Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The last thing Rumi remembers is that there was a swarm of demons, a wall of bodies and claws and snarling mouths crashing on on her from all sides like a tidal wave, and then, cutting through the waves upon waves of demon, was Zoey and Mira, hacking and slashing their way towards her, calling out her name, and she was running towards them, calling out to them, and then, just before that bright, blinding light, they threw themselves at her almost like they meant to tackle her and only when that bright, blinding light exploded in her eyes that she realized they were shielding her from it, as if their bodies would be enough, and then—

Silence.

Rumi thinks she might be dead. Her soul feels like it’d been knocked loose out of her body, but she’s still, somehow, able to think she’s dead, which means maybe she isn’t as dead as she thinks she is. It’s not like Rumi’s ever been dead before so she doesn’t have a benchmark to work with here.

Rumi?

Zoey’s voice, or maybe Mira’s. They’re here too, she can feel it. Maybe—and somehow, she finds this worse than the possibility of her own death—they’re dead too, with her. They did throw themselves in the line of fire for her. Tried to shield her from the inevitable. She feels an ache all around her, not quite where her chest would have been. Her heart.

Rumi?

She feels a little bad about it, but it still does come as a comfort to Rumi, knowing that they’re still with her now. It’s probably not the most ideal set-up, but she’d been convinced and had even started to make peace with the fact that she’d die alone, if not by Celine’s hands then by Gwi-ma’s, so this is a far better bargain than she ever dared to hope for.

It comforts her to know that, in their last moment, despite everything, they still chose her.

“Rumi!”

Rumi jolts upright, gasping.

She thrashes for a second, and her heart—her heart, it’s there, it’s right where it should be in her chest, locked behind her ribs, and muscle, and skin, and it’s pounding thunderously in her ears and her limbs. The world spins, and she blinks hard, struggling to gather her bearings, still unsure if this is actually real and not just another one of Gwi-ma’s vile, unfair tricks, and then there are two pairs of hands on her shoulders, her arms, her face, that same voice—voices—calling out, “Rumi, Rumi, hey,” and then the world finally comes into focus.

The trees, the night sky. Zoey, and Mira, crouched down beside her, holding her steady. Grounding her.

They’re here. They’re real.

They’re alive, all three of them.

“Rumi,” Zoey says, wide-eyed, and Rumi makes this desperately relieved and grateful noise in the back of her throat and throws her arms around the both of them. It’s a tangle of limbs from there, and at some point, someone—Mira, probably—knocks all three of them down against the soft, wet grass, and then they just lie there, piled up on each other, holding each other as hard as they possibly can. Mira buries her face in Rumi’s neck, and Zoey clutches at both of them, trembling just a little, her breath hitching like she’s seconds away from crying. No one says anything right away. They just hold each other like if they let go, the world might come undone again.

When they finally disentangle from each other, Mira pulls back and blurts out, “We thought you—”, only to choke on her words and on the tears she’s just barely managing to hold back.

Suddenly Rumi’s throat is tight too. “Yeah,” she breathes out, shaky. “I know. I thought…” She shakes her head, stopping herself before she ends up bawling her eyes out too. Instead, she says, “I-I’m just glad you’re here.”

Mira and Zoey smile at her softly, until Zoey asks, “So is it… over?”

“And how did we even get here?” Mira adds, looking around, brows furrowed.

They help each other get up on their feet. Rumi pats herself down, getting all the grass off of her clothes. She looks around, and there’s no doubt about where they are: the Hunters’ village. They’ve found themselves somewhere along the path that leads to her mother’s grave.

But that still begs the question of how they ended up here.

“Maybe Gwi-ma dropped us here after we kicked his ass into oblivion?” Zoey supplies hopefully.

“He’s a demon lord, Zoey,” Mira sighs, exasperated but also begrudgingly fond, “not an Uber.”

Rumi would really like to believe that somehow, they actually did defeat Gwi-ma, but… “It’s not adding up,” she says, frowning. Mira and Zoey exchange glances, and then turn to look at her at the same time. “Just think about it. What was the last thing either of you remember, before we woke up here?”

They rack their brains, and then Mira answers, “Well, I remember we were all there, at the Saja Boys’ concert, and then there were demons, lots of them, and then you were there, and—”

“There was this blinding light,” Zoey continues for her, face screwed in concentration, “kind of like, you know, an explosion, then—”

“We wound up here,” Rumi finishes. She purses her lips, hands on her hips. “I don’t know how or why we’re here, but… I don’t think we actually defeated Gwi-ma. I—I don’t think we did much of anything to him.”

It’s quiet again for a moment, Rumi’s words hanging heavy in the air. She looks at Zoey and Mira, at their crestfallen expression, and is about to say maybe it’s not all that bad, maybe they can just waltz right back to the stadium and finish what they started, even if that’s too optimistic even for Rumi, but Zoey pipes up and says, “Maybe we are dead after all.”

“Zoey!” Rumi chides at the same time Mira groans, “Don’t be fucking morbid, Zoey.”

“What?” Zoey pouts. “How else can we explain what’s going on here? If we didn’t defeat Gwi-ma, then what else is there?”

Yeah, Rumi thinks, solemn, confused. What else is there?

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she says in the end, already dreading where this is going, “but we’re here now, so we might as well try to get some help figuring it out.”

Mira and Zoey exchange glances again, then they nod at Rumi.

They set off together, following the familiar footpath that winds through the trees and into the heart of the village. The air is cool, and quiet in this almost eerie way, like everything is just too still for this to actually be real, but Rumi brushes that thought aside for now. Their footsteps are soft against the dirt, and no one says much as they walk. There’s still too much they don’t know, but there’s a strange comfort in having some semblance of a plan, even if that plan involves—and really is just—Celine.

Rumi’s stomach churns at the thought of seeing Celine again after how they left things off before she ran head-first into Gwi-ma’s not-so-little deathtrap, but she can’t deny that if there’s anyone that can help them make sense of this, it’s Celine. Doesn’t make it any less awkward, though. Heyyy, so I know I dropped by earlier to ask you to kill me and it’s like, super awkward between us right now, but could you maybe help us figure out just what the hell is happening first before you give me another sermon? Kthnxbye. God.

The house comes into view through the trees. Low-built, wooden, familiar in that way that makes her chest ache—the house she grew up in, looking as it always has, quiet and unchanging. She walks up the steps without thinking, the way she always used to, past the gate and across the familiar stone path, and then knocks on the front door.

Nothing. Rumi knocks again.

“Celine,” she calls, and then she hears it. The soft, slow shuffle of footsteps from inside, drawing nearer and nearer, and then, the sound of the lock turning, and—

The door opens, and the woman standing in front of them is not Celine.

If Rumi isn’t actually dead already, her heart stops. “Mom?”

Ryu Miyeong frowns at her. “‘Mom?’”

All Rumi can do is gawk at the woman standing in front of her. The woman who is, unmistakably, Ryu Miyeong, and it’s like she walked out of all of the pictures and newspaper and magazine cut-outs Rumi grew up knowing her from. She looks like she walked out of the cover of the album that won the Sunlight Sisters the Idol Awards in 1997, that Celine lent her as a child and she hasn’t actually given back since, not that Celine’s ever actually asked for it back anyway.

She looks about as old as she must have been when she had Rumi.

This is Ryu Miyeong, live and in the flesh—and it doesn’t make any fucking sense.

“Mom,” she says again, confused, elated, and honestly kind of nauseous because what if Zoey is right and they really are dead? What other explanation would there be for why her dead mother is standing right in front of her now? “Mom, I—”

A sword zips through the air and nearly cleaves her face clean in half before Rumi even gets to finish her sentence. The only reason she gets to keep her entire head intact is that Mira yanks her out of the way, summoning her gok-do. Zoey summons her shin-kal too as the reason for the flying fucking sword steps out, holding another sword, thrumming an almost electric blue, in her hand. She holds out her empty hand and, with barely a twitch of her fingers, summons the sword she just flung at Rumi’s head, a reddish-pink one now, right back in it.

“Celine,” Rumi murmurs.

And it is Celine, but just like Miyeong, it’s like she stepped out of all of those album covers and old photos Rumi grew up adoring. She looks impossibly young, not a hint of grey in her thick, dark hair, and her face is free of the heaviness Rumi’s always known her to carry. There’s no weariness in her eyes, no big, incomprehensible sadness. She is Celine, but not the Celine that Rumi’s known all her life. No, because this Celine doesn’t look like she would have hesitated if Rumi came to her like this, demon patterns bared to the world, and asked her to kill her. This Celine just sent a sword flying at her head, and Rumi should be annoyed by that because who just does that, but the answer is obvious, because the answer is Celine would, if she’d never raised Rumi.

“Who are you,” Celine snarls, taking another step forward, putting herself between Miyeong and Rumi, “and how do you know my name?”

Mira and Zoey step in front of Rumi too, protective.

“Celine,” Zoey tries, “please,” but Celine narrows her eyes at the both of them and spits out, “You’re clearly Hunters too—so what are you doing protecting that demon?”

That lands like a punch straight to the chest. Rumi staggers back, head spinning, the world closing in on her. It’s different, hearing Celine, even if it isn’t really her Celine, say it like that. It suddenly makes Rumi want to cover up, to hide, just like her Celine always told her to when she was growing up, but there’s nowhere to run now.

The only thing that pulls her out of her spiraling thoughts is Mira snapping, “If you would just shut up and give us a second to explain,” at Celine. “Rumi isn’t—”

“Rumi?”

Suddenly, everyone turns to her mother. To Miyeong, who’d been shell-shocked into silence by this strange, unfamiliar girl calling her Mom and by the sudden escalation of events. She takes a step forward now, gently brushing past Celine even though Celine steps forward with her anyway, and then she just—looks at Rumi. Really looks at her, like she’s seeing her for the first time. And for a moment, there’s… something behind her eyes. Not exactly recognition, or even a flicker of familiarity, but like something about the name Rumi snags in her brain and now she’s trying to grope in the dark for a memory that doesn’t exist. Like, now, she sees the girl behind the patterns that curl and wind all over her body, around her limbs and up her neck, her face—Miyeong’s face, with Miyeong’s eyes.

“Rumi,” Miyeong says again, more to herself than anything, breathing the syllables out like she’s trying to get a grasp on the name that sounds a little too suspiciously close to her own. And it’s something, getting to actually hear her mother say her name like this, something that Rumi’s always dreamed of, always imagined—and now, she knows what it sounds like, hearing her name in her mother’s voice. But that happy little bubble bursts the very next second when Miyeong asks, “Why… did you call me that—Mom? Who are you, Rumi?”

Mira and Zoey turn to look at Rumi, their weapons still raised at Celine. Rumi lets out a shaky breath, then steps forward, through the barrier of Mira and Zoey’s bodies. She can practically hear all the warning alarms blaring in Celine’s head as she tries to put herself between Rumi and Miyeong again, but she freezes when Miyeong places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes, like she’s telling her to stand down.

Rumi’s eyes flicker back and forth between them, and it’s dizzying, seeing the both of them like this, but she takes another breath in and tells them—or Celine, mostly—“Just… let me explain, please,” and she flexes her hand, fingers catching on the threads of the Honmoon, which then materialize into her sword.

To say Miyeong and Celine are shocked would be the understatement of the century.

“You’re…” Celine’s face screws up in confusion, and then horror. “You’re a Hunter?”

Rumi swallows down the lump in her throat. “Yes,” she gets out, “and—and a demon. A half-demon,” she corrects quickly. “I’m half-demon.”

Celine voices out the question on everyone’s minds right now: “How?”

“I…” Rumi purses her lips—opens her mouth again, then closes it. How exactly is she supposed to go about this? She has to explain this to Celine and her mother just as much as she has to explain it to Mira and Zoey, who she obviously hasn’t had the chance to actually talk to about all of this since they found out. She can feel their eyes boring into the back of her skull, expectant.

She clears her throat. “Look, I—we—don’t know what’s happening right now, or how we got here, or—or—how you’re here,” she says, gesturing to her mother, who shoots her back a puzzled look, “but we do know that whatever is going on right now, Gwi-ma’s got something to do with it, and I—” Her breath catches in her throat. A beat, then: “I’m your daughter.”

Celine and Miyeong stare back at her, wide-eyed, then turn to look at each other.

It’s obvious that Celine is doing the math in her head because how could someone who looks, at most, five years younger than the both of them be Miyeong’s daughter, and she starts, “Since when did you—,” but Miyeong cuts her off by asking Rumi, “You’re my daughter?”, pointing at herself like she’s trying to make sure Rumi’s got the right person.

“Yes,” Rumi answers, heaving the word out.

Silence, again.

Rumi can feel Mira and Zoey shifting uncomfortably behind her. She keeps her eyes on Celine and Miyeong the entire time, waiting. Finally, it’s Celine who breaks the silence: “So you’re telling me that you’re a half-demon Hunter, and that Miyeong is your mother even though you’re, what, twenty-three? Twenty-four? You do realize how insane that sounds, right? And Miyeong would never—”

Miyeong places a hand on Celine’s arm, as if to stop her.

Celine turns to her, brows furrowed. “Miyeong, this is insane. This is impossible. Why are we even still entertaining these—these—” She waves her hand vaguely at Rumi, Mira, and Zoey, making this frustrated noise. “This is obviously just another one of Gwi-ma’s dirty tricks.”

But Miyeong just purses her lips, like she isn’t convinced.

“Miyeong,” Celine says, exasperated now.

“Rumi isn’t lying!” Zoey says suddenly, defensive. “W-we don’t know how we got here or where here even is, but she isn’t lying or making any of this up. She is your daughter, it’s just—you just don’t know it yet, you know?”

Celine shoots her this unimpressed look, and as much as Rumi appreciates Zoey for sticking up for her, she can’t really blame Celine either.

Before she can accuse them of lying again, though, Miyeong finally speaks up.

“Let’s just… hear them out,” she says to Celine, who inevitably looks like she’s going to explode again. “We don’t know what’s going on, but something is going on, and I don’t think killing them now is going to be very productive for us if we want to figure all of this out.

“They’re Hunters too, Celine,” Miyeong says more gently this time, “and as… strange as the circumstances are, I think we ought to help them.”

Celine tries to argue against it but gets nowhere with it. In the end, she just lets out this frustrated but resigned sort of half-whine, half-groan. She dismisses her swords with a wave of her hands. “Fine. But if I’m right…”

“You won’t be,” Mira says stubbornly, clutching her gok-do tighter, which earns her a glare from Celine. Zoey nudges her and tells her hey, chill under her breath, and then they dismiss their weapons too.

Rumi breathes out a sigh of relief, and so does Miyeong. They just look at each other for a moment, then she beckons for them to follow. “Let’s take this inside—before Celine changes her mind,” she says, and Celine scoffs, already halfway back inside the house.

“I would tell you to make yourselves at home,” Miyeong says as she sets down five cups of tea, one for each of them, “but I don’t think Celine would appreciate that.”

Celine makes a face at her but only just sips on her tea silently.

“So,” Miyeong says, settling down beside Celine, across Rumi, Mira and Zoey. “You say you’re… not from here, right?”

Rumi, Mira and Zoey exchange glances. “Well,” Rumi answers for all three of them, “I guess that’s one way to put it, yeah.” But then Celine narrows her eyes at her, which forces her to swiftly add, “I-It’s just that the last thing we all remember before we wound up here is that we were fighting Gwi-ma—”

“We almost had him too,” Zoey adds helpfully.

“—and then, there was this, like—”

“Explosion,” Mira says this time.

“—yeah, like an explosion of light, not like the place blew up or anything, and then next thing we knew, we woke up here.” Rumi’s eyes bounce back and forth between Celine and Miyeong, who both look a little skeptical of their story. “I know it’s a little hard to believe, and even we’re still having a hard time just… processing it, but we think that Gwi-ma sent us here. Or, at least, that seems to be the only plausible conclusion we can come to right now.”

“The only problem is,” Mira adds, tired, “we don’t really know where or what ‘here’ is, exactly.”

Miyeong purses her lips, mulling over that. Then, she turns to Rumi and says slowly, carefully, “You said you’re half-demon… and that you’re my daughter.”

“Yes,” Rumi answers, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She isn’t so surprised her mother—Miyeong—would want to address the elephant in the room, but she still feels a little nauseous over it anyway. Even Mira and Zoey sit up straighter, attentive. “I… I don’t really know the full story,” she explains, “but from what, uh”—her eyes flicker towards Celine’s direction—“from what Celine—the one from where we came from—told me, my mom—you—fell in love with a demon and then… had me.”

Miyeong and Celine exchange a quick glance. Almost like she can sense the huge but hanging in the air between them, Celine presses Rumi by asking, “And then what?,” crossing her arms over her chest. It gives Rumi whiplash. Sure, the Celine sitting across from her now is younger, not weighed down by grief, and she doesn’t even know who Rumi is, but she’s looking at her the way she always does when she doesn’t buy Rumi’s excuses or the stories she makes up whenever she tries to get herself out of trouble. “You said you were surprised to see Miyeong here—why?”

Rumi hesitates.

It’s one thing to tell totally random strangers that her mother died giving birth to her, but it’s another thing to tell her own mother, who is very much alive and breathing and whole and sitting across from her now, waiting for her to explain just what happened to her over there, where Rumi came from. Celine too. She’s watching her—watching them—already on edge, like she’s already bracing for Rumi to say something that will inevitably set her off again.

She drops her eyes to the tea she hasn’t touched. Her fingers tighten around the cup. She could lie, but if there’s anything she’s learned in the past few days, it’s that the truth will always come out eventually. Better to get it out and done with herself than to wait for the universe to pull the rug out from under her again.

So, she takes a deep breath and, bracing herself, says, “Back where we came from, Miyeong—my mom… She died during childbirth.” A heavy, heavy pause. “I never got to know her. Celine raised me.”

Then: silence, again.

Miyeong doesn’t move. She doesn’t even blink, doesn’t breathe, like Rumi’s words haven’t landed yet, or maybe they landed too hard. There’s no horror or her face, no disbelief, not really. Just… stillness. A stunned, reeling kind of quiet, like she’s mourning something she only ever got to know ever even existed now, through this strange, unfamiliar girl sitting across from her who claims to be her daughter—the girl she dies for, in some other version of this world.

Beside her, Celine goes rigid. Her eyes are wide with shock, and just barely contained anger. That’s familiar too, but it never crossed Rumi’s mind that Celine could ever be like this. That she could burn like this, when Rumi’s only ever known her to be calm and cool, if not distant sometimes, even in her anger or disappointment. Her love.

Finally, Miyeong says, “I… I die? Where you three came from—I die?”

It’s Rumi’s turn to be puzzled. “W-what do you mean?”

Miyeong’s eyes flicker to Celine, then down to her hands. She doesn’t answer right away, just sits there, the question hanging in the air, unanswered. It goes unanswered long enough for Rumi to start putting two and two together, and judging by the looks on Mira and Zoey’s faces, it seems like they’ve reached the same conclusion she has, horrified.

It’s Zoey who speaks up for all three of them in the end. “You mean… Poppy, she—she’s dead?”

Celine glances at Miyeong, working her jaw like she’s unsure if she should entertain that question or not, then she heaves a sigh and answers, “Yes. She died a few months ago.”

Suddenly it’s all starting to make horrible, awful sense.

Rumi had started to think that maybe Gwi-ma had thrown them back in time, back to before Miyeong had her. That would certainly be enough to explain why she has no idea who Rumi is, or that she ever had a daughter in the first place. But she’s starting to see it a little more clearly now:

This is a world where Miyeong gets to live because she never existed, and because someone else had died in her place.

It makes Rumi feel sick in the stomach but what other explanation is there? What else can explain Poppy’s absence?

She looks around the table, at the way everyone has gone quiet as the same realization—understanding—hits them. It seems to hit Miyeong especially hard, though, if the way her face twists in pain is anything to go by.

“Mom,” Rumi says softly, aching for her.

She gets it. Of course she does. Her mother died so she could live—she knows a thing or two about that specific kind of guilt. The guilt of a life exchanged for another.

Celine hasn’t said a word since she confirmed Poppy’s death, but now, her voice cuts through the silence, low and tight. “You do understand how this looks, don’t you? I’m not saying I believe in cosmic trade-offs, necessarily, but you show up here and tell us Miyeong died in your world, or wherever you came from, and now it’s like Poppy died in exchange for her life here. Like Miyeong was never supposed to be alive—keep living—in the first place. But now you’re here, and if she died in your world and you came here… I don’t want to assume the worst, but I’m not taking my chances either.”

Her eyes lock on Rumi pointedly when she says, “It doesn’t help that one of you is half-demon.”

Miyeong bristles at that, like she doesn’t like Celine talking about Rumi—her daughter, even if it obviously still doesn’t make sense to her how Rumi is her daughter—like that, and that’s the only consolation Rumi gets out of this horribly tense exchange.

“So you’re saying that, what? Us being here is some sort of omen or something?” Mira fires back at Celine. Rumi knows she’s really only pissed off at Celine for her sake, at what she’s insinuating. “You can’t be fucking serious, Celine. We didn’t even want to be here.”

Celine’s eyes cut to Mira, her gaze sharp. “I’m saying I don’t like unknown variables walking into my life and dropping this kind of news on us. You three might think you’re just passing through, but what if you’re not? What if something followed you here? You say you’re not from here, so don’t you think that something will inevitably have to change now that you are here? You can’t just walk in here and expect things to stay the same.”

The air between them goes taut. Rumi stays quiet, but she can feel the weight of Celine’s words pressing on her chest. The terrible thing is, Rumi actually does think there’s perfectly calculated logic to what Celine is saying, and it sucks, the way having to admit Celine is right always sucks because she’s right about these sorts of things more often than not.

“Look,” Zoey chimes in, trying her hardest to diffuse the tension between Mira and Celine, “w-we don’t have any intention to stay here longer than we have to”—which Rumi translates in her head as, we don’t plan to stay here long enough for anyone else to die—“but we really need your help getting back, o-or, like, figuring out if we can.”

Celine is about to say something again until Miyeong places a hand on her arm, and then she just turns to Miyeong, curious, and maybe a little confused.

“It’s late,” is what Miyeong says in the end, her hand still on Celine’s arm like she means to hold her down, hold her back, with that alone. It works, though, to Rumi’s fascination. “I think we should all just get some rest first, and then maybe, hopefully, start to figure this all out tomorrow when we’re all a little more… calm,” and she seems to direct this at Celine specifically with the way she squeezes her arm. Celine just huffs. “We have a spare room here." Something shifts in her voice—softer, almost careful—before she continues, "It’s not very big, but—”

“The guest room?” Rumi blurts out.

Miyeong blinks at her, surprised, then smiles sheepishly. Like she just remembered that, in another world, or another life, maybe, Rumi grew up in this house, so she knows it just as well as Miyeong and Celine do. “Yes,” she replies, “I can get it ready for you three. I think we’ve got some clothes you can change into as well.”

Celine makes a face at her, like she’s going to complain that she never agreed to letting these strangers stay the night, much less lend them her clothes, but Miyeong just smiles at her, lets her hand slip down Celine’s arm and around Celine’s hand instead, tangling their fingers together. Rumi watches as, just like that, all of the fight leaves Celine’s body, every muscle relaxing with it, and the look she gives Miyeong is one of irritated fondness. Affection. And that’s when it hits Rumi—

“Wait—you’re together?”

Rumi’s head spins. She’s always known Celine and her mother were close, Celine said as much, and Poppy had confirmed it for her too, the couple of times she visited the both of them when Rumi was a kid, had even said that whatever Celine and Miyeong had was “something special,” verbatim, and Rumi knows Celine has spent the rest of her life mourning that. When she was a bit older—old enough to take crushes more seriously, and to realize maybe she liked more than just boys—she started entertaining the idea that maybe Celine had been in love with her mother all along. It seemed like the only explanation for why someone like her would have taken it upon herself to raise Rumi, despite everything. That there must have been something that compelled her to do it, something stronger than just their bond as Hunters and as friends.

She’d never once considered the possibility that her mother might have, or could have, felt the same way. Or that, you know, she could have been into women at all too.

Both Celine and Miyeong have tensed up. Even Mira and Zoey have, too. Then Celine asks defensively, and almost threateningly, “Is there a problem with that?”

“What?” Rumi squawks, a little offended at what Celine is insinuating this time, “Of course not! Why would I—I’m not shocked because of that. I-It’s just, you know… where we come from…” She deflates, gesturing to herself, as if to say, I happened, and so, they never did.

Celine doesn’t say anything. She just looks kind of embarrassed.

Miyeong pats her hand and, addressing everyone, says, “Alright, time for bed.”

Rumi guides Mira and Zoey to the guest room, passing by the room that, back where they're from, would have been her room, seemingly locked shut here, where they wait quietly for Miyeong to come with the pile of fresh clothes she promised them. “I would give you directions to where the bathroom is,” she quips, smiling crookedly, “but I’m sure you already know.” They thank her for the clothes, and just before she leaves, she says, “Rumi,” and Rumi freezes, gripping tightly onto the shirt she’d picked out for herself. Miyeong rubs the back of her neck awkwardly. “I just wanted to apologize for Celine’s… behavior earlier. I would say she isn’t usually like that, but I think you and I both know that isn’t exactly true. I just hope you don’t take it personally.”

Rumi purses her lips, conflicted. How could she tell her mother that she’s been trying not to, ever since she was old enough to internalize that her very existence was a mistake? That she’s always told herself Celine was just scared for her, and that’s why she told her to cover up her entire life, even up to their very last time seeing each other before Rumi wound up here? That she’s spent all her life telling herself it was never anything personal on Celine’s end, even if she could never really be sure?

And anyway, she can’t really blame this Celine for being so hostile towards her, not after everything they’ve already lost.

“I do want to know more about your world,” Miyeong goes on to say, sincere, if not a little nervous, “and—and about me, over there.”

Rumi manages a small smile at her.

“Alright,” Miyeong breathes out, smiling at all three of them now. “I’ll see you three tomorrow.” Then, she’s gone.

When it’s just the three of them again, they strip out of their battered stage outfits and into the clothes Miyeong lent them. Then, wordlessly, they flop down onto the singular bed in the guest room, just barely big enough to hold all three of them, let alone Mira, who takes up most of the space. “Sorry,” she mumbles, as they try to figure out how to make this one-bed situation work.

Eventually they end up huddled against the headboard, with Rumi sandwiched between them. After a long, long day and what may or may not be an interdimensional leap through time and space or whatever, Rumi is—exhausted, and it’s all finally starting to catch up to her. Having the familiar warmth of Mira and Zoey’s bodies pressing in on her from both sides is especially making her drowsy. Mira and Zoey, at least, seem to be on the same page.

“Hey,” Mira says after a while, softly, “I… I’m really sorry about the way we reacted.”

“Me too,” Zoey murmurs.

Rumi squeezes her eyes shut, because she might actually cry otherwise. “It’s fine,” she says. “I don’t think I would have reacted so differently if I were in your shoes.”

Neither Mira nor Zoey say anything in response to that.

“You showed up for me in the end,” Rumi continues, gentler this time, so they know she isn’t mad at them and probably never really could get herself to be anyway. “That’s all that matters to me.”

Zoey takes Rumi’s hand into hers and squeezes it, like a silent promise being made.

Rumi knows she could leave it at that, and it would be a nice, sweet note to end things on, but she feels compelled to tell them, “Before Gwi-ma… I went back here, to Celine, and I… I asked her to kill me.”

This time, Mira stirs, turning so violently that it almost knocks both Rumi and Zoey off the narrow bed. “What?” she breathes out, stricken, and she looks like she actually wants to cry. “Rumi, why—you mean—”

Even Zoey looks like she’s going to bawl her eyes out any second now, the realization that they almost lost Rumi hitting her just as hard. “Rumi,” she says, and then—there it is: the waterworks—sobs, “Rumi,” and she throws her arms around Rumi. Mira wraps her arms around the both of them, almost pulling the both of them against her body, like that’ll be enough to keep Rumi safe and just hold all of them together.

“Hey,” Rumi says, trying to soothe her friends, “it’s fine. I’m still here, aren’t I?”

Mira pulls back just to glare at her through her tears when she says, “And what if you aren’t? What if she actually did do it? I—I just watched her throw a fucking sword at your head, Rumi.”

Rumi suddenly feels bad for trying to crack a joke at this moment. “Yeah, but…” She furrows her brows, trying to find the right way to explain it, and then just settles on, “Celine wouldn’t have done it,” hoping that they understand what she’s trying to say. That the Celine who did, in fact, hurl a sword at her head isn’t the Celine that raised her.

Mira and Zoey get it, of course. They always do, in the end.

“You know,” Zoey says a beat later, once their emotions have settled back down a little, “I always thought Celine was scary, but this Celine is—” She shudders. “I never imagined she was such a homicidal maniac when she was younger.”

Rumi snorts out a laugh, but then that quickly turns into mortification when Mira adds, “And, like, Celine and your mom, dude,” scandalized.

“Stop,” Rumi groans, embarrassed now, “please, I don’t need to think about how she’s—”

“Fucking your mom?” Mira supplies, gleeful. “Do you think that’s what they were doing before we got here? Maybe that’s why Celine was so grumpy. Maybe we interrupted them.”

“Celine’s always grumpy,” Zoey says, “and also, ew,” but then she’s laughing so hard she almost rolls off the bed.

“Stoooop,” Rumi whines, burying her burning face in her hands. Mira and Zoey only laugh harder.

Zoey’s still giggling under her breath when Rumi yanks the blanket over her head like she can block them both out, muffling a groan. It earns her a light and playful elbow from Mira before Mira tugs the blanket back down and slides in closer, arm draping over Rumi’s waist. Zoey shifts so her forehead rests against Rumi’s shoulder; Mira’s breath fans against the back of her neck. Their teasing fades into the soft rustle of fabric and the creak of the mattress as everyone gets comfortable.

There’s still a lot left between them that they need to discuss, but for now it’s enough that they’re all still together somehow. The rest can come later.

Eventually, Rumi’s eyes drift shut. The last thing she registers before sleep takes her is the weight of Mira’s arm tightening just slightly around her, and Zoey’s quiet, steady breathing against her skin, like they mean to hold her there, and won’t let go.

Rumi wakes up and, for just a second, hopes against all hope that whatever happened last night had all been a strange, overly elaborate dream, and that they’d actually defeated Gwi-ma. But then she peels her eyes open and finds that she’s still cramped in the small bed in the guest room and then, as if on cue, Miyeong pops her head in and greets her with, “Good morning. I hope you guys slept okay,” smiling apologetically at the way they look like a trio of unevenly-sized sardines packed in a very, very tiny can.

Mira and Zoey stir awake too, and Rumi manages to grab ahold of Zoey before she almost rolls off the bed again. “Hey, uh—” Rumi furrows her brows, unsure if she should call Miyeong Mom again or not, but also uncomfortable with the idea of just referring to her by her name. She scraps it entirely and just answers, “Yeah, um, we’re fine.”

Miyeong gives her this unplaceable kind of look at her hesitation to call her Mom again, but then she quickly smooths over that with a smile and tells them, “Breakfast is ready, by the way,” then ducks out of the guest room right after.

They take turns showering then follow the warm, savory smell wafting through the hall. It leads them to the kitchen, where they find Celine standing at the stove, patiently guarding over the mackerel sizzling in the pan while steam curls up from a pot of soup beside it. For the first time since they got here, she looks totally at peace.

Rumi is still taking that in when Miyeong comes up behind Celine and wordlessly rests a hand against the small of her back. Celine tilts her head slightly, just enough to acknowledge Miyeong’s presence, and Miyeong leans in to murmur something Rumi can’t hear. Celine chuckles softly, then Miyeong’s arms slip loosely around her waist as she leans in again to kiss her, this time.

A heavy feeling settles in Rumi’s chest.

Her mother is happy here. Celine is happy. Maybe it’s no coincidence that she doesn’t exist in this world, after all.

Miyeong glances up and finally notices the three of them standing in the doorway. When she catches Rumi staring, she blushes like she’s embarrassed or something. Celine turns to look at them too—at Rumi, specifically—and she kind of just half-frowns at her before she turns all of her attention back to the food she’s preparing.

“Um,” Mira says awkwardly, and Miyeong slips away from Celine’s side to set the table. “Come,” she says, gesturing for them to take their places, “sit down.” One by one, she sets down bowls of rice and then an array of side dishes—neatly plated kimchi, stir-fried vegetables, seaweed, the works—while Celine ladles generous portions of the soup into five bowls, which she then passes to Miyeong. The fish is done too.

They settle into their seats, and without a word or hesitation. Miyeong takes one of the fillets of mackerel and places it on Rumi’s plate first. Rumi blinks down at her plate, the gesture landing heavier than she wants to admit, but then Miyeong’s already moving on to serve Mira and Zoey like it didn’t mean anything at all to her, saying, “Go on, dig in,” smiling warmly at them. They mumble their thank you’s and get to eating.

It isn’t until Rumi’s got a mouthful of rice, soup, and mackerel that she realizes just how hungry she is. It’s probably been almost a whole day now since Rumi’s last meal. She’s tempted to just shovel all the food into her mouth and risk the humiliation of choking or, later on, indigestion, but she manages to get a hold of herself, slowing down to savor the food—to savor the taste of home.

Rumi grew up on Celine’s cooking. When Rumi was finally of age and she insisted that she wanted to spend her birthday drunk out of her mind—it would just be at home anyway with Zoey, who wasn’t of age and had to spend the evening sipping on soda instead, moping about it the entire time, and Mira, who was also of age, so she spent the evening drinking Rumi under the table—Celine had the haejangguk ready and waiting for her the very next morning, as well as a lightly-served sermon on drinking responsibly. So, even if things are tense with this Celine, this is still the food she knows and loves so well, prepared the exact same way by the exact same hands. She didn’t think she could ever miss Celine like this, especially not after how they left things off before Gwi-ma dropped them here—but she does. She misses Celine, even if—well—Celine is sitting right across from her.

She doesn’t realize she’d been staring at Celine until Celine cocks a perfectly arched brow at her. Rumi drops her gaze and shovels some more rice, soup, and mackerel into her mouth to keep herself from saying something stupid.

Not much talking is done over breakfast. Mira and Zoey are just as ravenous as Rumi, meanwhile Celine and Miyeong just watch them tear through the side dishes and several bowls of rice and soup in quiet, almost horrified fascination. At one point Celine stands up to fry up some eggs, nice and simple sunny-side-up, and shoves the entire plate at the three of them and then sits back to just watch them again, faintly more amused this time.

“You guys are hungry, huh,” Miyeong remarks eventually, which makes Rumi, Mira, and Zoey freeze, embarrassed at how they must look like a bunch of hungry little slobs right now. Miyeong picks up on that, of course, and just laughs, light and easy. “No, no, it’s okay. I understand. You've been through a lot in the past couple hours. Just eat as much as you want.”

Celine shoots her one of those looks again, one of those silent complaints, like STOP DRAGGING ME INTO THIS, I AM NOT THEIR PERSONAL CHEF, but just as Rumi’s observed all it takes is a light touch and a small smile to make her acquiesce.

“Actually,” Zoey says shyly, with an equally sheepish smile to match as she holds her empty bowl up, “could I maybe have a little more of the soup? It’s really, really good.”

Rumi catches the faint curl of pride tugging at Celine’s mouth before she schools her expression back into something neutral.

When the last of the fish and side dishes are gone and every bowl has been scraped clean one last time, they help clear the table. The clatter of dishes fades into the background as fresh mugs of tea and coffee are set down on the table, steam curling into the air between them. Miyeong takes her seat again, folds her hands on the table, and with a glance at Celine, says, “Alright, I suppose there’s no time better than now to pick up where we left off last night.” She looks at Celine again. “Celine?”

“You have to tell us everything,” Celine instructs Rumi, Mira and Zoey. “Before you fought Gwi-ma, when you were fighting Gwi-ma, and then just before you wound up here. Before the explosion of light that you mentioned. Spare no details and try not to be so vague this time. We won’t be able to piece together how this was possible or how to send you back to where you came from otherwise.”

Miyeong nods, then adds more gently, “We understand that this is all a lot to take in right now, but we really need you to try your best to remember any- and everything that could potentially help us help you. We have to work our way backwards.”

Rumi, Mira and Zoey exchange glances, then Mira and Zoey nod at Rumi. She nods back at them then, taking in a deep breath, says, “Okay, so—”

She does her best to tell them everything, just like Celine said, start to finish. She tells them about the Saja Boys, and both Celine and Miyeong, but especially Celine, are distressed when she tells them specifically about Jinu. Celine looks like she’s already planning a manhunt, and Miyeong looks like she’s ready to join her, weirdly kind of protective, and Rumi just tries to barrel on with an, “Anyway,” that her voice cracks around, only for them to look even more distressed as soon as she tells them that she and Jinu had come to an agreement to help each other, or at least she thought he was going to actually honor his promise to let the Saja Boys lose during the Idol Awards. She decides to leave out the not-so-minor detail of her asking the Celine from their world to kill her because she thinks she’s done enough irreversible damage to this Celine’s blood pressure for one morning.

“Which brings us here,” Rumi says, a little breathless from how much and how long she’d been talking. “It’s exactly as we said: we were fighting Gwi-ma and his hordes of demons, and just when we thought we had it, there was this explosion of light and then next thing we knew, we were all here already.”

“So,” Zoey chimes in, hopeful, “what do you think?”

Celine and Miyeong exchange a look, another one of those private nonverbal conversations they have with their eyes and eyes alone, then Celine turns back to Rumi, Mira and Zoey and simply says, “Follow me.” She’s up and out the door the next second, in a few quick strides.

Miyeong and Rumi look at each other for a moment, then Miyeong is up on her feet too. Rumi, Mira and Zoey follow her lead.

Celine leads them out the back of the house, across a stone path slick with morning dew. The shed sits at the edge of the property, tucked between two tall persimmon trees, plain enough to be ignored—except for the heavy steel door and the keypad lock bolted to the front. Rumi recognizes it from all of the times Celine’s asked her to fetch some gardening tool or other, back in her world, but she’s never actually let Rumi inside the shed. There never seemed to be any reason for her to, until now.

They watch as Celine punches in the code, and then, the mechanism clicks. The door swings inward, revealing a narrow stairwell lit by bare bulbs, like something ripped straight out of a horror movie, but they follow her down the narrow stairwell all the same, the air becoming cooler and drier as they descend.

The steps go on longer than Rumi expects, long enough that the sound of their footfalls seems to sink into the walls. She swears she sees faded talismans pasted at intervals, their paper brittle and their ink long since bled into the plaster. When they reach the bottom, Celine palms another lock, this one set into a reinforced door with intricate carvings around the frame. It swings open on silent hinges.

“Whoa,” Rumi murmurs, as the space beyond swallows them.

Underground, it’s vast, far wider than the footprint of the shed above. A sprawling archive, with wooden shelves that stretch high toward the vaulted ceiling, lined with scrolls bound in silk cords, and then thick leatherbound tomes, and stacks of weathered manuscripts. The faint smell of incense clings to the air, threaded through with the dry scent of paper older than everyone in the room combined.

“This,” Celine says, stepping forward, “is where we keep everything.”

“Damn,” Mira says, walking up to one of the shelves and just eyeing all of the volumes neatly arranged on the shelves. She turns to look at Rumi and Zoey over her shoulder and asks, “Did you know we even had this? Because I sure as hell didn’t.”

At that, Celine raises a brow at Rumi, who shakes her head and explains, “Celine—uh, our Celine, the one from our world—never let us in here.”

“She wouldn’t even let us go near it, honestly,” Zoey adds, hopping over to where Mira is. She drags her fingers along the spines of the bounded volumes and attempts to pluck out one, only for half the row to come sliding forward in a slow, unstoppable cascade. The books drop to the floor with embarrassingly loud thuds, and both Mira and Zoey turn to look at Celine with sheepish, mildly terrified smiles on their faces. “Oops…?”

Celine, thankfully, doesn’t throw a sword at anyone’s head this time but she does grumble, “I can see why.” When they scramble to pick up the books and rearrange them on the shelves, Celine sighs and says, “Leave it. At this point, you might only make it worse,” and then turns her back to them.

Miyeong beckons for everyone to gather around Celine when she comes back from one of the shelves—one of the older ones, by the looks of it, if not the oldest one—with a scroll that looks so ancient that it’s any wonder how it hasn’t actually disintegrated yet. She lays it carefully across the nearest table, weighing down its curling edges with smooth river stones.

In the center of the parchment, painted in fading but still vivid ink, is a tree. Its sprawling roots are drawn in looping coils that seem to sink deep into the earth, while its branches reach impossibly high, vanishing into a halo of gold leaf. Even through the haze of age, Rumi, Mira, and Zoey recognize it instantly.

“That’s—” Rumi starts, but Celine is already nodding.

“The shinmok,” she says, gaze sweeping over them. “When the first Hunters created the Honmoon, they bound its magic here, to the shinmok. Its primary purpose was to serve as a shield to protect this world from Gwi-ma and his demons, yes, but the magic itself that holds the Honmoon together is also what holds this world apart from others.” She taps at the painted tree. “This is the keystone that holds it all together. It’s what connects your world—or, I suppose, more accurately, your reality—to ours.”

Zoey frowns. “So it’s like… some kind of magic battery?”

“Something like that, but it’s also more than that,” Miyeong answers. “It’s more than just the thing we, as Hunters, tap into to keep the Honmoon intact, and from which all of our own powers flow. Think of it as the point where everything meets, or… Or like a marker for the border between your reality and ours. Like Celine said, the magic itself that holds the Honmoon together is also what holds that border together, so our worlds don’t collide or bleed into each other, so to speak.”

“Wait,” Mira pipes up, crossing her arms over her chest as she tries to make sense of everything they’d just been told. “If this—this—multiverse or alternate realities whatever-the-fuck existed all this time, then why wouldn’t we have been taught about it? Sure, we know what the Honmoon is for, we know why we’re fighting as hard as we are for it, but not once did Celine mention any of this.”

Mira’s words hang in the air for a moment. Celine and Miyeong exchange a glance, like they’re telepathically arguing about who should take one for the team and answer. It doesn’t come as a surprise to Rumi when Celine inevitably crumbles under Miyeong’s gaze.

“We didn’t know either,” Celine answers finally, “at least, not until recently. After Poppy died, the Honmoon had started to weaken significantly. But it wasn’t just the Honmoon, it was—”

“The shinmok,” Miyeong says now, brows furrowed. “Or, more specifically, the magic that comes from it. It wasn’t just that the Honmoon had weakened because one of us was gone, it was the magic itself, the very thing keeping it together. Keeping this world together. It was affecting not only the Honmoon, but our abilities too, to a degree.”

“So, we came down here,” Celine goes on. “We went through everything. Scrolls, bound volumes, anything at all that might tell us what was happening, and why. That’s when we found it.”

She nods at Miyeong, who plucks one of the bound volumes from a nearby shelf and comes back with it, setting it down on the table. She flips through it until she finds the pages relevant to their discussion now.

“This,” Celine continues, gesturing to the book, “was written a few centuries after the scroll. Whoever wrote it theorized that other worlds, or realities, existed, and that the shinmok are, like Miyeong said, simultaneously the throughline between those different realities and the borders between those different realities themselves.”

“So, like in Thor or something?” Zoey asks, confused but also kind of excited. When Miyeong and Celine, particularly, look at her like she’s talking absolute nonsense, she says, “You know, the movie? The one with Chris Hemsworth? Norse god with the hammer? And there’s a massive, magical tree?”

“I don’t know who that is,” Celine deadpans, “or what that movie is.”

“There’s no Thor yet here, remember?” Mira tells Zoey gently. “We’ve been blasted to an alternate reality that’s also somehow simultaneously stuck in the past.”

“Oh,” Zoey says, crestfallen. “Right.”

Miyeong looks a little amused by their segue, like she’s trying to imagine what this Thor person is like, but Celine just sighs, tired. "You are onto something with that, though. The theory essentially is built on the foundation of the concept of the world tree—something where the divine energy from the spiritual realm flows into the physical, and something that connects all of the different realities or worlds together.

“But, that’s all it is. Theory.” Celine smiles wryly. “Honestly, I didn’t even believe it was possible myself until you three showed up here. I doubt my counterpart where you came from would have any reason to know about it… or, if she did, then she had no reason to believe in such a thing either. Either way, there’s centuries’ worth of texts in this room alone—what are the odds she came across this piece of information too?”

Rumi’s head kind of hurts, honestly, but she thinks it’s all starting to make a little more sense to her too at least. Still, that leaves one more question unanswered: “How exactly was Gwi-ma able to, I don’t know, tear a hole through the fabric of reality, though?”

“You mentioned that the Honmoon where you came from had been de-stabilized,” Celine says. “I’m not offering this as a concrete answer or anything, it’s purely theory the way I thought all of this”—she gestures to the dusty old book in front of them—“was theory, but when it weakened, so did the boundary between our realities. The magic that flows from the shinmok doesn’t just feed into the Honmoon. It works the other way around too, creating a perfectly symbiotic relationship—and so, a perfectly dependent relationship. When one weakens, so does the other. With yours unstable and ours under constant strain, it might have given Gwi-ma the perfect opportunity to tear a hole through the fabric of reality, just as you said. He might not have been able to, normally, but the circumstances were aligned to his favor. He only had to find the seam, and then push.”

The room goes silent.

After a while, it’s Rumi who breaks the silence by saying, “Okay, so theoretically, we should be able to do that too, right? Just—just find the seam and then rip it right open?”

Celine purses her lips. “I… don’t know,” she says. “As far as I can tell, no one—Hunter or not—has actually attempted such a thing.”

“It doesn’t seem like anyone’s ever really had the reason to,” Miyeong murmurs.

“Until now,” Rumi finishes, dread crawling up the back of her throat.

Great. So not only are they stuck in an alternate reality, but now they have to put together a way back to their reality from scratch.

Great. Just—great.

Rumi’s about to dig herself a hole to crawl in right here and now when Zoey, ever the optimist, says, “Okay, but there’s, like, a bajillion books and scrolls and stuff in here. I doubt you’ve actually read every single one of them, which means that maybe, just maybe, what we need is somewhere in here.”

There’s a look of fierce pride and affection in Mira’s eyes. “Yeah,” she says, “and now that there’s five of us here, we could go through everything here until we find what we’re looking for together.”

Celine frowns, but for once, it doesn’t seem like she’s frowning because she disagrees or thinks they’re annoying or stupid or whatever. It looks more like she hates that it actually makes some sense. Before she gets to say anything, though, her head snaps toward the direction of the door. Rumi feels it a split second later: the prickle along her skin, the way the air seems to thicken—a ripple through the Honmoon that signals the arrival of demons.

They all rise at once, and they’re up and out the door in seconds.

Celine and Miyeong lead the way, summoning their weapons as they run towards the direction of the graveyard. She’s familiar with Celine’s weapons (which has nothing to do with whether they get flung at her head or not), but is amazed, despite the urgency and gravity of their current situation, at the sight of her mother’s greatbow, thrumming and glowing with the energy from the Honmoon. Even Mira and Zoey can’t seem to help but admire it. The beauty of it, and the strength. Suddenly, Rumi is excited to hack her way through a horde of demons, if only for the chance to see her mother put that greatbow to work.

And there’s a horde of them, alright, slinking between the headstones, claws scraping, and fangs flashing in the cold light of day. Rumi lets her eyes sweep over them and comes to the conclusion that they’re all headed towards the shinmok, the massive zelkova tree dabsmack in the middle of the graveyard. That’s when she notices it: the ribbons hanging from its branches stir weakly, not from wind but from some flicker of energy that seems to stutter like a dying candle, and its leaves are less vibrant than they should be, edges curling and darkening. A heavy feeling settles in her chest.

This place is sick, just like Celine and her mother said.

This place is dying.

Celine tears through the horde, swinging her twin blades with all the ferocity and murderous intent she showed them the night before, cutting down anything that gets within reach. Miyeong hangs back just far enough for a clean shot, her bow drawn in smooth, practiced motions. The magical energy strung between her fingers hums before she looses each arrow, and every single one finds its mark, exploding in a burst of magic on impact.

Rumi, Zoey, and Mira move together without thinking, the old rhythm kicking in. They’ve fought as a unit long enough to know the space between each other’s swings. Mira’s gok-do cleaves through a demon that charges at them, and Zoey’s shin-kal zip through the air, knocking back several demons at once. Rumi darts in to strike where there’s an opening, swinging her sword down with the same intent and swiftness that Celine drilled into her through hours and hours of training and sparring sessions, many of which Rumi spent getting knocked flat on her back with Celine standing over her, the tip of her practice sword at Rumi’s throat.

From the corner of her eye, she catches Celine watching her with this… look on her face. The stance, the angle of Rumi’s blade, the unflinching drive behind every swing—Celine sees all of it, sees Rumi fighting almost exactly like her, and it’s a moment that feels like it lasts an eternity but, in reality, is more like a blink in time because Celine whips her attention back to the task at hand, to the demons they still have left to get rid of, and hacks her way through them. So Rumi’s eyes drift to her mother instead, catching the arc of her mother’s bowstring as it pulls taut beside Celine. They move around each other with all of the familiar, practiced ease that Rumi, Mira and Zoey have. Fluid, instinctive. It’s a little hypnotic, watching them fight like they’re dancing, that Rumi almost forgets she’s in this fight too—until a demon lunges at her.

Mira steps in and cuts the demon down with her gok-do.

“You good?” Zoey calls, already moving to cover Rumi’s flank.

“Yeah,” Rumi says, shaking off her nerves and gripping her weapon tighter. Together, the three of them pivot, scanning for the next threat.

They make easy work of the last few demons still alive and kicking. Then, just like that, it’s over. Quiet, again. No one dismisses their weapon until they’re a hundred percent sure there isn’t another wave of demons coming.

“They’ve got some nerve,” Celine grumbles, irritated, “coming here in broad daylight.”

“You know what they say,” Mira says drily, “start the morning right.”

“A demon horde a day keeps the doctor away,” Zoey chimes in.

A smile flickers over Celine’s face, and Rumi huffs out a tired laugh before she kind of squeaks in surprise when Miyeong comes over to her and catches her face in one hand, tilting it to check for any cuts or bruises. “Are you okay?” she asks, voice low but urgent.

“I-I’m fine,” Rumi answers, her cheeks burning under Miyeong’s touch. “Thanks.”

Miyeong looks like she’s going to still fuss over Rumi but then seems to decide against it in the end. She just says, “That’s good,” smiling warmly at her.

