Work Text:
The gallery smelled like varnish and orange peels. Celine had cracked open the old windows to let the evening air move through the rooms, marigold petals and the papel picado along the hallway moved faintly each time the city breathed. Outside, the street was a slow river of people carrying bundles of cempasúchil and boxes of pan de muerto. Inside, Rumi stood at the threshold between the main room and the storage corridor and tried, unsuccessfully, to look like a person who belonged there by choice.
“Angle the spotlight two degrees to the left,” Celine called from a ladder, her voice carrying the unbothered authority Rumi had grown up inside like weather. “No, baby, the other left.”
Rumi pinched the bridge of her nose, adjusted the spotlight, then stepped back. The orange glow found the lacquered frame and turned it warm, almost alive. In the reflection she caught the familiar slash of her own braid, lavender, the kind of color people paid stylists to imitate. She had slept on it damp and braided it on autopilot that morning. It felt like a talisman against the day, a version of herself she could anchor down while the rest of her wanted to drift.
On the polished floor below, Zoey was cross legged with a nest of cable ties and a roll of gaffer tape. She had already tagged the gallery on three platforms and posted a bts story with a timestamp and a heart eyed emoji over the marigolds. “Friendly reminder,” she said without looking up, “that if we don’t feed the social media beast, it will feed on us.”
“The beast,” Rumi said, “can paypal me for overtime.”
Celine climbed down, touched Rumi’s elbow in passing, and walked on to scold a floral arrangement into better posture. Her touch always landed like a blessing and a checklist at once. Rumi knew which part was love and which part would end up in tomorrow’s planning document with bullet points and color blocks like a well intentioned cage.
The exhibition theme was Remembrance and Return. Celine had commissioned contemporary work from local artists, curated a room of devotional objects, and pulled out a set of family portraits no one had seen in decades. Rumi had flown in with a laptop full of mock-ups and a head full of resolve. She told herself she was here to help, to design the signage and program and wall labels, to prove she did more than make pretty shapes with inherited access. She told herself she could hold the line between daughter and employee. By the time the first crate came up from the basement, she had already stopped believing her own pep talk.
The basement had a climate she could taste, cool and mineral, with chalk dust hiding in the corners and wood as old as the building. Rumi pulled the chain for the single bulb and watched the light settle over shelves of wrapped canvases and boxes labeled in Celine’s angled script. She put on gloves, knelt, and began to work through the stack Celine wanted inventoried. Dust rose gently with every unwrapping.
She found the first portrait by accident. The paper tore easier than she expected, revealing an oval of ocher and umber. A woman in a dark dress sat at a three-quarter angle, gaze direct enough to make Rumi pull back. The face wasn’t finished. The skin around the eyes was sketched and washed in, but the mouth was only whisper marks.
There was a brass plate on the frame, dulled with time. Rumi rubbed it with the hem of her T-shirt until the letters woke up.
Mira Kang - Unknown.
No date. No artist. No provenance card beyond Celine’s neat label on the shipping wrap. Rumi felt her pulse lift in her throat in a way that irritated her. She preferred her heart to behave when she was at work, especially here, in the rooms where her last name was a key that fit every lock whether she wanted it to or not.
“Find anything cool?” Zoey’s voice floated down the stairs, followed by her sneaker squeaks and the flash of her grin. She took the descent two steps at a time, then leaned over Rumi’s shoulder. “Oh. She’s hot.”
“Professionalism,” Rumi said. “Try it sometime.”
“I am professionally recognizing hotness,” Zoey said. “Also the composition is nice. But mostly hotness.”
Rumi swallowed a smile and fit the painting against the wall to photograph it, her phone set to a high-res capture she would sync to her laptop later. She reached for the frame to steady it and felt the oddest sensation, like standing too close to a speaker at low volume. Not a sound exactly. More a pressure behind the ears, a thrum without source. It passed so quickly she might have imagined it. She checked the frame joints, found them sound, and told herself she was tired.
By the time the portraits were upstairs and arranged for triage, what could be cleaned, what would stay cracked, night had leaned fully against the gallery windows.
Celine went home to change and promised she would be back with pozole from the Mexican place Rumi loved. Zoey declared herself in charge of snacks and half jogged toward the corner store for bottled water and gummy bears. Rumi watched their departures, then exhaled into the empty hours like she had finally admitted the day had also been a performance. She flicked on her task lamp, rolled her chair to the worktable, and woke her laptop.
