bluefall

*if comfortable doing so, you may include your age range/generation in the tags for helpful demographic data

Currently: our crew is hiding out in Miyeong’s apartment while trying to track some wraiths and prepare for battle—Minji and Celine making lunch, Miyeong and Zoey doing a Heist TM of Zoey’s belongings, and Rumi and Mira stealing some of Mira’s mother’s books. Unfortunately, on the way out, they’ve been stopped by someone who seems to have business with Mira.

First is that she's glad she didn't try to talk Rumi out of bringing the sword, after all.

Second is that that's a stupid thing to think, because these aren't supernatural horrors in a dark alley, they're human assholes in the middle of the hall in the heart of the Kang chaebol empire, and she can't actually just sic Rumi on these guys, that's not how the world works.

Third is that, wait a minute. That's exactly how the world works, Park's goons literally have guns, is the entire point and purpose of this confrontation not the threat of physical violence if she doesn't comply?

Fourth is that Park's goons literally have guns, thanks so much for that, Kunwoo-sachon, you unbearable twit (and Abeoji had rolled his eyes, too, had said "what are we, some classless Yakuza outfit or silly posturing Americans?" but he'd still signed off on the KNPA bribe, hadn't he), and as much as Rumi is a badass, she probably has no idea what a gun even is and that's maybe not the best position to be trying to fight people with them from.

So Mira puts on her slickest, most dangerous voice, the one she and Jaeho used to practice with each other, snickering, hiding out from Abeoji's parties on roofs and in coatrooms and behind kitchens, and tries to talk the men's hands off their weapons.

"A moment, Rumi," calm, like she's totally in control here. "I'm sure Park-ssi meant no insult," and just a hint of contempt, for that, like she's doing him a kindness, letting him pretend he wouldn't be fool enough to act above his place. "He is a longtime employee of my family, and there's no reason for a simple conversation with such a reliable friend to escalate to anything unpleasant."

She can't quite tell if the intimidation hits, but Park does say, carefully, "... of course. I apologize for my... enthusiasm," apparently at least willing to see where she's going, now that she's not trying to leave.

"Mira," murmurs Rumi, letting go of Park but still very pointedly standing between her and the men. "We should not linger here."

She can hear it, the hope behind the words, the desire to fix this for Mira, to keep her safe, like her presence alone isn't the only reason Mira is still upright and not screaming. Mira reaches out, mostly invisible to the men behind Rumi's broad shoulders, and brushes her hand briefly against the small of Rumi's back, the most reassurance she can afford.

Her words, she keeps directing at Park. "We unfortunately have obligations of our own. However, I respect your concern for the company and its affairs. It's especially important, now, with so much of the family... unavailable to provide their opinions."

Park's eyes narrow, to Mira's immense satisfaction. Serves him right for trying to make threatening veiled insinuations to a Kang, like her family didn't basically invent the practice.

"With that in mind, I'm sure I can find time for you tomorrow, or the day after, if you wish to arrange a more formal meeting. But at the moment, I'm afraid I have other messes to clean up. So, if you will stand aside."

“I am so excited to take my meds,” she tells Miyeong, delighted as it washes over her again, pulling out the bottle just to shake it. “I’ve missed these babies so! Much!”

Miyeong snorts, bemused. “Glad to have been of service.”

She puts the bottle back away and brushes against TeeJay’s worn fabric as she goes. “Do you think there’s a non-traumatic way to get Mira some of her stuff back?”

Not that Mira doesn’t make the slightly oversized look of Celine’s clothes look hot, but the constant borrowing has to suck. She deserves something of her own.

Miyeong grimaces, and Zoey winces at the non sequitur. No one else is in her brain, right.

“That… She was there when that happened, wasn’t she?” she asks quietly.

Oh. Or that. Zoey forgot that Miyeong had been inside. “Yeah. We all were.”

“We could ask her to make a list, maybe,” Miyeong agrees. She forces an awkward little smile. “The smoothie stuff being out makes more sense now.”

“I didn’t put that away?” Zoey’s horrified for all of a second, thinking of the smell, before the rest of the situation slams in again and she remembers that slightly off milk was the least of Miyeong’s problems.

It makes her laugh, at least. “You meant to?”

They zigzag a bit more on the way back than they did on the way there—it gets late enough that Zoey half-considers suggesting they stop and grab some food before catching the next bus, but she’s also still very broke, and probably going to be fielding a call from her mom about the new card showing up in the mail.

