Rumi accidentally injures Celine during their confrontation under the tree but she doesn’t notice as she’s not in the best headspace and Celine no sells it. Doesn’t realize Celine is hurt till she finally decides to reconnect again and Celine won’t tell her how she got injured.
[And you might ask, hey aren't you busy writing that "short fic"? And I would say, yes. Don't worry about it. I definitely know how to allocate my time properly between all my projects. Everything is fine.]
//
In all honesty, Rumi didn't remember much of her argument with Celine.
Between the heartbreak of having everyone she trusted -- and yes, she had to admit to herself that she did trust Jinu, even if it had been a mistake -- turn on her and the despair-panic of facing against Gwi-ma himself, her talk with Celine had blended into a gray haze in the back of her mind. To be brought to the forefront of her mind when she was trying to relax; a memory of where she personally humiliated herself in front of her Celine that she couldn't talk to her girls about because, well, how else was anyone supoosed to take, "do what you were supoosed to."
Apparently, she had also completely forgotten that her Celine had gotten injured at some point as she watched Celine hiss under her breath after Rumi touched her arm; the corners of her eyes going tight with pain.
"Kang-nim?" One of the younger business executives asked. Because of course this had to happen out in public and Rumi had to pretend she couldn't tell exactly how much pain Celine was in. "Are you alright?"
Celine waved off his concern with a self-deprecating smile and a, "Slept wrong. Make sure you enjoy your youth, Park-nim."
"Of course, Kang-nim," the man said before he bowed and left the conference room.
The doors had barely swung shut before Rumi rounded on Celine, hands pressed against her hips.
"When did you get hurt?" Rumi demanded. "How did you get hurt? You've been at the office since --"
The realization choked off her voice and froze the air in her lungs.
She'd thought Celine's movements had been a little strange in recent weeks but she'd been too preoccupied with her own issues -- Mira and Zoey were fighting over who was more responsible for the Idol Awards; they were both mad at her and Celine for lying to them for so long -- that she hadn't thought much of it. The moments she'd put in the back of her mind flooded her now.
The stiffness of her arm, how Celine avoided using it when at all possible. The way her blazer sleeve folded strangely and how Rumi had noticed a stain once, before Celine started wearing exclusively black jackets.
"Rumi, I'm fine," Celine said. She stared out the window, avoiding Rumi's gaze entirely.
"No, you're not!" Rumi yelled. She raked her fingers through her hair, cut short for the first time since she was a child.
"Keep your voice down." Celine glanced towards the conference room doors. When no one barged in to check on the commotion, she continued. "And don't pull on your hair like that, it's bad for the follicles."
An angry, distressed whine escaped from Rumi's lips as she pressed them tightly together. She paced the length of the conference table before she stopped to face Celine again.
"That's great, Celine," Rumi said. "Let's worry about my hair while you've been injuried for weeks. God, have you -- has anyone even looked at it? What if you got some weird demon disease!?"
Celine sighed. "Rumi, I have been fighting demons longer than you've been alive. If there were weird demon diseases, I would have gotten them years ago."
"That -- that isn't the point!"
Rumi started to pace again.
"You don't tell us these things," Rumi said, finally. "You still think you have to be perfect in front of everyone all the time. And maybe in front of the board, sure. But us -- me? Do you really think that we'd think less of you just because you needed help stitching an injury?"
"Rumi, I am your guardian --"
"You're my mother and I worry about you!" Rumi yelled.
Rumi watched Celine's face tighten. Her hand brushed over her injuried bicep; her fingers tugged at the fabric of her jacket.
"All the more reason to not tell you," Celine said. There was a tighteness to her voice, though only someone as familiar with her as Rumi could hear it.
Rumi hated that -- the way Celine was so perfectly controlled; the way Celine pretended to be flawless as though Rumi hadn't seen her collapse at the foot of the tree, the same as her, a few weeks ago.
She was weak and fragile and human just like Rumi was. She just refused to let anyone else help.
"I don't have to tell Mira and Zoey you got hurt. They can keep thinking you're this untouchable hunter if you want," Rumi said. That they had been disillusioned of that fact years ago was something Celine didn't need to know. "No one but us needs to know that some random demon got the drop on you."
The stillness in Celine's body after she said demon made Rumi's stomach grow cold.
"It wasn't a demon, was it?" Rumi asked, quietly.
Celine's eyes wavered and she glanced away from Rumi.
Rumi felt the cold in her stomach spread. Vines of ice crawled up her spine, rippled across her shoulders. Down into the tips of her fingers.
"Celine, what -- who --"
"Rumi don't --" Celine shook her head. "It wasn't your fault. I know it was an accident."
The loud thud of Rumi's own heartbeat muffled the last of Celine's words. Your fault echoed in her head. Your fault.
The sharp scent of pine burned in her nostrils. Was that the new air fresheners the building was using? Rumi couldn't tell. But it mixed with smell of moist soil and thick, honey-sweet evening blooms.
Stomach acid nipped at the back of her throat.
"I need to see," Rumi said.
Celine shook her head.
Why was Celine shaking her head? She couldn't fix this if Celine refused to show her. Rumi -- Rumi needed to fix this.
"This isn't going to make you feel better," Celine warned.
As if she had any idea of what would make Rumi feel better. As if not knowing was some kind of mercy. As if Rumi wouldn't feel her mind collapse in on itself, conjuring images of white bone jutting out from a mass of red meat or separating wounds, green and yellow and black, leaking pus.
"Celine --" Rumi hated begging. She wanted to say, can you just take off your damn jacket and let me see, but what came out was a quiet, child-like, "Please."
The hard corners of Celine's eyes softened.
"It's not as bad as you're thinking," Celine said.
She shrugged off her blazer. Underneath, she wore a white, sleeveless blouse. Her left bicep was wrapped in a layer of gauze. A dark yellow-green stain had seeped through the covering.
Celine frowned. "Suppose it's time to change the dressing anyway."
She said this with the same tone as she might have said, the rabbits are invading my vegetable gardens again.
It did not settle Rumi's stomach.
Hunters lived dangerous lives and they were all painfully aware of how long wound healing should take. Celine should have healed enough to not need gauze by now. If it were being taken care of properly.
Celine had been staying late at the office for weeks. And Rumi suspected that she had slept at her desk more times than anyone knew.
"Can I --" Her fingers trembled as Rumi brought them up to the bandage.
"You don't have to --"
Rumi clenched her jaw. "I want to, Celine."
A quiet sigh left Celine and Rumi began to unwind the mostly white fabric before Celine could protest further.
As the gauze fell away, Rumi could see four lines, puckered and red and crusted with yellow, where Celine's flesh had separated cleanly. Like a fish fileted with a sharpened knife.
The skin was held together now by stitches -- neat and orderly in the front and which grew increasingly messy until they were replaced by butterfly bandages.
She could see too clearly Celine slide needle and thread into her own skin, her hands shaking the further along she got until finally, in too much pain to stitch herself together, she slapped butterfly bandages over the rest before resting her head against the cold porcelain sink.
If Rumi touched them, the tips of her fingers would cover the start of each stitch perfectly.
Her stomach started to churn again and Rumi gripped the side of the conference table to steady herself.
She had done that.
It had been her. Her claws, her anger had torn Celine's flesh and forced her to mend herself stitch by bloody stitch. Alone. And she didn't even remember doing it.
And she'd forced Celine to show her. Cornered Celine into this empty conference room and demanded -- as if she had any right! Celine should hate her. Celine should be scared of her. Hadn't she left Celine that night trembling on her knees?
God.
She was an awful child.
"I -- I'm sorry," Rumi mumbled.
She couldn't -- she shouldn't be here. Celine shouldn't have to be alone with her.
"You should -- you really should have someone help with that it looks infected," Rumi said. She stepped backwards, hand fumbling for the door. "I'm sorry, Celine. I -- I'm sorry."
Miyeong and Min-ji wakes up with a gasp as something in them feels something is wrong. Deeply wrong. Miyeong cries out for Celine, but she's be met with silence. Before a disheveled looking Min-ji bursts into her room, frantically looking for Celine. The cold feeling of remembering that Celine isn't with them anymore and they both break down. It hasn't been a year since Celine's departure but they are terrified what this deep seated fear they are feeling right now.
Soo-ho rushes over to Celine's apartment the moment he feels dread in the honmoon. When he enters her apartment, it was pitch black except the bathroom. He runs towards the bathroom and the door is slightly ajar. Privacy be damned, he opens the door to be greeted with a sight he knows he will remember for the rest of his eternal life.
Celine who lies bloody against the bathtub, dry tear tracks on her cheek, eyes closed. On her right hand, a single bloody razor. Her left wrist marred with cuts of various length and size. There were bottles littering the floor, some shattered.
Soo-ho rushes in and picks Celine up, ignoring her weak protest to leave her to die. He gently places her on the sofa and gets the first aid kit he had stashed in the kitchen cabinet. He quietly cleans and bandages Celine's wrists. He hopes the honmoon can heal the rest. Celine tries to fight back, spewing vitriol and eventually begging Soo-ho to leave her alone (Please don't leave her alone.)
Soo-hoo anger fades when he sees how small Celine had made herself. Taking a deep breath, he begs Celine to not die. There's so much for her to do and it doesn't have to do anything with Miyeong and Min-ji. She could so something more, for herself and maybe for the people. He talks about Rumi and how happy she was when she got the teddy bear Celine gifted her in secret. Nibbling and gurgling happily when she has the teddy bear. How it helps her sleep at night. The small things Celine had done to help, making the life people she interacts with brighter. Whether she knows it or not.
"Who knows," Soo-ho looks at Celine with a hopeful smile, "You might even change a kid's life for the better." Soo-ho heaves a sigh, "Just... Promise me. Please. Don't go."
Celine who has been quiet the whole time. She expected for Soo-ho to yell and scream at her for doing something stupid. But instead, she gets this and she doesn't know how to react to it. Celine doesn't look at his face. "I will not make a promise I can't keep." Celine interjects Soo-ho, "But. I can promise I will try my best to stay." Celine finally looks at Soo-ho with a tired and grieving look, "That's all you can have from me."
Soo-ho nods. Celine turns away and covers her face with her bandaged arm, no words are spoken.
Sensing that Celine isn't in the mood to talk more, Soo-ho quietly gets up and cleans the bloody bathroom. Thanking the honmoon that he manages to get here in time. He shudders what would have happen should he arrives too late.
When Soo-ho heads home and emerges from his room, he sees the kitchen's light is on. He sees Miyeong and Min-ji quietly sitting. Miyeong looks up and she has a haunting look on her face. He can guess what had caused it, but he still asks. Miyeong tells him that they feel something bad is happening to Celine and they feel helpless that they can't do anything. It frustrates them and hates how it makes them feel. Because if anything bad happens to Celine where she's all alone, it's on them. They had pushed her away and lied to her. This is their punishment for taking things for granted.
Many, many years later, Celine is reading something on her apartment's couch, Miyeong is leaning against her right side, while Min-ji is toying with her free hand on her left.
Celine, for the most part, has forgotten all about those scars, and has yet to answer their questions about days (and there were many day, ranging from sever illness that she refused to go get treated, to days where Soo-ho is practically dragged there by the honmoon to stop her from killing herself) when they woke up feeling nothing but dread and the sheer wrongness of it all.
So Celine doesn't think much of it when Min-ji's fingers move from the lines of her palm to the inkwork of her tattoos. The touch is soft (they've been nothing but soft with her, afraid that if they are too bold with Celine, she might disappear again or her eyes might once again become cold) and never pushes for more.
Min-ji wasn't really looking for anything, just reveling in the fact that she was free to touch their mankae like this again; when her fingers passed over a section of raised skin, it wasn't smooth by any means, but it wasn't horribly rough either. She froze, realizing exactly what it was on Celine's arms.
The scars were old, but not old enough to be any of the ones received while doing their jobs as hunters; they were too evenly deep for that as well.
"Celine?"
Min-ji voice was quiet, and full of a tone that Celine knew was guilt.
"Hm?" Celine responded not looking up.
"What are these?"
Celine froze, finally realizing what Min-ji was touching.
Hurt, no comfort idea of Huntrix being estranged from Celine and Celine dying before anyone can really get any kind of closure.
(They haven't talked to Celine for... a while. Haven't visited since before the Idol Awards.
They didn't even know she had been sick.)
Celine's soul is taken to the underworld and it is judged.
And her years of sacrifice and service and saving the lives of complete strangers far outweigh the wrongs that she's done. And she is allowed to choose what kind of afterlife she would like.
"Most of you hunters choose the same afterlife," the judge suggests.
But Celine, who has, in the last years of her life, lost everything that was important to her (and for who being a hunter has simply meant endless loss and grief) can't imagine wanting to spend a single second more having to exist.
"I just don't want to be me anymore," Celine says.
"Oh, you wish to be reincarnated?" The judge asks. "Are you sure? You needn't rush. All of us return to the cycle eventually, in our own time."
"I think I've existed long enough," she says. "I would like to -- I would like to end."
"... so be it," the judge says. "May your soul be lightened in the next life."
(It would not have changed her decision, had she known that others were waiting for her.
She would not have wanted to burden them with herself.)
(For years, until their own passing, Rumi, Mira, and Zoey keep their own lists of things they wanted to say to Celine when they saw her again.
Mira wanted to scream at Celine and sob into her shoulder and hug her tight and tell her that she'd been right, Mira did end up a much better parent than her own.
Zoey wanted to share every lyric she'd written since Celine's passing. And that she'd eventually gone back to university and gotten a degree in marine ecology.
If Celine imediately wants to be reincarnated does this mean its possible that Miyeong and Third never see Celine again? They've been waiting patiently for her and haven't returned to the cycle.
I'm gonna assume Huntr/x doesn't all die at the same time. But imagining them slowly filing through the judgement process and learning that Celine isn't there and meeting the Duo instead. The Duo is confused how they got there before Celine. Questions and panic occur.
Since Rumi being part demon I'll just have her live the longest. She's got the whammy of being the last hunter of her trio to pass away so shes been alone but atleast she has future hunters/family with. She dies of relative old age, and she is excited to hear Celine's voice again and see her girls.
