Archive of Our Own

The second best feeling in the world, in Rumi’s humble opinion, is standing in the middle of a giant stage—fireworks in tri-colors popping above and the roar of the ocean screaming her name (their names)—and waving towards the crowd and the imperfect colors that shimmer back in greeting. 

The best best feeling in the world, in Rumi’s correct opinion, is sitting where she is. 

Her back sinks so deep between the crevices of the pillowy couch that she’s half-surprised she isn’t sucked in and lost to the human world forever. Limbs tangle on top of her legs, under her legs, and over her lap—a mess of warm bodies that makes it hard to untangle one person from the rest. 

Her body is sore and impossibly warm, but she doesn’t mind it. She prefers it, to be quite honest. Rumi could lay here forever until her body decomposes and tether her to the people she loves forever and she would never mind. 

Which isn’t the most normal thought to have after closing the last leg of their tour in Seoul, but Rumi blames it on the exhaustion. And maybe her father’s side of the family. 

“Ugh,” Mira groans, knocking the back of her head against the couch. “I’ve been waiting to lay down here all day.”

Zoey stretches out over Mira’s legs, with her calves resting on Rumi’s lap, and gives an affirmative groan. “We should give Bobby a raise for putting this on the table,” she says happily, voice slurring from exhaustion. She points at the neck massager resting on her upper back, then lets her arm flop over the couch. “God, that’s the stuff.”

Rumi chuckles. She melts deeper into the couch and shimmies into a more comfortable spot, then lets her hands glide over Zoey’s ankles. Zoey kicks her stomach lightly in gratitude. It’s been their little ritual ever since Zoey accidentally twisted her ankle at a dance practice for this particular comeback.

Meanwhile, Mira busies her own hands by clicking incessantly with the remote to find them something to watch. Brown roots are starting to peek through Mira’s bright pink hair—indiscernible to the average person, but Rumi’s noticed since that morning. She’s already booked Mira’s hair appointment for her for the weekend. She knows how much Mira hates forgetting to touch up her roots.

Rumi’s thumbs rub soothing circles into Zoey’s sore ankles as she remarks, “I’ll talk to management tomorrow. I already figured we were going to bring up Bobby.”

Their groans aren’t what Rumi was expecting. Well—expecting anymore. She thought she was getting better at making them groan like that. 

“Tomorrow?” Mira echoes, exasperated. She lolls her head to the side to look at her. “What happened to actually taking a vacation?”

“Yeah!” Zoey agrees, looking at Rumi over her shoulder. “You’ve been hyping up this vacay since, like, Hong Kong! Like ‘oh, don’t worry, girls, we’ll have couch time all the time for two months’ and ‘oh, don’t worry, if the couch starts sagging from our ass indents, we—’” 

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Rumi says with a laugh. She gives Zoey’s ankle a small pinch, and Zoey flails in return. “I didn’t forget. The both of you would’ve started waterboarding me in the bathhouse if I did.” 

“Duh,” Mira grumbles.

“It’s a twenty minute meeting,” Rumi assures them. “Wrapping things up and all that—and, you know, touch base about our next comeback in the fall.”

“Are you sure it’s twenty minutes?” Zoey asks suspiciously. 

Mira grumbles something unintelligible under her breath as she fiddles with the on-screen keyboard. Rumi huffs out an amused breath through her nose and answers, “I’m sure.”

“You’re a hundred percent—?”

“I’m sure,” Rumi says gently. “I even asked them to push it back a couple hours.”

That gets their attention. Mira sits up straighter, and Zoey picks herself up from Mira’s lap to look at her suspiciously.

“Meeting’s at eleven o’clock,” Rumi confirms. She pounds her fists into the sides of Zoey’s calves to massage them. “Told them that we’re out of there by twelve whether they like it or not.”

Zoey and Mira press closer to her curiously. 

“And,” Rumi continues, holding up a finger, “I booked lunch reservations to the hotpot place with the nicer dangmyeon.”

It’s the finishing blow. 

Zoey and Mira whoop and holler, thanking her between their cheers and Rumi’s loud laughter. The couch nearly tips over with the force of their cheering—but none of them are phased by it. It’s a common occurrence at their place nowadays, even at hotels or penthouses that they rent for slightly longer legs of the tour. 

They’re tired, they’re sore to the bone, but they’re relaxed. Happy, too. Though Rumi can’t tell if they’re happy because they’re relaxed, or relaxed because they’re happy. Either way, all is right in her world. 

It’s so wonderful having the breadth of her world fit into the couch of their penthouse. 

Mira digs her shoulderblades into the couch and flinches back. She leans forward to unearth Rumi’s teddy bear, and Rumi gives her a small smile in apology. Zoey giggles and passes along her bear for Rumi to plop onto her own lap. Sometimes Beary gets forgotten from movie nights the day before. 

“Ugh, I can’t find anything to watch,” Mira complains. She’s jamming her thumb so hard into the remote that it’s a wonder that it doesn’t snap in half in her hand. “Zo, what was that one movie you wanted to watch the other day? The stupid one with the hurricanes and sharks—” 

“‘Sharknado’?” Zoey supplies. 

“Not that one. The one we haven’t seen yet.”

“‘Sharknado 2: The Second One’?” Rumi guesses. 

Mira hums. “We’ve seen that one. Like, half of it, but we’ve seen it.”

Zoey guesses again, “‘Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!’?”

“Nope.”

“‘Sharknado: Heart of Sharkness’?” Zoey tries once more. 

“That one’s a documentary,” Rumi reminds her. 

“Ooh, right.”

“Mockumentary,” Mira idly corrects. Then she furrows her brow and taps the remote on her chin to add, “The trailer you showed us was so stupid but you—” She catches herself, and Rumi knows why. She probably meant to add, but you looked so excited to show us the trailer and now I want to see you that happy again. 

Instead, Mira finishes, “But it looked kinda cool, I guess.”

Rumi shoots her a look, paired with a curl on a corner of her lips. Mira pretends not to see. 

“Oh! Oh!” Zoey sits up to stare nose to nose with Mira. “Do you mean ‘Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus’?! I mean, I don’t think it had hurricanes, but there were other—”

“Wait, I remembered,” Rumi interrupts, knocking the side of her head. “‘Thrash’?”

Mira points at her, and Rumi holds up her chin in pride. “That’s it,” she declares proudly, which is the closest she’ll ever get to the sincerest thank you from someone like Mira. “Feel like watching that tonight?” 

Rumi just shrugs. “I’m fine with whatever you guys wanna see.” 

Mira snorts, and Zoey layers it with her giggles. Mira lightly jabs, “I keep forgetting that you’re the last person on Earth who knows how to make a decision.” 

Which isn’t true. Not in the slightest. 

She knows what calls to make for which demos end up on their albums. She knows which nearly identical takes to choose for their second verse harmonies. She’s the one who pitches most of their concepts for comebacks. Hell, she picked where to eat for lunch tomorrow. Rumi just likes handing the decisions like this over to them instead. Whatever makes them happy makes her happy.

Rumi gives her teddy bear a light squeeze on the paw. 

Zoey flops back onto Mira’s lap, back first this time, to stare up at her as she jokes, “Aw, Mira, don’t make fun of her. What if she drops another album at midnight to force us back to work.”

“Better yet, maybe she’ll run out during the meeting tomorrow,” Mira jokes back.

“Or tell us she ran away to hook up with her demon boyfriend!” Zoey exclaims. 

They burst into fits of giggles after Zoey’s little joke. Rumi doesn’t join—unless squeezing the poor life out of her bear’s paw again counts. 

Rumi has known them long enough to know when they’re holding grudges or not. Nothing about their laughter or the way they melt into the couch with her say anything about holding any sort of ill will about what happened last year. If they did, they’ve dispelled it over a year of vulnerable, whispered reassurances in dark bedrooms and blackout curtains. Carrying the insecurities that she does has gotten so much lighter now that she knows that the people she loves don’t ever think any less of her. 

But still—guilt rests underneath her skin, as deep and marred as her patterns. It’s a part of her just as much as everything else is. 

They know it, too. Mira’s the first to realize her mistake—she calls out, “Rumi? You good?” before Zoey even finishes laughing. 

“Yeah,” Rumi says sincerely. “I deserved that. You know I already promised I wouldn’t let it happen again.”

Zoey, whose giggles have long since faded, gives her stomach another gentle poke with her foot. “We made you promise to be more open with us,” she scolds, in a way that makes Rumi smile. “We’re in this for life! You have us forever, or—yeah.” Zoey’s tone grows slightly unstable, until she balances it with an encouraging beam. “Everything’s all good now. I mean, I am spending my break between comebacks with you guys rather than my parents.”

Rumi exhales through her nose and gives Zoey’s ankle a small pat of the hand. “I wouldn’t spend my break with anyone else but you two, either,” she says, as sincere as she can muster.

“Same,” Mira replies, nonchalant.

Rumi and Zoey let that one slide. They’ve already teased her enough for crying at yesterday’s romcom.

“But seriously,” Zoey says, her voice somber, “if there’s anything bothering you, we’re always here, Rurubear.” 

There’s no use whining about the nickname anymore. Once Zoey finds a fitting name, there’s no changing her mind.

So, Rumi answers, “There isn’t. I promise. The only thing on my mind is trying to figure out what to do on our break.”

“Isn’t the point of a break not doing things?” Mira says lazily.

“Well yeah,” Rumi says, a little embarrassed. She scratches at her chin and plays with her teddy bear’s fur as she continues, “But it would still be fun doing something relaxing.”

