And hopefully it writes well

Odds and ends that I collect here and there

[secondtolastrow]

Blood cult au part sixteen (first, most recent, masterpost)

Currently: the gang are hiding out at Miyeong’s apartment, and spent the morning working through some very mundane trauma… only for Minji’s grandmother to give them a reminder that the wraiths are looking for them. At least they got to see the healing spirit first?

“I’m pro-biting, really,” Zoey says cheerfully, and Mira starts choking for air.

Rumi isn’t entirely sure why, given the circumstances, but she persists nonetheless. “It is a useful tactic in battle, and often quite hard to treat—is that still so?”

Minji-nim nods, clinging to the question as the life preserver it was intended to be. “We have a lot of bacteria in our mouths. Part of why this was so stupid of me.”

She stuck out her tongue to show the scab.

Ah—bacteria, the small creatures that plague all sorts of beings. Rumi must stop being surprised by how many ailments they are the cause of.

Rumi allows them a moment to breathe and settle, watching the shift of Miyeong-nim’s hands on Minji-nim’s wrists. They seem calm, now, or at least calm enough to address the matter at hand.

“If the wraiths are continuing to search you out, then we must take an active stance,” she says, as calmly as she can.

Mira makes another face, this one mildly displeased. It is delightful to see how much more freely her face moves now, but… unfortunately distracting. Rumi must seek some sort of self-control.

“You just got shot yesterday,” she grumbles. “Are we actually about to go diving into another fight?”

“I mean, hey, if we go seeking it out, then we’ve got better odds than getting woken up at one a.m., or being drugged first,” Zoey points out, less to argue than to provoke some optimism about their future into the situation.

“Getting drugged first?” Miyeong-nim echoes, confused, even as she pulls Minji-nim down onto the couch with her, preparing for a longer conversation outside the quiet of her bedroom (as she prefers for research).

Zoey wiggles her fingers in a wave as she flops back onto the armchair. “The cult guys hit me with a roofie first. Very unfair of them.”

It is, perhaps, a testament to the situation that Rumi has put them all in that Miyeong merely shrugs her acknowledgment, while Mira perches on the arm of the chair to declare dryly, “Fair play wasn’t really one of their core values.”

“If we’re plotting,” Minji adds, “I guess we should wait for Celine—oh, speak of the devil.”

The front door has opened again, letting Celine in, and leaving Rumi grasping after what the meaning of that idiom could be.

[the-fallen-blue]

Minji has been pre-gaming a little, since Celine made Mira put the evil book away and sent them back out into the living room (Rumi has too, but apparently she just doesn't get super drunk so Zoey's giving her a pass). She also still seems a little thrown from whatever happened this morning (which is maybe why she's pre-gaming, in which case, fair). Zoey is trying to decide how rude it would be to ask if she's fully up to plotting, before they get into it, when the impossible happens—

"We have been taking an active stance," says Celine, calmly but firmly disagreeing with Rumi. "We would only put ourselves in greater danger by moving faster than is wise. We have been training the others to reduce the risk of engagement. We have been gathering information on our enemy, who we had not even located until two days ago, and about whom we are still lacking significant intelligence. We have been recovering from extremely compromising injuries," and she says that with so much annoyance and distaste Zoey has to hold back a giggle.

(Okay, maybe she's also had a beer in the last half hour. Or a little tiny bit more than that. But they cracked open the samosa box for an afternoon snack and Zoey's tolerance for spice is moderate at best, she needed something to cool herself off. It's fine, she could still do the alphabet backwards. She can do that when she's plastered, actually, courtesy of working in a library shelving books for several years, but the point is, it's fine, she didn't actually giggle, she just wanted to. She's totally good.)

"We have been taking action appropriate to our original situation," Rumi says, just as polite, just as firm. "Our situation has changed. The honorable river spirit has restored Mira and yourself to your full capabilities. Zoey and Miyeong-nim have shown consistent accuracy with the shinkal, and Mira has gained access to her family's knowledge of wraiths. Our enemy escalates, and threatens Minji-nim's family. Our response must change as well."

Celine is unmoved. "Minji-ssi's grandmother is safe, and has bought us time," and then Zoey completely zones out the rest, because there's a tapping, on the windowpane, and she pulls herself out of the armchair and beelines to let Suspicion-ssi in.

"You're early for the party," Zoey murmurs, though there isn't really a reason to be quiet; Rumi and Celine fell silent once they saw what she was doing.

The spirit caws and puffs up, I'm doing you a favor, there can't be a party until I'm here, drawing a chuckle out of Celine that she tries unsuccessfully to disguise as a cough.

But she turns grim at Suspicion-ssi's next words, turning back to Rumi with a heavy sigh, and then a wry smile and an apologetic dip of her head and shoulders. "It seems you have the clearer view of the situation, Rumi-nim."

"What did the bird say," says Miyeong, fingers pressing into her temples, a woman who does not want the answer to her question but feels obligated to ask it anyway.

Suspicion-ssi nips lightly at Zoey's ear, and Zoey swallows and translates, "They're making new wraiths."

[secondtolastrow]

Rumi-nim hisses through her teeth, making a face, and Celine finds herself feeling much the same way.

A part of her is still processing the rest of her conversation with Minji-ssi’s grandmother—a formidable woman, even in passing, but certainly one willing to gossip about her granddaughter’s habits once she understood that Celine only wanted to help—in spite of how much the current one demands all of her attention.

Kkachi-ssi continues, and it’s all she can do not to wince.

“And, uh, working their way up, obviously,” Zoey adds. “Big goal is Gwi-Ma. But right now it’s dead guy central.”

“How far along are they?” Mira asks, gaze lidded and calm, but voice tight.

The summoner is an amateur, Kkachi-ssi declares. The wraith has to teach him everything. Unfortunately, the sacrifice won’t need to be big to get results, so it’ll probably be soon once he gets the idea.

“Uh, still on bookwork?” Zoey translates. “But with everything… it’s gonna be easy once they get all the pieces in place.”

“Wraiths can only be summoned at twilight,” Mira points out. “So we’ve got at least a day and a half?”

Kkachi-ssi caws her agreement. You are not skipping my party.

“We would never,” Celine agrees. It would be a great insult to meet the aid and favor of a spirit not just with no returned tribute, but with the promise thereof and then its withdrawal. She would hate to see that beak set to work with any actual malice.

This, perhaps, is too solemn a response for Kkachi-ssi’s taste, as she sends her triplicate side eye Celine’s way.

“Suspicion-ssi reminds us that the party is mandatory,” Zoey explains and, from the looks on Minji-ssi and Rumi-nim’s faces, probably quite necessarily.

“Well, at least there’s that,” Miyeong-ssi says brightly. “How fucked are we in general, though? We brought six to ten down to four to eight, what would this go up to?”

Kkachi-ssi shuffles her feet, feathers rustling. Zoey translates. “Maybe four this first time. They’ve got a lot of power, but not focus.”

[the-fallen-blue]

Unfortunately, before the party can start, Miyeong has to talk to the damn bird again.

She reports, through Zoey— who, based on Celine's varying, not-quite-controlled facial expressions, is working very hard to moderate the magpie's snark— that several of the wraiths frequenting the target building wear the logo of Changwon Commercial Shipping, that they're in and out at roughly eight-hour intervals, and they have at least one car ("Hate that for us," says Mira flatly, with the voice of experience). The magpie remembers the plate, and Miyeong writes it down for further inspection, and gives the most gracious thank-you she can manage; the spirit did find out everything she asked it for, after all.

Zoey's polite "She says you're welcome" would be more convincing if the bird wasn't squinting all six eyes and sniggering when she says it.

And then Zoey and Mira are off to set up the folding table, and Minji and Rumi are putting the food and alcohol out in the kitchen, buffet-style, and it's Thursday, so Miyeong goes out on the balcony to water her plants. Because this is the day she waters her plants. Restraining herself from starting a fight with a bird is not a factor.

Celine follows her out and leans against the railing, amused. "You know she picks on you because you react so strongly."

"Bully logic from the spirit world," Miyeong shoots back.

"Friendly teasing," Celine corrects, but she does sound genuinely sympathetic.

And honestly, Miyeong will take the pity; it's probably better than whatever she'll get if she actually tries to argue with a mudang about a spirit, so she just shakes her head and changes the subject.

"How was the conversation with Minji's gran?"

"…. illuminating," says Celine.

"Yeah?" Miyeong's done watering, so she just leans next to Celine. "What's our concern level, there, generally? Because mine isn't zero."

Celine considers it, the slightest crease in her brow. "… not zero, no. Her grandmother had some insight, but..." She pauses. Still thinking about it, Miyeong thinks. Illuminating, but maybe not immediately obvious what to do with it.

"She'll need you," Celine finally says, one thing at least that she's apparently sure of, "once the wraiths are dealt with and she's able to start contacting her friends."

Start finding out who's left alive, she means.

Miyeong tips her head back and traces a striated line of cirrus clouds across the sky. "You know, some of them are my friends too?"

It feels strange to say, comes out uncertain, but—

"It's not, I haven't thought about it at all, but. Take Donghyun, he's a radiology tech, constantly snacking, has a niece he helps his sister take care of, he's an absolute idiot. If you asked me who I'm close to, his name wouldn't cross my mind— but I've known him for the better part of a decade, met his family, know his coffee order and his go-to cocktail after work. And if he was on shift that day? If I never see him again—"

She'd thought Minji didn't like her. She'd thought Sieun found her vaguely annoying on Minji's behalf. She thought the whole lot of them mostly just tolerated her because she was Yeonggi's girlfriend, and kept inviting her out once he was gone out of, what, inertia? But she was wrong about Minji, probably wrong about all of them, and if she never hears Donghyun try to goad someone into a stupid bet again…

"I'd genuinely miss him. I'd miss all of them, I think. They're good people." She sighs. "Poor Minji."

[secondtolastrow]

“You are allowed to just feel bad for yourself,” Celine points out. She doesn’t give any of the caveats politeness begs that she add—they both know Minji-ssi is suffering, and Miyeong-ssi doesn’t need any paths to minimizing her own pain further.

Miyeong pauses a moment, and then snorts, still studying the sky. “Would you believe that you’re not the first person to tell me that?”

Celine is certainly startled by it, and she afreely admits as much.

“Yeonggi,” Miyeong explains, a slight smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I always thought he didn’t like it when I talked about my exes because he was insecure, but… it might not have all been that.”

A surprisingly clear-eyed view of the man, after Minji-ssi’s assessment that she’d thought him too good for her. Idly, Celine wonders what he was really like.

“Who would you say you’re close to?” she asks, instead, which is a slightly more relevant matter.

Miyeong-ssi does not answer her for a long time.

It’s not the first time that she has had such a response to that kind of question. She’s seen it in almost every way possible, she thinks.

“You?”

Everything stops. Fragments. Reconstitutes itself, fundamentally changed.

Miyeong laughs a little. “Kind of pathetic, but—I don’t know. I’ve been out of practice with talking to people about hard things for a long time now. So… Minji, and you, and the kids.”

“Fear has a tendency to linger in the strangest of places,” Celine replies, almost automatically.

She feels as if someone has changed the oxygen content of the air, or maybe the strength of gravity. Lightheaded. She holds on to the balcony rail tightly, hoping not to fall, though she knows that it’s silly.

You.

“…I guess so,” Miyeong says. “You’ve got a proverb for everything, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” Celine answers.

Miyeong smiles at her, and Celine thinks that she might just be okay with living in this gravity.

[serpentbeardwrites]

Mira decides that the magpie spirit is out to get her specifically. The moment Celine steps out with Miyeong, the spirit alights herself on Zoey’s head. There is a vicious gleam in her six eyes as she looks between Mira and Rumi. The spirit squawks once.

Zoey glances at Rumi, and her face turns a pretty shade of bright red. “I am not translating that.”   The spirit nips her ear.

Zoey wrings her hands, “Suspicion-ssi would like you to shift the table to the left.”

Rumi smiles and bows to the spirit. “Of course, Kkachi-nim.”

Under the magpie spirit’s haughty gaze, Mira and Minji transfer the platters and glasses from the folding table onto Miyeong’s table.

Rumi lifts the folding table and shifts it to the left. The magpie spirit caws indignantly.  “Ah, suspicion-ssi meant the other table.”

Mira bites back a sigh, the bird gives them all the smuggest side-eye as they clear the platters from Miyeong’s table and put them back on the folding table.

With one smooth movement, Rumi lifts Miyeong’s table as easily as Mira would lift a paper cup. She has to fight to keep her jaw closed as Rumi’s shirt does precious little to hide her lithe muscles working underneath.

Minji gives her a knowing look. Mira can’t find it in herself to care, as with grace that would make a ballerina green with envy, Rumi moves the table to the magpie spirit’s desired spot.  “Is this location acceptable, Kkachi-nim?” She asks.

From her perch on Zoey’s head, the magpie spirit radiates judgment. 

Confusion then surprise shoots across Zoey’s face. “But she jus—” 

The bird cuts Zoey off with a nip on the ear.

She sighs and gives way.  “Suspicion-ssi asks that you, uh, put that table down, she meant the other other table” 

Other other table? Mira looks around Miyeong’s apartment. Rumi has moved all the… Her eyes catch on the coffee table.  

“Oh, as you wish,” Rumi says, as she strides over to the coffee table and carefully removes the TV remote.

The coffee table is a squat, heavy thing; it has clearly been well-loved. Rumi lifts it like it’s nothing.

Mira’s throat goes dry.

“Do you need help with that?” Mira asks, mostly for the sake of saying something.  

A playfully affronted look crosses Rumi’s face, “There is no need—” With that dangerous gleam in her eye, Rumi shifts her weight slightly and pulls one hand out from under the coffee table. “—for I am quite comfortable here.”

Mira’s jaw drops, the bird cackles and flits over to perch atop one of the nicer wine glasses. Her three eyes narrow at Mira.

She sees Zoey’s sharp intake of breath out of the corner of her eye. 

“Suspicion-ssi says you may put the coffee table down; she now requests karaoke.” Zoey translates. Minji crows with laughter. She says something about fetching Celine and Miyeong.

Mira doesn’t hear her as she feels the floor drop out from under her.

That fucking bird.

[secondtolastrow]

Blood cult au part fourteen (Lord have mercy) (first, most recent, masterpost)

Currently: our crew is hiding out in Miyeong’s apartment while trying to track some wraiths and prepare for battle—Minji and Celine making lunch, Miyeong and Zoey doing a Heist TM of Zoey’s belongings, and Rumi and Mira stealing some of Mira’s mother’s books. Unfortunately, on the way out, they’ve been stopped by someone who seems to have business with Mira.

“Park Seonggi-ssi,” Mira says. Her voice is soft, even with respect to the whisper she has been restrained to since Rumi met her, the usual easy roughness of it restrained. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today. Is there something you needed from my father?”

It’s… unnerving, watching her disappear. How awful, that she has been forced to survive in such ways.

“You, actually,” Park says, dead-eyed smile remaining firmly in place.

Mira’s eyebrows raise, an arch expression that sits oddly well on her face. “Really?”

Rumi shifts to brace herself, and begins visualizing how to remove herself from the unobtrusive position that she has taken and place herself between Mira and Park, preparing to take out the guards—she’s unfamiliar with the objects at their hips, but they don’t appear much like weapons.

“Yes, I had a thought regarding some of the accounts from that last merger, you know, and given how involved you were, I assumed you might want to take care of it with me,” he says.

“…That sounds like something to run past my father,” Mira says, careful and firm and starting to step past him.

And he grabs her arm. “Mira-ssi—“

He does not get any further than that.

Rumi does not need much force at all, or indeed any elegance, to simply remove Park’s arm and force him back a step into his guards.

She feels as much as sees his breath catch, and vicious satisfaction curls in her chest like a dragon, seeing such a man realize that he is small and fragile and could shatter at her thought, when he had attempted to misuse what power he does have.

Low and cold, she says, “You should not put your hands on someone without permission.”

“Hey—“ One of the guards starts, and she turns her gaze upon them.

The man’s face pales, but he continues, almost admirably, “Ma’am, you need to step away from Vice President Park Seonggi right now, or I will be forced to remove you from the premises.”

Rumi, however, does not listen to trained dogs. “Mira,” she asks casually, “have you called our conveyance?”

[the-fallen-blue]

When Rumi rips Park's hand off Mira's wrist, Mira has four conflicting thoughts in very quick succession.

First is that she's glad she didn't try to talk Rumi out of bringing the sword, after all.

Second is that that's a stupid thing to think, because these aren't supernatural horrors in a dark alley, they're human assholes in the middle of the hall in the heart of the Kang chaebol empire, and she can't actually just sic Rumi on these guys, that's not how the world works.

Third is that, wait a minute. That's exactly how the world works, Park's goons literally have guns, is the entire point and purpose of this confrontation not the threat of physical violence if she doesn't comply?

Fourth is that Park's goons literally have guns, thanks so much for that, Kunwoo-sachon, you unbearable twit (and Abeoji had rolled his eyes, too, had said "what are we, some classless Yakuza outfit or silly posturing Americans?" but he'd still signed off on the KNPA bribe, hadn't he), and as much as Rumi is a badass, she probably has no idea what a gun even is and that's maybe not the best position to be trying to fight people with them from.

So Mira puts on her slickest, most dangerous voice, the one she and Jaeho used to practice with each other, snickering, hiding out from Abeoji's parties on roofs and in coatrooms and behind kitchens, and tries to talk the men's hands off their weapons.

"A moment, Rumi," calm, like she's totally in control here. "I'm sure Park-ssi meant no insult," and just a hint of contempt, for that, like she's doing him a kindness, letting him pretend he wouldn't be fool enough to act above his place. "He is a longtime employee of my family, and there's no reason for a simple conversation with such a reliable friend to escalate to anything unpleasant."

She can't quite tell if the intimidation hits, but Park does say, carefully, "... of course. I apologize for my... enthusiasm," apparently at least willing to see where she's going, now that she's not trying to leave.

"Mira," murmurs Rumi, letting go of Park but still very pointedly standing between her and the men. "We should not linger here."

She can hear it, the hope behind the words, the desire to fix this for Mira, to keep her safe, like her presence alone isn't the only reason Mira is still upright and not screaming. Mira reaches out, mostly invisible to the men behind Rumi's broad shoulders, and brushes her hand briefly against the small of Rumi's back, the most reassurance she can afford.

Her words, she keeps directing at Park. "We unfortunately have obligations of our own. However, I respect your concern for the company and its affairs. It's especially important, now, with so much of the family... unavailable to provide their opinions."

Park's eyes narrow, to Mira's immense satisfaction. Serves him right for trying to make threatening veiled insinuations to a Kang, like her family didn't basically invent the practice.

"With that in mind, I'm sure I can find time for you tomorrow, or the day after, if you wish to arrange a more formal meeting. But at the moment, I'm afraid I have other messes to clean up. So, if you will stand aside."

She channels her mother at her most imperious, her father at his most arrogant, puts every last millimeter of her height and every iota of contempt for this company that she has ever felt into staring down her nose at Park, and prays it will take.

[secondtolastrow]

The bus ride back is really weird—without having committed any actual crime, Zoey is riding the high of having gotten away with something anyway, a bag full of her own stuff to show for it.

“I am so excited to take my meds,” she tells Miyeong, delighted as it washes over her again, pulling out the bottle just to shake it. “I’ve missed these babies so! Much!”

Miyeong snorts, bemused. “Glad to have been of service.”

She puts the bottle back away and brushes against TeeJay’s worn fabric as she goes. “Do you think there’s a non-traumatic way to get Mira some of her stuff back?”

Not that Mira doesn’t make the slightly oversized look of Celine’s clothes look hot, but the constant borrowing has to suck. She deserves something of her own.

Miyeong grimaces, and Zoey winces at the non sequitur. No one else is in her brain, right.

“That… She was there when that happened, wasn’t she?” she asks quietly.

Oh. Or that. Zoey forgot that Miyeong had been inside. “Yeah. We all were.”

“We could ask her to make a list, maybe,” Miyeong agrees. She forces an awkward little smile. “The smoothie stuff being out makes more sense now.”

“I didn’t put that away?” Zoey’s horrified for all of a second, thinking of the smell, before the rest of the situation slams in again and she remembers that slightly off milk was the least of Miyeong’s problems.

It makes her laugh, at least. “You meant to?”

They zigzag a bit more on the way back than they did on the way there—it gets late enough that Zoey half-considers suggesting they stop and grab some food before catching the next bus, but she’s also still very broke, and probably going to be fielding a call from her mom about the new card showing up in the mail.

(It’ll be just slightly less painful than the last conversation between them, where her mom nearly cried and then Zoey nearly cried and then her mom really cried and also yelled at her for being so stupid.)

(At least she didn’t ask for a clear explanation of where Zoey’d been?)

[the-fallen-blue]

Rumi sees Mira's words, sharp as any blade Rumi has ever held and heavier than the law of any yangban patriarch her father ever hosted, strike Park's dogs and sink deep. Their hands leave their hips and fold behind them, both standing at attention and already shifting out of the way for their betters to pass.

She also sees the way that Park's nostrils flare, the way that fury rises in the twitch of his eyes, a petty, jealous wrath as base as any demon, and she realizes, with a jolt, that she did not need to remind this man that he is small and fragile. This is a man who is so aware of his weakness that it consumes his every thought, drives his every action, a rat nibbling the flesh of a bound man in fear and hatred of the free man's boot, and she knows before he speaks what he will say—

"I'm afraid our business cannot wait, Mira-ssi," and he folds his own hands behind his back, the type of man who would not deign to dirty them, and begins to step out of the way of his dogs, "Yang-ssi, Jeon-ssi, if you would please restrain our guests—"

Rumi is already moving.

The taller man is the greater threat, his reach the only advantage these two have on her, and she slams him into the wall with a forearm across his chest before he has even shifted from his obedient posture; his head rocks back a half-breath behind the rest of him and claps sharp against the plaster, eyes unfocusing. Rumi hooks her foot behind his ankle and pulls left, shoves right, and the dog recovers the presence of mind to grapple at her as he goes down, prying at her wrist and tearing her collar in his grip (these modern clothes bear weight no better than sweat).

These are only men, and there is no need to be cruel. Rumi twists easily from his hold, tosses him to the ground, and kicks sideways at his knee, a satisfying snap ringing out and assuring he is incapable of pursuit. It has been long enough seconds that the other dog will have gathered himself, and Rumi turns toward him—

Agony rips through her ribs in a flash of light and a crack of thunderous sound, and she staggers back, and—

Blood.

Blood, loud in her ears, iron in her mouth, on her tongue, when she coughs. Distantly, she hears someone shout her name, and for just an instant, she remembers the molten brand of fingers on her spine, molten like the raging fire under Rumi's hand, beneath her breast, where the skin gapes, ragged edges, around nothing; molten like the coals that seem pressed into Rumi's wet back, torn open, flesh screaming, where she cannot see.

She looks down at her own crimson hand, and thinks, dumbly, I have no time for this, and then, her vision flickering briefly, her mind not quite able to grab the meaning of the word but sure of its desperate import,

Mira.

[secondtolastrow]

Mira’s body tries to scream before she can think. The pain radiates from her jaw, almost blinding—almost deafening, with the ringing from the gunshot.

She stumbles forward, towards the blood, not certain of what she’s about to do but needing—“Rumi. Rumi. Oh God, Rumi.”

And Rumi tilts her head. She forces her body to straighten, eyes locking on Park. Voice tight with pain and low with threat, she says, “That was rude.”

A breath hiccups out of Mira and she thinks, wildly, of the wire cutters stuck in the bag full of her mother’s books, splattered all over the floor and soaking up blood.

Rumi moves.

It’s one breath, two breaths, three. Then they’re just shells, empty on the ground. Mira falls to her knees and scrambles for the bag.

“Mira!” Rumi calls, impossible Rumi, should be bleeding out Rumi, as Mira heaves, clutching at the wire cutters like a fucking safety blanket. “Mira, are you—“

Mira’s no medical professional, but she knows—pressure. Pressure first. She tips the rest of the books out and turns to press the bag into Rumi’s wound.

The breath punches out of her, a loud thunk of pain, but Mira would rather she not die so she pulls her free hand around to Rumi’s back and searches up the blood-sticky skin in search of—

“Please,” Rumi says, gently taking her hands. “Let me.”

“You’re—calm,” Mira manages, falling back to the floor, “for someone who’s gonna need to talk to that healing spirit.”

Rumi shakes her head. “I heal more quickly the worse the wound. This should be mended within the hour.”

Which… makes sense of why her father had been trying to summon “The Unkillable”. “Any other magic tricks up your sleeve?”

Rumi shakes her head with a little smile, as if she isn’t splattered with blood and pale with blood loss. “I can sing?”

Mira turns to fight the urge to retch some more.

“Mira!” Rumi yelps, so panicked, so kind.

Mira breathes. “We—there’s bodies. We—someone’s going to call the police. You’re on camera.”

And, again, her parents’ voices come out of her mouth, “We need to get ahead of this.”

[the-fallen-blue]

Mira's jaw is set, as though in pain, as she kneels, blood seeping into the honored shaman's pants. Her face is as pale as Rumi's must be. And she is planning, turning her sharp mind to the problems and politics of this time and Rumi does not wish to interrupt her, but—

"Are you injured, Mira?" She would not be the first not to notice, and she does not heal so well as Rumi. "I do not know the nature of the weapon that struck me, but—"

"No," Mira cuts her off, that same firm yangban control now fully returned to her voice, a strange contrast to her still-trembling hands. "I'm fine, we can talk about guns in a minute. I need—" She twists the bag in her hands, opens a side pocket to find her phone. Blood streaks the mirrored surface, and she wipes it on her sleeve. "— Eunjeong, probably. I don't know why I didn't think about this until now. They're all fucking dead, I'm not disowned, I'm not a target, I'm the goddamn heir unless Minsu wants to fight about it—"

Her hands steady as she presses the machine, and by the time she pulls herself to her feet, she's standing tall, her breath evening out.

Rumi busies herself by tucking the wire cutters into her own pocket, and collecting the books. The blood slides off them like water from oil, save for the dark red tome, which drinks it in, soaking Rumi's life into itself to the last drop.

"… fixer, why do you think I called you?" Mira is asking her phone, icy with contempt. A pause, and then, "Park Seonggi developed aspirations above his station. In my mother's absence, I was forced to correct him myself. … Yes, and two company men. Confused in their loyalties, but they have answered adequately for that, please speak to Mun-ssi about the usual package for their families. …. The downtown tower, yes, thirty-ninth floor, just outside the office elevator."

The longer Mira speaks, the more her posture changes, the more her lip curls into something cruel and ugly.

