Sarag in the streets, Sarah in the sheets

(@fakelawyerbug’s deadbeat miyeong au)

Oh that would fuck everyone up

Like on main!Rumi and Celine’s side, they’ve just been dropped into a flower shop au where they’re openly mother and daughter (Rumi wants and hates herself for it) (and so does Celine). They probably don’t even realize the other SLS are alive at first, unless this is one of those variants where Miyeong and Third came stalking Celine to try to pat child support. Fucks them up so much worse when they realize

Like Rumi is 18/19ish.

Db!Rumi and Db!Celine wake up in a high rise that Db!Celine couldn't dream of renting and before they even have a chance to breathe, Celine's assistant (what?) is knocking on the door with a private car (what?) because they're supposed to be running through the debut performance (what?).

(Db!Rumi is also supposed to be debuting in a week but Miyeong and Third had said that it was going to be a smaller venue and to just think of it as a performance review.)

(The honmoon was stable enough with two Sunlight Sisters still active and a scapegoat to absorb the fan backlash. Huntr/x could afford a slow launch.)

Instead, Db!Rumi and Db!Celine see a honmoon in a worse shape than they had ever seen it and a debut that was being billed as the debut of the decade. Fuck.

Meanwhile,

It's the wanting.

She looks through the tiny flowershop and remembers sunny afternoons spent in the garden with Celine, Rumi picking sunflower seeds straight out the centre of the flower to snack on. Chilli peppers Rumi had eventually learned not to snack on. Radishes and garlic and chilli peppers. How Celine would have Rumi sit on her knee and guide her hands as together they dug up the weeds and got rid of the pests, made sure every bad and harmful thing was gone.

There are things in this world that Rumi knows must have been her influence, her wants, out on display for Celine to see. People calling Celine her mother without hesitation, or deference to the ghost Rumi had never known. Baby photos of Rumi on display on all the walls. A child's stick-figure drawing tacked up on the noticeboard downstairs labelled FOR EOMMA LOVE RUMI XXXXX. Notes and cards in Celine's handwriting that she's signed... not as Celine.

And of course, because Rumi's life is never simple, now Celine is with her in this world, looking at all the pictures and listening to everyone talk about how proud Celine must be of her daughter and--

Ugh. Celine wouldn't even be mean about it, finding out that Rumi still wants that closeness, that acknowledgement that they are family and Celine is the only mother Rumi has ever really had, and even if Celine doesn't want her as a daughter then there's at least something there that matters to her on some level beyond just a promise to a dead woman.

But she'd be gentle. And she'd explain. The same way she'd explained to Rumi why Rumi didn't have a mother or father like the rest of her classmates did. Why Rumi wouldn't get to have a baby sister or brother. And it would be a thousand times worse than being eight years old because Rumi's an adult. And she knows.

She knows.

What Rumi does not know: That at the exact time she is cringing at the thought of her longest, most secret wish being so blatantly on display to the one person who has always carefully refused it, there is another woman looking at this world with huge, ashamed eyes.

The neighbours who call Rumi her little girl. The photo of a baby wearing a badly-pilled jumper. The girl's bedroom with her shoes worn almost through on the sole, school books with another child's name in the cover carefully crossed through. The way Rumi had looked at the artwork and said 'Eomma' and Celine had thought, stupidly, that Rumi meant--

It's humiliating. Knowing that Rumi can see this about her, what Celine had been so careful not to impose on Rumi but had never been able to quite stop herself from wanting all the same. Especially now, with the knowledge of all she had done to hurt Rumi. What right does she have?

And deadbeat!Rumi had dreamed, once or twice, about a high rise apartment and private cars and the like—she grew up hungry, of course she did. But she’d stopped wanting that a long time ago

Having her eomma holding her hand as she goes to perform? That dream is still alive and well. She’s just not so sure about everything else going on here

Celine just keeps leaning over and telling her to play along, telling her to keep her head held high and not to let anyone think she might be confused, advice as much for herself as Rumi. She’s a florist! She hasn’t been able to do so much as sing karaoke in nearly twenty years without it being a smear campaign for the tabloids! What the fuck!

It’s not even a question for main!Mira and Zoey that the people who step out of that car aren’t Celine and Rumi: Rumi’s posture is off, a little hunched, a little braced for a scrap that isn’t coming, and Celine looks uncertain.

(Also, she’d buttoned her shirt all the way up. Like she’s expecting to have to wear a tie or something????)

And then, well… the demon disguised as Rumi calls Celine Eomma

("We should, like, get them somewhere out of the way, shouldn't we?" Zoey whispers. "To interrogate them about where Rumi really is?"

"Before we end up going on stage with the fake," Mira agrees - and despite the whole what the fuck, where's our Rumi you demon assholes? of the situation, they pause to snicker at the thought of Gwi-Ma actually trying to infiltrate the kpop industry. Stupid demon probably doesn't even know how to sing.)

But the imposters are at least a little bit more situationally aware than their very bad Rumi-and-Celine impersonations would suggest. The one posing as Rumi plants herself next to the one posing as Celine, eyes narrowed as she watches staff members greet Celine with a bow.

"That's enough, jagiya," the not-Celine says after Jinkyeong-ssi almost bursts into tears under the weight of "Rumi'"s sharp look (Mira winces to think about how bad Rumi's gonna feel when they rescue her; the real Rumi has known Celine's assistant since she was a kid and Mira kind of has the impression that she might have been the closest thing Rumi had to a big sister). Then Celine - holy fuck, the demons were not trying at all, were they? - just bows back to Hong-ssi.

"I apologise," "Celine" is saying. "My daughter's a little nervous, and she doesn't mean to be impolite - does she, Rumi-ya?"

"Rumi" pulls a face but does at least take the hint and bow. "I'm very sorry to behave so rudely, seonsaengnim," she says, giving an awkward, wide-mouthed smile as she does. "I hope you can forgive me!"

Mira and Zoey watch "Celine" wait until they think they're alone and then turn towards Rumi with a face that is so earnestly disappointed Mira and Zoey both feel it in their own guts. Even though it isn't directed at them, even though the real Celine has never looked at them like that.

"Rumi-ya," the "Celine" demon is saying. (Which-- Weird, right? People are around them but Zoey's pretty sure that she and Mira are the only people listening, and also that their very cool and sneaky tactic of just hiding behind a clothing rail is enough to trick all but the smartest of demons. And these two don't seem very smart, if that's the best impression they can do.) "What has gotten into you?"

"Rumi" snarls, "Everyone just keeps smiling and bowing to you, 'Oh, yes, Celine-nim, right away', like they haven't spent years calling you names. They're all so fake--"

("You're one to talk, imposter," Zoey mutters. Mira digs her sharp elbow into her side to shut her up.)

"Be that as it may," "Celine" says. "I can fight my own battles, little cub."

And then Celine - the demon Celine - the fake, whatever, it's still weird seeing the thing wearing Celine's face do this - just presses a kiss to Rumi's forehead with a loud mwah that Zoey is sure every single person who has ever met the real Celine pulls the exact same face at.

Not like. Disgusted. Just-- Oh, that shouldn't be happening.

"Rumi" just scrubs at her forehead and whines "Eomma"--

And that is when Zoey falls through the rack to the other side where she just kind of stares at them both.

"Eomma?!"

That brings about the full weight of the World's Worst Rumi Impersonator's anger crashing down directly on her, as "Rumi" just sort of jerks her head around, sees that it's Zoey and straight up bares her teeth.

"You have a problem with that?"

----

And in the other world, Celine is mentally cataloguing: - the dance shoes with holes in, that someone had to wear long after they needed to be replaced - the school uniform, not a good school which might offer Rumi the sort of opportunities she deserved - the financial statements she skims through, adds up the average income against the rent, supplies, the cost of singing lessons and the taekwondo hagwon and food for three active teenagers

And, most damningly of all, the lack of any pictures of Miyeong at all.

Is that what the Honmoon is trying to warn her of, here? The consequences of her wanting laid bare - Miyeong, entirely erased from Rumi's life, Celine taking everything that should have by rights belonged to Miyeong and wasting her money on some pipe dream that has done nothing but take opportunities away from Rumi, leave her poor and hungry and cold and without anything of Miyeong's to hold on to, all on a selfish whim.

"Can we just... not talk about this? Please, Celine?" Rumi had said, when they found the card the other Rumi had written to her Celine for Parents' Day.

(The other Rumi had not called Celine Celine.)

“Oh, nice one,” Zoey chirps, bouncing to her feet, knives already glimmering between her fingers.

Mira tilts her head. “Really? You think?”

“Playing Rumi?” Rumi is two words from physically seeing red. Fuck this stupid nightmare and fuck Mira and Zoey for being part of it.

“So, you wanna tell us where you put her, demon?” Zoey’s shinkal twirls. “Or would you rather we just kill you and ask ‘Eomma’?”

