(@fakelawyerbug’s deadbeat miyeong au)

Oh that would fuck everyone up

Like on main!Rumi and Celine’s side, they’ve just been dropped into a flower shop au where they’re openly mother and daughter (Rumi wants and hates herself for it) (and so does Celine). They probably don’t even realize the other SLS are alive at first, unless this is one of those variants where Miyeong and Third came stalking Celine to try to pat child support. Fucks them up so much worse when they realize

Like Rumi is 18/19ish.

Db!Rumi and Db!Celine wake up in a high rise that Db!Celine couldn't dream of renting and before they even have a chance to breathe, Celine's assistant (what?) is knocking on the door with a private car (what?) because they're supposed to be running through the debut performance (what?).

(Db!Rumi is also supposed to be debuting in a week but Miyeong and Third had said that it was going to be a smaller venue and to just think of it as a performance review.)

(The honmoon was stable enough with two Sunlight Sisters still active and a scapegoat to absorb the fan backlash. Huntr/x could afford a slow launch.)

Instead, Db!Rumi and Db!Celine see a honmoon in a worse shape than they had ever seen it and a debut that was being billed as the debut of the decade. Fuck.

Meanwhile,

It's the wanting.

She looks through the tiny flowershop and remembers sunny afternoons spent in the garden with Celine, Rumi picking sunflower seeds straight out the centre of the flower to snack on. Chilli peppers Rumi had eventually learned not to snack on. Radishes and garlic and chilli peppers. How Celine would have Rumi sit on her knee and guide her hands as together they dug up the weeds and got rid of the pests, made sure every bad and harmful thing was gone.

There are things in this world that Rumi knows must have been her influence, her wants, out on display for Celine to see. People calling Celine her mother without hesitation, or deference to the ghost Rumi had never known. Baby photos of Rumi on display on all the walls. A child's stick-figure drawing tacked up on the noticeboard downstairs labelled FOR EOMMA LOVE RUMI XXXXX. Notes and cards in Celine's handwriting that she's signed... not as Celine.

And of course, because Rumi's life is never simple, now Celine is with her in this world, looking at all the pictures and listening to everyone talk about how proud Celine must be of her daughter and--

Ugh. Celine wouldn't even be mean about it, finding out that Rumi still wants that closeness, that acknowledgement that they are family and Celine is the only mother Rumi has ever really had, and even if Celine doesn't want her as a daughter then there's at least something there that matters to her on some level beyond just a promise to a dead woman.

But she'd be gentle. And she'd explain. The same way she'd explained to Rumi why Rumi didn't have a mother or father like the rest of her classmates did. Why Rumi wouldn't get to have a baby sister or brother. And it would be a thousand times worse than being eight years old because Rumi's an adult. And she knows.

She knows.

What Rumi does not know: That at the exact time she is cringing at the thought of her longest, most secret wish being so blatantly on display to the one person who has always carefully refused it, there is another woman looking at this world with huge, ashamed eyes.

The neighbours who call Rumi her little girl. The photo of a baby wearing a badly-pilled jumper. The girl's bedroom with her shoes worn almost through on the sole, school books with another child's name in the cover carefully crossed through. The way Rumi had looked at the artwork and said 'Eomma' and Celine had thought, stupidly, that Rumi meant--

It's humiliating. Knowing that Rumi can see this about her, what Celine had been so careful not to impose on Rumi but had never been able to quite stop herself from wanting all the same. Especially now, with the knowledge of all she had done to hurt Rumi. What right does she have?

And deadbeat!Rumi had dreamed, once or twice, about a high rise apartment and private cars and the like—she grew up hungry, of course she did. But she’d stopped wanting that a long time ago

Having her eomma holding her hand as she goes to perform? That dream is still alive and well. She’s just not so sure about everything else going on here

Celine just keeps leaning over and telling her to play along, telling her to keep her head held high and not to let anyone think she might be confused, advice as much for herself as Rumi. She’s a florist! She hasn’t been able to do so much as sing karaoke in nearly twenty years without it being a smear campaign for the tabloids! What the fuck!

It’s not even a question for main!Mira and Zoey that the people who step out of that car aren’t Celine and Rumi: Rumi’s posture is off, a little hunched, a little braced for a scrap that isn’t coming, and Celine looks uncertain.

(Also, she’d buttoned her shirt all the way up. Like she’s expecting to have to wear a tie or something????)

And then, well… the demon disguised as Rumi calls Celine Eomma

("We should, like, get them somewhere out of the way, shouldn't we?" Zoey whispers. "To interrogate them about where Rumi really is?"

"Before we end up going on stage with the fake," Mira agrees - and despite the whole what the fuck, where's our Rumi you demon assholes? of the situation, they pause to snicker at the thought of Gwi-Ma actually trying to infiltrate the kpop industry. Stupid demon probably doesn't even know how to sing.)

But the imposters are at least a little bit more situationally aware than their very bad Rumi-and-Celine impersonations would suggest. The one posing as Rumi plants herself next to the one posing as Celine, eyes narrowed as she watches staff members greet Celine with a bow.

"That's enough, jagiya," the not-Celine says after Jinkyeong-ssi almost bursts into tears under the weight of "Rumi'"s sharp look (Mira winces to think about how bad Rumi's gonna feel when they rescue her; the real Rumi has known Celine's assistant since she was a kid and Mira kind of has the impression that she might have been the closest thing Rumi had to a big sister). Then Celine - holy fuck, the demons were not trying at all, were they? - just bows back to Hong-ssi.

"I apologise," "Celine" is saying. "My daughter's a little nervous, and she doesn't mean to be impolite - does she, Rumi-ya?"

"Rumi" pulls a face but does at least take the hint and bow. "I'm very sorry to behave so rudely, seonsaengnim," she says, giving an awkward, wide-mouthed smile as she does. "I hope you can forgive me!"

Mira and Zoey watch "Celine" wait until they think they're alone and then turn towards Rumi with a face that is so earnestly disappointed Mira and Zoey both feel it in their own guts. Even though it isn't directed at them, even though the real Celine has never looked at them like that.

"Rumi-ya," the "Celine" demon is saying. (Which-- Weird, right? People are around them but Zoey's pretty sure that she and Mira are the only people listening, and also that their very cool and sneaky tactic of just hiding behind a clothing rail is enough to trick all but the smartest of demons. And these two don't seem very smart, if that's the best impression they can do.) "What has gotten into you?"

"Rumi" snarls, "Everyone just keeps smiling and bowing to you, 'Oh, yes, Celine-nim, right away', like they haven't spent years calling you names. They're all so fake--"

("You're one to talk, imposter," Zoey mutters. Mira digs her sharp elbow into her side to shut her up.)

"Be that as it may," "Celine" says. "I can fight my own battles, little cub."

And then Celine - the demon Celine - the fake, whatever, it's still weird seeing the thing wearing Celine's face do this - just presses a kiss to Rumi's forehead with a loud mwah that Zoey is sure every single person who has ever met the real Celine pulls the exact same face at.

Not like. Disgusted. Just-- Oh, that shouldn't be happening.

"Rumi" just scrubs at her forehead and whines "Eomma"--

And that is when Zoey falls through the rack to the other side where she just kind of stares at them both.

"Eomma?!"

That brings about the full weight of the World's Worst Rumi Impersonator's anger crashing down directly on her, as "Rumi" just sort of jerks her head around, sees that it's Zoey and straight up bares her teeth.

"You have a problem with that?"

----

And in the other world, Celine is mentally cataloguing: - the dance shoes with holes in, that someone had to wear long after they needed to be replaced - the school uniform, not a good school which might offer Rumi the sort of opportunities she deserved - the financial statements she skims through, adds up the average income against the rent, supplies, the cost of singing lessons and the taekwondo hagwon and food for three active teenagers

And, most damningly of all, the lack of any pictures of Miyeong at all.

Is that what the Honmoon is trying to warn her of, here? The consequences of her wanting laid bare - Miyeong, entirely erased from Rumi's life, Celine taking everything that should have by rights belonged to Miyeong and wasting her money on some pipe dream that has done nothing but take opportunities away from Rumi, leave her poor and hungry and cold and without anything of Miyeong's to hold on to, all on a selfish whim.

"Can we just... not talk about this? Please, Celine?" Rumi had said, when they found the card the other Rumi had written to her Celine for Parents' Day.

(The other Rumi had not called Celine Celine.)

“Oh, nice one,” Zoey chirps, bouncing to her feet, knives already glimmering between her fingers.

Mira tilts her head. “Really? You think?”

“Playing Rumi?” Rumi is two words from physically seeing red. Fuck this stupid nightmare and fuck Mira and Zoey for being part of it.

“So, you wanna tell us where you put her, demon?” Zoey’s shinkal twirls. “Or would you rather we just kill you and ask ‘Eomma’?”

The pit drops out of Rumi’s stomach—first with the twisting horror of hearing herself be called a demon, not when she’s been so careful, and then a second time when Zoey threatens her mother.

She lunges.

After all the shit she’s had to put up with, every single moment of Zoey simpering over the Sunlight Sisters and cheerfully chattering away about that slut Celine, it all rushes right back to the surface. Whatever kind of nightmare illusion this is, at least she’ll get some catharsis out of it.

“Keep her name out of your mouth,” she snarls, grabbing Zoey by the collar and hauling her forward, hard.

Their foreheads meet with a crack, and Zoey gasps in pain.

Rumi drops her and whirls away before Mira can try to make her back off.

“We don’t even know her name!” Mira snaps, exasperated, using her gokdo to keep them at bay. “Jesus, who knew demons had such mommy complexes?”

Rumi goes to get back in close again—she’s better there than either of them, and Zoey’s already getting up—but Eomma catches her.

“I just told you I could fight my own battles,” she chides, clicking her tongue. “What have they been teaching you, escalating to violence so quickly?”

Rumi shrinks under the weight of her disapproval—and her own guilt about exactly what she hasn’t been telling her mom about life with other Hunters. She doesn’t need to know that Rumi’s been struggling because they’re so rude; she’d only blame herself.

Thankfully, Eomma turns her gaze to Mira and Zoey. “As for you two… I presume you’d know that a demon can’t do this?”

She hums, softly, and the Honmoon glitters alive around them—thready, yes, but still alive.

“What the fuck,” Mira says.

“You actually call her Eomma when you’re alone?” Zoey squeaks.

Rumi really, really hates it here.

----

Rumi’s not sure what feeling wins out most when her phone vibrates and she sees a notification from Ryu Miyeong: ready to head back to us?

Guilt. At having demoted her despite how much Celine always wanted—

Surprise. That she’s here at all. (More guilt.)

Dread, quiet and slow, in the back of her head, as she wonders if maybe this is her wake up call. If it’s not part of this dream, but a guide back to the real world and the piece of rock that is all she really has.

She picks the phone up and walks over to hand it to Celine. Celine pauses, looking up at Rumi in search of a cue, and then looks down again.

Her face pales by shades as she reads the name.

“I’m sorry,” Rumi says, not sure exactly what for—for her greed, for having done this to her mother’s memory, for the fact she had to bring Celine in along with her.

“Don’t be,” Celine says. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Rumi had wanted this to be good. For months, if not years, she's been nursing this secret dream that maybe Eomma can see her perform some day - not their debut, obviously, or anywhere else the Sunlight Shitheads will be; Rumi knows even if she still sometimes catches herself thinking about ways she could make sure the duo are waylaid - and then maybe Rumi could introduce Eomma to Mira and Zoey and Eomma would see them the way Rumi can see them when they sing together. Like they're both just erupting into starlight. And Eomma would be able to see Rumi with them and would know that Rumi's soul has found its home, and Eomma wouldn't need to worry about her any more.

Even though she knows this world is weird and wrong, there was still a couple of minutes - when their driver held the car door open for Eomma to join Rumi, like it was so obvious that they'd be going together - that Rumi couldn't help but feel that same hope flutter inside her chest, and she'd thought--

Well. She'd hoped. That if everyone knew who Eomma was and she was still allowed to come see Rumi here, then maybe this wasn't a nightmare but her wish being granted, and even if things went back to normal then Rumi would still be able to keep this memory, Eomma getting to see the Hunter Rumi has been growing into, all of her.

Then they got out the car and Rumi had reached over to grab Eomma's hand as they walked in, and Rumi felt the atmosphere shift around them. All the little raised eyebrows, the staff trying to hide their staring.

And Rumi had figured it out, hadn't she? In this world, Eomma was allowed to come watch, but only as long as Rumi looked appropriately ashamed of having a mother like Celine.

---

The radio on the side chatters quietly to itself for a little while longer until Rumi stands up and switches it off. By the time she turns around, Celine has taken advantage of the opportunity to empty her face, stop her hands from shaking.

"I haven't replied."

"I can see that."

Absently, Rumi's hand tugs at her sweatshirt. "I probably should. So she doesn't. Worry about me?"

(It's kind of Rumi to frame it like that. Kinder than Celine really deserves, especially now that Rumi can see exactly what Celine has done to her wish just by being present.)

(Rumi clearly wanted to be with her mother again, which is perfectly natural. It's Celine, Celine's selfish rotten heart, that must have twisted that wish somehow.)

"That would be for the best, yes," Celine replies.

Rumi retrieves her phone and opens up the message app again. Celine watches as she scrolls back through the conversation with Ryu Miyeong's contact - it's short, mostly dates and locations, Rumi's responses reduced to acknowledging any schedule changes, and Rumi's face flickers.

(How much has Celine taken from her?)

Rumi taps out her response: on our way. where should we meet you?

Susaek station comes almost immediately. Then her phone buzzes a second time and they both bow their heads to see Miyeong's next message:

Not-demon-not-Rumi startles, blinking rapidly as she snaps her head at Mira, and not-demon-not-Celine doesn’t make Celine’s that was disrespectful face but frowns sharply, something troubled starting up behind her eyes.

“Mira,” Zoey hisses, all but stomping on her foot to make sure she shuts up and doesn’t have them reverting to form.

“You know me,” Fake Celine says, slow, more a question than not.

And not-Rumi looks at her, and then at Mira and Zoey, as if that would somehow be a surprise.

“Celine has been my guardian since I was fifteen,” Mira replies, watching this pass across the possibly-not-exactly-imposters’ faces. “Of course I know her.”

“What about the—“ Not-Rumi makes a face, cuts a quick, uncertain look at her mother, and then dives right in. “What about the Sunlight Sisters?”

----

Rumi starts to type celine and i???? and then stops, deletes it. She could say her mom. That would be right, in this dream of hers.

She closes her messages. “Susaek station.”

“Hm,” Celine says. Blankly. Like she can hide how affected she is by the idea of getting to see Miyeong again, and by this awful ridiculousness that Rumi had forced upon them.

I’m sorry, Rumi wants to say, but it’s true.

Celine bandaged her scraped knees and looked over her report cards and braided her hair and did all of the things that Rumi ever needed. And, yeah, Celine also put Rumi in math hagwon instead of helping her with her homework and often was way too tired to come play with her when she was little and every once in a while had to ask Rumi to wash her hair because demon hunting had its drawbacks, injury and mobility-wise, and dry shampoo wasn’t going to cut it but—

All Miyeong ever gets from her are dates on the calendar. Time to go visit the rock.

Not that it’s always bad, but—

Rumi never really had a mother. None at all.

“Well, hopefully we have the means for public transportation somewhere around here,” Celine finishes.

Rumi tugs on her sweatshirt again. “I—I think I saw a purse by the door. I’ll go check it.”

(She knows she did. A large bag, the kind she always thought of as a mom purse. The kind Celine had never carried in her life.)

(Rumi doesn't preen at who gives a shit. But. Okay. Nightmare world has got one specific point in its favour.)

(@fakelawyerbug’s deadbeat miyeong au)

Oh that would fuck everyone up

Like on main!Rumi and Celine’s side, they’ve just been dropped into a flower shop au where they’re openly mother and daughter (Rumi wants and hates herself for it) (and so does Celine). They probably don’t even realize the other SLS are alive at first, unless this is one of those variants where Miyeong and Third came stalking Celine to try to pat child support. Fucks them up so much worse when they realize

Like Rumi is 18/19ish.

Db!Rumi and Db!Celine wake up in a high rise that Db!Celine couldn't dream of renting and before they even have a chance to breathe, Celine's assistant (what?) is knocking on the door with a private car (what?) because they're supposed to be running through the debut performance (what?).

(Db!Rumi is also supposed to be debuting in a week but Miyeong and Third had said that it was going to be a smaller venue and to just think of it as a performance review.)

(The honmoon was stable enough with two Sunlight Sisters still active and a scapegoat to absorb the fan backlash. Huntr/x could afford a slow launch.)

Instead, Db!Rumi and Db!Celine see a honmoon in a worse shape than they had ever seen it and a debut that was being billed as the debut of the decade. Fuck.

Meanwhile,

It's the wanting.

She looks through the tiny flowershop and remembers sunny afternoons spent in the garden with Celine, Rumi picking sunflower seeds straight out the centre of the flower to snack on. Chilli peppers Rumi had eventually learned not to snack on. Radishes and garlic and chilli peppers. How Celine would have Rumi sit on her knee and guide her hands as together they dug up the weeds and got rid of the pests, made sure every bad and harmful thing was gone.

There are things in this world that Rumi knows must have been her influence, her wants, out on display for Celine to see. People calling Celine her mother without hesitation, or deference to the ghost Rumi had never known. Baby photos of Rumi on display on all the walls. A child's stick-figure drawing tacked up on the noticeboard downstairs labelled FOR EOMMA LOVE RUMI XXXXX. Notes and cards in Celine's handwriting that she's signed... not as Celine.

And of course, because Rumi's life is never simple, now Celine is with her in this world, looking at all the pictures and listening to everyone talk about how proud Celine must be of her daughter and--

Ugh. Celine wouldn't even be mean about it, finding out that Rumi still wants that closeness, that acknowledgement that they are family and Celine is the only mother Rumi has ever really had, and even if Celine doesn't want her as a daughter then there's at least something there that matters to her on some level beyond just a promise to a dead woman.

But she'd be gentle. And she'd explain. The same way she'd explained to Rumi why Rumi didn't have a mother or father like the rest of her classmates did. Why Rumi wouldn't get to have a baby sister or brother. And it would be a thousand times worse than being eight years old because Rumi's an adult. And she knows.

She knows.

What Rumi does not know: That at the exact time she is cringing at the thought of her longest, most secret wish being so blatantly on display to the one person who has always carefully refused it, there is another woman looking at this world with huge, ashamed eyes.

The neighbours who call Rumi her little girl. The photo of a baby wearing a badly-pilled jumper. The girl's bedroom with her shoes worn almost through on the sole, school books with another child's name in the cover carefully crossed through. The way Rumi had looked at the artwork and said 'Eomma' and Celine had thought, stupidly, that Rumi meant--

It's humiliating. Knowing that Rumi can see this about her, what Celine had been so careful not to impose on Rumi but had never been able to quite stop herself from wanting all the same. Especially now, with the knowledge of all she had done to hurt Rumi. What right does she have?

And deadbeat!Rumi had dreamed, once or twice, about a high rise apartment and private cars and the like—she grew up hungry, of course she did. But she’d stopped wanting that a long time ago

Having her eomma holding her hand as she goes to perform? That dream is still alive and well. She’s just not so sure about everything else going on here

Celine just keeps leaning over and telling her to play along, telling her to keep her head held high and not to let anyone think she might be confused, advice as much for herself as Rumi. She’s a florist! She hasn’t been able to do so much as sing karaoke in nearly twenty years without it being a smear campaign for the tabloids! What the fuck!

It’s not even a question for main!Mira and Zoey that the people who step out of that car aren’t Celine and Rumi: Rumi’s posture is off, a little hunched, a little braced for a scrap that isn’t coming, and Celine looks uncertain.

(Also, she’d buttoned her shirt all the way up. Like she’s expecting to have to wear a tie or something????)

And then, well… the demon disguised as Rumi calls Celine Eomma

("We should, like, get them somewhere out of the way, shouldn't we?" Zoey whispers. "To interrogate them about where Rumi really is?"

"Before we end up going on stage with the fake," Mira agrees - and despite the whole what the fuck, where's our Rumi you demon assholes? of the situation, they pause to snicker at the thought of Gwi-Ma actually trying to infiltrate the kpop industry. Stupid demon probably doesn't even know how to sing.)

But the imposters are at least a little bit more situationally aware than their very bad Rumi-and-Celine impersonations would suggest. The one posing as Rumi plants herself next to the one posing as Celine, eyes narrowed as she watches staff members greet Celine with a bow.

"That's enough, jagiya," the not-Celine says after Jinkyeong-ssi almost bursts into tears under the weight of "Rumi'"s sharp look (Mira winces to think about how bad Rumi's gonna feel when they rescue her; the real Rumi has known Celine's assistant since she was a kid and Mira kind of has the impression that she might have been the closest thing Rumi had to a big sister). Then Celine - holy fuck, the demons were not trying at all, were they? - just bows back to Hong-ssi.

"I apologise," "Celine" is saying. "My daughter's a little nervous, and she doesn't mean to be impolite - does she, Rumi-ya?"

"Rumi" pulls a face but does at least take the hint and bow. "I'm very sorry to behave so rudely, seonsaengnim," she says, giving an awkward, wide-mouthed smile as she does. "I hope you can forgive me!"

Mira and Zoey watch "Celine" wait until they think they're alone and then turn towards Rumi with a face that is so earnestly disappointed Mira and Zoey both feel it in their own guts. Even though it isn't directed at them, even though the real Celine has never looked at them like that.

"Rumi-ya," the "Celine" demon is saying. (Which-- Weird, right? People are around them but Zoey's pretty sure that she and Mira are the only people listening, and also that their very cool and sneaky tactic of just hiding behind a clothing rail is enough to trick all but the smartest of demons. And these two don't seem very smart, if that's the best impression they can do.) "What has gotten into you?"

"Rumi" snarls, "Everyone just keeps smiling and bowing to you, 'Oh, yes, Celine-nim, right away', like they haven't spent years calling you names. They're all so fake--"

("You're one to talk, imposter," Zoey mutters. Mira digs her sharp elbow into her side to shut her up.)

"Be that as it may," "Celine" says. "I can fight my own battles, little cub."

And then Celine - the demon Celine - the fake, whatever, it's still weird seeing the thing wearing Celine's face do this - just presses a kiss to Rumi's forehead with a loud mwah that Zoey is sure every single person who has ever met the real Celine pulls the exact same face at.

Not like. Disgusted. Just-- Oh, that shouldn't be happening.

"Rumi" just scrubs at her forehead and whines "Eomma"--

And that is when Zoey falls through the rack to the other side where she just kind of stares at them both.

"Eomma?!"

That brings about the full weight of the World's Worst Rumi Impersonator's anger crashing down directly on her, as "Rumi" just sort of jerks her head around, sees that it's Zoey and straight up bares her teeth.

"You have a problem with that?"

----

And in the other world, Celine is mentally cataloguing: - the dance shoes with holes in, that someone had to wear long after they needed to be replaced - the school uniform, not a good school which might offer Rumi the sort of opportunities she deserved - the financial statements she skims through, adds up the average income against the rent, supplies, the cost of singing lessons and the taekwondo hagwon and food for three active teenagers

And, most damningly of all, the lack of any pictures of Miyeong at all.

Is that what the Honmoon is trying to warn her of, here? The consequences of her wanting laid bare - Miyeong, entirely erased from Rumi's life, Celine taking everything that should have by rights belonged to Miyeong and wasting her money on some pipe dream that has done nothing but take opportunities away from Rumi, leave her poor and hungry and cold and without anything of Miyeong's to hold on to, all on a selfish whim.

"Can we just... not talk about this? Please, Celine?" Rumi had said, when they found the card the other Rumi had written to her Celine for Parents' Day.

(The other Rumi had not called Celine Celine.)

“Oh, nice one,” Zoey chirps, bouncing to her feet, knives already glimmering between her fingers.

Mira tilts her head. “Really? You think?”

“Playing Rumi?” Rumi is two words from physically seeing red. Fuck this stupid nightmare and fuck Mira and Zoey for being part of it.

“So, you wanna tell us where you put her, demon?” Zoey’s shinkal twirls. “Or would you rather we just kill you and ask ‘Eomma’?”

The pit drops out of Rumi’s stomach—first with the twisting horror of hearing herself be called a demon, not when she’s been so careful, and then a second time when Zoey threatens her mother.

She lunges.

After all the shit she’s had to put up with, every single moment of Zoey simpering over the Sunlight Sisters and cheerfully chattering away about that slut Celine, it all rushes right back to the surface. Whatever kind of nightmare illusion this is, at least she’ll get some catharsis out of it.

“Keep her name out of your mouth,” she snarls, grabbing Zoey by the collar and hauling her forward, hard.

Their foreheads meet with a crack, and Zoey gasps in pain.

Rumi drops her and whirls away before Mira can try to make her back off.

“We don’t even know her name!” Mira snaps, exasperated, using her gokdo to keep them at bay. “Jesus, who knew demons had such mommy complexes?”

Rumi goes to get back in close again—she’s better there than either of them, and Zoey’s already getting up—but Eomma catches her.

“I just told you I could fight my own battles,” she chides, clicking her tongue. “What have they been teaching you, escalating to violence so quickly?”

Rumi shrinks under the weight of her disapproval—and her own guilt about exactly what she hasn’t been telling her mom about life with other Hunters. She doesn’t need to know that Rumi’s been struggling because they’re so rude; she’d only blame herself.

Thankfully, Eomma turns her gaze to Mira and Zoey. “As for you two… I presume you’d know that a demon can’t do this?”

She hums, softly, and the Honmoon glitters alive around them—thready, yes, but still alive.

“What the fuck,” Mira says.

“You actually call her Eomma when you’re alone?” Zoey squeaks.

Rumi really, really hates it here.

----

Rumi’s not sure what feeling wins out most when her phone vibrates and she sees a notification from Ryu Miyeong: ready to head back to us?

Guilt. At having demoted her despite how much Celine always wanted—

Surprise. That she’s here at all. (More guilt.)

Dread, quiet and slow, in the back of her head, as she wonders if maybe this is her wake up call. If it’s not part of this dream, but a guide back to the real world and the piece of rock that is all she really has.

She picks the phone up and walks over to hand it to Celine. Celine pauses, looking up at Rumi in search of a cue, and then looks down again.

Her face pales by shades as she reads the name.

“I’m sorry,” Rumi says, not sure exactly what for—for her greed, for having done this to her mother’s memory, for the fact she had to bring Celine in along with her.

“Don’t be,” Celine says. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Rumi had wanted this to be good. For months, if not years, she's been nursing this secret dream that maybe Eomma can see her perform some day - not their debut, obviously, or anywhere else the Sunlight Shitheads will be; Rumi knows even if she still sometimes catches herself thinking about ways she could make sure the duo are waylaid - and then maybe Rumi could introduce Eomma to Mira and Zoey and Eomma would see them the way Rumi can see them when they sing together. Like they're both just erupting into starlight. And Eomma would be able to see Rumi with them and would know that Rumi's soul has found its home, and Eomma wouldn't need to worry about her any more.

Even though she knows this world is weird and wrong, there was still a couple of minutes - when their driver held the car door open for Eomma to join Rumi, like it was so obvious that they'd be going together - that Rumi couldn't help but feel that same hope flutter inside her chest, and she'd thought--

Well. She'd hoped. That if everyone knew who Eomma was and she was still allowed to come see Rumi here, then maybe this wasn't a nightmare but her wish being granted, and even if things went back to normal then Rumi would still be able to keep this memory, Eomma getting to see the Hunter Rumi has been growing into, all of her.

Then they got out the car and Rumi had reached over to grab Eomma's hand as they walked in, and Rumi felt the atmosphere shift around them. All the little raised eyebrows, the staff trying to hide their staring.

And Rumi had figured it out, hadn't she? In this world, Eomma was allowed to come watch, but only as long as Rumi looked appropriately ashamed of having a mother like Celine.

---

The radio on the side chatters quietly to itself for a little while longer until Rumi stands up and switches it off. By the time she turns around, Celine has taken advantage of the opportunity to empty her face, stop her hands from shaking.

"I haven't replied."

"I can see that."

Absently, Rumi's hand tugs at her sweatshirt. "I probably should. So she doesn't. Worry about me?"

(It's kind of Rumi to frame it like that. Kinder than Celine really deserves, especially now that Rumi can see exactly what Celine has done to her wish just by being present.)

(Rumi clearly wanted to be with her mother again, which is perfectly natural. It's Celine, Celine's selfish rotten heart, that must have twisted that wish somehow.)

"That would be for the best, yes," Celine replies.

Rumi retrieves her phone and opens up the message app again. Celine watches as she scrolls back through the conversation with Ryu Miyeong's contact - it's short, mostly dates and locations, Rumi's responses reduced to acknowledging any schedule changes, and Rumi's face flickers.

(How much has Celine taken from her?)

Rumi taps out her response: on our way. where should we meet you?