(It’ll be just slightly less painful than the last conversation between them, where her mom nearly cried and then Zoey nearly cried and then her mom really cried and also yelled at her for being so stupid.)

She also sees the way that Park's nostrils flare, the way that fury rises in the twitch of his eyes, a petty, jealous wrath as base as any demon, and she realizes, with a jolt, that she did not need to remind this man that he is small and fragile. This is a man who is so aware of his weakness that it consumes his every thought, drives his every action, a rat nibbling the flesh of a bound man in fear and hatred of the free man's boot, and she knows before he speaks what he will say—

"I'm afraid our business cannot wait, Mira-ssi," and he folds his own hands behind his back, the type of man who would not deign to dirty them, and begins to step out of the way of his dogs, "Yang-ssi, Jeon-ssi, if you would please restrain our guests—"

Rumi is already moving.

The taller man is the greater threat, his reach the only advantage these two have on her, and she slams him into the wall with a forearm across his chest before he has even shifted from his obedient posture; his head rocks back a half-breath behind the rest of him and claps sharp against the plaster, eyes unfocusing. Rumi hooks her foot behind his ankle and pulls left, shoves right, and the dog recovers the presence of mind to grapple at her as he goes down, prying at her wrist and tearing her collar in his grip (these modern clothes bear weight no better than sweat).

These are only men, and there is no need to be cruel. Rumi twists easily from his hold, tosses him to the ground, and kicks sideways at his knee, a satisfying snap ringing out and assuring he is incapable of pursuit. It has been long enough seconds that the other dog will have gathered himself, and Rumi turns toward him—

Agony rips through her ribs in a flash of light and a crack of thunderous sound, and she staggers back, and—

Blood.

Blood, loud in her ears, iron in her mouth, on her tongue, when she coughs. Distantly, she hears someone shout her name, and for just an instant, she remembers the molten brand of fingers on her spine, molten like the raging fire under Rumi's hand, beneath her breast, where the skin gapes, ragged edges, around nothing; molten like the coals that seem pressed into Rumi's wet back, torn open, flesh screaming, where she cannot see.

She looks down at her own crimson hand, and thinks, dumbly, I have no time for this, and then, her vision flickering briefly, her mind not quite able to grab the meaning of the word but sure of its desperate import,

She stumbles forward, towards the blood, not certain of what she’s about to do but needing—“Rumi. Rumi. Oh God, Rumi.”

And Rumi tilts her head. She forces her body to straighten, eyes locking on Park. Voice tight with pain and low with threat, she says, “That was rude.”

A breath hiccups out of Mira and she thinks, wildly, of the wire cutters stuck in the bag full of her mother’s books, splattered all over the floor and soaking up blood.

Rumi moves.

It’s one breath, two breaths, three. Then they’re just shells, empty on the ground. Mira falls to her knees and scrambles for the bag.

“Mira!” Rumi calls, impossible Rumi, should be bleeding out Rumi, as Mira heaves, clutching at the wire cutters like a fucking safety blanket. “Mira, are you—“

Mira’s no medical professional, but she knows—pressure. Pressure first. She tips the rest of the books out and turns to press the bag into Rumi’s wound.

The breath punches out of her, a loud thunk of pain, but Mira would rather she not die so she pulls her free hand around to Rumi’s back and searches up the blood-sticky skin in search of—

“Please,” Rumi says, gently taking her hands. “Let me.”

“You’re—calm,” Mira manages, falling back to the floor, “for someone who’s gonna need to talk to that healing spirit.”

Rumi shakes her head. “I heal more quickly the worse the wound. This should be mended within the hour.”

Which… makes sense of why her father had been trying to summon “The Unkillable”. “Any other magic tricks up your sleeve?”

Rumi shakes her head with a little smile, as if she isn’t splattered with blood and pale with blood loss. “I can sing?”

Mira turns to fight the urge to retch some more.

“Mira!” Rumi yelps, so panicked, so kind.

Mira breathes. “We—there’s bodies. We—someone’s going to call the police. You’re on camera.”

