Archive of Our Own

“No!”

She can’t hear her own scream over the roar of Gwi-Ma’s flames, the shrieks of mindless demons all around her. She feels her throat tear, tastes blood—but she’s been tasting blood for what feels like hours. She sees her own hand reaching out, straining, straining, towards her eomma, even though she knows it’s too late, even though she can see the whites of her eomma’s blank, staring eyes—

There’s a shout of her name. She whirls on Jinu with a soundless snarl—this is his fault—

He shouts her name again. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry for everything—”

She’ll fight. She’ll fight him and Gwi-Ma and all of them with everything she has until they kill her like they killed her eomma—

“We can stop this!” Jinu screams, fending off her slashes, her frenzied rage. “Please, we can stop this, we can stop him—you just have to trust me—”

“Trust you?” she tries to say, but nothing comes out but a rasp of blood.

“Please!” Jinu says again. “Just—just sing, sing with me—trust me, it’ll—you’ll be able to lock Gwi-Ma away forever—”

Gwi-Ma, far enough away that she’s able to keep her focus on Jinu, bellows with rage—and that’s what makes her pause long enough to listen. If Gwi-Ma doesn’t want to let Jinu do this—

“Just sing with me,” Jinu breathes, and she doesn’t know how she can even hear him but suddenly it’s like they’re in a bubble of silence, and suddenly her bleeding throat no longer pains her.

“Sing with me,” Jinu says one last time—

And she does.

“Hurry up!”

“I thought this was supposed to be relaxing,” Mira huffed. “Didn’t you say you wanted me to take a break from working?”

“This isn’t working!” Zoey chirped from up ahead, irritatingly not at all out of breath.

“It is very much working,” Mira said, grunting as she braced her foot on a rock and pushed herself up. “Is this even the path?”

“This isn’t your work,” Zoey corrected. “Because your work is sitting hunched over a desk all day ruining your eyesight even more than it already is.”

Mira wrinkled her nose to adjust her glasses. When that didn’t work, she pushed them up with a very specific finger. Zoey laughed, which Mira would never admit had been the end goal of the action. She huffed again, and said, “You know there’s a reason why I spend so much time—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zoey said. “Med school this, med school that, blah blah blah—” She turned abruptly, and Mira stopped short, suddenly nose-to-nose with Zoey—or more like chin-to-nose, since Zoey was still looking up at Mira despite being higher on the incline than her. Mira briefly got distracted by Zoey’s freckles, both the ones scattered across her nose and cheeks and the darker specks of black-brown in her eyes.

“Are you even listening?” Zoey said, but she sounded amused more than irritated.

“Totally,” Mira lied.

“Great!” Zoey said. “In that case I’m thinking marshmallow jjajangmyeon for dinner tonight, and I wanted to try hot sauce hotteok tomorrow—”

“Uh, ew, no, what?”

“I said I wanted to cook for the next week!”

“Absolutely not.”

Zoey grinned at her. “You weren’t listening.”

“I was totally listening!” Mira protested.

Zoey laughed, and said, “What I actually said was that you can take a break every now and then, you know.”

Mira opened her mouth to continue her protestations, then closed it, and adjusted her glasses again. They were sliding down her sweaty nose—why Zoey had decided to drag her on this hike during the lead-up to the hottest months of summer, Mira had no idea. “I know,” she said. “I just can’t afford to—”

“Yes you can,” Zoey said, gentle but firm, booping Mira’s nose and causing her glasses to slide yet again. Before Mira could splutter indignantly, Zoey turned around and skipped further up the questionable path, saying, “Six less hours of studying isn’t going to make you fail your exams! They’re not even for another, what, month?”

“They start in three and a half weeks,” Mira grumbled. “Six less hours could totally make a difference.” But she followed Zoey anyway (because she’d follow Zoey anywhere), and added, “You could have at least picked a flatter hike.”

“You gotta work your muscles to keep your brain fed!” Zoey said.

“That’s not how it works.”

“Totally how it works,” Zoey said, then yelped as she tripped, her arms windmilling as she teetered on the edge of the definitely-not-a-sanctioned-path.

“Zoey!” Mira cried. She lunged forward to snag Zoey’s wrist, but only succeeded in getting dragged along too. They toppled into and then through a bush, crashing and rolling down the hillside through the underbrush. Mira was confident she hit about a gajillion rocks before they skidded to a stop, thankfully in what appeared to be a small patch of grass instead of at the bottom of a cliff. For a moment, the only sound was their panting and the distant chirp of a bird (a magpie, maybe?), and then Zoey said, “Okay, so maybe that wasn’t technically a path.”

Mira groaned, and threw one arm over her eyes—glasses-less, because of course her glasses had fallen off. “Zoeyyy.”

“I wander around places like this all the time!” Zoey said. “I was just too distracted by your sweet ass, so I tripped.”

Mira lifted her arm to raise an eyebrow at her friend. “You were literally in front of me.”

“So maybe I was trying to use sex-ray vision,” Zoey said, goofy leer visible despite Mira’s blurry vision.

“I can’t stand you,” Mira informed her, then pushed herself into a sitting position, inspecting her clothes for tears. “You know, we’re lucky we’re not dead.”

“Aw, it’s not that bad,” Zoey said, then hissed in pain.

Mira tensed, attention zeroing in on Zoey to find her poking at a sluggishly bleeding scrape on her elbow. “Stop touching it,” Mira ordered, scooting closer. “Did you bring a first aid kit?”

“Uh,” Zoey said.

“Oh my god,” Mira said, rolling her eyes. “Okay, I’m going to clean this as best I can with what we have and get it to stop bleeding, and then you’re going to find my glasses and pay for a replacement pair if they’re broken, and then we’re going home. Okay? If you want me to take another break I’ll be happy to just sit on our couch and read a book.”

“Aw, but we’re having so much fun!” Zoey said, grinning broadly.

“You’re lucky you’re so cute,” Mira said without thinking, then ducked her head and hoped the warmth in her cheeks wasn’t visible. “Gimme your water bottle.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Zoey chirped.

Thankfully, Zoey did manage to find Mira’s glasses, and while one lens was scratched, they’d miraculously managed to survive the tumble. Zoey teased Mira, saying it was because she had old lady coke bottle glasses and the lenses were too thick to break on a plain old rock, and Mira just rolled her eyes and plopped her glasses back onto her nose.

“Home,” she said. “I need a shower.”

“Okay, fine,” Zoey said, drawing the words out. “But we should do this again sometime. After final exams?”

“Try never,” Mira said, squinting up at the hill they’d fallen down. “Should we climb back up to the fake path?”

“Let’s just go around!” Zoey said, and struck out into the bushes.

“I feel like that’s where we went wrong last time,” Mira said, but again, she followed.

She ended up a few steps behind Zoey, so when she heard the gasp, she had no idea what Zoey had seen to make her react. Knowing her best friend, it could be anything from a cool bug to a whole-ass tiger, so Mira quickened her pace and said, “Zo? You okay?”

“Oh my god Mir this is so cool!” Zoey cried. “Gaja gaja gaja!”

She reached back and grabbed hold of Mira’s wrist, yanking, and Mira yelped and kept her eyes on her feet, hopping over tree roots and stones to follow at Zoey’s breakneck pace. “Zoey!” she said. “Slow down!”

Zoey stopped as abruptly as she’d started, and Mira nearly crashed into her back, managing to stop herself just in time. She peered past Zoey to see what had caught her attention, and blinked at the sight of what appeared to be a shrine.

“Whoa,” Zoey breathed.

“Yeah,” Mira said, because she did have to admit the little clearing and its ancient-looking shrine were cool as hell. It was run-down—clearly uncared for. The old wooden structure was covered in moss, as were the cobbled stones surrounding it. Oddly, though, there was one fixture of the shrine that appeared newer than the rest: a sword, sticking up out of a small stone base, ropes and talismans looped around the grip.

“Someone must have put that in after the fact,” Zoey said. “I wonder how they got it in there.”

“Hm,” Mira said, nudging her scratched glasses further up her nose and squinting at the sword. It was much better kept than the rest of the shrine, with only a bit of moss and plant growth around it. The bronze of the hilt was shining brightly, the constellations etched into the blade clear and unmarred. The metal itself was almost iridescent, pinks and blues catching the dappled light filtering through the leaves as Mira tilted her head this way and that. It was, honestly, beautiful.

“I’m gonna take it,” Zoey said, releasing Mira and stepping confidently towards the sword.

“What?” Mira said, blinking, a little dazed, before she registered what Zoey had said and repeated more urgently, “What? Zoey, no! It’s a freaking ancient shrine in the middle of the woods, are you trying to offend someone?”

“It’s fiiine!” Zoey said. “Like I said, someone obviously just stuck this in there way more recently. I mean, c’mon, this can’t have been here for longer than a few months, look at it!”

“Okay, but,” Mira said, hurrying after her friend. “That means someone was here a few months ago, and put it there, and might want it back.”

“You snooze, you lose!” Zoey said in English, and before Mira could ask her what the hell “snooze” meant, Zoey was easily slipping the ropes off the hilt of the sword, then closing her hand around the grip and tugging. The blade must have slid free more easily than she expected, because she stumbled back, and Mira had to catch her, only narrowly avoiding getting slashed in the face by the flailing blade. “Zoey,” Mira said, warning.

“Oops!” Zoey said, grinning brightly over her shoulder. “No harm done! C’mon, let’s get this bad boy home.”

“I really think you should put it back,” Mira said, eyeing the yellow and red talismans now lying limp on the mossy ground.

“It’ll be fiiine.” Zoey righted herself, then took off her backpack and rummaged around in it. “Did you bring a sweatshirt or something? We should probably cover this up.”

“So no one sees the obviously stolen sword we’re carrying around?” Mira said flatly, but she was already taking off her backpack. “And why would I bring a sweatshirt when I was already sweating enough to fill a swimming pool in the air conditioned car?”

“Thanks!” Zoey said, taking the thin sweatshirt Mira handed over. “I dunno, but I like that you’re always prepared!”

Clearly not prepared enough, Mira thought, watching Zoey wrap the shining blade in Mira’s sweatshirt. Not prepared for a tumble through bushes and over rocks, and not prepared for sword thievery from an ancient shrine.

But…

Well, it wasn’t like the spirits of their ancestors had jumped out to scold them or possess them or anything. In fact, the shrine looked more undisturbed now, without the new-ish sword, than it had before—and Zoey was right that someone must have put the sword there recently. Now the biggest concern was someone coming back for the obviously expensive sword and realizing it was missing. There were definitely some moral issues here, but hey, if someone was willing to leave a bright, shiny sword in the middle of the woods relatively close to some hiking trails (Mira thought; she wasn’t actually sure how far off the path they’d wandered), they kind of deserved to have it stolen.

“Ready!” Zoey said, standing back up and hiking her backpack further up on her back. The sword was now sticking out of it, covered in Mira’s sweatshirt, and Mira wondered, a bit disgruntled, if the blade was sharp enough to cut the fabric.

“For the record,” she said, “I still think this is a bad idea.”

Zoey patted her arm, then strode off in the direction they’d come. “The record hears and dismisses. Let’s go!”

Mira rolled her eyes with a sigh, and followed Zoey yet again.

The best part of a good hike was the absolute banger sleep the following night. Zoey would bet a week’s pay that Mira would absolutely pass out and maybe even sleep through her alarms, which Zoey would probably catch an earful over, but hey, Mira always woke up way earlier than she needed to for class.

It was kind of crazy, how well they got along. Considering they didn’t have a whole lot in common and frankly on first glance Mira was very similar to the kinds of people who’d hated Zoey in high school. But that was judging a book on its cover, and while externally Mira seemed like a very cool, collected, totally normal person, inside she was a wacky softy who’d desperately needed someone to break down her walls when they’d first met.

It had been crazy luck of the draw—they’d both ended up needing a new place to stay for various reasons (Zoey’s spur-of-the-moment decision to move to Korea from the states, and Mira’s shitty parents cutting her off right before the end of her previous year of med school), and had moved in together without ever having met before. The first week had been awkward, with Mira barely saying two words to Zoey and Zoey yammering on anxiously as she was wont to do, but then Zoey had walked in on a very tense phone call between Mira and her mother, and, at Mira’s frozen stare, had blinked, then walked over to their tiny, rickety table and knocked over first one chair, then the other. Mira had stared at her for another moment, then said, “Sorry, Eomeoni, I should really see what that is,” hung up the phone, and breathed, “Thank you.”

“No prob,” Zoey said. “Just repay the favor next time my eomma calls.”

And that had been that.

So yeah, Zoey was super lucky, and everything they didn’t have in common was just one more thing to listen to the other talk about. Mira was the first person who’d ever really just listened. Sometimes Zoey still felt like it was a trick.

But hey, she’d come out with Zoey on a hike in the middle of nowhere and had been a really good sport about it, and now Zoey was flopping onto her bed with a sigh of contentment, having had the world’s best shower and about to have the world’s best sleep.

There was a soft knock on her door. “Zo?”

“Don’t come in, I’m naked!” Zoey said.

Mira scoffed, and pushed the door open, poking her head in. “Just wanted to check on your elbow. Need a bandage?”

God, Mira was such a softy. And Zoey had entirely forgotten about the scrape she’d gotten. She twisted her arm awkwardly to peek at it, and said, “Huh. I think it started bleeding again in the shower, maybe?”

Mira rolled her eyes, pushed the door further open, and entered with their little first aid box. “You’re a disaster, you know that?”

“Maybe I just wanted you to kiss it better,” Zoey said, batting her eyelashes.

“You’re so annoying,” Mira said, and Zoey drank in the faint pink tinge to her cheeks and bit back a small sigh. One of these days, one of them was going to act on the unspoken attraction between the two of them. Because the thing was, Zoey was so supremely confident that Mira was almost as down bad for Zoey as Zoey was for Mira, it was just that…

Well, Mira was the first real friend Zoey had ever had. And she’d be happy just being friends forever, if that was what Mira wanted.

“This is gonna sting,” Mira murmured.

“Give it to me straight, doc,” Zoey said. “How long do I have to live?” She yelped as Mira gently pressed the scrape with a piece of gauze, and said, “Just kill me now!”

“Drama queen,” Mira said, snorting. “There. Done. Let me just put a bandage on it.”

“Thanks, Mir,” Zoey said, unable to stop a soft smile. “You’re my hero, you know that?”

“Shut up,” Mira said, the pink deepening. Zoey giggled, and obeyed, preferring to just watch Mira work. She was going to be a great doctor, Zoey knew. Absolutely a pediatrician, because again, under the admittedly sometimes chilly exterior: total softy.

“There,” Mira said again, lightly patting Zoey’s elbow.

Zoey pouted. “No kiss?”

Mira heaved a sigh, then gently lifted Zoey’s arm, one hand just above her elbow, one at her wrist, and pressed a featherlight kiss to the bandage. “Happy?” she murmured, glancing up at Zoey through her eyelashes. She was wearing her nicer glasses—she’d worn her chunkier spare pair for the hike, which had clearly been a good idea considering the scratched lens. The light of Zoey’s lamp glittered off the gold wire frames, and for once, Zoey was struck speechless, and she just nodded.

Mira cleared her throat a bit awkwardly, releasing Zoey’s arm. “Well,” she said. “Goodnight. Thanks for, um—making me take a break.”

And then she was gone, before Zoey could say so much as, “You’re welcome.”

Zoey huffed a laugh to herself, and fell back into her mattress. They were working on it. Zoey was working on believing Mira actually wanted to hear what she had to say, and Mira was working on believing Zoey actually cared for her.