“I’m more surprised you didn’t think about it while we were on tour,” Zoey muses. 

She tried to. 

It was just really hard to think about vacation spots when Zoey and Mira keep pulling her in to go barhopping together or to check out the tourist traps in the city they’re staying in. Even harder to think when they’d link arms with her and smile and laugh and put their heads on her shoulder or guide her to push her head into theirs. In—in a good way, though. Rumi wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We could always ask Bobby to make us an itinerary,” Mira muses. “He’s pretty good at those.”

“He is,” Rumi says with a sigh, “but I want him to have just as much of a vacation as the rest of us.”

“Fair ‘nough.” Zoey hums as she thinks. Mira fist pumps in victory when she finds the shark movie on one of their gajillion apps. “Oh! How do you both feel about the Maldives? I missed vacaying there.”

“Palawan was nicer,” Mira comments. 

“We could always hit up there first and then—hmm.” Zoey taps her ear in thought. “Ninh Van Bay? Could be sorta redundant. Kyoto’s pretty nice around—”

Rumi blurts out, “How—how about Jeju-do?”

Mira and Zoey look over to her curiously. Rumi starts to feel herself sweating under the collar. 

“Jeju-do?” Mira echoes. Rumi can’t make out what she’s thinking for once.

“Like… Jeju Jeju-do?” Zoey adds.

Rumi breathes out a laugh. She tries to make it sound as natural as possible, but she’s not sure if it’s working. “What other Jeju-do do you know about?” she teases. 

Zoey whines, and Mira chuckles under her breath as she asks, “You want to… go to Jeju-do? For vacation?”

“I mean…” Rumi’s at a loss for words. Did she say something wrong? “Yeah?” 

Zoey pulls herself up onto her elbows to give her a strange look. “Like, with us?”

“I wouldn’t say we if I didn’t mean us,” Rumi jokes. 

“No, no, we know—” Zoey says quickly. 

“We were just—” Mira interrupts. 

“—a littleeeee confused?” Zoey finishes, tilting her head at Rumi. 

Rumi frowns and looks between them in confusion. “Why?”

“Because we trained there for, what, three and a half years?” Mira says slowly, like she might bolt in the other direction if she says the wrong thing. She gently puts the remote down on the couch arm, too. “And—I don’t know if you know this—but you grew up there.”

“Why does that matter?” Rumi asks, slightly defensive.

Zoey tries to soothe her by sitting up and taking her hand to squeeze. “She just means that you never mentioned going back,” she says gently. “We kinda just thought that it was an, um… sore subject?”

They aren’t wrong. 

Jeju Island is a complicated jumble of memories in her mind. Some good, some bad, some lukewarm, and some downright horrifying to recall. Her first memory of Jeju-do was of stumbling down with her little baby legs to a giant camphor tree. Her last was of Celine’s tear-stricken face and an anchor in her chest that weighed her down to the bottom of the sea. 

“But it would be really nice to go, if that’s what you want!” Zoey exclaims, a little too loud. “Like—god, I miss the Hallabongs there. And the nighttime ambience, ugh. It would be so nice to read fanfics in bed while you’re surrounded by crickets and nice cold air.”

“It would be pretty chill,” Mira admits, her tone still careful. Her fingernail draws circles on the arm rest. “It’s quiet there. I was kinda hoping we’d go somewhere…”

Rumi tries to fill in the blanks: Quaint? Peaceful? Intimate? 

Rumi settles by answering, “I think I know what you mean. That’s why I suggested it.” 

Mira levels her with a look. Her eyes flick back and forth between the left and right sides of Rumi’s face, until she answers with a gentle, “Only if that’s where you want to go.”

“Yeah,” Zoey happily concurs. “We’ll only vacay somewhere we all wanna go to.”

“Funny you say that after you ignored me groaning about the—” Mira deadpans. 

Zoey hushes her, and Mira gives a quick roll of the eyes. It makes Rumi laugh, and that sinking feeling in her chest no longer feels like it’s on its way to drown her.

Rumi gives them a shrug and says, “It would be nice to go back. I mean—I don’t remember much, but I was there with family, and it was…” Her hesitation makes both of her girls look over, concerned and ready to listen. Their looks make her feel like an anchor being pulled back to a ship.

“Being there made me happy,” Rumi finishes. 

And it would be so nice to have it again with the family who make her just as happy.

Celine had called two days before they left for their flight. 

The call was… pleasant? 

Well, Rumi never really knows how to describe talking to Celine as anything more than—well, fine. Before and after what happened that day. 

They haven’t talked about that day since that very day. It’s almost like it never happened at all, if it weren’t for the gaping hole between her and Celine erupting into a much bigger abyss. Celine hadn’t always been the warmest person in the world when she was a kid, a tween, or teenager, but at least they ate meals together, laughed, and spent time after meetings, going over the best way to curve around something she or the girls weren’t comfortable with. Nowadays, she gets texts in ten words or less reminding her of company obligations or to be safe before a flight—or Bobby tells her what Celine wanted to tell her. 

Rumi was fine with that. It stung like saltwater in the eyes sometimes on colder, lonelier nights, but she manages. 

She doesn’t let herself wish things could be better in the future, either; she wished to be rid of her patterns, and it ended with gravel stuck to her knees and months spent after picking them out of her skin. It is what it is, as Zoey would say—usually about spilled juice in the kitchen, but it would apply here, too, she thinks. 

So it’s a surprise, to say the least, when Celine had called her for longer than ten seconds to ask her how she is, if she had packed her bags, and if she and “the girls” have already picked accommodations on Jeju-do. 

And then Rumi had said a mildly guilty, “Not… yet, I think,” and Celine only seemingly waved her hand in dismissal (somehow even through a phone) and told her that she would take care of it.

The call had been all too familiar to her—up until she crashed them into a tail spin when she blurted out that Celine could come along with them for vacation. The silence that stretched so palpably thin over the phone that she was convinced Celine had hung up on her. 

Until Celine had said back, almost soft, “Maybe next time, Rumi. Just be safe.”

She’s not so young and naive anymore to think that there’s ice between them. Mira had made sure, over the years, to ground her in reality before her innocence could turn into frostbite. Their relationship is cold blocks of ice, built into fortresses. It would be hard to thaw, but it’s Zoey’s optimism that makes her think that it wouldn’t be impossible. 

And it’s her experiences and upbringing that makes her grateful that the ice, at least, doesn’t bite against skin. 

Rumi thinks about the call the entire flight. At least it’s not a long flight—just an hour or slightly less, listening to Zoey and Mira sing their hearts out to some anime they’re watching. That makes her less of a loser, she likes to think.

She also doesn’t know why she’d been making up all sorts of theories in her mind as to what Celine had in store for them on Jeju-do. Like, duh. 

Of course she was going to give them the hanok they used to live in. Where else would it have been? 

“Aww, I haven’t seen this place in forever!” Zoey coos, dropping her bag by the sliding door to peek her head in said. Her voice muffled by the slightly damp insides of the hanok, she yells again, “Guys, look! It’s like we never left! I can still see the burn marks on the hallway ceiling from when we accidentally set that pot on fire!” 

Yeah, Bobby’s always been the type to shove them into five star hotels with a built-in jacuzzi in the room and mini-fridges stocked with everything they could ever want in a mini-fridge. If it were up to him, their bags would have been taken by five different porters and they’d be given neck massages all the way to their jacuzzi rooms. The silkiest pajamas would have been waiting for them on their beds, too—silky, with monogrammed initials and matching golden cuffs. 

But Celine had always been a realist. 

She spoiled Rumi as a child (and still now, if Rumi thinks about it), but always as a reward and never as a pacifier. The house smells clean, with the afternotes of lavender and minty cleaner, but with the slight forethought of damp rain still stuck to the ceiling. The floorboards are warm underneath her feet when they enter, but she can still see scuff marks around corners where Zoey had fallen flat on her face after Mira had chased her down for taking a picture of her mid-yawn—and where her little yellow scooter as a child had taken its course. 

Somehow, Rumi prefers being right here than that fancy hotel a couple of kilometers away from them. It’s cozier. Normal, or ordinary. Intimate, she should say. It’s fitting for the people she’s with. 

They separate as soon as they walk past the hallway. Well, separate in the mildest sense of the word. 

Rumi can still hear Zoey opening and closing the cupboards to see if Celine had thrown away her secret stash of “special candy”; with the walls so thin, she can hear Mira’s grunts as she drags their bags inside. She would have helped, but Mira always loves to fix them with a mean glare whenever they offer to help her. She doesn’t know why Mira always insists, but whatever. 

(She remembers Zoey cuddling up to her chest after a long day in Australia, an hour after they wrapped up their concert, nearly two years ago. She remembers Zoey mumbling into her neck, “When Mira comes back from the bathroom after shitting her guts out, tell her I fell asleep with my makeup still on.” 

“I thought you took it off backstage?”

“I did.” Zoey pauses for so long that Rumi thought she had fallen asleep. 

But then—“Mira only likes to take care of herself when she takes care of us.”) 

There’s a small note by the teapot on the table. She crouches to pick it up and unfolds it with a flick of her thumb. Celine doesn’t necessarily live here anyway, but she comes by at least once a month to “level herself out,” according to Bobby. It makes her wonder when Celine had the time to prepare a succinct note for them like this, because the scratches on the paper are definitely Celine’s. 

It’s straight to the point, as Celine always is. Bullet-pointed, even. 

The fridge and pantries are stocked, but they are free to throw away anything that tastes off because of the constant dropping and rising humidity over the past few weeks. 

