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Miyeong dies in Celine’s arms.
Celine knew—was told—there would be complications. It couldn’t be anything but complicated. A child born of a demon would never come without risk.
Celine knew that. Miyeong knew that.
But this was what Miyeong wanted, and Celine—she knows, days, months, years and years from now, an entire lifetime from now—she knows she’s going to regret not trying harder to change Miyeong’s mind, or even forcing her to just get rid of the baby, to save herself, prevent what was, as she will come to realize later on, always the inevitable. But Miyeong wanted it, wanted this baby, and for all of the anger and betrayal and grief Celine felt over it, and still feels over it, she just… couldn’t do it.
She couldn’t, and now, Miyeong isn’t moving. Her skin is cold. Her lips have lost all color. Her eyes, half-lidded, aren’t focusing. There’s too much blood—too much—soaking the sheets, her thighs, Celine’s hands. It doesn’t stop.
There was a part of Celine that thought, stubbornly clung onto the hope, that Miyeong would survive. That she would beat the odds stacked against her, just like she always has. And, for one brief, agonizing second, Celine thought they’d actually done it—that they’ve pulled through the impossible. That Miyeong would live after all. That she could still keep Miyeong.
The child was wailing, tiny and furious, slick with blood. The worst, Celine thought, was finally over.
It should have been.
Celine presses her hand to Miyeong's stomach, to her chest. Cradles her face in her blood-slick hands. “Don’t,” she whispers, “please, Miyeong—don’t you dare.” She holds her close. Rocking, barely breathing herself. Miyeong’s head lolls slightly in the crook of her neck. “Miyeong,” she says again, calling out to her wherever she is right now, trying to pull her back here, to Celine, where she belongs, “Miyeong, it’s done, it’s over. She’s here. Your daughter is—” She chokes on the words she can’t get out of her mouth, and then around the sob that threatens to rise up her throat. “Please, Miyeong, just—just stay, please. Stay with me, just a little longer. Don’t—”
Don’t die, she means to say, yell, pray. For god’s sake, don’t die.
“Miyeong,” she tries again, and she feels something warm trickling down her face, salt against her lips, and she realizes she’s crying now, actually crying, “Miyeong, please, just stay with me a little longer. Look at her—just look at her.”
Live for her.
But Miyeong doesn’t stir.
The blood clings to her fingers like ink, thick and warm, and Celine realizes with creeping, dawning horror that she can feel everything slipping. Warmth, breath, presence. Life.
And there is no stopping it.
There is nothing Celine can do, not this time, to stop it.
Miyeong dies in Celine’s arms, and all that’s left is the crying of a newborn child and the sound of Celine’s heart breaking.
“What do you plan to do about the child?”
Celine looks up from her newspaper. Inhye is leaning against the door of the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest, regarding Celine warily, cautiously. Like she’s bracing herself for an attack that never actually comes. Somehow, that ticks Celine off more than the question Inhye had actually asked, but she supposes she can’t really blame her either. Miyeong died in her arms, after all, and it’s evident enough from the bruise-like shadows under her eyes that she hasn’t had a wink of sleep since.
She sets the newspaper down on the counter. She lets her eyes linger on the front page, just for a second—on Miyeong’s face, plastered all over it, on the clean and careful version of the story they allowed to be published for everyone else’s consumption. Pop star dies tragically in childbirth. Nothing more, nothing less, because that’s all Miyeong ever was to these people, other people: just another bright, young, beautiful face, gone too soon, except Celine is sure that they might actually just love Miyeong all the more for it, because everyone loves a tragedy.
Celine wishes she could be so far detached from it—from Miyeong—that she could just brush it off as that. Just another tragedy. But it isn’t, not to Celine. Not when the smell of Miyeong’s blood lingers on her skin, and her hands sometimes still feel slick with it. Warm, where Miyeong was cold as ice.
“Celine,” Inhye says, worried this time.
Celine looks back up at Inhye, at all she has left of the Sunlight Sisters, then she scrubs her hands over her face.
“I don’t know, Inhye,” she says, tired. So, so tired. “I don’t know.”
But Celine does know.
Or, she knows what she wants to do, at least. What she doesn’t know, just yet, if she actually will do it. If she has the heart to. The strength, the resolve. The anguish.
She enters the room where the baby is sleeping.
She steps up to the crib, slow and soundless. Miyeong had chosen it herself—white wood, smooth finish—and left Celine and Inhye to put it together one quiet weekend. She was already beginning to show, then, and Celine, despite all of her apprehensions, wouldn’t let Miyeong lift a finger. So Miyeong issued directions at them from the bed instead, until Celine decided it might be better for her to handle the instruction manual herself because Miyeong kept getting the parts wrong. Inhye had just laughed, and laughed, and Miyeong was glowing. Radiant. Alive.
The baby is fast asleep, swaddled, chest rising and falling with every breath she takes. Her tiny mouth parts in her sleep. Celine peers down at her, takes all of her in.
Her face, her hands, her feet—everything about her is so small.
So helpless.
Celine unfurls her fist, palm aching where her nails had dug deep and hard into the flesh, and summons her weapon.
She just holds the blade in her hand for a while, feeling the heft of it. Familiar, heavy. Dangerous. She looks down at the baby, really takes her in, sees her for what she is—an abomination, the price Miyeong paid, the thing that took Miyeong from her—and tightens her grip on the hilt.
