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Rumi had never known silence like this. She was sitting on the terrace of the Huntr/x tower, watching the afternoon gently descend over the Seoul landscape. The honmoon glowed faintly before her, pulsing with iridescent colors. Outside, the world continued with its usual routine, as if it was celebrating its salvation even without knowing that there was a battle. Up there, she stood motionless, remembering the day she had lost Jinu. Where she had let him go. Where he had chosen to go.
She could still feel him. In the air. In the ghost of the smile he used to give her when he pretended not to care. She pressed her palm to the glowing surface of the newly formed honmoon. It was warm. Alive. Almost a miracle. A miracle he paid for with everything.
Rumi exhaled shakily. It should have been different. They should have been different. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the last moment: the look he gave her when he stepped between her and Gwi-Ma, when he made a choice she never imagined he would make. A choice she never deserved.
“Why did you do that?” The hunter whispered to the air.
The silence didn’t answer, but the honmoon pulsed again, like a heartbeat. Her heartbeat. His. Theirs, if they had ever allowed themselves to be a them. She curled her legs to her waist. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. They weren’t supposed to end at all. They were supposed to begin, but they never had the chance.
When Rumi first met Jinu, she hated him.
No, she told herself she hated him. He was a demon, a threat, a sworn enemy. She had been taught to fight demons since she was old enough to hold her sword, and he had already lived nearly four centuries by then, bound to Gwi-Ma’s will, wearing patterns of corruption across his skin. He was everything she had been trained to destroy. But not everything is what it seems. Not every demon is a monster. And not every girl recruited as a hunter is entirely human.
When Jinu learned what she was -half-demon, half-hunter-, a contradiction wrapped in trembling defiance, he hadn’t attacked her. He hadn’t even spoken. He had just looked at her with this strange, unreadable softness, like he suddenly recognized something familiar in her. Like he saw the part of her she had spent her whole life hiding.
That was the beginning. They weren’t friend, not exactly. Not officially. But there were moments. Small ones. and quiet ones. And definitely, dangerous ones.
A shared smirk during a tussle moment between Huntr/x and the Saja Boys. An accidental brush of hands while they walked side by side. A secret conversation under moonlight where she admitted she didn’t hate demons as much as she should. A confession of fear, soft, whispered, when he admitted he couldn’t remember the sound of his own humanity anymore. Moments that meant nothing and everything at once. Moments Rumi replayed now, one by one, like a series of doors she never walked through.
“Why didn’t we said something?” She questioned herself, but the answer never came.
The phrase stung. It echoed too closely the song she’d once heard: lyrics about almost-loves and almost-kisses and the regret of never crossing that line. She had always thought it was dramatic. Now she understood it was prophecy.
Because Jinu had once almost kissed her.
One day, during a meeting on a rooftop, while they were looking at the stars the night before the Idol Awards. Rumi was internally devising a plan to finally seal the golden honmoon and convince Jinu to help her.
“Rumi..." He had said, her name trembling on his tongue. And then he leaned in, slow, hesitant, as if waiting for her to stop him. She did. She stepped back.
Not because she didn’t want him (gods, she had wanted him so much it terrified her), but because she was afraid. Afraid the other Huntr/x girls would find out. Afraid Gwi-Ma would use her against him. Afraid of breaking the delicate something that lived between them. Afraid of ruining the friendship they never acknowledged.
Now she would give anything to ruin it. To have ruined it a thousand times over if it meant she could have even one more moment with him. One more heartbeat. One more breath. But regret was the luxury of living. And Jinu was…
The Honmoon pulsed again, faint but real. There. Alive. Proof of the soul that saved her and made it possible.
She pressed her forehead to her knees.
“I should’ve told you.” She whispered. “I should’ve told you everything. That you weren’t a monster. That you made me feel safe. That I cared about you more than I was brave enough to admit.”
Her tears hit the stone. They sizzled softly, absorbed by the sacred surface.
“I should’ve kissed you that night.” Her voice broke. “I should’ve ruined everything.”
Silence again. Except… not quite. A tiny spark flickered inside the Honmoon, lighting up for half a second.
“Jinu?” she whispered.
No answer. Just the echo of possibility. A possibility that he wasn’t entirely gone. That souls who sacrifice themselves for love leave traces stronger than death. That maybe, someday, somehow, she might see him again.
But until then, she was left with two truths:
She loved him. And she never told him.
So she sat there watching the iridescent shield pulsing like a reminding of the “almost” they could never turn into possible.
My advice is always ruin the friendship
Better that than regret it for all time
Should've kissed you anyway
And my advice is always answer the question
Better that than to ask it all your life
Should've kissed you anyway