Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rumi could see the Honmoon from the moment she first opened her eyes.

At least that's what Celine used to tell her.

She was barely a week old when Celine and her fellow Sunlight Sister Kimmy had met her for the first time, sitting in Rumi's mother Miyeong's home drinking tea and watching with wonder as the baby girl's eyes followed the shimmering blue lines across the ceiling and walls.

The three women in the room had all been taught to see the Honmoon by their mentor back when they were kids. None of them had ever heard of a Hunter being born with the sight.

So Rumi was special, Celine would say. She was chosen. She was born for this. Destined to turn the Honmoon gold. And someday the Honmoon would lead her to her fellow Hunters, just like it led Celine to Kimmy and Miyeong.

Rumi hadn't believed her about that part until the first time she felt them.

She was five years old, sitting in the garden singing the Hunter's Song while Celine braided her hair. It was a sort of ritual they did, singing together and putting Rumi's hair up to mark the end of playtime and the start of training.

Celine liked rituals. She liked structure. She liked things organized and tidy. So Rumi did too.

But there was something wild in the way the Honmoon hummed that day, something disorganized and vibrant. Rumi had been restless since the moment she woke up, like she was waiting for something.

But she wouldn't let her energy interfere with training, or their ritual. She didn't want to bother Celine with it. So she clenched her fists and sang dutifully as Celine wove her long hair with deft hands, harmonizing with her.

“We are Hunters, voices strong. Slaying-”

Rumi gasped mid-verse, watching as a pulse of brilliant gold spread through the lines of light beneath her before racing off across the landscape in a specific direction. Then a second pulse, just like the first, but it went a different way.

Rumi looked over her shoulder, eyes wide, to find Celine smiling at her. Her hands fell gently to Rumi's shoulders, and Rumi could tell that Celine was excited too, in her own way.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered, and Rumi did. “Follow the light. Can you feel them?”

And Rumi could.

They were faint and far away, but two little flames were out there in the dark, calling to her. Bright spots of warmth, wrapping Rumi in the feeling of a towel fresh from the dryer or a purring cat lying in the sun.

Until then, Rumi had always doubted that there were really two more girls like her out there. Celine was always alone, no Sunlight Sisters left by her side. Just Rumi.

But they were out there. She felt them. And she was breathless with joy just knowing they existed.

“We'll find them someday, when the light gets stronger,” Celine had told her as she resumed braiding. “The Honmoon will lead us to them. They can't see it yet, but they'll start to feel you soon too.”

Rumi practically vibrated with excitement. They could feel her too, whoever they were. She hoped the feeling they got from her was half as nice as the one she got from them, half as warm and welcoming.

She didn't know it then, too young to have the emotional vocabulary, but the feeling from those two little lights in the dark was home.

Zoey loved Rumi's voice. Like, she was obsessed, if she was being honest with herself. She was always ready to tell the press and interviewers that whoever claimed to be Rumi's biggest fan was actually her third biggest, because Mira was number two and Zoey was number one.

It killed as a joke. But Zoey was dead serious.

That was how she'd found them, after all. After years of feeling like something was missing from her heart, like there was a great love out there waiting for her to find, she started hearing Rumi's voice in her dreams.

The first time, she was six. She had been dreaming of waves, like the ocean, but made of… light? And then there were ripples, big ones, like two heavy stones had been dropped in the water at different points far away and she was just now seeing the effect.

But no, heavy stones wasn't right. It was more like… sound waves. Yeah, like the forms in the audio editing software she played with on her laptop when she was supposed to be doing homework. There were two new sounds out there, she could feel it. A vibration, a humming, a… a pair of heartbeats, perfectly in sync with hers.

And then she heard her voice.

Just one voice, which was weird because there were definitely two hearts out there that she needed to find. But wow, that voice.

“We are Hunters, voices strong…”

She sounded so far away. That wasn't fair. She needed to be closer.

“Slaying demons with our song…”

There was so much yearning in that voice, a loneliness, a longing. And Zoey recognized those feelings immediately because they were hers, too. They were reaching for each other, all three of them, across space and darkness and silence, and Zoey needed to find them.

“I'm here,” she called out, and the waves of blue light around her rippled and hummed.

“Fix the world and make it right…”

The song was still so quiet, still so far.

“Where are you?” Zoey shouted, tears in her eyes. She was going to wake up soon, she was going to lose them, and she grew desperate and panicked. “I need you! Help me find you!”

“...I'm here.”

Zoey gasped in excitement. It wasn't the singing voice, it was the other one. The third heartbeat. Even further and quieter than the song, but…

“Please,” Zoey cried, reaching blindly into the dark.

“When darkness finally meets the light.”

The singing faded away to a whisper. She was waking up.

“I love you!” Zoey called out while she still could. “I love you both! I'll find you!”

When she woke up, she was inconsolable for about a day before she realized something.

She finally knew that they were out there somewhere, for sure. The pieces of her that were missing. She'd always felt their absence so acutely, but now she'd heard them.

They were there. Calling to her.

And she could find them.

For a large portion of her childhood, Mira thought she was haunted. Which was like… metal, so. Cool.

Ever since she was seven, she was visited almost every night in her dreams by two ghosts.

They were sort of… wispy. Immaterial. Like she was always seeing them out of the corner of her eye through a fogged window. But she grew to recognize their shapes, the way they moved.

They were two girls, like her. 

No matter how odd or scary or boring the rest of the dream was, her ghosts were there. Out of place. Like they were both from other dreams and had ended up in hers by accident.

Mira was tactile. She liked watching how people moved. How they held themselves, how they walked, how they played. So even before she started to see more details, she knew which was which.

The one she'd seen first, she was more… still. Purposeful. She reminded Mira of the other girls in her ballet class that she'd hated and gotten kicked out of. Poised. At least, most of the time.

There was an anxiety in her too. A restlessness. Like there was some explosive energy building up inside her slowly that she had to let out in little bursts. Mira understood that well enough, what with her so-called anger issues. She spent most of her time simmering, but every so often she boiled over.

The other ghost, the one that had joined the first after a couple weeks, was smaller. Wilder. An unstoppable force of energy and excitement. She was always bouncing, hopping, like she was constantly listening to music that Mira couldn't hear.

Which was a bummer, because Mira loved music. She loved to dance. She just didn't like that jerk ballet teacher.

Mira eventually named her ghosts, when their shapes started to resolve into something more defined. The first was  Borasaek, for all the soft purple light that surrounded her like a halo. The second was Paransaek, for the blue sparkles that seemed to follow her every move.

Mira started martial arts when she was eight because she could see Borasaek practicing it sometimes and it looked cool. She tried skateboarding for a while too when Paransaek started gliding around her dreams at high speed, but she didn't stick with that one.

She did keep dancing. Just not ballet.

She didn't connect her ghosts to the hollow longing in her chest until the first time it seemed like they saw her.

The dream was strange that night. She was in an empty space with only her ghosts for company. They were both far away, much too far away, but dream logic still allowed her to see them as clearly as ever.

Borasaek was kneeling like she was meditating. The smudgy violet halo around her flickered with movement. But most noticeable was the light pouring off of her, rolling waves of shimmering blue lines spreading out from beneath her like a blanket over the world. The lines pulsed to a consistent rhythm, but as usual, Mira couldn't hear anything.

Paransaek, on the other hand, looked frantic. She was facing decidedly toward Borasaek, reaching for her. Light pulsed off of her as well, but not to a rhythm, not controlled. More like she was shouting or crying.

They were so far away. But Paransaek looked so scared. Maybe… just knowing she was there with her would help. So Mira took a slow, settling breath.

“...I'm here,” she said gently, and the change was instant. Paransaek whipped toward her, and the waves coming from Borasaek stilled. They were both looking for her, she realized with a start.

Of course they were. Because she was looking for them. She had been looking for them her whole life.

They weren't ghosts. Not really. They were her girls. Hers. She just had to find them.

By the time Rumi was twelve, she felt them all the time.

When one of them was angry, she felt it sharp and hot like a sunburn. When one of them was sad, she shivered with cold and ached in her chest. She could feel their excitement as their connection got stronger, their loneliness at still having not met, not found each other.

They could feel her too, just like Celine had said. They dreamed together most nights, though they couldn't really communicate. Rumi could just feel that they were there, and they knew she was there, and they all ached to find each other.

Her fires in the darkness got brighter every night.

She asked Celine about it fairly often, wondering when it was time. How would she know? She felt so bound to them already, she was mostly confident if she started walking she would know which way to go.

But not totally confident. Not fully sure. And Celine told her she would know. She was impatient, and that was okay, because Celine remembered that feeling. But that also meant it was soon. So soon.

And then one morning, it was there. The confidence. The surety. She'd dreamed about them, two familiar gold flames reaching for her, so bright and close, and when she woke up it was like the Honmoon was showing her a path. A gold line leading out of her bedroom. Out of Celine's house.

“I know where they are,” Rumi declared the second she entered the kitchen for breakfast. “I can see the way. I can find them.”

Celine didn't question her. She trusted her implicitly, and soon they were out the door and into the car she had called for them. Rumi sat in front, giving directions to the somewhat confused driver.

Rumi's heart was racing by the time they reached Seoul. She couldn't sit still, practically vibrating in her seat as she directed them to Olympic Park. She didn't wait for Celine when the driver stopped at the curb, just opened her door and ran toward the World Peace Gate without a second thought.

The Honmoon was so bright Rumi could hardly see. Or maybe that was the tears in her eyes. She looked around frantically, still running as fast as she could, and-

“Get back here, young lady!”

A stern male voice was shouting somewhere far off to her right.

“Slow down, sweetheart! Don't run off!”

A worried female voice called from somewhere to her left.

Through the crowd of tourists, there were two roaring fires headed right for her. So bright they were blinding.

The three of them collided in a hug.

The crowd faded to white noise in the background as Rumi held them, finally, one arm around each of their shoulders. They were all laughing and crying, breathless from running, no words exchanged yet but so much feeling.

One of them, slightly smaller with glitter on her cheeks and bandaids on her knees, grabbed Rumi by the face and kissed her right on the lips, no hesitation. Then she turned to the taller girl with pink hair and spikey bracelets and did the same to her.

They all dissolved into tearful laughter, not one of them letting go, hands squeezing arms and cheeks rubbing together as the pieces fell into place.

Mira's ghosts, Zoey's heartbeats, Rumi's fires in the dark. The missing pieces of their souls, found.

“Here you are,” Rumi finally cried, and she couldn't miss the gasp from the smaller one at the sound of her voice. “Found you. Finally.”

“I've missed you,” the smaller one squealed, bouncing happily in place. “I love you both so much!”

“Can you really miss someone you've never met?” the taller one asked, sarcastic, but there was fondness in her voice. “I… I love you both too.”

“I love you too,” Rumi laughed through her tears.

There was a rather intense and confused conversation happening somewhere nearby between Celine, Mira's parents and brother, and Zoey's mother and stepfather, but the girls didn't even notice. They all pulled back just enough to see each other's faces, still refusing to let go.

“I'm Rumi,” Rumi said.

“Zoey!” the smaller one blurted, bouncing again.

“Mira,” the taller one finished, and they all just looked at each other for a few breathless moments.

Rumi slid a hand up from each of their shoulders to their faces, stroking her thumbs along their cheekbones. Mira blushed but nuzzled into the touch. Zoey turned in just enough to press a kiss to her palm.

Her girls.

“Hi,” they all said in unison.

Eleven years and one near-miss demon apocalypse later, they were a few days into their well-earned hiatus. A nature documentary was on the TV, captions on and volume low.

Rumi was deep in the couch, Zoey's head in her lap as she hummed idly. The patterns on her fingers shimmered as she slowly brushed them through Zoey's hair, nails barely scratching her scalp. Zoey's eyes were closed comfortably, her hair down from its usual buns so Rumi had free rein to comb through it as much as she wanted.

Mira was sitting up on the back of the couch behind Rumi, who was snug between her legs as she slowly teased her long violet hair out of its ever-present braid. Her eyes were focused on her hands, but every so often she squeezed her knees together a little or tugged on a lock of hair just to make Rumi laugh.

“Rumiiiiii,” Zoey sighed blissfully, stretching her toes out toward the end of the couch and snuggling herself further into Rumi's lap. “Will you sing for me?”

Rumi laughed again, a soft, comfortable sound, and Mira couldn't help the smile that rose to her face.

“Of course,” Rumi purred, running the tip of her pinky down Zoey's nose and grinning when she got the desired reaction of Zoey's face scrunching up adorably. “Any requests?”

“The Hunter's Song,” Zoey said immediately, beaming up at the two girls above her. Rumi and Mira both looked quizzical, and Zoey blushed. “What? It's what brought us together.”

“What do you mean?” Mira asked, head tilting curiously and a fond chuckle in her voice. Zoey's gaze slid to Rumi, who looked just as puzzled. Zoey frowned.

“We heard you singing in our dreams before we met met,” she answered like it was obvious, looking to Mira again. “Remember? She was calling to us.” Her eyes flicked back to Rumi. “Weren't you?”

Rumi looked mystified, and Mira shook her head.

“I could never hear either of you,” Mira supplied, brow furrowed. “I could only sort of see you. I thought you were both ghosts for the longest time.”

“Wait wait wait, you could hear me? And see me?” Rumi asked, startled. “I could always just kind of… feel you, out there somewhere.”

They all stared at each other for a beat.

“How have we never talked about this before?” Zoey blurted.

And the three of them locked in, settling onto the couch all facing each other and taking turns filling each other in.

Zoey and Mira already knew Rumi could always see the Honmoon, since she didn't have to learn to like they did. But the fact that she could feel them? When she called them her little fires in the dark? Zoey got so overwhelmed by the thought she dissolved into tears. Followed closely by the other two.

Mira blushed when she recalled how she had named them Borasaek and Paransaek, face turning redder than they had ever seen when they both melted and cooed and squished her face between theirs with kisses. They immediately started calling her Bunhongsaek.

When Zoey recounted her very first dream of them, of falling in love with Rumi's voice and begging for them to tell her where they were, of hearing Mira's quiet declaration that she was there, the memory hit Mira and Rumi like a freight train.

“That was the first time you both looked at me,” Mira whispered. “When I realized you weren't ghosts, you were real. You were out there.”

Zoey reached for Mira's hand wordlessly and they intertwined their fingers with comfortable ease, sharing a gentle smile. But they were interrupted by a loud sniffle, both of their gazes snapping to Rumi.

Tears were pouring down her face, her patterns sparkling like a kaleidoscope of pastels and gold. They reached for her immediately, cradling her face between their free hands. 

“That was the first time I felt you love me,” Rumi laughed through her tears.

There was a single moment of stillness and silence before Zoey and Mira crashed into Rumi, folding the three of them into an embrace of tangled limbs and kisses and sobbing.

In fact, this moment felt a lot like that first one in Olympic Park all those years ago.

The Honmoon flared brilliantly around them, pulses of gold flowing out across the shifting rainbow lines.

When the girls eventually settled back into the couch together, all cried and kissed out, Rumi in the middle with Zoey tucked into her left side and Mira on her right, they all let out long sighs of contentment.

A few moments of comfortable silence passed before Zoey couldn't stand it anymore.

“So we're like, soulmates , right?”

Mira snorted a laugh. Rumi hummed.

“Yeah, totally.”

“Absolutely.”

Zoey wiggled happily in place.

“Okay cool, just making sure.”

Rumi sang the Hunter's Song for them and was the last to fall asleep, eyes following the shimmering rainbow lines across the ceiling and walls before they drifted shut.

It wasn't the same Honmoon that had brought them together. It was one they'd made themselves, from the pieces of the old one they loved the most.

Chapter Text

Mira decided, at the wise and experienced age of twelve, that she didn't even want to see the stupid Honmoon.

It had been a whole month since she'd learned about its existence, a month and a day since she was sent to an exclusive “summer camp” with the famed Celine of the Sunlight Sisters, a month and two days since she ran away from her parents and brother in the middle of breakfast one morning and sprinted all the way from the hotel to Olympic Park.

She couldn't explain it then. She hadn't even tried. She just knew, without a doubt, that her ghosts were there. And she had to get to them no matter what.

So she ran. She got up from the breakfast table at the bougie hotel restaurant, looked her father in the eye, and bolted. She would learn later she had run about half a mile, but that seemed inconsequential. She would have run ten miles. A hundred. A thousand. Because her girls were there.

And wow, they actually were. She literally ran right into them, and she had never been a very affectionate kid but these were her girls. Her ghosts. She threw her arms around them without a second thought. She laughed in delight when Paransaek kissed her. She rubbed her cheek against Borasaek’s like a cat trying to leave its scent.

She told them she loved them. Right then and there. Because she did. More than she had ever loved anyone or anything. And apparently, that was all thanks to the Honmoon.

The Honmoon that she still couldn't see.

Mira buried her face in her arms, curled up behind the massive Hunter’s Tree in Celine's garden. She wasn't hiding. She just… didn't want to be found.

It was so easy for Zoey. It had only taken her a week. Celine just had to relate it to soundwaves and it clicked for her. And Rumi? She had apparently been able to see it her whole life, which didn't seem fair.

Rumi had been training for this from the moment she was born. She could already fight, already summon a beautiful sword made from the Honmoon, already sing like an actual angel. And she was only four months older than Mira.

Mira, who was supposedly also chosen by the Honmoon. Mira, who chafed against Celine's authority and Rumi's perfection and Zoey's open heart at every turn. Mira, who was messing everything up once again, just like her dad always said.

She wasn't crying. She wasn't. She was just breathing weird.

“Mira?”

Mira jumped, wiping her eyes hastily before she looked up. But it was just Rumi, peering around the trunk of the tree. Man, she could be really quiet when she wanted to be.

“What?” Mira grunted, pulling her knees tighter to her chest and resting her chin on her arms, looking dead ahead instead of over at Rumi's stupid adorable face as she crept over and sat down several feet away.

“Just wanted to check on you,” Rumi said quietly, and Mira glanced at her. She had sat herself parallel to Mira, back against the trunk of the tree. She wasn't looking at her, instead watching the guardian ribbons swaying in the wind. “Celine can be kind of harsh.”

Mira scowled and looked away from her.

“She's not even close to the meanest teacher I've had,” she grumbled. “And anyway, what would you even know? You do everything perfectly.”

Mira immediately felt guilty for snapping at Rumi, who was clearly just trying to give her some comfort. But that was what Mira did. She pushed people away, whether she meant to or not. It just felt about a million times worse doing it to one of her ghosts, a girl that felt more like a missing piece of her own soul than another person.

Those were big feelings for a twelve-year-old to parse.

“I didn't always do everything well on the first try,” Rumi said quietly, shrugging in Mira's peripheral vision. “I've had way more time to practice everything, and I was Celine's only student. She focused all her attention on making sure I got it right.”

Mira frowned, wiping at her eyes again.

“You said she can be harsh,” she said slowly. “Has she ever like… hurt you?”

Rumi's eyes went wide.

“Oh, no, no no no,” she said quickly, an embarrassed blush spreading on her cheeks that had no right to be as cute as it was. “Sorry, I didn't mean to imply… no, she's just a perfectionist. And I get why, I mean… it's important. What she’s training us for.”

“Well lucky me to be the one screwing it all up,” Mira snapped, burying her face in her arms again. It was stupid. She was being stupid. Rumi was trying so hard and all Mira could do was lash out. Sometimes she really didn't understand herself.

Mira heard Rumi moving, getting to her feet. She assumed she was leaving, which was kinder than Mira deserved. But then Rumi's hand was on her wrist, so light and careful, and Mira opened her eyes to find her sitting down right in front of her.

Mira swallowed hard and slowly relaxed out of the ball she had curled herself into. She crossed her legs and let her hands fall into her lap, holding Rumi's gaze. Rumi smiled at her shyly, and Mira blushed. Embarrassing. But then Rumi was taking both of Mira's hands in hers, holding them loosely in Mira's lap, and Mira was a goner because she loved holding Rumi and Zoey's hands.

Zoey was affectionate. Whenever she was around Rumi and Mira, she was on them in some way. She was always hugging them, kissing them, rubbing their noses together, jumping onto their backs, and Mira was having a little trouble getting used to it. Her own parents barely hugged her. She had grown up with little physical affection. And now here was this hyperactive ten-year-old that kissed her the moment she saw her and told her she loved her every chance she got.

It was really nice, honestly. Mira kind of loved it. But it was also new. Different. Scary. And it was clear that Rumi's childhood had been closer to Mira's. Not quite the same, as Mira had already seen Celine offer more physical affection to Rumi than she had ever gotten from her own mother. But Rumi hadn't been around a lot of people. She just had Celine, and the other residents of the town Celine lived on the outskirts of, but Celine was also protective. It had taken her a while to even get used to Mira and Zoey being close to Rumi without her face tightening with concern.

So Mira and Rumi held hands. Whenever they were near each other, when they needed to feel a connection but weren't quite on Zoey's level, they sought out each other's hands, sometimes without even realizing it. And even Zoey recognized that her version of affection could be a little overwhelming to two somewhat-repressed twelve-year-olds, so she was more than happy to hold hands when the rest was too much.

Mira sighed, and Rumi squeezed her hands gently.

“I'm sorry,” Mira said quietly, unable to meet Rumi's eyes as she said it. Her cheeks were burning, and she really hated it when she blushed like this. It was hard to look tough when she was bright red.

“It's okay,” Rumi said immediately. And Rumi didn't say that unless she meant it, so Mira sighed again. “Mira… you know there are things that you do all the time that I wish I could do, right?”

Mira finally met her eyes again, eyebrows quirked up in confusion. Rumi's cheeks turned a little pink, but she didn't look away.

“You're so brave,” Rumi blurted, and Mira could tell she was trying to force the words out before she lost her nerve. “You aren't scared of anything. And you stand up for yourself, and for me and Zoey, even though Celine is a grownup. And I just… I sometimes wish I was better at telling her when I think she's wrong, you know?”

A slow smile spread across Mira’s face, and Rumi positively beamed at it. She loved making Mira smile, and it was such a sweet little thing Mira had noticed about her that it made her insides go all gooey.

“Plus you're like waaay better at dancing than both of us combined.”

Mira jumped again, and this time Rumi jumped right along with her. Zoey had somehow managed to crawl along a tree branch above their heads without them noticing, and she was now hanging from it upside down by her knees, reaching her hands down toward them. A laugh bubbled out of Mira before she could stop it, and Zoey giggled with delight.

“Zoeeeey,” Rumi laughed, scrambling to her feet and pulling Mira up after her. “Get down, you're gonna fall.”

“No I'm-!” Zoey began, cutting herself off with a shriek as she did just that. But Mira and Rumi had been expecting it, so she dropped neatly into their outstretched arms. She was, however, flailing just enough that all three of them fell over in a heap.

Mira didn't even try to move as the other two laughed and struggled to detangle their limbs. But as soon as they were just about to get up, she grabbed them both and dragged them back to the ground with her, setting off another round of giggling and flailing that Mira joined in on.

They eventually settled down, lying in the grass in the shade of the tree with Mira sandwiched between her ghosts. Zoey, as per usual, made herself comfortable in the strangest and cutest way possible, wrapping her legs around Mira’s hips like a koala and sticking her arm under Mira’s shirt to wrap around her ribs. She liked skin contact with Mira, as they had both learned that Rumi was more reserved about it, and Mira didn’t mind. Rumi just laid by Mira’s side, arms intertwined and fingers laced together tight.

“You’re not screwing anything up,” Rumi said quietly, and Mira turned her head to find Rumi’s nose inches from hers, her eyes wide and honest. “I wish I knew how to help.”

“Can you sing for us?” Zoey asked, and Rumi laughed and Mira rolled her eyes fondly. Zoey was always asking Rumi to sing for her. The girl was obsessed, but it was too cute to be annoying, and it wasn’t as if Mira could say she didn’t also love Rumi’s voice.

“Sing with me?” Rumi requested, and Mira and Zoey both sighed like it was a huge chore, but they were all smiling as Rumi rolled her eyes. She was doing that more and more since she’d met Mira, and Mira secretly loved it. “You guys remember that song Celine taught us to practice three part harmonies?”

“Without you, without them,” Zoey answered quickly, squeezing Mira’s waist in her excitement. “Rumi, you take the melody.”

They all faced up toward the leaves and ribbons overhead. Celine had told them there was a ribbon for every Hunter that had passed. Some were so old they were sun-bleached and frayed. Mira glanced over and saw Rumi’s eyes find her mother’s ribbon, still bright and clean. She squeezed her hand.

“Give me…” Rumi began, drawing the notes out so they could find their key, and the other two came in on the next word, a little wobbly on their harmony at first but settling in quickly.

