polytrix pls

Bonus thingamajig:

Redrew that one Zoey meme, too. lol.

I realized I probably should’ve colored the background a different color 💀 oh well.

zoey is no longer allowed to buy groceries via any app , after the spinach incident. the first and last time she did, she bought 5kgs of spinach by accident, they had to eat spinach for like a week.

Geotjeori is fresh kimchi though so they'll have to eat it immediately after putting in all the kimchi preparation instead of fermenting it like Mugeunji [묵은지] — the aged kind of kimchi everyone is familiar with

BUT

(Or have some spinach heavy staff lunches)

Mira frowned as she hung up the phone. "You two order anything big?"

"No." Rumi didn't look up from her laptop as she answered, fingers not missing a beat as they typed out rote platitudes on an email.

"I mean," From where she was sprawled upside down and half-on/half-off the couch, Zoey rolled to her stomach and slithered down to kneel to the floor. "I ordered some groceries to make an extra-special-one-month-in-the-penthouse celebration dinner, but I wouldn't call that 'big.'"

Mira waved her phone towards the elevator. "Doorman said there's a big delivery for us. Guy has a handtruck and everything. Told him to send it on up. Guess we're getting a surprise."

"Ooh!" Zoey brightened, popping to her feet. "Maybe Celine got us a late penthouse-warming gift!"

Mira raised a brow. When they'd moved into the penthouse, Celine had made sure it was already furnished with every creature comfort they could want and then some (seeing the jacuzzi in her ensuite was the closest Mira had come in years to wishing she could call her mother, for no other reason then seeing just how green she would turn). Plus she'd given them all carte blanche use of a credit card with a limit up where no won has ventured before to fill their rooms as they saw fit. She was pretty sure all that qualified as a more then generous housewarming gift. But that wasn't the strange part about Zoey's guess.

"You're proposing Celine was late?"

"Maybe it was on backorder?" Zoey shrugged helplessly as the elevator dinged open on a teen in desperate need of acne treatment and a handtruck laden with-

"Is that…spinach?" There was the click of Rumi's laptop closing behind Mira as their unnie did the unheard of and set aside a work email, but Mira didn't turn to witness the phenomenon; she was too busy staring at the mountain of green being wheeled (noisily; thing needed oil) into their home. A mountain of thin plastic produce bags, each bulging with dark-green leaves, rustled and quivered with the motion of the truck, a schadenfreudic avalanche of vitamin K gleefully waiting to descend on unsuspecting idols.

"Who the hell would send us this much spinach?!?" Mira squawked before the delivery boy could utter a star-struck "Yes, Rumi-nim."

She felt more than heard the change come over Zoey. When she whipped back towards the couch Zoey was standing in the same spot as before looking like a bottle of soda pop gone miserably flat, staring at her phone with wide-eyed horror.

"Zo?"

Slowly, Zoey looked up from her phone. "I…" She swallowed, hard, and clenched her phone to her chest and squeaked: "I'm sorry!"

It was then that Mira noticed the other groceries being suffocated by the spinach.

"I just thought I ordered a little!" Zoey rushed to explain as Mira snatched a receipt dangling from a bag and nearly dislocated her jaw upon reading that Zoey had purchased 5 kgs of spinach. "Like, a kilogram's small, right?"

"It's about two pounds," Rumi said with her Publication Relations voice and smile as she signed for the unholy amount of spinach and dismissed the delivery boy (who, fortunately, was too starstruck by the fact that Ryu Rumi touched his pen to say anything). "2.2, to be precise."

(because of course Rumi has to be precise)

Groaning, Zoey crashed onto the couch, burying her face in the cushions. "I'm such an idiot…"

Mira balled up the receipt and lobbed it to bounce off Zoey's head, earning her an injured look. "No, you're such an American."

"And still one of the smartest people we know," Rumi added.

Zoey looked from Mira to Rumi. "You're not…mad?"

"Honest mistake," Mira smirked. "And one day, once we finally cram the metric system into your brilliant head, we'll look back on this and laugh. All of us. Like we do about the time Rumi tried to un-jam Celine's printer."

"I don't laugh about that," Rumi huffed, hefting a bag and stepping into the kitchen.

"Nothing terrible happened."

"I got ink everywhere!"

