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Chapter Text

Baby Ryu was whisked out of the room almost immediately, as more support staff streamed in to tend to her rapidly destabilizing mother.

The nurse pushed the bassinet into an auxiliary pod, separated from the main hallway by a curtain. Though none of the prenatal appointments had given any indications of potential problems, they were still always a risk, and they were, of course, prepared for them.

It never made the reality any easier, though.

The immediate postnatal checks indicated a normal, healthy baby girl. Her heart rate was a little low, but not concerningly so, and her tiny hands and feet had a grayish tinge, but that was normal. She was otherwise active, responsive, and clearly had a great set of lungs. Maybe that made sense, given who her mother was.

When the press had realized Ryu Miyeong was pregnant, and particularly when they realized there was no secret husband--nor any father in the picture at all, as far as anyone had been able to tell--they had been...well. They had been unkind. That wasn't something she had to worry about here. Their hospital had almost certainly been chosen because of their experience in treating public figures, and their well-known discretion in doing so.

Though now, of course, there were much more pressing issues than rude reporters.

Baby Ryu was still squalling. "I know you want your mama," the nurse cooed. "Just hold on for a little while longer, okay?"

Weight, 2.7 kg. Length, 47 cm. Eyes, brown. Hair...

Baby Ryu's hair was sparse. She wasn't the baldest baby the nurse had ever seen, but she wasn't too far off either. Her thin, fine hair was still damp from the afterbirth. But even so, it was clear it was too light, greyish instead of black. Nothing like her mother's. It could be just an odd quirk, birth fuzz that would fall out in a few weeks before her full head of hair grew in. Or it could be a sign of something else. She'd have to ask the neonatalist what he thought as soon as he arrived.

She checked the baby's heart rate again, just to see. It was no faster, but no slower either. And her hands and feet were starting to pink.

She had wondered, when she found out Ryu Miyeong would be delivering here, if there might be a man accompanying her after all. Even someone pretending to be on her staff, maybe. But the only people with Ryu Miyeong had been Kang Celine and a very polite (female) assistant, who'd been dismissed a little while back as the labor progressed.

No father in sight, and a mother who--well. No need to borrow trouble.

There was one more thing to note down before she could swaddle the baby and hopefully calm her. There were some birthmarks on her right upper arm. She palpitated the area gently, but the discolored skin was flush with the peach parts, and there didn't seem to be any pain. Still, another thing to ask the neonatalist about. She made her notes and then bundled up the baby. She'd have to unwrap her to do the blood draw, but the poor thing had to be freezing by that point.

"Almost done, dumpling. Just one little prick so we can do your bloodwork, and then I'll make sure the doctor's on his way, okay?"

A quick patdown of her pockets and a scan of the drawers in their alcove revealed a distinct lack of needles with the right gauge. She'd left some things behind in the rush to get out of the way of everyone swarming on Ryu Miyeong. She took one more look at baby Ryu's pink cheeks, at the way her body wiggled inside the swaddling, to make sure everything looked alright. Then squeezed the baby's toes in apology and slipped to the other side of the curtain.

"Ahnjong?" she called to the girl behind the nearby desk.

"Yeah?"

"Do you know where--oh never mind, I found them. Do you know if Dr. Ji's on his way?"

"Not sure. I think he was with the Parks. Is there a problem?"

"Not so far. Make sure he knows where we are?"

"Sure thing."

Nearby, baby Ryu's cries had finally quieted into grunts and sighs. She was a chatty little thing. Maybe that was a good sign; maybe peace in the child reflected peace for the mother.

She stowed the supplies in her pocket and briefly stepped behind the desk. "Can you pull out Ryu Miyeong's chart?"

"What a mess," Ahnjong said as she handed it over.

"Did you see what happened?"

"They took her to surgery basically as soon as you left. No updates so far." For all the negative coverage about the pregnancy, Ryu Miyeong was still a beloved public figure, and it would reflect very poorly on the hospital if anything were to happen to either her or her baby.

She flicked through the chart, knowing she couldn't take too long to get back to the baby. Obviously, anything concerning would have been noted in the delivery plan, but there was still an urge to see if anything jumped out in hindsight. But everything recorded seemed normal. The pregnancy had progressed as expected at every stage. The OBGYN had noted that the mother seemed anxious, and there were some episodes of an elevated heart rate, but nothing that couldn’t be adequately explained by nerves and the normal hormonal changes in her body.

She did note that despite the professed anxiety, Miyeong had turned down any prenatal genetic testing. All the Sunlight Sisters were rumored to be superstitious, and some people believed such tests invited trouble. Now, though, she suspected an extended suite of testing would be ordered for baby Ryu, just in case.

There were no answers to be found here. Sometimes there were no answers to be found at all. That was too often the way. She sighed and handed the chart back.

"Alright, dumpling," she said as she stepped around to the other side of the curtain, "I promise this won't--"

Instinct stopped her in her tracks. Baby Ryu wasn't crying. She wasn't grunting or sighing. She wasn't moving at all.

Her hand moved to the page button automatically, but she knew what she would find. Baby Ryu had died, likely within minutes of her mother.

She never even got a name.

Twenty years later

Zoey peered into the shop window, using her hands to reduce the glare from the setting sun and leaning as close as she could without smudging the glass.

When she pulled back, Mira was already pulling the door open. "Oh, we don't have to go in here."

"You sure?" Mira said, holding the door in place. "We can go in if you want."

"Nah. I thought maybe they had a new display, but I'm pretty sure that's the same one as last time."

There was a Sunlight Sisters song playing in the shop, which cut off abruptly as Mira released the door to let it it swing closed. Which was kind of a whole other thing. Zoey didn't really want to be reminded of that right now.

The last time they'd talked to Celine, she'd told them they'd have to finally move pretty soon. The Honmoon wasn't in dire straits yet--according to Celine, the rise of recorded media had done wonders for helping preserve it between Hunter generations, and she was incredibly canny at being able to goose people's nostalgia for the Sunlight Sisters. But that strategy could only take them so far.

Once upon a time, Zoey had been excited for the next steps. She had been young, and the training had been difficult (it took her ages to figure out good breath control while dancing), but she had never wanted anything as badly as she wanted her debut. To finally finish the journey she had started under Celine's tutelage.

Except you couldn't debut a new group of Hunters if you didn't have a group of Hunters.

Zoey was tired. The Honmoon held for now, but it wasn't great, and it turns out two wasn't quite enough people to keep up with the demons that bullied their way through it. The idea of adding more, of everything they'd have to do on top of the demon hunting if they debuted? She was pretty sure she was just going to melt into a puddle of stress one day.

"I wish she'd show up already," Zoey muttered as she and Mira walked down the street. She didn't need to specify who "she" was. They'd been talking about her for years at this point. The (theoretical?) third Hunter. The one who seemed to be willfully avoiding them at this point. The late one. The Lauryn Hill of demon hunting, if you would.

She also didn't need to explain her leaps in logic to Mira. Mira either got it, or she didn't and was more than happy to let Zoey's mind wander wherever it would.

When Mira spoke, her voice was slow. "I think...maybe we need to start assuming she won't."

"What?" Zoey whipped her head to the side to take in Mira's expression. "Celine's still looking for her, isn't she?"

"Do you think she is?"

"You don't?"

Mira shrugged, her nonchalance painfully fake, but Zoey wasn't sure what she was hiding behind it. "Maybe."

"Celine said we'd have to move soon," Zoey reasoned out. "Soon, but not now."

"Yeah, true."

Zoey sighed. This isn't how she wanted things to go. Today had been a nice day, a mostly free one except for a meeting Mira had had that morning to talk to some accountants (and thank god Mira was willing to talk to the accountants). They'd sparred and stretched and then wandered the city, poking in and out of shops and having a nice leisurely lunch together. It'd been great until Zoey's brain had run off in the wrong direction and made things weird.

She rolled a shoulder with a grunt, feeling out the stiffness in it. Mira's hands were on her almost immediately, lightly squeezing her shoulders and digging her thumbs into the muscles of her upper back. 

"You good?" Mira asked.

Sometimes, selfishly, Zoey was glad it was just the two of them. Usually on the lazy mornings when they could lie in bed together, curled around each other. Or when they had the kind of long conversations that could be peppered with kisses without losing the flow. It kind of felt like someone else would mess up the dynamic? They'd probably have to have a lot less living room sex, at least.

But then they'd have a particularly hard demon fight, and Zoey would remember, oh yeah, this sucks.

She dragged her thoughts back to the present moment and said, "I'm fine. Just sore."

Mira dragged her hands up and down Zoey's back. "Let's go home. I'll give you a massage."

"Yessssss."

Then a red flash of "danger" rippled through the Honmoon around them.

"Nooooooo."

Mira squeezed her shoulders one more time. "Come on." 

They took off together.

--

As they neared the epicenter of the signal the Honmoon had sent them, they could hear the sounds of a scuffle, and picked up their pace. If someone was trying to fight back against the demons, that probably wasn't going well for them. (Although she'd once seen a drunk college boy put up a surprisingly effective fight using a traffic cone as a club.)

Before they could turn the corner, though, a dokkaebi flew out of the alleyway and slammed into the opposite wall.

Zoey flung a shin-kal into its chest faster than she could think about it, and it melted away.

Before she could even exchange a 'what the hell was that' look with Mira, another dokkaebi tumbled ass over teakettle towards them, landing at Mira's feet. The butt of her gok-do made short work of it.

Now they did exchange a look. They slowly and quietly ventured down the alley towards the continued sounds of fighting. Celine had told them that it was always in their best interest to exercise caution. That they couldn't help anyone if they were badly hurt or dead. That they should retreat if the situation looked too dangerous.

Zoey wasn't sure if every Hunter got that advice, or just the ones who were...incomplete.

When they reached the end of the short alley, they saw a huge dokkaebi staggering around the empty space on the other side. It had something attached to its face.

No, not something. Someone? For a moment, Zoey thought it was a person, before realizing that was dumb. Then she saw the glowing patterns and realized it was a demon--maybe a gwishin?--which made sense until, wait, no it didn't, why would it be fighting the dokkaebi then? And then she didn't have any more time to think before the gwishin (?) ripped a purple, clawed hand across the dokkaebi's throat, and smoothly leapt off of its shoulders as it melted away.

For a moment, the only sounds were the gwishin's harsh panting. (Did gwishin need to breathe? Why?) It was standing with its back to Mira and Zoey, who were still frozen in shock and confusion. (It had purple hair. That was neat, and not something she'd seen before. Did that mean if you passed away with dyed hair, you got to keep it forever?) Then the demon stretched, and it occurred to Zoey that there was still a demon in front of them, and they really ought to do something about that. (Was that a Twice logo on the back of its sweatshirt? Where did it get that? FOCUS ZOEY.)

Before they could do anything except hesitantly raise their weapons, the demon turned around, saw them, and disappeared with a hiss and a flash of pinkish light.

"Huh," Mira said, which, yeah, about summed it up.

"Do demons fight each other?" Everything was quiet now except for the normal street sounds faintly filtering in, so Zoey dismissed her shin-kal.

"Maybe. I think..." Mira's brow was furrowed in concentration, even as she continued to scan the area around them. "I think maybe we talked about that? That demon infighting can happen sometimes because they're violent." They'd talked about a lot of stuff during their training, and maybe not all of it had stuck one hundred percent.

"Yeah, that sounds familiar." Zoey grinned. "How do we get them to do that all the time?"

Mira snorted and finally let her gok-do dissolve back into the Honmoon. "Do you think there's a demonic rumor mill? Could we start some beef?"

"Next time we fight dokkaebi, we leave one alive to send a message. And that message is, 'Hey, we ran into some mul gwishin at the bathhouse, and they said you guys suck.'"

"I'm down to give it a try."

Zoey had been inching closer, and now she was close enough for Mira to rest her hands on Zoey's waist. 

"Hi," Zoey said.

"Hi." A smile was tugging at the edges of Mira's lips, soft enough that she probably didn't realize she was doing it. In comparison, Zoey felt her own grin stretching her cheeks, but she loved Mira's little smiles. "Guess we got lucky. Ready to head back?"

"We're gonna get lucky."

"Not if you make puns like that."

"Boo."