To be honest, she’s a little giddy about it. She grew up watching other kids’ moms dote over them and always wondered what it would be like to be given that treatment. It isn’t that Celine was cold with her or sparing with her affection or anything, but she’s certainly not doting the way Rumi always imagined her mother would be.

Celine would whack her with a practice sword without hesitation and then get mad at her for letting her guard down again, or for hesitating long enough again to give her an opening. Afterwards, she would pass her an ice pack for her new collection of bruises and then prepare one of Rumi’s favorite dishes for dinner. She cared for Rumi, but never particularly doted on her.

So, naturally, this Celine has to ruin the moment by saying, “Don’t let yourself get distracted next time,” but there’s no heat to it. She’s got this unreadable expression on her face, but she looks away before Rumi can try to make anything more of it.

They gather around the tree. “When you said it was bad,” Mira starts, and Zoey finishes, solemn, “We didn’t think it was this bad.”

Rumi can feel the tree’s weakness pressing in, the way its fading magic leaves the whole place feeling just a little more hollow. “They were going for the shinmok,” she says, voicing her observation from earlier out loud.

Celine hums. “Ever since the Honmoon weakened, we’ve noticed that, more and more lately, the demon appearances have been concentrated here—not just in the village, but here, specifically.”

“Like they know,” Miyeong says gravely.

“You don’t think Gwi-ma is…?” Rumi starts to ponder, only for her voice to taper off unsurely.

“There’s no way to know for sure if this is just the demons in this reality making the most of the Honmoon’s weakened state,” Celine answers, “or if Gwi-ma specifically means to get rid of it so he can cut down your last connection—your only way back—to your reality.”

“All we know now,” Miyeong says, looking around at everyone, eyes lingering on Celine before they land on Rumi, “is that we need your help just as much as you need ours.”

Rumi waits for Celine to bristle at that, or two give one of those I didn’t agree to this frowns she’s become very familiar with in the short few hours they’ve spent together in this reality, but neither come. She just purses her lips and looks at Rumi, Mira and Zoey expectantly.

It seems that they’ve finally come to a truce, of sorts.

“We’d better get to work then,” Rumi says, Mira and Zoey nodding resolutely beside her.

They spend the next few hours holed up in the dusty old archive under the shed.

The objective is simple enough—find literally anything at all in here that could help them figure out a way to get back home—but sorting through centuries’ worth of texts is still a tall order, and there’s the matter of how quickly they can do it too. Rumi doesn’t know how time is even supposed to work anymore, given their predicament. She doesn’t know just how much of it has passed in their reality since they got here, and it seems a little too optimistic to hope that things just got frozen or suspended in time over there, as if Gwi-ma would ever be considerate enough to wait for them to come back. She’s sure that he wouldn’t have thrown them here in the first place if he knew it was going to be easy for them to find their way back.

“Maybe we can start from the oldest stuff in here and work our way up,” Rumi had suggested, so that’s what they’re doing now.

They’ve split into two groups: Celine and Miyeong on one end of the archive, methodically pulling down scrolls and stacking them into neat piles, and then Rumi, Mira and Zoey on the other end, grabbing as many as they can carry in their arms and choking and coughing on all the dust that come with them. Every so often, Celine glances over at them. Not in suspicion, exactly, but with that razor-sharp watchfulness that makes the three of them slow down and handle the brittle scrolls like they’ll actually disintegrate if they aren’t careful enough.

The hours pass with the steady rustle of parchment and the occasional creak of the wooden shelves. They only take a break when Rumi, Mira and Zoey’s stomachs grumble so loud at the same time that the sound of it echoes in the quiet, cavernous archive. Miyeong covers her mouth like she’s trying not to laugh, while Celine just gives them this only mildly irritated look before she says, “Come on,” and is up on her feet the very next second. They don’t have time to really whip up anything as put-together as breakfast was, so they make do with the leftover soup and fried rice, and Celine fries some eggs too and two whole cans of Spam, like this time she’s ready to feed the three hungry little gremlins that have barged into her life from another, different life entirely.

They inhale the Spam, just like Celine had anticipated. To thank her and maybe apologize for having her prepare so much food just to keep them up and running, they offer to wash the dishes.

By the time they descend into the archive again, the air feels warmer and heavier, the kind of heat that seeps in from above even without a single window to let the light through. They fall back into rhythm without needing to speak—scrolls eased from shelves, parchment whispering under careful hands, the occasional muttered comment when someone finds something worth passing along. It’s a productive afternoon, all things considered, but by the time they’ve worked through at least two and half shelves of old, dusty scrolls, some so old that they’re faded beyond comprehension, they still have nothing to show for it.

Mira exhales sharply, leaning back on her heels. “We’ve been at this for hours,” she groans, “and all we’ve found is dust and dead bugs.” Zoey glances her way, but doesn’t say anything… mostly because she’s trying not to sneeze on the scroll she’s holding.

Celine doesn’t look up from the scroll in her hands. “Then we just have to keep looking. The book we showed you was written long after any of these scrolls were written, so maybe we won’t find exactly what we’re looking for in any of these, but it’s still worth looking at them. We might find something that will lead us to what we’re searching for now.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mira grumbles, a little embarrassed. She turns away from Celine and leans into Rumi to mumble, “You know, I never thought that we’d end up hopping between dimensions or something, but if I did, I would have hoped it would be a little more exciting than being stuck in a tomb of a library all day long.”

This time, Zoey does sneeze, like she just can’t hold it back anymore. She flashes them, but Celine, particularly, an apologetic smile.

Rumi snorts. “Yeah, I get what you mean. I guess this isn’t exactly my idea of reality-hopping and -bending adventures either.”

It’s quiet again for a moment. Rumi’s got her nose buried in a new scroll when Mira nudges her with her elbow and murmurs, “Your mom and Celine are looking real chummy over there,” nodding towards Celine and Miyeong on the opposite end of the room.

Rumi follows her gaze and finds Miyeong leaning against Celine, almost like she’s slouched against her, and it seems like Celine is more than happy to let her do so. Miyeong has one of her knees drawn up, and Celine leans slightly into her too, a scroll spread open across her lap, and there’s this ease to the way they sit—like the space between them stopped existing a long time ago—that snags at Rumi’s heart a little. She watches as Miyeong says something to Celine, too quiet to carry across the room, and whatever it is makes Celine’s expression soften into something warm and unguarded. She says something back that makes Miyeong laugh, then Miyeong bumps shoulders with Celine playfully.

“Is it weird that I think they’re kind of cute together?” Mira blurts out before she can stop herself.

Rumi frowns at her and says, “Dude,” but Zoey excitedly jumps in on their conversation, putting down her scroll to huddle closer to them and say, “It’s really not weird at all. You know, back in the day, in the forums I was a part of, they were, like, a pretty huge thing.”

“You’re saying people shipped them?” Mira asks incredulously.

Zoey nods her head so hard Rumi worries she’ll give herself a concussion or something.

“Did you ship them?”

“Stop,” Rumi groans, before Zoey can even answer. Her face is so hot you could fry an egg on it. “They’re right there, you know. I don’t want them to hear us talking about their legion of fans who ship them, or even have to explain what shipping is.”

Mira makes this noise like fair enough. Zoey smiles sheepishly at Rumi then, more seriously, asks, “Hey, back where we came from—did Celine… or was Celine, you know…?”

“Yeah,” Mira says, serious now too, “I mean, if they’re together in this reality, which is supposed to be some kind of parallel to our own, then wouldn’t that mean that they maybe had something between them there too? Before you were born?”

Rumi would rather not admit that they’re making some sense, but they are. So far, everything has followed the rule of cause and effect perfectly. There is no Rumi here, so Miyeong is alive, and someone else died in her place. There is no Rumi, so it must mean Rumi’s dad either doesn’t exist in this version of reality or Miyeong just never met him, never fell in love with him, which is why she’s with Celine instead.

It makes sense, but she still kind of hates it because the one thing tying it all together is there is no Rumi.

“I… don’t know,” is all she says in the end, in response to Mira and Zoey. “Celine’s never talked about it. To be fair, I’ve never asked either, but, like—what even is a good time to ask, oh, hey, just wanted to know if you were actually in love with my mom?”

Mira makes that fair enough noise again.

“Is it, like, weird for you?” Zoey asks Rumi gently. “Seeing them together here, I mean.”

Rumi has to think a little about that. “No,” she finally answers. “Or at least, not really. They’re clearly happy with each other, and it’s not like I think there’s anything wrong with them being with each other, specifically. It’s just, I guess I keep thinking—”

The both of them are happier without me, is what she was going to say, but then she sees the looks on Mira and Zoey’s faces, like they’re already preparing to throw themselves at her and reassure her so hard it’ll sound like they’re sermoning her instead, so she scraps it and just says, “It’s just taking me some getting used to, that’s all.”

Mira and Zoey exchange a glance then just nod at Rumi.

They get back to work after that. Rumi throws herself into another scroll, trying to smother the dark thought from earlier, but it lingers stubbornly, wedged in the back of her mind, until it finally drags her gaze back to where her mother and Celine are again.

She’s surprised to find Miyeong looking at her too. She tenses up, guilty even if she hasn't even actually done anything to be guilty about, but then Miyeong smiles her way and she relaxes almost immediately. She returns the smile with one of her own, hoping her mother doesn’t see the sadness lingering at the edges of it.

By the time they finally call it for the day, the light outside has dimmed into that hazy, in–between glow that comes just before night settles in. The stacks of scrolls they’ve worked through are taller than they were this morning, but they still don’t have a solid lead.

Celine makes a beeline for the kitchen. She’s already grabbing pots and pans and a variety of ingredients to prepare dinner. Rumi, Mira and Zoey offer to help her but she briskly says, “No,” and leaves it at that.

“Don’t take it personally,” Miyeong assures them with a soft laugh. “She doesn’t even let me help.”

“That’s only because the last time you did, you nearly burned down the kitchen,” Celine says without looking up from the cutting board.

“That was three years ago! Why do you still keep holding that against me?” Miyeong makes a show of looking wounded, which only earns her the faintest twitch at the corner of Celine’s mouth.

The meal is simple—freshly cooked rice, a bubbling stew that fills the air with the sharp comfort of gochujang and garlic, an array of side dishes, and then some tea—but it’s all prepared meticulously and to perfection, and it’s exactly what they all need. Warm, filling. No one talks much, because they’re all too tired to, and because the only thing on everyone’s mind is how the hell are we going to fix this reality-hopping equation, and no one is really in the mood to still talk about that right now, not after a whole day spent in the archive.

They clear the table after dinner. “I can do the dishes,” Rumi offers, stacking plates.

Mira and Zoey open their mouths as if to say they’ll join her, but then Miyeong beats them to it, saying, “I’ll help,” gathering the rest of the dishes. Mira and Zoey exchange a glance with each other first then with Rumi, then they mumble something about showers or resting and then get up and slip out, leaving them alone.

Celine, on the other hand, stays put, brows knitting like she’s not quite following this part of the plan—until Miyeong catches her eye.

“Go,” Miyeong tells her, placing the bowls and utensils in the sink. “You said you wanted to continue checking the archive anyway, right? You can leave this to us.”

Celine still won’t budge, though. She just frowns, crossing her arms over her chest, like she doesn’t trust Miyeong around Rumi or something. Rumi watches as they engage in another one of those nonverbal conversations they always have, until Miyeong seems to give up, sighing, and walks over to where Celine is hovering.

She takes Celine’s face in her hands and says, “There’s no cooking involved, so you don’t have to worry about either of us burning the house down.”

Celine huffs, looking like she’s trying to fight back a smile. “Knowing you,” she replies tiredly, but also fondly, “you’ll probably find some way to do it anyway.”

Miyeong frowns at her, like she’s going to give her a real talking-to now, but she just presses a kiss to her lips instead and then shoos her away with a wave of her hand. This time, Celine does smile, just a little, enough for Rumi to catch before she catches Rumi watching, and then she finally turns to leave.

They wash the dishes together in companionable silence. Miyeong scrubs the dishes clean while Rumi rinses and sets them aside, but they end up tagteaming a particularly stubborn pot. They’re both wiping sweat from their brows by the time they get rid of all of the stuff stuck at the bottom.

Rumi thinks they’re going to spend the rest of their time together in total silence, which she isn’t entirely opposed to—just getting to be around her mother is enough for her, given their circumstances—but then, out of nowhere, Miyeong goes, “You know, Rumi, I’ve been thinking.”

Rumi turns to her. “You’ve been thinking…?”

“Did I really name you that? ‘Rumi’?” Miyeong asks, so dead serious about it that it kind of just circles back into not being serious at all. “I’m just imagining myself using my last, dying breath to say, ‘Name her Rumi,’ and I just keep thinking, wow, that’s pretty self-absorbed of me.”

It’s such a morbid thought that it punches a disbelieving, kind of shocked laugh out of Rumi.

“Sorry,” Miyeong says sheepishly, like she just realized how insane it was to say that to her daughter, “that was…” Then she’s laughing too in that what the fuck sort of way.

“It’s fine,” Rumi says, wiping her hands dry with a paper towel. “And, um… as far as I know… Celine was the one who picked it out.”

Miyeong’s smile doesn’t fade, but there’s a shift in her expression—something quiet and unnameable, as if she’s thinking about that other life Rumi came from, the one where she never got to meet her at all. It isn’t sadness or grief, not exactly, but it carries the same weight, and Rumi can feel the gravity of it pressing down on Miyeong.

“Back there, where you came from,” Miyeong says softly this time, “how is she?”

Rumi bites the inside of her cheek. She knows she has to be very careful of how she goes about this. She doesn’t want to give Miyeong anything more to worry about, knowing that she’s with Celine in this version of reality. The whole daughter reveal is enough of a bomb to drop on someone, but she doesn’t want to lie to her mother either. She doesn’t know how long they’ll have together here like this. She can’t waste any second with her, even if it means saying the sad, unhappy truth.

“She’s okay,” Rumi answers in the end, heart aching with it, “for the most part. She’s… older, and she… misses you. She misses you a lot.” She pauses a beat just to gauge Miyeong’s reaction and it’s—devastated, is the only way she can think to describe it. Quietly devastated. “She never really says as much, but I can tell. I could always tell. But she—she’s tried, she really has, for the both of us, it’s just that things aren’t always so… nice between me and her either. Honestly, we left things off on a pretty, um, bad and awkward note, before I wound up here.”

Miyeong doesn’t say anything for a while. It’s like she’s letting it just… sink in, how her absence has defined this girl’s entire existence, down to the relationship with the woman who did raise her—the woman who, in this reality, she is in love with. That there might always be a bruise or an ache in the shape of her in both these women’s lives.

Eventually, she reaches out to touch Rumi’s face, tracing her patterns with her fingertips. “It must have been hard for you,” she says softly.

Rumi’s breath catches before she can stop it. It hits her hard—too hard—and it makes her want to look away, to flinch. To protect herself from the sharp ache that swells in her chest. But she doesn’t, not when it’s her mother holding her now, giving her the one thing she didn’t even know she needed: the quiet acknowledgement of how hard it’s been, being who she is, and being what she is. How much she’s had to carry by herself for so long. How hard she’s tried to fix things and fix herself, just so she would never have to hide anymore.

She wants to cry. She wants to curl into her mother and just cry… but she somehow manages to keep it together. She swallows down the lump in her throat and says, “Yeah, I—I guess it hasn’t always been so easy. I thought… I thought Celine was right, and that the only way to get by was to just keep my head down and hide my patterns—who I am—from everyone, even from Mira and Zoey, but it just—it sucked. If Celine couldn’t love me, all of me, then who could, you know?”

“Mira and Zoey do,” Miyeong says gently, tucking a strand of Rumi’s hair behind her ear. “I’ve seen how they are with you. They’d give Celine a run for her money when it comes to being protective.”

Rumi laughs shyly, then says more morosely, “Yeah, well, you should have seen the look on their faces when they found out I was half-demon.” A beat. “I… I thought I’d lost them forever, then. I thought they hated me and—and it’s one thing to have the rest of the world hate you, and I almost felt prepared for that, but with them it’s—” Her voice catches. “It’s different, when it’s them. I don’t know how I’d live with myself if they hated me.”

Miyeong is quiet for a moment, just observing Rumi, then she asks, “How long?”

“What do you mean?” Rumi asks back, blinking.

Miyeong raises her brows at her like, really?

“O-oh,” Rumi mumbles, blushing now. She rubs the back of her neck sheepishly, trying hard to avoid her mother’s gaze. “Well, um… I guess, a really long time now? Probably, like—forever.”

“And which one?” Miyeong probes. “Or is it both of them?”

A beat. “Both.”

“And there’s this boy… the demon… Jinu, in the mix too?”

“I—well. I mean, kind of?” She wouldn’t really call a four-hundred-year-old demon a boy, but sure.

“Seems complicated,” Miyeong remarks sagely, and it ends up making the both of them laugh.

“Yeah,” Rumi concedes, sighing, “I guess it is, huh?”

Miyeong smiles at her sympathetically, like she knows a thing or two about complicated herself. “Have you ever told Mira and Zoey?”

“In so many words,” Rumi mumbles, but then she sees the puzzled and skeptical look on Miyeong’s face, and feels compelled to explain, “I-It’s just—it’s been hard, just like you said. I’ve had to keep the fact I’m half-demon from them a secret, and there was always the possibility that they would hate me for it—if not the fact I’m half-demon, then just the fact I’d been lying to them this whole time—a-and obviously that’s going to make the fact I’ve kind of been in love with the both of them since forever really, really complicated. Even if sometimes it’s like they’re just waiting for me to make the move already, but—god—you know, they’ve always sort of, kind of been a thing too, Mira and Zoey, and it feels like if I tried to wedge myself into that, between them, half-demon or not… It’s just weird, you know? I kept wondering if I should just say something already but the timing is never right, and I still hadn’t even told them about the bigger issue right now—which is that I’m half of the very thing we were taught to kill and destroy—and then there’s just the group in general to think about and I—” She breathes in, deep, hard, and exhales it all back out in a heavy sigh. “I just don’t want to be the one who screws it all up because I couldn’t keep my feelings to myself.”

She sees the stunned look on her mother’s face and her face burns even hotter. “I-I’m sorry, that was—” But then Miyeong smiles, and it makes Rumi stop in her tracks again. Shyly, she asks, “What?”

“Nothing,” Miyeong answers, still smiling. “You just sound a lot like her.”

It’s not rocket science: Rumi knows Miyeong is referring to Celine.

“We seriously wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if I hadn’t taken matters into my own hands,” Miyeong tells Rumi, laughing now. “The one piece of advice I can give you, Rumi, is to just go for it. Maybe you guys are still in a strange, tentative spot right now, and the reality-hopping of it all is probably just taking away precious time you could be using to sort out everything you need to sort out with each other—but just go for it anyway. I’ve seen how they are with you,” she repeats pointedly, “and I think, whatever it is you’re afraid of, you don’t have to be anymore.”

“You really think so?” Rumi asks earnestly.

“You said so yourself,” Miyeong answers gently. “You’ve been told to keep everything in all your life. To hide, and to cover up. Maybe Celine meant well, and she was… just trying her hardest to make sense of things, of you, but… if you’re really my daughter…” She smiles here, a little sadly. “I’ve never been in the habit of holding myself back—at least, not when it comes to the things that matter to me. Celine always gives me grief over it, saying I let my emotions cloud my judgment more often than not, but I think at the end of the day, you just have to trust your gut—your heart—and go for it, whatever it is.”

Rumi doesn’t say anything for a while, taking a long and quiet moment to just absorb everything her mother had said. Then, she stands up a little straighter and says, “I understand,” followed, more shyly, by, “Thanks, Mom.” A beat, then: “I—um, it’s, like, cool if I call you that, right?”

“Yes,” Miyeong replies, laughing softly under her breath. “It’s cool.”

They wrap things up in the kitchen and Miyeong walks with Rumi to the guest room. They stop in front of the door and Rumi has this urge to throw her arms around her and pull her into a hug, but she doesn’t. She just waits, because it seems like her mother has one last thing to say to her—and she does, but it isn’t anything she could have ever expected.

“I know it might be a little strange to say this,” Miyeong says, shifting unsurely, “but I feel compelled to say it all the same, so—I’m… I’m sorry, Rumi.”

Rumi would ask what for, but she already knows. Or, at least, she can surmise that what her mother really means by it is, I’m sorry I never got to watch you grow up, or I’m sorry I never got to be with you, or even, I’m sorry I wasn’t there—even if it’s in another life—to protect you. Or, maybe: I’m sorry we never got to know each other.

It sits heavy in Rumi’s chest. “I know,” is all she can think to say.

Miyeong offers her one last, sad little smile before she turns to leave.

“How did it go?” Zoey asks as soon as Rumi steps into the room. She’s tucked in front of Mira, who has one arm wrapped lazily around her middle. Their legs are tangled in the narrow space of the bed, Mira’s knees hooked behind Zoey’s. Mira tilts her head just enough to glance at Rumi too, but she doesn’t shift otherwise, her chin still resting in the curve of Zoey’s shoulder, her hand idly tracing shapes against the fabric of her hoodie.

They always did fit together so easily. So… perfectly.

Rumi pushes down that funny, insecure little feeling that’s trying to niggle at her. She clears her throat and walks towards the bed, easing herself into the only bit of free space left on it, then says, “It was… pretty good, actually. I’ve spent all my life wondering what my mom would be like, and what it would be like to just talk to her, and she’s everything I expected, and also just… nothing at all like I expected, in some ways. But it was pretty good.”

Mira and Zoey smile at her warmly.

“We’re really happy for you, Rumi,” Zoey says, pulling herself out of Mira’s hold just so she can crawl over to Rumi and give her a big, warm, hard hug. “Things are, like, seriously weird right now but at least you got to meet her, and I’m really, really glad you got that.”

Mira hums in agreement, her gaze soft on Rumi. “Whatever else happens, at least you’ll always have this part.”

“Yeah,” Rumi murmurs, already feeling that familiar tightness in the back of her throat, and that familiar pressure behind her eyes. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Neither Zoey nor Mira say anything after that, like they’re giving Rumi the space she needs to just be in her feelings for as long as she needs to be, knowing just how important this is to her. And Rumi appreciates that, of course, and yeah, maybe she does need to just keep her mouth shut for a bit, otherwise she might actually cry.

When she feels that ache—that tenderness—finally subside, she takes a deep breath and, squeezing her eyes shut, tells Mira and Zoey, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.” She hears rather than sees Mira and Zoey sit up straighter, alert, now.

“What is it, Rumi?” Mira asks carefully.

There’s a split second where Rumi starts second-guessing herself. Starts considering telling them it’s nothing, or that she completely forgot what it was she wanted to talk to them about, or just that she’s changed her mind and they can talk about it some other time. But then she hears her mother’s voice in her head, loud and clear in her ears, telling her to just go for it, and even if Miyeong isn’t in the room with her right now, she doesn’t want to disappoint her.

I’ve never been in the habit of holding myself back—at least, not when it comes to the things that matter to me.

And this matters. It does, to Rumi.

So, taking another deep breath, she peels her eyes open and turns to look at Mira and Zoey, then, finally, says, “It’s about… us.”

Rumi swallows, then before she can stop herself or chicken out, she blurts out in one breathless ramble, “I—I like you. Both of you. I really, really like both of you a-and I know you probably already knew that anyway, or guessed, or whatever, but I—I just didn’t want to make things weird between us, or to mess things up, and w-with everything else going on, it always felt like the worst possible time to tell you or to do anything at all about it, and then there’s the whole oh by the way, I’m half-fucking-demon of it all and I—god, I really didn’t want you to find out like that, or just, honestly, at all, and now—now I’m back to square one, but maybe worse off for it, and like, how could I possibly even follow any of that up with, ‘so I know the world is ending and you maybe, probably hate me but I still feel that way about you, I still really like you, and I’m maybe, kind of in love with you’ and—” She lets out a winded laugh that sounds more delirious than anything. “I-I just felt—stupid, or selfish. Or both.”

“Rumi,” Mira says softly.

“And I just,” Rumi goes on, glancing between Mira and Zoey, eyes wide, like she’s waiting for one of them to tell her to shut up, “I-I just didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to force myself into what you two already have with each other, and I—”

“Rumi,” Mira says again, a little more firmly this time.

“—I didn’t want you to feel like you had to pick or change or… god, I don’t know. I just didn’t want to ruin it.”

“Rumi.”

“I didn’t want to ruin you, or—or the group, or us.”

“Rumi.”

“I didn’t want to ruin any of it—”

Zoey suddenly grabs her by the face, and it all happens so fast that it takes Rumi what feels like an eternity to register that Zoey’s lips are pressed against her. That Zoey is kissing her. She tenses up, then slowly just—melts into it, into Zoey, and her mind just goes totally, completely blank.

When Zoey pulls away, Rumi says very intelligently, “Uh.”

“Well,” Mira says, stunned but still laughing, “I guess that’s one way to shut her up.”

Zoey, at least, tries not to look too pleased with herself. “Hey,” she says to Rumi gently, “relax, Rumi.”

“Y-yeah.” Rumi lets out a shaky breath. Her face is still burning, her head still spinning. When she decided to finally have the talk with Mira and Zoey, the last thing she expected was for that to happen, as much as she’s been dying for it to. “Yeah, I—Sorry.”

Mira scoots closer to them, until her shoulder is pressed up against Rumi’s. “I’ll admit,” she says, shockingly vulnerable now, “it was… really hard for us, finding out you were half-demon. Not just because of the whole Hunter thing, but because we—”

“We really, really like you too, Rumi,” Zoey says, taking both of Rumi’s hands into hers and squeezing gently. “We always have.”

Zoey’s thumb brushes gently over the back of her hand. “Back then… when we first found out, it wasn’t that we didn’t want you anymore, Rumi. It was—” She exhales, like she’s still trying to find the right words. “I mean, it’s not every day you find out that someone you care about, that someone you love, is… you know.”

Mira purses her lips. “It was a lot,” she says, voice quiet but steady, “and I-I hate that the first thing you saw from us was… that. I hate that we made you think we didn’t love you anymore, or that we hated you just because you were half-demon.” She pauses, eyes searching Rumi’s face. “I know I already said it but… I’m really sorry, Rumi. I’m sorry we made you feel like you couldn’t be safe with us. But—we were scared too. Not of you, just… Just of what it would mean for you, and for all of us.”

Zoey nods. “We didn’t know how to help you, or what this would do to you, and yeah, maybe we did freak out and yeah, it—it did hurt, that you kept that from us, but we never stopped caring about you. Not for a second.”

Mira’s hand comes up to cup Rumi’s cheek, her touch light, almost tentative. “If anything, I think we cared too much, and we let the fear of losing you get in the way of just… showing you we cared.”

Rumi swallows hard, blinking a few times, because she doesn’t trust her voice not to crack. “You guys…” She laughs a little, quiet and shaky, like she’s trying to keep it light but failing. “I don’t… I don’t even know what to say to that. But… thank you, and I—” she glances between them, the corners of her mouth twitching upward, “—I really like you. So much. More than I can even—” She cuts herself off with a tiny huff, shaking her head, because there’s no point in rambling again. “Just… yeah. I really do.”

Mira and Zoey smile at her, every bit as shy and giddy, and for a moment it’s all just… perfect. Yeah, they’re still stuck in this alternate reality, and yeah, they have no clue yet how they’re going to find their way back home, but at this moment, none of that really matters so much. For now, it’s enough to just be here with each other, their knees and shoulders pressed together, the air between them warm and steady.

Rumi would be more than happy to just leave things at that, to cuddle up with Mira and Zoey like she knows they’re dying to do as well, but there’s just one more thing she needs to get off her chest.

“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about too, actually,” she says, and she can feel the mood shift instantly, Mira and Zoey’s eyes sharpening on her. She braces herself. “It’s about Jinu.”

Just like she anticipated, the mention of him bursts their happy little bubble. Mira’s frowning so hard Rumi can already hear their dermatologist having a heart attack over it, the wrinkles, oh Mira-nim, oh dear, and Zoey’s grip on her hands loosens, just slightly.

Rumi powers on before she can lose her nerve. “J-just hear me out, okay? I still want to help him. If there’s even a chance of it… I want to try, when we get back.” She sees the protest forming on Zoey’s lips, the flash of warning in Mira’s eyes, and barrels through it anyway. “This doesn’t change the way I feel about you, okay? Nothing ever will, you have to know that. You have to—to trust me on that, please. But it’s just… I know it’s going to sound crazy, but I really do think that he’s a good person deep down, and that that person is still somewhere in there. He made a mistake, yeah”—she hesitates, grimaces—“a really big one, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be saved, or that he can’t come back from it. And he… He’s helped me too. He’s helped me accept who I am, and what I am, and as complicated as things are, I want to return the favor. I want to help him, like I promised him I would.”

Mira exhales sharply, running a hand over her face. “Rumi, you can’t just—after everything he did—”

“I know,” Rumi cuts in, her voice steady now, her chin lifting just slightly. “I know what he did. I know what it cost you, and what it almost cost us—but this matters to me, and I-I can’t just walk away from it, not when I could do something about it.”

Mira’s jaw works for a moment before she says, quietly, “Where does that leave us, then? If you can save him. If he sticks around.”

“It leaves us right here,” Rumi says without hesitation, “with me still wanting you. That’s not changing. I want you—and I want to help him, too. I know it’s asking a lot, but… I’m asking anyway, because I… I think it’s the right thing to do, and I don’t think I can do it all alone.”

For a long moment, no one speaks. Mira and Zoey just look at each other, scarily reminiscent of the way Celine and Miyeong look at each other when they speak to each other with their eyes alone, and then finally Mira sighs, rubbing at the back of her neck before looking back at Rumi.

“You’re impossible,” Mira tells Rumi, more resigned than angry, really, “you know that?”

Rumi blinks at her, then at Zoey. “So does that mean…?”

“Yes,” Zoey sighs, shaking her head with a faint smile. “We’ll help you help him.”

“Trust me, we really don’t want to,” Mira grumbles, like she’s just remembered she has to pretend to be mad or something, only for her expression and her voice to soften again when she says, “but if this is really important to you, then… Fine.”

Rumi lets out a relieved, honestly just touched breath. “Thank you,” she says, emotional again.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mira says, smiling at her tenderly, “you big baby.”

“Wait, I just need to know,” Zoey says, cutting their sweet little moment short, “did you… or do you… you know, like him too?”

Rumi freezes at Zoey’s question. She could just pretend, or at least be vague enough that it won’t have to mean anything at all for them, but after her conversation with her mother, she finds that option less and less appealing with every second that she hesitates to answer.

So, in the end, she admits, “…I mean—yeah, kind of,” wincing as soon as the words are out, and then swiftly adding, “Not the same way I like you, not even close, but… I do care about him, a-and I guess I did start to kind of like him in his own stupid, annoying way, but he’s—he’s not you. He’s never going to be you.” She pauses, just to gauge Mira and Zoey’s reactions, and she’s relieved to see they’re relieved too, hearing that. “But I can’t pretend that he didn’t—doesn’t—matter to me, because he does, and if I can do something to help him break free from Gwi-ma’s control over him, anything at all, then I want to. That’s all.”

Mira and Zoey nod, like that’s enough for them.

“Hey,” Zoey says, squeezing Rumi’s hands. “We love you.”

Rumi can’t help the big, goofy smile that lights up her face. “I love you too,” she says, without hesitation.

“Just one more thing,” Mira says suddenly, and the next thing Rumi knows, her face is in Mira’s hand and Mira’s lips are on hers. When she pulls away, Mira smiles at her crookedly, which is usually the sign that she’s really happy about something, like her own face can barely contain it, and says, “There. Now Zoey and I are even.”

“It was never a competition, you know,” Zoey tells Mira, shoving lightly at her shoulder before she pulls her in for a quick kiss too.

The three of them don’t say anything after that, and they don’t really need to. Mira and Zoey keep Rumi sandwiched between them, their shoulders and arms and legs pressing against Rumi’s, and the air between them has gone soft and warm again now that they’ve stumbled over the hard parts already. Rumi lets herself lean in, her head tipping until it rests lightly against Mira’s, and she can feel Zoey’s thumb drawing slow, absent-minded circles over the back of her hand.

Like this, warm and safe between the two people she loves the most, Rumi is glad she listened to her mother.

As full as Rumi’s heart is, she can’t sleep. If she weren’t stuck in the middle of the cuddle pile with Mira and Zoey, she would be tossing and turning right now. She wiggles her way out eventually, so she can go to the bathroom, but when she’s done with that, she finds herself drawn to the shed out back instead. She pops her head in the guest room just to check in on Mira and Zoey, make sure she didn’t ruin their sleep, and then she makes her way out.

She wraps her arms around herself as she steps out into the chilly night. Her slippers scuff quietly over the damp grass, the world so still she can hear the soft hum of insects and the faint rustle of leaves in the wind. The shed’s door is still open, light spilling out in a warm, narrow beam that cuts through the darkness. She descends the stairwell, and finds Celine standing over a spread of scrolls and thick, old volumes laid out in front of her on the table, shadows polling under her eyes.

“You’re still here?” Rumi asks, not at all surprised.

Celine looks up at her and says, “And you’re still up,” not sounding the least bit surprised herself.

Rumi walks over to Celine, skimming over all of the ancient texts laid out in front of them. “Find anything?”

Celine makes this low, grumble-y sound in the back of her throat, which Rumi takes as a no. She crosses her arms over her chest, after, and just sighs. “I don’t think any of the Hunters before us anticipated that something like this would happen, or that Gwi-ma would even be capable of it.”

“There’s a first for everything,” Rumi blurts out, sardonic, and she’s about to apologize for cracking a joke now but then she catches the smile that flickers over Celine’s face and decides maybe an apology isn’t necessary after all. “So, uh… where’s—”

Calling Miyeong ‘Mom’ to her face is one thing, but she isn’t sure if Celine is entirely comfortable with it. Hell, she isn’t entirely comfortable with Rumi.

Celine doesn’t make a fuss over it, though. She just gives Rumi this look, then replies, “Miyeong is asleep.” She looks down at one of the books, thick and leatherbound and covered in enough dust to suffocate a person, then back up at Rumi. “Since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful.”

Rather than be offended, Rumi just nods and walks over to the nearby shelf, plucking out a few texts to go over herself.

They work together in silence for a while. It’s a little awkward at first, being all alone with this Celine, the same woman who, barely a day ago, had tried to behead her and who, until now, is clearly still wary about her. But the quiet between them settles into something less jagged as the minutes pass, and Rumi gets used to Celine’s presence soon enough, to the way her shadow shifts over the table when she leans in to read, and to the sound of her steady, even breathing between page turns. If Celine minds that she’s here, she doesn’t show it. There’s at least none of that sharp, defensive edge Rumi’s gotten used to from her in the short time they’ve been here.

Rumi is starting to get quite comfortable with this set-up of theirs when Celine breaks the silence, finally, without looking up from the book in front of her. “How are things with you and the other two?”

Rumi looks up from the book in her hands and turns to gawk at Celine. “What? How’d you—”

Celine makes a small, disgruntled sound and turns a page. “Miyeong wouldn’t shut up about it.”

Rumi doesn’t know which is more embarrassing: that Celine knows, or that her mother, as mothers probably do, spent all her time down here with Celine telling her about her daughter-from-another-reality’s romantic woes instead of helping Celine find the key to sending said daughter-from-another-reality back to where she belongs.

“I… um…” A blush burns across her cheeks. “We, uh, sorted it out earlier. Kind of.”

When Celine doesn’t say anything in response to that, and still doesn’t look up from the book she’s skimming over, Rumi takes it as encouragement to keep talking.

“I really couldn’t have done it—or wouldn’t have done it, is more like it—without her help,” she tells Celine. This time, Celine turns to look at her, interest piqued. “She told me to, you know, go for it, so I… did.”

Celine scoffs, smiling a little, before she turns her attention back to the page in front of her. “Yeah. That does sound like her.”

She thinks that that’s the end of this very awkward and very strange interaction, or at least she hopes it is, but just as she turns her attention back to what she was reading, Celine says, “Rumi.”

Rumi turns to her again, a little stunned to hear her actually address her by her name.

Celine doesn’t say anything right away, her eyes still glued to the yellowing, dusty pages in front of her, but it’s obvious enough to Rumi that she isn’t actually reading a word on them this time. She places her hands down along the edges of the table, almost hunching over the texts spread out in front of her, then she tilts her head ever so slightly towards Rumi’s direction and says, “You said that, in your reality, Miyeong fell in love with a demon, and then she had you.”

“Yes,” Rumi murmurs, trying not to shift uncomfortably in her seat.

“Did you ever meet him? After…”

After Miyeong died hangs in the air between them, heavy, suffocating. Rumi gets it. It must be strange, or harrowing, or devastating, even, talking about Miyeong like that when Miyeong is so very alive here. Talking about her like she’s lost her already. Lost her here too.

“No,” Rumi answers softly, wringing her hands on her lap. “I honestly don’t know what happened to him after I was born, or where he went. You—I mean, Celine—never told me much about him, just that he was a demon, and that’s why I—” She gestures to the patterns on her face, her arms. “That’s why I have these.”

Celine looks at her, at the patterns all over her exposed skin, but there’s no judgment or hatred to it this time. She just… looks at her. Then, with a soft huff, asks, “And what about me?” Her tone is even, almost too even, but there’s something in it that makes Rumi think the question isn’t as casual as she’s trying to make it sound. “What was—am—I like there?”

She doesn’t ask how she is, the way Miyeong had asked. It’s almost like she knows already, like the answer to living a life and an entire world without Miyeong is as obvious as it gets for her.

Rumi purses her lips, thinking carefully of how to answer that. In the end, she says, “Well, you’re a little less angry, I guess,” which earns her this half-annoyed, half-amused scoff from Celine, and maybe a tiny hint of a smile like, cheeky little shit, almost affectionate, then Rumi goes on to say, “You… looked out for me. You took care of me, and you made sure I was safe.” A beat, then: “You tried, for me.”

It’s strange, saying this to Celine even if it isn’t really Celine. Even if this Celine will never have to bear the burden of raising Rumi. Or protecting her, like she promised Miyeong she would, in a different life. It’s probably just because their present circumstances have made it impossible to really still dwell on it, but there’s still a part of Rumi that’s angry with Celine. There always will be, until she actually gets to see her again and they settle this properly.

She’s angry—but Rumi still loves her too, despite everything, and that love naturally extends to this Celine, who never got to know Rumi.

Celine is quiet for a while, like she’s letting it all sink in. Imagining this other life she had, this child she had in that life. Then, she says, smiling sadly, “I’m guessing I messed it up with you, didn’t I.”

“I—I mean,” Rumi stutters, shifting awkwardly, “I, um, wouldn’t put it that way…”

“It’s okay,” Celine tells her. “I can tell, anyway.”

It’s quiet again for a while between them. Rumi stares down at her hands, unsure of what to do with them, or where to put them. Eventually, Celine speaks again, and this time, she says, “I’ll be honest with you, Rumi. I’m still wary of you, and your presence here. That Miyeong cares about you, against all odds, isn’t going to change the fact that you—all three of you—are still an anomaly here, and your presence in this reality could potentially lead to its ruin. You’ve seen for yourself that we’re halfway there already. But…” She purses her lips, brows furrowing. “But Miyeong—the one where you come from—chose you. She gave up her life for you, and despite everything and despite how little sense it makes even to me, I feel personally responsible for you too.”

She looks Rumi in the eye when she says, solemn, “You said I raised you.” A beat, and Celine exhales shakily. “I can’t just let you die here.”

Rumi blinks at her, startled by the tremor in her voice. It slips past all the steel and caution she’s been used to hearing from Celine since they met, landing somewhere deep in her chest before she can brace for it. Her throat feels tight, and she has to clear it before she can manage, “Thank you.” Then, she adds, “I promise we’ll do anything and everything we can to help you too. We’ll help you fix it, whatever is wrong with the Honmoon here. Whatever it takes.”

For a moment, she thinks she sees something flicker in Celine’s expression, too quick to name or put a finger on, before she nods and turns back to the open books in front of her, like the safest thing is to bury herself in work before she says something they can’t take back.

Rumi doesn’t mind. If anything, she expected as much.

She’s about to get back to work when Celine asks, like she can’t help herself, “Did I teach you how to fight too?”

Rumi nods.

Celine hums, then mumbles, “Apparently I didn’t teach you well enough if you’re letting yourself get distracted in the middle of battle,” then she tilts her head again, just enough for Rumi to see the small, almost self-deprecating smile on her face.

Rumi feels a smile tugging at her own lips, but she turns away before Celine can see it, eyes dropping to the page in front of her. Celine does the same, the rustle of paper filling the space between them once more.

Rumi was ten when she first summoned her sword. It was, surprisingly, a lot harder to do than Celine made it look, but she assured Rumi that it took them—that is, Miyeong, Poppy, and herself—a while to get the hang of it too, making something materialize from what looked like a whole lot of nothing. But, one afternoon, through sheer will and determination, she was able to, feeling the threads of the Honmoon materialize into something hefty and something real in her hands. She ran to the garden after, where she knew Celine would be, tending to the flowers there, and she proudly showed off her sword, or at least she tried to. She couldn’t really carry it given how heavy it was for her then, so she was dragging it around instead, but it was all worth it for the look of surprise and then unmistakable pride on Celine’s face. And Celine had just laughed, low and warm, when Rumi complained that it wasn’t fair Celine got two swords while she only got one, and she said, Rumi-ya, tenderly, brushing her fingers through Rumi’s unruly, sweaty hair.

That same sword is in her hands now as she offers it to Celine, begging her to kill her, to do what she should have done a long time ago, to end it all, end Rumi’s misery, DO IT—

Rumi wakes with a start, cheek stuck to the page she’d fallen asleep on. Her neck protests the angle, and she rubs at it with one hand, blinking blearily as she tries to get her bearings.

She can’t remember the exact moment she’d nodded off. The last thing she remembers was that she and Celine had been working steadily through the night, and through all of the written records they could get their hands on in the archive, cross-referencing notes until all of the words started blurring together. And now, it’s morning—how she knows it’s morning is a bit of a mystery, but her body can sort of just tell that it is.

She sits up, and then feels something shifting around her shoulders. That’s when she notices it: the jacket of Celine’s samue is draped around her shoulders, the fabric still warm and smelling faintly of her.

“You’re awake,” Celine says, drawing Rumi’s attention to where she’s standing on the far end of the long table, dressed down to her white tank top and pants. Standing beside her is Miyeong, holding two mugs of piping hot coffee. Neither of them are looking at her, though. They’re both bent over the book in Celine’s hand, speaking quietly as Celine points out something in the open pages between them.

Rumi pushes to her feet, tugging the jacket closer. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—What time is it?”

“Rumi,” Miyeong says.

Rumi freezes, looking up at them.

Her gaze shifts from her mother to Celine, pulse picking up. Celine holds her gaze, then:

“We found something.”

Chapter Text

They gather around the long table in the archive. Mira and Zoey look like they just rolled out of bed—which they did, when Rumi burst into the guest room to wake them up and then drag them down here. Zoey is trying so hard to be awake that she’s swaying where she stands, and Mira keeps trying to rub the sleep gunk out of her eyes.

“You said you found something,” Zoey says, yawning around her words so it sounds more like Y’sai’ you fouuun’…sumfnn’. Not that it really matters; they all understand her anyway.

Celine sets a leatherbound book down on the table, then she turns it so it’s facing Rumi, Mira and Zoey right side up. The three of them scoot closer, bodies bumping into each other, to get a better look at what’s printed on the pages Celine flipped the book open on. Beside her, Miyeong leans in closer too.

“Now,” Celine says, pausing to blow on her coffee before she takes a small, quick sip, “I’ll preface this by saying that what this is, is a solid lead at best, not exactly something that’s guaranteed to work.” She pauses there to take another sip, and to look around, gauge everyone’s reactions. “I’m not saying that to discourage you, but I also don’t want you to get your hopes up too high either. That said, this is still a solid lead, the best one we’ve got since you three wound up here, making it the best option on the table—the only option—right now.”

She gestures to the opened pages of the book in front of them.

“As you already know, the magic that flows from the shinmok is the same thing that holds the Honmoon together and keeps our realities separated from each other, with the shinmok serving as a boundary, so to speak, between those separate realities. This,” she says, tapping a finger to a block of text near the top, “is about the full moon. In a lot of magical traditions, it’s when magical energy peaks. It’s when magic energy is at its strongest and most concentrated—so much so that the lines between realities might even blur. Basically, when the magic is at its most concentrated in this one area—in our case, the shinmok—that very boundary between dimensions becomes thinner.”

Celine pauses again, just to make sure everyone is still following. When her eyes land on Rumi, Rumi says, brows furrowed as she turns all of the new information they have over in her head, “So you’re saying…”

“That’s right,” Celine nods. “If we can find where that boundary, that veil, is weakest, we might be able to open up a… a rift, of sorts, or a passage for you three to use to get back to your reality.”

“The seam,” Rumi murmurs under her breath, chin propped in her hand. She turns to Mira and Zoey, who are definitely awake now, standing straighter, more alert.

“So… all we have to do is wait for the next full moon, and that’s it? We’re free to go?” Mira asks a little skeptically. Like it’s almost too good to believe and, honestly, Rumi can’t really blame her.

“The boundary between our realities thinning out doesn’t mean you can just walk through it,” Celine clarifies, pausing to take an even bigger swig of her coffee this time, like she really, really needs it. She probably does, with the way she’s obviously stayed up all night to get this deceptively tiny bit of information. “Like I said, we have to pinpoint where it’s weakest, and then essentially cut an opening through it.”

“The way Gwi-ma did,” Zoey says, all serious now.

“Essentially, yes,” Celine confirms, scrubbing a hand down her face. “Assuming we can, anyway. Even with five of us, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to pull this off the way Gwi-ma was able to. This is, for all intents and purposes, all still purely theoretical.”

Rumi, Mira and Zoey exchange glances.

“But it’s the best shot we got right?” Mira says.

“The only shot,” Zoey adds.

“So we make it work,” Rumi finishes, working her jaw. “It’s not like we have any other choice.”

Celine’s eyes sweep across the three of them, then she makes a small, tired sound of agreement before she tips her mug back.

“I guess that just leaves us with one last thing,” Mira says, and Celine cocks a brow at her over the rim of her mug. She turns to look at Zoey and Rumi, first, then asks, “When exactly is the next full moon?”

At this, Celine and Miyeong look at each other. Miyeong places a hand on Celine’s shoulder and squeezes gently, as if to say, it’s okay, I’ve got this. To the three of them, she answers slowly, like she’s bracing herself for their reactions already, “I checked, and the next full moon is two days from now.”

“T-Two days?” Rumi stutters, panic crawling up the back of her throat. “That’s… that’s too long, don’t you think? Do we even have two days?”

“I understand,” Miyeong answers patiently for both herself and Celine, who seems too tired and sleep-deprived right now to really talk again just yet, “but as it stands, our only chance of making this work at all is by waiting for the full moon, when the natural spike in magical energy can compensate for how unstable the magic has become here. We could try it now, strong-arm it, but you’ve seen for yourselves how… difficult the situation is here.”

“I know,” Rumi mumbles, eyes flickering towards Mira and then Zoey before they land squarely on her mother’s face again. “And we understand, it’s just—we’ve already been here, what? Three days? And we don’t know just how much time has passed in our reality since Gwi-ma zapped us here. We don’t know how things are over there, right now.”

Mira and Zoey murmur their agreement, shifting uncomfortably beside her.

Rumi doesn’t say it, but she knows all three of them are thinking it: they don’t know if they even still have somewhere to come back to.

The room goes quiet as death after that.

In the end, Celine sets her mug of coffee down on the table and lets her gaze pass over each of them slowly when she says, “If you want to try it now, then we can. But I think we’ve made it clear that right now is just not the best or most efficient time for that. I get it, I do, but trying to hack your way through the magical barrier between our realities will either get you nowhere or land you in even worse trouble. I’m not willing to risk that either.”

Rumi doesn’t miss the way Celine looks at her, specifically, when she says that last bit.

“We won’t be wasting those two days,” Celine assures them, softening her tone now. “We use them to prepare ourselves as much as we can, read up as much as we can, so we get this right on the night of the full moon.”

“What about the Honmoon?” Rumi asks. Suddenly Celine's samue jacket, which she still has draped around her shoulders, feels like it weighs a ton. “This… ritual… Will it work too for the Honmoon?”

“Theoretically,” Celine answers, exhausted.

“We’re just going to have to apply the same logic we’re operating on right now to the Honmoon,” Miyeong supplies, squeezing Celine’s shoulder again. “If all goes according to plan, we’d have enough magical energy generated to restore the Honmoon and to keep the rift between our realities open long enough for you to slip through.”

“You were taught about it, weren’t you?” Celine asks them now. “The first Hunters’ sealing rite?”

Rumi, Mira and Zoey nod.

“Good,” Celine says, followed by a mumble of, “I would hope I did,” and then, more seriously again, “Since the first Hunters, no one else has actually had use or need for it, but this isn’t exactly a very normal situation we’re in right now—and desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“It’s unlikely that Celine and I would be able to complete the sealing rite on our own,” Miyeong adds, looking at the other three almost apologetically, like she hates having to ask this of them. As if Rumi wouldn’t lay her life down for her right now if she asked. “But there’s five of us now, and we’ve got the full moon on our side. If we can restore the Honmoon, we can stabilize the magic here, and with that much power flowing through the Shinmok at the full moon—even as weakened as it is—finding and forcing open the rift should be possible.”

“Theoretically,” Celine adds mechanically.

Rumi heaves a sigh. “I guess that settles it, then.”

“I gotta admit, though,” Mira says reluctantly, “this is a whole lot of maybe’s we’re banking on.”

“To be fair,” Zoey chimes in, “we are the first Hunters to go on reality- and dimension-hopping adventures.”

“There’s a first for everything,” Celine remarks, dry, and she shares a tiny, knowing smile with Rumi.

Miyeong’s eyes flicker back and forth between Rumi and Celine, like she’s pleasantly surprised by this little moment the two are having. Then, she says, addressing everyone now, “Alright, I think that’s enough planning for now. You,” and she nudges Celine here, “need to get some sleep.”

Celine grunts, not exactly in disagreement, then sips on her coffee. “I’ll sleep after I prepare breakfast.”

“You’ll sleep now,” Miyeong tells her in a way that reads more like a threat, like she’ll drag Celine to bed right now if she has to, the kind of tone that leaves no room for argument, “and we’ll prepare breakfast.”

