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Even if I lose my way, it'll be fun
Because someday, it'll lead me to you
Doyoung, First Step
x
He finds her in the HUNTR/X practice room long after hours, seated at the far edge of the studio leaning against the mirror as the heavy beat to their upcoming title track thrums, reverberating through the corners of the small space.
Rumi hears and recognises Jinu’s steps before she sees him; one foot ever so slightly heavier than the other, another idiosyncrasy of his that she’d unconsciously filed away in her growing list of things that made Jinu, Jinu. Call it a Hunter’s senses, call it love. Both a lesson in fine-tuned memory, as far as she was concerned.
Rumi watches in the mirror as Jinu makes his way closer, until he finds his way right behind her.
“You’ve been working hard,” he comments.
She sighs, feeling a dull ache in her muscles that seeps deep into her bones as she turns towards him. She must look terrible now, sweaty and slumped and a mess all around. What she wouldn’t give for a trip to the bathhouse right now, or 20 years of Couch. Rumi had been able to ignore it throughout the entire dance practice as well as the hours after, but sitting here now, laid bare in her vulnerability, she feels so, so exhausted.
Rumi doesn’t reply, not hard enough, because something in the back of her mind suspects that it’ll lead to Jinu getting upset and nagging at her to get more rest. She knows, of course, that it comes from a place of genuine concern now that the disdain and facade of rivalry has long vanished, morphing into something softer around the edges that lets unspoken words tumble through. But she is nothing if not stubborn, and she worries that if she were to say anything, it’d be all the wrong things. She’s been worrying a lot about words unsaid, lately.
Jinu squats down, meeting her eyes. His fingers curl around a lilac strand that had fallen loose across her forehead, tucking it back into place slowly.
“You don’t have to work yourself so hard, you know,” he says. It’s not chastising or upset, just matter-of-factly. Ever pragmatic and understanding. “The Honmoon won’t fade for another year, and there are no more demons to fight for a while for now.”
Rumi scrubs tiredly at her face.
“I know. It’s just—I’m scared,” she admits. It feels shameful and raw, saying it out loud like this, but the walls of the practice room are soundproof enough and her heart was never one to hide from Jinu, anyway.
Jinu tilts his head, a silent request to continue.
“I’m still learning to accept it, I guess. Deep down, I know that the fans don’t care that I’m half-demon anymore, and they’ll still love us the same, but I’m still scared. That now more than ever, I have to prove myself to them.” Rumi swallows, “Zoey’s killed it with the lyrics and Mira’s created the most amazing choreography as usual, but I still need to come up with the point choreo part of the dance and I can’t seem to find anything that fits.”
“Maybe you just need some new inspiration.”
Rumi stares at him, suspicious.
“C’mon, let me.” Jinu stands and bows dramatically, resting a hand over his chest while he offers her the other one, beckoning.
“My lady,” he lilts, voice honeyed gold and saccharine, “May I have this dance?”
She rolls her eyes, but reaches out to accept nonetheless. Just to humour him this once. Jinu’s fingers wrap around her smaller ones, pulling gently as he helps her off the ground. He slips an arm around her back, tugging her closer. Smoothly, he shifts his hand against Rumi’s, slotting his fingers into the spaces between hers as they mould into each other. Complementary.
It's awkward, at first. Rumi has never been good at following, and now she stumbles like a newborn foal against Jinu’s confident steps, feet chasing after his and knees knocking in a way that mirrors the thumping in her chest.
“Slow down, just follow my lead,” Jinu laughs. Teasing as he was at the start, he seems to be taking to teaching her seriously; Rumi feels a little embarrassed still at the thought of slow dancing with Jinu, but is grateful to say the least that he was genuinely trying his best. His voice remains steady against her uncertain frame as he coaxes her body to match the tempo, “Trust me as I trust you.”
“Didn’t take you as the kind for slow dancing,” Rumi says, trying her best to do as he said.
Jinu hums, eyes closed as he sways gently. The music from her phone has stopped, replaced now by a gentle melody that drips like ambrosia from Jinu’s lips. He grins, pressing down on the small of her back to bring her just a hair’s breadth closer.
She follows, easier now.
“It’s not that hard,” Jinu reasons, “And plus, I’ve had a long time to learn.”
“You slow danced…with demons?” Rumi chokes back a giggle as Jinu shoots her a half-hearted glare. He jabs a foot over hers in warning, but it only makes her laugh more.
