Work Text:
Full stop, writer's block is the worst.
Two years since their debut, they have only encountered it a handful of times, usually resolved after a few days of trial and error. For the times where said trial and error didn’t work, Zoey had a contingency plan in the form of a pocket sized, coffee-stained notebook: 127 Ways to Break Through Writers Block and Make a Song that Serves Hunt!
They’ve never had to go past solution #30. For the last week, they’ve been on #127, and that one said to simply walk away and come back after said week.
Well, they came back, and still no ideas flowed. As meticulous as Celine was about getting them ready for their dual responsibilities of Hunter and Idol, lyricism wasn’t something that could be taught other than pointers on structures and themes— the rest had to come from mind and mood. Usually, at least one of them could pick up the slack and bang out a song before too long.
This time, they were all equally as uninspired, with one song to go on an album of 13 due in a week. Less helpful was how busy their schedule had been in the preceding time— even today was blocked out for a series of interviews that they had contractual obligations to. That in itself ate up songwriting days even if they were inspired, because who wants to sit down and talk about songs after doing so all day?
(The answer was Rumi, but Mira and Zoey outnumbered her.)
They arrived at the broadcasting station early in the morning, having taken the earliest slot they could. This was one of the few studios they worked with that interviewed Idol groups in blocks, so it was no surprise when they had gone inside and saw almost the entire lineup of last year's Idol awards already moving around and mingling. They drew attention, positive and negative– they had won two years in a row, afterall– but aside from returning scattered greetings here and there they headed straight for the stages.
They did one interview as a group, and then were segregated to separate stages so they could film individual interviews at the same time. None of it was live, thankfully, and they weren’t meant to be published until receiving approval, but Rumi still felt her nerves spike as she sat in her chair and answered pointed questions alone. Moreso when she saw her girls get up from their own chairs a ways away and head backstage, finishing faster than her. No surprise; the leader always gets the most questions. Rumi resisted the urge to grumble as the interviewer tabbed to another page on his tablet.
Far too many minutes later, she was thanked for her time and permitted escape. Rumi wasted no time rushing to the backstage, passing by another Idol group, loud and excitable as they discussed whether or not they officially made it now that they were sharing a room with HUNTR/X. It brought a small smile to her face as she ducked through curtains. It didn’t take long to spot Mira, pink hair standing out among white walls and overwhelmingly black and brown-haired idols; Rumi headed her way.
Beside Mira was Zoey and they both seemed deep into a conversation with another Idol group-- RAMPANT, if she recalled correctly– though a tall woman with a high ponytail seemed to be doing most of the talking. Rumi staggered her steps to give her time to think of her name, because she’s fairly certain they met before. Wasn’t she a friend of Zoey’s? Nami, was it?
“-So how do you break through it, then?”
“Well we, you know-“ Nami– maybe Nami– let out a giggle, putting her index and middle finger to her lips and pulling it away as though she were taking a drag from a cigarette. Rumi tilted her head. Cigarettes? What are they-?
“Ooooh!” Zoey slapped her temple, “you’re talking about-!”
Mira pressed a hand over her mouth, hissing “Keep your voice down!”
Apparently, they both knew what Nami was referring to. Great, she’s in the dark. Rumi tugged at her sleeve as she joined Mira and Zoey at their sides, halving a smile their way when they both glanced at her.
“Yes, that,” Nami said, a lazy grin drawing across her face. Behind her, her groupmates nodded eagerly, “We double our streams on all the songs we write using it.”
“Does it work that well?!”
“That well.”
“What are we talking about?” Rumi finally asked.
Zoey grabbed her bicep and shook her a little, “Drugs, Rumi, obviously!”
Oh. Now the secrecy made more sense. Getting caught with any substance was career suicide for an idol. Why were they even talking about this? Her interest was piqued.
“Drugs like-?” Rumi trailed off, lowering her voice.
“Cannabis, keep up,” Mira said, then to Nami: “Where do you get it from?”
“Oh, Seong knows people from his ‘bad boy’ days. Why? Wanna try it?” Another broad grin.
“Why are we trying drugs?” Rumi asked, almost letting a sigh mingle with the words. She wasn’t annoyed at them for discussing it without her, only annoyed that her interview had taken long enough for her to miss the context.
“Zoey asked us how we deal with our writer’s block,” Nami said, her prior grin falling into a dangerous smirk. She shifted her weight to cock a hip out, stuffing her hands into her puffy pink jacket, “I gave her our foolproof solution.”
“Foolproof?”
“Works every time!” One of her groupmates chimed in. Bright-eyed and round-faced, maybe their maknae. “Nothing but bangers when you are on the stuff!”
“Seong can get you some, Zoey,” Nami continued, looking at their own maknae, “Remember where we used to get boba? Just let us know and we can bring it,” She finished with a wink.
At that, the three glanced at each other. Zoey looked like she was ready to say yes, Mira was unreadable, and Rumi-
Well, Rumi was curious. And the deadline was in a week.
“If we get found out-“ Rumi started halfheartedly.
“We get Bobby to take care of it,” Mira pumped her fist and grinned wickedly. It might be the final straw that would get him to quit, but Rumi had no doubt that Bobby would find a way to sweep a drug scandal under the rug. He was just that guy.
“That didn’t sound like a no, Rums!” The excitement was plain in Zoey’s voice and Rumi couldn’t help but smile.
“Well, everything else we’ve tried hasn’t worked so far, so I guess I’m open to the suggestion,” She said, still teasing by not quite saying the ‘yes’, but the answer was there all the same. The thought of trying it did make her nervous, but she’d have her girls with her for the ride and she’s read enough social media tweet confessionals to know this was one of the more safe drugs to try. Besides, she couldn’t recall a time where Celine told them to stay away from it specifically.
So really, how bad could it be?