"No, of course there isn't, and you should consider me generous to take that as due diligence and not a questioning of my competence. Not that some plebeian clean-up crew would have the wit to use them if I did leave anything behind. … No. No more questions. You have your instructions. Do your job, Eunjeong."

She removes the phone from her ear, and shudders, the hollow cruelty sloughing off her like the blood from those cursed books, and looks down at the bodies, for a long moment.

Rumi does not know what to do, what to say, where to stand or put her hands. She shuffles the bloody bag on her shoulder. "…. Mira?"

Mira breathes out, sharp, and looks up.

She does not look at Rumi.

"It's fine, I'm fine," she says, eyes on the elevator. "I need to make more calls but we need to get moving, there's a bathroom down the hall, we can't walk out of here like this. I…" She plucks at the hem of her ruined shirt. "I don't know about our clothes. I'll think of something. Maybe Abeoji left some coats in his office we can take."

Mira puts the phone back to her ear, turns down the hall, and her posture shifts, again. "Security? Yes, this is Kang Mira. Yes, I'm sure you are. The office elevator is barred to entry until further notice, and I'll need to speak to your camera technician. Lee Eunjeong will be arriving soon, admit her— yes— I did not ask," as though the man on the other end of the conversation, perhaps the poor soul who had been so alarmed by Rumi's sword, is no more than a worm beneath Mira's shoe.

Rumi shuffles the weight of the bag again, away from the still-tingling burn of the wound on her back, and follows Mira down the hall.

[secondtolastrow]

Mira starts to search the office, then changes her mind, and goes to wash her hands. Rumi follows.

She wants to tell Mira how to get the blood out. How to scrub under her nails. How just because she does not feel clean does not mean she is not, how she could scrub until her skin was red and raw and not feel clean, how Rumi has not felt clean in—

Well.

She does not.

Mira probably knows, anyway, given the things she has said of what she has been forced to do.

Rumi waits while Mira goes out again, stripping off her own torn and bloody shirt and the now-useless bandages from her earlier wounds and using some of the paper… napkins? Towels? at the side of the sink to clean the blood from her torso. And her arms. And her face.

Mira returns with a coat in her hands—scratchy on the outside, but silk-lined. The sleeves hang awkwardly over Rumi’s hands, too stiff to drape properly.

“Let me help you,” she says, shrugging it back off, the moment she sees Mira start trying to clean herself.

Mira does not say no.

So Rumi keeps going.

Eventually: “A gun is—it pushes a bullet—a pellet made of lead—out with a tiny explosion. Like archery but worse. That was what they shot you with.”

“Like a cannon?” Rumi asks, wiping the blood from Mira’s face, careful with her jaw. The makeup comes with it nonetheless.

“Yeah,” Mira says. Her eyes close, and Rumi freezes, scared to have hurt her, but then— “Fuck. I hate this. I have to—I have to call—I—“

And she collapses, right against Rumi.

[the-fallen-blue]

The actual grown-ups handle it pretty well, in Zoey's opinion, when the door of Miyeong's apartment swings open and Rumi and Mira all but topple through it, dressed in mismatched men's coats that don't fit with dark stains on their pants and shoes and backpack.

Which is to say, Minji leads Mira to a kitchen chair and starts methodically checking her for shock, a sensible reaction to her pale skin and thousand-yard stare. At the same time, Miyeong is collecting the bag and shoes into a tub and then disappearing into the spare room, and Celine starts water and sets out mugs, all three of them immediately doing obviously useful things in a calm and efficient way.

Zoey, for her part, does at least manage obviously useful, and sits Rumi down in her own kitchen chair to make sure that none of the poorly-hidden blood all over the two of them is hers. But there's nothing calm or efficient about the noise she makes when she sees Rumi's torso.

"It is— I am well, Zoey," Rumi tries to reassure her. "The healing is almost complete."

"You said within the hour," says Mira, from the other side of the kitchen. She doesn't sound like she's in shock, but she does sound scolding and scared, which isn't much better. "It's been almost two. You got shot from half a meter away and there was a giant terrifying hole through your chest. Let Zoey look."

Zoey makes another extremely unhelpful noise of distress.

"It was a terrible moment," Rumi says, taking Zoey's hands between hers, warm and healthy and alive. "But the moment is over, and it does not negate our success. We took no lasting harm, and we returned with what we went there for."

"Yes," says Celine, sounding pretty displeased about it, "I can see that you did. Zoey, if Rumi-nim genuinely doesn't need your medical skills, I would appreciate you placing that barrier pattern you were practicing yesterday on that tub, while I construct something more permanent."

Zoey takes another long look at the mushroom bloom of violent purple-green bruising covering the entire distal half of Rumi's left side, and the shiny knotted ground-beef entry wound somehow closing itself in the middle. It actually does look incredibly close to healed, if still probably quite painful and definitely quite gruesome.

Rumi pulls the coat back around herself to conceal it, a little sheepishly. "Truly, Zoey. I am touched by your concern, but there is no need for it. If the honored shaman feels it is important to contain the books, that should be our priority."

Minji, having finished her appraisal of Mira and given her ice for her jaw, walks over and tells Rumi, "We can multitask."

Zoey gladly hands Rumi over to someone less likely to let warm hands keep her from telling her patient to be less of an idiot, and takes a sharpie over to the tub, skin prickling at proximity to what is apparently a bag full of evil books (!), to start drawing hanja.

Miyeong and Celine come back into the room a moment later, Miyeong with less bloody, better fitting shirts and pants in hand, and Celine with her box of inks and a small wooden storage chest which Zoey really hopes wasn't holding anything Miyeong considers important.

"So," says Miyeong, handing Mira a fuzzy polar bear top with a cheerful enthusiasm that seems somehow entirely genuine, "while you two get cleaned up, who wants to hear about a heist?"

[secondtolastrow]

“I’m sorry,” Mira says. “About…”

Her voice falters, uselessly, as she looks down at Celine’s pants. They’re disgusting. Literally stiff with blood and sticking to her skin at the same time.

“Don’t be,” Celine says, her voice strangely gentle.

Mira wants to say, I was kneeling in the blood because I was trying to keep Rumi from bleeding out. She wants to say, I don’t even know the names of two of the people we just killed. She wants to say, When I said I’d do anything not to be alone with him again, I didn’t mean it.

She doesn’t.

She goes into the bathroom. She thinks about Rumi’s biohazard jeans, piled in Celine’s sink.

She picks up the old shopping bag and wonders who else remembered them.

And carefully, she shucks off her father’s jacket, then the pants, then her underthings—at least her fucking bra isn’t ruined, fuck—piling the more stained garments inside the less, and shoving it all into the bag.

There’s blood in her hair, too, not just on her skin.

It doesn’t feel like hers right then. Doesn’t feel like anything. None of her body feels all that real.

She pulls on the long, fuzzy sweater. It doesn’t seem like something Celine would own, much less pack. She wonders if it’s Miyeong’s, oversized and for bad days.

She wonders if she’ll ruin it too.

She goes back out.

“Shower’s yours,” Mira says.

Miyeong stops her story. Rumi, sitting, bloody, in that same kitchen chair, rises with a quiet “Thank you.”

Celine comes from somewhere to take Mira by the arm, leading her to the couch.

Then it’s Miyeong appearing, her hand over Mira’s so she instinctively opens it and—

Cold.

She blinks down at the ice cube melting in her palm. “What the—“

“You seemed a little out of it,” Miyeong says with a shrug, like that’s a normal response to have to that situation.

Mira blinks at her for a moment, then braces her jaw with her free hand, helpless to stifle the laughter.

[the-fallen-blue]

Lunch turns out to be something closer to dinner, by the time they get around to it. They eat they way they usually do, spread out in the living room, eschewing the little two-person table that doesn't even fit the four chairs Miyeong has tried to put around it.

Well. Everyone else eats.

Miyeong tries. She really does. She stabs her chopsticks in and out of the bibimbap half a dozen times, arguing back and forth with the queasy knot in her stomach. But there's never been any question of who would win, in the end.

She hides her abstinence under her well-curated array of stupid stories, competing with Zoey to provide the most distraction and coax the most eyerolls and grudging smiles out of Rumi and Mira. Zoey takes the crown handily, of course, but Miyeong thinks she does quite well considering her "not involved in that goofy hormonal mess" handicap.

She collects the dishes before anyone else can, deals with her all-but-full bowl before anyone can see. The dishwasher is loaded and she's scraping down pans when she hears the television flicker on behind her, more of the drama they've gotten Rumi addicted to about a mob-owned soju distillery and three generations of messy romance. She leans back around the corner to see Mira in the center of the couch, Zoey and Rumi draped against her, and Celine and Minji slipping into the cramped corner over the sink to help her finish dishes.

"If you're going to contact that healing spirit," says Minji, pitched low enough to travel no further than the three of them, "sooner is better than later. Mira's wiring is mangled, it's not properly supporting her jaw anymore."

Celine nods. "I'll take her down to the river tomorrow. And get the whole story out of Rumi-nim tonight, if I can."

Minji nods back, and then she and Celine exchange a significant look. Miyeong can't quite read it, but it Minji must be satisfied with whatever she saw, because she brushes a hand absently along Celine's shoulderblade and says, "I'm going to go read for a while, then. Don't do anything stupid to your stitches."

"I won't," promises Celine, an easy assent, and Minji wanders off to the bedroom, where it's entirely possible that they won't see her again until it's time for another long night of torturing Miyeong with her warm, grabby proximity.

After a moment, as they're beginning to wipe down the counters, three-handed, Celine says, softly, "You didn't eat."

Miyeong glances back at the couch, the pile of traumatized young women increasingly merging into each other just out of earshot. "… no, I didn't."

"Still worried about them?"

It had been Celine, a few hours ago, who found her spiraling in front of the dresser in the spare room; who Miyeong had curled up against, disassembled enough to not feel guilty about imposing on her personal space; Celine whose sternum had received Miyeong's mumbled, aching, "God, they're just kids." It had been Celine who wrapped her good arm around Miyeong's shoulders and held her, tall and kind and steady, until she pulled herself together and went back out into the kitchen to be useful again.

It's Celine who Miyeong lies to now, when she says, perfectly honestly, "Yeah, I really am."

[serpentbeardwrites]

The credits roll on the twenty eighth episode, Zoey’s arm went numb halfway through episode twenty seven and she worries it’ll drop off if Mira continues to lean on it. It’s so tempting to let her. She hasn’t really been watching the series, not really, she’s seen it before, six times. The look of wonder on Rumi’s face and Mira’s lip twitch that might as well be a full grin is priceless. 

Mira shuffles and Zoey rips her eyes away from her study of Mira’s hair and back to Lee’s and Hae-won’s confession. 

Zoey glances back to Mira, just to see if she’s comfortable. 

Mira’s eyes snap to her. “I um,” She fights back a shiver as Mira’s arm tightens on her shoulder. “I left my turtle on the table, he’s been a comfort for me through hard times not that I’ve you know nevermind it was stupid.”

Mira looks at her with such warmth it could probably melt a yeti. Her voice is a hoarse whisper, barely audible above the TV. It sounds like honey to Zoey. “TeeJay would be nice.”  

She remembers his name. 

Rumi perks up. “Worry not, I shall acquire the Honoured Turtle!” “Rumi, it’s okay.” Zoey nodded to the TV. “I don’t want you to miss this! Episode twenty nine is the best.” 

Leaving the couch was a mistake, the thoughts came in waves. You useless—no! No! Not going there! They need me, focus!  

What could she—Mira could probably use more ice, yeah she could do that! 

Heavily accented Korean crashes into her train of thought. “If you not surrender distillery, Mr. Lee nim, I will take by force.”  

There was something—

“You will never get away with it, Goncharov. We have true love!” The TV blares. Wait. Episode twenty nine. How could she forget? What was she thinking?! 

She races back, and almost slips on the tile. Stupid Zoey, stupid! You forget the one episode! She catches herself on the corner of the couch. Rumi lets out a yelp of surprise. On the screen, Goncharov flicks back his black coat to reveal a revolver.

Zoey’s fingers fumble for the remote. It almost slips out of her hands.

The music crescendos. Goncharov fires.

Zoey hits the ‘off’ button just as Hae-won jumps in front of Lee.

Mira and Rumi’s faces stare at her through the TV’s dark reflection, stricken.

[secondtolastrow]

Blood cult au part thirteen (first, most recent, master)

Currently: most of the way to Seoul, the gang stopped in a hotel for the night… only to have to battle off wraiths who came looking for Minji. With Celine injured, and some questionable piles of ash on their hands, their plan has not survived first contact with the enemy.

“Call a damn ambulance!” Minji yells at the man—maybe not a perfect response, but his face pales and he rushes back into his room.

It’s seven minutes from then until the paramedics arrive, taking over. Ten until the police do, which is just enough time for Miyeong and Mira to make Rumi’s sword disappear again.

They all tell the same story, not quite the truth but close to it: they came looking for Minji. Celine protected her. The commotion woke the rest of them. They don’t know where the attackers went.

(Minji asks Mira about the cameras in the hall.

Mira shrugs. “They’ll see what they expect to see more than what really happened.”

Minji… is not as unbothered by this as Mira seems to be.)

Celine, thankfully, gets stuck full of local anesthetic and stitched up fairly easily, grumbling about how she won’t be getting her security deposit back from the hotel and already fidgeting with the sling even as she’s released from the hospital into the predawn light.

Minji switches with Miyeong for the last stretch of the drive to Seoul.

The next several days are the shittiest “hurry up and wait” Minji has ever experienced.

She spends the first anxiously waiting for another wraith to break her door down—because, apparently, it’s not enough for her to have gotten Kim Jeonghun killed, she needs to die herself (and put everyone around her at risk in the process), the wraiths really feel the need to get her, specifically—and trying to get Celine to sit the fuck down, she’s recovering from severe blood loss, and keep her arm still because that sling is there for a reason.

No, Minji does not care if she has mudang things to do, Mira and Rumi can handle it between them!

Her body insists on a crash for the second—when Miyeong wakes her, it’s nearly lunchtime, and she picks at her food, borderline catatonic, until somehow it’s nine in the evening and she’s been half-flopped on Celine for an hour. The third is even worse, as she alternates between an anxious high and totally zombielike and she has to (however warily) clear Celine to go commune with some spirits in hope that they can provide a lead.

(She only does so on the condition that Zoey go along, since she’s not only the most educated but (surprisingly) the most insistent about Celine’s health. Zoey mostly just seems delighted at being assigned to spend time with her, having latched on like a little duckling.)

It’s the fourth when things begin to happen again.

[grundpfeiler]

The good news continued to be - Miyeong was still alive. No, she was not talking about the demons (though she probably should have been.) Having two women who she had (deep, distracting attraction and respect for, and did she mention that both were very beautiful in very different ways) somewhat large-ish crushes on in her apartment for multiple days was dangerous for her health. (Celine being tall and patiently listening to Miyeong as she prattled on, Minji dressing in Miyeong's clothes.)

After the reveal that Minji was actively targeted - going back to her apartment was very much not an option. At least until Celine got cleared for going back to risking her life, "let the wraiths follow us back from a known place" was not an option. And Rumi and Mira had been going everywhere in the apartment complex laying, tucking defenses and other things to ward off wraiths everywhere that they could slip something out of sight - with even more without the out of sight portion in Miyeong's apartment. Also the apartment of her neighbors, an old retired couple. When Mira and Rumi had almost been caught putting the defenses up the two had played the superstitious old people to the hilt - and that is how there was a second apartment in the complex that Mira had given a begrudging approval of. The two had decided that the pack of people that were tucked into Miyeong's apartment were apparently "lovely". Given that Miyeong knew that Yeonngi had been in the upper register of their opinion by the pair being politer in their comments about him when he wasn't around Miyeong felt perfectly reasonable in asking Rumi if her neighbors had been replaced by something supernatural. Because the pair had never in all her years of being in the complex had a positive thing to say about a guest of hers that had stayed more than one night in a row. Up to rescuing everyone from Miyeong's terrible cooking when Minji finally slept. And also that the two had been completely not asking any questions what so ever when the police had finally gotten around to contacting Miyeong. Which it was something to put on the white board for discussion of whether that was due to corruption from the Kang's being filthy rich, general lack of noticing the supernatural, something targeted or whether there was cult apparatus embedded. Because somehow it had taken two days for the Seoul police, who had been trying to find Minji to actually make contact. Who was merely the only staff member who had worked the night shift of the ER on one of the two days immediately prior to the fire who was still alive. (The demons had hit during the shift change. When Minji finally got that information while Celine and Zoey was out, Mira and Rumi had gone to see the neighbors. Miyeong had pretended to not notice that Minji was crying. Despite feeling Minji's body shudder as Miyeong uselessly curled around her friend) Okay - that Miyeong was sure was due to supernatural shenanigans. Because the police hadn't called Minji, or even Minji's family. Somehow every single attempt at finding the numbers and records kept coming back without bearing fruit. Hospital records - everything on site destroyed, with the offsite backup managing to hit with corruption that ate Minji's contact information. Family members of the coworkers - memory problems or phones ending up taking swims... into rivers. One by being hit by a pigeon apparently spontaneously forgetting how to fly.

The police had finally managed to get in contact yesterday evening - because one of the detectives on the case of the hospital fire had ended up talking to witnesses at the hospital often, and thus seeing the Miyeong vs Minji information war. And decided that calling Miyeong (who had absolutely no contacts in the department, of course not) and seeing if she had Minji's contact information. Honestly Miyeong wasn't sure who had been more surprised. The detective when Miyeong had answered that yes, Minji was with her, and also happened to drop the fact that someone had broken down the door of the hotel room Minji was in the day of the fire. Or Miyeong due to how the information had not been sent to the Seoul Department... especially as Minji's apartment had been broken into either the day of the fire or the day preceding. Which was why Miyeong and Minji were at a park early in the morning to answer some questions for the detectives. (Miyeong had been hard pressed to convince the detective to keep the questioning away from her apartment and also away from the station.) After a long emergency information session with Mira, Rumi and Celine cramming their analysis of the demon situation into Miyeong and Minji's brains once the phone call ended. Because on one hand - no one wanted to risk a second demon attack. On the other hand - access to finding out what the police knew. Which leads for finding demons. (And not getting Minji jailed for refusal to answer questions or some other way to set her up for another murder attempt.)

[secondtolastrow]

Miyeong curled her hands around her coffee, and kept her eyes open.

The police officers—who looked like the photos of themselves in dress uniform that Miyeong had looked up just in case, thank God—were waiting where they said they would be, settled on a bench and facing in opposite directions.

She watched as Park Yeongjin spotted them, nudging Kim Seongho to turn. The men stood, offering a quick and professional greeting that Minji and Miyeong returned.

Park Yeongjin eyed the bench criticially. “That seems a little small for four. Shall we walk and talk, Minji-ssi?”

“That sounds fine to me, Inspector,” she agreed. That was the end of the pleasantries.

“We might as well get down to it,” Kim Seongho said, his voice surprisingly low and rough—maybe a smoking habit? “What can you tell us about the events of the last few days from your perspective? We’ll ask you to clarify anything or come back to any important-sounding details, so don’t worry about them, just give us what you think of.”

So Minji told them.

What they got back was little, at first—casually noting that it didn’t appear anything had been stolen from Minji’s apartment, and how difficult it had been for the firefighters to manage the blaze, but at least it hadn’t spread to any nearby buildings.

A request that they not speak to any other officers about this, at least not without a direct introduction by the both of them, which indicated that there very much were ongoing concerns about corruption in the department, even if Miyeong hadn’t been willing to risk saying the name Kang and watching this whole mess crumple up and blow away just yet.

It was the casualty count Kim Seongho gave stuck in the back of Miyeong’s head, though: all of the staff, thirty-five patients so far, and one civilian.

Only one.

That was always a suspicious number.

[the-fallen-blue]

It feels like movement, when Miyeong tells them what the police said. Mira can see it in everyone's faces, the relief, the sense of progress, even before Miyeong explains which contacts she can reach out to, now, how it narrows down her search to fewer records.

She warns it will still take a while, and Celine's spirits and Mira's half-remembered auguries are also still days from bearing fruit, but it's a lead, and it's enough momentum that Celine wants them all on the same page about wraiths. So she spends dinner holding forth on demonic metaphysics, like Miyeong's tiny dining room is a lecture hall and they're all halfway through some supernatural PhD.

"Spirits are a natural part of the world," she's telling them, between annoyingly elegant spoonfuls of soup. "Even demons are, by most definitions." She doesn't look at Rumi, there, but Zoey and Mira both do. Rumi looks at the table.

"Wraiths are neither. They're not truly alive, or independent; they're shards of Gwi-Ma himself, connected to him, with all his abilities and malice. Like him, they grow in strength as they corrupt and consume, and as they grow stronger, so does he.

"The wraiths we face have fed to a degree I've never heard of, and we should not underestimate the danger. But I have met stronger spirits in my time. Now that I have their measure, I can prepare us better for the rest of them."

She sounds more than a little put out. Which is pretty funny from where Mira's sitting. Four hours of sleep, no implements, and two wraiths packing as much power as a higher-order gwishin each? Mira's abeoji wouldn't have made it out the door. Jageunabeoji might have made it as far as getting his shoulder ripped open before his defenses dropped, but physical pain is a great antidote to spiritual composure, in Mira's experience, and he'd still have been dead before Rumi woke up. But Celine froze the thing with a half-remembered spell on a piece of paper and a quarter of her blood volume in the carpet, and somehow her pride is still bothering her more than her arm.

"So do we have to use magic?" Zoey wants to know, tragically oblivious to how ridiculous the shaman is being. "We can't just, I dunno, shoot them?"

Mira answers before Celine can. "Think zombie rules. Injuries don't matter but if you destroy the whole body that'll work."

From the look on her face, it would have pained Celine less if Mira had actually physically slapped her, but she admits, grudging, "That is… a functional comparison."

"And they have to have made a deal with Gwi-Ma," says Miyeong, slow and resigned, not really a question.

"Yes," Rumi confirms, with deep sympathy. "Not all who die in his service become wraiths, but all those who are wraiths died in his service."

There's something a little haunted, or maybe hunted, in her eyes, when she says it. Mira wonders who she's thinking about, if it's a face she's afraid to see or one that she had to strike down and can't let go of. Both are the sort of petty torment Gwi-Ma loves.

The next question is Minji's, quiet and uneasy. "You said they're… fragments of him. What about the person they used to be? Is there anything left, anything to… reach? Save?"

Mira looks at Rumi for guidance, Rumi looks at Celine with an expression that Mira cannot bear to see, and Celine looks at Minji, her face grim, her tone sad. "No one knows. They remember what they knew in life, they go to the same places, follow the same routines, when they're not advancing the whims of their summoners or their lord. It could be a sign that they are the souls of the dead in truth, and not merely stolen images."

Celine hold's Minji's eyes for a moment, intent, then Miyeong's, then Rumi's, and her voice goes iron.

"It is not a sign worth betting your life on."

Rumi closes her eyes, and breathes out, long and slow.

"No," she agrees, sad but steady. "It is not."

Mira looks over at Zoey, and is not at all comforted to see that she doesn't believe Rumi means it, either.

[secondtolastrow]

Zoey is, in her own fairly professional opinion, being pretty useless.

She’s taught Rumi just about every way she knows to fold a paper airplane, and gone down an internet rabbit hole about them besides, and is (to her horror) starting to get used to being woken up first thing in the morning to go practice a basic self-defense regimen in the courtyard. Which is good, because Rumi doesn’t sleep much, but she will zone out into a napping meditation once Zoey gets to the target practice part.

Beyond that, though, not exactly useful yet.

She’s picked up enough to sort of follow some of what Celine and Mira do without asking too many annoying questions—though absolutely any of those were too many for Miyeong, who flashed her a very tight, polite smile and… Zoey was bad at a lot of things, but she knew that smile pretty well. She skedaddled.

(The smile was at least better than Minji finding out that she hadn’t called her mom—that was scary.)

So: Zoey hangs out with Rumi and hangs out with Mira and hates herself for being bored when she’s doing something this important and terrifying and wishes she could be better and wishes her brain would just shut up and—

A magpie appears at the window.

Zoey does not, at first, really think anything of it. It’s a bird. It’s pecking at the glass, which isn’t the most normal bird behavior, but she’s sure that some of them have to try to investigate those invisible forcefields sometimes.

It squawks. At her. And then hops up onto the sash and pecks right across from the one of the locks.

“Um,” says Zoey.

The magpie gives her a look that indicates she’s being a fucking idiot.

“Are you going to kill me if I let you in?” she asks, leaving behind her bowl of cereal to come squint right back at it. “No—don’t give me that look, I know you wouldn’t admit it if you were going to kill me!”

The magpie blinks, and opens three eyes to keep giving her its magnificent side eye.

Zoey squeaks and jumps backwards. It remains unperturbed, pecking again at the sash. Which, well…

She can only die once?

“Fine,” Zoey says, and the magpie hops back down onto the sill, allowing her to flick the locks and slide up the window.

It doesn’t move.

“Well?” she asks, bracing her hands on the ledge as she leans forward it look at it. “All that and you—“

This is when the magpie bites her.

And things get a little weird.

[the-fallen-blue]

Celine is having a conversation with a bird.

Admittedly, it has a minimum of six eyes and is behaving with an uncanny level of intelligence, so if there was a bird worth having a conversation with, Miyeong figures this is probably the one. But despite all the insanity that she's seen since the day she got that call from Minji, an overgrown corvid sitting coolly and imperiously on the top of her kitchen chair while the most elegant and dignified woman she has ever met bows to it and gravely offers up a small hardboiled egg still somehow feels like a bridge too far.

"Thank you for answering my call, Kkachi-ssi," Celine is saying. Zoey, a napkin wrapped around one finger and a great deal of nervous energy vibrating through her body, gives Miyeong a look like it's not her fault nobody told her to expect magical avian visitors and maybe if Miyeong were a little more forthcoming she wouldn't have gotten bit and had to come drag them in here.

Miyeong tries her best to silently convey don't yell at me I don't have any idea what the fuck is going on either without offending the bird, which can see both of them, or Celine, who has only the normal number of eyes as far as Miyeong is aware but still seems to know what's happening behind her with a frightening level of accuracy.

And indeed, almost immediately, Celine says, without looking away from the bird, "Stop fidgeting back there, and go assemble the others in the sitting room."

It's said with a certain level of affection, but Miyeong and Zoey both walk out like scolded teenagers. They split without discussion, Miyeong going after Minji and Zoey collecting Rumi and Mira, and by the time they all make their way back together, Celine is standing by the picture window waiting for them. The magpie is on her shoulder. It only has two eyes, now. Miyeong decides to stop looking at it.