Susaek station comes almost immediately. Then her phone buzzes a second time and they both bow their heads to see Miyeong's next message:

Celine has swapped places with a version of herself from another universe, where Miyeong never died, and the Sunlight Sisters created the Golden Honmoon when Rumi was four, removing her patterns. This alternate Celine has been living her best suburban mother of three life for decades and is devastated by our Celine’s life, seeing in her every cruelty and failure that alt!Celine always feared herself capable of. She is currently taking a sanity break under the sacred tree after getting sobbed at by Rumi and then menaced by Mira. Meanwhile our Celine has been tormented by having everything she's ever wanted and being utterly unable to trust or not hate herself for a second of it. Currently she is freaking out about alt!Rumi referring to the removal of her patterns as “fixing” her, marking the fifth time since Celine woke up that she has been perilously close to a panic attack that she should probably just go ahead and have at this point, it’s not like her day could get worse.

Celine doesn’t mind as much as she thought she would - it’s been a while since she’s had the chance to talk about the band like this at all. The boys find it “cringe”, but they’re at that age when anything their parents do is terminally embarrassing, and all Miyeong really wants to know is that Celine is enjoying herself with her friends, as if she’s a preschooler being dropped off by her mother. Rumi, with a handful of memories of big parties and glittering dresses and nothing of what they had shielded her from, used to try to wheedle the three of them into doing another comeback, although that faded into a similar embarrassment as the twins by the time she reached her own teen years. Sunmi, out of all of them, understands most why Celine has drawn the line where she has - how she can be capable of loving the game but hating the business in equal measure - and even then, there’s always more interesting gossip for them to talk about than Celine’s garage band.

Zoey, though, is as bright as she is enthusiastic, and she spots connections and references Celine hasn’t even fully articulated in her head. Celine has always written like this - Miyeong calls it her “crow tendencies”, stealing little bits from other songs and stitching them to her own ideas like she’s feathering a nest, but Celine thinks of it as being more like what the songs are about. Celine doesn’t write about falling in love; she writes about how people have always fallen in love, and she’s just part of that same tradition. She makes sense in the world. She doesn’t know how else to say it but that.

“I still cannot believe you don’t at least have some kind of album,” Zoey says disbelievingly, the culmination of a rant that has toured three musical eras, two languages, another plea for Celine to at least write down the lyrics to some of the Sunlight Sisters’ later works pretty please with a cherry on top, and a brief segue into Huntr/x’s discography. “How do people even find out about you?”

“Normally because they’re in the bar.”

The look Zoey gives her is deeply unimpressed. “I cannot believe that even alternate Zoey doesn’t get to see you play live. I would be frothing at the mouth to hear about this, oh my God, I would absolutely never shut up about getting to see an actual Sunlight Sister play live in her MCR tribute act whenever I want.”

“I value my privacy,” Celine says evenly, instead of asking what that’s supposed to mean. Her family’s privacy, really. It isn’t as though Dispatch would exactly be trawling through random Jeju bars looking for former idols, but she’d still been careful, not wanting to draw any attention to why this particular idol might be on Jeju in the first place, much less who she might be living with. 

It might be different - she might be prepared to be just a little bit braver - if only it wouldn’t mean drawing the wrong kind of attention to the boys, who still have to go to school and see their friends in this place. As it is, it’s better that she and Miyeong continue to be discrete, even if they have their own small circle of friends and likeminded women, until the boys are able to escape off to university with their own reputations intact. 

Zoey sticks out her bottom lip and bats her eyelashes up at Celine in another shameless display of aegyo. “But not the feelings of your number one fan?”

Then her sad face cracks and Zoey just giggles, looking far too young all of a sudden. Hair escaping from her buns and a sweatshirt with a cartoon tiger printed on it, something that Rumi might have chosen for herself a few years ago. So full of potential, so young, and pushed into working as an idol instead: it’s such a waste.

Someone like Zoey - someone with this much passion and knowledge - should be supported to nurture her talents properly. Celine doesn’t know how this other version of herself can’t see that.

But. The girls - and yes, fine, she mostly means Rumi, but all three of them have made it clear that they don’t fully understand how culpable their Celine is in their experience of the industry - don’t want to know. They’ve made that much clear. Rumi’s already rebuffed her first clumsy attempts to help her; making sure they at least eat well before they get called back to their normal lives is about as much as she thinks she will be allowed to do.

Without thinking about it, Celine tugs open the cupboard where the sesame oil should live and finds it full of pans. 

Of course, she thinks wryly. Celine has spent close to thirty years playing the role of sous chef and contentedly losing every argument about how the kitchen should be arranged. This world’s Celine will never have had a reason to shape her life around anyone but herself.

“... That was kind of a heavy sigh,” Zoey observes. “Or, like, not that heavy? But for sure a sigh of some description that feels weird considering it seems to be triggered by looking at, like, three saucepans?”

“I don’t suppose you happen to know where your Celine keeps the sesame oil?”

Zoey just shrugs. “Nope, sorry,” she says, and Celine can’t bring herself to be even the slightest bit surprised.

She starts opening more cupboards, Zoey watching helplessly as she looks.

“I’m just saying,” Zoey ventures, “That this seems like maybe it is not about the saucepans? And you’re entitled to your privacy and whatever, but maybe also this is something that could be what we’re looking for?”

“The pans?” 

“Or the part where you kinda consistently freak out whenever we talk about being an idol?” Zoey cringes as she says it (Of course, of course, it’s like a drumbeat in Celine’s ears). “Like maybe there’s some conflict of a personal nature - that’s for sure none of my business, I know - but also should maybe be on the list of big personal things going on in your world?”

“That’s not– I’m not conflicted.”

“Um,” Zoey says. (And cringes. Celine hates herself all over again.) “We’ve known you for less than 24 hours and in that time you’ve burst into tears five separate times, so…?”

Celine shuts the cupboard door she’s currently looking into (glassware, over by the sink, instead of where it should be - closest to the fridge, ever since Rumi adopted that disgusting teenage habit of drinking straight from the carton). She does so very carefully and slowly, making sure not to slam it, and takes a deep breath before she speaks.

(Even to her own ears, her voice is unnaturally tight.)

“Yes, Zoey. I was upset to wake up in another world, with no warning and no idea how to get home, and to discover that everyone I knew in my world is dead, or hates your Celine - and my children were never even born - and Rumi–” Celine breaks off, throws a hand up in the air to try and encompass everything she feels about a version of her daughter sent out into a world of demons and sasaengs without anyone to keep her safe. 

“--But if you’re suggesting that I’ve wondered for a second about giving up my family to go back to that life, then you’re wrong. And if it is some kind of personal conflict that made us trade places, then it certainly wasn’t mine.”

(It’s anger, mostly - it’s anger and it’s fear and it’s frustration, and knowing all of these things does not do enough to keep the words inside her head - but it isn’t until Celine hears herself say it that she can really feel the spike of horror it warrants. This other Celine, the wrongness of her empty home, being shown a world where she has everything. Her friends, her family, Miyeong. 

Why would the other Celine even consider coming back to this?)

“Okay, awesome,” Zoey says, far too brightly, giving her a double thumbs-up for no apparent reason. “That is! A thought we are maybe not going to share with Rumi right now!”

The lack of resistance cools Celine’s anger as quickly as it first came over her, leaving her feeling stupid and tired all over again. “No, that’s fine, I know this is… difficult for her. I’m sorry.”

Like a little owl, Zoey just blinks before opening her mouth. Whatever it is that she’s about to say is quickly cut off by Mira and Rumi’s conversation as they arrive, Rumi’s head bent over a phone screen as they bicker about which part makes up the radical. They both squint slightly as they look between Zoey and Celine.

“... You didn’t have to cook. We can take care of that,” Rumi says eventually. The words are polite, the tone is distinctly not.

“Can you take care of finding the sesame oil?” Zoey asks, and then by way of explanation she tells Celine “I may have been slightly banned from the kitchen after the gochujang smoothie incident.”

This time, Celine makes absolutely no effort to hide the way her lip curls. It gets a snort from Rumi all the same, who reaches past Celine’s hip to pull out a familiar bottle. 

“A place for everything–” Rumi starts to say.

“--And everything in its place,” the three chorus.

Celine’s hand closes around the neck of the bottle. “Thank you,” she says, turning back to the stove before any of the girls can see her eyes start to sting. Five times in 24 hours, is it? “Zoey said you girls found something promising.”

“It could be,” Rumi says, noncommittally. “We aren’t sure if she really swapped, or just had a vision or dream. Did you…”

“I thought this might be a nightmare,” Celine volunteers. “At first.”

Rumi’s eyes are like sharp, bright needles, and Celine feels like the butterfly they’re pinning into place. “Because of the Honmoon?”

Perfectly honestly, Celine says, “No.”

“Change of subject, change of subject,” Zoey chants. “Sooo! Who wants to hear about Celine’s garage band?”

—-

“Miyeong,” Celine breathes.

(Stupid. As though Celine hasn’t already seen her - as though Celine hasn’t already pressed the filth of her into Miyeong’s skin like it was nothing, not a fault or a betrayal or manipulation. As though Celine had any right to do so at all.)

She becomes suddenly, intensely, aware of Rumi’s hands, still held in her own. How soft this Rumi’s skin feels, how calloused and ugly her own hands must feel for her. Celine pulls her hands back and tucks them awkwardly against her side, then stands up so quickly she cracks her knees on the underside of the table. 

“Became a GOAT of a hunter, apparently,” Rumi says, which makes so little sense that Celine’s head snaps back in her direction. Miyeong, sensibly, ignores her comment and takes another faltering step into the room.

“Your Rumi–?”

“She defeated him,” Celine tells her. The same awe, the same fierce pride that she has no right to feel, even setting aside all the ways she has failed Rumi over and over - it was never meant to be hers to feel. (She does, all the same. Rumi has made a habit of inspiring people.) “She was alone, and hurt, and without any Honmoon to guide her. And she won.”

Miyeong’s fist flies to her mouth. The stifled noise she makes is… not proud.

“She was by herself? And you just– Let her?”

The idea of letting Rumi do anything - on that night, under that tree - doesn’t feel correct, really, but the recrimination does.

Celine’s memories of that night are blurry and incomplete. Repetition and shame have carved the image of Rumi holding out her sword (“Do what you should have done a long time ago”) into Celine’s brain with white-hot clarity (“Why couldn’t you love me?”) but after the Honmoon was gone, her grasp on events is less firm. Flashes of violence, interspersed with blind panic.

The Honmoon had splintered, then shattered, then was gone entirely in the blink of an eye. And Celine had stayed rooted where she was, on her knees in the dirt, reaching out towards the place Rumi had been, making contact with nothing.

She doesn’t know how long she had stayed there, in the dirt. Long enough that the first demon, taking advantage of the gap where the Honmoon used to be, had caught her by surprise. Celine had gone to reach out to the Honmoon and felt nothing, and then it had been upon her.

And then it had not. Her fist had closed around a rock, and the rock was wet, but she could breathe again. So she had done exactly that, lay there, gasping for air.

Shortly after that, she had been holding her homi. A second demon was lying at her feet, but it had not been Rumi and it had not pleaded so—

And then she was in her car, heading towards Jeju City, dialling Rumi, Mira, Zoey, even the girls’ manager in the hopes that someone could confirm Rumi was still alive, and getting nothing. Not until after the radio started confusedly reporting Huntr/x’s special appearance to support some new boy group, and the new Honmoon had snapped around her like an elastic band, and finally the girls’ manager had answered his phone and been full of compliments about the girls’ new single. 

And a few hours after that, Rumi had texted to say that she was fine, and so were the other two. So Celine had looked at the message for a long time and then turned the car around, and that had been that.

Instead of trying to explain any of that, Celine just looks hopelessly at Miyeong. “She did well. Brilliantly.”

“She’s my baby!”

“I’m twenty-five,” Rumi says, unhelpfully. “Also, that other me has magic powers, so that has to help.”

Miyeong takes another step forward, and another. One trembling finger jabs into Celine’s sternum, hard. “You promised me,” Miyeong cries. “You promised, you promised she would always be safe, you promised you would never let Gwi-Ma take her–”

“She never even heard his voice!”

“Did you even try to protect her?”

(And Celine is twelve and seventeen and twenty-two all at once. Celine is bracing her arms against her father’s desk and emptying her head until it doesn’t even notice the pain. Celine is watching the easy way Miyeong pulls Sunmi onto her lap and tucking her hands into her pockets to make it clear that she’s giving them space. Celine is lying on the couch in their shared apartment, waiting for the sound of Miyeong’s key in their front door so she can pretend to be asleep.)

(But. Celine is also forty-seven years old, and well-aware of every fault and failure that has brought them both to this moment.)

She just continues, like Miyeong hadn’t spoken at all, “Two things to consider, Eomma: first, she did not actually promise you anything, you met this woman roughly twelve hours ago. Second, she’s been crashing out that entire time so this isn't exactly a fair fight.”

Absurdly, Celine is more offended by the second half of that latter statement than the first. As though she hasn’t successfully wrangled teenagers far more belligerent than this version of Miyeong while sleep-deprived and punch-drunk and, on two separate occasions, actively dizzy from blood loss.

“Third,” adds Rumi, while Celine is still processing her objections to the first two, “your baby, for a twenty-five-year-old value of the word, is right here, and I am perfectly safe and entirely fine. I'm already jealous of the other Rumi's magic powers," and she slips into a pout, "don't make me jealous that you care about her more too."

Miyeong seems genuinely stymied by the unserious pout and the even less serious accusation both, and Celine recovers just a little faster. “That was three things," she tells Rumi, and then, more sternly, "And I don’t need you to defend me.”

“You keep saying things like that and you keep being wrong,” says Rumi, unconcerned.

Miyeong finally manages to pull back together something resembling sternness, and she frowns at Rumi. “This isn’t your place, Rumi-ya,” and then looks up at Celine, “She should not even have told you any of this.”

“She,” parrots Rumi, “didn’t. You and Imo did when you decided to have a private conversation in the middle of the kitchen.”

“Rumi,” Miyeong says, pure exasperation.

Celine steps sideways, so that Rumi is no longer between them, and says, as steady and honest as she can, “Miyeong. The Rumi of my world never had you. She didn’t have Sunmi. She didn’t even have Eunbi and Hana, because I couldn’t trust them with her patterns. All she had was me, and you know that could never have been enough. And still, despite everything she didn’t have, despite my influence, she became so much greater than any of us. She looked fear itself in the face and sang him down, she defeated the enemy that we have been fighting for five hundred years. Her hunters love her so much it built a new Honmoon from nothing. I know it’s not what you wanted for her. But can you not be proud of what she made herself, all the same? Does she not deserve to have that from someone with the right to give it?”

Miyeong does not immediately respond, but something has… shifted, in the course of Celine speaking; it feels suddenly like she's missed something important, somehow despite the fact that she was the only one who could have said it. She glances at Rumi, who is wearing an uneasy frown that she can't remember ever seeing on the Rumi she knows, and then back at Miyeong, who is looking at Celine like she does not like what she sees, but in a way as alien to Celine as Rumi’s frown, something completely different from the anger of a moment ago.

Miyeong opens her mouth and lifts her hand toward Celine, about to speak, but then stutters to a halt before her outstretched fingers can close the gap. As of course she would, of course she should – now that she knows what Celine is she knows better than to let Celine touch her again – but Celine cannot guess why Miyeong would even get so far. Cannot speculate on what echo of this world’s Celine she might have been reaching for.

“… she sounds remarkable,” says Miyeong, softly, finally, her arm dropping to her side. “I’m sorry. Rumi is right, you owe me no promises. You’re a guest here, I shouldn't have spoken to you like that.” She shakes her head before Celine can respond. “I came to tell you that it’s time for dinner. If you haven’t ruined your appetites with illicit kimbap,” she adds, a light tease to them both, and she's not fooling anyone but she does put in a PR-solid effort at it.

“Hey, it was my kimbap, the twins made it specifically for me, nothing I do with it can be illicit,” objects Rumi, and her heart isn’t really in it either, not quite as scattered as Miyeong but worse at hiding it. They keep trying to banter their way into a better mood all the way to the angeori and Celine aches to fix it, to find the perfect words that will make them both smile and laugh and relax, to throttle whatever thing would dare to make her girls upset.

But of course, it’s her, she’s the problem, not the solution. In any universe, it’s always her, and it’s right, it’s proper, that this Honmoon will not let her draw her weapon, will not allow even the delusion that she could protect or heal or do anything but cause damage wherever she goes. Perhaps watching the stain of her spill out on this happy perfect world is what will make her finally abandon her self-serving pretenses that she could ever be otherwise.

She’s being melodramatic again. She lets herself indulge all the way to the doorway and then grudgingly shakes it off.

Inside, Sunmi is a still pillar of calm in a vortex of adolescent chaos, sedately temping mandu and garnishing japchae with a sprinkle of sesame seeds while the boys, clearly meant to be cleaning and setting the table, mostly jostle and chatter and throw napkins at each other. Even once they finally all sit and settle, Celine herself gets briefly caught up in a game of chicken with the quieter twin – Seojoon – who has a substantial pinch of noodles halfway to his face almost before Celine even picks up her chopsticks. There's clearly nothing for it but to slow her movement and stare down this ridiculous sixteen-year-old, who really seems to think she’s going to break and eat her mushrooms before he breaks and puts the food back on his plate. Eventually Rumi and Sunmi are both snickering, and Hajoon kicks his brother under the table to make him concede so the rest of them can eat.

The smile drops off Celine’s face when she sees the look Miyeong is giving her, probing and intent. Neither of them say much after that.

Instead, the boys give an update on some architectural project they have going out in the woods, a fort or a treehouse of some kind that Sunmi has a lot of opinions on for someone who can't assemble flatpack furniture without supervision. Once that back and forth is exhausted, their sister catches Sunmi up on the latest drama at work – an art museum, apparently – where a new exhibit is causing logistics headaches well beyond what Rumi considers reasonable.

“I’m sure it’ll all get sorted in a day once you’re back there to straighten them out,” reassures Miyeong.

“Oh, I won’t be back before the opening,” Rumi says easily. “I extended my vacation another week.”

The responses are immediate and overlapping from the entire rest of the table, “Nuna, what –” and “Really?” and “Kid, are you –” and “Rumi-ya, why, they’re going to think you’re not serious about your job, you can’t just –” but Rumi just shrugs casually.

“They’ll be fine, Tae-hwan and Yuna can handle things perfectly well without me, and gwajang-nim isn’t going to fire his favorite babysitter. Also, I’m definitely not leaving Alternate Dimension Maman here with you guys without even trying to help her get home, that would be so rude –”

Sunmi and Miyeong interrupt with immediate and identical "Rumi"s, angry and dismayed and largely drowned out by the loud, simultaneous "What" from the twins as their heads both snap toward Celine.

Celine levels a stare at Rumi, who looks… smug. It’s an unpleasant expression, and Celine says, cool and disappointed and without really thinking, “Rumi, that was unworthy of you.”

The table is dead silent in the wake of it, and Rumi’s face drops from self-satisfied to genuinely stunned.

“I… we don’t know how long you’ll be here, right?” she says, after a moment, a little tentative. “They had to know. You can’t just play-act for days or weeks, it wouldn’t be fair to you or the twins.”

Miyeong and Sunmi are looking at Celine very strangely.

"You have a defensible reason, then," she says anyway, holding Rumi's gaze, "and yet you forced the issue as soon as you saw an opportunity, without patience or care, so that no one could question you. Which means that either you don't actually have faith in your reasoning, and so acted recklessly toward your brothers; or you don't believe any of the other adults in the room have the right to question it, and so acted disrespectfully to your mother. Both are beneath you.”

“… huh,” says Hajoon, after another long pause, somehow the first one to speak. “Absolutely not our Maman whatsoever.”

“She’s right, though,” says Rumi, reluctantly, and she turns to Miyeong and bows slightly in her chair, “Sorry, Eomma. Celine,” she adds, inclining toward her as well, and then ruffles Seojoon’s hair. “Sorry, hooligans. I was being a jerk.”

“You’re good, nuna,” says Seojoon, swatting at Rumi’s hand and trying to comb his bangs back to order, and Hajoon adds, “It was worth it just to see that look on your face,” and then ducks wildly out of the way as Rumi makes a noise of outrage and attempts a retaliatory noogie.

“Also.” Seojoon smoothly leans out of the way of his siblings’ flailing. “We would never have forgiven a single one of you, if we found out we were actively in Sunlight Sisters: Into the Hunterverse and you hadn’t told us.”

“Yeah we definitely need to know everything about this,” agrees Hajoon, who has managed to get both hands around his sister’s wrist and is now simply trapping it a little ways from his face, while Rumi placidly pretends to ignore him and starts eating a dumpling left-handed. “Oh, like, hey, what are we like in your universe? Can your Seojoon actually talk to a girl without stuttering?”

“Can your Hajoon walk across a parking lot without falling on his face?”

“That was two years ago and there was ice, let it go Seojoon –”

“You slid ten meters and it took three of us to pull you out of the snow, Hajoon –”

“Some decorum at the dinner table, please,” cuts in Celine.

“Sorry Maman,” they chorus together, and Rumi’s hand is released, and then Hajoon politely corrects, “Not-Maman,” and Seojoon finishes the thought, “sorry for that, also.”

“I suspect,” says Celine, looking down at the boys, ignoring Miyeong’s eyes burning into her across the table, “that you two are trouble in any universe.”

—

Rumi, Celine suspects, does not in fact want to hear about Celine's garage band. She engages very little as Zoey spins up her rant again, and keeps slipping into a pensive expression, fiddling occasionally with her sleeves. But it's not open hostility anymore, at least, and since she is engaging a little (and Mira is very clearly keeping an eye on her), Celine decides to trust her partners' judgement on the subject change.

"Keeping the Hunter legacy alive even after gold, huh," is Mira's laconic summary of the whole thing, once Zoey is done, and Celine can't tell if it's approval or sharp edges. Possibly both.

"Maybe if anyone ever heard any of it," grumps Zoey, whose opinions are much clearer.

"Strictly speaking," says Celine, "bar patrons are in fact 'anyone'."

"And an all-kill is everyone and therefore better," says Zoey, cheerfully, and then her eyes go wide, and she says, "Wait. I'm having an incredible thought." She pulls another spiral notebook out of absolutely nowhere, slaps it down next to her plate, stands up, and disappears down the hallway.

Rumi and Mira exchange a fond glance, and Rumi says, "Better clear the table."

Mystified, Celine helps them stack dishes next to the sink – not a single sliver of carrot left to scrape off, which is satisfying and distressing in equal measure – just in time for Zoey to slide back into the room, quite literally, her socks slipping smooth on the tile for a full meter past the threshold.

She has a guitar in her hands, a custom job, cream-colored lacquer with three galloping horses in sumukhwa style, a wild dynamic ink wash of red and black and brown stampeding from the waist to lower bout, and Celine stares, stupefied.

That guitar was sold.

That guitar was sold, it was the first thing Miyeong ever bought with her own money and it was pawned for groceries in the bitter lean stretch between the breach-of-contract fees coming due and the move and Celine had sat in the shame of it for years, and this Celine still has it, this Celine dares to keep it when she failed Miyeong's daughter so badly, and the guitar is being passed to Rumi and she's plugging an adapter into her phone and checking the tune (it's in perfect tune, this world's Celine sits over this guitar and tunes it) and Celine is homesick and heartsick and Rumi has never held, will never hold that guitar.

It fits perfectly in her hands.

"… memorized, you know, that one Baridegi poem," Zoey is saying to the girls.

Rumi says knowingly, "The one you spent two hours trying to archive because the scanner wouldn't get the doodles in the margins right?"

"Completely worth, I cannot disrespect a fellow doodler."

"And you want to remix it?"

"Ish," says Zoey. "Mira, you remember that beat you were playing with on Friday?"

Mira obligingly taps out a few phrases of a rolling, energetic rhythm and Zoey nods "yeah yeah yeah," excited, mostly to herself, and starts scribbling furiously in the notebook, occasionally muttering quiet lyrics in at least two languages. Mira leans back in her chair, evidently content to wait on Zoey's work, but Rumi's left hand starts shaping tentative chords on the neck of Miyeong's guitar.

Celine slips out of the room, and then out of the building entirely.

The garden is as old as the hanok, and for most of that time, to Celine's knowledge, it's been a subsistence plot, a supplement for the resident hunters who needed roots or nuts or tea. When she and Miyeong moved back in, everything was so overgrown that they'd had to tear it all out and build from scratch, and so Celine had planted flowers of every hue and season instead, bright under Miyeong's line of viburnum, cheerful on the sitting room table when she brings bouquets in for her wife.

This garden, to her eye, is much the same as her mentors left it. She sees snow peas, scallion, squash, carried mindlessly forward for twenty-five years, no soothing color or living, growing love, nothing but pointless lonely habit. There's a four million won suit in this Celine's closet and she has no one to feed and she never had to sell Miyeong's guitar, she doesn't need fucking backup radishes.

Celine mutters a childish and unsatisfying "tas de merde" at the vegetables and goes back inside.

"So it's about leaving a home that wasn't right for you but if you can accept that, you can build something better," Rumi is summarizing, eyes scanning the notebook, as Celine leans at the threshold of the kitchen. To all appearances they didn't notice she was gone.

"Very on-theme," Mira nods.

"Also very hashtag relatable," says Zoey, and this time Mira and Rumi nod, because of course they do.

"So, what if we do something like…"

Rumi has the notebook in front of her, and she taps the body of the guitar a few times in the same rhythm Mira showed them earlier and puts her hands on the strings, and the sound is a little off and tinny through the phone speaker but –

– but Rumi is good at this.

Celine's own Rumi loves music, of course, is a skilled musician herself and always has been – a strong voice carrying through the house as she cleans her room or burns lunch, first chair in her university orchestra – but Celine has never seen her compose. Never seen her sit forward, eyes bright and fingers tripping over themselves to get the notes out as she strings one chord after another after another, until they cascade into an irresistible tour of exactly the emotion she wants felt. Has never seen her glow with fierce joy in the back-and-forth with other artists just as skilled, switches and adjustments and arguing her case until a dragging phrase turns perfect.

"How about four bars of melody and then we have Zoey cut in –"

Celine's never looked at her Rumi and seen this profound longing for music, not as a hobby or a diversion or a daily paycheck but something as deep and essential and unconscious as breathing, something she could not be alive or sane or in any way herself without.

"Maybe start the bridge with the C, no, Rumi, give me that, like this, and then we could bring in some ghost notes –"

Celine could be a shadow in the hanok twenty-eight years back, haunting a tight little circle of three, overworked and underfed and exhausted and not caring about any of it for an instant, feeding off each other's excitement, passing around Miyeong's shiny new guitar to demonstrate a point, caught up in the sound and the connection and the thrill of making something beautiful, and it didn't even matter that the label would never let it see the light of day because once the music was crowded up in her chest there was no other choice but to let it out.

"Make it a slant rhyme. Order and expectations breaking down in the story and the verse –"

She feels like a dog. Like a dog on a chain, one that wants to growl and bite at anything that comes close, something dirty and half-rabid that shouldn’t be allowed inside. A fucking dog, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what to do with herself, so she stays where she is, watching the girls pull music out of the air. 

Zoey scribbles something down and starts to rap in easy, American English. Celine is not as out of practice as the girls might guess - it’s surprisingly useful at work, especially when liaising with international partners - but she still has to concentrate to understand what it means.  “I’ve been told my heart is the size of my fist, never learned to block but I always hit. Huntr/x here to break your walls down, got all I need with my girls and a four-count.”

“Sick,” Mira says, then starts to tap out a beat on the table. “Go back to the bridge, I’m thinking we should try something like this instead…”

“Ireona, ireona, and I’ll keep on running,” Zoey sings. “Nananana—”

“Can’t go home again,” Rumi finishes for her. Her voice is clear and rich, even like this, with no warning and no warm-up, crowded around Miyeong’s guitar.

Celine doesn’t mean to make a noise at that but she must, because Rumi twists around to look through the doorway straight at her, and the other two follow.

She knows, on some level, how ridiculous she must look - skulking around the hall, like some kind of thief - and that does more to pull her out of her head than the distrustful glare Rumi shoots towards her.

“It sounds beautiful,” she tells them, which is true.

Rumi does not look the slightest bit appeased.

Zoey, on the other hand, almost glows at having received a compliment from Kang Celine of the Sunlight Sisters, and if Celine spends a second more thinking on what that must mean about how this world’s Celine has trained these girls then she will not be able to stop herself from fetching the scissors. 

“Wanna join us?” Zoey offers. “We can give you a writing credit but interdimensional royalty payments are not in my power to authorise.”

“What a shame. I’ll just have to content myself with my garage band,” Celine teases, mostly just to hear Zoey grumble about it all over again. True to form, Zoey starts to lay out all the reasons why Celine’s band is a calculated personal betrayal of the other Zoey, and the need to set up “at least a YouTube page, I am begging you” until Mira, finally, nudges her and nods towards Rumi.

“Oh, right, we should get back to it,” Zoey chirps. “If you’re sure..?”

“I’m sure,” Rumi mutters, and gets a kick to her shin for her troubles.

Celine decides not to draw any attention to it and politely retreats back into the hall, letting herself fade into the background again. The girls’ voices carry further than she thinks they realise, a hiss and a yelp and then a very deep sigh and more laughter, bickering, the guitar starting up again. Together, Rumi and her friends begin to harmonise, and a thousand strands of light arc towards the three of them as though the world cannot bear to be apart from them a second longer than it needs to.

