Archive of Our Own

Mira fucking hates her.

(Rumi can’t exactly stand her, either.)

She hates her. Mira hates how she acts and how she speaks and how she pretends. She hates how Rumi practically sneers down at her every single time they talk to each other, though ‘talking’ is maybe too nice of a word for what they’ve been doing ever since Mira came to the compound. She hates how Rumi acts all high and mighty, as if she’s better than her. And Mira hates that Rumi is better than her most of all. How is any of that fair? How is she meant to have a chance to get her foot in the door if Rumi has been training for this her entire life?

Mira hates how easy it is for her to fall back into old habits, stupid, pathetic thoughts cropping up in her mind. ‘It isn’t fair’ is something she should have stopped complaining about years ago, back when she was a kid. So what if it’s not fair? It doesn’t matter. Mira knows she’s good and she knows she can be just as good, if not better, than Rumi. She just hates that she has to deal with her at all. Celine’s whole spiel about saving the honmoon and the world itself isn’t lost on her; Mira understands she doesn’t have a choice, and that’s what she hates more than absolutely anything else. 

She didn’t ask for this. She didn’t want this. But since when has that ever mattered? It’s as if every single person in her life has decided to force her hand. Mira thought she finally got herself out from her parents’ grasp, and now she’s here, falling right back into the same old patterns she thought she escaped. She swears to god she’s not going to let this be her life, she’s fucking not. She’s not going to let Celine control her the same as everyone else has, and she’s not going to deal with Rumi, and she’s not going to turn herself into something smaller and different just because the world wants her to. She doesn’t give a fuck about the honmoon or hunting demons. If the honmoon wanted someone who would care, it should have picked better.

Mira hates how Rumi won’t back off. She doesn’t—she doesn’t get her. Rumi used to just stand there and take it, stone-faced and still, until Mira pressed too hard and she snapped back. But there are lines Rumi must have in her mind that she won’t cross, whereas Mira has long since abandoned anything like that. She’s tried to get Rumi to throw off the gloves and fight her back properly, but Rumi won’t. She won’t take it like she used to, but she won’t give Mira what she wants, what she arguably needs. If Rumi just...hit her, or something, it would make more sense than whatever it is she’s been doing.

Because it’s obvious Mira can get under her skin. She’s seen Rumi’s composure break more times than she can count. Mira knows she’s able to piss her off and get her just to the very tipping point, but nothing she’s ever done has gotten Rumi to topple over. There’s a sick thrill in knowing that Rumi is controlling herself, but it’s usually muffled by the disgust she feels at herself for striving to get Rumi to break. Mira knows she’s not a good person. She just wishes Rumi would treat her like that or stop pretending to to do anything at all other than what’s been doing. Does she just not see it? She has to, Mira swears to god she has to. 

It’s not like she’s ever tried hiding the fact that she’s more effort than she’s worth. Mira knows that. She’s known that her entire life, and everyone in her life has made fucking sure she’s known it in any way they could; it’s not like anyone has ever been shy about that, either. Mira has been reminded of that constantly, and the fact that Rumi won’t just buck up and say it to her face has her angrier than most things Rumi does. 

She’s beyond angry about Celine’s stupid solution to their fights. Mira guesses she doesn’t know what she expected, because obviously she couldn’t just keep going on like this—Celine has always separated and punished both of them before, usually by making them work together more than they already were, and she’ll reiterate how hunters are meant to work together, that it doesn’t matter if they hate each other right now or not. They will work together, even if they hate it the entire time it takes the honmoon to turn gold. 

Mira absolutely does not want to work in Celine’s greenhouse.

She’s largely managed to avoid even going into the greenhouse because she just hasn’t cared enough. When Rumi gave her the tour of the compound—after Celine’s—she took Mira to the greenhouse and made some offhand comment about how she liked working there and how they grew a lot of their own food, whatever. Mira didn’t ask any questions past that, and Rumi didn’t offer up any unprompted answers, and that was that. 

Mira has seen her working in the greenhouse since then. Celine primarily takes care of it, but Rumi is in there just as often as she is; Mira guesses it must be hard to squeeze in taking care of plants between being insufferable all day. She doesn’t see how this is a punishment for Rumi other than having to deal with her, which almost makes Mira want to laugh. Celine really doesn’t dance around the bush, apparently. She might not scream at her like her parents would, might not go out of her way to get physical, but she’s still the same as them. 

