some of that which is called memory returned to me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rumi blinked. "A secret?"

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

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

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

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

"So you think it was more complicated."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It wasn't not working.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was shaping up to be a wonderful day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They both started talking at once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rumi nodded, mutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"….KNEE DEEP in mud"

"The birds weren't my fault!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miyeong wasn't stupid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is a pleasure in routine. Repeating specific tasks at defined intervals, using techniques refined to the point of resistlessness. Letting an unbroken strand of action pull your body along while your mind lays still and smooth at the bottom of a lake. Her memories are dissolved like mineral into the water. Her hands are always where she expects them to be. Kim Chesa had one very bad day seventeen years ago, and restructured her entire life to prevent it from happening again.

Then, she had been red-faced and furious; Miyeong's words pitch-bending in her head. Teeth clamped so hard on the sides of her tongue that she could taste blood. Knowing that a lie this total could never be walked back. That they'd be telling this story for the rest of their lives. That they would never know what impulse had lead Celine to take the demon away rather than kill it, because she would see this broadcast. She would know that, given the opportunity to denounce her, they had.

The last time she had seen Celine, she was cradling the wet bundle Miyeong had crawled away from. The birth had lasted all night, Miyeong curled up the tub like a wounded animal, too terrified to go to the hospital. Someone would see her. The fans would find out. Their reputation would be ruined. But Chesa had wanted to be a nurse once, and had seen some childbirth videos in health class. People didn't always have babies in hospitals, right? And they were strong. At least they were together. They could get through this together.

They were barely 20, it had made sense at the time.

Until Celine caught the baby (when they still thought it was a baby), and wiped the caul from its face. As she smoothed back the blue-black tuft of its hair, one eye flicked open, golden as a snake. Chesa thought she might have been the one who screamed first. But Miyeong was shaking in her arms, struggling with the afterbirth. So she turned away from the demon to the one who mattered. The next few minutes were a blur. The demon started wailing, and Miyeong pushed herself up the bathroom wall and scrambled out and down the hallway. Only once Miyeong was still and spent, and Chesa was tucking her into bed, did either of them have a chance to think about the silence. About Celine and the demon.

(They had to tear up the carpet and replace it. Red wine stains, Miyeong had said to the contractor. The contractor had tsked and agreed that what Celine had done was shameful, but that the remaining Sunlight Sisters shouldn't loose themselves in drink. Chesa assembled a mask out of raw nerves and smiled; assuring the woman that it was just an accident. A bottle dropped and rolled down the hallway. White had never been their first choice anyway, so might as well just replace it rather than keep scrubbing fruitlessly. She would never ever ever ever be able to stop lying.)

Miyeong had struggled back up, insisting that they needed to go check on Celine, to help her kill it. That she was alone, probably in danger. Chesa had reassured her that Celine was more than a match for a demon so small. That she was probably looking for a place to dispose of the blood-stained towels and sheets. That some women had strong emotions after birth and that she'd feel less anxious when she'd had some rest. That if Celine wasn't back by morning they would look for her together. But the next morning Celine wasn't back, and she'd left a landmine in her place. A letter to their record label claiming that there was a secret baby. Her secret baby, and that she'd be leaving the Sunlight Sisters to raise it. She not only hadn't killed the demon, she'd fled with it like a thief in the night, and decided to raise it as though it was a person.

On the worst day of Chesa's life, Celine had been missing for less than 72 hours. And rather than deny the monstrous lie that there even was a baby, she sat huddled with Miyeong in front of a bank of microphones and left Celine to the wolves. At the time Chesa had told herself that they were choosing the stability of the honmoon. That it was better to condemn Celine, and preserve what remained of the Sunlight Sisters. What she had done (run away with a demon) was worth condemning. Celine would know how they felt about that.

And if a lie couldn't be walked back, then it wouldn't, so there was no point in dwelling on whether they should have. Because Celine was either long-since dead at the hands of the demon, or she had given in and killed it when it inevitably showed its nature. No point in indulging impertinent questions from their students. Because there was nothing Celine had done since that moment that was worth knowing. That out of personal affection for a former sister they had chosen not to hunt Celine themselves, but neither did they really expect her to apologize to them. No point in reaching out now, 1 year 2 years 10 years almost 20 years later. Because if she was still alive, she had chosen to stay missing and continue rejecting her duty to defend the world from demons like the one she stole.

(But 10 albums later Chesa still hadn't seen so much as a thread of gold, so maybe the honmoon was punishing them for not having had the courage to take matters into their own hands).

Now, she has pick ups to record for an Ilocano language album she's guesting on. A 11th Sunlight Sisters album in production. Desiderata has some interesting vocal tricks she's quite proud of: a madrigal they composed using their own vocal samples from early albums. A spacious six-part harmony with only two voices.

Now she has students. Incredibly willful and poorly behaved students. Students that try her patience and disturb the smooth water of her mind. But students nonetheless. The honmoon chose them so eagerly that Chesa was expecting to hand the greater work over to them in a few years at most. But their music is….fine. There's nothing wrong with the recordings they've made of studio-supplied songs. They've technically already qualified for debut. But Chesa has been holding them back anyway. Their performances are uninspiring. Their combat practice is too individualized, merely fighting in one another's vicinity rather than as a team. They're not ready in a way that troubles her. Rumi-ssi seems to best understand their true job (rid the world of demons), but raises the hairs on the back of Chesa's neck. A powerful voice weakened by a strangling anger. Mira-ssi understands how important their reputation will be to their success, but bafflingly doesn't care. A beautiful dancer who dances as though her sisters aren't even in the room. Sohee-ssi understands that their songs have to reach the souls of their fans, but she can't seem to write inspirational music that isn't vulgar in some way. A strong composer too focused on pleasing Miyeong to develop her own identity as a musician.

Chesa had been hoping to have a fresh start as a team. To celebrate seollal together and clear the air. To reaffirm their commitment to one another and force the team to work together properly if it killed her. Then Rumi had declared she was going to Gwangju, and was taking no feedback on the subject. And her eyes flickered, just for a moment, amber. A trick of the light, Chesa thought, while scrubbing the graves clean. Just my imagination, Chesa thought, the next morning while Rumi mocked Miyeong's fear that she had taken a lover already. She's just being a teenager.

Chesa ran the perimeter of the grounds for the fourth time, trying to clear her head, but the fear was fizzing around her. An odd look, a turn of phrase that seemed too knowing. That wasn't evidence of anything, but it felt like evidence.

When she got back to the hanok, in the evening, she found Miyeong sitting at the kitchen table singing to herself. Running a finger around the edge of her cup of coffee.

"Whether or not (or not or not) it is clear to you (to you to you) no doubt (no doubt no doubt) the universe is unfolding" Miyeong's glissando wandered across several measures in a way that abruptly reminded Chesa of Rumi. "as it should."

She looked up at Chesa, and said simply "The girls are gone."

Byeong-Ho sipped his coffee and looked out onto the city, letting the warmth gather in his chest as he settled his thoughts. It hurt less than he'd expected to finally meet the other chosen hunters. Even knowing what they must have been told about "Celine." Even with Zoey-ssi's frightened little poke to his forearm. Even with Rumi-ya's impatience with them. He found in his heart only an amused fondness, and maybe a little hope for two kids who decided to run away after their friend. Kids were always learning how to be better than their elders. Maybe some day it would be safe for Rumi-ya to tell them.

There was an ache, of course. The feeling that he should be with them. He should be making them play neolttwigi until they knew exactly how hard they could push each other. He should know what weapons they had pulled from their souls, and be helping them strategize how to use them together. He should know their first music. Surely they had tried to write songs together by now? Rumi-ya never seemed particularly enthusiastic about their music in her texts. Maybe the…the Sisters were relying on studio-written songs for their debut. It would be easier to get label buy-in that way, but the girls might struggle to put real feeling into the music. And if Mira-ssi and Zoey-ssi had the kind of spirits that would mesh with Rumi, that must rankle them just as much. Maybe a combined approach would work better. A few highly produced songs so that the album looked safer, but at least a few tracks where they could explore their talents and try to build an audience out of their more authentic work. Maybe the four of them could have a little listening party tonight. Share your favorite song, then take it apart as a group. Figure out what makes it work. How line distribution can complement vocal range. How beat arrangements can integrate dance more fully into the…"Heh," he thought. "Listen to me run on planning classroom activities like I'm going to play any part in their training."

He swirled the last sip of his coffee around his cup, nearly too cold to be worth drinking, and hesitated. It could be nice to do just the once.

"WAIT WHAT?" Byeong-Ho nearly dropped his cup. Zoey-ssi was shouting so loud he could hear it outside. Maybe having three teenagers under one roof was going to give him a heart attack before he had a chance to fret about the quality of his little girl's education.

To give them fair warning, he walked loudly down the little staircase that made up the roof of Rumi-ya's alcove; praying to god and the honmoon for minimal bloodshed. Her marks were small still. Created as much by shame at having had outbursts as by the outbursts themselves. Just a little bug at the time; a toddler having a tantrum, and immediately terrified by the deep red flare of the honmoon. It had so obviously been an accident he barely had the heart to chastise her. He had stayed up all night in fear that he might need to physically fight his sisters, though. But no one came. For a few months afterward, Rumi had been afraid of even becoming angry, and watching Rumi cry herself out rather than let herself feel thwarted had been heartbreaking. It was touch and go for a few years teaching her to manage how big her feelings were, but that was probably true of most children. (They never came.) And, for better or for worse, by elementary school she was fully able to get into angry fights with other children without risking her self-control or the playground.

"Girls? I heard you talking, are you awake enough for breakfast?" He shifted the curtain slightly and looked in.

"It's always been just us. Appa's never really talked about him." Rumi looked perfectly at ease, not even a fidget at her sleeve. Byeong-Ho was torn between pride and sadness. Pride that she sold the disguise so well. Sadness that she needed it at all. But…at least for now, it kept her safe.

Well, theoretically safe. Rumi had a split lip, Zoey two bruised eyes, and Mira a bloody nose. They looked like they'd been brawling, not just arguing.

"…Girls? Are you alright?"

"It's, um. We're fine, really. We were. I was." Zoey twisted in place and landed on Rumi's lap, then half bowed her head. "I'm very sorry Byeong-Ho-nim. I have said some very rude things about you. And that was, uh, not very cash money of me?"

Rumi snorted. Mira let out a little bark of laughter. All of the sudden the tension melted in earnest, and they were laughing together; their hands seeking one another. Zoey leaned ever so slightly into Rumi, and all three girls turned bright red as they realized how intimate their arrangement of limbs had become. They flung themselves apart as though he'd caught them kissing in secret.

Byeong-Ho laughed, because how could he not?

"Zoey-ssi, I accept your apology."

She began to sigh in relief.

"On the condition that you come eat breakfast, and tell me all about your theories. I am a great enjoyer of supernatural romances." He winked at Zoey, who was developing actual stars in her eyes at an alarming rate.

"Does that mean you're going to tell us about Rumi-unnie's dad? Like, his biological dad?"

Rumi leaned back, blinking rapidly, but with the tinniest hint of a smile. An unexpected honorific, then. "Poor girls" he thought, "they hardly know where they stand with one another even now." That at least he might be able to fix. He wasn't their teacher, couldn't be their teacher. Couldn't be there for them day to day the way they needed. Couldn't correct their form or help them plan for the future. Definitely couldn't soothe their fears about fickle fans. But maybe he could help them know each other better, that could count for a lot at this age.

"We'll see. That's Rumi-ya's story as much as it is mine, I wouldn't tell it without her permission."

Mira-ya looked contemplatively between Rumi and him. Hmm. If anyone put it together without any more hints it might be her. She did seem to enjoy dramatic reveals. But, if how glued she was to Rumi's side was any indication, she might be willing to listen to the whole story.

"Drink your soup girls, it's good for the constitution."

"No, I mean we need to go get them now." Chesa gripped the doorframe like it was all that was keeping her standing. "Rumi is..."

Miyeong tsked. "A bad influence, I know."

"She's a danger to the other trainees."

"Well, I think that's a little dramatic." Miyeong didn't disagree that they should go collect the trainees, but it wasn't like they would be in mortal danger spending one night alone with the little delinquent. "I don't like how infectious her bad attitude has become, but Mira-ya was nearly as bad when she first got here."

"That's not..."

"She is very aggressive, but not...physically. I think she'll be more agreeable when she stops having such a chip on her shoulder about being illegitimate! She really needs to get used to rude questions about it, it's not as though it won't come up in interviews." (Don't think.)

"No, I mean..." Chesa paused for a long moment. "I don't know what I mean. There's something off about Rumi. Something *spiritually* off."

Miyeong sighed internally. Chesa could be so...delicate about this aspect of their work. Wasn't it enough that they moved out of Seoul, all the way back to Jeju, after she started seeing demons in every crowd? Refitted an outbuilding on the old hunter training grounds into a recording booth, so they could live in an old hanok in the middle of nowhere and Chesa could feel safe at night? Miyeong could be in Seoul right now, being admired at an industry party while tastefully flirting with actors she wanted to work with again. One of the very few benefits of being famous. But instead she had to be an eccentric artist, dedicated to developing the talents of her protégées. Which was fine. It was fine.

"Chesa, you have a sensitive soul and I cherish that about you, but Rumi is just being a brat. It's nothing more insidious than being brought up badly." Miyeong sighed. "But I suppose it's not as though the honmoon has never made mistakes before." (Don't don't don't think about the ____.) 

"And in the worst case, we've done just fine as a duo." Miyeong looked up at Chesa expectantly. "Right?"

"....Right."

"Anyway, it's late. I'm not going to drive down to the airport and suborn a plane just to scold three teenagers."

She drummed her fingers lightly on the table. "We'll go tomorrow." A small smile. "Maybe we'll make a little game of it. Show the girls that we know how to find them."

The Sunlight Sisters did not maintain a private jet. Temporarily renting a plane for the duration of a tour was less of a hassle than paying rent on a hangar, and projected an air of wholesome frugality that appealed to elders and diaspora audiences. If something truly required their personal attention on short notice, one could always charter a flight. Which meant today, early in the morning of the first day of seollal, was the first time in more than a decade that Miyeong had really needed to fight for her life to get through an airport terminal in time to catch one of the few remaining flights out of town. Masked, swaddled in sweaters, and sweaty from running, no one recognized her. It was strangely liberating.

Once they made it to Gwangju, it should be simple to locate the girls. They hadn't needed to practice the technique since. Well. They hadn't needed to practice it in a long time. But Miyeong remembered how. (The three of them, playing tag across Seoul; feeling for the vibrations of one another's voices along the strands of the honmoon. Laughing in delight as they took turns chasing and being chased.)

The honmoon was all souls, but no soul was a static point within it. The people within its protection moved from place to place. The strength of their resolve waxed and waned. They felt hope, or faith, or love in varying amounts from day to day. But if someone felt any love at all, even a touch, you could find them. With, to be fair, some patience.

You took a strand of the honmoon and plucked it, letting the vibration roll through you, and listened for an echo. Then another strand. (Your sisters would do the same.) You skimmed the surface of the city, your souls echoing closer and closer until they began to harmonize. Miyeong would always be able to find Chesa (and Celine) the most easily, but she'd heard the girls harmonize together often enough. It should be simple to find their resonance.

So why was the honmoon so noisy? 

Strangely amplified, yet discordant. Trying to follow it was like trying to tune a guitar by adjusting the effects pedals. When Chesa and Miyeong finally converged on a likely location, neither was quite sure what they were even hearing. A song almost familiar, but transposed. And three more voices, narrowly circling one another without settling on an interval. A round of fifths chasing one another without resolving.

What was it Hana had said? "In an unexpected attack you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training." She hit the back of Chesa's knees with her cane, barely nodding when Chesa pushed her fall into a roll and then a kick-up without so much as dirtying her knees. "Your body won't go where your mind has never been."

They had nodded awkwardly, each in their own place; afraid to look away from Hana towards one another. Nervously tensed for individual attacks that might or might not come.

"So you must plan tactics against one another, and practice them in secret if you must." A ghost of anger passed over her face and was gone before Miyeong really processed it. "Learn not only your own strengths, but your sisters' weaknesses. Because mark my words," Hana pointed at each of them, shaking ever so slightly, "a demon can evade your emotional as well as physical defenses. Gwi-Ma can influence the mind of even a skilled and wary hunter, and you three are not even skilled hunters yet."

"Miyeong, let's start with you. Your weapon is useless in close combat, so you must learn to control the terrain instead. How do you think you could deny Celine the use of her ssang-geom?"

Miyeong opened her mouth to speak.

"No don't say it out loud you stupid girl. What did I just say about planning in secret? But I want to see whatever you were about to say out in the field today. First hunter down will spend tomorrow carrying water. Winner gets a study day."

Miyeong shuddered reflexively. (Don't don't don't don't don't think.) Chesa looked over at her, quizzically. "Are you alright?"

(A holy arrow piercing Celine's hand, pinning her to the ground. Miyeong didn't win, but she didn't lose. The next time none of them hesitated.)

"You're just jealous you were too tall to ride the Atomic Mouse with me."

Mira chased a bit of miyeok around her bowl and popped it into her mouth, giving Zoey a serene look. She was, actually, but she wasn't going to admit that. "Oh you mean the baby ride you were on? I was too busy riding Dragon Chase to notice."

Byeong-Ho-nim laughed softly, distributing the last of the mackerel between their bowls. "Don't let Rumi-ya hear you say that, she loves that mouse roller coaster."

"It's a good coaster!" Rumi barely paused for breath before launching back into a clearly prepared speech about the virtues of dilapidated theme park rides. "It's maybe just a mini-coaster, whereas Dragon Chase is a full loop and spiral-type coaster, but you're still looking at an appreciable percentage of the speed of a larger coaster. Unless you're really acclimated to drops you'll still feel it."

She gestured emphatically with her chopsticks, apparently having unhinged her jaw to make her fish vanish instantly. "I've read that they're both a bit of a rougher ride than Meisho's newer installations, and not quite as intense, but I like them the way they are? I've only ever had the chance to go to Family Land…but, I don't know, getting your teeth rattled is part of the experience. It would feel weird for it to be all smooth. Plus you can see the whole park from the top of the Atomic Mouse." She sighed dreamily. "You can see the honmoon shimmering over everything, full of all these little points of light."

Rumi reached out her free hand and gently touched the air, tiny blue ripples collecting around her fingertips. "When people are happy enough, they can strengthen the honmoon a tiny bit all on their own. Hunters just amplify the effect, the strength is theirs." She blushed. "I just think that's neat." And then stuffed her mouth with rice.

She was so…for lack of a better phrase, at home here. All the layers of ice queen professionalism had been peeled away and the girl who was laid bare was a giant fucking dork. She liked free-fall and chemistry. She could yap like a champ about what qualities made a good houseplant. That poise wasn't gone per se, but she wasn't poised to strike. Poised to grab their hands and rush back to Family Land, maybe. Seeing Rumi expand like that, be so much more than she'd ever let them see, was almost distracting enough for Mira to miss that she was being distracted.

Just a question here and there; a rare interruption; and Byeong-Ho was directing the conversation while doing little more than listening attentively. His media training might be a decade out of practice, but he clearly remembered it well enough to run rings around some teenagers. Annoyingly, it didn't stop working just because she saw the slight of hand. In asking her and Zoey to introduce themselves to him, Mira found she was being reintroduced to Zoey and Rumi. Just this morning Mira had discovered that there was more than one kind of sea turtle. That Zoey used to make skate culture zines and missed the mechanics of constructing a zine as much as writing and preparing the illustrations. That her favorite half-sister Fabiola had started learning the guitar to impress girls.

She learned that Rumi honestly had not intended to pursue a musical career, which made her natural singing range infuriating. That until pretty recently she and Byeong-Ho had not been sure that Rumi being able to touch the honmoon necessarily meant that she would be a hunter. That she and Byeong-Ho loved each other with a kind of fierceness that made Mira want to tear a hole into their life and crawl inside. Would it be weirder to ask Byeong-Ho to adopt me, or to trick Rumi into marrying me so I can have him as a father-in-law? Hideously embarrassing, but hardly the first time in her life that she would rather die than say what she was thinking.

Regrettably, they were all so diabolically bad at yutnori that she had no choice but to think. Mira circled around the morning's conversations in her head. If the duo were lying, demons were a very unnecessary extra detail to introduce. For worse or for worser, it was a situation where they would have already had to force Byeong-Ho out of the public aspect of their work. No need for supernatural elements, they could just be ashamed of him in a normal way. If the duo weren't lying and Byeong-Ho was lying…wait. What had he even confirmed? Only that Rumi was his daughter. Not that he was a demon, or even that her biological father was a demon. Rumi had said the same. That he was her father, and that she never knew her bio father. He could be lying about knowing that Rumi's bio father was a demon, but he'd never even said whether he had known or not. Put a pin in that one and come back to it, Mira thought, as she tried to shake off an unpleasant sense of vibration.

If the duo weren't lying, and Byeong-Ho wasn't lying about Rumi being the daughter he left the Sunlight Sisters for, there was only one person the demon could be. And it was the girl with apparently naturally purple hair, who was trying to plan with Zoey about whether to group up their mals again, a strategy that had sent them to the back of the course twice already. If Rumi and Byeong-Ho were plotting to destroy this generation of hunters from within, 16 years was an impossibly long game to be playing. And when examined more thoroughly, What do I actually know about demons? turned out to be rich in specifics but very sparse in detail.

So really she was left with two questions: What exactly is a demon? and Is someone who has one demon parent a whole demon, a whole human, or a little bit both? Those questions implied others: How does someone become a demon?, Can you stop being a demon once you start?, and How does the honmoon choose Hunters?; but she didn't really need the answers to those questions, not immediately. She did pretty urgently need to know whether she could accidentally kill Rumi in sparring practice though. For fuck's sake, they had been practicing for with actual weapons, was Rumi cocky or suicidal?

Despairing of ever making it past Mo, and so distracted by the skin-crawling sensation that she could barely concentrate. Mira tried to focus on what to do next. She had once again found herself in a situation where the worst person she knew at talking (her) was going to have to broach this subject. And because she was too blunt to do this in the delicate, almost invisible way Zoey and Byeong-Ho did, Mira was probably going to blurt it out and make Rumi ice them out again. She couldn't think of a way to raise an urgent question while making it seem like innocent curiosity. She cast Do, again, and swore.

Byeong-Ho's head shot up. "Girls, do you feel that?"

