Archive of Our Own

Mira wasn't coming down from the tree, no matter how pretty the girl who'd just walked into the garden was.

This was mostly because Mira had been crying, but also because Mira didn't recognise the girl, which meant she must be an actual signed trainee for Highest Entertainment and not just a summer placement like Mira was, and the fact that Mira was never going to be an actual signed trainee for Highest Entertainment and not just a summer placement was the reason Mira had been crying.

Also the girl was letting her incredibly long bright purple braid do too much of the work in making her look pop and Mira thought that was lazy, and she refused to be caught crying by a pretty girl who had everything Mira wanted and was lazy about her look.

It turned out it didn't matter, because the girl didn't even see Mira perched in the branches and walked right past her to reach the little seating area in the centre of the garden. Mira, even more annoyed, turned a shoulder to the girl and huddled herself back against the tree, wrapping an arm around the trunk and forcing herself to stop sniffling into her sleeve.

Mira didn't even want to be a signed trainee with Highest Entertainment that much. HE wasn't the biggest idol company out there nor did it have the best track record with its contracts, but it was the only one whose summer program had accepted her that her parents had approved of and Mira couldn't see any way to get what she did want except by being signed as an idol, and it wasn't going to happen. She was too old, too sharp, too blunt, too aware of how screwed over she would end up being. She was here as a relatively rich kid who could dance a little whose parents wanted her out of the way over the summer holidays, and that was all she was going to be, and everyone from the thirteen year old newbies to the twenty-three year old near retirees knew it.

Her bottom lip trembled and she bit it, hard. Spiteful, she glanced over her shoulder to glare at the girl who had everything Mira wanted in the world and couldn't even wear something better than grey sweatpants about it, and paused. The girl was still there in the middle of the garden, and she was doing a weird dance.

Mira knew dance, and this was a weird one. She swivelled around on her tree branch and leaned out for a better look. The girl was moving with a slow measured grace between what must be very practised poses; her eyes were closed and her feet sure and confident on the short grass of the lawn, but she held each mark for a long moment before transitioning to the next, and the poses were a little…

It wasn't a dance, it was some kind of yoga thing or something, why had Mira thought it was a dance? Because the girl was doing it exactly on beat, Mira realised, and the sequence was so well rehearsed the girl must have done it a million times before, and it was elegant, Mira admitted, as the girl swung from a high pose to a low kick, holding there for a moment with one leg outstretched and the other not even trembling as it held her weight. But something was missing from it. Some of the poses were unbalanced, like the girl should be holding something-

"What are you doing?" Mira asked, finally unable to keep quiet.

Mortifyingly, the girl wasn't surprised to hear Mira speak from halfway up a tree, so she must have known Mira was there.

"Hapkido hyeongs," she said.

Even her voice was pretty. Mira rolled her eyes. "Martial arts? I thought so. You're very smooth with it."

"I've been doing it a long time."

"It's not balanced in some of the poses," Mira pointed out, snippy.

But the girl just nodded. "They're sword forms," she said.

Mira imagined the unbalanced poses with the line of the arm extended by a sword blade and admitted that would look good. "You sword fight?"

"A little," the girl said.

"You have time for that?"

The girl blinked. "Why wouldn't I?"

Mira ground her teeth. "Aren't you a trainee? Don't they run you into the ground?"

"Oh!" The girl shook her head and came over, leaning under the hanging leaves to look up at Mira through the branches. "I'm not a trainee with Highest. Are you?"

"No." Mira unbent all in a rush and wriggled to the edge of her branch to start feeling her way down. "I'm part of the summer dance program. I thought you were, because I haven't seen you in any of our classes."

"My guardian's working here," the girl said. She held up her hands to Mira. Mira looked at her, sarcastic, but the girl's brown eyed gaze was serious and her hands steady. Mira went bright red and reached down to take her hands, and the girl took firm hold and pulled, and Mira came out of the branches and near enough into the girl's arms.

"There you are," she said, and didn't step back, so Mira was stuck between her and the tree, looking up into her pretty pretty face.

"Thanks," Mira said.

The girl's hair was dyed professionally purple. Mira, who had dyed hers in the sink in the shared bathroom at three in the morning so her dorm-mates didn't yell at her, stared at the girl's perfect purple roots instead of into her beautiful big brown eyes and scowled.

Mira's natural hair was very light brown. After Mira had first grown the very light brown hair her father had made her mother agree to a DNA test. It had come back saying that (unfortunately) Mira was related to him, but her hair had been a source a tension in her family for all her life and Mira couldn't remember a time when she hadn't wanted to dye it. She'd managed it here and there, usually with the help of various staff members who'd been given a week's notice that their employment with Mira's family was coming to an end, but she hadn't managed to get away with it since she'd started boarding school three years ago, and the realisation that she wasn't going to see her teachers or her family for four weeks and had access to a sink had made her go a little crazy, so it had been pink pretty much the instant Mira had arrived at Highest Entertainment. But it was only wash out, as that was all she could afford and wouldn't be too hard to get rid off before she went to back to school. Another big reason Mira had been crying in a tree was that she'd realised that as she was never going to be signed as an idol she was going to have to go back to school and have brown hair again.

The girl tilted her head. She was still holding Mira's hands.

"Can you dance?" Mira demanded.

The girl blinked. "Yeah."

"Those hyeongs could make a good dance. You were on beat anyway, it just needs sped up. Come here-"

Mira dragged her back to the lawn and spun her away, feeling the girl's warm palms slip out of her grip.

"Here, like this, and don't hold them so long." Mira put her hands to her mouth to amplify the sound and started a beat, quick and strong, and for some reason the girl started to dance to it, running through her sword forms in time with Mira, and Mira, picking up the gaps in the tableau where a sword should be, started imagining variations to re-balance it, easier transitions, exaggerating the poses… Mira sped the beat up and the girl went with it; she was starting to grin now, and the bared-teeth enjoyment of her smile shattered the impression made by her passive beauty and turned her suddenly into a real person, having fun, and she looked so happy Mira lost the beat in surprise.

"Wo-ow, that's looking good!"

Mira and the girl turned at the shout; the girl still amused, Mira horrified. But it was only a kid, one of the younger trainees, looking absurdly babyish with her round freckled face and in her big cargo shorts and a sweater even though she was the same height as Mira. She bounced a little closer when neither Mira or the girl yelled at her, coming over sideways as though to avoid facing them head on.

"Do you want a bit added on, like, here, look-" The kid took up Mira's beat and then suddenly burst out into a complex beatbox, looping half-notes and riffs into the rhythm. Mira and the girl stared, and then the girl laughed (also pretty) and started the dance again, and released from keeping time Mira could jump in next to her and shadow the moves, feeling out her imagined choreography in real time.

The kid broke off to say, "Yeah!" and as Mira and the girl had the tempo down perfectly the kid could just start up again. Mira stepped forward and said, "Try this between the overhead and that sweeping motion-" and demonstrated, and the next time they got to that part the girl got it right first time, and Mira couldn't help it, she'd been grinning for the last five minutes anyway, and she laughed in delight.

Then the kid rapped out, "Uh, put a lock on this door/I'll just kick it down/say what you like/I'm skipping this town! I'm outta here!" and it was so silly and out of nowhere but it fit the beat so well and it was so exactly what Mira wanted to do that she stopped dead in the middle of the dance, appalled that this, this baby could strip Mira bare like that with two bars of rap in, of all things, English.

The kid stuttered to a stop as Mira did and grinned. "Um, haha, uh, sorry, that's one I've been thinking about so it just kinda… Haha, sorry. Um."

Mira was aware she was staring. Mira was also aware that the kid was grinning because the kid had the unfortunate appease response to conflict and not because the kid thought Mira was ridiculous, but it was hard to not take the grin of a strange kid seriously. Things might have escalated, but before Mira could snap the kid's head off the girl said, "Oh! That was really good. Hmm, you, uh, you want us to speak English?" The last part was in English, and while it was good English it was not confident English.

The kid relaxed and circled Mira to get closer to the girl. "No, no worries! I speak Korean. But rapping's harder, all my stuff's in English at the moment 'cause that's what I'm fastest in, I haven't really had a chance to write any Korean stuff. You guys speak English?"

"Um," said the girl, and wobbled her palm side to side.

"Yeah," said Mira, in English. Then in Korean, "It was really good. Sorry, it caught me off guard."

"Oh, sorry! That one's been stuck in my head for a bit and I didn't have a beat for it, and then yours just sort of fit! It was looking great! That dance was really cool, I haven't seen anything like that before."

"It's based on martial art sword forms," said Mira, like she'd known about martial art sword forms for longer than ten minutes.

The girl didn't call Mira out on it. Instead she nodded. "Hapkido. That last line, um, what does it mean, 'I'm outta here?'"

"You know, like, I'm outta here! I'm going! Eat my dust! The song is basically meant to be about, like, 'I am feeling trapped by my current situation and I'm going to do whatever it takes to get out of it.'"

"Nice," said the girl, nodding, while Mira wheezed with agony. "So it's a whole song? You've got more?"

"Um," said the kid. "Well, a bit? Uh, I've got… some stuff… written down… I guess…"

"I'd love to see it," said the girl. "Is that your comfortable range, where you sang the chorus lead in?"

"Yeah…?"

The girl nodded. She turned to Mira. "Can you do lower than that? And a beat behind to layer it?"

Mira had not told anyone at HE that she liked to sing. She'd signed on to the summer courses to dance and only to dance, because she knew she was good at dancing. She didn't care if some harassed intern who couldn't keep on beat without a metronome tried to teach her stuff she already knew, but she hadn't wanted some singing instructor condescending to Mira that her enjoyment of singing might one day make her passable if she put effort in. Mira knew she might one day be passable at singing if she put effort in; it was the fact that she had never been allowed to put any effort in to getting passable at singing that pissed her off. It was the same reason she hadn't told anyone she could play a couple of instruments. She'd had no intention of singing anything the whole time she was meant to be at HE.

"Sure," said Mira. "Just 'I'm outta here'?"

"That's all we've got for now," the girl agreed. "Can you stand in here-" she waved the kid into the dance line, in the middle "-don't worry about hitting the moves, but try something freestyle when you step forward to rap. And maybe I'll layer in Korean? Let's try!"

So Mira started the beat again, and she and the girl danced while the kid improvised in the middle, and snapped out her rap, and as the kid hit "I'm outta here!" Mira hit a pose and forced her line out as best she could, deep and fierce and angry about it, and heard how good it sounded, and then the girl opened her mouth and sang.

Both Mira and the kid stopped dead. The girl's voice soared over their heads, pure and high and overwhelming, and Mira's brain buzzed so hard processing what she was hearing that it made her see blue ripples running away over the grass and the trees and the HE building behind them. Then it hit her that when Mira and the kid had frozen and the girl had sang on alone the sound had lost the echoing harmonies their three voices had brought to it and the ripples had died away. Instead there was just an amazing solo singer trying out a new line. Mira and the kid had made it sound better. Pride whacked into Mira like a thrown brick and repaired her bruised ego in an instant.

"That sounded pretty good," Mira said.

"It did!" the girl agreed, looking around, pleased. Her teeth-baring grin was back and the kid was stuck staring at the girl's canines. Mira noticed this because she was also stuck staring at the girl's canines.

The girl said, "If you have more of that written down it would be great to see it," to the kid and the kid squeaked and tore her eyes back up.

"I could bring it tomorrow?" she said.

"Awesome!"

They both turned to Mira, one expression eager confidence and the other desperate pleading.

The back of Mira's neck went hot. "I could drop by," she said, pretending to look over her nails. Her cool was shattered by her phone alarm blaring off from inside her jacket and making her jump. "Oh, I've got to get back. Lunch is over." She stuck her hand in her pocket and silenced the obnoxious beeping.

"Oh crud! Is it?" The kid pulled her own phone from one of the cavernous short pockets and checked it. "Yikes! Yup! Okay, same time same place? I'll bring my notebook!"

"I'll be here," said the girl, that big grin relaxing into the calm little curve of a smile that had set Mira off at first and now just looked cute.

"Yeah, sure," Mira choked out. "Where are you going?" she asked the kid.

"Studio 1A?" the kid said. She fell into step by Mira, waving furious goodbye to the girl. Mira nodded at her and they both got a cheesy thumbs up back, and as Mira and the kid left the garden Mira looked back over her shoulder and saw the girl slip back into the dance Mira had made of her hyeongs, clear joy in each of her movements from one pose to the next.

Really cute. Mira whipped her head back around and power-walked away, the kid bouncing along next to her.

"I'm going by that studio," Mira said, though she wasn't. "I'll walk you."

"That'll be cool!" the kid chirped. "As long as you don't need to get back, you must be busy."

"No, I'm good," said Mira, in no hurry to go to her next workshop and be condescended to. "You're probably busier than me anyway."

"I don't think so? I'm just a day student after all."

"You what?" Mira stopped. "I thought you were a trainee. You're in the summer program?"

"Yeah? Aren't you a trainee?"

"No, I'm a summer placement as well, but I'm boarding. I thought for sure you must be a new recruit."

The kid blushed. "Oh wow! No, I'm visiting my mom for the summer and she got me a place here, but I go home and have weekends and stuff. Kinda feels like I'm just back at school to be honest."

"Cool," said Mira, looking at the kid from the corner of her eye. There was something there, when she'd said that… But the kid had kept going.

"I thought you were a trainee for sure! I thought you were a duo or something working on your choreography, I was super scared you were going to tell me to get lost. Oh, this is super embarrassing, but I didn't get a chance to say, I was too caught up in the dance, I'm Zoey!"

"Mira," said Mira.

"And your friend?"

"I don't know her name, I just met her literally two minutes before you did."

"What?" Zoey blinked, and then burst into laughter. "That's so stupid, what the heck! Were we all there making up a whole song and dance routine like 'wow, super cool these amazing idols are being so nice to me butting in on them?' That's crazy. Is she an actual trainee then?"

"No, she said her parent's working here or something."

Zoey nodded. "Free summer babysitting. But that's awkward, if we don't know her name."

"We can just ask her tomorrow."

Zoey looked at Mira with something like hero worship in her eyes. "That's so brave…" she said.

Mira laughed.

"Ugh!" said Zoey. "And you're really beautiful and you can dance like crazy good and your voice was so… rich when you sang low! Not fair! And she was…"

Zoey trailed off trying to explain what the girl had been, and Mira nodded in sympathy.

"When she was singing with us my synaesthesia went off like, way good, it was so pretty… And she wants to see more of my lyrics tomorrow! I'm gonna die. What if she doesn't like them? What if she does like them?! What if you don't like them?!"

"I'll like them," Mira assured, a little taken aback that Zoey cared. "I really liked those two lines, they just… They hit me pretty hard, is all."

Zoey turned huge adorable eyes to Mira and gazed at her in awe. "Really?"

"Yeah, whatever. What's that word 'syn-synaesthesia?'"

"Oh, I don't know the Korean for it! It's when, hmm, you know how the bits of your brain that sort out speech and hearing and sight and stuff are all really close together?"

"Sure," said Mira.

"Well, it's when your brain messes up the signals and engages the parts around the bit you actually want it to use. It has to make sense of itself so it mixes your senses up, you'll see colours while hearing stuff or smell things that aren't there and other things like that. Some people see auras when they hear people talk! I'm a really mild case, I only get it with music and even then not all the time. It's really pretty! Everything goes blue and whooshy."

"…I get that sometimes," said Mira. She had never told anyone that before.

"Really?! Yay!" Zoey grabbed Mira's arm and shook it a little, dragging Mira along. "Oh, this is so cool, you guys are so cool. What do you get?"

"Um, ripples. Like someone dropped a stone into water. I got it then, when we were all singing together."

"Yeah! Oh man, I wonder if it happens again? I think it's something to do with harmonies, I get it mostly when I'm listening to three parts and we were doing that then. I don't know if you know the Sunlight Sisters? Their music does it to me crazy style."

"My mother used to listen to them," said Mira.

Zoey shook Mira's arm harder in barely contained glee. "Mom got me in here because the word on the street was that Celine from the Sunlight Sisters was consulting here this summer. Can you imagine? What if I see her? What if I hear her sing? What if she still knows the dance to 'Dawn is Breaking'? I'll die for real."

Mira only knew 'Dawn is Breaking' as the song her mother listened to when she wanted an excuse to cry. "Which one was Celine?" she asked, conjuring a blurry image of the album cover in her mind.

"Uh, the cool one, duh…"

Mira dropped Zoey off at the door of Studio 1A and then dragged her feet to her afternoon dance workshop. She was late and was sent to the back of the room, but that was fine because she'd memorised this dance the first time she'd seen the instructor perform it and didn't even like it anyway. She was restless and twitchy all day, and that night spent so long staring at her light brown roots already showing up in the bathroom mirror that one of the other girls turned the lights off on her, so at least Mira got to work out a little of her mood in a fight.

