Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Rumi has always been able to find peace when she’s gardening.

It’s an old habit, and an even older memory—kneeling side by side with Celine in the dirt, weeding and pruning as they’d tended graves together. She’d liked the balance of it: the symmetry of honoring the dead by encouraging the living; how the discipline and diligence of routine could result in something so vibrantly untamed. Celine’s calm instructions delivered amidst an otherwise comfortable silence had been utterly practical, about sunlight and water and soil, but the larger lessons Rumi had taken away from those long afternoons stay with her still. How to shoulder the weight of responsibility, and the importance of following the rules. How to take pride in her successes, and see the through-lines between her own efforts and the growth that may follow… however long it sometimes takes.

It’s a relief, to be able to put this in the column of things that still work for her. That feel like her. Rumi’s learning to love her new life post-exposure, she is, but loving the parts of her everyone’s actually seeing? That’s… harder. Especially when she still—when she doesn’t—when there’s not even enough there for her to have conviction about it, yet. Half the time, she feels like a total fraud. As if she’s making herself up as she goes along, just so she’ll have an answer when she’s asked to state a preference or establish a boundary.

It’s like… she’s hidden so much of herself for so many years that even she can’t be sure where she ends and the lies begin. She might be the the last person to know which parts of her are really Rumi and which parts are Celine; which parts are her mother and which parts are Celine’s vision of her mother; which parts are Zoey and which parts are Mira. Not to mention the parts of her the label invented so the fans would like her; the parts of her she invented so the girls would like her—

“Ow!” she exclaims as a sharp, sudden pain pierces the lobe of her ear. “Did you just bite me?!”

Three pairs of glowing eyes stare coolly back at her, unfazed; until this moment the magpie—whom she’s started to think of as Sussie, because of the way he’s always side-eying her—had been perched calmly on her shoulder as she’d worked. But apparently, going by his expression, she was thinking too loud or something. She cranes her neck and pouts for backup: “Are you just gonna lie there while I’m being assaulted like this?”

The tiger (Derpy; self-explanatory) takes a good ten seconds to reluctantly tear his attention away from the trowel he’s been pawing at—marching the miniature shovel methodically (if haphazardly) across her balcony by repeated nudges on its curved metal scoop, sending it wobbling back and forth instead of straight ahead—to blink at her vacantly. “Rrr?” he rumbles, a questioning purr from deep in his chest.

She rolls her eyes, and pretends she’s not smiling. “Never mind.”

(It’s nice, having pets—though she’s not sure if that’s really the word for it when her new companions are some kind of sentient spiritfolk, for one thing, and mostly act like they’re the ones who adopted her, for another.

The closest she ever came before this was the regal white-furred tomcat that had shared Celine’s compound with them, growing up… but he’d been so fiercely independent and unnervingly handsome that she’d felt like she was bothering him every time she’d made a bid for his attention, and had eventually stopped trying. Her memories of him mostly consist of admiring him from afar, mixed with a vague jealousy of his effortless grace—and of how easily he could curl up anywhere, including the smallest crevices of the home’s foundation. She’d wanted that more than anything, looking back on it now. A place where she could just fit.

…It’s probably not, like, awesome, that that’s maybe the most ‘Rumi’ thing she’s sure of so far.)

She’s in the middle of debating whether the baby Japanese maple she impulse-bought a few months ago is growing fast enough to already be worth repotting when she hears a distant knock on her bedroom door.

“Rumi?” Zoey ventures, her tone kept carefully neutral. “We don’t want to push or anything, but you’ve been in there for a few hours now and we’re a little worried you’re… well. Y’know.”

She does know, whether Zoey actually says the word out loud or not. After all, the accusation’s been haunting her for the entirety of their relationship—it having taken maybe three days of acquaintance before Zoey’d cottoned on to the way Rumi would ask for privacy, or a little distance, or time to be alone and think, and coined a term for the behavior that she and Mira have teased Rumi with relentlessly ever since:

Ruminating.

She knows it’s not that bad as inside jokes go; knows they’ve never said it with malice, and that she should be grateful for the privilege of having friends who even care enough to notice her less-than-appealing quirks, or to miss her when she’s made excuses. She also knows she wouldn’t actually feel any better about it if they accused her of brooding, or isolating herself, or crashing out, instead of sticking with the cutesy pun. But the way it’s let them tie up her absences so tidily in her name, like the frequent lack of her was all of her… has sometimes hit uncomfortably close to home.

(“Can we just drop it?” she’d tried once, years ago, letting her voice lapse into a rare whine. “It’s a funny joke, I get it, but can we move on? I mean it’s not like we go around saying…”—she’d flailed, then, struggling to come up with anything clever off the top of her head—“…that, I dunno, everything Mira does is miraculous—”

“It is and you should,” Mira drawled without missing a beat, not even bothering to look up from her phone.

Zoey rewarded that with a high five—which Mira also managed to return without so much as a glance—then shrugged off Rumi’s pleas with a playful shrug. “Maybe we’ll stop saying if if you stop doing it. Quit navel-gazing and come to the bathhouse with us!”

And so one tired argument had circled into another, and Rumi’d eventually learned to just live with it.)

“I’m just gardening,” Rumi says, raising her voice so it will carry across her bedroom and through the thick wood of her door. Buying herself a little more time.

Because—they want her to talk about everything. The girls. Of course they want her to talk about it. Which—fair! Obviously! It’s probably the right thing, the healthy thing, to get it out all there, and… even if it weren’t, they more than deserve to know. And they’ve been amazing about it up til now, not pressing too hard even though she’s sure the curiosity must be killing them.

Unfortunately, Rumi has no idea how to talk about this. Because she’s never fucking talked about this. And the only person, literally the only person who ever made her feel like it was remotely safe or worth it to try talking about it is—

Dead.

Gone.

Well. A big part of what they want to talk about, probably. Or maybe why they want to talk about it? Or—

(She takes a deep breath, and does her best to shove all her suppressed thoughts about Jinu back into the mental box she’s long since taken to calling Future Me’s Problem, Hopefully Never.)

The point is, talking’s not—the problem isn’t whether or not she wants to. The problem is forcing all the chaos that’s crowding her brain and sticking in her throat and even lighting up her skin, now, into anything vaguely resembling Actual Words instead of a paralyzing slurry of internalized panic-anguish-shame-regret.

And Rumi doesn’t know where to start.

“Well, can gardening be a spectator sport?” Zoey asks. “We can be super quiet about it. Like golf. Or—”

“We just don’t want you to be alone in there, is all,” Mira cuts in, saving Zoey from torturing the metaphor any further. “It doesn’t have to be a whole big thing if you’re not ready.”

She’ll feel awful if she sends them away. But Derpy’s still batting at her trowel like he can make it walk if he tries hard enough, and Sussie shows no signs of wanting to get off of her, and—

Wait.

Actually?

Maybe this is perfect.

Maybe this can be the first secret she stops keeping. And maybe, once she’s broken the seal, the others will come easier with practice.

Bracing herself, Rumi slips off her work gloves and goes back inside, tilting her neck until it pops to ease the ache that’s built up in her shoulders. Sussie flutters his wings, annoyed at the intrusion, but doesn’t leave his perch.

“I, um. I actually already have company. Do you want to meet them?”

“Wait, you have people in there? Who?! If you’d told us we would’ve—”

Rumi opens her door, and swallows a charmed grin at the way Zoey’s jaw drops, the rest of her sentence forgotten as she gets a solid eyeful of the six-eyed, gat-wearing magpie and giant glowing blue tiger taking up residence in Rumi’s bedroom.

“—Whaaaaaaaaaaat?” is what she says instead, pitch tilting higher and giddier with every second she holds onto the vowel.

“Okay, explain,” Mira demands, a little too breathlessly to pull off the no-nonsense tone she’d been aiming for.

