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Rumi is six years old the first time she thinks that she might want to die.
It's a fleeting thought, is the thing. There and gone again so quickly she's barely even registered it, and by the time she realizes what her mind has whispered to her she already regrets it. There had been an argument with Celine—nothing particularly noteworthy, just frustrated words and a slammed door whose echo bounced through too-empty hallways—and Rumi had thought to herself, Maybe she'd love me more if I was a gravestone, too.
(It takes twenty years before she can really be proven otherwise. It feels like a betrayal, in the end. She will never be loved more than this.)
It scares her. Rumi shouldn't want to die, not when the Honmoon needs her to give it all her strength and her voice and her love. Not when the world is still threatened by demons. Not when she owes it so much retribution for her crime of existing.
So she takes the thought, like she takes all of her bad thoughts, and stamps it down flat deep in the recesses of her mind, never to be addressed again.
(It's wishful thinking, but so is being loved.)
She's eleven when it happens again.
Well, more accurately, it's happened a number of times since then, in all sorts of moments of pain and loneliness and frustration—but this time, the thought about the gravestone lingers. She carries it in her mind and in her heart for the rest of the morning training session, and for the entirety of the six-times-weekly dance intensive Celine takes her to, all the way until her private voice teacher stops in the middle of their lesson and demands to know what has Rumi so distracted that she's missed her cue to join the piano's melody three times in a row.
And, the thing is—what do you respond to that? Certainly not "I think that I was a mistake." Certainly not "I think that the Honmoon would be better off if it had never chosen me." Certainly not "I think that I might want to die."
So she says, "Nothing," (and also says nothing.) She says, "Sorry," and clenches her fists at her sides, and does not miss a single note for the rest of the afternoon.
She eats the bibimbap Celine makes for dinner that night without a word (clearly an apology on her mentor's part, nonverbal as always, but it's one of Rumi's favorite meals so she'll accept it) and doesn't bring up their argument again. It's sometimes awkward to navigate around each other in the tense aftermath of their disagreements, but she'll probably just run a few extra laps around the training field tomorrow as her own form of sorry, and that will be that. Hopefully her legs won't hurt too badly when she gets to her dance class afterwards.
She and Celine always work things out. Rumi only wishes she wouldn't keep almost ruining everything in the interim.
She knows a little bit more now. Understands some of Celine's pain. She still hasn't been told everything, but she's heard as much as she needs to: there are demons in the world, and she exists to help get rid of them. Demons have jagged purple markings on their skin, just like Rumi does. Rumi is a demon.
Rumi's a demon, because her mother should not have loved a demon but did. Rumi's a demon because when she was born, the Sunlight Sisters fell apart, and Celine tries to hide it but Rumi knows that destroyed her. Rumi's a demon because that's all she'll ever have the chance to be, unless she becomes the best demon hunter there ever was and turns the Honmoon gold. Maybe then she could finally be the child that Celine deserves.
No pressure, or anything.
The child that Celine deserves probably doesn't want to die, and so Rumi will continue to never say anything about that. The child that Celine deserves probably also understands things that Rumi has yet to grasp, and so she thinks that maybe this might be the right time to try to learn.
"Celine?" she asks abruptly. "How does the Honmoon choose its hunters?"
Celine raises an eyebrow, chopsticks stilling in the air. "Why do you ask?"
Rumi… shrugs. "I don't really know. I'm curious, I guess. How will I know once I meet the others?"
Celine pushes a few stray vegetables around her bowl. "Believe me, you will know. The first time I locked eyes with your mother, it was something like an electric shock. All of a sudden, it was as though a part of me that I hadn't known was missing now existed. And I looked at her, and I knew she felt it too."
That sounds… maybe a little painful, but mostly exciting. "Was it like that for both of them?"
Celine takes a breath. "Yes."
Rumi probably shouldn't have asked. For as difficult as it is for Celine to talk about Rumi's mother, she often seems even less interested in discussing Hyun-seo, the third Sunlight Sister whose smiling face graces countless posters and album covers and all other kinds of merchandise that exists in boxes in one of the many rooms of the house Rumi doesn't dare enter alone. Rumi doesn't know very much about Hyun-seo besides the fact that she isn't literally dead, but from the way Celine reacts to hearing her name, she might as well be.
"What about… when you're apart?" Rumi asks, very hesitantly, eyes carefully fixed on Celine's face to detect the minutest of shifts in emotion. She's taking a pretty big risk, she knows, especially considering the fact that they'd argued about Rumi's training just that morning, but she suddenly cannot let her curiosity rest. "Does the Honmoon tell you what they're doing?"
"…No," Celine says, and Rumi genuinely cannot tell whether or not it's a lie. "The connection is still there, but it's not… as complete as you seem to think. The hunters stand as a unit, yes, but they must each maintain control over their individual lives as well."
Rumi stares down at her rice. Suddenly it doesn't look quite so appetizing anymore.
"Why do you ask?" Celine says a second time, and she doesn't sound quite as neutrally curious this time around.
"I don't know," Rumi says, honestly. "I think I just… want to know more about what it's like. Why would the Sunlight Sisters split, if it was so good and important? Why do you have to go demon hunting and manage the label and take care of me all by yourself?"
Too far. Celine's face darkens. "Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to."
It should stop there, but Rumi cannot help it. "But I want to know," she protests. "Really, I do."
She knows her mother is dead, of course. That is something Celine has made clear to her from the moment Rumi was old enough to understand. The fact that the timing of the death had perfectly coincided with Rumi's birth has never been directly addressed in their home, but it isn't too hard to extrapolate that, had Rumi never been born, Ryu Miyeong would still be alive.
The Sunlight Sisters had been supposed to turn the Honmoon gold, but they had fallen apart before their lives' goal could be accomplished. Now, the demons keep tearing their way through the Honmoon's fragile threads, and Celine has to go out and battle them alone, and Rumi can never be sure if she'll come back. But there should still be two demon hunters. Hyun-seo should be here, too.
"Are you sure?" Celine asks, though there's almost a challenge to her tone.
Rumi isn't sure in the slightest. Whatever Celine has to say, there must be a reason why she hasn't told Rumi sooner. "I'm really, really sure."
Celine frowns, some unplacable hurt in her eyes. She may say that Rumi's mother dying wasn't Rumi's fault, but that probably doesn't mean she actually believes that.
"After your mother died… Hyun-seo couldn't handle it," she begins. "Couldn't handle you. She told me, over and over again, that we are hunters, and hunters must kill all demons. But the Honmoon chose you, and so I knew you could be saved. I knew you could be fixed, if you do what we failed to do and turn it gold."