The pit drops out of Rumi’s stomach—first with the twisting horror of hearing herself be called a demon, not when she’s been so careful, and then a second time when Zoey threatens her mother.

She lunges.

After all the shit she’s had to put up with, every single moment of Zoey simpering over the Sunlight Sisters and cheerfully chattering away about that slut Celine, it all rushes right back to the surface. Whatever kind of nightmare illusion this is, at least she’ll get some catharsis out of it.

“Keep her name out of your mouth,” she snarls, grabbing Zoey by the collar and hauling her forward, hard.

Their foreheads meet with a crack, and Zoey gasps in pain.

Rumi drops her and whirls away before Mira can try to make her back off.

“We don’t even know her name!” Mira snaps, exasperated, using her gokdo to keep them at bay. “Jesus, who knew demons had such mommy complexes?”

Rumi goes to get back in close again—she’s better there than either of them, and Zoey’s already getting up—but Eomma catches her.

“I just told you I could fight my own battles,” she chides, clicking her tongue. “What have they been teaching you, escalating to violence so quickly?”

Rumi shrinks under the weight of her disapproval—and her own guilt about exactly what she hasn’t been telling her mom about life with other Hunters. She doesn’t need to know that Rumi’s been struggling because they’re so rude; she’d only blame herself.

Thankfully, Eomma turns her gaze to Mira and Zoey. “As for you two… I presume you’d know that a demon can’t do this?”

She hums, softly, and the Honmoon glitters alive around them—thready, yes, but still alive.

“What the fuck,” Mira says.

“You actually call her Eomma when you’re alone?” Zoey squeaks.

Rumi really, really hates it here.

----

Rumi’s not sure what feeling wins out most when her phone vibrates and she sees a notification from Ryu Miyeong: ready to head back to us?

Guilt. At having demoted her despite how much Celine always wanted—

Surprise. That she’s here at all. (More guilt.)

Dread, quiet and slow, in the back of her head, as she wonders if maybe this is her wake up call. If it’s not part of this dream, but a guide back to the real world and the piece of rock that is all she really has.

She picks the phone up and walks over to hand it to Celine. Celine pauses, looking up at Rumi in search of a cue, and then looks down again.

Her face pales by shades as she reads the name.

“I’m sorry,” Rumi says, not sure exactly what for—for her greed, for having done this to her mother’s memory, for the fact she had to bring Celine in along with her.

“Don’t be,” Celine says. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Rumi had wanted this to be good. For months, if not years, she's been nursing this secret dream that maybe Eomma can see her perform some day - not their debut, obviously, or anywhere else the Sunlight Shitheads will be; Rumi knows even if she still sometimes catches herself thinking about ways she could make sure the duo are waylaid - and then maybe Rumi could introduce Eomma to Mira and Zoey and Eomma would see them the way Rumi can see them when they sing together. Like they're both just erupting into starlight. And Eomma would be able to see Rumi with them and would know that Rumi's soul has found its home, and Eomma wouldn't need to worry about her any more.

Even though she knows this world is weird and wrong, there was still a couple of minutes - when their driver held the car door open for Eomma to join Rumi, like it was so obvious that they'd be going together - that Rumi couldn't help but feel that same hope flutter inside her chest, and she'd thought--

Well. She'd hoped. That if everyone knew who Eomma was and she was still allowed to come see Rumi here, then maybe this wasn't a nightmare but her wish being granted, and even if things went back to normal then Rumi would still be able to keep this memory, Eomma getting to see the Hunter Rumi has been growing into, all of her.

Then they got out the car and Rumi had reached over to grab Eomma's hand as they walked in, and Rumi felt the atmosphere shift around them. All the little raised eyebrows, the staff trying to hide their staring.

And Rumi had figured it out, hadn't she? In this world, Eomma was allowed to come watch, but only as long as Rumi looked appropriately ashamed of having a mother like Celine.

---

The radio on the side chatters quietly to itself for a little while longer until Rumi stands up and switches it off. By the time she turns around, Celine has taken advantage of the opportunity to empty her face, stop her hands from shaking.

"I haven't replied."

"I can see that."

Absently, Rumi's hand tugs at her sweatshirt. "I probably should. So she doesn't. Worry about me?"

(It's kind of Rumi to frame it like that. Kinder than Celine really deserves, especially now that Rumi can see exactly what Celine has done to her wish just by being present.)

(Rumi clearly wanted to be with her mother again, which is perfectly natural. It's Celine, Celine's selfish rotten heart, that must have twisted that wish somehow.)

"That would be for the best, yes," Celine replies.

Rumi retrieves her phone and opens up the message app again. Celine watches as she scrolls back through the conversation with Ryu Miyeong's contact - it's short, mostly dates and locations, Rumi's responses reduced to acknowledging any schedule changes, and Rumi's face flickers.

(How much has Celine taken from her?)

Rumi taps out her response: on our way. where should we meet you?

Susaek station comes almost immediately. Then her phone buzzes a second time and they both bow their heads to see Miyeong's next message:

Not-demon-not-Rumi startles, blinking rapidly as she snaps her head at Mira, and not-demon-not-Celine doesn’t make Celine’s that was disrespectful face but frowns sharply, something troubled starting up behind her eyes.

“Mira,” Zoey hisses, all but stomping on her foot to make sure she shuts up and doesn’t have them reverting to form.

“You know me,” Fake Celine says, slow, more a question than not.

And not-Rumi looks at her, and then at Mira and Zoey, as if that would somehow be a surprise.

“Celine has been my guardian since I was fifteen,” Mira replies, watching this pass across the possibly-not-exactly-imposters’ faces. “Of course I know her.”

“What about the—“ Not-Rumi makes a face, cuts a quick, uncertain look at her mother, and then dives right in. “What about the Sunlight Sisters?”

----

Rumi starts to type celine and i???? and then stops, deletes it. She could say her mom. That would be right, in this dream of hers.

She closes her messages. “Susaek station.”

“Hm,” Celine says. Blankly. Like she can hide how affected she is by the idea of getting to see Miyeong again, and by this awful ridiculousness that Rumi had forced upon them.

I’m sorry, Rumi wants to say, but it’s true.

Celine bandaged her scraped knees and looked over her report cards and braided her hair and did all of the things that Rumi ever needed. And, yeah, Celine also put Rumi in math hagwon instead of helping her with her homework and often was way too tired to come play with her when she was little and every once in a while had to ask Rumi to wash her hair because demon hunting had its drawbacks, injury and mobility-wise, and dry shampoo wasn’t going to cut it but—

All Miyeong ever gets from her are dates on the calendar. Time to go visit the rock.

Not that it’s always bad, but—

Rumi never really had a mother. None at all.

“Well, hopefully we have the means for public transportation somewhere around here,” Celine finishes.

Rumi tugs on her sweatshirt again. “I—I think I saw a purse by the door. I’ll go check it.”

(She knows she did. A large bag, the kind she always thought of as a mom purse. The kind Celine had never carried in her life.)

(Rumi doesn't preen at who gives a shit. But. Okay. Nightmare world has got one specific point in its favour.)

(Rooms full of people who deferred to Celine, as if she had never been ruined to them. That apartment, leaking money and stability but only showing any sign of one adult inhabitant. I never you’d get communicative enough, as if Rumi had another mother, one that mattered.)

(She doesn’t know how long she has until Rumi notices that.)

“They died,” Mira says bluntly. “A few months after Rumi was born.”

And Celine doesn’t know what part of the sentence she hears first, really. Maybe just the ringing in her ears.

A few months after—by then, Celine was already broke and only going out to buy formula with a hoodie, scarf, facemask, and sunglasses on the whole time.

They died—together. The bond they once had is long gone, certainly, but there are threads Celine has spent years ignoring. Waiting for—

A few months after—which means in this set of memories, Miyeong did not look at Rumi and say—

They died—and Celine can feel it, could feel it, even in the humming, that there are no other souls to meet hers, not the way that Rumi has, not so beautiful and bright and alive.

A few months after—

“Good,” Rumi says.

“Rumi,” Celine snaps.

----

Rumi doesn’t know how to feel, as they approach their stop.

Happy, probably. Celine gets Miyeong back. Rumi is selfish, yes, pushing her into a role she never wanted, but it’s not as bad as all that. Celine gets Miyeong, too.

Sorry, definitely, for doing this in the first place.

Nervous, in theory. That’s what all the stories would tell her. But she isn’t sure if that’s what the twisting feeling in her gut is—the excited apprehension she ought to feel.

She scratches at her ribs, the most recent place her patterns have been growing, and wonders what Miyeong will look like. The pictures and videos Celine has of her all look so young, now. It’s hard to imagine her Celine-aged.

Alive.

The call comes. Their car stops. They stand.

Celine looks at Rumi, and she looks almost as if she might say something—start promising there is a comb in her bag again, maybe. Or maybe… She’s going to love you, and Rumi will be able to hear the I do in it, and it will cling warmly to her insides as she steps out.

