Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

» A quick recap of everything that happened in the story, in the movie. Because the story starts after it.

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

Long ago, before the stages and the stardom, there were only voices—voices strong enough to push back the darkness.

For centuries, humanity has unknowingly been under siege. From the shadowed depths of the underworld, the demon king Gwi-Ma has ceaselessly sent his minions to the surface, hungry for one thing: human souls. But the Earth was never defenseless. Rising in secret, armed not with swords but with their voices, came the Hunters—three women chosen in every generation, gifted with the ability to channel magic through song. Together, they formed the Honmoon, a radiant force field that repelled demonic influence from the world. Their mission was led by a powerful matriarch, Celine, who carried the burden of one dream: to create the Golden Honmoon, a perfect, eternal shield that would lock Gwi-Ma and his forces away forever.

The tradition lived on into the modern day, where the latest Hunters hid in plain sight as pop idols. Known to the world as Huntr/x, they were the hottest K-Pop girl group on the planet—glamorous, beloved, and unknowingly the world’s last line of defense.

Mira, the fierce and rebellious dancer, never quite fit in with her family. Zoey, the sweet-natured rapper, was the group's emotional glue. And at the center stood Rumi, the elegant lead vocalist raised by Celine herself. What the world didn’t know was that Rumi’s late mother had once been a Hunter too. And what even her teammates didn’t know was that Rumi carried a dark truth in her blood—on her father’s side, she was demon.

Their story begins high above the clouds, aboard a private jet. The girls were on their way to perform a sold-out show, their fans already chanting below. But mid-flight, they received a frantic call from their manager, Bobby—a frantic reminder that their stage awaited. That’s when they realized the truth: the flight crew weren’t human. Demons had boarded first.

Without hesitation, Huntr/x transformed from idols to warriors. As their hit track “How It’s Done” boomed through the sound system, fists flew and magic flared. They sang and fought in seamless rhythm, trashing the jet mid-air before leaping out into the sky, landing dramatically onto their concert stage. The crowd went wild, unaware of the battle just waged in the skies above them.

In the underworld, Gwi-Ma fumed. Another failed mission. Another humiliating defeat. But this time, an ancient demon stepped forward with a plan. His name was Jinu, and his eyes were filled not only with cunning—but with pain. He proposed a new strategy: infiltrate humanity not with terror, but temptation. With Gwi-Ma’s blessing, Jinu and four other demons—Romance, Mystery, Abs, and Baby—shed their monstrous forms and became the Saja Boys, a dazzling new boy band engineered to enchant the hearts (and souls) of Huntr/x’s fans. It worked. Their charm, their moves, their debut single “Soda Pop”—it was all instant magic. And dangerous.

Huntr/x had planned to take a break after their tour. Zoey relaxed. Mira vanished to unwind. But Rumi, in a bid to keep their momentum—and perhaps something deeper—announced their next single: “Golden”. As they rehearsed, Rumi’s voice began to falter. Cracks. Strain. Fear. In secret, her demon markings began to appear, glowing like veins of fire across her arms. Celine had always known. She had hidden the truth, shielding Rumi from her past, her teammates, the world.

To heal her voice, the girls visited the strange and eccentric Healer Han, who quickly diagnosed them with a glance. On the way back, they encountered the Saja Boys in full performance mode, drawing huge crowds and even bigger suspicion. Sparks flew—hostile, playful, confusing. But the charm offensive was already underway.

Things escalated. A variety show turned into a trap. A chase into a bathhouse turned into a fight. Amid it all, Jinu uncovered Rumi’s secret—but kept it. Why?

Because he saw something in her. Something that mirrored his own past.

He invited her to meet him in secret. And on a quiet rooftop beneath the moon, Jinu told his story. Four hundred years ago, he was a starving boy living with his mother and sister. Desperate, he made a deal with Gwi-Ma to save them. He was given a beautiful voice, fame, and a place in the palace. But Gwi-Ma later claimed him for the underworld, and without him, his family perished. He said he bore the same shameful markings as Rumi. That they were alike. And for a moment, something fragile and new formed between them.

Back with the others, Huntr/x planned a diss track to defeat the Saja Boys at the upcoming Idol Awards, a performance that could strengthen the Honmoon enough to force the demons back. But the lyrics hit too close for Rumi. Her identity, her loyalties, her heart—it was all tearing her apart. Bobby, in the name of fanservice, arranged a fan event combining Huntr/x and the Saja Boys. The event stirred rumors. Pairings. Whispers. More confusion. But amid the chaos, Jinu was touched when a child called him beautiful.

Meanwhile, the Saja Boys gained 50 million fans. The Honmoon began to fracture.

A desperate confrontation on a speeding train proved that the stakes were rising fast. The trio fought valiantly, singing “Takedown” as they battled demons on the roof. But in the end, the passengers vanished. Souls lost.

Rumi and Jinu met once more. She wanted to protect the world. He wanted freedom. They sang “Free”, admitting their feelings. Jinu promised to throw the match at the awards. But Gwi-Ma knew. He dragged Jinu back to the underworld, twisting the knife: Jinu hadn’t sacrificed his family. He’d abandoned them. Willingly. For power. And now, he was lying to Rumi, just like he did to them.

At the Idol Awards, things spiraled.

Rumi took the stage alone, beginning their performance of “Golden”. Mira and Zoey were ambushed. Demons disguised as them joined Rumi onstage, then publicly exposed her demonic heritage by ripping her sleeves off. The betrayal cut deep. Mira and Zoey saw the truth. Rumi, humiliated, reached for understanding—but her friends recoiled.

Worse still, she believed Jinu had set her up. He confessed the truth: he lied. He had betrayed his family. And now, he had betrayed her too.

Alone, rejected, exposed—Rumi fled to Celine. But the woman who had raised her couldn’t even look at her now. Celine tried to lie, to explain things away, to keep the illusion alive. But Rumi had no more illusions. She was done hiding. With tears burning in her eyes, she embraced her demon side.

That night, the Saja Boys summoned fans to Namsan Tower, ready to harvest their souls. Gwi-Ma was stronger than ever. Mira and Zoey were trapped in trances, haunted by their worst fears. Bobby too.

But Rumi arrived. Singing a new song—“What It Sounds Like”—she shattered the illusions, freed her friends, and stepped into her true power. Gwi-Ma tried to strike her down with a blast of energy—but Jinu leapt in the way. He took the hit. With his dying breath, he told Rumi she had set him free. He gave her his soul.

And with that, Rumi became something new.

Huntr/x, reborn as three again, sang together one final time. Their voices wove into the Golden Honmoon, brighter than ever. They destroyed the Saja Boys. They vanquished Gwi-Ma. And the world was safe again.

After the storm, they found each other in the bathhouse. No secrets. No fear. Just warmth, tears, and a shared love that had survived everything.

When they stepped outside, fans were already gathering. The world still needed them. And this time, they were ready to shine—not just as idols.

But as legends.

Chapter Text

Album No. 1: AFTERGLOW

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

Neon-purple track-lights trickled down the glossy studio walls, dappling the mirrors in bruised color. It was the witching hour—two fifty-one a.m. by the digital clock above the sound booth—and the entire HUNTR/X tower seemed to slumber. Thirty-three floors below, Seoul’s traffic lights blinked dutiful patterns no one watched; higher still, the clouds smudged the moon like someone had thumbed the sky. Rumi stood alone on the polished floorboards of Studio C, bare feet cooling against the wood, heartbeat a tight rattle inside her ribs.

She had told Bobby she was “just stretching.”

She had told Mira she needed “air.”

She had told Zoey she’d “be back before dawn.”

All half-truths, stitched together with the professional smile she’d perfected since the Namsan Tower broadcast—the day Huntrix rewove the Honmoon and the world called them heroes. Heroes didn’t break; heroes didn’t bleed in public. Heroes kept their spines straight even when phantom harmonies haunted the vents at night.

Rumi exhaled once, long and slow. Fingers trembled on the mic stand. The studio smelled of lemon polish and stale heat from yesterday’s dance drills; the ventilators whispered overhead. She let her braid fall forward—thick, violet, heavier every day—then looped it behind her shoulder again, a nervous repetition she’d done since childhood. Scarth, the three-eyed magpie, perched on the lighting truss like a gargoyle statue; Dabbadon, her impossible blue tiger, prowled the glassed-in control booth, tail twitching. They never slept when she didn’t.

“One verse,” she told herself, voice rasping. “Just… one.”

The instrumental came through the wedge monitors: a skeletal piano, count of four, then the opening chords of “Free.” The song was theirs alone. No stage, no fancam, no chart rankings. A promise passed back and forth.

Six weeks ago, she’d buried that promise in the ruin of Namsan Tower.

Six weeks ago, his voice ended mid-note, and the world told her that was victory.

She inhaled until lungs hurt, tasting dust and ozone, and sang.

“You got a dark side, guess you're not the only one—

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

We can't fix it if we never face it—

What if we find a way to escape it?"

The words rode out on a thin tremor of vibrato. Her throat burned, memory pooling like molten lead behind her eyes.

Second line.

Third.

She reached the pre-chorus—

“It's just easy when I'm with you, no one sees me the way you do—

I don't trust it, but I want to, I keep coming back to—”

...And braced for silence.

Instead, a broken harmony bled through the speakers: fractured, breathless, unmistakably his. A ghost-voice wrapping around her melody like yearning incarnate.

"Why does it feel right every time I let you in?

Why does it feel like I can tell you anything?"

Rumi’s knees buckled. The mic slipped through her fingers, clanged against the floorboards. Feedback squealed in a desperate arc, then died. For an instant, the studio seemed to tilt; the neon strips fuzzed, scattering static fireflies across the mirrors. Dabbadon froze mid-prowl, all four fangs bared. Scarth unfolded charcoal wings without sound.

“Jinu?” she whispered, scared to breathe too loud.

No answer. Only her pulse, a frantic cymbal behind her eardrums.

She staggered backward, shoulder catching the mirror. A fracture line spider-webbed across the glass where her clavicle hit—hairline, razor-fine. She did not feel it. Panic slid icy nails down her spine. His harmony lingered like perfume—vanishing only when she sucked in a shuddering breath.

It wasn’t real.

It was a hallucination.

I'm sleep deprived.

Lie stacked atop lie until she believed none of them.

Bare feet slapped the boards as she fled the studio, braid whipping behind her like a comet tail. Out in the hushed hallway, purple safety LEDs lined the carpeted path to the service elevator. Every footstep echoed too loud, mocking her attempt at quiet. She slammed the call button; the doors whispered open, soft metallic sigh. Inside the lift, mirror walls reflected nine identical girls: pale skin glowing, braid trembling, patterns all over her body like soft scars of her hybrid nature, silver in her eyes where tears refused to fall.

Only when the doors closed did she crumble. Sound punched from her lungs—half sob, half laugh—but no tears came. It was like trying to cry through stone. She wrapped arms around her middle, and the elevator rose toward the triplex penthouse she shares with Mira, Zoey, and Celine.

Floor 63.

71.

85.

Up. Up. Up.

Memory chased her down the shaft: Jinu telling her about how miserable it felt to be controlled by Gwi-ma, to have his voice always inside his head; Her asking him to join her, to stay out of the demon gates and help her and HUNTR/X win the Idol Awards to fight Gwi-ma for good and build the golden Honmoon; Jinu agreeing to help, to make sure he and the Saja Boys lost, so she could win; the silent promise of a future free from the demons, where they could be free, be together.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

Ding. Triplex level.

The doors parted onto a private vestibule of smoked-glass walls and trailing ivy. The biometric lock glowed lavender and slid aside. Rumi stepped into the living room, marble and velvet drowning in moonlight. It was too big, too quiet, designed for a girl who was supposed to be an idol first and a human second.

Tonight, when Celine and the girls were all already asleep, it felt like an empty mausoleum. Lonely.

She stripped the in-ear monitors from her neck and dropped them onto a side table. Her braid snagged on the shoulder strap of her tank top; she cursed softly, fingers fumbling. The magpie fluttered past, landing on the railing of the mezzanine, tilting one eye cluster at her with eerie sympathy.

“I’m fine,” she murmured.

It was the smallest lie imaginable.

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

Rooftop — 03:12 a.m.

She climbed the iron spiral staircase that led to the rooftop herb garden—the place Celine used to call their pocket of sky. A humid breeze teased the basil rows and tugged loose strands of hair from her braid. Seoul sprawled beyond the balustrade, skyscraper crowns blinking red like distant pulse monitors. Up here, the world looked manageable—a circuit board of silent lights. Only the Han River glimmered, black silk laced with gold.

Dabbadon padded out behind her, head low, rumble deep in his chest. She put a hand on his azure fur—and for a heartbeat, the tension slipped. The tiger had been Jinu’s once. His only companion with the magpie for hundreds of years. Now it belonged to her by default, a relic of someone who half-existed.

“Did you hear him?” she asked.

The tiger butted her hip gently. An answer and a comfort.

Rumi sank to the wooden decking, legs folded. Wind scraped her cheeks dry. She closed her eyes and replayed the thirty-second rehearsal: her voice, the fragile note of longing, the reply that should have been impossible. Was it an echo trapped in the recording chain? A trick of the mixing console? Or—

Or was Jinu still here, singing through her because that was the only way left?

Was it because he had given me his soul?

She swallowed hard. “If you’re in there… give me something. Anything.”

Silence. Then the faintest vibration under her palm—Dabbadon growling so softly the wood hummed. Scarth glided in, landing on the top of the tiger’s head, eyes glassy with reflected city lights. The magpie tilted its head, opened its strange beak.

A single flute-pure note spilled into the night: D on the chromatic scale—the exact pitch Jinu used before, in two of the times she sneaked out to meet with him. It lasted no longer than a heartbeat, but it was enough.

Rumi’s mouth went dry. “Jinu?” The name cracked, tasted like sacrilege. “Is that you or am I losing it?”

Wind answered, cool and impersonal.

Yet inside her sternum, a warmth flickered—embarrassingly small, like the first glow of a dying ember coaxed back to life. She pressed her knuckles to her sternum, breathing until the rush of adrenaline dulled.

Fine. If this was grief talking, she would let it speak. If it was him—if—she would not run from it.

