Currently: while Mira, Rumi, and Zoey have wandered off to have gay breakdowns—er, put Rumi’s sword away, Minji, Miyeong, and Celine are working on lunch and continuing to plan how they’ll be getting rid of the wraiths. In Seoul, a grieving Bobby meets a nurse…
The cooler, dryer air inside of the hanok hits Rumi like a wave as they enter, and she has to pause to take a breath and let herself luxuriate in it.
“It is a beautiful invention, this thermostat,” she declares, just to make Mira and Zoey smile.
And they do.
“And we even fixed the hole in the ozone layer,” Zoey jokes, before pausing, like she’s realized that Rumi has entirely no idea what ‘ozone’ is—indicating it is likely a modern term and not just something of Korean that has escaped her. This language can be such a headache compared to Jejuan sometimes, and the wonderfully creative way that Zoey uses words is… not necessarily helpful, for one as slow as Rumi.
She smiles anyway, because she is certain that it would be funny, did she understand.
“What does that have to do with air conditioning?” Mira asks, herding them all gently forward out of the doorway, which makes Rumi feel somewhat better about her ignorance.
Half of their conversation about ‘coolants’ and ‘atmosphere’ goes over Rumi’s head, but she thinks that she understands the general meaning: much like the stars, this invention had not come without cost.
By the time they reach the honored shaman’s office once more, the sweat is cool and damp against Rumi’s skin, and she is left to wonder again how it is that modern clothing is meant to work. These strange, skimpy undergarments have caught almost none of it, and she is certain that a proper runthrough of her exercises would have left her soaked in sweat, to say nothing of a day’s work. Is one meant to change clothes constantly?
She considers asking, but—
Mostly she is just stalling.
Selfish creature that she is, she does not want to put her sword away.
It will be there again when she returns, yes, but—
It is hard to part with, though she knows she should. Her sword, deadly and vicious, not ever to be drawn when not needed, feels so comforting in her hand. Like an anchor, a reminder that she is yet real—yet alive, in the same world that she left.
“Rumi? Sorry, we were getting kind of deep into the science there.” Zoey laughs nervously, apologizing for her own existence.
Rumi shakes her head, grip tightening on the sheathed sword. “It was no fault of yours. I am merely… considering.”
Mira snorts. “Considering our atmosphere? You looked like you were really paying attention there.”
“Perhaps I was considering the beauty of your features, sweet lady,” Rumi answers, the casual deflection coming easily.
Perhaps too easily, if the startled expressions that take over not just Mira’s features but also Zoey’s are to say anything. Rumi ought be careful, if her… desires… are so visible.
Hurriedly, she turns away, unlatching the box and putting the sheath back in it.
It closes with a decisive thunk.
And hopefully, Rumi will keep such a decisiveness in herself going forward.
The sesame oil has started sizzling, so Celine scrapes Minji-nim's pile of neatly (if... perhaps excessively finely) chopped vegetables into the pan and turns to the pantry. She pulls out a jar of kimchi and two eggs without thinking, then goes back for the rest of the carton. Six mouths to feed is nice, but it will take some adjustment.
She looks over at her designated sous chef, but Minji-nim has slumped over her arms on the table, eyes closed at last.
Celine is glad. It's meant to be part of her duties, in carrying on the great Rumi-nim's work, to give comfort to those who she helps; Rumi-nim healed hearts and spirits, as well as protecting bodies from harm. Celine has always been much better at the practical side of things. She can offer food, a safe place to go, she can repair torn stuffed animals and glue together broken heirlooms like they were never damaged, but she's never known what to say to people, when they hurt. In the face of what Minji-nim has lost, any mere words Celine could think to offer feel dismissive and trite. But a nap will do her good.
Celine turns to Miyeong-nim instead. "Can you be trusted to chop kimchi?"
"Let's find out." The reporter's eyes sparkle as she takes the jar. "You can come over here and supervise, if you're worried."
Miyeong-nim really is a flirt. Celine should probably roll her eyes, but she finds herself smiling, just a little, instead, as she turns back to the skillet. It's been a while since anyone cared to flatter her that way. And despite first impressions, she's beginning to think Miyeong-nim's good opinion is more discerning than she likes to act.
Certainly, she has decent taste in women. Celine glances over at the table again. "Will she be alright there?" she asks Miyeong-nim. "She needs sleep, but I doubt she needs back problems."
The reporter stops squinting suspiciously at the kimchi and takes a look of her own. "She'll be okay, I've caught her napping in much worse positions than that. You wouldn't think a human could bend the way a nurse can bend when the only available flat surface is the top of a mini-fridge."
Her face has gone soft and warm, and her voice is so fond that it makes the words sound like something earthshaking and precious, instead of the off-hand anecdote to a near-stranger that it is.
Well. Small talk. Celine starts pulling some fruit out of the fridge for Mira's smoothie, and asks over her shoulder, "Have you two been partners a long time, then?"
“I—wait—huh?” Miyeong barely manages to avoid spasming and starting to chop her own fingers instead of the kimchi. “Partners like—not that—Minji?”
Celine looks back at her, blushing slightly and says, voice stiff with embarrassment, “I hadn’t meant to presume. I apologize.”
“No, no, it’s just…” Miyeong stares at her, attempting to come up with something, anything beyond repeating, “…Minji? She’s so… and I’m…”
Why would someone like Minji, who is as selfless and competent and together as she could be, possibly get involved with Miyeong? (…Beyond getting dragged along with her in extenuating circumstances such as the ones they were under. Where it was the right thing to do.)
Celine frowns slightly. “You’re…?”
Miyeong’s face goes hot, feeling ridiculously adolescent at having Celine look at her as if she‘a more than just some worn out idiot who’d sold her soul for consistent employment years ago.
“I—I don’t even know if she—“ likes women. Miyeong takes a breath before she finishes that sentence in the stupidest way possible. “We’d known each other through work before now. Separate works. Wherein she did not like me very much.”
Celine just looks at her for another moment, still frowning, and nods. “…What sort of stories have you working at the hospital, then?”
Miyeong cringes at the thought of explaining about Yeonggi, though she knows Celine hadn’t meant it that way, and then it makes Celine wince and— “No, no! You didn’t—no, I was only—please, Celine-nim, forgive me, there’s just a bit of a story there, and one that involves me being a bit of an idiot.”
Matched with a smile, that, at least, finally has Celine loosening up instead of looking like she wants out of this conversation, raising an eyebrow. “Really?”
So Miyeong deftly avoids the subject of how everything with Yeonggi ended, and gets into how it started—a tale involving missing IV bags, a caffeine allergy, and a source who exclusively spoke Spanish.
It makes Celine laugh, as she explains how she’d tried to bribe the handsome male nurse with coffee and he’d looked at her like he wanted to die.
She skips the part where he was so enthusiastic about helping her because the new operation was cutting in on his own illegal activities. Maybe once they’ve known each other more than a week… and she’s had a conversation with Celine where she doesn’t have to fight the urge to melt into the ground from embarrassment.
It’s funny, though. She’d never noticed that Minji was in the story so much too, exhaustedly trying to kick Miyeong out even then. “Since I still had the coffee, I tried the trick on the next nurse I saw.”
Celine, set up at her own cutting board next to Miyeong, follows her nod to Minji. “And I take it she refused?”
“Oh, no, she took it,” Miyeong says, feeling a fond smile tug at her lips. “It just meant that she smiled at me while directing me to the exit that day.”
Celine’s laughter feels distant, almost, as Miyeong puts down the knife.
Part of Zoey — okay, most of Zoey — wants to stay and poke around the office a little more. Not only is she curious about what a modern mudang's day-to-day equipment might look like, there could be more ancient mystical weapons stashed around here and she cannot miss that.
But as soon as Rumi puts the sword away, she turns and all but marches out, a woman on a mission. Zoey turns to Mira, a silent question, but Mira just raises her eyebrows and shrugs a little, and then gestures broadly toward the door with a tiny little bow of her head, after you.
Fortunately, from behind, Mira won't be able to see the absurd blush that overtakes Zoey's entire face over such a completely normal gesture.
When they get to the kitchen, Minji is slumped asleep on the table, and the sweet smell of sauteed veggies fills the air. Celine and Miyeong are standing very close together at the counter; over the sizzling of oil, Zoey can just hear Celine walking Miyeong patiently through every step of holding her fingers curled, rocking the knife along its curve, letting the blade do the work. From her angle at the door, Zoey can just make out the edge of Miyeong's expression, serious and focused, and the tip of one ear, a brilliant red.
"Honorable shaman," says Rumi, keeping her voice low to not wake Minji and doing something really unfair to Zoey's guts as a bonus. Both women look up, Celine like a normal person and Miyeong with a little startled jump. "Can I assist in any way?"
Celine looks around thoughtfully. "There's not much else to do until it's time to fry the eggs. You three should get something to drink, though. Especially Rumi-nim. I'm sure you're dehydrated after that swordwork."
While Rumi is thanking Celine with more of that formal, archaic graciousness that should be goofy and awkward but is actually just really sweet and hot, Zoey starts digging in the fridge, Mira right behind her. "What do we think they drank to cool off in Rumi's day?" Mira murmurs, and from right over her shoulder that is also doing something really unfair to Zoey's guts, and this is the worst day. "Just water?"
There is bottled water in the fridge, but, "All that sweat," says Zoey, very cool and very calm and totally a medical professional about it, "we should give her something with some electrolytes."
They dig out a few choices for her, bokbunja and banana milk and a bottle of Bacchus that seems like an odd thing for Celine to keep on hand, considering her vibe. Zoey's usually pretty uncomfortable about sharing her drinks, but for some reason it feels totally normal when they sit down at the table, a respectful distance from the lump of unconscious nurse, and make Rumi try all three before deciding who gets what.
Her eyes go bright and she says, "An age of wonders," again, at the banana milk, and Zoey ends up with the energy drink. Probably for the best; her ADHD makes her functionally immune to caffeine, Mira should probably be avoiding it post-surgery, and Zoey's not sure she's ready for the Rumi On Red Bull experience.
"So not to in any way imply that we should be left here, because we are absolutely not doing that," says Zoey, once they're settled, "but, what's the plan for those of us without sacred weapons? I know we're looking for the wraiths, but what should Mira and I and our home invaders do when we find them?"
Miyeong just smiles shamelessly at the dig, and Celine looks over her shoulder at Mira. "Did you learn any rituals of control or banishment, from your family?"
Mira grimaces. "I tried to know as little about it as I could. Kinda wish I'd payed more attention, now."
"Well, I can teach you all a simple exorcism. Strong rituals take time we won't have to perform and even more to learn, but wraiths are only so powerful once their summoner is gone. The right words and a little mugwort can be enough to break their control on a person, particularly if any of you happen to be decent singers. And provided you can keep your own minds barred against the pain they feed on."
There's a moment of silence, as they all simultaneously exchange glances and process the ratio of emotionally level potential exorcists to recently-traumatized wrecks in the room, and Zoey says, "I'm really good at beer pong, maybe you have some sacred weapons I could learn to throw real quick instead?"
Minji gets shaken awake to find a plate of food being placed in front of her. It smells good enough that she doesn’t ask too many questions.
It takes a few minutes for the world to kick back into focus. She’d love to say that the vegetables suddenly taste like ash in her mouth, that everything turns blackened and sick, but… the world just keeps existing, same as it ever has. That’s the worst part.
The food tastes good. She just can’t let herself enjoy it.
They talk, and plan, and somehow it’s decided that they’ll be trying to make the last ferry out and staying the night in a hotel on the mainland, so they’ll have a whole day for Rumi and Celine-nim to take on the wraiths.
At least no one has much packing to do.
“Both of our cars only seat five,” Miyeong says, as if it wouldn’t be reasonable to at least pretend she hadn’t tracked them by car. “Do we want to split back according to how we came?”
“I should probably stick with you three,” Minji says, gesturing to younger group—or, wait, Rumi’s five hundred. Ugh. “No offense, but if anyone’s going to be needing medical attention, it’ll be one of you.”
Rumi looks mildly offended (as if the skin of her torso isn’t half-shredded), while Mira nods, conceding the point, and Zoey laughs a little, awkwardly.
“Yeah,” she says, “probably. But we shouldn’t have anyone riding solo, so do we want to have someone double-buckle, or…?”
“Celine-nim and I can ride together,” Miyeong volunteers.
A second later, she blushes vibrantly, turning to Celine-nim. “If—if you want, I mean! You don’t have to, I didn’t mean to speak for you—“
“I would be happy to,” Celine-nim says smoothly, which is nice. Miyeong deserves a win—getting to spend a few hours in a car with a beautiful woman before they all drive to their deaths is the least that could happen for her.
And then she gets another when Rumi volunteers to take Mira and Zoey out for knife practice.
“Go on,” Minji says, nodding after the not-actually-younger trio. “I know how much you like distance weaponry.”
“I’m offended by this,” Miyeong declares, but she marches after them to go find Celine-nim’s shinkal nonethless.
Minji smiles after her. She hopes Miyeong enjoys it—properly enjoys it, in the way that Minji wouldn’t be able to right now, even when she doesn’t think about Miyeong and Yeonggi soundly beating Seulgi at darts, the way she would always laugh about it.
“You don’t have to help with the dishes,” Celine says gently, but Minji shakes her head.
“It’s either do something or shut down, and I’d rather not fall asleep again.”
The fine day has clouded over somewhat by the time everyone minus Celine and Minji has assembled in the yard, sun only intermittently peeking out from rolls of cottony clouds, but Mira honestly thinks that's for the best.
She's fairly sure Zoey would melt otherwise.
"These should suffice for a target," Rumi remarks without a hint of strain as emerges from the garden shed Celine had given them freedom to ransack, a bag of soil that had to way at least eighteen kilograms draped over each shoulder like it was nothing.
Which, considering prior feats, probably was.
Mira nods agreeably, watching Zoey gape like a landed fish in her periphery. "Yeah, I'm cool with it. Zo?"
"So cool..." Zoey breathed, jaw on the ground as Rumi thumped down a bag on a low stone wall, then propped it up with the other.
Mira chuckled to herself. Subtle Zoey was not.
But cute.