Rumi grimaces. “I’m not sure if I can, to be honest. They were Jinu’s. And now they’re… here. They just kind of hang out.”

Zoey’s practically vibrating in place. “RUMI. I need you to be so real with me right now. Is he nice? Can I pet him? Can I pet him canIpethimcanIpethim—”

“Yeah, go for it.”

Zoey moves like she’s been shot from a cannon, launching herself over Rumi’s bed to get to the balcony door that much faster. Rumi watches her go fondly, only to feel her heart to drop when she turns back around and Mira won’t look at her.

…only then she realizes it’s not that Mira’s avoiding her gaze, it’s that Mira’s trying to win a staring contest with the bird. Because of course she is. It takes effort, but Rumi’s able to (mostly) convert her snort of laughter to something that passes for clearing her throat. Mira jolts, then straightens her posture and gives Rumi her full attention.

“How are they here?” she asks—not aggressive, but full of a quiet wonder. “Does this mean we didn’t actually seal the—?”

“I don’t think they’re demons,” Rumi interrupts. Across the room, they watch as Zoey tries to goad Derpy into play-wrestling with her, but she’s such a slip of a thing and he’s such a dim immovable object her efforts mostly consist of her trying to get him to notice she’s climbing all over him. “I think they’re… something else. I’ve seen them go right through the Honmoon.”

“They tear the—?”

“No, not tear it—go through it. Like it’s a cage with bars too big for them. Like the rules don’t apply.”

“Whoa,” Mira murmurs, genuinely taken aback. Then: “Have you asked Celine? About what they might be? I mean, they look like…”

Rumi knows exactly what they look like—the ink wash figures of the hojakdo minhwa that hangs proudly in the front hall at Celine’s. But she’s been trying not to think about it, because then she thinks back to all the dinners that painting watched over, all the conversations it overheard, the expectations and the failures, and suddenly, the eye contact Rumi’d fought so hard for feels too difficult to keep. Her gaze falls to the floor. “I, um. I actually haven’t talked to Celine at all, yet. Since…” She clears her throat. “…Yeah.”

She bites her lip as tears start to gather at the corners of her eyes. Before any can fall, she feels the soft pressure of a curled knuckle gently lifting her chin up, and a blurry Mira fills her vision. Mira’s voice tender as she pleads, “Will you talk to us?”

So Rumi does.

They join her on the bed—Zoey’s attention easier to keep once the spirit animals fade back into the Honmoon, apparently deeming their work done for the time being—and she starts from the beginning. Doing her best to explain her origins; her patterns.

“Oh my gosh, that makes so much more sense than anything we were thinking,” Zoey blurts, looking both halfway to devastated and unspeakably relieved. “I mean, we couldn’t figure it out—what the heck would you trade your soul to Gwi-Ma for when we already literally have everything? And also no offense, but like. Remember that one time, right before our debut, when there was a spider in the studio and Bobby freaked out and squished it before any of us could set it free?”

Rumi jumps to interject, because she does, and the recollection is mortifying. “Okay, that had been a long day, and we were all past our limit at that point—”

“You cried. You may be half-demon, Rumi, but you don’t have an evil bone in your body. It just didn’t track.”

It’s… a little embarrassing, how much Rumi apparently needed to hear that. Her lower lip wobbles, and she holds out a hand; Zoey grabs for it instantly and squeezes it tight.

On her other side, Mira looks pensive. Fretful. “So, your parents were…?”

“Totally star-crossed, duh! Weren’t you listening? It’s like something out of a K-drama,” Zoey says, only for Mira’s implication to visibly sink in about three seconds later. Zoey’s eyes widen. “Oh, shit. Rumi—”

“I don’t know,” Rumi croaks, voice coming out hoarse. “I never asked. Celine never said.”

She’d never asked precisely because Celine never said—because what else could the truth be but awful, if someone as stoic as Celine wouldn’t admit to it? Never in her life had Rumi imagined the circumstances of her conception as anything other than coercive at best and outright traumatic at worst…

…until she met Jinu, and dared—for the first time—to hope. About a lot of things, plenty of more important things, but. Also about that thing in particular. In the smallest corner of her heart. That maybe her father might have been half as good a man, or had wanted to try half as hard; that maybe her mother might have liked him even half as much as Rumi liked Jinu.

(Which—that’s a train of thought she’s gonna shut down right now, actually. She’s confused enough about how to define her feelings towards Jinu already; she can’t afford to start thinking of him as her Dad-coded on top of everything else. Nope! Not going there.)

“Can we talk about something else, please?” Rumi asks in a small voice, and Zoey and Mira politely pretend not to notice the way her patterns have started flickering a dejected lilac.

They let her steer the conversation towards safer waters, to the extent that any exist. It’s pretty clear they’re furious with Celine and trying very hard not to show it until Rumi’s done speaking, which she appreciates—but the longer she talks, the more obvious it is to all of them that there’s still so much she can’t bring herself to say. She steadfastly refuses to blame anyone but herself for how things happened, which leaves a lot of holes in the narrative. Celine-shaped holes, yes…

…but also Jinu-shaped holes. Giant ones.

It’s Zoey who’s finally brave enough to bring it up.

“I’m sorry, Rumi, but I have to ask. You said you were working with him—”

“You said I was working with him,” Rumi corrects, knee-jerk, before snapping her mouth shut. It’s the last thing she wants to think about—that awful conversation with them at the Idol Awards, when everything finally broke—but: “I said I was using him.” The memory boils like acid beneath her skin, making her patterns flare once more.

Mira places her palm on Rumi’s thigh. It’s grounding (despite the way it makes Rumi’s heart beat faster), but the gesture can only do so much to soften the sting as she bluntly asks, “Were you?”

“I—I tried to. I wanted to.”

“I don’t believe you,” Zoey cuts in, before she can get any further. Which—rude, but also wonderful, and Rumi’s stomach flip-flops. “That doesn’t sound like the Rumi I know.”

Well at least one of us has met her, because I sure haven’t, Rumi can’t help but think. “Zoey, we just established I’ve been lying to you for years.”

“About what you are, maybe, sure. But not who.”

But that’s exactly what Rumi means. Who she is, at the end of the day, is a Hunter. So she had to be using him. Because if she wasn’t—if she didn’t do it for her own gain in their war against Gwi-Ma, or at least a mutual assurance of success, then—

Then that means she’d believed in him. And that’s so much worse. Isn’t it?

“You don’t understand,” Rumi mumbles.

Mira’s gaze never wavers. “Then help us understand.”

“Where you guys, like, a thing, or…?”

Rumi can barely get her mouth to work fast enough. “Wh—no. Of course not!”

“But you liked him.” Mira doesn’t say it like a question.

“No.”

“You don’t have to deny it, it’s okay if—”

“It’s not okay!” she spits, because it isn’t. It’s the opposite of okay, because he was evil, and now he’s dead, and— “It will never be okay!” Because none of it will ever be fixed, now. It’s just gonna be this, broken and stupid and unfinished, forever, and she doesn’t know how to explain it when it’s sharp and it’s wrong and tastes like ash in her mouth, and she can’t get the words past her too-big teeth, and—

Her mouth.

Her teeth.

“Rumi, hey. Breathe. Look at me.”

Mira is crisper than she should be when Rumi guiltily glances up, somehow just as in-focus as everything behind her is, and over Mira’s shoulder Rumi can see her own reflection in her vanity mirror. Her canines, elongated to wicked fangs. Her patterns, back to to the same dark, awful purple she’s been hiding her whole life, shameful and sickly as bruises. Her left eye, preternaturally glowing and golden.

She squeezes her eyes shut, blocking out the sight. “S-sorry—”

“I said look at me.”