Mira tried to fight her on it. She snapped and snarled and fought back as much as she could, but Celine just stood there with that cool, impassive look on her face and waited for Mira to stop screaming. She felt like an idiot, her chest heaving, red in the face, and she felt even stupider when Celine simply told her that she wasn’t going to change her mind, that it wasn’t going to be an every day thing, and that she thought it would be ‘good for both of them’ for Mira to do this. 

That’s fucking bullshit and they both know it, but...what else is she meant to do? Leave? Mira could, she knows she could. She knows that, for all their talk about saving the world and keeping demons out, Celine and Rumi wouldn’t make her stay. 

Where else does she have to go? Mira would rather blow her own brains out than go back to her parents, and god knows they probably wouldn’t take her back. She doesn’t want to roam the streets until she figures something out. At least at the compound, she...has everything she technically needs. And Celine and Rumi are obligated to put up with her more than anyone else. 

So Mira works in the greenhouse with Rumi. 

She was going to sit somewhere near the front of it and do nothing at all, but that made her feel like a petulant child, and Mira wasn’t going to do that. She begrudgingly moves to work—’work’—on the opposite side of the greenhouse as Rumi. Except she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do at all, Celine didn’t tell her, probably because she was relying on Rumi to do that and for them to be forced to work together, but Rumi clearly isn’t all that interested in helping out. 

Mira hates how useless she feels. If Celine wanted this to be a punishment, she’s done a great job at figuring out all the things Mira hates the most. She hates feeling useless and stupid, she hates that she doesn’t know what to do or where to begin. She hates having to admit that she needs help at all, and she’s absolutely not going to admit that to Rumi of all people. So Mira bitterly stands there and stares at the dozens of plants she doesn’t even know the names of, progressively getting more and more angry at Rumi, at Celine, at herself, at everyone in her life.

Rumi is closer than she thought she’d be, albeit with her back turned to Mira. Mira can hear the honmoon start to quietly hum, she feels it under her feet. She almost wants to laugh; it avoids her like the plague, whereas it wraps itself around Rumi near-constantly, and now it wants to pay attention to her? Mira ignores it just like how it ignores her, clenching her jaw harder and harder the longer she looks at the plants. Most of them are herbs, she knows that. Some are vegetables. Maybe it would have been nice of Celine to label them, but god forbid she makes anything easier.

Mira jolts when Rumi suddenly turns the corner and stands there at the far end of one of the planters. For a second, neither of them say anything.

And then Rumi clears her throat and gestures in front of her, toward the planter closest to Mira. “Did she give you gloves?”

Mira scoffs. “No. Why would she?”

Rumi genuinely looks a little stunned at that. After another second, she shakes her head, walking past Mira toward the entrance. She doesn’t even ram their shoulders together like Mira probably would have. It’s such a stupid, pathetic thing to notice, but it makes Mira curl her lip and scuff her foot at the ground. She doesn’t know what the fuck her problem is.

Rumi is only away from her for maybe a minute. She loops back around with a pair of gardening gloves in her hands, standing in front of Mira as she offers them up. “It’s dirty, first of all, and getting dirt under your nails sucks. And also Celine got these little, they’re like...” Rumi makes a noise, and waves her hand vaguely to the left of them both. “They’re four-packs of vegetables, they come in these plastic containers. They suck to have to break apart, and you’ll cut yourself if you’re not careful.”

Before Mira can snap that she wouldn’t do that, Rumi is already rushing to add, “I’ve done it literally a thousand times and so has Celine, it’s just something that happens. Celine wants us to move those to the planters I was by. It’s not hard. Other than getting the stupid things apart, I guess,” she mutters. “There are scissors on the rack by the entrance, you can use those to cut them open.”

Mira drags her thumb across the thick leather and rubber. If the roles were reversed, if it was the other way around, she doesn’t think she would have gotten Rumi gloves. It’s such a stupid thing to do, but Mira thinks she probably would have done it, anyway. And Rumi hasn’t even done anything to her. Mira hates her, she hates now she pretends and how she’s perfect, hates that she can’t even see that, but she still knows she’s in the wrong for half of what she does. 

“...Cool,” Mira mutters. She looks away, back toward the planters. “Lead the way, I guess.” Rumi gives her a stunned sort of look, like she’s surprised Mira hasn’t decided to pick a fight over something as small as this. It only makes Mira angrier, largely at herself this time. When Rumi still doesn’t move, Mira does bite, sneering, “Are you just going to fucking look at me, or are you going to do something?”

