Chapter Text
Chaeyoung is not used to silence. She is a musician, after all. She used to fill her days with melodies, her guitar was her vehicle to express what she was feeling at every moment, her voice was acclaimed by everyone.
“You will be a great singer,” people told her. A singer that the world will not be able to ignore, one that will go down in history. Everyone used to say that Chaeyoung was a star and she had believed it. It wasn’t until that moment, alone in the silence of her apartment, that she realized that if she was a star, then she was a shooting star: one whose pace was quick and who everyone forgot about once they had used her for their own benefit.
Chaeyoung had always cared about everyone around her: for her parents, for her friends, for her classmates... They all knew that they could count on her, that she would not hesitate to go in the help from her if they needed it. But, when no one was looking for her, she Chaeyoung had no one to count on. She had never realized it until that moment.
She had moved to the big city to pursue her dreams right after she graduated. She rented a small apartment and started working in clubs, hoping that some of the agencies to which she sent her songs would offer her a good contract. The beginnings of this new stage were exciting. Mainly, because of him.
Before him, Chaeyoung wrote about fictitious relationships, about the idea she had of romantic love, without having experienced it in her adolescence. It was enough for her to observe the couples she had around her, read novels and watch movies that made her cry with emotion all night long. That was her inspiration for her music: the concept of love. But, shortly after moving, she met another aspiring musician. The young man and her connected immediately and it didn’t take long for them to become a couple. He moved into Chaeyoung’s apartment and they started singing together at the clubs where she worked. Chaeyoung started making music all the time, composing was like oxygen for her and he was her inspiration.
Chaeyoung gave everything for that relationship, so much so that she was left with nothing. She wrote a song that she was very proud of and planned to audition for a discography with it. She made the innocent mistake of showing it to her boyfriend. What could happen?
The next thing she knew was that her boyfriend had been signed to that discography she aspired to. Overnight, she left Chaeyoung’s apartment with a note in which he apologized, in which he told her that he should focus on his dreams. It was just the morning of the audition and Chaeyoung was so devastated that she didn't have the strength to go. She would soon find out that that boy, the one she had loved so much and to whom she had trusted everything about her, had stolen her best song, the one she was so proud of. And not only that, he debuted in music with an album in which all the songs were composed by Chaeyoung, although he omitted that detail.
It had been a few weeks of that. Chaeyoung didn’t want to think about him, but she couldn’t help it. Nothing she wrote made sense, nothing she touched felt right. She had lost all motivation in music and, therefore, she felt that her life no longer had meaning. She had left her passion in someone's hands and that someone had used her. Now, Chaeyoung’s throat was dry from crying and her hands felt broken, from having held on so tightly to the love that she had been idealizing for years. The rope had broken, or rather had been released, but Chaeyoung was still trying to climb. She was trying to return to the place where she had started, when she was a teenager full of dreams. But she is no longer the same person.
She hasn’t played the guitar for several days. In fact, she hasn’t spoken for a while. The clubs she used to work at no longer have her. The only notifications from her that reach her phone are emails in which different discographies reject her, over and over again.
The silence is starting to feel nice, but Chaeyoung just wants to disappear.
Jennie always thought the dining room table was too long. Her mother told her that, if it weren't for that detail, she would not be able to accommodate all of their loved ones in one place. On one occasion, when she was still a teenager, Jennie had replied that there were plenty of spare seats, then. Her mother had punished her for that comment, but at the time that happened all the time.
Jennie still thinks about it. The list of people she considered ‘loved ones’ within her family was getting shorter and shorter. That day, as Jennie watched her family gathered at the dining room table, she concluded that that list had become empty. Not even her parents were safe, nor her siblings, nor her grandparents. They were all accomplices, they all knew that Jennie was unhappy and no one was capable of even looking at her. That wasn't love, Jennie was sure. So, no, if it were up to her, no one would deserve to be sitting at that table.