Two days later, they were all in the studio, casually dressed in hoodies and pajamas, an array of notebooks set out on the table in front of the couch and a brightly colored package marred with at least 3 warning signs sitting next to them, spaced away like it would contaminate anything it touched. The conversation had been light before, discussing, again, for the hundredth time, what they wanted the song to be about, when Zoey had reached into the pocket of her oversized hoodie and set said package on the table with an excited smile.
“Check it!”
Mira and Rumi leaned in to read the labeling, Rumi almost sliding off the beanbag until she steadied herself with her feet. On the corner listed a number: 10 milligrams. Weight of the gummies? Rumi had done a little research the night before, enough to know what effects to expect and the general duration, but she didn’t delve too much into it. Purposefully, because the more she knew the easier she would be able to talk herself out of it and this was an experience she would like to share with her girls.
The energy in the room shifted to something more nervous. They all stared at the package like it was about to flash patterns and bite them.
“Well… who’s first?” Rumi said after the silence had stretched for too long.
“Oh, Nami said it will take a while to kick in, like, several hours, so it doesn’t really mat-“
“Several hours? Like a two several or a three several?” Rumi had read it was instant, or at least had a five minute buffer.
“Um, I don’t know!” Zoey grabbed the package and turned it over to read the labeling, “She just warned me since it’s our first time.”
“Second,” Mira interjected.
“One: you smoked it, which is different. Two: you said it made you throw up and sleep for 16 hours, so does it really count?”
Mira stuck her tongue out at Zoey, which she reciprocated.
“That outcome doesn’t sound productive,” Rumi muttered.
Mira rolled her eyes, “Okay, workaholic, either we take this and write an amazing song or you finally sleep for longer than four hours. Sounds like a win-win to me.”
Now it was Rumi’s turn to stick her tongue out at her.
“I can’t wait anymore!” Zoey wrestled the packaging, grunting as she tried to undo the zipper seal, “Why’s it?! Oh-“
It popped open on a different side than expected. Child-proof seal. Makes sense. Zoey shook three pale-looking gummies into her hand and presented them like she was showing off flawless diamonds, her smile wide and wicked.
“Nami said to take one because they are strong.” Zoey dispersed the gummies, popping her own in her mouth and chewing quickly, “Took it! Now you two can’t let me do it alone!”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Mira said. She threw hers back as well.
Rumi stared at the gummy in hand, a small frown pulling at her lips. This was fine, this didn’t take agency away from her like alcohol did. As far as she could understand, there was no risk of her oversharing or feeling the need to shed layers. This was fine. This was something fun to do with her girls.
Don’t overthink it.
She popped it into her mouth. It was… chewier than expected, and the flavor had a bitter note to it that she couldn’t quite place. Grimacing at the taste, Rumi plucked the packet from the table and scrutinized it, “This doesn’t taste like wildberry.”
“It’s kinda… espresso-y?” Zoey rolled her tongue around her cheeks, “really sticky.”
“Gross,” Mira added, “It’s okay, we can call it what it is.”
“Well, point of no return now!” Zoey kicked her legs up on the table, fishing her phone from her pocket, “So we can watch my playlist while we wait.”
Rumi’s skin prickled. Point of no return.
Time passed slowly. There had been a flow of conversation after they made it through Zoey’s playlist: latest movies, aquatic animals, fashion trends, but soon they all found themselves in their phones instead. Rumi went through her socials, scrolling through her mentions and liking some of the content that pertained to HUNTR/X. Her head felt… odd, but otherwise nothing was amiss. Occasionally she’d look up to see if the other two had been affected, but they were lost in their phones as well.
Eventually, she could no longer ignore the itch of productivity and stuffed the device into her pocket, “So, songs.”
“Blank,” Mira said, not looking up, “Blank as ever.”
“Uhm… about sharks? Metaphoric sharks. Like we are the sharks and other people are in our tank?”
Great idea if they hadn’t done it already. When Rumi had stated as such Zoey only shrugged and went back to her phone too, leaving Rumi to close her eyes and stew in her thoughts instead. Several minutes passed, her own brain betraying her when it came to doing any sort of conceptualization. Maybe she needed a change of scenery. Drumming her fingers on her thigh, Rumi moved to stand.
Woah.
Her legs wobbled. Little by little she lowered herself back down, scrunching her face. That was…odd. It felt like she floated up. Rumi waited for a moment, wondering if she was lightheaded from standing too fast, then tried again.
It was like someone had flipped a switch.
Her head felt too light. Rumi was there, present, but spaced at the same time, each thought drifting sluggishly through her brain as her surroundings seemed that much less real.
Rumi laid back on the beanbag, staring at the ceiling. Her mouth was so, so dry.
“I think… I think I feel it now.”
Neither of her girls responded. Rumi tried to look at them, but her head remained firm on the beanbag, too heavy to lift. It felt like the seat was swallowing her body, every attempt to lift a finger or limb met with an even more earnest attempt at keeping her stuck. Rumi grunted softly, managing to lull her head onto one shoulder. Zoey, sitting uncharacteristically straight, had her hands folded in her lap, boring holes into the carpet with blank eyes. Beside her Mira was similarly sunk into the couch, staring at the ceiling with an odd grin on her face.
“You guys feel it too, right?”
Mira giggled.
Zoey looked up at her, blinking slowly, “Hm?”
“Do you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“The…” Rumi waved a hand in the air. Tried to, at least. Her fingers only twitched, “What we just— the thing.”
“The-?”
“Gummies!” Rumi exclaimed, finally finding the word somewhere in the sloshing in her head.
“Oh, yeah!” Zoey broke out into a grin, “I’m having conversations in my head.”
“In your head?”
“Like telepathy!”
Mira giggled again, this time drawing both of their attention. She had a hand to her mouth, face tinted red, tears at the corners of her eyes.
“What’s so funny?” Rumi asked
“Remember when Zoey curbstomped that one fan?”
“Oh my god!” Zoey’s face lost its color, her previous tranquility broken. She hid her head in her hands and shrunk in on herself, “It was an accident!”
