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There’s the twinge, the tingle. An early warning, right up through her palms and her wrists.
Rumi twists and puts her new sword through the pair of demons that had melted out of the shadows to try and attack her flank, but the subtle hum of the soul within the blade had given her an early warning again. Almost as though even after everything that happened six months ago he was still making amends for the choices he had made. Something scratches at the brickwork behind her and she throws a kick blindly behind her, launching another demon away. A fourth one ripped its way from a fresh tear against the opposite wall and swung a jagged blade towards her. She brought her blade up and the demon’s own snapped against the enchanted steel, rusted shards scattering against the wall behind Rumi, who drove it away with a shove of her blade and then bisected it with a turning slice.
It had taken her a few weeks to become accustomed to her upgraded sword, which was now a broad and heavy curved blade that tapered into dual points. Their first hunt after the change the first time she had swung it had carried her off balance and nearly proved a fatal mistake. Seconds later another swing went clean through about six inches of brick wall and became lodged there, stuck fast: she had to let it back into the Honmoon to be able to summon it back to her hand. But working together closely with the others and with plenty of more hours of practice, she had found a new compromise that didn’t make her a threat to anyone and anything standing too close.
The demon she had kicked away clawed itself back to its feet and tried coming for her again, but a quick upwards swing turned it to magenta dust. The dust dissipated, and she felt the Honmoon settle, the usual colours returning to its strands.
Breach sealed. Good job, guys.
Even though the new Honmoon they had built was far more stable than the original one, it wasn’t the Gold Honmoon they had aimed for: demons were still forcing their way through, though the rate of breach events was far lower than it was. And with the start of their latest world tour rapidly approaching, it meant they could afford to focus more on the logistics of the tour.
She sent her blade back to the Honmoon and followed the shimmering threads back the way she had come, towards the main entrance of the run-down tower block the breach alert had drawn them to, gutted and left swathed in plastic and scaffolding for remodelling. Even six months after Namsan, plenty of demons had been left stranded on this side of the Honmoon and were desperate to claw their way back home. The ones hiding here had managed to rip a significant tear in the threads to allow many of their kind to return home, but HUNTR/X had arrived in time to intercept and slay those left behind. The work continues.
“Zoey! Mira!” she calls out as she reaches the edge of the balcony at the central atrium, her voice echoing out through the heart of the building. “You two okay?!”
There was a brief pause, and then, “we’re okay,” Zoey called back. “Still alive!”
There was a waver in Zoey’s voice, and something spiked in Rumi’s soul. She recognised the tone of someone who was hurt and trying to disguise the pain. Without hesitation she vaulted the balcony and dropped a good thirty feet to the ground floor, landing in an effortless roll to her feet. The Honmoon’s strands shimmered from where she landed, cushioning her fall.
“Zoey,” she said, seeing her fellow hunters against the far wall, Zoey standing unsteadily on one foot, her other hand on Mira’s shoulder, who was supporting her younger bandmate. They had all come straight from dance practice at the penthouse when the warning had come, so they were all dressed down in black shorts or sweatpants and t-shirts and sneakers, hair tied back hastily, skin still glistening with the recent exertion. Mira’s favourite golden glasses with the circular lenses glinted in the security lighting.
“Zoey’s twisted her ankle,” Mira stated, looking up as Rumi reached the pair of them.
“A big one tossed me through a window,” Zoey winced, though she was still trying to smile through the pain. “Rude. I got him right between the eyes before I hit the glass though.”
“Of course you did,” Rumi said with a light smile, crouching down and carefully rolling down the cuff of Zoey’s sock to get a better look at the bruised and swollen joint. “Definitely twisted. Can you put any weight on it?”
“No,” the maknae said, shaking her head. “I tried to land into a roll and landed on that foot badly.”
“Okay, then let’s get us home so we can get some ice on it,” Rumi stated, standing up, and then she glanced at Mira and noticed the crimson smeared against the visual’s left arm. “Mira, you’re bleeding.”
“Just a glancing hit,” Mira insisted, but the tightness in her expression was still noticeable. “I’ve had worse.”
“I know, but that’s still a lot of blood,” Rumi retorted, unzipping her hunter’s field kit shoulder pack and grabbing for a field dressing, just as a temporary fix until they got back to the penthouse. “Here,” she said, passing it over, and Mira applies the dressing deftly, fingers smeared with red.
