avii

Rumi was staring out of the northern numaru window like she could bore a hole through the glass if she put her mind to it. Maybe she could.

It was raining too hard to train outside, Miyeong-seonsaengnim had said. They'd stay in for the afternoon and help her organize "Their Little Library"; the journals former hunters had left behind, the fragile delicately-illustrated bestiaries, someone's collection of florid joseon romance novellas. Centuries of research, amounting to very little they hadn't already heard ("demons are bad", "demons are tricky", "demons are liars", "demons can disguise themselves to look like anyone"). Thirdlight-seonsaengnim was making them all take turns hand-copying the oldest texts into new books, which was apparently not meant to be a punishment. In practice, this meant Zoey was yapping about her favorite Sunlight Sisters albums (almost all of them), and there was nothing Miyeong loved more than being yapped to about her songwriting. Mira was pretty sure neither of them had even noticed Rumi slinking out.

Mira is not the right person for this, she knows that. She's not conciliatory. She's not a peace-maker. Rumi's so icily polite that she's almost positive Rumi hates her. But someone has to try to fix this. Someone has to at least figure out what's wrong, and if Rumi takes it badly…at least she'll have reacted.

It's a lost cause to sneak up on Rumi, so she didn't even try, deliberately squeaking her house slippers against the wooden floorboards as she approached her. Rumi half turned her head to look at Mira, her face already shaped into that PR fake friendliness that she's so good at. Mira stopped. Out of saingeom range, hopefully.

"So I'm not great at reading people."

Rumi breathed out through her nose in something that was trying not to be a snort.

Mira resisted the urge to ball up her fists. Don't make it a fight. Don't punch first. "Yeah, yeah. I'm not exactly a natural. But it's pretty obvious someone upset you. And." Her hands clasped and unclasped at her sides, gripping the hems of her sleeves and digging her nails in. "And if it's me I want to apologize."

Rumi's stupid perfect face did something genuinely unexpected. It moved. Just a little spasm around the eyelids and then it was gone. Smoothed away like it had never existed. Mira felt a little jolt of victory.

"What could you have to apologize for?" Rumi said in a voice so sweet it could kill flies. "We're hunters, right? The honmoon picked us for one another, so I don't know how you could say anything that would hurt me."

"Okay so that's a yes." Mira's mind started ticking. What had they said? What had they been talking about when Rumi left?

Oh.

"15 years seems like kindof a long time to still be making grudge albums." Mira cringed internally. She should give up speaking. "Don't they have any other material?" Forever, if possible.

Rumi's face was still as stone. "It's a good reason, isn't it? She chose a demon." It felt like a brittle lie. It felt like home.

Mira shifted uneasily. There was something moving under the surface of the conversation that she couldn't see. She wasn't the right person for this. Zoey was the one who could see how people interacted and then know how to appease them. Zoey knew how to keep Miyeong's attention focused on her, and diffuse arguments between Mira and Thirdlight almost before they started. But Rumi made Zoey uncomfortable. Judged. So Mira had to be the one to talk to her.

"Well, that's probably punishment enough, right?" Please be provoked. Yell. Make a face. Do SOMETHING. "No need to keep rubbing her face in it. She's out of the industry, if she was going to share her side of the story she would have already."

"Her side?" Rumi's tone was sharp and high. Not shocked, Mira thought. Which could mean nothing.

"Well she must have one, right? You wouldn't burn down your life for no reason at all."

"Miyeong-seonsaengnim and Thirdlight-seonsaengnim seem pretty sure they know the reason." Mira was a little impressed Rumi had fit that much scorn into so few syllables.

Mira smirked at her. "Hey, can I tell you a secret?"

Rumi blinked. "A secret?"

"Yeah. Thirdlight-seonsaengnim and Miyeong-seonsaengnim argue about her sometimes. When they think we're asleep. I needed a cigarette a few nights ago after that fight choreography disaster." Rumi laughed nervously, fingers hovering over the spot where Zoey had collided with her, nearly planting a shin-kal directly into her right hip. "And I found out they never even looked for her."