…Oh.
"And then my patterns will go away," Rumi says, because that particular information may be new (and maybe a little devastating, if she thinks about it too hard) but at least she knows where the story goes from here. It feels like an empty comfort, but she wants it all the same.
"Yes," Celine says. "They will."
Normally, the conversation would end here. Tonight, though, Rumi has learned something new, and something about that makes her crave even more. "What does it feel like?" she asks. "To fight demons together?"
Something wistful crosses Celine's face. "…It is the greatest feeling there is," she says, half in a whisper, sounding more sure of herself than Rumi has ever felt in her life. "You will see. Once you meet your other two hunters, you'll never have to feel lonely again. Your faults and fears may never be seen by those we protect, but it is… different, among the three of you. They will be your everything, and you will be theirs."
It sounds like a dream, but Rumi's not too confident she deserves a dream. "Even though I'm a demon?"
"Half," Celine automatically corrects. "And only until the Honmoon turns gold. After that, everything will be alright. They'll never have to know. They never will know."
She says it like it's supposed to be a comfort. Maybe it is, and Rumi's just too broken to realize it. It certainly wouldn't be the only thing she's too ashamed to admit she doesn't understand. Like why her mother had to fall in love with a demon. Like why Hyun-seo would leave Celine. Like why Celine didn't just abandon Rumi.
But the child Celine deserves would not be questioning herself like this, much like how the child Celine deserves doesn't want to die. So Rumi will ask none of those questions, and instead gets up and begins to clear the table before Celine even asks. She's fine. She's satisfied with what she's learned tonight, and she's fine, she's fine, she's fine.
Well, at least she won't be alone like this forever. And she shouldn't have too much trouble living a continuous lie. She's quite good at that already.
(It's wishful thinking, but so is being loved.)
She's fourteen when she learns to hold starlight in her hands, its glow burning impossibly bright.
It doesn't feel at all like she'd expected it to. Rumi has been able to touch the Honmoon for some time now, gently lacing her fingers into its spectral strands as she coaxes them towards her with her voice, but it is a different feeling entirely to reach within it and pull out something physical.
She and Celine are outside in the garden, sitting in poses halfway between meditation and a predator waiting to pounce. They've been doing this more and more often, lately, and while Rumi understands in theory that this has all been in preparation to learn how to summon her hunter weapon, part of her secretly hadn't expected it to ever actually work. She's spent so many years learning all sorts of fighting styles, but none of them feel like they've really clicked with her. It's almost as though she's still missing a part of herself, or something.
But it does work. The Honmoon surges. She feels a weight in her hands, and opens her eyes, and the gleaming sword she's clutching is so heavy and real and beautiful that she nearly screams. In fact, the only reason she doesn't is that Celine's eyes abruptly fly open as her mentor lets out a gasp, and somehow that's even more interesting than the weapon is.
"Oh," Celine says, and something in her eyes is shining. "Oh, Rumi."
This is very possibly the happiest Rumi has ever seen Celine. She isn't entirely sure how she feels about that.
"…Did I do it?" Rumi asks, which is easily the stupidest question ever posed in the history of the universe.
"You did," Celine says, leaning forward to look more closely at the shining blade in Rumi's hands. "Look at it!"
And Rumi does, even though it hurts her eyes. The iridescent gleam shimmers in her grasp, almost as though the blade itself doesn't quite know how to react to the orange glow of the sunset that surrounds them. The length is perfect and the grip is just right and Rumi knows, without even moving, that this weapon is everything she needs it to be.
And she thinks, Maybe I've finally done something right.
And she also thinks, if this kills demons, it must be able to kill me, too.
It's not exactly a remarkable thought. Certainly not enough to have implications, or whatever. She's just stating the obvious.
Still, something must show on her face—even though her faults and fears must never be seen, evidently they still can be—because Celine says, "It's just a blade, Rumi. It can only hurt you if you let it."
It isn't exactly the reassurance she seems to think it is, but Rumi says nothing. Besides, it's hard to speak when her entire head feels like it's in a vice grip, and her hands are shaking, and her patterns are burning, and she has to drop the blade on the ground before she throws up. It vanishes into thin air a moment afterwards, and Rumi is left breathing hard and blinking furiously at the dirt it disappeared in even as her sudden-onset headache begins to disappear.
Celine's hand hovers over her shoulder, in a non-touch that is far too hesitant for comfort. "Rumi?"
"I'm okay," Rumi says, and the lie comes far more easily than she would like. "Can we be done for today, please?"
Of course the answer will be no, because it's barely past dusk and they have a training schedule to keep, but—
"Yes," Celine says, and Rumi can't quite help the way her head jerks up in surprise. "Rest. It will get easier with time."
If Rumi didn't know better, she might even think there was an unspoken I'm proud of you in there somewhere. But surely that's wishful thinking. She's only meeting expectations, not exceeding them. If she's going to defend the world from demons, she should at the very least be able to hold her sword.
But she's been told to rest, so she gets to her shaking legs, walks to her room, gets into her bed, and doesn't sleep.
Her patterns still ache, in a way that's both unfamiliar and oddly comforting. They haven't spread any further—she'd checked, rather meticulously, hands shaking as they traced the too-familiar shapes—but they feel even more wrong than usual all the same. If they're reacting this strongly to such a brief moment of her spectral weapon's existence, how will it feel once she creates the Golden Honmoon? Who will she be?
Fully human, hopefully. The child Celine deserves to have, hopefully. A person who finally has everything she'd ever dreamed of, maybe.
It's all a little hard to picture. Celine has told her, more than once, how wonderful it's going to be, but Celine exists in a dichotomy of past and future, with no room left to acknowledge the present. Everything had been fine before Rumi was born, and everything will be fine again once she turns the Honmoon gold. These in-between years may as well just be a temporary inconvenience to her, but to Rumi, it's all she's ever known. She has no idea how to imagine a life other than this, except for the fact that it's supposed to be everything she has yet to realize she wants.
Ugh. She can't sleep, and she's thinking too hard. Maybe she needs a glass of water.
Celine's rarely in the house at this time of night, but Rumi finds herself sneaking through her door and down the long hallway regardless. The Honmoon has been uncharacteristically still tonight, as though Rumi's successful summoning of her weapon has left it too exhausted to maintain its usual comforting ebb and flow. That, or there just aren't any demons trying to tear their way through it right now, which seems… unlikely. Celine's had to go out and fight almost every single day of the past month, and Rumi doesn't see why that would be any different tonight. Maybe, now that she has her spectral weapon, it will soon be time for her to join those battles.