SURPRISE SURPRISE, Rumi meeings the group in the afterlife only to discover that Celine never made it. Mira doesn't get her hug, Zoey never gets to share her lyrics, and Rumi never gets to hear Celine again.
With all 5 past hunters devasted somehow the judge appears.
Judge explains to them that "Celine" chose to reincarnate immediately. The 5 all have the reaction of WHY!?!?!.
The judge knowing these 5 have gone through some shit, share a memory of sad Celine. They see how defeated and deflated Celine was when she spoke "I just don't want to be me anymore," "I would like to -- I would like to end."
The Duo are confused how their makane ended up the way she was
At Toba aquarium in Japan, after closing time, some clever little otter pups help their grandpa tidy up their toys. As a reward, he gives them ice cubes
Forgot I had this saved in drafts until my moot @eldergoblin started being active on Tumblr again tonight lol (IDK if I'm AO3ing this one or not, we'll see)
you'd come over, right?
Rumi should have seen this coming.
When she woke up with a headache and a sore throat the day before, she didn’t take it seriously. She pushed through time in the recording booth and choreography sessions, despite her voice being a little more rough than normal in the recording booth and how easily she got tired after a few run-throughs of their new song in the dance studio. Zoey asked several times if Rumi needed a break or if she preferred coming back later. Mira made Rumi take extra water breaks when she noticed she was dripping in sweat the way she does at the end of their session - not fifteen minutes in.
After their work was done for the day Mira took her place in the kitchen and Zoey kept Rumi pinned to the couch with cuddles. One plate of Mira’s heart-warming kimchi jjigae later, Mira and Zoey marched Rumi into one of their bathrooms to take a long, hot shower. They waited on the other side of the door for her, throwing Rumi into her cozy pajamas and wrestling her into their bed early.
They thought that a full night’s rest would help. Rumi, too, thought it would be enough to banish whatever ailment was bothering her, especially with Zoey and Mira weighted so nicely against her as she fell asleep.
When Rumi wakes in the dark with her head pounding, her throat sore, and her body aching and coated in sweat, Rumi realizes just how screwed she really is.
She tries to sit up, but her muscles are like gelatin and she collapses back into her pillow with a weak groan. It’s just enough movement and noise to wake only one of her girlfriends (the other sleeps like a rock).
“Hm? Ru?” Mira whispers, her voice thick with sleep. “Y’okay?”
Rumi tries to respond, but her throat is too sore to form words. She groans again and she’d be the first to admit that it sounds much more helpless than she’d like.
Whatever this is has put her flat on her back - something the demons they fight can’t typically manage to do.
“Rumi? Hey,” Mira says, her lack of response rousing her. She lifts her head a little more and moves closer. “You okay?”
Rumi groans softly again, wishing her voice would cooperate in telling Mira to go back to sleep. It still doesn’t, and Mira moves away to turn on the lamp at her bedside. In this light, Rumi can see just how concerned Mira is when she turns back to her, sliding a hand up to cup her face.
“Ru?-- Shit, you’re burning up,” Mira mutters. “I’ll grab the thermometer. Stay right here.”
It’s not like Rumi could move if she wanted to - she’s already tried that.
Mira kicks the covers off her legs, getting to her feet and padding into the bathroom. Rumi hears the click of the light switch and some rummaging.
It feels like an eternity before Mira returns, but in that time Rumi realizes she is too hot and too cold at the same time. Zoey’s body heat from where her head rests on her shoulder makes her feel like she’s boiling, and Mira’s absence on the other side makes her feel like she’s been stuck in a freezer. As comfy and cozy as Rumi is, her limbs are aching. Her head is thrumming - it sounds like someone is using the kick pedal on their drumset but on the inside of her skull.
Mira returns to Rumi’s side, turning on the thermometer in her hand with a faint beep. She sits beside Rumi again, leaning over her.
“Okay, open up, Ru,” Mira whispers. Rumi barely gets her jaw to cooperate, but Mira’s able to slip the end of the thermometer underneath her tongue. A few moments later, it beeps three times, and Mira pulls it out of her mouth to read it. “Shit, you’re almost up to 103,” she announces.
Rumi doesn’t know much about Fahrenheit except from Zoey. By some odd luck, one of them always gets sick when they tour in America, so most (if not all) of the thermometers in the penthouse are in Fahrenheit. Zoey has told Rumi and Mira repeatedly that a normal body temperature in Fahrenheit is 98-point-something degrees, and that after 104, they need to go to the hospital. That’s how she knows that 103 Fahrenheit is definitely not ideal.
“We’ve gotta bring that down. I’ll be right back,” Mira mutters, kissing her forehead.
From that point, Rumi remembers only the smallest snippets. Her fever keeps her so muddled that she only manages to have sporadically clear thoughts and memories.
Rumi blinks once and Mira’s gone.
She blinks again and Mira is draping a freezing, wet towel on her forehead.
One more blink and Rumi has an icepack on her chest while Mira tries to get her to sit up and drink some water. Rumi’s too weak to move on her own and her throat is too swollen to swallow, so she refuses.
“Just a little,” Mira whispers, stroking her cheek with her thumb. “I know it hurts.”
Rumi doesn’t even know how long it’s been since she first woke up by the time she realizes Mira is dressed for the day. There’s a bit of light peeking through her curtains now. Rumi feels like she’s thoroughly sweating through her shirt.
Rumi doesn’t remember dropping her jaw just a little so Mira can trickle cold water into her mouth. Any relief granted from the water is erased by the pain that comes with swallowing.
Rumi blinks again and Zoey’s awake, stroking the hair at the top of her head and looking down at her.
“Hey, aegiya,” Zoey whispers. “Mira’s gone to make you a smoothie to cool you down. You’re still hanging around 102.”
A shiver creeps up on Rumi, shuddering through her body when it radiates from the icepack on her chest. She doesn’t understand how the thermometer could say she’s so warm when Rumi feels like she’s taken a trip to Antarctica.
“Cold?” Zoey asks. Rumi manages a small nod. “Here.” She drapes a thin blanket over Rumi’s chest and arms, just enough to keep the chill away. “We can’t have you too warm, but I don’t want you freezing.” She presses a soft kiss to Rumi’s forehead.
Rumi blinks again and Mira’s trying to get a spoonful of a peach and strawberry smoothie down her throat.
“Nae sarang, you need to eat something,” Mira tells her. “Please.”
Rumi opens her mouth just a little, letting Mira spoon the smoothie into her mouth. She waits for her to swallow before offering another - it still hurts, but it’s cold and tastes pretty good. Rumi can only stand to swallow six times before Mira lets up.
“Can we try some medication?” Zoey asks from her other side. “It will help with the fever.”
“No,” Rumi rasps, her voice breaking despite it finally allowing her to form words. “It hurts.”
“We’ll try later, okay?” she asks. Rumi nods.
“Get some rest, Ru,” Mira tells her. “We’ll be right here.”
Rumi closes her eyes, letting sleep overtake her.
A string of old memories run through Rumi’s dreams. She dreams of when she was younger, seeing flashes of herself and Celine during all the happy times they had together.
She sees herself held in Celine’s arms, her eyes drooping. Rumi was supposed to be asleep in her own bed, but found Celine when she just couldn’t manage to drift off. Her little feet hang off the side of Celine’s lap, but she doesn’t seem to mind that Rumi’s slowly falling asleep on her shoulder.
She watches Celine throw a big, fluffy towel over her head after her nightly bath. Celine teasingly wonders where Rumi went until a tuft of purple hair and her little nose poke out from underneath the towel. Rumi giggles when Celine gasps dramatically and starts rubbing her dry, telling Rumi that she’s snug as a bug in a rug.
She sees Celine teaching her some basic first aid when she was barely a teenager. Celine often used herself as an example for Rumi after she returned from her solo demon fights and coached Rumi through the basics so she’d have plenty of hands-on experience.
Rumi remembers Celine doing the same for her after her training sessions. Celine’s hands were always steady and careful, always just warm enough to soothe her deepest aches from sparring for two hours straight.
And then she sees her first hug with Celine after the Idol Awards. A not-quite-mother and a not-quite-daughter sharing a desperate, tight, relieving hug. Rumi doesn’t know how long it actually lasted, but in the moment it felt like they had been hugging for hours. They had tea afterwards and began some difficult conversations.
Things haven’t quite been the same since the Idol Awards, but Rumi knows it’s a work in progress. Celine is trying to be a better parental figure. Rumi is trying to be okay with everything after so long.
Rumi never knew her mother - she can’t remember ever being with her.
But Rumi loves Celine like she’s her mom.
Celine was far from perfect - this they both agree on - but Rumi loves her. She was there when she had no one. She loved her and cared for her when no one else was there to do so.
She wishes she was here.
Rumi barely opens her eyes for a minute, seeing Mira pacing on the phone.
“She’s really out of it. It hurts her to swallow, her temperature is down to 102, and we got her to go back to sleep but she keeps muttering about her mom,” Mira says. “She won’t take any meds and it’s difficult to get her to eat or drink anything… I think she needs you… I know you’re not her mom, but you’re the closest thing she has, Celine.”
That’s all she catches before Zoey replaces the cold towel on her forehead, then she’s out like a light again.
Rumi thinks she’s dreaming again when she hears Celine’s voice.
“Rumi-ya.”
Rumi pulls her eyes open. When they focus, Celine is at her bedside, placing one of her palms against Rumi’s forehead. Rumi shivers - Celine’s hand feels cold, but she knows that she’s still too warm.
“You’re right, she’s still burning up,” Celine says over her shoulder. Mira and Zoey appear behind her. “What was her temperature?”
“She was at 101 just before you got here,” Zoey replies.
“She’s been incoherent for hours,” Mira adds.
When Rumi reaches over and grips one of Celine’s hands, she turns back to Rumi with a soft smile.
“There you are, Rumi-ya. You’re okay,” Celine whispers.
For a moment, Rumi is so out of it that she feels like she might have somehow telepathically communicated with Celine to get her to show up.
“You’re here.” Rumi’s voice is rough and her throat feels like sandpaper. The tears running down her face aren’t helping.
“Shh,” Celine whispers. “I brought soup. Rest.” She turns back to Mira and Zoey. “Do you still have that smoothie? It’ll be good while the soup heats up.”
“I’ll go grab it out of the freezer,” Mira says, then leaves the room.
“Zoey, can you get Rumi a dry t-shirt? This one is soaked,” Celine tells her. Zoey nods and starts rummaging through her drawers, but Celine turns back to Rumi. Her hand moves from Rumi’s forehead to wipe away the tears on Rumi’s face. “Don’t cry, Rumi-ya, it’s okay.”
“I missed you, eomma,” Rumi whispers. She doesn’t realize the words slip out of her mouth until Celine notices.
After the Idol Awards, Rumi started calling Celine her mom more openly… but she’s never called her eomma. That term had always been reserved for Mi-yeong.
But Mi-yeong isn’t here. Celine is. She’s always been there for her.
(Not always always, but they’re working on moving past that.)
And now Celine looks like she’s about to cry.
“I missed you, too, Rumi-ya,” she replies, ducking down to kiss Rumi’s forehead. “We’ll get you feeling better.”
Zoey shifts a few pillows behind Rumi to get her to sit upright, holding her to keep her there while Celine helps Rumi change shirts. Mira returns a minute later with the smoothie she made and a spoon, but leaves again to check on the soup.
“I need you to eat something, Ru,” Celine tells her, taking the smoothie from Mira and giving it a good stir. “We need to get you some medication so you can fight the fever, but we can’t do that if your throat hurts too much to swallow a pill, so… smoothie.”
Celine’s presence changes everything.
She convinces Rumi to eat Mira’s smoothie despite her throat still hurting. Celine convinces Rumi to eat her homemade samgyetang even though she has to spoon-feed it into her mouth.
Celine is the one that convinces Rumi to finally take some medication for her fever.
When Celine is finally satisfied she tells Rumi to take a nap (because her eyes were drooping anyways). Rumi is still so lucid that she barely remembers asking Celine to get into her bed with her. She doesn’t remember asking, but she remembers laying her head on Celine’s shoulder like she used to on Celine’s couch.
“Get some rest, Rumi-ya,” Celine whispers into her hair. “I love you.”
“Love you too, eomma,” Rumi mutters, her eyelids falling closed.
Celine stays with Rumi. Mira and Zoey are still around, bringing her food, cold drinks, and more medication… but it’s Celine that is almost always with her. Celine makes sure she eats and drinks enough, makes sure she takes her medication, and makes sure she doesn’t sweat through her t-shirts.
Having Celine around makes Rumi feel like that four year-old girl again - the one that giggled while Celine dried her off after her bath. Everything feels lighter between them than it has in a long time.
Mira and Zoey handle Rumi’s hot baths to help with her body aches, and they sleep beside her at night to make sure she gets good sleep and doesn’t need anything in the middle of the night.
Two mornings later, Rumi’s fever finally breaks. She admits to not really remembering much of what happened the first day of her fever, but she’d wished for Celine in her dreams… and Celine showed up.
“I guess I should probably get going now that you’re feeling better,” Celine tells Rumi, her duffle bag packed at her feet.
“Do you have to?” Rumi asks quietly, sliding her legs over the edge of her bed and getting to her feet. “I, um… I miss you.”
Celine looks like she wants to smile, but the corners of her mouth return to a neutral position.
“I’m never too sure if you want me around after… everything,” Celine replies. “But… if you want I can be around more.”
“I’d like that,” Rumi says. Celine does smile then. “I really, really want that.”
Celine moves first, closing the gap between them and pulling her into a hug. Rumi wraps her arms around Celine, never wanting to let go. She buries her face in Celine’s shoulder, trying to keep herself from getting too emotional.
“I know you’re Mi-yeong’s… but I love you like you’re mine, Rumi-ya,” Celine whispers. That’s enough for Rumi to cling to her even more. “If you want me to be your eomma, I will… but I need you to say it again so it’s not just something you said in a fever-induced haze.”
Rumi very vaguely remembers what Celine’s talking about. For a moment she thinks that she dreamt calling Celine her eomma, but if Celine knows about it… then she must have said it out loud.
