okay in my mind coco would eventually join the brimcaps because she can no longer tolerate the amount of danger qifrey's atelier is facing due to coco's presence. And also she couldn't experiment with certain spells for her mother without bringing shame to the atelier since transforming a human body is around forbidden magic territory.
After a few years searching and experimenting in despair. coco would hit some kind of mental block thinking her mother couldn't be saved with any magic available. Pushed to the brink with her saviour complex, coco thought if she couldn't save her mother, she might as well save her only living parental figure.. (yes qifrey im looking at you)
So her desperate little mind thought of a body switch magic. switching her master's parasitic silvertree eyes with her own normal ones. the least drastic to her mind. after applying the spell she would burn it afterwards to make sure no one would misuse her spell.
Imagine Celine post Rumi's birth at the Hanok going through records trying to secretly find anything she can about small demons or half-demons. Rumi, bundled up in a sling against her front hidden from the elder hunters that live there still.
Celine discovering that Rumi is not the first half demon. She's just the first half demon that's been allowed to live.
Celine vowing immediately that absolutely no one else will ever know about Rumi's patterns.
Celine putting Rumi in a wool-knit hat to cover her dark purple curls and a onesie to cover the two small lines on her arm before heading to the hanok to go through the archives, trying to find anything that can help her figure out how to even being to raise a child like her.
(Do the patterns mean that she already belongs to Gwi-ma? Celine wonders. Do they mean she's already lost her soul?)
And the archives are absolutely no help.
Rumi isn't the first child born from a human and a demon. Far from it in fact. The other children -- infants, if she's being precise -- never live for very long.
Of the 107 demon-human children known to the archives, 56 were stillborn, 31 died within the first six months, none had lived past five. Most of them had simply...faded, growing weaker and weaker no matter what their caretaker had tried. 11 had tried to eat the souls of their caretakers. 4 had shifted into something so inhuman that they were put out of their misery. 21 had been drowned (or abandoned or smothered or) -- reasons unknown.
Celine holds Rumi close, tucks the baby to her chest; wondering if it would be kinder to kill the baby now than to see her starve or twist into something monstrous or for her to be taken away and abandoned on the side of a mountain.
"Just breath, unnie," Miyeong had said. "No one is expecting us to save the honmoon overnight."
Celine had nodded. "One day at a time right?"
"One day at a time, Rumi-ya," Celine murmurs into the soft curls of Rumi's hair. "We'll figure it out, the two of us."
deadbeat miyeon au inspired by Miyeong's "She's alive out there somewhere. We would know if something had happened to her. We would."
Now I can't help but imagine third and miyeong getting constant tugs from the honmoon whenever celine gets seriously hurt or sick or injured (because accidents happen. humans are unpredictable. celine spent years if not in poverty then somewhere borderline, she wouldn't have been safe. and that's without taking into account how appetizing the lone hunter and the half demon would be to gwi-ma and his minions)
third gets good at ignoring it (she gets good at ignoring a lot of things, from guilt and self hatred, to absences louder than words, to the spaces still left empty for someone who will never return).
miyeong meanwhile lives on a constant edge, fingers twitching whenever the honmoon shudders, too brief for her to even pinpoint a direction. (she thinks she would have helped if she knew where to go. carves that belief into her heart. truth is, all it would have taken was a tug of the soulbond for her to find celine)
And then, one day, the honmoon shakes. like, full on reverberates down the spiritual richter scale. third and miyeong look at each other - they're probably mid event, or doing an interview - and after a long moment they just nod. abandon everything and go.
when they arrive, all they see is a sacked flower shop, with red and purple splotches of blood marring the walls and floor.
The dark purple blood, almost indistinguishable from the human red until they got up close and saw the unnatural shimmer, told them that it was a demon that had attacked the shop though what kind of demon could bleed this much and also get injured by a civilian, they didn't know.
It was eerily silent, broken only by the crunch of glass and ceramic under their shoes.
"Let's check upstairs and then get out of here," Seoyi mutters.
Even at this late of an hour, it wouldn't take long for concerned neighbors to call the police -- if they hadn't already.
Getting caught here -- two popstars who were supposed to be doing promo for their newest album -- Miyeong didn't even want to imagine the headlines.
Sunlight Sisters Caught In Violent Break-in!
They gingerly step through the store, following the blood trail up the stairs; the red-purple mix of human and demon blood turning to smears of dark red the further up they went until, near the top of the steps, the blood had been all human.
At the very top was a body.
Slumped against a wooden door, curled up like it was resting, dark hair falling across its face.
The body looked like Celine. The body looked dead.
Miyeong thought the body was dead until it shuddered and its lungs contracted and a wet, bloody gasp ripped through its mouth. Its hair shifted across its face and --
It wasn't Celine, Miyeong decided, even as she kneeled at the body's side. Celine had taken a demon and left. Celine wouldn't have stayed in Seoul; stayed so close and never reached out. Celine wouldn't have gotten so injured by some demon.
"Shit," Seoyi says, kneeling on the other side of the body. "Celine, hey, Celine, are you hearing me? The fuck are you doing, letting some stupid demon get the better of you, huh?"
Celine stirs again. One eye opening to glare at them.
"Still did better than the fucking demon," Celine says, voice tight and pained. She closes her eye again, head sliding forward until her chin touches her chest. "You two can leave now."
"So you can pass out and die?" Miyeong says, moving Celine's arm, cursing under her breath as she sees the broken off horn stuck in Celine's side. "Where's your emergency kit? I know you've still got one stocked."
Celine's head shifted. Tilts towards the door behind her before falling forward again.
"Miyeong, help me move her," Seoyi says, sliding under Celine's arm, ignoring her pained gasp.
Before the two of them can move Celine away from the door, Celine's hands grip the backs of their shirts with a strength that made her arms shake.
"Don't," she says, forcibly. "Just leave."
From behind the door, Miyeong hears the sounds of children trying to keep quiet and failing.
There’s a brief pause before Miyeong tightens her mouth and says, loudly, “Either the emergency kit can come to us or we’ll go to it. We’re going to help you, and then we’ll leave.”
Seoyi seems just as surprised as Celine herself, turning to Miyeong with wide eyes, but—a hand brushes something in the movement and Celine hisses.
She watches them both flinch.
“Just help,” Seoyi adds, in that same voice, loud and deliberate and meant to carry through the door. “No weapons.”
Celine can hear Rumi and Mira behind her, moving. She offers her arms up in surrender, and still-familiar hands move her off of the door. Even not doing any of the work, her vision goes first black and then white with pain.
Her blood is all over everything.
The door clicks. She stiffens—a mistake, but impossible to avoid—and Mira shoves the kit out before it shuts again. Protecting Rumi, like she expected her hand to be grabbed and her to be yanked out.
“Is—that child, are they hurt?” Seoyi asks instead, voice blank in a way that meant she was grappling at turmoil but set in her course of action. Even if it was Rumi, Celine realizes, she’d help her.
Even if. She hates them so much right now.
“No,” she grunts. Miyeong pokes her hand. She wiggles her fingers and toes in answer. All four limbs still with feeling and motion.
Celine needs to be awake and aware, when there are Hunters around, but it’s hard. She’s in so much pain, and their hands are so gentle, and this situation is—
“Stay awake,” Miyeong says.
“Ungrateful,” Seoyi huffs, stitching up her side.
“Are you kidding me?” It comes out too bitter, too honest. Rumi and Mira are listening.
The whole patching-up process takes far longer than Celine would have liked; for once in their lives Seoyi and Mi are more concerned with being deliberate than hasty.
“We’re trying not to damage your guts, dummy,” Seoyi huffs when Celine grumbles over Mi easing the horn from where it’s jabbed in her side rather than just yanking out the damn thing.
The whole time she can feel her grip on consciousness slipping, but sheer desperation keeps the encroaching nothingness at bay. She can’t recall his hear her girls listening from behind thr door, and while Mi and Seoyi promised no weapons she refuses to extend them that level of trust.
How did they expect her to, when they’d done nothing to earn it back?
(this- seeking her out when the Honmoon cried and stitching her back together- doesn’t count; this is basic human decency)
(Though…it does feel nice, being tended by hands she knows rather than a stranger’s, and whose touches bring her back to a time a corner of her soul misses…)
“Here. Help me get her inside.”
Mi’s voice, calm though it is, shrieks against Celine’s ears, yanking her back from the half-drowse she’d stumbled into. “No.” She winces as she tries to shrug them off.
Seoyi arches a brow. “What, you want to recuperate in the hall? On the floor?”
“Yes.” Then, hearing how that sounded, she clarified: “I can get inside myself.”
Mi purses her lips, the way she always did when she detected a lie, and before she can protest Celine gathers her legs under her to prove them both wrong.
White-hot pain rips through her side as she moves to stand, spots blotting out far too much of the hall for her liking, and she can’t stop the cry that escapes her lips.
Mi and Seoyi’s arms are lowering her back to the floor before she can further prove them right; she can just hear the sounds of gasps from behind the door.
She cannot let them into the apartment.
“You have a couch, right?” Mi’s asking. “How about we just dump you there?”
“Get you situated with some painkillers and frozen peas before we go?” Seoyi offers with that crooked grin that’s never changed, doing as poor a job as ever at hiding her worry.
Eomma had told her that if demons ever attacked them or if -- god forbid -- the hunters ever found out about her patterns, she was to run as fast as her feet could take her and that eomma would find her no matter what so just keep running.
When Mira had come to live with them, eomma had sat them both down and said, "if anything happens, the two of you need to look out for each other, okay?"
And they had both nodded but tonight, when the big demon had torn front door off the shop and dozens of little demons had rushed in, the two of them hadn't been able to do anything except run upstairs, hold each other, and hide while eomma got hurt.
When Rumi cracked open the door and looked outside, she thought the woman staring at her looked a lot less scary than the demons.
"Is eomma hurt bad?" Rumi asked. She was too scared to look down and see what was making her toes wet.
The woman glanced down towards eomma quickly before she looked back up at Rumi. She had the look on her face that adults got sometimes when they wanted to lie for good reasons.
"Eomma is fine," eomma said, weakly.
"The fuck you are." Rumi heard an unfamiliar voice grumble.
"Language," eomma and the woman said. The woman glared briefly off to the side where Rumi couldn't see.
"Rumi-ya, why don't you and Mira-ya go to your room, okay?" Eomma said. She sounded even weaker. "This is adult business."
Mira clutched Rumi's arm.
"We wanna help," Mira said. "You got hurt. We can help."
Seoyi tried not to think about how much easier it made this. She didn’t know which of them is the baby demon baby, so she didn’t have to know.
“Someone needs to carry the emergency kit back in,” she pointed out. It made Celine give her a displeased, suspicious look (as if she weren’t the one who left—) but it was a good, simple task to keep the children distracted, and it did need to be done.
“Someone needs to get out of the door so we can get Eomma to the couch,” Miyeong added. This was, of course, ambiguously worded such that Celine could choose to tell the kids that meant go to your room.
Instead, she sighed and grumbled and gave Miyeong a dirty look, which the children inside correctly interpreted as permission to open the door and come get the emergency kit that Seoyi was currently repacking as quickly as she could, biohazards already neatly bagged up.
She did not look at them while she finished.
“Good girls,” she said, keeping her gaze below their shoulders. “It’s a little heavy, but you already knew that—got it? Good.”
Then, in turn, she and Miyeong picked up Celine—heavier than she used to be, but weren’t they all, after years off of those awful diets?—and shared a glance around to make sure they were all steady, before they started to move.
The couch inside was large and overstuffed and well-worn, the kind of thing that just looked like it belongs in a home. Seoyi tried not to think too hard about the way her chest hurt as she and Miyeong helped Celine down onto it.
“Tea and ice?” Seoyi muttered. “For them to get you?”
Celine looked at her for a long moment, before finally she turned away and huffed in a vague, petulant assent.
“What about blankets?” Miyeong asked. She turned. “Does Eomma have a favorite blanket?”
Seoyi did too, automatically.
Both girls were in the doorway, the black-haired one with the narrow face right ahead of the (don’t think about it) purple-haired one with the big eyes.
“She’s not—“ started the black-haired one. She cut herself off, several emotions playing over her face before she nodded determinedly. “I’ll bring the gray one. And her good pillow.”
Celine muttered something about getting blood on her favorite blanket and pillow and couch and did they know how hard it was to get blood out of fabric when there wasn't a professional cleaning staff?
"Are you joking?" Seoyi asked as she checked Celine over again to make sure the stitches were holding and that the gauze was still tightly bound over the worst of her injuries. "Do you actually want us to dump you back in that hall so you can bleed to death? You do remember that the honmoon can only heal the living, right?"
"I don't want you two here at all," Celine grumbled.
Miyeong and Seoyi did an admirable job pretending that the words didn't feel like a hundred arrows shooting them through the chest. Unfortunately, the three of them still knew each other a little too well because Celine winced -- this time, not because of any physical pain -- before a quick, "sorry" slipped from her.
And what were they supposed to say to that?
They were saved from having to talk by the two girls returning carrying, between the two of them, what looked like every blanket, pillow, and towel in the apartment.
The girls stared at the adults staring back at them.
"We panicked," Purple-hair says, giving them a nervous, toothy grin.
Her incisors looked bigger than normal and she was missing a few teeth in the front. Seoyi supposed that even demon babies had to go through baby teeth. The thought made her want to laugh in its ordinariness.
Miyeong was wrapping gauze around Celine's arm over a wound that was barely larger than a scratch.
"That's okay," Celine says, giving the girls a weak but genuine smile. "It's always better to overprepare, right?"
"Right," the girls said.
They nod so seriously that Miyeong has to duck her head and bite her lip to stop herself from laughing. Or crying. The stinging in her throat and eyes made it hard to tell what emotion wanted to spill from her.
The girls slide next to Celine. Black-hair tucks a pillow underneath Celine's head while her -- the demon -- drapes a thick, gray blanket over Celine's body, carefully tucking her in before shyly pulling out an old, well-loved teddy bear out from the bundle of blankets and sitting it next to the pillow.
Miyeong didn't think about the tightness suddenly wrapping itself around her chest. She certainly didn't feel raw and bloody as if something was ripping open all the old wounds inside of her that had long scabbed over.
"I'm...going downstairs," she mutters to no one in particular. "It's a mess down there."
deadbeat miyeon au inspired by Miyeong's "She's alive out there somewhere. We would know if something had happened to her. We would."
Now I can't help but imagine third and miyeong getting constant tugs from the honmoon whenever celine gets seriously hurt or sick or injured (because accidents happen. humans are unpredictable. celine spent years if not in poverty then somewhere borderline, she wouldn't have been safe. and that's without taking into account how appetizing the lone hunter and the half demon would be to gwi-ma and his minions)
third gets good at ignoring it (she gets good at ignoring a lot of things, from guilt and self hatred, to absences louder than words, to the spaces still left empty for someone who will never return).
miyeong meanwhile lives on a constant edge, fingers twitching whenever the honmoon shudders, too brief for her to even pinpoint a direction. (she thinks she would have helped if she knew where to go. carves that belief into her heart. truth is, all it would have taken was a tug of the soulbond for her to find celine)
And then, one day, the honmoon shakes. like, full on reverberates down the spiritual richter scale. third and miyeong look at each other - they're probably mid event, or doing an interview - and after a long moment they just nod. abandon everything and go.
when they arrive, all they see is a sacked flower shop, with red and purple splotches of blood marring the walls and floor.
The dark purple blood, almost indistinguishable from the human red until they got up close and saw the unnatural shimmer, told them that it was a demon that had attacked the shop though what kind of demon could bleed this much and also get injured by a civilian, they didn't know.
It was eerily silent, broken only by the crunch of glass and ceramic under their shoes.
"Let's check upstairs and then get out of here," Seoyi mutters.
Even at this late of an hour, it wouldn't take long for concerned neighbors to call the police -- if they hadn't already.
Getting caught here -- two popstars who were supposed to be doing promo for their newest album -- Miyeong didn't even want to imagine the headlines.
Sunlight Sisters Caught In Violent Break-in!
They gingerly step through the store, following the blood trail up the stairs; the red-purple mix of human and demon blood turning to smears of dark red the further up they went until, near the top of the steps, the blood had been all human.
At the very top was a body.
Slumped against a wooden door, curled up like it was resting, dark hair falling across its face.
The body looked like Celine. The body looked dead.
Miyeong thought the body was dead until it shuddered and its lungs contracted and a wet, bloody gasp ripped through its mouth. Its hair shifted across its face and --
It wasn't Celine, Miyeong decided, even as she kneeled at the body's side. Celine had taken a demon and left. Celine wouldn't have stayed in Seoul; stayed so close and never reached out. Celine wouldn't have gotten so injured by some demon.
"Shit," Seoyi says, kneeling on the other side of the body. "Celine, hey, Celine, are you hearing me? The fuck are you doing, letting some stupid demon get the better of you, huh?"
Celine stirs again. One eye opening to glare at them.
"Still did better than the fucking demon," Celine says, voice tight and pained. She closes her eye again, head sliding forward until her chin touches her chest. "You two can leave now."
"So you can pass out and die?" Miyeong says, moving Celine's arm, cursing under her breath as she sees the broken off horn stuck in Celine's side. "Where's your emergency kit? I know you've still got one stocked."
Celine's head shifted. Tilts towards the door behind her before falling forward again.
"Miyeong, help me move her," Seoyi says, sliding under Celine's arm, ignoring her pained gasp.
Before the two of them can move Celine away from the door, Celine's hands grip the backs of their shirts with a strength that made her arms shake.
"Don't," she says, forcibly. "Just leave."
From behind the door, Miyeong hears the sounds of children trying to keep quiet and failing.
There’s a brief pause before Miyeong tightens her mouth and says, loudly, “Either the emergency kit can come to us or we’ll go to it. We’re going to help you, and then we’ll leave.”
Seoyi seems just as surprised as Celine herself, turning to Miyeong with wide eyes, but—a hand brushes something in the movement and Celine hisses.
She watches them both flinch.
“Just help,” Seoyi adds, in that same voice, loud and deliberate and meant to carry through the door. “No weapons.”
Celine can hear Rumi and Mira behind her, moving. She offers her arms up in surrender, and still-familiar hands move her off of the door. Even not doing any of the work, her vision goes first black and then white with pain.
Her blood is all over everything.
The door clicks. She stiffens—a mistake, but impossible to avoid—and Mira shoves the kit out before it shuts again. Protecting Rumi, like she expected her hand to be grabbed and her to be yanked out.
“Is—that child, are they hurt?” Seoyi asks instead, voice blank in a way that meant she was grappling at turmoil but set in her course of action. Even if it was Rumi, Celine realizes, she’d help her.
Even if. She hates them so much right now.
“No,” she grunts. Miyeong pokes her hand. She wiggles her fingers and toes in answer. All four limbs still with feeling and motion.
Celine needs to be awake and aware, when there are Hunters around, but it’s hard. She’s in so much pain, and their hands are so gentle, and this situation is—
“Stay awake,” Miyeong says.
“Ungrateful,” Seoyi huffs, stitching up her side.
“Are you kidding me?” It comes out too bitter, too honest. Rumi and Mira are listening.
The whole patching-up process takes far longer than Celine would have liked; for once in their lives Seoyi and Mi are more concerned with being deliberate than hasty.
“We’re trying not to damage your guts, dummy,” Seoyi huffs when Celine grumbles over Mi easing the horn from where it’s jabbed in her side rather than just yanking out the damn thing.
The whole time she can feel her grip on consciousness slipping, but sheer desperation keeps the encroaching nothingness at bay. She can’t recall his hear her girls listening from behind thr door, and while Mi and Seoyi promised no weapons she refuses to extend them that level of trust.
How did they expect her to, when they’d done nothing to earn it back?
(this- seeking her out when the Honmoon cried and stitching her back together- doesn’t count; this is basic human decency)
(Though…it does feel nice, being tended by hands she knows rather than a stranger’s, and whose touches bring her back to a time a corner of her soul misses…)
“Here. Help me get her inside.”
Mi’s voice, calm though it is, shrieks against Celine’s ears, yanking her back from the half-drowse she’d stumbled into. “No.” She winces as she tries to shrug them off.
Seoyi arches a brow. “What, you want to recuperate in the hall? On the floor?”
“Yes.” Then, hearing how that sounded, she clarified: “I can get inside myself.”
Mi purses her lips, the way she always did when she detected a lie, and before she can protest Celine gathers her legs under her to prove them both wrong.
White-hot pain rips through her side as she moves to stand, spots blotting out far too much of the hall for her liking, and she can’t stop the cry that escapes her lips.
Mi and Seoyi’s arms are lowering her back to the floor before she can further prove them right; she can just hear the sounds of gasps from behind the door.
She cannot let them into the apartment.
“You have a couch, right?” Mi’s asking. “How about we just dump you there?”
“Get you situated with some painkillers and frozen peas before we go?” Seoyi offers with that crooked grin that’s never changed, doing as poor a job as ever at hiding her worry.
Eomma had told her that if demons ever attacked them or if -- god forbid -- the hunters ever found out about her patterns, she was to run as fast as her feet could take her and that eomma would find her no matter what so just keep running.
When Mira had come to live with them, eomma had sat them both down and said, "if anything happens, the two of you need to look out for each other, okay?"
And they had both nodded but tonight, when the big demon had torn front door off the shop and dozens of little demons had rushed in, the two of them hadn't been able to do anything except run upstairs, hold each other, and hide while eomma got hurt.
When Rumi cracked open the door and looked outside, she thought the woman staring at her looked a lot less scary than the demons.
"Is eomma hurt bad?" Rumi asked. She was too scared to look down and see what was making her toes wet.
The woman glanced down towards eomma quickly before she looked back up at Rumi. She had the look on her face that adults got sometimes when they wanted to lie for good reasons.
"Eomma is fine," eomma said, weakly.
"The fuck you are." Rumi heard an unfamiliar voice grumble.
"Language," eomma and the woman said. The woman glared briefly off to the side where Rumi couldn't see.
"Rumi-ya, why don't you and Mira-ya go to your room, okay?" Eomma said. She sounded even weaker. "This is adult business."
Mira clutched Rumi's arm.
"We wanna help," Mira said. "You got hurt. We can help."
Seoyi tried not to think about how much easier it made this. She didn’t know which of them is the baby demon baby, so she didn’t have to know.
“Someone needs to carry the emergency kit back in,” she pointed out. It made Celine give her a displeased, suspicious look (as if she weren’t the one who left—) but it was a good, simple task to keep the children distracted, and it did need to be done.
“Someone needs to get out of the door so we can get Eomma to the couch,” Miyeong added. This was, of course, ambiguously worded such that Celine could choose to tell the kids that meant go to your room.
Instead, she sighed and grumbled and gave Miyeong a dirty look, which the children inside correctly interpreted as permission to open the door and come get the emergency kit that Seoyi was currently repacking as quickly as she could, biohazards already neatly bagged up.
She did not look at them while she finished.
“Good girls,” she said, keeping her gaze below their shoulders. “It’s a little heavy, but you already knew that—got it? Good.”
Then, in turn, she and Miyeong picked up Celine—heavier than she used to be, but weren’t they all, after years off of those awful diets?—and shared a glance around to make sure they were all steady, before they started to move.
The couch inside was large and overstuffed and well-worn, the kind of thing that just looked like it belongs in a home. Seoyi tried not to think too hard about the way her chest hurt as she and Miyeong helped Celine down onto it.
“Tea and ice?” Seoyi muttered. “For them to get you?”
Celine looked at her for a long moment, before finally she turned away and huffed in a vague, petulant assent.
“What about blankets?” Miyeong asked. She turned. “Does Eomma have a favorite blanket?”
Seoyi did too, automatically.
Both girls were in the doorway, the black-haired one with the narrow face right ahead of the (don’t think about it) purple-haired one with the big eyes.
“She’s not—“ started the black-haired one. She cut herself off, several emotions playing over her face before she nodded determinedly. “I’ll bring the gray one. And her good pillow.”
Celine muttered something about getting blood on her favorite blanket and pillow and couch and did they know how hard it was to get blood out of fabric when there wasn't a professional cleaning staff?
