Chapter Text
Rumi finds him again in a dream. But not in the way she thinks.
The street they had met in before, in the silks of twilights, surrounds her, empty except for the twinkling string of lanterns in the distance. Rumi feels it more than sees it, until it prints into her mind like the flash of a camera. It feels so real, like she's actually here, like those times she went back after the battle, sometimes intentional, sometimes not. But she can't be. How can she be? How is she here right? She cannot recall for the life of her how she is standing here again, under the same sky, the same stars—
"Rumi."
Rumi will never mistake anything for that voice. She had heard it for such a short amount of time, longer in dreams—
"Rumi." It echoes around her, louder, more urgent, like the call is reaching out for her. It sounds so near, yet so distant at the same time. She turns, and she forgets how to breathe.
Jinu stands meters away, hair shining like the night, skin glowing in the light. He looks as radiant as the day she lost him, a sheen of clean blue flaring around him before clearing to reveal his human form - his true human form. He's still wearing that hoodie that looks like it probably has a price tag longer than its drawstrings. The tear in her heart feels physical, seizing in her chest like cannon fire.
"Jinu," Rumi finally manages to say, her voice breaking like her heart. It sounds futile, but she needs to say it: "I miss you. I wish you were here."
Jinu's face is strange. He looks... bewildered, like he can't fathom what is happening right now. He'd only look like that in his most human moments, she finds herself noting wistfully. His eyebrows twitch, like his confusion is only growing.
"Rumi," he says again, taking a step forward, eyes searching. "I am here."
"I know," she returns, not unkindly, her own self-pity washing over her like a wave in an ocean of sadness she might as well call her home now. "I mean, like. I wish you were here here."
"I am," insists Jinu, suddenly planted right in front of her. She cannot smell that cologne she caught a whiff of every time they came this close to one another, but she feels his warmth, feels it fan out through every nerve beneath her skin.
"I know," she nearly groans, casting her eyes heavenwards. Honestly, it tracks that he can be so infuriating even when he isn't really with her anymore-
"I am with you."
Rumi snaps her eyes back to Jinu. Did he just... contradict her own thought? Had she said it out loud? Where is she?
"I don't know where we are," Jinu says like an answer, which, to her shock, it is, "but we are here together. I am here with you, Rumi."
It doesn't make any sense. She can't understand. What is he saying? How is this happening? What is he saying? How does this feel so real? What is he saying? She tries to wrap her mind around the words, tries to remember how she ended up here—
Rumi opens her eyes.
Rumi isn't sure about a lot of things lately, but she feels sure about this: it had been Jinu, the real Jinu in her dream. It doesn't make any sense though. How is he speaking to her? Is he still in the beyond or whatever people called it? Is he in trouble? Is this even real? She thinks she's sure, but maybe a part of her, swimming below the currents in her heart, wants it to be true. She wants to see him again. There's so much she wants to tell him, so much she wants to do with him-
Rumi pauses. She sees her reflection freeze in the mirror of her bedroom. Her bed's still unmade, and the clock on her bedside table gleams neon purple in the soft light of the dawn. It's nearing six. She's been up for three hours now, pondering over the meaning of her dream, straining her mental and spiritual and occasionally physical muscles trying to 'contact' Jinu under some stray, half-baked notion of astral projection or whatever. Not surprisingly, it hadn't worked.
She had tried picturing him, the carefully crafted planes of his face, the broad slope of his shoulders, the gentle curve of his smile. Nothing.
She had tried calling to him, all in her mind because it had felt too embarrassing to say his name out loud in the emptiness of her room, with only her hair accessories to bear witness. Still nothing.
She had even considered checking up spiritual rituals and the like. Only then had the rational side of her brain clocked her with a sound argument: You're hella sleep deprived, Rumi. It may have been true, but it hadn't made her any less disappointed.
Rumi considers telling Mira and Zoey about it. Out of habit, she shoots it down instantly, then slows down with the aid of a deep breath, feeling the air attempt to soothe her frazzled thoughts. She could tell them, wants to tell them definitely, but she doesn't even know what's happening. The next time it happens—
She says it like it's sure to happen again, but knowing Jinu, it will happen again, because him and her? Neither one of them is the kind to stop at a wall. She shouldn't have been surprised that he hadn't let death - or whatever happened to him - stop him from finding a way back to her.