Jennie’s life is monotonous, boring, frustrating, and has been for as long as she can remember. She soon realized that money made people stupid. On the one hand, her entire family and the social circles they were used to were all superficial people who measured people’s worth based on their appearances. As long as you look pretty, no one will care if you feel the urge to jump out of a window every time you approach one.
On the other hand, all the friends that Jennie had tried to make without success, as well as her schoolmates, only saw her for her money. They weren’t interested in what was on her mind either, only in the benefit they could get from her. And Jennie had become so desperate that she had let herself be used, she had let her so-called friends squeeze her until she couldn't take it anymore. In the end, she always ended up alone.
She is now attending university. Her studies help her distract herself most of the time, she no longer bothers to socialize. Furthermore, at her private university there are nothing but snooty people like her family, she doesn’t want more of that. But, there at the mile-long dining table, there is no way to get distracted. Jennie is absent, listening to everyone talking but not hearing a single word. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because no one is paying attention to her.
It has already become clear to her that none of the people around her like her, she already knows well what they say about her behind her back. They criticize her for every detail: that if she is too serious, that if she is too sensitive, that if she laughs too much... There is no secret formula to fit into a family, it is something that is done or not. And Jennie has never felt like she belongs in hers.
She also doesn’t feel like she belongs anywhere else. She doesn’t know who she is and she doubts that she will ever find out. For now, sitting at that damn table, she just wants to disappear.
Jisoo’s leg has already healed. She can now walk normally, but she is still not able to get out of bed.
Everyone seems to have tired of her quickly. At the funeral, it was impossible for her to find a moment alone. Her wheelchair didn’t help her, because with it she was dragged everywhere, carried in front of people she didn’t know or didn’t care about, all of them telling her how sorry they were. Jisoo kept her eyes on the cast, wishing she was dead too, so they would stop looking at her.
It was either with pity, as most did, or with resentment. Only her boyfriend’s mother looked at her like that, but there was no way to ignore her. Jisoo’s shoulders were heavy, not only because of the pain that she had in her body due to her accident, but also because of the guilt and hatred that that woman who one day received her as her daughter dedicated to her.
Why did he have to die? Her boyfriend had a great future ahead of her. Jisoo didn't know herself yet, it didn't matter much if she died. She knew that her boyfriend would scold her for thinking like that, she knew him well: he had a beautiful heart. But now that heart is cold, buried underground. Jisoo can't seem to walk on it.
Nobody calls anymore. No one knocks at his door anymore, they have given up. Jisoo knows this well. They're all back to their lives and she doesn’t blame them. It’s no one’s fault but hers. It was her who suggested going skateboarding that day. Her boyfriend had been teaching her, Jisoo had asked him knowing that it would make him happy. If she had known, she would have looked for other ways to connect with her partner’s tastes, because something like that would never have happened to him if he had been skating on his behalf.
He had died because Jisoo had tripped and fallen off her skateboard, on the road, and just then a car was speeding by. She doesn’t remember how he had pushed her off the road, which is both a plus and a minus. Now, no one would know what his last moments had been like. No one could know if he had said any last words, because Jisoo didn’t remember it. It couldn’t be known if he had sacrificed himself intentionally, or if he hadn’t enough time to escape the clutches of death. The fact is that he is no longer in this world and that, in the eyes of others, Jisoo only broke her leg. In reality, Jisoo has lost a lot more, but it seems like everyone has forgotten about it very quickly.
Life goes on, or so they have been told. But Jisoo doesn’t think she’ll ever get out of bed again. Her head hurts from crying so much, her stomach hurts from not eating anything, and her chest hurts from the emptiness she feels inside of her. What is the point of continuing if the person who made you love life is no longer there?
Life goes on and for Jisoo that is cruel. She needs a moment to stop, to take a breath, to cry without feeling like she is being judged, to recover the pieces that were left scattered on the side of the road. Jisoo doesn’t want to go back to a reality where he isn’t in, she just wants to disappear.
Lisa is very young. She knows it perfectly, but she hates being told it.