And she really didn't blame her. Rumi in action was well worth looking at; as she moves around setting up makeshift targets, standing back to gauge distance then striding forward to make adjustments, humming Celine's old-school kpop song from the record store as she does so, Mira finds herself unable to look away, thoroughly captivated.
Not that she should be, considering Rumi was as good as taken, and she refused to deny Zoey that happiness, never mind she's known her for, like, a week.
"Alright!" Miyeong- oh crap that's right she's here, pull yourself together!- claps her hands together and eagerly looks at the shin kal Zoey has (somehow) managed to hold onto even as her head visibly emptied of all thoughts save for Rumi-ones (very eagerly; should they be worried?). "How are we doing this?"
"Here," Rumi takes one of the shin kal from Zoey's unresisting grip. "I will demonstrate, then each of you can try." She motions for them to clear some space, then rolls her head from side to side, muscles snapping loose. Shifting her right foot forward she grips the knife, draws her arm back, and-
Now Mira's jaw's keeping Zoey's company. In the span of a second Rumi's released the knife and sent it singing through the air to land- thwack!- in the target, a smattering of soil crumbs tumbling dazed to the ground.
Miyeong, at least, has the presence of mind to show appreciation in a way that doesn't make her look like an idiot and applauds, the sound nudging Mira into clapping action; Zoey does one better: she actually sticks her fingers in her mouth and whistles.
Damn she's cute...
Rumi turns to them, grinning to show her pointed canines (wide enough to be unsettling, but...weirdly cute on her). "Who would like to go first?"
Before she's finished Mira's nudging Zoey forward. "You're already holding the knives," she justifies when Zoey "eeps!" and blinks back at her.
And you and Rumi are perfect for each other and just need to realize it.
"Oh yeah," Zoey says like she's forgotten, then bounds forward to join Rumi. She shakes her head, shoulders, arms, the shin kal flashing in the sun like they're giggling with anticipation. She grins fiendishly (but still adorably) at the target and, taking a knife in her hand, winds up. "Alright, time to go Rambo!"
Mira shifts her weight, watching expectantly. Wait for it...
"You want to keep your body loose," Rumi begins, laying her hands on Zoey's shoulders.
Instantly, she goes stiff as a board.
Mira smirks. There it is!
She swears Miyeong is just barely not laughing along with her as 'Rambo' turns red as a traffic signal and markedly less responsive while Rumi, oblivious as the wind to the effect she's having on her pupil, goes on adjusting Zoey's posture and positioning her fingers on the knife, languidly narrating the 'why' behind each motion.
Mira wishes that could be her. Either of them.
"Now you throw!" Rumi finishes, stepping back.
"Huh?" Zoey blinks herself back from whichever cloud she'd been perched on and looks around, taking in the position she's been moved into. "Oh!" The adorably maniacal grin comes back. "Okay wraiths, say 'hello' to my little friend!"
Her arm snapped forward, the knife sung, and- thwack!- another shower of soil from where the shin kal landed in the bag; not dead center like Rumi's, but commendably close.
Impressive. And hot.
"WHOO YEAH!" Zoey crows, pumping her fist in the air.
"Remind me to challenge you to darts after all this ends," Miyeong smiles her own congratulations as she moves to go next in line for a turn piercing the literal dirt bag.
Rumi stands there, blinking, then turns to Zoey with that same ridiculous/adorable smile. "You are a natural!"
"Eh," Zoey shrugs in a way that's both modest and self-congratulatory. "All that beer pong paid off."
Rumi sobers, nodding seriously. "I am unfamiliar, but this beer pong must be a sport that requires great skill and discipline to result in such accuracy and power."
Yup, Mira thinks as Zoey tries to figure out how to respond to that, the both of them just so happy and right together. They're perfect for each other.
She just wishes she could be, too.
When it’s her turn, she can’t ignore how wrong the shin kal feels in her hands.
Mira takes her first shot and lands about five feet short of the target. Her second goes careening off to the left. Her third, at least, nicks the wall next to the bag of dirt, but her fourth goes wild again.
She doesn’t get too upset about it.
“Never really been great at throwing things,” Mira admits, as the knives run out and they pause to go get them back.
“You cannot curse yourself to failure before you begin,” Rumi says, all warmth and good intentions. “You merely need a bit of practice.”
But Zoey sees the way Mira’s jaw tightens (and then quickly loosens again as she loses some color, clearly regretting that move) and she knows the feeling. When you really just know something’s fucking hard and always will be and someone oh-so-sweetly denies it, like you’re just being mean to yourself and not able to accurately assess the situation… it sucks.
So she bites her tongue against the “You got this!” that she wants to chirp out—especially when Miyeong says exactly that and Mira’s jaw does that thing again—and, instead, just watches how Mira throws.
…Which is ridiculously badly. Because she just throws with her arm.
“Um,” Zoey says, carefully, “are you okay with constructive criticism or do you just want me to stand over to the side and not say anything? Because I’m totally good with not saying anything! I promise!”
Mira huffs before she can get any further. “Advice is fine.”
“Well, uh, I’m sure you know what you’re doing, but… you kinda gotta roll with it? Like, twist your hips and put all of you into it!” She offers her goofiest smile, exaggerating the shift of her body until it’s more of a joking bounce than an actual mock-throw as she mimes it for Mira—and then having to do it for real, however awkward that is.
But Mira’s smiling, nodding—though that might have something to do with Rumi coming over to try to help guide her through it with those calloused-but-still-so-gentle hands of hers. You know. If Zoey had to guess.
Just from the way Mira starts getting that really pretty blush, not any of her own thoughts on the matter, obviously.
At least she’s too distracted to be paying attention to Zoey as she throws again. Her lips tilt in a tiny smile as the knife clips the edge of the bag and she turns to high five Rumi.
And then she keeps turning and offers her hand to Zoey. To high five.
Right, because they should show Rumi, that was only invented in, like, the 1950s.
So Zoey grins and slaps her palm against Mira’s, and Mira—her voice is always kinda quiet, with the wires and all, but she tilts her head back and laughs and it’s so pretty and Zoey is so, so doomed.
And then! And then!!!!
She looks at Zoey and she smiles and she says, “Thanks. I always forget not to isolate everything when I’m not dancing.”
And she just turns to high five Rumi like Zoey isn’t exploding right next to her.
They wash the dishes in a silence that feels more comfortable than Minji expects. She's still tired enough that it's easy to zone out, to not really think of anything but the movement of the towel and how to stack the plates on the counter once they're dry. The loss remains, of course, a constant ache at the back of her mind, but with a task at hand, she stops getting caught by its sharpest edges.
Or maybe it's Celine-nim, who has a warm steadiness to her presence, despite her silence. There's something in the way she holds herself, the way she seems so centered and in control, as though demon apocalypses are just another day. It makes the pressure seem a little lighter, just for her standing there.
She's also very hospitable, rewarding Minji for her assistance by leading them to the sitting room and producing a bottle of soju, then pouring out two shots. "I don't often have the occasion," she says, her smile small and wry, "but if there's ever been a situation that warrants a drink..."
Minji doesn't need to be told twice. She grabs a glass, says a dry, ironic "wihayeo," and throws it back without blinking. Celine-nim shows more restraint, and simply holds hers, maybe swirling it a little, contemplatively, while Minji pours herself another.
"The 'situation'," Minji repeats, as the second shot burns down her throat. "That's one word for it. We've got the impossible ancient hero. The murder of all my friends. The kid who got kidnapped for a sacrifice. The thing where we're setting a bunch of random civilians against fantasy monsters." She waves a hand, still wrapped around the glass, at Celine-nim. "You said you were part of an order, right? Aren't there other people who are, I don't know. Trained in this kind of stuff? How is this Miyeong's job, or those poor kids?"
The shaman takes her bitterness in stride, watching her calmly like she has every right to it, but makes no apologies.
"We've been spread very thin, over the years," she answers instead, matter-of-fact, "and we were never a large order to begin with. Anyone I called for help would have to travel too far to be timely, and would have to leave their own home defenseless."
Celine-nim finally takes her shot, the long column of her throat flexing elegantly as she swallows. Minji blinks and drops her eyes, pouring herself another.
"Still," she says, filling Celine's glass again too, once she puts it down, "you have Rumi, right? Shouldn't you two just... do your thing, and the rest of us just stay out of the way?"
For a moment, Celine-nim just watches Minji, a careful regard that seems to peel right into the heart of her. Minji has seen Miyeong strip informants of their layers with a look, leaving them cut open and exposed, but this feels different, somehow; like Minji's being understood, her deepest self handled with the care of a surgeon, everything closed up properly afterward and left healthier than she started.
"... when I first met Zoey," Celine-nim says, once her keen gaze has finished its search, "I knew she and I would someday do something important together. I understand why, now. She and Mira withstood the voice of no mere wraith, but of Gwi-Ma himself, for days, and remained steadfast enough despite it to bring Rumi-nim back up from the hells."
She drinks again, and this time Minji doesn't look away.
"This battle will be a spiritual one, far more than physical, and Rumi-nim will need their strength for that." Celine's eyes hold Minji's, serious and thoughtful. "And you... It may be that you and Miyeong-nim are here because I will need yours."
Minji-nim looks at the soju bottle, and her lips twist contemplatively. “…Does Zoey have a driver’s license?”
Celine smiles and shakes her head instead of answering, not knowing either way. She hopes so, at least, given how shortly post-surgery Mira had been when the two of them arrived at her office.
Minji-nim waits with that for a moment before she says, quietly, “One of the wraiths looked like a photographer Miyeong liked. We didn’t even know he was dead until…”
Until we explained what they were. Celine grimaces.
“And—fucking Yeonggi turned up, apparently—did—“ Minji-nim breathes, sharply. “Becoming a wraith. Does it mean something about you?”
She wishes she could say no. Wishes she had decent words, comforting hands, anything. She tells the truth. “Gwi-Ma can only take a person’s image to use as a wraith if they gave themself to him in life.”
Minji-nim covers her face with her hands for a long moment before making a sound, the kind that might be a sob and might be a laugh. “Miyeong always thought there was something about the way Yeonggi died. We all figured it was just—“
Celine thinks back to the way Miyeong-nim had been so startled by Celine’s mistake, earlier, hadn’t even thought to be offended as she looked down at Minji-nim as if she were somehow worth impossibly more. And she thinks she understands a little.
“He actually sold his soul to a demon?” Minji-nim asks, peering up at her. She doesn’t wait for an answer before she laughs again. “That son of a bitch, of course he did.”
“Many do,” Celine says. “Gwi-Ma is… clever. And it might not have been…”
Minji-nim shakes her head again. “I don’t need hope for Yeonggi’s memory.”
“But I need you to understand,” Celine replies, thinking, terribly, of Rumi-nim on the other side of that portal, bloody and resigned and smiling as she gave herself up. She thinks of— “I need you to understand that it is not a weakness of—he will not only take what is offered. Gwi-Ma is called the Devourer for a reason. He will take anything he can touch, freely given or otherwise.”
Her hand has found its way to Minji-nim’s shoulder, somehow, as she is very close to her face.
Celine jumps back against the arm of the couch.
Minji-nim’s mouth opens.
“We must hold onto each other,” Celine says, before she can hear some platitude. “We must.”
“…I won’t let you go,” Minji-nim says, and this is perhaps the most anyone has understood Celine in years.
Miyeong hasn't had this much fun in ages. Not least because she's winning; Zoey's giving her a good fight, accurate with a great eye for distance, but Miyeong has mastered the forward spin faster than her, and is getting most of her knives in point-first while a good third of Zoey's are still bouncing blunt end off the sacks.
"Very good," is Rumi's assessment, as Zoey sinks one just a few centimeters off a bullseye and does a little whoop of glee. "You all show great promise. But in a true battle, your enemies will seldom remain still. I would like to advance to practice on moving targets, if you are amenable."
Zoey shoots a sly look at Miyeong, and then beams at Rumi, wide and innocent. "Sounds great, let's do it!"
Mira demurs, preferring to keep trying to consistently hit the stationary bags, but Miyeong rolls her shoulders competitively and agrees. Rumi has a little pile of squash that she's managed to collect from somewhere, green and round and overripe, and she lobs one slowly across the field of fire. Zoey whips a shinkal after it, a long clean release, and it sails just behind the vegetable, nearly clipping it.
Miyeong's lead might be in trouble.
One more round, and Miyeong's lead is definitely in trouble. She nicks a squash here and there, but mostly she goes wide in every direction, and Zoey, still hitting blunt-first a lot but still consistently hitting, is steadily closing the point gap. Rumi puts forward a valiant attempt to pretend she's impartial about it, but Mira makes no such pretense. She's entirely given up on her own practice to cheer Zoey on and trash-talk Miyeong, and Miyeong can't find it anything but charming. Watching the three of them fall all over each other in a fit of youthful hormones is almost more fun than the knife-throwing itself.
Though perhaps she shouldn't judge. At least they know what they're feeling. She lets her eyes flick over to the main building. Behind those walls is a woman who has somehow become the most stable presence in Miyeong's life for the better part of a decade, a reliable constant in all her rootless chaos, an irreplaceable comfort against her loneliness, and Miyeong never even noticed.
Honestly, she sort of wishes she still hadn't. It's not like there's anything to do with the information. Miyeong had her one shot, and it literally ended with a body count. Minji, who is in such terrible pain but still sent her out here to flex her projectile skills on undergrads for fun, deserves better from Miyeong than to hope to drag her down.
(Minji, who knows Miyeong is shameless enough to find that fun, is aware enough of who Miyeong is as a person that there would be no point in hope, regardless.)
The sun has not lowered greatly in the sky by the time that Minji-nim and the honored shaman come out to recall them and set them to preparations for their journey, but Rumi is proud to say that all of her pupils have improved a great deal.
Even Mira is more like to hit the target than not, and she showed much promise when they went over how to stab an attacker, despite being quite stiff during Rumi’s explanation.
“I am very proud of you,” she tells them all, the same as she tells everyone she teaches, whether they be five years old or sixty-five.
“You’re a really good teacher,” Miyeong-nim says, warmly, and Mira and Zoey agree, and Zoey comes up to loop an arm over Rumi’s shoulder and pull her close in thanks.
