Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Don't think you can escape what you are."

For a horrifying moment, Jinu realizes he really had thought he could.

The stagnant air that presses down upon him says otherwise. Neon flame had already encircled him where he stood, guillotining any chance of an escape. Beyond the stretch of stone steps that leads to Jinu, the braver demons murmur in a frenzy while others turn submissive and silent at the tone of their master's voice — but Jinu hears none of that. Sees none of it. Blinded by memories, he crumples to his knees upon an altar made of uneven stone, pawing the earth for his sister's hand blindly.

There's nobody there to reclaim his outstretched palm, though.

There is no weeping little girl waiting for him when his vision returns, no devastated mother. Gwi-Ma's tendrils of power, scraping like fingernails against bone, continue to pry around in his throbbing mind; the rumbling laughter behind him speaks to the fire's pleasure at causing him to fumble so helplessly once again — all for a family that died long ago.

Punishment, the word blares in Jinu's thoughts. Punishment for being careless.

He had known Gwi-Ma could've been looking in on him in the human realm. Not always, but often enough. It was hundreds of years ago that he'd learned he couldn't afford to be caught doing anything but what Gwi-Ma expected of him, so he'd crafted a delicate system of how to be — who to be — above ground, and with great care. No more suffering for a misstep on the mortal plane, for following any sense of longing for life beyond the oppressive carpet of the Honmoon. Or, worse: longing for freedom beyond Gwi-Ma.

It had made Jinu a good actor. Quick to provide what was needed of him on the first take.

And with that confidence, the explanations had felt like enough in the moment.

'I'm just leading her on,' he'd say. 'I just need to find her shame, so we can use it. I'm using her. I'm manipulating her — haven't I learned from the best? You don't trust your own teachings?' And each time, Gwi-Ma would hum. Consider. Process. It was an old dance they'd performed together so often over the centuries that Jinu had been confident he could slip by with his bleeding, aching heart unnoticed. Some part of him lied to himself, of course. Some part of him had been such a good actor, he'd even been his own captivated audience.

It was too obvious, though.

The fondness, the burst of love that had lit up his chest when he'd looked into her eyes. The lilting honesty in his voice as it had embraced hers and carried up and over the beautiful lines of light that blanketed Korea... Now, he stares at his trembling fingertips and recalls with pathetic clarity how Rumi's hand had slotted so effortlessly into his own. It felt like something he'd been stripped of for four-hundred years. It felt like what living was supposed to be like.

She'd offered him a fleeting moment of hope, of a freedom that overlooked a vast and beautiful horizon.

The promise of a world beyond the suffering, the guilt, the misery.

"I understand," Jinu finally says, trying in vain to numb himself. "Please, allow me to prove myself. As... you've taught me."

Another song and dance they perform together, when Jinu is caught being insincere in his devotion to his master: grovel in words and actions and hope that he's not picked up and burnt into ash before a horrified audience. Their relationship has always been a wound sewn shut with flimsy thread; one wrong pull of muscle and the whole thing will unfurl. He forces himself to breathe evenly and turn back toward Gwi-Ma, legs wobbling under the weight of everything in his head. As he does Gwi-Ma's flames crackle around him, building sweat on his brow.

"Take off the mask," the fire says.

Jinu ducks his chin, but he obeys. Warm healthy skin turns blue and dead as purple lines creep over his face — an infection in a once human spirit, a symbol of his lies and misdeeds against those who deserved better. Glowing golden eyes cast their miserable gaze at the floor. A suffocating silence constricts the very air before his patterns glow and he's unceremoniously forced onto his knees.

"Kneel," Gwi-Ma growls as he falls. Jinu's hands catch him, but the weight of pressure on his back leaves him bent like a straining bow string. The earth is close enough to his face that it cloys his smell, claws scraping on rock rendered the color of flesh by Gwi-Ma's light. His flame dances in staccato rhythm with faint laughter as he tells him, "Ahhh... Stop pouting, Jinu. It's not becoming of a demon so capable as you. Have I not spared you from burning tonight?"

Jinu's downcast mouth twitches.

Gwi-Ma doesn't care for an answer. "This song you've been working on — it's almost done, isn't it?"

It is something Gwi-Ma's offering that he can latch onto, Jinu thinks. Something he can use to reorient himself, or else he'll never be able to pull himself out of the burning whirlpool that threatens the humanity left inside him. With focus, his voice becomes disciplined and systematic and cool.

"We haven't completed the ending. It's close, though."

"Look at me," the monster whispers, and Jinu tilts his chin up to obey. "Listen and remember well."

The knot in his throat narrowly goes down as he swallows. "I'm listening."

"And remembering well, my nobi?"

"... I wouldn't dare do otherwise."

Disgust coils in his insides. He's groveling and Gwi-Ma knows it. He can tell by the soft, almost sweet laugh that dislodges from the fiery mass. Lingering outrage at Jinu's flickered hope still paints Gwi-Ma's tone with disdain though, stray embers raining like spittle.

"Living in your mind now — too late, because you're mine now."

Jinu's lips part as a mixture of voices clamor over each other in his head, overlapping with ferocity like a belt lashing on wet skin. He bites back a whimpered breath as his temples throb and ache at the pressure of too much too fast for a meager human mind. Lyrics. Lines are being fed to him with gleeful intent. An unwanted duet, to wipe away all promise of liberation.

Jinu echoes words that were whispered to him four-hundred years ago: "I will make you free when you're all a part of me."

(Jinu watches Rumi's lips move, a smile around every optimistic word... Just them and their song, building effortlessly from each other. It's as natural as breathing. "We could be free," she sings for him, to him, so kindly, "Free...")

Gwi-Ma chisels away the memory of Rumi with each striking word and slots himself there with malice.

"Give me your desire," he mockingly sings to the huddled form on his altar, "Watch me set your world on fire."

("We can't fix it if we never face it." Her hands are warm in his, and for a blissful moment, they're all that exists. Just a swell of promise for a better tomorrow against a secretive night sky. For the first time in four-hundred years, someone looks at him like there's really a chance for someone like him-)

"내 황홀의 취해, you can't look away," Jinu sings back more forcefully now, heat burning his cheeks, sweat running down stark purple patterns along his jawline.

("Let the past be the past 'til it's weightless," she and he sing. Their voices melt together. He wants to — if he could just tell her...)

"No one is coming to save you," Gwi-Ma hisses.

Far down below the altar steps, the Saja Boys watch, expressions blank.

(He wants to press his lips against hers, thank her for the warmth in his chest. But Gwi-Ma will see, will know. It's too dangerous. But what if it — what if he did let go of it all? His shame, his guilt, that feeling that he'll never be whole again... What if... "Rumi, wait," Jinu calls out. She looks back at him before she can leave, the stars in her eyes. Oh, to believe so deeply-)

Jinu's throat feels tight, and he can't summon the words. The duet with Gwi-Ma feels like sandpaper across his skin.