“Thanks,” is the curt reply, though Mira’s gratitude and relief is writ on her sharp features.
“Uh, what about me?” Zoey pipes up from beside them, raising her hand like a kid in class. “Can’t use this foot, remember? Unless you have a nice ice pack in your fanny pack, Rumi?”
“Nope, no ice pack,” Rumi says, and then suddenly steps closer and effortlessly hoists Zoey up in her arms. “So I’ll be helping you get home.”
“Oh,” Zoey says, genuinely lost for words for a brief moment, one arm braced across the back of Rumi's broad shoulders. “Oh. Well…this is nice, I guess,” she finally manages with a little chuckle, then stops again when she realises her other hand is gripping Rumi’s bicep. “Wow Rumi, where were you hiding these guns?”
Rumi blinks. “…under long sleeves and hoodies?”
“Oh! Right, silly me,” Zoey continues, her cheeks flaring bright pink. “Hey Mira, you noticed Rumi’s biceps, right?”
“You can notice them from three blocks over,” Mira teases, the slightest of smiles on her face.
“Guys,” Rumi groaned, heading for the exit. “Let’s get the patients home. Stat.”
“Yes, Doc Rumi!” called Zoey cheerily, wriggling in Rumi’s embrace. She was really enjoying this.
It didn’t take them long to get back, since they could use the rooftops to get there, occasionally stepping off of the gleaming threads of the Honmoon on occasion, which shimmered brightly beneath sneakered feet and gave just enough pressure to lift them to the next solid ground. Soon, they were sweeping into the penthouse, and the huge blue tiger that had become one of their steady companions stretched and let out a low rumble as it woke and approached as if picking up on the approaching wounded.
“First off, our maknae,” Rumi said, heading for the couch to deposit Zoey down softly, who looked aggrieved at the fact she was no longer getting a close up view of Rumi’s impressively toned arms, their leader pulling the foot stool over.
“Rumi, it should be illegal for you to go out in public with those guns and that sword without some kind of license,” Zoey chuckled as she found her leg propped up and Mira reappeared with an ice pack from their medical kit and wrapped it in a towel, laying it on the offending ankle. With her sneaker and sock removed, they could see how swollen it had become. “Thanks Mira,” she smiles.
“Anytime, pipsqueak,” Mira says, and then moves aside as the blue tiger guardian spirit/companion they have all recently acquired plods into their space and settles beside Zoey’s spot on the couch. “Look after her, okay?” she says to the tiger, but it’s impossible to tell if the huge orange eyes hold any understanding or acknowledgement. It chuffs and settles in besides Zoey, worming towards the younger girls’ outstretched hand.
“Good boy,” Zoey whispered smiling. And then it fell as she remembered something important. “Mira…could you…pass me the remote? Please?”
Mira’s eyes turned to regard the remote at the opposite end of the couch, while Zoey just flashes her biggest and shiniest puppy dog eyes, and Mira rolls her eyes fondly and fetches the offending object.
“Thanks, unnie!” Zoey called, as Rumi called over to Mira.
“And now, our visual,” she said, already laying out what she needed from the medical kit: needle and stitching thread, sterile cleansing wipes, a fresh dressing. “Sit,” she says, indicating the kitchen stool she’s pulled out for Mira to sit at.
“Yes ma’am,” says Mira as she sits herself down and presents her arm, the current dressing still staining dark red.
“Oh, this is still bleeding,” comments Rumi as she carefully peels away the old dressing, and some crimson still dribbles out from the gash, that travels a good six inches from just beneath the wrist, travelling towards the elbow.
“Guess it was deeper than I realised,” Mira says, wincing as her leader begins to clean the wound area with a couple of sterile wipes. “Adrenaline can be useful, but also a bitch by the time it wears off.”
“What even happened?” Rumi asked as she readied the needle and thread.
“When Zoey went through that window a load of smaller ones went for her,” Mira answered, and then winced slightly as the needle first pierced her skin. Her fingers clenched and unclenched. “So I got there first and took the first few out with one swing, stayed over her until she got to her feet. Took a hit from a particularly ornery one.”
“Oh, ornery, you don’t hear that word often,” Rumi chuckled, as she carried on her work, the needle deftly working between each side of the wound, gradually pulling the gash together. “Been reading the dictionary or something?”