Rumi started giggling too, remembering the look of horror and guilt on the maknae’s face. The fan had breached the security line and climbed the stage, right as Zoey was bringing her heel down in a choreographed move. At the very least, the stomp didn’t land hard, but it did leave the fan looking dazed as the security dragged her away not a second after.
Mira wiped tears from her eyes, “I had to run off stage, I couldn’t stop-“
“Mira, it wasn’t funny, I hurt her!”
“You didn’t hurt her, which is why it was funny-“
Zoey whined, still hiding her face in her hands.
Rumi found the strength to shrug, “It was scary when it happened… but the edits-“
Her and Mira both snorted, a new round of laughter filling the studio.
“Remember that Mortal Kombat one?” Rumi said
“Or when someone drew her as Chun-Li?”
“Hah!”
“Guys!” Zoey’s voice had become distressed, “That memory haunts me at night!”
“Zoey, she came up to you after at the meet and greet and thanked you.”
Still abashed, Zoey moved towards one of her many notebooks, shuffling them around until she pulled out one that looked brand new, save for yet another coffee stain on the corner and a giant leaf she had drawn in the center.
“Thought I’d make a new one for this, in case it becomes a thing,” Zoey mumbled flatly, opening to the first page.
Rumi found the strength to sit up then, feeling the beads shifting beneath her back. She could feel everything touching her to an uncomfortable degree; rough fabric of the beanbag, softness of her hoodie, the itch of the baby hairs on her neck. Her face… she could feel her face… the nerves behind her eyes…
“So, so far we have six romantic tracks, three disstracks, two songs about money, and one song about ramyeon. So, maybe the next theme can be… another ramyeon song?”
“We’ve tried working that one already,” Rumi said, rubbing her eyes. They felt swollen.
“Social commentary?” Mira suggested, “Fighting the system?”
“Bobby just got us out of hot water with the last one we wrote, let’s give him a break,” Rumi waved it off, chewing on her lip in thought, “How about… how about a...a song about…”
“Sure, shoot down our ideas and have none of your own,” Mira snorted. Her arms were in the air; she was alternating between letting them drop and raising them back up again.
Rumi shushed her, “I’m thinking! Song about…”
“Demons?” Zoey was rocking back and forth on her seat, eyes glazed and staring holes into her notebook.
“Later on,” Rumi said, waving her hand faster, “Oh! We can write one about… about, uhm… oh shit-”
“What? “
Rumi threw her hands up “I forgot.”
The three of them all started to giggle. A snort from Rumi turned the giggles more maniac, then Mira suddenly rolling off the couch and faceplanting caused an uproar. Rumi fell from the beanbag and Zoey threw herself onto Mira’s back. Rumi curled up on her side, stomach hurting, tears wetting her cheeks. Why was everything so damn funny?
Zoey stopped laughing long enough to let out an equally-as-loud gasp, sitting up rapidly from where she had been laying on top of Mira and grabbing her discarded notebook.
“Listen listen listen! Idea! A song about Mira’s IBS!”
Mira’s head snapped up, “No, Zoey!”
Rumi couldn’t stop laughing. Her chest was starting to hurt too. The room was spinning. She crawled back onto the beanbag and squeezed her eyes shut, unable to fight the stupid grin spreading across her face.
“It’s impactful! It raises awareness, it’s something we’ve never done-“
“Veto, we’re not doing that. How about one about the hundreds of dick pics I’ve been sent since debut?” There was sneer in Mira’s voice.
“Oo!” Rumi could hear Zoey scribbling, “100 dicks on my phone, please leave me the fuck alone!”
Mira and Zoey snickered, the sound of one of them lightly slapping the other following. Rumi would have started laughing again too had it not been for her feeling so dizzy so suddenly. Her heart thumped against her chest. When she tried to open her eyes, everything looked hazy and far off.
“Rumi~” Zoey sang her name, “Earth to Rumi, are you still with us? You haven’t said anything in a minute.”
Rumi nodded. It felt like there was water in her head. She closed her eyes again. Floating, she was floating.
“Rumi?” The playfulness in Zoey’s voice had been replaced with worry. “Mira, she’s not responding-“
“M’fine,” Rumi mumbled out. Every bit of moisture had been sapped out of her mouth at this point. “I need something to drink.”
As soon as the suggestion left her lips, her stomach growled. There was another distinct feeling, not hunger, but… wow, did food sound good. Food always sounded good, but right now it sounded way good. Rumi looked at her girls. Their eyes were glazed, red and puffy. Did she look like that too? Were they feeling everything she was feeling?
“We need food,” Zoey said. Question answered. “I need food! Lyricists run on a 1:1 carb to lyric ratio, you know? I already wrote eleven so I'm in a deficit. Rumi, can we call Bobby?”
Rumi held up her hand, already fishing her phone out of her pocket, “Way ahead of you. What do we want?”
“Anything spicy,” Mira said.
“That’s gonna result in IBS lyrics!”
“Ugh, no!”
Rumi snorted, scrolling through her contacts, eyes drifting over each name, her brain taking two seconds to catch up enough to read them. It wasn’t until she got to the bottom of her very extensive contact list that she realized she couldn’t find it. Frowning, Rumi exited the app and opened up her web browser, her index finger navigating slowly across the keyboard to type in his name.
“We can call it ‘I Ate Spicy Food and Now I’m Suffering Again’. Ooo, It can be a metaphor about crawling back to things that are toxic to you!”
“I don’t suggest we write songs called ‘Why Does It Burn When I Pee?” when you get a UTI, so don’t write one about my medical condition!”
“I stopped getting them when I started drinking more water; you blow up the bathroom every other day because you won’t give up spicy food and you text us begging for emotional support every time it happens! I should be able to write a song about it.”
Rumi growled in frustration as she reached the end of the first page of results, still no number to be found. She opened up youtube next, going into her subscriptions.
“Spicy food is worth the pain. No IBS song”
“Miraaaa!”