Rumi knows better than to argue with that tone. She sucks in a breath and blinks her eyes open, shoulders slumping in relief when her depth perception is back to what it should be, this time.

Human. Normal.

And Mira—

Mira doesn’t seem frightened. That wide-eyed look of horror and betrayal she’d borne the first time she saw Rumi like this is nowhere to be found. She looks—intense, sure, and maybe a little ticked off, but in the way Mira always does when she can’t personally cow Rumi’s doubts into submission. Not mad at Rumi, but mad at Rumi’s brain. Like they’re somehow different things.

(Maybe they are. Maybe that’s part of the problem.)

She says: “We are not gonna fumble our second chance with you. Okay? So just—please. Trust that we wouldn’t ask you the questions if we didn’t want to know the answers. Even if you think they’re ugly.” A pause. Then: “Maybe especially then.”

Zoey backs her up, scooting closer to Rumi until their shoulders can bump together. “What she said. You’re not gonna scare us off, and you’re not gonna lose us. So whatever it is you’re afraid of… we can face it together.” Her eyes, so earnest and caring, narrow as she becomes serious. “But first you have to let us.”

“I’ll try. I mean—I’m trying. It’s just… I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“We don’t want you to say anything; it’s not a test. We just want the truth.”

Rumi swallows, and nods.

But she still can’t make the words come.

(It’s like trying to wrest headphones out of tangled cables in a junk drawer—no matter how hard she tries to pull a single thread, she can’t find a way to do it without bringing everything along with it. The whole gnarled, impenetrable mess.

Its been like this since she was a child, now that she thinks about it. “Golden” wasn’t the first time her voice left her—just the first time singing wasn’t a way around the blockage that’s somehow always lodged in her throat.)

“How about this,” Zoey says, taking Rumi’s hand and pulling it gently into her lap, so she has the freedom to idly flex and manipulate Rumi’s fingers with her own as they talk. Rumi’s not sure which one of them it’s meant to soothe more, but you won’t hear her arguing. “Let’s start simple. At the beginning. What did you like about him?”

“Um, nothing?” Rumi scoffs—barely-suppressed hysteria thinning out her voice into a shrill mockery of laughter. “Honestly, nothing. I’ve never met anyone who pissed me off like he did. I hated him at first.”

Mira rolls her eyes, like Rumi’s being contrary on purpose instead of fighting for her life to give them what they’re looking for. “Okay, but that was at first. What about at the end?”

Rumi can’t help it; upon hearing ‘the end’ it’s like her mind flashes her abruptly—violently—to the stage at Namsan Tower. Standing there frozen and useless as Jinu’s edges had burned away to drifting embers, consumed by Gwi-Ma’s fire. A sob rips itself from her throat. “I-I can’t—I don’t—”

Zoey squeezes their entangled fingers, bringing her back to the present. “Easy. Okay. We’ll try a different way. What did he like about you?”

“I have no idea. He didn’t like me either, it wasn’t like that. He just… knew me.”

Mira frowns, visibly attempting to suppress the way the insinuation has offended her. “We know you.”

“No, I know, it’s just—”

Rumi has no idea how to explain this—the allure he’d posed for her, the difference, the nuance. She’s known how it feels to have soulmates since she was fifteen years old, when the pull of the Honmoon finally brought Mira and Zoey to Sunlight Entertainment and it was like everything that had felt empty and half-baked inside Rumi suddenly went click. But she’s never known how to be one back; not when she couldn’t share all of herself.

So yes, the girls know her. They know everything about her… yet until recently, had known nothing at all.

Whereas Jinu had known nothing, but knew everything about what mattered most. Without her having to admit a word. She didn’t have to try, she didn’t have to risk. He was just—there already. Like a cheat code.

Zoey and Mira have always been her cosmic complements: the higher and lower harmonies that form a perfect triad with her every time they’re in sync. The warmest chord she’s ever heard—intended, euphonious, side by side by side. Inyeon.

Jinu wasn’t like that. He… he was her, just mirrored back. Her dark reflection, an octave down.

The first person she’d ever met in her life who’d rhymed.

“Hey, it’s okay, I get it,” Zoey says, when it’s been almost a full minute and Rumi still hasn’t managed to articulate a single thing. “I still can’t talk about my first crush without getting all tongue-tied.”

“Who, the fox version of Robin Hood?”

“Shut up, Mira, I told you that in confidence—!”

The two start pushing at each other, then grab pillows from the head of Rumi’s bed to use as weapons, and Rumi lets their antics wash over her like a balm.

First crush would be easy. She got that out of the way a long time ago—at least, as much as you can call anything out of the way when it’s still happening, actively, and has only gotten more intense with time.

Jinu was… something else. Both better and worse, much closer and much farther away. He’d made her blood boil and her heart race and her soul sing, but how’s she supposed to put a label on that when it’s already over before it ever really began? She—

A pillow to the face halts the momentum of her thoughts.

“Hey! Technical foul! Rumi’s out of bounds!” Zoey objects, all but shoving herself into Rumi’s lap as a somewhat-tardy (but adorably gallant) human shield from Mira’s onslaught. She turns in place, wide-eyed. “You okay?”

Rumi gapes, fish-mouthed, as her brain tries to catch up to the moment. That was—she can’t—

Seriously?

Overwhelmed—overjoyed—Rumi bursts into laughter. The girls share an uncertain look, then tentatively begin to chuckle along with her—their expressions evolving from nervousness to a smug sort of glee, as if to say oh, have you finally noticed we’re trying to cheer you up? Good. Welcome to our level.

“My fault, Mira,” Rumi forgives, through lingering giggles. “Sorry. I should know better than to start Ruminating in the middle of a pillow fight.”

It’s the first time she’s ever called it that out loud, and she can tell they’re not sure how to take it. Which—fair. Her particular brand of self-deprecation doesn’t generally lean comedy, in their experience. Zoey’s grin turns hesitant and soft: “You don’t have to apologize for being you.”

“No, I mean—I want to talk about this stuff, and not just get caught up in my head about it. I promise I do. I just don’t know how.”

“I wish I knew how to help you,” Zoey sighs, climbing off her lap to give her space. (Rumi misses her immediately, but—you can’t just ask someone to keep crushing you like a weighted blanket, right? That would be weird.) “‘Just say stuff’ is kinda my default; I don’t know how to like—be your coach about it. Other than to keep asking questions until one feels like it makes sense.”

Just say stuff.

Rumi can do that.

Rumi can… probably figure out how to do that.

“Jinu was—he made me feel—” Nope, that’s not gonna do it. Rumi stops, and tries again. “He was so weird. I think that was what bothered me about him most, when we were getting to know each other. I wanted him to be this clear-cut villain, I didn’t want to see any redeeming qualities, but then he’d whine at me for being late or like, get legitimately choked up about some kid’s fan art, and he was just… a person. I think that’s why it hurt so much, when…”

Mira reaches for her after she trails off, grabbing the same hand Zoey had been playing with before. “It doesn’t have to make sense. You can miss him and be mad at him at the same time. That’s allowed.”

And Rumi knows how hard Mira fought for that wisdom, knows how torn up Mira still feels sometimes about going no-contact with her parents and brother, but in this moment all she can really think is: good.

Good, because Rumi is furious with him.

She’s still not sure if she really has room to be, no matter what Mira says. She’s done plenty of her own betrayals, and told plenty of her own lies. Maybe she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. But for him to take every vulnerable, aching truth she’d ever offered him and then just—pass it all on to Gwi-Ma, hand it over like he was so happy to do with their fans, with all of Seoul, like it didn’t matter to him that those were people—

It’s awful. He was awful. Unforgivable. One act of sacrifice can’t change all that.

But… there was so much more good in him than just one final act of sacrifice. So much more of him, period—not even good or bad but just… specific. Unique.

(Human.)