Rumi also bows to the bird, when she sees it, which isn't that surprising. Mira politely nods her head, which sort of is. Minji looks baffled, but less concerned than Zoey or Miyeong were, which is unfair. Of course, she hasn't seen the extra eyes yet.

"Kkachi-ssi has agreed to help us," says Celine, like this is perfectly reasonable. "She reports malign spiritual energy in a district northwest of here, and is willing to explore more closely and tell us what she finds. She also knows of a healing spirit who may be able to assist Mira and myself in returning more quickly to a more combat-ready state, if I am able to contact him."

Miyeong is impressed with Celine's ability to say that last bit like it's just a normal piece of news, and not something that might free her from Minji's reign of healthcare tyranny and thereby save her last drop of sanity. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see that Minji is somewhat less impressed. Though possibly just as amused.

Celine continues blithely along, as though she can't read all of that on their faces. "I thought it might be beneficial for us to gather and consider if there would be anything in particular she might look out for. I know, of course, what spiritual considerations to look out for, but I'm not well versed in tactics or the mundane details of investigation. If Rumi-nim or Miyeong-ssi, in particular, have any suggestions for what they'd like to know about our enemy's lair, we would like to hear."

"Of course, honored shaman. Kkachi-nim," agrees Rumi, with another elegant bow, and then furrows her forehead, clearly already trying to compile a list of options.

Celine raises a brow at Miyeong, a flicker of warm humor behind her eyes, and Miyeong realizes, quite suddenly, that the shaman knows exactly how unsettled she is by this and is delighting in it.

Miyeong is being teased, right in front of Minji and a pile of hormonal children, and she can't even do anything about it, because she has to have a conversation with a bird.

[secondtolastrow]

“Um,” Zoey says, very nervously, “is there a reason you’re translating for Kkachi-ssi?”

Mira’s heart skips a beat.

The magpie spirit croaks haughtily.

“Oh, well, if you want a more personal name—“ Zoey starts, again interrupted by a croak.

She recoils in surprise, and her eyes light up. “That’s so cool—uh, I mean… Thank you for honoring me with your name, Suspicion-ssi?”

Mira’s heart is no longer skipping beats. It’s doing a goddamn tap dance—what the fuck does she mean, the spirit just gave her a name?

And, like, Rumi and Celine look just as absolutely fucking poleaxed about it, so Mira can assume this isn’t just a “evil cult that thinks you have to steal everything has taught her you have to steal a spirit’s name when really they’re chill about it with normal people” situation.

The magpie spirit blinks her extra eyes open and then shuts them again, looking distinctly satisfied.

“The rest of the room cannot understand her quite so well,” Celine says, faintly strangled.

Which, yeah. If Mira had spent several decades honing her ability to connect with various spirits, only for one to show up and bite some random into alignment, she’d probably feel a little wild too. As it is, she’s just glad the spirit had the good sense to pick Zoey.

A lot of other people wouldn’t be smart enough or kind enough about it.

“Oh,” says Zoey. She looks down at her bandaged finger with wide eyes.

“It is a great honor,” Rumi tells her earnestly. “Were we able, we would have a feast thrown for Kkachi-nim—and yourself, of course—in recognition of this connection, and the sight that she has blessed you with. I am certain we shall do so once the danger is passed.”

“Promises,” Mira says dryly, unable to help herself. Thankfully, the magpie spirit doesn’t take offense, only tilting her head in what might be amusement.

Neither of these statements do anything but make Zoey look really nervous again. So Mira feels great about it overall, really.

“…Right,” Miyeong says, sounding a little like she’s going to fall over. “We can probably start with what kind of building it is—an apartment? How big? Whether or not there are multiple occupants?”

“How many showers there are?” Minji mutters, probably just to make Miyeong elbow her and insist that she said she was sorry.

At least that works.

[frozenwolftemplar]

"More than there are here." Zoey translates the answering croak without a second thought, then realizes what she just said. Face burning, she turns to Miyeong. "Sorry! I…don't think I was supposed to translate that."

Suspicion-ssi croaked primly, drawing herself up haughtily. Yes. You were. There are reasons Gwi-Ma's forces avoided this building, and they have everything to do with amenities; there are some torments they are not willing to face.

Zoey probably should have expected an attitude like that, considering the way Suspicion-ssi was looking at everyone, but…well. It's one thing getting a stinkeye from a bird (she's gotten plenty from the pigeons and gulls back in California); it's another thing hearing their critique of humanity.

"And that was…?" Miyeong asked suspiciously (oh…wait…now that name's making sense), eyeing the bird like it was a coiled snake.

Zoey saws her teeth across her lower lip, trying to think how to honestly but accurately answer. It reminds her too much of standing in the kitchen of her childhood house, the one her parents sold after the divorce, trying to placate two warring people and only further angering both. Only now one's a bird. Or, well, spirit-bird.

This must be what people mean when they say 'great power comes with great responsibility.'

Fortunately, Celine steps in.

"Just her thoughts on the building, namely that it is safe from incursions by Gwi-Ma's wraiths," she says, outwardly cool and professional but her lips quivering at the edges like she's fighting a grin.

Suspicion-ssi smirks (birds could do that?), and Miyeong 'hmph's in response, able to listen between the lines; Zoey wasn't sure what Miyeong's opinion on birds was before, but something tells her it is tanking fast.

Rumi steps forward, bows to Suspicion-ssi, who fluffs her feathers and preens under the display of deference. "Honorable Kkachi-nim, can you enlighten us as to the type and location of the building the wraiths have made their stronghold so that we may better locate it?"

Suspicion-ssi makes a series of low croaking-clucking sounds that scrape through the air like a spoon against the sides of a pot. She directs her eyes to Zoey as she answers, so Zoey reasons that she's meant to translate.

"She says it's an apartment building, nicer than this one-" Miyeong is clearly never bringing breadcrusts to the park again "-a few blocks from the hospital. Like, you could walk it which would be good for the wraiths, I guess?" She looked around the others. "Do wraiths remember how to use the public transit system?"

"I mean," Mira shrugged. "They can be fast learners if they have to be. My dad once taught one to drive a little."

Zoey tucked that tidbit away to properly become paranoid about later and focuses back on Suspicion-ssi. Her eyes narrow, not with the judgment she's been raining down on everyone or that smirking satisfaction, but something...heavier.

Winging off Celine's shoulder, she settles herself on Zoey's, claws pricking little indents of pain through her shirt. Beak close to Zoey's ear, she croaks again, low, creaking, portentous, and Zoey gulps. Celine's expression hardens, and the rest of the room looks at Zoey, collectively on edge and holding their breath, waiting for her to speak.

Great power, great responsibility.

[secondtolastrow]

A tiger who cannot sheathe its claws when needed is only a beast.

The words ring chillingly in Rumi’s mind, even still, for all that Zoey had tried to offer them lightly.

Is she the beast? Is Jinu? (Worse?) What moment will come when she must be able to see the difference?

Prophecy has rarely been any comfort to Rumi, and this one is no exception.

At least, she supposes, Mira had perfectly understood what the most honorable whispering magpie meant on saying “Though a bat is not truly blind, it is still smart enough to use its ears to see.”

“C’mon,” Mira declares, as if Rumi had not spent the past several minutes waiting for her arrival, “it’s time for your introduction to public transit.”

Rumi grins, hoping her cheer will help soothe some of Mira’s edginess. (She is, of course, truly delighted by the existence of public transportation systems such as had been described to her the night before—if only they were fully free and accessible to the unlucky!) “The bus station it is.”

Mira rolls her eyes fondly, which is enough.

“The listening ear was a favorite of my eomeonim’s,” she explains, keeping her gaze off on the passersby. “It, uh, it lets you sense intent. What a person wants, that sort of thing. Probably pretty useful for spotting wraiths, yeah?”

“Very much so,” Rumi agrees.

“She liked to use it as a party trick,” Mira explains, tugging Rumi to one side of a moving staircase, so that they may merely stand upon it and not walk down. “Abeoji would throw them, and she’d get so fucking bored that she’d just set herself a goal—like seeing how many marriages she could destroy in one night. Stuff like that.”

“Petty cruelty.” Rumi’s lip curls.

“Yeah.” A slight smirk twists Mira’s mouth. “She’d hate knowing that I was about to use it to ‘destroy Jaeho’s last work’, God. Kinda perfect.”

“Did she—“ Rumi’s question is lost as Mira withdraws her card, starting to explain how the ‘turnstile’ works.

She hesitates, not sure if she wants the answer, but plagued by the question nonetheless: did she ever sense any individual intent from the wraiths?

[the-fallen-blue]

Miyeong peers at the paper, transcribed from her phone recording, full of exactly the kind of cryptic nonsense she used to love puzzling through in her old fantasy books, trying to get ahead of the author.

It should probably be less entertaining when it's actual life and death, but Miyeong has never claimed that her sense of fun is remotely appropriate.

She looks at the order of the ones they've figured out, again; Rumi first, Mira sixth, Celine third (supposedly. She won't explain why she thinks that and she doesn't know what it means if it is her, so Miyeong's not exactly sold). No obvious pattern, not by age or when they joined this adventure, no clues there.

She taps at the second line. A healer cannot heal from the belly of her foe.

"A healer." It seems pretty unhelpful, as prophecies go, being a fairly obvious statement, but it's at least also fairly specifically targeted. "That has to be Minji, right?"

Minji shrugs. "Zoey's a med student, she does more hands-on healing than I do, these days. Barring current exceptional circumstances."

Zoey looks up from her own, extensively scribbled-on copy of the prophecy, and cringes. "I mean I haven't shown up for almost three weeks now which is way more than enough truancy to get bounced from the program, so, probably not so much, actually."

"Zoey," says Minji, like Zoey's one of her nurses who she just knows can do better.

"Forgive me for being slightly kidnapped," Zoey protests. "I've been a little too busy to make calls to my residency director!"

Minji eyes her, and says, like a diagnosis just clicked, "You haven't been busy, you've been unmedicated, so you avoided a stressful conversation until it was too late and the anxiety of choice was taken away from you."

Miyeong hisses quietly between her teeth, and Celine's eyes narrow slightly. Zoey, for her part, goes pale, but still manages to put some bite behind it when she answers,

"Wow, okay. Didn't ask to be quite so perceived, today." Miyeong catches the sideways flick of her eyes, the briefest, anxious glance at Celine. "I'm not, it's not like I'm a flake, I'll write the letters and do the apology tour and get back in next semester. I just think the whole evil cult thing is kind of more important right now—"

"No one's judging you for getting caught in all this, Zoey," says Celine, in a way that manages to be simultaneously gentle toward Zoey and fairly pointed in Minji's direction.

Minji pinches the bridge of her nose. "She's right, yes. Sorry if that came out harsh. I was trying to say that you have a disability, which means that you not actively being in a program right now has nothing to do with whether or not you're actually a 'healer' and everything to do with being denied appropriate accommodations. Which we should have dealt with by now. Do you have a provider you can call about getting a new script?"

The slightly wounded, extremely wary expression on Zoey's face flips instantly away in the face of sudden opportunity, her eyes lighting up.

"I mean." She tries for nonchalance, anyway, and fools no one. "I know we're avoiding places the cult might be watching. Buuuuuut I do have most of a month of XR still, sitting uselessly in my dorm, we could always just go get that."

She's pulled out the puppy dog eyes.

Miyeong might, possibly, add her own to the mix.

It's still a bit of a surprise when Celine just sighs, and says, "Take some shinkal and please be careful."

"Choi Zoey," Miyeong says, with relish, "let's go do a heist."

[secondtolastrow]

“So,” says Minji, once it’s just her and Celine alone, casting around for any possible subject of conversation, “healing spirit, huh? What’s that like?”

And, because today is apparently Minji Fucks Up Day, makes Celine’s mouth tighten slightly as she focuses down on the papers in front of her.

Minji half-expects an immediate redirect to the tune of “maybe we should start lunch—it seems like time to start lunch to me, hm?” but, instead, Celine sighs and shakes her head. “Healing is a magic that requires an ability to connect with others. Not just to have compassion for them, but to truly engage.”

“Sounds intense,” she prompts gently.

It’s enough for Celine to spit the last bit out: “I wouldn’t know. Hopefully, this spirit Kkachi-ssi referred to doesn’t require a skilled partner. Shall we make lunch?”

She sweeps herself up and towards the kitchen, deftly avoiding the air mattress, and leaving Minji with the bitter satisfaction of having seen it coming.

Miyeong is a little touchy about her kitchen, as they’ve all learned, but they should be able to clean up before she’s back, so Minji’s only worries as she follows are about Celine.

She’s already digging in the pantry, for one, looking entirely ready to grab something with her dominant hand and pop several stitches in the process.

Minji does not think about where they would go in that event. She just clears her throat.

Celine straightens, without a single hint of guilty speed, showing off the bag in her left hand. “I was just getting the rice. I can manage it one handed, I think. Do you want to get some vegetables started?”

“Certainly,” Minji says dryly.

They work in silence for a while, as Celine is very safe with the rice cooker and Minji barely even notices what’s under her knife, too busy spinning away platitudes and trying to think of something real to say.

“Unskilled,” she says at last, “is not incapable.”

Celine looks over from where she’s leaning against the stove, expression momentarily unguarded.

Minji smiles at her, just slightly. “If I happen to say that I find you very capable, will you keep believing me?”

Celine does not smile back, but rather looks very, very serious as she considers her answer. “…I would hope that you’re right.”

[grundpfeiler]

Minji rolled her eyes, sketching the tip of her knife lightly in the area. "Don't you start - I will win if we do comparisons on "incapable" or messing up today. The nurse turned back to her chopping. Celine opened her mouth and - "Ah," Minji interrupted without turning around. "Do not start."

Celine watched Minji''s back ruefully. "Alright - why are you so confident?" Minji's chopping slowed - the slow dawning realization of a teenager with their bluff called. "I bit Miyeong last night." Carefully staccato cuts chopped down the vegetables.

Celine, secure with Minji not looking at her, allowed one eye brow to rise. Miyeong had not been a fifth red enough for anything with even aspirations to be foreplay to have occurred. More importantly - Miyeong had not done the requisite a hundred and twenty offerings to the fates, spirits, ancestors and everything else in between for Minji to realize that Miyeong had an interest. The nurse was many things - and stubbornly oblivious was unfortunately one of them. (If it wasn't for the fact that Minji thought so well of Miyeong, Celine would have felt sad for the reporter. Instead Celine was finally understanding the reason why some romantic comedies were actually funny. The two would figure it out eventually- Celine just needed to get every one through their hunt alive to give them the time.) "I rather need context." Celine glanced over at the rice cooker - which chugged along without further direction. "If your long time friend deserved it, you would have started with that this morning." (Meanwhile if Miyeong had asked for it, Celine would have been forced to congratulate the other woman for finding her voice and saying what she wanted in her relationship with Minji.) A smile stretched slowly on Celine's lips. "I had a nightmare - and I thought I had been biting into my fist as some wraiths passed my hiding spot." Celine's mirth vanished. "That's not a failing." Celine began - but the crescendo of Miyeong's chopping cut her off. "I woke up due to her yelping from being hurt by me." Minji was now more crushing the vegetables instead of chopping them now. "And all she did when I woke up was ask if I was alright." Celine carefully did not pinch her the bridge of her nose and sigh. Rumi hadn't leaped up in alarm from hearing a yelp of pain - and Rumi would definitely have noticed if Minji had gotten the first aid kit. So Minji hadn't broken the skin probably.

Having previously help rescue Miyeong from a combination of Minji impersonating a squid and sheer... hmm feeling stuff due to Minji burrowing her head into the crook of Miyeong's neck and curling tightly to the source of heat... Celine highly suspected that what actually woke Minji up was Miyeong moving during the nightmare. And probably in surprise or... Again, Minji was extremely oblivious that Miyeong hadn't been blushing out of just embarrassment for walking into the bathroom while half asleep to shower while Minji was already washing her hair.

Did Celine sound as silly when she... Celine put that thought away, put it away with the momentary day dreams of she, Miyeong and Minji having tea and just... talking after everything was done. (And if she looked at the pair - well, that she could think of after the wraiths were hunted down.) She had to rescue the vegetables from Minji's confusion at Miyeong still working on gathering the courage to be more straight forward.

[secondtolastrow]

Mira isn’t sure what she expects from showing up at her parents’ office, just that she wants this to be the last time.

The guy working security looks at her ID with an awkward grimace that says he’s been told off for trying to see someone in her family’s before. Usually she’d say something to make him feel better.

Today, she points at Rumi and says, “She’s a guest.”

He gets a look on his face, like he hates her rich ass and his shitty paycheck, but nods.

They have to send Rumi’s sword through the x-ray machine. The security guy looks miserable, but says nothing. Mira resolves to figure out if she can give him a bonus for dealing with their shit.

Rumi bows to him on getting it back, way too low for the modern day. “Thank you for returning this unharmed. It is very dear to me.”

“Uh,” the security guy says, bewildered. “No problem?”

He remembers to bow back a moment later.

“What is he guarding?” Rumi asks, as they head up.

“The family ego, mostly,” Mira jokes.

Rumi laughs, grinning in that goofy, too-wide way of hers, her ever so slightly too long canines catching in the shitty fluorescents. “I have met many of his ilk.”

“Enough about my shit, what about you?” Mira asks, hurrying to deflect before she gets emotional again. “You said you’re part-demon, right? Had to be some monsters on that family tree.”

“I suppose,” Rumi says, looking thankfully untroubled by a question that could’ve gone incredibly wrong. “I never knew my mother, though my father always spoke highly of her, in spite of her nature.”

The closest Mira’s ever come to a proper demon is that time Jaeho tried to cultivate a dokkaebi in his closet like it was a sourdough starter. She tries to imagine what the fuck Rumi’s parents must have been like, and the resulting concept is too nonsensical for words. “Huh.”

Rumi shrugs. “He had a very kind heart. I have always sought to emulate it, but—“

She waits.

Rumi is not dumb enough to finish the sentence, instead eyeing the floor counter and asking, “How high are we going?”

Mira snorts. “Thirty-ninth floor. One from the top.”

[the-fallen-blue]

Standing in Eomeoni's office is… strange.

Nowhere that belonged to her parents has ever been safe or comfortable, exactly. The rules changed too often, Mira was too inconvenient— or, worse, too convenient by far. But she spent hours in this office when she was small, sitting in the corner, being quiet and patient under fear of pain and punishment, tooling away at her 3DS and waiting for Eomeoni or Abeoji to deign to notice her again.

It's… familiar, is the feeling. It's not a good place. But it's one she knows, one she can navigate blindfolded. There's something about that, a solidity she hasn't had since she and Zoey got in that car, and it's disquieting to realize any part of her could walk through this door and feel relief.

"Are you well, Mira?" asks Rumi, quietly, and it occurs to Mira that she's been standing in the threshold for a somewhat abnormal amount of time. She gives herself a little internal shake.

"Just memories. It's fine." She leads them over to the bookshelf, full of expensive first editions of culturally significant books that her mother did not care about at all and never read, but which looked impressive to visitors. Mira remembers her father criticizing her for the shallow vanity, as though his cabinet full of untouched fancy liquor one office over was any different.

At the base of the bookshelf is a locked cabinet, where the real books are. Mira doesn't know where the key might be, of course, but that hasn't been an obstacle to her for years. Thirty seconds in Eomeoni's desk for a paperclip to bend up and a nail file for pressure and then she's two tumblers in before Rumi can even react.

"You can pass locks," she says, like Mira is doing something wildly impressive instead of the topic of a two-minute-or-less YouTube tutorial. "Is this a common skill in this time?"

"Probably depends on how common it is for parents to lock their kids up. I couldn't get past the spells, once they started using those, but for a couple years there they were just leaning on a Masterlock to keep me out of the way. And I didn't want to be out of the way, so."

The lock slips with a satisfying click, and the cabinet swings open.

And she came for the listening ear, that was her plan, that was the full extent of her intentions here. She has spent her entire life knowing as little as possible of what her parents did, of what her family has devoted itself to. She has deliberately forgotten glyphs made to override human will, refused to memorize words that have no purpose but pain, she is stained enough by her family's evil, it makes her sick to think about the things she's done, the power they have, the power they wanted for her.

But in with the ledgers and dirty laundry, there are six books of hundreds of years of occultist bullshit in this cabinet, and in at least one of them, there is a means to summon wraiths, and doesn't that mean there's a way to bind or dismiss them, too? In at least one of them, there's a bestiary of demons, and wouldn't there be something there about Gwi-Ma?

The idea of even touching them makes her queasy. The idea of leaving them is terrifying. She can't— Mira is a Kang, Mira hurt Rumi when she should have known better, Mira cannot trust herself.

But Mira is not alone. Mira is in this office, horrid and familiar, with the most righteous person she's ever met.

"Rumi," she says. Her voice cracks, and she clears her throat against it. "Rumi, what if we take them all?"

[serpentbeardwrites]

Rumi draws in a sharp breath, hidden cabinets forgotten. The city sprawls below her, a hundred-thousand glittering spires of metal and glass more numerous than blades of grass in a field. Cars and buses clot the roads like armies of ants; people in their thousands flit to and fro. Her heart aches. 

Rumi eyes the smudges her fingers leave on the massive glass wall. Maybe I can wipe them off before some poor attendant is forced to?

The crack in Mira’s voice sends Rumi whipping back around "Rumi, what if we take them all?" 

She can’t quite make out the contents of the cabinet Mira has opened, but the burnt pitch of magic lingering on the tip of her tongue is unmistakable. 

A war rages behind Mira’s eyes—she gazes at Rumi as if she is her lifeline, her only source of absolution.

As if I am fit to offer that. 

Fit or not, at this moment, someone is in need. 

Rumi steps closer and crouches down so she is closer to eye level with Mira. Wow, she is tall. Focus!

“Take them all?” she echoes.

Mira swallows and motions to the books. “There is probably a lot of cult bullshit in there but what if these books hold the key to dismissing wraiths? Or discovering something about Gwi-Ma’s weaknesses?” Rumi eyes the uniform leatherbound spines, she could only guess what wickedness lay within. Her eyes drift back to Mira. Mira, who had lifted herself out of her family’s grasp by will alone. Mira who had stood up for Zoey, a stranger at the time, throwing away everything she had known. Mira who is wringing her hands and breathing perhaps too quickly. 

She reaches out to grab her hands on impulse. Mira stiffens but does not pull away.

“You have worked so hard to pull yourself out of this ‘cult bullshit’.” The phrase feels strange in her mouth. Mira snorts and Rumi feels the thrill of victory in her chest. “Are you sure this is what you want?” 

Mira looks her straight in the eye and her gaze turns to steel, “Zoey has her shin-kal and weird bird bond. Celine has her shamanism. I can do this.” 

“I trust you, and I promise you will not bear such evil things alone.” One by one, together, they stack the books into Mira’s bag.

None of the books are pleasant to handle but the oil slick feeling of the sixth and final book clings to Rumi’s hands. She breathes through the memory of fire. It’s just a book. Before Mira can protest, Rumi slings the bag over her shoulder. Mira gives an indignant squawk.She affixes her most reassuring smile upon her face. “I said you would not have to bear this burden alone! Is there anything else we might need?”

“...I think that’s it in terms of evil cult things.” Mira glances at a round device hanging on the wall. “We should get moving.”

She follows Mira back through three different doors of varying heights and several ostentatious hallways. 

The elevator chimes before they reach it. A tall, gaunt man steps out, flanked by two security guards. He reminds Rumi of an official from the mainland that arrived at her house one evening, armed with decrees, papers, and words from other people.

“Mira-ssi, how fortunate to see you here. I trust you have a moment?” the gaunt man asks as he gives an indecently shallow bow. His smile does not reach his eyes.

The hairs on the back of Rumi’s neck raise, she glances at Mira and her heart drops to her stomach. Gone is the steely resolve, in its place, the blank mask of a courtier. 

[birdplushie]

i love a morally grey ruthless woman who will do whatever it takes to achieve her goals (that she believes are for the greater good) and is also constantly wracked with guilt about what she's had to do but can't show it so she just comes across as cold and unfeeling to everyone

[secondtolastrow]

Blood cult au part twelve!!! (First, most recent)

Currently: the gang are still road tripping to the siege of Seoul—but the party has split after a magic sparring session for the newbies to practice exorcism left Rumi injured by the backlash, with Mira leading the non-Rumi and Celine faction in asking “why the fuck didn’t you tell us that would hurt her?”

And things have only gotten worse with Mira’s realization that she was the only one to actually hurt Rumi.

Rumi does not know how to answer. She is not going to lie, obviously, but Mira gives her the sense that the truth would be entirely unuseful.

She knows silence will only provide more room for Mira to interpret for herself, though, so she hurriedly says the first foolish thing she can think of: “A spell built to hurt? To what are you referring?”

“The severance!” Mira snaps, then buries her face in her hands. “I need—I need to calm down. Just—fuck. Give me a minute. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I’m sorry.”

And so Rumi sits, utterly bewildered, waiting, and trying to parse exactly what the mess around her is.

If she were to trust Minji-nim’s illustration, she is as an ignorant beast, borne by her nature to cause a calamity, and it was the responsibility of herself and the honored shaman to have mitigated such a situation. Rumi is certainly more capable than this, and she would hope that her companions might gain some respect for her experience.

Mira’s anger over it having been her to hurt Rumi is… more comprehensible. Especially given how quickly she has flinched from her own anger during these encounters. Rumi has seen this fear, knows this fear.

But the harm was to be expected, and Rumi is certainly not damaged by the experience—yet pointing out her experience in being a partner in practicing severance had only led them here.

Rumi scrabbles to remember exactly what Mira had said to her during the earlier conversations, searching for the moment that would help her understand.

Rumi’s judgment’s shit!

Oh, yeah, of course. She gets choices.

That isn’t—we were hurting you!

Rumi’s judgment’s shit!

Rumi bites her tongue. No, Minji-nim cannot have offered the view of the group. Rumi might be ignorant, but…

Rumi’s judgment’s shit!

She offers a look at Zoey, silently begging her to say something, literally anything, to convince her that they truly do not see her as an animal brought to heel and taught to dance.

“I…” Zoey shrinks against her door. “Mira’s got a point, you know?”

[the-fallen-blue]

Once again, Miyeong-ssi is silent for the first part of a car ride. In fact, the whole car is silent; Celine entirely forgets to even turn on the music until they're well into Mokpo.

When the other woman finally does speak, it's just to say that she's found a hotel and texted the others the pin, and then "Left, at the light." Celine turns the car with a nod. She hopes, distantly, that Miyeong-ssi isn't uncomfortable— she's not fidgeting, this time, at least— but can't quite bring herself to ask.