But on the off chance that Celine is home, Rumi stays quiet. She isn't exactly in the mood for any sort of conversation right now.
She turns the corner, still walking on her toes as quietly as she possibly can, and freezes when she hears the murmur of voices.
It's hard to make out exactly what's happening. Rumi is at the edge of the darkened living room, which offers an admittedly spectacular view of their garden and the mountains beyond. Celine is outside, just past the sliding glass door that has been left partially ajar, standing in the shallow puddle of water emanating from the watering can she'd evidently dropped at her feet. She's leaning heavily against one of those absolutely massive ceramic pots that are dotted here and there throughout the garden, as though she doesn't trust her legs to hold her weight.
…But Rumi doesn't go to her, because she recognizes the figure standing before her.
Well, somewhat. Hyun-seo is dressed nothing like the way she is on Starlight Sisters album covers or on any of the grainy VHS tape videos that Celine sometimes watches late at night when she thinks Rumi is asleep, but this is undoubtedly her, wrapped in a hooded cloak and face cast in sharp shadows from the low light of the solar garden torches that line the garden paths.
Whatever is going on here, Rumi is absolutely sure it is not meant for her to witness. But she cannot tear her eyes away.
"—hardly believe you're still here," Hyun-seo is saying.
"I… wanted to ensure you could find me," Celine says, a very uncharacteristic tremble to her voice. "When you were ready."
"You are one of the most famous women in South Korea," says Hyun-seo. "The internet exists. I could have found you in seconds."
"You know what I meant."
"Do I? I hardly know you anymore!"
"I want you to," Celine says, more than a little desperately. "Please, Hyun-seo. Come back to me. Come back to us."
"How can you bear it?" Hyun-seo asks, shoulders tensing as though she expects to look smaller. She waves a desperate hand at their surroundings. "How can you walk those empty halls when she's gone?"
Celine shakes her head, pushing herself back upright. "This is our home. It still is. It can be yours, too."
The shadows across Hyun-seo's face shift, ever so slightly. "I can't stay here."
"Then… why come now?" Celine asks. "If you're here for Rumi—"
"No," Hyun-seo says, shaking her head. "The time for that has passed. You were right. The Honmoon has chosen her. I… suppose I only wanted to see for myself that you were still…."
If she finishes that thought, it is too quiet for Rumi to hear. Even from the distance she's standing at, she thinks she sees a soft devastation in Celine's eyes.
Hyun-seo shakes her head again, as though snapping herself out of a trance. "I felt her summon her weapon, and we both know what that means. Take care of her, Celine. But do not ask me to be a part of either of your lives. I cannot love Rumi the way she would need me to."
Celine starts to say something in response to that, but Hyun-seo's eyes shift to look in through the glass door and Rumi practically flings herself away from her little lookout, pressing her back against the wall where she cannot be seen. She waits for five agonizing seconds, then ten, then twenty, and once it's clear that she hasn't been spotted she tiptoes all the way back to her room, heart pounding, glass of water entirely forgotten.
In the morning, there is silence. Celine dishes up two bowls of reheated soup for breakfast without a word, and doesn't quite look at Rumi when she passes one over.
Hyun-seo is gone. Rumi doesn't quite know why she wishes she would have stayed.
"Are you well-rested?" Celine eventually asks. "It can be overwhelming to summon your weapon for the first time."
Rumi didn't sleep at all, of course. But Celine doesn't need to know that.
"I'm fine," she says.
(It's wishful thinking, but so is being loved.)
She's sixteen when she tries to free herself of the patterns.
It's the worst idea she's ever had. It's her only hope of salvation. Rumi ducks into the bathroom (the one that will belong to three people, once they all find each other, but for the time being is only hers) and tries to trick herself into thinking she's breathing easily. She doesn't lock the door, because she's not stupid; she knows how dangerous blood loss can be, and sits down on the edge of the bathtub, spectral blade of starlight summoned and resting across her knees.
Also because she isn't stupid, she's prepared for this. Mostly. She has gauze, and medical tape, and a bowl of boiled water. She has something to bite on. Celine is somewhere in the house, because Rumi would never do this completely alone, on the off chance that something goes really wrong.
But it won't. She's just doing what needs to be done, and she's doing it by herself, because this is her responsibility. Nobody else's.
With luck, Celine won't even have to find out until after Rumi succeeds.
It's gotten easier to handle the sword. Ever since first summoning it, she's been able to maintain its existence a little bit longer each time. Its glow either no longer hurts her eyes, or she's grown used to it. Her patterns still itch, but at least they don't burn.
So if she's going to cut away the demonic part of herself, she has to do it now, before she grows any more used to the way her body fights against her weapon's existence. Maybe she won't have to wait until the Honmoon is complete to fix herself. Maybe, by the time she meets her other hunters, she can already be whole. If the way Celine speaks of the Sunlight Sisters is of any indication, it's going to be what her own group deserves.
She stares at her bare shoulder in the mirror over the sink. The jagged purple markings stare back.
It's just a blade, Rumi. It can only hurt you if you let it.
She lets it, apparently.
~~~
The blood is buried underneath her fingernails, too deep to ever come out.
Of course it didn't work. The patterns had recoiled from her weapon's glow, rippling across her skin like sunlight on the surface of a pond, hissing and smoking when they finally made forcible contact, but they do not disappear. All she is left with is a weeping wound that spans from her collarbone halfway down to her elbow, a terrible nausea deep in the pit of her stomach, and Celine, who had burst into the room mere moments after the Honmoon had flared with what Rumi could only describe as a scream. They'd stared at each other for a long, excruciating moment, Rumi's empty hand shaking where the grip of her sword had vanished into thin air the moment the door bounced against the wall, Celine's eyes frantically locking onto the evidence of Rumi's failure.
The Honmoon's threads are already gently weaving themselves around the injury, pulsating with a soothing light. The sharp smell of iron lingers in the air.
"…This…" Celine begins, looking at more of a loss for words than Rumi has ever seen her, "…is not a solution."
Rumi swallows. There's something stuck in her throat. "I was just trying to—"
"Never again, Rumi," Celine interrupts, and there's a shaking to her voice, and Rumi doesn't know how to interpret her tone. Celine takes both of Rumi's hands into her own, and it's hard to tell which of them is trembling more. "Do you hear me? Never again."
"…Okay," Rumi says numbly. It's a little hard to focus on anything beyond the itching feeling of her flesh knitting itself back together under the Honmoon's watchful ministrations.
"Look at me."
Rumi does. Celine's face, twisted with pain and horror and maybe, if Rumi were to admit it to herself, grief, swims in front of her.
"I need you to promise," Celine says, and she looks afraid.
