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“Rumi!”
Demons were dangerous. They were ruthless, and strong; they had claws and horns and teeth. Long, sharp, jagged teeth.
There were several dozen long, sharp, jagged teeth in Rumi’s shoulder.
Pain radiated from her shoulder and upper arm, where the demon had clamped down with its jaws and refused to let go. She dangled from the demon’s mouth, suspended over the stony sidewalk, and then the creature shook her.
It hurt. She almost dropped her sword, but a lifetime of physical conditioning and “our faults and fears must never be seen” kicked in when she needed them most. With a battle cry that was maybe a little closer to a wounded animal than the kick-ass, girl-crush vocalization she was going for, she flipped her grip on her saingeom and plunged the blade down and back, into the belly of the beast behind her.
The foul creature bellowed and staggered around, prolonging her torture, before it finally vanished in a cloud of purple smoke. Victory!
Rumi dropped out of the empty air and crashed onto the flagstone, hitting her skull with a dull thud. Sweet, sweet victory.
She groaned.
Dimly, she was aware of more fighting—purple smoke, flashes of weaponry, snatches of song— as she lay there on the ground, panting.
“Rumi!”
It was Zoey who reached her first.
She knelt beside her and smoothed the hair out of her face. “Unnie, are you okay?
Rumi coughed weakly. “Never better,” she wheezed.
“Let me see how bad it is,” said Zoey, fingers already slipped under the edge of her jacket.
“No, wait-!” Rumi protested, scrambling for an excuse. She tried to lift her arms, to push Zoey away, but it was like moving through water, or being in a dream. So slow…
Zoey was, as ever, moving in hyperdrive: she pushed open Rumi’s jacket, and peeled the bloody sleeve away from her shoulder, and blinked.
Rumi needed to say something, needed to hide or explain or push Zoey away or just say SOMETHING, but she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs-
The next second there was a shinkal pressed to Rumi’s throat.
Rumi felt like she had left her body, like she was watching one of her best friends’ straddle some other sorry pathetic half-demon and hold a knife to their throat. She had never seen so much rage in the maknae’s eyes.
“Where’s Rumi?” Zoey demanded. “What did you do to her?”
This was it then. How the hunter became the hunted. Rumi had always known there was a possibility she would die by Mira or Zoey’s blade, if the truth came out. She’d promised herself that she would accept her death with dignity; it would be better for everyone that way.
So why was she crying?
“Zoey,” she pleaded, almost choking on a sob. “Zoey, it's me. Zoey, please-”
Zoey’s other hand dug into her wounded shoulder, her fingers slipping easily into the puncture wounds. Rumi screamed.
“Where is she?!”
“What the fuck?” Mira’s low voice interrupted.
Rumi’s head whipped around, making the world spin. Zoey jerked, accidentally nicking Rumi’s throat.
“She’s an imposter!” Zoey cried. “This isn’t Rumi, she has patterns!” She yanked the jacket sleeve the rest of the way off to demonstrate.
Rumi whimpered. The edges of her vision were going black
Mira’s eyes flicked rapidly back and forth between the two of them, indecision plain on her face.
“Zoey,” she said slowly, “get off of her. We’re taking her back to the tower.”
“Mira!”
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I know that wound needs serious medical attention. If there’s the slightest possible chance that’s the real Rumi, we need to help her. And if it’s not….. She needs to be alive to answer our questions.”
The last thing Rumi saw before she passed out was Mira menacingly tossing her weapon from hand to hand.
She was vaguely aware of moving. Of being carried.
Everything hurt. And it hurt worse when they touched and prodded her. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone?
Rumi woke up to beeping.
She was in a bed, in a room. A bedroom. Not hers, though. Her head felt cloudy and her body ached. Her eyelids drifted down.
.
.
.
But no, she couldn’t go to sleep right now—something was wrong, wasn’t it?
She forced her eyes back open, forced herself to take stock of her surroundings. She was in the guest bedroom, the one they sometimes used as an infirmary. It was strange, being the one tucked into the guest bed; she was used to being the nurse, not the patient.
She turned her head; there was an IV line connected to a half-full bag of dark-red liquid labelled ★ RUMI ★ in purple glittering ink.
Rumi remembered when Celine had first taught them all how to do blood transfusions. Mira had been skeptical about whether they needed to learn such a skill—not to mention go through the hassle of regularly re-stocking their blood stores (“Couldn’t we just go to a hospital?” Mira had asked, more than once)—but Celine had been insistent. Zoey and Mira had chalked it up to paranoia. It had taken Rumi an embarrassingly long time to realize this was a precaution Celine had taken for her, specifically. It would be impossible for her to receive blood without revealing the shameful secret spelled out on her arms. Who knew if her body would even accept regular, untainted human blood?
