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Rumi’s fifteen years old the first time she draws another person’s blood.
It stains the tip of her sword—a metal one for training—bright red and viscous with barely enough of it to trickle down the sharp edge. It’s Zoey’s blood, drawn from a shallow gash across her freckled cheek, and Rumi’s arm trembles as she lowers her blade.
Celine seems unbothered, and so does Zoey, honestly. She’s already laughing about it (‘Got me!’) while the dead weight of dread sinks into the pit of Rumi’s stomach. Mira’s taunting from the sidelines comes to an abrupt stop.
“Help me up, unnie?”
“Right—sorry!” Rumi curses under her breath.
She takes a step forward to give Zoey a hand, the tip of the sword dragging against the dirt, and when she glances down she sees how the blood seeps into the earth until a little spot of clay darkens. Zoey’s hand clasps around hers—it’s warm—then Rumi pulls.
She sees, with a wince, that the cut is much worse than she thought.
“I’ll have to patch it up,” Rumi promises, already tossing aside her practice sword to cup Zoey’s face—but then her hands freeze as they hover an inch above her skin.
“Rumi?”
“I—” Rumi stammers, her hands jerking back. “Maybe Mira can—”
“Rumi.” Celine calls from beneath the shade of the tree. “If you aren’t going to help her, then go again.”
Rumi goes for the sword.
Later that night, Rumi lays on her bed and thinks about how she’d never cut someone with a weapon before. Until today. Until Zoey.
Her window’s propped open to let the breeze in. She can see the dark silhouette of the tree they had been sparring beneath rustling as the wind howls.
She holds her arm up to stare at her hand.
It’s a perfectly normal hand.
She tells herself that demons aren’t the same as her. They have skin in sickly hues and purple marks—and she has those too, but hers are different. They’re not angry, or wretched. They’re just kind of there. Demons have patterns that glow and wrap around them like gnarled, constricting roots. And there’s the rest of them, too: the teeth, the forked tongues, the grotesque horns and the claws.
The claws.
The claws.
It’s unnerving how clearly she can see her hand in the dark. There’s barely any moonlight. But she likes what she sees, at least: her hand has tanned skin from all the training and the yard work Celine puts her on. It’s healthy. Flesh-colored and pinkish. Blood beneath it. She looks at its features: perfectly-trimmed nails, rounded and pretty.
It’s normal. She’s normal.
But if she ever grew claws, would they be sharp?
Would they leave a gash like the sword did to Zoey?
Mira is weaving a crown of wildflowers.
She picked the blooms herself, stolen from odd corners of the hanok, and it’s a beautiful thing, just like Mira. Zoey’s laying on one of Mira’s knees, scrolling through her phone, and it’s only when Mira lays the crown atop Zoey’s hair with forced indifference does Zoey sit up abruptly to coo at her.
Rumi plays with the hem of her t-shirt. Envy, envy.
A bit of rain comes and goes and the three of them take shelter beneath an overgrown tree. When it passes, Rumi wanders off to try her hand at making a crown of her own too. She struggles to find which flowers go together, and her movements aren’t elegant enough to weave them into a band without crushing their stems. It’s frustrating but she doesn’t want to ask for help, tossing the wilted bloom to the ground in petulance.
There are things she’s good at, she knows. Oftentimes her portion of their chores have her digging, or cutting things, or pulling apart the flimsy part of their fences and building them back up piece by piece. She’d like to try something different, though. To do something delicate for a change.
Instead, her hands are calloused and her nails have gone a bit overgrown. There is dirt beneath them.
She freezes.
There’s a sudden swell of panic so sharp she feels it twisting in her chest as her breathing picks up, because they look like—
They look a bit like claws.
Tonight’s incursion of demons aren’t very strong.
Celine is up ahead clearing out the worst of the group, leaving them with what Mira likes to call ‘leftovers’—laggards, easy pickings. It gives them room to breathe; space for errors. Just another training exercise—even this.
Mira overreaches and misses her mark. She still swings anyway, hitting a demon with the pole of her gok-do instead of the blade, then yells out at Zoey: “Catch!”