Rumi winced. "That horrible noise?"

Zoey sighed audibly. "I'm not the only one?"

Mira nodded. "It feels like my skin is crawling."

Byeong-Ho's lips pressed tightly together for a moment. "Okay. It's going to be okay. Have the…sisters taught you anything about how to use the fabric of the honmoon?"

Mira and Zoey started talking at the same time. "You can use the honmoon? How?"

"Maybe? I think? They didn't say exactly, but I think I'm running a lot faster than I used to? Like the ground is pushing me up a little bit."

Rumi paused, her eyebrows pinched together in thought. "I've seen Chesa sortof skim across the ground like that too."

Byeong-Ho nodded. "That's a good place to start." He took a deep breath. "I know I'm not one of your teachers, but if you would do me the honor, I can try to explain a few things to you."

Mira felt half a smile creeping across her face as she saw Zoey and Rumi turn toward Byeong-Ho.

He smiled. "Okay. The first thing you need to know is that everyone is part of the honmoon. Everything, in a sense. Our noblest feelings; love, loyalty, compassion, empathy; they provide the strength of the honmoon. And because we provide that strength, it is materially part of us, and as Hunters we…you can draw on it in small ways to move faster or fall slower or run across a surface that wouldn't normally hold your weight." He closed his eyes. "That connection also makes us visible to those who can see and touch the honmoon."

Zoey started climbing to her feet. "ANYONE? Like, right now? Anyone could find us?"

Byeong-Ho touched her shoulder. "If they know how, yes. But it's difficult even if you do know how. You need to…"

All four of them winced at a new round of vibrations.

"…You need know the harmony of the person you're seeking. To be able to fit alongside their voice without overpowering it. With practice, you three should be able to find each other quite easily this way. It can be very helpful if you get separated, or if you're having trouble finding a small tear in the honmoon."

Mira grimaced. "I'm not sure it's useful enough if it feels this gross to do it."

Byeong-Ho shrugged. "It's not usually this unpleasant. I'm not sure what's making the honmoon so discordant." He looked at Mira and Zoey, and not quite at Rumi. Rumi looked at the ground, digging her fingertips into the carpet. Hmm. "Not to presume too much, but, have you girls been successful at harmonizing? Are you…have you managed to bring out the light in one another?"

Rumi continued to stare at the floor, hands clutching at the pile of the carpet. Like she could dig the answers out of the ground.

"Maybe a little? Sometimes when we're just improvising together, but…" Zoey chewed her lip thoughtfully. "Not when we're recording real tracks, like, for the label." She smiled awkwardly. "The sisters said it would, uh, come with practice?"

Byeong-Ho nodded sadly. "Yes, that might be it. In trying to find you individually, it's causing unintended resonances between you. Catching the edge of the wrong string and getting a sour note." He reached out toward Rumi, and loosened one of her hands. "Aegi horangi, don't fret. We knew this was a risk."

Rumi nodded shakily, and looked up at him. "I'm sorry. I…" She sniffled once. "I just wanted to see you. I didn't think they'd chase me here."

"Ehhhhhh, that's probably our fault." Zoey glared at Mira. "Okay, my fault. It was my idea to run after you and find out what your…" Mira gestured vaguely at Rumi. "Your whole deal was."

Rumi looked confused. "My whole deal?"

"I'm saying this wrong." Mira tilted her head back and breathed out. "I wanted to understand why you hated the Duo so bad. I wanted…ugh." She clapped her hands over her face and dragged her fingers down her cheeks. "I wanted to be friends. I wanted you to like me. I knew there was something you were keeping a secret and I couldn't figure out how to get you to trust me with it."

Zoey added, quietly. "We knew we'd upset you, but I didn't really understand why and oh no. Oh no, oh no. Oh my god I have been misgendering your father for like, a year. RIP to me, I have to bury myself under a tree for the next 100 years."

Rumi snorted. "To be fair to you, I was actively trying to keep him a secret."

There was a pounding noise on the door downstairs.

"Well. Time's up I guess." Mira sighed, climbing up from the floor into a low bow. "I'm sorry for interrupting your holiday. I gotta go face the music for this."

Zoey leapt up. "Well I'm not sorry."

Mira looked over at Zoey. "Eh?"

"Well I'm not. I don't know if I ever would have gotten the chance to apologize to Byeong-Ho or to tell Rumi about zines or to know that you can play the violin or to talk about sea slugs, like, at all. And I'm glad. About all of those things. Even if we kinda fucked up your holiday. That part I am sorry for."

The pounding continued, followed by a loud cracking noise.

"Ai-ya, what on earth are they doing down there?" Byeong-Ho seemed more annoyed than frightened, and that seemed to stead Zoey's nerves. Zoey started towards the stairs, and Rumi paused to help Byeong-Ho to his feet.

As Rumi rounded the corner after them, Mira caught Rumi by the shoulder and looked at her, trying to will her to understand. "I don't care." Please understand, please. "What….whatever it is, you should get to tell us yourself."

Rumi's eyes widened, and she made another face Mira couldn't understand. A little scared, a little angry, a little hopeful? Maybe that was just Mira hoping that Rumi understood her.

They reached the ground flower shop to find the Duo standing in front of the entrance, Miyeong's hand pushed through the broken glass, grasping towards the deadbolt.

Byeong-Ho sighed. "Impulsive as always, I see," and he walked towards the door. Mira reached out to grab Rumi's hand, to hold her back. A bad feeling for a reason she couldn't quite identify. But Rumi had practically teleported in front of him, and the two of them jockeyed for position closest to the door.

In the end, Rumi got her hands on the doorknob first, and composed an "annoyed, but innocent" face. The Sunlight Witches were the ones being unreasonable and invasive, she was here having a normal holiday. Okay. Okay. She could do this. She opened the door just as Miyeong finished wiggling her hand back out of the glass.

"I'm pretty sure this is breaking and entering."

"Don't be so melodramatic." Miyeong tried to peer around Rumi to see into the shop behind her. Rumi narrowed the opening of the door even more, until only her face was visible. "You're our trainees, it's important for us to know where you are."

"What makes you think Mira and Zoey are here? If they're not at the hanok, maybe they decided to take their own vacation together."

Chesa sighed. "We know you're all in there, despite your best efforts at blocking us."

"Blocking them?" Zoey whispered behind her. Rumi couldn't tell who she was talking to, but Mira shushed her.

"Maybe I was practicing on my own, and you just heard me learning how not to play a chord on the honmoon."

Miyeong pushed on the door; hard enough to budge it. But Rumi pushed back with her knee, keeping it in place.

"Kang Rumi you are being very disrespectful to us."

"You broke my friend's door, Miyeong-seonsaengnim. I think it's quite reasonable for me to be a little annoyed about that."

"Where is your friend, anyway? I'd like to meet the man who's this important to you." Miyeong smiled broadly. "He must be very special."

There were whispers and jockeying behind her, but Rumi didn't look over her shoulder and kept bracing the door. "He is, thank you. I'll see you in a few days. I'm sure Mira-ya and Zoey-ya will be back to the hanok in a few days as well."

Chesa raised her voice enough to carry over Rumi's shoulder. "Are you girls going to keep hiding behind Kang Rumi or are you going to come out and account for yourself?"

Appa rested his hand on her shoulder. "Rumi-ya, I'm a grown man. You don't need to protect me from them."

Reluctantly, Rumi let go of the door and allowed him open it.

By degrees, Miyeong's smile became more genuine. "It's so nice to finally meet you! You probably know us," she gestured between herself and Chesa. "We're the Sunlight Sisters! Choi Miyeong and Kim Chesa. And your little friend Rumi there is one of our trainees."

Rumi pressed her lips into a thin line. Of course Miyeong would be weird about appa, that was nearly the only thing that could make today worse.

"We've come to bring her and our other trainees home, but before we leave I'd love to get to know you a little better!" She smiled up at appa, and the absolute lack of recognition made Rumi want to cackle.

"So who might you be?" Miyeong continued. "Rumi's mentioned your shop but she didn't tell us how adorable it is. Can we come in?"

"Kang Byeong-Ho, and thank you. I've devoted many years to its development and I'm very proud of it." He pointedly looked over at the door. "It looks like I'll be needing to replace a pane of glass on my front door though."

"Hahaha, well. Rumi-ya wasn't answering the door and we were understandably a little worried about her. Staying here by herself with an older man, you know how talk can be."

Appa gave Miyeong a bemused look. "I think you might have misheard me. My name is Kang Byeong-Ho. Rumi-ya is my daughter."

"Well!" Miyeong blinked rapidly. "Rumi! You could have just told us he was your father! You were so mysterious about the whole thing, of course we were going to be suspicious." Miyeong briefly narrowed her eyes at Rumi before looking back to appa. "And it's so nice to finally meet you Byeong-Ho-nim! If you'd like to talk about your daughter's trainee progress I'm sure we can make time to chat before we take the girls back to Jeju."

Rumi and Chesa said, at the same time. "I'm not going back.", "She's not coming back."

Miyeong made a startled noise. "Chesa, we talked about this. Rumi has been a little bit of a difficult student, but she's not dangerous. I'm sure we can have a reasonable discussion about this inside."

Byeong-Ho stepped slightly to the side, and with great reluctance Rumi followed him.

"Okay, you're inside. You can see we're all fine." Rumi started pushing the door closed again. "Now you can go back to the hanok, and let us enjoy the remainder of our seollal in peace. Goodbye, so nice for you to drop in."

Miyeong sighed. "You see, Byeong-Ho-nim? She's very obstinate."

"Mm. Rumi-ya has a strong personality, yes. But I've never had reason to doubt her judgement." He looked coolly at Miyeong and Chesa. "She feels very strongly about spending time at home with me, and bonding with her fellow trainees. Surely you have no objections to the girls spending time together with adult supervision?"

"I agree that Kang Rumi should stay here with you." Chesa's jaw tightened. "She seems to have been stable with you all this time, but I strongly disapprove of training her any further. She's enough of a danger to Mira and Zoey as it is."

Rumi didn't shrink back at all. She had nothing to be afraid of. Chesa had no proof. She could barely feel appa's hand on her shoulder, pulling her deeper into the flower shop.

"Chesa what are you doing?" Miyeong hissed. "Why are you are being so difficult about this?"

"You cannot seriously be telling me that you don't recognize this man. He is obviously related to Kang Celine."

Miyeong went white as a ghost. "What? No."

"You know what that makes it, this so-called Kang Rumi."

Rumi desperately wanted to laugh right in Miyeong's face, but she was frozen by "it." A nervous wisp of a laugh escaped her. They knew they knew how could they know she had been SO CAREFUL.

"You don't know that!" Miyeong snapped. "You don't know that. You don't. They're gone Chesa. They're both gone."

"Uh." Zoey interjected. "Who is gone?" She paused. "Also, rude? Byeong-Ho-nim is right here, and Rumi uses she/her pronouns, not it/its."

Rumi stifled her laughter, which was maybe trending toward hysterical. This couldn't be happening. It was such a stupid way to be exposed. Her patterns had never really hurt before, but her skin felt hot and tight in a way she struggled not to react to. Like the patterns (small! so concealable that no one even looked twice at them in school!) were actively writhing around under her skin.

Chesa didn't even have any proof she was just guessing.

Chesa rounded on Zoey. "You don't even recognize what this creature is? After all your training? How could you possibly care what pronouns it uses?" Chesa clenched and unclenched her hands. "Don't you understand how much danger caring about it puts you in?"

"She is our friend Chesa-seonsaengnim." Zoey looked confused and hurt. "I know you guys feel betrayed or whatever, but caring about people is kindof a normal danger?"

"Chesa stop, she isn't. She can't be." Miyeong grabbed Chesa's sleeve and tried to turn Chesa to look at her. "You're seeing demons where there aren't any. Please. Celine is dead, the baby is dead."

Mira's brows pinched in confusion, stepping forward to stand next to Rumi. "Wait, why would his baby be dead?"

Chesa pulled away from Miyeong. "How am I the only one who remembers our actual job? This thing," gesturing at Rumi, "is beguiling you idiots. It is a demon and we kill demons so that they don't kill real people."

She stared at Rumi. "I was nearly content to leave you under the care of a jailer, since this man seems to have kept your condition from worsening. But I see the rot is already too deep." And then Chesa all but lunged at Rumi. Before Rumi even finished bracing to roll away, Mira had slid in front of her, catching the shorter woman's hands.

Chesa had some strength (and a lot of training) on Mira, but size does count when you're mostly playing keep away.

Chesa pulled away from Mira and turned to look at Zoey. "Demons don't have friends, Sohee-ssi. They have targets."

Rumi watched Chesa and Miyeong and Zoey argue back and forth about her with a sense of growing dissociation. Was she Celine's baby? Appa called her aegi all the time, but appa hadn't given birth to her. But appa was the one who had quietly placed himself between Chesa and Rumi, not Miyeong. The way he'd always been putting himself between her and Them. If she was anyone's at all it was appa's, right? And only appa's? And Miyeong didn't have any claim on her at all?

"Well then she's not a demon, is she!" Zoey's eyes were wide and wet, and for the first time since Rumi had met her she looked really and truly angry.

Mira nodded, her eyes bright. "Rumi's not a demon, Chesa-seonsaengnim. She's a hunter just like us."

Rumi poured every last bit of her frayed nerves into a cocky smile. "I think I would know if I was a demon." And she wasn't, mostly. She wasn't unnatural, she just needed to be more careful than other people. "I'd, you know, have the claws and stuff." She tensed her hands like a cat with it's claws out, and she knew they would just look like fingers.

"Everyone thinks I'm so stupid, like being distractible means I can't notice what's happening around me." Zoey could feel her face burning. Why had this looked so real to her? Why had she been trying so hard to make it real?

"It's attention deficit, not attention total fucking absence." Zoey thought she might be crying, but the heat was burning her tears away. "How could you never look for them?" She was shouting and she knew she shouldn't shout but she couldn't make herself stop. "How could you just abandon them like that?"

Miyeong looked offended. Chesa looked just shy of murderous. Rumi and Byeong-Ho looked at each other.

When she was 8 years old Zoey wrote a 3k "Sold to The Sunlight Sisters" fanfic and uploaded it to wattpad with the kind of fizzy enthusiasm that came with a brand-new obsession. Six days later she had gotten so many derisive comments that she unpublished it, and almost deleted the .txt for good measure. Papi had laughed and told her not to take it to heart. Eomma told her that she shouldn't have written about real people like that in the first place. Were they already fighting by then? Zoey couldn't quite remember. Just that she had wanted a sister her own age. Someone who wouldn't tell her to shut up about slugs already. Someone she belonged with. Papi's other kids always took one another's side, but Eomma said she had too many kids already.

At least people on the forums understood. They knew what it was like to feel betrayed, and like no one was on your side. They thought her fanfic was cute. They said some bad words that eomma didn't like, but eomma didn't like a lot of the things Zoey wanted to be doing instead of homework. The people on the forums were nicest to her when she talked about music, and she liked talking about music! They became her friends; encouraged her to try out for band and thought skateboarding might be a good outlet for all her nervous energy. It was an online friend who told her that the Sunlight Sisters were doing open auditions for a secret project that everyone knew was going to be a new girl group. That her lyrics were so good that she had to at least send a demo. By then eomma had come around a little bit on K-Pop, and loved the idea that Zoey might want to move to Korea. Papi had already been talking about moving back to New York to take care of Zoey's abuela and abuelo, and just said it might be good for her to experiment with living in a new place. Her older siblings were working, or in college. Even if Zoey wanted to stay in Burbank, who would she be staying for?

Only, the Sunlight Sisters were nothing like what she had expected. And not just because of the demon hunting thing. But it wasn't all bad! Eomma was happier in Korea. Very busy, maybe a little lonely, but less homesick. And Zoey had Mira now! Someone who liked being called Unnie and had some jagged edges that Zoey related to. Who was so sweet in private. Who had trouble understanding when Zoey couldn't just say how she felt, but listened anyway. Who was patient while Zoey got used to all korean all the time. Who knew a little english and could pronounce her name right. (Who had miles of leg. Who said that.) And Rumi, who kept refusing to fit in. Who did the work and practiced as hard as anyone else, but refused to give the sisters any respect they hadn't earned.

It made Zoey so angry until it suddenly didn't. Zoey internally cringed in embarrassment. Of course she couldn't fit in with the sisters, not when she was so loyal to her dad. Not when Rumi felt the same kind of abandoned that Zoey had felt, but without the cushion of her forum friends to support her. Not when Zoey had been regularly calling her dad a whore with her forum friends. Cringe. But despite that Rumi had spent all morning wanting to love Zoey and Mira back. She let them in on her secret as soon as they asked. As soon as they apologized. Rumi had not only listened with rapt attention to Zoey's ramble about sea slugs, she had a lot of specific questions about their relationship to non-sea slugs. Having Rumi-unnie's complete attention was, uh, very nice. It made her feel warm inside. (She wondered briefly if this was going to give her hair-brushing privileges. Who said that.)

If Rumi and Mira could refuse to be afraid of the Sisters being angry with them, she could too, right?

She hiccuped. "Don't you get it? Byeong-Ho-nim has been so kind to us. I tried to sneak into his house and accused him of being a demon and he still cooked me breakfast and taught me yutnori." Zoey took a deep breath. "I think it was wrong. It….it was wrong to kick him out of the Sunlight Sisters. You should have talked to him about Rumi instead of hiding from them. You should. You should have tried to understand."

She took another shaky breath. "I don't know if we even know what a demon is."

Miyeong slowly turned to look at Byeong-Ho. "Celine? Is that really you?" Her hands fluttered like she didn't know where to put them. "You look, well? The years seem to have…agreed with you?"

Rumi rolled her eyes theatrically. "His name is Byeong-Ho now. You were just literally calling him that a minute ago."

Miyeong suddenly took a few steps back. "Oh my god I can't believe I was flirting with Celine, uh, Byeong-Ho."

"I can." Chesa looked resigned.

"Please don't flirt with my father." Rumi said, to no one in particular. "This whole day has been stupid and weird enough already."

Miyeong turned to Chesa. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"You cannot tell me you don't realize this." Chesa scowled at Miyeong. "Every boyfriend you have had in the last 17 years has looked like this." She gestured at Byeong-Ho. "I assumed you were sublimating or something when we were teens, but you are a grown woman."

Miyeong looked shellshocked. "I'm not this side! I'm ill-sseu, not a lesbian."

"Please say less." Rumi was rubbing her temples. "Everything I am learning about you today has been against my will."

Zoey whispered to Mira, "Um. Can you fill me in?"

"Hilarious choice of words there." Mira whispered back, her eyes a little wide with suppressed laugher. "But Miyeong is trying to assert that she looks too straight to be a dyke, using uh, intracommunity slang."

Zoey blinked a few times. "…does she not know about bisexuals?"

"I cannot imagine wanting to ask her."

Byeong-Ho interrupted. "Choi Miyeong. Kim Chesa. While I was not angry that you came here, this has been very stressful experience for all three girls, and I think we would all benefit from taking some time to regroup." He paused. "Among other things, so that I can fix my door."

Miyeong flinched from her full name like Byeong-Ho had struck her. "Y…yes. I. That. I think that would be a good idea."

"We will, of course, discuss Rumi-ya's education at a later date, but after that display I'm not convinced that your trainee camp is safe for any of the girls." Byeong-Ho paused, and seemed to briefly slip out of the dad dimension. "Chesa, what on earth were you thinking?"

Chesa looked up at Byeong-Ho. "You were there too, you know. Just because you've forgotten how to be afraid of them doesn't mean I have."

"You think I didn't understand the risk?" Zoey didn't know Byeong-Ho could raise his voice. "You think I haven't had the opportunity to study the risk by now? Did you just think no demons ever came to Gwangju in 16 years?"

"We didn't exactly see you anywhere outside of Gwangju either." Chesa dug in her heels. "You could always have sought us out."

"I had a baby to take care of, Chesa."

"You chose that baby over us. Over the honmoon."

"And I would keep choosing her even if the honmoon hadn't. Which it did."

Chesa looked like she was about to cry and was furious about it. "While I was busy taking care of Miyeong, you…you just left!"

Now what in the cinnamon toast fuck was that supposed to mean?

Byeong-Ho closed his eyes briefly and let a breath out. "And if you're still too afraid to even consider that you misunderstood her, I was clearly right to stay away."

Agonizingly slowly, Miyeong turned to look at Rumi. "I don't know if. Do you know? That. That I'm…"

Rumi looked away and closed her eyes. "Don't. Just. Don't, not now."

"I did. I left because I knew what I'd need to do to keep Rumi safe." Byeong-Ho raised his hand slightly between Chesa and himself; as though to push her away, but not quite touching her. "We could always have gone to the hospital." He paused, eyes flicking to Miyeong. "You could have gone as soon as I left."

Miyeong started crying, and Byeong-Ho felt sorry that he didn't feel more about that. It was ungenerous to be toying with her emotions like this, despite everything. He heard one of the girls gasp softly.

"Oh is that how you justified it? What could we even have said in the ER?" Chesa took a step towards him; and fell back, staggering. Subtle strands of the honmoon twisting around her limbs and pulling her backwards.

"It would have been as good as…." Chesa paused and looked at the girls, as though she was only now conscious of how indiscrete she was being.

"Don't add another entry to the list of things you've done that you can't take back." There had been days and years where the bitterness of that had burned in Byeong-Ho's throat, but today he felt lighter than air. He had other people to sing for now. Other people to protect.

"So now we're the villains." Chesa snarled. The strands of the honmoon pulled tighter around her as she tried to break free. "If you'd just done what we'd asked we wouldn't even be in this situation. If you hadn't abandoned us we'd still be a trio! The honmoon might already be gold."

Byeong-Ho felt disappointed, but not surprised.

"You didn't ask." Byeong-Ho said softly. "You assumed that I would feel the same way as you. And I didn't. I don't."

"I don't understand how could you study with Hana-seonsaengnim as long as we did and still not understand why it was necessary." Chesa looked at Rumi and then back to him. Then, in a whisper. "You know what happened to Yunhui-nim, god rest what remains of her soul."

"I know what Hana said about Yunhui, and I have reason to doubt her rationality on the subject."

"How dare you? Hana loved her sisters! She loved us!"

Byeong-Ho felt his last nerve snap. "Hana beat us. Hana terrorized us."

"Her training was a little rough, but it made us strong! Don't blame her for your failure to act under pressure."