Mira lightly pinched Zoey's waist and then took her hand. "Come on," she said again. "Let's go home."

When Rumi's feet reappeared beneath her, her stance was uneven, and she stumbled into a nearby wall and cursed.

Panic teleporting was always a bit of a gamble. "Away" wasn't really specific enough to get her where she really wanted to be, and if she didn't know where she wanted to land, the landing was often rough.

She'd just known, as soon as she'd seen those girls, that she had to get away.

It was hardly the first time a human had stumbled into one of her fights, especially if they were noisy. Or even the first time someone rushed in wielding weapons, though she saw a lot more blades out in the boonies than in the middle of a huge city.

But she'd never seen weapons that glowed before. Even in the last bits of sunlight, strong enough that the streetlights hadn't come on yet, they had been radiant.

It reminded her of the light from the Honmoon. Brilliant even in the middle of the day. Bright when it felt like it shouldn't be.

It reminded her of other things too. Stories that pricked at the back of her memory.

One thing at a time. She felt lightheaded, and it was probably about dinner time. Time to forage for food.

The first bin she checked didn't have anything that looked promising, but she did see the gleam of a glass bottle, improperly recycled. She filched it before continuing on her way.

--

By the time it was full dark, Rumi had acquired both dinner and about half a dozen glass bottles, jangling around in a plastic bag.

Judging by the spotlights streaming through the sky and the crowds swarming the sidewalk, there was probably a concert happening at the large stadium nearby. Rumi teleported again, this time with a destination in mind: A secluded rooftop not too far from the venue. Up here, the sound pumping out of the stadium echoed a little strangely, but it was more than loud enough for her to enjoy the show too.

She liked the city. She hadn't always; when she was younger, the busyness had seemed overwhelming. But she was better at getting around now, and she liked that there was always something happening. Music playing, different things being displayed on the large screens decorating the buildings on the main thoroughfare, random festivals what felt like every other week. She always made sure to avoid the thick of it, made sure that wherever she was, she could escape if need be. But even just watching from a distance was its own entertainment.

Now though, the city apparently had girls with strange, glowing weapons.

Rumi felt a bit better after eating, and was ready to turn her thoughts to that particular problem. She hadn't gotten much of a look at them. Had let instinct grab her instead of trying to figure out what was going on. She was pretty sure that there were two, and that they were young. And that they had looked confused, but not shocked. Not...afraid.

Like they weren't scared of demons. Maybe like they'd been expecting them.

The word lingering at the back of her brain finally pushed its way through. Hunters.

Just the thought made a tightness shoot up from her belly, squeezing her ribs, almost seizing her throat. She stopped: stopped moving, stopped remembering, stopped thinking, stopped everything except breathing. Slow in, slow out, trying to force the air down deep to push away the tightness. She listened to one song, then two, then three.

When she finally felt in control of herself again, she tried to pull up what little she knew. It wasn't much. She'd heard stories of Hunters when she was younger, although she didn't know if she should believe most of them.

She'd heard that they wielded magic weapons that glowed with holy light. (That seemed to be true.) That their weapons could kill with a touch, and that Hunters would swing them at anyone with patterns, no matter who they were. (They'd had a chance to stab her in the back and hadn't, but maybe Rumi had just seen them before they could swing.) That they were superhumanly fast and strong. That if you knocked one down, she would get right back up. That their blood sanctified the ground, so if you were going to make one bleed, you had better finish the job. That they could fly. That a Hunter's voice would make you go mad, and if they sang in harmony, you'd die on the spot and the only defense was to stuff your ears with mud. That as they aged, they could get up to three meters tall, and also could regrow limbs if you cut them off.

She'd also heard that there were three of them at a time. Had there been three girls? She only remembered two, but the alley had been narrow and maybe there had been one behind them.

There was one other thing she knew about Hunters. But thinking about it tempted the tightness at the bottom of her ribs to return, and so she didn't. She squeezed the fingers of her right hand with her left instead, and distracted herself by looking at the stadium.

If she shifted her vision just slightly, she could see the thousands of souls filling it. Brilliant points of light blending together in a mass that, had it been physical, would have pierced her eyes to the point of tears.

Was it any wonder the Hunters had weapons of light, if this was what they were protecting?

The light of the Honmoon was so much closer here than in the demon realm. It was always right under her fingertips. She traced its lines now, seeing the way they swayed to follow her touch, the way the light pulsed gently around her. A melody that didn't match the song pumping out of the speakers in the arena, but one she felt she could hear all the same.

Rumi stayed on the rooftop, feeling the aches and pains from the previous fight slowly fade, until the music stopped.

--

The warehouse she was staying in was clearly long abandoned. On the lower levels she could see where others had bunkered down at various points, but the staircase leading to the top floor had rusted away. It would be difficult for a human to get up there. Not impossible--she'd seen many a human do foolish things--but difficult.

Even so, she circled the floor thoroughly, until she was satisfied that the only marks in the thick dust were her own.

The door to the small room she stowed her supplies in was propped open, as she had left it. She scanned as much as she could before entering, and looked around again when she was inside.

When she was assured she was alone, she closed the door. There was a pile of heavy objects she had painstakingly collected to use as a barricade, and she went through her nightly routine of piling them in front of the door. It wasn't enough to keep out determined demons, she knew, but would make it difficult for most humans to force their way in.

When she was done, she arranged most of her bottles precariously on the piles of assorted junk in front of the door. The crash of shattering glass made a good alarm.

There was one small window high up in the corner. It was too small for anyone to pass through, and had a grate on the outside besides. But there were Hunters in town, apparently. And while she thought the story that they could squeeze into any space that fit their head was probably just someone messing with her, better safe than sorry. She put the last couple of bottles on the windowsill.

Then she fell back against her collected blankets and thought. She'd only returned to Seoul recently. The last time she'd been here, there hadn't been Hunters. Maybe it was safer to leave before she got any more settled. Probably it was.

But maybe...maybe if there were other people here to fight demons, she wouldn't have to fight so much herself. Maybe for once she could lay low. Maybe if anyone did come after her, the Hunters would find them first. Maybe it was worth staying to see.

She wondered if they ever hesitated before swinging their weapons.

She wondered if they had as many dumb myths about demons as demons had about Hunters.

She wondered if the Honmoon ever sang to them.

She wondered where they buried their dead.

She wondered what she was going to eat for breakfast, before firmly slotting that into "tomorrow's problems", rolling over, and going to sleep.

Chapter Text

Mira was in a foul mood.

That wasn’t exactly uncommon; she knew she had rage issues, had for as long as she could remember. She came by it naturally. The sound of her father raging and storming was part of the DNA of her childhood memories. As was the way his face would shutter as soon as she struck back. Him, her mother, her brother eventually, always throwing up a solid wall of apathy between themselves and her moods. It had been a terrible feedback loop. Mira only becoming louder, more explosive, throwing herself against that wall in an attempt to get any reaction at all. She never succeeded. 

His tempers were meant to be catered to, while hers were meant to be ignored until she had exhausted herself, and they could ask, "Are you ready to behave like a lady?"

The problem with that kind of habit was that it was too easy for it to spill out. She couldn't get a reaction from her parents, but she could from their staff, from her teachers, from random sales clerks. She didn't want to know what kind of stories they told about her, the spoiled brat and her tantrums. She deserved whatever they'd say, and she knew it.

She tried to be better these days. She wasn't naive enough to think she could ever get rid of the anger, but she wore it close now, kept it quiet and cold instead of loud and explosive. She tried to shield the people who didn't deserve it from the worst of her temper.

At the top of that list was Zoey. Mira didn't ever want Zoey to see that side of her. Her biggest fear had nothing to do with demons, and everything to do with the fact that her parents might have been right when they said she would never change, that she would always be that little girl adrift at the whims of her own emotions.

But Zoey made her want to be better. Zoey did make her better. It was so much easier to let things go, to let the swells sweep through her and then past her, when she was with Zoey.

Still, sometimes something would just piss her off.

They kept running into that fucking demon girl.

Sometimes they stumbled into a fight she was already having. Twice now the fight had been theirs, and she had dropped into the middle of it before seeing them and teleporting away. And once Mira had seen her just watching them from a distance, although she disappeared as soon as Mira had looked her way.

Mira hadn't been too upset when she got away the first time. Particularly cowardly demons sometimes slipped through the cracks. But the fact that it kept happening was fucking infuriating. They couldn't ever seem to sneak up on her either. It was like she always knew when they were coming. Sometimes even when she was nowhere to be seen, not even a trace of smoke or light from her teleporting away, they'd turn a corner and Mira could tell, she could just tell that she'd been there.

It had gotten frustrating enough that they'd discussed if they should ask Celine for advice, before deciding not to. Celine's advice was generally fine, if repetitive. And if they asked her to help, she definitely would. The problem is that it would be humiliating.

It was one demon. They couldn't handle one demon? Celine already took care of so much for them. She'd trained them, given them purpose. To that point, she'd introduced them, which on Mira's sappiest days was the thing she thought she was most grateful for. Celine owned the apartment they lived in--hell, she owned the whole building. It was apparently built in an auspicious location, and what Mira suspected was a small army of shamans had warded it to hell and back to keep out all but the most powerful demonic forces. Celine even provided them a special salary as part of their contracts with Sunlight Records, even though they weren't really producing any officially released music yet.

(It's not that they weren't doing anything. They were working on songs and choreography. They were recording and had unofficially released some stuff here and there, and were working on cultivating an online following both together and separately. Mira modeled, and Zoey streamed sometimes. But compared to how much they eventually needed to do...yeah. It didn't feel like it added up to much.)

To have to go crying to Celine over one single demon on top of all of that--god, Mira's ego would never recover. Celine would probably manage to kill her first time out too. It would be absolutely devastating.

Zoey had agreed that they shouldn't call up Celine, though Mira was realizing her motivation was less frustration and more...fascination.

She's always the only one fighting the others, did you notice that?

She's never attacked us at all!

I don't think we've seen her go after any humans, actually. Just other demons.

What do you think she's doing?

Why do you think she's doing it?

Do you think she's trying to help?

Maybe herself, Mira had said to the last question when Zoey had brought it up yesterday. Zoey had pouted, but that's just how demons worked. They were selfish. The best case scenario was maybe--maybe--whatever the demon girl was doing was simpatico with their own duties. But she wasn't counting on it.

Today, Mira was trying not to think about weird demons. She could only do so many breathing exercises. She and Zoey were cuddling on the couch--usually a guaranteed stress reducer--and she was trying to decide whether or not to suggest they put on a movie, when Zoey blurted out, "I think we should talk to her," like it was an outrageous, unexpected suggestion and not exactly what she had obviously been building up to for days now.

"Hard pass," Mira said immediately. So much for her stress relief.

Zoey whined. "Come ooooooooon, don't you want to know what her deal is?"

Mira desperately wanted to know what her deal was, if only because unexpected behavior from demons was automatically dangerous behavior. There was a way things were supposed to work, and when the rules were bent, it made it more difficult to anticipate where things were going. If weird things were happening, it was logical to assume they, and by extension all humanity, were in danger.

But you couldn't ask a demon what was going on. First of all, you couldn't trust a thing out of their mouths. Secondly, the most obvious explanation was that this was all a trick. A way for the enemy to worm their way closer and strike when they weren't prepared. What else could it possibly be?

They'd already had extensive talks about why they couldn't trust demons, so she wasn't going to get into it again. Instead, she just said, "If we're gonna figure out what her deal is, we gotta do it ourselves. I'm not sitting down with a demon whose type seems to be 'throat-ripper' and having a civilized conversation."

"She could be a good demon."

"I'm gonna need you to think about those two words together again, and tell me if you see the problem with that phrase."

Zoey huffed, which was fair. That had been a bit rude. Then she said, "I'm gonna talk to her," and Mira realized her thoughts were somewhere much more dangerous.

Zoey's back had been nestled against Mira's chest. Now Zoey sat up and turned to face Mira, her spine straightening into a steel rod and her shoulders squaring. Mira felt a matching tension working its way through her limbs. She was a fighter. They both were.

And now it was time to face off.

"You are not," Mira said firmly.

"I am."

"Not."

