Something something Zoey having a kpop stan shrine to the Sunlight Sisters and to Celine specifically, and having custom photocards and a custom saint prayer candle with Celine's face edited onto the saint like THIS
reason Zoey never let Celine into her room during her trainee pre-debut days: she cannot live down her teen idol seeing a candle of herself and a veritable shrine to her own glory days staring back
I feel like the most important implication of this is that Zoey either brought all her Celine tributes with her when she started training, or she carried on acquiring them while she was living there, and then - instead of putting them away to stop people from seeing them - decided that the shrine was important enough Zoey had to keep it all on display, and the solution was just to stop Celine from seeing it rather than get rid of anything.
The second most important implication is that Zoey's banning Celine from her room but is theoretically fine with both Mira and Rumi seeing the Celine shrine, and then all three of them having to sit across Celine during demon training activities with the Knowledge that discovering how Celine has literally been humanity's last line of defence against soul-eating demons for years will only make Zoey's hero-worship thing a million times more intense.
Prev's excellent tags
#zoey kpdh#celine kpdh#just saying if someone's the only person stopping demons from killing me and everyone i loved#then maybe i'd start getting some custom prayer candles of them too#rumi will never recover from the psychic damage incurred when mira concedes this point#“it's strengthening the honmoon!! the celine prayer candle is helping save us all from demons rumi!!”#“this might be the only thing that saves us!! you don't want us all being killed by demons do you???”
Rumi staunchly refuses to believe in the power of the Celine Prayer Candle; it's nothing more than a pillar of wax Zoey pasted Celine's face on. And anyway, she's never actually seen one but she's pretty sure prayer candles aren't supposed to smell like sugar cookies.
("It's part of the offering! Celine loves sugar cookies!" And Rumi can't argue because she does, how does Zoey know that)
And candles don't strengthen the Honmoon or it's Hunters! She's been connected to the Honmoon for almost as long as she can remember and has never once seen it react to a candle!
Zoey's a fanatic, though, and continues to religiously light the damn candle as "tribute." Rumi just accepts it as something she'll have to live with and looks forward to the day the candle burns down.
Until that night.
Celine got called away from the hanok by a pulse of pink, and three hours later she still hadn't called or come home. Rumi, naturally, starts to worry.
Four hours; no sign.
Five; she's run out of nails to bite.
The clock hand is creeping towards two in the morning, six hours since she left.
And with ten minutes to two, Rumi caves.
Furtively checking that Mira's asleep, she creeps into Zoey's empty room (she’s not home, family visit or something), finds the candle, and lights it.
She doesn't do anything weird; she certainly isn't going to pray to it. But...she does think about Celine as the watches the flame waver and dance to its own soundless music. About how she was scared for her, about how she wished she was skilled enough to come with her, about how much she...loves her.
Half an hour later she hears the door open, and flies into Celine's embrace.
“It was a bad one,” Celine says heavily over a cup of tea as Rumi helps patch her up. “I…they came close.”
Rumi shivers at what lurks beneath her words. But harrowing as that is, it’s what she says next that causes her hands to shake.
“Then…I’m not sure what happened, but the Honmoon seemed…stronger, all of a sudden. And I was able to keep going.”
“When did this happen?” Rumi asks, breathless.
“Hmm…about half an hour before I got back.”
Rumi becomes a very devout believer in candles after that.
I love how the fic really does write itself at this point <3
lovely addition tysm
Speaking of fics that write themselves
Have the actual fic form of this idea! Gifting this on ao3 to @frozenwolftemplar for enabling this idea with the above additions!
Fic - Light a Candle
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Oh my word…🥹🥹🥹 So honored that my little ramble inspired you! (and wow were you fast!)
I was Locked In playing Light a Candle by Jamie Foxx on repeat until I finished the fic last night, creative flow state of I can't go to bed until I finish this dammit
Probably not the healthiest way to write but it worked out in the end ahaha. Glad you like!
