#rtwfic

Rumi has been standing in front of the wooden gate for approximately ten minutes now, listening to Mira and Zoey bicker inside her house. This is so stupid. She could just take the leaves from the oregano plant from within her reach. It's right there.

But Mira insisted that they had oregano inside and told Rumi to wait here. So she waits.

"Zoey, how did you rearrange the spice cabinet?!"

"By vibes!"

"What does that even mean?!"

Rumi hid her cough with her fist. She just needed one oregano leaf, not whatever these idiots were trying to give her.

~*~* In which Rumi doesn't know why her mothers keep asking her to get leaves from the new neighbors, but she does so anyway because she's a good daughter. Zoey and Mira fumble their chance with Rumi (or do they?) because they don't know their plants.

“This isn’t just an apology! It’s the apology. We have to go all out.” Zoey flailed her arms around to emphasize her point. “Wanna join? You could hold the boombox up while I sing, or I could hold the boombox up while you sing. It’s best if we hold the boombox up together but our height difference makes that impossible.”

Zoey took a deep breath and whispered to herself, mortified, “I think I said boombox too much, it doesn’t feel like a real word anymore.”

“…boombox,” Mira whispered, if only to stoke the flames.

“Stooop!” Zoey covered her ears.

Soon, it was like nothing changed at all. They acted as they always had, minus a few intimacies that was once shared—but they wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Soon, the three of them learned to love each other, as friends, as lovers, but more importantly as something far beyond what our mortal definition of love is.

And when Rumi got the surgery, the one that made him feel more at home in his body than he already was—Zoey and Mira were there to help him in his recovery.

And when all of his documents got legally changed to reflect who he truly was, Mira was the first to hug him. Was the first to whisper,

“I’m so proud of you.”

And there it is, not even a quarter of a second later, the world-renowned idol group HUNTR/X were all sobbing like newborns. Good thing the bathhouse was rented out lest they wanted to be on the headlines tomorrow.

Breaking news: Record-breaking girl group HUNTR/X are nothing but sobbing failures.

Not that crying and letting your emotions out make you a failure, but that is the industry that they work for. Even if they were failures though, they were each other’s, and in this moment? That was enough. More than enough.

They assumed it was the weight of betrayal. The gravity of a broken trust. The burden of something beyond their understanding. And when you don’t understand anything, you tend to chase everything away.

Rumi runs away. Each step tearing apart the Honmoon.

Mira did not run after her, deaf to her soul’s plea to hold.

Zoey did not reach out for her, deaf to her soul’s plea to listen.

Their shoulders fell, defeated. Their soul felt thrice as heavy. The broken pieces of their connection, their bond, scattered on the floor beneath them.

Just thinking about the media frenzy that would follow sends shivers down Zoey’s spine.

‘Zoey of HUNTR/X in custody for stabbing seven people’ was not a good look. The group was still recovering from the PR disaster that was the week of the International Idol Awards. Their reputation couldn’t take it.

The other dolls seem to agree.

“Or Alci. They will be better off as wine.”

Another chorus of agreement. 

“Or fish food.”

“Angie.”

She stopped. Right in front of the closet. That you were in.

Fuck.