Zoey completed her nightly ritual (that being messing around on her phone for at least a couple hours before going to sleep), then reached over to turn off her lamp and caught sight of her backpack, leaning against the wall with the fabric-wrapped sword sticking out of it. For a moment, Zoey felt the urge to go over and unwrap it, to just look at the sword, scrape off the bits of clinging moss, trace the constellations and try to name them. It was the same urge that had nudged her to take the sword in the first place, because yeah, Mira was right, it was kind of a bad idea to take it, either because disturbing shrines was a big no-no, or because the sword clearly belonged to someone who’d put it there semi-recently. But…

Well, Zoey had no regrets. If someone came looking for the sword, easy, she’d put it back. But she got the sense that whoever had put it there wasn’t going to come back to it. Zoey wasn’t even sure she’d be able to find the place again, honestly, and if someone had shown up just to stab a beautiful sword into some rocks and not even try to clean up the shrine, well…

Okay, so maybe Zoey felt a little bad. Maybe she’d convince Mira to drive her out there again, so she could find the shrine and tend to it a bit, or at least see what it was a shrine to.

Zoey flicked off her lamp and settled into her mattress with a sigh. That would be a problem for Future Zoey—Mira had final exams coming up, and this had been pretty much the last day she had free. There was no way Zoey would be able to convince her to drive another four hours until after her exams were done. But maybe then, she thought drowsily, already drifting off.

“Excuse me.”

Zoey didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but it was definitely not long enough. She rolled over and stuck one arm under her pillow, spreading her legs to sprawl wide and get more comfortable, ignoring whatever had half-woken her.

A throat cleared; a hair harder: “Excuse me.”

“Mm?” Zoey said, cracking open one eye. Hadn’t she turned off her lamp…?

…Oh.

Oh, okay, that was a whole ass ghost.

Zoey blinked once, twice, rubbed at her gritty eyes to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

Then she screamed.

Instantly, she heard a shout and a muffled thump from Mira’s room, then a scramble, a crash, and thudding footsteps. Zoey’s bedroom door slammed open, revealing Mira, a rumpled shirt on backwards and inside out, her hair a mess, no glasses on, wielding her own bedside lamp like a club. “What’s happening?” she yelled.

“Ghost!” Zoey yelled back, pointing.

Said ghost had its—her?—arms crossed, a rather severe frown on what part of her face was visible underneath her gat. “I’m not a ghost,” she said.

“What the fuck!” Mira yelped, and swung the lamp. It went straight through the ghost, who shot Mira an unimpressed stare. There was a brief pause, and then Mira said, “Okay, yeah, I should’ve guessed that wouldn’t work.”

“Your shirt’s on backwards,” Zoey said faintly.

“Yeah?” Mira said. “You try pulling on the nearest article of clothing the next time I wake you up screaming bloody murder.”

Zoey strove in vain not to think about Mira sleeping totally topless, and said, “Hey, that’s rude, what if this ghost was bloody murdered?”

“I’m not a ghost,” the ghost said again.

“Then what the fuck are you?” Mira demanded.

“A spirit,” the ghost said.

“Oh, like that makes all the difference!” Mira said, throwing up her arms (one still holding her lamp).

“It does,” the ghost—spirit—said. “As a spirit, I protect my shrine, and hold back the forces of Gwi-Ma. Without my presence, the seal is weakened. I must humbly request that you return me to my shrine immediately.”

Uh.

What?

“What the fuck?” Mira said again, a little more calmly this time. “What the fuck does that mean?”

The spirit gestured to something—

Oh.

Oh, shit.

To Zoey’s backpack, and the fabric-wrapped sword.

“Oh, shit,” Zoey said. “You’re the sword.”

“Yes,” the spirit said.

Which made about as much sense as anything—that was to say, kind of none. Zoey didn’t know how a girl was a sword, but she also didn’t know how a girl was a spirit, so. She also didn’t know how she was going to get back to the shrine, because—

“Absolutely not,” Mira said, pointing at Zoey like she knew what Zoey was about to ask.

“But Mir!” Zoey pleaded.

“No,” Mira said. “I already lost enough time today and please don’t take that the wrong way, I had a mostly lovely time except when we nearly fell off a cliff, and I love spending time with you but I am not driving two hours and then wandering around in the woods getting lost just to put a magic sword back where we shouldn’t have taken it from in the first place and then driving two hours back. Not until after my exams.”

Zoey grimaced apologetically at the spirit. “Can it wait a month?”

The spirit hesitated, then sighed (did she even need to breathe?) and said, “Must it?”

“Unless you can find a taxi that’ll go out that far and wait for you,” Mira said. “I’m sorry, Zo, but I really can’t.”

“I know, I know,” Zoey said. “Yes. It must.”

The spirit sighed again. “Very well. But I won’t be able to return to my dormant form until I’m returned to my shrine.”

“Wait wait wait,” Mira said. “So you’re saying we’re going to have a ghost—”

“I’m not a ghost!”

Mira ignored her. “—haunting our apartment for a month?”

“It’s that or bring her back now,” Zoey said.

Mira pinched the bridge of her nose with the hand that wasn’t still holding her lamp. “You have to get a driver’s license.”

“Not in the next month I don’t,” Zoey said. “Or I guess not in the next month I can’t. It’ll be fine! Just like having a third roommate!” She turned to the spirit and said, “So, do we get to know your name?”

The spirit opened her mouth, then went very still, and closed it. “I,” she said, faltering for the first time. “I don’t…remember.”

“Whoa,” Zoey said. If she’d just said she didn’t have one, maybe Zoey would have assumed that sword-spirits just didn’t have names, but “I don’t remember” had a very different vibe from “I don’t have one.”

“Are you sure you have one?” Mira asked, apparently having a similar thought process as Zoey.

“I must have,” the spirit said. “I was…I was human, once. I must have been.”

Zoey exchanged a look with Mira—though who knew how much of it her friend could see, without her glasses. “Well,” she said. “I’m Zoey, and that’s Mira. Maybe we can help you remember your name!”

“Mm,” the spirit said.

“I’m going back to bed,” Mira announced. “Maybe this has all been a horrible nightmare.”

“Rude!” Zoey said. “Fine, go to bed, you big grump. You’re so boring.”

“And you have work in the morning,” Mira reminded her.

“I’ve survived on all-nighters before,” Zoey said, waving a hand. “Go sleep. We’ll keep it down.”

“Hm,” Mira said, giving the spirit a suspicious look. “Scream again if you get possessed.”

“I don’t possess people,” the spirit said, sounding insulted.

“Just inanimate objects?” Mira said. “Okay, Zo, scream if your desk gets possessed.”

The spirit huffed, but before she could say anything Mira was already leaving, Zoey’s door closing quietly behind her in an inverse of the way she’d banged it open. Zoey smothered a giggle with one hand, then scooted back on her bed, grabbing her pillow and hugging it in her lap. “You can sit, if you want,” she said.

The spirit hesitated again, though this pause seemed less reluctant and more uncertain. “Right,” she said, but made no move to sit.

Zoey wondered if she’d pass through anything she tried to sit on or move, but then she could just sit on the floor—and then something struck her, and she said carefully, “You’re not very used to being human-shaped anymore, huh?”

The spirit bristled, then deflated, then nodded.

“Well,” Zoey said. “You also don’t have to sit if you don’t want to. Whatever’s comfortable, okay?”

“Right,” the spirit said again, hesitated a moment longer, then gingerly began lowering herself into a stiff kneeling position. Zoey tried not to pull a face, because hey, if some people found sitting like that comfortable Zoey wasn’t going to judge them.

“So,” she said, clapping her hands lightly. “You don’t remember your name?”

The spirit shook her head. “No.”

“Do you remember anything about being human?”

She frowned. “Just…just the end.”

Well, that was vague and ominous. “Okay,” Zoey said, drawing the word out. “Do you think looking at the sword would give us any clues?”

“Maybe?” the spirit said. “I doubt it. Also I doubt I’d be able to touch it, in this form.”

“Right,” Zoey said, climbing off her bed. “Do you mind me touching it?”

“You already have,” the spirit said dryly, and Zoey’s cheeks burned.

“Right,” she mumbled again. “Sorry about that. I, um. We thought someone had put the sword there recently. It’s so clean!”

“No,” the spirit said. “I assume it has something to do with the magic binding me to that place.”

“So how bad is it, that you’re not there?” Zoey asked, sliding the sword out of her backpack, plopping cross-legged in front of the spirit, and starting to carefully unwrap Mira’s thankfully intact sweatshirt.

“Not ideal,” the spirit said. “But…I can tell there’s some time. I’ve…clearly been there for a long time, based on what I see in this room. I assume the seal has built up, over the years.”

“Yeah, it’s a little weird that I can understand you if you’re a like, centuries-old ghost,” Zoey said. “Sorry! Spirit, not ghost.”

“I suppose ghost kind of also applies,” the spirit grumbled. “I did die to fulfill the ritual, sort of.”

“You’re so cryptic, it’s fascinating,” Zoey said, tossing Mira’s sweatshirt aside. “There. Wow, the constellations are beautiful.”

“Mm,” the spirit said. Her eyes were fixed on the sword—fixed on herself, Zoey supposed. Zoey wondered if she’d ever really seen it before. Zoey was so intrigued by this, even if she was probably going to have a peak crashout in a few hours once she was a little less sleep-deprived. She inspected the grip, guard, and pommel, but found no handy Hangul, not even ancient script or anything, inscribed anywhere on the sword.

“That’s a bust,” she said. “Spark any memories?”

“No,” the spirit said quietly. “I remember three names, but I know they aren’t mine.”

“You mentioned the forces of Gwi-Ma,” Zoey said. “Is that a person?”

“The demon king,” the spirit said. “One of the three names I remember. The shrine and seal are meant to hold his armies back from the human world.”

This definitely sounded like the plot of a video game, but Zoey couldn’t exactly say, “No way, I don’t believe you, this is totally fake,” because, well—there was a ghost-spirit-whatever-the-fuck sitting on her bedroom rug right now, and Zoey could see her own bedside table through the spirit’s chest, so this was all very much real. Hoo, Zoey wanted to tell her coworkers at the aquarium about this tomorrow, but that would probably be a bad idea.

“Well,” she said. “We’ve gotta find something to call you. Should we just start listing names and see what sticks?”

“If you want,” the spirit said. She seemed deeply uncomfortable, her gaze still on the sword, but Zoey had never known when to stop talking, and there wasn’t really another option other than putting the sword out in the living room so she could go back to sleep without ghostly eyes staring at her all night.

Okay, so this was a little bit creeping Zoey out.

“Let’s do it!” she said. “I’ll pull up a baby-naming website.”

“A baby-naming what?”

Zoey grinned. This was going to be fun.

Usually, when Mira got up in the morning to make breakfast before class, Zoey was still asleep. She didn’t start work until an hour after Mira started class, so usually she was just waking up as Mira was leaving the house. But the morning after what Mira had half convinced herself was a crazy dream, Mira emerged from her room to find Zoey sitting at the table with a cup of coffee, a moss-free sword, and an awkward, formal ghost.

“Mira!” Zoey said, grinning past drooping eyelids. “Meet Rumi!”

“Rumi,” Mira repeated, trying not to sound hostile.

“Yep!” Zoey said. “We looked through baby-naming websites and Rumi jumped out at her. We think mayyybe it was her real name?”

“Right,” Mira said, squeezing her eyes shut and reaching under her glasses to massage the bridge of her nose. “Okay. So I wasn’t hallucinating last night.”

“Nope!” Zoey said. “Unless we’re having a joint hallucination, which would be kind of cool. I guess it’s possible there’s like. A gas leak in the building or something.”

“I don’t think that would cause hallucinations, I think that would cause death,” Mira said. “Do you want breakfast?”

“Yes please! Rumi?”

Mira raised an eyebrow. She was fairly confident ghosts—or spirits, whatever—couldn’t eat.

“Oh,” Rumi said. “I…am not hungry. And probably wouldn’t be able to eat whatever you make anyway.”

“Oh yeah,” Zoey said, pouting in a way that made Mira want to figure out how to cook ghost food. “Dang, I wanted you to try Mira’s cooking.”

“Oh,” Rumi said again. “Sorry.”

This was so fucking weird.

Mira slipped into the kitchenette without a word, and got to work on a simple stew, her go-to on school days. She really didn’t have time for this dramatic ghost thing, and if it weren’t for the fact that Zoey could obviously see the spirit too, Mira would really be concerned that she’d hit her head during the fall the day before and was currently in a coma dreaming this whole thing. On second thought, that was still probably a possibility…whatever, either it was a dream and she’d wake up, or it was real life and ghosts were real and Mira could have a freak-out about that after her exams.

It was nice to eat breakfast with Zoey, despite the presence of the sword-spirit who was pretty clearly awkward and overwhelmed. Zoey kept up a stream of conversation, coaxing both Mira and Rumi into discussion. Rumi stiffly apologized that she was unable to help with the washing up, which maybe Mira would have found kind of cute if it weren’t for the fact that this whole situation was absolutely batshit insane. But compartmentalization, compartmentalization was the name of the game, and Mira had to get to class.

“Have a good day!” Zoey said, waving her off. “See you after work!”

Oh, right. If Mira came straight home after classes, she’d get back before Zoey was off work. She could only assume Rumi would be there, lingering in whichever room Zoey had placed the sword. Mira didn’t usually work well in libraries, but maybe she’d go to the campus library to study—just till Zoey was done with work.

Classes were mind-numbing and scintillating in turn, as they always were. With the beginning of final exams just over three weeks away, professors were beginning to gently (or not-so-gently) nudge their classes about studying, hinting at things that might be on the exams. Honestly Mira wasn’t terribly worried—she got good grades and had always tested well—but, well…

This was only the second semester she was relying on those good grades and test scores to keep her place in med school.

But it was fine, she’d be fine. She was disciplined at studying, after all, and if she was focusing just a bit more than she had last year around this time, well that was only to be expected, right? And it wasn’t like there was anyone around her to even notice one way or another, since she didn’t have any friends other than Zoey and around when they’d moved in together Mira had been in a frenzy of end-of-year exams, panicking over the possibility of gaining or losing a merit-based full-ride scholarship.

So no, she absolutely didn’t have time to be driving two hours to wander in the woods for who knew how long, then another two hours back. And she absolutely didn’t have time to have an existential crisis about the nature of death and the soul and the possibility of an afterlife, despite Rumi insisting she wasn’t a ghost.

There was still the possibility that this was all a hallucination.

Mira finished her last class, had a brief, boring conversation with a classmate about an article for a different class, then hesitated. She didn’t really want to go back to her now apparently haunted apartment, but the idea of sitting in the library, where she probably wouldn’t be able to nab a cubby and would have to sit at a communal table, was honestly kind of abhorrent right now. She sighed, and started fishing out her car keys.

She found Rumi in the living room, sword propped up against the couch, spirit standing (hovering?) by the window motionlessly. “Well that’s creepy,” Mira said. “Have you just been standing there all day?”

Rumi turned. With her gat and its ropes and ragged, draping talismans hiding most of her face, all Mira could see was her chin and mouth, which didn’t really give her much. It was…eerie, that was the best word for it. Eerie, to be unable to see Rumi’s eyes, to be able to see through Rumi’s body.

“There’s not much else to do,” Rumi said.

She had a nice voice, delicate, melodic. Mira rocked from foot to foot uncomfortably, and said, “Uh. Did Zo offer to like. Put on the TV, or something?”

“She left in a bit of a hurry,” Rumi said, and Mira couldn’t help rolling her eyes fondly. Typical Zoey.

“Well,” she said. “I have to get some studying done. But, uh, I could turn on the TV, or, like, an audiobook…?”

There was a brief pause, and then Rumi’s lips quirked, and Mira realized she’d been staring at them for any hint of emotion. “I don’t know what either of those things are.”

Oh. Right. This ghost was probably like four hundred years old. “The TV’s like a moving picture,” Mira said. “An audiobook is like…like someone reading you a story.”

“Oh,” Rumi said, frowning slightly, though Mira had no idea if it was a thoughtful frown or an angry one, just based on her mouth. “That sounds…nice.”