Rumi knows she meant it, even if she was pretty muddled during her fever.
“I love you, eomma,” Rumi mutters with a sniffle, clenching her eyes shut when her tears threaten to spill. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Celine holds her firmer. “I love you so much, Rumi-ya,” she replies. “I’ll be apologizing for everything that happened for the rest of my life, but I love you, Rumi. All of you.”
When they pull out of the hug, Celine takes Rumi’s face between her hands.
“No matter how big you get, you’re still my little girl,” Celine whispers, finally opening Rumi’s tearful floodgates.
They agree on brunch once a week - or FaceTime calls when HUNTR/X is on tour or otherwise occupied. They’ve got to start somewhere, after all.
When Rumi walks Celine out of the penthouse with Mira and Zoey at her side, she knows that they’ll figure this out, but for once… she feels like her family is complete.
Headcanon - Shortly after the events of canon, the girls are performing on stage when Rumi get's a notice from Bobby, through her ear piece, that Celine had a heart attack. The video of her jumping off the stage and barging through the crowd without a word reached over 2 million views within 24 hours.
It was due to a combination of stress and the amount of mental turmoil Celine went through when Rumi said she wanted to die. As for if it was always oncoming……I’d like to think so. There’s no way that woman didn’t know she was at risk of a heart attack from stress
The way Celine takes on everything by herself, putting in gruelling hours to make sure Idols under her label are treated well, handling Demons by herself for two decades and having to make sure Rumi was okay as an unexpected parent, she knew there were risk factors but push through them as she believed she should have. When Rumi approached her at hanok during the Idol awards and asked her kill her for own failure, the stress of failing Rumi being to great, and avoiding conversation afterwards probably made it worse and caused her to have a heart attack.
Then there is amount of panic filled dread of Rumi worrying if she’ll be okay. She’s her be injured and try to walk it off; she’s seen her be sick and says it’s nothing in order to keep doing her work; but this is a heart attack and heart attack can be deadly. The fact that they haven’t talked in who knows how long since the International Idol Awards makes her anxiety over possibly losing her worse. She can’t let last conversation they have be the worst one ever.
Rumi just frantically pacing in the waiting area, waiting for any sort of news about Celine, waiting to hear that she is fine, as her mind feels like its spiralling with the worst possibilities and guilt.
Mira, Zoey and Bobby trying to reassure her but nothing seems to be working as they are all equally stressed over Celine’s condition.
Rumi is finally allowed back and, like you said, heart attacks are different from an injury while fighting demons. And seeing Celine on a hospital bed, hooked up to machines, is almost too much for Rumi but she powers through. A representative from the company is there and tells Rumi that Celine was doing a meeting and just collapsed. The doctors think the heart attack was brought on by stress or the fact that Celine hadn't been eating.
Rumi is taking in the news and looking over at Celine, who is awake but very weak. Because of the severe nature of the heart attack, the doctors make it clear that only one person can be in the room at a time and no one hesitates to let Rumi have the space. However, it's only after everyone leaves that Celine turns to talk to Rumi.
#oof.#after that scare Rumi and Celine finally talk#but because this is a hear attack their words can’t be emotionally charged#so Rumi holds back and Celine knows. She’s too drained to call it out.#so she tells Rumi: It’s fine#Rumi internally screaming: No it’s not. None of this okay#they just sit in silent protest. Rumi holds her hand and Celine accepts it#her feeble hand touches Rumi’s cheeks#and that’s when#Rumi breaks down into an uncontrollable sob#Celine could just only say “I’m sorry - @silverwritesblog
😭😭😭
You're making me cry!!!
But also YES!!!
Celine just holding Rumi's face as best she can while also not being able to do much of anything because she's so weak and unable to really move out of the bed. Rumi is sobbing though because the last conversation she had with Celine was at the tree. She never spoke to her after that and she's never seen Celine so weak so maybe she's lost the chance to actually have a real conversation with her.
Just Rumi begging her eomma to not die and talking about everything they can do together once she gets better. They can go to France, see all those random 80 and 90 movies that Celine loves, they can go get kimchi at that old run down restaurant they both love. Celine just has to stay alive.
Omg France and traveling 🥹 I love it that Rumi and Celine will try to make up for lost time. All they ever known was smashing demons and protecting humanity at the expense of their personal lives. It cost Miyeong and Thirdlight’s life too. I’m all for reconciliation, but it doesn’t come without bumps on the road.
Since the recent reblogs have been angsty here’s a bit of fluff before we go back to the blender:
Post heart attack, they talk more, and Celine agrees to try and take care of herself. For Rumi’s sake, she’ll do it.
However, ‘trying’ is a herculean task because it's like asking a workaholic mom (Rumi gets it from her) to go on a vacation.
It's a different kind of stress, and Celine finds it hard.
After getting discharge from the hospital, Celine thinks she’s going to ease her way back to work, (maybe a 3 day work week, because that's better than six days by Celine's logic) only to find her schedule completely cleared out.
For two whole months.
Rumi ordered it, and it seems that while she was recovering, Bobby and the girls took over company matters. Not that Celine would argue, it's that she misses work. Work had purpose, kept her busy, and put her mind away from grief.
But now, Celine is task free, alone in the penthouse with nothing to do. Flying back to Jeju was out of question despite her wanting to go back and clean Miyeong’s grave. Rumi insisted that she’ll do it, another stress point that Celine buries.
The girls also made accomodations for Celine, and hired a chef next door to cook her meals. She thought of cooking for the girls, but now a Michelin star chef is here???
Celine (fuming): I can't cook? I'm a hunter, not a patient!
She knows that she shouldn't get angry and the girls mean well, but this feels like punishment.
The extra home health staffers and the girls treating her like glass is not helping either.
Celine hates it but gets why Rumi is acting like this. The other night, while sleeping, the door creaked slightly and the hallway lights made Celine's eyes squint. Before she could check, the door closed again. She knows it was Rumi. Like any kid who fears for their parents' life, Rumi is terrified of losing her.
It’s like a reversal: before the idol awards Celine feared for Rumi’s life. Now it’s Rumi scared for Celine.
For now, Celine just holds back her frustrations. Maybe when things cool down, and Rumi not panicking every night, that she'll say what’s on her mind.
Also, Derpy is Celine's new therapy pet! She finds a giant blue tiger laying at the foot of her bed and a note on side table. The note reads:
Derpy teleports and loves belly rubs. Just don’t tip over flower pots.
-Rumi
PS: Sussie perches on his head. Don't worry, she's harmless.
Celine sighs and looks to the happy, blue tiger and the magpie, “So can you fly?"
It takes a few seconds but Derpy nods, rubbing his cheek against Celine.
On a funny-not-funny note,
Sunlight Entertainment has a new de facto boss who’s more hawkish than their former one. If you thought Rumi pulling a fast one on Mira and Zoey to push out Golden was bad, just imagine Rumi as the new boss. See, Mira and Zoey (and Celine) can put up with Rumi's antics, but regular employees?
They rather go to hell.
Celine kept the girls’ chaos in containment. Without Celine here, Sunlight employees are sobbing for their chairwoman’s return.
"If only Chairwoman Kwon was here, she would tell HUNTR/X to halt on fifteenth MV reshoot," cries one employee from the 28th floor. She's been editing the same MV for the 100th time like it's a Marvel reshoot. Deadline is tomorrow, and they barely scratched on post. Rumi says it's for the fans, but to the editors that got one hour of sleep, they're thinking, "We're your fans too. Save us!"
It's only after one awful month with Rumi that it dawned on them: Celine was never the boss of Sunlight. It was Rumi all along. All the crazy requests from Chairwoman Kwon stems from their true overlord: Ryu Rumi.
#introducing b-plotline: save Sunlight employees from Rumi's crazy demands!#Celine will have to go back and save her employees#right? right? Either that or Korea's OSHA???#maybe give the girls a reminder that employees are not hunters#personal headcanon: I find it hilarious that everyone in the movie just goes along with Rumi's anctics like a true queen she is#bonus: Celine is making use of Derpy's travel abilities to go to Jeju and care for the hunters graves. (DOESN'T TELL RUMI)#Celine: If I can't go on an airplane then Derpy it is#don’t worry they’ll talk it out#after the health scare#they have no choice but to do better - @silverwritesblog
My stupid brain can't think of anything to reply with but I just wanted to reply and say that I read this entire thing with a giant smile on my face.
Loose thoughts, these two do get into one last big argument. Of course it's at dinner, and yes, it happens to be related to the poor editor at 28th floor sending an SOS text to Celine. Celine has to bring it up, chastising the girls to not treat their employees as hunters. At this point, Celine announces that she plans to go back to work tomorrow, and Rumi is not thrilled.
Rumi: Go back? You’re still recovering! I’ll go and talk to Yujin the editor.
Celine: No Rumi. Giving them a blind pep talk is not going to fix workers rights.
Rumi shuts up immediately.
Celine knows what Rumi will likely do and what the employees need right now is sleep and validation.
Celine: Girls, it’s brought to my attention that our employees are working longer hours. They need rest. *sighs* Frankly, they need a vacation more than I do.
Zoey: But comeback is around the corner,
Celine: *raises her hand* I’m aware, Zoey. However, it shouldn’t come at the expense of them sleeping two hours a day. I’ll be at headquarters to check up on everyone and listen to their grievances. *assures them* It’ll only be a few days. Lee Seongwoo and I will also review their overtime pay and add extended vacation time.
While it seems reasonable to Celine, Rumi is not taking this well at all. What if the employees yell at Celine because of her and the girls mistakes? What if they add more stress and she gets a heart attack again? So many ‘what ifs’ and of course, because Rumi’s running the company like it’s everyone’s business to protect the Honmoon, the employees are stressed.
Rumi’s not an idiot. All these last minute changes and having everything perfect is rooted from fear. Fear of losing Celine or that the demons might rip a tear. (Since the idol awards, they haven’t seen a tear, but there’s always that worry that it could happen.)
Rumi: *crosses her arms* You never gave yourself vacation time after pulling 3 all-nighters.
Celine: *pinches the bridge of her nose* Rumi, not now...
Rumi: *rises up from her seat* Am I not wrong? You never had a long vacation until now. After comeback, we’ll review work hours.
Celine: *careful with her words* They’re not going to survive after comeback. I’m going back and it’s final.
Rumi: No.
Celine: *shock* Rumi!
The argument gets to the point that both of them are raising their voices, and they’re yelling. Mira and Zoey are like kids of divorced parents, trying to douse the fire before it gets worse. Celine snaps.
Celine: That’s unreasonable! Rumi, I’ve taught you better!
Zoey holds Celine back, trying to soothe their mentor, and Mira is doing the same for Rumi while also lecturing her that they need to not yell at each other for a hot minute.
The yelling match ends with Celine feeling a dull pain on her chest, and is out of breath. She holds onto the table while trying her best to breathe, but this seems all too familiar… like the board meeting and her heart hurting as if an elephant pressed on her chest. She winces, trying her best not to keel over.
The girls freak out and Zoey pages the doctors. The elevator dings; two of Celine’s concierge doctors (Rumi’s idea cause if one happens to be in the bathroom then the second one can save mom) rush over. Rumi steps away, panicking, while the doctors crowd around her mom. A stethoscope hovers over the surgical scar on Celine’s chest.
Celine is telling the girls that she’s fine, but guilt eats Rumi alive. She never seen the giant slit up close. Sutures and injuries are normal in their line of work, but this is different. The scar is a reminder that Rumi almost lost Celine.
The heart attack was preventable. Post Idol Awards, Celine was pulling all nighters, not caring for sleep or think about food. There were whispers from employees, saying she never left the building; always her telling them, “the song will do well. It’s a matter of promotion. I’ll talk to our sponsors,”or “don’t worry. You rest, I’ll take it from here.” Celine’s way of making it up after everything.
If she and Celine didn’t argue under the tree, to the point that her mom was pulling three all nighters in a row because the Honmoon was new and needs all the support it could get, then she wouldn’t have collapsed during the board meeting.
Ashamed, Rumi retreats back to her room, ignoring Mira and Zoey’s calls.
The doctors concluded that it was psychological distress and advised Celine to avoid any intense shouting matches.
Zoey and Mira, still rattled from what just happened, are telling each other, “Yeah good luck with that…” They’re also towering over their mentor, arms crossed, and ready to scold Celine for overdoing it.
Celine shrinks, feeling smaller than the bird plushie next to her.
“Teacher,” Zoey’s voice is steady, not raising a decibel higher. Her arms crossed.
“We care about you, but that was,” Mira shakes her head, “look, we understand, and we won’t stop you from going back to work. There’s just one problem…” Mira glances over to the hallway.
Celine, sighing, “I’ll talk to Rumi.”
Not wanting to end the night with a giant fight, Celine goes to Rumi’s room. She enters and finds Rumi is curled up with Derpy at the rug.
Derpy rises up, happy to see halmeoni. By now, Celine and Derpy are besties and the frequent trips to Jeju made them closer.
Although they don’t say sorry, Rumi and Celine haven’t yelled, which is enough admission.
Rumi: *gets up* Last week, I went to clean up Mom’s grave. There were fresh flowers.
Celine: *knows she’s caught, she looks elsewhere* I…couldn’t step away.
Rumi: I know. (You would never leave Mom.)
Rumi would never say it to Celine; how she knew her birth mom through Celine's words. It was Celine who always maintained Miyeong’s resting place. Whether it was penance or grief, she'd wish her adoptive mother would look at her instead of a grave.
Why can't I be a daughter to both?
Her birth mom that she’s supposed to honor and revere is a blank page, empty. Yet, grief is more of a what than a wish. Rumi wish she knew her. Wish her mom was here. Why she's a star to so many others that her adoptive mother couldn't look away.
Why Celine had hoped Rumi would be like her, but grew up to mirror Celine. And the look of disappointment on her adoptive mother’s face that she didn't conjure a bow like her Miyeong added a different kind of shame.
Why a sword?
Can't it be both? Both, so Celine can stop wallowing alone and look over to a kid who desperately wants a parent.
Can't you be my mom too?
