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Most nights, the sound of a crying infant ricochets the walls of Celine’s home.
Sometimes, Celine resisted in removing herself from the side of her bed that Mi-yeong would sleep in before, just to check on the baby. The hunter would be laying on her side, limbs curled inwardly while her face mushed against the pillow, inhaling the scent that still remained.
The crying always won in the end, tugging her upright, drawing her out into the dark hall.
At first, Celine had held little more than a passing curiosity for the child, for there was nothing between them to bind or relate.
That child did not know Mi-yeong. It may have come from her, it was cared for by Mi-yeong when she held it in her womb, yet it did not know her, not in the way Celine does — did. The loss was hers and hers alone, and sometimes, in her more brittle moments, Celine found the infant’s wails unjustified.
The first few nights after her birth however, the baby — given the name Rumi, would refuse to sleep.
And maybe in that stubborn refusal, there was a possibility to bond over the sleepless nights they both had shared. Celine too laid awake the majority of the time, hours spent restless in the silence, only moving when sunrise peeked at her window.
Nights devoid of sleep weren’t exactly uncommon ground for Celine — her body was trained for long hours of rehearsal, of late night patrols, of relentless work.
Those hours were now replaced with measuring scoops of formula, trembling precision at the stove, fumbling with ridiculously small diapers in the dim light at 2 in the morning, and pacing the floorboards with the infant in her arms in hopes to quiet her down.
It was then, in the staggering quiet after the storm of crying, that the tears threatened her most. When those sobs would soften into wondrous coos, and Celine's chin would point to the heavens, eyelids falling shut as if willing the ache back inside. She would place the sleeping child back down into the crib, and resume her stare into the abyss until morning.
There were many nights in which Celine panicked outright. Parenting guides littered the table, corners bent from frantic rereads.
She would reread and reread passages in these pointless books open and half-closed, half annotated and highlighted — how many hours an infant should sleep? Should a baby cry this much? What was too little? And none of them were exactly accounted for this child.
Some nights, Rumi would resist sleep entirely, wide browns glazed but so sleepy, lashes fluttering closed only after endless hours of protest.
Other nights, she would sleep so deeply that Celine couldn't help but hover over her, palm pressed against impossibly small ribs, waiting for the faint rise and fall of breath.
Is it her demon side? Celine wondered, thumb stroking across the baby’s impossibly small ribs. Is it something I can’t fix?
She searched the books for answers, stacked them high by her bedside, tore through pages with eyes burning from fatigue. The books offered nothing, and well why would they? There was no manual titled How to Raise Your Best Friend’s Half-Demon Daughter.
Tonight, the baby cried the instant Celine sat at the hem of her bed, and movement stirred in an instant. Bare feet quietly padded the ground, her long legs guiding Celine forward before she even thought to hesitate.
The wails led her to the small nursery she took part in creating with Mi-yeong and their other sister in arms, only months ago. With a deep sigh, she crossed the space and stood over the handcrafted crib.
Rumi’s little body wriggled and fussed, face flushed crimson with the efforts of crying until her sobs came in quick, hiccuping bursts.
Celine had attempted everything the books and her rather rushed research said the previous days — formula warmed precisely to the number of degrees printed on the side of the tin, rocking in slow arcs, even humming quietly though her voice sounded so … so foreign and lonely to her own ears without any form of harmony behind it.
Tonight, there wasn’t any progress.
And oh, how Rumi hated being put down.
If Celine so much as lowered her into the crib, her cries pierced through the air — whimpering, panicked, desperate to feel a human warmth swaddle her.
Celine tried to resist, at the beginning. Tried to set her down, tried to teach her independence even at her ripe age in infancy, because was that not what children needed in general — discipline before affection?
Without progress, everything rendered futile. Celine’s resolve would waver, as it often did when it came to anything tied to Mi-yeong.
Her hands reached, scooped, gathered the infant into her arms. She drew the child directly to her chest, palm spanning with such stiff tenderness over the hunched curve of her fragile back.
“There, there, you’re alright, Rumi, there’s no reason to cry…” Celine half-heartedly muttered, voice hoarse with exhaustion. She half-scolded the tiny being in half-hearted whispers even as her palm cupped the fragile back of her head, even as her arm tightened protectively around her.