“The audiobook?” When Rumi nodded, Mira did her best to bite back a sigh, and said, “Um, well. I guess you can use my phone? I can listen to music on my computer. Let me just…” She fished her phone out of her pocket, shot off a quick text to Zoey, then said, “What kind of, uh. Story would you like?”

“I don’t know,” Rumi said. “I expect most modern stories would confuse me quite a bit.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Mira said. She wanted to be sympathetic, she really did, but she had studying to do. “Uh, I can probably find something on the older side?”

It took longer than she’d like to get Rumi set up with an audiobook. She made sure her phone was plugged in so it wouldn’t die, then fled to her room, where she closed the door and leaned up against it like a horror movie victim hiding from an ax murderer. “This is fucking crazy,” she whispered to no one, then dragged her hand over her face with a sigh. She had work to do.

She lost track of time, as she often did while studying, and was roused by a cheerful, patterned knock on her door, and then the gentle creak of it opening. “Why’s your door closed?” Zoey said, without so much as a “Hi, how are you?” “You never leave it closed while studying.”

Mira peered nervously behind Zoey, then hissed quietly, “Because it’s creepy! I didn’t wanna be studying while there was a fucking ghost looking over my shoulder!”

“Not a ghost,” Zoey said, raising one finger.

“Ghost, spirit, whatever!” Mira said, throwing one arm up, hooking the elbow of the other over the back of her chair. “This is an insane situation, Zo, and you know it. Can’t we just lock the creepy haunted sword in the closet for a month? Can’t we just—I dunno, sell it to an antique store and make this someone else’s problem?”

“Mira,” Zoey said. “No we cannot.”

And the thing was—

The tone of gentle admonishment was something Mira had never heard, before Zoey. The tone that said, “Don’t do that, but it’s okay and I’m not mad at you and it’s not a big deal.” Mira could never really resist, when Zoey used that tone of voice. She turned back to her desk, grumbling, “Fine, fine.”

Zoey giggled, and then her arms were looping around Mira’s shoulders from behind and she was saying, “Besides—I see you. You left her your phone!”

“Yeah, cause someone forgot to do anything to make sure she wasn’t bored out of her fucking mind,” Mira said.

“And yet you’d consider locking her in a closet, where she’d be bored and claustrophobic.”

“She can probably pass through walls or something!” Mira shuddered, and twisted in Zoey’s hold to peek towards her open door again. “Zoey, this is crazy. Ghosts aren’t real!”

“Maybe not,” Zoey said, shrugging. “But spirits clearly are.”

The next day, Zoey remembered to flick through channels on the TV before work, to make sure Rumi wasn’t stuck staring out the window for hours like she had been the day before. Zoey had apologized profusely, and Rumi had assured her it was fine (“I’ve spent who knows how many years as a sword in a shrine alone in the woods, I think I can handle a few hours of quiet inside a building.”), but Zoey still wanted to make Rumi as comfortable as she could be. She felt bad, that they couldn’t return the sword right away. To a certain extent, Mira was right. They could give the sword to someone else, and hope they’d follow Rumi’s ask and return it to the shrine. But it was possible whoever they foisted the task onto wouldn’t do it at all, or wouldn’t be able to find the shrine. Zoey and Mira, after all, had already found it once. Plus, there was also the fact that anyone they tried to talk to about this would probably think they were crazy.

Zoey sighed, shoving her backpack into her tiny locker. It was why she hadn’t mentioned her weekend adventure or ghostly (spiritly?) roommate to anyone at work. There was no way they’d believe her—it would just be more of Zoey yapping. Which was fine, because while Mira was still the first and only person to always happily listen, Zoey’s coworkers were nice, could maybe be considered friends. Work friends, definitely. They at least loved marine life almost as much as Zoey did, so when Zoey got excited about turtle facts, GG was there to get excited about jelly facts, and Ha-eun about shark facts. God, Zoey was lucky to get to do what she did.

“Got a bit more sleep last night?” GG said from behind her, and Zoey closed her locker and rolled her eyes with a grin.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” she said. “But if you must know, yes. I did.”

“Good,” GG said, grinning back. “We don’t need a repeat of the Great Ray Incident.”

“Don’t remind me,” Zoey said, flapping a hand at him. “I’m fine, I slept!”

It was true. She’d slept perfectly fine that night, with Rumi in the living room with the audiobook Mira had started for her the day before. Sure, it was a little weird to think about someone just hanging out in her living room all night, but what else could they really do? So Zoey was perfectly well-rested, just…

Not exactly focused.

Because how could she be expected to focus on work when there was a haunted sword, at that very moment, sitting in her apartment? Like the day before, she hurried to clock out at the end of the day, where she usually lingered to chat with GG and Ha-eun, reluctant to leave the cool blues and air conditioning of the aquarium unless she and Mira had plans. “Day two,” she mumbled to herself as she hiked her backpack higher on her back. How many days till the end of Mira’s finals? Twenty-five? Twenty-four? Maybe she’d start a countdown. No, that felt mean. It wasn’t like she hated Rumi’s presence—the whole thing was interesting!

This time, when she got home, Mira was still out. Zoey sighed, hooking her keys onto their spot by the door and kicking off her shoes. She felt bad. Mira clearly felt awkward with a new person in the house, immortal spirit or otherwise, and while it wasn’t exactly Zoey’s fault it was kind of also entirely Zoey’s fault for taking the sword in the first place.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Rumi,” Zoey said, fighting a grin. Rumi was standing in the entryway into the living room, like she’d been waiting there all day which Zoey really hoped she hadn’t been. Zoey couldn’t help likening her to a particularly patient dog, which felt a little insulting but hey, it was in the privacy of her own mind and Rumi probably couldn’t read her thoughts.

…Right?

“I have a question,” Rumi said. “A few questions, actually. May I…ask them?”

“Ask away,” Zoey said. “Ugh, it’s hot in here, sorry. Neither of us are usually home during the day, so we leave the AC off.” She crossed to the little unit, which was constantly acting up despite all the work orders Mira had submitted, and started fiddling with the knob.

“That’s alright,” Rumi said. “I…can’t actually feel temperature, I don’t think.”

“That explains how you can stand that hanbok in this heat,” Zoey said, giving the AC unit a little thump with her fist and huffing in satisfaction as it started its rattly purr. “I was thinking people were just built different however many hundreds of years ago.”

“Well,” Rumi said. “That…kind of relates to my question? Well, not really, but—” She gestured to the TV. “In the—TV?”

“Yep, TV,” Zoey said, once more trying not to grin. God, this centuries-old spirit was kind of freaking adorable.

“In the TV,” Rumi repeated. “And out the window. There were these…metal things. Like carriages, but…”

“Cars,” Zoey said, wondering idly what had ended up playing on the channel Rumi had chosen that morning. Right now it was showing a news segment, so it was just a person talking with a KSL interpreter in the bottom corner.

“Cars,” Rumi echoed. “And they…”

“They’re like carriages, I guess,” Zoey said, plopping down on the couch. “But without horses. They have engines—that’s, uh…” She rubbed her chin, and continued mostly to herself, “Gosh, how do I explain engines?” She could go in depth on the mating and laying habits of pretty much any sea turtle a person could name, could probably put together a computer if she had some instructions, but a car?

“Sorry,” Rumi said. “There’s…so many things I don’t understand, in the TV.”

“That’s okay,” Zoey said. “Let’s see—I don’t know when Mira’s coming home, but lemme grab my laptop and we can do some exploring together.”

“Exploring?” Rumi said, uncertain.

Zoey grinned. “Surfing the great wide web, baby!” Excitement started growing in her as she realized the golden opportunity she’d just been given: the ability to introduce Rumi, a totally blank slate, to the internet and the modern world. “Just you wait. This is going to be great!”

And thus began the first week of “Zoey Teaches Rumi the Mythical Ways of the World,” trademark pending. That night, Mira came back late with takeout, and found Zoey and Rumi sitting on the living room floor with the TV on, Zoey’s laptop open, and even a few books out. She reluctantly agreed to help, telling Rumi a bit about things like modern medicine and sewing machines. On the third day, Zoey stopped off at a consignment store after work, and picked up a little CD player so Rumi could listen to audiobooks or music when she didn’t have access to Zoey or Mira’s phone.

The whole thing was…

Kind of eye-opening.

Because there was so much that Zoey and Mira took for granted, from the internet to cars even to the fact that the common cold wouldn’t kill them. It felt like every five minutes, they said something that made Rumi’s jaw drop, made her voice come out curious and wondering. “Is it really true that anyone can get this medicine?” she asked on the fourth day, pointing to the Advil Zoey had gotten from the bathroom to show her

Zoey paused for a moment, thinking about how monumental it would seem, if Zoey had been afraid of dying if she so much as got sneezed on by someone else. She thought, too, about how there were people who couldn’t get Advil, who struggled to feed themselves, take care of themselves, survive—she supposed that was something that never changed.

“Yeah, mostly,” she said, instead of brushing Rumi off with an “Of course!” “Crazy, right?”

Zoey worked five days a week—Monday through Friday. On Saturdays, Mira usually volunteered at a clinic near their apartment, so Zoey took the day to play video games or sometimes go skateboarding or on hikes she could get to on her own. Sundays were their together days, when they either vegged out on the couch and watched dramas or went out like they had last week, though with exams coming up even those Sundays were probably going to be eaten up by Mira’s study time.

But the point was, when Saturday rolled around, Zoey managed to wake herself early enough to eat breakfast with Mira before she left for the clinic, then joined Rumi in the living room and said, “Let’s go somewhere today.”

“What?” Rumi said.

“Let’s go somewhere!” Zoey said. “You deserve to get to see things other than the inside of our tiny apartment.”

“Well,” Rumi said uncertainly. “I don’t know if that’s…I mean, you’ll have to bring me. The, the sword, that is.”

“No biggie!” Zoey said. “The main thing is making sure no one sees you.”

“That shouldn’t be an issue,” Rumi said.

“Great!” Zoey said. “D’you mind if I wrap you in a towel? It feels kind of rude, now that I actually know you.”

“Not at all,” Rumi said.

Zoey wondered if she was thinking the same thing as Zoey—that Zoey didn’t really know Rumi, because Rumi didn’t really know herself. That was half the reason Zoey wanted to go out today. It felt unfair, that Rumi had been stuck as a sword for hundreds of years, unable to really see or experience anything, unable to remember her human life except for what Zoey could only assume was a somewhat violent end. Zoey wondered if it would be better not to remember being human at all—she thought that if she was turned into a sword, even without the memories that made her herself, she’d go crazy. And what was left behind, without memories? It was the whole nature versus nurture debate, and Zoey had certainly been nurtured to be a lot quieter and take up a lot less space than she actually was and did. So was that her nature, then? Was that an irrefutable part of who she was, just like Rumi, irrefutably, was a little awkward, but deeply kind and empathetic, and incredibly easy to ragebait? She didn’t need her memories for that.

“Where are we going?” Rumi asked as Zoey stepped into her shoes, kicking her heels against the floor to get her feet settled.

“I dunno!” Zoey said cheerfully. “That’s the fun part. Okay, first thing’s first is getting out of the building, and then we’ll just have to—I dunno, walk on empty streets, I guess, or hope people don’t look up from their phones.”

“Okay?” Rumi said. She still sounded uncertain, a bit confused. Zoey hoped this wasn’t going to be horribly overwhelming for her.

Zoey eased the door open, poking her head out. Okay, the hallway was empty. Now, would it be riskier to use the elevator, or take the stairs…Zoey opted for the stairs, because getting trapped in a metal box with a ghost sounded like a heart attack for someone who didn’t already know Rumi (Zoey had to admit that with her gat and trailing hanbok, Rumi was a little intimidating), and hopefully no one would be using the stairs.

“Let’s go,” she whispered, beckoning, and slipped out of the apartment.

Things immediately went wrong.

Because while she was cranking her key to lock their horrible, sticky lock, the door to the apartment right next to theirs opened, and Zoey froze as Bobby, their neighbor’s grandson, stepped into the hallway.

Oh, shit.

“Bobby!” she squeaked.

“Hi, Zoey!” Bobby said. “Going somewhere?”

“Uh!” He was being shockingly chill about this. Zoey glanced over her shoulder, and sure enough, there was Rumi, head tilted at her. She looked back towards Bobby, who tilted his head too, his eyes focused on Zoey and not the spectral being behind her. “Yeah?” she said. “Just—just on a walk?”

“That sounds nice,” he said. “You doing alright? Kinda seems like you’re still waking up.”

“Yeah,” Zoey said. “Yeah, yep, still waking up. How’s Harabeoji?”

“Grumpy as ever,” Bobby said, laughing. “I was just bringing him his groceries for the week. About to head down. Need a ride anywhere?”

“N-no thanks,” Zoey said, then turned back to the lock and managed to jiggle the key enough to scrape it shut. “Having a wandering day, y’know?”

“Sounds lovely,” Bobby said, a bit wistful. “Shall we head down?”

“Sure,” Zoey said, wondering what the hell was going on.

They took the elevator down, Rumi standing in the corner all creepy like, Bobby still totally oblivious. They chatted for the brief elevator ride, about Zoey and Mira’s sticky lock and shitty AC, about how Bobby’s grandpa, Young-sik, had been having trouble with his bathroom sink. “There’s a reason the rent’s so low, I guess,” Bobby said, sighing, as the elevator doors jerked open on the first floor. “I keep telling him I could help him pay for a better place, something a little more accessible for him, but nooo.”

“I wish I had a grandkid as nice as you,” Zoey said, and Bobby laughed, ruffled her hair, and said, “Wait another sixty years, kid. Have a good wander, okay?”

“Hey!” Zoey spluttered, batting his hand away. “You’re only like a couple years older than me!”

“Bye, infant!” Bobby called, and then the door to the parking lot swung shut behind him with a bang. Zoey rolled her eyes—

And then abruptly remembered that Rumi was still there.

“You!” she said, whirling on the spirit.

“Me?” Rumi said, head tilted again.

Puppy, Zoey thought, then waved her hand to dismiss the thought and said accusingly, “He couldn’t see you!”

Rumi held up her hands. “I told you it wouldn’t be an issue!”

“I thought you meant you were good at being sneaky! Not you could go invisible to just some people!”

“It’s not that I can go invisible to just some people,” Rumi corrected. “It’s just that most people can’t see or hear me.”

Zoey blinked.

Zoey squinted.

Zoey pressed her hands together in front of her mouth, then pointed them towards Rumi and said, “So I am crazy.”

“What?” Rumi said, sounding affronted. “No!”

“I’m talking to something only I can see and hear,” Zoey said.

“Mira can see and hear me,” Rumi pointed out.

“Hmm,” Zoey said, eyes still narrowed. “But why can we see you?”

“Because you’re the two who took the sword,” Rumi said.

“So you are haunting us!”

“Not haunting!” Rumi said, and her frown was almost a pout and painfully cute—Zoey just wished she could see the rest of Rumi’s face. “Ghosts haunt! I’m not a ghost!”

Zoey opened her mouth to keep arguing, but just then someone Zoey vaguely recognized as living on a different floor from her and Mira entered through the street door, and Rumi said hurriedly, “People can still hear you talking though, so, uh.”

Zoey snapped her mouth shut, nodded to the half-stranger, and headed out onto the street.

They walked about two blocks before Zoey judged the sidewalk empty enough for her to mutter, “So if anyone notices me talking to you they’ll think I’m crazy?”

“Yes,” Rumi said. “Unless you pretend you’re talking on your phone?”

It was a totally normal thing to say, and a very good suggestion, but the way Rumi said “phone” sounded like an ajumma who’d just been introduced to a new word. It made Zoey giggle helplessly for a moment or two, which left Rumi pouting at her again, but through her giggles Zoey managed to pull out her headphones and put them on. “Good idea,” she said. “As long as we talk about normal things we should be fine!”