She stood, brushed splinters from her thighs, and faced the city. “Tomorrow,” she whispered, voice hoarse. “I’ll sing it again. And if you’re real, you’d better answer me. Loud.”

The tiger padded closer, massive head under her palm. Scarth preened one wing. Together they looked less like familiars and more like memories made flesh.

She exhaled. The ache lessened by a hair’s breadth.

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

Penthouse — 03:47 a.m.

The corridor lights were dimmed to a bruised indigo, every surface of the triplex humming with hush-money opulence. Rumi’s bare feet whispered over the heated marble, each step a silent confession. The rehearsal room was more than a dozen floors below and the city pulsed kilometers beneath, but the ghost of that fractured duet still clung to her vocal cords like smoke.

She reached the ensuite and clicked on a single sconce. The mirror flared, catching her at an angle that always startled her: violet braid frayed, mascara scorched into smoky crescents, pearl-pale skin iced over with stage powder she hadn’t bothered to scrub off after the midnight session. Between collarbones, faint lilac circuitry glimmered—a demon’s patterns sutured to human flesh by the cruel love of whoever demon was clever and powerful enough to make her mother fall for him, and bear his child, even though she was a demon hunter.

Even alone, she winced at herself. Fans saw the fairy-princess idol, the goddess in velvet; the mirror offered the stitched-up heart of a revenant girl faking bravery.

Cool water sluiced through her fingers. She leaned forward and let the tap run until it turned glacial, then filled her cupped palms and dragged it across her face. Liner bled, mascara surrendered, and the silk veil of glamour cracked wide open. The relief in that sting was sinful.

“Tomorrow,” she rasped, gripping the countertop until her knuckles frosted white. “We start.”

Start what? There was no plan, no manager-approved rollout. Only the taste of a harmony that shouldn’t exist and a low-fidelity voice that had answered hers from inside a dead amplifier. Jinu’s voice. Half an octave of him, spliced through the static like a promise—and she’d nearly dropped the mic because some corner of her soul recognized him faster than her brain ever could.

The ache spread, molten and slow: longing braided with hunger, the kind that lived low in her belly and soaked through every slow breath. She should have been terrified—haunted by angelic phantom vocals, cursed circuitry in her chest—but want was a narcotic and it fogged the fear.

She padded into the bedroom, body starving for any anchor. Seoul’s river shimmered beyond floor-to-ceiling glass, a silver artery guiding her gaze nowhere helpful. Bobby’s assistant had thrown a last-minute radio promo on her calendar; a half-packed suitcase sulked on the chaise beside forgotten stilettos and a flint-spark dress that smelled like last night’s champagne. Work could wait. Creation couldn’t.

From the nightstand she pulled the plum-purple snake-leather notebook Celine had given her is HUNTR/X's previous tour stop in Paris—a blank companion meant for genius she hadn’t dared uncork. Zoey was the best at writing songs between the three of them, not her, she never felt as confident in her skills at it, even if she's written a few of their songs before. She flipped past empty vellum until the spine sighed open. Purple grape-scented ink fled the pen as if desperate to keep up with her pulse:

   Jinu sang back. A shattered harmony, two bars long, but unmistakable—him. I felt it ricochet through my ribs, like he dove straight into my bloodstream and refused to surface.

   If a fragment exists, if he’s living in these wires, then music is the only scalpel that can cut us free. I will bleed for this surgery.

   Tomorrow I sing again, louder, longer—until the city rattles or the heavens crack open and choose a side.

   If he's not completely gone, I'll do everything to bring him back to me, or my name isn't Ryu Miyeong.

When the frenzy stilled, she reread. The handwriting looked manic: letters knifing up and down the lines, desperation disguised as poetry. But desire was a holy engine—one that didn’t ask permission to burn.

On a whim she flipped to the inside cover and branded the journal: HONMOON STARFALL – Field Notes.

Thunder—no, her own heartbeat—thrummed behind her ear. She shut the book, slid it under her pillow like a talisman, and peeled off the silk rehearsal top that still clung damp beneath her arms. The fabric fell away with a wet sigh, exposing the patterns glowing faintly across her sternum. She pressed two fingers to it, half-expecting heat, half-hoping for Jinu’s phantom hum.

Nothing, only her pulse—too fast, too lonely.

She kicked off leggings, letting them puddle at her ankles, and crawled across the linen sea of her bed in nothing but black lace panties. The sheets were cold, an honest lover. Dabbadon, her azure tiger demon, rumbled awake at the foot of the bed and nosed her calf, then settled—a breathing furnace wrapping her ankles in warmth. Scarth, the thief-magpie with too many citrine eyes, tilted his head from the headboard and clicked a sleepy scold, as if to remind her dawn was less than three hours away.

Rumi lay on her back, inhaling the faint note of expensive detergent and the subtler trace of him—the musk of sweat and cedar that had lingered on Jinu’s borrowed hoodie. Her nipples tightened against the chilled air, a needy ache that wasn’t satisfied by memory. She imagined him standing at the foot of the bed, shirtless, patterns in display across his body like tattoos, throat flexing while he sang that fractured harmony—each note a thumb brushing down her stomach, chasing the lilac light.

"We can't fix it if we never face it—

Let the past be the past 'til it's weightless."

Heat spiraled lower. She slid one palm under the blanket, skimming her hip, nails grazing sensitive skin. The moan that slipped out was raw, almost ugly, and perfect. Yes, crude—why pretend she was chaste when obsession gnawed her bones?

She pictured Jinu’s mouth, warm and brutal on hers, his hands pinning hers to the mattress while neon Seoul strobed behind them. She imagined the velvet scrape of his low notes licking down her navel, the shock of teeth when he decided softness wasn’t enough. The quilt rustled; her thighs flexed. Another ragged sigh fogged the dark.

"If you’re there…"

The words came out half-whisper, half-plea. She pressed her face to the pillow and let the sheets cradle her rocking hips, searching for friction that might drown the ache. It was messy and selfish and thrilling—every press of her fingers a lyric carved in private skin. Yet just when pleasure threatened to crest, guilt struck like cold iron: how dare she chase ecstasy while he floated in limbo, a broken echo lost to circuitry?

Hot tears burst free. They smeared mascara she’d missed, streaking down temples, soaking the case. She bit the pillow, shaking so hard the mattress shivered with her. Dabbadon lifted his head, concerned; she hushed him with a trembling hand and kept crying, kept rocking, unable to stop either grief or hunger. Silent sobs convulsed her ribs until the pillow felt like a storm-cloud of salt and cotton.

The orgasm, when it finally tore through, was jagged—a snap of lightning that left her gasping, throat raw from swallowing every sound. It was relief and punishment in one violent flood. She lay limp, fingers damp, chest heaving, tears shining on her cheeks like molten stardust.

I’m sorry, she mouthed into the linens, not sure if the apology was for him, herself, or the universe that kept them separate. Her shoulders quaked, grief ripping a new fault line alongside the fresh afterglow.

When the tremors faded, she rolled onto her side and hugged the pillow, face buried deep. Salt stung cracked lips; her breath hiccuped in uneven gusts. She could taste desperation in every inhale. Minutes passed—or hours—in muted darkness. The only soundtrack was Dabbadon’s low purr and the distant throb of traffic over Mapo Bridge.

Eventually the storm of tears dulled to tremor. She pressed the pillow tighter, one hand slipping beneath it until fingertips found the journal’s leather edge. The contact steadied her—like touching the cliff wall after barely surviving the drop.

I didn't confess...

I thought I'd save you...

I thought we'd have time...

Her throat wobbled, holding back another wave of tears.

I'll find my way back to you...

I promise you, I'll bring you back to me.

The vow flared through bone and scar alike, welding the fractures with molten certainty. Tomorrow she would test the amplifier again, maybe fry every circuit in the HUNTR/X tower if she had to. She would roar until the city’s glass towers rattled, until Jinu’s voice returned full-bodied, or the heavens burned for their arrogance.

Sleep prowled at the edges, ragged but inevitable. She drifted down through layers of exhausted sensation—tingling thighs, swollen eyes, chilled toes warmed by tiger fur. Somewhere beneath consciousness, the static harmony threaded the walls again, quieter than breath but unmistakable: two notes, bruised but stubborn, calling her name like a lighthouse refuses to drown.

Rumi clutched the pillow, damp and fragrant with tears, and answered in slumbering silence—broken, blazing, undaunted.

Chapter Text

Album No. 1: AFTERGLOW

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

Morning broke in the triplex like light through cathedral glass—brilliant, fractured, too holy to touch. Sunrays shivered off river water more than eighty stories below, bounced upward, and sliced across the living-room marble in long, blinding shards. Rumi padded in on silent feet, every muscle tight from a night that had offered more ghosts than rest. She wore an oversized tour hoodie, violet braid coiled in a loose rope that skimmed her calves. It felt heavier than usual, as if the harmony still clung to each strand.

At the kitchen island, Mira hunkered over a mixing bowl of cereal large enough to drown anxiety in milk. Mauve-pink twin ponytails bounced with every shovel-sized bite. Opposite her, Zoey tapped an improvised clave rhythm against her mug—tap-tap-rest, tap-tap-rest—while eyes flicked between a notebook of rhyme fragments and her phone’s metronome app, her hair was lose for a change, falling just around her shoulders. Bobby Cho paced in a straight line by the stovetop, juggling three phones, two espresso shots, and a spreadsheet projected onto smart lenses perched on his nose.

They were a living metronome trio: Mira’s crunch, Zoey’s tap, Bobby’s mutters. Bright plastic sentences filled the air:

“—Bangkok radio wants the acoustic teaser Friday—”

“—Fitting’s moved to ten-thirty, Paris seamstress remote—”

“—If the LED floor can’t handle sixty frames per second we scrap it—”

Every word glided over the thing none of them would say out loud: Jinu is dead.

Dead boys do not trend. Dead boys do not belong in agendas. Dead boys never, ever answer a love song at two-fifty-one in the morning.

And she was being hunted by... his spirit.

Rumi opened the fridge to hide the tremor in her fingers. Aloe water. Greek yogurt. A dish of chilled gimbap Mira had made at midnight. She took none of it. Cold light blasted her face; she blinked until her vision cleared of silver static.

“Morning, Rumi,” Bobby chirped without looking up.

“Morning, Bobby,” she echoed, voice scratchy. Mira grunted a greeting through cereal; Zoey flicked two fingers and a cute smile in a casual salute timed exactly on the up-beat. No one noticed she still wore yesterday’s mascara.

Bobby’s monologue revved: “Ten thirty fitting, noon docu VO, two-thirty dance clean, five p.m. intro-shoot for the tour teaser. Don’t forget the V-Live at nine. Oh—and the new pre-debut girl group? The one everyone keeps whispering about? They’re booking silent billboards downtown. No name, just a moon-shaped logo. Fans are already theorizing. I've got word that it'll be a four-members girl group. We get out in front with our own teaser next week.”

Pre-debut. Moon logo. Four-members girl group.

Rumi stored it away like a splinter—something irritating she’d examine later. Right now her skin buzzed where last night’s ghost-note had pierced, a phantom bruise beneath her sternum. She twisted open an aloe bottle, took a gulp, barely tasted sweetness.

Mira finished her cereal with a wet clatter. “If we’re starting with fittings I need coffee. And sleep. But coffee first.” She glanced at Rumi, squinting past neon bangs. “You look like you fought a beast for the shower.”

She flashed a lazy grin. “If I did, it definitely won.”

Zoey’s spoon kept time: tap-tap-rest. On the rest beat she studied Rumi with quiet sharpness. Zoey read subtext the way other people read lyrics—some days a blessing, some a curse. Rumi added half a smile for camouflage, but it felt photocopied. Her mouth remembered the shape; her eyes refused.

Bobby shoved phones into pockets, downed the second espresso, and straightened his jacket. “Schedule printed on the fridge screen. Hydrate. No heroics. Remember, we project stability.” He aimed the last words specifically at Rumi, then vanished toward the private elevator in a swirl of minted cologne.

Silence thudded in his wake. Zoey’s spoon stalled mid-tap; Mira exhaled a corrugated sigh. A sunbeam crawled across the countertop, catching steam from Zoey’s mug and painting Rumi’s braid in molten copper.

She lingered at the balcony door—glass barrier between plush interior and vertigo view. Beyond, Han River traffic slid like mercury ribbons. The metal door frame cooled her palm. It tingled exactly where last night’s phantom harmony had vibrated, as if static wanted back in.

Would they believe me?

The question tasted childish, needy.

No—they wouldn’t.

Or worse, they would worry, they would hover, they would call in healers and holistics and hardware technicians to exorcise the grief right out of her. And Jinu—if that whisper truly had been Jinu—would retreat into whatever limbo held him.

She pressed her forehead to the glass, exhaled fog. Behind her, Zoey’s chair scraped back.

“Rumi-unnie,” Zoey said, gentle. “You ate?”

“Right here.” Rumi lifted the aloe bottle in salute. Liquid sloshed—a pathetic parody of nutrition. Zoey’s mouth tightened, but she let it slide. Mira rummaged in a cupboard, produced salted crackers and slapped them on the counter like an intervention. Rumi dragged one into her mouth mostly to satisfy them.

Outside, a gull coasted between high-rises. The sky was heartbreak blue.

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

10:43 a.m. — Wardrobe Level

Rumi balanced on a low, lacquered dais, bare feet curling against the cool teak as though she might anchor herself there forever. Opposite her, a triptych of gilt-edged mirrors reflected her from every painful angle: the violet crescents carved beneath sleepless eyes, the faint quiver at the corner of her mouth, the pulse that leapt traitorously in her throat each time someone so much as rustled fabric. A dozen white-clad stylists orbited like nervous moons around a shrinking planet, their tape measures whispering numbers, their chalk wands brushing phantom corrections onto her borrowed skin.

A cropped jacket—electric violet, the color of radioactive energy—hovered in mid-air before descending onto her shoulders. Pins clicked between quick fingers, stitching the garment onto her as if to keep her from bolting. One stylist crouched at her hip, lips moving in a counting cadence; another lifted Rumi’s braid and wound it around three open palms, gauging circumference for gemstone cuffs. Each unfamiliar touch sent a shiver skittering down her arms, and with every shiver came the same, inexorable vibration in her right palm: a phantom resonance, perfectly pitched, that thrummed like the after-ring of a struck tuning fork.