"Are you injured, Mira?" She would not be the first not to notice, and she does not heal so well as Rumi. "I do not know the nature of the weapon that struck me, but—"

"No," Mira cuts her off, that same firm yangban control now fully returned to her voice, a strange contrast to her still-trembling hands. "I'm fine, we can talk about guns in a minute. I need—" She twists the bag in her hands, opens a side pocket to find her phone. Blood streaks the mirrored surface, and she wipes it on her sleeve. "— Eunjeong, probably. I don't know why I didn't think about this until now. They're all fucking dead, I'm not disowned, I'm not a target, I'm the goddamn heir unless Minsu wants to fight about it—"

Her hands steady as she presses the machine, and by the time she pulls herself to her feet, she's standing tall, her breath evening out.

Rumi busies herself by tucking the wire cutters into her own pocket, and collecting the books. The blood slides off them like water from oil, save for the dark red tome, which drinks it in, soaking Rumi's life into itself to the last drop.

"… fixer, why do you think I called you?" Mira is asking her phone, icy with contempt. A pause, and then, "Park Seonggi developed aspirations above his station. In my mother's absence, I was forced to correct him myself. … Yes, and two company men. Confused in their loyalties, but they have answered adequately for that, please speak to Mun-ssi about the usual package for their families. …. The downtown tower, yes, thirty-ninth floor, just outside the office elevator."

The longer Mira speaks, the more her posture changes, the more her lip curls into something cruel and ugly.

"No, of course there isn't, and you should consider me generous to take that as due diligence and not a questioning of my competence. Not that some plebeian clean-up crew would have the wit to use them if I did leave anything behind. … No. No more questions. You have your instructions. Do your job, Eunjeong."

She removes the phone from her ear, and shudders, the hollow cruelty sloughing off her like the blood from those cursed books, and looks down at the bodies, for a long moment.

Rumi does not know what to do, what to say, where to stand or put her hands. She shuffles the bloody bag on her shoulder. "…. Mira?"

Mira breathes out, sharp, and looks up.

She does not look at Rumi.

"It's fine, I'm fine," she says, eyes on the elevator. "I need to make more calls but we need to get moving, there's a bathroom down the hall, we can't walk out of here like this. I…" She plucks at the hem of her ruined shirt. "I don't know about our clothes. I'll think of something. Maybe Abeoji left some coats in his office we can take."

Mira puts the phone back to her ear, turns down the hall, and her posture shifts, again. "Security? Yes, this is Kang Mira. Yes, I'm sure you are. The office elevator is barred to entry until further notice, and I'll need to speak to your camera technician. Lee Eunjeong will be arriving soon, admit her— yes— I did not ask," as though the man on the other end of the conversation, perhaps the poor soul who had been so alarmed by Rumi's sword, is no more than a worm beneath Mira's shoe.

She wants to tell Mira how to get the blood out. How to scrub under her nails. How just because she does not feel clean does not mean she is not, how she could scrub until her skin was red and raw and not feel clean, how Rumi has not felt clean in—

Well.

She does not.

Mira probably knows, anyway, given the things she has said of what she has been forced to do.

Rumi waits while Mira goes out again, stripping off her own torn and bloody shirt and the now-useless bandages from her earlier wounds and using some of the paper… napkins? Towels? at the side of the sink to clean the blood from her torso. And her arms. And her face.

Mira returns with a coat in her hands—scratchy on the outside, but silk-lined. The sleeves hang awkwardly over Rumi’s hands, too stiff to drape properly.

“Let me help you,” she says, shrugging it back off, the moment she sees Mira start trying to clean herself.

Mira does not say no.

So Rumi keeps going.

Eventually: “A gun is—it pushes a bullet—a pellet made of lead—out with a tiny explosion. Like archery but worse. That was what they shot you with.”

“Like a cannon?” Rumi asks, wiping the blood from Mira’s face, careful with her jaw. The makeup comes with it nonetheless.

“Yeah,” Mira says. Her eyes close, and Rumi freezes, scared to have hurt her, but then— “Fuck. I hate this. I have to—I have to call—I—“

Which is to say, Minji leads Mira to a kitchen chair and starts methodically checking her for shock, a sensible reaction to her pale skin and thousand-yard stare. At the same time, Miyeong is collecting the bag and shoes into a tub and then disappearing into the spare room, and Celine starts water and sets out mugs, all three of them immediately doing obviously useful things in a calm and efficient way.

Zoey, for her part, does at least manage obviously useful, and sits Rumi down in her own kitchen chair to make sure that none of the poorly-hidden blood all over the two of them is hers. But there's nothing calm or efficient about the noise she makes when she sees Rumi's torso.