“Won’t most people not even care what you’re talking about?” Rumi said.

Zoey shrugged. “Sure, but some people like people-watching and eavesdropping! I know I do. Oo, I had an idea! Let’s go on the bus and people-watch.”

“How do you people-watch?” Rumi asked. She was tall, kind of close to Mira in height (though Mira was an outlier and should not be counted), and Zoey was able to really appreciate it for the first time as Rumi took long steps, easy and relaxed, in comparison to Zoey’s quicker steps. Ugh, tall girls were hot. No, bad Zoey! Very not allowed to objectify the pretty sword-girl! Well, she was technically already an object since she was a sword…

“Zoey?”

“Sorry!” Zoey yelped. “I got distracted! What was the question again?”

“How do you people-watch?” Rumi repeated patiently.

“Oh, right,” Zoey said. “Just…I don’t know. Watch people walking by. Pay attention to their mannerisms, or what they’re talking about. Most of the time we just…take it all for granted, you know? Like me and Mira with Advil. A lot of people walk past with their heads down and don’t even look at anyone else.” Zoey stuck her hands in her pockets and squinted up at the sky. There were a handful of puffy clouds drifting across it, and she let herself drink them in, wondering if cloud formations had changed in the past few centuries. “In some ways,” she said softly, “I think the advances we’ve made since you were alive, whenever that was, have isolated us just as much as they’ve brought us together.”

“You think so?” Rumi said, also soft. “It’s all so…amazing.”

“Yeah,” Zoey agreed. “But like I said. People take it for granted.” She took a breath and let her tone brighten. “This is the bus stop! If we wait here for a little bit a bus will come—that’s like a big car, remember? We’ll get on and just ride for a little while. This one can take us to a park like twenty minutes away, so we’ll probably get off there so we can walk around?”

“Okay,” Rumi said. “Whatever you want, Zoey.”

Zoey wrinkled her nose at Rumi. “Nuh-uh. I can do this whenever I want. You’re tied to the sword in my backpack. Whatever you want.”

Rumi huffed lightly (they’d discovered she didn’t have to breathe, but it was habit, a holdover from her knowledge of being human), and said, “Fine. Yes, that sounds good to me.”

“We could also turn around and go back to the apartment,” Zoey offered.

“No,” Rumi said, a little more firmly. “I want to explore.”

“Alright,” Zoey said, grinning. “Let’s do this!”

The bus wasn’t too crowded, on a late Saturday morning, but Zoey had always found it fun to people-watch, even when said people weren’t doing much that others might consider “interesting.” They got off at the park along with two ajummas who’d been talking on the bus about their tai chi class, and Zoey led the way on the path she usually took on walks at this park. Once she judged the ajummas to be out of earshot, she said, “So, what do you think?”

“I think people talk about the same things now they did hundreds of years ago,” Rumi said.

Zoey glanced at her, raising an eyebrow. “You remember what people used to talk about?”

Rumi frowned. “I…I don’t know. I don’t really know why I said that. Maybe I do? Their problems all felt familiar—a mother complaining about a lazy son, a friend telling another friend about problems of the heart. Doesn’t that…seem pretty timeless to you?”

“Yeah,” Zoey said, feeling a soft smile tug at her lips. “Yeah. There are some things that are like that, I’ve realized. It’s kind of amazing, huh?”

Rumi nodded.

They were quiet, then, as they walked down the path, leaving the grassy open space of the park and entering the sparsely forested area Zoey preferred to haunt (if she’d pardon her own pun). It was funny—for someone as talkative as she was, even Zoey was surprised by her own propensity for solo hikes. Sure, she preferred dragging Mira along, and internally she was practically fluttering with excitement that she got to introduce this to Rumi, but she loved this area even when she was by herself.

A bird chirped, and Rumi stopped at Zoey’s side. “Rumi?” Zoey said, stopping too and turning to face her ghostly (spiritly!) companion.

“Was that a magpie?” Rumi asked. She sounded a bit…dazed, almost. Like she wasn’t speaking on purpose, like the words had just slipped out of her.

“I don’t know,” Zoey said. “Mira’s more of a birder than me. I stick with water and ground beasties.”

Rumi barely seemed to hear her; she started off again, this time with a bit more purpose and in the direction the chirp had come from. Zoey followed her, because who needed paths anyway—if Zoey had followed paths she’d never have met Rumi, after all! …Which maybe would have been better for Rumi and the safety of the whole world, but hey, the forces of Gwi-Ma, whoever he was, hadn’t burst through yet! It wasn’t that Zoey didn’t believe Rumi. It was just that Zoey was a super present-thinking individual (and past-thinking, when she lay awake at night staring at her ceiling and rethinking choices she’d made and things she’d said from literal years ago), so as long as there weren’t demons busting down her apartment door, she wasn’t going to be too worried about things.

And right now, considering Rumi was determinedly striding through bushes (literally, which Zoey kind of hoped she wouldn’t notice because she’d probably freak out about it) in search of a bird, Zoey was pretty sure Rumi wasn’t too worried about it either.

The bird chirped again, and Rumi changed direction. Zoey stifled a giggle, and followed. This pattern repeated three or four more times before Rumi finally came to a halt under a tree, saying, “Ah ha!”

“Ah ha!” Zoey echoed. “Did we find it? Was it a magpie?”

“It was,” Rumi said, pointing up into the branches. “See?”

Zoey stepped closer to follow Rumi’s pointing finger. It was weird—she’d always kind of thought ghosts/spirits/whatever would be cold. That was what all the media she’d consumed said. That, or the hug of your ancestors was warm, or something. Regardless, she felt like cold or warmth was always mentioned, and yet Rumi had outright stated a few days ago that she couldn’t feel temperature, and even when Zoey was practically standing inside her (she didn’t want to even experiment with seeing if she could pass through Rumi, because that sounded like it wouldn’t be good for either of their mental health), there wasn’t a change in the air.

Not temperature wise, at least; Zoey felt like the hairs on her arm and the back of her neck stood up. But not in a creepy way, in a way that felt…pleasant. Like she was just so aware of the person next to her that her body couldn’t help reacting.

It kind of happened around Mira, too.

Okay, nope nope nope, following Rumi’s pointing finger…

“Oh yeah!” Zoey said. “It is a magpie!”

“They haven’t changed much,” Rumi said, and it was that same kind of off-handedness she’d had when she talked about the people on the bus, like she could remember things as long as she wasn’t trying too hard. This time, Zoey didn’t bring attention to it, just said, “Anything different?”

“I can’t tell from this distance,” Rumi said, squinting. “But the magpie I remember was a little unusual, so.”

“How so?” Zoey asked, trying her best to be casual.

“Well,” Rumi said, and then she went very, very still.

Darn. Well, Zoey had tried.

“Just whatever you can remember,” she whispered.

“I, um,” Rumi said. “I just…don’t understand why I can remember some things. Why…things are coming back to me. For however long I was in my shrine, I…” She shivered, and the tiny movement brought her shoulder almost against Zoey’s and Zoey held her breath—but they didn’t touch, or pass through each other, just a hairsbreadth still between them.

“It didn’t matter,” Rumi went on. “Nothing mattered. I knew that I’d stopped Gwi-Ma. I knew that my sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. And that was all that mattered.”

Zoey wanted to ask if it was better that way, if Rumi had preferred that to this uncertain half-humanity and lost memory. But how would she answer that question, if she’d been in Rumi’s place? How would she feel, lost and uncertain in a world unfamiliar to her, stuck without her purpose? Zoey supposed it didn’t really matter which Rumi preferred, because at the end of the month, when Mira’s exams were over, they’d be going back to the shrine and returning the sword.

…Maybe Zoey could go visit, sometimes. Keep the shrine clean, at the very least.

“I remember Gwi-Ma,” Rumi mumbled. “I remember…two people. Or their names, at least. I remember a magpie. I remember the inconsequential chattering of everyday life. None of that mattered, at the shrine. Why should it matter now?”

“There isn’t a should or shouldn’t about it,” Zoey ventured. “I mean—should I love marine life as much as I do? No. Should I not? Also no. I just do. Right? And because I do, I work at the aquarium, and I love it. So it’s not that stuff should or shouldn’t matter to you.”

“It’s not that simple,” Rumi said, and then she was turning, starting back the way they’d come. “In three weeks you’ll bring me back to my shrine. If things do matter now, well—they won’t then. Will they?”

Wouldn’t they? Zoey said nothing, because if Rumi remembered her time outside the shrine, wouldn’t they keep mattering? But if Rumi forgot it all… The melancholy that struck Zoey, at the thought of Rumi forgetting everything they’d learned together even just over the past week, was startling. How had this odd, awkward spirit captured Zoey’s heart so quickly?

“It’s beautiful here,” Rumi said softly, and Zoey knew she was trying to brighten the mood. It was sweet of her, really.

“It is,” Zoey said. “Quiet, too. Not many people like walking through this way, I guess cause there are nicer hikes outside the city.” She cracked a sly smile. “And when you wander off the trail, there’s even less people!”

“Oh!” Rumi said, head whipping back and forth. “I didn’t even notice—I was following the magpie—Zoey!”

It was the same way Mira said her name sometimes, flustered and reproachful, and it made Zoey laugh, her heartbeat fluttering in her throat. “I don’t mind!” she assured Rumi. “I do the same thing. I’m the sort of person who’d walk off a cliff playing Pokémon Go!”

“Playing what?”

Zoey laughed again, and took the lead in their wandering, starting to explain the glories of Pokémon.

With an apology to Zoey, Mira spent most of Sunday shut up in her room studying. She wanted to be out with Zoey, lazing around, exploring some weird antique store Zoey had found, going on a walk, something, but for some reason the stress and anxiety surrounding this set of exams was so much worse than last time. Maybe it was because last time she’d been in shock, kind of, scrambling to find somewhere cheap to live, scrambling through begging emails to student admissions to see if she could get a full ride. She hadn’t had the brain-space to be stressed, because if she’d spent one moment considering her situation at all she’d have collapsed into a puddle of sweat and tears. She kind of had done that, as soon as exams had been over, as soon as she’d gotten her results and the good news that she’d be able to stay in school. She’d passed out for nearly a full day, then stayed rotting in her bed for another few hours till Zoey had tentatively knocked, offering her some cup ramyeon with the words, “I really don’t want to have to find another roommate so soon, or deal with a dead body, so please eat this.”

God. Mira wondered if Zoey knew how much she’d done for Mira, over the months they’d been friends.

It was why she made herself stop, when her eyesight started blurring even with her glasses on. Sundays were her days with Zoey, and if she couldn’t spend all day with her best friend she’d at least cook a nice dinner for her. She’d bought ingredients on the way home from the clinic the day before, and two Cornish hens weren’t going to cook themselves.

So she ventured out into the living room, where she found Zoey trying to teach Rumi how to play go-stop—the problem being, of course, that Rumi couldn’t actually pick up the cards, plus which Zoey had to be able to see both her own hand and Rumi’s in order to teach the spirit.

“Hey,” Mira said, unable to curb the fond smile that brushed her lips as she leaned in the doorway. “Gonna start on dinner.”

“Hi Mira!” Zoey said, beaming up at her. “Can we have marshmallow jjajangmyeon!”

She’d brought it up twice, in the past week. Mira rolled her eyes, and said, “No, you’re disgusting, and I already have plans.”

“‘Kay!” Zoey chirped, attention already back on the game. Mira cast one last look over the two of them—Zoey in basketball shorts and a loose tank top, Rumi in her ghostly hanbok. They made quite the pair, Mira admitted to herself. Maybe she’d sketch the scene. It would be interesting to take a closer look at Rumi’s hanbok, to see how it differed from the traditional-modern hanbok that could be found in this day and age.

Mira shook herself, and made her way to the kitchenette. It had been a while, since she’d been able to take the time to cook. And with the weather as hot as it was, and the air conditioning still on the fritz, samgyetang would be nice.

But she hadn’t even finished prepping the ginseng and jujube when Zoey and Rumi appeared, Zoey carefully laying Rumi’s sword on the table and saying, “Sorry, keep each other company, gotta go.”

Her voice was quiet, and her face, when Mira looked up from scrubbing the ginseng, was drawn. She disappeared into her room, lifting her phone to her ear, and just before the door shut, Mira heard her say, “Hi, Eomma.”

Ah.

For as much as they’d both gotten each other out of parental calls over the months they’d lived together, they usually didn’t unless the other asked, either out loud in advance, or with pleading expressions mid-call. So unless Zoey came back out, pulling exaggerated faces and drawing her thumb across her own neck, Mira would let it be, though she didn’t love it. She frowned down at the roots, knowing half of her distaste for Zoey’s mother was Mira projecting, but…

“Zoey’s speaking to her eomma on the phone?”

Rumi’s voice was quiet, tentative, the phrase sounding awkward in her mouth like the words weren’t quite familiar yet. Which Mira supposed they wouldn’t be, after only a week of existing in the modern world as anything other than an abandoned sword.

“Yeah,” Mira said, and she knew her voice came out a little too gruff.

“Oh,” Rumi said. “And that’s…a bad thing?”

“Not every relationship is perfect,” Mira said, sighing, setting the ginseng to one side and picking up a jujube. “Zoey and her eomma…I dunno. Not my place to talk about it.”

“Oh,” Rumi said again. “What about you?”

Mira’s hand flexed on the dried fruit. “What about me?”

“Nothing, never mind,” Rumi murmured.

Mira consciously relaxed her jaw and shoulders. She was getting defensive. “Sorry,” she grumbled. “Let’s just say Zoey and her mother have a complicated relationship, and my relationship with the woman who gave birth to me is much less complicated.”

“Yikes,” Rumi said—which was definitely a word she’d picked up from Zoey, unless whatever was making it so that they could understand her despite her being hundreds of years old had just translated an ancient word for “yikes.”

“Yikes,” Mira agreed.

They were quiet after that—it was the first time they’d spent an extended period of time alone, unless Mira counted that first afternoon when she’d set Rumi up with an audiobook. She’d…kind of gotten used to the spirit’s presence, she had to admit, and it was kind of nice that there was someone to keep Zoey company while Mira was stuck studying all the time. Mira tilted her head from side to side, stretching her neck as she got the small hens out of the fridge, and wondered if it would be weird to thank Rumi for something she couldn’t actually help.

“What are you making?”

Again, Rumi’s voice was tentative—though this time Mira was pretty sure it was because she was shy.

Cute.

What the hell, not cute, no way, this was an ancient old lady sword ghost thing and Mira would not find her cute—

“Samgyetang,” she answered, a little gruff again.

“Samgyetang?” Rumi repeated.

Huh. Mira had kind of thought of samgyetang as traditional enough for Rumi to know what it was, but she supposed it was possible she’d known it by a different name. It was likely, almost certain, even, that the dish had changed in the past however-many-years. “Kind of exactly what it sounds like,” she said. “Chicken stuffed with rice, ginseng, jujube, and garlic, cooked and eaten in broth. It takes a little while, but it’s worth it. Nice on a hot day.”

“Hot soup on a hot day?” Rumi said.

“Yep,” Mira said, generously sprinkling salt over the hens with her clean hand and rubbing it in with her other.

They were quiet for a while, then, as Mira rinsed the hens, patted them dry, then stuffed them, placed them in the pot, and covered them with cold water. She kept an eye on them as the water slowly came to a lively simmer, then covered the pot to keep cooking while she made dipping sauces.

It was kind of weird, having Rumi there, just watching in silence. But Mira tried to ignore it, reminding herself that while something like this dish probably existed in Rumi’s time, the utensils Mira used in the kitchen were modern, shiny, factory-made instead of the handmade tools Rumi would have been used to.

…Did she even remember things like that?

She remembered enough to know the world was unfamiliar. Where did this magical amnesia, or whatever it was, draw the line? Had Rumi cooked regularly, when she’d been alive? Mira couldn’t imagine forgetting that.

