The Tiger King (Chaelisa)

28| Progress

 Lisa tapped her foot, tilting her head at Rosé with an understanding smile gracing her face. "Personally, I had some...anger management issues in the past. But Hwangssabu helped me master it with boxing. We...well, let's say we couldn't afford therapy, so it was really lucky that I had boxing to help."

"Hwangssabu...the owner?"

"Jennie and I's old trainer." Lisa paused, face sombre. "He was like a father to both of us."

A strange expression crossed Lisa's face just then which intrigued Rosé, moreover with how Lisa kept referring to him in the past tense.

"He's not around anymore," Lisa said quietly, noticing Rosé's quizzical expression. "He passed away in...unfortunate circumstances."

"Oh...I'm sorry. I didn't know..."

"Don't sweat about it," Lisa smiled, "I ain't gonna break down just because we mention him you know? No need to walk on tiptoes around me."

Rosé wanted to ask more because this Hwangssabu guy seemed to be an important piece of the puzzle that made up Lisa. She filed the information away for later, resolving to ask more once they had perhaps gotten a little closer. It was still much too early to unpack their backgrounds and Rosé was definitely not ready to divulge much about hers. 

Lisa tapped Rosé's hand. "Rosie, starting out strongly and aggressively can only hurt you in the long run." She rubbed her thumb over the sore red knuckles in emphasis, making Rosé hiss and Lisa immediately dropped her hand as though it were a hot pan.

"Sorry," Lisa said quickly before turning to halt the swinging punching bag and bring it back to a standstill.

Rosé wondered why she felt disappointment welling up in her gut at the loss of Lisa's hand—the blonde's touch felt strangely soothing.

"Hwangssabu used to tell me that the ideal focal point for your optimal state of mind should be to find the point between rage and serenity," Lisa said now as they stood in front of Punchy again. "That's the place your mind has to be to have full control over your emotions and in turn, your actions."

Rosé stared at her, mouth dropping open. "Did you just quote Professor X at me?"

Lisa tilted her head curiously. "Uh...no? It's what Hwangssabu used to say. Who's Professor X?" 

"You mean you don't know who Professor Charles Xavier is?" Rosé squealed. "You don't know X-men?"

Lisa scrunched her brows. "I do know some Disney that Somi showed me," she said slowly but Rosé shook her head violently.

"X-men is a comic series. So you don't know about the mutants and their awesome super powers? Wolverine and Magneto and Emma Frost and Jean Grey and Kitty Pryde and...?"

Lisa shook her head. "You're talking gibberish to me."

"You gotta get into them, they're really cool! My favourite mutants gotta be X-23, she's a clone of Wolverine and Blink, she can create dimension-warping portals, I like her best in The Gifted and she's played by my TV mom Jamie Cheung. She's had such a traumatic past....not like X-23 hasn't but yeah both of them had their hard times. But then my favourite movie is X-men: First Class. I may or may not have had a small crush on Michael Fassbender in that movie even though he eventually turned out to be the bad guy.  And oh there's so many mutants really I hardly know where to begin it's one sprawling universe and they're all basically fan fictions of each other according to the era of the writers that take over which so frustrating but also incredible at the same time. Oh I'm just remembering, another favourite mutant has to be Wolverine because well, Hugh Jackman plays him before Wolverine died, and Jackman's an Aussie and well, an Aussie gotta stick up for your pals, you know?" Rosé gushed before catching herself, gnawing on her lip.