When those words leave her mother’s lips, she knows she says it with hope. Her mother still hopes that her daughter will mature, that she will make her proud. But Lisa knows that will never happen, and even though she doesn’t seem capable, she assumes that her mother will lose faith in her one day. That’s why she prefers to prepare for the blow, instead of joining her mother in her fantasies about her perfect daughter. Lisa knows that she is not what her mother wants her to be and that she will never be. The faster her mother realises this too, the better for both of them.
Her father, on the other hand, says it with disdain, as if being young is something unimportant but annoying enough that he gets angry every time he mentions that her daughter is young. Her teachers say it without emotion, like saying a fact, because she is: Lisa is young, she has barely turned eighteen. But Lisa hates that they say it like they don’t care at all, even though they were pretending to care about her some minutes prior.
Her problems are no less important because of her age. When are they going to take her seriously? Lisa feels like she’s been screaming for help for years, inside a jar, but everyone shrugs when they see her. “She will grow up.” Now Lisa has grown so much that she doesn’t fit in the jar, she has broken it. Now free, she wants to continue breaking everything, she needs to vent the anger for which until that moment she had no space. Her screams are now annoying, but no one makes an effort to listen to her. “When are you going to grow up?” they ask. Lisa wants to yell at them that nothing she feels will go away just because her body gets older. It’s all in her head, as her parents say, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
Lisa wants to hit each one of her classmates. She wants to pull the hair of the girl who made fun of the color of hers, the day after she dyed it without her parents’ permission, maybe she wants to cut it with scissors too. She wants to break the face of those boys who make fun of her because of her appearance, the way she dresses and the way she acts. She wants to get up from her seat and slap her teachers every time they use her as a bad example in front of the rest of her classmates. She wants to break every exam she fails, she wants to break the classroom windows with her bare hands so she can jump into the void.
Despite everything, in the solitude of her room, Lisa’s mind is calm. Her aggressive tendencies seem to disappear when she looks in the mirror. Then, she smiles. She likes the color of her hair. She likes her clothes. She likes her face, she likes everything about her. The only thing she doesn’t like is herself. The intrusive thoughts that run through her head, her attitude, her rebellion... she doesn’t like being like that, but she doesn’t know any other way to live with her pain. She was never taught defense mechanisms that would not put her on edge, she never learned to take care of herself and therefore she finds herself unable to take care of others in her interactions. Besides, why should she? When was the last time someone saw her as a normal person, as the lost teenager that she is, instead of as an irredimible monster?
Today, she is sitting between her parents in the principal’s office. The three adults say the same thing: “Lisa is young.” Desperation, contempt and resignation. Everyone says it in their own way, but Lisa isn’t stupid, even if they think so. Her gaze is lost in the window, in the views of the city that she has from her school.
The buildings seem to be very tall. Lisa wonders how it will feel to fall from the top of one of them... A smile escapes her and now the three adults are yelling at her, asking her why she can’t take anything seriously, that when is she going to grow up. Lisa ignores them, she knows that giving in to anger again will only make things worse.
Her gaze moves away from the window and she heads for the door. How easy it would be to just get up and leave... Although Lisa knows that wouldn’t be enough. There is nowhere she can escape, because the problem is within her. She is the problem, wherever she goes, it’s her destiny. Lisa just wants to disappear.
But she’s reaching her limit. There is too much noise. Without thinking, she stands up and runs to the office door.
When she opens it, silence welcomes her, for the first time in her life.
The school hallway is empty, but that’s not what surprises her, it’s the abrupt cessation of the screaming. She no longer hears anyone, neither her parents nor the director, although a few seconds ago they were ordering her to sit down again immediately. Lisa walks determinedly down the hallway, although she can’t help but look back. The office door is ajar, but no one comes out after it. That didn’t make her relax her pace and she hurries towards the stairs, fearing that at any moment they will chase her.