But she doesn’t.

Someone brushes by them, and Celine takes Rumi’s arm and pulls her out onto the platform.

Rumi can’t spot her in the crowd, but Celine points, after a moment. Ryu Miyeong, gracefully aged in the way that money allows, her hair shorn short of its iconic braid, now in a neat bob, stands near the steps, talking to Mira and Zoey.

A moment later, and she registers Kim Seoyi, too, equally older. Mostly because her expression blanks with shock, and this draws all three of the others to look Celine and Rumi’s way.

That isn't the first thing she thinks of whenever the Honmoon trills mournfully around her ("Celine can take care of it," then the tiny hand closing around her finger. Every time, she remembers that) but it's one of the memories she returns to sometimes. Standing in the middle of a department store, feeling the judgment of the other shoppers. Wondering what the fuck Miyeong had been thinking.

"I'm glad," Rumi continues, her eyes flashing dark. "I'm glad and I hope it hurt."

Celine can't entirely manage words, but a sound leaves her mouth anyway. Not a sob. She doesn't know what it is but- Not that.

(The cardigan had been navy, chunky knit. She'd been wearing it and then she hadn't. Rumi's first baby blanket, powder blue with a picture of a teddy bear, had been carefully stored in Rumi's dresser along with a few other keepsakes. Celine had thrown the cardigan away years ago.)

"What the fuck," Mira is saying again. "What is your damage?"

Rumi's nostrils flare and Celine knows - before she even opens her mouth - that Rumi is about to double-down.

"Don't, Rumi," she says. And then, before Rumi can object: "No scandals, no undue attention - not until we know what happened and how to fix it."

Her bear cub can see the sense in that, at least.

"...Speaking of which, does that mean you don't have any ideas about what made you all weird? Because I've been running through a couple of possibilities in my head--"

"How many?"

"Only four so far - or seven, depending how you count the different kinds of brainwashing - but I'm working on it!"

Mira looks over to Celine again. "It's got to be some kind of demon, right? You fought something that screwed with your head somehow?"

"Or we're the ones getting screwed with," Zoey proposed cheerfully. Her smile slips as she appears to listen to her own sentence. "Wait. Mira. What if it's us. What if we're the ones who remember everything wrong?!"

By way of answer, Mira just points her thumb at the promotional poster hanging on the opposite wall. The backlit silhouette of the three girls standing together sits under two lines of white text: After the night Comes the dawn. "Oh," says Rumi. "Gross."

Celine is not inclined to disagree.

---

It's not exactly on brand of Seoyi to think it but there's always been something very difficult to like about Kang Rumi. It isn't that she's rebellious, exactly - it isn't even that she's rude or outwardly disrespectful. There's just a persistent sense that every time Seoyi and Mi try to teach her anything, the girl lets whatever they have to say wash over her, as though Rumi has already decided their opinions mean nothing to her.

"Well, I suppose that explains why you refused to tell me who your guest was," Miyeong says, forcing out an airy laugh. A few commuters glance their way and Seoyi tugs her hat down as low as it can get. What had Rumi been thinking? If someone recognises them...

There's a series of increasingly less hushed whispers and insistent gestures from her other students happening behind her. Ahead of her, the two passengers are rooted in the same place, both looking directly at their group. Rumi's eyes are slightly narrowed in that unpleasant, suspicious way she has, but the woman next to her--

Fine. Celine. Seoyi can think her name. Some days she can even say it out loud without wanting to break something.

Celine looks at them like she's been torn open, exposed to the world. Her eyes look between Miyeong and Seoyi and Miyeong, briefly towards Rumi and the other girls, then back to Miyeong all over again, full of a horrified longing that Seoyi only recognises from the echo in her own chest.

(Celine had left. Miyeong was falling apart and Celine had fucked off without saying a word, and it had been Seoyi left to pick up the pieces, put her unnie back together.)

(Celine had left them.)

(What right does she have, to look at them that way?)

"We need to get out of here," Seoyi mutters to Miyeong. "Before Dispatch get hold of any pictures."

"I... Yes, you're right," Miyeong concedes. She looks unhappy about it, which Seoyi understands, but you don't get to be a 40 year old Hunter without knowing the advantage of a tactical retreat. "Girls, car. You too, Rumi. Your... guest will have to make their own arrangements."

Seoyi fights the urge to tug at the Honmoon's strings, send a few questioning notes Miyeong's way. Are you sure that's how you want to play this? It wouldn't help.

"But--" Rumi starts to say. She looks over at the two of them, then at Celine and doesn't look back.

"...I understand," Celine croaks. Nearly twenty years, and that's the only thing she has to say for herself? Seoyi wants to scream and she kind of wants to fight her and she definitely needs to end this whole conversation now, before it ends up on someone's TikTok.

"Car, Rumi," Seoyi says, and as horrid a child as Rumi normally is then she can at least normally be counted on to follow instructions.

“The song,” she says, desperate for a change of subject. “You’re performing. What song is it?”

Rumi has partners, in her memory. A debut coming up, that Celine won’t be able to attend. A song that Zoey wrote (mostly), one she’d plucked out carefully on her guitar for Celine’s ears, interrupting herself to point out where the harmonies were, how much better they all sounded together, or at least she hoped.

She watches the same thought occur to all three of them, faces dropping and paling at the idea of (re)teaching Rumi their routine in a week.

“Call Me Up?” Zoey says nervously, and Rumi’s shoulders drop just as Celine’s do—not all the way, not yet, the girls stepping to the side for a hurried runthrough before their runthrough.

Celine doesn’t know their timeline—even though she should, everyone in this venue should—but she does know that people address her with the kind of respect that means she can make it a bit flexible. She’d always hated that kind of person, back in the day.

At least right now she knows the talent will appreciate her gently shaking her head in the direction of the first person who looks like they’re about to approach and holding up a hand: Give them five minutes.

The crew member doesn’t even blink.

This is not Celine’s life.

Except, of course, for how it is.

----

“What about her?” Zoey bursts out, and Mira elbows her, hard, and Seoyi smiles.

Always that. Steady on the surface. Just like Miyeong needs to be.

“Now is neither the time nor the place,” she says.

Rumi scowls, expression twisting, but Celine touches her arm—looking like she didn’t just cause this, how couldn’t she have expected it, why the fuck is she talking to their student—and says, “Rumi. Go.”

“You’re—Celine, you’re not just—I’m not leaving you,” she says, which is a very weird, emotional statement that Miyeong does not like the sound of, not at all, and Celine looks at her—

Miyeong hates them, just for a moment. She hates Celine for looking at anyone that tenderly, with that much love, with that much pain, when the last people she loved were left torn apart because Celine chose a fucking demon over them, and she hates Rumi for being loved by her when she isn’t Miyeong.

Bobby follows the sound of music playing tinnily from someone's phone speakers - through the lobby and to an empty hallway, where the girls are running through the choreography for Celine. That much doesn't surprise him - Huntr/x have the kind of work ethic that, well, you'd expect from a trio handpicked and trained personally by Kang Celine.

"No, you're starting the body roll too late. You have to be moving before the bridge. Go again."

Seeing their leader stumble and miss her cues, on the other hand, is not what Bobby has come to expect at all.

"Girls? Is everything OK?"

"... Rumi has a headache. I don't want her to push herself," Celine says. After a beat, Rumi puts one hand to her forehead and winces unconvincingly.

"Ouch?"

"Oh, poor RumI! What about the rest of you? You aren't coming down with something, are you?"

"We're pretty sure it's not contagious," Mira says, in that dry way she has.

"Unless..." mutters Zoey. "Hey, Rumi, have you ever heard of the Berenstein Bears?"

The girls half-whisper amongst themselves the rest of the way to the main stage - the adrenaline seems to be making it harder than usual for Zoey to control her volume - and Bobby tries to catch Celine-nim's eye. Partly in order to give the girls as much privacy as he can, and partly to offer Celine some reassurance of her own. It's an open secret that Celine created Huntr/x around Rumi - some of the staff gossip that Celine founded the whole company specifically for Miyeong's daughter, even if the timeline makes that more than a little hard to believe - and so their debut must come with its own kind of pressure for Celine.

"They'll do well," he assures her, expecting more of her usual cool assurance. Of course they will, Celine would usually tell him. I would not be arranging their debut if I did not believe in them.

Instead, he's met with the sight of Celine glancing back towards the girls, one hand coming up to toy with the button on her collar in a very subtle display of nerves that Bobby thought Celine was no longer capable of.

"I'm very proud," Celine tells him, quietly enough that the girls miss it entirely. "I just hope people aren't cruel to them."

---

If there's a feeling that means vindicated and angry and kind of excited but not in a fun way, more of a guilty way then that is the one to describe how Zoey is feeling. All of it all at once, like when you add a bit of every fountain soda to the same cup and can't finish it because orange soda and root beer and Mountain Dew are a disgusting combination.