"It is— I am well, Zoey," Rumi tries to reassure her. "The healing is almost complete."

"You said within the hour," says Mira, from the other side of the kitchen. She doesn't sound like she's in shock, but she does sound scolding and scared, which isn't much better. "It's been almost two. You got shot from half a meter away and there was a giant terrifying hole through your chest. Let Zoey look."

Zoey makes another extremely unhelpful noise of distress.

"It was a terrible moment," Rumi says, taking Zoey's hands between hers, warm and healthy and alive. "But the moment is over, and it does not negate our success. We took no lasting harm, and we returned with what we went there for."

"Yes," says Celine, sounding pretty displeased about it, "I can see that you did. Zoey, if Rumi-nim genuinely doesn't need your medical skills, I would appreciate you placing that barrier pattern you were practicing yesterday on that tub, while I construct something more permanent."

Zoey takes another long look at the mushroom bloom of violent purple-green bruising covering the entire distal half of Rumi's left side, and the shiny knotted ground-beef entry wound somehow closing itself in the middle. It actually does look incredibly close to healed, if still probably quite painful and definitely quite gruesome.

Rumi pulls the coat back around herself to conceal it, a little sheepishly. "Truly, Zoey. I am touched by your concern, but there is no need for it. If the honored shaman feels it is important to contain the books, that should be our priority."

Minji, having finished her appraisal of Mira and given her ice for her jaw, walks over and tells Rumi, "We can multitask."

Zoey gladly hands Rumi over to someone less likely to let warm hands keep her from telling her patient to be less of an idiot, and takes a sharpie over to the tub, skin prickling at proximity to what is apparently a bag full of evil books (!), to start drawing hanja.

Miyeong and Celine come back into the room a moment later, Miyeong with less bloody, better fitting shirts and pants in hand, and Celine with her box of inks and a small wooden storage chest which Zoey really hopes wasn't holding anything Miyeong considers important.

Her voice falters, uselessly, as she looks down at Celine’s pants. They’re disgusting. Literally stiff with blood and sticking to her skin at the same time.

“Don’t be,” Celine says, her voice strangely gentle.

Mira wants to say, I was kneeling in the blood because I was trying to keep Rumi from bleeding out. She wants to say, I don’t even know the names of two of the people we just killed. She wants to say, When I said I’d do anything not to be alone with him again, I didn’t mean it.

She doesn’t.

She goes into the bathroom. She thinks about Rumi’s biohazard jeans, piled in Celine’s sink.

She picks up the old shopping bag and wonders who else remembered them.

And carefully, she shucks off her father’s jacket, then the pants, then her underthings—at least her fucking bra isn’t ruined, fuck—piling the more stained garments inside the less, and shoving it all into the bag.

There’s blood in her hair, too, not just on her skin.

It doesn’t feel like hers right then. Doesn’t feel like anything. None of her body feels all that real.

She pulls on the long, fuzzy sweater. It doesn’t seem like something Celine would own, much less pack. She wonders if it’s Miyeong’s, oversized and for bad days.

She wonders if she’ll ruin it too.

She goes back out.

“Shower’s yours,” Mira says.

Miyeong stops her story. Rumi, sitting, bloody, in that same kitchen chair, rises with a quiet “Thank you.”

Celine comes from somewhere to take Mira by the arm, leading her to the couch.

Then it’s Miyeong appearing, her hand over Mira’s so she instinctively opens it and—

Cold.

She blinks down at the ice cube melting in her palm. “What the—“

“You seemed a little out of it,” Miyeong says with a shrug, like that’s a normal response to have to that situation.

Well. Everyone else eats.

Miyeong tries. She really does. She stabs her chopsticks in and out of the bibimbap half a dozen times, arguing back and forth with the queasy knot in her stomach. But there's never been any question of who would win, in the end.

She hides her abstinence under her well-curated array of stupid stories, competing with Zoey to provide the most distraction and coax the most eyerolls and grudging smiles out of Rumi and Mira. Zoey takes the crown handily, of course, but Miyeong thinks she does quite well considering her "not involved in that goofy hormonal mess" handicap.