And all of this is good, like the sun and the grass and the feeling of an overripe squash in her hand. Rumi holds it tight, tries to burn it into herself, because she knows from experience that weak words would not stop Gwi-Ma.
They use the washroom to quickly wipe off the worst of the sweat and, going last, Rumi has opportunity to see that Mira has, indeed, changed her clothes, which is presumably simply what is done when one sweats in this time. The amount of washing must be ridiculous, and Rumi has a million questions about how they prevent things from falling apart, but—
For now, she just jerks her head away, flushing, because Mira has walked out wearing what cannot qualify as a full garment in this day and age.
It covers barely more than the undergarments. It doesn’t even reach her knees.
It doesn’t even reach halfway to her knees!
You’ve spent how much time in brothels? Rumi scolds herself, angry and embarrassed. Get a hold of yourself; her body is nothing to do with you.
(…It does make her feel a bit better when Zoey sees Mira and responds with a squeak of surprise.)
"So is this how we're doing this?" Miyeong looks between the two groups of people, Minji and the girls clustered around Miyeong's car, and her and Celine next to hers.
It's a logical division. Sensible. Minji's familiar enough with Miyeong's car to drive it without being distracted searching for the turn signal, and Celine's car is, well, Celine's. Plus if Rumi or Mira needs sudden medical aid, having Minji able to provide immediate guidance without needing to be flagged down from the other car is beneficial.
And Miyeong's not heartless; she has no intention to get in the way of young love and suggest Zoey ride with her and Celine.
So this is the most logical way to split up.
If the thought of being alone with Celine for a couple of hours ties a knot in her stomach, that's just...pre-wraith-hunting nerves. Yeah.
Celine nods, the motion more elegant than it has a right to be. "I'm fine with it."
Miyeong's heart jumps. The hot gorgeous TALL shaman's fine with it! She's fine with alone time with her! She is-
Lightheaded.
Maybe she should drive her own car with the girls. They have cellphones; Minji's only a call away-
But Minji's already holding her hand out for Miyeong's keys, and they're going to miss the ferry if they're not careful.
"I can drive!" Zoey's hand shoots up in the air. "Please? Rumi hasn't seen me drive yet and I'm really good! Mira! Tell them how good I am!"
"She didn't get us towed," Mira shrugs. "I think."
Miyeong blanches, thoughts of Celine momentarily suspended by thoughts of her car in the impound lot. Or worse.
Not that Zoey didn't seem responsible, but...she'd been that age once. She'd been that eager to drive to impress a crush once. She'd turned a car into an off-roader more than once.
But Minji- thank god for Minji- pockets the keys. "I'm giving you the aux."
"A role of great importance," Rumi nods seriously, perking Zoey up from the deflated slump she'd fallen into. "And you did exemplary with it yesterday.”
Miyeong mouths a ‘thank you’ to Minji as the girls pile in to the car, Mira and Zoey bouncing songs that Rumi just had to hear between them like juggling balls, and watches them crunch out of the gravel drive. She’d have a lot to worry about in the next few hours, but at least her car wasn’t one of them.
The sound of a car door opening pulls her attention back to her side.
“Ready?” Celine asks, one hand gripping the open door. There’s an inviting little smile on her lips, and her eyes catch the sun in such a way that they sparkle, igniting something in Miyeong’s chest.
Yes, a lot to worry about…
(she was going to say something stupid, she just knew it)
While Rumi did fine on yesterday’s supply run, Zoey is honestly expecting a bit more of a freak out from her today—maybe just because she gets motion sick so easily.
But: nope. They pile in (Minji driving, Rumi and Zoey in back, and Mira sitting shotgun to have some room for her legs) and get on the road and Rumi shows absolutely no signs of discomfort.
Zoey might be a bad person for being disappointed about that.
After a while, the conversation shifts back from music to demons. Minji missed Celine’s earlier advice about mugwort, after all.
“The first rule of wraith-hunting is,” Rumi says (and Zoey’s brain unhelpfully fills in to have fun and be yourself and we don’t talk about wraith-hunting), “that they are hollow. There is nothing in them, and any promises they make to you are false. Do not listen. Hold on to what is solid.”
She looks at Zoey while she says it, because Zoey’s the only one looking at her, and so Zoey is left with the intensity of Rumi’s gaze, the impossible, out-of-time person that she is, and the softness of her smile.
“You,” she says. “Music. The sun on the grass. Anything you have.”
And Zoey’s brain plays it again: You. You. You. She has you.
But before she can say something stupid—something like I have you—Minji says, fingers tapping against the steering wheel, “Celine mentioned—she mentioned that Gwi-Ma would… take people, earlier. Like… like they didn’t have to make a deal with him or anything?”
Rumi’s expression twists with a horrible kind of hope, and she doesn’t answer for a long moment before, finally, her voice thick with something Zoey can’t interpret, she says, “The knowledge that I have is different, but it has been many years.”
(Zoey thinks of the way she talked about her dad. Wonders if maybe…)
(But maybe not. They haven’t even known each other a week, after all.)
“No, she—she wasn’t clear,” Minji says. “I might have misunderstood.”
Rumi bites her lip. Hesitates, before adding, in a way that’s clearly meant to be reassuring, “You must fail for him to take you. But it does not mean you cannot be brought back. Fear is his hand. Do not play it.”
It would’ve worked better if she didn’t sound like she was about to cry.
Celine keeps the music low enough to talk over, but unexpectedly, Miyeong-nim spends the first half hour or so of the drive fidgeting quietly.
Perhaps the danger is finally hitting her, now that there aren't any distractions. Miyeong-nim strikes Celine as someone with disconcertingly little fear of risk, but her whole worldview has also just been upended. In Celine's experience, both the most brave and the most foolhardy come to that attitude largely through experience, and demons are well outside the experience of most.
But when Miyeong-nim finally speaks, it's to say, "So," drawing it out, and glancing toward the back of the car. "Do you happen to have permits? For the ancient magic sword, and pile of deadly sacred knives? More specifically, do you have permits on hand, in the car with us right now?"
She does, for the sword, actually, although she certainly doesn't keep it in the car. And the shinkal are another matter entirely.
Still, "I've never found the ferry staff particularly concerned with the contents of people's trunks during crossing."
Her reassurance is met only with a skeptical little hum. "If they do check it out, for whatever reason, go ahead and let me do the talking. I've got some ideas already, I'll loop you in when I decide on one."
Apparently Miyeong-nim is not, in fact, nervous about getting caught with weapons. Celine glances over, bemused, and finds a gleam in the reporter's eyes, even brighter than the anticipation in her voice.
"Fighting wraiths isn't enough excitement for you, you have to be maneuvering around the law, too?"
"I try to always be getting away with something. Keeps my skills sharp."
Celine can't help her smile. "And what skills are those?"
For some reason that makes Miyeong-nim start stumbling again, stuttering out an awkward, "Well, ah—I—you know—reporter things. …Talking. Persuasion, and such."
Celine considers that. She will admit that Miyeong-nim is actually quite a skilled storyteller, when she's not tripping over her tongue, but it was not her clumsy charm offensive at their first meeting that brought her into this adventure. It was so obviously a mask, and Celine hadn't liked that she couldn't see what was underneath. But Miyeong-nim's dogged persistence, her willingness to try anything other than turning away, had gotten them past it; had brought her all the way here, to the passenger seat of Celine's car.
Which is a recurring theme in the stories she's told so far, as well. Miyeong-nim simply does not give up on a story, no matter the expense to her time or dignity. It's an admirable trait, albeit a vexing one to be on the wrong side of. More admirable than mere persuasive charm, in Celine's opinion. Stubbornness has saved many souls from Gwi-Ma, and Miyeong-nim's may yet save more.
Which is why it's meant to be a compliment when she says, "Persistence seems to be a more reliable tool, for you."
But Miyeong folds her arms in Celine's peripheral vision and plays at being affronted. "I'll have you know," she huffs, "I am in fact incredibly charismatic, and regularly talk my way out of situations that would bewilder and terrify a lesser woman."
It's still a distraction, and Celine finds she still wants to know what's underneath it.
But she'd rather take the softer path to get there, now.
So she just says, dry, "And how often did you talk yourself into these situations, in the first place?"
"Half of them at most," sniffs Miyeong-nim. There's a beat, and she tries to sound grudging, but the laughter's clear in her voice. "… maybe three-quarters."
Mira keeps her eyes doggedly out the window, focusing on the mountain landscape blurring by and not on the rearview mirror, where Zoey, cheeks flushed from hearing how she was one of the things that kept Rumi anchored, had just reached over to squeeze Rumi's hand and got the most beautiful smile in return.
She refuses to focus on how much she wishes to be a part of what's blossoming behind her, how much she wanted to see Rumi or Zoey (preferably 'and') look at her that way and say that Mira was worth holding onto.
Not that she begrudges them for it! She's genuinely glad they found each other to smile at like that and hold hands and blush over changing bandages. They deserve it. It's just...
Her life, or well what's left of it- an empty mansion populated by her brother's decaying body she never wants to go back to, a cave somewhere in the wilderness where her parents rot over the sigils they bickered over while carving them in the floor- is so bleak and empty by comparison.
Not that it was any different when her family was alive, they objectively sucked, but they were still alive. Which, to be honest, had its own set of problems but now they're dead and-
Ugh! She stopped herself just before making the mistake of clenching her jaw because Appa had officially beaten her for the last time and she still couldn't figure out how to feel about that. Why couldn't she have had a normal family? Or simpler feelings about her abnormal one?
Minji-nim glanced over at Mira, then the rearview mirror, then back at Mira.
Mira stared harder at the scenic view, carefully keeping her face turned towards alternating trees and fields. Like hell was she going to tip her emotional hand.
Minji, clearly a professional, didn't pry, just drummed her fingers on the wheel. "So. Is there a second rule about wraith hunting we should be aware of? Do they, like, fight back or anything?"
On impulse Mira flicks her eyes to the mirror; Rumi's face is puckered in a little thinking pout. It is, frankly, adorable, but before Mira can properly appreciate it her face darkens. The hand Zoey's not holding drifts to her side, to the bandages hidden under her shirt.
"Words are their first choice of weapon, but...when they fail, or sometimes to help ensure they fail, they will resort to...other measures."
Mira turns around and her eyes instantly find Zoey's; they were waiting for her, like she was about to lean forward to locate Mira, wanting to consult her.
She forces herself to not think too hard on that. Or the way the sun catches on Zoey's lashes.
It's clear they're both thinking the same thing.
They both saw the gashes on Rumi's side, long and jagged and- and claw-like. Mira had assumed they were from some weird underworld animal; clearly Zoey had done the same.
Now, though...
The last time she saw Jaeho's wraiths, they were pitiable things; deformed limbs and twisted forms that could hardly have won a fight against a dishrag (with the dishrag having the more favorable odds). But that was several years ago by now. She'd never given much thought to what they could do if conjured properly.
And clearly, judging by the hospital fire, he'd done things properly this time.
Rumi reaches forward to lay a hand on Zoey's shoulder, and fixes her gaze on Mira, intense and beautiful and determined.
“Other measures?” Minji-nim echoes. “Sorry, I don’t mean to poke at anything, but—“
“No,” Rumi hurries to reply, guilt immediately overtaking irritation. “I ought to have been more—“ (What’s the stupid word?) “—descriptive. Primarily, they will retain the forms they have, though their teeth may grow, and they will have claws. These are their weapons. One need not fear any venom or poison, but they are quite sharp. And wraiths very quick.”
“Oh,” Minji-nim says. “Lovely.”
Rumi and Jinu used to pause here to cheerfully tell any of the youths who wished to join them about all of the horrible injuries they had seen from wraiths until they went pale and nervous (or else their mothers decided that, no, they were not of an age to hunt wraiths).
Used to.
Without him, Rumi is adrift.
Her companions know what wraiths are, how to resist them, and how to kill them. They need to know…
Where to find them, Rumi, Jinu teases her. What, are you just going to give them a dog and a lantern and hope their souls don’t get eaten?
“The most difficult issue has always been the discernment of wraith from person,” Rumi explains. “A wraith has… patterns. Parts of the soul that are etched into it. For many, it would seem as if their loved one had miraculously returned to them.”
(She’d always been… distantly sad for such people. A part of her had, admittedly, thought some foolish.
Now, the very idea seems to wrench her heart out of her chest.
She would fall. She would fall so, so easily.)
“So we can’t hesitate?” Zoey asks.
“No!” Rumi yelps. (Hypocrite.) “No, you must always hesitate!”
Didn’t you remind me of that? she asks, silent, desperate, staring at Zoey in quiet horror as she wonders if she is influencing such a wonderful soul for the worse. Had you not, would we not have both lost the opportunity to know Mira?
"So." Miyeong taps the car door in lively time with the song playing on the radio. "Have you done this before?"
Celine's hands clamp tighter on the wheel as she subtly sucks in a breath, hoping Miyeong-nim didn't notice but knowing that was likely a vain hope.
Fortunately her mentors had taught her many things, including the art of deflection.
She cleared her throat and looked sidelong at her traveling companion, watching her with an assessing eye. "What, drive down the mountain with someone who thinks it's normal to go knocking on strangers' doors before breakfast?"
Miyeong's fingers stumble over the bridge as she chokes on nothing and flushes crimson. "There were extenuating circumstances!" She sputters.
Celine felt a grin wriggle its way across her lips. "Do you mean impulsivity?"
"I am not-"
"Or a lack of regard for norms and etiquette?"
Miyeong opened her mouth to respond, then sat back, crossing her arms petulantly over her chest with a little 'hmph!' that tickled Celine's ears.
She chuckled. This was easily some of the most fun she'd had in a while. Plus she was spared from having to admit-
"I meant the whole wraith-slaying business," Miyeong clarified as the radio switched to a new song. "Have you ever done that?"
She spoke too soon.
"Not...exactly," she said slowly, focusing hard on the road unfurling before them.
Miyeong raised a brow, silently prodding her to continue.
Celine swallowed. "There's...not exactly much call for expunging wraiths. While I have a strong theoretical base, it's...not something I have much hands-on experience with."
“‘Much?’” Miyeong prodded.