The screen became a small sun in the dim room. She imported the images and opened her restoration software, adjusting levels until the cracked varnish surrendered detail. Her thumbnails formed a family reunion, stern uncles, women with complicated hair, a child with a dog. And then the woman again, expanding to fill her screen when Rumi tapped the trackpad.
Mira Kang’s eyes were brown, the kind of brown that caught the light like wet earth after rain. There was unfinished light along the cheekbone, a hesitation in the shadow below the lower lip. Whoever had painted her had loved looking. Whoever had set the plate had not thought to ask questions.
Rumi cropped and set a restoration mask, careful and slow. Her work could often feel like she was making a case for herself in secret. See, I am useful. See, I make things better. She zoomed closer and closer until the brushstrokes weren’t strokes at all but small gusts of intention. Something tightened in her chest, a thread pulling from some place she hadn’t known was stitched shut.
She saved her file and leaned back. The gallery hummed softly in the way old buildings do when they are full of objects that remember. The marigolds along the window threw shadows that looked like lace. Rumi reached for her thermos, took a sip of cold coffee, and winced.
Her phone buzzed,
[Zoey]
making content. if a ghost poses i will require a modeling fee.
[Rumi]
if you summon a ghost i am firing you from a job you do not technically have.
Zoey sent back three skull emojis and a photo of a snack aisle.
Rumi’s lamp flickered. It was small, a single stutter. The cursor on her screen paused for half a beat like it couldn’t remember what it had been doing. She frowned and tapped the spacebar, then the spacebar again. The cursor obeyed. The lamp steadied.
“Old wiring,” she said out loud, because sometimes naming a thing made it less likely to crawl under her skin.
She returned to the portrait. The face filled her monitor, so close the unfinished mouth felt like a breath held between them. Rumi adjusted exposure, painted in a soft digital patch over a tear in the canvas, then undid it because the tear felt like something honest the painting had earned. Beyond the glass of the frame, beyond the membrane of the screen, a woman looked back at her.
“Who are you,” Rumi asked quietly. “And why do I feel like you could answer?”
Her voice landed on the table and went still. The gallery, rude, did not reply. Rumi laughed at herself and shook it off. She rotated the image slightly for alignment. The cursor lagged again. The screen brightened a fraction, then dimmed, then brightened. The lamp echoed the change like they were agreeing on a mood.
Rumi stood, crossed to the wall switches, and clicked them on. Overhead lights bloomed. The room became less candlelit gothic, more honest workspace with scuffed baseboards and museum wax crumbs. The painting did not change. The eyes did not stop watching her. Of course they didn’t. That was the point of painted eyes. She told herself that twice and it almost worked.
Her thermos knocked against the lamp base when she reached for it. Metal on metal. A dull ring. The sound ran through the table and up into her forearms. It was so ordinary she wanted to laugh again, and she would have if the portrait on her screen hadn’t changed. Not much. Just enough.
Rumi did not move for three breaths. Then she leaned in until her own reflection crowded hers in the glass of the monitor. The eyes on the canvas were no longer looking slightly past the viewer to the left, the way most portraits did. They were looking directly at her. It was the smallest recalibration, a single degree. It was enough to make her mouth go dry.
She checked the undo history. Nothing. She checked the alignment grid. Unchanged. She lifted her hand and hovered her fingertip above the pixelated iris like an idiot trying to touch a star.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’m tired.”
The lights seemed to agree. One of the overheads flickered and then steadied, like it had blinked. Rumi let out a breath she hadn’t noticed holding and pressed her palm to her sternum as if she could smooth her heartbeat down.
The front door rattled. Zoey’s voice arrived first, bright and unafraid. “I bring offerings. Also the clerk asked if the pretty girl with lavender hair is single and I said no, she belongs to her work.”
Rumi turned from the screen. “Tell the clerk I appreciate their condolences.”
Zoey shouldered in with a bag and a grin, then stopped mid stride. She wasn’t looking at Rumi. She was looking past her, toward the far window where the glass turned the outside into a second room. The reflection in that window held the gallery like a bowl. It held Rumi and her lamp and the table. It also held, for a heartbeat Rumi would later recount to herself in pieces, the ghost of a woman standing between the marigolds and the frame. Pink hair in a loose wave like the memory of a flame. Bare feet. A quietness that was not absence.
“Did you see…” Zoey began.
“No,” Rumi said too quickly, because naming a thing sometimes made it too real to unsee.
Zoey nodded slowly, as if the two of them had agreed on a game without speaking. She set the bag on the counter, unwrapped a pack of gummy bears, and slid it toward Rumi with the solemnity of an altar offering.
“Tomorrow,” Zoey said, voice softening. “You should sleep.”