Zoey compensates and covers for her, watching the arc of the demon as it flies her way before sending three knives to its back. It’s gone in a puff of smoke before it even reaches the ground.
Rumi isn’t even really breaking a sweat as she cuts through two, three, four. She rides that high for a minute—that rush of strength and power and ruthlessness.
But then she hears a curse—panicked—and it’s Mira, crumpling over on herself by the side of the alley and cradling her ankle as she stumbles. Zoey manages the rest, but there’s a straggler near Rumi who thinks it’s being clever. It tries to slip through her line of defense by lunging closer to where it’s too awkward for her sword to reach—trying to get to Mira.
She doesn’t even realize she’s snarling until her palm comes into contact with its neck.
There’s a mark on its shoulder, bitterly reminding her of her own.
Rumi curls her fingers with crushing force until the frail demon is hanging a full foot from the ground. It gasps in her ever-tightening grip, terror in its eyes. The roles have been flipped and somehow, she’s perfectly fine with it. Let her have fangs. Let her have sharp, biting teeth.
Then she hears something zip by her ear—one of Zoey’s knives, there for a moment before disappearing into dust along with the demon that was in her grasp. She looks back quick enough to see Zoey’s frown.
“Zoey—”
“Mira’s hurt.” Zoey says curtly. “What are you doing?”
Rumi doesn’t answer, just rushes over until she’s kneeling down next to the both of them.
“Her ankle’s dislocated.”
“I’m fi—” Mira hisses.
“Don’t even say it.” Zoey cuts Mira off in admonition. The Honmoon is rippling at her fingertips already—instinct—ready to soothe, ready to fix. Despite Zoey’s obvious nerves, it comes easy for her—and it always has. It’s a good thing too, because Mira’s ankle is worrisomely pale. “I—I’m going to try to set it. Okay? Like Celine does sometimes.”
“Can I help?” Rumi offers, palms upturned.
Zoey hesitates, apologetic. “It’s careful work, Rumi.”
Right. It’s careful, delicate work. She closes her hands—dangerous and deadly—into fists and settles them on her lap. She waits, useless.
Zoey pushes down on Mira’s shin with one hand, then she cups her heel with the other. She takes a deep breath.
Mira scrambles for Rumi’s arm with a small, nervous: “Unnie?”
“Yes? Yeah?” Rumi leans in. “What do you need?”
Zoey mutters an apology but doesn’t stop. “One, two—”
“Will you—” Mira grits her teeth. “Will you hold my hand—?”
“—three!”
“You’re heavy.”
Mira snorts, though she sounds dreadfully weak. “Rude.”
Rumi wasn’t kidding—she is heavy, but it’s nice. Rumi carries her with ease, hoists her up on her broad back and wide shoulders, and she finds that it’s easier to not think about everything that just happened when Mira’s arms are coiled around her neck like this.
“I’m also, like, ninety-three percent sure I can walk.”
“Bullshit!” Zoey nags.
“Well, I’m a hundred percent sure that I’m not setting you down. Celine’s just up ahead.”
Her arms are looped beneath Mira’s thighs, her hands holding her steady. It’s late enough at night that they don’t have to worry too much about being seen, especially up the wooded hill where the hanok sits.
“What’s the plan here, then?” Mira drawls. Rumi can feel her breath fan out along her neck and shoulders as she speaks. “Are you going to carry me all the way home?”
“Of course.”
“Hmph.” Mira buries her face into the crook of Rumi’s neck, hiding away like she always does when she’s too stubborn to say thank you.
The longest tendril of purple on her body has made it down to her left elbow.
It’s a bit like an artery, branching out from her heart and creeping over her shoulder, crawling and crawling every day.
She hasn’t figured out if they feel like anything yet. Aside from the discoloration, everything is much the same. The patterns are just as warm and just as smooth as the rest of her; and when she shivers in the cold they rise up in goosebumps all the same.
She wonders if it will be different when the purple makes it past her knuckles to the tips of her fingers.
Will they become sharp?