"Yeah," Mira chuckled, remembering the sight of her ink-splotched unnie, a rare moment where her impeccable feathers were actually ruffled. From the den, Zoey giggled.

(it was objectively funny; case and point, Celine had come as close as Mira had seen her to laughing).

Zoey padded over and leaned against Mira, who slung an understanding arm around her. "Still. What're we gonna do with all this?"

With her free hand Mira grabbed a bag and plopped it on Zoey's head. "Eh, eat it. Prove to Celine that we eat more than junk food when she's not around. Feed the techs at the studio."

"Make sigeumchi geotjeori," Rumi added from the kitchen.

"You'll see," Mira nudged Zoey as she took up an armload of spinach to take to the kitchen. "It'll work out."

Still, as she looked at the fridge, freshly stocked with more spinach then she'd ever seen in one place, Mira had one thought:

zoey is no longer allowed to buy groceries via any app , after the spinach incident. the first and last time she did, she bought 5kgs of spinach by accident, they had to eat spinach for like a week.

Geotjeori is fresh kimchi though so they'll have to eat it immediately after putting in all the kimchi preparation instead of fermenting it like Mugeunji [묵은지] — the aged kind of kimchi everyone is familiar with

BUT

(Or have some spinach heavy staff lunches)

Mira frowned as she hung up the phone. "You two order anything big?"

"No." Rumi didn't look up from her laptop as she answered, fingers not missing a beat as they typed out rote platitudes on an email.

"I mean," From where she was sprawled upside down and half-on/half-off the couch, Zoey rolled to her stomach and slithered down to kneel to the floor. "I ordered some groceries to make an extra-special-one-month-in-the-penthouse celebration dinner, but I wouldn't call that 'big.'"

Mira waved her phone towards the elevator. "Doorman said there's a big delivery for us. Guy has a handtruck and everything. Told him to send it on up. Guess we're getting a surprise."

"Ooh!" Zoey brightened, popping to her feet. "Maybe Celine got us a late penthouse-warming gift!"

Mira raised a brow. When they'd moved into the penthouse, Celine had made sure it was already furnished with every creature comfort they could want and then some (seeing the jacuzzi in her ensuite was the closest Mira had come in years to wishing she could call her mother, for no other reason then seeing just how green she would turn). Plus she'd given them all carte blanche use of a credit card with a limit up where no won has ventured before to fill their rooms as they saw fit. She was pretty sure all that qualified as a more then generous housewarming gift. But that wasn't the strange part about Zoey's guess.

"You're proposing Celine was late?"

"Maybe it was on backorder?" Zoey shrugged helplessly as the elevator dinged open on a teen in desperate need of acne treatment and a handtruck laden with-

"Is that…spinach?" There was the click of Rumi's laptop closing behind Mira as their unnie did the unheard of and set aside a work email, but Mira didn't turn to witness the phenomenon; she was too busy staring at the mountain of green being wheeled (noisily; thing needed oil) into their home. A mountain of thin plastic produce bags, each bulging with dark-green leaves, rustled and quivered with the motion of the truck, a schadenfreudic avalanche of vitamin K gleefully waiting to descend on unsuspecting idols.

"Who the hell would send us this much spinach?!?" Mira squawked before the delivery boy could utter a star-struck "Yes, Rumi-nim."

She felt more than heard the change come over Zoey. When she whipped back towards the couch Zoey was standing in the same spot as before looking like a bottle of soda pop gone miserably flat, staring at her phone with wide-eyed horror.

"Zo?"

Slowly, Zoey looked up from her phone. "I…" She swallowed, hard, and clenched her phone to her chest and squeaked: "I'm sorry!"

It was then that Mira noticed the other groceries being suffocated by the spinach.

"I just thought I ordered a little!" Zoey rushed to explain as Mira snatched a receipt dangling from a bag and nearly dislocated her jaw upon reading that Zoey had purchased 5 kgs of spinach. "Like, a kilogram's small, right?"

"It's about two pounds," Rumi said with her Publication Relations voice and smile as she signed for the unholy amount of spinach and dismissed the delivery boy (who, fortunately, was too starstruck by the fact that Ryu Rumi touched his pen to say anything). "2.2, to be precise."