"Are you joking?" Seoyi asked as she checked Celine over again to make sure the stitches were holding and that the gauze was still tightly bound over the worst of her injuries. "Do you actually want us to dump you back in that hall so you can bleed to death? You do remember that the honmoon can only heal the living, right?"
"I don't want you two here at all," Celine grumbled.
Miyeong and Seoyi did an admirable job pretending that the words didn't feel like a hundred arrows shooting them through the chest. Unfortunately, the three of them still knew each other a little too well because Celine winced -- this time, not because of any physical pain -- before a quick, "sorry" slipped from her.
And what were they supposed to say to that?
They were saved from having to talk by the two girls returning carrying, between the two of them, what looked like every blanket, pillow, and towel in the apartment.
The girls stared at the adults staring back at them.
"We panicked," Purple-hair says, giving them a nervous, toothy grin.
Her incisors looked bigger than normal and she was missing a few teeth in the front. Seoyi supposed that even demon babies had to go through baby teeth. The thought made her want to laugh in its ordinariness.
Miyeong was wrapping gauze around Celine's arm over a wound that was barely larger than a scratch.
"That's okay," Celine says, giving the girls a weak but genuine smile. "It's always better to overprepare, right?"
"Right," the girls said.
They nod so seriously that Miyeong has to duck her head and bite her lip to stop herself from laughing. Or crying. The stinging in her throat and eyes made it hard to tell what emotion wanted to spill from her.
The girls slide next to Celine. Black-hair tucks a pillow underneath Celine's head while her -- the demon -- drapes a thick, gray blanket over Celine's body, carefully tucking her in before shyly pulling out an old, well-loved teddy bear out from the bundle of blankets and sitting it next to the pillow.
Miyeong didn't think about the tightness suddenly wrapping itself around her chest. She certainly didn't feel raw and bloody as if something was ripping open all the old wounds inside of her that had long scabbed over.
"I'm...going downstairs," she mutters to no one in particular. "It's a mess down there."
Zoey and Mira stopped talking about Eomma in front of her. Things got easier afterward. They moved to safer subjects. Zoey loves turtles and talks about what life was like in America. Mira loves fashion and is always willing to show off her dancing. Rumi told them about Eomma's farm and shop, about the different plants that were in her own private garden that Eomma had cordoned off just for her.
It was good, Rumi was starting to like them. Was maybe even willing to call them her frie-
("God, Celine is such a whore.")
Rumi should have known better.
("I won't ever understand how Celine could betray them like this?)
It was so stupid of her, but she just really hoped.
("All for a fucking demon too!)
That when they stopped talking about Eomma in front of her that it might have meant that they stopped insulting her in general. That they were starting to understand, to give Eomma just a little grace.
Rumi stood in front of the closed door to Zoey's room and listened to the all too familiar vitriol spew from her... coworkers... mouth for a minute before silently walking away.
😭😭😭
(This is awful and amazing thank you for sharing it with the world)
(Rumi starts pulling away again. Mira and Zoey can't get her to tell them what's wrong.)
This is gonna blow up so soon I can feel it. They are gonna take it too far. Maybe they say she sould her soul too the demon. That she did it on purpose or something. Maybe something worse I cant think of. And Rumi fucking snaps.
I do think ince the truth comes out things will be a bit better for the girls. But MAN are Zoey and Mira gonna feel guilty as fuck. Especially Zoey. This is gonna be her first real lesson in not taking fandom rumors as gospel and its gonna be so personal too. Like it would be different if Celine and Rumi eventually came out into the spotlight for some reason and shared their side of things. But learn the 'forbidden love child' was 1) your friend/possible soulmate, 2) not even the child of the member you thought, and 3) the true parent wanted that child dead and has been actively lying too you for however long they have been there. It would be rough.
I think both girls are gonna have the hardest time reconciling with Miyeong and Third, if they ever do. Rumi, nothing really changes. She lowkey hates the two before and still does. But too have your heroes be shown too have the capability to be so awful? Yeah no. Mira is especially gonna hold a grudge.
If rumi leaves after the blow up I wouldn't be suprised if the girls try too follow her. Whether or not she let's them come is up in the air but it would be ironic if this ends in the girls being trained by Celine in the end because they cant stand the other two.
Rumi was staring out of the northern numaru window like she could bore a hole through the glass if she put her mind to it. Maybe she could.
It was raining too hard to train outside, Miyeong-seonsaengnim had said. They'd stay in for the afternoon and help her organize "Their Little Library"; the journals former hunters had left behind, the fragile delicately-illustrated bestiaries, someone's collection of florid joseon romance novellas. Centuries of research, amounting to very little they hadn't already heard ("demons are bad", "demons are tricky", "demons are liars", "demons can disguise themselves to look like anyone"). Thirdlight-seonsaengnim was making them all take turns hand-copying the oldest texts into new books, which was apparently not meant to be a punishment. In practice, this meant Zoey was yapping about her favorite Sunlight Sisters albums (almost all of them), and there was nothing Miyeong loved more than being yapped to about her songwriting. Mira was pretty sure neither of them had even noticed Rumi slinking out.
Mira is not the right person for this, she knows that. She's not conciliatory. She's not a peace-maker. Rumi's so icily polite that she's almost positive Rumi hates her. But someone has to try to fix this. Someone has to at least figure out what's wrong, and if Rumi takes it badly…at least she'll have reacted.
It's a lost cause to sneak up on Rumi, so she didn't even try, deliberately squeaking her house slippers against the wooden floorboards as she approached her. Rumi half turned her head to look at Mira, her face already shaped into that PR fake friendliness that she's so good at. Mira stopped. Out of saingeom range, hopefully.
"So I'm not great at reading people."
Rumi breathed out through her nose in something that was trying not to be a snort.
Mira resisted the urge to ball up her fists. Don't make it a fight. Don't punch first. "Yeah, yeah. I'm not exactly a natural. But it's pretty obvious someone upset you. And." Her hands clasped and unclasped at her sides, gripping the hems of her sleeves and digging her nails in. "And if it's me I want to apologize."
Rumi's stupid perfect face did something genuinely unexpected. It moved. Just a little spasm around the eyelids and then it was gone. Smoothed away like it had never existed. Mira felt a little jolt of victory.
"What could you have to apologize for?" Rumi said in a voice so sweet it could kill flies. "We're hunters, right? The honmoon picked us for one another, so I don't know how you could say anything that would hurt me."
"Okay so that's a yes." Mira's mind started ticking. What had they said? What had they been talking about when Rumi left?
Oh.
"15 years seems like kindof a long time to still be making grudge albums." Mira cringed internally. She should give up speaking. "Don't they have any other material?" Forever, if possible.
Rumi's face was still as stone. "It's a good reason, isn't it? She chose a demon." It felt like a brittle lie. It felt like home.
Mira shifted uneasily. There was something moving under the surface of the conversation that she couldn't see. She wasn't the right person for this. Zoey was the one who could see how people interacted and then know how to appease them. Zoey knew how to keep Miyeong's attention focused on her, and diffuse arguments between Mira and Thirdlight almost before they started. But Rumi made Zoey uncomfortable. Judged. So Mira had to be the one to talk to her.
"Well, that's probably punishment enough, right?" Please be provoked. Yell. Make a face. Do SOMETHING. "No need to keep rubbing her face in it. She's out of the industry, if she was going to share her side of the story she would have already."
"Her side?" Rumi's tone was sharp and high. Not shocked, Mira thought. Which could mean nothing.
"Well she must have one, right? You wouldn't burn down your life for no reason at all."
"Miyeong-seonsaengnim and Thirdlight-seonsaengnim seem pretty sure they know the reason." Mira was a little impressed Rumi had fit that much scorn into so few syllables.
Mira smirked at her. "Hey, can I tell you a secret?"
Rumi blinked. "A secret?"
"Yeah. Thirdlight-seonsaengnim and Miyeong-seonsaengnim argue about her sometimes. When they think we're asleep. I needed a cigarette a few nights ago after that fight choreography disaster." Rumi laughed nervously, fingers hovering over the spot where Zoey had collided with her, nearly planting a shin-kal directly into her right hip. "And I found out they never even looked for her."
After several long seconds, Rumi managed to assemble a look of surprise. Which could mean nothing. "….they didn't?"
"So that's weird, right? If she left with a demon, wouldn't they want to kill the demon? They'd be rescuing her, probably. We're supposed to…" Mira paused, trying to keep the hunger out of her voice. "We're supposed to protect each other."
All at once Rumi seemed to really look at Mira. Mira wondered what she saw.
"So you think it was more complicated."
Did kids of hunters often become hunters? Did enough hunters live long enough to have children to find out whether or not the children of hunters were likely to become hunters? Mira's brain skittered away from the thought.
"I think if I have to pretend I care more about sh…stuff like legitimacy than a….fellow hunter I might as well still be rotting at home."
Rumi bit the edge of her lip. It was the most vulnerable expression Mira had ever seen her make.
"Yeah, you did upset me. You all know I was raised by a single mom, and no one blinks an eye when Zoey calls a famous single mother a slut. When Thirdlight-seonsaengnim says she got what she deserved. When Miyeong-seonsaengnim says she should have taken care of it. When you don't say anything at all."
Harsh, not unfair. "Do you……want……to talk about her? Your eomonim."
"She was perfect." Rumi said quietly. "She was perfect and everyone abandoned her because she loved me enough to keep me."
Mira couldn't quite keep the wistfulness out of her voice. "So you were wanted?" Deep breaths, don't cry. "That sounds….nice."
Rumi looked tired. "You'll probably have to disavow that if the duo finds out you said a nice thing about a lovechild."
Mira snorted. "This wouldn't even be the first family I got kicked out of for having the wrong opinions about a mother."
Kdramas (that she's been in, we stan a gossip queen)
America (the weirder the better)
Lyricism (blue journals 2-4, still can't understand me when I rap in korean 😭)
Girls or Boys?
Mira in Rogue cosplay
Tony Hawk, I guess? (gender envy??????????)
Short fluffy hair
Wristbands?
MILFs 🙏🏼 😭
Subjects Thirdlight likes to hear about
Books (fiction, no comics, light novels okay, NO SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE)
RPF (oh no oh no)
Drums, drumming, rhythm section NO STIMS
Bonguk geom (sword arts in general I guess, but let HER yap)
Geommu (safe topic to divert her & Mira onto, sleeves???)
Conversations Rumi has started
If I like perilla leaves (in gimbap, or in general?)
Cucumber or radish kimchi (our turn to prep)
Where I got my purple gel pens (DID SHE NOTICE)
Where the audio jack adapters are (my room, always my room, please help me find them)
If I need more water (OH NO SHE NOTICED)
Shower Songs
Fast Car (god Rumi is SO OLD)
Heartbreaker (yeah Miyeong, apparently)
ICONIC (damn, maybe Mira's a demon)
Show (whyyyyyy won't Thirdlight talk to me about vocaloid I hear u singing Ado in there)
Runaway (if I let one syllable of Kissing Lessons out of my mouth it's the end 4 me)
Evidence that…..
Zoey tapped her pen rhythmically against the ring on her index finger. Evidence that.
Mira had return from her conversation with Rumi looking faintly smug, and promptly picked a fight with Miyeong. Zoey had cringed back against the wall and resisted the urge to intervene. This was the plan. This was their plan. Zoey would create an opportunity, Mira would run recon for her, and she would pick a fight that got her sent to her room when she had something worth sharing. Mira loved picking fights; Miyeong loved being provoked; and Thirdlight loved that Zoey loved peacekeeping. The four of them had gotten along so well before Rumi had put everything out of balance. She just. She just needed to figure out where Rumi fit in this dynamic, and then it could stabilize again.
Evidence for. Zoey tapped her pen faster. Yes. Evidence for.
Evidence For A Conspiracy
Mira thinks so
Pic from her brother (either she has the best shapewear known to science OR Rumi was way way premature OR…hmm.)
Where was she hiding that baby bump, the honmoon?
Overheard conversation (I wasn't there, tho, so idk)
Celine's fully still alive, with no teen in residence (and ripped, goddamn)
Rumi's obviously pissed about SOMETHING, and uh, arrived at the hanok pretty locked in? She's way too scrappy for "farm chores", be so fr right now
She seems to maybe hate the duo? Like, she's polite to their faces but she gets mad as hell when Miyeong tries to mom her
And she's always got these angry little zingers that Mira loves? Like she's daring them to say something.
Official story is pretty odd
STILL no leads on a dad (it's been 15+ years and she's not impossible to find? unless he's a HUGE dirtbag he would have at least stopped by once and dispatch would be on that shit.)
Total Industry Disappearance (not even as a staff songwriter? not even under a pen name? no public legal action to recoup lost sales?)
Lots of passive aggressive songs, but no new gossip? (again, 15+ years. she hasn't done anything worth reporting on, or doing new fan exposés on, or for the duo to reveal?)
Why didn't the label pressure her to, you know, get an abortion? The SS were supposed to be recording that same summer, they had to have know.
Demon story is also pretty odd
She just dipped with a demon and everyone let her?
She dipped with a demon and a baby and everyone let her?
Like, okay. Say they didn't have the heart to like, kill Celine. But the demon would still be fair game, right?
She dipped with a soul-devouring demon and a baby and no one followed her to keep that demon from sending a bunch of other souls to Gwi-Ma?
And like, if she had made a demon pact, they'd have to kill her, right? A demon with hunter training would be so so so so so dangerous to let run around?
Could she still summon weapons from the honmoon with demon patterns? That's terrifying?
But Celine's super findable. And like, I guess the patterns might not have spread far, but those guns were out and I was not looking respectfully.
The duo are weird as hell about Celine
Thirdlight has nothing good to say about her, but gets mad when I have anything bad to say about her.
They have some kinda sad soju pity party once a year on the anniversary of the announcement?
Miyeong goes through these phases of weepy and angry about her? Sometimes she "misses her every day and wishes Celine had made better choices", sometimes she "wishes Celine had had the guts to just get rid of it" (the demon?? the baby?????)
To be fair, 11 albums is a lot of albums to have grudge songs on. Kendrick has less beef with Drake than these two have with Celine.
The duo are weird as hell about Rumi
Miyeong cries every time Rumi makes sweet potato hotteok, which not even Rumi seems to understand.
Thirdlight avoids being alone with Rumi. Like, often enough that it has to be intentional.
They both HATE her dye job. Want it to be natural like mine, but apparently it was her mom's favorite color and it's non-negotiable? (idk I think it's pretty which means nothing)
A floorboard creaked in the hallway and between one footfall and the next Zoey had torn out the page and crumpled it up to eat it before anyone could catch her with it. The footsteps passed and her heart gradually stopped hammering in her chest. It was fine, no one was listening at her door to make sure she was sleeping. No one was going to storm in and demand that she take their side. Maybe one or two people were telling lies, but they were lies about someone else, someone who wasn't even in their family anymore. The whole thing with Celine could be weird and none of her business, and if she could just get Rumi on her side too, everything would be fine.
But Mira thought she knew what Rumi needed. And as long as everyone needed her for something, Zoey was safe.
Oop. Forgot to post this before going camping for a week, so you get two chapters tonight.
Chapter 3: We Saw You From Across The Honmoon and We Loved Your Vibe
✨❤️🩹💗 Zoey & Mira's Friendship Offensive, ver 2.5 💗❤️🩹✨
It wasn't not working.
Mira had a gift. A rare combination of natural talent, dedication to practice, and enthusiasm for experimenting in her chosen art form of making authority figures incandescently angry with her. Now Mira was magnanimously applying that gift on Rumi's behalf; creating both opportunities for Rumi's little zingers, and the beginnings of a theory on why Rumi was so good at getting under the Duo's skin.
Rumi hadn't noticed immediately that Mira was doing it on purpose, which gave her and Zoey a chance to observe Rumi at work. Some subjects made immediate (embarrassing) sense: the justice of certain social stigmas, whether or not judgmental behavior could be considered inspiring, and (chillingly) how dishonesty might directly damage the honmoon. Other subjects, less so. Chuseok and children's day seemed to particularly devastate Miyeong, as did Rumi reminiscing about how much she had loved bucheonnim osinnal because she knew both her and her eomma would get enough to eat. That was, you know, sad; but Rumi never seemed to be angling for either sympathy or invitations. Just…making cheerful jokes about teetering on the edge of malnutrition and being severed from her family's history.
But nearly every blow that snuck under Miyeong's defenses seemed to miss Thirdlight entirely. If there was a corresponding wound to Miyeong's, it must have long since calloused over. Mira didn't know what to make of that. She noticed things (arguably too many things); but what they meant was harder to place. Big emotional responses like Zoey's and Miyeong's registered well. Quieter reactions like Rumi's and Thirdlight's…she needed to really focus on those to even see them. Thirdlight avoided being alone with Rumi, but that was non-specific. She had some tics about things Rumi had touched, but she was like that with Miyeong too. She was maybe more aggressive with Rumi during training, but Rumi was faster at summoning her saingeom than Mira or Zoey were; maybe Thirdlight just thought Rumi could handle it. Mira was beginning to think Thirdlight didn't have a role in whatever cold war Rumi was engaging in.
The five of them had all dutifully neatened up for Chuseok. No one had anywhere else to go, after all. Zoey had a zoom call with her mother (busy), a different zoom call with grandparents (who needed to be reminded that she and her mother lived in Korea now), and a tense phone call that Mira couldn't follow at all (her half sister, apparently). Mira wasn't expecting a call, and didn't receive one; but her brother texted, which was a nicer gesture than she had expected from him. The duo hadn't insisted on hanbok, but everyone still had to crawl out of bed at first thing in the morning to offer prayers and gifts and hear Thirdlight tell the saga of the creation of the Honmoon all over again, while Miyeong got weepy, and their ankles got damp in the fall dew. Foxes got into the fruit the same night, but the flowers from town had lingered. The heavy scent of floral decay made Zoey sneeze, and Rumi had looked over and smiled sympathetically.
Zoey was inclined to view this a complete victory. Rumi had offered antihistamines; and amused sympathy when Zoey sneezed all over her a second time while apologizing for the first time. Rumi wasn't completely freezing them out of conversation. Rumi was finally talking to them about music. Mira wasn't so sure. They were getting along now, but only as long as they followed The Rules. No celebrity gossip, no boys (ew), no Sunlight Sisters discourse, no Celine at all. They could strategize all they wanted about how to extract maximum creative control as quickly as possible; but they couldn't talk about why they needed that. Tentative mealtime conversations on vetted subjects didn't exactly scream friendship let alone a "once-in-a-generation harmonious blending of souls to make supernatural music that will save the world." She wanted it to be true that they had fixed things, and that was horrible. Wanting something meant it would hurt so much worse when she lost it.
Then Rumi had gone and looked so excited when she mentioned Hanabie that Mira couldn't keep containing the little flares of hope she was feeling. That first burst of genuine Kang Rumi charisma had left her throat dry (which could mean nothing), and even more terrified of what she could lose if her and Zoey fucked this up. Now Rumi sought them out. Even if Mira and Zoey were just practicing scales together, Rumi would come and slide her voice around theirs. Dancing in intervals around their notes; coaxing harmony out of nothing until their souls started to glow. Amidst all these intense horrifying realizations that it was important to all human life for Rumi to like her, and worse, that she cared a lot about whether Rumi really for real liked her back, Mira had almost forgotten about the Thirdlight dilemma.
Until Rumi suggested that she might go back to Gwangju for seollal. Alone. That, respectfully, she didn't want to receive gifts from the Duo. That, respectfully, there was a shop owner in her old building who "didn't have anyone else." That, respectfully, he and Rumi had been practicing seollal quietly together for some years, and she didn't want him to be alone. That, in passing, maybe ancestors who would abandon her and her shop keeper friend like this didn't deserve their offerings. That she'd rather care for the living. That she'd already bought her tickets. Thirdlight spent the better part of that night out in the graveyard. Not just cleaning the graves, but scrubbing them. On her hands and knees at midnight polishing individual markers so old the names had long since been eroded away. That was something worth noticing.
The next morning wasn't any better. Rumi had packed quietly, then set her bag by the door as if waiting for the confrontation to come to her.
"I really think you should reconsider. I'm sure your friend will be fine! He's a grown man." Miyeong's laugh was probably aiming for friendly, but landed on nervous. "If he really didn't want to be alone he'd find a wife, not a…a…teenage orphan."
Her smile was so polished it almost looked genuinely affectionate. "He'll probably be expecting you to stay here, since you're making new friends your own age. Brought closer together by your rigorous studies."
Nothing about her face changed, but somehow her voice shifted into a completely different tone. "Besides, I'm not sure it's appropriate for you to be spending time alone with an unrelated man at your age. Especially now. You have to know that your…our behavior is always being scrutinized."
Zoey swallowed. Faults and fears must never been seen, right?
Rumi's laugh was dismissive. "Oh please, he's old enough to be my appa. No one is going to think we're lovers." She smiled coyly. "I think it'll play well, actually. An orphan girl being extra kind to lonely elder she's known since childhood? An 'alternative' girl, at that? Might even make me more popular with the aunties."
"We could forbid you from going." Thirdlight said, staring hard at Rumi in a way that always made Zoey a little uncomfortable. Like Thirdlight was waiting for Rumi to…I don't know, sprout horns or something. Like there was something dangerous about her.
"You could." Rumi agreed. "But I might leave anyway."
"We could kick you out of the program for being so disruptive. For impeding the education of your peers."
"You could." Rumi agreed. "You could kick me out, and maybe spread the word that I'm difficult to work with to make sure no one else will talent scout me. Then I would go back to a normal school. Maybe go to college. Maybe work for my friend in his flower shop." She paused, delicately balanced between provoking and solicitous. "Is that what you want? Do you think the Honmoon would find another candidate for you if you sent me away?"
She looked in the direction of Zoey and Mira, but through them rather than at them. Sketching a bow that was probably deep enough to be polite rather than rude? She would have to ask Mira. "I'm very sorry for disrupting your holiday celebration. And if they decide to expel me for visiting a dear friend, I wish you luck in your future debut." A small smile. "Hwaiting!"
Zoey twisted her rings off and on and off, one after another. Rumi and Mira and the actual Sunlight Sisters were supposed to be her family. She wasn't supposed to have to choose. They were supposed to be Happy Together, while they saved the world with the power of friendship for fuck's sake. If she wasn't allowed off-compound to see her actual mother, how was it fair for Kang Rumi to swan out to visit some man (instead of spending time with her and Mira)? Wasn't it bad enough that the Sunlight Sisters had been destroyed by a….wasn't it bad enough that the last generation of hunters was missing a member because of a mistake?
Miyeong looked at her levelly and said "Well I'm not going to take responsibility for repairing your reputation if anyone sees you."
Rumi's eyes were dancing with laughter. "I never thought you would. Saehae bok mani badeuseyo, Miyeong-seonsaengnim, Thirdlight-seonsaengnim. I'll be back in a few days."
Thirdlight stormed out into the training yard, door slamming behind her.
Then Miyeong "had a sudden headache" and had to go lie down.
Mira turned to look at Zoey. "Do you know what this means?"
"That Rumi's kindof a bitch, and we're going to be unsupervised for the next several hours?"
"That we could be unsupervised for a lot longer than the next several hours if we play our cards right."
"Normally I'm all about hijinks, but I think I'm kinda angry? Too angry to be any fun to be around."
Mira made a considering noise. "What if I told you that I think I know who Rumi is going to visit? And that I bought us plane tickets to Gwangju? "
"What, no. You did not buy plane tickets to Gwanju on the suspicion that Rumi might get her way." Zoey glared at Mira. "You did not! What in the spy kids 3d are you trying to do here?"
Mira smirked. "Oh it was way more than suspicion. Rumi was going to go no matter what they said. She practically choreographed that confrontation."
"If you knew she was going to win, you should have told me!" Zoey wasn't shouting. She didn't shout. She didn't shout because she didn't lose her temper. "I could have. My eomma actually has time off this time. I could have insisted. She wanted." Zoey didn't lose her temper because she couldn't lose her temper. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Mira looked confused. "Why didn't you ask them?"
"Because no one else was leaving!" Zoey swallowed. She was not shouting, and she was not being hysterical. "Because if I leave and no one else does you might not let me come back!"
"…..Zo. I'm." Mira paused, her jaw working silently. "I'm your friend. Right? We're friends?"