"Ah yes, 'faults and fears must never been seen', right?" Byeong-Ho said angrily. "Or was it 'You don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training'? She did like to use that as an excuse to set us against one another."

"It was training. After those sessions we could react instantly, even when a demon impersonated one of us to the other."

"And do you think that brought us together? Did we trust one another after that?" Byeong-Ho realized that he was looming over Chesa, and took a step back.

"You have no idea how much faith it took in your ability to overcome Hana's teachings for me to allow Rumi-ya to attend training at Jeju at all. There is blood deep in the soil in that place Chesa."

Shit, now he was forgetting that the girls were listening.

Calming breaths. "Chesa you are being very irrational, and just tried to attack my daughter. Now please get the fuck out of my house while I am still asking. If you think you can be civil all five of us will talk about this later."

Chesa opened her mouth to keep arguing, and Miyeong finally spoke. "Chesa, stop." She drew a wavering breath. "I don't want to keep fighting about this."

Chesa deflated, and looked at Miyeong. "Why? This is for you. I'm protecting you."

"I know." Miyeong sounded small. "But maybe you shouldn't. Maybe I should…"

There was a gentle tapping on the door. And a welcome distraction, with a little more silver than black in her hair, leaned her head inside. Byeong-Ho smiled at her, and almost felt guilty about the look of loss that crossed Miyeong's face.

Rumi waved and gave a small bow with somewhat affected cheerfulness. "Hyeyoung-imo! Saehae bok mani badeuseyo!"

"Oh Rumi-ya! Saehae bok mani badeuseyo to you too! I'm so pleased you came home for Seollal! And brought some…" she looked over the assortment of crying women in the entryway with bafflement. "Some friends?"

"Yes auntie, some friends of mine from trainee camp came to visit for a few days." Rumi looked at his former sisters, and he could practically see a spirit of mischief descend on her. "Some teachers of ours were in the area and decided to briefly stop by and wish us a happy new year. Maybe you've heard of them. They're the Sunlight Sisters."

Miyeong and Chesa froze and slowly turned toward the door.

Hyeyoung-ya tactfully smiled and bowed. "How kind of you to be so attentive to your students. I am very sorry to disrupt your conversation, but I must speak with Byeong-Ho-ya on some professional business. Could you excuse us?"

Rumi looked delighted to help Hyeyoung usher his formers sisters out, encouraging Hyeyoung and some aunties she corralled off the street to take more than a few selfies with them. When they returned they were giggling to one another. Little imps.

Byeong-Ho ran a hand through his hair. "Do you actually have business Hyeyoung-ya? I'm afraid I'm not at my best at the moment."

"Oh no, nothing at all. I just heard some shouting and thought you might have unwelcome guests." She opened her purse and showed the brick she'd hidden inside.

Zoey and Mira burst into slightly hysterical laughter.

When Byeong-Ho came back upstairs perhaps an hour later, warmed by activity and more pleasant conversation, he found the girls back in their pajamas and piled onto Rumi's bed again. Eyes wet with tears, but clinging tightly to one another.

"Ah, decided to give the morning up as a bad job?"

"We're starting over." MIra said, her face buried in Rumi's shoulder, her long arms holding Zoey tight against Rumi's other side.

"Reloading from an earlier save." Zoey said, looking up at him with a solemn but determined face.

Byeong-Ho looked at Rumi questioningly. She nodded shakily.

He whistled. "Big day for all three of you, then. Well, when you're done with your nap and ready for tea, it sounds like we'll have a lot to talk about."

Mira squeezed the three of them together, and they made some intense but mysterious eye contact with one another.

Mira seemed to speak for the three of them. "Yeah, we do."

"Then I'll go fill the kettle. Come on out when you're ready." There were….technically enough cups, if he used a small bowl for his own tea.

They followed him out into the main room as a unit, still holding hands like the spell might be broken if they let go, and settled into the same little circle of cushions where they had been playing yutnori barely two hours ago.

"Well. Where would you like me to start?"

"Did…did they really ask you to." Zoey looked stricken and whispered, "did they really ask you to kill her?"

Byeong-Ho looked at Rumi for confirmation. She nodded, but shrunk in on herself; and started withdrawing her hands from Mira and Zoey. Zoey laced her fingers more firmly with Rumi's, and Mira scooted closer to Rumi. Letting Rumi's hand wander, but leaning against her like a cat.

"Not in so many words, but between their screaming and our training, I did understand them to mean that."

Mira flinched. "Was she born with patterns then?"

Byeong-Ho looked at Rumi. She nodded slowly. "Yes, though very small."

Zoey looked puzzled. "It seems like that would be really hard to notice? There's like, a lot of goop, and it's all oxygenated so it's pretty dark." She looked around at the slightly disgusted faces of Rumi and Mira. "What? I had health class in america, they make us watch a video of a live birth."

"Rumi's eyes were yellow when she was born." Rumi flinched, and Byeong-Ho leaned forward to touch her gently. "It faded in a few hours to a golden brown, but I think that's what Chesa must have seen. I haven't seen them do more than flash amber since she was a toddler though."

"Do you know what causes that to happen?" Academic curiosity seemed to be overtaking fear in Zoey, Byeong-Ho couldn't quite decide if he found that reassuring. "Dynamic color changing in the animal kingdom is typically used for signaling or active camouflage, but environmental stress can be a factor too."

"It's shame, I think." Rumi interjected. "Anger or fear, maybe. But that's hard to divorce from feeling ashamed of something I did while angry or afraid."

Zoey's grip on Rumi's hand tightened. "Jeeze and I thought I was the only one who felt like history's greatest monster every time I made someone angry."

Mira looked deep in thought. "Do you know if our weapons would hurt Rumi?"

Byeong-Ho sighed. "I've never been sure, and honestly…"

"Yes." Rumi whispered.

WHAT. Byeong-Ho reached forward to pull Rumi into his arms. "Uri Rumi what happened? Are you okay?"

Rumi shivered in his arms. "I was panicking. A little." She breathed in and seemed to steady herself, laying her head on his shoulder. "I'd been arguing with…everybody. I felt like maybe it was a mistake to come and that I wasn't really a hunter. That I shouldn't even be there. And I thought. I thought I had to know for sure."

She sighed, the breath tickling his neck. "So I went out into the woods late at night, and summoned my saingeom, and just kinda stared at it for awhile." Rumi laughed softly and looked up at him. "And just when I'd convinced myself that it was a stupid risk, Chesa surprised me and I nicked my thumb."

Oh aegi horangi. Of course she'd think she needed to figure it out alone. "Rumi, you've obviously already thought better of it. But what were you thinking? Why didn't you…"

Ai-ya, don't make it about yourself, he thought. "I'm sorry you didn't feel like you could talk to me."

"I didn't want to worry you."

"Oh yes, I would have been much less worried by you disappearing entirely." Byeong-Ho hugged her, as much to reassure himself as her. Rumi laughed a little and sat up, pulling away from him. Somehow, he let her.

"It hurt, but just a normal hurt?" She raised her hand, and showed them a thin line along her thumb. "It didn't even bleed much, but it took a long time to heal closed. And was, uh, kinda sparkly? It looked like I'd gotten pink glitter in a cut."

Mira snatched Rumi's hand and held it gently, looking at the hairline scar. "Is that why you kept it covered so long? You said you'd sprained the joint."

Rumi looked a little startled. "I wasn't sure if anyone would notice, but it seemed safer to keep it covered."

Mira smiled wryly. "Well now I feel less terrible about knocking your feet out from under you when we were sparring."

Zoey nodded solemnly. "So it's dangerous, but not, like, insta-deadly." She patted Rumi's other hand. "We'll be careful. Maybe we'll just practice hand-to-hand while we figure this out." She grinned. "I've got this idea for a scissor kick takedown, and honestly maybe I should already have been planning to try it without knives first."

She looked back at Byeong-Ho.

"So….Rumi's father is definitely a demon?"

Byeong-Ho looked at Rumi. She nodded and shrugged. "I suspect so, but I honestly have no idea. It depends a great deal on how common…sexual encounters are between demons and humans, what percentage of them result in viable pregnancies, and what percentage of those pregnancies result in living children. It's possible that there could be other people out in the with partial demon ancestry, but I suspect it would be challenging to raise them without the skills and tools of a hunter."

"So Miyeong might not have known." Mira paled.

"I expect not." Byeong-Ho agreed.

"How could she not know? How could…you not know?" Zoey whispered. "Chesa-seonsa…Chesa. She sortof implied that demons could transform, but that they couldn't mimic humans very well."

Byeong-Ho rubbed his chin for a moment. "Miyeong ran through boyfriends very quickly. A few dates here or there, but no one frequently enough for it to seem serious. I, uh." He could feel himself blush faintly. "I have never found men interesting like that, so I confess I did not pay much attention to them. One seemed very much like the next." He paused, thinking. "At some point early that summer Chesa and I discussed the possibility that Miyeong might be ill and concealing it from us, but she worked very hard to hide her situation. Perhaps she didn't know what to do."

Byeong-Ho sighed. "At any rate, she didn't take us into her confidence until very late in the pregnancy. From then up through the birth itself we assumed the father was fully human. We had discussed taking a hiatus to visit my family. My eldest sister lives in the west, it would not be too unusual for her to adopt a baby out of wedlock there."

Rumi laughed. "You would have given me to Tante Margot?"

Byeong-Ho pinched her nose. "Well it turned out that I couldn't be parted from you, you little imp. So she came to us instead."

"Miyeong might be a little selfish."

Rumi snorted. Byeong-Ho raised an eyebrow at her.

"Miyeong might be a little selfish, but I don't think she would have agreed to that plan if she knew your father was a demon. And after the birth…well, if Miyeong has given any thought to it since that night, she has not shared her suspicions with me."

"Still. Both Miyeong and Chesa made it sound like it's really obvious when someone is a demon."

"Well, I have a theory." Rumi looked at Zoey, unable to quite conceal her bitterness. "Miyeong thinks that if she couldn't tell, that means it wasn't her fault. That way she can deflect all the blame onto me and appa."

"Rumi." Byeong-Ho chided her gently. "That's ungenerous. You know there's variance in how human a demon can appear to be." He paused to organize his thoughts. "Zoey, Mira. Have either of you observed any tears in the honmoon directly yet?"

Mira nodded. "Sortof? There was one very close to the compound shortly after Zoey arrived. The duo told us to stay inside and out of sight, but we did peek out the window to see if we could see anything." She thought for a few moments. "It was honestly pretty confusing. They would look like people sometimes, but not others."

Zoey chimed in. "Yeah! Some of them looked almost completely human, but there were also these, like, ogres….dokkaebi I think?" She looked at Mira, who nodded. "And those ones seemed to not really try to look human at all. But the other ones looked mostly normal, just kinda purple striped and fang-y."

"Your definition of normal is a little concerning, Zoey-ya."

"My bookmarks are between me and god, thank you very much." Zoey raised her eyebrows challengingly. "Besides, your DeviantArt handle was way way easy to guess. You are not free from sin Mira-unnie."

Mira blushed bright red, and Byeong-Ho could practically see steam rising from Rumi's ears as she contemplated what secrets might be held within those bookmarks. He struggled not to laugh, and nodded to Rumi to distract her.

"Rumi, what have they taught you about demons?"

Rumi hummed a little as her train of thought clicked back into place. "They kinda collapse all the types of demon into one big category, I guess? They distinguish them more by preferred environment and behavior, not by what kind of soul they started off with."

Byeong-Ho nodded. "Then to start with, there are humans, supernatural creatures, and spirits; and any of the three can become demons."

"Spirits?" Zoey asked.

"Fantômes. Ghosts, if you like. Humans who have died in such a way that their soul cannot rest. In their sorrow and their thirst for revenge, they can deteriorate and become vengeful towards the living. Gwisin and other muck demons often started out as spirits."

Mira looked confused. "How is that different from humans?"

"Humans bargain with their souls while they are still alive, and they gradually become dokkaebi as a result of that pact. The evil they do is selfish in nature, and began while they were living human lives. And, having made their pact while still living, they remember more clearly how to look and act like humans."

Zoey interjected. "Wait, how is a supernatural creature different from a demon? Chesa said it was, uh, a 'distinction without a difference'? I think I need my notebooks."

Byeong-Ho thought for a moment. "Think of it this way. A gumiho is born, not created by Gwi-Ma. It is native to our world, but born with dangerous supernatural abilities. It has the capacity for great evil, and some might say that this capacity means that it is their nature." He looked at each of the girls in turn. " But a gumiho who choses to forgo killing humans might in turn become a human. A gumiho who chooses to cultivate their protective powers over a long life might become the guardian of the mountain or forest where it resides. Like humans, they have the capacity to choose good or evil."

He looked at each of them. "In a sense, you have all become supernatural creatures. You have the capacity to do great good with your abilities; but those abilities are not ontologically good. Earlier this afternoon you saw me use the honmoon to restrain Chesa. The honmoon asks for your resolve, not your perfection or even your goodness."

Mira looked up suddenly. "So even if we were empowering the honmoon by influencing our fans, if we were influencing them to do shitty things it would just be a stalemate? The honmoon would be eroded again as fast as it was built up?" Her face fell. "I guess that mean that the golden honmoon isn't really possible."

"Well, I think asking the honmoon to remove our capacity for evil is expecting a little too much of it. Preventing Gwi-Ma from directly contacting vulnerable humans is worth enough all on its own. I doubt the earth would be rendered free of every selfish thought or shameful deed, but without Gwi-Ma empowering those flaws, perhaps people would be less ruled by their shame."

Mira started digging her fingernails into the hem of his nightshirt again.

Byeong-Ho sighed internally. One couldn't necessarily help nervous habits, but she must destroy her sleeves at an alarming rate. No wonder she had been wearing her own shirt cuffed.

"I have a question, but I don't know if it's rude. It's hard for me to tell that, sometimes."

Zoey laughed a little. "Girl, same."

"I just don't want to upset Rumi, but I don't know how else to ask it."

Rumi looked up and raised an eyebrow. "Well, I'll consider myself warned, then."

"Why us? Why did the honmoon choose us? Why did the honmoon choose Rumi?"

Rumi flinched, almost imperceptibly. A blow she had been expecting, but hadn't been able to avoid. Byeong-Ho breathed in through his teeth. "For that, I have only conspiracy theories. No real evidence one way or another."

Zoey blew out a weary sigh. "I mean, at this point if you told me it was the rabbit in the moon I'd hear you out. It's been a very confusing day."

Byeong-Ho held up one finger. "Option one: totally random chance. The honmoon seems to prefer candidates with a strong singing voice, who are of korean ancestry; but there are no other consistent requirements across the generations that I know of. Perhaps if we read through the hanok journal library we could detect some patterns, but I haven't had access to it in nearly twenty years."

Byeong-Ho held up a second finger. "Option two: the honmoon prefers people who are also…in between. Liminal in some way. Standing between one identity and the next, like the honmoon stands between one world and the next. Again, I couldn't be sure without access to the library, and it's hard to say if that would have been preserved in records that have been transcribed by hand. People…edit historical documents that don't quite say what they want them to say."

Zoey looked troubled. "You…you probably wouldn't have been able to transition if you had stayed with the Sisters, would you?"

"I expect not." He looked at the girls thoughtfully. "Though perhaps in time. Your generation is more accepting than mine; I might have been able to transition once the spotlight did not shine quite so brightly on me."

Byeong-Ho held up a third finger. "Option three: the honmoon is lacking some vital element that it desires, and has been seeking it out through generations of hunters over time. A counterpoint in the harmony, someone who completes a trio of hunters in an unusual way. Perhaps having a demon father makes Rumi more qualified to repair the honmoon than she would be with two human parents."

"It's kindof freaky to think about the honmoon wanting you to be part demon." Zoey said. "Uh, no offense. It's just weird to think of it matchmaking or something."

Byeong-Ho blinked. "I doubt it's as actively involved as that, but it is strange to think about."

"Speaking of matchmaking, how is Hyeyoung-imo and her little girl?" Rumi waggled her eyebrows very impudently. "You two were talking down there quite a while."

Dignity was long past him, but he mustered up what he could. "We were fixing the door…and discussing a light novel which we both follow."

"OH OH which one?" Zoey looked delighted.

Byeong-Ho sighed. "We have been reading 'Reborn as the Spoiled Lover of an Undersea Princess' together. We're going to make time to compare our theories about the assassination attempt sometime next week."

"Over coffee, perhaps?" Mira was fluttering her eyelashes alarmingly.

Byeong-Ho suspected where this might be going. Had he been this hormonal when he was a teenager? "Hyeyoung does make excellent coffee." He admitted.

All three of them gasped.

"It's like they totally forgot we were there." Mira was leaning back against the closed door, breathing unsteadily.

"What the hell happened at that hanok?" Zoey's face seemed to be frozen at 'startled'. "I know I haven't known your dad long, but uh, he seemed furious about…their old teacher I think? They were talking too fast for me to one hundo percent keep up." She paused, and looked from Rumi to Mira and back again. "Also, Miyeong was staring daggers at you this whole time and you gotta spill already. What is her problem with you?"

Mira flung herself away from the door. "No no no, you don't have to say. Only. Only if you want to tell us." She was visibly flailing for the right words. "It should be your choice."

Her choice.

They were all standing so close together in the entryway. If Mira summoned her gok-do right now it could go right through Rumi's chest before she could run. If Zoey summoned her shin-kal right now she wouldn't even need accuracy to dig under Rumi's ribs.

Her choice.

Mira licked her lips nervously. "Why don't we go upstairs? We're, uh, basically in each other's pocket here and I gotta stretch out, I'm way too tense after that argument."

"….yeah, sure." Zoey's look of suspicion was subdued, but deep.

Her choice.

How would she even start that conversation. "Hi yes I am a demon actually oh look at the time gotta go" and then what? Fling herself out of a window? Go hide out in Rivière-des-Prairies with her aunt until they stopped looking for her?

"hahahaha yeah let's go. Do you guys like Gu Family Book?" Rumi marionetted her body up the stairs while screaming internally. She almost walked straight up to the rooftop garden, but Zoey planted herself in the way.

"Okay for real. You're both acting super weird."

Rumi looked back and forth from Mira to Zoey, and sat down at the foot of the steps. I just wanted to see appa.

"It's…complicated." Rumi started, hesitantly.

"It's usually not." Zoey interrupted, already looking annoyed.

"What?"

"Usually when people say something is complicated it's because they don't want to explain, or don't like how it sounds when they try to."

"Well, I don't want to explain, and I don't think you're going to like how it sounds when I do, and it's still complicated." Rumi snapped.

"Zoey-ya we shouldn't pressure her."

"You know what it is, don't you?"

"…..No? A guess. Maybe." Mira swallowed. "Maybe a guess where I could understand why Rumi might be scared to share it." Mira stared at Rumi anxiously. "But it would be fine. If she did. If she did want to share it. We wouldn't judge her for it, right Zoey?"

"You don't know how I'd feel about it." Zoey said stubbornly. "I have been getting lied to so much since I moved to Korea and I kinda hate it actually."

"Zoey don't…"

"I'm half demon." Rumi said quietly. "Or part demon, or something like that. My birth father was a demon."

Zoey deflated a little bit. "Is that all? You and your dad have been dancing around that all day, I kinda guessed that was the sitch. I just wasn't sure what that meant." She sighed. "Knowing you were so scared to tell us does make it make more sense why you were so squirrelly about it. Wait, do you have squirrels in Korea?"

Mira nodded. "We have squirrels."

Rumi nodded. "Flying ones, yeah."

"God flying squirrels are so cute. Anyway! Sidetracked!" Zoey lightly slapped her cheeks a few times. "Focus. So what does being part demon actually mean?"

"Not very much and also a lot?"

"Rumi that is so unhelpful."

"Well I don't know what to say! I don't think I'm very different from you? But how would I be able to tell the difference?"

Zoey clicked a fingernail against her ring. "Well, you haven't tried to kill us or steal our souls yet. Most of the time you don't even really seem like you want to fight us." She kept tapping. "But you're really good with your saingeom. Do half demons have supernatural fighting abilities?"

"I just practiced a lot before I got to the hanok? I figured the longer I had to stay there, the more likely it was that I'd get caught, so I needed to be as good as I could get alone."

"Alone? Didn't Byeong-Ho help?" Mira had a tense look on her face that Rumi couldn't place.

"Some, but we didn't train with, you know, our real weapons, just wooden ones. He was afraid he'd…hurt me."

"Hmm." Zoey continued. "So no secret reserve of demon fighting prowess. And no super strength or super speed that I've noticed. Not more than me or Mira at any rate. Can you transform? Or teleport? Do you have fangs?" Zoey was getting very close to Rumi's face.

"No, I don't think so, and a little bit?"

"So, tentative checkmark for teefs, checkmark for gorgeous hair."

Rumi blushed. "You like it?"

"Rumi you have got to be joking." Now Mira was also very close to her face. And Rumi's brain was maybe melting a little bit.

"No, yeah it's amazing." Zoey nodded at her. Then, as if consulting some checklist in her brain, "So do you have patterns?"

Rumi sagged. "Yeah. They're not big but…I've had them as long as I can remember."

"The layers!" Zoey and Mira pointed at each other.

"Eh?" Rumi was getting more and more confused. This conversation was going nothing like how she had imagined.

"You always dress in structured layers, but your style is otherwise kinda…athleisure." Mira paused. "No offense."

"None? Taken?"

"Anyway, we just thought you were hiding a tattoo or something."

"It definitely added to the rebel allure." Mira said.

"Rebel allure?"

"Yeah! I thought you were kindof a bitch when I first met you," Zoey said. "But like, a really cool mysterious one?"

Rumi felt tears start to gather at the corners of her eyes.

"Oh no oh no I'm sorry I called you a bitch, sometimes my mouth kinda runs away with me."

"No, no, it's not that. I just." Tears were starting to run down her cheeks and she couldn't stop them. "You're just being really nice about this? I kinda thought you might try to kill me."

"OH MY GOD." "RUMI, NO." Zoey and Mira collided with Rumi, knocking her back against the stairs.

"Rumi you're our friend, we don't want to kill you." Now Mira was crying too. "I don't even like Miyeong and Chesa, I'm not going to choose them over you."

Zoey sighed. "I only decided to try to move to Korea because of friends I made on the Sunlight Sisters reddit, but like, they were maybe not the best influences on me. I'm going to try to be better about that."