Rumi opened the pack and ate a green one, then a yellow, as if color could return her to equilibrium. She glanced at the monitor as if she were only checking the time. The portrait waited, exactly as it had been, eyes perhaps a degree too present and no more. The lamp hummed, the building breathed, the city outside narrowed to a hush beneath paper cutouts and garlands.
Rumi gathered her files into folders and named them with the elegant precision she used when the rest of her was unruly. She put the equipment away, reset the alarm and didn’t look into the window’s reflection again.
On her way out she paused by the worktable, fingertips hovering above the old frame as if she might touch it after all. She stopped herself. She blew out one candle and watched the smoke ribbon upward in a soft gray twist.
“Goodnight,” she said, not sure who she meant it for.
Upstairs, in the small apartment above the gallery, Rumi braided her hair again with damp fingers and lay awake listening to the city and her own pulse learning a new rhythm. Sleep came in fits and when it finally found her, it brought a dream of a studio that wasn’t hers, of brushes standing in a jar, of a woman turning slowly toward her with paint on her hands and a voice like the inside of a seashell.
“I’m not a ghost,” the woman said in the dream, so gently it hurt. “I’m unfinished.”
Rumi woke with the word lodged under her tongue like a seed. The room was dim, the window cut into a square of early light, and somewhere below the apartment, the gallery creaked as if a door had opened and then closed. She told herself it was the old building settling, nothing more. She told herself many reasonable things while her hand reached for her phone to scroll the photo roll until the portrait filled the dark.
In the stillness between notifications, between the breath of the city and the next heartbeat, the eyes in the image seemed to be waiting for her to speak first.
—-----------------------
The next night, the gallery felt different. Not haunted exactly just… listening.
Rumi told herself she was back to work early because deadlines didn’t wait, but really, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the painting. About the subtle wrongness of it. She’d spent the morning rechecking files, recalibrating her monitor, even adjusting the camera lens to prove it wasn’t her imagination. But when she opened the portrait again, the gaze was the same, fixed, direct, unflinching.
Celine had left a note on the counter,
Pozole in the fridge. Do not subsist on caffeine and gummy bears. Love, C.
Zoey had drawn a doodle of a skull beside it, blowing a kiss.
Rumi smiled faintly, folded the note, and tucked it into her pocket. She wasn’t sure if it was comfort or superstition, but the gesture felt necessary.
Downstairs, the light hummed. The marigolds were beginning to wilt in their vases, the edges curling in on themselves like old secrets. The portraits lined the walls in various stages of restoration, quiet faces from other lives keeping vigil as she worked. The air carried the faint tang of paint thinner and candle smoke.
Her laptop flickered awake, the screen throwing pale light across her braid. She tried to focus on color correction, but her thoughts kept sliding back to the small, impossible thing she had seen in the reflection the night before. The pink hair. The bare feet. The stillness that had felt aware.
“You’re just tired,” she muttered, not for the first time. “You’re tired, your brain’s romantic, and this is what happens when you spend too much time alone with dead people’s faces.”
“Maybe,” said a voice behind her, “you’re just not alone.”
Rumi froze.
It wasn’t the creak of the building or Zoey’s cheerful arrival. It was a human voice, quiet, low, and so close that she felt the sound in her ribs before her mind caught up. Slowly, she turned.
There, at the far end of the room, the air shimmered faintly, not like a ghost in a horror movie, not transparent or cold. Just there, the way heat bends the horizon. And within it, a shape. A woman, standing near the marigolds, her hair loose and pink, falling over one shoulder. Her skin looked too alive to belong to a painting.
Rumi’s throat tightened. “Who…”
“You shouldn’t be afraid,” the woman said softly. “I’m not… whatever word you’re searching for.”
Rumi stepped back, half tripping over the chair leg. “Oh, great, you talk.”
A small smile curved the woman’s mouth. “It’s been a while since someone noticed.”
Her voice was like old music played on a gramophone, warm, slightly distant, threaded with something fragile. She moved toward the easel, her steps soundless. When she passed through a patch of candlelight, her outline flickered faintly, like a reflection crossing from one mirror to another.
“You’re…” Rumi started, then stopped herself. The word ghost sat heavy on her tongue. “You’re not real.”
“I’m unfinished,” the woman said simply. “That’s different.”
Rumi blinked at her. “Unfinished.”
“Yes.” The woman turned her head, the same small tilt as in the painting. “Mira Kang. You already know the name.”
Rumi’s heart stuttered. “The portrait. You’re…”
“The woman in it,” Mira finished for her. “Once, I was.”