Celine is not needed here. She turns her back and heads towards the office.

Yesterday, when she was looking everywhere for some sign of her family, she’d opened the door to what should have been her own office and paused just long enough to see that there was nobody there. Today, she lets herself take her time noticing each of the differences between this office and the one at home. There are lots; the merry chaos of Miyeong’s various projects and the kids’ art is gone, leaving the room perfectly impersonal. The only sign of life at all is the laptop on the desk.

It’s password protected, which she should have expected. She doesn’t bother guessing at what it might be.

She takes a seat in what turns out to be, annoyingly, a very nice desk chair with the sort of lumbar support she could only dream of, and pulls out Zoey’s notebook again. Instead of going back out there again for a pen, she pulls open the desk drawer and finds, sitting on top of a blank memopad, her counterpart’s phone.

Three strong, clear voices drift through the hall towards her.

“We should do something with the flower imagery,” Zoey’s saying. “Flowers for a funeral, flowers for Valentines’ Day…”

“Medicinal flowers,” Rumi says. “There’s chamomile, mugwort, ginseng–”

“--Famously a root.”

“Roots, rootless, is that anything? Like, it’s not just that your home wasn’t right, it was never really your home in the first place?”

Celine sits at the desk and listens to the girls say I love you and then drifts over towards the office door and closes it. She turns the lock. A pointless, stupid thing in a house that has one occupant. She sits back down and fishes out a charging cable for the phone and turns it on. Her face, luckily, is enough to unlock it.

As Zoey mentioned yesterday, there are twelve missed calls and even more text messages - most from Rumi, although there’s another one from someone called Lee Kyunghee with a question from Legal that Celine cannot waste any energy trying to understand. Celine swipes away the notifications without reading them and finds the email icon.

It feels like an impossibly long shot, the idea that Sunmi might still use the same email address, but the thought of turning her back on the one person left who would understand the wrongness of this world makes her whole chest feel tight.

TO: [email protected] FROM: [email protected] SUBJECT: Help

She opens a new email and starts to type, only to pause at the sight of this Celine's email address. It's clearly a work email, she knows enough not to hope otherwise - but the simple, easy cruelty held within that SL Entertainment is, like all the rest of it, unfathomable.

----

The boys - naturally - take this as a compliment and visibly preen over it. Little peacocks, both of them, but Celine finds there’s no real heat to that thought, and neither Miyeong nor Sunmi seem particularly inclined to discourage them.

In fact, Miyeong looks at them like— Celine cannot let herself think about the way Miyeong is looking at her sons, worried and indulgent and faintly exasperated all at once. Certainly Miyeong had never looked at Rumi like that back in Celine’s world; Miyeong had never known a version of Rumi old enough to ever really be irritating. 

(Celine knows that time has blunted her few memories of Miyeong and Rumi together, knows that Miyeong had felt overwhelmed and exhausted like any other new parent. But whenever she thinks back to Rumi’s birth, the only thing she can picture is Miyeong staring adoringly at her little girl.)

Her eyes dart quickly towards this Rumi, dark hair mussed up from her scuffle with the boys, and finds that Rumi is looking straight back at her. Celine feels uncomfortably aware of her own body, then. Her palms prickle, hot and itchy. Her knees hurt from where she hit them against the table, and her back hurts from too much time spent hunched over Moon Yongsu’s journals, and her head hurts from everything else. 

Everyone at the table is looking at her.

She thinks it, and then feels foolish for thinking it, because the others aren’t staring. They’re looking at one another too, but Celine as well - Celine more than any of the others - and it has been a while since Celine last shared a meal with anyone else.

“So why did you come here? Was it to warn us about some kind of apocalypse you need us to stop?” Hajoon asks, with an entirely inappropriate level of excitement.

Seojoon leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Ohhh! Is this some kind of multiverse team-up where you had to ask our Maman for help to save your own universe?”

Celine does her best to hide her skepticism that this world’s Celine would be able to contribute anything valuable in the event of a disaster. 

“No, it most certainly is not.”

“All the universes?”

“The Honmoon has shuffled Hunters off to visit other worlds before,” Sunmi cuts in, talking so breezily that it almost seems like something that happens to her all the time. “Not for any kind of emergency end of the world type purposes, before you ask.”

“Then why, just for fun?”

“The Honmoon is supposed to bring everyone together, it wouldn’t just drive Maman away,” Rumi says firmly. The effect is only slightly spoiled by the way she turns to Celine for confirmation. “Right?”

“Nuna, what do you know about the Honmoon?”

“That’s correct, Rumi. The Honmoon does not play pranks,” agrees Celine. Warm, honeyed light touches the twins’ shoulders, brief but affectionate. Sunmi and Miyeong look to one another, and then at Celine, but whatever coded message the two of them are trying to exchange Celine cannot imagine.

“Does that mean you don’t know what your Truck-kun was?”

Sunmi tweaks Seojoon’s ear. “Try again, this time using real words.”

“Ow!”

“Truck-kun’s an isekai thing,” Rumi translates. “You get hit by a truck, and when you die you get shoved into a TV show or a video game or something. Which cannot possibly be less relevant, because we’re not a TV show and also Maman is not dead.”

“Sometimes people just get put in a coma.”

“Enough, Hajoon,” Miyeong says, and then - for some reason - turns to make eye contact with Celine. 

Hajoon ignores her completely. “Can we at least know what kind of alternate dimension you’re from?”

Miyeong has not stopped looking at Celine, her dark eyes heavy with something Celine cannot name. Miyeong’s teeth dig into the corner of her bottom lip, and the sight of that old habit settles heavy as a stone in Celine’s gut. She had forgotten. Years of seeing that same expression on Miyeong’s face, before concerts and contract negotiations and life-or-death ambushes alike, and Celine had never even realised this part of Miyeong was lost to her before now.

She stares back, adrift.

Then pulls herself together. “Your mother asked you to stop,” she reminds him.

“My mother isn’t here,” Hajoon shoots back, but with no heat - none at all - just the tiny smirk of a sixteen year old who thinks he’s outsmarted an adult.

Celine’s chopsticks stutter in her hand, clinking lightly against the side of the bowl. Whatever Miyeong says in response, she misses. 

(It would be ridiculous to let this one rude comment from an ignorant child affect her. As though she hasn’t had far worse said to her by the girls, with far more intent to hurt her feelings, and this is surely worth even less of her attention.)

If she were in her own home, in her own kitchen, she would be able to look through the window towards the treeline, and watch the sunlight stretch across the sky to meet every Hunter who had ever gone before her. A whole mountain full of bones, and the Honmoon that would have outlived them all. Seen in that light, it has always been easy to focus on what really mattered.

Celine has not meditated on that since the night of the Idol Awards, and there doesn’t seem to be any point in starting now. Instead, she turns her gaze towards the pictures hanging on the wall. She doesn’t linger over the pictures of the boys; they belong to this other world, and have nothing to do with her. Even some of those with Rumi have no equivalent in her own world: Rumi as a toddler playing tea party with Sunmi; Rumi in her graduation gown, clutching a bouquet of flowers; Rumi sitting on a bike, dark hair peeking out from underneath her helmet, Miyeong behind her holding onto the seat. Celine looks past those too.

The one that does snag her attention seems almost familiar, Rumi in her yellow bucket hat holding Miyeong’s hand in front of the Seonim bridge. In this house, it’s displayed next to one of Miyeong’s childhood photos, her and her brother standing in exactly the same place. Celine remembers bringing Rumi to see the Cheonjeyeon Falls when she was about that age, had walked with her over the exact same bridge, had told Rumi to keep her eyes peeled in case they saw any nymphs. Back in her own home, in the chests of drawers where she kept the photo albums and keepsakes, there was a picture of Rumi there too.

In that picture, as in every other one Celine can remember taking, Rumi is all alone.

By the time she has sufficient air in her lungs to talk again, the conversation has moved on. Sunmi has also decided that she will be staying with Miyeong and her family “for the duration”, which Celine does her best not to bristle at - as though she’s in need of supervision, as though Sunmi needs to keep her from ruining this perfect little family—

(Celine finds herself remembering, with white-hot shame, her earlier lapse in judgment. How she couldn’t be trusted to police herself.)

(She hadn’t known. It had felt– unreal, like a dream or a hallucination, where consequences could be avoided just by wishing them gone, and Miyeong had been dead too long to be hurt by her. But explaining that, to this Miyeong, to this Sunmi, feels impossible.)

At some point, it has been decided that Sunmi will take the guest room, Rumi will stay with Miyeong and Celine will take over Rumi’s bedroom. The bakgeori is out of the question - Miyeong just shakes her head and says something about a plumbing issue while the boys look sheepish - and her offer to take the couch, any couch, or the living room floor, is refused as well. 

“You’re our guest,” Miyeong says, with a firmness that still manages to catch her by surprise. “And we do have some manners, despite the absolutely appalling impression our children might have given you.”

The boys squeak indignantly at that. Rumi, ears still pink with embarrassment from having to be corrected for her earlier thoughtlessness, wrinkles her nose but doesn’t object.

This Rumi had never moved over into the bakgeori where the trainees traditionally slept, and so the room Celine was shown to still has several children’s books on the shelves amongst several Suneung study guides and practice papers, faded Pokemon bedding and sheet music peeking out of a ringbinder covered in panda stickers. Force of habit has her going to straighten the papers up, and the sting when she realises that there are no lyrics is no less muted than any of the others.

Rumi doesn’t sing. 

The thought itself has its own kind of violence. Rumi, a version of Rumi who had grown up loved and happy, would have chosen – art, or history, or art history, Celine isn’t entirely clear. A steady job, a pet cat, a home in Incheon and time to go visit her family. When Rumi was very small, she used to totter on her chubby little legs to sit on Celine’s lap and demand her favourite nursery rhymes, and that had been how Rumi first learned to sing, her hand poking at Celine’s mouth to try and copy the shape of it. And sometimes Celine had been overtaken by silliness and pretended to nibble at those little fingers and Rumi had shrieked with delight, and sometimes she had not and they stayed working at it until their two voices blended together, and that had been lovely too.

Rumi - a version of Rumi given more choices than back in Celine’s world - would not have wanted those things.

Celine runs her thumbnail over some of the crease marks, then puts the papers out of sight.

She is lying down on a too-soft mattress, staring up at the ceiling and wondering whether she would be able to let herself out and return to the archives, when a knock sounds on her door. Celine sits up, convinced that it must be Miyeong, come to collect the apologies Celine owes, or Rumi, back with more questions.

“Come in.”

Not Miyeong, not Rumi, not even Sunmi come to continue needling her– It’s Seojoon, hair still damp from the shower, who enters, nudges the door shut with his heel, and sits on the foot of Rumi’s bed as casually as if he does so without waiting for any further invitation.

“I can’t sleep.”.

“Have you tried going to bed?”

He gives her a half-hearted smile, clearly unaccustomed to listening to the Celine he knows, and looks down at his hands. The skin around his thumbnail is pink and sore, and Seojoon carries on picking at that while he talks.

“Did your Seojoon ever break his arm?”

Celine says, truthfully, “No, that never happened in my world.”

“I was twelve. Couldn’t play baseball for months.” He carries on picking at himself until the skin starts to look raw, and without thinking about it, Celine tugs his pyjama sleeve down to cover his hands and Seojoon starts toying with the cuffs instead. 

“But even after the cast came off,” he says, “I still couldn’t play properly, and my arm wouldn’t work right.”

“That all sounds perfectly normal.”

“Yeah, I know, you told me. My you told me, I mean.” Seojoon tips his bodyweight towards her, and for one horrifying second, Celine almost thinks he’s trying to rest his head on her lap, or cuddle, or something else that Rumi has long since grown out of, but instead he just bumps his shoulder against hers and pulls back. 

“I only had to wear the cast for a bit, and even then I still couldn’t do anything. Maman hasn’t had to fight demons in years, and now the Honmoon’s sent her off to some other world to do it–”

“The Honmoon did not send anyone to fight demons,” Celine tells him, feeling some of her earlier frustration thread through her voice. “Gwi-Ma was defeated in my world, and even if that were not the case, I retired from that a long time ago and the next generation of Hunters took on that mantle. And even if, somehow, some demon did appear – and even if the other Hunters were not able to dispatch it – then your Maman’s soul will still have been strengthened through everything that connects her to the rest of the world. Tradition, art, community, they’re all ways of feeling those connections, not having to fight for it.”

Celine thinks of her own routine, back in her own world. Tea to greet the sunrise. Meditations out in the courtyard, watching the night sky. Caring for the hanok and tending to the graves, and watching the girls knit more souls together into the fabric of the world. Countless small moments where she feels the soil beneath her fingers and the breeze on her neck and she could reach out and wrap her hands around the soul-strings and feel the rightness of it.

“Your mother loves you,” she tells him, and her voice does not catch on the same words she must have said to Rumi a thousand times over. Talking like this, with a stranger’s son, still sits more comfortably with her than Rumi’s earlier attempts to console her, and she shifts so they’re both sitting on the side of the bed, staring at Rumi’s crowded bookshelf. “That love she feels - for you and your family - that’s what will bring her home.”

The boy’s shoulders hitch, just the once. She doesn’t reach out to touch him, not like Miyeong must - or his Maman, or Imo, she thinks, a little spitefully - but Seojoon takes another deep breath and nods.

It is almost a very nice moment, but when the door swings open a second time to reveal his brother trying to balance an armful of comic books and several DVDs, Celine doesn’t hesitate to point right back where he came from.

“It’s for research!”

She was handed a small pile of clothes, last night, but she learned yesterday that even the other Celine's blouses don't fit properly, too loose in the chest, too tight in the shoulders, and she doesn't want to deal with the discomfort again. The slacks are loose, too, but there's a belt, so at least that's fixable. For the rest, she makes do with the sport bra she pulled on yesterday when everything was still a nonsensical blur, and the shirt Miyeong gave her to sleep in. It's some kind of old gray-blue concert tee, too faded to read and spotted with dried paint and ancient stains, and she snaps off a loose thread before pulling it on and slipping silently into the hall.

If they lived the same lives, up until Miyeong's pregnancy, this world's Celine must once have sealed leaking sinks, replaced timing belts, kept Sunmi's disaster-prone bicycle in one piece; must once have had a regular supply of shirts like this to sacrifice for it. It's hard to imagine. The deep satisfaction of making a thing work, of fixing a problem for someone she cares about... it's practical, it's productive. It can't coexist with sobbing over every little thing, with trying to talk an issue uselessly to death instead of just correcting it and moving on. Truthfully, she wonders if whatever the twins did to the plumbing was really so bad that an hour with a toolbox can't fix it, or if it's just that her counterpart gave up being useful, over the last twenty years, abandoned basic repairs right alongside regular exercise and emotional restraint.

The moon is full overhead in the courtyard, casting deep shadows as she makes her way through the morning dew, the gooseflesh on her arms biting enough to wake her and then trivially dismissed. She hums, some mindless ambling improvisation to clear her head, and this world's Honmoon chases the sound, a pair of drowsy golden strands trailing after her, falling behind and then bouncing forward to catch up like a sleepy puppy. The dark smooths away the wrong paint and misplaced trees and turns the yard familiar, and the smell of damp pine and hackberry sinks into her like an old friend. She takes her time crossing the compound, gratified to find the bakgeori unlocked, and slides her hand to the switch by instinct.

But the ease of the outside air flees with the dark.

The angeori, with its thousand glass shard memories scattered on every wall, was to be expected, really. Was exactly the sort of thing Miyeong would want, and maybe Celine could still have found a way to touch just that, without bleeding, but this –

In Celine's own world, the shared areas of the hanok are decorated mostly with art. The angeori has paintings Rumi buys for her on tour, fashion plates and figure studies from Mira's design classes, a few complex macrame pieces from when Zoey broke her leg (the majority of these hung by Rumi with mathematical precision, and also no notice whatsoever). The bakgeori, now that the girls are gone, is all prints and hangings passed down the years, alongside a mix of random gifts from Celine's friend Rei, who does repatriation out of Tokyo and sends the odd piece she can't find another home for. Both arrangements are understated and coordinated and generally pleasant and it suits Celine just fine. She has never been the sort of person who hangs photos.

Or even someone who likes taking them to begin with, for that matter. She isn't good at it, always getting washed-out ghosts or people blinking, and it distracts her, to be recording the moment instead of living in it. She does try anyway, when she knows other people will want them – Miyeong mugging at an awards dinner, Huntr/x backstage at their debut, all the little moments of Rumi's childhood, alone –

– at any rate, the results are never worth that kind of display.

Miyeong, though, called photography a kind of archery where no one got hurt, and she'd been just as good at it. Just as precise at finding the perfect light, the perfect moment, the perfect shot. She said the camera could see things that eyes couldn't; could see the truth, if you did it right.

In this world, Miyeong has had time to look for that truth. There, in her family, those thousand frozen moments; here, in the shinmok at sunset, clasped hands, ballet dancers in flight. Close-ups of tools and toys and weeds growing out of sidewalks. Architecture from odd angles, city streets from so far above they're almost dizzying to look at.

They're organized by theme, Celine realizes, as she moves slowly through the pieces. Some playing with color, some with focus, a few evidently grouped in ways she doesn't have the expertise to understand.

Ways her own Miyeong never had the chance to teach her.

Celine forces her eyes away from the walls; it's of no significance, really, just another reason to focus on her actual purpose here. She shoves down on the yawning hollow trying to open in her chest until it yields, smothers it to a distant, irrelevant ache, and pushes forward.

And then she's there, the old armory. She had almost been afraid that it would be gone, deemed needless in retirement, but here it stands. Neatly sheathed blades and sturdy practice swords and gleaming polearms rest watchful in their places, marked by generations of hands still practicing for starlight. Celine reaches, unthinking, for the paired short swords crossed over the knife display, then recoils just as quickly, queasy at the thought of dead metal ssang geom against her palms, at holding any clumsy man-made imitation of her soul blades like it could begin to compare.

She takes the jikdo instead, and makes her way back out onto the practice yard, into the cool dark and pine-sap breeze.

It starts as always, with the first and simplest form: step, step, slice, turn, focus on her weight spread properly between her feet, her weapon stable and still in her hands. Once she's warm and steady on her toes, she moves up to higher levels, low stance and strike, high stance and sweep, tiger stance and reverse strike; up again, step and turn and strike, sweep and hook kick; up again, ignore the handful of gold strands gathering at the edges of her movement; up again, slash into thrust into two hands and reverse, the blade a brilliant flash of silver, fast and tight and perfectly placed.

And by the time the sun rises and she's working through the master-level patterns, everything else has fallen away. The smooth burn of exertion sweeps through her knees and back and wrist and leaves no pain in its wake; the steady rhythm of her heart pulsing in her temples crowds out the ache behind her eyes; the clean demand of step and strike and counting out each pace drives away all anger and frustration, leaves nothing behind but the first peace she's felt since all this began. Here, centered in her body as it does exactly what she asks of it down to the last and finest ligament, she can breathe, she is right.

Miyeong has been watching her since about twenty minutes before sunrise, but Celine keeps moving, counts out her steps and her strikes, works form by form all the way back down to the first while the dawn slides from amber to white, before sheathing the sword and turning to face her.

The Honmoon flickers out with an almost mournful note, and Miyeong, eyes cool and sharp like Celine has only ever seen behind a starlight arrow, teeth working with that horrible new-old familiarity at her lip, steps forward.

"You dodged the question last night," she says, and by the time she finishes the sentence, she's managed to school her voice and expression to an evenness Celine knows she's never seen from Miyeong before. "That's fine, the kids don't need to know. But I do. What kind of world do you come from?"

She steps forward again, leans in like a threat, like Celine's reach advantage and two extra decades of training and the weapon at her hip and the fact that Miyeong can outpunch a demon if she has to but has never beaten a fully-trained Hunter in melee combat in her life are all completely irrelevant, and her voice is still controlled, still nothing like the screaming Celine is suddenly sure Miyeong is just barely holding back.

"What's happening over there, to my wife?"

---

Celine waffles about the phrasing, the request. How to sound believable, about this unbelievable thing. How to make it clear that whatever this Sunmi rightly holds against her own Celine, Celine herself will not argue with, is truly sorry for, trusts Sunmi to put aside long enough to help. She writes, deletes, wrestles with autocorrect, deletes and writes again.

The muffled soundscape shifts a few times, as she works. The music halts for a while, then starts up again at intervals. Footsteps patter down the hallway, and then back a little later. She thinks at one point a microwave might beep. None of it is her business. She keeps editing.

Celine has just wrapped up, at least settled if not necessarily satisfied with what she's sent, when she hears a phone alarm ring clear across the building. It's followed immediately by a loud English nonsense phrase from Zoey about… crackers?… that Celine imagines is standing in for actual cursing. A brief burst of quieter conversation is muted by the closed door, and then there's a pounding of feet and a quick rap on the wood.

Celine braces herself, counts out her breath, and moves to the door.

There's the briefest moment after she clicks the bar away when Zoey's quiet, bewildered "Did she lock it?" just barely makes it through the barrier, and then it's open, and Zoey is standing there with a wide hopeful smile, Mira is a pace behind her looking mildly unimpressed, and Rumi is halfway down the hallway, leaning almost sullenly against the wall, arms crossed and pointedly not looking in their direction.

Celine has about a breath to take it in and then Zoey is off like a rocket.

"Okay so I actually had a stream scheduled for this afternoon that I slightly forgot about but that's why we invented alarms! And I did think about cancelling it, because obviously we're in kind of the middle of a situation here, but we already spent like half the day writing so it's probably a little too late to worry about that? Although I can't actually stream anyway because I don't have my whole setup here and we hit the ferry in kind of a rush and the only real machine in the hanok that could even sort of substitute is Celine's, and she does have a pretty good headset actually for conference calls but obviously she is. Not here to let me on and I think her mouse is possibly broken currently? I cannot game on a trackpad, a line must be drawn somewhere and I am drawing it there."

"Also," Mira adds dryly, "Her Steam library is truly dire."

"She has SpaceChem," says Zoey, loyally, "chat loves SpaceChem."

"I will literally make you that baked Alaska monstrosity you were talking about, from scratch, if Celine actually has SpaceChem installed on that laptop."

"It's not even half a gig! We get decent downstream here now! I could fix that in five minutes!"

"Long story short," drawls Mira, switching her attention to Celine, "she decided to do retro tabletop day instead. She needs to get into the office closet."

"Yes," Zoey agrees brightly, nodding. "I was going to be way more polite about it, but, that."

Celine steps aside, wordlessly, and Zoey bowls past her, pops open the closet, and pulls out a pair of weathered old wood cases, four field kono and a baduk board from where they're half-buried under a cardboard box of yut nori pieces, all of which have been floating around the hanok at least since Eunbi and Hana themselves were trainees.

"We're also going to need more food, if we're going to be here a while," Mira tells Celine, while Zoey juggles the game sets, "so I'm going into town. You should come with me."

Rumi shoots a glance sideways, at that, and Mira's arms are folded under her cool expression, and it's clear in both their body language that it's not a request. Which should be both ridiculous and insulting, but is actually sort of endearing, somehow. It puts her in mind of the twins, trying to throw their height around with Rumi back when they hit their last growth spurt.

And obviously, Celine has nothing better to do.

So she follows Mira out to their canary yellow Ignis and clambers inside.

It's a little cramped, and Celine ratchets the passenger seat back practically half a meter before she has enough leg room that she's not hugging her own knees. She sees Mira shoot a sideways smile at her, at that, like they're in on some kind of tall person joke together, but it's fleeting, and she's deadpan again by the time they're fully on the road. She starts a playlist, not loud enough to prevent conversation but not too quiet to fill the silence, and music flows out into the car that Celine can only describe as a world tour of orchestral metal; there's English, Korean, German, something that must be some variety of Slavic in amongst the power chords.

Mira hums along intermittently, not enough to wake the Honmoon, just idle familiarity. It's mostly pretty good, actually; Celine is just wondering how Mira would react if she turned the radio up, when the younger woman finally speaks.

"So I wouldn't normally ask this." She doesn't glance over, eyes on the truck they're passing. "But who knows what weird Honmoon logic got you here, it might turn out to be relevant."

She pauses, and Celine realizes she's waiting for… permission?

Given the complete lack of context, Celine can only shrug. "Ask what you like, I suppose. Though I reserve the right not to answer."

"Yeah, of course," agrees Mira, a little distracted, but then she's quiet for another minute.

Celine wants to tell her I'm not your Celine, you don't need to be afraid to ask me things, hates that it would make it worse, tries to wait patiently, instead.

"The ring that you're not wearing," Mira finally says. "It's Miyeong's?"

Celine pulls in a sharp breath. She genuinely had no intention of outing this world's Celine to her students, and even after everything – and not without reason – her own instinct at sudden confrontation remains deny. But Mira's not wrong, there's no telling what triggered this swap or what's meant to resolve it, and Miyeong's absence is quite possibly the axis around which every change here turns. So what if her marriage is involved in some strange way?

She finds herself reverting to negotiation tactics, like she's in a tricky work meeting, stalling for time to make a choice.

"What makes you think that?"

Mira doesn't roll her eyes, but there's a distinct unimpressed thread in her voice when she responds, "You call Rumi's brothers your kids, we found you in a puddle on our Miyeong's grave, and let's not get started on Rumi herself. You're not a good liar. Certainly nothing like our Celine," and there's something there, a grain of genuine irritation, and Celine doesn't know whether to be glad that Mira is at least able to hold one thing against this Celine, if only a little, or crushed by yet another way that her counterpart has apparently hurt them.

"And you girls have been discussing this?" she asks, still stalling, instead of addressing any of that.

"Me and Zo," says Mira. "Pretty sure Rumi hasn't noticed a thing." She sounds deeply amused. "Actually, pretty sure it's more that she doesn't want to notice."

Like it's silly, like it's just a passing, adolescent quirk. Like it isn't steel jaws digging sharp into Celine's heart, and she has to pause to breathe again, to remind herself that this isn't her world, this isn't her Rumi, it isn't fair to expect her to want to be Celine's daughter, that she has every right to be uncomfortable with the idea of Celine so deeply in her life when the Celine she knows is so undeserving of being in it at all.

"… you're right," she says, once she thinks she can speak normally, again, match Mira's perception that this is a casual conversation. "It's Mi's. We married almost twenty years ago, now, and raised Rumi and the twins together."

Mira's fingers drum on the steering wheel, not quite in time with the music, like a brief burst of anxiety, but she just sounds idly curious when she asks, "It's legal then? In your Korea?"

"Unfortunately no." Celine rubs at her finger, where her ring should be. "We are federally recognized by the commonwealth of Canada, though."

It earns her a quiet snort of laughter. "I guess I'll remember to update my passport if I ever want to get hitched."

An admission for an admission, to put them on the same level again. It's a move Celine recognizes intimately, has made herself and been reassured by from others a thousand times, but here, in this moment, from this steady young woman, it makes her already knotted stomach drop like a stone.

Because it's not that unusual, Hunters falling in love with Hunters. It's scattered across their whole history, between the lines, for someone who knows where to look. And why wouldn't it be? Hunters are chosen for each other, for how well they match, how easily they can create the harmony that protects the world, and for a Hunter interested in women, how could anyone else compare?

And what does that mean for this world's Rumi, tied soul to soul already to Mira and Zoey? Celine's own Rumi has never been serious about a girl, to her knowledge, but she's made it clear she could be, and is this one more decision taken away from this world's scarred and lonely version of her, one more chain she can't escape?

"Your kids are fine, by the way," says Mira. Through the speakers, someone holds an angelic note along several measures of snarling base, and Celine blinks across the car, the words not quite penetrating the spiraling storm in her mind.

Mira's still watching the road, but she apparently senses she's not getting a verbal response, because she elaborates, mostly sincere, a little cool at the edges but it feels like she's trying not to be,

"I appreciate that you've stopped being a dick about our Celine, but I'm not stupid enough to think you've actually changed your mind that she's some crazy asshole. And if I thought some crazy asshole was hanging out with my wife and kids, I'd be a little worried. So. Just saying, you don't have to be. Celine's good with kids. Not exactly cuddly," she allows. "But she treats them like people, kids are into that. And obviously she's not gonna hurt Miyeong."

Celine's reaction to the first claim can't even be called doubt, it's pure disbelief, but Mira just thanked her for keeping that sort of opinion to herself, so it seems impolitic to say so. And it's true it never occurred to her to worry about Miyeong. How she'll feel about all this, yes. How ashamed Celine will be to face both her soulmates in the wake of her own worst self, absolutely. She's going to spend a long time cleaning up after the other Celine, once she gets home. But there's no version of her who doesn't love Miyeong.

In fact, that's half the problem, and the horror of it digs at her again, needles in her skin, a soft, terrible, "I don't know why she'd ever want to come back."

It's Mira's turn to take a sharp breath, and Celine, belatedly, hears the words that just left her mouth, creeping under her guard on a wave of exhaustion and fear and a loneliness she hasn't felt in decades and nevertheless utterly without excuse, and scrambles to fix it.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean – of course your Celine has a life here, I only –" Useless. "I just miss my home, that's all."

They're just crossing into the city, the music floating on unperturbed in the background, something mournful and driving in German.