“Well there was one time. When I was still in training. But I…really mostly just watched. From a very safe distance.”
She winced as she finished. Perhaps she shouldn't have admitted to that, and just given some roundabout half-truth focused on her expertise. But...it was surprisingly hard to do that with Miyeong's eyes on her, quiet and curious and looking at her like she wanted to know Celine, really know her.
Probably a reporter thing.
Miyeong was quiet a moment longer, letting the radio and hum of the engine fill the space; Celine fought the urge to squirm.
"Wow."
Celine looked over, expecting sarcasm or some hint of irony, and Miyeong was smiling. She reached a hand over the console, lighting it on Celine's knee, and-
-And she didn't catch what Miyeong said next, too focused on not veering into the other lane and trying to force her pulse back to something sensible.
Celine-nim is suddenly silent, her leg tense under Miyeong's hand, and Miyeong tries to slide the offending limb back into her lap, casually, hiding her wince at her presumption. A few smiles are not permission to touch, and she shouldn't assume that just because she feels so incredibly comfortable in Celine-nim's presence that the other woman feels at all the same about her.
There's a lock loose from Celine-nim's ponytail, black streaked with silver. It's slipped in front of her face, and she tucks it back behind the ear nearest Miyeong with long fingers.
Miyeong swallows against her heartbeat. Maybe comfortable isn't exactly the right word.
Desperately, she tries to drag the conversation forward, away from her faux pas and flushed cheeks.
"So what do you usually do, then, as a mudang?"
Celine-nim visibly relaxes, and Miyeong tamps down her disproportionate sense of pride. "Honestly, most of it is very mundane. People who come to me with spiritual problems usually just have normal emotional ones. I reassure grieving widows that their husbands' souls are well, convince blustering teenagers that they still have their whole lives ahead of them, that sort of thing. Sometimes someone comes in who's in real danger, and usually I connect them with the perfectly normal modern resources that will help get them out of it."
Carrying on Rumi-nim's legacy, she'd said. Miyeong thinks of the way she'd guarded the younger women against Miyeong and Minji's intrusion, how patient and clear she was walking Miyeong through chopping up kimchi. Somehow she suspects Celine-nim usually gets a little more involved than handing over a phone number or pamphlet.
"You talked about rituals, at lunch?"
"Yes." Celine-nim's eyes flick sideways, like Miyeong just said something noteworthy, though she can't guess what. "I've done cleansings, when necessary, and there are seasonal meetings, upkeep of sacred spaces, that sort of thing. Mostly, if I'm doing anything... supernatural, it's to commune with spirits. There are fewer around than I'm led to believe there were in Rumi-nim's day, but they require no less mediation and reassurance than they ever have."
She says it like they're misbehaving dogs or unruly children, frustrated and fond.
"... should we, I don't know, ask them for help?" Miyeong says. She thinks she can remember something about that, magpies who give wisdom or tigers who protect the dead, or possibly the living.
Celine-nim looks at her strangely.
"Or is that a stupid idea," Miyeong corrects, hastily.
"No," says Celine-nim, kind, "not at all. Actually I intended to try to propitiate the local spirits as soon as we settled in the hotel. It's very unlikely there will be anything willing to directly oppose Gwi-Ma, but we may be able to get help in tracking down the wraiths, at least.
"No, it's just that most people aren't usually so eager to invite the supernatural into their lives."
Miyeong looks over, sly. "Aren't you sort of supernatural, technically?" She bats her eyelashes outrageously. "I'm quite happy to have invited you into my life, so far."
Celine-nim rolls her eyes, but she's smiling, and Miyeong counts it a win.
They stop for gas in Jeju City, just before heading to the ferry station. Zoey appoints herself chief snack-getter, which Minji suspects is more to stretch her legs—that’s absolutely why Mira follows, and if they’re getting up, then so is Rumi.
So she stays outside with the car, and with Miyeong.
Celine’s card, after all, was needed inside. Minji trusts her, at least, to actually return with coffee.
Miyeong gives her a look, hesitant, as they stand between the cars. The one that says she thought about asking how Minji was doing and then remembered the situation.
But, Miyeong being Miyeong, she steels herself a moment later and barrels straight in: “It’s a nice drive, isn’t it? Makes me wish we were out here to appreciate the scenery.”
Minji almost laughs. She’s sure Miyeong is really enjoying the scenery, yeah. But she’ll be nice. “Maybe we’ll come back some other time. Visit them and all.”
She’s surprised by how much she realizes that she wants it. To keep knowing the young women who’ve been talking and laughing and giving each other ridiculously intense looks all around her, to have more time with Celine, to… to do with Miyeong.
To hold onto each other, she supposes.
The ache hits her a moment later, threatens to overwhelm her with everyone who has just been ripped away. How could she even think of rebuilding after this?
“Hey, where are you going?” Miyeong asks.
Minji shrugs, and scrambles for something to say that won’t leave her breaking down in the parking lot. “…Do you think I’ll have a job after this?”
Miyeong wraps an arm over her shoulder, stupidly touchy the way she’s always been, and politely pretends to believe her. “If you’re fired, so am I.”
Which is something, at least.
“You should call your boss,” she says.
Miyeong shrugs. “Last time I did, he told me to go fuck myself for telling him about a murder, so… not feeling super charitable at the moment.”
Minji does laugh, finally, and Miyeong looks like it’s the best thing she’s heard all week.
"Look, it's fine." Mira's voice, stiff and stilted from the wires, is just audible over the usual ambient sounds of the convenience store. "I'm not even that hungry."
Celine looks away from the coffee cups she's slotting into a cardboard holder at a miserable whine. Zoey's standing in the middle of an aisle, flanked by bags and boxes covered in eye-catching colors and photos of snack foods "enlarged to show texture."
Foods, Celine deduced in an instant, that Mira could not eat.
Celine winced, mentally kicking herself. Considering how many times she'd frequented this store, she really should have considered the lack of broken-jaw-friendly snacks when packing.
Why didn't she just take five minutes to pull together a thermos of something?
And while providing nourishment for her traveling party was hardly a set-in-stone mudang responsibility, it already felt like she was failing. Like she was letting everyone down before they!d even left the island.
"But what about later?" Zoey wrings a bag of shrimp chips as she dithers in the aisle, and Celine feels like it may as well be her heart in her hands. "I mean, you didn't even have as much lunch as the rest of us."
"Well if there's nothing I can eat here there's nothing any of us can do about it." Mira shrugged, but Celine could tell the motion wasn't as nonchalant as Mira was trying to make it out to be.
"I'm a bad chief snack-getter!" Zoey wails, dropping her head into her hands, the chips crunching as she does so. "Mira's gonna starve and it'll be my fault!"
Correction: it'll be Celine's, but before she can go over and say that, Rumi-nim, of course, steps in.
"No, she will not," Rumi-nim says gravely, as if this was the final outpost before a desert journey, not one of many food-selling establishments along their path. "We will not let her."
Rumi-nim's kindness should not surprise Celine by now, but she still feels awed by her refusal to let someone be in need.
"Not sure you have a choice," Mira grumbles, glaring hard enough at a bag of turtle chips that a guilty look crosses face of the cartoon mascot. “Look, I really don’t want this to be a thing, so-“
"Perhaps the shopkeeper can help?" Rumi-nim glances over at the checkout counter and the acne-faced cashier, an exemplar of apathy as he thumbed through his phone. She nods, as if making up her mind. "I shall ask him for assistance procuring liquid sustenance."
"NO!" Mira and Zoey lunged and each grabbed one of Rumi's arms as she turned to march over to the counter.
Celine relaxed muscles she hadn't realized went taught. The cashier was likely harmless, but...there was a time and place for marching up to counters in search of liquid sustenance and bringing a taste of the 16th century to the modern day, and this was neither.
All three girls' brains seemed to stall at the contact, matching flushes creeping up their necks. Present problems aside Celine couldn't help chuckling to herself as they snapped back to earth and simultaneously jerked their hands and arms back to themselves.
Might be a controversial take but I don’t think Rumi is as oblivious as a lot of the fandom makes her out to be, and she is DEFINITELY not naive.
Think about it. Yes, she grew up likely very sheltered/isolated on Jeju Island, but also, she was a CHILD STAR. Even if she wasn’t performing, she was attending huge events like the Idol Awards with Celine when she was very young, and Celine was raising her to be a pop star. Rumi, who we know is a huge workaholic, has a ton of PR and media training and experience, more than Mira and Zoey combined. You don’t get to that position and point in your life without being able to read people (paparazzi, interviewers, journalists, etc) REALLY well. We see her gaslight and lie to Mira’s face no problem in the movie without even breaking eye contact. Yes, it’s obvious she’s hiding something, but she kept a massive secret from Mira and Zoey for years, and her lying only got bad and really noticeable when her patterns were out of control, she was stressed, and she was starting to see herself (and her heritage) differently thanks to Jinu.
And some of y’all don’t wanna hear this, but she was right about Jinu. Despite him saying that he wasn’t the guy to help her, that the Honmoon wouldn’t save him, she insisted, she persisted, she knew he desperately yearned for freedom and specifically used that to motivate him to sway him to her side, only meeting him one-on-one on her terms after their first rooftop meeting (we see her rejecting his invitations during Takedown, and she makes him go where she wants both other times they meet). Was part of her wanting to save Jinu trauma dumping and self-projection? Sure. But even when Jinu stopped trying to manipulate her (which he really only did in 1.5 interactions at most, and he wasn’t even really “manipulating” her at the fan signing, just being a smug asshole and holding what he knew over her head) and told her he wasn’t the dude to help her, she still saw and believed he could. And she was right! She was so right that Gwi-Ma literally had to step in and torture Jinu into compliance.
And finally, she single-handedly saved the world. Completely on her own, when talking to Celine, she came to the right realization and reckoning and appeared in Namsan Tower with the perfect philosophy and said just the right things to break Mira and Zoey free. And the fact that Rumi managed to convince the very dude who started the external conflict in the movie to switch sides is fucking impressive.
Bonus: I’ve seen takes that Rumi doesn’t know what sex or even a period is and like….come on, there’s NO WAY Celine skipped out on The Talk given what happened to Mi-yeong.
So yeah. Rumi is really fucking smart, and I’m tired of pretending she’s naive, oblivious, or helpless.
⁵Rumi is be more likely to be oblivious in the, "how much could a banana cost, Michael" way than anything else.
And let's be honest here, Rumi was a child star. She probably went to school with kids her own age (it's a popular headcanon, but homeschool isn't really a thing in South Korea. And actually, the US is really, very much an outlier for how unregulated it is.) She has access to the internet.
You know, I gotta say: I wasn't a 'Twihard' and was never enamored with him or those movies, but I've come to have a lot of respect for him as an actor.
First his coming to The Boy and the Heron auditions with old-man-in-heron-costume voices ready to go, now this.
I've been studying old miniature for a while now but I forgot I learned that one of the elements in persian illumination is called Eslimi and it's a floral, leaf like design usually drawn in the centre of the composition
Another name for Eslimi is Rumi. and Rumi is usually a part of a pattern. Get it? Nevermind
I always get the feeling when I argue that yes, Willoughby and Henry Crawford did feel real love, but love does not conquer all, that it's very... strange for Austen readers to believe that love conquers all because she is pretty focused as an author on the fact that love really shouldn't be the only thing one considers in marriage. Morality is a big factor but the other one is money.
Edward and Elinor are very much in love, and yet, "they were neither of them quite enough in love to think that three hundred and fifty pounds a-year would supply them with the comforts of life" and do not marry until Mrs. Ferrars chips in. Elinor assures Marianne that even if Willoughby had married her, his love would turn to resentment because of their poor financial situation. Anne Elliot enthusiastically confirms to Captain Wentworth that she would have accepted him... with a few thousand pounds, and... posted into the Laconia. Then they would have been financially secure enough to make a go of it even without her family's approval.
Even Lydia's unfortunate marriage to Wickham is mostly described in financial terms instead of something like abuse. Lydia and Wickham remain in a constant state of want and instability. This is why their marriage is a failure, though the lack of affection is also undesirable.
Love is a factor, Maria's marriage with Rushworth based on money alone is a total failure, but I really don't think that Austen thinks love is sufficient on it's own to keep a marriage going. It cannot fix principals and constant want might wear it away. The fact that love didn't save Henry Crawford doesn't mean his love wasn't real. Willoughby choosing money over Marianne doesn't mean his love wasn't real. It just means it wasn't enough.
Rumi on releasing Golden early: This was all a terrible idea. Why didn’t anyone stop me?
Mira: Because you didn’t tell us!
Zoey: Why didn’t you tell us?!
Rumi: If I told you, you would have stopped me.
There are 3 main types, but from my research, this looks to be American Gregg Shorthand.
As you can see, there are set symbols for every letter.
Let’s break one of the words down:
Using the Gregg Alphabet as reference, we can see most of the letters in “atrophied” are present. But why no “o” vowel, and why is “ph” written as “f”?
Simple. In shorthand, you cut out all vowels in a word when writing it down, with the exception of words that BEGIN or END with a vowel (hence the “a” at the start being present), or like in the “i” in “atrophied”, to make it more readable when the sound could be harder to distinguish if it isn’t written. In “atrophied” if the the “i” isn’t written, it could be hard to tell if the writer meant a “fud”, “fad”, “fod” or “fid” sound, for example.
Also, since Shorthand is a phonetic writing system, you are encouraged to write down the phonetic sounds of words rather than the actual letter blends - in this case, write an “f” instead of a “ph”.
So in actuality, these aren’t just meaningless scribbles - it’s Gregg Shorthand, a writing system developed to take down notes more quickly than when written out in full, which is very useful in a medical or journalistic environment.
Some people can even write over 100 words in a minute! And, it’s been in use since John Robert Gregg invented it in 1888! Wow! So old!
Currently: while Mira, Rumi, and Zoey have wandered off to have gay breakdowns—er, put Rumi’s sword away, Minji, Miyeong, and Celine are working on lunch and continuing to plan how they’ll be getting rid of the wraiths. In Seoul, a grieving Bobby meets a nurse…
The cooler, dryer air inside of the hanok hits Rumi like a wave as they enter, and she has to pause to take a breath and let herself luxuriate in it.