Rumi’s rational mind, the part that built mood boards, signed contracts, designed things that made sense, scrambled to keep up. “This isn’t possible,” she said. “You’re…”
“Dead?” Mira’s smile was quiet. “Yes, that part’s true.”
Rumi exhaled sharply. “Right. Fantastic.”
“I told you,” Mira continued, stepping closer, “I’m not gone. Just… paused. There’s a difference.”
Rumi swallowed hard. Mira’s presence felt both fragile and solid, not cold, not spectral, just faintly humming with energy. Like the world around her hadn’t quite decided which side of existence she belonged to.
“How are you here?” Rumi asked finally. “Is this some kind of, I don’t know…Day of the dead miracle?”
“Miracle,” Mira repeated, tasting the word. “No. A mistake, maybe. A story unfinished. Every year, when the veil thins, I wake for a while. Until I fade again.”
The way she said it, not tragic, just factual, made something ache behind Rumi’s ribs.
Mira walked toward the table, glancing down at the laptop screen. The portrait stared back at them, digital and bright. “You changed something,” she murmured. “The shadows are lighter.”
Rumi found herself staring. Mira’s movements were deliberate, graceful. The loose strands of her pink hair caught the lamplight like rose gold threads. “I was restoring the file,” Rumi said, her voice thinner than she intended. “Digital cleanup. For the exhibition.”
“I can feel it,” Mira said, brushing her fingertips near the screen but not touching. “When you work on it. Like someone smoothing a wrinkle in my sleeve.”
Rumi stared. “That’s… insane.”
Mira looked at her, her brown eyes steady. “So is the fact that you’re talking to a dead woman.”
Fair point.
Rumi rubbed at her temples, half laughing, half ready to faint. “Okay. Okay, fine. Let’s pretend this is real. Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
Mira’s expression softened. “To be remembered. To finish what was started.”
“And that means… what? Me fixing your portrait?”
Mira’s gaze flicked toward the unfinished brushwork on the screen. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know what counts as ‘finished’ anymore.”
Rumi sat down before her knees gave out. “You’re really not giving me a lot to work with.”
“You’re giving me more than anyone has in years,” Mira said. “You looked at me.”
The words hit Rumi like a quiet confession. There was no arrogance in them, just simple truth. She looked up at her again. Mira stood at the edge of the table, half shadow, half light. She didn’t blink. She didn’t breathe. But she was there.
Rumi whispered, almost without realizing, “What happens when you’re remembered?”
Mira tilted her head, pink hair sliding over her shoulder. “That depends. Sometimes a soul rests. Sometimes it stays.”
“And you?” Rumi asked. “Which do you want?”
For the first time, Mira hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “It’s been so long since I wanted anything.”
The room was very quiet. Outside, the wind carried faint music from the plaza, guitars, laughter, the sound of paper lanterns fluttering. It felt impossibly distant from the space between them.
Rumi swallowed. “You said I changed something in the portrait. If I keep working on it…”
“You’ll make me stronger,” Mira finished. “For a while.”
“That sounds, dangerous.”
“It’s just life,” Mira said, with a small shrug. “Borrowed, maybe. But isn’t it always?”
Rumi didn’t have an answer for that. She closed the laptop, dimming the light between them, and the room fell into candle glow. Mira didn’t disappear. If anything, she seemed clearer in the dark.
“You should rest,” Mira said quietly. “Your eyes are tired.”
Rumi gave a small, incredulous laugh. “You’re haunting me and giving me health advice?”
“I’m keeping you company,” Mira said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
Rumi wanted to argue, but she couldn’t. There was something strangely comforting about her presence…unsettling, yes, but also gentle. Like being watched by someone who didn’t want to frighten her.
Mira stepped back, her form thinning at the edges like fog beginning to lift. “Tomorrow,” she said. “If you wish to see me again, keep the light on by my portrait.”
Then she was gone or maybe the word was blurred. The air shimmered once, then stilled. The gallery exhaled, as if relieved.
The candle burned low long after Mira faded. Rumi didn’t move for minutes, maybe hours. Her body was still, but her mind roared like wind trapped in a bottle. Every rational part of her insisted there was an explanation stress, exhaustion, the fumes from the varnish, grief leaking through cracks she didn’t even know she had. But none of those could explain the pink haired woman who had looked at her like she was the one out of place.
Eventually she fumbled for her phone, thumb trembling slightly. The screen’s glow felt too bright in the quiet room.
[Rumi]
are you awake?
[Zoey]
define “awake”
[Rumi]
conscious enough to handle ghost talk
[Zoey]
so… drunk you called me or drunk on fear?