She’s about to raise her weapon, about to plunge the blade into the child’s chest, her barely formed, defenseless frame, when she suddenly stirs.
Celine freezes.
The baby scrunches up her nose, her mouth twitching—then opens into a small, quivering wail. Thin and reedy at first, then louder, and only louder still. Celine finds herself dismissing her weapon, making it disappear in the blink of an eye, and reaching for the baby instead.
There’s nothing natural or even motherly about it. It’s awkward, through and through, like Celine can’t quite figure out how she’s supposed to be holding this… thing. Like she’s afraid she might actually break her if she holds her the wrong way. Too hard, too soft, too carelessly.
Celine cradles her against her chest, looking down at that wrinkled, blotchy little face, red from crying. Her mouth works uselessly in the air, fists balled near her chin. Celine just watches her for a moment, stunned, and more than a little confused by her own reaction. It shouldn’t have affected her, shouldn’t have cracked through her resolve just like that but there was just something about the rawness of it. The vulnerability. The need. And now Celine is so terribly aware of just how impossibly small this child is.
Everything about her—so small, so helpless. So delicate.
Celine starts to sway, rocking the baby gently until, eventually, she quiets down.
The baby—Miyeong’s baby—lets out a small hiccup of a sob, grabbing a fistful of Celine’s shirt and holding on tightly, and Celine just… lets her. She just shifts her grip, steadier and more sure, this time.
Celine holds on to Miyeong's baby the way she holds on to Celine.
Celine watches as Inhye rocks the baby back and forth, whispering quiet reassurances, nonsense, to her. Then, she says, “I’m thinking of naming her Rumi.”
Inhye looks up at Celine. For a moment, she doesn’t say anything. She just looks at her, her gaze steady but heavy with all of the grief they share, and all of the grief Inhye’s had to carry on her own, something that is entirely hers. Then, with a small, sad smile, she tells Celine, “I think that’s perfect.”
Celine offers her a small, sad smile back.
She knows that what Inhye really means is, I think Miyeong would like that.
Miyeong had spent the entirety of her pregnancy in the village, far from prying eyes and nosy gossip columnists. They were set to have a comeback, and had even announced it before they found out Miyeong was pregnant. They had to push it back, naturally, and gave flimsy, just barely believable reasons for why they were postponing the Sunlight Sisters’ much-awaited comeback. It wouldn’t do to tell everyone that it was because one of the members was pregnant, and by an unnamed, mystery man at that, especially not at the peak of their careers.
Frankly, Celine didn’t really care about the public fallout, not when there was something bigger and more important at stake here. The world, yes, but Miyeong too. Miyeong especially. And Celine, at the time, could hardly even make sense of her own feelings regarding the matter. She would oscillate between anger and sadness, but the one thing that was consistent was that she was afraid for Miyeong. They’d been warned already that there would be complications, and that the chances of Miyeong surviving childbirth were slim, fifty-fifty if they were being really optimistic, and everything in Celine’s body told her to convince Miyeong to just let the baby go. To tell her it wouldn’t be worth it, risking her life for something so wrong, something that just goes against everything they’ve been taught and fought their entire lives against.
It had already been heartbreaking, knowing Miyeong was in love with someone else. She’d long accepted that Miyeong would never love her back, even if she knew, maybe, how Celine felt about her, but she couldn’t lose her again, not like this.
But Miyeong wanted to keep the baby. They’d argued about it, yelled at each other over it, Inhye caught in the middle trying to settle things down, until finally, Celine relented. The only condition she had was that the father of the child—that demon—couldn’t come near Miyeong ever again. That he would have no part in the child’s life, if the child did make it out alive. Miyeong had agreed, reluctantly.
Things had been tense between them, for the most part. Only Inhye’s presence softened Celine’s edges, and Celine couldn’t help herself anyway. She couldn’t help but take care of Miyeong, even if there was a part of her that knew she shouldn’t have agreed to keeping the baby, that knew there was a chance that everything could go from bad to much, much worse by agreeing to keep the baby. But this was Miyeong, and Celine had never been good at saying no to her, even when she was exasperated with her, or angry, or hurt. This was Miyeong, and Celine loved her, and she would have done anything for her, anything at all to keep her.
Eventually, they went back to how they always were, or at least as close as they could come to that again, given their present circumstances. It was enough for Celine to believe, even for a while, even just a little bit, that maybe they’d be okay after all. That maybe Miyeong would be okay, and that she actually could make it. That maybe they could come out the other side with something left—someone left—to hold on to.
But then, one night, Miyeong turned to her and said, “If I don’t make it… Promise me you’ll protect her.” She had one hand over her large belly, and the other seeking Celine’s across the scratchy quilts. “No matter what she is, and no matter what anyone else says.”
“Don’t say that,” Celine said, terrified, desperate. “Don’t—” Don’t say it like that. Don’t give up just yet. Don’t die on me, please, for god’s sake, don’t die on me. But she couldn’t get the rest out of her mouth. It was too much, too fast, and her eyes prickled with the tears she was holding back. She choked on it—the hurt, the confusion, the fear. On all of her love for Miyeong that she’s tried so hard, all this time, to keep bottled up inside her, afraid of ruining Miyeong with it. “Miyeong…”
“Please, Celine,” was all Miyeong said, squeezing Celine’s hand. “I—I know it’s a huge thing to ask from you, but… please. Promise me, Celine. Promise me you’ll take care of her. Protect her.”