Rumi tapped on a video, smiling as one of her favorite travel vloggers filled the screen and excitedly introduced the video as a love letter to all the various tea shops they have been to across the world, something they’ve been teasing for a while on their socials. The sounds of the vlogger’s voice paused Zoey and Mira’s conversation– after a few moments, Rumi could feel the burn of their stares and looked up.
“Hm?”
“Food?”
“Huh?”
Zoey made her eyes big and sad, “Food?”
“Oh,” Rumi closed out of youtube and opened an ordering app, “What do we want?”
“Spicy,” Mira said. She had shifted so she was sitting on the couch again, crossing her arms with her eyes peacefully shut. After a moment, they reopened, suspicious, “Wait… Didn’t we just talk about this?”
Rumi tapped back and forth on the delivery app, before sighing and closing out of it to open her contacts, “I can’t navigate the app like this, I’m going to call Bobby.”
Zoey giggled, “You are so high.”
Rumi furrowed her brow, carefully reading the contact over again. Bobby. Bob-be.
“Am not,” She muttered.
“I think I’m the only sober one here,” Zoey said gleefully, “Super tolerance! All the second hand smoke in Burbank paid off.”
“No, you are high,” Mira said. She had pulled out her phone, the display of her social media reflected on her glasses.
“Oh yeah, how?”
“Eyes,” Mira grunted. She made a bizarre gesture with her hand, “Center of gravity.”
“Cen-?”
“Girls be quiet, I’ve been trying to call Bobby for ten minutes,” Rumi scolded, scrolling up and down Bobby’s contact page as she looked for his phone number. Finally, finally, the call option popped up. A wild smile spread across her face.
“Okay, Bobby, food time.” Rumi slid off the beanbag again, walking on her knees until she was by the couch. Zoey shifted over so she could join. It was very cramped.
Rumi tapped on the icon. Her grin fell as she saw her own face fill the screen,“Fuck, my eyes! I look stoned!”
“Wha-? You’re stoned?” Mira leaned over to better see Rumi’s face, a look of genuine surprise on hers.
“Just open them more! Stop squinting.”
“Zoeytheyarelikebrightredtoo-?!”
The sound of the videocall connecting made Rumi yelp and turn the phone down on her lap, muffling Bobby’s excited ‘Hi Rumi!’. Nerves spiking, she looked to her girls for help, but Mira only shot her a look that was a mix between amused and incredulous while Zoey mimicked opening her eyes with her index finger and thumb. Okay, lock in, Rumi. Her eyes burned a bit as she widened them.
She turned over the phone.
“Hiiiiii Bobby!”
The phone slipped from her clammy fingers, leading to a mad scramble for who could keep it from hitting the floor first. In the chaos, a hand smacked it aside and it bounced off the wall, landing on the floor as Bobby’s garbled reply came through the receiver.
“Zoey!” Rumi hissed.
“Sorry!” Zoey launched herself off the couch, grabbing the phone and crawling back so she could kneel in front and hold the phone up, putting Rumi and Mira in frame with her barely peeking up from the bottom. Natural. Totally natural.
Bobby frowned, face distorted where the glass on the phone had cracked, “Girls? Is everything alright? You needed me?”
“Yeah!” Rumi said too quickly, “Listen, Bobby. We need a songwriting carb load, double the usual. Lots of noodles, illegal amounts of kimbap–uncut.”
Mira pressed her head against Rumi’s until she was more to the center, “Extra spicy everything!”
Bobby blinked, squinting at them, uncharacteristically subdued. Then, slowly, a grin plastered across his face.
“Double the usual?”
Rumi kept smiling, “Yeah.”
There was a beat of silence. Rumi tried her best to look casual. She hoped the other two were trying to as well.
“You want to add anything new to the order? You seem experimental tonight.”
Rumi blinked, looking at Zoey and Mira who looked at her in turn, panic in their eyes. Did he know?
“Uh, no!” Rumi said, voice higher than normal, “Just what we always-“
“Bulgogi burgers!”
“Zo-! Wait, actually-“
Bobby giggled on the other line, Rumi gave him a smile that felt too wide to be normal.
“Okay~” He sang, “Anything else I can do for you?”
“Uhm,” Rumi glanced at the door. It didn’t have a lock on it and the last thing she wanted was Bobby or a delivery person to walk in and see the state of them,“Just leave it by the door? We are in song mode, it will escape if you open it.”
“What would escape?” Bobby’s grin wavered, his eyes squinting and becoming glassy.
Rumi blinked twice, “...Song.”
“We don’t want that,” Zoey said with a shake of her head.
Bobby covered his mouth and moved the phone away, then shifted it back just as quickly, face somewhat stoic but still wavering at the edges.
“Noted. I’ll send it all up with some sweets too,” Bobby said, “Stay hydrated! And remember to keep it offline.”
He winked at them all too knowingly.
Rumi winced, hyper aware of how heavy her eyes felt, “Okay… bye Bobby!”
“Bye~!”
There was a burst of laughter from his end before Rumi’s phone chimed and the screen went back to Bobby’s contact photo. The smile from Rumi’s face dropped and she threw her head back to the couch cushions.
“He’s gonna tease us about that for weeks.” She groaned.
Zoey set the phone on the table, leaning against it, “At least he didn’t start freaking out! He looked so stern at first, I thought he was going to yell at us-“
“This is the most normal thing we’ve had him deal with. I’m pretty sure we could… like… tell him we kill demons and he’d be all ‘yeah that sounds about right’” Mira said, pitching her voice at the end for a surprisingly convincing impression of Bobby.
“Woah, demons,” Zoey leaned so far back against the table she started sliding it away, “What if Bobby was a demon?”
“I’d feel sad killing him”
“Aw! Me too! Do you think he’d have the tusks and horns?”
“No, Bobby would be a boring demon. Just patterns and nothing else.”
Rumi sat frozen on the couch, hands trembling.
Oh god why were they bringing this up?