A reminder to turn the TV off before bed because of the wasted electricity. 

A brief routine for her plants in the garden every morning.

All the bedsheets have been washed, but they should still check in case of dirt or dead bugs. 

Zoey and Mira’s old rooms are still under repairs due to a flood last year, but they’re free to bunk in Celine’s room during their stay.

At the very end, Celine attaches her phone number, and Rumi lets out an amused snort through her nose. As if the three of them would be incapable of memorizing her eleven-digit number. They’ve called her so many times for emergencies—demon or wardrobe malfunction related, it didn’t matter—that they could probably dial her in their sleep. 

Rumi tucks the note back under the teapot for Zoey and Mira to read later, then pauses.

She can still see the outline of the crack in the saucer that she dropped as a kid. Celine had glued it back together the next day. It’s bitterly nostalgic as much as it is sweet in the back of her throat.

Something crashes in the room next door, and Rumi calls out, “Zoey!” 

“It wasn’t me!” Zoey shouts and whines back.

Rumi pushes the teapot closer underneath the pot for safekeeping and sprints away to check. Thankfully, no fatal injuries have killed any of them just yet. It would’ve topped the time Rumi snapped her forearm clean in half (eugh) when they were on a vacation in Italy. 

Mira’s hunch-backed against one of their bigger luggages. She has a hand on her lower back, and Rumi poofs at her side. Literally poof, which is a thing that she can do that she also forgets about most of the time. 

Mira startles when she looks up to see Rumi standing over her, and she squeaks, “Rumi! Dude!”

“Sorry!” Rumi winces. 

She reaches out, but then thinks better of it. The last time she tried to help one of Mira’s back sprains, she nearly cracked her in half. Zoey had muttered something under her breath in English about it, but still refused to share about what it was. 

“Do you need me to get you some ice?” Rumi offers instead. “Uh… tea? Water?”

Zoey pops her head into the room and instantly grimaces at Mira’s posture. “Or an Advil?” she offers, too. 

Mira grunts in response and gives the top of the suitcase a quick thwack on the top. “It’s cool. I just need a break.” 

“We’ll bring the rest of the luggages inside,” Rumi promises. 

“I can—”

“Well, if you can, then come out and help me!” Zoey calls over her shoulder, and she disappears before Mira can reply. 

Mira huffs under her breath, mostly in annoyed defeat. There’s no catching up with Zoey whenever she puts her mind to things. ‘The Tasmanian Devil’ is her laser tag name whenever they go out to play. Rumi laughs quietly under her breath. 

“Go sit down,” Rumi says, lightly chiding.

She takes Mira’s elbow to guide her to the sofa just outside of the room. Mira grunts as she melts into the cushions. She looks so much like an eomeoni settling after a long day outside that Rumi barks out a laugh. 

Mira shoots her a nasty look. “What?” 

“Nothing,” she teases. “What kind of tea do you want me to make for you?”

Exasperated yet again, Mira starts to say, “I can make it my—”

Rumi poofs in front of Mira like a milky cloud of red, and Mira nearly slams her head directly into the wall behind her. Rumi almost feels bad about it, if it wasn’t for the look on her face. 

“What tea?” Rumi repeats. 

Mira knees her gently in the stomach to get her away, and Rumi straightens with a laugh. “Fine! Chamomile. I hate that you know how to do that now without needing to fart first.” 

Offended, Rumi snaps, “I never needed to—!” 

“Oh, my back,” Mira says flatly. “Oh, my head. It’s dying. I’m dying. I think I might pass away and never get back up.” 

Rumi shakes her head and leaves for the kitchen. Mira cackles away behind her, with the sound of Zoey grunting as she brings up the luggages one stair at a time just slightly farther away. She comes over to help while she waits for the water to boil on the stove. To Mira’s credit, she got a majority of their bags out of the muddy grass outside. 

Zoey pecks her on the cheek and exclaims, “A tip for my bellboy! Treat yo’ self,” before making a beeline straight to the kitchen to find something to eat.

Zoey makes use of the bananas in the freezer (Celine’s always been one who refuses to waste) to make banana bread. She puts Rumi on mashing bananas duty for her while she watches a tutorial on 2x speed. Rumi mixes some milk into Mira’s chamomile and serves it with the superglued saucer. Mira doesn’t point it out, and neither does Rumi.

The rest of the night isn’t so eventful after that—at least not in the way that concert nights are, with people frantically running around to make sure everything would be working fine by seven on the dot and water bottles shoved in their faces every few seconds. Or when they’d have to sneak outside at midnight, leaving behind a romcom and sundaes in their penthouse, to fight off some demons that managed to escape through tiny pockets in the Honmoon. The latter doesn’t happen as often anymore, if ever. Sometimes Rumi feels guilty for missing it. 

(Sometimes she wonders if it’s just the victory hugs and the big goofy grins, framed by messy hair and sweat, on her girls that she misses.)

And because they’d gotten to Jeju Island so late into the afternoon to allow for some last minute packing and sleeping in to celebrate their official vacation, nightfall comes like a snap of the fingers.

They try Zoey’s wonderful banana bread, bicker about the itinerary, and pile into the living room on the floor to watch a horror movie. The popcorn that Mira had shoved into the microwave tastes slightly burnt, which Zoey had tried to rectify with the cheese powder in the pantry, but Rumi doesn’t mind. She prefers this too salty, too burnt popcorn while she’s with them, rather than the kind that she eats alone in her room when she knows they’ve fallen asleep.

Near midnight and after the movie and some late night eggs, they say goodnight and pile into their respective rooms: Rumi in her childhood room, and Zoey and Mira into Celine’s.

Her room looks identical as to how she left it, as most childhood rooms are. It doesn’t feel the same, though. It’s probably because she can’t place how to feel about her too bright curtains or the dusty books piled up in the corner.

A picture of her mom and her two young bandmates posing for an award still sits on a shelf in the closet, next to the sparse clothes she left behind. It’s the only thing in her room that doesn’t have a speck of dust. 

Rumi scrolls through her phone in bed. She gets notifications from their group chat once in a while, mostly from Zoey, who also seem can’t to sleep. Most of it are funny seal videos for her to watch, but a few are odd comments like bro I cant sleep I feel liek celine’s watching me or why does celine have so many pillows and blankets/#?1!???

To which Mira always replies with short u can’t cuz u aren’t closing ur eyes or god forbid a woman wants to be comfortable when she sleeps.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that no one’s sleeping in the house. Rumi can’t chalk it up to jet lag, not with the time difference between Seoul and Jeju-do being nonexistent. Sometimes the insomnia just won’t leave her alone; sometimes, Zoey and Mira love to get the zoomies at one in the morning. 

She can hear them talking and giggling through the thin walls. They’re trying to be quiet for her sake, but once in a while Zoey will mutter something funny and Mira will laugh too hard before she slaps her hand over her mouth—or Mira will say something sarcastic, and Zoey will whine loud enough that Rumi can make out most of her words. 

Last year, she would’ve blasted some music in her earphones and turned her back on the door to wallow. 

But Rumi balls up the second blanket on top of her and trudges across the hallway to knock on the door. 

They don’t even hesitate to ask her to come in.

They talk and watch videos together on Zoey’s phone until the cold floor underneath them turns warm from the rising sun. It’s Zoey who knocks out first, curled up in between them, then Mira. 

Neither of them see the text Bobby had sent at five in the morning until they wake, apologizing that he didn’t realize the heating system at Celine’s hanok was still faulty and that a repairman would stop by the same day as an emergency (“What, with Jeju’s chilling cold nights and everything!”). 

Rumi didn’t think it was that cold. Not even back then, when she was too busy learning how to braid her own hair in the mirror. 

She even remembers Celine describing Jeju-do’s nights as “warm.”

Rumi’s almost forgotten how loud the birds are on Jeju Island. 

Well—anywhere that isn’t Seoul, for that matter.

Moving to Seoul hadn’t been too much of an adjustment when she was a preteen—it was just louder, brighter, and never stopped smelling like clean detergent. Living there also made all of Celine’s frequent scoldings of ppalli-ppalli with her when they lived on Jeju make so much sense. No wonder why she started taking sleep meds as a teenager. The lights of the city never turn off, and neither do the people in it. 

Jeju is vastly different. A good different, Rumi likes to think. It’s a good thing for a vacation like this, with them waking up exactly an hour and a half later than they usually do, with scattered calls of birds outside the window. Their tweeting songs sound almost as if they’re only rising now, too. 

Surprisingly, it’s Zoey who finishes getting ready first. She takes them by the hands and whines about how slow they are, and it only takes one glance between her and Mira for them to decide to slow down—just a little—to teach Zoey the virtue of patience. 

But Rumi feels kinda bad about it when Zoey starts to sulk on the wood outside of the door, so Rumi makes some toast and slathers it with butter and sugar for her. Zoey’s comfort breakfast. 

“This doesn’t mean that I won’t make you rue the day,” Zoey warns, one side of her cheeks stuffed with her toast. It makes her words sound more like hissing spits from a radio.

It makes Rumi laugh under her breath, but she sobers up when Zoey shoots her a nasty look. “I’ll look forward to your rueing,” Rumi says, semi-serious. 

Zoey’s face brightens at that. 

She gulps down her food, and Rumi turns away to look down at her phone—just in time for Zoey to leave a gracious peck of the lips on the highest point of her cheekbone. 

Rumi swallows hard and lets out a short breath through the mouth, like she’d just finish shoving a piece of toast in her mouth, too. 