Rumi sniffled. "I don't know what to do about Jeju. I don't think appa wants me to go back."

Mira sighed. "I don't think I'd trust them either, Chesa got pretty unhinged there."

"I don't want to ruin your chance of debut, though."

"Debut is so not our main concern right now, Rumi." Mira said, squeezing her. "We want you to be safe."

"Okay, I think I know what we need." Zoey said decisively.

"What?" Rumi asked.

"A reset. Sometimes when my day started going really wrong, eomma and I would put our pajamas back on and go back to bed for a little bit. Then you 'wake up' again and start the day over."

"…does that work?" Mira seemed dubious.

"It wouldn't hurt to try?"

Too stunned to really resist, Rumi found herself bundled into bed between Mira and Zoey. Too emotionally overstimulated to process that she was being held by two people she hadn't even conceived of liking 48 hours ago, and who she now thought she might love.

Well, might as well get it all out. "Also Miyeong is my birth mother. Byeong-Ho kidnapped me because Miyeong and Chesa wanted him to kill me."

"Okay, what? You don't get to speedrun all the types of parental abandonment all at once. You can't have a deadbeat mom and a deadbeat dad and a secret adoptive dad who is kindof divorced from your birth mom who you pretended was dead to hide him from his, like, ex-soulmates who wanted to murder you. That's too many things."

"I did say it was complicated."

1947: Ai-ja, 15 Song-ok and Woo-rim had pretended to be sisters for so long that sometimes they seemed to forget that they weren't. With their matching haircuts and private dialect of signs; with the ways their eyes stuck to one another across a stage or a classroom or a battlefield. They were a tight dyad that Ye-ri orbited; never quite admitted into their mysteries. So when one twilit night they announced that the two of them were taking a sudden trip home to Hwanghae to visit family, and that Ye-ri would be staying behind, Ai-ja just smiled and nodded.

It could mean nothing. Song-ok and Woo-rim were off alone together as often as not, and didn't always think to tell anyone but Ye-ri before they left. They professed themselves to be poor teachers; more interested in activity than theory. Not so educated as Ye-ri or as interested in books. So they ranged wide across Korea with their traveling show, hunting where it suited them, while Ye-ri taught. Arirang and demonology; comportment and swordsmanship; penmanship and musok and reluctantly, resentfully, how to skim along the surface of the honmoon to find one's sisters. The methods by which the honmoon could tell her what her sisters were up to in her absence.

It could mean nothing. Ye-ri often stood in the doorway with dry, red-rimmed eyes and watched them leave. But by the way her arms were crossed (tight against her her stomach, nails digging into the muscle of her triceps), and by the dry press of her lips, Ai-ja had known Song-ok and Woo-rim were not coming back. Ye-ri did not entertain Min-ja's questions. Not that night, nor any night afterward. That left four.

They wondered. Of course they wondered. Ai-ja and Sook-ja discussed it in hushed whispers under cover of night. Dancing around the obvious implication of going North. Afraid of what another war would mean. How demons had mixed so naturally with soldiers, their patterns concealed by fatigues and mud. Min-ja became increasingly insistent that Ye-ri explain herself, and collective punishment only made her wilder and more disobedient. But you didn't ask your elders questions. It was always always an elder's choice whether to explain themselves to a student. So it was disrespectful to mention that only Woo-rim still had family in Hwanghae. Worse to ask how they planned to cross the parallel. Worst to ask why. Ai-ja found she smiled and nodded a lot these days. She had a beautiful smile, everyone said so, and it kept the peace for a moment. Anything to keep the peace.

Ai-ja would be the lover, Sook-ja would be the leader, Min-ja would be the laughter. And Ye-ri was leftover.

1948: Ai-ja, 16 Pristine reputations, prestigious backgrounds, practical fighters. Incredibly, achingly perfect. And it hadn't even mattered. Two years before the Oh Sisters had a chance to debut, Sook-ja died of a perfectly ordinary bullet wound sustained while running past a perfectly ordinary barbed wire fence in frantic pursuit of her perfectly ordinary father, so far away from Ai-ja and Min-ja that they didn't even hear her scream.

Of course they had no idea what Sook-ja's father had been planning, or why she had been present. Of course they didn't support WPSK, they hadn't even been on Jeju during the general strike; gone to visit family at Ye-ri's insistence. It was tragic that she had been mauled by some sort of animal; something wilder than a tiger and more ravenous. What else could explain the walls splattered with blood, the claw marks in the tile floor, her missing body? They had no idea where their other teachers were. They had been missing for more than a year. That left two.

Of course they disavowed them. In a sense, Ai-ja felt like she had never even known them. (Faults and fears must never be indulged, they said. Gwi-ma can enter your mind through the smallest crack of doubt, they said. Through even a whisper of shame. They would want us to be perfect.) They stepped out of an interrogation cell and into army club show. Rewrote all their music for two Oh sisters instead of three. Ai-ja became both musician and gymnast, Min-ja became both performer and manager. (Sook-ja and Ya-ri became nothing. There were no bodies under their grave markers; their bones were mingled in a cave on Hallasan.)

1973: Ai-ja, 41 Fortuitously, Yunhui found them. A decade spent looking for even a trace of the next generation. Wondering what mass grave might hold them. Wondering whether Song-ok and Woo-rim had found them first, and were keeping them in the DPRK. Wondering if the honmoon could still find candidates whose family had fled Korea entirely. Wondering if a daughter sold to international child-knappers adopters would still think of herself as korean, would still think of Korea as a place to love and protect; if that would matter to the honmoon. Wondering how long two hunters could maintain the honmoon on their own.

Yunhui appeared in the village in the company of a father who looked eager to be elsewhere, and who vanished like smoke once his errand was complete. Asked to apprentice herself to the famous Oh Sisters, with a little nest egg to support the cost of her training. She had seen the honmoon already, and hadn't even flinched when Ai-ja described the dangers of the unseen world. Her father never sent for her again, so Yunhui was free to devote herself entirely to their cause.

Yunhui with her swan's neck and huge black eyes and steady disposition, who fought like a wild animal and could hold a note in her hands for minutes without breathing or faltering. Who effortlessly evaded Min-ja's temper. (Ye-ri had a deliberate hand with punishment. No bruises where they would show, or where they would impact range of motion. Min-ja was less judicious. It was helpful that Yunhui was so well-behaved.) Obviously they would build a group around Yunhui. Obviously she would be the leader. She was there a full three years before Hana and Soo-hee were even discovered. She was practically their third teacher.

1976: Hana, 16 Their teachers did not, Hana thought, have a particularly balanced approach to their responsibilities.

Min-ja managed their diet, their training regimen, their singles, their image. She negotiated all the contracts, kept the Oh Sisters on the radio, edited the ad copy on their endorsements, and distributed the profits as she saw fit. She drilled "her girls", parading them around like dressage horses when she thought their tricks were polished enough to be worth seeing. All Ai-ja did was perform, and play the indulgent mother to Hana and her fellow trainees. She spoiled Yunhui and Soo-hee with affection and attention. She endured Hana's own endless questions with equanimity. She comforted them when she thought Min-ja's punishments had gone on long enough, and keep their spirits up when Min-ja's approval seemed unattainable.

It didn't seem fair. Ai-ja was leaving Min-ja with all the responsibility for toughening them up, saving the softer work for herself. Ai-ja could kindly remind them that their faces reflected on their teachers, so they should smile as much as possible. She could be relentlessly patient when she taught them again and again how to show on the outside how happy they should feel on the inside. She could reassure them that no one seeing their faults and fears was more important than not having any.

Which seemed to Hana like hardly any work at all, until Ai-ja drowned.

(Years later, when Hana had to teach a new generation of girls all on her own. When she had to be both whetstone and oiled cloth. She would wonder if Min-ja had resented that extra work. Or if it had been easier for her to push them, to demand more blood every time Soo-hee and Hana crossed swords, because she didn't also have to become attached to them.)

When Ai-ja was pulled under the water, it happened in an instant; smooth and soundless, without even a ripple in her wake. The girls drew straws to decide who would call the police and report her as missing, like they didn't already know that there would be no body to find. Like Min-ja hadn't already carved the demon open like a fish looking for any trace of her. Without Ai-ja to refill her cigarette case, and arrange little outings into the gotjawal, Min-ja…deteriorated. Without Ai-ja to improvise every evening on her lovingly restored hyang-bipa, Min-ja's training became more demanding and erratic. Without Ai-ja to playfully rap her knuckles and scold her about being too preferential, Min-ja openly took her frustrations out on Hana and Soo-hee.

Yunhui snuck out of bed two nights running to help Hana and Soo-hee out of stress positions they had been forgotten in. Dragging them back inside to lay them out on the warm hanok floor, rubbing the blood back into their numb limbs. The third night, Yunhui announced that they were ready to manage their own career, and that she would break the news to Min-ja.

The next morning Soo-hee found Min-ja stone dead in her bed, eyes wide and already clouded white. The funeral was sparsely attended, and only Soo-hee seemed to find it in herself to cry. Yunhui said it would be bad luck to stay in the hanok after that, and packed them all of to Seoul without so much as a backward glance.

1978: Hana, 18 Trot might have been their mentor's genre, and still dominated by artists who sung in their style, but now that Yunhui's hand was on the tiller she was steadily breathing new life into it. Trot medley was a little disco and a little yé-yé, and abandoned their mentor's live instrument accompaniment for pre-recorded samples and live record mixing. It was scary stepping so far outside of Ai-ja and Min-ja's shadow, but maybe a little liberating. To be recording music pitched a little ahead of modern tastes. There was the honmoon to consider, and that ate at Hana's stomach at night, wondering if the risk was worth their own pleasure. But Yunhui's confidence was infectious. And when "안녕하세요, 친구들 (Salut Les Copains Remix)" spent a full month at the top of the charts, suddenly everyone else knew what Hana knew. That they were on the cusp of something special. That Yunhui was something special.

They booked with every variety show who would have them. Yunhui started incorporating risqué dance interludes into their shows, nothing that really challenged TV censorship laws but skirted tantalizingly close to the edge of them. Soo-hee added little audience participation activities. They piled new elements onto every show, testing what might drive fans a little crazier. What might make a thread of the honmoon pulse gold. In the end, each concert was so different that a real fan couldn't afford to miss one. Yunhui was magnetic. Hana was a little afraid she might be in love.

1986: Hana, 26 It was a normal tear. Or, as normal as they ever were. Evil red ash spilling through a gash that connected their world to ours; leering monsters crawling through it; and the promise of a hot shower on the other side of some spiritually cleansing violence. Yunhui lazily flicked a shin-kal through the head of a dokkaebi as it stumbled past Soo-hee's hwandudaedo and into Hana's hyeopdo. Hana and Soo-hee sang "Cherchez La Femme" as they tore through demons that hardly seemed to be fighting back; Yunhui humming along with them from a little farther up the grassy hillside. (Last year's single but still lingering on the charts; still requested in encores. Plenty of strength for this.)

It was a good vantage point to watch Hana and Soo-hee's backs. To catch any creature who might dodge past the thresher and try to flank them. Which meant her back was turned to the sky as she focused on her sisters. She didn't notice the red line appearing in the air just above and behind her until it was too late; nearly the same moment that a horn spear tore through her ribs; nearly the same moment that her scream became a roar.

Time seemed to slow and stutter when Hana looked backwards towards where Yunhui had been. Something ripped the giant dokkaebi's arm clean off its body, tossing it to the ground where it hissed and dissolved into ash. Black fur and blood drifted out of the wound in Yunhui's chest, dispersing into the air around it like the smoke that curled up from a pressed cone of incense. Something staggered towards Hana, drifting from one side to the other as it tried to pull the spear free. Yunhui's long styled curls hung loose around something's long and vulpine face. What spilled past something's lips might have been speech, but garbled by a mouth over-stuffed with fangs. Tantalizingly like a voice, but more like the yipping and growling of an animal than true language. While Ai-ja was drowning, demons wearing her face had separated Min-ja and Hana from the group. Distracted them with the sound of Ai-ja's voice calling out of the forest. Was this…a demon dressing itself as Yunhui? Was it even now distracting her? Concealing the real Yunhui, who must still be laying where she fell, bleeding to death in the grass?

Hana heard Soo-hee gasp sharply behind her, followed by a hard wet thunk. Hana knew she should have looked back. She should have looked back. But she ran towards the beast instead. Towards Yunhui. She harried the thing shambling towards her that dared to imitate her…friend. Keeping it at a distance with her hyeopdo as she ran toward where she'd last seen Yunhui, slashing along its arms as it reached for her. More blood and fur curled out of the wounds, the same black fur that mingled with Yunhui's blood on the grass. Hana couldn't think, her heart pounding in her ears; couldn't see, her eyes fixed on the crushed grass and claw marks pressed into soft soil. But when Hana fell to her knees, grasping for any sign of Yunhui, there was only a shredded norigae. A stained silk orchid and a coral bead.

Something yelped and cried out, and only then did Hana realize it had kept moving after she dodged past it. That it was moving towards Soo-hee. Hana remembered the wet and labored breath. That in a moment of horrible certainty she had chosen one sister over another, and left Soo-hee alone. Hana's feet were leaden as she tried to run back towards where she had left Soo-hee. Dreading the silence; knowing what it must mean. But something reached Soo-hee first, and wailed. The most heart-wrenching sound Hana had ever heard a demon make. Like a woman's scream. Like a fox. When its illusion of humanity finally melted away, Hana was briefly transfixed by the gumiho's cold animal eyes. By its anger. And before Hana could muster the strength to brandish her hyeopdo again, it ran into the night. It all made sense now. Gumiho were vain and wicked, and Yunhui was perfect. The kind of perfection a demon might cultivate the appearance of, but never truly posess. It must have finished her off while she was weakened from her wounds. Then it distracted Hana while its allies descended on Soo-hee. A broken generation of hunters, and a feast of souls for Gwi-ma.

And Hana had let it all happen, again. She had been deceived, again.

1987: Hana, 27 Yunhui had been the leader, Soo-hee had been the baby, and Hana was the one who was left.

There would have to be a new generation of girls now. (There always had to be a new generation of girls.) Where else to go to train them but home?

1993: Hana, 36 They loved each other already, these girls. It should have made Hana happy, to see them fall into one another's arms so quickly and absolutely. Natural wariness melting away like the black sugar in the hotteok Celine smuggled into their bedroom the night she arrived at the hanok. Barely a year and they were already fighting cleanly enough to safely hunt live game. It should have made Hana happy, but all she could see was how soft-hearted they were. How they would prioritize protecting one another over efficiently dispatching their eternal foe. It made her heart ache, though she couldn't say why.

They didn't have much closing power on their own, so still Hana had to tag along and seal the tears behind them. But that gave her a chance to evaluate their weaknesses, and devise appropriate lessons to correct them. They tolerated discipline without much complaint, but it only seemed to touch their hearts, when she singled one of them out to take the punishment for all of them. One girl taking lashes for all would leave her unfit to practice any of their longer routines, though. It was a delicate balancing act.

They were natural hunters, and it was very gratifying to see them take so quickly to sword and bow and axe. Their music, though. Hana did not care for Kpop. It was a necessary evil, she supposed. They were inheriting a weakened honmoon, they needed to follow trends closely rather than risk shaping them (Yunhui). Their harmonies were crisp at least, which made their music tolerable for her to critique. But their dancing was even worse. Far too sexual for such young girls. It was Chesa's choreography, and Hana supposed it was Chesa's turn anyway. She was so bright and studious that it was hard to trick her during lessons; but if she thought writhing around with her midriff out was acceptable, she'd clearly been brought up badly. Chesa took the cane (a thin little strip of bamboo, flexible and delicate for children) as stoically as she ever did, counting out the strikes in a voice more blank than contrite. She always crawled somewhere inside herself rather than pay attention, it was very vexing. Celine was weeping, though, which meant at least one of them was absorbing the lesson.

"Okay but seriously. Like, it's great to be getting all this Rumi lore, buuuuut…." Zoey trailed off, looking at Mira.

"…but what do we do with any of this information?" Mira winced, again, at how words just seemed to fall artlessly out of her mouth. "What are we supposed to do now?"

"….yeah, that." Zoey looked away.

Everyone looked away.

Mira watched everyone avoid one another's gaze with growing impatience.

Rumi looked at her hands, one finger tracing the thin scar along her thumb. "I'm pretty sure appa would rather mail me to Canada in a box than send me back to Jeju."

Byeong-Ho looked out the window at the darkening sky. "It would not be my preference, no. Bluntly, I have reservations about sending any of you back to Jeju."

Zoey looked at the floor, blindly reaching for Rumi and capturing one of her hands. "Yeah. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Chesa kinda wants to murder Rumi. And now that Miyeong knows who Rumi is she's going to be even less normal about her."

"And I don't think it would be a good idea for me to go back even if he was willing to let me go." Rumi twisted her hand in Zoey's, their fingers interlocking. "At…at best I'd be a distraction." She sighed. "It's a little funny. I finally almost want to be there, and now I can't."

Mira breathed out slowly, ice creaking under her skin, trying to keep the fear chilling her stomach from transmuting into anger. "We can't just…stop though. We can't drop everything and stop training." Mira felt like she was in physical pain. She was tearing herself out of another family practically as soon as she found it. "The world…the world still needs hunters."

Byeong-Ho swirled what remained of his tea around the bowl.

"The world still needs hunters." He agreed.

Rumi looked up at Mira. "It's okay, Mira. Really." It might have been intended to be a reassuring face, but Rumi had the biggest, wettest eyes Mira had ever seen in her life. "I wouldn't blame you two for going back without me."

Having cataloged a lot of Rumi micro-expressions over the course of the previous year, Mira found it almost overwhelming to see her make so many broad, emotive ones. If she was trying to be manipulative, she was being so transparent about it that it just made Mira want to laugh. If she was trying to be convincing, she was the worst liar on the planet. Regrettably, either option was a little cute.

"They'd probably want you two to stop talking to me, but I doubt they could actually force you to. Maybe we could….text? Once they're fully out of the picture I could…." Rumi looked doubtful. "….I don't know, help behind the scenes? I could be a roadie or something."

"…..a roadie." The disbelief in Zoey's voice made Rumi immediately defensive.

"Hey, I could be a roadie if I wanted to! I'm strong. I can hold a plank for like 15 minutes."

Mira pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Well you've already got a lyricist and a choreographer!" Rumi gestured toward Zoey and Mira. "And I'm an okay composer, but I've trended a lot more 'ballad' than 'dance pop' in my own songwriting, so I'm not sure I'd be a good fit there. Maybe I could be a backup dancer?"

"Rumi you're ridiculous. Two days after I met you, you were casually belting an A5 while making radish kimchi and, as Zoey described it, throwing ass." Both Rumi and Zoey flushed. If Mira was feeling a little pink at the memory, she firmly ignored it.

Mira continued. "You cannot seriously expect to stay anonymous as a backup dancer. You will be noticed. People would try to poach you, and the fact that you used to be their trainee will come out."

"Well I'm not hearing a lot of ideas from either of you."

"It feels like we're really taking for granted that Mira and I have to go back to Jeju. Byeong-Ho is literally right here."

Byeong-Ho smiled sadly. "That's very kind of you Zoey, but my industry contacts are 20 years out of date and have been rendered a little bit…compromised by association with me. Getting purchase as a new group would be much harder without the Sisters' sponsorship, and they could do a lot to hinder you."

"Sure, but I meant as a hunter, not as an idol. You've been a hunter for like decades. You're going to have a lot of insights that. Uh." Zoey gestured at Rumi. "That are gonna be pretty relevant to us now."

Byeong-Ho nodded slowly. "Certainly there's a lot I've observed over the years, and I would be happy to talk you through anything you might find valuable." He looked at Zoey thoughtfully. "In particular there are some nuances to the C/P3 honing complex in dokkaebi that I could diagram out for you. But I've been hunting on my own much longer than I was ever with a team, I'm not going to have much to teach you about tactics." He sighed. "And hunting is only half the job."

Zoey sighed. "I know, I know. I just feel like there should be more options. Like, could we release music online?" She drummed her nails against her cup. "Do we know that Kpop is the only genre available to us? The only industry we can break out in? Hunters can't have been singing modern pop music in like, the 15th century or whatever. Idol groups aren't even originally Korean. There's got to be some flexibility we can work with."

"It's not just the music." Mira interrupted. "We're basically mudang. Dance and performance are a really important part of those rituals. We need a stage for that; we need to be seen. We can't just livestream and hope for the best. Chesa's had us copying out journals for ten thousand years, haven't you two been reading them?"

Zoey frowned. "…Mira, you're kinda making it sound like you want to go back."

Mira wanted a lot of things, and few of them touched in any way on going back to Jeju.

"I don't want to go back to Jeju, I just don't want the world to end, or get sent back to…" Mira started frantically backpedaling. "I mean. It's just."

"Mira-ya," Byeong-Ho said, so gently that it made Mira want to flinch, "No one will force you to go home, even if you don't return to Jeju."

He didn't ask. He didn't not ask. Byeong-Ho simply said "You're nearly grown, you can make decisions about where you want to live."

'Is your home unsafe?' stayed unspoken, but she could feel it pressing against her skin. (Sitting in the principle's office of another boarding school, studying the subtle motion of the veins in the marble tiles. Like cigarette smoke. Like fracturing ice. Like balanchine hands rippling around her feet, drawing her underwater. Her mother's gracious apologies for Mira's antisocial behavior covering the sound of money changing hands.)

"It's not a big deal," she said stiffly. "It's not like they would want me to come back anyway."

Zoey and Rumi's hands reached for hers. It was probably supposed to be reassuring. (Two manicured hands resting lightly on Mira's shoulders as they adjusted another new school blazer. Her mother laughing as she promised that this school would keep a tighter leash on her. Ice creeping up her body, burying itself under her nails.) She felt like she was falling. She tried not to jerk her own hands away from theirs.

Zoey smiled like she hadn't even seen Mira flinch. "Don't worry, if we can't hack it streaming, I promise I'll drive around Korea in a van with you and play every grimy club that will book us. Rumi can be our suspiciously beautiful manager and ghostwriter with a mysterious past." She looked at Rumi. "Sound good, Rumi? We'll put you in a leather jacket and ripped jeans."

Mira raised an eyebrow to avoid picturing Rumi in a leather jacket and ripped jeans. "Will our band even be able to afford a leather jacket?"

"We'll work up to it. Maybe a leatherette jacket."