“It is a beautiful invention, this thermostat,” she declares, just to make Mira and Zoey smile.
And they do.
“And we even fixed the hole in the ozone layer,” Zoey jokes, before pausing, like she’s realized that Rumi has entirely no idea what ‘ozone’ is—indicating it is likely a modern term and not just something of Korean that has escaped her. This language can be such a headache compared to Jejuan sometimes, and the wonderfully creative way that Zoey uses words is… not necessarily helpful, for one as slow as Rumi.
She smiles anyway, because she is certain that it would be funny, did she understand.
“What does that have to do with air conditioning?” Mira asks, herding them all gently forward out of the doorway, which makes Rumi feel somewhat better about her ignorance.
Half of their conversation about ‘coolants’ and ‘atmosphere’ goes over Rumi’s head, but she thinks that she understands the general meaning: much like the stars, this invention had not come without cost.
By the time they reach the honored shaman’s office once more, the sweat is cool and damp against Rumi’s skin, and she is left to wonder again how it is that modern clothing is meant to work. These strange, skimpy undergarments have caught almost none of it, and she is certain that a proper runthrough of her exercises would have left her soaked in sweat, to say nothing of a day’s work. Is one meant to change clothes constantly?
She considers asking, but—
Mostly she is just stalling.
Selfish creature that she is, she does not want to put her sword away.
It will be there again when she returns, yes, but—
It is hard to part with, though she knows she should. Her sword, deadly and vicious, not ever to be drawn when not needed, feels so comforting in her hand. Like an anchor, a reminder that she is yet real—yet alive, in the same world that she left.
“Rumi? Sorry, we were getting kind of deep into the science there.” Zoey laughs nervously, apologizing for her own existence.
Rumi shakes her head, grip tightening on the sheathed sword. “It was no fault of yours. I am merely… considering.”
Mira snorts. “Considering our atmosphere? You looked like you were really paying attention there.”
“Perhaps I was considering the beauty of your features, sweet lady,” Rumi answers, the casual deflection coming easily.
Perhaps too easily, if the startled expressions that take over not just Mira’s features but also Zoey’s are to say anything. Rumi ought be careful, if her… desires… are so visible.
Hurriedly, she turns away, unlatching the box and putting the sheath back in it.
It closes with a decisive thunk.
And hopefully, Rumi will keep such a decisiveness in herself going forward.
The sesame oil has started sizzling, so Celine scrapes Minji-nim's pile of neatly (if... perhaps excessively finely) chopped vegetables into the pan and turns to the pantry. She pulls out a jar of kimchi and two eggs without thinking, then goes back for the rest of the carton. Six mouths to feed is nice, but it will take some adjustment.
She looks over at her designated sous chef, but Minji-nim has slumped over her arms on the table, eyes closed at last.
Celine is glad. It's meant to be part of her duties, in carrying on the great Rumi-nim's work, to give comfort to those who she helps; Rumi-nim healed hearts and spirits, as well as protecting bodies from harm. Celine has always been much better at the practical side of things. She can offer food, a safe place to go, she can repair torn stuffed animals and glue together broken heirlooms like they were never damaged, but she's never known what to say to people, when they hurt. In the face of what Minji-nim has lost, any mere words Celine could think to offer feel dismissive and trite. But a nap will do her good.
Celine turns to Miyeong-nim instead. "Can you be trusted to chop kimchi?"
"Let's find out." The reporter's eyes sparkle as she takes the jar. "You can come over here and supervise, if you're worried."
Miyeong-nim really is a flirt. Celine should probably roll her eyes, but she finds herself smiling, just a little, instead, as she turns back to the skillet. It's been a while since anyone cared to flatter her that way. And despite first impressions, she's beginning to think Miyeong-nim's good opinion is more discerning than she likes to act.
Certainly, she has decent taste in women. Celine glances over at the table again. "Will she be alright there?" she asks Miyeong-nim. "She needs sleep, but I doubt she needs back problems."
The reporter stops squinting suspiciously at the kimchi and takes a look of her own. "She'll be okay, I've caught her napping in much worse positions than that. You wouldn't think a human could bend the way a nurse can bend when the only available flat surface is the top of a mini-fridge."
Her face has gone soft and warm, and her voice is so fond that it makes the words sound like something earthshaking and precious, instead of the off-hand anecdote to a near-stranger that it is.
Well. Small talk. Celine starts pulling some fruit out of the fridge for Mira's smoothie, and asks over her shoulder, "Have you two been partners a long time, then?"
“I—wait—huh?” Miyeong barely manages to avoid spasming and starting to chop her own fingers instead of the kimchi. “Partners like—not that—Minji?”
Celine looks back at her, blushing slightly and says, voice stiff with embarrassment, “I hadn’t meant to presume. I apologize.”
“No, no, it’s just…” Miyeong stares at her, attempting to come up with something, anything beyond repeating, “…Minji? She’s so… and I’m…”
Why would someone like Minji, who is as selfless and competent and together as she could be, possibly get involved with Miyeong? (…Beyond getting dragged along with her in extenuating circumstances such as the ones they were under. Where it was the right thing to do.)
Celine frowns slightly. “You’re…?”
Miyeong’s face goes hot, feeling ridiculously adolescent at having Celine look at her as if she‘a more than just some worn out idiot who’d sold her soul for consistent employment years ago.
“I—I don’t even know if she—“ likes women. Miyeong takes a breath before she finishes that sentence in the stupidest way possible. “We’d known each other through work before now. Separate works. Wherein she did not like me very much.”
Celine just looks at her for another moment, still frowning, and nods. “…What sort of stories have you working at the hospital, then?”
Miyeong cringes at the thought of explaining about Yeonggi, though she knows Celine hadn’t meant it that way, and then it makes Celine wince and— “No, no! You didn’t—no, I was only—please, Celine-nim, forgive me, there’s just a bit of a story there, and one that involves me being a bit of an idiot.”
Matched with a smile, that, at least, finally has Celine loosening up instead of looking like she wants out of this conversation, raising an eyebrow. “Really?”
So Miyeong deftly avoids the subject of how everything with Yeonggi ended, and gets into how it started—a tale involving missing IV bags, a caffeine allergy, and a source who exclusively spoke Spanish.
It makes Celine laugh, as she explains how she’d tried to bribe the handsome male nurse with coffee and he’d looked at her like he wanted to die.
She skips the part where he was so enthusiastic about helping her because the new operation was cutting in on his own illegal activities. Maybe once they’ve known each other more than a week… and she’s had a conversation with Celine where she doesn’t have to fight the urge to melt into the ground from embarrassment.
It’s funny, though. She’d never noticed that Minji was in the story so much too, exhaustedly trying to kick Miyeong out even then. “Since I still had the coffee, I tried the trick on the next nurse I saw.”
Celine, set up at her own cutting board next to Miyeong, follows her nod to Minji. “And I take it she refused?”
“Oh, no, she took it,” Miyeong says, feeling a fond smile tug at her lips. “It just meant that she smiled at me while directing me to the exit that day.”
Celine’s laughter feels distant, almost, as Miyeong puts down the knife.
Part of Zoey — okay, most of Zoey — wants to stay and poke around the office a little more. Not only is she curious about what a modern mudang's day-to-day equipment might look like, there could be more ancient mystical weapons stashed around here and she cannot miss that.
But as soon as Rumi puts the sword away, she turns and all but marches out, a woman on a mission. Zoey turns to Mira, a silent question, but Mira just raises her eyebrows and shrugs a little, and then gestures broadly toward the door with a tiny little bow of her head, after you.
Fortunately, from behind, Mira won't be able to see the absurd blush that overtakes Zoey's entire face over such a completely normal gesture.
When they get to the kitchen, Minji is slumped asleep on the table, and the sweet smell of sauteed veggies fills the air. Celine and Miyeong are standing very close together at the counter; over the sizzling of oil, Zoey can just hear Celine walking Miyeong patiently through every step of holding her fingers curled, rocking the knife along its curve, letting the blade do the work. From her angle at the door, Zoey can just make out the edge of Miyeong's expression, serious and focused, and the tip of one ear, a brilliant red.
"Honorable shaman," says Rumi, keeping her voice low to not wake Minji and doing something really unfair to Zoey's guts as a bonus. Both women look up, Celine like a normal person and Miyeong with a little startled jump. "Can I assist in any way?"
Celine looks around thoughtfully. "There's not much else to do until it's time to fry the eggs. You three should get something to drink, though. Especially Rumi-nim. I'm sure you're dehydrated after that swordwork."
While Rumi is thanking Celine with more of that formal, archaic graciousness that should be goofy and awkward but is actually just really sweet and hot, Zoey starts digging in the fridge, Mira right behind her. "What do we think they drank to cool off in Rumi's day?" Mira murmurs, and from right over her shoulder that is also doing something really unfair to Zoey's guts, and this is the worst day. "Just water?"
There is bottled water in the fridge, but, "All that sweat," says Zoey, very cool and very calm and totally a medical professional about it, "we should give her something with some electrolytes."
They dig out a few choices for her, bokbunja and banana milk and a bottle of Bacchus that seems like an odd thing for Celine to keep on hand, considering her vibe. Zoey's usually pretty uncomfortable about sharing her drinks, but for some reason it feels totally normal when they sit down at the table, a respectful distance from the lump of unconscious nurse, and make Rumi try all three before deciding who gets what.
Her eyes go bright and she says, "An age of wonders," again, at the banana milk, and Zoey ends up with the energy drink. Probably for the best; her ADHD makes her functionally immune to caffeine, Mira should probably be avoiding it post-surgery, and Zoey's not sure she's ready for the Rumi On Red Bull experience.
"So not to in any way imply that we should be left here, because we are absolutely not doing that," says Zoey, once they're settled, "but, what's the plan for those of us without sacred weapons? I know we're looking for the wraiths, but what should Mira and I and our home invaders do when we find them?"
Miyeong just smiles shamelessly at the dig, and Celine looks over her shoulder at Mira. "Did you learn any rituals of control or banishment, from your family?"
Mira grimaces. "I tried to know as little about it as I could. Kinda wish I'd payed more attention, now."
"Well, I can teach you all a simple exorcism. Strong rituals take time we won't have to perform and even more to learn, but wraiths are only so powerful once their summoner is gone. The right words and a little mugwort can be enough to break their control on a person, particularly if any of you happen to be decent singers. And provided you can keep your own minds barred against the pain they feed on."
There's a moment of silence, as they all simultaneously exchange glances and process the ratio of emotionally level potential exorcists to recently-traumatized wrecks in the room, and Zoey says, "I'm really good at beer pong, maybe you have some sacred weapons I could learn to throw real quick instead?"
Minji gets shaken awake to find a plate of food being placed in front of her. It smells good enough that she doesn’t ask too many questions.
It takes a few minutes for the world to kick back into focus. She’d love to say that the vegetables suddenly taste like ash in her mouth, that everything turns blackened and sick, but… the world just keeps existing, same as it ever has. That’s the worst part.
The food tastes good. She just can’t let herself enjoy it.
They talk, and plan, and somehow it’s decided that they’ll be trying to make the last ferry out and staying the night in a hotel on the mainland, so they’ll have a whole day for Rumi and Celine-nim to take on the wraiths.
At least no one has much packing to do.
“Both of our cars only seat five,” Miyeong says, as if it wouldn’t be reasonable to at least pretend she hadn’t tracked them by car. “Do we want to split back according to how we came?”
“I should probably stick with you three,” Minji says, gesturing to younger group—or, wait, Rumi’s five hundred. Ugh. “No offense, but if anyone’s going to be needing medical attention, it’ll be one of you.”
Rumi looks mildly offended (as if the skin of her torso isn’t half-shredded), while Mira nods, conceding the point, and Zoey laughs a little, awkwardly.
“Yeah,” she says, “probably. But we shouldn’t have anyone riding solo, so do we want to have someone double-buckle, or…?”
“Celine-nim and I can ride together,” Miyeong volunteers.
A second later, she blushes vibrantly, turning to Celine-nim. “If—if you want, I mean! You don’t have to, I didn’t mean to speak for you—“
“I would be happy to,” Celine-nim says smoothly, which is nice. Miyeong deserves a win—getting to spend a few hours in a car with a beautiful woman before they all drive to their deaths is the least that could happen for her.
And then she gets another when Rumi volunteers to take Mira and Zoey out for knife practice.
“Go on,” Minji says, nodding after the not-actually-younger trio. “I know how much you like distance weaponry.”
“I’m offended by this,” Miyeong declares, but she marches after them to go find Celine-nim’s shinkal nonethless.
Minji smiles after her. She hopes Miyeong enjoys it—properly enjoys it, in the way that Minji wouldn’t be able to right now, even when she doesn’t think about Miyeong and Yeonggi soundly beating Seulgi at darts, the way she would always laugh about it.
“You don’t have to help with the dishes,” Celine says gently, but Minji shakes her head.
“It’s either do something or shut down, and I’d rather not fall asleep again.”
The fine day has clouded over somewhat by the time everyone minus Celine and Minji has assembled in the yard, sun only intermittently peeking out from rolls of cottony clouds, but Mira honestly thinks that's for the best.
She's fairly sure Zoey would melt otherwise.
"These should suffice for a target," Rumi remarks without a hint of strain as emerges from the garden shed Celine had given them freedom to ransack, a bag of soil that had to way at least eighteen kilograms draped over each shoulder like it was nothing.
Which, considering prior feats, probably was.
Mira nods agreeably, watching Zoey gape like a landed fish in her periphery. "Yeah, I'm cool with it. Zo?"
"So cool..." Zoey breathed, jaw on the ground as Rumi thumped down a bag on a low stone wall, then propped it up with the other.
Mira chuckled to herself. Subtle Zoey was not.
But cute.
And she really didn't blame her. Rumi in action was well worth looking at; as she moves around setting up makeshift targets, standing back to gauge distance then striding forward to make adjustments, humming Celine's old-school kpop song from the record store as she does so, Mira finds herself unable to look away, thoroughly captivated.
Not that she should be, considering Rumi was as good as taken, and she refused to deny Zoey that happiness, never mind she's known her for, like, a week.