Zoey wipes the crumbs off of her lap and happily says, “I’m gonna check on Mira to make sure she didn’t flush herself down the toilet. Get the GPS ready. You’re Dora’s map for today!”

Right. No wonder why Zoey had been so excited. Today’s itinerary is entirely Zoey’s dream day.

Zoey’s never stopped raving about the fruits on Jeju Island. She’d ask Bobby to get her some, “Fresh and deliciously orange, stat!”, whenever they finish a particularly grueling dance practice or concert. “Popeyes has spinach and I have my hallabongs,” Zoey would always smugly say. 

Sometimes Rumi wonders if Zoey’s going to end up living on Jeju-do when they retire, living in a quaint house surrounded by hallabongs and other citrus goodies for the rest of her life. She definitely wouldn’t mind spending her mornings picking citrus fruits before Zoey wakes, and neither would Mira.

If—if that’s something Zoey wants, obviously. 

Mira comes out of the house eventually, squinting at the sun through her dark sunglasses and holding a sling bag off of her shoulder, full to the brim with all the equipment they might ever need. Sometimes Rumi has to wonder what they’re going to do with two umbrellas and MREs, but she’s long since accepted that Mira’s too stubborn to let go of them. They do help with her overthinking whenever they get stuck in traffic, though. So maybe she has a point. 

Jeju Island never runs out of cafés. Every time she thinks she’s been to them all, another one appears from the ground up. Zoey doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest, instead squishing her cheek into Rumi’s shoulder and excitedly scrolling through her phone until she declares that they’ll be going “to that café!”

“Zoey,” Mira groans, sinking in her seat. “I don’t know how you do it—but I swear to god you always find the best places to eat.”

“I know, I know, you’re lucky to have me, you’re welcome,” Zoey replies with a wave of the hand, but the grin on her face never fades. “Just wait until we get to that restaurant I found on the plane. I peeked at the menu, and ugh, I’m already saving room in my stomach for it.” 

The pager on their table vibrates, and Rumi swipes it away before either of her girls can. She waves the pager and muses, “If you’re saving room, does that mean I can take your—?”

“No!” Zoey whines. 

Rumi’s face splits into a grin, and Mira gives her a smirk and a subtle nod before she slips away. It was Mira who had taken enough pity on her over the past year with Zoey’s increasing jokes and teases. It’s part of why she paid for Mira’s drink (and Zoey, of course—she can’t do one and not the other). 

Rumi swaps the pager for three drinks and another round of orange ice cream, and Mira and Zoey cheer when she returns. It makes her grin in mild embarrassment at the other patrons in the café—just one old couple situated at the very end, who clearly don’t know who HUNTR/X or demon hunters are from the way they’re glaring like they want them to drown at sea. 

Mira reaches for the ice cream, and Zoey slaps the back of her hand. 

She barks out, “Maknae eats first!” 

They’re used enough to Zoey’s random rules that Mira just shrugs and pushes it closer to Zoey’s side of the table with a huff.

They have their pick of the harvest when it comes to picking out which farm to go to for Jeju’s homegrown mandarins. It would be stupid of them to take a vacation here and not pick some citrus fruits as one of the first (and she guesses probably the last) things they do. Rumi doesn’t remember much about her mother—or, demonic demon-husk-fanged father, for that matter—but sometimes she’ll catch a whiff of the herbal leaves and citrus fruit and stop in her tracks. 

She does the same when they greet the owners with bows and earnest gratitude and finally make it through the gates of a modest farm.

Celine told her once that her favorite food as a baby was hallabongs and peeled oranges—that she would take the thin skins and run away from people, laughing and screaming, with them still clutched so tightly in her baby hands. Rumi’s pretty sure she was joking. 

She has to be, but it’s still bittersweet when she walks up to a low-hanging fruit and cups it in both of her hands, still too big for her even as a woman who lets two human girls slather sunscreen all over her and her patterns before they leave. Zoey still wonders if her patterns are more or less likely to burn in the sun than typical human skin; Mira likes to hypothesize that her patterns are made like animal hides, strong and resilient. Sometimes Rumi wonders the same. Life’s greatest mysteries, but at least they unfold them one by one together. 

Zoey has an entire notebook shelf full of “Rumi experiments” by her bed for that exact reason. 

She bets that Zoey’s gonna write about this experience in one of those notebooks when they get home, too—because her patterns are starting to shimmer gently under the morning sun and dazzle through the quiet shades of the hallabong trees. Mira and Zoey glance over when they think she has her back to them. It still takes some effort nowadays to press down the smirk on her face. 

“Zoey! God, you need to slow down,” Mira starts, slightly out of breath as she clumsily steps over uneven soil to get to their sides. It makes Rumi giggle watching someone neverendingly described as graceful as a swan online to meet her maker on a citrus farm.

Zoey retorts, “Hey, we’re already walking slower than we should be. Maybe you just need bigger legs.” 

“Stilts could help,” Rumi adds helpfully, and Mira shoots her a nasty look. 

Rumi just gives her a wolfish half-smile. Justice and karma for the time Mira tried to give her carnival stilts for Christmas. It was a gag gift, right before Mira showed her her real gift (expensive and tailored to her tastes—as naturally as Mira would ever give them things), but still. Justice rests for no one.

Zoey leans over to inspect more fruits on a particular tree. She hums under her breath, rubbing her chin and making all sorts of faces that makes Rumi want to roll her eyes. 

“You know we can, like,” Mira interrupts, holding up her basket, “fill up as many baskets as you want, right? You don’t have to look at just one.”

“I know, I know,” Zoey says offhandedly. She reaches to touch the branches of the tree and hums even louder. “But listen closely, young Mira—”

“I’m older than—” 

“—you have to learn the way of the citrus fruit. You have to listen to them so you can bear the fruits of your labors and maximize the sweet, delicious, tangy flavor profiles of the best of the best.” 

“Any fruit on those trees will taste fine,” Mira groans. 

Zoey nods sagely. “Ah, that’s what an untrained person in the way of the hallabongs would say.” She grasps a fruit to show them the bulging top. “You just don’t know the way of caressing tiny knobs and knowing what joys they produce.” 

The offended look on Mira’s face, complete with her wrinkled nose and her half-snarl, makes Rumi bark out a short laugh. 

“I mean it!” Mira exclaims, once again shaking the empty basket. Out of pity, Rumi snips a hallabong and gently places one on the bottom. “Thanks, Rumi—and I stand by what I said. There’s a thousand fruits on these trees and all of them are going to taste the same.” 

Zoey only replies, “Nuh-uh.” 

Mira takes a step back in surprise, and Rumi bites on the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at the face she makes. 

“You can’t just tell me—!” Mira growls. 

“I mean,” Rumi interrupts, tilting her head thoughtfully, “she’s not wrong, you know.” 

Zoey lets out a happy giggle, and Mira whips her head over to her in surprise—and betrayal. “What do you mean?”

Zoey points at a hallabong by Mira’s shoulder, and then at another one next to Rumi. She tells Mira, matter-of-factly, “Well, that one’s too yellow, and Rumi’s is like this succulent delicious orange color.”

Mira raises her eyebrows. “So what? They’re still the same fruit.”

“It means that Rumi is sweet,” Zoey chirps, “and you’re sour and nasty.” 

The face that the Mira makes, offended and very sour, makes Zoey and Rumi laugh so hard that their voices echo down the trees and towards the birds that circle and sing above. It’s a miracle that no one tells them to hush up—but she supposes that their giggles are so high and airy that they could be mistaken for the birds.

(There have been a few times when she’d wake, aching from last night’s practices, dreaming of two herons in the sky; dancing and falling and so high that they’re more like black specks against blue; and then two becomes three, and the blues in the sky turn gold.

She usually blames those kinds of dreams on the weird movies they watch before bed.)

Zoey leads them through the forest of hallabongs. She’s picky about which fruits end up in the basket that Mira proudly tuts along, chin high and proud, but she never denies Mira nor Rumi of the fruits that catch their eyes. She encourages them, even, eyes sparkling and voice high when she squeals whenever Rumi or Mira sheepishly points to a fruit that they feel drawn to.

Most of the hallabongs in the basket are Mira and Rumi’s selection, by the time it starts to get full and the peak afternoon sun starts to stare them down. More than once or twice, Rumi and Mira had shot each other looks to prod the other to goad Zoey into picking some stuff of her own—this time, when Mira points down to their spoils of war (hallabongs in the basket), only one or two heads (hallabongs) away from being filled to the brim, Rumi finally clears her throat to get Zoey’s attention. 

But the sound she makes drowns under the the sound of Zoey’s loud gasp. 

It doesn’t take long for either of them to notice what it is. It’s hard to, when Zoey’s pointing and jumping like she just saw Celine start flossing in front of her. 

“Oh, that’s gorgeous!” Zoey gushes, rushing over to the side of a particularly full and orange-y hallabong. 

“Like you?” 

Mira and Rumi say it at the same time—with the same teasing tone, and with the same underlying cheesy sincerity. 

Mira snorts and presses down a guffaw, and Rumi strikes her calf with the top of her shoe. Mira buckles under the weight, but the shit-eating grin never leaves her face. As if she has anything to laugh about—she’s just as guilty of making the same joke as she is!

Well. Not a joke.

She just knows that Mira likes to pretend that things like that are jokes behind her drawls and her har har har’ing. Rumi lets her have it just this once. She won’t be so kind tomorrow when they go to the waterfalls.