Rumi’s jaw ticks, her lips twitch, but she doesn’t say anything or even come close to rising to the bait. She just nods and turns on her heel, walking them both toward a table full of the four-packs she told Mira about. They’re purple. The thought embeds itself in her head more than she would care to admit. Ever since meeting Rumi, she’s never seemed to be able to escape from the fact that everything is purple now.

Mira heaves a sigh. She watches Rumi pull the packs apart, bites her tongue on how they break and splinter and how the jagged edges of plastic nearly cut up her arms, and pulls on her own gloves. 

Rumi doesn’t get why Celine is punishing her for something she’s literally had no part in. How is it her fault Mira hates her? What has she done wrong? She’s been nothing but nice to her! She swears to god she’s been nicer than she really should be, given how badly Mira seems to hate her for no reason. She was the one who set up Mira’s room, she made sure to set her up with an extra charger and her own water bottle and made sure the spare room was cleaned of everything. She’s been making Mira breakfast for the past, what, month now?

Nothing is ever good enough. If Rumi is supportive of her during training, Mira thinks she’s mocking her. If Rumi is harder on her, Mira thinks she’s being belittling. If Rumi is outright mean back to her, Mira gets meaner. She’s never satisfied with a single thing Rumi does or doesn’t do, and she’s—what the hell is the point in trying anymore? Rumi knows she shouldn’t think like that, and she thinks most of the time she’s good about not doing that, but it’s really hard sometimes. She wants Mira to like her so badly that it aches, for a dozen of different reasons.

First of all, they’re supposed to save the world together. Whether they like it or not, they’re effectively soul-tied together for the foreseeable future. Maybe once they turn the honmoon gold and seal off all demons from the world, Mira can ditch out and disappear like she so clearly wants to. But what are they supposed to do in the meantime? They can barely work together as-is, and they’re not even dealing with any of the higher stakes that Rumi knows they’ll have to tackle sooner rather than later. They’ve fought and killed demons together, though it’s mostly been Rumi killing them. No matter how much she wants Mira to actually use the gok-do she worked so hard to summon, she won’t. And it’s not like Rumi is going to just let demons swarm Mira to force her to use it, that would be fucked up, and she’s just...she’s not that kind of person.

She’s not going to stoop because Mira won’t meet her halfway. She won’t. It doesn’t matter how hard Mira tries to get her to get on her level, Rumi won’t do it. She hates how often they fight and she hates that she doesn’t know how to fix any of it, or even make an attempt. She doesn’t know where to start—how do you start to fix something when the other person is practically punching you in the face the whole time? And she doesn’t—Rumi doesn’t want to just stand there and take it, because that literally changed nothing at all, but she hates yelling back, she hates getting angry. She’s never been angrier in her entire life. She doesn’t know how Mira is so good at getting her to feel. It would almost be impressive if it didn’t suck so bad.

So Rumi fights her more than she used to, she pushes back harder than before, but none of it feels good. She doesn’t want to do any of it, really, but what else is she supposed to do? It’s harder than she’d care to admit to just stand there and let Mira say scathing, awful things to her. Half of what Mira blames her for have been out of Rumi’s control. She can’t control the fact that she’s Ryu Miyeong’s daughter, or that she was raised by Celine, or that the honmoon took her in when she was a toddler. How is that her fault?

Maybe she could throw it back in Mira’s face, maybe she could sneer back that her mom is dead and Rumi never got to meet her, and is that what she wants to hear? Half the time, Rumi is tempted to tell her that she’s a demon and that she has to work harder than Mira or their third hunter ever will have to, because she is on a timer. They are not. She’s a ticking time bomb waiting to explode, she has actual goals and plans and a need to do her duty. It’s clear Mira doesn’t care about the honmoon or the world or any of it. Rumi doesn’t understand why the honmoon would pick someone who so clearly hates it. 

And she doesn’t—why the hell is Celine taking it out on her? Rumi hasn’t even fucking done anything! She’s been patient, she’s been relaxed and calm and considerate, she doesn’t lash out first or go out of her way to screw with Mira, not like how Mira does with her. How is it her fault that Mira hates her when she hasn’t done anything to deserve it? Rumi has been trying so hard to not give in, to not feed back into Mira’s anger, but is she just...does Celine just expect her to take it? She knows she’s their leader, she knows she’s meant to be able to handle it better than anyone, but it’s not fair. How is this fair? Why does she have to be punished for something Mira is doing?

She can’t believe Celine is making them work in the greenhouse together.