"You're down on your knees," Gwi-Ma sings. Sings, in a voice that Jinu had once so desperately entrusted with his survival.

(Jinu's smile is slight. "I can't wait to see you on that stage tomorrow."

The moment the words leave his lips, he is ruined.)

Finally allowed to rise to his feet, the final line falls from his lips.

"I'll be your idol."

The other boys seem conflicted about the end of their era.

While it's certainly true that the 'Saja Boys' were a means to an end and the work was more grueling than they'd anticipated (interviews, variety shows, fan meet-ups, on and on and on in so short a time-), their work had been a reprieve from all of the wretchedness that often waited down below. This had been the closest thing to freedom that any of them had received in centuries — and why not relish in it? Why not enjoy the purest act of performing, of being adored for voices they had once used to sing to their parents, their aunts and uncles, their siblings?

It was an easy sell when Jinu had approached them. Contrary to popular belief among the other demons, where was no audition to be had. There was no search for the best, brightest performers.

Handsomeness was a requisite, admittedly.

But one doesn't live in the same barren hell for four-hundred years without noticing the distant pull of someone else's voice trapped in song, and Jinu had noted them distantly in the past. Had never approached them, naturally. He had been skittish at the thought of caring about another breakable thing ever again to consider friends or lovers.

Even the tiger and bird had to fight for his affections when they first floated into his life.

But he did listen, any time a demon opened their mouth to sing.

He listened very, very closely to voices when they would carry over the craggy rock that jutted up all over that wasteland. Their songs were so often distant melodies, with lyrics lost to the passages of time, thick with homesickness that Jinu had on occasion escaped into fleetingly. Bolstered by confidence in his plan, he'd approached each demon one by one: Abby Saja had agreed before Jinu could get his pitch out in full. Romance Saja had to consider it for an entire fortnight. Mystery gave no answer, and yet appeared the day he was due. And Baby? Baby had shrugged and eventually conceded that he'd had nothing better to do.

And so it went. Five leashed souls who had very few attachments, if any, and certainly none when it came to one another. But that's how demons are forced to exist. They find joys in the simple things, perhaps even share amused or devious smiles or a mutual understanding. Then they prepare themselves for the inevitable moment those small pleasures and budding relationships are burned to cinder in front of them.

They partook in something dangerously close to mortal life, and they pleased their master as they danced on that dangerous precipice between success and failure, between reward and torture. And soon they would win. They were almost elated by the thought of so many souls being culled tonight.

If you had asked any of them, it was never truly malicious or personal. Jinu had known that feeling hismelf, after all. None of them had sought to harm until harm sought them, and once a person's been beaten into the dirt and trained to loathe so many parts of themselves, it's easy to find comfort in the intoxicating flavor of a soul as it runs down one's throat.

A momentary high. A reprieve. A chance to be commended by the devil that had distorted them, even if such pride in their efforts would surely rot into disdain for their tarnished souls..

Evil. Irredeemable. Monsters.

For tonight, they could all be desirable to demon and human alike. They could be revered for those fleeting moments in front of a backing track, and then think of all of the mercy that their master would bestow upon them like medals of honor. The voices in their heads would lessen. The realm would never be hungry again. And then... maybe there would be a moment permitted to rest.

Or at least, that's what the plan is supposed to be.

In their small, bright changing room and dressed in shades of black, Jinu peers back at himself in the mirror of his vanity. The memory of Rumi's hopeful smile clutches one wrist, while Gwi-Ma's smoldering heat shackles the other. They tug his mind back and forth relentlessly, all while he sits so very still and studies the shadows across the plains of his face. He's tired, but the glamour of his human mask hides it all behind smooth, perfect skin.

What now?

Here, in one hand: Rumi's peaceful gaze, telling him everything would be okay.

Here, in the other cold, clawed hand: Gwi-Ma's promise of pain if he dared help them.

He can hear them, melting together.

A beautiful voice raising in song for him.

A young voice begging for her brother to come back.

He buries his face in his hands and sits in the silence as the clock ticks down the seconds. It's not until he feels the press of a cold, wet nose and soft fur into his arm that he sucks in a surprised breath, turns his attention to his tiger. Unnamed but not unloved, the beast usually seems to smile with those crooked, odd teeth. Perhaps it's just a trick of his plagued mind, but it doesn't seem to be the case now. Is that concern in his feline eyes?

Sliding his hand over the crown of his large fuzzy head, the corners of Jinu's lips turn up weakly.

"What do you think, old friend?" he asks wearily, with claws summoned to scratch beneath the tiger's chin. "Would the Honmoon save a guy like me?"

Rumi's voice soars with confidence.

Light bounces off every angle of her. Rhinestones on her cuffs twinkle like the stars that have returned to her eyes. Gold tassels bounce as she raises her arms, saintly, glowing warm with adoration for her fans, for her friends who prepare to join the stage with her. There is no fear. Just jubilation. Just the auditorium and the taste of a Golden Honmoon on their lips.

"I'm done hiding, now I'm shining, like I'm born to be..." she sings; her fans joins in with her, harmonizing effortlessly as their souls glow blue and beautiful with inherent power — a sea of happiness and undivided connection. Jinu nudges through the crowd until he's pressed up against the barrier, clutching his aching side beneath his jacket. There would be no demons to steal Zoey and Mira's face. No Takedown to bare Rumi's shame to the world. He can already imagine the looks of anger and betrayal on the Saja Boys' faces, when they realize they'd been led too far astray by his lies to prevent what happens next.

It doesn't matter. Not anymore.

The fans scream and giggle in ecstasy around him. It's so palpable, he's not even sure they'd notice him without his raised hood. If he's honest, he also can't take his eyes off of Rumi as she belts out their hunter's mantra with pride. "... and I know I believe!"

The other two girls appear beside her as the backing track swells exuberantly, and soon their three-part harmony carries through the speakers, through the very air itself. Huntrix moves with fluidity, moons around a sun, three parts of a whole: a perfect, cohesive performance, carefully practiced to delight the very energy that safeguards the planet.

The golden threads of the Honmoon flutter in anticipation at the promise of finality.

They're so close. Freedom, just at the tips of their fingers. It fills Jinu's chest with something warm, so much so that his mouth falls open as he croons the words back. "Up, up, up, with our voices, 영원히 깨질 수 없는..."

As if a lantern through thick fog, Rumi sees the glow of his blue soul before she sees Jinu's face among the crowd. His soft brown eyes look back in fluttering relief. Relief and — something more, something both had felt as they'd floated in their own delight together, hand in hand, yearning for freedoms neither had been allowed for so long. No more fighting, no more pain, no more secrets.

