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Rumi’s hair has never been hers.
Initially, it had been that demon’s. The ungodly lavender that matched the swirls growing like poisoned veins against the skin of an infant. The same inherited shade she’d spent the last quarter of a century deceiving the world into believing was religiously and ritualistically dyed. It was unnatural. The blessings of human-made pigments and the expectation that idols present themselves as something unique, distinctive, had carried her thus far.
Once Celine had gotten over the shock of it (the hair, the heartbreak), it had been indisputably hers. Those steady and unrelenting hands of her caretaker had woven the strands into artwork, and for a while, Rumi’s hair had been her mother’s.
Celine had not kept it like that for long. Perhaps it had been too painful, a reminder of what she had lost, and what she had been left with the burden of looking after.
Eventually, by extension, Rumi’s hair had belonged to the label. Sunlight Entertainment had left its expectations and allowances hand-woven into the contract she had signed with her girls at her side and her (adoptive parent?) guardian standing over her shoulder.
She’d had no reason to fight against it then. They’d needed the Honmoon sealed. They’d needed their songs broadcast to the world; they’d needed Celine’s guidance and Bobby’s assistance, and they’d needed the label and all the help they could get.
Now, the Honmoon is secure. Their Honmoon. The fibres of it are radiant and strong, and they’ve not had more than a handful of demons slip through in months. Rumi can breathe, she can rest without fear of the waylines thruming like a badly tuned guitar to warn them of a breach in the middle of the night, she can relax in the company of her girls, truly, entirely, for the first time since she’s met them. The tension that had become an integral part of her muscular skeletal system seeps away, not overnight; it takes weeks, months, but she gets there.
There is still, however, a persistent ache in her head, her shoulders.
Rumi had spent all her life playing nice, playing a good daughter, a good employee - she’s ready to go a little bit ape shit.
Rumi emerges from her ensuite and walks the length of the room towards where the girls are reclined, mostly obscured from her line of sight by the back of the couch, but when Rumi softly clears her throat and says, “Zoey.” The younger girl sits up, eyes finding hers, and, noticing her purple hair loose and free, Zoey beams at her like pure sunlight.
“Hi,” She says, her smile crooked and honest. “Your hair’s down.” It’s not often. It’s such a rarity, in fact, that the statement has Mira glancing up too.
“Yeah,” Rumi swallows, feeling all of a sudden far too seen. “I, um. I want to cut it.”
“Oh?” Zoey says, one hand propped on the back of the couch cushions to maintain her swivelled posture.
Mira won’t stop staring either. Eventually, she offers, at the continued silence, “I’m sure Bobby could get us booked in tomorrow. Eun-seo has been on my back recently about a touch-up.” The taller girl’s hand runs nonchalantly through her own unaturally coloured hair. It’s the usual procedure. Having anyone other than their usual stylists in close proximity with scissors and sharp things would be considered a sin.
“No.” Rumi responds. “No. I don’t want anyone else to do it.” And now they were looking at her with a whole new level of attention. Zoey had dabbled, back in America. Rumi did not need it to be neat and tidy and perfect; she just needed this first terrifying part to be done by the hands of someone she trusted implicitly. Who might actually understand what Rumi was asking of them.
“How much are we talking?” Zoey inquires, now kneeling.
“Uh,” Rumi closes her eyes. “Most of it.”
The sound that comes out of Zoey’s mouth is a mix of an excited squeal and a disbelieving gasp. She is over the back of the couch and at Rumi’s side like a shot.
“Do you have inspiration photos, a mood board? What exactly is your definition of “most of it”, because—”
“Wait. Hang on. It makes me nervous when I have to be the only source of impulse control; that’s usually your job.” Mira stood and was joining them, her focus solely on Rumi. “Are you sure? Sure, sure?”
“Yes.” She returns. “I’ve been thinking about it for weeks.”
Zoey’s hands clasp around the flesh of her arm and begin shaking manically. “This is so exciting. You know you’ve literally had the same hairstyle every single day since I’ve met you!”
Rumi lets out a disbelieving laugh, “Yeah, Zo, I’m very aware, that’s kinda the point of this.”
“And you’re one hundred per cent, absolutely, feed my soul to Gwi-Ma and hope to die, sure about this?” Mira asks again, seeking confirmation as opposed to lending discouragement.
Rumi lies with a gentle smile on her face. “Yeah.” Sometimes a girl’s just gotta be a little bit brave. It will grow back, sure. Not without a long ass amount of time though. Celine’s going to fucking kill her.