“You guys are so corny,” Zoey declares with a wrinkled nose. A smile on her face gives away her delight. “I was gonna make that joke!” 

“To who?” Rumi asks suspiciously. 

“Careful, Zo,” Mira says, the drawl in her voice a short warning to her sarcasm. “You don’t want to repeat the same mistake Paris of Troy made.” 

Zoey snips the top of the hallabong and waves her hand dismissively. “Oh, I won’t. Because unlike chud Paris, I would’ve done the smart thing and split it into three.” 

Then she drives her thumb into the top knob of the hallabong and peels it downwards, smooth as a banana peel. Rumi’s impressed. Even more so when Zoey splits the fruit into perfect thirds, and hands one each to the both of them. 

It tastes much sweeter than Rumi thought it would. 

But maybe that’s just because she’s with them.

They pick out another hallabong from the basket—Mira’s, judging from its deformed, lumpy quality, she quietly muses—and split it amongst themselves again while they walk among the rest of the hallabong trees.

Rumi pulls out her digital camera and crouches to take a picture of the young plants taking root in strange places. 

Such an awkward phase in their growth, and hiding away and tucked under the shadows of their bigger companions. An odd thing to take pictures of, but she can only take so many pictures of hallabongs in different angles today. Plus, she needs to pace herself with taking candids of Mira and Zoey—she only brought five SD cards, and she learned from their last vacation when it came to going wild with photos of them. 

She clicks through the photos of the plants she took. Proud, Rumi stands up and tries to retrace her steps. 

But walking backwards hadn’t always been her strong suit. Honestly, dancing or moving around in general has never been her strong suit in the first place. Having Mira as a teacher and Zoey as a cheerleader is the only reason she hadn’t been bashed as much as she should have on the internet. 

Still—being bested by a rock and losing her footing because of it is the lowest point in her life (so far) (and yes, including when she met the stupid Saja Boys). 

And yet, she’s never known a time in her pre or post debut lifetime when Mira wasn’t there to catch her after she gets dizzy twirling around during rehearsals. 

Or, you know… tripping on rocks. 

And she’s never known Zoey to not giggle about it, harmonious and teasing and gentle all at once. Teasing, obviously, for how awfully bad she is with coordinating her body—but somehow Zoey’s laughs always made her feel so much better about her “epic fails.” 

No cheesy k-drama piano plays in Rumi’s head. None of the OSTs that get stuck in their heads after they binge watch the latest drama, either. 

Just Mira’s laughter; Zoey’s laughter; her own, when she finally manages to step away from Mira and give Zoey a cutting glare with a breathless huff. 

Zoey tugs her by the belt loop and tilts her head down the rest of the farm. “Come on, miss ballerina cappuccina,” she teases. “We’ll make sure you don’t drop into another ditch.” She pokes the tip of Rumi’s nose. “Don’t you worry.” 

“Don’t,” Mira says, sounding just a tiny bit exhausted. 

Rumi clamps her mouth shut with a pout.

They both know that refuting Zoey’s teases would just make things worse. There’s a reason why they call it bait online, Rumi’s pretty sure. 

On the way back, walking closer to the other side of the trees that they had missed on their first walkthrough, Rumi catches markings on a tree.

She slows down to squint at it, but not slow enough to stray from the girls who would stop in their tracks for her if she so much as wandered more than a couple feet away. 

The handwriting seems so familiar to her, she thinks—but she thinks that way of almost everything on Jeju-do. Everything, from the birds to the waves, gives her déjà vu. It would make sense that carvings on a tree, made from hands in love, judging from the inside joke that they draw a heart around, would feel the same way.

The last thing she notes is that the pathing beneath them seems so well walked-on, too. Rumi wonders where they are now. She hopes that they enjoy the sweet hallabongs like she does. 

Mira tugs her by the wrist when she doesn’t notice a divot in the ground. She doesn’t even scold her, and Rumi just gives her a weak smile in thanks.

Zoey slides her arm into Rumi’s elbow—so natural and right—and starts blabbing about how much she missed the fruits, the sea breezy air, the random videos on her phone, and how it’s so nice to be out here with them. Mira and Rumi hum along happily. 

Mira’s pinky is locked with hers as they walk. Zoey hugging her elbow, affectionate down to the way she walks slower to accommodate Rumi; and Mira’s pinky locked with hers, loose and not as tight as Zoey, but just as confidently grounding.

The three of them swing their hands together and sing a stupid song that got stuck in all of their heads on the way there.

A basket full of hallabongs sits in the back, making the inside of the car so sweet and citrusy. It’s the kind of smell that will stick to her clothes even after she washes and scrubs, but she doesn’t really mind. 

The smell will bring back memories like this, and she doesn’t mind that a single bit.

Rumi had expected Jeju Island to feel smaller, now that she’s older. 

She still remembers being frightened by the giant trunks of the trees, towering over her and calling her name through crooning songs up above the sky from birds that she can’t see through the thick green. Celine used to pick her up and let her closer to the sky, murmuring encouragement for her to touch the sky because “one day, when you’re older, you’ll be able to touch those harp strings that the birds love to sing to.” 

And when she lived in Seoul, Jeju-do kept such a small space in her mind compared to the bustling streets and the giant concert venues. Even more so when they began to tour the world, flying high above the birds and fans that always sing to her. She expected Jeju Island to seem so miniscule compared to everything she experienced. 

But it’s been the complete opposite so far. 

Waterfalls, camellias, lava tubes, parks—something new greets them everyday, and it’s become a ritual for her every night to load her SD card onto the fancy hard drive she brought along. Money well spent, she’s happy to say. Plus the raincoat she bought for her teddy bear. 

She has a feeling the sudden vastness is because of Mira and Zoey, who never let her stay home for longer than an hour if the sun was out so that they could explore every part of the island.

When she closes her eyes and recounts the day, it’s only memories of Mira or Zoey that come to mind—never the food, as delicious as she would’ve touted them to be, or the fancy cliffdiving platforms. Just pink perfect hair, rings that hurt her hand when someone squeezes her fingers too hard, and laughter, laughter, laughter. Every new day is an adventure with them, and somehow more memorable than all the fancy lights at concerts and the dozens of demons they’ve evaporated.

It made sense, to be fair. This is the first real, proper vacation in… honestly, probably ever, and she had only been following Celine’s lead when it came to proper R&R. Celine had never let them go too far on Jeju Island when they used to train here, unless it was for cardio.

Well—she has a feeling that Celine would approve of what they’re doing right now, anyway. Bike rides are cardio activities, right?

“It closes in half an hour,” Rumi informs them with a wince. “I don’t think we’ll make it—yeah, Zoey, even if we bike really hard.”

Zoey clamps her mouth closed with a pout. 

“That sucks,” Mira says in a way that she thinks doesn’t suck. “Guess we have to go to my favorite restaurant for dinner tonight. I’m… so sad.”

Her delivery is so deadpan that Rumi snickers under her breath, and Mira smacks her with her sling bag before she clips it back onto her body. 

“You planned this, didn’t you?” Zoey accuses.

“Me?” Mira sounds genuinely offended. 

“Yes, you, Six Foot Pepto Bismol.” Zoey squints hard at Mira, and Rumi turns away to face the water that stretches over the horizon and down below the cliffs to stay out of the impending squabble. “You’re the reason we’re out here so late!”

“Me?” Mira repeats, somehow even more offended. “All I said was that we should cycle when the sun isn’t too hot so we don’t get sun damage.”

Not a lie, but not the complete truth—Rumi knows for a fact that Mira’s been overly cautious with them steering any kind of vehicle at high noon after Rumi nearly caused a traffic jam on Gyeongbu Expressway. She still maintains the defense that it wasn’t her fault. It was Mira’s, obviously, for making her drive.

When Zoey sucks in a deep breath to defend herself, Mira quickly adds, “And you’re the one who made us stay at the petting zoo for that long because you ‘really like the alpacas.’”

“They were cute!” Zoey whines. “And one thought your hair was candyfloss! It was really cute. I already posted the pics.” 

Mira throws her arms up in exasperation, and Rumi lets out a laugh. She doesn’t try to hide it this time. 

Zoey and Mira glance at her expectantly, and Rumi clears her throat to sober up. Her years of leadership has perfected the art of calming down (most) conflicts in the group, and it comes out so naturally that she finds herself saying, “Let’s just go to Zoey’s restaurant for lunch tomorrow—and then we can just move up that street market outing,” before the plan even registers in her mind. 

Zoey and Mira glance back at each other—then nod in subdued agreement. 

Rumi keeps her chin up high with pride. Nailed it. There’s a reason why she’s been voted the ‘top one best leader in K-pop’ for the fourth year in a row.

The best part of being a great bickering bomb technician is that she gets to have nice, refreshing, peaceful walks down Jeju Island like this after she defuses their arguments. Nothing says trending YouTube ASMR video for ‘Jeju Island ambience - 2 hour loop’ than listening to Zoey sing A Thousand Miles in Toad’s voice and Mira trying to drown her out via the static noise on full blast with her mini speaker. 

She wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Not that she’d tell them that little fun fact, though—they would have turned up the volume until Bobby can hear it from Seoul. 

The bike rent shop has a nice air conditioner that makes all three of them sigh with relief. They don’t spend very long being too choosy with their bikes, not with the threat of the sun coming down soon. 

“Aw, there’s no trio bikes,” Zoey whines when she reconvenes with them. 

Rumi clicks her tongue. “I don’t think bikes with three seats would be safe to ride anyway, Zo,” she says, rubbing between Zoey’s shoulderblades in pity. She masks her own slight disappointment as best as she can. 

