Archive of Our Own

After the collective psychosis that was the Saja Boys's final concert, the thunderstorm gone as quickly as it came, the public looked to their reliable stars for a sense of routine and normalcy. Rumi, Mira, and Zoey threw themselves into the normalcy at full speed, trying to bring the country back to a state of calm. It went well for a few weeks, but they neglected to check in on their own internal processing which quickly led to burnout. 

Rumi, used to working nonstop anyway, was surprisingly the first to run out of steam. While Mira bluntly handled the press and Zoey handled the ideas and scheduling for Huntrix's new projects, Rumi tried to get involved with everything else, and found she was unable to really help Bobby or the rest of the team with the extra affairs. Bobby was as kind as could be, trying to find simple tasks for Rumi to complete, but from the reactions of the rest of the management she got the sense that her presence was doing more harm than good. The administrative workers were too nervous and offput to treat her like any other coworker, and the logistics that were never handled by the talent became stressful when Rumi realized how little she knew about running the show from backstage. As leader of Huntrix, she felt surprisingly out of depth and it quickly shook her confidence to realize how much she was used to having everything handled, and just being told when and where to show up.

And so, curled up on the couch wrapped in the fuzzy tail of a certain blue tiger, Rumi was the first member of Huntrix to announce a creative hiatus.

Zoey was the next, after too many nights of Rumi poking for ideas and Zoey coming up with nothing that sounded novel or exciting to do. She quickly got used to planning around the sneaky Saja Boys, coming up with full notebooks of ideas on how to upstage or hijack their events, and without the rival band as a spring point, all the ideas in her notebook fell flat and lifeless. 

Mira was the longest to last, finding it easy to talk to the press in the beginning and keep attending events and meet and greets to keep the band culturally relevant. But even she was missing the demonic tension, the creative competition, and soon attending galas and shows solo became boring. 

Mira and Zoey jointly announced on a video they would be joining Rumi in her hiatus, which would be no longer than a few weeks of rest to come up with new ideas for the fans.

Before long, the three girls had "couch time" nightly, finding a certain soft tiger too cozy to resist, and the nights became weeks, and weeks became months.

No one acknowledged the real reason for their inactivity until one night on the late-night programming, while half-asleep, a sampling of the Sodapop jingle played in a commercial.

"Was that..." Rumi bolted upright on the couch, but the commercial had changed by the time her eyes opened. She looked over to Mira who was fast asleep, and Zoey, whose shoulders moved almost imperceptibly in her dream to the viral dance. The last time Rumi heard that song was when the Saja Boys were still roaming the streets causing trouble, and the sudden twist of grief in her heart caught her by surprise. It shouldn't have been a surprise, since it had been there for quite some time, but she had refused to acknowledge it since.

"Jinu..." Rumi sighed, burying herself deeper in the warm blue fur. Since giving his soul to Rumi to aid in defeating Gwi-ma, Rumi's internal world had been unacceptably dull. The twinkling of the evening lights paled in comparison to the lone beam of light from Jinu's soul, which hadn't been seen since he fused with her sword. Rumi wished she asked Jinu more about the demon world, if the demons vanquished by the Hunters re-formed underground or if they were permanently cut down by their blades. She only knew they were "killed" in the sense that they were purged from the living human plane, but no one had bothered to explain what living as a damned spirit was like. She suspected that before her deceased mother, no one even dared to care at all.

A tap-tap-tapping on the back window broke Rumi out of her thoughts, as the hatted Crow played a rudimentary melody on the glass outside. It must have been after 3AM, so there better be a good reason for this interruption. Rumi extricated herself from the soft tiger, who merely blinked at the movement with its wide, solemn eyes.

Rumi pulled the glass door open and was surprised at the warm breeze that wafted into the penthouse. "What could you possibly need at this time, that was so important it couldn't wait?" she asked the bird, rubbing at her patterned arms despite it not being all that chilly outside.

The bird merely jumped to the handrail and kept staring at Rumi with its three big yellow eyes. Rumi took the bait, wandering closer to the rail and staring out into the expanse of the city, twinkling neon lights against an inky sky. 

"I wonder what Jinu thought of all this when he first came up here. After 400 years, I'm sure he was quite shocked," she told the bird, not even sure yet if it was capable of understanding speech. "He seemed to blend in pretty well, but I imagine it was quite different from the life he was used to while he was alive." 

A human, like her. Older than her mom, older than generations of Hunters even. Just centuries of shuffling endlessly in front of the eternally burning fire that was Gwi-ma. Was he conscious for that entire time, fully aware of the passage of time as it painstakingly grated onwards, or was 400 years simply a blur of consciousness? She didn't have much conversation with the other Saja Boys, but even Zoey and Mira had mentioned they had very little to talk about when not singing in the public eye or following Jinu's direction. It was as if they were created for a singular purpose, and had no memory or identity beyond their brief lives as Abby, Romance, Baby, and Mystery.

The crow jumped onto Rumi's hand gripping the railing and gave it a few rude pecks. When a few half hearted attempts at shooing it away were unsuccessful, she flicked her wrist to summon her sword for the first time since defeating Gwi-ma, intending to lazily swipe at the creature without harming it. However, upon holding the shining hilt of her dutiful blade, she heard a voice on the warm breeze that she had already been forced to accept she'd never hear again. 