"You're not a good liar," Mira repeats, and this time it has teeth.

And there's a moment, Celine searching for some conciliatory response that won't sound like the lie that Mira is absolutely right that it would be, and the song fades out, another rolls in, and Celine notices Mira's breathing.

In for four. Hold for four. Out for six, and she can still hear every number in Sang Hana's stern voice, in her own over and over through the years, and Celine reels, without knowing why.

When Mira speaks, it's incredibly, deliberately calm.

"Celine didn't cry at Eunbi's funeral." Her eyes cut sideways, brief and sharp. "She also didn't speak the whole three days other than the offering. She didn't remember to eat for a week unless we ate with her. Even once she was sort of a person again it took forever for her to smile about anything. It was Zoey who did it. Some pun in English that I'm not fluent enough to get, but Rumi said it was painfully dumb, and Zoey cried when she saw, and Celine doesn't do hugs but she hugged Zoey until she stopped."

Mira's jaw works, briefly.

"So maybe you don't give a shit, because you did your job and walked away two decades ago and you don't remember the first thing about what it means to be a Hunter. But our Celine does. She knows what it means to have a teacher, or be one. She's not going to abandon us, not me and Zoey and sure as hell not Rumi, no matter how tragic you think her scars are or how perfect you think your world is in comparison."

The car pulls to a stop while she speaks, and objectively it's smooth and soft but it feels wildly abrupt. Mira reaches into the backseat, grabs a canvas bag, and tosses it at Celine, voice still calm in the most tightly controlled, not-at-all-actually-calm way.

"Get meat, Celine never buys any when it's just her."

Celine cried at Eunbi’s funeral. So had Miyeong and Sunmi; so had Rumi and so had the twins, who were tiny at the time and only knew that their mothers were upset. And then after the burial itself, Celine had gone to bed fully intending to wallow, and then Seojoon had pulled himself up beside her wanting milk and cuddles and stories, and that had been that. Her family needed her to be present so she picked her way through her sadness back to them. The other version of herself had clearly never learned how to work through her own grief, choosing to rot away in her empty house instead of doing the right thing for Rumi.

The image of her other self leaning on children - children who should have been able to depend on her to take care of them - sits uneasily with the picture she’s been starting to form of the cold, lonely woman she would have become without her family. But the other Celine letting grief swallow her whole until she forgot herself entirely, abandoned any sense of duty or responsibility to the girls in her care– 

Well. She can readily believe that. 

Celine gathers up her purse and unfolds the blue Gallery bag Mira handed her, trying to find exactly what it is that bothers her in Mira’s words. It’s a well-honed trick she mastered with her first therapist and she’s come to rely on it over the years to stop her from reacting without thinking. Dig into the feeling, figure out where it’s really coming from, so she knows how to manage herself.

Her pride isn’t all that bruised by the implication she knows nothing about being a Hunter, she finds. In fact, now that the moment is over, it almost makes her want to laugh - how Mira had thought that was the weak spot worth throwing a jab at, when the Sunlight Sisters had turned the Honmoon golden and Mira’s Celine had left their Honmoon to shrivel away until Gwi-Ma finally destroyed it. The fresh hurt from how funny Mira had found it, how much this Rumi hates the idea of being this Celine’s daughter, is unpleasant but unsurprising, and entirely deserved given what she has come to learn of the woman.

She’s angry, Celine realises, because of Sang Hana.

In her own world, Hana died just two weeks before the twins were born. Celine had missed the funeral. Miyeong, too, had flatly refused to consider leaving Celine when she was heavily pregnant, so Sunmi had been the only Sunlight Sister to attend. For a long time, the two events had been knitted together in her mind - her sons coming into the world just as one of the first people to see anything worth a damn in Celine had to leave. Celine had been convinced, somehow, that it was a kind of necessary rebalancing - that the universe had seen she was too happy and needed to take something away from her, and it had chosen Sang-seonsaengnim, who had been the first person - the very first, in the world - to look at Celine and see that there was something within her worth shaping. 

Celine allows herself to remember that time as she sets about her task. She had wanted, desperately, to enjoy the boys’ first few weeks - in a way that they had all been too scared and stressed to ever really enjoy Rumi’s - and hated herself even more desperately for not feeling it. There had never been that one moment when things clicked into place, not when Hajoon was first placed on her chest, not when Seojoon was handed over to her, not even when Miyeong brought Rumi in to meet her brothers and their little family was complete. It had been hard. For months, it had been hard.

Her counterpart’s cell phone feels heavy in her jacket pocket. Even though it’s been hardly any time - certainly not enough for Sunmi to digest the whole impossible story and come up with any response more substantial than some variation on ‘Unnie WTF??’ - Celine has been wanting to pull it out of her pocket and check the whole drive over here.

Mira’s shock of pink hair is just about visible through the stalls. Celine checks her email app, quickly. There’s no answer from Sunmi yet, but just the sight of her email in the Sent folder and no bounce-back message settles some of her anxiety, knowing that she’s still moving in the right direction.

She misses her wife. She misses her children. And while the other Celine doesn’t seem like a ‘crazy asshole’, as Mira had put it - just the accumulation of a thousand selfish, cowardly impulses Celine had carefully worked to keep away from her loved ones and the other Celine had just surrendered to, every time - Celine cannot imagine how she will even begin to make up for whatever the other woman is saying to them. It must be callous and unfeeling; she can’t imagine any kindness in her other self, not when her students can listen to her talk about her family with such indifference. The world doesn’t care that Miyeong and the boys aren’t in it - fine, Celine isn’t a child who would expect all the clocks to stop forever to mark Mi’s death. But even the people closest to this Celine think it’s just a joke.

Sunmi will understand, the horror of it all, this world without a Miyeong. She’s maybe the only other person who can.

It’s wrong - it’s not fair - that this Rumi doesn’t even know enough to miss Miyeong, has lost every connection to her family.

But. She isn’t going to let herself wallow, not like the other Celine. Celine breathes through the feeling and lets herself out of the car, trying to focus on the present. 

As she walks, she passes people she knows from her own life - the stall with big sacks of black rice, millet, barley, dried beans and lentils; beside her, the fishseller with piles of long, silver galchi, thick slabs of yellowtail, the abalone that has always been Miyeong’s favourite; there, the halmeonis selling fruit and vegetables from their own garden who still remember Celine as an awkward, silent teenager trailing after her teachers. She doesn’t know whether or not to be relieved that she recognises the butcher, Lee Kwang-soo, from her own world. The familiarity just underlines how strange the rest of it is, as though she should be able to glance up and see Miyeong checking the prices, comparing cuts of meat against one another, chatting away with the other customers in that easy, casual way Celine had never really been able to master. She should be able to see the boys buying pork skewers or Rumi tearing into a sugary kkwabaegi. And then Celine does exactly that, glance up, and of course Miyeong and her children are not there and the world is still just as strange and terrible as she knew it would be.

“Good afternoon sajang-nim,” she begins, forcing herself to smile. “I’d like some pork belly, please.”

Celine also asks for some pork bones, thinking that it might be nice to make the girls gogi guksu the way Eunbi taught them, and then - still thinking about that fucking four million won suit in her counterpart’s closet - beef as well, chadol-baegi and shrimp meat and a ribeye each, and why shouldn’t she, after all? It isn’t as though she can’t afford it.

Lee Kwangsoo doesn’t even look the slightest bit surprised at her order, wrapping up some extra short ribs and asking after the girls as he hands over her purchases. It’s the kind of conversation she must have had with him a thousand times - his granddaughter, Minseo, was in the same class as the boys all the way through elementary school but he volunteers nothing about her and Celine can only mumble something indistinct about the girls staying for a few days. He nods at that, and throws in another portion of ribs on top of the others, and Celine feels too wrung out and sad to think about the implications with anything more than a sick, hollow Of course.

The girls are hungry, here. Everyone can see.

The Celine they know, and claim to respect for some godforsaken reason, knows this and lets it happen to them all the same.

Rumi and her friends have made their position clear, even if Celine will never be able to understand how they could forgive this version of herself who is hurting them, and any other form of help she can offer is going to be rebuffed. But they ate, they ate breakfast, they ate lunch, they want to eat meat, apparently - the same voices that have kept Miyeong and Celine from keeping a set of bathroom scales anywhere in their home have not yet taken root in the girls’ heads. Celine can, while she’s here, make sure they all eat.

It feels like nothing. Dust on the scales, how little it should matter against all the other wrongs those girls have been subjected to. But now that she’s started to remember the twins’ birth, it brought it back to her how that had been something to cling to when she felt like she had nothing else - her body was looking after her children, and while her heart was too heavy to find much joy in those early days then she had at least found enough of a routine in nursing the babies, eating well so that her body would be able to care for them, making sure Miyeong and Rumi didn’t have to worry about her. After Miyeong went back to work, Rumi would come home from school and do her homework at the kitchen table while Celine made her something to eat and they would talk about everything and nothing, until one day she’d felt it again. Like sunlight through a grimy window. All that happiness had been there the whole time, just waiting for her to see it.

—--

Running drills has always had this effect on her. Like clearing brambles or stripping back paint, repeating each sequence until they are exactly as they are supposed to be empties out her head. She is entirely her body. Her heartbeat echoing in her ears, her feet stepping the pum and leaving layers of overlapping footprints in the dirt. The warm stretch of her muscles. She could be anyone in the world; she could be nothing at all.

(The thought rises inside her and Celine pushes it away immediately. Ridiculous. Who has she ever been but herself?)

That’s the reason why, at the sound of Miyeong saying my wife - the absurdity of it, as though that could mean something, anything at all - startles a laugh from her before Celine can stop herself. She disguises it as a cough, poorly.

“What? Nothing,” Celine answers, hoping that will be enough for Miyeong. “My world is fine. What would be happening to her?”

“Your ‘fine’ world still has demons, so I’m going to need you to be a little more specific–”

“Rumi and her partners defeated Gwi-Ma,” Celine reminds her. Miyeong, for some reason, has taken another step towards Celine - they’re so close now that Celine can almost feel the warmth of her skin against her own. She’s left feeling suddenly, acutely aware of the sweat making her hair stick to the back of her neck; she feels unclean and foolish and embarrassed, and hates every second of it.

The early morning light softens all the lines around Miyeong’s eyes, left by all the years of laughter and frowns she must have had in this world, and Celine does not see any point in indulging herself by wondering which accounts for the majority. She blinks, and makes herself refocus on the question.

It had been humiliating enough, listening to Seojoon fret over the other Celine’s safety last night. At least he had the excuse of being a child, and one who had never had any occasion to see the Celine he knew handle anything more complicated than laundry. Miyeong, though - Miyeong who had known, who had fought beside Celine, who sang their souls into light along with Sunmi - Miyeong should know what she is capable of. The knowledge that all of this has been forgotten of some whining child of a woman, a version of Celine with every advantage in the world who had decided to waste it getting fat and useless, crying and leaning on the people who should have been able to depend on her, is enough to make her want to scream.

“They won. Rumi won. She freed Mira and Zoey from his influence all alone–”

“Don’t try and distract me,” Miyeong says, before Celine can really start to pick up steam. “You can tell me all about how proud you are of your Rumi later; I need to know what my wife has just walked into. When she gets back, I need to know what she would have faced; I need to be ready–”

Celine needs to be moving again. She needs to go back to the archives, to start running through her forms again, to claw her skin clean off so Miyeong will not be able to stand there looking at it. (Stupid, maudlin– Celine knows. It’s fine.) 

She doesn’t ask “For what?”; there’s no answer she won’t hate.

“No demons,” she says instead. “And even if that is no longer the case, the girls will handle it.”

“That’s– Fine, she won’t need to fight while she’s over there. What else?”

“What else is there in the whole world?” Celine repeats. “Shall I start naming countries and we’ll work our way down?”

She isn’t entirely sure which one of them steps forward that time, but it must happen because Miyeong is there, inside her guard, raising her chin like she expects that to be enough to make Celine back down – and of course it must be, for the coward Miyeong has become accustomed to in this world, but Celine just looks back at her and does not flinch.

Miyeong. Here. The impossibility of it hits her all over again, and Celine keeps herself very still indeed.

“You know that’s not what I meant. Your life, the one my Celine is currently seeing from the inside,” Miyeong is telling her. Celine cannot read her tone but she can still feel something licking around the edges of Miyeong’s voice, grace notes that are allowed to drift gently into the space between the Honmoon’s strings. 

Miyeong did not get dressed before she came outside. She’s wearing what Celine recognises now as the same pyjamas she was wearing yesterday morning, cornflower blue with the cartoon dogs, and Celine can almost see it - Miyeong slipping out of her bedroom, light off, tip-toeing so as not to wake Rumi. Celine used to let Rumi climb into her bed when she was small. Rumi would lie on top of her, all sharp toenails and hot little breath against Celine’s neck, and Celine would stare up at the ceiling and hope that the Honmoon stayed blue enough she wouldn’t need to move before morning. 

Celine remembers that because it feels easier than remembering - yesterday morning, the same pyjamas, the same bed. 

She doesn’t know what Miyeong is remembering. If Celine were Miyeong, she would be thinking about Rumi as a baby, arms and legs spread out like a starfish; she would be remembering you promised and Did you even try? and whatever Sunmi had said to Miyeong in private, in the middle of their kitchen where her Rumi could overhear. She asked me to execute her, but Rumi hadn’t mentioned that in the archives and Sunmi had looked so smug and confident in her assessment of Celine’s story that it’s possible Miyeong still doesn’t know. 

“Start with where she is,” Miyeong is saying now, and it takes Celine a moment to swim against the current of her own thoughts, sift through all the shes to identify the one Miyeong is thinking of.

“The hanok,” she spits out after a second. Petulant. Stupid. She takes another breath, draws her shoulders down and meets Miyeong’s eyes. “If I woke up where she fell asleep, then she probably did the same in my world. So, my bedroom. The same one you have now.”

“So she’ll be in a familiar place.”

Celine feels her face do something. Give away too much. She feels it, and she sees Miyeong’s jaw tense at the sight, and so she hurries to add: “There’s food in the refrigerator. Plenty of gas for the generator. We digitised our archives a few years ago, but if she can’t use the database then Zoey will be able to tell her how to use it.”

“She wouldn’t help?”

“The girls live in Seoul,” she answers stiffly. “Rumi - the one in my world - expected me to call her yesterday, so she will have found out what happened then.”

As though that settles something: “So she won’t be alone.” A little tension bleeds from Miyeong’s posture. Celine watches it happen and feels a familiar violence well up inside her. 

She should apologise, she thinks. For the– Did you even try?, for Rumi. For other things too, if Miyeong needs to bring them up again. Celine could say “I’m sorry” and that would be true, and Miyeong could just apply it as needed to whatever list of faults had dragged her outside before dawn in her blue pyjamas with the little dogs, and then that would be that. But she doesn’t, of course, so they both just stand there feeling terrible at one another with no end in sight.

“What about anyone else?”

“Oh.” Celine considers the question, as though there is any other answer she might give. “There shouldn’t be anything urgent at work. A few emails, but Rumi will be able to handle them - or come up with some suitable explanation as to why I’m unavailable.”

Miyeong waits. For just a few seconds. Looking at Celine the whole time. Celine stares right back at her, breathing steady, face still and clear. She blinks - it takes too long, really, and Celine feels stupid for timing herself, but opening her eyes again takes effort, and the world is unchanged when she does. 

“Celine,” Miyeong says all the same, and this time a trill of concern - or, unforgivably, pity - finds its place in the Honmoon, golden, warm, and entirely foreign. Miiyeong hasn’t had time to brush her hair yet, or maybe it hadn’t occurred to her to do so, used to getting out of bed all sleep-rumpled with hair escaping her braid and not thinking twice about whether this world’s Sunmi, this world’s Celine, can see it. Celine notices it and immediately wishes she hadn’t.

“Celine,” Miyeong says again. Celine’s hands twitch slightly, go to make fists, but that isn’t right. She doesn’t want to fight. Miyeong might have been ready for one when she first came over to speak to her but now she isn’t. “Is that it? Your whole life?”

Celine settles for gripping both her forearms, like she’s trying to hold herself in place. She keeps her hands to herself. She’s fine. She thinks that if she doesn’t answer Miyeong soon, there’s a risk that Miyeong will say her name again and then there won’t be anything left to keep Celine from collapsing. 

When she fails to answer, Miyeong adds, gently, “That sounds… lonely. My Celine doesn’t do well when she’s by herself.”

Does she ever? Celine wants to snap, but– It’s a relief, she decides, to know that Miyeong is thinking of the Celine she knows. The pity is meant for her, not Celine, so Celine doesn’t have to acknowledge it at all.

“Are you at least happy?”

“That,” Celine says, with as much dignity as she can muster. Half-hunched forward, clutching at her own arms. Sweat cooling on her skin. Her voice cracks slightly. “Is not relevant to our current problem.”

Gwi-ma, as the interior voice of shame, can only voice the shame that already exists within someone. During times of emotional crisis (ie Mira and Zoey) or when someone has done something that they ought to be ashamed of (say, ommitting certain facts about an event leading to them gaining a benefit they might not otherwise have), his voice gets much louder.

And it isn't your fault, if he controls you. You didn't have a choice.

And if you didn't have a choice, then what do you have to be ashamed of?

So while it may be a comforting lie for Jinu to tell himself that Gwi-Ma controls people, it's probably more accurate for Gwi-Ma to be talking to them, suggesting courses of action or giving justifications for giving in to your worst, most selfish, shameful impulses.

And when you do give in, the shame from that moment will haunt you forever. You could have chosen differently, after all, but you were weak and selfish, and you deserve everything that happened to you.

(@fakelawyerbug’s deadbeat miyeong au)

Oh that would fuck everyone up

Like on main!Rumi and Celine’s side, they’ve just been dropped into a flower shop au where they’re openly mother and daughter (Rumi wants and hates herself for it) (and so does Celine). They probably don’t even realize the other SLS are alive at first, unless this is one of those variants where Miyeong and Third came stalking Celine to try to pat child support. Fucks them up so much worse when they realize

Like Rumi is 18/19ish.

Db!Rumi and Db!Celine wake up in a high rise that Db!Celine couldn't dream of renting and before they even have a chance to breathe, Celine's assistant (what?) is knocking on the door with a private car (what?) because they're supposed to be running through the debut performance (what?).

(Db!Rumi is also supposed to be debuting in a week but Miyeong and Third had said that it was going to be a smaller venue and to just think of it as a performance review.)

(The honmoon was stable enough with two Sunlight Sisters still active and a scapegoat to absorb the fan backlash. Huntr/x could afford a slow launch.)

Instead, Db!Rumi and Db!Celine see a honmoon in a worse shape than they had ever seen it and a debut that was being billed as the debut of the decade. Fuck.

Meanwhile,

It's the wanting.

She looks through the tiny flowershop and remembers sunny afternoons spent in the garden with Celine, Rumi picking sunflower seeds straight out the centre of the flower to snack on. Chilli peppers Rumi had eventually learned not to snack on. Radishes and garlic and chilli peppers. How Celine would have Rumi sit on her knee and guide her hands as together they dug up the weeds and got rid of the pests, made sure every bad and harmful thing was gone.

There are things in this world that Rumi knows must have been her influence, her wants, out on display for Celine to see. People calling Celine her mother without hesitation, or deference to the ghost Rumi had never known. Baby photos of Rumi on display on all the walls. A child's stick-figure drawing tacked up on the noticeboard downstairs labelled FOR EOMMA LOVE RUMI XXXXX. Notes and cards in Celine's handwriting that she's signed... not as Celine.

And of course, because Rumi's life is never simple, now Celine is with her in this world, looking at all the pictures and listening to everyone talk about how proud Celine must be of her daughter and--

Ugh. Celine wouldn't even be mean about it, finding out that Rumi still wants that closeness, that acknowledgement that they are family and Celine is the only mother Rumi has ever really had, and even if Celine doesn't want her as a daughter then there's at least something there that matters to her on some level beyond just a promise to a dead woman.

But she'd be gentle. And she'd explain. The same way she'd explained to Rumi why Rumi didn't have a mother or father like the rest of her classmates did. Why Rumi wouldn't get to have a baby sister or brother. And it would be a thousand times worse than being eight years old because Rumi's an adult. And she knows.

She knows.

What Rumi does not know: That at the exact time she is cringing at the thought of her longest, most secret wish being so blatantly on display to the one person who has always carefully refused it, there is another woman looking at this world with huge, ashamed eyes.

The neighbours who call Rumi her little girl. The photo of a baby wearing a badly-pilled jumper. The girl's bedroom with her shoes worn almost through on the sole, school books with another child's name in the cover carefully crossed through. The way Rumi had looked at the artwork and said 'Eomma' and Celine had thought, stupidly, that Rumi meant--

It's humiliating. Knowing that Rumi can see this about her, what Celine had been so careful not to impose on Rumi but had never been able to quite stop herself from wanting all the same. Especially now, with the knowledge of all she had done to hurt Rumi. What right does she have?

And deadbeat!Rumi had dreamed, once or twice, about a high rise apartment and private cars and the like—she grew up hungry, of course she did. But she’d stopped wanting that a long time ago

Having her eomma holding her hand as she goes to perform? That dream is still alive and well. She’s just not so sure about everything else going on here

Celine just keeps leaning over and telling her to play along, telling her to keep her head held high and not to let anyone think she might be confused, advice as much for herself as Rumi. She’s a florist! She hasn’t been able to do so much as sing karaoke in nearly twenty years without it being a smear campaign for the tabloids! What the fuck!

It’s not even a question for main!Mira and Zoey that the people who step out of that car aren’t Celine and Rumi: Rumi’s posture is off, a little hunched, a little braced for a scrap that isn’t coming, and Celine looks uncertain.

(Also, she’d buttoned her shirt all the way up. Like she’s expecting to have to wear a tie or something????)

And then, well… the demon disguised as Rumi calls Celine Eomma

("We should, like, get them somewhere out of the way, shouldn't we?" Zoey whispers. "To interrogate them about where Rumi really is?"

"Before we end up going on stage with the fake," Mira agrees - and despite the whole what the fuck, where's our Rumi you demon assholes? of the situation, they pause to snicker at the thought of Gwi-Ma actually trying to infiltrate the kpop industry. Stupid demon probably doesn't even know how to sing.)

But the imposters are at least a little bit more situationally aware than their very bad Rumi-and-Celine impersonations would suggest. The one posing as Rumi plants herself next to the one posing as Celine, eyes narrowed as she watches staff members greet Celine with a bow.

"That's enough, jagiya," the not-Celine says after Jinkyeong-ssi almost bursts into tears under the weight of "Rumi'"s sharp look (Mira winces to think about how bad Rumi's gonna feel when they rescue her; the real Rumi has known Celine's assistant since she was a kid and Mira kind of has the impression that she might have been the closest thing Rumi had to a big sister). Then Celine - holy fuck, the demons were not trying at all, were they? - just bows back to Hong-ssi.

"I apologise," "Celine" is saying. "My daughter's a little nervous, and she doesn't mean to be impolite - does she, Rumi-ya?"

"Rumi" pulls a face but does at least take the hint and bow. "I'm very sorry to behave so rudely, seonsaengnim," she says, giving an awkward, wide-mouthed smile as she does. "I hope you can forgive me!"

Mira and Zoey watch "Celine" wait until they think they're alone and then turn towards Rumi with a face that is so earnestly disappointed Mira and Zoey both feel it in their own guts. Even though it isn't directed at them, even though the real Celine has never looked at them like that.

"Rumi-ya," the "Celine" demon is saying. (Which-- Weird, right? People are around them but Zoey's pretty sure that she and Mira are the only people listening, and also that their very cool and sneaky tactic of just hiding behind a clothing rail is enough to trick all but the smartest of demons. And these two don't seem very smart, if that's the best impression they can do.) "What has gotten into you?"

"Rumi" snarls, "Everyone just keeps smiling and bowing to you, 'Oh, yes, Celine-nim, right away', like they haven't spent years calling you names. They're all so fake--"

("You're one to talk, imposter," Zoey mutters. Mira digs her sharp elbow into her side to shut her up.)

"Be that as it may," "Celine" says. "I can fight my own battles, little cub."

And then Celine - the demon Celine - the fake, whatever, it's still weird seeing the thing wearing Celine's face do this - just presses a kiss to Rumi's forehead with a loud mwah that Zoey is sure every single person who has ever met the real Celine pulls the exact same face at.

Not like. Disgusted. Just-- Oh, that shouldn't be happening.

"Rumi" just scrubs at her forehead and whines "Eomma"--

And that is when Zoey falls through the rack to the other side where she just kind of stares at them both.

"Eomma?!"

That brings about the full weight of the World's Worst Rumi Impersonator's anger crashing down directly on her, as "Rumi" just sort of jerks her head around, sees that it's Zoey and straight up bares her teeth.

"You have a problem with that?"

----

And in the other world, Celine is mentally cataloguing: - the dance shoes with holes in, that someone had to wear long after they needed to be replaced - the school uniform, not a good school which might offer Rumi the sort of opportunities she deserved - the financial statements she skims through, adds up the average income against the rent, supplies, the cost of singing lessons and the taekwondo hagwon and food for three active teenagers

And, most damningly of all, the lack of any pictures of Miyeong at all.

Is that what the Honmoon is trying to warn her of, here? The consequences of her wanting laid bare - Miyeong, entirely erased from Rumi's life, Celine taking everything that should have by rights belonged to Miyeong and wasting her money on some pipe dream that has done nothing but take opportunities away from Rumi, leave her poor and hungry and cold and without anything of Miyeong's to hold on to, all on a selfish whim.

"Can we just... not talk about this? Please, Celine?" Rumi had said, when they found the card the other Rumi had written to her Celine for Parents' Day.

(The other Rumi had not called Celine Celine.)

(@fakelawyerbug’s deadbeat miyeong au)

Oh that would fuck everyone up

Like on main!Rumi and Celine’s side, they’ve just been dropped into a flower shop au where they’re openly mother and daughter (Rumi wants and hates herself for it) (and so does Celine). They probably don’t even realize the other SLS are alive at first, unless this is one of those variants where Miyeong and Third came stalking Celine to try to pat child support. Fucks them up so much worse when they realize

Like Rumi is 18/19ish.

Db!Rumi and Db!Celine wake up in a high rise that Db!Celine couldn't dream of renting and before they even have a chance to breathe, Celine's assistant (what?) is knocking on the door with a private car (what?) because they're supposed to be running through the debut performance (what?).

(Db!Rumi is also supposed to be debuting in a week but Miyeong and Third had said that it was going to be a smaller venue and to just think of it as a performance review.)

(The honmoon was stable enough with two Sunlight Sisters still active and a scapegoat to absorb the fan backlash. Huntr/x could afford a slow launch.)

Instead, Db!Rumi and Db!Celine see a honmoon in a worse shape than they had ever seen it and a debut that was being billed as the debut of the decade. Fuck.

Meanwhile,

It's the wanting.

She looks through the tiny flowershop and remembers sunny afternoons spent in the garden with Celine, Rumi picking sunflower seeds straight out the centre of the flower to snack on. Chilli peppers Rumi had eventually learned not to snack on. Radishes and garlic and chilli peppers. How Celine would have Rumi sit on her knee and guide her hands as together they dug up the weeds and got rid of the pests, made sure every bad and harmful thing was gone.

There are things in this world that Rumi knows must have been her influence, her wants, out on display for Celine to see. People calling Celine her mother without hesitation, or deference to the ghost Rumi had never known. Baby photos of Rumi on display on all the walls. A child's stick-figure drawing tacked up on the noticeboard downstairs labelled FOR EOMMA LOVE RUMI XXXXX. Notes and cards in Celine's handwriting that she's signed... not as Celine.

And of course, because Rumi's life is never simple, now Celine is with her in this world, looking at all the pictures and listening to everyone talk about how proud Celine must be of her daughter and--

Ugh. Celine wouldn't even be mean about it, finding out that Rumi still wants that closeness, that acknowledgement that they are family and Celine is the only mother Rumi has ever really had, and even if Celine doesn't want her as a daughter then there's at least something there that matters to her on some level beyond just a promise to a dead woman.

But she'd be gentle. And she'd explain. The same way she'd explained to Rumi why Rumi didn't have a mother or father like the rest of her classmates did. Why Rumi wouldn't get to have a baby sister or brother. And it would be a thousand times worse than being eight years old because Rumi's an adult. And she knows.

She knows.

What Rumi does not know: That at the exact time she is cringing at the thought of her longest, most secret wish being so blatantly on display to the one person who has always carefully refused it, there is another woman looking at this world with huge, ashamed eyes.

The neighbours who call Rumi her little girl. The photo of a baby wearing a badly-pilled jumper. The girl's bedroom with her shoes worn almost through on the sole, school books with another child's name in the cover carefully crossed through. The way Rumi had looked at the artwork and said 'Eomma' and Celine had thought, stupidly, that Rumi meant--

It's humiliating. Knowing that Rumi can see this about her, what Celine had been so careful not to impose on Rumi but had never been able to quite stop herself from wanting all the same. Especially now, with the knowledge of all she had done to hurt Rumi. What right does she have?

