Chapter Text
Rumi knew the basics of soulmarks. Everyone did. Yet between endless training, her endless fear of her patterns, and the shadow of the honmoon, she had never wasted much energy on them. If anything, soulmarks felt like the universe’s cruel way of making fun of her.
While most children whispered and daydreamed about what their marks might be, Rumi had spent her childhood loathing hers. For everyone else, a soulmark meant being one step closer to finding the person destined to love you more than anything. For Rumi, losing her marks was the only way she knew that anyone would be able to love her.
From the time she was small, she had assumed she would be like Celine—one of the rare few who never received a soulmark. Celine’s bare skin had felt like freedom. Rumi’s marked skin felt like a sentence. The jagged lines spreading across her chest and arms were her version of fate: a reminder that she existed to guard and seal the honmoon, not to fall in love.
Zoey, of course, had been fascinated by soulmarks. Early in their friendship, she had grilled both Rumi and Mira about whether they had received theirs, what they hoped for, and what they imagined their soulmates might be like. For Zoey, soulmarks were fairytales written into skin—proof that happy endings were real. For Rumi and Mira, they were landmines, better avoided than dwelled upon.
To Zoey’s disappointment, none of them had received their marks at that time. Mira brushed off the entire subject with a level of indifference that made Rumi strangely relieved and comforted. Especially since Zoey spent much of their first year together gushing about how she couldn’t wait for her soulmark, how she dreamed of loving someone the way her parents loved each other.
Whenever Rumi muttered that she doubted she even had a soulmate, Zoey’s wide eyes would turn pitying. “You only think that because you haven’t met him yet,” Zoey would insist, as though certainty could overwrite reality.
When Rumi once accidentally let slip that Celine had never received a soulmark, Zoey had burst into tears, mourning the tragedy as if it were her own. Rumi had lasted only a few minutes before retreating to the training yard. Eventually Zoey stopped pressing her about it. Or rather, she shifted her obsession to Mira.
Still, Zoey learned to stop bringing up soulmarks and accepted that she was the only romantic in the group. Well, she only accepted that after Mira had snapped at Zoey after pressing Mira too much one day.
Rumi had tuned out most of Zoey’s chatter about soulmates by that point. She only remembered that day because it was the first time she had heard Mira raise her voice at Zoey.
Zoey had been pestering Mira with questions about who she hoped her soulmate was while they had been training.
“Do you think you’ve already met him?” Zoey had asked while Mira was still locked in stance, gok-do gripped in both hands. Her eyes shone, her tone almost conspiratorial.
Mira didn’t look away from her target. “Probably not. I don’t have my soulmark.”
“Do you think he’ll be a dancer?” Zoey squealed, voice pitching high with delight. “Imagine if he were another idol—”
Rumi caught the tightening in Mira’s jaw, the flick of her wrist that nearly snapped her grip on her weapon. “I don’t care, Zoey.”
Rumi felt bad for Mira. Since Rumi would always shut down Zoey’s questioning, Zoey had moved on to relentlessly rambling to Mira about soulmates.
So Rumi found herself saying, “Zoey. Mira and I don’t care about soulmates like you…”
“Speak for yourself, Rums. Mira might pretend she doesn’t care,” Zoey teased, eyes dancing. “But that’s just because she doesn’t like dealing with her emotions.”
The gok-do creaked under Mira’s hands. “ZOEY—”
Zoey barreled on, oblivious. “Do you think he’ll have dated other girls? Or will he wait—”
The air split with Mira’s roar. Her voice cracked like thunder, startling even Rumi. “HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT THAT MAYBE I DON’T WANT A SOULMATE? THAT MAYBE BEING ‘FATED’ FOR SOME GUY SOUNDS SUFFOCATING, NOT ROMANTIC?”
And even though Rumi had seen Mira mad plenty of times before, she was taken aback by the pure anger and hatred that seeped through Mira’s words before she turned and stalked out of the training yard.