She turned the heat down, uncovering the pot to check on the broth level. Good, it hadn’t reduced too much. She nabbed a spoon, and carefully ladled some of the broth over the tops of the hens where they poked up from the simmering liquid. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and she glanced out of the corner of her eye to see Rumi lingering closer, now, trying to peek into the pot over Mira’s shoulder without crowding her. Ugh, Mira really should find her creepy, but it was hard when her mannerisms, in a living girl, really would be cute.

“It’s fogging up your glasses,” Rumi noted.

“It’s hot,” Mira said, biting her lip to keep the corner of her mouth from quirking up as she put the lid back on the pot, leaving it partially uncovered to let steam escape and allow the broth to richen.

“Oh,” Rumi said. “I—guess it is, isn’t it.”

Mira squinted sidelong at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rumi shrugged. “I can’t feel it. Heat, I mean. Or cold, I suppose, though Zoey said it’s been very hot since the…AC? Isn’t working.”

“AC,” Mira said, nodding. “Stands for air conditioning in English. Zoey’s got a few holdovers like that. You get used to it.”

Well—

Mira had.

Rumi would only be there for three more weeks.

“Mm,” Rumi said, like she was thinking the same thing.

“Anyway,” Mira said a bit hurriedly. “I guess you’re lucky you don’t have to deal with the heat, then.”

“Yes,” Rumi said. “I suppose I am.”

Except…

Was she?

Mira nibbled her lip, took off her glasses to wipe away the condensation with her shirt. Sure, the heat outside was unbearable and inside was stuffy and warm, but even with that, she’d chosen to make a meal that involved her standing bent over the stovetop for however long. She liked the way the steam fogged up her glasses, kissed her face and made her sweat a bit. It wasn’t like heat was always bad. And bitter cold, like those late winter nights when they’d first moved in and the heating had been broken just like the air conditioning, sucked, but the first time Zoey had offered to share her blanket on the couch…

“I guess heat isn’t always bad,” Mira murmured, settling her glasses back on her nose. “There’s different kinds of it, after all.”

“I think I’ve forgotten most of them,” Rumi said, equally quiet. “Could you…tell me?”

Could she? Mira had never been good with words. But Zoey? While Mira still struggled to wheedle Zoey into sharing her poetry and lyrics with her, she knew Zoey had real talent. Mira, on the other hand, was gruff and awkward, but what the heck, she’d try anyway.

“Well,” she said. “There’s the kind of heat you get outside, right now. Humid, sun drying the sweat on your cheeks almost before you can sweat it out. Then inside, like this, with the air conditioning broken? It’s…muggy, I guess. Like the air has weight. You’re sweating and you can feel it in your lungs.”

“What about this?” Rumi asked, passing her hand through the steam wafting up from the pot—the vapor continued undisturbed, without the swirl of her passage, and Mira found herself transfixed for a moment before she cleared her throat and adjusted her glasses.

“That’s damp,” Mira said. “It doesn’t matter how hot or cold you are, it’s gonna make you sweat a bit—or maybe it’s just the condensation from the steam. But it’s…it’s different. Because you can also smell the ginseng, the—the richness of the chicken. That’s the sort of heat that makes your mouth water, cause you know it’s going to be a good meal.”

“I see,” Rumi said seriously. Mira kind of felt stupid, like she was being cheesy or over-explaining things, but one look at Rumi’s thoughtful frown banished most of those thoughts. “Are there other types of heat?”

“Yeah,” Mira said. “There’s warmth when it’s cold out, but you have a blanket and a mug of hot tea or hot chocolate. You know it’s cold outside, but inside you’re warm. It makes the heat even hotter, knowing the—the contrast.” She rolled her lower lip between her teeth, glad of the steam’s warmth that hid the flush of her cheeks. “There’s, um. You know, when you’re…when you’re with someone. The warmth of their skin when you hold their hand. Or—or the way your heart feels warm when they laugh.”

“Oh,” Rumi whispered, and Mira watched her hand drift up to press itself against her chest. Mira swallowed again, and wondered if they were both thinking about Zoey.

“So,” Mira said a bit lamely.

“Thank you,” Rumi said. “I…I wish I could remember.”

“Well,” Mira said, uncovering the pot maybe sooner than she needed to, ducking her head over it. “Zoey and I can help you, or whatever. Remind you of things.”

“Yeah,” Rumi said—awed, in a way that made Mira’s heart jump in her chest.

Zoey came out soon after that, with the sort of bland cheeriness that told Mira she didn’t want them to ask about the call with her mother. So Mira let it be, pleased, at least, with the way Zoey’s smile softened at the herby scent of the samgyetang. “Thanks, Mir,” Zoey said affectionately. “This’ll be great.”

“I still don’t understand hot soup on a hot day,” Rumi commented.

“You sweat out the bad!” Zoey said. “It’s cleansing, or something. I’m a big fan of hot on hot and cold on cold. Sure, ice cream’s great during the summer, but on a foggy day all bundled up?”

“I guess heat isn’t always bad,” Rumi quoted slyly, and Mira blinked at her, startled.

“Yep!” Zoey said, grinning, and Rumi’s lips turned up, and once again Mira’s cheeks felt warm from more than just the soup’s steam.

So, the call from her eomma hadn’t been great, but they never were—it was always, “Yah, when are you going to get a real job?” or “Aren’t you heading back to school?” But at the end of the day, Mira and Rumi had clearly made some progress while Zoey had been in her room, to the point where, as they started eating, Mira slid her bowl a bit towards Rumi to show her the process of digging into the stuffed chicken.

God, they were both cute.

And the next day, when Zoey got back from work, she found Mira in the living room instead of still out or locked in her room. She was sitting on the floor, her books and papers spread out over the coffee table—it was her preferred manner of studying, and Zoey had felt a bit guilty that she’d been avoiding it. Rumi was curled up in the squashy armchair that had kind of become her spot in the past week, an audiobook playing so softly Zoey could barely hear it.

Good, Zoey thought in satisfaction. They were getting along.

More than getting along, as it turned out; over the course of the week, Zoey managed to catch Mira quietly reading passages from her textbook aloud to a spellbound Rumi (how Rumi found that dense academic vomit interesting, Zoey had no idea), as well as thoughtfully describing the smell, taste, and texture of various foods to Rumi.

“I’ve had noodle soups before,” Rumi was saying when Zoey got back from work on Wednesday. “But not in a cup like that.”

“I guess ramyeon is pretty new, in the grand scheme of things,” Mira said. “Instant ramyeon definitely. It’s…”

Zoey leaned against the wall in the entryway, closing her eyes, content to just listen without alerting them to her presence. There was a soft slurp, and Zoey envisioned the way Mira would narrow her eyes slightly in thought, determined to do her snack justice.

“It’s salty,” she said. “Pretty much always. Instant ramyeon tends to be saltier, I guess since it’s so processed? This brand is spicy, too, the kind of spice you can smell. The kind of spice that clears out your nose—makes the ramyeon seem hotter, temperature wise, for longer. The noodles—they’re usually a bit less, like, bouncy? Than fresh noodles? Especially if you overcook them which it’s really easy to do with instant noodles. So they can end up kind of mushy, which—” She huffed. “I’m making it sound gross, aren’t I?”

“No,” Rumi said. “Not at all. It looks good, and you enjoy it, so…”

“Yeah,” Mira said. “I guess that’s a good point. I, um.” Her voice dropped, awkward. “Sorry you can’t…”

Zoey pushed off the wall, ready to break the tension, but to her surprise Rumi laughed, and said, “Don’t apologize! I haven’t eaten in hundreds of years, I don’t think I even remember how to miss it.”

Which was…

Sad, a bit. Reassuring, on the other hand. Because Zoey wanted to show Rumi everything, let her experience everything, but in some ways it felt cruel to do so, because in a couple weeks Rumi would be back in her shrine, back to her duty.

“Do you have classes today too?” Rumi asked on her second Saturday with them, and Mira, who was slipping on her shoes, snorted, and said, “No, thank goodness. I volunteer at a clinic a few blocks away. It’s not official, or anything, but I usually go on Saturdays.”

“Oh,” Rumi said.

She was a spirit of few words (at least compared to Zoey), but Zoey had learned to read her tone, since her gat, hung with ropes and fabric talismans, obscured her face, and she heard the curiosity and interest in the singular word. “Maybe you can go with her next week,” she suggested, grinning.

“Oh, sure, let me just cart a sword in,” Mira said sarcastically, then winced apologetically at Rumi and said, “Sorry.”

“No, that’s okay,” Rumi said. “I understand.”

Mira hesitated in the doorway. “I mean,” she said. “Not the clinic. But maybe you could come to class, or something? It’s not like anyone’ll see you, right?”

“Right!” Zoey said. “Good idea, even if your classes are boring as hell! Hey Rums, you wanna come to the aquarium this week?”

“Rums?” Rumi said, bemused, and Zoey nearly bit through her own tongue.

“It’s, uh,” she stammered. Shit.

“It’s a nickname,” Mira said, easy and casual. “Like Zo, or Mir.”

“Oh,” Rumi said again—this time with that innocent wonder she had sometimes, like she couldn’t believe the world was real.

She’d been remembering tiny things, here and there—anecdotes about the magpie she’d been friends with, hazy, vague moments of interaction with other people she only sometimes remembered the names and faces of. Zoey would never, ever say it out loud, but…

She kind of hoped Rumi wouldn’t remember too much more.

Because for one thing, there was the whole gonna-turn-back-into-a-sword thing, and what good would it do Rumi to remember more of what she’d lost? But for another, well—she’d been fighting against what Zoey had gathered were demonic forces, and didn’t that mean that her life had been at the very least really, really stressful? Wasn’t it better to just experience the world with that innocent joy? On Monday, Zoey swaddled Rumi’s sword in fabric, and brought her to the aquarium, where they realized Rumi wouldn’t be able to get very far with Zoey’s things in her locker.

“It’s okay,” Rumi said, her lips curved in a gentle smile. “There’s still a few things to look at.”

“Yeah,” Zoey said reluctantly. “The touch tank is over there, that’s always fun. How far away from the sword can you get?”

“I’ll find out,” Rumi said. “Go, you’re at work.”

Zoey checked on Rumi throughout the day. During her lunch break, she went back to her locker and found Rumi missing—because she’d managed to get into the second room down, not actually that far away from the sword but with two walls in between them. She was sitting on a bench, gazing up at the wall of glass of one of the big tanks, and for a moment she took Zoey’s breath away.

It took her a moment to realize why—or at least, part of why. The talismans hanging from Rumi’s gat had disappeared, leaving Rumi’s face almost visible, peeks of her nose and eyes flashing between the still-present ropes. Light, turned rippling and blue as it passed through the water, flickered through Rumi’s ghostly silhouette, and Zoey wished she could take a picture—wished pictures of Rumi came out at all, which they’d discovered they didn’t.

She was beautiful.

It, it, it was beautiful—the scene, the image—

Aw, who was Zoey kidding?

She was loathe to disturb Rumi, who looked so peaceful, but she stepped closer and said softly, “Hey.”

Rumi glanced up, and smiled at Zoey, and fuck, she was so pretty. She’d been pretty, when all Zoey could see was her mouth, and now? “Hello, Zoey.”

“Your talismans,” Zoey said—she felt like she was stumbling over the words. “They’re—they’re gone. Where’d…”

Rumi’s head tilted, the corners of her lips turning down in a mild, bemused frown. “My talismans?”

“You know, the…” Zoey gestured ineffectually around her own head. “The talismans? You had? On your gat?”

Rumi tilted her head further. “I had talismans on my gat?”

Zoey opened her mouth to reply, stopped—then broke down giggling. And Rumi smiled, like she was just happy to hear Zoey’s joy, and…

“She’s so…”

It was Friday night. Rumi had gone with Mira to classes that day, and was now standing by the window, people-watching, while Zoey helped Mira with dinner (snuck bites of prepped veggies and stuck her tongue out when Mira scolded her).

“She’s so what?” Mira said, but she was determinedly not looking at Zoey or Rumi, and Zoey nibbled on her lip and said nothing.

That Sunday, Zoey and Rumi helped Mira with studying, quizzing her with flashcards and textbooks, Zoey acting as page turner while Rumi revealed a remarkably good memory for the facts she’d picked up through Mira. It had been three weeks, since Zoey had pulled Rumi’s sword out of its place at her shrine. Mira’s final exams would start on Wednesday, and be done by Friday. As early as Saturday, they could bring Rumi back to her shrine.

When Zoey had been a kid, she’d gone to summer camp a few times.

It had just been a day camp, where they met up at a park in Burbank and spent the day doing activities in groups. There’d been a counselor, when she’d been ten, who’d been maybe the closest thing to a friend she’d had before Mira, which was totally sad because the counselor had been at least eighteen, maybe more like twenty, but she’d been nice to Zoey, had listened to her yap, had partnered with her when the other kids scrambled to avoid Zoey. And in the last few days of camp, as Zoey had realized this was it, camp was going to end and she’d never see that counselor again—

Time had started to speed up.

As a ten-year-old she’d been so present-thinking that she’d never even considered the fact that maybe she’d come back to camp next summer, maybe that counselor would still be there. Maybe, if she’d been a bit older, she wouldn’t have felt so devastated. But looking back? Well, she hadn’t gone back to camp the next summer, so she’d been right that she’d never see that counselor again. So Present Zoey was honestly thankful, for the desperation with which Past Zoey had spent those last few days of camp. She’d crammed as much time with that counselor in as she possibly could.

The girl had probably just been humoring her—a lonely kid clinging to any scrap of attention. Stuck with Zoey, a counselor with a camper, just like Rumi was stuck with Zoey, a sword stolen by an idiot.

Well.

There was one week left of their time with Rumi, and Zoey wasn’t going to waste it.

She called in sick on Monday, and Rumi scolded her gently but with such a warm smile that Zoey knew she was glad. So maybe Rumi wasn’t humoring her like that counselor had humored her—maybe Rumi would miss the hustle and bustle of city life once they brought her back to her shrine.

“Hello?” Mira said that afternoon, stepping into the living room with a bemused smile. “You’re supposed to be at work.”

“Called in sick!” Zoey said cheerfully. “It’s Rumi’s last week with us!”

Mira laughed—and even put off studying for a bit, to join them in playing video games so Rumi could make vicarious decisions through her. That, along with all the little moments Zoey had caught between Mira and Rumi, told Zoey that Mira would miss Rumi too.

On Tuesday, Zoey called in sick again, and told her supervisor she was unlikely to be well until sometime next week. She had enough sick days built up, since she had a strong immune system and never used sick days for any reason other than genuine illness.

Until this week.

On Wednesday, Zoey and Rumi wandered the city. They went to an antique store, where Zoey narrowly avoided the owner asking about the swaddled sword in her backpack, then to a boba shop, where Zoey let Rumi pick her flavor, then got a drink for Mira. They met Mira outside her last exam of the day, and she took the drink from Zoey, drank half of it without speaking, then said, “Please don’t kick me out when I fail.”

She was kidding—mostly. Zoey could hear the tension she was trying to hide in her voice, so she looped her arm through Mira’s, and said, “What, go from two roommates to zero? Nah, no way!”

Mira chuckled, and Rumi smiled, and the end of the week hung over them, draping long arms over the sun.

That night, one of Mira’s study questions had to do with some medical law passed in America. “Why do you need to know about American medical law?” Rumi asked, craning her neck to read the flashcard over Zoey’s shoulder.

“Duh, for when I finally convince her to come back to Burbank with me!” Zoey said. “I’ve been wanting to show her around. All the old haunts, the skatepark by my dad’s house…”

“It sounds amazing,” Rumi said.

“It is,” Zoey said. “I’ll—I’ll take you, sometime. Show you. Show you both.”

Rumi smiled at her. Mira bent over her notebook.