The next day Mira finally snapped and kidnapped the same girl to a corner of the dance studio to teach her the dance properly, fed up with watching the teacher roll his eyes at her frustrated tears. Mira was halfway through making up a shorthand for the order of the hand poses before she realised there was another adult in the room, some tall woman in a suit Mira had never seen before. She was watching Mira's pupil in the mirror, and Mira, unable to interpret the woman's neutral gaze, glared back at her and moved to block her view.

"Who's that?" Mira's dorm-mate asked.

"Don't know," Mira snapped. "Focus. It's reach and point and then turn into the finger hearts."

"I'm never going to get this…"

"Not with that attitude, come on."

When they finally broke for lunch Mira sprinted out the studio before realising that getting to the garden first would look lame. She dawdled through the building to the courtyard, glaring at everyone she passed like they might be trying to muscle in on her lunch plans. She wasn't sure she even wanted to go, she wasn't in the zone, every movement in class had rasped her joints just slightly wrong and she felt sick. What was she even going to bring to this if Zoey and the unknown beautiful girl were going to go over lyrics? Mira hadn't even been invested enough to ask the girl's name, who was she fooling that she could contribute anything of use? She couldn't even sit to the side and eat her lunch with them, because she didn't have any.

Then Mira dragged her reluctant feet into the garden and saw the girl already there, stretching out into one of the poses Mira had made up yesterday, and every other thought went right out of Mira's head and she leapt forward to join in.

Except the girl saw her and stopped and that huge smile broke over her face again, and she came forward with her hands out like she was going to grab hold of Mira's hands and squeeze them like she had when she'd helped Mira down from the tree, and then as Mira slowed to a dumbstruck stop and nearly reached out in return the girl cried, "Mira!"

Shit fuck shit fuck shit.

Mira had not introduced herself yesterday. For all her bold words to Zoey it was a lot easier to say, "Hey, didn't catch your name, I'm Mira by the way," when the beautiful girl whose name you were trying to catch hadn't gone out of her way to find out your name in the meantime and greeted you with it straight off.

"Hi," said Mira. Why hadn't she asked around about the girl last night? How many pretty girls with purple hair that reached their knees could there be in the HE buildings? Now Zoey was going to stop thinking Mira was cool.

The girl dropped her hands when Mira paused but kept that grin up, her canines catching Mira's eye again as she said, "Come and sit down. How was class? I brought lunch for you guys."

"Oh, no, I shouldn't-"

"Don't say they've even got the summer students on that idol diet stupidity," the girl said, frowning. "You need to eat, you're working hard. And this is extra work, so, extra food! It should still be warm."

She pulled a takeaway tray from her bag and handed it to Mira. It was still very warm, and Mira, mouth watering, opened it to find proper street dumplings, steamy and crisp and perfect, and nearly cried.

Mira tried to explain. "It's not a diet or anything. I can't just take your food-"

"I got it for you. I've got my own, see?"

There wasn't an un-sad way to say that Mira not being able to get herself lunch had nothing to do with HE's diet rules. "Thanks," she muttered, and stuffed a too-hot dumpling in her mouth to avoid having to talk more.

The girl was distracted from Mira's burnt-mouth yelping when Zoey rushed into the garden, skidding on the grass and with a backpack clutched in her arms.

"I'm so sorry! Am I late?"

"Hey, Zoey!" said the girl. "You want some dumplings?"

"Huh? What? Oh, wow, that's so nice of you!" Zoey made desperate eye contact with Mira and Mira shook her head and stuffed another dumpling in her mouth. They were so hot and so tasty and Mira had failed Zoey so badly.

"Wow!" said Zoey again. "Hahaha. I would love some dumplings! I mean, I have lunch from home so I don't need any dumplings but it's so great you got them, I love dumplings, but if you guys want them and I'll eat my lunch, um, I mean, not that I don't want them…"

Mira swallowed her painful mouthful and said, "Are you okay?"

This was the wrong thing to say; Zoey's smile froze and her face crumpled up. "Yup!" she squeaked. "Here, I brought my notebook!" She opened the backpack and stuck her hand in and pulled out a battered exercise book, and then just stood there, holding it tight against her chest. "Yup!"

Mira put her dumplings down and started to scramble to her feet, but before she got halfway up the girl had slid up to Zoey's side and leant over sideways at the waist to get her head underneath Zoey's and look up into her face. The girl's hands were clasped behind her back, and her head was tilted over a little to get the right angle, and her thick long braid swung down and trailed softly across the grass, ignored, as all the girl's attention settled onto Zoey.

"What's wrong?" she said.

Zoey cracked like a dropped egg. "I'm just- I'm fine! But I just…" She gulped, and the girl tilted her head over more to follow as Zoey tucked further into herself. "I didn't see my mom this morning." That had seemed to be the worst thing, once that was out Zoey's babble broke out again. "Which is like, fine! She's busy, she's got a new job so we can't spend as much time together this summer, which is why she got me a place here! But like, I didn't see her at all this morning so I woke up on my own and had to get here on my own and that's fine! I'm a big girl, I can get myself to scho- to here. But I just haven't seen a lot of her. And that's like, the whole point of me coming out here every holiday. So it's stupid, it's nothing, it's just usually in the mornings we get to have a chat, is all. And usually it's in English so I can get all my English out and then focus on Korean for the rest of the day! But I didn't this morning so I kept answering in English in the workshop and everyone- Um. No one understood me."

The girl nodded, and turned away. Zoey blinked after her as she bent down to retrieve another takeaway box and brought it over.

"Eat some dumplings," the girl said. "They're going to get cold."

Zoey, mechanically, opened the box and ate a dumpling. "…it's good," she mumbled. "Thanks."

The Grin broke out again. "Come sit down!" the girl said. "Mira, your food-"

"I got it," Mira said. She picked her dumplings back up and ate another one. "What about you?" she challenged.

The Grin was turned on Mira. "Yes! Don't worry, I'll eat mine. Let's sit here, the grass is dry and we won't all fit on a bench. Zoey, do you want to read your lines out? Eat first though."

Zoey, still stunned, trailed after the girl and plopped down next to her in a daze. "I can if you want? Or you can read them- can you read them? They're in English. I can translate it for you, no problem!"

"We do understand English," Mira pointed out.

"I know, but, we're in Korea, so…"

"You write in English. I don't mind talking English if it makes it easier for you. It's good practice."

"Yeah," said the girl, clearly bracing herself. "Let's talk in English!"

"No, you can listen, can't you? Zoey understands Korean and you understand English, we can all just talk in what's comfortable."

The girl relaxed. "That works, as long as you won't find it confusing? But-"

"Eat first, yeah," said Mira, rolling her eyes.

The girl was about four dumplings behind Mira and Zoey but she quickly overtook them, because both Mira and Zoey were distracted from their own food by the sight of the girl absolutely massacring her portion. Mira, half-chewed dumpling hanging out of her open mouth, watched in fascination as the girl tossed her last dumpling up and snapped it out of the air and swallowed it pretty much in one, tipping her head back like a predatory bird. She did a happy little wriggle as she finished up and looked down at her empty tray with a sigh. Zoey, scared, held out her own box.

"You want some more?" Zoey asked, holding her arm out as far away from herself as possible, like someone offering food to a wild animal.

"No," said the girl, looking at Zoey's dumplings with longing. "I got them for you."

"I've got lunch from home, look," Zoey said, and reached into her backpack to pull out a lunchbox. Both Mira and the girl looked into it curiously. Zoey had a portion of rice, some carrot sticks, and-

"Ah!" said the girl, pointing. "Sandwich!"

She said it like a kid winning at I Spy, and the English word lisped a little as she stumbled over it. Cute! Mira thought, wanting to shake her to bits. She clenched her hands tight and swallowed her mouthful. She wasn't too far behind the girl on dumpling score, hungrier than she'd thought.

"Yeah!" Zoey laughed. "Pretty blended culture of me huh? You want to try some? My mom made it for me this morning before she left, you have half, and some more dumplings, if you want."

Mira looked at the lunch with new eyes, seeing how carefully the sandwich had been cut into triangles, the carrots peeled and chopped into equal sticks, the rice pressed neatly into all corners of the compartment. She put her last dumpling into her mouth and stalled out there, with it stuck on her suddenly dry tongue.

"You're sure? Here, let's do this." The girl took half of the sandwich and held it between her teeth as she took Zoey's tray and tipped half the dumplings on top of Zoey's rice, and then she turned and tipped the other half into Mira's empty box.

"Huh? No, I ate mine-"

"And now we all have more!" the girl chirped, around Zoey's sandwich. She was already chewing it further into her mouth. "Zoey, if you put your notebook out we can have a look while we finish, I can read English well." She puffed her shoulders up a little, looking, Mira had to make herself realise this, very silly. Mira ate another dumpling.

Zoey put her notebook down on the grass, open on a page filled with English writing and scribbles. She couldn't look away, hovering over it with her fingers twitching like she wanted to snatch it back. The girl looked at Zoey for a moment, and then sat on her hands and leaned over to read, and Zoey zeroed in on her like a dog waiting to get smacked.

"This kicks ass," the girl said.

Zoey fell back on the grass and started to squeal, kicking her feet. One flailing limb whistled past Mira's extra dumplings and nearly knocked them out of her hand, and Mira snapped, "Hey!" and held them out of the way. "Chill out. Turn that thing around and let me have a look."

Zoey snapped that terrifying attention onto Mira at once, and Mira stared back, unwilling to back down. The girl, after a pause, unsat one hand and used her fingertips to turn the notebook so Mira could see it. Mira's English reading was okay, but it didn't stretch to upside down.

Mira narrowed her eyes at Zoey one last time and then started to read.

"…yeah this is pretty cool," she admitted, reading the lines think I'm down for the count?/I'm just braced for the spring/baby, I told you/you can't do a thing!/I'm outta here!! surrounded by doodles of explosions and fireworks and Zoey riding a motorcycle through the flames while wearing comically oversized sunglasses.

Zoey made a sort of honking sound and rolled off to flail safely away from Mira's food. While Zoey wasn't looking the girl took one of her carrot sticks and bit it in two with a powerful snap of her jaws.

"How do you feel about a twist?" the girl asked.

Zoey rolled back.

"Hmm?"

"With the lyrics. This is a lot of rap bars right? They have the same rhythm as what we did yesterday, and the theme for all of them is getting out no matter what, and they end with the main theme repeated. So if you want singing lyrics, and sorry, they might have to be in Korean, how do you feel about focusing on, obviously it's still gotta be about leaving, but how about taking someone with you? You're going but there's room on your cool on-fire motorbike for anyone else who wants to come?"

Mira practically saw Zoey's pupils dilate.

"That sounds good," Zoey breathed. "So like, rap into the through-line 'I'm outta here!', with the background theme being getting out together, and to tie it all in we've got Mira's sick beat and moves-"

The two of them broke down into a technical discussion of lyrics and themes and key points and narrative in a bewildering mix of English and Korean, and by the end of the lunch break the girl was even allowed to take Zoey's pen and write in the notebook herself. As Mira had thought there wasn't a whole lot she could add to the conversation, but it was interesting, and she could help by feeding Zoey the abandoned carrot sticks when the girl had to pause and tilt her head to catch up with Zoey's rapid English, and also by pointing out when a proposed bar didn't fit her beat. Zoey's rice had somehow ended up split between the girl and Mira, and Mira, properly weighed down with lunch for the first time in a while, was quietly dreading her afternoon workshop.

Mira's phone alarm went off again, and Zoey and the girl both startled.

"Oh no!" the girl said. "Still, I think we're on to something. We need to work on melody next, we can do that tomorrow."

"Wish I could bring my keyboard with me," moaned Zoey. "We're going to have to hum it all. Oh well, no worries! Mira can keep us in time, 'cause her rhythm's so crazy accurate."

"Thanks," Mira said, determined not to make a big deal of that. "Where are you this afternoon? I'll walk you."

"Oh, same as this morning," Zoey said, dimming a little. "One of the second floor classrooms. Are you sure? You don't have to. It's nowhere near the dance studios."

"I've got time," said Mira. Then to the girl, "Same time same place tomorrow?"

The girl shot Mira finger guns. Mira hated that it worked.

"See you tomorrow!"

"Yeah, see you."

"Bye bye bye! See you tomorrow! This was so fun!"

"Yeah!" said the girl. "I think it's gonna be really good."

Mira watched as Zoey's bounces got lower and lower the closer they got to her classroom. At the door, Mira said, "Let me," and opened it, sticking her head in first to glare around the room. Looking dumbfoundedly back at her was a collection of snotty kids, older than Mira had guessed. She stood aside to let Zoey in.

"These the right guys?" she asked Zoey, in English.

Zoey answered in the same. "Huh? Oh yeah! This is my class. Thanks for walking me."

"No problem," Mira said, still in English. "Where are you tomorrow? I'll come get you." She ran her scowl around the room again, and when Zoey started to splutter a protest cut her off by ruffling her hair, tossing an airy, "I'm doing it. See you," over her shoulder as she left and sauntered around the corner before breaking into a sprint to try and make it to her workshop on time.

Mira barely slept that night. Instead she lay in the narrow bunk bed running through all her favourite dance routines, trying to work out what made them fun, how they worked with the lyrics and melody of their songs, where the flourishes fit in around the singers' moments of effort. It should have been hard to translate that to moves for their song without the melody, but Mira almost already knew what it was going to sound like; straining her brain through making up music instead of just dances for music already made had never been so unthinkingly easy. She was even looking forward to singing again herself, that brief second of glorious harmony they'd achieved running over and over in her mind, the best thing Mira had ever heard.

She woke dry-eyed and stiff, and fidgeted all through her morning timetable, classroom work rather than practical, which didn't hold her attention. But she was ready when Zoey's class let out, leaning nonchalantly against the wall opposite the door.

"Mira! Hey! You came!" Zoey yipped, bounding over like a puppy whose owner was home early. Then she stopped short, staring at Mira open mouthed. "You've got glasses?"

"Yeah. I wear contacts for dancing. How was class?"

"Good!" said Zoey, lying. Mira let it be, but cast a look over the other students, just starting to troop through the door to head to lunch. One boy met Mira's eyes, went white, and darted back into the classroom, leaving his friends gaping after him. Satisfied, Mira fell into step with Zoey and they headed off for the garden.

Zoey was chattering away, about her commute this morning, the show she'd stayed up late to watch with her mom last night, what instruments she was feeling for the build into the high point of their song, when Mira stopped humming along and shot an arm out to grab her. Zoey went, "Whoa!", and Mira shushed her and pointed.

They'd come to a crossroads in the hallways, about to turn right to reach the doors to the courtyard, and crossing the intersection ahead of them was the girl, heading the same way they were. Zoey went wriggly with excitement, making little noises in the back of her throat, because the girl was holding a guitar.

"Ugh, I wish I could've brought my keyboard… maybe we can find an empty practice room? What do you think?"

"Let's catch up first," said Mira, and started forward.

"Rumi!"

The unexpected call cut between Mira and Zoey and the girl and stopped them all in their tracks. The girl turned away from Mira and Zoey, not seeing them, and took a step back the way she'd came, and a woman came into view from the corridor, walking quickly to catch up with her.

It was the woman who had watched Mira dance yesterday. Mira bristled, and Zoey gasped, and the next thing Mira knew her arm was being yanked off. Zoey dragged her back around the corner, squeaking, and popped her head out to see. Mira, disoriented, copied her without thinking.

The girl fidgeted with her guitar as the woman came up to her, and Mira hissed, "What's the matter? Do we need to rescue her?"

"Shh! That's Celine."

"That Sunlight Sister?"

"Shh!"

Celine reached the girl (Rumi?) and said, "What are you doing with your guitar?"

The girl smiled, looking at the guitar instead of the woman. "I'm going to play in the garden for a bit."

Mira couldn't see Celine's expression well from this far away. She heard Celine say, "Hmm. Make sure you're careful," and Celine didn't sound mad, but she didn't sound exactly pleased either.

"Of course," said the girl.

Celine softened all at once and reached up and framed the girl's face with her hands, not touching, but cupping the air tenderly around her. "I'm sorry darling, I know it's boring for you. But we're making progress, there's definitely a few worth keeping an eye on. I'll try and arrange for you to meet."

Next to Mira, Zoey started to vibrate. Without looking Mira reached around and put her hand over Zoey's mouth to muffle the wheezing.

The girl turned her head and pressed her cheek into one of Celine's palms. "I don't mind," she said.