“Everything you’ve got, I’ll take what I can get. I want to hear your story, and be a part of it. Thank your father before you, his mother before him. Who would I be without you, without them?”

“Speak to me…” Rumi began.

“Speak to me…” Mira joined, two-and-a-half steps up.

“Speak to me…” Zoey finished, another step up, and they all came back together.

“Until your history’s no mystery to me.”

“Talk to me…”

“Talk to me…”

“Talk to me…”

“Until the words run dry, we’ll see eye to eye-”

Mira’s eyes had been comfortably shut, but when she opened them coming into the last verse, she gasped. There was a light glowing in her chest. And on her left, another light, right over Zoey’s heart. She turned to Rumi to find her smiling hopefully at her, tears in her eyes, and a brilliant blue light pouring out of her heart.

“I’ll give everything I’ve got, please take what I can give,” Rumi and Zoey sang, Mira still too shocked by what she was seeing to join back in. The lights wove together, shimmering blue lines like ocean waves, glowing bright around them and pulsing out across the ground. Mira sat up, looking all around her in awe, as she joined back in the harmony on the next line. “I want you to hear my story, and be a part of it.”

Rumi and Zoey sat up on either side of her, both of them holding her hands tight.

“Thank my father before me, his mother before him.”

They both leaned into Mira, heads resting on her shoulders, as they all watched the light glow and shift and move in time with their voices.

“Who would I be without you, without them?”

They were all silent for a bit, until Mira couldn’t hold back her sniffling anymore. She was crying again. Dang it. But Zoey just wrapped her arms around her waist and pressed as many little kisses to her cheek as she could get away with. And Rumi was crying with her, laughing as they both tried to wipe each other’s tears away at the same time and ended up just leaning their foreheads together.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Zoey whispered, head back on Mira’s shoulder as she looked out at the waves of light all around them like a blanket, dimmer now that they weren’t singing but still visible. Still real.

“It really is,” Mira laughed, voice still cracking a bit as her tears wound down. “Thank you. Both of you.”

“I love you,” Rumi said, looking between Mira and Zoey, and Zoey grinned so hard her cheeks turned pink. Usually she was the one initiating their ‘I love yous.’

“I love you!” she chimed in, reaching her arms out across Mira to try to grab Rumi as well. She was a bit smaller than both other girls so it was difficult, but they all wrapped their arms around each other to help her out.

“I love you,” Mira finished, pressing a kiss to Zoey's forehead and another to Rumi's cheek. “So much.”

“That’s what the Honmoon is made out of, in the end,” Rumi sighed, snuggling comfortably into the embrace of her girls. “Love.”

“Awwww,” Zoey cooed.

“Gross,” Mira groaned.

They all started laughing, Rumi elbowing Mira in the side, and they tipped over into another heap of flailing limbs and giggles.

Celine had approached to check on them, but as soon as she heard them singing together she had headed back to the house with a smile on her face. They would get there, together. She had no doubt.

Chapter Text

Zoey had too many feelings.

It was the only explanation that made sense. The only reason she still couldn't summon a weapon from the Honmoon. She had always had too many feelings, ever since she first understood what a feeling was.

The first feeling she remembered was missing someone. She knew there was someone she was supposed to find, someone she loved. Oh right, love. That was the first feeling she had. Then longing.

Her parents chalked it up to an active imagination when she was six and started talking about having three hearts, dreaming of the other two at night and wondering where they were. She drew pictures of them together, though she didn't know what they looked like so they were never quite the same. She often found herself humming the song that one of them was always singing to her, calling to her.

When her mom moved to Seoul and married her stepdad, a part of her was thrilled because she knew she was getting closer. They always seemed so far away in her dreams, but once she started spending school breaks in Korea, she could hear them so clearly.

The summer after fourth grade was when everything changed. She arrived at the airport after a twelve hour flight, ran into her mom's waiting arms, and told her very seriously that she had to go someplace immediately. Her heartbeats were there and she needed them like she needed to breathe.

As confused as her mom and stepdad were, they played along. She knew where to go instinctively, guiding her mystified parents through a two hour train ride like she did it every day. Her mom was on the phone with her dad back in Burbank when they arrived at Olympic Park by bus, and then Zoey took off running.

She didn't know how far she ran, lost count of the amount of people she squeezed past and ignored that saw her mom chasing after her and tried to stop her. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Except the two girls she ran straight into the arms of, laughing and crying and squeezing them as tight as her little arms would allow. She couldn't stop bouncing, overflowing with love so much she kissed them both without even thinking.

And that was kind of how she had always been. Feeling so much, all the time. But lately she felt like it was even more than usual.

Maybe it was puberty. It was probably puberty.

It was just… hard. Coming back to Korea every summer knowing Rumi and Mira had been here without her. Sure, they only saw each other on weekends, and they always called her when they did, but they were sixteen hours ahead so Zoey's time with them was short.

She felt like she was missing so much.

Just three more years of high school in Burbank. Then she could be here with them all year. Maybe even forever. And they could come back to California with her when she visited for holidays like she promised her dad she would.

Zoey stared at the ceiling of Mira's room in Celine's house, frowning at the shadows and moonlight swaying in through the window. They had all snuck into Mira's bed tonight, so she was in the middle, snoring softly. Normally that put Zoey right to sleep. She looked away from the ceiling and over at her girls, Mira splayed out facedown on the bed like a starfish, one leg thrown over Zoey, one arm thrown over Rumi on her other side. Rumi was curled into Mira’s side, her sleeping face barely visible over Mira’s neck. There was a certain amount of anxiety in Rumi that most people didn’t notice, but Zoey did. And it was totally gone when she was asleep, especially when she was snuggled up with them.

Zoey smiled slowly as she looked at them, Mira drooling onto her pillow, Rumi’s nose twitching a bit. She’d been back home for a week now, and they did their best to fill her in on what she had missed. They were extra cuddly with her, something they were getting more and more generous with as the years went on, and sneaking into each other’s rooms to sleep together every night was something new from just last year.

She loved it. She lived for it. She had missed it so much during the school year back in America that she didn’t feel like she got a good night’s sleep the whole time she was away. It should have been easy for her to hate her dad for making her finish school in Burbank.

But there she went with her feelings again, because she loved her dad.

He was a good man, just not for her mom. And she loved her mom too, and her stepdad here in Korea. She loved Burbank, and she loved Seoul, and she had some friends in the U.S. that she loved too, just not nearly as much as her girls. There was probably no one in the world she loved as much as her girls.

But she still loved. Too much. All the time. She wished there could be more than one of her to hold all of the love she had, because right now she didn’t know what to do with all of it.

It wasn’t really something she could explain to Rumi and Mira. Mira’s home life was… hard. Her parents were crazy wealthy but not very kind, and they wanted Mira to be something she wasn’t. She had attended a different boarding school every year that Zoey had known her, sometimes more than one if she got kicked out. She had told Rumi and Zoey just a couple days ago that Celine’s house with the two of them was the only place she had really been happy in her life.

And Rumi, sweet, beautiful Rumi, didn’t know a thing about her dad except that he died when she was a baby. All she knew about her mom was what Celine had told her and what was available on the internet. And Celine loved her, but it was obvious to Zoey even back when she was ten that Celine had never planned to have a child of her own. She hadn’t been ready to be Rumi’s mom, but she was doing her best to be her guardian, and Celine’s best was way better than most people’s.

Rumi and Mira had not had nearly enough love in their lives. And Zoey had too much. But how was she supposed to give them all the love they wanted and needed and deserved when she was only with them three months a year?

And now she had even fallen behind in her Hunter training, because a couple months ago Mira had mastered the hardest skill in the book: forming a weapon from the Honmoon.

Rumi had been able to summon a sword since she was eight, but Zoey knew better than to compare herself to Rumi when it came to that stuff. She was born for this, training with Celine since she could walk. And she was so kind and generous when it came to Zoey and Mira, sometimes helping them even more than Celine was able to, like when she helped Mira see the Honmoon for the first time. She said Zoey had helped too, but Zoey knew it was Rumi’s voice that did it.

And Zoey tried to tell herself that she shouldn’t compare herself to Mira either, especially when it came to fighting. Mira had always been a fighter, she punched an older kid in kindergarten because he was picking on a smaller kid and she hadn’t stopped fighting since. Not to mention Zoey was two years younger than Rumi and Mira, so really she should be proud of how well she was doing.

She was really feeling that two years’ difference this summer. Rumi and Mira were so beautiful, they practically looked like grownups, and she still felt like the same little kid with bandaids on her knees that they met in Olympic Park five years ago.

Zoey closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking at the Honmoon. She couldn't see it all the time yet, still had to concentrate for a moment to tap into the feeling of it, the energy that hummed all around her.

According to Celine, Hunters could affect the Honmoon in a way that normal people couldn't. They could concentrate it and weave the strands together to make weapons to fight demons. Zoey had been awestruck the first time she saw Rumi do it years ago, and when Mira summoned her gok-do to show Zoey for the first time a week ago it had moved her to excited tears.

Zoey sat up, careful not to dislodge Mira's leg and wake her up. She looked down at the empty edge of the bed beside her hip, watching the threads of the Honmoon roll and shimmer slowly. With a sigh, she touched the lines, feeling it between the air and the bed, just a thin layer of sound and light and love that protected the whole world. It shifted beneath her fingertips, rippled like the surface of a pond, but that was it.

She tried to picture it, a sword like Rumi’s or Celine's, a pole arm like Mira's. Celine had told them about Kimmy's axe and Miyeong's bow, told them stories about older Hunters’ staffs and spears and blades. Maybe that was Zoey’s problem, there were too many possibilities and she wanted to see them all.

Zoey's chest tightened in a familiar way and she sat up straighter. A pulse of neon red light raced across the room, disturbing the Honmoon. That could only mean one thing: demons.

“Hunters!” Celine called from her room down the hall, just as Zoey put her hand on Mira's shoulder to shake her awake. Rumi bolted up like she'd been dowsed in cold water. Mira groaned and curled herself into a ball. Between Rumi and Zoey, they managed to drag Mira out of bed and all get their sweats and sneakers on over their pajamas before meeting Celine in the hall.

She wasn't surprised to see them come out of one room. She had given up trying to stop them barely two weeks into last summer, but they still put up the pretense of sleeping separately at the start of the night just for her.

“Are you ready?” Celine asked. “Judging by the light pattern, it's a sizable tear, and not far.”

“Yes, Celine,” the three girls said in unison.

They hadn't been hunting actual demons with Celine for very long, but this was Zoey's favorite part. Running through the town she lived in on the outskirts of Seoul, practicing staying out of sight and staying silent as they moved. It was like being a ninja in a movie, and the girls all played their own game of doing more and more extreme parkour tricks to one-up each other as they went.

Sometimes, rarely, Celine even joined in.

But not this time. She was concerned, Zoey could tell by her body language. Rumi and Mira seemed to catch on too, as none of them tried anything fancy as they followed her silently through the midnight streets. The tear in the Honmoon must be big.

They ended up at the canal on the edge of town, a slow-moving stream of dark water spanned by old stone bridges and surrounded by moss-covered brick paths. It separated the edge of the town from farmland, so luckily this late at night it was deserted.

Of people, anyway.

“Water demons,” Celine whispered, holding up a hand to halt the girls as they peered over the edge of the roof of an empty building. They could see right down into the canal, see the rip in the Honmoon spreading across it, see the demons rising from the water.

Lots of them. More than Zoey had ever seen in one place. A knot of anxiety formed in her stomach and she reached instinctively for Rumi and Mira's hands, which they took and squeezed. She wasn't the only one feeling anxious.

Celine summoned her swords, and Zoey watched carefully. She just opened her hands at her sides and the Honmoon shifted, threads of light weaving together rapidly like maedeup, until it solidified into two nearly identical hwando. She flipped one in her hand and offered the hilt to Zoey.

Zoey tried not to blush in embarrassment as she took the sword, Rumi's saingeom and Mira's gok-do flashing into existence.

“Stay close, watch each other's backs,” Celine said, eyes narrowing as she scanned the battlefield below. “Let's go.”

Things didn't go bad right away.

It was pretty standard at first, the four of them working in sync to corral the demons back into the canal, slashing through them and leaving glittering smoke in their wake. Celine started singing to close the rift as they pushed the enemy back.

“Eodum-eul balkhiryeo,” Celine belted, her voice so clear and strong it almost took Zoey's breath away. She didn't love it like she loved Rumi's, but she couldn't deny the power of it.

“Uri norae bureurira,” the girls joined in, falling into harmony just like they'd practiced. This was the original version of the Hunter's Song that Zoey used to hear Rumi singing in her dreams, the first song Celine taught them, and if the stories were to be believed, the song that first created the Honmoon.

“Kudgeonhan i sori-ro…”

But there was a reason this rift had opened here, so close to Celine's house. In the middle of the night when there were no people around to feast on.

“I sesang-eul kochirira…”

It was a trap.

Two massive demons burst out of the canal, scattering the smaller demons in their wake and sending a geyser of water into the air. Rumi and Zoey were both knocked off their feet by the force of the water, and Zoey distantly heard Celine and Mira shouting from the other side of the canal.

“Zoey,” Rumi gasped beside her, and Zoey blinked her eyes open when she felt Rumi's hand on her arm. She coughed up some canal water. Gross. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Zoey rasped, sitting up and letting Rumi help her back to her feet. But Rumi winced when she pulled her up. “Rumi, are you hurt?”

“No,” Rumi said immediately, but her cheeks reddened and her eyes darted away from Zoey's face. Zoey swallowed hard. Rumi was usually better at lying.

They both turned to face the canal. The two demons that had just appeared were bigger than any Zoey had seen, and probably bigger than even Rumi had seen judging by the blank shock on her face. They were each at least nine feet tall, standing in the bottom of the canal and still taller than eye level for the girls up on the edge.

“Ogres,” Celine shouted from across the canal. Zoey couldn't even see her or Mira behind the broad frames of the demons. There was one facing each side of the canal, and Rumi and Zoey's was shorter but wider. It was blue-skinned and snarling down at them, fangs and horns curling out from its massive head.

Rumi summoned her sword, and Zoey…

Zoey had dropped Celine's hwando when she fell. It had dissolved back into the Honmoon. Rumi noticed and put a protective arm in front of her, stepping between Zoey and the ogre.

“Rumi no,” Zoey whispered, grabbing the wrist of the arm blocking her. She tried to tug her back, away from the canal. “Let's get back to Celine. There's a bridge-”

“Stay back,” Rumi shouted at the demon, and Zoey hadn't even noticed it was grinning at her specifically, having apparently clocked that she was unarmed. Rumi brandished her saingeom, stepping further in front of Zoey. “I said back!”

Rumi's voice seemed to shake the Honmoon, sending a pulse of bright blue light across it that appeared to make the demon stagger just a bit.

“Whoa,” Zoey breathed.

“Stay here,” Rumi whispered, glancing over her shoulder to meet Zoey's eyes. She was terrified, Zoey realized. “Stay safe. Please.”

“Rumi, don't," Zoey whispered back, eyes wide.

Rumi grabbed the back of her neck and kissed her soundly on the lips. Zoey froze in shock.

She hadn't really kissed her or Mira on the lips in the past couple of years, not since she mentioned to her friends in Burbank that she kissed her best friends when she got really excited and they told her it was weird. Zoey realized in this moment that Rumi had noticed. Probably Mira too.

They had noticed her pulling back, getting distant. They had noticed and they never mentioned it. Because Rumi only kissed her to distract her. And it worked. Zoey just stood there, stunned, when Rumi's lips left hers and her hand splayed against her chest to shove her backwards. Further from harm. Further from the danger that Rumi then turned and leapt right into.

Zoey sat on the ground at the edge of the brick path, soaking wet and numb with shock, watching her girls and Celine fight the two giant demons. She could see Celine and Mira now, flashing in and out of view on the other side of the canal as they fought. The ogres were slow, at least. But still strong.

Strong enough to hit Mira so hard her gok-do disappeared and she crumpled to the bricks on the other side of the canal. Rumi screamed, enraged, and the Honmoon shook again. Zoey’s heart leapt into her throat and she forced herself to her feet, sprinting toward the canal without a plan. Celine was in view again, standing between the demon and Mira, and Zoey had never seen that look on Celine’s face before.

Rage. Pure, blind rage. Zoey filed away the thought for later, but it crossed her mind for the first time that Celine knew better than anyone how Zoey felt when she had to be away from Rumi and Mira. Because Celine was always away from her girls, Miyeong and Kimmy. And if she loved them the way Zoey loved Rumi and Mira, the pain must have been unimaginable.

Rumi’s horror at seeing Mira fall had distracted her. Zoey watched as she fell too, sliding to the ground yards away in a heap, sword scattering away into shards of light. She met Celine’s eyes across the canal. Celine was protecting Mira, she couldn’t move. And Zoey was too far away from Rumi. The ogre was already swinging his other arm down toward her like a hammer, and Zoey wasn’t going to make it in time.

She had too many feelings. She was so scared, she was so angry, she was so hurt, she was so in love, so in love, so in love.

Zoey saw red.

She would remember it later as a blur, a haze of screaming and the Honmoon flashing vibrantly and blades, knives, daggers of light flying from her hands and sinking into the demon before it could touch Rumi. She would remember, clearly, the look of surprise on Celine’s face, followed by pride and relief. By the time Zoey finished off the demon that had knocked down Rumi, her Rumi, hers, Celine had taken care of the other one.

Zoey collapsed to her knees next to Rumi, still unconscious on the ground. She had hit her head when she fell and she was bleeding a lot, and Zoey tore off her own sweatshirt and pressed the sleeve to the gash she could feel just past her hairline above her right eye.

“Head wounds bleed a lot,” she whispered to herself, frantic. “They always look worse than they are, they just bleed a lot.”

“Zoey,” Celine called, and Zoey’s head whipped up to see Celine helping a wobbly Mira carefully to her feet. “The Honmoon.”

Right. Of course. They had to fix the Honmoon. There was still a huge hole in it, and before long more water demons would start pouring out. She had to sing. She had to stop panicking and remember… anything. The Korean words she had been singing minutes ago. Any of the lyrics she had filled journals with. But nothing was coming to her. All she could see was the blood soaking her sweatshirt, Rumi’s eyebrows furrowing as she struggled for consciousness. All she could hear was her heart, pounding out a booming bass line.

Zoey took a deep breath.

“This one is for the boys with the boomin’ system, top down, AC with the cooler system, when he come up in the club he be blazin’ up, got stacks on deck like he savin’ up,” she began rapidly.

Nicki Minaj lyrics came pouring out of her, echoing across the canal and sounding just a little bit silly in the aftermath of the insane battle that had just taken place. But maybe that was why it was working so well, because the Honmoon immediately started pulsing around her and knitting itself back together.

“And he ill, he real, he might gotta deal, he pop bottles and he got the right kinda build, he cold, he dope, he might sell coke, he always in the air but he never fly coach, he a mothafuckin’ trip, trip, sailor of the ship, ship, when he make it drip, drip, kiss him on the lip, lip, that's the kinda dude I was lookin' for, and yes, you'll get slapped if you're lookin', ho,” Zoey went on, the verses falling from her lips easier than any Korean songs she dutifully sang under Celine’s instruction. 

Celine, who was nearly across the nearest bridge with Mira’s arm slung over her shoulders. Mira, who was just now recognizing what Zoey was rapping and had a huge grin spreading across her face. But Zoey’s attention went right back to Rumi as she swapped the blood-soaked sleeve for the dry one to put pressure on the wound.

“I said, excuse me, you're a hell of a guy, I mean, my-my-my-my, you're like pelican fly, I mean, you're so shy and I'm lovin’ your tie, you're like slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye, oh, yes I did, yes I did, somebody please tell ‘em who the F I is, I am Nicki Minaj, I mack them dudes up, back coupes up and chuck the deuce up.”

The Honmoon was glowing brightly all across the canal, lighting up the water as it tied itself back together. Lights were glowing in Mira and Celine’s chests too, spinning out new threads to help fill the space. Celine looked… amused by Zoey’s song choice as she gently set Mira on her knees next to Zoey and took over holding the sweatshirt to Rumi’s head so Zoey could wrap her arms desperately around Mira.

“Boy, you got my heartbeat runnin' away,” Zoey was crying and laughing in equal measure as she kept singing into Mira’s neck, finally feeling a shred of sanity now that one of her girls was here in her arms, conscious. “Beatin' like a drum and it's comin' your way, can't you hear that boom, badoom, boom boom, badoom, boom, bass?”

“He got that super bass,” Mira added, and Zoey was laughing more than she was crying as Mira pulled her in tight, one hand on the back of her head and the other arm hanging limp at her side.

“Boom, badoom, boom boom, badoom, boom, bass,” they both sang.

“Yeah, that's that super bass,” Rumi croaked, and Celine practically had to dive out of the way of Zoey and Mira as they wrapped their arms around Rumi.

The Honmoon dimmed, all back together in one smooth piece unfurling across the world. Celine wrapped the three young Hunters in a hug, grateful they were all alive, before she began the arduous task of getting them back home.

Zoey didn’t sleep the rest of the night, even though Celine told her to before she went to bed. She paced restlessly in Rumi’s bedroom, where Celine had deposited them all after wrapping Rumi’s head in bandages and setting Mira’s arm in a sling. They were both out cold, Mira snoring once again, and Zoey could almost pretend that between her snoring before and now she hadn’t experienced the worst moments of her entire life.

Almost.

She kept summoning her knives from the Honmoon, though Celine had called them shin-kal. She wanted to see how many she could summon at once, and it seemed like she could summon as many as she could hold. They disappeared as soon as they fell from her hands and hit the ground. And she knew she was tired when it started to get harder to make them appear, her hands shaking, but she just couldn’t sit down.

She had too many feelings.

“Zoey?”

Zoey dropped all of her knives, looking over to find Rumi sitting up slowly. She immediately jumped to Rumi’s side on the bed, helping ease her up as gently as she could.

“Careful,” she whispered, flinching when Rumi’s hand went to the bandage on her head. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m okay,” Rumi laughed lightly, looking Zoey in the eyes and taking her fluttering hands in both of hers to hold them steady in her lap. Zoey swallowed hard, anxious. “Are you?”

“Am I what?” Zoey asked blankly, and Rumi sighed with a fond roll of her eyes.

“Okay,” she said gently, and Zoey blinked at her. She hadn’t really thought about it. Was she okay? Rumi reached up and laid a hand on her cheek, thumb sweeping softly across her cheekbone, and Zoey let out a shaky breath.

“Yeah,” she sighed, frowning. “I’m okay. I’m… okay.”

A line of worry formed between Rumi’s eyebrows and she squeezed the hand that she was still holding.

“Zoey,” she whispered, and Zoey’s cheeks burned.

“You noticed that I haven’t kissed you in a while,” she blurted, and Rumi’s eyes widened just a bit in surprise. “You and Mira haven’t mentioned it so I figured… you also maybe… thought it was weird that I used to do it so much.”

Rumi’s brow furrowed again and she started shaking her head, but the words were pouring out of Zoey now and she couldn’t stop.

“So you just kissed me to distract me,” she continued, and now she could feel her ears turning red too and she couldn’t look Rumi in the eyes anymore. “Which is smart, it worked, I was kind of a liability and you needed to-”

Rumi moved the hand on Zoey’s cheek around to the back of her neck, just like she had earlier in the night, and pulled Zoey in to kiss her. Zoey froze, again, eyes wide open as Rumi closed hers, sending a couple of tears down her cheeks. When she pulled back, Zoey just stared at her, confused.

“I kissed you earlier because I love you,” Rumi said quietly, and Zoey’s eyes went a little wider. “And I was scared I couldn’t protect you.”

Zoey just sat there, staring, feeling so much all at once that she didn’t know what to do.

“And yeah, Mira and I both noticed you’ve been getting a little more distant every year,” Rumi continued, glancing away sadly as she fidgeted with the baby hairs on the back of Zoey’s neck. “But we didn’t want to demand anything from you that you always gave so freely before. I didn’t know you started thinking it was weird.”

“I didn’t think it was weird, my friends in Burbank did,” Zoey blurted, defensive, but Rumi just looked relieved. “I just… I have too many feelings.”

“What are you talking about?” Mira grumbled, rolling over to look at both of them with a frown. She didn’t sit up, but she did prop her head up on her uninjured arm, elbow in her pillow. “Too many feelings? Who told you that?”

“Nobody,” Zoey muttered, face going even hotter under both of their attention. “I mean… I’ve always been like this. I’ve always loved people more than they love me. I miss you so much when I’m away from you and when we’re together I’m scared of how much I’ll miss you when I’m gone again. And I want to love you both so much more but I know it’s too much and I don’t want to scare you.”

