Welcome to the Gallery

Picturing little teenage Rumi, with her Copious Notes and Bonding Plan and fantasies of what it'll be like to become friends with her Hunters.

Picturing her meeting Mira, a riot of pink and limbs and a bitterness that sears the air through clipped remarks and barbed looks, always angry, always guarded, always disappearing behind a slamming door.

Picturing Rumi trying.

"So, do you like historical dramas? There's a good one coming on and-"

"No."

"...Oh. That's okay! What kind of shows-"

Slam!

Picturing Rumi trying.

"I've got a ton of really pretty beads; wanna make friendship-"

Slam!

Picturing Rumi trying so hard.

"It's a nice day out, Mira; wanna go for a walk? Or we could garden with Celine-"

"Would you just stop?"

"...Okay."

Picturing Rumi stopping, because...isn't this what friends do, too? Listen to what they want and...stop.

Picturing Rumi lying awake at night, staring at the shadows crawling across her ceiling, wondering where she went wrong.

Celine had always said her Hunters would be her soul mates; that they'd be the most important people in the world to each other; that they'd be her best friends.

Like her girls were with her.

But Rumi's pretty sure Mira hates her, and that if she hadn't signed a contract with Sunlight she'd already be on the ferry back to the mainland.

She certainly isn't acting like a soul mate, even less like someone who wants to be friends.

What did she do wrong?

Picturing Rumi reviewing her notes, brow creased as she replays the scenes from the cafeteria and playground and halls she committed to memory, analyzing them.

No, she did everything right. Then...

Her throat goes tight.

Then the problem must be her. And she knows where all her problems come from.

Celine says Mira's fated to be a Hunter, and though she has yet to learn that part of her future she must already know, in some deep part of herself, that Rumi's...wrong.

A mistake.

Her patterns throb.

And who would want to be friends with a half-demon?

(Picturing Mira, who's been burned too many times to want to reach for the flame even as she craves its warmth;

who sees all Rumi has- a house where she's allowed to play stupid programs on the TV without being told to turn it off, a pile of craft supplies she can use without being scolded about wasting her time, a mom-type-person who wants to spend time with her and loves her- and is pained by how unfair it is;

Miyeong’s first, awful thought is something that would mean as much as Minji doesn’t realize this would mean to her—a journalist might own their articles by default, the Chronicle’s exclusivity clause is airtight.

But.

It’s Minji.

So she makes a face, humming, and tries to find something that will be both clearly selfish and also enjoyable for Minji.

“Well,” she drawls, “you do keep complaining about the state of my refrigerator. Why don’t you make me some breakfast?”

Minji does like cooking, even if she doesn’t bother with doing it for herself as often as she might in a different occupation. And doing it for Miyeong absolutely means doing it for herself.

“Mm, how about that one you did on the birth rate? ‘Childbirths soar to seven-year high’?” Minji offers. “Or that silly puff piece on ‘How to survive year-end party season without getting drunk’ you did? I thought that one was sweet.”

Immediately. With barely a thought.

But it makes sense, given that Miyeong wrote those just a few months ago, and she was writing about things Minji knew decently.

“Low-hanging fruit,” she insists. “And please, don’t tell me you bothered to read those.”

“I read everything you write,” Minji says steadily. “But what about that series you did on those construction projects in Guryong? I thought it was damn well-researched.”

It was also years ago.

Miyeong felt the same way. Most people who contacted them regarding the articles were either calling her boring or asking why the hell she was opposed to something supposedly cleaning Guryong up, like they hadn’t read a word of it. Her editor cut the series short because of it.

Minji snorts; she’s on a roll now. “Or that one you did right after? About the youtuber with the smuggling case? What was it, ‘youtuber accused in government crackdown’? That one was so funny.”

“I don’t write my own headlines,” Miyeong says numbly. She hadn’t thought anyone understood that it was as much joke as reporting, not when the joke was her own career and the punchline her audience. “Almost no reporter does.”

Zoey has issues with this.

"What kind of convenience store has microwaves but not applesauce?" she grumbles as the cashier yawns out their total and Celine pays with her card. "Everyone has applesauce!" (or, well, everyone in California; maybe that didn't apply here?)

