Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They say your world ends when you die. You stop breathing, your heart stops moving, and you simply… cease to be. 

Celine’s world ends on a rainy day.

The ambush is something they should have prepared for, something the Honmoon should have alerted them of the moment the first demon came, but life holds no room for what-ifs. Mi-yeong is three days post-labor, and Hana is making pancakes.

Hana, because she was the best and the kindest of them (she shouldn’t have been alone that night—) dies first. A claw through the stomach. The thought never occurred to them of having to worry about their safety in their own home. After all, the Honmoon was strongest around its hunters. 

She had been whistling joyfully because little Rumi had opened her eyes and held her finger for hours. She loves her auntie so much, she had awwed. And in celebration, she decided to cook their group’s favorite. 

Her blood had splattered over the counters, staining the innocent dessert red. Celine had never been able to tolerate pancakes after… after.

Mi-yeong, hearing the commotion, had been prepared. But oh, how weak and vulnerable she was. The demons must have known about the recent birth. They had been more active in the wake of Mi-yeong’s pregnancy, hoping to take advantage of her new weakness. 

She had rushed straight to the nursery, grabbing little Rumi. Celine, who had been by her side the whole time, protected her as they fought off the hordes of demons. There must have been hundreds. Thousands. They left trails of demon deaths in their wake, but eventually, a demon slipped through their defenses. It had ran its wretched claws through Mi-yeong’s back as she turned to shield Rumi from the blow.

They fought for two nights. That was how long it took until the last demon was felled. It was then that Mi-yeong collapsed onto the ground, unable to hold herself up any longer.

“Celine…” she said, with the tone of someone who knew she was close to death. Celine had not resisted, back then, because she knew it was futile. For Mi-yeong to stay fighting for so long, with all the injuries she incurred, was a miracle.

“Mi-yeong…” Celine clenched her fists.

Mi-yeong smiled. “You were always the most responsible one of us.” She cradled little Rumi’s head, fingers running up and down her cheek. The child had stopped crying sometime during the night, sound asleep due to exhaustion. “Will you grant me one last favor, old friend?”

“Anything. Anything you ask.”

“Take care of my Rumi for me, please. Pass our legacy down, and ensure no other demons will come to harm us again.”

Celine nodded. She sat by Mi-yeong’s side until the other could no longer move, breathing turned static. Only then did she take the child from her mother’s grasp. Only then, were her exhales stolen by the screams that left her throat.

Celine’s world ends on a rainy day, with nothing more than a bloody countertop and two corpses. The only living remnant to come out—because Celine’s heart had died alongside Hana and Mi-yeong and she could not have been considered fully alive, not anymore—was a baby with purple hair and patterns engraved on her skin that all but spelled out DEMON.

Unbidden, the seed planted itself into her head and grew: how was it that two hunters died, but a demon hadn’t?

The weight in her arms should have been light. It should have been, but the universe was cruel, and so was the human mind.

She was holding the child of her very first friend a demon. She was holding a child a demon. 

The patterns, as if they had been listening to her thoughts, grew minutely. Celine covered them up with her hand, even when the very touch almost caused her to recoil. 

It would be the first, and last time, she touched them.

Rumi thinks flowers are pretty.

She likes the way they smell, the way the petals feel smoother the more the thumbs them. Mostly, though, she loves how many different colors there are. The purple ones are her favorite. She giggles as she plucks one from the ground to tangle in her hair. Often, she runs out of the house just to find a new flower to play with. Celine tells her to not go too far and always reminds her to cover it up, but she’s never too strict. Rumi spends most of her time outside when she’s not training, only coming back in during the night when Celine remembers her bedtime. 

Her tummy rumbles.

Rumi scrunches her nose. The sound is weird and stupid, and why would her tummy need to rumble anyway? It’s not a drum, or a pet, but it always rumbles no matter what she’s doing. Arms wrapping around her middle, she curls into a ball on the soft grass. The rumbles were sometimes accompanied by pain, and she still wasn’t quite sure how to fix it, but maybe it was just another part of her bad-ness. Like the patterns on her arm.

Celine would know how to fix it. But Celine was already upset about her patterns, and Rumi didn’t want to make her more upset than she already was. Her tummy aches though, and tears pool in her eyes. She wipes them away with the back of her hand. 

Just for today. She’d ask Celine today, and Celine will teach her how to fix it and Rumi won’t have to ask her anymore things and have to see her mentor with that scary look on her face again and everything will be okay.

Propping herself up on shaky legs, Rumi makes her way for their home. It’s not very far, so it only takes a few minutes before she’s back inside. Celine is in her office again, so Rumi makes sure to knock three times before letting herself in.

“Rumi?” On her face is visible confusion. “What are you doing here?”

“Ce-ley,” she picks at the edges of her shirt nervously, “can you help Rumi? Rumi’s tummy hurts.”

The older woman’s expression contorts into one of realization and annoyance, and Rumi feels something get stuck in her throat. Did she say something wrong?

Celine sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “The food is in the pantry. You know this, Rumi.”

“I know!” Rumi sniffles. Of course she knows the food is in the pantry, but what is she going to do with it? What will the food do to her tummy? She may not have been very bright, but she knew eating the candy wasn’t going to help, even if it did taste yummy.

“If you knew, why did you come to me? Go eat. You don’t need to tell me if you’re hungry.” Celine goes back to her papers, shooing her away, and Rumi has no choice but to go out.

Her tummy hurts, but Celine told her to eat, and Celine always knew what was best. She knew how bad her patterns were. Knew she needed to hide them. Knew how bad Rumi was, so Celine must be right. Maybe food will help?

Tap. Tap. Tap. Small feet make their way through wooden floors and arrive at the kitchen. Rumi looks through the drawers in the pantry for something to eat before she finds it. There, in the corner, lay a ramyeon cup, her absolute favorite meal. She giggles, tears all but forgotten, and takes it out, eagerly peeling away the cover.

Rumi was not very good at cooking, but she had seen Celine prepare the ramyeon multiple times before. All she did was pour hot water inside it, something that was even easier than plucking flowers. So—so it was just this. It wouldn’t be too hard, right?

Stubborn hands grab hold of a water bottle. The kettle hadn’t been put away yet, likely because Celine forgot to do so after her morning coffee, so it wasn’t very far. A big relief, because if the kettle had been stocked away in one of the top cabinets, Rumi knew she would fall trying to get it, her gripping skills not yet good enough, and Celine would probably be mad. 

Rumi doesn't want to make Celine mad.

And so, with the ease that came with daily training, Rumi climbs the lowest countertop, sitting cross-legged as she pours the water inside the kettle excitedly. There are a few stray splashes on the counter, but success! She lets the water sit for a couple of minutes before dipping her finger in, but nothing has changed. The water is still cold.

Maybe it’s like a light switch? Rumi stares at the kettle in concentration, trying to find anything suspicious. She moves it about again and again, trying to activate it, but nothing ends up happening. 

Celine would know, but Rumi doesn’t want to bother her again.

And so, after slumping on the counter in frustration, Rumi gives up and grabs her ramyeon cup. She pours the kettle water in it and the ramyeon inside rises but. But it’s ugly and it isn’t soft like how she likes it and she hates it.

The taste is bad. It’s like she’s eating wood and her teeth hurt from chomping down, but Celine said eating would fix her tummy and Rumi eats it all anyway.

At the bottom, she finds some square plastic-thingies. She holds them between her fingers, tongue sticking out unconsciously. Inspects them for a while. Eventually though, the novelty wears off and she throws them in the bin with the ramyeon cup.

The ramyeon was bad, but her tummy doesn’t hurt as much anymore, and Celine is always right. Celine makes the ramyeon taste good, so does that mean that Rumi is just bad? Did her bad-ness make the ramyeon bad?

Her tummy doesn’t ache, but her heart does, and Rumi runs to the flowers because it’s the only thing she knows how to do.

The child unsettles her.

It trots around with Mi-yeong’s face, smiling at her. It doesn’t cry, not anymore, but it used to, when it was much smaller than this. Celine had not known what to do then. She knew she was supposed to hold it, rock it in her arms until it calmed down, but seeing the patterns on its skin and the unnatural hair color that could only have come from its bloodline, she couldn’t. 

A blanket. That was the only thing that quieted it. Whenever the child cried, she threw a blanket on it and waited until it stopped crying. It didn’t pick up so much of a fuss in the weeks, months, years after that. Of course, it grew, and with it, Celine’s apprehension, but blessings came small and appreciated. It did not seek her out. 

It learned not to, after the first time, when Celine all but stiffened under its touch and could offer no comfort to its pleading face. Not when it cried and all she could hear were the sounds of weapons clashing against claws as a baby shed tears for something it could not fathom. Never again, and Celine was grateful for that.

Against her will, though, the child had to be trained. It moved with a strength and grace that unnerved her, but she could not argue against its effectiveness. Celine would raise the child to be a good demon hunter, better than she had been, better than they had all been, and they would rid the child of its marks when the time came for the Honmoon to shine gold.

Then, she would be able to look the child in the eyes, and see something other than it.

The face of a woman she once loved.

The marks of a man she despised with her very being, who had taken everything from her.

(“She’s small,” Celine says.

“Babies are supposed to be small, you know,” Mi-yeong replies teasingly. She sends Celine a knowing glance. “I want to name her Rumi.”

Celine’s eyes widen.

They had pooled together a list of names for the baby, back when Mi-yeong entered her second trimester. It had been the three of them wracking their brains for boy and girl names, searching up hidden definitions and all sorts of nonsense. At some point, Hana had suggested the name Bap, joking that rice was the heart of Korean life, and the soon-to-be Bap would thus never go hungry. Celine had whacked her upside the head. 

Rumi. That was the name Celine had chosen. For Mi-yeong to choose it as well...

It was perfect.)

“So does that mean I have to hide it, all the time?” the child asks. 

“Yes.” Celine hums as she brushes through its hair. “Demons will hunt and kill, feasting on souls simply because it satisfies them. Your duty as a hunter is to make sure they are vanished from this world and thrown back to Gwi-Ma’s realm, and to do this you must seal the Honmoon. Until then, no one must see.”

“So…” the child scrunches up its nose, “are there no good demons in this world?”

“Never,” Celine answers viciously, face twisting in an almost-snarl. The child has its back turned to her, so it does not see, but it feels the way the Honmoon shifts in response to the venom. Weapons clashing and crying and blood on the countertop and—there are no good demons.

It turns its head look at her sadly, and then at its hands. “Am I good?” it says with hope, eyes boring into her in that same expression it always had when it was searching for something. Celine looks away.

“Celey?” There is a whine in its tone, bordering desperate. “Am I good? Can I be good?”

Celine does not look at it, still. Cannot look at it. She brings her hands to her lap. “We will turn the Honmoon gold, and it will fix you. You will be perfect.”

The child is quiet.

“You will be perfect, Rumi,” Celine reassures it, lowering her tone. She will fix this. They will fix this. 

Something shifts in the air. The child shuffles on the grass until it is facing Celine, a sweet smile adorning its face. There is a gap in the place of its front teeth, but the smile is soft and warm, filled with all the affection a child could muster. It is the same smile the child gives her, all those times Celine called her by its her name. 

Rumi pulls something out of her jacket; a flower, or a purple hyacinth to be more precise. She clasps Celine’s hand, placing the flower atop her open palm. “I… I got this flower for you.” she says shyly. And then, quieter but filled with hope, “I love you.”

Celine pulls her hand back at the touch. There is no fire but she is burning and there is a demon pressing against her and she does not want it to touch her again.

I love you, it says.

I cannot love you, Celine does not say back.

She keeps the flower in her pocket and, later, buries it next to a grave.

I’m sorry, Celine falls to her knees. It is raining and the world is not ending but it feels like it is. I am so, so sorry, Mi-yeong.

Rumi is not an artist, but it doesn’t stop her love of drawing. A smiley face here and there, the occasional cat, and just about anything her mind could imagine. In particular, she likes doodling pretty swords. She imagines herself wielding one, when she’s finally old enough to tap into the Honmoon’s magic, and the thought feels like a missing puzzle piece slotting into place. 

She’s just finished her most recent drawing—a longsword that spanned the length of her forearm—when Celine walks in.

Fwhip. The sound is almost audible with how fast she moves. She hides her arm behind her back sheepishly, and Celine raises a brow but makes no further comment. “Hiya, Celine.”

“It’s time for practice. You’ll be coming with me outside.”

“Wait, outside?” Rumi jolts up. She’s been out of the house and away from the forest a grand total of four times in nine years. Officially four times, but unofficially… well, the locals didn’t know her name, but they knew her. They gave her treats and told her she was good at things. 

You’re so mature for your age, one would say. 

Smart gal. Keep that head with ya when you’re older and you’ll go places, another would praise.

And like the greedy, selfish thing that she was, Rumi could not resist.

“We’re finally going outside?”

Celine nods, looking at her watch. “You have twenty minutes,” she says, leaving before Rumi can get another word in. Rumi huffs, flopping on the bed. She takes about five minutes reloading her brain before the realization sets in that, yes, she is about to go on a trip outside with Celine, and no, this is not a dream. It almost sends her careening to the shower as she cleans up in record speed and throws on one of her hoodies. 

She meets Celine at their residence gate, panting. She’d crossed the distance between here and her room in seven seconds, leaving behind nothing more than a blur, and now that she’s here…

Rumi rocks back and forth on her heels, resisting the urge to beam. Celine never liked it when she smiled too wide, so she tries her best to imitate her mentor and her calm, collected demeanor. A grin slips out either way.

“Come,” Celine says, and Rumi follows.

They make their way through the vast expanse of the forest and into civilization in less than an hour. Her friends (can she call them that? she doesn’t really know what having friends is like, but she hopes they are) wave at her when they see her, and Rumi keeps her head down, but she sees the kind old woman who had given her soup last time and can’t resist. Celine tugs her arm down harshly.

Her grip is tight and her knuckles are bordering on white but she doesn’t let go of Rumi’s wrist. “Try your best not to interact with the humans,” she whispers, and there is an odd quality to her voice that Rumi can’t decipher.

Rumi runs it over in her head. Right... She wasn’t one of them, and she wasn’t fixed yet, so getting too close was a risk they couldn’t take. What if she accidentally hurt someone? 

Guilt fills her up like a balloon. She hadn’t thought of that before. 

Thankfully, Celine caught on before she could make it worse than it already was. Rumi murmurs a quiet thank you, and the grip on her wrist loosens. 

It does not let go.

They arrive at a dark alleyway in one of the more desolate areas in the town. It’s squished between two motels, but there’s plenty of running space to go around. Rumi catalogues the routes in her mind, the act almost instinctual—a part of her hunter traits, she thinks—and she senses the disturbance before it happens.

Inhale. She takes in the air and does not vomit, because she had smelled and eaten worse, but it does not stop her stomach from churning. The smell is, well, terrible—like overripe fruit mixed with incense; an offering left too long at a shrine. 

She hears a distant, “Don’t move. Just observe,” before her sight is taken over by a flash of white and magenta. Celine summons her weapons from thin air, a pair of sai that glimmers in the lightless space, and the Honmoon rips apart. Demons rush out of the breakage, but it is futile. Celine is a veteran, and she moves like it, weaving between hordes of demons as she slays them all one by one.

Rumi is entranced. By the movements, by the ripples coming from the Honmoon, and by the song. Celine sings and her voice does not waver once. It is beautiful. 

There are parts that feel empty, though. Missing.

Distracted as she is, Rumi doesn’t notice when one of the demons slips out of Celine’s circle. It clacks its teeth together as it runs to her from the side, and she is too late to dodge. She holds an arm up to defend herself, but the demon claws at it without remorse.

Blood trails down her arm, and far away, she hears the sound of a battle being finished. The demon beside her is killed by the quick throw of a sai, but she pays no heed to it.

It is painful, and she could scream (she really wants to, in fact). Except, Celine would be mad at her. “Our faults and fears must never be seen,” she would probably say, and her guess is right.

Celine stoops down next to her, inspecting the wound. Finding the injury acceptable, she hands Rumi a brown handkerchief. “Wipe this off before we go back.”

Rumi takes it, cleaning the blood off her arm. Everything feels… muted, somehow. Touching her fingertips against each other, she does not feel anything more than a tingling sensation. She shakes her head, refocusing on the cleanup. It’s not too bad. There is a lingering pain, and a faint scar on her arm that quickly fades away, but nothing more. 

Rumi heals quickly, she knows, after all the training sessions she’s had with Celine. This is the first time, however, that the thought of it stays in her brain. Cogs turning, Rumi runs a hand over the spot where the demon had taken her flesh. A drawing of a longsword had sat there just minutes ago, and now it was gone, leaving nothing more than pure, untouched skin.

She stares at her forearm, and then at the area near her shoulders.

An idea festers inside her, twisting and turning. It aches. It is stupid and smart and good and bad but it strikes at the desire that had always lay hidden inside her chest and she is terribly, terribly weak to it. When she follows Celine back home, she is trembling.

The idea sits there as just that—an idea—for the better part of three years. At night, it keeps her up, and during the day, when Celine makes her recite the mantra of “Hide the patterns until they can be fixed”, it blares loud in her head. 

The only reprieve she gets is when she’s exhausted herself and is forced to… retreat, for lack of any better word. Rumi retreats and the fog that had been a constant companion in her life thickens until it reaches into her lungs and steals the breath from her being. No longer does she have any control of her breathing, unconscious or otherwise, and a different entity that is both Rumi and not pushes her body to operate.

She lets it.

During those times, she is nothing more than a spectator in her own mind, watching and waiting. She feels nothing and thinks of nothing, because what need is there for her to do so when she can stay in the cold, comforting clutches of the fog?

Everything hurts less, when she lets it happen. The pain in her stomach lessens (she is so, so hungry and she wants food but the pantry ran out and Celine gets angry when she asks for more and it hurts), and her thoughts quieten. 

Which brings her to now.

Shredded paper drifts to the ground in slow motion, and Rumi wants nothing more than to disappear.

“You—You.” Celine pants angrily. Her hands are splayed on her desk and she had stood up so abruptly that Rumi flinched back into the door. “Refrain from calling me that name again. Understood?”

Rumi, heart stuck in her throat and fog making its way up her lungs, can only whimper. Her mentor slams her hands on her desk again. 

“I said. Understood?”

“Y-yes.”

“Good,” Celine says. She glances at her desk, at the shredded papers on the floor, and at Rumi. Rationality comes back to her all at once, and she sighs, collapsing into her chair with her head in her hands. “I’m not your mother.”

“‘M sorry. I just wanted to give you a—”

“I am not your mother, Rumi.” Celine’s voice is level. Like the calm before the storm. Rumi’s hand grapples for the doorknob, a primal sort of fear radiating throughout her body. Her arm shakes but her grip is strong, because Celine is angry and when she is angry Rumi is bound to take the fallout. 

“Have you ever thought that, maybe,” her mentor pauses, and Rumi braces herself, “I never wanted to have a daughter like you?”

And oh.

Rumi thinks of flowers. Beautiful and wonderful and every good thing she could not be. How the world had taken them as a symbol of warmth. Of endearment. Of adoration. Curious, isn’t it? How much love is poured into a flower for it to grow from a mere seed to something that has its roots planted firmly to the ground? An undeniable mark left on the world despite its short lifespan.

Rumi has always wanted to be a flower.

In the end—

In the end, she is nothing more than a passing wind. A stain on the sidewalk. Something she has forced her mentor to pay attention to because of how much space she takes up despite being such a mistake. The fog is oh so tempting, then, and she lets it spread from her lungs and into her bones until there is nothing left to distinguish the fog from the girl.

Shuffle. She picks the shredded paper off the floor and leaves. Celine does not look at her.

Childish handwriting colors the page. What was left of it.

There, laid lovingly and with carefully made illustrations, were five words. 

“Happy mother’s day! 

Love, Rumi.”

The thoughts are louder that night.

Or, not the thoughts, because Rumi can feel them passing through her fingers every time she tries to think. The idea.

Skin was replaceable; temporary. On weekends, Celine would take her demon hunting and show her the ropes, often leaving her to get rid of the demons by herself. So, Rumi was used to it. The smell of blood. Wounds that went away after a hard battle.

Wasn’t it only natural for her to think: 'I could carve it all away'?

Vision going hazy at the edges, Rumi opens the door to her bathroom and steps in the tub. All those times she tried to bathe herself, the metal had felt cold to the touch.

Today? It felt scalding. 

What was that phrase again? Rumi touches her fingers to her lips. Oh, right. ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’. A hiccup escapes her mouth and she quickly suppresses it, pressing her teeth down on her knuckles. Rumi had done more than just bite. It made sense for her to face the consequences, no?

Celine… had torn apart her letter as if it meant nothing. As if Rumi meant nothing. 

The tears are quick to gather in her eyes, but she doesn’t know how to let them fall. It fuels her numbness. Rumi plays with the knife in her hands and thinks: I really am a demon, aren't I? Crooked and bent and wrong. She doesn’t even know how to cry properly.

Doesn’t even know how to unburden the only person who ever looked out for her. 

And that was, perhaps, the most heartbreaking part. Rumi loves Celine, loves and adores her because she is a demon in all the most revolting ways, but Celine took her in regardless. She clutches the knife in her hand. Maybe this time, Celine will find a way to love her back. Maybe, if this can fix her, Celine will look at her without the grief that clouded her eyes and the hatred that led to too-tight grips and too-cold words. 

It doesn’t take much thought on her end.

Trickle. 