(because of course Rumi has to be precise)

Groaning, Zoey crashed onto the couch, burying her face in the cushions. "I'm such an idiot…"

Mira balled up the receipt and lobbed it to bounce off Zoey's head, earning her an injured look. "No, you're such an American."

"And still one of the smartest people we know," Rumi added.

Zoey looked from Mira to Rumi. "You're not…mad?"

"Honest mistake," Mira smirked. "And one day, once we finally cram the metric system into your brilliant head, we'll look back on this and laugh. All of us. Like we do about the time Rumi tried to un-jam Celine's printer."

"I don't laugh about that," Rumi huffed, hefting a bag and stepping into the kitchen.

"Nothing terrible happened."

"I got ink everywhere!"

"Yeah," Mira chuckled, remembering the sight of her ink-splotched unnie, a rare moment where her impeccable feathers were actually ruffled. From the den, Zoey giggled.

(it was objectively funny; case and point, Celine had come as close as Mira had seen her to laughing).

Zoey padded over and leaned against Mira, who slung an understanding arm around her. "Still. What're we gonna do with all this?"

With her free hand Mira grabbed a bag and plopped it on Zoey's head. "Eh, eat it. Prove to Celine that we eat more than junk food when she's not around. Feed the techs at the studio."

"Make sigeumchi geotjeori," Rumi added from the kitchen.

"You'll see," Mira nudged Zoey as she took up an armload of spinach to take to the kitchen. "It'll work out."

Still, as she looked at the fridge, freshly stocked with more spinach then she'd ever seen in one place, Mira had one thought:

[A Mirror, Mirror AU] [first, second]

Context: Celine swaps with a version of Celine who isn't nightmarish awful but doesn't really see Rumi as a person per se.

While everyone’s figured out it’s an alternate timeline situation, main!Huntrix are trying to prevent alt!Celine from doing more damage while wading through their own trauma, and alt!Rumi has had a breakdown about the difference between the universes and hurt her wrist in the process.

@fakelawyerbug

Zoey stops herself from finishing the thought and sucks on her teeth until the urge to voice it settles back down.

"Well, you implied that your Rumi's patterns were spreading faster than ours had," Zoey says. Celine grimaces and Zoey pushes on. "And, well, you are planning to let your Rumi debut, right? She's not going to be your secret demon hunting demon?"

Celine's brows furrow and she narrows her eyes. She looks genuinely irritated.

"Of course she's going to debut," Celine says, sharply. "She's been working towards it her entire life, why wouldn't --"

"Well if her patterns spread..."

Zoey watches as Celine works her jaw, her lips pressed tightly in a thin line.

"She's a good girl," Celine says, stiffly. "She has no control over her patterns. They grow... regardless."

//

Celine was waiting by the car, a manila folder open on the hood of the old van. There was a frown on her face as she flipped through the papers and Rumi felt her shoulders tighten.

Sure, she'd had to go to the doctor's a few times but she thought that was normal for a kid. Hell, the way Zoey talked, she in and out of the hospital every couple of weeks when she was learning to skateboard.

Or maybe she didn't go enough?

(Maybe her Rumi was more human than she was)

(Maybe the fact that she didn't need a doctor very often was a sign of her spreading nature)

Something sour squirmed inside of her chest and Rumi held her breath until it was smothered. God what was wrong with her, jealous of someone she'd never met.

"You haven't been getting regular check-ups, have you?" Celine asks, rubbing her temple.

Rumi shook her head. Celine had stopped taking her to the doctor regularly once her pattern started growing past her elbow.

"Should I have been?" Rumi asks.

Rumi knows Celine was about to say 'yes' before she sighs and says, "Ideally. But things get busy, so I understand why she wouldn't have. At least you're up to date with your shots."

Celine closes up the folder and gets into the driver's seat.

Also, yeah, other Rumi is never gonna set healthy boundaries in a million years. Oof.

“Yeah,” Zoey says, trying not to get overexcited, to jump straight in, to put her on the defensive again by saying she knows more, even if she does, just like she’s ten and about to get told off for correcting the teacher, “I bet she is. I mean, I always remember how much of a stick in the mud Rumi was when Mira started living with you guys? Like, she was being so careful to make sure no one had any reason to even think about taking Mira back.”