“Well if he’s boring, would we have to kill him? As long as he’s not reaping souls for Gwi-Ma-“
“If they have the patterns they gotta die, preferably violently, but for him we make an exception and just make it quick,” Mira shifted her half-lidded eyes to Rumi.
“Right, Rumi?”
Right, Rumi? Right, Rumi? What did she mean by that? She’s acting like she knew— did she?
Her heart leapt into her throat. Beneath her hoodie, her skin crawled, patterns flaring. Did they both know? Did they always know?! It felt like her lungs were collapsing in on themselves. She had been so careful, so so careful. Fuck, it was because they could read her mind, isn’t it? This is some new Honmoon ability everybody but her knew about and they’ve been-
“Rumi?” Mira’s voice shook Rumi from her thoughts. Her eyes zeroed in on Mira; there must have been some type of odd look she had because Mira pulled a face, “You doing alright?”
“I’m going to call Celine,” Rumi blurted out. Her cover was blown, Celine had to know. Celine had to protect her.
“What?!”
“Rumi, don’t you-!”
“I need to call her,” Rumi said again, breath coming out quicker now, shaking hands digging around her pockets for her phone. Where did she- oh, right, on the coffee table. Unfortunately, Zoey and Mira clocked its location at the same time and Rumi only had half a second to react before they were diving for it first.
“She’s going to know!”
“Don’t call!”
Several pairs of hands wrestled over the phone. “Give me my phone!”
“She’s gonna kill us! Oh my god she will really kill us she’s got like a sixth sense for when we are doing things we really shouldn’t be doing-”
“Rumi, you are not going to ruin this for us!”
“I need her here!”
“Give me the fucking-!”
Mira wretched the phone from her hands and tossed it to her foot, aiming a kick that sent it flying. It apexed near the ceiling, suspended midair for a single dramatic moment before a Shin-Kal pierced and pinned it to the wall behind.
Rumi stared speechless. White smoke billowed out of the phone. She turned to Zoey.
Zoey smiled politely, eyes forced wide open.
“What the fuck.”
Still smiling, Zoey folded her hands under her chin and tilted her head.
“What the fuck?” Rumi whined again, voice cracking.
Mira let out that weird giggle, “Try calling now.”
Rumi opened her mouth, then paused, eyebrows furrowing. Calling…? Every attempt to recall the last few minutes was met with a fuzzy resistance. Her heart still sped with distress, but the source had been lost somewhere in the scramble.
Is this what it feels like to be Celine’s age?
Her skin was still crawling. The reason was there… somewhere…
Mira managed to quell her amusement, “Why were you even trying to?”
“I…”
Tip of her tongue… It was almost there, pushing through a slog of half-formed thoughts and fuzziness.
Oh, right. Demon talk.
Panic edged at her again, but the adrenaline had her feeling more aware of herself than before. It was the high making her paranoid—one of the side effects she had read about. Rumi tried to rub away the burning on her arm. They didn’t know, they were just saying whatever came to their heads about Bobby, it meant nothing.
She tried to think of a reason that didn’t pertain to her patterns. A lie believable enough.
Though, leaning into the truth made it sound too ridiculous to question.
“I was going to tell her you guys were going to kill me because you think I’m a demon.”
“What? We weren’t- Why?!”
“I was feeling dramatic,” Rumi tried for a nonchalant shrug. It felt kinda chalant.
Twenty minutes later, the food fairy had blessed them, much to the girls' extremely loud and extremely enthusiastic excitement, and they gathered the bounty of various bags, takeout containers, and drinks across the table. In Rumi’s own hands was a clamshell of kimbap, which she was shoveling into her mouth one after the other. Mira was on her second serving of buldak, and Zoey was eating her bulgogi burger with a gross enjoyment only an American could replicate.
“So, why not another romance song?” Zoey said between bites, hands and face messy, “I mean, we have, like, six already. One more won’t hurt.”
Rumi reached for a drink, cracking it open and downing half the bottle in one go before responding, “How many times can we sing about wanting to take someone cute home with us?”
“Or wanting someone’s number?” Mira added, muffled with food in her mouth.
“Maybe someone specific? Like an ex? We haven’t done that.”
There was a short pause. Rumi finished her drink, “That’s because none of us have dated.”
“I have!” Zoey said, smiling broadly as she danced with her shoulders.
“Playground romance doesn’t count,” Mira said
“Does to!”
“Refering to an ex will get our fans digging,” Rumi plucked another kimbap roll from the clamshell, “And you know how some of them can get.”
“True,” Zoey sunk into the couch and licked sauce off her fingers, “I guess you two have really limited our potential with your bitchlessness.”
The two of them let out similarly disgruntled noises. Mira shot her a look as she stabbed her chopsticks into a container of rice she had picked up, “Right person, right time.”
“It’s not like you’ve been looking either, Zoey,” Rumi said. Her face burned from both embarrassment and offense. She leaned over to a branded restaurant bag and pulled out one of the burgers from it, eating half in one massive bite, “Besides, no one’s been worth the attention.”
Zoey batted her eyes at her, “Not even me?”
Rumi took another tentative bite, furrowing her brow, “What do you mean?”
Zoey gave her a bright smile, which shut the rest of her already half-open eyes,“I’m a Rumisexual: I would hit it if you liked women.”
Her heart leapt into her throat. She almost choked.
“Wh-what?!”
“Just saying!”
Her brain was spinning, trying to find an emotion to throw at that and instead just giving up and sounding alarm bells instead. Rumi shoved the rest of the burger in her mouth and grabbed another fizzy drink, her hand shaking as she brought it close, “Hah, well, that’s-!”
“Well, do you?” Mira’s deep voice was a startling contrast to how high-pitched hers had become. Fuck, she was going to have a heart attack. Rumi looked down, teeth sinking into her lip. Orientation wasn’t something she gave much thought to. She couldn’t really; not with the distance she had to put between herself and everyone else. Not with-
Her skin started crawling again. She dug her fingers into the bottle.