After several long seconds, Rumi managed to assemble a look of surprise. Which could mean nothing. "….they didn't?"

"So that's weird, right? If she left with a demon, wouldn't they want to kill the demon? They'd be rescuing her, probably. We're supposed to…" Mira paused, trying to keep the hunger out of her voice. "We're supposed to protect each other."

All at once Rumi seemed to really look at Mira. Mira wondered what she saw.

"So you think it was more complicated."

Did kids of hunters often become hunters? Did enough hunters live long enough to have children to find out whether or not the children of hunters were likely to become hunters? Mira's brain skittered away from the thought.

"I think if I have to pretend I care more about sh…stuff like legitimacy than a….fellow hunter I might as well still be rotting at home."

Rumi bit the edge of her lip. It was the most vulnerable expression Mira had ever seen her make.

"Yeah, you did upset me. You all know I was raised by a single mom, and no one blinks an eye when Zoey calls a famous single mother a slut. When Thirdlight-seonsaengnim says she got what she deserved. When Miyeong-seonsaengnim says she should have taken care of it. When you don't say anything at all."

Harsh, not unfair. "Do you……want……to talk about her? Your eomonim."

"She was perfect." Rumi said quietly. "She was perfect and everyone abandoned her because she loved me enough to keep me."

Mira couldn't quite keep the wistfulness out of her voice. "So you were wanted?" Deep breaths, don't cry. "That sounds….nice."

Rumi looked tired. "You'll probably have to disavow that if the duo finds out you said a nice thing about a lovechild."

✨❤️‍🩹💗 Zoey & Mira's Friendship Offensive, ver 2.5 💗❤️‍🩹✨

It wasn't not working.

Mira had a gift. A rare combination of natural talent, dedication to practice, and enthusiasm for experimenting in her chosen art form of making authority figures incandescently angry with her. Now Mira was magnanimously applying that gift on Rumi's behalf; creating both opportunities for Rumi's little zingers, and the beginnings of a theory on why Rumi was so good at getting under the Duo's skin.

Rumi hadn't noticed immediately that Mira was doing it on purpose, which gave her and Zoey a chance to observe Rumi at work. Some subjects made immediate (embarrassing) sense: the justice of certain social stigmas, whether or not judgmental behavior could be considered inspiring, and (chillingly) how dishonesty might directly damage the honmoon. Other subjects, less so. Chuseok and children's day seemed to particularly devastate Miyeong, as did Rumi reminiscing about how much she had loved bucheonnim osinnal because she knew both her and her eomma would get enough to eat. That was, you know, sad; but Rumi never seemed to be angling for either sympathy or invitations. Just…making cheerful jokes about teetering on the edge of malnutrition and being severed from her family's history.

But nearly every blow that snuck under Miyeong's defenses seemed to miss Thirdlight entirely. If there was a corresponding wound to Miyeong's, it must have long since calloused over. Mira didn't know what to make of that. She noticed things (arguably too many things); but what they meant was harder to place. Big emotional responses like Zoey's and Miyeong's registered well. Quieter reactions like Rumi's and Thirdlight's…she needed to really focus on those to even see them. Thirdlight avoided being alone with Rumi, but that was non-specific. She had some tics about things Rumi had touched, but she was like that with Miyeong too. She was maybe more aggressive with Rumi during training, but Rumi was faster at summoning her saingeom than Mira or Zoey were; maybe Thirdlight just thought Rumi could handle it. Mira was beginning to think Thirdlight didn't have a role in whatever cold war Rumi was engaging in.

The five of them had all dutifully neatened up for Chuseok. No one had anywhere else to go, after all. Zoey had a zoom call with her mother (busy), a different zoom call with grandparents (who needed to be reminded that she and her mother lived in Korea now), and a tense phone call that Mira couldn't follow at all (her half sister, apparently). Mira wasn't expecting a call, and didn't receive one; but her brother texted, which was a nicer gesture than she had expected from him. The duo hadn't insisted on hanbok, but everyone still had to crawl out of bed at first thing in the morning to offer prayers and gifts and hear Thirdlight tell the saga of the creation of the Honmoon all over again, while Miyeong got weepy, and their ankles got damp in the fall dew. Foxes got into the fruit the same night, but the flowers from town had lingered. The heavy scent of floral decay made Zoey sneeze, and Rumi had looked over and smiled sympathetically.