After that, soulmates and soulmarks became a subject none of them touched directly.
But years passed, and fragments slipped through the cracks.
To everyone's surprise, Mira was the first one to receive her soulmark. Rumi had never seen it, but Zoey had mentioned it a couple of times from Mira and Zoey’s trips to the bathhouse. Apparently, Mira’s mark was rather strange in that it started quite faintly and grew in size over the years. According to Zoey, it looked almost like a lightning bolt that bloomed across Mira’s chest. Mira hated even acknowledging its existence, and Zoey quickly learned not to press.
But Zoey had screamed so loud when she first noticed her soulmark. So loud in fact that Rumi and Mira had charged into her room with weapons drawn, only to find her shirt halfway off and her face split in an ecstatic grin. It was a simple wave-like pattern just left of her sternum. Rumi had snorted when she first saw it. It was very fitting given the amount of marine life documentaries and facts that Zoey had subjected them to over the years.
Zoey concluded that since her soulmark appeared on her eighteenth birthday, it must mean she hadn’t yet met her soulmate.
Rumi alone remained unmarked. Aside from the living patterns that spread slowly across her chest and arms, over the years, there was nothing. When Zoey received her wave, Rumi was surprised to feel something sink inside her. Almost disappointment, though she would never say it aloud. If Zoey was right—if un-met soulmates revealed themselves at eighteen—then Rumi’s blankness meant she had none. But more than anything, Rumi felt stupid for even holding out hope that she could have a soulmate—that someone could even love her.
Celine had always told her that was her fate: to be only a hunter, never a lover. Rumi told herself she accepted it. And yet, some bitter corner of her still wished her patterns were a soulmark—if not proof of a soulmate, then at least proof of being loved once, by her parents.
Rumi not receiving a soulmark was the final nail in the coffin. Zoey never spoke of soulmates around her again. She even kept her own mark covered, as though shielding Rumi from pity. But Rumi could still see their pity. The silence around her was heavy with it.
Even Bobby seemed to eventually get the memo that relationships, soulmates, and soulmarks were not to be brought up to Huntr/x. Interviewers learned quickly not to ask Huntr/x about soulmarks or romance. The label never asked Rumi to so much as sing a love song.
Rumi was grateful. It meant fewer questions she didn’t have to answer, fewer lies to choke on.
Still, the fans found ways to ask. Always.
The words came in comment sections, on livestreams, in the kinds of posts Rumi sometimes found herself reading at two in the morning when she should have been sleeping.
Whyy haven’t we gotten a Huntr/x love song yet??
These interviewers need to start asking the important questions. What about their love lives?!
They used to be asked about it constantly… so what changed?
Some were guesses, games played in the dark.
I wonder what Rumi’s mark is?? I bet Zoey’s is a turtle and Mira’s is a chain or something…
It HAS to be a crown. Popstar royalty, duh.I’m holding out hope that Zoey and Rumi’s are both either a crown or a turtle.
That’s probably why they’re so good at hiding their marks.The way Mira looks at Rumi has me 1000% CONVINCED they’re soulmates.
NO. It’s definitely Zoey and Mira!
Rumi knew she had no control over the fan theories, but seeing it laid out so publicly made her stomach twist.
Rumi told herself it didn’t matter. Just noise. Just speculation. But the truth was harder.
Every word felt like salt pressed into a wound that could never be left to heal.
So when they finally defeated Gwi-ma and the Saja Boys, the rumors cooling down was another benefit.
Not only had Rumi been suffocating under the pressure to defeat the Saja Boys, seal the honmoon, and hide her patterns, but the rumors about Huntr/x’s love life and soulmates had been worse than ever before. Ever since the Saja Boys’ sudden appearance, fans and media alike had latched onto the idea that they were destined soulmates of Huntr/x.