He’s as evil a creature as she could ever imagine—a predator, an unrepentant demon, a killer whose idea of a just reward was of no longer being haunted by the few remaining dregs of his guilty conscience. But he was also just… Jinu. Grumpy and particular, tender and goofy. The kind of person who easily blushed at the bawdy insinuations of old ladies; who really listened when other people talked; who’d do things like make a very small hat for a very large tiger and then get huffy and offended when it didn’t work out.

She has no idea how she feels about him. If she’d loved him in even the smallest way, or if she could have learned to with time. But she knows he was lovable. Knows it wasn’t impossible.

And if it could be true for someone as far-gone as him, well.

Maybe it’s not so impossible for her, after all.

(Maybe she’d needed someone like him in her life, to show her that.)

“…Rumi?”

Ugh, because apparently she’ll never get anywhere on her own, because she’s still constantly stuck in her own head!

“I want to go to the bathhouse with you,” she blurts, her brain finally doing something adjacent to useful and supplying her an intimacy she’s denied them until now. (Maybe not a relevant intimacy, but. Baby steps. She’ll take it.) “Both of you. Tomorrow. If… the offer still stands?”

Zoey screams. Straight-up shrieks in excitement, hands flailing in the air like she’s a fan who’s just spotted them at the airport before she tackles Rumi onto the bed.

Mira, on the other hand, smirks with quiet satisfaction. “Yeah, I think we can make that happen.”

Rumi doesn’t really mange to say much more after that; certainly not anything of consequence. But they spend the whole night talking to her anyway—eventually falling asleep like that, in a tangled pile together atop her bedsheets.

It had never occurred to her before, to think of Gwi-Ma as bright.

Such a thought seemed sacrilege—associating light with the demon king. He should be a creature of darkness; of shadow and ooze; of mystery and silence and uncertainty.

But up there on stage, he roars, and burns, and it is only now—broken and exposed, staring down a hungry god—that Rumi realizes this isn’t the first time she’s seen it. Him. That she knows this particular ominous pink light, and knows it well. She’s seen it a thousand times before: every time the veil stretched thin enough to tear and a horde poured through; every time she’d lost control and something feral ripped itself out of her, rattling the foundations of her universe.

She’d thought it was his atmosphere. The air of his dimension. His essence.

Now she sees it’s him.

Jinu had warned her, about what it might do to her to hear his voice. How he wielded shame like knives and shackles both, hurting his subjects while binding them ever more tightly to him.

You think you can fix the world? You can’t even fix yourself. And now everyone finally sees you for what you really are.

She blocks him out. She argues back. She takes a stand, and tries to embody the hero she’s always aimed to be.

And none of it makes a difference, because in the end she’s still just Rumi.

Too weak. Too selfish. Always needing to take from others instead of getting by on her own, just like her heritage demands, and it’s costing her everything. It’s costing him, everything—

“Rumi, wake UP!”

Rumi’s eyes slam open as she sucks in a drowned gasp for air. “Jinu—!”

Her gaze whips wildly around the room as her lungs heave, every detail crystal clear to her despite the darkness: the snarl of blankets she’s kicked into an inescapable tangle. The jagged claw marks she’s torn into the sheets, her freshly-grown talons caught deep in the mattress itself. The furrowed lines of concern etched onto Mira and Zoey’s faces as they reach to brush the tear tracks from her flushed and sodden cheeks.

“It was just a dream—”

“You were screaming—”

“Don’t touch me,” Rumi pants, scrambling back from their gentle hands. “I can’t control it, please!”

“Rumi—”

“I said stay back!” the demon cries, the infernal reverberations that suddenly augment her voice flooding the Honmoon with Gwi-Ma’s fury. Raking the magenta coruscations of his wrath violently across the ley lines. “I don’t want to hurt you, too, I—”

The rest of her sentence dies on her tongue as, for the first time, she watches his angry fuchsia somehow get absorbed, then released—the flames ebbing into a tranquil gold before disappearing entirely, instead of ricocheting endlessly outwards like they always have before. As if no harm had been done. As the Honmoon itself is saying nice try, dongsaeng; I know better, now. You don’t scare me. I know who you are.

“Holy shit,” Mira breathes, confirming the others saw it, too.

(Or maybe just confirming the obvious—maybe it’s just Rumi she’s reacting to, half-transformed and trembling. Not dangerous to the Honmoon anymore, perhaps, but still dangerous to them. Far too sharp for human comforts; much too corrupted to merit trust.)

“You’re not gonna hurt us, too,” Zoey says, keeping her voice low and deliberate. The way you’d talk to an injured animal. “I know these are some really high thread count sheets, but we’re made of stronger stuff than that. Promise.”

That is not what she’d meant. Who she’d meant. Not at all.

“I damned him,” she chokes.

Zoey’s brow knits in confusion; her eyes flick to Mira, do you know what she’s talking about?

Mira takes her best guess: “Nobody hurt Jinu but Gwi-Ma. He made a choice—”

“I ate his soul!” Rumi wails. “I did exactly what demons do, I—”

“Whoa, no. Hang on. What? No. That is not what happened,” Zoey counters, hands flapping as if to physically bat away Rumi’s negative thoughts. “If it were, it just would have made Gwi-Ma stronger. You know that.”

“It was the Honmoon,” Mira agrees. “We felt it, too. The fans loaned us their spirits; gave us a power-up. Jinu did the same.”

But he didn’t. Jinu didn’t loan her anything—a loan’s not a loan if you’re not alive to take it back.

Which means she’s kept it.

“Rumi, talk to us,” Zoey begs.

What is there to say?

I didn’t save him.

I could have saved him.

I’ll never know, because he didn’t even let me try.

And I robbed him of everything for his trouble.

“You’re right,” she’s able to make herself rasp. “I know you’re right. I just…”

“You’re ‘just’ exhausted,” Mira finishes curtly—an exasperated accusation to the untrained ear, but pure compassion to anyone fluent in Mira. The care in it opens a crack in Rumi’s chest; she wonders if a new pattern would be there, if she looked. Mira’s kindness breaking her open and overwriting her fears. It’s so much more than Rumi could ever repay; all she can do is stare back in awe, hoping to—

Wait.

“Mira, your eyes!”

“My eyes?” she repeats, amused in a way that can only mean one of Rumi’s is probably still glowing, but—whatever, that’s not important. What’s important is—

“You fell asleep with your contacts in!”

Mira’s lips twitch, suppressed laughter infusing her voice as she drawls, “That’s what you’re worried about right now?”

“You could get an infection! Or scratch your cornea! Or—”

“Okay, okay. Really not that big a deal, but I’ll go take them out. Now will you try and get some rest?”

“I…”

Rumi considers.

Sniffles.

Nods.

As Mira departs, Zoey leans back against the pillows and opens her arms. “C’mere,” she invites, only to go on a face journey as a better idea occurs to her in real time. “Actually, wait—can I take your braid out? You’ve been crying; you’ll get a migraine.”

It’ll also be a nightmare to deal with the the bird’s nest it will have become by morning, but—this is a temptation Rumi’s not strong enough to deny herself. “Yeah, okay. If you don’t mind.”

Zoey rolls her eyes, like Rumi’s said something ridiculous. “I don’t mind.”

So they reorient—Rumi curling up to rest her head in Zoey’s lap, with Mira eventually sliding in behind her to take big spoon duty once she returns. Zoey hums as she works and Mira succumbs to it first, the exhalations from her nose turning metronome-steady where they caress Rumi’s neck as she drops off into sleep. Rumi doesn’t dare follow, though; she doesn’t want to miss this, not a second of this feeling. The drowsy, perfect comfort of being cared for. Even when the plait’s finally released, Zoey’s hands stay buried in her thick tresses, scratching soothingly at Rumi’s scalp while the melody continues. It’s nearly half an hour before Zoey finally quiets and her fingers go still as she, too, nods off.