—D— —D— —D—

The tone chimed in slow triplets—at first no louder than distant wind chimes, then swelling until it lodged beneath her ribs, reverberating against bone. It was the note she and Jinu used to trade like a secret handshake, slipping it into harmonies where no one would notice. The note of dare you and I’m here and don’t freeze under the lights. Now it mocked her, invisible and undeniable, no matter how high she lifted her chin.

She forced her shoulders back, spine spear-straight: choreography of survival she’d practiced since childhood recitals under flickering gymnasium fluorescents. Confidence, after all, was ninety percent posture, ten percent breathing through terror. She squeezed air deep into her lungs, tasting starch, dryer-sheet lavender, a faint metallic tang from the rolling racks of chain-mail fringe meant for someone else’s encore.

Across the dressing suite, Zoey sprawled on a blush-velvet chaise, one foot swinging, thumbs flying over her phone screen. She mouthed lyrics as she typed—Rumi caught half-syllables, echoes of new verses meant for their new album—and nodded along to a beat only she could hear. Mira, meanwhile, harangued a seamstress with the ruthless focus of a general inspecting troops, demanding the coral combat pants be slimmed another centimeter along the side seam so the fabric wouldn’t flap onstage. Their voices formed a bright counterpoint to the dirge in Rumi’s head, human warmth she couldn’t quite trust to thaw the chill in her blood.

That blood. She felt its strange, double temper today more than ever, thick with inherited magic—or curse, depending on which grand-aunt whispered the tale. Demon blood. Now it crawled under her skin, reminding her that even her own hemoglobin refused to be ordinary.

Her gaze returned to the mirrors. The woman there looked both hollow and incandescent, cheeks hollowed by insomnia yet flushed with the fever of determination. She seemed older than twenty-three, younger than certainty, a contradiction pinned together by swatches and willpower. A tiny part of Rumi wanted to shatter the glass just to see if the fragments would give her new angles, softer ones, anything but this stark panorama of exhaustion.

“Arms up for me, darling,” the head stylist murmured. His accent rounded the consonants, making the command sound like a lullaby. Rumi obeyed; fabric rasped over cotton bandages at her ribs—souvenirs from a tumble off risers during tour rehearsal three nights prior. Pain flashed white behind her eyes, but she kept the grimace buried under a smile so polished it felt like enamel.

Her thoughts drifted to last night’s choice, a decision still fluttering in her chest like a wild bird. After lights-out, after even Mira’s caffeine high burned to ash and Zoey’s laughter faded into snores, Rumi had crept back to Studio B. Alone beneath the spiderweb of cables, she’d whispered nothing but D into the mic and felt the walls shiver in answer. Before singing "Free" and hearing Jinu sing with her. Tonight she would return—not to whisper, but to howl. She would lock the doors, kill the house lights, and belt “Free” until her throat tore. If something haunted the circuitry—if Jinu haunted the circuitry—he would hear her. And she would hear him, or go hoarse trying.

A sudden sting clipped the thought. “Ow—!” She jerked as a pin jabbed her shoulder blade. The stylist gasped and swore softly in apology, raking free the offending needle. Blood welled—a dark, near-violet bead in the sterile light—then trickled like spilled ink down the slope of her scapula. Cotton swab, antiseptic, another apology. Rumi watched, fascinated, as the crimson jewel dissolved into ghost-white fibers, leaving a fleeting bruise of color that made her stomach twist.

Even my blood wants to be theatrical, she thought, dizzy. Even that cannot stay silent.

In the mirror, Mira’s sharp gaze snagged Rumi’s. Twin pink ponytails framed worry-creased brows. Mira cocked her head, silently mouthing You good, unnie?

The question dangled in the space between them, fragile as a filament. Rumi summoned every ounce of her stagecraft, flexing a smile—wide, angled, convincing. The lie sparkled like sequins, blinding. Mira’s shoulders eased; she turned back to the seamstress, resuming her crusade against loose fabric as though nothing had cracked.

But Rumi felt the fissure widening inside herself, a fault line vibrating to that relentless, private tempo.

—D— —D— —D—

She let the sound fill her ears, let it braid with the tap-tap of the measuring tape and the clatter of pins into porcelain dishes. She imagined the note splintering into harmonics, weaving through the vents, slipping down corridors until it reached Studio B and resonated there, waiting. Waiting for her to prove she was not afraid.

Tonight, she promised the phantom of Jinu, she would not flinch. She would sing louder than the echo of his absence, louder than the doubt that gnawed her bones, louder than demon stories or spilled blood. She would stand in the dark with nothing her heartbeat and she would drag the ghost out of the wires, force it to dance, force it to speak—or else let it devour her and be done.

And until then? She would smile. She would pose. She would let strangers stitch confidence onto her body with silver pins and whisper compliments about her posture, because that was the currency of survival in these marble halls. The showgirl’s pact: pretend long enough, and the world might believe.

Rumi inhaled, tasted iron and lavender, then lifted her chin a fraction higher. The stylists resumed their orbit. Zoey hummed half-written verses. Mira argued about seam allowances. And beneath it all, unseen by anyone else, the note pressed a rhythm against her heart, steady as destiny.

—D— —D— —D—

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

12:20 p.m. — Vocal Booth B

The re-recording session for “Golden” and "What It Sounds Like" should have unfolded with surgical precision. It was meant to be simple: correct the slurred consonants, rein in a rogue vibrato, blend in harmony stacks like brushstrokes, and sign off before anyone's blood sugar dropped. A clinical patch job for the documentary version—nothing more.

But the moment Rumi stepped into the booth, where Mira and Zoey already were, and the door sealed behind her with its signature hiss, the air changed. Thickened. The kind of thickness that memory wears like perfume. She adjusted the headphones over her ears, tilted the pop filter with the ritualistic boredom of habit, and waited for the first cue. The click track ticked like a steady heartbeat. Her cue blinked red.

Then she opened her mouth.

And each take felt like pouring scalding water over invisible bruises.

Her voice was there—technically. It rang out with clarity, pitch-perfect and precise. But it felt far away, disconnected, as though someone else was singing her vocal cords from a locked room just out of reach. She heard the notes, but they didn’t carry her. They shimmered like reflections on the surface of water she couldn’t break. Clean. Hollow. Echoing from the other side of a dream.

She blamed the monitor mix first—maybe the engineer had it wrong. Then the jacket collar that had dug into her shoulder blades for two straight hours. But none of those excuses silenced the quiet truth breathing cold air against her spine:

Jinu's ghost was back.

She felt it. Felt him.

The prickle at the base of her skull. The hush between breaths. The sense that if she turned just fast enough, she might catch him in the reflection of the booth glass: Jinu, perched on the soundboard, head tilted with that signature grin of his, fingers drumming an unspoken beat. Watching. Waiting.

She didn’t turn.

Instead, she spun the mic cable slowly around one hand between takes, wrapping and unwrapping it with a kind of tension therapy no coach had ever recommended. Her gaze locked on the red mute light. Solid. Unforgiving. A stop sign she couldn’t run.

In the control room beyond the glass, a junior engineer sipped from a neon tumbler and laughed with Mira and Zoey over plug-in chains—reverb settings, vocal comps, something about FabFilter being overhyped. They sounded distant, safe, like people who had never sung through grief or bargained with echoes. Rumi watched them without really seeing.

She considered it then—just for a flicker of a second—confiding in them.

Telling her about the D note. About her supernatural duet with Jinu. About the endless loop it played inside her bones. About how it felt like singing into someone else’s mouth. About how the mic sometimes pulsed like a heartbeat when no one else touched it. She could say it in half a sentence. They wouldn’t laugh. They might believe her.

But self-preservation hissed louder.

Not yet.

Secrets had gravity. Speak them aloud, and they didn’t shrink—they grew, multiplied, sprouted hydra heads. And Rumi didn’t have enough hands today to hold the ones she already carried.

So she swallowed the words and endured eight more takes of "Golden", plus another five of "What It Sounds Like".

Each one rang more hollow than the last. Each one felt like brushing dirt off a grave and calling it gold. Her voice was technically perfect by the final pass, but it didn’t matter. The damage was in the marrow, not the mix.

The red light dimmed.

A sharp ping—Bobby’s replacement text—lit up Mira's phone, and she slipped out of the room with a dramatic groan about mid-session reschedules, Zoey following her. The engineer followed a moment later, chasing caffeine or gossip, or both.

Rumi stood alone in the empty booth, glass walls reflecting back a dozen translucent versions of herself—all of them tired, all of them quiet. Her fingers twitched around the mic stand, hesitant.

Then she took a breath.

Closed her eyes.

And hummed two lines of the post-chorus of their song.

"We could be free, free—

We can't fix it if we never face it."

Not to practice. Not to warm up.

She sang it the way you might whisper a name into a pillow when no one’s listening. Soft. Certain. Scared.

The lyrics lingered in the air like a held breath.

No answer.

Just the indifferent hum of the HVAC system overhead, as if the ceiling itself had exhaled in disappointment.

Rumi opened her eyes slowly. The silence that followed wasn’t just absence—it was refusal. And that hurt more than static ever could.

But she didn’t leave.

Not yet.

She stood still in that booth, listening hard for something no machine could measure. Not the click track. Not her own breath. But a trace of something left behind in the wires—like the fading scent of cologne on an old hoodie, or the echo of a laugh you haven’t heard in years.

And when it didn’t come?

She hummed the last line of the post-chorus. Softer.

"Let the past be the past 'til it's weightless."

She wasn’t done searching.

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

3:45 p.m. — Dance Hall 4

Rumi’s skin shimmered with sweat, neck slick beneath the low bun that stuck like a brand to her nape. She and Mira drilled the chorus transition for the eleventh time, bodies hitting beat after beat while choreographer Song Eun-Jae prowled the hardwood floor like a metronome made of muscle and sharp vowels.

“Lower. Breathe with it. Again.”

His voice cut through the music like chalk on slate. Mira didn’t flinch. Rumi didn’t blink.

Zoey, temporarily benched with a cooling towel and a half-melted ice pop, mimicked the beat under her breath—soft human percussion while the Bluetooth speakers reset. Her rhythm grounded the room. Made the routine feel survivable.

But Rumi’s head wasn’t in the room.

It was split between the mirror and the pulse under her skin. The floor-to-ceiling reflection showed a tight, lean version of herself—shoulders locked, breath controlled, every hit on time. But what she felt was chaos. Echoes. Her body obeyed the rhythm, but her soul jerked toward a different tempo. One she couldn’t hear, only feel.

Because the mirrors didn’t just show dancers.

They showed ghosts.

Behind each reflection, a flicker. Eight Rumi silhouettes—and eight barely-there Jinus trailing like time-delay shadows, caught mid-step in some other realm. Sometimes it was just a flicker of shoulder movement. Other times, the twist of his smirk in a face that wasn’t there. But she saw it. Felt it. Every time her body snapped into a hit, she braced for his hand—his real hand—light at her waist, guiding her hips back into alignment, reminding her where the gravity was.

But it never came.

And the space where it should’ve been—that hurt more than she let show. Like phantom limb syndrome, except not a limb. A whole heart.

Eun-Jae clapped out another count. Mira nailed the transition; Rumi followed half a beat late, blinking away heat and ghosts.

Then it happened.

Mid-combo, she glanced up—just reflex—and locked eyes with herself. Truly looked.

And froze.

Her collarbones were glowing.

Not glowing exactly—pulsing. Thin, branchlike patterns etched faintly across her skin in soft lilac, beating in sync with her racing pulse. Something ancient. Inherited. Uninvited.

No one else noticed. The overheads were harsh but scattered, shadows warped. Mira was too focused, Zoey too distracted. But Rumi felt it. Her throat tightened.

Still, she kept moving. Forced her body through the final rotation, every muscle shaking like overstrung wire.

The music cut.

She stopped.

Hands on knees, breath heaving, eyes back on the mirror.

The reflection stood still. Hair damp, skin flushed, her patterns' glow already fading. But the look in its eyes—her eyes—held.

Terrified. Furious. Defiant.

Tonight, she told the reflection silently.

It didn’t flinch. Didn’t nod. Just stared back, as if daring her to keep her word.

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

7:08 p.m. — Penthouse Kitchen

Dinner was functional: grilled chicken, rice, kimchi, wilted kale Bobby pretended was trendy. Celine presided in elegant silence, offering warm eyes and polite questions about rehearsal. Rumi parried them with practiced answers. Mira rambled about lighting cues; Zoey hummed new melodies between chopstick pauses. The conversation orbited safe planets.

But when dishes clinked into the dishwasher and Celine rose to pour ginseng tea, Rumi’s gaze tracked the older woman’s poised hands, remembering how they tuned her first beginner mic years ago. How those hands taught her how to wield her sword. Rumi wondered—briefly, savagely—if Celine would even believe the story of a dead boy singing. Would she bless or lock down? Protect or doubt?

Maybe ask her to pretend it wasn't happening and hide it, the same way she made Rumi do her whole life with her half-demon nature.

Celine didn't need to know. Not until she learned exactly what was going on.

Celine tucked a stray wisp of Rumi’s braid behind her ear. “Your eyes look tired, Rumi-ya.” The endearment pierced like a syringe. Rumi forced a shrug.

“New choreo headaches.”

Celine’s palm lingered a heartbeat on her cheek—cool, grounding. Then she turned away to discuss vitamin drips with Bobby. The contact left Rumi shaken. Support felt like guilt when you hoarded secrets.

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

10:15 p.m. — Penthouse Hallway

Hall lights dimmed to night mode. Mira retreated to her suite clutching a protein shake. Zoey disappeared behind sliding doors lined with stickers of anime characters and rap quotes. Bobby texted reminders about call times, then ghosted to his apartment three floors below. Celine’s door clicked shut, her shadow retreating.

Rumi waited until silence fell thick as velvet. She crossed to the secondary staircase in socks, Dabbadon pacing at her flank. The tiger’s claws made no sound on marble—just muscle rolling under azure fur. Scarth circled overhead, a silent drone.

Studio C’s neon track lights were off now, triggered by motion sensors. She crept inside, heart thrumming. The mic stand slept in the center, cable coiled like a serpent at its feet. Last night’s crack spiderwebbed still marred one mirror—her clavicle’s fault line. In the dark, the crack looked like a mouth.