Celine looks a little embarrassed at getting whacked like this in front of Rumi, Mira and Zoey, but she also looks like she’s still going to push back against Miyeong anyway, like she’s going to insist that for the sake of the poor house she really can’t let Miyeong near the stove—but she never gets to.

Everyone freezes, feeling the ripples through the Honmoon.

Demons.

Rumi, Mira and Zoey groan in unison—why do they always get in the way of food?!—and Celine grumbles, “Are you fucking kidding me?”, looking so pissed off Rumi starts to worry for a second that she might actually crush the mug with her bare hands or fling it at the nearest wall. She chugs the rest of it down, practically slams the mug back down on the table, then turns to leave. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

They spill out into the garden, grass slick with dew underfoot. The air’s thick with that telltale static, the Honmoon rippling harder now, and then the demons burst from between the trees. Celine meets them head-on, moving sharper than anyone who’s as sleep-deprived as she is has the right to. Each strike is short, efficient, and brutal, like she’s got no patience for anything that isn’t dying immediately.

Miyeong looses magical arrow after magical arrow with unhurried precision, hitting her mark with so much ease Rumi thinks she might honestly be a little bored. One demon drops just as it’s about to flank Zoey, who sends her shin-kal zipping through the air at another wave of demons pressing in; another one crumples mid-lunge toward Mira. Even as things start to get a little more chaotic, Miyeong is there, steady as a rock, her aim cutting clean paths through the chaos so the others never have to glance over their shoulders.

Rumi is about to stop, just for a second, to admire her mother’s prowess in battle, but as she cuts down another demon, she spots movement at the edge of her vision—one demon slipping away and down the path that leads to the graveyard. To the shinmok. She bolts after it without thinking, hearing someone call out, “Rumi!,” behind her. Then, she hears quick footsteps fall in behind her, but when she looks over her shoulder, it isn’t Mira or Zoey she finds trailing after her, but her mother.

They push hard through the damp underbrush and through the lines upon lines of gravestones, the noise of the main fight fading, until the demon whirls on them. It lunges at Rumi, but Miyeong shoots it down before it can lay a demonic finger on her. The demon falls to the ground with a pained growl. Rumi steps over it and plunges her blade down into it—double tap, always—and the demon disappears in a poof of reddish smoke.

“Don’t run off on your own like that next time,” Miyeong tells Rumi sternly.

“O-oh,” Rumi mumbles, embarrassed. She rubs the back of her neck sheepishly. “Right, sorry.”

Miyeong’s expression softens, and then she starts looking a little embarrassed too, like she doesn’t know where that came from. “Let’s head back now.”

Rumi nods, her sword still in her hand, and she’s about to turn to leave when something catches her eye.

She’d been too preoccupied to notice it, but now she realizes where she’s standing. The soil here is undisturbed, and the gravestone is simple. Poppy’s name stares back at her in careful etching, the carved letters catching on the early light, with two dates underneath. The date of Poppy’s birth, and—

“What?” Rumi murmurs, stomach dropping.

Miyeong turns to her, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

Before Rumi can answer, the others arrive—Celine first, with Mira and Zoey close behind her. “Are you two okay?” Celine asks, eyes scanning the both of them for any injuries. Then, she catches the way Rumi is looking at Poppy’s gravestone, and asks, “Is… something the matter?”

“N-no,” Rumi answers weakly, eyes still glued to the two dates under Poppy’s name, “it’s just…”

The date of Poppy’s birth, and the date of Poppy’s death:

April 21, 2001

“That’s the day I was born,” Rumi says, and then, slowly, turns to Miyeong, “and the day you died.”

Celine, Mira and Zoey come closer, gathering around the gravestone. Rumi hears Mira mumble, “Oh, shit,” somewhere behind her, and she feels Zoey slip a hand into hers, squeezing gently. Both Celine and Miyeong are too taken aback to really say anything just yet either, but Rumi can practically hear the gears turning in Celine’s head. It’s not just surprise in her expression—it’s something heavier, sharper, like she’s already connecting threads the rest of them can’t quite see yet. Rumi knows that look. It’s the one Celine gets when she’s chewing on a problem, turning it over and over until the shape of it makes sense.

Rumi can wager a guess at what Celine must be thinking.

Poppy died here the day that Miyeong gave birth to Rumi and then died over there, back in Rumi’s reality, like the cosmic scale had to balance itself. Instead of Miyeong, it’s Poppy; instead of a new life brought into this world, it’s death. Perfect, fucked-up, cosmic balance.

“Hey,” Miyeong says softly, gently, wrapping an arm around Rumi’s shoulders. “We can discuss this later. Let’s all just head back now, get some rest. Something to eat.”

It feels unfair that her mother has to be the one keeping it together now, knowing—or at least thinking—that she should have died, not Poppy, even if it’s all in another life, another reality, but Rumi nods, swallowing around the tightness in her throat.

They start to move, already turning toward the path that will take them home, but Celine lingers. Her gaze stays fixed on Poppy’s gravestone—on the date Rumi pointed out—a faint line etched between her brows.

“Celine?” Miyeong calls, glancing back.

Celine blinks, looks at Miyeong, and then at Rumi, something unreadable flickering over her face, before she shakes her head. “It’s nothing,” she murmurs, almost to herself. Then, she steps away from the grave and falls into stride behind them.

In the end, Celine passes out on the couch. She was too tired to still argue against Miyeong’s order to catch up on some sleep while the rest of them whip up breakfast, but not tired enough to stop being paranoid over them fucking up somehow. The couch just happens to be close enough to the kitchen for her to intervene if breakfast becomes an act of arson.

This isn’t actually anything new for Rumi. Growing up, she’d sometimes wake to find Celine sprawled on the couch just like she is now. She used to wonder why that was, until she eventually just pieced together that Celine was something of an insomniac, and by the time she’d tired herself out enough to go to sleep, she always wound up here, on the couch. Rumi remembers an instance where she got out of bed one morning, dragged a blanket with her to the couch, and then squeezed herself into what little space was left, stirring Celine awake in the process. She looked both confused and slightly embarrassed that Rumi, who was around six or seven at the time, found her sleeping on the couch again, but then she just shifted around to make room for Rumi and then held her close as they drifted back off to sleep together.

She thinks of that again now as she shrugs off the samue jacket and drapes it over Celine’s torso. She walks to the kitchen after, but not without casting one last glance at Celine’s sleeping frame.

To their credit, they manage to put together a decent breakfast and not burn down the kitchen. They keep it simple, because anything else is asking for trouble. Mira takes charge of the eggs while Zoey takes charge of the Spam, and Rumi takes up rice duty. Miyeong handles the side dishes—kimchi and stir-fried anchovies from the fridge, some pickled radish from a jar—and toasts up some bread. She reheats some of the soup from last night too.

By the time they have everything set up on the table, Rumi can’t help but feel a little proud. Yeah, it’s nothing like the stuff Celine makes, not even close, but this is still a massive leap from instant ramyeon.

“This doesn’t actually look half-bad,” comes Celine’s voice, scratchy with sleep. She looks just barely awake still, but also infinitely better than she did over an hour ago. At least she isn’t that terrifying mix of sleepy-grumpy and homicidal anymore. She walks over to Miyeong and leans in to kiss her, slipping an arm around her waist. “I suppose this is the part where I apologize for doubting you.”

Miyeong looks smug for all of two seconds before she sighs and says, “And I suppose this is the part where I have to tell you that Rumi, Mira and Zoey did most of the cooking, not me.”

“Oh, I know,” Celine says, smiling even as Miyeong shoves at her shoulder, offended.

From her seat, Rumi grimaces without meaning to, that automatic eww response kicking in before she can stop it. For one horrifying second, she finds herself thinking, Is this what kids who had both their parents growing up go through? On either side of her, Mira and Zoey catch the look on her face, exchange a glance, and then make exaggerated barfing motions that earn them a withering glare from Miyeong and—surprisingly—a soft chuckle from Celine.

Breakfast is a quiet affair. It’s obvious enough that they’re all thinking about everything they discussed earlier, before those pesky demons just had to drop in to greet them good morning—fuck you. And it is a lot to think about. There is no what will we do if it doesn’t work here, there’s just we have to make it work, otherwise they’ll be stuck here for who knows how long and maybe by the time they do get back, there’s no saving their reality from Gwi-ma.

But it isn’t just that. Not for Rumi, at least.

She finds herself thinking of Poppy, the day she died—on her birthday, of all days. The same day Miyeong would have died giving birth to her, in her reality. Honestly, she thought that in this reality, Poppy had just… died, that it might have just been any other day and that that would have been enough for whatever rules govern their realities. That as long as someone else filled in the role as set in the cosmic script or whatever, then the nitty-gritty of it wouldn’t really matter so much. She didn’t think they would be cutting it this close.

Suddenly she feels like she might actually throw up her breakfast.

If Rumi didn’t already feel bad before, she sure as hell feels bad now. It’s one thing, having to grapple with the fact that both her mother and Celine are alive and happy in this reality where Rumi never existed, but it’s another thing realizing that not only did Poppy have to die for Miyeong to live, she had to die because Rumi never existed. That Rumi didn’t—couldn’t—just conveniently vanish from the equation.

She is the common denominator in the universe’s every fucked-up equation.

Rumi looks up from her plate and finds Celine watching her quietly from across the table. They hold each other’s gaze for a long moment. It’s obvious to Rumi that Celine has come to the same conclusion, if the way she was acting at Poppy’s grave earlier and the way she’s apparently been staring at Rumi this entire time are anything to go by. She’s expecting Celine to scowl at her, or to give her one of those disapproving looks she’s gotten used to in the short time she’s been here, any good will between them rendered invalid by this new discovery, but Celine just… looks away.

Somehow, Rumi thinks that might be worse than if Celine had just gone back to being openly hostile towards her.

After breakfast, Celine excuses herself, mumbling something about needing to shower and then catch up on some more sleep. That leaves the three of them with Miyeong, who busies herself wiping down the table while Mira and Zoey ferry things to the sink.

Rumi works in silence, stacking bowls without meeting anyone’s eyes. Mira and Zoey are already chattering again, a little more vibrant now that they’ve eaten, but she can’t seem to shake the heaviness in her chest.

She startles a little when Miyeong sidles up beside her, hand coming to rest lightly against the small of her back.

“Are you okay?” Miyeong asks gently.

“Yeah,” Rumi lies easily, forcing a small smile. “I’m just a little tired. That’s all.”

Miyeong studies her for a moment, clearly not convinced, but doesn’t push. “You should go lie down, then. I know that the archive isn’t exactly the coziest place to sleep.”

“I’m fine,” Rumi insists, turning back to the dishes. “I’ll help finish up.”

But then in comes Zoey with, “Nuh-uh,” and Mira’s already grabbing the stack of dishes from her.

“We’ve got this,” Mira says, waving Rumi off with a soapy hand.

“Yeah, go crash,” Zoey adds. “You look like you need it.”

Rumi opens her mouth to protest, but they’re already shooing her toward the hall. Eventually, she gives up, holding her hands up in defeat as she exits the kitchen.

She passes by the locked door—the room that would have been hers, and is hers, in another life—again on her way back to the guestroom. She just stops and stares at it for a second, then carries on.

She face-plants onto the bed as soon as she gets to the guest room. She stays there like that for a while, face buried in one of the pillows, before she rolls over to lie on her back and stare up at the ceiling, the weight of the morning’s big revelations pressing down on her.

With a sigh, Rumi turns to her side, curling in on herself, knees drawn up and arms tucked close the way she used to when she was a child and it was too cold, or she was scared of something—all before she’d run out of her room to find Celine and tuck herself into Celine’s side. But she can’t do that now, not here, so she just… holds herself together.

Sleep finds her, eventually.

Rumi wakes up to Zoey curled up against her side and Mira at the other end of the bed, flipping through a magazine. She lifts her head and blinks at Mira blearily, and Zoey shifts, stirring awake too. Mira smiles at the both of them softly and says, “You’re up just in time for lunch.” Rumi takes a quick shower and gets a spoonful of rice and leftover chicken stew in her mouth—the meat is tender and the potatoes are soft and soaking up the deep-red broth, the heat of gochugaru curling in her nose—before that familiar ripple in the Honmoon disrupts their meal again. Miyeong sighs, exasperated, and Celine mutters, “Seriously,” under her breath. Rumi, Mira and Zoey are every bit as pissed off but they shovel as much food as they can chew and swallow as they join Celine and Miyeong in running out the house to fend off this new wave of demons.

On the way back to the house, Celine announces, “After lunch, we’re going into town for a quick supply run. You can come, if you want.” At this, she turns her head ever so slightly towards Rumi, Mira and Zoey. Then, drily, she adds, “Assuming the demons actually let us finish lunch, this time.”

“You must be feeling cooped-up,” Miyeong says to them gently. “It might help to have a change of scenery.”

Rumi, Mira and Zoey exchange glances with each other then say, in unison, “Okay.”

They get changed then cram themselves into the backseat of the SUV. It’s on the smaller side and pretty old, left behind by the Hunters who came before the Sunlight Sisters, but it’s still a workhorse, steady and reliable. It’s not the fanciest car they’ve ever had the privilege of riding, and it doesn’t even come close to the BMW Celine has in Seoul, where she still keeps an apartment in case she needs to be there for some reason or other, but there’s something charming about how honest it is. Unassuming. Celine is in the driver’s seat, of course, with Miyeong right beside her in the passenger seat. Something plays softly on the radio as they make the forty-five minute drive to town.

Rumi leans her head against the window, letting the hum of the engine and the sway of the road seep in.

She recalls all the times she used to ride up front instead when she was little, small enough that the seatbelt crossed her awkwardly. Sometimes Celine would join her in humming along to the music on the radio, or sometimes they’d talk about whatever has captured Rumi’s fancy and imagination this time around. Sometimes they wouldn’t talk at all and Rumi would just stare out the window like she’s doing now, until the road opened up and the town came into view.

Now, though… It’s the same drive she remembers, just with a different person beside Celine. It would be a lie if she said she hasn’t imagined this scenario even once, growing up. The three of them, together.

Happy.

The road widens as they come down out of the hills, traffic picking up. A low skyline rises ahead. Not high-rises, but squat apartment blocks, tiled rooftops, and a scatter of neon shop signs. It’s not Seoul, not even close, but it’s busy in its own way, the town. A couple of buses rumble past in the opposite lane. The streets here are narrow enough that the shopfronts seemed to lean in over the road: cafés with hand-painted signs, convenience stores with their doors propped open. Rumi catches flashes of red peppers drying in shallow baskets, stacks of cabbages for kimchi, and fish laid out on trays with their scales catching the light when they pass by the market, with its corrugated roof and bright tarps strung between stalls. Somewhere in there, she knows, are the ajummas who could sell you half a dozen side dishes in as many minutes, ladling them into plastic tubs and snapping the lids shut with practiced hands.

“We’ll hit the market first,” Celine announces as they turn down a side street toward the parking lot, steering one-handed. “If you three need anything else, we can get around to that after.”

From the backseat, Zoey perks up. “Please tell me we’re getting hotteok on the way out.”

“Depends if you behave,” Celine replies, deadpan, and Rumi can’t help smiling as the SUV pulls into the lot and the market’s noises close in around them.

Vendors call out prices in quick, practiced bursts, the clatter of scales and knives underscoring the hum of conversation. Celine and Miyeong slip naturally into the current, moving from stall to stall with ease. They greet familiar vendors, haggle, and weigh produce in their hands. Rumi, Mira, and Zoey trail behind like kids on a field trip, eyes darting everywhere, slowing down for every display they pass. Towering stacks of honey-colored persimmons, skewers sizzling over a charcoal grill, baskets of puffed rice crackers bigger than their heads. Rumi worries at first that the patterns on her face might draw attention, even with her cap low over her eyes and with her head cocooned by the hood of her jacket, but it turns out no one notices them. They seem to only be visible to the Hunters. Zoey keeps drifting toward the food stalls until Mira grabs her by the arm and steers her back in line, reminding her, “We don’t have money here, remember? I don’t wanna test Celine’s patience today,” casting one last forlorn, longing look at the skewers herself before they carry on their way.

They catch up just in time to overhear an ajumma at the vegetable stall squinting at Miyeong over a pile of spring onions. “You know,” she says, voice bright with curiosity, “you look just like that one singer I see on TV sometimes. What’s her name… She’s part of some girl group or other—I forget. But my granddaughter really likes them.”

Miyeong’s smile is polite, almost sheepish. “I get that a lot,” she replies, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. The ajumma hums, snapping a rubber band around the bundle of onions before passing them over to her.

“Ah, now I remember,” the ajumma says, beaming. “The Starlight Sisters!”

“It’s Sunlight, not Starlight,” Celine corrects politely without looking up from counting her change. She smiles and bows her head. Says, “Thank you,” and moves on to the next stop.

As the three of them rush after Celine and Miyeong, Rumi catches another ajumma, the one in the next stall, telling the ajumma selling spring onions, “You know, I remember my daughter telling me that those Sunlight Sisters went on a hiatus after one of the members died,” and then the ajumma selling spring onions gasps, “My, what a shame!” Rumi turns to Mira and Zoey, who share a quick, uneasy glance with her.

They hang back as Celine and Miyeong peruse the fish stall. Zoey leans in and murmurs, “You heard what those ajummas said, right?”

Rumi and Mira nod. “It’s exactly as it happened in our reality,” Rumi says, except… Except someone else died here, she thinks but doesn’t say. Not that she has to. She knows Mira and Zoey are thinking it too.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Zoey says after a long beat of silence, voice low, “what about… us? Me and Mira—do we, or will we, ever exist in this reality too?”

Neither of them want to say it out loud, but Rumi can feel the unspoken because you don’t exist here hanging in the air between them. She doesn’t know what to make of that, or how to feel about them hingeing their existence on hers, whether they really mean to or not. It feels like too much, lately, has been entirely dependent on her existence—or nonexistence, in this case.

“Well,” Mira says, pulling Rumi out of her thoughts, “even if I did get to exist in this world, I wouldn’t want it anyway, not without you, Rumi.”

“Yeah,” Zoey chimes in, nodding fiercely. “There’s no us without you.”

“Who else would boss us around?” Mira jokes, taking Rumi’s hand into hers and squeezing.

“Yeah,” Rumi says, touched. She looks from Mira, to Zoey, then says, “I wouldn’t want it any other way, either.”

“We just have to wait for the full moon,” Zoey says, hopeful, “and we can go back to normal.”

“Well, we have to defeat Gwi-ma first, and for good,” Mira corrects, “but yeah, more or less.” She bumps shoulders with Rumi and promises her, “Don’t worry, Rumi. It’ll all be over soon.”

“Yeah,” Rumi says again, softer this time. She manages a weak smile at both of them.

They leave the market with their arms full and the sun warm on their backs. Celine doles out the hotteok like it’s a reward, one paper-wrapped bundle for each of them. The smell fills the car as soon as they climb in—sweet, buttery, a hint of cinnamon and nuts—and Zoey makes an exaggerated sound of relief after her first bite. Mira laughs around a mouthful, chunks of half-chewed hotteok flying out, and teases Zoey about looking like she’s about to cry. Miyeong joins in, her voice bright, and even Celine is smiling faintly.

Rumi sits back, quietly chewing on her hotteok and letting the chatter wash over her. She watches as Celine reaches across the gearshift to take Miyeong’s hand, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Miyeong glances up in the rearview mirror, catching Rumi’s eye, and smiles at her, warm, unguarded. Rumi offers a small smile back at her mother. She shifts her gaze from her mother and Celine to Mira and Zoey, who are still making a mess with all of the crumbs they’re getting all over themselves and the seat, laughing around mouthfuls of hotteok.

Crammed in the backseat, Rumi finds herself caught between the two things she’s always wanted most.

She takes a big bite of her hotteok and swallows it, along with that thought, down.

Apart from another pesky demon attack later that afternoon, the rest of the day goes by without incident. Over dinner—stew made from the fresh cod they bought earlier at the market, its clear broth fragrant with radish, garlic, and green onions, the tender white flesh of the cod breaking apart with even the lightest touch of a spoon; Celine seems especially proud of herself—Mira remarks, “These demons are getting real persistent. I mean, that’s three waves in one day,” and Zoey adds, disgruntled, “And who knows if they’ve still got one more left in them, for dinner.”

Rumi chews slowly, then asks, “Do you think it’s got anything to do with the full moon approaching? We all know that magical energy spikes up significantly during a full moon. But what I mean is—are they doing this on purpose? Like, are they timing it, or something?”

“Like they know we’re gonna try to use it to fix the Honmoon,” Mira mumbles, chin in her hand.

Zoey turns to Celine and Miyeong. “What do you think?”

“It’s a possibility, yes,” Celine answers after spooning some broth into her mouth. “With the full moon being a time when supernatural activity in general is significantly heightened, the demons—and Gwi-ma—would benefit from it as much as we do.”

“If they do know we’re up to something,” Miyeong adds, “then it would make sense for them to strike now when they’re at their strongest and before we can do anything about the Honmoon.”

Rumi, Mira and Zoey look at each other uneasily.

“Hey,” Miyeong says gently, “we’ll be okay. There’s five of us now, remember? We’ve got each other.”

Celine tilts her head towards Miyeong, smiling. A little tired, mostly fond. They finish the rest of the meal in quieter conversation, the steam from the stew curling in the lamplight as the night settles in.

After dinner, Rumi gets first dibs on the shower. She stands under the spray of warm water for a while, letting it wash away all of the sweat and grime and weariness of the day, watching the soap suds circle the drain until the water goes cold. She steps out a few minutes later, toweling her still damp hair dry as she pads down the quiet hallway. She’s making a beeline for the guest room when a spill of moonlight catches her eye, pale silver across the polished wood of the floor. She slows down and, drawn to the light, walks towards it instead.

She finds Miyeong sitting on the wooden veranda, knees drawn up, staring out into the central courtyard. Miyeong turns her head ever so slightly when she hears Rumi approaching her.

“Hi,” Rumi greets, smiling.

Miyeong smiles back. “Hi.”

Rumi hovers uncertainly for a second, then she gestures to the empty spot beside Miyeong. “Mind if I join you?”

“Go ahead. Room for two.”

So Rumi makes herself comfortable beside Miyeong, her damp towel hanging around her neck. For a while neither of them say anything. They just sit together in the pale wash of moonlight, the courtyard spread out before them in still, quiet symmetry. The gnarled branches of a pine twist up from the earth, casting long, ink-dark shadows over the stone path. A faint breeze stirs the leaves, carrying the cool scent of soil and wood, and the faint trickle of water from a nearby basin breaks the silence. Lantern light spills faintly from the eaves, brushing the edges of tiled roofs in gold, but the rest lies bathed in the moon’s silver.

Eventually, Rumi says, “I used to play out here when I was a kid. I’d run around the place in circles for what felt like hours, but somehow, I never got bored.”

She can imagine it all vividly. Afternoons spent out here, running circles around the courtyard. Sometimes Celine would be attending to some house chore or other, and she would call for her from inside the house. Rumi-ya, she’d say. Come in already. Other times, though, Celine would sit here where they’re sitting now and just quietly and wistfully watch Rumi as she plays.

It seems like Miyeong is trying to imagine that too. A little girl running around the courtyard, toys scattered all over the grass. Maybe she’s even imagining herself watching that little girl as she plays. Maybe she’s imagining Celine is with her, watching too.

“Can I ask something?” Rumi says, turning to look at Miyeong now.

Miyeong turns to her too. “What is it?”

“That room down the hall… Was it Poppy’s?”

Miyeong is quiet for a long, long moment. Then, she looks out at the courtyard again. “Yes,” she answers quietly. “Celine and I didn’t have the heart to clear it out. I don’t know if we ever will.” A beat, then she turns to look at Rumi again. “I’m guessing that’s your room, back in your reality?”

Rumi nods.

Miyeong hums. “I figured.”

Silence settles again, not heavy but lingering. The faint trickle of water from the basin is the only sound between them, steady and unbroken. Miyeong draws her knees a little closer, chin resting lightly against them. Rumi lets her towel slip loose around her shoulders, the cool night air prickling against her skin. For a while, they just sit there, letting the night speak in their place.

It’s Miyeong who eventually breaks the silence.

“When it happened,” she says, slow and careful, “when Poppy died… It really didn’t feel like anything bigger than that. It didn’t feel like anything more complicated than us losing our friend. But today…” She sighs. “I don’t know what’s worse. If it really was just some senseless, ugly thing that happened to us, or if there was a reason, whatever it might be, behind it after all. Nothing will ever make it hurt less, knowing she’s gone, but I don’t know if I can really stomach knowing that she had to die just to balance out some equation the universe decided mattered more than she did.”

The words hang in the night air for a long moment before Rumi says softly, “It’s not your fault.”

Miyeong looks her in the eye, unflinching. She says, “It isn’t yours, either,” and Rumi feels it land deep, sharp and sudden, like a blade between the ribs.

“I don’t think it can really be anyone’s fault,” Miyeong goes on to say, gaze drifting out to the courtyard. “I guess that’s both the comforting and frustrating thing about it, isn’t it? It’s not anyone’s fault at all, it’s just… how it is, the universe correcting itself—however you want to look at it. But it would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, if we could pin the blame on someone, or even just something other than some vague and detached and honestly just cold cosmic logic behind everything. Something that would actually help us make sense of all this.”

Rumi doesn’t know how to respond. The words just sit there between them, heavy as stone, and all she can do is swallow around the ache in her chest.

Miyeong observes her for a moment, then she tells her gently, “I… understand how you might blame yourself for—for me, Rumi. I know that’s something you carry around with you, every single day of your life, but it isn’t your fault. And, honestly…” She laughs softly here, leaning her cheek against her knees. “I don’t think I would have chosen any differently, if everything here went according to how it went in your reality. I would have still chosen you.”

Rumi can’t breathe for a moment, Miyeong's words landing like a punch to the chest, knocking all of the air out of her lungs. Because this isn’t her mother—not really, not the one she lost, the one died because of her—and yet it is too. Her face, her smile. Her voice, as Rumi grew up hearing on the records and video tapes she’d borrow from Celine sometimes. This is still Ryu Miyeong telling her what she’s ached for her whole life to believe: that none of it was a mistake, and that she wasn’t a mistake.

She stares down at her hands, afraid that if she looks at Miyeong’s face she’ll come apart completely. How is she going to come back from this? How can she go back to her reality where Miyeong is gone? How can she go back when Miyeong is here, alive, and looking her in the eye and telling her she would have wanted her as a daughter all the same—even knowing she dies because of Rumi?

How can she go back to a world without her mother?

Miyeong reaches over and runs her fingers through Rumi’s hair tenderly. “Tell me,” she says, “is it because of Celine that you keep your hair this long?”

That somehow manages to put a smile on Rumi’s face. “No,” she replies softly, angling her head towards her mother. “I grew up seeing what you looked like from pictures, newspaper and magazine clippings. Performances recorded on tape. Celine used to tell me that you guys would spend hours in hair and makeup because of how long you kept your hair, but it’d become your thing, so no one could really tell you to chop all of it off or anything. That it might have caused an actual riot if Ryu Miyeong of the Sunlight Sisters dropped her signature braid. I kind of just decided, then, that I wanted to wear my hair the same way too—because it was your thing.”

Miyeong smiles at her, touched and a little sad. “So, in short: it’s still Celine’s fault.”

Rumi laughs softly.

The faint creak of the floorboard and the muffled rush of water shutting off pulls both Rumi and Miyeong out of their quiet, bittersweet little moment. It’s only then that Rumi realizes how long she’s been out here, and how soon Mira and Zoey will start looking for her.

Miyeong pushes herself up to her feet, brushing her palms down the front of her skirt. “You should go get some rest,” she tells Rumi gently. Then, with a soft huff, adds, “I need to head down to the archive anyway, to wrangle Celine back up and into bed before she decides to spend the night buried under those dusty old scrolls and books again.”

Rumi gets up too. They walk together, and exchange a quiet goodnight with each other. Miyeong turns to leave, her figure already half-swallowed by the shadows stretching across the hall, when Rumi turns around and calls, “Mom,” before she can think better of it.

Miyeong glances back, raising a brow in question.

“I-I just—I just wanted to say—” Rumi swallows, her throat tight. “Thank you.”

To be honest, she isn’t even entirely sure what it is, exactly, that she’s thanking Miyeong for. It could be anything, or everything. Maybe a bit of both. She couldn’t explain it if she tried—but it seems like she doesn’t need to, not when Miyeong’s patient smile says she understands all the same. She lingers there just long enough for Rumi to feel it settle deep in her chest before turning away, footsteps fading into the dark.

Rumi pads quietly down the hall. She passes the locked door on the way there—Poppy’s room. The sight of it makes her chest squeeze tight, but she keeps going, slipping into the guest room where Mira and Zoey are waiting for her.

“There you are,” Zoey says brightly. Her hair is still damp, spread across the pillow in a dark halo. She must’ve been the one in the bathroom just now. Mira’s already half-asleep, an arm curled loosely around the empty space waiting for Rumi. She kind of just squints at Rumi then beckons for her to come join them in bed already.

So she does. Mira curls around her and Zoey shifts in against her back.

“Where’d you go?” Mira asks sleepily, wrapping her arm around Rumi’s waist now.

“I just bumped into my mom,” Rumi answers softly. “We talked for a bit.”

Zoey hums, her lips brushing the back of Rumi’s neck.

For a while, no one speaks, and that silence stretches long enough for Rumi to know that both Mira and Zoey are fast asleep now. Mira’s breathing has evened out against her shoulder, steady and slow, while Zoey’s hand rests warm and loose at her hip. Rumi knows she should sleep too—should be asleep too—warm and safe between Mira and Zoey, her pillars even when they’ve been uprooted from their reality and shoved somewhere they don’t belong, grounding her even here, but Rumi lies there with her eyes wide open, her mind still caught on Miyeong’s voice, and her smile.

There’s no rest to be found in this purgatory between the world where she’s supposed to belong and the one where her mother is alive—and, despite everything, would still choose her.

For the first few minutes Rumi is awake, she just lies there, staring up at the ceiling, nestled between Mira and Zoey’s warm, sleeping bodies. She doesn’t know what time it is, exactly, just that it’s bright and early in the morning, sunlight streaming in through the blinds. She should probably wake Mira and Zoey up already too but she decides not to, not just yet. She just… needs a few more minutes of silence. A few more minutes to herself, and to her memories of the night before. Her mother’s voice, and her smile. I would have still chosen you.

Rumi pushes down the ache in her chest and wiggles herself to finally wake Mira and Zoey up. “Hey,” she murmurs, shaking Mira’s shoulder gently, “Wakey-wakey.”

Zoey groans, wrapping her arms tighter around Rumi’s waist and slinging a leg over Rumi’s like she means to keep her in place with it. Mira, meanwhile, slurs out, “Five more minutes,” pulling both Rumi and Zoey closer and slinging one of her very long legs over Rumi and Zoey.

Rumi laughs softly. “Come on, you guys.”

Mira and Zoey both groan in complaint, but they finally stir awake anyway. Rumi sits up in bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and Mira and Zoey follow suit with heavy reluctance. Mira leans into Zoey’s shoulder, mumbling something incoherent, and Zoey just tips her head to press a lazy kiss to Mira’s temple. Then Mira turns her face to meet Zoey’s properly, their lips brushing in a slow, unhurried good morning.

Rumi tries not to stare, but it’s impossible not to feel it. The easy rhythm of them, the way affection comes as naturally to them as breathing. Zoey’s hand lingers at Mira’s jaw, Mira’s fingers curl into Zoey’s shirt, and for a moment the room feels brighter than the sunlight spilling through the blinds.

Zoey pulls back only to grin at Rumi, reaching over to squeeze her knee. “Your turn,” she teases. Mira, eyes half-shut, leans in to kiss Rumi’s cheek, and Zoey follows, pressing one against the corner of her mouth until Rumi laughs, shy and just a little bit overwhelmed.

“You sure you wanna kiss me before I’ve even brushed my teeth?” she jokes.

Zoey snorts. “Please. You think we care about that?” She leans back in again to kiss Rumi properly this time before she can duck away.

“Don’t overthink it,” Mira says, voice still a little low and rumbly with sleep, then she leans in and kisses Rumi too, deliberately letting her teeth snag on Rumi’s lower lip as she pulls away. She smiles smugly at the honestly pathetic little noise Rumi makes. “Yeah, I figured you’d be into that.”

Rumi’s face heats up, and she’s torn between laughing and wanting to dig a hole for her to just crawl into. Then, she feels Zoey slip a hand underneath her shirt, her hand warm against Rumi’s skin, and then Mira’s hand is firm around her thigh. When Rumi turns to look at her, she squeezes and just smiles at her.

Rumi had wondered often enough why Mira and Zoey sometimes take so long getting ready in the morning, and then all that wondering turned into imagining, which she isn’t so proud to admit. Knowing these two, though… They’d probably be into it, if she told them. Either way, trapped between them now, it becomes obvious enough why they take so long.

She looks back and forth between them, stomach clenching underneath Zoey’s palm, and she mutters, “What?”

Mira and Zoey exchange a glance and then just—laugh.

“Relax,” Mira tells Rumi, squeezing her thigh again. “We’re not gonna do anything, not with your moms down the hall.”

“Unless you want to,” Zoey teases, giggling at the look Rumi shoots her. “What? I’m just saying.”

“Seriously,” Rumi grumbles, embarrassed, then she crawls out of bed before she can give in to that part of her that very much does want it anyway. Mira and Zoey are laughing again, and as annoyed as Rumi is, she can’t help but smile.

They get up too then give her one last kiss each before they slip out of the guest room. She tries not to think too hard about how their certainty, their ease with her, makes the hollow ache in her chest throb even more.

The smell of food pulls them down the hall, warm and savory. Rumi breathes it in, her stomach giving a low, impatient growl. Apart from that and the low sizzle of the pan in the background, the house is quiet—peaceful, even—until Rumi’s ears pick up on something else, something even softer, threading underneath all that silence. As they get closer to the kitchen, the low murmur of voices, unmistakably Celine and Miyeong’s voices, becomes clearer.

She’s half-expecting them to be having their own little lovey-dovey thing going on, just like they did Rumi’s first morning here, but when they round the corner into the kitchen, Rumi finds them standing at the stove where Celine is frying some fish again, their heads bent close, and there’s nothing flirty or relaxed about the looks on their faces. They don’t even notice Rumi, Mira and Zoey at first. They continue whispering to each other, and at some point Rumi notices Miyeong’s entire body tense up, and Celine, by contrast, softens, placing a hand gently along Miyeong’s arm.

Rumi just stands there for a second, watching this strangely tense interaction unfold in front of her eyes, then she clears her throat.

Celine and Miyeong freeze. Slowly, they turn their heads towards Rumi, Mira and Zoey, who are still hovering in the doorway, curiosity buzzing heavy in the silence between them.

“Uh,” Rumi mumbles, embarrassed now, “Hi.”

Celine and Miyeong turn to each other, then back. “Hi,” they say in unison.

Rumi can feel Mira and Zoey shifting uncomfortably beside her. “Sorry,” she blurts out, “we, uh—we didn’t mean to interrupt you two or anything.”

Another awkward beat, then like nothing is wrong, Miyeong plasters an easy and warm smile on her face. “It’s alright,” she says, and Rumi is reminded that Celine and Miyeong are trained in the fine art of smiling through absolutely anything and everything just as much as she, Mira and Zoey are. “Come, take a seat. Food’s almost done.”

Celine catches Miyeong’s arm then, in a murmur, says, “We’ll continue talking later.”

Miyeong doesn’t say anything. She just gently pulls away from Celine and busies herself with setting the table. Celine watches her, jaw tight, like she wants to say more but doesn’t.

The rest of breakfast, at least, isn’t as awkward. It is quiet, though, with how things are still a little weird between Celine and Miyeong, and Rumi, Mira and Zoey are too afraid to say anything that might only make things worse. Or, you know, weirder. That’s the last thing they need right now. Rumi just continues to observe Celine and Miyeong, trying to figure out if what they’d walked in on was a fight, and what they would even be fighting about if that were the case. She recalls Miyeong telling her the night before that she was headed down to the archive to fetch Celine. Maybe it has something to do with that…?

Rumi can’t shake the horrible, sinking feeling that this is about her. That this is, somehow, her fault.

“Meet us down in the archive when you’re done,” Celine instructs the three of them after they excuse themselves to shower. They all nod, mumble, “Okay,” and turn to leave. Rumi glances back just once, though, just a quick glance, and finds her mother and Celine huddled close and talking in hushed voices again.

“So,” Mira says as soon as the door closes behind them, “that was really fucking weird, right?”

Zoey plops down onto the bed. “You don’t think they were fighting, do you?” she asks, eyes flickering to Rumi in particular.

“Who knows,” Rumi sighs, curling up in bed too. “They seemed totally okay last night, until—” She stops abruptly, hoping neither Mira nor Zoey tries to probe, but too little too late and all that.

Mira settles down on the bed too. “Until?”

“She went down to the archive last night,” Rumi answers carefully. “Celine was there too, remember?”

“Maybe Celine’s just in one of her moods again,” Zoey suggests, the tone of her voice making it obvious enough that she’s not seeing the same issues Rumi is seeing. The way Mira hums in agreement points to that too, for her. “You know how she is.”

“Yeah,” Rumi says in the end, tired. “Maybe.”

But it seems like whatever was wrong and weird between Celine and Miyeong has been settled already because by the time Rumi, Mira and Zoey descend into the archive, they look like they’re back to normal again. They’re still huddled close, but not in that strange, almost conspiratorial way anymore. Just… close, the way Rumi’s slowly gotten used to seeing them here. Rumi is relieved to see this, of course, even if she can’t fully shake that feeling of unease that’s settled inside her.

When everyone gets settled, Miyeong rolls out a scroll on the long table. It looks about as old as the scroll that had the painting of the shinmok on it. Rumi, Mira and Zoey press in closer to get a better look at it.

The calligraphy sprawls in sweeping, deliberate strokes, every character drawn with care. The lines are arranged almost like a score, verses staggered down the page, repeating phrases looping back like refrains in a song. Even without singing them, the syllables seem to hum faintly, their weight pressing into the air as though the scroll remembers the voices that spoke them first. There’s a painting on this one too: three women standing in a ring with hands lifted towards the sky. It’s obvious that these women are supposed to be the first Hunters.

Rumi says, “So this is…”

“The first Hunters’ sealing rite,” Celine confirms, her voice drawing all of their attention to her. “This was what they used—what they sang—to create the Honmoon. But you already know that.”

“We didn’t ask you to come down here to test your knowledge,” Miyeong says, smiling faintly. “We’re here to discuss what needs to be done, and to make everyone understand what it will take if we attempt this.”

Celine continues, a light wrinkle forming between her brow, “Our voices are what we use to drive back the darkness and bring people together—you know the spiel. But as powerful as our voices are, this”—she gestures to the scroll—“is still going to demand a lot from us.”

“Even with three of them,” Miyeong says, dead serious now, “this ritual was still a huge undertaking. This is what I meant when I said that Celine and I couldn’t have done this ourselves, not without Poppy. And even then, even if she were around, there’s no guarantee we could pull this off anyway. Based on the records we found here—the records the first Hunters wrote themselves—it seems even they were surprised they pulled it off. But there’s five of us now, which should make it… relatively easier.”

“Theoretically,” Mira says, deadpan.

A smile flickers over Miyeong’s face. “Yes. Theoretically.”

It’s Zoey who asks, “Okay, there’s a lot of talk right now about how difficult it is and how much it’s apparently going to cost us, but… what exactly is it going to cost us? What is it exactly that makes it so difficult in the first place?”

Celine and Miyeong exchange a glance, like they’re deciding who gets to drop the bomb. In the end, it’s almost inevitably Celine who answers, “Everything. It’s going to cost us everything, the way it nearly cost the first Hunters everything to put the Honmoon up. We need to pour everything we’ve got into this. Our voices, our life forces, even.”

“Like we explained last time,” Miyeong says, picking up where Celine left off, “the magic itself, the very thing holding our reality together, has weakened significantly.” Miyeong pauses for a second, like a thought had just crossed her mind, or there’s something else, but all she says in the end is, “Stabilize the Honmoon, then we stabilize the magic itself.”

Celine doesn’t say anything right away. She has her eyes on Miyeong the entire time, expression unreadable. Then, like it never happened, she just turns back to the other three to tell them, “There’s no holding back, if we’re going to pull this off. We either give it everything we’ve got, or we just don’t do it at all. Five voices, five hearts, five wills. One song. All of us, moving as one. If even one of us falters, the whole thing collapses.”

“The risks are high,” Miyeong says, acknowledging the elephant in the room, “but this is the only thing we have in our arsenal right now that’s strong enough to really do anything.”

“Trust me,” Celine says, sounding a little more tired now, “if there were an easier way around this, we would go for it. We would prefer it. But, as it stands… There isn’t. This is the best we’ve got.”

It’s quiet for a long, long moment. “We promised you we’d help you find your way back home, to your reality,” Celine says at last, and her gaze lingers on Rumi in particular, something heavy and unnameable behind her eyes, when she says, “and we have every intention of seeing it through to the end, no matter what it takes.” Beside her, Miyeong conspicuously doesn’t echo the promise, only lowering her gaze to the scroll again.

Rumi catches the shift immediately, but before she can make anything of it, Zoey says, “And we’ll help you seal the Honmoon here,” brightly, and Mira nods eagerly, every bit as fired-up now too. “Then we tear a hole through the borders between our realities again,” Zoey says, hopeful, and Mira finishes, “and we’ll finally get to go home.”

They turn to Rumi hopefully, optimistically—and all Rumi feels is sick.

Guilty.

Mustering a smile, she says weakly, “Yeah. We’ll finally get to go home.”

She doesn’t miss the way both their smiles seem to falter. She looks away, because she can’t bear to look at Mira and Zoey right now, not when that thought is still lodged somewhere deep in her brain and her heart, and that’s when she catches the looks on Celine and Miyeong’s face. They’re smiling like they’re touched that Zoey and Mira are so earnest about wanting to help them too, but there’s something lurking at the edges of those smiles, something Rumi can’t quite name.

The closest thing Rumi can think of is… sadness.

After that, they carry on with their planning. Business as usual. “We need to familiarize ourselves with this,” Celine says, tapping the incantation—the lyrics—written on the ancient scroll, “every word, every thread of it. No margin for error,” and Miyeong adds, “We’ll need to account for interference from our pesky little friends, as well.” The determination and focus in their voices pulls the mood forward again, even if Rumi can still feel that subtle unease lingering under the surface, like smoke that just won’t clear.

Rumi tries her best to be as involved and as focused as everyone else is, her eyes keep drifting to Celine and Miyeong. Each glance only twists the knot in her stomach tighter, until she finally tears her gaze away—only to catch Mira and Zoey watching her again, their expressions caught between worry and confusion. She smiles at them, as if to say see? I’m fine, everything is fine, and they smile back at her, but they don’t look too convinced.

They spend the first half of the afternoon cutting large sheets of hanji down to size for the talismans that they spend the rest of the afternoon placing around the perimeter of the shinmok. At first glance the talismans could pass for regular, ordinary bujeok if not for the characters written on them. They’re unique to the Hunters, designed to tap into the Honmoon’s energy and power to help ward off or, in their case, hold back the demons long enough for them to complete the sealing rite. They might not be able to do so much right now, what with how both the Honmoon and the magical core of this reality have been significantly weakened, but the full moon ought to make up for what they lack right now in power.

The first wave of demons arrive while they’re in the middle of placing talismans on the trees lining the graveyard’s edges. “About time,” Mira says, summoning her gok-do, “I was starting to get bored,” and Zoey follows after her, brandishing her shin-kal. The talismans flare weakly as the demons breach the perimeter, not enough to stop them outright but enough to slow their steps and make their movements drag and stutter as if gravity itself was holding them back. It makes it easier for them to hack and slash their way through their pesky little friends, as Miyeong put it. “At least we know they work,” Celine says drily as she cuts a demon down in half. They make quick work of the remaining demons then get right back to work.

Not even an hour later, though, the next wave of demons arrives. “Already?” Miyeong asks, almost bored, as she tidies up the stakes they’d set around the shinmok itself, “They’re quite impatient today, aren’t they,” and then she’s summoning her bow the very next second and loosing a magical arrow into a demon that’s brute-forcing its way through the sort of force field made by the talismans along the outer perimeter. The others put down the talismans and draw their weapons too.

Annoying but almost inevitable demon interruptions aside, Rumi is honestly glad to be busy. For one, it helps keep her mind off of the everything of it all—Poppy, her mom, hell, even Celine, but especially her mom—and it helps keep Mira and Zoey off her back too. There’s no time to dissect silences or tension or awkwardness when they’ve got a shinmok to secure and a sealing rite to hopefully, you know, get right. They have a Honmoon to seal, and a reality to go back home to, even if the thought of leaving suddenly makes Rumi nauseous.

Rumi can’t avoid them forever, though.

She sits under the shade of a tree, knees pulled up to her chest, staring across the clearing at where Celine and Miyeong are sitting a few feet away beneath another patch of shade. They’d just finished setting up the talismans around the perimeter and the shinmok, so they’ve all decided to just take a break here before they head back to the house. She watches Celine and Miyeong quietly, carefully, and she doesn’t know what they’re saying this time—she can’t even really tell if they’re talking at all—but the sight of them and of her mother, especially, is still enough to make her throat go uncomfortably tight.

She drops her gaze to the dirt between her shoes.

The crunch of footsteps startles her. Mira drops down beside her with all the subtlety of a falling boulder, a flask dangling from one hand. “Here,” she says, already unscrewing the cap to a flask of cold barley, and Zoey flops onto the ground on Rumi’s other side, shoving the flask into her hands before she can protest.

Rumi huffs, “Thanks,” then tips her head back for a sip. The tea is cool and faintly nutty on her tongue, a relief after the afternoon’s hard work under the sun. Rumi doesn’t realize how thirsty she apparently was until half the flask is gone. When she catches the amused glances Mira and Zoey throw her way, she smiles sheepishly and says, “Sorry. I, uh, didn’t mean to hog all of it to myself.”

“It’s fine,” Zoey tells her warmly, bumping shoulders with her.

And Mira adds more teasingly, “You looked like you needed it more than we did anyway.”

Rumi rolls her eyes, smiling.

For a while, they all just sit under the shade in silence. A breeze passes through them, cool and welcome against their skin, sticky with drying sweat. Rumi tries not to stare at her mother and Celine again, but it’s like someone’s stuck magnets into her eyes or something with how they keep getting pulled back to them anyway, no matter how hard she tries to resist. She can feel Mira and Zoey following her gaze, the same way she can tell that they’re engaging in one of those nonverbal conversations they always have when they think Rumi isn’t looking, or that she’s maybe just too dense to notice.

“Hey, Rumi,” Mira says, breaking the silence.

Rumi doesn’t turn to her, or to Zoey. “Yeah?”

When Mira doesn’t say anything right away, and not even Zoey says anything, Rumi finally tears her gaze away from her mother’s face and towards Mira and Zoey instead. They wear their apprehension openly on their faces, and they keep looking back and forth at each other like they’re not sure who should be the bearer of bad news or whatever, and it makes Rumi ask, “What is it?” She looks from Mira to Zoey and then back, then asks again, “Seriously, what is it?”

Zoey purses her lips, eyes flickering to Mira over Rumi’s head. Then, cautiously, she says, “It’s just… We don’t want you to take this the wrong way or anything, or think that we’re taking it the wrong way or anything, but…”

She trails off, and Mira, who’s never been great at dancing around things, just blurts out, “Are you actually thinking about it? Are you—are you actually having second thoughts about going back?”

The words land like a stone in Rumi’s gut. She freezes, her fingers tightening around the flask of barley tea. “What?” she breathes out, “Why would I—”

“We’re not accusing you of anything,” Zoey says, expression softening, “It’s just that we’ve noticed the way you’ve been looking at your mom, and then there was, you know, earlier…”

“You didn’t look so enthusiastic at the thought of going back,” Mira murmurs, shifting uncomfortably.

Rumi’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out at first. Her heart stutters in her chest, loud enough that she’s sure they can hear it. “I—I’m not—I mean, of course not,” she blurts finally, stumbling over her words, “Why would I even—? That’s insane, you guys. Seriously, come on. You really think I’d just—just—hang here forever or something? That’s ridiculous. I’m not—” Her voice breaks on the last word, too sharp, too defensive, and she clamps her mouth shut.

“Rumi,” Zoey says gently, reaching for her hand, and it isn’t until then that Rumi realizes she’s clutching the flask so hard her knuckles have gone white. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“We understand, okay?” Mira says just as softly, before she adds, “But you know you can’t stay here. None of us can. I—” She groans. “I hate admitting Celine is right, but I think she was onto something being worried about us being here. We don’t belong here, Rumi. You were never here, and I-I don’t even know about me and Zoey. But this isn’t our world. It’s theirs, and—I get it, she’s your mom, Rumi, of course I get it, but—”

“We have our own world to save too,” Zoey says, squeezing Rumi’s hand. “And besides that…”

“What about Celine?” Mira asks.

That hits her like a slap to the face. Rumi’s throat goes tight, her chest squeezing until she can barely breathe. Of course. Celine. The one who raised her, and the one back home now probably wondering where she is and what happened to her. Who may or may not even still be alive right now, if Gwi-ma hasn’t taken over the world already.

Suddenly Rumi feels like throwing up again.

She could never just forget Celine, especially not when her last memory of her—the last moment they shared—was her on her knees, holding her sword up to Celine and begging her to just kill her already like she should have done all those years ago, before things got this far or this bad. Not when every step she takes here feels like walking through echoes of her, and not when she still misses her anyway, despite how angry she is with her, and she misses her so much it hurts sometimes. But hearing Mira say it like that—it makes her stomach drop, makes her feel sick, because it throws into sharp relief how selfish she’s being for wanting to just—just—run away. For letting herself want this place, and for letting herself imagine the life she could have here with her mother, and with this version of Celine who would never come to know the grief that Rumi’s Celine has carried with her for the better part of her life since Miyeong died over there in their reality. A version of Celine who, maybe, could love her for all that she is, and not just the parts that remind her most of the woman she loves.

But there’s still her Celine, who might be waiting for her, desperate, terrified, and if she’s—god, Rumi hates herself for even entertaining the thought of it—if she’s gone too, then… Then there’s no way for them to ever fix what broke between them that day, not anymore.