“I slow danced as a demon,” he corrects haughtily. “I might be old, but I wasn’t living under a rock for 400 years. Technically. I had to keep up with at least some of the Earthly trends, learn some human things, you know, in case—”
In case he had a chance to come back.
And now, in the days following his return — only now very much with a living soul embedded within him — he’d come to experience firsthand a myriad of things that were so terribly human. None of the experiences he'd had living on the fringes of their realms, watching these poor humans live out their fragile, mortal lives, could have prepared him for it. The hunger that struck his belly when he passed by carts on the streets grilling up meat skewers, the warmth of the golden rays of the Sun as she sang on stage where she belonged, the electricity that stirred up like a storm in his heart whenever he thought of the promise of a home to belong to. All his life he knew that all demons did was feel too much — too much guilt and shame and misery, but he’d forgotten that it was all humans did too — too much desire and too much yearning and too much love. They were two sides of the same coin, after all.
Jinu doesn’t complete his sentence. Instead, he crows, mirthful, “Well, at least that’s one thing I can hold above you. Didn’t think that you’d not know any dance.”
Rumi scoffs. “Excuse me, I do know how to slow dance. Just maybe not the best at it.”
“I can tell,” Jinu smirks. “But don’t worry, Teacher Jinu is here to save you.”
“Please, never call yourself that ever again.”
“Or what?” he teases, “I’m the one calling the shots here.” Jinu ignores her protests as he snickers, hands darting to hold Rumi by her back as he swivels without warning. She yelps as she feels her vision spin, and the next thing she knows she’s looking up into his eyes, dizzied. Overhead, the white lights of the practice studio shine down, harsh where they start but eventually curling around Jinu’s frame, enveloping him like a halo.
It feels like she should close her eyes, lest her vision starts to hurt, but against better judgement Rumi stares back, matching Jinu’s unwavering gaze. His gaze is intense yet tender, filled with an emotion she knows all too well but she dares not name, and — reflected in them she sees herself the same. Her heart jackhammers in her chest as he leans against her, foreheads bumping and sending molten fire down her spine.
“My dance, my rules.”
Then, just as quickly as he had dipped her, he pulls away, righting her until they settle back against each other.
“Jerk,” Rumi says with no bite. She sees the pink dusting her cheeks reflected in the mirror as he throws his head back in laughter, shaking as it fills the entirety of his body. Her body is warm still as her centre of gravity returns to normal, pinpricks running through her skin and core.
“Had to sweep you off your feet one way or another eventually,” he winks. “You totally fell for it though.”
Rumi huffs and ignores him, refusing to give Jinu the pleasure of knowing he’d one-upped her. Old Jinu would’ve gloated more, but now he just grins smugly, saying nothing. After all, they’re long past the stage of really competing to be the best. Variety show points, award show wins, kisses in the dark; who was counting, anyway?
“Really though, you ought to take a break sometime, you know,” Jinu murmurs.
Rumi finds herself leaning against him more now, feeling the toll of the hours of rigorous practice combined with the sudden moves that Jinu pulled earlier crashing into her like a brick wall. Jinu must feel it, but he lets it slide without saying anything, simply holding her tighter. Even if she was on her last sliver of energy, it would take a full army of demons and hunters both to drag Rumi to take even a half-hour of a real break when it’s so near comeback, but it was still worth a try. As stubborn as Rumi was, so is Jinu, and if it was worth it he’d try now and then again tomorrow, and again, and again. “When was the last time you let yourself take a day off, huh?”
Rumi looks up at Jinu, frowning. Jinu’s fingers twitch, and on instinct — or muscle memory — reaches to smooth out the furrow of her frown carefully. His thumb is calloused from countless years of playing his bipa, yet soft and delicate in the way it traces over her skin. Under his touch, she feels the creases between her brows soften, unfurling like the petals of a morning glory under the sun’s rays. Nothing was ever the way it seemed with Jinu, she supposes.
“But the fans…” she says weakly.
It’s Jinu's turn to frown now. “They’re your fans for a reason. They love you and the group, and they’d wait a year or five if it’s for you,” he replies. He says it, easy as anything; like the sky is blue and the grass is green and the sun rises every day. Ever pragmatic, understanding.
He’s playing dirty, using their love as an argument, but she finds that she can’t give a proper answer to it. Rumi knows, logically, that Jinu was correct about it (as he often was) but if she spent too long thinking about it, it was her who—
“I’ll try,” she offers. It’s genuine and as much as she can give, in this moment — Jinu smiles, satisfied — and that was enough.