The sound of her footsteps was the only thing she heard. She couldn’t even hear the noise of the teachers teaching classes, hitting the chalks against the blackboard. She peeked into the hallway, directing her gaze toward her classroom, not far from the stairs. She had been taken out of class to talk to the principal because the previous hour she had thrown the table to the floor, after the teacher had mercilessly mocked her mistakes on the last exam. She had gotten frustrated, she had reached the limit. The teacher sent her to the office and she was there alone until the three adults had appeared, all with that disappointed face that Lisa hates.
Her classmates don’t look at her like that, but maybe she prefers the adults’ looks to theirs. They seem to hate her for no reason, although Lisa imagined they were annoyed by her interruptions. A girl, on one occasion, had told her that her childish attitude distracted everyone. She told him that ‘some of us do want to study.’ Lisa had hit her, a measly shove on her shoulder, but the little girl had started crying.
Without thinking, Lisa is walking towards her classroom. She wants to come in and destroy everything. Breaking every book, every table... It’s not fair! She wants to study too! She wants to be smart, she wants to be praised, she wants her parents to tell her that they are proud of her and she wants them to stop making fun of her. She wants to prove that she is worth something.
Her hand grips the doorknob tightly and Lisa opens the door to her classroom, ready to receive everyone’s horrified stare. But that doesn’t happen.
There is no class behind the door.
The door faces the outside, to the street.
Lisa suppresses a cry of surprise and leans back, still holding the door.
“What the hell?!” she exclaims, loud enough for everyone to come out of the continuous classrooms to see what is happening. But the rest of the doors remain closed.
Lisa doesn’t recognize the street her door faces. The threshold is several meters from the ground, although it does not face the void, but rather a platform that connects the door to another building... It doesn’t make any sense. Lisa’s classroom window overlooks the courtyard... But that platform is even longer than Lisa’s classroom, which has obviously disappeared.
Still in disbelief, Lisa closes the door and opens it again. Nothing changes, all she sees is that cement platform. Feeling like her heart is going to burst out of her chest, Lisa takes a step and advances on the platform.
It’s quite high. The street under the platform does not seem to be in her city: it is colorful, not like the gray and depressing ones she is used to. The sky is full of clouds, but still the clarity of it makes Lisa blink several times to get used to it.
When she turns around to look at the door, she finds nothing but the wall of the building she just left... It’s not even her school. It doesn’t look like her school at all. It is a much taller building, with no windows on that wall, with nothing leading to that platform.
Panic begins to fill Lisa’s chest. There’s no way to get down from there unless she jumps. Her legs tremble at the thought and she can’t help but snort. Wasn’t she just fantasizing about that a few minutes ago? Now, she could do it, she could just jump in and put an end to all that nonsense... But the situation was so strange that her mind was no longer thinking about it, but rather about searching for a logical answer, one that clearly didn’t exist.
A screech startled her. Fearing that she would lose her balance, she crouched down and covered her head with her hands, but nothing happened. She moved a little closer to the edge and saw the source of the noise: down there, on the deserted street, there was a swing.
The swing hung from two lampposts, each on one side of the street. Still, they seemed to hold the weight without problems. On the swing, there was a girl. She swayed from side to side calmly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to swing in the street, where she could calmly hit passing cars... Although, at that moment, there were none in sight.
“Hey!” Lisa called, waving an arm to get the swing girl’s attention. She didn’t seem to hear her, just then Lisa noticed that she had her eyes closed and a smile from ear to ear. “Hey, you!” She screamed, holding on to the edge tightly.
This time, she did manage to get her attention. The girl watched her with joy, although there was confusion in her eyes. She looked to each side, at Lisa, at the platform that joined the buildings, at the street, then at the streetlights... her smile faded quickly.
“Hey, I need help!” Lisa screamed, but her request was interrupted by the girl on the swing’s scream of horror. Out of fright, Lisa leaned back, moving away from one edge and fearing she would fall on the other.
When she looks back at the street, she sees that the girl is clinging to one of the swing chains, curled in on herself, sobbing things that Lisa couldn’t hear. Due to the weight, the swing begins to swing to one side only, closer to the platform.