"It'll be fine Rumi," Celine said, dropping her hands. "Hopefully not much longer now. Did your lunch get delivered?"

Rumi took a step back, easing away from Celine. "Yes. Thank you."

"Alright. I've got to get back to it, the one thing I'll say about this company is they work their instructors just as hard as their trainees… Stay out of trouble for me, please?"

"Yes Celine," said Rumi, and stayed waiting there as Celine walked away. Something about the watchful stillness of her body tickled the back of Mira's brain, tried to remind her of something-

Rumi broke suddenly away and darted out the door to the garden, guitar clutched against her chest. Zoey hissed and pulled Mira back but there was no way Rumi would have seen them, she moved that fast. I'm outta here! Mira thought, realising what Rumi's pose had brought to mind. That long line of stillness that ran from the ankle all up the spine to the watchful tilt of the head would make a good opening pose, the song was meant to start with a bang, if they exploded out into motion like that it would look good, would demand attention from the audience.

"I know who she is," Zoey said.

Mira blinked. "Yeah, that Celine woman said. Rumi." Mira was prepared to feel a little kinder towards Celine since she'd given Rumi's name away for free.

"No, Mira, I know who she is. She's Ryu Rumi."

"Okay…?"

For the first time Zoey looked annoyed at Mira. "Ryu Rumi, Mira. The daughter of the dead Sunlight Sister?" Seeing Mira look blank she carried on. "You know, the comeback scandal? Come on, it was before we were born, but it's like the most notorious case of industry neglect there is."

"I'm not actually that into K-Pop," Mira said. "I just like the dances."

"For crying out loud… Ryu Miyeong was the Sunlight Sister who broke up the band and then tried to come back like years later and died from pneumonia or something due to overwork and then it turned out the reason she'd left the band was that she'd had a secret kid and no one knew who the father was so Celine had to take her in. And that's her, that kid's Rumi."

"Her mother died from pneumonia?"

"Or something. She was in hospital because she collapsed on stage and then she never came out and Celine whistle-blew that the studio had made her go through a crazy diet and fitness thing and they ended up folding due to the lawsuits, it was huge news at the time."

"Oh," said Mira. "That sucks."

"Yeah. But Mira, listen, the official story is that Celine's here as a consultant trainer, but it's been an open secret in industry circles for years that Celine wants to start a new band and put Rumi in it. And that must be what she's actually here for, she's looking for members on the down low."

Mira whistled. "Sneaky."

"Yeah, but Mira. If that's the case, what's Rumi doing making a song up with us?"

"Oh," said Mira. She thought over what they'd heard. "I guess she's just… bored?"

"…that kinda sucks," said Zoey.

"Yeah."

They stood dejected in the hallway for a long moment, not looking at each other. Mira, digging her toe into the plain beige carpet, felt the familiar turn of hurt to irritation rise up within her, spreading out to touch everything around her in a indiscriminate wave of fault-finding. She was mad at the carpet for being so beige, mad at Celine for setting the whole thing off and for being a creep who watched Mira dance, mad at Zoey for telling her this stuff and for wearing cargo shorts the third day in a row, and mad at Rumi for loads of things, including the fact that she must own at least two different grey hoodies because the one she had on today was not the one she'd had on yesterday and Mira was pretty sure today's one was longer than the one she'd been wearing the first day so that meant there must be at least three-

"What do we do?" said Zoey in a small voice.

"We go and ask her," said Mira, burning with the desire to make Rumi tell them to their faces that she was just playing around with them while her stupid famous K-Pop star guardian found her stupid famous K-Pop talents to be in her stupid famous planned-from-birth K-Pop group.

"Okay…" said Zoey, and trailed Mira reluctantly to the garden.

Rumi was sat in the same place in the grass, the same heat-retaining bag at her side, picking a tune with easy assurance from her guitar. When she saw them she changed at once into a lively little improvised riff, ended it by dragging her fingers along the strings to make them squeak, and jumped to her feet.

"Hi Mira! Hi Zoey!"

Mira stayed silent. Zoey, wincing, said, "Hey, uh, Rumi?" and Rumi beamed.

"Hey! How was class? I got lunch again! It's street toast, like 'sandwich!'"

Rumi grinned her stupid big grin as she somehow mispronounced 'sandwich' even worse than she had yesterday. It simply wasn't fair to make Zoey be the one to burst this adorable bubble, so, as always, Mira had to step up and do the unpleasant thing.

"When were you going to tell us you're K-Pop royalty?" she asked.

"Huh?" said Rumi.

"That you're," Mira shot a sour look at Zoey, "the Ryu Rumi or whatever, and your guardian's Celine from the Sunlight Sisters, and you've been doing all this idol stuff since before you could walk. When were you going to tell us that?"

"Didn't you know?" said Rumi.

"No," said Mira, irradiated with rage.

"We didn't even know who you were until, like, two seconds ago," said Zoey, digging a toe into the grass. "We saw you with Miss Celine just now."

"You didn't know who I was?"

"No," Mira ground out, "because you never introduced yourself."

"I didn't?"

"No."

"Never?"

"No."

Rumi sat back down and tenderly laid her guitar onto the grass at her side. Then she folded herself forward into a ball and pressed her face into the ground and wrapped her arms around her buried head. Then she went, "Uuuuggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh."

"Um," said Zoey. She made eye contact with Mira, but Mira had nothing. Rumi made another dying cat moan into the dirt.

Zoey crouched next to her and patted a tentative hand off her back. "There there," she said.

"I thought for sure I'd introduced myself," said Rumi's muffled gorgeous voice.

"You didn't," said Mira.

"I thought for sure I had."

"Nope," said Mira.

"This whole time you haven't known my name? We've made a full song together and you don't know my name?"

"We know it now!" said Zoey. "And to be fair, I should have guessed who you were, I mean, how many other girls with purple hair down to their knees hanging around Celine from the Sunlight Sisters could there be?"

"You had to find out my name from Celine, this is so uncool of me…"

"Yeah, it's pretty lame," agreed Mira.

Zoey glared at Mira and said, "It's fine, it's fine! Come on, stop being a pillbug. You need to show me your sick guitar!"

Rumi turned her head just enough that one brown eye could peer over her arm to see Zoey's earnest little face looking down at her. "What's a 'pillbug'?"

"Oh, shit, uh, what's the Korean for it… Um, um, it's the little guy, who rolls up, the little guy who lives in the ground… and his mother-in-law bullies him… Woodlouse! Stop being a woodlouse and show me your sick guitar."

Rumi unrolled a little. "You want to see it?"

"Of course! We still need to write the melody for our killer song, don't we?"

"Yeah…" said Rumi, fully uncurling and perking up. Her hand caressed the neck of her guitar, gripping it carefully before she started to lift it off the floor. "I had some ideas last night- Oh, but we should eat the toast first, it'll get cold."

Mira couldn't take street toast from Rumi's offering hands with things still unsaid between them. She sat cross-legged on the grass and lent her hands on her knees. "Rumi," she said, "why are you writing a song with us?"

Zoey flinched. Her lunchbox, pulled halfway out of her backpack, fell back with a thump as she lost her grip on it. But Rumi just pulled her guitar across her lap and blinked at Mira.

"Huh? Don't you want to?" she asked.

"Yes," said Mira, taking her life in her hands. "But, I mean, you're Ryu Rumi. Celine from the Sunlight Sisters is your guardian, you could pretty much snap your fingers and any company in Seoul would beg to have you sing any of their songs for them. So why are you making one up with us?"

"Wasn't it your idea?" said Rumi.

"What?"

"Didn't you ask me to dance? And then Zoey asked if she could use your beat for her lyrics? So wasn't it your guys' idea to make a song?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess…"

"And aren't you having fun?" asked Rumi, leaning forward over her guitar. "I thought you were, but aren't you? I want you to have fun."

A beautiful girl was making direct eye contact with Mira and telling her that she wanted Mira to have fun. Mira was very proud when she managed to say, "I'm having fun," with her voice barely cracking. She was less proud when she saw Zoey giving her a thumbs up for effort over Rumi's shoulder.

"That's great!" said Rumi, sitting back. "Was there something wrong? Did I seem like I wasn't having fun? I have been, this has been great. It's usually terrible when Celine brings me along on these placements, everyone just looks at me without saying anything and it freaks me out. So I was really happy when you two started talking to me."

"Oh, cool," said Mira. She felt like someone had flicked her hard between the eyes. There wasn't anything factually wrong with Rumi saying it had been Mira and Zoey's ideas that had started off their song. Mira had asked Rumi to dance. Zoey had asked if she could put her lyrics to Mira's dance beat. All Rumi had done was provide the quick-learning body and voice that had brought their ideas into physical reality and given them room to refine them. Yet somehow Rumi had also been the driving force behind the song being made, steering them along with such assurance that Mira hadn't questioned it.

Zoey had gone a little teary-eyed at Rumi's speech, and as though determined not to freak Rumi out by silently staring at her Zoey sat herself right next to Rumi on the grass and said, "I'm having fun! I didn't think I was going to, but then I met you two and now I am. And I really really really want to make this song with you! I stayed up all night thinking about the melody and I have so many ideas. Now show me your guitar."

"Eat your toast," said Rumi, but she let Zoey hold the guitar on her lap while she got the boxes out. "I hope it's still warm," she said, frowning, "street toast isn't great if it's not fresh."

Mira was going to eat the toast even if it was now frozen solid. And it wasn't, anyway, maybe not piping hot but more than fine for Mira, whose small breakfast felt a long time ago.

Zoey took the box without complaint as well, holding the tray right under her mouth to protect Rumi's guitar as she tried to eat and hum her melodies at the same time. Rumi devoured her portion in about two bites and then sat with her head propped up on one knee, copying whatever little tunes Zoey managed to make audible over the crunching of fried bread.

Mira sat and watched them, chewing it all over with her toast, careful not to get runny egg on her shirt. Every note Zoey had thought of was exactly right. It was so perfect that Mira's brain kept trying to remember where she'd heard it before, tripping up on the fact that she hadn't, that the reason it felt so familiar was that it was going to fit absolutely perfectly with the dance that Mira had spent her sleepless night thinking up. She felt a little raw, exposed, unsure how their thoughts had aligned so quickly, not quite trusting it but unable to see how to protect herself from it or even if she wanted to.

"Thanks Rumi!" said Zoey, wiping the last egg from her mouth. "Can I use your guitar a second? Oh wait, here, look, we had the same thought about food! I asked my mom for this specially." Zoey rescued her lunchbox from her bag and laid it triumphantly before them. "I was like, what's good for brain work, oh, eggs of course!" In the lunchbox was a huge rolled omelette, stuffed with ham and stir-fried vegetables, on another perfect bed of rice. Mira saw it was cut into nine pieces and her belly gave a weird little swoop. "There's three each, go on, oh, and I have extra chopsticks here."

Rumi seemed frozen, staring unblinkingly at the omelette. "Thanks," she said taking the chopsticks from Zoey without looking and diving straight in. "This is so nice of you and your mother Zoey." Mira, glancing at her, saw her ears were red, standing out against the purple of her hair.

"…yeah, thank her for us," Mira said, taking her own chopsticks like they might stab her, and picking the smallest possible piece of omelette. Rumi at once leaned over and arranged the pieces into piles, making sure Mira's portion had the largest piece and the others were pretty much equal. Mira chewed omelette and thought about how nice curling into the grass and screaming would be.

Mira could at least contribute more today; she could hum on pitch and her rhythm was pretty accurate. Between them they played guitar, keyboard, piano, drums, bass, violin, janggu, and a little bit of bipa, and Zoey could use a mix-board, so even if they only had Rumi's guitar to pick at right now they knew what was available for wider instrumentals and could spitball options. Zoey's notebook came back out and they passed the pen around as they wrote the roughest hardest-to-read shorthand sheet music that had ever been free-styled in the history of K-Pop.

"Look at my hands, they're shaking," said Zoey, pupils blown out again. "This is going to sound sick guys. We have to record this, we have to. Can we use a studio here? Would they let us?"

"No," said Rumi. "Nothing that belongs to Highest Entertainment gets used for this."

Mira and Zoey both turned to her, Zoey cringing.

"Why? What's up?" said Mira.

"Anything made or recorded on their equipment or premises they can claim they own. We're already pushing it writing this on their lawn. We ask them for anything, the next thing we know our song isn't ours anymore and they've got their latest twelve year old exploited 'stars' to butcher it."

"Yikes," said Mira, both at the idea and Rumi's visceral reaction to it.

"So what can we do?" said Zoey. "I have a mic I can hook up to my laptop. We could record it acoustic I guess, with just your guitar?" But she looked longingly at the messy score in her notebook.

"There's more recording studios in Seoul than just HE," said Rumi. "We can book into an independent one and do what we like."

Zoey blinked. "We can?" She looked over at Mira, who winced. Mira couldn't afford both hair dye and lunch, let alone a private recording studio, and she didn't think Zoey's mom could offer much more support than the extra omelette.

"Yeah," said Rumi. "I'll sort it. What days are you guys free? Zoey, you get weekends right?"

"Yup! Weekends and evenings." Zoey winked and threw them each a finger heart.

"I don't have any classes on Saturdays," said Mira, "but I'd need to ask for leave to go off-site."

Mira hadn't expected to want to go off-site for her day off, because what would she do out in Seoul on her own with no money? She'd planned to bully her way into a practice room with a mirror and get some proper work done. Today was Friday. It was highly unlikely that Mira would get leave approved now. But Rumi just nodded and said, "I'll sort it," again, and this time when Zoey looked over at Mira it was so both of them could widen their eyes and telepathically say, 'Huh?' to each other.

"And we'll want to hire a drum kit," Rumi mused. "I can bring my bass, and my other guitar. Zoey, do you need-"

"I've got a keyboard!" Zoey chirped. "If that's what you meant. I've got one, it's not as good as my one back in the States but it's decent, and I know my way around it, no problem."

Rumi nodded. "There'll be other stuff already there we can play around with as well. Okay! Great! Give me your numbers and I can let you know time and place."

Mira's stomach dropped, the toast roiling uneasily around inside of her. Zoey, humming their song with excitement, rattled her number off for Rumi so quickly Rumi didn't catch all of it and Zoey had to repeat it.

"Send me a message so I've got yours," Zoey chirped. "I'll make a group chat!"

The toast gave Mira stomach cramp. "Um," she said. Slowly and reluctantly she pulled her phone from her pocket; the cheapest pay-as-you-go flip-phone she'd been able to find, the sim loaded up with what had been left of her lunch money after buying hair dye. "I don't think I'll be able to join."

"Is that your phone?" Zoey said, head tilted like a puzzled dog.

"Yeah," said Mira. Desperate, she tried the only line which ever had any success getting her out of this trouble; "It's got Snake on it."

"Oh, cool!" said Zoey, and Rumi's eyes snapped to Mira's phone, pupils blowing out like a cat on silvervine.

Success. Mira did have an actual good phone, with internet access and the ability to be in groupchats and send images without using up all her minutes, but that phone also had a shocking amount of parental control apps on it. It was currently buried in the bottom of her suitcase, wrapped in plastic and foil.

"Alright," said Rumi, tearing her gaze away from the item that could give her the chance to play Snake. "Well, I can still text you, if you want, but maybe we could meet at the entrance and go to the studio together? Would that be easier?"

"Yeah," said Mira. "I'll need to pick up my pass anyway."

She looked hard at Rumi as she said it, but Rumi betrayed no unease about her chances of getting Mira a leave pass this late in the day, so Mira was forced to put it down to the privilege of being The Ryu Rumi, which was annoying. But useful.

"Oooh, I'm excited," said Zoey. "This is going to be so cool…"

Rumi grinned, played the main riff of their song in a lightning fast little ripple of notes on her guitar, and bounded up to her feet like she simply couldn't sit still anymore.

"Alright!" she said. "Lunch is almost over, you should start heading back. I'll get started on a studio. Zoey, I'll text you the details tonight, okay?"

"A-okay, boss!" said Zoey, saluting. She gathered up her notebook and placed it tenderly back in her backpack, smoothing her hands lovingly over the material. "I don't know how I'm going to get any sleep tonight."

"Try your best," Rumi told her, serious. They set off across the lawn back to the main building, in a close little huddle of teenage limbs.

"Yeah yeah yeah, I'll try, I'll take up meditating or something."

"I don't think you can learn that in one evening?"

"Pfft, how hard can it be?"