(Zoey used to think the three of them were like that. Great flavours apart, but not when you mix them together.)

(And obviously that's wrong - Miyeong-seonsaengnim explained it all, how they just need to find their harmony and then the three of them will be perfect forever, and Zoey didn't even ruin the moment by going "Well, it's not like that mattered when Celine betrayed you and Seoyi" - but. Sometimes. It is very hard to believe that they can sustain said harmony.)

(Like right fucking now, when Rumi just appears with The Actual Jezebel without so much as a warning. To give one example off the top of her head!)

"Go on, Rumi," Celine is saying, nodding in Zoey's direction. Reluctantly, Rumi does as she's told.

Or: not reluctantly. Like she's just defaulting to basic operating mode of Follow Instructions because her head is so Not In The Game Zoey can't even be sure it's on the same planet. It almost looks like Rumi's in shock.

Mira leads the way over to the car - good job, since Rumi genuinely does not seem to see it at all until they stop right in front of it - and they take their seats in silence, apart from the tap-tap-tap of Zoey's fingers against the armrest so she doesn't explode with shouting or questions or more shouting.

(Zoey used to dream about moments like this, actually. When she was young and being Not Very Swag About Single Mothers - which, yikes, but she has grown as a person since then, she and Rumi basically have come to an Understanding.)

(Lemonade and ice tea?)

(No, Zoey, focus. Celine. S-tier snake behaviour. Many, many years filled with daydreams in which she would just let Celine know how awful it was that she hurt her friends who she was supposed to love and look after forever, and maybe make her cry a little bit and all the Sunrays online would know that Zoey is officially One Of Us forever.)

(It's just... Harder, than she imagined when she was a kid. Hating Celine was just hating a face in a magazine or a character in a music video; the woman who got off the train has a little bit of grey in her hair and bags under her eyes and the exact same bag her aunt carries everywhere. Like real people do.)

"Dude," Mira says, while Zoey's still trying to untangle that particular knot. Her voice is all clipped around the edges. So: probably angry. Maybe also at Rumi? "You didn't think to warn us?"

"YOU DIDN'T THINK TO WARN US," Zoey echoes. "ONE TEXT, Rumi! So we didn't inadvertently run into Korea's Most Hated right before our debut! So we could make sure it doesn't end up ALL OVER THE INTERNET, which BY THE WAY is FOREVER."

"Was this--" Mira takes a deep breath and flexes her hands, deliberately unfolds her fists so she can lie them flat on her lap and hold them where they are. "Was this on purpose? You didn't want to sing with us any more?"

"YOU DIDN'T WANT-- Wait, why would that matter?"

Bobby—who is a constant, apparently, with his warm eyes and slightly anxious smile—trails them to the main stage, giving Rumi a beautiful walkthrough of everything that’s supposed to go down on Friday.

And a bunch of weird looks that—yeah, okay, if her memories weren’t fucked, she probably would be chipping in to tell him that they knew all of this already and he didn’t have to go over all of it. However: they are! So she does, in fact, need him to explain.

And… hm. She leans over to Zoey, hoping against hope that this bet pays off. “Given, uh… everything. Do you have some videos of public stuff I’ve done before now? So I won’t screw us all over by making the wrong joke or something.”

“Ooh, yeah, good idea!” Zoey agrees, her voice maybe not as quiet as it could be. “It’ll take me a while to get all the way back to age six if you want everything—“

Not that Rumi is quiet at all.

“SIX?”

---

“No!” Rumi protests, horrified, snapping awake. She’s barely following this dream-nightmare by now, the way everyone is trying to tell her to cut away Celine like she’s tainted, dirty, like Rumi is—like Rumi has somehow put on her? The same way she’s dragged her into mothering her?—but.

Not that. Never that.

“I…” she tries to find the words for it, for her voice and her patterns and her love for them, the way it all knots together. “You guys are my best friends. Why would I give up on the one thing that gives my life purpose?”

Why wouldn’t you know Celine?

Mira and Zoey both stare at her, and she wonders if she’s misheard, wonders if this is yet more of the dream collapsing around the edges into nothing but rot. Zoey gets this funny look on her face, like she does when Mira says something sad about her life before coming to live with Rumi and Celine without realizing it, and—

(It’s too awful to think of a world where they don’t love each other, but Rumi does anyway.)

“We’re your best friends?” Mira says, quietly.

She hasn't seen Rumi perform often. When she was younger, Rumi had gone through that phase of putting on little shows for her, and Celine had tried to go to all her school performances until Rumi had asked her to stop. Rumi still sings at home, of course, while doing the dishes, or sometimes just to show Celine what she's been practicing, but nothing she ever really took seriously.

Even to Celine's unpractised eyes, Rumi's movements are much stiffer than either Mira or Zoey's, but nobody corrects her. She hits her marks, at least, which is good enough for the team to arrange the lighting cues and camera angles around her, and is something of a miracle considering how little practice she's had, and seems to grow in confidence every time they go through the song. By the fourth run-through, Rumi actually manages to grin all the way through and sends a little finger heart Celine's way.

The gesture's cute, in a way that seems to match the bubblegum pop song Rumi has been describing for weeks but is at odds with the tougher sound of Call Me Up. The girls are tough. They want the world, with its wounded Honmoon, to see them as tough.

The stage manager calls out for the girls to start again for the fifth time, and Celine slides the phone from her blazer pocket (Dior, she found it in the apartment with all of its frictionless luxury), opens the browser and types:

Ryu Miyeong death

---

"I don't understand you," Mira says heavily. "Bringing her here like-- OK, you weren't trying to get us cancelled, but what about Miyeong and Seoyi?"

"What about them? They're meant to be partners, Celine's partners. They're meant to be her family," Rumi says, as though she's ever given a single fuck about the sacred Hunter bond before she saw an opportunity to fuck with their teachers.

But something about that thought tugs at her attention. Instead of snapping back, Mira makes herself take another deep breath and turn it over in her head.

They're meant to be partners.

You guys are my best friends.

"That's not... We're not going to end up like them, though," Zoey tries.

Rumi doesn't agree. She also doesn't argue. Instead, Rumi just stares uncomprehendingly at Zoey, like the words are in a language she doesn't speak.

When Zoey gets into her head, it's easy enough to pull her out of it. Sit down next to her as tight as Mira can squeeze, put on some music, hold her hand while she talks herself back to normal. After spending most of two years with nobody but two aging popstars and the most hot-and-cold leader on Earth, Mira's got the whole routine down now.

She doesn't know what helps Rumi, who's never really let them see her like this. But she's operating on a similar logic when she reaches over to grab Rumi's hand.

A unit, even in death.

She doesn’t scream. She gently moves her thumb across the phone screen and taps—gently, not going to leave a crack on the screen—and then scrolls.

Her eyes can’t decide if they want every word or if they can’t stand the sight of them.

The twenty-three year old idols… (God, they were so young.) …mired in scandal since the unexpected birth of a daughter… home invasion…

Ah. There it was.

A home invasion. A lie. They’d died bloodily enough that Celine had had to lie.

Or maybe the demons had come. She doesn’t know. Doesn’t matter that the article claims she’d called the police and been mired in the matter for months, that it shows a photo of her, young and pale and bloody, clutching Rumi to her as the EMTs try to talk her down, that this should have shaped her life.

The memories aren’t there, no matter how she tries to reach for them.

No memories, as she scrolls back up, of Miyeong worsening her own public perception by telling a reporter the father didn’t matter. No memories of herself and Seoyi refusing to abandon her, despite pressure from the label—how ironic.

No memories of, either, of Ryu Rumi.

She’s going to have a hell of a time explaining this one.

---

Miyeong is sitting in the front seat of a private car, putting pieces together.

Miyeong is trying not to put those pieces together, because they cannot make sense, and the image they show cannot be true.

Rumi, for all her faults, is a Hunter.

Which is—unkind, really, of Miyeong. She’s a good girl, most of the time. Obstinate, maybe, and quick to anger, not nearly as worldly as she thinks, but not a bad child.

She glances back, where their students are talking.

Rumi’s expression is soft and vulnerable as she looks at Mira and Zoey. Desperate for someone to reassure her.

Miyeong looks away.

It should be enough. It should put those thoughts out of her head.

(Kang Celine. Kang Rumi. Rumi’s mother, who she is so protective over. The way she has just pulled the right thread to unravel everything they have worked for.)

…But that vulnerable expression, so utterly out of character, is just the thing to make Mira and Zoey sympathize.

Even worse, the looks they start to give Eomma.

As tempting as it had sometimes been, the idea of embarrassing the Shitheads who had handpicked her and trained her to follow in their footsteps, Rumi had always excelled in her evaluations. Partly to avoid the promise of extra one-on-one training, but mostly so she could avoid seeing exactly this sort of reaction. The girl without a dad ruining everything again, What Else Can You Expect With A Mother Like That.