The skin on her arm is cleaved away. It is rough and messy and painful, but Rumi doesn’t care. For once, she has hope to fix things. Through half-lidded eyes, she watches the wound knit itself back together. Her hand is still holding the knife, and she is willing to try as many times as necessary to fix herself.

It heals quickly, a large scar taking over its place. Her chest feels empty, like a part of her soul had been taken away, but—

The patterns are gone.

Rumi washes the blood clean. To be presentable.

Celine would be mad, if she came to her and stained the floor. But, the blood is okay. It doesn’t hurt as much anymore. Her head feels light even though her face in the mirror is wrong wrong wrong who are you distorted. That was also okay.

Shoulders steady, Rumi knocks on her office door. It’s night already. 

She can’t remember what her mentor's said, but one moment Celine is sitting and the next she is holding her by the wrist and pushing her sleeve up. Eyes wide.

“Rumi, what did you do?”

A tilt of the head. Rumi looks at her arm. The scar is still there, and some parts of the pattern are growing back again. It’s faint. Slow. Barely noticeable unless you know what to look for.

She takes Celine’s free hand and places it against her cheek. Smiling. The warmth helps chase away the cold. “It’s ‘kay, I’ll go deeper next time and it’ll take longer to come back.”

Celine recoils. Rumi stares at her in confusion.

“Why would you do this? You’re not supposed to—” Celine cuts herself off, and. There. Rumi sees the panic.

Why is Celine panicking?

“This. You can’t do this again, you hear me?” Her mentor is not herself when she says it. She says a lot of things, after. Moves her mouth and her hands and paces around the room, but Rumi’s ears are ringing.

She isn’t focused on her voice.

Or on much else, really.

Rumi hides a smile behind her hand because she knows Celine wouldn’t like it. The smile stretches her cheeks and Celine stares at her in horror, but alas.

Rumi is twelve years old. Baby fat is still present in her cheeks. She is twelve years old and there is blood on her hands, but.

Celine is looking at her.

It is a wondrous day, indeed.

Chapter Text

Celine isn’t the type of person to have a sense of humor—Rumi knows her mentor well enough for that, and the thought of it being otherwise would send her into giggle fits. 

When her mentor wants to, though, she can be funny.

Like when she tells Rumi to stop, didn’t I tell you to stop?!

Or when she catches Rumi during one of her ‘sessions’ and throws whatever sharp object she’s currently holding across the room. You foolish child, I didn’t raise you to hurt yourself like this! she would say.

But I’m a demon, and demons are supposed to hurt, Rumi would reply, and Celine, as if the words had been a slip of the tongue, would stiffen. Rumi laughs at those instances. Her mentor can be a bit forgetful sometimes, but that was okay. Whatever Celine would forget, she would help her remember. 

(Secretly, she preens, rare pride bursting from her chest. To be able to help Celine, even in such a small way, made her feel wanted. She chased that feeling.)

(Rumi would never be good enough, but at least, in her own way, she could try to be good.)

Afterward, Celine would leave for a couple of minutes and Rumi would doze in a puddle of her own blood, mindlessly tapping her nails against the wall. She’s not very fond of those moments. The blood is thick and warm and sticks to her skin. She scrubs it off.

There is blood under her nails and it won’t go away.

It’s… one of the reasons why she likes making deep incisions. Even when it hurts and the cleanup takes too long and her body stops feeling like her own blood under her nails that she can't reach demon hurt kill killer all demons must die.  

The method is effective and efficient. That's all.

(Plus, it would take months for the patterns to come back when she did it that way. She likes the way her scars look, then, because they may be as ugly as her but they are human.)

Rumi would wait in that tub with full confidence that Celine would return, and her mentor would never fail her, reentering her bathroom with a pack of bandages. She’d drop them on the floor and leave. An issue with privacy, probably. 

And, in spite of all the ups and downs they’ve been through, Rumi’s heart would swell, because Celine didn’t love her now, not when her patterns were still laying underneath her skin, waiting to resurface, but she cared for her. Even when she didn’t deserve it. Even when she knew Rumi was strong enough to heal on her own.

So, Rumi is grateful.

The door to her room opens, interrupting her train of thought. She doesn’t blink when the light hits her face, rather comforted by it. 

(The shadows move, sometimes, when she’s alone for too long. They would wriggle towards her silently and enter her pores and she would choke choke choke while the darkness in her room would laugh laugh laugh).

“Morning,” Rumi says. She's in a teasing mood today. “I was starting to think you forgot about me.”

Celine sighs, opening the curtains. Dangling on her waist is the knife she had taken from Rumi a few hours ago. It looks sharp, and it is. Scarily so. That was what it had been advertised for, after all. She moves towards the bed, slicing through the ropes around Rumi’s wrists with practiced precision. 

A crack resounds throughout the room, and Celine purses her lips. 

“Check your injuries. Report to me if there's any heavy damage, and do try to be careful. Please.”

“That was my back, sorry.” Rumi lowers her head. Being stuck in the same position all night did no wonders for her posture, hence the crack. The apology comes too late though, because she is left alone in her room again with the stupid rope that kept her bound all night. 

Celine didn’t like staying for long in the mornings after.

She hums. With a quick shake of her head to bring her vision into focus, she tries, and fails, to inspect the damage. The patterns are the first thing she checks, and they are gone, save for the small part near her ribs which she had passed out before getting to nick, but she could save that for future sessions.

Her hands are shaking, though. She can’t lift her shirt up more than a few inches before they rebel against her. 

Rumi curls into herself.

So much stubbornness for such a fragile body, a whisper brushes against her ear. How are we going to seal the Honmoon if we’re like this?

Rumi stares at a distant spot in her room quietly. She remembers a crack being present there, two days ago. When she stares at it, however, the objects warp and the shadows flicker. Nothing is in its proper place.

(Sometimes, she’d forget that she was even real.)

We can stay like this, the voice says, it hurts less if we do.

She doesn’t respond.

(It's real but not and she hates it. The voice cannot appear in her dreams.)

(Why was it that she could only find peace from her own mind in a reality that was not of her own making?)

“Please leave,” Rumi says flatly. The voice does not speak up again. 

The feeling comes back to her fingers in time, and she can hear the bone snapping into place from the wrist that Celine had put too much pressure on yesterday. 

We don’t want unnecessary damage, Rumi mouths her mentor’s words silently. 

If you asked Rumi, she would say this was plenty unnecessary.

(The doubt runs like shame on her skin. It's a disgraceful thought, but Rumi has never been known for her brightness. Still…

No, there is no still. Celine knows best, and Rumi is not one to question her mentor. Unnecessary damage, the bedraggled woman would mutter, brows brought together in a frown, and Rumi would nod.

This is for your own good, she would shut her eyes, locking Rumi’s wrists together and tying them to the bedpost farthest from the bathroom, and Rumi would agree.

Like an animal. 

She would be fine with it, if it were that way. A tamed demon is always better than a wild one, and she had already hurt Celine enough. If Celine wanted her to be put down…

Who was she to stop her?)

Ow. The sensation is sudden and unwelcome. A throb comes from her temple and makes her hands convulse. Against her will, they end up tied together with the rope.

Rumi glares at it, when she's regained clarity. Kicks it as far as she can. It’s early in the morning and her head hurts and there is fog and a deep-seated pain that pierces through her body. 

It hurts demons are supposed to hurt.

It aches was she not used to the pain?

She deserves it.

Her thoughts turn to the situation at hand when another blinding burst of pain wracks her hands. She tries to remember, going through her memories for any solution she could think of. That thing. The thing that fitness gurus were always playing as a backdrop in their workout videos. 

She latches onto the memory.

In.

Out. 

In. 

Out. 

Rumi laughs, high and unsteady. How absurd.

Nonetheless, those long-awaited bodily functions of hers are consistently punctual, and the dark specks in her eyes begin to dwindle and fade away. She glimpses at the bruises on her wrist once before concentrating on the wall. They will heal, as they always have.

They’re still shaking though, her hands. She gets up anyway. Hungry. Always hungry. 

And most importantly… Rumi grabs her phone, scrolling through her social media and going to one of the three contacts on her list, just below Bobby and Celine. 

She’d made a friend.

[barz4lyfe]

r u awake

rumiiiii (つ╥﹏╥)つ 

do i need to call the rambulance

[rumi_account]

Good morning, Bars. Yes I’m awake.

What’s a rambulance?

[barz4lyfe]

RUMS I MISSED YOU

HAVE YOU EATEN YET

[rumi_account]

I’m going to eat in 5.

[barz4lyfe]

cool cool

what r u gonna eat

i swear rumi if its not something healthy

i will board a plane to korea just to abduct u

[rumi_account]

I can pay for the plane.

Have you eaten yet?

[barz4lyfe]

awww

u care about lil ol me?

(˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)

breakfast was SOOO GOOD today

u should come visit sometime

i have so many leftovers i swear

[rumi_account]

That’s good to know.

I’ll see what I can do about a meetup.

[barz4lyfe]

meeting u irl is my dream right now ngl

literally

u invaded my sleep and drank dream me's coffee

i feel so betrayed rums…

[rumi_account]

Sorry. I'll make it up to you.

Didn't mean to.

[barz4lyfe]

OMG NO

ITS FINE

(ง ͠ಥ_ಥ)ง

[rumi_account]

:(

Sorry.

[barz4lyfe]

i rlly wanna pinch u rn

the good pinch i promise

wait

its been ten minutes

rumi.

[rumi_account]

I’m going to eat now.

Secrets to be kept are secrets to be forgotten.

Poison to the touch, few would say, but the ones who do are hypocrites.

Everyone holds their secrets.

Celine’s is this: when the sun disappears from the horizon, she enters a room. There is a body in that room, sprawled out either on the floor or on the bed. She approaches it but does not reach out, and thinks, I’ve made a mistake.

She casts a lock on it and throws away the key and thinks, how am I supposed to fix this?

Somewhere deep in the forest, lay a grave. There are no flowers by its side, and mold crawls through the cracks in the stone.

No one has visited it in years.

“What was she called?” the child would ask one day, eyes bright and curious. Fingers threading together in nervousness.

It is older now. Old enough to know.

“You will find out when it’s time.”

(There is no time. Celine had never planned on telling her, and Rumi finds out on her own. 

She packs her essentials into a bag and searches the forest for seven days and six nights until she finds it. A shrine dedicated to all the previous generations of demon hunters. The grave she is looking for is found underneath the shade of a tall tree, and Rumi is grateful that even in death, her mother is cherished.

Ryu Mi-yeong, she would read the name, the syllables curling on her tongue like a melody.

Mi-yeong, Rumi would fall to her knees and crawl, unable to sustain herself on her own two feet. She would take the frame holding her mother’s dead face and cradle it. 

Mi-yeong. Mi-yeong. Mi-yeong. 

A mother embraces her child through the only picture left on a lonely grave and Rumi digs her fingers into the ground until her nails crack. She dreams of solid hands wrapping around her and pulling her close and presses herself against the cold stone of the grave because her skin is warm and her mother is cold and the heat is the only way she knows how to help. Love you, momma, she mumbles. You love me too, right?

The only response she gets is silence.

Rumi embeds her mother’s name into her core, strings it into her veins and stuffs it into her arteries, until they are inseparable. The syllables are a composition and she the conductor, and she cannot bring herself to leave. She weaves the name Mi-yeong into song and sings it until her throat breaks—a mourner’s goodbye. 

And a hello, somewhat, because death was the closest they had been, even in life, and Rumi has been in mourning since she was born.

Something soft registers in her mind, and it takes her gaze down. Her legs had brushed against mold. 

No one has cleaned the grave in years. 

She kisses the headstone, forehead bumping into where Mi-yeong’s name had been written. That wasn't a problem anymore. Rumi was here now, wasn’t she?

With the same love and care she had once put into a letter, Rumi wipes the stone with her bare hands. It isn’t enough, not really, because Mi-yeong is dead and even a child praying upon the gods that be would not bring her back, but she thinks her mom likes it.)

She doesn’t regret going to that shrine.

(Leave now, the wind howls, days into her visit, your presence stirs what should sleep.

Rumi stays. The fog is lighter today, and she recalls a tune she had heard, once. Innocent and childish. It is eerily fit for the occasion. 

A mother sings lullabies to her children to lull them to sleep. Rumi, however, is not a child—had never been. The fact of her existence is that she was a demon, one who took and took but could never give. 

Today, she wants to do the opposite.

Cough. Her throat is sore from all the singing, but her voice persists. She forces it to. In this shrine that held nothing but bones, she would be the singer and her mother would be the listener and for just a moment, she can pretend her mother is holding her tight and tucking her to bed. Can pretend there is someone who loves her for who she is and not who she couldn't be.

She sings. Rests against the cold texture of the grave.

“Warm kitty, soft kitty, little ball of fur.

Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr purr purr…”

Rumi sings into the void and her voice does not crack. The song is childish desire is untainted innocence is visceral guilt is hello, goodbye, I'm sorry. It is not enough.

I want to see you again.

Why did you leave me?

The verses are not very hard to remember, simple as they are, and she recites them hollowly.

What she does not expect, is this: Rumi sings into the void in a shrine of heroes underneath the shade of a tree.

She is the only presence there.

Or, she should have been.

The void echoes back.

“Lost soul, young soul, child too full of sin.

Spirits whisper, do not linger, lest they pull you in.

“Sweet one, still your breathing, do not make a sound.

Lurking things with crooked limbs are stirring underground.”

YOUR SOUL IS 

WRONG RIGHT ALIVE Ḑ̸͕̫̠̋̀̍̌͌͑̍̑̆̇̓͝͝Ȇ̷̞͙̞̙̘̲̘͕̝̃̿͊̍̕͜ͅǍ̵͍̠̹̬̪̬͋̄̇̌̏̀̃͗͜Ḏ̵̬̬͇̻̻̭̜͍̥̹̔̓͋͜

F̸͙͌̓R̷̦̥̱͎̥̰̞͒͗̔̈́͌͘A̵͔̓G̷͕̩͔͖̗͍̰̐̅̏̐̐͂͗M̷̙̘͇͚͑̔̑͜͝Ẽ̷̦̾N̴̙̻̠̣̦̿͐̏̓̕͝T̷̤̟̆͊͊̂̋S̴̠̠̻̅̇̈́͌͐̿̃̕

DO NOT TARNISH THIS HOLY LAND

Rumi takes the warning for what it is and leaves. She had overstayed her welcome.)

The question would hang in the air, late that night, turbid and oozing.

How could one person be so wrong?

Rumi stares into nothing. Is nothing. There is a fragile thread enmeshing her soul and she staples its ragged edges together with calloused hands.

The living do not want her.

The dead reject her.

Rumi hides away in the darkest corners of her mind and she does not cry.

[barz4lyfe]

rumi please

are you okay?

please reply

it's been weeks

i miss you

[rumi_account is typing…]

[rumi_account is typing…]

[rumi_account deleted a message]

[rumi_account]

sorry im ssiry

Imj s rry

[This chat is no longer available.]

The Honmoon stirs.

Celine’s weapons flicker in her hands—the third time that day. Around her, the demons riot, clamoring over one another. Their attacks increase in intensity.

She lifts her eyes to the sky, gaze unreadable.

There was no mistaking it.

The new Hunters had been chosen.

(They meet, for the very first time, in the courtyard of her home. Rumi is freshly sixteen, young but so, so old, and she can no longer remember what it feels like to be whole, but when Zoey smiles at her and Mira pulls out a blunt retort about how you're late, isn't this your house? there is an empty space inside her chest that glows.

The fans love them, cheering them on for their first live appearance. The new generation of Sunlight Sisters, they would gesture excitedly. Fresh from training but already setting a new standard. Generational talents!

Their first album is a hit. And so is their second, their third, their fourth, until their names are known all throughout Korea. An incoming worldwide sensation, newspapers and idols alike would praise. They climb the charts at a record-breaking speed and there are interviews and fan signings and their faces are plastered on billboards and.

Rumi looks at it all and thinks, I can't. Not yet.

And it makes her want to scream.

Because the world loved this human half of her, the one with the perfect voice and perfect tone and imperfections covered by long sleeves; an irreplaceable piece meant to be slotted in a whole—but that was all.

Rumi has built herself a kingdom made of sand and no matter how much she tries, falling to her knees to beg please love me please see me am I enough? can I be enough? I'll be good please, it slips through her fingers. 

So she does the only thing she can. She turns the sand into glass, ignites everything she was made for, in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, she can keep the pieces from falling through the cracks. 

I can fix this.

The jagged corners scar her in ways that she cannot heal from, but she holds them anyway, even when it burns. She holds them close because it is the only way she knows, and the only way she has been taught, to love.

It is not enough.

It will never be enough.

She tries anyway.

Rumi gives and gives and gives. For the Golden Honmoon. For Zoey and Mira and Celine. 

And, selfishly, for herself.

A child holding a letter in her hands, peeking inside a room. Words tinged with hope. Oh, so much hope.

A shredded letter. 

I never wanted to have a daughter like you.

Rumi’s fans are adoring and she the same, but she hates herself more than she loves the fans and the only way to fix that was to fix her.

The Honmoon must turn gold, she recites, when she is nestled in the safety of her room and there is no one else she can hurt but herself. All demons must be killed.

Rumi would save the world and send the demons back to Gwi-Ma's realm where they belonged, but—

A childish desire, still untouched, laid dormant inside the deepest recesses of her heart.

Would it be too much, if she wanted someone to save her too?)

Zoey loves her team to bits. It’s obvious, in the casual hugs after a hard day’s work, the Rumi and Mira playlists that always have new songs added to them every week, the lyrics that are too private to share to the public but find themselves in the other girls’ hands anyway.

They’ve come a long way.

It had been such a struggle at first, even she would admit. Zoey, having moved from America because her dad had decided to “Move back to the homeland, for old times’ sake”, would stumble over Korean words, so unlike her usual smoothness with the English language. She’d forget customs and confuse one type of food for another because everything looked similar but tasted nothing alike.

(Her dad had lied, she knew. He didn’t want to move for old times’ sake. He just wanted to spite her mom by bringing Zoey away.)

The feeling lasted for a while, exemplified by… everything, basically. Zoey didn’t fit in back in America because she was too loud and too bubbly, head always lost in the clouds. She thought it would be the same for Korea, too.

Or, that was until Celine found her. Something shifted in the air, then—a feeling of anticipation that wasn’t quite hers alone. One moment led to the next and Zoey was signed to HUNTR/X. It had been exhilarating. 

Then came the practices, the idol training, and finally, the demon thing (she really should’ve read that contract before signing it).

She meets Mira and her heart soars. I know you. The other girl is snappy and blunt and sharp, but the Honmoon links them together and Zoey can hear it sing You will be each other’s in the same way she’s heard her entire life.

Their last member joins them, and the final note to the song she’d been wracking her mind on since she was five settles into place.

Her name is Rumi.

Her name is Rumi, and Zoey had had a friend, back when she was fourteen and oh so lonely. A Rumi who was from Korea and who was raised by a woman named Celine. Who had been polite but endearing and who had stayed up until three AM to listen to lyrics that everyone else thought weren’t worth listening to.

A Rumi who she thought was dead.

(Her last words had been ‘I'm sorry’.)

Zoey sings and fights and trains, and the girls laugh and cry with each other like they could do with no one else, and the worry does not leave.

She does not bring up their past history, because what if she was wrong and it was all a product of overthinking and the Rumi she knew is dead, but the suspicion is there.

So Zoey observes. Let’s it lie in wait for years because she is patient and Rumi will open up if she wants to. Rumi, with all her walls and strained smiles and too-quiet footsteps, who made Zoey feel seen and spent hours in the recording studio with her even when her songs were a bust. Rumi, who was steadfast and hardworking and sometimes a little too committed too her work.

Rumi had been patient with her. Zoey can do the same.

She keeps observing, but Zoey is not omniscient, and humans are often forgetful. When weeks turn into months turn into years, arguments softening into quiet conversations and the girls inching closer to turning the Honmoon gold, the suspicion is all but erased from memory.

(Thinking back, Zoey really wants to grab her past self by the shoulders and shake.)

Mira’s first impression of their team is great, I’m stuck with a goody-two-shoes and a moody nepo baby.

Her second is, fuck, I'm stuck with a goody-two-shoes and a moody nepo baby.

Celine, who thinks that apparently five minutes of introductions is enough for a team they're supposed to spend their whole lives with, takes them to train—has them do acrobatics in the forest like they're a bunch of lab monkeys. 

Something about ‘team building and strengthening your reaction time’ or whatever. 

Mira makes it up a fifteen-meter tall tree before deciding that, no, she is not about to kill herself via tree impalement, and goes back down. 

Zoey fares slightly better. Slight, being the key word. She climbs the same tree and jumps over to the next one and almost falls off. Rumi has to climb to where the younger girl is hugging a branch and piggyback her to the ground.

Speaking of.

Mira doesn't think jumping down from a height of fifteen meters while carrying another person and coming off uninjuried is natural. 

Celine, however, acts as if it's the most logical thing in the world. The only reaction she's showing is disappointment.

Probably at Zoey. Most likely at Mira.

“I understand that this is new to you,” she frowns, “but please take this more seriously, girls.” The older woman utters the phrase like it's completely normal for a bunch of teenagers to be traversing forests via tree. Like she's not just setting them up for a Final Destination scene.

It's embarrassing and probably the best way she could've worded it, but the tone rakes at Mira’s spine and makes her scowl. It sends her into the defensive and she wants to spit at the ground. Or punch someone. Preferably both.

