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There’s a certain weightlessness in Zoey’s steps these days.
She’s always been the bubbly one, the cute one, the beloved maknae, and she forced herself to uphold that image through thick and thin. These past few months, though, have freed her from her self-imposed suffering—like rocks have been removed from her shoes, and now she can truly step.
Huntrix is back and better than ever! The three of them are more honest with each other! She’s able to pull from more and more sources for their lyrics—there’s more to life than singing and killing demons now! yay!—and their new sound is being herald as breathtaking. Mature. Huntrix’s evolution.
Zoey he-hems to herself.
Life is good these days. She has her girls, her money, and her passion back. Mira is trusting them more; Rumi is… well, almost like a new person! In a good way. Not that she was bad before! But now that her secret is out and those patterns shine in the light, she’s far more at peace… and not to mention Jinu tumbling out of her sword.
Zoey kind of owes him one. Whatever he’s doing for Rumi is helping her hit notes previously unheard of. Good for them. Good for them!
Good for all of them!
During practice today, Rumi’s voice went higher than in Golden… and it didn’t crack. It remained solid! She could hold it! They all cheered and patted each other on the back and Zoey had tried soooo hard to go to sleep after an exhausting workout, but man. Inspiration struck. Danced in her head and wouldn’t leave her alone.
So, here she is, opening the doors to their studio at two in the morning, well past when she retired for the night. A solitary mission that she’s ready to undertake.
Except, well, the light is already on.
Mira is laying on the couch, flipping through something with an indifferent expression. Her long, delicate legs stretch over an armrest; her tongue darts out, licking her lips over and over.
Oh, oh, ooooohhh?
Zoey hops her way, grin cockeyed. “What’cha looking at?” she says, going to peer over her shoulder.
Big mistake.
Her own hand writing stares back at her—mocks her.
Back when they were fighting for their lives to come up with a song, she was exploring any and all options. Any and all. She bought a notebook purely for writing those ideas down… she had thought it lost to the ether after a night of drinking, but, unfortunately, it wasn’t. It’s come back to haunt her. And not just her…
Mira’s IBS.
Mira’s heel breaking mid rehearsal and her sliding across the stage.
Mira’s old period stained panties she keeps for comfort.
Mira’s projectile snot when she has hay fever.
The one time Mira’s hair got stuck in her outfit zipper and the only way to fix it was to cut it which had 20 forum posts in less than 10 minutes.
Mira closes the notebook with one hand, elegant. Practiced. “Just doing some light reading,” she says, tone even.
Fuuuuuuck.
Zoey takes two large steps back to get out of her range. She shuffles her weight from foot to foot, skin clammy. “Where did you… where did you find that?”
She didn’t miss that selection of topics, written during hours of nothingness. Hell, she kind of forgot about what she wrote until this very second! It was just—just brain dumping! Clearing the air! Nothing serious! She could’ve sworn she threw it away during her drunken rampage! And nothing of value would have been lost!
“I came in here because I had a beat in mind,” Mira says, “and I dropped one of my snack packs. Hit my foot and bounced under the couch.”
“...so that’s what happened.” So that’s where it ended up. How did it end up there—wait, is that even what she should be thinking about now? She has more pressing concerns.
Zoey has a couple of options to navigate this… mess. The first is to grovel, suck-up, and try to brush past it. Sure, she made a list of Mira’s Greatest Hits that anyone with a single brain cell could figure she wouldn’t want just out there, but she’s a pro at smoothing things over! It’s her special skill! Rumi and Mira are the headstrong ones, and she’s the peacemaker. That’s how it’s always worked.
She doesn’t want to do that, though.
“I’m sorry,” Zoey says, sincere. She casts her eyes towards the floor, uncomfortable—an old habit of hers. “We were struggling so much that I just… wrote down whatever I had in my head. If I could get a single line out of it, then…” She sighs. “I promise nothing in there has made it into anything we’ve put out.”
Her mouth twists. It’s not like—it’s not like she was broadcasting to the world all of Mira’s private life, but the fact of the matter is this: she had considered it, even just in passing. Even if the single line was totalllllyyyyy unrelated to what was written, it was still inspired by it.
Snrk.
Zoey’s eyes shoot back up, taking her head with them. Mira’s shoulders are subtly shaking; her hand covers her mouth. Her eyes are crescents. Oh—“—you’re laughing at me?” she asks. And here she was, worried! Afraid she hurt her friend!
Mira lets her hand fall. Her mouth has the slightest upward curve to it—a smile. “Sorry. It’s just… I’m not mad.”
“Then what was that act for?” Zoey’s face scrunches up, nails digging into her palms. Was this all some big joke to her?
“Teasing?”
“Mira.”
“Sorry. Like, it wasn’t great to see, but I know you kept all this to yourself.”
Zoey huffs, crosses her arms, juts out one hip. OK, OK—“—fine. Guess I deserved a little teasing after writing it down for inspiration.”
“Do you remember what else you wrote?”
“Not really.” They were all sleep deprived, she was panicking in new and exciting ways, and it was months ago now. It blurs together.
Mira adjusts her legs to make room for another person on the couch. She pats the spot next to her, and Zoey has no reason not to plop down—even if they’re about to go through her worst ideas.
Their knees knock together, and the room suddenly feels a lot warmer.
Mira opens to a random page; there’s a crudely drawn Rumi with Rumi is hiding something! scrawled around her.
OK, that gets a snort from Zoey. “Glad we know now.”
“Me too.”
Another page.
Santa Doms. No nice only NAUGHTY!