"Please stop looking like you want to bite Jiwoo-nim, she's super nice," Zoey whispers as they move back to their starting positions for the seventh time.

"She keeps looking at Eomma--"

"She keeps looking at the CEO who is throwing away billions of won on a lead singer who doesn't know the song. You gotta chill." Mira steps past the two of them, her long pink hair swishing behind her. Frustratingly, even that manages to look cool.

"The CEO?"

Zoey smiles sympathetically but doesn't disagree. "Sorry, Ru, Mira's got a point. We really need to get your memories back..."

The backing track starts up again. From her position, she can't see much of Eomma's face but her posture - head bowed, hands wrapped tightly around her forearms - is one Rumi knows intimately well.

For Eomma, she thinks, and grits her teeth, and tries again.

By the time the three of them are excused - Rumi catches the little grimace that the various employees all share with one another, like they're embarrassed on their behalf - Eomma is sitting up ramrod-straight, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She gives them a polite round of applause and, after a second, everyone else joins in.

---

Seoyi doesn't stop moving. That's the first thing Celine notices, Seoyi's hands - one of them by her side, opening and closing into a ball, while the other clutches her coat sleeve. The way her eyes dart over to the car, back to Celine.

(She's moving, and her cheeks are slightly pink from the cold, and alive. Celine doesn't know what she has ever done to deserve this - Miyeong and Seoyi, here - but she wants to cry out with joy all the same.

Rumi is with her mother now.

It's a miracle, and it's an outrage. Rumi has Miyeong back, but in some twisted way Celine has still managed to take that from her.)

"You couldn't just stay gone?"

(Rumi had -- Not flinched, that wasn't the word for it. Had gone quiet when she saw everyone else's reaction, how they had known somehow what Celine had done to this world.)

"I'm sorry," Celine says, and means it. God, she's never meant anything more. "If I knew-- I never wanted to hurt her."

"Well, that's OK then! So long as you didn't mean it!" Seoyi drags one hand down her face, exasperated, and Celine feels her stomach lurch at the sight. She remembers that gesture. She hadn't, for a while - so many details Celine must have forgotten over the years - but seeing it again brings back all the other times Seoyi must have done something similar before, and Celine wants nothing more than to grab each memory and fix it in place in her mind forever.

If she does that. Stands here and stares at Seoyi. She will miss all the other gestures and facial expressions, every other detail she could take now and keep forever, tucked safely in the corner of her heart that belongs forever to her sisters.

Her face is stiff. Her hands are knit together, so neatly. She sits up straight against her seatbelt.

Rumi doesn’t know what she is going to say.

“I never intended—“ She stops, glances at Mira and Zoey, looks at the privacy partition keeping the driver from hearing them. One corner of her mouth twitches, almost yanked upward.

It doesn’t actually matter if anyone hears. This belongs to Rumi and her mother. No one else remembers it.

“I never intended to lie to you,” Eomma says, very slowly. “I didn’t really have a plan at all. All I knew was—I knew I had to protect you. I had to help you. I had to take care of you.”

“Eomma?” Rumi asks, confused.

She can see it on Mira and Zoey’s faces, though. They understand what this is. They know this secret, or they think they do.

“And—our memories are wrong,” Eomma says, faster now. “It didn’t happen that way, she never—she wouldn’t have—your mother was—“

“You’re my mother,” Rumi says.

---

“You didn’t know?” Seoyi snarls.

Celine looks at her, with that numb, pathetic face, with that ripped open expression, without any fucking right—

“You did this,” she reminds her. “You chose this, Celine, don’t act like you didn’t know the consequences of your own damn actions.”

“I’m sorry,” Celine says.

Because no one can piss Seoyi off like her, even all these years later. It’s like she knows just how to grab at the scab that Seoyi thought was a scar and tear it open anew—standing there, just taking it.

She’s not angry, no, not Celine. She’ll be your scapegoat if it fixes things.

“What are you sorry for?” Seoyi asks, half-ready to grab her and shove her the way that she remembers doing as a teenager, like she can shake some kind of awareness from her.

The right away, daepyonim-ness of all the staff. The designer clothes and the high-rise apartment and the playlist of YouTube videos Zoey is pulling together, pretending she isn't listening to their conversation, showing Celine and Rumi walking red carpets like the world didn't have a reason to hate them. Mira being allowed to live with them as Celine's ward, and Rumi's sort-of sister, apparently? (Weird, Rumi thinks, and decides to shove that feeling to one side to unpack later.)

"Rumi," Eomma says, her voice soft and pained. "Jagiya, you need to understand- I only ever wanted you to be safe."

"I know," Rumi spits. "I-- Eomma, I know. OK? I figured it out, and I get it, I do, I'm not mad but-"

She's hurt, maybe. But not mad.

Because Rumi hasn't been a little kid for a very long time. She's known for years - the trail of lost jobs and new schools and the single room in the officetel they used to share. Like clockwork, the weeks before Rumi's birthday or any big holiday, Eomma used to start having big lunches at work so she was never very hungry at dinner. The coat Eomma got her from church, once, and made Rumi swear never to tell anyone at school it wasn't properly new.

She grew up poor. Hungry, sometimes, even if it would hurt Eomma to know that.

"- But that's not how anyone else remembers it, is it?"

Wordlessly, Zoey and Mira shake their heads.

(They look so fucking sympathetic while they do that Rumi kind of wants to smash them together. It's because of you, she'd like to yell at them. Because of all the shit people like you say, that's why Eomma had to lie to protect me from it, so don't--!

But they probably don't even remember saying any of it.)

Rumi nods, exactly once, and tucks her thumbs into the cuffs of her sweater and twists until the elastic pinches her wrists. Her eyes sting. "I get it," she forces herself to say. The words taste kind of like puke. "It's OK, Eomma. I understand."

Rumi means it, as much as she hates thinking it. Eomma must've been so scared, and they both knew what had happened when she told the truth - Eomma lost her home and her family and her reputation, and for what? Being hungry and cold and tired and having her name used as a punchline by stupid comedians for years.

Rumi gets it. Why, in these backwards memories, Eomma might have decided to keep her a secret, make sure she gets the fancy shoes and the best training and a world full of people who don't know enough to hate them.

---

Rumi has, obviously, wondered before. About Miyeong, mostly, and the rock next to her which was Seoyi, and the knowledge that the two of them had been Important.

(When she was really small, before she really understood death, she'd thought that had been it. Celine loved the two rocks, and Rumi had spent hours looking for the very best rocks for her - ones that were worn smooth enough Celine could hold them easily, or ones that were pretty colours, or Rumi's favourite rock, the little black one with all the holes in it like cartoon cheese. She'd find them and give them to Celine who would say "Thank you, jagiya! This is special!" and that had confirmed it. Celine loves rocks.)

The braid was for Miyeong. Rumi had spent too long looking at old pictures, trying to see some part of herself in her Hunter parent and had cried so hard when she couldn't see anything that she threw up, and then Celine had tucked her into bed with a plastic bowl and lay next to her listing all the similarities she could think of. You have her heart, Celine had said. Her courage, her compassion, her sense of humour. Her sweet tooth.

Nothing that showed up in a photo. Nothing that looked really, properly human.

Miyeong loved Pepero, Celine had told her once, and the idea that Rumi could just lean forward and say "Hey, Miyeong-nim, what's your favourite flavour?" strikes her as faintly hysterical.

She could know. She could know anything at all about Miyeong, now.

"... Why didn't you want to speak to Celine?"

The squawk Zoey lets out at that question is both loud and immediate. "RUMI! You can't just ask someone why they don't wanna talk to that--"

"Zoey," Miyeong says firmly, before Zoey can finish her sentence. "Rumi. You girls are young, and you are just starting out as a team, but even you must understand that there are some betrayals you can't just take back."

"Like what," scoffs Rumi, before she can really stop herself. "Fucking a demon?"

"EXACTLY THAT!"

Currently: the gang are hiding out at Miyeong’s apartment, and spent the morning working through some very mundane trauma… only for Minji’s grandmother to give them a reminder that the wraiths are looking for them. At least they got to see the healing spirit first?

"We have been taking an active stance," says Celine, calmly but firmly disagreeing with Rumi. "We would only put ourselves in greater danger by moving faster than is wise. We have been training the others to reduce the risk of engagement. We have been gathering information on our enemy, who we had not even located until two days ago, and about whom we are still lacking significant intelligence. We have been recovering from extremely compromising injuries," and she says that with so much annoyance and distaste Zoey has to hold back a giggle.

(Okay, maybe she's also had a beer in the last half hour. Or a little tiny bit more than that. But they cracked open the samosa box for an afternoon snack and Zoey's tolerance for spice is moderate at best, she needed something to cool herself off. It's fine, she could still do the alphabet backwards. She can do that when she's plastered, actually, courtesy of working in a library shelving books for several years, but the point is, it's fine, she didn't actually giggle, she just wanted to. She's totally good.)