Rumi exhaled a shaky laugh despite herself.
[Rumi]
neither. i saw someone. here. in the gallery.
[Zoey]
elaborate or i’m grabbing my rosary
[Rumi]
a woman. pink hair. she said her name was Mira Kang. like the portrait.
[Zoey]
hot ghost confirmed. continue.
[Rumi]
not a ghost. she said she’s “unfinished.” whatever that means.
A pause. Three blinking dots. Then..
[Zoey]
okay that’s either sleep deprivation or the start of a romance novel.
[Rumi]
both can be true.
Another pause. Then Zoey sent a voice note, soft, tired laughter, the rustle of her sheets. “Rums,” Zoey said, “you’ve been inhaling varnish all day and running on caffeine. Drink water, lock the doors, and if your ‘unfinished’ woman starts singing or floating, call me so I can film it.”
Rumi smiled faintly, her nerves loosening just enough to breathe again. “Yeah,” she whispered, though the gallery didn’t need her to answer out loud.
She left the lamp on by the portrait when she finally went upstairs. The light spilled across the frame like a promise, or a dare.
----------------
The morning came golden and indifferent. Sunlight poured through the apartment window, catching in Rumi’s braid and turning the lavender strands silver at the edges. She sat on the floor with her laptop open beside a half eaten pan de muerto from the Mexican store, editing files she barely remembered importing. Every time she blinked, she expected to see pink hair flicker behind her reflection. She didn’t.
Zoey arrived late morning, armed with iced coffees and far too much energy for someone who claimed to have gone to bed at three. “Ghost check-in!” she announced, dropping her bag onto the table. “Any hauntings? Possessions? Unexplained moaning?”
“Only yours,” Rumi said, rubbing her temples. “You moaned in your sleep on the phone when I hung up.”
“Flattering,” Zoey said. “So no sign of Miss ‘I’m Unfinished’?”
Rumi hesitated. “Not since last night.”
Zoey leaned on the table, sipping her coffee through a straw. “You’re sure it wasn’t like… a reflection or projection or whatever? You do weird digital stuff, maybe your computer glitched.”
“It didn’t feel like a glitch,” Rumi said quietly. “It felt like a person.”
Zoey studied her for a long moment, eyes softening. “You believe she was real.”
Rumi let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “I don’t know what I believe. But I can’t stop thinking about her.”
Zoey’s grin returned, sly and alive. “Ah. So it’s like that.”
“Don’t,” Rumi warned.
“Oh, it’s definitely like that,” Zoey said, drawing out the words with relish. “You found your dream girl and she’s literally a dream.”
Rumi groaned and buried her face in her hands. “You are banned from ghost jokes for twenty-four hours.”
Zoey saluted. “Fine. But if she comes back, ask if she prefers espresso or tea. We need data.”
That night, the gallery was once again quiet. Celine had gone to dinner with donors, leaving Rumi to finish the layout for the exhibit guide. The lamp still burned beside the portrait, just as she’d left it. She paused by the frame before sitting down. The painted eyes looked almost alive in the soft light, brown and deep, like earth turned over by rain. She reached out, fingertip hovering just above the surface.
“I kept the light on,” she whispered.
At first, nothing. Only the slow hum of the building, the tick of the clock near the entrance, the muted noise of cars on the street. Then a faint shift, like the air inhaled. The candle flame wavered. And when Rumi looked up, Mira was standing there again.
This time, she wasn’t a blur. She was vivid, her pink hair spilling over her shoulders, her skin glowing faintly with the same warmth that lived in the painting.
“You came back,” Rumi said softly.
“You asked,” Mira replied, as though it were that simple.
Her presence filled the room without taking space. The scent of marigolds grew stronger, not perfumed but earthy.
Rumi took a careful step closer. “You said you were unfinished. What does that mean?”
Mira turned toward the painting. “I died before I could finish my last piece. I thought that was the end, but… something kept me here. The brush never dried, I suppose. Maybe the painter never stopped painting.”
“You’re the painter,” Rumi said. “Not the subject.”
Mira nodded once. “The portrait you found, it isn’t me exactly. It’s what I was painting when I died. Somehow, I became part of it.”
Rumi stared at her. “So you’re… trapped in your own art?”
“Yes.” Mira’s smile was thin, but not bitter. “Poetic, isn’t it? An artist consumed by her own creation.”
Rumi crossed her arms. “And what happens if someone finishes it?”
Mira’s expression darkened slightly. “Then I fade completely. The story ends.”