She collects the dishes before anyone else can, deals with her all-but-full bowl before anyone can see. The dishwasher is loaded and she's scraping down pans when she hears the television flicker on behind her, more of the drama they've gotten Rumi addicted to about a mob-owned soju distillery and three generations of messy romance. She leans back around the corner to see Mira in the center of the couch, Zoey and Rumi draped against her, and Celine and Minji slipping into the cramped corner over the sink to help her finish dishes.

"If you're going to contact that healing spirit," says Minji, pitched low enough to travel no further than the three of them, "sooner is better than later. Mira's wiring is mangled, it's not properly supporting her jaw anymore."

Celine nods. "I'll take her down to the river tomorrow. And get the whole story out of Rumi-nim tonight, if I can."

Minji nods back, and then she and Celine exchange a significant look. Miyeong can't quite read it, but it Minji must be satisfied with whatever she saw, because she brushes a hand absently along Celine's shoulderblade and says, "I'm going to go read for a while, then. Don't do anything stupid to your stitches."

"I won't," promises Celine, an easy assent, and Minji wanders off to the bedroom, where it's entirely possible that they won't see her again until it's time for another long night of torturing Miyeong with her warm, grabby proximity.

After a moment, as they're beginning to wipe down the counters, three-handed, Celine says, softly, "You didn't eat."

Miyeong glances back at the couch, the pile of traumatized young women increasingly merging into each other just out of earshot. "… no, I didn't."

"Still worried about them?"

It had been Celine, a few hours ago, who found her spiraling in front of the dresser in the spare room; who Miyeong had curled up against, disassembled enough to not feel guilty about imposing on her personal space; Celine whose sternum had received Miyeong's mumbled, aching, "God, they're just kids." It had been Celine who wrapped her good arm around Miyeong's shoulders and held her, tall and kind and steady, until she pulled herself together and went back out into the kitchen to be useful again.

“Thad had forgotten that in tracking down Bart, he would eventually meet the inescapable, inevitable hurdle of having to deal with Bart’s friends.”

writing this fic is the only thing getting me thru it, enjoy a small comic preview while i try to finish

also bonus:

Currently: our crew is hiding out in Miyeong’s apartment while trying to track some wraiths and prepare for battle—Minji and Celine making lunch, Miyeong and Zoey doing a Heist TM of Zoey’s belongings, and Rumi and Mira stealing some of Mira’s mother’s books. Unfortunately, on the way out, they’ve been stopped by someone who seems to have business with Mira.

First is that she's glad she didn't try to talk Rumi out of bringing the sword, after all.

Second is that that's a stupid thing to think, because these aren't supernatural horrors in a dark alley, they're human assholes in the middle of the hall in the heart of the Kang chaebol empire, and she can't actually just sic Rumi on these guys, that's not how the world works.

Third is that, wait a minute. That's exactly how the world works, Park's goons literally have guns, is the entire point and purpose of this confrontation not the threat of physical violence if she doesn't comply?

Fourth is that Park's goons literally have guns, thanks so much for that, Kunwoo-sachon, you unbearable twit (and Abeoji had rolled his eyes, too, had said "what are we, some classless Yakuza outfit or silly posturing Americans?" but he'd still signed off on the KNPA bribe, hadn't he), and as much as Rumi is a badass, she probably has no idea what a gun even is and that's maybe not the best position to be trying to fight people with them from.

So Mira puts on her slickest, most dangerous voice, the one she and Jaeho used to practice with each other, snickering, hiding out from Abeoji's parties on roofs and in coatrooms and behind kitchens, and tries to talk the men's hands off their weapons.

"A moment, Rumi," calm, like she's totally in control here. "I'm sure Park-ssi meant no insult," and just a hint of contempt, for that, like she's doing him a kindness, letting him pretend he wouldn't be fool enough to act above his place. "He is a longtime employee of my family, and there's no reason for a simple conversation with such a reliable friend to escalate to anything unpleasant."

She can't quite tell if the intimidation hits, but Park does say, carefully, "... of course. I apologize for my... enthusiasm," apparently at least willing to see where she's going, now that she's not trying to leave.

"Mira," murmurs Rumi, letting go of Park but still very pointedly standing between her and the men. "We should not linger here."

She can hear it, the hope behind the words, the desire to fix this for Mira, to keep her safe, like her presence alone isn't the only reason Mira is still upright and not screaming. Mira reaches out, mostly invisible to the men behind Rumi's broad shoulders, and brushes her hand briefly against the small of Rumi's back, the most reassurance she can afford.