Zoey falls from a tree and, naturally, they decide to turn it into a learning opportunity.
They sit on the grass beneath the shade of it, that same tree that looms outside of Rumi’s bedroom window, and Zoey offers up her own arm for practice after they call Celine to supervise.
“You need to stop the bleeding.” Zoey says. “You have to, like, you know, feel the vibes of it.”
Mira stares at her flatly. “Love you. But no, I don’t know.”
“The Honmoon isn’t a miracle worker.” Celine supplements, standing somewhere nearby and watching them. “All it does is help things along. Our bodies already know how to stitch itself together. Encourage it. And give it time to rest, still.” She pauses to look at Rumi, then at Mira, who’s still stewing over being stuck in a cast. “It comes easier for Zoey but I know the two of you can do it too.”
Rumi decides to go first.
She shuffles forward to inspect the laceration. It’s been cleaned and disinfected, though the blood still oozes out.
She starts by trying to visualize how Zoey had done it: the way the glowing threads floated between her knuckles, visibly dancing by her fingertips. It had woven itself into a loose patch, like gauze.
When Rumi lays her hand on Zoey’s arm she doesn’t even flinch. If it stings, Zoey doesn’t show it. It’s part of the job and she’s used to it by now.
Then Rumi remembers that she’d given her the very first one, back when they were sparring. Blood at the tip of her dirty, metal sword; seeping into the ground.
“Focus, Rumi.” Celine hovers.
“I am!” Rumi grits her teeth. Her hands tremble. I’m—”
Good at cutting, and digging, and tearing things down.
Every day, the purple along her arm creeps closer to her hands—her hands pressed into Zoey’s warm and untainted skin.
She remembers how it feels to crush cartilage between her fingers and thumb. She is afraid of it. She remembers that demons have sharp and pointed claws. She is afraid that she might too, one day.
How easy would it be to break skin?
She feels Celine step in closer behind her, hovering.
She needs to let go of Zoey.
“I’m trying.”
“Rumi-ya.”
Rumi looks up from her bowl of soup. “Hm?”
“Help me carry some soil,” Celine’s already turning away, expecting Rumi to follow out into the yard. “We’re going to start a flowerbed.”
There’s only a little over ten months left before they debut.
Three things are going to happen: first, they will lose their anonymity; second, they will be working more than they ever have before in their lives; and third, the demons will only keep coming.
It will be a two-pronged assault from then onwards—an industry of vicious vultures by day and literal monsters in the night. But they are also sharper than they’ve ever been before. These days they spend most of their time hunting—sometimes in Jeju, but more and more often out in Seoul where incursions happen with increasing frequency.
Rumi is good at killing them. Unsurprisingly.
It is quite literally her life’s work to be good at killing them.
Zoey is an expert at weaving the Honmoon by now—it soothes their aches, even in the middle of battle, thrumming and alive and settled on their skin. Mira beckons it around them, an imposing bulwark to keep them safe. A shield.
Rumi uses it to cut things down. As per usual.
She can sharpen the Honmoon into a pointed edge and set it loose; carving devastation in its wake. She’s come to terms with the fact that maybe all that she’s good for—to strike and snarl. It’s almost fitting, then, for her to have these patterns down her arm because isn’t that all that demons do anyway?
She’s useful, at least.
Rumi overhears them while she and Celine clean up after dinner.
They’re in the living room: Zoey’s on the couch while Mira’s on the floor, listening to her fondly.
“I swear—it works! My mom used to do it for me all them when I’d get a headache as a kid, and I had a whole lotta those, trust. Here, let me—”
Zoey grabs Mira’s hand and pries it open; though there isn’t really any resistance. Mira’s fingers are beautiful and slender, and they curl instinctively around Zoey’s stouter ones, lingering where they touch. Zoey takes her pointer finger and her thumb and pinches at the soft flesh at the base of Mira’s thumb. She seems to be applying steady, even pressure.
Rumi turns off the faucet so she can keep watching.
“I don’t feel any differently.” Mira deadpans.
“It’s been five seconds!” Zoey whines.
“Still waiting.”