"We have been taking action appropriate to our original situation," Rumi says, just as polite, just as firm. "Our situation has changed. The honorable river spirit has restored Mira and yourself to your full capabilities. Zoey and Miyeong-nim have shown consistent accuracy with the shinkal, and Mira has gained access to her family's knowledge of wraiths. Our enemy escalates, and threatens Minji-nim's family. Our response must change as well."

Celine is unmoved. "Minji-ssi's grandmother is safe, and has bought us time," and then Zoey completely zones out the rest, because there's a tapping, on the windowpane, and she pulls herself out of the armchair and beelines to let Suspicion-ssi in.

"You're early for the party," Zoey murmurs, though there isn't really a reason to be quiet; Rumi and Celine fell silent once they saw what she was doing.

The spirit caws and puffs up, I'm doing you a favor, there can't be a party until I'm here, drawing a chuckle out of Celine that she tries unsuccessfully to disguise as a cough.

But she turns grim at Suspicion-ssi's next words, turning back to Rumi with a heavy sigh, and then a wry smile and an apologetic dip of her head and shoulders. "It seems you have the clearer view of the situation, Rumi-nim."

"What did the bird say," says Miyeong, fingers pressing into her temples, a woman who does not want the answer to her question but feels obligated to ask it anyway.

A part of her is still processing the rest of her conversation with Minji-ssi’s grandmother—a formidable woman, even in passing, but certainly one willing to gossip about her granddaughter’s habits once she understood that Celine only wanted to help—in spite of how much the current one demands all of her attention.

Kkachi-ssi continues, and it’s all she can do not to wince.

“And, uh, working their way up, obviously,” Zoey adds. “Big goal is Gwi-Ma. But right now it’s dead guy central.”

“How far along are they?” Mira asks, gaze lidded and calm, but voice tight.

The summoner is an amateur, Kkachi-ssi declares. The wraith has to teach him everything. Unfortunately, the sacrifice won’t need to be big to get results, so it’ll probably be soon once he gets the idea.

“Uh, still on bookwork?” Zoey translates. “But with everything… it’s gonna be easy once they get all the pieces in place.”

“Wraiths can only be summoned at twilight,” Mira points out. “So we’ve got at least a day and a half?”

Kkachi-ssi caws her agreement. You are not skipping my party.

“We would never,” Celine agrees. It would be a great insult to meet the aid and favor of a spirit not just with no returned tribute, but with the promise thereof and then its withdrawal. She would hate to see that beak set to work with any actual malice.

This, perhaps, is too solemn a response for Kkachi-ssi’s taste, as she sends her triplicate side eye Celine’s way.

“Suspicion-ssi reminds us that the party is mandatory,” Zoey explains and, from the looks on Minji-ssi and Rumi-nim’s faces, probably quite necessarily.

“Well, at least there’s that,” Miyeong-ssi says brightly. “How fucked are we in general, though? We brought six to ten down to four to eight, what would this go up to?”

She reports, through Zoey— who, based on Celine's varying, not-quite-controlled facial expressions, is working very hard to moderate the magpie's snark— that several of the wraiths frequenting the target building wear the logo of Changwon Commercial Shipping, that they're in and out at roughly eight-hour intervals, and they have at least one car ("Hate that for us," says Mira flatly, with the voice of experience). The magpie remembers the plate, and Miyeong writes it down for further inspection, and gives the most gracious thank-you she can manage; the spirit did find out everything she asked it for, after all.

Zoey's polite "She says you're welcome" would be more convincing if the bird wasn't squinting all six eyes and sniggering when she says it.

And then Zoey and Mira are off to set up the folding table, and Minji and Rumi are putting the food and alcohol out in the kitchen, buffet-style, and it's Thursday, so Miyeong goes out on the balcony to water her plants. Because this is the day she waters her plants. Restraining herself from starting a fight with a bird is not a factor.

Celine follows her out and leans against the railing, amused. "You know she picks on you because you react so strongly."

"Bully logic from the spirit world," Miyeong shoots back.

"Friendly teasing," Celine corrects, but she does sound genuinely sympathetic.

And honestly, Miyeong will take the pity; it's probably better than whatever she'll get if she actually tries to argue with a mudang about a spirit, so she just shakes her head and changes the subject.

"How was the conversation with Minji's gran?"

"…. illuminating," says Celine.

"Yeah?" Miyeong's done watering, so she just leans next to Celine. "What's our concern level, there, generally? Because mine isn't zero."

Celine considers it, the slightest crease in her brow. "… not zero, no. Her grandmother had some insight, but..." She pauses. Still thinking about it, Miyeong thinks. Illuminating, but maybe not immediately obvious what to do with it.

"She'll need you," Celine finally says, one thing at least that she's apparently sure of, "once the wraiths are dealt with and she's able to start contacting her friends."

Start finding out who's left alive, she means.

Miyeong tips her head back and traces a striated line of cirrus clouds across the sky. "You know, some of them are my friends too?"

It feels strange to say, comes out uncertain, but—

"It's not, I haven't thought about it at all, but. Take Donghyun, he's a radiology tech, constantly snacking, has a niece he helps his sister take care of, he's an absolute idiot. If you asked me who I'm close to, his name wouldn't cross my mind— but I've known him for the better part of a decade, met his family, know his coffee order and his go-to cocktail after work. And if he was on shift that day? If I never see him again—"

She'd thought Minji didn't like her. She'd thought Sieun found her vaguely annoying on Minji's behalf. She thought the whole lot of them mostly just tolerated her because she was Yeonggi's girlfriend, and kept inviting her out once he was gone out of, what, inertia? But she was wrong about Minji, probably wrong about all of them, and if she never hears Donghyun try to goad someone into a stupid bet again…

Miyeong pauses a moment, and then snorts, still studying the sky. “Would you believe that you’re not the first person to tell me that?”

Celine is certainly startled by it, and she afreely admits as much.

“Yeonggi,” Miyeong explains, a slight smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I always thought he didn’t like it when I talked about my exes because he was insecure, but… it might not have all been that.”

A surprisingly clear-eyed view of the man, after Minji-ssi’s assessment that she’d thought him too good for her. Idly, Celine wonders what he was really like.

“Who would you say you’re close to?” she asks, instead, which is a slightly more relevant matter.

Miyeong-ssi does not answer her for a long time.

It’s not the first time that she has had such a response to that kind of question. She’s seen it in almost every way possible, she thinks.

“You?”

Everything stops. Fragments. Reconstitutes itself, fundamentally changed.

Miyeong laughs a little. “Kind of pathetic, but—I don’t know. I’ve been out of practice with talking to people about hard things for a long time now. So… Minji, and you, and the kids.”

“Fear has a tendency to linger in the strangest of places,” Celine replies, almost automatically.

She feels as if someone has changed the oxygen content of the air, or maybe the strength of gravity. Lightheaded. She holds on to the balcony rail tightly, hoping not to fall, though she knows that it’s silly.

You.

“…I guess so,” Miyeong says. “You’ve got a proverb for everything, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” Celine answers.

Zoey glances at Rumi, and her face turns a pretty shade of bright red. “I am not translating that.”   The spirit nips her ear.

Zoey wrings her hands, “Suspicion-ssi would like you to shift the table to the left.”

Rumi smiles and bows to the spirit. “Of course, Kkachi-nim.”

Under the magpie spirit’s haughty gaze, Mira and Minji transfer the platters and glasses from the folding table onto Miyeong’s table.

Rumi lifts the folding table and shifts it to the left. The magpie spirit caws indignantly.  “Ah, suspicion-ssi meant the other table.”

Mira bites back a sigh, the bird gives them all the smuggest side-eye as they clear the platters from Miyeong’s table and put them back on the folding table.

With one smooth movement, Rumi lifts Miyeong’s table as easily as Mira would lift a paper cup. She has to fight to keep her jaw closed as Rumi’s shirt does precious little to hide her lithe muscles working underneath.

Minji gives her a knowing look. Mira can’t find it in herself to care, as with grace that would make a ballerina green with envy, Rumi moves the table to the magpie spirit’s desired spot.  “Is this location acceptable, Kkachi-nim?” She asks.

From her perch on Zoey’s head, the magpie spirit radiates judgment. 

Confusion then surprise shoots across Zoey’s face. “But she jus—” 

The bird cuts Zoey off with a nip on the ear.

She sighs and gives way.  “Suspicion-ssi asks that you, uh, put that table down, she meant the other other table” 

Other other table? Mira looks around Miyeong’s apartment. Rumi has moved all the… Her eyes catch on the coffee table.  

“Oh, as you wish,” Rumi says, as she strides over to the coffee table and carefully removes the TV remote.

The coffee table is a squat, heavy thing; it has clearly been well-loved. Rumi lifts it like it’s nothing.

Mira’s throat goes dry.

“Do you need help with that?” Mira asks, mostly for the sake of saying something.  