Her words, she keeps directing at Park. "We unfortunately have obligations of our own. However, I respect your concern for the company and its affairs. It's especially important, now, with so much of the family... unavailable to provide their opinions."

Park's eyes narrow, to Mira's immense satisfaction. Serves him right for trying to make threatening veiled insinuations to a Kang, like her family didn't basically invent the practice.

"With that in mind, I'm sure I can find time for you tomorrow, or the day after, if you wish to arrange a more formal meeting. But at the moment, I'm afraid I have other messes to clean up. So, if you will stand aside."

“I am so excited to take my meds,” she tells Miyeong, delighted as it washes over her again, pulling out the bottle just to shake it. “I’ve missed these babies so! Much!”

Miyeong snorts, bemused. “Glad to have been of service.”

She puts the bottle back away and brushes against TeeJay’s worn fabric as she goes. “Do you think there’s a non-traumatic way to get Mira some of her stuff back?”

Not that Mira doesn’t make the slightly oversized look of Celine’s clothes look hot, but the constant borrowing has to suck. She deserves something of her own.

Miyeong grimaces, and Zoey winces at the non sequitur. No one else is in her brain, right.

“That… She was there when that happened, wasn’t she?” she asks quietly.

Oh. Or that. Zoey forgot that Miyeong had been inside. “Yeah. We all were.”

“We could ask her to make a list, maybe,” Miyeong agrees. She forces an awkward little smile. “The smoothie stuff being out makes more sense now.”

“I didn’t put that away?” Zoey’s horrified for all of a second, thinking of the smell, before the rest of the situation slams in again and she remembers that slightly off milk was the least of Miyeong’s problems.

It makes her laugh, at least. “You meant to?”

They zigzag a bit more on the way back than they did on the way there—it gets late enough that Zoey half-considers suggesting they stop and grab some food before catching the next bus, but she’s also still very broke, and probably going to be fielding a call from her mom about the new card showing up in the mail.

(It’ll be just slightly less painful than the last conversation between them, where her mom nearly cried and then Zoey nearly cried and then her mom really cried and also yelled at her for being so stupid.)

She also sees the way that Park's nostrils flare, the way that fury rises in the twitch of his eyes, a petty, jealous wrath as base as any demon, and she realizes, with a jolt, that she did not need to remind this man that he is small and fragile. This is a man who is so aware of his weakness that it consumes his every thought, drives his every action, a rat nibbling the flesh of a bound man in fear and hatred of the free man's boot, and she knows before he speaks what he will say—

"I'm afraid our business cannot wait, Mira-ssi," and he folds his own hands behind his back, the type of man who would not deign to dirty them, and begins to step out of the way of his dogs, "Yang-ssi, Jeon-ssi, if you would please restrain our guests—"

Rumi is already moving.

The taller man is the greater threat, his reach the only advantage these two have on her, and she slams him into the wall with a forearm across his chest before he has even shifted from his obedient posture; his head rocks back a half-breath behind the rest of him and claps sharp against the plaster, eyes unfocusing. Rumi hooks her foot behind his ankle and pulls left, shoves right, and the dog recovers the presence of mind to grapple at her as he goes down, prying at her wrist and tearing her collar in his grip (these modern clothes bear weight no better than sweat).

These are only men, and there is no need to be cruel. Rumi twists easily from his hold, tosses him to the ground, and kicks sideways at his knee, a satisfying snap ringing out and assuring he is incapable of pursuit. It has been long enough seconds that the other dog will have gathered himself, and Rumi turns toward him—

Agony rips through her ribs in a flash of light and a crack of thunderous sound, and she staggers back, and—

Blood.

Blood, loud in her ears, iron in her mouth, on her tongue, when she coughs. Distantly, she hears someone shout her name, and for just an instant, she remembers the molten brand of fingers on her spine, molten like the raging fire under Rumi's hand, beneath her breast, where the skin gapes, ragged edges, around nothing; molten like the coals that seem pressed into Rumi's wet back, torn open, flesh screaming, where she cannot see.

She looks down at her own crimson hand, and thinks, dumbly, I have no time for this, and then, her vision flickering briefly, her mind not quite able to grab the meaning of the word but sure of its desperate import,

She stumbles forward, towards the blood, not certain of what she’s about to do but needing—“Rumi. Rumi. Oh God, Rumi.”