"…Okay," Rumi says again, trying not to flinch at the sound of her own broken voice. This would all be so, so much easier if she simply hadn't survived. Her weapon is supposed to kill demons, after all, isn't it? "I promise."
Celine nods, as though that's satisfying enough. Whatever emotions had been swirling across her face moments ago, they're gone now; carefully suppressed in her practiced way that Rumi has yet to master. Faults and fears must never be seen.
"…Clean that up," Celine says, voice perfectly measured, and Rumi moves to obey before her mind has a chance to process any of what's just happened. She'd been prepared, after all. The cut on her shoulder is already beginning to scab over, courtesy of the blue threads glowing around her shoulder like a cocoon made of light, and so at least she won't be making any bigger of a mess as she carefully wipes away her shame. She's pretty sure Celine tells her to meet her out in the garden once she's done, but Rumi can't seem to manage more than an absent nod at that.
Blood can be washed away. If only the same could be said for all the parts of her that Rumi wishes had never existed.
By the time she finishes cleaning, the wound she'd cleaved across herself is practically gone. The sun is still high in the sky. Nothing, fundamentally, has changed.
She still tapes gauze over where the injury should be. Whether it's meant as a comfort or a reminder, she isn't entirely sure.
She meets Celine outside, where they spend the rest of the afternoon training. Sparring. Generally ignoring what just happened. Neither of them bring it up again, and Rumi's pretty confident that they're never going to discuss this. That's fine by her.
…She stays awake that night, watching the garden from her bedroom window. Waiting. Hoping. If the Honmoon had alerted Celine to her earlier stupidity, just like it had alerted her when Rumi summoned her sword for the first ever time… and it had also alerted somebody else that day….
But Hyun-seo does not come. Of course she doesn't.
Rumi doesn't know why she'd hoped otherwise.
She removes the gauze in the morning. Her skin, and the patterns that mar it, look just as untouched as they did a day ago. Soon enough, there will be no reason to remember this. Perhaps she and Celine will both manage to forget it ever happened.
(It's wishful thinking, but so is being loved.)
The Honmoon always chooses three.
Rumi has been joining Celine on her nightly demon hunts for a few years now, but it's clear they were never meant to do this on their own. Two people cannot sing a three-part harmony, and Celine may not exactly be getting old but she certainly no longer moves like she used to, and Rumi's always been destined to have her own trio anyways. The Sunlight Sisters' era is well and truly over. It's time for something to change.
So they start looking.
She meets Mira first, when both of them are nineteen and desperate to prove themselves to a world that can never know who they truly are. The plans to create a new K-pop girl group with Rumi at the center have been in motion for some time now, but it's not until this moment that it actually starts to feel real.
Rumi and Celine have spent the past several weeks watching auditions, a process that Rumi feels a little bad for finding as mind-numbingly boring as she does. It's not that these girls aren't incredibly talented—plenty of the other talent agents around them have been keeping frankly sizeable callback lists—but whenever she shoots a questioning glance at Celine she's just met with an imperceptible shake of the head and a quiet "You'll know." By the third day, Rumi would almost rather not watch their singing or dancing or anything else at all.
It's almost anticlimactic, then, when a pink-haired girl strides onto the stage with her head held high. She looks over to where the talent agents are sitting, and makes eye contact with Rumi, and all of a sudden the only thought capable of going through her mind is That one.
Something similar must strike the other girl, too, because for a moment she just stands there and keeps staring in such bewilderment that she almost misses her first step when the music kicks in. Almost, but not quite. It's clear, even only a few seconds into her routine, that she is an incredible dancer.
"Celine," Rumi whispers as the pens around them begin clicking already.
Celine meets her eye. Nods minutely. Doesn't question it for a moment.
Mira's contract with Sunlight Studios is signed and dated by the end of the evening, and Rumi's life will never be the same again.
~~~
Zoey comes to them two months later, in the form of an audition video sent to the Korea National University of Arts.
She's already been accepted by the time Celine has gotten her hands on the digital files for the entire class of 2024, and Rumi and Mira have spent an excruciating afternoon watching every single one. (Well, the first few seconds of each, that is. They quickly discover that the fast forward function is the greatest invention ever made.) Celine seems genuinely surprised when they tell her that the third hunter is currently somewhere in America, but she doesn't question it any more than she'd questioned Rumi and Mira's simultaneous deer-in-headlights impressions upon first seeing each other.
Maybe, once they're a completed trio, things will get easier. It's not that Rumi and Mira dislike each other, but… it's a little difficult for them to come to many mutual understandings. Mira is fiercely independent, whereas Rumi is far too desperate for approval for her tastes. Mira wants nothing to do with her family, and Rumi wants nothing more than to have one. Mira scoffs at the idea of legacy, whereas living up to her mother's shadow is all Rumi's ever known.
Mira holds herself to just as high of a standard as Rumi does, but she hasn't spent nearly two decades training to summon swords and battle demons and save the world. She has a long way to go, and apparently Rumi's offers to help are a bit more offensive than she intends for them to come off as. Maybe they're both a little too hard-headed for their own good.
Hard-headed and lonely, that is. Mira and Rumi may not exactly always see eye-to-eye when it comes to training for their roles as demon hunters (though it was a relief that Mira did seem quite a bit more receptive to the concept of the Honmoon and everything that comes with it than Rumi had really dared to hope,) but they do become friends. A shared love of music, dancing, and really good food tends to make that happen.
So maybe they're both a little nervous to see Zoey. Whatever delicate balance they've struck in their time spent together, sometimes in Seoul but mostly in the house in the mountains, the addition of their third hunter is going to change it.
That is to say, they spend three frantic days a few months later cleaning the entire house top to bottom in preparation for her arrival. Rumi has never been the best at wielding a mop, and Mira is clearly used to having house staff doing this kind of thing for her ("Leave me alone, Rumi! I'll figure it out,") but they manage to make it happen in the end, several new skills and maybe a couple of bruises acquired. They're both well aware that Zoey is currently having a much more world-shattering revelation than they are right now, anyways.
Celine brings Zoey to the house from her university dorm just in time for dinner on the third day, just as Rumi and Mira are putting the finishing touches on what passes for their attempt at a welcome meal. It's only because Rumi knows Celine so well that she can tell her mentor looks a little… frazzled.
Their third hunter is… bright. She's wearing a rather flamboyantly colored hoodie and mismatched knee-high socks, and somehow none of it goes with either of the massive suitcases she has on each side like a pair of plastic bodyguards. She's also wearing a bright yellow backpack that looks so full it might genuinely be in danger of bursting, covered in pins and keychains and all sorts of other baubles. Her smile very well might be the biggest Rumi's ever seen.