(Mira was a fighter through and through. She had fought for a place outside her family and she would be darned if she couldn't stand her ground here, too.)

That disappointed gaze turns to her, and her hackles rise. “There's no way I'm—”

Celine bulldozes over whatever words she could say and stomps on them for good measure. “This is the safest way you could possibly learn, Mira. Do you really think adrenaline will cover your weaknesses while you're cornered by demons on top of a skyscraper?” She raises a brow, and. Okay, maybe she has a point.

Begrudgingly, Mira complies.

When she's up that horrendously tall tree again and contemplating how this had become her life, Celine raises her voice. “Maximize your training and do not come down unless it's to fall.”

“Do you want me to die?” Mira yells.

“Rumi will catch you,” the older woman says. Said girl is standing by the side with her gaze directed towards her shoes. Her eyes are glazed over like there's nothing going on upstairs and Mira curses in four different dialects.

Whatever. She'd do this whole monkey thing and fall and probably die, but it's whatever. 

Mira, because she's not about to back down (she'd signed a contract, goddamnit) goes through about ten trees and ten stages of grief before her foot slips.

It's been a 4/10 life, she thinks resignedly while she's falling.

The long-awaited impact does not happen, however, and she peeks through her eyelids to see Rumi staring at her.

Her soul almost leaves her body and she pulls it back down with all the grace of a hunter (a trainee, but that still counted). She rolls off the other girl's arms and onto the grass. It's embarrassing, but not as much as being bridal carried. She coughs out a thank you and pointedly does not look up.

Celine calls her back and Zoey's turn comes. It gives her enough time to breathe.

(Out of sight, Rumi touches her cheeks curiously. They're warm.)

Hours later, when they're doused in sweat and laying on the grass (or, Zoey and Mira are—Rumi's been running for hours on the forest canopy and she's still doing drills), Celine tells them they're going to start tree-singing in two weeks.

You'll be carrying weapons after a month, she says, ever composedly.

And then, to pour salt on the wound, acrobatic sparring will start after two.

Mira groans and Zoey's soul visibly leaves her body.

What a day.

Weapon practice comes before weapon-tree practice, Zoey is glad to find.

It's the first week, and Celine brings a rack of weapons to their gathering spot. Zoey is absolutely awed.

A sword! An even longer sword! A slightly shorter but almost as long sword! (she can't tell the difference, sue her) There's at least a dozen knives, three maces, two scythes, and her hands are itching.

She does a little sweep of the area. Celine is preoccupied talking to Mira and Rumi is nowhere to be found.

It wouldn't be too noticeable, right? She creeps towards the weapons rack, drawn to the side with what she dubs as ‘the big guns’. The blades are wide and run longer than half her height.

“You're not supposed to touch those.” Rumi peeks over her shoulder, and Zoey jolts.

Holy crap, that girl came and went like a ghost.

“M-morning Rumi!” She flails. Keep it cool, Zoey. So damn cool. “When did you get here?”

Their recently-dubbed leader tilts her head. A pout forms on her face and her confusion confuses Zoey.

(Zoey wants to pinch her cheeks so bad but that would be violating dozens of social conventions that she's not sure if Celine will kick her out for. She refrains. Keep it cool, Zoey.)

“I was always here…?”

“Huh?”

Rumi points up. “I was watching you.”

And that was… really not the best way to phrase it, but Zoey nods. “Sounds kinda creepy, Rums.”

The pout intensifies. 

“Wait! I didn't mean it that way!” Zoey flails again. She's been doing that a lot today. “What I meant is that you could've phrased it a bit better? Like, people don't usually make it a habit of watching other people ‘cause it's kinda stalker-y, but if that's one of your hobbies it's fine! No, wait—”

“What's a stalker?” Rumi says, and Zoey blinks.

They stare at each other for several seconds. 

“You two, come over,” Celine interrupts their short staredown and Zoey mouths later. She's already drafted a couple of articles in panic but she doesn't want to explain it right now while their mentor is in earshot. Or have to explain it at all.

Celine gathers them together and gives them a rundown of what they're supposed to do for the day—channeling their designated weapons. They're tasked with wielding each of the weapons on the rack until they find the one that ‘sings’ to them or some other magical mumbo-jumbo. Zoey's suspension of disbelief is practically nonexistent at this point.

Rumi finds hers on her second try—a saingeom. The silvery threads around her croon in delight, and Zoey hugs her in congratulations. 

(The older girl stiffens in her arms then relaxes. She acts like she's never had a hug before, and Zoey just hugs her tighter.)

Mira finds hers next—a gok-do. Twelve tries. 

“Don't hug me.” She holds a hand up. Zoey gives her a high five instead and the normally stone-faced girl is appalled.

Zoey, on the other hand, is not so lucky. She goes through just about every big blade they have and then some. She even tries the halberd, once. Weapons are scattered on the floor and it's forty-five minutes in when she starts to panic.

Rumi approaches her from the side and tugs on her sleeve softly, reminiscent of a child. “You'll find it,” she says, all confidence, and her calmness is what gets Zoey to steady. “No hunter goes without a weapon. You won't either.”

It reignites the fire in her chest and she grins.

She's emptied the entire rack when she finds it. Two small daggers almost the size of her forearm. It's small, the complete opposite of the blades she had been drawn to at first, but she wields it and her veins thrum.

The first time Zoey calls on the Honmoon's powers, she summons a shin-kal.

Celine tells Rumi to come to her office.

There's a lesson plan and everything posted on her board. Rumi will teach the girls, and Celine will watch to the side.

Leadership practice, she explains. They will learn and improve with time, but the transition will be difficult. We can make it smoother for them by letting them accumulate experience before entering the battlefield.

Experience fighting with a demon.

You're used to it, she gestures to a knife on the wall, and Rumi's head blanks.

fog in her lungs wrong wrong wrong who am I fog demon human patterns blood HELP ME

Rumi reads through the plans and her very essence screams in protest.

It's a reasonable solution, frankly.

The trio of hunters is half a year into their training and growing more powerful by the day. They are quick on their feet and their teamwork has been honed to lethal levels.

They need to be prepared, though. Zoey and Mira are improving quickly but they are not improving fast enough.

Time races against them. Celine’s grasp on the Honmoon's threads grow weaker as the girls’ grow stronger. And as her connection fades bit by bit, so does the Honmoon.

The blood will make them squeamish, she knows.

Rumi will be the best teacher for the job.

Grief had always been a double-edged sword.

Mira wakes up on the left side of her bed and immediately knows it's going to be a bad day. She trips over the covers, loses her soap in the drain, and burns breakfast.

So yeah, it's perfectly justifiable for her to be wary when Celine tells them that Rumi will be teaching them today.

(Something sparks in the air, acrid and burning. Turn back, it warns her, this path will not end cleanly.)

“Zoey,” their leader turns to the aforementioned girl, and their maknae is all smiles, “You're up first. We're doing aim practice on moving targets to polish your technique. The more centered your aim, the better your score.”

“Moving targets? You guys have those here?” Zoey spins around to look for them excitedly and Mira has to hold back the urge to roll her eyes. 

If this place had moving targets, wouldn't they have clocked those things by now?

“No,” Rumi smiles. The smile is lopsided and doesn't quite fit right on her face, like a wooden doll that had been carved with rusted knives. But oh .

It's the first time Mira’s seen her smile since they've met, and she tries to muster up a reaction—a sarcastic retort, an eye roll, heck, even a glare.

All she feels is dread.

(Acrid and burning. Turn back.)

“I'll be the target,” Rumi says it like it's nothing. Like she's offering to take a bullet for a joke. Mira waits for the punchline and it does not come.

Mira breathes in. The key to controlling your emotions is to focus, her therapist had said. 

Rage scorches the foundations of her rationality, and she snarls.

The fucking audacity.

“You're a shit leader, you know that?” the beast in her snaps, all venom and jagged edges and the intent to hurt.

“Mira?” The girl turns to her, eyes wide, and Mira wants to wipe the expression off her face. Zoey is trembling and Rumi is still smiling.

How unnatural.

Repulsing.

Clarity lathers itself on the surface of her bones, and Mira scrapes and scrapes like she's trying to strip the very earth of its soil. The realization she has at that moment is sudden and dizzying. It drains the blood from her insides until the raw expanse of her heart is filled with only hate.

She laughs but there is no humor in her tone. It is sharp and cruel, and all the camaraderie they had built up in the past eight months shatters like glass. 

“You psychopath,” she spits. There is no furious, roaring beast to watch out for, because the anger is all hers.

“Psy—What?”

“Oh, you know,” Mira sneers, “a person who can't feel empathy for others. That type of thing. I'd assumed you'd already known, considering how obvious you're being.”

“I'm helping. That doesn't make me a psychopath.”

“You must be more delusional than I thought you were, then.”

“What do you mean?” Rumi huffs, crossing her arms defensively. “It's just a lesson, not a life or death exam.”

“Just a lesson? Do you even hear yourself right now?” Mira intones incredulously. “How is it just a lesson if you're forcing Zoey to do something you know she’d never agree to on her own? We're teammates, for crying out loud! Or are you just going to ignore that too?”

“You're making a big deal out of nothing. I'm doing this to give you experience.”

“Fuck you and fuck your experience.”

Mira pushes her and Rumi barely even budges, the piece of shit. She doesn't care.

(Why would she do this? They were a team and, Mira had dared to hope. 

Celine had told them, once, that every trio of hunters would hold a connection so strong it ascended the boundaries of death. That they were carefully hand-picked because they were uniquely compatible, so much so that their essences melded and filled in each other’s gaps to form an unbreakable whole.

Maybe they could've been a family.

But families don't hurt each other, and Rumi is asking them to hurt her. )

Zoey pries them apart, eyes pleading. Celine sighs. “Listen to your leader, you two. If you're worried about overdoing or overexerting yourselves, do keep in mind that the Honmoon will fix things, as always.”

Mira scoffs.

(The Honmoon wouldn't be able to fix this.)

How long had it been?

Rumi would crawl into bed, after the conversation with Celine. She would count down the hours and toss and turn while failing to sleep. 

Celine could be so cruel, sometimes.

The clock in her room ticks and tocks. It strikes twelve, and Rumi licks at her dry lips.

Momma, she would pray on the hardwood floor. Begging. Her patterns burn and she can't see past the hazy film that covers her eyes. I don't want them to hate me, momma.

They go through with the practice, and it's a disaster.

Zoey launches volleys of daggers into the air, but she’s terrified, and it shows. Shivers wrack her body. She misses all her throws and they're so obviously intentional that Mira cringes.

“You'll see worse than this when you're fighting demons.” Rumi encourages her when one of the daggers had flown too far to be ruled an accident. “You can hesitate, sure, but demons won't.”

“I–I can't do this.” Zoey says. Stutters. “Rumi, can we take a break? Leave it for another day? I… I can’t.” She’s fucking shaking at this point, and it should be enough to stop the lesson right there, but it isn’t.

“You can,” Rumi says. Confident and assured. Mira balls her hands into fists and turns to the only sane person left on that courtyard: Celine.

Their mentor has her lips pursed. Apprehension colors her features and Mira wants her to do something. Anything. Anything to stop this—this awful excuse of a training session.

“Celine,” she says, her voice rough at the edges. Like sandpaper had grinded her vocal cords down to their base.

Their mentor exhales.

Celine walks towards where the two are talking and places a hand on Zoey's shoulder, and for a moment it feels like she's going to say something reassuring.

That moment doesn't last very long.

“Trust in the Honmoon. I assure you, any wounds that incur will be healed almost immediately. Rumi will barely feel a thing.”

“But she'll still feel it.” Zoey hangs her head low. Her voice is tremulous, as if she’s on the verge of crying, 

This is one fucked up family of psychos, is what Mira thinks as she watches the scene.

“Zoey…” Celine trails off. 

Zoey shakes her head, turning to Rumi. “I know there’s a way I can learn this without—without hurting anyone! I know! Please, can we change the lesson?” Her eyes grow more hopeful with each word, and by the end of it, she’s looking straight up at their leader.

Crickets.

Time stretches. Rumi averts her gaze. “Maybe I can—”, she says, and Mira thinks she’s about to change her mind, but then their leader’s whole body stiffens at something none of them can see and she clams up.

Celine takes her to the side to have a talk after that. They're arguing and it's creepy because Celine is talking but Rumi, even from afar, only reacts with nods and shakes of the head. She’s still as a mannequin otherwise, and for some reason it sends a chill down Mira’s spine.

It's clear the argument is not going the way they want it to.

And Mira is not Zoey, who always sees the best in people, but she hopes that just this once Rumi will take Celine’s advice and cancel the lesson plans.

She doesn't. She walks back to them and her gait is stilted and so is her speech.

“You'll… the shin-kal,” she points to Zoey, and then herself, “ …me.”

Zoey turns to their mentor desperately—her last resort in this terrible, fucked up situation. When Celine nods in assent, her face falls. 

“We can stop early, later,” Rumi says to console her. Zoey sniffles.

Mira is seething in her skin.

It's three AM, and Rumi is knocking on Celine’s door.

I don't want to do this, she says. Celine, please. Please, don't want to. Can you? I don't—

Fragmented. She can't say much else other than Please and I don't want to and it is pitiful.

It's just a lesson, Rumi.

Hands in her hair. The only part of her body that bore no skin. That couldn't grow those blasphemous patterns. Celine runs her hands through her hair and Rumi melts.

I'll be there to help, she says, and Rumi believes her.

Zoey is more accurate after that. Her shots still miss, but it's not because she’s doing it deliberately. The error comes from her lack of skill and practice—an observation that only reaffirms what their leader has said, and Mira can already imagine how smug Rumi must feel at all this.

It’s unfair, how right she is. Those demons outside won’t sit and wait for Zoey to take a shot at them, so moving practice is essential.

(With themselves?)

(Wasn’t the Honmoon built to slay demons and protect humans?)

(Why were they using it to harm one of their own?)

The exercise lasts for a couple more hours and it’s enough time for the rage in her chest to abate. Not disappear, no, because she’s fucking furious, but even Mira can’t keep going at 100 percent rage without getting tired. Time crawls like it’s a snail with half its body chopped off and the other sprayed in salt, but they’re almost done. She can see it in the way that Celine rolls her shoulders in anticipation and the way Rumi offers less and less combat advice.

Practice almost comes to an end, and that’s when several things happen at once.

One.

Zoey lands her first hit straight in Rumi's abdomen. Her shin-kal are Honmoon-manifest, and the corners of the blade are sharp. The blade pierces Rumi's front and exits through her back.

Two.

The older girl falls to the ground and coughs, blood soaking into the viridescent undergrowth.

Three.

Someone is screaming—the sound is coming from her own throat. Mira is screaming.

So much for immediate healing.

Zoey rushes to her immediately and drops to the ground, but Rumi only shoves her away with a quick don't help me, and retrieves the knife with one swift pull. Shick, the sound goes, and Mira doesn't vomit but it's a near thing. 

Rumi crawls to the side and does not let anyone help her, only dabbing a brown handkerchief on the wound. Their mentor watches, unmoving, and Mira can’t help but think bitterly that even Celine was not exempt to their leader's self-righteous tendencies, already so used to them that she knows it's not even worth it to try.

What a bitch, she scoffs.

And then Rumi helps Zoey stand up and their maknae stares at her all wide-eyed and inconsolable, and she goes, “That was good. You did good, Zoey. Let's do that again.”

(Momma, the sinner kneels inside an empty church for an atonement that will not come. Momma, I've been bad again.)

Mira’s vision turns red. One moment she's sitting on her side of the bench and listening to Celine’s observations about the battle and the next she's storming over and her hands are fisted in Rumi's jacket and she's pushing the other girl into a tree.

Thud. Rumi budges this time. She's staring at Mira but Mira feels like she's not staring at her at all.

Mira draws her blade and points it to her neck.

“You've already trained for long enough. I've been sitting on a bench this whole morning. Don't you think I should get a turn?”

“But this isn't part of the lesson plan,” she replies hollowly. And there it is again. The nothingness. The ghostlike persona that possesses her that Mira had once thought to be a ruse. A facade.

Now? She's starting to believe it's not that simple.

“Change the plan, Rumi,” Celine says, the volume of her voice unaffected by the distance. Rumi's eyes flicker with something like shock, but it's so quick Mira’s not sure of what she's seen.

What she is sure of, though, is that Celine has just granted her permission to vent her anger.

Even their normally stoic mentor is affected, it seems.

“Go,” Rumi allows. She hasn't summoned her saingeom but Mira doesn't care.

Anger anger anger, she’s so angry it almost hurts, and she can’t focus on anything other than the way her leader is still standing when she should be kneeling for forgiveness instead.

It's a flurry of stabs and slashes. The roaring, vengeful beast inside Mira’s stomach won't stop until it draws blood.

(Out of sight, Zoey tries to interfere. Celine stops her. 

Rumi is strong, she says, but it doesn’t sound like a compliment. The sentence has a strangely bitter edge to it and there are roiling undercurrents spilling into her words that make Zoey shudder. Watch closely, I will not let you interfere again, the older woman says, and that’s that.

Her heart sinks. Celine tells her not to interfere and the only thing she can do other than breathe and sit is to look away, but.

Zoey watches. 

She watches it all and she doesn’t look away once. Her shoulders are shaking and her heart is in pain and it's the bravest she's felt in a long time.)

Rumi's hoodie is torn.

There's blood on it, she notes. She can still fix it, though. Can stitch up the ripped fabric and bleach the crimson stains away until it looks all better again.

In the corner of her eye, she spies Celine.

Rumi is not very good at cleaning, but Celine is.

She would know what to do.

“Your stance is too wide.”

“You leave your back too open. Just because your gok-do has range doesn't mean you can ignore your flank.”

“If you shift your weight back before stabbing like this, your thrusts will have more power.”

Rumi tosses out pointers and evades her strikes, and Mira has to admit that it's good. Progress flows through her like instinct, but the gratitude that should come with it is far out of reach. She does not feel thankful. 

Instead, the more her leader opens her mouth, the more she feels the rage burning under her skin.

(Patient and calm; Rumi is fighting to teach.

Mira is fighting to kill.

There really shouldn’t have been any surprise, that it would turn out the way it did.)

“SHUT UP,” Mira screams, throat hoarse. They’ve been at it for so fucking long, and Rumi will. Not. Stop. “Just shut up! I don't care about your advice! If we weren't practically forced to be teammates, I wouldn't even care about you!”

Rumi falters, and Mira takes her chance. She doesn’t give herself much time to think before her gok-do slices into soft flesh. 

Finally, she relishes in the feeling. She's panting and her anger is receding and the beast roars in triumph.

This is what you deserve.

Zoey is screaming.

Mira’s eyes snap open, and all it takes is a split second before nausea floods her senses and she sees the damage she's done.

Rumi is pinned to a tree, there is blood on her gok-do, and—

(Acrid and burning and wrong. STOP.)

—she doesn't know what to do.

Zoey stands between them, resolute, and Mira steps back. 

Monster.

Rumi is bleeding.

Mira unsummons her gok-do but it's too late. She can't take back what she's done. Can't wash the blood off her hands. She's pierced at an area between Rumi's ribs and fuck, the blood. So much blood.

Celine hands their group a first aid kit and tells them training is over. She leaves them to their own devices right after. Tired of their bullshit, probably. Mira wouldn't blame her.

“Mira!” Zoey's voice cuts through the air. “You—Don't just stand there! I need your help!” Their maknae is not standing anymore but kneeling, putting pressure on the wound to stop the flow of blood. Zoey only has two hands though, and she can't do much else.

Alone, that is.

Mira takes cautious steps and moves closer to Rumi, to the girl she'd stabbed through the ribs all because she was angry, and the smell of copper and salt whiffs past her nose. She moves slow enough that she doesn't look intimidating, but it's useless. 

Fuck, everything about this was terrible. 

The other girl paws her away but her movements are slow and she doesn't seem all there. Hasn't seemed all there for the past fight, now that Mira can see past her haze of anger, and it makes her feel guiltier.

Something acidic crawls out of her stomach and into her throat.

(Hypocrite. She was acting in the same way her brother had been, before she moved out of the house. Lashing out in anger at anything he could see and getting away with it because their parents had let him.)

( Why had Celine let her? )

“Don't… I can heal it,” Rumi mumbles. Mira ignores her.

“Zoey, pin her to the ground,” she orders, and Zoey nods.

Rumi, to her credit, doesn't fight. Can't seem to fight them. She stares listlessly at nothing and Mira cuts away the cloth at the area where the blood was most concentrated.

Apparently, their mentor had been telling the truth when she said that Rumi would heal. Mira can see the wound scabbing over, but it's not the immediate fix that Celine had practically praised it to be. It makes her stagger in place.

(It would've been so easy to hold back.)

Does the Honmoon act as a numbing agent ? She thinks in an attempt to distract herself as she grabs the first aid kit at the side and applies antiseptic. Rubs an actual numbing agent over the broken skin.

Mira tries to wrap a bandage around the other girl's torso, too. She goes about as far as trying to strip her of her jacket when Rumi thrashes.

“No,” she says feebly, the weakest Mira had heard her yet, and Mira stops.

She finishes treating the site, thankfully, eventually, and lies down on the ground in defeat. Zoey is cuddled up to Rumi's uninjured side and there's blood on both their clothes and who even fucking cares at this point. Mira grabs Zoey's offered hand like it's a lifeline and doesn't think about how this is the first time she's willingly touched either of her teammates outside of a dance or training session.