Her eyes lift into happy crescents as she sings at him — for him. "You know that it's our time, no fears, no lies..."

— and even with the distance between them, he couldn't help but reach his hand out to her with longing to feel the warmth of it again.

Rumi reaches back.

Their golden Honmoon rolls across the earth in a beautiful, intricate wave.

"That's who we're born to be...!"

The last thing Jinu sees before the blanket of gold light violently pushes him back down into the earth is Rumi's horrified expression, just beyond her outstretched, empty hand.

Ah... Well, his downhearted thoughts whisper, just before his body makes impact with an unyielding stone altar. It was nice to dream, anyway.

Chapter Text

The moment Jinu's body meets the demon realm's unforgiving earth, he can feel angry claws descend upon him.

His thoughts are so scrambled by the freefall and subsequent hard knock to the head that he doesn't quite parse what's happening at first; his vision is filled with blue and purple and red, patterns flashing in blurs as limbs swipe at him relentlessly. His fingers immediately become talons as he slashes back — feels his blood and the blood of other demons strike his face in wet gushes. His hooded jacket is shredded into patches across his torso and is immediately stained; one demon's hand strikes him across the face and carves a messy set of gouges from ear to nose. He sinks his fingers into the assailant's throat and squeezes.

A hunter's blade would be a kindness in comparison, for either of them. At least those sharpened tools are quick to turn them into lifeless cinders.

Almost humane, if you're desperate enough to look for it.

"Fall back!" Gwi-Ma's voice booms, and the attackers all scamper away down the stairs, some even tumbling off the high edges of the altar in their panic. No amount of outrage could keep them from obeying, and it's only in this moment that Jinu's senses return to him enough to grasp the severity of the situation. They're all furious. And who could blame them? He'd taken everything he'd promised them and not only threw it away, but did so knowing it would be the end of everything for them. They would slowly starve to death — slowly perish under Gwi-Ma's especially indelicate temper.

And it was his fault.

He weakly pushes the limp body of a dying demon off him and rolls onto his knees, quaking with the effort. The sting of their onslaught makes his breath catch in his throat. Human clothes hang off him in ribbons and blood, dark like ink stains, saturates parts of him. He's half-bared, vulnerable, shivering as the fight finally begins to leave him and replace itself with pain.

In front of him, Gwi-Ma's fire is ever vivid with colors that haunted their dreams if they had dared sleep.

He fell, he thinks. He fell, he fell, he fell.

Unworthy, disgusting creature that he is. The Honmoon crushed him like a bug. And he fell.

Did she know? Did she know that he'd — no. No, she wouldn't have done that to him. He tells himself again and again in the madness of the moment. They'd both felt something; it was real, he knows it was real, and she was so gentle in her affirmations. We'll both win. But as he sits on the cold altar with his arm clutching around his slicked body, he realizes through the burn of his stomach and coldness that washes over the rest of him that such profound hope was a mistake.

Gwi-Ma's voice sneers, "What are you crying for? You did this to yourself."

To his horror, tears have cut through the blood on his face and drip freely from his wobbling chin.

"After everything I've done for you... all of the exceptions I've made for you when you've faltered... You sit here before me — crying like an infant. What a pitiful, pathetic display." His flame flares outward as his voice raises higher. "I gave you a chance to prove yourself worthy of my attention, of my gifts! And instead of receiving my grace, you've betrayed us all. Betrayed us to the same miserable fate as your family!"

The demons down below scream and beat the earth with their fists and sob. With the Golden Honmoon completed, Gwi-Ma will feast on whatever is left here... and they will be left to either feed his flame or starve. Jinu had been watching it happen before his eyes, had known it was their only chance to stop the door from truly slamming shut in their faces forever. There will be no more human souls to feast on. Gwi-Ma's reign will wither.

And they will all eventually wither with it.

It could be decades. Centuries. But they will fall, one by one, stumbling through this barren world until their emaciated ankles give in and they collapse. He's seen it before in the human world — as a child, as a grown man, watching people who had been just as desperate as his family, people who would struggle to scrape the bark off trees to boil into a meager porridge. 

What could he say? That it all went to plan? That he was just fooling her? Leading her on, for the sake of their survival? Whatever lies he would've smoothly delivered before have become large knots in his throat. He's a fake, a liar, an imposter — he's defeated. There is no coming back from this. Whatever slim pickings of reverence he'd gained being their capable savior has been ground to dust with every choice he'd made at the end of it all. Whatever chance he'd had to be redeemed and permitted salvation by the Honmoon was a lie, even as it had left Rumi's soft lips.

Hanging his head, he says nothing.

No apology. No explanation. No plea for his survival.

He's done.

"No more slick words left in you, are there?" Gwi-Ma's seething. He wants to burn him into nothing, into ashes that the others merely trample across. How many demons are forgotten underfoot? One loses track. The tyrant laughs, but there is no humor in the sound. "No, of course there aren't... You were used as a hunter's tool, a plaything to be discarded, and now all you can do is live in greater shame. Isn't that right? Not only are you a selfish, murderous liar, but you're stupid enough to think one of them would ever save something as disgusting to them as you."

The memories slam into him like one body into another. He jerks back weakly, too tired to fight it even if he could. So his eyes look through Gwi-Ma, seeing Rumi's horrified expression as he falls. Over and over he falls, listening to the sobs of his sister — the crunching of dirt as the palace doors are pushed shut. Then he's bowing to the king. Bowing to Gwi-Ma. Bowing in defeat, over and over again. Four hundred years and it feels like every moment of weakness had only just been committed. He squeezes his eyes shut against the migraine that bloats behind his vision, brain-matter throbbing at the invasion, the intrusion of thoughts and voices and memories and—

"Enough!" Jinu screams.

And with that desperate, rabid sound, a throb of pink striations run along the altar, stopping at the feet of the demons down below.

It's a single, shocking word to those watching. Nobody tells Gwi-Ma what is and isn't enough. Not unless they sought death.

Panting, blood-soaked, hair unkempt against a sweaty forehead, Jinu's wild gaze finds Gwi-Ma through the haze of violent memories that still try to assault him.

His eyes have shifted from their humanity, back into the color of a Golden Honmoon that coats the bruise-colored sky above them. 

And then Jinu snarls, "This is what you deserve."

As the crowd of creatures huddled down below gasp and murmur among each other, Jinu closes his eyes and waits for Gwi-Ma's flames to find him. That's how their master had almost always dealt with incompetence or insolence: burning wailing demons, sometimes to death, sometimes just enough that they can limp away and lick their wounds beneath the shade of sunken debris. The death may not be quick. Or it may be a swift, unrelenting hand. But as he waits and anticipates and almost yearns for something he'd once fought so hard to escape, he imagines Rumi.