Then Zoey arrives and Celine does the same thing all over again, except with a Californian teen who keeps insisting that she knows, her Health class watched a video and she's aware of the basics, but Celine keeps going until Zoey goes and finds the other two and says in a slightly-awed voice "Kang Celine of the Sunlight Sisters just talked to me about how I would go about getting some Plan B. How is this my life" while Rumi hides her face in a cushion and screams

And then they go and move out into their trainee apartment and Celine makes a point of telling them where the nearest pharmacist is, how to handle any medications discretely, and (before she lets herself out) that she has made sure there are plenty of condoms (a collective gasp of horror from all three girls; Celine is not allowed to use the word condom, much less in connection to the three of them, and probably shouldn't even be allowed to know what they are at all if Rumi had her way).

They open the bathroom cabinet, and indeed find two boxes of condoms in there.

"We have cleaners, Celine," Rumi grumbles. "This is a scandal waiting to happen."

"19 and 20 year olds found with condoms, that's worth breaking an NDA over?"

"Ugh."

Then they go into their new bedrooms and start to unpack, and Rumi opens up the drawer in her nightstand to put away some of her favourite fuzzy bedsocks. And finds another box of condoms.

The slightly hysterical laughter from both the other rooms suggests she is not the only one.

"It's sweet!" Zoey insists later. "She wants us to be safe!"

This totally counts as a mirror mirror ask 👍

I'm imagining Sarang with one of these lights

Imagine the duck collection slowly seeping into the rest of Huntr/x’s fandom. Little duck pin badges on Rumi’s lanyard, a photo of Mira holding up two duck stuffed toys and carefully considering the two, an Instagram live in which Zoey gets derailed from her answer about new songs and instead tells 12000 viewers about mandarin ducks and their eclipse plumage. Fans going “… I guess we like ducks now? Duck mascot time!!”

Sarang finding out about wedding ducks and looking around at all the duck-themed gifts her mother (she has one!) and unnies (she has three!) have given her and seeing every one as an extension of the same question- “We want you, we choose you, be family with us”.

And after, when she was tired and the demon was sore and exhausted, she would sit in the sun and the grass and the demon would get to watch the world. And the ducks in the pond would dart around and duck their heads under and squawk at each other and (this was a very bad thought, back then, one she didn’t really let herself have) they would fly away whenever they liked

And when Sarang got her very first duck, a squishy thing that is bright yellow like a duckling and soft in her hands, she thought of all those ducks and she thought of Celine’s arm around her shoulders as they walked between worlds and she did not know how to say those words, as she dropped to her knees and pressed her forehead against the floor because a thing like her did not deserve this, and clearly it was a mistake

And now she has more than is reasonable to count (she knows the exact number)

Sarang wants to be able to read about Jemima, and she wants to be able to talk about the story with Zoey, but she's still learning and Sarang doesn't want conversations about the book to become something about Zoey teaching her. Her unnie is sharing this thing she loved with Sarang. If it becomes a series of reading lessons, it is not sharing any more. It would be about what Sarang has learned, not what they both liked, and Sarang does not want that. She wants this thing to be equal between them.

So she goes to Rumi, even though she knows that Rumi will not keep this a secret from Zoey. And Rumi sits with her and she reads the story to Sarang, all about how Jemima is tricked by Mr. Fox, who lets Jemima sleep on top of feathers and collects herbs to cook with, and then Jemima is rescued and goes back to her home on the farm and that is the happy ending.

After the story is done, Rumi puts it to one side and says, "Maybe don't ask Celine to read this one to you just yet."

Sarang knows enough - the things Celine had thought, how she wanted to keep them safe - to nod. "But she's not like a fox, though," she adds loyally. "He's supposed to be charming."

Rumi finds that very funny, even though Sarang hadn't really meant it to be, and then they get distracted talking about the difference between charming and manipulative, and how Sarang could tell them apart.

They both talk about the book with Zoey, because Sarang doesn't want Zoey to think that she doesn't like her gift, her special book, and Rumi offers to help explain when the words feel too much. And Zoey just cringes and says, "Oh noooo, I thought I was doing so well by avoiding The Ugly Duckling..." and then, of course, Sarang asks about the other duck story that Zoey did not tell her about, and then she reads The Ugly Duckling and decides that it is a better book than Jemima Puddle-Duck, because the animals look like real animals and do not wear clothes, but it is not really about a duck so it cannot be a very good duck story.

Sarang puts both books away on her bookshelf, which is slowly filling with books and photo albums and souvenirs from days out with her family. And they stay there, for weeks, until Celine offers to practice reading with Sarang and takes Jemima Puddle-Duck from the shelf before Sarang can stop her.

Sarang reads it, Celine helping her sound out some of the harder words but otherwise letting Sarang take the lead until they reach the part when Kep saves Jemima but they are not yet back at the farm, and Rumi's warning is sounding so loud in Sarang's head she has to close it and then take Celine's hands in hers (Sarang is allowed, Celine has told her - Sarang will always be allowed) and say, as furiously as she can, "You are not a charming Mr. Fox."

Celine blinks. She does not laugh, and Sarang feels how much she loves her mother bubble up inside her so strong she can taste it.

"And you are not a Jemima Puddle-Duck," Celine tells her, and Sarang nods very quickly because she is not a duck at all. She is a person. She has an ID card to prove it.

"You gave me a family," Sarang says, like Kep but not really. "You brought me home."

"Sarang, uri ttal," Celine says, and holds out her arms for a hug, which Sarang gives to her happily. Celine is asking! For a hug from Sarang! She wants Sarang to be close to her, and Sarang wants the same thing, and they can both share the wanting and the holding and the closeness for as long as they like!

They do, and then Celine smooths down Sarang's hair and runs her thumb over an imaginary crease in Sarang's t-shirt and then smiles. "Are you hungry? I'll get you some fruit."

"Then more reading?"

This totally counts as a mirror mirror ask 👍

I'm imagining Sarang with one of these lights

Imagine the duck collection slowly seeping into the rest of Huntr/x’s fandom. Little duck pin badges on Rumi’s lanyard, a photo of Mira holding up two duck stuffed toys and carefully considering the two, an Instagram live in which Zoey gets derailed from her answer about new songs and instead tells 12000 viewers about mandarin ducks and their eclipse plumage. Fans going “… I guess we like ducks now? Duck mascot time!!”

Sarang finding out about wedding ducks and looking around at all the duck-themed gifts her mother (she has one!) and unnies (she has three!) have given her and seeing every one as an extension of the same question- “We want you, we choose you, be family with us”.

So both @the-fallen-blue and I have said in the past that if it's not written in the story, we consider it fair game (and as far as I'm concerned, that's the whole joy of collaborative writing - I get to be introduced to so many new ideas and different perspectives that I wouldn't get writing by myself) so anything I say below is only fixed when it gets written in the story.

(I'll also add the caveat that the dream to nightmare world in the main storyline with blue is slightly different from its incarnation in the threeway swap world where @zoloteh-volossya suggested that Miyeong and Jeongho's relationship was not a particularly happy one and that's feeding into Miyeong's reaction to mirror!Rumi. That Miyeong says she used to think there were nice demons but she was wrong, so to me that suggests that Jeongho hurt her in some way, and Miyeong thinks of him as having been tricking her by pretending to be nice.) As far as the main dream to nightmare, I think the following parts are important to how both Celines would think about Jeongho:

Jeongho is a demon. Miyeong might not have consciously made a choice, but Celine had a lot of internalised homophobia (which only one of them ever worked through) and thought that kissing/touching/loving women was in some way corrupting or harmful to them. Seeing a woman she loved in the arms of a literal demon just underlines how disgusting Celine's desires really are.

Jeongho is the reason Sunmi leaves SLS. Miyeong tells them both that she is pregnant and going to have a baby with her demon boyfriend, and both Celine and Sunmi are incredibly hurt. This risks everything the three of them have worked so hard to build, and it hurts that Miyeong wouldn't talk to them sooner. Sunmi walks out and Celine stays with Miyeong but hurts, visibly, the whole time.

Miyeong's pregnancy with Rumi is not a happy time. SLS all feel hurt and angry with one another for various reasons - Sunmi hates Miyeong for putting them in that position and hates Celine for staying with Miyeong, choosing Miyeong over Sunmi when Miyeong was the one who betrayed them first. Miyeong regrets hurting her sisters but she does not want to be ashamed of her baby, especially knowing that the world will already treat her harshly as a single mother. Celine hates herself more than she hates the other two, but she's hurting as well.

During Miyeong's pregnancy, Celine does get to know Jeongho a little. What I think is true, although this has not been explicitly stated so collaborators are welcome to write something different, is that main!Celine chose not to tell Rumi her father's name or anything about him as a person. Alt!Celine had enough time with Jeongho engaging in relatively prosocial behaviour to, if not look past the demonhood, at least pity him on some level. Main!Celine either did not see that or recontextualised it due to the circumstances of Miyeong's death.

So why is it different between the two worlds? Again, not explicitly established but I think there's a way of making all three worlds connect together - the main world, the alt!world and the threeway swap alt!world. And it comes down to Miyeong's death.

This generation's Hunters are separated and in hiding while one of their number recovers from recently giving birth. The Honmoon has been growing so strong under them that if Gwi-Ma's forces do not strike now, they may never get another opportunity.

The demons are going to launch an attack, and Jeongho - who still bears Gwi-Ma's marks, who can still be controlled by him - knows where the most vulnerable Hunter is hiding.

In the alt!world, Jeongho tells them both that Gwi-Ma is trying to use him to kill Miyeong before the Honmoon can turn golden. He can't stay with them as Gwi-Ma is doing everything he can to seize control of Jeongho, and he can't go back to the demon realm without being tortured, tricked or tempted into giving them up either. His control is slipping and there's only one way out that lets him stay himself, stay the kind of man he would have wanted to be for his family.

Jeongho dies at their hands. They remember him at Seollal and Chuseok and eventually come to see him as a tragic warning of what the patterns will end up doing to Rumi if they don't act quickly to save her. Celine doesn't ever love him but she had a kind of familiarity through being around him when he was near Miyeong and Rumi, even though she seethed with jealousy the entire time and hated herself for it, and she does love Rumi, so she can't hate him.

In the main!world, Jeongho gives them up to Gwi-Ma. Demons attack them and kill Miyeong while Celine escapes with baby Rumi. Jeongho is part of the force that attack their little house, and Celine feels nothing as her blade bites into her neck. There is simply too much else that needs to be done for her to gloat. In the aftermath, Celine realises that Jeongho was amongst those fighting against them. She tells herself that Rumi is better off for not knowing anything about the man who betrayed them all - better that she should think her parents were star-struck lovers on opposite sides, than the conclusion she came to which was that Jeongho had been manipulating them from the very start.

Dude is a demon. Not healed, like Rumi, which no one in either universe knew was possible; purple, like Jinu. He would, for most of the time they knew him, have been the charming but selfish asshole dudebro you wish your friend would stop giving second chances to.

alt!Celine in the two-person swap considers him a person, and has the same amount of hostility toward him that she might any other ex of Miyeong's.

main!Celine doesn't think he deserves for Rumi to even know his name; her hostility toward him is a lot more like what we'd expect from a Hunter for a demon.

So at least from Celine's perspective, in the rainbow universe he was at best a shithead, at worst a monster; in the golden universe, he was at worst a shithead and at best did something really redeeming, in the end. Which could be about anything but why wouldn't it be about Miyeong, who he is most closely linked to narratively and whose presence or absence is the single major difference between universes? It makes a lot of sense if the reason for that difference is whether Jeongho contributed to her death (and is hence unforgivable), or her survival (which could be redeeming, but potentially not redeeming enough if there was a betrayal first).

Miyeong is cross-legged on the floor, face-down on the coffee table when Sunmi finds her.

Sunmi settles down, kitty-corner, on the old blue couch, and waits.

"… she's so gorgeous," Miyeong says, eventually, like Sunmi dragged it out of her with a crowbar instead of just sitting nearby. "And so strong. And so careful. And so dedicated. And so good with the kids."

And main!Celine lands first in mirror!universe (picks up Sarang), then in alt!universe (maybe the golden Honmoon burns Sarang? And Celine has to spend the entire time holding Sarang up so she isn't touching any surface that hosts the Honmoon) before finally getting back to main!universe.

Meanwhile alt!Celine starts in main!universe (freaks out), then the mirror!universe with an empty kennel and a despondent Zomira (freaks out Even More) before crash landing back in alt!universe.

Main!Celine and Alt!Celine are both incredibly traumatized and handling it with varying degrees of emotional intelligence. The jury is out on how Mirror!Celine would handle it (up to you). Mirror!Zomira hate themselves and Mirror!Celine. Alt!Miyeong & family now have horrible horrible context for what Mirror!Celine actually meant when she fed them her sob story, and have met two very different versions of their Maman. Meanwhile Main!Huntrix are just happy to get their Celine back and have a brand new (also horribly traumatized) little sister. Sarang has had a very confusing week and doesn't really want her new Celine to stop carrying her absolutely everywhere.

Celine getting pinball machined through the multiverse🤣

"Hello." Celine smiles. "Mira and... Zoé, was it?"

"Zoey," corrects the pink haired one (how embarrassing, she mixed up which girl had which name) as the black haired one (Mira?) says, "You're not our Celine." There is a tinge of relief in her voice.

"I'm afraid not." Celine looks around but doesn't see... "Where's Rumi?"

Mira's eyes well up with tears. Zoey grabs her in a hug, her long pink hair swaying with the force of the movement. After a moment, Zoey's eyes also water, and then both of them burst out crying.

Oh dear. Ignoring the sinking feeling in her gut, Celine bundles the two girls into the angeori and coaxes the full story out of them.

The full story is awful. Celine sits in horror as the girls recount the depths of the depravity she is capable of sinking to, the cruelties she could have inflicted on Rumi if it hadn't been for Miyeong, the shape that her daughter would have been twisted into if it weren't for the golden Honmoon. (She is shamefully relieved that another Celine, presumably the Celine whose world she just came from, took this world's Rumi with her. That Celine has experience with a demonic Rumi in a way that she just does not.)

What Celine does have experience with, though, is dealing with distressed teenagers. She will get these young Hunters situated as best she can before she is yanked out of this world once more.

First things first - getting them away from her other self.

[Cue the conversation from the previous post]

-----------------------------------------------

Rumi has never seen a demon before, so it takes her a moment to connect the patterns, the claws, the odd hair color (so similar to what her own had once been) to demonhood. She has a moment to gape - why is this woman who is not her maman embracing a demon? And then this version of maman is moving, and all Rumi can do is scramble to follow her.

Despite carrying an entire demon, the new imposter sets an impressive pace as she marches straight up the mountain. She doesn't answer any questions as she goes, so Rumi, Eomma, Sunmi-imo, Hajoon, and Seojoon end up just trailing awkwardly after her. From this vantage point, they watch as the back of her white button-down stains red with the blood that trickles down from where the demon's claws have sunken into her shoulders.

Finally, after nearly an hour of hiking, not-maman's strength finally appears to fail her and she staggers over to sit on a stump, perching the demon delicately on her lap. Rumi is huffing and puffing as she arrives moments later and can finally take a proper look at them both.

Not-maman has more grey in her hair than either maman or the previous alternate-maman, but is otherwise unremarkable. The demon, on the other hand, is very remarkable - it's Rumi's first time seeing one. Patterns very much like the ones she vaguely remembers having cover her whole body. Her hair is purple, like Rumi's used to be. The similarities end there, though - the demon's hands and feet are likewise purple, her fingers and toes taper to sharp points, and behind the muzzle Rumi can see small tusks jutting out of her mouth. Is this what she would have turned into if it weren't for the golden Honmoon? The previous not-maman had said that in her timeline Rumi had become a full demon, is that what happened here?

The previous not-maman had told horror stories of what demon-Rumi had been like (and it had made Rumi a bit uncomfortable, but that's natural when talking about a timeline where you become a demon, right?) But that demon had mauled a Hunter, and this demon is obviously just as dangerous - she's wearing the same muzzle as the other not-maman had described, and has thoroughly shredded this not-maman's back even as she carried her up a mountain.

But on the other hand... that's her, right? And like, she hasn't behaved aggressively, other than the clawing. Her arms are pretty badly burnt where they had touched the ground. Rumi would want a hug from her maman if she'd been burnt that badly (she wants a hug from her maman now). Maybe she's just in too much pain to realize the damage she did? Now that not-maman has stopped moving all rbe demon has done is curl up in her lap, occasionally snuffling piteously.

The demon turns towards her and she can't help herself from jerking back in disgust at the sight of slitted yellow eyes looking out of her own face, disfigured with patterns. The demon shrinks back from her gaze, burying her face in not-maman's shoulder again.

""Rumi?" says not-maman.

"Yeah?"

Seeing Miyeong - not just alive and well, but in love with her own Celine, raising the daughter she should have had - has been beautiful but emotional, too. More than once she's caught herself looking at Miyeong's Rumi, whole and unblemished and exactly as she ought to be, and wondered about what could have been, if she had been able to drive the demon out sooner.

It would have been nice, she thinks. To see Miyeong's little girl growing up. To be able to keep her safe and make sure she knows how much her mother would have loved her.

Three girls are waiting under the boughs of the tree. Celine is gratified to recognise Mira and Zoey at once, but the sight of the third has her on guard immediately.

"Celine?" Zoey asks. "Please be ours, please be ours..!"

"Or at least one which isn't going to cry everywhere," Mira mutters.

The demon takes a step closer. "Hey, Celine," it says, reaching one of its pattern-marked hands towards her arm. "Let's get you inside."

---

Zoey and Mira hold each other as they cry, and Celine listens. Perhaps it would be harder, if she had seen the girls do what they are confessing to. If she had seen this world's version of her daughter treated like an animal.

As it is, their Rumi is some place safe. Celine has to believe that - has to trust Mira's insistence the other other Celine was horrified and had taught them they were wrong to let it happen, so it (she, I mean she, I'm so sorry, I promise I know she's a person now..!) - Rumi must be safe.

These kids, she can help.

"What about your families? When we report Celine, will you be able to go back to live with them?"

Both girls wince and cling to each other again, and with that Celine understands exactly how the other Celine had been able to get her claws into the pair so completely.

"OK, then," she tells them both. "That feels like a good place for us to start."

---

"I wasn't staring," the dark-haired Rumi tries to object, pouting in a way that makes her look much younger than she is. Celine doesn't dignify that with a response; she can feel the girl's breath in hot, sharp puffs of air against her collar bone that seem to be getting more jagged.

"It's OK, sweetheart," Miyeong is saying, and Celine - without thinking about it - turns her head to see Miyeong comforting not the child in Celine's arms but the other Rumi. Miyeong hugs her as though she's the one hurting, and Sunmi hugs Miyeong, and it is Celine - still - and Celine's hands, which have hurt this child so badly already, who has no choice but to quietly stroke the child's back and wait for her to calm.

"Would it be too much to ask if you happened to bring a first aid kit?"

"We weren't expecting you to drag us hiking, so no--" Miyeong says, hotly, only to break off as Sunmi tosses a small travel kit she fishes out from her backpack.

"Been a while since I've needed my go-bag, unnie."

Celine nods. That would make sense, she guesses. All three Sunlight Sisters alive, and apparently unbroken, and a golden Honmoon wrapped around them all. She wants to look over towards Rumi, sulking in her mother's arms; she wants to fall onto her knees in front of Miyeong and beg for her forgiveness.

She settles for taking one hand off the child's back - as she does, the girl stirs, unconsciously trying to chase the contact, and it makes her heart sore to see just how desperate this child must have been left for affection - and unzipping the first aid kit.

"Here," Sunmi offers, stepping forward to kneel by her side. "Let me."

Then Sunmi's hands are on Celine's shoulders, trying to look at the cuts under her torn shirt, and Celine can't quite keep her voice even as she asks "What are you doing?"

The girl - the almost-Rumi in her arms - has been burned.

Sunmi blinks. Refocuses. And then takes out the burn gel and applies it to the girl's arms. It appears to give her some relief, at least; after a moment the girl's shaking grows less pronounced and she drops her head from where it's pressed into the side of Celine's neck to rest against her sternum instead.

"Do I want to know why you brought your pet demon universe-hopping?"

The girl does not visibly react to being called a pet demon. Celine hates herself for having done that to her, and hates Sunmi for bringing it up, and hates herself all over again for thinking she could get away with hiding this shameful secret from the people who most need to know.

The demon stops - it even manages to pretend to look hurt, but it'd have to be skilled at acting in order to have pulled this charade off - and does not advance further.

"OK, so, NOT our Celine," says Zoey. Which has very disturbing implications - is this world's Celine bewitched, or did she make the mistake of looking at the demon child and only seeing the human it could have been? Either way, her Hunters do not seem bothered at all to be standing next to a demon. She needs more information on exactly what is happening here. Are they being controlled or have they been criminally misguided by their Celine?

"No," she says, managing to keep her voice cool and even. "You seem a bit older than my Hunters. What year is it?"

That sets Zoey off (it's 2025, and she now knows a great deal about the many many things that will happen in the coming five years. Once she returns to her own world she will have to make some timely investments). As that conversation is ongoing (despite her age and presumed idol career, this Zoey has not been taught to control the more overbearing aspects of her personality) the demon ushers them into the hanok and the Hunters obey it.

That's fine (it's fine, she can play along for now, until she finds out what exactly is going on here). Once inside, she takes her leave, retreats to her room (locks the door), and pulls out her phone.

She finds what she's looking for with just a little digging - a video of Mira and Zoey attempting to take down the demon on stage that suddenly cuts to black, a poorly explained 'reconciliation' afterwards, confused reports of an impromptu concert featuring a giant fire (Gwi Ma!!! It must be!!!), and, most damningly, reports of thousands of mysteriously disappeared people over the past few weeks.

What has happened is apparent: the Hunters caught onto the demon's manipulations, but it managed to enthrall them somehow and summon its true master into this world. With the Hunters compromised and the Honmoon corrupted, Gwi-Ma is free to gorge himself as he pleases.

Celine must fix this before she leaves.

------------------------

Shin Byeongmin (aka 'Bobby') is one of the best managers in the business. Celine came into contact with him during an incident where one of the girls in his group was outed - he'd reached out to her organization as he fought like hell to protect his charge from being dismissed and to keep the group above water. It was touch and go for a while there (god, Celine loathes the idol industry), but thanks to Bobby's indefatigable efforts and with the weight of the Sunlight Sisters behind them they'd managed to pull through.

That's the sort of dedication and support these girls need right now, and thankfully no one has realized what a gem that man is in this world yet - his profile shows him as currently between jobs. He sounds thrilled when she gives him a call, and is more than happy to arrange to meet up in Seoul the next day.

"So now what?" asks Mira, in a tone of voice that would seem petulant if Celine couldn't see the fear undergirding her every action. "Who is this guy?"

"You girls shouldn't try to handle this all on your own. You need an adult you can trust, and I would trust Bobby with my own children. He'll do right by you, no matter what happens."

He'd better - she only has three days here, and she must fix this before she leaves.

------------------------

"I kept her chained up in a kennel," Celine confesses. The girl whines, and she brings one hand up to gently stroke the back of her head. "I don't think I even gave her a name."

"What," says Sunmi.

Celine looks over to Miyeong. "She needs a mother to give her all the love she deserves, that she should have received. I have been intolerably cruel to her." The girl whines again, louder this time. Celine can feel the hot puffs of her breath and the cool metal bars of the muzzle as she shoves her face into Celine's chest and throws her arms around her torso, claws sinking into the skin of her back again. Celine carefully adjusts the girl's position in her lap so she isn't at risk of falling off into the golden Honmoon.

Miyeong looks justifiably disturbed, and hugs her Rumi tighter to herself. "Is that why she's wearing a muzzle?" she asks.

"Maman," says Rumi with a twinge of annoyance in her voice. "Don't you remember? The previous version of maman said she had to put a muzzle on the demon I became after it mauled a Hunter."

"An utter falsehood!" Celine snaps, appalled. The girl flinches at her vehemence, and she rocks her gently until she calms again. "You were never at risk of being a demon, Rumi. You are a person. This one, too-" she places an arm on the girl's back and draws her closer to her chest "-is a person, not a demon. My Rumi, even at the end, when she looked like this, was a person and acted as a person."

Sunmi and Miyeong share a glance. "Your Rumi?"

At least this version of Celine is still properly a Hunter, Mira thinks with a little shudder. The first doppelganger had been so... leaky and clearly horrified by everything about their lives; this one, who knows they're all Hunters, won't be falling over herself to apologise for their own Celine's actions.

"Celine?" Mira holds her hand up in greeting. The woman's eyebrows draw together for half a beat before smoothing out again.

"Mira." New Celine looks around. "You're by yourself?"

"Zoey went to buy some more things now it looks like we're staying, and Rumi pulled pack mule duty," Mira explains. This Celine's expression does not change, exactly, at that but something in her face stills at Mira's words.

All three Celines look subtly different to one another - the grey in their hair, the creases around their eyes and mouth. But they are similar enough that Mira - who had learned here, with their own Celine, that she had better options than lashing out at the others; who had been dragged outside to run laps or spar whenever she'd forgotten that until the physical exertion had chased all the anger out of her - still wants to trust her.

It's the other parts - the parts that had never really stopped being her mother's daughter - that stir within Mira as this new Celine slowly takes a seat.

"I found a video," Celine starts, and shows Mira her own phone. The thumbnail is one Mira's seen - in memes, in profile pictures, in seven different articles PR had them comment on after the shitshow that was the Idol Awards. She dreams about it sometimes, the look on Rumi's face. The violation.

Mira flinches. The corner of Celine's mouth pulls upwards, the same as their own Celine whenever Mira finally landed a hit on her.

---

The newest Celine makes sundubu-jjigae for dinner, which Zoey eats mechanically. She knows that it tastes good. The first Celine - their mentor - had always treated food as fuel, and the second Celine had--

It wasn't like she'd starved them. The second Celine had just made food that she knew the demon would like, because the demon had been a person the whole time and liked things, the way Zoey and Mira liked things. Because they were people, and the demon was a person, and Zoey had still--

The spoon in her hand is shaking. Zoey watches the lump of soft tofu wobble and drop into her bowl.

The second Celine had known the demon was a person because she'd raised it like one, and it had been a Hunter back in her world. The third part of her own Mira and Zoey's harmony. And she'd said as much to the three of them - and the demon had been around them long enough to know what it had meant - and it had still thrown itself into the second Celine's arms rather than stay with them.

And now another Celine, one who said the demon - Shit, Rumi, it has a name, I know it has a name - was her daughter was sitting across from them. Making them dinner. Saying she'd protect them. Like she didn't know about the kennel, and the chains, and their training sessions. About the times Zoey had summoned her shin-kal just to show the demon she could keep it in line, when Celine needed to go to town.

Mira's knee presses against hers, out of view from this other Celine, and Zoey knows that Mira's just trying to keep her grounded, stop her from spiralling, but Zoey doesn't deserve it. Not even from Mira and definitely not from this other Celine. She heard the stories from both Mira and Celine - the time Mira had assumed she knew better than Celine about the demon, had needed to learn her lesson the hard way. Zoey--

God. Zoey had never even tried.

---

The demon knows, intellectually, what a mother is. It knows that people and animals have them, and that monsters do not. Master had taught it that. The Hunter it killed, so long ago it only remembers Master telling it about the killing and not the event itself, was supposed to have been a mother, and the demon had killed her and the baby, because it is a demon and it is bad and it has always been bad.

This new, different master is holding the demon. Holding the demon like it has seen babies being held, all curled up in their mother's arms. New master is touching the demon so much even though it has been bad and the Golden Honmoon burned the demon the way old Master always said it would and it has been bad because it has new master's blood on its claws and it is bad. New master knows it is bad and she is still touching it.

Despite the warmth of new master's arms, the demon shivers. New master just pulls it closer against her.

"Unnie..." the woman says. "I'm sorry. For whatever happened to your Rumi. But that thing in your arms isn't her."

"I know that," new master says quietly. The demon is not sad because demons do not know how to feel. It is a demon and it is bad so the ache in its chest is just because new master had said that in her world the demon was Rumi, and Rumi had a name and slept inside and had a name because new master thought Rumi was a person, and the demon is not Rumi. And new master knows that it is not Rumi. So.

The women are quiet for a long time. The staring girl looks over at the demon again, and the demon knows better now so it makes sure to look down at the floor and tries to match her breathing to new master's. This close it is almost as though they are one thing; the demon imagines them as links in a chain, the breath from new master's lungs filling its own.

"It's getting late," the woman says pointedly. "The boys have got school tomorrow, so they ought to be getting to bed."

New master blinks in surprise, as if she's only just taking in the fact there are boys at all.

"I don't want to bring her back down if the Honmoon is just going to hurt her again," new master tells the group.

"It's a demon," the one who helped new master clean up the demon's arms says. "That's what the Honmoon is supposed to do."

"Not to her," new master says, and pulls the demon closer. She brings one arm up from where it's curled around the demon's elbow to rest on its shoulder instead, and the new position means the demon's head drops to rest against new master's chest. The demon can hear the steady thump-thump of new master's heart picking up slightly, even though the walk is over.

"...Miyeong, why don't you take the kids home?" The woman says.