But then her mind, traitorous as ever, drags her back to Miyeong.

Because how can she sit here, in this world, and not think about the impossible? Not think about the fact that she’s here, that her mother is here, warm and alive and exactly as gentle as Rumi always dreamed she would be, and Miyeong doesn’t regard her with suspicion or fear, and doesn’t even flinch from the parts of her that are too much, too dangerous, too wrong, like she’s spent all her life believing—Miyeong, who told her outright that she would have still chosen her, even knowing what it would mean or what it would do to her, that she would have still kept her—how could she not want this?

She’s carried the ache of wanting this her whole life and now, it’s right here, right in front of her. Her mother. The life she’s always wanted. The family she’s always wanted. So close now that she could almost believe it’s actually hers to keep.

—But Mira and Zoey are right.

This isn’t their world, and this isn’t hers to keep. It never was.

“Great,” Mira sighs, guilty, “we’ve bummed her out.”

“We really didn’t mean to,” Zoey says, panicked, still clutching Rumi’s hand like she’ll float away otherwise or something, “and we really don’t want you to feel bad for wanting to be with your mom, but… We need to know you’re still in this a hundred percent, Rumi.”

“You heard Celine,” Mira adds, taking Rumi’s other hand in hers. “Five voices, five hearts. We have to all be in this together.”

Rumi’s chest aches. She wants to run, to hide from how raw it feels—but their hands are warm around hers, anchoring her, and so she says, “I’m with you,” and then she swallows. Looks at Mira, then Zoey. “I promise.”

Zoey exhales shakily, relief written all over her face. “Okay.”

Mira nods, squeezing her hand. “Whatever happens, we’ll face it together.”

“We know this isn’t easy,” Zoey says, gaze drifting to Miyeong. “She isn’t just anybody, she’s your mom, and we know how much it means to you, actually getting to meet her and be with her like this. Wanting that doesn’t make you selfish”—and Rumi tries not to flinch at that word, specifically—“It just makes you human.”

Mira nods sympathetically. “If it were us, we’d want the same thing. No one blames you for that, Rumi.”

The words sting and soothe all at once, and Rumi has to bite down on the burn rising in her throat. She takes a moment to just breathe, to steady herself and her heart, then says, “Thank you.”

“We love you,” Zoey tells her, assures her, and Mira squeezes Rumi’s hand.

“Yeah,” Rumi says, smiling a little now, around the ache, “I know. I love you too.”

Rumi lets out a shaky breath, the burn in her chest easing just a little. She looks away, not sure she can take much more of Mira and Zoey’s softness or grace without falling apart completely. Inevitably, she finds herself looking at her mother and Celine again—only this time, she finds Celine watching her too. There’s a light wrinkle between her brows, like she’s trying to piece together what’s going on over here, with the three of them. It makes Rumi wonder what sort of face she must be making right now for Celine to be looking at her like that.

But then Miyeong says something, her hand brushing against Celine’s arm, and Celine immediately turns her attention back to her. The spell breaks, and Rumi drops her gaze, chest aching like a bruise.

It’s late in the afternoon by the time they make their way back home, the sun hanging low and heavy above them. Mira and Zoey walk ahead with Miyeong, their arms full of baskets and bundles, laughing softly at something she says. Rumi trails a few paces behind, her steps slower, her mind still circling the conversation from earlier. Her eyes are glued to the back of Miyeong’s head the entire time, her heart twisting and aching in her chest whenever she catches a glimpse of her smile or whenever the sound of her laugh fills the air.

She almost leaps out of her skin when Celine suddenly slips into step beside her. The weight of her presence is grounding and disquieting all at once. “O-oh. Hey.”

Celine cocks a brow at her, amused. “You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind,” she remarks, friendly enough. When Rumi laughs nervously in response, she looks long and hard at her then asks, “Are you okay?”

Rumi tries not to wither under her steady, searching gaze. “What do you mean?”

Thankfully, Celine spares her the unimpressed, unconvinced look. Instead, she just asks, not unkind but still straightforward the way she always is, “Back there, earlier—what was that about?”

Rumi is about to answer, It’s nothing, but before she can even get the words out of her mouth, her skin prickles, the air around them suddenly heavier than it was mere seconds ago, and without thinking, Rumi summons her sword and flings it toward the demon that lunges at Celine. The sword zips past Celine’s face, close enough that it almost grazes the tip of Celine’s nose as it flies past her and into the demon, pinning the demon against a nearby tree. It lets out an angry screech before it disappears, leaving nothing behind but the sword stuck in the bark of the tree.

For a second, no one says anything. Then, letting out a shaky breath, Celine tells Rumi, dry and self-deprecating, “I suppose I deserve that for throwing one of mine at your head, the first night you were here.” The corner of her mouth lifts. “Good catch.”

Rumi blinks at her, surprised, then she huffs out a laugh. She moves to retrieve her sword, planting a foot against the tree as she pulls the sword out, the blade glowing and the constellations etched along the length of the blade pulsing faintly. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Celine staring at the sword, her gaze tracking the faint shimmer of lines that run like starlight across the blade. She doesn’t say anything, but her expression shifts into something intent, thoughtful.

But there’s no room to dissect that, not right now, with the rest of the demon’s companions rushing in around them.

“Stay close,” Celine tells her, drawing her blades too, and Rumi nods, covering her flank.

By the time they clean up the third wave of demons for the day and make it back to the house, the sun has dipped behind the clouds already. Mira lets out a relieved sigh as soon she steps through the front door, and Zoey all but rolls her way in, exhausted from a long and busy afternoon. Miyeong chuckles softly at the pair of them, and then tells Celine teasingly, “You’d better get started on dinner before these three start gnawing on the furniture,” and Celine grimaces, resigned to the thankless task of keeping three insatiable, reality-hopping brats alive and well-fed. This time, Miyeong laughs, full-body and out loud and everything, then leans in to kiss Celine like it’s consolation for the burden she has to bear.

Zoey sits up from where she’d been lying on the floor to say, “We can help!,” and Mira, who’s also lying on the ground, lifts her arm to give a thumbs up. Rumi smiles at them from the couch, then says, “Yeah, it’s the least we could do.”

Celine eyes the three of them warily—and then she just sighs. “Fine. You three can help.”

Miyeong bats her lashes at Celine expectantly, then all but smacks her on the shoulder when Celine just looks back at her blankly. “We—we—didn’t burn down the kitchen last time, you know!”

Celine laughs, warm and fond. “Okay, you can help too,” she tells Miyeong, pulling her in to press a kiss to her cheek.

They spill into the kitchen, Mira and Zoey already bickering over who’s on chopping duty. In the bustle, Celine lays a hand on Rumi’s shoulder, pulling her just slightly aside. “Thanks again for earlier,” she tells Rumi.

Rumi blinks, caught off guard, then nods. Shyly, she mumbles, “Of course.”

Celine squeezes her shoulder before she turns her attention back to the task at hand. Beside her, Miyeong doesn’t say anything, but Rumi catches the quiet and almost… content smile on her face. A little wistful. When Miyeong feels Rumi’s gaze on her, she directs that smile at her, letting it linger just for a second longer before she looks away too.

Because it’s their last night here before the full moon, dinner ends up a little more special than usual. They feast on the short ribs and thin slices of beef that Celine marinated yesterday when they got back from the market, before she prepared the cod stew they had for dinner that night. That really is just like her, Rumi thinks. She may not always be the most openly affectionate or sentimental person out there, certainly not compared to Miyeong, but she’ll show she cares by preparing enough galbi and bulgogi to feed the entire village. Rumi’s not complaining, and neither are Mira and Zoey, who shamelessly pile their plates high with grilled meat.

Miyeong laughs as she watches them shovel as much meat, rice, and vegetables as humanly possible into their mouths. “Slow down,” she tells them even as she attempts to do the same and almost chokes on her food. She just laughs that off too, washing the food down with water. She catches the way Celine is looking at her—a mix of horrified and worried—and says around another mouthful of food, “What?”

Celine gives her that look Rumi often got when she was a kid and she would talk with her mouth full. She doesn’t say anything, though, just sighs and turns back to her own plate—but then she notices that Rumi’s is half-empty now, so she reaches for the tongs and grabs more than enough bulgogi for one person and drops all of it onto Rumi’s plate. “Eat,” she says in that tone that leaves no room for argument. All Rumi can do is obey, smiling faintly.

The conversation drifts in snatches: there’s Mira’s running commentary on which marinade she prefers, and then Zoey boasting that she could eat another three plates, followed by Celine muttering that she’d be wise to not test that theory even as Miyeong encourages everyone to just eat more, refilling everyone’s plates and cups. The meal stretches on, loud and lively and warm, the table crowded with food and laughter. It’s almost impossible to believe that only a few nights ago they weren’t welcome here, but tonight it feels like they’ve always belonged. Their presence here feels easy. And for now, this is all there is. The warmth of good food, the comfort of good company, and the sense of fullness in every way that matters. The knowledge that tomorrow will decide everything looms over all of them, but no one says it out loud. They don’t need to, not tonight. For now, it’s enough to eat their fill and let the moment be what it is—whole, fleeting, and precious.

They’re just starting to clear the table when a faint meow carries from outside. Everyone freezes but Zoey’s halfway out the door already, sing-songing, “A cat! There’s a cat!”, rushing out to the courtyard. Mira just lets out this resigned breath as she follows after Zoey, shaking her head with the kind of resigned fondness that says she’d follow Zoey anywhere, without question. Rumi smiles sheepishly at her mother and Celine before she follows after Mira and Zoey, then a few seconds later she hears Celine and Miyeong trail after the three of them too.

Sure enough, when they step into the courtyard, a small stray cat is there, weaving eagerly around Zoey’s legs as she squeals and bends down to pet it. Mira crouches beside her, letting the cat sniff at her fingers before scratching under its chin, smiling softly to herself.

“Oh,” Miyeong says, pleasantly surprised, “he’s back.”

Mira raises her head. “He comes here often?”

Miyeong nods. “He usually climbs up the roof and then down here, but it’s been a few days since we last saw him,” she explains as she joins them, crouching down to pet the stray cat too. She scratches the back of his ear and then, smiling at Celine, says, “For him to show up tonight, of all nights… Seems auspicious, don’t you think?”

Celine is less enchanted. She scoffs, folding her arms over her chest. “He probably ran out of wild mice to chase or something,” she grumbles, frowning like she’s mad she’s got yet another mouth to feed now, but the very next second she’s already turning back toward the kitchen anyway, and then a minute later she reappears with a small bowl piled with scraps from dinner. Bits of beef, some rice, even a splash of soup. She walks over to where Mira, Zoey and Miyeong are fawning over the cat and sets the bowl down without ceremony. The cat pounces on it immediately, tail swishing happily.

Miyeong looks up at Celine like she’s about to tease her for being a softie or something, but Celine is quick to excuse herself again, grumbling something about needing to wash the dishes. She walks right past Rumi before Rumi can even offer to help her. Rumi lingers for a moment, watching Celine go, then shrugs and kneels down beside the others, letting herself get caught up in the simple joy of fussing over the cat.

“You know,” Miyeong says when Celine’s well out of earshot, fond and so thoroughly and deeply amused, “it’s Celine’s fault anyway that this cat keeps coming back here.”

Rumi snorts. “Really?”

Miyeong hums, smiling. “The first time this cat came by, it was raining, and he was looking for shelter for a while. We tried to shoo it away, but we felt bad about kicking him out like that, so we kind of just let him hang around and wait out the rain. The only reason he came back a few days later was because she left some food out for him that night—and she still kept giving him food after that anyway, every time he came back.”

Zoey goes, “Aww,” and Rumi smiles faintly as she says, “Yeah, that does sound like her.”

“Why didn’t you guys just adopt the cat, then?” Mira asks Miyeong as she plays with the cat’s tail. “I mean, he seems pretty at-home here already anyway.”

“I told her we should,” Miyeong answers, sounding a little more exasperated now, “because she’s always feeding the thing anyway. ‘We might as well take him in,’ I’d said, but for whatever reason, she just refused. Not that that ever stopped her from putting food out for him anyway, whenever he did drop by again, and not that that ever stopped her from complaining about him being a freeloader either.”

Rumi doesn’t say anything more, but her smile lingers as her eyes drift unconsciously toward the house, where she knows Celine must be by now.

Celine comes back out a few minutes later with a bowl of water for the cat and a plate of sliced fruit and tea for the others. She sets the water down beside the scraps, then passes the plate around for them to pick at while they fuss over the cat. The rest she takes back with her to the veranda.

Rumi stays with Mira, Zoey and her mother for a while as they play with the cat, who’s stuffed himself so thoroughly that all he can do now is flop over and wriggle in the grass, eyes half-shut in bliss. Zoey laughs and rubs at his belly with the tips of her fingers, earning a single, lazy swat of his paw before he promptly rolls back onto his side. Mira dangles a blade of grass in front of his nose, and the most he manages in response is a slow batting motion, like he can’t be bothered to fully commit. Even Miyeong joins in, brushing the fur along his back until he stretches out long and slow, tail flicking in contentment. For a few minutes, none of them say much at all. They’re all too busy fussing over the cat in his indulgent stupor.

She reaches out and gives the tip of his tail a teasing wiggle with her fingers. The cat flicks it once, twice, then—without even bothering to open his eyes—lifts a paw and smacks at her hand in lazy protest. Rumi yelps in surprise, pulling her hand back just in time to avoid the cat’s paw of death. Mira snorts, “Looks like someone flew too close to the sun,” and Zoey coos something about him being a grumpy little prince. Miyeong, however, instinctively reaches for Rumi’s hand and inspects it thoroughly, asking in a soft but urgent voice, “He didn’t scratch you or anything, did he?”

Rumi blushes despite herself. “N-no, he didn’t,” she mumbles, drawing her hand back to her side and clenching it like she’s trying to hold all of the warmth of her mother’s touch safe in her palm. “I’m alright. Thanks.”

She thought she’d been doing such a good job at it too—at pushing down the knowledge or, no, the cold, hard fact that this won’t last, and that tomorrow she’ll have to leave this place behind. Leave her mother behind. She doesn’t say anything, of course, tries her hardest not to let any of the pain show on her face, but it’s obvious that Zoey and Mira notice. That they know, just from the look they both give her, the kind that says they’ve caught on and they see the mask slipping. She knows they won’t say or do anything about it now, of course, not in front of Miyeong.

Rumi clutches her hand close to her chest, almost like she’s nursing it. Half because she’s afraid the cat might actually try to smack her again, and half because she’s holding onto her mother as long and as hard as she can, in any and every way she can. She watches her play with the cat, cooing softly at it, Mira and Zoey huddled close to her—and suddenly, it just becomes too much. She tears her gaze away and looks over to the veranda instead, where she finds Celine watching them quietly and wistfully. It reminds Rumi of all the times Celine—her Celine—used to sit there and watch Rumi as she ran around the courtyard until she tired herself out, then she would scoop Rumi up in her arms when Rumi would come running to her whining about how she wants ice cream, or she just doesn’t want to have to walk herself to her room to get changed before dinner.

Just like that, Rumi feels her heart start to ache in a different way.

Rumi excuses herself then gets up to her feet. She registers the faint surprise on Celine’s face as Rumi approaches her, before she schools her face back into a more neutral expression as Rumi occupies the empty space across her on the veranda, the plate of sliced fruits and tea between them. “Is it okay if I join you?” Rumi asks, reaching for a slice of pear and popping it into her mouth.

“Tired of the little freeloader already?” Celine asks, still pretending like she doesn’t care or like the cat the least bit, but her expression softens as she says, “I don’t mind.”

Neither of them say anything for a while. They both just watch as Mira, Zoey and Miyeong play with the cat, who soaks up all of their attention. It’s clear enough too between the two of them that they’re both watching Miyeong closely, in particular. Rumi pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, like that’ll be enough to hold herself together even if the ache that continues to persist inside her threatens to tear her apart.

She’s pulled out of her thoughts when Celine suddenly says, “I know this might be a strange request, but do you think I could take a look at your sword, Rumi?”

‘Strange’ doesn’t even cut it. Rumi looks at her, confused, and maybe a little panicked because the last time she held that very sword out to Celine—her Celine, or this Celine, maybe the distinction doesn’t even really matter—but the last time—

“Sure,” she manages, in the end, and then the very next second her sword has materialized in her hand. She looks at it for a moment, feels its familiar weight in her hand, then forces herself to turn it over to Celine as calmly as possible. “Here.”

There’s something almost reverent to the way Celine takes the sword from Rumi. She wraps one hand around the hilt and holds the weight of the blade in her other hand, the blade thrumming and glowing faintly in the moonlight. Then, she traces the constellations etched into the blade with her fingers, like she’s trying to decode them or read them. Rumi just watches her silently, and she doesn’t even realize she’d been holding her breath the entire time until Celine looks up at her again to ask, “You know what this sword is, right?”

Rumi nods. “Sa-In Geom,” she says from memory. “I saw it once when I went with y—Celine to Seoul for a business trip when I was a kid. She took me to the National Museum before we left.”

That was three years before she managed to summon her Honmoon weapon. The sword, as explained on the exhibit label, was only made under very, very specific astrological conditions: it had to be during the year of the tiger, the month of the tiger, the day of the tiger, all the way down to the time of the tiger. Hence, the name. It was all a little bit too much for her little kid brain to process at the time, but Celine—her Celine—had explained that the constellations engraved on the blade were supposed to represent how a king should read and understand the sky to be able to govern over his people. The sword, as she understood it, wasn’t even the kind you’d actually bring into battle. It was ceremonial, gifted to the king’s most trusted vassals.

“Is it because the king will be mad if they lose it?” she remembers asking Celine then, in all of her childlike innocence and naivety, and Celine was stunned into laughter. Rumi didn’t think anything was funny about it, though, because it made perfect sense to her back then: if they require the stars to literally align for this thing to be made, then she’d be pretty mad too if the person she gifted this to lost it or broke it in battle. It's special, after all.

“I never thought I’d actually be wielding it, though,” Rumi says in the end, fully in the present again with this Celine who, now that Rumi thinks of it, looks a lot closer to the Celine in her memory of that trip to the museum than she’s comfortable admitting.

It’s strange, and maybe a little shameful, but it had never really crossed her mind just how young Celine was when she had to take up the responsibility of raising Rumi. How young her mother was when she died. She grew up with her mother frozen in time in all of those pictures and album covers, immortal in a sense, but being with her mother and even Celine now, flesh and blood, makes her understand a little bit better just how young they both were when everything fell apart.

Celine turns the blade slightly, her face illuminated by the faint glow from the sword. “They say the Sa-In Geom can fend off disaster and evil.”

“I would hope so,” Rumi blurts out and then immediately regrets. “I-I mean—well, if this is supposed to be some sacred sword that can only be forged when everything is cosmically aligned or whatever, then—yeah, I’d hope it can do all that. Seems like it would be a pretty big waste of time if it couldn’t.”

Celine huffs, amused. “That’s one way to look at it,” she says, tracing the constellations with her fingers again. She’s quiet for a long, long moment, deep in thought, and just as it starts to unnerve Rumi, she looks up again and says, “I suppose it’s not a coincidence this ended up in your hands, then,” as she reaches out to give the sword back to Rumi.

There’s something to the way she says that that rubs Rumi the wrong way, or at least makes her think Celine doesn’t mean it the way she thinks Celine means it, but she neither has the time nor the energy to really dwell on it right now.

Rumi hesitates before reaching for it. If Celine can feel the way her fingers tremble just the slightest during the hand-off, she doesn’t say anything about it. She knows Celine’s noticed for sure, though, because of the way her eyes flick up, searching Rumi’s face.

She holds the sword in her hand for a moment, then she looks back up at Celine and says, trying to play it cool, “Yeah, I guess not. Perfect for a Hunter, though, right?”

Celine smiles, but there’s something… off about it. Like she’s humoring Rumi while her mind is already miles away again, a flicker of thought still shadowing her face. Puzzled, Rumi waves her sword away.

For a while, neither of them says anything. The courtyard feels hushed except for the low murmur of Mira and Miyeong talking, Zoey’s bright laughter breaking through every so often. The cat stretches luxuriously across Mira’s lap, tail flicking lazily. The three—or, well, four—of them look like they’ve carved out a tiny, ordinary world for themselves there. Rumi is acutely aware of the silence between her and Celine, but right now, she’s happy to just sit there and watch with her, letting the scene out in the courtyard settle in her chest. Something warm, something heavy. Something she doesn’t quite know how to name.

Rumi chews on another slice of pear, eyes lingering on Miyeong as she laughs at something Zoey said. That’s when Celine decides to speak again.

“Do you know how Poppy died?” Celine asks, voice low.

Rumi freezes, then she shakes her head slowly.

Celine looks long and hard at her for a moment, then she heaves a sigh. “She died saving Miyeong,” she finally says. “We were ambushed that night. There were too many of them. Strong ones, coming at us faster than we could keep up with. We thought we’d cleared a path, but one of them slipped through. Miyeong didn’t see it coming—Poppy did.”

She swallows hard. “She threw herself in the way before any of us could move. It tore right through her.” Her voice trails off, and then shakes her head like she’s trying to make the memory of it, the image of it, disappear. “There was nothing we could do to save her. She was already gone.”

Rumi goes very still. She opens her mouth to say something, anything at all, but nothing comes out. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth, her throat dry. Celine just looks back at her sympathetically.

“Miyeong blamed herself for it for a while,” Celine goes on to say, looking past Rumi to where Miyeong is, smiling light and easy now in contrast to what Celine is saying about her. “I know she still does, sometimes. I blame myself too. What else can we do, to make sense of why she died? It’s easier to think we both failed her somehow than it is to admit that maybe it was just her time to go.”

“Though, to be honest, I’m not sure if I ever really believed in any of that stuff,” she says after a pause, quieter now. “Blame felt like something we could hold on to, but deep down I don’t think I ever bought it. Maybe it was just easier to pretend than to face the truth: that sometimes people die for no reason at all, and there isn’t anyone or anything to blame. Sometimes it’s just… senseless.”

This time, she turns to Rumi. “And then you came along, and now—now I’m not so sure, anymore.”

“I think that’s why I was so harsh to you,” Celine admits to Rumi, smiling wryly. “You weren’t just some strange girl who wound up at our doorstep, claiming you come from another reality and that you’re ours in that reality. You… You were proof too—proof that, maybe, I’d been wrong this entire time. That maybe everything I’d told myself to make it easier to live with Poppy being gone just wasn’t the truth at all. And I didn’t want to face that. I didn’t want to be wrong.”

Her gaze drifts back toward the courtyard, where the others are laughing softly over the cat. “When you came along, I had no choice but to… to see it all, for what it is. Patterns. Signs. That maybe there is no such thing as senselessness or coincidence. That maybe things don’t just happen, not in a world like this and not for people like us. But that’s just the thing isn’t it? Knowing that Poppy wasn’t just unlucky, that her death might have been part of some larger design, doesn’t make it any less cruel. It should be comforting, the possibility of her death not just being a matter of misfortune, but… It isn’t, not really.

“And it seems like the more I try to dismiss it, the more everything starts to make sense,” Celine says, arms crossed over her chest, her gaze not exactly on Rumi or Miyeong, but some far point in the distance. “Maybe that should come as a comfort too but… Things don’t always line up the way we want them to, do they? We can make sense of the signs, the patterns—whatever you want to call it—all we want but we can’t change the outcome. We can’t change the plan set into motion by the universe.”

She looks like she’s about to say more, but she stops herself. She looks at Rumi instead. Not like she’s imploring her to speak, or even like she’s accusing her of anything. It reads more like recognition, in a way. Like she’s seeing beyond Rumi and seeing the shape of what she represents instead. Seeing where she fits into all of this.

Rumi’s stomach turns, but she can’t even bring herself to look away. What would the point be in that? Celine’s just saying out loud what they both came to understand the moment Rumi said Poppy died on the day she should have been born.

She is the common denominator. Every death and every fracture comes back to her.

It feels like prying at a wound that never really closed, exposing the rot beneath, having Celine look at her like that. The ache that she’d so far managed to bury deep, deep down rises back up to the surface, sharp and difficult to ignore—and, before she can think better of it, it makes her say, “I asked you to kill me.”

Celine recoils as if she’d been hit. “What?”

Rumi swallows hard. She looks away from Celine, wrapping her arms tighter around her knees. “Before we wound up here,” she explains, voice low and surprisingly even despite how she feels like an exposed nerve right now, tender in all of the worst ways, “after Mira and Zoey found out I was half-demon—I ran back home. Here, and I—I ran to you. I… I offered you my sword and I asked you to kill me. I felt like it was the only thing that could still be done. I’d failed as a Hunter, I’d failed Mira and Zoey and they knew what I was, and I—I just couldn’t live with myself anymore. I didn’t want to live anymore. So I asked you to just… do it. Just kill me, put an end to all this—but you didn’t.” A beat, then a deep, heavy breath. “You couldn’t.”

She closes her eyes against the swell of feeling rushing up inside her. “Things weren’t always so bad between us. I have a lot of fond memories of growing up, when it felt like maybe I didn’t really need my mom around because I had you—and then I did grow up, and I became a Hunter like you always told me I would be, just like my mom before me, and things… changed. I knew you never hated me, but… I made you sad. I could tell, even as a kid, that sometimes I just—I made you sad. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized why and I—I just wanted to make it go away, you know? I wanted to make my patterns go away, just like you said we’d be able to do once the Honmoon was sealed for good, and I wanted to make that sadness go away. I wanted you to love me again. All of me.”

Rumi looks up at the sky now. At the moon. She wonders if Celine, the one from her reality—her Celine—is looking up at it now too, wondering where Rumi has gone or if she’s still alive at all.

“I thought it would be enough to just keep my head down and stick to the plan. You told me to cover up and hide who I really am, and it hurt to have to do it, but I told myself it wouldn’t have to be for long anymore. I just had to hold out until the time finally came for us to seal the Honmoon. It’s not like I had any other options available anyway. I just didn’t expect that the demons would actually be clever or sneaky enough to pull something like that, or that Jinu would turn his back on me at the last minute even when it seemed like we wanted the same thing.” She heaves a sigh, feeling an entire lifetime’s worth of bone-deep exhaustion catch up to her. “I fucked up. I wanted to just—just get it over with already, just do away with these patterns and everything that’s been holding me back my entire life, and I fucked up. And now… Now we’re here, where we don’t belong and I don’t even exist, and even then I’ve made myself a burden to you again, even if you’re not exactly the same Celine.”

Rumi falls silent after that. She doesn’t look at Celine. Can’t. But she can feel Celine’s eyes on her, and can feel the confession from earlier still hanging heavy between them. She half-expects Celine to just get up and leave, because what even is there to say to the girl who, even if it happened in another reality, asked you to kill her? Instead, what she gets is Celine quietly and almost gently telling her, “You’re not a burden.”

Rumi’s vision blurs, sudden and sharp, the tears coming before she can blink them back. She keeps her gaze fixed down at her knees, fists curling tight in the fabric of her sleeves as if that might hold her together. She can’t trust herself to say anything, not when it feels like she just took an axe to the chest and she’s been split down the middle.

“I don’t think I can speak for her,” Celine says, sounding guilty all the same, “the me from your reality, but… I’m sorry, Rumi. I’m sorry that… you felt you had to ask something like that from her—from—from me, and…” She shakes her head, like she knows it isn’t her Rumi needs to hear this from, not really. She just says, “I’m sorry,” again in the end.

And all Rumi can really say is, “I know.”

The silence stretches out between them again. She shifts her gaze towards Mira, Zoey and her mom again. This time, Miyeong seems to sense her staring, because she looks back at her from across the courtyard. Rumi must be doing a shit job at how miserable she feels right now because Miyeong furrows her brows at her, concerned, before her eyes flicker to Celine, and then back. Rumi turns away now, glancing sideways at Celine when she asks, “How are you so sure?”

Celine blinks at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

“What you said earlier,” Rumi clarifies. “You said that we can make sense of the patterns all we want, but we can’t change the outcome. How are you so sure about that?” She smiles at Celine lopsidedly. “I’ve never known you to back down like that.”

Celine blinks at her again, surprised this time, then she huffs out a soft laugh. “Yeah,” she murmurs, “I guess not.” She goes quiet again for a beat, her face settling into that same sad, faraway look, like someone already grieving a future she’s convinced is set in stone. Then, quietly, cryptically, she says, “There are some things you just can’t fight, I suppose.”

Rumi says nothing. The words lodge themselves somewhere deep inside her, too sharp to touch and too heavy to shake off. For now, she just lets them stay there, echoing in the quiet between them.

When Rumi looks up, Mira, Zoey and her mother are walking towards them. It seems they’re done fussing over the cat, who’s made himself at home in one of the corners so the courtyard. They’re all in good spirits, which is a hilariously striking contrast to how heavy things are right now between Rumi and Celine. Not exactly unpleasant, just—heavy. Mira and Zoey both glance at her and, for a second, their smiles falter. Rumi smiles back at them, small but steady, just to assure them that she’s fine. They might not be entirely convinced, but it’s still enough to make the both of them relax again.

“Doesn’t look like our guest will be moving anytime soon,” Miyeong says as she skips past Mira and Zoey to sidle up to Celine. Celine scoots over to make some more space for her on the veranda. “I’m thinking of setting up a spot for him here. A pillow and a blanket, maybe. Make him a proper little bed to sleep in.”

“Is it not enough that we fed him?” Celine complains, more lip service than anything at this point.

Miyeong just hooks her chin over Celine’s shoulder, poking her side with a finger. “Should we charge him rent, then? Would that make you less grouchy?”

Celine snorts, not the least bit offended.

As Mira and Zoey polish off the remainder of the sliced fruit, Miyeong looks back and forth between Celine and Rumi. “So,” she says, curious but careful, “what were you two talking about earlier? Seemed pretty serious.”

Rumi and Celine share a brief glance, something quiet passing between them. Then, it’s Celine who answers, “It’s nothing.”

“We were just going over the plan for tomorrow again,” Rumi adds.

Miyeong doesn’t look convinced, but she doesn’t look like she has it in her to really coax the truth out of them right now either. So, she just says, “Alright,” smiling at Rumi, specifically.

“I think we’ll call it a night,” Rumi says, trying hard not to rush up to her feet. Mira and Zoey are already pushing themselves up too, their faces still stuffed with half-chewed slices of fruit. “Big day tomorrow, after all.”

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Miyeong agrees gently. “You three should go get as much rest as you can.”

They murmur their goodnights. Mira and Zoey are already a few paces ahead of Rumi when she feels a hand suddenly close around her wrist. Then: “Wait.” Celine pushes herself up to her feet too, gently pulling Rumi closer. Miyeong just watches the both of them quietly.

“What is it?” Rumi asks, biting down the irrational bit of panic rising up her throat.

Celine doesn’t say anything right away, though. She opens her mouth once, like she’s about to, only to purse her lips again. It’s like she hadn’t actually thought of what she was going to tell Rumi, or maybe how she was going to say it. In the end, still holding onto her, Celine says, “Whatever happens tomorrow, Rumi… Don’t hesitate.”

Rumi instinctively glances toward Miyeong. Her mother is now watching them with that same look Celine’s worn all night, all throughout Rumi’s conversation with her, her expression unreadable and resigned.

“Rumi,” Celine says, more urgently this time, pulling all of Rumi’s attention back to her. “Don’t hesitate, do you understand me?”

“I…” Rumi swallows, then gives a small nod. Murmurs, “Y-yeah, I understand.”

Celine’s expression softens. “Good,” she breathes out, letting go of Rumi’s wrist. “Go. Get some rest.”

Rumi lingers only long enough to murmur another goodnight before she turns to follow after Mira and Zoey. She doesn’t get far before the pull of instinct makes her glance back.

Celine’s already settled back down beside Miyeong on the veranda. They’re shoulder to shoulder, Celine leaning ever so slightly into her as Miyeong loops an arm around her back. Neither of them speaks. They just sit there together, under the moonlight. There’s a strange sense of finality to it.

Rumi forces herself to turn away and keep walking.

Chapter Text

The quiet that’s fallen over the house is a familiar one. If Rumi closes her eyes, she can imagine it all vividly: they’re backstage, minutes away from stepping out to perform in front of a sea of people waving HUNTR/X banners and lightsticks, their fans’ voices drowning out the thunderous beating of their hearts. They’ve gotten used to it, bearing the weight of thousands upon thousands of eyes on them, but the nerves never really go away. The nerves, and the adrenaline rush, and then, always, that moment, when the noise of the crowd fades into nothing, total silence, and when the world itself ceases to exist and all that’s left is the hush before the music hits and the show begins. That moment when it feels like the entire world is holding its breath. The calm before the storm—and then, finally, release.

Needless to say, the tension is palpable.

It’s obvious that they’re all thinking about the same thing, but it’s like they’re all too afraid to actually say anything about it. Like they’re afraid they’re going to jinx it or something. Not even Zoey, who always takes it upon herself to keep things light and sunny, is noticeably mum. So, it’s been almost eerily quiet in the house the entire day. Not much talking is done over dinner, either. Dinner itself is nothing fancy—that was saved for last night, when they had the time to prepare fancy—just some heated leftovers and rice. Some soup and vegetables. It’s still good, objectively speaking, but if the night before had been warm and cozy and almost celebratory, now it just feels like they’re eating just for the sake of eating. So they don’t walk into the ritual later on empty stomachs, and so they don’t just sulk in their respective corners of the house all day, letting the nerves eat away at their sanity.

They clear the table after. Still, no one speaks. Only the clatter of dishes cuts through the silence.

Rumi is about to get started on washing the dishes when someone—Miyeong—places a hand along her arm and tells her, “It’s alright. I’ll take over here.” Rumi looks up at her like she’s going to protest, but she smiles at her gently and says, “Go.”

Rumi purses her lips, then nods. She turns to leave, and Celine moves to take up her spot beside Miyeong. Rumi glances at them over her shoulder, at the way their bodies are pressed close, their heads bent together, even if it doesn’t seem like they’re saying anything to each other, and just—lets out a heavy, shaky breath. Then, she walks away.

They have five hours until the moon is at its highest. Five hours until they head out, and five hours until—if everything goes according to plan—they finally make their way back to their reality. Back to where they belong.

Five more hours of calm before the storm.

Five more hours, only five more hours, left in this reality.

The next time Rumi steps out of the guest room is for a glass of water.

It feels strange, wearing the clothes she’d been wearing when they first arrived here again. They’ve been washed clean, and any holes or tears they sustained from the last time they faced Gwi-ma have been sewn shut by Miyeong. It’s strange too, thinking about how they’ll be dressed as they were when they disappeared from their reality when they come back, as if nothing ever happened. Like this has all just been a very long and vivid dream and now it’s time to wake up and face reality again—go back to how things were, back to normal, again, as if it really were that simple.

Rumi doesn’t know how much of herself she’ll actually be taking back with her, once they step through the rift and back into their own reality. She doesn’t think she’ll ever know what it feels like to be whole again, not after this.

She stands in the middle of the kitchen with her glass of water. The silence is different now than it was during dinner. It’s… emptier, rather than tense, although there’s definitely still some of that. She takes another slow sip, sets the glass down, but doesn’t leave. For a moment she just leans into the stillness, letting it press down on her chest.

Then, she hears it: a soft meow, drifting in from outside.

Rumi turns her head towards the direction of the courtyard. Another mew follows, higher, more insistent. She chugs the rest of her water down and sets her glass aside, then she makes her way out into the courtyard, where she finds the stray cat from yesterday waiting expectantly and impatiently.

“It’s you,” Rumi huffs.

The cat lets out another meow, almost in greeting or recognition now. He’s sitting near the shadow of the veranda, tail flicking lazily, eyes catching in the moonlight. When she approaches him, he gets up and waves between her legs. His fur brushes against her ankles, soft and warm, and he bumps his head insistently against her shin until she steadies herself and crouches down.

Rumi scratches him behind his ear and he mrrp’s happily. She smiles to herself. “You’re here to freeload again, are you?” The cat nuzzles his head into her palm, meowing as if to say, why yes, yes I am, shamelessly. “Alright, just wait.”

She comes back a few minutes later with a bowl of reheated rice, leftovers, and soup in one hand and a bowl of water in the other. The cat rushes towards her as she bends down to place the two bowls down, leaping at the bowl of food, in particular, before it even touches the grass. Rumi settles down on the veranda and watches as the cat inhales the food in record time.

After the cat has devoured every grain of rice, every last shred of soup-soaked meat, licking the bowl clean, he sits back, tail curling lazily around his paws, and begins grooming himself. For a while, Rumi is happy to just match the cat’s rhythm, breathing in and out, the ache in her chest dulling in the quiet. It would be easy, she thinks, to stay like this. To let herself just be small, unimportant and forgotten, in the stillness of the night. To just… be.

But then, almost without thinking, she holds her hand out and summons her sword.

It materializes in her grip, heavy and solid, familiar as her own heartbeat. The cat pauses mid-lick, blinking at the gleaming weapon in Rumi’s hand, then goes back to licking his paw like it’s nothing at all. Rumi sets the sword across her lap and runs her fingertips along the flat of the blade. The etched constellations catch the faint light, each one sharp and clear, as though the night sky itself has been carved into the blade. She thinks of that trip to the National Museum again, when she first saw this sword.

“They aren’t just decoration,” Celine—her Celine—had explained when Rumi asked what the constellations were for, why they were there, “They’re a reminder that the king has to be able to read the sky.”

Rumi, only still a child then, had screwed her face in confusion. “Read the sky?”

“That’s how the king knows when the seasons will turn, when the rains will come, when famine might follow. If he can’t read the heavens, his people starve, and so, his kingdom falls,” Celine said. “But it’s more than just that. Reading the sky means seeing the patterns: knowing when to act, and when to wait. The stars remind a king that he’s not the center of the world, no matter how much power he has. He’s part of something larger. If he forgets that, if he rules only for himself, he’ll lead everyone to ruin.

“Most people think kings are chosen to command, but they’re actually chosen to care. To govern wisely, you have to think of those who can’t read the stars for themselves. You carry their fears, their futures, on your shoulders. That’s what this sword means: you don’t wield it for yourself. You wield it for everyone who looks to you for guidance, and for survival.”

Because Rumi couldn’t really make anything of that, all she could think to say was, “Is that all really true?”

And Celine had just laughed softly. “Maybe,” she said, and it wouldn’t be until now, years and years later, that Rumi would recognize her cynicism for what it is and what it was, in that moment, “maybe not.”

Rumi had just shrugged that off back then, and then she dragged Celine to the food court next to the museum shop, where she then convinced Celine to buy her a stuffed tiger before they left. That took a while, because even dressed down, the clerks at the museum shop recognized Celine, and then she spent the next twenty minutes posing for pictures and doling out autographs.

Now, Rumi presses her fingers over one cluster of stars on the blade of her sword, the Sa-In Geom, each groove sharp and almost alive under her fingertips. She thinks of her conversation with Celine—this reality’s Celine—the night before, and how she’d said I suppose it’s not a coincidence this ended up in your hands, then. She finds herself wondering, again, if she’d read that right. It’s always impossible to tell, when it comes to Celine. Doesn’t help that she was being especially cryptic that time.

She’s pulled out of her thoughts by the sound of footsteps softly approaching, and when she looks up, she finds that it’s her mother walking towards her. A smile lights up Miyeong’s face as she says, playful, “You know, I thought I heard our little freeloader earlier.”

The cat sits up, ears perking up too, as Miyeong lowers herself onto the veranda beside Rumi. He stretches and then saunters languidly towards her, sniffing her outstretched hand and then bumping his head against it. She scratches the top of his head then pulls her hand back to her side.

Rumi just takes her mother in, for a moment. She’s dressed in a plain black shirt and jeans, the edges tucked into her boots laced all the way up. It’s not exactly tactical, but it’s definitely the attire of someone dressed to march headfirst into a swarm of demons if she has to—and she probably might have to, given how tonight’s going to be a big one for the Hunters and the demons alike. They all might have to.

Miyeong glances sideways at her, the corners of her mouth lifting. “What?”

“Nothing, it’s just…” Rumi clears her throat, looking away in embarrassment. Sheepishly, she answers, “I-It’s just… You seem… ready, I guess.”

Miyeong hums. “Ready, huh?” she murmurs, more to herself than to Rumi. When Rumi turns to look at her again, Miyeong is not looking at her anymore but at her sword instead, which Rumi didn’t even realize she was still holding. She stares at it for a second longer then looks back up at Rumi to say, “I saw you and Celine were engaged in quite the discussion over that”—she gestures to the sword, the Sa-In Geom—“last night.” Something about the way she says that gives Rumi the impression that she already knows what Rumi and Celine were talking about last night, and not just about the sword.

“Oh,” Rumi mumbles, then, “uh, yeah. She asked if she could see it, so—” Unsure of what else to say or even what else to do, she waves the sword away. She hugs her knees to her chest, chin resting against them, and just mumbles, “Yeah.”

It’s quiet again for a moment. It’s still in the courtyard except for the lazy, contented movements of the cat, who rolls around in the grass, belly up, like he’s beckoning for them to come pet him or play with him, but neither of them move. Eventually, Rumi says, “Mom?”

Miyeong turns her head towards her, ever so slightly, in silent acknowledgement.

Rumi braces herself—for what, exactly, she doesn’t know. “What did Celine mean, when she said… that, last night?”

Whatever happens tomorrow, don’t hesitate.

That’s what Celine had said. Don’t hesitate—but… why? What would even prompt Celine to say that? She’s been turning it over and over in her head, and she still hasn’t got a grasp on it. There’s already so much else she needs to worry about tonight, but she finds herself stuck on that. Two simple words. A warning, maybe, or… something else. Something that Rumi just can’t put a finger on. Don’t hesitate.

But it seems like she’s not going to find the answers to all of her questions here, from her mother. Miyeong’s gaze is steady and unflinching, but there’s that vague, faraway sadness behind her eyes again. She’s seated right beside her, but she’s never felt so distant, and Rumi’s spent an entire life without her in it.

She doesn’t know which is worse, right now.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles in the end, eyes downcast. “You don’t have to answer that, if you don’t want to. I’ve just been thinking about it a lot, that’s all.”

“I understand,” Miyeong replies, reaching over to brush Rumi’s hair back from her face. She lets her fingertips linger on Rumi’s skin, like she’s trying to keep what little she can of Rumi before she inevitably has to go back to her own reality, back to where she belongs. “Celine just… She just wants what’s best for you, the same as I do.”

Rather than comfort Rumi, all it does is confuse her more. Miyeong seems to pick up on this, because she adds somberly, “All she means—and all we mean—is that we want you to… stick to the plan. Okay, Rumi? No matter what complications arise, and no matter what Gwi-ma throws at us. We—” Her voice catches here, and Rumi catches on to that. “We promised we’d get you, Mira and Zoey back home, and we will, we’ll see that promise through to the end. Just promise me, Rumi—promise me that no matter what, you’ll stick to the plan. Okay?”

“I…” Rumi searches her mother’s face, perplexed. But her face gives nothing away, nothing but her concern for Rumi, and her urgency. Swallowing hard, Rumi nods and says, “I promise. I’ll stick to the plan. We all will, the three of us, a-and we’ll—we’ll keep our promise to you too. We’ll… we’ll fix all of this, sort it out. Together.”

Miyeong smiles at her, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Just focus on what you need to do first,” she says, drawing her hand back from Rumi’s face, “and leave the rest to us.”

Rumi feels the urge to ask her just what the hell she means by that, and to say that maybe it makes sense for Celine to be cryptic all the time, but now it isn’t just Celine being vague and evasive on her own—it’s Miyeong too. It’s the both of them acting like this, and that’s what’s starting to worry Rumi.

…But she doesn’t. She can’t get herself to, not with her mother looking at her like that. She may not understand her mother entirely right now, but she doesn’t want one of their last moments together to end in an argument or a misunderstanding, so—she just nods again.

Neither of them say anything more, after that. They sit together on the veranda, watching the cat play on the grass.

The clock ticks on. An hour passes, and then another, the five hours whittling down to mere minutes. They hadn’t spoken much while waiting, but now they stand together in a circle in the middle of the guest room, hands clasped. Rumi has the warmth of Zoey’s palm in one hand, and Mira’s grip tight and unyielding in the other. Their heads are bowed together, foreheads pressing. It’s just like all of those times before they would have to step out on stage. The calm before the storm, and then, finally—

“I just wanted to say… thank you,” Rumi says, squeezing both Mira and Zoey’s hands. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. If you—if you hadn’t thrown yourself in front of me, to protect me.” Even if they didn’t know they’d survive whatever was coming at them, and even if they’d just found out that their best friend, the girl they’ve loved all this time, had lied to them. “I know we’ve still got a lot left to do once we get back to our reality, but when all of this is over, I… I want to go to the bathhouse with you guys.”

Mira and Zoey pull back just to gawk at her.

“Really?” Zoey gasps.

“Yeah,” Rumi answers, laughing softly, “really.”

Even Mira is ecstatic. “Really-really?”

“Really-really.”

Mira and Zoey beam at each other, then at Rumi.

“A-and—and—dates, and stuff,” Rumi adds more shyly, trying not to squirm in embarrassment. “I’d like to do that too.”

It’s a wonder how Zoey hasn’t shot straight through the roof with how she’s buzzing with so much excitement that her body can barely contain it. Mira speaks for both of them when she says, “We’d really like that too,” so warmly and so earnestly that Rumi feels herself getting a little choked up.

“Just… thank you,” Rumi says, eyes prickling. “I don’t know if I could ever say it enough.”

“We’d do it all over again for you, Rumi,” Mira says, steadfast.

Zoey nods. “We’ll follow you anywhere.”

Rumi’s about to throw herself at them when a knock on the door—firm, deliberate—brings her back down to reality. The three of them exchange a sobering glance.

Rumi swallows hard then calls out, “Coming,” to either Miyeong or Celine—or maybe it’s both of them—standing at the other side of the closed door. It’s quiet again for a second, then they hear footsteps fading down the hallway.

She turns back to Mira and Zoey. Says, “So…”

“Yeah,” Mira murmurs.

Rumi draws in a breath, steadying herself, then looks between Mira and Zoey. For a moment none of them move, none of them speak—then it happens almost all at once. Mira leans in, Zoey too, and Rumi meets them halfway. Their mouths find each other in turn, clumsy and urgent, one kiss bleeding into the next, all of them pressed close, foreheads and noses bumping. It’s messy, and a little confusing—Rumi’s long lost track of whose mouth is on hers—but Rumi wouldn’t have it any other way. When they finally break apart, they’re laughing a little, breathless, like maybe we should have thought of that a little bit better, then Zoey throws her arms around both of them, and they all squeeze in tight, holding onto each other as hard as they can.

“It’ll be okay,” Rumi whispers fiercely, not sure if she’s saying it for their benefit or for her own.

“It’ll be okay,” Mira echoes, her voice like steel.

Zoey nods against their shoulders, her voice muffled but certain. “We’ll make it. Together.”

The three of them linger a moment longer, holding each other, before finally pulling away from each other. No one says it, but they know they have to move. They slip out of the guest room, quiet in the hall, and make their way to the front of the house.

Miyeong and Celine are outside already, waiting for them—but they’re in a world of their own, Celine’s head bowed slightly, her forehead leaning against Miyeong’s, with Miyeong’s hand cupping the back of her neck. Holding her close. Holding her steady. Celine’s hands are firm on Miyeong’s hips too.

For a second, Rumi almost feels like she’s intruding on something private, something fragile and almost sacred, but she can’t get herself to look away. So she just looks at them, watches them for what may be the last time she’ll ever get to.

Her mother and Celine, as they could have been. The family she’s always wanted.

Miyeong is the first to pull away, but it’s only to take Celine’s face in her hands and kiss her—once on the lips, and then the tip of her nose, and finally between her brows. Celine’s hands are on her wrists, like she’s afraid to let go, but Miyeong just smiles at her, soft and sad, like she’s been the entire time leading up to this moment, and then she finally turns to Rumi, Mira, and Zoey.

“Ready?” she asks them.

Rumi looks at Celine, at the unreadable expression on her face, and then back at her mother. Even if she isn’t entirely sure that she is, she nods all the same.

“Alright,” Miyeong says, slipping her hand into Celine’s, squeezing. Celine turns to her, expression softening again, the way it only ever does for her. The way she only ever does, for her. “Let’s go.”

The full moon hangs high in the sky. It’s so bright it almost burns, like the sun would—too alive to be anything but magic. That’s the only way Rumi can describe everything else around them too: the air around them is charged and restless, electric, and the Honmoon pulses faintly, a slow and uneven rhythm, but steady enough to echo like a heartbeat—all of it is proof that, somehow, this world is still alive, even if only barely. The talismans they’d set up along the perimeter of the shinmok glow with the overflow, their paper edges fluttering in a wind that isn’t there, and each thrum of the Honmoon ripples outwards and into the shinmok as if the moon itself is forcing air back into its lungs, resuscitating the tree along with all of the magic that flows through it.

Rumi’s given plenty of performances in her life, on weekly music shows and for sold-out stadiums across the world. She lives to perform, but she’s never felt so nervous like she does now, for this performance. It’s the most important performance of all, literally do or die. Or, at least, it’s do or get stuck in an alternate reality with maybe no hope of ever making it back to their own. Back to the familiar, terrible weight of home. There’s so much on the line, and there’s no room for error, no room to fuck up, not anymore, and Rumi knew it was a big deal, obviously, but now that they’re here, standing in front of the shinmok, in front of what may or may not be her ticket back home—god, Rumi thinks she might actually throw up.

She looks up when Mira takes her hand into hers and squeezes, grounding her again when it started to feel like she was floating away, losing herself slowly but surely to all of the dread bubbling up inside her. “Hey,” she says softly.

Rumi smiles at her, and then at Zoey, who takes her other hand.

That’s when Celine clears her throat.

They all turn to her, expecting her to be steady as always, the calm center of all this chaos. And she is, cool as ever, her presence grounding as it always is, but Rumi catches a flicker of something in her eyes. Not fear, exactly, and not hesitation—she knows what that looks like on Celine, and they were standing right here too, that time—but something heavier. Sadder. Something complicated.

Vulnerable, just like she was earlier with Miyeong.

But then Celine notices the way Rumi is watching her, and whatever it was that Rumi saw in her eyes is quickly smoothed over, vanished and shuttered away as her mask of familiar and unshakeable calm slips neatly back into place.

Her gaze passes over the three of them, and then back, lingering on Rumi’s face. “So,” she breathes out like a sigh, resigned, “this is it.”