The moment Rumi saw the fan in the Rujinu shirt at the signing, she knew what was coming. Bobby showing her the posts only confirmed it: Jinu was supposedly her soulmate. She told herself that it made sense—fans had to pick someone. Someone real. Someone visible. But it stung more than she wanted to admit.
The glossy cover with Jinu’s grin and the bold letters screaming ‘SOULMATES?’ had hit her stomach like a hammer. She had frozen mid-step, her fingertips curling around the edge of the magazine until her knuckles turned white. She had felt her patterns tingle painfully under her skin, like the universe was mocking her.
Not only would Rumi never have a soulmate, but now everyone believed her soulmate was a demon. She knew that people were also speculating that Zoey and Mira’s soulmates were demons, but they at least had actual soulmates. It wasn’t as if the universe was telling them that they could only ever be fated to be with a demon. Or worse, that even a demon wouldn’t be their soulmate—wouldn’t love them.
No, instead the universe was going out of its way to mock her again. To remind her that she could never escape being a demon. To remind her exactly why she didn’t deserve to have a soulmate.
She swallowed hard, trying to push it down. She saw how the rumors hurt Zoey and Mira all the same. How betrayed they looked when they realized that their own fans could believe that those demons were their soulmates. In that moment, she almost understood why it wasn’t fair for her, a demon, to have a soulmate.
Mira already hated when anyone speculated who her soulmate was, but now she looked like she was ready to run her gok-do through anyone that brought up the Saja Boys. Even Bobby showing Rumi the posts about her and Jinu made Mira seem like she was going to snap.
Rumi exhaled. Defeating Gwi-ma had been a good thing—for the honmoon, for the world, for the fans, for her girls. She hated Gwi-ma more than anyone. And yet—her chest still ached like it had been hollowed out.
Celine had been wrong. Sealing the honmoon hadn’t freed Rumi from her patterns. If anything, her demon side burned brighter, impossible to ignore. The lines across her skin shimmered faintly in the dim light, catching her eyes every time she moved.
She would be stuck with her patterns forever. She would be stuck without a soulmate.
(She knew how stupid it sounded, but she had clung to the hope. If her patterns disappeared, maybe the universe would forgive her—maybe she’d be allowed to be loved. Maybe she’d be allowed to be human enough to be chosen.)
But it wasn’t fair to say she had no one. Zoey and Mira sat close on either side of her, so close their knees brushed hers, refusing to move until she spoke. It might not be the same, but surely Zoey and Mira loved her. They wouldn’t be sitting here begging Rumi to tell them if they didn’t.
So she tried to focus on them instead. She drew a shaky breath, but it trembled in her chest. So instead, she dug her fingernails into her palms and forced the words out, choking them past the lump in her throat.
“I was born with the patterns,” she whispered. “They started in a small patch on my arms and chest… at least from what I remember.”
“Born with them?” Zoey’s voice was soft, almost afraid to break the fragile quiet. “Like… born a demon?”
Rumi’s gaze fixed on the floor. She couldn’t bring herself to look at either of them. “Part demon. My mom was a hunter, as you know, but my dad was a demon.”
The words sat heavy in the air.
“How did that even happen… How is that even possible? A hunter and a demon-” Mira’s voice cut off mid-sentence as Zoey put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Sorry, I mean you don’t actually have to explain.”
Rumi huffed out a laugh at that. “I couldn’t explain if I wanted to. I don’t remember either of my parents.”
Mira’s eyes softened, but her voice carried a quiet edge of frustration. “Surely… Celine must—”
“Celine says that I am a hunter. ‘That’s all that matters.’” Rumi finally met Mira’s gaze, her eyes wet with unshed tears. “She would never even tell me his name.”
“Oh,” Mira whispered, almost reverently.
Zoey’s hands slipped over Rumi’s, gentle but unrelenting, grounding her before she could disappear back into silence.
Rumi’s tears slipped free, warm and unstoppable. Silence stretched between them, heavy but safe.