I can’t, was what Celine wanted to say, was what she knew she should have said, but she whispered back, “Okay,” and, “I promise,” instead, squeezing Miyeong’s hand. “I promise, Miyeong. I’ll protect her.”
It had been so easy, then, to promise something so ludicrous. Miyeong was still alive then, after all, and not bleeding to death in Celine’s arms. Miyeong was still alive, and, for the most part, despite everything, healthy and strong, and Celine had started to let herself believe that they really had a fighting chance. Miyeong was still alive, and Celine had started to think maybe she could love the child too, eventually, somehow.
Inhye was always the sharpest of the three of them, Celine thinks. She always knew that Celine’s devotion to Miyeong would be the very thing that would turn her against the child, if—or, when, is more like it—the worst case scenario comes to fruition.
What do you plan to do about the child?
But Inhye already knew. Celine doesn’t know if Inhye, who usually deferred to Celine, would have stopped her. If she would have tried to talk her out of it, to remind her of the promise she made to Miyeong, to tell her she’s only just a child, but Inhye knew.
It doesn’t come as a surprise to Celine when, a year later, Inhye comes to her and says, “I don’t think I want to keep doing this anymore. I… I don’t think I can.”
Celine doesn’t respond right away. She just stands by the crib, watching the slow rise and fall of Rumi’s chest. She’d only just managed to get Rumi to sleep—one of the rare, blessed nights where the baby hadn’t screamed herself hoarse first before finally succumbing to sleep. Her tiny fists clutch at her teddy bear, a gift from none other than Inhye herself.
Inhye stands by the doorway, like she’s not sure if she should step in, come closer to Celine, or if keeping a safe distance between them is the wiser choice. That seems to be a thing with Inhye, these days. Like she’s afraid of Celine, or at least afraid of breaking whatever sense of normalcy and calm has finally settled over her.
When Celine still doesn’t say anything, Inhye wraps her arms around herself and says, “It’s just… too much, Celine. It’s too much, and I can’t—I thought I could keep going, and I thought that I might be able to want to keep doing this for the rest of my life, that I could still try to want it, but after Miyeong died…”
Her eyes drift towards the direction of the crib. Towards Rumi. “I’m sorry,” Inhye murmurs at last.
Celine can’t look at her. She keeps her gaze on Rumi’s dark lashes instead, the way they flutter with each soft breath. She reaches down, letting her fingers graze the curve of Rumi’s cheek, then says, with her back to Inhye, “I understand.”
There’s a long, almost awkward beat of silence that follows, like Inhye is waiting for Celine to say anything more, to tell her it’s okay to leave this all behind, to leave her behind, but she doesn’t. Inhye doesn’t say anything more either. Celine feels her hovering by the doorway for a while, watching them quietly, the air thick and heavy with everything that’s been left unsaid between them, before she hears her leave.
Only then does Celine look over her shoulder, to where Inhye was standing earlier.
Someone was always going to be left behind.
It’s always been like that, with the Hunters. Somehow, Celine always knew it was going to be her.
She always knew that she would be the one left with the responsibility of finding and then nurturing, training, the next generation of Hunters, once the Sunlight Sisters’ time was up. She was the leader of the Sunlight Sisters, after all. The one holding the line, the last to leave. The one who would see this through to the end.
She always knew Inhye would leave. She’d always talked about it, how she wanted to settle down eventually, live a life away from the spotlight. Two kids, a dog. That sort of domestic fantasy that Celine never once related to, and never particularly wanted for herself.
But Miyeong—
She always thought she’d at least still have Miyeong.
She didn’t need Miyeong to love her back. She could live with it, and has lived with it, for as long as she’s known and been in love with her. She just wanted—needed—Miyeong there. To know she wouldn’t need to do this all alone, by herself, and Miyeong would be reason enough for her to keep going. To fulfill her duty, not as a Hunter this time, but as the new Hunters’ mentor.
It would have at least been enough for Celine to accept that, maybe, she never had a choice or say on the matter. To accept that she could never be selfish, not the way Miyeong and Inhye always had the freedom to be. That she was always meant to be the one who had to hold herself steady while everything and everyone else fell apart, and that there would be no room for fear or softness or hesitation—not even grief—for her. That she could never look away. Never turn away.
She would always be the last one standing.
That was, Celine thought, always her burden to bear, and she would have bore it for Miyeong, to give her a world to live in where she could live happily, be loved, and love in return. A world where she could just live her life the way she’s always wanted.
But Miyeong is gone, and now, so is Inhye.
All that’s left is Celine, just as she was always meant to be—and Rumi, who shifts slightly as Celine braids her hair, hands moving slow and steady, weaving each section of Rumi’s hair into place. Rumi sings the Hunters’ hymn softly, under her breath, as she gazes upon Miyeong’s grave. We are hunters, voices strong, slaying demons with our song…
The wind brushes past them, soft through the grass. Celine ties off the braid.
…fix the world and make it right, when darkness finally meets the light.
All that’s left is a promise, to be fulfilled.
Celine watches Rumi grow more and more into her mother.