The boys object immediately - "We want to see!" - and the girl says "I'm not a kid, I'm 25" and the woman with the braid says "You shouldn't have to see--"

And the demon hears new master's heart jump in her chest.

"See what, exactly?"

"Unnie," the woman says. "It's for the best, yeah?"

"What's for the best?" the girl from before asks.

"Fuck you," new master tells the woman, raspily. "I should have known you--"

New master breaks off and looks towards the woman with the braid, at the girl in her arms. The demon is the only one close enough to feel the way new master has to stifle a cry at the sight of them.

"Miyeong-ah? She's your daughter," new master pleads.

"My daughter is right here," Miyeong snaps, holding the girl even more closely. "That thing is a demon tricking you!"

The demon does not nod, even though Miyeong is correct. It is a demon and it is bad and it does not deserve to be held the way it has seen mothers hold their children and it should not want those things from new master, who it has already hurt. It does not know how it managed to trick new master into thinking that it was a person but the demon knows it is very very bad indeed because even if it knew how, it thinks that it might not stop. It thinks it would choose to keep tricking new master forever.

New master laughs, but not like she finds this funny. The demon had not known a laugh could sound angry and defeated before.

"Even here, then," she mumbles. Then, more loudly, she addresses the rest of the group: "If you even think about hurting her again, we'll see how your training matches up to mine - and I don't think I'm as out of practice as you are."

Absently, without seeming to think about it, new master --

New master lowers her mouth so that her lips brush against the demon's forehead.

That's... not what Celine expected. Why would the demon do that? "But it is... Rumi on stage, right?"

"Yeah," says Mira, and looks down. "That's how we, uh, found out about her patterns."

"That must have been a shock," says Celine. It's a good thing, she thinks. Her girls hadn't known the demon's nature - they'd been tricked. She has no idea what the hell this Celine had been thinking, but it makes it much more likely that she'll be able to break through to them.

"Yeah, uh. We didn't handle it very well." Suddenly Mira looks up and meets her eyes. "Did you tell your Rumi to hide her patterns from us?"

"No," says Celine, perfectly honestly.

"Must've been nice," mutters Mira disrespectfully. She''d called Celine by name without honorifics earlier. Not acceptable, but something to be addressed later, if she persists in the behavior after she's been freed from Gwi-Ma's control.

"Yes, it's best to be clear about these sorts of things," says Celine. "What happened next? I saw reports of a surprise concert featuring a giant fire in Seoul."

Mira winces. "We, uh, fought. The Honmoon shattered. I... I don't really remember much of what happened next, but I came to in Namsan stadium and Rumi was fighting Gwi-Ma. She was able to defeat him and we remade the Honmoon together." She hums a couple of bars of a song Celine does not recognize, and the corrupted Honmoon shimmers like an oil slick around them.

Celine barely manages to suppress her shudder, both at the alien feel of this corrupted Honmoon and at the story itself. It's along the lines of what she expected, though. Her Hunters fell under Gwi-Ma's spell and were fed a delusion of success and set to maintaining this new, corrupted Honmoon. Presumably it kept Gwi-Ma's rivals out as he gorged himself, and with this generation of Hunters still alive the ancient failsafes would not kick in and empower emergency replacements. The ancient Hunters who set up the Honmoon had foreseen the likelihood of a generation being wiped out, but hadn't even considered the possibility that an entire team could be compromised so spectacularly.

No matter. Mira was always headstrong, not nearly as suggestible and obedient as Zoey. If anyone could break through Gwi-Ma's control, it would be her, and then the two of them could deal with the demon and bring Zoey back to the light.

"You can't truly believe that's what really happened, Mira," Celine tries.

"What!?"

"No demon can fight Gwi-Ma. You're still under his spell. Mira, you need to come to your senses."

Mira recoils, stepping back several times. "'No demon' - are you talking about Rumi!?"

"Rumi's dead, Mira. She died long ago, consumed by the taint inside. That's just a demon wearing her face to manipulate you."

Mira looks horrified. Good. Maybe she's breaking through. "You... you said you told your us about the patterns."

"I was honest about its nature in a way your Celine must not have been. The demon can be useful, Mira, but it's not a person. It must be controlled with a strict hand, or else it will end up controlling you. That's what's happened here."

Mira's eyes are wide. "What are you talking about."

"Mira, surely you're aware that thousands of people have gone missing."

"That's not Rumi's fault! The Saja--"

"It's corrupted the Honmoon! Mira, you have eyes, you can see. The Honmoon is the same color as its patterns! With the Honmoon under its control Gwi-Ma can feast freely. You're being used."

Mira swallows. She breathes deeply... and summons her gok-do. It trembles in her arms but she points it at Celine regardless. "I don't know what's going on with you, Celine, but I'm not letting you near Rumi like this."

"I was afraid this might happen," says Celine and reaches for her ssang-geum. The corrupted, alien Honmoon does not answer.

---*---*---

Mira stops eating halfway through her bowl. The soft tofu wobbles on her spoon, and then her lower lip likewise begins to wobble. There's the sound of shuffling from underneath the table as Zoey leans closer to her - likely an attempt at providing comfort.

On one hand, Celine feels horribly horribly unprepared for this. She's raised (or is in the process of raising) three teenagers, yes, but once Rumi's patterns were cured all their problems had always been minor, scraped knees and hurt feelings and schoolyard disagreements. She doesn't know how to help two teenagers who have been abused and who have been groomed into being complicit in abuse, who are just now grappling with the cruelty they are capable of.

On the other hand, Celine is increasingly convinced that, of all the Celines that may apparently exist, she is one of the few who ever got therapy. Frightening as it is, there likely isn't anyone better equipped to help these poor girls.

"Mira," she says.

"What?" says Zoey. She, too, has stopped eating, attention directed towards Mira, who is staring down at her jjigae and looking increasingly miserable.

"Is Mira all right?" Celine realizes it's a stupid question the moment it comes out of her mouth - a reflex reaction from decades of parenting that is not appropriate in this case.

"I'm fine," says Zo-- the pink haired girl, in a defensive tone that indicates that no, she is very much not fine but also not willing to admit it.

"Oh, you're Mira." Celine rubs her forehead with two fingers. "I'm sorry, girls."

Both of them stare at her like she's grown a second head. The black haired girl has to look up in order to do so, revealing that she's blinking back tears.

Celine tries again. "Zoey, can you tell me what you are thinking?"

She sniffs. "You're being nice," she says, voice hitching on the last word. "I don't deserve--"

"Oh, girls," breathes Celine, heart breaking. "You didn't deserve for the only adult in your life to put you in such a position in the first place."

"I should have known better!" exclaims Zoey, then shrinks in on herself. "Mira tried. I--"

"Hey," says Mira, placing a hand on Zoey's shoulder, "That's my fault, I told you not to try--"

"You're right. You should have known better, both of you," says Celine, because it will do the girls no good to lie to them. They turn towards her, guilty and despondent. "And because of your actions, your Rumi has left you. There's nothing you can do about any of that." Zoey's tears spill over, shoulders shaking silently. Mira leans into her, eyes likewise watering.

"But beating yourselves up accomplishes nothing. It doesn't help Rumi, it just hurts you."

"We deserve--"

"Everyone has a capacity for evil, " Celine interjects. "You've learned this lesson the hard way. But everyone - you girls included - also has the capacity for good. Direct your guilt towards something productive. You can't do anything for Rumi anymore, but there are many other people out there that you can still help."

Zoey sniffs, but now her expression is thoughtful. "We could... try to raise awareness about, uh, about abuse?" At Celine's encouraging nod, she seems to gather steam. "We could donate all our profits to shelters?"

Celine stifles a wince. "Good idea, but not all of them. You still need something to live on."

"A third," says Mira. "Rumi's portion."

Zoey nods. "A third. For Rumi."

---*---*---

"Hold up," says the black haired Rumi. "Are we talking about killing demon-me!?" The girl in Celine's arms freezes, claws slicing through her skin as she grasps onto Celine's shirt.

"That's not you," says Sunmi. "That's the demon you could have become."

Celine wants to scream, because Rumi was never a demon - not even at the worst moment of her life did she ever serve Gwi-Ma. But these alternate versions of her soulmates, with their golden Honmoon, have shown that they will not listen to her.

Maybe they'll listen to their Rumi, who folds her arms. "Well, maybe I become a nice demon."

"There's no such thing," says Miyeong. "For a while, I thought it possible. But Rumi, it was just a manipulation. You cannot trust them."

Sunmi folds her arms. "It was an ugly time, Rumi. The fact that we know of at least two timelines where your mother died show that we were very lucky that things did not go much worse." (They did, they did, oh god, Miyeong's dying face will haunt Celine until she joins her in the grave.)

The stubborn expression that spreads across Rumi's face is very familiar to Celine - typically a prelude to fights about bedtimes and eating one's vegetables. She greets it now with joy. Rumi can be legendarily stubborn when she truly sets her mind to something and for once it is working in Celine's favor.

"Well, this maman raised her me all the way through turning into a demon so I think she knows more about them than you."

Miyeong furrows her brow, but Sunmi persists. "Her demon started destroying the Honmoon. We've left the industry and we're out of practice, if this one damages it we won't be able to fix it!"

Rumi cocks her head with the arrogant tilt that Celine's own Rumi gets when she knows she'd about to win an argument. "Is she? Hurting the Honmoon?"

Everyone turns to look at the girl, who quails under the scrutiny. She attempts to shift as far away from them as possible, shoving her head over Celine's shoulder into her hair as she presses herself flat against Celine's chest. One leg slips off of Celine's lap and knocks against the stump before she pulls it back up with a yelp. When Celine looks down, there is a fresh burn along her shin. The Honmoon shimmers goldenly on, unperturbed.

"No," says Celine. When she raises her eyes to look at her erstwhile soulmates, neither meets her gaze. Miyeong looks away, something like shame playing over her face. Sunmi, though, just frowns, staring at Celine's thoroughly wrecked shirt.

"Unnie, it's shredding you."

"She's frightened and unaccustomed to being held." Celine reaches reaches over to the first aid kit and pulls out the burn cream again. "Now, you said you needed to head down the mountain. I suggest you all get going if you want to make it before it gets dark."

"And what'll you do?" asks one of the boys.

Celine finally looks over at him. He and his brother look very much like her own father used to, which she immediately decides not to think about further. "It's not the first time I've spend the night outdoors," she says, aiming for wry and landing somewhere closer to 'tired' instead.

"You're not staying up here alone," says Sunmi.

Celine opens her mouth.

"The demon doesn't count."

"I won't let you hurt her."

"...So long as it doesn't hurt you, I won't hurt it."

"The scratches don't count."

"Fine. But you'll let me treat them."

It's the best that Celine is likely to get. She nods and begins applying the burn cream to the girl's leg. After a moment, Sunmi steps forward. The girl flinches and edges backward on Celine's lap, so Celine holds her and murmurs reassurances as Sunmi takes off her shirt and pulls out the bandages.

By the time that Sunmi is done, Miyeong has herded the children (25 year-old included) down the mountain over their complaints. Celine picks the girl up and walks over to sit down on the ground with her back against an old, sturdy tree. She pulls the girl against her chest and waits as she settles herself into a more comfortable position in Celine's lap.

Sunmi sits across the clearing from them, dark eyes gleaming in the light from the setting sun. She has streaks of grey in her hair. Celine's heart aches. She never got to see her Sunmi grow old, and this Sunmi is a stranger to her.

They do not talk further.

The mountain is chilly at night. Celine shivers and is grateful for the warm weight of the girl upon her. Lacking a blanket or a jacket, she instead wraps her arms around the child and hopes it is enough. She doesn't seem to be shivering, at least.

"You're not cold?" Celine murmurs.

"Winter was cold," says the girl. As Celine tries to reign in her rage (she was kept outside all winter!? it's spring now, what temperatures is she accustomed to enduring!?), she continues, "you're warm."

Any further conversation is forestalled when Celine hears the crunch of footsteps in the distance. She sits upright, nearly dislodging the girl, but cannot see anything in the darkness.

After a moment, two beams of light cut through the darkness, and Miyeong and Rumi walk back into the clearing.

"I brought blankets," says Miyeong, gesturing to her backpack. "And a hammock, a tent, two tarps, all four of our sleeping bags, and changes of clothes."

"And food!" says Rumi, dropping her backpack with a groan. "Other-me's eyes shine in the dark. That's creepy."

"Took you long enough," says Sunmi. "It gets cold on these slopes."

Celine blinks at them.

"You didn't think we were just going to leave you up here like this, did you?" asks Miyeong.

Even the mercy she granted the demon could be forgiven - it has proved useful, over the years, especially now that it has grown large enough to help Mira and Zoey’s training while she searches for their missing third.

And, in turn, the Honmoon has always answered its most steadfast defender.

It shouldn’t surprise her that this Honmoon, covered in the demon’s taint, does not but her empty hands ache as they close around nothing.

“Stand down,” she tells Mira, drawing herself up to her full height. The trouble with Mira is that she’s always been a little more brash, out of the two of them. Determined to push back against Celine at every opportunity, until she’d learned the hard way why the rules were what they were.

This Mira seems to have the same lack of restraint as Celine’s own. Her hands tighten around the shaft of her gok-do, turning the hook of the blade ever so slightly towards Celine. Mira’s eyes flicker down at Celine’s empty hands, noticing that she’s unarmed, but she does nothing to press the advantage.

She’s not quite so far gone that she’s willing to threaten her mentor, then. Perhaps there is some hope for the Zoey and Mira of this world, once Celine finds a way to free them both.

“You’re out of your mind,” Mira tells her. Her voice shakes as she does.

“You know I’m right, Mira. Whatever’s been done to you–”

“Shut up,” Mira snaps, as though that doesn’t prove Celine’s point entirely. The corruption in Mira’s mind, trying to make her disregard all the evidence of the demon’s tricks. Sunmi had experienced something similar. Even Celine had not been entirely immune, back when the demon was small, before its true nature had been as apparent as it has become.

“-- There will be a way to help you and Zoey,” she continues. “You may not be the same girls I trained but I cannot in good conscience abandon you to a demon.”

“To our friend. To your– To Rumi,” Mira tries again.

Celine aches for her, the poor girl. So caught up in the facade the demon must have crafted for it, drawing on its knowledge of the girls’ weaknesses. Both of them, always too desperate to belong, too ready to throw everything away for a chance to belong.

At least Celine had been the ones to find them, train them properly as Hunters. If someone else had been able to take advantage of them – Well. Celine suspects she’s looking at the results. A version of herself too weak to defend her mind against the demon, tricked into helping it draw the others under its control. 

There had been times, when it was very small and not yet fully developed, where it had almost seemed cute, the thing that killed Miyeong. The same way a tiger or a bear could seem cute, until it showed its fangs. 

Celine had never forgotten what the demon really was but it was still far too easy for her to think back on that time and realise how close she had been, at times. When she would hold it in her lap while it fed from the bottle, the warmth from its tiny body almost like that of a living things. When she taught it to speak, talking to the creature so it would hear the names of things and patting it on the head when it did well. It would have been easy for Celine to lower her guard, tell herself that its clumsy imitation of a child meant that there was something redeemable within it. Their Celine must have done much the same, but in a moment of weakness - when Celine had been able to catch herself in time - she allowed the demon to influence her.

And now its plans are coming to fruition, she thinks. The whole Honmoon, destroyed. 

She thinks that she has trained the demon well, made sure it would have no chance to develop its powers to this degree back in her own world – but the Celine of this world had probably thought herself safe too. No, as soon as she returns to her own world, the only way to protect the Honmoon and her charges will be to finally put the creature down.

“The demon,” Celine corrects her. Happily, there has always been one thing that Mira could be counted on to value above her own safety. “Mira, listen to me. You have to remember. Zoey needs you.”

—--

Celine watches the girls lift their heads, their new resolve alleviating at least a little bit of the shame that has kept them both curled in on themselves ever since she arrived. Mira and Zoey grip one another’s hands and nod, promising one another they’ll do better in her daughter’s name.

“...Will you tell us about her?” Zoey asks. “Rumi. We didn’t know–”

She doesn’t finish the sentence, which is probably for the best. Celine has not had to see what this world has done to Rumi, has managed to escape the brunt of Mira and Zoey’s horror as whichever Celine they met told them what they were complicit in, but she can see too many of the scars.

(She found a cattle prod, broken in two, thrown out with the rest of the trash. She cannot ask the girls what it was used for.)

“--We didn’t know her,” Mira finishes for her. 

(Better, Celine thinks bitterly, than We didn’t know she was a person.)

“My Rumi isn’t the same as your Rumi,” she warns them. The other world had taught her that much.

“It’s the closest we’ve got.”

Selfishly, Celine doesn’t want to give these girls too much of her own daughter. A Rumi who has always had her family, who grew up without the shadow of Gwi-Ma hanging over her head and a Celine intent on adopting all her parents’ worst impulses, who has been safe and happy and loved and never once felt the need to doubt any of that is not theirs to miss. 

But.

She wants them to know - to remember - that Rumi is more than just a rallying cry for the duo. Rumi is her oldest child, her only daughter, the baby that taught Celine she could do better than her own parents had. That she could be trusted to love someone precious without hurting her.

Celine takes a deep breath and begins. “My Rumi was born with a tiny set of lines on her shoulder, smaller than the width of my thumb. The doctors thought it was just a birthmark, but we recognised it straight away…"

—

Miyeong and Sunmi begin to put the tent up. Celine stays where she is, holding the girl against her chest, and watches them.

She has no words for the feeling that passes over her as she does. She has been used to hating and missing Sunmi in equal measure, but Miyeong has always been… Miyeong. Rumi’s mother. The one who should have been there, in the place Celine had taken for her own. The one truth she’s been able to cling to over the years, as her own doubts set in, was that Miyeong would have known what to do. Miyeong would be so much better at this.

Celine still can’t hate her. She remembers what it had been like, the early days when there had been nothing to do but hold the baby against her chest and look through the archives for anything that would tell her how she could save the child from being turned into another mindless creature following Gwi-Ma’s bidding. Rumi used to sleep in her lap, tiny hands clutching at the fabric of her shirt, while Celine pored through old diaries and correspondence in the hope that some other Hunter had thought to write how a child could be saved from those patterns. The only answer, no matter how hard she looked, was the golden Honmoon. It was supposed to remove Gwi-Ma’s taint: for demons, and those who had already turned too far towards him, it would cut them out of the world entirely, and just sever the connection to him for anyone who could still be saved. Celine had prayed, for years, that some other answer could be found - something that she would be able to do to keep Gwi-Ma from taking what was left of Miyeong. But there was nothing else, and there was nothing Celine alone could do to protect her, so she’d started praying for time instead. Just one more year, over and over, feeling as though every breath Rumi drew was stolen from under Gwi-Ma’s nose.

She has no right, not holding the version of Rumi she has systematically tortured, to compare herself to Miyeong.

But she thinks she understands, all the same.

The dark-haired Rumi drops down to squat next to them, staring at the girl and Celine holds the girl a little more tightly, not sure what Rumi is about to do.

“Are you hungry?” Rumi tries. She tips the contents of her backpack out onto the grass, revealing several containers of leftovers, some bottled water and then, with a little conspiratorial wink at the girl, a much larger plastic bag filled with snack food. “I raided the guys’ stash.”

Although Rumi lowers her voice, it’s not enough to stop Miyeong from groaning. “Rumi, leave your brothers’ things alone–”

“It’s an emergency, Eomma.”

“It’s junk is what it is.”

This Rumi just turns towards her, making her eyes as big as they will go and puffing her cheeks out slightly in a display of aegyo that Rumi has long since claimed to find too embarrassing. 

“Eomma,” she wheedles. “Her world might not even have the same food. Are you going to make her go home without ever finding out if she likes Pepero?”

“She’s not going home,” Celine reminds her.

“Her new home, then. Do you have Pepero?” Rumi asks, as though it’s that simple - that obvious - that the child will be going to Celine’s world.

Silently watching Sunmi had given Celine a chance to think, for the first time since arriving in this world. The child obviously can’t stay here, not if the Honmoon keeps mistaking her for a demon - and that’s discounting the issue of Sunmi and Miyeong’s reaction to her. But nor should she have to stay with the same woman who had treated her worse than a dog.

If there is another world out there, one where Miyeong had survived and the other two hadn’t, one where the Honmoon was the same as it always had been, the girl could slide into their family. A niece, or a cousin. Someone Miyeong would have a reason to take in and care for, give her all the love that had been denied to her.

And if Celine can’t find it… Well, she’ll at least find some place where the girl will be safe before she returns.

There’s a clicking noise, and Celine glances up to see Sunmi clicking her fingers at her. “Still with us, unnie?”

“... Yes, we have Pepero. Why wouldn’t we have Pepero?”

Rumi just shrugs. “Well, I don’t know when your world started going different,” she says, matter-of-factly. “If there are worlds where I’m not even human, then whether or not a cookie exists doesn’t seem like that big a change in comparison.”

Before Celine can rebuke her, she pulls out a few sodas and holds them out towards the girl. “Which one do you want?”

The girl doesn’t answer, but she does turn her head to look at the cans. Celine points at each one in turn, reading out the label - the other Rumi’s eyes widen but she doesn’t make a fuss, and if Miyeong and Sunmi realise the implications at all they at least say nothing. 

With some encouragement, the child taps for the banana Milkis and allows Celine to take the muzzle off. She’s tempted to throw it down the mountain, but that feels performative and hollow, so instead she puts it carefully to one side so the girl doesn’t have to see it.

The girl’s claws are too long to undo the tab, and her hands too burned to hold the can comfortably, so Celine raises it to her mouth and lets her sip slowly.

“The banana’s Seojoon’s favourite, too. Mine’s the strawberry,” Rumi volunteers. “Hajoon likes melon, but he likes all the weird gross flavours so you can’t trust his opinions on anything.”

Miyeong and Sunmi join them not long after that, and that’s how they eat, the girl accepting food and drinks from Celine’s hands just as Rumi had as a toddler perched on Celine’s knee. Celine catches Miyeong’s eye as she handfeeds the girl and wonders if they are remembering something similar.

Rumi and Sunmi-imo manage to keep the conversation going between themselves, mostly. Miyeong says nothing. Celine contributes a few comments about snacks her own Rumi liked - Turtle Chips, which this Rumi describes as “actually kind of mid”, and Banana Kick - until she feels the girl’s breathing deepen and her grip on Celine’s shirt loosen.

Without thinking about it, Celine sets the can down and runs one hand over the girl’s cheek where there’s a faint red mark left from the muzzle. The girl’s eyes flutter open and then she tenses, as she realises where she is. Who she’s trying to cuddle into.

Horror floods the child’s face, and Celine understands - she’s seen the other world’s kennel, the chains; she can hold out her hand and take the muzzle this child has been forced to wear - but it still hurts to see, on a face so very much like Rumi’s, and is dangerous if the child tries to push herself backwards into the golden Honmoon again. Celine’s arms come up to hold the child in place before she can think about what that must feel like for the poor girl, but Rumi - every version of Rumi - has always been brave, so the girl stays in Celine’s arms.

“I’ll take the hammock,” Sunmi says, taking one of the sleeping bags. Her eyes trail over the girl, Miyeong, Rumi and then finally Celine. “Shout if you need me,” she adds, faux-casual in a way that makes Celine want to set the child down and smack the look off her face.

Rumi shows the girl how to open the tent flap and the two of them crawl inside. Celine goes to follow, only to be stopped by a hand on her wrist. 

“Is it safe? Be honest with me, Celine; this is my daughter we’re talking about. Is Rumi going to be safe?”

In Miyeong’s other hand, there’s the muzzle.

“Put that down.”

“You’re looking at me like I’m a monster.”

“I don’t know how to look at you,” Celine confesses. “The Miyeong I know wouldn’t be okay with hurting her child–”

“The Celine I know wouldn’t parade my daughter’s corpse in front of me,” Miyeong retorts, and for a moment Celine is 22 again, watching her life fall apart. Miyeong, pink spots blooming across both cheeks, spitting: What do you know about love, Celine?  “The patterns, the claws– Did you mean it, when you said it isn't a demon? Gwi-Ma doesn’t control her yet?”

Celine’s rotten heart splinters once again. “Every word,” she promises. “Rumi - every Rumi - no matter how big her patterns got - has always been her own person, Miyeong.”

“And the muzzle?”

“I was hurting her,” Celine says, as simply as she can. That’s all it comes down to, really. She was hurting the girl; she had been for a long time – years, probably. She hurt Rumi; she had been doing so for years. And Miyeong still looks lost. “Here,” Rumi is saying from inside the tent. Celine glances over to see that she’s finished unzipping a sleeping bag for the girl, and is starting to roll out a second to lie next to it. “You can get in that one now, if you want, or I can show you how to zip two together to make one giant sleeping bag if you want to share with your maman?”

“Maman?”

Rumi’s finger points directly at Celine, an arrow she feels just as surely as if she had really been shot. “It means ‘eomma’; it’s the name we use for our Celine to tell her apart from Eomma - Miyeong’s our eomma. What did you call your Celine?”

It’s clear what this Celine is doing. She hadn’t come out against Rumi right away (because she would have gotten her ass clobbered, and she knew it). She waited until Mira was alone so she could try and drive a wedge between her and Rumi, and now she wants to use Mira to drive a wedge between Zoey and Rumi. It’s like a horrible, twisted reprise of that awful night at the Idol Awards. She had acted first that night – raised her weapon at Rumi, abandoned Zoey – and now a new threat is trying to use her against her girls again.

Not this time.

Mira shifts her gok-do so that she can hold it up with one hand, bracing it against her torso, as she uses her other hand to pull out her phone.

“What are you doing?” snaps the other Celine.

“Calling Zoey,” says Mira truthfully, and raises the tip of her gok-do slightly in warning.

Zoey picks up on the third ring and immediately switches to speakerphone, as they always do when one member calls the other two. “Heeeeeeyyyy Mira!” she says, “We just paid but we’re still at the store, did you want us to pick something else up?”

“This new Celine is bugfuck crazy. Rumi, you can’t come back, she wants to kill you—”

“What are you doing,” snarls the alternate Celine and Mira tightens her grip on her gok-do, “You’re warning the demon!?”

“Yes!” Mira snaps at her. There’s exclamations and protests coming from her phone. “Rumi, I’m serious. I think she killed her own—”

The alternate Celine surges forward and Mira—hesitates—and then Celine is inside her guard and her phone is clattering to the ground as she’s desperately trying to defend herself. She drops her gok-do (it’s useless at such close range) as she's forced to use her forearms to block the flurry of punches Celine is battering her with. Rumi and Zoey’s muffled voices rise from somewhere behind her from somewhere behind her. She tries to disengage, make space, but Celine doesn’t let her, pressing a vicious assault.

One punch gets through her guard – Mira can feel her nose breaking – and it’s over. She stumbles and Celine uses her momentary distraction to slam her into the ground and wrap an arm around her neck. Mira lurches upwards, trying desperately to wrench herself out of the chokehold, but it’s no use. Unlike Zoey, Mira had never been able to match Celine at wrestling.

“Don’t worry,” wheezes the alternate Celine as Mira thrashes, “I’ll deal with it and free you.” Her vision’s going grey, she embeds her nails in Celine’s arm and drags them in a vicious scratch. Celine hisses but doesn’t let go. “Just stay down for a—”

The Honmoon ripples and suddenly Mira is free. She drops to her elbows, dragging in frantic breaths as she fights to keep herself conscious.

“Celine, what are you doing!?” cries Rumi and that can’t be right, she was still at the store. She rolls over (ow ow ow) and yep, that sure is Rumi. The evil Celine is scrambling towards, oh shit, Mira’s gok-do. Before Mira can dismiss it, the other Celine grabs it, only for it to dissolve in her hands.

“You’ve done a commendable job of corrupting the Honmoon, demon,” says the Celine.

“What!?” says Rumi, eyes wide and trembling.

Mira rolls unsteadily to her feet. “Don’t listen to her, Rumi,” she wheezes. “You’re not a demon.”

“It teleported here, Mira,” snaps evil Celine.

“That’s not—“ Rumi blinks rapidly. “I’m a Hunter, like my mother.”

“You keep her name out of your mouth!” It’s the angriest that Mira has ever seen any Celine, teeth bared and eyes wild.

Rumi, bless that hopeful little trooper, stands her ground. She raises trembling arms and summons her sword – its new, larger shape looking unnatural to Mira but still unmistakably a sacred weapon. “See?” Rumi says, presenting it towards Celine.

The alternate Celine stares at the weapon and there’s a moment where Rumi’s eyes brighten with hope.

“There’s a soul embedded in that,” spits the alternate Celine. “A clever fake, I suppose. Is that how you fooled Mira and Zoey?” There’s a beat, and then she says, with horror in her voice, “Is that the soul of their third!?”

“I don’t think we’re gonna be able to get through to her, Rumi,” Mira says, summoning her gok-do once more.

Celine glances back at Mira and then darts towards the open door of the angeori. Mira swears and follows, Rumi behind her. They don’t manage to catch up to her before she reaches the kitchen, though. By the time they get there, she’s already grabbed a knife from the knife-block.

“Shit,” hisses Mira.

“It’s time I do what I should have long ago,” says Celine.

Rumi freezes.