“There’s a dual one,” Mira says, pointing at the bike in the very corner. 

Rumi leans forward to squint at it. It’s almost certainly made for Jeju’s finest preteens, with the pompom on the handle and the glitter along the body. 

“Oh!” Zoey exclaims, pointing at the nice teal to the right of it. “I can rent that one. You guys can take the tandem bike. I don’t mind. I can bike behind you just in case you two argue and crash and die or—” 

“Take it with Rumi,” Mira says, matter-of-factly. 

Zoey and Rumi shoot her twin looks of surprise. 

“What?” Mira shrugs and folds her arms protectively over her chest. “I can’t fit on that thing, but you two are short enough.” 

“You can fit!” Zoey argues.

Rumi glances at her with a slight jerk of her cheek. “Well…”

Then Mira’s eyebrow twitches as she answers, “You called me ‘Bubblegum Burj Khalifa’ when you woke me up yesterday.” 

No point arguing with that, and Zoey knows it—hence, onto the infamous bike paths of Jeju Island they go. At least not before Zoey tucks Rumi’s bangs back with pins she keeps in her back pocket and Mira stress-tests the gears on their bike. Zoey insisted that she take the captain’s seat at the front of their bike, which was surprising, but she’s always happy to oblige. It’s clear why as soon as they speed away from the rental store, with Zoey nearly tipping them over now and again as she centers her action camera and swings her feet around to take in the gorgeous view. 

And obviously, to point and laugh at Mira behind them. 

Rumi’s always loved Jeju’s skies and coastlines. The jagged, harsh geometric lines of the city sometimes feel claustrophobic when she isn’t careful about keeping her sleep schedule to a bare minimum; it’s the openness of the cool wind and the blue waters that make the air smell vaguely of sea salt and citrus fruits that propels her forward. The waves against the rocks and the spurring of the wheels feel like harmonies to Zoey’s teasing shouts and Mira’s louder laughter. Pretty, pretty instruments, to the sounds of voices that she loves.

To voices that make her grin madly against the feeling of cold, wet wind on her face. 

She closes her eyes once in a while to listen to them closer, just as much as she stretches her hand towards the open ocean just for a chance to catch the wind in her hands—wind with laughter still intertwined.

The sunset, with its warm red glow and the golden light that falls beneath the horizon as they ride back home, is a great competitor to the way its reflection casts orange streaks across Zoey’s sea-kissed freckles and the earthy brown in Mira’s crinkled eyes. Sometimes Rumi wishes she had a photographic memory. She would take pictures of the wind in their hair and fall asleep to it until she lays under the soil of the island. 

They pull over when the sky seems mere minutes away from turning dark, near the hanok with ground beef defrosting in the fridge for dinner. The coast and its foaming waves look too good to pass up for quick pictures and a reflection on their day. 

“Hello!” someone calls, and Rumi nearly drops her camera into rocks below. 

Mira laughs quietly under her breath, and Zoey pinches her side until she jumps and yelps. 

A man with a gray beard mimics taking a picture with a rectangular camera. “Would you like me to take?” he asks kindly, English thick but understandable.

It’s Zoey who responds first with a surprised but enthusiastic, and most importantly in Korean, “Oh! Thank you for offering!” She slides her eyes over to Mira and Rumi to make the call. 

Mira politely answers, “If it wouldn’t be a bother, maybe a picture or two. Thank you.” 

He chuckles and waits for Rumi to stop fiddling with the settings before handing it over to him.

There’s no concern between the three of them on if he’d end up mugging them or running away with the camera. They’re more than capable of chasing him down, saingeom in hand or not. Hopefully. Maybe they slacked off too much in the past week or so. Should she wake them up at sunrise to—?

“First vacation to Jeju?” he asks kindly as he lifts the camera up. 

The three of them squish together into the frame, and Zoey leans closer to Mira to squish her cheeks together to force her to smile. 

After the first shot, Rumi answers, “First proper one, I think.” 

He brings the camera down to raise his eyebrows at her in surprise. “Ah, I knew I recognized you from somewhere!”

Rumi stiffens in panic—which disappears in record time when he goes on to say, “It’s easy to recognize an islander. Welcome home, kkomaengi.” 

Zoey giggles against her shoulder at the comment, and Rumi’s vision goes temporarily white with the accidental flash. The old man apologizes, and Rumi misses her chance to ask him about what it means. “Thank you,” she says instead, voice weak. 

He goads them into doing silly poses together. He snaps each one between their giggles: Zoey being held up horizontal, them biting their lips, hearts with their arms towards the sea, and everything under the sun that would probably yield a dozen selcas for the next album. He even teaches them how to make a star with their fingers, all connected together. 

“Another group of friends turned it into a trend a long time ago,” he muses as he hands back the camera. “With how loud the three of you laugh, I’m sure you’ll come up with something just as good.” 

Zoey giggles at the compliment, and Mira openly smiles, a testament to how gallantly happy she is. They bow and thank him profusely, and he shakes his head and tells them over and over that he’s just happy to see more memories made on the island. 

He gives them a quick story before he leaves: about friends like them who talk so loudly that the birds laugh along to their jokes, the time one had jumped from a boat to swim back to the shore they’re standing on because her friends were calling out for her to come back, and the oceans that would sooner dry up before he would ever confidently think their bond would break. 

He tells them to stop by and buy cabbages down by the market if they ever wanted to say hello. They promise to, wave goodbye, and Rumi adds a quiet, “Gomapsuda, samchun.” His laughter leaves after they do. 

Zoey slips her arm around Rumi’s bicep with their bike guiding along on the other side of her hip. The small flashlight on their bikes grant them more light under the youthful night. Meanwhile, Mira forges ahead—always ready to take danger first for them, even if it’s only a night’s pot holes. 

Zoey puts her head on Rumi’s shoulder and murmurs, “What’s bothering you? Why are you pouting?”

Answering with nothing would just douse fire on more flames. Zoey can sniff out their sulkiness from a mile away like an emotional bloodhound. 

So she swallows her pride and mumbles, “Is it that easy to tell that I’m from Jeju?” 

“Well, the jejueo before we left was a nice touch,” Zoey teases. 

Rumi elbows her gently in the rib. “I was being polite!” 

Mira looks over her shoulder to smirk at her, then replies, “No, you sound fine—just not when you’re mad.”

“Or sleepy,” Zoey adds. 

“Or distracted,” Mira also adds. 

“Or, like, whenever you’re surprised, you say ‘gasp! Musa—?’”

“No, I don’t!” Rumi snaps. 

Zoey and Mira just give each other a look, then laugh. It makes Rumi huff, but Zoey kneads her bicep all the way home to get her to calm down and Mira unties her shoes for her by the door as an apology. Acceptable, for now.

Bobby calls them to check in while they cut up vegetables and get a pot boiling. 

Zoey takes Rumi’s phone to blather on and on about the scenery and her alpacas, their plans to head to Geumneung Beach over the weekend, and that they should take Celine out for a relaxing day at the spa after they’re going to tomorrow. 

“Because she clearly needs it,” Zoey explains, waving the knife lazily in the air. “I mean, can you imagine how many knots she has in her back? She stands like an African net sponge—so full of tough-to-knead-out knots and—” 

“Zoey!” Mira and Rumi scold. 

“What?” Zoey complains, passing Rumi the cut-up carrot matchsticks. “Or maybe we can just take her to the beach. You know those videos of people putting their pets in places they’ve never seen? We should put her on a beach. Have you guys ever imagined putting Celine in beach water?” 

“Zoey!” Rumi cries out again, a wooden spoon hanging loose on her wrist with mortification.

But Bobby only laughs—which means that his boss in question wasn’t in the room to cut him with a look—and exclaims, “Between me and you, I don’t think she even knows how to swim. But that’s fine! We have technology to help with that now!”

Rumi shakes her head as Bobby gives them a short summary of the things happening back on home base, and then leaves them to enjoy their dinner. A chorus of “Bye, Bobbyyyyy!” later, and they’re back to cooking up some delicious home-cooked meals. 

They pile up for the night when all the food they gorged on starts to hit right before midnight. It’s not a particularly cold night, but they still stick close together under the blankets anyway. Rumi isn’t one to complain. 

Then, in the darkness, Zoey whispers, “Rumi?” 

Rumi just gives a mild grunt in reply, already halfway to sleep and to a dream about oranges floating in saltwater.

She feels Zoey shift against the crook of her elbow. Then she says, just as quietly as the wind that whispers outside, “I don’t think most people can tell you’re from Jeju, if that’s what you’re worried about.” 

Rumi exhales through her nose, partially in exasperation and mostly in amusement. “I’m not worried,” she replies candidly, voice thick with the call for sleep. 

Then she feels Mira’s chin twitch against the top of her head. 

“But we can tell sometimes,” Mira says, her voice even deeper and dawdling than hers. 

Rumi draws in a quick breath to gain enough consciousness to answer. “How?” is all she can manage. 

She doesn’t get a response for a while. She melts her body back against the futon once she starts to think that they’d just fallen straight back to sleep. 

But then Zoey mumbles, “When you call us jagiya.” 

To tease them, she means. Jokingly. Obviously. 

Rumi’s too tired to ask what that means—but Mira already knows she’d like the explanation, and she uses the last of her consciousness to quietly say, “It’s different when you… say it. Like the… syllable. Second. I think.”

Zoey draws in a slow breath. “Is different,” is all she can mumble out.