It's all the questions she can muster while looking at Celine. But the mom in front of her is thinking of the other mom. Just a word, and Celine’s face completely overtaken by guilt.
Mira and Zoey nervously, sitting at Rumi's room, making sure their mentor not keel over in front of them.
Rumi and Celine cool themselves, and talk at the balcony. But they get better. They talk because there's nothing left after their seething rage departs.
****
That’s all I have for now! The worst is over. (Though my brain is fried due to work 😖)
Celine and Rumi are just incapable of having an emotional conversation huh??? It's their curse it seems.
But also, yes! Of course Celine would push herself to work more while Rumi just wants her to be okay and to actually take some time off. Celine, in my mind, is just physically incapable of taking time off and actually relaxing until Rumi asks her to do it for her because she couldn't bear to lose Celine. She's not asking Celine to stay healthy for the doctors or for her career or even for Huntrix, just for her. Is it selfish? Yes. Does Rumi care anymore? No. She wants her mom. She just wants her mom to stay alive.
Why is she so okay with working herself into an early grave and leaving her?
Celine tries not to let that comment get to her too much (because everything she's done has been for Rumi and it does feel a bit heartbreaking to know that no matter which direction she goes in, she's letting everyone down) but Rumi staring at her and about to sob is enough for Celine to finally agree to some time off. She'll rest in the tower on the condition that she gets to use the magical tiger and visit the grave (that is the one thing she won't budge on). Rumi agrees.
Post Movie!Rumi meeting two different Rumis from two worlds where the other SLS members survived.
In the world where only Miyeong survived, she was able to love Rumi and she doesn't have to hide her patterns, but (since Miyeong lived and the fans and media don't have to worry about "badmouthing the dead") she also had to grow up with the scandal of Miyeong "ruining" SLS because she "couldn't keep her legs closed". And without Celine, the idol industry was also kept the same as it was in the early 2000s (or just IRL, let's be honest). While Huntrix still forms they couldn't be as popular due to that same scandal, the worse Industry and they have a lot more pushbacks than Main. There's also that Mira and Zoey, despite knowing about the patterns since day 1, get injured more because they hesitate when they see patterns, b/c they're afraid of hurting Rumi. Every injury just adds to Rumi's guilt cause she blamed herself for being the reason for their hesitation.
In the world where Third survived, she couldn't keep Rumi. Third couldn't hurt a baby but she also couldn't bring herself to raise Rumi either. So she let Rumi fall into the foster system. Third was able to mostly tank the scandal and make the industry better, but Rumi bounced from foster home to foster home. Some better, some worse, some VERY not good. Essentially she was forced to hide more of her patterns and herself, not even being allowed to keep her purple hair as she was forced to dye it black (to make her look more "normal" so more couples would "want to adopt her"). Huntrix forms and while they care for each other, Rumi's distrust of other people keeps them at arm's length, which makes Mira untrusting, and Zoey more reserved cause she doesn't want to "overstep their boundaries"
And then there's Main Rumi who just wants to bring these poor girls some therapy.
Taking everyone out of the damn blender for the time being.
Celine hugs Mi-yeongs Rumi and Third's Rumi in a bone crushing hug. The other two return the favor espeically Third's Rumi cuz she just really needs a hug. Main Rumi joins in.
Now does Celine try and fix the other Rumi's in their world 🤔. I highly doubt Celine would keep them since they gotta protect their own universe and return to their own duos.
Post-movie idea Rumi is embracing her demon side more which comes with the ability to see the emotions and souls of people along with their scars. Cut to her becoming extremely protective of Celine to a concerning degree cause Celine soul is covered in scars. Now everyone is trying to get Rumi to calm down and get Celine to therapy to finally address her problems. It goes as well as you expect.
The idea of Rumi seeing souls wouldn't leave me;
Everyone walked around with a soul that was utterly their own, Rumi realized the day after the Idol Awards and her vision still had not returned to normal.
(She would, in time, learn to control it. Though that would not be for some time.)
Zoey's was blue and yellow and like a cold glass of lemonade in summer and lit sparklers during new years.
Mira's was red and dark like velvet, like wine, like a thrumming heart.
(She sees Celine's by accident; they'd agreed to give each other the space they both needed after --
But well, Celine had an important meeting and Rumi had been in the office.
It had only been a few seconds, Rumi catching sight of Celine as she walked turned a corner, embroiled in a conversation with the COO and head of legal.
But it had been enough.)
Celine's was... it *had* been green, Rumi thinks, though *so much* of it was marred by dark scarring all through it that it looked like it was more scar than soul.
(It was not recent, the damage. Rumi had seen what new soul scars looked like -- raw, festering, glowing as though the life was leaking through it.)
(Celine's had new damage too, almost lost underneath the scars)
The next day, Rumi surprises Celine at her office with takeout from her favorite restaurant and tries to not stare at her soul.
Rumi couldn’t stop staring, despite trying not to. It was like driving by the scene of an accident: morbid curiosity always gets the best of you.
Soul scars were different from regular scars. Souls were amorphous balls of light, contained within a person’s chest, occasionally filling their person or radiating outward from them. A scar on a soul wasn’t placed in a way that would tell a story. There were no obvious tells regarding what that person survived, just that they had survived something.
Celine’s soul reminded Rumi of an old tree. One that had withstood drought and fire and floods. One that had been struck by lightning and blight. One that grew as three trunks, but two had been split off forcefully and painfully. One that was rotting from the inside out, and it was only a matter of time before the next storm the old tree faced would be its last.
(One that countless people had carved their names into, had dug out pieces of, had dozens of hearts that meant nothing to it etched into its bark and leaking its sap.)
Rumi knew Celine had physical scars. She had helped bandage some of them herself. But there was something about seeing these scars, seeing how Celine’s soul never got as bright as it could get, how it almost acted lethargic. Rumi knew the stuff Celine refused to tell her about must be painful, but the longer she stared the more concerned she became.
There had been a stray cat living at the hanok when Rumi was growing up. A mean, old thing missing half an ear that hissed if Rumi got too close (which was often since he'd decided the porch was his favorite napping spot.)
And then he'd disappeared and Rumi had found his body under the rose bushes.
Celine had told her, as she dug out a small grave for the poor creature, that sometimes old cats like him, nearing the end, retreat to quiet, lonely places as to not worry their people.
Rumi -- irrationally, she knows -- can't help but think that if Celine returns to Jeju, which she will, Jeju is her *home* now and has been ever since Huntrix debuted and she took a step back from managing them directly, then that will be the last she ever sees of Celine.
That the moment Rumi can't see Celine's faltering, drowning soul, it'll go out forever. And she won't know until someone thinks to check on the hanok.
(She had been too afraid to touch the cat, even in death. But she had seen the insects beginning to do the work of renewal.)
(How long could Celine disappear before someone checked? A few days at least. Enough time for nature to begin it's devouring.)
That can't happen if Celine stays close, if she stays in Seoul.
If Rumi can lean out her balcony and see the dim green light flickering from the direction of Celine's apartment. And if she can see Celine, that means Celine isn't going to die.
If she can just grasp firmly enough, she can keep Celine here.
It is obvious to pretty much everyone with eyes that Rumi becomes, well clingy would be the polite term. But it is also obvious that the motivation behind it is some kind of fear. The way she needs to keep Celine close, the way she keeps finding excuses to keep their mentor in the city, the way she texts her constantly and gets visibly anxious the longer it takes for Celine to respond... Mira likened her to a dog with separation anxiety and judging by the way Rumi needed to keep Celine in her sightline, it was an accurate description.
It got to the point, however, when Celine made a decision. She was going to do something she had never done before, taking a leap into the unknown where she'll either emerge victorious or drown in a tar pit of depression and loneliness: she was going to sit down with Rumi and *gulp* talk about their feelings.
And for Rumi, this might as well have been Celine's note. She was a ball of stress when she sat on the couch, barely able to make her tense body rest on the couch at all, and now here she was: face to face with Celine. Alone. With the express purpose of talking.
"Rumi," Celine sighs, heavily but out of love, "Rumi-ya, what's wrong?"
Rumi didn't know where to begin. She was aware that her behaviour lately had been...a little irrational. Ok, a lot irrational. But even now any time she looked at Celine, all she saw was that tattered soul pulsing like a failing heart and she just...
"I can see souls," she states. No more hiding, no more lies.
Celine frowned, her brow furrowing in confusion. "Explain," she replies. Not a harsh command. Rumi could tell it was out of concern.
"I...I don't know... Ever since Namsan I... I can see people's souls," Rumi stammers, pointing to her own chest, "It's like...a glowing light. Right here, over the heart. It's different for everyone, kind of like being able to see who they really are inside."
Celine nods solemnly. "Makes sense," she murmurs.
"It...it does?" Rumi sputters.
"Well... Hunters have a connection to everyone's souls in order to power the Honmoon. And demons have the ability to sense souls to, well... Never mind that. So it would make sense that you would have such an ability," Celine explains, rational as always. Her eyes flick up to meet Rumi's, and she asks, "Is that what's got you so spooked? Seeing things others cannot?"
Rumi shook her head. "N...not exactly," she reveals, "It's...I..."
Celine's soul flickered. It reminded Rumi of a lightbulb nearing the end of its life. "I...I can see yours, too," she breathes. She swallows, tears beginning to form in her eyes as all of her worries avalanche on top of her. "Celine: why is it so broken?"
Celine tries to hide her flinch. She can't hide the unconscious way her hand comes up to rub her sternum or the glance she gives towards the window.
So Rumi knew, then.
She supoosed she shouldn't have been surprised. Her Rumi had always been a bright girl. She was surprised it had taken Rumi this long to figure out just how broken and wrong her caretaker is, was, had always been.
A poor fit for a guardian but the only one capable of it, limited as she was in her abilities.
"I'm sorry you found out like this, Rumi-ya," Celine says. "It... can't be pleasant to look at."
Rumi is shaking her head.
"I don't care about how it looks," she says. "Why is it like that, Celine?"
Where to even begin? Celine wonders. How is she supposed to tell the child she raised that her caretaker had simply been... put together wrong?
“I…I don’t know,” Celine admits with a heavy sigh, “It sometimes feels like it was always…”
Rumi shakes her head, adamant. “No. There’s no way that’s true,” she insists.
“Rumi-ya,” Celine chides gently.
“No. Celine I… They’re scars,” she states, gritting her teeth in frustration.
“And that means it was not broken for as long as I can remember?” Celine challenges, “Rumi my life has… When I was a child I… I’ve been broken since I was born.”
Rumi knew. She knew Celine hadn’t had an easy go of it, with immigrant parents returning back to Korea after spending most of their lives far away. Of growing up mostly alone and unable to connect with other kids. Of being discovered young by the Hunters and her training starting early. Of all the pressure, and judgement, and lies she had to tell. All of that would wear on a person, but Rumi also understood the feeling.
“So was I born broken?” she asks bluntly.
“What? No, of course not,” Celine replies quickly.
“What about Mira? Or Zoey? Bobby?” Rumi presses.
“No, Rumi—”
“So why were you born broken but no one else was?”
“Because I…” Celine looks away, her hands falling limply into her lap, “I just…”
Rumi shifts closer, pressing herself into Celine’s side. Celine felt a faint rumble from that side, a grounding vibration filling her with warmth. “I…I know you don’t like talking about it,” she murmurs, “But I also know that if you don’t… It…it can build up and…”
Celine remembers the dull thud of knees hitting dirt, the Honmoon rippling angrily from the impact.
Rumi watches as Celine’s soul flickers, constricting in size. Like it was trying to make itself smaller. Like it was trying to hide from something it didn’t want to face.
“I know things have been…weird between us,” Rumi continues, feeling like she’s about to lose her final chance, “But I’m serious, Celine. If you can’t talk to me, you need to talk with someone. Please?”
“You know why I can’t talk to a therapist, Rumi,” Celine argues weakly, “Even with confidentiality agreements, there’s no guarantee I won’t be committed for sounding utterly insane.”
“Please try?” Rumi felt tears in her eyes again, her involuntary purring in an effort to calm herself as well, “Because I can’t… I don’t want…” She huffs out a sigh and hugs Celine tight. “I’m scared, Cece.”
Rumi's mind currently thinking of the old cat goes on the tangent of Celine going back to Jeju and dying and know one knowing until someone visit the hanok or Celine doesn't respond to her and than they have to send somehwere there and find her.
Next thing Rumi is talking about burying Celine next to Mi-yeong and that she just can't.
Ends with Rumi just clingy and half incoherent please don't go.
Off tanget can you imagine if Celine did get away from Rumi and went on her self induced "vaction" and runs off without telling anyone starting Where in the world is Celine.
Post-movie idea Rumi is embracing her demon side more which comes with the ability to see the emotions and souls of people along with their scars. Cut to her becoming extremely protective of Celine to a concerning degree cause Celine soul is covered in scars. Now everyone is trying to get Rumi to calm down and get Celine to therapy to finally address her problems. It goes as well as you expect.
The idea of Rumi seeing souls wouldn't leave me;
Everyone walked around with a soul that was utterly their own, Rumi realized the day after the Idol Awards and her vision still had not returned to normal.
(She would, in time, learn to control it. Though that would not be for some time.)
Zoey's was blue and yellow and like a cold glass of lemonade in summer and lit sparklers during new years.
Mira's was red and dark like velvet, like wine, like a thrumming heart.
(She sees Celine's by accident; they'd agreed to give each other the space they both needed after --
But well, Celine had an important meeting and Rumi had been in the office.
It had only been a few seconds, Rumi catching sight of Celine as she walked turned a corner, embroiled in a conversation with the COO and head of legal.
But it had been enough.)
Celine's was... it *had* been green, Rumi thinks, though *so much* of it was marred by dark scarring all through it that it looked like it was more scar than soul.
(It was not recent, the damage. Rumi had seen what new soul scars looked like -- raw, festering, glowing as though the life was leaking through it.)
(Celine's had new damage too, almost lost underneath the scars)
The next day, Rumi surprises Celine at her office with takeout from her favorite restaurant and tries to not stare at her soul.
Rumi couldn’t stop staring, despite trying not to. It was like driving by the scene of an accident: morbid curiosity always gets the best of you.