It’s in the way she walks headfirst into trouble, too brave for her own good. It’s in how stubborn Rumi is, but also in her wit, her drive, that familiar fire that burns inside her. It’s in the way she works her jaw when she’s angry, or especially frustrated about something, or when she’s trying to hold herself back from crying. It’s in the way she talks back to Celine sometimes, even when she’s wrong, but also especially when she’s wrong, with the full heat of her conviction, and it’s like talking with a ghost, the ghost of Ryu Miyeong. The voice, the face, even the eyes.
But ghosts don’t laugh like that. They don’t eat too much candy and lie about it. They don’t curl up beside you on long nights because it’s too cold, or because they’re scared of the dark, or because they woke up from a nightmare and can’t go back to sleep unless you’re beside them.
Ghosts don’t ask complicated questions, like what happened to their mother, or where their father is and what happened to him, and why they’re a Hunter if they’re half-demon too.
Celine had made the decision to tell Rumi about her mother—and, by extension, her father—as soon as she was old enough to start asking about her, and old enough to understand. It didn’t make sense to withhold that from Rumi for as long as possible, because the patterns on her skin would lead her to the answer she’s been looking for anyway, and she might be worse off for it. If Rumi had to find out from anyone, Celine decided it had to be from her.
“You’re not one of them, Rumi,” she told her then, and still reminds her now. “You’re a Hunter, just like your mother was.”
She tells her everything there is to tell about Miyeong. About how strong she was, and about how brave she was, maybe the bravest of the three of them, and certainly braver than Celine ever was or ever could be. She lends Rumi the Sunlight Sisters’ records, so she can hear her mother, even if she can’t speak to her. So she knows how beautiful her mother’s voice was. She braids her hair like Miyeong used to braid her hair, because Rumi wants it that way too—wants to be like her mother, in every way she can.
It’s in those moments that Celine loves Rumi the most.
And she does love her, more than she thought she’d be capable of, given everything, but it’s when she sees Miyeong in her, when she answers back to a voice that sounds almost exactly like hers, or when she looks into Miyeong’s eyes in Rumi’s face—that’s when Celine loves her the most, and that’s when she fears for her the most. That’s when she fears failing the most.
Because if she fails Rumi, then she fails Miyeong too. She fails Miyeong again.
She can’t, not this time. Never again.
They have to seal the Honmoon. They have to put an end to this, once and for all, so she can give Rumi the life that Miyeong would have wanted her daughter to have. So she can fix everything, make it all right again.
So when Rumi says, “Maybe they’ll understand,” hopeful, naive, as she watches Mira and Zoey leave for the bathhouse, Celine steels herself and says, “No, Rumi. Nothing can change until your patterns are gone.”
Rumi looks back at her, crestfallen, but eventually nods, resigned. Resolute.
That’s all Celine needs from her. That familiar conviction, and the strength to see this through with her.
She tells Rumi all there is to tell about Miyeong, but she doesn’t tell her that she’d come close to killing her, destroying her once, and she wouldn’t be here now if Celine just hadn’t hesitated. She doesn’t tell her that she almost broke her promise to Miyeong, in the face of her anguish and her grief, and she’d never experienced a hatred or anger quite like that before, not for anyone, not even demons, much less a newborn child, innocent, by all accounts, but still carrying the weight of her parents’ sin. Miyeong’s mistake.
She doesn’t tell her that her father had visited once, or tried to, a few months after Rumi was born, but Celine wouldn’t let him come near, wouldn’t let him see her, hold her—blamed him for Miyeong’s death, for ruining Miyeong’s life, for ruining Miyeong. For taking her from Celine and then leaving Celine to pick up the pieces, clean up the mess they made. Raise the mess they made, because when she had the chance, she just couldn’t kill Rumi, and now she has to live with and live by that decision.
She doesn’t tell Rumi that that was the last time she saw him.
Inhye checks in from time to time, and makes the trip down to the village—the Hunters’ village, as they call it among themselves—during Miyeong’s death anniversary to pay her respects.
Celine comes with her to the graveyard, where the first Hunters are buried, as well as all of the Hunters that came after are buried. Where Miyeong is now, among their ranks. Among the fallen.
They don’t speak much, at first. Inhye kneels to light the incense, brushing loose ash from the stone before she lays down a fresh bouquet of white chrysanthemums and then clasps her hands together in silent prayer. Celine stays standing beside her, arms crossed loosely, eyes glued to Miyeong's gravestone.
When she’s done, Inhye presses her hand gently to the gravestone, letting her fingers graze over the words etched in stone, and then she stands back up and turns to Celine again. Asks, “So, how is Rumi?”
Celine exhales, arms still crossed. “She’s doing well. HUNTR/X just wrapped up their world tour, and their new single, Golden, is charting well too. They’re everything we hoped them to be.” She pauses, takes in a deep breath, eyes flickering to Miyeong’s grave again, then she says, like a promise to Miyeong, “It won’t be long now.”
Inhye just watches her for a moment, then she smiles at her gently. “That’s not what I asked.”
Celine turns to her, gaze sharpening before she schools her expression back to something more neutral.
“How is she, Celine?” Inhye asks again. “Really?”
“She’s…” Celine works her jaw, then all of the fight leaves her body with her next exhale. She looks up at the sky, clear and bright and blue, so, so blue. “She’s so much like her.”