Rumi felt a chill creep along her arms. “Then maybe we don’t finish it.”
Mira looked at her with something like gratitude or sorrow. “You can’t stop endings, Rumi. You can only make them beautiful.” The way she said her name, gentle, deliberate, felt like a hand resting over her heart.
Silence stretched between them. Rumi found herself noticing small things, the faint glimmer in Mira’s hair where candlelight touched it, the way her hands trembled slightly as if remembering what it meant to hold a brush.
“I could design something for you,” Rumi said suddenly. The words came out before she’d even thought them through. “A digital ofrenda. It’s what I do. Maybe it could…help you stay.”
Mira blinked. “Stay?”
Rumi nodded, her voice soft but certain. “On Día de los Muertos, families build ofrendas…offerings, for those who’ve passed, altars with their photos, food, candles, all the things they loved. The idea is that, for one night, the souls can find their way back home through the light and memory we leave for them.”
Mira listened, eyes steady and warm.
“My mom, Celine, she fills the gallery with them every year,” Rumi continued, glancing toward the marigolds lining the windowsill. “She says every candle is a map, every flower petal a path. I used to think it was just a tradition, something beautiful for visitors. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s… proof that being remembered keeps you alive in some way.” She hesitated, thumb brushing the edge of the table. “My other mom, Miyeoung, she passed when I was a baby. I never really knew her. Just stories, photos, the way Celine still talks to her like she’s in the next room. Every year she lights a candle just for her and says, come home for a while.”
Rumi’s voice grew quieter, steadier. “I used to think that was just… poetic. But maybe it isn’t. Maybe that’s what remembering really does, it keeps the door open long enough for love to find its way back.”
Mira’s expression softened, the faintest shimmer running through her outline like light through glass. “You believe that?”
“I think,” Rumi said slowly, “that forgetting is what kills us twice. Once in body, and once in name.”
Something unreadable passed across Mira’s face, sorrow and wonder intertwined. “And your ofrenda… would keep my name alive?”
“Yes. But not just that,” Rumi said, her designer’s hands already gesturing in the air, building the idea as she spoke. “It could be more than candles and frames. Interactive, alive. Your paintings could move, your colors could breathe. People could see you, remember you, not as a ghost, but as the artist you were.”
Mira looked at her, something fragile flickering in her gaze. “You would build me a doorway?”
Rumi hesitated, then shook her head gently. “A home,” she corrected. “Something you can walk through, not vanish from. You deserve that much.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It felt like standing at the edge of something sacred, an understanding neither of them knew how to name yet.
For the first time, a true smile curved Mira’s lips, bright, almost mischievous. “Then let’s see what your light can build.” She tilted her head, studying her. “You sound like someone who knows what it’s like not to belong.”
Rumi almost laughed. “That’s one way to put it.”
Mira stepped closer, and for a heartbeat, they were only inches apart. Rumi could see every shade in her eyes, warm and alive, impossibly human.
“Then maybe we can finish something together,” Mira said.
And before Rumi could answer, the candle flickered, the flame bending toward Mira like a bow.
She vanished with it.
Rumi exhaled shakily and stared at the empty air. The lamp burned steady again. On the table beside the portrait, she found something that hadn’t been there before, a single marigold petal, perfectly whole.
—---------------------
By the next evening, the gallery had turned into a controlled mess of wires, sketchbooks, and glowing screens. The candles Celine left flickered beside Rumi’s laptop, their wax pooling like melted time. A soft playlist hummed under the noise of typing, and the scent of copal smoke clung to the air like a blessing.
Zoey sat cross legged on the floor, a tablet on her lap. “Okay, so let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re making a digital altar for your ghost girlfriend.”
“She’s not my…” Rumi stopped herself, pinching the bridge of her nose. “It’s not an altar. It’s an installation.”
Zoey tilted her head. “You’re literally lighting candles for a dead woman and coding her a website so she won’t fade into the void. That’s an altar.”
“Art installation,” Rumi insisted, typing faster.
Zoey grinned. “A love letter you can click through.”
Rumi threw a stray marigold petal at her. “Go rewire the projector, menace.”
It was easier to bicker than admit what she really felt, that she could sense Mira’s presence before the air even shifted. It started as warmth near the base of her neck, like someone standing just behind her. Then a quiet vibration under her skin, the soundless rhythm she was learning to recognize.
When she turned, Mira was already there.
She didn’t fade into existence this time, she stepped out of the dim, full and whole, the candlelight gilding her pink hair. She was barefoot, still, but the edges of her form were no longer translucent. There was color in her cheeks now. The faintest shadow beneath her chin.