Lisa doesn’t understand the girl’s sudden terror, but there’s no point in trying to call her. She continues to look at the swing, noticing how he is getting closer to her, and the intrusive thought that seemed to have left her returns.
Jump.
Lisa summons all her courage to stand at the edge of the platform. She takes a breath and looks at the top of the buildings in front of her: on the horizon, the sky was turning a pinkish tone. The sight of her calms her, forgetting her situation for a moment, leaving her breathless.
“Please help!”
The girl’s voice brought her out of her thoughts. She was getting closer to her, stretching her arm out toward Lisa every time she passed by her. Lisa doesn't think about it anymore, feeling the adrenaline take over her, and jumps towards the swing the moment it passes in front of her again.
By force, the swing is directed towards the buildings in front. The two girls scream and Lisa doesn’t have time to check if the other is okay, holding on to the swing as best she can. She has not managed to sit up, but rather she is hanging on to him. As the swing swings hard, she feels her hands begin to slip and she screams louder. It’s then that she notices a hand on hers, grabbing them and looks towards the other girl. She looks terrified, but she has broken free a little to grab Lisa.
Only then does Lisa notice that the swing is made from a skateboard, which catches her attention, although due to the situation she does not focus much more on the detail.
Little by little, the movement of the swing calms down and it doesn’t take long for Lisa to touch the ground with the toes of her shoes. She falls on her butt, but she immediately gets up to stop the swing and let the girl jump to the ground.
While she recovers from the shock, Lisa directs her attention to the skateboard. It’s lovely. She would like to learn, but her parents would never allow it. They’d say it would distract her from her studies, or that only troublesome teenagers ride one... As if Lisa wasn’t already one.
To avoid further thinking about this issue, she lets go of the swing and lets it swing on its own. Lisa raises her head to see the platform she was on before and is amazed to see that it is not as high as she thought from above. Even so, she is still unable to explain how she got there, if a few moments ago she was in the hallway of her school, about to enter her class in a rage... Although perhaps the strangest thing is that swing that she has challenged the laws of gravity. Or that girl who is now crying on the floor.
Lisa takes a few steps and crouches next to her. The girl cries uncontrollably, covering her face with her hands. Lisa notices the purple streaks in her brown hair and the barely healed wounds on her legs. Almost without thinking, she places a hand on her shoulder and caresses it gently.
“You’re fine, calm down,” she tells her, surprising herself. She didn't imagine that she would be able to speak so carefully to another person... Lisa already about herself thought like the rest. “What happened?”
The girl doesn’t respond, she’s still crying, and Lisa decides to wait. She sits next to her and wraps her arms around her. She doesn’t really know why, but she feels that she needs it and... Well, maybe she herself needs that touch too.
Jisoo had been dreaming about him. That wasn’t strange, of course. On that occasion, they were in a playground, despite their age, on a summer night. He pushed her swing and she closed her eyes, smiling, letting her breeze caress her.
She would give anything to return to those memories.
This time, her dream felt... real. Somehow, she could really feel the lack of gravity. When she opened her eyes, she found not the ceiling of her room, but a deserted street.
She didn’t quite understand what was happening, but she didn’t recognize that street. It was clear that he was still dreaming, especially after seeing that the swing was attached to two thin lampposts. There was a girl, somewhere, Jisoo didn’t pay attention to her. However, upon looking down, in order to know how high she was, she saw that she was sitting on a skateboard. His skateboard.
Her heart skipped a beat and she got scared. She needed to get down. The swing flew higher and higher, closer to the buildings. Jisoo finally noticed the girl she had seen a few moments before, a young girl with mind-green hair and a surprised face who was waving her arms at her. Jisoo held out her hand, trying not to fall, begging him to help her, until the girl jumped onto the swing. Luckily, neither of them fell to the ground, not until the swing's balance had calmed down and they were able to jump onto solid ground.