“Sometimes it breaks my heart,” Inhye says, pulling all of Celine’s attention back to her, “looking at her, watching her performances on TV, but… Miyeong would be proud of her.”
Celine just hums. She just looks at Inhye for a moment, at the lines that weren’t there before, the exhaustion that’s softened into a kind of peace. She got everything she wanted, Celine thinks. To start a family, grow old. She got it all. Got to walk away. Celine doesn’t resent her for it, not exactly.
Inhye turns to look at her too. “And you?” she asks, voice quiet. “Are you okay?”
Celine blinks, like she hadn’t expected the question. Like it hadn’t even occurred to her that Inhye would bother to ask about her. She clears her throat, composing herself again, then answers vaguely, “I’m still here.”
But Inhye is quick to say, “That’s not the same thing,” because she doesn’t seem to want to give Celine an easy way out of this one.
“I’m fine,” Celine says in the end, not quite looking at Inhye anymore.
Silence falls between them again. After some time, Inhye tells Celine, “I’m sorry.” A beat, like she’s gauging Celine’s reaction, or lack thereof, before she adds, “I’m sorry, for… leaving, and for leaving you to raise Rumi by yourself.”
“I told you,” Celine replies, maybe a little too quickly, “I understand.” What she doesn't say is, I would have done the same, if I just had the choice to walk away. “She asked me, not you. You didn’t have to stay, if you didn’t want to.”
Inhye doesn’t say anything just yet. She cradles her left hand, brushing her thumb over the polished silver of her wedding band. “If she hadn’t asked you to,” she says, quiet, “would you have still kept Rumi?”
Celine knows what she’s really asking. Would you have killed her, like I know you wanted to do—like I know you thought you should have done? Would you still be here?
In the end, Celine answers, “What’s done is done, Inhye.”
“I suppose so.” Inhye strokes her thumb over her ring again. “I think about her all the time, you know. About you, too.”
That gets Celine to look at her, but there’s no accusation behind it. Just a quiet kind of disbelief.
Inhye laughs. “Why do you look so surprised? Of course I think about you. I worry about you.”
Celine looks away first, but she can feel Inhye’s eyes boring into the side of her face. Into her skull.
“I think she would’ve liked seeing us like this,” Inhye says after a beat. “Still standing. Still… trying.”
“She always believed in that,” Celine murmurs. “Trying—even when it wasn’t enough.”
Inhye doesn’t argue. Just steps closer, her voice soft. “You don’t have to keep carrying all of it, you know.”
Celine clenches her jaw. “Someone has to.”
Inhye doesn’t say anything in response to that.
They walk back to the house. Neither of them say anything the entire time. Before Inhye leaves, she pulls Celine into a hug, holds her close, breathes her in, then tells her, “Take care of yourself, Celine.”
“You too,” is all Celine says in response.
She watches as Inhye’s car pulls out of the driveway and then disappears from sight. She stands there at the door for a while after, letting the distance between Inhye and herself linger and then settle, before she finally closes the door behind her.
Celine can’t pinpoint the exact moment she fell in love with Miyeong. In a strange way, it felt like she'd always loved her. It was like gravity. Real, and inevitable. Like something that simply was, long before she ever learned to name it. There was no before or after, not really, only the knowing—quiet and constant—that settled somewhere deep inside her, lodged beneath her ribs.
All she knows is that she loved Miyeong from the start.
She loved her during all of their late nights in the recording studio, and the late nights they spent hunting down demons together. She loved her even when she couldn’t get the choreography right, or when she would veer way off plan and go off on her own, and she loved her even when she told them that not only had she fallen in love with a demon, but she was pregnant with his child too. She loved her even when she felt her heart break into a million pieces because of her. She loved her even when Miyeong couldn’t love her back, and even when Miyeong would give this look sometimes, this smile, that felt a lot like her saying, I know, I’ve always known—and I’m sorry.
She loved Miyeong more than she’d ever loved anything or anyone else in this world. Loved her in a way she didn’t think she was even capable of, before she met Miyeong.
Maybe that’s why Celine can’t let go.
Maybe that’s why Celine couldn’t get herself to kill Rumi, even if everything she was ever taught as a Hunter told her Rumi was wrong. A mistake to make right—to erase.
Maybe that’s why, even when Rumi drops to her knees in front of her and offers her her blade, begs her to kill her now, like she would have and should have done all those years ago, before things got this far, before they got this bad, before everything they’d worked so hard for comes crumbling down around them—
“I can’t.”
Rumi is the only thing she has left of Miyeong. Miyeong left Rumi with her, gave her to her. She can’t just—
“We can still fix this,” Celine tells Rumi, trying to calm her down, to get her to listen to reason and to just stick to the plan, just trust her, one more time, I can fix this, I can fix this—but Rumi isn’t having any of it. Not anymore. “Just, please, Rumi, listen to me—”
“No,” Rumi spits out, angry and hurt. Betrayed. “Don’t you get it? This is what I am—look at me,” she says, gesturing to herself, her body, and the patterns all over her skin. “Why can’t you look at me? Why couldn’t you love me?”
Celine recoils as if she’d been hit. “I do,” she cries, “I do love you, Rumi—”
“ALL OF ME.”
