No powers AU
Rumi was given up at birth because Miyeong (who was still crazy famous as a Sunlight Sister) was an orphan and died during child birth and the father never stepped up. Let’s say that Celine wasn’t even given an option to adopt because she was unmarried or some other arbitrary as rule, so it’s not like she abandoned Rumi. After Miyeong’s untimely demise and the scandal surrounding it all, SS disbands and goes their separate ways. Celine starts SE to prevent what happened to Miyeong from ever happening again and Third works as a coveted vocal coach or something. Rumi never gets adopted out of the orphanage because of her skin condition (you can choose which) and phases out of the system.
Rumi ends up working like 3-4 low paying jobs to afford her shitty roof top apartment. She leaves bread for the surly magpie that frequents her window and maybe spares her extra money on cans of tuna for Derpy (a stray cat whose markings look a lot like her skin condition). One of Rumi’s jobs is a cafe and she often uses her breaks to dance or (if it’s near closing/empty) belt out the latest kpop tune.
Mira got signed on to SE when she was 16 and had been working mostly as a model but did have a single or two.
Zoey went to SK for college to save money and ended up working at SE as a producer right after she graduated at 22. She also happens to be the person who produced all of Mira’s music for her.
Rumi did have interest in becoming an idol but all of the companies she auditioned for told her that they couldn’t promote someone who looked like her and to give up. And Rumi did because she was already so used to denying herself anyway.
Zoey who always thought she was too much, had experienced being too American for Korea and too Korean for America. So every time Mira tried to cajole or bribe her with turtle paraphernalia to record even just one song with her, she shut it down. She could accept criticisms of her songs but of her person? if she tried the idol shit that Mira was fantasizing about? Yeah, no.
Mira wears her down eventually and they become Huntrix which is mostly a rap heavy group until Rumi.
Fantastic Duo, which is a SK singing competition show where contestants compete against each other to hopefully get to perform with their idol(s); The idol in question selects who wins™️ and they (idol and fan) compete against 2 other duos to win the overall episode and be cast again for the next episode. Huntrix gets casts on this show an so they send out the notifs so people can apply on their app.
Rumi DIDN’T apply. After all, She had given up her dream but JINU did. He took a video of her while she was singing along to ‘How It’s Done’ in the cafe and uploaded it. If nothing came of it, no harm done but something did come of it… the casting assistant got into contact with Jinu and then Jinu had a LOT of explaining to do.
He barely manages to keep his skin attached to his body and convince Rumi to go on the show. But the hope of being an idol (even if for just one day), and getting to meet one of her favorite artists was too delicious to let rot. She did still trip him at every available opportunity (when he wasn’t carrying anything, she’s not a monster) for the next two weeks for revenge.
Rumi goes on the show covered head to toe, only allowing her face which had been covered in concealer (hiding her skin condition). Zoemira chose her, the other contestants were good but Rumi was better. They don’t end up winning that episode because it’s kind of hard to win a singing show with a rap song but the stage was good and goes viral.
Rumi doesn’t immediately agree to signing a contract with SE (because this was all supposed to be temporary and Zoemira still don’t know about the skin condition) but she does agree to record Golden with Huntrix under her stage name Cafe Babe (Fucking Jinu 🙄). That goes mega viral and like almost everyone in SK is begging Rumi and Huntrix to just add Rumi into Huntrix.
AN: This has gotten long so I’m gonna call it. Thanks for reading this far
