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It was a common enough trivia question: Rumi is the leader of the internationally renown girl group, Huntr/x. What is Rumi's full name?
Most times, the player would answer, "What is Ryu Rumi?" and look surprised when the answer was met with the harsh sound of the incorrect buzzer. It was an understandable mistake. To the public, Rumi had one famous — and tragically dead — mother, Ryu Miyeong, and an unknown father so uninvolved that he had left his infant daughter with nothing, not even a family name.
"Ryu Rumi is actually a stage name," the host usually explained. "Since the leader of Huntr/x was formally adopted by her mother's friend and fellow Sunlight Sister, Kang Celine, Rumi's full name is actually Kang Rumi."
It wasn't the public's fault that Kang Rumi, daughter of Kang Celine, only existed on legal paperwork and sealed court files. And it certainly wasn't their fault that Rumi's mother was synonymous with Ryu Miyeong rather than the woman who actually raised her.
Rumi could count on her fingers the amount of times Celine called Rumi her daughter and still have enough left over to write with.
And she was fine with that.
Really.
She had never been mistreated. Celine had, as far as Rumi could tell, done everything that a mother was supposed to do.
When, every year, without fail, Rumi would get sick with a summer fever that would leave her listless and bedridden and shivering, Celine would be the one to sit at her bedside coaxing her to eat just a little bit more soup.
"One more sip, Rumi-ya," Celine would say. "You need to eat good food so your body can be strong enough to get better."
When Rumi would get nightmares that her patterns had spread to all of her and that Gwi-ma had pulled her down into the dark to be alone forever, it was Celine who rocked her back to sleep, murmuring promises that Gwi-ma would never get that far. That Rumi would grow up to be a great hunter, just like her mother, and the people would love her so much that the honmoon would have no choice but to turn gold. And when it did, her patterns would disappear and she would be safe from Gwi-ma and his demons for good.
"Promise?" Rumi, curled up in her covers and hidden inside of Celine's robe, had asked.
"I promise," Celine had said.
When Rumi punched a boy for making fun of a girl he thought wasn't a girl, it was Celine who showed up with a lawyer and threatened legal action if the school didn't do something about its clear and pervasive bullying problem. And later, when Celine had taken her home because it was school policy to remove fighting children from the premises — which is also when Rumi learned the word, bullshit, among other terms that could be used to describe school administrators without real jobs — it was Celine who gently bandaged Rumi's wrist and told her that the next time she needed to punch someone, to lock her wrist and to imagine hitting behind them.
"You'll hit harder," Celine had explained.
But through it all, Celine didn't call herself Rumi's mother and she didn't let Rumi call her that either. As far as Celine was concerned, the late Ryu Miyeong would always be Rumi's mother by the sole virtue of Rumi having come out of her womb and no amount of bedtime stories or family dinners or kisses on bandaids could take that title from her.
And Rumi got it.
Really, she did.
It wasn't as though Rumi believed having someone, a someone who was alive and not a rock in the ground, to call "mom" would fix anything.
Zoey's mom was still embarrassed and disappointed that her only daughter was an entertainer with only a high school diploma instead of something more prestigious like a doctor or an engineer. And she probably always would be.
Mira's mother didn't seem to like children at all and seemed to only have them because having children was simply what one did once one was married. And she had never been much of a mother anyways — most of the child-rearing, she left to nannies and, later, to Celine.
But Rumi wanted —
Rumi wanted to be claimed.
Rumi wanted Celine to be selfish and say that Rumi was her legacy, the continuation of her family. That Celine's family was Rumi's family and that Celine's ancestors were Rumi's ancestors, bloodlines be damned. That they were tied together in the ways families were tied together; in obligation and duty that implied forever.
"Mother-daughter photo recreations are trending right now," Rumi said.
She was lounging in Celine's office, a space large enough to be an apartment and with enough dark, mahogany bookshelves and leather-bound — never opened — tomes that it could be mistaken for the office of some law professor rather than that of the CEO to one of Korea's biggest entertainment companies, in one of Celine's plush lounge chairs that Rumi had never actually seen Celine use. Her feet dug into one of the armrests as she sat there, curled up, with her phone in her hand.
"The social media people think it would be good if we got in on it." Rumi said as she skimmed the email chain. "Get some positive press going after, you know —"
Her words trailed off and ended with a grimace.
The Idol Awards may have been months ago but the 'official inquiry' into the code violations and the numerous missing persons surrounding the 'pop-up concert' at Namsan tower were still on-going.
Celine had tried to keep Rumi separate from the state of the company. It's nothing you need to worry about, she said. The fans love Huntr/x and no scandal from the company will be able to affect that, she said. There are plans in place to protect the artists signed to the company in the event of any actual legal threats, she said.