Actually, what Miyeong-ssi is, is blunt, and Celine really should have expected it a few roads later when she says, abrupt, "You're very in your head."

It almost makes Celine smile, in spite of herself, but all she offers in return is a reserved, "I have a lot to think about."

"Tell me. Things usually make more sense when you say them out loud. Take a right two streets up," Miyeong-ssi adds, absently.

And honestly, the better part of Celine wants to take her up on it. Miyeong-ssi has proven easy to talk to, and sensible when she actually wants to be, and Celine would love to think she could lessen the burden of the tangling nest of knots in her head.

But the idea of putting any of it into words that make a shred of sense feels almost absurd. Where could she even start?

The great Rumi-nim, maybe, the root and reason of five centuries of mudang who have forgotten or never knew that she was half a demon, all along. That she was burdened to wield one of the most cruel and terrifying powers a shaman can be called to fight. That Celine had watched four people who she is responsible for, who she is meant to protect, succumb to that power in front of her, under hands she was taught to know as the peak of righteousness.

Perhaps that even if everyone at the table had severed her as hard as Mira had, Celine knows Rumi-nim would have thought little of it, would not have been distressed by simple pain, that there was no such pain regardless, and yet with every moment of their practice something had been making her more and more distraught. That Celine can guess at five explanations that might fit and none that she can do a thing whatsoever about.

Or, of course, the argument. The compounding mistakes, one after another: forgetting Mira and Zoey's civilian perspective; not realizing that the potential danger of exorcism might not be self-evident; failing to diffuse the situation; failing to fully divert Mira's anger in the aftermath. The way that Celine's cascading negligence has hurt all three of them so badly, has driven a wedge between Rumi-nim and her strongest support.

Guilt and shame are the left hand of Gwi-Ma, she tries to remind herself. It's about as effective as it ever is.

"Right lane, up here," says Miyeong-ssi, gentle and patient.

"...I've never had students, before." Celine checks her blind spot and merges, and catches on Miyeong-ssi's eyes, brown like dark leather, before pulling her gaze back to the road. "It's a virtue, in my order. Rumi-nim was known to be a great teacher, and we're encouraged to… 'plant knowledge wherever it might bloom', is the mantra."

"That's kind of sweet," says Miyeong-ssi, like she means it.

"Hm," says Celine, noncommittal. "If one has the talent for it, I suppose."

[gveret-fic]

Rumi looks so god damn wounded, and it’s pissing Mira the fuck off. She turns away from them, watching the calm rural scenery go by.

“I am trying to understand, but I—” Rumi stumbles. “I am not a horse, easily frightened and unsettled by unexpected pain. I am an experienced warrior. Such brief discomfort is nothing to me. I’d gladly take it again.”

“Maybe it’s not about you!” Mira snaps. “For once!”

Rumi flinches. 

Fuck. Fuck. Mira didn’t mean to snap. She keeps doing this.

She takes a deep breath, lets it out slow and controlled through her nose. This needs to be fucking said. She needs to fucking say it.

“I was thirteen,” she starts, quiet and careful, looking out the window. She doesn't want to see their faces. But the abrupt hush is palpable nonetheless. “The first time they used me in a ritual. They figured I was old enough, I guess. Before that, they'd just leave me locked in my room. I'd thought that was the worst thing in the world, back then. I couldn't imagine anything could be…”

The voice chokes off in her throat. 

A hand settles on her thigh, a warm, reassuring weight. Zoey. Zoey’s warm, reassuring hand.

Mira breathes. 

“But of course it could. That was stupid of me.” Mira clicks her tongue impatiently. “I still remember the first time that I… They gave me something to read, and it was difficult, the words didn't make sense. I was so focused on getting all the sounds right, I didn't even notice until the lamb had already,” she takes a gasping breath, “already exploded.”

They’d passed by a farm a few kilometers back, clearly visible through the car window. No sheep, though. Only cows. Much bigger animal, the cow. So much more blood in it.

“I didn't throw that shirt out for years. The blood stains had set in after the first wash. They thought it was funny.”

Zoey’s hand spasms against her thigh.

“By ‘they’, I mean my evil fucking blood cultist family,” Mira grits out. “In case that wasn't clear.”

“Yes,” says Rumi, unusually subdued. “It was clear.”

Mira scoffs. “Was it? Great! I'm so glad that was clear.”

She can hear Rumi shift uncomfortably in her seat. 

She hazards a glance. Rumi's hand is clenched, and she's frowning intensely. 

“I—” Rumi cuts herself off. Starts up again. “It is a flaw of my character, that I often fail to see others with clarity. I know it. I wish I—I’d like to—”

Her nails drive grooves in the material of her pants, her knuckles white. Mira feels a familiar twinge in her chest. 

She turns toward Rumi. “Okay,” she says. “I get it. I'll be clear, then. I've been made to hurt others. A lot. I didn't fully understand what was happening and I was not able to stop it. It made me feel—Fuck.” She sucks in a wheezy breath. 

Zoey crowds closer, so now their knees are pressed together, and she takes Mira’s hand, and she squeezes. Her elbow is a hard unyielding angle against Mira’s side.

“Thanks,” Mira mutters. “It made me feel—bad. If you ever make me do that again, to you, or anyone else, I'm done. Got it?”

She looks directly at Rumi, and Rumi looks back. In the lighting, it almost seems like one of her eyes flashes yellow.

[secondtolastrow]

Rumi is not a kind thing, ultimately.

Rumi is—hungry, and cruel, and viciously curling with corruption.

But she wants to say yes. She wants to say it without any of the caveats that spring to mind. She wants to remake the world itself until she will never, ever have to see Mira suffer again.

She shifts her gaze to Zoey, stuck in between them. “This is your issue as well? That you were not… offered full understanding of the possibility of harm?”

And Zoey, still pressed against Mira’s side, nods.

“I had not meant to deceive you,” Rumi says, and this part, at least, is one of the easiest vows she has ever had to make. “I shall endeavor in the utmost not to do so again.”

“Thank God,” Minji-nim sighs in the front seat, which would almost break the tension. It makes Zoey laugh, certainly.

Mira takes a shuddering breath. Her fingers lock around the seatbelt where it crosses her chest, knuckles going white, and then she releases with a small shake. “Okay. Good. I’m glad you—get it. Thank you.”

Rumi hates herself.

“However,” she says, fixing her gaze out the window past them, watching the world pass at dizzying speed, “I cannot promise that you will not be put in a position where it is necessary to harm me again.”

Silence.

Rumi barrels forward. It is her favorite tactic, after all: engage aggressively until the enemy is defeated.

The sickness boiling at the back of her throat does not matter.

“I am not good, Mira. One of my feet lies in the realms infernal, and it seeks always to change my path. It is mere—“

“So what?” Mira says.

Rumi is startled enough to turn her gaze, and find Mira with her brows furrowed and face awkwardly set to keep her jaw loose.

“It’s not the darkness that covers up the stars,” Zoey whisper-shouts, her own anger barely suppressed by a veil of gentleness.

Rumi cringes, thinking of the song that had brought her back to herself. “I am not saying—that does not deny the risk—“

And this seems to push Zoey over the edge.

[frozenwolftemplar]

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?

Zoey can feel Rumi and Mira flinch at her volume, and she can see Minji-nim wince in the rearview mirror, but honestly? She doesn't care.

Ever since Mira blew up at Rumi and Celine before storming off on the ferry she has been trying and trying and trying to be what they needed: a sounding board for flaming tirades, a smiling face to ease the burn that lingers after, a comforting hand on a knee during trauma-inducing stories about exploding baby animals (which- yikes, good thing she was recruited to help Celine with the dead chicken and not Mira, it's never a good time for war flashbacks), and just- everything!

She got ice!

And now- despite everything- Rumi still wasn't getting it, Mira was still angry, and Zoey- and Zoey-

And Zoey still felt like she did before the divorce. When she couldn't stop the fighting, and when no one noticed- or cared to notice- how she was hurting too.

But she can't fucking take it anymore!

She jabs a finger at Rumi, the back of her braid thumping against the window as she startles back. "Do not- I repeat do not!- keep talking about yourself like that!"

"Like what?" Rumi asks, neck bending in an elegant curve as she tilts her head, genuinely confused.

Zoey growls. How can she be so dense? And still hot? "Like you're some dog carrying rabies that's about to go all Cujo on us!" And you know what? She doesn't care if Rumi doesn't get that reference, let her figure it out! "We get it, you're a half demon, we sang the heavy metal song to pull you out of hell! But that doesn't change the fact that we like you!"

Surprise blazes across Rumi's face. Zoey really should have seen that coming.

"Perhaps so," Rumi says, quietly, turning her face to the window, like what she's saying is a done deal. "But it does not change what I am. You cannot change my past, my father succumbing to the temptation of a demon."

Zoey clenches her hands in her lap before she starts literally tearing her hair out. Really should've seen that coming too. "Well I don't fucking care! And neither does Mira! And I really doubt Minji-nim does!"

"Minji-nim doesn't," from the driver's seat.

"So maybe, if you won't be kind to your own sake, think about what you're doing to the rest of us! To Mira and- and me!"

Her eyes are burning and she dashes a hand across them, sniffing harshly, waiting.

Waiting for Rumi to be her parents and not care.

Waiting for Rumi to be better and say she did.

Waiting…to see if she was going to lose this, too.

Rumi's quiet, then:

"There are…things, that can happen in battle." The rumble of the car over the road nearly swallows her words. "Terrible things. Things that would make the mighty weep. When demons are involved, it is worse. I do not answer to Gwi-Ma, he is not privy to my thoughts, he does now own my soul, he cannot control me as he would a person or a full demon, but…" she pauses, and in the almost-silence Zoey can hear clashing swords and agonized screams and shadows darkening souls.

Mira's hand grips hers, and Zoey leans back into her.

"But there are still ways."

The car grows cold.

For the first time since this whole wraith-slaying plan started, Zoey wonders: what are they walking into?

[secondtolastrow]

Miyeong snorts, before she can stop herself. “Sorry!”

Celine casts a quick, offended look in her direction.

“Sorry,” she repeats, trying to keep the laugh from her voice. “I just… Celine-ssi, you’ve known them for all of a week—less, for Rumi, and even less for Minji and I—and you’re already counting yourself out?”

Celine keeps her expression mostly impassive, eyes fixed on the road, but she can’t stop herself from blushing (a soft, pretty pink that Miyeong should not be thinking about right now). “I am merely considering my actions moving forward.”

…As it turns out, their dignified shaman has a ridiculous side to her, too. Miyeong kind of loves it.

Miyeong shakes her head, leaning back against the seat. “Look, do I not like that we were hurting Rumi without you two telling us that? Sure. But you clearly didn’t lie to us on purpose, and now you know to communicate more in the future. It’s not as bad as all that.”

Celine nods, slowly. Her right hand drifts from the steering wheel and her left hand slides down it, closer to the casual posture she’d adopted later in the first leg of their trip.

Score one for the chill approach!

“It is not good to enter battle without unity, especially spiritual warfare,” she says, at length.

…So maybe not.

“Minji works in an ER,” Miyeong points out. “She’s an expert in idiots. Even if Mira and Rumi can’t communicate, she’ll get through, I promise.”

“Yes, but I—“ Celine purses her lips and flushes again, shaking her head. “I’m sure she will. Did we remember to give her the protein shakes?”

“Yeah,” Miyeong says.

Yes, but I should’ve.

It makes sense, when she thinks about it: Celine has spent at least two decades in this order of hers, and the literal founder of the thing—or… spiritual founder? Inspiration? Diety? Honestly, Miyeong isn’t sure—turns up out of the blue and turns out to be some college kid with too much heart and not enough self-worth.

Miyeong would be a little insecure about herself too.

The question is just how to address it without making it weird.

“Not that you aren’t doing some very necessary jobs yourself, of course,” she says, like a bull in a fucking china shop.

[the-fallen-blue]

Celine startles both her passenger and herself when she actually laughs, some tight twist in her chest breaking loose that she hadn't even known was there until it was gone.

It's probably an insane response to an honestly pretty condescending statement, but Miyeong-ssi means no harm, and she's just so ridiculous. So utterly unconcerned with how she's perceived, so willing to make a spectacle of herself if she thinks it will help anyone else feel better, so willing to say the wrong thing as many times as needed to get to the right one.

Celine corrals her grin and looks over at the other woman, and finds her staring at Celine, stunned, a pretty flush high on her cheeks, embarrassment tinting her ears red, and Celine's grin is back just as quickly at the sight.

"Alright, then," she says, because she can't help teasing if that's going to be the result. "What necessary jobs am I doing?"

"I— you— hmph." Miyeong-ssi tilts her chin up and turns away in Celine's periphery. "You have the credit card, obviously. Walking wallet. Very important."

It's a tease of her own, but it's also a reminder of yet another practicality, and Celine sobers a little. "Might as well go ahead and book the rooms for tonight, speaking of my credit card. If we break for more than twenty minutes in Cheonan we won't get in until nine."

"Ugh, mobile websites always suck for booking," says Miyeong-ssi, but she pulls the hotel back up obligingly. "How many rooms? Two is cheaper…"

"Just get three doubles," Celine says. "The order has money to spare, and I'm not putting any two of Rumi-nim and her friends in the same room. If we're going to be facing wraiths tomorrow I want them actually sleeping."

Miyeong-ssi makes a little chuff of amusement. "Good point."

There's a moment of quiet, as she types, and Celine lets herself enjoy the landscape, green and gold around them as they roll steadily north.

"Three doubles booked to Jang Celine." The little confirmation bloop rings out of Miyeong-ssi's phone, and then she adds, slyly, "Money to spare, eh?"

Celine rolls her eyes, but she smiles, too (a combination which is becoming a habit, around Miyeong-ssi). "To spare, not to spend frivolously. But yes, otherworldly advice has as much economic use as it does material. We've made a few key investments, over the years."

"Elegant and rich. I don't suppose your order has an opening for a kept woman? Sit around, tell dumb stories, tell you you're all very pretty, live in luxury, that sort of thing?"

"I'll be sure to bring it up at the next regional meet-up," Celine says, dryly. Ridiculous. She's an absolutely ridiculous woman.

It's kind of wonderful, really.

[secondtolastrow]

Every once in a while, there’s a newbie who makes Minji break out the phrase believing you’re cursed is just another kind of thinking you’re special.

It’s not as gentle as she could be, but the work they do isn’t gentle, either. Sometimes they just need to have someone remind them that everyone has days from hell, and all of the people who just caused theirs are having one too.

Rumi’s issue is that she is, quite frankly, both cursed and special, and probably literal enough to miss the point anyway.

So Minji decides not to come at it so directly.

“Well,” she says, “I know more ways to kill you than you can possibly think of, and I’m incredibly vulnerable to a wraith right now.”

And then she turns the radio up to pretend it’s drowning out Rumi’s choking.

She can still hear the argument resuming in the backseat, starting with Rumi’s “That’s different!” but it gives her something to do to prevent her from intervening too much, and presents them with the idea that they have to figure this out, since she’s getting tired of their nonsense.

Deceptive? A bit. Effective? She hopes.

“Oh, so you get to be offended by people you care about talking shit about themselves?” Mira bites back. “Sure, it’s different that I can read the binding on your face and Zoey could just punch it, but both are true, Rumi!”

“And neither one is less likely to happen than you hurting us, so you can just stop,” Zoey finishes. “Unless you really don’t trust us.”

“Of course I trust you,” Rumi says, with genuine offense, and Minji thinks that she’s finally on the right track.

The static of the radio blares loud, suddenly, drowning out the old pop song the host was just trying to call a “classic” (Minji can admit the nineties were thirty years ago, thank you very much) as they get farther away from wherever they’re broadcasting.

(Honestly, Minji’s just following the other car. If she loses gem, she’ll be utterly and completely lost.)

It’s quiet when she finally finishes retuning and turning down the radio—staticky as shit, still, out her e in the middle of nowhere, but almost comprehensible.

She risks a glance backwards via the rearview mirror. Mira and Rumi are holding hands over Zoey’s lap (while Rumi stares out the window, bright red, possibly slightly trapped), and Zoey looks pleased rather than pained about the situation.

Minji turns the static down a little more. “Didn’t I give you the aux?”

Zoey grins.

[the-fallen-blue]

The stop in Cheonan ends up quite brief. Celine stands at the edge of a park with Minji-nim and Miyeong-ssi, while the others dash off to use the restroom, Mira and Rumi-nim smiling freely at each other as they go. Celine is gratified to see that Miyeong-ssi was correct, that Minji-nim was able to help mediate their dispute and repair their connection.

The emotion transforms to a deep discomfort, however, when she realizes how wholly and immediately she was willing to give Minji-nim credit for the change. As though Rumi-nim, of all people, could not be expected to solve the conflict herself.

Minji-nim does not give her time to dwell on it, though the topic she replaces it with is little better, when she says, "So," rubbing her neck against the strain of long driving. "Just between us old-timers. Rumi's power is pretty fucked up, huh."

"… I'm not the person to ask about the ethics," Miyeong-ssi says, while Celine is still trying to think of a reasonable response. "But I wouldn't have felt it. If I didn't know to look for it. I would have thought it was just me. I don't love that."

"Yes. Our… communication issues aside," says Celine, keeping a tight hold on her chagrin, "we are actually quite fortunate that Rumi-nim possesses the ability. Learning to recognize it is the first step in training resistance. And even without the time for that, you will all be less vulnerable to the wraiths for that first step alone."

Neither of them reply to that, for a beat or two. And then Minji-nim says, slowly, "She never used her power on you. Could she, if she wanted?"

Celine shoots her a puzzled glance. "Why would she want to? None of us have anything to fear from her."

"Indulge me."

She's steady, but clearly concerned, and… that's probably fair, despite Celine's instinctive, rankled defensiveness. She and Miyeong-ssi don't really know Rumi-nim, or Celine herself, for that matter. The question deserves the same consideration as anything else Minji-nim could say.

As for the answer...

Celine has not thought about the boy from Yeosu for a long time.

It had taken nearly six hours to finally calm the angry spirit and release it to its proper destination, which was frankly absurd. Celine hasn't heard of another that took half that long in the last hundred years. But tiring as it was, that part was simple; inevitable, even, once she'd pacified it enough to begin. It was that five minutes before that, when the gwishin had turned its will directly on her own mind, that had kept her awake until dawn, shivering and practicing her defensive chants and drinking Kyunghee-seonsaengnim's highest-proof soju straight from the bottle. Five minutes, it turned out, was so much longer than six hours, when one's soul was at stake.

Rumi-nim had been careful with her power, but Celine could see the edges of it clearly, felt the first moment of instinctive resistance when the severance hit. She is certainly strong. But she is not stronger than the jasa gwishin of Yeosu.

And so, as strange as it is to think that she might have any advantage on the great Rumi-nim, Celine tells Minji-nim, "No. I don't believe she could."

Minji-nim considers that, glancing at Miyeong-ssi, then looks at Celine again. "And if she did it to any of us, you'd be able to tell?"

With her senses on as high alert as she's been keeping them for all this? "Fairly quickly, most likely, yes. Though if your next question is in regards to anything more offensively-oriented, the answer is categorically no. I will not be turning my magic on Rumi-nim of Jeju, nor would most of the gut practice I use on malicious spirits work particularly well on a human, if I did."

Minji-nim puts her hands up, placating. "Severance is all I ask."

"You know," says Miyeong-ssi. "Two days ago, this conversation would have sounded very strange to me?" She shakes her head, affecting regret. "This is what I get for answering the phone when Minji calls."

"This is what I get for calling you to begin with," Minji-nim grumps right back.

[secondtolastrow]

Though her companions all swear they are staying the night in Suwon, Rumi almost disbelieves them—not in the least because the walled city appears to be missing its walls.

(Zoey laughs when she voices this observation, delighted, and Mira tells her they can come back and see Hwaseong Fortress with all the tourists another time.

“I had the same reaction the first time I came to Korea,” Zoey confesses. “I thought it would be like—Troy, or Jericho, or something. Finding out my grandparents just lived in a normal apartment building was kind of a let down.”)

It is not only a matter of the speed a car can attain—Rumi might not know how long a kilometer is, but she can certainly grasp fast—but of the roads that now carve through the land, paved in stones so small one can hardly feel the gaps between them.

What marvels humanity has reached.

Rumi wishes she could rejoice in the wholeheartedly, instead of watching the landscape speed by and thinking of how she could outrun horses (how she’d outrun that gray mare to force the man trying to abduct Seoyeon to come to a halt), but she couldn’t outrun this. Watching a truck belching black smoke roll by and thinking about how few stars there are anymore and how many cars. Watching—

But Rumi always wishes for things she cannot, and should not, have.

It is why she is disappointed when the honored shaman says they will be sharing three rooms, and Miyeong-nim says that Rumi will be her “buddy,” with a cheery smile.

“An honor,” she replies, bowing her head to hide any possible sign of discomfort. It is good that she not be allowed this. Zoey and Mira have faith in her. She ought not take an opportunity to betray it.

Miyeong-nim laughs. “You’re so sweet.”

And Rumi does not say anything about that.

“I’ll want to look at those bandages before you fall asleep,” Minji adds, before turning to Mira. “And I know it might feel overbearing, but—“

“No.” Mira turns away, blatantly embarrassed as she studies the far end of the entry hall, where Celine has gone to speak with a worker. “I don’t mind. It’s… fine.”

Minji smirks, but does not press, and Rumi is glad. Hopefully, Mira will come to feel safe enough to express such sentiments without hesitation or obfuscation, but it is enough to see that she is made safe by Minji’s presence in the moment, as well.

(…Hopefully, the rooms at this lodging house will resemble a cave less than those at her own home did.

She would hate to disturb Miyeong-nim’s rest.)

“Guess that leaves me with Celine!” Zoey says brightly, oblivious to the chill creeping down Rumi’s spine.

[the-fallen-blue]

Mira and Minji have just settled in, pjs on and teeth brushed (with incredible anxiety on Mira's part, despite Minji's assurance that it was fine and encouraged as long as she was careful), when a rap sounds on the door.

Mira's bed is further from the door, so she lets Minji get it, and is surprised when it's Celine, on the other side. She would have expected the shaman's knock to be a little more confident, somehow. Celine meets Mira's eyes, briefly, the same calm neutrality on her face that she's been pointing at Mira since the blow-up at the ferry, and Mira looks down, uncomfortably aware, suddenly, that she's wearing the older woman's clothes.

"Miyeong-ssi suggested I pack this for you," Celine says to Minji, and then there's a beat, while Mira picks at a loose thread on the comforter.

"… did she tell you why?"

"I didn't think to ask. Should I guess?" She sounds very fond. "Allergies?"

"It's a hair thing." Minji's tone is much harder to parse. "A night or two without isn't a big deal. But, thank you."

"You're very welcome. Sleep well. You too, Mira."

Mira looks up without thinking, to see the tail end of Celine bowing her head lightly in Mira's direction, then shutting the door gently behind her. Next to it, Minji is holding a black silk pillowcase, staring at it like she wants to have some kind of significant emotion but can't quite muster the energy.

In spite of herself, Mira thinks about Jaeho.

She'd been… fifteen, it must have been, when the Kangs decided to buy out Friendly Automotive, unconcerned by the owner's unwillingness to sell. She doesn't remember the pain, or what she was wearing, or any of the words her father said, but she remembers his sneer, as he held her by the elbow and wrist, too tight. She remembers the look on Jaeho's face when he raised his knife to cut her, between Abeoji's bruising hands, to offer up the blood of kin; pale, hunted, furious at Abeoji for making him do it, furious at Mira for being afraid.

He'd snuck into her room, later that night, silent and folded in on himself, with the dinner she'd been denied for misbehaving and a change of bandages. He used to do that, all the time, sneak into her room after a bad day or terrifying ritual, bringing little sweets, books he thought she'd like. An otter stuffie, once, when she was ten and feverish with the flu and didn't understand why her parents had just locked her away like always when she needed them so badly, and she'd hidden it, never dared to give it a name, hugged it every night for five years before her mother found it and burned it. Sometimes her brother had stayed to talk, a little, after giving her whatever gift he'd come up with, tell her dumb jokes and play stupid guessing games.

He didn't say anything, that night. It was the last time he ever came.

Mira had grown up in the same house, with the same parents, and she never stopped caring. She tries so hard to control her anger, she didn't know she was hurting Rumi, she's never meant to hurt anyone, she's never murdered a person. She drew a line, she fought back, for Zoey, pointless as it was. That should mean something, surely. She didn't know.

But had she had the same parents? Her parents wanted her quiet, out of the way. His parents were invested. If he hadn't had Abeoji dragging him down every dark alley his entire life, holding his love and approval over a knife's edge, could he have broken free, found the will to say no, the way Mira did?

If Mira hadn't learned a decade ago that she was never going to earn her father's love, if she'd been raised on the same precipice, would she have said yes, when they brought Zoey in?

Mira sniffs, without thinking, and realizes, quite abruptly, that her cheeks are wet, and Minji is sitting on her own bed, facing Mira, with the most agonizing look of compassion on her face, and her voice is so, so brutally gentle when she says,

"Do you want to talk about it?"

[secondtolastrow]

And Mira shakes her head—her face hurts and she’s already talked so, so much; she told Rumi and Zoey and Celine more about her family than she’s told anyone, just the night before; she’s talked enough; she’d like to be done talking, please—but the tears don’t stop coming.

Minji doesn’t press, which is even worse, because at least if she had Mira would’ve had something to fight against, any kind of resistance to marshal herself to. She just nods.

“Why can’t it just—stop?” Mira shoves up her glasses and uses the heel of her hand to wipe angrily her eyes. “They’re dead. It shouldn’t matter.”

(That thing with Friendly Automotive hadn’t left a scar. She has enough of those, though—the belt marks on her back, the slight crookedness of her nose, the burn scars on her shins, the slash on her arm from when one of her cousins had cut too deep.

They take enough space. They always will. She doesn’t want to give them this.)

Minji’s expression—what of it Mira can make out, anyway—doesn’t change.

“They killed people,” she chokes.

Jaeho killed people. People Minji cared about. And here Mira is, crying over a kindness as insignificant as a stuffed otter.

How can Minji stand to be in the same room as her?

I didn’t love them, she wants to swear. Fuck, she didn’t. She didn’t love her parents—she loved them once, maybe, when she was too small to know any better and things were kinder. When Eomma still sometimes swung her through the air just to make her laugh and Appa still always had a little piece of trivia to help make the world make more sense.

But she’d never been right for them, and somewhere along the way that had turned into the combination of fear and loathing that she’d spent most of her life boiling in.