Minutes passed before Mira’s voice broke through, careful but trembling with barely restrained anger. “So… Celine has known this entire time?”
Rumi nodded, a fragile whisper. “I wasn’t allowed to tell you.”
Mira held up her hand like she wasn’t even ready to consider Rumi’s newest confession. “So the woman who raised you, who taught us to kill everything with patterns, who taught us to hate all demons, did so while fully knowing that could include you?” Her voice shook with rage, barely controlled.
Rumi sobbed openly now, gasping for air as she tried to speak. “She… said… faults and fears…”
“MIRA!” Zoey’s glare cut across the room.
“What? You were there, Zoey!” Mira shot back, tears brimming. “You know what Celine was like! She told us demons were all the same! That no demon deserved to live! That it was our job to kill them all!”
“Yes, Mira!” Zoey’s voice cracked, raw with emotion. “I was there. I am well aware of how fucked up it is. How wrong it all was…”
Mira went silent, the fury simmering just beneath her skin. Zoey wiped at her own eyes and continued, voice softer now. “But this isn’t about Celine. Right now… right now needs to be about Rumi.”
Tears slipped down Rumi’s face in uneven drops. Her voice broke as she tried to go on. “It was supposed to go away… the patterns… I thought I could fix this. That I could fix me.”
Zoey grabbed Rumi’s hands once again. “Rumi, there was nothing to fix.”
Rumi stared at her, incredulous.
Mira stepped closer, wrapping both of them into a fierce, protective embrace. “You were never the problem, Rumi,” she murmured into her hair.
The night stretched long with crying, whispered reassurances, and snack breaks Zoey insisted on between bouts of tears. At some point, the three of them curled together on the floor cushions, Mira’s arm slung protectively over both girls while Zoey absentmindedly traced patterns on Rumi’s knuckles to soothe her.
When Rumi could finally speak again, her voice was hoarse. “I really did want to tell you. So many times. But Celine said I couldn’t trust anyone until the patterns were gone. That nothing could change until they were gone.”
Mira’s jaw clenched so hard her teeth ground audibly. She looked like she could kill Celine with her bare hands. Zoey didn’t argue either—her silence said enough. But neither of them left Rumi’s side.
“As much as it sucks, I understand why you didn’t tell us. It’s not like we gave you any reasons that we might be accepting or even open-minded when it came to demons.” Mira’s voice broke and it took her a moment to continue. “I just wish that you didn’t have to carry all of this on your own… I just wish that I could’ve been there to tell you that it was okay.”
Zoey, steadier now, squeezed Rumi’s hand again. Her voice was simple but sure. “We love you, Rumi. Nothing changes that. Not this. Not anything.”
For a fragile moment, Rumi let herself believe it. That even if fate had denied her a soulmate, the universe had still placed her here, pressed between Zoey’s warmth and Mira’s strength. Maybe she hadn’t been fated for one person—but she had been fated to sit right here, loved by them both.
For a while, none of them spoke.
Rumi should have felt lighter. She had finally said it—the secret she had carried for as long as she could remember, the truth about her patterns and her father. Instead, her chest still ached like it had been carved hollow. Saying it hadn’t made the shame vanish. If anything, it only made the silence that followed feel sharper.
Mira huffed, a short sound that told Zoey and Rumi the conversation was not over. They liked that about Mira—how she never let things fester, how she pushed until people were forced to feel whatever they’d been running from. Sometimes it went too far. Sometimes it worked.
“So,” Mira said, choosing the words like someone choosing the least sharp blade in a drawer, “is there anything else you haven’t told us?”
She was trying to shield Rumi from any guilt about her secrets and lies. Though that only made Rumi feel worse. Because how even now was Mira trying to protect Rumi? After Rumi had stared into her trusting eyes and promised that she wasn’t keeping anything from her…
Rumi swallowed. She knew that she should tell them about everything that had happened after the Idol Awards, instead she settled for an easier topic. Jinu.