Soul scars were different from regular scars. Souls were amorphous balls of light, contained within a person’s chest, occasionally filling their person or radiating outward from them. A scar on a soul wasn’t placed in a way that would tell a story. There were no obvious tells regarding what that person survived, just that they had survived something.
Celine’s soul reminded Rumi of an old tree. One that had withstood drought and fire and floods. One that had been struck by lightning and blight. One that grew as three trunks, but two had been split off forcefully and painfully. One that was rotting from the inside out, and it was only a matter of time before the next storm the old tree faced would be its last.
(One that countless people had carved their names into, had dug out pieces of, had dozens of hearts that meant nothing to it etched into its bark and leaking its sap.)
Rumi knew Celine had physical scars. She had helped bandage some of them herself. But there was something about seeing these scars, seeing how Celine’s soul never got as bright as it could get, how it almost acted lethargic. Rumi knew the stuff Celine refused to tell her about must be painful, but the longer she stared the more concerned she became.
There had been a stray cat living at the hanok when Rumi was growing up. A mean, old thing missing half an ear that hissed if Rumi got too close (which was often since he'd decided the porch was his favorite napping spot.)
And then he'd disappeared and Rumi had found his body under the rose bushes.
Celine had told her, as she dug out a small grave for the poor creature, that sometimes old cats like him, nearing the end, retreat to quiet, lonely places as to not worry their people.
Rumi -- irrationally, she knows -- can't help but think that if Celine returns to Jeju, which she will, Jeju is her *home* now and has been ever since Huntrix debuted and she took a step back from managing them directly, then that will be the last she ever sees of Celine.
That the moment Rumi can't see Celine's faltering, drowning soul, it'll go out forever. And she won't know until someone thinks to check on the hanok.
(She had been too afraid to touch the cat, even in death. But she had seen the insects beginning to do the work of renewal.)
(How long could Celine disappear before someone checked? A few days at least. Enough time for nature to begin it's devouring.)
That can't happen if Celine stays close, if she stays in Seoul.
If Rumi can lean out her balcony and see the dim green light flickering from the direction of Celine's apartment. And if she can see Celine, that means Celine isn't going to die.
If she can just grasp firmly enough, she can keep Celine here.
Reminds me when my brother asked me to look for his cat since he didn't see it for a while. I didn't want to tell him they probably ran away cuz they knew it was close to their time....
So I gotta ask, what's the living situation for Sarang after she's taken into the main universe?
Like obviously not back on Jeju but does she stay with Huntrix? With Celine? Does Celine have her own apartment somewhere in the tower/Seoul?
Because I imagine that Celine gets her own place/already has her own place if only to give Huntrix their own space.
(Also do you have any thoughts on what Sarang's bedroom looks like?)
So Celine does have an apartment she keeps in Seoul, has for years—she had to go there often enough for business that hotels seemed wasteful, and it was a bit easier to keep her own hours
Huntrix are also Not Down for Celine to be alone with herself and a pile of trauma when they decide to move out of the hanok, and make a solid case about how Sarang won’t be going out in public regularly anytime soon and their three floors is a lot less restrictive than her two bedrooms and, look, Sarang won’t put up with living without her, so she basically has to
Eventually, when she’s Sarang’s more stable, Celine engages in some slightly dubious business ethics and takes an apartment lower in the building, closer to the actual SLE-headquarters part
Sarang has rooms in both apartments
I hadn’t thought about the look of them but… fairy lights. Strung across the ceiling and wound on the bottoms of the bed frame. Because sometimes she needs to hide down there.
Wondering how much time it took the girls to try and convince/trick Celine that she couldn't be left alone to her own devices.
Girls You can't stay here by youself. Celine I can and I will. After some idea processing convinces Celiine that Sarang needs her and she agrees originally to stay in her apt, but the girls not trusting Celine says nope you have to stay in the penthouse with us.
Celine: believeing shes 100 percent fine. I'm being kidnapped.
I feel like Zoey 100% takes point in helping decorate Sarangs room.
Rumi's crying again and Celine's up before any thought pops into her head she carefully picks the toddler up rocking her gently as she's done mentally times
The markings glow on her skin she doesn't see them
Rumi's hungry and Celine's in the kitchen making her breakfast teddy bear shaped pancakes the ones Rumi loves it's peaceful this morning
The markings glow on her skin she doesn't see them
Celine takes Rumi to the teddy bear museum that weekend she'd promised to and Rumi looks so happy as she carries the little purple teddy Celine got for her
The markings glow on her skin she doesn't see them
Demon hunting has gotten easier Celine thinks only for a second as she cuts down the last demon Rumi will start training soon so she supposes it's a good thing the Honmoon hums happily as she returns home
The markings on her skin glow she doesn't see them it doesn't want her to see them
Rumi's training is going well Celine thinks as she kisses Rumi's forehead after giving her a bandaid she doesn't remember the last time she had to bandage an injury but she does her best for her daughter
The markings on her skin glow she doesn't see them it doesn't want her to remember
Rumi's found her fellow hunters soulmates and Celine couldn't be happier she knows they'll be there for each always Celine doesn't remember a time when she and her fellow hunters weren't
The markings on her skin glow she doesn't see them it doesn't want her to remember
Celine cuts herself while making dinner for the girls the night before they debut and it doesn't hurt she has a high pain tolerance despite Mira's concern about it being deep
The markings on her skin glow she doesn't see them it won't let her feel pain again
The girls debut and Celine is so proud of them she makes sure to cook for them that night as well and tells Zoey she's fine after she burns herself like she told Mira she has a high pain tolerance
The markings on her skin glow she doesn't see them it won't let her feel pain again
The Honmoon is breaking and Rumi's gone the Honmoon is breaking and Rumi's gone her daughter had just asked the unthinkable and Celine feels dizzy and Tired
The Markings on her skin glow she sees them it's still trying to keep her together
The Honmoon shatters and Celine feels nothing She doesn't feel anything it feels like her mind is cotton as her body falls to the ground with a thump
The Markings on her skin glow she sees them they vanish it can no longer sustain her as it shatters
Rumi finds her near the tree still body positioned like she had fallen over and Rumi's heart sinks into her stomach as she runs over desperately calling out for her mother mentor
Flipping Celine over reveals that she's still breathing but her eyes are closed and she won't wake up despite Rumi's pleading and begging
Rumi carefully as carefully as she possibly can picks up Celine and Brings her inside and to her bedroom Zoey and Mira following right behind
Zoey says she probably needs rest and Mira tells her to not panic because Celine's still breathing so Rumi gets Celine cleaned and she and her girls Wait
They wait a day then 2 then 3 then a week goes by and Rumi starts panicking Celine's not waking up she's not even moving she's still breathing tho
Mira is the one to call Bobby and tell him Celine's fallen sick and as always he says he'll deal with things that sunlight entertainment and says he wishes Celine a speedy recovery
Rumi sits by Celine's beside as days go by Celine's Still breathing but her eyes are still closed and she's not moving
Almost a month goes by and finally Celine opens her eyes except their hollow eyes like all life had been drained from them Rumi calls her name and Celine doesn't respond
Celine doesn't respond to any of them not Zoey not Rumi not Mira not as they call her name not as they give her food and water Celine's still breathing and doesn't respond
Another week and a half Celine's still breathing she won't respond to them not as Rumi hugs her and begs Celine still won't respond
Two weeks more go by Rumi goes to check on Celine it's become routine Celine's not in her bed Rumi's heart freezes in her chest before she hears the humming
It's coming from the kitchen and When Rumi gets in there her heart starts beating again Celine's still breathing and Humming while making breakfast
Celine's still breathing and Celine's humming a song Rumi hasn't heard since she was little And Celine responds in a cherry tone when Rumi asks her a question
Celine's still breathing as Mira and Zoey join Rumi at the kitchen table and smile as they see Celine up And responsive breathing sighs of relief
Celine's still breathing as she turns to them and they all freeze as they stare at her iridescent eyes her smile not quite right as the Honmoon is covering her skin like patterns
Celine's still breathing but how much of Celine is left?
What's in Celine? Is it the old Honmoon? Is it the new Honmoon? Or is it left over demon bits thats hiding in Celine? Will the girls have to "take care of" *Celine*.
The mirror mirror au is rife with so much angst, especially with how much you ahve Celine conflate herself with Mirror!Celine, and for some reason my mind keeps coming back to a crack version of the girls confronting Celine after they discover that she killed her double and Celine just explains herself by saying:
Celine: I deserved it.
The girls all stare at each other. Wow. She needs therapy. Probably more than any of them, which is saying something.
Mira: That would be concerning even if you didn't say I. But you do see how that's so much worse, right?
Look sometimes that’s just the way it is
Really I do think they figure it out. Celine clearly had to fight her counterpart and there’s a grave-sized patch of upturned earth. Rumi nearly starts to dig it up to make sure the body is buried deep enough that no wild animals will get it before Zoey and Mira ask her what the hell she’s doing and point out the much more reasonable options
And Celine just keeps saying “I hurt her. I would’ve kept hurting people. I had to” and it clicks that she is not drawing any line between who is herself and who is her counterpart and. There are many reasons they bring her to live with them in the city
I think the I/she split is one of those things where Celine's line of thinking is so divorced from everyone else's that it takes a little bit of time for the girls to realise the extent of Celine's warped sense of guilt?
Like maybe at first they're all still in shock and struggling to get their heads around what happened and focusing on trying to help other Rumi adjust, and Celine isn't going to be keen on talking about what happened more than she really has to, so it's easy just to think 'huh that's a weird verbal shorthand you're using, but not what we need to be focusing on now' the first couple of times Celine says something like "I kept her chained up if I wasn't making her work". Like, obviously she means Other!Celine did this, Other!Celine is the evil one and their Celine is the good one, that's so obvious to them that it doesn't really need to be pointed out so clearly it must be obvious to Celine too.
(And Celine just thinks 'okay good you are finally understanding how awful and depraved I really am deep down, so now you will understand why it is so important you keep Rumi and everyone else safe from me' and is so relieved they don't push back and say that it isn't her who does those things, because Celine does not want to have to explain to Rumi just how many times they could have found themselves in the mirror situation. So not being corrected about her innate evil is actually a source of comfort for her.)
So the first time someone does push back on Celine's use of "I" when she means "Other!Celine" is not good. And: shit, Rumi does not like the penny that is dropping, does not like it at all.
Mmhm, yeah. Like, I think at first it’s something they barely notice, and then it’s something they think is a subconscious expression of self-hatred
It does not go over well that Celine’s doing it on purpose.
It’s Zoey who points it out, an awkward, careful spurt of a thing, trying to practice using her words and not sure how to express herself gracefully yet. You shouldn’t act like you’re the same
How else could I act? Celine’s words come out harsh; she goes a little still, a little stiff, standing there by the sink. The next breath, and it hits her that this has all just been one long bout of humoring her. Do you want me to lie to you?
Zoey flinches away from the sharp teeth before she can think, immediately apologetic, ready to soothe
No, no, I just meant— Except, of course, she said exactly what she meant. There’s no way to twist it. The sentence collapses. Her words come out small: You aren’t like the other Celine.
Yeah, Zoey the lyricist being the one to try and articulate the impact of this word choice is very cool :)
There's an interesting linguistic thing as well, because pronoun-dropping is way more common in Korean than in English. So the sentence in English "I have some water" needs the 'I' but a Korean speaker could say "have some water" and let the conversation partner infer the "I" and it would still make sense if the context is clear.
So Celine could have said "locked her up", "beaten her", "taught the other Mira and Zoey to treat her like an animal" and it would have sounded normal. The girls would have mentally filled in the subject for her. Using 'I' is a Choice to remove any possibility of hiding all her shame behind a grammatical sleight of hand.
Zoey's first instinct is to deny it. Pull out a list of examples - because there's actually a lot that spring to mind almost immediately, many of the obvious You never chained Rumi up in a freaking kennel variety, others which spiral out into these nebulous ideas Zoey's never properly thought about, things like how the kitchen always had their favourite snacks and the choreographer whose hand lingered on Mira's back one time was quietly removed from the company that same day and Zoey's never heard his name mentioned anywhere in the industry since. How Rumi used to drive Mira mad when they first met with the way she'd just politely bulldoze through planning sessions like someone used to getting everything they asked for. Hundreds and hundreds of moments Zoey has quietly absorbed without needing to examine them further, because why would she ever have to make this case to anyone - least of all Celine herself?
She knows Celine cares about Rumi. She knows it the same way she knows the sun will come up tomorrow.
So that's her first instinct. But Zoey's second instinct is the one where her pattern recognition autism kicks into high gear and that's the one that can see the way Celine's setting her shoulders, curling her lip, and it makes her think of Mira picking fights with them back when they first met. It makes her think of her dad a bit too, the way he'd spit out I'm a total failure as a husband, right? until her mom had agreed so hard she'd moved to a whole other country. It's a pattern she's not unfamiliar with, the way someone might try to convince her that they're poison who needs to be cut out from her life. I'm bad, I'm scary, stay away from me. Like lizards popping out their neck frills or brightly coloured poison dart frogs. Or like a mimic octopus making itself look like the nastiest most toxic slug around.
She thinks about that, and she thinks about predators and prey, and she thinks about how Mira's actually always been kind of awesome and it was just her shithead family who made her think otherwise, and how her dad maybe isn't the greatest (but still not like cage and chains bad - no, Zoey, focus!) but Zoey didn't actually feel all that better off to be separated from him, and then she thinks about how maybe the stuff that's obvious to her isn't always obvious to other people (Rumi) and also the line from that folktale about the scorpion and the frog, because it is in my nature, and how she's always hated that story.
And she'd like to say the way those things feel, the way she just knows they add up to something that'd fix everything (the chorus for the Sunlight Sisters' criminally under-rated Love Like This literally rewrote some neurons in her brain, Zoey is so sure that the right words can do the same to everyone if she can just find them).
Unfortunately, what comes out of her mouth is "Ohhhh, you're being stupid."