And Rumi tilts her head. She forces her body to straighten, eyes locking on Park. Voice tight with pain and low with threat, she says, “That was rude.”

A breath hiccups out of Mira and she thinks, wildly, of the wire cutters stuck in the bag full of her mother’s books, splattered all over the floor and soaking up blood.

Rumi moves.

It’s one breath, two breaths, three. Then they’re just shells, empty on the ground. Mira falls to her knees and scrambles for the bag.

“Mira!” Rumi calls, impossible Rumi, should be bleeding out Rumi, as Mira heaves, clutching at the wire cutters like a fucking safety blanket. “Mira, are you—“

Mira’s no medical professional, but she knows—pressure. Pressure first. She tips the rest of the books out and turns to press the bag into Rumi’s wound.

The breath punches out of her, a loud thunk of pain, but Mira would rather she not die so she pulls her free hand around to Rumi’s back and searches up the blood-sticky skin in search of—

“Please,” Rumi says, gently taking her hands. “Let me.”

“You’re—calm,” Mira manages, falling back to the floor, “for someone who’s gonna need to talk to that healing spirit.”

Rumi shakes her head. “I heal more quickly the worse the wound. This should be mended within the hour.”

Which… makes sense of why her father had been trying to summon “The Unkillable”. “Any other magic tricks up your sleeve?”

Rumi shakes her head with a little smile, as if she isn’t splattered with blood and pale with blood loss. “I can sing?”

Mira turns to fight the urge to retch some more.

“Mira!” Rumi yelps, so panicked, so kind.

Mira breathes. “We—there’s bodies. We—someone’s going to call the police. You’re on camera.”

"Are you injured, Mira?" She would not be the first not to notice, and she does not heal so well as Rumi. "I do not know the nature of the weapon that struck me, but—"

"No," Mira cuts her off, that same firm yangban control now fully returned to her voice, a strange contrast to her still-trembling hands. "I'm fine, we can talk about guns in a minute. I need—" She twists the bag in her hands, opens a side pocket to find her phone. Blood streaks the mirrored surface, and she wipes it on her sleeve. "— Eunjeong, probably. I don't know why I didn't think about this until now. They're all fucking dead, I'm not disowned, I'm not a target, I'm the goddamn heir unless Minsu wants to fight about it—"

Her hands steady as she presses the machine, and by the time she pulls herself to her feet, she's standing tall, her breath evening out.

Rumi busies herself by tucking the wire cutters into her own pocket, and collecting the books. The blood slides off them like water from oil, save for the dark red tome, which drinks it in, soaking Rumi's life into itself to the last drop.

"… fixer, why do you think I called you?" Mira is asking her phone, icy with contempt. A pause, and then, "Park Seonggi developed aspirations above his station. In my mother's absence, I was forced to correct him myself. … Yes, and two company men. Confused in their loyalties, but they have answered adequately for that, please speak to Mun-ssi about the usual package for their families. …. The downtown tower, yes, thirty-ninth floor, just outside the office elevator."

The longer Mira speaks, the more her posture changes, the more her lip curls into something cruel and ugly.

"No, of course there isn't, and you should consider me generous to take that as due diligence and not a questioning of my competence. Not that some plebeian clean-up crew would have the wit to use them if I did leave anything behind. … No. No more questions. You have your instructions. Do your job, Eunjeong."

She removes the phone from her ear, and shudders, the hollow cruelty sloughing off her like the blood from those cursed books, and looks down at the bodies, for a long moment.

Rumi does not know what to do, what to say, where to stand or put her hands. She shuffles the bloody bag on her shoulder. "…. Mira?"

Mira breathes out, sharp, and looks up.

She does not look at Rumi.

"It's fine, I'm fine," she says, eyes on the elevator. "I need to make more calls but we need to get moving, there's a bathroom down the hall, we can't walk out of here like this. I…" She plucks at the hem of her ruined shirt. "I don't know about our clothes. I'll think of something. Maybe Abeoji left some coats in his office we can take."

Mira puts the phone back to her ear, turns down the hall, and her posture shifts, again. "Security? Yes, this is Kang Mira. Yes, I'm sure you are. The office elevator is barred to entry until further notice, and I'll need to speak to your camera technician. Lee Eunjeong will be arriving soon, admit her— yes— I did not ask," as though the man on the other end of the conversation, perhaps the poor soul who had been so alarmed by Rumi's sword, is no more than a worm beneath Mira's shoe.