“I haven’t decided anything.”
“You… haven’t decided?” Mira said slowly, raising a brow.
“Nope,” Rumi shrugged and tried for a casual smile, “Nothing.”
“No one you’d spend alone time with?” She pressed.
Patterns started to burn, “Nope.”
“Guys?” Zoey wiggled her brows.
“No opinion.”
“Girls?” Mira dragged out the ‘r’.
“Uh, I guess that’s Zoey’s thing?”
“I’ll climb anything!” Zoey giggled, “And liking girls isn’t exclusive to me. Who can say no to boobs?”
“Apparently, Rumi,” Mira said with a frown.
Rumi glanced away, shifting in her seat and reaching up to dig her fingers into the patterns of her arm, willing the burn to subside, “A-and what about you, Mira?”
“I will never say no to boobs.”
Oh? Rumi dropped her hand from her arm and let her brain process that for a moment—three moments, actually, it had to repeat the words a few times before the confusion could really stick.
“I thought you were straight.”
Mira choked on her rice. Her face flashed with a series of expressions Rumi was too foggy to decipher. Most of them looked rather violent. Her eyes were doing that twitching thing again.
“You-?!”
“That’s cause she is, Rumi, duh,” Zoey chimed in. She was jotting something down in her notebook.
Mira’s head whipped fast enough that her hair caught onto Rumi’s face. She sputtered around the strands landing in her mouth, batting them away. Her arms felt like they were moving through water.
“No way. No fucking way you both think I’m straight. What the fuck? Are you blind?”
Rumi pulled a strand of pink hair from her tongue, scrunching her nose at Mira, “But you’ve told us how cute you think a guy is-“
“Doesn’t mean I’m straight!” Mira threw her hands up, flushed to her neck, “I can’t believe it. Do you even know me? This is the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Worse than when Rumi told you to-?“
Rumi cut Zoey off, grimacing “Let’s not bring that one up again.”
Mira, thankfully, didn’t seem like she wanted to dredge up that particular piece of history either, crossing her arms and leveling them with a fierce glare.
“I am not straight.”
“Okay! Sorry for assuming,” Rumi held up her hands.
Zoey kicked her feet, setting her notebook back down to grab more food, “I’m just ragebaiting.”
“I like women,” Mira declared, calmer now, “Have since I was, I don’t know, fourteen? Probably earlier. I couldn’t be out because of my family. Got in a massive fight over it the year before Celine came to get me.”
“Your family sucks,” Rumi said, not for the first time and definitely not for the last.
“Tell me about it. My dad flipped his shit.”
Zoey winced, her hand hovering with a mouthful of brisket on the end of her chopsticks, “Did you tell him or did he catch you with someone?”
“Better. He caught me-“ Mira made a circling motion with her middle and ring fingers pointed downwards, “to videos of-“ another obscene gesture involving intersecting the webs of her pointer fingers.
“Mira no~” Zoey dragged the ‘o’ out, hiding her face and groaning in solidarity, “He didn’t.”
“Yep, got all: ‘How dare you disrespect me in my house?’ And ‘You disgrace this family!’ and ‘I didn’t raise a dyke!’ about it. Took my doors down and put cameras in my room. Timed my showers. No privacy.”
“Are you serious?” Rumi asked, voice sharper than intended. She couldn’t help it, each and every mention of Mira’s family and what they put her through boiled her blood to a degree nothing else compared to. Not for the first time, she wished she could fight them.
“Mhm,” Mira folded her hands over her stomach. For a moment she was quiet. Almost too deep in thought, like she was hurtling past a point of no return in her memories, until she blurted out something she probably wouldn’t have if she were sober. “I touched myself for a week straight when I got to the Hanok.”
Zoey, previously sipping what remained of the broth of her yukgaejang, spat it out “What?!”
And like that, the tension in the air had been released, pierced by the sound of Zoey and Rumi’s combined laughter. Mira grinned and continued, “Everyday.”
“Is that why you refused all the bonding activities?” Zoey asked between breaths.
“I mean I hated the idea of having to make friends, but I definitely had other plans too.”
“Oh my god,” Rumi covered her burning face, breaking out into another uncontrollable grin. She couldn’t even make herself feel embarrassed about the conversation, “That’s why you kept getting up and washing your hands in the middle of the night.”
“I- were you listening?”
“I was right next to the bathroom, Mira.”
“Why were you even awake?”
Her skin prickled as she recalled the memories. Heartbeats were… a background noise she tuned out most of the time, but ever present in her senses. Staying with Celine, it became a habit to let the sound of a resting heart lull her to sleep. When her teammates had been introduced into the Hanok, it had been the same routine to sit and listen until they slowed down enough to indicate sleep. Mira’s always sounded too fast for Rumi to truly relax those nights.
The prickling turned to burning. What human could hear the rhythm of hearts without being close?
Mira was still waiting for her answer.
Rumi made her face as blank as possible, “What do you think I was doing?”
It hit as intended, sending both of her girls into uproarious laughter. She’s fine with letting them think that, better than admitting the truth.
“Okay, song,” She said after the last of the residual giggles faded, “Romance?”
Zoey picked up her notebook again and read off of it, “Legs like yours has me on the hunt, I just want to spread them and lick up on your-“
“That’s gonna need a rating change,” Rumi said quickly, “No explicits on the album.”
“Aw!”
They worked with the topic for a while, each throwing out random bars that earned a middling or negative reaction. Eventually, Zoey tossed the notebook on the table and threw herself back onto Mira’s lap with a loud groan.
“Stumped.”
“Ditto,” Mira had long since lost herself to her phone, the sounds of various short-form videos keeping the studio from being silent when they were too deep in thought to speak. Safe to say, she didn’t contribute much in the first place.
“Gotta be something,” Rumi murmured, drumming her fingers on the armrest of the couch.