"Oh?" Zoey tilted her chin, her expression having left 'thoughtful' far behind and slipping into pure defiance. "You're gonna stop me? What are you going to do, chain me to the bed?"

Mira could feel her blood pressure rising. Zoey was optimistic and way too trusting and sometimes impulsive, but she wasn't stupid. Far from it. She had to be just trying to get a rise out of Mira or something. She had to.

"Zoey," she said, low and slow, not calm, but controlled, "I'm not joking about this, okay? We're not going to have a talk with a demon. We're just not."

"No, I know, you're right," Zoey said. Her tone was too blithe for Mira to trust it was over. And sure enough: "We're not. I am though."

"You are not!"

"Am!"

"Zoey!" And now she really was worried. This was veering past optimism and into delusion. "We don't go after demons without each other!"

"See, that's what I thought, but someone's being really stubborn right now."

"Some--" Mira bit the word off, sucked in a deep breath through her teeth. She forced her words back before they could come out barbed and pointed. The last thing she wanted right now was to give Zoey any reason to go storming off when she was outright threatening to go demon hunting on her own.

Naturally, Zoey barrelled right through the opening she had left. "It's one demon, and there's two of us. If we both go, she'll be outnumbered. And I mean, it's one demon. How tough could she be?"

Once, when Mira had asked her about her writing process, Zoey had told her that she felt like she had to go through at least a thousand bad ideas before she landed on one that was actually good. It was just how her brain worked through things.

Now, Zoey was obviously committed to this one really, really bad idea. She wasn't going to let this one go. So the only options left were to do it with her, or not.

And honestly, there was a part of Mira, the part always drawn to ill-advised action, that was saying, Don't you want to take some action? Aren't you tired of going around in circles? Get up and do something about it!

Mira didn't like it when problems lingered.

To cap it off, Zoey turned on her with wounded puppy dog eyes. Overkill at this point, but whatever. "Please? Let's just try?"

"Fine," Mira sighed, and was immediately smothered by an armful of her girlfriend.

"Yay! Thank you! And don't worry, we'll be super careful."

--

Being "super careful" apparently meant that the next time they saw the demon girl, Zoey blurted out, "Hey! Can we--" Which was as far as she got before the demon disappeared again.

"Dammit," Zoey muttered, but they had other demons to worry about, so there wasn't time for her to soak in her disappointment.

--

The next time Zoey shouted out, "Wait!" And it did, in fact, cause the demon girl to hesitate.

But only long enough to go, "No?" and then teleport away again.

"Well," Mira said a few minutes later, when they were once again alone, "at least now we know she can talk."

--

The third time, there were only a couple of stragglers left, so Mira took care of them while Zoey ducked under their swipes and said, "Please, we just want to talk to you!"

The demon girl, who had executed an honestly pretty sick backflip to gain distance as soon as they showed up, watched the dokkaebi dissolve into nothing and said, "You're Hunters. Hunters kill demons, so..." And then she was gone again.

Zoey's frustrated howl echoed down the now empty street.

--

The next time the demon girl actually lingered for just a moment, perched high up on a narrow ledge. It was enough time for Zoey to say, "We don't want to fight you, I promise! We just want to talk!"

"Hm," said the demon, tapping her purple claws against her cheek. "You do look like you want to talk, but that one still looks like she wants to kill me, so...bye!"

"Mira!" Zoey snapped as the demon girl disappeared.

"This is just my face, Zoey!" Mira snapped right back, taking out her frustration by way of a blade thrust into a gwishin's chest. "What do you want me to do about my face?" One, two, three demons were beheaded with smooth swipes of her gok-do, and on Zoey's side, a similar number crumpled and disappeared.

Even with all the demons gone, tension still thrummed between them. Until Zoey slumped with a sigh and said, "This isn't working."

As frustrated as Mira still was at the whole thing, seeing Zoey deflate caused a sympathetic pang in her chest. "Hey," she said, squeezing Zoey's arm gently, "you tried."

Zoey nodded slowly, her expression far away. Then it snapped back into focus. "Alright then, time to move to plan D!"

"Plan--plan D? What plan are we on now?"

"This is still plan A."

"What happened to plans B and C?"

"Oh, those definitely wouldn't work."

Zoey's expression was sharp and determined. Mira really, really didn't want to know how deep she'd gotten into her lettering. She dug the heels of her palms against her eyes and groaned.

"Mira?"

She blinked the spots out of her vision to meet Zoey's gaze again. "We're in this together, right?" Zoey said, suddenly soft.

It was a terrible idea. But it was Zoey's idea, and Zoey was hers, so...

"Yeah. Of course. Together."

--

Plan D actually ended up being blessedly simple: just kind of hoping they could tire her out.

"We keep bursting in halfway through her fights," Zoey explained. "That gives her a chance to run away. But the very first time we saw her, you remember how she was gasping for air after the fight? Maybe if she's tired, she won't be able to run like that."

She's not literally running, Mira thought, but set that thought aside in favor of, "So we're just gonna find some demons and watch them go buckwild?"

"Not if there are people around, obviously!" Zoey huffed. "But if she's there, then there usually aren't people. So I bet it'll work."

It was a reasonable enough theory. But one they weren't able to test immediately. For the next few days, their demon scourge was either gone, or was just being much faster about slipping away. For a little while, Mira hoped that the problem had solved itself.

But, of course, she showed up again. It was like the universe was forcing them together.

As they got near the source of the Honmoon's distress signals, they slowed, as they had been doing since the introduction of plan D. And sure enough, there was the demon girl again, with no other humans in sight.

Zoey gasped quietly, but otherwise they were silent and still. For the first time, they got to watch her really fight. She was acrobatic, weaving in and out of the other demon's reach, rarely staying in one place longer than needed to get in a hit or two on her opponent. On a purely professional level, Mira was begrudgingly impressed by her economy of movement.

She was also clearly used to fighting groups. Mira was going to have to try some of her tricks for using the other demons' momentum against them. She wasn't going to pretend like she was above filching fighting techniques from their enemies as long as they worked.

Finally, at the end of it, the demon girl stood still and alone.

Mira found herself hesitating for half a beat, wrapped up still in her doubts. But Zoey was off in an instant, so she had no choice but to follow.

It didn't, in the end, seem to do any good. They were as quiet as they could be while racing towards her, but she still saw them before they could have a hope of grabbing her. (And was grabbing her the plan? She really should have clarified with Zoey.) She disappeared again.

And then reappeared an instant later, not ten meters away, but now on the other side of a tall fence.

"Why," the demon snarled, "won't you just leave me alone?"

Zoey's momentum had dipped briefly when she disappeared, but she immediately ramped up again, racing until she nearly collided with the fence and sending the demon instinctively stumbling back a few steps. She did not, however, teleport away. Mira once again found herself following and settled next to Zoey at the fence.

"Hi!" Zoey chirped.

The demon roundly ignored her. "Seriously, I'm just trying to stay out of your way, and you keep hunting me down. What have I done to you?"

"Exist," Mira muttered under her breath, and grunted when she caught Zoey's elbow in her side.

"We just want to talk to you!" Zoey said. "You fight demons, we fight demons, maybe we have a lot in common. Also, why do you fight demons?"

It was the first time they were really able to get a good look at her, but it wasn't really edifying. She looked like a patchwork version of a demon. The usual purple patterns swirled all over her body, but for the rest of her skin, she still wore peach instead of the grayish tones they'd see in gwishin or Jeoseung Saja. Her hands were tipped in claws, but one side was much darker and more gnarled than the other. And she sported one gold eye and one brown.

What was she?

The demon stared at Zoey in turn, stone-faced. And then her gaze slid to Mira and somehow turned even more unimpressed.

"This is my neutral face," Mira said. Neutrally.

"It is her neutral face! She's trying so hard!"

"Wow, I'm super convinced," said the demon.

Mira was becoming more and more sure this was a bad idea. What did they even expect to get out of her? The bars on the fence were wide enough that Zoey could have easily flicked a dagger through it, taking care of their problem once and for all. Not that she could indicate that Zoey should do that without the demon getting suspicious.

And there was no way Zoey was going to do it on her own, judging by the way she was once again busting out the puppy dog eyes and a long, drawn-out, "Pleeeeeaaaaaase?"

"Look," said the demon, "you seem nice." Zoey perked up at that, of course. "I'll believe you want to talk. That one," she gestured to Mira, "I still don't trust."

"Is there anything we can do to make you trust us?" Zoey asked, and Mira immediately hissed her name in warning.

"Hm." The demon tapped her claws against her lips, briefly looked at the sky, and then pointed at Mira and said, "Tie her hands together."

"Fuck you."

The demon cracked up. "Oh man, your face. You do pissed off well, you know that?"

"Lots of practice," Mira said, not bothering to keep the growl out of her voice.

"Hm, I bet. Okay, okay." She clapped her hands together. "We can talk. You," she pointed to Zoey, "come over here, but you," she pointed to Mira, "stay on that side."

Zoey was scaling the fence before she even finished saying, "Okay!" Mira grabbed the back of her shirt and hauled her back down.

"We can talk through the fence. There is zero reason for you to be on that side."

With a wounded voice, the demon said, "I'm getting the impression you don't trust me."

"I want to kill you so bad," Mira snarled, which made Zoey go, "Mira!" and the demon fall into giggles again.

"This is great," the demon said, with a grin Mira desperately wanted to smack off her face. "I'm having a fun time. Are you two having fun?"

"Yea--!"

"No."

"No, absolutely not."

The demon looked back and forth between them, still grinning. "It sounds to me," she said, "that you two have some stuff to work out. I wish you the best of luck. I do need to run though, it's about dinner time, so until--"

"We'll buy you dinner!" Zoey blurted, to Mira's absolute horror. "Anything you want, on us!"

"Zoey," she hissed, "this is a demon! What if she eats souls or human babies or something?"

"I'd actually prefer dumplings," the demon called out. "If that's an option instead of human babies."

"Oh, oh!" Zoey bounced in excitement. "I know the perfect place."

"Wait just a--Zoey." Mira leaned in and pitched her voice down. "If we take her somewhere public, we can't attack her if she turns on us."

"Then maybe she won't attack us either," Zoey whispered back. "It's neutral ground!"

Mira was about to keep arguing when they heard, "Okay."

They pulled away from each other and refocused on the demon, who had...agreed? Just like that? No more teasing or bargaining?

Oh, Mira didn't like this at all.

The demon teleported back to their side of the fence, although she technically wasn't standing any closer to them. And then, with another flash of smoke and light, she transformed: Her patterns disappeared, her purple hair became black, and when she looked up at them, it was with two brown eyes. Hiding in a human disguise.

"Lead the way," she said.

It took several more heartbeats, and Zoey tugging on her arm, before Mira turned her back on the demon. "Wants to walk behind us to stab us in the back," she muttered.

"Mira, I'm going to need you to chill for one evening, okay?" But even Zoey glanced a little nervously behind them, before she started pulling Mira down the street. "Come on."

--

They slid into the booth, Mira and Zoey on one side and the demon on the other. This was the first time they'd really been able to look at her up close, although obviously she was hiding her true form.

Her clothes were worn but mostly clean, and hung loose on her. She was completely unadorned: clean nails, no jewelry, no makeup. She had amazing bone structure, actually, even without makeup to accent it. Maybe that was part of the shapeshifting? If you could change how you looked, why wouldn't you make yourself hotter?

While her expression was impassive, she squeezed her hands together and glanced around the busy shop as if charting her escape routes. Good. She should be nervous.

"So," Mira said, "do demons have names?"

The demon girl shrugged. "Some do."

"Some?" Zoey prompted. "Not all?"

"No. Not all."

"Do you have a name?" Mira asked.

"Yep." The demon girl fixed her with a grin she already knew was going to be trouble.

"...Are you going to tell us what it is?"

"Maybe."

Mira took a deep breath and counted to five. "What's your name?"

"Hm." She leaned forward, chin in her hands, and just smiled at Mira.

Mira's fingers were already twitching into strangulation position when Zoey took her hand. Zoey put on a thousand-watt smile and said, "Hi! My name is Zoey, and this is Mira. Can we please have your name?"

Looking unbearably pleased, the demon leaned back in her seat and said, "Yes, thank you. It's Rumi."