"Hi!" Zoey says, and if the four-hour drive has left her with any less energy than she normally has, she certainly doesn't show it. "You guys are both really pretty. Am I going to have to dye my hair, too?"
Rumi blinks. It somehow hadn't occurred to her until just now that she's going to have to pretend her hair doesn't naturally grow out its light purple color. That's probably something to worry about.
"Not unless you want to," Celine says, and oh, yeah, she is exhausted. Not that anyone who knows her any less than Rumi does would ever know.
"Eh, not really. I'm Zoey! You must be Rumi and Mira, but I guess you probably already knew that. Knew that I'm Zoey, that is; I'm not saying I don't think you already know your own names. The landscape here is so beautiful! Not that California's half-bad either, but so far Korea has really been… beautiful-er. That's not a word. Unless it is now, because I used it? Anyways, I think I'm going to stop talking now."
It's a lot to take in at once, and so Rumi decides to start with the easiest in to the conversation she can take. "You're… far from home, then," she says. Whatever home means to any of them here.
Zoey shrugs, still beaming. "Yeah, but have you seen college tuition over there? That wasn't happening. I'm taking full advantage of my dual citizenship to not have to go into life debt just to get homework." She hesitates, blinking rapidly as the realization hits. "Or was going to, I guess. Looks like I kind of get to speedrun my performing arts education now. Thanks, Honmoon."
"…Speed-run?" Mira asks, and Rumi tries to take solace in the fact that she isn't bothering to hide her befuddlement either.
Zoey, of course, is completely unperturbed. "I don't know if it's a word in Korean or not. So I made it up! Anyways, where are you guys from?"
This is… a lot. But also, kind of perfect? Something about Zoey's seemingly boundless energy feels oddly comforting, even though Rumi has very little clue what she's actually talking about.
"…Seongsu," Mira says, tone suggesting no interest in elaborating.
"Right here," Rumi says, trying to offer a smile and finding it a little easier than she had really dared to expect.
"…Cool," Zoey says, and, okay, looks like she's finally slowing down to breathe properly. That, or she's suddenly gotten shy. Her eyes flick over to the pots on the stove. "That smells nice."
Rumi and Mira have recently discovered that they're both pretty terrible cooks, all things considered, but Rumi will take the compliment if it's offered. "Thanks."
"I will leave the three of you to it," Celine says. "Get to know one another. Zoey is aware of the responsibility the Honmoon has entrusted you with, but I am sure she will have further questions."
Clearly, it's code for Now you two deal with this so that I don't have to, but the others don't need to know that just yet. Rumi and Mira nod. "Yes, Celine," they say, and Zoey echoes them a moment later.
Celine vanishes down the hallway, Zoey's two suitcases in tow, and the next generation of demon hunters sit themselves down at the kitchen island with bowls of tofu, limp vegetables, and slightly overcooked rice.
The silence doesn't hold for long.
"So… are we, like… " Zoey begins, and then hesitantly adds on an English word with an embarrassed smile and apologetic shrug, both of which look entirely too practiced. The unexpected switch is softened somewhat by the fact that she still pronounces it with Korean vowels, but it feels unfamiliar all the same. "I, uh, don't know the word in Korean. Like when people are connected, you know, with their spirits."
"…Soulmates?" Mira suggests after a brief pause, and Rumi can only shrug when she looks over to her for input. She can sing English words just fine when it comes to song lyrics (no, not just 'fine,' anything she does has to be better than just fine,) but it would certainly be a stretch for her to claim she actually speaks the language.
It wouldn't matter, anyway, because Zoey's already flicking through what appears to be some kind of translator app on her phone. "Hey, yeah! Soulmates. Cool. So, is that how it works?"
Of course they're both looking at Rumi now, as if she's supposed to have the answer.
"I'm… not really sure," Rumi admits. "We are all connected to the Honmoon, so I suppose it also connects us to one another? But not, like… romantically, if that's what you're asking." Please let that not be what she's asking. Rumi has certainly extrapolated far more than Celine would probably ever want her to know about exactly how much the Sunlight Sisters had all meant to one another, but that wasn't necessarily the Honmoon's doing. Probably.
Yeah, definitely not.
"Oh!" Zoey says. "Ha! Nah, not what I meant at all. Just like… destiny, and stuff."
Mira snorts at that, though not unkindly. There's a difference, with her, and Rumi's pretty sure she's been getting the hang of it lately.
"Right. Of course," Rumi says, maybe a bit too quickly. "Destiny, and stuff."
She'll be the first to admit that what she's offered has been a non-answer at best, but for now, it seems to be satisfactory enough.
"Well…" Zoey says. "As far as soulmates go, I'm sure we could have done worse. I mean, how many people get to have soulmates who will cook them dinner before they even meet each other? Me, that's who. This is awesome. You guys are the best."
Rumi isn't quite sure what to say to that, but she doesn't feel pressured to immediately respond, either. They've only just met, and yet the space between the three of them already feels so… warm. Companionable. Right.
Mira raises her glass of water in a mock toast. Her face is deeply serious, but the energy in the room is anything but. "To destiny, and stuff."
Zoey grins, and mirrors the movement. "Destiny and stuff!"
Rumi feels a smile spread across her own face, too. "Destiny, and stuff."
They clink their glasses together, and maintain their highly amused eye contact as they drink, and Rumi can't help but ask herself, Is this what affection feels like?
She's not sure if she's ready to know the answer. But, whatever this feeling is, she hopes that Mira and Zoey have it, too.
(It's wishful thinking, but so is being loved.)
They fall into a rhythm.
Musical rhythms, mostly, but also just… a life rhythm. For what's probably the first time ever, Rumi is waking up every morning with an excited anticipation in her chest. She may have been training for life as an idol-slash-hunter for as long as she can remember, but the addition of Mira and Zoey to her orbit has injected a level of fun into everything that she hadn't thought would be possible. They spar with fists and staves and wooden swords, and they laugh. They write songs together, and Mira teaches them dances to pair with the music, and Zoey raps random animal facts at them while they wait for their lunchtime ramen to be ready, and Rumi feels more joy swell in her chest than she's ever experienced before.
She can't help it. She loves them.
(It's hardly perfect, of course. She and Mira still butt heads sometimes, and Zoey won't admit it, but Rumi can tell she gets very sensitive whenever they argue. But the two of them mean more to Rumi than quite possibly anything else ever has, and so she always strives to make it work between the three of them. She knows the others do, as well.)