I’d seen that in,,,, some article when I was trying to figure out how honorifics worked and assumed it was a lot like Spanish, which is also prone to pronoun dropping in part because it has more distinct conjugations than English. E.g. the English “I have/you have/she has/we have/they have” would be “yo tengo/tú tienes/ella tiene/nosotros tenemos/ellos tienen” (simplified for the second person). And so it’s just easier to get from the verb alone
Is that accurate to Korean and Celine really doubling down, or is conjugation more ambiguous?)
And. It’s not like either of them are raising their voices. It’s not like Zoey is actually freaking out yet as she makes one of her Top Five Greatest Conversational Blunders and Celine glares at her for the disrespect, or like Celine has slowed down enough to notice how all of this makes her feel as she does
Rumi turns up anyway, as Zoey is trying so incredibly hard to smooth things over, to apologize without taking the words back, rambling as she circles around the question of whether she’s sorry or not, and Celine cuts through it with a cold, quiet, “Don’t you see it? We’re already halfway there.”
“See what?” she asks, and Zoey jumps at having someone to take the brunt of this for her and is ready to stop talking
…Except Celine says, “That I am exactly what I always was,” and looks ready for that to be the end of the entire conversation
okay more linguistics under the cut bc this got longer than expected lol
(So Korean verb conjugations are not really very similar to Spanish. For pronoun-dropping languages you basically have two kinds - the ones which inflect a lot for person and number and the ones which don't. Korean verbs don't change based on the subject (the person doing the action) so you can drop them. Spanish does have subject-verb agreement and inflects a lot so you can drop the subject. English is kind of in the middle so you can't.
The key difference is that Korean is not a subject-prominent language. It's something called topic-prominent. English and Spanish are both subject-prominent. The sentence structure is "Subject verbs object" - the doer of the action typically comes first and the sentence follows. A topic-prominent language has a "Topic-comment" structure like "Theme of my sentence, what I have to say about this theme".
An example of a topic-comment structure you might use in English is 'It's spelling that I really struggle with'. The topic is spelling, so I introduce that first, and then I add my comment (I struggle with it). But it's more common in English to just say 'I really struggle with spelling' & English speakers would typically understand the first as being more of a stylistic choice or something that might convey additional meaning (like implying a contrast with something else: oh, I'm actually good at maths, I just find spelling hard.)
Korean is also agglutinative - you basically add your affixes (prefixes and suffixes) onto words with each affix adding one bit of meaning. Spanish on the other hand is fusional - there's loads of meanings within one single affix.
So for example let's take Amy tenías (Amy used to have). The -ías in Spanish is saying all these different layers of meaning - the active voice, the third person so we know Amy is not the speaker or listener, the number of people 'Amy' is, the indicative mood, the imperfect tense - within that one single suffix.
In any agglutinative language, one affix doesn't do all those different bits of work simultaneously. There's hundreds of different affixes which convey a particular bit of meaning - I've seen estimates of between 400-2000+ different affixes in Korean. Plus the affixes don't always convey the same kinds of meaning that an English speaker would see the verb's role as conveying, if that makes sense? So you might add stuff to a verb to change tense, as in English, but the verb doesn't need to change to match the subject the way English verbs might. Korean verbs might also change to convey mood or politeness where English verbs don't, really.
Politeness and honorifics aren't the same as using usted/ustedes in Spanish where the subject of the verb is you (formal) - in Korean, I could be talking about someone in the third person and add the honorific to convey respect for that person. So I might say to a close friend "tu mamá tiene..." in Spanish but in Korean I would add the honorific to say something more like "your mother (who I respect) has...." even if my friend's mother isn't there.
The other thing is Spanish can easily drop the subject because that's conveyed in the verb (so tengo implies the I so everybody knows it's me who has the thing) but we usually retain the object, the thing I have. In Korean you can also drop the object if everyone understands what's being talked about.
So if you translate the same sentence literally you might end up saying something like this:
English: I have some cake
Spanish: Have (the verb form for I) some cake
Korean: Have
(Caveat that this makes sense if the context is there to convey 'we're talking about me and my relationship to this delicious cake' to my conversation partner.)
All of which is to say: Celine is Making A Point. Celine is not doing so in a way that would be unnatural (you can say I, it often makes sense to say I if you think people might be confused or mistakenly fill in the gap with 'someone else (not the monster speaking to me right now)' if you don't specify), but her way of speaking is raising every single red flag she can think of to say I Am Not Okay (derogatory). However everyone's heads are too fried from the continuing horrors to dig into that the first few times they hear it, and they probably do think at first she's trying to explain what she'd discovered in a language that did not consider the possibility of one day meeting your mirrorverse selves. Except then maybe they start noticing that the rest of them - including mirror!Rumi - have all figured out the grammar pretty quickly, and it's just Celine who keeps making the same weird mistake.
Like, keeps on making it every time without any hesitation or attempt to clarify that she meant the evil mirror!Celine?
Like, oh, shit, that's... maybe not a slip of the tongue, that's deliberate.
But how do you sit down with your mother figure/mentor/first crush and say 'haha so funny story we were thinking maybe someone should remind you that you are not actually irredeemably evil and corrupting everything good and pure in this world just by existing in it???')
---
Rumi furrows her brow. Celine is already pretending to look like the dishes are the most important job in the world and definitely require all of her attention, which Rumi has spent years interpreting as a signal that a conversation is over, full stop, except.
Except Zoey looks genuinely distraught by whatever the fuck is going on between them and she makes this stifled noise in the back of her throat and turns, beseechingly, to Rumi. (Except the line of Celine's shoulders tenses at the sound like she's taking a blow.) (Except that Rumi has always been able to push back and make Celine at least explain herself, even if she doesn't change her mind.)
(Except, really, that they've all been in survival mode since Celine came back with other Rumi in her arms, and it's only now that Rumi feels able to actually think about what's going on instead of the days of crying and trying not to punch something or throw up.)
"... Is that meant to be a riddle?"
Zoey shakes her head, just once. She's chewing on her fingernails, an old nervous habit they haven't seen in years.
"Did you leave any mugs in your bedroom?" Celine asks. Rumi does not bother hiding her eye roll.
"What do you mean, you're the same as always? We know," Rumi says, exasperated (and Zoey cringes) (and Celine nods). "We've just been through this."
Because they'd clocked evil!Celine in the space of maybe three sentences, hadn't they? Granted, they had been very evidently - almost comically - evil sentences, which had helped make things simple, but still. They'd known she wasn't Celine right away.
Celine doesn't look annoyed by Rumi pushing back. If anything, she looks almost relieved - like it's taken a weight off her shoulders to have Rumi confirm that, as obvious as it should have been - but Zoey's closing her eyes and hugging herself, looking anything but relaxed, and that ticks something in the back of Rumi's brain.
Like stones in her gut, Rumi hears her own words play once more in her brain. Hears Celine, again, halfway there. Exactly what I always was. Her own voice, once more, on that night, Do what you should have done a long time ago.
(I am nodding along delightedly to all of the linguistics talk thank you for giving me an impromptu lecture)
“Halfway there,” Celine declares, throwing out an arm like she’s gesturing to somewhere they can get. “The other world. All you have to do is let me and I’d—“
She stops. Shudders. Goes back to scrubbing at a plate that was probably living in Zoey’s room for a week before this.
Zoey gives Rumi this pleading, pained look. I didn’t mean to make her like this, I’m sorry, you get it now, help please.
And Rumi can barely breathe for the idea that Celine thinks she is like That Woman so. Deeply.
The other Celine had looked at Rumi with all the annoyance and disgust one reserved for a malfunctioning printer, like a tool that just wouldn’t do its job to the point where it had to be malice. She could think about everything that her counterpart flinched over or all the basic knowledge she’d been kept from or every way she reacted to kindness, about the icy orders the other Celine had tried to issue even while duct taped to the kitchen chair, about the insults hurled her way, but—that’s it. That’s what stuck.
Because from the very first moment, Rumi had known that whatever was looking at her, it wasn’t Celine.
“Let you?” she echoes incredulously. “Let you?”
(Do what you should’ve done a long time ago: what could be better permission?)
And Celine still refuses to look back at them. She puts the plate to the side. Her knuckles are white.
Rumi takes a breath, and doesn’t calm down. “Do you actually think that you’re anything like—do you see me like that? Like the girl?”
(You’re welcome! You can also imagine some fun stuff with particles too here? Korean has markers to show the topic (as well as subject/object markers - in Spanish the use of “a” plays a similar role in marking the object “mi hermano vio a tu perro” or “a tu perro vio mi hermano” in showing what is being looked at, which is important because Spanish lets you change the word order much more than in English).
So topic marker basically means “As for this thing we’re going to be talking about”.
Celine could say “As for me” then immediately sandblast Huntr/x in the face with so many horrors they forget to circle back to the me. Then “As for the other Mira and Zoey” then yet more horrors!)
———
Celine does not snap “I couldn’t look at you at all” but only because she clamps her mouth shut tight before she can do any more damage.
Rumi truly doesn’t know, she realises. How close to death she’s always lived. How Celine had held that tiny, milky, shrieking thing and promised Miyeong she would take care of the baby, and had turned around and promised the Honmoon that if it was necessary - if it came down to Miyeong’s daughter or the world - she would remember her duty.
The first decade of Rumi’s life, that had hung over them constantly. How many times did she look at the sweet little girl and bargain with herself over Rumi’s life? If her patterns grow, if she develops fangs, if she damages the Honmoon, if she does it on purpose— Everything Celine had said would warrant Rumi’s death over the years.
The other world didn’t have a Celine that was crueler or more hateful than this. She’d just made the same calculations- the exact same ones Celine had made, stacking up the weight of the world against Miyeong’s ill-placed trust - and found a way to manage the risk.
Celine lets herself glance through the window towards the forest, where this one good thing she can do for the girls is waiting. Selfishly, she wants them to know - to be assured that it’s safe, things are under control. To know that Celine is arranging things as neatly as possible; they don’t need to worry. Even though she doesn’t deserve it, there’s still the same wretched hope that maybe they might see that effort and think of her kindly.
Awful, disgusting, selfish hope. She plunges her hands back into the water and keeps them there to hide the shaking.
“You’re—“
(Rumi - somehow- still doesn’t see what Celine can’t hide anymore.)
(Like that. Like the girl, Rumi had said, as though—)
“She’s a good girl,” Celine chokes out. “Don’t talk like that, Rumi, she’s just a baby.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” Rumi huffs. Looks at Zoey, half-pinned against the counter in some kind of apology and nods at the door, eyebrows raised. Presses a hand against her temple to try to collect herself as Zoey makes a hurried exit.
It’s ugly maybe, but she’s not wrong—“She’s not a baby, she’s a really traumatized teenager who doesn’t know how to exist in the world because someone took that from her.”
“And I would’ve done that too,” Celine says. Her voice is shaking. “I would’ve—I did. I made the same—“
“No, you didn’t!” Rumi wants to scream. She might’ve already gotten halfway there. “I’m right here and I’m not her because you didn’t do those things.”
“You are both here because I didn’t kill you,” Celine says, with a frightening certainty. “You are both here because I couldn’t love all of you, but I could keep a promise.”
In English, you might use a structure like "Bilal made Charlie laugh" whereas in Korean you can change the verb 'laugh' to show that this is something Charlie is being caused to do. As a contrast to English, which has different verbs for eat/feed, Korean lets you conjugate 'eat' to show the person is being fed.
Korean has two different forms which might be used to convey information about whether this causation was direct/indirect, think the difference between "I dressed Debbie in her new clothes" and "I let/made Debbie wear her new clothes". So yeah. More options for wtf grammar when Celine is talking about other Mira and Zoey's actions.)
--
Celine isn't good.
There was a time in her life when she had thought she was, or at least that she could learn how to be, and then there was longer when she'd figured out that she could at least be useful in the hands of someone good. Miyeong had been a good person: kind, compassionate, courageous. It had been easy, to trust that Miyeong would know the right thing to do, and then it hadn't been.
So no, Celine isn't good. But she is stubborn. She can dig her heels in. She can stick to the plan, even when others might give up. She can keep a promise.
"I promised your mother I would protect you," she reminds Rumi. Reminds herself, too. The one true thing she had to cling onto, when everything else had seemed so uncertain. "She wanted you - her daughter - to be safe. And you will be. Both of you will."
I can keep you both safe, she thinks. It's a little funny, given all the evidence to the contrary. But.
She can.
She can make sure Miyeong's girls are safe. Like pruning a tree - cutting back the dead or diseased wood to keep the rest healthy.
Celine isn't good. She's known that for a very long time. But she can still do this one good thing, for Rumi, and for the girl, and for Miyeong.
(Chewing on this concept and incorporating it into my understanding of what is being said and delighting in the horrors thank you I love linguistics)
There is no one who can infuriate Rumi quite like Celine.
It’s like she thinks that these things make sense when she says them, when she puts them together, almost acknowledges at least the reality that Rumi and the girl aren’t the same and still tries to convince herself all she’s doing is because of some stupid promise she made to a woman Rumi can’t even remember.
“Safe?” she echoes, and it comes out almost like an accusation more than a question. “We are safe. The Honmoon is stronger than it’s ever been, so not demons. Mira and Zoey know about my patterns, so not them. The girl is here, so not—“
“From me,” Celine says.
Rumi stops.
Everything in her goes very still.
There is something about the way Celine is holding herself, hunching forward as she clings to the edge of the sink, head dropping forward like what she’s said has just released her from having to hold it up—there is something about the posture that makes her think of kneeling.
Of—
Celine shakes, crumples. Says, very quiet, tears in her voice, “You’ll be safe.”
(You're welcome, and so do I - so thank you for giving me a reason to talk about it this much lol)
Rumi's first thought - she wants to kick herself for it, wants to find a way to claw whatever made her think it right out of her chest and then set it on fire - is Don't you dare do this to me, don't you dare-!.
Which is. Not the correct, helpful response. Not what Celine should be hearing, if she's saying things like--
Like what, is it meant to be it? Just like that, Celine plans to-- Celine will--
(Their first trip to the bathhouse, Zoey wailing "I'm so glad you didn't die!" and all three of them bursting into tears.)
(What, is this revenge? Karma?)