She flicked a floor lamp on low. Dust motes swam. She approached the mic; her palms dampened. A strand of braid slipped free; she tucked it behind ear, set feet hip-width, inhaled.

No backing track this time. Raw voice, raw prayer.

She began the verse—quiet, trembling:

“I tried to hide but something broke—

I tried to sing, couldn't hit the notes—

The words kept catching in my throat—

I tried to smile, I was suffocating though—

But here with you, I can finally breathe—

You say you're no good, but you're good for me—

I've been hoping to change, now I know we can change—

But I won't if you're not by my side.”

Note by note, she bled longing into the room. The tail of each line tremored, as though begging for an answer.

Silence responded. Neon hum. Rooftop condenser thrumming kilometers over her head. Her lungs tightened—anticipation tipping toward panic. She reached the pre-chorus a half-step under pitch—

“…it's just easy when I'm with you, no one sees me the way you do—

I don't trust it, but I want to, I keep coming back to.”

—and a harmony slid out of the dark. Clearer than the night before, still fragile, but two full bars this time, threading around her vowel like silk pulled through an eyelet. It was Jinu’s timbre exactly: smoke-and-saffron, low enough to brush gooseflesh down her arms.

Her knees threatened to buckle again; she locked them, bitter resolve. She finished the phrase, voice breaking:

“…why does it feel like I can tell you anything?”

The harmony held, answering:

“Because I’ve always been listening, Rumi.”

Six words. Not a note—words. Whisper-loud but crisp, like breath against her ear.

Shock stole voice and myth alike. She squeezed the mic stand; metal froze flesh. “Jinu?” It came out a whimper.

The monitors hissed; then silence reclaimed the room, like an echo yanked into another dimension.

Rumi’s throat burned. Tears blurred neon. She spun, scanning the shadows—nothing but her own half-formed reflection fragmented across mirror panels. Dabbadon growled softly, hackles raised. Scarth’s wings shivered with electric static. Her pulse ricochetted.

He had spoken. Proof. A single sentence confirming every impossible suspicion.

But the proof would vanish with sunrise if she didn’t trap it.

Her fingers scrambled for the monitor desk. She armed a track, checked levels, hit RECORD. Red light bloomed on the console—a fragile ember in the gloom.

“Talk to me,” she begged the air, mic hot. “I’m here. I’m listening.”

Silence.

“Jinu, please. Tell me if you're dead or not. Please.”

Static brushed the speakers—faint, like a coat sleeve on velvet.

"I'm... not dead... nor alive..."

Then silence.

"You... You're... not dead?" Her voice cracked, raw with emotions, tears rolling down. "Please, please, don't leave, talk to me. Please. Jinu, please."

Nothing.

She froze for a full minute, shaking, breathing through nose, refusing panic. Nothing. She disarmed the track, saved the session anyway, naming the file JINU_ECHO_01. Zoey could analyze waveforms tomorrow. Let data prove what her heartbeat knew.

Exhaustion flooded in like tide. She sagged onto the floor, back against the cracked mirror, braid pooling violet ribbons. The neon strips washed her in bruised color, and the patterns on her collarbones glowed faint lilac—an afterimage of far bigger power.

She pressed two fingers to the pulse under jaw. Fast, desperate, alive. Raw tears threatened but did not break. Instead a soundless laugh leaked out—half-mad, half-exultant. He had spoken. He was here. He wasn't dead.

In the hush, she spoke to the empty air: “I’ll find the rest of you. I swear it. I'll bring you back to me.”

No answer. But the tiger settled at her side, rumbling an approving bass line. The magpie perched on the mic stand, tilting its many eyes at invisible friend or foe alike. And Rumi, queen of midnight vow-making, felt something shift—an inward hinge—swinging open toward impossible dawn.

She closed her eyes, clutching the downloaded file like a lifeline, and whispered one last vow:

“Tomorrow night, sing with me again. Please. I will never stop listening.”

Chapter Text

Album No. 1: AFTERGLOW

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

There was no floor here—no ceiling, no horizon, no left or right—only a lilac cosmos folding in on itself like an endless silk ribbon. Minute sparks drifted where stars ought to be, bright as frost and twice as fragile; they pulsed in time with a heartbeat that wasn’t his, a distant percussion that boomed somewhere beyond the lavender haze.

Rumi.

Her pulse was a kettle-drum—too slow when she slept, too frenetic when she pictured losing control, too steady when she lied to her friends about breakfast. Jinu could read it all because he was inside it: inside her power, her aura, her half-demon circuitry.

He drifted through the amethyst gloom, weightless, fingers spread in a reflex that expected gravity. They met only velvet dark, like water without wetness. Somewhere overhead—or underfoot, the directions blurred—rose a canted rampart of glimmering stardust. And beyond that: absence.

Eight vast, jagged rents tore across the galaxy. They were negative space, pitch-black and humming, edges ragged as raw flesh around a wound. From each tear leaked faint motes—memory, music, scent—vanishing before he could focus on them.

Fragments.

Fragments of my soul. Missing pieces sawn off when I—

He couldn’t finish the thought; it unspooled into nausea. A soul wasn’t designed to notice its own missing organs.

He pressed a hand to his sternum—except there was no sternum, only plasma-light shaped like memory. He could still feel the press of Rumi’s fingertips on his cheek from Namsan Tower, her gasp as he gave his soul to her, his own body collapsing into stardust. It felt like minutes ago. It felt like four centuries ago. Time here warped with her moods.

“Rumi,” he tried. The name scattered like dust—no vox, no air. Speech dispersed into trembling motes that chased each other and died. He pressed lips shut—habit—and tried again, projecting thought instead of sound.

Rumi, I’m here.

Silence, but the lilac nebula vibrated. Her heartbeat kicked—she must have taken the stairs two at a time again. He sensed her lungs, the flex of her diaphragm, even the cramp in her left calf from dance rehearsal. It all fluttered through him, intimate and impersonal at once.

He drifted closer to one tear—it hovered like a black gash ripped through a lavender curtain. A faint scene flickered at its center: mud-brown streets, a paper-thin boy curled beside a fireless brazier, holding two smaller arms—one skeletal mother, one coughing baby sister.

Jinu felt his own phantom throat tighten. That shard was the memory of freezing winters and the night the rice ran out. The first fragment. He tried reaching out—too slow, too late; the vision collapsed into indigo static, sucked outward into nothing. Pain bloomed like iron in his gut.

Not gone, he reminded himself. Hidden.

He rotated—somehow—toward another breach. This one showed silk banners, gold-lacquer masks, aristocrats clapping while a nineteen-year-old boy with a borrowed voice sang in too-tight shoes. He’d signed the contract an hour earlier—inked in blood he’d thought he could spare. The shard winked out before guilt could devour him.

Eight.

Eight holes; eight absences.

He swept his gaze over the void—stars dimmed, then flared, as if breathing. This entire place was her, yet also them; a symbiotic galaxy where his song now orbited her gravity. He tasted honey-ginger tea on his phantom tongue from her last sip, felt the mild burn of antiseptic from the stylist’s pinprick on her shoulder. Alive—but bodiless. And worse—powerless.

But not useless.

She thought he was a ghost in a speaker. But that couldn't be farther from the truth.

He closed ghost-eyes, reached for the pulse again. Her vow from minutes ago—I’ll find the rest of you. I swear it. I'll bring you back to me—reverberated across the galaxy like a promise etched into bedrock. The words glowed briefly in the nebula, curling violet calligraphy before dissolving into dust.

Not if I find the rest of me first, Rumi-ya.

He gathered what strength the void granted—the ersatz brush of spirit fingers, the memory of lungs filling—and shaped it into a note. The same D he’d pinged hours earlier, but steadier, brighter. It rang through the galaxy, bounced between shards, then tunneled outward—through marrow, through skin, through circuits in the studio mic on the floor.

He felt the cost instantly—a dimming, a fray at his edges—like slicing a sliver off an already ragged soul. But he held the note until it threaded into her ears in real space. She would hear it as tinnitus, as déjà-vu frequency, as the muse that wouldn’t shut up. And maybe—if luck dared—she would follow.

He exhaled—though there was no air—and let the note fade. Colors bled darker. The heartbeat eased into a slow-lull; Rumi was entering that micro-meditation she liked before choreography. Breathing through fear.

He drifted deeper, seeking orientation. The “floor” became aurora veils, sliding underfoot then overhead. A kaleidoscope of Rumi’s sensations spooled around him: the ache of a healed sword-cut on her shin, the electric rage at Bobby’s brand-first pep talks, the warmth of Dabbadon’s fur brushing her calves, the soft stab of guilt for lying to her friends, the lonely twist of desire for him that she would never voice to anyone but the dark.

Every time she felt, the galaxy glittered brighter. Every time she doubted, the light pooled like oil.

He didn’t want to spy on her most private aches; but there was no line anymore. He was inside her; she carried him like a second pulse. If he tuned out, he risked drifting into fragment-nothingness. If he listened, he risked drowning in her.

So he balanced—just enough to anchor.

Another ripple. Her attention snapped to something outside—probably a pin jab delivering pain‐static to him a heartbeat later. Jinu flinched in sympathy, then steadied himself. He drifted toward the galaxy’s core—a roiling vortex the color of bruised violets, in all shades of purple there were, thrumming with power. Her power. It felt like storm-wind on phantom skin.

If I can’t step into the physical yet, he reasoned, I can at least map these fractures, feed her clues.

He extended a thought—probing each jagged tear. The moment his essence brushed the first, lightning pain shot along spectral nerves. He recoiled. Touching shards hurt her; he felt her physical body flinch, calf muscle seizing.

Okay. So no direct contact. The last thing I want is to hurt her... again.

He retreated, floating until the throbbing ebbed. He wished for breath, wished for a body to pace. Longed to tap knuckles against something solid, to run hands through hair, to feel her skin warm under his, to under her braid and inhale the scent of her hair. The ache spooled into the void, almost physical.

Anger sparked—low, quiet. At Gwi-ma for carving him apart, at himself for letting it happen, at centuries wasted. The anger fed the light; stars vibrated sharper, edges crystalline. He swallowed it. Barely.

Focus.

The word rang through the star-dappled void like mallet on temple bell, a single strike that set every drifting fleck of his disassembled being into ordered vibration. The Phantom Galaxy—that liminal dreamspace he’d built from equal parts memory, regret, and Rumi’s borrowed lifeforce—swam into clarity. Silver filaments tightened, constellations sharpened, and for one crystalline instant he felt almost whole, a silhouette of sound and light rather than a smear of echoes.

Then the pain returned: the quiet, lead-heavy knowledge that his soul was still in tatters, scattered to the winds of Gwi-ma’s spite.

Location.

That was today’s problem.

Eight shards glimmered in the dark like orphaned moons. He reached with sense instead of limb, tuning himself to their frequencies the way he’d once tuned a twelve-string dan-ga guitar before sunrise shows at Namdaemun Market. No eyes, no ears—only resonance. Each shard thrummed its own key, a private Morse.

E-flat minor: a slice of someplace frigid, the metallic scent of ice over brackish water—maybe a port city hugging a winter sea.

G major: bright as lacquered doors and political smiles; he tasted sugared lotus on his tongue and heard a marimba laugh beneath.

C-sharp Phrygian: dry wind over dune, sand rasping like vinyl hiss, a horizon shimmering under punishing sun.

None of these places belonged to him. That was the point. Gwi-ma’s punishment was geographical exile, scattering the pieces of Jinu’s essence to lands his living self had never trod, severing every shortcut of memory that might guide him home. Distance as disorientation. A cosmic blindfold.

Yet one shard boomed louder than all the rest, a relentless heartbeat in D-flat major—lush, wet, fragrant with frangipani, diesel, and low-rolling thunder. Jungle humidity and island salt. Southeast Asia, though he couldn’t specify a city; the aura felt nomadic, half-river, half-road. He could almost smell fermenting jackfruit and wet stone.

Jinu had never went there. Never even passed through it. Perfect exile territory.

He tasted the shard again and shuddered. The farther a fragment lay from Korea, the weaker his root frequency—his han—could sing. Every second he pushed into that distance threatened to snap the intangible cord that kept him tethered to Rumi’s pulse.

But the D-flat shard called to him like a gong in fog, impossibly clear.

If he could seed its coordinates into her dreaming mind, she might tilt south when booking travel for the next video shoot. The studio bosses would assume a sudden marketing whim—“tropical visuals! fans love that!”—while he rode in silence inside her bloodstream. He couldn’t speak in daylight; Gwi-ma’s warding sigils still throttled his voice past dawn. But music, always older than any binding charm, slipped through cracks no sorcerer anticipated.

He began the delicate work of folding himself. Imagine trying to origami a thundercloud—painful, but possible if you accepted the rip and ache. He compressed stray harmonics, pulled starlight into a spine, compacted longing until it hummed like a bass string. Four notes would do. A motif spare enough not to trip alarm wards, strong enough to drag a dreamer across an ocean.

He chose a lullaby his mother had murmured during ration blackouts, one she claimed was older than dynasties, meant to coax uneasy spirits to rest. He layered it on the D-flat carrier wave, then braided in coordinates older than GPS: metaphysical longitude, latitude in pure pitch.

Now—release.

The motif unfurled like glimmering pollen, drifting outward in slow, concentric tides. Every centimeter of spread stripped energy from his form; translucent edges fuzzed, pink turning to gray. But he kept pushing until he felt the note slip past the perimeter of Rumi’s aura in the waking world.

Take my echo. Just get her there.

Seconds—or light-years—later, the tether shivered. On the other side of the veil Rumi’s diaphragm stuttered, a micro-gasp no one else in Dance Hall 4 would notice. He felt her fingertips twitch where they rested on sweat-slick hip bone. Connection established.

Good. That was good.

The Galaxy dimmed from ultraviolet brilliance to bruised plum. Stars winked out like stadium LEDs shutting down after encore. He’d burned spirit mass, but it was price of progress.

Rumi’s subconscious, forever half-aware of him now, brushed his psyche with a featherlight hush: rest.