Rumi’s voice cracks like a whip through the air, echoing outward as if the world itself flinches at the sound of it. The ground trembles, and blood-red ripples through the Honmoon, like blood through a vein. Violent, radiant, and raw. It spills out from beneath her skin in jagged arcs and flickering currents, twisting the air around them, warping it with the weight of everything she’s ever held in. The grief, the betrayal, the love—the storm that’s been brewing inside her, living inside her, from the moment she was born, finally breaking loose.
“Rumi,” Celine tries again, reaching out for Rumi even if she only jerks herself away from Celine’s touch. “Rumi, please,” and this time, her voice catches on her tears, on everything she’s been holding back all these years. “I love you, Rumi, I do.”
That only seems to make Rumi angrier. “You never loved me,” she says, quiet, aching. “You loved her.”
Celine flinches. For a moment, she says nothing. She can’t. She opens her mouth only to close it again. All there is is the breath leaving her lungs all at once, like she’s taken a particularly nasty, heavy punch to the chest.
She wants to say that isn’t true, that—maybe—this is just Gwi-ma trying to trick her, to break them apart, again, that she shouldn’t listen to that voice telling her all these lies but…
It’s not, is it? It isn’t a lie, not exactly. Enough of it is true that it burns.
She looks at Rumi now, really looks at her, and sees everything: the fury trembling beneath her skin, the heartbreak bleeding through her eyes, the patterns, glowing like cracks in porcelain about to shatter. And she sees Miyeong, too—so much of Miyeong in her face, in the way she’s breaking.
“Rumi, I…”
“You say you love me,” Rumi says, picking up her sword from the ground, “but you told me to hide who I really am from the world, you made me—” Her voice hitches on a sob, angry, fed-up. “You made me live in shame of who I am—what I am—and even now you still want to cover everything up, to just keep pretending like nothing is wrong, like it’s enough to keep pretending, like I’ll never be enough, not for Mira or Zoey, and not for you, until—until what? How much more do I have to do for you to love me?”
“I was just trying to protect you,” Celine says, aware of how pathetic it must sound. She’s about to take a step forward until her eyes catch on the glowing blade of Rumi’s sword, still clutched tight in her hand, then she thinks a little better about getting too close to Rumi. She looks back up at Rumi instead, wets her lips. “Rumi, please, you have to listen to me. To believe me. I was—I was just doing what I thought was best for you, doing what I thought I had to do to protect you, like I promised your mother I would.”
Rumi’s face screws up in pain, at the mention of her mother. “That’s not fair,” she whispers. Her voice breaks on it. The sword dips slightly in her hand, her fingers trembling where they grip the hilt. “You don’t get to use her like this, against me. You don’t get to stand there and say you did all this for her, not when she died thinking I was going to be safe with you.”
A beat.
“She trusted you.”
And then—quieter, more broken:
“I trusted you.”
She presses the heel of her hand hard against one eye, like she’s trying to shove the tears back in. Her voice is hoarse now, unraveling at the edges. “You don’t see me,” she says, “you see her. You don’t love me the way you love her. You never wanted me.” That’s when she raises her sword again, and Celine reflexively takes a step back—but Rumi doesn’t come charging at her, and she doesn’t even point it at her. She holds it up like she’s offering it to her again, giving her one last chance to make things right. To settle the score. “Do it, Celine. Finish what you started. Do what you should have done.”
Celine wishes Rumi had cut her down instead. It would have been easier that way. She might even deserve it.
For the second time that night, she says, “I can’t.”
Rumi just looks at her like she expected as much.
Her hand falls back down to her side, her grip looser now around the hilt of her sword, and then, finally, she says, “If this is the Honmoon I’m supposed to protect, I’m glad to see it destroyed.”
Rumi disappears in a wisp of red smoke, and Celine sinks to the ground.
The wind stirs again, low and mournful, rustling through the leaves of the great tree overhead. It stands sentinel above her, ancient and unmoving, even as everything else begins to fall apart. The ribbons twist in the breeze, fluttering like silent prayers, or like the ghosts of vows made by the Hunters that came before her.
There’s a ribbon for Miyeong up there too.
The dirt beneath her is cold and loose. Her knees dig into it, but she doesn’t move. The earth smells like iron, like roots, like something ancient rotting just beneath the surface. The tree groans as the wind picks up. A low, creaking sound, like the world exhaling around her, and the ribbons whisper with it.
Talk to me, Miyeong, Celine thinks. Tell me what to do.
Silence—it’s always just silence.
What should I do? What can I do?
Just when she thinks it’s all over, that they’ve failed, that she’s failed, yet again—
They pull through, somehow.
They prove Celine wrong, somehow.
She watches as gold surges through the Honmoon, purging all of the red that has corrupted it. She sees it too, that brilliant, blinding flash of light off in the distance, and then an unearthly, unhuman scream—something not heard so much as etched into the air itself, rippling outward like a wave of pain and rage. It echoes through the bones of the world, through trees and stone, until even the ribbons hanging from the giant tree tremble with it. Then, finally: silence.
Celine lets out the breath she’d been holding in.
She knows, without a doubt, it is over.
Against all odds, it is over.
They’ve done it. Rumi has done it.
It’s over, and Celine should be relieved—but all she can think about is the way Rumi looked at her before she left to face Gwi-ma. She’d been afraid that she was going to lose Rumi to Gwi-ma, but she realizes, now, that she’d already lost Rumi then.