Rumi did something then that surprised Zoey, genuinely. Right from where she was sitting on the bed, she lifted Zoey up by the waist and dropped her between herself and Mira. Rumi did not look like she should be strong enough to do that. But she did it like it was easy. Even Mira looked impressed as she let her head drop to the pillow so she could reach under Zoey’s shoulders with her uninjured arm and pull her in close. Rumi sandwiched her in from the other side, wrapping her arms around her waist and resting her chin on Zoey’s shoulder where she could look up at her.

“You don’t scare me,” Rumi whispered.

“Me either,” Mira added just as quietly, and when Zoey looked over at her she took the opportunity to press a soft kiss to her lips that made her turn even redder. “We miss you when you aren’t here, you know that right?”

“We feel it, both of us, every second that you’re gone,” Rumi agreed easily. “And when we spend time together without you, we spend most of it wondering what you’re doing without us.”

“You have a whole life we barely know anything about,” Mira murmured, burying her face in Zoey’s hair. “And when we try to ask you just say it isn’t important. But it’s important to us.”

“Because you’re important to us,” Rumi finished, pressing a kiss to Zoey’s burning cheek.

Zoey started sobbing.

She kept trying to form words through her tears, kept trying to tell them how scared she was when they both got hurt and how stressed she had been about not being able to summon a weapon from the Honmoon and how much easier it would be if she hated her dad and hated Burbank but she didn't, but it was impossible to know if they understood any of it because Mira and Rumi both started crying too.

Maybe Zoey had been wrong about not being able to talk to her girls about this stuff. Maybe she just had to trust them with more of herself.

“Please never stop feeling the way you do,” Rumi murmured when they eventually all stopped crying, the words tickling Zoey's neck where Rumi had buried her face. “Nothing has ever made me more comfortable with my own feelings than knowing how much you love me.”

“Oh, wow,” Zoey sniffled.

“Same,” Mira sighed into Zoey's hair. “Now are we gonna talk about the fact that you can flawlessly rap all of Super Bass even when fully panicking? Because that ruled.”

“And your shin-kal!” Rumi added excitedly. “They're so cool! Can you show us?”

Zoey grinned, squeezing her girls closer. Maybe having all of this love wasn't such a problem after all.

Chapter Text

Rumi honestly thought she would be more nervous about her first trip to the bathhouse.

She had built it up in her head for ages as this sort of ultimate goal, the thing she would be able to do once the Honmoon was sealed and her patterns were gone that symbolized everything else she had missed out on. She had lost count of the amount of times she almost told Zoey and Mira the truth about everything simply because Zoey looked so hurt but immediately tried to hide it every time she turned them down.

She wanted to be there with them so badly that the idea of the place practically haunted her, and now she was finally going. The circumstances were a bit different from the original plan, what with her being covered head to toe in patterns rather than being rid of them, but even that didn't scare her.

Because Zoey and Mira were totally smitten with her new look, and they told her that every chance they got. Mira had immediately started adding patterns like Rumi's to all her costume ideas, and Zoey had spent a whole evening with Rumi in front of their bathroom mirror trying to faithfully recreate the look of her facial patterns with makeup.

Nothing could have prepared Rumi for how quickly, and how completely, she felt at home in her skin thanks to their acceptance.

So instead of nervous, Rumi was just excited. The girls had told her all about it beforehand, how they picked their favorite spot because of its discretion without being too stuffy, how they always called the owner ahead of time to make sure the private locker room and bath were available so they'd be left alone. So even the usual nerves Rumi would feel about being out in public were abated.

They all giggled as they helped each other out of their disguises in the locker room, Zoey positively giddy at Rumi finally being present. She'd been talking about it almost nonstop since the day after the Idol Awards.

“Come on come on!” Zoey chanted, trying to yank Rumi’s hoodie over her head from behind her and only succeeding in getting Rumi's arms stuck up over her head.

“Zoeyyyy,” Rumi whined, and Mira had to push Zoey out of the way with a fond laugh to extract Rumi from the garment.

“I get it, I'm excited too,” Mira drawled. “But you're making this take even longer.” Zoey pouted as Mira steered her away by the shoulders. “We'll be in the next row. Come over when you're ready, babe.”

Rumi laughed at the sound of Zoey grumbling from the next row of lockers. She hummed idly as she shed her clothes and folded them carefully, patterns shimmering as they were revealed. She paused as she pulled a plush white robe from the locker, watching light pulse faintly along the marks on her arms in time with her heartbeat.

They hadn't seen all of her patterns yet, she realized. They'd been sleeping in a cuddle pile since the Idol Awards, sometimes in their pajamas, sometimes in their underwear. But they hadn't seen her naked.

Rumi knew Zoey and Mira had seen each other naked plenty of times at this very bathhouse. But she also suspected they had been intimate in a way that Rumi hadn't been able to be. She pulled back whenever things got heated, and they were always so respectful of her boundaries.

Even now, Rumi realized as she fastened the robe around her waist, they fell back into old habits, giving her space to undress on her own while the two of them changed out of their clothes one row over. Maybe now, the boundaries could change. Maybe they wanted more with her too, like she wanted with them.

“Maybe… they’ll understand.”

“No Rumi. Nothing can change until your patterns are gone.”

Rumi hated the word ‘maybe.’

For the first time that day, a spike of anxiety ran through her. She clutched her robe closed at her neck out of habit.

No, she was being ridiculous. Celine was wrong, Zoey and Mira had proven that a thousand times over. Her patterns started turning purple at the edges, changing in time with her racing heart.

“Rumi?” Zoey asked gently, and Rumi jumped. She turned around to find Zoey and Mira peering around the end of the row, robes on and hair up in towels. When they saw she was in her robe, they both approached her carefully. A warm hand fell to Rumi's lower back, another curling around her shoulder. The girls hemmed her in, and Rumi smiled.

“You okay, sweetheart?” Mira murmured.

“Yeah, sorry, I just… got nervous,” Rumi laughed.

Mira moved behind her and started gathering her braid up on top of her head, wrapping it snug in a towel. Zoey placed her hands over Rumi's, still fisted at her throat, and smiled up at her.

“It's okay, this is a big step,” Zoey said softly. Mira gave the towel a final tug to make sure it was secure, drawing a small laugh out of Rumi, and slid her hands down to her shoulders. “We can take it slow, sorry I pushed you.”

“Don't be sorry, I love that you're excited,” Rumi sighed, and she let Zoey ease her hands away from her collar. She lowered their intertwined fingers to swing between them, drawing out another laugh from Rumi. “I'm excited too.”

“Good, you should be, Borasaek,” Mira murmured, lips brushing a kiss to Rumi's cheek with the words, and Rumi and Zoey both practically swooned.

It was just two nights ago that they had all finally talked about the dreams they had of each other as kids before the Honmoon brought them together, how Rumi could feel them and Zoey could hear them and Mira could see them. And ever since, Mira had been sprinkling the nicknames she had given her ghosts into conversation, and every time Zoey and Rumi melted.

“Wanna head out there?” Mira asked as she gave Rumi's shoulders a squeeze, and judging by the smug smile on her face she was pleased with the reaction she got of Rumi sighing blissfully and Zoey's cheeks turning pink.

Rumi nodded and Zoey squealed, grabbing Rumi by the arms and yanking her toward the door. Mira was dragged along with her by her hands on Rumi’s shoulders, and they were all giggling again by the time they made it out to the bath.

The room was low lit and full of steam, and by the time Rumi had done a slow turn and looked all around the room, Mira and Zoey were already taking their robes off. Rumi tried not to look, she really did. But they were also glancing at each other, Mira smirking and Zoey beaming with excitement, and there was something so… normal about it. There was nothing particularly heated in the way they looked at each other in this moment, just a quick glance of appreciation as they both lowered themselves into their own sections of the large, round tub in the center of the room.

Rumi blushed. They were both so gorgeous. And now they were looking at her, still standing at the edge of the tub in her robe.

“Do you want us to close our eyes?” Zoey asked, immediately picking up on Rumi’s hesitation.

“I don’t really want to,” Mira sighed dramatically, and Zoey shot her a glare. “But I will, obviously.” Zoey nodded in approval and Mira smiled even as she rolled her eyes. “It’s no big deal, Rumi.”

They were both looking at her again, waiting for her to answer, and they really meant it. Rumi’s heart fluttered. She adored these girls.

“No, I don’t want you to,” she said, managing the smallest hint of a smirk, and Zoey’s eyes went wide above her grin. Mira smirked a bit more, impressed, and Rumi finally shed her robe.

Again, she tried not to look at them. Tried to play it cool, just slide into the bath and not make a big deal out of it. But she couldn’t help it when she heard Zoey’s breath catch. She looked at them both as she lowered herself into the hot water, and they were staring. Openly. Unabashedly. And yeah, damn, that was quite a trip for her ego.

“You’re so pretty, Rumi,” Zoey breathed.

Mira just said “Wow.”

Rumi preened a bit as she sank back against the edge of the tub. Then it all sort of… washed over her, all at once.

She was here. In the bathhouse. With her girls. They’d just seen her naked and called her pretty. And the wave of tension and anxiety that had started in the locker room just fell away as all three of them tilted their heads back and closed their eyes.

“Aaahhhhh… wow… this feels amazing…” Rumi sighed, lightheaded and boneless in her sudden relaxation.

“We’ve been saying that for yeeears,” Mira drawled with a smile in her voice.

“Right? See what you’ve been missing?” Zoey murmured, wiggling a little bit in place as if to burrow further into the steaming water.

“Oh yeah,” Rumi exhaled. “I wanna come here every day of our three month hiatus.”

They all let out long sighs of contentment, but Zoey’s was cut a bit shorter than the other two.

“Rumi,” Zoey began, eyes popping open to stare up at the ceiling. “I’m so happy you didn’t like… die.”

“Wow, Zoey, way to be super literal,” Mira replied sarcastically, but there was still that subtle smile on her face when she glanced back at Rumi. “But same.”

Rumi was about to respond when Zoey started sniffling, and she and Mira both looked over at her just in time to see tears running down her face.

“You guys just mean so much to me-” Zoey began, and her words immediately started blending together and becoming completely nonsensical as Mira and Rumi both started crying right along with her. “And I don’t know what I would do without you-”

Mira sobbed something along the lines of “If you keep crying I’m gonna cry” while Rumi bawled “I love you guys so much” and it wasn’t long before they were all just sitting in the tub crying their eyes out.

The group sobbing eventually quieted to hiccups and sniffles, and finally they were all scrubbing at their faces with the hot water to wash the tears off.

“Is there um… usually this much crying?” Rumi laughed, her voice still a bit fragile.

“No, Paransaek,” Mira said with a pointed glare, to which Zoey blushed and pouted at her. But Rumi laughed again, and then the other two joined her, and soon enough they were all sighing and leaning back against the edge of the bath again.

“But besides the crying, you like it?” Zoey asked after a long silence. Rumi hummed comfortably and nodded, opening one eye to find Zoey looking at her in that same adoring way she did when they were working on a new song and Rumi sang Zoey’s new lyrics for the first time.

Rumi’s heart was fluttering again. She opened both eyes and looked at Mira to find her just watching over her girls with a contented smile, and Rumi felt like there was too much air in her chest. She hadn't been able to feel what they felt through the Honmoon since they met eleven years ago (with one notable exception), but in this moment she knew exactly what they were feeling, because that feeling was hers too. She was in love with these girls. Her little fires in the dark.

“Can I… ask you guys something?” she asked before she could lose her nerve, and they both sat up a bit to make sure she knew they were listening. She blushed under their attention. “So I've been thinking a lot about… myself.” She rolled her eyes at her own words and Zoey giggled. “I mean my habits. My boundaries. And you both have always been so respectful and so sweet about me being… uh… modest?”

Rumi glanced between them nervously, but there was no reason for the anxiety. They were both smiling at her softly, nodding for her to go on. They looked… proud of her? And that thought spurred Rumi on.

“But I've realized that so much of my time and energy was spent hiding my patterns that I never really stopped to consider what I want,” she said in a rush. “And I want… more. Of you. Both of you.” Mira grinned like the cat that caught the canary. Zoey bit her lip to stop from interrupting with a squeal of delight. “So can I maybe start um… sharing a dressing room with you?”

It was hilarious to watch the different ways they both tried to play it cool. Zoey immediately squealed and clapped before forcibly shoving her hands back under the water and clearing her throat like Rumi hadn't just seen the whole thing. Mira lit up, her eyes going all soft and wet like she was going to start crying again before she schooled her expression back to something closer to her usual disaffect.

“Yay- I mean yeah sure totally,” Zoey said, lowering her voice after it cracked excitedly on the first word.

“Yeah I guess if you want,” Mira drawled at the same time, shrugging.

Rumi laughed. She couldn't help it.

“You're both so cute,” she sighed. Mira blushed and glanced away, unable to stop herself from smiling. Zoey had to physically wrap her arms around herself to stop from reaching out to Rumi, which made Rumi pause. She met Zoey's eyes and saw a question there. “You can come closer… if you want.”

Zoey was at her side before Rumi could blink, water sloshing over the edge of the tub from the speed at which she displaced it. Rumi blushed, overwhelmed by her sudden closeness, but Zoey still wasn't touching her. Her patterns pulsed with light when her heartbeat fluttered and it drew Zoey's eyes like a magnet.

“But what do you want?” Zoey asked, voice low. She was leaning in close, eyes roving slowly over Rumi's patterns. Mira started humming something, a song Rumi knew was familiar but couldn't quite place.

“I want Mira to sing for me,” she said with a grin, and Zoey smirked as both of them looked at Mira. Mira sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes, but her cheeks turned a little pinker.

“Touch me baby, put your lips on mine,” Mira sang, holding Rumi's gaze intently. “Could go to hell, but we'll prob’ly be fine.” Zoey's smile widened as Mira approached, taking her time compared to Zoey's wild lunge across the bath. Rumi swallowed hard as Mira settled right next to her, resting her elbow on the edge of the tub behind Rumi. “I know you want it, baby you can have it, oh I've never done it, naked in Manhattan.”

“Woo!” Zoey added, and the Honmoon shimmered and buzzed around them as Rumi laughed.

“Touch me baby,” Mira continued, grinning as she leaned further into Rumi's space until she could feel her breath on her cheek but still wasn't touching.

“Touch me, touch me, touch me, touch me!” Zoey chanted, shimmying her shoulders in the water to make Rumi laugh again.

“Touch me baby,” Mira repeated, so close Rumi shivered.

“Naked in Manhattan!” Zoey sang, and this time Rumi supplied the “Woo!”

“Touch me baby,” Mira laughed, finally taking Rumi's hand under the water and lifting it up to her own cheek where Rumi could feel the heat of her blush.

“Touch me, touch me, touch me, touch me!” Rumi chanted right along with Zoey as she found Rumi's other hand and held it tight.

“Touch me baby,” Mira murmured against Rumi's palm as she pressed a kiss to it.

“Naked in Manhattan!” they all finished together, laughing again as Zoey and Mira settled in Rumi's space. Mira kept her eyes locked on Rumi's, lowering their hands back into the water, and Zoey hummed with excitement.

“Can I touch you, unnie?” she whispered, and Rumi's patterns flared neon pink as she blushed darker than she ever had in her life. Mira laughed, delighted, but Rumi couldn't take her eyes off Zoey. “Oh, my. I'll be remembering that for later.”

“Yes, please,” Rumi finally breathed, and Zoey's eyes softened as they met hers again.

“Don't be nervous, I'll be gentle,” she whispered, and as if to prove her point she gave Rumi's hand a reassuring squeeze. “I'll go real slow, okay? And you tell me if it's too much.”

Rumi nodded, glancing at Mira. She just rested her chin in the hand propped up on the edge of the bath, watching with great interest and a smile on her face that only slightly reminded Rumi of a hungry wolf.

Her attention was brought back to Zoey when she took Rumi's face in her hands, thumbs brushing along the patterns on her cheeks like she was trying to memorize them. Rumi let out a comfortable little hum and Zoey's pupils dilated just a bit.

“Even your humming is beautiful,” she whispered, eyes fixed on Rumi's lips. “I love your voice so much, Rumi. I wish I could wrap myself up in it like a blanket.”

Before Rumi could even start to think of a response, Zoey caught her lips in an indulgent kiss, slow and hot and deep. A whimper was drawn out of Rumi, a sound she'd never heard herself make before, and Zoey smiled against her mouth as she drank it in eagerly.

They had kissed before. Plenty of times. In fact the first thing Zoey did when they all first met was kiss them both. When they were teenagers they started making out in earnest, though kissing was about as far as Rumi would allow herself to go with her girls for fear that she would lose herself in them and her patterns would be discovered.

But this was new. This was as heated a kiss as she and Zoey had ever shared, and Rumi was already naked. She didn't have to hold back. Her hands roamed across Zoey's bare skin, fingertips pressing into her shoulders, her sides, her hips, anywhere that elicited a pleased little sigh into Rumi's mouth.

Zoey released Rumi after enough time to leave her gasping, panting against Zoey’s lips. Rumi didn't know when Mira had sat up and leaned closer, the last few minutes a blur of pure sensation, but as soon as she got a few breaths in Mira's hand was on her chin, tilting her head away from Zoey and right into Mira's lips.

Mira was thorough. She started slow, gentle even, giving Rumi a few moments to find her footing before she licked into her mouth. Rumi whimpered again, breathless, and Zoey laughed into her neck where she was leaving a trail of burning kisses along the glowing pink patterns there.

Rumi was gone. Between the hot water and the steam, Zoey's lips on her pulse point and hands on her hips, Mira's tongue in her mouth and hand on her jaw, there wasn't a shred of sanity left in Rumi. She was floating away on the waves of the Honmoon.

“Okay, slow it down,” Mira's voice sounded far away, but maybe that was just Rumi's own heartbeat in her ears. She opened her eyes to see Mira booping Zoey's nose with a finger while Zoey pouted at her. Mira rolled her eyes and beckoned her forward, and they both leaned in across Rumi, lips meeting in a short but searing kiss that made Rumi's cheeks burn and her patterns flash pink. “Let's not kill her on her first trip here.”

Zoey grumbled in response, pulling a laugh out of Rumi. But the sound stopped in her throat when Mira's hand settled on her navel, nails drumming once on her abs and the grin rising back to her face when Rumi's muscles jumped under the touch.

“Don't want to scare you off,” Mira whispered, lips brushing Rumi's ear with the words as she started kissing along her jaw. Rumi exhaled shakily, overwhelmed. “It'd be a shame not to be able to see all those pretty patterns.”

“Fiiiiine,” Zoey huffed, and Rumi gasped when she felt Zoey's fingers following the patterns down her side from her ribs to her hip. “You're right, our girl deserves better than a bathhouse for her first time with us."

Rumi's breath stuttered in her chest. She felt the heat of her blush creeping down her neck and up her ears. She'd been agonizing over how to bring it up with them, how to tell them what she wanted, and then Zoey had just casually mentioned having sex with her like it had always been part of the plan. God that was hot. 

Mira pulled back enough to peer into Rumi's eyes, reaching up with her free hand to brush her fingers over Rumi's heated cheek.

“You okay?” Mira asked quietly, and her tone was gentle but Rumi could hear the seriousness in it. “Too much?”

Zoey paused, resting her chin on Rumi's shoulder and tangling her fingers with Mira's just above Rumi's belly button.

“Gimme a second,” Rumi laughed, crinkling her nose a bit in embarrassment as her patterns dimmed from hot pink to smoldering purple.

“Don't be embarrassed," Zoey murmured, and Rumi glanced over to find her smiling at her so softly it made her heart ache. “I'm sorry, I got carried away.”

“We,” Mira corrected gently, fingers tracing along the patterns on Rumi's temple and cheek.

“Don't be sorry,” Rumi sighed, and she reached up to both of them, a hand firm at the back of each of their necks to ground herself. Her fingertips slid up into the soft baby hairs beneath their towels and she grinned when they both smiled at the contact. “I like you getting carried away.”

Zoey hummed, delighted, but remained still with her chin on Rumi's shoulder. They all just waited there for a few moments while Rumi slowed her breathing, patterns fading back to their comfortable opalescent shimmer. Maybe still just a bit pinker than usual, being surrounded by her naked girlfriends and all.

“God, Rumi, your patterns are so beautiful,” Mira sighed, and Rumi realized she was looking into the water at Rumi's stomach where Mira and Zoey's hands were still joined over her abdomen. Rather than the flush of pink fading everywhere Zoey had kissed her, the patterns there seemed to be turning… golden?

“I've never seen that before,” Rumi admitted quietly, and Zoey turned her attention to their intertwined hands as well.

“They mean something, right? The colors?” Zoey asked, lifting her head so she could run her fingers down the patterns on Rumi's shoulder. A blushy pink glow followed her fingers, fading back after a few moments of contact.

“Seems that way,” Rumi said with a thoughtful frown. “They used to just be kind of bruisey purple all the time. And they'd glow pink when they spread.”

“But now the pink means… overwhelmed?” Mira teased, pressing a kiss to Rumi's other shoulder and watching the pink glow form and then recede right where her lips had been.

“I guess,” Rumi laughed helplessly. Zoey moved her hand away from Mira's and the gold faded to pink. “Hm?”

Zoey's eyes were wide with curiosity as she laid her hand at the base of Rumi's throat, covering the dip between her collarbones. The pink glow spread there, creeping down her chest and up her neck.

Mira followed Zoey's lead, lifting her hand from Rumi's stomach and placing it over Zoey's, interlocking their fingers. The pink was replaced by that same gold, bright and warm and shimmering. Rumi's cheeks turned a bit redder as Mira and Zoey met her eyes.

“It's both of us,” Zoey said quietly, eyes bouncing between Rumi's and Mira's as a smile spread across her face. They tried again, each of them separately placing a hand on Rumi's cheek and then together, watching the pink light turn golden.

“Yeah, it is,” Mira laughed, a little awestruck.

“That's…” Rumi began slowly, holding one arm out of the water so they could both touch and she could see the color better herself. “That's the same gold from my dreams. Of you two. My little fires.”

Zoey's eyes filled with tears, just like they had the night before last when Rumi told them she used to call them that. She wrapped her arms around Rumi's waist and snuggled her face into her neck. Mira slid her hand up Rumi's arm to intertwine their fingers and lifted her hand to her lips, kissing her knuckles.

“Maybe the real golden Honmoon was the friends we made along the way,” Zoey said, voice muffled against Rumi's neck.

Rumi burst out laughing. Mira booed.

“You're the worst,” Mira groaned, leaning over Rumi to kiss Zoey's cheek. “But I love you anyway.” She leaned back, pecking Rumi's lips once, twice, three times on her way. “Love you too.”

“Love you too,” Rumi and Zoey sighed back in unison. Zoey giggled against Rumi's cheek as she pressed a few kisses there too.

They eventually got pruney and got out of the bath, all giggling and teasing and touching as they wrapped themselves in robes and let their hair down.

Zoey ran ahead and got Rumi's clothes from her locker so she could change in the same row as her and Mira. And also so she could steal Rumi's hoodie. When Rumi tried to steal it back, Zoey just looked at her with her big brown eyes.

“I want it ‘cause it smells like you, unnie,” she pouted.

Rumi caved immediately. Mira rolled her eyes as she finished buttoning Rumi's pants. She tugged Rumi forward by her waistband.

“You are so lucky we're the same age,” Mira said, voice low, as Zoey wrapped her arms around Rumi's midriff from behind. “Or I'd be using that ‘unnie’ trick on you too and you'd never say no again.”

“Yeah, I am lucky,” Rumi sighed, smiling up at Mira in a way that made her blush. Zoey giggled behind her. Mira rolled her eyes again, failing to suppress a grin as she leaned down and kissed Rumi softly.

The Honmoon sparkled around them, painting the locker room in shimmering rainbow light.

Pressed between her girls, all of Rumi's patterns lit up golden.

Chapter Text

One of the first things the girls did all together under Celine’s instruction was make norigae.

Celine sat them all down at a tea table covered in materials, thread and yarn and string and beads and charms of every color, shape and size. She showed them her own pair of norigae, one for each hwando she wielded. She taught them about the different parts of the norigae, how to make simple maedeup with thread or string.

And she told them the truth about their destiny.

Rumi already knew all of it, of course. But Mira and Zoey had just arrived at Celine’s house for “summer camp” yesterday.

They at least had some sense of the magic in the world, having been led inexorably to each other and to Rumi by the deepest parts of their souls. Neither of them had been able to explain it after they had all run into each other's arms from across the city, across the world in Zoey’s case, but they knew each other. They had known each other their whole lives.