Even when they aren't training or rehearsing, though, they're still together. Group meals, movie nights, all the things best friends are supposed to do. The kind of thing that makes Rumi feel like she has a family. Even Celine joins them, on occasion, usually at Zoey's insistence, and while the energy often feels a little off when she does, Rumi finds she doesn't entirely mind. Celine deserves to have a good child, after all, and good children involve their parents in their lives, and she's Mira's and Zoey's mentor, too. They haven't had nearly two decades of Celine to themselves; of course the dynamic's going to be different and in need of building. They can share meals together. That's fine.
Like tonight. It's been almost half a year of their newfound camaraderie, and both Mira and Zoey have really been improving in all the martial arts Celine and Rumi have been teaching them, and when Celine clears her throat and makes eye contact with each of them in turn Rumi can already tell that a pretty significant tonal shift is about to happen.
"I think it's time for the three of you to go on a hunt," Celine says, and Zoey and Mira freeze with their spoons in midair, and Rumi thinks, Finally.
"…Oh," Zoey says, sounding a little taken aback. "Really? I mean, isn't it kind of… soon?"
"Uh, no," Mira says. "I want to kick demon butt."
"Well, same, but… what if we get hurt?"
"I am confident you will not," Celine says, tone somewhere between comforting and insistent. "I have trained you well, and the Honmoon responds to you. You will be under its protection."
"What does that mean?" Mira asks, eyes widening despite the more detached cool suaveness she typically tries to have.
"The Honmoon protects us," Rumi explains. "Strengthens us, cushions impacts, that sort of thing. And it can heal us, should the need arise."
"Wait," Zoey says, like she's just abruptly unlocked the key to the whole universe. "So that time I fell off the back of that hayride, and I swear I broke my arm, but when we went to the hospital and they said it wasn't broken but the x-ray showed it had apparently been broken before, even though there's no way that ever happened—that was the Honmoon?"
"How do you fall off a hayride?" Mira mutters, largely to herself.
"Yeah," Rumi says. "It can fix a lot of injuries. Major ones, at least. Little things like paper cuts probably aren't worth it, or not bad enough for the Honmoon to notice, or something."
Cleaving your entire shoulder open definitely qualifies as major, though. Sometimes she still gets an itch there, as a reminder.
"Wow," says Zoey. "So, are we, like—Korean word for when people are un-murder-able? Can we die?"
Rumi freezes.
"Yes," says Celine, tone unusually harsh, even for her when it comes to stupid questions. "You can."
Zoey squirms a little. "…Oh."
"We'll, uh, try not to, then," Mira eventually says, evidently reading the room.
"I will join you for your first hunt," Celine says, tone leaving no room for argument—not that Rumi suspects any of them would have protested to begin with. "We will go tonight. Meet in the garden in two hours."
And she stands, takes her plate to the sink, and disappears down the hallway towards her room.
"…Sorry," Zoey mutters a moment later, shrinking in on herself. She suddenly doesn't look nearly as interested in her supper anymore.
"Not your fault she reacted like that," Mira says, glancing at Rumi like she dares her to disagree.
"We'll… be okay," Rumi says eventually, because she has no idea what to say about Celine's reaction that wouldn't just open her up to more questions she isn't ready to answer. "Nothing's going to happen to either of you. Celine and I won't allow it."
Zoey and Mira nod, though apprehension still pulls at their faces. It's clear that they're more nervous than they probably should be, but Rumi can't exactly blame them. They're only human, after all, and humans get to have human problems. Like Zoey's diabetes, or Mira's constant stomach issues when it comes to all sorts of foods, or the fact that both of them are clearly deeply afraid of pain.
Human problems. Like human people have when they are human. Rumi's not human. Rumi's a demon.
"The Honmoon will protect us," Rumi reassures them a second time, absentmindedly rubbing her shoulder where a scar should be. She smiles. "And I'll protect you. We're going to be fine."
"…I believe you," Zoey says, and it sounds like she means it. "Hey. Do you guys, uh, know what word I was trying to say earlier? About not dying? In English it's —"
"Immortal," Mira says. "When someone's unkillable. But guess we can't have everything, huh?"
"Guess not," Zoey agrees, pulling a small notebook out of one of the many pockets on her sweater to make a note of the new word.
Rumi's never exactly studied English. Mira has—as well as varying levels of French, Italian, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Japanese—because being an intended heir to her parents' business empire apparently had some advantages Mira hasn't totally rejected. Zoey, of course, speaks English fluently and Korean almost as well, and is actively trying every day to improve on her grasp of the language, so that she doesn't sound quite so much like she mostly learned it from watching television. She's succeeding, mostly. It definitely helps when the new words she needs to learn have something to do with sea creatures.
Rumi's never learned how to speak any other language. Maybe, once they turn the Honmoon gold and make everything okay, she'll have the time to.
"So, how do you fall off a hayride?" Mira asks, and Zoey gladly launches into a story about something called Scarefest that sounds like it involves a lot of… monsters and vegetables? Honestly, Rumi's not sure she wants to know.
It hurts, sometimes, just a little—these reminders that Zoey and Mira had lives of their own before the three of them had found each other. Granted, from what Rumi understands, both of them are much happier here as a unit than either of them had been beforehand, but… she thinks it might be nice to have felt like she'd had some amount of choice in the matter. Some semblance of normalcy, before the call of the Honmoon had taken it away.
Maybe, once this is all over, she'll be able to learn more about what it means to be normal. And when that happens, she wants Zoey and Mira to be right at her side.
In fact, Rumi wants a lot of things. Of course she wants their idol group to succeed, and she wants to turn the Honmoon gold. But, also… she wants to visit Zoey's hometown in America. She wants to invent new recipes with Mira. She wants to see a rare flower bloom on her potted kadupul, she wants to push her vocal range even further, she wants to climb up onto the roof and watch a meteor shower with her best friends, she wants to live with them forever, she wants to live, she wants to live, she wants to live.
(It's wishful thinking, but so is being loved.)
They call themselves HUNTR/X.
Officially, that is. Unofficially, they've been all sorts of things from The Super Epic Demon Slayers Who Save Everybody (Zoey's suggestion) to The Bad Bitches (Mira's,) but those names are reserved for use when it's just the three of them, relaxing and unwinding after a long day of idol training or saving the world, whichever had been their most recent priority.
And things are really, really great. Their career launches with a single titled Starlight, and hits the ground running so thoroughly that even Celine seems taken aback by the rapid enormity of their success. They're in the top ten charts by the end of the week, and it isn't much longer before they're the number one most-played song of the month.
So they keep going. A second single, then a third, and then a whole debut album. They're the opening act for the International Idol Awards within their first year of existence, and actually among the competition—among the finalists—the year after that.