Zoey gives Rumi’s arm one last jostle before she skips away, saying, “Oh, I’ll meet you in your bathroom - I’m gonna get my supplies!”
— — —
She sits on a chair, the backrest to her front, Zoey behind her with unrestrained access to the wealth of purple that cascades down her back and to the floor. Mira sits on the counter, supervising, handing Zoey tools as she asks for them. It’s quiet for a while. Rumi finds her eyes drifting closed at the repetition of the hairbrush against her scalp, down the back of her neck, the planes of her shoulders. She schools her breath not to stutter when Zoey’s fingernails run unfettered in a similar pattern. Managing all but once, but when her eyes crack open in embarrassment, Zoey is looking at her as though she is a marvel, and not merely a blank canvas she’s been allowed to wreak havoc on. She wonders if Zoey is nervous, too.
“So what’s the game plan here?” Mira inquires. “You wanna just take a bit off the end and see how you’re feeling?”
“I want to just go for it,” Rumi says. “Keep it no longer than my shoulders, hack it off, and then we can tidy it up after.”
Another of Zoey’s delighted noises erupts behind her, and even Mira lets out a fond laugh, commenting, “You’re gonna look like Rupunzel.”
Zoey bounces on the balls of her feet. “Oh my god, wouldn’t it be weird if it went super dark after, too?”
“I’ve had haircuts before!”
“Yeah, but never anything this drastic.” Zoey hums, her hands distractingly back in Rumi’s thick waves of lavender. “It’s gonna take a while to get through all of this, there’s so much of it.”
“We have time.” Mira reminds them, her voice soft.
And while Rumi agrees, she wants to get the first step over before her heartbeat rises too far up into her throat. “Use my saingeom.”
Zoey laughs, startled. “Oh, you’re serious?”
“How would that even work? Honmoon weapons aren’t supposed to harm… humans…” Mira trails off, realising the mistake, and the pursed lip expression on Rumi’s face.
They used to play a game, the other two. Before they’d settled on their signature weapons, they’d trained with anything and everything they could pull out of thin, luminescent air. Throwing knives had been a part of the curriculum for all of them, and using your best friend for target practice was harmless enough when the spirit-formed weapons would pass through flesh and blood bodies like mist. Rumi had never joined in with this game.
She watches something flicker across Mira’s face. Maybe she’s recalibrating all the memories she has of their days spent sparing, how Rumi had always held herself to a higher standard, how often she’d walked away with knicks and scrapes that she’d had to hide and tend to in private. Alone.
“It’ll be quicker,” Rumi says, summoning the misty, cold blade, choosing to stare dead ahead so as not to have to acknowledge the way Mira’s expression is changing. Unfortunately, she finds Zoey’s there instead, in much the same state.
Rumi closes her eyes.
The room is still for a prolonged moment, and she imagines the other two are having one of those silent conversations they’d become so fluent in during the years she spent hiding away from them.
Eventually, the featherlight touch of a hand brushes against hers, and the weight of her weapon leaves her grasp. It must have been Mira, because Zoey’s move to reposition her head, pads of her fingers warm and careful against her jawbone. “Stay there for me.” Then Zoey does something quite unexpected: she kisses the back of Rumi’s head like a farewell to the braid they’ve known for years.
Rumi squeezes her eyes closed and suppresses a shiver down the length of her spine. Words are whispered behind her, Mira must have moved off the counter when she’d reached for the saingeom, she thinks she works out ‘she wanted you to do it.’ An unsteady, nasally noise is followed by complete silence. All three must be holding their breath.
She feels the presence of the weapon near her skin, the frigid wraith of air that follows its movements and sets the hairs at the nape of her neck on end. Then—
With one swoop, it’s gone. Oh.
Oh, wow.
That’s so much lighter.
Rumi blinks her eyes open to stare at herself in the mirror. Zoey lets out a giggle that could be both hysteria and exhilaration. Mira has one hand over her mouth as though this is the most reckless decision they’d ever made. But they’re both staring at her in wonder, checking that she’s happy, checking this wasn’t a mistake.
She splays her fingers through it. Tests. Rolls her neck and watches, enraptured, how the ends move with her motions. It’s short, shorter than she ever remembers it being — she cannot recollect her own toddlerhood. It’s not styled, it’s a bit of a mess right now if she’s honest, and there’s a whole swath of it fallen in a heap to the floor tiles. But it feels. Fucking amazing.