So the existence of demons and their evil king Gwi-Ma and the Honmoon that protected the world wasn't that far-fetched, honestly. Especially when Celine explained that the Honmoon had chosen them. Connected them. It was the reason they were bound together before they had even met.

And that should have been a scary thought for Mira at age twelve. But it wasn't. Not at all. It should have made her angry, being told that she was destined for this (what about her free will?) It should have upset her, being tossed aside so easily by her parents, foisted onto a stranger (what about family? Her father was always harping on about how important the family name was.) It should have annoyed her, being thrown in with two girls that couldn't be more different from her (Zoey, so loud and bright and energetic. Rumi, so poised and gentle and perfect.)

But she loved them. Maybe that was the Honmoon's doing too, but if it was she didn't care. Because she loved these girls before she ever laid eyes on them. She loved them before she heard their voices. She loved their ghosts for five years, just knowing they were out there loving her too.

So when they made their first norigae, weaving colored string together in intricate knots while Celine explained the Honmoon, Mira wanted that love to be a part of it.

“Rumi?” she asked quietly when Celine gave them time to just work and talk together, leaving the three girls briefly to go make snacks. Rumi blinked at her the same way she had been the past two days, like she was surprised Mira was talking to her. No… not surprised. More like… excited?

“Mira?” she replied, saying her name like it was precious, and Mira blushed. Zoey, who had been humming nonstop since Celine left the room, giggled, and Mira stuck her tongue out at her. Rumi grinned, and Mira didn't know for sure but she was getting the impression that Rumi hadn't spent much time with other girls her own age. Everything they did seemed to thrill her.

“What's your favorite color?” Mira asked, and Rumi blushed prettily when Mira's eyes stayed trained on her face. She really seemed to think about it, eyes wandering over all the different beads and spools of thread on the table.

“I guess… gold,” Rumi answered eventually, lips quirking to the side a bit in what could almost be called a smirk. “Like we're gonna turn the Honmoon.”

“Oooooo,” Zoey whispered, eyes going wide. “That's a really cool answer.”

Rumi’s blush spread to her ears and she let out a fluttery little laugh.

Mira hadn't smiled for so long continuously in her entire life. She was obsessed with these girls.

“Zoey?” Mira asked, and Zoey wiggled in place. "Same question.”

“Pink!” Zoey answered immediately, and she reached over the small table and tucked some of Mira's hair behind her ear, running her fingers through it indulgently as she pulled away. “Like your hair! So pretty!”

Rumi hummed in agreement, copying the move on Mira's other ear. She let her touch linger until Mira wrinkled her nose ticklishly.

“It is really pretty,” Rumi said quietly, and Mira didn't even care how uncool she looked when she grinned.

“I can't believe you guys can both dye your hair,” Zoey huffed, squinting in concentration as she gathered bright blue string together in tassels. “My mom still won't let me.”

Rumi hummed again, noncommittal, and Mira snorted.

“I didn't exactly ask for permission,” Mira shrugged, and Zoey's eyes went wide again.

“So cool,” she sighed.

Mira laughed and reached for a tray of beads, picking through them slowly.

“What’s yours?” Rumi asked, and Mira paused.

She wanted to say ‘the color of Zoey's freckles’ and ‘the color Rumi turns when she blushes.’

Instead, she just smirked and held up her partially finished norigae.

“Black.”

They all burst into giggles as Celine returned with healthy snacks and tea, smiling fondly. She jumped right back into teaching them the history of the Hunters, and Rumi and Zoey didn't notice the two beads Mira selected for the center of her norigae.

One gold. One pink.

They made new ones every few years. Whenever they reached certain training milestones, Celine would sit them all down at the tea table again, teaching them more intricate knots each time.

The girls’ norigae changed wildly as they aged, as they went through different phases, as they became Hunters, as they became Huntrix.

Rumi's were usually purple, but she added more black to each iteration. She used a lot of sun imagery when she was younger, trying to emulate her mom and Celine, the Sunlight Sisters, but drifted to more moons and stars in her teens. There was one flower charm she always used, moving it from norigae to norigae. When she was seventeen and the girls had snuck a couple bottles of soju out to the Hunter's Tree in the middle of the night, they all got drunk for the first time and she finally admitted she kept it because it reminded her of her dad, but she wasn't sure why. She had only the vaguest memories of him, and she never talked about him, so revealing that part of herself to her girls led to a lot of crying, cuddling, and kissing that night.

Zoey's were never the same color twice. Her first one was blue, which Mira took a secret bit of joy in since she was Paransaek, her blue sparkly ghost. She made a purple one at twelve, a pink one at sixteen, and a yellow one at eighteen. She always included a little charm bracelet with her name on it that she made with her parents when she was little to teach her to spell it. Whenever she had a new favorite animal she would swap out or add charms of it.

Mira always struggled with hers.

When Celine first taught them about norigae, she said they were originally meant to contain blessings. The act of making one involved having an intention and putting that intention into the work. It wasn't necessarily still a part of modern norigae, but Mira latched onto it. Her parents liked to think she was a reckless wild card, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Everything she did was intentional.

The way she loved her girls was intentional.

Every new norigae she made included them somehow. The first one with their favorite colored beads. The second one with tassels in purple and blue, for her ghosts. The third took inspiration from Zoey's, adding little strings of beads that spelled both of their names.

When she was twenty and they had just won their third Idol Awards, they were interrupted during their celebration at Celine's house mid-norigae-making by a pretty nasty demon attack.

Gwi-Ma tried something different this time. He snuck a small army through the Honmoon before the Idol Awards, before they strengthened the Honmoon for the year, and attacked right after when their guard was down.

Zoey got hurt. It was Mira's fault.

“Mira, come on,” Zoey said lightly, forcing a smile to her face through her wincing as Celine wrapped bandages tight around her waist. “It's not that bad.”

They were all in the infirmary in Celine's house, dressed in fresh sweats as morning sunlight slanted through the windows. Mira sat stone still on her cot while Rumi dabbed antibacterial ointment on the gashes on her shoulder. Zoey reached over for her hand, which Mira took without looking at her.

“It wasn't your fault,” Rumi whispered, smoothing a bandage over the wound carefully. “...Does it hurt?”

Mira grunted, glancing away when Rumi placed a feather-light kiss on her shoulder. Now wasn't the time for her to get all soft and blushy. Rumi sighed and Mira closed her eyes.

“There. Is that too tight?” Celine asked in her usual business-like tone. Zoey sat up straighter and twisted experimentally.

“Nope, feels good,” she said tightly, a clearly fake smile still fixed to her face. She was just wearing a sports bra so Celine could access the deep slashes just above her left hip. Rumi rubbed a hand down Mira's back softly and she flinched. Rumi pulled her hand back like she'd been burned.

“Rumi, you still have some cuts on your face,” Celine said, and Rumi reached up to touch three thin scratches on her jaw like she'd forgotten they were there. “Zoey, can you help her with them?”

“Of course,” Zoey reached her hands out to Rumi, wiggling her fingers. “C'mere c'mere c'mere!”

Rumi lingered by Mira for another moment like she wanted to touch her again, but then she smiled and went to Zoey's cot. Zoey let out a quiet ‘yay!’ as she took Rumi’s hands in hers.

“Mira, come with me,” Celine said, tilting her head toward the door before walking out of it. Mira sighed and followed her out without looking at her girls, even though she could feel their eyes on her.

The house was a mess, broken glass littering the floor, claw marks on the walls, broken furniture and appliances strewn about the kitchen. Celine went straight to the sunroom, the tea table covered in craft supplies one of the only things untouched. Mira sat down heavily on the floor and buried her face in her hands.

“Tell me what went wrong,” Celine said calmly, sitting down beside her and placing a hand on her uninjured shoulder.

“I was sloppy,” Mira growled, dropping her hands to her knees and clenching them into fists. She picked a spot on the ground between herself and Celine to glare at. “Rumi didn't sleep well last night so I was paying extra attention to her and they knew , the demons… they knew I was distracted. They snuck up on me, and Zoey…”

She couldn't continue, instead swallowing hard and clenching her jaw. She kept replaying it over and over in her head, Rumi's eyes widening in horror as a huge demon caught Mira by surprise, Zoey coming out of nowhere and taking most of the hit.

“That's not what went wrong.”

Mira looked up at Celine blankly, too confused to be angry. Celine’s face gave away very little emotion, but Mira could see the care in her eyes, the stress in her jaw. She squeezed Mira's shoulder once and removed her hand.

“You didn't trust Rumi to take care of herself,” Celine said gently, and Mira stiffened. “You said she didn't sleep well. That's good, that you know that. That means you care about her. But you have to know the difference between caring and protecting.”

Mira scoffed and looked away, cheeks reddening.

“What are you talking about?” she snapped. “There isn't a difference. I protect them. I have to.”

Celine sighed, and Mira met her eyes again, expecting her to look annoyed or exasperated. But she was just… smiling, a bit ruefully.

“I know you're going to hate hearing this,” Celine said quietly. “But you remind me so much of myself at your age.”

Mira blinked, taken aback. This wasn't going the way she thought it would.

“Rumi is so much like her mom, even though she barely knew her,” Celine continued, eyes losing focus as her tone dipped to something soft and sad. “And Zoey-”

“Let me guess, she's just like Kimmy?” Mira drawled, raising an eyebrow.

Celine snorted. Like, actually snorted a laugh.

“No. Zoey isn't like anyone. Possibly in history,” Celine said with a grin, and Mira couldn't stop the laugh that burst out of her.

“Okay, I was gonna say you were full of shit, but now I'm listening,” Mira sighed, and Celine's smile turned fond again.

“When I was young, I made it my job to protect my girls,” Celine said, still quiet but very clear. “That's why there are three Hunters, after all. We cover each other's blind spots, make up for each other's weaknesses. Miyeong and Kimmy were both incredible at other things, but I was great at self-preservation. And my self extended to them.”

Celine paused, looking down at her hands, and something in Mira's chest clenched painfully.

“I failed them, in the end,” Celine murmured, staring at her open hands and slowly closing them into fists. “Both of them. I failed, and I will not, cannot, fail Rumi. I protect her. And I trust you to protect her too.”

Mira swallowed hard, eyes stinging. She didn't say anything, didn't think she even could. Celine met her eyes again.

“But I had to learn when to let her protect herself,” Celine said evenly. “So she didn't sleep well last night. I know her well enough, I trained her well enough, to know that when she's in a fight, that doesn't matter anymore. Her instincts are sharp. She's dialed into the Honmoon more than any Hunter I've known, and that's part of why the three of you fight so seamlessly together.”

Celine tilted her head, studying Mira, and for once Mira didn't feel judged. She just felt seen.

“You let your care for her interfere with your connection to her through the Honmoon, and that can be a very hard thing to separate,” Celine sighed.

“But don't I care for them because of the Honmoon?” Mira asked with a frown. Celine shook her head, smiling softly.

“Hunters are connected by the Honmoon,” Celine explained gently. “But that has never meant they had to care for each other. Or even like each other.”

That revelation floored Mira. She just blinked again, mouth hanging open slightly, and Celine’s hand was back on her shoulder.

“The way you three love each other is something special,” she whispered, and Mira's eyes were stinging again. “Something rare. It helps you be a better team, for sure. But it isn't because of the Honmoon. It just helped you find them.”

Celine stood up suddenly, offering Mira a hand which she took numbly.

“Summon your weapon,” Celine said crisply, and Mira did so without a thought. Celine laid her hands on Mira's wrists, guiding her into a stance pointing her gok-do out in front of herself at its full length. She stood at the point of the blade, nearly six feet away.

“This is how you protect them,” she said, gesturing to the space between them. “You hold the line. You control the distance between the enemy and your girls.” Mira nodded firmly and Celine gestured for her to relax her stance. “Beyond that, you have to trust them. Trust that they'll protect you too.”

Mira frowned, letting her gok-do dissipate back into the Honmoon, as Celine crossed her arms over her chest.

“Now, I know you're hiding another injury, so do you want to keep it from the girls and let me patch you up?” she asked bluntly, and Mira's hand went to the scratches on her thigh that she had, in fact, been hiding. “Or do you want to let them help you dress it and pretend I don't know?”

“Can't I just… take care of it myself?” Mira grumbled, blushing.

“No, you're not good at it,” Celine said flatly, and Mira scowled. “Just on yourself. You're very attentive when it's Rumi or Zoey. We need to work on your self-preservation.”

Mira wanted to argue, but she really didn't have a leg to stand on, so she just sighed dramatically and nodded.

“Whatever, fine, I'll let them help.”

Celine put her hand on Mira's shoulder again as she walked past her, the contact brief but affirming.

“Don’t beat yourself up about this,” she said quietly over her shoulder as she left the room. “And don't stay up too late.”

Mira sighed and stood alone in the sunroom for a couple minutes, shaking her arms and legs out anxiously, before she slowly made her way back to the infirmary. She listened at the door for a moment and didn't hear voices, making her smirk at what she believed she was about to walk in on.

Sure enough, when she burst noisily through the door, Zoey was in Rumi's lap, fingers tangled into her braid as they made out sloppy-style. They both let out shrieks of surprise, and only Rumi's hands on Zoey's ribs kept her from falling off the cot as they both whipped around to face the intrusion.

“Miraaaaa,” Rumi whined, face bright red, and Zoey pouted at her, dropping her hands to cover Rumi's at the top of her waist.

“What if I had fallen down?” Zoey asked dramatically as Mira closed the door behind her. “What if I fell and hit my head and got amnesia and forgot all about you both?”

Mira's eyebrows shot up and Rumi dug her fingertips into Zoey's ribs, making her laugh and squirm a bit at the touch.

“That's not a fun hypothetical,” Rumi grumbled, fingers sliding down a bit to brush gently at the top of the bandages around Zoey's waist.

“Oh, sorry,” Zoey muttered with a sheepish smile, and Mira heaved a huge sigh so they would both look at her.

“What does it take to get some attention around here?” she drawled. “Do I have to take my clothes off?”

And without further ado, she pushed her pants down her hips, stepping out of them in just her underwear. Zoey laughed, delighted, and Rumi turned even redder. But Rumi was also on the correct side to see the four long scratches on her thigh, and she gasped.

“Mira,” she said, voice soft and strained, and Zoey heard the panic in her tone and immediately got off of her lap. They both stood from the cot, Zoey letting out a gasp of her own when she circled around and saw what Rumi was looking at with her hands on Mira's hips.

They both doted on her, sitting her down on the cot and taking turns with alcohol swabs and ointment and bandages, all soft voices and soft touches and soft looks. Mira just watched them, only speaking when they asked her questions, and by the time her leg was wrapped in clean gauze her chest was full and her head was floaty with adoration.

“Thank you,” Mira murmured, smiling at them in that quiet, fond way she didn't let anyone else see. Her eyes turned a bit wet as Zoey and Rumi watched, and she glanced down at their hands resting gently on her knees. “And I'm sorry.”

“Mira-” Zoey and Rumi began in unison, ready to argue, but Mira just reached out and pulled them both against her, tucking herself into an embrace between them. They both wrapped their arms around her eagerly, automatically, Zoey being extra careful as she was on Mira's side with the bandaged shoulder.

“I should have trusted you, Rumi,” she said, voice muffled against Rumi's shoulder. “Instead of hovering over you. And Zoey, thank you.” She turned her head, lips against Zoey's shoulder now. “You saved my ass. I love you both.”

She could practically feel Rumi and Zoey meeting each other's eyes over the top of her head, hoping they were smiling. And she decided they were when they both just snuggled in closer, pressing kisses to her hair.

“I love you both too,” Rumi whispered.

“Love you both so much ,” Zoey sniffled.

When they returned to the sunroom to finish their new norigae, they all found that Celine had left them presents, charms she'd gotten from fans and online that she thought they would like: a golden moon for Rumi, a glass sea turtle for Zoey, and for Mira…

Two little clay beads, shaped to look like the faces of her girls.

Her eyes started stinging again, and Rumi and Zoey smothered her with kisses when they saw why. Rumi softly sang a Taylor Swift song while they all finished their norigae, hers in purple and black, Mira’s in pink, Zoey’s in yellow.

“And isn’t it just so pretty to think, all along there was some-” Rumi sang, plucking at the Honmoon so it shimmered around them along with her voice, and Zoey sighed dreamily. “Invisible string, tying you to me…”

Mira smiled, soft, and remembered a thought she had at this very table years ago. She was obsessed with these girls.

It was the middle of the night, nearly a month after the defeat of Gwi-Ma, when Mira showed up at Celine’s house alone.

The girls had all been over together just a couple of days ago, mostly for Rumi’s sake. She needed to talk to Celine about… everything, really. And Zoey and Mira had offered to come for emotional support. By the end of the day, Rumi and Celine had started to heal their fractured relationship.

But that day had been about Rumi. And Mira had been stewing for two days, until she couldn’t stand it anymore. So she snuck out of Rumi’s bed, made sure Rumi and Zoey were snuggled up together enough that they wouldn’t miss her for a while, and here she was. Pounding on Celine’s door at two in the morning.

Celine didn’t seem surprised to see her.

“Mira,” she said simply, and her shoulders sagged. She looked tired, something she never allowed the girls to see when they were in training.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” Mira said brusquely, walking past Celine into the house without being asked. She heard the door shut behind her and headed for the sunroom, not turning to see if Celine was following. But she was, Mira could hear her quiet footsteps.

She stood waiting in the sunroom, arms crossed over her chest, staring down at the little tea table that had been the scene of so much love and laughter throughout her life. Celine cleared her throat and Mira looked up at her, stomach turning.

“You told me I was like you,” Mira said quietly, and Celine closed her eyes briefly, letting out a long sigh. “You said I reminded you of yourself at my age, and I wanted that. I wanted so badly to be like you.” Mira’s nails were digging into her arms and her voice was rising angrily, but she couldn’t seem to keep herself calm. “And the whole time you were… you were treating Rumi like that… you were telling her to hide from us, from me… ”

Mira let out a frustrated breath, reaching into the space between herself and Celine and strangling the air with shaking fingers.

“You said you trusted me to protect her,” Mira shouted, and Celine just stood there, just took it. Her eyes were wet and the corners of her mouth were turned down, but she just looked steadily into Mira’s eyes as she fell apart. “You said the way we love each other was rare . And you made her lie to me. To both of us. How could you? ”

There were angry tears running down Mira’s face and a ringing in her ears. At some point she had clenched her hands into fists so hard her nails had cut into her palms. And still Celine didn’t flinch. She didn’t cry. She didn’t collapse into a puddle of tears at Mira’s feet and beg for forgiveness.

Instead, she waited to see if Mira would say anything else. Then she stepped forward, took Mira’s fists in her hands, and very carefully pried her fingers loose. Mira’s hands were shaking, and Celine just brushed her thumbs gently across her stinging palms.

“I didn’t know this was possible,” Celine said quietly, and Mira saw she was looking around them, at the shimmering rainbow lines slowly rolling across the floor and walls. “A new Honmoon. I didn’t know it could be done. I had never even considered it as a desperate last resort should the old Honmoon fail.”

She let go of Mira’s hands, and it took her a concerted effort not to clench them back into fists.

“But Rumi… I don’t know if she knew somehow that it would work, or if she just believed it would, but she did it. You and Zoey and Rumi… you made a new Honmoon. A stronger Honmoon,” Celine continued, eyes still wandering the room in awe. “She could see that the old one was failing because… because of me.” Celine placed a hand on her chest, digging her fingers into the fabric of her shirt, and her eyes lost focus. “Our faults and fears must never be seen. That’s what we were… what I was taught. And the Hunters before me, going back… who knows how long. That was the only way we knew to protect the Honmoon. And it was…”

Celine paused, swallowing hard, and for a second she looked younger. She looked like she did on the album covers and the magazines, if back then she had looked completely terrified.

“It was the same way Gwi-Ma was controlling the demons,” she whispered. Mira felt herself swaying toward Celine without meaning to, had the instinctual urge to reach out and comfort her, because she had never sounded like this before. Never showed so much emotion in her voice, on her face. Celine crossed her arms over her chest like she could make herself smaller. “I didn’t know. I couldn’t have known. But I failed her. I never meant to hurt her, and I hurt her so much.”

Celine looked up sharply and Mira blinked in surprise. There was that old intensity again.

“I hurt all three of you,” she continued quietly. “I’m so sorry, Mira.”

Mira clenched her jaw. She took a few deep breaths through her nose. She grabbed the hem of her hoodie and squeezed it so she wouldn’t clench her hands into fists again. And she fell to her knees, gasping in the effort to hold back a sob. Celine dropped to the ground beside her, hands hovering over her like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed, but Mira lunged for her and let herself cry into the front of Celine’s cardigan while Celine rubbed her back and held her.

“I wish I could have helped her,” Mira sobbed, and she hated it. She hated showing weakness, she hated crying in front of Celine. But if she was honest with herself, Celine was more of a mother to her than her real mother had ever been, and that was perhaps what had broken her the most about this. “I wish she told me, I wouldn’t have cared. I would have loved her the whole time, I’d love her no matter what.”

“I know, I know, I’m so sorry,” Celine whispered, tears running down her face as she rocked them back and forth just a bit. And they sat like that for a good couple of minutes until they were interrupted by the sound of the front door banging open.

“Mira!”

Rumi’s voice.

“Mira, where are you?”

And Zoey’s.

“We’re in here,” Celine called, and the sound of running footsteps was quickly replaced with the sound and the feeling and the warmth of Rumi and Zoey dropping to their knees, wrapping their arms desperately around Mira and holding her close.

“Never do that again,” Zoey demanded tearfully, pressing kisses to every inch of Mira’s face that she could reach.

“We were so worried,” Rumi whispered, hands shaking as she touched her carefully, fingers alighting on each part of her like she was checking for injuries before weaving them into Mira’s hair.

“How did you know I was here?” Mira sniffed, and she glanced over to find Celine smiling at her rather sadly as she sat back from them, letting the girls take over holding onto her.

“I texted Rumi when you were walking in,” she said quietly, shrugging a bit when Mira raised an eyebrow at her. “I figured you would want them here at some point.”

Mira closed her eyes, huffing a laugh, and let herself be enveloped fully by her girls. She and Zoey so enjoyed squishing Rumi between them, and Zoey adored the attention when she was in the middle, but Mira didn’t seek it out as much. She knew the other two needed it more than her.

But this felt really nice.

At some point, Celine got to her feet. She placed a hand lightly on Zoey’s shoulder, then moved it to Mira’s, then to the back of Rumi’s head as she placed a light kiss on top of Rumi’s braid.

“You can stay the night, your old rooms are all still made up,” she said quietly, mostly to Rumi, who was smiling up at her and nodding. But before she could make it out the door, Mira cleared her throat. Celine looked back at her and she felt her ears turn a bit red, embarrassed.

“Don’t uh… don’t beat yourself up about this,” Mira said quietly, and Celine’s eyes crinkled with her first genuine smile of the night.

“Don’t stay up too late,” she replied as she left.

The girls piled into Rumi’s old room and fell asleep with Mira in the middle, who remained a soft blushy mess until she fell asleep.

In the morning, over breakfast, Celine asked if they wanted to make new norigae. They all shook their heads without even thinking about it.

Their current versions were the best of them, plus each of their little gifts from Celine.

And besides, they made an entire Honmoon. They were set on arts and crafts for a while.

Chapter Text

Zoey told Rumi and Mira she loved them the moment they met, and they both said it back in nearly the same breath.

But that wasn't the first time they had told her they loved her. She'd heard it in her dreams for years.

It wasn't exactly a perfect communication system. In fact, Zoey was almost positive they couldn't hear her or each other the way she could hear them. She tried to ask them questions in the beginning, and either they were ignoring her (which would be mean, and her heartbeats would never be mean to her) or they just couldn't hear her.

But they knew she was there, somehow. They talked to her, and to each other, not knowing she could hear them.

Rumi sang to them. It was like singing was its own language for her, and she was fluent in it above all others. She always seemed to know when Zoey was having a hard time or was sad, and she would sing her love songs. When she was done, Zoey would thank her and tell her she missed her and how much she loved her. And she had to know somehow that Zoey was listening, because she let out this happy little sigh whenever Zoey said she loved her.

The first time Rumi said it, Zoey was seven and knew her only as the Singer.  She had just finished singing the Korean version of the very first song Zoey heard her singing last year, the one about hunters and demons. Zoey was dreaming about lying in a field of wildflowers in the sun, listening to the song and pretending Rumi was right beside her. Mira too, her heartbeat a constant rhythm beneath Rumi's voice. When the song was done, Zoey sighed blissfully, her heart so full she could barely hold herself together.