Zoey was inclined to view this a complete victory. Rumi had offered antihistamines; and amused sympathy when Zoey sneezed all over her a second time while apologizing for the first time. Rumi wasn't completely freezing them out of conversation. Rumi was finally talking to them about music. Mira wasn't so sure. They were getting along now, but only as long as they followed The Rules. No celebrity gossip, no boys (ew), no Sunlight Sisters discourse, no Celine at all. They could strategize all they wanted about how to extract maximum creative control as quickly as possible; but they couldn't talk about why they needed that. Tentative mealtime conversations on vetted subjects didn't exactly scream friendship let alone a "once-in-a-generation harmonious blending of souls to make supernatural music that will save the world." She wanted it to be true that they had fixed things, and that was horrible. Wanting something meant it would hurt so much worse when she lost it.

Then Rumi had gone and looked so excited when she mentioned Hanabie that Mira couldn't keep containing the little flares of hope she was feeling. That first burst of genuine Kang Rumi charisma had left her throat dry (which could mean nothing), and even more terrified of what she could lose if her and Zoey fucked this up. Now Rumi sought them out. Even if Mira and Zoey were just practicing scales together, Rumi would come and slide her voice around theirs. Dancing in intervals around their notes; coaxing harmony out of nothing until their souls started to glow. Amidst all these intense horrifying realizations that it was important to all human life for Rumi to like her, and worse, that she cared a lot about whether Rumi really for real liked her back, Mira had almost forgotten about the Thirdlight dilemma.

It was shaping up to be a wonderful day.

The ferry ride was long, but the passenger cabin was warm and quiet enough for Rumi to let her thoughts unspool. Her fingers itched to tell her "friend" she was coming, but no. He'd just tell her to go back to Jeju and keep her head down until the contract was physically in her hands. Buuuuuuuut if she was already there. If he knew she could see how much he missed her. Rumi snuggled smugly into her seat to doze. If she was already home before he found out, they'd simply have no choice but to have a joyful little seollal all to themselves.

It was easy to be patient on a ferry. Everything around you just looks like more ocean until it suddenly doesn't. Once you're on a train though. On a train you can feel yourself moving. Worse is a train you've ridden a hundred times before; where you know all the little shudders as it slows down to make a sharp curve, the churning sounds where the time signature shifts as it speeds back up. Rumi checked the time on her phone for the third time, trying not to tap her foot impatiently. They weren't even late. They were already past Naju, if she squinted she could probably even see the station from here. She was nearly to the most exciting part, and the money was burning a hole in her pocket.

Rumi didn't have a lot of money. But she was used to not having a lot of money. At a certain level of poor, there's no saving into being rich, so a little extra was reason enough for a little largesse. She couldn't quite make a jeon appear out of thin air like some of her school friends, but Rumi got by. And she'd been checking and re-checking her math all day. Only enough for a few things, but they could be good things. Sweet potato glass noodles from a shop she knew he favored. The community garden always had too much mugwort, the aunties would be glad to be rid of it. So she only needed to buy a handful of jujubes to make the special hwajeon. Dried shrimp. Frozen tteok, so that she could be 'not too hungry' and he could make it last after she went back to the Sunlight Witches. By the end of her errands she was practically skipping. Three whole days of no secrets or lies, with someone who knew her and truly loved her. Her favorite person in the world.

She snuck towards the door of a trim little flowershop, where a middle aged man with long hair pulled up into a bun and a tasteful dusting of grey at his temples was closing up for the evening. Gently shooing out the aunties ("whose daughter needs a new man this time?", Rumi thought) and dragging in the sidewalk signs. Rumi felt the honmoon tremble a little with her own excitement. And the man's head shot up, turning to look just as she pounced.

"Appa!" She leapt into his arms, knowing he'd catch her. "Surprise!"

"Rumi-ya, what are you doing home? Are you okay?"