"So cold..." a voice she knew all too well spoke in her ear. "...Rumi has all but forgotten me."

She gasped in shock and let go of the sword in her surprise, re-grabbing it as it almost took a tumble over the edge of the guardrail and down several stories of penthouse. In the blue flash of her blade, a familiar pair of eyes stared back at her, mouth turned upwards in amusement. Rumi dismissed the blade and darted her eyes around and behind her, convinced she was finally in the 6th stage of grief known as Delusion. However, there was no Jinu with laughing eyes peering around any nook or cranny of the platform.

She shook her head. It couldn't be that she just saw Jinu. She summoned the sword a second time, determined to dispel her temporary hallucination, but was somehow equally surprised to see the same laughing face reflected in the pane of her neon demon-slaying sword.

"I got you twice, and I didn't even have to do anything myself!" the voice of Jinu melodiously taunted a badly shocked Rumi. She was in disbelief - there was no way he was simply there the entire time, spirit hidden away in her weapon this entire time?

"If you're really real, tell me something only Jinu would know!" Rumi accusingly shouted at the blade. 

"That may be difficult Rumi, for anything you know about me could be made up by your memories, and anything you've never learned of me you'd have no way of checking the truth of." He spoke with a gentle, teasing tone that spoke more volumes of his validity than anything he could have possibly said otherwise.

"Jinu, have you really been in my blade the entire time since the battle?" Rumi asked urgently. 

"I was beginning to think you'd have forgotten entirely of me, Rumi. You haven't visited me in quite a long time." Jinu spoke into the warm evening breeze from inside the neon blade. "You must be incredibly busy saving the world with your music and had no use for your sword, so I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see you again in your lifetime."

With a lurch, Rumi briefly wondered if she would have ever summoned her sword again now that Gwi-ma was defeated and realized with a panic there was a good chance she may not have until it might have been time to train a new generation of Hunters.

"I had no idea...I thought you were completely gone," Rumi spoke uneasily, absentmindedly running her finger along the cool broad side of the sword. "I saw you breaking apart before my eyes. How are you here?"

"Oh Rumi," he said fondly, "have you already forgotten? I gave you my soul. I quite distinctly remember imbuing my power into your weapon, and with it my consciousness as well. For all intents, I'm stuck here with you for the foreseeable future. But I have no where else to be these days, so I'm okay with it."

Rumi peered into the sword, it was like Jinu was just on the other side of a small pane of glass, felt so close but impossibly far at the same time. "Can I get you out of there?"

Jinu shook his head. "Your guess is as good as mine, Rumi. But I'm not going anywhere. We have time to figure it out, if you're interested. If not, that's cool too, but I might get a little bored in here all by myself without someone to talk to."

Rumi's heart leapt in her chest. She would take every day trying if it meant there was a chance to break Jinu free. 

"Rumi..." Jinu started quietly. "I'm sorry for how I treated our last few moments together. I spent too much time angry at myself to properly appreciate being with you, and now I wish I could do nothing more than just stay by your side and watch Huntrix soar. I understand if you want your space, I wasn't very kind to you while I was...there. But if you believe in second chances, I want to make it up to you. I'll be truthful always and I'll find ways to make you happy", he cleared his throat. "If you want that."

"Oh Jinu," Rumi shook her head definitively, "You've already absolved yourself of your sins to me. I'm already happy knowing you're...there, even if you're not...here. Truthfully, we haven't been working for months beyond a few videos posted online. Zoey's all out of ideas and Mira's all out of audacity. I've been out of passion and I haven't really found a place to belong that isn't onstage. I don't fit in among the staff or even in the normal world. Without the Saja Boys...and without you, Huntrix lost their fighting spirit," Rumi smiled sadly. "It's strange, we were so used to being the #1 for so long, and since you've been gone, we don't know how to go back to the way that things used to be."

Surprisingly, Jinu laughed, light and airy. "Ah, so you haven't quite forgotten about us yet. I have to admit, being in Saja Boys was one of the most fun experiences I've ever had in 400 years of being alive."

"I admit we weren't quite fond of you to begin with, but we really grew to like you - I mean - as an opponent or rival, not anything, like, more important than that! - " Rumi felt herself rambling nervously. 

"Oh? Well thank you for letting me know that," Jinu said, his expression and tone frustratingly even. "Perhaps I was mistaken then. Maybe, if you're willing to talk to me sometimes, I could have the chance to change your mind on that."

Rumi didn't say anything in return, but the embarrassed flush on her face and avoiding eye contact through the sword said enough to satisfy Jinu, for now.

"I think it looks late for you, at least from what little I can see through your sword, Rumi. Perhaps it's time for you to go rest." Jinu said kindly after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

"Okay." Rumi said at last dazedly, unsure which suggestion of Jinu's she was agreeing to.

"Sleep well, dear Huntress." Jinu smiled softly and faded as the sword dissipated with a curl of energy. Rumi watched herself quietly pad back into the penthouse and past the sleeping girls, shut off the TV with a click, and make her way into her bedroom. 

Resting atop the covers, she traced her softly glowing patterns with her fingers, feeling warm and tingly all over, the first feelings she's fully enjoyed in months. She drifted off peacefully, with hope in her heart.