Chapter Text
It’s a nice night. The weather is pleasant, the sky is clear, dinner was wonderful and Mira has one of the most beautiful women in the world sitting next to her humming a quiet tune. The only thing that could make tonight any better was snuggling up with their third and watching some cheesy romance show so they can mock. They only have a few more nights together before Rumi starts her next world tour. While it wouldn’t be too difficult for Mira to work and join Rumi on tour, she knows that pulling teeth would be easier than separating Zoey from her students. So there wasn’t a point in even trying to join Rumi, at least not until school lets out for the winter break. “So after this tour, promise you are going to take a break?” Mira breaks the silence, sparing Rumi a glance at the red light.
Mira doesn’t miss the exaggerated eyeroll and small shake of Rumi’s head. “I promise. Bobby already blocked out my calendar for four months after I get back. He also said that he was told to change the passwords to everything if he catches the smallest hint of work while on break.” There’s a playful annoyance in Rumi’s voice. “I wonder who put him up to that?”
There’s no question about who asked Bobby to do this. If anything, Mira is annoyed that she didn’t think of this first, but then again there’s no one who could beat Zoey at thinking of creative solutions to annoying problems. “The world may never know.” She chuckles, turning onto the road that leads to their home. “But seriously, you’ve earned that break, Ru. It will line up when Zoey isn’t working and then we can spend a couple of months on a warm beach with fruity drinks in hand.”
Rumi lets out this beautiful laugh and Mira swore that she just heard the voice of an angel. “I can’t promise that I won’t do any work. You know if Zoey gets a song idea while we are on vacation, I’m not going to ignore it.”
As much as Mira would enjoy arguing that a no work vacation means no work, she knows how the creative process works. If inspiration strikes, you would be a fool to ignore it. “Okay. But that’s the only work allowed on our vacation, deal?”
“Deal.”
The car settles into a comfortable quiet, Rumi’s soft singing muffling the engine’s hum. At this point she’s certain that there’s nothing that could possibly ruin this perfect night.
Except… when she sees their home, something is clearly wrong.
The lights are on, the front door is ajar and most importantly Zoey’s car is missing. If it was just the lights on, then she wouldn’t worry. They forget to turn the lights off before leaving all the time. But the front door? That’s a huge red flag. Zoey always double checks that she locks the front door before leaving, even if she’s just walking to the mailbox.
Mira pulls into the driveway and kills the engine. “Rumi, call Zoey. Maybe this is the one time she forgot to check the front door.” Her voice is cold as her mind scrambles for some reason the house is like this that doesn’t involve kidnapping or a break-in. “If she doesn’t pick up, call the police.”
She starts getting out of the car when Rumi grabs her wrist. A mixture of concern and fear is etched into every feature on Rumi’s face. “But why are you going inside? What if this is a break-in and they are still inside?”
Mira puts a hand on top of Rumi’s before putting on a brave smile. “Because I have to know that Zoey isn’t inside scared or hurt. With all the noise we made pulling into the driveway, hopefully was enough to scare away anyone who was lagging behind.” She frees her wrist from Rumi’s grasp and climbs out of the car, grabbing the pepper spray she keeps in the door on the way out. She loudly slams the door shut, hopefully to spook anyone left inside.
Rumi is by Mira’s side in less than a second. Before Mira has a chance to open her mouth in protest, Rumi narrows her eyes. “I’m not letting you go inside alone.” Rumi slips out of her heels and starts walking towards the front door. “Besides, only one of us is a trained black belt.”
Unable to argue with Rumi’s sound reasoning, Mira jogs after her. Was this the dumbest thing they could do in this situation? Probably. Does it matter? No. Not when Zoey might be in danger. Rumi silently counts them down from three and on zero she bursts into the house sliding into a defensive position. Mira runs in immediately afterwards. While she might not be formally trained in self defense, it’s not that hard to throw a punch at anything without purple hair.
She’s not sure what she expected to see.
From the entryway everything looks relatively fine. All of their expensive electronics and instruments are still sitting there. The random bowl of miscellaneous jewelry is still sitting undisturbed. Designer clothes draped over chairs and shoes by the door are left untouched. At least from here, all it seemed like was that someone forgot to turn off the lights and close the front door. That wasn’t enough to get Mira to lower her guard as they carefully creeped deeper into the house.
