#ruminating

Chapters: 1/3 Fandom: KPop Demon Hunters (2025) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Mira/Rumi/Zoey (KPop Demon Hunters), Jinu/Rumi (KPop Demon Hunters), Mira & Rumi & Zoey (KPop Demon Hunters), Jinu & Rumi (KPop Demon Hunters) Characters: Rumi (KPop Demon Hunters), Zoey (KPop Demon Hunters), Mira (KPop Demon Hunters), Celine (KPop Demon Hunters) Additional Tags: 'wait why is Jinu listed in the relationships but not the characters', oh because he's still super dead sorry, also none of these are consummated rumi just Yearns, Grief/Mourning, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Discovery, Rumi Needs Therapy (KPop Demon Hunters), Bisexual Rumi (KPop Demon Hunters), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Emotional Baggage, Friendship, Trauma, Soulmates, Personal Growth, Character Study, uhhhh what else, woo jinu, Selective Mutism, fear of possession and fixation on a stable identity?, you know just rumi things, Rumi's Patterns Glow (KPop Demon Hunters) Summary:

Zoey and Mira have always been Rumi’s cosmic complements: the higher and lower harmonies that form a perfect triad with her every time they’re in sync. The warmest chord she’s ever heard—intended, euphonious, side by side by side. Inyeon.

Jinu wasn’t like that. He… he was her, just mirrored back. Her dark reflection, an octave down. The first person she’d ever met in her life who’d rhymed. [or: after Namsan Tower, Rumi must contend with who she is, who she wants to be, how she communicates, what the girls mean to her, and what Jinu means to her, too... especially considering how she might have eaten his soul, and all.]

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Rumi has always been able to find peace when she’s gardening.

It’s an old habit, and an even older memory—kneeling side by side with Celine in the dirt, weeding and pruning as they’d tended graves together. She’d liked the balance of it: the symmetry of honoring the dead by encouraging the living; how the discipline and diligence of routine could result in something so vibrantly untamed. Celine’s calm instructions delivered amidst an otherwise comfortable silence had been utterly practical, about sunlight and water and soil, but the larger lessons Rumi had taken away from those long afternoons stay with her still. How to shoulder the weight of responsibility, and the importance of following the rules. How to take pride in her successes, and see the through-lines between her own efforts and the growth that may follow… however long it sometimes takes.

It’s a relief, to be able to put this in the column of things that still work for her. That feel like her. Rumi’s learning to love her new life post-exposure, she is, but loving the parts of her everyone’s actually seeing? That’s… harder. Especially when she still—when she doesn’t—when there’s not even enough there for her to have conviction about it, yet. Half the time, she feels like a total fraud. As if she’s making herself up as she goes along, just so she’ll have an answer when she’s asked to state a preference or establish a boundary.

It’s like… she’s hidden so much of herself for so many years that even she can’t be sure where she ends and the lies begin. She might be the the last person to know which parts of her are really Rumi and which parts are Celine; which parts are her mother and which parts are Celine’s vision of her mother; which parts are Zoey and which parts are Mira. Not to mention the parts of her the label invented so the fans would like her; the parts of her she invented so the girls would like her—

“Ow!” she exclaims as a sharp, sudden pain pierces the lobe of her ear. “Did you just bite me?!”

Three pairs of glowing eyes stare coolly back at her, unfazed