"Alright!" Miyeong- oh crap that's right she's here, pull yourself together!- claps her hands together and eagerly looks at the shin kal Zoey has (somehow) managed to hold onto even as her head visibly emptied of all thoughts save for Rumi-ones (very eagerly; should they be worried?). "How are we doing this?"
"Here," Rumi takes one of the shin kal from Zoey's unresisting grip. "I will demonstrate, then each of you can try." She motions for them to clear some space, then rolls her head from side to side, muscles snapping loose. Shifting her right foot forward she grips the knife, draws her arm back, and-
Now Mira's jaw's keeping Zoey's company. In the span of a second Rumi's released the knife and sent it singing through the air to land- thwack!- in the target, a smattering of soil crumbs tumbling dazed to the ground.
Miyeong, at least, has the presence of mind to show appreciation in a way that doesn't make her look like an idiot and applauds, the sound nudging Mira into clapping action; Zoey does one better: she actually sticks her fingers in her mouth and whistles.
Damn she's cute...
Rumi turns to them, grinning to show her pointed canines (wide enough to be unsettling, but...weirdly cute on her). "Who would like to go first?"
Before she's finished Mira's nudging Zoey forward. "You're already holding the knives," she justifies when Zoey "eeps!" and blinks back at her.
And you and Rumi are perfect for each other and just need to realize it.
"Oh yeah," Zoey says like she's forgotten, then bounds forward to join Rumi. She shakes her head, shoulders, arms, the shin kal flashing in the sun like they're giggling with anticipation. She grins fiendishly (but still adorably) at the target and, taking a knife in her hand, winds up. "Alright, time to go Rambo!"
Mira shifts her weight, watching expectantly. Wait for it...
"You want to keep your body loose," Rumi begins, laying her hands on Zoey's shoulders.
Instantly, she goes stiff as a board.
Mira smirks. There it is!
She swears Miyeong is just barely not laughing along with her as 'Rambo' turns red as a traffic signal and markedly less responsive while Rumi, oblivious as the wind to the effect she's having on her pupil, goes on adjusting Zoey's posture and positioning her fingers on the knife, languidly narrating the 'why' behind each motion.
Mira wishes that could be her. Either of them.
"Now you throw!" Rumi finishes, stepping back.
"Huh?" Zoey blinks herself back from whichever cloud she'd been perched on and looks around, taking in the position she's been moved into. "Oh!" The adorably maniacal grin comes back. "Okay wraiths, say 'hello' to my little friend!"
Her arm snapped forward, the knife sung, and- thwack!- another shower of soil from where the shin kal landed in the bag; not dead center like Rumi's, but commendably close.
Impressive. And hot.
"WHOO YEAH!" Zoey crows, pumping her fist in the air.
"Remind me to challenge you to darts after all this ends," Miyeong smiles her own congratulations as she moves to go next in line for a turn piercing the literal dirt bag.
Rumi stands there, blinking, then turns to Zoey with that same ridiculous/adorable smile. "You are a natural!"
"Eh," Zoey shrugs in a way that's both modest and self-congratulatory. "All that beer pong paid off."
Rumi sobers, nodding seriously. "I am unfamiliar, but this beer pong must be a sport that requires great skill and discipline to result in such accuracy and power."
Yup, Mira thinks as Zoey tries to figure out how to respond to that, the both of them just so happy and right together. They're perfect for each other.
She just wishes she could be, too.
When it’s her turn, she can’t ignore how wrong the shin kal feels in her hands.
Mira takes her first shot and lands about five feet short of the target. Her second goes careening off to the left. Her third, at least, nicks the wall next to the bag of dirt, but her fourth goes wild again.
She doesn’t get too upset about it.
“Never really been great at throwing things,” Mira admits, as the knives run out and they pause to go get them back.
“You cannot curse yourself to failure before you begin,” Rumi says, all warmth and good intentions. “You merely need a bit of practice.”
But Zoey sees the way Mira’s jaw tightens (and then quickly loosens again as she loses some color, clearly regretting that move) and she knows the feeling. When you really just know something’s fucking hard and always will be and someone oh-so-sweetly denies it, like you’re just being mean to yourself and not able to accurately assess the situation… it sucks.
So she bites her tongue against the “You got this!” that she wants to chirp out—especially when Miyeong says exactly that and Mira’s jaw does that thing again—and, instead, just watches how Mira throws.
…Which is ridiculously badly. Because she just throws with her arm.
“Um,” Zoey says, carefully, “are you okay with constructive criticism or do you just want me to stand over to the side and not say anything? Because I’m totally good with not saying anything! I promise!”
Mira huffs before she can get any further. “Advice is fine.”
“Well, uh, I’m sure you know what you’re doing, but… you kinda gotta roll with it? Like, twist your hips and put all of you into it!” She offers her goofiest smile, exaggerating the shift of her body until it’s more of a joking bounce than an actual mock-throw as she mimes it for Mira—and then having to do it for real, however awkward that is.
But Mira’s smiling, nodding—though that might have something to do with Rumi coming over to try to help guide her through it with those calloused-but-still-so-gentle hands of hers. You know. If Zoey had to guess.
Just from the way Mira starts getting that really pretty blush, not any of her own thoughts on the matter, obviously.
At least she’s too distracted to be paying attention to Zoey as she throws again. Her lips tilt in a tiny smile as the knife clips the edge of the bag and she turns to high five Rumi.
And then she keeps turning and offers her hand to Zoey. To high five.
Right, because they should show Rumi, that was only invented in, like, the 1950s.
So Zoey grins and slaps her palm against Mira’s, and Mira—her voice is always kinda quiet, with the wires and all, but she tilts her head back and laughs and it’s so pretty and Zoey is so, so doomed.
And then! And then!!!!
She looks at Zoey and she smiles and she says, “Thanks. I always forget not to isolate everything when I’m not dancing.”
And she just turns to high five Rumi like Zoey isn’t exploding right next to her.
They wash the dishes in a silence that feels more comfortable than Minji expects. She's still tired enough that it's easy to zone out, to not really think of anything but the movement of the towel and how to stack the plates on the counter once they're dry. The loss remains, of course, a constant ache at the back of her mind, but with a task at hand, she stops getting caught by its sharpest edges.
Or maybe it's Celine-nim, who has a warm steadiness to her presence, despite her silence. There's something in the way she holds herself, the way she seems so centered and in control, as though demon apocalypses are just another day. It makes the pressure seem a little lighter, just for her standing there.
She's also very hospitable, rewarding Minji for her assistance by leading them to the sitting room and producing a bottle of soju, then pouring out two shots. "I don't often have the occasion," she says, her smile small and wry, "but if there's ever been a situation that warrants a drink..."
Minji doesn't need to be told twice. She grabs a glass, says a dry, ironic "wihayeo," and throws it back without blinking. Celine-nim shows more restraint, and simply holds hers, maybe swirling it a little, contemplatively, while Minji pours herself another.
"The 'situation'," Minji repeats, as the second shot burns down her throat. "That's one word for it. We've got the impossible ancient hero. The murder of all my friends. The kid who got kidnapped for a sacrifice. The thing where we're setting a bunch of random civilians against fantasy monsters." She waves a hand, still wrapped around the glass, at Celine-nim. "You said you were part of an order, right? Aren't there other people who are, I don't know. Trained in this kind of stuff? How is this Miyeong's job, or those poor kids?"
The shaman takes her bitterness in stride, watching her calmly like she has every right to it, but makes no apologies.
"We've been spread very thin, over the years," she answers instead, matter-of-fact, "and we were never a large order to begin with. Anyone I called for help would have to travel too far to be timely, and would have to leave their own home defenseless."
Celine-nim finally takes her shot, the long column of her throat flexing elegantly as she swallows. Minji blinks and drops her eyes, pouring herself another.
"Still," she says, filling Celine's glass again too, once she puts it down, "you have Rumi, right? Shouldn't you two just... do your thing, and the rest of us just stay out of the way?"
For a moment, Celine-nim just watches Minji, a careful regard that seems to peel right into the heart of her. Minji has seen Miyeong strip informants of their layers with a look, leaving them cut open and exposed, but this feels different, somehow; like Minji's being understood, her deepest self handled with the care of a surgeon, everything closed up properly afterward and left healthier than she started.
"... when I first met Zoey," Celine-nim says, once her keen gaze has finished its search, "I knew she and I would someday do something important together. I understand why, now. She and Mira withstood the voice of no mere wraith, but of Gwi-Ma himself, for days, and remained steadfast enough despite it to bring Rumi-nim back up from the hells."
She drinks again, and this time Minji doesn't look away.
"This battle will be a spiritual one, far more than physical, and Rumi-nim will need their strength for that." Celine's eyes hold Minji's, serious and thoughtful. "And you... It may be that you and Miyeong-nim are here because I will need yours."
Minji-nim looks at the soju bottle, and her lips twist contemplatively. “…Does Zoey have a driver’s license?”
Celine smiles and shakes her head instead of answering, not knowing either way. She hopes so, at least, given how shortly post-surgery Mira had been when the two of them arrived at her office.
Minji-nim waits with that for a moment before she says, quietly, “One of the wraiths looked like a photographer Miyeong liked. We didn’t even know he was dead until…”
Until we explained what they were. Celine grimaces.
“And—fucking Yeonggi turned up, apparently—did—“ Minji-nim breathes, sharply. “Becoming a wraith. Does it mean something about you?”
She wishes she could say no. Wishes she had decent words, comforting hands, anything. She tells the truth. “Gwi-Ma can only take a person’s image to use as a wraith if they gave themself to him in life.”
Minji-nim covers her face with her hands for a long moment before making a sound, the kind that might be a sob and might be a laugh. “Miyeong always thought there was something about the way Yeonggi died. We all figured it was just—“
Celine thinks back to the way Miyeong-nim had been so startled by Celine’s mistake, earlier, hadn’t even thought to be offended as she looked down at Minji-nim as if she were somehow worth impossibly more. And she thinks she understands a little.
“He actually sold his soul to a demon?” Minji-nim asks, peering up at her. She doesn’t wait for an answer before she laughs again. “That son of a bitch, of course he did.”
“Many do,” Celine says. “Gwi-Ma is… clever. And it might not have been…”
Minji-nim shakes her head again. “I don’t need hope for Yeonggi’s memory.”
“But I need you to understand,” Celine replies, thinking, terribly, of Rumi-nim on the other side of that portal, bloody and resigned and smiling as she gave herself up. She thinks of— “I need you to understand that it is not a weakness of—he will not only take what is offered. Gwi-Ma is called the Devourer for a reason. He will take anything he can touch, freely given or otherwise.”
Her hand has found its way to Minji-nim’s shoulder, somehow, as she is very close to her face.
Celine jumps back against the arm of the couch.
Minji-nim’s mouth opens.
“We must hold onto each other,” Celine says, before she can hear some platitude. “We must.”
“…I won’t let you go,” Minji-nim says, and this is perhaps the most anyone has understood Celine in years.
Miyeong hasn't had this much fun in ages. Not least because she's winning; Zoey's giving her a good fight, accurate with a great eye for distance, but Miyeong has mastered the forward spin faster than her, and is getting most of her knives in point-first while a good third of Zoey's are still bouncing blunt end off the sacks.
"Very good," is Rumi's assessment, as Zoey sinks one just a few centimeters off a bullseye and does a little whoop of glee. "You all show great promise. But in a true battle, your enemies will seldom remain still. I would like to advance to practice on moving targets, if you are amenable."
Zoey shoots a sly look at Miyeong, and then beams at Rumi, wide and innocent. "Sounds great, let's do it!"
Mira demurs, preferring to keep trying to consistently hit the stationary bags, but Miyeong rolls her shoulders competitively and agrees. Rumi has a little pile of squash that she's managed to collect from somewhere, green and round and overripe, and she lobs one slowly across the field of fire. Zoey whips a shinkal after it, a long clean release, and it sails just behind the vegetable, nearly clipping it.
Miyeong's lead might be in trouble.
One more round, and Miyeong's lead is definitely in trouble. She nicks a squash here and there, but mostly she goes wide in every direction, and Zoey, still hitting blunt-first a lot but still consistently hitting, is steadily closing the point gap. Rumi puts forward a valiant attempt to pretend she's impartial about it, but Mira makes no such pretense. She's entirely given up on her own practice to cheer Zoey on and trash-talk Miyeong, and Miyeong can't find it anything but charming. Watching the three of them fall all over each other in a fit of youthful hormones is almost more fun than the knife-throwing itself.
Though perhaps she shouldn't judge. At least they know what they're feeling. She lets her eyes flick over to the main building. Behind those walls is a woman who has somehow become the most stable presence in Miyeong's life for the better part of a decade, a reliable constant in all her rootless chaos, an irreplaceable comfort against her loneliness, and Miyeong never even noticed.
Honestly, she sort of wishes she still hadn't. It's not like there's anything to do with the information. Miyeong had her one shot, and it literally ended with a body count. Minji, who is in such terrible pain but still sent her out here to flex her projectile skills on undergrads for fun, deserves better from Miyeong than to hope to drag her down.
(Minji, who knows Miyeong is shameless enough to find that fun, is aware enough of who Miyeong is as a person that there would be no point in hope, regardless.)
The sun has not lowered greatly in the sky by the time that Minji-nim and the honored shaman come out to recall them and set them to preparations for their journey, but Rumi is proud to say that all of her pupils have improved a great deal.
Even Mira is more like to hit the target than not, and she showed much promise when they went over how to stab an attacker, despite being quite stiff during Rumi’s explanation.
“I am very proud of you,” she tells them all, the same as she tells everyone she teaches, whether they be five years old or sixty-five.
“You’re a really good teacher,” Miyeong-nim says, warmly, and Mira and Zoey agree, and Zoey comes up to loop an arm over Rumi’s shoulder and pull her close in thanks.
And all of this is good, like the sun and the grass and the feeling of an overripe squash in her hand. Rumi holds it tight, tries to burn it into herself, because she knows from experience that weak words would not stop Gwi-Ma.