“This one has merit,” Mira says, “but it feels…”
“...out of place.” What had even led her to draw that? Oh yeah—“—I was thinking the Saja Boys were gonna be around for a while? And like, those guys were definitely gonna capitalize on holidays. And Christmas is well—! I could just see them doing some slutty Santa thing.” She takes a breath. “So I wanted to get the jump on them!”
Mira hums, agreeing. “I wonder if Jinu had the concepts already?”
“We can ask him later.”
Next page.
Giant shoes. Anaphylactic shock.
“My cousin in Cali. Peanut allergy.”
“...are they OK?”
“Oh!” Yeah, that wording was off. “She’s totally fine! Happy and healthy and alive. A couple of years ago her dad got her something he swore had no peanuts… it had peanuts. She had to go to the hospital, but she recovered.” She looks at the pair of shoes on the page. “In the photo her mom sent, her shoes looked huge on the hospital bed.”
“Glad she’s OK.” She genuinely sounds so relieved… that’s her Mira. A softie—even for someone she’s never met.
“She uses the shoes for online profile pics now… so I think it’s all chill?”
“Is she a Huntrix fan?”
“No. She only likes animated characters.”
This isn’t bad, actually! Zoey yoinks the notebook from Mira, excited now, and flips through to find another sketch. The trio of them… as aliens. Sci-fi.
“I was remembering when my dad made me watch reruns of Star Trek,” she says. Try as she did to resist it, parts of the show left an impact. “Sooo…”
“Could’ve rivaled the Sajas’ demon theme?”
“Yeah maybe?” Zoey frowns, looks to the ceiling. “I think that I was like it’ll be too on the nose if we amp up the hunting motif? Or like, fans may not even be surprised? So this was just… random bullshit? If the Saja Boys were going to go all-in on their costumes and band stories, then we should too?”
Mira taps her avatar. “I’m not painting myself green.”
“Yeaaahhhh…” Zoey quickly goes to a different page. Ah. A Zoey-cringe moment! So she didn’t just pick Mira’s!
“What am I looking at?” Mira asks. She hunches over to inspect the page, scowling all the while. Zoey can tell she’s wishing she had her glasses—not that it’d help. The drawing is rather… incomprehensible… if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
Zoey points out the biggest blob. “OK, so this is me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And this—”—she traces the random lines, each sprawling from her—“—is the path I took my first time skateboarding.”
“OK.”
All roads lead to the giant column at the bottom of a page. “This is a tree.”
“Real… leafy.”
“I was going more for a gesture.” Back to the drawing. “So after, like, a day of practice, I was feeling sooo confident! I started to pick up the pace! And ran right into a tree.” She moves over to the squiggles. “A couple of squirrels fell out of the tree and into my hair.” She shudders. “That sucked.”
“I never heard this story before,” Mira says.
“Not one I like to tell! Even as a joke. The squirrels were reaaalllly mad.”
“...did you—”
“—yeah. I had to cut my hair after and had to get a rabies shot to be safe.” Zoey clears her throat. “OK, moving on—”
—she slams the notebook closed, hides it behind her back. Nope! Not moving on! “We’ve seen enough,” Zoey rushes out, ice in her veins all the while, “and it’s actually super late—”
“—I’ve already flipped through every page,” Mira says, deadpan. Like it was sooooo obvious.
Zoey screams. Internally.
“I was browsing when you got here, remember?”
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Mira straightens her posture, moves in closer, just a hair’s breadth away; Zoey’s heart pounds in her ears. From adrenaline. Or…
“I take it you got to that page,” Mira says.
If by that page she means the really detailed sketch of Mira with all the things she loves about her written around it? Then, yeah.
That was… supposed to be a secret.
Sometime after the Namsan Tower incident, Zoey had just… started to notice Mira, in a different way. Maybe it was kicked off by how elegant she looked that day. Maybe it was because losing Mira had been her final straw. Maybe it was because when they got home and collapsed from exhaustion, Mira had held her so, so tight in her sleep and Zoey thought: I want to protect her.
So, during a drunken rampage, she had taken everything out on a page, then in embarrassment… hid… hid the notebook… under… the studio couch…
Ohhhhhhh. It’s all coming back to her.
One of the final secrets she has—for the greater good. Were anything to happen to them and Huntrix fall apart again…
Mira smirks. Her eyes have a predatory glint to them; she’s finally cornered her prey, and that prey is Zoey.
I don’t taste good!
Zoey whips her head to the side. “So listen,” she says, voice trembling, “just… I was mildly intoxicated and—”
—something soft presses against her cheek.
Zoey sucks in a breath through her nose so fast that the air punches the back of her throat. She coughs, pounds her chest to help get it all out. Spit dribbles from her mouth. Very sexy. Very charming.
When she dares to turn back Mira’s way, Mira has moved as far back as she possibly can. She’s simply staring at Zoey, her eyes betraying nothing.
What was that?!
Zoey wipes her chin, opens her mouth ready to get some answers, but Mira stands. Stretches. Part of her shirt rides up, and Zoey can see some of her stomach—ooooh, nice—before the metaphorical curtain falls once more.
“You said it’s late,” Mira says, yawning out each word, “so I’m going back to bed.”
Wait.
What?
Mira walks to the door—is she purposefully swinging her hips?—before giving Zoey one last glance over her shoulder. “Try not to work too late.”
And then she leaves.
Zoey touches the spot where the sensation had been, and finally exhales, finally decides.
Maybe this secret can be told.
She jumps from the couch, rushes out the door, and knows one way or another, she’s staying up all night.