So he let himself drift, tumbling end over end through an astral sea of her surface thoughts. They flared like bioluminescent plankton:

— Celine complaining the ginseng latte tasted like “bitter mud but keep it coming.”

— Mira scolding the seamstress, still stressed about a crooked hem.

— Zoey face-timing someone, laughing so hard she dropped her phone.

These flickers of mundane life soothed him more than Buddhist sutras. Because beneath them ran the basso continuo of her grief—silent, almost noble in its restraint. Most days she tucked it away behind staged smiles and riot-girl bravado, but he felt its weight: the marrow-deep ache of having no corpse to bury, no gospel of closure to sing. Her managers called it drive; the tabloids called it rebranding. Jinu recognized it as mourning wearing an iron mask.

He pressed phantom palms together—tingle of habit where skin ought to meet.

Protect her, even half-gone.

He would build bulwarks of chord and counterpoint if that was all he had left. Each shard reclaimed wasn’t simply about resurrecting himself; it was armor for her. A stronger guardian frequency to shield her from Gwi-ma’s next gambit and from the hungry machinery of an industry that devoured bright girls for breakfast.

Fragment by fragment he would assemble a citadel of sound, a fortress whose halls echoed only with music they chose.

A playful impulse sparked—part dare, part devotion.

Save me a mic, Rumi-ya. I’ll fix the harmonies this time.

He forged the sentiment into a warm, unadorned D—subtle enough to skate under Gwi-ma’s detection, sincere enough to vibrate straight through her sternum. He sent it, then watched its glow feather out like dawn across violet sky.

On the waking side, her heart settled into slow, even meters—4/4 breathing, the tempo she slipped into right before she truly focused. He aligned himself to that rhythm, letting every beat weave him closer, warp and weft. Their pulses interlaced like silk threads under an artisan’s loom, each tug strengthening the other.

Darkness curled around the Galaxy, not threatening but protective, a velvet blackout curtain. He welcomed it. Just before surrendering, a ripple trembled through the tether: the tap of her fingers on a mic stand, faint, hesitant—like checking if the metal remembered his touch. Then, the hush of her breath shaping his name, too soft for human ears, perfect for his.

Sleep—cool, merciful—folded over him. In the final slide toward nothingness he felt, rather than heard, the promise crystallize:

Alive is still possible.

And this time, he vowed with marrow-made-of-mist, alive would mean more than applause or charts.

It would mean duet, shield, love, home.

It would mean stepping onto any stage Rumi chose with harmony stitched between their shadows, daring Gwi-ma or any god to silence them again.

Chapter Text

Album No. 1: AFTERGLOW

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

The void flexed.

Not with light. Not with sound. Not with anything mortal senses could define.

It pulsed.

A ripple shot through the Phantom Galaxy like a hot wire through mist—a sensation, not a signal. Pure, primal feeling detonated inside the lilac expanse where he drifted: not like lightning, but like skin peeling under a monsoon. It carved a wound into the airless velvet of this not-place, and the color changed—warped.

Lavender bled into bruised orange. Then frangipani gold.

Then heat.

Sticky heat. Wet heat. Jungle heat.

It poured in, uninvited and unspeakably real—humid like breath on the nape, thick like spit clinging to a tongue mid-moan. It stank of hibiscus rot and copper sweat. Of mildew soaking into rice paper and sandalwood powder caking on overheated skin. There were mosquito whines and mango rinds fermenting somewhere far away, and all of it seeped into the space-between, smothering the silence Jinu had learned to live inside.

He staggered mid-drift—if a soul without legs could stagger. His form twisted like smoke, pulled toward something behind him, inside him, under his own ribs.

A shard.

One of the eight had stirred.

He turned—not in body, but in pulse, in memory-sinew—and faced the eastern edge of the void. There, where the cosmos split like torn silk, a jagged tear hung open like a raw scream.

It vibrated now. Pitched in D major—his key, his blood—but tilted just slightly off center, as if warped by distance or fever. The wrongness in the note rattled his incorporeal teeth, but still, it called. Pulled.

He didn’t float. He lunged.

And the second he did, sensation hit harder.

The shard yawned wide, and scent flooded in: temple smoke, fried garlic, metal coins oxidized by damp air. Then sound—uneven bells ringing like tin against skull, dogs barking through traffic horns. And then—color: gold foil flaking from red-painted wood, school uniforms washed too many times by river water, a skyline clawing at clouds stitched from tropical steam.

But none of this was Seoul.

It was Bangkok.

And none of it was his.

He had never walked those streets. Had never inhaled that air. Had never sung in that language. This place—wherever it was—belonged to the shard, not to the boy who had once been Choi Jinwoo.

That was Gwi-ma’s cruelty, wasn’t it? That every piece of his soul had been flung far beyond any place he had ever known. Exile beyond geography. Erasure through estrangement. His fragments had been sewn into foreign soil he’d never touch, scattered so far that even memory warped under foreign moons.

But something in her—in Rumi—had stirred it awake. Her voice, her heat, her presence from half the world away had reached across that impossible distance and knocked on its coffin door.

And the shard had answered.

He shuddered. Not from cold. From recognition.

Because even if the streets didn’t belong to him, the song they leaked did.

The images twisted—melted—folded back into something deeper. The phantom heat gave way to a darker warmth: older, coal-thick, belly-born. The real memory lay beneath the fever.

Joseon.

Four centuries ago. A rain-swollen alley. Cobblestones under bare feet. He saw a boy—himself—no older than fourteen. Thin in the way that meant hunger, not aesthetics. Crouched in a doorway, voice hoarse from overuse, hands cupped to rich men and laughing courtesans who dropped coins only if he hit the high notes.

His mother had coughed blood for two weeks by then. His baby sister had a fever that turned her delirious. The rice pot had cracked. The dog had vanished. And still, he sang.

Because singing was the only thing that made people stop.

He watched it unfold from outside himself: his own ghost staring at the moment his voice was born not in joy, not in love—but in desperation. Not crafted, not trained—torn out, raw and wet like a baby pulled from the womb by force.

A harmony hummed under the memory now. Faint, barely-there, like a shadow under breath.

The voice of his father.

Choi Jinseok, who had taught him melody between shifts in the charcoal yards, taught him how to play the bipa, who whispered lullabies in broken throat when Jinhee cried too long, who died when Jinu was thirteen and took the warmth of music with him. Leaving his mother Lee Sohee alone to take care of both of them.

But not the sound.

The sound stayed. It burned in Jinu’s marrow, refused to die. And here, now, in this stitched-up afterlife, it rose again in the shard’s gravity—waking, writhing, reaching for him across centuries.

Rumi wasn’t here. Not physically. Not yet.

She was somewhere else—in her bedroom back in the Huntr/x tower in Seoul. But something in her—something hot, hungry, open—had cracked the void and touched this fragment.

And now it sang.

A single pitch echoed across the ether, thin and unstable—but alive.

And Jinu felt his soul ache toward it like a mouth desperate to speak. Not with words.

With song.

Because this wasn’t just memory. This was origin. This was truth.

This was the first shard.

This was where his voice was born.

The resonance grew louder.

It didn’t pierce so much as seep—notes blooming like bruise-petals across a fleshless sky. They didn’t ring clean. They trembled, as if underwater, warped by currents, each tone dragging threads of humidity and regret.

The void around him thickened—not with color, but with meaning. A mood. A hunger.

Jinu floated inches from the wound. Just there—just there—on the eastern fracture of the Phantom Galaxy, the shard pulsed like an ulcer in the sky, dark and wet and ripe. But he didn’t touch it.

Not yet.

Last time, the pain had nearly torn his soul into ribbons and flung him across this dreamscape like litter in a hurricane. It wasn’t just agony—it was fragmentation. Reaching into that scar without preparation felt like unzipping his spine and letting the past devour him. So now he circled.

Wary. Wanting. Wiser.

He spun wide arcs around the shard, more animal than man. Predatory. Patient. Like a hawk in low thermals, gauging the best angle to strike. Every inch of him ached to close in—to taste, to fuse—but desperation wouldn’t save him. Precision would.

Because he couldn’t force Rumi to find this piece of him. Couldn’t drag her here by the wrist like some haunted child bride of fate. He wouldn’t. That wasn’t what they were. That wasn’t what this was.

But he could suggest.

He could pull.

Just a whisper. Just enough to make her dream turn in this direction. Enough to stir some hidden ache that pointed her feet south.

So he began to sing.

Not a ballad. Not a chorus. Nothing that would alert the sigils coiled around his vocal cords like spiritual barbed wire.

Just a lullaby.

Three notes at first. A descending minor phrase that slipped down the void like sweat tracing a spine. Then a fourth, a breathy sigh at the bottom of the scale. Then silence.

Then again.

This time slower. Louder. He laced the phrase with sorrow, not just melody. With humidity and incense and old blood. With coordinates.

Because each note vibrated on a different axis. Longitude in the D. Latitude in the F. Elevation in the minor third that quivered between them like a half-remembered kiss. Every phrase mapped a different harmonic contour, and if she felt it—if her aura brushed it in sleep—it would tug at her like déjà vu. Like a memory misfiled in someone else’s body.

Jinu didn’t learn this. No one taught him how to hide direction in sound. It wasn’t some idol trick he picked up between rehearsals or brand deals. This was older.

Older than pop. Older than microphones. Older than Seoul itself.

It was blood-memory.

Something buried deep in the marrow of his demon blood. Whatever ancient whisper had left talon-marks on his soul, it had etched this too: the ability to fold a road into a refrain.

He spun the lullaby again, backward this time. Inverted the pattern. Bent it slightly sharp like a bird’s cry before storm. He let his voice—a thing not breath, not throat, not air but intention—spill into the base of the void, down where instinct lived and intellect burned away.

Come find me.

A half-step pause.

Come south.

Another breath, drenched in want.

Come where the lotus breaks the mud.

The shard responded.

It shivered, not visibly—but viscerally. A ripple coursed through the Phantom Galaxy. The entire sky tilted one agonizing degree off-axis, as though the universe had flinched in its sleep. The color around him deepened into a dusk-mauve bruise, rich and pungent with some wordless promise.

And far away—so far it would have been silence to anyone else—Jinu felt it.

A twitch.

Not his own. Hers.

Rumi.

Just a flicker. A tremble. One sliver of flesh—her left ring finger, curled where her hand must have lain beside her head on the pillow. It spasmed once, then stilled.

But it was enough.

He froze.

Not in fear.

In awe.

Because that had never happened before. Not once in all the weeks of drifting. He’d stirred her heartbeat, yes. He’d tangled his voice through her ears. But this—this tiny, involuntary response in her body—was new.

Real.

Tangible.

Proof.

He dropped everything else. Every other hum, every other shard, every aching echo in this galaxy of his own shattered making. He killed the ambient static—snuffed out the breathless noise of cosmic regret. And he focused.

Everything.

Every gram of spectral mass, every flicker of harmony, every aching nerve of unbody—he funneled it toward her.

He reached.

Not with arms, but with pulse.

Rumi’s breath hitched. Not a gasp. Not a sigh. Just a tiny interruption, like a singer catching a lyric mid-sleep. She was still under. Not conscious. But something had kissed the surface of her dreaming mind.

He’d brushed it.

A strand of her unconscious had shivered.

And suddenly he was ravenous for more.

He pushed closer to the shard now, teeth bared metaphorically if not literally, soul humming like a string tuned too tight. Every note he’d sent out ricocheted back with static now—feedback from her skin, her thoughts, her sleep.

She had heard him.

And if she could hear, she could follow.

If she could follow, she could find the shard.

If she could find the shard, he could finally come back—piece by piece, voice by voice—until he wasn’t just a phantom vibrating inside a girl’s grief anymore.

He could exist again.

But first, he had to keep singing.

He pulsed the lullaby again.

But this time, he altered it—slightly, deliberately, like a seduction done by inches.

The melody folded in new textures. Under the top note, he laced in the sound of rubber sandals slapping wet pavement, sharp and familiar. Beneath that, the barking of a street dog two alleys away, hoarse with hunger and territorial spite. Then—fainter still—he shaped the hum of low, bone-deep chants. The prayers of monks at daybreak, throats graveling with centuries of ghost-warding.

The lullaby wasn’t a song anymore.

It was a place.

Because this wasn’t theory or metaphor or wishful projection.

That shard—this pain, this memory—it was real. It was his. And the city where it had been buried wasn’t an abstract punishment.

It had been chosen. By someone who wanted him lost.

Gwi-ma hadn’t just broken his soul into shards and scattered them across the earth like cursed pearls—he had embedded them, married them to the marrow of cities Jinu had never touched, soaked them in unfamiliar air, drowned them in dialects and disasters and dust that didn’t remember his name.

But Jinu remembered everything.

So he wove more than location into the notes now. He layered emotion, spliced story into every pause, hid confession in each breathless resolve.

He threaded love into the fourth note—pure, unslick, but hungry.

He knotted longing into the fifth—aching, crude, the kind of longing that lived in teeth and stomach and under fingernails, the kind of want that wanted not just to kiss but to inhabit.

And when he reached the suspended chord near the turnaround, he left it unresolved—glistening with regret. A kind of regret no clean harmony could cure. The kind that stayed behind your ribs when you held someone for the last time and didn’t know it was the last.

He wrapped her name—Rumi—around the rhythm like it was silk, like it was fire, like it was the anklet of a dancer he’d never dared to touch. It rang with every repetition, hidden in the syncopation, disguised as percussion but undeniable if you knew how to listen.

He had no lips. No lungs. No vocal cords to tear. But the void still let him sing.

And so he did.

Gods, how he sang.

He sang until time slurred sideways. Until the chord itself started humming back. Until the stars in the Phantom Galaxy flickered in time with the beat he’d shaped from memory and myth and mourning. Until the wound at the edge of the sky swelled open wider, like a mouth finally willing to confess.

And somewhere—far away, real and not real, fleshbound and beautiful—he felt her.

Not just her breath.

Not just her pulse.

He felt her dreaming.

Of heat.

Of sweating thighs stuck to rehearsal chairs. Of lips tasting like ripe mango and water left too long in a plastic bottle. Of sun-wet air heavy enough to make you dizzy. Of water lilies, open like offerings, floating beside incense sticks bobbing in canal drift.

And a faint itch. An unplaceable yearning. Not sharp enough to name. Not loud enough to say aloud. But it was there.