Rumi's gentle hand, running over his tiger's massive head; offering him a simple, cheap bracelet — an olive branch between hunter and demon — and how greedily he'd snatched it up; the way she had playfully toyed with the lines of a blue Honmoon, offering him a chance to sing alongside her. A demon and a human. The impossibly cliched darkness and light. Maybe it had all been a trick, but the way she had looked up at him... Was he just too stupid to see something more cruel there?

(No, no. She looked shocked. She looked mortified as he fell. She reached for him-)

Hope was a mistake. Hope was a weakness. Hope destroyed him.

Hope had such beautiful eyes.

"Take him to the pit."

Jinu's breath catches.

No.

Ice in his veins freeze him over for only a moment, and then bestial instinct takes over any sense of dignity. He rises to his feet and starts running for the edge of the altar, clamoring for the nearest escape, but it's as pointless as its ever been to try and flee. As his patterns flare up with light, he slams into the ground violently — pinned but still trying to force his limbs out of their invisible shackles. Levitation fails him. Teleportation fails him.

A bug stripped of its wings.

And this bug calls out: "No, no, stop! Let me go! Don't!" As he fights against empty air, clawed hands suddenly grab him beneath each armpit, hoisting him up and lugging him backwards. He tries to flail in protest against the pressure of Gwi-Ma's control — and against the demons who have loyally obeyed and have collected him in their grasp — but no matter how much he wills his body to respond, his legs only twitch as he's dragged away. Panic leaves his voice rough and desperate as it echoes through an infertile world. "Please, don't do this, just kill me! Please! Kill me!" And then again, with fury, "Kill me!"

"I should have left you begging on the streets," Gwi-Ma spits. He watches Jinu's writhing form pulled down step after sharply jutting step. "Left you to live a short, pathetic human life full of misery and death. Left you to starve. Well, if it's endless hunger you prefer, it's hunger you'll get!"

The crowd of demons begin to part down the middle as Jinu's body is dragged toward the single structure still standing from the old world: a red hongsalmun. Its two pillars vibrate as a portal yawns open between them like a doorway. Jinu looks from one demonic face to the other — some are bleeding like he is, gashed by his claws in their scuffle. Some of them look disappointed, tearful, despondent. Most look furious.

Among them, he catches sight of the Saja Boys. They haven't stripped out of their silky modern button-up shirts, nor their jewelry, but their skin has returned to shades of purple and blue once more. Their gold-colored eyes watch him as he passes, expressions indifferent. The only one of the four that can't seem to school his emotions is Abby, with furrowed brow and angrily clenching jaw. Blame. Scorn. Outrage. Rightfully deserved, even as Jinu still struggles against Gwi-Ma's gravity with every passing moment. The horned demons that tow him — that tower over him — clutch his bare arms tighter the more he fights it.

Then, they pass through the portal.

Gwi-Ma's altar, standing in the middle of dull rock and dark sky, shifts into even more of nothing. The other side of the portal is a vast expanse of dead trees and mountains tall enough to nearly scrape the underbelly of the Honmoon. But Jinu knows what this is — where this leads to. He's endured this punishment once before, long, long ago. At the mouth of these desolate mountains, a cave sits with a yawning maw. It's inviting to no one, but prepared to consume all the same. Ripped, discarded bujeok litter the ground where Jinu's knees brush — paper talismans once for the purpose of good, devastated by corrosion for hundreds of years in the dark.

Soon enough, the fight within him withers into soft pleas. Rough hands drag him through the cave's hollow entrance and into near darkness; the glowing patterns across their demon bodies are the only light that leads the way. All the while, every slight sound bounces off the cavernous walls. Jinu's strained breathing mingles with crunching footfalls and occasional uncomfortable grunts from his chauffeurs as their grip on him adjusts. He knows they're not permitted to talk during this unkind ritual, though maybe that's for the best; they probably have a lot they'd like to say to him, judging by how roughly their nails dig into the muscle of his bicep.

The deeper they wander in, the more ancient, mournful voices whisper and wail and beg... These are the sounds of demons long since destroyed inside this place, Jinu knows. Their voices are like stars that have long since burnt out and yet exist, centuries later, for those left behind to bear witness. Some of the voices he recognizes. Remembers from years past, before Gwi-Ma had sent them away to the Pit.

And now, he's sitting at the edge of that very same horrible, long chasm.

He tries, despite himself. Tries to teleport away when they drop his arms back to his sides. Tries to float when they shove him forward. For the second time, he falls again — deeper and darker and longer, he falls. Down in the Pit, you don't know when the ground will finally greet you, like a kiss from a fist.

Eventually, though: a landing.

It's hard and brutal and he loses conscious for a time.

A short, nauseating time.

When he stirs and opens his eyes, all he finds is darkness.

He fights to keep his breath steady, but his lungs start pulling faster and faster from the damp, stale air as the panic creeps in.

This is going to be all he has. For years, for decades, for centuries if Gwi-Ma so chooses. This will be all there is. Sitting down in a ravenous cavity of rock and darkness, forgotten, left to wither without the mercy of death. He paws around the black abyss for some shred of hope that something can grant him a miraculous escape — but no matter how many times he gropes around the Pit, there is only the same circular wall, over and over and over again-

His steadily rising cries for mercy are entombed from the outside — sealed shut with a heavy stone.

A heavy weight unlike anything they've ever endured begins to press down upon the demon realm.

There are a lot of demons who have given in to their panic and have spent hours upon hours clawing at the Golden Honmoon's barrier. Others have slowly sank to the ground, quietly comforted by what few friends or lovers they'd weaved in what little privacy they've been afforded. Usually that kind of comfort didn't come easily and was often chastised, but this night Gwi-Ma was surprisingly silent on the matter. It was... as if he had started floundering in his own way, left to figure out just how long he had left before his flame would well and truly burn out.

A soon to be dying king with a crumbling crown, as foretold by the demon who would serve the final blow.

Not before his bondservants all perished first, of course.

But perhaps some of them welcomed the day that the great King Gwi-Ma of the demon realm had to truly fear for his continued existence.

Jinu had been taken away — would be punished endlessly, they know, and would be last to be consumed by the fires when nothing else was left to feed and stoke it. The Saja Boys weren't really sure what would happen to them, though Baby figures they would be given the smallest amount of leniency for not betraying all of their demon ilk for the love of a woman.

With their glorious leader gone, the four of them stand together long after the other demons have dispersed. They walk along an unappealing path of uprooted, decaying tree corpses, slowly shifting back into long robes and sheer gats. Mystery toys with the curved fangs jutting out from under his lips. Baby rolls a half-eaten sucker between curved monstrous claws.