(How dare she, how dare she, how--)
"Think I'm gonna be sick," Rumi manages to say. She doesn't. Not really. But it's the closest thing she can think of right now to express the way her whole chest seems to have seized up, and her stomach hurts. Or maybe it doesn't. Rumi can't tell, all of a sudden.
Celine's hand on her forehead, like she's a little kid all over again and Celine's fussing over a bad head cold. It's cold and wet, and Rumi can't stop herself from flinching at the sensation.
Which. Yeah.
Doesn't exactly help.
Celine pulls her hand back (and it's not the night of the Idol Awards all over again, it isn't, but--) and blinks rapidly to clear her eyes. "Are you?"
"No."
Neither of them say anything for a while. Rumi swallows down something that could be nausea, could be rage, could be something else entirely, and grabs hold of Celine's hand.
Rumi takes Celine’s there, standing in the kitchen, and she holds on so tightly—the way she always did when she was small, even as a little baby, Miyeong smiling as she wrapped her fingers around, cooing with pride at her girl.
She stopped. Doing that. Sometime in between when she got too big to be carried and when she started protesting at hugs, putting all the more distance between them, spotting on some level that she needed to get away.
But now she does it again, clinging, holding Celine with everything she has.
Rumi takes a breath in, slow and shuddery, and she says, “Please tell me you aren’t—Celine, did you… Do you mean that—that you want to kill yourself?”
She can’t stop herself, this time, from looking out the window, towards the forest.
Want is funny word. Maybe the wrong one. Rumi’s grip tightens again.
“It would keep you safe,” Celine answers. Honest instead of pedantic. They’ve been asking her to be honest, haven’t they, her girls?
"How?!" Rumi doesn't shout, but only because it doesn't feel like there's enough air in her lungs for shouting. "How the fuck would--"
"Language," Celine chides. The part of Rumi's brain that hasn't quite processed what is happening wants to laugh at her audacity.
it would keep you safe pulses inside her, like a brand.
Absurdly, Rumi finds herself thinking that she should call Bobby. Like a little kid needing a grown-up, except the grown-up Rumi should be able to call wants -- thinks that--
And Rumi doesn't feel much like a grown-up at all. She feels small and scared in a way that she hasn't been for years; not the kind of scared from fighting demons or what happened at the Idol Awards but the kind that you only feel in the middle of the night when you still believe the dark is full of monsters. Some nights, when it got too scary, Rumi used to grab her bear and run from her bed into Celine's, sure that the Sack Man was on her heels.
"I didn't mean to upset you," Celine's saying. Almost petulantly. Like Rumi's the one in the wrong, for not--
Not what? Thanking her?
Rumi's hand tightens involuntarily, like Celine's about to slip out of her reach. Her knuckles are bone-white.
"Celine," she says again, forcing the shakiness out of her voice. "How. The fuck. Would that make me safe?"
“I—“ and she chokes. Chokes and holds Rumi so tight that her fingers must be hurting, because Celine’s are, but when she tries to let go, Rumi refuses.
“I hurt—“ She tries again.
Celine remembers that night.
She chooses to remember it, for once, instead of the constant, breathless haunting it has become, waiting around every corner to show her the Honmoon burning and the dirt under her knees and Rumi’s bright, golden eye.
She does not know how Rumi could forget.
She has a new memory like that, now, of her girls. The wood of the kennel door and the stench of dried urine and the clink of metal on metal as the girl scurried back away from her. It had punched the air from her chest in a gasp of Rumi’s name and the girl had looked at her with so much fear and confusion and Celine—
Celine does not know how Rumi could forget.
“You already know,” she manages, broken and pathetic as a ruined dam, river rushing on. “You always knew I would. You came to me and asked me to hurt you, Rumi, you asked me to because you know what I am and I’m sorry, I tried, but—“
It's like a bad mystery novel or that board game Rumi used to like, the way the words arrange themselves in Celine's head: Rumi, under the tree, with the saingeom.
Other Rumi, in the kennel, with a muzzle.
(Celine, in the pond, with her hands.)
"I-- I didn't mean it," Rumi wails. Her voice is raw, an open wound, and Celine hates herself for making Rumi feel like she has to pretend, for Celine's sake.
Like she did when Rumi was small, Celine curls her free hand around the nape of Rumi's head and scritches her scalp, very lightly, with her fingernails. "Shush, Rumi-ya, I know," she lies. "Don't cry."
Rumi crumples, leans forward to bury her face in Celine's shirt and blubbers into it, all snot and tears. Without thinking, Celine lowers her arm to draw Rumi into a hug, and feels the shudder run right through Rumi's body.
Which. Makes sense. That Rumi wouldn't want - couldn't bear--
It's a moment in which Celine could almost hate that big heart of Rumi's. Too full of compassion, no matter how little Celine had ever deserved it; not for the first time, Celine finds herself thinking how much better it would have been if Miyeong had survived that night instead.
(If there's one other world, with its other Rumi and Mira and Zoey, then maybe there are more where Rumi had grown up with her mother. Had been loved the way she always should have been loved, wholly and without every choice that led them both to the tree, to the kennel.)
The door swings open, and Mira enters the kitchen. Her eyes dart between Rumi, distressed, pale, sobbing, and Celine, guilty.
A guttering lick of irritation - one which Celine has no right to feel anyway. Mira's a smart girl; she should be able to put the pieces together without needing to look at Celine like that. Like she's worried about her. Like Celine does anything other than hurt Rumi, over and over again.
"Zoey sent me in to distract you," Mira tells them. (From the hall, a muffled voice hisses "You weren't meant to say so!")
The corners of Mira's mouth pull upwards in an approximation of a smile. "Whoops."
It gets a thick, wet, hiccuping laugh from Rumi all the same. Mira hovers, just beyond Rumi's shoulder, clearly wanting to offer the comfort Celine can't give her. And that's good. It's good, it's good that Rumi has that in her girls, and it's good that they know they should intervene when Celine is left alone with her. It's good.
Rumi wants to stay burrowed in Celine’s arms forever, because at least then she’ll be certain that Celine is still alive, still warm and breathing and holding her and not doing something stupid.
She’s incredibly uncomfortable (hand on her back, near her collar, she knows it’s just Celine but it could still—), but she doesn’t care.
Celine still lets her go, tilting back her head. “Let’s find something to wipe your face on, hm?”
Like a little kid, Rumi finds her hand and clings to it, repeating, broken, “I didn’t mean it.”
She hadn’t, she didn’t, she’d just—
There was no one left.
She’d needed a Hunter to kill the demon, one who would understand that Rumi was trying. That she still wanted to be good, even if she’d thought that her best option was to zero herself out so she’d stop doing bad.
And Celine could fix anything. Some last, desperate, gaspingly hopeful part of her had known that Celine could fix any problem she had, and that was why it had led her home.
She hadn’t meant it.
Celine doesn’t draw her hand away as she leads Rumi and Mira from the kitchen in search of tissues, as if she’s somehow figured out just what Rumi’s stupid brain actually allows. “I know.”
The demon has been waiting for something like this. It didn't realise it at the time, but at the first sound of raised voices, it feels like a wire unspools in its chest.
Strange, though, how it doesn't sound like one of the old Celine's lessons. The demon doesn't think it recognises the loud voice at all.
You could find out, it thinks to itself. This Celine had said, hadn't she? The demon does not need to ask permission to go places. The demon is allowed. Especially in the kitchen, where the demon is also allowed to open the cabinets and the fridge and allowed to take things from them and allowed to eat anything it chooses; the demon knows these things because Celine told it so explicitly.
The demon stands, shakily. It wants to know. If there are things that are not allowed, and what the shape of the allowed-things looks like, and how it can tell the difference.
The other Zoey is sitting in the hall, knees drawn up to her chest. She looks up at the demon, her eyes all pink and shiny, and says, "Let's give them a minute to talk, Little Ru."
The demon shifts its weight from one foot to another. It is allowed - it is supposed to be allowed - Celine said the demon is allowed, and it does not need to ask for permission. But this Zoey is still a Hunter, and she is still telling the demon what to do.
It doesn't know whether disobedience is allowed.
Before it can decide whether or not it should test this, Celine is opening the door and guiding Rumi - hand in Rumi's patterned hand - arm linked with Rumi's patterned arm - tone low and soothing, the way this Celine had spoken to her in the kennel and the time after the kennel, the way that makes the demon want bad demon things.
(It does so now, seeing the way Rumi clings onto Celine. Seeing how this Zoey's attention snaps straight to Rumi's blotchy face, how this Mira's eyes are fixed on Rumi, how this Celine is looking at her with an expression the demon has never seen on the old Celine's face - and despite all of those things, Rumi is still covered in patterns and she is fussing and foul and manipulative and being a bad demon, and still this Celine is holding onto her and talking to her as though she has not noticed.)
(It wants. To tell them that Rumi is being bad, and the demon knows not to do that. It wants to tear Celine's hand away from Rumi's. To tuck herself against Celine's side in Rumi's place, where the demon could be quiet and would not try to manipulate anyone. To have someone hold its hand and look at it, just for a little bit.)
They are all there, now, watching as Celine takes Rumi to sit, gets her tissues, attempts to clean up the mess she has made. They should all see it, right in front of them.
They don’t seem to.
The girl, maybe, has hints of something that could be anger in her dark eyes, flicking over and over again to where Celine holds Rumi’s hand. But she does not intervene. And why would she? Not with what Celine has done to her.
Rumi blows her nose and presses her forehead into Celine’s shoulder. She does not say anything, make any more attempts at denial. Just leaves it there.
“So,” Mira says slowly. “I hear Zoey told you that you were an idiot?”
Rumi laughs again, snotty and short but real, and the girl’s eyes go wide.
“I didn’t—I wouldn’t—I don’t think you’re an idiot! Usually. Not in a mean way but you were kinda, uh…” Zoey trails off, burying her red face in her hands.
The girl looks at her, and at Celine, and waits, waits, waits. She knows. She sees.
So there's a loop and Mira's definitely out of it - all Zoey had garbled at her before shoving her into the kitchen was "It's bad - I told Celine she was an idiot- you gotta go help Rumi" and then Mira had walked in on the pair of them crying and clinging to one another.
Is that progress? Processing their feelings, instead of bottling them up?
Zoey - thank fucking God - doesn't look too worried now, just kinda embarrassed, and it's not like Celine's even cross with her. But Rumi looks half-torn open by whatever happened in the kitchen, burying her face in Celine's side, her breath catching in her throat until she can finally stop herself.
Without realising it, Mira and Zoey have both drawn closer to Rumi, wanting to be there whenever she's ready to resurface. The other Rumi too has done the same thing, although she's still standing a little further apart.
Other Rumi's wearing some of the new clothes, a pair of loose navy sweatpants and a cardigan open over a tank top. Mira looks at her outfit, looks over at what she nicknamed Celine's depression chic, and tries to subtly nudge Zoey to see if she can see it.
Zoey - not subtly at all - looks between Celine and Other Rumi and then grabs hold of Mira's hand.
(Mira should have seen it coming, really. From what they pieced together from her evil imposter, Celine is the first person in Other Rumi's life to treat her like a person, and Mira remembers what it had felt like, the heady weight of Kang Celine's confidence Mira could be good at this.)
Rumi's finally straightening up, searching for something in Celine's face, and it's only because Mira's looking at Other Rumi's outfit that she sees it - how Other Rumi adjusts her posture very slightly to angle herself further from Rumi, like a plant turning towards the sun.
"You were being an idiot, right?" Rumi asks, voice shaking with some kind of desperate hope Mira doesn't know how to read. "You didn't mean it- I didn't mean it-"
Rumi’s whole body kind of seizes up at Mira’s question. It’s not that she’s planning on lying, just—
She hasn’t been able to think about it much. What she did. And putting it to words means she has to make it real.
She watches the journey of Celine’s face, her mouth shifting as she considers how much of the truth she’s willing to give up, and the truth sinks through her, dragging her heart down into her shoes: it’s already real.
“I asked—“ Rumi sits up straight, breathes deep even as it drags snot places snot shouldn’t go.
“Rumi-ya,” Celine says, an offering.
Rumi shakes her head. No. She has to. “The night of the Idol Awards, after—I was stupid, I just—I thought I was going to destroy everything unless someone stopped me, and the only person who I hadn’t—hadn’t already seen, I guess, who might’ve had some kind of new idea…”
Zoey makes a sound, and it triggers Mira’s free hand to reach forward.
“I asked Celine to kill me,” she says, all at once, putting them all out of their misery.
And everything stops. One, two, three—
Zoey gasps. “Oh, Rumi!”
“I didn’t mean it,” she promises again, desperate to head their emotions off at the pass.
Her eyes meet the girl’s. In her face, at least, she sees something strangely comforting.
Celine's hand is still curled around Rumi's, and Rumi's hand is curled in hers, so she can't let go until Rumi also lets go, and instead Rumi holds her tighter. Like when she was very small and Celine would say "You have to hold my hand before we cross the road because it's dangerous" and Rumi would hold on tight, unwavering in her faith that Celine would protect her.
Zoey's mouth has fallen open in horror. Mira's hand shakes as she goes to reach for Rumi then thinks better of it and grabs at her sweater instead, and the other girl draws closer.
"Rumi," Zoey says hoarsely. "You wanted-- Because of us? You wanted to die, because of what we did?"
"No!" Two voices - Rumi's and Celine's - both deny it, and then look equally startled by the other.
It isn't about Celine - it is not Celine's place to speak, not when Rumi has her girls who will give her all the love Celine has never found within herself - so she shuts her mouth and waits for Rumi's condemnation.
Because of Celine, Rumi went to the tree. Because of Celine, Mira and Zoey had raised their weapons. Always, only ever Celine.
"It wasn't you," Rumi is saying. "It wasn't - And I didn't want to do that, I promise, I just didn't know what else to do."
Her voice cracks on the last word - broken, open, spilling her pain to the world, and still. Still, Rumi's hand is around hers, and the girls can see this and they are not trying to take her away to some place Celine cannot hurt her, and Celine doesn't understand.
The other girl. The one Rumi could have been. Slides the edge of her index finger against Celine's sleeve, a ghost of a touch, and she stays where she is. The other girl touching Celine who is touching Rumi who is also touching Celine, a closed-circuit of misery.