Rumi’s tired gaze traveled down the IV line, across the thick blankets (now blood splattered) that had been drawn over her chest, to the bandages wrapped tightly around her right shoulder and upper arm.
She remembered fingers digging down into the bite wound and flinched.
Wait. An IV?
The IV line was connected to her bare arm.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no, this was bad.
What had happened?
Rumi screwed up her eyes, no longer sleepy, and tried to remember.
There had been a tear in the honmoon, late, late at night. They’d followed the discordant notes downtown, to Cheonggyecheon, a small park built along the valley of a stream. The tear and the demons had both seemed unremarkable. The late hour and the high walls of the park had both seemed like boons, making it easy for them to conduct their business without fear of witnesses or casualties.
It was late; they didn’t fight demons next to natural waterways often; maybe that was why the Crocodylomorph demon had taken Rumi by surprise so easily.
She had no idea where it had come from—the stream? the bridge overhead?—only that its huge maw had found her before she could strike at it.
Everything after that was a blur. She remembered being swung around like an oversized chew toy. Stabbing the monster with her good arm. Being stripped out of her jacket. Zoey and Mira’s fury, a shinkal at her throat and fingers in her wounds.
A sob wracked Rumi’s chest.
This had always been a possibility, she reminded herself. She’d always known there was a chance that Mira and Zoey would kill her if they knew the truth; that was a big reason Celine had been so afraid for anyone to know.
The tears came faster. But Rumi herself had always thought– she had always believed–
Well, she’d been wrong, clearly. Zoey and Mira hated her (her heart throbbed); their weapons had made that very clear (her patterns throbbed too). Rumi lay in the borrowed bed in the makeshift infirmary, and wondered again what she was doing there. It didn’t make sense! Why bother bringing her here and patching her up? They should have slain her in the alley and been done with it.
Maybe she should worry less about what the girls were planning, and start thinking about her own plans. The Golden Honmoon was an impossibility now, at least for her generation. And oh- Rumi would never get to train the next generation of hunters with Mira and Zoey. She might not even live to meet them. She would never grow old with her girls, never retire to a little-but-not-too-little cottage by the seaside with them like they’d planned, never get to go to the bath house with them even once.
Rumi shook her head to force the thoughts out, and then groaned when the room spun and the pounding in her skull crescendoed a sforzando.
Plans. Plans, plans, plans. Rumi needed to pull herself together and think of one.
She wasn’t sure how much time passed before the door opened, and Mira and Zoey walked in.
Rumi hurriedly tried to wipe away the tears with her good hand, but something caught her wrist. She tugged uselessly, then looked down: she’d been handcuffed to the bedframe.
Zoey’s lip trembled at the sight, and Mira’s eyes watered, but neither made any move to approach her.
“First question: Are you Ryu Rumi?” Mira asked.
Rumi stared at them in confusion. “Yes?” Or at least, she tried to say yes. Unshed tears blocked her throat. She cleared her throat, wincing when the sound resembled a growl.
“Yes,” she croaked.
“Prove it,” Zoey demanded. “Tell us something only Rumi would know.”
Oh… they were hoping she was an imposter. If she was an imposter, that meant the real Rumi was still out there somewhere. A human Rumi, one who could be saved. Somehow, Rumi still wasn’t done being a disappointment that night.
Zoey was still waiting for her response. It hurt to see her so upset; in spite of everything, Rumi wanted to comfort her.
“Your favorite kind of turtle is a diamondback terrapin,” said Rumi softly, gazing into the maknae’s warm brown eyes. “You like them because they can live in either fresh or salt water, so they have the best of both worlds, and because every terrapin’s shell is unique.”
Instantly Zoey’s hard exterior crumpled. “Rumi?” she warbled, taking a step forward.
A new idea occurred to Rumi: if Mira and Zoey had thought she was an imposter, did that mean the weapons and the cruelty from before had been meant for someone else? Did they… was there hope that maybe…?
Mira’s hand shot out, blocking the maknae from approaching the bed. “Not so fast. Zoey shares turtle facts with our fans all the time. You could have read all that on Instagram.”
That was dumb. Rumi wanted to scream, How many demons do you know that can use Instagram?, but she bit her tongue. So much of their lives was in the public eye, so she would need to dig deep if she wanted to convince Mira.
Rumi closed her eyes, and thought back to her earliest memories of the prickly teenager who’d become one of her best friends.
“When we were trainees,” she began carefully. “You had a hard time accepting praise from our instructors, because your family only ever used back-handed compliments. You were always trying to find the hidden insult in their feedback. Also, you have a celebrity crush on Moonbyul.”