Celine doesn’t hear from Rumi for a while after Gwi-ma’s defeat. It’s definitely not because they’re so busy that she can’t call her, or shoot her a quick text: their manager, Bobby, had called her to tell her that the girls would be going on a three-month hiatus, which means they’d have all the time in the world to themselves, to do any- and everything they want.
She doesn’t begrudge Rumi for it. Doesn’t resent her for it, the same way she doesn’t resent Inhye’s decision to leave all those years ago, after Miyeong died.
But it still hurts, in ways Celine didn’t expect it to. Hurts in ways Celine didn’t even realize were possible.
One day, she finds herself dialing Inhye’s number. Her phone rings, and rings, and just when Celine is about to put the phone down, just not push through with it, it doesn’t seem like she’s available right now anyway, Inhye suddenly picks up.
“Hi,” she greets.
Celine picks up on all the commotion in the background, the familiar voices of Inhye’s husband and her children, both grown now.
She’s quiet for too long, though, because Inhye says, “Celine? Are you still there?”
“Yes,” Celine answers quickly, adjusting her grip on her phone. “I’m here.”
“I’m surprised you called,” Inhye says candidly.
Celine huffs, smiling a little. “Yeah,” she says, “well.”
Another beat of silence follows, like they’re both not sure what to say to each other, but neither of them want to hang up either. Eventually, Inhye asks, still casual, “How have you been?”
“I’m fine,” Celine answers, perfunctory. “There’s… not much to keep me busy these days.”
Inhye hums. She called Celine the day Rumi, Zoey and Mira defeated Gwi-ma—the day the Honmoon turned gold. They’d spoken briefly then, just checked in on each other, on the girls. Told each other to take care.
Finally, Inhye asks, gently, “Is this about Rumi?”
Celine feels embarrassed, despite herself. Still, she admits, “Yes,” then after some more deliberation, elaborates by saying, “I haven’t seen her since that day. She hasn’t called either.”
She hears the faint clatter of dishes in the background, the murmur of voices. Then, finally, Inhye says, “She’ll come around, when she’s ready.”
Celine exhales, shaky. “And what if she doesn’t?”
Inhye is quiet on the other end of the line again for a moment, then she says quietly, carefully, “She might not,” and Celine squeezes her eyes shut against the feeling, the sudden, dull throb in her chest.
“But she’s still your daughter,” Inhye goes on to say, just as soft. “That won’t ever change.”
Celine flinches. It’s not the certainty in Inhye’s voice that gets her. It’s the fact that it’s just… never occurred to her before. Not really, not before Inhye actually said it out loud to her. Because to her, Rumi was always Miyeong’s, always tied to the best and brightest parts of her, the things Celine cherished most about her and never thought to claim because they weren’t hers to claim. But then Inhye says Rumi is her daughter, and suddenly she aches with it, like a wound she didn’t even know she had.
It’s like Inhye can read her mind, because she tells Celine, “Rumi has always been yours as much as she is Miyeong’s. She’s your daughter, the both of you. She always was.”
Some mother I was, Celine thinks bitterly. Ruefully.
“I don’t know anymore,” Celine says, voice dropping close to a whisper, “if I did the right thing after all, with Rumi. If I… if I raised her the way Miyeong would have wanted me to.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. Celine almost thinks the call dropped, until she hears the faintest sound. A sigh, or maybe a breath. Then Inhye says, softly, “Children can be... complicated like that. You just love them, as best as you can, and sometimes it’s enough. Sometimes, it’s not, and you fall short. All you can really do is… try, I suppose.
“You don’t have to be Miyeong to be someone Rumi needs. And… you kept your promise to Miyeong, to the best of your abilities. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
Celine breathes in through her nose, slow and uneven. For a moment, she lets herself sit in that—Inhye’s quiet grace, her steady voice, the offer of forgiveness she doesn’t quite feel worthy of. “I used to think that was enough,” she says eventually. “I used to think it was enough to just—try, to fulfill my promise to her, and that, if I did… maybe everything else would fall into place.”
She pauses, and her voice hitches.
You don’t see me, you see her.
“I didn’t see how much it was costing Rumi. How much of her I was missing… and now, I don’t know if I even have the right to try again.”
There’s a rustle on the line. A faint exhale. “I don’t think it’s about having the right to anything,” Inhye says finally, her voice low but steady. “It’s about what you do now. What you choose now, even if it doesn’t change anything. In the end, it’s up to Rumi to decide if she’s willing to let you back in, but if you mean it—really mean it—then you owe it to her to just… show up anyway. Even if you don’t know if it’s going to be enough, and even if it’s messy, and even if she doesn’t forgive you. Not right away, or maybe not ever.
“She doesn’t need you to be Miyeong,” Inhye says again, “she just needs you. That’s all she’s ever needed from you, Celine. Just you, and for you to be there, especially when she needs you the most.”
It’s quiet again for a while after that. Inhye’s words settle between them like stones, heavy, dense. When Celine finally musters up the courage to speak again, she says, “Thank you, Inhye. I… really needed to hear that.”
She can almost feel Inhye smiling through the phone. “Who would have thought I’d be giving out parenting advice, huh?” she jokes, and they both laugh. Softly, quietly. Then, she adds, “I always thought I’d be going to Miyeong for that, to be honest.”
“Yeah,” Celine murmurs. “She would have been great at it.”