“Okay, fuck you.” Zoey playfully shoves at Mira before laughing, but before she can let go, Mira is tangling their fingers. They slot together perfectly.
Rumi looks back to the sink. There’s a small bit of purple peeking out of her sleeve that she had pulled up to wash dishes. It’s the first time that it feels different—it stings, almost—like a burn from the inside out.
She wants to be near them. She wants to be touching them, too.
Her mind’s starting to play tricks on her. The shape of her hand warps beneath the flowing water, twisting into something she doesn’t recognize. Rumi begins to wash with fervor. The dishes. Her hands. Scrubbing at her arms.
Maybe the purple will wash off.
She lathers the soap even harder, scrubbing between the spaces of her knuckles.
Maybe she’ll be able to hold them, too, once her hands are safe and clean.
“Rumi.” Celine turns off the faucet. “Come outside with me.”
“They’re so small.” Rumi says in awe, sitting from a distance. “And they’ve come up so quickly.”
“Little sprouts.” Celine hums. “Just like you three were.”
“How soon before they bloom?”
“Sooner than I thought,” Celine replies contemplatively. “Take a look.” She urges Rumi, beckoning her to touch one of the sprouts.
“I might—”
“It will be fine.” Celine says with certainty.
They debut.
They hunt.
They are a massive success.
Rumi doesn’t like it when her stylists press long, black acrylics onto her fingernails but her fans love it and it fits her ‘look’, so it’s fine.
“Maybe they’ll understand.”
“No, Rumi. Nothing can change until your patterns are gone.”
Year after year, they climb higher. Rumi grows dizzy thinking about how far the fall might be. When they see the first flicker of the golden Honmoon, she feels the rush twice-over: hope and shame, crawling ever-faster up her throat and down her arm like they’re racing.
She wants to carry Mira on her back again, without feeling her patterns sting.
She wants to tuck a flower into Zoey’s ear without claws that might cut her.
God.
She just wants to stop lying to them.
They raise their weapons at her while she begs them to understand.
But what else were they supposed to do? There she is—a demon.
Purple marks—scathing and angry—wrapping around herself like gnarled and constricting roots and choking out her hope.
(Like her hand around that demon’s throat, so many years ago.)
Sharp teeth, slitted eyes, and a tongue that had lied and lied and lied so much it may as well have been forked like a serpent’s.
And when she reaches out to them—
“Don’t leave!”
—she has claws.
She’s kneeling on the dirt, offering her starlit sword to her mother. Her arms don’t even tremble as she holds it up, because, finally—
“Do it.”
—a good fucking use for her cursed hands.
Celine takes the cloth off her own back to wrap it around Rumi.
“I can’t.”
There’s a lull in the afternoon, one that Rumi decides to spend sprawled out beneath the overgrown tree in their yard.
Tomorrow, they’re moving to Seoul.
She holds up her hand against the sunlight filtering through the leaves, just staring at it again.
And then the sun goes dark, covered by a curtain of pink hair looming from above, then a little ways to the side she sees Zoey crouch down next to her. Mira drops something onto her chest. Something small and light and made of paper—a folded crane?
“Zoey and I are making little animals.”
“Origami!” Zoey drops a turtle right onto her nose and laughs.
“We’re going to make, like, a million.”
“Then hide them around the hanok for Celine to find in strange places because I know that woman is going to be all sad and mopey when we leave—”
“Join us?” Mira asks tenderly.
“I’m already looking up how to make tiny purple tigers.” Zoey’s hand wraps around her forearm to pull her up.
“I just—I’m not sure if I—”
“Come on.” Mira’s actually pouting—she’s pouting! “You never hang out when we make stuff.”
“But I break stuff all the time. Remember your poor pottery ducks?”
“I thought their strangely-shaped tails gave them character.” Zoey giggled.
“Worried that your big strong hands are going to be too much for arts and crafts?” Mira smirks.
It makes Rumi flush under the teasing, but she isn’t exactly wrong.
“These little softies?” Zoey asks incredulously, grabbing Rumi’s arms and shaking them. “These little softies that you use to carry Mira back like a princess when she’s whiny about walking on her bad ankle?”