“Wo-o-ow, okay, those two proofs were not created equal,” Mira drawled, but her nonchalant tone was at odds with her rapid blinking.
“It really is you!” Zoey exclaimed, no longer capable of holding back. She was at Rumi’s bedside in a nano-second; she flung her arms around Rumi’s waist, carefully well-below her injuries, where she suddenly began to bawl.
“I’m so sorry I hurt you and threatened you,” she cried. “I thought you’d been replaced by a demon.”
Zoey didn’t hate her. Rumi’s shoulder still burned, and her head still pounded, but something in her chest loosened. She took a deep breath, and for the first time all evening, she let herself think that maybe her friends still wanted her around. Maybe they could even learn to tolerate her– her demonic parts.
“It’s okay,” Rumi soothed. It hurt like hell to move her injured arm, but Rumi made the effort anyway so she could pat Zoey’s hair.
Zoey leaned into her touch. “It’s not okay,” she protested tearily. “I basically tried to torture you. Let me make it up to you? Do you want water? Food? More pain meds? A shirt? You can borrow one of my halter tops, I’ll be right back.”
Rumi watched her run out of the makeshift infirmary, feeling incredibly off-kilter.
Mira was still hovering a foot away from the bed, uncharacteristically hesitant. It was so easy to think of Huntr/x as a unit, because they were usually so in sync with each other. It didn't matter whether they were onstage or not, they always found each other’s harmony…
But Mira and Zoey were still separate people. It was too much to ask that both of them would accept her. (Zoey could be a little out of pocket sometime. She was always doing questionable things like picking up frogs, talking to inanimate objects and, apparently, apologizing to half-demons. Mira was more level-headed.)
Rumi met her red-rimmed gaze, trying to decode the many emotions warring on her friend’s face.
“The Rumi I know,” Mira began in a low voice, “would never make a deal with Gwi-Ma.”
Rumi pulled back like she’d been slapped. She felt like she’d just been accused of being involved with the Burning Sun scandal; she’d never been so offended in her life.
“I didn’t! I would never! I-”
“Okay.”
“- okay?”
“That’s all I needed to know,” Mira confirmed, and then it was her turn to come forward, hug Rumi’s waist, and cry. The taller girl shook as she buried her face into Rumi’s abdomen.
“You’re not mad at me?” Rumi asked, desperately trying to make sense of the rapidly changing situation.
“No. Yes. I don't know, maybe later.”
“Don’t you have questions??”
Mira sniffed. “That can wait. I’m sorry for doubting you.”
Rumi was so lost. For the second time that night, one of her girls was crying into her midsection and apologizing to her when she was the one who had lied and kept this awful, unforgivable secret from them!
Zoey returned then, with tea, a clean shirt, a stuffed turtle, and a plate of fruit.
Mira let go of Rumi and scrubbed away her tears with her fists.
They then realized collectively that Rumi was still handcuffed to the bed.
“Ohmygosh, sorry!”
“Why do we even have these? Where did they come from?” Rumi wondered.
“They’re Gucci,” said Mira, unlocking them with a little diamond-encrusted key.
“Oh, of course. I should have realized.”
As soon as she was unshackled, Rumi’s good hand drifted to her head. Rubbing the base of her skull helped soothe the aching there, made her feel like she could think a little more clearly. Gingerly, with help from Mira and Zoey, she sat up. She tried not to flinch when they helped her into the shirt Zoey had brought: a wrap shirt held on with ties at the neck and back. It meant she didn’t have to jostle her injuries, but it left Rumi feeling exposed.
When they were done, Mira and Zoey sat on the bed with her, with the plate of fruit in between them, and Rumi’s patterns on full display.
“Don’t you have questions?” Rumi burst out.
“Yeah, actually—did you hit your head?”
“Maybe,” Rumi admitted. “I don’t actually remember.”
“Look at me?” Mira peered into Rumi’s eyes. “Pupils are even. How many fingers am I holding up?”
Rumi pushed away Mira's hand. “Three. Mira, I’m fine.” Exhausted, in pain, and barely able to keep up with everything that was happening, but otherwise basically fine.
Mira raised an eyebrow. Rumi sighed.
“What year is it?” asked Mira.
“2025,” Rumi answered dutifully.
“Who’s on the Music Top 10 Chart this week?”
“Us, Twice, FF4L, Hypur, SPF100, VENOMNOM… I forget the rest.”
“Good enough.”
“I bet your braid broke the fall,” said Zoey, reaching out to pet Rumi’s dragon braid appreciatively. It probably had—yet another reason for Rumi to appreciate her signature hairstyle. However, Rumi felt like they were ignoring the purple elephant in the room.
