『JenSoo Short Stories』 - Chapter 55: Chapter 55

When Jennie succumbed to the weariness that consumed her, Jisoo made sure to take the reins.
She tucked her essentials into her pockets, keycards and cash and made her way into the white hallways.
She walked past Lalisa, her hair was a plain shade of brown and shortly cut, and neatly pulled back in a ponytail. Jisoo felt a twinge of pain dance across Jennie's chest as Lalisa laughed and greeted her with a smile that drove her insane during drills and gunfights, even with bullets sinking into every wall that bent to protect her, she grinned as if she was still back home dancing to songs in the pouring rain.
(She'd greet death with a pearly grin and a sweet, "how's it going bud?").
"Goodnight Lieutenant." she said with a simple bow.
A goodbye almost leapt from , Jisoo clamped Jennie's jaws shut and quickly twirled the ends of her lips.
(A choked and almost all too emotional goodnight leapt from and Jisoo knew without a doubt that it was Jennie's sleep-coated goodbye).
Leaving the compound was beyond easy, she swiped her I.D. card every few minutes, opening door after door, leaving behind a sea of memories that washed by her feet.
"We're leaving aren't we?" Jennie asked eventually, her voice trembling with an emotion unknown to her.
"We don't have a choice." Jisoo replied, twisting another friendly grin onto Jennie's face when they greeted another Lieutenant.
"This is a coward's way out." Jennie spat with a sharp fury tracing her words.
"At least cowards survive." Jisoo mumbled, ignoring the sudden emptiness within Jennie's chest.
"I'm a traitor." Jennie mumbled through loose lips as she watched countless pictures of herself fly up and off screen.
"You wouldn't of survived if you stayed." Jisoo reminded her softly.
Jennie glanced towards the 'older' woman, a turmoil of anguish and fury seeped into her bones. Traitor. Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.
The word was carved deep into her flesh, it stretched over the only scars she could wear with pride, the one that started at her sternum and ended at her shoulder, it was colored dull shades of pink that were all consumed by the vivid memory of a knife shredding into her collarbone and then jerking towards the right.
The reporter's voice faded into a quiet murmur and the shuffling outside the hall blended into the endless white noise that floated within her skull; she laughed, the years she spent becoming a hero had all been tarnished by a single pungent stain. They ignored the bloodstains that coated her body, the scars, the memories both lost and forgotten.
They would never know that the people of Busan weren't starving, they were never dying. It was a distortion painted with white, black and red and blue patriotism, the army just needed a reason to storm into Busan and put an end to all the riots without being recognized as brutal monsters.
Jisoo slid her arm over the slight dip in Jennie's waist, her hand clung onto the loose fabric that was slightly wet to the touch.
"You're not a traitor." Jisoo murmured into her ear, hoping it wouldn't be lost within the wild strands of hair that hung over her ear.
"That's not what they think."
"They don't know you." her voice was thick with a vicious anger.
For a split second Jennie heard it; the quiet distortion of her voice, the faded sputter of her coding trying to correct something that never should've been possible - fury within a machine that was made to only drown in bliss.
A bitter taste flooded as she pulled herself away from Jisoo's limp grasp. Her lips nearly tore into a snarl as Jisoo's eye began to whir.
"You're not a human." she said roughly, with a drop of hatred floating in her words.
"So?" Jisoo fired back as she sat up sharply.
Reality was quickly flooding back, everything had become painfully clear, she heard the mechanical clicks and hums that she had learned to warp into white noise, the vibrant blue she tricked herself into thinking was some natural hue.
It was all a lie, a beautiful lie- but a lie nonetheless.
Jennie felt her body tense, each muscle twitched as words sharpened to become daggers shot from . "Nothing you feel is real- It never was."
Jisoo's scowl crumbled the second the words tore into her; endless lines of code try to explain what she felt, they tried a thousand times only to fail. Rugged and scarred words got caught at the base of and the only thing that could escape her inner collapse was a quiet and solemn,
"No."
Jennie watched as heaven collapsed in on itself, the blue flickered only to quickly stop spinning and a cool black filled its place, her smooth skin fractured into a million different rough edged splines that all interlocked to form the familiar rocky terrain of skin.
For the first time she looked nothing out of the ordinary, her perfection had been wiped off to reveal a machine crumbling.
"I meant everything, Jennie." Jisoo mumbled oh so softly, each line of code, each fragment of light begged - she was as tender and soft as light and code could ever be.