“Thank you for the song,” Zoey said, grinning as she stretched languidly in the warm sunlight. It was almost automatic now, thanking her after she sang. “I love your voice. I love you.”

Zoey heard the usual pleased little hum from Rumi, then there was a pause. Hesitation. Rumi's heartbeat, previously steady, raced for a moment.

“I love you,” Rumi whispered, and Zoey's breath caught in her chest. She could almost imagine her breath on her cheek, her fingers tucking hair behind her ear. “I hope… I hope I feel as nice to you as you do to me. My girls… I love you both.”

Zoey jolted awake, tears streaming down her face, and buried her tearful smile in her pillow.

It became fairly regular after that. Whenever Zoey was feeling particularly soft and lovey, Rumi would quietly declare how much she loved her, letting the words drift off into the dream. Zoey always answered, always gave the words right back even though she couldn't hear them.

Mira was harder to pin down. Zoey knew her back then as the Quiet One, and she knew her heartbeat better than she knew her voice.

Mira's heart was steady. Loud. Constant, like a bass line. Rumi was prone to bouts of anxiety and her heart would flutter and skip, but Mira's never skipped. Never fluttered.

It did speed up sometimes.

It took Zoey a while to figure it out. A strange dance of cause and effect. Mira’s heart would kick into high gear, and Rumi would start singing something different. Lullabies, usually. Sweet, slow songs, like she could tell Mira was upset and wanted to soothe her.

Again, not the best system of communication, but considering it was some kind of world-spanning soul magic it was pretty impressive.

Zoey thanked Rumi for her songs for Mira too. She wasn't sure Mira could even hear them, but she hoped she could. It had some effect, at least, because Mira's heartbeat would eventually slow. Zoey could usually hear her breathing at that point, long, slow breaths to calm herself down.

And sometimes, on rare and special occasions, Mira spoke when her heart slowed back down to normal.

“I wish I could be where you are,” was the first thing Zoey heard her say, nearly two years after her very first dream of them when Mira had told her she was there. Zoey held her breath, and after a long pause Mira continued.

“I wish I could… just be with you both,” she sighed, and she sounded so sad Zoey immediately started crying. “I love you so much, I can hardly stand it sometimes.”

“I know, I miss you,” Zoey whispered, hiccuping through her tears, and Rumi's heartbeat went all fluttery. “I love you too.”

“I'll find you both,” Rumi said quietly, seriously, and Zoey believed her without a second thought. “Soon. …I mean, I hope it's soon.”

Mira spoke a bit more often after that, but still not much. So it was extra special when she said she loved them, and she could hear the breathless excitement in Rumi when she felt it too.

A lot of it made sense in retrospect when Zoey learned, years later, that Mira could only see them and Rumi could only feel them. Rumi would feel Zoey's sadness or Mira's anger and sing them songs accordingly, hoping they would hear somehow. Mira could see the soundwaves coming off of Rumi when she sang, a consistent, steady rhythm she could match her breathing to when she was upset. And Rumi could feel the love pouring out of them after and would tell them she loved them too. 

So much of those first years before they met was based on faith. Rumi at least knew what was happening, but Zoey and Mira just knew the unshakeable truth that the other two were out there.

Everything changed once they were finally together.

No more shared dreams. No more strange glimpses of each other through space and distance. Just the overwhelming presence of them, her heartbeats, the other two thirds of her soul. They were still kids when they met, still prone to little fights and hurt feelings and everything that came along with being a child. But there was something different about them too. That unshakeable truth was still there, no matter what. They belonged with each other.

As they got older, Zoey realized she also wanted them to belong to each other. And at sixteen she really had no idea how to bring that up.

Celine brought them to California for Christmas that year. They had debuted as Huntrix at the start of the year and had just won their first Idol Awards, and Celine thought they deserved the break. Plus Zoey wasn't finishing high school in Burbank as she and her dad had planned, so she would be coming back for holidays here whenever she could.

It was the first time Rumi and Mira were on Zoey's home turf, and she wanted to show them everything. So when they weren't at the house Celine had rented in Malibu with the security fence and the private beach, they were running around Burbank together, trying out casual disguises for the first time since Huntrix was getting popular.

And all the while, Zoey just… wanted.

It was stupid, really. They held hands. They cuddled. They kissed. They slept in the same bed most nights. They practically lived in each other's pockets.

They said ‘I love you.’ So often. But Zoey meant it differently these days. She was in love with both of them. She wanted them, and nobody else, forever. She wanted to be theirs, she wanted them to be hers, and she felt completely ridiculous whenever she thought about it because wasn't that already what they were?

But Rumi blushed and smiled when that boy at In-N-Out asked for her number. Mira flirted with the girl at the concession stand before they saw a movie. 

And Zoey just ground her teeth and glared. She had to make it obvious. Declare her intentions. So in true romcom fashion, she went to a flower shop two days after Christmas.

There was an elderly Japanese woman behind the counter that smiled kindly at Zoey when she walked in looking frantic.

“I need help,” Zoey blurted the second she reached her, and the woman nodded.

“You're in the right place,” she said patiently. “Tell me what you're looking for.”

“I want to make a bouquet,” Zoey began slowly. She wasn't sure how honest she should be with this sweet-looking and probably old-fashioned woman about her soul-bound homoerotic throuple, so she tried to keep it vague. “That has a certain… meaning.”

“Meaning,” the woman repeated, nodding again. “Okay, what kind of message are you trying to send?”

Zoey stared at her. She thought of Rumi and Mira, still curled up together all cozy and asleep at the beach house when she snuck out this morning. She took a deep breath.

“Okay so we've been best friends for six years but we've kind of known each other our whole lives because I'm pretty sure we're soulmates and our fates are deeply intertwined and that's a long story but we love each other and we say it all the time but I'm also in love with them like romantically and I don't know how to tell them I want to kiss them all the time and whenever I see them with other people I get so mad I want to break things.”

Zoey was panting when she was done, fingers clenched into fists on the counter, and the woman at least had the grace to not look completely confused or horrified. She just blinked at her a few times and turned to a water cooler behind the desk, pushing a small paper cup across the counter which Zoey drank gratefully.

“Friends, but want to be romantic, got it,” the woman said with a nod, and she went bustling through the aisles, selecting flowers and explaining their meaning as she handed them to Zoey.

“You'll want mostly red, it signifies passion and affection. And roses are obvious, everybody knows what a red rose means,” she paused at Zoey’s wide-eyed look. “Enduring passion. Endless love.” Zoey nodded, blushing, and they continued. “Carnations, another classic. Red means fascination, a deep, affectionate love.”

The woman hummed thoughtfully, glancing at Zoey every so often like she was a book she was having trouble reading.

“If you think this is your one true love, you'll want red tulips,” she continued. Zoey hesitated. Two true loves, technically. But she nodded and took them too. Another thoughtful hum. To fill out the bouquet, she added lilacs (after checking that this was Zoey's first love), jasmine flowers (sensual love, which made Zoey blush again), and primroses (young love). She finally paused beside some delicate purple blossoms and squinted at Zoey long enough to make her squirm.

“These are for a girl?” the woman asked at length, and Zoey swallowed nervously. This was already getting a bit more honest than she was expecting, so she took a chance and nodded. The woman smiled, a look of understanding coming over her face, and handed Zoey some violets.

She arranged everything into a beautiful bouquet and tied it together with a pink ribbon. Zoey also bought a purple ribbon with the excuse that she might change her mind, and the woman accepted that answer as she wrapped it all in paper.

“Thank you so much,” Zoey said earnestly as she handed over her credit card. “And I really have no idea how much flowers cost so like… please don't under charge me.”

The woman did a double take and burst out laughing.

“Under charge! You caught me,” she chuckled, pressing a few keys on the register before swiping the card. “I'm surprised. Didn't expect that from someone your age.”

“I know I can look kind of helpless,” Zoey laughed, shrugging as she took her card back. “But I really appreciate this, so… thanks again.”

“Best of luck, dear.”

Zoey used the bus ride back to the beach house to split the bouquet into two, carefully separating the flowers so both got a few of each type. Then she wrapped them both back up in the paper and stared at them anxiously while she tried to figure out what she was going to say.

The trip back felt too short. Sneaking back into the house was much easier than sneaking out had been. And all of a sudden she was outside Mira's room, still with no idea what to say.

Rumi and Mira were awake, as Zoey could hear them having a whispered argument through the door.

“-of course we shouldn't tell Celine, she'll freak out! Mira, you're not-”

“Then we should call her dad. Maybe he… maybe he'll have a better idea where…”

“Those are literally the two things she asked us not to do in this note. She's probably fine, I'm sure she'll be back any-”

Zoey opened the door to find Rumi sitting on the edge of the bed facing her, the post-it note Zoey had left them in her hand. Mira had clearly been pacing the room frantically, phone clutched in her hands. They both froze as Zoey entered, staring at her.

“I'm back,” Zoey said, forcing her tone into something light and casual as she smiled awkwardly and shut the door behind her.

Mira was on her immediately, phone clattering to the floor.

“I can't believe you,” Mira growled, her tone softened by the worry in her wet eyes as she hugged Zoey so tight she lifted her off her feet. “We're in a foreign country, Zoey, you can't just disappear like that.”

“It's not a foreign country for me,” Zoey laughed, meeting Rumi's relieved smile over Mira's shoulder as she put her back down and started checking her over like she was expecting to find injuries. “Mira, I'm fine. I just had to run an errand.”

“Like the note said,” Rumi added, sticking the post-it to Mira’s shoulder as she pushed past her to give Zoey a much less intense but still deliciously warm hug. Zoey hummed comfortably when Rumi pressed a kiss to her cheek, then felt Mira's arms wrap around them both. She giggled when Mira buried her nose in her hair and took a long, slow breath to calm herself down.

“Sorry I worried you,” Zoey murmured, words muffled against Rumi's shoulder, and Rumi's lips curved into a smile against her cheek.

“It's okay, your note was very clear,” she whispered, the words tickling Zoey's skin. “Someone just got a little overprotective, that's all.”

Mira grumbled but didn't say anything as she squeezed them tighter in her arms, making them both laugh helplessly.

“What did you get?” Rumi asked when Mira eventually let them both go, and Zoey was suddenly thrust back into her state of low-grade panic as she clutched the paper-wrapped bouquets behind her back. She felt a blush rising to her face.

“Um… sit, please,” she began hesitantly, and Mira and Rumi exchanged a confused glance before sitting side-by-side on the end of the bed. Zoey stood in front of them, hands shaking as she unwrapped the brown paper. “I um… I got you flowers?”

She let the paper fall and held out the two bouquets, pink ribbon for Mira, purple ribbon for Rumi. They both looked surprised as they reached forward to take their flowers, Rumi's eyes sparkling with tears as she examined them and Mira's cheeks turning pink as she looked up at Zoey.

“I just um… I love you both. A lot,” Zoey continued haltingly, folding her hands behind her back and rocking nervously on her feet. She was staring at her shoes, too anxious to hold Mira's gaze. “And I wanted to get you something special. With like… meaning. Because I want…”

The words stuck in her throat and she looked back up at them. Mira was still blushing as she smelled her flowers, a smile tugging at her lips. Rumi was staring at Zoey like she hung the stars, clutching the flowers to her chest like she was scared they'd disappear.

“You,” Zoey sighed, and Mira's eyes flicked up to her as Rumi's widened just a bit. “I want you. Both of you. All the time. Any way you'll have me, but also like… romantically. I know we already… I mean we kind of act like…” She huffed, frustrated, and covered her face with her hands. “I want to kiss you both. And touch you both. And be with you and nobody else. Do you… get what I mean?”

There was a moment of silence before Mira let out a short hum of approval.

“Oh, you're both mine,” Mira said calmly, matter-of-factly, like it was the most obvious sentence she'd ever spoken. Rumi blinked at her, ears turning red, and Zoey peeked at her through her fingers. Mira frowned. “Was that not clear? Yeah, no, sorry, nobody else can have either of you. Ever.”

She reached out and grabbed Zoey by a belt loop, reeling her in one-handed. That hand then migrated up to Zoey's shoulder, pulling her down until she was at eye level with Mira.

“Thanks for the flowers,” she whispered, the words practically falling into Zoey's mouth as she tugged her in the last inch for a positively searing kiss. Zoey's mind went blank, fully handing the reins over to her body so she could just feel this. The heat of Mira's breath through her nose, the press of her tongue, the taste of her mouth.

The only thought she could muster was yes, yes this was exactly what she wanted. Leave it to Mira to make it so easy, so effortless as she hummed against Zoey's smiling lips. She was vaguely aware of Rumi sliding closer to Mira's side, a small, hungry sound coming from the back of her throat and her fingers brushing the soft skin of Zoey's wrist.

Zoey whined when Mira's lips left hers, but Mira just turned her head and Zoey saw that her flowers were in her lap. Her other hand had pulled Rumi in by the back of her neck, and then she was kissing Rumi, and Zoey had to brace her hand against Mira's shoulder as her knees went weak at the sight.

Zoey loved watching Rumi blush. It started so soft with pink in her cheeks, then her ears would turn red at the tips, and finally the flush would go all down her neck and across her chest. Rumi had really only been wearing crew necks or turtlenecks recently so Zoey couldn't see it spread to her collarbones today, but she had before, and it always made her want to put her lips on that rosy skin. She hadn't indulged in that fantasy yet. Zoey took a deep breath. Maybe she'd get the chance soon.

Rumi looked a bit dazed by the time Mira was done with her, her fingers having tangled tight into Zoey's at some point, and Zoey had to squash down the desire to pick right up where Mira left off. Because Rumi hadn't said anything yet, and Zoey wanted to be sure.

“So we know where Mira stands,” Zoey giggled, blushing again as Mira grinned at her and reached back up to tuck some loose hair behind Zoey's ear, letting her touch linger. They both looked at Rumi, who was still cradling her flowers against her chest with a faraway look in her eyes. “Rumi?”

Rumi's focus snapped to Zoey, and for a second she looked… guilty. Like she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't. Mira ran a thumb across her cheek softly and it made her jump.

“Rumi? Is that… okay?” Mira asked slowly, doubt creeping into her voice.

“Of course,” Rumi said immediately, earnestly, eyes flicking between her girls’ faces. Mira visibly relaxed, and Zoey smiled hesitantly. “I love you both so much. And I love the flowers. I just um…”

Rumi looked down, swallowing hard and taking her hand back from Zoey, and Zoey leaned against Mira's knees for support as they both watched her shrink. She did this sometimes, when she was anxious or overwhelmed. She tried to make herself small, take up less space, like she didn't know what to do with herself, and it broke Zoey's heart every time.

“I really like kissing you both, but I don't know if I'm… ready, to go… further,” Rumi said haltingly, wincing. She forced her eyes up to Zoey’s, then Mira's. “Or I guess I'm not um… comfortable with my clothes off? Is that… okay?”

“Of course!” Zoey and Mira both blurted in unison, so perfectly in sync that they glanced at each other in surprise, and Rumi let out the sweetest little laugh. Zoey stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Rumi gently, holding the back of her head as she buried her face in the front of Zoey's shirt and took a deep breath. Mira wrapped an arm around her shoulders, burying her face in Rumi's hair.

“I'll never ask you for more than you're comfortable with,” Mira said, quiet but fierce, and Rumi sniffled. “I promise both of you.”

“Same,” Zoey murmured, letting her fingernails drag against the nape of Rumi’s neck the way she liked. Rumi sighed comfortably, and Zoey smiled. “I'm not ready to go much past kissing either.”

“I'm obsessed with making out with the two of you, so trust me when I say I'm satisfied with you both,” Mira replied, a slightly embarrassed laugh in her voice. Rumi hummed a quiet laugh of her own into Zoey's shirt, and a grin spread across Zoey's face as she started swaying back and forth just a bit to the beat in her head.

“All I want to get is, a little bit closer,” Zoey sang, and Mira turned her face away from Rumi's hair to look up at her. “All I want to know is, can you come a little closer?”

Mira huffed a laugh and started swaying with Zoey, moving a giggling Rumi along with her.

“Here comes the breath, before we get, a little bit closer,” Zoey continued, and Rumi joined in the harmony. “Here comes the rush, before we touch, come a little closer.”

Zoey took Rumi's hands in hers and danced a few steps back from the bed, coaxing Rumi up after her with her shimmying shoulders and infectious laughter. Mira got up after her, gently placing both of their bouquets on the bed before she joined in.

“The doors are open, the wind is really blowing," all three girls sang together, laughing as they bounced to the beat. “The night sky is changing overhead.”

Zoey spun Rumi around as they came to the bridge, and Mira caught her by the waist as they all laughed breathlessly and started jumping. The Honmoon sparkled with life, vibrating like an orchestra of strings as their joined voices made the light brighter and stronger.

“It's! Not! Just all physical! I'm the type who won't get oh so critical," they all belted, taking turns twirling each other under their hands and swaying their hips together, crooning Tegan and Sara's lyrics at each other like they were on stage. “So! Let's! Make things physical! I won't treat you like you're oh so typical.”

Mira picked Zoey up from behind and spun her until she was laughing too hard to finish the chorus of “oh oh ah ohs” with them. Mira tossed Zoey onto the bed and spun Rumi around as well until her laughter was wild and unburdened. Then they crashed onto the bed on either side of Zoey, all giggling breathlessly in a tangle of limbs. Zoey hummed a little more of the song as they all caught their breath.

“So what do the flowers mean?” Mira asked as she reached across the bed for both bouquets, handing Rumi's to her and her own to Zoey. She got comfortable, propping her head up on one arm and wrapping the other around Zoey's hips. Rumi leaned her head on Zoey's shoulder on her other side to watch as she pointed to each type of flower in Mira's bouquet and tried to remember what they meant.

“So all the red ones are for love and passion and romance,” she began, brow furrowing in concentration. “I want to say the roses and carnations are the obvious ones that the nice old lady at the store gave me sass for not knowing.” Rumi shook with a laugh and Mira smirked. “The tulips are for true love, I remember that because I thought up the word ‘trulips’ and was like dang, that's smart.”

Rumi giggled again despite the pun not really making sense in Korean. Mira leaned in and started pressing soft little kisses to the freckles on Zoey's cheek, and her voice wavered just a bit as she blushed.

“The um… the primroses and lilacs are uh… young love and first love but I don't remember which is which,” she stammered as Mira's smiling lips trailed lower, leaving kisses on her jaw and down to her pulse thumping in her neck. “Jasmine flowers are for like… sex, I think.”

Rumi hummed a delighted laugh when Zoey's blush spread down her chest. She pressed her nose to the other side of Zoey's neck and grinned when she felt her breath catch. Mira slowed down considerably, kissing Zoey's neck in a long and lingering fashion. 

“And the violets are for lesbians," Zoey finished breathlessly, dropping the flowers on Mira's chest so she could turn her head toward Rumi and catch her lips. Rumi grinned at her like she'd been waiting for this, that slow, easy smile of hers that she only wore when she felt safe, and they met in the middle for a kiss that was just as slow. She sighed into it comfortably, and that was maybe one of Zoey's favorite sounds in the world.

Rumi grabbed Zoey around the waist and turned her so they were both on their sides facing each other, allowing her to wrap her arms around Zoey's neck and get a better angle to kiss her deep and languid. Mira huffed a laugh behind her, wrapping her arms tight around Zoey's waist and pulling her flush against her body. She resumed slowly kissing her way down Zoey's neck, lips curved into a smirk that Zoey could feel against her skin.

Zoey was overwhelmed. Overstimulated. Completely surrounded and drunk on the sensations of Rumi and Mira touching her, holding her, kissing her, and it was perfect. God, it was exactly what she wanted. It was scratching the itch that she started feeling when that random guy at In-N-Out made Rumi laugh. It was soothing the burn that started when Mira touched the hand of the girl at the concession stand to look at her nails.

In fact, feeling Rumi's tongue and Mira's teeth, Zoey forgot all about them. And everyone else in the world. There was just her and her girls, smiling against each other’s skin in Mira's bed, surrounded by sunlight and the smell of fresh flowers.

Eventually, Rumi and Zoey slowed down, the kiss trailing off in a series of soft pecks on the lips until they settled with their foreheads pressed together. Mira held Zoey snug in her arms, still kissing the back of her neck and shoulders but slower, softer. Enough for Zoey to feel it but not enough to overwhelm. Mira reached further with one arm, settling a hand on Rumi's hip so they were all connected.

“You're both perfect, you know that?” Zoey murmured sleepily.

“You too, babygirl,” Mira hummed, and Zoey blushed again. She blinked her eyes open to find Rumi already looking at her, smiling gently in that way that showed more in her eyes than on her lips.

“Rumi,” Zoey whispered, brushing their noses together so Rumi breathed a ticklish laugh. “I'm not pressuring you or anything, I swear, I just want to make sure you know…” Zoey reached up and laid a hand on Rumi's cheek, feeling the warmth of her blush beneath her palm. “You're so beautiful. You and Mira are the prettiest people I've ever seen, and I'm not just saying that because I'm deeply in love with you both.”

Mira laughed behind her, lips and breath tickling Zoey's shoulder.

“Agreed,” Mira sighed, and Zoey could see Rumi meet Mira's eyes over her shoulder. “Though I'm gonna say my opinion is for sure influenced by the fact that I'm deeply in love with you both.” Rumi and Zoey both giggled at that, and Mira sighed again, comfortable. “But you're both objectively gorgeous.”

Mira's hand squeezed Rumi's hip for just a moment, and the blush on Rumi's face was so pretty it made Zoey sigh.

“Thanks,” Rumi said, glancing away shyly even as she smiled. “I mean… I know I have to be beautiful in order to pull you two.” Zoey and Mira both laughed, and Rumi's grin widened. “I'm deeply in love with you too.”

They fell asleep like that, and when they woke a few hours later Rumi and Mira panicked at having left the flowers sitting on the bed instead of putting them in water. Zoey just watched them rush around looking for vases, a smile on her face and her heart full to bursting.

That was the first time they had all said they were in love with each other.

Chapter Text

The first time she tried to tell them, Rumi was twelve years old and had only known them (in person) for four days.

It was early in the morning. The girls had all eaten breakfast, and she had already showered. She got to go first because her hair took so long to dry. So while they waited for Mira and Zoey to get ready, Celine and Rumi were out in the garden by Rumi's mom's grave, singing the Hunter's Song while Celine braided her hair.

They didn't do this as often anymore. It made more sense to do when Rumi was younger and needed a more rigid routine. But it was their time to talk now that there were two more people in the house.

“So? Are you getting along?” Celine asked at the end of the song, and Rumi had to stop herself from nodding enthusiastically and messing up her braid.

“Yes, they're both so…” Rumi just sighed explosively, unable to find the right words. Celine hummed a laugh. “I mean, Mira tries to be all cool and distant, but she loves us so much she can't help it. I love making her smile. Gosh, I love making her laugh.”

Celine hummed again for her to go on.

“And Zoey is just… Zoey,” Rumi laughed. “She says exactly what she's thinking about the second she thinks it, and she's always singing, and I love it. I love hearing her talk. I love hearing them talk.”

“They seem to like you too,” Celine said quietly, and Rumi wiggled happily in place the way Zoey did.

“You think so?” she asked earnestly, her voice high and hopeful. “I think so too. I mean I hope so. I kind of miss being able to feel what they’re feeling, but being able to see them and hear them and touch them is so much better.”

“You girls were very connected in your dreams before this,” Celine agreed. “Even more so than I was with Kimmy and your mother. I think you three are something special.”

That sounded so much better to Rumi's ears than when Celine would tell her she was special. She hummed happily, hugging her arms to her chest like she could hold her heart in and keep it from bursting.

“So when can I tell them about my patterns?” Rumi asked, her heart going all fluttery at the thought. She was nervous, yeah, but mostly excited. Finally, the other two parts of her soul were here. This secret wouldn't be just hers.

But Celine went quiet. Her hands stilled near the end of Rumi’s braid. Rumi tensed without even realizing it, dread rising up her throat.

“What do you mean?” Celine asked quietly, her voice low, and Rumi could hear that guarded edge in her tone. That sharpness that came along whenever Rumi mentioned her patterns.

“I can… I can tell them, right?” Rumi stammered, breath coming just a bit quicker. “I mean they… they're my girls. They're my… they mean everything to me, they… they should know all of me.”

Celine remained silent, and Rumi turned around sharply, yanking her hair out of Celine's hands with the movement. Celine wouldn't meet her eyes, and Rumi felt the hot itch of tears welling in hers.