Some jewelry lingers, though. None of them return to their top knots.

As they reach a clearing of cracked mud and long-collapsed huts, they turn towards one another.

A loose circle of demons, ready to face the pitiful end of everything, angry and tired and still fighting scathing voices of their own.

Romance speaks first, after the silence overstays. "I guess that's it, then."

"... Guess so," Abby mumbles.

They all anticipate turning and going their separate ways.

For some absurd reason, they do not.

Chapter Text

Rumi has waited her entire existence for permission to exist.

She'd wanted to prove she was worthy of the human part of her — and to deshell herself of the demonic heritage that had made her naked body a waking nightmare to look at in the mirror. Since she was a little girl, she'd dreamed about changing the Honmoon's colors, sometimes wishing so deeply, she'd cry upon waking from a dream after realizing it had all been in her imagination.

And she now she's finally getting to see it realized.

Her voice had soared, had intermingled with the beautiful harmonies of fans who had brought them to this moment. And down at the barricade, Jinu had sang with her; he was a beautiful sight then, radiant with promise and hope and all the things she had sworn he could have again. Freedom to choose. A chance to find his own redemption. A purpose beyond being a tyrant's loaded weapon.

She reaches for him. She wants to feel the warmth of his hand in hers. She wants to see their hard-won laurels gifted when their patterns vanish and their bodies are purified by the mercy of the one thing she had sworn to protect with her life.

("Because if there's no hope for you, what hope is there for me?")

And then Jinu sinks under the weight of the Honmoon.

("Then we'll both win.")

Gone.

("You can be free from those voices forever.")

Rumi falls, too. But not like Jinu.

She has felt pain before. Physical pain, emotional pain. Daggers in her spirit and claws through her flesh. But no amount of suffering she'd built herself up to handle could prepare her for the agony in her chest at the sight of Jinu being crushed beneath the Honmoon's weight. It's like the air is punched out of her. She becomes voiceless in her dread.

He had vanished from her sight. From her life.

The song's instrumentals continue to play, but she can only hear the blood pulsing like liquid fire in her ears. The golden shawl sparkles brilliantly across the crowd. Someone on the overhead speakers congratulate Huntrix for yet another incredible performance while Mira and Zoey rush to throw their arms around her, nuzzling close, eyes closing in the ecstasy that accompanies victory.

In the heat of the moment they must mistake her pale-faced shock for something else. What else could it possibly have been, if not the realization that all of their work has finally come to fruition? A world united by their music. A society truly shielded from the evil, disgusting creatures that fester beneath their feet. Even now, Rumi can feel stray tears from Zoey's eyelashes as she clings to her.

She whispers excitedly, "We did it, Rumi! We did it!"

"Keep it together you two," Mira's voice wobbles.

Rumi can only stare at the space where Jinu used to be, a space already filling back in with other bodies.

He is gone.

Simply gone.

"Ah — I'm sorry for the unfortunate news," an announcer chimes in over the many overhead speakers. "We've received word that the Saja Boys will not be performing as planned. It seems they've had an emergency come up… but they would like to sincerely congratulate Huntrix for their wonderful performance tonight."

Rumi's knees threaten to buckle beneath her. When tears finally track down her cheeks, Mira and Zoey can only look on in panicked confusion. They steady her arms in their hands and tuck flyaway strands of hair back behind her ears. Surely, these were just overwhelmed tears of joy.

After all, the Honmoon turned gold.

What was there to mourn?

By the time they're ushered off the stage and microphones are thrust into their faces by eager reporters, Rumi's make-up has been adjusted, and her smile carefully stretches across her painted lips. Nothing quite masks the puffiness under her eyes, nor the pink irritation that lingers — not very sightly for a well-cultivated idol persona — but most find it endearing tonight.

Surely, it's just a girl that cares deeply about her work.

She practices the art of disassociating well. Gives thanks to the fans, promises more to come in the future. Though Zoey and Mira's expressions betray their concern at times, the three work in a harmonious balance, greeting eager fans waiting to be noticed and cradling bouquets of flowers in their arms.

Faults and fears cannot be seen, Rumi thinks.

The fault of exhibiting grief.

The tightness of fear in her stomach.

A sort of numbness takes over as she signs her name on CD cases and glamor shots. One fan frowns at her from behind the red rope that parts them from overeager concert-goers. "I hope the Saja Boys are okay," the girl says, and then holds out an Idol Awards poster, slightly dented despite her great care. "I'm glad I saw them before the show, but…"

Rumi signs beneath Jinu's signature.

And then signs another poster. And then another.

The world around her wobbles and blurs and her palms begin to sweat—

Rumi.

Rumi.

"Rumi."

She startles, and realizes she's sitting across from Mira and Zoey in the back of a limousine with expensive leather seats, homeward bound. Their own music is playing softly on the radio, which she realizes belatedly has to be Bobby's doing from the front seat.

"Are you okay?" Mira asks, brow furrowed. "Back there on the stage, you looked…"

"I'm sorry," she says, forcing a smile. What could she say? What would settle that uncertain look in their eyes? The truth wasn't going to be it. That much she knew for sure. "I'm just — it's so much. We've worked so hard to get here, and I just can't believe… I mean…"

Zoey smiles sympathetically. She reaches over to put her hand on Rumi's, squeezing.

"It does feel totally overwhelming."

"But nothing my girls couldn't handle!" Bobby chirps from the driver's seat.

What was usually a warm glow from Bobby's kind words fizzled out before they could reach her. Cold from the inside out, she presses a hand to her chest and breathes in shakily. When she closes her eyes, she just sees him. Over and over again, she sees him. Encouraged. Heartened. Then plummeting.

"It's okay. I'll be okay," she lies.

One of many lies she has told, and with more to come.

Before they reach the paved driveway that leads into their garage, Rumi's phone buzzes in her pocket — not a voice call, but a simple text. As they lean in to read it together, she can feel a short-lived burst of anticipation.

It's Celine. She must have felt it. Felt the Honmoon change.

The words that reflect back at her makes her throat tighten, despite everything.

'Rest yourselves.

We'll talk tomorrow.

I am SO proud of you girls.'

They get home fairly late, but Zoey and Mira are full of unbridled energy. They throw off their jackets and kick off their shoes at the door, giving Bobby a cheery farewell and rummaging around in their spacious kitchen for bowls and the snacks to fill them with. They talk about maybe taking a few weeks off to relax, to plan out some kind of well-deserved trip and actually harvest the fruits of their years of hunting labor.