A pull. Toward somewhere humid. Somewhere she couldn’t name but had started to crave.

Jinu smiled—or the ghost of a smile passed through him like a tremor.

That was enough.

He had planted it.

Instinct had been seeded.

And instinct, when fed, became decision.

In the waking world, Bobby would be drafting up their world tour logistics within days—spreadsheets and stage specs, venue options, cultural appeal, climate considerations. Rumi didn’t choose setlists or cities—not officially.

But if she sighed during a meeting, just once, and said something like, “Remember our last fanmeet in Bangkok? The smell? The food? The fans?”—it would plant the idea.

If she dreamt it twice, it would etch. Linger in the back of her throat like a lyric she couldn't shake. Eventually, she’d mention it without realizing why. It would show up in a pitch deck, then on a schedule.

He knew how hooks worked.

He had written thousands before he died... or whatever exactly had happened to him.

So Jinu let the lullaby trail off—not sharply, but like incense dying in soft spirals. Like a hand slipping off a thigh it wasn’t allowed to touch anymore. Like breath slowing after climax.

He let it fade.

And then he collapsed.

His spirit—his patchwork silhouette of memory and myth—flickered. Not elegantly. Not gently.

Frayed.

Even incorporeal, he had limits. Soulcraft wasn’t free.

This lullaby—just a handful of notes stretched into spellwork—had eaten through him like acid on silk. His edges fuzzed. Vision dimmed. His colors dulled from bright pinks to ash. His fingers—if you could call them that—broke apart like smoke trails in wind.

He curled inward.

Let go of tension. Pulled his essence in tight, like a scroll folding closed.

Let himself drift.

The Bangkok shard—no longer screeching with the ache of loss—slowed. Rotated gently now, no longer whirling like a gyroscope. It would rest. Wait.

For her.

For Rumi.

And when she came—because she would—he would be ready.

Even if it burned.

Even if it cost the last of him.

He would rebuild his soul one breath at a time.

One note.

One girl.

One shard.

He drifted back—slowly, like a whisper drawn through honey—to the center of the galaxy.

Still Rumi-shaped.

Still Rumi-powered.

Still alive only because she believed he might be.

Tethered to her, who now owned his soul.

The void pulsed beneath him—not with his own breath, but with hers. Her heartbeat reverberated through this impossible space, through the starlit plasma that passed for a sky. It thumped steady and sweet, like a war drum lined in silk, keeping time not just for his bodyless soul but for everything he still wanted to become.

He curled into it. Let it fold around him. Her.

Every beat said: You’re still here. I still want you here. I haven’t let go.

Her thoughts—half-formed and dreaming—rippled across his skin like warm water over scars. Snippets of lyrics unfinished, melodies she couldn’t yet place. The weight of unshed tears resting behind her closed lids. A flicker of longing—guilt-bitten, stubborn—for him.

And deeper, beneath the crust of exhaustion and frustration and press-day performance polish, was something unshakable. A promise.

A vow.

The same one she had spoken in a voice cracking with salt and steel, alone in Studio C, her back against shattered glass and her throat torn raw:

“I’ll find you. I’ll bring you back to me.”

Jinu didn’t just hear it. He drank it.

Let it anchor him.

She had meant it—not as wishful thinking, not as metaphor, but as bone-deep conviction.

She would. She was.

But he knew better than anyone: faith was never enough by itself.

This wouldn’t be easy.

Not with Gwi-ma’s curse snarled like barbed wire through her bloodstream, dark magic hidden behind the pretty scrolls inked onto her spine.

Not with the eight shards of his broken soul hidden in corners of the world he’d never seen and had no claim to—each one wrapped in a grief he couldn’t name.

Not with Bobby organizing their days down to the minute, every second bought and sold in neon font, every breath monitored by PR agents who saw grief as branding and pain as PR gold.

Still.

He had heard worse odds.

He had been worse odds.

And Rumi—Rumi was made of sharper steel than anyone suspected. Fire under sugar. Curses written in cursive. A half-demon girl who smiled like sin and fought like salvation.

He trusted her.

And so, for now, he surrendered.

Jinu rolled—figuratively, spectrally—onto his back, floating in the lilac-black firmament like a starfish with no stars. His limbs loose, his being soft at the edges, spirit flickering where he’d burned too much too fast. He drifted through the scent of her memory—cypress and studio floor polish, blood and ginseng tea, her hair still damp from last night’s shower—and let it rock him.

Overhead—if “overhead” still meant anything—a shard flickered.

Not glowing. Not yet. But there.

A dim ember blinking behind space. Memory pressing against the veil. Not warm enough to reach for yet, but familiar. Like the moment before you remember a name you’ve been chasing all week.

It wasn’t ready.

He wasn’t either.

But soon.

Soon he would chase it.

Soon he’d follow it like he had followed her voice the night she begged the dark to sing back.

But first—rest.

Rebuild.

Repair the fraying edges of his spirit before they unraveled entirely.

Let Rumi carry the ache for now.

Let the heat of Bangkok bloom in her belly like déjà vu. Let it tickle her collarbone like sweat she couldn’t explain. Let it tug gently behind her ribs like a hook made of humidity and song.

She wouldn’t understand why yet.

She’d shake it off at first. Call it a craving. A dream fragment. A misplaced memory from a tour she hadn’t taken.

But when she landed there—

When her feet touched the wet concrete, when her mouth opened and the air soaked into her skin—

When she stood on stage, surrounded by lightsticks and monsoon wind, and sang into that heavy heat with his name buried beneath the syllables—

The shard would answer.

It would hum to life like a struck tuning fork.

It would recognize her, because he was now within her.

And Jinu would feel it.

Would drink it.

Would grow stronger.

Less mist.

More man.

More real.

And maybe—just maybe—voice.

Not fractured whispers.

Not harmonies barely tethered to the veil.

But a real voice, sharp and bright and undeniable.

Maybe, if she sang into the same mic he once kissed with his breath.

Maybe, if she summoned the chord that matched the shape of his name.

Maybe, if she wanted it hard enough—

They could sing together again.

Truly together.

Not as ghost and girl.

Not as memory and mourning.

But as a duet. A reckoning. A fusion.

Himself.

Whole.

But only if she found the rest.

Only if she kept pulling.

So he let himself fall deeper into the galaxy’s womb. Let Rumi’s breath become the metronome of his rest. Let her longing keep him alive. Let her faith keep him real.

And he whispered it to himself, over and over, like a benediction made of stardust and scars:

One fragment at a time.

Eight empty notes.

Each one waiting to be found.

Each one tied to a piece of me I once gave up.

Each one, now, calling her name.

And he knew—when she answered?

The entire sky would burn lavender.

Chapter Text

Album No. 1: AFTERGLOW

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

The rooftop garden was too quiet.

Not serene. Not peaceful.

Stifled.

Like a breath caught in a throat that couldn’t decide whether to choke or scream.

The air shimmered with artificial calm—curated moonlight, filtered humidity, the faint scent of bergamot laced into the irrigation system—but none of it touched her. The breeze skimmed the marble balustrades, combed through steel-trellised vines, stirred the LED-lit roses—but skipped her entirely. Like even the weather didn’t dare come close.

Petals hung stiff on their stalks, frozen mid-bloom. Orchid lips parted just so. Wisteria twisted above her head like a held breath. The koi pond below, usually restless with darting flashes of orange and white, was eerily still—no ripple, no dart, no spiral—just a mirrored black, like the surface of a cursed mirror.

Something was wrong. Not loud-wrong.

Subtle wrong. Deep tissue. Marrow-deep.

Rumi stood at the garden’s exact center—an accidental axis—and tried to breathe through the noise inside her.

Because outside? Stillness.

Too much of it.

Too fucking much.

Dabbadon circled her with clinical grace—eight steps, tight and symmetrical, claws clicking precisely on each tile. Then pause. A blink. Then again—counterclockwise this time, as if reversing the curse he was tracking. His blue-black fur shimmered under the soft LEDs, each individual hair refracting light like starlight caught in oil.

Clip, clip, clip, clip.

Pause.

Pivot.

Clip, clip, clip, clip.

The sound was maddening in its precision. Not a beat too fast. Not a beat too soft. Each movement was a prayer and a warning. The familiar didn’t pace like that unless something was near.

Something unseen.

Scarth crouched above her on a lantern’s curled frame—his six golden eyes unblinking, tracking an arc through the air that didn’t exist to human sight. His head twitched in sharp, unnatural angles, joints popping like mechanical birdsong. Every three of her breaths, his wings shivered once. Not in readiness.

In anticipation.

Like something behind the veil had just inhaled.

Rumi stood perfectly still.

A question written in flesh.

A fault line waiting for the tremor.

Was she the conductor of this chaos, or just a corpse propped upright to witness it?

Her throat felt raw. Her limbs too loose inside their sockets, like she’d stepped out of her own body and forgotten how to wear it again. She didn’t remember leaving bed. She hadn’t meant to come up here. She’d meant to sleep. Had gone through all the motions—cleansed, moisturized, taken the valerian drops, even scrolled herself into migraine on her backup phone.

But then the ache started.

That internal vibration. That buzz under her ribs. Like her whole body had become the inside of a speaker—low hum, hot metal, fraying wires. Not pain, exactly. Not panic either. Just too much voltage in too fragile a frame.

And then—

That moment.

That infinitesimal breath before the fall into sleep.

The liminal edge where body and mind split.

Where the veil thinned—just enough.

Where she heard it.

Not in her ears. Not in air.

But in the root of her spine.

A voice.

“Don’t forget me, Rumi-ya.”

Not a hallucination. Not some memory loop on autoplay.

It was him.

Not in his tone.

But with his tone.

That unbearable D—the one that hummed behind her eyes when she was about to cry, that bloomed behind her teeth when she sang too hard, that scratched along her nerves when she got too close to the truth. The frequency she hadn’t heard since the studio floor had cracked and she’d screamed herself hoarse begging his ghost to stay.

He hadn’t spoken since then.

Not directly. Not this clearly.

The rooftop lights dimmed without flickering. Not a power outage. A pulse.

Rumi’s breath hitched.

Her hands curled into fists at her sides before she even realized.

That voice had carved her open all over again.

Because it wasn’t just words. It wasn’t just longing.

It was heat.

Molten, vulgar, specific.

Her skin flushed before she could steel herself. Her knees weakened not from fear—but from desire. She could feel his mouth against her pulse point. Could taste the curses under his breath, biting at her collarbone like she owed him pain.

This wasn’t grief.

This was hunger.

It crackled under her skin like static trapped in velvet, like sweat under silk. It made her thighs tense. Made her stomach tighten. Made her miss the parts of him she never got to own before he was taken away.

She’d sworn to move on.

Had told Zoey, had told Mira, had told herself—

That she could keep going. That she could sing without him. That this was survivable.

But that whisper—

That voice—

It snapped the lie in half like cheap candy glass.

Scarth made a low thrummmm, almost a growl. Dabbadon froze mid-step. Every creature on the rooftop felt it. Felt him.

Something had shifted.

Rumi pressed her lips together to keep from saying his name aloud.

Because if she did—

If she said it, out loud, under this too-silent moon and this too-still koi pond, and this air that refused to touch her skin—

She was afraid she might break.

Or worse—

She might not want to be whole again.

So she came.

Barefoot.

Braid unpinned.

Sleeves dragging over trembling wrists.

She hadn’t even realized she’d gotten out of bed. Hadn’t felt the elevator ride, hadn’t noticed the doors opening. She was just here—drawn like iron filings to magnet, like a song to a throat.

And she wore his jacket.

The black one. The one he would throw over his shoulders, always a little too big, always too soft in the collar. Faded lettering sprawled across the back like a sentence that never got to finish—just a ghost of a lyric, something they once argued about over chicken skewers at 2 a.m. in the back alley close to the Huntr/x tower.

She had taken it without asking in one of the last times they met in secret.

Nobody near but his two familiars, that were now hers.

Just breath and hunger and the soft bite of his thumb against her lower lip.

He had draped the jacket over her shoulders when she shivered—not just from cold, but from how much she wanted him. She’d meant to give it back. She never did.

It still smelled like him.

Or at least, like the idea of him—amber resin, sweat, lime peel, and that strange, impossible ozone note that no cologne ever captured but always lingered in his neck crease.

The smell of someone meant to burn out.

The scent hit her like a memory laced with venom. Her stomach clenched. Her thighs pressed together on instinct. Heat swelled in her chest, in her throat, behind her eyes. Not tears yet—just the sting before.

She crossed the stone path in silence, stepping around Dabbadon’s careful loops. Her footfalls made no sound. She barely registered the cold marble biting up through her soles—only the pull, the pull, the pull toward the altar of silence.

The incense bowl waited beneath the tallest bonsai.

Tucked into the crook of the tree’s bend, it had sat untouched for weeks. Since the vigil. Since the shrine she built in defiance of Bobby’s warnings.

Bobby had wanted it cleared.

Said it “looked haunted.”

She’d said, “Good.”

She’d said, “It’s for balance.”

Tonight, balance was no longer theory.

It was ache.

It was hunger.

It was invocation.

Her fingers hovered over the incense options in their worn velvet case. Jasmine. Myrrh. Hinoki. Each a note. Each a spell.

She chose sandalwood.

The one he always said reminded him of old stories.

Of hearth smoke and dynasty.

Of temples abandoned but still singing.

Her hands didn’t shake as she struck the match. That came later. The flare hissed to life in a sudden golden arc, lighting her cheekbones with fire. She held the stick steady. Watched the tip burn, ember bleeding orange, smoke coiling up like a question stitched in silk.

It rose, slow and deliberate, tracing a curving line into the sky—like a beckoning. Like a thread between worlds being drawn tight.

And then—

Soft. Unbearable.

Like a breath pulled from between parted lips after a kiss that ruined everything—

“Jinu.”

His name.

Her voice.

Out loud.

The moment it left her mouth, the garden stilled.

Dabbadon froze mid-step.

His claws hovered above the tile like he was holding the planet in place. No twitch. No tail flick. No breath. As if the syllables of that name had locked him in orbit.

Scarth didn’t move either. He bowed low, feathered head dipping like a monk at the altar. All six golden eyes shuttered at once. His wings curled in. Reverent. Waiting.