"I mean, if we're daydreaming I want boots first. Like those Hiromu Takahara engineer boots with the red soles, those would look pretty sick with ripped jeans."

Mira was going to expire. "Duly noted, any other requests for our 'living out of a van' plan?"

"I should get to rap sometimes, and you should get to do that crazy metal growl I heard you practicing."

"Our band's genre is getting very complicated to describe. Rumi, do you have any additional requirements? Do you need to incorporate aerial gymnastics into our stage performances? Any pyrotechnics we could be storing in the glovebox of our van?"

Rumi laughed. "Honestly, I'm just glad we're not keeping secrets from each other anymore. Just being able to trust you is enough for me." Rumi paused. "We're not, right? No more big secrets?"

Mira looked from Rumi to Zoey to Byeong-Ho. Rumi looked at Byeong-Ho, and he shrugged.

Zoey examined her nails. "idk, I might be non-binary but I think I have to be, like, professionally a girl for the foreseeable future, so I don't really have time to think about that right now."

Mira blinked. "O…kay. Anyone else?"

"Literally this whole day has been my secrets, if I have any more secrets they're also a secret to me. Do you have anything to share?"

"Yeah Mira, any bombshells?"

Mira flushed. "What? No? Why would I have something to share?"

"It would be a good time," Byeong-Ho said quietly, "if you did. You three are rebuilding your friendship practically from its foundations; knowing that you're on even ground might set all of your minds at ease."

He must have looked at each of them equally, but Mira felt pinned in place by his gaze. It was so achingly sad.

"Shame and distrust tore my generation apart." Byeong-Ho looked away, as though he could see straight through the floor into the flower shop below. "I don't know what Miyeong and Chesa have told you about our time as trainees, but Hana-nim was…very strict with us. I think she meant to make us hard enough to weather the challenges she faced, but instead she made us brittle. Miyeong was afraid to trust Chesa and I with her pregnancy until it was nearly too late, which led us to try something absurdly dangerous to both her and Rumi. I didn't trust Chesa and Miyeong to listen to reason, so I fled with Rumi rather than confront them. Chesa only trusts her own judgement, so she can't bear to hear any disagreement with those judgements. The bond we forged wasn't able to withstand our first serious fight. I don't want you three to suffer the same thing."

If Mira pressed her nails any harder into her palm she was going to break the skin. If she closed her eyes she knew she'd see her mother's look of disgust projected against her eyelids, hear the hiss of her mother's embarrassment in her ear, feel the ice crawling up her throat.

"Shame is tricky. It's a crack in your defenses that Gwi-Ma can use to manipulate you, but it's not actually good for you, or for one another, to do everything you can to avoid it. Avoiding feeling shame can lead you to…creatively reorganize your thoughts and memories to make the things you did not shameful."

(Her brother's gentle assurance that some people grow out of it. That their parents just wanted what was best for her. That he knew of a therapist that was very discreet.)

"I just don't want you to think about me any differently."

"Hey, don't worry. Zoey and I were just teasing. You don't really have to tell us anything." Rumi leaned against Mira and smiled so softly and sweetly that it made Mira's heart ache. Wanting was awful. "It should be your choice, right?"

Zoey winked theatrically. "Don't worry, we won't tell anyone your hair isn't naturally hot pink. We still trust you."

Mira was choking on ice. "Maybe you shouldn't."

Zoey looked affronted. Rumi looked curious. Byeong-Ho looked like he saw something familiar.

"Why?" Rumi turned to Mira, like she thought Mira was the one who needed comforting. And something cracked.

"Because we could have killed you." Mira whispered. "We've been practicing with honmoon weapons for months because it was supposedly safer. Because we couldn't accidentally maim each other. Except that was only true for me and Zoey. At any moment we could have killed you and I never knew." She took a shuddering breath. "I don't know if I deserve to be trusted."

"Okay, I know I said that you shouldn't completely avoid feeling shame, but I think this is a little too much shame."

Mira felt hands on her face and they burned. Rumi had shifted directly in front of her, near enough to sitting on her lap, and was squishing her face with both hands.

"I don't blame you."

Mira blinked, then tried to frown, then tried to deny. This was her fault, she should feel ashamed.

"No." Rumi insisted, and squished Mira's face more. "I don't blame you, and our family is perfect now actually, because you followed me to fix it."

--------

Mira: I'm not sulking, I just ruin everything I touch and must be kept away from my loved ones for their happiness, lest I ruin everything by yearning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rumi blinked. "A secret?"

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

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

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

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

"So you think it was more complicated."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It wasn't not working.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was shaping up to be a wonderful day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They both started talking at once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rumi nodded, mutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"….KNEE DEEP in mud"

"The birds weren't my fault!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miyeong wasn't stupid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is a pleasure in routine. Repeating specific tasks at defined intervals, using techniques refined to the point of resistlessness. Letting an unbroken strand of action pull your body along while your mind lays still and smooth at the bottom of a lake. Her memories are dissolved like mineral into the water. Her hands are always where she expects them to be. Kim Chesa had one very bad day seventeen years ago, and restructured her entire life to prevent it from happening again.

Then, she had been red-faced and furious; Miyeong's words pitch-bending in her head. Teeth clamped so hard on the sides of her tongue that she could taste blood. Knowing that a lie this total could never be walked back. That they'd be telling this story for the rest of their lives. That they would never know what impulse had lead Celine to take the demon away rather than kill it, because she would see this broadcast. She would know that, given the opportunity to denounce her, they had.

The last time she had seen Celine, she was cradling the wet bundle Miyeong had crawled away from. The birth had lasted all night, Miyeong curled up the tub like a wounded animal, too terrified to go to the hospital. Someone would see her. The fans would find out. Their reputation would be ruined. But Chesa had wanted to be a nurse once, and had seen some childbirth videos in health class. People didn't always have babies in hospitals, right? And they were strong. At least they were together. They could get through this together.

They were barely 20, it had made sense at the time.

Until Celine caught the baby (when they still thought it was a baby), and wiped the caul from its face. As she smoothed back the blue-black tuft of its hair, one eye flicked open, golden as a snake. Chesa thought she might have been the one who screamed first. But Miyeong was shaking in her arms, struggling with the afterbirth. So she turned away from the demon to the one who mattered. The next few minutes were a blur. The demon started wailing, and Miyeong pushed herself up the bathroom wall and scrambled out and down the hallway. Only once Miyeong was still and spent, and Chesa was tucking her into bed, did either of them have a chance to think about the silence. About Celine and the demon.

(They had to tear up the carpet and replace it. Red wine stains, Miyeong had said to the contractor. The contractor had tsked and agreed that what Celine had done was shameful, but that the remaining Sunlight Sisters shouldn't loose themselves in drink. Chesa assembled a mask out of raw nerves and smiled; assuring the woman that it was just an accident. A bottle dropped and rolled down the hallway. White had never been their first choice anyway, so might as well just replace it rather than keep scrubbing fruitlessly. She would never ever ever ever be able to stop lying.)

Miyeong had struggled back up, insisting that they needed to go check on Celine, to help her kill it. That she was alone, probably in danger. Chesa had reassured her that Celine was more than a match for a demon so small. That she was probably looking for a place to dispose of the blood-stained towels and sheets. That some women had strong emotions after birth and that she'd feel less anxious when she'd had some rest. That if Celine wasn't back by morning they would look for her together. But the next morning Celine wasn't back, and she'd left a landmine in her place. A letter to their record label claiming that there was a secret baby. Her secret baby, and that she'd be leaving the Sunlight Sisters to raise it. She not only hadn't killed the demon, she'd fled with it like a thief in the night, and decided to raise it as though it was a person.

On the worst day of Chesa's life, Celine had been missing for less than 72 hours. And rather than deny the monstrous lie that there even was a baby, she sat huddled with Miyeong in front of a bank of microphones and left Celine to the wolves. At the time Chesa had told herself that they were choosing the stability of the honmoon. That it was better to condemn Celine, and preserve what remained of the Sunlight Sisters. What she had done (run away with a demon) was worth condemning. Celine would know how they felt about that.

And if a lie couldn't be walked back, then it wouldn't, so there was no point in dwelling on whether they should have. Because Celine was either long-since dead at the hands of the demon, or she had given in and killed it when it inevitably showed its nature. No point in indulging impertinent questions from their students. Because there was nothing Celine had done since that moment that was worth knowing. That out of personal affection for a former sister they had chosen not to hunt Celine themselves, but neither did they really expect her to apologize to them. No point in reaching out now, 1 year 2 years 10 years almost 20 years later. Because if she was still alive, she had chosen to stay missing and continue rejecting her duty to defend the world from demons like the one she stole.

(But 10 albums later Chesa still hadn't seen so much as a thread of gold, so maybe the honmoon was punishing them for not having had the courage to take matters into their own hands).

Now, she has pick ups to record for an Ilocano language album she's guesting on. A 11th Sunlight Sisters album in production. Desiderata has some interesting vocal tricks she's quite proud of: a madrigal they composed using their own vocal samples from early albums. A spacious six-part harmony with only two voices.

Now she has students. Incredibly willful and poorly behaved students. Students that try her patience and disturb the smooth water of her mind. But students nonetheless. The honmoon chose them so eagerly that Chesa was expecting to hand the greater work over to them in a few years at most. But their music is….fine. There's nothing wrong with the recordings they've made of studio-supplied songs. They've technically already qualified for debut. But Chesa has been holding them back anyway. Their performances are uninspiring. Their combat practice is too individualized, merely fighting in one another's vicinity rather than as a team. They're not ready in a way that troubles her. Rumi-ssi seems to best understand their true job (rid the world of demons), but raises the hairs on the back of Chesa's neck. A powerful voice weakened by a strangling anger. Mira-ssi understands how important their reputation will be to their success, but bafflingly doesn't care. A beautiful dancer who dances as though her sisters aren't even in the room. Sohee-ssi understands that their songs have to reach the souls of their fans, but she can't seem to write inspirational music that isn't vulgar in some way. A strong composer too focused on pleasing Miyeong to develop her own identity as a musician.

Chesa had been hoping to have a fresh start as a team. To celebrate seollal together and clear the air. To reaffirm their commitment to one another and force the team to work together properly if it killed her. Then Rumi had declared she was going to Gwangju, and was taking no feedback on the subject. And her eyes flickered, just for a moment, amber. A trick of the light, Chesa thought, while scrubbing the graves clean. Just my imagination, Chesa thought, the next morning while Rumi mocked Miyeong's fear that she had taken a lover already. She's just being a teenager.

Chesa ran the perimeter of the grounds for the fourth time, trying to clear her head, but the fear was fizzing around her. An odd look, a turn of phrase that seemed too knowing. That wasn't evidence of anything, but it felt like evidence.

When she got back to the hanok, in the evening, she found Miyeong sitting at the kitchen table singing to herself. Running a finger around the edge of her cup of coffee.

"Whether or not (or not or not) it is clear to you (to you to you) no doubt (no doubt no doubt) the universe is unfolding" Miyeong's glissando wandered across several measures in a way that abruptly reminded Chesa of Rumi. "as it should."

She looked up at Chesa, and said simply "The girls are gone."

Byeong-Ho sipped his coffee and looked out onto the city, letting the warmth gather in his chest as he settled his thoughts. It hurt less than he'd expected to finally meet the other chosen hunters. Even knowing what they must have been told about "Celine." Even with Zoey-ssi's frightened little poke to his forearm. Even with Rumi-ya's impatience with them. He found in his heart only an amused fondness, and maybe a little hope for two kids who decided to run away after their friend. Kids were always learning how to be better than their elders. Maybe some day it would be safe for Rumi-ya to tell them.

There was an ache, of course. The feeling that he should be with them. He should be making them play neolttwigi until they knew exactly how hard they could push each other. He should know what weapons they had pulled from their souls, and be helping them strategize how to use them together. He should know their first music. Surely they had tried to write songs together by now? Rumi-ya never seemed particularly enthusiastic about their music in her texts. Maybe the…the Sisters were relying on studio-written songs for their debut. It would be easier to get label buy-in that way, but the girls might struggle to put real feeling into the music. And if Mira-ssi and Zoey-ssi had the kind of spirits that would mesh with Rumi, that must rankle them just as much. Maybe a combined approach would work better. A few highly produced songs so that the album looked safer, but at least a few tracks where they could explore their talents and try to build an audience out of their more authentic work. Maybe the four of them could have a little listening party tonight. Share your favorite song, then take it apart as a group. Figure out what makes it work. How line distribution can complement vocal range. How beat arrangements can integrate dance more fully into the…"Heh," he thought. "Listen to me run on planning classroom activities like I'm going to play any part in their training."

He swirled the last sip of his coffee around his cup, nearly too cold to be worth drinking, and hesitated. It could be nice to do just the once.

"WAIT WHAT?" Byeong-Ho nearly dropped his cup. Zoey-ssi was shouting so loud he could hear it outside. Maybe having three teenagers under one roof was going to give him a heart attack before he had a chance to fret about the quality of his little girl's education.

To give them fair warning, he walked loudly down the little staircase that made up the roof of Rumi-ya's alcove; praying to god and the honmoon for minimal bloodshed. Her marks were small still. Created as much by shame at having had outbursts as by the outbursts themselves. Just a little bug at the time; a toddler having a tantrum, and immediately terrified by the deep red flare of the honmoon. It had so obviously been an accident he barely had the heart to chastise her. He had stayed up all night in fear that he might need to physically fight his sisters, though. But no one came. For a few months afterward, Rumi had been afraid of even becoming angry, and watching Rumi cry herself out rather than let herself feel thwarted had been heartbreaking. It was touch and go for a few years teaching her to manage how big her feelings were, but that was probably true of most children. (They never came.) And, for better or for worse, by elementary school she was fully able to get into angry fights with other children without risking her self-control or the playground.

"Girls? I heard you talking, are you awake enough for breakfast?" He shifted the curtain slightly and looked in.

"It's always been just us. Appa's never really talked about him." Rumi looked perfectly at ease, not even a fidget at her sleeve. Byeong-Ho was torn between pride and sadness. Pride that she sold the disguise so well. Sadness that she needed it at all. But…at least for now, it kept her safe.

Well, theoretically safe. Rumi had a split lip, Zoey two bruised eyes, and Mira a bloody nose. They looked like they'd been brawling, not just arguing.

"…Girls? Are you alright?"

"It's, um. We're fine, really. We were. I was." Zoey twisted in place and landed on Rumi's lap, then half bowed her head. "I'm very sorry Byeong-Ho-nim. I have said some very rude things about you. And that was, uh, not very cash money of me?"

Rumi snorted. Mira let out a little bark of laughter. All of the sudden the tension melted in earnest, and they were laughing together; their hands seeking one another. Zoey leaned ever so slightly into Rumi, and all three girls turned bright red as they realized how intimate their arrangement of limbs had become. They flung themselves apart as though he'd caught them kissing in secret.

Byeong-Ho laughed, because how could he not?

"Zoey-ssi, I accept your apology."

She began to sigh in relief.

"On the condition that you come eat breakfast, and tell me all about your theories. I am a great enjoyer of supernatural romances." He winked at Zoey, who was developing actual stars in her eyes at an alarming rate.

"Does that mean you're going to tell us about Rumi-unnie's dad? Like, his biological dad?"

Rumi leaned back, blinking rapidly, but with the tinniest hint of a smile. An unexpected honorific, then. "Poor girls" he thought, "they hardly know where they stand with one another even now." That at least he might be able to fix. He wasn't their teacher, couldn't be their teacher. Couldn't be there for them day to day the way they needed. Couldn't correct their form or help them plan for the future. Definitely couldn't soothe their fears about fickle fans. But maybe he could help them know each other better, that could count for a lot at this age.

"We'll see. That's Rumi-ya's story as much as it is mine, I wouldn't tell it without her permission."

Mira-ya looked contemplatively between Rumi and him. Hmm. If anyone put it together without any more hints it might be her. She did seem to enjoy dramatic reveals. But, if how glued she was to Rumi's side was any indication, she might be willing to listen to the whole story.

"Drink your soup girls, it's good for the constitution."

"No, I mean we need to go get them now." Chesa gripped the doorframe like it was all that was keeping her standing. "Rumi is..."

Miyeong tsked. "A bad influence, I know."

"She's a danger to the other trainees."

"Well, I think that's a little dramatic." Miyeong didn't disagree that they should go collect the trainees, but it wasn't like they would be in mortal danger spending one night alone with the little delinquent. "I don't like how infectious her bad attitude has become, but Mira-ya was nearly as bad when she first got here."

"That's not..."

"She is very aggressive, but not...physically. I think she'll be more agreeable when she stops having such a chip on her shoulder about being illegitimate! She really needs to get used to rude questions about it, it's not as though it won't come up in interviews." (Don't think.)

"No, I mean..." Chesa paused for a long moment. "I don't know what I mean. There's something off about Rumi. Something *spiritually* off."

Miyeong sighed internally. Chesa could be so...delicate about this aspect of their work. Wasn't it enough that they moved out of Seoul, all the way back to Jeju, after she started seeing demons in every crowd? Refitted an outbuilding on the old hunter training grounds into a recording booth, so they could live in an old hanok in the middle of nowhere and Chesa could feel safe at night? Miyeong could be in Seoul right now, being admired at an industry party while tastefully flirting with actors she wanted to work with again. One of the very few benefits of being famous. But instead she had to be an eccentric artist, dedicated to developing the talents of her protégées. Which was fine. It was fine.

"Chesa, you have a sensitive soul and I cherish that about you, but Rumi is just being a brat. It's nothing more insidious than being brought up badly." Miyeong sighed. "But I suppose it's not as though the honmoon has never made mistakes before." (Don't don't don't think about the ____.) 

"And in the worst case, we've done just fine as a duo." Miyeong looked up at Chesa expectantly. "Right?"

"....Right."

"Anyway, it's late. I'm not going to drive down to the airport and suborn a plane just to scold three teenagers."

She drummed her fingers lightly on the table. "We'll go tomorrow." A small smile. "Maybe we'll make a little game of it. Show the girls that we know how to find them."

The Sunlight Sisters did not maintain a private jet. Temporarily renting a plane for the duration of a tour was less of a hassle than paying rent on a hangar, and projected an air of wholesome frugality that appealed to elders and diaspora audiences. If something truly required their personal attention on short notice, one could always charter a flight. Which meant today, early in the morning of the first day of seollal, was the first time in more than a decade that Miyeong had really needed to fight for her life to get through an airport terminal in time to catch one of the few remaining flights out of town. Masked, swaddled in sweaters, and sweaty from running, no one recognized her. It was strangely liberating.

Once they made it to Gwangju, it should be simple to locate the girls. They hadn't needed to practice the technique since. Well. They hadn't needed to practice it in a long time. But Miyeong remembered how. (The three of them, playing tag across Seoul; feeling for the vibrations of one another's voices along the strands of the honmoon. Laughing in delight as they took turns chasing and being chased.)

The honmoon was all souls, but no soul was a static point within it. The people within its protection moved from place to place. The strength of their resolve waxed and waned. They felt hope, or faith, or love in varying amounts from day to day. But if someone felt any love at all, even a touch, you could find them. With, to be fair, some patience.

You took a strand of the honmoon and plucked it, letting the vibration roll through you, and listened for an echo. Then another strand. (Your sisters would do the same.) You skimmed the surface of the city, your souls echoing closer and closer until they began to harmonize. Miyeong would always be able to find Chesa (and Celine) the most easily, but she'd heard the girls harmonize together often enough. It should be simple to find their resonance.

So why was the honmoon so noisy? 

Strangely amplified, yet discordant. Trying to follow it was like trying to tune a guitar by adjusting the effects pedals. When Chesa and Miyeong finally converged on a likely location, neither was quite sure what they were even hearing. A song almost familiar, but transposed. And three more voices, narrowly circling one another without settling on an interval. A round of fifths chasing one another without resolving.

What was it Hana had said? "In an unexpected attack you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training." She hit the back of Chesa's knees with her cane, barely nodding when Chesa pushed her fall into a roll and then a kick-up without so much as dirtying her knees. "Your body won't go where your mind has never been."

They had nodded awkwardly, each in their own place; afraid to look away from Hana towards one another. Nervously tensed for individual attacks that might or might not come.

"So you must plan tactics against one another, and practice them in secret if you must." A ghost of anger passed over her face and was gone before Miyeong really processed it. "Learn not only your own strengths, but your sisters' weaknesses. Because mark my words," Hana pointed at each of them, shaking ever so slightly, "a demon can evade your emotional as well as physical defenses. Gwi-Ma can influence the mind of even a skilled and wary hunter, and you three are not even skilled hunters yet."

"Miyeong, let's start with you. Your weapon is useless in close combat, so you must learn to control the terrain instead. How do you think you could deny Celine the use of her ssang-geom?"

Miyeong opened her mouth to speak.

"No don't say it out loud you stupid girl. What did I just say about planning in secret? But I want to see whatever you were about to say out in the field today. First hunter down will spend tomorrow carrying water. Winner gets a study day."

Miyeong shuddered reflexively. (Don't don't don't don't don't think.) Chesa looked over at her, quizzically. "Are you alright?"

(A holy arrow piercing Celine's hand, pinning her to the ground. Miyeong didn't win, but she didn't lose. The next time none of them hesitated.)

"You're just jealous you were too tall to ride the Atomic Mouse with me."

Mira chased a bit of miyeok around her bowl and popped it into her mouth, giving Zoey a serene look. She was, actually, but she wasn't going to admit that. "Oh you mean the baby ride you were on? I was too busy riding Dragon Chase to notice."

Byeong-Ho-nim laughed softly, distributing the last of the mackerel between their bowls. "Don't let Rumi-ya hear you say that, she loves that mouse roller coaster."

"It's a good coaster!" Rumi barely paused for breath before launching back into a clearly prepared speech about the virtues of dilapidated theme park rides. "It's maybe just a mini-coaster, whereas Dragon Chase is a full loop and spiral-type coaster, but you're still looking at an appreciable percentage of the speed of a larger coaster. Unless you're really acclimated to drops you'll still feel it."

She gestured emphatically with her chopsticks, apparently having unhinged her jaw to make her fish vanish instantly. "I've read that they're both a bit of a rougher ride than Meisho's newer installations, and not quite as intense, but I like them the way they are? I've only ever had the chance to go to Family Land…but, I don't know, getting your teeth rattled is part of the experience. It would feel weird for it to be all smooth. Plus you can see the whole park from the top of the Atomic Mouse." She sighed dreamily. "You can see the honmoon shimmering over everything, full of all these little points of light."

