It's not until Rumi finishes and sheaths her sword that Zoey realizes she's stopped breathing.
Not that she didn't know Rumi was fit; hell, she carried her and Mira down a mountain without breaking a sweat. It's just...watching her go through sword forms, with so much confidence, was a completely different experience.
"Hot..." she mumbles as soon as she gets some breath back. The second the word's out of her mouth she stiffens, teeth clacking as she clamps her jaw shut. Warily, she glances around; hopefully no one heard that...
Mira's looking at her from the corner of her eye, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.
Screwing her eyes shut, Zoey clenches the hem of her shirt so she doesn't start facepalming herself into next week.
"Was that not to your liking?"
Zoey's eyes snap open to Rumi, standing a foot or so away. The earlier confidence seems to have been sheathed with the sword; there's a worried crease in her brow, and her canines are peeking out as she gnaws her lip.
"Oh, it was." Mira answers languidly before Zoey can so much as open her mouth. Arms folded, she shifts her weight on a hip and throws the biggest shit-eating grin in Zoey's direction. "She just thinks its hot."
Good thing there's an actual nurse here; Zoey's gonna need one if her heart keeps crashing out like that.
Rumi...doesn't really react, though. Just frowns, shades her eyes, and looks up at the sky. "Yes," she says after a moment, not a hint of irony or mockery in her tone. "It is quite the warm day."
If she wasn't currently about to die of embarrassment, Zoey would be fighting to keep a straight face. Apparently, not-so-ancient not-quite-human heroes take things literally.
Plus side: at least this was a relatively harmless way to discover that than, say, turning her loose on Celine's record collection and offhandedly telling her to 'knock herself out.'
Not counting, of course, the damage dealt to her dignity.
"Perhaps you would feel better if we returned inside?" Rumi offers, smiling brilliantly.
(yup, really good thing they have that nurse)
Zoey's one-hundred percent certain she would not, but nods and trails after her towards the hanok all the same. She can feel the adult-adults sharing looks over her head and, worse, Mira's little triumphant smirk.
Well, at least one of us is enjoying this...
Mira is not enjoying this.
Sure, there was something amusing in the way Zoey was sticking her tongue out at her behind Rumi's back, and yeah, the smirk- the one she used to pull out on the rare occasions she had something to lord over Jaeho- feels good to dust off.
But she swears the second she's alone she's going to scream into a pillow (which will probably make her jaw hate her even more but whatever).
She saw the way Zoey watched Rumi go through her forms; she saw the way Rumi's face lit up at the prospect of doing anything for Zoey, even something as basic as moving everyone inside out of the not-really-hot-day; she saw how...right they were for each other. How much they wanted each other.
The way her own chest had warmed as she watched Rumi slide into her element and become a brighter version of herself with that sword, looking the way Mira felt when she danced, didn't matter.
Just like the way she had felt inside listening to Zoey infodump about the twenty-first century to Rumi didn't matter.
They...weren't for her. Not in that way.
So the least she could do was nudge them towards each other and be happy watching their happiness-
"Yeah, no, you were great!" Zoey's gotten over her mortification enough to start complimenting Rumi with her usual bubbly effusiveness (damn Mira could listen to that voice all day). "You are totally gonna kick some ass!"
Rumi stops, one foot on the porch step. "...But I have my sword. We will not need to kick anything?"
Mira pauses as Zoey starts laughing and Rumi stares at her incredibly (adorably) confused, chest aching anew at the scene.
Yes, she could be happy for them, no matter how much she wanted to be in that picture too.