Rumi falls asleep last between the three of them. 

She always does, but she falls asleep so late because she’s too busy to sleep this time. 

She keeps mouthing and mumbling the word under her breath in different cadences. 

Jagi. 

Jagiya. 

Jagiya, jagi-ya, ja-gi-ya, jagiya. 

Jagiya, gyeote isseo-jupseo. 

Huh. 

She never noticed.

Rumi’s favorite place to take pictures, at least for now, is right here, surrounded by sunflowers and the sun that beats overhead. Nothing that SPF 50 PA++++ (with their faces on it, naturally) couldn’t help with. 

She crouches and turns the ring on her film camera as slowly as she can to capture the details on the petals. Her mirrorless camera still sits inside of their hanok, ready for an adventure down by the cliffs tomorrow. Film strips just seem so much more fitting when they’re surrounded by beautiful scenery like this. 

Mira sets her chin on top of her head to watch her fiddle with her camera. “I thought you broke that last year?” she muses. 

“What?” Rumi replies, half-distracted. 

“You did.” Rumi jerks her head upwards to get Mira to go away, but Mira’s deep chuckle just presses into her skull. Mira continues, “Don’t you remember? We were in Gangnam and you smashed a demon in the face with it because they were right next to Zoey.” 

The film camera gives a tactile click. She chuckles under her breath and lowers it from her eye to squint up at Mira. “First of all, that was a disposable camera. I wouldn’t break a real camera like that. I’m not you.”

Mira gives her the stink eye, and Rumi laughs again. She and Zoey promised never to let her live down the power bank incident for a reason. 

“So you brought a ‘real’ camera?” Mira says, tone approaching on a tease. 

Rumi shrugs. “Why not?”

“So can I see what you took so far?” 

“It’s a film camera.” When Mira stares, Rumi sighs through her nose and explains further, “We have to develop it first at a shop. Or we can do it at home, but I don’t think I trust either of you with the chemicals.”

“Ouch,” Mira says flatly, and Rumi puts the viewfinder back up to her face. Mira continues with her jabbers. “Are you just taking pictures of the sunflowers? Why didn’t you take pics with this camera at the canola field we went to last week?” 

Rumi puts the camera back down again, exasperated. “Why are you so nosy today?”

Mira nods over into the near distance, where Zoey is loudly squealing at one of the farmdogs and playing a loose game of chase around the rough paths. 

“Stopped talking to me so she could play with the dogs,” she grunts. “So I’m bored.” 

“Aww, Mira,” Rumi croons, making Mira’s shoulders tense at the tone, “are you jealous of the doggies because you can’t follow Zoey around like—ow—!”

She laughs as Mira pinches and twists the skin above her elbow. She swats her away, and Mira lets out a huff as she threatens (in her own perception, probably), “You’re so lucky that I’m too tired to bend down and throw that camera to that fat dog over there.” 

Rumi snickers, but she holds on just a little bit tighter around her camera. Mira won’t break up, but she definitely will try snatching it and holding it over her head to make her work for it. She’s already done that a few times—with her hats or sunglasses, mostly. Nothing is safe from Mira’s reign of tall terror.

“If you’re so bored, why don’t you take some pictures?” Rumi suggests. 

Mira wrinkles her nose, and Rumi suppresses the urge to roll her eyes. “You take better pictures than I do,” Mira says. 

“So?” 

“So, why would I take pictures?”

“Because it’s fun and you might like it?” 

Mira mocks her words under her breath in a higher-pitch, and Rumi shoots her a nasty glare. Mira pretends not to notice and asks instead, “Is that why you keep taking pictures while we’re on vacation? Because it’s fun and you like it?” 

Rumi pauses to think about that, fiddling with the dials on her camera. “I mean… isn’t that why most people take pictures?”

Then Mira bends down at her hip—and Rumi takes a startled step back. But instead of saying to her (or laughing, for that matter), Mira turns her head and squints in the distance. She holds up both thumbs and pointer fingers to make a rectangle, then adjusts it until it’s near Rumi’s eyes. Rumi huffs and complains, “Hey, you don’t have to bend down that much! I’m not that short.” 

“I can still see exactly what you’re looking at,” Mira murmurs, a faint wisp of a smirk on her face. 

Rumi looks at the side of her cheek in confusion. “What, the sunflowers?”

Because they are very pretty sunflowers. 

“Your background, yeah,” Mira says casually, then tilts her head to think. “And… foreground? Fuck if I know. But I know who your subject is.” 

Before Rumi can ask who? and risk being mocked for sounding like an owl, Mira leans close to her shoulder and points in the distance.

Towards the dogs jumping and barking, and the girl that they, too, can’t keep their eyes off. 

“I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine,” Mira cajoles. “She can’t know I thought I was getting a little jealous over dogs.”

In another world—or a year ago, before her patterns had been slathered up and down in sunscreen before they left the house by two sets of gentle palms—Rumi would’ve stashed her camera away and vehemently denied any wrongdoing. Or she wouldn’t have been caught at all, because she wouldn’t have ever dared herself to look at them for longer than she’s permitted on a stage or at home, might as well through the frozen frames of a camera. 

But they’ve been teaching her more than to just accept herself; sometimes, when they complain that she’s acting too much like a princess, Rumi likes to tut back the fact that it’s their faults. 

“Subjects,” Rumi says. 

Mira tilts her head in silent confusion. 

“Subjects. The sunflowers, bugs, you, and Zoey,” she says again, lowering Mira’s makeshift frame by her wrist. “I was taking pictures of you and Zoey playing around the sunflowers a minute ago. The gold on the petals reflect off your hair and her freckles, you know. It’s pretty.”

You’re pretty, she wants to add. She’s pretty. I think you two are the best people to give crowns of sunflowers.

But she already told them that when they first came through the gates and she made them take a staged photo around the logo. They laughed it off and shook her arms, as if she only joked to get them to smile wider for the click of the camera. Never. She likes seeing them smile, but she’s stopped lying to them the minute she felt their warmth in her arms against a sea of crude, cold smiles sent by a demon king. 

The barest tint of pink blossoms against Mira’s cheeks. It’s pretty on her; it’s just as pretty as the laughter she can hear through the winds that carry it back to her, as sweet as the season’s oranges. 

Rumi gives her a weak poke in the rib. 

“I don’t think she’d mind if you asked her about the dogs so you can still listen to her,” Rumi says. The pink darkens on Mira’s face, and the corner of Rumi’s mouth twitches. “Knowing her, she probably already asked about all of their names. Or made some up if they don’t have one.” She shrugs. “Or taught them tricks. You know her.” 

Mira huffs a helpless sound and folds her arms over her chest. Rumi giggles with the top edge of her camera hiding her mouth. She knows Mira meant her exhale to signify mild annoyance at being lectured, but it honestly sounds more like a wistful sigh. For all her boldness and popular headlines about her being the first to step in and defend her friends from nasty interview questions (and demons), Mira’s not very good at doing anything about her sulkiness. 

“She’s gonna make me touch them,” Mira mutters under her breath, no bite to her words. “I mean I don’t—obviously—mind them or anything, but god, we still have that hotpot place to get to, and I already went through the emergency outfit in my car yesterday after we went splashing by the stupid ocean.”

Rumi laughs at her crinkled face. Nothing irks Mira more than sitting in any kind of dirt for longer than half an hour. She’ll do it if she has to. Maybe just not for proposed music videos or concept albums. 

But Zoey? Well…

“It’d be worth it,” Rumi says, incontestably. 

Mira’s sharp shoulders drop at her side, and Rumi palms her camera again. It’s hard not to spot a good photoshoot afoot when she can see Mira’s face shift in real time—guarded as it often is, until she hears Zoey’s sharp squeal again when a dog pounces on her body, and those tense corners of her eyes soften and give way to the sunlight in her pupils.

There’s a reason why Mira’s the concordant visual of the group. It’s hard not to give that title to her when her beauty is only rivaled by the love she gives. 

Mira gives her one last look, in which Rumi responds with wide eyes and a jerk of the head towards Zoey, and Mira sulks away, tail tucked between her legs. A grin spreads across Rumi’s face before she can stop herself. She brings her camera back up to her eye, and she squints right into the viewfinder. 

It takes a second for her to set the right focus. 

When she does, she can’t stop herself from greedily snapping pictures of them dangling loose flowers over a few farm dogs’ heads to goad them to play.

She adores each picture more than the last. 

Each photo clicks and snaps, and she vaults the pictures somewhere in her mind to come back to and dream about on nights she needs it most. She wants to lucid dream about a life on the island, with dogs on the property and a hanok with their names carved somewhere inconspicuous for only their eyes to see. 

She takes a step forward when they come a little closer to her. A few tighter shots would be nice in a physical album to put together when they get home. She can already imagine the smell of takeout in the living room with pictures dumped across a glass coffee table. The sound of their laughter and bickering about the order of the binder pages would be much louder than the song they put on the speakers, but it would be just as addicting as a pop chorus. 

Rumi takes another step forward, and something crunches under her foot. 

Startled, she looks down to find something red and long right under her dirtied sneaker. She takes a step back and crouches down to squint at it over the beating of the sun. 

A small decorative ribbon. 

If she had to guess, some poor kid probably lost it from their dress, or from a present they carried around while they followed their parents—or a bow on a teddy bear. 

Like the bow on her teddy bear, when she was younger. The bow always made him look so dashing.

Her knuckles brush over the glittery edge of the ribbon. It’s too dirty to pick up, but she smiles ruefully at how worn it seems, even without her dirty shoeprint across it. 