"…I think so? I want us to be friends? We're supposed to be, like, family. Closer than family." Zoey watched Mira dig her nails into the hem of her sweater, and whispered. "We're supposed to choose each other over anyone else."
"And she's supposed to be too, right? The three of us together, voices strong or whatever? But she won't let us all the way in." Mira looked away, her eyes drifting towards the door. "Don't you want to know, Zoey? Don't you want to know what she's hiding from us?"
Zoey wanted to argue, just for the sake of it. "…she would see us get on the plane, Mira. We can't spy on her from the same vehicle."
"Oh contraire, Zo." Mira said, tapping Zoey's cheek with a long finger. "She's taking the ferry. We're going to get there so many hours ahead of her we'll have time to do a stake-out."
Man, I am six chapters deep in this nonsense, I should probably compile this somewhere rather than just reblogging the same post and clogging up @fakelawyerbug's & @amjustanobserver's mentions.
Chapter 5: Ghost Stories
It was shaping up to be a wonderful day.
The ferry ride was long, but the passenger cabin was warm and quiet enough for Rumi to let her thoughts unspool. Her fingers itched to tell her "friend" she was coming, but no. He'd just tell her to go back to Jeju and keep her head down until the contract was physically in her hands. Buuuuuuuut if she was already there. If he knew she could see how much he missed her. Rumi snuggled smugly into her seat to doze. If she was already home before he found out, they'd simply have no choice but to have a joyful little seollal all to themselves.
It was easy to be patient on a ferry. Everything around you just looks like more ocean until it suddenly doesn't. Once you're on a train though. On a train you can feel yourself moving. Worse is a train you've ridden a hundred times before; where you know all the little shudders as it slows down to make a sharp curve, the churning sounds where the time signature shifts as it speeds back up. Rumi checked the time on her phone for the third time, trying not to tap her foot impatiently. They weren't even late. They were already past Naju, if she squinted she could probably even see the station from here. She was nearly to the most exciting part, and the money was burning a hole in her pocket.
Rumi didn't have a lot of money. But she was used to not having a lot of money. At a certain level of poor, there's no saving into being rich, so a little extra was reason enough for a little largesse. She couldn't quite make a jeon appear out of thin air like some of her school friends, but Rumi got by. And she'd been checking and re-checking her math all day. Only enough for a few things, but they could be good things. Sweet potato glass noodles from a shop she knew he favored. The community garden always had too much mugwort, the aunties would be glad to be rid of it. So she only needed to buy a handful of jujubes to make the special hwajeon. Dried shrimp. Frozen tteok, so that she could be 'not too hungry' and he could make it last after she went back to the Sunlight Witches. By the end of her errands she was practically skipping. Three whole days of no secrets or lies, with someone who knew her and truly loved her. Her favorite person in the world.
She snuck towards the door of a trim little flowershop, where a middle aged man with long hair pulled up into a bun and a tasteful dusting of grey at his temples was closing up for the evening. Gently shooing out the aunties ("whose daughter needs a new man this time?", Rumi thought) and dragging in the sidewalk signs. Rumi felt the honmoon tremble a little with her own excitement. And the man's head shot up, turning to look just as she pounced.
"Appa!" She leapt into his arms, knowing he'd catch her. "Surprise!"
"Rumi-ya, what are you doing home? Are you okay?"
"Everything's fine, I just…" she faltered, blinking rapidly.
He squished her cheeks, wiping away the tears almost before they formed. "Aegi horangi. You couldn't stand to be in that house one more minute, could you."
"Ai-ya appa, I'm not a baby anymore." Rumi squeezed him tighter. "I just missed you so much. And it's your special day tomorrow, you know." She waggled her eyebrows despite an undignified sniffle. "I wouldn't miss it for anyone."
"APPA?" What did a whisper sound like while being yelled? Like exaggerated vowels and hissing plosives. Like a hundred pigeons. Like outraged rabbits. Like her two numbskull maybe-friends.
The two idiots who were supposedly the other halves of her soul were peering down at Rumi from her appa's rooftop garden, hands gripping the balcony edge like they'd even be injured by a two story fall.
Rumi's father looked from Rumi to his roof and raised an eyebrow. "Your fellow trainees, I assume."
Rumi groaned. "Yes, though I have no idea what they're doing here." Closer to his ear, she whispered "I never…..specifically named you to either them or the Duo. I just described you as a friend from childhood."
Her father nodded slightly. "Well, they seem to have heard otherwise just now." He turned to Rumi, face neutral and quiet. "Well, you said you're not a baby anymore Rumi-ya. What does my very grown up tiger want to do about this?" He breathed in slowly. "Do you trust them?"
Rumi felt her stomach drop away. Once, when she was very little; after eomma had started becoming appa, he'd tossed her too high. Eomma was strong. So strong. And testosterone had made him clumsy for awhile, everything taking less effort than his brain thought it should. And only just then, suspended in air and out of reach, had Rumi even been aware that she could be afraid to fall. When appa sang her to sleep, the air vibrated with little blue threads that clung to his fingertips. She didn't know how to sing yet, but she reached out into the air and held onto the little blue threads for dear life. Sliding inelegantly down a strand of the honmoon until she could reach for her appa's hands. They both cried a little bit after that, curled up until they were hoarse and hiccuping on the floor of their one room apartment. Then appa told her all about the little blue threads and the demon haunted world and her strange heritage and the friends who loved him until they didn't. How the honmoon had coiled around the three of them, linking their souls until it didn't. The same honmoon that bore her weight patiently was coiled around Mira and Zoey too. Would they love her until they didn't?
"Uri Rumi." He pinched her cheek and smiled. "People won't ever be better if you don't give them a chance to be." He drew her inside, past the warm damp smells of cut flowers and sprouting trays, winding up the stairs into their little apartment. He lead her right up to the rooftop door and stopped.
"It's your choice." He said softly. "You can invite them in or send them away, but all three of you are going back to Jeju in a few days and things will probably go easier between you if you at least figure out why they're here."
Rumi huffed. "Not if I make so much of a scene that they don't want me to come back at all." But she was already in motion. Rumi opened the rooftop door, sighing theatrically, and then took in the sight before her. Zoey in a Family Land bucket hat, covered in coffee grounds and potting soil. Mira soaked to the knees, with broken glasses and feathers stuck in her hair.
All of her previous questions immediately flew out of her head. "What on earth happened to you two?"
They both started talking at once.
"It was her idea!" Zoey gestured wildly at Mira.
"What do you mean APPA? I thought you were sneaking off to see your mother!" Mira shouted.
"Wait mother?" Zoey looked back and forth between Mira and Rumi. "I thought you were an orphan! Wasn't that why you were mad at us?"
"She was mad at us because we were being shitty, Zoey."
"But being shitty about single mothers. And. And." She gestured emphatically at Rumi's appa, who was leaning over her shoulder through the doorway and looking perplexed. "You can't have had a single mother, you HAVE A DAD."
Appa made a choked laughing sound. Before Rumi could even interject, Mira had picked her thread back up. "She has a dad NOW. That doesn't mean she had one then. Right?"
Rumi nodded, mutely.
"AND." Mira shushed Zoey, who was about to start yelling again. "AND she wouldn't tell the Duo anything about her mother, which she would only do if she was trying to hide her eomma from them. ERGO." She flapped a hand at Zoey to shush her. "ZO STOP IT LET ME FINISH. ERGO her eomma was someone the duo would have reason to know. Someone who they would know, who must have taught Rumi how to summon her saingeom because she managed that crazy fast, but who Rumi thought she had to protect. And that someone was CELINE, a Hunter."
"A saingeom, huh?" Appa gave her a significant look and a half smile. "Sounds like they're onto us aegi horangi."
Zoey gasped dramatically. "YOU'RE THE DEMON." She took a step back, and then a few steps forward to gently poke Rumi's appa's forearm, currently resting on the doorframe. "You look really normal."
He blinked a few times. "OKAY Girls, time to come inside."
Zoey took a deep breath in and out. "Fine, but ONLY because I'm in the company of two other hunters and because you seem kindof like a boring dad and not a creature of the night?" She straightened her back and walked right between Rumi and appa. He chuckled and gestured after Zoey. "Mira-ssi, Rumi-ya, after you."
Rumi half-listened as Mira and Zoey re-litigated the question of who was ultimately at fault for the state of their clothes.
"….KNEE DEEP in mud"
"The birds weren't my fault!"
Mira sighed. "Yes, the birds weren't your fault." She paused. "But you knocking me over while you were running away from them WAS."
"The guy with the french press snuck up on me, I only knocked you over because I bounced off of him."
"Oh, is that why you're covered in coffee grounds?" Rumi interjected.
"No no nonono. I? Maybe? Knocked over some bins on your roof."
"It was compost. She landed in the compost. We realized we were running late because SOMEONE wanted to go to Family Land first, and we did a little, uh, environmentally assisted parkour."
"Family Land was an important side quest! It's going to be a surprise tool that helps us later!"
Appa introduced himself as Byeong-Ho and Rumi smiled to herself. Before she really understood why appa needed to become appa, all she knew was that he was happier now. She'd told him, on the way back from her third new school, that his smile was as bright as the whole sky. The very next seollal they had a little naming day ceremony. She composed a song mainly consisting of every word she could think of that rhymed with his new name, plus some nonsense words she made up to fill out the meter.
By the time Zoey and Mira had rotated through the shower, and into clean clothes (Rumi's and appa's, respectively) they were nearly dead on their feet. Assured that he wouldn't disappear into a puff of red dust while they slept off all the excitement, and that they would definitely talk more in the morning, he made up his own bed for the two of them to share.
Rumi sat on her bed, suddenly not sure if she still belonged in it. Appa leaned on the open door frame and looked at her quietly. "Well, Rumi-ya? Are you too old to be tucked in?"
"Appa?" She sounded uncertain. She felt uncertain. In the dark, with her girls in the next room having somehow both the right and completely the wrong idea about who her appa was. "Do you ever regret it?"
He crossed the room quietly and sat down on the bed next to her. "Regret what, Uri Rumi?"
"….me." She whispered. "That you lost them over me."
"Oh Rumi-ya." He sighed, stroking her naturally lavender hair. His favorite color, he'd always said. "I weighed you against Miyeong's ghost a long time ago. I chose you, and I've kept choosing you every day since then." He tipped up her face to look at him. "I think they'll choose you too."
Note: ehhh, I can't quite tell if I should be using 'jjeujeunna', 'aigoo', or a secret third thing to mean something like 哎呀 (ai-ya), so I'm just using ai-ya until I make a decision one way or another. Read "playful annoyance" here.
Superficial, maybe. But 'superficial' was her whole job description. She was the candy coating that concealed an eternal spiritual war. Sing pretty songs, stay sweet, and never let anyone see the danger all around them. Turn your head just so, smile without teeth, don't quiver when a lighting assistant accidentally digs her finger into your bruised intercostals as she rotates you towards the turntable point lamps like a recalcitrant sunflower. Don't think about the baby.
Mysterious but inspiring. Beautiful but modest. Sexy but innocent. Don't think about the baby.
Sing like a bird, act like the girl next door, be competitive (but not too competitive). Host quiz shows, giggle, murder monsters, talent scout your replacement. Don't think about the baby.
Miyeong was the last of her generation to be found. A cute little button scouted from a mediocre middle school dance recital and whisked away to become a magical girl. No more time spent worrying about cram school, or who she should try to become, or the books under her older brother's bed; all along she had been destined to sing with her sisters and brandish a blue bow of starlight like Sailor Mars. No more two-faced friends who would undermine her confidence, now she had two true soulmates. Best friends hand-chosen for her by god and the fabric of souls that encircled the world. They'd be together forever; killing demons until their bodies gave out or until they could hand the job off to the next generation of little fools. A generation that they would have to train, making those girls the same unkeepable promises that Hana had made them. (And why had there only been Hana to train them? Why had she never thought to ask what happened to Hana's forever soulmates?)
Promise them that if they turned the honmoon golden, they'd everyone would be free. Promise them that the honmoon could become golden. Promise them that demons really could be destroyed. Don't think about the baby. Promise them anything at all that made them stay and kept their courage up.
Miyeong wasn't stupid, but managing to stay a pop princess into your late 30s required a little vaseline on the lens of your brain. There were a lot of things you just could not let yourself dwell on (it felt like being torn apart) if you wanted to write inspirational music that charted around the world (there was so much blood) in Pop and Christian Contemporary and World Beat. You needed a flawless reputation, not just a flawless soprano (she stuffed her bras with paper towels for weeks to soak up the sweet animal stink).
Her trainee girls didn't need to be told twice. Sohee-ssi had laughed nervously and explained she already knew about condoms. Mira-ssi had looked, if anything, eager to agree to stay away from boys. But Rumi-ssi…was very knowing. Being an orphan, and the child of a single mother, perhaps she was simply more worldly. More aware of the ramifications. Miyeong took an instant dislike to her.
Rumi-ssi wasn't even unusually wild or disobedient, which was the problem. There was no reason for Miyeong to dislike her. She didn't test boundaries like Mira-ssi or run her mouth like Sohee-ssi. She hit her choreography marks, performed her vocal exercises admirably, and trained as hard as anyone else. A saingeom, and so quickly. Like when Rumi reached out to the honmoon it reached back with equal urgency; clinging to her fingertips and trembling to her song. But Rumi-ssi was her trainee just as much as Sohee-ya and Mira-ya. Miyeong should like her. Why was it so hard to like her?
Maybe it was because Rumi-ssi was cold to her soulmates. The girls already sung together beautifully, but there was so much friction. (Celine would have known what to do, why hadn't Celine known what to do.) Practicing with them, working with them, studying with them. Whatever was required of her; but distant. A door that closed almost as soon as she had arrived. Sohee-ya was high-spirited, and spent maybe a little too much time online. Thirdlight didn't like the way Sohee-ya talked about Celine. But Sohee-ya was right, wasn't she? Celine did leave us alone to cover for her mistake. Rumi-ssi did seem a little over-sensitive about Celine, though. Thirdlight and Mira-ya were probably right to try to reign her in a bit.
Maybe it was because Rumi refused to stop dyeing her hair. Miyeong had searched the whole hanok while the girls were out doing drills with Thirdlight and never found the bleach or dye, but somehow Rumi's hair was always perfectly lavender from tip to root. She couldn't reasonably keep denying Mira-ya the right to dye her hair once she saw Miyeong couldn't prevent Rumi from dyeing hers, but it made them both look too alternative for her taste. It wasn't that she thought it was ugly! (It was, it was. Like demons, like the color of the patterns on their skin.) She told herself it was because this would restrict what themes the group could work with. Labels would be less forgiving. Interviews could be more hostile. And all of that could jeopardize the honmoon! At least Sohee-ya had kept hers natural, despite the bad influences of the other two.
Maybe it was because Miyeong didn't care for the way Rumi looked at her. Something disrespectful in the cast of her eyes that no amount of extra chores or practice seemed to dislodge. A slight sarcasm in her smile. An orphan, yet so disinterested in the family Miyeong and Thirdlight were offering her. The more they tried to be welcoming, the more she seemed to resent it! Involving her in all their holiday celebrations without even needing to be asked, never discussing her mother's morality (don't think about the baby), offering the womanly advice she would need as she grew older. Unfortunately, the disrespect seemed to be infectious.
Miyeong wasn't stupid, and she was becoming suspicious about how quiet it was in the hanok.
Rumi was nearly awake. Awake enough to feel a change in the light as it filtered past the curtain that covered the little alcove of her room. To hear the soft creaks of footsteps on the stairs over her head, and imagine appa's little hiss when the cold hit his nose as he walked out onto the rooftop. To hear the murmuring of something bubbling on the hotplate, and to be torn between sneaking a taste of breakfast and snuggling deeper into bed. To smell instant coffee and the deep musky green of kelp stock and the tiniest hint of melon conditioner. To feel a tickle of loose hair across her nose.
A lock that stubbornly refused to drift out of the way no matter how she shifted her head. Dangerously close to being fully awake, Rumi attempted to blow the hair away with her breath. Nothing. Rumi's arms felt heavy with fatigue and stress, but she motioned towards her face to wave away the hair and smacked herself instead, jolting as something sharp grazed her lip.
And she shrieked, because there was someone laying half on top of her. Who woke, and also shrieked. Who woke a third person, who bolted upright from her position reclined against the person laying on Rumi, effectively headbutting them directly back into Rumi, who caught another flailing swipe to the face.
During her first weeks at Jeju Rumi had often laid awake at night, wondering if she might eventually come to blows with Zoey-ssi and Mira-ssi. Laying still, listening to the hanok breathing, imagining all the ways it could go wrong. Who would strike first, and how. Whether she'd burst into red dust when their weapons pierced her skin, or if ash would slowly ooze out of her like blood. If she would be banished to the demon realm, or simply die.
One night, too sick with fear to sleep, she snuck out into the woods and summoned her own saingeom. Just to look at it. To run a fingertip over the flat of the blade, tracing its constellation patterns from tip to guard and catch her breath. Appa had never wanted to spar with her with his own ssang-geom, only cheap training swords they both had to be careful not to break. "Just to be safe," he said. And there was so rarely time to practice with him at all (between day jobs and second jobs and arranging the agricultural loans they'd used to start the flower farm), that Rumi had never wanted to press the issue. So she watched online tutorials and practiced by herself in her thickest clothes, quietly dancing around potted plants on the roof so as not to disturb the neighbors or wake appa. And wondered with a kind of fearful fascination what would happen if they ever really trained. Which instinct would prevail?
She should. She should put her sword away. It was risky having it laying out like this.
A rustle of wind through the trees made her instinctively grab towards the blade, and she felt it bite into her thumb. Thirdlight-seonsaengnim was skimming across the grass toward Rumi, her axe swinging loosely in hand. Still some distance away, but closing fast.
Rumi's heart skipped a beat. She had been so careful. Her patterns were subtle; a dusting of purple streaks on her upper arm, a few jagged lines across her rib cage. Easy to cover with makeup. Easy to mistake for a bad bruise. Usually concealed by a sports bra. But unmistakable if you had seen the real thing. Could Thirdlight have spotted them? When? She resisted the urge to pat her clothes to make sure they were adjusted correctly. If they were exposed it was already too late anyway, and if they weren't it would just look suspicious.
Thirdlight slowed to a gentle walk a few feet away, and seemed to listen. "No one out here but foxes, Rumi-ssi." Rumi was torn between brazening it out as aimless disobedience, talking a walk just because she wasn't supposed to; and running like a demon in fear for her life.
Then she looked at Rumi disapprovingly. "Summoning a spiritual weapon is draining when you're not used to it. You shouldn't be practicing alone without telling someone where you'll be."
Rumi realized she was still gripping her saingeom and flinched. "I was just thinking. About. About it." She tried to shake the nervousness out of her voice. "About being able to summon weapons at all. About what they're made to do."
"Ah." Thirdlight nearly smiled. "It's a privilege, isn't it? To be trusted by the honmoon like this; given a share of its strength to protect others. And a burden too. It's good that you already grasp the responsibility you'll be shouldering."
Rumi let out a breath. Thirdlight patted Rumi's shoulder, drawing her slightly closer.
"Killing demons is dangerous, Rumi. Never forget that." Her grey eyes seemed to glow with the reflected light of her axe. "And you never really feel clean again once you've felt their ash on your skin. But there's a satisfaction to be found in the work, and hope for a golden future where we're free of demons forever."
She stepped away from Rumi again and started walking back towards the hanok. "If not in our generation, then in yours. And if not in yours, in the generation you girls train. Our weapons are forged out of great need, and if we're lucky one day we'll be able to lay them down."
Rumi looked down at the sword loosely held in her hand, smudged with a streak of blood. It had only cut her, and shallowly. She was alive, undusted, and if not safe then at least undetected. But the faint shimmering line it left behind didn't fade for weeks. Not demon enough to be destroyed by it, not human enough to go unmarked.
During her first weeks at Jeju Rumi had often laid awake at night, wondering if she might eventually come to blows with Zoey and Mira; but admittedly 'dealt a glancing blow by Mira's rhinestone nail appliqué, followed by a short slap fight as the three of us failed to untangle our limbs' was not a scenario Rumi had considered.
Zoey and Mira had crowded into her alcove, found her asleep, and rather than either wake her or wait for her elsewhere, piled on top of her like puppies. Zoey had sprawled along the length of Rumi's sleeping mats; her face curled against Rumi's shoulder. Mira had reclined against Zoey; her longer limbs tangling with both Zoey and Rumi's, pinning them closer together.
Zoey burst into tears and buried her face in Rumi's blankets. "I'M SORRY RUMI, I DIDN'T MEAN TO CALL YOUR MOM A WHORE."
Rumi flinched. Mira dropped her head onto Zoey's back. "Zo, please don't shout 'whore' at Rumi first thing when she wakes up, we talked about this."
Zoey curled even deeper into the blankets. "I didn't really think she was a person!"
An outraged wail emerged from somewhere inside Rumi. "You didn't think my mom WAS A PERSON?"
"No I didn't mean it like that!" Zoey was shaking. "I mean she wasn't real TO ME. She was like. Like an idea. She was a….a Top Ten Anime Betrayals supercut, but for girl groups. A character to talk about, not….not a real person who could get hurt." She sniffled. "And I wasn't thinking about you at all."
Mira was rubbing little circles on Zoey's back, which felt unspeakably unfair to Rumi. She had to listen to Zoey dehumanize her eomma again, and Zoey was the one getting comforted.
"I had to change apartments three times in the second grade. Because Sunlight Sisters fans kept finding our address and sending her hate mail." Rumi said quietly. "I missed so much school that I had to repeat the third grade. Because kids were repeating to me what their parents were saying to them, and I was getting into fights. Teachers told me I was bringing the harassment on myself. That eomma couldn't raise me right and I'd turn out like her. Like it would be bad to turn out like her." Rumi shook with building anger. "Like they weren't the ones who abandoned US."
Distantly, Rumi could tell that her eyes were watering, but she couldn't feel it over the roaring sound between her ears. "All my life people have been trying to make me feel ashamed of the only person who has ever loved me unconditionally. And I won't." She bit out. "I'm not ashamed of eomma."
Mira looked stricken. "Then why do you live here with that man instead of with her? What happened to Celine?"
Rumi tilted her head and blinked. "What do you mean? I do. I live with appa. He's Byeong-Ho."
Zoey sniffled quietly, digging the heels of her hands against her eyes. "The demon Celine ran away with?"
Rumi laughed awkwardly. "Appa's not a demon. He's a shopkeeper. Demons don't own flower shops."
Mira narrowed her eyes at Rumi. "What do you mean you do? You do still live with Celine? Where is she?"
"Byeong-Ho." Rumi said, patiently. "Celine is Byeong-Ho now. Appa."
"WAIT WHAT?" Zoey's head shot up, smashing against Mira's nose. "Is THAT why no one could figure out where Celine went?"
"Byeong-Ho." Rumi said, testily. "He's Byeong-Ho. He didn't go anywhere, they just never looked for us. And once he changed his name, the hate mail finally stopped following us around."
"So that's why you told Miyeong you were an orphan." Mira said, thoughtfully. "To keep her away from Byeong-Ho-nim."
"He deserves some peace after what they put him through. Aaaaand, I kindof panicked when Miyeong showed up in person. We hadn't figured out what our cover story would be, or even done any of the emancipation paperwork."
Mira laughed a little. "And I guess it is kinda true that your mother is dead."
"Ye-yes. Basically yes."
Zoey sighed. "I finally know what happened to the mystery lovechild and I'm not going to be able to tell anyone on the forums at all."
Mira pushed Zoey's face back into the bedclothes. "Which you shouldn't want to do, remember?"
"I know! I know! I know! I'm not going to! I won't tell the Duo, either. It's just anti-climactic is all. It turns out I've known the secret baby for months and Celine's not even missing, he's just a dude now. Masc Celine truthers stay winning, I guess." Zoey paused. "Wait, if Byeong-Ho-nim isn't your biological father, who is? Thirdlight-seonsaengnim and Miyeong-seonsaengnim always said Celine ran off with a demon, but like……he's still alive."
Chapter 8: Woman Sortof Curious What Her Last Straw Will Be
ao3 link to come! I just need to clean up the early chapters a bit before I post them.