“Celine, please,” Rumi whispered, and there was something raw in her voice that made her cheeks burn with shame. She tried not to be this emotional in front of Celine, not because Celine had told her not to, but because she didn't want to be difficult. “Please let me tell them, they'll understand. They love me, they said so-”

“Rumi,” Celine cut her off gently, and Rumi couldn't hold back the sob anymore. She was choking on her tears, gasping, and Celine gathered her into her arms. “Rumi, I'm sorry, but you can't tell them.”

Rumi bawled, screwing her eyes shut tight and burying her face in Celine's sweater like she was a little kid again. This was embarrassing. She had to get a hold of herself.

“I have to teach them to hunt demons, do you understand? They can't have any doubt that a demon will kill them if given the chance,” Celine continued, still quiet but firmer now. More serious. “And if they find out about your… father, they might have doubts. They might think there are good demons, because they do love you. And they could hesitate, and they could get hurt.”

Rumi gasped at that, forcing her tears back down. She hadn't thought of that, but it made sense. Celine had years to teach her to hate demons, to fear them, to make her understand that she wasn't one of them. But Mira and Zoey had just learned demons existed two days ago.

Her blood ran cold. What if they got hurt because of her?

“Okay,” Rumi said tightly, moving to wipe her eyes roughly with the heels of her hands. Celine interrupted the action, brushing softly with the sleeve of her cardigan instead so she could look Rumi in the eyes. “Okay, I understand.”

“It's not forever, “ Celine said, offering her a small smile. “When you seal the Honmoon, the patterns will be gone and you'll have nothing to worry about anymore.”

Rumi fought her breathing back to normal, nodding as she measured her breaths. Celine gently tugged her braid over her shoulder to fix the bit that had gone loose and tie off the end.

“I just don't want to lie to them,” Rumi muttered when she was done, and Celine sighed as she laid her hands on Rumi’s shoulders.

“Don't think of it as lying,” she said stiffly, and Rumi had gotten pretty good at knowing when Celine was out of her depth when it came to parenting stuff. She was really good at hiding it, but in the past few years Rumi had learned her tells. “Think of it as… protecting them.”

Rumi sighed again, giving a final nod as she stared at her lap. Her chest felt hollowed out and achey.

“Put it out of your head, okay?” Celine said, trying to sound upbeat and only partially succeeding. “We have a lot to do today.”

She got to her feet gracefully, brushing off her pants and reaching a hand out to Rumi to pull her up. Rumi took it, her hand shaking, and Celine squeezed it tight when she was on her feet.

Celine changed the subject as they walked back inside, and Rumi did her best to stop thinking of the fact that she would be hiding this from her girls.

She felt sick the rest of the day.

Whenever her patterns spread, she wanted to tell them.

It was usually a slow, creeping process that she would only notice after the fact. But it was still scary to undress for a shower and realize there were more patterns, more skin she had to cover. And usually when she was scared, she would talk to her girls.

But in these moments, she was just reminded of the lies she was telling them. The parts of her she was hiding. She would tell Celine eventually, after she spiraled alone for a while. And Celine was never mad or anything, but Rumi could feel her worry, and she hated making Celine worry. She just wanted to be easy to care for, easy to love.

There were a couple of times when the patterns spread fast, all at once, and when that happened it was painful. One of the worst times was when she was sixteen, and she'd been in an argument with Mira. Zoey was still spending her school years in California, and Mira and Rumi didn't exist the same way without her. Zoey held them together in a way, softened their edges, and when they both missed her and Mira was stuck spending any time at all with her family, they butted heads more often.

Rumi couldn't even remember what the argument was about anymore. It was possible that Mira had just picked a fight over nothing, something she did when she was hurting that the three of them eventually learned to work through. But what Rumi did remember was the moment it happened, Mira laughing bitterly and calling her a spoiled little princess, Rumi wanting to bite back, wanting to say something cruel, and then pain.

Pain like her arms were on fire. Pain like skin splitting, wounds opening, lightning lancing from her elbows to her shoulders. Pain as her patterns crawled up her skin beneath her hoodie and she screamed.

She fell to her knees and Mira turned pale, eyes wide, and Rumi had never seen Mira look so scared. Mira's arms were around her as she screamed, the Honmoon shaking around them in a way she'd never seen before, and the sound of Mira shouting for Celine was muffled like she was underwater.

The next thing she remembered was the inside of Celine's infirmary. Celine was at her bedside adjusting cold compresses on her bare arms and shoulders. She couldn't disguise the relief on her face when she noticed Rumi's eyes were open, though she tried to keep her expression calm.

“Hey, there you are. How are you feeling?” Celine asked quietly. Rumi's throat was raw from screaming, and Celine helped her sit up and held a glass of water to her lips.

“Where's Mira?” was the first thing out of her mouth after she took a grateful drink.

“I sent her home,” Celine replied, lips pressed into a thin line. Rumi clenched her fingers into the front of her tank top, right over her heart, as it lurched painfully at the thought of Mira going back to her family home where she wouldn't find any comfort. “I told her you'd be fine, that you had a flare up from an old injury.”

Mira wouldn't buy that on its own. Rumi would have to think of something better. She peeled back the cold cloth on one arm and winced. The patterns had spread up to the point of her shoulder. Not to her collarbones yet but on the way. She pulled all of the compresses away, holding her arms out in front of herself to look. They had spread down just past her elbows too. Her upper arms were totally covered.

Her hoodie was pressed into her hands. Rumi looked up, like she was coming out of a fog, but Celine wasn't looking at her. She pulled the hoodie over her head with stiff, automatic movements, wincing as the fabric settled against the new patterns.

“Celine… please,” Rumi sighed, and Celine just rested her elbows on her knees and rubbed her temples tiredly. They'd had this conversation enough times now that she was exhausted by it. But Rumi pressed on stubbornly. “Please, let me tell them. Every day that I don't tell them makes it worse.”

“Rumi…” Celine sighed, a warning in her tone, and Rumi knew she was pushing it. She knew Celine was struggling to keep up with demon hunting and media appearances, and she knew she was having issues with Mira's parents and the label. But Mira had called her a spoiled little princess and it made her so mad she snapped, and now Mira was alone at her house with her awful parents and her useless brother and she probably hated Rumi, or thought Rumi hated her, and she just couldn't hold her pieces together like usual.

“Mira hates it when people hide things from her and Zoey is so hurt when people lie,” Rumi continued desperately, her voice gaining a manic edge, but Celine still wouldn't look at her. “I know because I know them, because they've told me. They've shared themselves with me and I can’t do that for them. Celine this is breaking me, please-”

“Breaking?” Celine interrupted coldly, and Rumi flinched at her tone like she'd hit her. “You think this is breaking you? You don't know the meaning of the word.”

The warning signs were there. Loud and clear. But instead of backing down, Rumi stayed angry.

“How are we supposed to fix the world if they can't trust me?” Rumi snapped, digging her fingers into her arms just to feel the sting. “How are we supposed to turn the Honmoon gold if-”

“It was supposed to be us!” Celine shouted, and Rumi was shocked into silence. Celine had never shouted at her like that before, and she looked like it was tearing her apart. Her eyes were wild and full of unshed tears. “We were supposed to seal the Honmoon! My girls! But she-” Celine ran her hands up into her hair and curled them into fists, her usual composure gone. “She ruined it. She ruined us. She went and fell for a demon. A demon.”

The venom in the last word burned something deep inside Rumi, something small and fragile that she'd been trying to protect. The wind was knocked out of her and she struggled silently to take a breath.

“He really had us all fooled, too,” Celine said, her voice bitter in a way that Rumi had never heard. “Had us all convinced he was good. He was different. He loved her. He wanted a family with her.”

Rumi's hands tightened on her arms. She felt cold and sick to her stomach. Celine never talked about her dad. This was bad. She'd pushed her too far. Celine was on her feet suddenly, pacing the small room anxiously.

“Don't you see? That was Gwi-Ma’s plan the whole time. He let him get close. He let him fall in love. I don't know if he anticipated you, but when the time was right and we were vulnerable he took over your father. Your father, who thought he'd fixed it, thought he could resist. What a joke,” Celine rambled, passing Rumi again and again but never looking at her.

Rumi wished she could get smaller. Wished she could just melt away into the floor and disappear. Her patterns ached and her heart thudded and tears were running down her face, dripping from her chin. She didn't want to know this. She didn't want it.

“He turned on us. On her. On you. He attacked me because he knew I'd fight back, he knew I'd protect you and Miyeong the way he was supposed to. He begged me, begged me to kill him so he wouldn't hurt you. So I did,” Celine finally stopped for a second, gasping for air. She looked at Rumi, angry tears running down her face, and seemed to realize for the first time that Rumi was crying too. She just stared at her for a moment, chest heaving. “I killed your dad, Rumi.”

Rumi had known that, somehow. Deep in her heart she had always known that there was guilt in the way Celine looked at her. Hearing it said aloud didn't change it for Rumi, but saying it seemed to change something for Celine.

“I killed him so he wouldn't kill you or your mom,” she whispered, and Rumi had never seen her cry so much. But here she was, gasping with tears, not even bothering to try to wipe them away. She closed her eyes. “And it didn't even matter, because Kimmy-”

Rumi blinked, startled. She mentioned Kimmy slightly more often than Rumi's dad, but not by much. Rumi never found out what happened to her, but she assumed she was still alive. Otherwise there would be two graves in the garden that Celine watched over.

Celine sat heavily in the chair beside Rumi's bed. She stared at the floor while Rumi trembled, terrified of what she would say next.

“Kimmy said we had to kill you,” Celine said, very quietly, and Rumi felt like a fist had closed around her heart. “Your father had turned, so it was only a matter of time before you did. You would be too powerful if you grew up, a demon and a Hunter. And your mother died to stop her.”

“No,” Rumi whispered, shaking her head like that would make it not true. “No, please…”

“She took the blow meant for you,” Celine pushed on recklessly, voice shaking to pieces with tears. “And Kimmy was so horrified by what she'd done that she ran. I haven't seen or heard from her since.”

Rumi wanted to throw up. It was all her fault. All of it. She was the reason her mother had died and Kimmy had left. She had taken Celine's girls from her. She didn't realize it at the time, but the patterns on her chest and hips spread further across her body as the shame of it settled over her.

“I'm sorry, Rumi,” Celine whispered, and the fight had drained out of her. She looked more tired than Rumi had ever seen her. “I killed your dad. I failed your mom. I couldn't protect her. It's my fault. It’s all my fault, I’m so sorry.”

Rumi stared at her like she'd grown another head, and Celine looked confused.

“Your fault?” Rumi repeated, her voice high and hysterical. “I ruined your life. I ruined all of your lives.”

Celine's eyes went wide and she reached for Rumi on instinct, shaking her head vehemently, but Rumi flinched away from her and she froze.

“I'm a mistake,” Rumi gasped, breaths too quick and faint to draw any air into her lungs, and she curled herself tighter into a ball, shrank away from Celine as her vision blurred at the edges. “I’m a mistake, I-I never should have been born. I ruined everything.”

Celine was on the bed with her, gentle words and gentle hands trying to soothe her, but Rumi couldn't breathe. She couldn't hear what she was saying. Celine was crying again, frantic as a high-pitched ringing sound took over in Rumi's ears, and oh, she was passing out again. That explained a lot.

The next time she woke up, Mira was there. The beds in the infirmary were meant for one person, but Mira had wrapped herself around Rumi so thoroughly they really only took up the space of one. She had Rumi's head tucked under her chin, arms around her shoulders and legs tangled together. Usually Zoey was the one clinging like this, but this was nice. This felt safe.

Celine was asleep in the chair beside the bed. Rumi could just see the top of her head over Mira's shoulder. And somewhere nearby, there was a sound of someone humming through a speaker.

Rumi eventually figured out it was Zoey, on speaker on Mira's phone sitting on the pillow next to her head. She was doing homework, by the sound of the pencil scratching away in the background, or maybe writing lyrics, listening to them sleep on the other side of the world.

“Zoey?” Rumi whispered, and there was a pause, then a scrambling sound as Zoey scooped the phone up off of her desk.

“Rumi?” Zoey asked desperately, her voice immediately thick with tears. “Rumi, babes, are you okay?”

Rumi let out a quiet laugh, closing her eyes and snuggling herself into Mira’s embrace when she felt her waking up.

“I’m okay,” Rumi murmured, and she heard Zoey sigh in relief. Mira sleepily kissed the top of her head. “Mira’s got me.”

“Yeah,” Mira whispered, voice muffled in Rumi’s hair. “I’ve got you. I’m sorry, Rumi.”

“You don’t have to-” Rumi started, but Zoey tsked through the phone and Rumi fell silent.

“I don’t know what happened but I think it was my fault,” Mira continued quietly, and just like Zoey’s, her voice was thick with tears. “You looked like you were in so much pain. I’m so sorry.”

“I wish I was there,” Zoey sighed, and she sounded genuinely pained by the fact that she wasn’t. “I wish I could hug you both. If I’d been there you wouldn’t have-”

“Don’t,” Mira said firmly, and Zoey let out a shaky breath, a hiss of static through the phone. “There’s no way in the world this is your fault, okay?”

“Okay,” Zoey sniffed, and Rumi smiled into Mira’s shirt. “Rumi, sweetheart, will you say something? I wanna hear your voice.”

“I’m here,” Rumi said, pulling her face just far enough from Mira’s chest that Zoey would be able to hear her clearly. “I miss you, Zo. Thanks for being worried about me.” Zoey sighed fondly and Rumi looked up to meet Mira's eyes. She had been watching her, but she blushed and looked away quickly. Rumi smiled. “Mira. I'm not mad at you.”

Mira huffed, rolling her eyes and blushing high on her cheekbones in that way Rumi loved.

“Well you probably should be,” she grumbled, and Rumi smiled wider when she heard Zoey trying to stifle a laugh. “Rumi, what happened? Celine said it was an old injury? If I'd known about it-”

“You couldn't have known about it, it's not your fault,” Rumi sighed, her stomach dropping as she tried to fabricate a believable lie. “It happened when I was so little, I don't even remember it. A demon grabbed me by the shoulders, dug its claws in deep.”

Rumi saw Celine shift slightly over Mira's shoulder, knew she was awake and listening. She swallowed hard, stamping down all of her instincts to fidget anxiously and give away the lie.

“I worked out my arms yesterday morning and I must have overdone it, then I was… breathing hard when we were fighting and…” her throat tightened as she spoke. She hated this. She hated how easy it had become. Mira started dropping soft kisses on her hairline, her forehead, her eyelids, and Rumi exhaled harshly. “It wasn't your fault, Mira. I swear, I don't blame you.”

Mira huffed again, pressing her forehead to Rumi's.

“Okay, but… I'm sorry for the fight too,” she murmured, eyes shut tight and cheeks still red. “I was being stupid. If either of us is a spoiled little princess, it's me.”

“That's true,” Zoey giggled, and Mira pouted so adorably that Rumi burst out laughing.

“I forgive you,” Rumi whispered, warmth in her chest when Mira let out a relieved little sigh. But that warmth dropped away when Rumi wondered if Mira could ever forgive her.

“Aw man, I have to go,” Zoey whined, voice close to the phone like she was trying to reach them through it. “Stupid school.” Mira and Rumi both laughed at the sound of her smacking kisses near the receiver. “I'm glad you're okay, Ru. I love you both so much I'm gonna be scratching at the walls all day.”

“Love you Zoey,” Rumi laughed.

“What does that even mean?” Mira said at the same time.

“Bye bye bye love you bye!” Zoey said rapidly before hanging up, seemingly content to leave Mira's question unanswered.

Rumi sighed and snuggled herself back into Mira’s arms. Her shoulders still ached a bit, but the pain in her chest was worse. 

If Celine wasn't sitting a few feet away, she would have told them. She would have told them the truth right there. But she was a coward.

“Go back to sleep, Mira,” she said softly, feeling the quiet laugh in Mira's chest more than she heard it. “And thanks for coming back. I love you.”

“I love you so much I'll be scratching at the walls all day,” Mira replied with a smirk in her voice, and Rumi managed to hide the tearful sound of her laugh in the front of Mira's shirt.

Rumi could have easily fallen back to sleep, lying there safe in Mira's arms. But she waited. And she listened. And when Mira's breaths got long and slow with sleep, sure enough, Celine got quietly to her feet.

“Are you okay?” she whispered, and Rumi peeked an eye open to see her hovering over Rumi's side of the bed, worry and guilt etched deep into the bags under her eyes.

“I will be,” Rumi whispered back, and Celine nodded before quickly wiping her eyes.

“We'll… talk more,” she murmured, eyes darting to the door. “Tomorrow.”

Rumi hummed an affirmative and closed her eyes, holding her breath to stop from sobbing when Celine bent and kissed the top of her head.

And she left the room, quiet in the way only a trained Hunter could be. Rumi let her tears fall silently until she fell asleep.

Rumi almost told them everything so many times after that, she stopped counting.

When she was seventeen and they all got drunk one night under the Hunter's Tree, she came so close to telling them that her patterns spread down her legs for the first time when she didn’t.

When she was eighteen and she and Mira spent Christmas in California for the first time, she had to physically bite her tongue until it bled to stop from telling them when Zoey and Mira offered her their hearts in no uncertain terms.

When she was twenty-three, the world nearly ended. In part because of the hundreds of times she was too scared to share half of herself with two girls that loved her so deeply that she was tearing herself apart over it.

It was no wonder, really, that the shame grew and spread exponentially.

When she came home after they had to cancel their live performance of ‘Golden’ to find them waiting for her with soft touches and gentle smiles and soup, she almost told them.

When she got home from her first secret meeting with Jinu when he correctly assumed she was too scared to tell them, she almost told them.

When she snapped at Mira during that demon hunt on the train, then slunk home alone after failing to save all the passengers, she wanted to tell them so badly she spent the night throwing up.

Every moment she spent with Jinu burned a little piece of her away to ash. He found out by accident, and a selfish part of her wished her girls had found out by accident instead. She was paralyzed by the thought of telling them, because along with the truth came all of the lies. All the years she had knowingly hidden from them.

The evening before the Idol Awards, when her girls told her about their own fears and faults, she had to lie to herself. If she really sat there with them, knowing she was still lying and hiding and cowering away from them even as they offered her all the grace and love in the world, it would have killed her. So she lived the lie for that evening. She wasn't hiding anything, because if she was, what kind of person did that make her?

They found out in the worst way she could imagine. They drew their weapons on her.

She wanted to die. 

But on her way to Celine's house, as the Honmoon splintered and ripped in her wake, it did something she didn't expect.

The Honmoon, broken and bleeding, connected her to her girls again.

For the first time in eleven years, she could feel them again. Her little fires in the dark weren't so little anymore, but they were fading. She felt Mira break first, surrendering to Gwi-Ma’s will. She felt it like a knife in her ribs, felt her heart contract painfully and never refill. And then Zoey, she sobbed aloud when she felt Zoey give up. Zoey's pain felt like drowning, like smothering, and she gasped for air like it would make a difference.

By the time she reached Celine, there was nothing left. She was hollow, carved out. Her girls were gone.

But Celine wouldn't kill her. Wouldn't fix her mistake. And when she asked why Celine couldn't love all of her, the Honmoon let out its last gasp.

And she felt it. She felt them. Her little fires. So weak, so diminished.

Still loving her.

Somehow, after everything. Separated, broken, alone and scared and loving her. All of her. Like they always had.

The Honmoon was shattered. Only pieces remained, jagged, sharp enough to cut. It was sustained by hiding, by lying, by pressing the truth down into the dark.

But it had also led her to her girls. It had chosen them, connected them. Surely those pieces, the pieces that showed her the way to the greatest loves of her life, could be shaped into something new. Something better.

And that's exactly what they did.

The moment she finally touched her girls again, when they met on stage and ran into each other's arms just like that first time eleven years ago, that moment created the new Honmoon. That moment, that love, that connection built out of the pieces of the old one, that moment was the start. The start of apologies. The start of forgiveness. The start of a new Honmoon protecting the world without fear, without lies.

Just love. Endless, extraordinary love.

A month later, Rumi woke up in her old bedroom in Celine's house. Before she opened her eyes, she did a mental inventory.

Her arms were around Mira’s waist, and she could feel two hands on her arm. One was Mira's, slender fingers in a loose grip around Rumi's wrist, the pad of her thumb pressed right against her pulse. The other was Zoey's, reaching across Mira from her other side, gripping tight to Rumi's forearm like she didn't want to be pulled away.

She could feel Zoey's knees near her thigh and figured she must have wrapped her legs around Mira's hips, something she tended to do to both of them while conscious and while asleep.

Her face was near Mira's neck, as she was breathing in the smell of her with every quiet inhale. A mix of her shampoo and their laundry detergent and just Mira, since they hadn't done anything yesterday to warrant her putting on perfume.

Sometimes Mira snored and Zoey talked in her sleep, but this morning they were both quiet, like the world was pausing breathlessly before the day. She could feel them both breathing, chests gently rising and falling, and when Rumi finally opened her eyes the first thing she saw was the Honmoon.

This new one was more reactive to them, it seemed. Whenever they touched it wrapped around them, like it was trying to keep them safe. Or perhaps since they made it together, it was just especially strong around them in moments like this.

Rumi let her eyes focus and the shimmering rainbow lines faded to her periphery, allowing her to see Mira. She'd been right about being close to her neck, but Mira's head was tilted slightly toward her, so her face was just above Rumi's on the pillow. Her lips were parted and her cheeks were pink, probably a bit warm from being wrapped up between her girls all night. Her eyelids were still a bit red from crying the night before when she showed up here in the middle of the night to yell at Celine.

Rumi sighed, tilting her head up just enough to see Zoey over Mira's chest. As predicted, she had wrapped herself around Mira entirely, clinging to Rumi's arm across her waist. Her face was pressed against Mira's neck and Rumi could just barely see a freckled pink cheek and long eyelashes, the very corner of her lips twitched up like she was smiling in her sleep.

Rumi loved these girls so much she ached with it even as she held them in her arms. The Honmoon sparkled, wrapping them tighter. Her patterns lit up along with it, and Mira stirred in her sleep.

“Oh no, sorry,” Rumi whispered as Mira blinked her eyes open with a yawn. But she just gave Rumi the fondest smile and turned toward her further to pull her into a warm, sleepy kiss.

“Never apologize for glowing,” Mira hummed against her lips, and Rumi glowed brighter as she blushed.

Zoey whined from Mira’s other side, awake now that the other two were moving, and Rumi just laughed as Mira turned over and made sure Zoey got a sleepy morning kiss too.

Rumi sat up slowly, eliciting grumbles from both of the girls beside her that just made her chuckle again. Now that she was more awake, she could hear movement out in the kitchen. It was an intensely familiar sound from growing up here, Celine humming to herself while she worked. It smelled like tea and porridge.

“Rumiiiii,” Zoey whined pitifully, grabbing at Rumi's arm again and trying to pull her back down.

Rumi rolled her eyes as she turned back and pressed her lips to Zoey's, completing the triangle of warm little good morning kisses, and Zoey hummed happily. Rumi was still glowing, and Mira sat up on her elbows to admire the view. Rumi smiled at her coyly.

“How are you feeling?” she asked gently, and Mira blushed but she didn't look away. She just nodded slowly as she thought about it, Zoey sitting up beside her and wrapping her arms tight around Mira’s nearest arm.

“Good,” Mira finally sighed, turning to smile at Zoey too. “Thanks for coming last night. Sorry I snuck out.”

“I forgive you on the condition that you never do it again,” Zoey grumbled, rubbing her face against Mira's shoulder like a cat. Mira huffed a laugh.

“Deal.”

Rumi slipped out of bed and stretched her arms languidly over her head as she headed for the door. She paused when she reached it and looked back. Her girls were just watching her, a patient question in Mira's eyes, a blush on Zoey's cheeks as her eyes moved across Rumi's patterns. Rumi smiled. She couldn't help it.

“Do you mind waiting a little bit? I want to talk to Celine first,” she asked quietly. She was getting better at this, asking for what she wanted. She barely hesitated this time, just stated why she was asking what she did. And her girls noticed too, both of them grinning at her proudly.

“Take your time,” Mira said immediately. 

“We'll be right here,” Zoey finished.

Rumi pouted, feeling her fangs sharpen in her mouth and her eyes brighten, pupils narrowing at the rush of possessiveness she felt looking at them. They were so cute, she didn't even know how to handle it sometimes, and they shared a look with each other when they saw their effect on her.

Rumi pounced back onto the bed and kissed them both quickly, prompting startled laughs from them as she pulled them in close and squished their cheeks against hers so she could rub them together briefly, before she raced out the door. She could hear them giggling all the way down the hall, and her patterns were still glowing softly when she reached the kitchen.