They talk for a little while longer. Celine asks Inhye how her husband and children are, asks Inhye how she is, and then, after some aimless chitchat, they finally end the call.
“Take care of yourself, Celine,” Inhye says, just like she did the last time they saw each other, before she hangs up.
Rumi does show up, eventually, with Mira and Zoey in tow.
Celine spots Mira and Zoey first. She’s on the way to the graveyard when she bumps into them. They both jolt in surprise when they see her, like students getting caught skipping class, before they start regarding her warily. They greet her, are polite with her, as they always are, but Celine can tell that they know the full extent of it now. That Rumi must have told them everything. She can see it, the protectiveness underneath all of their awkwardness and wariness around her.
“Is… Rumi here too?” she asks.
“Yeah, she, uh,” Zoey answers, eyes flickering to Mira and then back to Celine, “she’s at her mom’s grave. She asked for some time alone with her, so… Yeah.”
“I see,” is all Celine says. She takes in the two girls in front of her, just for a second, then she says, heartfelt, “Thank you.”
They both look confused at first, like they don’t understand the need for such an emotional thank you just because they told Celine where Rumi is, but then comprehension quickly flashes across their faces. Like now, they know that Celine really means to say, thank you—for sticking by Rumi, for loving her for all that she is, something I failed to do.
She finds Rumi at Miyeong’s grave, just like Mira and Zoey said she would be.
Rumi looks up when she hears Celine’s footsteps approaching. She tenses for a second, when their eyes meet, before her entire body relaxes again, like all of the fight she had left in her, maybe had saved up for the next time she sees Celine, has left her body. Like she just… doesn’t have it in her to fight right now. And Celine just… takes her in for a moment. Looks long and hard at her. At her patterns, curling all over and around her body, and just out in the open now, like Rumi isn’t just unafraid of them now, but she might even be proud of them now too.
Finally, Celine says, “I didn’t know you’d be here today.”
Rumi purses her lips, like she isn’t sure if she wants to respond at all, then she heaves a sigh and replies, “I just wanted to visit Mom before we start promotions for our comeback.”
“Already?” Celine asks, cocking a brow at her. “Bobby told me you were on a three-month hiatus—and it’s barely been three months.”
Rumi blushes, despite herself. Says, “Yeah, well,” and leaves it at that.
It suddenly hits Celine that that’s not something Rumi got from Miyeong. Miyeong was hard-working, yes, but she knew when to take breaks. Knew how to savor them. She realizes that, somehow, Rumi had gotten that from her. Miyeong and Inhye always used to tell her she needed to learn how to relax, to not be so uptight, to learn to take it slow.
It could only be from her.
A surge of emotions swell inside her, and Celine says, “I’m sorry, Rumi.”
Rumi doesn’t say anything. She works her jaw that way she always does when she’s being stubborn about something, or when she doesn’t want to let her own emotions spill forth, her hands balled into fists in the pockets of her jacket. She watches Celine, holds her gaze—but she doesn’t say anything, not yet.
Celine takes that as encouragement, or invitation, at least, to keep talking.
“I’m sorry,” she says again, “for telling you to hide who you are, and for”—she swallows down around the tightness building her throat—“for making you feel ashamed of yourself, for making you think that you weren’t enough, or that you would never be enough. And I… I’m sorry, for not being what you needed me to be. For not being there for you the way you needed me to be.”
She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, and just—breathes. Then, she looks up at the sky as she says, “I did mean it. I did everything I did to protect you, and to keep the promise that I made to your mother. I did what I thought I had to do to keep you safe, to give you the life I know she would have wanted for you, but…” She looks down, now, straight at Rumi again. “I understand now that maybe… I was wrong. That maybe, that wasn’t the only way I could have gone about it. That it wasn’t right, to make you feel so… small, like that, or to make you live in fear, all your life.”
It’s quiet again for a moment, but it isn’t so oppressive this time, or so heavy. Celine takes in another breath and, softly, achingly, says to Rumi, “I do love you. Not just because you’re Miyeong’s.”
Rumi looks away, whip-fast, as if she’d been struck. She stares down at the ground, at her sneakers, then kicks at a pebble near her foot. Her hands are still in her pockets, but her shoulders drop, just a little, when she says, “I don’t know if I’m ready to forgive you yet.”
Celine just nods. “I understand.”
“But…” And Rumi lifts her head again and looks Celine in the eye when she tells her, “Thank you, I guess. I… needed to hear that.” Another beat, then Rumi adds a little more meekly, “I didn’t come here to see you, but… I’m not mad that you’re here.”
It’s not forgiveness, not yet, but it’s a start.
They stand over Miyeong’s grave like that for a while. Quiet, together—just like how they always used to, when Rumi was only just a child. It’s not exactly companionable silence, but it’s the kind of silence that allows things to just… settle.
Eventually, Rumi shifts and says, “I need to head back now.”
“Of course,” is all Celine offers back.
But Rumi lingers a moment longer. She just looks at Celine, then she asks, “What are you going to do now?”
A breeze slips past them, and Celine exhales with it, long and even. “Stay,” she answers, and for once, there’s no bitterness to it. Just quiet acceptance, now. “It’s what I’ve always done.”
Rumi watches her for a beat longer, then nods. She turns and walks away.
And Celine remains. Unshaken, unmoving.
When Rumi is ready, she will be here—like she always is, and always will be.