She manages a nod, mechanical; an autonomic response after a lifetime of people asking if Celine was this or that to her.
(never mother, like that question had been trained/cowed out of the press before she was old enough to remember)
The mentor softens her face with sympathy and hums, but Rumi can see the smile in her eyes. "I know it's hard to see someone who's such an important part of your life suffer, but it won't last. She's doing so well."
The gumiho child- Celine- flashes back to Rumi's mind's eye, snagging on how loose her dingy shift hung over her frame, how pale her complexion was, how...scared she looked as she watched the door shut out the few meager strands of light that found their way to this forsaken corner of the cellar.
This is your idea of 'well?' She wants to shout, but the mentor's not finished.
"And you know she leads a good life once she's human, so it all works out for the best."
She remembers seeing Celine come up from the rare trip to the cellar, pale and shuddering in a way she never was after a demon battle.
She remembers watching Celine's plate during meals and noticing just how little she ate, and how she was hardly able to bring herself to eat more no matter how Rumi pressed.
And the way she always looked after the foxes in the woods around the hanok, the grief that shrouded her sitting somehow heavier...did her soul remember what she'd lost, even if the rest of her had forgotten?
The mentor's trying to usher her back upstairs, prattling on about how she almost never cries anymore (!!!) and today was just a little setback, she's becoming such a good and quiet little girl, and it's such a relief to know this little...experiment of theirs- taking a demon and making a Hunter out of it- was ultimately a success; their own mentor had her doubts.
"How long?" Rumi braces against the mentor's leading arm, refusing to budge from the door. "How long has she been in there?"
The mentor looks...proud. "We just marked fifty days; a few more months and she'll-"
"She hasn't eaten in over a month?!?" Rumi feels like her own stomach has been gutted.
The mentor, for the first time, looks taken aback. But she recovers just as quickly, all smiles and cheap sympathy. "Yes, and it's quite a credit to her fortitude that she hasn't; gumiho can be voracious beasts. She'll be a stellar Hunter. But of course-" she chuckles, like her and Rumi are in on a private joke. "-you knew that already."
A month in this dark, dank cellar, starving...feeling a part of her soul shriveling and dying in her chest...alone.
And Rumi makes up her mind right then and there.
Damn the timeline, they were getting Celine out of here, tails and all.