Celine was right where Rumi expected, stirring a pot on the stove while steam curled from the teapot at the table a few feet away. There were four cups out, each from a different set that the girls had picked as kids. Only Celine's matched the teapot, though Rumi had chosen a similar one.

“Morning,” Rumi said quietly, and Celine looked over her shoulder with a smile that reached her eyes even though it was a bit tired.

“Rumi,” she said simply, and like every time she had said her name in this past month, she sounded relieved when she said it. Like she was worried she wouldn't be able to any more. Like she had almost lost her.

Which she had.

“Do you need any help?” Rumi asked, washing her hands quickly in the sink, but Celine shook her head and placed the lid back on the pot.

“No, thank you, it just needs time to cook.”

Rumi got to the table first and poured tea in Celine's cup and hers with practiced ease. Celine sat first and Rumi took the chair beside hers. They curled their hands around their warm cups in the same way, and Rumi couldn't stop her smile.

“Are you okay?” she asked, tilting her head a bit as she looked at Celine. Just like Mira, her eyes were a bit red and puffy from the night before. But she rolled her eyes fondly at the question.

“You don't have to worry about how I am,” she sighed, and Rumi noticed her eyes moving slowly across Rumi's neck, shoulders, arms. No longer carefully avoiding looking at her patterns. She couldn't remember if Celine had seen them glowing before.

“I know I don't have to,” Rumi said with a shrug, and Celine met her eyes again with a wry smile. Rumi looked at her thoughtfully, trying to arrange the words in her head, and Celine just waited for her. There was comfort between them again. Ease. And Rumi loved it, had missed it desperately. “Celine… I don't really remember my mom.”

Celine's forehead creased with worry immediately, but Rumi continued before she could get too worked up.

“I remember a feeling, and maybe a voice, but I was so little when she died,” she said, rotating her cup in her hands slowly. “And I know that's not fair, and it kills you that I didn't get to know her, but I was never really… wanting for anything.”

Rumi glanced up and the wrinkles in Celine's forehead had smoothed. She looked a little unsure, but patient. Listening.

“You spoiled me rotten most of the time,” Rumi laughed, and Celine winced through a smile. “But you also… y'know… raised me. Taught me. Took care of me. Loved me. Like… a mom would.” Rumi looked down at her tea, nervous. “And I know you weren't ready for that when I was little, and you want to honor my mom's memory and everything, but… I really hope you don't mind if I tell you…”

Rumi looked back up to find tears in Celine's wide eyes. She felt the sting of them in her own and didn't feel ashamed of it.

“You're my mom,” Rumi finished quietly, and Celine’s lips trembled. Rumi shrugged again, tears slipping down her cheeks. “You have been as long as I can remember.”

“But I…” Celine started, voice shaking more than Rumi was used to. She cleared her throat and tried again, looking down at her cup and her hands trembling around it. Rumi reached over and laid a hand on her wrist, holding it steady. “I hurt you so much. I never meant to, but I did.”

Rumi let out a tearful laugh and Celine’s eyes flicked back to hers, confused.

“You were wrong about some things, you made mistakes,” Rumi said, squeezing her arm a bit. “Nobody had perfect parents. Look at Zoey and Mira, their moms messed them up plenty and they aren't even half-demons.”

Celine laughed. Not even one of her practiced media laughs, but a full, honest laugh, and the next thing Rumi knew Celine's arms were around her, hugging her close.

“But you're trying to make it right,” Rumi continued, voice muffled in the soft fabric of Celine's sweater. “You've been listening and learning and… I'm just so grateful.”

Celine was crying in earnest now, and this felt a lot better than their talk a couple of days ago. That had been a lot of raw emotion, a lot of anger and confusion from both of them, and then the very start of this. The understanding. The forgiveness. This felt like healing. This felt like home.

“My baby, my baby,” Celine sang quietly into Rumi's hair, and Rumi sobbed against her shoulder. She sang the start of this song to Rumi when she was little, and it was only years later that Rumi learned the rest of it. “You're my baby, say it to me… Baby, my baby…”

“You did kind of bet on losing dogs when it came to me,” Rumi laughed, and Celine scoffed as she pulled back, brushing Rumi's tears away with her sleeve just like she did when she was small. “And my girls. We're kind of a mess.”

“I don't think anyone in the world would call Huntrix ‘losing dogs,’” she replied smugly, and Rumi laughed again. “I'm so proud of you, Rumi.”

Rumi let out another quiet sob, leaning her head back onto Celine's shoulder. They just held each other there for a bit, Celine still humming and kissing Rumi's hair on occasion as she rocked them gently.

“The girls are probably losing their minds right now,” Rumi sniffed eventually, pulling back and letting Celine wipe her face again. “I told them I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Well I'm afraid Mira will have to continue losing her mind,” Celine sighed, leaving one hand on Rumi's cheek as if to show her she was no longer afraid to touch her patterns, and Rumi's heart felt warm and full. “I'd like to talk to Zoey alone, if that's okay. She hasn't had a chance to yell at me yet.”

Rumi snorted at that, finally taking a long drink of her tea. It had gone a little cold, but it was brewed to perfection as always.

“I think you're underestimating how big a fan she still is,” Rumi hummed, but Celine just tilted her head and gave her a knowing smile.

“And I think you're underestimating how much she adores you,” she said with a graceful shrug. Rumi blushed, her patterns turning pink, and Celine blinked in surprise. She hadn't seen her patterns change like that up close, but she didn't question it. “It's okay, they have every right to be angry. It's my fault you hid such a big part of yourself from them, and they didn't deserve my mistrust.”

“Okay, I'll send her out,” Rumi sighed as she got to her feet. “Just… I don't know… scream if she summons any shin-kal.”

Celine laughed, then took Rumi's hand before she could leave.

“I love you,” Celine said firmly, looking her in the eyes. She gave Rumi a shaky smile. “And I'm… so happy to be your mom.”

Rumi sniffled, wiping her eyes with her other hand.

“Okay cool thanks,” she laughed wetly, and Celine laughed with her, squeezing her hand. “I love you too.”

Rumi felt lighter than she had in years as she walked back to her room, and if her senses hadn't been sharper since she accepted her demon half she would have been scared half to death by Zoey bursting through the door before she reached it. But as it was, she just braced herself for the hug that Zoey wrapped her in.

“I was eavesdropping so I'm gonna go yell at Celine,” she said rapidly, pressing a few quick kisses to Rumi's lips before she skipped down the hall. “And she's right, I adore you!”

Rumi laughed, overwhelmed, and turned back to her doorway. Mira was sitting on the end of the bed smiling at her.

“If it helps, she was only eavesdropping for the last couple minutes,” Mira said in her usual deadpan tone, and Rumi grinned as she stepped into Mira's space. She nudged Mira's knees apart to step between them, and Mira laid her hands on Rumi’s waist as she smirked up at her.

“You okay?” Mira asked quietly, eyes heavy on Rumi’s.

“Yeah, I'm good,” Rumi replied softly, smiling down at her. She reached out and brushed some sleep-mussed hair out of Mira's face. Mira closed her eyes, comfortable, trusting, and Rumi glowed brighter. “I love you so much.”

Mira smiled slowly and wrapped her arms around Rumi's hips, burying her face in the front of her tank top.

“Love you too, darling,” Mira sighed, and Rumi hummed happily at the endearment.

The Honmoon wasn't as bright as it would have been if Zoey was there too, but it still glowed joyfully around the two of them. They ended up falling right back to sleep on the end of the bed until Zoey returned, launching herself on top of them to wake them back up.

When they all went out for breakfast with Celine, she saw firsthand the way the Honmoon danced around them. It was the prettiest thing she'd ever seen.

Chapter Text

Mira decided, at the wise and experienced age of twenty-three, that being in a committed relationship with her two best friends/soulmates (one of whom was also half-demon, wild) was awesome.

After defeating Gwi-Ma and making the new Honmoon, everything started falling into place. Rumi was finally her true, full self, and it was like a dam had burst that they didn't even know was there. She had been trying so hard to compensate for the parts she was hiding that she was always a little bit exhausted, but now?

Rumi was so affectionate. So clingy. So flirty. It was insane how fun it was now, just being the three of them together. Just existing in the same space, being crazy about each other. Rumi was constantly surprising them with the most romantic shit, just dropping casual bombs like her favorite smell being Zoey's neck and her favorite taste being Mira's lips, calling them babygirl and jagiya and darling like it didn't short circuit them every time.

Zoey had always been the touchier one between the three of them, and she was thriving. It seemed like she was making up for lost time, sitting in Rumi's lap whenever they were on the couch, sticking her hands up Rumi's shirt when she was cold, wrapping her legs around Rumi's hips when they were falling asleep.

Mira was more than happy to share Zoey's affection more evenly with Rumi. Especially considering she was getting so much more from Rumi too. Whenever they were standing together, Rumi was sure to wrap her arms around Mira’s waist from behind. When she entered a room, she would press a kiss to Mira's lips like she hadn't seen her in ages. She seemed to enjoy making out with her especially when she was wearing her glasses, which was incredibly cute.

And that wasn't even to mention all the demon stuff.

Because yeah, Rumi was half demon. She'd spent her whole life suppressing it, consciously and unconsciously, and now that she wasn't anymore she was… different.

Rumi had always been, above all else, in control. She was poised and precise, because if she wasn't she didn't know what would happen. But now that the truth was out, she was finally giving herself permission to be messy. Baby steps, but still. She let herself not be in control at all times, let her walls down. Most of all she let her girls see her and be near her when she allowed her demon side out.

There had always been signs that were only obvious in hindsight. She was stronger than she looked. She could be so quiet it wasn't uncommon for her to accidentally sneak up on her girls. Her senses were always a little sharper, her endurance a little longer. But all of that could also be excused by her being raised by Celine and trained as a Hunter since she could walk.

Mira wondered if her demon heritage was why she didn't have to learn to see the Honmoon, but even Rumi herself didn't know the answer to that.

In fact, there was a lot about being half-demon that Rumi didn't know, because as far as they knew, she was the only one.

Celine had dug back in the records of the previous Hunters as far as she could when Rumi was a baby and never found so much as a mention of another half-demon. So Zoey asked for all the materials to comb through herself, and thus began her current hyperfixation.

Rumi.

Or maybe more accurately, what exactly was different about Rumi now that she was embracing her demon side.

Mira helped her keep notes, but otherwise was mostly just there for moral support. And to watch, because there was something stupidly adorable about sitting on the couch with the two of them while Zoey poked at Rumi's teeth and asked questions about her patterns and found which ticklish spots made her purr.

Yeah. Rumi purred. Like a cat.

The funniest part about it was that she had genuinely no idea how she was doing it. She couldn't purr on command. She couldn't force herself. It would just… happen. And Zoey was obsessed.

Mira was too, she just didn't make a big deal out of it.

They spent some very sweaty, very giggly days in the home gym figuring out how to trigger Rumi's demonic characteristics. How to get her claws and fangs out, how to get her eyes to turn gold, how to make her patterns glow. Rumi was scared she wouldn't be able to control herself when she leaned into it, so they worked on it together in the safety of their training space until she was comfortable.

Zoey kept records of everything. How much weight Rumi could bench, how fast she could run, how long she could hold her breath, both normally and in demon-mode (Zoey also variously referred to it as goblin-mode, sicko-mode, and sexy-mode, depending on the situation). She kept track of what emotions brought out which colors in her patterns, what feelings Rumi could focus on to make the changes more predictable. Sometimes she didn't want to have claws or fangs, and it helped to have an over-excited girlfriend to tell her what to think about and how to breathe to make them go away.

Mira checked in with Rumi fairly regularly to make sure it was still okay for them to be studying her like this, keeping a journal like Zoey’s notebooks full of lyrics but specifically just for Rumi’s demon puberty.

Eventually, Rumi shyly admitted that she liked the attention. Mira and Zoey spent that night positively ravishing her.

Right, they were having sex now too. That was awesome. Like, seriously.

It wasn't like Mira had felt unfulfilled before they were, but holy shit did it add another dimension to their relationship. That she liked. A lot.

Rumi had been surprised to learn that Mira and Zoey had never had sex without her. They'd gotten close a couple of times, talked about wanting to try, but when it came down to it, it felt wrong without all three of them. They were a packaged deal. Do not separate. Rumi cried, lamenting how she had deprived them of this, but they got her to stop that real quick.

Turns out sex was a really good way to distract Rumi when she spiraled about the past instead of focusing on the now. Something she still did almost two months into their hiatus, but less.

And today she hadn't spiraled at all. It had just been a quiet day in the penthouse, the kind of cozy domestic bliss Mira chased. They worked on some lyrics over breakfast (Mira made waffles), trained in the gym until lunch (Bobby had bibimbap delivered from their favorite little hole-in-the-wall restaurant as a surprise), and were lounging in the living room after visiting the bathhouse for a couple hours.

Mira was comfortably situated in one corner of the couch with Rumi's head in her lap, doing a crossword on the arm of the sofa with one hand and scratching Rumi’s scalp with the other. Rumi was scrolling on her phone, humming the bass line of the song they were working on. And Zoey was leaning comfortably against the back of the couch while straddling Rumi's thighs, squinting at the cramped Korean text in one of Celine's many books on demonology.

This was a somewhat-common evening activity for them at this point, Zoey pouring over an ancient book while the other two kept busy until she asked a question. These sessions were how they figured out that Rumi's hair was naturally purple, that she had only successfully teleported once and it felt gross so she didn't want to try again, and that she had better night vision when her eyes turned cat-like.

But tonight, Zoey had a different question.

“Rumi, have you ever…” she began confidently, but trailed off so hard that both Mira and Rumi looked up at her. She was a bit pink under her freckles, staring hard at the book like she was trying to decide whether to finish the question. She winced as she met Rumi's eyes and continued awkwardly. “...Eaten a soul?”

“Zoey,” Mira snapped, and Zoey winced again, but Rumi just laughed thoughtfully and they both relaxed at the sound.

“I wouldn't even know how,” she said simply, shrugging, though she set her phone down on her chest to think about it. “I mean… I clearly don't need them to survive.”

Zoey hummed, tapping her pen against the edge of the book as her mind whizzed along. Mira just watched her with a fond smile.

“How does eating a soul work anyway? Do you need to take the whole thing, or can you just take a bit and it'll replenish eventually like blood? Do the demons we fight only eat the whole soul because they're jerks?”

Zoey moved her hands animatedly as she spoke, eyes bouncing around the page of the book as she went on. But Mira's attention fell to Rumi, who had gone very still and was staring at the ceiling.

“And if you did eat a soul would it give you super demon powers? Like you could turn invisible or read minds or something? What do you think eating a soul would feel like? Would you see the memories of the person the soul is from? Or is it just like another body part? Do they taste different depending on the person? And what-”

“Rumi?” Mira asked, quiet but firm enough that Zoey stopped speaking and focused on Rumi.

Rumi, whose eyes were widening slowly, brow furrowing, patterns slowly turning neon pink.

“Oh my god,” Rumi said, her voice flat.

“Rumi? What's wrong?” Zoey asked anxiously, setting the book aside and reaching toward her hands. “Was that too much? Sorry, my train of thought kinda got away from me and-”

Rumi sat bolt upright, the movement so sudden Zoey almost fell off her lap and Mira’s glasses were nearly knocked off.

“Oh my god, I think I've been eating your souls when we have sex,” Rumi blurted, horrified, as she covered her mouth with her hands.

The silence that followed was… weird. Rumi was clearly distressed, but Zoey and Mira were both trying not to laugh. The sentence she just said was so absurd, but she was so upset about it she looked about ready to cry. Mira met Zoey's eyes over her shoulder and they silently agreed: not the time to joke.

“Rumi, sweetheart,” Mira began gently, reaching toward her. She didn't flinch away, so she and Zoey guided her carefully into a normal sitting position on the couch between them. Neither of them let go of her, Zoey holding her hand and brushing wisps of hair out of her face, Mira squeezing her knee and touching her cheek to draw her attention. Rumi's eyes flicked to hers and they were yellow, pupils narrowed to slits.

“Take a deep breath for me, honey,” Mira continued when she noticed the speed at which her chest was rising and falling. Zoey wound her hand into Rumi's braid, scratching at the nape of her neck. Rumi nodded, taking a few slow, purposeful breaths, but her eyes stayed yellow. Her patterns kept glowing.

“Okay, good, can you explain that a little more?” Zoey asked, and Mira hadn't even noticed Rumi's claws were out until she saw the careful way Zoey was holding her hand.

“I think I've been… eating a little bit of your souls,” Rumi said slowly, tears welling in her eyes. “Every time we have sex. Oh my god, I'm so sorry.”

“Babe, it's okay,” Zoey murmured, smiling as she tried to hold Rumi's gaze. “We're not mad. Tell us why you think that.”

Mira brushed Rumi's tears away as they fell, moving slow so she wouldn't startle her. As Rumi seemed to realize that they weren't upset, her patterns faded just a bit. One of her eyes went back to normal. She exhaled heavily.

“Okay. Okay. So after the first time we had sex, I remember feeling…” Rumi paused, struggling for the right word. She started blushing, patterns glowing again but not as harshly. “Satisfied, obviously. But not like… just satisfied. Full, I guess. And I figured it was just what it felt like after having really good sex.”

“I mean I think we did pretty good considering it was all of our first times, but really good?” Zoey teased, but even her teasing tone was gentle. Soft. Careful, like she didn't want to overwhelm Rumi, and Mira felt herself relax a little more when Rumi smiled and rolled her eyes. Mira brushed away the last of her tears with her thumb, but before she could withdraw her hand Rumi reached up and held it against her cheek. Mira smiled, her chest warming at the action.

“But once I was full, I realized that I'd been hungry, do you know what I mean?” Rumi continued, brow furrowing again. “Like I'd never noticed the hunger before because I wasn't looking for… an absence of something. And then I started feeling it again the next day, and I thought it was just like… libido, or something.”

Rumi's blush darkened and she turned her head to bury her face against Mira's palm, embarrassed.

“Borasaek, darling,” Mira laughed, taking her face in both of her hands and gently turning her to meet her eyes. “So far, that does just sound like you found your sex drive. I get kinda hungry for both of you too.”

That made Zoey blush too, which felt like a huge accomplishment.

“That's what I thought too, which is why I haven't mentioned it before,” Rumi sighed, and her patterns dimmed again. But her claws were still there, one eye still amber. “But… when Zoey asked about it… I realized I know what both of your souls feel like.”

Mira met Zoey’s eyes, and they were wearing the same expression: curiosity. Rumi's cheeks warmed under Mira’s hands.

“When we sing together, I see them,” Rumi murmured, shyly meeting Mira's eyes, then Zoey's. “And when I really thought about it… I know your souls. I know their shape and their sound. I know how they feel. Those were my little fires.”

Mira watched Zoey think about it, saw her eyes unfocus and her fingers start to play idly with Rumi's claws. Then her eyes widened just a bit and filled with tears, and she smiled at Rumi.

“Oh wow,” she laughed, shaky with tears, and Rumi smiled back at her. “Yeah, I know what your souls sound like. That's what I was hearing all those years before we met.”

Mira's brow furrowed as she thought about it, hands dropping to hold one of Rumi's between them. She thought back to her ghosts, the light and color of them, the way they moved. She thought of the first time she saw the Honmoon, the way the lights glowed above their chests and spun out into threads.

She thought of the moment they made the new Honmoon, how it sounded, how it felt.

“I guess… I know exactly what your souls look like,” she laughed, overwhelmed, and Rumi squeezed her hand carefully. “That's pretty cool.”

“But that's just it,” Rumi sighed, and the smile left her face. She swallowed hard and looked down at her knees. “I know what your souls feel like, and I feel them when we're intimate. And I think I've been… feeding on them, a little.”

Mira frowned thoughtfully. She didn't feel different. Didn't feel like less of herself. When she was having sex with her girls, she never felt like something was being stolen from her.

“I get full with the feeling of you,” Rumi continued, wincing again as she searched for words. “And it gives me energy, like adrenaline, like… a shot of espresso. And you both… get tired.”

“We do kind of… wear out before you do,” Zoey admitted slowly, blushing. “But I just figured that was a demon stamina thing. You've always been a bit sturdier than us endurance-wise, Rums.”

“But I'm… I'm stealing,” Rumi stammered, shaking her head and squeezing her eyes shut. “I didn't ask, I just… took.” She exhaled hard again, and Mira met Zoey's eyes sharply at what they were seeing. She was making herself small again, a habit she had finally been breaking lately. “I swear I didn't know I was doing it, I'm so sorry, I'd never-"

“So what?” Mira asked firmly, and Rumi blinked at her, confused. “So what if you are feeding on my soul? Is that bad?”

Rumi seemed to blue screen at that question. She opened her mouth like she was going to speak, then closed it. She looked at Zoey for help, but Zoey just smiled at Mira and shrugged.

“I don't feel different,” she said simply, tapping a finger on her own sternum. “I don't feel… less. Or drained. Or anything like that. I get tired right after the sex, but by the time I wake up I'm all good and basking in that afterglow.”

Mira chuckled at Rumi's blush. She still didn't seem to know what to say, so Mira reached back up to run a thumb over a pattern glowing pink on her cheek.

“And you're not stealing, or taking without permission,” she said quietly. “Because I'm yours. Both of yours. Body and soul.”

Rumi's eyes filled with tears again and Zoey hummed in agreement. Mira kept her hand steady on Rumi's cheek as she leaned in, entering her space slowly to look for signs of hesitation. But she didn't see any, so she smiled as she bumped her nose against Rumi's and watched her eyes turn back to brown up close.

“My soul is yours to take, jagiya,” Mira whispered, and she felt Rumi's shaky exhale on her lips. “Always has been.”

She let Rumi move in the last inch for a slow, smoldering kiss, and smiled against her lips when her tongue felt the points of Rumi’s fangs. It wasn't a long kiss, but it was thorough. Rumi was panting by the end, and Mira just smirked when she saw Zoey's fingers curling around Rumi's chin. She turned Rumi's face to hers and sealed their lips together briefly.

“Mhmm, retroactive permission granted,” Zoey murmured before another kiss. “I know you weren't taking anything without asking on purpose, pretty girl.” Mira hummed in agreement, watching Rumi’s eyes flutter between kisses with a grin. “And it seems to me like you're only feeding when emotions are high and our souls are overflowing anyway.” Rumi's eyes turned gold again as Zoey's kisses got longer, deeper. “So drink up, babe.”

“Holy shit, Zoey,” Mira laughed, and she knew she was blushing too when Zoey finally turned away from Rumi, giving the poor girl a chance to breathe. Zoey just smirked, giving Mira a single moment of warning before she caught her in a slow, searing kiss.

All three of them could be described as insatiable, but Zoey was… something else.

“I'm yours too, Bunhongsaek,” Zoey whispered when she eventually let Mira take a breath. Then she and Rumi both giggled, and Mira had to assume it was because her glasses had fogged up because she couldn't see. She pouted until she felt Rumi's fingers, not claws, lifting her glasses away from her face.

Rumi was fully human again, all the anxiety-induced demon characteristics having faded away while she watched Zoey kiss Mira. Her patterns were still glowing, but only because she was blushing. She set Mira's glasses aside carefully, then sat back with a sigh.

“Thank you,” Rumi murmured, eyes sliding between them. “For understanding. And calming me down. And…” She reached out to both of them, pulling them into an embrace so she could kiss both of their cheeks. “For sharing your souls with me. I can't… I don't even know how to…”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Mira whispered when Rumi trailed off, voice thick with emotion. “If you think about it, our souls have been together even longer than we have.”

“Aw, Mira,” Zoey cooed, reaching her arms around both of her girls to squeeze them closer. “That's so sappy, I love it.”

Mira pinched Zoey's cheek and she giggled. Rumi's patterns were glowing a soft gold as she stayed tucked between them, and it made Mira's heart feel warm and full.

“I love you, Paransaek,” Mira said quietly, dropping her voice into her lower register the way she knew her girls loved. Sure enough, Zoey blushed and Rumi hummed happily. Mira sat back a bit to meet Rumi's eyes. “Love you too, Borasaek. So…”

Mira smirked, sliding a hand up under Rumi's shirt and feeling her abs jump beneath her touch.

“Are you hungry?” Mira whispered, and Rumi's eyes turned gold so fast Zoey gasped. Rumi leaned back in, breathing the next words against Mira's neck.

“Starving.”

Mira stirred to consciousness at the sound of Rumi humming.

It was the intro of a song she recognized, but… her brain hadn't quite re-engaged yet. Now that Rumi had pointed it out, yeah, she did tend to be disproportionately exhausted after sex.

Worth it.

She blinked her eyes open, patting around for her glasses, and heard Zoey giggle before her glasses were placed gently onto her face.