---*---*---

Zoey can't sleep. She can't stop thinking about Rumi. The Rumi this Celine had described - a bright, cheerful girl studying to be a vet - seems so different from the demon who had mauled Mira (Zoey's seen the scars). But then again, Rumi had been raised with love, and the demon had been raised without. What did she know, other than cruelty and violence?

Cruelty and violence that Zoey had participated in. It roils in her chest, how much the demon girl-who-could-have-been-Rumi must have suffered over the years; how much Zoey herself had contributed to it. And she can't fix it or make amends, because that girl is gone. She left. She's free (of them).

Zoey's aware that what the current Celine had said is true - they can't change the past, they need to focus on helping others - but she can't help but mentally replay every training session, every game of "tag", how they'd been in charge of feeding the demon (and how little food, in retrospect, it had been, because "demons don't need to eat much." God, she'd never even questioned it.)

Zoey finds herself lurching out of bed and staggering towards Mira's room (god, the third room in the bakgeori will always be empty now, huh?). She can't be alone with her thoughts right now.

She realizes that perhaps Mira might be asleep only after she's already knocked. Shit, fuck, inconsiderate, demanding too much-- but there's an answering, "Come in," and now she's committed.

Mira looks... bad. She's clearly been crying, eyes red and baggy. Zoey supposes she doesn't look much better herself.

"Could I, um," Zoey begins, but Mira reads her mind and raises the blanket with one arm. Zoey immediately shimmies in to join her, then squeaks as Mira's arm wraps around her and squeezes.

"God, I don't deserve you," Mira mutters into the crook of Zoey's neck. "I don't deserve a family."

And Zoey wants to-- to object, to disagree, to argue against her. It's Zoey who doesn't deserve Mira, who at least tried, who offers comfort so freely. In the end, though, it feels hollow - it really does feel like neither of them deserve anything good, at least not for 19 years, to make up for the 19 years the demon-girl lived in that fucking kennel.

But she's selfish, she doesn't want to give Mira up (she just found her, another part of her soul, a hole she didn't know she needed filled, and now the only other part of her soul she will ever have).

"I think we deserve each other," she says eventually. They'd both hurt the last third of their soul, they'd both supported each other. They were all the other had, now. For better and for worse.

Mira pulls her closer with a sniff, and wrapped in her arms Zoey finally manages to sink into sleep.

---*---*---

The staring girl (Rumi, a person, what it could have been if it wasn't a demon) stares at the demon. This is nothing new, but Miyeong also turns to stare at it. Has it said the wrong thing? New master is frowning but there's none of the tightness in her face that indicates she thinks the demon is in need of correction. So. Probably not?

The demon looks back down the odd puffy bag that Rumi had partially split open. The Golden Honmoon sizzles against the flesh of its calves, but if it kneels on where the puffy bag still has two layers it's not as bad.

"O...kay... then," says Rumi. She is still staring. She stares a lot (the demon doesn't curl up, but it's a near thing. No one has ever looked at it for so long before). "What do you call this Celine?"

The demon freezes. New master had told it to call her something, in that first bewildering day where she had struck off its chains and brought it out of the kennel, but it had been too overwhelmed by the warmth of the hanok and the taste of the freshly cooked food to remember. It looks to her frantically, but she gives no instruction. Because she told it already. And it forgot. Because it is bad. And now she is waiting for it to answer because Rumi asked it a question but it doesn't know the answer and-- "N...new... master?" it ventures, because being disobedient is worse than being wrong.

"No!" exclaims new master and the demon drops into position for correction, forehead touching the ground. Its forearms burn from their position on the ground above its head, off of the protection of the puffy bag, but it dares not move them. It was bad it was bad it was bad. Everything new master did for it and it still didn't remember what she had told it to call her.

"No," she says again. Her voice is coming from right above its head and it can't help flinching (it had thought, for a moment, that maybe it wouldn't get corrections, if it left the world with the kennel. Now, all it can hope is that she'll be... gentler). Then there are hands on its wrists and it cringes as it is yanked out of position. "There's no need for that. You are burning yourself," she says as she pulls it upright.

The demon keeps itself pliable and obedient as she maneuvers it and lifts its arms to inspect them for damage. For a brief second it glances up and accidentally meets Miyeong's eyes over new master's shoulder -- the expression on her face is like Mira's, the first time she saw it, in the kennel. It drops its gaze back to the puffy bag - staring at humans is not allowed, lest it start to hunger.

"You can call me Celine," it is told once its arms have been thoroughly inspected. The demon's eyes nearly bug out of its skull. It can't! But it was given a direct order. The sheer disrespect! Does it dare disobey? Celine (augh!!!) seems to notice its discomfort and adds on, "or Ms. Kang." The demon nods, relieved.

(Ms. Kang, it thinks. It now belongs to Ms. Kang. It was going to be going home with Ms. Kang, who said it was a persona and might not do corrections after all and feeds it fresh food and holds it like a baby sometimes. Its heart is still racing from the fear of moments ago but there is also a warmth in its chest that is entirely new.)

Ms. Kang looks down at where it is sitting and frowns. "Your legs-- is the sleeping bag adequately protecting you from the Honmoon?"

Now, the demon should tell the truth, say that the bag protects it as much as it deserves, that the pain is bearable with these layers between itself and that burning gold. But it's not a lie to look at the ground and say, "it hurts." And, well. If that results in Ms. Kang sweeping it back up into her gentle arms and asking Rumi to "zip" two bags together. It that leads to Ms. Kang sliding into the combined bags with the demon curled up on top of her. Well. If that's what Ms. Kang thinks is best, then that's what's best.

Mira spares a second to glance over her shoulder and sees Rumi - eyes huge and white, one hand clutching at her chest, looking way too much like she had looked backstage at the Idol Awards with Takedown ringing in their ears.

“Just run,” Mira hisses. She can’t afford to check again to see if Rumi will - not now that Celine is moving to close the gap. Mira sweeps her arm, bringing the gok-do’s blade down in one smooth arc to make her back the fuck up.

“Mira, think about Zoey!” Celine calls out to her. “She needs you to focus on what’s real!”

(Behind her, Rumi lets out this choking sound which Mira still cannot afford to investigate.)

She thinks she can keep this Celine here for a little while at least - the kitchen door acts as a natural chokepoint, letting her keep Rumi safely behind her, and while she doesn’t have the same mobility as this Celine will, Mira’s gok-do gives her a much greater reach than the knife. Mira realises this, and she watches Celine realise it, and she knows that both of them are coming to the same conclusion: that, despite all the advantages of her weapon and the layout of the room and the unsteadiness from other Celine’s limp, Mira is going to lose.

Mira’s weapon is an extension of her soul. It had taken months of slow, humiliating progress, feeling like she was slamming her head into a brick wall to get even the tiniest wisp while starlight rushed to wrap itself around Rumi and Zoey’s hands. When she finally managed to do it, it had felt like opening a door and stepping into herself for the first time. Like Rumi and Zoey could see her properly, without any of the bullshit - her heart, her intention made real. 

Evil Celine is relying on a kitchen knife. But her weapon doesn’t have any inhibitions about hurting people. That’s what it comes down to.

Celine takes a series of small, fast steps forward, in and out of Mira’s range, jabbing towards her gok-do with the knife. For a second, it feels almost like they’re sparring again out in the courtyard, drilling the same footwork over and over again until Celine said the lesson was done for the day. It’s that ingrained muscle memory that’s sitting in the driving seat of Mira’s brain now, making her drop her knees low and swing the pole-arm up and across to block the blow. 

(“Please,” Rumi’s gasping from behind her. Not - Mira doesn’t think - to her, or even at Evil Celine. Mira hears it, and she mentally slots that away with all the other problems that need to be resolved later.)

Horrifyingly, Evil Celine gives Mira a short nod of approval. Then she moves backwards and drops into her own stance, knees bent, back ramrod-straight, feet parallel and pointing straight ahead. Mira’s feet unconsciously move to mirror Celine’s.

“Whatever you think you know about your ‘Rumi’, it’s just another of Gwi-Ma’s tricks,” Celine says, another quick jab that Mira easily parries. 

“How do you know you aren’t the one falling for Gwi-Ma’s trick right now?” Mira tries. “Attacking one of your own students - turning on another Hunter?”

“I know my duty,” Celine snaps, eyes flashing, and she makes another attack. Straightforward, another move that could have come straight out of their drills, bobs forward and slashes to one side, and Mira forces her backwards. Celine staggers back unsteadily, and the adrenaline rushing to Mira’s head wants to press the advantage. 

She doesn’t.

After a moment, Evil Celine drops the pretense and hops forward to make another series of quick thrusts with her knife - Mira moves her gok-do to block them easily, up, down, left, right, keeping her eyes on the blade exactly as Celine had drilled into her.

(“Watch the sword, not my arm, Mira,” Celine had said, tapping the flat of the blade against Mira’s shoulder to emphasise her point. “Don’t ever lose track of where the danger is.”

And Mira, like a good student, had learned her lesson.)

She watches the knife slash upwards, a wide telegraphed arc that Mira easily deflects, shifting her weight onto the balls of her feet to do so. Which is about the time Mira realises Evil Celine must remember having taught a similar lesson to her own Mira, judging from the left hook Celine’s empty hand sends crashing into the side of her head.

Pain explodes through her. Celine is inside her guard now, sending a second punch right on the heels of the first. It feels almost exactly like being hit by a small truck, and Mira staggers under the force of it. Her knees crumple, and the floor rushes up to meet her.

At that point, Mira figures it’s more about staying alive than anything else. She lets her gok-do fall, and blink out of existence before Evil Celine can get her hands on it, then rolls to one side as Evil Celine follows, her long legs pinning Mira into position as she raises the knife hand.

Mira doesn’t give a fuck about duty, not if this is what it looks like. But she knows her friends. She knows Rumi. And this Celine doesn’t have a clue.

Rumi’s hand closes around Celine’s wrist, the other wrapping around Celine’s upper arm, and she drags Celine off Mira and to the side. Rumi grunts softly as she uses her whole bodyweight to keep control of the knife arm, and to duck her head to avoid Celine raking her eyes. Mira rolls over, pushes herself up and promptly kicks Celine’s bad knee as hard as she can.

They make an undignified, slow mess of it - the real Celine, if she were here, would have something to say about their technique - but between the two of them, the knife is kicked out of reach and Evil Celine is effectively immobilised as Rumi grapples her into a mockery of a hug.

“All that talk about how dangerous Rumi is,” Mira scoffs. Now that there’s time to notice things about her body again, she notices the strong copper taste filling her mouth and she realises that her lip is bleeding. “And you didn’t think she might be stronger with a family who love her?”

Celine, like a coward, stays silent.

—

Celine sits alone in the kitchen and watches through the window as the lights in the bakgeori go out. There is another structure in the yard, set a few metres back from the angeori, which her brain skitters away from naming. She wants to scream, or hit something, or burn the whole building down, but she has spent the last three hours trying to calm two teenage girls who have every reason in the world not to trust her, and her anger would do nothing to make them feel better.

She doesn’t want to sleep. She doesn’t want to lay down in another bed without Miyeong, much less one that has been used by this Celine. But she doesn’t want to sit here either, staring at the blank spaces their family photos should fill.

Slowly, she walks over to the small hut the girls called the kennel.

The locks on the doors have been pried off, someone wanting to make sure the space couldn’t be reused easily. There would be nothing to stop her from going inside. 

Instead, she stands there and rests one hand against the wood. The first memory that comes to mind is of their old house, adopting the same posture outside the small playhouse where Rumi was hiding out with her sleeping bag and a backpack full of snacks. The boys had both been teething, and Miyeong had woken Celine up in a panic to say that Rumi had left a note saying that she was running away because they didn’t love her any more. Granted, they had soon discovered that Rumi’s version of running away hadn’t involved leaving their garden, but the panic had been immediate. Celine remembers how Rumi had shouted back to them that Celine didn’t care about her now that she had her own babies, and Miyeong had to hold her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Celine remembers having wanted to laugh, too. It had seemed ridiculous at the time - they’d loved Rumi so much the whole Honmoon had turned gold as testament to just how loved she was.

It seems less ridiculous now. 

The first world had been bad enough, a Celine who had never done enough to protect their girl - not from her patterns, and not from the idol industry, and not from Celine herself if the three girls’ reactions had been anything to go by.

If she opens the door, she’ll have to know just how much worse things could have been. She’ll have to live with knowledge for the rest of her life. She’ll have to go home and look Rumi, Hajoon and Seojoon in the eyes; she’ll have to tell Miyeong exactly what she saw. Who Celine could have become without her.

—

Sunlight spills through the canvas tent, making the insides glow and the demon wakes up to the gentle sensation of someone stroking its back.

The demon, brain still fuzzy from sleep, glances up and sees Ms. Kang looking down at it. Sees, at the same time, how its sharp claws are grasping at Ms. Kang’s bloody shirt, how its sharper teeth have been allowed to dig against Ms. Kang’s throat.

It is going to be bad to Ms. Kang, just as it had been bad to Mira back when Mira first arrived at the hanok and had not understood what it meant for the demon to be a demon. It does not want to be bad, not if it means losing the warmth and the gentle touch, but even if it can still keep those things - how it has been allowed to keep them now, despite Ms. Kang’s blood under its nails - then it thinks that it still wants to not be bad.

(At the time, biting Mira hadn’t felt good. Mira had just been there, and her hands were right near its mouth, and its heart had been fast and sick in its throat, and there had been nothing stopping it from biting. So. And then the correction had also felt bad, and the way Mira had needed to show both the demon and Master that she would not make the same mistake again had felt bad, and then Mira had helped Zoey learn how the demon should be treated and that also involved a lot of feeling bad. 

But sometimes, in the in-between times, the demon had been able to look at Mira and remember the fright all over her face, and that part had not felt bad at all.)

The demon cannot be good, not the ways people can be good, but it wants. It wants. It wants Ms. Kang to know how much it wants, what it will do to keep her warm and close and safe from its horrible claws, for as long as Ms. Kang wants to be kept. So it shrinks back as much as it possibly can, sinks its teeth into its fingers to stop itself from biting and scratching, and rolls off Ms. Kang’s body onto the inside of their sleeping bag nest.

It cannot quite stop itself from whimpering as the burning starts.

“Oh, sweetheart, no,” Ms. Kang says. Her hands reach out towards it, but then stop, hovering in the air just a few inches from the demon’s shoulders. It could lean forward and be touching Ms. Kang. It could do it on purpose, to this woman who calls it sweetheart.

It doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Ms. Kang says, which makes no sense at all. “I know how difficult this must be but please let me hold you. Just until you’re safe. Please.”

The demon bites down even harder. It does not want to be bad– but Ms. Kang is asking, Ms. Kang is saying please like she wants something from the demon– and the demon is hurting and it does not have to hurt, not when Ms. Kang wants this – so it cannot be so bad to crawl away from the burning and onto Ms. Kang’s lap once again.

Ms. Kang does not hold it like a baby this time. Ms. Kang tries very hard not to touch it at all.

“Thank you,” she whispers to the demon all the same. “It’s just until we can get you someplace safe, where you won’t be hurt, and then you’ll never have to let me near you again, I promise.”

The demon makes a tiny high-pitched sound in the back of its throat, the kind that Master called manipulative, and Ms. Kang’s face crumples in on itself for the space of a heartbeat.

“Good girl,” she says, which makes even less sense than the apology.

Around its fingers, the demon mutters, “... don’t want to be bad.”

“What?”

It pulls its fingers away briefly. “I don’t want to be bad.” Pops them back in.

“You aren’t.”

“I need my muzzle,” the demon whispers, not bothering to remove its fingers at all. Ms. Kang does not correct it, but she does let out a small, sharp exhale.

The demon doesn't want to be bad to Ms. Kang, and the muzzle can stop it. Biting its hand can stop it, but only for as long as it takes for Ms. Kang to wrap her hands around each of the demons, tuck her thumb into the middle of the demon’s palm and gently tug its hands away from its unsafe mouth. Which is not very long at all.

(Ms. Kang’s hands are so warm. The demon feels every point of contact between its skin and Ms. Kang’s like a thousand fireflies, like every single part of it is bursting into light.)

“Need it to stop biting,” the demon says again, when Ms. Kang does not answer. Back before Ms. Kang came to their world, whining like this would have been dangerous and very bad indeed, but Ms. Kang just nods slowly.

“We can go and get it,” Ms Kang agrees. “If you think that it will help you feel safe, so you don’t bite yourself.”

(Another strange thing. The demon does not know if hearing all of Ms. Kang’s strange thoughts will ever feel normal.)

There's a distant corner of her mind worrying about things like her reputation as an idol and how Celine (their Celine) will react if she comes back to tens of thousands of won worth of speeding tickets, but most of her attention is occupied by an all-consuming panic. After Mira's warning (a Celine who had killed her Rumi - an unthinkable idea; Zoey's mind skitters away from the full weight of it. Celine has always been such a steady - if not particularly affectionate - presence in Rumi's life, she cannot imagine--) they'd heard the scuffling and grunting sounds of combat. There had been a horrible crunch and Mira's unmistakable cry of pain and then nothing from the phone except for Celine's indistinct voice and then the Honmoon had started shuddering and shuddering and Rumi had sunk into it like a stone into water and left Zoey standing in the parking lot all alone.

Celine's trusty sensible sedan roars into the courtyard and Zoey barely remembers to put it in park before she is sprinting towards the angeori. Mira's phone lies abandoned on the porch, call still connected. Nearby, there's a small blood spatter (too small to be from anything serious, Zoey thinks, hopes, prays, but Mira has always been the weakest of them when it came to hand-to-hand, and there are many many ways to hurt someone that don't involve too much blood). The hallway is empty as Zoey barrels through it but she sees a blur of color in the kitchen and skids in to find Mira and Rumi (both still alive, thank god) in an inelegant heap on top of this version of Celine. Zoey's heart is still beating a mile a minute in her chest as she notes the kitchen knife lying on the floor less than a meter from this Celine's outstretched arm, the rapidly purpling bruise around Mira's neck, and the blood covering Mira's face.

"Zoey," shouts the imposter Celine, "help me! You cannot let yourself be fooled! The one you call Rumi is a demon!"

"Yeah," says Zoey distantly, remembering that awful moment behind the stage of the Idol Awards, how Rumi's patterns had glowed a lurid pink as her voice tore the Honmoon, how Zoey had raised her shin-kal and nearly... "We know that."

Those selfsame patterns are nothing but pale scars now, occasionally flickering with the light of their new Honmoon. They're on full display as Rumi's muscles bulge from the effort of holding this Celine's arm flat on the floor (away from the knife, which doesn't make any sense, she can summon her ssang-geum, why would she need to grab a knife?)

(No demons have gotten through their new Honmoon. That she'd gone for a knife at all means that she really had been trying to kill--)

"I'll, uh, go get the rope," Zoey offers. She was a Girl Scout; she knows her knots. She doesn't know how to hogtie a person, but thankfully there are a number of helpfully illustrated websites on the internet with extremely detailed instructions on that very topic! Celine fights it with an animal desperation, but there's not much she can do once it's the three of them against her.

Zoey cannot shake the feeling of horrible wrongness as she looks down at their seonsaengnim, trussed up on the floor like an animal and glaring up at Rumi with a hatred that Zoey has never seen on Celine's face before. She cannot square the glowering woman on the floor with the first person to truly look at Zoey and see someone worthy of attention. (She's never ever told anybody, but she used to envy Rumi her parental guardian - Celine had been strict, yes, but she'd also always been so clearly proud of everything she had accomplished, had been present in Rumi's life in a way that Zoey's parents never quite managed.) This stranger is far more alien than even the weepy crier, because the Celine Zoey knows would never, ever raise a weapon against Rumi.

Or Mira. With the threat taken care of (and Zoey cannot believe she's thinking about Celine like that now), she can turn her attention to her partners. Rumi looks shaken but uninjured. Mira, on the other hand, looks awful. Her nose has clearly been broken in at least two places, the blood trailing down her face to join with the blood from her lip, which has split. Her face is rapidly bruising around her nose, her mouth, and at least one black eye. What's most frightening, though, is the ring of bruises - already purpling ominously - all around her neck.

"Oh my god, Mira, are you okay!?" asks Zoey, "Your neck, your voice..."

Mira winces. "I'm fine," she croaks, and winces again.

"I'm sorry," says Rumi, and she looks stricken. "I don't know what happened, I just froze, I--"

"Came through when I needed you," rasps Mira. "Twice."

Rumi still looks guilty, and Zoey tries to smile at her encouragingly. Having your not-mom genuinely trying to kill you is probably incredibly traumatic, it makes sense that tripped Rumi up.

"I'll grab the first aid kit," she offers, because Mira's injures do need to be looked at.

"Good idea," says Rumi, stepping forward and reaching her arms out to Mira's face. "We'll need to reset your nose."

"Stay away from them!" shouts Celine. "Mira, do not let it touch you!"

There is genuine fear - and concern? - on Celine's face when Zoey turns to look at her. Which is nonsense, because, "You're the one who did this to her!"

"Unfortunate but necessary. I just needed her to stay down long enough for me to deal with the demon. Once it's gone its hold on you will fade." The impostor meets Rumi's gaze and her beautiful face twists into a sneer that Zoey has never seen on their Celine, not even when she was talking about shareholders. "The me of this world should have killed you long before things got to this point."

"Hey!" snaps Zoey; Mira steps between this evil Celine and Rumi protectively.

And Rumi says, "I asked her to."

---*---*---

Bobby practically skips through his morning routine. He'd been called directly! By Kang Celine!! It's an open secret in the industry that she is planning to debut a successor trio to the Sunlight Sisters, one she's scouted herself and personally trained. And somehow, she knows about him and wants him to be involved!

Well, maybe. Everything depends on if he can ace the interview and impress Kang-nim and the group. It's his best opportunity since his disagreements with (and subsequent ejection from) his previous company, and his savings are running low. No pressure!

He runs the comb through his slicked-back hair one last time and adjusts the lapels of his best suit. It sits awkwardly on him now - he's put on weight since he last wore it. The part of him that will always be an idol despairs, before he shoves that voice all the way into the back of his mind. He'd never say such things to one of his charges, so he shouldn't be thinking that way about himself. 

Punctuality is very important, especially for a manager, so Bobby gets to the interview location - an office building in Gangnam - 17 minutes early, and then waits around the corner until 10 minutes before the meeting time to actually walk in. Kang-nim arrives shortly afterwards, followed by two teenage girls - one with long, shockingly pink hair and the other wearing baggy pants and a shirt that Bobby struggles to describe for a moment before settling on "stylistically interesting."

"Shin Byeongmin?" Bobby would never say it aloud but Kang-nim looks tired as she addresses him. Her makeup is expertly applied but cannot quite hide the deep bags under her eyes, and her eyes themselves look bloodshot. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I'd like to introduce you to Mira and Zoey."

Bobby smiles widely and bows. "The pleasure is all mine! You can call me 'Bobby.'" The girls smile back at him, but their expressions are strained. 

Kang-nim gestures to an upholstered chair. "Please, sit." She takes the other upholstered chair, and the girls both sit at one end of the fancy couch that takes up much of the room. The first questions are ones that Bobby anticipated - about his idol career (brief), his experience with management (likewise), the reasons for his departure (raising too many concerns about his charges' schedule), his priorities as a manager (his groups' wellbeing and success). The following questions make sense but are oddly specific - how he would handle a situation in which the group is late to a performance (profuse apologies), whether he has first aid training (yes?), would he enforce a diet mandated by the label (he hesitates at this, but ultimately that was part of what drove him from his last job, so he says no and is relieved by the pleased smile that spreads over Celine-nim's face). The oddest thing about the interview is how distant Kang-nim seems. She asks the questions but often doesn't seem like she's fully following his responses, as if her mind is elsewhere.

Once Kang-nim finishes her apparent list of questions, she turns to him and asks if he has any questions for them. Bobby flashes her a smile and turns to the girls. 

"I'd love to get to know you! Could you tell me a bit about yourselves?"

"Mira," says the girl with pink hair, folding her arms. "I dance." Bobby is surprised by her curtness, but maybe she's going for the cool girl archetype? It's not as broadly popular an archetype but fans who like it tend to be very dedicated. He can work with that. 

"Hi! I'm Zoey!" The girl with the interesting fashion sense smiles widely. "I'm from California and I'm a rapper! I'm also a lyricist and I do some production work and know how to play piano and violin. My hobbies include martial arts, parkour, skateboarding, and surfing and I really like turtles! Uh. Yeah!" She pumps her arm at the end, and-- it's cute. She's definitely the maknae of the duo(?). But there's something stilted and slightly manic about her demeanor. It's not genuine, she's forcing it, and she can tell he can tell because she mostly manages to stifle a wince once she's done. Mira shifts over towards her so that their legs are touching in a silent comfort and she relaxes slightly.

If Bobby is completely honest, he expected better of two trainees who had been singled out for training by Kang Celine herself. The Sunlight Sisters had been legendary in their prime, and he has to admit he was expecting to be meeting lightning in a bottle today. But! That's OK! He'll do his best for these girls regardless. 

"That's really cool! I'd love to hear some of your songs," he tells Zoey, and then turns to Mira with, "and see you on stage." He then turns back towards Kang-nim and takes a bit of a risk. "I am curious, though, Kang-nim. You've made it clear that you are planning to debut a trio. Is that still--" Both girls immediately stiffen, and Bobby stops, realizing that he has strayed into something sensitive. 

Kang-nim's face slides into a carefully expressionless mask, though her eyes seem pained. "Yes, that was the plan. Unfortunately, the third member of the group is no longer in this world."

Oh. Shit. "My sincerest condolences," Bobby says, painfully aware that he has royally overstepped. No wonder the girls seemed off, if their groupmate had died recently. When did it happen, that it was still affecting them so? His mouth moves before his brain can catch up, and he finds himself saying, "When did—" He cuts himself off in horror, but it's too late. 

"Yesterday," says Mira tersely, and what the fuck. What the fuck!? Their groupmate and presumed friend died yesterday and they were still meeting their prospective manager like nothing had happened!? What was Kang-nim thinking, she... she had kept performing after the death of Ryu Miyeong, hadn't she? Is she that dedicated to the business?!

Fuck it. Bobby has already stepped in it so soundly this interview that there is no chance he's landing the job. Might as well try and say, "Kang-nim, are you sure it is a good idea to be having these sorts of meetings so soon after that? They should have time to grieve."

"Unfortunately, we don't have that sort of time. I'd already begun making arrangements for their debut. They'll be moving into the company dorms tomorrow." Kang-nim grimaces. "They need to launch soon if they're to be positioned to compete in next year's Idol Awards."

Bobby cannot believe what he's hearing. "Surely a couple of weeks is not too much of a delay. Kang-nim, you know what it is like to lose a groupmate, surely--"

Kang-nim freezes at that. Bullseye. She takes a deep breath, looks over at the two girls curled up together on the couch, and says, "The best way to deal with such feelings is to be so busy you don't have time to wallow in them."

Which. Certainly explains some things.

Before Bobby can come up with a suitable retort, all three women's heads snap towards the window in unison.

"Excuse me," says Kang-nim. "I need to step out and attend to something. Girls, you stay here and ask Bobby-nim any questions you have for him." She strides authoritatively out of the room, leaving Bobby alone with two grieving girls on a couch.

An awkward silence descends upon the room. At a loss for what to do - he's a stranger to these girls, it's not his place to offer comfort - Bobby deploys his time-tested teen taming technique. "Do you girls want some snacks?"

The two of them look at each other, and then back at him. Zoey nods.

The office building has, in its lobby, a basket of complimentary snacks. Bobby, confident in the knowledge that he is not getting hired here, swipes the entire thing and slinks back to the office.

Mira and Zoey demolish a box of Pepero together, and it gladdens Bobby's heart to see them perk up a bit. Then they inhale another. And another. In the end they work their way through over half the basket before they finally slow down.

"I do have a question," says Zoey as she finishes a bag of turtle chips. "If we wanted to donate a third of our profits to charity, could we do that?"

"Of course," says Bobby, wondering why they were asking him, "once you've paid off your debt to the label."

"That'll be quick, since Celine covered our training," says Mira.

"Do you have an idea of what charities you'd be interested in supporting?" Bobby asks.

Mira and Zoey glance at each other, and then Zoey looks away, shoulders rising. "Support for victims of domestic violence," says Mira eventually. "Shelters and stuff, I guess?"

Bobby keeps his smile fixed on his face, but a chill runs down his spine. The third member of their group just died - young, only a teenager - and they were talking about donating a third of their money to combating domestic violence. What happened to their third!? He'd assumed that it had been an accident or a disease, but now...

He doesn't get a chance to ask. Kang-nim strides back into the room, for some reason limping slightly. "Well, girls," she says, "what do you think?"

They meet each other eyes. Mira nods, and then Zoey joins in. Their smiles towards Bobby are small, but genuine.

"Congratulations, Shin-maenijonim," says Kang-nim. "I'll send you the details later today." She claps a hand on his shoulder. "Take good care of them."

"We'll be in your care!" say Mira and Zoey, bowing.

Bobby's mind spins as he automatically bows back. He's utterly baffled - he argued with his interviewer and still ended up hired!?

... He should maybe apologize for swiping the snack basket.