I didn’t love them, she wants to swear, but it sounds too much like a plea for absolution.

“They did,” Minji says, and Mira wipes at her eyes again, this time a little rougher, bruised or not, and puts her fucking glasses back on.

“Do you wanna just—turn on the TV? Watch something mindless before we fight for our lives?”

Minji, with that same awful compassion, says, “Sure.”

[frozenwolftemplar]

Rumi was having a terrible time.

It's not that the hotel room was cave-like; caves did not have pictures of formless splotches of color on the wall or paper glued to the walls (did no one value paper in this world?) or a couch.

And it's not that Miyeong-nim was a bad roommate; she honestly reminded her a lot of Zoey, constant talking and movement and compliments she didn't really deserve. Rather it was-

"I find that curtains are a must in the city," Miyeong-nim's saying as she pulls the window coverings shut, snuffing the flickering star-swallowing lights of the city beyond. "Celine-ssi says we're getting an early start tomorrow, and something tells me she's the kind of person who thinks starting your day before sunrise is normal. Last thing we need is all that noise and light when we're trying to sleep, hmm?"

"Hmm." Rumi nods agreeably, like a good roommate, trying to not notice how the color-splotch paintings seem to vanish in the shadows, or how little stucco bumps and ridges covering the ceiling lengthen into stalactites beyond the little puddle of light from the bedside lamp.

She is an adult, she has faced and fought patriarchy and wraiths and the nanny goat from the Shim's farm with a vendetta against the world.

She was not afraid of the dark.

Miyeong-nim flounces into her bed and reaches over to switch off the bedside lamp.

The cavern looms.

Was it always so hard to breathe in hotels? Did the 'air conditioning' thin the air? And wait, was her hand shaking? Was she shivering? She didn't feel cold, if anything she was too warm-

"Rumi?" Miyeong-nim's smile dims as her hand drifts away from the switch. "Is something wrong?"

Yes.

"No. I am just…tired."

She turns the light off. After all, Miyeong-nim seems to need dark to sleep, and Rumi will not be the cause of insomnia.

Just her own.

Hopefully the others were not experiencing such trials…

xxx

Zoey was having a terrible time.

She had just learned something awful about Celine.

"We have an early day," Celine said, already in her pajamas even though it wasn't even ten o'clock yet. "We both need sleep. Please turn that off."

She didn't believe in sleeping with the TV on!!!

[the-fallen-blue]

"Oh, come on," begs Zoey, putting on her widest, wettest eyes, like a kpop maknae doing aegyo. "It's an accommodation."

Celine raises an eyebrow, looking profoundly unimpressed, and Zoey fidgets under her gaze and hits the power. And it's fine, it's whatever, it's normal to want quiet to sleep, it's not Celine's fault that ninety seconds of silence makes Zoey's brain start trying to chew its own leg off in search of a drop of dopamine, Zoey probably isn't going to sleep well tonight either way and one of them should be comfortable—

"Explain," says Celine, which is. Unexpected?

"Uh. I… have ADHD?" Her mother's voice rings exasperated in the back of her mind, Are you telling me or asking me?, and Zoey cringes, but carries on. "Without some kind of noise I kind of just go in mental circles all night. It's fine though. I can put something on my phone, it'll be really quiet, you won't hear it at all, I won't need it charged tomorrow if we don't get separated—"

"Zoey," interrupts Celine, firm but not unkind. "Are you medicated?"

She thinks of her bottle of Adderall XR, sitting on a shelf in her dorm. "Not… at precisely this exact moment, no."

Celine's eyes narrow, somewhat ominously.

Zoey bounces to her feet, all but yelps "Hey don't worry though! I won't be a liability in the fight I promise. I was unmedicated most of my life, I didn't even get a prescription until I was 19—" There's nothing wrong with you, Zoey, you're a perfectly bright young girl, you don't need expensive chemicals, you just need to focus— "And actually life and death situations are the one thing I can concentrate on reliably, or you know things like exams that might as well be life and death because if I fail med school my mother will kill me anyway—"

"That wasn't my concern," says Celine, who has turned and begun digging into her luggage. Zoey gulps when she sees which luggage— not the hard-sided roller with a few changes of clothes, but the blue-and-gray gym duffel (gym duffel! modern shamans use gym duffels!) full of knives and herbs and other miscellaneous Shaman Stuff.

She produces… a sliver of wood and a box of ink brushes? and brings them over to the bedside table, directly under the light. Zoey sinks back down onto the bed, and watches as Celine paints the wood— flat, square, pale white, a little bigger than Zoey's thumb— with a stroke of solid black.

Zoey's leg is bouncing. She stops it, anxiously, trying not to annoy Celine as she finishes a character— hanja of some kind, Zoey's pretty sure. Zoey's fingers are tapping. She folds her hands tightly together as Celine inks another shape, murmuring something under her breath, melodic and reminiscent of the odd dialect Mira's family had been using back when Zoey was trussed up like a pig (a week and also a hundred years ago). Zoey's leg is bouncing again when Celine finishes, looks up at Zoey, and hands her the piece. The ink is crisp and already dry, somehow.

"Will," Celine says, pointing at the first hanja. "Calm." The second. "Focus." The third. "Now hold it tight, and say something about how you'd rather feel, when you're distracted. Verse is good. Music is better. Most important is that you mean it."

Zoey looks up at Celine's face, patient and confident like she's making perfect sense, and then back down at the wood. Something did pop to mind, as soon as Celine said it, and it's off the cuff and stupid and untranslated but it's certainly extremely sincere:

"Every single day I've got bees in my head Wish now and then I could get silence instead—"

A shiver runs through her and her skin prickles, hairs on end like she's in a static field.

"Is there something you should be doing right now, that you aren't?" Celine asks.

"I mean, I guess I should get my pjs on," Zoey grumbles, and goes over to her bag, and stops short.

She thinks about brushing her teeth. It seems pretty doable and not especially boring.

She thinks about going to sleep. She probably should.

She stands there and pretends she's standing in line for something, that she's going to keep having to stand there for a while, and lets her mind wander, and doesn't feel anxious to talk or fidget or get her phone—

Zoey whips around. "You made me magic Adderall."

Celine's smile is small and her voice is dry. "It's not quite as good as all that. Just a concentration aid, and it's unlikely to last more than an hour and will take much longer to renew its energies. But it might calm the bees enough for you to sleep," she adds, with a touch of humor.

"Don't be mean, you barely gave me any time to compose."

"It was fine," says Celine, more sincerely. "A little impressive, actually. I've never heard of anyone activating bujeok with English, or any other language other that Korean. Although I suppose it's most likely that no one has ever thought to try."

"Yeah I don't suppose you get much more traditional than a mudang order, linguistically or otherwise," agrees Zoey, going back to digging out her pajamas. "Which, speaking of, why Celine? You've got five Koreans with you and only one of us can even say your name right, and I only can because I'm, like, only Korean on a technicality. Doesn't seem very traditional?"

And, wow, okay, Zoey, great job thinking before you speak with that one, have you ever even heard of impulse control? Definitely still gonna need that Adderall.

[secondtolastrow]

Miyeong has very simple preferences when it comes to sleep: dark, and quiet. Dark is negotiable. Quiet is not.

Sleeping sitting up? Can, has, and probably will again. Sleeping in a car? No issue, as long as the radio’s not on. Sleeping in a library? Has, in fact, gotten her in trouble a time or two.

Sleeping while someone watches a movie at full volume, in spite of her explaining that she needs to be up early the next morning? Not happening.

(Miyeong totally isn’t still bitter. At all.)

(Yeonggi was many things. Amongst them, tragically, the best boyfriend Miyeong has ever had.)

(Minji. Her and Minji. Someone—Celine—had thought that she and Minji were—)

(And Celine herself, laughing at Miyeong’s stupid jokes and taking her seriously regardless—which brought her to how Minji had apparently been reading her work and that was just—)

(Isn’t she fighting for her life in the morning? How is she keeping herself awake thinking about this?)

Miyeong breathes in through her nose, one-two-three-four, and holds for seven and lets the breath out over eight counts. She repeats it, feeling moderately calmer in her own skin, but…

Not, actually.

There’s a wrongness prickling at the back of her neck.

She rolls over, wondering if it might be something that Rumi can sense more clearly, and after a moment for her eyes to focus, finds her roommate lying rigid atop the blanket. Clearly, whatever it is has gotten her attention too.

Wait.

Had she never gotten under the covers?

Now that she’s paying attention, Miyeong realizes Rumi’s breathing is shallow and uneven, that this is what felt so wrong—not some kind of creeping evil, but the fact that the person right next to her wasn’t breathing. What kind of idiot was she?!

Miyeong rolls to her feet, and Rumi’s head snaps to the sound.

“Are—Miyeong-nim, are you—are you well?” she asks, breathlessly slurring the words.

Miyeong flicks on the light, blinking at the brightness. “Yeah, agiya, I’m fine. What about you?”

Rumi shakes her head, pressing a hand to her chest. She’s been crying, Miyeong can see now. There are tears still on her face.

“Okay, does your chest hurt? Is it an injury?” Was Minji to their left or their right? She needed her rest, yeah, but Miyeong doubts she’ll mind be woken for—

“Fine,” Rumi says, between shallow breaths.

Horseshit.

Miyeong drops to her knees next to the bed, remembering what happened that morning. “Okay, agiya, you’re breathing a little fast—“

“No air,” Rumi protests.

“Just follow me,” Miyeong says, taking one of Rumi’s hands to press it to her chest.

Rumi promptly flinches at the contact, and throws herself over the far edge of the bed.

[grundpfeiler]

Minji forced herself to be present while as the TV showed some cooking show. (Normally she'd be interested but-) Mira was still awake and that meant that Minji was still on shift. Watching Mira without visibly watching her. (And eyes on the television meant that Minji's eyes were not going to her phone, silent except for the messages her family had sent her.)

Instead Minji focused on scripting future conversations - hopefully never needed ones. The fire wasn't the first time the ER staff were under threat because of someone taking ire that their victim had finally reached help. Bah - that was the truth of it but the young woman's pride would probably balk at being called a victim. She needed another way to say the truth. (It was a logistical impossibility that none of the ER staff had managed to get out - besides the unfortunate number of entrances from the ER wing to the hospital proper that Miyeong exploited whenever someone took their eye off her if she got access to the ER - the waiting room was designed to be accessed from the street so that whoever was manning the front desk could call a medical emergency code. Like when two teenagers walked/dragged themselves to the hospital after being stabbed. And on top of that the ambulance dock was also a direct access point so that patients could be taken directly to the operating room. No, there was no way that no one-)

Minji blinked and refocused on the judges' critique of an appetizer. She did not look at her patient directly, or even from the corner of her eye. She instead found a warped reflection on a metal - something. What didn't matter - Mira's tense posture no better or worse than before did. Minji breathed in - and then placed her tongue between two of her canines and bit. (Five, four-) She was on shift. Until everything was over she was Nurse Park, and everything outside of the hos- outside of her responsibilities did not exist.

Her phone rang. Minji's hand snatched it - raising it to her ear. "Hello?" She asked - the years of experience in the ER the only thing silencing the hope balled in her throat from her voice. "Park Minji-nim, you answered." The voice Minji heard was her supervisor's supervisor. Lee Seongsu. Which meant that her supervisor, Kim Jeonghun wasn't calling her. Jeonghun who had been pleased that Minji had finally turned in some of her overtime to take time off - and had taken her shifts despite the last minute nature of her sudden request. "Yes, Lee Seongsu-nim." Minji managed to answer. "Why are you calling now?" Minji had expected calls at the start of the day when the news had broken, maybe an announcement. (If she had not been hours away when the news had broken - she would have been finding the nearest hospital. When emergencies like this happened - people came in regardless whether or not they were scheduled. There was never enough hands when a major crisis happened... and then a hospital was lost.)

"You saw the news?" The question came - slow. "Yes - I was away from the city." Minji answering the unasked question. Where had she been - she hadn't shown her face the entire day at any of the hospitals.

She should have been there. "We're trying to figure out who was there." Who died. "And there was no one at your home when the police checked. But your neighbor said you hadn't come home for the past few days." And Minji not coming home but instead staying at the hospital, sleeping in a break room before returning to work had happened enough times that that wasn't a guarantee. "The police were looking for me?" Minji asked - attention refocusing on the important part of the sentence. "They were looking for everyone." Minji forced herself to breathe as the words hit. (No, no. There was no way - someone must have. Someone would have -) Her phone had been silent all day. There would be no reason to go through the entire list of ER personnel if... someone could report those who weren't there. Or at least look at who had gotten out. ... Or by identifying bodies. (Minji could already see the nightmare waiting for her the next time she closed her eyes. The fires licking the ceiling. Seeing a door that she could open to let people out - if she had been there. Why hadn't she been there?) Minji heard someone else speak - despite feeling her cell phone in her hand. "Can you tell me who is okay?" "We are waiting for confirmation that all the families are informed about their loved ones before any announcements are made. And I need to know where you are now, and where you will be at seven in the morning." "Why?" Minji asked from the far side of a tunnel - eyes upon the sight of the ER catching fire. A hundred fire drills replaying in her mind, watching the practiced procedure to evacuate. What had gone wrong. "The police and fire department want to speak with any ER staff, or anyone familiar with the department layout and about the days leading up to the fire. And you are the one individual who can still answer those questions." Minji could barely hear herself as she gave the hotel address. The phone call had ended - she knew that because her phone was charging again. And Mira was looking at her: "Who was that?" Minji dug her thumb into her palm. She was on shift, her attention must be on her patient. She was on shift. "My work - I am not working tomorrow." She remembered that much at least. Minji refocused - banishing the screams beginning to mount in her ears, the banging of fists upon glass, terror at a demon hunting people in corners - why did no one get out, HOW DID NOT ONE GET OU- No, no. Once Mira was asleep - the shower would be safe to cry in without being heard. And after that - then she would be able to think of what preparations she could make. It was like being on the night-shift. She could sleep when the job was done. She would have to sleep after - if she screamed (and she would, she could already taste the choking smoke smothering Sieun and that was if her friend wa- had been lucky, unconscious before fire ate and ate to the point of needing dental records-) everyone would react badly and they needed to sleep. She was on shift - everything else could wait. Everything else must wait - as soon as she fell Minji wasn't getting back up.

[the-fallen-blue]

"Get ready for bed," says Celine, like a mom, ignoring Zoey's question, which is probably the best response she could reasonably have asked for.

So Zoey goes into the bathroom, changes, brushes, washes her face, takes out her earrings, and heads back into the room, where Celine is folded gracefully upright at the head of her bed, wearing startlingly sexy squared-off frameless glasses and reading Miyeong's article.

She looks up, when Zoey emerges, and says, "Only Korean on a technicality?"

"Oh."

So she's not ignoring the whole question, just all the parts that don't involve making Zoey say uncomfortable things. Okay.

"I mean." Zoey shrugs and sits down on her own bed, plugging her phone in to charge. "I grew up in America. Even after the divorce I was only here a couple months a year. I don't, like, have a name other than Zoey, even, like some of my friends did back in Burbank, my mom wanted to give me a Korean one too I think but my dad wasn't about it, which, you know, I don't know how anyone didn't see the divorce coming— Anyway. I can try forever but I'm always eventually going to bow at the wrong angle and pick the wrong honorific and cross my legs or point at stuff without thinking. I didn't mean, like— obviously, literally speaking I'm three-quarters Korean ethnically and I have citizenship and everything but."

She doesn't know where the rest of that sentence is going, really, so she lets it die, uncomfortably.

"You asked about my name," says Celine. "Does it bother you that they can't say yours?"

"Not… really? Just kinda feels like when my skater friends called me Zoester or Zoematic. Just them making it theirs, that's fine. It's not hearing it, so much as just, as soon as I introduce myself everyone knows I don't belong."

She could have given herself another name, of course. Her mom tried to get her to, for ages. But calling herself Juhee or Jisoo or whatever seventeen years after the fact wouldn't make her any less Zoey. She doesn't want to hack California off herself like a dead branch, amputate her whole childhood like a diseased limb. She just wants to be able to grow here, too.

And maybe that's greedy, or selfish. Her mother certainly seems to think so. But it's still who she is, and she can't pretend it isn't.

Celine hums a little, thoughtfully. "I wasn't born here, either. I can tell you that manners come with time, if that's what matters to you. Longer than you'd like, but they will become second nature, eventually."

She puts the magazine down on the bedside table, folds her glasses on top of it.

"I can also tell you that spirits, tied more intimately to this land than any human will ever be, told me, years ago, that you, specifically, were important to its future. A med student is certainly still within her rights to argue with a spirit, of course, about whether and where she belongs. But this mudang won't be, if that's worth anything to you."

"… yeah, okay," says Zoey, because what the hell else do you say to that.

"Sleep well, Zoey," says Celine, like she means it, and turns off the light.

[frozenwolftemplar]

Rumi doesn't know what she's thinking- or even if she is thinking, when she throws herself off the bed, realizes too late that the lack of air has her legs are quivering like a newborn colt (what else could it be?), and crashes to the floor. Just that she needs to get away.

Their hands were on her again, burning the sigils into her face, chanting words meant to keep a demon in check. She remembers strainng against them, trying to gain her feet so she could slaughter them properly and fight her way back home. But every time she shifted, she found more of herself had been locked away, and the key impossible for her to grasp.

(what demon could?)

Where Minji-nim bandaged before retiring to her own room aches from where she's crashed to the floor, the still healing injuries throbbing.

Injuries he gave her, or, well, his likeness.

But he'd given her other ones.

"Jinu! Jinu, what-"

"Jinu don't leave! Don't leave!"

A lightness floods her head, like a surfacing bubble. It turns out, there is no air on the floor either.

"Shit…" Miyeong-him's footsteps hurry around the bed to where Rumi's sprawled on the floor. "Rumi?" She reaches out, then jerks her hands back, as if checking an impulse. "Right. No touching right now. That's okay."

Rumi both agrees and disagrees with that.

"Okay agiya." She must have spaced out a moment, because Miyeong-nim's suddenly on her belly, cheek pressed against the carpet so she can latch her eyes on Rumi's. "This is going to be over soon."

One of them had said that, with a sneer that showed a deadened tooth in the corner of his mouth. "Just don't fight like a good little demon, then lights out," he'd said, like they hadn't just bound her.

The most horrible sound escapes her throat, a thready whimper that someone of her status should not make.

She didn't want the cave again! She didn't want the darkness and the silence and the nothingness! She didn't want to be alone again!

"Here. Nice carpet, huh?" Miyeong-nim cuts her eyes briefly to the carpet before turning them back to Rumi. "How about you focus on how it feels for a minute?"

It is a ridiculous request, Rumi knows. But she finds herself focusing on it anyway, turning her senses to the very much not-a-cave texture beneath her. "R-rough," she chokes out. But not rough like sandpaper, she thinks as she considers the fiber beneath her cheek longer. "W-woolly?"

"Mmm, that is a good way of putting it." Miyeong-nim smiles like that was an inspired observation rather than something embarrassingly basic. "What else do you notice about it?"

Rumi has no idea how long Miyeong-nim lies there with her, asking her about the carpet, then the notepad that fell off the bedside table during her dive off the bed, then the pen she placed where Rumi's fingers could twitch over it. Just that when she finally sits up, there is air again.

"There you go." Miyeong-nim passes a box of tissues to her as she slowly, painfully, sits. It's only then Rumi realizes her face is wet.

Had she cried, when it happened?

No. She would not let those bastards see her tears.

But after…

After, her sobs had filled the void.

[the-fallen-blue]

Celine is woken from sound, dreamless sleep by an unsteady knock.

She glances sideways first, sees Zoey still out cold, and slips silently out of bed herself to go check. It's Mira, of all people, on the other side of the door, wringing her hands around what appears to be a sock full of ice, and Celine steps into the hallway with her, blinking against the light.

"So uh." Mira lifts the ice around her neck, anxiously. "My stupid face woke me up and I got up to get painkillers and Minji was awake, she never fell asleep. I think—"

Her eyes dart away from Celine's face.

"I told her I was going to go get ice and she said, I don't know, some nurse stuff but it sounded like— I think she was crying?"

She says the last word with poorly hidden panic, which is a little endearing, despite the circumstances.

She also looks like she's been crying, at some point, but that feels like something Mira would rather she not notice, so she pretends she doesn't.

"Stay here," she says, instead. "Take my bed. Don't wake up Zoey." Mira's expression turns a little resentful, but she nods and swaps keys when Celine holds hers out, and makes to move past her. Celine lets out a breath, sends her ego with it, and says, "Wait."

Mira stops and watches her, wary.

"It wasn't my intention to deceive or control you, about the exorcism. I was simply thoughtless, which is its own failing, of course. I'm sorry for the pain it caused you, and you have my word that I will try to be more clear and thorough, about such things, in the future."

For just a second, Mira looks shocked, before her face smooths out into studied nonchalance. "Yeah, okay. Thank you." The ice makes a faint scraping sound as it jostles under her fidgeting. "I'm... It kinda mostly wasn't about you. Which, you figured out, obviously. Still a dick move on your part, don't get me wrong. But, I should have known. So. I'm sorry too, for like. Making my shit your problem."

"I wasn't offended," says Celine, which is true. "But I appreciate that." Which is also true. That Mira is no longer upset with her, specifically, is… a more significant, and more personal, relief, than Celine was letting herself be aware of hoping for.

"Yeah," says Mira. "Sure. I, uh. I hope you can help Minji."

"As do I. Goodnight, Mira."

"Yeah." Mira ducks her head, and slips inside.

Their rooms aren't quite adjacent— honestly they're probably lucky to all be on the same floor— so Celine pads past several doors before she reaches Minji and Mira's and lets herself in. The beds are empty and the bathroom light is on, and Celine ducks in a little further and rounds the corner to see Minji-nim at the sink, splashing cold water on her face.

She lifts her head when she senses Celine's presence, and does a not-particularly-good impression of someone who is calm, adult, in control, and not half-dehydrated from tears when she says, "Did you find ice? We can always— you're not Mira."

"I am not," Celine agrees easily.

"Celine-nim." She makes no more pretense of not being a wreck, but there's still a hint of shame in her tone, like she shouldn't be upset, or at least like Celine shouldn't be expected to deal with it. "I would say Mira shouldn't have woken you, but I suppose better you're here than her."

"I'm flattered."

It's a Miyeong sort of thing to say. Minji-nim doesn't quite roll her eyes.

Celine walks over to Minji-nim's bed, silk pillowcase askew and incongruous amongst the off-white linen, and sits down, Minji-nim trailing after to land heavily at her side. Celine does not look at her, and waits.

"I'm a liability," Minji-nim says, eventually, tired and raw. "In this fight. I shouldn't be facing wraiths right now. I can barely face my own reflection."

[secondtolastrow]

“I apologize,” Rumi says, gaze studiously fixed on the tissue box. “You need your sleep.”

Miyeong almost wants to cry. This fucking kid. “So do you.”

Rumi shakes her head, still not looking up. “I have slept enough. Please, extinguish the light and return to sleep. I will not trouble you anymore.”

“Right,” Miyeong sighs. So, definitely not turning the lights off again. “Let’s try that again with a little more realism? I’d rather not have to talk you down from another panic attack.”

Rumi flushes violently, but she doesn’t insist Miyeong just go, which means framing it as an inconvenience… maybe worked. A little.

“You wanna tell me what happened, and maybe we can work it out?” she asks, more gently.

“It is foolish,” Rumi mumbles, pulling out a tissue to worry at it. “I should not—such a thing should not trouble me in this way.”

“…I don’t eat meat,” Miyeong tells her.

The non sequitur makes her head tilt, just a little, showing her one brown eye.

“I gave it up when I was in college.” She shrugs. “The guy I was with then, he’d… forget. On purpose. And then it would be me making things difficult if I realized it wasn’t tofu in my food and started asking questions.”

Rumi’s eyes narrow in displeasure. “I do not like the sound of this… guy.”

Miyeong laughs a little. “I still—I am difficult, now. I can’t let pretty much anyone cook for me, or I can’t eat more than banchan if they do.”

“That is not d—“ Rumi realizes what she’s saying and scowls, refocusing on her hands, and the half-shredded tissue between them. “…I know I am not the only one whose memories plague them. I—I was in a cave. Under a rock. I was bound and alone and in the dark. And when I fell asleep, I did not wake until—“

“Oh, agiya.” Instinctively, Miyeong reaches for her, but she catches herself.

Rumi, to her surprise, leans in, quietly inviting Miyeong to wrap an arm around her as she sniffles.

So Miyeong does.

“We can keep the light on,” she says softly. “I’ll sleep just fine, okay? And anytime you need, you can look over and see I’m right there next to you.”

“…I would not—it is not an inconvenience?” The earnest, quiet hope in her voice makes Miyeong’s teeth ache.

She squeezes around Rumi’s shoulders. “Not at all.”

[frozenwolftemplar]

Minji slumps forward until she's bent nearly double, arms resting heavily on her knees. Perhaps she should feel better- lighter- having said that, admitted to Celine-nim just how unfit she was for all this. But it doesn't.

Instead putting her weakness out there- how she's failing them all, how she can't pull herself together enough to see them through this one crisis after devoting so many years of her life to the ER- has the opposite effect. Her words settle heavily on her shoulders, a ton of emotional bricks, and she can feel the tears she just finished scrubbing her face clean of burning again.

Crap, she really was a mess.

On the plus side, though, Celine-nim would probably see what a wreck she was and agree; kick her off the wraith-hunting team rather than make her resign.

Celine doesn't respond right away. Minji's not surprised. Celine-nim strikes her as the type to run every thought through an editorial review board twice before speaking it, the exact opposite from Miyeong.

It's a good dynamic, minimal filter with too many; they must have realized it too, considering how they both seemed refreshed from their drive to the hotel. They'll make a good wraith-hunting team.

Which is fortunate, since Celine's about to agree it's better Minji sit out.

"No more so than the rest of us."

Minji twists her neck to peer up at Celine-nim, still staring at the wall. "You know I'm one word away from becoming a sobbing mess, right? Isn't this-" she gestured to herself contemptuously "-like, a wraith banquet?"

"You are correct that wraiths prey on such negative feelings as grief and shame and guilt." Celine nodded, conceding the point. "And that people suffering from an abundance of them are seen as easy prey. But they have a way of drawing them out from anyone." She paused, and in the dim lighting Minji saw a muscle in her jaw clench. "Any one of us could fall."

Celine's hand tightens where its clasping her knee, like she's revisiting her own private load of bricks, pawing through the pile and not stopping even as they scrape her palms. An urge to sidle closer and, like she has with Miyeong in the past, knock her shoulder against the shaman's, just a little reminder that she's not alone, but she doesn't.