“Do you have to go back?”

It was Thursday night; Zoey and Rumi had spent the day watching animated movies and talking about art. It was late, and Zoey knew she should go to sleep, but she didn’t want to leave Rumi alone in the living room, looking out the window. She didn’t want to lose any more moments.

Rumi bit her lip, and Zoey tried not to stare at her mouth. “Zoey…”

“Nothing bad’s happened yet,” Zoey said. She knew she sounded like a kid, whiny, naïve. “So…”

“Zoey,” Rumi said again—

And then she reached out, and let her fingers hover directly over Zoey’s hand.

Zoey froze.

She didn’t dare move—because if either of them moved at all, they’d pass through each other, and Zoey didn’t think she could handle that without crying.

“I can’t,” Rumi said gently. “I can feel the seal weakening. There is no other way.”

“Well,” Zoey said, swallowing hard. “We can—we’ll visit you. All the time.”

“I’d like that,” Rumi said. “Even if…”

Even if what?

Even if she couldn’t speak to them, returned to her sword form forever? Even if she lost her memory again, what little she’d remembered of her life and everything they’d brought her over the past month?

On Friday, Zoey found that she had nothing left to say.

She didn’t know what to do, what to show Rumi, what to tell her—one month was not enough time to explore the whole world, but one month was plenty enough time to know that this awkward spirit girl was so, so wonderful. What could Zoey say, that Rumi deserved? What could be the last thing Zoey told her? They spent most of the day in silence, until Mira came home with marshmallows and black bean paste and a wrinkled nose. And thank god for Mira, because somehow they were laughing, and yeah, marshmallow jjajangmyeon was just as terrible as Mira had warned her it would be, but it was also glorious and made Rumi pull a face and joke that she was glad she couldn’t smell the monstrosity.

Zoey tried so hard to stay awake that Mira actually helped her drag her mattress out to the living room—she said it was dumb, because Zoey could just bring the sword into her room, or Rumi could just pass through the wall or whatever, and Zoey told her it was the principle of the thing, trying to keep the grin stretching her lips. She still tried to stay up, tried and tried and tried, until eventually she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore, and she drifted to sleep, the softest, sweetest humming she’d ever heard slipping into her dreams.

Despite staying up so late, she woke early, like her body was trying as hard as her heart was to make the most of their last few hours. The same thing had happened at summer camp, that year she was ten. She pushed herself up off into a sitting position, slowly, and nearly laughed aloud at the sight of Mira, curled up asleep on the couch where she definitely hadn’t been when Zoey had fallen asleep.

And Rumi.

She didn’t really sleep, they’d discovered, but she rested with her eyes closed. She was in her armchair—it could only be called hers, now, after how much time she’d spent in it the past month.

And the last few ropes had disappeared from her gat.

For the first time, Zoey took in Rumi’s unobscured face.

She’d known she was beautiful—even just her mouth, her nose, the flashes she’d seen past the talismans and ropes. But like this? Relaxed, exposed? Zoey wanted her to open her eyes. Zoey wanted to know what color her eyes were—Rumi, as a whole, was colorless on top of being vaguely transparent.

Zoey wanted her to stay.

Rumi opened her eyes.

“Good morning,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” Zoey said, then shook herself and said, “Yeah, hi, good morning. Sorry.”

“For what?” Rumi said.

For stammering? For staring? Zoey shrugged, wordless, and said, “Your ropes are gone.”

Rumi’s brows furrowed. They were strong, shapely—and the fact that Zoey had just thought the word “shapely” almost made her die of internal embarrassment. “My…ropes?”

“Like the talismans, I guess,” Zoey said. “You had ropes on your gat…”

“Oh,” Rumi said, raising one hand and touching the brim of her gat. “I…didn’t notice.”

“I don’t know how you couldn’t,” Zoey said, trying to inject some amusement into the words. “I don’t know how you could even see with all that stuff in front of your eyes!”

Rumi laughed, and Mira, on the couch, grumbled, shifted, stretched and blinked her eyes open. She was really like a giant cat, Zoey thought, propping her elbow on her knee and her cheek on her fist. “Morning, Mir,” she said. “Didn’t hear you come in.”

“Shut up,” Mira grumbled, groping at the floor where she’d placed her glasses. She settled them on her nose, blinked a couple more times, then regarded Zoey and Rumi and said, “Your ropes are gone.”

“That’s what Zoey said,” Rumi said.

Zoey huffed a laugh. “She didn’t even know she had them.”

But it was hanging over them, like the ropes had been hanging from Rumi’s gat—

Mira’s exams were over.

Neither she nor Zoey had any responsibilities that day unless Mira was planning on going to the clinic. And even if she was, tomorrow they’d both be free.

Like Mira had read Zoey’s mind, she said quietly, “I, uh. Told the clinic I wasn’t coming in today. So.”

Zoey’s stomach dropped.

“Right,” she heard herself say. “Then I guess we can go after breakfast.”

“Right,” Mira echoed. “Does—does that…work for you, Rumi?”

“It does.”

They all sounded off, a little too quiet, a little too formal. Zoey hated this—it almost reminded her of the morning her mother had left for Korea, the stiff, detached words, the clinical goodbye. Suddenly restless, she leapt to her feet, said, “I’m gonna get ready,” and fled into her room.

Breakfast was quiet, and then they were wrapping Rumi’s sword and packing backpacks—first aid kit included, this time. It was while they were putting on their shoes that Mira suddenly straightened, hands on her hips, and said, “Okay, no.”

Zoey blinked at her, exchanged a confused look with Rumi. “No…?”

“No,” Mira repeated. “I’m not gonna drive two hours in depressed silence. So either we buck the fuck up and chill out, or I’m not taking us.”

“Well,” Zoey said, debating the merits of pretending to be deeply depressed to keep this whole thing from happening.

But somehow her own facetious planning made her relax, a bit, and she giggled, and said, “I guess we don’t wanna ruin Rumi’s first car ride, huh?”

“I’ve been on the bus,” Rumi pointed out.

“Totally different,” Zoey said, shaking her head briskly. “C’mon! We’ll put on music and belt at the top of our lungs. Car rides are fun!”

And this one was, somehow; they listened to music they’d introduced Rumi to over the past month, and music they hadn’t, and music Zoey and Mira had never heard before. They talked about how music was something all people, all time periods, had in common, and they all sang along as loudly as they could, and Rumi had one of the prettiest voices Zoey had ever heard and she wasn’t afraid to tell her so. Rumi nearly clammed up, embarrassed, until Mira laughed, and said, “She told me the same thing the first time she heard me sing.”

“Cause it’s true!” Zoey insisted. “We should be a kpop group!”

“Ghost girls,” Mira said, and Rumi laughed and said, “Not a ghost!”

The hike, too, once they got to their destination, was nice. They almost immediately diverged from the path, wandering vaguely in the direction they’d gone a month ago. Mira told the story of them falling down the hill right before they’d found Rumi’s shrine, with (in Zoey’s personal opinion) way too many embellishments about how close they’d been to dying. Zoey whirled around and walked backwards while defending herself, and promptly tripped. “Zoey!” Mira and Rumi cried, Mira in exasperation, Rumi in concern. Mira grabbed Zoey’s arm to steady her, and this time they didn’t go crashing through the bushes and down a tree.

“Sorry,” Zoey said, grinning sheepishly up at her friends. They were so close—Mira having tugged her upright, Rumi hovering nervously right next to her.

They were so pretty.

“You’d think you’d learn your lesson,” Mira said, but she was teasing, and Zoey pouted at her and said, “And lose my whimsy and charm?”

“Oh yeah,” Mira said, pointedly adjusting her glasses (the same pair from a month ago, because she hadn’t gotten the chance to replace the scratched lens and she’d refused to wear her nicer pair hiking just in case something happened again), “I love it when your whimsy and charm cause you physical harm.”

Zoey blew out air through her lips, waving a dismissive hand, and tugged out of Mira’s hold. “C’mon!” she said. “We have an ancient shrine we’re supposed to be looking for!”

But…

She had to admit she wasn’t actually looking that hard.

Oh, she was looking up at the trees, at the bushes, at the handful of critters they saw. She was looking at Mira and the way she smiled softly at the sound of birdsong, and at Rumi and the way she closed her eyes with a little sigh, even though she couldn’t feel the gentle coolness of shade. She just…wasn’t looking terribly hard for the shrine.

They found it anyway, eventually. Because of course they did, because they had to, because Rumi wasn’t a human anymore, was a seal against an evil that Zoey didn’t want to believe in, because if she believed in it it meant she had to lose her friend. How the hell had one month changed so much?

“Well,” Mira said softly.

They were standing at the edge of the clearing, right where they’d stood a month ago. There were the ropes and talismans, the stone, the shrine. Zoey tried to swallow the lump in her throat, her hands tightening around the straps of her backpack. The pack suddenly felt thousands of pounds heavier, like the sword inside it was dragging her down, down, down. Were the forces of Gwi-Ma, that Rumi was so concerned about, down there? If Rumi stayed with them, if Zoey refused to put the sword back, would they crawl up through the ground, steal the souls of innocents like Rumi said they used to do when they ran rampant in her time?

“It’s time, Zoey,” Rumi said.

“I know,” Zoey said. “We’ll come visit. We’ll clean this place up a bit.”

“I’d like that,” Rumi said, like she’d said on Thursday.

Okay.

It was time.

Zoey swung her backpack off her back, set it on the ground with a little too much force, then immediately felt guilty for it. She glanced up, but neither Rumi nor Mira looked to have noticed. Zoey swallowed hard again, and took out Rumi’s sword and unwrapped it.

For a moment, they all just stood there and looked at the sword—the blade, dotted with its constellations, seemed to glimmer here more than it ever had in their dingy little apartment.

This was where it belonged.

“I’m going to miss you.”

Zoey’s breath caught in her chest.

She never believed that anyone cared about her as much as she cared about them. Because why would they? What proof was there? Until Mira (and she still questioned that, sometimes), it had always felt like Zoey was running behind people who were walking and yet so much faster than Zoey could ever hope to be. Like they were casual, and she was desperate, and they didn’t even care that she was clinging to the straying wisps of them, trying to hold on, to reach out.

But Rumi said that she was going to miss them.

“I’m gonna miss you too,” Zoey croaked.

“Yeah,” Mira muttered.

And Rumi smiled at them—smiled at them and Zoey thought it must be the same smile she’d had as she’d died, the smile that meant she’d give up every good thing she’d ever had, if it meant saving the world. Because wasn’t that what she was doing? No matter that it had only been a month, that it had probably been so overwhelming Rumi was in some ways glad to be leaving—she said she was going to miss them, and overwhelming or not there had been good moments, Rumi had looked up at a wall of blue light and water and fish with such serenity, she’d listened to ajummas on the bus gossip about their kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews—

And she was giving that all up because of a danger that Zoey couldn’t even say for certain existed.

Rumi was standing next to the stone her sword had been stabbed into when they’d found it, and she was smiling. Zoey stepped forward, sword in hand. She lifted it, point down, both hands wrapped around the grip, and set its tip into the gap in the stone.

“Thank you,” Rumi said, and then she reached out and her hand covered Zoey’s, and for the first time Zoey could almost feel her, could almost feel the breath of her touch pressing down. Zoey swallowed, and squeezed her eyes shut, and bore down, sliding the sword into its stone base.

And that was it.

There was no flash of light, or angelic choir. Zoey just opened her eyes, and Rumi was gone.

She managed to resist the urge to pull the sword right back out of the stone, and instead released its grip to sit down hard on the mossy cobbles and put her head in her hands.

She heard Mira take a deep breath, and then let it out, long and slow and shaky.

“Is it crazy to say I think I was a little in love with her?” Zoey heard herself say.

And somehow it was true.

It had only been a month. It had only been a month, but it had been a long, long month, and Zoey had felt a tug towards the sword when she’d first seen it, and she’d felt that tug towards Rumi for the past month, and now the sword was back in its place and Rumi was gone and Zoey and Mira were sitting in the middle of the woods and Zoey couldn’t look up at Mira.

“No,” Mira said.

Zoey worked her fingers into her hair. “Is it crazy to say I think I’m a little in love with you?”

Mira sucked in her breath audibly.

Zoey hunched over further, and didn’t look up.


Mira was fine.

Why the hell wouldn’t she be fine? The girl she’d been half in love with (who the fuck was she kidding, mostly in love with, entirely in love with) for months had said she loved Mira back, and final exams were over, and she was going to go back to the little convenience store she worked at when she wasn’t in the throes of studying and build her bank account back up, and…

And Rumi was gone, and Mira hadn’t realized how used to her presence she’d gotten.

The apartment felt so quiet, when they got home, and part of that was because Zoey hadn’t spoken much, on the hike and drive back, but part of that was because Mira kept expecting to look up and see a ghostly hanbok, Rumi staring out the window creepily like she liked to do. Which was completely crazy, to be clear—Mira and her roommate had been haunted by a ghost for a month, and in a few months it would be a wild story, and in a few years they’d start questioning whether it had ever happened at all, and eventually it would fade from their memories entirely, and that was that.

That was that.

…That should have been that.

But the next day was Sunday, and instead of heading to the convenience store, Mira poked her head into Zoey’s room, and surveyed the blanket-covered lump that was her best friend. “Zo?” she whispered. “D’you wanna…”

Her voice trailed off. Zoey-lump didn’t respond.

Mira gnawed on the inside of her lip. “You, uh. Mentioned cleaning up the shrine…?”

Still no response.

And yet somehow, Mira found herself going to the convenience store not to ask about hours, but to buy cleaning supplies. She found herself getting into her car on her own, driving two hours alone with only soft instrumental music in her ears. The day before, she’d done her best to memorize the route back from the shrine, so it didn’t take her long to find it this time, and the last of her doubts—the last few thoughts that whispered that the past month had been some sort of weird dream, a stress-induced hallucination brought on by studying and the fear of losing her scholarship—faded away. There it was, just as they’d left it, looking as ancient and undisturbed as it had a month ago—

Apart from Rumi’s sword.

Mira got to work.

She avoided looking at the sword, because it was just a sword and it didn’t matter—

(It completely and obviously mattered; it was the whole reason she was there.)

—and cautiously approached the wooden shrine building. It wasn’t actually as decrepit as she’d thought when they’d first seen it, thankfully. It actually looked like someone must have taken care of it, for a while, and it had only been abandoned a few decades ago, maybe a century or so. Mira wasn’t a carpenter by any means, had never built anything, had barely ever used a hammer, but to her untrained eye it didn’t look too bad—didn’t look like it would fall over on her if she so much as sneezed on it. So she put a careful hand on the railing, a careful foot on the first step up to the main part of the shrine, and held her breath.

The step held.

“Okay,” she whispered, then glanced involuntarily over her shoulder at Rumi’s sword. She wasn’t talking to the sword—wasn’t talking to Rumi. She was just thinking aloud. “Okay,” she said again, a little louder. “Let’s get this party started.”

The building was absolutely the part of the shrine that needed the most care. Whether or not people in the past had made sure it hadn’t fallen apart, it was now faded and dry. Mira warily tested walls and columns around the outside of the building, and deduced that the structure had been built very, very well. “Paint,” she said, standing back from the building and surveying it. “Cleaning it, then paint. Now if there was a handy spigot that would really help.” She couldn’t help glancing at the sword again, amused at the thought of Rumi responding.

…Okay, so maybe she was speaking with Rumi a little bit.

She hadn’t really come prepared to tackle the building—mostly she’d bought a few things she’d thought to use to scrape moss from the cobbles. She really didn’t have any idea what she was doing, but she was going to try her best, was going to try to learn—because didn’t Rumi deserve it? Didn’t she deserve to have someone acknowledging the sacrifice she’d made hundreds of years ago that was maybe keeping the whole world alive? So Mira spent six hours listening to house restoration videos in her earbuds while scraping up chunks of moss, and circled the clearing three times, sketching and taking notes in her sketchbook to see what she wanted to do next.