Somewhere between Zoey shoving Pepero biscuits in her mouth and Mira manhandling a popcorn bag into the microwave, they talk about a future they used to chatter about in the dead of night, when none of them could sleep. A future without fighting. Without fearing the next failure.

"It's going to be so weird not bashing demon faces in," Mira laughs.

"Right?!" Zoey claps her hands together. "I don't know what I'm gonna do with all of those demon insult journals! Maybe recycle them for jong-i jeobgi."

Rumi belatedly realizes silence has filled the kitchen. Both girls have stopped talking and are peering at her now — expectant, waiting for her input on something she'd tuned out. It occurs to her that she's been suspiciously quiet, so she masks it with a yawn that is admittedly a little forced. "Sorry, guys. That — that all sounds great… I'm just really tired. Maybe we can plan something for tomorrow? A relaxation day?"

Mira opens her mouth, but Zoey gives her a soft bump with her shoulder.

"That sounds great."

"Ah, yeah — " Mira agrees. "Yeah. Get some rest, huh? It's been a crazy two weeks."

A surprised laugh bubbles up from Rumi's mouth, because her friends had no clue just how crazy it had really felt. Two weeks since they'd bumped into the Saja Boys. Was that all it was? Just two? Fourteen days of nearly beheading one of them, of sticking out their tongues when the cameras weren't watching, of finding Jinu in the hushed darkness of nighttime, sitting with him and laughing softly and wondering what it would feel like to lean over and —

Rumi could never know what it felt like, to be tormented by memories the way demons were. But right now, she could at least understand a little.

Swallowing, she says, "I think I'm going to take a bath and hit the bed."

"Sure thing," Zoey doesn't delay in answering. "If you need us, we'll be here."

So — they definitely know something is off.

It wouldn't be the first time. It also wouldn't be the first time she hides it all anyway.

If Mira or Zoey are considering convincing her to stay for the couch and snacks, they hold their tongues. Rumi would have to be blind to miss the worry that creases their brow or the careful way they speak; it must be awful, she thinks, to know something is amiss but not know what. Has she been doing this to them all this time? With her nervousness about the bath house, or the way she'd hidden the decline of her voice? Is this just what she does? Inspire people to help her, only for them to get bitten for their kindness?

She offers a weak smile and has to force herself not to rush her steps as she leaves.

The moment her bedroom door closes behind her, she presses her body rigidly against it. The lock clicks into place behind her fingers. The room is too cold, too quiet. Some part of her wants to see a large, blue mass of fur curled up and sleeping on her floor. A bird in a silly little hat, tapping at her window. Did they get pushed down into that hell too? Were they demonic, or did they have a chance to remain free in the chaos? The thought of being the reason they're gone too…

One moment she's leaning on her door, the next she's in her bathroom, running the water in the shower. The mirror is damp and fogged, and she runs her palm across it to see what looks back. A fraud. A fake. A liar. For hours, she has dreaded this moment. For hours, she's pushed it away. She takes a deep, strained breath and slowly peels away her shimmering idol jacket from trembling shoulders.

A sob forms on her lips when bruise-colored patterns reflect back at her.

"No…" comes the weak response. She rips away her shirt, her bra, studies the lines that curve across and around her thin pale frame. "No, no, no…"

Not only has she not been saved from these patterns, the demon marks have grown further down her stomach — down her arms, too, and even closer to her wrists. Fingers clutch the marble counter, white-knuckled.

She was still just as wrong and broken as the child who had first shown Celine the funny little mark on her bicep. She was just as disgusting and foreign as the teenager who had slapped Mira's hand away when she had reached for a scrape on her elbow during training.

Jinu was gone, and she still wasn't whole.

"Why? Why? I've done everything I was supposed to. We sealed the Honmoon! We stopped Gwi-Ma, we — I was supposed to be fixed! I was supposed to be better!" She sinks to the floor. Her sobs fade into the spray of long-forgotten shower water. "I was supposed to be free. We were both — "

Her breath shudders.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry… I wanted to set you free. I wanted to save you, I swear."

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

What is that supposed to accomplish, saying such things to a bathroom rug? It's too late. This very moment Jinu is trapped a world that will despise him now. He'll be tortured for an eternity if he's not already been burned to ash, a betrayer to his own kind. She'd set him up for that. She'd been the one to put the final nail in his four hundred year-old coffin; every hammer stroke leaves a vicious image in her head: Jinu, surrounded by fire; Jinu, beaten by his fellow demon; Jinu, with his spirit broken, looking up at a world — a new life — that had rejected him.

And here she was, curled up on a bathroom floor, bawling her eyes out.

Yet another Gwi-Ma, promising a desperate man safety and security, only to rip it away in a lie.

She's floating.

The sky is both above and below. Endlessly, city lights twinkle and bleed together.

As he hovers beside her, Jinu slips his hand into hers with a feathery touch. Tentative. Sweet.

Their patterns glow together, unified.

Rumi isn't naive. She knows just what lies beyond the handsome, harmless-looking boy staring back at her. Like any demon, he was responsible for countless lives lost. He had hurt humans like he was trained to do, had consumed souls for a master that was relentless and cruel and would allow for nothing less. Jinu was dangerous. He was cunning. And she knows that at the start, no matter how much of it was sincere, there was always some part of him that had no choice but to collude with her for his own benefit.

But looking at him in front of her, buoyed together by hands ornamented with jagged lines… It could only remind her of a man who had gripped her wrist as if a bracelet could actually save his soul. Again and again, all she could see was a lonely, hopeless human spirit, desperate for another chance to live.

Not just survive.

Looking at him now, that is what she sees. A survivor. Someone who had been unmade so many times that he'd learned how to put himself back together. A person capable of great harm, but also great care. There is an endless wealth of possibility in the brown eyes currently tracing her figure in starlight.

"Rumi," he hums, "Will you sing with me?"

Of course. Of course she will.

She reaches up to brush his windswept bangs from one eye.

The gesture leaves long, thin scratches on his forehead that flood with blood.

Pulling back sharply, her gaze snaps to the claws that have consumed the tips of her fingers.

"Oh my god. I didn't mean to, I was—"

"It's okay," Jinu says, pulling her hand in to press against his cheek. She watches as gash after gash spreads open across his skin. Across his face. All over his arms. Down his chest. "It barely hurts. It barely hurts… It…"

His mouth opens, and the scream that leaves his lips is bloodcurdling.

She gasps awake on the bathroom floor before his name can escape her lips.

Chapter Text

Sleep doesn't come easily for Rumi, the night the Honmoon turns gold. Jewelry and make-up stripped away, the lingering glamor from the stage is replaced with damp hair and nightmares; these dreams are short and sharp, not unlike a small knife wound, and keep waking her to the blue coldness of a quiet room... and a soft pink glow. When she lifts her shaking hands she can only watch her patterns flicker with nauseating light, as if compelled by her misery, her shame.