Not like Jinu was a safe topic. In fact, Rumi was certain that Mira would be tempted to punch a hole in the wall at just the mention of his name. However, it was easier than having to admit that losing them both had taken away her will to live. It was one thing to say that they completed her. It was another thing entirely to admit that she became nothing the moment that Mira had turned her gok-do on her. That kind of talk was reserved for soulmates—for something sacred.
“Um… just the stuff with Jinu…” she said.
Mira flinched like she'd been struck. It was a tiny, involuntary thing, the kind that made Rumi’s skin go cold. The name burned.
“The stuff with Jinu?” Mira’s voice was sharp and clipped when she echoed Rumi’s words back to her. Rumi couldn’t tell if the heat in Mira’s eyes came from the sting of betrayal or from the old needle of hate she and the others had been taught to feel toward demons.
Before Rumi could explain that she hadn’t chosen Jinu over them, Zoey broke in, high and breathless in a way that made the room tilt.
“Oh my god!” Zoey’s tone was so excited that one would’ve thought that Rumi had just agreed to a girls night. “Wait—was Jinu actually your soulmate? Are you sure that your patterns are just because of your dad and demon ancestry? What if they are your soulmark?”
Mira looked like she was ready to end Zoey right then and there on their beloved couch. But unfortunately for Mira’s sanity, once Zoey latched onto an idea, it barreled on, unstoppable.
“Oh my god! The chemistry between you two at the fan signing—the looks—make so much sense now! You’re like modern day Romeo and Juliet! Destined to be together but ripped apart by circumstances—” Except then Zoey’s face fell as her thoughts just tumbled out.
“Oh… oh no. I am so sorry, Rumi. You must be living everyone’s worst nightmare right now!” And suddenly, tears began to well up in Zoey’s eyes all over again. “Oh god, we just watched your soulmate die…”
The thought made Mira’s stomach churn and her hands tighten into fists at her side. There was no way that Jinu was Rumi’s soulmate, right? She didn’t care if Rumi had a soulmate. She wanted Rumi to be loved and cared for like she so desperately deserved to be. But the thought of Jinu with Rumi made Mira sick. Besides that was just too cruel to Rumi. No one deserved to be betrayed so horribly by the person they trusted the most—especially not if that person was their soulmate.
“He… he literally gave his soul to you…” Zoey choked out between sobs as she looked sympathetic at Rumi.
Rumi, however, looked like a deer in headlights. Blood drained from her face; her patterns seemed to pulse, a faint magenta glow crawling along their edges. Her jaw dropped but she could not make words come out.
Zoey’s sniffling quieted down a bit as she wiped her eyes, smearing her mascara everywhere. “I guess in a way that means it is not as bad since technically your soul is now whole.”
Only then did Zoey realize that both Mira and Rumi were staring at her like she had grown two heads. “What?”
Mira’s restrain snapped. “Zoey, do you really think Jinu is Rumi’s soulmate? That’s—” Her voice cut off, replaced by a snarl. “That’s ridiculous! That’s insulting! Rumi’s soulmate is not a fucking demon Saja Boy!”
Though Rumi only heard part of Mira’s yelling. The part that confirmed her worst fears: it was insulting for someone’s soulmate to be a demon. To be her.
“Right Rumi?” Mira demanded, fierce and raw.
Rumi blinked, scrambling for air and for truth. “Huh?” Her voice was small as she worked to wipe the hurt off of her face.
“Please tell Zoey that Jinu was not your soulmate!” Mira said with so much conviction that Rumi wondered how Mira could even be okay with her being part demon.
Instead, she just turned to Zoey. “Zoey, Jinu is—was—not my soulmate,” she said, and the words came faster once they started. “I know you don’t really have any reason to believe me, but I was serious about not having a soulmate.” Rumi sighed before she continued, deflating a bit. “Yes, I have patterns, but no soulmarks. My patterns are just from my dad.”