"That's great!" Zoey squeezed Mira's fingers between her own. "So nice to meet you, Rumi. Now I'm going to need the two of you to act," she cut her eyes at the demon with a force that made her sit up ramrod straight, "civilized." This time her ire was aimed at Mira, and she found herself similarly instinctively improving her posture.

There was a silent, awkward beat before Zoey's face melted right back into her usual smile. "So! Anyway. Let's start from the top. What's up with the demon-on-demon fighting?"

She glanced back and forth between Mira and Zoey. "That's the cost of dinner? Questions?"

"Or you can just walk," Mira said. Zoey's hand clamped around hers, tight enough that she had to suck in a sharp breath through her nose to keep her face impassive. Holy shit, after this she was going to have to teach Zoey about bluffing.

The waiter chose that instant to drop off their menus, which preempted the argument Mira could already see brewing on the demon's face, and also gave her a discreet opportunity to flex the fingers Zoey had squeezed the life out of.

The demon, who may or may not actually be called Rumi, turned the menu over in her hands. "I need a reason? Demons suck."

"No," said Mira, "that's why we fight demons. Why do you fight demons?"

The demon had focused her full attention on the menu now. She pulled in a deep breath, and Mira was more than ready for more snark, or evasion, or for her just to refuse to answer.

Instead, her chest deflated, and she said, "Gwi-Ma killed my dad."

"Your--I'm sorry, your dad?" Zoey shared a quick glance with Mira and then leaned forward on her elbows to try and get a better look at the demon's face. "Demons have dads?"

"Sometimes." She shrugged again, still staring down at the menu. "Not usually. Depends."

"So demons reproduce sexually?"

"Nope," Mira said immediately, "no, nuh-uh. Not over dinner."

"I--" The demon ducked behind the menu so sharply that she briefly bonked herself in the face with it. "How did you think it worked?"

Mira instinctively stomped on Zoey's foot to forestall that particular line of conversation, and then met Zoey's WTF face with an apologetic look of her own. Luckily, the demon was still hiding behind the menu and missed that moment of discord, and they had their faces sorted again by the time she emerged.

"Just curious!" Zoey said brightly. "But definitely TMI, my bad, ignore that. So...uh, this might also be TMI, but what exactly happened with your dad?"

There was a long, long period of silence while the demon--Rumi--ignored them as she perused what was apparently every single item on the menu. Mira was fine with awkward silences, so she let it drag on. Zoey was much less so, but at the moment she was locked in, studying the demon across from them like she was going to be tested on her face.

"He was..." Rumi took a deep, slow breath. "There was this group. Rebels. They wanted to take down Gwi-Ma. He got involved. They got caught. I escaped."

Zoey let out an "oh" that was more breath than sound. "I'm sorry about your dad."

"Yes," said Mira. "That's a surprisingly sympathetic backstory."

The demon's eyes ripped away from the menu to slam into Mira's, a wall of pure heat, even as Zoey hissed, "Oh my god Mira you can't say that about someone's dead dad!"

"Come on," Mira scoffed, keeping her eyes locked on the demon's. "You expect us to believe that, actually, turns out there are good demons! Except they were all killed, and somehow you're the only good one left. And you just happened to run into us."

"I sure didn't want to run into you," Rumi said, voice flat even though her eyes raged.

"Every demon we've ever faced has been, like, suicidally devoted to stealing souls for Gwi-Ma. There are no demons fighting against him."

The demon slapped the menu down on the table, then drew in another deep, slow breath. She was now staring at a spot on the table between Mira and Zoey. Next to Mira, she could feel how tense Zoey was, and she focused on that for a moment, trying to let it calm the storm starting to brew in her. She didn't want to scare Zoey. But this wasn't a "benefit of the doubt" situation.

"He doesn't let them up here," Rumi said.

"What?"

"Gwi-Ma." She glanced up briefly, looking at them both, before refocusing her gaze on the table. "The people he sends up here--they're, they're the loyalists, or people who'd be violent no matter who was in charge, or just the ones who are scared or desperate enough that they're willing to hurt humans if it means they get something out of it. Gwi-Ma's not going to let anyone whose loyalty is questionable out. And if they escape, he'll drag them back. That's why he's after me. You--"

"Are you ladies ready to order?"

Mira could not tell if the waiter had the best or the worst timing, but within an instant, they had all shifted into relaxed postures and easy smiles as he went around the booth and took their orders.

She had been curious if Rumi was going to try to screw them over somehow when it came time to order, like trying to get something ridiculously expensive or just ordering an absurd amount. But while she did order a bit more food than was probably necessary, she wasn't being unreasonable.

Then the waiter left, and the smiles slid off all their faces.

Rumi, to her credit, didn't really look angry anymore. She traced the wood grain in the tabletop with her finger and said, "...You're walking out on a battlefield and saying that because all you see are soldiers, the other side must not have any bakers. Most demons aren't soldiers. They're bakers."

Out of the corner of her eye, Mira could see that Zoey was staring at her. When she looked over, she was met with Zoey's pleading look. She took her own breath and tried to let go of the last of her anger too. "I find that hard to believe."

"I don't really care if you believe me."

"Okay!" Zoey clapped her hands, and then twisted her fingers together nervously. "That was kinda intense. I think for us, it's just that one hundred percent of our demon encounters have been bad, so this whole situation is kind of new and weird. And I mean, you did say demons are assholes."

"They are." Rumi shrugged. "I don't think I've ever met a demon I'd want to be friends with. But plenty of humans are assholes too."

"So," Zoey asked, "that's why you get into fights? Gwi-Ma's sending people after you because you escaped?"

"Yeah."

"That's the only reason?" Mira asked. Instantly, Rumi's shoulders leapt up towards her ears, radiating tension.

When she spoke, though, her voice was deceptively calm. "Are you really going to complain about the fact that I'm doing your job?"

Mira sputtered. "Excuse me?"

Rumi threw her hands in the air. "I thought, Hunters! Kinda dangerous, but maybe that's good. Maybe they can protect this city from demons. Yet somehow, I keep finding more demons to fight."

"Fuck you," Mira snapped.

"We're doing our best!" Zoey said, some heat finally finding its way into her voice.

"So am I! I'm just...I'm trying to lay low, I'm trying to stay safe. And it just keeps going to shit. And now I've got a couple of nosy Hunters after me, and I just want to be left alone."

Mira was calm. She was calm when she said, "I don't know what your deal is--"

"I told you--"

"--but I do know you're lying. You're acting like you're some innocent victim, but you seek out fights. We've seen you. If you were 'laying low', then you wouldn't be hunting demons down. And you are. We know what demon hunting looks like."

Rumi's eyes were locked on Mira's when she said, "Have you ever seen a demon steal someone's soul?"

"...No."

"I mean," Zoey mumbled, "we wouldn't be doing our jobs if that happened."

"It does happen." Rumi was looking back and forth between them now. "I used to watch human souls descending into the demon realm. Being consumed by Gwi-Ma. It was...wrong. It was awful. If I can stop that, even sometimes...it's the least Gwi-Ma deserves."

Well. Mira didn't really know what to say about that. Neither did Zoey apparently, and they sat in silence for several minutes until their food was delivered to the table.

Once the waiter was once again on his way, Zoey said, "I mean, I think it's cool that you fight demons."

Rumi just hummed, too focused on the food to reply. She'd taken about two bites normally, and then it was like a switch flipped, and now she was inhaling food like it was oxygen.

"So, how's the food?" Zoey asked, already grinning. Rumi just let out a closed-mouth moan in response. "It's good, right? This is one of our favorite places."

"It is good," Rumi said. "It's better hot."

Mira blinked. "Come again?"

When Rumi glanced up at them, she was visibly hesitant. "It's...it's hot. It's good. I'll have to make it hot next time I eat dumplings."

"Girl, you're eating cold dumplings?" Zoey asked. "You've gotta reheat that stuff!"

Rumi hummed again. "It's just usually cold when I find it. I'll try to make it hot next time."

Mira and Zoey both paused, a bite halfway to their mouths, and exchanged a look. "What do you mean by 'find it'?" Mira asked.

Now Rumi did fully ignore her. When she spoke again, after demolishing an impressive amount of their dinner, she said, "Can I ask questions, or is it only you two who get to?"

"You can ask questions," Zoey said.

"No promises on answers," Mira added.

Rumi sent her a wounded look. "I answered your questions."

"And I appreciate that." Mira's smile was admittedly a little mean, but one conversation with a demon who may or may not be lying through her teeth didn't undo everything she had learned about how demons operate.

Rumi swallowed another bite of food and said, "I thought there were supposed to be three of you?"

"...We're working on it," Mira said.

"How? Like, how do you find more Hunters?"

"Trade secret."

Rumi's lips turned down at that. "But right now, you two are the only Hunters?"

"Yeah," said Zoey. "For now."

"When--"

"I'm gonna stop you right there," Mira said. "We're not telling you anything about Hunters, so you can just forget that."

Rumi actually pouted. "I don't know anything else about you."

"We can talk about whatever you want!" said Zoey. "Like, uh, seen any good TV shows recently?"

Rumi blinked at her blankly.

"Zoey likes turtles," Mira said. "You should ask her about them."

"Tell me about turtles," Rumi said gamely.

Zoey shot Mira another incredulous look. "No, we don't have to talk about turtles. That would be weird. We can--we can talk about something else."

"What," Rumi said after a moment of consideration, "is your favorite turtle in Korea?"

"Oooooooookay, what do you know about softshell turtles?"

"Nothing."

"Okay, so--!"

Mira would have to apologize later for sending Zoey into a turtle tangent. She was usually self-conscious infodumping around people she didn't know. But she'd wanted to give the demon a chance to relax. To see what she looked like when she didn't have her defenses up. And Zoey was particularly good at being disarming.

Despite the fact that she had willingly led into the topic, Rumi seemed to be ignoring Zoey, focused solely on polishing off the last of their meal. Which, first of all, rude. But she did at least seem to be relaxed.

What was her deal? If she was trying to cozy up to them, Mira would have expected her to be a bit more solicitous. She had been not so much combative, and more just kind of rude and annoying, but she definitely hadn't been endearing.

Was she telling the truth? Did she really just want to be left alone? Then why had she agreed to join them at all? Her attempts to get information about Hunters were clumsy, but in Mira's experience, all demon plans were pretty clumsy. But the fact that that's what she was after was in and of itself evidence that she wasn't just some hapless bystander. If that's what she was after, and she wasn't just genuinely at a loss for other conversation topics.

And what about the idea that she was actively working against Gwi-Ma? If there was anything Mira didn't trust, it was that. And the fact that it made sense with her behavior just made it worse. She had to have an angle. Demons didn't do things just because it was the right thing to do. That's not how they worked.

Then Rumi said, "Snoot snoot."

Before Mira could process that Zoey said, "Yes, exactly!" and Mira realized she had seriously lost the plot. What had they been talking about? Oh, right, softshell turtles and their snorkel noses. Genuinely super cool, and definitely one of Zoey's patented turtle fun facts.

"Well," Zoey said after a beat, "I guess that's it? Thanks for joining us for dinner, Rumi."

"I have one more question," said Mira.

Rumi narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "No promises."

"Fair." Mira steepled her fingers. "It sounds like we're all trying to stop Gwi-Ma, right?"

Rumi nodded slowly.

"Have you noticed anything weird in the demon attacks around Seoul? Like he might be plotting something?"

It was a honey pot. If Rumi was trying to get in their good graces, then the most obvious way to do that would be pretending to betray the rest of demonkind. She could make up anything right now, go back to Gwi-Ma, and tell him how to play along.

Rumi considered the question for a long moment. "No, I don't think so," she said at last. "There's always more demons running around Seoul than other places I go to, but I think that's just because there are so many people here. But I haven't seen anything particularly weird."

"Alright," Mira said with a sigh, conceding both the question and the conversation. "Well, thanks. I'll get the bill."

--

Outside the restaurant, they all stared at each other awkwardly. Rumi, for some reason, wasn't immediately taking off, and Mira didn't really want to head in the direction of their apartment with a demon on their heels.

"Thanks for dinner," Rumi said finally, with a little bow to boot. Mira and Zoey returned it out of habit.

"Sure thing!" Zoey said. "I guess we can walk you back?"