Celine smiles a little, and shakes her head. “She can be… protective.”

“The thing is, at least here, they didn’t grow for no reason. They grew because of how Rumi felt like she wasn’t really any good—couldn’t be, as long as she had patterns—and how she let that control her.” Zoey shrugs. “Which, uh… vicious cycle.”

“I can’t avoid putting pressure on her,” Celine says, disgustedly. “She has a duty—“

“It’s not pressure, it’s shame,” Zoey snaps.

///

Celine doesn’t say much once they’re in the car, except to ask if Rumi needs help getting her seatbelt on with her off hand. Rumi is so insulted by the idea she forgets to even feel bad about it.

Rumi holds the ice pack to her wrist and thinks about the way Mira has talked about doctors, about her mom’s insistences that she just try a cortisone injection, she could say no next time if it didn’t work, about never being told what was wrong with her as if she were too stupid to comprehend it.

Her Celine has never done that. Just quietly looked down at Rumi’s arm and shaken her head and not scheduled an unnecessary appointment. To keep her safe, just as much as it was so that no one would see.

At least as much. Maybe more.

Rumi almost convinces herself, and then the car hits a pothole and her wrist jolts and she tears up because Celine’s arm had twitched to catch a passenger who wasn’t there.

"Shame?" She says. "What does shame have to do with anything?" 

Hope -- fragile and fluttering -- rises inside of Zoey. This was good. Celine was listening and engaging. She wasn't shutting her down. 

Zoey can work with this. 

"Because that's how Gwi-ma controls people!" Zoey gestures vigorously with her hands. "Shame makes people feel bad about themselves and that's how Gwi-ma is able to get his hooks in." 

She curls her fingers like they were claws and flexes them in Celine's direction. 

Celine crosses her arm. She does not look convinced. 

"That's a ridiculous idea," she says, flatly. "Shame is good. It forces people to become better. How else do you think we were able to protect the honmoon for so long?" 

//

Rumi feels Celine looking at her and she stubbornly looks out the window, at the green fields stretching past the horizon, dotted with farms and utility poles. She shuffles the bag of ice around her wrist. 

"We'll be on the main road soon," Celine says. 

"I'm not your Rumi so you can stop all this," Rumi says although she pronounced as, "I'm not a baby." 

She can almost hear Zoey and Mira wince. For a moment, her chest seizes and she holds her breath. Her Celine would never have let her get away with that kind of tone, even if she was hurt. 

"It doesn't matter what's happening, you can't let your emotions get the better of you, Rumi," her Celine had said. "Your... heritage puts you in enough danger. You can't afford to have the public turn on you as well." 

And then, like the valiant bailer of sinking ships that she is, she tries, slowly, “Feeling like a bad person… helped you connect with and inspire the fans?”

“It made sure I would,” Celine answers, sounding equally like she thinks Zoey is kind of an idiot.

Zoey thinks of Rumi’s desperation, her reckless pace, those last few months before the Idol Awards, the way she’d been burning herself alive, and she opens her mouth—

Mira pads into the room, her mile of wet hair wrapped up in a towel turban, a step down from how she’d usually be with a guest around, though relaxed house clothes on, a step up from how she’d usually just be in a robe, and gives a vague glance of acknowledgment.

Celine gets a look like she feels disrespected. Which was probably deliberate on Mira’s part.

“I really don’t think that’s how it works,” Zoey says, trying to get her act back on track.

///

Rumi makes a face in the backseat, and Celine almost wants to cry—she absolutely is a baby, her face still so round and young, her emotions still so unpolished and uncontrollable.

(How had she gone and grown up so quickly?)

But the little girl in the backseat says, all pouty, “Then why are you treating me like one?” and she has to pay attention.

It aches, of course. Feeds the burning anger she has at this Celine, this monstrous other face of hers, who had raised a child that lashed out in fear at the barest glimpse of affection and who had treated meeting her basic needs as optional.

(How revealing it was.)

“How do you mean?” Celine asks, almost dreading the answer as she does.

It takes Rumi a long moment to answer, her expression twisting in the rearview mirror, but without all the usual mumbling and sputtering characteristic of Rumi’s frustration.

“You can drive the speed limit, for one,” she grumbles.