Rumi reached out her free hand and gently touched the air, tiny blue ripples collecting around her fingertips. "When people are happy enough, they can strengthen the honmoon a tiny bit all on their own. Hunters just amplify the effect, the strength is theirs." She blushed. "I just think that's neat." And then stuffed her mouth with rice.

She was so…for lack of a better phrase, at home here. All the layers of ice queen professionalism had been peeled away and the girl who was laid bare was a giant fucking dork. She liked free-fall and chemistry. She could yap like a champ about what qualities made a good houseplant. That poise wasn't gone per se, but she wasn't poised to strike. Poised to grab their hands and rush back to Family Land, maybe. Seeing Rumi expand like that, be so much more than she'd ever let them see, was almost distracting enough for Mira to miss that she was being distracted.

Just a question here and there; a rare interruption; and Byeong-Ho was directing the conversation while doing little more than listening attentively. His media training might be a decade out of practice, but he clearly remembered it well enough to run rings around some teenagers. Annoyingly, it didn't stop working just because she saw the slight of hand. In asking her and Zoey to introduce themselves to him, Mira found she was being reintroduced to Zoey and Rumi. Just this morning Mira had discovered that there was more than one kind of sea turtle. That Zoey used to make skate culture zines and missed the mechanics of constructing a zine as much as writing and preparing the illustrations. That her favorite half-sister Fabiola had started learning the guitar to impress girls.

She learned that Rumi honestly had not intended to pursue a musical career, which made her natural singing range infuriating. That until pretty recently she and Byeong-Ho had not been sure that Rumi being able to touch the honmoon necessarily meant that she would be a hunter. That she and Byeong-Ho loved each other with a kind of fierceness that made Mira want to tear a hole into their life and crawl inside. Would it be weirder to ask Byeong-Ho to adopt me, or to trick Rumi into marrying me so I can have him as a father-in-law? Hideously embarrassing, but hardly the first time in her life that she would rather die than say what she was thinking.

Regrettably, they were all so diabolically bad at yutnori that she had no choice but to think. Mira circled around the morning's conversations in her head. If the duo were lying, demons were a very unnecessary extra detail to introduce. For worse or for worser, it was a situation where they would have already had to force Byeong-Ho out of the public aspect of their work. No need for supernatural elements, they could just be ashamed of him in a normal way. If the duo weren't lying and Byeong-Ho was lying…wait. What had he even confirmed? Only that Rumi was his daughter. Not that he was a demon, or even that her biological father was a demon. Rumi had said the same. That he was her father, and that she never knew her bio father. He could be lying about knowing that Rumi's bio father was a demon, but he'd never even said whether he had known or not. Put a pin in that one and come back to it, Mira thought, as she tried to shake off an unpleasant sense of vibration.

If the duo weren't lying, and Byeong-Ho wasn't lying about Rumi being the daughter he left the Sunlight Sisters for, there was only one person the demon could be. And it was the girl with apparently naturally purple hair, who was trying to plan with Zoey about whether to group up their mals again, a strategy that had sent them to the back of the course twice already. If Rumi and Byeong-Ho were plotting to destroy this generation of hunters from within, 16 years was an impossibly long game to be playing. And when examined more thoroughly, What do I actually know about demons? turned out to be rich in specifics but very sparse in detail.

So really she was left with two questions: What exactly is a demon? and Is someone who has one demon parent a whole demon, a whole human, or a little bit both? Those questions implied others: How does someone become a demon?, Can you stop being a demon once you start?, and How does the honmoon choose Hunters?; but she didn't really need the answers to those questions, not immediately. She did pretty urgently need to know whether she could accidentally kill Rumi in sparring practice though. For fuck's sake, they had been practicing for with actual weapons, was Rumi cocky or suicidal?

Despairing of ever making it past Mo, and so distracted by the skin-crawling sensation that she could barely concentrate. Mira tried to focus on what to do next. She had once again found herself in a situation where the worst person she knew at talking (her) was going to have to broach this subject. And because she was too blunt to do this in the delicate, almost invisible way Zoey and Byeong-Ho did, Mira was probably going to blurt it out and make Rumi ice them out again. She couldn't think of a way to raise an urgent question while making it seem like innocent curiosity. She cast Do, again, and swore.

Byeong-Ho's head shot up. "Girls, do you feel that?"

Rumi winced. "That horrible noise?"

Zoey sighed audibly. "I'm not the only one?"

Mira nodded. "It feels like my skin is crawling."

Byeong-Ho's lips pressed tightly together for a moment. "Okay. It's going to be okay. Have the…sisters taught you anything about how to use the fabric of the honmoon?"

Mira and Zoey started talking at the same time. "You can use the honmoon? How?"

"Maybe? I think? They didn't say exactly, but I think I'm running a lot faster than I used to? Like the ground is pushing me up a little bit."

Rumi paused, her eyebrows pinched together in thought. "I've seen Chesa sortof skim across the ground like that too."

Byeong-Ho nodded. "That's a good place to start." He took a deep breath. "I know I'm not one of your teachers, but if you would do me the honor, I can try to explain a few things to you."

Mira felt half a smile creeping across her face as she saw Zoey and Rumi turn toward Byeong-Ho.

He smiled. "Okay. The first thing you need to know is that everyone is part of the honmoon. Everything, in a sense. Our noblest feelings; love, loyalty, compassion, empathy; they provide the strength of the honmoon. And because we provide that strength, it is materially part of us, and as Hunters we…you can draw on it in small ways to move faster or fall slower or run across a surface that wouldn't normally hold your weight." He closed his eyes. "That connection also makes us visible to those who can see and touch the honmoon."

Zoey started climbing to her feet. "ANYONE? Like, right now? Anyone could find us?"

Byeong-Ho touched her shoulder. "If they know how, yes. But it's difficult even if you do know how. You need to…"

All four of them winced at a new round of vibrations.

"…You need know the harmony of the person you're seeking. To be able to fit alongside their voice without overpowering it. With practice, you three should be able to find each other quite easily this way. It can be very helpful if you get separated, or if you're having trouble finding a small tear in the honmoon."

Mira grimaced. "I'm not sure it's useful enough if it feels this gross to do it."

Byeong-Ho shrugged. "It's not usually this unpleasant. I'm not sure what's making the honmoon so discordant." He looked at Mira and Zoey, and not quite at Rumi. Rumi looked at the ground, digging her fingertips into the carpet. Hmm. "Not to presume too much, but, have you girls been successful at harmonizing? Are you…have you managed to bring out the light in one another?"

Rumi continued to stare at the floor, hands clutching at the pile of the carpet. Like she could dig the answers out of the ground.

"Maybe a little? Sometimes when we're just improvising together, but…" Zoey chewed her lip thoughtfully. "Not when we're recording real tracks, like, for the label." She smiled awkwardly. "The sisters said it would, uh, come with practice?"

Byeong-Ho nodded sadly. "Yes, that might be it. In trying to find you individually, it's causing unintended resonances between you. Catching the edge of the wrong string and getting a sour note." He reached out toward Rumi, and loosened one of her hands. "Aegi horangi, don't fret. We knew this was a risk."

Rumi nodded shakily, and looked up at him. "I'm sorry. I…" She sniffled once. "I just wanted to see you. I didn't think they'd chase me here."

"Ehhhhhh, that's probably our fault." Zoey glared at Mira. "Okay, my fault. It was my idea to run after you and find out what your…" Mira gestured vaguely at Rumi. "Your whole deal was."

Rumi looked confused. "My whole deal?"

"I'm saying this wrong." Mira tilted her head back and breathed out. "I wanted to understand why you hated the Duo so bad. I wanted…ugh." She clapped her hands over her face and dragged her fingers down her cheeks. "I wanted to be friends. I wanted you to like me. I knew there was something you were keeping a secret and I couldn't figure out how to get you to trust me with it."

Zoey added, quietly. "We knew we'd upset you, but I didn't really understand why and oh no. Oh no, oh no. Oh my god I have been misgendering your father for like, a year. RIP to me, I have to bury myself under a tree for the next 100 years."

Rumi snorted. "To be fair to you, I was actively trying to keep him a secret."

There was a pounding noise on the door downstairs.

"Well. Time's up I guess." Mira sighed, climbing up from the floor into a low bow. "I'm sorry for interrupting your holiday. I gotta go face the music for this."

Zoey leapt up. "Well I'm not sorry."

Mira looked over at Zoey. "Eh?"

"Well I'm not. I don't know if I ever would have gotten the chance to apologize to Byeong-Ho or to tell Rumi about zines or to know that you can play the violin or to talk about sea slugs, like, at all. And I'm glad. About all of those things. Even if we kinda fucked up your holiday. That part I am sorry for."

The pounding continued, followed by a loud cracking noise.

"Ai-ya, what on earth are they doing down there?" Byeong-Ho seemed more annoyed than frightened, and that seemed to stead Zoey's nerves. Zoey started towards the stairs, and Rumi paused to help Byeong-Ho to his feet.

As Rumi rounded the corner after them, Mira caught Rumi by the shoulder and looked at her, trying to will her to understand. "I don't care." Please understand, please. "What….whatever it is, you should get to tell us yourself."

Rumi's eyes widened, and she made another face Mira couldn't understand. A little scared, a little angry, a little hopeful? Maybe that was just Mira hoping that Rumi understood her.

They reached the ground flower shop to find the Duo standing in front of the entrance, Miyeong's hand pushed through the broken glass, grasping towards the deadbolt.

Byeong-Ho sighed. "Impulsive as always, I see," and he walked towards the door. Mira reached out to grab Rumi's hand, to hold her back. A bad feeling for a reason she couldn't quite identify. But Rumi had practically teleported in front of him, and the two of them jockeyed for position closest to the door.

In the end, Rumi got her hands on the doorknob first, and composed an "annoyed, but innocent" face. The Sunlight Witches were the ones being unreasonable and invasive, she was here having a normal holiday. Okay. Okay. She could do this. She opened the door just as Miyeong finished wiggling her hand back out of the glass.

"I'm pretty sure this is breaking and entering."

"Don't be so melodramatic." Miyeong tried to peer around Rumi to see into the shop behind her. Rumi narrowed the opening of the door even more, until only her face was visible. "You're our trainees, it's important for us to know where you are."

"What makes you think Mira and Zoey are here? If they're not at the hanok, maybe they decided to take their own vacation together."

Chesa sighed. "We know you're all in there, despite your best efforts at blocking us."

"Blocking them?" Zoey whispered behind her. Rumi couldn't tell who she was talking to, but Mira shushed her.

"Maybe I was practicing on my own, and you just heard me learning how not to play a chord on the honmoon."

Miyeong pushed on the door; hard enough to budge it. But Rumi pushed back with her knee, keeping it in place.

"Kang Rumi you are being very disrespectful to us."

"You broke my friend's door, Miyeong-seonsaengnim. I think it's quite reasonable for me to be a little annoyed about that."

"Where is your friend, anyway? I'd like to meet the man who's this important to you." Miyeong smiled broadly. "He must be very special."

There were whispers and jockeying behind her, but Rumi didn't look over her shoulder and kept bracing the door. "He is, thank you. I'll see you in a few days. I'm sure Mira-ya and Zoey-ya will be back to the hanok in a few days as well."

Chesa raised her voice enough to carry over Rumi's shoulder. "Are you girls going to keep hiding behind Kang Rumi or are you going to come out and account for yourself?"

Appa rested his hand on her shoulder. "Rumi-ya, I'm a grown man. You don't need to protect me from them."

Reluctantly, Rumi let go of the door and allowed him open it.

By degrees, Miyeong's smile became more genuine. "It's so nice to finally meet you! You probably know us," she gestured between herself and Chesa. "We're the Sunlight Sisters! Choi Miyeong and Kim Chesa. And your little friend Rumi there is one of our trainees."

Rumi pressed her lips into a thin line. Of course Miyeong would be weird about appa, that was nearly the only thing that could make today worse.

"We've come to bring her and our other trainees home, but before we leave I'd love to get to know you a little better!" She smiled up at appa, and the absolute lack of recognition made Rumi want to cackle.

"So who might you be?" Miyeong continued. "Rumi's mentioned your shop but she didn't tell us how adorable it is. Can we come in?"

"Kang Byeong-Ho, and thank you. I've devoted many years to its development and I'm very proud of it." He pointedly looked over at the door. "It looks like I'll be needing to replace a pane of glass on my front door though."

"Hahaha, well. Rumi-ya wasn't answering the door and we were understandably a little worried about her. Staying here by herself with an older man, you know how talk can be."

Appa gave Miyeong a bemused look. "I think you might have misheard me. My name is Kang Byeong-Ho. Rumi-ya is my daughter."

"Well!" Miyeong blinked rapidly. "Rumi! You could have just told us he was your father! You were so mysterious about the whole thing, of course we were going to be suspicious." Miyeong briefly narrowed her eyes at Rumi before looking back to appa. "And it's so nice to finally meet you Byeong-Ho-nim! If you'd like to talk about your daughter's trainee progress I'm sure we can make time to chat before we take the girls back to Jeju."

Rumi and Chesa said, at the same time. "I'm not going back.", "She's not coming back."

Miyeong made a startled noise. "Chesa, we talked about this. Rumi has been a little bit of a difficult student, but she's not dangerous. I'm sure we can have a reasonable discussion about this inside."

Byeong-Ho stepped slightly to the side, and with great reluctance Rumi followed him.

"Okay, you're inside. You can see we're all fine." Rumi started pushing the door closed again. "Now you can go back to the hanok, and let us enjoy the remainder of our seollal in peace. Goodbye, so nice for you to drop in."

Miyeong sighed. "You see, Byeong-Ho-nim? She's very obstinate."

"Mm. Rumi-ya has a strong personality, yes. But I've never had reason to doubt her judgement." He looked coolly at Miyeong and Chesa. "She feels very strongly about spending time at home with me, and bonding with her fellow trainees. Surely you have no objections to the girls spending time together with adult supervision?"

"I agree that Kang Rumi should stay here with you." Chesa's jaw tightened. "She seems to have been stable with you all this time, but I strongly disapprove of training her any further. She's enough of a danger to Mira and Zoey as it is."

Rumi didn't shrink back at all. She had nothing to be afraid of. Chesa had no proof. She could barely feel appa's hand on her shoulder, pulling her deeper into the flower shop.

"Chesa what are you doing?" Miyeong hissed. "Why are you are being so difficult about this?"

"You cannot seriously be telling me that you don't recognize this man. He is obviously related to Kang Celine."

Miyeong went white as a ghost. "What? No."

"You know what that makes it, this so-called Kang Rumi."

Rumi desperately wanted to laugh right in Miyeong's face, but she was frozen by "it." A nervous wisp of a laugh escaped her. They knew they knew how could they know she had been SO CAREFUL.

"You don't know that!" Miyeong snapped. "You don't know that. You don't. They're gone Chesa. They're both gone."

"Uh." Zoey interjected. "Who is gone?" She paused. "Also, rude? Byeong-Ho-nim is right here, and Rumi uses she/her pronouns, not it/its."

Rumi stifled her laughter, which was maybe trending toward hysterical. This couldn't be happening. It was such a stupid way to be exposed. Her patterns had never really hurt before, but her skin felt hot and tight in a way she struggled not to react to. Like the patterns (small! so concealable that no one even looked twice at them in school!) were actively writhing around under her skin.

Chesa didn't even have any proof she was just guessing.

Chesa rounded on Zoey. "You don't even recognize what this creature is? After all your training? How could you possibly care what pronouns it uses?" Chesa clenched and unclenched her hands. "Don't you understand how much danger caring about it puts you in?"

"She is our friend Chesa-seonsaengnim." Zoey looked confused and hurt. "I know you guys feel betrayed or whatever, but caring about people is kindof a normal danger?"

"Chesa stop, she isn't. She can't be." Miyeong grabbed Chesa's sleeve and tried to turn Chesa to look at her. "You're seeing demons where there aren't any. Please. Celine is dead, the baby is dead."

Mira's brows pinched in confusion, stepping forward to stand next to Rumi. "Wait, why would his baby be dead?"

Chesa pulled away from Miyeong. "How am I the only one who remembers our actual job? This thing," gesturing at Rumi, "is beguiling you idiots. It is a demon and we kill demons so that they don't kill real people."

She stared at Rumi. "I was nearly content to leave you under the care of a jailer, since this man seems to have kept your condition from worsening. But I see the rot is already too deep." And then Chesa all but lunged at Rumi. Before Rumi even finished bracing to roll away, Mira had slid in front of her, catching the shorter woman's hands.

Chesa had some strength (and a lot of training) on Mira, but size does count when you're mostly playing keep away.

Chesa pulled away from Mira and turned to look at Zoey. "Demons don't have friends, Sohee-ssi. They have targets."

Rumi watched Chesa and Miyeong and Zoey argue back and forth about her with a sense of growing dissociation. Was she Celine's baby? Appa called her aegi all the time, but appa hadn't given birth to her. But appa was the one who had quietly placed himself between Chesa and Rumi, not Miyeong. The way he'd always been putting himself between her and Them. If she was anyone's at all it was appa's, right? And only appa's? And Miyeong didn't have any claim on her at all?

"Well then she's not a demon, is she!" Zoey's eyes were wide and wet, and for the first time since Rumi had met her she looked really and truly angry.

Mira nodded, her eyes bright. "Rumi's not a demon, Chesa-seonsaengnim. She's a hunter just like us."

Rumi poured every last bit of her frayed nerves into a cocky smile. "I think I would know if I was a demon." And she wasn't, mostly. She wasn't unnatural, she just needed to be more careful than other people. "I'd, you know, have the claws and stuff." She tensed her hands like a cat with it's claws out, and she knew they would just look like fingers.

"Everyone thinks I'm so stupid, like being distractible means I can't notice what's happening around me." Zoey could feel her face burning. Why had this looked so real to her? Why had she been trying so hard to make it real?

"It's attention deficit, not attention total fucking absence." Zoey thought she might be crying, but the heat was burning her tears away. "How could you never look for them?" She was shouting and she knew she shouldn't shout but she couldn't make herself stop. "How could you just abandon them like that?"

Miyeong looked offended. Chesa looked just shy of murderous. Rumi and Byeong-Ho looked at each other.

When she was 8 years old Zoey wrote a 3k "Sold to The Sunlight Sisters" fanfic and uploaded it to wattpad with the kind of fizzy enthusiasm that came with a brand-new obsession. Six days later she had gotten so many derisive comments that she unpublished it, and almost deleted the .txt for good measure. Papi had laughed and told her not to take it to heart. Eomma told her that she shouldn't have written about real people like that in the first place. Were they already fighting by then? Zoey couldn't quite remember. Just that she had wanted a sister her own age. Someone who wouldn't tell her to shut up about slugs already. Someone she belonged with. Papi's other kids always took one another's side, but Eomma said she had too many kids already.

At least people on the forums understood. They knew what it was like to feel betrayed, and like no one was on your side. They thought her fanfic was cute. They said some bad words that eomma didn't like, but eomma didn't like a lot of the things Zoey wanted to be doing instead of homework. The people on the forums were nicest to her when she talked about music, and she liked talking about music! They became her friends; encouraged her to try out for band and thought skateboarding might be a good outlet for all her nervous energy. It was an online friend who told her that the Sunlight Sisters were doing open auditions for a secret project that everyone knew was going to be a new girl group. That her lyrics were so good that she had to at least send a demo. By then eomma had come around a little bit on K-Pop, and loved the idea that Zoey might want to move to Korea. Papi had already been talking about moving back to New York to take care of Zoey's abuela and abuelo, and just said it might be good for her to experiment with living in a new place. Her older siblings were working, or in college. Even if Zoey wanted to stay in Burbank, who would she be staying for?

Only, the Sunlight Sisters were nothing like what she had expected. And not just because of the demon hunting thing. But it wasn't all bad! Eomma was happier in Korea. Very busy, maybe a little lonely, but less homesick. And Zoey had Mira now! Someone who liked being called Unnie and had some jagged edges that Zoey related to. Who was so sweet in private. Who had trouble understanding when Zoey couldn't just say how she felt, but listened anyway. Who was patient while Zoey got used to all korean all the time. Who knew a little english and could pronounce her name right. (Who had miles of leg. Who said that.) And Rumi, who kept refusing to fit in. Who did the work and practiced as hard as anyone else, but refused to give the sisters any respect they hadn't earned.

It made Zoey so angry until it suddenly didn't. Zoey internally cringed in embarrassment. Of course she couldn't fit in with the sisters, not when she was so loyal to her dad. Not when Rumi felt the same kind of abandoned that Zoey had felt, but without the cushion of her forum friends to support her. Not when Zoey had been regularly calling her dad a whore with her forum friends. Cringe. But despite that Rumi had spent all morning wanting to love Zoey and Mira back. She let them in on her secret as soon as they asked. As soon as they apologized. Rumi had not only listened with rapt attention to Zoey's ramble about sea slugs, she had a lot of specific questions about their relationship to non-sea slugs. Having Rumi-unnie's complete attention was, uh, very nice. It made her feel warm inside. (She wondered briefly if this was going to give her hair-brushing privileges. Who said that.)

If Rumi and Mira could refuse to be afraid of the Sisters being angry with them, she could too, right?

She hiccuped. "Don't you get it? Byeong-Ho-nim has been so kind to us. I tried to sneak into his house and accused him of being a demon and he still cooked me breakfast and taught me yutnori." Zoey took a deep breath. "I think it was wrong. It….it was wrong to kick him out of the Sunlight Sisters. You should have talked to him about Rumi instead of hiding from them. You should. You should have tried to understand."

She took another shaky breath. "I don't know if we even know what a demon is."

Miyeong slowly turned to look at Byeong-Ho. "Celine? Is that really you?" Her hands fluttered like she didn't know where to put them. "You look, well? The years seem to have…agreed with you?"

Rumi rolled her eyes theatrically. "His name is Byeong-Ho now. You were just literally calling him that a minute ago."

Miyeong suddenly took a few steps back. "Oh my god I can't believe I was flirting with Celine, uh, Byeong-Ho."

"I can." Chesa looked resigned.

"Please don't flirt with my father." Rumi said, to no one in particular. "This whole day has been stupid and weird enough already."