“Hey.” Mira flusters.
“These same softies? My favorite hand-holding stress toys? The ones you’ve been using to cut fruit for us when we’ve been mopey all day?”
“I get it—I get it!” Rumi laughs.
“Oh well.” Zoey sighs dramatically, looking at Mira. “I guess she doesn’t want to join us for folded little animal time. I guess I’ll go carry those heavy boxes in the house myself.”
Rumi’s already getting up.
“What boxes? I can get them for you. Where do you want me to—?”
“Boxes piled suspiciously close to the living room. By the coffee table. Where Mira and I want to make silly folded little guys—”
Mira cackles.
It’s only when she’s started walking to the hanok does Rumi realize she’s been got—flushing red to her ears.
“That’s mean!”
Rumi manages to make a misshapen little tiger.
She looks up at Zoey. “Do you remember when we were younger? We sparred, and I…”
Hurt her..
“Oh! Oh I do yes,” Zoey nodded absentmindedly, tongue poking at the edge of her lips as she tried to give her pink paper bat a tail. Rumi isn’t entirely sure if bats have tails. “We didn’t know each other super well yet! That was, like, a formative memory of yours for me.”
“Was it?”
“Mhm,” Zoey nods, setting down the creature, pleased with herself. “You were hella worried. You pulled me up so gently and checked on my wound and I thought it was really—I don’t know.” Zoey’s ears turn red. “Sweet.”
Rumi blinked. “Huh.”
Her flowerbed with Celine was in full bloom by late spring.
“They turned out so pretty.”
Rumi’s sitting in front of it, her hands draped over her knees, while Celine gently mists the petals and the leaves. They planted three: camellias, cosmos, and pansies.
“Of course they did.” Celine says, pleased. “You’ve cared for them carefully.”
Something about that takes Rumi’s breath away. She runs her knuckles over the petals of the freshest bloom.
“Sometimes,” Celine sinks down beside her, staring at a bandage covering one of Rumi’s more recent cuts—from fighting. “I wish I didn’t…”
Rumi turns to her. “Hm?”
Celine just shakes her head.
(Oftentimes her portion of their chores have her digging, or cutting things, or pulling apart the flimsy part of the fences and building them back up piece by piece.)
She tore the Honmoon apart. They’ll put it back together.
She sings.
She serenades them home.
Rumi traces the light scar along Zoey’s cheek, nearly ten years old now.
“It never healed,” Rumi mumbles. “All this time.”
“It’s healed, unnie.” Zoey laughs. “Just a scar.”
“Just a scar.”
She runs the pads of her fingertips over the shape of it.Then she cradles Zoey’s jaw—barely-there touches—feeling the small, invisible hairs there and marveling at her freckles.
She presses her hand into Zoey’s face to cup it gently. Rumi sighs in relief so strong it nearly hurts when she feels the warmth of her skin—especially when Zoey nuzzles into her palm and leaves it a soft, lingering kiss.
“I always thought it was kind of badass,” Zoey admits with a grin.
“I kind of do, too.” Mira’s laughter is a rumble against Rumi’s chest.
She’s pressed in between herself and Zoey, buried into the crook of Rumi’s neck. She can feel Mira’s breath washing over her collarbones—tickling the skin where her patterns first started. She grows warm from her heart and then outwards to the tips of her other hand—the sharper one—and it ends where her talons are pressed against Mira’s sides.
“Feels nice,” Mira mumbles, sleepy.
Rumi presses her nose into the crown of Mira’s head and mumbles: “Does it?”
“Mhm,” Mira slots their fingers together. “Safe.”
Rumi exhales again, shaky.
“And a bit ticklish.”
For the third time in her life, Rumi holds her hand up and above herself and looks.
It’s perfectly normal. At least for today. Rounded nails and a ring on her finger. Sometimes, when she’s angry, it grows long, violet, and sharp.
She’s okay with that.
Her clumsy hands are good for digging, and cutting things, and holding her lovers close and tenderly.