"Pretty hard, I think…"

Rumi parted from them at the crossed corridors, following Celine. It felt like a year ago that Mira and Zoey had watched Celine frame Rumi's face and heard Rumi's name for the first time, though it actually hadn't even been an hour. Under an hour, and they'd written pretty much a whole song. From Rumi pulling Mira down from the tree to now they'd spent about two hours together, and yet already Mira knew that the cocky little tilt to Rumi's shoulders and her confident grin meant that she was absurdly happy and excited about tomorrow, and that Zoey's contained buzz of energy was her trying to tamp her own equal enthusiasm down so it wouldn't show in class and draw attention to her. Mira hated to think what they might be picking up from her, while at the same time hoping desperately that they were picking up something, that this strange overwhelming connection wasn't all one way.

They waved goodbye to Rumi and watched her stride away, guitar in hand, to wherever she went when she wasn't writing music with them. This time Mira noticed the drop of confidence that Rumi's absence caused, how out of Rumi's sight Mira lost all her belief in her ability to keep up and wondered what she was thinking, letting herself in for this. It was very irritating. Then Zoey bumped her shoulder and started off towards her afternoon class, and Mira followed her, helpless to do anything else.

"How are you going to get your keyboard to the studio?" Mira asked.

"I'll find a way," said Zoey. She scrunched her little face up and pumped a fist in determination. Mira snorted at her, but it was cute. Then, suddenly, Zoey shrank back a little and reached out and tugged tentatively at Mira's sleeve, all her confidence draining away. "Mira?"

Mira stopped. "Yeah?" She wondered if Zoey had felt the drop too, if she'd also jolted awake last night and felt every creative urge she'd ever had drain out of her brain in terror, and been sure right up until the very last moment that she was going to be asked her opinion on the song and have absolutely nothing to say. As it turned out, Mira had had a great deal to say about the song, but she still couldn't shake the feeling that next time she'd have nothing.

"Should I have been calling Rumi 'Senior' this whole time?"

"Huh?"

"'cause, we didn't really get introduced a normal way so I never asked, and I'm bad at remembering to do it in the first place, my mom's always having to remind me, and you guys didn't use anything or tell me off, and I thought we were all the same age anyway, but Rumi's turning seventeen in October-"

"This October?" said Mira, startled.

"Yeah-"

Mira scowled. "Ugh. She's six months older than me."

"Huh? Are you sixteen as well?"

"Yeah? How old did you think I was?"

"I thought you were my age! You're in the same program as me!"

"What?" Mira blinked, offended. "How old are you?"

"Huh? Fifteen?"

"Fifteen?"

"Yeah?"

"I thought you were like, twelve."

Zoey gave Mira a incredulous look. "I am literally the same height as you."

"My family has late growth spurts!"

"What does that have to do with thinking I was twelve?"

"You're just-" Mira gestured up and down at Zoey. "Look at you! You're twelve looking!"

"What about me is twelve looking?"

"Because you're-" adorable, Mira stopped herself from saying. Really really cute, and I can't deal with two cute girls paying me attention at the same time so you have to be twelve-

"I don't know," Mira lied, lamely. "I'm sorry."

"Oh no, it's okay," Zoey squeaked, pivoting at once. "It's the freckles right? Haha. Or the big t-shirts? Or did I talk about my mom too much?"

"No, Zoey," Mira cut in. "I was being a dick. When we met I thought you were an actual trainee and I was stupid jealous so I had to think you were twelve."

"Oh," said Zoey. "Okay." Her fingers, still holding Mira's sleeve, rubbed at the material. "Why would you be jealous? I mean- It's just, HE isn't even a good idol company."

Mira felt herself tense up like Rumi in the corridor, every line and limb of her body braced for the moment she could spring away from this conversation. I'm outta here!

"I want to dance, as a career," she said instead.

"Oh, okay!" said Zoey. She didn't say, 'Aren't there easier ways to get a career in dance than trying to become an idol?' or, 'You know dance as a career isn't going to earn you a living right?' or even, 'Don't you just have to wait three years and you can do what you like?' Mira was especially grateful for that last one, because being reminded that she still had three years to get through made her feel sick. Instead Zoey moved closer and pressed herself against Mira's arm, her warm weight pulling Mira off balance to lean back into the contact, and said, "You'd be really good at it."

"…thanks," said Mira.

They were both going to be late now. Mira shook her arm free and draped it across Zoey's shoulders, using the grip to haul Zoey along.

"You don't have to call Rumi 'Senior'," she informed Zoey, "because she's not in the program. But she is older than you so you'd call her 'unnie'." Mira, teeth grit, also conceded, "I should call her that too. But she doesn't seem bothered, so I wouldn't worry. Maybe say it around your mom though."

"I think Rumi liked that we didn't care," said Zoey. "Okay, but I'll try to remember around the adults. Hey, as you are in the program with me, should I be calling you 'Senior'?" Zoey turned a little cat-grin to Mira and in self defence Mira immediately put her in a headlock.

"Don't be gross," Mira said, while Zoey flailed. "Call me 'unnie' as well if you have to but I'm not bothered, I liked it too, that we were so relaxed with each other."

Zoey pinched Mira's armpit and escaped. "That's so cute, unnie!" she sang, and ran away as Mira lunged for her again, darting down the corridors always just ahead of Mira's grabbing hands until they reached her classroom and had to sober up.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Mira said, once again leaning nonchalantly in the doorway to make eye contact with everyone else in Zoey's class, including the instructor. "Let us know if you need any help, alright?"

"I will! Thanks!" Zoey stood in front of Mira with her hands clasped behind her back, swaying lightly back and forth and beaming, ignoring the teacher's tentative efforts to start teaching. "See you tomorrow! I'm really looking forward to it!"

"Yeah," said Mira, just about resisting the urge to ruffle Zoey's hair again, which would have different connotations now Mira had acknowledged Zoey wasn't actually a kid. "Me too."

But standing in HE's lobby the next morning, waiting at reception with her leave pass, Mira was once again regretting all the decisions she'd made in the last week. She'd arrived twenty minutes before leave officially started and had an argument with the receptionist about whether she was allowed to pick up her pass before eight, which had helped settle her nerves, but after winning the argument she still had ten minutes to hang around in the entrance hall holding the pass tightly in her hand and waiting for Rumi to show.

By the time Rumi did show at exactly one minute past eight, Mira was deep in a catastrophic scenario where her claim that she could play the drums was proven horribly wrong by her smacking a cymbal so hard it catapulted off its stand and ricocheted into Rumi's face, breaking her nose and ruining all her future career prospects in the industry, while Zoey tearfully accused Mira of deliberate sabotage and ran from the room, distraught that the Sunlight Sisters' legacy had come to such a ignoble end. It was a pretty good fantasy; Mira was getting into imagining herself as a bitter seventy year old, still caught up on the unforgivable mistakes of her youth, when a car pulled up outside and Rumi shot out from it and into the lobby, squeezing through the automatic doors as they tried to open in time for her.

"Hey Mira!" she cried. "Got your pass? Let's go! Oh, how are you? Did you sleep well?"

The rote small talk phrases were so obviously afterthoughts, tacked on automatically from trained politeness, that Mira had to chuckle.

"I'm fine, I've got it." She ignored the question about her sleep. "I'm ready to go, have you told Zoey?"

"Yup. She was texting me until midnight, she's really excited." Rumi smiled fondly, though Mira noticed that that meant Rumi had also been awake and still texting at midnight, so Zoey wasn't the only one.

They went out to the car. Mira had a momentary qualm that Celine would be in it, but instead it was a hired driver. Rumi gave him an address and thanked him, and then sat back and let him get on with it.

"Where are you staying?" Mira asked. "I thought maybe you'd be at HE as well."

"No, we're in an apartment not too far away for the summer, Celine always has so much work this time of year it's easier to live in Seoul. When I was little she only came to the city now and again, but there's more work these days and I'm old enough to come along."

"So you live outside it, usually?"

"Yeah."

Rumi had been making direct eye contact with Mira, but at that she turned away to look out the window, and said, "It shouldn't take us too long, I told Zoey half past. Traffic's not too bad."

Mira accepted the redirect, and to keep things fair she said, "I'm usually at boarding school most of the year, but I like Seoul better."

Rumi turned back. "Boarding school? What's that like?"

Mira's turn to regret the turn of the conversation. "Uh. It's school. They don't allow dyed hair." She glanced at Rumi's perfect purple braid, coiled like a rope in her lap, and then out the window herself.

Rumi recognised the request and changed the subject, and for the rest of the car ride Mira got to rant about the dance workshops at HE, encouraged by the occasional insightful comment from Rumi, who obviously knew something about HE's organisation, probably from Celine. By the time the car pulled up and Rumi had again thanked the driver and they piled out the car, Mira throwing her own casual thanks in as she shut the door, Mira had forgotten her nerves. Mostly. They made a weak attempt to come back at the sight of the recording studio in front of them, but before they could settle Rumi had called her over to the boot to help with her guitars, and then Mira was distracted by trying to balance three instrument cases while Rumi pulled her phone out and held it close to her face, scrolling through her rapidly pinging messages.

"Zoey's on her way, oh, she's nearly here, oh, she can see us! Oh!"

Another car pulled into the spot vacated by Rumi's driver, with Zoey leaning out the window and waving.

"Hi hi hi! I've got my keyboard! Everyone thank my mom so much okay, she woke up early to drive me!"

And indeed a woman with Zoey's round face and eyes was driving the car. Mira felt a little shiver run down her spine and she clutched the guitars and stayed back, but Rumi darted forward to open the door for Zoey and then stuck her head in the car to chat to Zoey's mom while Zoey scrambled around in the back seat to free her keyboard.

"Thank you so much for driving Zoey. And for the omelette yesterday, it was delicious. If you like we can drop her back this evening? It must be your day off. Zoey said you had a new job? How exciting! How are you finding it?"

It was a masterclass in charm. Mira could see Zoey's mom falling for it, and came a few tentative steps closer. Zoey, keyboard liberated, met Mira's eyes behind Rumi's back and pulled a face, amused and embarrassed all at once. Rumi looked around and said, "Oh, Zoey, here, I can carry that for you, don't worry."

Zoey chirped, "Thanks, unnie!" Mira, carrying Rumi's three abandoned guitars, rolled her eyes. Rumi turned back to Zoey's mom.

"Thanks again! Are you sure you're alright to pick her up? It's no trouble. Okay, then we'll see you later. Oh, thanks!" Rumi beamed as Zoey's mom said she hoped it all went well. "I'm sure it will. Goodbye!"

"Bye Mom!"

Mira, pricked by conscience, bowed as well as she could around the guitars and said, "Thank you very much. Goodbye."

Zoey's mom drove away, Zoey waving furiously after her. Rumi watched the car out of sight and then said, "Shall we go in?" They hauled their stuff into the building, Rumi had Zoey's keyboard, Mira Rumi's guitars, and Zoey a huge backpack, which she held clutched to her chest, and then, once Rumi had booked them in, they hauled it all up to their studio.

"Pretty nice," said Mira, leaning Rumi's guitars carefully against the wall. There was the sound room, a larger recording booth with the hired drum kit, and a smaller booth already set up with three microphones.

"Very nice!" Zoey agreed, bouncing over to a shelf of miscellaneous instruments and poking about. "Oh, Mira, they've got a janggu. You could do some improv beats or something in the bridges."

"Let's get the main beat down first," Mira said, circling closer to the drum kit like it might leap up and bite her. She'd been officially taught violin, but she knew she wouldn't hold a candle to Rumi, who'd also had lessons and would have taken them seriously, and piano, and while she'd liked that more her amateur playing wouldn't be worth kicking Zoey off her keyboard. Janggu and drums she'd picked up in ensemble, where there was an abundance of passionate (and mostly bad) violin and piano players, but no one else quite so full of rage and willing to hit things very hard. By the time her parents had actually found time to make it to a recital Mira was firmly established as the drummer of the group and the conductor and teachers had all praised her so much for stepping up and for her rapid improvement that they hadn't dared find the face to make her quit immediately. Instead they'd waited three months and then sent her off to boarding school.

"I haven't played for years," Mira said. "I might suck."

"Okay," said Rumi, shrugging. "So we'll use today to practice and come back next week."

"Oh," said Mira. "Okay."

She trailed a hand along the edge of the cymbal and felt the vibration start up under her fingers, eager to sound. She moved on and tapped the hi-tom,one-two-three one-two-three one-two-and-three-four- She turned away, rubbing the feeling of the skin off on her jeans. This time the yawning chasm of self-doubt wasn't banished by Rumi and Zoey and their unthinking belief in Mira's talents, because this chasm came from a much older, deeper place. Mira wasn't really worried that she'd forgotten how to play. She'd loved it too much to really forget. Mira was scared that if she sat down and tried to play she'd realise she didn't love it anymore.

She sat down anyway. Her foot pressed on the kick pedal, teasing at striking it but never quite putting enough pressure on, seeing how close she could get and still draw back-

"Here, you'll need these," said Zoey, handing Mira a pair of drumsticks. She moved on immediately; keyboard already set up, she moved on to Rumi's guitars and unpacked them, plucking at the bass and the spare but leaving Rumi's favourite for her to pick up and tune, which Rumi did by ear, sitting on the floor.

Mira tapped a cymbal with a stick. She rapped on the snare with both in a little ratatat. Then before she could second guess herself she launched straight into the main beat for 'Top Secret' by Girl's Generation.

"Woo Mira!" cried Rumi, as Mira really started to get into it. Her rusty hands didn't quite match up with her remembrance of them but she barely cared for the obvious fumbles it caused because it was fun. It was fun, it was still fun, she was grinning as she clattered to a close and smacked the hi-hat as hard as she could and it didn't shoot off and smack anyone in the face, grinning as wide as Rumi ever had in her life, and as Rumi and Zoey both broke into applause Mira threw her head back and laughed.

"I haven't done that in ages!" she said, unable to stay sitting and springing to her feet. She hit all the drums again just to shiver in happiness as they sounded out in turn, and then laughed again and threw the sticks down and threw herself down by Rumi on the floor.

Rumi leaned over her and blinked happily into Mira's flushed face. "Feel better?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Mira. There was a nudge at her hip, and she looked over to Zoey, who was looming over them. Her backpack was still clutched in one hand, and she kept her eyes determinedly on where she was gently digging her toes into Mira's side, getting Mira's attention while also hiding from that attention.

"You're good," Zoey said, still not looking. "'Top Secret', right?"

"Yeah," said Mira, and Rumi wriggled in delight and tested her tuning by playing the melody. Only two bars, before her ear caught something in the sound and she was back to fiddling with the pegs.

Zoey managed a glance to smile at Rumi, but then it was straight back to Mira's waist. "So…" Zoey said. Mira resisted the urge to sit up. Rumi shifted closer to try to get a look at Zoey and suddenly Mira was trapped between them on the floor, Rumi's leg pressed against her one side and Zoey standing on the other.

"So…?" Mira prompted.

"So I had an idea…"

"What's the idea?" said Rumi.

Zoey pulled a video camera out of her backpack.

"Why do you just have that?" Mira asked, and then sat up as Zoey put the camera down on Mira's lap and pulled out another camera and a tripod. "Why do you just have those?"

Zoey took out a laptop and external hard-drive. "I make videos sometimes! Back in America. Of my lyrics or music or new tricks or stuff. And I was thinking…"

Rumi took the camera from Mira's lap and turned it over in her hands. Mira could feel the excited coil of muscle as she anticipated Zoey's idea.

"You want to record a music video?" Rumi asked. "Of us making the song?"

"Yeah," said Zoey. "The main part we'd have to do outside obviously, but I thought we could do like, clips of us singing or playing cut in between."

"In between what?" said Mira.

Zoey blinked. "Your dance, duh," she said. "Only problem is where to do it, 'cause we can't use HE's lawn for that. But I was talking it over with Mom last night and she mentioned the skate-park! I haven't been back yet this summer but last year there was a graffiti wall there, and if there's nothing too offensive on it I think that'd look sick, and I could take my board- Do either of you know how to skate?"

"No," said Rumi, looking interested. Mira was still shocked into stillness.

"Oh, well maybe not then," Zoey frowned, and put the laptop down on Mira. "I was thinking maybe we could have some skating sections and I could show off my kick-flip, I only learnt how to recently, though, actually, I could skate and Rumi could swordfight and Mira could dance solo, that'd look cool."

"I'm banned from taking swords outside," said Rumi. "I'd like to learn how to skate."

"That'd be cute actually, if we had some clips of you guys learning," Zoey mused. "I've got a spare helmet and I think Mom's got my old pads. This is going to be so fun! But okay, let me get set up here, we should rough out the tune first and then build it up from there, then do the solo stuff and the singing… I'll set one up static on the room and the other'll be handheld…"

Zoey darted around the room, humming their song under her breath. Mira stayed sat at Rumi's side, watching her mess with her guitar. They were so close the guitar neck was right in front of Mira, and if Rumi rolled her wrist around to hit a fret her elbow would bump companionably into Mira's ribs. She glanced at Zoey setting up to record, adjusted a peg, played a chord, and then twisted it right back to where it had been, and Mira realised Rumi was nervous.