Only then did the weeping subdue, and with the unreasonable strength of this newborn’s grasp reflex, those little fingers cling to the woman’s forefinger. Her cheek, still fever-warm and damp from tears, nuzzled into the quiet, rhythmic thumb beneath Celine’s collarbone.
She had been reluctant to reach for it these past nights, but tonight Celine finally made use of the wrap still folded over the rocking chair near the window — the sling the mother insisted on getting at 7 months of pregnancy. “Babies need closeness, Celine!” Mi-yeong had uttered then, a palm smoothing over the fabric with the same ease she had when smoothing her round stomach.
Celine had scoffed at the time, thinking it indulgent. Now her hands trembled as she unwound the cloth, recalling every step Mi-yeong had her practicing with some plush brown bear they got during a carnival. “Not like that, babo. You'll crush her legs–”
“Mi-yeong, it’s a stuffed animal.”
“Hush and listen! Watch me.”
Mi-yeong’s hands had folded and pulled the fabric with guidance of instructions she learned herself, and Celine had unfurled with a flush she dared not name. “You’ll be good at this — we both will, right?”
When Celine mimicked the loops and folds in the present, knotting with the same exactness her friend had taught her — ungainly at first, nonetheless careful, Celine could almost feel that ghost-touch, still hear that jesting scolding in the silence.
Little Rumi fretted as Celine shifted her, but the moment her tiny body was settled against Celine’s sternum, tucked beneath the layers Mi-yeong had chosen, the cries dwindled to tiny hiccuping sighs, and at last quiet. Purple fuzz stroked the hollow of her throat, damp warmth seeping through the cloth, each small exhale puffing against her skin.
Her small chest rising and falling almost in time with Celine’s — a quiet attempt to moor herself to the only heartbeat she trusted. Celine did not confess it, but she was holding on just as fiercely.
The baby sling, she claimed, was for convenience, when in truth, it was becoming the only thing that eased the pressure in her chest and let her shoulders finally loosen.
Celine settled on the floor, legs crisscrossing, hollowed irises staring at the ceiling, wide awake. Yet the silence that follows feels oppressive, saturated with remnants of a lullaby Mi-yeong used to hum to the life growing within her womb, the picture still so clear and vivid — gaze filled with maternal warmth, such a contradiction to the ghastly contour of her once flushed cheeks, a palm cradling her swollen belly, the other enveloped in Celine’s tight grasp.
“내 옆에 있어, 셀린.” Stay by my side, Celine. “Be by hers too. She’ll need you.”
Celine peered down at the child, only to find her little head tilted up already. Rumi’s hair had been a lavender’s hue from birth, a wild wisp of soft, ruffled whorls that stuck out rebelliously no matter how many times Celine tried to smooth them. But her eyes — warm, bottomless brown — were nothing in semblance of her father’s.
They belonged to Mi-yeong.
Celine’s heart seized every time she witnessed Rumi harboring parts of Mi-yeong she thought were gone forever, and it was then she was filled with a recollection of so many memories; the shimmer of Mi-yeong’s gaze in the wings before performance, the quiet lift of her smile now resting on a sleeping child’s face, the quiet, stubborn pout of a mind already lost in thought.
Holding Rumi was like cradling the reiterations of her comrade, her friend, her sister in arms, the woman her soul was once tied to. The resemblance was enough to churn. But those eyes were also what called to her the way Mi-yeong’s did.
She should have been repulsed — reminded with each strand of hair that this child was not entirely human, that she was part of the thing hunters like her were trained to eradicate.
Instead, she felt something unfamiliar, inevitable : this was not a demon nor something meant to be abolished, but an innocent, gentle creature. Faultless, hungry, drowsy, possibly grieving in her own wordless way. And she needed her, Rumi needed Celine.
She flattened a palm over the wrap, over the fragile weight nestled inside. Rumi was what tethered Celine to her — proof that Mi-yeong was not completely gone, not while this small beauty existed. "I'll stay by her side."
Without thinking, she rocked slightly, the motion so natural she startled herself. Celine pressed her cheek against the crown of Rumi’s head, and for the first time since Mi-yeong’s passing, the night felt almost survivable.