There is a pleasure in routine. Repeating specific tasks at defined intervals, using techniques refined to the point of resistlessness. Letting an unbroken strand of action pull your body along while your mind lays still and smooth at the bottom of a lake. Her memories are dissolved like mineral into the water. Her hands are always where she expects them to be. Kim Chesa had one very bad day seventeen years ago, and restructured her entire life to prevent it from happening again.
Then, she had been red-faced and furious; Miyeong's words pitch-bending in her head. Teeth clamped so hard on the sides of her tongue that she could taste blood. Knowing that a lie this total could never be walked back. That they'd be telling this story for the rest of their lives. That they would never know what impulse had lead Celine to take the demon away rather than kill it, because she would see this broadcast. She would know that, given the opportunity to denounce her, they had.
The last time she had seen Celine, she was cradling the wet bundle Miyeong had crawled away from. The birth had lasted all night, Miyeong curled up the tub like a wounded animal, too terrified to go to the hospital. Someone would see her. The fans would find out. Their reputation would be ruined. But Chesa had wanted to be a nurse once, and had seen some childbirth videos in health class. People didn't always have babies in hospitals, right? And they were strong. At least they were together. They could get through this together.
They were barely 20, it had made sense at the time.
Until Celine caught the baby (when they still thought it was a baby), and wiped the caul from its face. As she smoothed back the blue-black tuft of its hair, one eye flicked open, golden as a snake. Chesa thought she might have been the one who screamed first. But Miyeong was shaking in her arms, struggling with the afterbirth. So she turned away from the demon to the one who mattered. The next few minutes were a blur. The demon started wailing, and Miyeong pushed herself up the bathroom wall and scrambled out and down the hallway. Only once Miyeong was still and spent, and Chesa was tucking her into bed, did either of them have a chance to think about the silence. About Celine and the demon.
(They had to tear up the carpet and replace it. Red wine stains, Miyeong had said to the contractor. The contractor had tsked and agreed that what Celine had done was shameful, but that the remaining Sunlight Sisters shouldn't loose themselves in drink. Chesa assembled a mask out of raw nerves and smiled; assuring the woman that it was just an accident. A bottle dropped and rolled down the hallway. White had never been their first choice anyway, so might as well just replace it rather than keep scrubbing fruitlessly. She would never ever ever ever be able to stop lying.)
Miyeong had struggled back up, insisting that they needed to go check on Celine, to help her kill it. That she was alone, probably in danger. Chesa had reassured her that Celine was more than a match for a demon so small. That she was probably looking for a place to dispose of the blood-stained towels and sheets. That some women had strong emotions after birth and that she'd feel less anxious when she'd had some rest. That if Celine wasn't back by morning they would look for her together. But the next morning Celine wasn't back, and she'd left a landmine in her place. A letter to their record label claiming that there was a secret baby. Her secret baby, and that she'd be leaving the Sunlight Sisters to raise it. She not only hadn't killed the demon, she'd fled with it like a thief in the night, and decided to raise it as though it was a person.
On the worst day of Chesa's life, Celine had been missing for less than 72 hours. And rather than deny the monstrous lie that there even was a baby, she sat huddled with Miyeong in front of a bank of microphones and left Celine to the wolves. At the time Chesa had told herself that they were choosing the stability of the honmoon. That it was better to condemn Celine, and preserve what remained of the Sunlight Sisters. What she had done (run away with a demon) was worth condemning. Celine would know how they felt about that.
And if a lie couldn't be walked back, then it wouldn't, so there was no point in dwelling on whether they should have. Because Celine was either long-since dead at the hands of the demon, or she had given in and killed it when it inevitably showed its nature. No point in indulging impertinent questions from their students. Because there was nothing Celine had done since that moment that was worth knowing. That out of personal affection for a former sister they had chosen not to hunt Celine themselves, but neither did they really expect her to apologize to them. No point in reaching out now, 1 year 2 years 10 years almost 20 years later. Because if she was still alive, she had chosen to stay missing and continue rejecting her duty to defend the world from demons like the one she stole.
(But 10 albums later Chesa still hadn't seen so much as a thread of gold, so maybe the honmoon was punishing them for not having had the courage to take matters into their own hands).
Now, she has pick ups to record for an Ilocano language album she's guesting on. A 11th Sunlight Sisters album in production. Desiderata has some interesting vocal tricks she's quite proud of: a madrigal they composed using their own vocal samples from early albums. A spacious six-part harmony with only two voices.
Now she has students. Incredibly willful and poorly behaved students. Students that try her patience and disturb the smooth water of her mind. But students nonetheless. The honmoon chose them so eagerly that Chesa was expecting to hand the greater work over to them in a few years at most. But their music is….fine. There's nothing wrong with the recordings they've made of studio-supplied songs. They've technically already qualified for debut. But Chesa has been holding them back anyway. Their performances are uninspiring. Their combat practice is too individualized, merely fighting in one another's vicinity rather than as a team. They're not ready in a way that troubles her. Rumi-ssi seems to best understand their true job (rid the world of demons), but raises the hairs on the back of Chesa's neck. A powerful voice weakened by a strangling anger. Mira-ssi understands how important their reputation will be to their success, but bafflingly doesn't care. A beautiful dancer who dances as though her sisters aren't even in the room. Sohee-ssi understands that their songs have to reach the souls of their fans, but she can't seem to write inspirational music that isn't vulgar in some way. A strong composer too focused on pleasing Miyeong to develop her own identity as a musician.
Chesa had been hoping to have a fresh start as a team. To celebrate seollal together and clear the air. To reaffirm their commitment to one another and force the team to work together properly if it killed her. Then Rumi had declared she was going to Gwangju, and was taking no feedback on the subject. And her eyes flickered, just for a moment, amber. A trick of the light, Chesa thought, while scrubbing the graves clean. Just my imagination, Chesa thought, the next morning while Rumi mocked Miyeong's fear that she had taken a lover already. She's just being a teenager.
Chesa ran the perimeter of the grounds for the fourth time, trying to clear her head, but the fear was fizzing around her. An odd look, a turn of phrase that seemed too knowing. That wasn't evidence of anything, but it felt like evidence.
When she got back to the hanok, in the evening, she found Miyeong sitting at the kitchen table singing to herself. Running a finger around the edge of her cup of coffee.
"Whether or not (or not or not)
it is clear to you (to you to you)
no doubt (no doubt no doubt)
the universe is unfolding" Miyeong's glissando wandered across several measures in a way that abruptly reminded Chesa of Rumi.
"as it should."
She looked up at Chesa, and said simply "The girls are gone."
Chesa breathed in shallowly, trying not to let the fear reach her face. "I think we should go get them." She couldn't feel her hands.
Byeong-Ho sipped his coffee and looked out onto the city, letting the warmth gather in his chest as he settled his thoughts. It hurt less than he'd expected to finally meet the other chosen hunters. Even knowing what they must have been told about "Celine." Even with Zoey-ssi's frightened little poke to his forearm. Even with Rumi-ya's impatience with them. He found in his heart only an amused fondness, and maybe a little hope for two kids who decided to run away after their friend. Kids were always learning how to be better than their elders. Maybe some day it would be safe for Rumi-ya to tell them.
There was an ache, of course. The feeling that he should be with them. He should be making them play neolttwigi until they knew exactly how hard they could push each other. He should know what weapons they had pulled from their souls, and be helping them strategize how to use them together. He should know their first music. Surely they had tried to write songs together by now? Rumi-ya never seemed particularly enthusiastic about their music in her texts. Maybe the…the Sisters were relying on studio-written songs for their debut. It would be easier to get label buy-in that way, but the girls might struggle to put real feeling into the music. And if Mira-ssi and Zoey-ssi had the kind of spirits that would mesh with Rumi, that must rankle them just as much. Maybe a combined approach would work better. A few highly produced songs so that the album looked safer, but at least a few tracks where they could explore their talents and try to build an audience out of their more authentic work. Maybe the four of them could have a little listening party tonight. Share your favorite song, then take it apart as a group. Figure out what makes it work. How line distribution can complement vocal range. How beat arrangements can integrate dance more fully into the…"Heh," he thought. "Listen to me run on planning classroom activities like I'm going to play any part in their training."
He swirled the last sip of his coffee around his cup, nearly too cold to be worth drinking, and hesitated. It could be nice to do just the once.
"WAIT WHAT?" Byeong-Ho nearly dropped his cup. Zoey-ssi was shouting so loud he could hear it outside. Maybe having three teenagers under one roof was going to give him a heart attack before he had a chance to fret about the quality of his little girl's education.
To give them fair warning, he walked loudly down the little staircase that made up the roof of Rumi-ya's alcove; praying to god and the honmoon for minimal bloodshed. Her marks were small still. Created as much by shame at having had outbursts as by the outbursts themselves. Just a little bug at the time; a toddler having a tantrum, and immediately terrified by the deep red flare of the honmoon. It had so obviously been an accident he barely had the heart to chastise her. He had stayed up all night in fear that he might need to physically fight his sisters, though. But no one came. For a few months afterward, Rumi had been afraid of even becoming angry, and watching Rumi cry herself out rather than let herself feel thwarted had been heartbreaking. It was touch and go for a few years teaching her to manage how big her feelings were, but that was probably true of most children. (They never came.) And, for better or for worse, by elementary school she was fully able to get into angry fights with other children without risking her self-control or the playground.
"Girls? I heard you talking, are you awake enough for breakfast?" He shifted the curtain slightly and looked in.
"It's always been just us. Appa's never really talked about him." Rumi looked perfectly at ease, not even a fidget at her sleeve. Byeong-Ho was torn between pride and sadness. Pride that she sold the disguise so well. Sadness that she needed it at all. But…at least for now, it kept her safe.
Well, theoretically safe. Rumi had a split lip, Zoey two bruised eyes, and Mira a bloody nose. They looked like they'd been brawling, not just arguing.
"…Girls? Are you alright?"
"It's, um. We're fine, really. We were. I was." Zoey twisted in place and landed on Rumi's lap, then half bowed her head. "I'm very sorry Byeong-Ho-nim. I have said some very rude things about you. And that was, uh, not very cash money of me?"
Rumi snorted. Mira let out a little bark of laughter. All of the sudden the tension melted in earnest, and they were laughing together; their hands seeking one another. Zoey leaned ever so slightly into Rumi, and all three girls turned bright red as they realized how intimate their arrangement of limbs had become. They flung themselves apart as though he'd caught them kissing in secret.
Byeong-Ho laughed, because how could he not?
"Zoey-ssi, I accept your apology."
She began to sigh in relief.
"On the condition that you come eat breakfast, and tell me all about your theories. I am a great enjoyer of supernatural romances." He winked at Zoey, who was developing actual stars in her eyes at an alarming rate.
"Does that mean you're going to tell us about Rumi-unnie's dad? Like, his biological dad?"
Rumi leaned back, blinking rapidly, but with the tinniest hint of a smile. An unexpected honorific, then. "Poor girls" he thought, "they hardly know where they stand with one another even now." That at least he might be able to fix. He wasn't their teacher, couldn't be their teacher. Couldn't be there for them day to day the way they needed. Couldn't correct their form or help them plan for the future. Definitely couldn't soothe their fears about fickle fans. But maybe he could help them know each other better, that could count for a lot at this age.
"We'll see. That's Rumi-ya's story as much as it is mine, I wouldn't tell it without her permission."
Mira-ya looked contemplatively between Rumi and him. Hmm. If anyone put it together without any more hints it might be her. She did seem to enjoy dramatic reveals. But, if how glued she was to Rumi's side was any indication, she might be willing to listen to the whole story.
"Drink your soup girls, it's good for the constitution."
"Ai-ya appa, we will we will." Shy little smiles bloomed on Zoey's and Mira's faces too. Maybe they would both listen.
"No, I mean we need to go get them now." Chesa gripped the doorframe like it was all that was keeping her standing. "Rumi is..."
Miyeong tsked. "A bad influence, I know."
"She's a danger to the other trainees."
"Well, I think that's a little dramatic." Miyeong didn't disagree that they should go collect the trainees, but it wasn't like they would be in mortal danger spending one night alone with the little delinquent. "I don't like how infectious her bad attitude has become, but Mira-ya was nearly as bad when she first got here."
"That's not..."
"She is very aggressive, but not...physically. I think she'll be more agreeable when she stops having such a chip on her shoulder about being illegitimate! She really needs to get used to rude questions about it, it's not as though it won't come up in interviews." (Don't think.)
"No, I mean..." Chesa paused for a long moment. "I don't know what I mean. There's something off about Rumi. Something *spiritually* off."
Miyeong sighed internally. Chesa could be so...delicate about this aspect of their work. Wasn't it enough that they moved out of Seoul, all the way back to Jeju, after she started seeing demons in every crowd? Refitted an outbuilding on the old hunter training grounds into a recording booth, so they could live in an old hanok in the middle of nowhere and Chesa could feel safe at night? Miyeong could be in Seoul right now, being admired at an industry party while tastefully flirting with actors she wanted to work with again. One of the very few benefits of being famous. But instead she had to be an eccentric artist, dedicated to developing the talents of her protégées. Which was fine. It was fine.
"Chesa, you have a sensitive soul and I cherish that about you, but Rumi is just being a brat. It's nothing more insidious than being brought up badly." Miyeong sighed. "But I suppose it's not as though the honmoon has never made mistakes before." (Don't don't don't think about the ____.)
"And in the worst case, we've done just fine as a duo." Miyeong looked up at Chesa expectantly. "Right?"
"....Right."
"Anyway, it's late. I'm not going to drive down to the airport and suborn a plane just to scold three teenagers."
She drummed her fingers lightly on the table. "We'll go tomorrow." A small smile. "Maybe we'll make a little game of it. Show the girls that we know how to find them."
The Sunlight Sisters did not maintain a private jet. Temporarily renting a plane for the duration of a tour was less of a hassle than paying rent on a hangar, and projected an air of wholesome frugality that appealed to elders and diaspora audiences. If something truly required their personal attention on short notice, one could always charter a flight. Which meant today, early in the morning of the first day of seollal, was the first time in more than a decade that Miyeong had really needed to fight for her life to get through an airport terminal in time to catch one of the few remaining flights out of town. Masked, swaddled in sweaters, and sweaty from running, no one recognized her. It was strangely liberating.
Once they made it to Gwangju, it should be simple to locate the girls. They hadn't needed to practice the technique since. Well. They hadn't needed to practice it in a long time. But Miyeong remembered how. (The three of them, playing tag across Seoul; feeling for the vibrations of one another's voices along the strands of the honmoon. Laughing in delight as they took turns chasing and being chased.)
The honmoon was all souls, but no soul was a static point within it. The people within its protection moved from place to place. The strength of their resolve waxed and waned. They felt hope, or faith, or love in varying amounts from day to day. But if someone felt any love at all, even a touch, you could find them. With, to be fair, some patience.
You took a strand of the honmoon and plucked it, letting the vibration roll through you, and listened for an echo. Then another strand. (Your sisters would do the same.) You skimmed the surface of the city, your souls echoing closer and closer until they began to harmonize. Miyeong would always be able to find Chesa (and Celine) the most easily, but she'd heard the girls harmonize together often enough. It should be simple to find their resonance.
So why was the honmoon so noisy?
Strangely amplified, yet discordant. Trying to follow it was like trying to tune a guitar by adjusting the effects pedals. When Chesa and Miyeong finally converged on a likely location, neither was quite sure what they were even hearing. A song almost familiar, but transposed. And three more voices, narrowly circling one another without settling on an interval. A round of fifths chasing one another without resolving.
What was it Hana had said? "In an unexpected attack you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training." She hit the back of Chesa's knees with her cane, barely nodding when Chesa pushed her fall into a roll and then a kick-up without so much as dirtying her knees. "Your body won't go where your mind has never been."
They had nodded awkwardly, each in their own place; afraid to look away from Hana towards one another. Nervously tensed for individual attacks that might or might not come.
"So you must plan tactics against one another, and practice them in secret if you must." A ghost of anger passed over her face and was gone before Miyeong really processed it. "Learn not only your own strengths, but your sisters' weaknesses. Because mark my words," Hana pointed at each of them, shaking ever so slightly, "a demon can evade your emotional as well as physical defenses. Gwi-Ma can influence the mind of even a skilled and wary hunter, and you three are not even skilled hunters yet."
"Miyeong, let's start with you. Your weapon is useless in close combat, so you must learn to control the terrain instead. How do you think you could deny Celine the use of her ssang-geom?"
Miyeong opened her mouth to speak.
"No don't say it out loud you stupid girl. What did I just say about planning in secret? But I want to see whatever you were about to say out in the field today. First hunter down will spend tomorrow carrying water. Winner gets a study day."
Miyeong shuddered reflexively. (Don't don't don't don't don't think.) Chesa looked over at her, quizzically. "Are you alright?"
(A holy arrow piercing Celine's hand, pinning her to the ground. Miyeong didn't win, but she didn't lose. The next time none of them hesitated.)
"Oh, fine. Just a little cold. Shall we knock first? Or break down the door?"
"You're just jealous you were too tall to ride the Atomic Mouse with me."
Mira chased a bit of miyeok around her bowl and popped it into her mouth, giving Zoey a serene look. She was, actually, but she wasn't going to admit that. "Oh you mean the baby ride you were on? I was too busy riding Dragon Chase to notice."
Byeong-Ho-nim laughed softly, distributing the last of the mackerel between their bowls. "Don't let Rumi-ya hear you say that, she loves that mouse roller coaster."
"It's a good coaster!" Rumi barely paused for breath before launching back into a clearly prepared speech about the virtues of dilapidated theme park rides. "It's maybe just a mini-coaster, whereas Dragon Chase is a full loop and spiral-type coaster, but you're still looking at an appreciable percentage of the speed of a larger coaster. Unless you're really acclimated to drops you'll still feel it."
She gestured emphatically with her chopsticks, apparently having unhinged her jaw to make her fish vanish instantly. "I've read that they're both a bit of a rougher ride than Meisho's newer installations, and not quite as intense, but I like them the way they are? I've only ever had the chance to go to Family Land…but, I don't know, getting your teeth rattled is part of the experience. It would feel weird for it to be all smooth. Plus you can see the whole park from the top of the Atomic Mouse." She sighed dreamily. "You can see the honmoon shimmering over everything, full of all these little points of light."
Rumi reached out her free hand and gently touched the air, tiny blue ripples collecting around her fingertips. "When people are happy enough, they can strengthen the honmoon a tiny bit all on their own. Hunters just amplify the effect, the strength is theirs." She blushed. "I just think that's neat." And then stuffed her mouth with rice.
She was so…for lack of a better phrase, at home here. All the layers of ice queen professionalism had been peeled away and the girl who was laid bare was a giant fucking dork. She liked free-fall and chemistry. She could yap like a champ about what qualities made a good houseplant. That poise wasn't gone per se, but she wasn't poised to strike. Poised to grab their hands and rush back to Family Land, maybe. Seeing Rumi expand like that, be so much more than she'd ever let them see, was almost distracting enough for Mira to miss that she was being distracted.
Just a question here and there; a rare interruption; and Byeong-Ho was directing the conversation while doing little more than listening attentively. His media training might be a decade out of practice, but he clearly remembered it well enough to run rings around some teenagers. Annoyingly, it didn't stop working just because she saw the slight of hand. In asking her and Zoey to introduce themselves to him, Mira found she was being reintroduced to Zoey and Rumi. Just this morning Mira had discovered that there was more than one kind of sea turtle. That Zoey used to make skate culture zines and missed the mechanics of constructing a zine as much as writing and preparing the illustrations. That her favorite half-sister Fabiola had started learning the guitar to impress girls.
She learned that Rumi honestly had not intended to pursue a musical career, which made her natural singing range infuriating. That until pretty recently she and Byeong-Ho had not been sure that Rumi being able to touch the honmoon necessarily meant that she would be a hunter. That she and Byeong-Ho loved each other with a kind of fierceness that made Mira want to tear a hole into their life and crawl inside. Would it be weirder to ask Byeong-Ho to adopt me, or to trick Rumi into marrying me so I can have him as a father-in-law? Hideously embarrassing, but hardly the first time in her life that she would rather die than say what she was thinking.
Regrettably, they were all so diabolically bad at yutnori that she had no choice but to think. Mira circled around the morning's conversations in her head. If the duo were lying, demons were a very unnecessary extra detail to introduce. For worse or for worser, it was a situation where they would have already had to force Byeong-Ho out of the public aspect of their work. No need for supernatural elements, they could just be ashamed of him in a normal way. If the duo weren't lying and Byeong-Ho was lying…wait. What had he even confirmed? Only that Rumi was his daughter. Not that he was a demon, or even that her biological father was a demon. Rumi had said the same. That he was her father, and that she never knew her bio father. He could be lying about knowing that Rumi's bio father was a demon, but he'd never even said whether he had known or not. Put a pin in that one and come back to it, Mira thought, as she tried to shake off an unpleasant sense of vibration.
If the duo weren't lying, and Byeong-Ho wasn't lying about Rumi being the daughter he left the Sunlight Sisters for, there was only one person the demon could be. And it was the girl with apparently naturally purple hair, who was trying to plan with Zoey about whether to group up their mals again, a strategy that had sent them to the back of the course twice already. If Rumi and Byeong-Ho were plotting to destroy this generation of hunters from within, 16 years was an impossibly long game to be playing. And when examined more thoroughly, What do I actually know about demons? turned out to be rich in specifics but very sparse in detail.
So really she was left with two questions: What exactly is a demon? and Is someone who has one demon parent a whole demon, a whole human, or a little bit both? Those questions implied others: How does someone become a demon?, Can you stop being a demon once you start?, and How does the honmoon choose Hunters?; but she didn't really need the answers to those questions, not immediately. She did pretty urgently need to know whether she could accidentally kill Rumi in sparring practice though. For fuck's sake, they had been practicing for with actual weapons, was Rumi cocky or suicidal?
Despairing of ever making it past Mo, and so distracted by the skin-crawling sensation that she could barely concentrate. Mira tried to focus on what to do next. She had once again found herself in a situation where the worst person she knew at talking (her) was going to have to broach this subject. And because she was too blunt to do this in the delicate, almost invisible way Zoey and Byeong-Ho did, Mira was probably going to blurt it out and make Rumi ice them out again. She couldn't think of a way to raise an urgent question while making it seem like innocent curiosity. She cast Do, again, and swore.
Byeong-Ho's head shot up. "Girls, do you feel that?"
Rumi winced. "That horrible noise?"
Zoey sighed audibly. "I'm not the only one?"
Mira nodded. "It feels like my skin is crawling."
Byeong-Ho's lips pressed tightly together for a moment. "Okay. It's going to be okay. Have the…sisters taught you anything about how to use the fabric of the honmoon?"
Mira and Zoey started talking at the same time. "You can use the honmoon? How?"
"Maybe? I think? They didn't say exactly, but I think I'm running a lot faster than I used to? Like the ground is pushing me up a little bit."
Rumi paused, her eyebrows pinched together in thought. "I've seen Chesa sortof skim across the ground like that too."
Byeong-Ho nodded. "That's a good place to start." He took a deep breath. "I know I'm not one of your teachers, but if you would do me the honor, I can try to explain a few things to you."
Mira felt half a smile creeping across her face as she saw Zoey and Rumi turn toward Byeong-Ho.
He smiled. "Okay. The first thing you need to know is that everyone is part of the honmoon. Everything, in a sense. Our noblest feelings; love, loyalty, compassion, empathy; they provide the strength of the honmoon. And because we provide that strength, it is materially part of us, and as Hunters we…you can draw on it in small ways to move faster or fall slower or run across a surface that wouldn't normally hold your weight." He closed his eyes. "That connection also makes us visible to those who can see and touch the honmoon."
Zoey started climbing to her feet. "ANYONE? Like, right now? Anyone could find us?"
Byeong-Ho touched her shoulder. "If they know how, yes. But it's difficult even if you do know how. You need to…"
All four of them winced at a new round of vibrations.
"…You need know the harmony of the person you're seeking. To be able to fit alongside their voice without overpowering it. With practice, you three should be able to find each other quite easily this way. It can be very helpful if you get separated, or if you're having trouble finding a small tear in the honmoon."