Rumi’s heart throbs. Torn between gratitude at their love for her, and despair in being so undeserving of it. For being given so much and still greedily wishing for more. For missing what she can’t have.

Because the thing is, she knows they’re probably right about Jinu’s soul—no matter what her doubts may whisper at the back of her mind. And not just because she sees the logic in their words; she knows because Jinu told her.

She’d asked him about it herself.

She squeezes her eyes shut, and tries to lose herself in the memory:

The night is chilly around them, brisk breeze blowing a bit too often to be comfortable, but it’s been twenty minutes since their conversation technically ended and neither of them has made a move to get off the hanok roof they’ve settled on and go home. No need; not when they’ve got his dozing tiger between them for warmth. Rumi knows why she hasn’t left—knows how stifling the guilt feels with her girls so close yet still so far from the truth—but Jinu…

…she has no idea what ‘home’ means to Jinu. Whether the Saja Boys’ farce of a career means he, too, has a penthouse somewhere he’s avoiding, or if the only place he has to return to is the other side of the Honmoon.

Below.

The thought makes her shiver.

“Oh. Cold?” Jinu asks, already moving to shrug out of his jacket like some chivalrous grandpa before he’s even finished the question, let alone waited for an answer. “Here, you can—”

“It’s fine,” she says, leaning in closer to the tiger. “I’m fine.” The warmth it gives off isn’t quite the familiar temperature of body heat—tingling instead of soothing, something electric and inescapably magical to the sensation—and she finds her traitorous brain wondering whether Jinu would feel the same, if she were to cuddle up to him instead.

Finds herself wondering if he’s wondering the same thing about her.

It’s just—she doesn’t let herself have this. Touch, like this. That lingers. The girls are always reaching and she’s always having to duck away, and it’s—

It’s nice.

She kind of hates that it’s nice.

(Almost as much as she hates how she can’t help remembering the unpleasant truth: no matter how long she’s gone without it, Jinu’s undoubtedly gone centuries longer.

But then—maybe that’s why he has the tiger in the first place.

Clever demon.)

“Whatever it is, you can just ask me,” he says.

“Huh?”

“You’re never this quiet,”—wrong, she’s always this quiet, always Ruminating; just goes to show he has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to her—“So, out with it. You’re obviously thinking about something.”

She hadn’t been; not really. She’d been too busy being annoyed at him for having the audacity to smell so good, then being annoyed at herself for even noticing what he smells like in the first place. Ridiculous.

But if he’s gonna hand her the keys to this conversation, she might as well take the opportunity.

“You said demons do nothing but feel. The first time we talked.”

“I did.”

“So, how—?” The question lodges itself sharply in the back of her throat before she can finish, too audacious—too perverse—to be voiced. But she’s already made it this far, and he’s waiting for her. “How does it feel, to eat a soul?”

She asks in order to bait him. To guilt trip him. To maybe get something productive out of all that shame keeping him fettered. It’s supposed to be a trap.

But they can both hear the tremor of terror and morbid curiosity in her voice, too. How she’s asking because she wants—needs—to know.

(If she’s felt it. If she’d want to feel it.)

“It’s like…” he begins, and then stops himself—a perturbed expression flashing briefly across his face before he masks it with the roguish smile that’s rocketed fancam after fancam to virality these last few weeks. “Like the kind of thing you don’t talk to good girls about,” he leers, with an infuriating wink to top it off.

She knows he’s fucking with her, knows he’s probably only saying it to get her to drop the subject, but still the impulse rises in her throat like vomit—to blurt out ‘I’m not good’ and mean it. Even so, it doesn’t take much effort to channel her self-disgust back into righteous outrage. Because ugh. He wants to be vulgar? Fine.

“Oh, yeah?” she spits, judgment dripping from her voice. “Is it hot? Is it tight? Does it make your toes curl?”

“You really want to know?”

“Well, you clearly want to brag about it, so—”

“I’m not bragging, you asked me!” he explodes, frustration robbing him of his patience. His raised voice startles the tiger awake; it slinks away on its belly, eager to get out from between them. “And you know what? Yeah! It is that good. It’s exactly that good, for a fraction of a second, and then it’s over. Awful. Empty. No—worse than empty, because he took it from you.” Jinu’s breathing hard, now, brown eyes glinting stonily. Unrelenting. “I sold my soul to Gwi-Ma because I was sick of starving, and for my big reward he’s kept me starving ever since. That’s how it feels. Like you’re always smelling an amazing meal that you never, ever get to taste—only chew and spit back out. Like all you’ll ever get to be is hungry.”

And that?

Denial, craving, want?

Yeah. Rumi understands that.

Understands how it can drive you to make the worst kinds of choices—because all you’ve ever known is the desperation, and all you’ve ever had is the holding out for relief.

But then… at least Rumi knows relief is coming. Knows that if she can just turn the Honmoon gold, everything will be different. And even in the meantime, she has glimpses. Moments of reprieve. Weekends lounging on the couch with her friends; jam sessions brainstorming in the studio; those sweaty, incomparable nights on stage where everything feels possible, perfect, right within her grasp. When—

Wait.

Does that mean…?

Jinu’s still glaring at her, resentful, and she has to bite back the instinctive urge to apologize. She feels bad for pushing it, but he doesn’t get to get her ‘sorry;’ not before the girls do. Still, she can’t help the tenderness in her voice as she asks: “It feels like that… even when you sing?”

His eyes widen, then flicker downward. “Especially when I sing,” he admits, honest and mournful. Her insides squirm—that’s horrible, she can’t imagine—and his curiosity gets the better of him, hard look melting off his face. Like he doesn’t know how to stay mad at her. Like he’s not even invested in trying very hard. “Why? What does it feel like for you?”

“It feels… golden,” she says, only realizing what a lame answer it is the second it’s out of her mouth. A whole dictionary of options at her disposal, and she couldn’t come up with a single different word for it?

He bursts into laughter—full-bodied, genuine laughter that makes him clutch at his stomach in delight. “Wow. Is your press training that thorough about pushing the brand, or are you really just that uncreative?”

“Shut up!” she hisses. (Why was she trying to cheer him up, again? He’s the worst!) “It’s just—that’s the best way to describe it, okay? Everything just feels…” Come on, brain, think! You write songs for a living! Zoey’s not the only one who knows her way around a metaphor! “It’s like when it’s raining and you look out at the city through a window, and everything’s all smeary and glowing and connected. Like we’re all a part of each other—lit up from the inside—and for just a few minutes we’re sharing a heartbeat. Like… no one ever has to be alone.”

The longer she’s talked, the more his infuriating, puckish smirk has faded to something softer—unfiltered and fond. His voice almost unbearably gentle as he looks her right in the eyes and murmurs: “That sounds beautiful. I’m glad; you deserve it.”

And now she’s the one lit up from the inside; she clears her throat awkwardly, wishing she had any sort of way to hide her blush. “Yeah, well—thank you. I mean. You too. You deserve it, too.” Was she always sitting this close to him? Why is she sitting this close to him?! Their proximity appears to belatedly occur to both of them at the same time, and he’s already gracelessly spider-crawling in the other direction as she starts scrabbling backwards, their patterns flaring a synchronized mortified neon. “Anyway—um—”

“Yeah,” he agrees, cringing when his voice cracks. He grimaces—swallows—and composes himself. “Anything else?”

For a second, she’s too spellbound by the way his Adam’s apple travels up and down the column of his throat to register the question. Focus. It’s not attraction; Mira and Zoey are a thousand times hotter than him and you can talk to them just fine.

(Never mind that she’s had years to get used to them; never mind that just because she’s not jump-scared by the ways they make her eyes wander anymore doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.)