The thought is so, so sappy, and she would rather die than say any of that aloud, but it tugs at her heartstrings in a way that spins herself giddy.
Rumi rises from the seat in front of the mirror and pads over to the window, observing the glow of the clouds threading past the sun. She sees her reflection again in the glass of the window, soft and faded like an old painting of a portrait lost in time. If this was a movie, maybe Jinu's face would suddenly shimmer into view behind her, but it doesn't.
She tries to get on with her days, practicing and dancing and singing like all the times before. She tries not to think about the dream; perhaps the conscious thought of it chases it out of her reach, as is the case with dreams. Days drag by, much like they did after the battle for the world, where she had felt so raw and exposed, so broken and alone, the sadness lingering in her chest like a numb shadow devoid of form. Being with her friends had helped, their smiles and embraces carrying a healing power only achieved through acceptance. It had made her happy back then, which would in turn remind her of Jinu, how he had sacrificed himself for her to attain this happiness that he hadn't found himself worthy of.
He doesn't show up when she falls asleep the next few times. She doesn't know what caused him to join her in the dream from before. She isn't giving up though. She has to see him again, insist that he was wrong to think himself unworthy, that he belongs by her side.
It's a thought that pervades her mind even now, as she watches a video of the Saja Boys, focusing only on him, drinking in the sight of him, submerging herself in the lilts of his voice. The screen is a bright fog in her vision, the saccharine colors blazing before her. The fatigue resting in the center of her back seeps through her bones, her eyelids are heavy, her head moves to meet more of the pillow—
"Rumi."
Rumi wastes no time. She starts, feeling the ground beneath her back. She's lying somewhere, feeling softness under her palms. It feels like the carpet in her bedroom.
It is her bedroom, and hovering above her lying form is Jinu. The sky is glowing like it had been before, dipping her whole room in hues of blue, painting Jinu into a vision of midnight beauty. Something shimmers faintly around him, an aura as blue as her blade, when he had transferred his soul into it to give her strength. His eyes look into her, the warm brown of them disappearing in the darkness.
"Jinu?" Rumi whispers tentatively, slowly leaning up with a prop of her elbow. He is still bent over her, gazing down at her, reminding her of the time he had bumped into her, reminiscent of a scene from a romantic drama film. She stares at him, searches for any sign of deceit, falsehood, something that will tell her this isn't real, that it's all an illusion woven of her deep sorrow. It takes everything in her power not to reach for him, to touch his face.
His eyes tear away from her, scan the room appraisingly. When he looks back, he's smirking. "Couldn't wait to get me into your bedroom, huh?" he teases softly.
It's like a dam breaks, emotion bursting out of every crack etched on her soul. It's him. It's really him. If she hadn't truly believed in the existence of magic and miracles, this cements it in a metaphorical crescendo of the choir of her heart. Rumi launches forward, wraps her arms around his shoulders in the tightest hug she can manage. This close, she can't catch any of his scent, but he feels solid in her arms, warm against her chest. She buries her face into the place where his neck meets his shoulder. Tears slide silently down her cheeks. Her nose burns with the onslaught of more tears. Breathing becomes immaterial.
The healing power in an embrace shines through here as well, when Jinu returns her hug with almost twice as much force, lifting her onto her knees as he falls to his own. It's like he is trying to convey every thought he's had in her absence, squeezing her like it'll keep her here beside him. Her head is spinning, the whole possibility of this feeling like absolute impossibility, but she doesn't want it to end. She never wants it to end. She doesn't care if she never wakes up; all she wants is to live in this moment, this hold forever. Till the end of eternity.
"That sounds like a great song," Jinu mumbles beside her, his voice rumbling through her entire being, the teasing stirring up feelings of sweet familiarity. A realization dawns on her right then, a theory as strange as the moment she's living right now.
With great reluctance that almost keeps her locked in place instead, she draws back from him, still holding onto him in the sudden fear that releasing him will make this wonderful moment vanish. "Can you..." Rumi tests out her voice; it creaks with the weight of everything she had been feeling coupled with all she is feeling now. "Can you hear my thoughts?"
Jinu stares at her. One corner of his mouth tilts up in a very sheepish fashion not entirely characteristic of him - or rather, not what one would expect from someone as confident and charismatic as he appears to be. "Not exactly," he finally relents, sounding unsure himself. "It's more like— It's like I just know what you're feeling. Maybe because this is your dreamscape, after all."