Mira grimaced. "I'm not sure it's useful enough if it feels this gross to do it."
Byeong-Ho shrugged. "It's not usually this unpleasant. I'm not sure what's making the honmoon so discordant." He looked at Mira and Zoey, and not quite at Rumi. Rumi looked at the ground, digging her fingertips into the carpet. Hmm. "Not to presume too much, but, have you girls been successful at harmonizing? Are you…have you managed to bring out the light in one another?"
Rumi continued to stare at the floor, hands clutching at the pile of the carpet. Like she could dig the answers out of the ground.
"Maybe a little? Sometimes when we're just improvising together, but…" Zoey chewed her lip thoughtfully. "Not when we're recording real tracks, like, for the label." She smiled awkwardly. "The sisters said it would, uh, come with practice?"
Byeong-Ho nodded sadly. "Yes, that might be it. In trying to find you individually, it's causing unintended resonances between you. Catching the edge of the wrong string and getting a sour note." He reached out toward Rumi, and loosened one of her hands. "Aegi horangi, don't fret. We knew this was a risk."
Rumi nodded shakily, and looked up at him. "I'm sorry. I…" She sniffled once. "I just wanted to see you. I didn't think they'd chase me here."
"Ehhhhhh, that's probably our fault." Zoey glared at Mira. "Okay, my fault. It was my idea to run after you and find out what your…" Mira gestured vaguely at Rumi. "Your whole deal was."
Rumi looked confused. "My whole deal?"
"I'm saying this wrong." Mira tilted her head back and breathed out. "I wanted to understand why you hated the Duo so bad. I wanted…ugh." She clapped her hands over her face and dragged her fingers down her cheeks. "I wanted to be friends. I wanted you to like me. I knew there was something you were keeping a secret and I couldn't figure out how to get you to trust me with it."
Zoey added, quietly. "We knew we'd upset you, but I didn't really understand why and oh no. Oh no, oh no. Oh my god I have been misgendering your father for like, a year. RIP to me, I have to bury myself under a tree for the next 100 years."
Rumi snorted. "To be fair to you, I was actively trying to keep him a secret."
There was a pounding noise on the door downstairs.
"Well. Time's up I guess." Mira sighed, climbing up from the floor into a low bow. "I'm sorry for interrupting your holiday. I gotta go face the music for this."
Zoey leapt up. "Well I'm not sorry."
Mira looked over at Zoey. "Eh?"
"Well I'm not. I don't know if I ever would have gotten the chance to apologize to Byeong-Ho or to tell Rumi about zines or to know that you can play the violin or to talk about sea slugs, like, at all. And I'm glad. About all of those things. Even if we kinda fucked up your holiday. That part I am sorry for."
The pounding continued, followed by a loud cracking noise.
"Ai-ya, what on earth are they doing down there?" Byeong-Ho seemed more annoyed than frightened, and that seemed to stead Zoey's nerves. Zoey started towards the stairs, and Rumi paused to help Byeong-Ho to his feet.
As Rumi rounded the corner after them, Mira caught Rumi by the shoulder and looked at her, trying to will her to understand. "I don't care." Please understand, please. "What….whatever it is, you should get to tell us yourself."
Rumi's eyes widened, and she made another face Mira couldn't understand. A little scared, a little angry, a little hopeful? Maybe that was just Mira hoping that Rumi understood her.
They reached the ground flower shop to find the Duo standing in front of the entrance, Miyeong's hand pushed through the broken glass, grasping towards the deadbolt.
Byeong-Ho sighed. "Impulsive as always, I see," and he walked towards the door. Mira reached out to grab Rumi's hand, to hold her back. A bad feeling for a reason she couldn't quite identify. But Rumi had practically teleported in front of him, and the two of them jockeyed for position closest to the door.
It should have been funny to watch Rumi and Byeong-Ho trying to edge in front of each other to get to the door first. But it had a nervous quality that made Mira sick to her stomach. Like they were both trying to protect one another from the Duo. Like they'd both need to be protected from them.
In the end, Rumi got her hands on the doorknob first, and composed an "annoyed, but innocent" face. The Sunlight Witches were the ones being unreasonable and invasive, she was here having a normal holiday. Okay. Okay. She could do this. She opened the door just as Miyeong finished wiggling her hand back out of the glass.
"I'm pretty sure this is breaking and entering."
"Don't be so melodramatic." Miyeong tried to peer around Rumi to see into the shop behind her. Rumi narrowed the opening of the door even more, until only her face was visible. "You're our trainees, it's important for us to know where you are."
"What makes you think Mira and Zoey are here? If they're not at the hanok, maybe they decided to take their own vacation together."
Chesa sighed. "We know you're all in there, despite your best efforts at blocking us."
"Blocking them?" Zoey whispered behind her. Rumi couldn't tell who she was talking to, but Mira shushed her.
"Maybe I was practicing on my own, and you just heard me learning how not to play a chord on the honmoon."
Miyeong pushed on the door; hard enough to budge it. But Rumi pushed back with her knee, keeping it in place.
"Kang Rumi you are being very disrespectful to us."
"You broke my friend's door, Miyeong-seonsaengnim. I think it's quite reasonable for me to be a little annoyed about that."
"Where is your friend, anyway? I'd like to meet the man who's this important to you." Miyeong smiled broadly. "He must be very special."
There were whispers and jockeying behind her, but Rumi didn't look over her shoulder and kept bracing the door. "He is, thank you. I'll see you in a few days. I'm sure Mira-ya and Zoey-ya will be back to the hanok in a few days as well."
Chesa raised her voice enough to carry over Rumi's shoulder. "Are you girls going to keep hiding behind Kang Rumi or are you going to come out and account for yourself?"
Appa rested his hand on her shoulder. "Rumi-ya, I'm a grown man. You don't need to protect me from them."
Reluctantly, Rumi let go of the door and allowed him open it.
By degrees, Miyeong's smile became more genuine. "It's so nice to finally meet you! You probably know us," she gestured between herself and Chesa. "We're the Sunlight Sisters! Choi Miyeong and Kim Chesa. And your little friend Rumi there is one of our trainees."
Rumi pressed her lips into a thin line. Of course Miyeong would be weird about appa, that was nearly the only thing that could make today worse.
"We've come to bring her and our other trainees home, but before we leave I'd love to get to know you a little better!" She smiled up at appa, and the absolute lack of recognition made Rumi want to cackle.
"So who might you be?" Miyeong continued. "Rumi's mentioned your shop but she didn't tell us how adorable it is. Can we come in?"
"Kang Byeong-Ho, and thank you. I've devoted many years to its development and I'm very proud of it." He pointedly looked over at the door. "It looks like I'll be needing to replace a pane of glass on my front door though."
"Hahaha, well. Rumi-ya wasn't answering the door and we were understandably a little worried about her. Staying here by herself with an older man, you know how talk can be."
Appa gave Miyeong a bemused look. "I think you might have misheard me. My name is Kang Byeong-Ho. Rumi-ya is my daughter."
"Well!" Miyeong blinked rapidly. "Rumi! You could have just told us he was your father! You were so mysterious about the whole thing, of course we were going to be suspicious." Miyeong briefly narrowed her eyes at Rumi before looking back to appa. "And it's so nice to finally meet you Byeong-Ho-nim! If you'd like to talk about your daughter's trainee progress I'm sure we can make time to chat before we take the girls back to Jeju."
Rumi and Chesa said, at the same time. "I'm not going back.", "She's not coming back."
Miyeong made a startled noise. "Chesa, we talked about this. Rumi has been a little bit of a difficult student, but she's not dangerous. I'm sure we can have a reasonable discussion about this inside."
Byeong-Ho stepped slightly to the side, and with great reluctance Rumi followed him.
"Okay, you're inside. You can see we're all fine." Rumi started pushing the door closed again. "Now you can go back to the hanok, and let us enjoy the remainder of our seollal in peace. Goodbye, so nice for you to drop in."
Miyeong sighed. "You see, Byeong-Ho-nim? She's very obstinate."
"Mm. Rumi-ya has a strong personality, yes. But I've never had reason to doubt her judgement." He looked coolly at Miyeong and Chesa. "She feels very strongly about spending time at home with me, and bonding with her fellow trainees. Surely you have no objections to the girls spending time together with adult supervision?"
"I agree that Kang Rumi should stay here with you." Chesa's jaw tightened. "She seems to have been stable with you all this time, but I strongly disapprove of training her any further. She's enough of a danger to Mira and Zoey as it is."
Rumi didn't shrink back at all. She had nothing to be afraid of. Chesa had no proof. She could barely feel appa's hand on her shoulder, pulling her deeper into the flower shop.
"Chesa what are you doing?" Miyeong hissed. "Why are you are being so difficult about this?"
"You cannot seriously be telling me that you don't recognize this man. He is obviously related to Kang Celine."
Miyeong went white as a ghost. "What? No."
"You know what that makes it, this so-called Kang Rumi."
Rumi desperately wanted to laugh right in Miyeong's face, but she was frozen by "it." A nervous wisp of a laugh escaped her. They knew they knew how could they know she had been SO CAREFUL.
"You don't know that!" Miyeong snapped. "You don't know that. You don't. They're gone Chesa. They're both gone."
"Uh." Zoey interjected. "Who is gone?" She paused. "Also, rude? Byeong-Ho-nim is right here, and Rumi uses she/her pronouns, not it/its."
Rumi stifled her laughter, which was maybe trending toward hysterical. This couldn't be happening. It was such a stupid way to be exposed. Her patterns had never really hurt before, but her skin felt hot and tight in a way she struggled not to react to. Like the patterns (small! so concealable that no one even looked twice at them in school!) were actively writhing around under her skin.
Chesa didn't even have any proof she was just guessing.
Chesa rounded on Zoey. "You don't even recognize what this creature is? After all your training? How could you possibly care what pronouns it uses?" Chesa clenched and unclenched her hands. "Don't you understand how much danger caring about it puts you in?"
"She is our friend Chesa-seonsaengnim." Zoey looked confused and hurt. "I know you guys feel betrayed or whatever, but caring about people is kindof a normal danger?"
"Chesa stop, she isn't. She can't be." Miyeong grabbed Chesa's sleeve and tried to turn Chesa to look at her. "You're seeing demons where there aren't any. Please. Celine is dead, the baby is dead."
Mira's brows pinched in confusion, stepping forward to stand next to Rumi. "Wait, why would his baby be dead?"
Chesa pulled away from Miyeong. "How am I the only one who remembers our actual job? This thing," gesturing at Rumi, "is beguiling you idiots. It is a demon and we kill demons so that they don't kill real people."
She stared at Rumi. "I was nearly content to leave you under the care of a jailer, since this man seems to have kept your condition from worsening. But I see the rot is already too deep." And then Chesa all but lunged at Rumi. Before Rumi even finished bracing to roll away, Mira had slid in front of her, catching the shorter woman's hands.
Chesa had some strength (and a lot of training) on Mira, but size does count when you're mostly playing keep away.
Chesa pulled away from Mira and turned to look at Zoey. "Demons don't have friends, Sohee-ssi. They have targets."
Rumi watched Chesa and Miyeong and Zoey argue back and forth about her with a sense of growing dissociation. Was she Celine's baby? Appa called her aegi all the time, but appa hadn't given birth to her. But appa was the one who had quietly placed himself between Chesa and Rumi, not Miyeong. The way he'd always been putting himself between her and Them. If she was anyone's at all it was appa's, right? And only appa's? And Miyeong didn't have any claim on her at all?
"Well then she's not a demon, is she!" Zoey's eyes were wide and wet, and for the first time since Rumi had met her she looked really and truly angry.
Mira nodded, her eyes bright. "Rumi's not a demon, Chesa-seonsaengnim. She's a hunter just like us."
Rumi poured every last bit of her frayed nerves into a cocky smile. "I think I would know if I was a demon." And she wasn't, mostly. She wasn't unnatural, she just needed to be more careful than other people. "I'd, you know, have the claws and stuff." She tensed her hands like a cat with it's claws out, and she knew they would just look like fingers.
Byeong-Ho cleared his throat. "Celine isn't dead, exactly."
Zoey and Mira stopped talking about Eomma in front of her. Things got easier afterward. They moved to safer subjects. Zoey loves turtles and talks about what life was like in America. Mira loves fashion and is always willing to show off her dancing. Rumi told them about Eomma's farm and shop, about the different plants that were in her own private garden that Eomma had cordoned off just for her.
It was good, Rumi was starting to like them. Was maybe even willing to call them her frie-
("God, Celine is such a whore.")
Rumi should have known better.
("I won't ever understand how Celine could betray them like this?)
It was so stupid of her, but she just really hoped.
("All for a fucking demon too!)
That when they stopped talking about Eomma in front of her that it might have meant that they stopped insulting her in general. That they were starting to understand, to give Eomma just a little grace.
Rumi stood in front of the closed door to Zoey's room and listened to the all too familiar vitriol spew from her... coworkers... mouth for a minute before silently walking away.
😭😭😭
(This is awful and amazing thank you for sharing it with the world)
(Rumi starts pulling away again. Mira and Zoey can't get her to tell them what's wrong.)
This is gonna blow up so soon I can feel it. They are gonna take it too far. Maybe they say she sould her soul too the demon. That she did it on purpose or something. Maybe something worse I cant think of. And Rumi fucking snaps.
I do think ince the truth comes out things will be a bit better for the girls. But MAN are Zoey and Mira gonna feel guilty as fuck. Especially Zoey. This is gonna be her first real lesson in not taking fandom rumors as gospel and its gonna be so personal too. Like it would be different if Celine and Rumi eventually came out into the spotlight for some reason and shared their side of things. But learn the 'forbidden love child' was 1) your friend/possible soulmate, 2) not even the child of the member you thought, and 3) the true parent wanted that child dead and has been actively lying too you for however long they have been there. It would be rough.
I think both girls are gonna have the hardest time reconciling with Miyeong and Third, if they ever do. Rumi, nothing really changes. She lowkey hates the two before and still does. But too have your heroes be shown too have the capability to be so awful? Yeah no. Mira is especially gonna hold a grudge.
If rumi leaves after the blow up I wouldn't be suprised if the girls try too follow her. Whether or not she let's them come is up in the air but it would be ironic if this ends in the girls being trained by Celine in the end because they cant stand the other two.
Rumi was staring out of the northern numaru window like she could bore a hole through the glass if she put her mind to it. Maybe she could.
It was raining too hard to train outside, Miyeong-seonsaengnim had said. They'd stay in for the afternoon and help her organize "Their Little Library"; the journals former hunters had left behind, the fragile delicately-illustrated bestiaries, someone's collection of florid joseon romance novellas. Centuries of research, amounting to very little they hadn't already heard ("demons are bad", "demons are tricky", "demons are liars", "demons can disguise themselves to look like anyone"). Thirdlight-seonsaengnim was making them all take turns hand-copying the oldest texts into new books, which was apparently not meant to be a punishment. In practice, this meant Zoey was yapping about her favorite Sunlight Sisters albums (almost all of them), and there was nothing Miyeong loved more than being yapped to about her songwriting. Mira was pretty sure neither of them had even noticed Rumi slinking out.
Mira is not the right person for this, she knows that. She's not conciliatory. She's not a peace-maker. Rumi's so icily polite that she's almost positive Rumi hates her. But someone has to try to fix this. Someone has to at least figure out what's wrong, and if Rumi takes it badly…at least she'll have reacted.
It's a lost cause to sneak up on Rumi, so she didn't even try, deliberately squeaking her house slippers against the wooden floorboards as she approached her. Rumi half turned her head to look at Mira, her face already shaped into that PR fake friendliness that she's so good at. Mira stopped. Out of saingeom range, hopefully.
"So I'm not great at reading people."
Rumi breathed out through her nose in something that was trying not to be a snort.
Mira resisted the urge to ball up her fists. Don't make it a fight. Don't punch first. "Yeah, yeah. I'm not exactly a natural. But it's pretty obvious someone upset you. And." Her hands clasped and unclasped at her sides, gripping the hems of her sleeves and digging her nails in. "And if it's me I want to apologize."
Rumi's stupid perfect face did something genuinely unexpected. It moved. Just a little spasm around the eyelids and then it was gone. Smoothed away like it had never existed. Mira felt a little jolt of victory.
"What could you have to apologize for?" Rumi said in a voice so sweet it could kill flies. "We're hunters, right? The honmoon picked us for one another, so I don't know how you could say anything that would hurt me."
"Okay so that's a yes." Mira's mind started ticking. What had they said? What had they been talking about when Rumi left?
Oh.
"15 years seems like kindof a long time to still be making grudge albums." Mira cringed internally. She should give up speaking. "Don't they have any other material?" Forever, if possible.
Rumi's face was still as stone. "It's a good reason, isn't it? She chose a demon." It felt like a brittle lie. It felt like home.
Mira shifted uneasily. There was something moving under the surface of the conversation that she couldn't see. She wasn't the right person for this. Zoey was the one who could see how people interacted and then know how to appease them. Zoey knew how to keep Miyeong's attention focused on her, and diffuse arguments between Mira and Thirdlight almost before they started. But Rumi made Zoey uncomfortable. Judged. So Mira had to be the one to talk to her.
"Well, that's probably punishment enough, right?" Please be provoked. Yell. Make a face. Do SOMETHING. "No need to keep rubbing her face in it. She's out of the industry, if she was going to share her side of the story she would have already."
"Her side?" Rumi's tone was sharp and high. Not shocked, Mira thought. Which could mean nothing.
"Well she must have one, right? You wouldn't burn down your life for no reason at all."
"Miyeong-seonsaengnim and Thirdlight-seonsaengnim seem pretty sure they know the reason." Mira was a little impressed Rumi had fit that much scorn into so few syllables.
Mira smirked at her. "Hey, can I tell you a secret?"
Rumi blinked. "A secret?"
"Yeah. Thirdlight-seonsaengnim and Miyeong-seonsaengnim argue about her sometimes. When they think we're asleep. I needed a cigarette a few nights ago after that fight choreography disaster." Rumi laughed nervously, fingers hovering over the spot where Zoey had collided with her, nearly planting a shin-kal directly into her right hip. "And I found out they never even looked for her."
After several long seconds, Rumi managed to assemble a look of surprise. Which could mean nothing. "….they didn't?"
"So that's weird, right? If she left with a demon, wouldn't they want to kill the demon? They'd be rescuing her, probably. We're supposed to…" Mira paused, trying to keep the hunger out of her voice. "We're supposed to protect each other."
All at once Rumi seemed to really look at Mira. Mira wondered what she saw.
"So you think it was more complicated."
Did kids of hunters often become hunters? Did enough hunters live long enough to have children to find out whether or not the children of hunters were likely to become hunters? Mira's brain skittered away from the thought.
"I think if I have to pretend I care more about sh…stuff like legitimacy than a….fellow hunter I might as well still be rotting at home."
Rumi bit the edge of her lip. It was the most vulnerable expression Mira had ever seen her make.
"Yeah, you did upset me. You all know I was raised by a single mom, and no one blinks an eye when Zoey calls a famous single mother a slut. When Thirdlight-seonsaengnim says she got what she deserved. When Miyeong-seonsaengnim says she should have taken care of it. When you don't say anything at all."
Harsh, not unfair. "Do you……want……to talk about her? Your eomonim."
"She was perfect." Rumi said quietly. "She was perfect and everyone abandoned her because she loved me enough to keep me."
Mira couldn't quite keep the wistfulness out of her voice. "So you were wanted?" Deep breaths, don't cry. "That sounds….nice."
Rumi looked tired. "You'll probably have to disavow that if the duo finds out you said a nice thing about a lovechild."
Mira snorted. "This wouldn't even be the first family I got kicked out of for having the wrong opinions about a mother."
Kdramas (that she's been in, we stan a gossip queen)
America (the weirder the better)
Lyricism (blue journals 2-4, still can't understand me when I rap in korean 😭)
Girls or Boys?
Mira in Rogue cosplay
Tony Hawk, I guess? (gender envy??????????)
Short fluffy hair
Wristbands?
MILFs 🙏🏼 😭
Subjects Thirdlight likes to hear about
Books (fiction, no comics, light novels okay, NO SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE)
RPF (oh no oh no)
Drums, drumming, rhythm section NO STIMS
Bonguk geom (sword arts in general I guess, but let HER yap)
Geommu (safe topic to divert her & Mira onto, sleeves???)
Conversations Rumi has started
If I like perilla leaves (in gimbap, or in general?)
Cucumber or radish kimchi (our turn to prep)
Where I got my purple gel pens (DID SHE NOTICE)
Where the audio jack adapters are (my room, always my room, please help me find them)
If I need more water (OH NO SHE NOTICED)
Shower Songs
Fast Car (god Rumi is SO OLD)
Heartbreaker (yeah Miyeong, apparently)
ICONIC (damn, maybe Mira's a demon)
Show (whyyyyyy won't Thirdlight talk to me about vocaloid I hear u singing Ado in there)
Runaway (if I let one syllable of Kissing Lessons out of my mouth it's the end 4 me)
Evidence that…..
Zoey tapped her pen rhythmically against the ring on her index finger. Evidence that.
Mira had return from her conversation with Rumi looking faintly smug, and promptly picked a fight with Miyeong. Zoey had cringed back against the wall and resisted the urge to intervene. This was the plan. This was their plan. Zoey would create an opportunity, Mira would run recon for her, and she would pick a fight that got her sent to her room when she had something worth sharing. Mira loved picking fights; Miyeong loved being provoked; and Thirdlight loved that Zoey loved peacekeeping. The four of them had gotten along so well before Rumi had put everything out of balance. She just. She just needed to figure out where Rumi fit in this dynamic, and then it could stabilize again.
Evidence for. Zoey tapped her pen faster. Yes. Evidence for.
Evidence For A Conspiracy
Mira thinks so
Pic from her brother (either she has the best shapewear known to science OR Rumi was way way premature OR…hmm.)
Where was she hiding that baby bump, the honmoon?
Overheard conversation (I wasn't there, tho, so idk)
Celine's fully still alive, with no teen in residence (and ripped, goddamn)
Rumi's obviously pissed about SOMETHING, and uh, arrived at the hanok pretty locked in? She's way too scrappy for "farm chores", be so fr right now
She seems to maybe hate the duo? Like, she's polite to their faces but she gets mad as hell when Miyeong tries to mom her
And she's always got these angry little zingers that Mira loves? Like she's daring them to say something.
Official story is pretty odd
STILL no leads on a dad (it's been 15+ years and she's not impossible to find? unless he's a HUGE dirtbag he would have at least stopped by once and dispatch would be on that shit.)
Total Industry Disappearance (not even as a staff songwriter? not even under a pen name? no public legal action to recoup lost sales?)
Lots of passive aggressive songs, but no new gossip? (again, 15+ years. she hasn't done anything worth reporting on, or doing new fan exposés on, or for the duo to reveal?)
Why didn't the label pressure her to, you know, get an abortion? The SS were supposed to be recording that same summer, they had to have know.
Demon story is also pretty odd
She just dipped with a demon and everyone let her?
She dipped with a demon and a baby and everyone let her?
Like, okay. Say they didn't have the heart to like, kill Celine. But the demon would still be fair game, right?
She dipped with a soul-devouring demon and a baby and no one followed her to keep that demon from sending a bunch of other souls to Gwi-Ma?
And like, if she had made a demon pact, they'd have to kill her, right? A demon with hunter training would be so so so so so dangerous to let run around?
Could she still summon weapons from the honmoon with demon patterns? That's terrifying?
But Celine's super findable. And like, I guess the patterns might not have spread far, but those guns were out and I was not looking respectfully.
The duo are weird as hell about Celine
Thirdlight has nothing good to say about her, but gets mad when I have anything bad to say about her.
They have some kinda sad soju pity party once a year on the anniversary of the announcement?
Miyeong goes through these phases of weepy and angry about her? Sometimes she "misses her every day and wishes Celine had made better choices", sometimes she "wishes Celine had had the guts to just get rid of it" (the demon?? the baby?????)
To be fair, 11 albums is a lot of albums to have grudge songs on. Kendrick has less beef with Drake than these two have with Celine.
The duo are weird as hell about Rumi
Miyeong cries every time Rumi makes sweet potato hotteok, which not even Rumi seems to understand.