She bumped Rumi back, and Rumi jumped.

"Alright?" Mira asked.

Rumi smiled, a smaller softer thing than her grin. "Yeah," she said.

"Annnd we're rolling!" cried Zoey, and handheld camera at the ready she came back over. "Okay, let's rough it out. Mira, can you bring a tom over and keep time? We'll record this and build over it. It's bit annoying we have to do guitar and bass separately, but we'll make it work. Ready? Okay, go!"

They played their song. It fucking ruled.

Halfway through Zoey couldn't contain herself anymore and started to rap under her breath, and then Rumi had to join in and layer in the background, so Mira started up as well, and as they reached the end they broke out properly into singing and the blue rush overtook Mira again and rippled through the room and lit up Rumi and Zoey in glowing light and Mira nearly lost the beat with how beautiful it was. She laughed out loud as Rumi squeaked the strings and played the last bars vibrato, really making the guitar squeal, and as Zoey started giggled and that set Rumi off, the blue flared so bright Mira was blinded and ended up flat on her back, grinning at the ceiling, unable to see Rumi and Zoey anymore but knowing without knowing how that they were just as elated as she was.

"That's so good, that was so good," she said, still dizzy with the flare. "That's how we should end it, all of us laughing like that."

"Guys," sighed Zoey dreamily, "I think we're on to something here. Ready to get really going?

Part by part they worked on the layers of melody. Mira's drum beat, Zoey's standard keyboard, Rumi on guitar and then on bass. Then Mira's beat but having fun with it, Zoey going off, Rumi making her guitar work. Mira even allowed Zoey to big-eye her into messing about with the janggu, and Rumi insisted on Zoey recording a beatbox track. Zoey was everywhere, playing, checking the cameras, running the soundboard, bouncing off the walls. Rumi's nerves had settled and she barely noticed the cameras, and Mira had forgotten about everything except the colour blue.

When they broke for lunch Rumi ran down to the lobby and came back with hot soup and bean pancakes and twisted doughnuts, and Zoey pulled out a thermos of green tea and three mugs, so they had a picnic in the sound room while Zoey, headphones still on, messed about with the tracks and had to be prompted to eat, and Mira was so happy and hungry she ate everything she could and didn't feel bad about it at all.

In the afternoon they moved into the smaller room and started on recording them singing. Mira had tried to get out of this as much as possible, sticking to harmonies, but Rumi and Zoey hadn't let her and she had some solo stuff. Rumi had about the same, but then a lot of the background singing was hers, and of course Zoey had the rapping, and harmonies with Mira and Rumi, so there was a lot to do. Mira had more fun than she'd expected, and watching Zoey rap was crazy, Mira and Rumi were so shocked they didn't start hooting and hollering when Zoey was done until she asked them if it had been okay.

Then they recorded Rumi on her own. About halfway through the song was a part where Rumi, leaning over Zoey's shoulder to watch her write, had pointed at the page and said, "You can push that a bit more," extremely casually, and Zoey, raising her eyebrows at how high it already was, had said, "You sure?", and Rumi had said, still casual, "Yeah," so Zoey had pushed it. And now Rumi had to hit it.

As she got close Mira felt Zoey get tense. Rumi sang, "There's thousands and thousands of stars in the sky, and you and I-" and on the 'I' she went for it, and hit it, and her head came back and her neck arched and she had her eyes closed and then she kept it, just kept hitting the note like it was easy, and then she tucked sweetly back in close to the mic and crooned, "We're gonna get there…" and held that too, running it out down her scale, and Mira grabbed at Zoey.

"You recorded that right?"

"Yup," said Zoey.

"You're not putting that in the video right?"

"Nup," said Zoey.

"You're keeping the footage right?"

"Yup," said Zoey, and Mira patted her shoulder.

Rumi bounded out the booth, canines flashing, and chirped, "How was that? All good?"

"That was so good unnie, how did you get that, I can't believe you got it-"

"Oh, it was fine, and the buildup was really nice for it, not too quick a climb-"

They fell into a compliment off, manic energy feeding off each other. Mira handed Rumi the last of the tea.

"Thanks… Oh, Mira, your turn!"

"Yeah," Mira sighed, realising that she was going to have to sing her harmonies knowing Rumi's stupid high note was going to be played right into Mira's ear and she was going to have to be normal about it. "Let's go."

But it was nice, actually, having Zoey and Rumi's voices close in her ear while she sang. Mira looked over at them in the sound booth; Rumi had her eyes closed, the content curve of a smile on her face as she listened, and Zoey was looking at Mira with an expression that could only be described as soppy, and everything for Mira was blue blue blue.

They had to stop at five; Zoey's mom was collecting her at half past and Mira had to be back at HE by six. In the course of the day Mira and Zoey had learnt that Rumi was the type of perfectionist who always wanted one more go just to make sure, so Mira caught Zoey watching the clock a little anxiously and prepared herself to haul Rumi out by force if needed, probably by using the convenient leash of Rumi's braid. But the instant the clock ticked over from four fifty-nine Rumi snapped out of it and packed up her guitars with no sign of resentment.

"If we need any retakes it's no problem to book the studio again," Rumi said, holding Zoey's backpack open so Zoey could fit her cameras back in. "But I'm pretty hopeful we've got most of it. And it would be good to get the dance recorded next Saturday instead, we can practise it in your lunch this week."

"We definitely got it," Zoey said, smug. "I'm going to blow your minds on Monday, just wait."

"On Monday?" Mira asked.

"Yeah, I don't have classes on Sundays."

"Oh." Mira had forgotten. She had two three-hour workshops. "So you won't be in?"

"No, I'm going out with my mom, I think, I don't know where yet. But I've got all this evening and tomorrow to work on this."

"Oh."

Zoey stopped. "But Rumi might be in HE! Right Rumi?"

"Hmm? Oh, no, Celine doesn't work Sundays, and I'm not allowed in the building without her."

"Oh," said Zoey, wincing.

"Why?" Rumi asked.

"Mira'll be all alone-"

Mira scoffed. "I can spend one lunch-break on my own, I'm not a kid-"

"That's not the point-"

"I've spent a lot of my time without you, you know-"

"No, I know-"

"What are we arguing about?" Rumi asked, head tilted to one side. "We'll see Mira Monday, right?"

"Yeah…" said Zoey.

"And she says she's fine, right?"

"Yeah…" said Mira.

"So there we go," said Rumi, heartlessly. Even though Mira had wanted to drop it she still felt a sick little gasp of panic that they were going to stop caring. Then Rumi ruined it by saying, "Make sure you eat some lunch Mira."

Mira rolled her eyes. "Yeah, unnie, whatever you say."

Rumi wrinkled her nose. "Ew."

"Sorry unnie-"

"Ew-"

Zoey's mom was waiting by the curb when they staggered out, arms piled with instruments. Once again Rumi leapt forward to help Zoey into the car and hypnotise her mom with small talk, but this time Mira edged a little closer as well, aware of just how rude she'd been this morning.

"Did you girls have a good time?" Zoey's mom asked. She listened amused as Zoey and Rumi fell over themselves answering her, rattling on about track orders and level mixing and mic blow-out. Mira fidgeted, hidden behind Rumi, but while Zoey's mom was humming along to Rumi and Zoey's deluge Mira could feel her looking.

"Excuse me, Mira?" said Zoey's mom, and though she'd been expecting it Mira flinched. But Rumi had already moved aside to reveal her, so Mira had to shuffle forward and bow.

"Hello, ma'am…"

Zoey's mom laughed. "No need for that, it's alright. I just wanted to say thank you for taking care of Zoey so well."

"Mom-"

"This whole week it's been nothing but 'Mira Mira Mira' and 'Rumi Rumi Rumi'," said Zoey's mom, while Zoey whined. "She's really enjoying the classes now."

Mira finally looked up and tried to meet Zoey's mom's gaze. She managed for a second, Zoey's mom's eyes were very like Zoey's, before she had to give up. She bowed again.

"She's really fun, Auntie, we're having fun too."

"I'm glad." Zoey's mom beamed. "Okay, we've got to get going, your driver's waiting for this spot, and you need to get back. Thank you again, girls."

"See you Monday!" Zoey called, clambering into the passenger seat.

"See you."

"Bye Zoey! Bye Auntie!"

Mira was feeling a little tender and tired, and while she could've kept her attention on talking to Rumi in the car it would have needed active effort. But after greeting the driver again Rumi merely tugged Mira's sleeve, said, "Can I play Snake on your phone?" and settled contented in the corner, tapping away. Mira put her head back and closed her eyes, and watched the echoes of blue ripples run in her mind.

Sunday was bad, except for when a harassed and confused HE employee found Mira at the end of her morning workshop and gave her a lunchbox, which had apparently been dropped off at the front desk for her. Monday started better, because Zoey text her.

hihi mira i no u cant answer bc limit no wrrs cn u meet me in recept this mrng???

Mira wasn't sure if Zoey thought there was a limit on the number of characters Mira could receive as well as send, or if that was just how Zoey texted. Either way she got up early and met Zoey in reception. Zoey threw herself at Mira and nearly knocked her off her feet; Mira, startled, managed to spin out the momentum and keep them upright, but it was close.

"Hi hi hi! I missed you! Thanks for coming."

"Sure," said Mira, still off balance. "Want me to walk you to class?"

"Well, kinda. I was hoping you could hold onto this for me?" Zoey held up a laptop bag. "I've got the demos I want to show you and Rumi, but I'm kinda worried about carrying it around with me, but I thought if you had it…"

No one would try to touch it, Mira finished for her. "Sure," she said, slinging the bag over her shoulder. "Where are you first? And how was the rest of your weekend?"

Zoey's chatter carried them to her classroom, where everyone avoided meeting Mira's eye. Satisfied, Mira left her there and, hiking the laptop better on her shoulder, went to her own class. Lunch could not come fast enough.

Rumi had brought curried rice cakes and sausage, and wouldn't let Zoey even open the laptop bag until they'd eaten. Zoey's mom had sent her with an extra large portion of fried rice, and while Rumi was portioning everything out Mira took a chance and muttered, "Thanks for the lunchbox yesterday."

Rumi beamed. "They delivered it okay? I wasn't sure where you'd go, so I dropped it off early so they could catch you when classes ended."

"Yeah, went fine," said Mira, and stuffed a rice cake in her mouth.

Zoey bolted her food nearly as fast as Rumi and ripped her laptop free from the bag while Mira was still working through her rice. Zoey bounced over to sit between Mira and Rumi and turned the laptop screen back and forth to show them both a folder headed 'COOL SONG 2017 FUCK YEAH!!!!' in English with a crazy amount of .mp3 files in it. Mira moved in to lean over Zoey's shoulder so they could all see the screen at the same time, and Rumi did the same, hovering over Zoey's other side.

"Okay so," said Zoey. "Here's all the separate parts we recorded and then down here is where I've been putting it all together, I started all the file names with 'z' so they're all together-" Rumi winced, though whether it was at the amount of English she had to read or at Zoey's filing system Mira didn't know "-listen to this one first that's the acoustic demo we did first thing, and then here's a few where I had a go at mixing all the parts together-"

"Zoey, there's like, fifty tracks in here," said Mira, seeing the 'z-' files stretch further and further down in the folder. "When did you find time to do all this?"

"Oh, haha, um, well, you know, I didn't have class yesterday…"

"You were going out with your mom, you said."

"Oh, well, um, not for the whole day…"

"Just admit you didn't sleep," said Mira.

"Oh, well-!"

"Here," said Rumi. Hesitating over the English keyboard and typing with two fingers like a grandma, she made a new folder and called it 'Cool Song', using the caps-lock key to get the capitals. "Put the rough demo and your five favourites in this, and we'll listen to them while you nap on the bench."

"Oh-" said Zoey.

"You don't have to sleep," Rumi told her, "but you'll feel better even if you just lie down. Do you mind if we use headphones? I don't want to play anything out loud here. We can tell you which one we're listening to though, if you want."

Zoey went still, which Mira noticed because it was unusual and also because Zoey was tucked up under Mira's arm.

"You don't think it's… a bit much?" Zoey said. "That I did all this? And I don't like, mind you listening but also it makes me really anxious, which is silly because you guys like, know what it's going to sound like! You made it with me! But I just…"

Mira squeezed her. "I think it's cool," she said. "It's amazing how quick you did all this, and I really want to listen to the cool song I'm making with you guys, but I get it. You did all the work of putting this together, that's a big deal."

"It's not like we're going to say it's bad," Rumi pointed out. "We made it with you and we know it sounds awesome, the only thing we're going to talk about is whether we think 'zzzmirasbangingjanggusolo34.mp3' works better than 'zzbasslinegobrrrr.mp3' for what we wanted to achieve."

She peered at the screen around Zoey's head and sounded out the English file names very carefully, tripping a little over the '.mp3'. Mira shut her eyes and bit her lip and clenched her fist and did not shake Rumi to death, an achievement she was inordinately proud of.

"'Janggusolo41' is way better than '34', anyway," sniffed Zoey, a little choked up. She moved the '41' file to Rumi's folder, and then, quicker than Mira had thought, pulled four more easily out of the tangle and followed them up with the first demo. "There, okay! I'm going to go lie down, don't look at me until you're done!"

"Okay," Rumi said, and took over the laptop as Zoey extracted herself and threw herself down on the bench. Mira, tentative, moved up next to Rumi and slipped her arm behind Rumi's back, and accepted one bud of the earphones Rumi held out.

"Okay," Rumi said again, face way too close to the laptop, "let's see… Demo first… Um…"

"It's that one," Mira told her.

"Oh, thanks…"

Rumi opened the file, and at once Mira was hit with Zoey's voice, "Okay, let's rough it out-" and then the song started to play. It still ruled. Mira sat stunned, caught up in remembering how it had felt to play it at the same time she heard what they'd played in her ear, and slowly as the song built up and one by one their recorded voices started to sing Mira's vision lit up with blue, rippling all around and away and blinding her to everything but the music.

Nearly everything; out of the corner of her eye Mira saw Rumi reach out and run her hand over the grass, except it wasn't the grass she was reaching for, but the blue, and it reacted, jumping to meet her and rolling joyfully away from her fingers and making the whole blue world dance around her and Mira, and Mira was struggling to breathe almost, it filled her up so full, that Rumi could see it too-

The song broke down into Mira's recorded laughter, and at the sound of it Mira laughed again, a little chuckle that broke the spell and faded the blue away. The track ended and Mira and Rumi both sat back, as though they needed a break from whatever huge feeling listening had brought up in them.

"Zoey, that set me off so bad," Mira said. "I couldn't see a thing, it all just lit up. How did you manage?"

Zoey rustled around on the bench, maybe rolling over, but Mira didn't look at her. "It wasn't too bad, I think I was so in the zone I didn't notice, and the individual parts didn't do it for me at all. Haha, it might be stupid, but the tracks I picked are the ones that set me off the most, somehow they seemed the best…"

Next to Mira Rumi was listening with an odd little expression on her face; a sort of compressed glee and excitement that Mira could only categorize as smug. She hovered the mouse over another track and looked at Mira, eyes sharp and happy, and Mira adjusted her earbud and nodded.

In the end it wasn't hard to choose the right track. It was the one that made blue aftershocks flare even behind Mira's closed eyes and Rumi go rigid like a cat about to pounce. Even Zoey must have known, because the file name was just 'ZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!.mp3', and from the metadata Mira could see Zoey hadn't made any more mixes after this one. Hopefully she'd gone to bed.

"Zoey," said Rumi, "you're so talented at this."

Next thing Mira knew she was having a laptop thrown at her, so Rumi could brace for Zoey's ecstatic tackle from the bench.

"Really!? You really think so?"

"Yeah. I'd feel bad that you had to do all this by yourself but also I don't think you even needed help, like all of those were so good. I see why you turned the bass down though, it sounded great but it either covers up the rap or is really obvious when it fades out to give it room."

"Yeah, sorry I had to cover it though, you played so good…"

Rumi shrugged. "That's bass. Sometimes it's the best part and sometimes it sounds better without it taking up so much room. I love that you put some of your beatbox in, it really emphasises Mira's beat."

"So does Mira's sick janggu," said Zoey dreamily, lying on her back in Rumi's lap. Mira poked at Zoey's stomach, a little jealous but mostly just happy that Zoey's manic nerves had settled.

"Whatever," Mira said. "But it does sound good."

"It sounds awesome," said Zoey, able to praise her own work now Mira and Rumi had approved it. "So the next question is… the choreography."

Mira sat up and got serious. "Yeah. You have two hours to learn the dance."