(still there, though)

(nurse instincts never turn themselves off)

"What helps," Celine continues, hand drifting to the covers to needlessly smooth them. "Is facing them in a group. With people you can draw strength from. Who can…ground you. Remind you that there's more to you than shame and guilt."

"Good thing you have Miyeong, then." Minji sighs. "She'll be way more use in that department than me."

"And it's a good thing she has you. All of us. For reasons beyond providing professional medical care." The angles of Celine's face are softened in the dim lamplight, turning the look she's gracing Minji with into something Minji doesn't have words for.

(Miyeong probably would, though; or, at least, monosyllables).

"Your shaman senses tell you that?" Minji can't help the tease that straggles into her tone.

Celine tilts her head in a see-sawing motion. "Mmm, only partly."

...Minji has questions.

"I understand why you feel otherwise," Celine continues speaking as Minji reaches for the tissue box and rips out a fistful more than she actually needs. "But contrary to what you think, we'll be all the stronger for your presence."

And maybe it's a part of processing (or not-processing) crushing grief, but Celine-nim's words find their way into that aching, bleeding part of her and send some of the bricks tumbling away. For now.

Must be a shaman-thing?

This time, when she feels an urge to sidle closer to the shaman and drop her head on her shoulder (or, well, bicep; she really was tall), she doesn't fight it, and Celine shifts her weight to accommodate Minji's.

"Good to know," she hums. "'Course, I said I'd talk to the cops and fire department tomorrow…"

"We'll wait." Celine's voice vibrates pleasantly through her; Minji thinks she could have been a singer in a different life. "Besides, it's safer we don't leave you alone."

Minji's eyes flash open (wait, she'd shut them?). "What?"

Celine doesn't get a chance to answer.

[secondtolastrow]

The knock is perfectly polite.

The feeling on the other side of the door is… dusty, or stale, even. Ashy, maybe, like something that’s been burnt up.

“Don’t open that,” Celine says, immediately.

Minji-nim blinks at her. “I… What? What if it’s Mira? Or one of the others?”

Celine shakes her head, already cursing herself for having left her supplies in her room—everything she needed to kill a wraith, a hundred feet away with a wraith in the middle. What a fool she was. “It’s not. Nothing alive feels like that.”

Minji-nim stiffens. “Oh.”

The wraith knocks again. “Park Minji? This is the Seoul Metropolitan Police.”

“It knows my name,” Minji-nim says. She looks at her phone. Her jaw clenches. “Odds it bothered to wear a cop uniform?”

Celine winces. “You told someone you were here?”

“Guess we know who dies first in the horror movie,” she jokes, but despite what she’d said about her abilities just moments before, steel is already rising in her gaze. “What do we do?”

Celine gets to her feet and peeks out the peephole. The wraith is in a police uniform. It’s also not alone.

She steps back as it knocks a third time, calling Minji-nim’s name again. “We don’t have the supplies to kill them in here. Do you remember which room Rumi-nim is in?”

Minji-nim nods.

“Good,” Celine says. “I’m going to go out first and do what I can to hold them here. You’re going to run. Okay?”

“Jesus,” Minji-nim says. She breathes in. She stands up. “Okay.”

“Look at me,” Celine says.

Minji-nim looks at her. She has to tilt her head up to do it.

Celine still steps into her space. Carefully, intentionally. “You’re going to run. We’re both going to be okay. We’re all going to survive. Yes?”

Minji-nim’s lips tilt up in a world-weary smirk, like she knows exactly the trick Celine is pulling. Nonetheless, she agrees, “We’re all going to survive.”

This is when the wraith decides to put its fist through the door, and they run out of time for pep talks.

[serpentbeardwrites]

The door groans as the wraith’s fist unclenches and starts tearing; the wood parts under its claws like cardboard. 

The emptiness surging through the new-made gap hits Celine like a punch to the jaw. The taste of ash and smoke works its way down her throat like a serpent. 

She steels herself and opens her mind to song. She has no time for her preferred complex incantations—still, she risks a glance at Minji-nim. 

Gone is the grieving woman, there is only the emergency nurse now. Celine tamps down on the guilt that surges as she draws strength from that. 

The door gives way and the first wraith staggers through. Celine fashions her voice into a rebuke that sends it flying back into its compatriot. Both wraiths hit the floor with a thud.

“Go!” she tells Minji-nim, pouring as much speed as she can lend the nurse into her voice.   

Minji-nim bolts out through the gap just as the first wraith surges to its feet. Celine speaks another rebuke. 

It merely staggers the wraith this time.

The wave of emptiness washes over Celine again. Her voice strains as she forces her song to meet it. 

The second wraith is on its feet now, a young girl, with dark empty eyes and an empty smile. A hospital band clings to her emaciated wrist. She’s only a little younger than Zoey.

Her song flickers. The burning hunger laps at her mind. No.  

Celine twists as the wraith lunges. It nicks her shoulder instead of tearing out her jugular. 

She sings another rebuke, the little girl wraith staggers back into their room. Celine’s throat burns as she half-leaps half-stumbles out into the hallway. If I can get to my instruments…

The burning hunger hits her mental defenses again like a hammerblow. She collides with the wall and lightning lances through her shoulder. 

The first wraith shambles towards her, all traces of humanity gone from its gait. With a shuddering gasp, Celine swallows the pain and changes key.

The key change hits the wraith like a slap and it halts as if its muscles seised up. 

The hunger burns bonfire bright as the second wraith steps into the hall. Celine’s song waivers under the torrent of obsessive NEED that crashes into her mind. The second wraith lunges forward and Celine shifts her song to still it too.

It halts inches from her face. Sweat drips down her forehead and she stumbles back. The hunger beats against her song like a gong. Slowly, agonizingly, as if straining against some invisible current, the wraiths drag themselves forward.  

Celine glances down the hall, Minji-nim has almost made it to Rumi-nim’s room. She can do this, she can buy a little more time. 

The first wraith catches her eye and turns its head all the way around like an owl to follow her gaze. 

Hunger SURGES. With an ugly snap the wraith breaks free of her song and lopes down the hall after Minji-nim at full speed. Celine hears her voice buckle as she strains to keep the second wraith in check. 

Laughter like the crackling of flame slams against her song failed failed failed failed!

[secondtolastrow]

Blood cult au part eleven (first, most recent)

Currently: the crew are attempting to invade the city of Seoul. Via road trip. In search of demon wraiths. While everyone else goes in for snacks, Miyeong and Minji are in a gas station parking lot discussing exactly what Miyeong might get if Minji can’t name anything Miyeong has written.

Miyeong’s first, awful thought is something that would mean as much as Minji doesn’t realize this would mean to her—a journalist might own their articles by default, the Chronicle’s exclusivity clause is airtight.

But.

It’s Minji.

So she makes a face, humming, and tries to find something that will be both clearly selfish and also enjoyable for Minji.

“Well,” she drawls, “you do keep complaining about the state of my refrigerator. Why don’t you make me some breakfast?”

Minji does like cooking, even if she doesn’t bother with doing it for herself as often as she might in a different occupation. And doing it for Miyeong absolutely means doing it for herself.

“Mm, how about that one you did on the birth rate? ‘Childbirths soar to seven-year high’?” Minji offers. “Or that silly puff piece on ‘How to survive year-end party season without getting drunk’ you did? I thought that one was sweet.”

Immediately. With barely a thought.

But it makes sense, given that Miyeong wrote those just a few months ago, and she was writing about things Minji knew decently.

“Low-hanging fruit,” she insists. “And please, don’t tell me you bothered to read those.”

“I read everything you write,” Minji says steadily. “But what about that series you did on those construction projects in Guryong? I thought it was damn well-researched.”

It was also years ago.

Miyeong felt the same way. Most people who contacted them regarding the articles were either calling her boring or asking why the hell she was opposed to something supposedly cleaning Guryong up, like they hadn’t read a word of it. Her editor cut the series short because of it.

Minji snorts; she’s on a roll now. “Or that one you did right after? About the youtuber with the smuggling case? What was it, ‘youtuber accused in government crackdown’? That one was so funny.”

“I don’t write my own headlines,” Miyeong says numbly. She hadn’t thought anyone understood that it was as much joke as reporting, not when the joke was her own career and the punchline her audience. “Almost no reporter does.”

Minji smirks crookedly. “Well, I read it. So I know it.”

[frozenwolftemplar]

Unfortunately, despite hunting through the rest of the impressively-stocked convenience store, they don't find anything more Mira-friendly than the not-really-a-snack bagged jelly.

Zoey has issues with this.

"What kind of convenience store has microwaves but not applesauce?" she grumbles as the cashier yawns out their total and Celine pays with her card. "Everyone has applesauce!" (or, well, everyone in California; maybe that didn't apply here?)

"It is a grave disappointment," Rumi, only acquainted with the food because Celine had bought a jar at the grocery store, nods from where she's loading their purchases into bags (single-use plastic; she'll have to make sure they dispose of them properly).

"Can we just- stop making a thing about it?" Mira mumbles, angling herself away from the cashier. The guy is clearly phoning his shift in, but he's not so checked-out that he doesn't notice the stilted way Mira's talking or the faint sheen of purple on her cheek where the concealer got smudged away during their practice with the shin kal; in between looking fo barcodes he's glancing her way, and Mira is obviously hating it.

The sight hits Zoey like a bullet between the eyes, guilt bleeding from the wound. This is always how it goes, isn't it? A leitmotif to her life. She tries to help, tries to be what the people around her need or want, only to be 'too much' in the end. "Obnoxious" and "overwhelming" and, in the case of her parents, "a lot" (in a sighing, hand-to-the-forehead kind of way).

She wonders which one Mira's thinking of. Probably all three.

She'll be tired of you by the ferry.

The slithery, hissing voice in her head- the one that was living there rent-free before Gwi-Ma popped in- sifts through her, sand through fingers, leaving a gritty trail before piling in her stomach.

Her family, her California classmates, now the hot woman she was going to hunt wraiths with; likely Rumi would be next in line to decide she's had enough of her (not that she seems the type, but Zoey's effect on people can be impressive).

You just can't get anything right.

Shoving her hand int her pocket and cursing to herself when it comes up empty (damn she missed her phone) she reaches behind her and blindly tugs a newspaper free from the rack, a weekly edition of some sorts. The cheap paper cracks in her hands as she snaps it open to a random story.

TikTok Reality Check: Five Influencers Better than Reality TV

It is an excessively dumb article. Still, she skims it anyway, more interested in a distraction than people who live-streamed their dumpster fire dating lives on TikTok. After a moment the hairs on the back of her neck stand up at a sudden presence alongside her, and the paper crumples in her grip as Rumi's breath brushes across her ear.

"Books have certainly changed a great deal."

Zoey glances quick at the cashier, consumed with reloading paper in the register's printer for their receipt. Not that he seemed the type to care about twenty-somethng's talking like they were centuries old, she'd rather…not deal with that today.

Tugging Rumi towards the relative privacy of the microwaves, she gives her a quick rundown of modern newspapers and magazines.

"There are some really good ones," she finishes. "Just…not this."

Rumi nods her head sagely, committing all Zoey's words to memory (that should not tingle the way it does) and points to the title. "And what is this?"

"TikTok?" Zoey chews her lip. "It's…" Shoot, had they explained videos to Rumi yet? Really wishing for her phone…

"It's something people use to murder time," Mira swoops in, coming to join them and motioning towards the door, Celine having finished paying.

(and any warmth she feel at Mira's coming back is doused by the thought that this was just until they finished living an episode of Buffy)

Zoey takes issue with that assessment. But before she can vouch for TikTok's virtues Mira's peering at the article. "Really surprised she writes that stuff; doesn't seem the type."

"What do you mean?" Zoey asks, Rumi making an adorably confused sound. (No! Bad Zoey! No swooning over the pretty girls!

It'll make it harder when they leave)

Mira taps the byline as they step into the parking lot in time to catch the tail end of Minji and Miyeong's conversation.

"…And that TikTok piece."

"Don't…my editor insisted on it."

If that wasn't incriminating enough, the look on Miyeong's face when she saw the paper in Zoey's hands- and in Celine's line of sight- left no doubt.

…Huh.

But she'd blown enough chances that she can't help grinning like everything was alright when it definitely wasn't. "You know," she says once they're back at the cars. "If you want to write a follow-up, I know some great marine biologists in there."

Rumi does that adorable confused thing again. "What is a marine biologist?"

It's like a switch has been flipped, or more accurately Rumi'smwords unlocked something in her, and she turns to the not-so-ancient-but-old-enough-marine-biology-in-it's-glorious-current-form-wasn't-a-thing hero and beams.

Zoey knows she shouldn't; knows she's probably on thin ice; knows what the best way to alienate people is.

But she has been waiting her whole life for someone to ask that.

[secondtolastrow]

Zoey blooms as she starts to speak. It is all Rumi can do to bask in her presence and try to keep up with her increasingly rapid speech—curse the mainland tongue, and curse Rumi for not being good enough with it.

Apparently, she learns, a marine biologist is one who studies the creatures that live in the ocean. The very first marine biologists lived thousands of years before even Rumi—men with names like Xenophanes and Herodotus. (Though Zoey’s opinion of the latter as a whole is not very high, he did write a very funny anecdote about a man being saved from drowning by a dolphin.)

Zoey breezes through Charles Darwin and Charles Wyville Thomson—perhaps Charles is a title she is unfamiliar with?—and the “theory of evolution” (???) before making a joke about “AAPI solidarity” (or, at least, it must be, as Mira laughs) and beginning to tell them of the people who live in the seas south and east of Jeju.

Rumi’s head in spinning in the best of ways as they settle onto the ferry and Zoey tugs her and Mira out of the parked car and across the massive, metal deck of the ship—how does it still float?!?—to watch the waves.

“I… sorry,” Zoey says, stuttering to a sudden halt as they look out on the gray, late afternoon waters. “I’ve kinda just… full bore Zoey, huh? I didn’t mean to…”

“Dude,” Mira says, leaning on the rail with effortless grace. “It’s cool that you know all this stuff. You should keep going.”

Zoey bites her lip, looking as if this has done the opposite of reassuring her, and flicks her gaze to Rumi, who does her best to rearrange her features from confusion to enthusiasm with a broad smile.

“Scholars that would study the deep are a brave group indeed, to not fear any of the monsters that lie below, or even the simpler dangers of drowning,” she says, hopefully encouraging.

Zoey lightens a little. Then pauses.

“Wait,” she says, eyes going wide, “are sea monsters real?”

[the-fallen-blue]

It’s Miyeong who finds the protein shakes, in the food court, while they’re waiting for Minji and the others.

“We should get a good supply,” Celine muses. “There’s probably something Mira can have for dinner, somewhere in all this, but it’d be good to have some at the hotel, afterward.”

It’s hard to tell, but Miyeong thinks she seems a little relieved, like the shakes somehow represent something more than just whether a capable adult woman who can probably handle being hungry for a few hours will continue to have to do so.

And Miyeong did that.

She tamps down on the inappropriate pride, again, as they find their seats.

Celine, who confiscated Zoey’s literary trash at the gate on the argument that she’d paid for it, after all, plops the offending magazine down on the table between them. “I’d like to read it,” she says, polite and sincere and completely unexpected, “but you seemed a little upset about us seeing it. We can throw it away, if you prefer.”

Miyeong blinks at her. “That’s…”

Unbelievably considerate? Impossibly respectful of the privacy of a person whose entire job is to violate everyone else’s? Yet more proof that Minji is absolutely insane to even be saying Celine and Miyeong’s names in the same breath?

“… very kind of you.”

Celine furrows her brow a little, like she doesn’t agree, but she doesn’t say anything, just waits patiently.

“It’s not the writing itself, exactly. I won’t claim to be good at much, but I know I’m good at that,” says Miyeong. “It’s more the topic. Forever ago, when I first got into reporting, I used to have this idea that I was going to write about things that matter. It’s harder to ignore how very much that did not pan out, when people I actually know are reading my trash listicles about TikTok.”

And Minji claims to have read all of it.

Celine’s look turns a little piercing, suddenly. “Miyeong-nim, forgive me if this is too forward, but, are you all right? You’ve seemed to have something heavy, on your mind, since we left the convenience store.”

“You should probably cut it down at least to -ssi, if you’re going to be reading my listicle trash,” says Miyeong, to cover the odd combination of embarrassment and warmth at Celine noticing her discombobulation.

“As you like. Miyeong-ssi.”

Oh, that might have been a mistake.

“...It’s about Minji,” says Miyeong, in lieu of acknowledging that. “I've known her forever, we share a friend group. Well, we did. And she was friendly enough when we were all out together. But just us, one-on-one, our entire relationship has been her kicking me out of the hospital, and chasing me away from her staff, and yelling at me about privacy laws and patient privilege. I wasn’t lying before, I've genuinely never really thought she even liked me.

“If that’s not true, if it never was, if I’ve actually mattered to her, all this time, I don’t… I don’t know what to do with that.”

Celine makes a sort of noncommittal I’m listening hum, which is much more polite than calling Miyeong a dumbass. Miyeong appreciates the restraint.

[secondtolastrow]

Not that Minji doesn’t find the history of Polynesian exploration of the Pacific and its relationship to marine biology fascinating, but she doesn’t think twice about not following Zoey, Mira, and Rumi out of Miyeong’s car. Her head hurts.

Her hair has turned into a puffball by now, too, after all that brushing Miyeong did, so she’d look like a bit of an idiot if she did step out there anyway.

She makes a valiant attempt at a braid—it comes out badly, with different ends sticking out, and absolutely won’t hold together for long, but it’s enough.

They’d agreed to meet in the food court, but Minji almost wants to just stay here.

It’s quiet.

But she knows that if she sits in the quiet long enough, she’ll be useless in Seoul. Celine and Rumi both talked about the wraiths’ emotional attacks, and if she lets her grief have her now—

So she calls her grandmother instead.

Her voice is good to hear, even as desperately hopeful as it is (as so many of Minji’s coworkers—the coworkers who took her shifts—will have left their loved ones). “Minji-yah? Is that you? Are you there?”

“It’s me,” she promises. “It’s Minji.”

She is here.

“Misuk-ah!” Halmeoni yells. “Come quick!”

And so Minji is passed to her aunt Misuk, and then her uncle Sanghun, and then her uncle Gwangyeon, and then their neighbor Jeongbin, and then, and then, and then, until it seems she has promised every person living within five kilometers of her grandmother that she is alive.

Prof of what Aunt Misuk said, when she first took the phone: “Mother has been worried sick about you, you know. She’s had all of us over at hers day and night, waiting for news. Aren’t you with that ridiculous reporter woman?”

(And Minji had tried to say that Miyeong wasn’t ridiculous, even if she sort of was.)

“Hmph,” Aunt Misuk had said loudly, ignoring her. And then, softly, “I’m glad you’re okay, Minji-yah.”

Day and night.

So Minji promises her grandmother that she’s okay, that she was nowhere near the fire.

And she gets out of the car and walks to the food court.

Celine and Miyeong are sitting at a table together, leaning in as they speak. Celine is giving Miyeong one of those—not armor-piercing looks, but… armor-removing ones? Focused and intent and sliding right under the walls. Miyeong is a little flustered, warm in the sunlight as she explains her thoughts to Celine.

Minji doesn’t know which of them she’s rather be.

…What?

[the-fallen-blue]

By the time they reconvene with the others, the conversation has somehow worked its way around to the yeongno, which Rumi is very pleased to have introduced Zoey and Mira to; Zoey’s exclamation that “It eats the one percent!?” makes little sense to Rumi, but the other woman’s joy is clear enough.

Rumi is less pleased when the honored shaman suggests demonstrating an exorcism technique, after the food is gathered, and Rumi has to say, “I agree. You should all have as many tools for the defense of yourself and others as you are able to bring. I can… assist with this training.”

The others think nothing of it, from only that little, but the honored shaman narrows her eyes. Rumi feels much the same. She did not want Mira and Zoey to even know this part of her, has shamefully hoped that Zoey has forgotten her use of it while searching for Mira, finds that she does not wish to see the good regard leave the faces of Minji-nim or Miyeong-nim or the honored shaman, as well. She fears the fear they will show her, if they should know her tainted power firsthand.

But their safety is more important than Rumi’s comfort, or whatever connections she might have hoped to make in this new time.

So she explains, “I have the ability to influence the mind, as a wraith does,” as empty of emotion as she is able. “I worked with young mudang in my time, on occasion, and was sometimes asked to push them, for demonstration, so they could familiarize themselves with the feeling, and practice cleansing safely. I can do it for you, as well. If that is something you desire.”

“Oh!” says Zoey. “Your Jedi mind trick!"

Evidently, Zoey has not forgotten; strangely, she seems more excited than wary, though admittedly her words are difficult to parse.

“That sounds… useful,” says Minji-nim, with a much more sensible amount of caution in her tone.

The honored shaman’s expression has not changed, but when she says, “Are you certain, Rumi-nim?”, her voice is only careful, not cold. Rumi does not trust her own voice, but she nods, solemnly, and after a moment, the shaman gives a brisk nod of her own. “Alright, then. We need a volunteer.”

The others exchange glances. “So this is, like. Mind control?” asks Miyeong-nim.

“Not exactly,” the honored shaman tells her. “If it’s like a wraith’s, it’s more a lowering of inhibitions. If there’s something you want to do, or could be convinced to, if you didn’t know better, it becomes harder to care that you shouldn’t.”

“Okay, then. Hit me, I guess.”

“It is not a physically violent process,” assures Rumi.

“Oh, she just means—” Zoey starts, then catches Rumi’s expression. “Wait. You got that one, you’re just messing with us.”

Her delight, and Mira’s amused snort, give Rumi the strength to turn to Miyeong-nim, and reach for the foul heritage ever hidden beneath her skin.

“You seem tired, Miyeong-nim,” she says, she pushes. She slips into the dark, smell and sight turning distant as she wraps cold tendrils around the bright pulse of human life before her and presses for weakness. “Perhaps you should sleep.”

She’s only vaguely aware of the physical world— the way that Miyeong-nim blinks and slouches, the honored shaman speaking, it’s all behind fog— but Miyeong-nim’s fatigue is clear and heavy in her demonic senses. She pushes, just a little more, against the softening will in her hands.

And then a song blazes across the shadows, a brilliant flare like a storeroom full of oil going up under a spark, a deafening melody of righteousness, beautiful and terrifying in its power, its suddenness, the blinding brightness of it, coiling around Miyeong-nim, around Rumi, around everything, and for a moment, the cruel, dark, greedy thing that is her is truly afraid—

—but when she’s pushed back into herself, it’s almost gentle, as she blinks back into human hearing and feeling and vision. There is none of the thudding mental bruising she remembers from doing this before, only a prickling discomfort, as though her mind is a slowly waking limb.

“Of course,” the shaman is saying, “ideally you also use a bit of the root compound, and you can make quick bujeok on white paper, but if song is all you have, as you can see, you can make do.”

Her eyes meet Rumi’s, and there’s a shadow in them that Rumi does not like. The knowledge, perhaps, no longer an intellectual abstraction but a brutal, visceral truth, that she has dedicated her life to a demon.

But all the honored shaman says is, “Who would like to try next?”

So Rumi reminds herself, as she tells Minji-nim to stretch and the wispy breeze of Miyeong-nim’s will practices pushing her back, that this is to help them. She assures herself, as she urges Mira to stand and the soft pressure of Minji-nim’s song tries to tug her demonic fingers away, that they asked for this, with full understanding. She convinces herself, as she instructs Zoey to eat, that this will make them safer, and she does not force herself to look at their faces.

And then Mira’s chant crashes into her like a runaway goat, knocking her back into her own mind with a stinging, painful slap.

“Well done,” says Rumi, letting her pride show and trying not to wince too obviously.

She fails, and the honored shaman catches it. “We can practice simple repetition without you, Rumi-nim, if you need a break.”

“Wait,” says Mira, sharply. “Cutting a victim off from its influence can stun a wraith. If you’re— is this hurting you?”

[secondtolastrow]

“I am well,” Rumi promises, immediately and falsely—which is not an answer to Mira’s question anyway, and both of them know it.

Her stomach lurches, shame and horror and anger mixing together. “Why the fuck—why would you do that!”

Rumi bites at her lip, and Mira wants to scream. “I… did not mean to make you uncomforta—“

“Are you kidding?” (She’s not. Mira knows she’s not.) “That isn’t—we were hurting you!”

“Are you okay?” Zoey asks, which is—a much better way to approach this. Fuck. “Can we help?”

“It’s only training,” Rumi says, sounding genuinely bewildered. “The pain will fade in short order, but the skills you are learning are very necessary. If that is your only concern, I would be very happy to continue.”

Mira wants to scream.

(Mira cannot scream.)

“So you are hurt?” Minji asks, sharp as a tack. “What kind of pain is it? Where?”

“It is only a mild headache,” Rumi protests, holding up her hands.

Minji, thankfully, zeroes in like a shark after the scent of blood, starting to ask questions about if they’ve been giving Rumi a fucking brain injury. And Mira just

Can’t

Breathe.

(They were hurting her.)

(One year, when Mira was younger, her parents took her and Jaeho out to the beach. It wasn’t even a magic thing, just… a handful of good memories that Mira’s clung to for years.

She remembers going swimming, ending up almost rounding the point. Her father had to yell at her to come back up the beach to where he was waiting.

He’d called her into shallow water and pointed down at where it swirled up and down around their toes. “You see how the foam is getting dragged to your left, just like you were? That’s the current, Mira. You have to keep track of it so you don’t get pulled away again.”

“Yes, Abeoji,” she’d said, and stayed there in he shallows, watching the foam be pulled down the beach, wondering at how she hadn’t even realized, until Jaeho decided he needed to conscript her for his sandcastle.

That’s the best comparison she has to the feeling of Rumi in her mind: that quiet, invisible pressure carrying her away.

And they were hurting her.)

“I did not mean to scare you,” she hears Rumi saying, so fucking apologetic, and it’s all Mira can do not to be sick.

She still doesn’t have any wire cutters, after all.

[serpentbeardwrites]

Rumi’s second reassurance dies on her tongue. Mira has gone as still as a startled deer. The white hot brand that had been driven behind her eye slivers into a needle point of crystallized agony. 

Rumi had seen this before, too many times, especially after encounters with wraiths. I did this. This is my fault. She has to— 

“Rumi-nim, are you dizzy? Are there black spots in your vision?” Minji-nim asks. 

“I am well, and my vision is sound.” Rumi gives a small smile and affixes her best ‘everything-is-fine-mask.’ “Severance is not like a strike to the head.”  

Rumi isn’t sure if Mira is breathing, Minji-nim steps in front of her, when had she moved? “Have you been hit in the head before?” 