Thirdlight avoids being alone with Rumi. Like, often enough that it has to be intentional.
They both HATE her dye job. Want it to be natural like mine, but apparently it was her mom's favorite color and it's non-negotiable? (idk I think it's pretty which means nothing)
A floorboard creaked in the hallway and between one footfall and the next Zoey had torn out the page and crumpled it up to eat it before anyone could catch her with it. The footsteps passed and her heart gradually stopped hammering in her chest. It was fine, no one was listening at her door to make sure she was sleeping. No one was going to storm in and demand that she take their side. Maybe one or two people were telling lies, but they were lies about someone else, someone who wasn't even in their family anymore. The whole thing with Celine could be weird and none of her business, and if she could just get Rumi on her side too, everything would be fine.
But Mira thought she knew what Rumi needed. And as long as everyone needed her for something, Zoey was safe.
Oop. Forgot to post this before going camping for a week, so you get two chapters tonight.
Chapter 3: We Saw You From Across The Honmoon and We Loved Your Vibe
✨❤️🩹💗 Zoey & Mira's Friendship Offensive, ver 2.5 💗❤️🩹✨
It wasn't not working.
Mira had a gift. A rare combination of natural talent, dedication to practice, and enthusiasm for experimenting in her chosen art form of making authority figures incandescently angry with her. Now Mira was magnanimously applying that gift on Rumi's behalf; creating both opportunities for Rumi's little zingers, and the beginnings of a theory on why Rumi was so good at getting under the Duo's skin.
Rumi hadn't noticed immediately that Mira was doing it on purpose, which gave her and Zoey a chance to observe Rumi at work. Some subjects made immediate (embarrassing) sense: the justice of certain social stigmas, whether or not judgmental behavior could be considered inspiring, and (chillingly) how dishonesty might directly damage the honmoon. Other subjects, less so. Chuseok and children's day seemed to particularly devastate Miyeong, as did Rumi reminiscing about how much she had loved bucheonnim osinnal because she knew both her and her eomma would get enough to eat. That was, you know, sad; but Rumi never seemed to be angling for either sympathy or invitations. Just…making cheerful jokes about teetering on the edge of malnutrition and being severed from her family's history.
But nearly every blow that snuck under Miyeong's defenses seemed to miss Thirdlight entirely. If there was a corresponding wound to Miyeong's, it must have long since calloused over. Mira didn't know what to make of that. She noticed things (arguably too many things); but what they meant was harder to place. Big emotional responses like Zoey's and Miyeong's registered well. Quieter reactions like Rumi's and Thirdlight's…she needed to really focus on those to even see them. Thirdlight avoided being alone with Rumi, but that was non-specific. She had some tics about things Rumi had touched, but she was like that with Miyeong too. She was maybe more aggressive with Rumi during training, but Rumi was faster at summoning her saingeom than Mira or Zoey were; maybe Thirdlight just thought Rumi could handle it. Mira was beginning to think Thirdlight didn't have a role in whatever cold war Rumi was engaging in.
The five of them had all dutifully neatened up for Chuseok. No one had anywhere else to go, after all. Zoey had a zoom call with her mother (busy), a different zoom call with grandparents (who needed to be reminded that she and her mother lived in Korea now), and a tense phone call that Mira couldn't follow at all (her half sister, apparently). Mira wasn't expecting a call, and didn't receive one; but her brother texted, which was a nicer gesture than she had expected from him. The duo hadn't insisted on hanbok, but everyone still had to crawl out of bed at first thing in the morning to offer prayers and gifts and hear Thirdlight tell the saga of the creation of the Honmoon all over again, while Miyeong got weepy, and their ankles got damp in the fall dew. Foxes got into the fruit the same night, but the flowers from town had lingered. The heavy scent of floral decay made Zoey sneeze, and Rumi had looked over and smiled sympathetically.
Zoey was inclined to view this a complete victory. Rumi had offered antihistamines; and amused sympathy when Zoey sneezed all over her a second time while apologizing for the first time. Rumi wasn't completely freezing them out of conversation. Rumi was finally talking to them about music. Mira wasn't so sure. They were getting along now, but only as long as they followed The Rules. No celebrity gossip, no boys (ew), no Sunlight Sisters discourse, no Celine at all. They could strategize all they wanted about how to extract maximum creative control as quickly as possible; but they couldn't talk about why they needed that. Tentative mealtime conversations on vetted subjects didn't exactly scream friendship let alone a "once-in-a-generation harmonious blending of souls to make supernatural music that will save the world." She wanted it to be true that they had fixed things, and that was horrible. Wanting something meant it would hurt so much worse when she lost it.
Then Rumi had gone and looked so excited when she mentioned Hanabie that Mira couldn't keep containing the little flares of hope she was feeling. That first burst of genuine Kang Rumi charisma had left her throat dry (which could mean nothing), and even more terrified of what she could lose if her and Zoey fucked this up. Now Rumi sought them out. Even if Mira and Zoey were just practicing scales together, Rumi would come and slide her voice around theirs. Dancing in intervals around their notes; coaxing harmony out of nothing until their souls started to glow. Amidst all these intense horrifying realizations that it was important to all human life for Rumi to like her, and worse, that she cared a lot about whether Rumi really for real liked her back, Mira had almost forgotten about the Thirdlight dilemma.
Until Rumi suggested that she might go back to Gwangju for seollal. Alone. That, respectfully, she didn't want to receive gifts from the Duo. That, respectfully, there was a shop owner in her old building who "didn't have anyone else." That, respectfully, he and Rumi had been practicing seollal quietly together for some years, and she didn't want him to be alone. That, in passing, maybe ancestors who would abandon her and her shop keeper friend like this didn't deserve their offerings. That she'd rather care for the living. That she'd already bought her tickets. Thirdlight spent the better part of that night out in the graveyard. Not just cleaning the graves, but scrubbing them. On her hands and knees at midnight polishing individual markers so old the names had long since been eroded away. That was something worth noticing.
The next morning wasn't any better. Rumi had packed quietly, then set her bag by the door as if waiting for the confrontation to come to her.
"I really think you should reconsider. I'm sure your friend will be fine! He's a grown man." Miyeong's laugh was probably aiming for friendly, but landed on nervous. "If he really didn't want to be alone he'd find a wife, not a…a…teenage orphan."
Her smile was so polished it almost looked genuinely affectionate. "He'll probably be expecting you to stay here, since you're making new friends your own age. Brought closer together by your rigorous studies."
Nothing about her face changed, but somehow her voice shifted into a completely different tone. "Besides, I'm not sure it's appropriate for you to be spending time alone with an unrelated man at your age. Especially now. You have to know that your…our behavior is always being scrutinized."
Zoey swallowed. Faults and fears must never been seen, right?
Rumi's laugh was dismissive. "Oh please, he's old enough to be my appa. No one is going to think we're lovers." She smiled coyly. "I think it'll play well, actually. An orphan girl being extra kind to lonely elder she's known since childhood? An 'alternative' girl, at that? Might even make me more popular with the aunties."
"We could forbid you from going." Thirdlight said, staring hard at Rumi in a way that always made Zoey a little uncomfortable. Like Thirdlight was waiting for Rumi to…I don't know, sprout horns or something. Like there was something dangerous about her.
"You could." Rumi agreed. "But I might leave anyway."
"We could kick you out of the program for being so disruptive. For impeding the education of your peers."
"You could." Rumi agreed. "You could kick me out, and maybe spread the word that I'm difficult to work with to make sure no one else will talent scout me. Then I would go back to a normal school. Maybe go to college. Maybe work for my friend in his flower shop." She paused, delicately balanced between provoking and solicitous. "Is that what you want? Do you think the Honmoon would find another candidate for you if you sent me away?"
She looked in the direction of Zoey and Mira, but through them rather than at them. Sketching a bow that was probably deep enough to be polite rather than rude? She would have to ask Mira. "I'm very sorry for disrupting your holiday celebration. And if they decide to expel me for visiting a dear friend, I wish you luck in your future debut." A small smile. "Hwaiting!"
Zoey twisted her rings off and on and off, one after another. Rumi and Mira and the actual Sunlight Sisters were supposed to be her family. She wasn't supposed to have to choose. They were supposed to be Happy Together, while they saved the world with the power of friendship for fuck's sake. If she wasn't allowed off-compound to see her actual mother, how was it fair for Kang Rumi to swan out to visit some man (instead of spending time with her and Mira)? Wasn't it bad enough that the Sunlight Sisters had been destroyed by a….wasn't it bad enough that the last generation of hunters was missing a member because of a mistake?
Miyeong looked at her levelly and said "Well I'm not going to take responsibility for repairing your reputation if anyone sees you."
Rumi's eyes were dancing with laughter. "I never thought you would. Saehae bok mani badeuseyo, Miyeong-seonsaengnim, Thirdlight-seonsaengnim. I'll be back in a few days."
Thirdlight stormed out into the training yard, door slamming behind her.
Then Miyeong "had a sudden headache" and had to go lie down.
Mira turned to look at Zoey. "Do you know what this means?"
"That Rumi's kindof a bitch, and we're going to be unsupervised for the next several hours?"
"That we could be unsupervised for a lot longer than the next several hours if we play our cards right."
"Normally I'm all about hijinks, but I think I'm kinda angry? Too angry to be any fun to be around."
Mira made a considering noise. "What if I told you that I think I know who Rumi is going to visit? And that I bought us plane tickets to Gwangju? "
"What, no. You did not buy plane tickets to Gwanju on the suspicion that Rumi might get her way." Zoey glared at Mira. "You did not! What in the spy kids 3d are you trying to do here?"
Mira smirked. "Oh it was way more than suspicion. Rumi was going to go no matter what they said. She practically choreographed that confrontation."
"If you knew she was going to win, you should have told me!" Zoey wasn't shouting. She didn't shout. She didn't shout because she didn't lose her temper. "I could have. My eomma actually has time off this time. I could have insisted. She wanted." Zoey didn't lose her temper because she couldn't lose her temper. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Mira looked confused. "Why didn't you ask them?"
"Because no one else was leaving!" Zoey swallowed. She was not shouting, and she was not being hysterical. "Because if I leave and no one else does you might not let me come back!"
"…..Zo. I'm." Mira paused, her jaw working silently. "I'm your friend. Right? We're friends?"
"…I think so? I want us to be friends? We're supposed to be, like, family. Closer than family." Zoey watched Mira dig her nails into the hem of her sweater, and whispered. "We're supposed to choose each other over anyone else."
"And she's supposed to be too, right? The three of us together, voices strong or whatever? But she won't let us all the way in." Mira looked away, her eyes drifting towards the door. "Don't you want to know, Zoey? Don't you want to know what she's hiding from us?"
Zoey wanted to argue, just for the sake of it. "…she would see us get on the plane, Mira. We can't spy on her from the same vehicle."
"Oh contraire, Zo." Mira said, tapping Zoey's cheek with a long finger. "She's taking the ferry. We're going to get there so many hours ahead of her we'll have time to do a stake-out."
Man, I am six chapters deep in this nonsense, I should probably compile this somewhere rather than just reblogging the same post and clogging up @fakelawyerbug's & @amjustanobserver's mentions.
Chapter 5: Ghost Stories
It was shaping up to be a wonderful day.
The ferry ride was long, but the passenger cabin was warm and quiet enough for Rumi to let her thoughts unspool. Her fingers itched to tell her "friend" she was coming, but no. He'd just tell her to go back to Jeju and keep her head down until the contract was physically in her hands. Buuuuuuuut if she was already there. If he knew she could see how much he missed her. Rumi snuggled smugly into her seat to doze. If she was already home before he found out, they'd simply have no choice but to have a joyful little seollal all to themselves.
It was easy to be patient on a ferry. Everything around you just looks like more ocean until it suddenly doesn't. Once you're on a train though. On a train you can feel yourself moving. Worse is a train you've ridden a hundred times before; where you know all the little shudders as it slows down to make a sharp curve, the churning sounds where the time signature shifts as it speeds back up. Rumi checked the time on her phone for the third time, trying not to tap her foot impatiently. They weren't even late. They were already past Naju, if she squinted she could probably even see the station from here. She was nearly to the most exciting part, and the money was burning a hole in her pocket.
Rumi didn't have a lot of money. But she was used to not having a lot of money. At a certain level of poor, there's no saving into being rich, so a little extra was reason enough for a little largesse. She couldn't quite make a jeon appear out of thin air like some of her school friends, but Rumi got by. And she'd been checking and re-checking her math all day. Only enough for a few things, but they could be good things. Sweet potato glass noodles from a shop she knew he favored. The community garden always had too much mugwort, the aunties would be glad to be rid of it. So she only needed to buy a handful of jujubes to make the special hwajeon. Dried shrimp. Frozen tteok, so that she could be 'not too hungry' and he could make it last after she went back to the Sunlight Witches. By the end of her errands she was practically skipping. Three whole days of no secrets or lies, with someone who knew her and truly loved her. Her favorite person in the world.
She snuck towards the door of a trim little flowershop, where a middle aged man with long hair pulled up into a bun and a tasteful dusting of grey at his temples was closing up for the evening. Gently shooing out the aunties ("whose daughter needs a new man this time?", Rumi thought) and dragging in the sidewalk signs. Rumi felt the honmoon tremble a little with her own excitement. And the man's head shot up, turning to look just as she pounced.
"Appa!" She leapt into his arms, knowing he'd catch her. "Surprise!"
"Rumi-ya, what are you doing home? Are you okay?"
"Everything's fine, I just…" she faltered, blinking rapidly.
He squished her cheeks, wiping away the tears almost before they formed. "Aegi horangi. You couldn't stand to be in that house one more minute, could you."
"Ai-ya appa, I'm not a baby anymore." Rumi squeezed him tighter. "I just missed you so much. And it's your special day tomorrow, you know." She waggled her eyebrows despite an undignified sniffle. "I wouldn't miss it for anyone."
"APPA?" What did a whisper sound like while being yelled? Like exaggerated vowels and hissing plosives. Like a hundred pigeons. Like outraged rabbits. Like her two numbskull maybe-friends.
The two idiots who were supposedly the other halves of her soul were peering down at Rumi from her appa's rooftop garden, hands gripping the balcony edge like they'd even be injured by a two story fall.
Rumi's father looked from Rumi to his roof and raised an eyebrow. "Your fellow trainees, I assume."
Rumi groaned. "Yes, though I have no idea what they're doing here." Closer to his ear, she whispered "I never…..specifically named you to either them or the Duo. I just described you as a friend from childhood."
Her father nodded slightly. "Well, they seem to have heard otherwise just now." He turned to Rumi, face neutral and quiet. "Well, you said you're not a baby anymore Rumi-ya. What does my very grown up tiger want to do about this?" He breathed in slowly. "Do you trust them?"
Rumi felt her stomach drop away. Once, when she was very little; after eomma had started becoming appa, he'd tossed her too high. Eomma was strong. So strong. And testosterone had made him clumsy for awhile, everything taking less effort than his brain thought it should. And only just then, suspended in air and out of reach, had Rumi even been aware that she could be afraid to fall. When appa sang her to sleep, the air vibrated with little blue threads that clung to his fingertips. She didn't know how to sing yet, but she reached out into the air and held onto the little blue threads for dear life. Sliding inelegantly down a strand of the honmoon until she could reach for her appa's hands. They both cried a little bit after that, curled up until they were hoarse and hiccuping on the floor of their one room apartment. Then appa told her all about the little blue threads and the demon haunted world and her strange heritage and the friends who loved him until they didn't. How the honmoon had coiled around the three of them, linking their souls until it didn't. The same honmoon that bore her weight patiently was coiled around Mira and Zoey too. Would they love her until they didn't?
"Uri Rumi." He pinched her cheek and smiled. "People won't ever be better if you don't give them a chance to be." He drew her inside, past the warm damp smells of cut flowers and sprouting trays, winding up the stairs into their little apartment. He lead her right up to the rooftop door and stopped.
"It's your choice." He said softly. "You can invite them in or send them away, but all three of you are going back to Jeju in a few days and things will probably go easier between you if you at least figure out why they're here."
Rumi huffed. "Not if I make so much of a scene that they don't want me to come back at all." But she was already in motion. Rumi opened the rooftop door, sighing theatrically, and then took in the sight before her. Zoey in a Family Land bucket hat, covered in coffee grounds and potting soil. Mira soaked to the knees, with broken glasses and feathers stuck in her hair.
All of her previous questions immediately flew out of her head. "What on earth happened to you two?"
They both started talking at once.
"It was her idea!" Zoey gestured wildly at Mira.
"What do you mean APPA? I thought you were sneaking off to see your mother!" Mira shouted.
"Wait mother?" Zoey looked back and forth between Mira and Rumi. "I thought you were an orphan! Wasn't that why you were mad at us?"
"She was mad at us because we were being shitty, Zoey."
"But being shitty about single mothers. And. And." She gestured emphatically at Rumi's appa, who was leaning over her shoulder through the doorway and looking perplexed. "You can't have had a single mother, you HAVE A DAD."
Appa made a choked laughing sound. Before Rumi could even interject, Mira had picked her thread back up. "She has a dad NOW. That doesn't mean she had one then. Right?"
Rumi nodded, mutely.
"AND." Mira shushed Zoey, who was about to start yelling again. "AND she wouldn't tell the Duo anything about her mother, which she would only do if she was trying to hide her eomma from them. ERGO." She flapped a hand at Zoey to shush her. "ZO STOP IT LET ME FINISH. ERGO her eomma was someone the duo would have reason to know. Someone who they would know, who must have taught Rumi how to summon her saingeom because she managed that crazy fast, but who Rumi thought she had to protect. And that someone was CELINE, a Hunter."
"A saingeom, huh?" Appa gave her a significant look and a half smile. "Sounds like they're onto us aegi horangi."
Zoey gasped dramatically. "YOU'RE THE DEMON." She took a step back, and then a few steps forward to gently poke Rumi's appa's forearm, currently resting on the doorframe. "You look really normal."
He blinked a few times. "OKAY Girls, time to come inside."
Zoey took a deep breath in and out. "Fine, but ONLY because I'm in the company of two other hunters and because you seem kindof like a boring dad and not a creature of the night?" She straightened her back and walked right between Rumi and appa. He chuckled and gestured after Zoey. "Mira-ssi, Rumi-ya, after you."
Rumi half-listened as Mira and Zoey re-litigated the question of who was ultimately at fault for the state of their clothes.
"….KNEE DEEP in mud"
"The birds weren't my fault!"
Mira sighed. "Yes, the birds weren't your fault." She paused. "But you knocking me over while you were running away from them WAS."
"The guy with the french press snuck up on me, I only knocked you over because I bounced off of him."
"Oh, is that why you're covered in coffee grounds?" Rumi interjected.
"No no nonono. I? Maybe? Knocked over some bins on your roof."
"It was compost. She landed in the compost. We realized we were running late because SOMEONE wanted to go to Family Land first, and we did a little, uh, environmentally assisted parkour."
"Family Land was an important side quest! It's going to be a surprise tool that helps us later!"
Appa introduced himself as Byeong-Ho and Rumi smiled to herself. Before she really understood why appa needed to become appa, all she knew was that he was happier now. She'd told him, on the way back from her third new school, that his smile was as bright as the whole sky. The very next seollal they had a little naming day ceremony. She composed a song mainly consisting of every word she could think of that rhymed with his new name, plus some nonsense words she made up to fill out the meter.
By the time Zoey and Mira had rotated through the shower, and into clean clothes (Rumi's and appa's, respectively) they were nearly dead on their feet. Assured that he wouldn't disappear into a puff of red dust while they slept off all the excitement, and that they would definitely talk more in the morning, he made up his own bed for the two of them to share.
Rumi sat on her bed, suddenly not sure if she still belonged in it. Appa leaned on the open door frame and looked at her quietly. "Well, Rumi-ya? Are you too old to be tucked in?"
"Appa?" She sounded uncertain. She felt uncertain. In the dark, with her girls in the next room having somehow both the right and completely the wrong idea about who her appa was. "Do you ever regret it?"
He crossed the room quietly and sat down on the bed next to her. "Regret what, Uri Rumi?"
"….me." She whispered. "That you lost them over me."
"Oh Rumi-ya." He sighed, stroking her naturally lavender hair. His favorite color, he'd always said. "I weighed you against Miyeong's ghost a long time ago. I chose you, and I've kept choosing you every day since then." He tipped up her face to look at him. "I think they'll choose you too."
Note: ehhh, I can't quite tell if I should be using 'jjeujeunna', 'aigoo', or a secret third thing to mean something like 哎呀 (ai-ya), so I'm just using ai-ya until I make a decision one way or another. Read "playful annoyance" here.
Superficial, maybe. But 'superficial' was her whole job description. She was the candy coating that concealed an eternal spiritual war. Sing pretty songs, stay sweet, and never let anyone see the danger all around them. Turn your head just so, smile without teeth, don't quiver when a lighting assistant accidentally digs her finger into your bruised intercostals as she rotates you towards the turntable point lamps like a recalcitrant sunflower. Don't think about the baby.
Mysterious but inspiring. Beautiful but modest. Sexy but innocent. Don't think about the baby.
Sing like a bird, act like the girl next door, be competitive (but not too competitive). Host quiz shows, giggle, murder monsters, talent scout your replacement. Don't think about the baby.
Miyeong was the last of her generation to be found. A cute little button scouted from a mediocre middle school dance recital and whisked away to become a magical girl. No more time spent worrying about cram school, or who she should try to become, or the books under her older brother's bed; all along she had been destined to sing with her sisters and brandish a blue bow of starlight like Sailor Mars. No more two-faced friends who would undermine her confidence, now she had two true soulmates. Best friends hand-chosen for her by god and the fabric of souls that encircled the world. They'd be together forever; killing demons until their bodies gave out or until they could hand the job off to the next generation of little fools. A generation that they would have to train, making those girls the same unkeepable promises that Hana had made them. (And why had there only been Hana to train them? Why had she never thought to ask what happened to Hana's forever soulmates?)
Promise them that if they turned the honmoon golden, they'd everyone would be free. Promise them that the honmoon could become golden. Promise them that demons really could be destroyed. Don't think about the baby. Promise them anything at all that made them stay and kept their courage up.
Miyeong wasn't stupid, but managing to stay a pop princess into your late 30s required a little vaseline on the lens of your brain. There were a lot of things you just could not let yourself dwell on (it felt like being torn apart) if you wanted to write inspirational music that charted around the world (there was so much blood) in Pop and Christian Contemporary and World Beat. You needed a flawless reputation, not just a flawless soprano (she stuffed her bras with paper towels for weeks to soak up the sweet animal stink).
Her trainee girls didn't need to be told twice. Sohee-ssi had laughed nervously and explained she already knew about condoms. Mira-ssi had looked, if anything, eager to agree to stay away from boys. But Rumi-ssi…was very knowing. Being an orphan, and the child of a single mother, perhaps she was simply more worldly. More aware of the ramifications. Miyeong took an instant dislike to her.
Rumi-ssi wasn't even unusually wild or disobedient, which was the problem. There was no reason for Miyeong to dislike her. She didn't test boundaries like Mira-ssi or run her mouth like Sohee-ssi. She hit her choreography marks, performed her vocal exercises admirably, and trained as hard as anyone else. A saingeom, and so quickly. Like when Rumi reached out to the honmoon it reached back with equal urgency; clinging to her fingertips and trembling to her song. But Rumi-ssi was her trainee just as much as Sohee-ya and Mira-ya. Miyeong should like her. Why was it so hard to like her?
Maybe it was because Rumi-ssi was cold to her soulmates. The girls already sung together beautifully, but there was so much friction. (Celine would have known what to do, why hadn't Celine known what to do.) Practicing with them, working with them, studying with them. Whatever was required of her; but distant. A door that closed almost as soon as she had arrived. Sohee-ya was high-spirited, and spent maybe a little too much time online. Thirdlight didn't like the way Sohee-ya talked about Celine. But Sohee-ya was right, wasn't she? Celine did leave us alone to cover for her mistake. Rumi-ssi did seem a little over-sensitive about Celine, though. Thirdlight and Mira-ya were probably right to try to reign her in a bit.
