They’d crammed themselves into bed, Celine-Rumi-Mira-Zoey, barely fitting. Over the course of however long they’ve slept for, Rumi has migrated onto Celine, draped atop her with her face tucked into Celine’s neck and her legs sprawled across Mira’s calves. Completing the Mira-furnace is Zoey, curled right up against Mira’s other side and snoring softly.
After a moment, it becomes clear that Celine was the one who woke her. She’s gently shaking Rumi, who makes a disgruntled sound and tries to bury her face deeper into Celine’s neck.
“Please stop,” whispers Mira.
“If you girls don’t get up soon, you’ll ruin your sleep schedule,” says Celine, much louder than Mira would like. Zoey twitches and begins making the soft snuffle-snorts that Mira knows precedes waking.
“Ever since you died, Rumi hasn’t had a sleep schedule,” Mira whisper-hisses, frustrated. This is the most peaceful rest she’s seen Rumi get in months. “Management had to move her out of the trainee dorms because her nightmares kept waking everyone else in the room.”
“Wuzza? M’ name?” Rumi lifts her head, bleary eyed. A beat later, she shoots up onto her arms, her eyes bulging as she stares at Celine.
“Good afternoon, jagiya,” says Celine. “Sleep well?”
“I thought…” Rumi laughs wetly. “I thought it was all a dream. But it wasn’t. You’re back.”
Celine winces. “… For a few days, yes.”
The joy and relief slide off of Rumi’s face. “What do you mean?”
“When I travel like this,” says Celine, “it is typically only for three days or so. Then I switch back with the version of myself I replaced.”
It’s fitting, Mira thinks distantly, that the dead return for Chuseok only.
“Can’t you stay longer?” Rumi pleads, grabbing fistfuls of Celine’s sleep shirt. “We’re not ready. I’m not ready. ”
Celine reaches up and gently wipes Rumi’s burgeoning tears away with her thumbs. “I’m sorry, jagiya, but I really have no control over it at all.”
“Do you know how it’s happening?” asks Zoey, sitting up and peering down at Celine.
Rumi, on the other hand, has an expression that Mira has come to learn means that she’s working herself up about something. “Only three days, and we wasted precious hours on sleeping!” she exclaims angrily. “There’s so much we need to do, there’s so much I need to learn, Mira still hasn’t—”
Celine raises an eyebrow, and Rumi shuts her mouth with a click. (And Mira’s hackles rise, even though she tells herself that this is normal, this doesn’t mean anything, her instincts are not helpful here).
“Sleep is important,” says Celine mildly. “As is food.”
At the reminder, all three of their stomachs growl. Mira casts her mind back, trying to determine when they last ate, and realizes it must have been some snacks on the ferry ride over last night. Rumi had rushed them to the graveyard as soon as they pulled up to the hanok, distraught at its sate of overgrowth, and neither Mira nor Zoey had the heart to ask for a breakfast break. Or a lunch break, for the matter. It must now be mid-afternoon and Mira is starving.
Obtaining food, however, is less simple. All the local restaurants are closed for Chuseok, and Celine opened the refrigerator and immediately slammed it back closed again. Mira realizes that they hadn’t thought to empty out the refrigerator in the devastation after Celine’s death. The last dinner she ever cooked for them has been sitting in there, molding over, for months.
“I’m sorry,” says Rumi, “I didn’t think…”
“Your were grieving children,” dismisses Celine, and normally Mira would object to being treated like a child (she’ll be nineteen in just a few years, which means she’s practically an adult already), but Celine’s voice is so heavy with… regret?… that she hears no condescension in the statement.
Celine pulls a package of frozen meat out of the freezer and hands it to Zoey to defrost. She assigns Mira the task of cooking the rice (the only thing – barring ramyeon – that Mira can be trusted to cook, because her culinary skills consist of applying boiling water to the situation and nothing else). Then she turns to Rumi. “Come,” she says. “Let us check the jangdokdae and see what we can find in the garden.”