Once she was down, Jisoo broke down. She started crying and crying like the first day. It’s the first time she’s seen that skateboard since... since what happened. She doesn't even know what happened to it, if it was thrown away or if it’s stored in a corner of his boyfriend’s parents’ basement... Or maybe it was broken. Or maybe it flew off to the side of the road and is lost in the brush. Either way, there’s no doubt that a part of Jisoo had been left on that damn skateboard, and there it was again. Tormenting her even in happy memories of her.
“You’re fine, calm down.” A voice from her brings her out of her thoughts and she notices a hand on her shoulder. “What happened?”
Jisoo is not able to respond. Still, now there are some arms surrounding her, holding her. Jisoo separates her hands from her face and sees that it is the girl, who has her forehead resting on his face and looks at the ground, absently. It takes him a while to notice Jisoo watching her and offers her a shy smile as soon as their eyes meet.
“Are you better?”
“I’m sorry,” Jisoo apologizes, embarrassed, but the green-haired girl denies, moving away from her. Jisoo almost wishes she wouldn't.
“It’s okay, that swing was... Oh.” Her voice trails off as soon as she looks back. “It’s not here anymore.”
Jisoo quickly whips around, scaring the girl a little, but she doesn’t notice it. Indeed, the enormous swing has disappeared... The street they are on is deserted, there are no cars or pedestrians. Jisoo looks for the skateboard, but she can’t find it. She couldn’t tell if it was a relief or not.
“Are you okay?” the girl insists. Jisoo nods slowly, finally directing her attention only to her.
“Yeah. Thank you,” she whispers. Her heart is still beating violently under her chest. “It’s just... This dream is so strange.”
“Dream?” the girl asks, confused.
“Yes, that's what it is, isn’t it?”
Jisoo doesn’t seriously question it, since there is no other explanation. However, the girl wrinkles her brow and looks up at the concrete platform she was on.
“Well, I don’t know. I opened the door to my classroom and instead of finding it, I appeared there,” she tells her. “I don’t understand anything, but you must be right. I don’t know when I fell asleep.”
Jisoo blinks, but the girl smiles at her as if nothing had happened. “My name is Lisa, by the way,” she tells her as she stands up. She reaches out to Jisoo and she accepts her help.
“I’m Jisoo.”
Lisa’s hand feels real. Everything about her seems that way. Jisoo wipes away her tears and Lisa begins to suggest that they explore the place, but she is interrupted by a melody that echoes through the street, as if it were coming from a public address system.
Both girls detect the origin of the melody. It’s coming from a building across the street. Lisa starts walking towards it, without saying anything, and Jisoo has no choice but to follow her.
Jennie had excused herself to leave the dining room. She had said she was going to the bathroom, or so she remembered. No one deigned to look at her as she got up from the table.
Jennie was really planning on going to the bathroom, she wanted to lock herself in and calm down in a place where she wouldn’t be disturbed. But, when she opens the door, she doesn’t see her bathroom, but rather a large room that she does not know.
Jennie takes a step back, feeling a shiver run up and down her body. What is this? She stays for a few moments looking at that room behind the bathroom threshold, stunned. It is impossible. It is impossible. She must be hallucinating.
She wants to go back to the living room, tell someone to go with her so she can find out if she was crazy or not. But she stops dead when she hears her mother’s lifeless laughter.
No, she doesn’t want to know if they see it or not. She doesn’t want to give them a reason to make fun of her anymore.
She backs away to the bathroom... or what the bathroom is supposed to be. She takes a step forward and passes the threshold. She immediately notices that the other side is cooler, but she takes a few more steps.
The first thing that comes to mind is that it looks like an abandoned nightclub. It is large enough to be so, only interrupted by thin columns every few steps and with some windows at the back that illuminate the room, as if it were daytime.
Jennie turns around and no longer sees the door she came through. To her surprise, she doesn’t get upset. She feels quite calm in that place, so she continues walking until she finds what looks like a CD player.
Jennie has a collection of CDs in her room, it is one of her hobbies. That player is curious: it is tall, it reaches her waist. It has a compartment where CDs would be stored, although now there is only one. Jennie places it, without thinking, as if an external force prompted her to do so.