Maybe it was because Rumi refused to stop dyeing her hair. Miyeong had searched the whole hanok while the girls were out doing drills with Thirdlight and never found the bleach or dye, but somehow Rumi's hair was always perfectly lavender from tip to root. She couldn't reasonably keep denying Mira-ya the right to dye her hair once she saw Miyeong couldn't prevent Rumi from dyeing hers, but it made them both look too alternative for her taste. It wasn't that she thought it was ugly! (It was, it was. Like demons, like the color of the patterns on their skin.) She told herself it was because this would restrict what themes the group could work with. Labels would be less forgiving. Interviews could be more hostile. And all of that could jeopardize the honmoon! At least Sohee-ya had kept hers natural, despite the bad influences of the other two.
Maybe it was because Miyeong didn't care for the way Rumi looked at her. Something disrespectful in the cast of her eyes that no amount of extra chores or practice seemed to dislodge. A slight sarcasm in her smile. An orphan, yet so disinterested in the family Miyeong and Thirdlight were offering her. The more they tried to be welcoming, the more she seemed to resent it! Involving her in all their holiday celebrations without even needing to be asked, never discussing her mother's morality (don't think about the baby), offering the womanly advice she would need as she grew older. Unfortunately, the disrespect seemed to be infectious.
Miyeong wasn't stupid, and she was becoming suspicious about how quiet it was in the hanok.
Rumi was nearly awake. Awake enough to feel a change in the light as it filtered past the curtain that covered the little alcove of her room. To hear the soft creaks of footsteps on the stairs over her head, and imagine appa's little hiss when the cold hit his nose as he walked out onto the rooftop. To hear the murmuring of something bubbling on the hotplate, and to be torn between sneaking a taste of breakfast and snuggling deeper into bed. To smell instant coffee and the deep musky green of kelp stock and the tiniest hint of melon conditioner. To feel a tickle of loose hair across her nose.
A lock that stubbornly refused to drift out of the way no matter how she shifted her head. Dangerously close to being fully awake, Rumi attempted to blow the hair away with her breath. Nothing. Rumi's arms felt heavy with fatigue and stress, but she motioned towards her face to wave away the hair and smacked herself instead, jolting as something sharp grazed her lip.
And she shrieked, because there was someone laying half on top of her. Who woke, and also shrieked. Who woke a third person, who bolted upright from her position reclined against the person laying on Rumi, effectively headbutting them directly back into Rumi, who caught another flailing swipe to the face.
During her first weeks at Jeju Rumi had often laid awake at night, wondering if she might eventually come to blows with Zoey-ssi and Mira-ssi. Laying still, listening to the hanok breathing, imagining all the ways it could go wrong. Who would strike first, and how. Whether she'd burst into red dust when their weapons pierced her skin, or if ash would slowly ooze out of her like blood. If she would be banished to the demon realm, or simply die.
One night, too sick with fear to sleep, she snuck out into the woods and summoned her own saingeom. Just to look at it. To run a fingertip over the flat of the blade, tracing its constellation patterns from tip to guard and catch her breath. Appa had never wanted to spar with her with his own ssang-geom, only cheap training swords they both had to be careful not to break. "Just to be safe," he said. And there was so rarely time to practice with him at all (between day jobs and second jobs and arranging the agricultural loans they'd used to start the flower farm), that Rumi had never wanted to press the issue. So she watched online tutorials and practiced by herself in her thickest clothes, quietly dancing around potted plants on the roof so as not to disturb the neighbors or wake appa. And wondered with a kind of fearful fascination what would happen if they ever really trained. Which instinct would prevail?
She should. She should put her sword away. It was risky having it laying out like this.
A rustle of wind through the trees made her instinctively grab towards the blade, and she felt it bite into her thumb. Thirdlight-seonsaengnim was skimming across the grass toward Rumi, her axe swinging loosely in hand. Still some distance away, but closing fast.
Rumi's heart skipped a beat. She had been so careful. Her patterns were subtle; a dusting of purple streaks on her upper arm, a few jagged lines across her rib cage. Easy to cover with makeup. Easy to mistake for a bad bruise. Usually concealed by a sports bra. But unmistakable if you had seen the real thing. Could Thirdlight have spotted them? When? She resisted the urge to pat her clothes to make sure they were adjusted correctly. If they were exposed it was already too late anyway, and if they weren't it would just look suspicious.
Thirdlight slowed to a gentle walk a few feet away, and seemed to listen. "No one out here but foxes, Rumi-ssi." Rumi was torn between brazening it out as aimless disobedience, talking a walk just because she wasn't supposed to; and running like a demon in fear for her life.
Then she looked at Rumi disapprovingly. "Summoning a spiritual weapon is draining when you're not used to it. You shouldn't be practicing alone without telling someone where you'll be."
Rumi realized she was still gripping her saingeom and flinched. "I was just thinking. About. About it." She tried to shake the nervousness out of her voice. "About being able to summon weapons at all. About what they're made to do."
"Ah." Thirdlight nearly smiled. "It's a privilege, isn't it? To be trusted by the honmoon like this; given a share of its strength to protect others. And a burden too. It's good that you already grasp the responsibility you'll be shouldering."
Rumi let out a breath. Thirdlight patted Rumi's shoulder, drawing her slightly closer.
"Killing demons is dangerous, Rumi. Never forget that." Her grey eyes seemed to glow with the reflected light of her axe. "And you never really feel clean again once you've felt their ash on your skin. But there's a satisfaction to be found in the work, and hope for a golden future where we're free of demons forever."
She stepped away from Rumi again and started walking back towards the hanok. "If not in our generation, then in yours. And if not in yours, in the generation you girls train. Our weapons are forged out of great need, and if we're lucky one day we'll be able to lay them down."
Rumi looked down at the sword loosely held in her hand, smudged with a streak of blood. It had only cut her, and shallowly. She was alive, undusted, and if not safe then at least undetected. But the faint shimmering line it left behind didn't fade for weeks. Not demon enough to be destroyed by it, not human enough to go unmarked.
During her first weeks at Jeju Rumi had often laid awake at night, wondering if she might eventually come to blows with Zoey and Mira; but admittedly 'dealt a glancing blow by Mira's rhinestone nail appliqué, followed by a short slap fight as the three of us failed to untangle our limbs' was not a scenario Rumi had considered.
Zoey and Mira had crowded into her alcove, found her asleep, and rather than either wake her or wait for her elsewhere, piled on top of her like puppies. Zoey had sprawled along the length of Rumi's sleeping mats; her face curled against Rumi's shoulder. Mira had reclined against Zoey; her longer limbs tangling with both Zoey and Rumi's, pinning them closer together.
Zoey burst into tears and buried her face in Rumi's blankets. "I'M SORRY RUMI, I DIDN'T MEAN TO CALL YOUR MOM A WHORE."
Rumi flinched. Mira dropped her head onto Zoey's back. "Zo, please don't shout 'whore' at Rumi first thing when she wakes up, we talked about this."
Zoey curled even deeper into the blankets. "I didn't really think she was a person!"
An outraged wail emerged from somewhere inside Rumi. "You didn't think my mom WAS A PERSON?"
"No I didn't mean it like that!" Zoey was shaking. "I mean she wasn't real TO ME. She was like. Like an idea. She was a….a Top Ten Anime Betrayals supercut, but for girl groups. A character to talk about, not….not a real person who could get hurt." She sniffled. "And I wasn't thinking about you at all."
Mira was rubbing little circles on Zoey's back, which felt unspeakably unfair to Rumi. She had to listen to Zoey dehumanize her eomma again, and Zoey was the one getting comforted.
"I had to change apartments three times in the second grade. Because Sunlight Sisters fans kept finding our address and sending her hate mail." Rumi said quietly. "I missed so much school that I had to repeat the third grade. Because kids were repeating to me what their parents were saying to them, and I was getting into fights. Teachers told me I was bringing the harassment on myself. That eomma couldn't raise me right and I'd turn out like her. Like it would be bad to turn out like her." Rumi shook with building anger. "Like they weren't the ones who abandoned US."
Distantly, Rumi could tell that her eyes were watering, but she couldn't feel it over the roaring sound between her ears. "All my life people have been trying to make me feel ashamed of the only person who has ever loved me unconditionally. And I won't." She bit out. "I'm not ashamed of eomma."
Mira looked stricken. "Then why do you live here with that man instead of with her? What happened to Celine?"
Rumi tilted her head and blinked. "What do you mean? I do. I live with appa. He's Byeong-Ho."
Zoey sniffled quietly, digging the heels of her hands against her eyes. "The demon Celine ran away with?"
Rumi laughed awkwardly. "Appa's not a demon. He's a shopkeeper. Demons don't own flower shops."
Mira narrowed her eyes at Rumi. "What do you mean you do? You do still live with Celine? Where is she?"
"Byeong-Ho." Rumi said, patiently. "Celine is Byeong-Ho now. Appa."
"WAIT WHAT?" Zoey's head shot up, smashing against Mira's nose. "Is THAT why no one could figure out where Celine went?"
"Byeong-Ho." Rumi said, testily. "He's Byeong-Ho. He didn't go anywhere, they just never looked for us. And once he changed his name, the hate mail finally stopped following us around."
"So that's why you told Miyeong you were an orphan." Mira said, thoughtfully. "To keep her away from Byeong-Ho-nim."
"He deserves some peace after what they put him through. Aaaaand, I kindof panicked when Miyeong showed up in person. We hadn't figured out what our cover story would be, or even done any of the emancipation paperwork."
Mira laughed a little. "And I guess it is kinda true that your mother is dead."
"Ye-yes. Basically yes."
Zoey sighed. "I finally know what happened to the mystery lovechild and I'm not going to be able to tell anyone on the forums at all."
Mira pushed Zoey's face back into the bedclothes. "Which you shouldn't want to do, remember?"
"I know! I know! I know! I'm not going to! I won't tell the Duo, either. It's just anti-climactic is all. It turns out I've known the secret baby for months and Celine's not even missing, he's just a dude now. Masc Celine truthers stay winning, I guess." Zoey paused. "Wait, if Byeong-Ho-nim isn't your biological father, who is? Thirdlight-seonsaengnim and Miyeong-seonsaengnim always said Celine ran off with a demon, but like……he's still alive."
Chapter 8: Woman Sortof Curious What Her Last Straw Will Be
ao3 link to come! I just need to clean up the early chapters a bit before I post them.
There is a pleasure in routine. Repeating specific tasks at defined intervals, using techniques refined to the point of resistlessness. Letting an unbroken strand of action pull your body along while your mind lays still and smooth at the bottom of a lake. Her memories are dissolved like mineral into the water. Her hands are always where she expects them to be. Kim Chesa had one very bad day seventeen years ago, and restructured her entire life to prevent it from happening again.
Then, she had been red-faced and furious; Miyeong's words pitch-bending in her head. Teeth clamped so hard on the sides of her tongue that she could taste blood. Knowing that a lie this total could never be walked back. That they'd be telling this story for the rest of their lives. That they would never know what impulse had lead Celine to take the demon away rather than kill it, because she would see this broadcast. She would know that, given the opportunity to denounce her, they had.
The last time she had seen Celine, she was cradling the wet bundle Miyeong had crawled away from. The birth had lasted all night, Miyeong curled up the tub like a wounded animal, too terrified to go to the hospital. Someone would see her. The fans would find out. Their reputation would be ruined. But Chesa had wanted to be a nurse once, and had seen some childbirth videos in health class. People didn't always have babies in hospitals, right? And they were strong. At least they were together. They could get through this together.
They were barely 20, it had made sense at the time.
Until Celine caught the baby (when they still thought it was a baby), and wiped the caul from its face. As she smoothed back the blue-black tuft of its hair, one eye flicked open, golden as a snake. Chesa thought she might have been the one who screamed first. But Miyeong was shaking in her arms, struggling with the afterbirth. So she turned away from the demon to the one who mattered. The next few minutes were a blur. The demon started wailing, and Miyeong pushed herself up the bathroom wall and scrambled out and down the hallway. Only once Miyeong was still and spent, and Chesa was tucking her into bed, did either of them have a chance to think about the silence. About Celine and the demon.
(They had to tear up the carpet and replace it. Red wine stains, Miyeong had said to the contractor. The contractor had tsked and agreed that what Celine had done was shameful, but that the remaining Sunlight Sisters shouldn't loose themselves in drink. Chesa assembled a mask out of raw nerves and smiled; assuring the woman that it was just an accident. A bottle dropped and rolled down the hallway. White had never been their first choice anyway, so might as well just replace it rather than keep scrubbing fruitlessly. She would never ever ever ever be able to stop lying.)
Miyeong had struggled back up, insisting that they needed to go check on Celine, to help her kill it. That she was alone, probably in danger. Chesa had reassured her that Celine was more than a match for a demon so small. That she was probably looking for a place to dispose of the blood-stained towels and sheets. That some women had strong emotions after birth and that she'd feel less anxious when she'd had some rest. That if Celine wasn't back by morning they would look for her together. But the next morning Celine wasn't back, and she'd left a landmine in her place. A letter to their record label claiming that there was a secret baby. Her secret baby, and that she'd be leaving the Sunlight Sisters to raise it. She not only hadn't killed the demon, she'd fled with it like a thief in the night, and decided to raise it as though it was a person.
On the worst day of Chesa's life, Celine had been missing for less than 72 hours. And rather than deny the monstrous lie that there even was a baby, she sat huddled with Miyeong in front of a bank of microphones and left Celine to the wolves. At the time Chesa had told herself that they were choosing the stability of the honmoon. That it was better to condemn Celine, and preserve what remained of the Sunlight Sisters. What she had done (run away with a demon) was worth condemning. Celine would know how they felt about that.
And if a lie couldn't be walked back, then it wouldn't, so there was no point in dwelling on whether they should have. Because Celine was either long-since dead at the hands of the demon, or she had given in and killed it when it inevitably showed its nature. No point in indulging impertinent questions from their students. Because there was nothing Celine had done since that moment that was worth knowing. That out of personal affection for a former sister they had chosen not to hunt Celine themselves, but neither did they really expect her to apologize to them. No point in reaching out now, 1 year 2 years 10 years almost 20 years later. Because if she was still alive, she had chosen to stay missing and continue rejecting her duty to defend the world from demons like the one she stole.
(But 10 albums later Chesa still hadn't seen so much as a thread of gold, so maybe the honmoon was punishing them for not having had the courage to take matters into their own hands).
Now, she has pick ups to record for an Ilocano language album she's guesting on. A 11th Sunlight Sisters album in production. Desiderata has some interesting vocal tricks she's quite proud of: a madrigal they composed using their own vocal samples from early albums. A spacious six-part harmony with only two voices.
Now she has students. Incredibly willful and poorly behaved students. Students that try her patience and disturb the smooth water of her mind. But students nonetheless. The honmoon chose them so eagerly that Chesa was expecting to hand the greater work over to them in a few years at most. But their music is….fine. There's nothing wrong with the recordings they've made of studio-supplied songs. They've technically already qualified for debut. But Chesa has been holding them back anyway. Their performances are uninspiring. Their combat practice is too individualized, merely fighting in one another's vicinity rather than as a team. They're not ready in a way that troubles her. Rumi-ssi seems to best understand their true job (rid the world of demons), but raises the hairs on the back of Chesa's neck. A powerful voice weakened by a strangling anger. Mira-ssi understands how important their reputation will be to their success, but bafflingly doesn't care. A beautiful dancer who dances as though her sisters aren't even in the room. Sohee-ssi understands that their songs have to reach the souls of their fans, but she can't seem to write inspirational music that isn't vulgar in some way. A strong composer too focused on pleasing Miyeong to develop her own identity as a musician.
Chesa had been hoping to have a fresh start as a team. To celebrate seollal together and clear the air. To reaffirm their commitment to one another and force the team to work together properly if it killed her. Then Rumi had declared she was going to Gwangju, and was taking no feedback on the subject. And her eyes flickered, just for a moment, amber. A trick of the light, Chesa thought, while scrubbing the graves clean. Just my imagination, Chesa thought, the next morning while Rumi mocked Miyeong's fear that she had taken a lover already. She's just being a teenager.
Chesa ran the perimeter of the grounds for the fourth time, trying to clear her head, but the fear was fizzing around her. An odd look, a turn of phrase that seemed too knowing. That wasn't evidence of anything, but it felt like evidence.
When she got back to the hanok, in the evening, she found Miyeong sitting at the kitchen table singing to herself. Running a finger around the edge of her cup of coffee.
"Whether or not (or not or not)
it is clear to you (to you to you)
no doubt (no doubt no doubt)
the universe is unfolding" Miyeong's glissando wandered across several measures in a way that abruptly reminded Chesa of Rumi.
"as it should."
She looked up at Chesa, and said simply "The girls are gone."
Chesa breathed in shallowly, trying not to let the fear reach her face. "I think we should go get them." She couldn't feel her hands.
Byeong-Ho sipped his coffee and looked out onto the city, letting the warmth gather in his chest as he settled his thoughts. It hurt less than he'd expected to finally meet the other chosen hunters. Even knowing what they must have been told about "Celine." Even with Zoey-ssi's frightened little poke to his forearm. Even with Rumi-ya's impatience with them. He found in his heart only an amused fondness, and maybe a little hope for two kids who decided to run away after their friend. Kids were always learning how to be better than their elders. Maybe some day it would be safe for Rumi-ya to tell them.
There was an ache, of course. The feeling that he should be with them. He should be making them play neolttwigi until they knew exactly how hard they could push each other. He should know what weapons they had pulled from their souls, and be helping them strategize how to use them together. He should know their first music. Surely they had tried to write songs together by now? Rumi-ya never seemed particularly enthusiastic about their music in her texts. Maybe the…the Sisters were relying on studio-written songs for their debut. It would be easier to get label buy-in that way, but the girls might struggle to put real feeling into the music. And if Mira-ssi and Zoey-ssi had the kind of spirits that would mesh with Rumi, that must rankle them just as much. Maybe a combined approach would work better. A few highly produced songs so that the album looked safer, but at least a few tracks where they could explore their talents and try to build an audience out of their more authentic work. Maybe the four of them could have a little listening party tonight. Share your favorite song, then take it apart as a group. Figure out what makes it work. How line distribution can complement vocal range. How beat arrangements can integrate dance more fully into the…"Heh," he thought. "Listen to me run on planning classroom activities like I'm going to play any part in their training."
He swirled the last sip of his coffee around his cup, nearly too cold to be worth drinking, and hesitated. It could be nice to do just the once.
"WAIT WHAT?" Byeong-Ho nearly dropped his cup. Zoey-ssi was shouting so loud he could hear it outside. Maybe having three teenagers under one roof was going to give him a heart attack before he had a chance to fret about the quality of his little girl's education.
To give them fair warning, he walked loudly down the little staircase that made up the roof of Rumi-ya's alcove; praying to god and the honmoon for minimal bloodshed. Her marks were small still. Created as much by shame at having had outbursts as by the outbursts themselves. Just a little bug at the time; a toddler having a tantrum, and immediately terrified by the deep red flare of the honmoon. It had so obviously been an accident he barely had the heart to chastise her. He had stayed up all night in fear that he might need to physically fight his sisters, though. But no one came. For a few months afterward, Rumi had been afraid of even becoming angry, and watching Rumi cry herself out rather than let herself feel thwarted had been heartbreaking. It was touch and go for a few years teaching her to manage how big her feelings were, but that was probably true of most children. (They never came.) And, for better or for worse, by elementary school she was fully able to get into angry fights with other children without risking her self-control or the playground.
"Girls? I heard you talking, are you awake enough for breakfast?" He shifted the curtain slightly and looked in.
"It's always been just us. Appa's never really talked about him." Rumi looked perfectly at ease, not even a fidget at her sleeve. Byeong-Ho was torn between pride and sadness. Pride that she sold the disguise so well. Sadness that she needed it at all. But…at least for now, it kept her safe.
Well, theoretically safe. Rumi had a split lip, Zoey two bruised eyes, and Mira a bloody nose. They looked like they'd been brawling, not just arguing.
"…Girls? Are you alright?"
"It's, um. We're fine, really. We were. I was." Zoey twisted in place and landed on Rumi's lap, then half bowed her head. "I'm very sorry Byeong-Ho-nim. I have said some very rude things about you. And that was, uh, not very cash money of me?"
Rumi snorted. Mira let out a little bark of laughter. All of the sudden the tension melted in earnest, and they were laughing together; their hands seeking one another. Zoey leaned ever so slightly into Rumi, and all three girls turned bright red as they realized how intimate their arrangement of limbs had become. They flung themselves apart as though he'd caught them kissing in secret.
Byeong-Ho laughed, because how could he not?
"Zoey-ssi, I accept your apology."
She began to sigh in relief.
"On the condition that you come eat breakfast, and tell me all about your theories. I am a great enjoyer of supernatural romances." He winked at Zoey, who was developing actual stars in her eyes at an alarming rate.
"Does that mean you're going to tell us about Rumi-unnie's dad? Like, his biological dad?"
Rumi leaned back, blinking rapidly, but with the tinniest hint of a smile. An unexpected honorific, then. "Poor girls" he thought, "they hardly know where they stand with one another even now." That at least he might be able to fix. He wasn't their teacher, couldn't be their teacher. Couldn't be there for them day to day the way they needed. Couldn't correct their form or help them plan for the future. Definitely couldn't soothe their fears about fickle fans. But maybe he could help them know each other better, that could count for a lot at this age.
"We'll see. That's Rumi-ya's story as much as it is mine, I wouldn't tell it without her permission."
Mira-ya looked contemplatively between Rumi and him. Hmm. If anyone put it together without any more hints it might be her. She did seem to enjoy dramatic reveals. But, if how glued she was to Rumi's side was any indication, she might be willing to listen to the whole story.
"Drink your soup girls, it's good for the constitution."
"Ai-ya appa, we will we will." Shy little smiles bloomed on Zoey's and Mira's faces too. Maybe they would both listen.
"No, I mean we need to go get them now." Chesa gripped the doorframe like it was all that was keeping her standing. "Rumi is..."
Miyeong tsked. "A bad influence, I know."
"She's a danger to the other trainees."
"Well, I think that's a little dramatic." Miyeong didn't disagree that they should go collect the trainees, but it wasn't like they would be in mortal danger spending one night alone with the little delinquent. "I don't like how infectious her bad attitude has become, but Mira-ya was nearly as bad when she first got here."
"That's not..."
"She is very aggressive, but not...physically. I think she'll be more agreeable when she stops having such a chip on her shoulder about being illegitimate! She really needs to get used to rude questions about it, it's not as though it won't come up in interviews." (Don't think.)
"No, I mean..." Chesa paused for a long moment. "I don't know what I mean. There's something off about Rumi. Something *spiritually* off."
Miyeong sighed internally. Chesa could be so...delicate about this aspect of their work. Wasn't it enough that they moved out of Seoul, all the way back to Jeju, after she started seeing demons in every crowd? Refitted an outbuilding on the old hunter training grounds into a recording booth, so they could live in an old hanok in the middle of nowhere and Chesa could feel safe at night? Miyeong could be in Seoul right now, being admired at an industry party while tastefully flirting with actors she wanted to work with again. One of the very few benefits of being famous. But instead she had to be an eccentric artist, dedicated to developing the talents of her protégées. Which was fine. It was fine.
"Chesa, you have a sensitive soul and I cherish that about you, but Rumi is just being a brat. It's nothing more insidious than being brought up badly." Miyeong sighed. "But I suppose it's not as though the honmoon has never made mistakes before." (Don't don't don't think about the ____.)
"And in the worst case, we've done just fine as a duo." Miyeong looked up at Chesa expectantly. "Right?"
"....Right."
"Anyway, it's late. I'm not going to drive down to the airport and suborn a plane just to scold three teenagers."
She drummed her fingers lightly on the table. "We'll go tomorrow." A small smile. "Maybe we'll make a little game of it. Show the girls that we know how to find them."
The Sunlight Sisters did not maintain a private jet. Temporarily renting a plane for the duration of a tour was less of a hassle than paying rent on a hangar, and projected an air of wholesome frugality that appealed to elders and diaspora audiences. If something truly required their personal attention on short notice, one could always charter a flight. Which meant today, early in the morning of the first day of seollal, was the first time in more than a decade that Miyeong had really needed to fight for her life to get through an airport terminal in time to catch one of the few remaining flights out of town. Masked, swaddled in sweaters, and sweaty from running, no one recognized her. It was strangely liberating.