“Something like that,” Mira muses with a chuckle, when not wincing. “It’s something my parents would have liked to use on the daily to describe my bad moods,” she continues as Rumi finished with the stitches, biting off the end and tying it off. The Honmoon would help with the rest of the healing overnight, and those stitches would be gone. The faint scar left over could easily be covered with some foundation until that too was gone.
“Nice job,” Mira added, turning her arm to check out the stitches. “I mean, they could be a little neater. This opinion being from a former medical student”-
“You dropped out after three classes!” chimes in Zoey from the couch, and Mira rolls her eyes.
“Still counts!”
“Next time I’ll just let you bleed all over anything in that case,” said Rumi with a fond eye roll, and then carefully applied the dressing over the stitches. “There we go, all done.”
“No lollipop?” asked Mira, eyebrow raised. Then she faux-pouted, like she would if someone denied her fresh ramyeon.
“She never offered me one, so good luck with that, Mira,” Zoey called from the couch, now flicking through the streaming apps to find something for the night. “Her bedside manner is 10/10 though.”
“Oh so now you’re ganging up on me?” Rumi chuffed, shaking her head. “Next time you can help yourselves.” Then – for some reason that she couldn’t figure out in the moment – she leaned forwards suddenly and pressed a quick kiss to the dressing on Mira’s arm. They both froze. Rumi started to flare bright pink: her cheeks and patterns both, and she covered her face. But it was too late.
“…did you just kiss it better?” asked Mira, a smirk slowly forming on her face. Zoey then ‘helpfully’ chimed in from across the room.
“She didn’t kiss mine better!”
“Guess she just likes me more then,” Mira smirked, as Rumi looked like she was considering throwing herself off of the face of the planet as Zoey started to cackle.
“Guys!” Rumi groans, voice muffled as she still covers her face.
Fifteen minutes later – after they had dragged Rumi for turning pinker and pinker by the second as she tried to hide it to no avail – all of them were on the couch now, settled down with one of their favourite K-dramas playing away with popcorn bowls between the trio. They decided they could finish the choreography session tomorrow morning before they headed out for the fan meet in the afternoon. Time passed in comfortable silence, the kind that only came between those who had become incredibly close.
“Hey,” said Mira at one point, as Zoey’s head was starting to loll against Rumi’s right shoulder as the tiger snoozed on at her feet.
“Hm?” says Rumi, turning to face her bandmate.
“Thanks for looking after us today,” Mira continues, her voice barely above a soft whisper. “Honestly, I felt a little silly about getting hurt. You would think after this long I wouldn’t be making a stupid mistake like that.”
“It’s alright,” Rumi insists, shaking her head, “we’ve all made silly mistakes and got hurt from them. Long as the rest of us are there to pick you up after…and I know it’s part of who you are, Mira.”
“What is?”
“The fact you don’t hesitate to put yourself in front of the threat if it comes down to it.”
Mira was silent for a spell, her eyes thoughtful. “Well…guess it was my own fault for liking you two so much I would do that without hesitation. Remember our…" she trails off as she looks skywards, brows furrowed in thought before it comes to her. "-second, hunt as a trio?”
“Yes,” nods Rumi, smiling slightly at the memory. Their early hunts had been chaotic and desperate, because learning to fight demons was one thing, but actually fighting them in the wild, so to speak, was another thing altogether. Zoey had been taken by surprise by one of the ogre-like Dokkaebi, and had been back-handed into a nearby tree and knocked out cold for a long, terrifying moment. Rumi had moved so fast at that moment it had surprised her, but Mira had beaten her to the punch and skewered that demon to a tree so thoroughly with her gok-do it was difficult to remove it from the trunk.
“When Zoey hit that tree, then hit the ground and didn’t get up, it just set something off in my brain,” Mira explained, steadily, staring at their maknae as she was now almost horizontal, eyes closed. “I thought ‘how dare you? How dare you hurt her?’ and that was it. I told myself I’d never let either of you get hurt like that again, no matter how much it hurt me in the process.”
“You can’t look out for us if you get yourself killed, though,” Rumi pointed out.
“I know that, it’s just…”
“Hey, I know,” says Rumi, nudging Mira’s knee with her own. “You care so much sometimes it’s scary…despite your nonplussed face sometimes.”
“Whatever,” Mira says, glancing away, but then glances back and she can’t quite hide the little smile she wears.