Zoey yelped, "Huh? What? But we're recording it Saturday? That's four days!"

"Yeah," said Mira, "and the only time you can learn it on the down-low is lunch, so that's four half-hours, so that's two hours. Less if Rumi keeps insisting on feeding us."

A scowl from Rumi, which said she was going to keep feeding them. Mira pointed at her.

"It's fine, but no more of this takeout hot food indulgence, alright? We can't eat and then cram choreography, you're not throwing up on my watch. So stick to cold lunchboxes and we'll eat after we're done."

"Fine…"

"And you," Mira continued, turning to Zoey, "don't get weird and in your head about the fact you won't have as much to do as Rumi and me."

"I won't?" said Zoey, getting weird in her head. Then she caught herself. "Okay hahahaha no problem! Why though."

"One, me and Rumi have a head start because I made the dance and it's based on Rumi's sword forms, and two, you have to do the heavy lifting to make the rap sections look cool."

"Ooooh I getcha," said Zoey. "I gotta intimidate the camera."

"Yeah," said Mira. She would have said that Zoey, baby faced, freckled, and a hundred and sixty centimetres tall, would have a hard time intimidating anything, but she'd seen Zoey rap at the recording studio.

"Four days, two hours," Mira said. "We've got this. You know why?"

"Why?" asked Zoey.

"Because I'm really good at this."

On Saturday Zoey's mom drove them to the skate-park. Mira and Rumi sat in the back together, though Rumi spent the whole time leaning forward between the front seats to continue her campaign to become Zoey's mom's favourite child, which meant Mira could huddle in the corner and stay quiet. She hadn't slept well all week; the extra half hour of dancing in an already dance heavy schedule had made her joints ache, and she'd had to use actual effort to maintain her perfect performance in the classes instead of just coasting. She'd resented any dance that wasn't hers, finding them clunky and un-intuitive, incredibly boring and yet needing to have too much attention paid to them. It had come across as the mother of all bad moods and now everyone in HE was walking on eggshells around her. The front desk had practically thrown her pass at her, glad to get her out of the building.

But with Rumi's knee pressed against hers in the backseat, steadying Rumi's lean, and Zoey's happy little asides about how close they were getting and what tricks she'd been practising since the last time she'd been to this skate-park, Mira felt it all start to drain out of her. She kept her leg still so Rumi could balance, asked Zoey about her ramp drops, and relaxed.

The skate-park, perhaps not unusually for a Saturday morning in summer, was busy. Mira and Rumi thanked Zoey's mom and followed Zoey across to the graffiti wall, where a few older teenagers were sat.

"I'll ask if we can nab their spot," Zoey said, and bounded over. Mira watched a little anxiously, but the kids moved off easily, interested in what they were doing, and one volunteered to make sure no one interfered with their set-up while they were dancing. Zoey had her board with her, and it seemed to give her a certain amount of social capital they could use.

Zoey set the cameras up again, Rumi got nervous again, and started doing jumping-jacks to work it out. Mira had her do them in frame, both to get her over it and to see where their starting marks should be. Rumi's braid in particular had a habit of going everywhere. Mira teased her about it, and she chirped, "I weighted it down today!" and showed off a metal ring threaded into the bottom of the braid.

"I see, today you've turned it into a deadly weapon-"

"No, it keeps it below my knees-"

"Turned it into a kneecapping machine, I see-"

"No-"

Mira had Zoey run a couple of test shots with all three of them, checking the limits of the frame, and then couldn't put it off anymore. She gathered Rumi and Zoey over and put a hand on each of their shoulders and said, "It has been physically paining me to look at your clothing for the last two weeks."

Rumi said, "Okay…?" and Zoey looked down at herself with a perplexed frown, trying to see what Mira didn't like about her wearing three-quarter length cargos and a jacket five sizes too big.

Mira continued. "I refuse to have people see you perform a dance I made up and think I encourage whatever it is the two of you have going on."

Rumi said, "Okay," and crossed her arms. Zoey looked at her cargo pants again, like the answer might be in one of the numerous pockets.

"Well I didn't bring any other clothes," Rumi said, "so I don't know what you want me to do about it."

"No worries," Mira said, dropping her backpack in the middle of their huddle. "I brought some options. What have you got on under that?" She nodded at Rumi's hoodie (blue this time) and Rumi clenched her fingers in the fabric like Mira might pull it off for her.

"…black underlayer," Rumi muttered, and Mira got to work.

"Okay… is it fitted? Good, okay, your sweats pull in at the ankle so your leg shape won't be lost, which means we can have something with movement on top, because the black will keep your silhouette clear. But we want something that'll stick around the shoulders, 'cause we want to show those off… Try this."

This was Mira's beloved denim jacket, worn authentically white around the seams and elbows through careful neglect to get the right look. It had reached the pinnacle of denim jacket aesthetic this year, only for Mira to find that the cuffs now sat wrongly on her wrists. Unable to bear throwing it out and knowing she'd never be allowed to get a new one she'd held on to it, and while she was glad it could find new purpose it still gave her a pang to hand it over to Rumi.

Rumi grumbled, but pulled her hoodie off and jacket on so smoothly it looked like she just snapped from one to the other. The jacket was Mira's size, so the shoulders were straining a little around Rumi's broader ones, and the cuffs sat above her wrists, but when they rolled them up it looked intentional, and the fall of the denim around her waist would look really good when the jacket whirled out in the spins. Rumi's trainers were at least always nice, and the black underlayer was doing what black underlayers did and clinging in all the right places.

"Great," said Mira, knowing it was the best they were going to get and letting Rumi go back to her jumping-jacks before she openly rebelled. "Now for you," she said, turning on Zoey, who grinned and tried to sidle out of reach.

"First things first, roll your socks down, don't you own any ankle socks? Second, take that jacket off- Why is your t-shirt even bigger than the jacket was? Oh boy. You okay to put this on?"

Mira pulled a dark grey tank-top out and cocked her head at Zoey, who gave up and shuffled over. "Okay…" Zoey whined, hauling her huge t-shirt unselfconsciously over her head and revealing a ratty sports bra Mira couldn't wait to cover up again.

"Tuck it in to your awful pants," Mira told her.

"My pants aren't awful…" Zoey tried.

"You could fit the entirety of your filming equipment into the pockets."

"That just means they're practical…"

Mira tied Zoey's jacket around her waist and made Zoey spin a few times. "Yeah, that'll work," she said, liking the flair of the obnoxious pattern better when it was merely hinted at when Zoey moved.

"Satisfied?" Rumi snarked. "Don't need to change your fit?"

Mira, who as part of her summer wardrobe had packed a careful rotation of three leggings to seven shirts to make sure no one would see her dance in the same combination twice in twenty-one days, didn't dignify that with a response. She'd guessed at what Rumi and Zoey would turn up in and dressed to contrast their baggy-below-fitted-on-top looks, and she knew she'd pulled it off.

Mira got them on their starting marks, nodded to the kid who'd volunteered to start the music for them, and danced.

First run through they drifted, Rumi's braid, even with the weight, flew out of frame a few two many times for Mira to like it. Second time through Zoey panicked and jumped ahead, forgetting that in the rap sections she had simpler moves and trying to match Mira and Rumi's complicated pattern. Third time through Mira knew they'd got it before the song even ended.

"Yup, I'm good with that," she said, watching the play back.

"Sure?" Rumi asked.

"Yup."

"Really?" Zoey asked. "It's really okay? We barely did it!"

"Yeah, because you worked really hard learning it," Mira pointed out. "It's fine guys, we got it. Well done."

"Oh," said Zoey. "Thanks." She'd gone bright pink, freckles standing out sharply on her red face.

"What now?" Rumi said, looking around a little blankly.

"Zoey's camera work," Mira said. "Maybe a bit for you, as well? Depends what Zo wants to do for the video."

Zoey's lipsync for the rap was going to be harder to work out; for the dance they'd played an instrumental version through Zoey's speaker to keep the lyrics under wraps, for this that wasn't going to work. The idea was to have Rumi and Mira dancing in the background while Zoey rapped in front of the camera, so they at least needed a beat. They settled on having the actual song playing on Zoey's blue-tooth headphones, which- "Why do you just have those!?" Mira despaired- she pulled from one of her endless pockets, and that Rumi would have one so she could keep the dance in time and Zoey the other so she could rap. Mira would have to match Rumi without being able to hear the music, but that was easy, because all Mira had to do was keep in time with the blue ripples rolling from their feet out across the whole of the skate-park.

After they'd done that Zoey wanted b-roll, so she taught them to skateboard.

They took it in turns because Zoey only had one helmet, and Rumi insisted that Mira take the knee-pads as her sweats were thicker than Mira's leggings and anyway Rumi didn't plan on falling off. Zoey taught them to step on, to tic-tac, and then pushed them gently along the flat ground in front of the graffiti wall to let them get their balance. It was fun, but Mira had no desire to try going it alone like Rumi did, who got to the point of pushing herself off with her foot while Zoey held the back of her borrowed jacket in case of accidents.

Instead Mira fielded the curiosity of the other skate-park kids, who had stayed away while they were actively filming but now came over to ask questions. Mira told them to stay out the camera frame as it was still rolling, but otherwise let them chatter, answering as much as she could, and applauding when one kid wanted to show her he could wheelie. That inspired Zoey, and she took her board back to try out some of the tricks she knew, Rumi following her around with the handheld camera, which turned more into Rumi chasing Zoey with the handheld camera while Zoey whizzed away, cackling. Then they persuaded Mira to get back on, and she rolled sedately back and forth in front of the fixed camera, with Rumi holding her steady.

"Hey, Zoey!"

It was one of the kids around their age, waving Zoey over. Zoey perked up and sauntered over, greeting him with a casual, "Whassup?"

"Didn't know you were back in Seoul this summer! You haven't been around the skate-park. Been working on your music instead?"

"Yeah, we're recording some stuff, it's turning out pretty good."

"Must be, if you've given up on learning to kick-flip," the boy smirked.

Zoey laughed. "Pfft! Learnt that easy back in Burbank, old news."

"Oh yeah? Don't see you showing your new friends you can do it…"

"Lend me your board and we'll see about that-"

Mira took the borrowed helmet off and handed it to Rumi. She didn't think wearing it would add to her looming aura as she went to glare at whatever was happening. This turned out to be a mistake because Rumi, left unsupervised, tried to roll across frame by herself, tripped, and ate tarmac in a truly spectacular fashion. So they got a great shot of Mira simultaneously scolding and patching up Rumi in the foreground while Zoey whizzed past behind them to show off the debated kick flip skills, caught sight of Rumi's bleeding knees at the top of the jump, yelled, landed the jump and zoomed off camera, and then came scrambling back to check Rumi was okay.

As if to make it up to her, after they'd packed up the equipment Zoey said, "Want to try doing a ramp drop?" and of course Rumi did. So Zoey took them to the smallest ramp and set the board up hanging over the edge, holding it up on her thigh, and told Rumi to step on.

"I'll hurt you," Rumi said at once. "All my weight will be on your leg."

"Nope!" Zoey chirped. "That's the whole point. You keep your weight on your back foot and only press down when you're ready to go. I'm just here to keep the board steady while you get used to it, so you know it's not going anywhere. But also I can stand a bit of weight on my leg, Rumi, you're not that heavy."

"Okay…" said Rumi, and stepped gingerly on.

"That's it. Feel how there's no pressure on your front foot? So all you're going to do is keep your weight there while I step away and then stomp down hard, okay? Try not to take your feet off the board. Okay, just lean in a bit, feel what the stomp will be like. Don't worry about me, I can take it."

Rumi leant forward and back, trying it out. "Okay," she said.

"Great! Now I'm gonna swap my thigh for my hands, okay? Just keep your weight back. Good. And now I'm gonna go to one hand, okay? Here, hold it for me. Great! Okay, no hands! Let me just step to the side… and stomp!"

Rumi stomped. She went shooting down the ramp, clearly having the time of her life and also clearly about to fall again. But Zoey had kept hold of her hand and as Rumi started to go Zoey pulled her off the board and stumblingly back onto her feet, and Rumi laughed and pounced and caught Zoey around the waist and hoisted her up, twirling her around and around.

"That was so fun!"

Zoey, pink again, could do nothing but join in the laughter, while Mira, who had got the whole thing on the handheld, smirked. Then Rumi saw her and grinned her stupid grin and still carrying Zoey, ran back up the ramp to catch Mira as well, and before Mira could yelp about watching the camera she was squashed into the hug. Then someone yelled at Zoey to go get her runaway board and they all had to let go.

"Do you want to try?" Rumi asked.

"No thanks," Mira vetoed. Rumi had the complete physical confidence of an athlete whose body had always managed to achieve what she'd asked of it, while Mira had the complete physical confidence of a dancer who knew exactly what her body was capable of and didn't ask it for more. After the week she'd had she didn't want to join Rumi in eating pavement. Nor did she want to rip her leggings up; Rumi's sweats were pretty much trashed after her nosedive.

Because they still had a couple of hours before Zoey's mom would come back, and because for once Rumi hadn't ordered food, they went down the block to get boba and snacks, and ate sitting at the top of the ramp, dangling their feet off the drop. Then Rumi wanted to go down it again, so they did that, and then it was time to leave.

"Can't believe the course is already half over," Zoey said, twisting around in her seat to talk to Mira and Rumi in the back. "We've done so much crazy stuff in barely any time at all!"

"Yeah," said Mira, realising the course was already half over, "crazy."

That night Mira wasted a precious text asking Rumi, knees ok?, and got back, (˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥)(ง'̀-'́)งദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧, which she guessed meant Rumi was alright. She wanted to ask what Celine had said about it, but couldn't quite make herself send the follow-up. She spent Sunday fretting a little, and went to reception stupid early on Monday morning to pretend she hadn't been waiting if Rumi arrived. But Rumi didn't show. Either she wasn't in today or Celine didn't bring her in the front entrance, so Mira waited around for Zoey instead.

"Did you get any sleep this time?"

Zoey gasped, mock-offended, and held out her laptop bag for Mira to take. "I did actually! I can't make a whole music video without checking in with you guys-"

"Can't you?"

"-so I've just synced up the dancing and rapping videos with the track and started to cut between them, and gone through the studio footage and the skate-park to pull out the best bits, and rendered a couple of rough drafts-"

"Of course you have." Mira rolled fond eyes. "Heard from Rumi?"

Zoey cocked her head. "Yeah? We were chatting last night. And hey, I don't know why you don't get on her case about sleeping, because she stays up just as late as me-"

"She must spend all her time here napping then because her eye bags are never as bad as yours." Mira made her glance down at Zoey's eye-bags obvious. "Though yours aren't too bad today…"

Zoey sniffed. "She probably does, actually, didn't she say she's always really bored when she comes here? Guess it makes sense she's up so late if she sleeps in the day."

"Yeah…" Mira slowed as they came up to Zoey's classroom door. Wanting to keep talking to Zoey, she cast about for a topic. "Hope her knees are okay."

Zoey's turn to roll her eyes. "Oh c'mon, she's fine, she walked it off like a champ, you're such a worrier."

"Rude."

They argued back and forth until Zoey's teacher stuck a terrified head out of the classroom to ask if Zoey was coming in. Zoey went in, and Mira went off to dance bad dances and wince at every spin, because today her hips were hurting. Lunchtime, and back to the garden, and Rumi was there, giving strong deja-vu with the takeout bag at her feet and how her face lit up when she saw them.

She tilted her chin up when Mira looked at the bag, stubborn. "'cause we're not dancing anymore," she said.

Mira snorted at her. "It's fine, princess. Anyway I'm hungry, what've you got?"

Rumi beamed and gave them fried chicken. Zoey took her laptop back and they settled around her, Mira on her left and Rumi on her right, to see the screen. Making a music video was interesting, but fiddly, and Mira found it kind of crazy how much Rumi and Zoey could deliberate about whether a clip should end at 01:34:08 or 01:34:10, and whether powerpoint-esque slide transitions were cool or not. Rumi won that one, but her favoured 01:34:10 had to compromise to 01:34:09, which she pouted about.

It also involved more waiting around than anything else they'd done, as Zoey's laptop had to whir furiously through the rendering, so they ended up laying around in the grass, trying to throw the shrimp crackers from Zoey's mom into each other's mouths. Rumi was the easiest target as she would lunge to catch them, so Mira and Zoey mostly focused on tossing her treats like she was a particularly snappy collie.

"How are your knees?" Mira asked. (Zoey went, "Wow," under her breath).

"Cool," Rumi said, chewing. "They might scar."

Zoey snapped up. "Oh noooooo, Rumi, I'm sorryyyyy… I should have brought extra knee pads or made you guys swap them… Your poor knees!"