They use the washroom to quickly wipe off the worst of the sweat and, going last, Rumi has opportunity to see that Mira has, indeed, changed her clothes, which is presumably simply what is done when one sweats in this time. The amount of washing must be ridiculous, and Rumi has a million questions about how they prevent things from falling apart, but—
For now, she just jerks her head away, flushing, because Mira has walked out wearing what cannot qualify as a full garment in this day and age.
It covers barely more than the undergarments. It doesn’t even reach her knees.
It doesn’t even reach halfway to her knees!
You’ve spent how much time in brothels? Rumi scolds herself, angry and embarrassed. Get a hold of yourself; her body is nothing to do with you.
(…It does make her feel a bit better when Zoey sees Mira and responds with a squeak of surprise.)
"So is this how we're doing this?" Miyeong looks between the two groups of people, Minji and the girls clustered around Miyeong's car, and her and Celine next to hers.
It's a logical division. Sensible. Minji's familiar enough with Miyeong's car to drive it without being distracted searching for the turn signal, and Celine's car is, well, Celine's. Plus if Rumi or Mira needs sudden medical aid, having Minji able to provide immediate guidance without needing to be flagged down from the other car is beneficial.
And Miyeong's not heartless; she has no intention to get in the way of young love and suggest Zoey ride with her and Celine.
So this is the most logical way to split up.
If the thought of being alone with Celine for a couple of hours ties a knot in her stomach, that's just...pre-wraith-hunting nerves. Yeah.
Celine nods, the motion more elegant than it has a right to be. "I'm fine with it."
Miyeong's heart jumps. The hot gorgeous TALL shaman's fine with it! She's fine with alone time with her! She is-
Lightheaded.
Maybe she should drive her own car with the girls. They have cellphones; Minji's only a call away-
But Minji's already holding her hand out for Miyeong's keys, and they're going to miss the ferry if they're not careful.
"I can drive!" Zoey's hand shoots up in the air. "Please? Rumi hasn't seen me drive yet and I'm really good! Mira! Tell them how good I am!"
"She didn't get us towed," Mira shrugs. "I think."
Miyeong blanches, thoughts of Celine momentarily suspended by thoughts of her car in the impound lot. Or worse.
Not that Zoey didn't seem responsible, but...she'd been that age once. She'd been that eager to drive to impress a crush once. She'd turned a car into an off-roader more than once.
But Minji- thank god for Minji- pockets the keys. "I'm giving you the aux."
"A role of great importance," Rumi nods seriously, perking Zoey up from the deflated slump she'd fallen into. "And you did exemplary with it yesterday.”
Miyeong mouths a ‘thank you’ to Minji as the girls pile in to the car, Mira and Zoey bouncing songs that Rumi just had to hear between them like juggling balls, and watches them crunch out of the gravel drive. She’d have a lot to worry about in the next few hours, but at least her car wasn’t one of them.
The sound of a car door opening pulls her attention back to her side.
“Ready?” Celine asks, one hand gripping the open door. There’s an inviting little smile on her lips, and her eyes catch the sun in such a way that they sparkle, igniting something in Miyeong’s chest.
Yes, a lot to worry about…
(she was going to say something stupid, she just knew it)
While Rumi did fine on yesterday’s supply run, Zoey is honestly expecting a bit more of a freak out from her today—maybe just because she gets motion sick so easily.
But: nope. They pile in (Minji driving, Rumi and Zoey in back, and Mira sitting shotgun to have some room for her legs) and get on the road and Rumi shows absolutely no signs of discomfort.
Zoey might be a bad person for being disappointed about that.
After a while, the conversation shifts back from music to demons. Minji missed Celine’s earlier advice about mugwort, after all.
“The first rule of wraith-hunting is,” Rumi says (and Zoey’s brain unhelpfully fills in to have fun and be yourself and we don’t talk about wraith-hunting), “that they are hollow. There is nothing in them, and any promises they make to you are false. Do not listen. Hold on to what is solid.”
She looks at Zoey while she says it, because Zoey’s the only one looking at her, and so Zoey is left with the intensity of Rumi’s gaze, the impossible, out-of-time person that she is, and the softness of her smile.
“You,” she says. “Music. The sun on the grass. Anything you have.”
And Zoey’s brain plays it again: You. You. You. She has you.
But before she can say something stupid—something like I have you—Minji says, fingers tapping against the steering wheel, “Celine mentioned—she mentioned that Gwi-Ma would… take people, earlier. Like… like they didn’t have to make a deal with him or anything?”
Rumi’s expression twists with a horrible kind of hope, and she doesn’t answer for a long moment before, finally, her voice thick with something Zoey can’t interpret, she says, “The knowledge that I have is different, but it has been many years.”
(Zoey thinks of the way she talked about her dad. Wonders if maybe…)
(But maybe not. They haven’t even known each other a week, after all.)
“No, she—she wasn’t clear,” Minji says. “I might have misunderstood.”
Rumi bites her lip. Hesitates, before adding, in a way that’s clearly meant to be reassuring, “You must fail for him to take you. But it does not mean you cannot be brought back. Fear is his hand. Do not play it.”
It would’ve worked better if she didn’t sound like she was about to cry.
Celine keeps the music low enough to talk over, but unexpectedly, Miyeong-nim spends the first half hour or so of the drive fidgeting quietly.
Perhaps the danger is finally hitting her, now that there aren't any distractions. Miyeong-nim strikes Celine as someone with disconcertingly little fear of risk, but her whole worldview has also just been upended. In Celine's experience, both the most brave and the most foolhardy come to that attitude largely through experience, and demons are well outside the experience of most.
But when Miyeong-nim finally speaks, it's to say, "So," drawing it out, and glancing toward the back of the car. "Do you happen to have permits? For the ancient magic sword, and pile of deadly sacred knives? More specifically, do you have permits on hand, in the car with us right now?"
She does, for the sword, actually, although she certainly doesn't keep it in the car. And the shinkal are another matter entirely.
Still, "I've never found the ferry staff particularly concerned with the contents of people's trunks during crossing."
Her reassurance is met only with a skeptical little hum. "If they do check it out, for whatever reason, go ahead and let me do the talking. I've got some ideas already, I'll loop you in when I decide on one."
Apparently Miyeong-nim is not, in fact, nervous about getting caught with weapons. Celine glances over, bemused, and finds a gleam in the reporter's eyes, even brighter than the anticipation in her voice.
"Fighting wraiths isn't enough excitement for you, you have to be maneuvering around the law, too?"
"I try to always be getting away with something. Keeps my skills sharp."
Celine can't help her smile. "And what skills are those?"
For some reason that makes Miyeong-nim start stumbling again, stuttering out an awkward, "Well, ah—I—you know—reporter things. …Talking. Persuasion, and such."
Celine considers that. She will admit that Miyeong-nim is actually quite a skilled storyteller, when she's not tripping over her tongue, but it was not her clumsy charm offensive at their first meeting that brought her into this adventure. It was so obviously a mask, and Celine hadn't liked that she couldn't see what was underneath. But Miyeong-nim's dogged persistence, her willingness to try anything other than turning away, had gotten them past it; had brought her all the way here, to the passenger seat of Celine's car.
Which is a recurring theme in the stories she's told so far, as well. Miyeong-nim simply does not give up on a story, no matter the expense to her time or dignity. It's an admirable trait, albeit a vexing one to be on the wrong side of. More admirable than mere persuasive charm, in Celine's opinion. Stubbornness has saved many souls from Gwi-Ma, and Miyeong-nim's may yet save more.
Which is why it's meant to be a compliment when she says, "Persistence seems to be a more reliable tool, for you."
But Miyeong folds her arms in Celine's peripheral vision and plays at being affronted. "I'll have you know," she huffs, "I am in fact incredibly charismatic, and regularly talk my way out of situations that would bewilder and terrify a lesser woman."
It's still a distraction, and Celine finds she still wants to know what's underneath it.
But she'd rather take the softer path to get there, now.
So she just says, dry, "And how often did you talk yourself into these situations, in the first place?"
"Half of them at most," sniffs Miyeong-nim. There's a beat, and she tries to sound grudging, but the laughter's clear in her voice. "… maybe three-quarters."
Mira keeps her eyes doggedly out the window, focusing on the mountain landscape blurring by and not on the rearview mirror, where Zoey, cheeks flushed from hearing how she was one of the things that kept Rumi anchored, had just reached over to squeeze Rumi's hand and got the most beautiful smile in return.
She refuses to focus on how much she wishes to be a part of what's blossoming behind her, how much she wanted to see Rumi or Zoey (preferably 'and') look at her that way and say that Mira was worth holding onto.
Not that she begrudges them for it! She's genuinely glad they found each other to smile at like that and hold hands and blush over changing bandages. They deserve it. It's just...
Her life, or well what's left of it- an empty mansion populated by her brother's decaying body she never wants to go back to, a cave somewhere in the wilderness where her parents rot over the sigils they bickered over while carving them in the floor- is so bleak and empty by comparison.
Not that it was any different when her family was alive, they objectively sucked, but they were still alive. Which, to be honest, had its own set of problems but now they're dead and-
Ugh! She stopped herself just before making the mistake of clenching her jaw because Appa had officially beaten her for the last time and she still couldn't figure out how to feel about that. Why couldn't she have had a normal family? Or simpler feelings about her abnormal one?
Minji-nim glanced over at Mira, then the rearview mirror, then back at Mira.
Mira stared harder at the scenic view, carefully keeping her face turned towards alternating trees and fields. Like hell was she going to tip her emotional hand.
Minji, clearly a professional, didn't pry, just drummed her fingers on the wheel. "So. Is there a second rule about wraith hunting we should be aware of? Do they, like, fight back or anything?"
On impulse Mira flicks her eyes to the mirror; Rumi's face is puckered in a little thinking pout. It is, frankly, adorable, but before Mira can properly appreciate it her face darkens. The hand Zoey's not holding drifts to her side, to the bandages hidden under her shirt.
"Words are their first choice of weapon, but...when they fail, or sometimes to help ensure they fail, they will resort to...other measures."
Mira turns around and her eyes instantly find Zoey's; they were waiting for her, like she was about to lean forward to locate Mira, wanting to consult her.
She forces herself to not think too hard on that. Or the way the sun catches on Zoey's lashes.
It's clear they're both thinking the same thing.
They both saw the gashes on Rumi's side, long and jagged and- and claw-like. Mira had assumed they were from some weird underworld animal; clearly Zoey had done the same.
Now, though...
The last time she saw Jaeho's wraiths, they were pitiable things; deformed limbs and twisted forms that could hardly have won a fight against a dishrag (with the dishrag having the more favorable odds). But that was several years ago by now. She'd never given much thought to what they could do if conjured properly.
And clearly, judging by the hospital fire, he'd done things properly this time.
Rumi reaches forward to lay a hand on Zoey's shoulder, and fixes her gaze on Mira, intense and beautiful and determined.
“Other measures?” Minji-nim echoes. “Sorry, I don’t mean to poke at anything, but—“
“No,” Rumi hurries to reply, guilt immediately overtaking irritation. “I ought to have been more—“ (What’s the stupid word?) “—descriptive. Primarily, they will retain the forms they have, though their teeth may grow, and they will have claws. These are their weapons. One need not fear any venom or poison, but they are quite sharp. And wraiths very quick.”
“Oh,” Minji-nim says. “Lovely.”
Rumi and Jinu used to pause here to cheerfully tell any of the youths who wished to join them about all of the horrible injuries they had seen from wraiths until they went pale and nervous (or else their mothers decided that, no, they were not of an age to hunt wraiths).
Used to.
Without him, Rumi is adrift.
Her companions know what wraiths are, how to resist them, and how to kill them. They need to know…
Where to find them, Rumi, Jinu teases her. What, are you just going to give them a dog and a lantern and hope their souls don’t get eaten?
“The most difficult issue has always been the discernment of wraith from person,” Rumi explains. “A wraith has… patterns. Parts of the soul that are etched into it. For many, it would seem as if their loved one had miraculously returned to them.”
(She’d always been… distantly sad for such people. A part of her had, admittedly, thought some foolish.
Now, the very idea seems to wrench her heart out of her chest.
She would fall. She would fall so, so easily.)
“So we can’t hesitate?” Zoey asks.
“No!” Rumi yelps. (Hypocrite.) “No, you must always hesitate!”
Didn’t you remind me of that? she asks, silent, desperate, staring at Zoey in quiet horror as she wonders if she is influencing such a wonderful soul for the worse. Had you not, would we not have both lost the opportunity to know Mira?
"So." Miyeong taps the car door in lively time with the song playing on the radio. "Have you done this before?"
Celine's hands clamp tighter on the wheel as she subtly sucks in a breath, hoping Miyeong-nim didn't notice but knowing that was likely a vain hope.
Fortunately her mentors had taught her many things, including the art of deflection.
She cleared her throat and looked sidelong at her traveling companion, watching her with an assessing eye. "What, drive down the mountain with someone who thinks it's normal to go knocking on strangers' doors before breakfast?"
Miyeong's fingers stumble over the bridge as she chokes on nothing and flushes crimson. "There were extenuating circumstances!" She sputters.
Celine felt a grin wriggle its way across her lips. "Do you mean impulsivity?"
"I am not-"
"Or a lack of regard for norms and etiquette?"
Miyeong opened her mouth to respond, then sat back, crossing her arms petulantly over her chest with a little 'hmph!' that tickled Celine's ears.
She chuckled. This was easily some of the most fun she'd had in a while. Plus she was spared from having to admit-
"I meant the whole wraith-slaying business," Miyeong clarified as the radio switched to a new song. "Have you ever done that?"
She spoke too soon.
"Not...exactly," she said slowly, focusing hard on the road unfurling before them.
Miyeong raised a brow, silently prodding her to continue.
Celine swallowed. "There's...not exactly much call for expunging wraiths. While I have a strong theoretical base, it's...not something I have much hands-on experience with."
“‘Much?’” Miyeong prodded.
“Well there was one time. When I was still in training. But I…really mostly just watched. From a very safe distance.”
She winced as she finished. Perhaps she shouldn't have admitted to that, and just given some roundabout half-truth focused on her expertise. But...it was surprisingly hard to do that with Miyeong's eyes on her, quiet and curious and looking at her like she wanted to know Celine, really know her.
Probably a reporter thing.