The panic from her nightmares flows into depression while awake, and that flows into exhaustion that starts the entire process over again. By the time the light from a crawling sunrise streams through the gaps in her curtains, she's given up on the idea of trying to make up for lost rest. Instead, she stares at the ceiling. Waiting. Waiting for what, she's not really sure. For reality to shift? For the possibility that she had dreamed yesterday all along?

Maybe she's just wishing the tiger and bird would rise from the bedroom floor with another handwritten note from Jinu.

What would it even say? 'Thanks for nothing'?

She let him down, and soon she would have to shatter Celine's perfect ending too. The thought of her horrified gaze on her bare arms constricts something warped and delicate in her chest. As the tears swell in her eyes and threaten to flee into the shells of her ears, she tells herself that this has to be it — no more tears, no more weakness. She isn't sure what will happen if the other two find her in such a sorry state, but the fear of it happening nearly suffocates her.

She's no stranger to covering something up. She just needs to keep doing it.

Because... because the demons are finally locked away, and their jobs are finished.

The patterns aren't gone, but maybe they're just delayed. Maybe it takes time for them to vanish, the same way that it took them so many years to spread. Maybe, maybe, maybe. There is still a chance things could be okay.

For her.

For her.

She presses her hands over her eyes and sees a dark-haired, tall figure running his fingers over blue strands of light, wary and hopeless.

("I don't trust it, but I want to.")

"It's not fair," she whispers in the dark. She turns on her side and watches the golden Honmoon pulse across her bedroom floor. She tells it, "He earned your mercy."

It's too late now.

It's over. It's done.

And she has to live with it, the same way she's lived with the sight of her markings year after year.

She has to.

(Just keep going.)

When Rumi comes out of her room, the other two have simple breakfasts set at the table, a third spot for Rumi created with care. As drained as she is, remembering that they're both here for her both heals and harms. All this time she'd been excited for the day she could finally be her true self around them — and yet she was moving to join them, knowing that there was so much of her hidden away from view. And after all of the concern she'd caused with her struggling voice and her performance as a hunter...

Making them feel like they have to look after her is a terrible feeling.

And it's happened more lately than she wants to admit.

"We were wondering when you'd roll out of bed," Mira says.

Rumi laughs displaying a well-practiced smile. "I guess I was making up some sleep I missed."

"Oh yeah, I was totally wiped."

"Not me, I couldn't sleep!" Zoey beams. "I was scrolling through all of our socials, getting hyped up by everyone else. I think that really was one of our best performances! Even late night talk shows in America kept bringing us up; we should totally do one of those sometime."

Despite herself, Rumi can't help but smile. "What, go international?"

"Only after we get a real break this time," Mira huffs. "No launches, no interviews, no rehearsals. Just couch and bed and maybe some jam sessions."

It almost feels normal at the table. If there's anywhere she can lose herself, it's in the company of Mira and Zoey, at least for a short while. They talk about all the things they want to do now that they'll have more free time away from hunting. Hobbies they had considered, solo works they'd like to have on the side. Sometimes its easy to forget that they're so young, that this is only just a small part of their hopefully long lives; Rumi has never thought past escaping parts of herself. She wouldn't even know where to start, and her contributions to their conversation are woefully uninspiring.

(Especially when she knows something they don't know.)

"I'm sorry for being so weird last night," she finally says. "We dreamed about this moment since we'd started training. And I know it was so special, and it should have been a celebration. Together. It was just so much at once... I really thought I would have a way different reaction."

"We're just happy you're feeling better," Zoey says around a spoonful of Jolly Pong. "I totally understand what you mean, though. I thought I'd freak out a lot more than I did. But really, I think it was just... this weird sense of peace?"

Peace?

Rumi's genuinely happy for her.

She envies her too.

Mira shrugs, a little in awe herself. "Yeah, it really does feel like we're waking up to a whole new kind of life. If we didn't have an idol group, I feel like I'd have been totally lost now." She smiles, glancing between Zoey and Rumi. "I'm really glad I still have you two. That this isn't... just it. You know?"

Their hands move to sit on the table.

All three move in tandem to cover each other's fingers with their own.

"Through thick and thin," Zoey grins. "And we've still got fans to entertain."

"Except now we don't have to worry about anyone eating them," Mira adds.

Zoey smiles, though she looks almost a little guilty. "You should have seen all of the buzz about the Saja Boys. Everyone's wondering where they went... I kind of feel bad for the people who liked their music. You could tell they were worried."

"Ha!" Mira smacks a fist beside her bowl. "If they knew what kind of freaky soul-sucking monsters they were worried about, they'd run screaming."

"I'm so sure now, their Soda Pop song was definitely about eating people."

"Oh yeah, totally."

"Smell you later, losers!"

As the girls giggle amongst themselves, Rumi focuses on eating.

Bite after bite, gaze boring holes through the table's wood finish, trying to stop the creeping heat in her neck or the guilt that burrows deeper and deeper still. It is a good thing, she thinks. It's good that the demons can't hurt anyone anymore. It's good that they can move on with their lives. It's good that their fans are safe.

She smiles back at them because it's good, good, good.

"How... How could this happen?"

Rumi had anticipated these words from Celine. It didn't make hearing them any less of a slap to the face of the child that still yearned for acceptance. Her body goes hot and her stomach burns like ice on skin, and she doesn't dare move as her mentor's hands roam across her arms and clavicle — not dare touching those jagged lines of contamination. Nausea and disquiet intermingle, reflected from Celine's eyes as they raise to meet Rumi's gaze.

She must see the struggle reflecting back, because she tries her damnedest to reel in her horror. Instead, she reaches for a shawl that had been thrown haphazardly across her desk and drapes it around Rumi's shoulders, and then gently rubs circles there with her thumbs now that there is a barricade between her fingers and the markings hidden beneath.

Their reunion prior had started wonderfully. There were happy embraces at the mouth of her quaint cabin, followed by the warm congratulations of a proud mentor. They'd all done so well and worked so hard, and they finally had a chance to rest. Rumi could see it then, in the relaxed slopes of Celine's shoulders; she was comforted, had truly felt at peace. She had longed for the day hunters wouldn't have to risk their lives — that there wouldn't be another Ryu Mi-yeong.

Most of all — and Rumi was sure of this, despite everything else — Celine had wanted them to be able to have a life beyond all of this, now that their duties were fulfilled.

If only those marks on her skin would've just... gone away, softly into the night.

"Maybe it's... just part of me now," Rumi says in a near whisper. Mira and Zoey had left to give them a moment together with the promise of a delicious, triumphal lunch, but she still fears them returning and hearing the truth from her own lips. "Maybe I was too late... and it just... spread too far."