Zoey went back to work the next day, and Mira went out to buy a broom, a few buckets of paint, and some wood stain, then drove back out to the shrine.

She didn’t know what she was doing.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she informed Rumi’s sword when she arrived, panting and sweating from lugging the heavy buckets. “Sorry if I’m like. Profaning this place, or whatever.” She scratched her head, equipment in a jumble at her feet. “I was never very spiritual.”

The sword, obviously, didn’t respond, and Mira got to work once more.

For the next week, she worked on the outside of the shrine, scraping off moss and lichen, clearing away cobwebs and accumulated dirt and grime. She spoke to the sword, complaining about the heat, describing it.

She spoke about her worry for Zoey, who’d been subdued. She was trying for smiles, leaving for work with waves in the mornings and coming back with stories in the evenings, but Mira could see and feel her loss. On Thursday, while balancing on a ladder to daub primer higher up, Mira said simply, “She misses you,” then bit her lips together around the admission that she, Mira, missed Rumi too.

Because what the actual fuck?

What the fuck, what the fuck, it had been a whirlwind month of mostly studying on her part, and sure, she’d spent hours of that studying in the apartment, sure, she’d cooked, she’d described food and feeling and read her textbooks out loud to Rumi, but what the fuck?

“Going to the clinic today?” Zoey asked on Saturday morning, and Mira hesitated. She didn’t want to lie to her—but she didn’t know if it would make Zoey’s sadness, her mourning, worse, if Mira mentioned she was restoring Rumi’s shrine. “I don’t have to,” she said honestly. “We can spend the day together. I didn’t actually tell them whether I was going in today.”

“You’re sweet,” Zoey said, offering her a crooked, affectionate smile. “I was thinking about going out. Skating, maybe.”

“Okay,” Mira said. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” Zoey said.

“We’ll be fine,” Mira said that afternoon, sprawled on the shockingly sturdy roof of the building, paintbrush in hand. It was probably very, very dumb—if the building collapsed and she died, no one would have any idea where she was—but hey, if there was some sort of magic that was keeping Rumi’s sword pretty much untouched by the ravages of time, maybe it was keeping the building from collapsing too.

On Sunday Mira and Zoey stay curled up on the couch watching dramas, and it should have been nice—it should have been perfect. It had been weeks, since they’d been able to just relax. But despite the fact that there was no spirit in their apartment anymore, Mira could feel Rumi hanging over them, could feel the paint chips under her nails, could feel words pressing against her tongue and teeth and the roof of her mouth. She wanted to hold Zoey close, wanted to kiss her, wanted to whisper that everything would be okay.

“Zoey told me she loves me,” she said the next day at the shrine, and she was going for casual but knew it didn’t really land. She was picking a sliver out of her thumb, bent studiously over the task to avoid even glancing at the sword. She’d wrenched the sticky door open to finally tackle the inside of the building, and had promptly ended up with a massive splinter. “You know,” she went on. “Last week. When we brought you back. We, uh. Haven’t talked about it.”

Because how could they?

“It was only a month,” she said now to the empty clearing, to the sword that housed the soul of a sweet, strange girl that Mira—

That Zoey had been starting to love.

Mira got the sliver out of her thumb and looked at it for a moment. The very tip of it, where it had dug in deepest, was pink-red.

“I guess I’d only known Zoey for a month,” she told the sliver. “I guess it doesn’t really matter, huh? How long it takes.”

The inside of the building was dusty, and dark. Mira, standing at the entrance, turned on her phone flashlight and peered warily in. “If there are any ghosts and-or wild animals, come out now,” she called. “No offense, Rumi.”

There was no response, so she took a cautious step forward. There was no way the floorboards in here would give out if the steps hadn’t, right? Still, she carefully tapped her foot against each board before shifting her weight onto it, methodically combing through each square meter. It was all empty, almost eerily so, and the thought of the shrine being abandoned for who knew how many decades suddenly made a lump come to Mira’s throat. “Well,” she said aloud, “we’re here now. Maybe we’ll steal the sword again, just to check and see if you’re okay with us calling in actual contractors or something. Not that we have the money for that sort of thing.”

The floor was sturdy in the first three quarters of the little room Mira went through. It was in the last that one of the floorboards wobbled, and she frowned. “The rest of them were fine,” she mused, and she squatted beside the loose board, inspecting it first by the light of her flashlight and then with questing fingers. There was one end that was looser than the other; she worked her fingertips into the crack and tugged, intrigued to find it jerked loose relatively easily. She slid the board out of the way, and whistled lowly at the sight of a bundle, wrapped in rotted cloth. She poked at it warily, and when no bugs jumped out at her and no ghosts tried to possess her, she carefully lifted the bundle out of the floor.

She took the whole thing out of the building and over to Rumi’s sword (she told herself it was because the lighting was best in that particular spot), plopped down on the cobbles, and started carefully removing the disintegrating fabric, commenting, “I really shouldn’t be doing this. I’m probably making a bunch of dead archeologists roll over in their graves right now.”

The sword still didn’t respond. Mira whistled again as the fabric fell away to reveal paper scrolls, yellow-brown with age. Yeah, she really, really shouldn’t be messing with all of this, but it wasn’t like she was going to bring in historians or anything—this was Rumi’s place. So maybe Mira should just leave the whole thing alone, but fuck it, she and Zoey had already profaned the shrine by stealing Rumi’s sword, and it was possible Mira was continuing to profane it with all the cleaning and painting, so why not go all the way? She unrolled one of the scrolls as delicately as she could, worried the paper itself would crack or fall apart, and squinted at the faded script that appeared as the scroll opened. “Thank goodness you had some weird translation magic on you,” she grumbled. “This old shit is incomprehensible.”

It was on the second line, that she realized what she’d found.

By the third line, she was trembling—by the fourth she scooped up the papers, rotted cloth and all, wrapped them in a dropcloth, dumped out her backpack and carefully slotted the bundle into it—she couldn’t damage these papers. She left her work half done, a mess all over the clearing, called back an apology to Rumi—

Halfway home, she realized she was being stupid. Zoey was at work, and wouldn’t be back until at least a couple hours after Mira. She sighed, and bonked her forehead on her steering wheel.

She waited impatiently for Zoey’s return, jittery and anxious, carefully spreading the scrolls out on their coffee table and weighing down the corners with random things from around the house—a deck of cards, an old candy tin that Zoey used for dice, a random little cat statuette Zoey had gotten at a night market because she said it reminded her of Mira. When she heard the door open, she rocketed to her feet, saying, “Zoey?”

“Home!” Zoey said, and Mira held her breath, listening to the rustle and thumps of Zoey entering the apartment and taking off her shoes. “You won’t believe this but Ha-eun said—” She cut herself off as she entered the living room, blinking at Mira and saying, “You’re covered in shit.”

It wasn’t shit—but Mira suddenly realized she hadn’t showered, upon getting home, and she was spattered with dirt, dust, and a bit of paint. She flushed, and shrugged, and said, “I, um.”

Zoey’s brow wrinkled in bemused curiosity as she stepped closer and saw the papers. “What the hell are those…?”

“Um,” Mira said again—

And then it was all spilling out.

She told Zoey that she’d been trying to restore the shrine, that she’d been cleaning up the clearing and repainting the wooden building. She told Zoey that she knew Zoey was upset, missed Rumi, and Mira just thought she could help in some small way. She told Zoey that she’d been going to surprise her, either when she was finished or when the school semester started, whichever came first. “I don’t know if you wanted to be the one to—” she said, wringing her hands nervously. “I just, um.”

“You’re amazing,” Zoey breathed.

Mira thought about Rumi, about the way she’d gotten more and more curious as the days had gone on. She thought about the one class she’d brought Rumi to, how the spirit had talked more than Mira had ever heard her on the way home, enthralled by this new world of modern medicine. Mira had listened and listened and listened and had felt so—so goddamn light. Rumi had cut herself off, apologized shyly, and Mira hadn’t known how to explain to her that Mira kind of hated people, kind of hated listening to idiots talk, but she’d listen to Zoey for hours—

And she’d listen to Rumi too.

“It was for you,” Mira lied, but she knew it wasn’t convincing at all. She’d always been a terrible liar.

And Zoey—

Zoey reached forward, and cupped Mira’s cheek, and brushed her thumb over what must have been a smudge of dirt on Mira’s cheekbone, and Mira fought to swallow the lump in her throat, fought to keep from nuzzling into the touch needily. “It’s okay, Mir,” Zoey whispered.

Mira licked her lips, and whispered, “I’ve been in love with you since I met you.”

Zoey smiled, and the smile was joy and melancholy all at once. “I know.”

Mira gulped. “Was I that obvious?”

“Only a little bit,” Zoey said. “But she…”

And Mira’s heart ached over the ghostly girl who’d wanted so badly to learn everything she could—was it because, Mira wondered, she’d known she’d lose it all again? Had she wanted to cram everything she possibly could into the twenty-eight days she had with them?

Zoey rubbed Mira’s cheek one more time, then lowered her hand, and Mira tensed every muscle in her body to keep from swaying after the touch. “So what’s…” Zoey said, sitting on the couch and reaching out to gingerly brush a fingertip against the ragged edge of one of the papers.

“I think,” Mira said, then swallowed hard and whispered, “I think it’s the ritual that turned Rumi into a sword.”

This was crazy.

This was absolutely bonkers crazy, but two months ago Zoey hadn’t believed in ghosts, and two months ago she hadn’t lowkey confessed her undying love to her best friend, and two months ago she hadn’t even realized she was maybe poly, which was something she should probably talk about with Mira but that really wasn’t the point because—

Because the point was, two months ago Zoey had known absolutely zero about magic and rituals and shamanism, and now she and Mira were up to their fucking eyeballs in research.

Because there had to be another way.

The notes on the ritual that had turned Rumi into a sword took some deciphering, but from what Zoey and Mira could gather they’d been written over the course of a few months by the person who’d done the deed, so to speak. They started out hypothetical, the person doing their own research. It was clear they’d expected to do the ritual on themself—Zoey and Mira had actually thought that maybe Rumi had written the notes, except while figuring out the chronological order of the scrolls they’d found bloodstained ones from afterwards that referred to the ritual working, referred to Rumi—so Rumi had been right about her name, that it had called to her because it had been hers all along.

But the point was, the person writing the notes had copied down all of their research, had detailed how the ritual would work if they did it on themself—and then in the aftermath, they’d scrawled out that they’d altered it slightly, that it had worked, that they were hiding their research from Gwi-Ma’s surviving supporters but there had to be a way to bring Rumi back because she didn’t deserve this.

I do, the notes read. I know I’m dying. I’m glad. I just wish I could save her, first, but I know someone else will someday.

“So it’s gotta be reversible,” Zoey said firmly, jabbing her finger at the paper without touching it. “We just have to find something else, something that’ll hold the seal that isn’t a human soul.”

“But what?” Mira said. “All this research relies on a soul. How the hell are we supposed to figure out an alternative when this person clearly couldn’t?”

“This person clearly wasn’t trying,” Zoey said. “Not until the end, when it was too late. This person was willing to give up their own soul to make this work, and somehow it ended up being Rumi’s instead. We have to find a way to fix this.”

So they researched.

They went to the library, checked out so many books on shamanism that one of the librarians pointed them to a research library that he could get them access to. They learned about traditional spiritual weaponry, and garb, and talismans like Rumi’s. They learned about modern mudang, and how people had carried their spirituality from generation to generation, keeping it alive in some form. And when their heads spun with knowledge and ached with the effort of deciphering old, dense texts, they drove out to the shrine, where they kept working on the building, kept talking to Rumi’s sword, spoke their research out loud and tossed ideas back and forth.

The fall semester started. Mira took research books to campus to read between classes, and Zoey went to work and spent her lunch breaks sitting in the room where Rumi had sat. On Saturdays, Mira went to the clinic and Zoey did research or took a brain break day, and on Sundays, they worked on the shrine. They learned, and made mistakes, and refinished and repainted.

“Okay, so let’s say Rumi’s a sword used to fight back the forces of Gwi-Ma,” Zoey said one afternoon. “Why not a shield, to just keep them back?”

“Or a cage,” Mira suggested.

“Shield, cage,” Zoey murmured, jotting down a note. “That’s somewhere to start.”

Once the building was as restored as they could manage with clumsy, unpracticed hands, they started setting up an altar within the shrine building, as well as one by Rumi’s sword, taking the research they’d done and putting their own spin on it. They set up incense holders and little figurines, brought food offerings—none of it was ritualistic, yet, just a way to show respect to Rumi and her sacrifice. They still came on Sundays, despite there not really being anything left to do other than tend to the altars. They brought books and notes and sat by the sword, talking.

“A net,” Mira said one Sunday.

“Song,” Zoey said the next. “And dance. Combat dance—ritualistic combat dance.”

“Traditional spiritual weapons,” Mira murmured that Thursday evening over dinner, tracing a picture of small, elegant blades, tassels dangling from their hilts.

“The first ritual used one soul,” Zoey said a week and a half later, while they tidied the little alter next to Rumi’s shrine. “Why not use more than one? Why not use the whole world?” She felt her lips quirk up as she thought of that car ride back to the shrine, singing along with Mira and Rumi. “Music is something we all have in common, after all.”

And—

Slowly—

Eventually—

Something began to take shape.

They designed—found words, found melody, found movement. They scraped together their savings, planned to buy ceremonial weapons, planned to rent hanbok because it would be too expensive to buy them on top of the weapons. They budgeted hard; Mira picked up some shifts at the convenience store, and Zoey applied to work there as a second part-time job. Mira’s midterms approached, and some nights she forwent sleep almost entirely, studying and researching and working.

One night, after a late shift at the convenience store, Zoey got home to find Mira asleep at the coffee table, her cheek pressed against a page of her textbook, and such aching fondness filled her that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She woke Mira, gently, softly, and whispered, “You gotta get to bed, baby,” and watched Mira, sleep-warm and vulnerable, flush pink at the term of endearment.

God, Zoey wanted to kiss her.

They’d talked about it, now—well. Not really. They’d each admitted to being a little (or maybe a lot) in love with the other. Some days, while they bent over the same book, Zoey felt their fingers overlap, their pinkies hook together, and she was never quite sure who had moved first.

So they’d talked about it, sort of. They were acting on it, sort of. But they were also pouring everything they could into research, into planning, and when Mira finished her midterms it was time. They put the final touches on the ritual, and rented the hanbok, and on a Sunday in late October, five months after they first found the shrine, they drove out, then hiked, laden down with backpacks and duffels, to the little clearing for what they hoped would be the last time.

Well—that wasn’t exactly true. If this didn’t work, Zoey would probably still come back. And even if it did, the shrine should still be respected, shouldn’t it?

“This is it,” Mira said quietly, and Zoey listened to her duffel (long, to contain the ceremonial gok-do within) thud softly to the ground.

“This is it,” Zoey echoed.

They set everything up first, on the little altar by Rumi’s sword—set out the incense and food offerings, and the six shin-kal Zoey would use during the ritual. Mira took out the gok-do, and laid it carefully in front of the altar.

They helped each other into their hanbok, neatly tying each layer—Zoey had never worn a hanbok before, and she watched Mira’s face as her friend helped her tie the goreum, watched the complex emotions swimming behind her eyes. “Thank you,” Zoey whispered when Mira had finished securing Zoey’s jeogori, and Zoey hoped Mira knew that the thanks was for far, far more than just tying a relatively simple knot.

And then they were ready.

“Okay,” Zoey breathed. “Okay. We can do this.”

“We can do this,” Mira repeated.

“And if it doesn’t do anything—” Zoey started, then had to stop, and swallow hard. She’d wanted it to be light—wanted to finish the statement with something like, “this’ll all be a funny story in a few years,” or “we’re obviously not spiritually significant enough for it to work,” or something.