"Everything's fine, I just…" she faltered, blinking rapidly.

He squished her cheeks, wiping away the tears almost before they formed. "Aegi horangi. You couldn't stand to be in that house one more minute, could you."

"Ai-ya appa, I'm not a baby anymore." Rumi squeezed him tighter. "I just missed you so much. And it's your special day tomorrow, you know." She waggled her eyebrows despite an undignified sniffle. "I wouldn't miss it for anyone."

"APPA?" What did a whisper sound like while being yelled? Like exaggerated vowels and hissing plosives. Like a hundred pigeons. Like outraged rabbits. Like her two numbskull maybe-friends.

The two idiots who were supposedly the other halves of her soul were peering down at Rumi from her appa's rooftop garden, hands gripping the balcony edge like they'd even be injured by a two story fall.

Rumi's father looked from Rumi to his roof and raised an eyebrow. "Your fellow trainees, I assume."

Rumi groaned. "Yes, though I have no idea what they're doing here." Closer to his ear, she whispered "I never…..specifically named you to either them or the Duo. I just described you as a friend from childhood."

Her father nodded slightly. "Well, they seem to have heard otherwise just now." He turned to Rumi, face neutral and quiet. "Well, you said you're not a baby anymore Rumi-ya. What does my very grown up tiger want to do about this?" He breathed in slowly. "Do you trust them?"

Rumi felt her stomach drop away. Once, when she was very little; after eomma had started becoming appa, he'd tossed her too high. Eomma was strong. So strong. And testosterone had made him clumsy for awhile, everything taking less effort than his brain thought it should. And only just then, suspended in air and out of reach, had Rumi even been aware that she could be afraid to fall. When appa sang her to sleep, the air vibrated with little blue threads that clung to his fingertips. She didn't know how to sing yet, but she reached out into the air and held onto the little blue threads for dear life. Sliding inelegantly down a strand of the honmoon until she could reach for her appa's hands. They both cried a little bit after that, curled up until they were hoarse and hiccuping on the floor of their one room apartment. Then appa told her all about the little blue threads and the demon haunted world and her strange heritage and the friends who loved him until they didn't. How the honmoon had coiled around the three of them, linking their souls until it didn't. The same honmoon that bore her weight patiently was coiled around Mira and Zoey too. Would they love her until they didn't?

"Uri Rumi." He pinched her cheek and smiled. "People won't ever be better if you don't give them a chance to be." He drew her inside, past the warm damp smells of cut flowers and sprouting trays, winding up the stairs into their little apartment. He lead her right up to the rooftop door and stopped.

"It's your choice." He said softly. "You can invite them in or send them away, but all three of you are going back to Jeju in a few days and things will probably go easier between you if you at least figure out why they're here."

Rumi huffed. "Not if I make so much of a scene that they don't want me to come back at all." But she was already in motion. Rumi opened the rooftop door, sighing theatrically, and then took in the sight before her. Zoey in a Family Land bucket hat, covered in coffee grounds and potting soil. Mira soaked to the knees, with broken glasses and feathers stuck in her hair.

All of her previous questions immediately flew out of her head. "What on earth happened to you two?"

They both started talking at once.

"It was her idea!" Zoey gestured wildly at Mira.

"What do you mean APPA? I thought you were sneaking off to see your mother!" Mira shouted.

"Wait mother?" Zoey looked back and forth between Mira and Rumi. "I thought you were an orphan! Wasn't that why you were mad at us?"

"She was mad at us because we were being shitty, Zoey."

"But being shitty about single mothers. And. And." She gestured emphatically at Rumi's appa, who was leaning over her shoulder through the doorway and looking perplexed. "You can't have had a single mother, you HAVE A DAD."

Appa made a choked laughing sound. Before Rumi could even interject, Mira had picked her thread back up. "She has a dad NOW. That doesn't mean she had one then. Right?"

Rumi nodded, mutely.