Rumi knew that this was Celine's way of protecting her; some lizard-brained belief that if Rumi wasn't told, then Rumi wouldn't know, and Rumi wouldn't worry.
But she wasn't stupid.
If Celine thought she was doing a good job of hiding the fact that for the last few months, she had been staying up and working into the small hours of the morning — well, she wasn't. Everyone in the office could see the emails that were sent at 3AM and the dark circles under her eyes that showed through her makeup.
That she thought Rumi wouldn't notice was —
"I'll tell them to stop bothering the three of you," Celine said in a croaky rasp that Rumi recognized as too little sleep and too many cups of coffee.
When the clack of the keyboard doesn't resume, Rumi looked up.
Celine held her head in her hands. Her thumbs pressed against the corner of her eyes as she squeezed them shut the way people do when they step out into the full sun after days of not seeing it — all pain and burning. Then the moment passed and Celine lowered her hands to her keyboard again.
"We want to do it," Rumi said before Celine could start typing.
Celine looked away from her screen. Her eyes met Rumi's. For a moment, it was so quiet Rumi could hear the pulse of her own heart in her ears.
"It's a mother-daughter photo recreation," Celine said.
Rumi nodded and tried to not feel the cut of her words.
"Yes," she said.
"It's a mother-daughter photo recreation," Celine repeated, as though the act of repeating them could turn them into new words. Different words. "Rumi, how —?"
So I guess no one changed my diapers and I just raised myself, Rumi thought, though she did not say this. And she thought, you're already my mother in all the ways that matter why won't you just accept that? Though this, she also does not say.
Instead, Rumi crossed her arms and tucked them tight against her chest like she was driving away the cold and she stared at the seams of the leather lounge chair until they blurred into a shapeless brown.
"We thought maybe we could take them with you," she said.
She said this in the way a dog growls, after it has seen a bone that it likes in the jaws of some other beast. All stiff-necked and narrow-eyed; the corners of its mouth tense and drawn back the way they do before they bare their teeth.
"Mira and I, anyways." Rumi shrugged in a way that only moved her shoulders. "Since Zoey, you know, still talks to her mom."
"Rumi —"
A deep scowl appeared on Rumi's face. It was darker and angrier than any of the looks she'd given Celine in the past, even when Celine had been telling her that she needed to lie to Mira and Zoey — her two best friends, chosen to protect humanity just like she was, the two people in the entire world she should have been able to trust with her life without reservation. She hadn't liked it. But Rumi understood why she was asked to lie and pretend her skin was unremarkable and wholly human.
She didn't understand this.
"It's just a photo for a stupid internet meme, Celine," she said.
Celine shook her head and said, "Rumi, we've been over this. I'm not going to replace your mother —"
"No one is asking you to!" Frustrated, Rumi leapt from her seat. She paced in front of Celine's desk and clapped her palms together. She jabbed the arrow-like point of her clasped hands towards Celine. "You're acting like I want you to go on national television and say, actually, fuck Ryu Miyeong —"
"Kang Rumi —"
Rumi barrels forward, "All she did was pop a baby out of her womb, I'm the one who actually raised the baby so I'm her real mom, screw all of you —"
The desk shook as Celine slammed her hands down on it. Her neck was flushed red and her breath came out in long exhales forced through her nose. Her glare burned and Rumi's resolve withered under it like an insect caught beneath a magnifying glass.
Rumi fell silent. Unable to meet Celine's eyes, she lowered her head and stared at the corporate-friendly gray carpet underneath her feet.
"Ryu Miyeong —" God, Celine used her mom's full name. "— gave you life. She grew you inside her womb. Your body is a gift that she gave you. Who taught you that you could speak about her like this, Rumi? Did I — was I too critical of her? Did I make you think she was a bad person?"
This doesn't have anything to do with Miyeong, Rumi wanted to yell. I just want to be able to call you my second mother, why are you so against that!?
What she said was, "How could you have taught me that? If you had your way, I would still think my mother's singing could create rainbows and her arrows could shoot down Gwi-ma himself."
"Then, how I spoke about her parents," Celine said with a frown. Her brows pinched together and she shook her head. "I knew I should have tried to be closer to them for your sake. It's an unfortunate child who isn't close to her family."
Rumi stared at Celine.
"I'm plenty close to my family, Celine," she said in a slow, low tone. She tried to keep the tremble from her voice.
What did Celine mean, her family? Was she not supposed to see the woman who raised her practically since the day she arrived in the world as her family? Was she not supposed to see the girls she's known since she was ten and lived with since she was twelve as her family? Was she not supposed to see the man who babysat her since she was eight and who still made sure she was taking care of herself as her family?
"You know what I mean, Rumi-ya," Celine said. "You should have been able to be closer to your biological —"
"They didn't want me." Rumi crossed her arms. "I was going to be sent to an orphanage. Why would I want a relationship with them? And don't tell me they could have changed their minds. I know the only reason they send anything for my birthday is because it would look bad if they didn't."