"No," Celine says firmly. She reaches up to cup Rumi's face in her hands. And god, she looks back, praying that she can be so certain as her mentor — her mother. "The Honmoon wouldn't do that. Not to you. It's purifying. It cleanses evil from this world. And it can see that you're a good person underneath this, Rumi; it knows that you didn't ask for these marks."

'Neither did Jinu,' she thinks. 'He didn't want his marks, either.'

And he was turned away by the Honmoon all the same.

"Then why? Why didn't it fix me?"

"Maybe we just... need to give it time," Celine says. Excuses the Honmoon, because it's all they have. "Maybe they'll start fading. The longer the bridge between the demon and human realm is fully broken down, the more you'll finally be free."

Free.

Rumi ducks her chin, and Celine immediately reaches beneath it, tilting her daughter's head back up.

"You're a hunter. You defended our world from harm. Only good can come from that."

Like so many times before, Rumi sees love reflected back.

Not for all of her, but most.

She learns how to stretch it thinly over the parts Celine can't bear to look at.

"Let's have lunch. Enjoy the moment we've been given here," Celine says.

As they prepare to leave her bedroom, she offers a soft reminder:

"Put your jacket back on."

Hours bleed into days bleed into weeks.

Rumi worries she may be going crazy.

Time is like a wound that gushes out of her, impossible to keep closed up. Sometimes Monday turns into Friday. But there is comfort in the business of their post-Idol Awards touring — Golden had just released, after all, and they had been planning to release a few more songs to round out the year. It was strange to lose an entire half of your life's work overnight — hunting, that is — but idol work was easily just as taxing as risking death in the middle of the night. Celine calls her every other day to check on her markings, and every time she gets off the phone she swears they've grown a millimeter, a centimeter, an inch more.

But the work is healing. It's life-saving, and she's relearned how to lie to everyone's faces without a single tell. She beams on stage. She laughs in interviews. She slides into step with Zoey and Mira during choreography rehearsals, and they comment happily on how motivated and excitable she's become. When they're outside of the penthouse, she can focus on being an idol with every fiber of her being; she can shed the burden of hunting and enjoy the fruits of their labor as singers and performers, and she can avoid thinking about the itch of her skin beneath her sleeves, and everything can be perfect.

Everything is perfect.

Everything — will soon be perfect.

Everything is going to... eventually be perfect.

Only there are moments where her thoughts slip. The beginning notes of Soda Pop play on the radio, and she can't bring herself to change the station or shut it off — it is catchy, Zoey always admits, and the three of them absently work their shoulders to the beat, despite everything. Sometimes a happy fan will have Saja Boys merchandise on, unaware that there wouldn't be anything new to enjoy past their first single.

And sometimes, when those kinds of thoughts are heavy in her mind, Rumi ends up at her laptop, watching videos in the gloom of an early morning where she can't be so easily discovered by her friends. She types 사자 보이즈 and watches as videos from variety shows and interviews load on the results page. Jinu's face is almost always front and center in the thumbnails.

Click.

There is no sincerity in the way the Saja Boys answer questions from overeager reporters. Beneath the alluring smiles and false stories, there are demons who are working hard to prepare a feast for their master. She watches Jinu talk, though — slippery like a snake with his false charm, playing his part so cautiously. She knows what that's like, maybe now more than ever.

Lying, putting on appearances... hoping that it will all pay off in the end and you can be just a little less unhappy.

It makes her heart ache, as she brushes her fingers across the screen. All she can see is the indecisive, nervous man who had taken her extended hand; the pain in his expression when he'd wanted nothing more than to believe in her; how soft his eyes had looked when they smiled back at her. Her patterns ache miserably.

They light up across her skin as she leans in and kisses the small, pixelated version of him on her screen.

He just talks beneath her lips, a phantom, unaware of where he would be days after this video ends.

The following silence is punctuated by a soft groan, and she rubs her temples. "... What the hell am I doing?"

On her screen the interviewer asks: "And what's something about you that your fans don't know about you?"

"Well," Jinu says, looking caught off-guard despite himself, "I'm... a cat dad?"

Bathed in the glow of his colors, Rumi laughs, surprised by the sound as it leaves her.

Sleep.

Sleep.

Sleep.

Laptop shut, bedroom lock checked for the fourth or fifth time, Rumi collapses backward onto her bed. Her hair is freed from its binds and lies around her like a snow angel. There in the darkness, she wrings her hands and watches an unchanging ceiling as her emotions and thoughts catch up with her once again; it happens like clockwork, one moment distracted and the next drowning in the excess that Jinu and the Honmoon and everything in-between had left behind. She usually doesn't feel sleep capture her — more often than not she's tossing and turning, then falling into a lottery of dreams. She's never sure what she'll remember seeing, but she's stopped hoping for the best.

Tonight, she sits in an audience, confused by the unhappy mutterings around her.

"Just sing already," someone says. "Just sing!"

On the stage, Jinu stands in front of a microphone, alone. His hands clutch the stand, twisting it as his mouth hangs open. His panicked gaze darts around the studio, tracing the faces in the crowd as he struggles to make a sound. "What're you doing?! What kind of performance is this?!"

Rumi moves to stand up, hands fists at her sides, but before she can fight back against the mockery —

The spotlight lands on her, bleaching her skin and forcing her to shield her eyes.

"Well," a distorted voice asks, "If he's not going to, what about you?"

Stupidly, all she can think is: But I don't know my choreography... What song is it? Where are the others?

She's unable to see Jinu anymore, not with her eyes fighting to stay open.

When she opens her mouth to sing something, anything, all that comes out is a strained cough.

I can't.

The light is too much. It's too bright, too expansive now. It washes away the crowd. The studio. Jinu on that stage. It feels like the spotlight wants to smother her until every breath in her lungs has been squeezed out. Is this what it's going to feel like from now on...? Buried under all of these horrible feelings as she hides from the world?

Then, somewhere in the distance — a soft, rasping voice.

It's so, so quiet.

But it wakes her up like a jolt of thunder.

"We can't fix it if we never face it..."

She sits up sharply in her bed, eyes scanning the darkness of her bedroom for the source; there's nobody here but her, and yet the sound persists. A melodic voice that struggles to form the words. Languidly, every word drawls with effort.

"What if we find a way to escape it?"

Rumi crawls off her bed, hair pushed out of her face as it trails behind her. There's no one here. No one at all. But as her feet meet the floor, the golden Honmoon ripples beneath her toes. A compulsion she can't quite understand pulls her to her knees, where the weak voice seems to reverberate through the thin lines of gold.

"... We could be... free — "

Again, her voice sticks in her throat.

Jinu.