“And you’ve both looked after me plenty of times,” Rumi continues, “even when I…kept you at a distance. Even when I was hurt.” Memories of locking herself away in her room, insisting she could treat her own injuries despite Mira and Zoey’s offers, watching the disappointment and confusion in their shared gazes as she pulled herself away to lock herself up with her injuries and her patterns and her guilt and her shame.
“Hey, come on, we talked about this,” Mira says, realising where Rumi’s mind is. She reaches across the space and puts her hand on Rumi’s to get her attention. “It’s alright. We understand why you did it all now. And…there’s plenty of time for us to catch up on the things we all missed out on.”
“Yeah,” Rumi smiles, giving a nod. “Yeah, there is.”
“And besides, you looked out for both of us all the time during our training,” Mira continues, “even though I made it as difficult as possible for you half the time.”
They lapse into silence, minds going back years to Jeju, the compound, their hunter training. Absolutely brutal work for two teenage girls who had no idea what to expect after they had received the news they would be part of Han Celine’s next great creation at Sunlight Entertainment, only to then be told they would be fighting literal monsters to save the world. Bruises, twisted ankles, contusions and scrapes from constant training and sparring. Rumi always on hand to offer a helping hand, bottles of water, first aid if necessary. How Mira would push back against it, insist she could look after herself, turn in on herself and close her walls up, storm away even as she held a hand close to the bruise she’d just suffered from a bad fall off the obstacle course. Like she was expecting something else instead. Memories of her poor home life and constant disappointment filtering in. But over time, those walls lowered some. Mira realised that Rumi was offering help every time because she wanted to, not because she was expecting something from Mira in return.
“You let me in eventually,” Rumi adds with one of those hopeful little smiles.
“I did. And thank you. For then and for now.”
Rumi gazed across as where Zoey was now truly out of it, drooling lightly against the blanket that was partially pulled around her. Mira reached out and carefully took the ice pack away, now long returned to room temperature. Zoey murmurs something in her sleep and cuddles in closer to her bandmates. Like she’s trying to connect with them via osmosis.
“Anytime,” Rumi smiles.
More time passes and Mira is drifting off now, head leaning back across the headrest of the couch, the TV and the K-drama now long forgotten. Rumi flicks the TV off and carefully slips away from the cuddle pile (even as they both reach for her as she moves away) and pads away to the bedrooms. She stops off at hers first to switch into her PJ’s (including a new pair of teddy bear and choo choo trains pants which she had sourced weeks after the whole Namsan mess). Then she stops by at the nearest closet and grabs a few fresh blankets, padding back to the couch where the others have barely moved. She drapes a blanket over each of them and flashes a look at the tiger as it cracks one eye open to watch her.
“Shh, it’s been a busy week for all of us,” she says, and then she reassumes her position in between them, draping the third blanket over herself. Then without thinking she takes a hand each from them: Mira on her left and Zoey to her right. They tightened their grip on her instantly. Just like at Namsan. Even after that performance and banishing Gwi-ma, after reshaping the Honmoon, after they had returned to stage level, then headed backstage and finally back to the penthouse by car as an entire city roared their gratitude, they had barely let go of each other for the rest of that day, even as exhaustion dragged them into a dead sleep on the couch. As though they instinctively knew just how close they had come to losing everything and one another. And they had, for a few terrifying hours.
Of course Rumi had looked after them in the run up to that traumatic night. She was their leader, she was the one who had to look out for them, even if that included patching up their injuries, no matter how major. But over time she came to want to do it because they became her friends…her family. And still she had kept them at arm’s length, thanks to the fear instilled in her since birth, over her lifetime of being moulded into a role she had no choice in. Or what could come to pass if the truth came out.
No more. They had all the time in the world now to catch up on all those firsts they had missed together, not just the bath house. And all of that just made her more determined to look after them time and again as they needed it, so they could continue to catch up on lost time.
“Thank you for sticking around,” she whispered fiercely to them both. The slight tightening of their grips made her wonder if they had heard her, or if they were just responding to the murmur of the voice they heard. “I love you guys,” she then added. Their grip clenched at her again, and with a small smile, she let herself become one with the couch, and felt herself drifting off into a peaceful rest.
On the walls and high ceiling and on the city skyline beyond, the Honmoon’s colours pulsed and shimmered, pleased.