And Zoey has to take a deep breath, the kind that swells up inside you that you can feel in your stomach, to stop herself from shooting back, "nuh uh" like she was in elementary school again.

"How?" Zoey asks. "Feeling bad just... feels bad."

"And there's nothing wrong with that," Celine responds. "Sometimes people need to be reminded of just how awful they are so they aren't tempted to revert to their -- their past selves."

She says this with an infuriating calm.

Zoey slides her gaze over Celine's shoulder to the couch where Mira was pretending to lounge. Mira's head snaps to the side to stare at Celine out the corner of her eye. Their eyes meet.

Are you hearing this? Zoey blinks.

Mira shrugs stiffly. The base of her neck was turning red with anger and the rise and fall of her shoulders told Zoey that she was trying to do the breathing exercises Celine had taught all of them -- that *their * Celine had taught all of them.

"I mean, your Rumi is just a teenager, right?" Zoey asks, watching Mira. Please just let me do this, she tries to say with her eyes. "How many past selves could she have?"

Celine shoots her another sharp look. "Did I say I was talking about my Rumi?"

//

"I can handle pain," Rumi insists.

And it reminds Celine so much of her Rumi, aged, oh, six or so, putting on a brave face for the doctor while getting her shots that Celine can hardly breathe. Her Rumi had a bad habit of downplaying her injuries too -- an unfortunate habit she'd picked up from Celine insisting that she was fine no matter the circumstances.

Of course she'd done that here too.

She tightens her grip on the steering wheel.

"Me driving faster isn't going to get us to the doctor any sooner, Rumi," Celine says.

"That sounds fake," Mira mutters.

Celine’s lips thin.

“We could talk about me, if you want,” Zoey offers, knowing she’s pushing her luck but—still. She smiles. Not fearlessly, not unbreakably, the way her Celine had taught her. With a chipped edge. “I heard Gwi-Ma’s voice once.”

Mira’s head dips, momentarily. Curling away from her own guilt. But she doesn’t volunteer to participate, so Zoey’s not going to drag her in.

“You… heard him?” Celine says slowly. It might be the first time Zoey’s ever really surprised her. (Definitely, actually, since it’s not her Celine.)

“I nearly walked to my death,” Zoey says. “Because I was ashamed—useless, and alone, and knowing that was me. Always.”

Celine shakes her head. “Don’t be foolish, Rumi and Mira adore—“

“I’d actually just told her to go to hell,” Mira says flatly, not looking at either of them.

///

The closest Celine gets to the speed limit is a solid three kilometers per hour under. Zoey keeps up a whispered running commentary about it the whole way down, until Rumi almost forgets how much pain she’d been in because she’s laughing too hard.

(Almost.)

“It’s weird how chill she is,” Mira mutters, as Celine leaves them in chairs to go get Rumi checked in.

She gives Rumi a sidelong look. One that indicates she knows the person it’s weirdest for is Rumi, and that this is an invitation to talk.

Mira is many things. Subtle? Not really one of them.

Rumi shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Usually she’d have chewed us out by now,” Zoey continues, because she is many things, including unable to stand a silence or read a social cue. “Like, do you think the difference is that in her universe she started growing pot?”

“Zoey,” Rumi chokes, horrified.

Mira laughs, a loud and sharp bark.

Nervously, Zoey picks at her fingernails.

"So... you get where we're coming from, right?" Zoey asks.

Celine nods slowly, uncertainly. And then, her face hardens with a grim sort of determination as she straightens her spine and brings her shoulders back.

"Yes," she says. "If a disagreement and childish insults were enough to cause a hunter to hear Gwi-ma, then clearly this other me did not do enough to prepare the three of you for what our duty requires of us."

"Wait, that's not --"

"And I deeply apologize on her behalf for her failure," Celine continues as if she hadn't heard Zoey.

And maybe she hadn't.

There was an intense, inward stare in Celine's eyes now -- her planning eyes, as Rumi called them. She picks up her pen again.

"Are the archives still on Jeju?" Celine asks.

"Hang on, you can't just take off to Jeju without explaining yourself," Mira says. She had turned to face Zoey and Celine.

//

The three of them shake their heads.

After a moment of Celine looking at them that makes them feel like children caught sneaking cookies after bedtime, Celine shakes her head with a small snort.

