Ok, shit got long, so starting a new post. This is a continuation of the dream-to-nightmare AU provoked by @fishyupmywishy & taken up by @kenkuheart, with the most recent installment here at kenku's tumbl. To recap: our Celine is in a world where Miyeong is alive, the two of them have Rumi and two boys together, and the Golden Honmoon happened when Rumi was four; the Celine from that world is in the movie!verse. Neither of them are having a good time.
Just breathe. Celine just has to breathe. That's what her mentors taught her when she was young and stupid, as anxious as Zoey had been and angrier than Mira. Just breathe until you can work, and work until the feeling is gone. So she counts, and she breathes, and she sits down at the desk and opens the laptop and pretends her chest isn't caving in.
She doesn't really have a solid plan, unfortunately, just the conviction that she needs to know more about what's going on. Her initial vague thought was the VPN on her personal computer; a direct line to the internal SLE network. From there she could send a few careful emails to department heads asking for updates, use the company's resources to do searches, get a better picture of what the rest of the world looks like and how far this impossiblity spreads.
But, while the laptop lets her in easily enough -- there's a post-it on the desk with the password, which Nayeon in IT would have Celine's head for if she knew -- there's no VPN to be found. In fact, a number of increasingly confused Naver searches and several frantic googles later, Celine is forced to conclude that Sunlight Entertainment does not even exist.
What in the hell has she been doing for twenty years, then?
The Sunlight Sisters, she discovers, have two extra albums and two world tours to match, which accounts for five of those years, at least. She listens to some of the music, old rips posted to YouTube with lyrics and grainy concert footage. She breathes. She counts. She splays her hands on the desk so her nails don't mark her palms. She goes back to her search.
Celine finds herself on an English fan forum, reading through a contentious thread about Sunmi's solo career (expected) and specifically her latest album (completely unrecognizable, though admittedly Celine hasn't tracked her work since the girls took over care of the Honmoon). At one point a moderator has to step in, and Celine knows just enough about American pop culture to recognize that their handle, "CheloniousMonk," is a turtle music pun worthy of Zoey.
Celine stalks CheloniousMonk's profile. She's a woman and was young when the Sunlight Sisters were big. She lives in California and speaks five languages, including Korean. Her bias is Celine, but she has an extremely long and well-researched post about Sunmi's importance to the entire kpop genre as the originator of the maknae archetype. She visits Korea regularly but hasn't seen it in the winter.
Because, Celine knows, the terms of the divorce included summers with her mother.
Celine stares at the laptop for what feels like a very long time, and then slowly goes back to her Naver tab, her heart in her throat, and starts looking for Lee Mira.
There are a number of Lee Miras, of course, but it's not hard to find Celine's. She's an idol with Endless Music Entertainment, in a group called Forever. She's skinnier than Celine has ever seen her. Her hair is black. Celine watches a Forever video, sound low. The choreography is basic hip-hop moves. If Celine didn't know their lead dancer like her own ssang geom, she'd think her smile was authentic.
Celine closes the laptop and stares at the Nintendo Switch, thinking, of course, and that's how Rumi finds her.
"Hey," Rumi says, reaching out to hand her a cup and saucer, and for a moment the fog breaks. "I brought tea. You've been in here a while, I thought you might be thirsty."
"You're very sweet, thank you, Rumi-ya," Celine replies gratefully, nursing the cup in front of herself and letting the jasmine-scented steam float up across her face, grounding herself in the kindness.
Rumi lingers a moment, uncharacteristically off-balance, and then says, a little uncertain, "You know, I'm twenty-four, now. I graduated. I have a steady job. I vote. I even have a little apartment and a cat that I've managed to keep alive for three whole years."
Celine raises an eyebrow, and Rumi tilts her chin up and puts a little more confidence into her voice.
"I'm just saying. I know you used to take antidepressants and I know sometimes you still go out to the garden and just stare at the leaves until you feel like you can be around people again. I know you're not fine this morning and you're not letting Eomma help. And I may not be an actual real-life superhero like you guys used to be, but I'm not a kid anymore. You can tell me things and I won't break."
Celine can only stare at her.
Rumi seems to take it as disagreement, and presses her case. "You always say that family is the people who are always there for you. Well, we're family, you're my Maman, and I'm here for you. Okay?"
Celine is wondering where this world's Celine keeps her phone when she notices the looks on the girls' faces. Zoey and Rumi are both cringing, their eyes meeting in some kind of silent but slightly frantic conversation, but it's Mira who speaks, glancing sideways at Zoey's wince.
"Why do I feel like I should know that name?"
There's a half-beat of silence that feels much longer to Celine, and then Zoey says "Kwon Sunmi was the third Sunlight Sister," and a look of understanding crosses Mira's face, almost immediately replaced by her own pained cringe.
It's Rumi who manages to address Celine, apology in her voice. "She might… not want to talk to you." A fortifying sip of tea later, she adds, "I'm actually not sure we even know how to get ahold of her?"
Celine stares. "What do you mean, she might not want to talk to me?"
"Well, she'll think you're our Celine, right?" Zoey, again. "She and our Celine don't talk. We've never even met her. Unless you count Eunbi's funeral, but I don't think I would, she never said anything to us and she left after the first day and we only even knew it was her because I recognized her from my many years of fangirling."
"It wasn't disrespectful!" Rumi rushes to add. "Leaving early. She's super busy, she's on tour everywhere all the time. She always sends dasik for Seollal for the Hunters who came before."
"Wait, those are from her?" Mira asks, and Rumi says something back, all three of them slipping into banter again, but Celine can't process it. She and Sunmi don't talk? How can this Celine and Sunmi not talk? Especially since -- If Miyeong died Celine would never let Sunmi out of her line of sight again.
When they'd first found out Rumi was coming, first learned about Jeongho, they'd both been so furious with Miyeong. Celine, her pain heavier than her anger (for reasons she wouldn't admit to herself for years), had stayed at her side through the pregnancy regardless. But Sunmi had left, had taken advantage of the hiatus they managed to pry out of the label to disappear completely, hadn't returned until Rumi was two months old, when she walked through the door sobbing and sorry and forced them all to actually face the hurt between them.
Her eyes sting viciously. It can't be, surely. They'd been so much stronger, so much more honest, so unbreakable after that day. But if, if that never happened -- if this world's Mieyong had died when they were still broken --
If this world's Mieyong had died then, she would never have known her daughter at all --
It's the sudden silence that brings her attention back to the girls, and then Zoey says, eyes wide, "Wow, you really aren't our Celine, are you."
Celine can only blink wetly, and Mira says, "Don't be rude, Zo," but then allows, "You have cried more times tonight than our Celine has in -- actually, have you guys ever seen Celine cry?"
Zoey shakes her head, but Rumi looks thoughtful.
"Once when she broke a few ribs," is her conclusion. "She teared up a lot when she tried to do… anything."
"Oh, I bet, broken ribs are awful," says Zoey sympathetically, and then cracks into a tremendous yawn and immediately apologizes -- both hands moving and a much-too-concerned "Sorry! Sorry" -- and Celine realizes, abruptly, how late it is. Rumi had served that first round of tea, before the cabinet came off the wall, with the last shred of sunset in the sky (it occurs to Celine, like a note of distant madness, that all that wood and shattered porcelain is still on the floor), and now, three cups later, there are morning stars out the window behind the tree's dark silhouette.
"Don't be sorry, it's late," she says, the autopilot of years of parenting letting her speak through her wrecked confusion. She doesn't talk to Sunmi. "We should all try to get some rest. We'll think better for it, and we can get back to solving all this tomorrow."