"...You didn't?" The other girl asks. Looking, not at Rumi, but at Celine herself.
You did, Celine thinks, and she cannot tell if the voice she hears say it is her own or Miyeong's. In every way that counts, you did.
The demon is allowed to live because it is not bad in the same way that other demons are—it could never be good, of course, but in its selfish demon ways, it can be motivated to avoid the Hunters’ blades for as long as possible. So it is obedient and it fights with the Hunters instead of against them, and it is not killed.
It knows, in the end, that the Hunters will seal the Honmoon and it will be banished to Gwi-Ma’s realm for all eternity if it is not killed, and because it is selfish, it doesn’t really want either of those things.
And yet Rumi had been good.
Rumi had asked this Celine to kill her, not because she wanted it but because she was being bad.
And this Celine hadn’t.
(The demon, when it was small, woke up once and the other Celine had been standing there and looking at it and she had been holding one of her swords and it had growled. Because it was bad and it was afraid and it was bad.
And she’d said, “Give me a reason.”
But the demon had stayed very still. And it thought, I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die, for the first time, not with the words but deep inside itself.)
“No,” Celine agrees, her voice soft.
And the demon wants to be the kind of good that Rumi is, the kind of bad that Rumi is, if it looks like this.
The girls know everything, and Celine - who has always been a selfish little coward - can’t bring herself to see the accusations in their eyes. She looks towards the new girl instead, whose eyes go wide with fright, and finds that even worse.
If there was any decency left within Celine, this would be the time for her to release Rumi, let her be comforted properly, but she doesn’t want to do that either.
She had wanted this to be taken care of neatly, for them. Had wanted to avoid seeing the moment they realised what she was. But she hadn’t deserved it and it wasn’t fair to want things from them, and it wouldn’t matter for much longer anyway so there’s no point in getting upset.
The girl Rumi could have been moves her hand. It could be a twitch, or a tremble. But it gets closer to Celine’s arm, and she holds very still.
Rumi looks at them. Rumi looks at her, and the girl she could have been, and every fault and fear and broken promise, and says, quietly, “I didn’t want to die. Not really. I just thought I had to- to protect the Honmoon.”
There is not a single thought in Celine’s head, just a crack in some rotted corner of her heart that remembers what it felt like to take Rumi in her arms when she had been small enough she could hold her forever, as she blurts “Fuck the Honmoon.”
Zoey, dazedly, is fairly certain that she just won a bet she and Mira made back when they were kids.
She’s never heard Celine swear before, at least not in Korean.
Rumi laughs, jagged and snotty, and tugs with her free hand on the iridescent threads of their new Honmoon. “Yeah, uh, I kinda took care of that one.”
Mira makes a sound, her hand curling in Rumi’s sleeve, but Rumi looks at Celine, as Zoey stands there uselessly, and it seems to really hit her, that Celine just—said that. The way it’s hit the rest of them.
Celine. Celine who she asked to kill her because she thought Celine would do her duty because both of them are so incredibly normal. Celine who has been acting as if that makes her the same as the other Celine, the evil Celine, as if she has always been the evil Celine, as if everything she does is bringing her to the inevitable conclusion of some rigged plinko machine of fate.
That Celine.
“I’m sorry,” she says, falling apart again. “Celine, I’m so—“
“For what?” Celine asks her, quiet, turning to her, pulling their joined hands into her lap in a way that would look almost comforting if Zoey weren’t hearing the moment where she went and said Aren’t I? all over again.
The air between them is one giant bruise. Instinctively, Mira grips Rumi's arm, the way they've grabbed each other a thousand times before -dancing and fighting, giving and taking the weight to keep each other standing. She doesn't know which one of them needs it most now: she feels sick at the idea that it might be her.
Horrifyingly, she looks past Rumi, over to Mira and Zoey: "None of it was your fault. I'm the one who taught you to react like that. I'm the one who drove you all to that point--"
"Please don't," Zoey whimpers, but Celine doesn't seem to hear. Her eyes are unfocused, her thumb tracing small lines over Rumi's knuckles.
"I hurt you. I treated you like you weren't even a person, and I taught you to expect that from everyone else," she says, her voice hollow and aching. She looks at Rumi as she speaks. She looks at the other girl. She looks down at the places where their hands are touching. "I would have treated you worse than a dog, Rumi-ya. Like you're some kind of creature. I saw--"
She breaks off and looks straight at the other girl. "I should have cared for you, do you understand? That was my responsibility to you. Not to hurt you, or lock you up or demand you work for me."
The other girl is frowning as Celine talks but doesn't pull away.
Mira tilts her head. "...You are aware that, factually, you did not do those things."
It probably isn't a good sign that Zoey shakes her head.
"The Honmoon was supposed to protect people, and then it couldn't do that any more.," Celine continues, her voice dropping to a pained whisper. " You did the right thing by destroying it, Rumi-ya. The world is better off for it."
Mira's stomach jolts. Oh shit, she thinks, please don't let this be a metaphor for anything.
“Stop saying that,” Rumi demands, releasing Celine’s hand to grab her by the shoulders and shake her.
As Mira half-trips to suddenly lose her grip, the other girl jerks back from the sudden movement, arms spasming outward and eyes narrowing in a quick, startled shift.
Rumi is tearing up again, however angrily. “Stop acting like it would be a good thing if you—please, you aren’t like that.”
“But I am,” Celine insists, voice breaking on it, hands fluttering up like she wants to grab Rumi’s or maybe to hold her and then stopping themselves again, and Zoey just gives Mira this terrified, pained, do you see now? look as they all watch one of the bedrock foundations of their world crumble.
Shit. Shit.
Before she can come up with the words for this, any kind of words for this, how her world is tilting off its axis in desperate denial, the other girl moves again, her hand settling over Rumi’s.
Like a static shock, Rumi and Celine both spasm this time, turning in the same moment to look at her.
The demon touches Rumi, touches Celine, does it on purpose without thinking about the potential corrections to come. Partly because the demon knows that some things are allowed here - even for demons, even when they are bad in all the ways the demon has ever been; even when they find new ways to be bad on top of that - but mostly because another, worse fear grips it.
The demon doesn’t understand why this Celine is saying that she is the one who locked it up - not when this Celine was the one who took her out of the chains and into the world and who fought the other Celine for the demon’s sake and who promised the demon would be safe and who gave the demon its first-best hug. It doesn’t understand why this Celine is saying she would have done things that she did not do.
But it does understand why a Celine might decide something very bad - worse than the normal demon kind of bad, bad in ways the demon had managed to avoid - would have to be put down. If something gave her a reason.
(Rumi had given her a reason. Rumi had asked, to be good. And Celine had not wanted to make her good, not like that.)
(The other Celine would not have waited to be asked.)
“No,” the demon says. Its voice comes out wispy and unpracticed, but it needs to be said because if this Celine dies then she will never hold the demon’s hand again, so she tries again.
“No!” The demon’s voice slips to a growl. Its patterns flash, and the Honmoon echoes.
Rumi starts to say something but the demon does not want to listen- the demon hates this Rumi, who has always had this Celine, and who is talking like Celine is going away, and who has a Mira and a Zoey already fussing over it now too, and who has been worse than the demon and never taught how to behave, and.
The demon does not want to manipulate people like Rumi, but its eyes sting and its voice shakes, and a hand settles against its jaw like it still deserves to be touched anyway.
The demon knows this Celine is not like the other Celine because Rumi is not like the demon. They do not have a kennel and they do not have a muzzle and Rumi has long pretty hair and Celine has told her things about Rumi’s favourite food because Rumi is allowed to have favourite things not in secret and Celine learns them and.
Her fingers flutter, an attempt at gentleness, and the girl Rumi could have been tightens her grip a little in answer, pressing Rumi’s hand down in turn.
Celine is stubborn. But she can learn, sometimes, give a little before she breaks, and as the injustice of it all, the fucking cruelty of it all, rips through her yet again, she doesn’t need to have someone spell out what it means.
She might not be good, but the other Celine was worse.
“She should’ve given you a name,” Celine says, careful on the words, careful with her hands. “We’ll find you one now.”
They should’ve already done this. It—Miyeong always knew it would be Rumi. Just scribbled the name down one day and handed it over with perfect certainty. (She—the other Celine—would’ve had to take the name away, not just not give it.) But there are other names, or names that are similar—something with Mi in them, give the girl her family ties—
The girl’s head tilts a little, seeking eye contact. “You gave her a name?”
Not a command anymore, but a question.
“Miyeong came up with it, bu—“
The girl shakes her head, growls slightly, frustrated with her slowness. “You gave her a name?”
Rumi is no longer the only one crying. In fact, she's pretty sure that the only dry eyes left in the room belong to Celine who looks pole-axed.
Celine, who had rescued the girl from her chains. Celine, who had looked at someone with patterns and fangs and decided to see her as a person. (Celine who - Rumi is fairly sure - has not noticed the fact the other girl is dressed exactly like her.) Celine, who promised the other girl she would be safe and fought off her evil counterpart for the girl.
Celine, who literally brought the girl into this world.
Celine, who knows all of those things and still somehow manages to be shocked at the idea that the other girl would want a name from her.
Rumi knows the story of how she got her own name - it's one Celine used to like telling her, how Miyeong had written it down and presented it to Celine like she was handing over a gift, then left Celine looking through hanja to figure out how to actually write it.
Ru, like the stars. Mi as in beautiful, as in Miyeong.
"I can look up some baby names," Zoey blubs, while Celine is still - despite the girl smacking her over the head with the truth - working to get over some mental roadblock.
The girl's face falls, ever so slightly.
"Celine's got this," Rumi says. "People get names from their families, right?"
That's enough to set Mira and Zoey off again. Celine, for her part, just blinks rapidly and gives Rumi a short nod, like she's preparing herself for something.
"If you don't like it, we can think of something else," she promises. "It's important to find something that feels right for you."
The girl's hand squeezes Rumi's. Carefully, Rumi squeezes right back.
And Celine, tentatively, says, "What do you think about Sarang?"
Through the years, Mira got used to defy and go against Celine every chance she got.
It started as a rebellious thing really. Even if Celine was the coolest adult she had ever met, she was still the authority figure. And despite Celine being ten times better than her own parents, there were times she didn't agree with the things she asked them (or Rumi in particularly) to do. So from the very beginning, she made sure to call her out whenever she thought something was unfair or ridiculous.
What encouraged Mira to continue doing it, and never backing down, was seeing how incredibly impasible Celine always remained. Not once throughout her training, did she manage to make Celine raise her voice at her. Celine never chastised her nor punished her. The biggest reaction she ever got was Celine crossing her arms over her chest or raising an eyebrow.
So, as an adult and acclaimed idol, Mira felt like she had more than enough reason to keep this up. No longer a teenager, she had more respect for Celine obviously, but she never kept her mouth shut when she thought something was not right or unfair. She'd let her anger control her and she'd go against Celine when needed.
After the truth about Rumi's patterns comes to light, and Mira learns about Celine's role in Rumi's lies. Mira wastes no time in facing Celine. Her anger makes her go see her before Rumi and Celine get the chance to make amends (they have already discussed the events of that night but they aren't in good terms just yet). And despite defying Celine for years and years, nothing prepared Mira for the one time that Celine reacts.
Anger and anguish mix together, and for the first time Celine bites back. And it hurts. It hurts more than Mira could have ever imagined.
"I'm the only hunter in Rumi's life who didn't raise a weapon at her."
How she felt so justified in her accusations, a crusader with a standard.
How she was ready to take pride in this, like she had all the other times.
How Celine kept quiet at first, like the other times.
How Celine reminded herself that Mira, though an adult, was still young.
How this was coming from a place of stress and anger.
How lashing back wasn't the answer.
How Mira kept going longer than Celine anticipated.
How Mira's words were a piece of flint, sending sparks into tinder.
How the tinder smoldered.
How the smoke carried images of that night, of her daughter driven to that singular most horrible request because two-thirds of her soul had rejected her in the most hurtful way possible.
How her worst fear, the nightmare that had kept her awake many a night, had come true.
How she shut her eyes and saw images of Rumi dead at their hands.
How she almost had to bury her daughter.
How she finally snaps, sparks leaping from her tongue.
And how the haunting through Mira's been bodily keeping at bay, burying beneath anger at Celine, bursts from the mental box she's shoved it in.
You drove Rumi to try and end her life. Her blood was very nearly on your hands.
Imagine Celine post Rumi's birth at the Hanok going through records trying to secretly find anything she can about small demons or half-demons. Rumi, bundled up in a sling against her front hidden from the elder hunters that live there still.
Celine discovering that Rumi is not the first half demon. She's just the first half demon that's been allowed to live.
Celine vowing immediately that absolutely no one else will ever know about Rumi's patterns.
Celine putting Rumi in a wool-knit hat to cover her dark purple curls and a onesie to cover the two small lines on her arm before heading to the hanok to go through the archives, trying to find anything that can help her figure out how to even being to raise a child like her.
(Do the patterns mean that she already belongs to Gwi-ma? Celine wonders. Do they mean she's already lost her soul?)
And the archives are absolutely no help.
Rumi isn't the first child born from a human and a demon. Far from it in fact. The other children -- infants, if she's being precise -- never live for very long.
Of the 107 demon-human children known to the archives, 56 were stillborn, 31 died within the first six months, none had lived past five. Most of them had simply...faded, growing weaker and weaker no matter what their caretaker had tried. 11 had tried to eat the souls of their caretakers. 4 had shifted into something so inhuman that they were put out of their misery. 21 had been drowned (or abandoned or smothered or) -- reasons unknown.
Celine holds Rumi close, tucks the baby to her chest; wondering if it would be kinder to kill the baby now than to see her starve or twist into something monstrous or for her to be taken away and abandoned on the side of a mountain.
"Just breath, unnie," Miyeong had said. "No one is expecting us to save the honmoon overnight."
Celine had nodded. "One day at a time right?"
"One day at a time, Rumi-ya," Celine murmurs into the soft curls of Rumi's hair. "We'll figure it out, the two of us."