"You three are lucky you're not in a bigger clinic with more nosy aunties," Celine says. "We don't need rumors floating around before you three even have a chance to debut."

Rumi winces along with Mira and Zoey. She sees Zoey shrink into herself, her leg bouncing hard enough to make her jeans rustle.

"Sorry, Celine," Rumi says. "We won't do it again."

But her words don't make Celine look any happier. It actually makes her frown and tilt her head.

“No,” Mira agrees. No, this Celine is something far worse than that.

“I would think it was obvious why I want to access the archives, anyway,” she continues, turning to face Mira properly, and—

Mira knows that look on her face. Not from Celine, but she knows it. She knows she’s provoking it, too, a little intentionally, because some part of her thinks maybe Celine will notice what she’s doing and start walking back, and the rest of her just wants to know what the danger level is.

“Who said I meant the archives?” she asks coolly, and looks right past Celine to Zoey. “Has she explained herself to you?”

Zoey shakes her head a little. Just barely. Dick move on Mira’s part. She’d better reel it in.

“So. Who were you talking about, with the shame?” she asks.

Celines face twitches.

Mira decides to dig the knife a little deeper. “If you don’t think Zoey and I have enough to go around?”

///

Zoey and Mira both look at Rumi at the name, startled and wondering, and it’s all Rumi can do not to cringe at the reminder. That there’s a world where she’s been allowed—

“I’m sorry,” Celine says, closing her eyes. “I didn’t—with all this , I must’ve forgotten—“

“It’s fine,” Rumi says quietly, trying not to let it come out choked, and gets up.

Mira and Zoey come too, of course, because they’re not going to be allowed to wait unsupervised, and the nurse looks between the four of them and doesn’t say anything about it.

Zoey perches on the end of the exam bed with Rumi, even though she could’ve easily taken the doctor’s spinny stool and enjoyed it, and Rumi feels the quiet solidarity in her bones.

“So, what happened?” the nurse asks.

“Please tell the truth,” Celine adds.

Rumi cringes, a sick feeling rising in her stomach at the tacit acknowledgment that she’d been lying before and the amused tint to the nurse’s gaze as she looks between them.

A small, vicious part of Mira stirs inside of her chest. She rolls her shoulders back and stretches like a panther with a full belly laying down to rest. And if some part of her gut feels cold, she ignores it.

"I mean, there's not many of us hunters, are there?" Mira says. "You three and us three. Are you talking about Miyeong? Because she definitely made a whole mess --"

"Miyeong was the perfect hunter until her indiscretion," Celine snaps before she presses her lips together into a thin line.

She looks angry at herself before her face smoothed over into a pleasantly neutral, camera-ready, expression.

Mira tilts her head. I can guess again, it said. There's only two of you left. Do you want me to keep going?

"I was talking about myself, Jung Mira," Celine says so calmly, the revelation almost seemed purposeful.

Celine's use of her old name made Mira's skin crawl.

"I know the power shame can have in making a person upright and good because that is how my mentors were able to mold me."

//

"A wall?" The nurse says with a laugh chasing her voice. "It must have been quite a punch."

Rumi's face felt hot.

"It's an old house," she mutters. "I wasn't really thinking about it."

She ducks her head to avoid Celine's gaze and covers her knuckles with her uninjuried hand. It's just a little lie, she argues with the Celine in her head. You do it all the time.

The nurse nods. "And what led you to do that?"

Rumi wanted to disappear into the floor.

I thought maybe Celine could love me but I was just being stupid, Rumi imagines saying. No, not this Celine. This Celine has a better Rumi and of course she can love that one. That Rumi even has her name and I hate her for it.

Instead, she shrugs and says, "Just got upset, I guess. Lost my temper."

The nurse glances up at Celine before shifting her attention back to Rumi. Something crosses her face but she tucked it away behind a smile.

They’re Celine’s words. Years ago. Mira had made Zoey cry—she doesn’t remember what she said, but she remembers the look on Zoey’s face, gutted and blank—and when Celine came to get her, she hadn’t been able to stand the lack of violence.

“They all say it! The only way to get me to behave is the cane.”