Once they made it to Gwangju, it should be simple to locate the girls. They hadn't needed to practice the technique since. Well. They hadn't needed to practice it in a long time. But Miyeong remembered how. (The three of them, playing tag across Seoul; feeling for the vibrations of one another's voices along the strands of the honmoon. Laughing in delight as they took turns chasing and being chased.)
The honmoon was all souls, but no soul was a static point within it. The people within its protection moved from place to place. The strength of their resolve waxed and waned. They felt hope, or faith, or love in varying amounts from day to day. But if someone felt any love at all, even a touch, you could find them. With, to be fair, some patience.
You took a strand of the honmoon and plucked it, letting the vibration roll through you, and listened for an echo. Then another strand. (Your sisters would do the same.) You skimmed the surface of the city, your souls echoing closer and closer until they began to harmonize. Miyeong would always be able to find Chesa (and Celine) the most easily, but she'd heard the girls harmonize together often enough. It should be simple to find their resonance.
So why was the honmoon so noisy?
Strangely amplified, yet discordant. Trying to follow it was like trying to tune a guitar by adjusting the effects pedals. When Chesa and Miyeong finally converged on a likely location, neither was quite sure what they were even hearing. A song almost familiar, but transposed. And three more voices, narrowly circling one another without settling on an interval. A round of fifths chasing one another without resolving.
What was it Hana had said? "In an unexpected attack you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training." She hit the back of Chesa's knees with her cane, barely nodding when Chesa pushed her fall into a roll and then a kick-up without so much as dirtying her knees. "Your body won't go where your mind has never been."
They had nodded awkwardly, each in their own place; afraid to look away from Hana towards one another. Nervously tensed for individual attacks that might or might not come.
"So you must plan tactics against one another, and practice them in secret if you must." A ghost of anger passed over her face and was gone before Miyeong really processed it. "Learn not only your own strengths, but your sisters' weaknesses. Because mark my words," Hana pointed at each of them, shaking ever so slightly, "a demon can evade your emotional as well as physical defenses. Gwi-Ma can influence the mind of even a skilled and wary hunter, and you three are not even skilled hunters yet."
"Miyeong, let's start with you. Your weapon is useless in close combat, so you must learn to control the terrain instead. How do you think you could deny Celine the use of her ssang-geom?"
Miyeong opened her mouth to speak.
"No don't say it out loud you stupid girl. What did I just say about planning in secret? But I want to see whatever you were about to say out in the field today. First hunter down will spend tomorrow carrying water. Winner gets a study day."
Miyeong shuddered reflexively. (Don't don't don't don't don't think.) Chesa looked over at her, quizzically. "Are you alright?"
(A holy arrow piercing Celine's hand, pinning her to the ground. Miyeong didn't win, but she didn't lose. The next time none of them hesitated.)
"Oh, fine. Just a little cold. Shall we knock first? Or break down the door?"
"You're just jealous you were too tall to ride the Atomic Mouse with me."
Mira chased a bit of miyeok around her bowl and popped it into her mouth, giving Zoey a serene look. She was, actually, but she wasn't going to admit that. "Oh you mean the baby ride you were on? I was too busy riding Dragon Chase to notice."
Byeong-Ho-nim laughed softly, distributing the last of the mackerel between their bowls. "Don't let Rumi-ya hear you say that, she loves that mouse roller coaster."
"It's a good coaster!" Rumi barely paused for breath before launching back into a clearly prepared speech about the virtues of dilapidated theme park rides. "It's maybe just a mini-coaster, whereas Dragon Chase is a full loop and spiral-type coaster, but you're still looking at an appreciable percentage of the speed of a larger coaster. Unless you're really acclimated to drops you'll still feel it."
She gestured emphatically with her chopsticks, apparently having unhinged her jaw to make her fish vanish instantly. "I've read that they're both a bit of a rougher ride than Meisho's newer installations, and not quite as intense, but I like them the way they are? I've only ever had the chance to go to Family Land…but, I don't know, getting your teeth rattled is part of the experience. It would feel weird for it to be all smooth. Plus you can see the whole park from the top of the Atomic Mouse." She sighed dreamily. "You can see the honmoon shimmering over everything, full of all these little points of light."
Rumi reached out her free hand and gently touched the air, tiny blue ripples collecting around her fingertips. "When people are happy enough, they can strengthen the honmoon a tiny bit all on their own. Hunters just amplify the effect, the strength is theirs." She blushed. "I just think that's neat." And then stuffed her mouth with rice.
She was so…for lack of a better phrase, at home here. All the layers of ice queen professionalism had been peeled away and the girl who was laid bare was a giant fucking dork. She liked free-fall and chemistry. She could yap like a champ about what qualities made a good houseplant. That poise wasn't gone per se, but she wasn't poised to strike. Poised to grab their hands and rush back to Family Land, maybe. Seeing Rumi expand like that, be so much more than she'd ever let them see, was almost distracting enough for Mira to miss that she was being distracted.
Just a question here and there; a rare interruption; and Byeong-Ho was directing the conversation while doing little more than listening attentively. His media training might be a decade out of practice, but he clearly remembered it well enough to run rings around some teenagers. Annoyingly, it didn't stop working just because she saw the slight of hand. In asking her and Zoey to introduce themselves to him, Mira found she was being reintroduced to Zoey and Rumi. Just this morning Mira had discovered that there was more than one kind of sea turtle. That Zoey used to make skate culture zines and missed the mechanics of constructing a zine as much as writing and preparing the illustrations. That her favorite half-sister Fabiola had started learning the guitar to impress girls.
She learned that Rumi honestly had not intended to pursue a musical career, which made her natural singing range infuriating. That until pretty recently she and Byeong-Ho had not been sure that Rumi being able to touch the honmoon necessarily meant that she would be a hunter. That she and Byeong-Ho loved each other with a kind of fierceness that made Mira want to tear a hole into their life and crawl inside. Would it be weirder to ask Byeong-Ho to adopt me, or to trick Rumi into marrying me so I can have him as a father-in-law? Hideously embarrassing, but hardly the first time in her life that she would rather die than say what she was thinking.
Regrettably, they were all so diabolically bad at yutnori that she had no choice but to think. Mira circled around the morning's conversations in her head. If the duo were lying, demons were a very unnecessary extra detail to introduce. For worse or for worser, it was a situation where they would have already had to force Byeong-Ho out of the public aspect of their work. No need for supernatural elements, they could just be ashamed of him in a normal way. If the duo weren't lying and Byeong-Ho was lying…wait. What had he even confirmed? Only that Rumi was his daughter. Not that he was a demon, or even that her biological father was a demon. Rumi had said the same. That he was her father, and that she never knew her bio father. He could be lying about knowing that Rumi's bio father was a demon, but he'd never even said whether he had known or not. Put a pin in that one and come back to it, Mira thought, as she tried to shake off an unpleasant sense of vibration.
If the duo weren't lying, and Byeong-Ho wasn't lying about Rumi being the daughter he left the Sunlight Sisters for, there was only one person the demon could be. And it was the girl with apparently naturally purple hair, who was trying to plan with Zoey about whether to group up their mals again, a strategy that had sent them to the back of the course twice already. If Rumi and Byeong-Ho were plotting to destroy this generation of hunters from within, 16 years was an impossibly long game to be playing. And when examined more thoroughly, What do I actually know about demons? turned out to be rich in specifics but very sparse in detail.
So really she was left with two questions: What exactly is a demon? and Is someone who has one demon parent a whole demon, a whole human, or a little bit both? Those questions implied others: How does someone become a demon?, Can you stop being a demon once you start?, and How does the honmoon choose Hunters?; but she didn't really need the answers to those questions, not immediately. She did pretty urgently need to know whether she could accidentally kill Rumi in sparring practice though. For fuck's sake, they had been practicing for with actual weapons, was Rumi cocky or suicidal?
Despairing of ever making it past Mo, and so distracted by the skin-crawling sensation that she could barely concentrate. Mira tried to focus on what to do next. She had once again found herself in a situation where the worst person she knew at talking (her) was going to have to broach this subject. And because she was too blunt to do this in the delicate, almost invisible way Zoey and Byeong-Ho did, Mira was probably going to blurt it out and make Rumi ice them out again. She couldn't think of a way to raise an urgent question while making it seem like innocent curiosity. She cast Do, again, and swore.
Byeong-Ho's head shot up. "Girls, do you feel that?"
Rumi winced. "That horrible noise?"
Zoey sighed audibly. "I'm not the only one?"
Mira nodded. "It feels like my skin is crawling."
Byeong-Ho's lips pressed tightly together for a moment. "Okay. It's going to be okay. Have the…sisters taught you anything about how to use the fabric of the honmoon?"
Mira and Zoey started talking at the same time. "You can use the honmoon? How?"
"Maybe? I think? They didn't say exactly, but I think I'm running a lot faster than I used to? Like the ground is pushing me up a little bit."
Rumi paused, her eyebrows pinched together in thought. "I've seen Chesa sortof skim across the ground like that too."
Byeong-Ho nodded. "That's a good place to start." He took a deep breath. "I know I'm not one of your teachers, but if you would do me the honor, I can try to explain a few things to you."
Mira felt half a smile creeping across her face as she saw Zoey and Rumi turn toward Byeong-Ho.
He smiled. "Okay. The first thing you need to know is that everyone is part of the honmoon. Everything, in a sense. Our noblest feelings; love, loyalty, compassion, empathy; they provide the strength of the honmoon. And because we provide that strength, it is materially part of us, and as Hunters we…you can draw on it in small ways to move faster or fall slower or run across a surface that wouldn't normally hold your weight." He closed his eyes. "That connection also makes us visible to those who can see and touch the honmoon."
Zoey started climbing to her feet. "ANYONE? Like, right now? Anyone could find us?"
Byeong-Ho touched her shoulder. "If they know how, yes. But it's difficult even if you do know how. You need to…"
All four of them winced at a new round of vibrations.
"…You need know the harmony of the person you're seeking. To be able to fit alongside their voice without overpowering it. With practice, you three should be able to find each other quite easily this way. It can be very helpful if you get separated, or if you're having trouble finding a small tear in the honmoon."
Mira grimaced. "I'm not sure it's useful enough if it feels this gross to do it."
Byeong-Ho shrugged. "It's not usually this unpleasant. I'm not sure what's making the honmoon so discordant." He looked at Mira and Zoey, and not quite at Rumi. Rumi looked at the ground, digging her fingertips into the carpet. Hmm. "Not to presume too much, but, have you girls been successful at harmonizing? Are you…have you managed to bring out the light in one another?"
Rumi continued to stare at the floor, hands clutching at the pile of the carpet. Like she could dig the answers out of the ground.
"Maybe a little? Sometimes when we're just improvising together, but…" Zoey chewed her lip thoughtfully. "Not when we're recording real tracks, like, for the label." She smiled awkwardly. "The sisters said it would, uh, come with practice?"
Byeong-Ho nodded sadly. "Yes, that might be it. In trying to find you individually, it's causing unintended resonances between you. Catching the edge of the wrong string and getting a sour note." He reached out toward Rumi, and loosened one of her hands. "Aegi horangi, don't fret. We knew this was a risk."
Rumi nodded shakily, and looked up at him. "I'm sorry. I…" She sniffled once. "I just wanted to see you. I didn't think they'd chase me here."
"Ehhhhhh, that's probably our fault." Zoey glared at Mira. "Okay, my fault. It was my idea to run after you and find out what your…" Mira gestured vaguely at Rumi. "Your whole deal was."
Rumi looked confused. "My whole deal?"
"I'm saying this wrong." Mira tilted her head back and breathed out. "I wanted to understand why you hated the Duo so bad. I wanted…ugh." She clapped her hands over her face and dragged her fingers down her cheeks. "I wanted to be friends. I wanted you to like me. I knew there was something you were keeping a secret and I couldn't figure out how to get you to trust me with it."
Zoey added, quietly. "We knew we'd upset you, but I didn't really understand why and oh no. Oh no, oh no. Oh my god I have been misgendering your father for like, a year. RIP to me, I have to bury myself under a tree for the next 100 years."
Rumi snorted. "To be fair to you, I was actively trying to keep him a secret."
There was a pounding noise on the door downstairs.
"Well. Time's up I guess." Mira sighed, climbing up from the floor into a low bow. "I'm sorry for interrupting your holiday. I gotta go face the music for this."
Zoey leapt up. "Well I'm not sorry."
Mira looked over at Zoey. "Eh?"
"Well I'm not. I don't know if I ever would have gotten the chance to apologize to Byeong-Ho or to tell Rumi about zines or to know that you can play the violin or to talk about sea slugs, like, at all. And I'm glad. About all of those things. Even if we kinda fucked up your holiday. That part I am sorry for."
The pounding continued, followed by a loud cracking noise.
"Ai-ya, what on earth are they doing down there?" Byeong-Ho seemed more annoyed than frightened, and that seemed to stead Zoey's nerves. Zoey started towards the stairs, and Rumi paused to help Byeong-Ho to his feet.
As Rumi rounded the corner after them, Mira caught Rumi by the shoulder and looked at her, trying to will her to understand. "I don't care." Please understand, please. "What….whatever it is, you should get to tell us yourself."
Rumi's eyes widened, and she made another face Mira couldn't understand. A little scared, a little angry, a little hopeful? Maybe that was just Mira hoping that Rumi understood her.
They reached the ground flower shop to find the Duo standing in front of the entrance, Miyeong's hand pushed through the broken glass, grasping towards the deadbolt.
Byeong-Ho sighed. "Impulsive as always, I see," and he walked towards the door. Mira reached out to grab Rumi's hand, to hold her back. A bad feeling for a reason she couldn't quite identify. But Rumi had practically teleported in front of him, and the two of them jockeyed for position closest to the door.
It should have been funny to watch Rumi and Byeong-Ho trying to edge in front of each other to get to the door first. But it had a nervous quality that made Mira sick to her stomach. Like they were both trying to protect one another from the Duo. Like they'd both need to be protected from them.
In the end, Rumi got her hands on the doorknob first, and composed an "annoyed, but innocent" face. The Sunlight Witches were the ones being unreasonable and invasive, she was here having a normal holiday. Okay. Okay. She could do this. She opened the door just as Miyeong finished wiggling her hand back out of the glass.
"I'm pretty sure this is breaking and entering."
"Don't be so melodramatic." Miyeong tried to peer around Rumi to see into the shop behind her. Rumi narrowed the opening of the door even more, until only her face was visible. "You're our trainees, it's important for us to know where you are."
"What makes you think Mira and Zoey are here? If they're not at the hanok, maybe they decided to take their own vacation together."
Chesa sighed. "We know you're all in there, despite your best efforts at blocking us."
"Blocking them?" Zoey whispered behind her. Rumi couldn't tell who she was talking to, but Mira shushed her.
"Maybe I was practicing on my own, and you just heard me learning how not to play a chord on the honmoon."
Miyeong pushed on the door; hard enough to budge it. But Rumi pushed back with her knee, keeping it in place.
"Kang Rumi you are being very disrespectful to us."
"You broke my friend's door, Miyeong-seonsaengnim. I think it's quite reasonable for me to be a little annoyed about that."
"Where is your friend, anyway? I'd like to meet the man who's this important to you." Miyeong smiled broadly. "He must be very special."
There were whispers and jockeying behind her, but Rumi didn't look over her shoulder and kept bracing the door. "He is, thank you. I'll see you in a few days. I'm sure Mira-ya and Zoey-ya will be back to the hanok in a few days as well."
Chesa raised her voice enough to carry over Rumi's shoulder. "Are you girls going to keep hiding behind Kang Rumi or are you going to come out and account for yourself?"
Appa rested his hand on her shoulder. "Rumi-ya, I'm a grown man. You don't need to protect me from them."
Reluctantly, Rumi let go of the door and allowed him open it.
By degrees, Miyeong's smile became more genuine. "It's so nice to finally meet you! You probably know us," she gestured between herself and Chesa. "We're the Sunlight Sisters! Choi Miyeong and Kim Chesa. And your little friend Rumi there is one of our trainees."
Rumi pressed her lips into a thin line. Of course Miyeong would be weird about appa, that was nearly the only thing that could make today worse.
"We've come to bring her and our other trainees home, but before we leave I'd love to get to know you a little better!" She smiled up at appa, and the absolute lack of recognition made Rumi want to cackle.
"So who might you be?" Miyeong continued. "Rumi's mentioned your shop but she didn't tell us how adorable it is. Can we come in?"
"Kang Byeong-Ho, and thank you. I've devoted many years to its development and I'm very proud of it." He pointedly looked over at the door. "It looks like I'll be needing to replace a pane of glass on my front door though."
"Hahaha, well. Rumi-ya wasn't answering the door and we were understandably a little worried about her. Staying here by herself with an older man, you know how talk can be."
Appa gave Miyeong a bemused look. "I think you might have misheard me. My name is Kang Byeong-Ho. Rumi-ya is my daughter."
"Well!" Miyeong blinked rapidly. "Rumi! You could have just told us he was your father! You were so mysterious about the whole thing, of course we were going to be suspicious." Miyeong briefly narrowed her eyes at Rumi before looking back to appa. "And it's so nice to finally meet you Byeong-Ho-nim! If you'd like to talk about your daughter's trainee progress I'm sure we can make time to chat before we take the girls back to Jeju."
Rumi and Chesa said, at the same time. "I'm not going back.", "She's not coming back."
Miyeong made a startled noise. "Chesa, we talked about this. Rumi has been a little bit of a difficult student, but she's not dangerous. I'm sure we can have a reasonable discussion about this inside."
Byeong-Ho stepped slightly to the side, and with great reluctance Rumi followed him.
"Okay, you're inside. You can see we're all fine." Rumi started pushing the door closed again. "Now you can go back to the hanok, and let us enjoy the remainder of our seollal in peace. Goodbye, so nice for you to drop in."
Miyeong sighed. "You see, Byeong-Ho-nim? She's very obstinate."
"Mm. Rumi-ya has a strong personality, yes. But I've never had reason to doubt her judgement." He looked coolly at Miyeong and Chesa. "She feels very strongly about spending time at home with me, and bonding with her fellow trainees. Surely you have no objections to the girls spending time together with adult supervision?"
"I agree that Kang Rumi should stay here with you." Chesa's jaw tightened. "She seems to have been stable with you all this time, but I strongly disapprove of training her any further. She's enough of a danger to Mira and Zoey as it is."
Rumi didn't shrink back at all. She had nothing to be afraid of. Chesa had no proof. She could barely feel appa's hand on her shoulder, pulling her deeper into the flower shop.
"Chesa what are you doing?" Miyeong hissed. "Why are you are being so difficult about this?"
"You cannot seriously be telling me that you don't recognize this man. He is obviously related to Kang Celine."
Miyeong went white as a ghost. "What? No."
"You know what that makes it, this so-called Kang Rumi."
Rumi desperately wanted to laugh right in Miyeong's face, but she was frozen by "it." A nervous wisp of a laugh escaped her. They knew they knew how could they know she had been SO CAREFUL.
"You don't know that!" Miyeong snapped. "You don't know that. You don't. They're gone Chesa. They're both gone."
"Uh." Zoey interjected. "Who is gone?" She paused. "Also, rude? Byeong-Ho-nim is right here, and Rumi uses she/her pronouns, not it/its."
Rumi stifled her laughter, which was maybe trending toward hysterical. This couldn't be happening. It was such a stupid way to be exposed. Her patterns had never really hurt before, but her skin felt hot and tight in a way she struggled not to react to. Like the patterns (small! so concealable that no one even looked twice at them in school!) were actively writhing around under her skin.
Chesa didn't even have any proof she was just guessing.
Chesa rounded on Zoey. "You don't even recognize what this creature is? After all your training? How could you possibly care what pronouns it uses?" Chesa clenched and unclenched her hands. "Don't you understand how much danger caring about it puts you in?"
"She is our friend Chesa-seonsaengnim." Zoey looked confused and hurt. "I know you guys feel betrayed or whatever, but caring about people is kindof a normal danger?"
"Chesa stop, she isn't. She can't be." Miyeong grabbed Chesa's sleeve and tried to turn Chesa to look at her. "You're seeing demons where there aren't any. Please. Celine is dead, the baby is dead."
Mira's brows pinched in confusion, stepping forward to stand next to Rumi. "Wait, why would his baby be dead?"
Chesa pulled away from Miyeong. "How am I the only one who remembers our actual job? This thing," gesturing at Rumi, "is beguiling you idiots. It is a demon and we kill demons so that they don't kill real people."
She stared at Rumi. "I was nearly content to leave you under the care of a jailer, since this man seems to have kept your condition from worsening. But I see the rot is already too deep." And then Chesa all but lunged at Rumi. Before Rumi even finished bracing to roll away, Mira had slid in front of her, catching the shorter woman's hands.
Chesa had some strength (and a lot of training) on Mira, but size does count when you're mostly playing keep away.
Chesa pulled away from Mira and turned to look at Zoey. "Demons don't have friends, Sohee-ssi. They have targets."
Rumi watched Chesa and Miyeong and Zoey argue back and forth about her with a sense of growing dissociation. Was she Celine's baby? Appa called her aegi all the time, but appa hadn't given birth to her. But appa was the one who had quietly placed himself between Chesa and Rumi, not Miyeong. The way he'd always been putting himself between her and Them. If she was anyone's at all it was appa's, right? And only appa's? And Miyeong didn't have any claim on her at all?
"Well then she's not a demon, is she!" Zoey's eyes were wide and wet, and for the first time since Rumi had met her she looked really and truly angry.
Mira nodded, her eyes bright. "Rumi's not a demon, Chesa-seonsaengnim. She's a hunter just like us."
Rumi poured every last bit of her frayed nerves into a cocky smile. "I think I would know if I was a demon." And she wasn't, mostly. She wasn't unnatural, she just needed to be more careful than other people. "I'd, you know, have the claws and stuff." She tensed her hands like a cat with it's claws out, and she knew they would just look like fingers.
Byeong-Ho cleared his throat. "Celine isn't dead, exactly."
Okay, so we know that eldritch Celine from the au that shall not be named is an eldritch being.
But.. hypothetically, IF she were ever to be tipsy or drunk (and also idk much alcohol you need to give a being of void to be even the slightest bit tipsy), how would she act? Like would she still be normal or literally turn into a puddle of shadow with lots of eyes blinking lazily while complaining that Miyeong should be with her and not at work to Dum-Dum (aka Third)?
An eldritch being cant exactly get tipsy/drunk by drinking alcohol. Consuming pure chaos on the other hand. That's the equivalent of an alcohol for an eldritch horror.
[Pure chaos, at least in this universe just for funsies, happens when a star is on the verge of explosion and the inhabitants are in a state of despair and chaos.]
Anyway, eldritch Celine turns into an amorphous blob or a massive snake-like shape with Its many eyes. She cant maintain her vessel when she's tipsy/drunk. She's like a sluggish/sleepy drunk.
Miyeong trying to pick her up and Celine just drips on the floor, the many eyes blinking lazily. An eldritch horror pancake.
Every time people write huntrix completely cut ties with Celine and hating her without any second thoughts after the movie something in me dies.
So, you're telling me that Zoey wouldn't understand how it feels to be torn between opposite sides that demand different things from you and are making you choose while you just cannot choose because these things are equally parts of you and you cannot bring yourself to tear one of them away completely?
You're telling me Mira wouldn't understand how it feels when the whole world you knew is breaking around you and you have to choose a path you never considered you'd have to be on or to be forced on a role you have never meant to perform? That she wouldn't understand how much things you can fuck up like this?
You're telling me Rumi wouldn't understand what it's like to try and keep things under control when this control is slipping between your fingers and you're making every stupid decision possible to hold onto this control as long as you can?
You're telling me they will be able to understand fucking demons making deals for their own benefit when pressed to the edge but wouldn't understand a woman who did everything to protect people of the world making mistakes along the way?
Like I'll keep bringing this up because people keep not understanding that Koreans (East Asians in general) have different expectations and family relationships than white people living in the US/Canada.
It just tells me that people don't want to bother with learning about other cultures.
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