Miyeong turned to Chesa. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"You cannot tell me you don't realize this." Chesa scowled at Miyeong. "Every boyfriend you have had in the last 17 years has looked like this." She gestured at Byeong-Ho. "I assumed you were sublimating or something when we were teens, but you are a grown woman."

Miyeong looked shellshocked. "I'm not this side! I'm ill-sseu, not a lesbian."

"Please say less." Rumi was rubbing her temples. "Everything I am learning about you today has been against my will."

Zoey whispered to Mira, "Um. Can you fill me in?"

"Hilarious choice of words there." Mira whispered back, her eyes a little wide with suppressed laugher. "But Miyeong is trying to assert that she looks too straight to be a dyke, using uh, intracommunity slang."

Zoey blinked a few times. "…does she not know about bisexuals?"

"I cannot imagine wanting to ask her."

Byeong-Ho interrupted. "Choi Miyeong. Kim Chesa. While I was not angry that you came here, this has been very stressful experience for all three girls, and I think we would all benefit from taking some time to regroup." He paused. "Among other things, so that I can fix my door."

Miyeong flinched from her full name like Byeong-Ho had struck her. "Y…yes. I. That. I think that would be a good idea."

"We will, of course, discuss Rumi-ya's education at a later date, but after that display I'm not convinced that your trainee camp is safe for any of the girls." Byeong-Ho paused, and seemed to briefly slip out of the dad dimension. "Chesa, what on earth were you thinking?"

Chesa looked up at Byeong-Ho. "You were there too, you know. Just because you've forgotten how to be afraid of them doesn't mean I have."

"You think I didn't understand the risk?" Zoey didn't know Byeong-Ho could raise his voice. "You think I haven't had the opportunity to study the risk by now? Did you just think no demons ever came to Gwangju in 16 years?"

"We didn't exactly see you anywhere outside of Gwangju either." Chesa dug in her heels. "You could always have sought us out."

"I had a baby to take care of, Chesa."

"You chose that baby over us. Over the honmoon."

"And I would keep choosing her even if the honmoon hadn't. Which it did."

Chesa looked like she was about to cry and was furious about it. "While I was busy taking care of Miyeong, you…you just left!"

Now what in the cinnamon toast fuck was that supposed to mean?

Byeong-Ho closed his eyes briefly and let a breath out. "And if you're still too afraid to even consider that you misunderstood her, I was clearly right to stay away."

Agonizingly slowly, Miyeong turned to look at Rumi. "I don't know if. Do you know? That. That I'm…"

Rumi looked away and closed her eyes. "Don't. Just. Don't, not now."

"I did. I left because I knew what I'd need to do to keep Rumi safe." Byeong-Ho raised his hand slightly between Chesa and himself; as though to push her away, but not quite touching her. "We could always have gone to the hospital." He paused, eyes flicking to Miyeong. "You could have gone as soon as I left."

Miyeong started crying, and Byeong-Ho felt sorry that he didn't feel more about that. It was ungenerous to be toying with her emotions like this, despite everything. He heard one of the girls gasp softly.

"Oh is that how you justified it? What could we even have said in the ER?" Chesa took a step towards him; and fell back, staggering. Subtle strands of the honmoon twisting around her limbs and pulling her backwards.

"It would have been as good as…." Chesa paused and looked at the girls, as though she was only now conscious of how indiscrete she was being.

"Don't add another entry to the list of things you've done that you can't take back." There had been days and years where the bitterness of that had burned in Byeong-Ho's throat, but today he felt lighter than air. He had other people to sing for now. Other people to protect.

"So now we're the villains." Chesa snarled. The strands of the honmoon pulled tighter around her as she tried to break free. "If you'd just done what we'd asked we wouldn't even be in this situation. If you hadn't abandoned us we'd still be a trio! The honmoon might already be gold."

Byeong-Ho felt disappointed, but not surprised.

"You didn't ask." Byeong-Ho said softly. "You assumed that I would feel the same way as you. And I didn't. I don't."

"I don't understand how could you study with Hana-seonsaengnim as long as we did and still not understand why it was necessary." Chesa looked at Rumi and then back to him. Then, in a whisper. "You know what happened to Yunhui-nim, god rest what remains of her soul."

"I know what Hana said about Yunhui, and I have reason to doubt her rationality on the subject."

"How dare you? Hana loved her sisters! She loved us!"

Byeong-Ho felt his last nerve snap. "Hana beat us. Hana terrorized us."

"Her training was a little rough, but it made us strong! Don't blame her for your failure to act under pressure."

"Ah yes, 'faults and fears must never been seen', right?" Byeong-Ho said angrily. "Or was it 'You don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training'? She did like to use that as an excuse to set us against one another."

"It was training. After those sessions we could react instantly, even when a demon impersonated one of us to the other."

"And do you think that brought us together? Did we trust one another after that?" Byeong-Ho realized that he was looming over Chesa, and took a step back.

"You have no idea how much faith it took in your ability to overcome Hana's teachings for me to allow Rumi-ya to attend training at Jeju at all. There is blood deep in the soil in that place Chesa."

Shit, now he was forgetting that the girls were listening.

Calming breaths. "Chesa you are being very irrational, and just tried to attack my daughter. Now please get the fuck out of my house while I am still asking. If you think you can be civil all five of us will talk about this later."

Chesa opened her mouth to keep arguing, and Miyeong finally spoke. "Chesa, stop." She drew a wavering breath. "I don't want to keep fighting about this."

Chesa deflated, and looked at Miyeong. "Why? This is for you. I'm protecting you."

"I know." Miyeong sounded small. "But maybe you shouldn't. Maybe I should…"

There was a gentle tapping on the door. And a welcome distraction, with a little more silver than black in her hair, leaned her head inside. Byeong-Ho smiled at her, and almost felt guilty about the look of loss that crossed Miyeong's face.

Rumi waved and gave a small bow with somewhat affected cheerfulness. "Hyeyoung-imo! Saehae bok mani badeuseyo!"

"Oh Rumi-ya! Saehae bok mani badeuseyo to you too! I'm so pleased you came home for Seollal! And brought some…" she looked over the assortment of crying women in the entryway with bafflement. "Some friends?"

"Yes auntie, some friends of mine from trainee camp came to visit for a few days." Rumi looked at his former sisters, and he could practically see a spirit of mischief descend on her. "Some teachers of ours were in the area and decided to briefly stop by and wish us a happy new year. Maybe you've heard of them. They're the Sunlight Sisters."

Miyeong and Chesa froze and slowly turned toward the door.

Hyeyoung-ya tactfully smiled and bowed. "How kind of you to be so attentive to your students. I am very sorry to disrupt your conversation, but I must speak with Byeong-Ho-ya on some professional business. Could you excuse us?"

Rumi looked delighted to help Hyeyoung usher his formers sisters out, encouraging Hyeyoung and some aunties she corralled off the street to take more than a few selfies with them. When they returned they were giggling to one another. Little imps.

Byeong-Ho ran a hand through his hair. "Do you actually have business Hyeyoung-ya? I'm afraid I'm not at my best at the moment."

"Oh no, nothing at all. I just heard some shouting and thought you might have unwelcome guests." She opened her purse and showed the brick she'd hidden inside.

Zoey and Mira burst into slightly hysterical laughter.

When Byeong-Ho came back upstairs perhaps an hour later, warmed by activity and more pleasant conversation, he found the girls back in their pajamas and piled onto Rumi's bed again. Eyes wet with tears, but clinging tightly to one another.

"Ah, decided to give the morning up as a bad job?"

"We're starting over." MIra said, her face buried in Rumi's shoulder, her long arms holding Zoey tight against Rumi's other side.

"Reloading from an earlier save." Zoey said, looking up at him with a solemn but determined face.

Byeong-Ho looked at Rumi questioningly. She nodded shakily.

He whistled. "Big day for all three of you, then. Well, when you're done with your nap and ready for tea, it sounds like we'll have a lot to talk about."

Mira squeezed the three of them together, and they made some intense but mysterious eye contact with one another.

Mira seemed to speak for the three of them. "Yeah, we do."

"Then I'll go fill the kettle. Come on out when you're ready." There were….technically enough cups, if he used a small bowl for his own tea.

They followed him out into the main room as a unit, still holding hands like the spell might be broken if they let go, and settled into the same little circle of cushions where they had been playing yutnori barely two hours ago.

"Well. Where would you like me to start?"

"Did…did they really ask you to." Zoey looked stricken and whispered, "did they really ask you to kill her?"

Byeong-Ho looked at Rumi for confirmation. She nodded, but shrunk in on herself; and started withdrawing her hands from Mira and Zoey. Zoey laced her fingers more firmly with Rumi's, and Mira scooted closer to Rumi. Letting Rumi's hand wander, but leaning against her like a cat.

"Not in so many words, but between their screaming and our training, I did understand them to mean that."

Mira flinched. "Was she born with patterns then?"

Byeong-Ho looked at Rumi. She nodded slowly. "Yes, though very small."

Zoey looked puzzled. "It seems like that would be really hard to notice? There's like, a lot of goop, and it's all oxygenated so it's pretty dark." She looked around at the slightly disgusted faces of Rumi and Mira. "What? I had health class in america, they make us watch a video of a live birth."

"Rumi's eyes were yellow when she was born." Rumi flinched, and Byeong-Ho leaned forward to touch her gently. "It faded in a few hours to a golden brown, but I think that's what Chesa must have seen. I haven't seen them do more than flash amber since she was a toddler though."

"Do you know what causes that to happen?" Academic curiosity seemed to be overtaking fear in Zoey, Byeong-Ho couldn't quite decide if he found that reassuring. "Dynamic color changing in the animal kingdom is typically used for signaling or active camouflage, but environmental stress can be a factor too."

"It's shame, I think." Rumi interjected. "Anger or fear, maybe. But that's hard to divorce from feeling ashamed of something I did while angry or afraid."

Zoey's grip on Rumi's hand tightened. "Jeeze and I thought I was the only one who felt like history's greatest monster every time I made someone angry."

Mira looked deep in thought. "Do you know if our weapons would hurt Rumi?"

Byeong-Ho sighed. "I've never been sure, and honestly…"

"Yes." Rumi whispered.

WHAT. Byeong-Ho reached forward to pull Rumi into his arms. "Uri Rumi what happened? Are you okay?"

Rumi shivered in his arms. "I was panicking. A little." She breathed in and seemed to steady herself, laying her head on his shoulder. "I'd been arguing with…everybody. I felt like maybe it was a mistake to come and that I wasn't really a hunter. That I shouldn't even be there. And I thought. I thought I had to know for sure."

She sighed, the breath tickling his neck. "So I went out into the woods late at night, and summoned my saingeom, and just kinda stared at it for awhile." Rumi laughed softly and looked up at him. "And just when I'd convinced myself that it was a stupid risk, Chesa surprised me and I nicked my thumb."

Oh aegi horangi. Of course she'd think she needed to figure it out alone. "Rumi, you've obviously already thought better of it. But what were you thinking? Why didn't you…"

Ai-ya, don't make it about yourself, he thought. "I'm sorry you didn't feel like you could talk to me."

"I didn't want to worry you."

"Oh yes, I would have been much less worried by you disappearing entirely." Byeong-Ho hugged her, as much to reassure himself as her. Rumi laughed a little and sat up, pulling away from him. Somehow, he let her.

"It hurt, but just a normal hurt?" She raised her hand, and showed them a thin line along her thumb. "It didn't even bleed much, but it took a long time to heal closed. And was, uh, kinda sparkly? It looked like I'd gotten pink glitter in a cut."

Mira snatched Rumi's hand and held it gently, looking at the hairline scar. "Is that why you kept it covered so long? You said you'd sprained the joint."

Rumi looked a little startled. "I wasn't sure if anyone would notice, but it seemed safer to keep it covered."

Mira smiled wryly. "Well now I feel less terrible about knocking your feet out from under you when we were sparring."

Zoey nodded solemnly. "So it's dangerous, but not, like, insta-deadly." She patted Rumi's other hand. "We'll be careful. Maybe we'll just practice hand-to-hand while we figure this out." She grinned. "I've got this idea for a scissor kick takedown, and honestly maybe I should already have been planning to try it without knives first."

She looked back at Byeong-Ho.

"So….Rumi's father is definitely a demon?"

Byeong-Ho looked at Rumi. She nodded and shrugged. "I suspect so, but I honestly have no idea. It depends a great deal on how common…sexual encounters are between demons and humans, what percentage of them result in viable pregnancies, and what percentage of those pregnancies result in living children. It's possible that there could be other people out in the with partial demon ancestry, but I suspect it would be challenging to raise them without the skills and tools of a hunter."

"So Miyeong might not have known." Mira paled.

"I expect not." Byeong-Ho agreed.

"How could she not know? How could…you not know?" Zoey whispered. "Chesa-seonsa…Chesa. She sortof implied that demons could transform, but that they couldn't mimic humans very well."

Byeong-Ho rubbed his chin for a moment. "Miyeong ran through boyfriends very quickly. A few dates here or there, but no one frequently enough for it to seem serious. I, uh." He could feel himself blush faintly. "I have never found men interesting like that, so I confess I did not pay much attention to them. One seemed very much like the next." He paused, thinking. "At some point early that summer Chesa and I discussed the possibility that Miyeong might be ill and concealing it from us, but she worked very hard to hide her situation. Perhaps she didn't know what to do."

Byeong-Ho sighed. "At any rate, she didn't take us into her confidence until very late in the pregnancy. From then up through the birth itself we assumed the father was fully human. We had discussed taking a hiatus to visit my family. My eldest sister lives in the west, it would not be too unusual for her to adopt a baby out of wedlock there."

Rumi laughed. "You would have given me to Tante Margot?"

Byeong-Ho pinched her nose. "Well it turned out that I couldn't be parted from you, you little imp. So she came to us instead."

"Miyeong might be a little selfish."

Rumi snorted. Byeong-Ho raised an eyebrow at her.

"Miyeong might be a little selfish, but I don't think she would have agreed to that plan if she knew your father was a demon. And after the birth…well, if Miyeong has given any thought to it since that night, she has not shared her suspicions with me."

"Still. Both Miyeong and Chesa made it sound like it's really obvious when someone is a demon."

"Well, I have a theory." Rumi looked at Zoey, unable to quite conceal her bitterness. "Miyeong thinks that if she couldn't tell, that means it wasn't her fault. That way she can deflect all the blame onto me and appa."

"Rumi." Byeong-Ho chided her gently. "That's ungenerous. You know there's variance in how human a demon can appear to be." He paused to organize his thoughts. "Zoey, Mira. Have either of you observed any tears in the honmoon directly yet?"

Mira nodded. "Sortof? There was one very close to the compound shortly after Zoey arrived. The duo told us to stay inside and out of sight, but we did peek out the window to see if we could see anything." She thought for a few moments. "It was honestly pretty confusing. They would look like people sometimes, but not others."

Zoey chimed in. "Yeah! Some of them looked almost completely human, but there were also these, like, ogres….dokkaebi I think?" She looked at Mira, who nodded. "And those ones seemed to not really try to look human at all. But the other ones looked mostly normal, just kinda purple striped and fang-y."

"Your definition of normal is a little concerning, Zoey-ya."

"My bookmarks are between me and god, thank you very much." Zoey raised her eyebrows challengingly. "Besides, your DeviantArt handle was way way easy to guess. You are not free from sin Mira-unnie."

Mira blushed bright red, and Byeong-Ho could practically see steam rising from Rumi's ears as she contemplated what secrets might be held within those bookmarks. He struggled not to laugh, and nodded to Rumi to distract her.

"Rumi, what have they taught you about demons?"

Rumi hummed a little as her train of thought clicked back into place. "They kinda collapse all the types of demon into one big category, I guess? They distinguish them more by preferred environment and behavior, not by what kind of soul they started off with."

Byeong-Ho nodded. "Then to start with, there are humans, supernatural creatures, and spirits; and any of the three can become demons."

"Spirits?" Zoey asked.

"Fantômes. Ghosts, if you like. Humans who have died in such a way that their soul cannot rest. In their sorrow and their thirst for revenge, they can deteriorate and become vengeful towards the living. Gwisin and other muck demons often started out as spirits."

Mira looked confused. "How is that different from humans?"

"Humans bargain with their souls while they are still alive, and they gradually become dokkaebi as a result of that pact. The evil they do is selfish in nature, and began while they were living human lives. And, having made their pact while still living, they remember more clearly how to look and act like humans."

Zoey interjected. "Wait, how is a supernatural creature different from a demon? Chesa said it was, uh, a 'distinction without a difference'? I think I need my notebooks."

Byeong-Ho thought for a moment. "Think of it this way. A gumiho is born, not created by Gwi-Ma. It is native to our world, but born with dangerous supernatural abilities. It has the capacity for great evil, and some might say that this capacity means that it is their nature." He looked at each of the girls in turn. " But a gumiho who choses to forgo killing humans might in turn become a human. A gumiho who chooses to cultivate their protective powers over a long life might become the guardian of the mountain or forest where it resides. Like humans, they have the capacity to choose good or evil."

He looked at each of them. "In a sense, you have all become supernatural creatures. You have the capacity to do great good with your abilities; but those abilities are not ontologically good. Earlier this afternoon you saw me use the honmoon to restrain Chesa. The honmoon asks for your resolve, not your perfection or even your goodness."

Mira looked up suddenly. "So even if we were empowering the honmoon by influencing our fans, if we were influencing them to do shitty things it would just be a stalemate? The honmoon would be eroded again as fast as it was built up?" Her face fell. "I guess that mean that the golden honmoon isn't really possible."

"Well, I think asking the honmoon to remove our capacity for evil is expecting a little too much of it. Preventing Gwi-Ma from directly contacting vulnerable humans is worth enough all on its own. I doubt the earth would be rendered free of every selfish thought or shameful deed, but without Gwi-Ma empowering those flaws, perhaps people would be less ruled by their shame."

Mira started digging her fingernails into the hem of his nightshirt again.

Byeong-Ho sighed internally. One couldn't necessarily help nervous habits, but she must destroy her sleeves at an alarming rate. No wonder she had been wearing her own shirt cuffed.

"I have a question, but I don't know if it's rude. It's hard for me to tell that, sometimes."

Zoey laughed a little. "Girl, same."

"I just don't want to upset Rumi, but I don't know how else to ask it."

Rumi looked up and raised an eyebrow. "Well, I'll consider myself warned, then."

"Why us? Why did the honmoon choose us? Why did the honmoon choose Rumi?"

Rumi flinched, almost imperceptibly. A blow she had been expecting, but hadn't been able to avoid. Byeong-Ho breathed in through his teeth. "For that, I have only conspiracy theories. No real evidence one way or another."

Zoey blew out a weary sigh. "I mean, at this point if you told me it was the rabbit in the moon I'd hear you out. It's been a very confusing day."

Byeong-Ho held up one finger. "Option one: totally random chance. The honmoon seems to prefer candidates with a strong singing voice, who are of korean ancestry; but there are no other consistent requirements across the generations that I know of. Perhaps if we read through the hanok journal library we could detect some patterns, but I haven't had access to it in nearly twenty years."

Byeong-Ho held up a second finger. "Option two: the honmoon prefers people who are also…in between. Liminal in some way. Standing between one identity and the next, like the honmoon stands between one world and the next. Again, I couldn't be sure without access to the library, and it's hard to say if that would have been preserved in records that have been transcribed by hand. People…edit historical documents that don't quite say what they want them to say."

Zoey looked troubled. "You…you probably wouldn't have been able to transition if you had stayed with the Sisters, would you?"

"I expect not." He looked at the girls thoughtfully. "Though perhaps in time. Your generation is more accepting than mine; I might have been able to transition once the spotlight did not shine quite so brightly on me."

Byeong-Ho held up a third finger. "Option three: the honmoon is lacking some vital element that it desires, and has been seeking it out through generations of hunters over time. A counterpoint in the harmony, someone who completes a trio of hunters in an unusual way. Perhaps having a demon father makes Rumi more qualified to repair the honmoon than she would be with two human parents."

"It's kindof freaky to think about the honmoon wanting you to be part demon." Zoey said. "Uh, no offense. It's just weird to think of it matchmaking or something."

Byeong-Ho blinked. "I doubt it's as actively involved as that, but it is strange to think about."

"Speaking of matchmaking, how is Hyeyoung-imo and her little girl?" Rumi waggled her eyebrows very impudently. "You two were talking down there quite a while."

Dignity was long past him, but he mustered up what he could. "We were fixing the door…and discussing a light novel which we both follow."

"OH OH which one?" Zoey looked delighted.

Byeong-Ho sighed. "We have been reading 'Reborn as the Spoiled Lover of an Undersea Princess' together. We're going to make time to compare our theories about the assassination attempt sometime next week."

"Over coffee, perhaps?" Mira was fluttering her eyelashes alarmingly.

Byeong-Ho suspected where this might be going. Had he been this hormonal when he was a teenager? "Hyeyoung does make excellent coffee." He admitted.

All three of them gasped.

"It's like they totally forgot we were there." Mira was leaning back against the closed door, breathing unsteadily.

"What the hell happened at that hanok?" Zoey's face seemed to be frozen at 'startled'. "I know I haven't known your dad long, but uh, he seemed furious about…their old teacher I think? They were talking too fast for me to one hundo percent keep up." She paused, and looked from Rumi to Mira and back again. "Also, Miyeong was staring daggers at you this whole time and you gotta spill already. What is her problem with you?"

Mira flung herself away from the door. "No no no, you don't have to say. Only. Only if you want to tell us." She was visibly flailing for the right words. "It should be your choice."

Her choice.

They were all standing so close together in the entryway. If Mira summoned her gok-do right now it could go right through Rumi's chest before she could run. If Zoey summoned her shin-kal right now she wouldn't even need accuracy to dig under Rumi's ribs.

Her choice.

Mira licked her lips nervously. "Why don't we go upstairs? We're, uh, basically in each other's pocket here and I gotta stretch out, I'm way too tense after that argument."

"….yeah, sure." Zoey's look of suspicion was subdued, but deep.

Her choice.

How would she even start that conversation. "Hi yes I am a demon actually oh look at the time gotta go" and then what? Fling herself out of a window? Go hide out in Rivière-des-Prairies with her aunt until they stopped looking for her?

"hahahaha yeah let's go. Do you guys like Gu Family Book?" Rumi marionetted her body up the stairs while screaming internally. She almost walked straight up to the rooftop garden, but Zoey planted herself in the way.

"Okay for real. You're both acting super weird."