“That is not relevant.” Rumi says, stepping around the physician.

Minji-nim will not be deterred. “It is extremely relevant.” 

Rumi looks to the honoured shaman for support and finds only concern in her gaze.

A warm hand grips her own, tentatively, softly, as if she isn’t half monster. Zoey. “I’m sorry we were hurting you, I—” Zoey glances around frantically at the others “—we didn’t realise it would hurt.”  

Rumi stiffens at the tide of extremely unhelpful, demonic, evil thoughts that spiral from where their skin touches. 

Zoey recoils as if she’d been burned. Like she’d finally caught on to the vileness that rests beneath Rumi’s skin. Zoey folds in on herself, wilting like a flower in the winter.

[secondtolastrow]

Blood cult au, part nine! (First, most recent)

Currently: While Celine has dragged Miyeong off for a walk in the garden—that’s going surprisingly well, odd comments about her height aside—Minji, Mira, and Zoey have helped Rumi down from her little PTSD moment, and started getting on the same page about all of the events that led up to the hospital fire.

Rumi has no urge to eat after her moment of weakness, but Minji-ssi insists, and Mira introduces her to the microwave as Zoey once more awakens the horrible vacuum.

(Much like the rice cooker, Rumi cannot understand the need for such a device.

No—in actuality, the vacuum is far worse than the rice cooker. A rice cooker merely replicates a process which even she could do if left with water, rice, a pot, and a fire. The vacuum not only does simple work, it creates so wretched a noise as Rumi has never heard, not even when walking along the strange, car-filled streets of Zoey’s city.)

“Oldest person eats first,” Minji-ssi tells her, half-joking, some reference she doesn’t fully understand.

Rumi frowns at her in confusion.

She, Mira, and Zoey all exchange a look of dawning realization, and Zoey smiles bright as sunshine.

“Basics of modern Korean etiquette time!” she says, pumping a fist. “Point for the Korean-American experience, I can break this down easy.”

And they let themselves be distracted by light, easy conversation. Rumi is all too happy to let her ignorance in this modern time show if it will keep Mira from lingering on the awful history of their family and the bloody end Rumi herself brought them to or give Minji-ssi somewhere to direct herself, even if she stays quiet, and her few words are tense as a gayageum string.

Eventually, Ryu Miyeong and the honored shaman return from their stroll.

They look pleased by each other’s company, but still, Rumi must ask, searching their faces, “Have you come to terms?”

Ryu Miyeong gets a startled look—perhaps at Rumi’s phrasing?—but the honored shaman merely nods.

“She listened… surprisingly well,” she says. “She and her partner mean us no harm.”

The look on Ryu Miyeong’s face intensifies.

Rumi thinks carefully over how to phrase her next question, wishing she knew better how to communicate it with any subtlety—for all that the honored shaman has been kind enough to declare this to be her home once more, she has no wish to overextend that kindness, nor to make Minji-ssi speak of overly distressing topics.

But she has never been anything less than blunt.

“Then perhaps they might be allowed to stay and discuss a plan of attack with me? If Gwi-Ma’s wraiths are active in the capital, I have a duty to put an end to them.”

[grundpfeiler]

Celine was pathetically grateful that Rumi had asked her question as she began drinking a large glass of water. It bought her time to decide what she felt about Rumi asking that question.

The answer was yes on multiple levels. Celine was aware that Rumi and her opinion on whose the house was differed. On one hand - Rumi herself being the one to say that you took such care of her home that she sees it as yours is something deserving of warmth. On the other - it was Rumi's house and Rumi just giving that authority to Celine (especially with that panic attack earlier) was not comforting. Rumi's home and if she wanted to open it to guests- it was open. And Celine was still left scrambling to figure out how much Rumi had figured out,and hadn't in regards to the current times. Because it could be incredibly scatter shot. On one hand, Rumi had figured out that Ryu Miyeong and Minji Park were a couple before Celine had. Which, it was slightly blatant in hindsight. The last boyfriend - and someone there in the emotionally charged aftermath. After all, you didn't just call anyone for help after finding a dead body. Also after the hospital fire became known the two had been much less careful about hiding it. Priorities - Ryu Miyeong admitting that the two had been staying together for the past two nights and Minji Park just finding comfort in her lover's presence. Considering the other foot however - maybe a certain quiet discussion later on current social standards and expectations. Zoey and Mira could cover a lot... but the area in the Ven Diagram where Mira being raised in a presumably extremely conservative cult and Zoey being raised with an American as well as Korean social lenses apparently was hit and miss. "Not noticing" the slip ups probably would have been the better call in this situation. On a second level - Celine was needing to figure out if she should feel ashamed at the idea that the great Rumi thought the answer could possibly be no. Ryu Miyeong had been entirely correct earlier that she and Park Minji needed information. Putting aside all the reasons to want the two around - Celine had an ethical responsibility at the moment towards the two. If someone was dealing with... poltergeist was the English word, that was violently injuring them and the individuals presented no danger to herself, Celine would argue that she was obligated to at least help them find a hotel room that was surreptitiously in areas where the poltergeist was highly unlikely to be able to follow to continue doing the harm until the matter was resolved. Park Minji had only escaped death by demon activity by luck. And depending on how the demons were operating - they might realize they didn't get all the people who were asking questions. Especially if Park-ssi was consistent with having opinions enough to call off work to help Ryu-ssi.

Who in turn had called the police, and was somehow being cut off. Ideally that was entirely supernatural in nature - because the situation became so much worse for everyone if the demons had infiltrated into the computer network of the Seoul Police to the point of eavesdropping on the dispatch channels. For some strange reason - it might be considered that these two women fall under the category of needing sanctuary. It's not like the two were bringing any trouble that wasn't heading their way anyways. Also on purely tactical grounds... Yes. Park Minji was very simple. They needed someone that could help with injuries/assess if they needed to be taken to a hospital because no one wanted a second hospital being burned by demons. Also she was a witness to the known demon hotspot (six demons roaming a specific building absolutely qualified) - and they absolutely needed to pick her brain for all the information she could give as to whether they were dealing with something grown quickly by Gwi-ma or something that already preexisted. Because how was the cult able to locate which hospital Mira was to kidnap her? A question for Park-ssi and her partner Ryu-ssi. And the journalist... well, they already knew that there was something blocking the police from finding out about Mira's brothers death. (Murder implied illegality - the man had been summoning Gwima - protection of self and others fully applied in Celine's opinion.) Someone who could help them trace the operations of the demons would be immensely beneficial. And - lastly on a personal level Celine wouldn't be upset at the two staying for a little bit. Now that she knew that the two were not threats to Rumi but two very frightened individuals who were grasping at smoke because something had gone very very wrong. It would be wonderful to have people her own age to talk to that knew about events. Celine wasn't entirely sure what had been some of the subtext going on in the conversation with Ryu-ssi but the woman had listened. And Celine wanted to see more of the rock steady personality of Minji. Celine didn't mind being distant from others homes and buildings in the area, people could be exhausting. But those two - they already had the feel of people who wouldn't drain her so quickly. Also because there were three young adults in the building, one of whom was centuries away from all she'd known, one had been raised in a cult, and the last having to sort out Americanisms and other aspects out. Knowing when you were over your head was a virtue.

And Celine was very much not overlooking the ability to point Rumi towards the lesbians in a presumably extremely stable relationship with the "I discovered a dead body" and current stressful situations not noticeably straining dynamic. (It even helped make the rooming situation easier if they stayed in the Hanok versus in town.) "As long as they're willing to help chip in on groceries." Celine answered.

[secondtolastrow]

“And you have how many open wounds right now?” Minji asks, before even processing the shaman’s reply.

She finds herself tilting her head to give a properly dirty look as it filters through her ears.

(It’s almost like another day at work, even if usually they’re begging college students to subside less on alcohol and energy drinks and more on foods that might actually help prevent vitamin deficiencies, not trying to keep them from killing themselves through blood loss, sepsis, or choking on their own vomit—no, actually, choking on their own vomit brings her back to alcohol.)

(Almost.)

Celine winces slightly, acknowledging the misstep, while Rumi flushes and stiffens.

“That is unimportant,” she says, which means she doesn’t know. While trying to plan some kind of… battle against the demons of Seoul.

Jesus. Minji is going to start screaming and never stop as soon as she slows down, isn’t she?

Then call her halmeoni and apologize for every time she ever thought her beliefs were silly.

“Try the other one,” Mira says.

Rumi, valiantly, tries again. “…I was not planning to leave until we had appropriate provisions, and the travel would take several days besides, so I would be largely healed by then?”

Minji points to her chair.

Rumi sits, and Zoey and Mira promptly engage her in conversation about travel times. Minji tunes out somewhere around, “The cars go how fast?”

It’s… difficult. She’s lost people before, she knows this feeling. The poking in the back of her head like when her father passed, every little thing reminding her.

And she’s been through mass casualty events before—car wrecks piled up, construction site collapses. She knows that feeling, too, like she’ll never get the blood off of her hands.

Both at once is hell.

Mingyu liked cars. Gyeonghui could cook like no one else. Seulgi ran every work event like the navy.

She has to force each sentence into the past tense. They don’t belong there. They’re not supposed to be. They’re supposed to be present, waiting, when she arrives back at work.

They won’t be.

How many open wounds does she have right now?

Minji couldn’t tell you.

Miyeong sits down and offers her a tired half-smile. Minji makes no attempt to return it.

“She’s nice, actually,” Miyeong says. “Celine.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Minji sighs.

Miyeong wraps an arm around her shoulder, pulls her close. She smells like motel body wash and flowers. Minji wishes she smelled like blood, but she lets her friend hold her up nonetheless.

She doesn’t know what else to do.

[frozenwolftemplar]

Truly, Rumi decides, this is an era of wonders.

"So we can leave at once!" Rumi sits up straighter, the dull throb from her injuries the only thing that keeps her from launching to her feet and marching out the door. "If it will just take a matter of hours to travel to Seoul, then there is no need for provisions! We will be back here to sup come evening!"

Modern travel was miraculous. And highly convenient!

"Okay, pendulum kinda swung too hard the other way." Zoey shakes her head, pinching the bridge of her nose. "We still need to, like, pack."

Rumi tilts her head confusedly. "...But you just said it is less than a day's journey. We can come back here just as fast. Packing should be unnecessary?"

Zoey makes a scrunched-up face, like she's trying to say 'yes' and 'no' at the same time. Mira is nursing along the last of her smoothie, not saying much; she had already admitted to not having much experience with travel ("evil cut family vacations aren't really a thing"), and Rumi suspects the- what was the word?- painkillers she took several hours past have worn off by now and her jaw is troubling her.

A horrible thought seizes her.

Did she ask a bad question?

"Here, perhaps this will help." Before she can apologize and take it back the honored shaman pushes off from the counter she's been leaning against and removes a folded piece of paper from the drawer (so much paper in this era...) and comes to the table.

Rumi's heart stutters as she watches her country unfurl amid the breakfast dishes. She knows...it has changed; what she learned during their car ride into town the day before (has it really only been a day?) still haunts the back of her mind like the scent of smoke that lingers long after a fire's been extinguished.

But here is Seoul, where Gyeongbok Palace stood shining and proud (was it still there?); here is the Han, a hooked blue line curving its way to the coast; here is Jeju, her home.

True, the colors are too bright, the paper too crisp, and...she is not sure of some of the city names or what some of the lines mean. But if she looks at it hard enough, focuses on the places and geographical features she does know, she can almost see herself back in her study, standing over a table with the children of the hanok crowded around as she gives a geography lesson.

She wondered what happened to them...if they were alright after Jinu-

The thought is leaden, and she forces herself from under it back to the present.

Mira is smirking at Celine. "You know only old people use these, right?"

Rumi blinks. They do? Wait...does that make her old? But Mira looks like it's funny so maybe it's a joke?

She is not sure she understands modern humor...

Celine is unruffled by the maybe-jab. "Being able to navigate via map is a useful survival skill. Unlike your phone, the mind does not run out of battery when you need it most."

"I have a solar charger!" Zoey pipes up, face un-scrunched.

Celine's eye twitches.

Ryu Miyeong pipes up. "Well, suppose the day is overcast. Maps are useful then!"

"Not that you know how to read one," Park Minji rouses herself enough to add, giving her friend a little nudge.

"...Okay, but! I can still appreciate their usefulness."

(Ryu Miyeong seems oddly determined to please the shaman, Rumi notes; likely just grateful for agreeing to open her home to them)

"Anyway." Before Zoey and Mira can reveal how their phones stay functional on cloudy days Celine's finger is tracing an imaginary line from Jeju to Seoul. "I know travel is faster now than it was, but the distance is still the same, as is our need for food and water. Plus it would be wise to bring medical supplies and a change of clothes or two if we end up staying somewhere overnight."

That makes sense. Rumi nods. The world has changed, but it also has not. Or perhaps it is people that have remained constant, beneath the technology and strange clothes and customs and jokes she does not understand.

A groan from Ryu Miyeong interrupts her musings before they can veer too hard into philosophy. "Shoot..." she turns to Park Minji. "We don't have a change of clothes!"

Park Minji gives her a flat look. "We are wearing yesterday's clothes which we slept in and you're just realizing this now?"

Ryu Miyeong stammers and colors as Celine looks at her and Rumi gets the sense that she is not the only one who's travel-planning skills are somewhat...lacking.

[secondtolastrow]

Thankfully, with their trip the day before, neither Miyeong-ssi nor Minji-ssi are stuck drowning in Celine’s clothing, as the girls had been.

Perhaps she ought to take to keeping a small supply of clothing about in more average sizes—while she regularly donates to winter clothing drives and the like, it is always good to be able to give to those in present need, rather than asking them to wait or giving indirect aid.

On the other hand, recent events might not recur.

Celine waits until she’s trailing behind Mira and Zoey before she makes a quick note in her phone to keep track of the idea. Happy as she is that they’re comfortable enough to tease her, they don’t need any more ammunition.

“Mira and I just got a few outfits, since we actually had clothes that we, y’know, might have the chance to get back to, but it’s definitely still enough to share,” Zoey promises, as if either Minji-ssi or Miyeong-ssi had hesitated for a moment at the promise of clean clothing. “Mira, what do you think, is she closer to my size or Rumi’s?”

As Mira and Zoey whisk Minji-ssi off in a whirlwind of fashion, Celine catches Rumi-nim leaning over towards Miyeong-ssi—and, well, the reporter had certainly proven much less aggressive than her first impression, but it would still probably be smart of Celine to keep an ear out.

She lets herself linger outside the doorway of the guest room, watching them down the hall from the corner of her eye.

“I do not mean to embarrass you,” Rumi-nim starts softly, “so, please, do not take this as an insult towards your intelligence—“

And Miyeong-ssi’s eyebrows are already climbing, in spite of the quiet earnestness of Rumi-nim’s tone.

“—but rather a statement of my own ignorance, as I have no knowledge of how widespread these ‘showers’ have become in replacement of the baths used in my time. Are you familiar with their use?”

Miyeong-ssi blinks, and some small part of Celine braces itself, protective, though of course Rumi-nim does not need her for that.

But Miyeong-ssi smiles, and there is not a hint of mockery or condescension. “I am, thank you.”

“There was some… disarray… after my first attempt,” Rumi-nim adds, her voice so low Celine had to strain to hear it. “If your knowledge is only theoretical…”

The humility and kindness with which she conducts herself makes Celine wish that she had understood half so much from the stories. After the awkwardness of teaching the great Rumi herself how to properly use a shower curtain, it echoes on like this: gently averting a problem before it could arise, even at cost of her own pride.

“Showers are very common,” Miyeong-ssi explains gently. “They have them in bathhouses now, even.”

It is, Celine thinks, a very good thing that Miyeong-ssi had not responded poorly. Minji-ssi’s taste is not altogether incomprehensible.

[frozenwolftemplar]

It's almost a shame she's committed to keeping this story off the record, Miyeong thinks as she heads towards the bathroom, arms laden with clothes generously provided by the 'violent hate-filled demon, Rumi of Jeju.'

She hates libel as a rule, but especially when it's aimed at someone like Rumi, such a kind-hearted and giving person (and yes, she would use 'person,' considering she was a better one than most of the ones Miyeong's met). The thought that someone could harbor such animosity towards her, enough to spread lies that all but buried the truth, made her want to hunt down every author of the niche dissertations and esoteric website and- do something.

But Minji's entire shift- so many of her friends- was gone because of actual demons and, like her friend, she didn't want anyone else to get hurt.

Kang Mira and Choi Zoey were safe, Rumi was far from a danger to the world, and there was a very nice mudang involved who seemed to be enjoying her company. That was enough. This would stay the best story she never wrote and she was fine with that. Still, she could fantasize about what she would do if, one day, she happened to find one of Rumi's detractors.

Punching someone in the nose would probably be a bad idea, considering she'd broken her hand when she tried out her ex's punching bag. But maybe she could still manage a roundhouse kick? Her teenage years weren't that long ago, right? And she'd almost gotten a blackbelt; that had to count for something...

"OOF!"

Musings on the merits of being an almost-blackbelt came to a screeching halt as Miyeong stumbled backward, rubbing her forehead where it'd knocked into the chin of the person she'd just walked into. Hard.

"Sorry about that," she groaned, blinking the stars from her eyes and gave a little self-deprecating chuckle. "Not really used to having to look out for-"

Celine was standing in front of her, a fresh pile of towels in her arms.

MIyeong was suddenly beset by stars of a different variety.

"-You."

Instantly, Miyeong wanted to kick herself. That was the lamest possible way to finish that sentence and, more importantly, not what she meant to say!

Why did she keep doing that she never did that she was always completely in control of her mouth why-

Celine lifted a brow, looking distinctly amused. "Well, since we just met this morning, I would expect not."

Miyeong blinked, brain crashing to a 404 error screen.

Was Celine...making a joke? About something she said? The hot hot gorgeous TALL shaman thought she was funny?!?

And she was smiling at her again.

Yes, she thought as she took the towels Celine offered her, she was very fine with how her investigation was playing out.

[secondtolastrow]

Minji wasn’t ashamed to admit that she sat down and cried in the shower.

The moment she was alone, herself and no one else, no one needing her to help them, it crashed over her, sending her to the ground.

It hurt.

She didn’t have better words than that. It hurt.

So she cried until the water ran cold, and then she cried some more.

She was a wreck when she finally turned the water off, from the tangled mess of her hair all the down to her slightly numb toes. But she didn’t have the energy to do anything about it.

Rumi’s stolen shirt was soft in the way that only brand new clothes had, easy to pull on, but the jeans she’d borrowed from Zoey had her nearly crying for no fucking reason.

Minji squeezed her sore eyes shut, jeans halfway around her thighs, and hiccuped at the sheer misery of it. All her friends were dead, and she had to put on pants?

Her head hurt and she was cold and all of her friends were dead and never, never coming back.

She fumbled at the jeans until she finally got them on, pausing against to wallow in the awfulness of having succeeded at that when nothing was supposed to be right, this petty little victory when there where demons lighting her fucking hospital on fire, and then breathed deep and slow until she trusted herself to open the door.

Rumi—strange, young-old, maybe-demon Rumi—found her first, expression soft with the kind of non-judgement Minji usually only saw in professionals. But that made sense, from the Joseon equivalent of a domestic violence advocate.

How pathetic, that she needed to be taken care of. This was her job.

(And everyone she worked with was—)

“I made tea,” Rumi said. “That is, green tea. If you would like some.”

“Thank you,” Minji said, wanting not at all to sit through a tea ceremony. She could hold it together. She could meet them where they were.

Rumi nodded. “It is on the back porch, if you would like. Or in the kitchen, with everyone else.”

Professional.

Minji laughed, the sound tired and broken. “Thank you. I—“

Words gave out. Pathetic.

“…I will take you to the back porch,” Rumi said gently. “I will stay until you are ready, or until you want me to leave.”

[frozenwolftemplar]

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately?) this is a familiar routine for Rumi. Taking Minji by the elbow, she shepherds her to the back porch, choosing a route that circumvents the kitchen; even though the eyes there would be full of concern- had been when Rumi left to check on Minji- they are doubtless not something Minji-ssi wishes to face just yet.

She'd already set the table on the porch, tea and cups and linens (or, well, paper linens) and a box of the strange tissues that were applied to tears with religious regularity in this century (also made of paper; was there no end to what it was used for now?). Minji sinks gratefully into the chair Rumi pulled out and watches numbly as she pours two steaming cups.

She mumbles a tired 'thank you' as she takes it and sighs her way through a long sip, watching the flowers bob in the breeze. Not talking, but that is fine. Kyung-ja hadn't either, when she first came to the hanok, shaken speechless in more ways than one by her- well, by the time she sat down for tea on the porch, former husband.

Not like Jung-soon, who'd found relief and comfort in letting her thoughts flow unrestrained from mind to tongue. She told good stories. Kyung-ja, too, once she recovered.

And both of their children had been so sweet and bright and full of laughter...she can almost- almost hear them now, beneath the breeze and chimes hanging from the roof, and part of her almost expects to see them come around the corner any second.

But they won't, the memory slams into her like a stick beating a rug, the calm that had settled over her shuddering off and into the air. They're gone.

There's a burning feeling in the back of her eyes. She knew that. She knew that. It's just...

It only felt like last week they were all sitting on this porch together, laughing over the ducklings the children had tried to sneak into the house.

But it wasn't.

Her hand clenches on the cup.

She knows, she knows, she knows, she-

She just saw them last week.

"You're a regular pro at this."

Rumi jolts back to the porch and the present. Minji is smiling wearily across the table. She nods politely. "Thank you. I...am not very experienced with the finer points of cooking, but have much practice with tea."

"I don't mean that." Minji glances at the cup. "But the tea is good." She tips her head, as if indicating the porch as a whole, the table, the two of them. "This. Helping people."

Rumi glances away, tucking a strand of hair behind an ear. She...never did get used to such compliments. "I very much enjoy it. It gives me purpose."

Minji nods, understanding. "You'd have made a good nurse." Then, before Rumi can respond to that (how does one respond to that?) Minji sighs and sits back. "Sorry if I'm kind of...out of it right now. Swear, I'm not usually this-"

"No!" Rumi reaches across the table to lay a hand atop one of Minji's. "It is alright. You have helped us a great deal today; it is an honor to return the kindness. And there is nothing wrong with accepting help from friends."

How many times had she sat on this porch, steam curling from cups of tea, and said those same words to another?

Minji sighs deeply. "Thanks. Again."

"If you want to talk," Rumi says, treading lightly. "If you think it will help, I can listen."

Minji doesn't say anything for a long moment, then leans back in her chair, face tipped towards the rafters and squeezes her eyes shut. "I can't believe they're all gone..." she whispers, the sentence hanging heavy in the air.

It wraps around the posts supporting the roof, twines through the rafters, and brushes away the wafting tendrils of steam, settling like mist around them.

Rumi squeezes her hand, hearing laughter and voices haunting the air.

She knows the feeling...

[secondtolastrow]

“Jaeho probably summoned the first wraiths to help get me out of the hospital,” Mira explains. “He was always insecure about mindf—about mind altering magic.”

Miyeong snorts at her self-censorship. Celine doesn’t react.

Mira wonders what it says about her that she feels more at nearly swearing in front of real adults than she does at talking like this about her recently dead brother. “The maximum that kind of spell can do is forty. I’d say Jaeho could probably get ten on a good day.”

(Not that their mother would have ever let him, of course. She never had the Kang taste for summonings, always wary of how they could go wrong, get out of control.

From her current perspective, Mira can’t help but agree.)

(She wonders what Jaeho sacrificed, where he did it. There weren’t any signs of a previous summoning in the living room when he brought her back, and he wouldn’t have wasted any time cleaning up after himself.)

“So we have a minimum of six enemies, and a maximum of ten?” Zoey asks, scribbling away. “How do we find them?”

She’s appointed herself their note-taker. So Rumi and Minji can catch up when they get back. It’s considerate of her.

“I can make talismans for that,” Celine says. “Hopefully, they’ll be clustered together. The scrolls all say that wraiths tend to stick to what’s familiar, though that might mean… Rumi-nim will be able to tell us for certain.”

Miyeong closes her eyes for a moment, leaning back from the table. Something about that idea—wraiths returning to the routines of their living counterparts—scares her. She doesn’t share, though.

“What about the banishment?” Mira asks. “Do you have cursed wine lying around?”

“I have shinkal,” Celine replies, which… makes sense for a mudang. Of course she would do things the right way, instead of feeding the wraiths hellwine.

(Mira’s only seen it a few times. It’s not pretty.)

“And,” Celine adds, after a moment, something like excitement flickering behind her eyes, “I have Rumi-nim’s sword.”

[secondtolastrow]

Minji shakes her head. The very idea makes her want to be ill. How could she remember so many people?

But—

Who else is left to remember but Rumi?

“Who was the first person you brought here?” she asks, impulsively.

Rumi casts her a startled look, but swallows it behind her practiced calm only a moment later. It’s an odd way she has, a noblewoman straight out of a period drama in her diction and bearing meeting a punk college kid with her hair and tattoos. She doesn’t quite fit.

Minji doesn’t clarify her question—the point isn’t to get an answer, it’s to get Rumi to answer. A more specific question that might feel more possible to cope with than the one she’d offered Minji, sneaking the emotional processing in underneath.

“I was fifteen,” Rumi says, at last. “Chaeyoung was my maid. My father wanted me to have someone close to my age to interact with. She—I grew worried.

“She is—she was—I have never known anyone braver or more loyal. Nor anyone else willing to put the lady of the house to work on the linens, regardless of whether I asked.

I wouldn’t… I don’t know how to exist without her.”

It’s more an image painted in silences than in words, but Minji grasps enough. She nods, offers out her hand across the gap between them.

Rumi takes it. “I am sorry, I was meant—I intended to allow you to speak freely, not to make such a moment about myself.”

“That would be me,” Minji corrects. “Mostly because I’m so lost that knowing anyone is down here with me is enough kindness.”

Rumi laughs. “You deserve far more, Minji-ssi.”

“It helps to know I’m not alone in being without them,” Minji points out. “Besides, it’s important that your family be remembered.”

Rumi stares at her a long while and, paradoxically, her face looks far younger as it softens under their weight of grief—less some immortal memory and far more just another young woman.

“Then I will endeavor not to be alone with you,” she says, and Minji’s tired heart breaks a little more.

“Same, kid,” she says, and she squeezes Rumi’s hand.

[frozenwolftemplar]

"YOU HAVE A SWORD?!?"

Zoey's shout from the kitchen catches on Rumi's ear and pulls her attention towards the door, setting aside for the moment her thoughts about last week the distant past.