She wants to tell Mira how to get the blood out. How to scrub under her nails. How just because she does not feel clean does not mean she is not, how she could scrub until her skin was red and raw and not feel clean, how Rumi has not felt clean in—

Well.

She does not.

Mira probably knows, anyway, given the things she has said of what she has been forced to do.

Rumi waits while Mira goes out again, stripping off her own torn and bloody shirt and the now-useless bandages from her earlier wounds and using some of the paper… napkins? Towels? at the side of the sink to clean the blood from her torso. And her arms. And her face.

Mira returns with a coat in her hands—scratchy on the outside, but silk-lined. The sleeves hang awkwardly over Rumi’s hands, too stiff to drape properly.

“Let me help you,” she says, shrugging it back off, the moment she sees Mira start trying to clean herself.

Mira does not say no.

So Rumi keeps going.

Eventually: “A gun is—it pushes a bullet—a pellet made of lead—out with a tiny explosion. Like archery but worse. That was what they shot you with.”

“Like a cannon?” Rumi asks, wiping the blood from Mira’s face, careful with her jaw. The makeup comes with it nonetheless.

“Yeah,” Mira says. Her eyes close, and Rumi freezes, scared to have hurt her, but then— “Fuck. I hate this. I have to—I have to call—I—“

Which is to say, Minji leads Mira to a kitchen chair and starts methodically checking her for shock, a sensible reaction to her pale skin and thousand-yard stare. At the same time, Miyeong is collecting the bag and shoes into a tub and then disappearing into the spare room, and Celine starts water and sets out mugs, all three of them immediately doing obviously useful things in a calm and efficient way.

Zoey, for her part, does at least manage obviously useful, and sits Rumi down in her own kitchen chair to make sure that none of the poorly-hidden blood all over the two of them is hers. But there's nothing calm or efficient about the noise she makes when she sees Rumi's torso.

"It is— I am well, Zoey," Rumi tries to reassure her. "The healing is almost complete."

"You said within the hour," says Mira, from the other side of the kitchen. She doesn't sound like she's in shock, but she does sound scolding and scared, which isn't much better. "It's been almost two. You got shot from half a meter away and there was a giant terrifying hole through your chest. Let Zoey look."

Zoey makes another extremely unhelpful noise of distress.

"It was a terrible moment," Rumi says, taking Zoey's hands between hers, warm and healthy and alive. "But the moment is over, and it does not negate our success. We took no lasting harm, and we returned with what we went there for."

"Yes," says Celine, sounding pretty displeased about it, "I can see that you did. Zoey, if Rumi-nim genuinely doesn't need your medical skills, I would appreciate you placing that barrier pattern you were practicing yesterday on that tub, while I construct something more permanent."

Zoey takes another long look at the mushroom bloom of violent purple-green bruising covering the entire distal half of Rumi's left side, and the shiny knotted ground-beef entry wound somehow closing itself in the middle. It actually does look incredibly close to healed, if still probably quite painful and definitely quite gruesome.

Rumi pulls the coat back around herself to conceal it, a little sheepishly. "Truly, Zoey. I am touched by your concern, but there is no need for it. If the honored shaman feels it is important to contain the books, that should be our priority."

Minji, having finished her appraisal of Mira and given her ice for her jaw, walks over and tells Rumi, "We can multitask."

Zoey gladly hands Rumi over to someone less likely to let warm hands keep her from telling her patient to be less of an idiot, and takes a sharpie over to the tub, skin prickling at proximity to what is apparently a bag full of evil books, to start drawing hanja.

Miyeong and Celine come back into the room a moment later, Miyeong with less bloody, better fitting shirts and pants in hand, and Celine with her box of inks and a small wooden storage chest which Zoey really hopes wasn't holding anything Miyeong considers important.

But I require motivation! So, a poll. Out of the six things I have worked on most recently:

summaries of the options under the cut, or snippets here:

paraplegic + uses a wheelchair

30s (late 20s at the youngest)

criticizes batman for being a manipulative weirdo

is just as much of a manipulative weirdo as batman

That's it. That's my answer. Endor.

People killed: around three quarters of a million.

So, did they save lives? No. Did they make the world a safer place? Not so much. Did they grow the economy? Not at all. Did they modernize the Federal government? Nope. But did they at least save money? Nah.