behind the stars // chaelisa + hints of jensoo

1

"Who is Rosé?" Lisa snaps, cutting Jennie's fangirling short - it's nearly scary to see the utter joy in her usually way too serious face, her high cheeks flustered with excitement. Lisa needs to know who she'll be hosting and to what lengths she'll have to go to make sure her entire staff keeps their mouths shut about it.

"God, I forget you've been living under a rock with no connection to the human world," Jennie means it as an offense, but Lisa can't take it when she can literally hear crickets in the trees outside. She watches impatiently as Jennie taps something on her phone and scrolls down until she finds a picture she deems good enough and turns the screen for Lisa to see, " That is Chaeyoung or Roseanne Park she also goes by Rosé which is her stage name."

Lisa resists the urge to grab the phone to look at the picture up close - Jennie and half the staff already have too much ammo when it comes to Lisa's "mom habits". The blurred background makes it clear it's a professional photography and Lisa can barely make out the stage and a keyboard on it before focusing on the main subject: a blonde singing softly into an old-school microphone.

With her black ripped jeans, a crop top that had more lace than actual fabric, and a bomber jacket on top of it, the woman hardly seemed like the type of person who would spend her days in a countryside hotel. She belongs in beaches with white sand and transparent water sipping on colorful drinks - not in a hotel in Middle of Nowhere, Colorado.

"Wait, does she have her pink hair in here?" Jennie asks as she snatches her phone back to check what picture she was showing, "Yeah, nice. She's like that now. She had it all in that faded grey you hate a while ago, then a pretty faded purple/blue-"

"Jennie," Lisa exhales in frustration, closing her eyes for a moment as the other woman stops talking, "I still don't see why is she such a celebrity and why she needs a non disclosure agreement from us."

"Ugh, grandma," Jennie grunts and rolls her eyes, typing something on her phone as she explains, "Rosé is a big deal, okay? She's the up and coming musician right now. Tickets for her concerts sell out in a flat minute, she's been to every talk show that matters, literally everyone wants an interview with her - apparently, she's hilarious. We should watch some interviews," Lisa can make out how Jennie exits the browser where she's been saving pictures to her phone and opens up YouTube and types 'Chaeyoung Park interview' in the search bar, "She's been number one on Billboard and iTunes for the last three months. Without any new song coming out in this time. That's the level of celebrity we're talking about."

Lisa rocks on the balls of her feet, picking up the non-disclosure agreement again. Even if they're in the off-season and there are barely more than a handful of guests in the hotel, it'll be a difficult mission to keep it all under covers. "If this Rosé really is all you're painting her to be, why would she run away and hide?"

Jennie lights up in a twisted way that makes Lisa wonder if she should give Jennie her vacation for whatever period of time Chaeyoung stayed in the hotel. "She just went through the break up of the decade . Seriously, some people say it's in the same level as Brangelina."

Lisa refrains from asking what exactly is a Brangelina as Jennie turns the phone back to her so she can read the title of a news article - "Why did Chaeyoung Park and Suho Kim split? From out of control jealousy to domestic violence allegations" - followed by a picture of the couple in an event of some kind, Chaeyoung with her hair in the faded grey Jennie mentioned and the man with his long hair parted sideways and styled with way too much hair product.

"I don't feel comfortable stalking our guests," Lisa says, drawing back from the phone when Jennie waves it at her to pick it up and read through the article. If feels a lot like invading her future guest's privacy for comfort, even is she is a famous musician whose live is always out in the open.

"It's not stalking if it's public information," Jennie shrugs and goes back to reading the article, browsing through it as if she's just learning all those facts, although Lisa would suggest she knows it by heart now, "Besides, don't you want to know why you need a confidentiality agreement? You should know what you're getting yourself into."

As if on cue to give her an excuse, her stomach grumbles and her mind can only imagine a godsent risotto with a gigantic wine glass to wash it down, images of a certain blonde with pink tips forgotten for the moment. "What I really want right now is food. Do you think Joy will feed me?"

Jennie snorts at her whiny tone and puts down her phone for the moment, even if Lisa knows she'll hear more about Chaeyoung before she arrives. Nudging the huge package in front of her towards Lisa, Jennie smiles, "Give her her fancy ass pressure cook and she'll feed you like a grandma feeds her always starving grandchildren."

Her night goes as many other have gone before. She eats in the kitchen before the dinner rush makes it impossible to be near it, listening to Joy raving about the new pressure cooker as if it's be single greatest kitchen appliance she's ever laid eyes on. Between sips of wine and mindless conversation, Lisa lets Chaeyoung fall to the back of her mind, focusing on listing everything she had to get done for the evening before curling up in bed with one of the books she had gotten in the mail.

She spends the next handful of hours pouring over budgets - damn her and her stupid decision to do all the accounting books on her own - and trying to figure out a more flexible schedule for the next few months when she'd be somewhat short staffed.

By the time she drops by the front desk to get a book and make sure no one needs her, Jennie has finished her shift and Aiden stood ramrod straight behind the desk, proud to be left alone for the night shift after all the times he had to put up with a sleep deprived Jennie. She smiles at him and bids him goodnight, picking up a book from the pile she left on the desk - because Jennie couldn't have been bothered to put it away - before making her way to her room.

She goes through the motions of showering, putting on pajamas, brushing her teeth, braiding her hair and picking up her newest book before something makes her drop it on the bed and walk to her desk. Lisa sighs at her own curiosity, knowing she won't be able to fall asleep before she gives into it, and grabs her laptop, bringing it to bed with her.

As her fingers brush the keyboard and enter "Chaeyoung Park" on her browser, Lisa can't help but wish she had brought some wine with her, if only to make it easier on her consciousness that she's actively stalking a guest - no matter what Jennie says, she wouldn't Google any other guest. She skims through the articles about the break up, mostly trying to find something else than absorbing any information, and reads the about section on her website instead of Wikipedia - at least that way she'd be reading only what Chaeyoung wanted everyone to know.

Before she makes an intentional decision to look for her music or even realizes that she's going to YouTube at all, Lisa lets the first chords of Chaeyoung Park's latest hit fill her room. The music video tells a story she can't really care about, not when close ups of bright brown eyes is everything she can see.

Lisa lets autoplay do its job, giving her music video after music video until she's seen everything in Chaeyoung's channel, including acoustic versions of songs she's already listened to. It doesn't take much for Lisa to decide she likes Chaeyoung best when it's just her and a guitar, her eyes closed as she makes it through the chords without any effort.

By the time she runs out of songs to listen to and the interviews start with Chaeyoung charming the entire audience with a mere wave, Lisa is curled up under the blankets, her hands tucked under her pillows as Chaeyoung chatters on about a new upcoming song she'll release in the following weeks. She sings a stripped version of it and Lisa realizes she's listened to it before - it's an old interview, apparently - and hums along without really meaning to.

If she falls asleep listening to Chaeyoung laughing as she plays some game in a talk show, Lisa rests quietly in the knowledge Jennie will never find out about it.