But that tenderness wasn't enough, there weren't any tears running down flushed cheeks while her eyes puffed up, she remained smooth-skinned, perfectly toned and colored without a single drop of redness or puffiness.
(She could never say "don't leave, it'll kill me if you go" because it simply wasn't true).
It destroyed Jennie but didn't even seem to scratch her.
Jennie shook her head, "There's no way you could've, you're not real and your feelings can't be either."
Jisoo let out a strangled chuckle as something within her black eye flickered, "You think you know everything."
Jisoo stared back at a living battlefield, and she loved Jennie. She loved her sharp edges that were made out of bullet shards, she loved the hollowness of her voice and the dips and cuts of her skin.
She loved her cruelness because she had tasted her sweetness, the scratchiness of her greetings in the morning when her hair was ruffled and soft.
(If humans were only destined to be tragedies she finally understood why they loved so dearly).
She loved her and it killed her all the same.
Jennie stopped calling for her, (and when she did, her face crumpled, her lips cracked and split while she called out a cold 8816, but never Jisoo, never again).
It only took days before Jennie realized why everything had become so empty, why the world seemed to boom louder than it had ever before.
(The whirs, the mechanical hums were all gone, not that she noticed entirely).
The blue tint that coated every object she touched had faded away, a mellow amber tone covered her in the morning and a dark indigo wrapped around her at night.
But there was always a twinge of pain when she fell onto her bed, expecting to see a flash of blue in a sea of darkness when there was none, but nothing hurt more than the quiet emptiness that she had plunged into.
It drove her insane, the constant clicking of the clock, the sound of her own heart thumping within her chest as she took quick and shallow breaths. It was mind-numbingly loud and yet it was always all too quiet.
Instead she used the tv and fell asleep to the sounds of saturated fake laughter and boring one-liners that Jisoo loved to watch, she played the music Jisoo would mimic and sing - and she could sleep because Jisoo's laughs always superimposed themselves into the pauses of the shows, and into the quiet instrumentals that played at the beginning of each song.
(And nothing prepared her for the day the laughter stopped echoing through her mind, when she was sitting alone in a beaten down apartment with a stupid sitcom blaring into her left ear and some ballad playing at the highest volume in her right).
It was deafening, but not enough.
Jennie tugged on the hat while she glanced at various cereals, she internally groaned knowing that Jisoo wasn't there to tell her the exact amount of sugar with each serving and how many servings it would take for her to become full.
Suddenly she felt a strong nudge press into her back.
"Oh!" a voice yelped.
"I'm sorry." she quickly apologized while Jennie turned to face her.
A woman stood with a soft smile; her voice was painfully familiar but this time she didn't speak with a mechanical hum nor a spinning eye.
Her name bubbled to the top of , Jennie thought if she didn't say then she would repeat it a hundred times into the night, savoring every syllable and letter, honey off the first J and wrapping her tongue around the more bitter yet comforting warmth of -soo.
"Jisoo." Jennie gasped while her nails dug into the colorful cardboard box.
She blinked for a few seconds, a warm shade of brown swallowing her eyes and devouring them whole.
The words got caught within but she still meant it with every throbbing scar tracing her body. "God you're beautiful."
Jisoo's voice dropped into a soft whisper, "Jennie? You remember me?"
(How could she ever forget? Even with bullets shredding into her brain, one scent, one voice, one face always stood in a sea of fog and dust).
It all intertwined together; painting something that never touched the familiar shade of crimson and the color of dulled scars- it painted Jisoo and her red hoodie in some class Jennie couldn't be bothered to remember, Jisoo and her whispers during tests, Jisoo laughing while dancing across rooftops while Jennie clung onto her school books. Jisoo and her constellation decals that covered the ceiling of her bedroom, Jisoo and her love of tragedies, Jisoo and her favorite constellation; Ursa Major. Jisoo. Jisoo. Jisoo.
Jennie let out a deep sigh and felt years of faded memories fly through her teeth, "I could never forget."
She smiled and Jennie felt years of aching scars melt away into supple and tender flesh. "I knew what they said about you wasn't true- I knew you weren't a traitor."
Jennie closed her eyes and her hand found itself buried within Jisoo's, "You don't know what I've done."
"It doesn't matter," Jisoo said with a slight shake of her head, "You're still my Jennie."
A series of words were caught within when she heard a quiet hum echo:
"I love you Jennie. Goodbye."
(Jisoo never said it, but her light strands never shined brighter when she thought of it: "i'll see you in the stars").