“You are an excellent fighter, Mira. You're flexible and your body control is even better than mine,” Rumi says, breaking the tense atmosphere with what Mira can only label as the most offbeat post-almost-killing-your-teammates combat report she's ever heard. “You too, Zoey. Your spatial awareness is really good. It's just that you're not used to practicing with mov—”

Zoey covers her mouth with her hand, beating Mira to the punch. “Shhh. Be quiet.”

Indecipherable mumbles are heard.

When they die down, Zoey removes her hand.

“Say anything fight related again and I'll smother your face.” She smiles. There are dried tear tracks on her cheeks but her eyes are lit aflame and resolute.

Silence falls between them, tired and weary. 

“I don't understand,” Rumi says.

“You're being stupid, is what we're saying,” Mira retorts, and this time she's sure she's not hallucinating when she sees something flicker on the other's face. 

Rumi looks hurt.

(Inside her, something vindictive squirms in satisfaction. Mira squashes it down and tells it to fuck off.)

She sighs, exasperated. 

“I'm sorry for calling you a psychopath instead of a masochist and for almost killing you and everything. I'm not sorry for calling your lesson plan fucking stupid. Because it is stupid.”

“Oh.” Rumi says. And Mira is ready to take it back, because frankly, it had been an impulsive speech. A moment of weakness that could be used against her. Fuck, talks like these were embarrassing to say the least. But she's not a coward, so she doesn't.

Rumi shuffles on the grass.

“I'm sorry, too. For making you two fight me. And for the lesson plan.” Her head is low and her voice is almost inaudible, unlike her usual tone. Mira is confused for a moment before she realizes that the other girl is shy. And what the hell, Rumi could actually feel embarrased?

Mira snorts. “Oh please, you didn't make me fight you. I've been waiting to get a good hook in your face for a while now.”

“Mira!” Zoey exclaims, scandalized. But then she's hugging Rumi around the waist and there's a smile on her face and she's apologizing, too. “I'm sorry for hitting you with my shin-kal.”

“But that was—”

“A natural consequence of your stupidity?” Mira says, deadpan. “Yeah, it was.”

Zoey gives her a light punch to the shoulder.

(Acrid and burning. She plugs her nose and hoses it all down.

Mira’s grown tired of that smell by now.)

Clap. Mira stands. “Alright, hunters. Apologies given and accepted and yadda yadda. No one against the notion? Okay, no more of that or else I'll get cavities. We're going to the movies today.”

“What.”

“Can we take front row seats?”

Mira takes their responses as a yes. She takes the brief burst of courage she'd gathered earlier and decides, fuck it, might as well rip off the bandaid.

“We're also going to promise not to use each other as target practice or punching bags.” She crosses her arms then says pointedly, “and to not LET ourselves be used as target practice or punching bags.”

It takes a lot of wrangling, but the promise is made via linked pinkies. (That had been Zoey's idea. Mira had vehemently protested, but Rumi had looked so amazed by the prospect that her protests died in her throat.)

(They didn't really know each other before that day. Jupiter, Mira would liken it to. They had been moons orbiting around the same planet, cycle after endless cycle, so close yet so far, and the only thing linking them together being a shared destiny.

They'd shared song practices and training sessions, sure, but nothing more. Relying on the label of a ‘team’ to somehow push them together, when in reality, they had been too content with the image of what they should've been to focus on what they actually were.

They go to see a movie that night. It's a shitty 90s romcom movie and Zoey spends most of her time yelling at the screen while Mira dies of cringe but.

Mira had never heard Zoey yell before. Their youngest was often soft spoken and didn't like to raise her voice. In the theater, she's loud and her gestures are open like she's put down the persona she's made just to impress them. Mira, against her will, actually likes the sound.

And Rumi…

The two love interests who had been chasing each other's tails the whole movie, in the most cliche and predictable way ever, kiss, and Rumi smiles. It's a soft, tiny smile, but it's genuine and she looks like she's actually there. Zoey takes a picture and Mira secretly passes her a note.

It's the first of the many shitty romcom movies they watch, to her dismay (and, she is unfortunate to discover, growing fondness).

The next time they go to the theatres, Mira buys candy sticks and five sets of popcorn instead of three. Zoey likes chewing on things and Rumi has a big appetite.

It's more than she's known about her teammates in months.)

In her personal, objective opinion, Zoey would say without an inkling of doubt that the bath house is, quite positively, the best place in the whole world.

Which is why it's strange, how often Rumi rejects their invites.

They still go, her and Mira, but the absence of their third member would hang in the air, and the unspoken agreement between them is, this would be so much better if Rumi was here.

Hence, the invites become a constant thing in their relationship, almost as constant as Rumi's “sorry, I'm busy ”s or “the weather isn't good for me today ”s.

They don't mind.

Whenever the girl would mumble one of her excuses, Mira would laugh and jokingly call her a prude, and Zoey would wrestle her into a hug before they left. If their leader was uncomfortable, they wouldn't force her to go.

They had the rest of their lives. Why rush?

As such, Zoey is rendered pleasantly surprised when Rumi is the one to hand out an invite one day.

I want to show you two something, she'd said, running to her room before either of them could respond. Zoey and Mira had stared at each other before jumping around the room in excitement.

Exactly five minutes later, Rumi would come back with a basket in her hands and a smile on her face, and Zoey would tackle her to the floor and start a dogpile, Mira following closely behind.

Sequestered in a dark pocket of the forest—where the trees climb toward the clouds and their branches weave a dome against the sky—lies a clearing.

There, flowers bloom across the surface floor, thriving and almost glowing in their beauty. The scene is carved from perfection and beget of miracles, because the light of the sun dies before it ever touches the earth, but thousands of flowers blanket the rich soil regardless.

A testament to their ability to survive.

Rumi takes them to that clearing, and they are quiet; no loud exclamations or teasing words. There is a reverence to the constant hum of the trees that belies its age. This is sacred ground, it whispers, do not violate its sanctity.

Air flutters through their clothes from a source that shouldn't be, brushing against their limbs in loving caresses.

I found this place when I was a child, Rumi meets their eyes, vulnerable and touched by something fragile. And I thought it could be beautiful, if someone nurtured it, so I planted flowers.

They lay in the silence for hours, the stillness too precious to breach. Mira threads her fingers through Rumi's hair and Zoey makes flower crowns for all three and, in the hectic noise of their lives, peace.

Their words get lost to the wind, echoes of yearning and want. Rumi trails her eyes over the vast expanse of the clearing and the gaping maw of her stomach hungers for something out of reach. 

Like this, it says:

I want to be beautiful, too.

Quietly yearning.

I want to be the flower that someone believes is worth nurturing.

The cursed words are left unspoken, but Zoey hears them anyway. In the way that Rumi's jaw will clench. In the longing that crawls onto her face. In the minute trembles that wrack her body where the flowers meet skin.

I will wait for you, Zoey thinks. She lowers a flower crown on the other girl's head and places a soft, tender kiss to her brow and thinks, You look beautiful, like this.

Rumi smiles.

Unspoken and unthought, the words, I want to be buried here someday, dig themselves into the ground and hide.

Buried things don't stay buried for long.

One night, when Rumi lifts herself from her tub to look in the mirror, she doesn't see a stranger.

No, she sees herself. The length of her hair that had grown to reach the floor. The brown of her eyes that she carried from her mother. And the scars that lined her body that would take months to heal.

There's something different about this routine.

Because just hours ago, Rumi had asked Celine if she could tell them—reveal the wretchedness that laid under her skin to the only people that could know and understand—and waited for the blow. 

Celine would say not now, when your patterns haven't been fixed. And Rumi, in practiced repetition, would lower her head and reply, okay, Celine.

But.

Things are different.

Celine does not abide by their regimen. For whatever reason, she can't figure. Maybe Celine was tired, that day. Maybe she was angry. 

Either way, her mentor breaks the performative iteration of a lifelong play and all it takes is three words.

(Just three words. Ha.)

(Rumi has always had a weakness for groups of three.)

“Hide your scars,” she says, an afterthought, and Rumi freezes in place.

“They're too obvious. The more you show them, the higher the likelihood that we'll be discovered. Others will mock us for all the times we failed to fix… this. All the times we made mistakes.”

Rumi loved her scars.

“Don't be so cruel as to give those girls hope for something that isn't true. At least, not yet. You'll only disappoint them this way if you end up failing.”

They made her feel human.

“Our faults and fears must never be seen,” Celine finishes. “Don't be cruel, Rumi. How do you think they would react if they found out about this ? Their confidence in your character when they find out you're… this.” She waves at Rumi as a whole, and this time Rumi knows she isn't talking about just her patterns.

“You girls are three parts of a whole. When one part is shameful, so are the rest. I know your scars heal, too, but please wait. We want both the patterns and the scars gone.”

Rumi escapes from the embrace of a cold, blood-stained tub and looks at herself in the mirror and knows she should feel something. Disgust, maybe. Resignation. Hatred. Shame.

Those fickle things are all stolen away by a torrent of apathy.

A chronically ill person thinking she had been cured, she hums detachedly. Playing up her perfections and disguising all her faults. She'd grown complacent.

Celine is right, as always.

Why would she be wrong?

Celine always knows best, doesn't she?

(Rumi digs deeper than she ever has that night. Deep enough to hit bone. She saws off her flesh and hopes that it's enough to saw off her shame, too.)

(Her demon side had been revolting, that she knew was true.)

(But, as Rumi stared at the deep gashes on her arms—the lies she fed to the world and swallowed whole—she realized.)

(Maybe it wasn't just her demon side that was the problem.)

(Maybe the problem was Rumi herself.)

Rumi can't see through the pain. 

The fog makes her thoughts sluggish. Her brain is disconnected from her body, and it's odd. Strange.

The tub is warm.

The tub is warm, not cold, and the showerhead is crooked when it should've been kept straight.

Something is wrong.

She looks down. Can barely see through the cloud of torment that blocks her irises. But she sees.

The patterns are still there.

A splintered laugh makes its way out her throat and she grabs for the knife by her side. Tries to grab it, more like, and fails.

The shame is still present on her body but her hands are shaking and her hands are shaking shaking shaking why were they shaking why wont they stop why can't they MOVE.

Celine would know what to do, right?

Of course. Of course. Of course. Celine would know and then Rumi would know because Rumi would ask and Celine is kind and Celine would answer and Rumi would listen to her and everything would be all right again.

(The patterns reemerge that night, thicker and expanding. She has to cut them off twice.

They grow back in the span of a month, and her ‘sessions’ likewise grow in frequency. 

Rumi is a liar to others, and she is a liar to herself. It's a realization that's sudden but not, surprising but predictable. 

It doesn't change a thing.

The sharp glint of a blade finds purchase on her skin and it is ugly but it is human and Rumi had always been good at denial.

The shame doesn't leave her though, when she thinks about how much she's lied to Zoey and Mira. They loved this human side of her, but they didn't know it was cursed, too.

The scars remind her of her goal. Of what she's working towards. 

If she can just get rid of her demon side, maybe she really would have the capability to be loved. 

All it takes is sealing the Golden Honmoon.

And then, she will fix herself. )

A purple hyacinth lays buried next to a grave. Against all odds, it has not yet wilted.

Something other has kept it alive for years.

(The patterns are longer now. Deeper.

It doesn't really matter much, in the grand scheme of things.

Rumi will just have to find a way to fix it, because what else is there to do?

These patterns were a plague that marked her skin, scratching the words unforgivable onto her soul. But humans are different—humans can make room for mistakes. Humans could be good please am I good? I don't want to be hurt I don't want please free.

She'd fix her demon side first and then, she'd fix the human in her, too. All she needs is time, and the scars will take care of themselves.

She'll make sure they do.)

The fifth time Celine finds her on the bathroom floor, she cradles her head in her hands. Oh Rumi, she says, what are we going to do with you?

Rumi will lean into the touch and smile.

Rumi operates for years with the belief that everything will be okay so long as nobody but her and Celine know.

They can fix this.

The Honmoon's threads shine gold for the first time, and her heart soars.

They can fix this.

“Did you guys see? Did you see? We turned it gold!” Zoey bounces around in their penthouse. “I'm so proud of you two, so proud of us.” Tears make their way to her eyes and her lip trembles. “I love you guys so much.”

They're high on the incoming victory, and there is nothing standing in their way.

“Ugh, I love you idiots too,” Mira complains, but she's grinning and not even trying to hide it.

They can fix this.

“I'm glad that it was you two.” Rumi says. She's tearing up, she knows, but she's so close to it—can almost touch it. 

The penthouse is lively, that night. Full of laughter and joy. The promo for ‘Golden’ is released and their team is light on their feet. 

They will fix this.

( I love you, a child says. Hope litters its hands like a hand-sculpted star left forgotten at a landfill. 

It does not realize, yet, how worthy it is of being loved in return.)

Chapter Text

It starts, like all things do, with a song.

(Not that Zoey and Mira know about it.)

The song she's referring to isn't How It's Done, nor is it Golden, and neither is it Takedown. 

It's a lullaby, one that Celine had composed just for her.

The memory goes like this:

Rumi, how would you like to hear a song? Celine asks her. Rumi is maybe four, maybe five, maybe six, and there is a glass full of milk in her hands that has yet to cool. She still hasn’t gotten a hang for brewing milk, because sometimes she pours too much water and other times she pours too little, but she knows how to heat it properly now.

(It doesn’t taste as bad as her first attempts used to. Rumi hopes it might be because she’s less bad, too. She’s been trying very hard to be a good girl.)

A song? She would repeat the words in confusion, the glass stalling halfway up her lips. Does Ce-ley have a new song for Rumi?

Celine pats her on the head and laughs, her words honest, because Celine would often hide the truth, but she would never lie. 

Yes, and I made it just for you.

(How simple things could’ve been—any outsider would have mistaken the scene for a mother having a late night talk with her child.)

(Except, simple things are a reward that only come to those who labor for it. And Rumi may be diligent, but she is still a child.)

Can Rumi it hear now? Rumi will go to bed early, promise. She bites her lip nervously, unused to asking for indulgences, much less having them obliged.

I will sing it to you when you sleep, Celine replies. A smile breaks out on Rumi’s face.

You’re the bestest! she cheers, face alight with a childlike glow. Happy and glad, because Celine had made a song just for her. 

(Her eyes had flickered gold, then, and Celine would retract her hand as if she had never intended to move it in the first place.)

Why couldn’t they have just been a normal family?

Celine hangs back until she's drained of her leftover energy. She stands by the doorway of Rumi’s room and does not sit by her bedside and Rumi does not question it, because by then, it had made all the sense in the world. 

The sky is blue and Rumi is a child that cannot afford the privilege of being touched. What else was there to say about it?

(Rumi wants, but that is all she can do. She wants Celine to tuck her to sleep. To read her a bedtime story. For even the quietest of ‘sleep well ’s to make it to her ears. She does not know where the desperate want comes from, but she doesn't like it. It isn’t natural.)

The lullaby does not lull her to sleep.

Celine sings it from her place near the doorway, but the distance feels too close. Rumi wants her to stay away, to move to the other side of the house, of the forest, because—

Rumi is afraid.

(Were all lullabies supposed to be like this?)

We are hunters, voices strong, Celine starts, and Rumi pulls her covers up to her ears. There is something strange about her mentor, because her voice is sharp and her eyes have that bad, bad look in them that she gets when she sees something she doesn’t like.

Slaying demons with our song, Celine continues, and the soprano of her voice makes way for an amazing melody. But all it does is make Rumi’s chest feel tight, like one of those stretchy toys that you spread far apart to see how much force it could take before bending back.

The blue man on the television said that lullabies were supposed to make you feel sleepy and nice. 

This lullaby was nice. A thoughtful gesture from Celine that she didn’t have to do. 

Rumi wants it to feel nice too, she does! But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t stop herself from trembling. She lets out a small whine in frustration.

Fix the world and make it right. Celine flicks the lights close, and Rumi burrows deeper into the safety of her covers.

I don't want this, she thinks, swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat.

And then, sadder. 

Like the sound of a small heart breaking.

Why would you make this?

Her lips wobble.

Celine had put aside her time just to make her a song, so why couldn’t she just appreciate it?

When darkness finally meets the light. 

The song finishes, and Celine retreats from her spot, when Rumi hears it.

Happy birthday, Rumi.

The door shuts close.

She does not sleep that night. Or the night after that.

A lot of things, when you simplify them, are composed of three layers: top, middle, and bottom. Once you reach the top, you have two choices: to float and stay, or to sink.

The west calls their demons fallen angels.

Lower and lower. From the top to the bottom. Down down down down down.

Do wn. Do w n. Do wn.

D

               O

                               W

                                               N

Rumi plummets from her place in the clouds and there is nothing to break her fall. Crack. Her back hits the concrete and she lays there unmoving because she has forsaken her god and this punishment is the result. She cannot die, but this pain spine cracked in half blood on the concrete please I just wanted to be good just give me one more chance does not feel like living at all.

(It is a long way down from the top.)

(She cherishes those moments in the fall, where the fear of death brought her closer to the joy of being alive. She knows now, that living is watching movies together, riding the highest rides in the amusement park, hands patting her back as she heaves, laughter laced with the contents of her stomach because who thought this was a good idea?

She knows. But.

Perhaps knowing is what makes it worse.

Disappointment trails behind her while rejection bites at her heels. Memories stained with anguish.)

(Demons don't deserve to live.)

‘Slaying demons with our song.’

That had been the core of Celine’s teachings. The message that her mentor had been relaying to her her entire life.

Rumi had interpreted the lyrics in their most literal sense, without stopping to look past the surface.

It was stupid of her to do.

If she'd just… looked closer. Maybe she wouldn't have had to burden herself with the weight of purpose—of trying to search for a meaning that was never there. Maybe she wouldn't have clung to the idea that she was more than what she was born into.

Slaying demons with our song; all demons were meant to die by a hunter’s blade. Even demons that happened to be hunters were no exception.

She shouldn't have hoped otherwise.

(Three hands reach out to save a drowning man, but they fall too far out of reach. Unable to pinpoint, because how can you save someone when you can’t even see who you’re trying to save?)

Bad things tend to happen when you least expect it.

The Honmoon had shone gold, in that lit stadium. It undulated, rolling back and forth into the air like moonlight shining on the surface of a lake—a symbol of all the things they’d been working towards. Everything had been going their way, Rumi knows, and that should’ve been the first sign. 

Good things never last. Not for demons, and certainly not for her. It was a saying that she’d tossed aside like trash the moment things started going her way.

And now, the phrase settles like a stone behind her ribs and seals itself inside and she can’t breathe.

Rumi's voice cracks, on the night of their live performance of Golden. It shrivels up in her throat and lays there and it feels like a lump of food that refuses to go down. The room closes in on her just as her impending doom does and she runs from everything she'd ever worked for because what was the point of it all if she didn't have the one thing that could stop her from being a mistake?

(Why can’t I have just this one thing? I did my best. I stayed quiet. I stayed out of the way. So, why then? WHY?)

The growing bud of a hope that had been nurtured by years of camaraderie and trust, resolute “I can fix this”s, threads that shone stronger each day, and, perhaps, the naivety that only a child could maintain, wilts. 

Rumi runs, and her muscles ache in protest. The ground is scorched earth underneath her feet and she wonders if this is what hell will feel like when she descends.

Her voice.

She couldn’t use her voice.

The patterns had crawled to her neck without her even knowing and they’d taken her voice.

(We are hunters, voices strong.)

Everything is going to be okay, she thinks desperately on a cold, lonely rooftop. It wasn’t too bad, really. Sure, her voice had given out on her twice in one night, but this could be salvageable.  If—if she could sing, then it didn’t matter how far the patterns had reached. She could fix this.

(Slaying demons with our song.)

Rumi tries again.

“No more hiding, I’ll be shining like I’m born to BE,” she strains, fights against the cracking of her own voice even when the first note already tells her that it’s futile, “‘cause we are hunters, voices strong and I know I believe!” 

(Fix the world and make it right.)

Rumi had always been good at denial.

This time, though—this time the truth she’d been trying so desperately to evade had found her, and there was nothing she could do to change it.

Even her body fails her, then, and she falls to her knees. 

“How am I supposed to fix the world, fix me, when I don’t have my voice?” The question is thrown into empty air. Only the Honmoon can hear her, in this desolate space she’d made for herself, and she asks the question even though she knows it cannot answer back. “Why now, when I’m so close?”

(When darkness finally meets the light.)

“Why?” she begs, “WHY?”

Magenta ripples through silvery threads, and it is all the answer she needs.

Rumi screams.

They talk about it, clustered around their dinner table. Zoey is holding her hand and Mira’s hoodie swallows her frame and it is too much. Rumi is too much and too little, always taking up unnecessary space and never amounting to enough. The only thing she was good at was singing, and that had been taken from her, too.

How was she supposed to call herself a hunter, if she couldn’t use her voice? How was she supposed to face Mira and Zoey without the shame that came with her inability to just be good?

If she could, Rumi would have run away from this conversation, but she owes it to them to explain. 

(Why did they still care? 

They should know, by now, that Rumi had just doomed them all. Had doomed the Honmoon and, consequently, the world.

Mira and Zoey were going off-script, touching her and murmuring in soft voices instead of shoving her away and yelling at her for not being able to do something as simple as sing.

They wouldn't be acting the same way if they knew. When they knew.)