“I needed it,” Celine says, the barest glimpse of something troubled washing over her features. Probably not questioning herself at all. Probably questioning them and how they were taught, if Mira knows Celine at all.

Zoey shakes her head, displeased, but not willing to speak up. She’s tapped out.

Which leaves Mira.

“I’m still sorry,” she says.

///

“Of course,” Celine says, rising smoothly to her feet, gesturing for Mira and Zoey to follow.

Rumi tries to contain the feeling in her chest at this Celine not correcting daughter to ward.

Zoey gives her a quick squeeze before getting up, just like usual, but Mira has a look on her face and Celine half-hesitates for a moment, as if considering saying something, before she decides against it, shaking her head and opening the door out to the hall.

Rumi doesn’t get it.

Especially not when the nurse’s first questions are the awkward ones about when her last period was, and if she’s (ugh) sexually active.

“You understand,” she then adds softly, sitting down and looking Rumi in the eyes, “that nothing you say in here will reach your mother’s ears?”

“Guardian’s,” Rumi corrects, well-trained. And then ducks her head, embarrassed, because that other Celine doesn’t seem to care, nor really. Kang Rumi.

“Your guardian’s, then,” the nurse agrees, gently. “That doesn’t mean no one will hear about it, especially if you’re being hurt—“

Celine had taught her how to do that too.

"There is nothing an interviewer likes more than a genuine reaction to an offensive question," Celine had said, when Mira had been young and angry and couldn't understand why Rumi and Celine refused to be angry back. "Rumi has been around those kinds of people for a long time, Mira. Just because she doesn't show it, doesn't mean you haven't upset her."

Watching Celine maintain her plastic smile made Mira's teeth hurt.

"I appreciate the sentiment, truly," Celine says. "Though, again, it's unnecessary. It was only through that suffering that I became the woman I am today. And I'm thankful for it."

That's not something to be proud of, Mira almost snaps before catching herself. She breathes deep. Reminds herself that all this was for a Rumi stuck with this Celine as a guardian. The only point in arguing with her was if it would help Rumi.

"Then why are you treating Rumi like you were treated?" Mira says. "You said it yourself, she's a good girl. And apparently she's not as bad a person as you were. So why treat her like you?"

//

" -- but if you are, there's things we can do to protect you, okay, sweetheart?" The nurse finishes.

She's standing a few feet away. Her clipboard clasped in both hands and held down near her waist. She smilies with soft eyes like the aunties down in the village market who slip Rumi candies when they think Celine isn't watching and Rumi has to look down at her sneakers to keep herself from talking.

She knows the nurse isn't asking about the things that her Celine actually does -- the way Celine looks at her and only saw her father, that monster that had destroyed her mother; the way nothing she ever did was ever good enough to make up for the demon she shared bloodlines with.

"I think she would be relieved if I disappeared," Rumi wants to say but she doesn't.

It is good, for the girl. To have knowledge of what she is. Of what she could be. It keeps her from falling into those traps.

Mira looks at her, the familiar face stripped of all its puppy fat and pretending at maturity. “Sure,” she agrees, “but what influences are you giving her to lean into?”

Celine’s instinct, stubborn as ever, is to refuse to listen, to push back until they retreat once more. She is tired of these children, acting as if she is an idiot and a monster for raising Rumi with a firm hand instead of simply leaving her to do what she would.

She knows how to fight it. She was taught self-control.

She was taught what she could be.

“What, exactly, are you proposing?” she asks. “To praise her for every little thing?”

///

“I just—I lied and said I fell, earlier. It was embarrassing.”

“Okay,” the nurse says gently, nonjudgmentally, still looking very soft and very concerned. Rumi knows she doesn’t believe her, not really.

She also knows that trying to convince her otherwise won’t work, so she bites back against the instinctive flailing of her tongue and waits.

“You know, I see some of just about everything here,” the nurse tells her. “If there are any other injuries you might’ve been embarrassed to talk about, I promise you, I’ve seen something sillier.”

She smiles.

“No. Just my wrist.” She doesn’t think so, anyway—she didn’t get the chance to do much more before Mira and Zoey were grabbing her and she didn’t fall hard, and by now anything else would definitely be sore. “No.”

“Alright,” the nurse says. “If there is anything you want to tell someone—“

“There isn’t,” Rumi says.