"What the hell is a dreamscape?" she demands bemusedly with a little shake of her head to punctuate.
Jinu then shrugs, the turn to his mouth becoming flippant. "I don't know. It seemed like the word to use."
"Okay, wow, thank you, Professor Jinu." The snappy remark comes quicker than lightning, and much softer than it. "Any more brilliant notions you wish to share with us, like how the hell are you even here?"
"How should I know?" Jinu replies with the same frustration a person might have when they hear their flight has been delayed. "You think I wanted to spend eternity haunting the dreams of some hunter? Although," he continues with the same annoying smirk accompanied by a downright devilish twinkle in his eyes, "it's nice to see you hate it just as much as me."
It feels like a ploy, some kind of barely veiled attempt at testing the waters between them. They hadn't exactly concluded things in an ideal way, but still, hadn't they just been embracing like two lovers in an epic ballad passed down generations, the love never dimming in the cadence of the song.
"I don't hate it," Rumi mutters with a shake of her head. "I just- I can't believe it."
"You and me both," he agrees, and that sweetly sheepish smile is back on his lips, the one that makes him look incredibly endearing. "Aw," he suddenly says, the guile gone. "You think I'm cute."
She shoves him away. This mind-link thing is starting to feel like a real problem. Jinu flops backwards, but easily turns it into some weird roll into a standing position. He reaches a hand down to help her up. She eyes it with challenge. "Oh, now he's a gentleman," she teases, accepting the hand and rising to her feet.
"Hey, I was hired to spy on you for a reason." His expression is haughty. His hand hasn't left hers. "Because I'm charming - very gentlemanly."
"Here I thought it was for your skill set as a musician."
"For your information, that whole operation?" Jinu taps his temple. "This brain, right here."
"Hold on." Rumi pauses, cupping her free hand to her ear like she's assessing a noise. "Sorry, I thought I heard an echo when you tapped your head there."
Jinu frowns and shoves at her with no real force, and Rumi catches at his wrist to pry open more space so that she can slip in and hug him again. She doesn't hear a heartbeat when her ear presses to his strong chest.
A terrible suggestion erupts in her mind then: is this some kind of divine intervention so they could be at peace? In a flash of brash and utter selfishness, she finds herself entirely opposed to the idea. Why should they resolve things when things had never even begun between them?
"I feel the same," Jinu murmurs into the bare space hanging between their still-close bodies. Rumi feels a bolt of surprise surge into her at him agreeing with her thoughts. It should have been unthinkable, stupidly self-serving, a viciously greedy intention. But this is Jinu, the same man who stood before her so many times (yet not enough times) and looked at every part of her: the good, the bad, the hidden. And he accepted every bit of her, every single part of her that she herself had tried to erase, had been so desperate to cover. Of course he's standing by her now.
Rumi breathes out a little laugh, the sound more fond than she intended. "Seriously, you've got to stop doing that."
"I think it's because I gave you my soul that time," Jinu states in their next dream meeting, speaking like it's a perfectly normal topic of conversation, not something earth-shattering and life-changing and quite literally soul-exposing. They're even strolling through her 'dreamscape' as if they're just two people on a regular outing, because in here, they can. Jinu walks beside her, seemingly more interested in assessing the setting before them: it's the city at night on a weekday, when it's guaranteed to be quiet, nothing but long, vast streets and the hum of street signs around them like the buzz of cicadas in the summer. Their neon shades stream over the sidewalks in washes of clean-cut color. They accentuate Jinu's clear and chiseled profile outlined in the corner of her eye. She tries not to stare, much like she tries not to think about how close they walk together, space becoming nonessential, even unwanted.
Rumi blinks. "What do you mean?" she asks in an attempt to refocus on the conversation. They're passing by an award-winning ramen shop that she recalls her and Mira and Zoey sprinting to after one of their early concerts, before they had hit viral status. The memory feels almost corporal, settling around her as the image sits in her mind's eye. Something slips around the entrance of the shop, darting behind Jinu's form before her like light dancing off a shiny ribbon in the breeze. It almost looks like the deep pink of Mira's hair, ducking past the doorframe. A laugh trills after, sounding exactly like Zoey's.