They try to fix it of course, because Mira and Zoey are kind and gentle and good like that, in a way she can no longer reach, but it’s no use. 

(“Why did you push for the Golden release?” Mira asks.)

(“Because it was important,” she replies.)

(Because I was running out of time, she does not say.)

They retire to their rooms early in the morning, tired and exhausted. There is no one to distract her anymore and it is then that the thought she’d been trying so hard to hold down breaks loose from the gaps in her hands; how do I prepare?

Crawling; expanding. Whose names should I place on my will?

Overflowing. I don’t want to have an empty funeral.

Her patterns pulse. The reality she’d been ignoring returns to her yet again, and it is suffocating. Jaws dipped in poison wrap around her throat and clamp down.

Rumi will lose her patterns, or die trying.

They had agreed not to tell Celine. 

Their mentor finds out either way.

The cancellation is all over the news and even though Bobby and their PR team had covered it up and spun it to appease the masses, it’s still there.

What did you do, Celine calls her early in the morning—not angry, but disappointed. Rumi answers because how was she supposed to sleep at a time like this? She answers because this was Celine and even if their team didn’t know what to do, Celine would.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Rumi babbles, I thought—

You thought? A short laugh. Have you really?

Silence.

I'm sorry.

Don't be so down, Celine huffs, we can still fix this. Just make sure you get enough rest.

She hangs up the phone.

Things get worse. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours, and their fans are being stolen away.

A boy group called the Saja Boys performs on the streets, and their patterns gleam in the bright light—it’s who knows what time in the morning, and everyone can see. They’re not even bothering to hide it.

Their song is good, to her dismay, and everyday citizens who frequent the district swamp the area within minutes, clamoring for more. 

The crowd loves them; Rumi hates them. 

(Something like envy sputters to life inside her chest. It is ugly and hideous and no matter how much she pushes it away, it does not leave.)

What was Gwi-Ma planning?

The demon with the beanie starts to sing, and Rumi feels the Honmoon beat thrice in succession. A warning. “Incredible. But why a demon boy band?” she voices her doubts.

“Who cares? A demon’s a demon—and we kill demons,” Mira walks up without hesitation, always the first to take approach, and Rumi has to hold her back.

(Rumi was not a demon, not fully, but the curse of her lineage made it so that she couldn't ignore the half that was already there. The half that needed to be fixed, if that was even possible, now. If Mira found out… would she be the first to draw her blade?)

(It would be the best choice.)

(If she had to die by her teammates’ hands, she would want Mira to kill her.)

(For no other reason than the selfish thought that, this way, her death would be swift and without delay.)

“It doesn’t look like they’re gonna hurt anyone.” Zoey offers. “In fact, it almost seems like they’re… nice demons?”

Rumi almost laughs at the thought. Demons? Nice?

the blood I can’t get it out of my hands my chest hurts please

(You are a mistake.)

Well, she can’t say she’s heard weirder. Zoey could very well outrank Celine’s odd humor with just that one phrase. 

The Saja Boys finish their performance and disappear in a flash of demonic power, and Rumi snarls. 

“It doesn’t matter if they’re nice,” she says slowly. “We’re going to kill them.”

Rumi’s voice may be failing her but she can still fight.

So she does.

They follow the boys to the bath house and Rumi chases their leader and leaves her teammates behind because there is something bitter in her chest that wants out. These demons had their patterns out for the entire world to see, yet the people still loved them anyway.

(Rumi wonders, if they would ever love her like that, too.)

(What a joke. She knew better than to believe in childish fantasies.)

It’s jealousy that forces her to her feet, and Jinu slices through her leather like cloth and suddenly her scars her shame failures mistakes it hurts why won’t you help me why can’t I ever be enough are out, and under them, a faint hint of purple barely seen.

“A hunter that’s… part demon?” Jinu says, and panic grips at her chest. “No—you’re different. I’ve seen scars like those before. Did Gwi-Ma strip you of your powers?”

Mira and Zoey are right there and they could see but Jinu had seen and he’d seen not only her patterns but her scars too, those marks of shame and reminders of all the times she's failed to succeed. And, worse, he wouldn’t stop talking about them. Something claws at the edges of her mind and she can feel herself slipping.

Suddenly, there is a yellow handkerchief tied around her arm and Jinu is no longer there.

“How do we go from gold, to this?”

The girls are right beside her, and she knows they can feel it too. How weak the Honmoon is. It hadn’t been that long since their How It’s Done performance, but this had happened. Their years of effort, gone, because of those demons. Because of her.

(Hatred. Rumi hated demons and she hated herself. She was supposed to be strong. Her very purpose as a hunter was to sing.)

(Part demon, part hunter?)

(Just demon.)

(Just hunter.)

(What was she?)

(A mistake.)

Bobby walks in prepared with updates as per usual and briefs them about how the Saja Boys had been trending on social networks. Rumi purses her lips.

“It’s just social media numbers, not the end of the world,” he says, and Rumi wishes it would be true.

The blaring magenta of the broken Honmoon stares straight at them and forces them to face reality.

They need to fix this.

Rumi needs to fix this.

That night, they decide to crush the Saja Boys.

“We’re gonna need a new song,” she says, and her girls and Bobby are on it in seconds. “We’re gonna write a new song—a diss track to expose the Saja Boys.’’

“And send those disgusting demons back to the depths where they belong!” Zoey finishes, and her and Mira cheer. 

(They will hate you, her subconscious whispers.)

(Fog. Cold walls. Hands. Not hers. Dripping. Warm. Hers.)

(I know.)

A momentary pause stills their cheering. They’re expecting her to cheer with them.

So she does.

(Demons were disgusting, were they not?)

(Rumi was disgusting, too.)

She retreats into her room, and she cannot stop thinking.

About her patterns. About the Saja Boys. About Jinu.

And then, to make things worse, a bird with a tiny hat barges onto her balcony with a demonic tiger.

At least the tiger is cute.

Even if it is kind of slow.

She’s never seen anything like it before, and it seems harmless, unlike the Saja Boy who had looked harmless but hadn’t been. The tiger offers her a letter and she takes it, dripping with saliva.

“Jinu ? Meet you?” she says incredulously, “I’m not gonna meet you, who do you think you—”

The bird zips past her and teleports away with the tiger and she wants to palm her face. She already knows this is going to be a stupid decision, but she goes to meet him anyway.

She tries to kill him and fails.

Spectacularly.

“You were supposed to be dead by now,” she’s growling at him after the initial strikes. The asshole had the audacity to stage an invite and have a mannequin in his place. She is, rightfully, furious.

“I could’ve told your friends what you are, but I didn’t,” he pauses from the other side of the rooftop, “because they don’t know.”

Rumi’s breath hitches, and she knows without needing to check that Jinu has seen it, too. She gives herself away so easily that it feels unreal. Her most shameful secret—thrown to the wind like a piece of discarded paper. Useless. 

She wants to—wants to—

She doesn't know what she wants to do.

“Ah, I did guess right,” he says smugly. “A demon girl, also hunter. Hiding, walking around free in the human world.”

“Just hunter, not demon.”

(She is a hunter and a demon but at the same time, she is not. Stripped away and laid bare, the only thing that Rumi could be was a mistake.)

“Then how’d you get the patterns?” he prods. Rumi wants to kick his face in. Her head is buzzing, now. Buzzing, from the constant supply of emotions that this back-and-forth had been eliciting. Aggression is the quickest to surface.

“That’s none of your business!”

“I know what it feels like to have them,” he says, and what news that was. Did demons feel anything when they took the lives of innocent people and fed it to their master? Did they feel anything when people who had whole lives to live, families to come back to, went missing, never to be seen again?

Cruel and merciless. Did he know the weight his words had? The history behind his kind?

Of course he did.

Demons were all the same. This one was no better.

A faint sensation moves under her skin. 

Like rats.

Rumi inhales. Stops moving.

(Rats. A medieval torture method used against criminals. Those writhing things, caged atop the perpetrator’s chest, both of them prisoners, in their own way. The opposite side of the cage would be heated, and the rats, in an attempt to escape, would dig down, displacing fragile skin and reaching into bones.

The patterns move like rats underneath her skin, and she holds in the urge to claw them away. She had done this before, during one of her worst days. Had dug into her skin in an attempt to find the rats, but to no avail.

There were no rats.

Only her.

In the end, it was Rumi herself who was the problem.)

She buries her fingers into the hilt of her saingeom, desperate to blur the sensation away. “Feel? You’re a demon, demons don’t feel anything,” she spits, even as the slow crawl under her skin contradicts her words.

She can’t let him see her weakness. More than he already has. Your faults and fears must never be seen, and that meant no one—especially not a demon—could know.

“Is that what you think?” Jinu’s gaze bores into her. “That’s all demons do—feel. Feel our shame, our misery. It’s how Gwi-Ma controls us. Do you not hear him in your ear?”

His voice doesn’t rise, but it strikes a chord in her regardless. 

(The shame of her existence burdened her every day.)

(A punishment. A reminder.)

(All demons do is feel.)

“What are you talking about?” she asks, blatantly ignoring the rest of what he said. If Gwi-Ma had tried getting into her head, she would know.

The corners of her lips twitch up. 

If there were any voices to worry about, they would be her own.

“I don’t hear anything at all,” she says. A lie.

“Then…” he looks her up and down, and Rumi's eye twitches. What answer would he find just by looking at her? “If you can’t hear him, it’s because he removed your connection to your demon powers, no?” he asks curiously, and this time Rumi actually has no clue what he’s talking about.

“I've never used anything demon,” she spits. “And I've never had access to those powers, either.”

“But your scars—”

“What about them, huh?” she bites back, defensive.

“Your patterns are linked to your soul. You should know this, as a demon yourself.” He smirks. “Gwi-Ma punishes rebellious demons like you by taking away their patterns. Those grow back, but taking away the patterns means taking away parts of your soul. It's not pretty, even for you.”

“What did you just say?” Rumi almost drops her weapon. Grip whitening, she suppresses the tide of panic that his words summon. 

Her soul?

No, she calms herself down, it made sense.

She was taking away only the bad parts, so it didn't matter how much of her soul she carved away, because they needed to be removed. She will fix herself, fix the demon, and then everything will be okay. Fix it. Fix it. Fix Rumi. Nothing else matters but fixing herself. Not her soul, or whatever is left of it.

The Golden Honmoon would’ve done it. She'd just sped up the process.

“So you didn't know.” He reads through her like a book, that smug bastard.

“I know now,” she retorts. “And it doesn't matter. It's better for those parts to be gone.”

The words are out before she can think about them, but they are true. Still, her teeth grind together and the tension gives her a headache. Of all the things she could’ve said, and of all the people she could’ve told…

Rumi squares her shoulders, leaning on the balls of her feet and waiting for… something. An averse reaction? A laugh?

But Jinu looks at her with none of the pity that she expected to find. Instead, he looks at her like he understands. Looks at her like he actually sees her—and then, he begins to speak, spinning a tale of guilt and shame and broken family.

“These are a constant reminder of my shame, a shame I can never escape.” He reaches a hand for her. “Yours are a reminder too of a shame of your own.”

“You don’t know me.” 

(It is a weak rebuttal, one that neither of them believe.)

(The truth is, they met just yesterday, yet he knew her better than anyone ever had.)

(Bitter. It makes her so, so bitter.)

(But there is something else there, too. A spark.)

(Flames from a campfire lit in a frozen wasteland. They sit beside each other as their hands hover to reach for the heat. The fire chokes, and they know that if neither of them move, they will not make it out alive, but the frost has already claimed their limbs. Eyes meet. An understanding known to two desperate creatures.)

(Paradoxical undressing. A medical phenomena. Euphoria before that final breath.)

(The deepest you will ever understand another person is in shared misery. Death.)

“ You know you can tell me. I’ll understand. I’m the only one who can .”

(It's true. It's true and she cannot deny it and isn't that sad? That the only person in her life that could ever begin to understand her, was a demon?

They were both doomed.

Perhaps they can rot in hell together.)

“I’m nothing like you.”

He disappears, and Rumi groans.

Her patterns have grown.

It is as unfortunate as it is sad. They have reached past her wrist now, and there is only so much that makeup can do before she is found out.

No matter, she’ll deal with it the same way she’s dealt with it her entire life.

The blade inside her bathroom taunts her. It sneers at her and calls her all sorts of things. Weak. A disgrace of a hunter. A demon.

A mistake.

Rumi will hold it against the patterns on her throat and stare.

It is right, naturally.

Rumi is a weak and pitiful thing that is hard to love. Grasping grasping grasping onto the love that is offered to her because she is greedy and selfish and everything in between.

Mira and Zoey wouldn't be too sad, if she died.

After all, who would miss someone like her?

(Momma, can I come see you again?)

It’s ironic, how she’s the one to come up with the song name. Takedown, because they would take down the demons. The inspiration sends them into a collective frenzy, and Zoey, ever their reliable lyricist, is quick to add the opening lines. Mira follows.

Hideous on the inside, Zoey wiggles her fingers in the air—a cute gesture she did whenever she got excited. Rumi can’t muster up the fondness to match it.

(Did Zoey know what she was implying? Her maknae always saw the best in people, always the first to speak up because she believed in their capability to be good. If even she thought that demons were hideous—)

(It would change nothing, actually.)

(Rumi has known that fact since she was a child.)

Whole life spreading lies but you can’t hide, Mira nods along, no doubt already cooking up a dance routine. Her teammates were amazing like that.

Baby, nice try, Rumi adds. Grins, but it feels fake.

Her neck hurts.

She thinks her heart might, too.

(All demons do is feel their shame—their misery.)

(Jinu was right.)

Soda Pop wins song of the week.

The week after, Golden wins song of the week.

She doesn’t feel much pride at it, if any, when she sees the missing persons reports on the news.

All these deaths, because she had been lax. Complacent.

She corners a demon in an alleyway. “Are you a prisoner too?” she asks in a moment of impulse, because she needs to know. Maybe demons weren’t just monsters. Maybe they weren’t made for damnation and there was hope for them. Hope for her.

Jinu had signed himself to a life of suffering, but he did it because he had no choice but to. He did it for his family. Regret walked with him in the four hundred years he’d lived, and if he could feel regret, then it wouldn’t be much of a jump to think that other demons were the same.

“Is Gwi-Ma making you do this?”

The demon gnashes its teeth in a twisted form of a smile. It’s mocking her.

Mira kills it.

(Inwardly, she’s resigned.)

(Just as it should be. Why had she dared to hope?)

Rumi makes several—she’s lost count after twelve—new attempts at removing the marks on her throat, but for some maddening, senseless reason, they grow back.

The patterns are linked to your soul.

Rumi looks at the ever-growing array of patterns and thinks, this is not enough. 

Her soul is unhealthy; polluted, and these patterns are the chemicals that need to be filtered out. 

She cuts and cuts and cuts, and the collection of scars that line her throat fill out until it hurts to even stretch, to breathe, but they won’t go away.

There’s blood on her sink. Blood all over her bathroom floors. She hasn’t had the time to clean it—can’t afford to really.

The patterns crawl like rats on her skin and her shame is what burns their cage. They burrow into the vessels of her blood and burst them open and all she can feel is pain.

Her voice was linked to her humanity. A strand of hope in the dark.

Didn’t it make sense for it to be her biggest shame, too?

His stupid cat brings her another invite.

She shuts the door in its face.

“Oh, oh,” Mira grins. “How about ‘a demon with no feelings doesn’t deserve to live?’”

“It’s so obvious,” Zoey chimes in, visibly brightening.

Rumi can only clench her fist around her pen. Her neck hurts. Her neck hurts and she had been all but bleeding out on her bathroom floor just hours ago.

(All demons do is feel. Feel their pain. Their misery.)

A rotten flower blooms underneath her skin. The ache does not leave.

The Saja Boys intrude on their fan signing.

“Should I tell them?” Jinu asks, all smug and mocking. Rumi is still wrapping her mind around the fact that they slept overnight on the sidewalk just to do this, and as much as it irritates her, she’s also impressed.

Some sort of devotion to the cause, huh.

(Beneath the mockery lay a faint treble of concern, but Rumi does not catch it. Jinu hides the stray note under layers of ridicule, and when a demon with four hundred years of experience wants to hide, there is not much one can do to uncover what they are hiding.)

“No, I’m gonna tell them… eventually,” Rumi lies through her teeth. Tell them? What exactly would she say? ‘Hello, I’m a demon, the very thing you’ve been hunting and were tasked to kill for years’? Like that would go over well. She will fix herself, and they will never have to know. If she fails, she will die, and Celine will bury her, and they will never have to know. 

(Ring ring ring. Her ringtone echoes inside her room, and her home screen—a picture of the three of them, Zoey, Mira, and Rumi—burns into her eyes. She turns the cover upside down.

Celine? Rumi whispers, voice cracked and thin. Twenty-seven seconds. That was how long it took for her mentor to pick up.

What is it now ?

I— a lump forms in her throat. She stifles a whimper. You’ll cremate me, right? If I can’t. Can’t get it right. And if I die. You will? I—I don’t want. They can’t. Please, I—

I will, Rumi, Celine soothes her. I will.

She slumps onto her bed, relieved.)

A little girl, only a head taller than their table, comes up to them and offers Jinu a drawing. It stuns him, and Rumi can read the hand-drawn letters on the paper without needing to peek. He holds it up front and doesn’t flip it over, and she sees.

Jinu, you have a beautiful soul, it says, and.

And.

Rumi can’t breathe.

(In careful, deliberately drawn strokes, were five words.)

(Happy mother’s day! read the first three.)

(Torn. Shredded. Discarded.)

(Useless.)

(A daughter? No.)

(Rumi was a mistake.)

“Maybe listen to those voices, instead of the ones in your head,” she hears herself say, but it is distant. 

She’s not sure who she’s trying to convince anymore; Jinu, or herself.

Rumi tries to sing the lyrics to the new song, she really does.

But there is blood on her skin and her neck hurts and even though her voice is getting better the patterns won’t go away.

(Time to put you in your place ‘cause you’re rotten within.)

How can anyone love her, when she’s like this?

(When your patterns start to show it makes the hatred wanna grow out of my—)

How can they, when she can’t even love herself?

Mira heard her singing.

There is a knock on her door, brisk and abrupt, and she knows it isn’t Zoey. Zoey’s knocks are soft but spaced. Constant, to let you know that there was someone outside, but soft, to reduce the pressure of opening.

Rumi scrambles to fix her room and hide the evidence. She opens the door for her and Mira crosses her arms. 

There’s a paper lying on the bed.

Rumi’s hands shake, and she can tell that Mira recognizes it at the same time she does. It is face up and there are lines crossed out but there are lines and what else would she be doing late at night but writing lyrics?

Mira frowns. “Why are you changing our lyrics?”

“The song—It’s so hateful…” Rumi bites her lip. The excuse is weak and when she hears her own voice, she can’t resist the urge to grimace.

“Yeah?” Mira states in that no-nonsense tone of hers, unwilling to beat around the bush, “Because we hate Gwi-Ma, and we hate demons.”

Rumi stumbles on her explanations and doesn’t look her in the eye, because Mira can smell a lie from a mile away and looking would only make it worse.

It doesn’t stop the words from hanging in the air. Mira is like an open book sometimes, when she’s hurt, and Rumi is thrown back to the time when they were teenagers and stuck in an awkward loop of “Hello, how are you”s and “I’m fine. Thanks”s. Mira does not say the words aloud, but the weight of her stare is enough.

You’re hiding something from me. 

Mira stares at her like she’s a stranger and not the hunter that had been accompanying their team for nearly a decade and it stings.

(Rumi doesn’t think she recognizes herself, either.)

“I can’t wait until every one of those demons is destroyed and sent back to suffer with Gwi-Ma for all eternity, right Rumi?”

“Yeah, eternal suffering. Sounds fun,” she says, but it doesn’t have any strength to it. 

Mira leaves the room without putting up a fight.

They’ve both hurt each other, today, and Rumi is at fault.

Rumi is always at fault.

The amount of missing person reports triples.

She parses through each name, each missing face. Lists them down on her notebook and commits them to memory. The faces haunt her, in her waking moment and when she sleeps. The shadows contort into angry glares and biting whispers of How could you do this to us? Why didn’t you save us?

They won’t stop. And she can’t stop, either.

She throws herself into fighting and working in hopes that it will alleviate the guilt, but it does nothing more than make her feel more guilty.

Monster, the voices screech.

Gwi-Ma may not be haunting her, but the dead are. She doesn’t know what’s worse.

Unforgivable. Killer. Monster. Her mind is fraying a the edges but she takes the words and does not let them go. Rumi is a demon, and there were only two ways to fix it. Fix her.

The first, a Golden Honmoon.

The second… she doesn’t like to think about it.

So, she would do all she could to repent. In hopes of fixing her mistakes. To make up for her sins.

She’s not sure if she can fix herself, anymore, but Celine tells her she can and Rumi listens. 

Anyway, what did it matter? 

If all else failed, Celine would know what to do.

Jinu asks to meet again. And Rumi can’t help but think, All demons do is feel.

Maybe, he would know.

They were one and the same, after all.

Her hope is diminishing, hanging onto thin threads, and this meeting is her last resort. Her voice was getting better, but Rumi would not rely on luck to carry her through such a momentous event. If her voice collapsed in the middle of that stage, she would never forgive herself.

And, there was always that thought lurking in the back of her mind, one that had grown stronger in the past few weeks.

I can’t fix this.

So she meets the demon and tries to convince him that he can fix himself. That there was hope for him, too.