She forces her mind back to the conversation. “What do you mean?”

“For someone whose whole life has revolved around slaying demons, you sure don’t seem to know much about what it means to be one,” he points out simply, with a one-armed shrug. “So, try me. Anything else you want to know?”

“Wha—no!” she sputters, all the lingering warmth inside of her doused in an instant. “First of all, ew; second of all, what’s the point? After tomorrow, it won’t matter. My patterns will be gone, and all of this will finally be over with.” Her eyes narrow, only half in jest, as she presses: “Unless you didn’t mean it when you said you’d help me.”

He raises his hands placatingly, professing his innocence. “I’ll play my part. You’re the one with the hard job, anyway.”

“What, you think we can’t beat you?”

“I didn’t say that. I meant the part where Hunters have been trying to create the Golden Honmoon for double my lifetime and no one’s even come close before, yet you’re acting like you’ve got it guaranteed. Sounds like a big ask, but what do I know?” His lips quirk, devilish. “You’re the one who thinks you can’t beat us.”

“Yeah right! It wouldn’t even be a competition if you weren’t cheating.”

“How are we cheating?!”

“Oh, I’m supposed to think you’re not supernaturally boosting your popularity by putting people under Gwi-Ma’s creepy thrall with your songs?”

He scoffs. “Like you’re not doing the exact same thing with the Honmoon.”

“That’s completely different!”

“Sure, okay. Five consecutive Idol Award wins just happen.”

“They do when you earn them.”

“Uh huh. And if some other group was connected to the Honmoon instead of you, you would have beaten them out and earned them just the same. Right?” He gets a look at her stubborn scowl, then laughs. “Oh, wow, you really think that. Check out that ego; we really are more alike than you want to believe.”

“Take that back.”

“Mm, no, you’re right. We’re super different—I have more friends than you.”

“You have pets, and henchmen. That is not the same as friends.” As a flex, she wiggles her fingers invitingly; just as she’d thought it would, the tiger obediently shuffles over to receive head scritches. “And your pets like me more. So.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the nice one?”

“No, that’s Zoey,” she says, almost by reflex. Because—obviously?

He rolls his eyes. “I meant between the two of us,” he says, but he’s still chuckling. Enjoying the joke, even if it’s at his expense. Respecting that she got him good. And…

It’s irritating, how awesome that feels. She’s not exactly proud of this petty, bickering side of her that being around him brings out, but she’s not used to thinking of herself as funny—certainly not compared to Zoey’s clever whimsy or Mira’s laconic wit. And the girls laugh at the things she says, sure, but. It had taken her a long time to believe they really meant it, and shake off the fear that Celine and the Honmoon had somehow conspired to keep the nepo baby happy by giving her friends by obligation rather than choice. She trusts it now, obviously, but. It was a years-long effort to force that lingering anxiety away.

Whereas she’s known Jinu for like two weeks, and somehow a part of her already trusts this.

“If you’re finally done dragging me, you should get home,” he says. “It’s late.”

“What about you?”

There’s that soft look again; the one that always makes her body subconsciously lean in. A ghost of a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Rumi nearly wrenches herself straight off the bed as the memory hits home; it’s only the fear of waking Zoey and Mira once more that keeps her still.

Had he really—?

He had.

And of course it’s only dawning on her now—when it’s far too late to do anything useful about it—what he’d implied there. How the only thing he’d equated with home was Rumi.

The thought is preposterous. Offensive. They’d barely known each other, and half the words out of his mouth had been manipulations—he’d admitted as much himself. I just needed you to trust me. A pretty bit of poison to get her reliant and beholden; another hook to pull her out of her life and closer to him.

But then. That’s the thing.

She had a life.

What had Jinu had? Other than his patterns, and Gwi-Ma’s voice in his ear?

Only her. Barely her. Unless you counted the tiger, and the bird in the stolen hat.

(And she’d teased him for it. Had made that stupid dig about how he hadn’t had friends, when—he hadn’t. He hadn’t had anything. Nothing and no one to claim as his own; nothing and no one to claim him back. And he’d laughed, instead of calling her cruel.)

She thinks she understands better, now, why he’d been so desperate to get his memories erased. Understands, even if she can’t relate—no matter how badly it aches to recall all the ways she’d failed him.

Because she would so much rather hurt than forget. Would rather keep the pain, so long as it also means keeping what little remains of him. Snatches of conversation, stolen moments, all buried in the past.

But that just brings her back to where she started. To the fear that jolted her awake in the first place:

Is she sure that’s all she’s kept?

A sudden weight against her legs forces her eyes open, and Rumi has to squint at the unexpected light that greets her from the foot of the bed—Derpy having returned to curl up against her and Mira’s calves, glowing like always. He blinks at her placidly, if a bit out of sync, as if to say Can’t it wait? Now’s sleeping time. Comfy cozy. Sussie trills from somewhere in the darkness in agreement.

Right.

Future me’s problem, she reminds herself, nuzzling closer to Zoey’s thigh with an exhausted yawn. Hopefully never.

“It’s official,” Rumi groans, as she sinks appreciatively into perfectly-heated water. “I really like the bathhouse.”

(Maybe one day she won’t feel the need to declare stuff like this out loud, like she’s planting a flag in every newly-discovered part of herself lest she somehow forget to claim one as her own, but… for now, it’s helping.

And it makes the girls smile, so. There’s that.)

“Freakin’ tolja,” Mira gloats, leaning back and letting her eyes drift closed with a smug little grin. “About time you finally learned to listen to us.”

She says it casually, off-hand, like it isn’t an absurd position to take. Like Rumi hasn’t been listening to Mira and Zoey since before she met them, their lonely songs haunting her dreams as they’d echoed through the Honmoon for years. Like she hadn’t memorized their tone and timbre before she even hit puberty. For all of Rumi’s privileges, precious little in her life has actually come easily—she’s trained with relentless fervor to become as good as she is at what she does. It’s why she so cherishes the few things that ever felt natural:

Her perfect pitch. Her broad tessitura.

And her girls.

She’d relished the sounds of their voices for almost a decade before they were finally united, under the auspices of so-called “open” auditions that were really anything but. By that time, Celine had known exactly who she was looking for—it was only a question of contriving a way to get them to Seoul. (And it wasn’t a complete smokescreen; a lot of those singers did end up debuting for Sunlight Entertainment. Just… not with Huntrix.)

When all was said and done, Zoey’d cried.

“I’m a Lego,” she warbled, bursting into tears only moments after Celine finished explaining how the Honmoon had united them for a higher cause. And Rumi and Mira’s eyes met in confusion, because—super endearing and all, but. What?

“Like… the toy?” Rumi asked carefully, not wanting to set Zoey off worse but not having a clue what she meant.

“Yes,” Zoey sobbed. Her whole body shaking. “They’re—they don’t make sense if they’re not together; they’re all sharp edges and weird shapes and they hurt like hell when you step on them and no one wants just one by itself, but that’s because they’re made to fit. To build something. My whole life I thought I was just—” She hiccuped, then, and cut the thought off there, apparently realizing that whatever she’d been about to say was maybe too much of an overshare too fast, even for soulmates. “But I’m not. I’m just a Lego, and I didn’t have my set.” She wiped her eyes, giving them a watery smile. “I mean. You feel it too, right? I’m not crazy?”

Of course they felt it, too. And while it hadn’t always been easy, especially in the early days, together they managed to make the whole world feel it—weaving strength into the Honmoon from the release of their very first single, “Slay.” (And boy had they patted themselves on the back over their own cleverness with that one.)