Rumi, Mira and Zoey exchange glances.

“Yeah,” Rumi murmurs in the end, for the three of them. She swallows around the tightness in her throat. “I guess it is.”

This time, it’s Celine and Miyeong who turn to look at each other. “I’ll admit,” Celine goes on to say, “this was the last thing I would have ever expected to happen. Alternate realties, or alternate worlds, other versions of ourselves… destiny… I never believed in any of it. I always thought this is it—this is all there is to it. This life, this world. That’s it. It might sound pessimistic or cynical to you, but I found comfort in it, in my own way. And yet… here we are.

“We met under strange and, honestly, what should have been impossible circumstances, and I wasn’t exactly very welcoming, I know that.” And here, Celine smiles wryly. “But now… I’m glad that what’s happened’s happened, the same way that, despite everything… I’m glad we met. Whatever happens next, I’m just glad for that.”

She turns to Miyeong, as if imploring her to get her goodbyes out the way too.

Miyeong meets Celine’s eyes for a beat, then turns back to the others with that warmth, that brightness, she wears so well. “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” she says, reaching for Celine’s hand. “Whatever else, I’m glad too.” She’s smiling at the three of them as she says it, but it feels like she’s speaking to Rumi specifically when she says, “Across realities, across time—I’m glad we found each other.”

Rumi feels her throat tighten at that, her mother’s words catching somewhere deep inside her, where she can’t dislodge them. She wants to say something back—Mom, or I love you, or I wish we didn’t have to leave, I wish I could stay here with you, forever, and we can be a family like I’ve always dreamed, anything at all—but she can’t get herself to actually speak. Her chest aches with it.

Beside her, Mira squeezes her hand again, but even she looks glassy-eyed. Zoey, though—as emotional as she is too, Zoey being Zoey, whips out a quip of, “Is it too early for hugs, or…?”, grinning crookedly, and that manages to make everyone laugh softly. The tension in Rumi’s chest eases just enough to let her breathe again, and for a moment, she smiles too.

“Let’s save those for later,” Celine says, almost unusually gentle. She turns to Miyeong for a second, talking to her with her eyes even if Rumi’s observed them enough now to make sense of what they’re saying but not really saying to each other, and this time, she knows it’s I love you, then she squeezes Miyeong’s hand and lets go. She looks up at the sky, after, at the moon swollen with this otherworldly glow—energy. “We’ve got work to do.”

They take their places around the shinmok, spaced at equal distances from one another. Rumi stands in the middle, with Zoey and Mira to her right and Celine and Miyeong to her left. The stakes they’d driven into the ground stand further out, talismans strung to them and stirring faintly in the still air, enclosing all of it—and all of them—in a wall of magic meant to buy them time, once the demons arrive.

Rumi is finding it hard to just stand still. She glances toward Mira, then Zoey—both of them tense, but Mira manages a small, steady smile, and Zoey gives her two thumbs up as if to say, we’ve got this. She smiles back at the both of them, then turns to look the other way, at Celine and Miyeong next. Neither of them spare her a glance, though; their eyes stay fixed straight ahead, locked on the shinmok’s massive silhouette, focused. Alert. It makes Rumi stand up straighter and square her shoulders too, redirecting all of her attention back to the shinmok.

“On my count,” Celine announces, voice strong and clear. “One.”

Rumi squeezes her eyes shut and breathes in…

The calm before the storm, and then, finally—

“Two.”

…and out.

“Three.”

—release.

Showtime.

They begin to sing, five voices coming together as one. The words are unfamiliar and almost strange at first in Rumi’s mouth, the way it’s always a little like learning how to walk again when they have to perform a new song for the first time, or like when they’re in the early stages of recording a new song. When the song and its lyrics, its rhythm, the very essence of it, aren’t like a second skin yet. Aren’t part of them yet. But each verse builds on the last, steady and unbroken, and it isn’t long before the song, the incantation, becomes familiar to Rumi, like she’s tapping into something buried deep inside her, down to the core of her. Something that’s just been waiting for this very moment to awaken. It’s like she can feel all of the Hunters who came before her manifesting their will through her, through this song, and that will, that power, grows stronger and stronger with every second, the longer and the harder they sing, putting everything they’ve got into the sealing rite, until Rumi can feel the air inside the circle they’ve formed around the shinmok grow dense and heavy with it.

Rumi feels it before she actually sees it: the Honmoon responds to their voices, to their will amplified by the full moon. A ripple of light sweeps outwards from their circle, faint at first, and then sharper, stronger, as it travels through the Honmoon. Another follows, and then another. The waves come steady, one after the other, in a way that reminds Rumi of compressions. Push, release; push, release. It’s slow-going, but the Honmoon begins to come alive with it, pulsing as though taking in air again for the first time in years, building strength with every breath and with every verse.

She doesn’t think she’s ever felt so exhausted in her entire life, though. Her throat feels scraped raw, even if she hasn’t even been singing long—or hard—enough for it to make sense. Her chest heaves with every breath, lungs burning like she’d just ran a marathon or something equally as masochistic, and she’s soaked in sweat. Technically, she isn’t doing much apart from just standing there and singing, so theoretically it should be the least physically demanding performance she’s ever done, but her entire body feels wrung out and sore as all hell already anyway. All this, just from how hard she has to concentrate, channeling all that she has and all that she is into this ritual, just like Celine told them they’d need to do if they want to make this work. Rumi is exhausted, and she wants to just take a break, sit down, drink some water—god, she could use some water right now—but she can’t. There’s no second, third, or fourth take on this. She can’t take five and then just pick up where she left off. No, it’s all or nothing, and it’s now or never, so she forces herself to just weather it, to push through the discomfort, and just hold on for as long as she has to, until the Honmoon—and, by extension, the magic of this reality—stabilizes enough for them to find their way back home.

And it is. It’s stabilizing, it’s working, if the way with every pulse through the Honmoon she feels herself pulled thinner, as though the ritual is hollowing her out to feed the Honmoon, is anything to go by. It’s not easy, she never expected it to be, but what matters is that it’s working, and so, she sings.

It isn’t long before their pesky little friends make their grand entrance.

Rumi can feel them pressing in all around them, like someone’s pressing a finger into an open wound. She can feel the pressure of their presence as they try to break through the Honmoon, stronger than it’s been in so long—and she can feel it too, that there's a lot of them surrounding the five of them. She can tell from the way every ripple they send out meets resistance, each wave slowed, dragging against what feels like hundreds of demons, big and small, all of them united in their effort to break through the Honmoon.

A bead of sweat slips down her forehead. The back of her shirt is plastered to her skin, soaked through. Her lungs burn with every breath, her throat raw, but she doesn’t let her voice falter. She can’t. None of them can. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Mira’s entire body trembling with effort, Zoey’s face red and twisted in determination, Celine and Miyeong locked in concentration. The pressure mounts, every pulse harder to force out than the last, with something—a whole lot of somethings—pushing back against them, but still they sing.

Still, it’s a lot that’s being asked from her, to trust that their voices and the talismans they’d placed around the perimeters of the shinmok and the graveyard at large will be enough to hold the demons back. Rumi knows she can’t turn around, even for just a second, to check exactly how many of them there actually are, but she’s really tempted to. It’s different, seeing just what you have to go up against compared to vaguely feeling what you’re up against. Their numbers, their strength—it’s honestly more overwhelming like this, with nothing but her senses to go off of. She’s exhausted besides that, and she doesn’t know just how much longer she can keep this up, or how much longer her voice can still keep going before it eventually gives out too.

She feels her focus slipping with her fatigue slowly but surely catching up to her, but she tries to rein it back in, keep herself on track, emptying her mind of anything but the words she has to repeat over and over, the same verses bleeding into each other as they bring the ritual closer and closer to completion—and then, that’s when it happens. That’s when it hits, like a crack of thunder, making Rumi, and even Mira and Zoey, jolt in surprise and knocking them out of their almost trance-like concentration. Rumi whips around, heart in her throat, and discovers the source of the disruption: a demon far larger than the others, a giant, for all intents and purposes, smashes its equally massive club down on the Honmoon again, and again, and again. The barrier and the earth itself quake with every heavy strike, and red flares across the surface of the Honmoon, like veins splitting under the strain.

To her left, Mira says, “Holy shit,” a sentiment Rumi can sympathize with because holy shit, indeed.

They’re everywhere. Demons piled up against the Honmoon like a living tide, an endless sea of bodies clawing and shrieking, their sheer number making the whole barrier of the Honmoon glow and tremble with the force of it. Big ones, small ones, all of them pressing at once, their distorted faces smeared across the surface of the Honmoon as though trying to claw their way through a sheet of glass. The air is alive with their roars, guttural and hungry, vibrating in Rumi’s bones until she feels sick with it.

She spots more of them too. More of the giants, rising above the swarm, their clubs as long as trees. Now that they’ve discovered hammering at the Honmoon seems to be effective, the rest are quick to follow: smashing down, over and over, the rhythm sickeningly steady. Every strike rattles her chest like her ribs are being shaken loose, and every blow sends another angry flare of red streaking through the Honmoon, veins spiderwebbing out with each impact. The smaller demons pry at weak spots in turn, squeezing their claws and snouts into any place the barrier thins. The Honmoon groans against it, and Rumi feels her throat close with panic as the Honmoon—the entire world itself—falters now that the ritual has come to an abrupt halt, buckling under the weight of the demons trying to push their way through.

Just when Rumi feels herself getting pulled under by her rising panic, Celine’s voice cuts through all of the noise: “Rumi,” she snaps, “Focus.”

Rumi, Mira and Zoey whip their heads towards her in baffled unison. Then, they turn to look at each other, like, is she serious? Just keep singing, when they’ve got literal giants out there with clubs the size of the fucking shinmok, and they’re knocking on their figurative door, ready to maul their faces off?

Rumi’s throat works around a protest, but then she catches the look Miyeong throws her way and suddenly any fight she had in her disappears. Stick to the plan. She’d promised her mother that. Her mother made her promise she would, and she’s looking at her now, brows knit, eyes almost pleading, like she’s telling her remember what you promised, please. She can’t put up a fight, not with her mother looking at her like that.

She turns back to Celine and mumbles, “Sorry, it’s just…”

“I know,” Celine says, a little more sympathetic now, “but you have to—we have to—trust in the ritual. If we stop now, even for a second, all of this comes crashing down, and then it won’t matter how strong we are or how many demons we cut down. We need to keep going, no matter what.”

Rumi knows what Celine is really saying is, I need you to trust us—to trust me, and that’s a complicated thing to ask of Rumi, given how trusting the Celine in her reality is in a roundabout sort of way how she wound up here in this reality with this Celine… but Celine is right. They can’t take all of the demons head-on, and even if they could, it would only take precious time away from the ritual, and they’ve only got a small window as is to get this right. Every second counts.

“Okay,” Rumi breathes out, shaky, then she turns to Mira and Zoey. Nods at them, and they nod back. Affirmation that they’re in this together, and they’re in this with her, most of all.

They start to sing again, stumbling through the first few notes and verses as they try to find their rhythm again. Rumi’s chest rattles with every impact of the demons trying to claw, smash, and rip their way through the weakening Honmoon, but she squeezes her eyes shut and forces herself to just focus on the task at hand. To trust the ritual, and the women, the Hunters, next to her—to trust herself, that she can and will get this right. That she will fix everything with this song and with her voice.

At first, it almost feels like they’ve found their footing again. The five of them slip back into rhythm, voices weaving together, steadier this time, and Rumi feels the full moon’s light swell inside her chest, amplifying every note until it thrums through her bones. The air vibrates with their power, ripples tearing outward through the Honmoon faster, brighter, sharper than before. For a moment, she swears she can feel it all locking into place, the chaos around them shrinking to the edges of her focus.

It feels like progress. It feels like hope.

But then, underneath the surface, Rumi can sense it. Somewhere deep in her bones, in her gut, she can sense it.

Something is off.

She doesn’t know exactly how she can tell that something is off, or maybe even that something is wrong, but she just—knows. She just knows that there’s something that’s just not adding up. The Honmoon might be stabilizing, but it doesn’t quite feel like the ritual is actually working as it was intended to. Every ripple of magic, of their power, that they send through the Honmoon meets resistance, every push outward comes back dragged and sluggish, as though weighed down by the sheer mass of demons pressing from the other side. She can hear their voices, strong and unbroken, and yet she feels the strain, deep in her bones, in the marrow of her being. It’s like patchwork straining to hold the fabric of the Honmoon together instead of truly mending it.

Swallowing down the dread rising up fast in the back of her throat, Rumi peels her eyes open again. She knows she probably shouldn’t, that even a split second of her losing her concentration could put them back at square one again, but she has to see. She has to see for herself—has to know why—it just doesn’t feel right.

And what she sees makes her stomach twist tighter.

The Honmoon looks ragged, patchy, its threads twitching like frayed wires flickering between brilliant blue and an ugly, jagged red. Where the demons press hardest, whole sections of it flare crimson, spreading out like bruises and pulsing—aching—like them too with every push from the demons. And it seems like the more they push into it, the harder they try to push back against the demons trying to break through, the worse the Honmoon looks. Bright bursts of power bleed into the structure like too much current overloading a circuit, until the threads warp and distort, bending under the strain. It’s almost like the boost from the full moon is working a little too well, to the point that the magic is becoming unwieldy even with five of them pouring all of their utmost focus and effort into wielding it, and there’s something about that that makes Rumi think it’s less to do with how difficult the sealing rite actually is and more to do with how there’s just something wrong.

She turns to Mira and Zoey to see if they see it too, and sure enough—

They’re still singing, but their eyes flicker to the Honmoon then to Rumi, both of their faces twisted in confusion. Where they had full faith in the words coming out of their mouth mere minutes ago, now it’s like even they’re not sure if they’re doing this right. They both look as unnerved as Rumi is feeling right now. The unspoken WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON hangs between them, and they’re looking at Rumi like they expect her to have the answer.

But Rumi doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. But she knows someone, two of them, even, who might.

So she turns to Celine and Miyeong, expecting them to be steady as they always are, steady as rocks, reliable, but then she catches the look on both their faces. They’re both still singing too, but if Mira and Zoey had looked back at her with confusion, mirroring her own, what Rumi finds on Celine and Miyeong’s faces is fear. Not uncertainty, but fear that’s bordering on panic—and that is a problem, obviously. It’s a problem, a huge one, because if the two people they thought they could count on to keep their shit together, to keep this ritual and all of them together, to take charge and lead them to victory or something—the two people who asked her to not hesitate and to stick to the plan, to put all of her trust in them—are faltering, if even they look this shaken, then that’s all the confirmation Rumi needs that something is so very, very wrong.

“Celine,” Rumi says, trying hard not to let her own fear now bleed into her voice. It’s no use, of course. She couldn’t hide it if she tried—and it isn’t just the Honmoon, or whatever the hell is wrong right now that’s scaring her, it’s them, her mother and Celine, whatever it is that’s got them like this. Whatever it is they’ve been trying to hide from her. “Celine, what’s going on? Why isn’t it—”

Celine turns to her at the sound of her name, and for half a second there’s no mistaking it—the wide eyes, the sharp intake of breath. Panic, raw and unguarded. But then, just as quick, she schools her face back into something steadier, jaw tightening, brows smoothing, her mask of unwavering composure snapping back into place. But that’s no use either, of course: Rumi’s already seen the cracks in the mask. She’s already seen too much.

“Celine,” she says more urgently this time. “Seriously. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Celine insists too sharply. She realizes this too a second later, if the way her eyes flicker to Miyeong briefly is any indication, and the next time she speaks, she’s smoothed the edge out of her voice—mostly. “We knew it wouldn’t be easy, that it wouldn’t go smoothly, this is just—it’s just a hiccup. It’s nothing to worry about. We just have to keep at it.”

“Keep at it?” Mira echoes back at her, incredulous. She waves her arms at the Honmoon, at everything going on around them, as if to say FUCKING LOOK. “I don’t know if this is what you would call a hiccup.”

Zoey fidgets nervously. “I-Is it supposed to go like this?”

But there’s no straight answer to that, is there? They’re only the second set of Hunters ever who’ve had to get this ritual right. All they know from the records that the first Hunters left behind is that it was difficult, and it cost them everything to put the Honmoon up. Even then, Rumi thinks that whatever is happening now isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Whatever is happening now is something that not even the first Hunters could have accounted for.

Whatever is happening now is a symptom of something much, much worse.

“We don’t have time for this,” Celine snaps at them, almost frantic now. Miyeong uproots herself from where she’d been standing this entire time to come stand beside Celine instead, placing a hand along Celine’s arm like she means to soothe her, or to calm her down. But Celine pays no mind to her, not right now, and just barrels on to say, more insistent now, almost angry, “We can’t just keep standing here arguing like this when we’re almost there, we almost have it—”

“Do we, though?” Rumi counters, the words coming out of her mouth before she can think better about speaking.

Celine’s gaze turns sharp. “What?”

Rumi feels Mira and Zoey come up behind her too, pressing in closer to her. Three versus two, just like the first night they arrived. Despite that, she agrees that now is really not the time for them to be arguing, it’s just—she can’t let this go, whatever it is. She just can’t.

So, steeling herself, Rumi says, with the demons still pressing in all around them, surrounding them from all sides, “Come on, Celine. We can feel it. You can feel it. There’s—there’s something off about this. You said this should be enough to seal the Honmoon again here, but—” She mimics what Mira had done earlier, only with more exasperation. “It’s clearly not working. Why isn’t it working?”

“Rumi,” Miyeong says, softer than Celine but just as firm, but Celine pushes forward, shrugging Miyeong’s hand off of her arm, and says, “Enough. We already talked about this. We knew this would be hard, the same way we knew the demons would be making the most of the full moon, just like we are now. That doesn’t mean it isn’t working. Now, all three of you, get back into your positions and stick to the plan—”

Somehow, that’s what pushes Rumi over the edge. It’s having Celine repeat those very words her mother spoke to her hours ago that fills Rumi with all of this sudden, incomprehensible rage—not even because she’s angry at them specifically, but because she’s afraid, and it’s easier to lash out than it is to admit that she is.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Rumi demands, planting herself firmly and stubbornly in front of Celine, leaving Celine nowhere to run or hide, not anymore. Her hands are balled into fists at her side and they’re shaking, trembling with everything she’s trying so hard to hold back. “You and Mom, you’ve both been acting weird ever since I told you Poppy died the day I would have been born. A-and you keep saying all this vague and cryptic shit and expect me to just do as you tell me—to not hesitate, to just stick to the plan—and I-I want to, I want to trust you, I do, but—”

“Rumi,” Celine says, not so angry herself anymore now that Rumi is, “please, listen to me—”

“Why?” Rumi presses, pushing forward, and Celine takes a small step back, almost bumping into Miyeong. When Celine doesn’t say anything, only presses her lips shut, Rumi turns to her mother instead and asks again, softer this time, aching, “Why? Why do you keep looking at me like that, and why do you keep talking like—like—it’s over already?”

“R-Rumi,” Zoey says, her hand low on Rumi’s back, “hey, easy now…”

“Your patterns,” Mira murmurs.

It takes Rumi a heartbeat to realize what they mean. Her skin is thrumming, hot, the patterns along her arms and throat sparking to life with a glow she can see reflected back in Celine’s eyes. They’re trembling with light, pulsing with every ragged breath she drags in. She clamps her arms around herself like she can smother it down, but the harder she fights to hold it back, the more it burns through, spilling out of her veins in erratic flashes. The same terrible pressure she remembers from before, when she’d let her emotions get the better of her, control her, and sent those red shockwaves through the Honmoon, is mounting again, coiling in her gut, begging to be released.

Even Celine seems to forget that they’re kind of fighting right now and starts looking concerned instead. It’s a little overwhelming, having Celine look at her like that, like if she just closed her eyes, she’d be back in her reality, standing in front of this very tree with her Celine. Older, scared—of Rumi, of the patterns all over Rumi’s body, her face, and of all the ways she’d failed to fix Rumi, like she always promised her they’d be able to do.

In the end, it’s Miyeong who reaches for Rumi. She doesn’t grab or restrain her, just eases closer, hands finding Rumi’s arms, steady and warm even through the heat rolling off her skin. Rumi wants to fight it, to shrug her off, to hold on to her anger because it feels safer than the fear clawing at her throat—but she can’t. Not with her mother. The moment Miyeong’s touch settles over her, something in Rumi buckles, and she leans into it despite herself, trembling and burning and trying so hard not to break.

“Mom,” she begs, her chest and throat thick with everything she’s trying so, so hard to hold back, “just—just tell me, please.”

Miyeong looks conflicted. She looks like she wants to actually tell Rumi already, but for whatever reason, she just can’t get herself to. She’s still holding herself back.

“Rumi,” Celine cuts in, voice careful but firm, “please, we need to keep going. We need to continue the ritual.”

But Rumi doesn’t look at her. She just looks Miyeong in the eye, voice breaking just a little when she presses, “Mom, please. Tell me. Whatever it is you’re keeping from me, I need to know. Don’t—don’t do this, please, not—not you.”

Miyeong falters at that. “Rumi,” she says softly, gutted, “I…”

“Please,” Rumi pleads again.

“We don’t have time for this,” Celine interjects again, sharper this time, the edge of panic bleeding through. “We’re almost there, we can’t stop now—”

“Please,” Rumi pushes, ignoring Celine, ignoring everything else around her.

“Rumi—”

“TELL ME.”

Her voice rips through the air and through the Honmoon itself, sending blood-red ripples tearing out in every direction. The ground itself trembles with it. The whole barrier shudders, veins of crimson spiderwebbing across its surface, the demons outside shrieking as if they can smell blood in the cracks.

“O-Okay,” Zoey says, wedging herself between Rumi and Miyeong and Celine now, with Mira grasping Rumi’s arm like that’s going to be enough to hold her back from whatever it is they’re afraid she might do. “Okay, everyone, let’s calm down.”

But Zoey’s voice is drowned out by a shudder rolling through the Honmoon. The ground lurches beneath their feet, the threads overhead spiderwebbing in violent red streaks, pulsing like veins about to burst. From outside comes the heavy BOOM of a giant’s club slamming into the barrier again, harder this time, the sound echoing like thunder.

“Rumi,” Miyeong starts, hand twitching at her side like she wants to reach for Rumi again, but Celine repeats, “We don’t have time for this,” frustrated and impatient this time, eyes flickering towards the swarms of demons pressing in on them, the Honmoon just barely holding them back anymore now that they’re busy doing this instead of the ritual, “Listen, Rumi, we’re close, we’re close to getting you home just like we promised you, so there isn’t any time for us to keep bickering like this.”

Rumi only bristles at that. “No,” she spits out at Celine, her patterns flaring again, “I-I won’t just—I won’t, I can’t, not this—whatever this is—”

“Rumi,” Celine says, exasperated and desperate, and then comes another earth-shaking BOOM.

Through the flickering net of light, the demons swarm thicker than ever, their claws raking, their snarls vibrating through the ground. The cracks Rumi’s voice had left behind glow jagged and raw, oozing crimson with every blow from outside. Smaller demons are already pressing their snouts against the weak spots, drool sizzling against the threads like acid, their eyes gleaming hungrily.

Mira says, “Guys—,” but Rumi is too wound up to pay her any attention.

“Why won’t you tell me?” Rumi demands, looking from Celine to her mother and then back. “Why can’t you tell me?”

BOOM. Another strike. The Honmoon trembles, the shockwave rattling through their bones. A crack zigzags across the surface like lightning, glowing bright and red.

“Guys,” Zoey chimes in now, panicked, “please, just—just calm down, the demons, they’re—”

BOOM.

“They’re breaking through!” Mira shouts, voice sharp with something close to desperation now. “If you keep this up—if you keep fighting like this—”

Still, Rumi won’t listen. Can’t back down.

“Why?” she demands again, voice breaking and distorting around the word, sending another ripple of red out through the Honmoon.

BOOM.

“We can still fix this,” Celine says, glancing at the demons clawing their way through the rapidly unraveling Honmoon again. “We can still stabilize the Honmoon, still hold them back, if we just—” But then Miyeong’s hand closes on her shoulder, and she freezes. Startles at the touch.

BOOM.

Celine glances back at Miyeong, and Miyeong shakes her head.

BOOM.

“No,” Miyeong says, and her voice is quieter than Celine’s but cuts sharper for it. She looks at Rumi, only at Rumi, her eyes wet with something she can’t hide anymore. “I don’t think we can keep it from her anymore.”

“Miyeong,” Celine shakes her head once, almost violently, but Miyeong doesn’t let go.

BOOM—and Mira and Zoey exchange panicked glances, their weapons drawn now. Like they know there’s no use in trying to get the other three to just put whatever this is aside long enough for them to continue with what they were doing. To just stick to the fucking plan like they were fucking told to.

Rumi’s eyes bounce back and forth between her mother and Celine. She’s blinking rapidly to keep back tears. Honestly, it doesn’t even make sense why she feels like crying when neither her mother nor Celine have even said anything yet.

“Miyeong,” Celine says again, softer now, face pinched in pain, almost. Like she knows that Miyeong has made up her mind, but she can’t help but try to get her to change her mind anyway. She has to—but then Miyeong just gives her that look again, tired and sad, and Rumi watches as all of the fight leaves Celine’s body. Shoulders slumping, Celine murmurs, “Okay.”

For a moment, it feels like the whole world is holding its breath. Even the Honmoon, trembling and shuddering under the weight of the demons, seems to go quieter, its frantic pulses stretching into a strange, suspended rhythm. Rumi can hear her own blood rushing in her ears, too loud, too sharp, and she thinks if someone doesn’t speak right now she might actually explode or something.

Miyeong’s eyes are on Rumi, steady and unbearably sad. And then, finally, she says very slowly, deliberately, “Poppy died the day you should have been born.”

Rumi frowns, somehow even more confused now than before she started demanding answers from them. Because this—it doesn’t feel like an answer. It isn’t new information. Rumi knows this already. She was the one who pointed it out. She already pieced it together: perfect, fucked-up, cosmic balance.

But Miyeong is looking at her now like what she just said is supposed to mean… something. Like it’s supposed to be something else, something more than just the universe balancing out its scales: a life over there in Rumi’s world, and a death here; a life spared here, and so a life taken in its place.

“Rumi,” Miyeong says, still slow, like she’s waiting for Rumi to catch up—like she wants so badly for Rumi to just put it together, to just see, just so she doesn’t have to say it herself. “Do you understand?”

Rumi wants to shout, OF COURSE I FUCKING DON’T, because she doesn’t, she really fucking doesn’t, but then her mind starts circling around that again—a life over there, a death over here; a life spared, a life taken in its place—like she knows intuitively, instinctively, that that’s where she needs to start looking for the key to what Miyeong is really trying to say, and then, somehow, her thoughts lead her back to that trip to the National Museum, where she first saw the Sa-In Geom years before she summoned it herself from the Honmoon.

They’re a reminder that the king has to be able to read the sky, Celine had said. Reading the sky means seeing the patterns.

Rumi swallows hard, pulse hammering. The date on Poppy’s gravestone, this entire reality coming apart at the seams, her mother being alive here—has she been reading the signs wrong, all this time?

It’s almost too fitting that the person who finally gives Rumi the answer she’s been looking for is none other than Celine herself.

For a moment, everything feels suspended mid-air, frozen… and then finally, the world lets out the breath it’s been holding.

“This world never stood a chance, Rumi,” she says, voice low, “not without you in it.”

For a second, Rumi can’t breathe. It’s like Celine just ripped the floor out from under her, like her stomach is falling and her chest is caving in all at once. The words sink into her bones, cold and heavy, impossible. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out at first, just a rasp, her throat too tight. Then, finally, barely audible:

“What?”

The world cracks open around them, the Honmoon splitting wide with a sound like glass shattering under a hammer. Scarlet light floods the seams, and the shrieks of demons pour in through the breach, hungry and triumphant.

Even with the demons rushing in around them, Rumi finds it impossible to move at first, the impossible weight of Celine’s words still crushing down on her chest, but then Miyeong looses an arrow of light into the demons barreling towards them, exploding on impact and knocking the demons back, and suddenly Rumi finds herself pulled into all of the action too. She holds her hand out and summons her sword at the same time that Celine summons hers, their eyes still locked on each other for another heartbeat, tense, taut, before they join Mira and Zoey in charging into battle.

Rumi drives her blade through a demon’s chest, twists, and feels Zoey slide in to cover her back as Mira cuts down another at her side. Celine carves a path clean through the horde with her twin swords, and Miyeong provides the support fire as she always does, letting her arrows rain down on the demons that their blades can’t reach or fend off. Despite everything, they move as one, covering each other’s backs—but their earlier conversation is anything but forgotten.

“What do you mean,” Rumi heaves as she drives her sword into another demon then kicks it off her blade, whirling around to strike down another one, with Mira driving her gok-do into a much bigger, much heavier demon’s gut in her periphery, “What do you mean”—another demon struck down, and another one leaping at her in its place—“this world never stood a chance?”

“Rumi,” Celine says, almost like a warning, like she’s going to tell her again that we don’t have time for this, but Rumi insists, “You can’t just say that and expect me to not want to know what the hell you mean by it! You—” Rumi hacks down another demon, “You said you wouldn’t keep things from me anymore—you wouldn’t lie to me anymore—you said—”

An arrow zips past her head, barely grazing the tip of her ear, knocking back the demon lunging towards Rumi and Celine and then exploding in a violent burst of magic and light. Rumi looks over her shoulder at Miyeong, who lowers her bow ever so slightly, and looks between Celine and Rumi before her eyes land squarely on Celine again. If it’s been fascinating before, under different circumstances, it’s infuriating now watching them engage in one of their nonverbal, pseudo-telepathic exchanges again, a conversation that’s all eyes and has no room for Rumi.

Eventually, Celine turns back to Rumi, face crumpled in frustration and something else—grief or sadness, maybe; whatever it is, it’s that same thing she’s been carrying around these past two days—when she says, “It’s true that Poppy died the same day you were born in your reality, but it’s—” She tilts her body, stepping aside just enough to avoid getting grazed by the arrow Miyeong fires at one of the giants stomping after Mira and Zoey, who weave between tree-trunk-sized legs. It groans and stumbles backwards, the ground shaking under its heavy feet. But Celine has her eyes on Rumi the entire time, like none of that is happening around them. “It’s not just a coincidence, Rumi. I-I thought it was at first, that maybe it didn’t really mean anything that Miyeong had you in another reality, and that here, in ours, you just don’t exist at all. It’s just—it’s balance, an equation where one variable is substituted for another, all in the name of balance. But then you told us Poppy died the day you should have been born… It stopped being coincidence then and started meaning something.”

Rumi slashes through another demon, her body moving on instinct while her mind claws at Celine’s words. Her chest heaves, the heat of her patterns burning through her skin. “S-so you’re saying—what?” she asks, turning to Celine again, gripping her sword with both hands and thrusting it backwards into the demon that tries to lunge at her from behind. “That this world is falling apart because I don’t exist in it?”

Celine doesn’t answer right away, her blades flashing, cutting down anything that gets close. But her silence is answer enough, and it rattles Rumi more than any words could.

“Rumi!” Zoey calls, flinging her shin-kal at a demon leaping at her, and Mira shouts, “We could use a little help here!,” grunting as she drives her gok-do through another demon and swings the gok-do, the demon still attached to it and everything, around, knocking back several more demons. Rumi rushes to their side, Celine and Miyeong pressing close behind.

The giants slam and swing their clubs down at the Hunters, each strike shaking the earth beneath their feet. Smaller more agile demons dart between the giants’ legs, springing at the Hunters in snarling waves, claws and teeth flashing. It’s a blur of bodies, demons and Hunters alike, Mira’s gok-do carving out wide to catch two demons at once as Zoey shoves Rumi out of the path of a giant’s descending foot, all while Miyeong aims straight for the eyes of one of the demons, bull’s eye, and it topples backwards, clutching at its face in agony. It comes crashing with a loud, earth-shaking and bone-rattling THUD. They all lose their footing for a second with how the ground just quakes under the weight of the fallen giant.

Rumi’s sword feels heavier in her hands with every swing, her head swimming, her chest tight. All her life she’s believed she was a mistake, and now—now they’re telling her the opposite? That this entire world is breaking because she isn’t here? Her grip slips on the hilt for half a second before she clenches tighter, slashing upward into a demon’s throat, the heat of her patterns searing through her arms like fire.

That should come as comfort—as relief—to Rumi, but…

“You knew?” Rumi says, and Celine and Miyeong freeze, guilty. “All this time—you knew?”

Mira and Zoey freeze too, only for a second, crowding closer to Rumi like that’ll be enough to keep her from falling apart. But then the demons keep coming—there’s no end to them, there’s never an end to them—and they have no choice but to keep fighting, eyes flicking back to Rumi every now and then.

“You knew,” Rumi says again, voice cracking around the edges, “that’s what this was all about—you knew, and you still let me—let us—keep thinking we could do something to help you save this reality, to fix what went wrong here. You let me—” She pushes forward, towards Celine and Miyeong, and slashes upward, catching a demon’s throat as it jumps at her. “You let me believe this is where she—” Her voice catches and breaks again as her eyes meet Miyeong’s. “—where you get to live.”

“Rumi,” Miyeong says, Rumi’s name coming out of her mouth like it’d been punched out of her. Her sorrow and her pain are clear in her voice, even as she tries to hold herself together, for both their sakes. “It isn’t—none of this is—”

“What? It isn’t my fault?” Rumi chokes out as she drives her blade through another demon. “But it is, isn’t it? No matter what, it’s always me. In my reality, you die because of me—and here, you’ll still die because of me. Because I don’t exist here at all. It’s always because of me.”

Miyeong fires again, but this time her eyes are wet when they land on Rumi.

“And you knew,” Rumi gasps, voice shattering, “and—and you still—all this—you knew it wouldn’t work, that this wouldn’t seal the Honmoon, not here in this reality, but you still did it, still pushed us to do it, because of me.”

“No, Rumi,” Celine cuts in this time, hurting—not for herself or even for Miyeong, but for her, for Rumi, “you don’t understand. You were always meant to live. You have to live, if we want to defeat Gwi-ma. Maybe not in this reality, not with us, but you, the three of you, together—we can still get you back to your reality and you finish what you started. Think about it,” and here, she barrels towards Rumi, gripping her shoulders desperately like she needs her to just listen to her one last time, to trust her one last time, “why else would he have tried to get rid of you? Why else would he send you here, to a world where you don’t exist—a world doomed to fail without you in it? He knows, Rumi.

“You know the song, don’t you?” Celine says now, and her voice is steadier now, stripped of the hurt from before, carrying something closer to certainty. “When darkness finally meets the light. I thought I knew what that meant, I was so sure of it, but now… With you here… Maybe we’ve been thinking of it the wrong way, this whole time. That it isn’t about defeating the darkness, but about bringing it to the light. And you, Rumi…” She reaches up to touch Rumi’s face, brushing her thumb against the pattern that runs along the curve of Rumi’s cheek. “You are the balance—darkness finally meeting the light.”

Rumi jerks back like Celine’s touch burns, stumbling into the crush of bodies until Mira shoves a demon off her flank. Her hand trembles where she’s gripping tightly onto her sword. “How are you so sure?” she demands, spitting the words out. “You say it like it’s a fact, like it’s written in stone, but how do you know?” A giant’s club slams into the ground close enough to them that she staggers, breathless. “You were so sure about it too last night, when you said that we can’t change the outcome, no matter how hard we try or how much we want to. That—that there are some things you just can’t fight—but how? How do you know all this for sure? How can you look at me and tell me this like Gwi-ma or—or—fucking god himself told you so?” Her throat knots around the words as she cuts another demon down, her patterns flaring again with the swell of emotions rising up and up inside her, threatening to pull her under again. “You can’t just stand there and tell me it’s already decided—that all of this, that she—”

She can’t accept it. She just can’t. She refuses to, because if she does, then what does that leave her with? She can’t just stand here and accept that this world is doomed, and that her mother and Celine are willing to die here and now if it means getting Rumi back to her reality. She can’t accept that they’ve already accepted their deaths, already surrendered themselves to—to—destiny, or whatever other cruel force in the universe has brought them here, and that this is going to be the last thing she’ll ever see of them—just like in all of those pictures she grew up with, pictures of her mother, forever young. Because here, in this world, they’ll never grow old. They’ll never get to. They’ll stay like this, faces and bodies trapped at this age, frozen in time like corpses preserved before they’ve even died.

Rumi catches Celine’s eyes flickering to her sword, and she sputters out, “Y-You can’t be serious. It’s just—it’s just a sword.”

But then Celine looks back up at her like she knows that Rumi knows that isn’t true. That it isn’t just a sword, and that maybe, horribly, Celine was right all along. That there is no such thing as coincidence, not when it comes to them, and especially not when it comes to her.

She’s been holding the stars, the entire sky, in her hands all this time, but she couldn’t see the signs. And now… Now she has to bear the terrible, impossible weight of meaning.

Miyeong steps in then, her bow lowered but still humming faintly with light, and lays a hand on Rumi’s arm. Her touch is steady in a way her voice isn’t.

“Rumi,” she says, and it’s softer now, almost pleading, “I—I’m sorry. I never wanted to keep this from you, but… If you’d known—if we’d told you from the start—you would never have agreed to leave. You would’ve fought us every step of the way, and you would’ve thrown yourself into trying to fix what’s broken here.” Her voice tightens, but she pushes through it. “But you can’t. No one can. This world can’t be saved.”

She squeezes Rumi’s arm, forcing her to look up. “I know it’s hard to accept. I know you want to believe you can change the fate of this world, that you can fix it, but this isn’t where you need to be. You have a chance in your reality. That’s where you can fight, and that’s where you can win. And if it costs me, and if it costs Celine—” Her voice breaks, but she steadies it again, for Rumi’s sake. “Then, that’s what it costs, and we’re willing to shoulder that cost. What matters is that you live.”

Rumi wants to argue with her, to tell her she’s spewing a load of bullshit right now, and that she and Celine are being unfair for just deciding all this for her. She’s angry, and confused, and scared, and she wants to just direct all of it at her mother, who looks like she’d stand there and just take it all anyway, silent and unflinching, like she knows she deserves it, but… She can’t.

“I never asked for this,” she says, her throat tight, and her chest heaving like she’s been running for miles. “I-If I’m not a mistake, then I’m supposed to be some sort of—of—hero or answer to the universe’s problems, but I never asked for any of that. I never asked for power, or greatness, or for this—this fucking sword—” Her grip trembles around the hilt of her sword. She used to find the weight of it in her hands comforting, and she was so proud as a child when she first summoned it. Now she only wishes she could throw it away, be rid of it forever. “I never asked to be chosen. I never asked for any of that, I never wanted any of that, I—I just—”

It’s only then that she realizes she’s crying. The sound that claws its way out of her mouth is nothing like a brave Hunter’s, and nothing like this chosen one they’re trying to make her believe she is. It’s small. Broken.

“Can’t I just be your daughter?”

Miyeong lets out a shattered noise. “You are my daughter,” and she pulls Rumi into her arms. Around them the battle rages on, but right now, in this moment, it all feels so impossibly far. Like the universe itself has paused, leaving only Rumi and her mother at the center of it. When Miyeong pulls back, she takes Rumi’s face into her hands and tells her, “You are my daughter,” again, firmer this time, “and that’s why we’re doing this. Not because of destiny, or because you’re the only person who can defeat Gwi-ma once and for all, but because you’re ours. You’re my daughter, and I told you—I promised you—I would have chosen you even in this life, and that’s all this is, Rumi. This is me, choosing you.”

Rumi can’t hold herself together. Miyeong’s words split her open all over again, ripping past the anger, the denial, the weight of everything crushing her chest. She can’t breathe for a second—not because of the demons pressing in, not because of the heat of her patterns burning through her skin, but because it’s her mother. Not the same one who gave birth to her and died for her, died because of her—but still Ryu Miyeong, looking at her with eyes that say the same thing. That she’s worth it. That she’s wanted. That she’s chosen, in all the ways that count and in all the ways that matter to Rumi. Not destiny or prophecy, but love from the one person her heart has ached for her entire life.

She drags in a breath, shaky, and asks, “The ritual—do we need to be locked in place around the shinmok, or can we finish it like this?”

Celine furrows her brows. “You mean…”

“We’re pop stars,” Rumi says, and even Mira and Zoey stop in their tracks, “We sing and dance for a living, so this shouldn’t be any different, right?” She looks at each of them in turn, before her eyes land on her mother and Celine again. “If that’s what it’ll take to finish the ritual and to… to get us home, then—let’s do it. Let’s finish this.”

For a moment, no one says anything. Then, sounding more relieved than anything, Celine breathes out, “Yes. —Okay. It’s worth a shot.”

“We’re with you, Rumi,” Mira says, clutching her gok-do harder, and Zoey nods, “All the way.”

And Miyeong… Miyeong doesn’t say anything at first, just brushes her thumbs over Rumi’s tear-stained cheeks, then she finally lets go and summons her greatbow again. She gives Rumi a small nod, and says back to her softly, “Let’s finish this.”

No, Rumi isn’t fine. She isn’t even remotely okay, and she still can’t accept that this world is doomed, or that there’s no way for her to save her mother here—to give her the life she took back in her own reality—but her mother has chosen her, has put her above her own survival, above this entire reality’s survival, and she can’t let that amount to nothing. She doesn’t know if she will ever be okay again, once all has been said and done, but this—she can at least do this much.

Their voices rise together, ragged at first from the shouting and the fighting, but then stronger and stronger still, weaving into one another like threads of light against the dark. Rumi throws herself into it harder than ever, her chest aching with the effort, her throat raw.

If she’d faltered before, if she’d let herself be distracted by fear or doubt, now she doesn’t dare. Her mother’s words are still ringing in her ears, in her bones, her entire being, so she sings as hard as she possibly can, even if fighting and trying to bring an already physically demanding ritual like this one to completion feels like hell itself—which is saying a lot, when they’re surrounded by all of hell itself, it looks like, here and now—every syllable and every swing of her sword sharpened by her resolve. Mira and Zoey, like they promised her, are by her side through it all, all the way, their voices carrying fierce and clear even as the demons swarm around them and overwhelm them with their sheer numbers. Celine and Miyeong are, once again, steady and unwavering, and Miyeong—her bow sings with her, each arrow like a note made manifest.

The demons keep coming, but their song reverberates across the battlefield, so powerful it feels like the air itself trembles with it. The Honmoon, which had begun to fracture, shivers and sparks, light stuttering across the seams like it’s remembering how to hold. The shinmok, its branches once withering and brittle, stirs, leaves trembling as though catching breath, the silver wash of the full moon pouring strength—life—back into its veins.

It’s much harder now, doing the ritual in the middle of battle, but it feels different now too. It feels… right, or at least better, compared to earlier, and Rumi doesn’t know how much of that has to do with the fact that Celine and Miyeong aren’t still pretending anymore like this ritual actually will fix everything wrong in this reality, but maybe the distinction doesn’t really matter so much.

All that matters is that they’re united now, unrelenting, and they’re going to make this count.

Rumi feels it before she sees it. A shiver in the air, the pull in her chest, like something inside her has finally clicked into place. She drags her gaze to the shinmok, and the world around it is… wrong. Its branches flicker, double, like two images overlaid but struggling to hold together. The leaves shimmer with light one instant and wither the next, as though time itself can’t decide which way to flow. For a heartbeat it looks whole, then broken, then whole again, blurring between—Rumi’s breath catches in her throat—

The moon’s light pours down, silver so bright it makes the tree glow, each glitch sharper, clearer, until she swears she can see through it—another world bleeding through the cracks. Her world.

“Rumi,” Celine calls, urgent, and their eyes meet for a second over the barrage of demons. Rumi nods at her, nervous but resolute, and then they surge forward together, cleaving a path through the swarm until they reach the shinmok where a fracture, clearer and clearer now as the full moon amplifies the power flowing through the tree to near-nuclear levels, glows across the tree’s trunk.

The seam.

“Now.”

No room for hesitation. Together, they bring their blades down, but they’re met with resistance. Rumi didn’t really have any expectations for what it would feel like to cut through the fabric of reality itself, but she never would have guessed that it would feel like cutting through jelly—really, really, really dense jelly, thick with the very thing that breathes life into the universe. Cutting through it is like trying to cut through a membrane of molten light. It trembles around the cut, rippling, trying to knit itself shut even as they drive their swords deeper.

“Move,” Mira says, coming up behind them to thrust her gok-do into the seam too, helping them cut through it. Even with three of them now, it’s still a lot of work, it’s still hard work, but Miyeong and Zoey cover for them, buying them the time they need to carve the path through.

The seam gives way, just barely, a hairline split shivering down the trunk of the shinmok, light leaking through, thin as a thread—but that’s all they need. They hack harder, driving their blades down again and again, widening the crack until it’s no longer just a line but an opening, jagged and trembling, fighting to snap shut around them. And when it still isn’t enough, when the gap is too small to be anything more than a cruel glimpse, Rumi drops her sword with a choked sound and seizes the edges with her bare hands.

It burns. It feels wrong, and it feels like trying to hold the sun in her hands, and Rumi screams in pain but she doesn’t stop. She keeps pulling as hard as she can, the rift stretching and resisting, quivering like something alive, every bit as they are. The next second, Celine is there beside her too, her own weapons discarded, bracing, hauling with everything she has. Mira joins too, abandoning her gok-do in the wound so she can use both hands, and the three of them drag it wider, wider still, as if sheer will alone could tear the universe open.

And then, with a sound like the world splitting in two, it rips.

The rift gapes wide, light flooding out in a torrent so bright it blinds them for a heartbeat—the same flash of brilliant and blinding light that Rumi, Mira and Zoey saw before they woke up here—until the glare clears, and on the other side, three figures stand staring back at them, eyes wide with shock.

“Celine,” Rumi gasps, grateful and like she could just fucking cry, because standing in front of her is her Celine and she’s alive, she’s still alive, and—

“Poppy?” Celine, the one from this reality, says, shocked to see her friend alive and well too, and older, just like her own counterpart in Rumi’s reality, and—

“Jinu?”

It made sense that Celine would be on the other side, and even Poppy, but Jinu? Jinu, with Celine? How did he even get past the gate without her trying to behead him?

“You’re alive,” he says, shocked and relieved, and he looks like he’s going to reach for her when a blur of blue leaps past him and through the rift, tackling Rumi to the ground.

“A tiger,” Mira says, gawking at the big blue one sprawled all over Rumi now, “Where the hell did you even get a fucking tiger?”

“We get keeping Jinu from us,” Zoey chimes in, looking like she’s trying so hard not to squeal and throw herself at the tiger herself, not while they’re in the middle of something very deadly serious, “but why the tiger too?”

“It’s not—ow, hey, I missed you too, but you’re heavy—” Rumi finally manages to push the tiger off just enough to roll out from under him. Mira helps her up, and patting the dirt and fur from her clothes, she explains, “It’s not my tiger, it’s Jinu’s—”

“He’s not mine either,” Jinu interrupts then, with a smidge of guilt over disowning the tiger or something, he adds, “Not technically, anyway. He kind of just… follows me around.”

The tiger just blinks at Rumi, and then at Jinu, with his big yellow eyes. The magpie that always follows him around swoops in just then, landing softly on the top of his head. It squawks at Rumi in greeting. Zoey really looks like she’s going to explode now from how badly she wants to pet both of them.

For a moment, in all the noise and strangeness, Rumi’s eyes find Jinu’s. He’s looking at her like he still can’t believe she’s standing here, alive despite everything. Like she’s a miracle. There’s guilt in his gaze too, recognition that she wouldn’t be here in this situation or in this strange, alternate reality in the first place if not for him… But the corner of his mouth lifts, just barely, and she feels her own lips tug into a small, tired smile in answer. For a heartbeat, it’s enough—that after everything, they’re both still here and still alive, and that after everything, it’s still real. What they had is still real.

Mira clears her throat awkwardly, and both Rumi and Jinu jolt in surprise. They turn to her and Zoey sheepishly, but neither of them say anything. Rumi follows their gaze instead back to Celine and Poppy, standing on the other side of the rift staring right back at this reality’s Celine and Miyeong.

For a moment, no one says anything. The fighting, the rift, even the world itself feels like it’s holding its breath along with them. Both pairs of women look like they’ve seen ghosts—and, maybe, that’s the only way to really look at it. In this world, Poppy is gone. In her world, Miyeong is. Both of them dead, both of them alive, standing here together now. Rumi catches the way Celine—her Celine—can’t look away from Miyeong, particularly. It’s written all over her face: grief and longing, disbelief and ache, the kind of pain Rumi has carried too. This Miyeong might not be her Miyeong, the woman she loved and then lost, not really, but she’s still Miyeong, standing there in front of her young and alive and every bit as beautiful as the day Celine lost her. Miyeong stares back at her, stricken.

Maybe Rumi and Celine don’t always see eye to eye, but in that moment, she understands Celine perfectly. She always does, when it comes to Miyeong. She is everything to them and about them, after all.

And then the world comes rushing back in—the roar of demons around them, barely contained by the Honmoon that flickers between stability and instability with the rift between their realities still blazing wide open—and it pulls Celine with it, drags her out of the spiral of grief and wonder with Miyeong, back to the here and now. Back to Rumi.

“Rumi,” she says softly at first, almost dazed, and then again, sharper, breaking in relief: “Rumi!”

Before Rumi can say anything, Celine throws herself across the rift and at Rumi too, pulling Rumi into her arms like it’s not enough that she’s standing right in front of her, she needs to hold her too to know for sure that this is all real and that Rumi is okay. She pulls back and frantically scans Rumi’s face, her body, for any injuries, gripping her tightly like Rumi will disappear again if she doesn’t hold her together like she’s holding her now.

Celine says, “You’re—”

“Yeah,” Rumi gets out hoarsely, voice catching on the sob rising in her throat, “I’m okay.”

Celine makes this soft, broken noise, then she holds Rumi’s face in her hands and leans their foreheads together. Rumi wraps her hands around Celine’s wrists, her entire body trembling now with all of her emotions threatening to spill out of her, messy and violent, and she breathes out, “I’m okay.”

They’re not totally okay again, not yet, but for now this is enough too.

When Celine pulls back to look at Rumi again, like she’s still trying to make sure this is all real and not just some other crazy fucking curveball that the universe has thrown at them, her expression shifts. The softness from earlier vanishes and she scowls at Rumi and demands, thoroughly furious now, “What were you thinking, teaming up with a demon?”