He calls it a date, jokingly, and Rumi thinks back to soft touches in a lazy morning and even softer lips brushing against her forehead and refuses. It feels wrong, to call it that.

(The alternative, she knows, is even more wrong to think about.)

(Not when she is what she is now.)

(And not with how things are going.)

“What if I told you there’s another way to regain your freedom?” she speaks, and he listens.

They’re both selfish creatures, this way. She is using him and he is using her and they speak in a language that only demons could understand and the answer is one that only they could hear:

Hope, or the absence of it. She can barely remember what it feels like, now. But Rumi has always been good at listening.

Sing, child, the Honmoon speaks, and she listens.

We can do this, Mira and Zoey speak, and she listens.

Fix the Honmoon, Celine speaks, and she listens.

So when she tries to hand Jinu the bracelet, the entire situation feels almost comical. A hopeless creature trying to convince another that hope can be found. 

A facsimile of it, at least.

She can settle for a copy.

What right did she have to ask for more?

The idol awards are tomorrow, the network blares. Rumi tries her best to avoid it, but it’s all over Seoul.

They can’t do this—no, Mira and Zoey could do this, but Rumi can’t, because she is a mistake, a failure when time called for it the least, and it’s a familiar pattern all over again

Rumi tries, but fails to succeed.

“Why are we stopping?” Mira asks frustratedly. She’s angry, Rumi can tell. Zoey, too. 

“It’s just that these lyrics are throwing me off, I don’t think they’re right just yet,” she lies. Or tells the truth. She can’t tell what from where anymore. The lyrics are right, it’s just that Rumi is wrong so she makes everything else wrong, too.

“Seriously, now?” Mira says, and her glare won’t leave her face. She’s been wearing that expression for a while now, whenever she talks to Rumi. It pricks like needles on her skin. Rumi wonders, distantly, if she would wear that very same expression at the sight of it.

Worse, probably.

Zoey tries to fix it, of course, but.

It’s the whole song, Rumi can’t help but think. Can’t help but say.

Her neck hurts. There’s blood under her clothes and she’s wearing double layers but she still feels cold. Someone is choking her, she thinks.

“I don’t think I can sing this song,” she manages to admit. A truth. It doesn’t breach the boundary she’s created between them and even though they are alone in that arena it feels crowded and tight and suffocating like someone is pressing down on her lungs and trying to sink her in the ground.

(A demon with no feelings don’t deserve to live.)

The Honmoon glows in assent.

Demons. Again and again and again and again and again. A repetitive process of sending them back to Gwi-Ma’s realm and going off to lick her wounds until they come back.

Now, though.

It’s not just the demons she’s fighting against.

“Seriously, what is your problem?” Mira demands, agitation and anger and heat threading its way into her usually calm tone. Mira was short-fused with others, but not with them. Today, though—no, the entire week—no, her life, it seems Rumi has been making mistake upon mistake. Too many to fix by just fixing the Honmoon. Too many to fix by just fixing herself.

“I told you, the song. It’s—”

“I’m not talking about the song, I’m talking about you!”

And oh.

That was always the problem, wasn’t it?

Rumi, the mistake. Rumi, the demon. Rumi, who couldn’t bring herself to sing a damned song because she just couldn’t be good.

“What are you hiding from us?” Mira grabs her shoulder, and she flinches. The touch puts pressure over her newly healed scars and it hurts, but not as much as her teammates’ pained expressions. Not as much as the death toll that had risen in the past week. It is intrusive and rears the ugly thing inside her head and all she can hear is screaming.

(The patterns had not stopped growing, after that day. She would cut them off and they would appear in the next as if to mock her.)

And so, she uses that hurt. Twists it into something sharp and jagged and as monstrous as her and spits fire into one of the only people that could’ve grown to love her. “Not everything is about your insecurities, Mira!” she yells, and the demon in her croons.

(They could’ve loved her. Could’ve. She doesn’t know if that’s still possible now).

They sing their parts of Takedown and Rumi’s part comes next. Her voice hasn’t cracked in a while and she sings. She does. She tries her best to, really, but her head hurts and her neck hurts and she hasn’t slept in weeks and there is nothing but pain pain pain.

A demon, larger and more powerful than the rest, is in front of her.

Her body rebels against her.

She can’t sing.

And now, apparently, she can’t fight either.

Mira and Zoey are disappointed in her.

Rumi is disappointed, too.

One hundred and fifty-seven.

She adds one hundred and fifty-seven names to her ledger and thinks, It would be so much easier, if I just…

No. She stops herself, because Rumi is a coward but she is not a traitor, and she will not fail the ones left behind by abandoning her duty to some selfish whim. The Honmoon needed to turn gold first.

And then, maybe.

Her and Jinu meet again on a rooftop.

“I want to believe in your crazy plan, but I don’t think I’m the one to help you,” he murmurs. The winds are placid that night—a calm before the storm. From this high up, the view of the cityscape is lonely, and the familiar sensation strikes a chord in her. Loneliness.

It was something that she faced alone.

It was—but one, unknowingly, unintentionally, became two.

Understanding shared in suffering, and the burden of isolation shared in a silence only they knew how to breach.

I don’t think I’m the one to help you, Jinu says, and who else could he be referring to other than Zoey and Mira?

Her wonderful, patient, good teammates were working on Takedown, beating themselves up over the song every night to get it perfect for the Idol Awards, and here she was talking to a demon because she couldn’t trust in them—couldn’t trust in herself to succeed.

(Quite the conundrum she’s found herself in. Unable to trust in her own teammates, so she opens up to a demon instead.)

(What a relief, that the only one that would face the consequences of her demon patterns, would be herself. That certainty brought a strange comfort. She could prioritize what truly mattered: Gwi-Ma, the Honmoon. The rest would fall into place.)

“Thank you, Jinu,” Rumi says sincerely. “For helping me.” 

She lifts her eyes to the stars.

“I spent this whole life keeping this secret, this shame of what I am, and the more I hid this shame the more it grew and grew until it started to destroy the one thing that gave me purpose. My voice.”

“But since I met you, and the more I talk to you, I don’t understand it but somehow my voice has healed.”

(Repeat a lie often enough, and you can fool yourself into thinking that it’s true.)

Two hopeless creatures sing on top of a rooftop, words meshing together in a harmony of lost souls. Binding them together is not hope, or trust, or love. Only simple understanding. 

You got a dark side, guess you’re not the only one.

What if we both tried fighting what we’re running from?

We could be free, Rumi sings. And maybe it’s the adrenaline. Maybe the voices have finally caught up to her and broken her mind. Maybe it’s pure, unadulterated foolishness, but she feels it. The small bud of her hope, once wilted, moves. It is miniscule, but it is there.

We could be free, Jinu echoes. There is a spark in his eyes that looks all too familiar, but that they are both scared to name.

Two versions of the same broken thing. They’ve mirrored each other since the very first moment they've met.

We could be free. The words bleed from her tongue in heavy drips and she swallows the blood until it parches the dryness of her broken throat. 

Rumi could be free.

The pain in her neck dulls into an ache.

I’ll make sure the Saja Boys lose tomorrow, he says, and she smiles.

Then we’ll both win.

(A starving, pathetic thing enters the home of a god. There is a banquet prepared on the table, and it is too good to be true.)

(She savors every bite.)

Hours later, that small, growing hope inside her chest is what carries her to talk.

Mira's head is bowed down and Zoey's eyes are covered in circles and neither of them is the first to speak. Rumi wrings her fingers together.

Guilt. 

How could she ever make it up to them?

The feeling sits in her throat like a scream she can’t release and slithers its way into her stomach until the acid thrashes and melts the lining of her gut. She wants to vomit. She wants to jam her fingers down her throat and reach into her insides to purge it out, but her hands have not stopped shaking, these days. 

It’s no use. 

“Look, the last few weeks have been hard, and I admit I haven’t been at my best, but I know we can win tomorrow.” Jinu’s face comes to mind. “We just have to sing the right song, and Takedown isn’t—”

“It’s okay, Rumi,” Mira says, resigned. “It’s not the song thats gonna connect all our fans.”

“It can’t even connect us.” Zoey’s eyes dart to Mira, and then to her.

And then Mira is opening up, open and vulnerable, and Zoey follows after.

(The conversation flows too mechanically to not have been planned, and oh.)

(Oh.)

(Had they talked about this without her?)

(Why did that hurt more than it should?)

“I’m afraid of losing you guys, too,” Rumi admits.

The secrets lying under her skin stand on the tip of her tongue. Rumi cannot find it in herself to make them known. 

“That’s why we have to finish this,” she says. It is not a lie, not really, but it tastes like ash in her mouth and the words burn themselves into her soul like flames of punishment. Rumi does not lie, but it is close.

Golden. The song they chose to play was Golden.

It is fitting, for a Golden Honmoon.

But not for a funeral.

The Saja Boys are fighting.

They’re fighting and Mira and Zoey are in high spirits and Bobby speeds off, more excited than all three of them combined.

That bud of hope blooms in Rumi’s chest, blooms and blooms and grows into something resembling a flower. She can’t keep the grin off her face when she chases after them, too.

Rumi doesn’t know how it all went so wrong.

One moment, she’s singing the last verses of Golden, the Honmoon’s threads turning a brilliant, shining gold, and the next—

The stage lights shut.

Takedown takedown takedown down down down.

Her breath catches in her throat.

“What?” 

They put this back in? 

They put Takedown back in?

But Mira and Zoey had said. They’d promised.

So why?

Why now, when the gold was right there?

So sweet, so easy on the eyes. Way hideous on the inside.

The first part of the song plays and she jerks like a puppet on a string. The lights are red and Mira is singing and Zoey is singing and Rumi is not but her throat aches like she's been screaming the same high notes for hours.

Her heart is in her ears and the throb of her veins is so strong it feels like they’re fighting to get out. Thud, they go. Soft, at first. And then a crescendo.

Thud. Thud.

Thud. Thud.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud THUD.

She whimpers.

The demon inside her awakens at the sound, like a pet called by its master.

It scrapes its way up and up, vying for her attention, sharpening its claws and howling in victory as it finally, after so long being ignored, draws her regard. It vies for her love in the only way she has taught it to—by piercing through her skin.

Spreading, spreading, spreading. Infecting.

Thud.

Two of the most important people in her life look at her with ruin and destruction in their eyes and it is all she can do not to scream.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

I love you and you're hurting me—

Thud.

Thud.

They push and shove and shove and push, irritating her already bruised scars. Rumi knows more than she feels it. Knows, in the way that rough fabric tears into frail, brittle skin. Knows, in the wetness that trails down her hands. 

It is an innate knowing—the same knowing that comes with landing on her feet after a grievous fall, the same knowing that came with meeting the other two parts of her three-part harmony—and Rumi knows, in her heart of hearts, that tonight, she will die.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Tunnel vision.

She can't focus on anything other than the resentment.

And up close, she can see it clearly. 

The hatred. Vitriol. Disgust.

They look at her as if she is nothing more than a bug underneath their shoes.

hOpE wE sTILL HAVE HOPE

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

She wraps her arms around herself. Numb. Desperate.

A closing act to a play that she was not made privy to, her own personal reapers come to take her life, and they do so without remorse.

As if none of it had mattered.

As if Rumi didn’t matter.

Zoey grins, the edges of her eyes pulled close by something like hostility, and Rumi realizes, faintly, that maybe none of it ever mattered in the first place.

Thud.

It’s time to kick you straight back into the night!

Their hands land on her body. Gripping onto her jacket. Pulling. Grabbing. 

And then there are patterns.

Her ears ring.

And then there are scars.

Her eyes shut close.

Rumi is there but she is not there and she thinks, for one blissful moment, that this must be a dream, that she can sink into unreality and wake up and pretend that this never happened, but it is base instinct, ingrained fear, raw terror that forces her out of her shock. Forces her out of the comfort of fog.

She lets out what could've been a small whine.

It hurts. 

It hurts.

EVERYTHING HURTS.

“Please,” she begs, begs and begs and pleads through the haze of pain that grips her heart and body and soul, “stop!” 

(Father, forgive me for my sins. Have mercy upon my soul. Father, save me. Father, why won’t you save me?! Why would you let me suffer?! I prayed for you, I worshipped you! Father—)

Rumi begs, and it is a tale as old as time.

Rumi begs and pleads and prays and it is not enough. It is never enough. 

Her head is spinning. Spinning, like one of those ripcord toy tops you launch onto the floor and watch as they ricochet. Except, it’s not stopping, and the nausea overtakes her and her throat contracts like whatever is left of heart is about to jump out of her chest.

The horrible voices near her ear, vicious and unforgiving.

They mock her as they shove her towards the crowd, running at her and leaving her patterns and scars exposed to the bite of cold air.

Tremors. In her legs. In her arms. 

She's trembling.

Rumi is a demon and demons are predators but here she is a prey and all she wants to do is to run to hide to die—

Thud thud. Thud thud.

Thud thud.

Thud.

Thud.

(A melody composed just for her.)

W̶͉̰̦̪̺̥͔̿̀ͅḨ̷̺́̒̀̏̐̀̓̐͂͘̚͝Y̵͕͍̜̮̥̮̔̀͂̒͗̎͝͠ ̸͖̉͋̍̃̔̑͌W̴̩̠͖͍̦͇̖̘͕̭͖̄͊̽̑̌͜Ỏ̸̢̹͓͇̟̙͙̺̾̊ͅỤ̵̔̎̈̈́̽̍͂̑̕Ļ̶̡̺̣̬̺͍͔̭͉̊̅̓̈́̊͝D̶͚̭̻̋̾͌ ̸̧̧̥̰̺͉̼̲̰͖͂̆̓̾͘ͅY̷̜̣͚̆̇̈́͗̃̎͌͒̍̕͝Ơ̵̻̣̫̱̜̓̑͑̇͛͐̆̈̚Ư̸̡͉̞̼͎̞͚̙͍̩̤͑͋̉̉́̔́̔͆̕ ̶̥͕͉̇́̇̀̋̑̌͆̿̚Ṃ̵̧̡̡͍̜̜̙͆̾͆̐Ǎ̵̛͕̀̉̋̂̇̎͘K̸͇̱̜͇̇̀ͅĘ̸̢̬͚̮̠͉͕̤͗̇̊̇̈́̅̌̏̽͜ ̶̛̮̱͉̫̤͔̔̀́͐̓́̆̊̓͝T̴͈͑̽̀̄̿́͐͐̚͝H̶̡̡̦͔̅Į̴̖̺̳̦̰͓̈́̃̀̋̔̑S̶̯̳̞̫̘̳̱͕̝̃͝?̴̦͚̂̊̅͑̓̌͂͝

Thud. Thud. Thud. 

Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud THUD.

THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD.

Unwelcome, like a key forced into a lock rusted shut, memories scratch their way to the surface.

Scratch scratch scratch.

Thud. Thud.

THUD.

I don’t think you’re ready for the takedown.

Hours spent inside a studio. Lyrics that flowed so easily off the tongue. 

A choreo with her as the center.

Break you into pieces in a world of pain, ‘cause you’re all the same.

Conversations had in private.

Furtive glances.

Click.

A realization.

Yeah it’s a takedown!

Mira and Zoey had known.

They'd known the whole time.

A demon with no feelings don’t deserve to live, it’s so obvious.

They knew she was a demon.

I’mma gear up and take you down.

And they decided to do this.

To write Takedown.

To expose her, in front of the whole world to see.

Thud.

(It’s tragic, isn’t it? That what undoes her at that realization is not the betrayal, nor is it the exposure.)

(It is the lie.)

(If they’d just told her…)

(She would have agreed.)

Thud.

Thud.

A whine bubbles inside of her throat. 

“We see what you are.”

Thud. Thud.

She can’t—she can’t move.

“You’re a demon.”

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

She can’t remember who says what. Maybe they’re both saying it. Maybe none of them are. Maybe it’s the souls she’s forsaken, speaking to her and screaming into her ear things she’s known her entire life.

But, it is true and only she and Celine had known and now the world knew it, too. Mira and Zoey and their fans and everyone watching the show—they knew. 

There was no hiding this. No fixing this. No redemption for what had already gotten so far out of her reach.

She might have made a sound, then. Thin and broken. Might have dug her nails into her skin. 

Might have been alive.

She doesn't know.

Thud.

She thinks she might be dying.

That someone is choking her.

Or was it just herself?

Thud.

She can’t bring herself to care anymore.

Thud.

The last golden thread of the Honmoon fades away.

She's silent, then. Curling into herself like an injured thing. And maybe she is.

Maybe she is an injured thing. A pathetic thing. A loveless, unforgivable thing.

Maybe she isn't a human. Maybe she never was.

They’ve failed, but Rumi is at fault, because Rumi is always at fault, has been, since she was a child. Carrying the blame of her existence, all because she was—

“A mistake.”

A mistake.

The patterns crawl. 

Piercing through scarred flesh and infesting, contaminating, corrupting new skin and shining brighter than they ever have before and it hurts it hurts it hurts. 

I love you why would you hurt me like this why why why—

(Father, why have you cast me out so mercilessly? I loved you, I sang for you, I fought for you—I toiled and bled and all this time it was because I loved you.)

(Am I so unlovable, that you must clip my wings?)

(Send me to hell then. Bring upon me your worst punishments.)

(I will feel no pain, because your absence of love has hurt me enough.)

The song ends. 

Rumi still can't move.

Her head hangs low and her limbs creak against exertion. A puppet on a string whose master has all but abandoned it. Like everything, and everyone else had.

Unrecognizable. Unloved.

An unlovable, pitiful thing.

“You have been, since the day you were born.”

The fragile cord holding her soul together snaps.

Pride.

Mira had been so proud. Teeming with it, in fact, that the smile on her face was practically plastered on for the duration of the show, to the dismay of their terrified support crew. She was so fucking proud, and she wanted everyone to know it—proud of the way their leader took up her spot on stage as if she was born for it. Proud of the confidence, which had been absent in the last two weeks, making itself known.

Rumi’s voice had not wavered once. 

And then, a bunch of demons had lured them away using Bobby’s face and Takedown had started playing, and all Mira could think was, oh shit.

They left Rumi alone.

She runs as if her life is on the line, chest burning with exertion, and Zoey is neck to neck beside her. Mira runs, but they are too late. 

The imposters that had stolen their voices sing Takedown for them. Rumi’s part is suspiciously absent, and Mira desperately tries not to overthink.

Rumi doesn’t give her the time to.

Patterns.

Demon patterns.

For a moment, Mira’s first instinct is to kill. The reflex had been hammered inside her head since she was a teen, and silver moonlight strands already manifest, but she stops them.

Realizes, this is Rumi.

And then, the betrayal comes. Because this was Rumi, and Rumi was a demon. And she hadn’t told them. Had lied to them, for who knows how long.

You lied to me.

The words don’t even sound like hers. They echo inside her skull and build on top of each other like shitty, off-brand lego blocks, and Mira wants to tear it down. To mash the pieces together and break.

You lied to me. I trusted you, and you lied to me.

She thinks of that night, after her mother had died. When Rumi had knocked on her door late into the evening and Mira had told her to go away but she still found a way in regardless, climbing up the windows with that little smile of hers. 

When Mira had been shutting them all out because she hadn’t spoken to her mother in years and the last time she saw her was at a funeral and the last time they’d talked was an explosive argument. 

Rumi had seen all that, had turned her way and said, “This isn’t like you,” and they’d fought. 

For hours. 

“You get back up. You fight. You find a way to win, even in the worst conditions,” Rumi had panted, pinned to the floor by Mira’s hands. They’d lost their weapons sometime during the fight, wrestling together like dumb cavemen. 

Mira had laughed, then, an ugly and wet sound. Sweat ran down her clothes and stuck to her face, pooling on the floor, and they both smelled like overcooked sardines, and Rumi had pouted. 

That stupid fucking pout.

And Mira believed her.

Mira believed her.

What an idiot she was.

You lied to me.

What else had Rumi lied about? 

No.

What hadn’t she lied about? 

Was the Rumi they knew even real, or was it all just a ruse made by a demon to make them let their guard down?

Mira’s mind drifts back to the last two weeks, and she can’t help but grit her teeth. Lies, lies, lies. So many lies stacked on top of each other, and she hadn’t even suspected a thing.

Their leader, a demon. Was this all some sort of long-term infiltration plan?

Had they ever been a team, at any point?

A family?

Rumi had lied straight through her teeth. Lied, and Mira believed every word. Because she was a fool who had been hoping for a family, who had thought that maybe, she had found a place to belong.

You will be each other’s, the Honmoon had crooned. 

It had lied to her, too.

She wants to scream and shout and yell until her lungs collapse. She wants to drive her blade through something, anything, just to bleed the sickening ache out of her guts.

Mira doesn't move.

(It was too good to be true. Of course it was)

(A family? Please.)

(As if that was even possible, for someone like her.)

Zoey lets out a tiny, hurt noise beside her, and Mira breathes in a choked breath. 

She grabs Zoey’s hand, because it seems they’re both rooted to the floor, then, and all but pushes the other girl down the stairs. Her grip might be too tight, but Zoey’s is too, and she knows she can’t let go. Because if she did, would Zoey disappear, too? 

Disappear, like her mother did. Disappear, like Rumi? The idea of who Rumi was?

Fuck.

She has to protect them both, now. Has to maintain what is left of her family, if they could even be called that, and that meant—

“Maybe it’s not really her,” Zoey blurts. Hysterical. “Maybe—maybe she’s possessed. Or, maybe it could be a hallucination! That couldn’t have been Rumi, right? Rumi wouldn’t be a demon. She wouldn’t lie to us about this.” 