Zoey stirred then, pulling her head away from where Mira had started playing with her hair so she could look over at Rumi, “Remember that one Sunlight Sisters song, ‘Give It To Me?’ Maybe we just make a song out of a bunch of innuendos and call it good.”
“The one where they had an entire verse about what happens when a noodle gets wet?” Mira said, glancing up from her phone.
“That’s the one!”
Rumi listened to them quietly, pouting at the floor as her fingers sped up their drumming. She had heard the song a few times before— usually when Celine wasn’t around to skip it. The song was sung in parts, each by a different Sister, with the aforementioned verse in particular headed by Celine. Rumi recalled the one and only time she had ever seen a recording of a live performance of that song; Celine was making obscene amounts of eye-contact with her mom the whole time.
Wait. Wait.
“I think Celine is gay.”
Both Zoey and Mira in perfect deadpan unison, “you think?”
Rumi put her hands up in mock surrender, startled at the fact that her revelation was apparently obvious news to others, “She doesn’t talk about things like that, so I didn’t assume. But, thinking about it, there was this one time-“
Rumi stopped, both smiling and cringing at the memory.
Zoey sat up from Mira’s lap, “Uh oh, what?”
“… Apparently, at some point the Sunlight Sisters did a more… ‘boudoir’ shoot– I think privately, because I didn’t see any-”
Zoey cut her off “Definitely private. Teenage me would have found those pictures and cherished them.”
“Okay, superfan,” Rumi said, rolling her eyes playfully, “Anyway, so that was a thing, and well, one day Celine was making dinner and left her study open, so I did what any normal teen would do and started going through her stuff-“
“-As you do-“ Mira interjected.
“-And there was this one bookshelf with Sunlight Sister memorabilia on it, and right behind two display cases of their vinyls was-”
Rumi trailed off, wincing as she recalled the image.
“...a topless photo of my mom that she wrote ‘Celine: Now don’t sing about it anymore.’ on...”
Zoey and Mira started howling. Rumi smiled uneasily while she watched Zoey take a dive off the couch so she could smack the floor with her fists. She knew Celine and her mother’s relationship was… different, hinted by the inflection in her voice whenever she spoke of her and the way she recalled memories with Miyeong compared to their third groupmate. It just hadn’t clicked that it could have been more intimate beyond friends.
“I was going to look some more, but she has super senses, so she walked in and caught me.” Rumi added after her girls had calmed down enough.
Mira pushed her glasses up so she could wipe her tears away, “Did you die?”
“Surprisingly, she wasn’t too mad, just told me not to snoop anymore. Wouldn't answer any questions, gave me the whole ‘Our faults and fears must never be seen’ and then the next day when I checked it was facedown with a book over it.”
Zoey also wiped her eyes and rolled over so she was on her back, the laugh still in her voice, “CEO of Sunlight Entertainment, by the way.”
Rumi frowned, brain mulling that one over a few times. Lazily, like her thoughts had to be dragged out of tar first before she could truly focus on them, “What about them?”
Now Zoey looked confused, “Celine?”
“Celine-?” What were they talking about?
“Celine. Big bad CEO of Sunlight Entertainment? How high are you, Rumi?” Zoey squinted her eyes at her.
Rumi squinted back, “How high are you? She isn't the CEO.”
“Wait, she isn't?”
“No, she’s just a shareholder.”
“I thought all this time-“
“Zoey, she was raising me, training us and holding up the Honmoon; where would she find the time?”
“I always saw her doing paperwork…”
“You mean her crossword puzzles?”
Zoey rubbed her temples, eyes wide as dinnerplates, “I’m having a crisis, there is no way. Why is she The CEO on your phone then?!”
“Was on my phone,” Rumi corrected gruffly, “And it’s because you two kept calling her that and she thought it was funny.”
Zoey squeaked loudly and hid her face behind her hands “Oh my god and you just let us do it?”
“She thought it was funny!”
“Mira-!” Zoey shook her head back and forth, “Mira! Tell her it’s not funny!”
Mira was staring off into space, lips pursed, “Who have I’ve been sending vacation time requests to?”
“Mira!”
Once they settled down again– after Rumi had assured Zoey over and over that no, Celine was not offended by the prospect of them thinking she was the CEO– they polished off most of the food and tried several other topics for a song, but came up short in the way of lyrics each time. Eventually, the conversation waned away when Zoey shut her notebook with a complaint about the room’s continuous spinning, and Mira had stopped responding at all, shifting back and forth between sitting up and laying back on the couch.
Rumi herself was teetering between sleep and consciousness. At one point, she had blinked and reopened her eyes to find her head had dropped down and her arms were limp at her sides. She whined softly as she shifted to lean against the armrest. Her eyes felt so very heavy.
Zoey was halfway on the beanbag, having moved there during the brief period Rumi was knocked out. She was resting her head in her arms, her skin pale and sheening under the low lights, “I think I’m done being high.”
Mira said something muffled. Rumi managed to turn her head enough to see she had curled into the fetal position with her arms over her belly, head buried between the cushions. Classic ‘I ate spicy food and now I’m suffering again,’ position. Rumi shifted off the couch and onto the floor, giving Mira the space she needed. The moment she laid down her body sank like it weighed millions. The world around her was pulsating and spinning. She had never felt so tired.
“Rumi, say goodnight,” Zoey whimpered, leaning over from her spot on the beanbag and tapping her ankle rapidly, “Tell me goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Zoey.” Rumi mumbled. She was half asleep, fading into a dream about a never ending supply of noodles and yet begging to choose whether it was a specific type of unlimited noodle or a customizable one.
“Mira, say goodnight!”
“I’m gonna fucking shit myself,” Mira groaned painfully.
“That’s not a goodnight!”
Rumi giggled softly, listening to Mira readjustments on the couch and Zoey’s continued whining for a goodnight, until it quieted as sleep pulled her further in. The world surrounding faded into nothing but mottled dreams.
Occasionally, she heard the gentle thumps of her girls' heartbeats make their way in.