“You’re stronger,” Rumi said before she could stop herself.
Mira’s lips curved in a small, knowing smile. “So are you.”
Zoey’s squeak from the floor broke the quiet. “Oh my god, oh my god she’s real.” She scrambled backward, tripping over a cable, eyes wide and glittering. “You didn’t tell me your haunting came with good lighting!”
Rumi winced. “Mira, that’s Zoey. She, uh…helps.”
“I can see that,” Mira said, her tone polite but amused. She turned toward Zoey, who waved stiffly, then turned back to Rumi. “You’ve begun.”
Rumi nodded, cheeks flushing. “I thought… if I can build you an ofrenda, one that doesn’t fade when the candles burn out maybe it’ll keep you here longer.”
Mira approached the table, studying the screens. Rumi had built a mockup, a soft gradient background, scrolling images of the restored portraits, and one empty frame glowing faintly, waiting for Mira’s name.
“It’s beautiful,” Mira murmured.
“It’s just a start,” Rumi said, her voice low. “There’ll be music, too…ambient sounds from the gallery, people’s stories recorded, maybe even brushstrokes animated. Something living.”
Mira reached toward the screen. Her fingertips didn’t pass through this time, they brushed it lightly, the pixels rippling beneath her touch like disturbed water. Both of them froze.
Zoey gasped so loudly Rumi nearly jumped out of her chair. “Okay, nope! Nope. We’re breaking like six laws of physics. You have ghost touchscreens now. I need tequila.”
Rumi ignored her. “You can feel it?” she asked Mira softly.
“Yes,” Mira whispered. “Your light… it connects things. I can feel where your memory meets mine.”
The words sent something through Rumi she didn’t have a name for. Maybe awe. Maybe fear. Maybe both.
Mira turned to her, brown eyes warm in the glow of the screen. “You’re stitching me into your world.”
“That’s the idea.”
Zoey had recovered enough composure to aim her camera phone vaguely in their direction. “If she phases through the Wi-Fi, I’m calling a priest and a programmer.”
“Zoey,” Rumi said sharply.
“What? I’m documenting history!”
Mira laughed, a real, clear laugh that made the candles flicker. “She reminds me of someone I used to paint with. Always certain the world was stranger than it looked.”
“See? Validation from the undead,” Zoey said proudly.
Rumi rolled her eyes. “Can you give us a second?”
“Sure. I’ll go talk to the marigolds,” Zoey muttered, retreating toward the front hall.
The quiet that followed was soft, but charged. Mira stepped closer to the main monitor, her reflection faint against the glass. “When I painted,” she said, “I always thought color was the only way to keep something alive. But you… you’re building light instead.”
Rumi’s throat felt tight. “Light remembers better than people do.”
Mira turned, studying her. “You say that like you’ve tested it.”
“I have.”
Something flickered behind Rumi’s eyes, a memory of candlelight on her mother’s altar, the way Celine whispered Miyeoung’s name every year. For a moment, she saw her mothers’ hands, one living, one remembered, both lighting the same flame.
When she looked back at Mira, her heart was louder than her logic. “I just don’t want you to fade.”
Mira smiled faintly. “Maybe that’s not up to you.”
“Maybe it is,” Rumi said, the words barely a breath.
The hum of the monitors deepened, the light shifting as if in response. Mira reached forward and touched Rumi’s wrist, warm now, almost human. “You’ve given me more than I thought possible,” she said softly. “But be careful. The closer I am to life, the more the world remembers what I am.”
Rumi blinked. “What does that mean?”
Before Mira could answer, Zoey’s voice echoed from the entryway. “Uh, Rumi? The power just flickered and all the portraits are glowing…should I panic or vibe?”
Rumi’s eyes darted to the walls. The older paintings shimmered faintly, gold light rippling across the varnish. For one breathless moment, every face in the room seemed to turn toward Mira, as if recognizing her.
Mira stepped back, her outline haloed by that same soft radiance. “They remember,” she murmured. “All of them. Every life I painted. Every name I carried.”
The light dimmed, gentle as exhale, and the gallery was still again.
Zoey peeked from behind a column. “Sooo… that’s a vibe, right? Not a panic?”
Rumi found herself smiling despite the adrenaline. “Definitely a vibe.”
Mira’s laughter joined hers, warm and full, and for a moment, Rumi forgot which of them was supposed to be living.
—----------------------
By sundown, the street outside the gallery had become a river of light. Candles shimmered in every window, sugar skulls smiled from balconies, and marigold petals marked the paths between worlds.