“You saw her on that stage,” Mira snaps. “Who else could have sang Golden? She didn’t have a part where she was supposed to leave. What, do you think Gwi-Ma would have had a demon perform on stage with us without us noticing? You saw her patterns too!”

“You can’t just say that—”

“Do I need to spell it out for you? Get your head out of the damn clouds, Zoey!” Mira yells, spiteful and sharp and not at all what she had intended to say, but she can’t unsay it.

Zoey backs away from her, stifling a sob through her hand, and Mira turns away, guilt and apology catching in her throat, but she doesn’t let go of her hand. Doesn’t let Zoey let go. Mira is holding on too tight, she knows, but she can’t risk losing her.

If that meant Mira had to hurt her, then she would.

(Families don’t hurt each other, but Mira had hurt Zoey and Rumi had hurt them both, and if this was a family, then maybe family was just a prettier word for failure.)

Mira presses her eyes shut, burying her tears under layers of fury and rage. She will not cry. Not today.

How were they supposed to fix this? How were they supposed to fix the Honmoon? To kill Gwi-Ma?

Zoey’s grip tightens. Too tight. So tight, that she’s sure it will leave a bruise, and Mira turns her head.

There, in all her glory.

Rumi.

The demon wearing her face.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Something crawls under her skin.

It starts, from the soles of her feet. She slams her heel into the floor to shake it off, but it achieves the opposite effect. The crawling moves up to her legs, then to her stomach. To her heart. Her throat. 

It makes its way into her brain and she buckles forward, fists almost hitting the floor. She shudders, jaw clenched so tight it aches, and her mouth opens in a hoarse scream.

Something was—something was wrong with her head. Distorted, wrong, not right.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

Demon. Mistake. Killer. Monster. Freak.

She grips at her hair and pulls and pulls, trying to get the sensation to go out, but the more she does it the more it threatens to split her brain into two.

Pain. Unbearable pain.

It hurts.

She leans against a wall, pressing the heel of her palm against her temple.

Memories. There’s flashing, inside her head, of memories. So many memories, tumbling like weeds and crowding the already overstretched corners.

One stands out from the rest, pushing its way to the forefront of her mind. It severs everything away in the process, and the roughness triggers a pain that fills her vision with white.

wE wO’NT hUrT eACh otHeR AgaIN

Her back slides down, lower.

pROmIsE?

The metal screeches.

(A warm laugh. An offended huff.)

p̵̨̡͉̱͈͇̕͜ŗ̶̹̺̈́o̶͔̙̩̹̙̬̦̫̭̣̜͙͇͋̑̌̀̓̽̈́̽͋̈̉͒́͜m̵͔̖͉͕͍̘̲͌̏̉̃̑̇̇͗̾͝ị̶̤̭̠̮̤͎̻̲̗̼͒̓́͋͘͜s̶̡̫̥̭̥̬̜̹̲̫̪̓̓̈̋̉ȩ̷̢̺̦͖̠̬̤̠͍̯̝͖͂̽̇͆̿̄́

A demon with no feelings don't deserve to live, it's so obvious —

I'mma gear up and take you down!

The ache in her head tightens and tightens and she can feel it

Splitting

Her

Apart 

P       O       P

wrong wrong wrong were these her hands her fingers her body who am i who—

Bzzzt. 

Bzzzt.

Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzt.

Her thoughts clear.

What had she been so pained about, before? 

It’s not so painful now, for some reason. The pain is there, but there is also buzzing, like a bee, and it presses against her thoughts comfortably. Smooth—no, not smooth, but constant, and nice. She thinks she wants it to stay.

The buzzing is nice, to distract her from the crawls.

It's nice.

demon mistake killer monster freak

She thinks she’s running. Or walking. Maybe both?

There’s two shadows in the distance now, though. She squints her eyes to get a better look at them.

Mira and Zoey? Those were their names, right?

Oh.

They were downstage.

When had she gotten downstage? 

When had they gotten downstage?

The thoughts slip through her fingers, fleeting. There's a likely explanation for this, which sounds really funny when she thinks it, but it is probably the truest one.

They're magicians.

demon mistake killer monster freak

She’s moving closer now. Maybe. Her legs are moving, and those two are getting bigger, so she must be, right? It would make sense. But, it’s weird—she can’t feel her legs. So if she can’t feel her legs, then how is she controlling them?

She stomps on the floor again. The Mira and Zoey get smaller.

Her legs aren’t moving anymore, though. So that must mean they’re moving away.

Do they feel their legs too?

“How do you have patterns?” Zoey’s voice is small, tiny. 

She blinks, confused. Now that was a strange question. How else would she have patterns? 

“I always had them?” she tries to explain. Zoey doesn’t react.

“You were hiding this from us this whole time?” Mira asks, and she frowns.

The way Mira says it is wrong. Off. It swings too high, then too low, like a staircase that doesn’t know which way goes up.

Mira shouldn’t sound like that. She doesn’t like it.

She tries to come up with a proper explanation through the noise chewing through her mind.

“I was hiding it, but it was gonna, gonna get fixed?” She says, at first, trying to start her gears. “Fix it, the patterns, fix it, the demon. Fix the Honmoon. Fix it. But, you didn’t want me to fix it, so I can’t fix it now. So no more fixing,” she babbles. “Can’t fix it, but the Honmoon still needs help. I can fix the Honmoon. Can’t fix it, though.”

“Fix the Honmoon?” Zoey cries. The sentence lands clumsily, wobbling. “You’re a demon, Rumi. Why would a demon want to fix the Honmoon? Why should we believe you, when all you’ve done to us is lie?”

“You’ve had those patterns the entire time, and you didn’t tell us,” Mira’s eyes shake. Blink. Shake. “ You couldn’t trust us, so how could you expect us to trust you?”

She stares at them, wringing her fingers together uncertainly. The Mira and Zoey are upset now. 

It makes her feel like she’s being scolded.

“I—” she stumbles, “I—want. Wanted to tell you. But the mistake was still there. The mistake is still here, but you know now, so I don’t have to. Wanted to, but can’t. She said I can’t, too. So I didn’t tell, but you’re good. Smart. You found out.”

“Stop talking in circles!” Mira yells, and she flinches.

“I explained good, right?” She looks up at their faces, pleading, trying to see if she did good, but they are still upset. She hunches her shoulders. The yelling hurts. “I’m sorry.”

Zoey stares at her, accusing. 

“You’re not.”

She feels the crawling speed up again, racing like toy cars. Head, throat, heart, legs, feet. They run laps, and something hot pricks the back of her eyes. 

They don’t believe her.

She keens in frustration.

She is sorry, and she explained.

She explained it good, right?

Or, maybe she thought it was good, but it’s really just bad. Just her.

She walks towards them again, controlling her legs this time, because she’s too far. Sorry people go on the floor to apologize, but she is too far away and she doesn’t think they will appreciate it if she can’t put in the effort to move.

But.

They step away. They summon their weapons.

“Are you…” she squints, trying to think past the haze in her brain, “Are you going to kill me?”

They don’t speak, but Zoey lets out a sob.

“You can slice at my neck,” she offers, remembering that demons like her are hard to kill. Zoey must be upset because it would take too much time. “The skin is weaker in my neck. Hurts to breathe there, I think. I think there’s too much scars?”

Silence.

Something about what she said flicks a switch.

Mira’s eyes narrow, like a bird, and Zoey breathes in too much air. Their eyes go from her neck, to her shoulders, to her wrists, and there is horror.

Horror? And… another emotion she can’t name.

Like seeing a wounded puppy on the side of the road and wanting to patch it up—bringing it home with you and giving it all the care in the world. Peppering it with affection and shielding it away from any more pain.

Her head feels sluggish.

“Why are you just standing there?” She bites her lip, nervous. “You don’t have to—have to slice my neck, if you don’t want. You can stab my heart. Or my forehead. Or. Or just stab. I have a lot of blood though, so—just stabbing is gonna take a while. A lo-long while.”

Her voice trails off into a murmur. “Don’t wanna bleed out.”

Bleeding out can kill her, but it would hurt. And for a while, too. And she doesn’t want to hurt more, okay? Doesn’t want to add to the demon mistake killer monster freak. 

One of the two lets out a choked sound, and her eyes, where they had momentarily drifted, refocus.

Mira was heaving? Clutching her stomach and bent at the side, her gok-do dropped to the floor.

Rumi peeks at her hesitantly. “...is she okay? Does she not want to do it?”

Silence.

And then, a breaking.

“How could you ask us that?!” Zoey yells, the sound wet and stained with tears. “We’re not—of course we don’t want to do it! You should've gone away. You lied, but you’re Rumi, but you lied and you’re a demon and you’re our Rumi and you were supposed to go away—”

“So you’re not gonna kill me,” she repeats, confused.

“Why are you saying that? ” Zoey stumbles forward, voice cracking. “Why would you—what makes you think we’d ever want to hurt you?”

The air feels tenser, now, and she breathes it in but it doesn’t feel enough. As if the very flow of the wind was working against her. Thick, coiling inside her lungs.

She backs away. Primal fear. Visceral dread.

“I don’t understand.”

She backs away, but Zoey steps closer to her regardless.

“You’re hurt.” The words are sad and pleading and angry. She brings her shoulders up to her ears, ignoring the pain that comes with the stretched skin. Anger is bad. Anger hurts more than yelling. Anger hurts.

“Al-always hurt. Nothing new,” she stutters out hastily, in an attempt to reduce that anger, but it seems to just grow stronger. She doesn’t know what she’s doing wrong. Why was it that everything she did was wrong? Why could she never get things right?

Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.

“Always hurt?” Zoey lets out a wounded sound. Behind her, Mira stands, back ramrod straight and expression furious. Approaching.

The ground tilts underneath her feet and she falls, legs kicking, hands scrabbling in the dirt. 

They’re scaring her.

“You lied to us,” Mira utters each word, each syllable, as if she's savoring them on her tongue. “You've been lying to us for god knows however long, hiding the fact that you're a demon.”

“Mira, don't—”

“You lied, and I should kill you where you stand. I should.”

The dancer draws in a deep breath.

“But I can't.”

What?

“We made a promise, Rumi,” Mira’s eyes are steel. Not shaking anymore, but steadfast, like an iron fortress that had been reinforced. “And I am not letting you break that.”

Promise?

But… they already broke their promise.

She whines. The situation is confusing and she doesn’t understand. None of it makes any sense, and no one is acting like how they should. She doesn’t understand, they don’t understand either, and it feels like the three of them are stuck in a merry-go-round but going in different directions. 

(“You know you can tell me. I’ll understand.”)

(“I’m the only one who can.”)

Jinu.

Jinu was a demon, right? He had patterns, she remembers. And she remembers as well, him saying something about shame and pain and misery.

Remembers the understanding, the way he always seemed to know the right words to say.

Remembers a promise.

Remembers the word: hope.

Hopeless, actually, one of the voices supplies. She freezes, hands releasing her hair from where she’d unconsciously been gripping them.

Oh. Stupid, she’d forgotten all about him. 

And she’d been so cruel to him too, making him believe in her and trust her when all she’d done was fail. There had been hope in his eyes, small and broken, and she’d put it there just to disappoint him.

She owes him such a big apology. I’m sorry, she wants to say, but the words are stuck in the lump in her throat.

Maybe? Maybe demons liked ice cream?

Rumi disappears in a cloud of demonic smoke, and Mira wants to put her head in her hands and just. 

Just scream.

Bile clings to her throat, sour and stubborn, and she can still taste it. Can feel it lurching up in response to her thoughts.

Rumi had been so close. An arm’s length away. Close enough for her to hurt. And it would have been so easy, to fulfill her duty as a demon hunter. To fulfill the duty that both Celine and Rumi had been instilling in their heads. She had entertained the thought for one fleeting, torturous second. Just a quick flick of her hand. A clean death, fast enough that Zoey wouldn’t see. But.

But then Rumi had told them to kill her.

(God, the scars. The scars. She wants to kill whoever put them there, to wring them by the neck and stomp on their trachea, to bash their skull against concrete and make it cave like wet paper, crush their ribcage beneath her heel and gut their insides and kill. Mira has been in control of her violence for a long time, but just this once, they are in agreement.)

(A promise. An innocent smile in a crowded theater. Linked pinkies.)

(Someone would pay.)

Rumi had told them to kill her. The thought sits distant, horrified, anguished. Repulsed.

That was Rumi, and Mira would rather run herself through—no. She would bring the world to its knees, burn down the whole Honmoon before she laid a finger on her. Not ever. Not again.

Fuck, Mira can’t think straight. Her mind is white noise. Rage and grief blurring into something that feels like it’s tearing her heart apart into two. The ugly beast that had always laid dormant inside her chest resurfaces and claws its way up and up and up, howling and howling, for what it’s lost, and for what it all entailed.

A sharp rip cuts through the air, loud against the stillness, and Mira’s head jerks up instinctively.

A tear in the Honmoon. Expanding, slowly but steadily. And if, in this limited visibility they had, she could already see such a tear, then outside… it had to be so much worse.

“We have to fix this,” she croaks, unable to hide the grief in her tone. 

“But how?” Zoey says, the same grief mirrored in her own voice. “Our songs are a three-part harmonies, and there’s only two of us here.”

They don’t mention the elephant in the room, that Rumi had been here just seconds ago and they’d let her go. That that was why they were two, instead of three. Missing, instead of whole.

Mira thinks back to the scars. Raised skin.

How many times have we almost lost you?

No more of that, she thinks. We are not going to lose you again .

“We find Rumi.”

The workers aren't acting as they should.

They ask her things. Questions like

Are you okay, miss?

Or,

Do we need to call the cops?

And say things like,

We need to get her medical attention!

At some point, their voices begin to blur together.

She only nods and smiles, because why wouldn't she be okay?

She buys two ice cream cones and leaves, even when they insist for her to stay.

“I didn't know they had so many flavors here. Rumi, Mira, what do you want to buy? I can't decide, so I'll just choose whatever you two choose!”

A voice pierces through the mantra of demon mistake killer monster freak. Pierces through the buzz buzz buzz, and it… is strangely familiar. 

Another voice joins in.

“I'll get some mint and chocolate. One cup, and no sprinkles.”

“Hm. Good call, good call. Although I pegged you more for the just mint type. You, Rums?”

Why did they sound so familiar?

“I… I don't know. I never had ice cream before.”

Her own voice?

A dramatic gasp.

“No way! We need to remedy this immediately!”

Phantom arms around her shoulders. Teasing. Happy.

Something wet touches her cheeks. She places a hand against them. 

She’s crying.

Zoey hasn’t stopped crying.

She cries as they run, cries as they search the city, cries as the cobblestone beneath her feet breaks from the force of her grief. Her eyes are sore, and whenever she thinks that it’s enough, that surely, she doesn’t have any more tears left to shed, the image of Rumi’s scars would surface and she would cry again.

Mira is still holding her hand, grounding her, keeping her tethered, and Zoey feels so useless. The dancer drags her around the city as they hunt for their wayward leader, and Zoey can’t do anything but cry.

Betrayal. Grief. How could you do this to us? What happened to you? How did we not see?

Zoey had always been observant. She’d prided herself on her ability to dissect things and to observe people’s language. It was a necessity in their industry, especially as the youngest of the group. The one who needed to appeal to the audience. She’d observed.

(Rumi had been so confused , unable to comprehend what they’d been saying. What she had asked of them.)

(And, maybe the betrayal had led them to raise their weapons. Maybe the betrayal had led them to hurt each other.)

(But to kill?)

Zoey’s breath comes out in rasps.

(Rumi hadn’t even questioned it.)

(She hadn’t even fought back.)

(She was supposed to fight back, damn it!)

Zoey lifts her free hand to her face, rubbing salt-stained eyes. 

(“What’s wrong, Zoey?” Rumi frowns. “You haven’t been training with your shin-kal as of late.”

“It’s nothing.” Zoey forces a smile. The callouses on her hands brush against each other. She’d been practicing on her own, to get a better feel of things, and it was—well, there had been some changes, at least. “It’s just…” 

She sighs. Doesn’t answer.

“Lyricist things, right?” Rumi asks seriously. “You need to find the right words to say before you let them out? That’s what you do?”  She props her chin on her hand, eyes sincere. “Take your time. Today is break day, anyway. We have plenty to spare.”

A snort. 

“You and breaks? Am I hearing this right?”

“I can take breaks!”

Indignant curses bounce off the four walls of the room and wandering elbows find themselves on very inviting ribs.

Zoey sighs, collapsing on the floor and holding her aching side. Rumi lays down next to her, stamina not even the slightest bit depleted, and their pinkies brush against each other. The other girl is silent; curious. 

Waiting.

“Do you think… I’ll ever live up to what Celine sees in me? To what the Honmoon sees in me?”

The lights dim, and Zoey curls into herself, as if making herself smaller would lessen the impact of her words. So stupid, god, this was so stupid. She should’ve just kept her mouth shut and trained with her skin-kal and worked for improvements instead of sulking like a child. Oh god, she was so stupid, why did she say that—

“No.” 

A flash of thunder. Cruel and divine.

Rumi utters the word with a cutting finality, and Zoey stiffens. Stiffens, and stops breathing entirely.

Hurt, maybe. Dejected, perhaps. 

She should be.

But she isn’t.

Zoey is utterly, and irrevocably, enthralled. Bewitched.

The lightning has struck… and for some reason—for whatever reason there is, it does not light her on fire. 

Not when Rumi shifts her weight to the side and props herself up on her elbow, turning to face her. Not when their pinkies link together and intertwine. And not when Rumi bares her teeth with something other in her gaze, feral and ruthless and demanding all at once.

Belief. 

Rumi looks at her with the faith of a devotee written in the lines of her smile, and Zoey receives her offering with calloused hands.

“You’ll be greater than they’d ever imagined.”)

Zoey breathes. 

The world does not collapse.

She needed to get herself together. To get her head out of the clouds, as Mira put it. She was a hunter, blessed with abilities the world could not conceive and a power to match that of titans. Her speed was a product of the heavens. Atlas had looked at her and decided she would be the one to redirect the storms from the sky.

Zoey was a hunter.

The Honmoon had chosen her to fit a three-man team, had given her a place to belong. It had hand-picked her out of the billions of other people in the world that it could’ve picked instead, and Zoey had doubted it, before.

Except.

The Honmoon chose three for a reason. The Honmoon chose her for a reason.

Rumi chose Zoey for a reason.

She rubs at her eyes one more time, and there are no tears.

Namsan Tower, the melody inside her chest sings. It forms a trembling, inconsolate crescendo, barely discernible from the beating of her heart,  and Zoey observes.

(“Lyricist, right?” )

“Zoey? Why are we stopping?”

(“You need to find the right words to say before you let them out?” )

“Zoey?”

(“Take your time. We have plenty.” )

Zoey bares her teeth in the faintest imitation of a smile.

“Let’s go to Namsan Tower.”

She can’t stop crying.

Her two ice cream cones had long melted, at this point, and she knows she’s supposed to find Jinu and apologize, but even searching the one street is starting to seem impossible. There’s too much space to cover and not enough of her.

She scrubs her sleeve against her nose helplessly. She doesn’t know where she is anymore.

The ground is cold, and sitting on it feels like she’s taking a break when she shouldn’t be. It feels like she’s running out of time, but there are no clocks around her and no one is telling her to speed up. The only companion that she has is herself. 

useless can’t do anything right this is why you’re a mistake

She needs to find Jinu.

Looking around, though, she can’t find any trace of him. Again. It’s made worse by the clogging in her left eye that narrows her field of sight. There’s pain there, too, but it’s drowned out by the one in her head. 

demon mistake killer monster freak

She stands.

Time has passed.

Not a lot, judging by the movement of the clouds, but time has passed. 

At some point, she’s started walking through the crowded road, weaving between hordes of people. Their arms brush against hers and it is unpleasant, but unavoidable. She doesn’t know where she’s going, doesn’t know where she is, or who these people around her were. 

She just wants to be anywhere but alone.

“—Huntrix breakup—,” someone near her says. The word tickles at something in her brain. A memory.

(“You will form Huntrix and create the Golden Honmoon," a woman says.)

(Three younger voices. “Yes, Celine.”)

Her ears perk up.

There’s an electronics store to her right, and the televisions on display are all playing the same advertisement.

She stares.

It's…

It's Jinu.

The relief that washes over her is so strong it almost knocks her off her feet. She gets distracted and misses most of what Screen Jinu is saying, but ends up snapping out of it through sheer luck, frantic and wide-eyed. 

By the end of things, she's scrambling to get up close.

Something about a concert?

“--- Namsan Tower. Don’t miss it for the world,” she manages to catch. The information is… new, but what to do with it?

Namsan Tower? Meet? Jinu?

Namsan Tower. She tries to remember where that is.

Maybe Jinu would be there, too.

The crowds thicken as they move closer to the stadium. Somewhere along the way, Mira and Zoey had to shove people aside just to speed up. And when that didn’t work, they navigated towards the rooftops to make use of the height.

Red lights blare from the stadium.

The tears present in the Honmoon have grown even larger, by now, and Mira can feel the heat of some of the edges touch her skin. Gwi-Ma’s presence was already seeping into the outside word, far more than it had before. It wasn’t just demons, anymore, but fire and malice and the growing aura of decay.