---*---*---

"Absolutely not," says eomma, sitting up in her sleeping bag. "What in the world are you thinking, Celine?"

"I am thinking that I have hurt this child horribly," says not-maman, "and now she is being forced into constant contact with me. It would be understandable for her to--"

"She's a demon, not an idiot," says Rumi, and not-maman turns towards her, frowning at the interruption. "It's clear she knows you're the one who got her out of that situation, not the one who did all that to her."

Rumi is much more familiar with animals than people (are demons people? or do they lose something in the becoming?) but it's very clear from the way that demon-her flinches and cowers that she is terrified of people in general and of immediate painful punishment of any sort of mistake in particular. It... weighs on Rumi, that the other maman, who had been so kind and attentive to her, must have been the cause. That the only reason she had been nice to Rumi was the golden honmoon. That any version of maman at all would be capable of the sort of cruelty that would inspire such fear.

But this version of maman has been nothing but gentle with demon-Rumi, and demon-Rumi obviously can tell the difference between them. Rumi has been volunteering at an animal shelter since she was 14 years old, she knows what an animal that does not want to be held acts like. Demon-her certainly behaves oddly at times (chewing on her fingers - a stress response? anxiety?) but she hasn't been tense or fidgeting or looking for a way out of the hold. It's silly for this maman to think that--

Except, Rumi realizes with horror, it's not. Because this maman had hurt a Rumi. Had raised her without eomma, as her only mother, had obviously loved her deeply despite the whole demon thing, for her grief to be so apparent. And then... how had she described it last night? The patterns had spread, that version of Rumi had transformed into a demon, had been destroying the Honmoon. Rumi knows what must have happened next.

She tries to imagine her maman in that same position, and realizes immediately that being forced to kill Rumi would have broken her. To then be dropped into a world with a version of her daughter that looks just like hers had in her final moments? One who has been terribly abused, by another version of herself?

A great deal of this maman's behavior suddenly makes horrible sense.

(Rumi doesn't really remember having patterns. She remembers remembering having had patterns, remembers the palatable relief surrounding her childhood and how her mothers had doted and fussed over her in a way they never really had for Hajoon and Seojoon. But it was a risk, past tense, that held no weight on her current life. It's only now that she's realizing the true magnitude of that little patch of discolored skin. She is a success story, but this maman had no eomma to turn the Honmoon gold with, had ran out of time during her attempt with the next generation, and her Rumi had died for that failure. And the previous maman--no, the previous Celine--hadn't even tried, and now Rumi is looking at what she would have become, if it were not for her parents' efforts and a mystical barrier she cannot even see.)

Before not-maman can reply - or scold her for her rudeness - Rumi shimmies out of the sleeping bag and unzips the tent. Demon-Rumi's muzzle is sitting on a stump nearby, covered with a layer of morning dew, which Rumi wipes off to the best of her ability. The demon snatches it out of her hands once she returns, buckling it on with obvious relief on her face.

The demon curling up to fiddle with her muzzle gives Rumi a clearer view of not-maman, sitting up from the sleeping bag in her torn and bloody shirt. Demon-her doesn't seem malicious, but her claws have done quite a bit of damage regardless. If this were the shelter, Rumi would just clip them, but--

Wait.

She can just clip them.

"We should go to my apartment," she says.

This version of maman seems to consider it, before shaking her head. "We need to stay on Jeju. I don't want to be too far from the dangsan namu, I think my... world shifting... is tied to it."

"Good thing I live in Jeju city, then," says Rumi, and not-maman blinks at her in mild surprise. "It's farther from the the hanok than we are now, but still on the island. It has a toilet, a shower, a refrigerator, a couch to sleep on, central heating, changes of clothes, we wouldn't have to hike for an hour just to bring things to you..."

"It's a good idea, Celine-ah," says eomma, and that seals the deal. While eomma and Sunmi-imo set about disassembling the tent, Rumi heads down the mountain to fetch her car (and call Young-min to beg him to take notes for her in the classes that she'll be missing while dealing with this situation). She's never been more thankful that her mothers overrode her desire to live like all the other students and insisted on renting an apartment for her. She would NOT be able to explain this to a dormmate.

Rumi's car is a trusty sensible sedan that her parents got her once she'd learned to drive. She'd wanted something fancier (or at least faster) (they could certainly afford it) and maman had almost agreed, but eomma had pulled up a website of accident safety statistics and that had been that. While the car is technically capable of seating five people, it's a tight fit, especially since demon-Rumi still needs to sit on maman's lap instead of the middle seat.

Demon-her seems spooked by the car. She glances around herself frantically as not-maman slides in, then freezes when not-maman draws the seatbelt across her back. Rumi tries to drive as carefully and smoothly as she can, which is difficult on the potholed gravel roads leaving the hanok. The roads get better as they get closer to Jeju City, though, and while demon-her still has her head buried in non-maman's shoulder when they finally pull up to Rumi's apartment complex, she is staring out the window with unconcealed curiosity when Rumi gets out to open the door for them.

Rumi had been concerned about how they were going to go about sneaking the very odd-looking version of herself into her apartment, but thankfully it's quite easy. Not-maman had changed into a clean shirt up on the mountain, and demon-Rumi is wearing an old hoodie of Rumi's, and with her face pressed firmly into not-maman's shoulder the muzzle isn't really visible at all during the brief climb up the stairs.

Once in the apartment, not-maman sits herself and the demon down on Rumi's couch with an audible exhalation of relief. Sunmi-imo checks not-maman's shoulders for fresh scratches, but it seems that demon-Rumi kept her hands balled into fists for the entirety of the hike and car ride. When not-maman gently unfolds them, there are puncture marks in her palms.

Sunmi-imo sighs and pulls out the first aid kit again, while Rumi goes to the cabinet where she keeps supplies for her cat, Derpy. Her nail clippers are sized for a cat, not a demon, but you work with what you have. She also grabs her nail file and, on a whim, some bottles of nail polish.

Not-maman and eomma are talking in low tones as Rumi walks back into the room. Demon-Rumi is perched rather precariously on not-maman's legs, staring wide-eyed down at Derpy, who is currently asleep in Rumi's knocked over waste basket (again).

"Hey." Rumi plops herself down beside her alternate universe self. Not-Rumi immediately averts her eyes. Rumi fixes her dealing-with-nervous-shelter-visitors smile to her face and says, "Can I clip your claws?"

"...Clip?" asks Demon-Rumi.

"Trim the ends off." Rumi helpfully holds up the clippers for demonstration.

Not-Rumi recoils, pulling both hands against her chest and curling up around them. She looks up at not-maman, who says, "That's not necessary."

"Why not?" asks eomma.

Sunmi-imo folds her arms. "It's a good idea, unnie. She scratched you up pretty thoroughly yesterday." The demon curls in on herself further, darting a guilty glance to not-maman's shoulders.

"She should be able to defend herself."

"From what!?"

"Me."

"Unnie, you cannot seriously believe--"

As an argument breaks out above them, the demon licks her lips (stress signal, Rumi thinks) and whispers, "I don't want to be bad." She thrusts one trembling arm out towards Rumi and screws her eyes shut, obviously bracing herself. "...Cut them off."

"Great!" Rumi chirps, and gently takes the proffered hand. It's shaking so badly she has to steady it with one hand as she takes a look at what she's working with. The claws are unlike any she's ever seen before - there's no clear demarcation where the skin ends and the keratin sheathe begins. Instead, the tapered point of the claw seems to extend smoothly out of the tip of each finger. She has no idea where the distal phalange ends (does it extend further than is typical for a human finger bone in order to support the claw structure?) and the deep purple color means she can't see the quick.

For safety's sake, Rumi decides to just take off the minimum required to dull the claws. The demon flinches violently at the first cut, and Rumi grasps her hand more firmly and hurries through the rest of the claws, trying to get it done before she changes her mind. By the end, though, the demon has relaxed a bit and opened her eyes to watch, so instead of hurrying to the next hand Rumi pulls out the nail file and smooths the cut edges into a nice gentle curve.

When that hand is done, the demon presents the other without a fuss. She smiles down at her trimmed claws once they're complete, and then excitedly turns to show them to not-maman.

"Look! I can't hurt you anymore."

Not-maman looks... slightly pained, but the corners of her eyes crease with affection regardless. (Behind her, Sunmi-imo looks smug.) "I can see that."

The demon whirls back around to face Rumi, and then begins scrabbling at her muzzle. After a moment she is able to unbuckle it, at which point she - holy FUCK - unhinges her jaw in a way no human ever could. Rumi jerks back from the mouthful of very sharp teeth that suddenly appear right in her face and there is a blur of motion as eomma lunges--

The demon shrieks as she is hauled backwards off of not-maman's lap onto the floor of Rumi's apartment. She desperately tries to scrabble off the linoleum but eomma is holding her down, golden light swirling around her other hand, coalescing into the shape of an arrow. As Rumi gapes at what must be a Honmoon weapon, not-maman tackles eomma, shoving her off of the demon and sending them both crashing to the floor.

(On the rare occasions where Rumi has seen her parents fight, it has always been in terse sentences and strained silences, a couple days of tension in the house before they reconcile and everything is right again. It has never been like this, eomma with a weapon, maman wrenching her arm behind her back and pinning her to the linoleum, eomma shouting It tried to eat my daughter, maman's eyes wide and teeth bared.)

The demon lurches upright as soon as she's freed, and while Rumi cannot see the Honmoon she can see how the demon's flesh immediately begins to redden and char. (Sunmi-imo wades into the fight and oh god Rumi's parents are physically fighting each other--) Rumi reaches out and pulls the her demon-self into her lap. Demon-Rumi falls into it willingly, her new position placing those tusks of hers right by Rumi's neck. But she doesn't do anything there except gasp and whine in pain, newly-trimmed claws scrabbling harmlessly against Rumi's back. (Sunmi-imo successfully hauls maman off of eomma, but earns an elbow to the stomach for her troubles and doubles over and maman is winding up for another blow and Rumi yells--)

Looking at her, because they know.

Which. Okay. Rumi said it so that— So that someone would know, even if this Celine isn’t the same Celine who looked at her, or didn’t look at her, and took the sword Rumi held out to her, and—

“Asked her to what?” Zoey’s eyes are huge and wet.

Rumi looks away.

"Rumi?"

"Don't let it trick you, Zoey, it's just--"

"If you don't shut the fuck up, I will gag you," Zoey spits out, furious and verging on hysterical. "Rumi, what do you mean, you asked?"

Rumi's shoulders have risen, unbidden, all the way up to her ears. She tries to shrug, because that feels like the kind of thing that someone unbothered would have, but instead the movement feels all tight and jerky and her body folds in on itself.

She's calm and in control. So. She straightens up. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”

“Don’t—“ Mira starts to say but then she breaks off as her nose makes this wet, crunching noise that sounds like it hurts.

(For Rumi. Because of Rumi. Because there was a Celine who looked at her Rumi and saw the patterns and did what Hunters were supposed to do.)

(Rumi. After a moment. Remembers to breathe.)

By the time she gets back, Zoey and Mira have dragged the other Celine into the pantry and are standing in the kitchen, staring at the door like they're scared she's going to break out and do something.

They are scared, Rumi realises. They're scared of this Celine.

She kind of wants to laugh. She kind of wants to cry. She kind of wants to go to this other Celine and tell her everything's going to be okay, which is - okay, probably not what someone coping well would think, Rumi knows that much, but--

Rumi understands, is the thing.

It's fine. This Celine is just. Fine. Not evil or crazy or whatever. Someone gave her a thing that looked like a baby except it had demon patterns, and so she'd fixed the problem the way Hunters were supposed to fix that kind of problem, and that had been that. It makes sense.

Rumi's hands are shaking. The room starts to sway. Adrenaline crash, the part of her brain that's still vaguely aware of her own body tells her, and Zoey's hands are guiding her to sit down and focus on the breathing techniques Celine drilled into them when they were teens. Other Celine cries out, begging Mira to get Zoey away from Rumi, and they all ignore her.

(Celine doesn't say 'Rumi'.)

(Maybe that's better. A version of herself so young she didn't even have a name yet. This Celine would have seen the patterns and realised what she had to do, and never needed to doubt her decision.)

Infuriatingly enough, the stupid nostril breathing thing that they have happily made fun of for years actually works, and by the time Rumi feels like herself Zoey's already finished tending to Mira.

"We can't keep her tied up forever."

"The fuck we can't," Mira snaps back. Or tries to, anyway; her voice comes out all stuffy and nasal and partly muffled by the ice pack she's holding to her face.

"Call it a citizen's arrest for beating the crap out of Mira--" Zoey begins. Mira makes a disgruntled noise but doesn't object. "-- But Mean Celine is staying right there until we can kick her ass home. She tried to kill you and newsflash, Rumi, we're not okay with that!"

As gently as she can, which isn’t very gently at all right now, Rumi says, "I am."

"Rumi--"

"I have to be," Rumi says. Her voice hitches, which isn't fair, because she's okay with this. She's okay with knowing that there is a version of Celine who killed her Rumi as a baby and another Celine who calls her Rumi her daughter, and Rumi's own Celine, lost in some other world, who didn't love her but couldn't kill her. Who did everything to protect the Honmoon right up until the moment it most needed protecting, and then hadn't done anything at all.

--------

As they follow after New Celine, Zoey grabs hold of Mira's hand and Mira tangles their fingers together and squeezes tight. It's the kind of thing they've done billions of times already, but it hits differently now.

Now she knows, doesn't she? Mira is it, for Zoey. All she's ever going to get. And Zoey has to try and be everything for Mira, too, because they're never going to find the third part of their harmony.

Zoey's inner soundtrack makes a giant comedy record scratch sound effect at that thought.

They had found their third, hadn't they? Sort of. They knew where their third was the whole time they'd known each other, at least, even if they hadn't known that was who Rumi was, or that she was even enough of a person to be Rumi and not the demon in the first place. She was never lost, not the way she is now, and she wasn't doing any kind of 'Someday my prince will come, if by prince you mean two teenage idols with magic weapons' montage.

Mira must feel the shudder Zoey's trying to suppress, because she squeezes their hands together again, so tight that it starts to hurt. The pain helps - it's grounding, somehow, drawing Zoey's attention away from her inner monologue and back to her body, and she bumps her shoulder against Mira's arm in a silent thank you.

"How bad was the fight?" Mira says, as soon as they're out of earshot.

"We were lucky," New Celine answers, and it doesn't look like she's avoiding their eyes exactly but she also isn't meeting them. "Not very many."

"But you got hurt."

New Celine does something with her face, and her tone gets sharper in a way that would have had Mira and Zoey apologising and preparing to run extra laps if this Celine was still their teacher. "It's been more than twenty years since I’ve even seen a demon. Forgive me if I'm a little rusty."

But this Celine isn't theirs, and as soon as she sees the way Zoey's shoulders scrunch at the sound of her disapproval, she closes her eyes and holds her hand to her mouth like she thinks she might be about to throw up.

"... Um, should we get you some water, or–?"

"No," Celine says. Her voice is distant, and she keeps her eyes closed, but she does at least drop her hand. "No, I'm sorry, girls, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”

Like what? Zoey wonders, and she knows from the answering crease in Mira’s brow that this is something the two of them will save to rehash later.

“It’s fine!” she says, brightly. Mira doesn’t answer but she does give New Celine one of her disaffected one-shoulder shrugs that look cool and elegant when Mira does them and vaguely twitchy when Zoey tries to copy her. They’re both meant to convey the same thing, she thinks.

New Celine just sighs.

“Change of plans, I think,” she tells them both, and leads them back towards the exit. A few of the employees they pass bow in greeting but New Celine either doesn’t see them or doesn’t care if they think she’s rude since Real Celine will be the one living with the consequences. Mira and Zoey don’t have that luxury and have to scramble to catch up with New Celine’s long strides.

“What - oof - What kind of change, ssaem?”

“Weapons practice?” Mira asks, not quietly enough for the receptionist to not turn to stare at them.

“For self-defence!” Zoey hurries to add. It’s the lie that the Real Celine has used on occasion too, and the receptionist reacts the way people always do, that look of understanding and sudden sympathy as they remember what happened to the other Sunlight Sisters.

The memory makes Zoey’s stomach clench. None of those people know anything about Rumi, about the kennel. If they did–

(Zoey had known, and she’d still–)

“No weapons,” New Celine tells them. “Actually I was planning on taking you to open new bank accounts–”

New bank accounts? Zoey mouths to Mira, who pulls the face that means Zoey’s missed something that Mira will have to explain later. 

“We can do that any time, we need to learn how to fight.”

New Celine doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at Mira’s impatience. Maybe that’s a good thing, Zoey doesn’t know, but New Celine has been doing this thing where she doesn’t quite look at them, doesn’t quite look away either, and the lack of reaction is starting to make Zoey’s stomach twist. 

“Why do you need to know how to fight?”

“Uh, because of all the demons?”

“Just the bad ones!” Zoey yelps. “Just the bad ones, not any nice demons!”

Zoey doesn’t need an explainer for the look on New Celine’s face at that. For a moment, New Celine looks almost exactly like their own, the nights when she would leave them alone in the hanok while she went to pay respects at the graveyard, and Zoey and Mira would stay up late watching movies and promising that they would never leave each other or their third partner all alone. And Rumi had been– Chained up. Outside in the kennel, probably. Zoey can’t even be sure of that in her own memories, because if she hadn’t been specifically told to supervise the demon then it had been easier to ignore it.

“Guess again” is all New Celine says to that.

The change of plans is, apparently, bringing them to a nearby park. It’s busier than Zoey would have guessed, since it’s the middle of the working day, but there are a lot of moms and their little kids, and for a second Zoey thinks about joking with Mira about what the mom collective must be thinking about them, but right before she puts the biggest, stinkiest foot in her mouth to ever be put, she remembers—

This Celine is Rumi’s mom.

She pokes at that thought a bit more, and it feels like prodding a bruise. Rumi’s mom made us dinner. Rumi’s mom is going to help us move into the trainee dorms. Rumi’s mom brought us to the park, even though she knows what we did to her daughter.

Celine sits directly on the grass. Zoey follows immediately, dropping into the familiar posture, back straight, eyes closed, hands folded – she can do this, she can be good enough, she can learn from Rumi’s mom and take it seriously and not ruin everything. She can.

They wait, perfectly quiet, for Celine to tell them if there’s something specific she wants them to meditate on or if she just wants them to strengthen their connection to the Honmoon. And then they keep waiting, and wait some more, and Zoey tries to empty her mind as best she can but it’s hard when her head is superimposing Rumi’s mom, Rumi’s mom, this is Rumi’s mom over every memory she has of Rumi.

Eventually, she cracks open one eyelid and sees that Celine isn’t paying any attention to them at all. Zoey isn’t sure if she’s just lost in thought or genuinely people-watching, but after a moment, Celine (Rumi’s mom, her brain supplies, unhelpfully) notices Zoey’s eyes on her and gives her a very small, very sad smile.

“You girls aren’t too tired?”

Mira just blinks at her. “For sitting in a park? I think we can cope.”

“Um, why did you bring us here, anyway? Is it special to the Honmoon or something?”

“Not to my knowledge.” New Celine, as she has done all day, doesn’t quite look at them when she answers. “Do you see the people down there?”

Zoey shifts to get a better look. There are some toddlers chasing each other around the climbing frame, a mom pushing her daughter on the swings. A few more kids crouched down to poke at something in the grass, and someone’s mom yelling at them to leave whatever it is alone. Further away from the play equipment, spreading out along the same slope that they’re sitting on now, there are clusters of students chatting and eating snacks. An elderly couple in full hiking gear are making their way along the hiking trail.

If there’s something weird about them, Zoey can’t see it. They look just like people. Normal people.

“I… think so?” Zoey tries.

Mira, who complained that her glasses didn’t match the girl crush aesthetic she was going for, says nothing. 

“Hunters are supposed to come in threes, for balance, and that hasn’t been the case in your world for a long time. You’re about to inherit a Honmoon that’s already very badly damaged, and you won’t be able to repair it without– As a duo.”

The without, from Rumi’s mom, rings in Zoey’s ears, and her stomach feels all knotted, so Zoey scrambles for the right thing to say.

“We know!” Is her smile too big? She means for it to be reassuring, like she understands the responsibility she’s taking on, but Celine and Mira don’t smile back. “I mean, we know it’s going to be tough, but we’ve got each other, right?”

“Duh,” Mira says, and Zoey feels her grin get less stiff.

(She knows, yeah. It’s still nice to hear.)

But New Celine hasn’t quite finished yet. She looks down at the little babies playing in the sun, the couples lying on the grass, the old man holding hands with his wife, and says, “A lot of people are going to die.”

Zoey feels herself jerk backwards at that, like New Celine’s just punched her right in the solar plexus. For a second, it feels like all the blood in her body rushes to her face, and she’s left reeling, trying to find steady ground beneath her.

“Most of them will be strangers,” New Celine is continuing, her voice sounding very far away. “To everyone else, they’ll just disappear. You’ll hear about them on the news, see their families pleading for information, and you’ll have to live with the knowledge that you didn’t save them, and get up the next day and do it all over again.”

Zoey shakes her head, which means nothing. Shakes to shake, to stop her hands from shaking, she doesn’t know. Mira clutches Zoey’s arm and Zoey clings back to her as well, and they both just sit there, holding one another in the middle of the park.

“Why are you telling us this?”

For maybe the first time all day, Celine meets her eyes properly and Zoey can see how red they are.

Rumi’s mom, you’re looking at Rumi’s mom–

“You need to be prepared,” Celine tells them. “When everything goes wrong. When it all seems hopeless. When Gwi-Ma talks to you both, tells you that you should just give in, that what happened to your Rumi is causing this. You need to know…”

She trails off, and Zoey feels her attention slide right past the two of them, down towards the little kids playing in the dirt. A little girl in a puffy pink coat is holding something up to show her mom - a stone, maybe, or a leaf. Zoey used to have a little jewellery box she filled with cool rocks and shells she found. She hasn’t thought about that in years.

“You need to believe there are things in this world worth fighting for,” New Celine eventually settles on.

--------

The Hunters freeze at Rumi’s shout and so does Ms.Kang, shoving the curly-haired Hunter away from her. Away from the demon.

“I have DOWNSTAIRS NEIGHBOURS!”

Ms.Kang turns towards the demon - who cannot get away, is stuck between the shouting and the angry Hunters and the burning and a familiar white-hot tension in master’s face, and the demon is bad, the demon is bad, the demon is bad—

And then Ms.Kang’s hands are hauling it up away from Rumi, who is still yelling something the demon does not understand about her security deposit, and drags the demon down the hall and into the bathroom. The demon is bad and snivelling and manipulative, the demon is bad and it needs to be corrected, and Ms. Kang shoves the demon into the shower cubicle and turns on the cold water and takes the soft sweatshirt it had been allowed to wear because it is bad and it is not allowed nice things, and it is bad.

It is bad, and its chest hurts to be bad, and it hurts because Ms. Kang—

It hurts. The demon is choking on it, how much it hurts, and its chest is aching, and noises are coming up out of its throat unbidden, and it is bad, and it cannot stop. Its head hurts and its stomach hurts and it is wailing in a way that cannot be allowed, and Ms. Kang is leaving it there in the cold–

The demon flings its arms out towards Ms. Kang, who tries to say something. The demon does not know what it is – it is not listening; it is bad – but Ms. Kang catches hold of both the demon’s wrists and holds it there, under the cold water, while the demon shakes.

The Hunters know. The long-haired one Rumi calls eomma. Miyeong, the Hunter it killed.

They know, and they know that the demon needs to be killed, and Ms. Kang–

Ms. Kang—

An animal howl rips out of its throat. Ms. Kang stares at it, still gripping its arms, mouth open as she says more words the demon cannot take in. It feels as though the sound has jarred something loose inside its chest, every bad demon thought it has ever tried to keep secret, and all of them are trying to spill out of its mouth at once. The demon howls again, and chokes on it, and tries to pull its arms free, and snaps with its ugly sharp teeth at the air, and Ms. Kang does not let go.

Ms. Kang does not let the demon go.

The demon does not know how long they stay there, in the cold and wet, only that at some point the shower is turned off and Ms. Kang releases its arms before another violent sob tears out of its mouth again, and it collapses into her lap.

The demon is crying, it realises.

It doesn’t know if it has cried before. It knows that it has never been allowed. But they know it is bad - the Hunters, who know it killed one of them – and Ms. Kang, who–

Ms. Kang who hit the Hunters, to save it.

The thought feels bigger than there is room in the demon to hold onto it: Ms. Kang, who knows what the demon is, had stopped the Hunters from killing it. Ms. Kang had fought them off. The demon had been corrected with cold water before, but never like Ms. Kang is correcting it now - still being held, Ms. Kang and the demon together in the cold.

The demon continues to snivel, and Ms. Kang continues to not correct it, until finally it feels that all of its tears have been used up, and Ms. Kang - gently - sits them both up.

“We should go,” she tells the demon - because the demon has ruined this place it was allowed indoors, this place where there was the promise of more snacks, more soft things, more, more, more. The demon just reaches up, and Ms. Kang scoops it against her front and carries the demon that way, so the demon can feel how Ms. Kang’s breath hitches.

More hot, fat tears slip from its face and pool onto Ms. Kang’s shoulder.

The Hunters are waiting for them. When Ms. Kang opens the door, the one who helped clean the demon’s cuts is holding towels and more clothes, and the one the demon killed is holding her Rumi. The demon glances up and sees them waiting, and drops its head back to Ms. Kang’s shoulder.

“We can leave,” Ms. Kang says hurriedly. “We can go back and camp out there – or find somewhere else to stay – Just don’t hurt her, please, Miyeong, don’t–”

“The muzzle stays on,” the Hunter it killed says. She presses her mouth closed in one tight, angry line, and looks as though she wants to say something else, but does not.

“Miyeong–”

“Rumi could have died, if you think I’m going to let you—”

“Eomma! I’ve been bitten worse at work, okay? She didn’t even touch me!”

“We agreed we’d do this later,” the other Hunter says. “Come on, let them dry off first.”

The other Hunter follows them both into the bathroom, where Ms. Kang wraps the demon in the biggest, fluffiest towel it has ever seen and starts to pat it dry. She does not hit Ms. Kang, and she does not try to hit the demon, so the demon tries not to flinch when the other Hunter comes closer. 

“Okay, kiddo, no biting. How’s your back?”

The demon blinks up at her.

“The burn,” the Hunter says. “... You know you were burned, don’t you?”

The demon has been burning ever since it first came into this world. The other Hunter had hurt it, it knows, but that was fair after what the demon did to her, and everything since then - the shower, and the crying, and Ms. Kang – had been so much that even the pain had blurred together with all the rest of it.

“Kiddo, why did you think your Celine dragged you in here?”

The demon glances up at Ms. Kang’s face. It feels very small and very, very stupid. Back in its world, Master had taught Mira and Zoey how to treat their injuries and the demon - because it i a demon and it is bad and not to be trusted - had listened to their lessons, sometimes, and had thought bad thoughts about the things it would like to happen as Master described all the ways she has been hurt, the ways Mira and Zoey will be hurt. They had lessons, lots of them, about how to splint their bones and wrap their wounds; they had been taught to run cool water over their burns, and the demon remembers this and feels an electric thrill all the way down to its toes.

Ms. Kang doesn’t do corrections.

The shower isn’t because the demon is bad. Ms. Kang wanted to help, Ms. Kang wanted the demon not to be hurt – had carried it up the mountain, and let it sleep on top of her, and fought the Hunters, and stopped the burning getting worse, and had done all those things while the demon hurt her.

Ms. Kang does not want to correct it.

Ms. Kang wants—

The demon scrunches up its toes and lets Ms. Kang check its shoulders, carefully patting it dry as she does. The other Hunter watches them silently.

“I’m not going to ask why you’re only talking to Miyeong–”

“She’s her mother,” Ms. Kang snaps back; the other Hunter ignores her (ignores her! Ms. Kang!) and carries on talking.

“--And not me, but I’m with her. We can’t risk your Rumi killing someone, and if you can’t keep the muzzle on her–”

“I can wear it,” the demon promises. “I can– Ms. Kang, I can keep it on.”

For you, the demon thinks with a dizzying force to the thought. Ms. Kang, I can do it for you.

Ms. Kang turns her face towards the demon’s. “You shouldn’t have to.”

“I want to be safe,” the demon tells her. It isn’t used to wanting, is even less used to doing so out loud, and as soon as the words leave its mouth it wants to curl back up into a ball on Ms. Kang’s lap and stay there forever.

But it is true. Ms. Kang had taken it out of the kennel, and away from the burning, and the demon had shredded her. And Ms. Kang had held it tight and fought the Hunters, and the demon had tried to fight her. If its claws and fangs, everything sharp and ugly and horrible about it, can be clipped away so easily, then maybe Ms. Kang can hold it again – maybe Ms. Kang can let it curl up, can press her own arms around the demon’s body so that they are touching so much – the demon can be safe, for Ms. Kang.

Ms. Kang just looks down at the demon, her hand hovering over the demon’s cheek. She could be touching it, the demon thinks, if it is nice and not spiky and safe. It would be nice, to be touched by Ms. Kang like it is something precious that can be held softly. It would be nice to be held forever.