But she couldn’t.

“If it doesn’t do anything,” Mira said, steady and determined, “we’ll try something else.”

Right.

Right.

They could do this.

“Okay,” Zoey said one more time—

And picked up the shin-kal.

She fanned the blades out carefully in her hands, aware of Mira beside her, lighting the incense and then picking up the gok-do. They’d practiced, with a broomstick and a handful of butter knives, but this was the first time they were really using the weapons they’d spent way too much money on for this not to work—

But Zoey couldn’t think like that.

Because it wasn’t about that; it was about finishing the work of the person who’d died before saving Rumi. It was about letting Rumi go, letting her rest, letting her finally be free of the crushing weight of an entire world’s safety.

It was about getting Rumi back.

Zoey lowered herself into a combat crouch, opened her mouth, and started singing.

It was wordless, at first, Zoey’s voice rising and falling, Mira’s rising to meet it, as they began to dance, weapons flashing in the dappled light. Zoey thought about that first day, the tumble down the hill, the first sight of the shrine—she thought about waking up to Rumi in her room—she thought about Rumi’s thoughtful observation of a world that was so brand new to her—

She drew one of the shin-kal across her own cheek, still singing, her heart pounding, and the hair on the back of her neck rose as the blade drew no blood.

And suddenly—

Suddenly it felt like her veins were filled with liquid starlight, cool and strong and impossibly beautiful.

Mira was whirling the gok-do effortlessly, her eyes wide with the same awe Zoey felt, her hanbok swirling around her, her hair a sea of pink, her mouth open and singing, Zoey’s mouth open and singing—

To light up the darkness, we shall sing our song.

And the world exploded in light.

Zoey danced, and Zoey sang, and Zoey watched as threads of light trailed off the six shin-kal, off the blade of the gok-do and the heel of its shaft. She watched as the threads circled them, pulsed with their voices—

She watched as Rumi’s sword began to glow.

With this steadfast voice, we will heal this world.

The light rolled away from them, out over the clearing, past the treeline, out of sight—

Then disappeared.

Zoey stood there, panting, listening to Mira panting, staring wide-eyed at her best friend with whom she’d just performed what was undeniably a magic ritual. And then—

“Zoey? Mira?”

They whirled.

And there was Rumi.

Rumi, as they’d last seen her before Zoey had plunged her sword back into its stone base—

…But she was fading.

“Rumi?” Zoey croaked.

Her ears started roaring, her throat thickening; as if from far away, she heard Mira breathe, “No.” This couldn’t be happening—they’d fixed it, they’d saved her—

“I can feel it,” Rumi said, and did it make it worse, that she was smiling in wonder? That she was touching her chest, where a blue light glowed? “Whatever you did, I can feel it—it’ll work.”

“But,” Zoey said, and her voice was warbling with tears that she tried to swallow back. “But we were going to…”

Rumi’s smile was so beautiful. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay. Thank you.”

“I was going to take you to Burbank,” Zoey heard herself say. She sounded like a little kid. She wanted to scrub the moisture out of her eyes, but she didn’t want to look away even for a moment, didn’t want to miss even a second of looking at Rumi.

“It’s okay,” Rumi said again.

“It’s not,” Mira said. “It’s not—it’s not fair, we—” Her voice started rising. “We did all this for—for you, for—” The heel of the gok-do thumped into the grass. “Zoey’s in love with you, for god’s sake!” Mira cried, and her voice broke, fell, lowered to a whisper as she said, “I think I’m in love with you.”

“Oh,” Rumi said, and there was wonder there, awe—she’d felt so much wonder, so much awe, in the month she’d had with them, and now they’d had four without her and five months was nothing, in the grand scheme of things, five months was nothing and Zoey watched Rumi fade—

“I think I love you too,” Rumi said. “I think I—” Her voice faltered for the first time, but her smile only grew wider. “I think I love you very much.”

“Don’t go,” Zoey tried to say, but she wasn’t sure if it even came out at all.

“I’m sorry,” Rumi said. “Thank you. I love you.”

And she was gone.

It was too horribly like the moments right after Zoey had put Rumi’s sword back into its spot. At first they just stood there, in silence, staring at the sword that seemed duller, now. Mira watched, as Zoey sank down to her knees, slow, tears breaking over her cheeks.

“Fuck,” Mira choked out—

And then suddenly anger flooded her, and she screamed, “Fuck!” and threw down the gok-do that had saved Rumi and killed her all at once.

And the thing was—

Mira could feel it, too.

“I can feel it,” Rumi had said. And Mira could feel it too, in her chest—in her soul. She could feel something that was like the faintest vibration, the faintest hum, and she closed her eyes and clenched her fists and wanted to tear apart whatever they’d done. Why, why, why? They could have just waited, could have taken the sword out every few months or once a year or something—but now Rumi was gone, was entirely gone, forever—Mira clutched at the front of her rented hanbok and didn’t care that she was crumpling the fabric—

“Mira?”

Zoey’s voice was faint.

“Fuck,” Mira breathed one more time, and then she fell to her knees too, next to Zoey, wrapped her arms around her and couldn’t figure out if Zoey was shaking or if she was. It had only been a month, she tried to tell herself. It had only been a month, and then it had only been four months. It had only been five months.

But now it would only be forever.

The shin-kal clattered as Zoey dropped them, and then she was clinging to Mira’s arms as tightly as Mira was clinging to her, her hands fisted in the sleeves of Mira’s jeogori. Mira hadn’t worn a hanbok since she was fifteen, the last time she’d allowed her mother to force her into one, but now she was wearing one of her own volition, had helped Zoey tie the goreum the way her mother had first shown her when she’d been four. And Zoey looked so fucking beautiful in it, and Rumi’s smile had been so peaceful, and it wasn’t fucking fair.

“I’m sorry,” Mira rasped.

And it was like the words released a valve, sent more roaring up her throat and rolling over her tongue: “I’m sorry,” she said again. “God, Zo, I’m so fucking sorry—”

“It’s okay,” Zoey whispered. “Mir. She’s gone.”

“She’s gone,” Mira said, and tears tickled under her chin—when had she started crying? “She’s gone. I’m so sorry.” She was shaking, or Zoey was shaking, and the incense was still burning and the ceremonial weapons were cold in the grass, and that vibration was humming in Mira’s chest, felt like it was getting stronger, louder—

—Louder?—

—And then the world lit up again, in blues and iridescent, shimmering strands—

—The hum sang—

Mira gasped for breath, held Zoey as tightly as she could, looked up into light almost too bright to see as the magic threads she and Zoey had somehow created began to weave themselves into something, a knot, a shape, growing and shifting and forming—

A body.

Mira and Zoey realized it at the same time, released each other with desperate urgency, held out their arms—

And a girl fell into them.

A girl.

Real, warm, in color—her hanbok was black, her gat tumbling off a long, purple braid—her eyelids fluttered and then slowly blinked open to reveal honey-brown eyes—

“Oh,” she said, and even her voice was different, more tangible, more real. “I see what you mean, Mira. About warmth.”

“You have purple hair,” Mira said dumbly.

“Rumi!” Zoey cried, and then she was wrapping her arms around Rumi, squeezing her so tightly Rumi wheezed, and Mira sat back and scrubbed at her face, trying to stem the flow of tears, but then Zoey reached out an arm and grabbed her by the front of her jeogori, yanked her in, and Mira yelped and Rumi laughed and Zoey sobbed.

And they were all there.

“How—” Mira managed. “H-how—how—”

“I don’t know!” Rumi said, still laughing. “I don’t know but—but you’re so warm—I think I was cold, all that time, and I’d just forgotten what it felt like to be warm so I didn’t realize I was cold—”

Zoey pulled back suddenly, and punched Rumi in the arm, saying, “You! I’m so mad at you!”

Rumi’s expression was so baffled Mira had to laugh, and maybe the laugh was a bit hysterical but who even cared, at this point, when ghosts were real and Mira and Zoey had created some sort of magic net or web over the world to keep out demons they’d never seen, had never even heard of before five months ago.

“Me?” Rumi said. “What did I do?”

“Nothing!” Zoey said. “Everything! Ugh!”

And then she was taking hold of Rumi’s shoulders, shaking her, then pulling her close and kissing her full on the mouth.

Oh.

Mira’s breath caught in her chest as she watched them, practically in her lap, and she had no time to really react before Zoey was releasing Rumi and once more grabbing Mira and yanking, and Mira sucked in a breath and their lips collided off center and…

Oh.

Zoey’s lips were so soft.

And then she was pulling back, and Mira blinked at her, blinked at Rumi who looked as dazed as Mira felt. “Oh,” Rumi said.

“Yeah,” Zoey said, and her cheeks were red. “So.”

“Um,” Rumi said, biting her very kissable looking lip and glancing up at Mira through her eyelashes which were unfairly long—

“Oh my god just kiss,” Zoey said, giggling breathlessly, and Mira reached without really meaning to, cupped Rumi’s cheek in one hand, watched Rumi’s eyes flutter shut, and kissed her.

Rumi was always one of the last ones out of her classes—even after months of being able to interact with the corporeal world, she still retained the caution she’d learned in her first few clumsy weeks. She nodded and smiled to a few classmates as they passed her, then heard them giggle from the door and glanced over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow. Seo-yeon grinned at her, flicking her fingers in a teasing wave, and said, “Rumi’s hot doctor girlfriend is here to pick her up again.”

Rumi felt heat flood her cheeks, and, as she often did, she thought about that conversation with Mira, steam fogging Mira’s glasses, a thoughtful frown on her pursed lips as she stirred samgyetang.

“Aw, not the cute turtle one?” Minny said, pouting, and Rumi huffed and said, “Guys,” swinging her bag over her shoulder and scooping up her books.

She had to admit, though, that Mira did look particularly hot—lounging against the wall opposite the classroom door, sunglasses on despite being inside. Of course, Rumi knew the lounging was probably because Mira was half asleep, and the sunglasses were to hide her bloodshot eyes and the circles under them, but Rumi’s classmates just giggled and waved while passing, and Rumi rolled her eyes, shaking her head with a grin.

“Hey,” she said, juggling the books to try to adjust the strap of her bag. “I didn’t think you were picking me up today.”

“Hey,” Mira said, taking Rumi’s books from her and ignoring her halfhearted protests. “I was thinking we could meet Zo at work? She’s off in like an hour and I know you like the aquarium.”

“I do,” Rumi said, unable to resist leaning against Mira as they started the walk out of the building. “How was your day off? I thought you’d still be sleeping.”

“Mm,” Mira said noncommittally. “I napped, some. How was class?”

“Honestly?” Rumi said, slipping an arm around Mira’s waist and hooking her finger into her girlfriend’s belt loop. “Kind of boring. And a little inaccurate.”

Mira laughed. “Well not everyone lived through it, babe. I still can’t get over the fact that you decided to major in history, of all things.”

“It masks my obvious inexperience with the modern world,” Rumi said dryly, grinning when Mira laughed again.

The drive to the aquarium was quick; they listened to music, hummed along, and Rumi watched iridescent light ripple under Mira’s fingers as she tapped on the steering wheel, and her soul felt light.

Most of the aquarium workers knew them by now, which meant that when Mira pulled out her wallet, the person at the ticket booth just winked and waved them in, saying, “Zoey’s off at four, right? Just don’t tell my boss.”

They found Zoey at the touch tank, giving a talk to a group of schoolkids on a field trip. She noticed them mid-sentence, and Rumi felt like her lungs filled with bubbles when Zoey’s face lit up. A handful of the kids turned around, curious what had captured their tour guide’s attention, and Rumi and Mira ducked out of the room, giggling to each other.

They wandered for about fifteen minutes, but Rumi’s favorite room really was the one with the huge tank, the swirling schools of different types of fish. She and Mira settled on a bench, Rumi’s head on Mira’s shoulder, Mira’s head on hers. They were quiet—Rumi was pretty sure Mira actually dozed off—and Rumi looked up at the wall of water, and the silver flickers of small fish and the slow-moving large ones, and took a breath just to feel the air in her lungs.

“Hey, you.”

Rumi heard Zoey’s voice a split second before warm arms looped around her shoulders. She turned her head carefully to avoid dislodging Mira, grinning. Zoey always looked so beautiful in this room, her freckles complemented so wonderfully by the cool blue light filtering through the water. “Hi.”

“Mira asleep?” Zoey asked, releasing Rumi to circle around and sit beside her.

“No,” Mira grumbled. “’S’it four already?”

“Boss told me to clock out a bit early,” Zoey said, grinning. “Wanna stay a bit longer, or head home?”

“Home,” Rumi said—and there was one warmth Mira hadn’t mentioned, when they’d had that conversation months and months ago. It was the warmth that pooled in her chest whenever she said the word “home,” whenever she took out her keys to unlock the sticky apartment door and remembered that it was hers now, too. She was here. She was real. She could stay.

“Home,” Zoey agreed, and together they hauled Mira up (to a cascade of complaints from their lanky girlfriend) and began the trip out of the aquarium and back to the car.

The heat outside was enough to have Zoey complaining after all day in the air conditioned aquarium, but Rumi breathed it in with as much delight as she had the cool inside. Mira woke up enough to drive them home, seeming to hit a second wind as Zoey sang loudly along with the music, much to the delight of their starlight barrier. They piled out of the car and into their building, ran into Bobby just as he was leaving, got into their apartment to find the AC had sputtered out at some point between Mira leaving to pick up Rumi and the three of them getting back. Zoey bemoaned the unit’s death (however temporary it was or wasn’t), and Mira rolled her eyes and said, “Rums, I’m making samgyetang, wanna help?”

“Yes please!” Rumi said, hurrying to the living room to dump her books on the couch.

Working with Mira in the kitchen was familiar, by now. Rumi still wasn’t much of a cook on her own, but she took instructions very well, and she started scrubbing the ginseng as Mira prepped the chicken.

Samgyetang wasn’t her favorite food. Over the past few months she’d tried pretty much every new food she could get her hands on, and while she liked the taste of samgyetang, her love for it stemmed more from that month of ghostly uncertainty, Mira’s awkward kindness, Zoey’s enthusiastic care. Zoey had worked so hard to make Rumi comfortable, to show her everything she possibly could in the little time they had together—and now, they had plenty of time, and three round-trip tickets to Burbank for a week once the semester was over. Rumi sighed contentedly, ladling broth over three little hens.

“What are you so happy about?” Mira asked, nudging up her fogging glasses with one finger, grinning at Rumi.

“You,” Rumi said. “And Zoey.”

“You’re such a sap!” Zoey called from the living room.

“Yeah,” Rumi agreed readily, snickering a bit as Mira, ears red, bent over the dipping sauces.

The samgyetang didn’t take long, and soon enough they were perched around their table, digging into their meal. It was then, that Rumi finally noticed the looks Zoey and Mira were exchanging. “Guys?” she said warily. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Zoey said. “Just…”

Rumi narrowed her eyes.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Mira said, reaching over to cover Rumi’s hand with hers. “It’s, uh. It’s just that it’s been a year. Since we…found you.”

…Oh.

Being a sword had been…strange, to say the least. She hadn’t really been conscious, hadn’t really been herself—but she’d been aware the instant someone had touched her, had removed her from her shrine and her purpose. She hadn’t remembered anything about herself, other than that she’d sacrificed everything to protect the world from Gwi-Ma.

But she didn’t have to anymore.

“Oh,” she breathed, gazing at these two beautiful, amazing women in utter wonder.

“Yeah,” Zoey murmured, taking Rumi’s other hand. “We just…wanted to do something special. We were thinking we could go out to the shrine this weekend…?”

And their hands were so warm—their hands, their eyes, their hearts, their souls. Rumi drew them up, pressed kisses to their knuckles, and hoped they could feel just how dearly she loved them.

“I would like that,” she whispered. “I would like that very much.”