A playfully affronted look crosses Rumi’s face, “There is no need—” With that dangerous gleam in her eye, Rumi shifts her weight slightly and pulls one hand out from under the coffee table. “—for I am quite comfortable here.”

Mira’s jaw drops, the bird cackles and flits over to perch atop one of the nicer wine glasses. Her three eyes narrow at Mira.

She sees Zoey’s sharp intake of breath out of the corner of her eye. 

“Suspicion-ssi says you may put the coffee table down; she now requests karaoke.” Zoey translates. Minji crows with laughter. She says something about fetching Celine and Miyeong.

Mira doesn’t hear her as she feels the floor drop out from under her.

“Any song requests?” Zoey asks, cheeks pinkening.

The honored whispering magpie spirit looks deeply amused.

“Then it is a singing game?” Rumi asks, circling around the couch to return to the area in which they’ve congregated.

“Uh, yeah,” Mira says, looking as if she might prefer to abscond from the feast now and fight a wraith. “We put on a song without the lyrics and then perform it. It’s pretty simple.”

It does, indeed, seem far simpler than Rumi had expected from their reactions. She tilts her head, wondering if there is some trick to the game that she has not understood. “So… how does one lose?”

It is at this moment that Minji-nim, Miyeong-nim, and the honored shaman return from the balcony, shutting the sliding door.

“At karaoke?” Miyeong-nim asks, grinning. “By being a really bad singer, I guess.”

“I… see.” (Rumi does not see.)

“Suspicion-ssi has a request,” Zoey announces, scrolling on her phone with all of the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner.

The honored shaman’s lips twitch. Whatever this request is, she is certainly as amused as the honored whispering magpie spirit. “Miyeong, do you think that we could connect Zoey’s phone to your television?”

“I know we can connect my laptop,” Miyeong-nim replies, still grinning.

Minji-nim’s eyebrows arch, and she looks between the two of them with some curiosity—perhaps at the new degree of intimacy to their speech?

Either way, Rumi must remain focused on the matter at hand. She leans into Zoey’s space, skimming the lyrics of the song she’s brought up.

It is a rather tender love song, one somewhat reminiscent in style of the song Miyeong-nim had led them in during their skirmish at the hotel. Romances are in fashion these days, from what Rumi has heard, so she does not understand why Zoey looks so embarrassed.

Mira's not sure how Miyeong defines 'lucky,' but she's absolutely certain it's not the same way she does.

Celine is entirely certain that she will not be getting out of this without some form of mild humiliation herself, and can only hope that the magpie spirit will find some kind of other shiny subject to fixate on than matchmaking soon. As she settles in, bracing herself, Mira, Zoey, and Rumi-nim retreat back off for food.

“Look, somebody has to eat first, and everyone always gets weird about it, and I’m not doing it! Food is a friend!” Zoey declares, before turning back to where they’re clustered around the laptop. “Do any of you want us to make a plate?”

“Please,” Celine says, before any awkwardness might develop.

“I could go for one of those burritos,” Minji-ssi adds. “And something to drink?”

“Yeah, I’ll could use some more soju,” Miyeong says, and it’s subtle. That’s not the word, exactly, given that they’re all aware of the matter—fluid, perhaps?—but were they not, Celine doubts anyone would’ve thought twice. She can see it in the beat after, too, how Miyeong sees them noticing and wishes they hadn’t.

And then they move on.

They should sing “Some”, Kkachi-ssi decides, whistling a bit of the tune as if the name weren’t already identifiable.

Zoey makes a face. “Isn’t there a rap part in that?”

Singers’ choice how to manage it, Kkachi-ssi decides.

“We have a request, I take it?” Minji-ssi asks dryly.

Celine silently leans over and starts finding it for them, her own face already burning from secondhand embarrassment.

Miyeong giggles, and wraps an arm around Minji-sis’s shoulder. “Feels like I’m yours, seems like I’m yours, but noooo—do you want SoYou’s parts or Junggigo’s ones?”

Minji-ssi flushes, and makes momentary, devastated eye contact with Celine.

“Um, I… I’ll take the higher ones,” she says.

Miyeong squeezes her shoulder briefly, and flashes her a smile. “Hey, don’t worry. If nothing else, imagine all the audience members in their underwear, right?”

hey @princington thanks for sharing finders keepers au with us, your brain is very big and i enjoy your work very much.

Miyeong didn't "die" when demons attacked the hanok when she was there with only her demon boyfriend and a baby Rumi.

(They manage to hide Rumi and when Celine and Third get to the hanok, she's the only one there.)

It's not that demons *can't* be killed with conventional means, it's just that demons, being technically spirits and all, are a little harder to kill without supernatural, glowing blades.

The way 'Rumi' stirs the dust from deep long-buried memories.

The way the red haze of hate clouding her vision thins, just for a moment.

The way it rushes back when the attack continues.

The way the strands shimmering in the air around her hum a mournful ballad, and cry with every strike.

The way, as her patterns burn her back to Hell, she looks up at the Hunter-

No, no that's wrong; a different word...a different word...

A body laid atop her breast, warm and soft and tiny and perfect; a wispy tuft of hair still damp and new; a fist so small she could enfold it in her palm...

A feeling in her chest so strong it almost took her breath away.

She hadn't known you could love something that much.

First, they stop the bleeding. Or try to, anyway. 

The demon gone, pulled back into the underworld by the patterns that chained it to Gwi-ma, Rumi sways on her feet before her knees buckle -- her body remembering that it had been hurt. 

Currently: the gang are hiding out at Miyeong’s apartment, and spent the morning working through some very mundane trauma… only for Minji’s grandmother to give them a reminder that the wraiths are looking for them. At least they got to see the healing spirit first?

"We have been taking an active stance," says Celine, calmly but firmly disagreeing with Rumi. "We would only put ourselves in greater danger by moving faster than is wise. We have been training the others to reduce the risk of engagement. We have been gathering information on our enemy, who we had not even located until two days ago, and about whom we are still lacking significant intelligence. We have been recovering from extremely compromising injuries," and she says that with so much annoyance and distaste Zoey has to hold back a giggle.

(Okay, maybe she's also had a beer in the last half hour. Or a little tiny bit more than that. But they cracked open the samosa box for an afternoon snack and Zoey's tolerance for spice is moderate at best, she needed something to cool herself off. It's fine, she could still do the alphabet backwards. She can do that when she's plastered, actually, courtesy of working in a library shelving books for several years, but the point is, it's fine, she didn't actually giggle, she just wanted to. She's totally good.)

"We have been taking action appropriate to our original situation," Rumi says, just as polite, just as firm. "Our situation has changed. The honorable river spirit has restored Mira and yourself to your full capabilities. Zoey and Miyeong-nim have shown consistent accuracy with the shinkal, and Mira has gained access to her family's knowledge of wraiths. Our enemy escalates, and threatens Minji-nim's family. Our response must change as well."

Celine is unmoved. "Minji-ssi's grandmother is safe, and has bought us time," and then Zoey completely zones out the rest, because there's a tapping, on the windowpane, and she pulls herself out of the armchair and beelines to let Suspicion-ssi in.

"You're early for the party," Zoey murmurs, though there isn't really a reason to be quiet; Rumi and Celine fell silent once they saw what she was doing.

The spirit caws and puffs up, I'm doing you a favor, there can't be a party until I'm here, drawing a chuckle out of Celine that she tries unsuccessfully to disguise as a cough.

But she turns grim at Suspicion-ssi's next words, turning back to Rumi with a heavy sigh, and then a wry smile and an apologetic dip of her head and shoulders. "It seems you have the clearer view of the situation, Rumi-nim."

"What did the bird say," says Miyeong, fingers pressing into her temples, a woman who does not want the answer to her question but feels obligated to ask it anyway.

A part of her is still processing the rest of her conversation with Minji-ssi’s grandmother—a formidable woman, even in passing, but certainly one willing to gossip about her granddaughter’s habits once she understood that Celine only wanted to help—in spite of how much the current one demands all of her attention.

Kkachi-ssi continues, and it’s all she can do not to wince.

“And, uh, working their way up, obviously,” Zoey adds. “Big goal is Gwi-Ma. But right now it’s dead guy central.”

“How far along are they?” Mira asks, gaze lidded and calm, but voice tight.

The summoner is an amateur, Kkachi-ssi declares. The wraith has to teach him everything. Unfortunately, the sacrifice won’t need to be big to get results, so it’ll probably be soon once he gets the idea.

“Uh, still on bookwork?” Zoey translates. “But with everything… it’s gonna be easy once they get all the pieces in place.”

“Wraiths can only be summoned at twilight,” Mira points out. “So we’ve got at least a day and a half?”

Kkachi-ssi caws her agreement. You are not skipping my party.

“We would never,” Celine agrees. It would be a great insult to meet the aid and favor of a spirit not just with no returned tribute, but with the promise thereof and then its withdrawal. She would hate to see that beak set to work with any actual malice.