And they win.
And then they keep winning.
They have a new routine, now, and it feels like the easiest thing in the world. Logistics and interviews in the mornings, rehearsals in the afternoons, performances on the evenings they're scheduled for (and songwriting together on the evenings where they aren't,) and killing demons at night. They move out of the house in the mountains and into the entire top floor of a massive skyscraper right in the middle of Seoul, and Rumi fills her balcony with as many plants as she can, and the distant view of the mountains on the horizon remains a comfort but she'll be the first to admit that there's a certain allure to the neon glow of the city.
And they get closer. What had started out as mostly-awkward attempts at reaching out to each other over differences that seemed like they might be insurmountable quickly morphs into the easiest comfort Rumi's ever experienced in her life. They do everything together—training, eating, relaxation—and by the time that five years have passed, Rumi wakes up one day and abruptly realizes it's been a long, long time since she's wanted to die.
That's good. That means there's still a part of her worth saving.
Still, things aren't perfect. There's always the worry that they've been too popular for too long, and one day they just won't be able to live up to their own hype anymore. The Honmoon is strengthening, but so is the demons' desperation, and they're taking bigger and bigger risks that are harder and harder for the hunters to cover up. Rumi's patterns are still expanding, ever so slowly. She'll probably have to move on to wearing exclusively full-length sleeves soon, and it's probably only a matter of time before someone notices enough to call her out on it.
…But she isn't thinking about that too hard right now. Right now, one hundred percent of her priorities lie in making sure that she is as comfortably burrowed into their couch as physically possible. (Not that it's hard, or anything. The thing is huge, and they have a frankly comical amount of pillows and blankets, and Mira and Zoey had delegated themselves to snack duty, which basically means there was enough food on their coffee table to feed a small army. Before they ate it all.)
(It was really good food.)
"I think I'm dying," Zoey says, but she sounds pretty relaxed as she says it. Fair enough. Rumi's tired enough to understand where she's coming from with that, but not so tired that she's going to risk falling asleep in front of them. No matter how much she wishes she could just tell them about her patterns… there are some risks that will never be worth it.
Soon. Soon. They're going to turn the Honmoon gold, and then Rumi will finally be able to have everything she's ever dreamed of.
"You guys," Zoey says much more insistently once it's clear that nobody cares about her impending demise. "I'm dying. It's awful."
"You're fine," Mira says through a mouthful of chocolate rice cake. "Only demons get to die under my watch. You're not a demon, are you?"
"Ew. Never. We hate demons. Gonna destroy 'em all." Zoey yawns spectacularly. "After we sleep for a million years."
"…Yeah. Maybe we should… go to bed?" Rumi suggests, even though right now it sounds like just about the last thing she wants to do. She never wants this moment to end, except for maybe the talking-about-killing-demons part.
"Ugh. Nooooooooo. Rumiiiiiiii."
There's no point in dignifying that with a response, but she can't help herself. "Yes, Zoey?"
"I don't wanna go to bed. Only losers sleep in beds. I'm staying on the couch forever."
Mira, who is currently somehow managing to sit on the couch both upside down and backwards, says, "I thought you liked your bed. I like my bed. It's a good bed."
Yeah, they're delirious. It's rapidly become one of Rumi's favorite states of being over the years. "Beds are good," she agrees, though that doesn't mean she's any more tempted to get up off the couch either.
"That's just what Big Mattress wants you to think!" Zoey's arms are now gesticulating wildly in the air over her head. "Who says you have to sleep horizontally? People who want to sell more beds, that's who. I'm gonna stay cuddled up right here until every demon that's ever existed personally kneels before my throne of comfort and begs me to kill them. Or until I'm hungry. Whichever comes first."
Rumi has long given up on trying to comprehend anything Zoey ever says past midnight or so. Still, the allure of the couch is indeed very powerful. "You're gonna get hungry in ten minutes."
"That's a future Zoey problem. Now Zoey's too busy being one with the fluff."
"Do we wanna just… sleep here tonight?" Mira suggests, sounding halfway to unconsciousness already.
"Yeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssss," Zoey says, drawing out the word into some sort of seventeen-syllable monstrosity. "Stick it to Big Mattress with me!"
Rumi makes a valiant effort to ignore the way her heart somersaults at the word we. She's not entirely sure she succeeds. Yes, the three of them have a tendency to be very affectionate with one another—sometimes to the point that they have to consciously withhold themselves if they're making a public appearance—but all three of them purposefully sleeping together on the couch seems like a step too far. Rumi has always taken great pains to avoid sleeping in front of the other two, because you can never be too careful, and now that her patterns have started inching their way closer and closer to the ends of her sleeves, she knows she cannot take any sort of risk. No matter how much she wants to fold herself right in with them and sleep for a week.
(Or until they all get hungry again. Which will definitely come first.)
"You guys go ahead," she says regretfully. "Big Mattress already has its hold on me. I'm sleeping in my room."
"Noooooo, come onnnn," Mira whines. "Don't abandon us, Rumi, please."
She almost gives in right there, just for Mira's commitment to the theatrics. But she can't. "Good night, you two."
"Rumiiiiiiiiiii," Zoey whines, roughly fifty times more dramatically than Mira. She reaches out, grabs Rumi's sleeve, and tugs, completely upsetting the delicate balance of exactly where the shirt sits on Rumi's body to hide the patterns. "You've gotta—"
Rumi flinches rather spectacularly, yanking her arm out of Zoey's grip. No, no, no no no no, that did not almost happen. They can never know. They can never know—
"Whoa," Zoey says, hand placatingly stilled in the air as though she didn't just almost discover Rumi's deepest shame. She suddenly looks much more alert. "Are you okay? You're jumpier than a… jumpy thing."
"…Yeah," Rumi says, heart still racing, adjusting her sleeve and her neckline as subtly as she thinks she can get away with. "Sorry. Just… frazzled. Little overstimulated, you know? They kind of went a bit too hard on the lights tonight, I think."
"…Sure," says Mira, who pretty clearly does not agree with her assessment of the overbearing nature of the stage lights. "Yeah. Whatever."
"Good night," Rumi says again, a bit more regretfully.
"Can you grab me Sir Squirtles?" Zoey asks, the exhaustion creeping back into her voice. "He should be on my bed somewhere."
"I thought you had it out for beds," Mira mumbles and Rumi wordlessly steps towards Zoey's room. It's hardly an apology, but it'll have to do.
"Well, Sir Squirtles is the one redeeming quality my bed has," Zoey says. "But he can still be moved. Zoey one, beds zero."
