Written for @rujinucafe's Rujinu This or That. Day 1 prompt: acceptance.
Fandom: KPop Demon Hunters
Summary: To Rumi, there are things more important than the destiny the world has handed to her, and she will make her own fate. To Jinu, fate is just another word for "cage."
Music was a story. For Rumi, music told of the parts of herself that she often wanted to hide, to secret away into riddles that only she understood. Sometimes, when she listened hard enough, she could even hear snatches of stories from songs that weren’t hers, fleeting rhymes and melodies that told her what a songwriter felt, or what a singer wished for so desperately that it ached.
Furthermore, if she listened even harder, a song felt fuller than that—a forgotten memory. A hidden desire, a transient destiny.
This last year felt like an old song Rumi had heard on the radio as a child, perhaps one Celine had played for her as she drove her somewhere. An old song, yet a song that she could never forget. Because she had heard music like this before.
She knew what this was; she was quite familiar with the feeling, actually. She had felt it her whole life on the days in autumn when Celine would bring her to her mother’s grave for Chuseok, and on the day of her own birth when she had no parents to celebrate it with.
And now, the night was a listless thing, and this was yet another anniversary that had settled into her bones.
Rumi massaged her left wrist, rotating it in her other hand and pressing her thumb into the taut, delicate muscles there. She sighed, draping her hand over the guitar she was using to test out the chords to a new song Zoey had written lyrics to.
She sat on the floor of the HUNTRI/X tower’s living room, her legs angled underneath her, enjoying the way the wooden panels cooled her skin. In the summer heat, she needed it.
She leaned against the plush sofa, her back pressing against the seat cushions, and stared at the ceiling.
Everything felt so far away. Distant, like she was floating in a sea and drifting further and further away from a truth she could not name.
She knew why she was here still, but she told herself not to think about it.