Rumi blinks at her, and just like that, she’s irritated now too. She has this knee-jerk urge to argue with Celine, to tell her she’s being unbelievable—seriously, Rumi’s just done the impossible and now she’s being scolded like a kid caught sneaking around past her curfew—and that her scheming with Jinu should really be the least of Celine’s concerns right now. But underneath all of that irritation there’s something else curling warm in her chest. Something tender. Because as much as she hates it when Celine gets like this, after the absolute whirlwind her life has been these past few days, it’s honestly comforting too. It feels like she’s finally come home, as messy and overbearing and annoying as home can be sometimes. Home is still home: utterly and fiercely hers.

Still, she’s got to get a dig in at least, so she mutters, “Funny you mentioned that, because I was going to ask the same about you.” She jerks her chin towards Jinu’s direction, then says more to him than to Celine, “I was surprised she didn’t try to kill you or something.”

“Oh, she did,” Jinu answers wryly. He nods at Poppy. “She’s my witness.”

Poppy, who’d been too gobsmacked to say anything, blinks like she’s finally been snapped out of her trance and says, smiling sheepishly at Rumi, “Hey, kiddo. Long time no see, huh?”

Their little reunion is cut short by Miyeong saying, “You have to go now.” She eyes the rift, and then lets her gaze sweep to their surroundings. Noticeably, she tries not to let her gaze linger on Rumi’s Celine for too long, like it physically hurts her to have to look at her—proof of the life her Celine will never get to grow into. Or maybe it’s just plain, simple guilt over reminding Rumi’s Celine of everything she’s lost. Either way, she doesn’t let her eyes linger too long. “The rift isn’t going to hold for very long, not like this.”

Celine and Poppy share a puzzled look, and when Celine turns to… Celine, her younger self, the Celine of this world—there’s a moment where they just stare at each other, like looking at your reflection in the mirror except it’s all wrong, and it isn’t really you staring back at you.

“The long and short of it,” says this reality’s Celine eventually, “is that this reality is coming apart at the seams, and we’ve only barely stabilized the Honmoon here enough to open this rift between our realities. But given the… constraints of this reality, doing both is putting a strain on the magic here. It can’t sustain both the Honmoon and this.” She gazes at the seam, where the edges flicker and warp like static. “If it collapses now, we may not be able to force it open again.”

“So if you’re going back,” Miyeong says, quiet but firm, “you have to go now.”

The words hang heavy between them, and Rumi feels her stomach clench. The rift ripples in the corner of her vision, the shimmer stuttering as if threatening to snap shut.

“Hold on,” Poppy says, alarmed now, “what do you mean by coming apart at the seams?”

Beside her, Rumi hears Mira mutter oh my fucking god under her breath.

It doesn’t come as a surprise when their Celine bristles too and says, “Are you saying—” Her gaze flicks to Miyeong, then back again at herself, and Rumi’s stomach twists. Of course her Celine would react like this, after seeing Miyeong alive, standing right there. Of course she would react the exact same way Rumi did earlier.

The air goes taut, both Celines staring each other down. It’s unnerving, seeing them like that, every ounce of stubborn fire Rumi knows so well reflected back at itself. And the worst part is, Rumi gets it. She gets both of them. She understands the ache in her Celine’s voice, the refusal to let go, just as much as she understands the exasperation in the other’s.

“It means,” Miyeong says, stepping in now between the two Celines, “that once you go and we close this rift, our reality may very well collapse right here and now.”

Celine—Rumi’s—blinks at her, shocked, then she turns to the other Celine with a more accusatory glare. “That can’t be right. It can’t just—you can’t just—there has to be a way.” It’s painfully clear that what she really means is you can’t just let Miyeong die. All of that guilt and self-loathing she’s kept bottled up inside, now directed at none other than herself.

And the other Celine, Miyeong’s, spits back, “You think we haven’t tried fixing it? If I just could, then I would have already. I would have bled myself dry putting this place back together, piece by piece, if I just could. But I can’t, and I hate that I can’t, I hate that—that—it’s been decided already for us that there’s no saving this world, not without Rumi in it, and I’ve tried so hard to fight against it but I can’t.” Her chest heaves with her anger, and her pain. Her gaze flicks to Rumi then, burning, desperate, tender in a way that’s almost unbearable. “All I can do, all I can still hold on to, is that we can still save Rumi. So, for the love of god, just go.”

At the very moment, the sky cracks open.

But it’s not just the sky. It’s the entire world around them, glitching like the shinmok did earlier, only vaster and more violent. The air tears in jagged seams of light; the ground doubles, smears, like two images overlaid but failing to align. Silver from the full moon pours down in fractured beams, no longer steady, no longer clean, as though it’s trying to contain their two realities at once and bleeding under the weight. The sky flickers—black, then red, then both at once, layered over each other until it becomes impossible to tell which world they’re standing in anymore.

Mira and Zoey rush to Rumi’s side, their weapons at the ready, and Jinu presses in closer too, protectively. “Look,” Zoey gasps, and they all look up at the blood-red sky as the shape of two colossal hands presses against the heavens. For a breath it looks unreal, like shadows stretched across a screen—but then the hands emerge from the clouds and, like they were doing earlier, grip at the edges of reality itself, pulling the sky apart. It splits wide open like a wound, blood-red light pouring out of it, and from it, a colossal, monstrous figure emerges.

It’s grotesque, almost spider-like in how it has too many arms, and it has two hands, curling around its head from the back, clamped over the titan’s eyes and two hands holding its head up, protruding out of its neck. Two massive horns jut from its head, and a mane of blue fire spills down its back. But the most unsettling thing about it is the way it seems to be smiling down at them, all teeth and smug, murderous intent.

Mira says, disbelieving, “No way. There’s no way that’s—”

“Gwi-ma,” Jinu says, guilty.

Gwi-ma laughs, and the sound of it is like stone grinding against stone. The ground shakes with it, the Honmoon sparking red as his bellowing laughter passes through it.

“I should thank you, Jinu,” he says. “If not for you or your little boyband, I would never have fed enough to take this shape again. Piece by piece, soul by soul, you’ve carried me back to what I was. It’s impressive, what you managed to do… which makes it all the more unfortunate that I will have to dispose of you on account of your betrayal.” His mouth splits wider, teeth flashing, and now it looks less like he’s grinning down at them and more like he’s snarling at them—at the pesky Hunters who keep standing in his way. “For centuries, you Hunters have starved me. I was left to rot, to wither, to crawl in the shadows of what I had been. But now—” He stretches those many arms wide, triumphant, the two hands clasped over his eyes twitching. “Now I take back what is mine.”

He tilts his head, his mane of blue fire burning brighter, and adds with a low, rumbling satisfaction, “And I am still hungry.”

The demons surge with renewed ferocity, ignited by Gwi-ma’s presence, their shrieks and howls piercing through the night. The world trembles again, glitching. Even their shadows split, jerking out of sync with their bodies.

Gwi-ma’s many hands twitch, fingers flexing against the air as his smile tilts down to Rumi now.

“You,” he says, voice grinding low. “The little Hunter who bears my mark, yet refuses my call. I thought I’d finally be rid of you, but you are more stubborn than I give you credit for. I send you here, and somehow, you’ve still managed to claw your way back. Really, I can’t help but commend you. Still,” and he sighs here, like it’s really just such a shame, “that leaves us at an impasse. I try to get rid of you, but you refuse to die. Over and over, we find ourselves here.”

Gwi-ma hums, and the earth trembles at the sound. Then, suddenly, he leans forward, almost like he means to reach down and grab Rumi. The others huddle around her, weapons raised. He ignores them and even with the two hands covering his eyes, Rumi can feel the full weight of his gaze, dark and heavy and suffocating, on her and her alone.

“If I cannot control you,” Gwi-ma says, “then perhaps I should ask you to join me instead.”

“Fuck you,” Mira shouts at Gwi-ma, with feeling, and then everyone around her starts talking over each other, yelling their own versions of fuck you and go fuck yourself at Gwi-ma. All Rumi can do is gawk at the massive, horrifying monster looming over them, so big he almost blocks out the moon itself, who just proposed the most ridiculous and most impossible thing to her.

“Why do you look so surprised, little Hunter?” Gwi-ma laughs. “Think about it. Why keep crawling back to these Hunters when they rejected you? Why make yourself small when you could rule by my side instead? You bear my marks,” he reminds her, sneering now, “so you are one of us, after all. Who knows, I might even feel gracious enough to spare Jinu for you.”

“Don’t,” Jinu spits out, angrier than Rumi’s ever seen him, “don’t you dare. You can’t use me, not anymore!”

Gwi-ma only laughs harder, low and grinding, like he’s savoring Jinu’s fury.

“Or perhaps…” he says, “I could offer you something greater yet. Isn’t this what your heart has always yearned for? Your mother, alive again. Whole. I could spare her here, in this fragile little overlap of worlds, or I could even gift you another reality entirely where she breathes still. All it would take is one word.

“So,” Gwi-ma drawls at Rumi, “what do you say?”

For a moment, silence presses down on all of them. Then Miyeong breaks first, voice sharp and panicked: “Rumi, don’t. Don’t listen to him!”

Both Celines echo her in unison, their tones colliding—one desperate, one furious, both equally terrified. “He’s lying,” one says. “It’s a trick,” the other spits. “He’ll take everything from you—” Mira, Zoey, Poppy and Jinu chime in, their voices rising above the chaos: “Rumi, no! Don’t listen to him—”

They’re all shouting over each other again, pleading, panicking, because they all know this isn’t like before. This isn’t Gwi-ma dangling just power or survival in front of Rumi anymore. No, this is him offering her the one thing that might actually break her: her mother.

Their voices flood her ears, drowning out the thundering of her heart—but she doesn’t say anything. She just lifts her hand, palm out, a simple motion that hushes them all at once. Then, still without a word, she takes a step forward. Then another.

Above, Gwi-ma leans down to meet her, his massive frame curling closer, grin stretching wide. He looks almost eager, like a predator that doesn’t need to chase its prey because it’s walking right into his jaws. “I take it you’ve made up your mind then, little Hunter.”

“I have,” Rumi answers, eyes downcast.

Gwi-ma hums, satisfied, those hands twitching like he's itching to pluck her from the ground. “I knew you would be smart enough to make the right decision. You were made for things greater than this, little one—greater than what being a mere Hunter could offer. You are the only one I cannot control, and that puts you a league above everyone else, don’t you think? You aren’t like them.”

Rumi’s fingers tighten around the hilt of her sword. “You’re right,” she says, looking up now. “You can’t control me—and you never will.

“You think I’d give all of this up for my mother,” Rumi says, louder now, stronger now, “but that would be a greater dishonor to her memory than if you spared her here, at the cost of our worlds, and at the cost of the people we love. If I took your offer, if I let you twist her into something she’s not… it would be spitting on everything she lived for. Everything she gave up.” She draws in a ragged breath, holding onto her sword now like it’s a lifeline. “Everything she’s giving up now, to give me the chance to keep on living.”

She lifts her sword, the blade thrumming with magic and with life, the constellations etched on the blade glowing with the fire of her conviction, and points it at Gwi-ma.

“This ends now.”

For a moment, Gwi-ma stills, the sneer slipping from his face as if he hadn’t expected her to throw his offer back at him. The hands over his eyes twitch, claws curling. Furious, he puts on that monstrous, grotesque smile again, and says, “Very well, then. You’ve made your choice. Now, you will have to live and die with it.

“GET THEM,” Gwi-ma commands his demons, his voice splitting the night like thunder. The ground shudders with it, trees bowing as a violent gust tears through the forest. The air warps, rippling like heat over stone, and the rift flares, like their two realities are pushing even further into each other, bleeding together under the weight of his will. “But save the insolent little Hunter for me.”

The world erupts in chaos. The demons surge forward, and the Hunters charge to meet them.

“Just so you know,” Zoey says as Jinu falls in line with them, claws bared, “Mira and I still think it was so not cool how you tricked and betrayed Rumi the way you did, and we aren’t happy about the you of it all in general,” and Mira swoops in to wrap it all up with, “But you’re here now, and that doesn’t absolve you of anything, but we promised Rumi we’d help her help you—so don’t be an asshole. Not anymore, anyway.”

Jinu huffs, smiling a little. “No promises,” he says, like he just can’t help but be a bit of an asshole, just for the bit, then says more sincerely, “but thank you.”

Mira scoffs, smiling a little too, then swings her gok-do at the first demon that comes charging at her.

Rumi, Mira, and Zoey move as one, taking down the demons that dare come their way together like they always have. Zoey sends a demon straight into Mira’s gok-do, which she swings to take the head off of another demon, and Rumi cuts down three in succession, all fast, decisive strikes, just like Celine taught her. Jinu rips and claws his way through the ranks near Rumi, intercepting anything that tries to reach her. One demon stares at him, stunned, as if it can’t believe he’s fighting against them, while another steps back in hesitation, but he’s already on it before it can even think of retreat.

Miyeong and the two Celines close in alongside Poppy, their strikes weaving together—one covers high, another low, a shot cutting through the opening between. They move like they’ve been fighting together all their lives too, falling into a rhythm that’s familiar across realities, instinctive. Poppy swings her axe with a roar, bulldozing through several demons at once, while Rumi and Miyeong’s Celines weave through the demons, tearing through them in a blur of their twin swords.

Even the tiger and the magpie pitch in. The tiger crashes through the horde with brute force, scattering bodies in its wake, while the magpie darts down pecking at eyes and ripping at faces, throwing the enemies into chaos.

Above, Gwi-ma spreads his many arms wide as if to welcome the souls streaking upward and towards him in burning trails of light with open arms. It’s impossible to tell which souls are coming from this reality and which ones are being pulled from theirs with the way their realities are blurring into one demon-infested mess. Every beam of light, every soul, that strikes his body sinks into him, feeding the blue fire in his mane until it roars hotter, wilder, spilling down his back like an inferno.

“We’ve gotta stop him,” Mira says, heaving as she drives her gok-do clean through a demon.

“Yeah, but he’s all the way up there,” Zoey reminds her, leaping and using Mira’s gok-do for a boost up and up, spinning in the air as she throws her shin-kal around, taking several more demons out. “And we’re down here,” she continues, as she lands on her feet again. “Unless the bird can, I don’t know, size up, like, full-on kaiju and all…”

“Or maybe,” Rumi suggests, grunting as she twists and puts her whole weight behind the swing of her sword, “we bring him down here instead.”

“And how do you propose we do that, exactly?” Jinu asks, driving his whole arm through another demon.

Rumi is embarrassed to admit she hasn’t actually thought that far. But… “Mom,” she calls, searching for Miyeong in the mess of bodies around them. “Mom!”

Miyeong doesn’t have time to produce an arrow so she knocks a demon down by swinging her greatbow down against it instead. “What?” she calls back to Rumi.

“Can you reach Gwi-ma?”

Miyeong freezes, puzzled.

“I mean—” Rumi ducks as one of the flying demons aims for her head, only to be knocked back by the magpie. The tiger tackles it to the ground and takes it into his mouth, shaking it around like a ragdoll. “Can you hit Gwi-ma from this distance?”

Miyeong turns her head towards Gwi-ma, squinting, and replies, “I could, but I don’t know if it’s going to do much of anything to him.”

“We need you to do just enough to disrupt him and then bring him down here, to us.”

The Celines, overhearing this, both stop in their tracks to look at Rumi incredulously. “Then what?” asks this reality’s Celine.

“Then… Then we figure the rest out once we get him down here, where we can hurt him,” Rumi says, only a little embarrassed that she can’t provide a concrete answer right now. “The point is, as long as he’s up there, we can’t touch him. And we can’t let him feed on any more souls either.”

The Celines turn to look at each other, and Poppy says, “Well, it’s something,” as she brings her axe down on another demon. “As far as I’m concerned, something is always better than nothing.”

Miyeong takes in a deep breath, steadying herself, and nods at Rumi.

They gather around her as she gets into position, planting her feet firmly into the ground. She raises her greatbow, aims it straight at Gwi-ma, and pulls the string back. An arrow of pure light takes shape, burning into existence between her fingers. She doesn’t loose it right away. She holds it, drawing the bowstring tighter and tighter, until the arrow swells with power—white-blue, searing, pulsing with explosive energy. She holds it for what feels like an eternity as the others fend off the demons charging towards them, everyone united in the goal of buying Miyeong the cleanest shot possible, then finally, when the light-bomb of an arrow doesn’t look like it can contain itself any longer, Miyeong lets it fly.

The arrow screams through the night and slams straight into Gwi-ma’s face, exploding against the hands clamped over his eyes. He howls and stumbles backwards, clawing at his singed face with his other hands as the streams of souls spiraling into him falter, breaking apart in the air like sparks snuffed out by the wind.

“This… could actually work,” Rumi’s Celine says, shocked, while the other Celine says, “We have to figure the rest of this actual plan out, but… yes, I think it might work,” and Rumi would hate that a little more if she weren’t so surprised herself.

Rumi turns to Miyeong, who nods at her again, a little more confident now—and maybe a little proud too, not of herself, but Rumi.

Miyeong loads up another arrow while Gwi-ma’s still reeling from the first. She aims it straight at his head again, at his eyes—or where they would be, anyway—his weak spot, even with the hands covering them. The others close in around her, cutting down the demons who are now targeting her specifically.

Gwi-ma steadies himself and starts clawing at the air for the loose souls, practically shoving them into his body. His mane of blue fire burns brighter and stronger as he recovers, slowly but surely—that is, until Miyeong fires another shot at him. He screams again as it explodes in his face, staggering and writhing as smoke curls off his burned flesh. The sound of his fury rattles the ground under their feet.

“ENOUGH,” Gwi-ma roars, gripping at the edges of the sky and pushing himself further out, until he’s almost dangling from the rift he opened in the sky. It’s not exactly how Rumi imagined this would go—she was thinking more knock the demon lord out of the sky, carnival game style—but if Gwi-ma’s angry enough to come down from the sky himself then hell, that works too.

His voice booms again, “I tire of your games. I will not be toyed with by insects. If you are so desperate to die, then I will oblige you.” Gwi-ma’s charred face splits into something between a grin and a snarl. “You want so badly to be with your mother, don’t you, little Hunter?” he rumbles, addressing Rumi directly, “SO DIE WITH HER.”

Gwi-ma tilts his head back, jaws ripping wide open, the sound of bones breaking and cracking filling their ears. He holds his mouth open until it looks wrong, less like a mouth and more like a pit yawning open in his skull. The souls, their steaks of light, come to him in droves, faster and faster, but it isn’t just human souls anymore. Around them, more and more demons dissipate and are absorbed into Gwi-ma too, like it doesn’t matter whether it’s human or demon anymore—they’re all fodder for Gwi-ma, one and the same. Red light swells at the back of Gwi-ma’s throat, growing into a blazing orb that becomes too much for even his grotesquely hanging mouth to hold, and then, like a dragon, he unleashes it: a great column of hellfire aimed directly at Miyeong.

“Mom!”

Rumi can see, from her periphery, that both Celines are rushing towards Miyeong too but the demons keep piling around them, purposely getting in their way. So, without hesitation, she throws herself in front of Miyeong. She holds her sword up and meets the hellfire with her blade. Heat scorches her skin, and the force of the blast pushes Rumi back until her knees buckle under the weight of it, the pressure, and she almost drops to the ground. Still, she refuses to move, gritting her teeth as she tries to push back as much as she can, arms trembling and every muscle in her body straining from the effort of holding hell itself back from touching her mother.

“Rumi!” she hears her mother call, or maybe it’s Mira, or Zoey, she can’t tell anymore with how the sound of Gwi-ma’s roar, his hellfire, drowns out everything else.

The torrent keeps coming, harder, hotter, threatening to crush her. Her arms shake violently as she barely keeps her grip on her sword. Her knees hit the ground, and still, she holds on for as long as she can, as hard as she can, screaming against Gwi-ma’s rage even as the weight of his hellfire overwhelms her.

A small voice in her head tells her, This is it. This is how it ends.

Maybe it won’t end the way they thought it would, and maybe she isn’t the hero they said she should be, but if it means she gets to save her mother, or at least buy her enough time to live, just live a little bit longer—

Suddenly, the pressure vanishes. Rumi slumps back, now that she isn’t pushing back against anything. The world is still a blaze of red around her, but she’s no longer the one holding it back. Rumi forces her head up through the heat and blinding red glare, and gasps.

“No,” Rumi says, tears catching fast in her throat as she rushes up to her feet. “No, Jinu, no—”

Jinu is standing in front of her, body outlined against the inferno. His back is to the torrent, shoulders squared as if he’s bracing himself against a storm. The fire crashes into him full force, but he doesn’t move—he plants himself there, unyielding, holding it back with nothing but his body and his will. He groans under the weight of it, the red glare swallowing him whole.

“No,” Rumi rasps, reaching out for him, “You don’t have to—Jinu, please, I wanted to help you. I wanted to set you free”

“You did,” he says, straining against the torrent. His voice is hoarse but steady, gentle despite everything. “You gave me a choice, and you gave me hope. You gave me grace, but I… I couldn’t take it. I didn’t think I deserved it.” He forces out a weak laugh, shaking under the hellfire’s weight. He’s already fraying at the seams, right in front of Rumi’s eyes. “I didn’t think I could escape it—not Gwi-ma, but… who I am. What I am. I left them, Rumi. I left my family to die, and maybe there isn’t any hope for me anymore, not the way you believe there is, but you…” He grits his teeth, shoving back against the inferno. “So let me do this. If this is all I have left to give, then…

“You gave me back my soul,” Jinu says, holding her gaze, and for the first time since she’s met him, he looks totally at peace, “and now, I give it to you.”

“Jinu,” Rumi says, scrambling to just—keep him together, grasping at his face, his shoulders, “Jinu, no, please, stay with me—I can still—please,” but it’s no use. The hellfire engulfs him, swallowing his body in red light. Rumi is helpless to watch as the torrent crawls over his arms, his chest, tearing him apart piece by piece. And still, Jinu is calm, at peace, with himself and with the choice he’s made.

A different kind of light breaks free—blue, alive—and it glows from deep within Jinu, spilling out through the cracks in his breaking body until it bursts forward in a single stream. His soul, blazing bright, tearing away from him as his body burns away into nothing and curling around Rumi instead.

He opens his eyes again as if to say goodbye or to just look at her one last time before he finally, completely disappears.

“Even now he dares defy me,” Gwi-ma rumbles as the torrent of hellfire falters, and through the thinning blaze Miyeong draws her bow again. She fires clean through the firestorm, and the arrow rips across the sky to slam into Gwi-ma. He clutches at his face, groaning in agony and in rage.

The others crowd around Rumi. “Rumi,” her mother says urgently, tilting her face towards her to check on her, to make sure she hasn’t sustained any injuries, but Rumi is still reeling. Still trying to process the fact that Jinu is gone, and that even he’s sacrificed himself for her. His light burns inside her now, she can feel it, but she can’t move. Can’t breathe.

It comes again—“Rumi…”—but she turns her head this time to Mira and Zoey, whose faces reflect Rumi’s pain back at her. They don’t say it, but she knows anyway, can read it in their eyes: I’m sorry.

“Why won’t you STAY DOWN,” Gwi-ma snarls at them, at Rumi, already winding up for another attack. More and more of the demons around them disappear, sucked into the vortex of Gwi-ma’s hunger. Miyeong’s last shot had burned clean through one of the hands over his eyes, exposing the eye behind it, and now that eye glares at Rumi, the flesh around it melting. “All you had to do was die, and yet you’ve refused me the satisfaction of that at every turn.”

Rumi drags her gaze up, jaw tightening. Her grief hardens into something sharper, something that burns as much as it aches.

Gwi-ma leans forward from the rift, the fire in his throat blazing hotter, swelling as if it wants to swallow the whole sky. “Every soul wasted on you, every body that throws itself into the fire for you, it means nothing. You mean nothing. I will destroy you and everyone you love, once and for all.”

Rumi won’t waste this. She can’t waste this. Not Jinu’s sacrifice, or her mother’s and Celine’s. She’s holding their lives, all of their hopes, in her hands now. They’ve entrusted them to her.

She calls her sword to her hand again. It takes shape, but it isn’t the same as before. The blade is bigger now, heavier, burning with new weight. The constellations that once shimmered along its length are gone, replaced by stark, jagged etchings, patterns like snarling demon faces seared into the blade. The glow is brighter, harsher, alive with Jinu’s soul threaded into it.

She looks down at it, awed, moved, then grips it tighter.

“You can try all you want, but you’re not getting rid of me,” Rumi calls up defiantly to Gwi-ma. She grips her sword with both hands now. “The only one dying tonight is you.”

Suddenly, she feels the weight of Mira and Zoey’s hands, familiar, settle on her shoulders. She turns her head, puzzled, and asks, “What are you—”

“Jinu gave you his soul,” Mira says, her hand trembling faintly against Rumi’s shoulder, “I… I don’t really know how it works, or if this’ll work the same way but… Maybe we could do the same.”

Zoey nods like she’s made up her mind, and there’s no changing it.

“W-what?” Rumi says, faltering. “No, no, you can’t—I can’t—” I can’t lose any more of you, even if it means I get to defeat Gwi-ma. Even if they’re only lending her their strength, she can’t say for sure that what happened to Jinu won’t happen to them too. She’s willing to risk herself, but not them.

“We trust you, Rumi,” Zoey says, smiling at her this time. “We’ll follow you anywhere.”

Before Rumi can protest again, beg them to not do this, the two Celines are there too. They place their hands over Mira and Zoey’s shoulders, and it’s her Celine who tells her, softly but resolutely, “Take ours too.” Poppy meets Rumi’s wide eyes, gives a single sharp nod, and presses in beside them, laying her hand on their Celine’s shoulder.

Rumi’s chest tightens. Her throat closes. She shakes her head, tears stinging her eyes. “No, I… I can’t ask you to—”

“You’re not asking, Rumi,” Miyeong says now, her voice cutting through all of the noise. She joins the others, placing her hand on the other Celine’s shoulder. “It’s our choice.”

Over the noise, over the fire, Rumi meets Miyeong’s gaze. Her mother’s eyes—fierce, unwavering, wet with grief but burning still. For a moment, it’s just the two of them, mother and daughter. Miyeong nods at her, and, breathing like there’s fire in her lungs too, Rumi nods back.

It scared her, knowing she had to carry the weight of the world—but now, she knows she doesn't have to do it alone.

All of their sacrifices. Everything they’ve done for her. Every single time they’ve chosen her.

Whatever it takes, she’ll make all of it count.

She'll do this for them.

Rumi squeezes her eyes shut, and breathes. In, then out, her grip tightening around the hilt of her sword.

Gwi-ma’s roar fills her ears as he lets out his hellfire again. Red, searing, endless, rushing down on them. But Rumi doesn’t move. Barely even flinches. She stays there, breathing in slowly, and then out, concentrating everything she’s got and everything she’s been given into her blade. She feels it rather than sees it at first: one by one, the lights of everyone else’s souls thread into her, and into the blade in her hands. When she peels her eyes open again, she sees that her sword is a blaze of golden light. It thrums with all of the magic, all of the power, being concentrated into it, burning brighter and brighter until it’s like Rumi is holding the sun itself in her hands instead of a sword, the golden fire overflowing from her grip.

And it isn’t just them anymore. She can feel it—something older, deeper, brushing against her soul. The echo of every Hunter who came before her, every soul that ever raised their weapon against Gwi-ma. Their strength threads into her too, vast and countless, a tide of voices that whisper and roar all at once, all of them echoing her promise to Gwi-ma earlier:

This ends now.

Rumi lifts her sword high, her body staining with the weight of it and with how much power she’s holding in her hands, but she drags the sword up, up, and then, just as the wall of red comes crashing in, she swings it back down with a defiant roar of her own.

Gold meets red, light against fire. The clash tears the sky apart, a blinding storm of sparks and fury that rattles the ground under their feet. For a moment they’re deadlocked, Gwi-ma’s fire pushing back against Rumi’s light. The air screams, splitting under the strain, not just the ground but their whole realities buckling as if it can’t bear the weight of either power.

Rumi digs her heels into the earth, every muscle burning, her grip white-knuckled on the hilt as the tide of red bears down harder, hotter, threatening to drown her golden blaze. But she doesn’t falter. She feels the weight of every soul behind her—Mira, Zoey, the Celines, Poppy, her mother, Jinu, and beyond them all, the countless Hunters who came before. She pushes forward, and they push with her, the gold flaring brighter, as bright as the sun itself, and then, finally, it tears through the wall of red hellfire, parting a path straight towards Gwi-ma, unstoppable as it crashes into him in an explosion of light.

Gwi-ma screams as his body is obliterated by the will of the Hunters combined, past and present. His howl splits the air, desperate, furious, and then it shatters into nothing—torn apart, consumed, until another explosion of light swallows everything, and the whole world goes white.

And then: silence.

The light doesn’t fade right away. It lingers, swallowing everything—sky, earth, the Hunters themselves—until there’s nothing left but white. For a long, endless moment, it feels like everything has been erased. Then, slowly, the blinding light begins to thin. Shadows creep back in, shapes reform as the world bleeds into view again, but it isn’t the same as before. The air is still, eerily quiet. No demons remain—only drifting motes of red, scattered like ash, rising into the sky until they vanish.

Rumi’s gaze follows the red ashes of the demons up and up, until she sees it: high above, hanging from the rift he tore open in the sky, is what’s left of Gwi-ma. His body dangles limp, his ghoulish skin charred, smoke curling off his ruined frame. His face is almost entirely melted off its skull, his eerie eyes bulging out of their sockets but still fixed on Rumi the entire time. She catches the way his jaw moves like he’s trying to speak, to force words out… but nothing comes. Not anymore. Only a rasp, too faint to carry. And then even that is gone, his form unraveling into red smoke that coils once, then disperses into nothing. As his body disappears, the rift overhead shudders, edges folding in on themselves and snapping shut with a sound like a dying breath. The sky is sealed shut again. Whole again.

“Is it over?” Zoey asks, her voice almost distant in Rumi’s ringing ear. “I-Is it really—”

It hits Rumi a second too late that they’re all alive.

Her sword drops to the ground with a thud as Rumi whips around and throws herself into Mira and Zoey’s arms. They hold each other like they’ll never let go, never again, and Rumi is just so relieved she could cry. When she pulls away from them, it’s only to throw herself into the arms of Celine—hers and Miyeong’s, but the distinction doesn’t really matter, not when these are the arms that held her close as a child. She collapses into Poppy’s arms too, her strong arms locking around her and grounding her, keeping her steady as she says, “You did good, Rumi-ya.”

Finally, she turns to her mother. Rumi crashes into Miyeong’s embrace and holds on with everything she has left, fingers twisting into her clothes, afraid to ever let go again. Miyeong’s arms wrap around her just as fiercely, and she presses her lips into Rumi’s hair. This time, Rumi does cry.

“It’s over now,” she tells Rumi, accompanied by another kiss as Rumi sobs in her arms. “It’s over now, Rumi.”

Rumi wishes she could just stay in this moment forever, stay in her mother’s arms forever—but then, out of nowhere, the ground quakes. Instinctively, she turns to the rift they’d opened and then left open while they were busy dealing with Gwi-ma.

“You have to go now,” Miyeong tells her urgently.

Rumi blinks through her tears, shaking her head. “But we—we defeated him. Maybe… Maybe that means—”

“No,” Celine says, steady and grim. “This reality is already unraveling. It won’t be safe to stay here any longer than you already have. You have to go now, Rumi.”

Rumi is going to start arguing with them again, going to be stubborn about it again—she just defeated Gwi-ma, why can’t she fix this too?—but the ground lurches, harder this time, and it nearly knocks her off her feet. The air splits with a sound like glass fracturing, the horizon rippling. Her breath catches as she sees it: the edges of their worlds glitching, colliding with each other, jagged seams tearing open where sky bleeds into sky, earth bleeds into earth.

Miyeong holds Rumi’s shoulders, steadying her. “Rumi, look at me.”

Rumi forces herself to look Miyeong in the eye, even if all she wants to do is cry.

“We can’t keep the rift open like this for much longer,” she tells Rumi, voice low and firm. “If it stays open, both our realities might collapse. We didn’t come all the way here just for that to happen.” She squeezes Rumi’s shoulders. Says, pointedly, “Do you understand, Rumi?”

The weight of it crashes down on Rumi. She wants to argue, to scream—but she knows her mother is right. So, in the end, all she can do is nod.

“I understand,” she answers hoarsely.

Miyeong’s expression softens. “Well,” she says, smiling sadly as she tucks a stray hand of Rumi’s hair behind her ear, “I guess goodbyes are in order.”

They don’t have the luxury of time on their hands, not anymore, so they make the most of what little time they do have to hug it all out. Mira and Zoey give Miyeong and Celine each a hug, and Zoey says, “Thanks, by the way—for, you know, feeding us while we were here,” sheepishly to Celine, who just smiles at her like she’s the one grateful for the responsibility of keeping three reality-hopping brats full and happy.

Poppy hovers awkwardly before Miyeong says, “Come here, you,” and pulls her into a hug with Celine. When they pull back, Miyeong clutches both of Poppy’s hands and looks at her long and hard. She looks sad and happy, all at once. “At least we got to see you again,” she says softly, “even if it was only for a little while.”

Poppy’s mouth twists, but she nods, her eyes wet. “At least we got to see you again too, Miyeongie.”

At this, Miyeong turns to the other Celine—Rumi’s, and Poppy’s. She’d been standing a safe distance from her counterpart here and from Miyeong, almost like she’s afraid to come close again. Rumi can understand why: it’s clear from the way she’s trying so hard to keep it together even as her face crumples with all of her longing and her grief, made anew. She knows it would be everything, to talk to Miyeong again and to hold her in her arms again, but it would also be cruel, just cruel, because she has to let her go not even a heartbeat after finally getting her back.

She flinches, almost looks like she wants to run away, when Miyeong approaches her. But as soon as Miyeong stops in front of her and lifts a hand to touch her face, she freezes—and then all of the fight leaves her body. She melts into Miyeong’s touch as Miyeong caresses her face, mapping out the laugh wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the fine lines around her mouth. Then, she reaches up, thumb brushing across the streak of grey in Celine’s hair. A wistful smile touches her lips.

“The grey is a good look on you,” she tells Celine, and then she turns to her Celine, who huffs softly.

Rumi’s Celine makes a rough noise in the back of her throat.

“I’ve spent my whole life missing you,” she tells Miyeong, so tender and so honest that it makes Rumi feel like she should look away, like she should give this to Celine and Celine alone, but she couldn’t if she tried. There’s something to the way that Celine looks at Miyeong that just floors Rumi. She’s never seen her Celine look at anyone like that, and in that moment, she sees echoes of the younger Celine, the one from this reality, in her. The person she once was, and the person she still might have been had she never lost Miyeong. “And now… Now you’re here again, standing in front of me like I never—” Her breath hitches. “Like I never lost you… But…”

Celine purses her lips, then just shakes her head. She can’t get herself to say it.

She doesn’t need to; Miyeong understands. She holds Celine’s face in her hands again and tells her, “You’ll always have me,” her gaze flicking to Rumi.

Celine’s face does something complicated. Then, softly, all she can say is, “I know.”

Mira, Zoey, the blue tiger and the magpie step through the rift first, followed by Poppy, and then Celine. Rumi hangs back, lingering at the edges of their realities like she’s second-guessing herself. Miyeong gives her this look, stern but tender all at once, and tells her, “Go now, Rumi.”

“I know,” Rumi says, sheepish, on the verge of collapsing into tears again, “It’s just…”

“I know,” this reality’s Celine murmurs, expression softening too.

For a moment, no one says anything, even as the world around them unravels. Then, Miyeong looks up at Rumi again to say, “I meant every word of it, Rumi. I’m glad we found each other, across realities and across time. I… I honestly never imagined what it would be like, to just… settle down, start a family… Have kids. But you’re everything I could have ever wanted in a daughter, I know that much for sure. I just wish we could have had more time together but…” She smiles, lopsided. “I guess our luck ran out.”

Blinking through the tears, Rumi throws herself into her mother’s arms one last time. Miyeong holds her close, breathing her in, and Rumi does the same, her tears hot against Miyeong’s neck.

She throws her arms around Celine too, burying her face in her shoulder. “Thank you.”

Celine breathes in sharply, like she’s going to cry too, but she just wraps her arms around Rumi instead. Her daughter in another life—the daughter she would never have here. She just holds Rumi close for a while, holds onto the life she’s gotten a glimpse of, and then murmurs, “I’m sorry for keeping it all from you, Rumi. I… I didn’t know what else to do, and I didn’t want to ruin the one thing we could still get right.”

Rumi sniffles as she pulls back. “I know,” she tells Celine, even as it hurts, “and I understand.”

Celine takes Rumi’s face into her hands, gazing at her fiercely, then looks over Rumi’s shoulder at herself, the her from Rumi’s reality, and tells her, “Take care of her.”

Celine—Rumi’s—stares back at her, a little stunned, then she nods, solemn.

Finally, they let Rumi go. She can’t speak through her tears, so all she can do is give Miyeong and Celine one last smile before she steps across the rift. She knows she shouldn’t look back, that it’ll only make everything hurt so much more… but she can’t help it. She throws a glance at Miyeong over her shoulder and catches a final glimpse of her mother, framed by the dying light of her unraveling world, unmoving, unspeaking, only holding Rumi’s gaze across the divide with a soft, unshakable smile, before the rift seals shut behind her with a shudder, folding in on itself, leaving only silence.

Chapter Text

The last thing that Rumi remembers is the look on Miyeong’s face as the rift snapped shut behind her, folding in on itself with this kind of relief, like the universe itself had been exhausted being forced and then kept wide open for as long as it was. She remembers stumbling forward, only a few small, shaky steps, before her knees buckled and the weight of everything—grief, exhaustion—crushed down on her. She remembers the voices that cut through the haze. Mira and Zoey, and then Celine, and Poppy: all of them calling for her, rushing towards her, and then someone, or maybe all of them, trying to pull her back into consciousness, to get her to answer them, just Rumi Rumi Rumi coming from every direction, all around her, but she was slipping already, drifting further and further away, and then—

Silence.

Darkness.

When Rumi opens her eyes again, the first thing she sees is white.

So much white that it blinds her for a moment. So much white that it makes her think she’s somehow been transported back to that other reality, in the thick of battle against Gwi-ma, wielding the sun itself again in her hands. But then she blinks and realizes it’s just the ceiling above her, smooth and familiar. Too familiar, even. Her head feels foggy, her body heavy, and it takes a few breaths before she understands: this is her room. Her childhood room.

She doesn’t move right away. She lies still, waiting for the weight in her chest to ease, for the blur in her vision to settle. When she finally turns her head to the left, she finds Mira asleep and slumped forward against the edge of the bed, her face half-buried in her folded arms, one hand loosely curled around Rumi’s wrist. She turns her head the other way and finds Zoey there too, mirroring Mira. They’re both holding onto her like they mean to anchor her to this reality again.

Rumi lets her gaze drift down, to the foot of the bed, and finds the blue tiger and the magpie that’s always perched on top of the tiger’s head watching her. The tiger blinks his big yellow eyes up at her, then before she can stop him, he leaps into bed and on top of her, crushing her under his weight. Rumi tries to push the tiger off, but she can barely lift a finger right now, not with how weak she is, so all she can do is groan as the tiger happily purrs at her, kneading her stomach with his paws. The magpie squawks at her, as if to say, Welcome back to the land of the living.

The commotion stirs Mira awake. She lifts her head to sleepily squint at the tiger, and then up at Rumi, and it takes a few more seconds before Mira’s brain catches up to her eyes, and she gasps, wide-eyed now, “Rumi!” That jolts Zoey awake, and then she’s gawking at Rumi too like she can’t believe she’s awake, and then the very next second they’re both climbing into bed to throw themselves at her just like the tiger did.

Mira’s arms are around her first, holding her so tightly it almost hurts, her voice breaking as she says, “You’re awake—you’re really awake—” over and over again like she’s afraid Rumi will disappear if she stops. Zoey squeezes in on the other side, clutching Rumi’s hand to her chest, whispering, “Don’t scare us like that again, you idiot,” even as her eyes brim with tears. Rumi wants to laugh, wants to tell them she’s fine, but all that comes out is a choked little sound as she buries her face against them both.

The tiger wedges his massive head against the three of them with a disgruntled huff until Mira and Zoey laugh through their tears and make room for him, petting his fur. He purrs louder, satisfied, while the magpie flutters down to perch on the bedframe above them, watching over their tangled little pile.

No one says anything for a while. They just hold on to each other as hard as they can—or, at least, as hard as Rumi can manage before her body starts screaming in protest. Rumi squeezes her eyes shut against the tremendous amount of feeling swelling up inside her, steadying herself against the way she feels like she’s being pulled every which way, towards intoxicating elation on one end and towards overwhelming, suffocating dread on the other.

Her eyes only flutter open again when she feels Mira cup her face in her hand to pull her in for a kiss, desperate and grateful, and then Zoey’s lips are on hers too, mumbling something Rumi doesn’t quite catch against her mouth before she pulls away. Maybe it doesn’t matter that she didn’t hear it when she can feel it deep in her bones instead. I love you.

“How long was I out?” Rumi croaks out. Even moving her mouth feels weird.

“Three days,” Zoey answers, pouting a little.

Well, that explains why Rumi feels like total shit, on top of generally feeling like she’d just been run over. She tries to sit up on her own, but it’s like she’s lost control of her entire body or something, where her brain is yelling MOVE but her limbs just won’t listen. Mira and Zoey swoop in to help her, gently maneuvering her so she’s perched up against the headboard now.

“Take it easy,” Mira tells her softly.

“Yeah, Rumi,” Zoey says, placing her hand on Rumi’s chest, right over where her heart is. She knows Zoey doesn’t mean anything by it, that all it is is a simple reminder, that’s all, but Rumi’s stomach twists itself into tight, uncomfortable knots when Zoey says, “It’s over now.”

And it is—Rumi knows that. Her mother had said as much, before they had to rush through their goodbyes and leave that reality, that entire world, behind.

It’s over now, Rumi.

Rumi doesn’t have to force herself out of bed, doesn’t have to rush anywhere, because the world’s already ended. Not hers, no, but an entire world out there, on the other side of the shinmok—a world that’s now lost to her forever, if the Celine and Miyeong of that reality were right about it being doomed from the start because she never existed in it. Gwi-ma is gone now, along with that world and her mother.

She has nowhere to be now, nothing left to do or to prove.

It’s over now.

And yet… Rumi feels none of the relief she should be feeling. She knows she should be happy too that it’s all over, and that they’ve finally defeated Gwi-ma, and that, most of all, they’re all still here, alive—and she is, of course she is, but she doesn’t feel the least bit triumphant right now. All she feels where all of the relief and joy should be is a dull ache that borders on emptiness.

“Rumi?” Zoey says, brows furrowed in concern.

“It’s nothing,” Rumi answers maybe a little too quickly, “it’s just—” As if on cue, her stomach rumbles, like her body still remembers how to function after all, or at least it remembers how to still be hungry despite everything. Not one to waste the convenient excuse she’s been given, she tells Mira and Zoey, “I’m just really, really hungry, that’s all. I’m starving.”

She catches the look Mira and Zoey share, totally unconvinced, but to her they nod and then help her get out of bed, one weak, small step at a time.

They carry her all the way to the kitchen with the tiger trailing behind them like he’s ready to catch Rumi if she ends up collapsing from exhaustion again. It’s strange to walk these halls, familiar from all of the years she spent here before moving to Seoul and yet, now, feels somehow so unfamiliar too, somehow wrong, after everything they’ve been through the last few days.

When they round the corner into the kitchen, Rumi finds Celine standing over the stove, stirring a pot. It’s almost like she can sense Rumi standing there and staring at her because she turns around—and Rumi freezes.

It’s Celine but younger, not a hint of grey in her hair or even the faintest of lines around her eyes and mouth. No weight of the past twenty or so years she’s had to live without Miyeong pressing down on her. It’s the face of the Celine she had to leave behind on the other side of the rift, somehow impossibly alive here.

Rumi’s vision swims. She blinks hard once, twice, and suddenly it’s not that Celine anymore at all—it’s her Celine now. Older, wearier. The woman who raised her.

For a moment, Rumi’s knees threaten to give out. The kitchen tilts, doubles, steadies. She presses her hand against the wall, breath catching as the disorientation ebbs.

“Rumi,” comes Mira’s voice, wrapping an arm around Rumi’s waist to steady her, “hey.”

In a few quick strides Celine is at her side too. She takes Rumi’s face into her hands, tilting her head up so she can observe her, make sure she’s okay. “Rumi,” she says, voice steady but urgent, “what’s wrong?”

“I-I’m fine,” Rumi insists, even if she does so weakly. “I… just got dizzy for a second there.”

Celine is giving her one of those looks that says she doesn't believe a word of that, or that she suspects there’s more to it than Rumi is letting on, but she doesn’t push the matter for now. All she says is, “Go take a seat,” her tone gentling a little, “before you have another dizzy spell.”

Mira and Zoey waste no time guiding Rumi into the nearest chair. “Where’s Poppy?” Rumi asks, accepting the glass of water Zoey hands her with a small smile and a murmured thanks. “Is she still here?”

“She went into town to pick some things up,” Celine answers as she walks back to the stove. She checks whatever it is she’d been cooking before the three of them arrived—her signature beef stew, one of Rumi’s favorites, if Rumi had to guess just from the smell of it alone—and then turns down the fire.

Rumi chugs half the glass of water down in one go, almost choking on it, but she can’t help it. She didn’t even realize how dehydrated she was until her first sip of water in apparently three whole days.

“Celine—”

“Save it for later,” Celine interjects, with her back to Rumi again. A beat passes, then another, then she turns ever so slightly to look at Rumi when she says, expression softening, “Just rest first, Rumi. We can talk after lunch.”

Rumi swallows hard. She feels tender inside-out, like a bruise—but she nods at Celine, unable to speak around the tightness in her throat.

Poppy gets back just as Celine finishes preparing lunch. She throws herself at Rumi the second she steps into the kitchen. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she says as she bear-hugs Rumi, pressing relieved kisses into Rumi’s hair. “You gave us a scare, you know, fainting like that.”

Rumi laughs sheepishly. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

Poppy sets the bag she’s carrying down on the counter, the tops of green onions poking out, along with a few other bundles of fresh produce. She busies herself unpacking quickly—eggs, a bundle of greens, some fruit—before Celine waves her over with a gentle but firm, “Sit. That can wait.”

Celine ladles steaming stew into bowls, the rich, savory smell filling the kitchen. She serves Rumi first, and only once Rumi’s is settled does she portion out the rest, handing bowls to Zoey, Mira, and finally Poppy before taking one for herself. They gather around the table, the tiger curling up beneath Rumi’s chair like a guard, the magpie hopping onto Mira’s shoulder to peer down at her food. She clicks her tongue at it like she’s annoyed but she doesn’t actually shoo it away.

After setting her own bowl down, Celine grabs another much older one from the cupboard and ladles in some of the rice and brothier bits of the stew, then she sets it down on the floor by the tiger with a simple, “Here.”

Rumi stares at her. “You don’t have to feed him.”

Celine cocks a brow back at Rumi. “You don’t feed him?” she counters, sounding more affronted at the thought of Rumi not feeding the tiger than she apparently is about having another mouth to feed.

“I—” Rumi blushes, embarrassed and half-defensive. “I mean, I-I didn’t know I had to.”

She’s tried to offer the tiger water in the past but he never seemed particularly interested in it. And anyway, he’s a magic tiger. Why would anyone need to feed a magic tiger? Isn’t all that, like—magic enough to live off of?

But then Celine gives her one of those long, level looks and all Rumi can do is grumble, “Fine, whatever.”

The tiger nudges his massive head against Celine’s leg with a low, contented rumble and Celine absently scratches between his ears. Rumi wonders just how much she missed these past three days or even beyond that, really, if Celine is apparently totally okay with having a magical tiger and his little magical bird companion freeloading off of her—but alongside that is an ache she has to tamp down, and she shovels more rice and stew into her mouth before she says something she might regret or might just make them worry even more about her.

For a while, they eat in relatively companionable silence. Or it’s mostly silent anyway, apart from the loud slurps coming from the tiger, who seems to be thoroughly enjoying his meal. The magpie squawks here and there too, sounding equally as pleased.

It should be comforting, but to Rumi it feels… strange. Surreal, even, with how quickly things have snapped back to this: to lunch around the table—to normal. Like she didn’t just spend the past few days in another reality, another world and another life, with her mother and a version of Celine who would never come to know the grief that this Celine carries with her everywhere she goes. Like she didn’t just watch that other world unravel and vanish before her eyes. Like she wasn’t just forced to leave all of it and her mother behind to die.

It’s over now, and here they are, having lunch together like none of it ever happened.

After lunch, Rumi tries to offer to help clear out the dishes but everyone shoots her this look that pins her down to her seat. So, she sits back and watches as the others move about the kitchen busily, piling the dishes in the sink or setting aside whatever they didn’t finish now in tupperwares that then join the other tupperwares of leftovers in the fridge. The tiger stays by her side through it all, grooming himself as the magpie takes a post-lunch nap on his head or something.

They all join her at the table again once all of the dishes have been dealt with. Poppy pours the tea, handing each of them a cup before sitting down too.

“So,” she heaves out as she occupies the chair beside Celine’s, “I guess we’ve got some catching up to do, huh? Mira and Zoey already filled us in on the basics, but…”

Rumi, Mira and Zoey look at each other, then Rumi takes one for the team and asks, “What happened while we were away?” A beat. “How long were we away?”

This time, it’s Celine and Poppy who exchange weary glances. Celine doesn’t seem to be in much of a mood to talk just yet, though, because she lets Poppy answer for the both of them: “Would you believe me if I said that only barely a day passed while you were on the other side?”

“W-what?” Rumi turns to Mira and Zoey but judging by the looks on their faces, it seems like Poppy and Celine had filled them in on the basics too while she was out of commission.

Still, the dissonance makes her stomach lurch. How could time move so differently between their realities? How could they have lived through all of that over there, while over here just barely any time passed at all between their disappearance and their return?

…But maybe there’s no point wondering, in the end. It’s not like she’ll ever get the answers to those questions now, not with that other reality lost to them forever.

“I know,” Poppy tells Rumi sympathetically. “We couldn’t wrap our minds around it either when Mira and Zoey told us that much time passed for you over there. I mean, over here it was—it was just chaos.”