"It is a grave disappointment," Rumi, only acquainted with the food because Celine had bought a jar at the grocery store, nods from where she's loading their purchases into bags (single-use plastic; she'll have to make sure they dispose of them properly).

"Can we just- stop making a thing about it?" Mira mumbles, angling herself away from the cashier. The guy is clearly phoning his shift in, but he's not so checked-out that he doesn't notice the stilted way Mira's talking or the faint sheen of purple on her cheek where the concealer got smudged away during their practice with the shin kal; in between looking fo barcodes he's glancing her way, and Mira is obviously hating it.

The sight hits Zoey like a bullet between the eyes, guilt bleeding from the wound. This is always how it goes, isn't it? A leitmotif to her life. She tries to help, tries to be what the people around her need or want, only to be 'too much' in the end. "Obnoxious" and "overwhelming" and, in the case of her parents, "a lot" (in a sighing, hand-to-the-forehead kind of way).

She wonders which one Mira's thinking of. Probably all three.

She'll be tired of you by the ferry.

The slithery, hissing voice in her head- the one that was living there rent-free before Gwi-Ma popped in- sifts through her, sand through fingers, leaving a gritty trail before piling in her stomach.

Her family, her California classmates, now the hot woman she was going to hunt wraiths with; likely Rumi would be next in line to decide she's had enough of her (not that she seems the type, but Zoey's effect on people can be impressive).

You just can't get anything right.

Shoving her hand int her pocket and cursing to herself when it comes up empty (damn she missed her phone) she reaches behind her and blindly tugs a newspaper free from the rack, a weekly edition of some sorts. The cheap paper cracks in her hands as she snaps it open to a random story.

TikTok Reality Check: Five Influencers Better than Reality TV

It is an excessively dumb article. Still, she skims it anyway, more interested in a distraction than people who live-streamed their dumpster fire dating lives on TikTok. After a moment the hairs on the back of her neck stand up at a sudden presence alongside her, and the paper crumples in her grip as Rumi's breath brushes across her ear.

"Books have certainly changed a great deal."

Zoey glances quick at the cashier, consumed with reloading paper in the register's printer for their receipt. Not that he seemed the type to care about twenty-somethng's talking like they were centuries old, she'd rather…not deal with that today.

Tugging Rumi towards the relative privacy of the microwaves, she gives her a quick rundown of modern newspapers and magazines.

"There are some really good ones," she finishes. "Just…not this."

Rumi nods her head sagely, committing all Zoey's words to memory (that should not tingle the way it does) and points to the title. "And what is this?"

"TikTok?" Zoey chews her lip. "It's…" Shoot, had they explained videos to Rumi yet? Really wishing for her phone…

"It's something people use to murder time," Mira swoops in, coming to join them and motioning towards the door, Celine having finished paying.

(and any warmth she feel at Mira's coming back is doused by the thought that this was just until they finished living an episode of Buffy)

Zoey takes issue with that assessment. But before she can vouch for TikTok's virtues Mira's peering at the article. "Really surprised she writes that stuff; doesn't seem the type."

"What do you mean?" Zoey asks, Rumi making an adorably confused sound. (No! Bad Zoey! No swooning over the pretty girls!

It'll make it harder when they leave)

Mira taps the byline as they step into the parking lot in time to catch the tail end of Minji and Miyeong's conversation.

"…And that TikTok piece."

"Don't…my editor insisted on it."

If that wasn't incriminating enough, the look on Miyeong's face when she saw the paper in Zoey's hands- and in Celine's line of sight- left no doubt.

…Huh.

But she'd blown enough chances that she can't help grinning like everything was alright when it definitely wasn't. "You know," she says once they're back at the cars. "If you want to write a follow-up, I know some great marine biologists in there."

Rumi does that adorable confused thing again. "What is a marine biologist?"

It's like a switch has been flipped, or more accurately Rumi'smwords unlocked something in her, and she turns to the not-so-ancient-but-old-enough-marine-biology-in-it's-glorious-current-form-wasn't-a-thing hero and beams.

Zoey knows she shouldn't; knows she's probably on thin ice; knows what the best way to alienate people is.