She’s frustrated and angry and tired and stressed, and her walls are let down. Grief makes itself home inside her heart and occupies the open space next to betrayal, and she’s just about had it for the day.

That’s why she doesn’t realize it until it happens.

You thought you found a family? You don’t deserve one. You never have, some wretched thing inside her head says, and Mira stops in her tracks.

Zoey tugs at her hand. Once. Twice. Harsher each time, but Mira is fighting against whatever entity had decided that her mind was the perfect target to breach, and for the life of her, she can’t move.

“Mira, we need to hurry,” Zoey urges.

“I know. I know—just. Give me a moment.”

She makes way for the railings, gripping onto them and letting go of the hand in her own. It worries the younger girl, but Mira will not let herself touch her, like this. 

She’ll rid herself of the pest inside her mind first.

It was all a lie.

‘And so what if it was?’

She lied to you about everything. Her patterns. Her life. What else? Is Rumi even her name?

‘Dick-Ma, let's be honest with ourselves here. Do I look like I give a fuck?’

(A knock on her door.

Rumi’s head peeks out from the small gap between. “Hey, Mira?” she says shyly. “Can we talk for a sec?”

“Sure, what for?” )

You shouldn’t have trusted her with your heart.

‘Who has a say in what I get to do with my heart?’

‘You?’ 

‘Please. I do what I want.'

She lied to you. Betrayed you. What you had wasn’t real.

(“Surprise birthday attack!” Zoey jumps out from behind a couch, almost toppling to the floor. “Oh, we got you good!”

“Happy birthday,” Rumi grins. “I got you a gift!”

Hands tugging on her sleeves. A small present box. Mira opens it hesitantly.

“Glasses?”

“I got custom lenses, because I know your eyes are sensitive to light sometimes. And I had our initials engraved on the frame. There’s a detachable chain too, ‘cause I know you like that sort of thing, but—sorry. Sorry. Please stop crying. I’ll change it—”

“Shut up, you idiot. I love it.” )

‘What we had was real.’

‘And if it wasn’t?’

Mira thumbs at the well-worn edges of a shape hidden inside her inner pocket. 

'I’ll find a way to make sure that it is.’

Then you’re a fool!

‘Yeah, I know. What are you gonna do about it, huh?’

The asshole in her head leaves, and Mira grits her teeth. She grabs Zoey’s hand, launching off from the rooftops in progressively stronger bursts.

They had to move faster.

Intermittent flashes. Different parts of the city flash through her vision in rapid succession. One moment she’s in a crowded street, the next in a dark alleyway, and the next in front of a grocery store. It’s all very confusing, both the locations and how she’s going to them respectively, but she boils it down to her being a magician. 

Where was Namsan Tower?

Korea. Seoul. Namsangongwon-gil. Namsan Tower. 

She’s tried to narrow down the location before, but whenever she gets close to the answer, a blinding pain bursts out from her temples that spreads throughout her body and forces her to her knees. She’d settled for going to whatever places she could remember, instead. And she knows, she’s getting closer. But sometimes, she estimates too much and lands at a place farther away.

She looks around. It’s hard, really, to concentrate. She knows where Namsan Tower should be, but at the same time she doesn’t.

A magic trick? 

Nah, magicians may be good but they aren't that good.

She shakes her head, scolding herself. No dilly-dallying, or so they say. 

Thankfully, the magic thing should be all fired up by now, given the short cooldown. She calls for the crawling beneath her skin to crawl outside, and it works.

Her back hits a random wall, and it knocks a small ‘oomph!’ from her chest.

She still hasn’t gotten a hang of this magician thing, but she’ll take it. Unsticking herself from the wall, she glances around.

Ah, where was she this time?

She does a cursory view of the area around her. The sign beside her read: Myeongdong‑gil. The main shopping center, she remembers. The last time she went here, she’d gone to fix Zoey’s phone—

Zoey?

Fix?

DEMON MISTAKE MONSTER KILLER FREAK

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She clutches at her head.

WE CAN FIX YOU FIX THE HONMOON FIX THE DEMON FIX THE PATTERNS WE CAN FIX THIS RUMI

The crawling runs laps, faster and faster. Her earlier magic stunt had made it stronger, and it backfires on her now. It crawls through her head and to her toes and it hurts it hurts it hurts.

FIX IT

Everything she’d been holding back comes flooding in all at once. Painful. Unbearably painful. She reaches for the buzzing, and—

No.

No no no.

Where did it go?

DEMON MISTAKE MONSTER KILLER FREAK

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The buzzing—the buzzing was gone .

DEMON MISTAKE MONSTER KILLER FREAK

She tries reaching for it again, but it doesn’t come back.

DEMON MISTAKE MONSTER KILLER FREAK

Despair. She clutches her head and falls to the floor. Splitting, splitting, splitting.

HOPELESS UNFORGIVABLE DEMON YOU NEED TO FIX YOUR MISTAKES REPENT MISTAKE MISTAKE MISTAKE

A moment of clarity bursts through the pain.

DO YOU WANT TO ADD TO YOUR SINS? YOU MONSTER DEMON KILLER FIX THE HONMOON FIX YOUR MISTAKES FIX IT YOU MONSTER

( “Rumi,” Celine crouches in front of her, “do you know why I raised you?” )

Pain. Rumi’s body convulses, and she can feel old, barely-healed scars opening again as they rub against the floor.

(“Why?” )

Rumi draws in desperate breaths, sucking the air back into her lungs like a thing that had forgotten how to breathe.

Unlovable, pitiful thing.

Unlovable, pitiful thing.

Unlovable, pitiful thing.

You are an unlovable, pitiful thing.

("I raised you,” Celine pauses, “to fix my mistakes, and to turn the Honmoon gold.” )

The pain stops. 

Rumi reaches out to thin air as if she could touch Celine’s face through the threshold of time, but the memory fades away. She stands instead. A familiar tune pushes itself past the relentless cacophony in her mind, and she smiles.

(It starts, like all things do, with a song.)

(Not that Zoey and Mira know about it.)

(The song she's referring to isn't How It's Done, nor is it Golden, and neither is it Takedown. )

(It's a lullaby, one that Celine had composed just for her.)

Oh!

A singular note. A trumpet of revelation. 

A harbinger to signal the end of times. 

How strange, that such a holy instrument would be blown by a demon the likes of her.

The closing page of her script nears, and Rumi can feel it, in the way the fire brushes at her skin even though she isn’t anywhere close to the stage. The way that the people seem almost hypnotized.

This is your only purpose, Celine-but-not tells her, and Rumi, because she is good at listening, can only agree. Can only follow orders because her body, her very being, had been programmed to do so. A lamb raised for slaughter—walking into the fire even when it knows that the fire will be its undoing.

Who was she but a vessel to other people’s wills?

It is at the thought of Celine that the lullaby comes to her mind, the first gift her mentor had given her. Celine had given her such a thoughtful present. Wouldn’t it be fitting, if Rumi sang that gift while giving Celine one of her own?

The tune is lost to her now, though. Hidden in a part of her mind that she cannot access without pain pain pain. So, Rumi will just have to settle for second best. 

The crowd parts ways for her, but it is a passing thing. Her sight is filled with Gwi-Ma only, and the rest of her senses are dulled, insignificant. The thoughts floating through her mind are submerged in black ink, and she can’t be bothered to trudge through the waste to access them. Not when the only thought she needs is already so clear. 

This is your only purpose. 

“We are hunters voices strong,” she starts.

(“What do you guys want to do after we finish making the Honmoon gold?”

“You do know we’re probably never gonna retire even if we do that, right?” Mira retorts.

“I was talking about a side job and you know it, Mira. Do you want me to stow away our fanart collection? Today's Zoey custody day, I'll have you know!”

“Over my dead body.” )

“Slaying demons with our song.”

( Answer the question!” Zoey huffs. “I want to be a writer. Or a marine biologist. Or a professional skateboarder? Is it possible to get all of them at once? Gah, I can't choose! Why is this so hard?”

“I think you could already be considered a poet, at this point. As for the other two, you could just split up your time,” Mira points out. “Don’t know about myself. Maybe I could start a fighting class? I’ve always wanted to teach little girls how to fight.”

“That’s so cool. Also so you, Mira. How about you, Rumi?” )

“Fix the world and make it right.”

(Rumi turns to them in surprise, not expecting to be included in the conversation. “Me?”

“Who else?”

“Oh.” Rumi looks down. She’d never thought about a life outside of hunting before. “...I think. I think I’d want to start a flower shop,” she says, and then, quieter, “---and I’d want you two to be there, too, if you want.” )

“When darkness finally meets the light.”

This is your only purpose.

The last note to her lullaby tapers off, and all is quiet.

“You come here like this?” Gwi-Ma mocks, but the mockery brushes over her skin like water. “You think you can fix the world? You can’t even fix yourself.”

“I can’t,” she agrees. 

Rumi is unfixable, a fact she’d already accepted. For both her own good, and the people around her.

Your circumstances would only ever upset you if you still believe they can be changed.

If you simply accepted how ugly and monstrous you were, things would be so much easier, wouldn’t they? 

You are a child born from sin.

“And now everyone finally sees you for what you really are,” Gwi-Ma states the obvious.

Children born from sin only have one fate.

Rumi holds in the urge to laugh at him, because this situation was very much not a laughing matter, and she had to show at least some semblance of respect to the great big bad of a millennia-old story. “They do.” 

Repent, child.

“And the Honmoon is gone,” he continues, and wow, he was really laying it on thick, wasn’t he?

Lest you die in sin as well.

(In the distance, the shredded remains of the Honmoon coalesce.)

“It is.” She smiles, lopsided and wrong. “So we can make a new one.”

(“Is that Rumi?”)

(“That voice—it is her! We found her, Mira!”)

(“Nice. Split up?”)

(“Split up.”)

Since time immemorial, souls took up the form of complex tapestries, threaded together by the joys and sorrows of living and carefully laced by the essence of each individual’s life.

The Honmoon had strengthened itself with the tapestries of people’s souls for millennia, stringing each piece that had been shared to aid its vitality, and combining the strings into the weave of its own threads. To say that so many parts of people’s souls coalescing would not have any effect on its bearer is outlandish.

Rumi stands in the wreckage of all her faults, and she does not sing. Has lost the ability to, because her voice has broken itself and her mind has been shattered beyond repair. There is a song in her heart, but the lyrics are scattered into pieces. 

The Honmoon, touched by souls but without a soul to call its own, stirs.

It stirs, and for the first time since its hunters sang to give it life, the Honmoon reciprocates. It parses through the countless memories embedded inside its threads, fighting against its fading existence, just to find the perfect melody.

This broken, terrified thing that had so lovingly nurtured it with years of unspoken want whispers to it with an apology that it does not seek, and the Honmoon sings. For itself. For the child trying to wash the blood from its hands.

Nothing but the truth now, nothing but the proof of what I am.

Nothing but the truth now, nothing but the proof of what you are.

The worst of what I came from, patterns I’m ashamed of, things that even I don’t understand.

Still you’re standing here now, patterns to be proud of, reaching through the dark with open hands.

I tried to fix it, I tried to fight it. My head was twisted, my heart divided.

You found a way through, kept on despite it. You held your pieces, though torn and frightened.

My lies all collided, I don’t know why I didn’t trust you to be on my side.

What’s broken can settle and turn into strength—there’s still a place for you by their side.

The Honmoon sings for the child it had so dearly treasured, but its child does not sing back. Rumi moves as though a puppet on a string and the verses leave her lips but they are not hers. 

Rumi has always been good at listening, for the faintest hope of being a good child. A good friend. A good hunter. Good.

But she cannot be good anymore, so she covers her ears and plugs the sounds away. This is my only purpose , she thinks petulantly, and the Honmoon cries. 

I broke into a million pieces and I can’t go back, but now I’m seeing all the beauty in the broken glass.

No need to gather every piece or trace each track, each broken edge is singing what the silence lacked.

The scars are part of me—darkness and harmony. My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like.

The scars are part of you—no shame to cover through. Your voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like!

It’s other children join in, bruised but so, so hopeful, their eyes for one person only. And maybe in another lifetime, that should have been enough.

It isn’t.

Why did I cover up the pieces stuck inside my head? Zoey’s voice is soft and teary and warm. The sound comes from her left side, where her eye had been infected by the demon in her blood, and the figure that walks on the stage is blurred.

I should've let the jagged edges meet the light instead. Mira’s gaze is earnest and protective. Rumi takes one glance and turns her head away.

(Don't look at them. Fulfill your purpose. Fix your mistakes.)

a dEMon WitH nO fEeLinGs dON't dEsERVe to LivE, iT's sO oBviOUs.

Her head hurts, and Rumi lets herself disappear into the fog, even when the chorus of their voices tries to drag her out.

Repent, child.

Blankness.

Blissful, comforting blankness.

She thinks she could melt in it.

That, for a just moment, maybe she could rest.

Sizzling.

Flames.

The blankness recedes.

Clawed hands yank her bank to reality, and Rumi digs her nails into the dirt.

Her fingers drag trenches into the ground and she screams as the void casts her out.

There is fire.

It burns.

Orange and purple and magenta scurry over her skin, and Rumi thinks, dazedly, is this my punishment? To suffer for my mistakes?

Her arms shake, for the briefest of moments, and not because of the exertion.

The muscles in her body protest, drained and unable to muster up any more energy. Bone-weary and world-worn. She’s failing, always failing, and as the fire forms a ring around her, she thinks, maybe this is for the better. 

I'm so tired I just want to be loved I just want to be enough why can I never be enough why am I such a mistake—

The heat of the flames char her hands, but she heals and new skin forms over burnt tissue and dies over and over again. An endless cycle of growth and destruction.

And then, reprieve.

Her body recognizes his face before her mind does, and she stumbles. Her hands don't know where to hold, to grasp, and all she can do is flounder.

No! she pleads. No no no. Please, Jinu!

Why? Why would he do this? 

I'm sorry, for everything, he says, but she can barely pay attention to his words. Distracted. Distraught. 

We were supposed to get ice cream together, she cries, thumping her fists against his chest. He only laughs, wrapping strong arms around her and pulling her close. I wanted to set you free!

You did, he says, voice muffled by her hair. You did set me free. That was some brilliant work you did, out there. I think I might’ve shed a few tears.

Rumi grips at his shirt—robe—whatever it’s called, and holds him tight. She cries like a child who has never been taught how to cry. Like a child who only knows how to beg I don’t want you to go, please don’t go! to the back of a vanishing figure, hoping they’ll turn around.

Jinu draws her close in response, tucking her crown beneath his chin. I’m here, the gesture lies. I’ll always be here.

You were so good, demon girl, he murmurs. So good, and I want you to know that I am so, so proud of you.

The flames are hotter now. Pressing in. A hiccuping sob tears its way out her throat.

Something wet runs down the side of her cheek. 

Jinu is crying, too. 

You gave me my soul back.

Warmth settles gently onto her scalp. She can smell his stupid scent, that annoying pine and tar that always seemed to accompany him, and she knows what the weight is before she even sees it. 

She doesn’t want to see it. 

She doesn’t want to know.

(Pine and tar. Jeoseung saja. The reaper’s cap.)

Jinu smiles.

And now…

A blue glow emanates from his chest. His soul, she realizes.

I give it to you.

(Long ago, a child's soul had fragmented. A mirror, broken time and time again until the emptiness felt more natural than being whole. All for the childish want of being loved.

There had been holes. Cracks. Some parts had long gone missing.

Jinu is a demon, four-hundred-years old from an era long gone, and he has been tired for a very, very long time, but.

There is a girl with the voice of an angel and the marks of a survivor. A girl just hunter, not demon with a fractured soul who found a way to thrive, in spite of it all. A girl who thought he was worth fighting for, who believed he could still be something good.

Hope, he thinks, is such a beautiful thing.

He gives his soul to her and fills in the cracks with pieces of his own, a patchwork of broken things cobbled together to make a whole.

His cheeks hurt from the smiling.

A kind of pain he'd forgotten—and it is the best one he’s felt in years.)

(“What happens if the patterns don’t go away when the Honmoon turns gold?” Rumi asks, eyes wide and curious. She is maybe eight, maybe nine, maybe ten, and the concept of hope is still a familiar thing. 

Rumi is a child, brimming with hope. Pure and innocent.

Naive.

Celine’s grip on her hair tightens.

“That won’t happen,” she says, then loosens her grip. “But if it does… you come to me.”)

Something like joy erupts from her chest when they vanish Gwi-Ma. 

She stifles it down.

The Honmoon does not shimmer gold.

Rumi takes one long, selfish moment, letting herself bask in their nearness, before she lets go. She drinks in their happy expressions one last time and commits it to memory. They look more haggard, now, but the joy in their faces makes them glow. 

I’m sorry, she does not say, because there are patterns on her body and she is still a demon and demons have always been unforgivable.

A cloud of demonic smoke appears in the air.

Celine will know what to do.

The ugliest side of grief is not the loss, but the shape it makes of those it leaves behind.

Ryu Mi-yeong had always been a resourceful woman. The strategist of their team, agile and stealthy and with all the grace of a panther in human skin. That was why her weapon had been so hard to narrow down. A bit unorthodox for a hunter, much less for a weapon.

She’d always liked to restrain, rather than fight.

Celine stands in the entrance of a shrine, holding the very same sickle that Mi-yeong had used, and she watches as the Honmoon rips and contorts into something unrecognizable, magenta tainting the very same threads that used to shine a bright silver. She watches as it stitches itself back together—slowly at first, then in rapid bursts, as if something had clicked. 

It does not turn gold.

The soft pitter-patter of footsteps make themselves known. Barely audible, but Celine had not lost her edge as a hunter to old age just yet.

She brandishes her weapon at the intruder, before she sees it.

“Rumi?”

It smiles at her, sad and mournful and resigned, and Celine goes rigid. “I couldn’t fix it. I made too many mistakes, and now everyone knows.” It pauses to take in a breath. Looks at her, and then at the ground. “Mira and Zoey know.”

“And yet the Honmoon has repaired itself,” Celine counters immediately. 

“They know.”

“You fixed the Honmoon together,” the words come out as more of a statement than a question. It nods.

Celine wracks her mind for solutions, pacing on the shrine ground. For the other two hunters to know, they must have done it after fixing the tear. Which left room for two scenarios: one, they found out sometime during the battle, or two, they found out after. It was still salvageable, thank whatever twist of luck remained.

“We can tell them it was a trick from Gwi-Ma. That your patterns are illusions. Pretend this whole thing never happened,” she commands. “A last-ditch effort from Gwi-Ma to break the Honmoon.”

No response.

“Well?” Celine frowns. “What is it now, child? Speak.”

The demon flinches, hand coming up to grip the beads on its horsehair hat. Where it had gotten that from, Celine doesn’t know, but it clashes horrendously with the white clothes. Whoever authorized this would be in for a thorough reevaluation.

“They’re hunters,” It shuffles closer to her, close enough to touch, and she backs away.  “It’s a hunter’s responsibility to slay demons, right?”

“It is.” Celine purses her lips. What was it trying to say? 

“And I am a demon.”

Celine does not answer. 

It smiles at her again, knowingly. 

“You raised good hunters,” it says. “They knew, the entire time. They were the ones to reveal me on stage, but they still fought with me to fix the Honmoon.”

Celine frowns at the information. Mira and Zoey had been the ones to reveal its demon heritage? So it wasn’t an accident, then.

If that were true… there would be no pretending to fix this.

“What are we supposed to do now?” It looks up at her, like a child would to a parent. Waiting for directions. 

(In another life, they would have been a family. A child asking its mother for advice, and a mother pondering quietly at what to say.)

(How simple. How kind.)

(How sweet.)

(Except, Rumi had never been a child. Only a thing desperately clinging to the thought of being loved.)

(And Celine?)

(Celine had only ever been a woman in mourning.)

Celine looks at its face, at the last remnants that she had kept from a woman that she once loved, and thinks of Mira and Zoey. Those two girls who she had greatly underestimated. So committed to their duties as hunters that they would expose the demon for what it is and force it to fix the Honmoon with them afterward.

If the only thing stopping those two from outright slaying the demon was the repair of the Honmoon, and there were no longer any cracks to repair now… who knows what they would do to it?

Celine looks at Rumi, at the offspring of a woman she loved and a man she despised, and swallows down the hatred in her throat. She looks at it and thinks, I can’t lose you Mi-yeong. Not even to this. 

“We can still fix this,” she says. It gazes at her in blinding adoration at the words.

Celine thinks back, to years ago, when the child had first flayed its own flesh. To the countermeasure she had kept in her home afterward, in case things ever got out of hand. She never thought she would have to use it like this, but…

“Come with me,” she says, and Rumi follows.

In Rumi’s first ever home, there had been a room.

Hidden under the floorboards inside of a study, the stairs to that room descended downwards for two dozen steps. Dust had accumulated over the span of years. It was small, not even big enough to properly stretch while laying down (it had been prepared for a child, after all). Within it was nothing more than a toilet and a mat on the floor to keep it company. A small lightbulb had been placed on the ceiling, dim and clearly not made for long-term use.

Celine brings her to that room and carefully fastens a band around her throat. This was specially made by your mother to suppress demonic powers, she says. It will do just fine to hide your demon aura.

They won’t find you here. You will be safe here. 

Rumi croons. I will be safe here. I will be safe here. Celine will keep me safe.

In the distance, the Honmoon’s threads thrash and turn.

Where is my child? It screams, with all the rage of a newly-awakened sentience. Where is she?!