Mira grumbles something that vaguely sounds like, "Whatever you say," but Rumi can't quite hear her anymore. She steps into Zoey's room, carefully maneuvering herself around the piles of notebooks and not-quite-dirty-not-quite-clean clothes strewn all over the floor, and tucks the stuffed turtle in question under one arm. She gently deposits him into Zoey's lap on the way back to her own room, shuts her door, gently locks it, and crawls into her bed, biting her lip to keep it from quivering.
It won't be much longer now. Surely. Some day, she'll be able to spend the time she wants to spend with her girls, and go to the bathhouse, and do everything else they've been asking her to do, and she won't have to hide anymore. As soon as they turn the Honmoon gold, Rumi will finally have everything she's ever wanted within reach.
(It's wishful thinking, but so is being loved.)
They're redesigning the costumes again.
Their regular show outfits don't need too many tweaks—Rumi's already has long sleeves, but the way her patterns have been crawling upwards past her collarbones lately is definitely going to necessitate adding on something to cover her neck underneath it—but with Golden almost ready to officially record, and the entirely new outfits they'll need for filming the music video, there's always room for improvement when it comes to the rest of the HUNTR/X wardrobe, too.
Normally, nobody bats an eye when she says her outfits need to cover more skin. Today, though, Bobby seems to have something to say about it.
"Hey, Rumi," he says, waving her over from across the room. "Can we talk for a sec?"
Everyone else is clearing out. Zoey and Mira have already left for the bathhouse (though not before Rumi was forced to turn down their invitation again,) and the designer's just finished putting her drafts and drawings and fabric samples away, and in a matter of moments it's just Rumi and Bobby, standing in the middle of the office like they're in a war meeting.
Okay, no, calm down. It's Bobby. Whatever he apparently wants to talk to her alone about, it's going to be fine.
"I, uh, couldn't help but notice that it seems really important to you that your costumes all cover your arms," he begins hesitantly, and oh, no. "Which is totally fine! I want you to do whatever makes you the most comfortable! But… well, I'm a little worried. I just want you to know that… well, I get it. So… if you ever want to talk, I'm here."
Rumi frowns. "You… get it?"
"…Yeah," Bobby says, smiling a little nervously. He rubs at one of his forearms under his own sleeve, and Rumi realizes for the first time that she's never seen him without long sleeves on, either. "I don't want to make any assumptions, but I'm… familiar with certain signs, let's say. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, but if it would help to have a listening ear, I'm there. Just between the two of us."
…Oh. Oh. Oh, he thinks that—oh, no.
(Well, yes, technically, but—not for any of the reasons he's probably assuming.)
(Wait, he gets it? Bobby? Who would ever hurt Bobby enough that—no, she's getting ahead of herself. Escape this conversation now, deal with the emotional fallout later. It isn't fair of her to make assumptions about his life when he's clearly trying so hard to respect her own privacy.)
"I'm okay, Bobby," she says gently. "Really. I appreciate you looking out for me. Just… please don't say anything to anyone else?"
"Of course," he says quickly. "I promise."
She wants to believe him. She wants to think that he actually cares enough to worry this much, and not just because he gets paid to. But the world does not love her, and so neither must he. Not really.
"…I just want you to know that I'm here for you, Rumi," Bobby eventually concludes. "Okay? I care about you, no matter what. And I do mean you, not just the persona the fans get to see. Though of course I love her, too. So, if there's anything I can do, just say the word." He pauses. "And if not, just say 'Shut up, Bobby.' I can do that too. Whatever you want. I'm just here to make things easier for you."
And for a brief, terrible moment—she almost wants to tell him.
Everything. Demons, the Honmoon, her patterns, Celine. Maybe, even if Zoey and Mira cannot know, Bobby will understand.
But no. Who is she kidding? He'd never believe her, and even on the tiniest off chance that he did, knowing about HUNTR/X's secret double life would probably only put him in danger. She can't do that to Bobby. Plus, no matter how much she wants to trust him, she's seen how he gets during their occasional emotionally charged late night post-show hangouts. There's always a chance he'd let something slip, and that is a risk Rumi cannot take.
Still, it would have been nice to not feel quite so alone.
"…Thanks, Bobby," she says, and offers him the realest smile she can. "I'll let you know."
(It's wishful thinking, but so is being loved.)
And then it all goes wrong. The Saja Boys explode onto the scene in a flurry of song and dance. Jinu betrays her, and all of Rumi's secrets are torn from her grasping fingers like a light vanishing in a storm, and Mira and Zoey cannot look at her. After everything they've been through as a unit, they can't even look at her.
And for the first time in years, she remembers what it feels like to want to die.
The Honmoon breaks, shatters, unravels beneath Rumi's feet.
This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves. This is what she deserves.
She finds Celine in the garden by the house in the mountains, tending to a plant Rumi will never see grow.
It's disorienting. Rumi has seen countless demons teleport, and certainly started paying more attention to what it looks like when they do it once she'd started hanging around with Jinu (and how dare she, how dare she ever have trusted him,) but nothing could have prepared her for the sensation of thinking, I need to go back to where it all started, and then she blinks and she's there.
"…Rumi?" Celine asks, voice shaking, garden sickle falling into the dirt at her feet.
Rumi kneels. Summons her sword. Trusts that Celine will understand what she needs.
"Do what you should have done a long time ago," Rumi says. "Before I destroy what I swore to protect. Please."
And Celine, too, betrays her.
There is nothing left to do. No one left to save her. No one here to even say, I cannot love Rumi the way she would need me to.
At least Hyun-seo had been able to admit it. Perhaps, if Rumi waits here long enough, she will come back again. Just this once. Surely she would be able to save the world.
But no. That's too much to hope for. Rumi is a demon, the villain of her own story, and that isn't the way these things are allowed to end.
Celine is speaking, pleading with her, making empty promises that could never be strong enough to undo the crime that is Rumi's existence. Both of them are so, so weak. How had neither of them ever noticed before?
Maybe Celine does love her, but it's never been enough. All of Rumi's life, she's never been loved enough.
Only you, she thinks. Only you could choose selfishness at a moment like this.
But it's the only choice Rumi can make. Perhaps it's the only choice she's ever had.
And if she is to be a selfish monster, then she knows what she must do. It may not make her the child Celine deserves, but if Zoey and Mira are in trouble, she is going to go to them. She is going to save them. And afterwards, if they still want to kill her—well, that's their decision. Rumi is done with secrets. With lies. She will be her full demonic self, and she will do whatever it was she was born to do. No matter what.
She has to make this right. Whatever that even means anymore.
(It's wishful thinking. So, she suspects, was being loved.)