Inside, everything glowed.
Celine’s gallery had never looked so alive. The old portraits, now fully restored, hung beneath strings of paper lanterns that bathed them in amber light. Between the frames stood vases of flowers, framed photos from visitors, and Rumi’s digital installation projected across an entire wall.
It wasn’t quiet or reverent in the traditional sense, it was alive, pulsing with soft laughter, whispered prayers, and the hum of computers blending with the crackle of candles.
Rumi stood near the center of it all, heart rattling in her ribs. Onscreen, the digital ofrenda unfolded like a slow heartbeat, paintings blooming to life, brushstrokes moving as if carried by invisible hands. Each portrait whispered a name when touched, the sound gentle as breath. At the center, one glowing frame carried a new inscription,
Mira Kang - Artist, Remembered.
“She’s going to cry,” Zoey whispered from behind a bouquet taller than she was. “Everyone, alert the media. Rumi Ryu, Nepo Baby Supreme, shows emotion in public.”
“Shut up,” Rumi muttered, but her voice shook with laughter. “Do the lights look okay?”
“They look transcendent,” Zoey said, softening. “You did it, you know. It’s perfect.”
Rumi didn’t answer. She couldn’t, not when every pixel, every flicker of light, felt like a heartbeat that wasn’t entirely hers. She felt Mira somewhere in the room just beyond the light, just out of reach.
And then she saw her.
Standing near the far wall, where the candles burned brightest, Mira looked almost human now. The shimmer around her had softened into something that could be mistaken for warmth, her pink hair loose and luminous under the candlelight. For a heartbeat, she could’ve been any guest at the exhibition, until Rumi noticed the faint marigold petals scattered where she stepped.
“You came,” Rumi breathed, weaving through the crowd.
Mira smiled. “I told you, your light would find me.”
Rumi wanted to laugh and cry at once. “You shouldn’t be here. There are so many people.”
“They can’t see me,” Mira said gently. “Only those who remember can.”
Rumi followed her gaze toward the installation, where children pressed glowing marigolds onto the touch screen, laughing as the portraits responded with color. Every interaction made the light ripple outward, like the gallery itself was breathing.
“They’re remembering you,” Rumi whispered.
Mira nodded, brown eyes soft. “And that’s because of you.”
“No,” Rumi said, shaking her head. “Because of us. You helped build this too.”
Mira tilted her head, pink hair falling over one shoulder. “You’ve given me a place to return to. That’s more than most souls ever get.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Rumi said quietly, a tremor in her voice. “You make it sound like goodbye.”
Mira smiled, faint but sure. “It’s not goodbye. It’s what remembrance looks like. This night belongs to the living and the dead, but when the candles go out, the doors close again.”
Rumi swallowed hard. “And you’ll fade.”
Mira’s hand lifted, hesitant. “May I?”
Rumi nodded before she could think. Mira’s fingers brushed her cheek, warm this time, unmistakably real. It was like touching sunlight.
“I’ll still be here,” Mira whispered. “In every pixel. In every color. You’ve painted me with your light, Rumi. That doesn’t disappear.”
Rumi blinked through the sting behind her eyes. “You don’t understand, I don’t want a memory. I want you.”
Mira’s smile trembled. “And I want to stay. But some art only lives when it’s let go.”
The sound of laughter rippled from the doorway as Celine entered, radiant in a gold shawl, greeting guests with her easy grace. When her eyes met Rumi’s across the room, she smiled, the kind of knowing smile only a mother could give, as if she could see who Rumi was looking at even if she couldn’t see her.
Rumi turned back to Mira, but the light was already dimming. The edges of her form blurred into gold and smoke.
“Remember,” Mira said, her voice already thinning. “Every candle is a map.”
Rumi reached for her, but her hand met only warm air.
When the last petal fell, Mira was gone.
Later that night, long after the guests had left and Zoey had fallen asleep on a bench surrounded by empty paper cups, Rumi walked the gallery alone. Only one candle remained, burning in front of the digital frame where Mira’s portrait shimmered faintly, even though the projector was off.
Rumi crouched down, tracing the outline of Mira’s name on the screen. Her reflection overlapped with Mira’s face for a heartbeat. Two silhouettes sharing one light.
“Come home for a while,” she whispered, the same words she’d heard Celine say every year for Miyeoung.
Outside, the city wind carried a handful of petals through the open window. They scattered across the floor in a small, golden trail leading back toward the easel.
And for just an instant, faint and soft as breath, Rumi heard a voice, mischievous, tender, and alive, “You got the lighting right this time.”