"Do or do not, there is no try," Zoey pipes up and both children turn their heads to muffle a snort.

Celine did not want to give these children the satisfaction of being right. Of course she demanded perfection, did they not understand the gravity of their work? They must not -- another failure of their Celine, she supposes.

"Compliments make for a spoiled child who expects everything to be handed to them," Celine says. "Rumi cannot afford to be that sort of child."

//

The nurse finishes typing up her notes on the computer as an older man with deep wrinkles around his eyes knocks on the door and steps into the exam room.

He -- Rumi thinks he introduced himself as Doctor Kim -- barely looks at her and speaks to her even less. Mostly, he reads the notes on the computer, hums to himself, and "orders labs" which mostly just looks like clicking on things on the monitor.

Then he leaves and Rumi is being shuffled out of the exam room where neither Celine nor Mira and Zoey were waiting. She wishes she could be surprised.

"Your guardian and friends are in the waiting room," the nurse says. "Do you want them with you for the xray?"

Zoey and Mira were probably getting snacks out of the vending machines. It was late enough for it and this Celine didn't seem the type to tell them to wait for a proper meal. Or begrudge them for buying one of everything.

She imagines Zoey and Mira taking over one of the low coffee tables, their snacks spread across it like a feast.

She doesn't want to bother them.

"Will it be quick?" She asks.

Except, you know, for the part where that someone else is a teenage Rumi.

“So praise her when she’s hardworking,” Zoey says, as optimistic and as good at compromise as ever.

It catches Celine off-guard, too, Mira can tell. There’s an off beat before she says, “Effort is not equivalent to results.”

“Screw ups are inevitable,” Mira points out. “You have to work on the skill to compensate for them and keep moving on instead of just freezing.”

It’s almost funny, how Celine has to look back and forth between the two of them to respond as they speak, awkwardly positioned as they are.

Less so when she snaps her head around and says, eyes hard, “Those ‘screw ups’ mean people dying.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Mira asks, disgusted at the condescension.

///

All that Rumi has to compare to is x-rays at the dentist, which take place right in the chair, not off in another room.

It’s not so different otherwise, she thinks. They’ll give her some lead to block the radiation from the rest of her and then go in the other room. It really won’t take long.

“Do you need help to roll your sleeve up?” the nurse asks.

Rumi chokes, and tries to hide it. “What?”

“Clothing can interfere with the image, so it would be best if you could roll it up to your elbow,” she says. “I know it might jostle your injury, so I can help if you’d like.”

Maybe it was for the best that Mira and Zoey were gone.

(Except. Well.)

(She’ll have to retrain that instinct.)

“No,” Rumi says, hating herself and her skin and the way that she can’t stop making the nurse give her those looks and the way that she still likes being the object of such care, and she reaches over to tug her sleeve up, grifting her teeth as she goes.

zoey is no longer allowed to buy groceries via any app , after the spinach incident. the first and last time she did, she bought 5kgs of spinach by accident, they had to eat spinach for like a week.

Geotjeori is fresh kimchi though so they'll have to eat it immediately after putting in all the kimchi preparation instead of fermenting it like Mugeunji [묵은지] — the aged kind of kimchi everyone is familiar with

BUT

(Or have some spinach heavy staff lunches)

zoey is no longer allowed to buy groceries via any app , after the spinach incident. the first and last time she did, she bought 5kgs of spinach by accident, they had to eat spinach for like a week.

Geotjeori is fresh kimchi though so they'll have to eat it immediately after putting in all the kimchi preparation instead of fermenting it like Mugeunji [묵은지] — the aged kind of kimchi everyone is familiar with

BUT

[past]

[past]

cut to some days later, zoey forgets to mute her phone and she receives some notifications, with one of the many samples rumi recorded, as a ringtone

mira: is that... rumi's voice?

zoey: *knowing damn well rumi hated that session so much* ...no?

rumi: zoeeeey... *gasps* wait! is that why you made me record it so many times?! for a ringtone?

zoey: ...no?

mira: *calling zoey's phone and a version of how it's done plays with rumi's million 'yuh' samples*

zoey: ...two ringtones? also mira, you fucking traitor

rumi: you better start running

mira: wait, before you kill her. zoey can u send me the file?