Soon, an unknown song fills the room. Jennie remains absorbed next to the player, letting herself be hypnotized by the melody. It is a beautiful song... It’s sung by several voices, women’s voices, but she is not able to recognize them.
She doesn’t know how much time she has spent listening to the song when she hears footsteps behind her and sees a girl stop by the CD player, with an expression of disbelief.
“That... That’s my song,” she says.
Chaeyoung can’t believe it, but maybe hearing her song will be the least strange of all.
She had fallen asleep, tired of the silence, on the couch in her apartment. When she opened her eyes again, she was no longer there. She was standing in a large room, which had already left her dazed enough. But soon, a girl appeared and headed towards a specific place. Chaeyoung hadn’t dared to move, feeling like everything around her was a fragile dream that would vanish if she moved.
But then she started playing her song. It wasn’t just any song, but the last one she had written. One that she composed the same day that her boyfriend would abandon her, when she didn't know yet that he would steal all her work as if it were nothing.
She has never heard it before, it is just a draft that she will never use from her notebook, the one that she no longer dares to open. Hearing the melody come true gives her goosebumps, and even more so hearing her own voice. She wasn’t the only one singing, there were other voices that she didn’t recognize, but the combination was beautiful... A tear runs down Chaeyoung’s cheek, as she moves towards the other girl and the CD player from which the song comes.
The girl looks at her when she stands next to her, but she doesn’t say anything. Chaeyoung takes a breath and tries to relax the tension that accompanied her.
“That... That's my song,” she mutters. She didn’t know if she was happy, excited, sad or scared to hear it. The dream is playing with her feelings.
“It’s beautiful,” the girl says and when Chaeyoung directs her gaze to her, she sees her smile at her with what seems like sincerity.
“Oh really?” she laughs, nervous. The other girl nods and the song ends. “I never recorded it, how strange. I don’t even recognize the other voices. There are four of them, right?”
“Well, everything is strange here,” the girl responds with a soft laugh. She turns her head back and tugs on the sleeve of Chaeyoung’s jacket, making her turn around as well.
There are two more girls at the back of the room, next to what looks like the entrance. One has mint green hair, although Chaeyoung can see her dark roots. The other is one step behind her and she is the only one watching them, because the first is more busy looking around her with her mouth open, even if there was nothing else to see.
“Hello!” she finally greets the one with green hair, walking towards them with large strides. The other girl follows her. Now that she’s closer to her, Chaeyoung can tell that she’s nervous, while the former seems excited to see them, like she already knows them.
The girl next to Chaeyoung waves, but Chaeyoung remains motionless.
“Are you guys from here?” the cheerful girl asks, once she is in front of them. Both Chaeyoung and the other shake their heads. “Neither are we! We just appeared here, for no reason, like magic. What are your names? I am Lisa.”
“I’m Jisoo,” the girl behind her says more shyly.
“Jennie,” answers the girl who played the CD. Now all eyes are on Chaeyoung.
“My name is Chaeyoung,” she answers and shifts restlessly. That’s when she notices that he has nothing after her. She turns around and sees that the CD player is gone. Jennie does the same and gasps in surprise.
“What’s happening?” Lisa asks, moving closer.
“The CD player is gone!” Jennie is amazed, pointing to the place where she was.
“Is that where that beautiful song sounded from?” Jisoo asked and Jennie nodded effusively, making Chaeyoung blush a little. “We were just coming to see where it came from.”
“Where do you come from?” Jennie asks.
“From the street,” Lisa answers.
“Take us there,” Jennie asks and she looks at Chaeyoung with a smile, as if she was asking her permission. Chaeyoung just nods, still unable to get out of the trance that has trapped her since she woke up... Or since she thought she woke up, at least.
For now, she follows the three girls towards the exit. The idea crosses her mind that, perhaps, it would be good for her to be distracted a little, even if it means staying in that dream a little longer.