Miyeong was quiet a moment longer, letting the radio and hum of the engine fill the space; Celine fought the urge to squirm.
"Wow."
Celine looked over, expecting sarcasm or some hint of irony, and Miyeong was smiling. She reached a hand over the console, lighting it on Celine's knee, and-
-And she didn't catch what Miyeong said next, too focused on not veering into the other lane and trying to force her pulse back to something sensible.
see unfortunately I have this condition where if I am not explicitly told that I am a part of the ingroup then I will assume I must be part of the outgroup
@waterfire1848 chatting about a deaged gumiho Celine is pulling me back into the gumiho Celine verse again 😔
But imagine gumiho Celine who was taken from her family, mentors who hunted every gumiho who came close to the property until the skulk moved on, loathed to abandon their lost kit but finding it too dangerous to stay.
Her mother being the only gumiho to stay behind. Learning the habits of the hunters, hoping to be able to steal back her kit when the chance came.
But it never did.
She saw her kit slowly lose herself. Transforming less until she stopped entirely. Wearing her human face until it was just her face. Learning to be a hunter until eventually, the wildness left her entirely and she smelled like city and rubber and steel.
Celine grows up being taught that her purpose was to be useful. Her worth came from what she could give back to humanity and the hunters. That, even though she had been unfortunate enough to be born a demon, she had been given an opportunity to do some good. And with it, the hope that she would be human in the next life.
Post-movie, Huntr/x discovers that Celine is a gumiho (maybe she's a sad sack and can't find it in herself to maintain her human form or maybe she feels like such a horrible demon that she reverts to her fox form) and Rumi gets it in her head that she's going to find out what happened to Celine's family.
Celine said that the previous hunters killed all the gumiho in the area but gumiho are supposed to be sly, shifty, sneaky demons and Rumi is convinced that the hunters couldn't have killed *all* of them.
It takes a long time but the girls start to feel like they're being watched the longer they camp out in the woods around the hanok until, in the middle of the night, Rumi wakes up to find a large, white-furred fox watching them.
First of all, LOVE this idea! Celine’s mom would not give up on her baby even when it makes no sense to stay. As long as Celine is there, even when she has a kit of her own (who also has demon heritage), her mom will stay on Jeju island and watch over her.
Second, the girls are about to be attacked by a gumiho. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. Her kit is starting to embrace her gumiho side again but whenever the hunters come around she reverts back. Clearly it’s their fault.
Third, I just rewatched Hoppers and now I’m imagining a scene where Celine is in her fox form and gets hurt in front of her mom (whether that’s from a demon or something else) and her mom changes back to human form to carry Celine to the girls, begging them to help her.
Oh combining your addition with @secondtolastrow 's addition 👀
Mother-fox knows that something has shifted in the hunter's den.
The scent of fox, strong and musky, grows stronger by the day ever since her grand-kit's scream split the sky open. And in the days since, watching from behind the treeline, where she has learned from years of watching is safe, she sees glimpses of a white fox behind the glass panes.
Thin, in fur and in body. Shoulders slumped, ears pinned back. Her kit had spent days in the window sill overlooking the front gate, looking so still that had it not been for the fog gathering on the cold glass, Mother-fox would have thought her kit dead.
She had not perked up until her own kit returned along with the short hunter and the pink-haired hunter.
(She had still not seen her kit leave the hunter's den.)
(Her kit had left the window.
She didn't know if her kit was still alive.)
So when the hunters had started to leave scraps of liver in the woods, when they had started to invade her territory; Her teeth ached to bite down. She wanted to shred flesh, feel warm blood spurt from their necks and drink deep.
Finally, one night, she loses her patience and when one of the hunters wakes and looks, blearily out at her, she screams at her a demand to know what they did with her child.
Rumi scrambles back instinctively from the sound, thankfully managing not to draw her sword before she starts comprehending that the GIANT DEMON FOX isn’t just screaming, or even screaming that it plans on killing her, but—
It’s screaming for its child
She hears Mira and Zoey waking up, tries to gesture at them not to do something stupid even while she can’t take her eyes off the slavering maw in front of her
She takes a deep breath. “Are you talking about Celine? Can you—can you help her?”
The fox snarls, paces, disbelieving. “You want to help her?”
(Out of the corner of Rumi’s eyes, she catches Mira and Zoey exchanging a glance. The moment of understanding that passes between them)
In a kinder world, one where the hunters did not hate and fear all demons, her kit might not have been stolen from her. Her kit, who had always been fascinated by the music of the humans, might have joined the hunters willingly.
This child in front of her might have spent her childhood riding astride gumiho, white fur clutched in small, child fists. She would have been presented to the skulk the night of her first full moon, would have been named underneath it's soft, white glow.
That image, and nothing less, is what stops Mother-fox from screaming further in this child's face.
It does not stop her from circling the camp and howling her frustration into the trees.
"Your kind's 'help' destroyed her!" She snarls. "Do you even know what she should be at her age?"
The girls shook their heads.
"She was supoosed to have grown into her tails decades ago!" Seven, eight tails maybe. Large, fluffy, and white. Her ninth tail would not have sprouted for decades. Mother-fox feared it never would. "You would help her kill what little part of her is still here!"
"That's not what we want!" The child protests. "We just want Celine to be okay again!"
"Yeah," the short hunter says. "We came back to talk to her and she was this fox. And now, she won't even come out from under her bed."
"We thought she got cursed or something," pink-hair adds.
“Cursed?” the gumiho repeats, voice very, very dangerous as she looks at Mira.
“And then she told us she was a gumiho!” Zoey adds hurriedly. “And the old Hunters just made her push all of that down so we never knew, not even Rumi.”
Mira nods, and Rumi does too, ugly anger welling up in her at the memory of what Celine’s mentors had apparently taught her. It’s very easy to understand the gumiho’s screaming when she thinks about them and what they did to Celine.
“We wouldn’t have known what to do even if it was a curse,” Rumi admits, “but… Celine said the old Hunters spent years driving the gumiho away from the hanok. I—every story says that gumiho are supposed to be tricky, and…”
The woman that the gumiho transforms into flares her tails almost aggressively, as if daring them to ignore the fact that they are still very much looking at a fox even as she gets right into Rumi’s face again, her breath full of carnivore-stink.
But Rumi doesn’t flinch. Won’t let herself.
“And?” she asks.
And Celine loved me enough that becoming what she hated didn’t matter.
“And I hoped that you might know something,” she tries. “I mean, we’d never even heard that thing about the tails.”
Mother-fox scoffs, looking down her nose at the trio before her with disdain. Ignorance. She'd expect nothing less from a pack of Hunters.
"Of course you have not," she hisses, tails lashing like so many snakes waiting to strike. "You are too busy murdering anything that doesn't reek of humanity to listen. It is a wonder they have let you live."
The pink-haired hunter and the small one wince, and Mother-fox delights in the lightning-strike of pain that burns across their features. Yes, feel ashamed, foolish Hunters. For once truly feel your due.
The child, the one whose human stink is mingled with the ash and earth and mustiness of the jeoseung saja, sits taller, and meets the gumiho's eyes. There is no fear, and none of the shame she has come to associate with patterned demons. Instead something that glints like a gumiho's pride. "We've changed."
A lip curls back from fangs itching for blood to drip off their lengths. Change. Hunters, who for generations have strung them up by their tails and stained their moon-white coats with red, changing to welcome a gumiho. A joke. The sort of cruel, ironic thing that only humans would be so heartless as to play. "Lies."
The child- so like her kit, this child!- is not cowed. "If you don't want to believe that we've changed, at least believe that we want to help Celine. She..." Her throat jumps as she swallows, and she drops her eyes to the ground. The gumiho watches as rounded fingernails dig into the earth, clenching the soil. When the human speaks again, there is a heaviness to her voice that...the gumiho's heart knows.
She barks in laughter, sharp and harsh, like claws scrapping across stone.
Small One and Pink-Hair's fingers twitch in the ways Hunters do before they pull their weapons from their glowing barrier, plucking at invisible strings.
Years ago -- a lifetime ago -- those fingers had plucked a chain from the air and lashed her across her chest and it had felt like fire being poured into her lungs. And that chain had twisted around her kit's neck and the hunter and pulled and her kit had screamed and when the hunter lifted her kit up by the scruff of her neck, she had hung so limply in that hunter's grip she had looked dead.
And then a spear had sliced through the sapling near her head and she had --
She had abandoned her kit.
To these --
"Zoey, Mira," the child says, sharply.
She has her back to Mother-fox. Foolish child. Wasn't she ever taught to never turn her back on a danger?
Shorter and Pink-Hair, this... Zoey and Mira, still their hands and the strings of light wrapping around their fingers fade away.
"It's okay," the Child says, looking from her hunters to Mother-fox and back again.
Strange.
To tell her hunters to not draw their weapons.
Was it possible that she was ... genuine?
Mother-fox wants to laugh at the thought. But this half-child who should not have existed, who was raised by a gumiho, even if her kit had been so thoroughly beaten down that she no longer transformed, would have been hers. If her kit had been allowed family.
"My child -- it has been a long time," Mother-fox says, reluctantly. "She does not remember her blood kin."
The hunters look at each other.
"Well, you never know unless you see her, right?" Zoey asks.
"You don't even have to come in," Rumi adds. "Just... I don't know, hang around? So she can smell you, maybe?"
The mother-fox even accepts Rumi’s jacket to rub her face and shoulders all over, until it smells strongly of animal even to the three of them.
So… hopefully this works?
Rumi picks her way back up into the house on careful feet, glancing out the window to see a flicker of white fur darting out of view, every time. It’s like she’s a little kid sneaking back from a midnight snack again, or a teenager who probably shouldn’t have stayed up quite that late with Mira and Zoey.
But it isn’t.
She nudges open the door to Celine’s room with her hip, calls out, “Hey, Celine.”
Like it’s normal. Like Celine might just be choosing her clothes for the day, ready to groan back at her about her lack of boundaries from inside the closet.
There’s no response.
“Brought you something,” she says, awkwardly setting the jacket down on the bed, for lack of anywhere better to put it. It feels important, but… it’s just a stupid windbreaker? So. Bed.
She kneels down to check when there’s not even a grumble at that, and spots the little silhouette after only a moment. Which is good.
“Turns out there was one gumiho still hanging around,” she says, straightening up a little first. Celine doesn’t like it when they look at her and talk to her at the same time.
There’s still no response.
No response to anything she says, not for the next half hour.
Eventually, she just gives up. Not—for good, not in general. This isn’t the first day they’ve had when Celine has refused to talk at all.
(But it still feels like defeat.)
She goes and eats some breakfast, even if stems so stressed that it tastes like dirt, because Zoey really does try so hard to keep them together, and she watches the fox out the windows, and she thinks about little baby Celine being taken from everything she knew and—
When Rumi comes back into the bedroom, Celine has moved the jacket.
Every time Rumi goes outside with some new article of clothing for the fox to scent, she thinks that it's the last time she'll see the fox. Or that this time, the fox will not come and she will have seen the fox for the last time and she will not have known it.
But every time the fox steps out from the treeline and greets Rumi at the boundaries of the hanok, at the stone walls encircling the property that have stood for as long as anyone can remember.
It shouldn't surprise her -- the fox had waited and watched for decades, she would hardly stop now -- but it did.
"Maybe you just have a thing about moms sticking around," Zoey had suggested. And Rumi's face had twitched so horrifically that Zoey had said, hastily, "Or not!"
Rumi didn't want to think about it.
"She's leaving her room more," Rumi says to the fox.
She's perched herself atop the stone wall, facing the forest, her legs dangling in the air, the heel of her sneakers scrapping against the stone and moss.
The fox is laying on the grass on the other side -- the forest side -- close enough for Rumi to dig her fingers into the thick fur around her neck.
Rumi does not do this.
"She's still not really taking care of herself but she's starting to eat again," she says. "Zoey wants to try and brush out some of the mats in her fur today. Mira thinks we should try to wash her since she's still not... turning back."
"There's nothing to turn back," the fox says, sharply. "She's what she would have been if she hadn't been stolen."
But she did get stolen, Rumi wants to say. She was stolen and she spent fourty years as a human and that's all I've ever known her as and I miss my Cece.
She swallows her words and it's like swallowing a peach pit.
The fox has a way of looking down her snout at Rumi, like she's some reprehensible creature that barely deserves to be looked at, that's objectively offensive and, in any other situation, would have her glaring right back.
But it reminds her so much of Celine cutting down anyone who dared question the way she bucked industry norms with how she ran her company that she doesn't. Just lets the fox's accusation hang.
How would she answer that anyway? It's not like she can say "Yeah, well, I like your stolen daughter better the way she forced herself to be for most of her life, so if she could lose the tails and fur that'd be great."
"It's just...hard, I guess," she settles on at last, knocking her heel against the stone of the wall. "Getting used to it. For all of us."
The fox wrinkles her snout, like she's smelled something foul. "What was hard was watching how they changed her. This is things being set to rights-"
"WOULD YOU JUST STOP???"
The world seems to stop as Rumi's shout hangs in the air. The fox stares. This time Rumi holds her gaze.
Stupid? Probably. But she couldn't keep taking the fox's disparagements. Not when Celine was still spending most of her day under the bed and acting like- per Zoey- she was clinically depressed.
"I get that it was hard. And that what happened to Celine- and you- was wrong. The old Hunters shouldn't have done that. But it happened, and no matter what she should have been Celine was used to living as a human and now-"
Rumi's words catch on something in her chest, on the image of Celine pressed into a corner under her bed, shaking and sullen and not Celine, but she presses on. "Now she's stuck and depressed and-" And I don't know how to fix it. "-and needs to turn back."
For herself, and for me.
The fox rises to a sit and pins her ears back, tails flicking testily across the grass. A ridge of fur rises like so many bristling spears along her back, and her whiskers twitch as she suppresses the urge to curl a lip back from her fangs.
Rumi doesn't flinch.
Then-
Then the wind shifts; they're downwind of the hanok now, and something above Rumi's senses brushes past the fox. From the change in the fox's expression, though, she knows it caught Celine's scent: the building snarl smooths, the spears lower, and the ears droop like leaves after a torrential rain.
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