"AND." Mira shushed Zoey, who was about to start yelling again. "AND she wouldn't tell the Duo anything about her mother, which she would only do if she was trying to hide her eomma from them. ERGO." She flapped a hand at Zoey to shush her. "ZO STOP IT LET ME FINISH. ERGO her eomma was someone the duo would have reason to know. Someone who they would know, who must have taught Rumi how to summon her saingeom because she managed that crazy fast, but who Rumi thought she had to protect. And that someone was CELINE, a Hunter."

"A saingeom, huh?" Appa gave her a significant look and a half smile. "Sounds like they're onto us aegi horangi."

Zoey gasped dramatically. "YOU'RE THE DEMON." She took a step back, and then a few steps forward to gently poke Rumi's appa's forearm, currently resting on the doorframe. "You look really normal."

He blinked a few times. "OKAY Girls, time to come inside."

Zoey took a deep breath in and out. "Fine, but ONLY because I'm in the company of two other hunters and because you seem kindof like a boring dad and not a creature of the night?" She straightened her back and walked right between Rumi and appa. He chuckled and gestured after Zoey. "Mira-ssi, Rumi-ya, after you."

Rumi half-listened as Mira and Zoey re-litigated the question of who was ultimately at fault for the state of their clothes.

"….KNEE DEEP in mud"

"The birds weren't my fault!"

Mira sighed. "Yes, the birds weren't your fault." She paused. "But you knocking me over while you were running away from them WAS."

"The guy with the french press snuck up on me, I only knocked you over because I bounced off of him."

"Oh, is that why you're covered in coffee grounds?" Rumi interjected.

"No no nonono. I? Maybe? Knocked over some bins on your roof."

"It was compost. She landed in the compost. We realized we were running late because SOMEONE wanted to go to Family Land first, and we did a little, uh, environmentally assisted parkour."

"Family Land was an important side quest! It's going to be a surprise tool that helps us later!"

Appa introduced himself as Byeong-Ho and Rumi smiled to herself. Before she really understood why appa needed to become appa, all she knew was that he was happier now. She'd told him, on the way back from her third new school, that his smile was as bright as the whole sky. The very next seollal they had a little naming day ceremony. She composed a song mainly consisting of every word she could think of that rhymed with his new name, plus some nonsense words she made up to fill out the meter.

By the time Zoey and Mira had rotated through the shower, and into clean clothes (Rumi's and appa's, respectively) they were nearly dead on their feet. Assured that he wouldn't disappear into a puff of red dust while they slept off all the excitement, and that they would definitely talk more in the morning, he made up his own bed for the two of them to share.

Rumi sat on her bed, suddenly not sure if she still belonged in it. Appa leaned on the open door frame and looked at her quietly. "Well, Rumi-ya? Are you too old to be tucked in?"

"Appa?" She sounded uncertain. She felt uncertain. In the dark, with her girls in the next room having somehow both the right and completely the wrong idea about who her appa was. "Do you ever regret it?"

He crossed the room quietly and sat down on the bed next to her. "Regret what, Uri Rumi?"

"….me." She whispered. "That you lost them over me."

"Oh Rumi-ya." He sighed, stroking her naturally lavender hair. His favorite color, he'd always said. "I weighed you against Miyeong's ghost a long time ago. I chose you, and I've kept choosing you every day since then." He tipped up her face to look at him. "I think they'll choose you too."

Miyeong wasn't stupid.

Superficial, maybe. But 'superficial' was her whole job description. She was the candy coating that concealed an eternal spiritual war. Sing pretty songs, stay sweet, and never let anyone see the danger all around them. Turn your head just so, smile without teeth, don't quiver when a lighting assistant accidentally digs her finger into your bruised intercostals as she rotates you towards the turntable point lamps like a recalcitrant sunflower. Don't think about the baby.

Mysterious but inspiring. Beautiful but modest. Sexy but innocent. Don't think about the baby.

Sing like a bird, act like the girl next door, be competitive (but not too competitive). Host quiz shows, giggle, murder monsters, talent scout your replacement. Don't think about the baby.