Rumi halts in her tracks, eyes fastened to the shop's entrance. Nothing materializes now, the yellow light the only thing present in the doorframe. Jinu follows her gaze. "You see?" he observes gently, lifting his chin once to indicate the shop. "This is your dream, your mind, your memories. But I gave you my soul during the battle, which allows me to visit you in this dimension."
The street around them feels tangible, filling every corner of her brain like hands suddenly clapping together. It doesn't really compute to her, but that doesn't exactly matter, which she voices as such. "That's nice and all," she begins a bit absentmindedly, her eyes flitting back to drink in the glow of the signs on Jinu's face, "but maybe we should just be glad to see each other again. I thought-" Her voice catches, breath leaving her all at once as her heart stutters. The words feels harder to say even though they had been branded truth just days before. "I thought I'd never see you again."
Jinu pauses in his stride, angling himself to face her. He looks so entirely real. The need to reach out to him, touch him with her hands burns within her like an ache. Like a sudden blip on a radar screen, she senses his hand lying at his side twitch, as if in response to her thoughts, as if he too wishes to touch her. In a daze that needs no conscious command, the feeling of his hands on hers materializes, his fingers curling tenderly around her own, his palm warm against the back of her hand, his fingertips tracing softly over her marks. Rumi has no idea how they ended up a breath away from each other, doesn't recall any effort made to move closer, but here they stand, the fingers of Jinu's other hand gliding over her cheek, the caress igniting her nerves in a fashion never felt before.
"I'm here now, Rumi," he whispers to her, her name falling off his lips with a tenderness as ardent as the caresses of his fingers on his skin. She wants to close her eyes, sink into this moment and never come up for oxygen again, but she lets her eyes remain open, unable to find the way out of his captivating gaze. Warm brown, not gleaming gold. How strange—
"There's so much I want to say to you," Jinu continues, but Rumi feels the words more than hears them, the brush of his sentence lingering on her lips as he lies barely a beat away from her.
"Then tell me," she replies on a desperate breath, eyes falling shut, impatience almost getting the better of her—
"RUMI!"
Rumi snaps awake. Shock shudders through like an electric blast. Her eyelids protest against opening as she tries to blink away her disorientation. Disappointment, dread, dismay war within her as she takes in the cry of the morning sunrise beyond her balcony. A knock thunders through her room, so strong that it seems to threaten the integrity of her door.
"Rumi, are you alive in there?" Mira's voice cuts through the morning fog.
"Move aside!" Zoey's shrill voice joins her from a somewhat farther distance. "I'm going to bust down the door!"
"Are you mocking me? I'll bust it down. Just get out of the way."
Rumi dashes out of bed.
Rumi had promised herself that once she had figured this out, she would inform the girls. However, as they sit around their living room the next night, Zoey scribbling away in yet another highlighter-bright notebook and Mira cranking up the volume of the action adventure movie on the screen because dialogue in those things are just so much quieter than explosions, Rumi finds herself at a loss for words. How is she supposed to phrase this? Will they even get it? Maybe it'd be better to keep it to herself-
Her eyes catch the demon marks carved deep into her arms, dull under the manmade lights hanging above them. It flashes like a reminder, searing away the doubts. It physically takes everything in her to rewire her thinking, like it did the past few times she tried to keep things to herself out of habit. So many things were lost in the battle against Gwi-Ma, but so many things had been gained at the same time.
She had lost Jinu; now she has him back, in a way, but she will not let this once-in-a-hundred-lifetimes chance go to waste. She will not let the second chance she had been granted with her best friends go to waste either.
"I-" The moment Rumi lets the word past her lips, nearly drowned out in the epic crash of another sci-fi-chic vehicle, Mira whips out the remote, slamming down on the pause button. Zoey tosses her notebook over her shoulder, fluffy-cap pen and all. They both latch their eyes onto her in a joint union of attention, like two puppies sensing the crack in their owner's resolve to not feed them an extra treat. It may be a bit crude, but their eyes are literally just as perceptive, just as big and round and probing. Rumi flinches at the exaggerated show of interest, but this is literally the two other girls at their 50 percent. She knows they can get much more curious.
"I-"
"Go on," barks Mira in her oddly supportive way. To further cement her demand, she clicks the television off and throws the remote to whatever land Zoey flung her notebook to.