In hindsight, Rumi can see why the girls are so frustrated with her years of secrecy, so incredulous at the mere idea that they’d have abandoned her—especially if she’d given them a chance and been honest from the start. But at the time, she hadn’t been able to see past her fear of losing the only thing in her life that had ever felt right. And why wouldn’t she? She hadn’t had anything to compare it to. For all she knew, what she’d felt for them was only half as powerful as what they could feel for each other, the connection muddied by her demon heritage. Maybe after the Honmoon turned gold it would be even stronger; even more perfect.

(She’d been half-right about that one, in the end. She’s never felt a pain as acute or a loneliness as vast as she did when the old Honmoon started dissolving beneath her feet and their connection as Hunters simply fizzled out, just like that. It was like losing a limb, or the ability to hear music, or every other beat of her heart. Profound, excruciating emptiness.

But on the other hand, she’s never felt as complete as she did when they reforged the Honmoon anew, backed by the harmony of thousands gathered at Namsan Tower. Their souls entwined somehow tighter than before, even more closely, the fit as snug and exact as custom-made clothing.)

“You’re doing it again,” Zoey says, stretching a leg across the tub to poke Rumi’s shin with a bare toe.

“Sorry,” Rumi mumbles, biting her lip when another one of Celine’s old training maxims springs instantly to mind: Don’t be sorry, be better. “It’s just—I do listen to you. To me it feels like that’s all I do. But if you can’t tell, then maybe—” She reaches up to scrub at her face with wet hands, partially in the vain hope that it might jump-start her thoughts and partially to obscure the shame she’s sure is written all over her expression. “I don’t know. I don’t want you to think I’m taking any of this for granted.”

“Say more,” Mira prompts—a little more on the side of ‘an order’ than ‘an encouragement.’

“Just… you should get to have the choice. Forgiveness is something I need to earn, not demand, and just expecting acceptance is… it doesn’t work like that. Right? I know you keep saying I’m not going to lose you, but that doesn’t mean I get to act like I couldn’t. That just means I’m not appreciating you, and—and I do, so much. It means everything to me, that you’re making room for me. For… all of the things I am.”

They just blink at her, completely miffed, and—this is why she doesn’t talk. Her sentiments are never half as eloquent as they sound in her head, the words refusing to come out as anything but vague platitudes. So used to lying and obscuring that now she literally doesn’t know how to just say something genuine.

But then Zoey smiles at her, so soft it aches: “We’re not doing anything you didn’t do for us, first.”

“It’s not the same; you’re not—”

“I’m pretty sure my family would call me a demon, if you asked them,” Mira interrupts. “Like, I know we’ve talked about this, but it seems like you still don’t get it, so I’m gonna say it again: I wasn’t a person—no one treated me like a person—until you guys. Until you.” She shares a look with Zoey, who somehow doesn’t look offended at being excluded upon second thought; if anything, she seems to be completely on the same page. “It’s like, before Huntrix, everything I did was somehow bad, or wrong—”

“Or too much—”

“Or not enough,” Mira concludes, unfazed by Zoey’s interjection. “And when I got the call, Celine kept talking about my potential, about what I could become, but you…” Mira looks her right in the eyes, but the look is so piercing Rumi feels it straight through the chest. “Everything you said to me, from the moment we met, was complimenting a choice I’d already made. Something I already was. You never asked me to be anything but myself, and then you loved me for it. Do you get that? No one did that for me before you. No one.”

“You set the example, and that made me brave enough, too,” Zoey agrees, voice thick with emotion. “I know my Lego metaphor’s kind of silly, but—we really were like the Island of Misfit Toys. You know? All broken parts and mismatched pieces. And you saw all that, and accepted it, and then you gave us a home. Not the Honmoon. You.”

“I—” Rumi’s eyes are filled with tears; she can’t speak past the lump in her throat.

Zoey takes the aborted sound as an attempt to disagree and hastily keeps going. “And it’s not even just us you did it for! Like. Think about it—I would have fallen apart in Celine’s shoes, if I lost everything like she did. But you gave her a family again; something to keep going for. And Bobby! Bobby was going to quit the industry before us, remember? How he’d been stuck with all those assholes and divas? And you were the one who convinced him to give us a trial run.”

And Zoey’s still talking, enumerating all the amazing people in their entourage and creative team who’d been burned out or shut out before getting a second chance with Huntrix—many of them people Rumi’d hand-picked or fought for over more-established options—but Rumi’s caught up thinking about the other person who would admit to belonging on this list, and would fight her about it if she tried to argue. The one Zoey doesn’t know well enough to name.

It’s just easy when I’m with you; no one sees me the way you do.

Even Jinu recognized this in her, when she’s never been able to see it in herself.

But then, that’s sort of what he was best at, wasn’t it? Even when it annoyed the crap out of her. Calling her out and lifting her up in equal measure, refusing to accept her professional mask as either the whole of her or the best of her. Wriggling beneath her defenses to see the truth within.

You gave me my soul back. And now, I give it to you.

Her patterns—idly opalescent until this point—flash a brief, blinding white before returning to their previous pearly shimmer.

Mira stares. “What was that?”

“I, uh.” Rumi really only has one theory. It’s a stupid one, selfish and terrifying in equal measure, but—it’s what she’s got, and the whole point is to be more honest. So she says it aloud: “I think Jinu was agreeing with you.”

Zoey snorts, as if Rumi meant it as a joke. “Yeah? Best of luck, buddy. Two against one never works on Rumi, I doubt three against one’s gonna make much difference. But I appreciate the assist.”

Mira, on the other hand, seems to take Rumi at her word. Peering at her with utter seriousness. “Do we have to go over this again? Rumi, I promise you didn’t eat him. Jinu’s…” Dead. Gone. “…part of the Honmoon, now. He’s starlight.”

As if to press the issue in the most obnoxious way possible, Rumi’s patterns flare brightly again—that same soul-white radiance. Like an arrogant hello, concurring with Mira while directly contradicting her.

Zoey chokes, eyes going wide with shock.

“O-okay,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady through a bout of sudden, nerve-ridden giggles, “That’s… okay. For the sake of argument, let’s consider it: maybe Rumi’s patterns are being lowkey possessed by the spirit of her Saja Boyfriend.”

“He’s not my—”

“—But even if that is what’s happening, that’s… kinda cute, right? In like a creepy sort of way? Like manta rays.”

Mira snaps her fingers, pointing at Zoey. “Totally what his hair looked like; good call.”

“And if that’s true, then—”

“I’m not possessed!” Rumi bursts out, just trying to get a word in edgewise. Lavender light racing across her skin.

The other two shut up, chastened.

Mira’s the first to recover, pitching her voice soft and compassionate: “No, you’re not.” Zoey squeaks in offense, protesting the way Mira’s dismissed her hypothesis, and Mira shushes her with a pat at the air in her direction. “Okay, my theory is that you’re not. My theory is that you’re grieving. Your patterns are a reflection of you, right? They betray your emotions, even when you want to keep them hidden. So, which is more likely: that your demon situationship is trying to Morse code at us from the great beyond—”

“—just ‘Jinu’ is fine, please stop calling him things—”

“—or that you, y’know. Miss him, and can’t help telling on yourself when you think about him?”

It’s a fair point; Rumi shrugs, conceding the argument. Zoey, however, doesn’t seem ready to let it go, raising her hand like they’re in a classroom.

“We can summon magical weapons with the power of song,” she points out. “I’m not sure if logic is the best tie-breaker here.”

(Rumi hasn’t held her saingeom since Namsan Tower; hasn’t had a reason to draw. She has no idea what form it will take when she does—whether it will revert to its classic shape, or remain changed.

She has no idea which option scares her more.)

“…Rumi?” It takes Zoey’s gentle voice to break through the fog of overthinking she’s suddenly lost herself in again. She wonders if it’s the first time Zoey’s said her name, trying to call her attention back.

Probably not.

“Sorry—what?”