“Is that the only thing you’re going to ask me about? My head injury?”
“Yes,” Mira said shortly.
Rumi stared at her in disbelief, and then turned to Zoey.
Zoey’s fingers drummed a frantic little rhythm on her shin; she clearly had so many questions, but she wasn’t going to ask any of them.
“Ryu Rumi,” said Mira. “You almost died. You are going to eat your fruit and take these pills and get some rest. We can ask questions in the morning.”
Zoey nodded emphatically. “No matter what, we care about you!” she assured her. “No hard conversations until we can all sit on the couch and eat ice cream about it.
“There’s no reason we can’t do that right now!”
“Stores closed. Also, you literally can’t sit upright without help right now.”
“But-”
“Fruit. Bed.”
At 3:06 in the morning, Zoey appeared at her bedside.
“Rumi?” she whispered.
“I’m awake,” Rumi answered at a normal volume. She had been for hours, suspended in a state of exhaustion, but unable to sleep.
“What year is it?”
“Still 2025.”
Zoey’s sigh of relief sounded loud in the small dark room. “Hurray, you passed!” she whisper-cheered. “Do you need anything? Water? Help walking to the bathroom?”
“I’m fine. Thanks Zo.”
“Okay...”
In the dim light of the heart monitor, Rumi could just make out Zoey’s hesitation. The younger woman reached out blindly; her hand tapped lightly on the pillow, on Rumi’s hair, on her ear. Rumi was about to make a joke, when Zoey leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Get well soon.”
Rumi wondered if maybe she was asleep and dreaming after all.
‘In the morning’ turned into a day and a half later, after anxiety and pain kept Rumi up the entire night. Mira took one look at her in the morning and gave her a sedative* (actually just a lullaby she and Zoey sang, but through the power of the Honmoon, it worked).
At last, they were gathered on the couch with three pints of caramel-, ube-, and corn-flavored ice cream on the table in front of them, and they were ready to talk things out.
“I’m sorry you found out like this,” Rumi began, and then halted, unsure what else to say; that had been her main train of thought the last day and a half. Less of a train of thought, really, and more of a compact Kia Picanto.
“How did you want us to find out?” Zoey asked softly.
Rumi flinched. “I didn’t. I was hoping the Golden Honmoon would fix me and you’d never need to know."
Mira frowned. Zoey looked like she was about to vibrate off the sofa or start throwing things.
“Okay, there’s a lot to unpack there, but let’s focus on the ‘fixing’ part. Is something wrong with you???” asked Zoey
Rumi barked out a laugh. “Obviously!” she gestured harshly to the exposed patterns on her arms.
“But why do you have those? How did you get them?” Zoey pressed.
Rumi closed her eyes, like she couldn't bear to look at them. “The truth is…. I was born with them. My mother was Ryu Mi-yeong, that much is true, but my father…. He was a demon.”
The dramatic proclamation echoed across the living room.
“Oh... so you’re half-demon?”
Rumi winced. ‘Half-demon’ chafed, like an itchy sweater against bare skin. She couldn’t bear the other side of that coin, the implication that she was only half-human. However, for the sake of not making this conversation any harder than it needed to be, “Yeah, I guess you could put it like that.”
“Okayyyyy,” Mira said slowly, “so just to be clear—there’s no deal with Gwi-ma?”
“No deadly curse?” Zoey chimed in.
“No incurable demonic plague?”
“No radioactive skin fungus?”
Rumi blinked. “What? No, none of that.”
Zoey and Mira visibly slumped in relief. “Oh, thank God.”
Zoey pulled a rack of erlenmeyer flasks from an unknown location and tossed them over her shoulder, ignoring the subsequent sound of shattering glass and the suspicious yellow smoke cloud that ensued. “Guess we won’t be needing those anymore!” she said cheerfully.
Mira pulled out her phone and started deleting various pages in her notes app. “I had no idea how we were going to spin suddenly investing all our money into biomedical research to Bobby without freaking him out. Glad that’s a non-issue now.”
“I don’t understand?” said Rumi. “Why do you guys seem happy about this?”
“We thought you were dying!” Zoey burst out. “And/or about to be stolen away from us, and we just found out you’re not, of course we’re happy!”
“And, before that, we thought you were a demon imposter and that the real Rumi had been kidnapped or worse,” said Mira, voice thick with emotion.
Rumi felt her eyes tear up. Her girls loved her so much, even when she felt unlovable. They wanted her around, even now that they knew the truth about what she was.
She grabbed their hands. “I’m not going anywhere,” she promised.