I've been thinking, and the more and more I ponder....the more I realize I love the idea of a Mi-yeong who was kind of selfish.
Now, I realize we know, like, absolutely nothing about Mi-yeong besides the fact that she was a Sunlight Sister, had a child with a demon, and is dead. A lot of what people say about her is pure headcanon, including what I am about to say.
(I do feel like there's a few things we can say with certainty are false, though: for one, I utterly DESPISE the headcanon (or people just outright claiming it's canon) that Mi-yeong was assaulted by Rumi's father. For one, that's not going to be a plot point in a family-friendly franchise. For two, that completely obliterates what little complexity the movie creates with demons. People have also suggested that Mi-yeong maybe didn't know that Rumi's father was a demon until after they had (consensual) sex. That's...eh, not as bad as the first point, but still doesn't paint Rumi's father in a good light, and I don't feel like that's what the creators intended. I know concept art and deleted scenes are not canon, but by the way Rumi's father has been depicted as smiling and kind and gentle in them, I feel like it's safe to say that, along with the ending of Rumi accepting both sides of her as beautiful and matter-of-fact and not something to be hated, the creators had the idea that Mi-yeong knew of Rumi's father's true identity and loved him anyways, bridging the gap between the two sides of the warring factions. Of course, we have no idea how long their relationship lasted, although I feel like it was more than just a one-night stand, or how their courtship (for lack of a better word) was like. I'm not here to headcanon about that, though.)
But I am growing to really, really like the idea that Mi-yeong may have bridged the gap between two worlds, but she was selfish in the sense that she picked what she personally wanted, which included a demon lover, over humanity/Korea.
I imagine that pretty much everything Rumi knows about Mi-yeong personally, beyond SLS fandom content, is from Celine and would be through HEAVILY rose-tinted glasses. Celine would likely not paint Mi-yeong as less than anything but an angel, and given how black and white Celine's views on demons understandably are, Celine likely was largely tight-lipped to Rumi regarding Rumi's father. If Rumi ever kept asking about him, probably as a child, Celine almost certainly painted Rumi's father in the worst light possible, because Celine doing that, saying Rumi's father manipulated Mi-yeong (even if he didn't) would be far easier for Celine to handle than admitting Mi-yeong fell in love with a demon, synonymous to Celine as a murderer, a mindless Gwi-Ma serving machine, all of the things Celine sees demons as. Every bad thing that Mi-yeong may have done, everything that she did that Celine disagreed with near the end of her life, any way she hurt Celine, could simply be blamed on Rumi's father.
That all is to say that Celine would probably be completely unable to provide any sort of reliable depiction of Mi-yeong, or at least not a heavily biased one, but I just love the idea that by the end of Mi-yeong's life, she would have picked Rumi's father over her former friend, and even all of Korea.
I like the idea that Mi-yeong truly fell for Rumi's father, and eventually came clean with his identity to her bandmates. They'd obviously react poorly. A fight would be inevitable...
And I just like the idea that Mi-yeong left them.
She trusted them with a massive secret. She thought they would understand her and trust her judgement. But they didn't. It's more than them rejecting the man she was in love with, it was, to her, an attack on her very identity and judgement, because they refused to listen to her side of the story. They picked their rigid dogma over her, so she just leaves them. She picks her demon boyfriend over them, telling him her loyalty lies with the two of them, not her friends. Now, normally, leaving close-minded loved ones would be perfectly fine, not selfish at all.
But the thing is, Mi-yeong is part of a long generation of women who have a sacred duty to keep Korea safe. She has responsibilities. People are relying on her to protect them from a threat to their very souls that they do not even know exists. Like we see in the movie, Hunters are strongest together, and them splitting up or fighting is bad for the Honmoon. It's not healthy, but technically, the best thing for Mi-yeong to do, the utilitarianism ideology, the greatest good for the greatest amount of people, is to stay together.
But I like the idea that she just leaves and cuts off contact from her bandmates.
I like the idea that she watches the massive public media frenzy that her abrupt departure from the Sunlight Sisters causes, how stressed and overwhelmed Celine and Thirdlight are. How the Honmoon is breaking down. How people are in danger.