Even the air shifted.

As if it heard.

As if it recognized her voice calling through the static.

Rumi’s throat burned. Her lips parted to breathe—too fast, too shallow—and she didn’t even register the pain until it hit her ribs. Something shifted behind her sternum. Not panic. Not fear. And not heat, exactly.

Pressure.

Warm. Heavy. Inside.

Like a hand pressed just beneath her diaphragm.

Not squeezing.

Not punishing.

Claiming.

The weight of a palm she used to know.

It wasn’t memory.

It was contact.

She felt him.

The shape of him. The brush of his palm through the veil. She inhaled too fast, and it caught in her chest, made her cough—choked her with how intimate it was.

Her knees buckled.

She sank before she even made the choice.

Fingers scraped the stone.

Palms hit cool tile.

Knees thudded hard enough to bruise.

She didn’t care.

Incense ash drifted over her wrist. Her braid slid over her shoulder, and the jacket he once held her in bunched around her elbows like a second skin.

She bowed her head, not in prayer, but in ache.

In surrender.

“You’re still here,” she whispered.

Not hope.

Recognition.

And the moment the words hit air, the pressure behind her ribs swelled. Not crushing—no. Never that.

It was affirmation.

Like a switch flipped.

Like someone turned the volume up on a silent room.

Like slipping on headphones and suddenly realizing the melody had been there all along—just waiting for her to listen.

A chord bloomed inside her sternum. Not music. Not yet. But resonance.

A harmony she hadn’t sung in too long.

A promise remade.

A ghost answering.

And though she didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t even shift her hands from where they trembled on the tile, her whole body felt seen.

Held.

And somewhere inside her, the song stirred.

He was here.

He was really, truly here.

Not a glitch.

Not a brain fever.

Not trauma flashback with good lighting.

Not her own longing inventing ghosts in the smoke or in a stupid speaker.

He was fucking here.

The truth didn’t just land—it detonated.

Right behind her ribs, right beneath her breastbone.

A violent, holy crack, like thunder splitting sky.

Like an altar collapsing.

Something inside her broke open. And not gently.

Tears came instantly—sharp, hot, and without ceremony.

No warning. No build-up. No breath.

They just fell, molten streaks racing down her cheeks, curling into the curve of her jaw, slipping past her chin and onto her thighs. Each one was an unanswered prayer. Each one was a scream she hadn’t allowed herself in daylight.

But her body didn’t shake.

Her breath stayed smooth.

Her hands stayed still on the stone floor.

Only her heart made sound.

And it shattered so quietly it felt sacred—

like porcelain splintering in a cathedral.

Like the soft crunch of a last step before falling off a cliff.

“I thought you’d gone,” she whispered.

Each syllable was soft enough to vanish—but he’d hear it. She knew he would. Her lips barely moved, but her mouth still shaped it like an apology too late to matter. Like confession laced with blood.

“I thought I’d lost you completely.”

The garden didn’t answer with words. It answered with response.

The air warmed by degrees.

The bonsai leaves trembled—not with wind, but with awareness.

The koi pond stirred—just one ripple, delicate and exact, like someone pressing a fingertip into memory.

And then—

Dabbadon moved.

The tiger crept forward with reverent slowness. No wild grace now. No wild anything. Just ritual.

He pressed the full weight of his massive skull against her back. Forehead to shoulder blades. A gesture of mourning. A gesture of submission.

He was touching the place where she carried her grief like a second spine.

Scarth descended a heartbeat later, his wings folding tight around his thin body as he landed on her knee.

Not her shoulder.

Not the stone.

Her knee. The posture of mourning.

Six golden eyes locked on the curling thread of incense smoke.

They’d been watching him.

They had seen what she couldn’t.

Long before she allowed herself to hope.

And now, they bore witness. To this.

To her folded shape.

To her stripped throat.

To the fire under her skin she couldn’t name, couldn’t touch, couldn’t fuck away.

The familiars knew.

Because he had never really left.

She inhaled.

Exhaled.

Again.

Each breath caught on something—like a thorn, or a name, or a memory with teeth. Her chest rose and fell in a rhythm she didn’t recognize but craved anyway.

Then, slow as a ribbon pulled loose from a silk blouse, her fingers moved.

They dug into the seams of Jinu’s jacket like she was bracing herself. Like she needed to remember the weight of it. Like she could anchor herself to cotton and thread because the boy it once held was no longer entirely gone.

“I should have known,” she said, barely above a breath.

Her voice cracked, just once.

Not from weakness.

From clarity.

“I should have known you’d never leave me. Not all the way. Not where it counts.”

More tears slipped free—this time not jagged with despair.

These tears were different.

They carried relief.

Real, radiant, sensual relief.

The kind that hits when the worst hasn’t happened—when someone you love is somewhat dead, yes, but not unreachable.

Not lost in the truest sense.

He was still threaded through her soul like the bassline to a song that refused to die.

Still stitched into her frequency.

Still inside her breath.

Her ache.

Her heat.

She felt him in her pulse now—just beneath the surface.

In the back of her throat where his name ached to be moaned.

In the curl of her fingers where memory lived like electricity.

In the soft ache between her thighs, where grief and longing had always blurred.

And that’s when she knew—

He wasn’t only here.

He was watching.

Listening.

Tethered.

Not with a leash. But with need. With devotion. With the kind of soul-love that scorched.

She let her lips part.

Let her chest rise.

Let her body stay folded on the floor like an offering.

Because somehow, impossibly, she was no longer alone.

Rumi closed her eyes.

Tilted her head back until her throat was bare to the night. Moonlight spilled over her collarbone like ghostwater.

Above her, the moon hung in fractured quiet— a pearl cracked in half, smudged with cloud and distance.

Just like her.

Just like him.

This feeling—this warmth, this invisible touch pressing from the inside out—it wasn’t just memory.

It wasn’t longing hallucinated by grief.

It was him.

A shard. A filament. A sliver of frequency.

A real piece, lodged under her skin like a splinter she never wanted to remove.

She wrapped her arms around her waist and held tight.

Not because she was breaking— but because she finally wasn’t.

This was something she could keep.

This was something she could fight for.

Even if it stayed soft. Secret. Sacred.

She wouldn’t ruin it by dragging it into the daylight.

Wouldn’t force it into words the world could twist into madness or metaphor.

She would protect it. Like a prayer.

Like a forbidden track she never released because it was too good for public ears.

She would carry it alone if she had to.

Until he was strong enough to return.

Until the whisper became a voice.

Until he became more than warmth, more than ache, more than memory dressed in moonlight.

Her eyes burned. Her chest trembled.

She wiped one cheek with her sleeve—Jinu’s sleeve, stained with a lyric that no one else ever understood.

Then, on a breath so quiet it could’ve been wind:

“Where are the rest of you?”

No answer.

But something shifted.

Scarth twitched on the lantern post, feathers rustling like silk in anticipation.

Dabbadon went completely still, muscles locked like he’d heard a command only familiars could translate.

And beneath it all—

Music.

So faint it could’ve been her pulse.

But it wasn’t.

It was a note. One note. His note.

—D—

Low. Deep. Familiar as breath.

It curled under the noise of the rooftop, threading through the garden like a lover’s fingertip grazing along her thigh in the dark.

Rumi inhaled sharply.

The sound vibrated under her skin.

Not across it. Not against it.

Through it.

Like a private map etched in chords and heat, like braille made for bone.

—D— again.

Always D.

It was the key he always tuned his heart to.

The one he warmed up with.

Her thighs clenched reflexively.

She rose slowly—movement smooth, ceremonial.

Smoke from the incense coiled around her legs like silk snakes.

The stone beneath her feet was warm now, like someone had heated it from within.

Her braid swayed down the backs of her thighs, brushing skin that still burned with leftover memory.

Her knees throbbed from kneeling, but her spine—her spine was steel.

Rumi turned to the familiars with something dangerous in her eyes.

Not rage. Not despair. Something older.

A vow.

Scarth cocked his many-eyed head.

Dabbadon blinked once, slow and certain.

“Find the coordinates,” she whispered.

It wasn’t a request.

It was a mission.

“If he’s leaving breadcrumbs—I want every one.”

The tiger huffed, low and deep, like an engine igniting.

The magpie lifted off in a blaze of wind, wings whirring like a war hymn.

The silence he left behind wasn’t empty anymore.

It had weight.

It had direction.

Her soul had cracked open—but this time it hadn’t spilled out.

This time it had aligned.

Like a compass clicking true north.

She touched her sternum—right at the place where warmth still pulsed like a brand.

Not pain.

Not nostalgia.

Presence.

“I’ll find every missing piece,” she said softly.

Like a benediction.

Like a blood oath.

“I swear it. Just… don’t go silent on me again, Jinu. Even when you can’t speak—give me something. Give me a note, a breath, a tremor in my bones. Anything. Because I need you. I need you with me.”

And in answer—

The incense flame flared once—high and blue-white like a heartbeat—

Then vanished.

Not snuffed.

Spent.

A single signal, burnt clean through the veil.

Rumi stood still in its wake.

Eyes open.

Breath held.

Heart pounding like a war drum in her chest.

Then, very slowly, she smiled.

It wasn’t pretty.

It wasn’t composed.

It wasn’t for cameras or crowds or Billboard charts.

It was small.

It was tired.

It was sacred.

The smile of a girl who had finally found her lover in the dark and refused to let go.

Chapter Text

Album No. 1: AFTERGLOW

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

She woke thinking of Bangkok.

Not the city, not the chaos of motorbikes and street vendors and gold-leaf temples—but that moment. The last fan meeting of the tour. The rooftop venue shimmering with twilight and sweat, fans crying with joy, and the sound of thousands of voices calling her name in unison.

There had been a warmth in her chest that night that had nothing to do with humidity. It was the way Zoey clutched her hand when the lights cut out. The way Mira laughed during their closing act, hair wild, cheeks flushed. The way Rumi had felt—whole. Seen. Believed in.

That had been nearly a year ago.

And for the first time since Jinu shattered and the Honmoon broke, Rumi woke without that thick film of static clinging to her brain. Her limbs moved without dragging. Her heart beat without aching.

Not healed.

But steadier.

Because she knew he wasn't gone.

She had an inkling before, but now she was sure.

She stretched her arms over her head and let the memory of Bangkok pass through her like incense smoke.

Then she rose.

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

The kitchen was golden with late morning sun, all muted warmth and quiet motion. The open window let in a faint breeze that smelled like magnolia and engine oil. A low playlist crackled through a Bluetooth speaker—some old Korean indie track Zoey liked, soft and sad like it was half-forgotten.

Zoey stood at the stove in bright green sleep shorts and a black tank top, humming tunelessly as she flipped an egg in the pan with exaggerated flair. Mira sat curled on a barstool in a panda hoodie three sizes too big, one slipper dangling from her toes, blowing gently on her pink mug.

Rumi stepped into the doorway. Her breath caught in her throat.

Because for a moment, just a moment, it felt like nothing had changed. No demons. No broken Honmoon. No Jinu, scattered across galaxies. Just them, in the aftermath of sleep and dreams.

Zoey was the first to notice her. She turned with the spatula in one hand, frying pan in the other, and broke into a smile.

“Well, well, well. Sleeping beauty lives.”

Rumi blinked, then smiled faintly. “Something like that.”

Mira turned too, and her eyes widened just a bit. “You look... better, unnie. Like, actually better. Color in your face, less corpse-like.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, I mean it,” Zoey said, placing the pan down and padding over with the precision of someone used to noise discipline. “It’s been what, weeks since you woke up not looking like you fought God in your dreams?”

Rumi raised her brow, amused. “I probably did, technically.”

Zoey handed her a cup of tea—green, light, slightly floral—and bumped her shoulder as she passed. “Well, welcome back to the land of the semi-living, unnie.”

Rumi took a seat next to Mira. “Thanks.”

Mira nudged a plate toward her. Toast. Half-burnt, the way she liked it. “You sure you’re okay? Or is this some kind of post-trauma zombie zen thing?”

“I’m fine. Or... closer to it,” Rumi said, sipping the tea. “This morning just felt easier.”

The other two exchanged a glance. Zoey leaned back against the counter, arms crossed. “Then I’m calling it. We do it.”

“Do what?” Rumi asked slowly.

Zoey didn’t flinch. “We tell Bobby everything.”

Mira stiffened. “Seo-yi.”

“No, come on, unnie,” Zoey pressed. “We’ve danced around it for years. He thinks we’re just overworked idols with a weird nightlife schedule. But we’re not. We’re hunters, and you’re—” she gestured toward Rumi, “—half the reason the veil’s even holding.”

Rumi tilted her head. “You’re sure about this?”

“I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t. He’s not stupid, Rumi. He sees the injuries, the fatigue, the weird places we have to vanish to in the middle of practice. If we’re gonna keep going—especially with tour season about to start again—we can’t keep lying.”

Mira shifted uncomfortably. “What if it changes things? What if he freaks?”

“Wouldn't you freak,” Zoey said gently, “if people you trusted were hiding something this big from you, unnie? Didn't we low-key freak out when we learned Rumi-unnie was part demon in the last Idol Awards?”

The air went quiet.

Rumi stared into her mug, thinking.

Zoey stepped closer, kneeling across from her. “He loves us, Rumi-unnie. All of us. Even when we’re at our messiest. He deserves to know. He deserves to see what we’re carrying.”

Rumi’s voice, when it came, was steady. “Then we’ll need the Honmoon Light Ritual. To give him the Sight. Let him see the world the way we do.”

Mira finally relaxed, shoulders slumping. “Thank God.”

Zoey exhaled deeply. “I thought you were gonna snap my head off.”

“I was tempted,” Rumi teased softly. “But no. You’re right.”

Zoey brightened. “So we call Celine, right? She can anchor the ritual again. She always used to.”

Rumi’s face froze.

Mira saw it instantly. “What?”

Rumi looked down, her voice a little too even. “I haven’t...  um... really talked to her. Not since Namsan Tower. We said superficial words, but nothing real.”

Zoey frowned. “You didn’t patch things up after—?”

“No.” Rumi set the mug down. “After I broke the Honmoon, she said she’d tried to accept me. That she fought herself to do it. And I realized... she never loved all of me. Just the part she could manage. The human part.”