Poppy exhales, wrapping her hands around her cup of tea. “I knew something was wrong before they ever even reached us. I felt it in the air, and then next thing I knew, the sky was red, and my husband and kids—” She stops abruptly, face twisting in pain. “I watched the demons take their souls along with everyone else’s around us. They were… gone, just like that.”

She goes quiet again for a moment, knuckles white around the cup. “I knew I had to get here somehow, so I made my way to the docks first—but even then, it would take me half a day, give or take, to get here, assuming the demons decide to leave me alone long enough to even make the journey by boat. And anyway, all the people who could sail the boats had their souls sucked right out in front of me, so… Planes were out of the question too. I was starting to run out of options until…”

Her eyes flick to Celine, then back down into her tea.

Rumi’s eyes bounce back and forth between them. “Until?”

Poppy looks at her apologetically as she says, “Until I ran into Jinu.”

The silence that follows is heavy.

It feels like someone had just reached into Rumi’s chest and squeezed her heart to a pulp. Even the tiger and the magpie perk up at the mention of his name. Under the table, Rumi feels Mira and Zoey take her hands into theirs, squeezing gently.

“I was surrounded,” Poppy goes on, still treading carefully on Rumi’s account, “Obviously, they’d want to get rid of another pesky Hunter standing in their way, nevermind that I’ve been retired for almost as long as you three have been Hunters.” She sounds particularly annoyed about that, like it’s really just too much to ask to be left alone, in peace, in the perfectly quiet little bubble of a life she’s built back in Busan. “They almost had me too. I knew I couldn’t hold them off forever, not on my own. I knew that it probably wouldn’t be long before I—I joined my family. Things… would have gone very, very differently if Jinu hadn’t stepped in and rescued me.

“Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. What was a demon doing helping a Hunter? I thought I was seriously just imagining things until he started fighting and taking down his own kind. Still, I couldn’t trust him—not yet, anyway—and, well, you can imagine we had some misunderstanding… until he mentioned you, Rumi. If I wasn’t confused enough as is, then that really threw me for a loop. He knew your name, and he told me what happened, how Gwi-ma just—disappeared you three, and that’s how they were able to take down the Honmoon entirely and work their way through the country like an all-you-can-eat buffet in only a matter of hours. He… he asked me to help, and I didn’t even know what he expected me to be able to do, exactly, but…”

She turns to Celine, who’s been quiet and stone-faced the entire time, again. “That’s when I decided to give him a chance—and he’s how I managed to get here. Let me tell you,” she says, more jokey now, “seasickness is nothing to demon-teleportation-induced nausea.”

This time, Poppy looks relieved when that manages to crack a small but still very sad smile out of Rumi.

“After that, we filled Celine in on what had happened, and how we ended up here together,” Poppy says, turning to Celine again, only this time she’s batting her lashes at her insistently like please do the talking now.

Celine grimaces at her but relents with a long-suffering sigh. She takes a sip of her tea first, then after taking a moment to gather her thoughts, says, “I didn’t believe him either at first when he told me what happened to the three of you. Alternate realities, other worlds… It all seemed too far-fetched. I had no reason to believe even just the possibility of any of that until Poppy showed up here with a demon in tow—a demon claiming to know you, Rumi, no less, and claiming he wanted to help you. It was obvious enough that we had to get you three back somehow, but…” She purses her lips. “We didn’t have days to figure out what happened or how it happened, and what we could actually do to access this other reality Gwi-ma had thrown you into. We only had a matter of hours on our hands, but even that was cut short by Gwi-ma’s arrival on this island.”

Smiling wryly now, she says, “I’m sure you can imagine our surprise when the fabric of reality itself tore open right in front of our eyes… and on the other side, there was you.”

Rumi mulls over that for a second, then she asks, “Do you think he was targeting the shinmok, specifically?” If it’s the marker for the border between your reality and ours, the point where everything meets, as her mother had described it, then it would make sense for Gwi-ma to want to get rid of it and sever the connection between their realities entirely.

Celine seems to be thinking the same thing because she answers, “It seemed like he was.”

“I guess we got lucky,” Poppy sighs, “holding him and his demons off long enough to prevent him from actually cutting it down. Long enough for you three to actually get that rift open.”

“But he got lucky too, didn’t he?” Mira murmurs, frowning. “If we hadn’t been able to stop him, we would have handed him a two-for-one deal for our realities.”

“Two realities, one stone,” Zoey says grimly.

Rumi recalls all of it vividly. The way their realities had started bleeding into each other, everything around them glitching like they were in some sort of computer simulation or something. It was as Celine—the other Celine—had explained: the boundary between their worlds had thinned out so much that it allowed them to rip through the fabric of reality itself. Had they kept that rift open any longer, though, and had everything gone absolutely and totally wrong, and if Rumi didn’t turn out to be what they kept saying she was—

“How did you know you could do that?” Celine asks. She’s looking straight at Rumi.

Rumi blinks, pulled out of her rapidly spiraling thoughts, then looks up at Celine. “Do… what?”

Celine has to stop to give that some thought too. “Everything,” she says in the end, “I suppose. How did you know you could do all that?”

“I didn’t,” Rumi answers candidly, as well as somewhat sheepishly. But then Celine gives her one of those looks, the kind that says that’s really not going to cut it, so she scrambles for an even better explanation. “I-I mean, Mira and Zoey were the ones who figured out the—the soul stuff, right, but… everything else… Celine—the other Celine—and Mom, they were the ones who put it all together.”

No one says anything for a while. They left that reality, left those versions of Celine and Miyeong, behind—not by choice, never by choice—but their presence is somehow palpable now in the room. Real and undeniable, as if their ghosts had followed them back here.

In the end, it’s Poppy who breaks that fragile silence by saying, “To be honest, I really didn’t want to ask, but… What happened over there, in that other reality?” A beat, and Poppy swallows hard. “What happened to me?”

This conversation was bound to happen sooner or later. Rumi takes in a deep breath, steadying herself, then tells Poppy everything she knows and everything she’d been told about her counterpart’s death in the other reality. Inevitably, it hits Poppy hard, knowing she died saving Miyeong there—that she had to die there to balance out the scales of the universe, the great and cruel cosmic equation. Celine says nothing, but Rumi catches the way she clenches her jaw hard, almost like she’s biting down on all of the emotions she’s holding back.

“Then that’s when I found out that you—I mean she, the other Poppy—that’s when I found out she died on the same day I was born here.” Rumi shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “That’s what started it all. Mom and the other Celine started acting really weird after I told them that, and it turns out it was because they’d figured out that my nonexistence there meant the world was doomed from the start.”

It’s not just a coincidence, is what the other Celine had said. It meant something.

“The date, and even the sword,” she says, reflexively clenching her hand. “It all apparently meant something—something that I couldn’t see, but they did.”

Now that the dust has settled, Rumi does feel a little guilty about picking a fight with them about it. All she’d done was prove them right too, which somehow stings more than the fact they’d withheld something as massive as that from her. Still, the sting of betrayal aside, she wouldn’t have been able to get back and defeat Gwi-ma without them.

The entire sky in her hands, all this time… and she couldn’t see what they saw.

She still can’t.

“What about your family?” Rumi asks Poppy, trying to steer the ship that is this conversation into less depressing waters. “Are they okay now, at least?”

Poppy’s entire body relaxes at that. “Yeah, they’re alright. I went back for a bit while you were still out, just to see with my own eyes. It was a little hard booking a flight back to Busan and then back here on the same day given how the entire world was still in disarray at that point or something, but… They don’t really understand what happened, but they’re alive and they’re safe, and that’s all that really matters.”

Rumi smiles, relieved and glad for one bit of good news, at least. Celine, though, says, “You didn’t have to come back here, you know. You could have just stayed with your family.”

Celine doesn’t say it unkindly or bitterly, but guilt flickers over Poppy’s face all the same. Rumi decides to step in again before they all get swept under the years and years of whatever these two have left unsaid or, maybe, unsettled between them.

“I’m feeling a little woozy again,” Rumi says, which isn’t entirely a lie at least. “Is it okay if I just head back to my room and lie down for a bit?”

Celine’s expression softens. “Yes, go get some more rest,” she tells Rumi. “If you need anything—”

“I know,” Rumi says, putting on a smile. Mira and Zoey rush to help her up, flanking her on either side to steady her. The tiger gets up too, following closely behind them as they half-carry Rumi back to her room.

“Thanks,” she murmurs as they help her get settled and comfortable in bed. She leans back against the headboard and heaves a sigh.

“You okay?” Zoey asks, curling up beside Rumi.

The tiger hops in bed too, the mattress dipping under his weight. Mira scoffs as she takes up her spot on Rumi’s other side, so she’s sandwiched between her and Zoey.

Rumi wants to say she’s fine, if only to spare her another conversation she’s not entirely in the mood to partake in right now or ever, but it’s Mira and Zoey. She knows she doesn’t have to hide anything from them, and besides that, they’re the only two people in the entire world—this entire world, anyway—who can and will understand her.

So, she replies, “I don’t know, honestly.” Zoey squeezes her hand sympathetically.

“Hey,” Mira says gently, “I just wanted to say… I’m sorry about Jinu. I know how much you wanted to help him, and we promised you we would help you help him, but…” Her voice tapers off, and she presses her lips together. “For what it’s worth, he proved us wrong about him.”

Zoey nods. “He was there when it mattered the most. I think that counts for something.”

“And… I’m sorry about your mom, Rumi. We don’t have to talk about this now, if you aren’t ready or you just don’t want to, but… I’m sorry.”

“We love you,” Zoey tells her, tucking her chin over Rumi’s shoulder. Mira wraps her arms around them both and presses a kiss into Rumi’s hair.

Rumi binks back the tears she’s fighting desperately to hold in. Because she can’t trust herself to speak without breaking down completely, she purses her lips and nods instead. She knows they’ll understand, the same way she knows that they know, without a shadow of doubt, that she loves them back.

For a while, they just hold each other. Then:

“I guess this leaves them,” Mira says, gesturing towards the blue tiger and his magpie companion, “to us, huh.”

The tiger blinks up at them, and the magpie tilts its head.

“I’ve always wanted a pet tiger,” Zoey says so sincerely it makes both Rumi and Mira laugh. She laughs too.

“Yeah,” Rumi says softly, settling back into their warmth for now even as her heart still aches, “I guess they’re with us now.”

It takes Rumi another three days before she regains enough strength that she doesn’t need Mira and Zoey lugging her around the house anymore. In those two days, Celine stuffs Rumi full of food every chance she gets. It’s like she’s gotten it into her head that if she just feeds Rumi enough, she’ll be okay. She always makes sure to give Rumi the biggest, heaping servings of everything she cooks, and everything she cooks is everything Rumi loves from her childhood spent here with Celine. She doesn’t even give Rumi room to breathe because the second she clears her plate, Celine is already piling more food on it again. At one point, she presses this bowl of dark, earthy broth that tastes more like medicine than food into Rumi’s hands and watches her like a hawk to make sure she drinks every last drop of it. Tea follows every meal, fragrant with ginger or jujube, meant to soothe and restore. It’s relentless, the way she tends to her, like she thinks keeping her full is the same thing as keeping her safe.

Celine’s logic isn’t even entirely flawed, but Rumi has to wonder how much of her relentless care is motivated by the other Celine’s parting words to her.

Rumi gets it. It’s much easier to make her chug down the most god-awful medicinal broth known to mankind than it is to just talk, which—apart from nagging at Rumi to eat, eat, eat—she actually hasn’t done much at all since they all got back here. Sometimes Rumi finds herself feeling frustrated at that, and then she swiftly feels bad about feeling frustrated at all because she gets it, of course she does. She knows she isn’t the only one here who lost Miyeong—twice. She knows she isn’t the only one here hurting.

Still, she wishes Celine would stop avoiding her. She can keep cooking all of Rumi’s favorite dishes and keep scolding Rumi for trying to walk around the house without Mira or Zoey or just anyone to make sure she doesn’t collapse again and keep hovering nearby and keep finding excuses to fuss over Rumi, but Rumi knows Celine is avoiding her. Avoiding actually talking to her by putting everything she’s got left into taking care of her, just like she promised herself, her other self, she would.

It’s on the fourth day of Rumi’s recovery that Poppy tells them she’s heading back home already. She tells them over breakfast, around a mouthful of rice and fish. “I booked a ticket already, for tomorrow.” Then, she just shovels more food into her mouth.

No one says anything. What is there to say, anyway? It’s not like they can ask her to just stay here forever, not when her family’s waiting for her back in Busan—back where she belongs. Despite that, Rumi is sad to know she’s leaving. Poppy seldom visited her and Celine when Rumi was younger, having a life and family of her own now to keep her busy in spades; this is the longest she’s ever stayed and the longest they’ve ever been around each other, like, ever. Even in a few short days she’s already gotten used to Poppy’s presence, enough to actually start missing her before she’s even left.

Later, after lunch, Celine announces she’s heading into town for a supply run. “Mira, Zoey—I’d appreciate it if you came with me. I could use the help with all of the bags.”

After being cooped up in the house for almost an entire week, both Mira and Zoey eagerly agree. It’s not lost on Rumi, though, that Celine purposely left her out. “I can help too,” she says, trying not to sound too stubborn or annoyed about it so Celine might actually consider letting her come too.

But Celine just gives her this look, not exactly chastising, but still leaving no room for argument. She’s already decided and there’s no changing her mind. There never usually is, Rumi knows that, but now more than ever it irritates her.

“Next time,” Celine tells her as gently as possible, like she’s trying to avoid getting into an argument with Rumi over this too.

Rumi works her jaw, tempted to still pick a fight with Celine over it anyway, but then she catches the way Mira and Zoey are looking at her, concerned and wary and begging her with their eyes not to use up what little energy she’s regained on this, so she backs down in the end. She heaves a sigh, swallowing down the bitter taste in her mouth, and nods.

Poppy watches this all go down quietly before she turns her attention back to the dishes that still need washing.

Even if she’s still seething, Rumi sees off Mira and Zoey all the same. They each give her a kiss on the cheek before they leave, which Celine catches, obviously, but she hardly reacts at all to the little display of affection between them. She just walks past them and into the car, sliding in the driver’s seat wordlessly. Rumi stands there and watches as the car rolls out of the driveway, Zoey waving goodbye to her in the backseat. She raises a hand in weak acknowledgement and then lets her hand drop and swing back down to her side.

She feels something bump against her leg, and turns to find the tiger beside her, blinking up at her with those big yellow eyes. The magpie squawks at her and she sighs. She scratches the tiger behind the ear and says, “Come on.” They head back inside the house together.

She drifts down the hall without thinking, her feet carrying her toward her own room out of habit—because what else is there to do here except collapse into bed again? But halfway there she slows down into a full stop, glancing back to where the guest room is, then after a few seconds of deliberation she turns around and heads that way, towards the guest room, instead. The tiger follows behind her without question.

The door to the guest room’s been left halfway open. Rumi stops in front of it, hesitating. For a second, her mind slips again. This had been, temporarily, Mira’s, Zoey’s, and her room in the other reality, and her room had been Poppy’s. But back here, everything is flipped, reversed, and she feels that same odd vertigo she’d felt when she looked at Celine and thought she was looking at the other reality’s Celine instead of her own. It’s just another reminder of everything she had to leave behind, everything she couldn’t save, and of how both realities keep bleeding into each other no matter how badly she wants to tell herself she’s back where she belongs.

“Rumi?”

Rumi blinks, coming back to herself, and then finds Poppy watching her from inside the guest room. She can’t help the sudden rush of embarrassment that washes over her. Poppy, though, just smiles at her and tells her, “Come on in.” Then, turning to the tiger and the magpie, adds, “You two, as well.”

So, Rumi steps into the room. She walks around Poppy and settles into the narrow bed. It still feels a little strange being inside this room again after everything she’s been through—everything she’s survived, against all odds—but it’s also a little… comforting, being in this bed again. It had been a pain in the neck, literally or otherwise, to sleep in, and maybe it isn’t exactly the same bed as the one in the other reality, but it feels the same, and maybe that’s all that really matters. Maybe it’s enough that it makes her feel somehow still connected to that other reality.

The tiger tries to squeeze himself into bed with Rumi, but he’s just too big for it. Disgruntled, he curls up on the floor beside the bed instead. Poppy and Rumi chuckle softly.

For a while, neither of them say anything. Rumi just watches as Poppy packs her things into a duffel bag—at least a week’s worth of clothes, a scattering of toiletries: things Rumi assumes Poppy must have picked up on her quick trip back home. Everything she’d brought here, everything that made her feel present in this house and in their lives, reduced to a handful of items and tucked away neatly into this single duffel bag like it’s nothing.

It makes Rumi all the more aware of how Poppy’s presence was never going to ever be anything more than temporary. That never used to bother Rumi, not when she was a child and she would see Poppy only once in a blue moon, but she would always come bearing gifts for Rumi—toys, clothes, and lots and lots of sweets, to Celine’s dismay—and that was always made up for how rarely they saw each other. But even then, Rumi never particularly minded. She wonders if she’s really only sad to watch Poppy leave now because of everything she experienced in that other reality. Because Poppy is the only other connection she still has to her mother regardless of reality.

“She means well,” Poppy says suddenly, pulling Rumi out of her thoughts.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out she’s talking about Celine. Rumi shifts uncomfortably, caught off guard all the same. “I know,” she mumbles, and if she’s pouting a little, it’s not like she can help it.

Poppy just laughs softly at that. “Hey, I get it,” she tells Rumi. “I spent a good portion of my life around Celine too, so I know how she can get sometimes. And besides that, I have kids of my own now, and as much as I try not to be so overbearing with them too…” She shrugs, smiling in a way that’s both self-aware and a little self-depracating. “I understand where your frustration is coming from.”

Rumi doesn’t say anything right away. She chews on her lip, her gaze slipping to the tiger’s sleeping form on the floor and then back to Poppy again, weighing whether or not she should say anything at all. It would be so easy to just nod along and leave it at that, but Rumi finds the option a lot less enticing than she thought it would be. Mira and Zoey know she’s frustrated, but she hasn’t actually vented all that frustration out to anyone. In a way, it feels right to tell Poppy about it. She’s the only person left who can actually help Rumi navigate Celine.

“It’s not just that she keeps fussing over me and keeps acting like I’m suddenly breakable, or like I can’t do anything for myself anymore,” Rumi says at last, voice low. As complicated as her feelings are over her alleged greatness or destiny, she still can’t help but feel a little offended at being treated like she’s suddenly made of glass when she not only fought her way back to this reality, but she defeated Gwi-ma at his strongest too, all in a matter of days (or hours, if it’s this reality concerned). But it’s so much more than that. “I can feel her using all of that as this—this—convenient excuse to avoid talking to me. I know she means well, and I know she genuinely wants me to get better, but she always does that. Always throws herself into—something, anything at all, that she feels will be enough to fix things when all I need is—”

Her. All she needs is her. She chokes on it, though, unable to get herself to actually say it.

A heavy, almost awkward silence follows. Rumi starts thinking maybe she shouldn’t have said anything at all because that is a lot for anyone to process, and it hits her that she’s opening up to someone who she doesn’t actually even know all that well, for as much as Rumi thinks of her as family in that distant, vague sort of way—the cool, fun aunt who shows up every now and then and showers her with gifts, but whose life she doesn’t really know anything about, and whose kids she hasn’t even met.

She does the math in her head and realizes they would both be in university by now, and she’s seen pictures of them, knows their names, but she’s never met them. They aren’t real to her. In a way, Poppy isn’t really, either.

Yet here she is, bleeding her heart out to her expecting something out of her.

“Why did you stay?”

Rumi doesn’t ask it because she wants to pick a fight with her, or because she’s accusing her of anything. She just—needs to know.

Poppy goes still, her shirt still in her hands. After a few seconds, she proceeds with what she was already doing, folding it neatly and smoothing it with her palm before she places it into her duffel bag with the rest of her things. Only then does she speak, her voice even, almost too calm.

“Celine always says she understands why I left, and that she’s never resented me for it, but there’s always going to be a part of me that thinks she does. I don’t think she even means to, but… It can’t be helped, can it? Our friend died, and I left while she stayed here, with you.” She looks up at Rumi, gaze steady but sad, when she says, “I don’t regret the choice I made. After we lost your mother, all I wanted was to just… get away from it all, and to go back home, live a normal life. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take after what happened to Miyeong. But as much as that decision came from a place of pain, I’m happy with the life I’ve built. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“But…” Here, she sighs. It’s fascinating, watching all the years catch up to her in that very second. “You want to know something, Rumi? When I lost my family to the demons, I ran to Celine because I thought if anyone could fix this, if anyone could get them back, it was her. It’s always been her. It wasn’t just because I needed to know she was okay, or because I was driven by our pact as Hunters. I wasn’t being noble or brave. I was scared, and I didn’t know who else I could turn to—no one but her.”

A beat of silence again, then Poppy shakes her head, almost like she’s disappointed with herself.

“I haven’t been very fair to her,” she says softly. “I left when things got hard, but it’s still her that I turn to when things go wrong and I don’t know what to do. I’m still leaning on her the way I’ve always leaned on her, even if I probably don’t have the right to anymore.

“I know I haven’t done enough for her or for you,” Poppy says, looking directly at Rumi, “and I know that staying here with you now isn’t going to make up for all of the years I was building a life away from all of this, but… I had to try, Rumi. I don’t know how else I could live with myself.”

Her words settle like stones between them. For a while, Rumi is honestly just a little too stunned to speak. She’d always had an inkling, growing up, about whatever was always lingering underneath the surface between Celine and Poppy. She could always sense it whenever Poppy visited. She knew just enough to figure out why there always seemed to be some kind of tension between them—Poppy left after Miyeong died, and she’d always been too busy with her own family to visit, which was understandable enough—but to have Poppy actually tell her all of that…

It’s strange, but it isn’t until now that it really hits her.

Poppy lost Miyeong too.

Maybe it’s just because Poppy left all of this behind and built a life so far away from them, a life that Rumi was never part of, but it never dawned on her until now just how much of their loss is also Poppy’s. She never saw any of it, never lived inside it the way she did with Celine. To her, Miyeong’s absence had always been something shared between the two of them, just her and Celine. But now—now she feels it. Now she feels Poppy’s pain. Now it’s real to her too.

“For what it’s worth,” Rumi says, wrapping her arms around herself, “I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to… deal with all this. We’re… We’re all just trying to survive, you know? So, I don’t think Mom would have resented you for choosing to leave, and I don’t think Celine does either. I… I think she would have done the same, if she just had the choice.”

If she didn’t have me, is what Rumi really means to say. She doesn’t, but Poppy seems to pick up on it all the same because after a moment of thought, she tells Rumi, “She loves you, the same way she loved your mother. Fiercely, protectively—and sometimes it’s all just too much for her to bear, and she doesn’t always know what to do with all that love and, honestly, I get the impression she’s scared sometimes of just how much she loves the both of you, but… she loves you, Rumi. That much I can say for sure.”

Everything between Rumi and Celine feels so… tangled right now, messy and just so heavy, heavy with all of the things they can’t seem to be brave enough to talk about with each other just yet, but hearing Poppy put it that plainly almost undoes her. She presses her lips together, forces herself to swallow it all down, and only manages a small nod.

Later that night, over dinner of rice and a steaming pot of doenjang jjigae with some beef thrown in for the extra bit of protein, the rich scent of soybean paste and garlic filling the room, conversations drifts easily between Mira, Zoey, and Poppy, who’s almost unnervingly in good spirits, laughing and chiming in like the heavy conversation she’d had with Rumi earlier had never happened at all. Rumi knows better, though. She can see it in the way Poppy’s smile lingers a little too long, in the way her eyes slide toward Celine every now and again. She’s still thinking about it—and so is Rumi.

But Rumi just keeps her head down and lets the warmth of the stew settle in her chest. When her bowl is empty, she doesn’t wait for Celine to ladle more stew into it like Rumi’s life depends on it. No, this time, she holds it out toward Celine quietly. And, for a second, Celine just blinks at her, caught off guard by being asked rather than being expected to just give, as if she isn’t sure she’s seeing right. Then, slowly, she picks the ladle up and fills Rumi’s bowl again, careful not to spill or waste any of the precious food that could go into making Rumi better again, whole again, and maybe they both know some stew—no matter how delicious or expertly crafted it is—is going to ever actually be enough to achieve that, but Rumi knows Celine is trying for her too in her own complicated and honestly frustrating way, and maybe they’re still far off from where they need to be and from what Rumi wants and needs from her, but for now, she sets the bowl back down in front of Rumi without a word, and Rumi murmurs thank you under her breath and keeps her head down and eats.

Rumi feels someone staring at her, though, so she angles her face towards the direction of that stare. She finds Poppy watching her quietly, and when their eyes meet, she only offers her a small smile before letting herself be pulled back into conversation with Mira and Zoey.

They all see Poppy off the next morning. Celine’s already waiting in the car, engine idling, but Poppy takes her time doling out hugs. She gives Mira and Zoey a big hug each, murmuring something to each of them that makes them smile, and she even gives the tiger and the magpie a big hug before she finally turns to Rumi. She holds her especially hard and especially long, and when she finally pulls back, Rumi tells her, working around the tightness in her throat, “Thank you for staying. I… I know you could have gone back to your family already, but… It meant a lot, having you here.”

Touched but not entirely eased, Poppy squeezes Rumi’s shoulders and says, “Thank you too,” sounding like she’s still got more that she wants to say, but she doesn’t know how to say them. So, she leaves it at that, like she’s trusting Rumi to understand. Then, with a small smile, she adds, “When you’re feeling better, and if you ever find yourself in Busan, I’d really love for you to finally meet my kids. To be honest, they always ask about you and complain about how Mom knows the Rumi of HUNTR/X but never introduced them to her. I’ll warn you now: I think they’re seriously just trying to brag to their friends, so don’t be surprised if they try to stage an impromptu meet-and-greet with you.”

Rumi laughs warmly and says, “I’d love that, impromptu meet-and-greet and all.”

Poppy pulls her into a hug again and presses a kiss into her hair. “Take care, Rumi-ya,” she says softly against her ear, and then she’s gone, climbing into the car with Celine. Rumi lingers where she stands, watching the SUV fade out of sight, then she follows Mira and Zoey back into the house.

The house is especially quiet without Poppy around anymore. Now that it’s just the four of them, Mira and Zoey try to make up for all of the warmth Poppy took with her when she left, but with how Celine only retreats further into herself, Rumi finds herself doing that too without really meaning to, retreating into her own thoughts, into that same silence.

If there’s a silver lining to be found, it’s that Rumi does feel herself getting better with each day that passes—physically, at least. All of the stews and medicinal broths that Celine’s been practically force-feeding her have been effective in fixing what’s wrong with her physically, as much as Rumi kind of hates to admit it, but it’s… It’s everything else that she feels is still—wrong. It’s what’s up there in her head that she can’t seem to get sorted.

She’ll look at Celine across the table and, for half a second, it’s the other one—the younger Celine, the one from the other reality—she sees instead, and then she blinks and it’s her Celine again, like that—glitch never happened. Or, she’ll be standing in the kitchen and she swears Miyeong is there, right beside her, close enough that she feels the phantom of her brush against her skin, and she’ll whip around looking for her even though she knows she won’t be there, knows it like breathing air, but she has to—she just has to—and then she’s all alone again. It happens more often than she’d like, these little slips that leave her rattled, like some part of her mind is still stuck in that other reality and refuses to come back to her no matter how much she tries to ground herself here. Rumi always tries to cover it with some excuse—she was just spacing out, or she was just distracted, or she was just thinking too hard about something—but the cracks show, and the more she tries to play it off, the more obvious that something is wrong with her.

The others have noticed, of course. How could they not, when she’ll just freeze up in the middle of the kitchen or the hallway like her entire existence has glitched out of this reality. Celine doesn’t say anything about it, but it starts to bother Mira and Zoey enough that one evening in her room, after dinner, they pretty much back her into a corner and finally make her explain just what the hell is happening to her.

“It’s… complicated,” Rumi murmurs, aware of how lame that must sound.

Just as she expected, though, Mira and Zoey don’t let her off the hook so easily.

“We were stuck in an alternate reality together, Rumi,” Mira reminds her, patient but firm. “I think we might know a thing or two about ‘complicated’.”

“Yeah, Rumi,” Zoey nods. She takes one of Rumi’s hands and squeezes it. “Just tell us. Whatever this is… We’re worried about you, and maybe we might not understand right away, but I don’t know how we can help you if we don’t know what the problem is in the first place.”

As much as Rumi doesn’t want to talk about whatever this is, it’s impossible not to give in with Mira and Zoey looking at her like that, pleading and almost desperate to just help her in any way they can, even if they may never understand. She lets out a shaky breath, says, “Alright,” and tries her best to explain it to them.

By the time she’s out of breath from rushing and stumbling over her words trying to make them understand just what the hell is going on with her brain right now, something that she barely understands herself, the expressions on Mira and Zoey’s faces shift to one of confused concern. They were plenty concerned before Rumi tried to make sense of it for them, but it seems that explaining has only made it less clear and only made Rumi look more out of her mind.

Then again, maybe that isn’t an entirely inaccurate way to look at it. She does feel like it—feels out of her mind, in more ways than one.

“Is there anything in particular that triggers it?” Zoey asks, lost but still determined to be there for Rumi.

“Not really, as far as I can tell,” Rumi answers, feeling bad about how little she can actually provide them to help them help her. She heaves a sigh, then she pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them as she leans back against the tiger, who’d curled up in her bed and taken up most of the space for himself. The magpie pops one of its eyes open to look at her before it goes back to sleep. “I thought it would go away or at least just get better as I got better too, but obviously that hasn’t happened. What… about you two, though? You didn’t… feel anything weird? No side effects, no… I don’t know. Nothing like this?”

They’ve been so focused on her, and on her recovery, that it’s only fair she checks in on them too. It’s only right that she does, after days of having to be lugged around the house by them and having them constantly worrying about her.

“I mean, we were both pretty exhausted,” Mira answers, absently petting the tiger, his massive tail swishing and swooshing against the sheets, “obviously nothing as bad as what you experienced, but other than that…”

Zoey shrugs. Rumi says nothing too.

It isn’t just the glitches that have been causing her problems, though. She’s been dreaming a lot in her sleep lately. The first two, three days of her waking up, she was usually still too fatigued in a physical sense and in a bone-deep sense to really dream while sleeping. It was lights out in her mind too, until the next morning came and she had to face another day back in this reality like everything is—or will be—okay. Now, though, her mind drags her back to places she thought she’d left behind. To her mother, alive and well and happy, and even to the other Celine, young and warmer, the both of them reaching out for her across a gulf she can’t cross. Those dreams never really lead anywhere, and maybe they’re less like dreams and more like fragments of her memory of the short time they spent in that other reality, hazy around the edges before they fade away completely again, and then: another day. Always another day.

There are stranger dreams too. Sometimes, she dreams of a great tree that stretches all the way into the heavens, a tree that looks a lot like the shinmok in the middle of the graveyard but is so impossibly big that it feels like something else entirely. That dream always ends the same: the great tree is cut down—destroyed—by this equally massive, monstrous creature that emerges from the clouds. Gwi-ma, as he was when they last faced each other, down to the way his skin is melting off his bones and those eyes—those eerie, golden eyes—bulging and almost rolling out of their sockets, but his gaze is always, always steady on Rumi. Like he’s mocking her, reminding her of the one thing she couldn’t do, the one person she can never save, before he destroys the tree and leaves nothing but a stump in its wake.

Those dreams always leave her tossing and turning, sometimes even murmuring barely coherent sentences if the way Mira and Zoey look at her when they wake her up to ask if she’s okay or if she said something is anything to go by, before they drift back to sleep right after. Rumi isn’t always so lucky. Usually, she’ll stay awake in the middle of the night for a period of time, not panicked but… unsettled. Sometimes, she honestly feels a little scared of going back to sleep because she might end up right back there—dreaming of her mother, of everything she had to leave behind, everything she was cut off from.

Mira and Zoey are patient with her, they always are. They still don’t really understand what’s happening to her, but that doesn’t stop them from trying their best for her anyway. When Rumi’s mind starts slipping again, when her gaze becomes unfocused and distant, one of them will gently call for her, pulling her back to here and now. When she stirs violently in her sleep, they steady her, murmuring reassurances until she settles again. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, unsettled, they don’t press for answers, they just stay close enough to remind her she isn’t alone. It isn’t perfect, but sometimes it’s enough to help her feel like she’s still here, still anchored, even when her mind keeps trying to draft away, back there.

It’s in those quiet moments that Rumi realizes Mira was right: if anyone is going to understand the level of complicated that this is, it would be them. They were there with her. They willingly followed her there. They know what it meant for her, to meet and be with her mother like that, only to have to let it all go again because she was apparently never meant to save that world.

Celine understands too, in her own way, and maybe even more so than Mira or Zoey ever could when it comes to the Miyeong of it all, but things are never so simple with Celine like they are with Mira and Zoey.

With them, Rumi can admit to feeling like she’s split between here and there. It’s easy to talk to them about it because they were always from here, and there was only ever one pair of them, and that’s the Mira and Zoey that Rumi has known basically all her life, the same two people who would have laid down their lives for her without hesitation even after finding out she lied to them about being half-demon. But Celine existed over there too. She spent five whole days there with that other Celine, got to know that version of Celine that would never come to know the grief that Rumi’s Celine carries with her, got to see how happy her own Celine could have been had she never been born and taken Miyeong from her. It’s impossible to look at Celine and not see the other Celine instead sometimes, even for just a heartbeat, like the two realities are starting to bleed into each other again and she can’t tell anymore where one starts and the other ends.

And Celine notices, Rumi knows she does. She notices every single time Rumi looks at her like that, like she isn’t entirely sure which Ceilne she’s seeing. Every single time Rumi’s gaze lingers on her too long, and every single time Rumi stumbles over her words or looks away too quickly like she’s guilty or something, Celine sees it. She’ll ask Rumi if she’s okay, but she won’t actually say the one thing they’re both thinking, and it’s that she knows. She knows Rumi sees her other self, that other Celine, sometimes when she looks at her. She knows that there’s a part of Rumi that’s still stuck in that other world, and that she reminds Rumi most of that. It’s in the guilt in her eyes—guilt over everything else, yes, but now this too—when she looks back at Rumi during those moments her mind slips.

Honestly, it makes Rumi wonder sometimes if Celine ever experienced this with her. If, in all the years she spent watching Rumi grow up, there were ever times when she looked at her and saw Miyeong instead. It would make sense of that sad, faraway look in her eyes Rumi used to see sometimes. Like Celine was looking at her, but it wasn’t really her she was seeing.

The irony of it isn’t lost on Rumi. Now more than ever, they understand each other, but the distance between them has never felt larger too, farther than ever before. It felt like everything had started to click into place when Miyeong—the other reality’s Miyeong, but Miyeong all the same—was around, however briefly, but now that she’s gone again, it’s like they just don’t know what to do anymore.

That night, she dreams of Miyeong again. She dreams of their final conversation on the veranda, the stray cat, their little freeloader, rolling around lazily in the grass of the courtyard. She dreams of the way Miyeong had reached over to touch her face, knowing it would be the last time they’d ever see each other again, and she dreams of the way Miyeong had smiled at her when she promised her they would help save that reality too, not knowing that Miyeong already knew how it would all end and she was just letting Rumi believe she could do anything at all to prevent the inevitable. She just wants what’s best for you, the same as I do.

Rumi stirs awake. She lies there for a while, caught between dream and waking, staring up the ceiling with her heart lodged in her throat. Mira is pressed against her on one side with Zoey on the other, the both of them totally dead to the world. They breath slow and even in their sleep, and normally, after a while, that’s enough to eventually lull Rumi back to sleep too—their warmth, their breathing, proof of their life, proof that she’s here again with them and this is all real—but for she feels especially restless tonight. For a long moment, she doesn’t move, holding herself so still that her body starts to burn and ache from the effort, then she finally, carefully slips out of bed, moving at a pace that can only be described as glacial so she doesn’t wake Mira and Zoey.

The tiger, curled up on the floor beside her bed, lifts his head and blinks at her slowly, deliberately, almost like he’s asking her, Where are you going? Rumi brings a finger to her lips to tell him shh, as if that’s any use on a tiger that—as far as she knows—can’t actually talk anyway, before she slips out of her room.

Rumi drifts down the hall, padding into the kitchen. She grabs a glass from the cupboard and then grabs the pitcher of cold water from the fridge. The water is almost too cold, biting even without any ice added to it, but she drinks it down in one go, the chill clearing the fuzz in her head. She sets the now empty glass down in the sink and means to head back to her room—but she finds herself drawn in the opposite direction instead, pulled toward the night, outside.

It’s cold out. Dressed in nothing but her thin pajamas and slippers, she shivers, but she trudges forward anyway. If she went back inside to grab a jacket or shoes or something, she might actually wake Mira and Zoey with all of the commotion. So, better to just… keep going. Down the familiar path that leads her from the house to the graveyard, her slippers scuffing softly against the dirt and gravel. Above her, the moon hangs high, swollen and bright, spilling its silver light over everything it touches, casting the trees and gravestones in stark relief.

Normally, she would go straight to her mother’s grave, but tonight her feet lead her to the heart of the graveyard instead, where the shinmok stands tall and proud, as if it’s waiting for her.

Rumi stops a few feet in front of the tree. The wind stirs, the ribbons tied to the branches twisting and fluttering in the breeze. For a moment, it almost feels like the tree itself is breathing, restless, as if recognizing her return. The last time she was here, standing in this exact spot, was after Mira and Zoey found out she was half-demon—when she came here and, having lost all hope, offered her sword, the very sword that the other Celine was convinced meant salvation, to her Celine as she begged her to kill her.

To do what she should have done a long time ago. To erase the mistake that is Rumi’s existence.

But…

You were always meant to live. You have to live.

Rumi summons her sword.

It isn’t the same sword, not anymore. It’s bigger, heavier, thrumming with life—Jinu’s, infused into the very being of the sword. It’s just another reminder now of everything and everyone she’s lost, all in the name of this supposed greatness she was meant for. But it’s all pointless. This sword, her powers—it’s all pointless if people have to keep dying for her just to prove she isn’t a mistake. It’s all pointless if she can defeat Gwi-ma but can’t even save her own mother.

She shifts her grip on the hilt of her sword, holding it with both hands now, and takes in a deep breath.

She tore through the fabric of reality itself. Held it in her hands, even. She defeated Gwi-ma once and for all, and sealed the Honmoon. She’s done the impossible, time and time again, and even though she resents the burden that’s been put on her shoulders—the responsibility of making the impossible possible—it’s all she has left to cling on to now.

She knows what they told her. She knows, but knowing has never been enough. Knowing feels like surrender, and surrender means admitting that there are some things even she can’t fix. That there are some things she just can’t fight, no matter how hard she wants to or tries to. All she needs is a sign. Just a sign, even the briefest of flickers, and if she could just feel it again—the presence and the life of that other reality, on the other side of theirs—then maybe, just maybe, she could believe it hadn’t all been for nothing. If she could just find the seam again and cut open a path to that other reality, if she could just see for herself that Miyeong is alive and happy with Celine, that the world didn’t crumble after all—that they were wrong—then maybe she’ll be okay again. Maybe she’ll find that piece of herself she left behind there with Miyeong and then come back whole again.

She knows she doesn’t have the benefit of the full moon on her side now, but… She has to try. That’s the only thing she can do anymore.

Try.

So, she steadies herself, closing her eyes and honing all of her senses in. She keeps her breathing steady as she searches for a pulse. Just one sign, one scrap of proof—anything to show that their world wasn’t lost forever.

At first, it feels like nothing. Just the cold night air biting her skin, the slow but steady rhythm of her breath. But then—something. A shiver along her arms, a prickle that runs down the back of her neck. The ground seems to hum faintly beneath her feet, and her sword answers in kind, thrumming with a low, steady vibration. She can almost hear it: the whispers of voices layered over each other, countless and overlapping. The chorus of the Hunters’ souls before her, the weight of their will pressing close, like they’re lending her their strength again.

Her grip tightens around the hilt of her sword. She can feel it. The magic surging through the air, gathering in her chest, building and building until she can barely breathe and until her heart feels like it’s going to burst. This has to be it—this has to be the proof she’s been searching for. She swears she can almost see it in her mind’s eye, shimmering at the edges of her consciousness. Almost, almost—but when she reaches for it, when she tries to pin it down…

Nothing.

Only the wind rattling the ribbons. Only the crushing silence pressing in again.

Her grip around the hilt falls slack. She just stands there, breathing hard, her sword trembling in her grip, and for a long moment, all she feels is nothing too… and then, so quickly it leaves her dizzy, her anger starts to rise, thick and molten, burning through the hollow in her chest. Her breathing grows ragged. Then, finally, she raises her sword, grip white-knuckled now, and for an instant she actually considers it—she considers cutting the shinmok down like that tree in her dreams. Her chest heaves and her arms strain with the weight of her sword held high above her head as she imagines taking down everything that’s left to remind her of how, no matter what anyone says, she still failed where it mattered the most.

She lets out a scream as she brings the sword down…

…and plunges it into the soil underneath her feet instead, driving down with all her strength until the ground splits around it. She staggers back from the sheer force of it, panting heavily. The sword quivers in the earth at the shinmok’s roots.

Rumi’s vision swims, her eyes hot with tears threatening to spill over. She blinks hard, swallowing them down, but the ache in her chest only sharpens. Another breeze passes through the ribbons strung on the branches overhead. They rattle faintly, and with them comes the unmistakable prickle of awareness down her spine—the sense that she isn’t alone.

She turns around and finds Celine standing a few feet behind her, watching in silence. The tiger is at her side, his big golden eyes steady and unblinking, the magpie perched on top of his head as it always is.

“How’d you know I was here?” Rumi asks, sniffling.

Celine answers by glancing at the tiger. Rumi looks at him too, throwing a slightly betrayed frown his way. Why he turned to Celine and not Mira and Zoey is really what bothers her, not so much the fact that he (somehow—is she really sure he can’t talk?) snitched on her.

Almost like she can read Rumi’s mind, though, Celine says, “I couldn’t sleep either.”

Rumi doesn’t say anything. She turns back to the shinmok and stares up at it, fists clenched at her sides. She couldn’t get herself to cut it down, but now she has this urge to just—just punch it instead, until the skin on her knuckles breaks and she’s bleeding, and maybe even until she’s beaten all that bone underneath into a pulp. She doesn’t know what else to do with all this fury inside her.

The only thing that stops her from actually hurting herself is Celine saying, almost so softly she doesn’t hear it at first, “I know you see her sometimes, when you look at me.”

That gets Rumi to turn around and face her again. Somehow, having Celine look at her like that only makes Rumi angrier. “So now you want to talk,” she bites out at her. Her anger had been directionless until Celine showed up, and now all Rumi wants to do is throw all of it at her, because who else is going to catch it? Who else can she just yell it all out at? “You spend all this time avoiding me, and now you want to talk? Is that it?”

She expects Celine to say Rumi, low in warning, or to just straight-out snap back at her… but she doesn’t. Celine just stands there, lips pressed into a thin line. She just stands there and takes it, and that only makes Rumi spiral harder.

“Of course I see her,” Rumi half-yells at Celine, who doesn’t flinch, but the tiger startles beside her. “I see her, and I see Mom, and I see that entire other world in everything around me and I—I feel like I’ve lost my mind, like I-I’m not entirely here, like I can never come back, not after everything, not after she—” Her breath catches around the words she can’t get out of her mouth. She swallows it all down instead, deflated. It isn’t long before all of her pain catches up to her. “They told me I was—special, and that I was—darkness meeting the light a-and—and I thought, I thought I could fix everything, and I could save her, that maybe I wouldn’t ever see her again but at least she’d be alive and happy—with you, alive and happy with you—and I could make things right there if I couldn’t make things right here, but I couldn’t. What’s the point in all of this—what’s the point in being bigger than everyone, and bigger than all of this—if I couldn’t even save her?”

Crying now, she rasps out, “Why couldn’t I save her?”

Celine rushes to Rumi’s side and pulls her into her arms.

Rumi is sobbing now. She clutches at the front of Celine’s shirt like she used to when she was a child and she was scared, burying her face there as if she could just disappear into her and everything would be okay. She gets her tears and snot all over Celine’s shirt, but Celine doesn’t move or say a word. She just holds her close, steady and unyielding, one hand braced against the small of her back while the other slides up into her hair, stroking gently, soothingly. Rumi cries, and cries, until she feels completely hollowed out.

Why couldn’t she save Miyeong? Why did it have to be her? Why couldn’t god or the universe or who- and whatever else choose someone else to bear all this burden?

Why couldn’t she just be their daughter?

Celine presses a kiss into Rumi’s hair and tells her, voice hoarse, broken, “I’m sorry, Rumi.”

Rumi pulls back, and that’s when she sees it: Celine is crying too. Quietly, steadily, the tears running down her face no matter how hard she tries to keep her composure. And that’s when she realizes she’s never seen Celine cry before. She’s seen her sad plenty of times, and she’s been the reason for Celine’s sadness more often than not, worn down and weighed heavy by everything she carries, but she’s never seen her like this. Not even when she said goodbye to Miyeong from that other reality. She looked like she wanted to, but she managed to still keep it all in, keep it together the way she’s been keeping everything together ever since she lost Miyeong—but not now. Not anymore.

Now, she finally lets go too.

Celine takes Rumi’s face in her hands, holding her like she’s seeing her for the first time. Like she’s something precious. She brushes her thumb against one of the patterns on Rumi’s face, along the curve of her cheek. Softly, she says, “I… I didn’t know how else to protect you. Your mother, when she died”—she winces here, like after seeing Miyeong again, it makes the pain of her death sting harder than ever before—“she asked me—made me promise—to take care of you. To protect you. And I—I didn’t know what to do, Rumi. I didn’t know what to do with this child she left me with, and I didn’t know what to do without her, but she left you with me, Rumi. You were the only thing I had left of her, and even if it went against everything I was taught, and even though I didn’t know how I was going to raise you without—without infecting you with all of the worst parts of me, the parts of me that drove Miyeong away—”

She breathes in sharply, chest heaving around a sob. “I wanted to make things right with her, with you. I wanted to give you the life she would have wanted you to have, and I… I know now that what I did, it hurt you, I never wanted to hurt you but I did, and—I’m so sorry, Rumi. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you the way you needed me to be, and that I—I pushed you so far that you felt you needed to ask me to—”

She shakes her head like she’s trying to shake the memory of that night away. Rumi wishes it were as easy as that.

“I was angry when Miyeong died,” Celine confesses, gaze dropping like she can’t bear to look at Rumi. “I was angry, and scared, and I—I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure if I could actually fulfill my promise to her. It was… hard, looking at you and knowing that you were all that was left of her. Knowing there wasn’t anything I could do to bring her back, or to… to change the way things ended. A child was one thing, but a half-demon one, when I was a Hunter… I’d spent so much of my life, up to that point, trying to avoid complications like that, steering clear of that sort of trouble but…” She smiles sadly here. “I could never be so logical or so careful when it came to Miyeong. She was always my blindspot.

“But, Rumi,” she says, steadier now, “you were never a mistake. Not to Miyeong, and not to me. I know that… I made you feel that you were, made you believe that you were nothing but a burden to me, that you were something to be fixed but—” She brushes her thumb against Rumi’s cheek again. “None of that was ever you. That was—that was all me. My fears, my mistakes: everything I felt that I needed to fix in myself, I-I passed it on to you, and I don’t know how I’ll ever live with myself knowing how I made you feel less perfect than you are. That I made you live in shame and fear, all your life.

“I love you, Rumi, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Celine’s words hang heavy in the air, heavier still in Rumi’s chest. She doesn’t know what to do with all of it—the apology, the love, the way Celine has finally broken herself open after holding it in for so long. It’s too much, and yet not enough. Rumi wipes at her face with the heel of her hand, trying to ground herself, to make sense of the ache and the flood of relief that somehow exist side by side.

Carefully, she asks, “What… exactly happened between you and Mom?” She pauses to gauge Celine’s reaction, to see if she’s going to clam up now, which Rumi honestly would understand, but… she doesn’t. Miraculously, she doesn’t. She flinches, but she doesn’t try to run away or tell Rumi she doesn’t want to talk about it. Rumi takes that as encouragement to keep going. “In the other reality, you’re together, and it’s just… If that’s supposed to be a mirror of this reality… You weren’t just friends, were you?”

Celine has already confirmed it in so many words, but… Rumi just needs to hear her actually say it.

After a moment’s hesitation, Celine takes a deep breath and answers, “We were together once, yes—but… Those were different times, Rumi.”

Different times. Rumi turns the phrase over in her head, feeling the weight of it. She might not know exactly what kind of world her mother and Celine lived in, or exactly what those times were like, but she understands enough to understand that the world isn’t always so kind, and that sometimes it’s harder to just—be, to simply exist and to love freely. And she doesn’t know a whole lot about Celine’s life before she joined the Sunlight Sisters and before Rumi was left in her care, but she can infer enough from the way she said she didn’t want to… to infect her, with the worst parts of her, that she felt she needed to fix something in herself, something that left her feeling fundamentally broken and wrong, that there’s a wound there that runs even deeper than the wound Miyeong’s death left on her.

Rumi feels her heart ache for Celine, but before she can tell her it wasn’t her fault, that she understands, Celine says, “I didn’t fight hard enough for her. And I know—it’s ironic, isn’t it?” She laughs, but it rings hollow. Bitter. “I was brave enough to fight countless enemies, and yet I was terrified. Terrified of her. Terrified of the way she made me feel, and terrified of how much I wanted her. Terrified to let her see just how weak I really am. I… I often wonder how differently things would have gone if I’d just fought harder for her. If I had just stayed with her, never pushed her away. If she would still be alive now, if I’d never been so scared of how much I loved her. But… I didn’t know how else to protect her—and I-I didn’t know how else to protect myself, either.

“But all I am is a coward. I couldn’t be brave for her and now… Now she’s gone. I failed her just like I’ve failed you.”

Rumi sits with Celine’s words, letting them sink in, the raw edges of them scraping against the ache inside her. She thinks about the weight of fear, about how heavy it must have been for Celine to carry it all these years, and how much heavier it must feel now, looking back. Slowly, she shakes her head, her voice quiet but steady when she finally speaks. “You loved her,” Rumi says, “and she knew that. I don’t think Mom would want you to keep tearing yourself apart over it.”