Rumi looked back and forth from Mira to Zoey, and sat down at the foot of the steps. I just wanted to see appa.

"It's…complicated." Rumi started, hesitantly.

"It's usually not." Zoey interrupted, already looking annoyed.

"What?"

"Usually when people say something is complicated it's because they don't want to explain, or don't like how it sounds when they try to."

"Well, I don't want to explain, and I don't think you're going to like how it sounds when I do, and it's still complicated." Rumi snapped.

"Zoey-ya we shouldn't pressure her."

"You know what it is, don't you?"

"…..No? A guess. Maybe." Mira swallowed. "Maybe a guess where I could understand why Rumi might be scared to share it." Mira stared at Rumi anxiously. "But it would be fine. If she did. If she did want to share it. We wouldn't judge her for it, right Zoey?"

"You don't know how I'd feel about it." Zoey said stubbornly. "I have been getting lied to so much since I moved to Korea and I kinda hate it actually."

"Zoey don't…"

"I'm half demon." Rumi said quietly. "Or part demon, or something like that. My birth father was a demon."

Zoey deflated a little bit. "Is that all? You and your dad have been dancing around that all day, I kinda guessed that was the sitch. I just wasn't sure what that meant." She sighed. "Knowing you were so scared to tell us does make it make more sense why you were so squirrelly about it. Wait, do you have squirrels in Korea?"

Mira nodded. "We have squirrels."

Rumi nodded. "Flying ones, yeah."

"God flying squirrels are so cute. Anyway! Sidetracked!" Zoey lightly slapped her cheeks a few times. "Focus. So what does being part demon actually mean?"

"Not very much and also a lot?"

"Rumi that is so unhelpful."

"Well I don't know what to say! I don't think I'm very different from you? But how would I be able to tell the difference?"

Zoey clicked a fingernail against her ring. "Well, you haven't tried to kill us or steal our souls yet. Most of the time you don't even really seem like you want to fight us." She kept tapping. "But you're really good with your saingeom. Do half demons have supernatural fighting abilities?"

"I just practiced a lot before I got to the hanok? I figured the longer I had to stay there, the more likely it was that I'd get caught, so I needed to be as good as I could get alone."

"Alone? Didn't Byeong-Ho help?" Mira had a tense look on her face that Rumi couldn't place.

"Some, but we didn't train with, you know, our real weapons, just wooden ones. He was afraid he'd…hurt me."

"Hmm." Zoey continued. "So no secret reserve of demon fighting prowess. And no super strength or super speed that I've noticed. Not more than me or Mira at any rate. Can you transform? Or teleport? Do you have fangs?" Zoey was getting very close to Rumi's face.

"No, I don't think so, and a little bit?"

"So, tentative checkmark for teefs, checkmark for gorgeous hair."

Rumi blushed. "You like it?"

"Rumi you have got to be joking." Now Mira was also very close to her face. And Rumi's brain was maybe melting a little bit.

"No, yeah it's amazing." Zoey nodded at her. Then, as if consulting some checklist in her brain, "So do you have patterns?"

Rumi sagged. "Yeah. They're not big but…I've had them as long as I can remember."

"The layers!" Zoey and Mira pointed at each other.

"Eh?" Rumi was getting more and more confused. This conversation was going nothing like how she had imagined.

"You always dress in structured layers, but your style is otherwise kinda…athleisure." Mira paused. "No offense."

"None? Taken?"

"Anyway, we just thought you were hiding a tattoo or something."

"It definitely added to the rebel allure." Mira said.

"Rebel allure?"

"Yeah! I thought you were kindof a bitch when I first met you," Zoey said. "But like, a really cool mysterious one?"

Rumi felt tears start to gather at the corners of her eyes.

"Oh no oh no I'm sorry I called you a bitch, sometimes my mouth kinda runs away with me."

"No, no, it's not that. I just." Tears were starting to run down her cheeks and she couldn't stop them. "You're just being really nice about this? I kinda thought you might try to kill me."

"OH MY GOD." "RUMI, NO." Zoey and Mira collided with Rumi, knocking her back against the stairs.

"Rumi you're our friend, we don't want to kill you." Now Mira was crying too. "I don't even like Miyeong and Chesa, I'm not going to choose them over you."

Zoey sighed. "I only decided to try to move to Korea because of friends I made on the Sunlight Sisters reddit, but like, they were maybe not the best influences on me. I'm going to try to be better about that."

Rumi sniffled. "I don't know what to do about Jeju. I don't think appa wants me to go back."

Mira sighed. "I don't think I'd trust them either, Chesa got pretty unhinged there."

"I don't want to ruin your chance of debut, though."

"Debut is so not our main concern right now, Rumi." Mira said, squeezing her. "We want you to be safe."

"Okay, I think I know what we need." Zoey said decisively.

"What?" Rumi asked.

"A reset. Sometimes when my day started going really wrong, eomma and I would put our pajamas back on and go back to bed for a little bit. Then you 'wake up' again and start the day over."

"…does that work?" Mira seemed dubious.

"It wouldn't hurt to try?"

Too stunned to really resist, Rumi found herself bundled into bed between Mira and Zoey. Too emotionally overstimulated to process that she was being held by two people she hadn't even conceived of liking 48 hours ago, and who she now thought she might love.

Well, might as well get it all out. "Also Miyeong is my birth mother. Byeong-Ho kidnapped me because Miyeong and Chesa wanted him to kill me."

"Okay, what? You don't get to speedrun all the types of parental abandonment all at once. You can't have a deadbeat mom and a deadbeat dad and a secret adoptive dad who is kindof divorced from your birth mom who you pretended was dead to hide him from his, like, ex-soulmates who wanted to murder you. That's too many things."

"I did say it was complicated."

1947: Ai-ja, 15 Song-ok and Woo-rim had pretended to be sisters for so long that sometimes they seemed to forget that they weren't. With their matching haircuts and private dialect of signs; with the ways their eyes stuck to one another across a stage or a classroom or a battlefield. They were a tight dyad that Ye-ri orbited; never quite admitted into their mysteries. So when one twilit night they announced that the two of them were taking a sudden trip home to Hwanghae to visit family, and that Ye-ri would be staying behind, Ai-ja just smiled and nodded.

It could mean nothing. Song-ok and Woo-rim were off alone together as often as not, and didn't always think to tell anyone but Ye-ri before they left. They professed themselves to be poor teachers; more interested in activity than theory. Not so educated as Ye-ri or as interested in books. So they ranged wide across Korea with their traveling show, hunting where it suited them, while Ye-ri taught. Arirang and demonology; comportment and swordsmanship; penmanship and musok and reluctantly, resentfully, how to skim along the surface of the honmoon to find one's sisters. The methods by which the honmoon could tell her what her sisters were up to in her absence.

It could mean nothing. Ye-ri often stood in the doorway with dry, red-rimmed eyes and watched them leave. But by the way her arms were crossed (tight against her her stomach, nails digging into the muscle of her triceps), and by the dry press of her lips, Ai-ja had known Song-ok and Woo-rim were not coming back. Ye-ri did not entertain Min-ja's questions. Not that night, nor any night afterward. That left four.

They wondered. Of course they wondered. Ai-ja and Sook-ja discussed it in hushed whispers under cover of night. Dancing around the obvious implication of going North. Afraid of what another war would mean. How demons had mixed so naturally with soldiers, their patterns concealed by fatigues and mud. Min-ja became increasingly insistent that Ye-ri explain herself, and collective punishment only made her wilder and more disobedient. But you didn't ask your elders questions. It was always always an elder's choice whether to explain themselves to a student. So it was disrespectful to mention that only Woo-rim still had family in Hwanghae. Worse to ask how they planned to cross the parallel. Worst to ask why. Ai-ja found she smiled and nodded a lot these days. She had a beautiful smile, everyone said so, and it kept the peace for a moment. Anything to keep the peace.

Ai-ja would be the lover, Sook-ja would be the leader, Min-ja would be the laughter. And Ye-ri was leftover.

1948: Ai-ja, 16 Pristine reputations, prestigious backgrounds, practical fighters. Incredibly, achingly perfect. And it hadn't even mattered. Two years before the Oh Sisters had a chance to debut, Sook-ja died of a perfectly ordinary bullet wound sustained while running past a perfectly ordinary barbed wire fence in frantic pursuit of her perfectly ordinary father, so far away from Ai-ja and Min-ja that they didn't even hear her scream.

Of course they had no idea what Sook-ja's father had been planning, or why she had been present. Of course they didn't support WPSK, they hadn't even been on Jeju during the general strike; gone to visit family at Ye-ri's insistence. It was tragic that she had been mauled by some sort of animal; something wilder than a tiger and more ravenous. What else could explain the walls splattered with blood, the claw marks in the tile floor, her missing body? They had no idea where their other teachers were. They had been missing for more than a year. That left two.

Of course they disavowed them. In a sense, Ai-ja felt like she had never even known them. (Faults and fears must never be indulged, they said. Gwi-ma can enter your mind through the smallest crack of doubt, they said. Through even a whisper of shame. They would want us to be perfect.) They stepped out of an interrogation cell and into army club show. Rewrote all their music for two Oh sisters instead of three. Ai-ja became both musician and gymnast, Min-ja became both performer and manager. (Sook-ja and Ya-ri became nothing. There were no bodies under their grave markers; their bones were mingled in a cave on Hallasan.)

1973: Ai-ja, 41 Fortuitously, Yunhui found them. A decade spent looking for even a trace of the next generation. Wondering what mass grave might hold them. Wondering whether Song-ok and Woo-rim had found them first, and were keeping them in the DPRK. Wondering if the honmoon could still find candidates whose family had fled Korea entirely. Wondering if a daughter sold to international child-knappers adopters would still think of herself as korean, would still think of Korea as a place to love and protect; if that would matter to the honmoon. Wondering how long two hunters could maintain the honmoon on their own.

Yunhui appeared in the village in the company of a father who looked eager to be elsewhere, and who vanished like smoke once his errand was complete. Asked to apprentice herself to the famous Oh Sisters, with a little nest egg to support the cost of her training. She had seen the honmoon already, and hadn't even flinched when Ai-ja described the dangers of the unseen world. Her father never sent for her again, so Yunhui was free to devote herself entirely to their cause.

Yunhui with her swan's neck and huge black eyes and steady disposition, who fought like a wild animal and could hold a note in her hands for minutes without breathing or faltering. Who effortlessly evaded Min-ja's temper. (Ye-ri had a deliberate hand with punishment. No bruises where they would show, or where they would impact range of motion. Min-ja was less judicious. It was helpful that Yunhui was so well-behaved.) Obviously they would build a group around Yunhui. Obviously she would be the leader. She was there a full three years before Hana and Soo-hee were even discovered. She was practically their third teacher.

1976: Hana, 16 Their teachers did not, Hana thought, have a particularly balanced approach to their responsibilities.

Min-ja managed their diet, their training regimen, their singles, their image. She negotiated all the contracts, kept the Oh Sisters on the radio, edited the ad copy on their endorsements, and distributed the profits as she saw fit. She drilled "her girls", parading them around like dressage horses when she thought their tricks were polished enough to be worth seeing. All Ai-ja did was perform, and play the indulgent mother to Hana and her fellow trainees. She spoiled Yunhui and Soo-hee with affection and attention. She endured Hana's own endless questions with equanimity. She comforted them when she thought Min-ja's punishments had gone on long enough, and keep their spirits up when Min-ja's approval seemed unattainable.

It didn't seem fair. Ai-ja was leaving Min-ja with all the responsibility for toughening them up, saving the softer work for herself. Ai-ja could kindly remind them that their faces reflected on their teachers, so they should smile as much as possible. She could be relentlessly patient when she taught them again and again how to show on the outside how happy they should feel on the inside. She could reassure them that no one seeing their faults and fears was more important than not having any.

Which seemed to Hana like hardly any work at all, until Ai-ja drowned.

(Years later, when Hana had to teach a new generation of girls all on her own. When she had to be both whetstone and oiled cloth. She would wonder if Min-ja had resented that extra work. Or if it had been easier for her to push them, to demand more blood every time Soo-hee and Hana crossed swords, because she didn't also have to become attached to them.)

When Ai-ja was pulled under the water, it happened in an instant; smooth and soundless, without even a ripple in her wake. The girls drew straws to decide who would call the police and report her as missing, like they didn't already know that there would be no body to find. Like Min-ja hadn't already carved the demon open like a fish looking for any trace of her. Without Ai-ja to refill her cigarette case, and arrange little outings into the gotjawal, Min-ja…deteriorated. Without Ai-ja to improvise every evening on her lovingly restored hyang-bipa, Min-ja's training became more demanding and erratic. Without Ai-ja to playfully rap her knuckles and scold her about being too preferential, Min-ja openly took her frustrations out on Hana and Soo-hee.

Yunhui snuck out of bed two nights running to help Hana and Soo-hee out of stress positions they had been forgotten in. Dragging them back inside to lay them out on the warm hanok floor, rubbing the blood back into their numb limbs. The third night, Yunhui announced that they were ready to manage their own career, and that she would break the news to Min-ja.

The next morning Soo-hee found Min-ja stone dead in her bed, eyes wide and already clouded white. The funeral was sparsely attended, and only Soo-hee seemed to find it in herself to cry. Yunhui said it would be bad luck to stay in the hanok after that, and packed them all of to Seoul without so much as a backward glance.

1978: Hana, 18 Trot might have been their mentor's genre, and still dominated by artists who sung in their style, but now that Yunhui's hand was on the tiller she was steadily breathing new life into it. Trot medley was a little disco and a little yé-yé, and abandoned their mentor's live instrument accompaniment for pre-recorded samples and live record mixing. It was scary stepping so far outside of Ai-ja and Min-ja's shadow, but maybe a little liberating. To be recording music pitched a little ahead of modern tastes. There was the honmoon to consider, and that ate at Hana's stomach at night, wondering if the risk was worth their own pleasure. But Yunhui's confidence was infectious. And when "안녕하세요, 친구들 (Salut Les Copains Remix)" spent a full month at the top of the charts, suddenly everyone else knew what Hana knew. That they were on the cusp of something special. That Yunhui was something special.

They booked with every variety show who would have them. Yunhui started incorporating risqué dance interludes into their shows, nothing that really challenged TV censorship laws but skirted tantalizingly close to the edge of them. Soo-hee added little audience participation activities. They piled new elements onto every show, testing what might drive fans a little crazier. What might make a thread of the honmoon pulse gold. In the end, each concert was so different that a real fan couldn't afford to miss one. Yunhui was magnetic. Hana was a little afraid she might be in love.

1986: Hana, 26 It was a normal tear. Or, as normal as they ever were. Evil red ash spilling through a gash that connected their world to ours; leering monsters crawling through it; and the promise of a hot shower on the other side of some spiritually cleansing violence. Yunhui lazily flicked a shin-kal through the head of a dokkaebi as it stumbled past Soo-hee's hwandudaedo and into Hana's hyeopdo. Hana and Soo-hee sang "Cherchez La Femme" as they tore through demons that hardly seemed to be fighting back; Yunhui humming along with them from a little farther up the grassy hillside. (Last year's single but still lingering on the charts; still requested in encores. Plenty of strength for this.)

It was a good vantage point to watch Hana and Soo-hee's backs. To catch any creature who might dodge past the thresher and try to flank them. Which meant her back was turned to the sky as she focused on her sisters. She didn't notice the red line appearing in the air just above and behind her until it was too late; nearly the same moment that a horn spear tore through her ribs; nearly the same moment that her scream became a roar.

Time seemed to slow and stutter when Hana looked backwards towards where Yunhui had been. Something ripped the giant dokkaebi's arm clean off its body, tossing it to the ground where it hissed and dissolved into ash. Black fur and blood drifted out of the wound in Yunhui's chest, dispersing into the air around it like the smoke that curled up from a pressed cone of incense. Something staggered towards Hana, drifting from one side to the other as it tried to pull the spear free. Yunhui's long styled curls hung loose around something's long and vulpine face. What spilled past something's lips might have been speech, but garbled by a mouth over-stuffed with fangs. Tantalizingly like a voice, but more like the yipping and growling of an animal than true language. While Ai-ja was drowning, demons wearing her face had separated Min-ja and Hana from the group. Distracted them with the sound of Ai-ja's voice calling out of the forest. Was this…a demon dressing itself as Yunhui? Was it even now distracting her? Concealing the real Yunhui, who must still be laying where she fell, bleeding to death in the grass?

Hana heard Soo-hee gasp sharply behind her, followed by a hard wet thunk. Hana knew she should have looked back. She should have looked back. But she ran towards the beast instead. Towards Yunhui. She harried the thing shambling towards her that dared to imitate her…friend. Keeping it at a distance with her hyeopdo as she ran toward where she'd last seen Yunhui, slashing along its arms as it reached for her. More blood and fur curled out of the wounds, the same black fur that mingled with Yunhui's blood on the grass. Hana couldn't think, her heart pounding in her ears; couldn't see, her eyes fixed on the crushed grass and claw marks pressed into soft soil. But when Hana fell to her knees, grasping for any sign of Yunhui, there was only a shredded norigae. A stained silk orchid and a coral bead.

Something yelped and cried out, and only then did Hana realize it had kept moving after she dodged past it. That it was moving towards Soo-hee. Hana remembered the wet and labored breath. That in a moment of horrible certainty she had chosen one sister over another, and left Soo-hee alone. Hana's feet were leaden as she tried to run back towards where she had left Soo-hee. Dreading the silence; knowing what it must mean. But something reached Soo-hee first, and wailed. The most heart-wrenching sound Hana had ever heard a demon make. Like a woman's scream. Like a fox. When its illusion of humanity finally melted away, Hana was briefly transfixed by the gumiho's cold animal eyes. By its anger. And before Hana could muster the strength to brandish her hyeopdo again, it ran into the night. It all made sense now. Gumiho were vain and wicked, and Yunhui was perfect. The kind of perfection a demon might cultivate the appearance of, but never truly posess. It must have finished her off while she was weakened from her wounds. Then it distracted Hana while its allies descended on Soo-hee. A broken generation of hunters, and a feast of souls for Gwi-ma.

And Hana had let it all happen, again. She had been deceived, again.

1987: Hana, 27 Yunhui had been the leader, Soo-hee had been the baby, and Hana was the one who was left.

There would have to be a new generation of girls now. (There always had to be a new generation of girls.) Where else to go to train them but home?

1993: Hana, 36 They loved each other already, these girls. It should have made Hana happy, to see them fall into one another's arms so quickly and absolutely. Natural wariness melting away like the black sugar in the hotteok Celine smuggled into their bedroom the night she arrived at the hanok. Barely a year and they were already fighting cleanly enough to safely hunt live game. It should have made Hana happy, but all she could see was how soft-hearted they were. How they would prioritize protecting one another over efficiently dispatching their eternal foe. It made her heart ache, though she couldn't say why.

They didn't have much closing power on their own, so still Hana had to tag along and seal the tears behind them. But that gave her a chance to evaluate their weaknesses, and devise appropriate lessons to correct them. They tolerated discipline without much complaint, but it only seemed to touch their hearts, when she singled one of them out to take the punishment for all of them. One girl taking lashes for all would leave her unfit to practice any of their longer routines, though. It was a delicate balancing act.

They were natural hunters, and it was very gratifying to see them take so quickly to sword and bow and axe. Their music, though. Hana did not care for Kpop. It was a necessary evil, she supposed. They were inheriting a weakened honmoon, they needed to follow trends closely rather than risk shaping them (Yunhui). Their harmonies were crisp at least, which made their music tolerable for her to critique. But their dancing was even worse. Far too sexual for such young girls. It was Chesa's choreography, and Hana supposed it was Chesa's turn anyway. She was so bright and studious that it was hard to trick her during lessons; but if she thought writhing around with her midriff out was acceptable, she'd clearly been brought up badly. Chesa took the cane (a thin little strip of bamboo, flexible and delicate for children) as stoically as she ever did, counting out the strikes in a voice more blank than contrite. She always crawled somewhere inside herself rather than pay attention, it was very vexing. Celine was weeping, though, which meant at least one of them was absorbing the lesson.

As the world changes, it is important to be prepared to safely and efficiently evacuate your home, potentially with little or no warning. Preparing ahead of time can help to reduce stress and anxiety, and help you evacuate safely if the time comes.

Red Level (No Warning): People | Pets | Keys. Human life matters most. If you can’t rescue your pets, let them out to give them their best chance. If evacuating by car, don’t forget your keys.

Orange Level (Less Than an Hour): Crucial Meds | Important Papers | Money | Paper Map | Pet Vaccination Records. Crucial meds and medical equipment. Papers including passports, birth certificates, medical records, etc.. Multiple forms of payment. Paper map with marked evac routes in case of signal loss. Phone. Most evac centers require vaccine records for pets to be allowed in.

Yellow Level (More Than an Hour): Photos | Hard Drives | Computers | Chargers | Irreplaceable Items | OTC Meds | Pet Supplies | Pet Food | Clothes | Weather Gear. Family photos. Hard drives and computers. Make digital backups ahead of time. Charging cords. Irreplaceable items such as collectibles and mementos. Over the counter medical supplies such as Aspirin and tampons. Pet supplies such as bowls, crates, toys, and litter. Pet food and treats. Clothes. If you are running out of time grab your laundry basket. Weather gear if needed.

Green Level (General Preparedness): Food | Water | Radio | N95 Masks | Multitool | Power Pack | Gas | Stove + Fuel | Flashlight | Toiletries | Emergency Contact Info | Bedding | First Aid | Can Opener. Easy prep, shelf-stable food. Water. Battery powered/rechargeable NOAA weather radio. N95 masks for smoke. A multitool. Rechargeable power pack for phones. Keep your car at least partially fueled at all times. Portable stove and fuel for cooking food without power. Flashlight and spare batteries. Toiletries including hair products, toothbrush and paste, etc.. Emergency contact info for friends and loved ones. Spare pillows and blankets. Dedicated first aid kit. Can opener.

Save yourself time and stress by preparing an evacuation bag ahead of time and keep it in an easy to access place. At the end of every season rotate out the perishable items within such as food, water, and medications. The more you can keep in the bag, the more time you’ll have to grab everything else. Remember, it is okay if you can’t do everything. Some preparation is better than no preparation.

If you are in the U.S.A. and experiencing disaster related anxiety call the Disaster Distress Hotline at 1-800-985-5990 for support and resources.

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