The night ended in a mirror of how it began, with Rumi once again trailing behind Mira and Zoey while they led her back to the street where they'd found her.

"We could get dessert," Zoey said quietly.

"With or without Rumi?" Mira asked, her voice equally low so Rumi couldn't hear them. When Zoey shot her a hopeful little smile, Mira huffed out a laugh. "I'm good. I think I've had enough demon conversations for the night."

"But what if this is our only chance to ask her questions?"

"I don't think we're lucky enough to get rid of her that easily."

Mira wasn't really sure how she knew that Rumi wasn't following them any longer. But both she and Zoey came to a stop and turned around at the same moment, to find Rumi watching them.

"Is this the part where you kill me?" Rumi said.

They stared.

"No people around anymore," she continued. Which was true. The street was empty.

"We're not going to kill you," Zoey said.

"No?" Rumi tilted her head. "Don't forget."

In a flash of smoke and light, she transformed back into her demonic form. It was a shock to see the patterns marring her skin after an evening of her pretending to be human. But on unspoken accord, both Mira and Zoey stayed stock still.

Rumi stared at them for another moment. Then disappeared.

The tension that had been building left with her, and Mira let out a slow breath. "I don't like her."

"She's not so bad," Zoey said. "She was trying a little too hard to be creepy there at the end, though."

Mira snorted. "Yeah. 'Ooh, remember I'm a scary demon.'"

Zoey giggled. "Oh well. At least we had a nice dinner." She tilted her head up at Mira. "Ready to go home?"

"Yeah." Always.

Chapter Text

Zoey poked the divot furrowed between Mira's eyebrows.

It was late, but they'd had a demon fight earlier and were both a bit wired. Mira was reclining on her bed, eyes closed, but her face lined and tense. Zoey sat cross legged next to her.

The fight itself wasn't what was bothering Mira. It was the fact that they had run into Rumi again.

Since the dinner, they seemed to run into her more often. Or maybe it was the same amount as before, but now she didn't run away. Her new thing was watching them. If they found her fighting, she'd disengage. If she found them, she'd post up nearby and just observe the fight and sometimes make commentary.

The commentary was kinda the problem. She and Mira just couldn't stop snarking at each other.

The other day Rumi had called out, "Whiff," when a demon ducked under Mira's strike.

"You could help!" Mira had yelled back.

"If you're swinging those things around, I'm staying away," Rumi said.

Zoey tried, "We're not going to attack you, I promise."

"Even if I believe that, you're telling me that in the heat of battle you won't see these," Rumi had gestured at her patterns, "and swing at me?"

She wasn't wrong, and none of them had said anything after that.

Rumi's presence annoyed Mira. It was always a question to her: what does she want, why is she watching us, is she going to stab us in the back if we get distracted?

Zoey genuinely believed the answer to the last question was "no", but it's not like she could prove it. For her part, she didn't mind having Rumi there. She wished she and Mira got along a bit more, but a lot of the time Rumi was an effective distraction. She'd show up, and the demons they were fighting wouldn't know if they should go after her instead, and boom. Quick kill. Not the worst setup in the world.

Zoey rubbed between Mira's eyebrows again, as if she could just soothe away her tension.

Apparently she could. Mira's face consciously relaxed. She opened her eyes and looked up at Zoey. "Better?"

"Yes," Zoey said. Mission complete, she moved on to exploring the rest of Mira's face. Zoey smoothed over Mira's eyebrows, played with her earlobe, and then squeezed her cheeks so that her lips were pursed and made kissy faces down at her.

Mira batted her hand away, and then reached up to squeeze Zoey's cheeks instead.

"'Hey Mira,'" she mimicked in a high pitched voice, squeezing Zoey's cheek in time with her words to make her lips move, "'I'm super bored. Will you give me some attention?'" She dropped her hand and in a normal voice said, "Well sure Zoey, since you were so polite and asked for it."

Zoey giggled.

"Did you finish that beat you were working on?" Mira asked.

"Yes!" Zoey scrambled off the bed and raced to grab her laptop out of her bedroom. She didn't like asking for attention, even when she wanted it, and felt self-conscious about asking for feedback on her work too. But Mira never made her ask.

Once she was set up in Mira's room and the beat started playing, Mira closed her eyes again. Her head was subtly nodding in time, and after a few bars the hand laid across her stomach started moving too, fingers twitching in what Zoey knew were faint approximations of the dance steps she was working out in her head. Zoey had some lyrics to go with it too, but they weren't quite done so she mouthed along but didn't sing.

When the track ended Mira reopened her eyes and said, "That was hot as hell."

"Yeah?" Zoey asked, already grinning.

"Seriously. Damn, Zoey."

Pride blossomed in Zoey, warm and electrifying. She flopped down flat on the bed, hands pressed against her stretched cheeks. She wanted to writhe with excited energy, and then realized she could, that this was their home and no one was here to see her except Mira, who said she liked how energetic Zoey was. So she rolled back and forth on the bed, grinning with the joy of creative validation.

Mira propped herself up on her side to watch, and Zoey took the opportunity to wiggle into her arms. She briefly pressed her cheek to Mira's chest, and kissed along the collarbone exposed by Mira's loose sleep shirt just because she could. She felt as much as heard Mira's affectionate huff.

She was just leaning in for a real kiss when Mira let out a huge yawn.

They both giggled, and Mira said, "Sorry," and gave her a kiss. "Are we bunking here tonight?"

"Sure." Zoey moved her laptop down to the floor next to the bed. While they technically had separate bedrooms, they slept together much more often than not. Although usually in Zoey's room, since Mira's bed shared space with a collection of stuffed animals that would inevitably get knocked to the floor and have to be carefully replaced the next day.

Then, bed clear of anything that wouldn't survive a fall to the floor in the middle of the night, she snuggled into Mira's arms.

Rumi floated on her back in a pool of dark water. Far above her head, embedded into the sky, the bright lines of the Honmoon shimmered.

Being in the water scared her. She kept waiting for something to pull her down.

Then she felt her father's hand pressed against the small of her back, cool and strong, keeping her above the water. She couldn't see him, but she knew he was close. He'd keep her safe.

She swung her arms around, enjoying the light drag of the water against her movement. She couldn't reach the shore, but her father was there. Even though she couldn't see him.

The lights of the Honmoon were in the sky, but the sky was too close. The lights were brighter than they should be. They were bearing down on her. She swung her arms again. She couldn't feel the shore, or her father, except for his hand at her back.

His hand was disappearing, dissolving into red embers that floated away. She could see it, even though she couldn't. And the lights were far too close, just above her and below her and all around, criss-crossing each other until she couldn't see anything else. She was falling under the water, which felt like falling through the air, because her father wasn't there to hold her up anymore.

She heard the sound of teleporting, and knew he was teleporting away even though he was already gone. Somehow leaving again. He was gone but still leaving, teleporting away again and again--

That's not the sound of someone teleporting away. That's the sound of someone teleporting into the room.

Rumi awoke with a stuttered breath that she immediately forced back into a deep steady rhythm. She kept her eyes closed, but she could hear them now, approaching carefully. She tensed her body as much as she could without giving away the motion, preparing to move. Her heart hammered so hard that it felt like her entire body pulsed with it.

There.

A giant fist came down where her face had just been. She knew she couldn't count on the surprise of her motion lasting more than a second, and twisted away from her makeshift bed immediately. But her blanket had come with her, was still half wrapped around her legs, and her movements were clumsy.

One of the smaller dokkaebi lunged at her, trying to take advantage. He moved too fast. When it came down to a contest of instincts she knew she could trust her body. If they didn't think they didn't stand a chance.

Unfortunately he was the only one dumb enough to rush her, and she couldn't even finish the kill because the larger dokkaebi swung again the instant it seemed like she might be distracted. She didn't make contact with Rumi, but it was close.

The light in the small room she slept in was dim, and she knew their nightvision was better than hers. She relied on the little she could see, and on their reliefs against the everpresent light of the Honmoon, but they had the advantage.

She ducked another swing, but wasn't able to avoid one of the smaller ones when they grabbed her leg and yanked. The force of her back hitting the floor knocked the breath out of her lungs. There was another massive fist headed her way, and she barely managed to kick up against the dokkaebi's chest, redirecting her enough that her fist slammed into the ground near Rumi's head instead.

The room she'd chosen to stay in was small, so that there wasn't anywhere for anyone to hide and so that they couldn't overwhelm her with numbers. The lack of space meant that they were functionally forced to fight her one at a time. But she was constrained too. She couldn't break away, couldn't get enough distance to see what they were doing, couldn't figure out how to respond.

She rolled into a crouch, deliberately ending up next to one of the smaller ones, knowing he'd sink his claws into her shoulder, and used that as an anchor to pivot and swing him into his friend. Then she teleported away.

She'd prepared for this. For this part at least. If she was attacked she'd teleport to the roof. She'd practiced when she first moved in, so that she wouldn't panic and end up somewhere else, or somehow land badly and hurt herself.

But she couldn't stay here. When there were no demons, it was safest to be as far away from humans as possible, so that's where she'd settled. But now, without any other souls to obscure it, her soul was a bright, singular beacon.

They were already appearing around in her flashes of light. Her shoulder was weeping blood, and the overwhelming shuddering of her heartbeat had worked its way into her limbs, leaving them trembling. She had to get somewhere she could hide. She teleported again.

This time she didn't have a plan except "away" and "near humans" and "but not too close". She ended up in an alleyway near a thoroughfare she knew was busy even at this time of night. But she was off-kilter, banging her hip against some trash bins set against the side of the alley. She barely remembered to shapeshift to look human before she stumbled out onto the sidewalk.

Not that it really mattered. Her sleep clothes were whatever she had that was most worn, and she knew she was disheveled. Her movements were strange and jerky, her body barely under her control as it tried to still react to a threat she could no longer see. She knew from experience that either of these things would draw eyes to her, even without the blood seeping from her shoulder.

The people on the sidewalk gave her a wide berth, even as they stared. If she didn't find somewhere to hide soon, there was every chance the police would be called.

There. An open terrace on the second floor, closed for the night. It was on the same level as some nearby apartments, so her soul wouldn't stand out. She ducked into the next alcove she saw and teleported again, barely making it to the terrace before lightheadedness overtook her. She slumped to her knees as black spots overtook her vision, prickles like ice washing over her face.

Then it passed. She was still conscious. She was alone, no humans or demons visible in her immediate vicinity. And she was so, so tired, the panicked energy from earlier leaving her limbs and making them feel completely dead.

For a few blessed seconds she swam in the numbness. Then she felt her chest seize, almost caving in with the force of the sound that wanted to escape her. A scream. A yell. A cry against the universe.

A beacon, if she let it escape.

She clamped down on it, squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth so hard they ached. She grabbed her wounded shoulder, digging her fingers in until the sting became bright enough to focus on. The scream that had been building inside her escaped as a long, slow hiss of pain.

She hadn't been careful enough. She had accidentally let someone escape, or had let someone follow her. She hadn't been aggressive enough about hunting down demons who might come after her. She'd missed something, when she was doing her nightly patrols around the warehouse. She'd been distracted, by the events in the street or those Hunter girls or her own thoughts, and hadn't noticed she'd been tracked. She'd done something wrong, and they found her.

She couldn't go back there. There was no way they wouldn't be waiting in ambush. She wouldn't be able to retrieve her clothes, or her toiletries, or her extra food...

There was a pressure in her chest again, something that would become a cry of anger if she let it, so she stopped. Stopped thinking, stopped gritting her teeth, stopped doing anything except breathing in and long, deep and slow. The sting in her shoulder had settled into a dull ache. And even though she hadn't eaten since morning, she somehow felt sick to her stomach. As unpleasant as it was, these at least gave her something to focus on until the sound building in her chest silently dissipated.

It didn't matter right now. She could find more clothes and supplies. She always did. She wouldn't be able to eat right now without throwing up anyway, and it's not like she was going to sleep again tonight. It wasn't the first time they'd found her. She could recover.

She'd done it before. She just had to do it again.

Right now, she had to find somewhere to be where she wouldn't draw attention. Maybe she should start with getting some new clothes. She'd be much less noticeable if she looked clean and put together.