Zoey, anxious over her hesitation, says, “I can fix it, I promise, you did use the words ‘hack it off’, but I can absolutely sort this out, or we can still ask Bobby—”
“Zoey,” Rumi reassures, her voice like satin. “Zoey, it’s okay. It’s perfect, thank you. It’s…” Wow. “Thank you.”
Zoey smiles back at her, careful and proud. The sword now dematerialised, this time, when the maknae’s hands return to her scalp, Rumi doesn’t hold back the sigh that escapes her.
Mira returns to her original position and assists as Zoey begins refining Rumi’s new look. The taller girl says, “We’re circling back to that at some point, though.”
She knows they’re probably thinking of the moment backstage, after takedown, after they’d raised weapons that they had not known would be as lethal to the exposed and open girl sat before them, as the unknown creature that had stumbled from the stage.
She nods, and Zoey smacks her on the top of the head with a comb. “Stay still.”
“Sorry.” Despite it all, Rumi lets out a relieved, amazed laugh, one palm pressing into her cheek and moving over one eye. “Celine’s going to kill me.”
Zoey smacks her with the comb again. They know. She had told them, naturally, what had transpired in between disappearing from the Idol awards and reappearing at Namsan Tower. “None of that.”
“It doesn’t have to be a big deal, Rumi.” She peers at Mira from between her fingers with the one concealed eye. “You’re a big girl, you can make your own choices.”
Rumi lets out a groan before biting her own tongue as she flusters. Her hand drops to meet the other one in her lap. “This is definitely a contract violation.”
Zoey pauses from where she’d been snipping near Rumi’s ears. She’s doing a remarkable job recovering it, actually. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Page three, item forty-seven.” Rumi recites.
The two of them stare at her, blinking.
Mira starts. “Why the hell did you sign that? What sort of perverted, controlling-”
Rumi scoffs out a laugh, reminding them of that fact while no longer caring herself in the slightest, “Celine’s on the board.”
“Screw the board!” Zoey declares, repositioning Rumi once again after her attention was pulled towards Mira’s outrage. She finds herself enjoying the feeling of Zoey cradling her head, tilting her neck just so. Maybe she should wriggle some more, be a little less compliant. “They let me change my hairstyle all the time. Why would it be any different for you?”
“I’m the figurehead. I have to be recognisable. Distinct.”
“I’d say you look quite distinct right now,” Mira notes breathily.
It takes Rumi a few seconds longer to realise that Zoey has finished her movements, has packed up her supplies, and is now just simply carding the crescent moons of her fingernails in motions against Rumi’s scalp. Ruffling the tresses until they fall obediently down her neck.
“Huh,” Rumi says. Maybe they won’t need Bobby to book a tidy-up appointment tomorrow.
“You like it?” Zoey asks, almost nervous.
Mira replies, “I think it looks lit, you continue to surprise us, Zo.”
“I’m quite pleased with it, if I do say so myself.” The maknae beams.
Rumi feels warm at the sight of them in the reflection, and mourns Zoey’s hands as they slip away. She stands, moving closer to the mirror. “It looks wonderful, Zoey. Thank you.”
“You said that already, silly.” Zoey darts forward and loops her arms around Rumi’s midsection, the warmth of her against Rumi’s back such a welcome respite. It is too short-lived. Zoey says, stepping back. “We gotta clean this up.”
“I’ll sort it out,” Mira says, she’s stepping closer for a moment, one hand carefully tucking a stray strand of hair behind Rumi’s ear, before a quick press of her lips meets Rumi’s cheek. “You look cute like this. If they give you hell for it, we’re right here, okay?”
Rumi just nods, hopeless in her attempt not to blush.
“You should probably shower, or you’ll be shedding all night. You can use mine; we’ll get this mess fixed up.”
“Thank you.” Rumi breathes out.
Mira winks at her. “Don’t mention it.”
— — —
The next day, Rumi posts a short and sweet video of herself with her new look. The fans go crazy, understandably. Mira must have said something to Bobby, who must have said something to the label, because they’re suspiciously quiet. Celine responds with a simple heart emoji. They’ve barely spoken, since, but she’s been doing that a lot lately. It feels like quiet approval. She’ll take it.
Rumi feels light. She feels good, she feels like herself despite it being so far away from the carefully curated idol image she’d been forming for years.
Rumi’s hair is hers, and there’s a little bit of her girls in there, too. Some amount of coownership is okay, she thinks, when entrusted, gifted, to people you love.