She had left Zoey and Mira and the honorable shaman and Miyeong-ssi discussing plans for returning to Seoul and addressing the wraiths Jaeho had left behind. Weaponry was to be an expected part of the conversation and not something that merited eavesdropping (never mind Zoey's volume demanded effort to not overhear). But...hearing mention of a sword...in the house that used to be her own...

It caused something in her, a small hopeful something, to stir.

Was it possible...?

Part of her wanted to leap up and run to the kitchen, ask if the sword in question was what she dared not hope, but she remained seated, hand tight in Minji-ssi's; she was hostess, Minji-ssi her guest, and more importantly she'd promised to stay.

But...perhaps she was out of practice at masking her desires, because Minji-ssi glances towards the kitchen, then at Rumi. "How about we see what all that's about?" She asks, tipping her head towards the kitchen as she stands. "Not sure how much I trust Miyeong's judgment if swords are involved..."

She'll have to work on that, Rumi thinks to herself even as she nods and accompanies Minji-ssi inside. Lest she let on just how much she wants and show everyone what a selfish, horrible creature she is.

Zoey is sinking back into her chair as they enter, visibly abashed by her exuberant outburst, but the honorable shaman is nodding pleasantly, clearly unbothered by what Zoey seems to think is a grave transgression. "Well, technically it's Rumi-nim's sword; I've just been safekeeping it. But-"

"It's here?" The words fly from Rumi's mouth before she can stop them, and now all four heads at the table are turned towards the doorway. Rumi knew she should bow and apologize for bursting in like that but…

Celine-ssi had her sword.

Far from being irked at Rumi's lamentable lack of manners, Celine-ssi actually looks pleased. Glows, like-

Like her father did the day he presented it to her.

"It's in my office. Would you like to see?"

Rumi's nodding before she even finishes.

Because the women and children of the hanok were lost to her, but she could at least reclaim some small part of her old life.

And while she did not doubt the honorable shaman's veracity, it wouldn't be true, it wouldn't be real, until the sword- her sword- was resting in her hands.

The tea is left to grow cold while Celine leads a small procession to her office, Zoey bouncing along since "there's no way I'm missing this!" and Mira keeping pace with a more sedate but no less eager enthusiasm. Miyeong-ssi and Minji-ssi bring up the rear.

Part of Rumi feels disgusting and selfish for doing this, causing them to break up their planning session to indulge her, but then-

Then they're in the room Rumi noticed her first night in the hanok, the one with the desk and strange large rectangle of black glass that looked like Mira's phone but larger.

Then Celine-ssi goes to a section of wood paneled wall and tugs, revealing a sort of closet.

Then Zoey whistles, eyes running over the contents before fixing on a set of golden-tasseled shin kal, and Mira's hand grips her wrist before she can reach out and touch.

Then Celine-ssi pulls down a long, flat box of polished wood, a tiger with sinewy muscles rolling beneath its coat leaping proudly across the lid, and holds it out to Rumi with a bow. "It is my honor, Rumi-nim, to return what is rightfully yours."

A dangerous concept for a demon, 'rightfully yours;' it signifies owning and wanting, satisfying all those most wicked impulses. But just this once she lets the thought go uncorrected.

Heart is fluttering in her fingertips as she reaches out with trembling hand to undo the latch.

[serpentbeardwrites]

Mira watches as Rumi undoes the latch on the ornate box. The eagerness, the want etched into her frame gives way to something much softer as she pulls out her sword.  

Zoey is vibrating so much that she might as well be still. Mira isn’t sure that Celine is breathing. Rumi’s sword is so different from the gaudy ceremonial daggers and gem studded ritual knives her family favours favoured—and clearly, it has been lovingly cared for. The pommel’s gold inlay shines under the office light. Painted constellations and warding charms cover the freshly lacquered sheath. 

It radiates a quiet, regal authority. It reminds Mira of Rumi herself.

Rumi runs a hand along the engraved crossguard. Then she traces her fingers across the sheath. Equal parts pain and wonder flicker across her face.

She blinks, turns to Celine, and bows low. “Thank you, Mudang-nim. You have taken such wonderful care.”

Celine finally seems to exhale. “As I said, it is my honour.”

“ARE YOU GOING TO DRAW IT?!” Mira jumps at the explosion of sound. Zoey, mortified, slaps her free hand over her mouth. Mira squeezes her hand in reassurance. Rumi smiles at them—sword in hand, she looks hot lighter than she has since Mira met her. Rumi’s fingers twitch along her sword’s leather grip and she swallows, hesitant, and flicks her gaze between them.

Mira nods in encouragement. Sue her, she wants to see the cool sword as much as Zoey. 

She nudges Zoey and jerks her head at Rumi’s sword. “Well? Don’t keep us waiting!”

Rumi smiles again, still careful but… hopefully buoyed by them and not pressured, before looking to Celine.

“Please.” Celine gestures.

Rumi leads them all out into the yard in front of the tree. There is a newfound confidence to Rumi that was not there before, like she has reclaimed a missing piece of herself. Mira tramps down on the butterflies in her stomach.

Rumi turns to Celine, “Mudang-nim, will you sing for me?”

Celine wipes the surprise off her face and nods resolutely.  

With a whisper of sanctified steel, Rumi unsheathes her sword. The Saingeom sings with power as Rumi begins to move to the rhythm of Celine’s voice.  

[tenderhooked]

I WANT TO WRITE MY STORIES!!!!!!!!!!!! -> continues doing literally Anything Else besides writing

[secondtolastrow]

Blood cult au first, most recent

Thus far: college student Zoey got kidnapped by cultists and watched unwilling cult member Mira get beaten in her defense before they awakened not so ancient, not so evil Rumi. After Mira took a turn in the damsel seat (being kidnapped to be used in opening a gate to hell) and so did Rumi (taking a trip to hell), the trio—along with shaman!Celine—finally have a moment to breathe. But they left a few loose ends (and dead bodies) behind them…

Ryu Miyeong would be the first to admit that she was not a perfect woman.

Once upon a time, she’d had big dreams—the kind of journalist who wrote stories that unconverted corruption and overturned governments, defended the underserved and kept the public informed of the truth.

But truth was a bitch who didn’t really exist, and print journalism was a dying industry.

So she learned to write what she needed to so she could eat, and if that kept her only a step above the idiots stalking idols just trying to live their lives? Well, at least Miyeong still had some standards.

But she thinks, maybe, if only because it reminds her of Yeonggi, if only because Jeremy hadn’t picked up any of her phone calls to say he had a secret twin, even if using this information isn’t the most legal thing she’s ever done and her editor’s going to kill her, whatever the hell happened to Kang Mira is the first story she’s cared about in a long time.

So she cuts the engine and walks up to the house.

It’s a long walk. She probably could’ve driven up to the door, but a person’s house says a lot about them. Mira’s says her family has too much money for their own good.

Miyeong wonders if it’s the kind of money that makes enemies.

Enemies who could fucking brainwash people? a mocking voice in the back of her head asks.

Reasonably, Miyeong decides not to draw any conclusions about that yet. Her job is just to put facts together in the right order, not to analyze them. Meaning is the reader’s job.

Jeremy might hate blood, but he didn’t just work with her. Could’ve been some kind of weird undercover thing—Sanguk had a habit of squirming around privacy ethics, and he was happy to bully other people into going along with him. Maybe.

Too many possibilities to draw conclusions, she tells herself, and she doesn’t believe it.

The house itself is an old-style hanok, well-kept. Something about it sends a shiver down her spine.

The door is hanging awkwardly on its hinges.

This is the part where Miyeong should call 112,

She thinks about what Park had said. That it looked like someone assaulted her patient. That people were trying to visit her.

She slips inside.

The smell hits her first. Rotting meat, so strong she nearly pukes all over the crime scene.

Then her eyes finally give in and put together the scene in front of her. Red and brown and black and yellow assemble themselves into a body. On the floor. A body without a face.

A body without a face because it has been pulverized.

This is the part where Miyeong calls 112.

(But she should’ve known that wouldn’t work, really. Truth was a bitch who didn’t really exist, so what the hell did that make justice?)

[frozenwolftemplar]

Miyeong frowns at her phone as the 'call ended' text blinks to her lock screen. She knew the operators on the emergency line were trained to be unflappably calm no matter what catastrophe was being reported from the other end of the line. But this...

You'd think she'd just reported the pettiest of thefts, not a break-in and violent murder.

"I'll send someone once they're available," the operator had said before hanging up. Weren't they supposed to stay on the line? And be a little more concerned about a murder?

Pocketing her phone, she turned back towards the room. Pointedly not looking at the faceless body on the floor, she breathes through her mouth and, after a considering moment, cat steps over the threshold.

Technically, she should stay well outside the crime scene, leave it undisturbed for the authorities.

But also technically, tiptoeing through the room and not disturbing so much as a speck of dust was leaving the room undisturbed.

Fishing for more disciplinary action? The ever-obnoxious voice in her head piped up. Looks like you're gonna get a bite!

Miyeong ignored it; she had practice.

Besides, this has all the trappings of her...special interest.

('X-Files fantasy,' her colleagues would say)

The room is some bizarre mix of the Kangs' high and expensive style and the aesthetic of an ancient cult. The parquet floor is scribbled over with strange markings, some of which have been halfway rubbed off. The shelves lining the far wall hold a mix of sleek modern sculptures and what seem to be ancient relics, all charred and singed as if there's been a conflagration bursting in the space. The mantel around the fireplace was completely obliterated, like there'd been an explosion of sorts. And the- the body is wearing a robe the likes of which would look right at home in, well, a cult.

Not that the Kangs could possibly belong to a cult; cults were secretive and ascetic and kept to themselves; the Kangs were regular faces on the society pages!

But.... She looked again at the markings, the relics, the body (briefly), the shreds of rope on the floor in the center of the incomprehensible design. What other explanation was there?

Checking the time, she made her way out of the room lest 'once they're available' happened while she was still technically not disturbing a crime scene and she got on yet another officer's bad side. Still, even surrounded by the pedestrian (well, pedestrian for the Kangs; she was pretty sure that painting was worth at least half her paycheck), furnishings of the foyer, she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something afoot. Something...not of this plane.

She could hear her colleagues now: "Miyeong's at it again. What is it today? Gwishin? Gumiho? Demons?"

It wasn't that she believed in all that. She didn't. Maybe? It was just- when Yeonggi passed, as sudden as a summer storm, she'd felt that there had to be an explanation, no matter the coroner's report. So she'd done what any semi-decent reporter would do and investigated; the places he'd been, the people he'd been in contact with.

She didn't find the answers she'd hoped. But she'd found...she could hardly describe it. An intangible sense of something that defied all explanation sans the impossible; an ancient something that smelled of incense and vellum, that swirled through the periphery of her thoughts like smoke from a storyteller's fire and rolled like a shaman's ritual chant.

No one else seemed to see it, sense it. If anything, though, their disbelief committed her more thoroughly to sussing out the truth, reasoning that if she dug hard enough, she'd strike gold.

Then Kang Mira mysteriously vanished from a hospital, and 112 couldn't care less about a break-in and murder in her home.

She loops around the thought as she drifts through the house and winds up in the kitchen. She stops.

Someone's been here.

The dregs of what must be a smoothie are in the bottom of the blender, room temperature but still liquid, the water not yet evaporated to turn the remnants sticky. Various other ingredients- honey, sugar, a carton of milk that's also warm but not yet soured- are scattered around the counter. She looks around suspiciously.

The murdered man's concoction, perhaps, before death came calling? Probably. But...there was no glass in the crime scene, no evidence of a spilled drink, and given the state of the kitchen he wouldn't have cleaned and put away the glass. So-

Wait. Hadn't Kang Mira's jaw been broken? And hadn't a pair of girls been asking after her?

[secondtolastrow]

Rumi is fascinated by the ‘running water’—as seems to be the most general term her companions have for it. It seems almost too broad, she thinks, but such smaller ones as ‘indoor plumbing’ and ‘the faucet’ are clearly not at all what she wants.

The shaman—Celine, a name Rumi knows she will have to practice to get completely right—offers to show her all of the modifications that have been made to her home over the years.

“Well,” Celine says, the tiniest of smirks playing at her lips as she looked between the three of them, “perhaps some new clothing first.”

Instead, this is when Mira’s hands begin to shake and she sits herself directly down on the floor.

“Mira?” Celine asks.

“Fuck,” she says, voice hoarse, instead of using her phone. Then, immediately regretful, she clutches at her throat and goes to check her jaw, like she can make certain the one word had not shattered the bone again.

No sooner have her hands reached the bruised skin than she begins to sob.

Zoey squeaks and drops to her knees, one hand under Mira’s jaw and the other on top of her head. Rumi settles beside them, the only thing she can do.

But Mira cries quietly, with a stillness to her. She doesn’t want anyone to notice that she san no longer keep the tears at bay.

“You are safe,” Rumi says. “You are among friends. It is done. You are safe.”

They are words she has said many times before.

They are words that burn, when she thinks of what she has done to put Mira in this position.

She looks up at Celine and mouths ‘handkerchief?’

Even so, Mira reaches out her hand and clasps Rumi’s tightly, with all the strength that had pulled her back from Gwi-Ma’s grasp.

“You are strong,” Rumi declares, squeezing in answer. “You have been so strong, Mira.”

“We’ve got you,” Zoey promises. She laughs, the sound high and wild. “Might be going a little crazy too, but that’s why there’s three of us, right? Gotta have all of those nice checks and balances.”

She says it almost with the air of one quoting, her hands sliding from Mira’s head down to the water ground of her shoulders, leaving Mira to smile back, as if she understood, and to place her free hand firmly over one of Zoey’s.

Rumi resists the urge to reach out and close the circle for no reason. Besides she’s still covered in blood—no one would want her touching them.

Celine drops between them a strange box with fine, white papers sticking from it.

Mira promptly uses one to blow her nose.

[serpentbeardwrites]

Zoey did not, in fact, puke. It was a small mercy, as now that both Rumi and Mira were back and safe—Celine had assured them the house was safe—she had time to think. Actually think. This was fine.

Mira had stopped crying, and Rumi and Zoey had dragged her back to bed, and Celine had gotten a little food in everyone, and it was fine. The torrent slammed into her with the force of a rhino. Her thoughts whirled at a mile a minute.

Holy shit she’d been kidnapped, she’d almost died. Monsters were real? Mira had almost died?! Mira is really pretty! Rumi is really pretty! Magic exists? Hell is real!? She killed a chicken! Would she go to hell for that?!  Rumi has demon powers?! She’d almost died! Mira had almost died! They’d almost lost Rumi forever. (As if Rumi would want to be around someone like her.) 

She couldn’t, it didn’t. At some point she hit the floor. Her back slammed into the bedframe, from atop the bed, Mira mumbled something incoherent.

Get a grip Zoey, before you ruin something else, get a grip get a grip get a gripgetagripgetagrip. 

A cool hand touched her shoulder light, hesitant. 

“My lady, are you alright?” Rumi asked.

“I’m fine, I’m okay.” She has just been pulled out of hell, you do not need to be adding your stupid shit to her worries. Get. A. Grip. Something else was mumbled. Zoey didn’t hear it. The hand went away. She didn’t miss it, she could handle herself, it was better this way, she was too much, she should just pack it in. She didn’t—Zoey forced herself to drag air in, hold it for two, and let it out. She clenched her fists. You’re fine. Get. A. Grip.  In the corner of her eye, a shadow settled next to her. 

The gentle notes of a gayageum being strummed filled the air. Mira had played it with an alarming proficiency, but this was something else entirely. Rumi’s fingers danced across the instrument like flowing water. The sound caressed something in Zoey’s heart. From her spot on the bed, Mira let out a sleepy sigh of contentment. Then Rumi started to sing.  

[kinschi]

The girls in suits because I said so

[0nkret]

okay so listen. I accidentally came up with a fic concept and now it lives rent free in my head (It’s not because the new Hades chapter is killing me and I need some fluff. Absolutely not.)

Celine, an engineer working on a top‑secret supersoldier program, ends up saving Rumi’s life by implanting military tech that absolutely should not be outside a classified lab. The same accident injures Mi‑yeong so badly she can’t work as a surgeon anymore.

So what do they do?

They quit their government jobs, disappear into Seoul, and open a tiny flower shop, all the while trying to make sense of the feelings growing between them.

Meanwhile Rumi is out here pretending everything is fine, that she can totally live a regular life with a body that’s now partly artificial. And she might have gotten away with it, but then there’s the cute barista with freckles and the human lie detector friend. Also she has two moms now.

[ferenhights]

Seeing all the beauty in the broken glass

[secondtolastrow]

I love bedroom scene Mira making blunt statements about Who She Is to someone she’s known for 6+ years. I love bedroom scene Mira deescalating by saying she’s acting crazy

I love post-train convo Mira again firmly Defining Herself and doing so according to the worst things she’s ever been, even though she hasn’t once lost her temper in the preceding runtime and her very slight aggression has been extremely controlled

I love fansign Mira with her voice pitched up and her emotiveness on for the fans because she needs them to look at her and see someone better than those worst things

I love train scene Mira being scared for her friend and scared of being lied to and scared of being unloved. I love train scene Mira having someone actually lash out at her and not lashing out back but instead freezing because she’s taught herself her first impulses aren’t safe

I love backstage at the Idol Awards Mira (over six years in!!!!) saying she knew this was “too good to be true”. I love Gwi-Ma attack Mira blaming herself and finally truly lashing out at someone in her own self-hatred as she isolates because she doesn’t get to have a family

I love the way trauma blatantly informs Mira’s characterization and they don’t need to say much more than “apparently, she’s the black sheep of her family”

[stories-i-guess]

*Realizes a couple of things about self*

*brushes that off in favor of KPDH realizations*

Hey, Zoey is like the opposite of that. Like, directly. She never brings up anything like that, and when confronted with her issues, she denies them as much as possible. The only time she becomes up front about something is when others lives are in danger, like on the train. When she sees that someone ELSE has an issue she does everything she can to fix it, but never pushes someone to tell her anything they aren’t openly ready to.

This does make me curious as to how Rumi acts when faced with issues that are anything BUT the one thing she never wants to talk about ever, that being her demon stuffs.

[secondtolastrow]

Mmhm! They gave Zoey that repressed people pleaser conflict avoidant behavior, and I love it—it is fine, she can provide a solution, everything is fine and she can smile her way through it, her friend is saying random mean things about her lyrics and instead of talking to her about that and how it clearly hurts her, she’s just going to step over here and keep spiraling her way through how apparently! All of that work was for nothing!!! While she lets Mira take the lead on having the hard conversation

(Someone’s parents got divorced and fought a lot and placed weird emotional burdens on them in the process) (someone grew up being told directly and indirectly that their neurodivergent behavior was a problem all the time) (someone is Korean-American and has lived in both countries and has a lot of complicated cultural feelings)

Well, we get bits and pieces from Rumi that we can extrapolate on—for example, from the Saja Boys first intro mostly up through the bathhouse, we have a problem that’s not Rumi’s patterns! And Rumi’s response is: get angry, try to stab

This, however, is not an interpersonal problem.

We also get her response to Healer Han’s: she reassures Zoey that she’s still on board with the obviously not legit healer (“smells legit to me!”) and then more… ambivalently? that she’s not “maybe a little too eager [to please]”. Clearly, she’s aware already that Zoey’s got insecurities, and she’s being gentle around them

And, well, if we’re using that word:

M: What are you hiding from us?

R: Not everything is about your insecurities, Mira!

R: Mira, I didn't mean…

So. Rumi is, uh, good enough at relationships to know how to hurt Mira with her personal issues? But the fact that she knows that can be read back into the bedroom scene, as we note how she knows Mira wants to be invited in. …And then we have the rest of the scene of her knowing Mira well enough to lie to her in a reassuring way

Her response to Jinu is also relevant: once she decides he’s sympathetic, she meets him constantly with “well what if you were listening to your better angels” “you know hope is a choice” “you’re not a bad person, you just made a mistake”

Rumi: good enough at relationships to create situations where people will be emotionally vulnerable and tell her about their traumas, remains reassuring and aware of them even in low stakes situations, can also be cutting and cruel

I’d guess that she might be a bit more of an emotional support player than a problem solver, but very perceptive and kind in her own way

[pancat-n-sausage]

STEP INTO THE RING, a three-song EP released by HUNTR/X after their Comeback album for seemingly no reason other than they look so cooooool--

Visit Original Link

Visit Original Link

Visit Original Link

(partially inspired by this post! please go check it out if you have the time!)

[load-of-junk]

I'm getting slightly bored waiting for the poll to conclude so in the meanwhile, I'm just gonna list down the food in the movie for funsy.

Besides the iconic ramyun, there were:

Gimbap

Specifically 마약김밥 or Mayak-gimbap for the uncut roll (notice the vegetables sticking out), and the cut gimbap might be spam or ham gimbap? Since there's a red part there that resembles meat more than vegetables.

(For those who don't know: Sushi and gimbap are different in that sushi uses raw fish, while all the ingredients in gimbap are cooked and vegetables (carrots, danmuji, perilla leaves, etc.) are the common toppings though there are gimbap that have meat products like cheese, tuna, roe, etc.)

2. Eomuk Tang

Eomuk Tang translate to Fishcake (어묵/Eomuk) Soup (탕/Tang) because fishcake is slowly cooked in anchovy broth (which I would recommend to drink, it's very good especially on cold winter days).

3. Hotteok

I was just about to say that hotteok (호떡) is kind of like pancakes, but now that I think about it, it's much closer to doriyaki. Being a pancake-like sweet with a sweet filling. In hotteok's case, it's usually filled with brown sugar, honey, cinnamon and nuts (I think peanuts or walnuts), but nowadays, there's a variety of trendy flavors now.

4. Sundae/Soondae

순대 or Sundae or Soondae is sausage made from pig's blood, rice, vegetables and spices stuffed in pig or cow intestine (cleaned, don't worry) before being steamed.

5. Mul-naengmyeon

As of today, 물 냉면 or mul naengmyeon is a summer dish, because it's a noodle soup served cold, so it's very refreshing to eat when it's hot outside.

6. Breadbasket

The stereotypical loaf there reminds me of salt bread (소금빵) which was trendy for some time in Korea. As for the round brown balls, I think I read an article speculating that it's boiled eggs, but I personally think they're cream ppang (크림빵) :3

7.-10. Banchan

Banchan are small plates of side dishes that help add or enhance the main dish or help the eater cleanse their pallet after eating. 7 is bap or cooked rice, 8 is eomuk bokkeum or stir fried fishcake, 9 was hard to see because it's at the edge of the screen, but I think it resembles oi sobagi or kind of like cucumber kimchi, and 10 was also hard to guess because it's very blurry, but from the reddish color and cube shape, it's probably kkadugi or diced radish kimchi.

11. ???

This was even harder to figure out since this is the only shot we had of this bowl, but from what little I can see from the top of the rim, I think it might be galbitang ( 갈비탕) or beef short rib soup. But I'm unsure so...

12. Chips

shrimp chips. just shrimp chips.

The hangul on zoey's chips literally just says "Potato chip" (감자/Gamja - Potato; 칩/Chip). Fun fact: if yoo look very closely, the chip is ketchup flavored :D

13-14. Beverages

13 - Milk tea. that's literally it.

14 - is a can of juice! it resembles Haiti's Podo Bong Bong which is grape juice with real grape pieces!

But you know what's amusing?

The food they grabbed the most were:

Gimbap (Rumi grabbed the cut rolls once then proceed to demolish the uncut roll by herself; Mira grab some cut gimbap twice; Zoey took twice as well)

Hotteok (All the girls grabbed some hotteok each)

Zoey grabbed some soondae twice.

Zoey tore into two bags of chips.

Mira grabbed a skewer of eomuk.

Rumi and Zoey each grabbed one cream ppang.

You know what a majority of these (except the ppang) all have in common? They're all street food. So now, I'm having an image in my head about the girls sneaking out at night during their trainee days for some food, and they just bounce from pojangmacha to pojangmacha (street food carts) trying as much as their allowance can buy them and they did iit so many times that they learn to recognize things like – this halmeoni makes the biggest gimbap for cheap; that imonim there has the best broth to pair with eomuk kkochi; the harabeoji in the corner makes hotteok that aren't too sweet; that sajangnim really knows how to make his soondae. Maybe they even get friendly with one imo who jokingly ask them about them what they're doing up so late, and the girls shyly tell her they were craving some food, and the imo hums and asks how they're doing in high school, they hesitantly tell her that they're trainees, and the imo is so awed and encourage them to eat more, that they look too thin, and they should eat as much as they can, idols are always going on diets and all that, joking that she'll cover for them if their daepyonim ever asks, giving them a "Fighting!" to cheer them on, etc.

[stupidly-be]

Bless the people who dissect the movies like this 🫠

[load-of-junk]

haha guess how many times i was hitting the space bar to pause just to get the shots of the girls hand

[iwillberealonceagain]

Hear me out: retired young but bored Celine agreeing to do parts in Kdramas because it's something to do that lets her go over the top in all the greatest ways.

I see what you're thinking, and I feel it.

BUT have you considered Celine doing Korean horror films? Look American films are scary but oh my GOD Korean horror films are on an entirely different level of mind fuck and twisted, and it's honestly brilliant.

I mean, either way I get the image of interviews and someone asking Rumi what she thinks of her mother's filmography only for Rumi to reply sulkily that she's not allowed to watch any of her mothers things.

Apparently it's 'rude' to try and write threatening tweets about people being mean to her mom and it gets her social media accounts stolen by Bobby for a few days.

"So you've never seen any of her work?" "Outside of music videos the only things I've seen are the fan edits Zoey makes me watch." staring into the distance like she's not sure if that's worse than a horror movie in general.

[load-of-junk]

Would Celine be the unsuspecting protagonist or the monster?

[iwillberealonceagain]

I really want to say protagonist but she would pull of some amazing villain roles I bet.

Props team gleeful to work with an Idol asking if she's ever held a weapon before. Celine looking over the weapons they're envisioning her having to learn to use and doing the 'ohh gee me? I've never touched a weapon in my life!' routine.

[load-of-junk]

Oooo, now I don't know if it's funnier if Celine says that and then execute the most badass moves in one go, or try so hard to not give away she knows how to duel wield two swords, that she does it almost cartooonishly bad

[iwillberealonceagain]

Hah Celine who TRIES To do it badly but she's been training with swords since she was like 14 years old, you can't fight muscle memory that well. It's ingrained by that point.

So even her attempting to be bad at it comes across as 'oh my GOD she's good' in a behind the scenes clip that leads to cheers and laughter, going viral because she manages something almost flawlessly and then looks almost surprised she did it.