This, perhaps, is too solemn a response for Kkachi-ssi’s taste, as she sends her triplicate side eye Celine’s way.

“Suspicion-ssi reminds us that the party is mandatory,” Zoey explains and, from the looks on Minji-ssi and Rumi-nim’s faces, probably quite necessarily.

“Well, at least there’s that,” Miyeong-ssi says brightly. “How fucked are we in general, though? We brought six to ten down to four to eight, what would this go up to?”

She reports, through Zoey— who, based on Celine's varying, not-quite-controlled facial expressions, is working very hard to moderate the magpie's snark— that several of the wraiths frequenting the target building wear the logo of Changwon Commercial Shipping, that they're in and out at roughly eight-hour intervals, and they have at least one car ("Hate that for us," says Mira flatly, with the voice of experience). The magpie remembers the plate, and Miyeong writes it down for further inspection, and gives the most gracious thank-you she can manage; the spirit did find out everything she asked it for, after all.

Zoey's polite "She says you're welcome" would be more convincing if the bird wasn't squinting all six eyes and sniggering when she says it.

And then Zoey and Mira are off to set up the folding table, and Minji and Rumi are putting the food and alcohol out in the kitchen, buffet-style, and it's Thursday, so Miyeong goes out on the balcony to water her plants. Because this is the day she waters her plants. Restraining herself from starting a fight with a bird is not a factor.

Celine follows her out and leans against the railing, amused. "You know she picks on you because you react so strongly."

"Bully logic from the spirit world," Miyeong shoots back.

"Friendly teasing," Celine corrects, but she does sound genuinely sympathetic.

And honestly, Miyeong will take the pity; it's probably better than whatever she'll get if she actually tries to argue with a mudang about a spirit, so she just shakes her head and changes the subject.

"How was the conversation with Minji's gran?"

"…. illuminating," says Celine.

"Yeah?" Miyeong's done watering, so she just leans next to Celine. "What's our concern level, there, generally? Because mine isn't zero."

Celine considers it, the slightest crease in her brow. "… not zero, no. Her grandmother had some insight, but..." She pauses. Still thinking about it, Miyeong thinks. Illuminating, but maybe not immediately obvious what to do with it.

"She'll need you," Celine finally says, one thing at least that she's apparently sure of, "once the wraiths are dealt with and she's able to start contacting her friends."

Start finding out who's left alive, she means.

Miyeong tips her head back and traces a striated line of cirrus clouds across the sky. "You know, some of them are my friends too?"

It feels strange to say, comes out uncertain, but—

"It's not, I haven't thought about it at all, but. Take Donghyun, he's a radiology tech, constantly snacking, has a niece he helps his sister take care of, he's an absolute idiot. If you asked me who I'm close to, his name wouldn't cross my mind— but I've known him for the better part of a decade, met his family, know his coffee order and his go-to cocktail after work. And if he was on shift that day? If I never see him again—"

She'd thought Minji didn't like her. She'd thought Sieun found her vaguely annoying on Minji's behalf. She thought the whole lot of them mostly just tolerated her because she was Yeonggi's girlfriend, and kept inviting her out once he was gone out of, what, inertia? But she was wrong about Minji, probably wrong about all of them, and if she never hears Donghyun try to goad someone into a stupid bet again…

Miyeong pauses a moment, and then snorts, still studying the sky. “Would you believe that you’re not the first person to tell me that?”

Celine is certainly startled by it, and she afreely admits as much.

“Yeonggi,” Miyeong explains, a slight smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I always thought he didn’t like it when I talked about my exes because he was insecure, but… it might not have all been that.”

A surprisingly clear-eyed view of the man, after Minji-ssi’s assessment that she’d thought him too good for her. Idly, Celine wonders what he was really like.

“Who would you say you’re close to?” she asks, instead, which is a slightly more relevant matter.

Miyeong-ssi does not answer her for a long time.

It’s not the first time that she has had such a response to that kind of question. She’s seen it in almost every way possible, she thinks.

“You?”

Everything stops. Fragments. Reconstitutes itself, fundamentally changed.

Miyeong laughs a little. “Kind of pathetic, but—I don’t know. I’ve been out of practice with talking to people about hard things for a long time now. So… Minji, and you, and the kids.”

“Fear has a tendency to linger in the strangest of places,” Celine replies, almost automatically.

She feels as if someone has changed the oxygen content of the air, or maybe the strength of gravity. Lightheaded. She holds on to the balcony rail tightly, hoping not to fall, though she knows that it’s silly.

You.

“…I guess so,” Miyeong says. “You’ve got a proverb for everything, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” Celine answers.

Zoey glances at Rumi, and her face turns a pretty shade of bright red. “I am not translating that.”   The spirit nips her ear.

Zoey wrings her hands, “Suspicion-ssi would like you to shift the table to the left.”

Rumi smiles and bows to the spirit. “Of course, Kkachi-nim.”

Under the magpie spirit’s haughty gaze, Mira and Minji transfer the platters and glasses from the folding table onto Miyeong’s table.

Rumi lifts the folding table and shifts it to the left. The magpie spirit caws indignantly.  “Ah, suspicion-ssi meant the other table.”

Mira bites back a sigh, the bird gives them all the smuggest side-eye as they clear the platters from Miyeong’s table and put them back on the folding table.

With one smooth movement, Rumi lifts Miyeong’s table as easily as Mira would lift a paper cup. She has to fight to keep her jaw closed as Rumi’s shirt does precious little to hide her lithe muscles working underneath.

Minji gives her a knowing look. Mira can’t find it in herself to care, as with grace that would make a ballerina green with envy, Rumi moves the table to the magpie spirit’s desired spot.  “Is this location acceptable, Kkachi-nim?” She asks.

From her perch on Zoey’s head, the magpie spirit radiates judgment. 

Confusion then surprise shoots across Zoey’s face. “But she jus—” 

The bird cuts Zoey off with a nip on the ear.

She sighs and gives way.  “Suspicion-ssi asks that you, uh, put that table down, she meant the other other table” 

Other other table? Mira looks around Miyeong’s apartment. Rumi has moved all the… Her eyes catch on the coffee table.  

“Oh, as you wish,” Rumi says, as she strides over to the coffee table and carefully removes the TV remote.

The coffee table is a squat, heavy thing; it has clearly been well-loved. Rumi lifts it like it’s nothing.

Mira’s throat goes dry.

“Do you need help with that?” Mira asks, mostly for the sake of saying something.  

A playfully affronted look crosses Rumi’s face, “There is no need—” With that dangerous gleam in her eye, Rumi shifts her weight slightly and pulls one hand out from under the coffee table. “—for I am quite comfortable here.”

Mira’s jaw drops, the bird cackles and flits over to perch atop one of the nicer wine glasses. Her three eyes narrow at Mira.

She sees Zoey’s sharp intake of breath out of the corner of her eye. 

“Suspicion-ssi says you may put the coffee table down; she now requests karaoke.” Zoey translates. Minji crows with laughter. She says something about fetching Celine and Miyeong.

Mira doesn’t hear her as she feels the floor drop out from under her.

Yup! She's open to any outfits (I just like drawing her with jackets and loose pants)

Here's a sketchy refs

art by a mysterious and unknowable being who does not wish to be named

A story and artwork for my beloved friend @chrysa3tos! I hope that you are having a wonderful day. Thank you for your art, thank you for being you, thank you for your friendship - thanks for an innumerable many things!

birdsong [zoerumi, 2.7k] AO3 link

“You’re not writing.” Rumi, while blunt, is more curious than accusatory. Zoey stares at her with a little tilt of her head, and it isn’t until she mutters a confused ’huh?’ that Rumi stammers out an explanation. “Oh. I just meant,” she scratches the back of her neck, setting down a tray of juice as she crouches near Zoey. “Your pencil moves differently when you’re writing—fast, like how you think. And you’re, uh.” Rumi awkwardly gestures towards her notebook, balanced on her knees as she sits on the floor by the opened sliding door of the hanok. “Oh!” Zoey grins. “I’m drawing! It’s—uh—come here.” She beckons Rumi over with an enthusiastic wave of her hand, until Rumi is peering over her shoulder. “It’s an oriental greenfinch—or at least I think so? There’s so many new birds here that I’ve never seen back home, I kinda wanna start drawing them all. I mean, I guess I lived in the city, so there wasn’t all that many birds to find, and I definitely didn’t hike as much as I could have, so—well, yeah, I’m just rambling now, and—” Rumi's listening. She's listening and looking intently at the margins of her notebook as Zoey holds it up for her to see, and there, a little ways to the side of a random drafted verse, is a drawing of the greenfinch. She’s pleasantly surprised by how carefully Rumi looks at it. "It's beautiful."

[past]

[Image ID: The Destiel confession meme edited so that Dean answers 'JK Rowling posted upskirt photos of a woman on Twitter' to Cas 'I love you'. /End ID]

No one doing this should be allowed to call themselves a feminist.