"Worrier," said Mira.

Rumi laughed. "Not like, bad scar! Just a little bit. They're just at a really scabby stage so it's hard not to pick at them."

"You should keep them moisturised so they don't crack," Mira said at once. "And air them out." She looked disdainful but resigned at Rumi's usual grey sweats.

"Worrier," said Zoey.

Rumi caught another cracker. "It's fine, guys, I'm taking care of them. It's not the first time I've hit the ground." But she was kind of preening at their attention, that they cared, so they kept it up until the crackers were finished and the latest video processed.

"This is going to take longer than I thought," Mira said, as lunch came to an end with only two versions of the video done, and both with things they all wanted to change.

"Well I can work on it this evening," Zoey pointed out, "and make the changes we want, and we can see where we are tomorrow. But it's not like we've not got time?"

"Yeah, I guess," Mira said, thinking that there was only nine working days left in the course, and only half an hour in those days for lunch, so actually there was only four and a half hours left for them to be together.

It was the next day at lunch (four hours left) when Zoey, amusing herself while yet another draft rendered by watching spare footage, said, "Hey, Mira? Can you stand next to Rumi a second?"

Both of them looked at her, because she sounded serious.

"Sure?" Mira said, and stood up. Rumi rolled to her feet and came over, and they stood side by side, shoulders touching, fidgeting a little under Zoey's intense stare.

"Mira, can you look sideways? Don't tilt your head."

"Okay?" Mira looked sideways. In her peripheral she caught Rumi also looking sideways, looking just as confused as Mira was.

"What do you see?" Zoey demanded.

"The top of Rumi's head?"

"Exactly!" Zoey catapulted to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at Mira, who flinched, startled. "You're taller than Rumi!"

"Huh?"

"You're taller than Rumi! You're taller than me! You've grown like five inches since we met!!"

"Huh?" Mira turned to Rumi properly and, for the first time she noticed herself doing it, looked down at her.

"Huh!?" Mira yelped.

"How much is five inches?" Rumi asked.

Zoey ran some quick calculations. "Oh, like, twelve, thirteen centimetres?"

"Huh," said Rumi, "that's a lot." She looked (up!) at Mira a little doubtfully, like growing thirteen centimetres in two weeks might be contagious.

"No wonder your joints have been hurting, they've been like, stretched," Zoey said.

"Huh," Mira said again.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," said Mira. "Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I told you: late growth spurts."

"Okay there's late growth spurts and there's-" Zoey gestured up and down Mira "-this. This is crazy style, my guy."

Mira drew away. To cover her Rumi leant in and asked, "How did you even notice Zoey? I didn't see it at all."

"Oh, I was switching between the recording studio footage and the skate-park and like, it's really obvious. Mira's the same height as you in the studio which is already crazy because she was the same height as me when we all met and then at the skate-park she like, towers over both of us."

"Really? Let me see…"

Mira tried to get a clear look at her own limbs. Awkwardly, as awkwardly as she'd been moving for the past two weeks, she stretched out her arms, twisted her waist, pulled one leg then the other up to try to judge how much longer her shins were. She still ached, but the pain had diffused into a more general sense of discomfort, as though knowing what was causing it had taken some of its focus. She looked at the tree she'd been climbing the day she'd met Rumi. Then, she'd had to jump and grab a branch, and scrabble her feet against the trunk to get the height to scramble up. Now she could've reached up and touched the place she'd been perched when Rumi came into the garden with ease. She almost went and did it.

But Rumi had lost Zoey's focus, and Zoey said, "You sure you're alright?" and she sounded worried.

"Yeah," Mira said. "It's just… I hadn't noticed. Which feels weird? And I was just thinking-" I'm going to be taller than my mother, was what she'd been thinking, but what she said was, "-I'm going to need new school uniform."

Zoey pulled a face. "Yeesh. Yeah, that sucks. The worst part about puberty is the wardrobe changes. Well, one of the worst parts. Well, one of the more annoying parts. Well…"

Mira thought about her denim jacket, with the sleeves that didn't fit anymore. She thought about the rest of her collection of clothes, which she was ridiculously proud of and protected as well as she could, as it had taken years of careful curating and culling to keep herself looking how she wanted to look working with only an occasional clothing allowance and her parents' frequent 'gifts'. She thought about how none of it was going to fit her anymore. She thought about what her mother would say when Mira told her she needed new clothes, and then her phone alarm went off to signal the end of lunch.

"Aw shoot," said Zoey. "Okay, well, I'll get those edits done tonight and then we can see where we are tomorrow, how's that? I wonder if anyone else will notice Mira turning into a beanstalk? I don't think anyone else here has, it's kinda hard when you see someone pretty much everyday. But man, Mira! Your parents are going to be shocked when they see you again."

"Yeah," said Mira.

Rumi tried to catch Mira's eye and likely would have followed them to Zoey's class if Mira hadn't incredibly obviously avoided looking at her and power-walked away. Zoey had picked up on something, and changed the subject and talked about nothing but the game show she was watching with her mom, which Mira was grateful for. She needed to start coming up with a plan.

She'd gotten away with it so far because all her dance clothes were deliberately loose and easy to move in, so they'd simply stretched out into a closer fit as she'd grown, and most of her tops were cropped or over sized depending on what type of legging they were meant to pair with, so they hadn't ridden up at the waist to show they didn't fit anymore. Her shoes should be fine; her feet and hands had gotten larger last year, which was why she'd been pretty sure she had a little more height coming her way before she was done. She just hadn't expected…

At this rate she might end up taller than her brother.

She needed to lock in. School uniform wasn't a problem as her parents basically had no choice but to buy her a new one; the school wouldn't let her back in if she turned up with her ankles and wrists sticking out the edges of her clothes, and her parents weren't going to begrudge that cost to keep her out of their house during term-time. It was the rest of her wardrobe that was an issue. Mira's mother would leap at the chance to get Mira new clothes, complain about the expense though she would, but the clothes she would buy would not be clothes that Mira would wear. They'd been having these arguments since Mira was seven, so Mira didn't need to waste time imagining what her mother would say when Mira dumped the ripped up remains of her mother's choices on the living room floor and walked away without a word. But she did need to think about how she could possibly get her hands on any clothes she would want to wear.

The school was obligated to feed her breakfast and dinner; Mira could pull her usual trick and skip lunch to save up that allowance again, though after two weeks of eating lunch with Rumi and Zoey Mira's stomach rumbled at the idea. She did get spending money for term-time, if she cashed that out and stashed it so her parents thought she'd used it they should top the account up at the next quarter, and she'd get a decent amount from that if she budgeted well at school. But she'd have to hide it somewhere pretty good to avoid her dorm-mates noticing.

The main problem Mira was avoiding was that she was also going to need money to keep in contact with Rumi and Zoey.

There was no way on earth she was going to give them the number for her phone from her parents and expose them to all that would entail. There was also no way she was going to give them her school email address, because while her parents didn't monitor that the school sure did. So Mira was going to have to keep her flip-phone topped up if she wanted any chance at all of even occasionally hearing from them, and that was maybe just edging out clothing she actually liked as her top priority for her expenses.

If Zoey ended up back in the US Mira had no clue what she was going to do. One international text would likely lock her sim card out for a week. Maybe Rumi would pass Zoey's messages along. Though a lot of Mira and Zoey's texting involved them talking about weird things Rumi did. Maybe Rumi and Zoey would wait for Mira to get through a really frugal year so she could buy a better phone and then they could all talk properly. Maybe Rumi and Zoey would decide this was weird and too much work and stop talking to Mira all together, and all her problems would be solved.

The third week of HE's summer course passed with Mira alternating between desperate clinging to Rumi and Zoey in a bid to endear herself to them so they'd keep talking to her and stand-offish offence over her made up scenarios where they dropped her like a hot potato as soon as the course was over. Zoey dealt with this by giving Mira heavier and heavier bags to keep an eye on when they met in reception. Mira suspected Zoey was grabbing random objects from around her mom's flat to pad them out, but as Mira never looked she couldn't be sure. Rumi responded by wearing shorts, which were denim and slightly fitted and a great improvement on Zoey's continued cargo crimes, so that Mira could see the scabs on Rumi's knees and distract herself by fussing over them.

Saturday they went out again. Mira hadn't been sure they would as they didn't have anything else to source for the music video, which was now on draft seventeen and only waiting for Rumi's perfectionism and Zoey's self-criticism to die down to be declared finished, but Saturday morning found her waiting in the lobby with a pass, and after they'd wandered around Seoul for the morning they took the train to Zoey's mom's flat and lay around on her couch, technically comparing draft '17.2.mp4' and '17.4.mp4' but really throwing more chips at Rumi, until Zoey's mom burst in to say they were going to be late getting Mira back and they all had to sprint to Zoey's mom's car.

"Okay, I'm doing it tomorrow," Zoey said, twisted around to see Mira and Rumi in the back seat. "'17.35.mp4' is going live, I'm sick of it and want it gone from my life. Just joking, I think it rocks and kicks ass and is amazing but also I'm going to break my laptop in half if I have to render one more video."

"Okay," said Rumi, letting her game of Snake die so she could focus on Zoey. "Yeah, okay, agreed. Mira?"

"Go for it," said Mira, heart in her mouth. "On your channel?"

"Yeah," said Zoey. "I've been dropping hints and stuff so I think a few of my regulars at least are looking forward to it, and I asked the skate-park kids who helped out how they wanted to be credited, so the thank-you section is done... Ah this is both so cool and so scary! Why did I think I wanted a career in the music industry!"

"Because you're very good and you enjoy it," said Zoey's mom. Zoey burst into a rapid English tirade against her mother embarrassing her like this, which Rumi tried to follow with her head tilted to one side like that would help her understand. Mira sank down in her seat and looked out the window.

She wondered if she'd somehow just know when Zoey uploaded the video and the three of them were exposed to the fickle view of public opinion, but she didn't. She only found out in the evening of the next agonising day when Zoey text her.

k its up im trning off all my stuff now im goin undrgrnd i cant BEAR THS PART!!!!!! cu tmr at lunch xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

o also hrs the link no u cant rlly watch it but j so u have it

Mira looked at the link for a long time. Then she leant over the edge of her bed to interrupt her bunk-mate.

"Can I borrow your phone."

"Can I play Snake on yours?"

"Sure. Let me just find this video."

Mira copied the link out in the browser of her bunk-mate's phone. Zoey's channel was hosted on an American website, but Mira thought she could work out how to use it. She handed her phone down and settled back deep into the corner of her bunk.

"There's a new high score by the way," she said.

"Aw, what-"

Mira ignored her and pressed play.

The video opened with Zoey's voice, "Okay, we ready?", and faded in to the three of them, sat around about to play the acoustic demo. Mira started the beat on her drum, and then the video cut to the three of them in the skate-park, frozen in the tense lines of the starting position for the dance, and then the real beat kicked in and the song started and they burst into motion, and Mira had been right, it did grab your attention.

She'd seen this video probably too many times over the last week, but now she was looking at it trying to see what someone not saturated in the song would see. There were bits were she thought, not exactly that it didn't land, but that the landing was rough, but more and more she kept thinking, man, that kicks ass. It woke a weird excited fear in her, that it was so good, because what if no one else thought it was and the three of them just had weird taste, but also what if it was that good? What would happen next? They had a week left.

The video hit Mira's favourite bit and she put her attention back on it; they'd gotten around Rumi's high note by pairing it with the footage of Rumi learning to skateboard, and as her voice built up in the background in the video she started to skate across the frame by herself, tripped, fell with arms flailing, and just as her voice hit the top and right before she hit the ground the video cut to her on the floor, Mira taking care of her bleeding knees, and as Rumi's voice crooned, "We're gonna get there…" Zoey kick-flipped across in the background. Rumi had pouted about it for pretty much all of a lunch-break, but for once Mira and Zoey had managed to stay strong in the face of her charisma and the joke stayed.

Mira's beat faded back down to the single drum, and then Rumi's guitar, riffing on the tune, and then Mira started laughing and the video cut back to them all in the recording studio, sat around to play the demo, and as Mira fell back to giggle Rumi and Zoey started to laugh too, and then the video ended.

Mira put the phone down as Zoey's credits came on. She resisted the urge to look at the views or if there were any comments, and instead worked out how to delete the browsing history.

"Hey, you done?" asked her bunk-mate. "This high score is stupid, who even got it? What was that you were listening to? It sounded pretty good."

"Video my friend sent me," Mira said, dropping the phone down and taking her own back.

"Oh, one of those girls you have lunch with?"

"Yeah," said Mira, and turned her light out and rolled over in her narrow uncomfortable bunk to get what sleep she could.

On Monday morning her dance workshop was interrupted by someone coming in and telling her to go up to an office on the third floor.

Someone's assistant had come in and caught the teacher's attention, and while everyone else took the chance to catch a breather Mira had kept trying the tricky transition between third and forth poses. The teacher had called, "Mira?" like he didn't know which of them that was, and when Mira had turned to glare at him he'd winced.

"Yeah?"

"You have a meeting upstairs, in Office 3d," said the assistant. Mira had transferred the glare to them, but they were made of sterner stuff than the teacher. "Now," they'd said, so Mira had gone.

The assistant took her upstairs to the hallway with all the offices, pointed down it and said, "3d," again, and left her. Mira walked down the hallway. What else was she meant to do? She wasn't even scared or dreading it or imagining what was going to happen, if maybe one of her parents would be there, because she had just gone sort of numb. She made it three doors along the corridor before she saw that none of the offices were labelled. Would it be worse to burst into the wrong or the right one? Mira, uncaring, found the closest one with lights on and went in.

And Rumi was lying upside down on a couch in the reception room, feet kicked up over the back and head dangling off the edge, her spine twisted horribly around so she could lay her arms along the couch cushions and not have to hold up the battered old Gameboy she was playing. The held breath left Mira in a whoosh that nearly broke into something less dignified, and blood rushed back to her head and spotted her vision.

"Dude, your back," she croaked.

"Mira!" said Rumi, throwing the Gameboy aside and rolling herself over her own head off the couch to land like a coiled cat on the floor. She sprang up and at Mira, grinning and grinning and grinning, and grabbed at Mira's cuff, shaking her arm in joyful greeting.

"What are you doing here? Don't you have classes now? Did you come to see me? Come meet my pikachu!"

"Sure," said Mira, instantly writing off the meeting. "What's it called?" She was pretty sure you could call a pikachu things.

Rumi beamed. "Dandelion!"

"Cute."

Rumi threw herself back on the couch and Mira leant over her to see the screen. She laid an arm along the back to keep her balance, so when Rumi tipped her head back to look up at Mira she nestled into Mira's shoulder, snuggled up under her jaw.

"Look, she follows me around, and I can check on her- oh, she's mad! What's the matter baby?" Rumi crooned over her little pixel mouse, and Mira smiled, but she'd noticed something.

"Rumi, are your eyebrows purple?"

"Yeah?" said Rumi. "Look, Dandelion's about to murder a pidgey."

Mira watched Dandelion murder a pidgey. "Cool," she said, pushing her ridiculous resentment that even Rumi's eyebrows were purple down as far as she physically could and making her stomach hurt. "Can she murder anything else?"

"Not too much, we're still in early game. Here's a metapod though."

Before Rumi could set Dandelion on the metapod the inner door opened and Celine stepped through it.

"Rumi, have you seen-" She stopped short. Mira had already leapt up and backed away to the door, but she could see Celine blinking as she processed the glimpse she'd gotten of Mira and Rumi, cuddled up on the couch. "Oh," Celine said.

"Hey Celine," said Rumi, not bothering to look up.

"Yes," said Celine. "Are you Mira? I'm Celine. I'm so sorry Rumi grabbed you, don't mind her. Do you want to come through…?"

"You wanted to see me?" Mira said. She couldn't take her eyes from Celine's face, so she saw the frown settle on it plain and clear as Celine disapproved of Mira's tone.

"Yes, if you don't mind?" A raised eyebrow, that said Celine would be interested to hear about it if Mira did mind. Mira couldn't even bristle, too busy feeling the blood drain back out of her head.

Something thumped against her chest. Mira looked down to see the purple top of Rumi's head.

"What do you want with Mira?" said Rumi.

She was standing between Mira and Celine, arms crossed, her back pressed up against Mira's front. Mira could tell from her voice the expression that would be on her face; that blank unblinking stare that pinned you in place. Celine was made of sterner stuff than Mira or Zoey who would have folded immediately; she stared back, head a little tilted, and a weird thrill went up Mira's spine, because Rumi did that too.

"To talk to her," Celine said, suddenly deciding to find the situation amusing and smiling. "It won't take long. Don't you want to go back to playing with your peek-a-ma-chu?"