Because she was famous; because Celine was famous. If she'd gone into that orphanage, they wouldn't have bothered. They probably would have tried to pretend she didn't exist and that their precious, perfect Miyeong didn't get knocked up by some random man who never even bothered to show his face to the public.
Rumi took a deep breath and slowly pushed it out between her lips. Her shoulders dropped by fractions.
That was… not fair of her.
This wasn't about them, she reminded herself.
"So, like it or not, you're the only parent I've got in my life, Celine," she said.
And she watched as Celine dropped her gaze to look at some random report sitting open on her desk. Her fingers roll a pen — one of her fancy ones, the kind that have weight and are made with real wood and coated in lacquer — back and forth. A frown tugs at the corners of her lips and — oh.
There had been an interview, when her mother was still alive and the Sunlight Sisters had been poised to take over all of Korea, where the interviewer had asked, "So when do you three see yourselves settling down? Any plans to start a family?"
And while her mother and Auntie Seoyi had bent their heads together and giggled — the pink dusted across her mother's cheeks always made Rumi wonder if she knew something the others didn't — Celine had rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"I don't think I'm ready for children yet," Celine had said. "Women sacrifice a lot to have children in our society and I'm a little selfish. For me, I would like to focus on my career, see the world, before making such a big decision."
Celine never did get to see the world.
After Rumi had been born, she had been too busy raising a child and maintaining what career she had left and building a future for the next generation of hunters. And then she had been busy training the next generation of hunters and after that…
"I'm at an age where travel is more inconvenient than relaxing, Rumi-ya," Celine had said. "You three should enjoy your trip across Sri Lanka without an old woman complaining about her knee."
All Rumi had done was laugh and tell Celine that she needed to stop talking like she was a geriatric old woman in her eightieth year.
"You're not even fifty yet, Celine," She had said.
But maybe age isn't why Celine didn't want to vacation with you and the girls, she thought. And the voice in her head sounded suspiciously like every jealous trainee — Kang-nim just feels sorry for her, that's the only reason she scored so high — and every nasty Celine superfan — She would be a superstar if she hadn't taken you in, you know — she had met before she debuted.
The anger inside of her deflated.
The truth had been so obvious and Rumi had blinded herself to it: Celine had never wanted a child.
She had, maybe out of obligation or pity or some under-thought urge to keep some part of Miyeong in her life, taken in an orphan that not even her own blood kin had wanted. And she had given that orphan more than anyone could have asked of her. And she had sacrificed more than anyone would have expected of her. How many wealthy parents left their children in the care of boarding schools and governesses so they could live their own lives? Who would have thought The Kang Celine would kill her career so she could spend her nights teaching a whiny brat multiplication tables?
And here Rumi was. The product of all of Celine's gifts and sacrifices.
Who had taken and taken and taken and still wanted more.
"I — I'm sorry." Rumi forced the words out of her mouth.
Celine looked confused.
"Rumi?" She asked, softly.
And she had risen up from her seat and had stepped out from behind her desk. And in a few short steps, she would be in front of Rumi and Rumi knew what Celine would do — she would reach up with her hand and cup Rumi's cheek with her palm and with her thumb she would wipe away the tears that flowed from Rumi's eye — and Rumi knew she would drink in that comfort and let herself live in her delusion a day longer.
Pain flashed across Celine's face as Rumi scrambled away from her.
"Rumi… " She said, more uncertainly.
"I shouldn't have asked," Rumi said. "I — I should have known better. I convinced myself that you wanted to be my mother and I shouldn't have done that. You — you even gave an interview about how you didn't want kids and here I am trying to force you to —"
She shook her head, unable to continue past the lump that had grown in her throat.
Celine's brows pinched together.
"That… is a very old interview, Rumi," She said slowly. "I was twenty-four."
She said this as if twenty-four was very young and not the age Rumi had just turned this year. Rumi imagined giving up her career to raise a child and her stomach churned at the thought. She imagined making that decision alone — Mira dead and Zoey gone — and acid turned the inside of her mouth bitter.
"Yeah," Rumi agreed. "And you had dreams and places you wanted to see and I ruined that."
"That… is not what I meant, Rumi."
"You shouldn't have needed to take care of a baby and you — you shouldn't have to keep making excuses for why you can't be something you never wanted to be in the first place," Rumi continued as if Celine had not spoken at all. "And I'm sorry I keep asking. I — this won't happen again, Celine, I promise."
Her back hit the wall. Her hand fumbled for the door knob.
"I really do appreciate everything you've done for me, Celine," Rumi said with a deep bow.
Before Celine could respond, her fingers twisted the door knob and Rumi slipped out of Celine's office without another word.