It takes them a couple of minutes to clear the downstairs, and outside of the coat closet being messier than usual everything is fine. Which only leaves the upstairs. Rumi once again takes the lead and Mira is not too far behind her. With each step they take, Mira’s worries continue to grow. There are no signs of any intruders, and more importantly no signs of Zoey. Everything continues to look fine until they walk into the master bedroom, and it looks like a tornado ripped through here. Clothes were thrown around, drawers pulled out and there’s random things all over the place. “What were they after?” Mira asks, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. There’s plenty of expensive jewelry and watches in plain sight, easy to throw into a bag and steal. Yet nothing seemed to be missing.
Rumi looks around, carefully stepping around the chaos. “I don’t know. But it seems like only Zoey’s things were taken. Our stuff is completely untouched.”
Somehow that’s even worse than if the house was completely empty. “I’m going to go check her gaming room. Can you call her cellphone? Maybe something happened and she had to leave quickly.” Mira makes a beeline for Zoey’s room, unsure of what she wanted to see. When Mira enters the room, it too is torn apart. Books are scattered all over the place, bins tipped over on the floor, but Zoey’s incredibly expensive gaming setup was left untouched. Mira’s eyes land on Zoey’s desk, and her heart sinks. Sitting in his spot is Mr. Shelly, Zoey’s childhood stuffed turtle. If Zoey ever had to leave the house, that plushie was the first thing into her luggage. Carefully wading through the chaos, Mira reaches the desk and picks up the worn plush, rubbing a thumb over his face. Seeing him here dashed any hopes of Zoey going on some emergency trip.
The sound of a very familiar ringtone snaps Mira out of her thoughts. She turns around clutching the plushie to her chest. Rumi is standing there in the doorway with her phone in one hand and Zoey’s ringing in the other. “Her phone was buried under a pile of clothes. Mira. Do you think…” This is the first time in a long time that Mira hears Rumi this scared. Tears are pooling at the corners of Rumi’s eyes.
Mira wants to say something, anything to soothe Rumi’s fears. But based on everything they’ve seen so far, things are looking bad. She knows that she’s made a couple of enemies in the fashion industry because of her personality. But they were incredibly careful to keep their relationship a secret. Their neighbors are really the only people who know their relationship, and they’re on good terms with everyone on the street. There’s no way anyone here would sell them out to Mira’s competition.
Is it possible that one of Rumi’s fans found out? She’s seen how obsessive some of the K-pop fans can be, and she wouldn’t put it past them to go to these lengths. But why take it out on Zoey? She’s done nothing wrong. She’s a high school science teacher. All of her students love her. Nothing makes any sense anymore.
There’s one possible explanation for the sudden disappearance. Mira looks down to the turtle in her arms and then back to Rumi. It’s possible that Zoey no longer loves them and just… left. Took her basic essentials and ran away while they were having their date night. It’s possible. It would explain why most of her stuff was left behind, and why her phone was hidden away. It didn’t explain Mr. Shelly being left behind. Unless she was banking on him being a diversion to give her more time to get away from them.
But this is Zoey.
The same Zoey that woke up super early this morning and made breakfast, despite having to be at school early today. The same one who made personalized playlists for them. The same one who eagerly listens to the style team drama. The same one who would drive half way across the county to pick up soup for them when they got sick. The thought of Zoey no longer loving them was something that Mira couldn’t entertain.
Maybe she’s overthinking things, and Rumi might have a better idea. Mira tries to ask for Rumi’s input but the words die in her throat.
Before she could try again, the doorbell rings. “Who could that be?”
“Don’t know.”
Mira carefully navigates out of the messy room and back to Rumi’s side. The two of them head downstairs and standing in the doorway are two men dressed in black suits. “Hello, how can I help you gentlemen tonight?” There’s a slight edge in Rumi’s tone.
The taller of the two men speaks. “Miss Ryu? Miss Kang? We are from the government and we need to talk to you about Dr. Choi. May we come in?”
Hearing Zoey’s name immediately catches Mira’s attention. “Yes of course.” She responds quicker than Rumi can, already stepping aside to let the men inside. Maybe, just maybe these men have the answers to what is going on right now.