She remembers playing in tall grass and flowers as a child—playing hide and seek and pressing her hands to her mouth to keep her giggles from having her friends locate her. She remembers three people who used to smile so much at her whenever she would run back home, teddy bear in hand and knees dirty and gritty from stones and soil. 

She remembers the way they would hold her up by the armpits and jostle her up close to the sun as they ask, “Bap mugeossukwa, Rumi-ya?” 

“Rumi!” they call. 

They say her name with the same delicacy as in the same memories as a child—adoring, and yet not as delicate. Rumi prefers it that way. She would rather be seen as someone touched with the same amount of sun by the people who make her warm. 

Rumi wipes the stray tear out of the corner of her eye. She looks down at the heel of her palm in mild surprise. She hadn’t realized she was crying. 

There’s no reason for her to be.

Rumi swipes over her cheekbones and the corner of her eyes with her sleeves one last time as she stands, picking herself back up from the dirt. She hears another call of her name, whinier and louder than the last. It makes her laugh. To be wanted that badly has never lost its charm to her. 

And yet a million fans chanting her name in a concert venue still holds no water against the way they beckon her back to them. 

It’s Zoey who wraps herself around Rumi’s arm first, attaching herself like a slap-on bracelet to a wrist (an analogy she called herself once, if Rumi remembers it right) and snuggling into her neck as she scrolls through her phone. 

“Where do you want to go after lunch?” Zoey asks casually. “There’s a bunch of places we haven’t hit up yet. Wanna go to another hallabong farm? Oh! Or do some buggy riding? Speedboating? I saw those really cool transparent kayaks for rent near the coast the last time we were there. Bet if we beg Mira hard enough, she’ll drive us again.” 

Rumi closes her eyes and nuzzles the top of Zoey’s head with her nose. She smells sun-drenched, with a mix of the perfume she sprayed herself down with, the bug spray she slathered herself with, and sweaty dirt. An odd combination, and a deterrent for most people at worst or a mild fun fact for their fans at best—but Rumi loves the way she smells whenever they’ve been outside for this long.

It almost makes Zoey smell like someone she would have grown up with, here on the island. Having someone like Zoey so early in her life wouldn’t have made things necessarily easier, but it would have made it more… chatty. And sunny, of course.

But the fact that she has her now—and strong, dependable Mira, who walks close behind them—is more than she could have ever begged the world for. 

“Stop, I smell gross,” Zoey complains, batting her away.

Rumi’s chuckle lodges in her chest so she can tease, “I think you’re better this way.” 

“What, sweaty and slobbered up from a buncha farmdogs?” Zoey jokes. 

“Happy,” is her answer. 

And Zoey’s shocked enough not to hit her in the arm or bite back with one of her witty remarks that she likes to corner them with. She just smiles, big enough for dimples on her cheeks to grow apparent under the daylight, and Rumi feels her chest ache like the volcanos that rumble underneath the island.

Mira clears her throat. A quick look behind her shows no kind of irritation on Mira’s face—just a slight lift on the corner of her mouth. Mira raises her eyebrows at her when she catches Rumi looking. 

“Zoey’s question. About what you wanted to do tonight,” she clarifies, and only smiles broader when Rumi blinks. 

“I kinda just wanna go home soon,” Rumi admits, voice quiet. “Is that okay?”

Zoey doesn’t even give that a second thought. She just turns her head, pecks Rumi on a spot somewhere along the line of her jaw, and taps around her phone as she answers, “Oh, sure, bubba! Do you wanna call it an early day or do you wanna watch Shark Boy and Lava Girl with me and Mira?”

“Guess what she has me under her contacts today?” Mira drawls, all while Zoey snickers. “You’d think she would’ve changed my contact to ‘Lava Girl’ at least once, but apparently today’s the first—”

“I haven’t seen the movie in a while!” Zoey defends. Mira reaches over her shoulder to lift up a sagging sunflower for her to walk through. “Which is why it’s gonna be so good when we see tonight. The graphics were so scarily realistic when I was a kid.”

Rumi bites down on the inside of her cheek to keep from saying, pretty sure I’ve never seen it.

It would be funnier to tell her when they get back. So for now, Rumi tells them, “I’d love to. Do we have enough popcorn?”

“Oh, shit,” Zoey says quickly. She whips her head over to Mira behind her to hiss, “We forgot to buy some yesterday.”

But Mira just shrugs and answers, “‘Kay, then we’ll just buy some tomorrow. Duh?” 

“Why not tonight?” Rumi inquires. “We can’t watch a movie and not eat popcorn.” Zoey nods her head in vehement agreement at her side.

Mira blows out a short laugh. She replies, “Okay, fine. We can just go out for dinner tomorrow and do our grocery shopping tonight instead.” Rumi smiles and bobs her head once. Then Mira drawls, sarcastic but never mordant, “Your wish is our command, gongjunim.”

Zoey curtsies to her and agrees with a short, teasing, “Princess Rumi.” 

Then I wish you both would stay here with me, Rumi thinks, an ache beneath her ribs. Stay and be happy with me like this for the rest of our lives. Stay and let me love you until all the sunflowers on Jeju-do wilt and the oranges no longer taste sweet.

But she just replies, “Hey, careful. I still remember Celine’s practice routines for vacations like this.” 

They both groan. Rumi thinks it gets her command across anyway.

The last night on Jeju Island isn’t nearly as glamorous as it should be, and it comes far too early. A blink of an eye, and suddenly this setting sun marks the last entry on the calendar in the hallway. 

But Rumi honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. It doesn’t feel like goodbye, like she was afraid it would. 

I’ll see you again soon, more like.

Most people on the island would have trudged somewhere loud, full of music and fairy lights on a beach and others to yell at over the music that pumps straight against the chest. It would have brought them back all the way to the concert stage. Maybe it would’ve jogged their memory and prepared them better for the next comeback that they have to start promoting in a couple days. 

It’s not the path they choose, though. It’s a unanimous decision between the three of them, made when they looked at each other while they washed the last dishes and packed stuff away last night. They didn’t really have to say anything to get to something like this. 

They elect to climb up the roof of Celine’s hanok with small sparklers and each other’s company instead. 

Fireworks shower the night sky in the near distance—a festival of some sorts that they were briefly tempted to go to. It’s grander than the sparklers that they hold in their hands, but Rumi thinks that the white flashes on their faces look much prettier than giant colorful explosions against the inky canvas of the night. Being on Jeju-do was a blessing because they were with each other, not with a group at a festival. 

It’s dinner first, with slightly cold instant ramyeon that they had to make do because of their laziness with putting more dishes away—then banter and more banter about nothing and everything, with Mira trying to wrestle the other sparkler out of Zoey’s hand, and Zoey laughing so loud in her face when she’s not as agile to take it. 

Then the fireworks pop in the sky, and their voices fade away to welcome it.

It sounds like fat drops of rain falling against a thin roof. It paints the dark night with reds and pinks and blues and purples and everything in between—beautiful and fitting for an island life that waves them goodbye. 

Each color fades to leave the sky dark again in a blink of an eye, just like the months they spent together walking down the coast. Zoey and Mira seem so mesmerized by the pops and colors they bring. 

But Rumi keeps her eyes trained on them, and the colors that fall against the gentle curves of their slightly open mouths and the contours of their cheeks. Why would she stare at a black sky instead of what makes Jeju so pretty in the first place? 

When the fireworks start to hail higher, screeching louder and louder until their echoes make them hold their breaths, her girls start to look up in awe, and Rumi keeps watching.

She loves the way that Zoey’s cheeks look so red, even in the night; just as much as she loves the fuzzy blanket on Mira’s tall frame and the way there’s still child-like wonder in her sharp eyes. 

Rumi doesn’t think, I love you. I love you both so much that it hurts to love you, but I still want you here with me until I never see the sun and the oceans again.

She already thought that for years. It’s a thought that never even left her.

She’s held it against the forefront of her mind that everything she’s done in the last near decade had been because of the trust and devotion she’s wanted to give them so badly. It wouldn’t be fair to them to call this an epiphany when she’d already known.

They know, too. 

Don’t they?

Don’t you? she wants to ask.

When the fireworks finish, Zoey and Mira ask her two simple questions. 

“So how’d you think of your first vacation?” Zoey asks sweetly. 

And for once, Mira’s voice sounds so bright as she asks, fist into her palm, “Ready to show off the most kickass comeback album ever when we get back?”

But Rumi just keeps looking at them. 

Her knees are drawn to her chest, arms hugged around them to keep herself warm under the cool night. She can feel something lodged in her throat, as big as a tangerine and as salty as the sea. She keeps looking at the girls who made her a home out of a place she used to hide.

“Pokssak sogatsuda,” she tells them, honest and raw. “Thank you.”

She taught them what that meant a while back, when Zoey grew too curious after she spoke to the locals at the market and asked her to teach them while Mira got a massage after craning her neck down in the cave for so long.

You’ve worked so hard, they must have heard. 

They aren’t completely wrong. 

It’s just that she would have meant it the other way, too.

I was completely fooled, she really means, by how badly I underestimated what you both mean to me.

Zoey and Mira don’t have to ask. 

They wrap her in a tight hug, with Zoey’s gritty hands from handling cold sparklers against the small of her back and Mira’s sharp shoulder digging into her collarbone. Imperfect puzzle pieces that still look pretty as a whole when they step back to look.

Rumi wonders where the scent of sun-baked, sea-salty citrus starts and the love for her girls ends.

To her, it all just feels like home.