The room hollowed.

Mira’s voice was small. “But she raised you.”

“She did.” Rumi nodded. “After my mom died, she became everything. My mentor. My guardian. She built Huntr/x with me as the centerpiece.”

“Built Sunlight Label around you,” Zoey added quietly. “Like you were the sun.”

“Only the half she could stand to look at,” Rumi said, and the bitterness laced under her voice caught them both off guard.

Zoey looked at her, eyes soft. “Shit. That’s why you’ve been so out of it, huh?”

“It’s not just that.”

Mira hesitated. “Then... Jinu?”

Rumi exhaled slowly. She didn’t look up. “I’ve been holding too many things in again.”

Mira groaned. “I knew you had more secret meetings with him than you told us, unnie.”

“And you said it was just tactics,” Zoey added. “Just leverage.”

Rumi flushed. Her ears burned. “It... wasn’t.”

“No shit.”

“It wasn’t just strategy,” she admitted. “We... we touched. Not... all the way. We didn’t get to kiss, not properly. But it was more. He kissed my neck. I kissed his. We—”

Her voice broke.

“We didn’t have time.”

Zoey’s eyes were bright with something unsaid. Mira reached out, wrapping her hand around Rumi’s wrist gently.

“Do you love him?”

“I don’t know if I had time to figure it out. But I know what I felt. And it was the closest to... that kind of love that I've ever gotten.”

They were quiet for a long time.

And somewhere inside herself, deep beneath the layers of discipline and ritual and silence, Rumi made her promise again.

She would bring him back.

She would find every scattered shard of him across this galaxy of hers.

She would rebuild him with her own hands, if she had to.

And this time, she would kiss him, breathless, and make sure he took all of her firsts, because they already belonged to him, he just needed to claim them.

Claim her.

She would make sure that happened.

🌘🌑🌓🌕🌖

After breakfast, Rumi lingered near the table, fiddling with her now-empty cup, feeling the residual warmth on her palms. Mira had already moved to wash dishes, and Zoey leaned on the kitchen counter, scrolling through her phone, pretending to look casual—but all of them were waiting.

They didn’t wait long.

Bobby strolled in through the side door, sunglasses perched on top of his cap, messenger bag slung carelessly over one shoulder. He was whistling some happy, ridiculous tune. His joy was infectious, easy in the way only Bobby could pull off. He clapped his hands together as he approached, eyes lit with excitement.

“Guess what, my beautiful sparkles,” he said with a wide grin. “The last leg of the tour is almost locked in. We’re just waiting on confirmation for Manila and Berlin, but it’s looking like a record-breaker. Number one in four continents already, and we haven’t even launched the new visuals yet.”

The girls exchanged a look.

Rumi stood up first. “Bobby…”

He paused, immediately sensing the shift in the air. His smile faltered just a fraction, eyes flicking to Zoey, then Mira. “What is it? Did something happen?”

Zoey nodded. Mira bit her lip. And Rumi took a breath.

“We need to tell you something,” she said, voice calm but low. “Something big.”

There was silence.

And then, without embellishment, they told him everything.

About the demons. The Honmoon. The magic woven into their voices, the rituals hidden beneath the surface of their lyrics, the barrier work disguised as choreography. How Huntr/x wasn’t just a girl group—it was the newest manifestation of an ancient lineage of warrior-performers. Of guardians. Demon hunters.

They told him about Gwi-ma, the entity who had once threatened to break the veil between worlds, and how the Saja Boys—beloved by millions—had been a demon boy band, vessels of power corrupted but tragic. How Huntr/x was created as a counterforce, the next generation in a lineage stretching back centuries.

Then, quietly, Rumi told him about her mother—Ryu Yeonhee, known to the world as Rina—and how she had fallen in love with a demon. How she had borne a child from that union, and died a year later. How no one knew the demon’s name, or the story of that love, or what price was paid.

And how Celine had raised Rumi ever since, guiding her, building Sunlight Label and Huntr/x around her, weaponizing her light without fully accepting her darkness.

When the silence fell again, it wasn’t comfortable.

Bobby sat slowly, blinking like he was trying to process a dream he didn’t remember falling into.

“So... wait,” he finally said. “You’re telling me... this entire time... you’ve all been fighting demons?”

They nodded.

“And that you, Rumi... you’re half-demon?”

She nodded, holding his gaze. “Yes.”

His mouth opened, then shut again. “And the songs. The concerts. The fan chants. The wards. The... the battles you vanish for.”

“All real,” Zoey whispered. “Every single one.”

He rubbed his face, groaned into his hands, then looked up with slightly wild eyes.

“Okay. Okay. I’m not mad, just—wow. Okay. So, uh—” He paused. “Was the neon blue tiger in Rumi’s room a hallucination or…?”

Mira blinked. “What?”

Zoey straightened. “What do you mean?”

Bobby squinted, uncertain. “I swear I saw it. Like this massive glowing tiger lounging on her bed like the freakin’ Cheshire Cat. And this creepy bird with too many eyes staring at me from the bookshelf.”

There was a beat of silence.

And then—

“RUMI!” Zoey screeched.

“WHAT THE HELL? More secrets, unnie?” Mira cried. “You’re hiding demon familiars in the dorm?”

Rumi groaned and buried her face in her hands.

“I was going to tell you,” she muttered. “Eventually.”

“Eventually?!” Mira barked.

“They were his!” Rumi snapped, looking up, frustrated and flustered. “Jinu’s. They were his familiars.”

The room quieted instantly.

“Wait,” Mira said slowly. “You mean...?”

Rumi nodded. “Dabbadon and Scarth. The tiger and the magpie. I got to know them during the... during the secret meetings I had with him. They found me after he vanished. I don’t know how. But they didn’t disappear with him. And I— I couldn’t let them go.”

Zoey stared at her like she was seeing something fragile and new. “So you kept them?”

“I didn’t bind them or anything,” Rumi said quickly. “They just started showing up. Sleeping in my room. Keeping watch. I think they… chose me. I think I’m all they have left of him.”

Bobby looked quietly overwhelmed again, but not angry. Just... stunned.

And then the air shimmered.

With a crackle like distant static and the smell of hot stone, they appeared.

Dabbadon stretched first, paws like black thunderclouds, glowing faintly with iridescent stripes of ultramarine. His huge eyes gleamed like gold in a hearth, and he yawned as if bored with being summoned. Scarth blinked into existence a second later, wings flickering through space like an old film reel, hat on, all shadows and shimmer, his six golden eyes blinking independently.

Mira screamed.

Zoey shouted, “NO FUCKING WAY—!”

And then both of them leapt toward Dabbadon like children at a petting zoo, gasping in awe and immediately wrapping their arms around the massive tiger’s neck. He purred with the sound of a thunderstorm far, far away.

“HE’S SO CUTE,” Mira cried.

“HE’S GLOWING,” Zoey laughed, running her fingers through the tiger’s stripes. “Unnie! Unnie! How could you keep this from us?!”

Scarth landed with a soft whump on the back of the couch and blinked at Bobby.

Bobby, for his part, was pale but composed. He adjusted his cap and cleared his throat.

"Why does the bird wear a hat?" He asked, eyes narrowed.

Rumi pressed her lips together for a second, "Jinu made it for the tiger, but the bird keeps taking it."

Scarth made a naughty sound to that.

“Okay,” he said, voice just a little too high. “So we have... demon familiars. In the house. Fantastic. But I think the tiger will fit in the jet, as long as he behaves.”

"He will behave. He's a good boy!" Rumi exclaimed confidently, and Dabbadon purred in agreement.

Bobby stood up.

And then pointed at Rumi, eyes narrowed.

“But that is not what’s freaking me out.”

Everyone blinked.

“It’s you, Ryu Miyeong,” he said, jabbing his finger. “You, sneaking off in the middle of the night to cozy up with Jinu, the lead vocalist of our previous demon rivals!”

Rumi flushed so hard she thought she might combust.

“It wasn’t—! I didn’t—!”

“Ryu Miyeong,” he said, exasperated and wounded and protective in that way only Bobby could be. “You didn’t tell me? You know I’m basically your manager-dad!”

“It wasn’t like that,” she mumbled. “Okay, it was sort of like that. But I didn’t mean for it to—”

“You told me you hated him!”

“I lied!” she snapped.

Zoey and Mira froze.

Rumi’s voice dropped. “I lied because I didn’t know what it was. Because I didn’t want it to be anything. But it was. And now he’s gone.”

The air was still again.

Bobby exhaled slowly and sat back down.

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, voice soft, “I wish you’d told me sooner.”

“I know,” Rumi said.

“But I’m here now,” he added, “and I’m not going anywhere.”

The room softened after Bobby’s words. For a long beat, no one said anything. Scarth blinked slowly. Dabbadon gave a long, dramatic yawn, curling his tail around the three of them sprawled across the rug.

Then, Rumi broke the silence.

“I’ve been dreaming about Bangkok,” she said quietly, still sitting on the floor, her back against the couch. “A lot.”

Zoey turned her head, Mira looked over, and Bobby tilted his head slightly. “Dreaming?”

She nodded. “It’s always hazy. But I wake up with the feeling stuck to me. Like a place calling. That last fan meeting there... I don’t know. It feels like a thread I’m supposed to follow.”

Bobby frowned thoughtfully. “You asking me to add a show?”

Rumi looked up at him, a small hopeful smile tugging at her lips. “Maybe one. If it’s not too late.”

He grinned. “You’ve got unbelievable timing, Miyeong. I was literally finalizing the last set of locations this morning. Bangkok’s doable. I’ll shift some things around.”

“Really?” she breathed.

“Of course. You’ve earned it,” he said, waving a hand. “Anyone else got a wish before I start stamping contracts?”

Zoey immediately perked up. “Paris.”

Bobby smirked. “Spoken like a true fashion-forward menace, Seo-yi.”

“Hey,” Zoey said with a grin. “Our Paris fans are diehard. We owe them.”

Mira raised her hand. “Brazil. Amazon rainforest.”

Bobby blinked. “You want me to book a concert in the Amazon rainforest, Mira?”

Mira shrugged with an impish grin. “Why not? Magic girls in the jungle. Atmospheric.”

Zoey snorted.

Bobby laughed, holding his stomach. “I love you, kid, but unless we start doing aerial drone performances in the middle of the canopy, that’s a no.”

Mira pouted. “Fine. But at least two shows in Brazil, okay? I want to visit. I’ve always wanted to go.”

Rumi laughed, nudging her. “We’ll make it happen.”

Bobby scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Brazil’s solid. The fanbase there is nuts. I’ll run the analytics tonight.”

The mood was light again—warm and fizzy like soda in the sun—but then Bobby’s voice dipped, hesitant.

“What about the Saja Boys?” he asked. “After... everything. What happened to them?”

It was like a curtain fell.

No one spoke right away.

Zoey shifted uncomfortably. Mira looked down at her hands. Dabbadon’s ears twitched.

Rumi answered finally. “We don’t know.”

Bobby exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. “No trace?”

“They vanished when the Honmoon fractured,” Rumi said softly. “Scarth says their essence scattered. They might not be... whole anymore.”

He looked at her sharply. “You talked to the bird about this?”

She blinked. “Uh— yeah? Sort of. I mean, I understand it. What it wants to say... um...”

Bobby pointed at her. “Please don’t tell me you also had secret dates with one of them.”

"Ew. No. I'm loyal," Rumi groaned.

Bobby turned his questioning gaze to Zoey and Mira.

Zoey let out a mortified laugh, turning red. “What? No!”

Mira held her hands up, equally flushed. “Absolutely not!”

But Bobby narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You’re blushing.”

Zoey groaned. “That’s because of the rumors, Bobby! Not reality!”

He grinned. “Mhm. What were the ships again? ‘Mira x Abby x Romance’, ‘Zoey x Mystery’, 'Zoey x Baby'? The fans had whole conspiracies. The most obvious was Rumi x Jinu.”

Mira covered her face with a pillow.

Zoey fake-screamed into her hands. “We didn’t even talk much to them!”

“But they did flirt,” Rumi teased.

“They flirted with everyone!” Mira cried. "Especially Romance and Abby."

“Romance winked at anything that had a heartbeat!” Zoey added. "His stage name was literally Romance."

"I wonder what their real names were," Rumi mumbled. "Jinu's real name better be Jinu."

"It's probably written the Korean way. Jin-woo," Bobby brushed off. "Jinu is easier on the ears of international fans as a stage name. They picked easier names, though aside from Jinu's, the others were stupid. Though Mystery made sense because I don't think I've ever got a glimpse of that kid's face. I doubt anyone did."

Zoey blushed, looking away, "I did."

"You're blushing," Rumi taunted.

"Unnie," Zoey cried.

"Oh, you're so blushing," Mira scoffed.

Zoey groaned glaring at her, "As if you didn't when you were gawking at Abby's abs."

"I never did that!" Mira gasped, skin blushing the color of her hair.

Bobby chuckled, shaking his head. “Kids these days. All drama, no deniability.”

It was soft. Silly. Just enough levity to let them all breathe again.

Then Bobby clapped his hands. “Alright. Enough heart-to-hearts. I want to see your demon-hunting gear later. All of it.”

They blinked. “Huh?”

“I’m serious!” he said brightly. “I want to see how you fight. How the magic works. It’s incredible. We could totally use it as the concept for the next album.”

Zoey perked up. “Wait. You mean—?”

“A whole girl fighter aesthetic,” Bobby grinned. “Huntr/x rebranded. Magic, armor-glam styling, edgy blades, arcane sound design, maybe even footage from barrier sites—”

“The media would eat it up,” Mira gasped.

“And it’s not a lie,” Rumi murmured. “It’s... just reframed.”

“Exactly,” Bobby said. “It’s who you are. Let’s make the world see it. Maybe not the whole truth, but close enough.”

They looked at each other. Eyes shining.

And for the first time in weeks, Rumi felt it in her chest—certainty. A slow, steady surge beneath her ribs, as if something inside her—something warm and strong and true—was beginning to glow again.

"We'll need to do a... um... ritual to grant you sight to the whole magic, Honmoon, and the whole demon thing, though, Bobby," Zoey added.

He rolled his shoulders, "I'm ready whenever you are."