She saw the confusion flicker over Zoey’s face and rushed on. “Jinu saw my patterns during the fight at the bathhouse. He kept asking to meet up and talk after that. He said he was going to tell you about my patterns… So I agreed to meet up with him. He told me about Gwi-ma and being a demon. I thought I could use him to help against Gwi-ma. We were using each other. I don’t know what we were to one another, but we weren’t soulmates.”
She hesitated, then added, because the detail mattered, “And his soul didn’t fuse with me. It fused with my saingeom. Not me.”
The room held its breath.
Zoey’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh.” The single word folded into a sob. “Oh, Rumi. I’m—I’m so sorry. I jumped to the worst image and forgot to—”
And this time Mira shot Zoey a look that said, shut up and don’t make this worse.
Zoey pressed her palms to her eyes, her voice muffled. “I just… I thought maybe it would explain things. That there was some kind of… reason in all of it. But I made it worse, didn’t I?”
Rumi reached out, her hand hovering uncertainly before resting on Zoey’s arm. “Zoey, it’s okay. You didn’t mean to hurt me. And honestly? I get why you thought it. Everyone else does, too. It’s not exactly normal for someone to not have a soulmate.” Then, she gave a hollow laugh. “I spent years praying that my patterns meant something.”
Mira’s chest tightened at the way Rumi’s voice cracked. She dropped onto the couch beside her, folding her arms tight across her chest. “Rumi… they don’t define you. Soulmarks, soulmates, patterns—none of that changes what you are to us.”
Rumi’s lips trembled. “But it changes what I’ll never have. Do you know what it feels like to miss something you’ve never had? I didn’t just lose out on a parent’s love… No matter what I do, I’ll never get to experience the greatest love people talk about like it’s written in the stars?”
The confession ripped something open between them. Zoey sniffled, looking down at her knees. “I’m scared of that too. Not in the same way, obviously, but…” She twisted the fabric of her hoodie in her hands. “I’m scared that if I do meet my soulmate, it’ll be too much. That I’ll be too much. What if I can’t handle it? What if I can’t be both—this, a hunter, and whatever love is supposed to be? What if I ruin it?”
“Zoey…” Rumi’s voice softened into something like awe. “You could never ruin love.”
Zoey shook her head, cheeks flushed and wet. “My parents had this perfect kind of love. Like, actual storybook stuff. I grew up watching it and thinking, ‘I’ll never be able to do that.’ And now I’m terrified of even trying.”
The silence that followed was heavy until Mira let out a sharp laugh. “You two are acting like soulmates are some gift from heaven. They’re not. At least not always.” Her voice was flat, but her eyes were burning. “My parents weren’t soulmates. In my family, it doesn’t matter. Marriage, partners—those weren’t about love or destiny. They were alliances. They were power. My whole life, I never planned to look for a soulmate. Didn’t want to. My fate was already decided: be a hunter. Be useful. Be strong.”
Her gaze flicked to Rumi, softer now. “So no, I don’t want a soulmate. I don’t need one. But that doesn’t mean I don’t—” She cut herself off, jaw tightening, the words too dangerous to spill.
Rumi looked between them, her chest tight with both grief and warmth. “You don’t get it,” she whispered. “I’m not scared of not being enough for a soulmate. I’m scared of you two finding yours. I’m scared you’ll wake up one day, see your fated person standing there, and leave me behind. And then… what happens to me?”
Neither Mira nor Zoey breathed.
Rumi looked at them both, throat tight with grief and a strange, hot gratitude. The confession she did not say out loud ballooned behind her ribs—the thought that if sealing the honmoon hadn’t burned the patterns away, maybe it could have taken her instead. If she had succeeded at her destiny to seal the honmoon, what was she supposed to do now? Surely, the honmoon was supposed to erase her patterns and give her a soulmark. Give her a new fate.