For a second, Celine just stares at Rumi, wide-eyed, like she can’t believe what just came out of Rumi’s mouth. Then, her whole face twists with the force of it, the way it hits her hard, like a punch she never saw coming. She looks like she’s on the edge of breaking with the way her brows are knit tight and her lips tremble, but she presses her mouth shut and—somehow—manages to stop herself from falling apart. Rumi can see how much it takes for her to hold herself together in her silence.

“I’ve spent so much of my life wishing we could just go back to how things were,” Rumi says, tender as a bruise, “Back to when we were happy, and I didn’t just… make you sad. I wanted to fix things, fix everything, so I could make that sadness go away. So I could make you happy again, and make you love me again. It didn’t matter that it hurt me every time you told me I couldn’t tell Mira and Zoey, every time you told me to hide and cover up my patterns, who I am—I trusted you, and I wanted the same thing you did. If anyone could fix me… I thought it would probably be you.”

Rumi closes her eyes against the great swell of emotion inside her.

“I never felt like enough, not for you, and not for Mira and Zoey. I hated myself. I hated what I am. I hated myself so much that on some days, I just wish I’d never been born at all—and then I ended up in that other reality, where I never existed, and I saw how happy you were, and how happy Mom was, and I thought maybe that was just how it always should have been. All I ever do is ruin things. All I ever do is make you unhappy.

“Maybe things between us will never go back to how they used to be when I was younger and everything was just so much simpler, but… What’s happened’s happened, right? We can’t change the past, but we can still do something about the future. About now. I think that’s what Mom would have wanted us to do.”

“I’m not ready to forgive you yet, but… I’d like it if we tried. For each other. For Mom.” She pauses, stopping to breathe in, then out. She holds Celine’s gaze, steady. “We’re all we’ve got left.”

Celine doesn’t say anything right away. Sadness and relief and guilt flicker over her face all at once, then finally, she nods and says, “I would like that too.”

It feels like a weight has finally been lifted from Rumi’s shoulders. She knows that this doesn’t mean they’re totally okay, not yet, but… It’s a start. It’s something, and as Poppy once said, something is always better than nothing. And if there’s one thing Rumi knows about Celine, it’s that she’s going to throw herself into this with the same single-minded determination and focus she has when she desperately needs to make something actionable out of a problem or predicament she’s in. So, she’ll try for Rumi. It won’t be perfect, that’s for sure, but she’ll try.

“I think I’m ready to go back to Seoul too,” Rumi continues. “It’s… hard for me to be here right now.”

Celine’s expression softens as she replies, “I understand,” then, a beat later, adds more meekly, almost embarrassed, “I know our present circumstances are less than ideal but… I’m going to miss you.”

It dawns on Rumi, then, how little they actually tell each other they miss each other. Just thinking about it leaves Rumi feeling a little embarrassed too, but she powers through it to say, “Yeah. I’m gonna miss you too.”

That’s when the tiger pads up to Rumi’s side and butts his broad head against her leg. She stumbles a little at the force of it, then steadies herself with a hand buried in his fur. A second later, he swings toward Celine, nudging at her just as insistently until she has no choice but to set her hand on his head, too.

Celine exhales through her nose, almost a laugh. “I guess this means you’ll be taking him with you too.”

Rumi cocks a brow at her. “Do you not want him to leave?”

“I would love nothing more than to have one less mouth to feed around here,” Celine answers, even as she scratches the tiger under his chin and a small smile flickers over his face at the way he purrs happily over that.

Rumi just shakes her head, smiling to herself, and the magpie gives one of his little sighs.

The sound of footsteps approaching them makes them both turn. Mira and Zoey are coming down the path, eyes darting between Rumi’s sword stuck in the earth and the two of them standing together. For a second, Rumi registers the alarm that flashes across their faces, but they both visibly relax when they’re close enough to see that Rumi is alright.

“What’re you doing out here?” Zoey asks, yawning around her words.

“Yeah, I woke up and you weren’t in bed,” Mira mumbles, rubbing the sleep gunk out of her eyes. She turns to the tiger and magpie and adds, “They weren’t in the room either.”

Rumi and Celine exchange a glance, then Rumi answers, “I couldn’t sleep, and neither could Celine, so we just… went for a walk.” The tiger and magpie glance up at her like they’ll be damned if they aren’t included. So, she swiftly adds, “They tagged along.” The magpie gives a happy, approving chirp.

Mira and Zoey look unconvinced, but neither of them presses her on it. Instead, they just nod and let it go. It seems to be enough for them that Rumi is okay, and that whatever was going on here between her and Celine before they got here wasn’t an encore of what Rumi told them about.

“Let’s go back now,” Zoey says, rubbing her hands up and down her arms in an almost exaggerated manner. “I’m freezing!”

Mira sighs and pulls Zoey to her side, letting her leech off of her warmth—she always did run the warmest, among the three of them—while Rumi smiles softly, fondly over the both of them. She catches Celine watching her watching them, this knowing and almost smug glint in her eyes, and it takes everything in Rumi to not blush or dig a hole for herself to crawl into right here and now. Instead, she walks over to her sword and, with some difficulty, pulls it out of the earth before she dismisses it entirely.

She falls into step beside Mira and Zoey after as they all head back to the house together, with Celine on her other side. The tiger, having no sense of how massive he actually is, squeezes himself between Rumi and Celine, like he’s taking his rightful spot, or maybe like he doesn’t want them to fight anymore so he’s going to distract them with how cute—and massive—he is instead. The magpie gives him one of those unimpressed looks it’s always giving him.

Celine huffs, just absolutely terrible at hiding her affection for her not-so-little freeloader. Rumi laughs softly too, reaching down to scritch the tiger behind his ear. Their eyes lock for a second afterward. She feels something steady in the silence between them now, a fragile but precious recognition that the worst is behind them—and that, maybe, they can find a way forward together.

Because they hadn’t actually brought anything here with them, there’s nothing to pack up either. Celine makes the arrangements with Bobby for them to be picked up and then brought back to Seoul, and if he has any questions about why or how they wound up there in the first place when the last thing he remembers was they were all backstage together at the Idol Awards—he doesn’t bring them up. That’s the thing about Bobby: if there’s one thing he’s learned in all the years he’s served as HUNTR/X’s manager, it’s to not ask too many questions when it comes to the girls’ strange and frequent disappearances. That, and it’s best not to press Celine on anything. He loves his girls, and he trusts them, and he’s more than content to just do his job, and they all love him for it.

The night before they return to Seoul, Celine prepares a feast for dinner. It reminds Rumi, almost painfully, of that last night in the other world—the night before they faced Gwi-ma, before they found their way back home. The other Celine had done the same, cooking more food than anyone could reasonably eat, as if it were possible to ward off the dread of what was to come with warmth and abundance. And now her Celine is doing it too. Soy-braised short ribs, crisp jeon fried until golden, side dishes arranged so neatly they almost look ceremonial. It’s not fancy or restaurant-polished, but it’s still indulgent for simple home cooking, and still better than anything Rumi’s ever had in her entire life, or will ever have once she goes back to Seoul. Nothing could ever hold a candle to the taste of home, after all.

Rumi watches wordlessly as Celine sets down a big bowl with even bigger servings than usual for the tiger and the magpie to share. If she had the heart for it, she would tease Celine about that by saying it’s almost like she’s more sad to see them go than she is about Rumi leaving again. Instead, all it does is make her feel wistful. She thinks of the stray cat in the other reality and wonders what his final moments were like. If he spent them waiting for Celine and Miyeong to come home.

She sets that thought aside for now and lets herself be pulled back into the conversation at the table. Back to the warmth all around her, the new sense of ease and lightness that’s fallen over them ever since she and Celine finally talked to each other. There are still snatches of awkwardness here and there between them, particularly in those moments when Celine slips back into fussing over Rumi and Rumi starts feeling a little irritated over it, like they should be over this by now, but other than those moments that are honestly few and far between… It’s mostly okay. Or it’s getting better, at least, and that’s all that really matters right now.

After dinner, and after Mira, Zoey and Celine all wave her off when she offers to help with the dishes or with preparing the sliced fruits and tea for dessert, Rumi retreats to the veranda where the night air is cool and soft against her skin. The tiger settles heavily at her side, pressing in close enough that his warmth seeps through to her, while the magpie settles on her shoulder.

Rumi scratches behind the tiger’s ear until his eyes slip half-shut. She smiles to herself, then she says, voice low enough that only the tiger and magpie can hear, “I’d really love for you to come back with us, but… I think you should stay here first, with Celine. She’ll be on her own again once we leave and even if she won’t admit it, she likes you a lot anyway, so I think it would be good for her if she had you guys as company. Just so she won’t be lonely while I’m away.”

The tiger huffs, lowering his head into her lap like he’s already agreed. The magpie gives a single approving chirp, and that’s answer enough.

Rumi threads her fingers through the tiger’s fur. “Take care of her for me, okay?”

Bobby arrives early the next morning. Rumi, Mira and Zoey throw themselves into his arms squealing, “BOBBY!,” relieved to see him unscathed and in one piece. He seems startled and even a little confused at first, but he hugs them all right back, just as happy to see them again. There isn’t anything for him to load into the car, so he just slips back inside to wait for them while they make their goodbyes.

Mira and Zoey’s goodbyes are quick, almost clumsy. Mira bows her head in a polite thank you, murmuring something about seeing each other soon, while Zoey just gives a stiff little wave and a take care before retreating toward the car. But when it’s Rumi’s turn, Celine pulls her into a hug and just holds her there, tight, and Rumi holds her back just as hard, burying her face in Celine’s shoulder and breathing her in. She holds her back like if she tries hard enough, she’ll be able to carry the feeling of her back with her, until the next time that they see each other, whenever that will be.

When they finally break, Celine presses a kiss into the crown of Rumi’s hair before she takes Rumi’s face in her hands and looks at her long and hard, like she’s trying to burn her into memory too.

“Take care of yourself,” she tells Rumi quietly, firmly. “Eat properly, and don’t overwork yourself. And if anything happens—anything at all, whatever it is—if you need me… I’m only a call away. Okay, Rumi?”

Rumi nods, throat too tight for words, and Celine brushes her thumbs once over Rumi’s cheeks before she finally lets her go.

Celine waves goodbye to them as the car rolls out of the driveway. Rumi turns in her seat to wave back before she presses her hand against the window, watching as Celine and the village she grew up in—this tiny pocket of peace and quiet tucked away from the rest of the world—slowly shrinks from view. The last thing she sees is the way Celine startles when the tiger suddenly appears beside her, the magpie perched on top of his head as always. Rumi allows herself a small smile before she turns around again.

After spending so much time away from Seoul, it’s a little overwhelming coming back to the hustle and bustle of the city. It’s different, too different—too loud, too bright—but that’s exactly what Rumi needs right now. She needs different, as different as possible, so she can untether herself slowly from that other reality and she can finally lock her head down here.

And it works, for the most part. Being away from the village, from ground zero, makes her vision stop glitching the way it’s been glitching. Rumi figures that maybe that’s because she never actually got to see Seoul in that other reality. There’s no overlap here, nothing in this city to tie her back to the other world.

Everything feels… new here. Possible.

She can find her footing again—start over—here.

They announce their three-month hiatus following the Idol Awards. The matter of their sabotaged performance is a little bit trickier to deal with, so Bobby tells them to just leave it to him, he knows a guy who knows a guy who can work his magic on the footage. “That’s what my 3% is for, after all,” he says, determined, before he dials up the number of some other guy to discuss other matters they need to smooth over.

With the professional stuff out of the way—that is, passed off to Bobby to deal with on their behalf, which makes Rumi think she should talk to Celine about increasing that 3% to something more befitting of all the miracles Bobby works for them. covering their tracks as Hunters—Rumi sets her sights on making the most of the three months she has to do absolutely anything and everything she wants. It used to be hard for her to just not do anything at all, to not keep working when every new single and every tour, every live performance, brought them closer and closer to the freedom she’s been chasing for so long—but that was before Gwi-ma threw her into another reality and she had to claw her way back to this one. The sort of stuff that puts everything into perspective. The sort of stuff that makes her want to slow down for once in her life.

It’s all over now, after all. There isn’t anything else left for her to do.

The first order of business: the bathhouse.

As silly as it might be, Rumi is a little nervous stepping into the bathhouse for the first time. Not necessarily because she’s, like, insecure about her body or anything—if the way Mira and Zoey have been shamelessly ogling her is anything to go by, she’s got nothing to be insecure about—but there’s still that lingering fear over her patterns. She doesn’t hate them anymore, not the way she used to, but it’s not like she can just flip a switch in her brain that makes her forget every bad and horrible thing she’s felt or thought about them in all of the twenty-four years she’s been alive. Hiding has become second nature to her, and it’s not something she’s going to unlearn overnight.

But the second she lowers herself into the hot and steaming water, Rumi’s problems melt away, and she melts along with it.

“Wow,” she practically moans as she sinks deeper and deeper into the water, “This feels amazing.”

It’s a good thing Mira and Zoey are regulars here, and that they’re celebrities besides that, so they can request a whole room to themselves any time they want. Some of the faces and sounds she’s making right now are anything but dignified.

“We’ve been saying that for years,” Mira says, triumphant.

“Right?” Zoey chimes in, eyes already half-lidded as the warmth all around them sucks the exhaustion and weariness right out of her bones too. “See what you’ve been missing?”

“Oh, yeah,” Rumi sighs, and it feels so good she feels her eyes almost roll so far back she can see the insides of her skull. “I wanna come here every day of our three-month hiatus.”

Mira and Zoey hum in agreement.

It’s quiet for a long stretch, after that. The only sounds are the gentle slosh of water when someone shifts, the faint hiss of steam rising around them, and the steady drip-drip of condensation trailing down the tiled walls. Rumi leans her head back, eyes half-shut, and lets the heat seep into every last sore muscle and bone in her body. She hadn’t realized, not really, just how tired she’s been until now—until she slipped into the tub and the water began to do what nothing else has managed: strip away her exhaustion bit by bit, like it’s draining out of her and right into the bath itself. Her whole body feels loose, boneless. She could honestly live here.

That’s when Zoey suddenly pipes up with, “I’m so glad we didn’t, like, die.”

“Wow, Zoey,” Mira drawls, lolling her head towards Zoey’s direction, “way to be morbid. But same.”

Rumi laughs, then falls quiet again before she says, “I know you’re probably sick of hearing me say it, but… thank you. Really, just—thank you. I don’t know how I would have made it back here without you guys, and I… I don’t know how I would have survived everything else, either.”

Mira and Zoey smile warmly at her, then they both go quiet too, deep in thought.

“It’s weird,” Mira says, leaning back against the edge of the tub. “I thought I’d be happy, once we finally got rid of Gwi-ma—and I am—but… We went through all of that. Another world, and another life, entirely. And now it’s just… over. No one else even knows it happened. No one knows there’s—there’s more out there. And now it’s all just over.”

Zoey chews on her lip. “I was really psyched when I found out I had what it took to be a Hunter, and to be scouted by a member of the Sunlight Sisters, too… I left home and came here by myself wanting to, like, forge my own path and—and—prove my parents wrong, but also make them proud of me, and I just… I never thought there would actually be an end to this. Like, I knew what we were all working so hard towards but…” She sighs, and the water sloshes around her as she slinks down further into it. “I don’t know. I guess it just doesn’t feel real to me yet, and—a-and I guess I thought we’d be doing this forever.”

“We are,” Rumi says, gentle but certain. “Maybe we don’t have demons to worry about anymore, but… This, us—we’re still forever.” She looks from Zoey, to Mira. “Right?”

Mira gets one of those big, dopey smiles on her face. “Yeah,” she murmurs, sounding both touched and relieved, too relieved to make fun of Rumi’s incredibly melodramatic and cheesy sentiment, “Of course we are. We’re forever.”

Zoey sniffles, and her entire face crumples as she says, “I just—you guys just mean so much to me,” and then she’s full-on sobbing around her words, until Rumi can barely understand what she’s saying but it doesn’t matter because she’s crying too, and now so is Mira, and they’re all sobbing out I love you over each other and making absolute fools of themselves, but none of that matters. All there is is the undeniable fact that they love each other, and that maybe Gwi-ma is gone now, along with that entire other reality, but Rumi still has Mira and Zoey. She still has her girls, and what they have is forever.

Trips to the bathhouse become a regular thing for the three of them, which leaves the other things for them to get around to. The dates and stuff, as Rumi had so eloquently put it.

Between saving the world and hopping between realities, they haven’t had the time to actually just be with each other. Back in the village, they had to be mindful too because it was awkward flaunting whatever they have going on between them now in front of Celine, and because everyone had been focused on Rumi’s recovery above everything else. But now, back in the city, now that they don’t have to worry about Rumi collapsing again from exhaustion from carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, they finally have the space, time, and privacy to explore this in full.

To be honest, the dates they go on feel almost indistinguishable from their usual hangouts. Barbecue, arcades, lazy afternoons wandering through the city. It’s not that they can’t afford to go on fancy, expensive dates, because they can—they’re HUNTR/X, after all, and they could get into any club or restaurant they want, bypassing waiting lists or lines. Hell, the owners of those clubs and restaurants would probably beg them to make an appearance, just so they can brag about it on their Instagram pages like #RUMI of #HUNTRX loves our risotto made with Acquerello rice aged one year, with Neapolitan ragout, smoked mozzarella, organic peas, pearl meatballs, and basil or something equally as embarrassing or absurd. (Rumi never went back there again.) But that isn’t really their scene. They might be pictured at Seoul Fashion Week wearing the most expensive, most cutting-edge, avant-garde, insert-other-big-journalistic-description-here clothes ever made, but their meal of choice after is always going to be enough pizza to knock them out cold for a week. The fact that they’re dating now hasn’t really changed any of that, or them.

The one and only difference is that there’s a whole lot of kissing involved now too.

Like, a lot of it. Rumi doesn’t think she’s ever been kissed so much in her entire life. Morning kisses, goodnight kisses, kisses stolen in between subway stops. Kisses that leave her dizzy and make her feel like she’s floating, just up, up, and away, until they pull her back down against the sheets and shower her with even more kisses, giggling at the way she makes all these honestly humiliating little noises for them. Movie nights on the couch always end up with them in a tangle of limbs and mouths—Mira’s on Zoey’s, Zoey’s on Rumi’s: she can never keep up with whose mouth is on hers anymore, whose mouth she’s gasping and sighing into, whose tongue it is in her mouth—but she wouldn’t have it any other way. She wouldn’t trade having all the air sucked out of her lungs and the insides of her mouth feeling hot and bruised, lips swollen from all the sucking and biting, for anything in the world. She’s giddy with it, giddy with being wanted so openly and so relentlessly. Now that they’ve got Rumi all to themselves, without anything else in the world left for them to worry about, Mira and Zoey are as insatiable for Rumi as Rumi is for them, and sometimes it overwhelms her—because she spent so long believing this was impossible. Believing they could never love her, not if they saw the patterns, not if they knew.

But they do. They love her as she is—all of her.

Every kiss is a fierce affirmation that they love her. Every soft murmur or gasp of, “Rumi,” against her lips. Every single time they call her baby, which—god, it’s embarrassing how much Rumi likes it, how she’d practically melted on Mira’s lap the first time she ever called her that and how her face was so red it could probably stop traffic, but she didn’t want them to stop. She liked it. Loves it. She loves them.

Rumi loves them, and she wants them, craves them… but there are some lines she isn’t ready to cross just yet.

As they grow more comfortable, the lines blur even more. Their touches are never totally innocent, especially not when they’re caught in the heat of another makeout session, but Rumi can feel their touches starting to veer on the edge of something more intense already, like just a little bit more and they’ll finally all cross that line together—but they don’t. Mira and Zoey never push her past that point, never ask her for more than she can give, because they know. They understand.

Just because Rumi is happy with them, it doesn’t mean she’s okay. It doesn’t mean she’s finally moved past everything that happened in that other reality. It doesn’t mean that her heart doesn’t still ache for her mother.

Rumi still dreams of her, of course. Often. She dreams of her face and her smile, of the way her name sounds in her mother’s voice. She dreams of the moments they shared, however few and far between, her brain blasting those moments against the canvas of her mind like a projector. Sometimes she wakes up simply feeling unsettled, a little lost, but other times she wakes up gasping and either Mira or Zoey presses a hand to her chest and murmurs something like are you okay? or some other reassurance, until she finally settles down again and drifts back off into sleep, tucked safely between Mira and Zoey.

They know she wants them. They know she wants to touch and be touched—but what she needs, at least right now, is to be held.

Mira and Zoey see so much more of her now—her skin, her patterns—and she gives them so much more of her now, but they never take more than what Rumi can give, and they never ask her to give back. They touch her freely and reverently, fingers tracing the patterns along her arms or over the lines of her thighs, a hand settling on the small of her back, cupping her jaw, her hips. The kind of touches that leave a different kind of ache burning in her chest, between her legs. That kind that leaves her burning deep in her core. They touch her like their lives depend on it, and sometimes all the touching leaves her more breathless than even all the kissing does… but they touch her without expectation, too. No push or rush to carry it further. They just gather her close when all that smoldering heat ebbs, wrapping her up between them like it’ll be enough to keep her together, Mira combing her fingers through Rumi’s hair until her eyelids flutter shut and Zoey’s fingertips tracing gentle circles against her skin to soothe her. Ground her. Rumi lets herself sink into it, into them, into this warmth that doesn’t ask or take, but only selflessly gives.

They’re in a cuddle pile on the couch tonight. There’s a documentary about turtles, which Zoey obviously picked out, playing on their honestly too-massive TV. Rumi thinks it’s boring—like, really boring, like tears in her eyes boring—but it’s also perfect, because Zoey loves it, murmuring soft commentary under her breath like she’s fact-checking the narrator or something, and they love Zoey, and if Zoey is happy then so are they. Rumi is glad that there are some things, at least, that remain as simple and as elementary as that.

Rumi is in her favorite spot in the world, nestled between Mira and Zoey. Mira absentmindedly brushes her fingers through Rumi’s hair, her nails grazing lightly against her scalp, while Zoey slips a hand beneath the hem of Rumi’s shirt, thumb tracing slow, idle circles over the soft skin of her waist. Their combined touch sends pleasant tingles throughout her body, and it isn’t long before the droning narration from the documentary becomes white fuzz in her ears and all that’s left, all there is, is that familiar warmth swelling in the pit of her stomach.

She tries not to squirm underneath their hands. Neither of them are trying to push it further. They never do. It’s just… touch, in the simplest sense of it. Contact. Still, Rumi knows they could lead to more if they wanted to—if she wanted them to. All it would take is one word.

Swallowing around the tightness in her throat, Rumi says, “I really appreciate you guys being so patient with me.”

Both of their hands freeze where they’re touching her. Mira glances down at her, brow furrowed, while Zoey tilts her head up at her curiously.

“I mean…” Rumi presses on, cheeks hot. “I know it’s been a while. And sometimes I feel bad, like I’m making you wait or something. Because I do want”—she falters, clearing her throat awkwardly—“I want you. Both of you. But I’m just… not there yet. I-I don’t know when I will be.”

There’s a long beat of silence before Mira leans down and presses a kiss to Rumi’s temple. Promises her, simple as, “We’ll wait for you as long as we need.”

Zoey squeezes her a little tighter, her thumb stroking over Rumi’s skin again, slow and soothing. “Yeah. Don’t ever think you’re, like, holding us back or whatever. We love you. That’s it. That’s the only thing that matters.”

“The things we went through,” Mira murmurs against the crown of Rumi’s head, “the things you went through… That isn’t the sort of thing you can just come back from right away, and we understand that, Rumi. You don’t need to rush yourself through it. We’ll always be here.”

Zoey hums. “We’re forever, remember?”

Rumi purses her lips and nods. Her eyes sting with the tears she’s trying so desperately to hold back. Seriously, when did she become such a crybaby? She doesn’t think she ever used to cry this easily before.

“Yeah,” she says, choked-up. “We’re forever.”

Mira presses a kiss into her hair, while Zoey presses a kiss to her shoulder. The three of them lie there in their cuddle pile, the turtles swimming serenely across the TV screen. It’s everything Rumi needs.

Celine checks in on her frequently. She leaves her voice message after voice message, because ever since she discovered the magic of voice messages, she’s never looked back. She says it’s just more ‘practical’, that it saves her all the time she’d otherwise be wasting on having to type out every single thing she wants to say, and that’s not accounting for typos, which is just more time wasted. Rumi honestly finds it kind of annoying, and sometimes she thinks that it actually would be simpler for Celine to just text her instead of dropping her a voice message that’s barely three seconds long over something that, again, could have been sent through text instead… But it would be a lie if Rumi said that, these days, she didn’t look forward to or find comfort in hearing Celine’s voice, even if it’s just to nag at Rumi or to tell her about some really mundane, trivial thing that makes it obvious she just misses Rumi and is finding any excuse to talk to her.

Once, she wakes up to a lengthy voice message from Celine, which means she’s about to get an earful.

“Rumi,” comes Celine’s voice, in that same tone she always uses when she’s scolding Rumi, “I was looking at the billing statement for the company card, and I noticed you’ve been putting far too many charges on it for”—Rumi hears the rustling of paper, because Celine still insists on printing everything out—“instant ramyeon, fried chicken, pizza—Rumi-ya, do you think that counts as a proper diet? You can’t just live on fast food. You have to eat properly or else you’ll get sick, and you’ve only just recovered. I shouldn’t have to tell you this.”

Just when Rumi feels her own irritation starting to bubble up inside her, Celine goes on, “And—the… bathhouse too? You’ve been going a lot… but—fine. If you like it so much, then go. At least that’s better for you than fried chicken for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

Celine sighs, and her voice softens almost imperceptibly.

“Anyway, just… eat better. Tell Mira and Zoey, as well. Seriously. Don’t make me come all the way to Seoul just to make sure you’re not wasting away.”

End of message.

Celine doesn’t actually book a flight to Seoul just to nag at Rumi in person, but what actually does might honestly be so much worse.

They’re making out on the couch, Rumi’s shirt almost halfway off her with the way Zoey and Mira keep grabbing at all the skin underneath it, their hands white-hot against her already flushed skin, and for once Rumi doesn’t think about anything else—not her mother, not the other world, not even Celine’s nagging voice in her inbox—until she hears a low huff and turns her head to find the tiger and magpie standing a foot away from them, watching them.

Rumi shrieks, almost elbowing Mira in the face. Mira and Zoey pull back to stare wide-eyed at the tiger and magpie too, just as confused and just as mortified as Rumi is right now. The magpie just squawks at them in greeting.

“What the—why are you—” That’s when Rumi notices the reusable bag dangling from the tiger’s mouth. She buries her face in her hands and groans, “Oh my god.”

The tiger pads forward, heavy paws thumping against the floor, and drops the bag neatly at her feet. Zoey and Mira exchange a glance over Rumi’s head then peek into the bag.

“Uh,” Zoey says, pulling out a squat container of soy-braised short ribs. “Is this…”

From there, it’s tupperware after tupperware of food. A variety of pork and beef dishes, some fish too. And vegetables, lots of vegetables.

Mira furrows her brows. “She… sent food?” She turns to Rumi. “Why did she send food?”

Rumi just groans again, which seems to be answer enough.

The tiger only huffs again, then lumbers over to settle on the rug like his job is done. Zoey’s already cracking open the lid of the short ribs, eyes sparkling.

Later, when Rumi gets over her embarrassment, she snaps a picture of all of the tupperwares spread out on the table, Mira and Zoey happily eating in the background. got the food, she types out, then after some consideration, adds: can you like message next time before you send the tiger here. nearly gave me a heart attack. All she gets in reply is a thumbs-up emoji, which seems to be the only thing Celine isn’t too lazy to type out. She’s sure Celine’s got some speech ready about how emojis are ‘practical’ and ‘efficient’ somewhere.

After they set the leftovers aside, she sends the tiger and magpie back off to Celine with the empty reusable bag.

She learns very soon, though, that a thumbs-up emoji isn’t worth shit because after receiving another voice message from her—“Rumi-ya. I passed by the bakery near the market and saw they had those red bean buns you used to like. Do you still like those? Let me know, so I can pick some up and have them sent over to you.”—the tiger is already at Rumi’s side before she can even hit send on her text to Celine.

She sighs as she accepts the plastic bag with more red bean buns than she knows what to do with. The tiger tilts his head and blinks up at her, and she scratches him under the chin. “You know,” she tells him, exasperated but fond, “when I left you there with her, it wasn’t so she could turn you into her personal delivery—tiger.” She almost says guy, but that just doesn’t seem right.

The tiger blinks up at her again, and the magpie chirps. “Go,” she tells them, then after they’ve left she texts Celine to let her know she got the red bean buns. When she jokes that she got too much, Celine leaves her another voice message in reply: “It’s so you can share with Mira and Zoey. If it’s still not enough for you three, I can drop by again tomorrow and send some more over.”

Rumi knows she should be far more irritated than she is. Every time the tiger shows up with another delivery, every time she has to rearrange their fridge to fit another round of tupperware—it should grate on her nerves. It does, a little. But underneath that, there’s something else. Something… softer. Because she knows what this is. She knows that this is Celine trying her hardest for her. It’s not perfect, and sometimes it’s suffocating, but it’s one of the only ways Celine knows how to show she cares. And honestly? That’s more than enough to make up for all of the irritation she feels when she has to listen to the four or five voice messages Celine’s left for her, or when the tiger pops in again unannounced and she swears she’s one more of those away from actually suffering a heart attack.

So, one day, she gets this sudden urge to text Celine about—something. She holds her phone in her hands, chewing her lips as she stews over what to say, then slowly, she types out:

it’s been a while since i had some good kimchi jjigae.

i’ve tried it from a few restaurants here, but none of them really hit the spot.

Pause. Hesitation.

they’re nothing like how you make it.

She stares at it, rereads it a dozen times, considers deleting it. Then, with a sigh, she hits send on it. She paces around as she waits for a reply, checking her phone twice, thrice, before she tosses it onto the couch as if not looking will make the reply come faster.

When her phone buzzes, she almost trips in her rush to grab it.

She’s surprised not to find a two- or three-second long voice message this time. Just a text, plain and simple.

Okay. I’ll make it for you and have it sent over.

Rumi stares at her phone screen, still gobsmacked that Celine actually texted her. It takes her a long, long moment to realize she’s smiling.

The next day, the tiger arrives again, this time with the heavy scent of kimchi and pork drifting out of the bag dangling from his mouth. Zoey’s pouncing on it before Rumi can even say anything, and Mira just cocks a brow at Rumi before she joins Zoey, delighted with their pickings today.

“Celine’s got us covered for life,” Zoey says around a mouthful of rice and kimchi jjigae, and Mira swats at her face, grumbling, “Stop talking! You’re getting food all over my face.”

Rumi just laughs as she ladles more stew into her own bowl.

They keep in touch. Celine sends her voice messages to nag about whether Rumi is getting enough rest or taking her vitamins like she promised she would, and Rumi replies with short and mildly irritated texts just to get Celine off her back. But they haven’t actually talked to each other like they talked to each other that night at the shinmok, before Rumi left for Seoul.

She knows that this time, neither of them are avoiding it. She thinks it might just be that weird what do we even talk about now, now that we’ve bared everything to each other? stage after such a heavy conversation. It feels like there’s still so much left that they need to talk about at the same time that it feels like there’s nothing left at all. Right now, it feels like they’re circling around each other carefully, holding on in smaller ways—nagging voice messages, irritated texts, little reassurances that say I’m still here without pushing the other too far into reopening their barely scabbed-over wounds.

Rumi just wishes it weren’t so awkward.

It makes her think about how easy it was to talk to the Celine of the other reality. Maybe it was because she had no history with that Celine. No emotional baggage. It was easier to speak her mind with her, to open up about even the most painful things to her, because she never caused her any of that pain. She never told Rumi to cover up and hide all her life. She wasn’t the one Rumi asked to kill her. It might have been a little weird talking to this version of Celine who wasn’t really Celine, but it was significantly easier.

She feels all that baggage now still weighing them down. She knows that one heart-to-heart isn’t going to make everything better all of a sudden, and she knows it’s not going to erase the years and years of grief and hardship shared between them. It’s not going to magically make both of them okay.

It’s a miracle how Rumi hasn’t woken up Mira and Zoey with how she’s been tossing and turning in bed. She envies them for it, really. After movie night—a really gory zombie movie picked out by Mira, this time—they all made a beeline for Zoey’s room, made out some more, and then Mira and Zoey were out like the dead in a matter of a few minutes. Rumi’s been trying to sleep for over an hour now, to no avail.

Frustrated, Rumi rolls over to lie on her back, squished between Mira and Zoey. She stares up at the ceiling, which means she’s basically staring up at nothing, with how dark it is. Accepting that she probably won’t be getting sleep any time soon, Rumi slowly and carefully wiggles her way out of bed and tiptoes out of Zoey’s room.

Because going to her own room would be pointless, Rumi heads back to the couch instead. She grabs some water along the way then fishes the remote out from under the cushions. She flips through the channels, lingering here and there when something catches her attention, but it isn’t long before she shuts the TV off again and just sits there in total, dark silence.

She gazes out the floor-to-ceiling windows, Seoul stretching out almost endlessly before her. Then, she pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket and thumbs her message thread with Celine open.

are you awake? can i call?

She’s about to put her phone away, already second-guessing herself, when her phone starts ringing. It’s silly, but Rumi panics as if she weren’t the one who asked Celine if she could talk to her. She fumbles with her phone a little before she finally hits the answer button and presses her phone to her ear.

“You can’t sleep either,” Celine says in greeting, matter-of-fact.

Rumi huffs out a laugh, shaky with her nerves. “Yeah. I guess not.” A beat. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Celine says back, a faint smile in her voice.

They both fall silent for a while. It’s not an uncomfortable silence, but it’s plenty awkward, the way they’re both waiting for the other to just say something. Deciding that it’s only fair she keeps the ball rolling, given how she was the one who instigated all this in the first place, Rumi says, stilted, “To be honest, I… I don’t even really know why I thought about calling you. I-I just—I couldn’t sleep, and I guess I didn’t want to just sit here by myself waiting for—I don’t even know either, and—” She pinches her nose, embarrassed. “Yeah, sorry.”

“That’s alright,” Celine says, almost too understanding that it makes Rumi shift uncomfortably. There’s another long beat of silence, the both of them deep in thought, before she asks, “How has your three-month hiatus been? Apart from the frequent trips to the bathhouse, anyway.”

Rumi is glad Celine can’t see the way that makes her blush. “It’s been… good,” she answers, drawing her knees up to her chest. “I guess it’s a little strange too.”

“Strange?”

Rumi hums. “Zoey was saying that she never really thought there was an end to all this, and I guess some part of me felt that way too. Except I know it isn’t really the end either, and maybe that’s what makes it so strange, you know? That we did all of that, we lived through all of that, and there’s still… all of this left ahead of us.”

Celine doesn’t say anything right away. When she does speak again, it’s only to ask, “Why do you keep going to the bathhouse?”

“What?”

“It just hardly seems like the sort of thing a girl your age would—or should—be into.”

Rumi blinks, taken aback, then snorts out a laugh. On the other end of the line, she hears Celine let out a soft breath that sounds close enough to a laugh too.

“Mira and Zoey are really into it, remember?” she finally explains, wrapping her other arm around her legs.

“Ah,” is all Celine offers back.

There’s a beat of silence on both their ends, the kind that tells Rumi Celine has already pieced it all together for herself. Mira and Zoey are really into it, and she couldn’t join them before because…

“I’m glad you enjoy it too, then,” Celine says in the end, sounding sincerely relieved.

“Yeah,” Rumi murmurs. She stares out again, at Seoul’s skyline. “I know I said it’s been strange, but… I do mean it too, when I said it’s been good. It’s been nice just… being a normal girl for a while. No demons to fight. No comebacks to prepare for—yet, anyway. It’s weird, but like, really, really nice too.”

Celine hums, and maybe Rumi’s just projecting, but she sounds content.

“What about you?” Rumi asks, turning the spotlight to Celine now. “How have you been? How are things over there? The tiger isn’t giving you too much trouble, is he?”

Celine makes this grumbly little noise that makes it sound like she wants to complain just for the sake of complaining, and not actually because she finds the tiger so bothersome. She shifts to something more quiet, more serious, though when she says, “I suppose it’s been… a little strange for me too.” A beat. “I never did know how or when to stop. Slow down. Miyeong always used to give me grief over that.”

Rumi’s heart aches at the mention of her mother, but she manages to keep it together. “I’m sure Mom would be relieved to know you are finally slowing down now, at least.”

Celine doesn’t say anything to that, but Rumi can imagine what face she must be making now.

“Rumi,” Celine says after a while, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize again,” Rumi murmurs, honestly unprepared to have that kind of conversation again with Celine. “We’ve put that behind us already.”

“I know, but… I really could have done so much more for you. I could have been better for you. I—” She lets out a ragged exhale. “I want to be better for you.”

This time, it’s Rumi who says, “I know.” It feels like she’s got a boulder lodged in her throat. “I can see you trying, and… Thank you.”

Neither of them speak again for a while, Rumi’s words hanging heavy between them. She hears a faint rustle on the other end of the line and imagines where Celine must be right now. If she’s in bed, or on the couch too, the same one she used to fall asleep on after her own bouts of insomnia years and years ago. She wonders if the tiger and magpie are there with her too.

She’s pulled out of her thoughts when Celine says, “I know you said that you thought you made me unhappy but that couldn’t be further from the truth, Rumi. As difficult as it was to accept that Miyeong was gone, and to—to accept the responsibility of raising her child… You became the best part of me. I haven’t done a very good job of showing you that,” and here, she sounds especially bitter at herself, “but I-I was scared too. I was scared of failing you the way I failed your mother and honestly, you were the only thing that still kept me going, after she died. I… I didn’t know what else to live for so I—I lived for you, and maybe it wasn’t fair to put that kind of burden on a child, but—I love you, Rumi. I really do. You were, and still are, all of the best parts of me.”

Rumi blinks back her tears. She wipes her runny nose on the sleeve of her jacket, then says wetly, “Hey, come on, now. Don’t make me cry. I really won’t end up getting any sleep like this.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Celine laughs sadly. “I just… needed to tell you. That’s all.”

“I know.”

The truth is, Rumi is glad Celine did. She never knew how much she needed to hear that until Celine actually said all of that—but she needed it, all the same.

“I’m glad we got to talk, Rumi,” Celine tells her tenderly. “It’s nice hearing your voice.”

“Yeah, you too.” Rumi idly picks at a hangnail. “Could you… stay on the phone with me, just for a little bit longer?”

She hears Celine breathe out softly, almost relieved. “Of course.”

Rumi doesn’t remember when she finally drifted off to sleep, only that Celine’s voice is the last thing she hears—steady, grounding. When she opens her eyes again, it’s to the golden wash of morning light spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Seoul hazy in the distance. Her phone is still clutched in her hand, the screen gone dark, and for a moment she just stares at it.

“So this is where you disappeared off to last night,” comes Mira’s voice, sleepy but teasing.

Before Rumi can answer, Zoey flops down on the couch beside her, making the cushions dip. Mira follows right after, hair mussed, eyes barely open, and wedges herself in on Rumi’s other side without a word. Rumi lets out a laugh as they press in close, warm and solid against her.

She feels herself starting to drift off again, so she murmurs, “I love you guys,” before she goes under completely. Mira hums, and Zoey says, “We love you too,” except she’s yawning around her word so it sounds a lot more like, Wuuuhhhluhhhvyyohtuhhhhhh.

Rumi sighs, happy.

The next time she dreams of Miyeong again, she finds her standing under the great tree that stretches all the way into the heavens, her face half-hidden in shadow. For some reason, Rumi knows she has no reason to panic. That Gwi-ma won’t be appearing in this dream, not anymore. Miyeong turns around as Rumi approaches. She smiles softly at her, then opens her arms to her. Rumi doesn’t hesitate. She lets Miyeong pull her into a hug and buries her face against Miyeong’s shoulder, squeezing her eyes shut as she holds her one last time. She feels Miyeong press a kiss into her hair, and then Miyeong slips through her like smoke, like a breath she’s been keeping in for too long and is now finally letting go. Rumi summons her sword in her hands, the weight of it familiar, grounding. She raises it high, then, with one clean swing, no hesitation—she cuts the great tree down.

“Okay: one, two, three—”

It’s probably the nicest serenade of Happy Birthday in the history of all Happy Birthday’s. Because they’re all singers here, they manage to make the song sound richer than it has any right to. Even Celine, who’d otherwise refused to wear the silly, cartoonish party hat Mira and Zoey tried to foist on her, sings along with enthusiasm. Or, enthusiasm by Celine’s standards anyway, which really just means she sings in a low, steady voice, but she’s smiling through it, which is all the indication Rumi needs that she is, in fact, enthusiastic about this. Even the tiger and magpie try to sing along in their own way, the magpie chirping on the high notes and the tiger rumbling along in something that almost sounds like harmony.

Rumi sits at the center of the table with a paper crown perched on her head, courtesy of Zoey—“A crown for the birthday girl, naturally!”—trying not to laugh at how ridiculous and wonderful the sight is: Mira, Zoey, and Poppy with their cone-shaped party hats, the tiger with one balanced carefully between his ears, the magpie with its own miniature version of a party hat that they made specifically for it.

“...happy birthday, dear Rumiiii—happy birthday to youuuu—!”

Rumi blows out the candles on her birthday cake and everyone cheers.

Mira and Zoey lean in at the same time to kiss Rumi, their noses knocking against each other, but they all just blush and laugh it off. Poppy comes in next, squeezing Rumi tight before she kisses her on the cheek. Finally, Celine steps forward and pulls Rumi into her arms. She presses a kiss to Rumi’s temple, then into her hair, before she pulls back to smile warmly at Rumi.

Rumi smiles back at her, laughing as she reaches up to stop the crown slipping from her head.

HUNTR/X have been busy. Their last comeback was their most successful one yet, and their lives lately have been a blur of promoting their single on the weekly music show circuits, where they collect win after win, the glittering trophies stacking up so fast they start running out of room for all of them. There were variety shows and magazine shoots too, as well as radio show appearances. Their promotions even took them all the way to Busan, where they met up with Poppy and—finally—Rumi got to meet her kids. That became a whole thing with the media, what with a member of the Sunlight Sisters and HUNTR/X all being in the same place, and just like Poppy had warned her, the impromptu meet-and-greet with Poppy’s kids’ friends really did happen, much to the kids’ delight, and Rumi couldn’t stop smiling about it the whole trip back.

Normally, Rumi celebrates her birthdays in Seoul, either through a fan event or a livestream, but Rumi wanted something different this time. She’d asked if she could fly back here, to the Hunters’ village, to celebrate so they scheduled a birthday event and livestream a few days before her actual birthday, then Bobby cleared out the rest of their week so they could fly in, and Rumi sent Poppy a message to invite her to celebrate with them. They took Bobby out to the fanciest restaurant in town for an advanced celebration, then they surprised him with a weekend escape to a secluded mountain spa retreat. He cried happy tears into his dessert.

Poppy takes charge of the cake now, carving out slice after slice and passing them around the table. She saves the biggest one for Rumi, a slice that’s almost double the size of everyone else’s. “For the birthday girl,” she says with a wink, as she offers it to Rumi.

“That’s practically half the cake,” Rumi laughs, happily accepting the humongous slice anyway.

“Aw, c’mon. It’s your birthday. There are no rules on your birthday!”

Across the table, Celine gives Poppy a sharp, pointed look—like, seriously?—but she doesn’t say a word, otherwise. Not tonight. Instead she just shakes her head faintly, lips twitching as though she’s fighting off a smile.

Rumi digs her fork into the cake, but pauses, looking around the table. Mira and Zoey are already halfway through devouring their slices, looking like total slobs while they’re at it, but they’re her slobs so she finds it far more endearing than she probably should. Poppy is recounting something about her kids to Celine, who listens with a faint smile on her face. The tiger eyes everyone’s slices of cake greedily while the magpie shamelessly steals crumbs from everyone’s plates as it hops around the table.

Something warm and tender unfurls in Rumi’s chest.

So much time has passed since that fateful day, and all that time has passed in the blink of an eye. It feels like only yesterday they were standing together against Gwi-ma, one last time, once and for all. It’s all blurred together for Rumi, which she didn’t think was possible when they first found their way back here.

Back then, she’d been sure it would never fade. That the grief, the anger, the rawness of it all would sit heavy on her chest forever, that she’d never take a step without feeling it grind into her ribs. She remembers thinking, in the first few weeks after they came back, that this was just how life was going to be now—one long and endless ache. But then… time passed. Promotions have come and gone, the days bled into each other, and somewhere along the way, the sharp edges of that ache have dulled. She hasn’t forgotten—there’s no way she ever possibly could—but sometimes she catches herself going whole days without feeling the weight of it pressing in on her anymore, not until she starts thinking about that, and then it makes itself present to her again but even then, it’s manageable. Nowadays, it feels more like a scar and less like a wound, something she can carry without feeling like she’s bleeding out anymore.

Rumi breathes out slowly, looking around the table again, and lets the warmth of the moment soothe her like a balm.

It’s good to be back home.

She catches Celine watching her with a faint but curious smile on her face. Mira and Zoey clock it, and then turn to her too, and Poppy asks teasingly, “What’re you smiling about, hm?”

Rumi didn’t even realize she was smiling until Poppy said so. “It’s nothing,” she answers softly, looking around the table again, at everyone here to celebrate this day with her, everyone she loves. Family. “I’m just… really happy we’re all here together.”

For a moment, nobody says anything. They all just look back at her—Mira, Zoey, Poppy, Celine—smiling, touched, mirroring all of her gratitude and relief back at her. All of that love.

The moment doesn’t last long, though, because out of the corner of her eye Rumi notices movement. “Wait—hey, STOP—” she blurts, just as the tiger makes a swipe at the cake. Before anyone can grab it, he knocks the whole thing—cake, plate, and all—straight into his mouth. They all freeze, staring in disbelief, until the tiger sticks out his tongue a second later and neatly sets the now-empty plate back down on the table.

There’s a beat of stunned silence, then all at once they collapse into laughter, the sound filling the room.

By the time the dishes and leftovers are put away, the house has quieted again. Out on the veranda, Poppy, Mira, and Zoey lounge in a loose circle, voices low and lilting with laughter as they trade stories about their craziest backstage encounters. Meanwhile, out on the grass, the tiger rolls onto his back, paws in the air, his belly rising and falling like he’s on the verge of a food coma. Given how much cake he devoured, Rumi thinks that might not be far from the truth. The magpie perches nearby, watching him, unimpressed.

Rumi stands at a distance from them, taking it all in, smiling faintly at the warmth of the scene before her before she quietly slips out into the night.

The night air is cool as she makes her way toward the graveyard, her steps carrying her straight to the shinmok. She lowers herself to the damp grass, knees drawn up, and tilts her head back to stare up at the tree, at the ribbons that sway in the wind like they’re dancing. Inevitably, she finds herself thinking of that other reality again, of Miyeong, and wishes she could have been here with all of them tonight too. Laughing with—or at—them, eating cake, celebrating with them.

The last time she was here, she’d been so angry, angry enough to actually want to cut this tree down herself, but now… She isn’t any less sad than she was back then, but she’s not angry anymore, at least. She’s not burning with that sadness, that grief, anymore, at least. She’s learned how to make peace with everything that’s happened, with losing her mother again, and with herself. She’s learned how to give herself the forgiveness she needs to let go.

She senses it before she hears it: Rumi looks over her shoulder and finds Celine standing some distance behind her, her expression, already so gentle, softened even more by the moonlight.

“Mind if I join you?” Celine asks. Rumi nods wordlessly in response.

She shifts to make room as Celine lowers herself beside her, close enough that Rumi can feel the warmth radiating off her body, steady and grounding. Celine mirrors her position, drawing her knees up to her chest and looking up at the shinmok too. For a while, neither of them say anything, watching the ribbons flutter in the soft evening breeze instead.

The quiet between them is different from before. It feels less like a void now and more like something they can share comfortably. It’s lighter now, bereft of all of the things that they used to leave unspoken and festering between them. It isn’t that things are perfect between them now—Rumi knows perfection is one of the only things in this world, no, universe that’s really, actually impossible—but they’ve both put in the work to at least make it better, day by day. The distance had been good for them, after their last conversation here, but… she’s missed this. She’s missed Celine.

It isn’t distance they need now, but this.

“After you left for Seoul,” Celine murmurs, pulling Rumi’s attention towards her, “I would come here almost everyday. This place comforts me as much as it reminds me of everything we lost, over there.”

Even without saying it out loud, Rumi knows that what Celine really means is, I understand you.

Rumi exhales, long and shaky. “Some days it’s easier. I get caught up with everything else and honestly, I… almost forget. And then I’ll see something, hear something, and it all just comes back to me, you know? Like no time has passed at all. It doesn’t hurt as bad as it used to, but…”

Celine nods slowly. “I think… that’s just how it’s supposed to be. It never really goes away. You just learn how to carry it better.”

Rumi glances at her, the ache in her chest easing, if only a little. “You really think so?”

Celine tilts face towards Rumi. “I do.”

A beat. Then:

“I wish she were here,” Rumi says at last, staring up at the shinmok again. “I miss her. Everyday.”

“I know,” Celine says softly, “I miss her too. Everyday.”

She goes quiet again for a moment, then she tells Rumi, “If she could see you now… if she could see the woman you’ve become—she’d be so proud, Rumi.” Rumi swallows hard, blinking fast; a beat that swells with all of the emotions brimming between them. “I’m proud of you. More than you could ever know.”

She reaches over and cups Rumi’s face in her hand, brushing her thumb over the curve of her cheek. The pattern that runs along it. Then, she smiles at Rumi, a little tired and a little sad in the way Rumi has always known Celine to be, but unmistakably proud too, just like she said she is.

Celine pulls her hand back to her side, and Rumi leans sideways into her. She rests her head on Celine’s shoulder, and Celine gently rests her cheek against the crown of Rumi’s hair.

They sit together under the shinmok, the ribbons whispering above them.

— 𖣂︎ —

FLEABAG: I don't know what to do with it —
BOO: With what?
FLEABAG: With all the love I have for her. I don't know... where to — put it now.
BOO: I'll take it. I'll have it. You have to give it to me. It's gotta go somewhere.

-Fleabag

"It all comes out right in the end."

-All-Star Superman #6