Rumi was smiling at her as her hand drifted from her glasses to her forehead, the feeling of her claws present as she very gently tucked some hair behind her ear. Her eyes were gold again, cat-like pupils dilated as they fixed on Mira's. She was still humming as she wrapped her arms comfortably around Mira's waist.

Zoey sighed behind Mira, her breath warm on the back of her neck before she snuggled her face there. Zoey's arms were around her too, reaching past so her hands were on Rumi's hips. Then Zoey started humming the bass line of the song Rumi was already humming, and Mira’s brain finally caught up. She smirked, sliding a hand up Rumi's neck and watching her grin ticklishly to see her fangs.

Rumi's demon half always got involved when they had sex. It made more sense now, knowing that she was skimming off their excess emotion as a snack.

“Daylight, to the moonlight, to the sunrise, to the water,” Mira sang softly, and she felt Zoey squeeze her and Rumi closer, saw Rumi's eyes light up. “Dark nights and the hard times, only make me want you more.” Mira leaned in, grinning against Rumi's lips. “Want you more…”

Mira pressed a soft kiss to Rumi's mouth, fingertips brushing the patterns glowing on Rumi's neck.

“Yeah you always leave me with a hungry heart,” Zoey sang, sliding her hands up from Rumi's hips to her waist, pushing her shirt up to reveal more and more of her glowing gold patterns. “‘Cause all I think about is think about is you.”

“Every time you leave I always fall apart,” Mira joined back in when Rumi's lips left hers. Rumi grinned and joined in on the next line. “‘Cause all I think about is think about is you…”

Mira let her eyes unfocus and the Honmoon was blazing around them, bright and sparkling as they sang together and snuggled close on the couch. Rumi's patterns glowed brighter in kind, gold wherever Mira and Zoey were both touching her. But their song was interrupted when a sound started rumbling out of Rumi’s chest.

Purring.

Mira could feel Zoey lifting her head to look at Rumi over her shoulder, and she could picture her grin. Rumi blushed, her patterns turning from gold and opal to a rosy pink.

“Still don't have any control over it, do you, tiger?” Mira whispered, and Rumi groaned and buried her face against Mira's chest. Zoey giggled, delighted, and slid her hands further up toward Rumi’s ribs to feel her purrs.

“Are you…” Rumi began, voice muffled, and she had to pause as another loud purr rumbled through her, followed by a wave of giggles from Zoey and Mira. “Both okay?”

Rumi kept purring, patterns still glowing pink, though they started to turn back to gold at the edges.

“Yeah, babe, I'm good,” Zoey sighed, pressing her smile to the back of Mira's neck. “Just a little tired.”

“Same here,” Mira hummed, kissing the top of Rumi’s head. “You full?”

Rumi whined, embarrassed, but her purrs got louder.

“Yes,” she muttered eventually, the words barely audible over her purring and through the fabric of Mira's shirt. “Thank you.”

“Good,” Zoey said, giving Rumi’s ribs a squeeze. “We want to keep our half-demon well fed.”

“Oh my god,” Rumi grumbled, voice strained.

She couldn't help but join in when her girls started laughing, though. And the Honmoon didn't shine as bright as it did when they sang, but it got pretty close.

Hours later in the middle of the night, Zoey woke up from a dead sleep shouting the word “succubus!” and sprinted out of bed to find the correct demonology book. Mira spent the next ten minutes comforting Rumi, who had been so startled by the shout she shredded a pillow between her claws.

Yeah. They were fine. Hell, they were great. This was the kind of cozy domestic bliss Mira chased, after all. Well… maybe a slightly weirder version than most.

Again. Worth it.

Chapter Text

The day before Zoey turned eleven, she was completely miserable. And at the same time, so excited she felt on the verge of passing out.

It was a lot.

Last year when she came to Korea for the summer, school had been out for two weeks and she had already turned ten. And then she had led her mom and stepdad directly to Olympic Park to find her soulmates.

This year, she wanted to get to Korea as quickly as possible after school ended. She missed her girls so much it was almost physically painful at this point, but she was also completely terrified to see them. It had been months, months, since she’d hugged them or held their hands or kissed their cheeks, and what if everything was different? Sure they’d talked on the phone every weekend when Rumi and Mira got to see each other in person, but it wasn’t the same. What if they had inside jokes without her? What if they had a secret handshake? What if they had decided that she was annoying, just like her classmates?

And there was the crux of it. School had been hard the past couple of years. She had a few friends, but most people thought she was… too much. She was annoying, or loud, or weird, or all three and then some. She was too obsessed with the Sunlight Sisters, too interested in the California hip-hop scene, and generally she just didn’t care about the same things as everybody else.

Maybe… maybe she didn’t care about the same things as Rumi and Mira anymore.

Zoey was unusually quiet on the ride to her mom’s apartment from the airport. Her stepdad was driving and her mom was in the passenger seat, turned halfway back so she could ask Zoey about her school year, but Zoey answered in as few words as possible, anxiety building as the ride went on. There was a birthday party tomorrow, and Celine was bringing the girls, and Zoey just didn’t know how to explain the combination of excitement and fear she was feeling about it as she struggled to switch her brain back over to speaking Korean.

“What’s going on, sweetheart?” her mom finally asked, reaching back and taking her hand. “Are you sick from the plane? You get to see your girls soon, are you excited?”

“I don’t even have words for how excited I am,” Zoey blurted, squeezing her mom’s hand. And that was true. She really didn’t have words for what she was feeling, in Korean or in English.

“Good, because we have a surprise,” her stepdad said mysteriously as he parked the car, and that lightened Zoey’s mood a little. She was so curious about what the surprise was, she forgot about her anxiety and her somewhat-awful school year and just peppered her mom and stepdad with questions as they all brought her luggage up to the apartment.

She was feeling a little better by the time they made it to the door, settling into the teasing banter with her parents, the Korean words springing to her mind faster. They stopped, and the anticipation grew as her stepdad grabbed the doorknob.

He pulled the door open with a flourish.

“Surprise!”

Zoey jumped, shocked by the sudden noise. Rumi and Mira. They were here. Right here, in her mom’s apartment. Celine was there too, smiling at her from the kitchen while Rumi and Zoey jumped in place in the entryway with huge smiles on their faces.

“Happy almost birthday!” they both shouted, and Zoey’s breath froze in her chest at the sound of their voices.

A few moments of silence passed as Zoey stared, barely processing what she was seeing, and all eyes turned to her.

“Zoey?” her mom asked gently from beside her.

Zoey burst into tears, running directly into Rumi and Mira’s arms.

“Oh no, Zoey-”

“Sorry, did we scare you?”

Their voices went soft and worried as they wrapped her up in their arms between them, immediately turning all of their attention in toward her as they sank to the floor together. Rumi was whispering in her ear how much she had missed her and Mira was kissing the top of her head and she could hear her mom talking to Celine nearby, but all Zoey could think of was how overwhelmed she was. Not by the closeness, no, she needed more of that. She wanted to be closer, she wanted to crack her ribcage open and pull them both in next to her heart.

Her heart, that's what was overwhelming her. Her feelings. This awful mix of joy and excitement and fear and anxiety that she couldn’t disentangle. And she couldn’t get any words out, just sobs that felt like they would tear her in half when they came out of her.

After an amount of time that Zoey couldn't parse (either several minutes or several hours), her mom interrupted the huddle to pick Zoey up and place her on the couch. As soon as she was situated, Rumi and Mira surrounded her again, and Zoey just kept wordlessly bawling the whole time while her mom went back to speaking with Celine and her stepdad.

“Zoey, what's going on?” Mira murmured, sitting back just enough that she could see Zoey's face and wipe at her tears with her sleeve.

“Do you not want us here?” Rumi asked anxiously, and at the question Zoey just clung harder to Rumi's waist, but she didn't seem to make the connection. “We can go, we can come back tomorrow if-”

“No no please,” Zoey finally managed, forcing the words out through her tears. “Please don't go. Don't ever go. I don't… I can't…”

“Excuse me girls,” Zoey’s mom cut in gently, and Rumi and Mira leaned back just enough that she could reach her daughter, kneeling in front of the couch. “Zoey, can you look at me?”

Zoey did, still hiccuping with sobs, and her mom took both of her hands and held them tight. Celine was standing behind her mom, watching carefully but pretending she wasn't.

“We're gonna try to squeeze all the feelings out, okay?” her mom said quietly, and Zoey immediately felt a little calmer. This was something she could do, something she had learned to do when she got too anxious. But anxiety was only one of the hundred things she was feeling right now, would this even work? “Curl your toes up tight and take a deep breath.”

Zoey did as instructed, tensing all the muscles in her feet and taking a long, slow breath along with her mom. Four seconds in, hold for four seconds, four seconds out. She relaxed her muscles as she exhaled.

“Now your legs,” her mom said, and her voice was steady. Soothing. This was easy. She could focus on this. She tensed her leg muscles, breathed in, held, breathed out, relaxed.

They continued that way, squeezing and relaxing the muscles in each part of her body from her toes up to her head, and by the time they reached her shoulders she realized Rumi and Mira were doing it too, holding their breath with her, clenching their fists with her, and she felt like her heart would swell right out of her chest.

“...And breathe out,” her mom finished, and Zoey opened her eyes, relaxing the muscles in her face as she let out her last long breath. She wasn't crying anymore, and Mira reached right back over to brush the remains of her tears away with her sleeve. Zoey's mom smiled at the action, eyes going soft as Rumi wrapped an arm around her shoulders and guided her gently to lean their heads together.

“Better?” her mom asked, and Zoey hummed an affirmative as exhaustion crashed over her. Mira leaned against her on her other side, burying her face in Zoey’s hair, and something inside Zoey finally stilled.

This was safe. This was home.

Her mom kissed her forehead before she stood to talk to Celine again, and Rumi and Mira took the cue to wrap their arms back around Zoey.

“That felt pretty good, honestly,” Mira mumbled into Zoey's hair, and Zoey let out a tired laugh. “Might try that next time I want to beat somebody up.”

“Is this okay?” Rumi asked, squeezing Zoey a little to show what she meant by ‘this.’

“Yeah, this is good,” Zoey sighed, turning and snuggling her face into Rumi's neck. She felt Rumi's breath catch at the action, but she knew Rumi would pull away if it was too much. “I missed you both so much.”

“Missed you too,” Mira whispered, pressing a kiss to Zoey's hair, and Rumi hummed in agreement.

“So much.”

“I'm sorry I cried,” Zoey blurted, and they both started to shush her and tell her she didn't have to apologize, but she barreled on before she could lose her nerve. “I just… I was so scared you wouldn't like me anymore.”

“Zoey, why-?”

“We love you-!”

“I know, it feels silly now,” Zoey grumbled, turning fitfully to try to hide her blush against Mira's shoulder. “It's just… kids back home, back in Burbank, they… they think I'm weird.”

“Well yeah, of course you're weird,” Mira laughed, and Rumi reached over and punched her in the arm. But Zoey laughed too, and Mira just swatted Rumi's hand away with a smile. “But all three of us are weird. The kids at my school think I'm insane, they're scared of me. But who cares about them? That's why we have each other.”

“I think you're both perfect,” Rumi muttered, blushing, and Zoey turned back to her to kiss her cheek. “I'm sorry you were scared. And that the other kids are mean. You want me to beat anybody up? I'll do it.”

“Hey, I was gonna offer that,” Mira whined, and Zoey was laughing again as she turned to kiss Mira's cheek too. “Seriously, we will go to America to stomp some jerks for you. Just give me names.”

“Guys,” Zoey giggled, and she was really tired now. All those panicked tears had worn her out, and she was fighting gravity to stay awake. “That's… good to know, actually. I just… have to remember…” She yawned, snuggling herself into Mira’s side and sighing comfortably when she felt Rumi lean after her and kiss her cheek. “That you love me... And I'll be fine.”

Rumi hummed a laugh, and Zoey realized there was music playing quietly in the room. She had been so overwhelmed she didn't even notice before, but a Sunlight Sisters song was playing. It was a cover from their second tour album, and Zoey grinned at Rumi.

“Will you sing for me?” she whispered, and Rumi rolled her eyes, smirking, while Mira shook with a laugh.

“My mom sounds better than me, but sure,” Rumi teased, and sure enough, the second verse was coming up and that was Miyeong's verse. Something in Zoey's chest clenched painfully for Rumi, for not getting the chance to know her mom. But she could also still hear Celine and her own mom talking nearby, watching over them all as they cuddled, and her chest warmed instead.

“You're gonna be knowing, the loneliest kind of lonely,” Rumi sang quietly, tucking some loose hair behind Zoey's ear. Zoey reached up and grabbed her hand, lacing their fingers together before Rumi could pull away, but she didn't try to. “It may be rough going, just to do your thing's the hardest thing to do.”

Rumi had the prettiest voice. It had completely blown Zoey’s mind to learn that the girl that had been singing to her in her dreams for years was the daughter of one of the Sunlight Sisters, and in retrospect she wondered if that was why she'd latched onto them in the first place.

“But you've gotta,” Rumi continued, and Zoey heard her laugh a bit as Mira joined in. “Make your own kind of music, sing your own special song.”

Celine let out a quiet laugh of her own at the sound of the girls singing one of her songs, and Zoey’s heart skipped when Celine started singing too.

“Make your own kind of music, even if nobody else sings along…”

Zoey drifted off right then and there, the murmur of her mom explaining the box breathing and muscle tensing exercise to Celine in the background and Rumi and Mira telling her how much they loved her right against her ears.

Safe. Home.

Zoey’s birthday was at the beginning of June, so depending on when the school year ended, she would start her summers in Seoul either right after her birthday or just in time for it. She kind of loved it, having the first thing back with her girls be a celebration just for her, a time for them to lavish attention on her to make up for the last several months apart.

Zoey liked to think that her birthdays contributed a lot to Rumi and Mira getting more comfortable with Zoey-levels of physical affection, because it seemed like every year they were faster to touch her. When she turned thirteen, they met her at the airport and Rumi got so excited she scooped her up and refused to put her down, carrying her all the way to the car while Zoey blushed and Mira laughed. By the time she turned sixteen, the girls basically reversed their very first meeting, both of them kissing her on the lips one after the other the second they got their hands on her.

For some reason, that was the moment that sprang to Zoey's mind when she kissed Rumi outside her old bedroom in Celine's house five years later.

“I was eavesdropping so I'm gonna go yell at Celine,” she rattled off, then leaned up on her toes and right into a kiss. Two soft little pecks on her lips and a third that lingered long enough for her to sigh into. “And she's right, I adore you!”

And Zoey skipped down the hall, leaving Rumi laughing behind her.

She loved the way Rumi laughed lately. It was different. Unguarded. She cried differently too, and sang, and kissed. It was like the saturation on her was turned up, like they had only been getting her middle range of sounds and suddenly there were these crystal clear high tones and velvety low tones that made her so much more beautiful.

And she had already been so beautiful.

Zoey stopped skipping when she reached the kitchen, approaching the table as soberly as she could. Celine was just finishing pouring tea into her mug, and Zoey couldn't quite keep the smile from twitching at her lips when she saw her old teacup. The care Celine handled it with as she pushed it across the table.

She had always handled all three of them with so much care. Maybe too much.

Zoey sat, mumbling a thank you as she wrapped her hands around her warm mug, breathed in the steam coming off the tea. Too hot to sip yet. She looked up at Celine.

There was still something so arresting about sitting in a room with Celine. The Celine. The last Sunlight Sister. But she was also Celine her mentor, Celine Rumi's surrogate mom, Celine the demon hunter.

Zoey sighed, and Celine just waited. She wasn't smiling, wasn't frowning. Just… waiting.

“Do you remember my first birthday here with Rumi and Mira?” Zoey asked with a frown. Celine's eyebrows lifted slightly in surprise. “My mom taught you the muscle tensing thing she did with me when I got anxious. And you used to do it with all three of us, when any of us was overwhelmed.”

“I remember,” Celine said with a nod. “It was really helpful. I wasn't always sure how to handle Rumi's anxiety, so-”

“Anxiety about her patterns,” Zoey cut in. Celine winced. “Because that was the worst part for her, you know. The secret. The hiding.”

Celine nodded, and Zoey tightened her fingers on her cup.

“I don't care that her dad was a demon. She's still Rumi, and I'm like… crazy in love with Rumi,” Zoey continued, brow furrowing. “The part that sucked was that she lied to us. She hid it from us.”

“Because I told her to,” Celine sighed, and Zoey clenched her jaw.

“I've been looking back ever since, you know? Thinking about our whole lives together,” she went on rapidly, staring down at her tea. “And I can see it. All the times she wanted to tell us. All the times she almost did. And how much it hurt her when she didn't.”

Celine nodded, fidgeting with her teacup, and Zoey let out an explosive sigh.

“Aren't you going to defend yourself?” she blurted, slamming her cup on the table, and Celine flinched.

“I don't want to make excuses,” she replied carefully, frowning, and Zoey scoffed.

“I want to know why,” she demanded, voice low and quiet in a way that Celine hadn't heard often. “I want to hear it from you.”

Celine stared at her for a long moment. Her shoulders sagged, and she sighed heavily.

“Back when you and Mira first arrived, I trained you the only way I knew how,” she began slowly. “The same way I was trained. By teaching you that all demons were evil and had to be hunted. So, Rumi… couldn't be a demon.” Celine looked away and wiped her eyes. “I know how confusing it is, to spend your whole life knowing something is true, only to be confronted by the idea that it might not be, and I was an adult when that happened. I couldn't have three little girls going out there to hunt demons thinking that some of them might be good.”

Zoey sipped at her tea to keep her hands busy. She wanted to step around the table and give Celine a hug, but she also really needed to hear this. She needed her to say it. Celine rubbed her knuckles between her eyebrows, a move Zoey remembered from training that meant she was getting a headache.

“Drink some tea, you're dehydrated,” Zoey said quietly, and Celine blinked at her in surprise, but she took a long drink nonetheless.

“Kimmy and I knew Rumi's father,” she continued eventually, her voice fragile. “We trusted him, at least as much as we could trust anyone that wanted to be a part of Miyeong's life. And it had taken a long time for us to get to that point. And a lot of reflecting on… what it meant, to be Hunters, if there were good demons. But in the end… it didn't matter that he was good. All that mattered was that he was under Gwi-Ma’s control.”

Celine's face turned hard, cold. She took another drink of her tea and met Zoey's eyes again, and there was a shadow there that Zoey had never seen.

“Has she told you that I killed him?” she asked darkly. Zoey nodded, and Celine swallowed hard, eyes narrowing. “And about… Kimmy?”

Zoey nodded again, heart thudding hollowly in her chest. Rumi told them everything in the days after they defeated Gwi-Ma, everything she knew about her demon blood and her past that she had to hide from them before.

“Did she… did she really kill Miyeong?” Zoey asked, her voice shaking for the first time today. “And she wanted… to kill my Rumi?”

Celine nodded, tears running down her face. She didn't even try to wipe them away this time.

“There you have it,” she finished  shrugging. “I made Rumi lie to you because I thought I was protecting you and Mira from demons, and…” She sniffed, looking down at her tea. “And protecting her from you and Mira.” Zoey's hands clenched around her cup again as Celine looked back up at her. “I'm sorry, Zoey. I was always just so… scared.

“You never let it show,” Zoey replied with a sigh. “Faults and fears, I guess.”

Celine just nodded miserably, and Zoey got to her feet. She walked purposefully around the table and stood next to Celine until she turned toward her enough that Zoey could wrap her arms around her. Celine just sat stiffly in her embrace for a moment, confused.

“I wish you didn't tell her to hide from us, but I understand why you did,” Zoey said firmly, and Celine slowly eased into the hug. “You were wrong, but you're trying to make it up to her. I see that. I'm glad.”

Celine's breath caught in her chest and Zoey pulled back, sitting in the chair next to hers. Celine wiped her eyes quickly and Zoey just watched her, thoughtful.

“I really want you to keep earning her forgiveness, because she loves you so much,” Zoey said softly, and Celine looked completely thrown. She hadn't expected this from Zoey, this quiet patience, and honestly Zoey hadn't expected it either. “And Mira respects you like crazy, she wanted to be just like you when we were kids.”

Celine sniffled, a smile finally crossing her face as she looked at Zoey. Really looked at her.

“And you?” she asked, and Zoey shrugged.

“Miyeong was my bias,” she said lightly, grinning, and Celine stared at her for the longest moment of Zoey's life before she started laughing.

“You still surprise me, even after all these years,” Celine chuckled, reaching out to tuck some of Zoey's hair behind her ear, and Zoey just kept grinning.

“For real though, I'm… in awe of you,” she continued quietly, and Celine’s eyebrows went up again. “Always have been. You raised Rumi and you trained all three of us, and the whole time you were protecting the Honmoon alone.” Celine actually looked a bit embarrassed by the praise, and Zoey was totally charmed by it. “There's a lot I wish I could change about these past eleven years. But I know you've always been trying to protect us.”

Celine nodded, and they both jumped a bit when the kitchen timer dinged.

“The juk is done,” Celine said quietly, glancing toward the stove. She looked back at Zoey with a small smile. “Do you want to get the girls? Or… you haven't technically yelled at me yet, so…”

“I'm good,” Zoey shrugged, giving Celine one last quick hug before she hopped to her feet. “Be right back.”

Zoey had to stop in the hall to catch her breath, hastily wiping tears from her eyes. This was good. She was still mourning what could have been, the life they could have had if Rumi had been allowed to be honest with them from the start. But that couldn't be helped, couldn't be changed, and all they could do was be better moving forward. And Celine was trying, for all of them, but mostly for Rumi.

When she pushed Rumi's door open, she wasn't surprised to see Rumi and Mira asleep on the end of the bed. Mira was flat on her back, one arm serving as Rumi's pillow, with Rumi's hand resting on her navel under her shirt. And Rumi was doing one of Zoey's favorite things.

Glowing.

When she glowed in her sleep like this, it meant she was totally peaceful. No bad dreams, no discomfort, just sleep. She only glowed like this when she was with one or both of her girls, and Zoey was obsessed.

Rumi had a hard time communicating her feelings. For obvious reasons, but still. Now, her patterns communicated when she couldn't. Sometimes it seemed like she hated it, found it embarrassing and left her exposed when she didn't want to be, and in those instances Zoey had taken to blurting out something embarrassing about herself to try to put them back on even footing. Mira always followed suit, and by the time Rumi realized what they were doing, she was so touched by it she wasn't embarrassed anymore.

But most of the time, Rumi seemed kind of… grateful for it. They could see her patterns changing colors or glowing a certain way, and sometimes it seemed like even she didn't know what she was feeling until she saw them.

Right now, tucked into Mira's side, they were that pretty silvery-rainbow they usually were, just glowing softly. This was Zoey's favorite glow. Peaceful. With her girls.

So naturally she got a running start and launched herself on top of them.

They both woke up with startled ‘oofs’, Mira reflexively wrapping an arm around her waist and Rumi's patterns flashing pink. They were pretty quick to figure out what happened though, since Zoey couldn't stop giggling and immediately started pressing warm little kisses to both of their faces in turn.

“Zoeeeyyy,” Rumi tried to whine, but she was laughing too hard as she caught Zoey with a hand on the back of her neck for a longer kiss.

“Ugh, am I allowed to leave the room yet?” Mira groaned, but Rumi and Zoey both kept her pinned to the bed when she tried to get up. Zoey turned to kiss Mira next, and when she was done Rumi caught Mira's lips immediately.

Zoey watched them with a happy sigh, Rumi's patterns fading from panicked pink back to that opalescent shimmer, and they both looked at her when she let out a delighted little hum.

“You're both so beautiful,” she sighed, and they both reacted just like she thought they would. Rumi blushed and glanced away, a shy smile on her face. Mira's eyes went soft and she grinned, tilting her head a bit as she looked at Zoey.

“You too, babygirl,” she said quietly, and Zoey kicked her feet gleefully off the edge of the bed. Then Mira's brow furrowed just enough that Zoey noticed. “You okay? How was your talk?”

Rumi hummed in agreement, turning her full attention back to Zoey, and Zoey’s heart fluttered.

“I'm good, it was good,” she said simply, and the tiny crease between Mira’s eyebrows disappeared. Rumi's smile softened just a bit. “Holy balls, I love you both so freaking much.”

Both of them stared at her, and she realized she'd said that in English, and she burst out laughing. She tried to translate it, but Mira was falling back to sleep and Rumi was being so snuggly, and she eventually gave up and dragged them both out of bed to go have breakfast.

But they both made sure to tell her they loved her so freaking much too, Rumi saying it confidently in English and Mira blushing as she tried it too, and yeah, god, she loved these girls so freaking much.