“No, I’m sorry. That’s what I was trying to say. For the jokes. I’m—we’re not trying to belittle you about him, or belittle him, or anything like that. You know that, right? It’s just that every time we talk about him, it gets so heavy, and—”

“We want it to feel normal,” Mira offers. “Not so much of a big deal.”

But it is a big deal, Rumi thinks.

If she had it in her to care less, none of this would have become a problem in the first place.

Three days later, she gets her answer about her sword.

When the warning ripples through the Honmoon, they’re already sweaty and exhausted—panting on the floor of their dance studio after what was meant to be a basic review session to keep their form and endurance up turned into an all out dance-off because they’re, to the last, hyper-competitive freaks when it comes down to it.

“Now?” Zoey whines. “The stupid demons couldn’t have attacked an hour ago, right when we finished our warm-ups and were all, like, limber and sexy about it?”

“More to the point, the Honmoon is supposed to be sealed,” Mira groans.

Rumi’s already halfway out the door. “We always knew there was a chance that meant some stragglers might get trapped on this side with us; move now, complain later. C’mon! Gaja, gaja, gaja!”

About three rooftops into their race towards the Honmoon’s beacon, Sussie and Derpy phase out of the ley lines to join them. Rumi’s never thought of them as being particularly combat-capable—at least, not after the first twenty seconds of knowing them—but when Derpy pointedly tosses his head, she realizes they don’t have to be. “Everyone on the tiger!” she orders.

“Wait, what?”

“We’re wasting energy running there when he can just fly us!”

“He can fly—?”

“Now, Zoey!”

Without further argument they scramble onto Derpy’s back, Zoey laughing giddily when he starts bouncing on air like something out of a Ghibli film.

“I still don’t get it,” Mira says as they glide, using the opportunity of being pressed up against Rumi’s back to speak directly into her ear. “If the gate is closed, the eaten souls can’t reach Gwi-Ma. So why feed? There’s no point.”

Rumi swallows. “That’s exactly the point. For the first time, they’ll actually get to keep what they kill—and they’re famished for it.”

(Just like she did. Just like she was.)

The trail ends at an alley outside an arcade, one filled with office workers blowing off steam and influencers filming video clips and kids, god, so many kids—

And just outside stand a half-dozen ogres with clubs, bickering over a leather jacket left in a dingy puddle like they’re deciding who gets to keep the souvenir before they go for more.

They’re already too late.

“You’ll pay for that,” Rumi growls, summoning her sword without a second thought as she leaps down from Derpy’s back. And—for a split second it’s like she hears an unexpected harmony, a new low note rounding out the tuneful concord that’s always sung through the air when she calls for her weapon.

Jinu—?

But the weight of her saingeom is familiar and balanced in her hand, no longer the heavy greatsword she’d forged at Namsan Tower, and she doesn’t have time to linger over it if she wants to keep her head on her shoulders.

The fight is fast-paced and fierce.

The alley keeps them uncomfortably hemmed-in, but risking discovery or further collateral by letting this spill out into the street is not an option. The guardians seem to understand implicitly, Sussie leading Derpy to stand sentry at the mouth of the alley and box the demons inside. As Rumi hacks and slashes, Mira roars in frustration—unable to use the full reach of her Gok-Do in such close quarters, and forced to settle for weak jabs. Zoey darts between bodies with her every throw, kicking out and dodging in time to the loud music of the rhythm game playing through the arcade wall. Two shin-kals glance off against thick skin, but one finds purchase right between a demon’s eyes.

One down.

Attack, deflect. Attack, defend. Attack, regroup.

“Eat this!”

Two down.

Rumi spins and thrusts, separating her quarry from the throng and getting him on the back foot before finally dissipating him with a brutal swing. (Three down.) She lunges forward with the momentum to catch herself and stay on her feet, but it’s a second’s respite she can’t afford to take as she hears—

“Rumi, your six!” Zoey shrieks.

No time to dodge, no time to jump, no hope of parrying when the blow’s coming from behind her—

“Rumi!”

Stop thinking like a Hunter and move!

Something in her gut caves, like Jinu punched her in the stomach instead of screaming in her head, and then suddenly the whole world shifts in a puff of pink smoke. Rumi’s falling, eight feet midair, and her proprioception kicks in just in time for her to have the presence of mind to slash downwards—right through her attacker’s neck—as she drops from above.

Four down.

“Did you just teleport?!”

“Focus, Zoey!”

“I am! I’m focusing on the fact that I just saw you teleport! I thought you said it was a one-time thing!”

“Until now, it was. We can talk about it later!”

“Uh, you bet your ass we’re talking about it la-Mira watch out—”

“Fuck off!” Mira barks as she whirls around, spearing her assailant in the chest, and—five down.

One left.

The final demon’s gaze flicks hatefully from one of them to the next as it (he? she?) deliberates how to proceed—too smart to keep fighting, and too proud to flee. Rumi raises her saingeom, the glowing blade humming lethally in the air as she brings it up.

“Your choice how this goes,” she says, and Mira does a double-take.

“You’d let it—?”

Rumi ignores her. “Option one: you decide feeding’s more important than freedom, we send you right back to your king, and you never see the sky again. Option two: you spend the rest of your existence on this plane telling all your brothers and sisters that violence will bring the Hunt to their doorstep every time, and the only way to stay on this side of the Honmoon is to leave. Humans. In peace. Your call; there is no option three.”

The demon spits at her feet. “Pretty threat for a Hunter. You ask me to starve, and to thank you for it.”

“No. That’s Gwi-Ma’s domain. I’m asking you to live, and make the opportunity worth something.” Impulsively, she lifts one hand from her sword grip to push up her right sleeve, revealing the patterns beneath. The ones on her face are small, and hard to discern in the low light; the ones winding up her arms, on the other hand, are unmistakable—even when colorless and dormant. “My father managed. You can, too.”

(It’s only after she does it that she realizes the demon already saw her teleport—not to mention the part where most of Korea was watching the Idol Awards before the feed cut out. So much for her big reveal moment. But… whatever. Too late to take it back now, and—and she’d meant what she’d said. No more hiding.)

(She could almost swear she hears a familiar voice tease: Drama queen.)

The standoff is silent, and lingers. Derpy, who had been guarding the only exit with an uncharacteristically fearsome expression, eventually pads over to stand by her side: posing as intimidating backup while actually offering up an avenue for escape. The demon takes it—one step, two, before sprinting into the night without looking back.

For a long moment, none of them move.

Finally, Rumi lets herself exhale, and slumps out of her rigid posture as her saingeom dissipates.

Zoey stares at her. “Okay, not gonna lie: that was super hot. But… Rumi, I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

Rumi has no idea what she’s doing.

Still: “New Honmoon, new rules. I can’t just… if even one of them could—”

“I get it,” Mira says—taking Rumi by surprise. Her face pinches at Rumi’s shocked expression. “I mean, I don’t like it, and I don’t think the demons that might deserve it are the ones getting caught red-handed sucking souls, but. I get it. Things won’t change unless we make them.”

“Speaking of…” Zoey walks over to the abandoned leather jacket, crouching to feel around its pockets before hanging her head in defeat. “No phone, no wallet. No way to notify family.” Derpy sidles up to her, gently head-butting her elbow before opening his mouth. “You… want it?”

Sussie trills, giving her a pointed look.

“You want it to find the guy’s family? You can do that?”

Sussie rolls all six of his eyes: duh.

Zoey turns helplessly to Rumi, seeking—permission? Advice? But all Rumi can do is shrug, completely at a loss.

“Um. Okay. Sure,” she says, handing the jacket over. Derpy takes it gingerly between his teeth, then sinks back into the Honmoon without fanfare, Sussie flying down to follow.

Rumi stares at the spot in the ground they just disappeared into for a long, long time.

Then:

“Okay, no more putting it off. It’s time to talk to Celine.”