"I know you know what Pokemon is," Rumi said. "What do you want to talk to Mira about."

"What do you think?" Celine's smile dropped. Mira couldn't tell if she was gearing up to get properly mad or if she was still stalling out in confusion. Blocked from Celine's sight by Rumi's body, Mira curled a finger into the back of Rumi's hoodie. Rumi shifted her weight back to tuck them tighter together.

Celine must have thought that movement was Rumi backing down. "Come in please, Mira," she said, turning away and gesturing at the inner door. When Rumi didn't budge Mira didn't either, and Celine turned back to stare. The confusion had now clearly won out over every other emotion.

"Rumi, what's the matter?"

"I want to know why you want to talk to Mira."

"Why do you care?"

Mira flinched, and Celine locked on to her immediately. With another sick shiver Mira recognised Rumi's hunting focus on Celine's face, like Mira was a cracker about to be thrown for Celine to catch.

"I found her first," said Rumi.

Celine's attention snapped back to Rumi so fast her neck must have popped. "What are you talking about? Both of you get in here, now." She stalked back into the office, one hand going up to rub between her eyebrows, and out of sight.

Mira said, "Dude."

Rumi said, "Hmm." She swayed back and forth a little, thinking, and then followed Celine, pulled back by Mira's clutch on her hoodie until Mira started to move. They shuffled into the office together, Mira staying close so Celine couldn't see she was still holding onto Rumi's clothes, which just meant Celine could see how close Mira stayed.

Celine took the seat behind the desk, and pointed to the chair pulled up in front of it. "There's another chair over there, Rumi. Please sit down."

Mira did not want to sit down. She tugged, and Rumi took them to stand in front of the desk instead.

Celine rolled her eyes. "Fine." She steepled her fingers in front of her face. "I'm going to be honest here girls, I'm a little confused."

Rumi said, "Hmm," again, and recrossed her arms. Mira stayed silent.

"Mira, you've obviously met Rumi already," Celine said.

Rumi raised her chin just a fraction, you can answer that, so Mira said, "Yeah."

A pause, so Celine could make it obvious that she was waiting for Mira to say more and that Mira was not going to. Mira was second guessing standing; Celine sitting at the desk and them standing in front of it was too much like being reprimanded at school. She clenched her jaw, stubborn, and stood firm. Finally Celine said, "Wonderful. I take it this is who you've been sneaking off to have lunch with, Rumi?"

Rumi said, "Hmm," again.

"And I'm guessing, Mira, that no one told you what our meeting was about?"

"No," said Mira.

Celine softened for some reason, and laid her hands down on the desk. "I'm sorry, it's nothing bad. Or, at least, I hope you won't think so. I don't know if Rumi has told you anything about my role here this summer; I'm working as a consultant trainer for some of Highest Entertainment's soon-to-debut acts. But that's my side-gig, as I actually run a small entertainment company myself. At the moment it's mostly performers who have a strong core following but don't pull the numbers for a larger company to want to take them on."

Mira had an idea of where this was going.

"I haven't had as much time to check in with you summer students as I'd like," Celine went on, "but what I have seen I've been impressed by. Especially in the dance studios."

She stopped there to see if that bait would crack Mira and Rumi apart. Mira let go of her hold on Rumi's hoodie so she could cross her arms and tilt her chin up like Rumi had, staying stubbornly silent.

"I really think you've got something very special with your dancing ability, Mira, and I wanted to ask you about your plans for after you're nineteen. Of course, you might be going into further education, but I wanted to offer you a chance to pursue a career in the industry. Sunshine Records would love to have a dancer of your calibre on board, and just from the brief glimpses I've seen your teaching abilities are more than up to-"

"You want me to teach your trainees to dance?" Mira said.

"I wanted to ask your opinion on teaching my trainees to dance," Celine corrected, trying to be gentle. "I've got your HE application here, Mira, and dance was the only area you indicated an interest in. If you were looking for something more in the spotlight than instructor you'd really need to start working on those other areas as soon as possible and it doesn't seem like you have the time or interest. And anyway, I don't know if you know what the teachers here have put down about your performances-"

"They said I need to smile more," said Mira, definitely not smiling now.

Rumi said, "Mira smiles all the time." Mira blinked down at her.

"Okay," said Celine. "Well, Mira, if trying for a idol career is something you're interested in then we could certainly look into getting you that training if you sign on when you're nineteen-"

"That's too late to start," Mira said.

Celine looked at her.

"Are you planning on your career being over by the time you're twenty-four?"

"No."

"Then it's not too late to start. I take it that is something you're interested in? I can work with that. Once you're done with school-"

"She's not going back to school," said Rumi.

Mira's hands flew to grab onto Rumi's shoulders without her telling them to. She dug her fingers in hard and for a moment wanted desperately to still be shorter than Rumi, because she wanted to shove her face away out of sight against Rumi's spine, protected and hidden by Rumi's strong back.

"Isn't she?" said Celine. She sounded like she'd committed to being amused now, but Mira thought it was costing her effort. She kept glancing down from Mira's face to look at Rumi, trying to read Rumi's still-flat expression, and she was failing, because every time the little frown would pinch again between her brows before she smoothed it away to return to Mira. "Well, depending on where you end up, Mira, I'm sure we can arrange some sort of weekend classes for you to start you catching up, if your parents agree-"

"She's not going to do that," said Rumi. "She doesn't need to."

"Okay," said Celine. "Excuse me Mira. Rumi, will you please calm down? I'm not going to attack her. What on earth have you been telling her about me?"

"Rumi hasn't mentioned you at all," snapped Mira, wanting to keep Celine's attention on her and away from Rumi. But Rumi tapped her head back to bounce off Mira's shoulder, so Mira subsided, and settled for glaring.

"Well?" said Celine

"I'm just thinking," said Rumi, "about whether or not to tell you yet."

"Tell me what?"

"Hmm," said Rumi. Over her head Celine looked at Mira with a sort of lost expression that made Mira uncomfortable, like Celine was asking Mira for help. Mira fixed her own gaze firmly on the beginning of Rumi's braid. If Rumi hadn't told Celine anything then Mira certainly wasn't going to tattle.

Rumi pulled her phone out her pocket and unlocked it. Mira caught half a glimpse of Zoey's channel, open on their video, before she ripped her eyes away as Rumi started to scroll through the comment section.

"Yeah, okay," said Rumi. "I don't think there's anything you can do about it now."

"About what? Rumi-"

Rumi handed Celine the phone.

Celine, after a moment to raise her eyebrows, played the video.

This time the blue ripples started immediately, radiating out from Rumi's phone and spreading to fill the whole office, susurrating up the walls, over the ceiling, bouncing off themselves and turning iridescent to Mira's eyes from the sheer density of them. Rumi ignored them, apart from a little puffing up of her chest when they appeared, but Celine darted her head desperately around to catch better sight of them, anger, amusement, and confusion giving way in her face to leave nothing but shock, only to have her attention forced back to the phone as Zoey started to rap.

I'm outta here!

For the first time Mira listened to their song with no voice in the back of her head telling her it couldn't be as good as she thought. She knew it was as good as she thought because Celine from the Sunlight Sisters thought it was that good too. Mira could see it in her face, in the way she couldn't look away, except when Rumi hit her high note and Celine saw her hit the deck in the recording. Then Celine glanced up to try to look at Rumi's knees, expression saying 'oh that explains that', before Rumi's croon dragged her back to watching.

The only thing that made Mira twitch was Celine watching the ending, when Mira's giggling brought the song back to the acoustics, because Celine's focus snapped to her at once, Celine's face disbelieving like she hadn't thought Mira could do that. Mira scowled at her, the worst she could, and for some reason that made Celine laugh.

It was kind of a desperate, hysterical laugh; Celine dropped the phone and put her head in her hands and choked into them until she got herself under control. Then she said, in English, "Rumi, what the fuck."

Mira hauled Rumi behind her and bulled forward. "Don't talk to her like that-"

"Mira," Rumi soothed, "it's okay."

"No-"

"It's okay, it's okay." Rumi's turn to grab onto Mira from behind, pulling her away from Celine. Mira resisted, so Rumi only got them turned halfway around, Mira wrestling back to keep snarling at Celine, Rumi with her arms wrapped around Mira's waist. "She's right, it is a 'what the fuck' situation." Rumi sounded smug.

"That's not-"

She was cut off by Celine raising a hand. "No, I apologise. I didn't know you'd understand that but also I shouldn't have said it. This is just… a lot."

Mira, upset by Celine's concession, backed away, making sure Rumi came with her. "What's the big deal?" she said. "We just made a song together. You know, the whole point of us being here."

"Mm, yes," said Celine. "Have you looked at this video since it went up?"

"Yes," said Rumi.

"No," said Mira.

"Maybe you should," said Celine, and held out Rumi's phone. Mira watched her narrow-eyed for a second, before inching forward and stretching out to take it from as far away as possible, like it might bite. She retreated back to Rumi and braced herself to look.

The comments first, some of which made her ears go hot.

(twirls my hair around my finger) omg hiii miss pink hair….hiiiiiii miss pink hair hiii

only 3zs would go to korea for a month and somehow find and pick up the two most talented singer/dancers ive ever seen

isnt that the purple kid from the sunlight sisters???

3zs pls bless us ur followers w even 1/10 of ur game….

But the vast majority were simply praise for the song, asking for a download link, where to buy it, or begging for a translation of the Korean. Mira scrolled quickly up to the description: ThreeZZZz-I'm Outta Here! (Official Music Video), and started to read Zoey's snappy blurb, before her eyes were caught and captured by the video stats.

"…that's a lot of views," she said.

"Indeed," said Celine.

Mira ignored her and asked Rumi, "Did Zoey's channel have that many followers before she put the video up?"

"Nope!" said Rumi.

"Oh," said Mira. "What the fuck."

Rumi cackled, and Celine put her head back in her hands.

"She's not even going to have seen this," Mira said. "She doesn't check her videos for a few days after she puts them up, it freaks her out. Rumi, we gotta go warn her."

"Sure," Rumi said, softening. She'd taken hold of Mira's sleeve again and was happily swinging their arms back and forth. "It's nearly lunch right? We'll go together to pick her up."

"No, Rumi," said Celine. "You'll get back over here and explain."

"Mira and Zoey and me made a song," Rumi said. "And Zoey has a music channel already so she asked if she could upload it there so we made a video."

"When did this happen?"

"We started on… the first Wednesday?" Rumi checked in with Mira. "Right?"

"Yeah."

"Since the first week?" said Celine. "This has been going since the first week? And you didn't say anything?"

"Why would I?" said Rumi. "What's it got to do with you?"

This time Celine went still not in a hunting-crouch way, but in a taken-a-deadly-blow way. She flinched back, and it was Rumi who pressed forward, slinking back to loom over the desk.

"Rumi, that's not… You know… you know I was working on it-"

"You know I wanted to work on it too," said Rumi.

Mira eased herself soundlessly back to press against the wall.

"Yes, I know. I'm sorry. I didn't think-"

"I know you didn't."

Celine's hands darted across the desk, searching for something to do. They found the keyboard, and Celine wrenched away from Rumi's golden-brown stare to tap into the HE database.

"Who's this other girl?" she asked. "Zoey? Is she in the summer program as well?" Celine looked at Mira for an answer, and seeing her hiding in the corner Celine stopped letting Rumi pressure her and instead frowned and said, "Mira?"

Rumi's focus popped like a soap bubble and at once she bounded across the room to Mira's side.

"It's okay! Sorry, was that awkward? Don't worry about it. Yeah, Zoey's in the program too! She's a day student though, she's not boarding."

"A day student?" Celine clicked through what must be a list of summer program attendees. "HE doesn't really do day students- Rumi, do you mean the Zoey fast-tracked into all the song writing classes who HE is hoping to exploit for lyrics?"

"They're hoping what?" snarled Mira, overcoming her shutdown and storming towards Celine's computer.

"No, Mira, you can't look, it's confidential information- Girls!" Celine had to turn the screen off before Mira and Rumi could make it around the desk. "But yes, HE doesn't do day students, but they were, hmm, intrigued by the material Zoey's parents submitted when they applied for her to be in the course. I was specifically told to not interact with her, so I was planning on reaching out once the course is over and I'm out of contract."

"Sick," said Mira, surprised.

"But her channel's on an American site and her material's in English. Is she not a Korean citizen? Rumi, had you thought about that?"

"Her dad works in America," Rumi said. "So Zoey goes to school there, because her parents think it'll be easier for her to get into an American college with a student visa if she's already in the country. But her mom's here in Seoul."

"And she doesn't want to go to American college," Mira said.

"Yeah."

The little frown was back between Celine's pained eyebrows. "Okay, that could be… better," she said. "But it might be… workable… It depends how reasonable her parents are."

"Her mom would go for it," Rumi mused. "She wants Zoey to go to college but I think she knows Zoey doesn't, and she was really helpful when we were making the video, she knows it means a lot to Zoey."

"Was she?" muttered Celine. Mira had to look away from her face until Celine got it back under control.

"Yeah, she's really nice. Right Mira?"

Mira jumped, caught off guard. "Uh, yeah? Yeah."

"Okay that's great," said Celine, flat. "What about you Mira? How likely are your parents to be reasonable and supportive of you leaving school at sixteen and joining a K-Pop band?"

Celine was now being mean and sarcastic, so Mira relaxed.

"Would I stay in their house?" she asked.

"No."

"And do they have to pay any money?"

"No. You'd actually be paid a small salary."

"Then they'd be cool with it."

Celine blinked. "Really?"

"Yeah." Mira braced herself, and extended an offer of peace. "Anyway, my mother's a big fan of yours."

For the first time Mira saw Celine actually smile. Not a practised idol's expression or a guardian's thin-wearing patience, but a natural delighted smile. Suddenly Mira remembered which Sunlight Sister Celine was on the cover of her mother's record; the one on the left, tallest, nestled up close and caring over her band-mates, her forehead just touched by the closest one's hair. Rumi's mother, Mira realised. Mira went itchy, and looked away to rub the feeling out of her arms.

"That's wonderful," Celine said. "I wasn't warned away from you, Mira, so if you're alright with me contacting your parents-"

Before Mira could blanch Rumi pounced, throwing herself into Celine's lap.

"You mean it? You'll do it? You promise?"

Celine laughed, holding Rumi at bay. "Well, you haven't left me much choice! Yes, Rumi, I promise. I will try my absolute and upmost best. I just hope no one at HE comes across that video in the next four days."

Rumi grabbed Celine's hands and held them out of the way so she could swoop in and rub her head all against the side of Celine's, squeaking like a happy kitten. Celine spluttered, protested, tried to drag Rumi off, but Mira could see how gently she handled Rumi, her fingers rubbing circles in their grip on Rumi's shoulders. Before Mira could back away into the corner again Rumi had leapt up and catapulted herself at Mira, and Mira caught her automatically, and the next thing she knew Rumi had wrapped an arm around Mira's neck and hauled her down and was shoving their heads together, scrubbing her temple so hard against Mira's hair she could hear it filling with static.

"Ow, Rumi, why are you like this- Rumi, ow, here, do this instead-"

Mira got Rumi around the waist and pulled her up onto her tiptoes into a hug that didn't strain Mira's back. Rumi seemed to need pressure or movement with her affection, so Mira squeezed her, and Rumi's breath punched out in a little, "Oof!" against Mira's neck. She wriggled with joy in Mira's arms, humming so loud Mira saw little prickles of blue again, sparking all around the room.

Rumi clawed free and darted to the door, vibrating with eagerness.

"Let's go tell Zoey!" she said.

Mira rubbed the side of her sore head, trying to smooth her hair back down. She would have felt more embarrassed about it, except that Celine's hair looked even worse.

"Discreetly, please, Rumi," Celine begged, fixing her hair in the black mirror of her monitor. Then, as Rumi made for the door, she said, "Rumi? It's a great song. Well done," and the pride in her voice was actually enough to make Rumi shy, and duck her head and wriggle.

"You think so?"

"Don't fish," said Celine at once. "You know you've done a good job. Don't make me change my mind."

Rumi openly stuck her tongue out at Celine, and even Mira saw that Celine was joking. Celine was joking because she was not going to change her mind; it was going to happen. Celine was going to make it happen. Mira and Rumi and Zoey were going to be signed with Celine's company. They were going to be in a band, and they were going to be together.

Rumi bounced in place and held out her hand to Mira. "Yeah, whatever. Mira, let's go tell Zoey!"

"Alright, princess," Mira said, dazed, coming over and taking Rumi's hand. She smiled into Rumi's blown-out big brown eyes, let her own flick down to catch again on Rumi's grin-bared canines, and pulled Rumi out the door. "Let's go get our girl."