When she opened her eyes she saw the Honmoon, bright and steady as ever. It pulsed around her, gentle echoes of light everywhere she made contact. It made her feel a little better.

She'd have to bind her shoulder, but it would be fine by the next day. She was a quick healer. She'd be alright.

She always was.

Mira was immediately annoyed when Rumi dropped down to watch their fight. For once she wasn't annoyed at her presence; rather, it was the way that a tension she didn't know she was holding was immediately relieved, and she realized she was expecting Rumi.

"You're late!" Zoey said cheerfully as she flung a shin-kal. A demon near Mira was distracted by Rumi's appearance, and she got in an easy kill.

"Sorry, were you in a hurry?" Rumi had settled into a crouch on top of a nearby HVAC unit, casually leaning back against the wall.

"This isn't exactly how I wanted to spend my evening," said Mira.

"Maybe you could use the practice." When Mira glared at her, Rumi flicked her fingers over Mira's shoulder, and she instinctively thrust her gok-do back in that direction, annoyed all over again when it hit home and another demon melted away.

"I don't want to hear that from someone who's sitting on their butt!" Zoey called out.

"This is your job, not mine."

"Is your job being a pain in our asses?" Mira asked. There weren't very many demons left, so she took her eyes off Rumi to focus on them.

"That's more a labor of love, really," Rumi said. Then, "Zoey, left," and there was the pained cry as her shin-kal hit home.

"Is that why you're stalking us?" Mira's blade decapitated the second to last demon.

"I'm just returning the favor."

"Well," Zoey said as the final demon disappeared in front of her, "I'm glad to see you."

"That makes one of us," Rumi said blithely.

With no more distractions, Zoey turned to fully face Rumi, and so Rumi and Mira both saw her full body flinch at Rumi's words. 

"Fucking rude," Mira snapped.

Rumi at least had the decency to look embarrassed. "I--" Her eyes darted between them. "I'm sorry. I didn't get very much sleep last night. I don't feel great."

"Aw, I'm sorry," said Zoey, moving past the insult easily. "Did something happen?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"That's okay. Are you just tired, or are you sick? Do you need medicine? Wait, can demons take human medicine, or is it toxic to you?"

Usually Rumi disappeared when the fight was done, but today she was hanging around, and let Zoey and Mira draw close. Zoey had already dismissed her knives, but Rumi kept her eyes on Mira's gok-do until it disappeared back into the threads of the Honmoon. Then she focused on Zoey, who was deep into a ramble about the toxicity in various things and how they impacted humans and animals differently.

It was the closest she'd ever been to Rumi in her natural state, Mira realized, and she took the opportunity to take her in.

Rumi looked like she'd put a little more effort in today. She wore a simple hoodie and sweatpants, which was painfully basic, but at least they were clean without any frays or tears. The outfit mostly hid her skin too, although it couldn't do anything for the gnarled claws on her right hard, or the patterns streaking over her left. Those same patterns curled around her neck and crept over her face, which was lined with exhaustion.

Mira had to wonder, why? Rumi could look human if she wanted. Why, unless they were specifically around other people, did she choose to look like this?

She did have to admit that the excellent bone structure was apparently natural. Rumi hadn't changed that when she shapeshifted. She'd just hidden her patterns.

And...her scars. She had a large, deep scar over her left cheek, puckering the skin there. How the fuck had Mira not noticed before? She definitely hadn't had it at dinner. And admittedly she didn't usually let them get close. But still. The patterns must have been distracting her. This was the first time she'd looked past them. And now that she was looking, she could see another scar, smaller but still obvious, over her right eyebrow.

Rumi glanced at her, maybe noticing her scrutiny. In return Mira gave her her best neutral look. Rumi's eyes flicked up and down, sizing her up, while Zoey continued to ramble away next to them.

Mira's body started moving before her brain caught up, operating on instinct. Her arm was already half raised to summon her gok-do before her conscious mind could process what she was seeing.

Rumi's eyes were suddenly sharp, intent. The muscles in her legs tensed, pressing hard against the HVAC unit and the wall as she prepared to launch herself at Zoey and Mira. Her claws, ever present, curved dangerously, perfectly in place to swing.

In an instant she had become a predator.

And Mira had dismissed her weapon.

She was too close. Mira could feel the weight of her staff begin to solidify in her hand, could see Zoey's knives appearing out of the corner of her eye, but it wouldn't be fast enough. The demon would be on them.

Rumi launched herself, flew between them, and slammed into the dokkaebi that had appeared behind them.

He had friends. A second ambush. There wasn't any more time to think before they were in the thick of it.

The panicked, fluttering part of Mira's brain was still racing, spinning around Rumi. They had to avoid her, had to make sure she wasn't caught in the crossfire. Mira knew what would happen with even a single blow of their weapons.

That part, in the end, was easy. The part of her that instinctively recognized enemies wasn't responding to Rumi, even as she swung those dangerous claws near her. Mira's gok-do struck true, as it always did.

Rumi though--her motions weren't the smooth acrobatics of her previous fights. She must really have been tired. She fought with an intensity that was almost frightening, but her movements were clumsy, and without Mira and Zoey there she almost certainly would have fallen immediately.

One of them got their claws into Rumi's side before Zoey's shin-kal could pierce through it, and she stumbled back. 

"Rumi, we've got this!" Zoey called.

Rumi didn't get a choice about participating in the fight though. The largest dokkaebi was fixated on her, and Mira and Zoey were too preoccupied to stop him before he grabbed her and slammed her into the wall.

Mira was pretty sure he yelled, "Traitor!" as he did so.

She cursed, sliced open the demon in front of her, and then flung her gok-do at the large dokkaebi. He dodged, and then looked at her now empty hands and grinned.

But that had only been a setup for Zoey to run up the wall, kick off, and deliver a fistful of knives directly to his face.

For the second time that night, the three of them were alone.

Against the wall, Rumi was shakily pushing herself up with one arm. The other was wrapped around her injured side, where blood was already seeping through.

"Shit." Mira hurried towards Rumi, dropping to her knees next to her. "Let me--"

The instant she was in range, Rumi's claws were at her neck. Not puncturing, not even holding her really. But digging in tight enough that even an ounce more pressure would break the skin.

Zoey cried, "Mira!" and rushed towards them. But Mira held out both her hands, one to Zoey and one to Rumi.

Rumi was trembling, panting. Her eyes kept darting between them. Mira was closest, but she knew Zoey still had her knives out. But this was the instinct of a wounded animal, not of a killer.

"It's alright," Mira said, as soothingly as she could. "I want to check your wounds. If you don't want me to, I won't."

Rumi focused on her (as well as she could at least), and after a few tense seconds her hand fell away.

"Thanks," Mira said. She gently pulled Rumi's other hand away from her side and lifted her hoodie. "Zoey, you're watching our backs?"

"Yeah. Man, those guys came out of nowhere!"

It was hard to tell how bad things were between the fading sunlight and the blood already smeared around the wounds. The cuts were deep, but did they penetrate the muscle? What were they going to do if she needed stitches?

One thing at a time. At a minimum, Rumi's wounds needed to be cleaned and bandaged. "Zoey, can I have your sweatshirt?"

Zoey passed it over without complaint. Mira folded up the torso to make a thick padding, and then used the sleeves to tie it around Rumi's waist.

"Look at me," she told Rumi. It took a few seconds, Rumi's head bobbing concerningly, but she finally made eye contact.

Were her pupils dilated? It was hard to tell. Her brown eye looked fine, but the golden one was blown out instead of slitted. Was that normal for demons, or was that a concussion?

"Do you have somewhere safe to sleep tonight?" Mira asked.

Behind her Zoey let out a plaintive, "Mira..." Rumi stared at her for several long seconds, then looked at the ground, and didn't say anything at all.

"Okay." Mira scrubbed her face with her hands. "Okay."

God, Celine would kill them if she knew what they were about to do.

"Can you shapeshift right now?"

Rumi looked at her again. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she made a pained sound.

"Never mind, it's fine," Mira said quickly. She tugged Rumi's hoodie back down over the makeshift bandage around her waist, then tucked her braid down the back of it before pulling the hood up over Rumi's head, and tightening the drawstrings as much as she dared.

Zoey was already crouching down next to them. She pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her crossbody and slipped them on Rumi.

"Those are my prescription sunglasses," Mira said, and then when Zoey gave her a look, "Okay, fine."

"On the count of three," Zoey said, as they each took one of Rumi's arms. "One, two, three."

In the end Zoey supported Rumi, Rumi's arm around her shoulders and Zoey’s arm around Rumi's waist, applying extra pressure to her wound. Mira's job was to walk in front of them and glare at anyone who was looking too closely.

"We'll be home soon," Zoey said.

Rumi, again, was silent.

--

Mira didn't remember the wards until she'd already turned the key in their front door, unlocking it.

Fuck.

Rumi wasn't going to be able to get past that door. Maybe she could just go get the supplies, and they patch Rumi up here? It would be hard to clean her up in the middle of the hallway though. She'd probably need a bucket, and also a chair.

"What's wrong?" Zoey asked. And Mira couldn't just say, it was probably bad to tell a demon about their wards. Except maybe the demons already knew? Like if they'd tried to break in at any point it would have been obvious. But those were Gwi-Ma's demons, and Rumi wasn't with them apparently, so she wouldn't know. But she was still a demon, and they were bringing a demon into their home, this was the worst idea--

Rumi, apparently done with waiting, let go of Zoey, opened the door, and walked right through.

"Wait, don't we have wards?" Zoey said. "How'd she do that?"

Add that to the list of about a million questions they had about Rumi.

"Later," Mira said. "Let's get cleaned up."

Rumi was leaning against the wall in the entryway. Mira stepped into the apartment, and ushered her to the bathroom, guiding her to sit on the edge of the bathtub. When she pulled off Rumi's hoodie she realized she wasn't wearing anything beneath it except for the sweatshirt around her waist, and some other scraps of cloth wrapped around her shoulder.

Behind them, Zoey gasped softly. The noise drew Mira back from her focus on Rumi's cuts, and that distance was enough for her to finally notice what Zoey saw. Her stomach dropped.

Rumi was painfully thin, all bones and angles and not an ounce of fat on her. It should have been obvious when Mira was first dressing her wound, but then she had been too focused on Rumi's injury to notice anything else. Now though Mira was concerned about how Rumi had been standing at all, much less fighting. Her clothes had always been on the baggy side, Mira realized now, which had obscured exactly the state she was in. But it was impossible to ignore now.

She was bruised to all hell, too, and in addition to the scars on her face, there were also a variety crossing all over her body. Mira and Zoey had some scars of their own, but they fought with weapons, not their fists. Apparently that made a difference.

Mira dragged her focus back to the immediate problem. The scars were old, and she couldn't do anything about Rumi's weight at the moment. But she could clean her wound, and maybe prevent her from getting a new scar.

Rumi was completely impassive while Mira directed the spray of water to her side and gently wiped her clean. She twitched once when Mira carefully pulled at the side of the deepest cut to see exactly how bad it was, but was still after that.

No stitches needed, Mira decided. The bleeding had already mostly stopped. She applied the butterfly bandages, and then a layer of gauze over the area. When she was done she checked on Rumi's shoulder. Whatever had happened there, it was clearly older, and already mostly healed. But she went ahead and washed it and wrapped it in gauze anyway.

Zoey had slipped out of the bathroom at some point, and re-entered now, with some clean drawstring shorts and an oversized shirt.

"Are you good?" Mira asked.

"Yep. Just had a scrape on my knee." Zoey kicked out the leg in question, so Mira could see the bandaids already applied. "How about you?"

"All good this time."

Zoey deposited the clothes on Rumi's lap. She blinked down at them, then at the toilet, and then back up to Zoey and Mira.

"We'll give you a minute," Zoey said, tugging Mira out of the bathroom. As soon as the door closed she looked at Mira, eyes wide, but Mira just shook her head. Later.

After a few minutes the toilet flushed, and Rumi wandered out, dressed in Zoey's clothes. She ignored them, walked directly to the couch, and collapsed.

"We have a spare bedroom," Mira said, circling around the couch to look at her.

"No." Exhaustion leeched deep into Rumi's voice. "I'm good."