Miyeong was the last of her generation to be found. A cute little button scouted from a mediocre middle school dance recital and whisked away to become a magical girl. No more time spent worrying about cram school, or who she should try to become, or the books under her older brother's bed; all along she had been destined to sing with her sisters and brandish a blue bow of starlight like Sailor Mars. No more two-faced friends who would undermine her confidence, now she had two true soulmates. Best friends hand-chosen for her by god and the fabric of souls that encircled the world. They'd be together forever; killing demons until their bodies gave out or until they could hand the job off to the next generation of little fools. A generation that they would have to train, making those girls the same unkeepable promises that Hana had made them. (And why had there only been Hana to train them? Why had she never thought to ask what happened to Hana's forever soulmates?)

Promise them that if they turned the honmoon golden, they'd everyone would be free. Promise them that the honmoon could become golden. Promise them that demons really could be destroyed. Don't think about the baby. Promise them anything at all that made them stay and kept their courage up.

Miyeong wasn't stupid, but managing to stay a pop princess into your late 30s required a little vaseline on the lens of your brain. There were a lot of things you just could not let yourself dwell on (it felt like being torn apart) if you wanted to write inspirational music that charted around the world (there was so much blood) in Pop and Christian Contemporary and World Beat. You needed a flawless reputation, not just a flawless soprano (she stuffed her bras with paper towels for weeks to soak up the sweet animal stink).

Her trainee girls didn't need to be told twice. Sohee-ssi had laughed nervously and explained she already knew about condoms. Mira-ssi had looked, if anything, eager to agree to stay away from boys. But Rumi-ssi…was very knowing. Being an orphan, and the child of a single mother, perhaps she was simply more worldly. More aware of the ramifications. Miyeong took an instant dislike to her.

Rumi-ssi wasn't even unusually wild or disobedient, which was the problem. There was no reason for Miyeong to dislike her. She didn't test boundaries like Mira-ssi or run her mouth like Sohee-ssi. She hit her choreography marks, performed her vocal exercises admirably, and trained as hard as anyone else. A saingeom, and so quickly. Like when Rumi reached out to the honmoon it reached back with equal urgency; clinging to her fingertips and trembling to her song. But Rumi-ssi was her trainee just as much as Sohee-ya and Mira-ya. Miyeong should like her. Why was it so hard to like her?

Maybe it was because Rumi-ssi was cold to her soulmates. The girls already sung together beautifully, but there was so much friction. (Celine would have known what to do, why hadn't Celine known what to do.) Practicing with them, working with them, studying with them. Whatever was required of her; but distant. A door that closed almost as soon as she had arrived. Sohee-ya was high-spirited, and spent maybe a little too much time online. Thirdlight didn't like the way Sohee-ya talked about Celine. But Sohee-ya was right, wasn't she? Celine did leave us alone to cover for her mistake. Rumi-ssi did seem a little over-sensitive about Celine, though. Thirdlight and Mira-ya were probably right to try to reign her in a bit.

Maybe it was because Rumi refused to stop dyeing her hair. Miyeong had searched the whole hanok while the girls were out doing drills with Thirdlight and never found the bleach or dye, but somehow Rumi's hair was always perfectly lavender from tip to root. She couldn't reasonably keep denying Mira-ya the right to dye her hair once she saw Miyeong couldn't prevent Rumi from dyeing hers, but it made them both look too alternative for her taste. It wasn't that she thought it was ugly! (It was, it was. Like demons, like the color of the patterns on their skin.) She told herself it was because this would restrict what themes the group could work with. Labels would be less forgiving. Interviews could be more hostile. And all of that could jeopardize the honmoon! At least Sohee-ya had kept hers natural, despite the bad influences of the other two.

Maybe it was because Miyeong didn't care for the way Rumi looked at her. Something disrespectful in the cast of her eyes that no amount of extra chores or practice seemed to dislodge. A slight sarcasm in her smile. An orphan, yet so disinterested in the family Miyeong and Thirdlight were offering her. The more they tried to be welcoming, the more she seemed to resent it! Involving her in all their holiday celebrations without even needing to be asked, never discussing her mother's morality (don't think about the baby), offering the womanly advice she would need as she grew older. Unfortunately, the disrespect seemed to be infectious.