Rumi jerked awake, blinking five times, shutting her eyes, and reopening them again.
What.
Her back was stiff. Drool slathered the side of her cheek. Her head felt like someone had put her brain into a microwave and cooked it.
She didn’t even remember falling asleep.
“Where am I?” Rumi groaned aloud. Her voice was hoarse. Her mouth was so damn dry.
“Morning, Rumi!”
The pierce of Zoey’s voice beside her made her groan again. She let her head drop to the side. Zoey was sitting in front of the couch, phone in her hands, dressed in her oversized hoodie but missing her pants. Rumi was not surprised that she wore underwear with HUNTR/X branding on it.
“Where’s Mira?”
“Fighting a losing battle.” Ah, the bathroom then.
Rumi wiped her mouth of the drool and reached over one shoulder, small pops and cracks rolling up the column of her spine. She let out an undignified moan and fell back to the floor, her body devolving to useless jelly.
“My mouth is so dry,” She tapped her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Like sandpaper.
Zoey plucked a soda from the table and rolled it to her. Rumi wasted no time twisting the cap off and downing it in three big gulps, gasping softly as she pulled the neck of the bottle away.
“What even happened last night?”
“I don’t know, but my abs are killing me,” Zoey chirped.
Rumi set the bottle back and rested her eyes again, idly listening to the rapid-fire noises of Zoey’s morning scroll through her socials. A while later, Mira trudged back into the room, pale, sweaty, and disheveled.
“Fuuuuck,” She groaned as she fell onto the beanbag stomach first, limp. “Don’t go in there if you enjoy living.”
“Morning, Mira,” Rumi said. She knew not to say ‘good’ with it.
“Uuughh,” Mira greeted her back.
They stayed like that for a while, comfortable, albeit recovering. Eventually, Mira found the strength to sit upright again and Rumi’s back hurt too much to keep laying on the floor, so she rejoined Zoey on the couch and curled next to her. When her shoulder brushed against hers, she looked up from her phone as if broken by a trance, glancing between her and Mira, and then to the table.
“Oh, the notebook! Let’s see what we got!” Zoey lunged and snatched it from the table, excitedly opening it. The light in her eyes dimmed.
Rumi sat straight, “Did we not write anything?”
Zoey was flipping through pages. There were half jotted down lyrics here and there, random scribbling, and an artistic rendition of Zoey, armed with a gun, shooting Mira’s father with the caption “HUNTR/X DON’T MISS”.
“Oh shit…” She muttered after a moment.
“Notes app!” Rumi barked.
Zoey and Mira immediately reached for their phones and navigated for the app. Rumi checked her back pocket, then her side ones, then her bra.
She frowned, “Where did mine-?”
Another memory, sluggish and disoriented, pushed through. Rumi glanced at the wall. A Shin-Kal stuck out of it, her phone on the wrong side of the blade.
“Zoey~”Rumi dragged out the last syllable of her name, “You broke my phone!”
“I’m sorry!” Zoey yelped, looking between her and her own phone, “I really don’t know why I did that last night, I think I was feeling really hyper, but, slow? At the same time? Everything was so weird and funny- Oh!”
She sat up, waving her phone, “I wrote things here!”
The relief was so palpable it could be felt in the air; Zoey’s bright smile was encouraging as her eyes started to dance across whatever she had typed up. Mira and Rumi moved to either side of her shoulders and angled their heads so they could-
They felt the maknae’s shoulders stiffen at the same time the words started to make more sense to them. Zoey scrambled forward, hiding her phone against her chest and flashing an all-too-wide grin, a blush spreading across freckled cheeks.
“Haha, whoops that’s not a-“
Rumi blinked at her, “Did you write fanfiction about my mo-“
“Listen listen listen,” Zoey flung her hands out in a placating gesture, “I take no responsibility for the things High Zoey did last night.”
“So we just wasted a night,” Rumi groaned and fell back to the floor, covering her eyes with her arm. It felt like nothing short of a deal with Gwi-Ma was going to get this song written.
“Well, we have more gummies-“
“It didn’t work.”
Zoey rocked back and forth in her seat, a guilty smile on her face, “Uhm, well-“
Nothing came after the ‘well.’ Rumi shifted her arm off her eyes and regarded Zoey suspiciously. Mira crossed hers and leaned in closer, which made Zoey lean back further.
“Well?”
“… Sooo… it kinda just occurred to me, like just now, that when Nami and I were talking about what to take, that maybe-“
Zoey clamped up again.
Rumi tried not to glare. Really tried not to, because the night was still fun regardless of the song being written or not, but the frustration at their lack of progress won out and she knew she looked a little mean right now. In her defense, Mira also looked mean, but it probably meant her stomach was about to tear up again.
Zoey’s next sentence fell out of her mouth rapidly, “We were actually supposed to take one piece each of one gummy instead of like three separate ones.”
“Zoey!” Rumi put her head in her hands.
“I forgot! I’m sorry!”
“Last night was like teetering on the edge of enlightenment and just straight up dying,” Mira groaned, taking her glasses off so she could rub her eyes, “...but I had fun, so-“
She shrugged.
Rumi thought about it.
She shrugged too after a moment, “…Yeah. Don’t worry about it, Zoey. At least we didn’t die.”
Zoey pouted as she batted around her notebook, “I had fun too. We can probably use one of these lines at least.”
Glancing, Rumi pointed towards a set of lyrics, “That might work.”
They worked on it for a while, comfortable, feeling better as the hour dragged on and more of the gummy left their systems. By the time it had hit noon, they had half a page worth of lyrics. Shitty ones, but at least they were getting somewhere. They breaked after to poke at the leftovers, falling into a fit of giggles when they saw how much of the food they demolished last night.
At least they kept it offline.
“Rumi.”
Rumi looked up from the bag of honey butter almonds she was trying to get open. Mira was giggling, looking at her phone.
“What?”
“You tweeted Bobby’s name five times.”