They fall back into their easy rhythm, staying that way for a while, letting Jinu’s haunting tune meld around them and coat the walls of the practice room. Rumi eventually feels herself sinking into the motions, allowing him to guide her like waves to the moon, back and forth in this private performance for two. She’s never been one to follow, but here and now, she thinks maybe it’s not so bad after all, taking Jinu’s hand and letting him guide her in blind, like a trust fall.
“You’re good at this,” Jinu’s voice cuts through the fuzziness in Rumi’s mind. She must have closed her eyes sometime mid-dance, lulled into a light slumber by his gentle motions and steady warmth. “Always the best.”
“It’s nice,” Rumi admits quietly, “I like it.” Perhaps from the jumble of thoughts and feelings, or maybe her sleepiness, but she can’t quite pinpoint what exactly. The dance, or Jinu, or just being here with the hopeful promise of together.
“Rumi,” Jinu says, serious now. Hesitant, he moves just half a beat too late, and even though he recovers quickly and falls back into the familiar rhythm they’ve set, it doesn’t slip past Rumi.
She meets his gaze, finds him looking back at her with a fire in his eyes that she’d only seen one other time before, right before he’d given all that he was to her. Jinu squeezes her hand, reassuring. Something trembles from deep within her ribs, like a flutter of butterfly wings.
“If you want — if you'll have me,” he says gently, “We can have this.”
Of all the things Rumi had thought would come out of this pas de deux, she never considered this, if she was being honest. Unlike their slow dancing, this other dance, one that she didn’t have a name for, was more familiar to her. This unending back and forth between Jinu and her, a maybe here and a what-if there. How much of her heart did she have to give before it wasn’t just hers any longer? How much of his soul did he have to devote before this choreography was no longer his alone? A repeated routine of give and take.
The world moved in patterns. She knows this to be true — in the way the marks across her body arrange themselves in a chaotic order of beauty, in the way the rhythm of their choreo goes one two three one two three, in the way demons came and hunters fought them and then they came again and so on, so forth.
Rumi closes her eyes and thinks of Jinu’s outstretched palm in the darkness, steadfast and confident, leading her uncertain steps to map out their path beside his. It’s terrifying, the thought of stumbling out of their pattern of familiarity into uncharted territory. But it’s Jinu—
Jinu, who’d broken the patterns again and again and again. Who looks at her, hopeful and encouraging, saw through all her cracks then and sees through her rapidfire heart now, and says, we can have this, just follow my lead; fall into me and I’ll catch you.
(Everything has to start somewhere, after all. Birth cannot happen without death; two sides of the same coin, or something like that.)
Wordlessly, ever patient, Jinu’s hand travels slowly across her back until it settles carefully on the curve of her hip. A feather touch, fingertips dancing on her skin pleading, let me stay. Unlike earlier, when he’d pulled the dip on her, this feels different. Slower, more deliberate. Jinu lifts up his arm slowly, his palm gently releasing hers. Amateur as she is to slow dancing, even she knows the steps to this. A brief moment in which their roles change, where she gets to set the pace.
An offer, and a choice.
Rumi supposes that this time it’s her turn to give.
“Do you trust me?”
“Always.”
Rumi turns, finally, using his fingertips as her anchor as she twirls slowly until she finds her way back where Jinu is waiting. She lets herself fall back in as his hands find purchase on her back again, this time pressing her clasped hand against his thrumming heart.
She feels like molasses, but Jinu doesn’t seem to mind, simply matches her motions as he lets her guide them through the routine this time. She tips her head upwards, and like a good dance partner Jinu leans down in the same heartbeat until they find each other in the middle. His lips are warm and soft and alive, as is the way he breathes out in unbridled joy after, love lacing his voice as gold spills from his entire being. This, too, felt human, the selfless vow of forever in their finite lifetimes.
“Didn’t take you for one to confess,” Rumi says. Quietly, she memorises the way Jinu’s eyes crinkle into twin crescent moons, his mellifluous laughter like birdsong at dawn, the firmness of his slender digits that press against her own, the tenderness of his lips that taste sweeter than any melody, the warmth of a body that has fought through hell and heaven until it found its way back to her, saying I’m here, I’m here now. What a wonderfully human thing, she muses, to love. She leans up again, and then again, and again some more, kissing him sweetly until her lips, too, like her entire being, have learned the choreography of their souls.
The lights quiver.
“It’s not that hard,” he repeats. Not when it’s you.
She tucks it away into the crevices of her heart, gentle like carefully pressed flowers preserved after springtime, an assurance that they’d make it to the next year and years to come.
Call it hope, call it love.
She never did like putting names to things, anyway.