"Suit yourself." Mira snagged the spare blanket they draped over the back of the couch for movie night cuddling and draped it over Rumi. Rumi made a noise that might have been either acquiescence or protest, but Mira figured it was best to leave her the blanket either way. There were throw pillows, if she wanted them, but honestly Mira thought she was asleep before she and Zoey left the room.

As soon as they got to Zoey's bedroom, Zoey said, "Oh my god!"

"Yeah," said Mira.

"She's so skinny!"

"Yeah."

"We have to feed her, like, a million more dinners." Zoey flopped face first onto the mattress.

"How does she fight like that?" Mira stood in place, chewing on her thumbnail. Imagining the things that could have gone wrong for Rumi if she and Zoey hadn't been there. Imagining everything that already had, for her to wind up in that state.

Zoey pushed herself onto her side, looking at Mira. "At least we know she's not evil."

"Yeah, after all that I don't think she's faking."

"No," Zoey said, and Mira blinked, looking at her. "The wards? Remember?"

Right. The wards. "They're supposed to keep out demons," Mira said.

Zoey simply flicked her eyes to the living room, and then back to Mira.

"I know," Mira said. "They didn't work."

"Or they did," Zoey said, "because they're supposed to keep out evil. And Rumi's not evil."

Before tonight, Mira wouldn't have thought there was a difference between "demon" and "evil". Now though...

"Is that how it works?" she asked. Zoey shrugged, even though it was rhetorical. They didn't know the exact mechanics of how the protection spells worked, just that they did. They hadn't learned much about the particulars of that kind of thing under Celine; she'd said, "Shamans have their job, and you have yours."

Maybe, though, it wouldn't hurt to learn more about that kind of thing. Since they were trusting their lives to it and all. There were several books about shamanism on Celine's recommended extended reading list, which would probably be a good place to start.

"Mira," Zoey said, "she doesn't have a safe place to sleep."

"Not one that she's willing to tell us about."

"Mira."

"I know, I know." Mira scrubbed her face again, and sighed.

When Mira looked back at Zoey she was sitting up, chewing on her bottom lip.

"So," Zoey said, and said out loud what Mira was already thinking: "What do we do now?"

Chapter Text

When Rumi opened her eyes, she saw Zoey sitting not an arm's length away. Immediately her body tensed, her claws flexing on the couch cushion until she heard the tiny tell-tale pops of the fabric being punctured.

How had she gotten so close without waking Rumi up?

"Good morning!" Zoey chirped. "You were out of it."

Rumi's body yearned to move, to put some distance between them. But Zoey was close, and a Hunter, and her position was far less prone than Rumi's. If Rumi made the wrong move now, Zoey could be on her in an instant.

So instead of moving, she looked around the room. Sunlight streamed through the windows. Somewhere behind her was the noise of clattering and sizzling. All things that should have woken her up. Instead, she'd left herself vulnerable.

"Sorry," Zoey said in response to her silence. "I've just never gotten a chance to look at a demon's patterns up close before." She quirked her head to the side. "Why do you have one gold eye and one brown eye?"

"I don't know," Rumi said, willing her racing heart to slow down. "I just do. Why do you have spots on your face?"

"You mean my freckles?"

"Yeah."

Zoey hummed thoughtfully. "Touché." She hopped up and said, "Come on, Mira's almost done with breakfast," and then walked away without answering the question about her freckles at all.

By the time Rumi made it to the dining room table, Zoey was already sitting down and Mira was plating the bibimbap. Rumi looked down at the bowl in front of her, and then back up at the other girls suspiciously.

"Eat," Mira said, which made Rumi want to refuse on principle. Truthfully, she wasn't sure she was hungry. Maybe it was the previous two nights catching up to her, but she didn't feel quite right yet. And sometimes if she didn't feel good eating just made her feel sick.

But the food was in front of her, and she didn't know when she'd be able to find a hot meal again. And also it would probably be rude to refuse at this point. So she dug in.

Breakfast was oddly quiet. When Rumi finished her bowl Mira said, "Do you want some more?"

"No," Rumi said. But Mira took the bowl and refilled it anyway, presumably to be annoying. Rumi was feeling a little bit better though, and, again, food was food. So she didn't protest when the refilled bowl was slid back in front of her.

"How are you feeling?" Mira asked. She and Zoey had both finished their own breakfasts.

"Fine." It was close enough to true.

"How's your side?"

"It's fine." This was true. There was no soreness when she'd moved from the couch to the table. "I'm a fast healer."

Mira hummed, and then looked at Zoey, who was nervously tapping her fingers together.

"So!" Zoey said. "Mira and I were talking last night. And we had an idea. A proposal, sort of. If you're interested."

Rumi looked between them, and chewed.

"We were thinking...well, we all fight demons, right?" Zoey glanced at Mira periodically as she talked. "So we were thinking that it'd be a lot easier for everyone if we officially worked together."

"Like, fighting together?" Rumi asked.

"Yes, exactly!"

Rumi stared at Zoey until she fidgeted. "Why would I do that?"

"Because it'd be a lot easier than fighting alone?" Mira said dryly.

"You two don't fight alone though," Rumi pointed out. "So. Why would you do that?"

Zoey splayed her hands out. "When it comes to fighting demons, it seems like it'd be the more, the merrier, right? Me and Mira are a good team, but we've had some really close calls. It just seems like it'd be easier for everyone if we could help each other."

"Easier for you, maybe," Rumi muttered into her spoon. "I get by fine."

"Sure," Mira drawled. "That's why we practically had to carry you home last night."

"I got hurt because I was trying to help you! That's not a lot of incentive to do it again." Rumi shoved the next spoonful into her mouth too roughly, the metal of the spoon banging painfully off her teeth. Stupid. She needed to calm down.

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then Zoey said, "You were hurt before that too." When Rumi glanced at her, she tapped on her own shoulder.

That one's fine, she wanted to say. It's surely healed by now. It's not a big deal.

But she did remember the pain of claws sinking into her, tearing with the momentum of her throw.

"Besides," Mira said, "we don't expect you to do it for free. We're offering room and board."

Rumi paused with the next bite off halfway to her mouth. "What?"

"We've got a spare bedroom!" Zoey said. "It's just been sitting empty, since we don't have a third--well. No one's using it, is the point. And we'd take care of your meals.You could stay here, and you'd just have to help us when we're hunting demons."

"Which, let's be real, you're going to do with or without us," Mira said.

Rumi shifted in her chair, feeling the tug where the gauze was taped to her skin. She was realizing, slowly, what last night had been. If they wanted her to fight with them, then she would be most useful if she was rested and fed, and if her injuries weren't slowing her down. Their kindness was an investment.

It was an obligation, too, if she accepted it.

"I can room and board myself, thanks," she said, and was instantly annoyed at the brief grimace that flitted across Zoey's face. Mira remained as impassive as ever. "I don't actually have a death wish--"

"Debateable," said Mira.

"--so forgive me for wanting to keep some distance between us. Hunters kill demons. They don't work with them." Rumi was darkly pleased to see conflicted expressions on both girls' faces at her words.

Zoey barrelled ahead anyway. "Well, usually, yeah! But you're, you're special! You're not evil like other demons."

Rumi frowned. "I told you--"

"Like the other demons Gwi-Ma sends up here, I mean." Zoey was looking at her with pleading eyes. That kind of look was...new, directed towards Rumi. And uncomfortable.

"You don't know anything about me," she said.

"We know you're not evil, because--" Mira shot Zoey a sharp look, and she stumbled over her words. "Because...this place is protected against evil. And you're here. So. Not evil."

Rumi blinked, confused again. "What?"

"Special Hunter protection wards," Mira said, watching Rumi closely. "Normally demons can't get in here."

"And you just walked right in!" Zoey said, seemingly oblivious to the staredown currently happening between Mira and Rumi.

"Maybe your wards are broken," Rumi said slowly.

"No," Zoey said, "Celine made us test them when we moved in. They're all good."

"It was kind of a huge pain in the ass." Whatever Mira had been looking for in Rumi's face, she was apparently done, and eased back into her seat with an almost imperceptible shift in her expression from searching to relaxed.

Their offer sat uneasy in her stomach. She was safest when she wasn't around humans or demons. But on the other hand, they had wards. Protection against demons. Protection she had slipped past, which was...she wasn't sure how she felt about that. But if it worked as intended...

She remembered again the claws sinking into her shoulder. Giant fists, coming down at her. Half visible silhouettes against the light of the Honmoon, looming over her.

And afterwards, the scream that had almost forced its way out of her.

She'd escaped. She'd controlled herself after. She'd survived so far. She could keep doing it, on her own.

It might be nice if it wasn't quite so hard though.

When Rumi was done with her meal, she looked up, and ran directly into Mira's sharp gaze.

There were several heartbeats of tense silence before Rumi spoke. "You don't want me here."

"No," said Mira, as Zoey looked nervously between them. "But I don't want to kill you either. You helped us last night. I appreciate that. So, since I'm not going to kill you, then as long as you're running around Seoul, you might as well be somewhere I can keep an eye on you."

Having a threat laid out in front of her, rather than hidden behind confusing offers, did something to ease the tension in Rumi's chest.

The fact of the matter was, she didn't know where she was going to sleep tonight if she turned down their offer. And food--well, she could find food. But the two meals she'd shared with them had been much better than most anything she could find on her own.

She just had to agree to share a living space with two people whose mission in life was to kill things like her.

But then, if they wanted to kill her, they'd had plenty of opportunities to do so already.

"Okay," she said, before she could think about it anymore.

Okay, for now, at least. Until she figured out her next move. Until something went wrong.

Once again, they for some reason looked surprised that she had agreed to something they were actively inviting her to do. Rumi didn't understand humans.

"...Okay!" Zoey said. "Great!"

Mira got up and started clearing the breakfast dishes.

"So, like we said, we have an empty bedroom. You can take that one." Zoey shot Rumi a smile. "Do you need help moving anything?"

"Like what?" Rumi asked.

"I mean like packing. Do you have anything you want to bring over here?"

"No."

"Nothing at all?" Mira asked from her place at the sink.

"No," Rumi said again, keeping her voice as blank as possible.

"That's okay," Zoey said. "We have stuff you can borrow. In the meantime...welcome home, I guess?"

Once again, Rumi didn't know what to say.

--

Once the kitchen was clean, Mira disappeared to get dressed for the day. Zoey also went to her room briefly, but came back with a fresh set of clothes.

"You can use my bathroom if you want to take a shower," she said. "Well, it's not really my bathroom, you can use either bathroom, but my stuff's in this one." The bathroom she led Rumi to was different from the one they had been in last night.

"There's towels and washcloths under the sink. Feel free to use my shampoo and whatever else you want." And then, with a final smile, Zoey left her to it.

What Rumi wanted was the shampoo, and maybe a bar of soap if it was available. What she saw was a seemingly endless supply of bottles and tubes and little jars, littered all over the countertop around the sink and on the edges of the bathtub.

She stared at the selection, and then, overwhelmed, went to find Zoey.

"Hey, there's--"

Zoey's eyes had been on her phone, and she jumped when Rumi spoke, which made Rumi startle as well. "Oh my gosh, you snuck up on me! Hah!" Zoey pressed a hand to her chest and looked Rumi over. "What's wrong?"

"There's..." Rumi chewed on her lip, suddenly realizing how stupid any question would sound. She couldn't even find soap.

Zoey seemed ready to wait her out though, so eventually she said, "There's a lot of...stuff. In the bathroom."

"Stuff?" Zoey asked, and Rumi grimaced at her own incompetence. "Can you show me what you mean?"

Back in the bathroom, Rumi gestured at the collection of bottles awkwardly, and said, "Stuff."

"Oh. Oh." Rumi wilted under the look Zoey was giving her. She would have liked maybe an hour of living together before they figured out she was hopeless with human things, but it was too late now.

"So, you can use as much or as little of this stuff as you want," Zoey said. "This is normal body wash, this is exfoliating if you want that instead, this is face wash, this is facial cleanser--" Face wash and facial cleanser were different? "--this is my shampoo, this is shampoo that's good for dyed hair--don't use that one actually, I need to put that back in Mira's bathroom. Um, lotion for after if you want it. Oh, conditioner! You probably don't need the bubble bath or the shaving cream--unless you want to shave? I could get you a--"

Zoey looked up, and stopped short when she saw Rumi's face. They hadn't even gotten to the sink yet.