And simply doesn't care. Or at least, is happy enough to not be troubled. From her training until now, her entire life has revolved around helping others. Ignoring her own injuries and problems, covering up her faults and fears and all, to keep people safe.
And she decides that she's had enough of it. But unlike her daughter decades later, she doesn't decide to recreate a flawed Honmoon into something more healthy. She just decides to turn her back on it.
She grows resentful to her former Sisters. They were with her until she fell in love with the wrong man. Supported her happiness until they saw the man she loved and refused to listen to anything she said. Celine keeps trying to crawl back for Mi-yeong's forgiveness, begging her to return, while still insisting that Celine knows more about Mi-yeong's lover than Mi-yeong herself. Saying the Honmoon needs her.
Mi-yeong doesn't care. She's serviced the Honmoon for years, and now its proponents want to summarily execute her lover and force her back into line.
She is choosing herself. If her choice of a lover is such a problem to the Honmoon and its guardians, they can figure out what to do without her. It's not like the apocalypse is incoming. Korea still has two very capable fighters who were perfectly united against her and her decisions.
Because she is not going to abandon her lover and all she has learned from him. She is not going to depart from what she has gained and how happy she is. She watches Celine and Thirdlight flounder and struggle to appease the public and keep the Honmoon sealed. And she is indifferent to the stress they are going through.
She lives her own life. I doubt Rumi's dad can be with her all of the time, given that I'm sure his absence would probably go noticed by Gwi-Ma. She finds hobbies. She relaxes. She hides herself from the world.
People are dying. The Honmoon is weaker than it has been for the entirety of the SLS's careers. Celine and Thirdlight are struggling.
But she can live with that. The Honmoon doesn't deserve her loyalty, and she has no interest in trying to upkeep something that could seal away her lover. She removes herself from the equation to ensure there's not a shot the SLS have in creating a Golden Honmoon. The remaining two Hunters are merely a reflection of the Honmoon who rejected her after a career of service to it.
Let them figure out to do without her. They gave her an ultimatum, and she informed them of her decision. She is going to live her life now, deserting a battle she does not want to take part in, even if her choice leads to more deaths.
As for why Rumi does end up in the care of Celine? I like to think that Mi-yeong went into labor, and Rumi's father panicked, having absolutely no idea what to do, so he risked his life to bring his lover to the only people who even partially understood her situation and knew of the parentage of their child. Perhaps Mi-yeong and Celine did have some type of reconciliation on Mi-yeong's deathbed, depending on how Mi-yeong died, or Mi-yeong intended Rumi's father to raise their child without Mi-yeong, but he died, leaving Celine to raise Rumi.
But I am also partial to the idea as well that Mi-yeong in her dying moments, regardless of how her life ultimately ended, never fully made amends with Celine, but used the fact that she was dying as leverage to make Celine promise to raise Rumi. Because even if Mi-yeong could live with innocent citizens being put at greater risk due to Mi-yeong leaving her Sisters, she loved the baby that she had brought into the world, and hated that she was leaving Rumi without her mother.
Maybe she even blamed Celine and her other Sister for the entire situation and her death.
But she knew Celine loved her. Loved her too much to reject her dying wish. And so Mi-yeong fought for Rumi with her last breath. Made Celine promise to raise and love and care for Rumi alongside Rumi's father. That she was to love Rumi and not lay a hand on her or her father.
Celine couldn't reject Mi-yeong when she was dying, especially if she felt guilty for causing the situation in any way. There was still resentment from Mi-yeong's side towards Celine as she died.
But she had spent the last months, maybe even years, of her life living for what she truly loved and valued.
And damn if she didn't love her daughter. Her daughter represented the knowledge she'd gained and the way she'd been changed and enlightened.
Her daughter represented everything worth protecting. The old Honmoon, with its self-importance, could struggle, condemn her, try to drag the man she loved back to a prison run by a tyrant. Mi-yeong would be a soldier leaving her post, even if that meant turning her back on people she was supposed to protect.
But her daughter had to live. No matter what Mi-yeong had to do to ensure that.
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