"I didn't even say anything yet," Rumi mumbles awkwardly, still bristling under the other girls' complete attention. It's sweet and something to cherish; she realizes this belatedly, deep in her core. But it is also extremely unsettling because they're all such intense people that only the three of them had seemed capable of handling one another.
"We know something's on your mind," Zoey chimes in, eyes boring so hard into Rumi's face that they look ready to pop out. "Tell us."
"You seemed so weird the past few days," Mira immediately follows, her gaze usually too aloof to meet; now it's fierce. "Spill."
Rumi almost feels her throat constrict. She wills herself to get used to this, to just say what she needs to say, no matter what. They'll understand, they'll understand. Then again, she barely understands. "I..." she begins hesitantly, struggling to find the words that best describes the current situation. She finally decides on simply stating the fact: "I've been dreaming about Jinu."
The other girls are silent, still looking at her with searching eyes. After an excruciatingly long moment, Mira replies, "Uhh, okay. I mean, I don't blame you. He was fine as—"
"I dream about Mystery sometimes," Zoey admits on a heavily wistful sigh, chin falling into her palm as she settles into the image replicating a fairytale maiden gazing yearningly out of her gigantic window.
While Mira shoots Zoey a judging look, Rumi waves her hands around desperately. "No, I mean-" She releases a sigh so deep that it causes her shoulders to sag. "I mean, he's in my dreams. Jinu. Him. Like, actually him. His soul."
Rumi is met with silence again, and this time, it appears that the gravity of the situation finally dawns on them. "Ah," Mira and Zoey both draw out the word toned with perfect understanding.
"That's... kinda creepy," Mira states in muted shock.
"I wonder if that's happening with Mystery," Zoey wonders aloud.
"He can't, like, hear us, can he?" Mira demands with blatant disgust.
"No!" exclaims Rumi. "I mean, I don't know- Probably not!"
"Hi, Jinu!" Zoey greets all too eagerly.
"Stop that!" Mira hisses.
Rumi sighs, feeling a little lighter after revealing her thoughts. Well, not all of them, and Mira seems to sense it, because she eyes Rumi in a way that is reminiscent of the mind-meld their songs conjure up. "Something else is on your mind," she tests, tone more sober now.
Rumi is quiet for a moment. "It's just..." She doesn't want to say it out loud, because it feels dangerous, like voicing the thought might cement it as reality. "I don't know if this is temporary, or some weird way for his soul to find peace." There it is again: that wretched selfishness. Shouldn't it feel wrong to want to keep Jinu here, to see him every night. She knows it's not sustainable; something will eventually come up, but she has never been allowed to dream her own wishes until recently. Perhaps she is overindulging.
"Well," Mira starts, and Rumi peers at her imploringly, hoping for some scrap of sense among this. "I know it's hard for you to have him, then lose him, then have him again. And- He's not a demon still, right? Not, like, judging, just- Uhh-"
"No, no, it's just him." Rumi remembers his skin, clear and glowing, the contrast stark against her own markings as they brush fingers, slide arms around each other. The memory makes her warm, wishing for his touch again, even if it is literally just a ghost of it. "I think because it's his soul, you know?"
Mira and Zoey, in all fairness, put on a good show of knowing, nodding their heads while empathy shines in their eyes and radiates in their hands as they clasp Rumi in their hold. Mira's cheek presses to the top of her head while Zoey buries herself in her chest, thin arms circled round her waist. Rumi brings them in even closer, something weighing in her so much in such a good way that she feels suspended in time, like the feeling one has experiencing a sunrise high up on a mountaintop — serene and utterly, irrevocably affirming.
"I think," Zoey says, voice muffled in Rumi's sweatshirt, "that you should enjoy this time while you have it. If you keep thinking about how it will go wrong, you'll end up regretting not trying to make it go right."
"She's right," Mira concurs, still resting her head on Rumi's. "You have this bad habit of looking at all the negative possibilities. What about the positive ones? I know I'm not one to talk about staying optimistic, but maybe this is more of a second chance for you guys, for you to say what you wanted to say."
Rumi feels her eyes burn. The reflection of the three of them huddled on the living room couch is painted clear over the outside night, the thread of the cityscape's lights laced through them.
"Thanks, guys—"
"Shush!"
"Enough of that."
The next time Rumi dreams, she stands in an empty street that she doesn't recognize. The land looks like the carcass of another time — all dust and grime and misery.
Jinu is nowhere to be seen.