"You know what, actually? Here." Zoey started piling bottles into her arms. "Shampoo, conditioner, body wash, face wash." She gave Rumi another smile. "That's all you really need."

Rumi nodded hesitantly. One of those things she knew, and the other two she could guess from their names. The conditioner, well, she'd just put that back after Zoey left.

Zoey was still looking at her, so Rumi put on the best smile she could and shot her a thumbs up. "Thanks."

At that, Zoey looked delighted. She finally left the bathroom with a, "Call me if you need anything."

Rumi sighed, unloaded her armful of stuff onto the back of the toilet, and then set her attention to figuring out the shower faucet.

--

Mira gave Rumi one rule before she and Zoey left to do whatever they were going to do that day: "Stay out of our bedrooms."

Every time Mira looked at her it was with a barely concealed grimace. She seemed to be regretting her invitation almost immediately. That in itself gave Rumi a twinge of satisfaction, and she made sure to shoot Mira a wide grin as Zoey dragged her out of the apartment.

The grin dropped off as soon as they were gone. Mira clearly didn't want her there alone, but in truth she didn't want to be there either. As soon as she was alone, she felt more exposed than ever.

For years Rumi's world had come in two flavors: Outdoors, where most everything was open and she had a plethora of escape routes, or the closed in nests she built herself to sleep and recover in. Those were never more than a single room, somewhere she could have a line of sight to every corner.

The apartment was claustrophobic compared to the outdoors, but also too large of an expanse for her to feel comfortable. There were too many walls, too many rooms, too many edges for something to hide behind. The living room had floor to ceiling windows, and while there were blinds, they were pulled completely open. Anything could be watching her right now. Could she close the blinds? Was she allowed to touch things like that, or would the Hunters get upset?

She turned away from the windows to look at the interior of the apartment instead. She found herself prowling, checking behind each piece of furniture, opening the cabinets in the kitchen over and over, glancing nervously down the hallway and its many closed doors.

Finally, when she couldn't take the anticipation anymore, she crept down the hallway to the first door.

Of course the first one she opened was a bedroom, one with a pile of stuffed toys piled high on dark sheets. She flinched, fully expecting some kind of booby trap to go off. But things were calm. The stuffed animals stared into the distance silently.

She carefully reached for the doorknob to pull it closed, taking care not to cross the threshold.

The next door opened into a small closet, stuffed with blankets and other linens. No room for anyone to hide in there. The bathrooms were similarly empty.

She found another bedroom next, this one with a mass of papers scattered over a desk set underneath the window. She braced herself just in case, but was once again able to pull the door shut without any trouble.

There were only two doors left. One led to a small room with one of those square machines that people used for washing clothes, and a variety of shelving and boxes against the other walls.

The final door, the very furthest one from the apartment entrance, led to another freaking bedroom.

Rumi had closed the door halfway before her thoughts caught up with her eyes. This room was near bare, its walls completely unadorned. There was a dresser, a nightstand, and a mattress set on a bedframe, but with no sheets on it.

It was the spare bedroom, she realized. Her bedroom, maybe.

She carefully slipped inside, and sat on the edge of the bare mattress. It was quiet in here. She couldn't even hear the sounds of traffic outside. And it was so far from the front door.

If someone were to break in, is that how they'd do it? Coming in from the front door? It would certainly be easiest; it would be difficult to get to the windows as high above the street as they were.

How would she know if that happened? Between the closed bedroom door and the twists of the apartment walls, almost no sound leaked through. Every door she had opened had been near silent. Perfectly oiled hinges, perfectly clean floors where anyone careful could pass without leaving a trace, a dozen perfect hiding spots between her and the exit.

She shuddered. She didn't want to be here, in this strange place, all alone. She didn't know the rules of how it worked, how best to protect herself. And the risks if she did something wrong, if she angered the Hunters, was far too high.

Rumi closed her eyes and, with a thought, disappeared.

--

A few hours of wandering around Seoul calmed Rumi's nerves significantly. It was heartening to see that she was already healed, that there were no lingering aches to hinder her movement. She felt better than she had in a while, in fact. And the Honmoon was steady and calm for once, its lights blinking playfully when she trailed her hands against the walls she walked past.

Also, knowing that she could leave, that whatever spells there were did nothing to bind her inside the apartment, was an additional relief.

She decided to head back around the time the cafes started filling up for lunch. They'd said they'd feed her, didn't they? It was part of the deal. She'd seen plenty of food in their kitchen while exploring earlier, and it'd be a lot easier to take that than to try to find something out here.

Maybe they'd be home. Maybe it wouldn't feel so strange then.

When she reappeared in the apartment's living room, Zoey shrieked.

"Rumi!" she said once her voice was back under control. "You're back. I told you." This last part was directed to Mira, who stood at the edge of the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

Mira had her hand out like she was about to summon her weapon, but instead she flexed her fist and then let her arm fall back to her side. "Where were you?" she asked, voice gruff.

Rumi shrugged. "Around."

"What were you doing?"

"Nothing in particular." She shrugged again. "I got bored." They didn't need to know the details of her fears.

Mira still looked vaguely pissed off, which Rumi was beginning to suspect was normal for her.

"We got you some stuff!" Zoey grabbed Rumi's arm with both hands. At the touch Rumi flinched, and Zoey stepped back and clasped her hands behind her back.

Rumi stared, confused, until Zoey started to fidget. "It's in the bedroom," she said, still cheerful, but flustered. "Come see?"

The stuff turned out to be several drawers full of clothes. Mira went over them efficiently: "Nightclothes, underwear, and socks. These are for working out and fighting, and these are just for everyday wear. It's just some basics for now. We can fill it in later with other things if you want."

"Plus, your own toothbrush and hairbrush," Zoey said, flashing the items at her.

"What size shoe do you wear?" Mira asked.

"I--" Rumi was overwhelmed. This wasn't how they said things were going to work. What did she owe them for this?

Not knowing what else to do, she kicked off the sandals she wore (which she had grabbed somewhat blindly off of a rack the day before) and looked at the size on them. "240?"

"We're going to try 250," Mira said. "Also, slippers only indoors."

"I don't have slippers."

"You can use some of mine for now."

"And..." Zoey walked over to the bed, now made up in sheets, and picked something off of it. When she turned towards Rumi, she was holding a stuffed tiger. "A welcome gift! Here." She pressed it into Rumi's hands. "It reminded me of you, all stripey and everything."

Rumi wasn't, at the moment. She hadn't released the human form she'd worn to walk around unnoticed. She did now, and saw the patterns reappear on her skin.

There was something heavy and sticky in Rumi's chest, and a buzz building between her ears.

If she paid too much attention to the weight in her chest, something would crack, and down that way lay danger. So she focused on the static in her head instead, until it pushed everything else out. Until she wasn't thinking at all.

"You could say thank you," Mira said from somewhere behind her.

Rumi stared at the tiger, and didn't say anything.

It took a long time, but finally the other girls left the room. Left her to her silence.

--

If she thought the apartment was too quiet before, that wasn't a problem now.

Mira: "Rumi, lunch is ready." (It was once again delicious, and this time she felt more than well enough to eat it.)

Zoey: "Rumi, do you want to help me with the dishes?" (Rumi wasn't sure she was much help at all, but she tried to follow Zoey's instructions.)

Mira: "Rumi, do you still want this hoodie, or can I toss it?" (A protest instinctively bubbled up in Rumi's throat, until it was stoppered by the memory of the drawers of clothes she had access to now. Still, she hesitated, and Mira said, "Let me patch it up at least," and took the hoodie with her.)

Zoey: "Rumi, is there anything in particular you want for dinner? We're going to order in." (She shook her head.)

Mira: "Rumi, come here for a minute."

Mira was leaning out of the bathroom doorway. When Rumi went to her, she stepped inside and gestured at a flat square item on the floor.

"Can you stand on that for me?"

She stepped on the square. There was a small screen at the top that briefly flashed through various numbers, before seeming to settle on one.

She glanced at Mira, wondering if it was okay to ask questions. Wondering if she should already know what was happening. But the look on Mira's face--brows furrowed, mouth pressed into a thin line as she looked down at the device--knocked those thoughts right out of her head.

"Is something wrong?" Rumi asked.

Immediately Mira's face smoothed out into neutrality. "No, nothing at all. I just need to do some meal planning. You know, now that there's three of us."

Mira left the bathroom. Rumi lingered for another moment, looking down at the numbers with a frown. Despite what she had said, Mira was clearly displeased, and Rumi wasn't sure what she had done.

--

When night fell, the old familiar fears pricked again at the back of Rumi's mind. She knew that Mira and Zoey were here, and that they were formidable fighters. She knew that this place had protections she'd never had before. She knew all that.

But old habits died hard, and so she patrolled, kitchen to dining room to living room, down the hallway and back up, over and over again, checking.

From the couch, Zoey called, "Rumi, we're going to watch a movie."

She was for some reason looking at Rumi expectantly, so Rumi said, "Okay," and opened the pantry door again, just in case.

Mira muttered something Rumi couldn't hear, but there was enough bite in her tone that Rumi glared in her direction instinctively. Zoey caught her eyes again, and said, "Do you want to join us?"

"Oh." That probably wasn't the kind of invitation she could refuse without being rude, was it? She walked into the living room and stood next to a plush chair, giving plenty of space to Mira and Zoey, who were cuddled on the couch.

From this angle the darkened hallway was almost entirely hidden, just a void that anything could emerge from. Rumi craned her neck to try and peek deeper down its length.

"Rumi, sit down," Mira snapped.

Rumi sat on the chair, hard.

"Thank god," Mira muttered. Zoey visibly relaxed.

"Hope you're ready for a romcom," Zoey said. She fiddled with a device in her hand, and then the movie started.

Rumi wasn't sure how long she was going to have to stay here, so she settled back and tried to get comfortable.

--

"Aww!" Zoey said as the credits rolled.

"I still think Jihoo should have gotten beaten up by the end," Mira said.

"Seojoon was cute, but he would not have won that fight."

"Right, 'cause everything else that happened was super believable."

Zoey giggled, and then looked over to Rumi. "What did you think, Rumi?"

Their conversation up to this point has been cozy and fond. It hadn't occurred to Rumi that she might be expected to take part in it. She flailed for an observation to contribute. "It was good. It made sense."

This, apparently, was the wrong thing to say. Mira and Zoey were looking at her with the same expressions as when she'd said the dumplings tasted better hot. She squirmed in her seat.

"Was there any part in particular that...'made sense'?" Mira asked. Internally, Rumi cringed.

Rumi knew what movies were, and TV shows. She'd often been fascinated by the snippets of them she saw on the various screens set up in restaurants and elsewhere around the city. But those had only been pieces of a story. Now that she'd seen the whole thing, it just...made more sense than the bits and pieces she'd seen before.

But if she'd said anything else it'd almost certainly be the wrong thing again. So she didn't say anything at all.

"Well," Zoey said finally, "I don't know if it made perfect sense. That library scene was pretty dumb. If I was there trying to read, I would have tackled them."

"It's a romcom," Mira said. "Everyone's IQ goes down at least 50 points in those." She stretched, groaning lightly as she did. "I'm about ready to turn in. Rumi, are you good for the night?"

Not trusting herself to speak, Rumi nodded.

Later, after Rumi had changed from what Mira said were her everyday clothes to the ones that were for night time, Mira swung by again.

"What are you doing?"

What she was doing was getting settled on the couch, same as she had the previous night. She'd risked closing the blinds. "I'm...going to bed," Rumi said.

"Here?"

"Yeah." She nestled into the couch cushions, staking her claim.

"Why?" Mira looked suspicious again. "You have an actual bedroom."

Rumi remembered the quiet of that room, the sense of everything being muffled, the knowledge of the dark hallway just beyond the door.

"The couch is comfy," she said. Here, she'd know immediately if someone came through the front door. Here, she had more escape routes.

"The bed would probably be comfier," Mira said.

Rumi rolled onto her side, pulled the blanket tighter, and ignored her.

After a moment she heard Mira let out a frustrated breath, and then, thankfully, walk away.