Rumi actually likes the work there. She likes going to the greenhouse to clear her head, she likes taking care of the plants, she likes being in that space. It’s always helped her get out of her mind. It’s peaceful and quiet and she’s good at it, and it just feels nice to not have to be running drills constantly or being talked at about the next ten years of her life, give or take. Rumi—Rumi likes being a hunter! Even if it wasn’t decided for her, she would choose this every single time. She likes being a hunter and she knows she’ll like being an idol, but she just...likes to get away from it all sometimes. The greenhouse has always been where she’s gone to do that. 

Except she can’t anymore, because now she’s expected to take Mira with her. Every time they fight, every time they even come close to it, Celine apparently expects them to go and work together. Rumi doesn’t even know how that’s going to be possible; Mira picks a fight with her pretty much every other minute, and there’s only so much they can do in the greenhouse. Most of the plants don’t need to be touched daily, let alone multiple times a day. Rumi can only stare at the perfectly fine cucumbers for so long before she starts to go insane. She can only pretend to check for any rot for so long before it’s obvious she’s just standing there doing nothing at all.

Rumi hates this. 

She feels so stupid putting herself on the farthest end of the greenhouse just to intentionally avoid having to be side-by-side to Mira. She feels like a total idiot mumbling under her breath how to take the plastic containers apart, how to carefully plant the peppers into the soil. She goes to repeat the process with the tomatoes Celine got, instructing Mira to water everything. She tries to say it as matter-of-factly as she can manage to make it clear that she’s not mocking her, but Mira still narrows her eyes and scoffs when Rumi is done explaining how to properly water.

She’s so sick of this. She hates feeling like this in her own home, in her own greenhouse. She hates feeling stupid and nervous and on edge. She’s meant to—she’s meant to save the world with Mira. She knows she doesn’t technically have to be her friend throughout the process, but it sure as hell would make it a lot easier. And it’s worse, too, because Rumi very genuinely thinks she could like Mira if Mira wasn’t so set on hating her and wanting her outright dead.

She thinks Mira is funny. They don’t exactly joke with each other, but there’s been a few times where they’ve come close, and Rumi has caught little glimpses of who Mira has to be under all the anger she wears as a shield. Rumi isn’t stupid; she was there when Mira came to the compound, she saw her covered in bruises. She’s seen the way she backs herself up into walls whenever Celine’s voice gets firm. She’s seen how Mira watches both of them, she’s seen that look in her eye every time she picks a fight, like she’s waiting for Rumi to do something to her. Rumi has seen all of that, but she knows bringing it up might just be the worst possible option. 

So she says nothing at all and keeps herself silent. She snaps back sometimes when Mira pushes a little too far, but she’s trying not to raise her voice, or to look or act threatening, or whatever. She doesn’t know if she’s doing a good job at any of that, but she’s trying. It doesn’t seem like it even matters in the end. Mira still picks fights with her, she still hurls insults at Rumi constantly, and it’s clear that she’s still trying to get Rumi to break and get angry at her the same way Mira gets angry with her. 

Rumi glances down at the ground when she hears the honmoon start to trill. She lets out a quiet sigh when it works its way up her legs, thrumming the whole time until it’s wrapped around her shoulders, trailing up along her cheeks, around her jaw. It hums and buzzes and sings, obviously trying to get her to do something.

What do you want me to do? Rumi thinks, almost exasperated. She’s not going to listen to me. 

The honmoon just trills a little louder. She watches it ripple off of her and ebb into the soil. It lets out a bright, happy noise, and then it starts to make its way over toward Mira. Rumi lets herself look, just for a few seconds. Mira doesn’t seem to have noticed either of them, her brows drawn together as she squints at the soil. She’s almost...

Rumi feels her lips twitch up into an involuntary smile. She’s so tentatively tilting the hose like she’s worried it might bite her, or something. And she’s doing a good job from what Rumi can see, there’s no water overflowing in any of the planters, or anything. The soil looks damp, but not soaked. She knows it’s easy enough to water everything, but she also remembers being scared out of her mind that she was going to fuck up Celine’s plants until Celine had quietly laughed at her and assured her that, even if she did, they could get more. It’s not like they’ve exactly ever been low on money.

She really does think she could like Mira if Mira would just...let her. Rumi thinks she’s funny, she’s seen the way she interacts with people out in public. They’ve all been strangers, but Mira—she knows Mira can be polite, because she literally is actively polite to the people they talk to out in public. She knows Mira is a hard worker and she’s stubborn and really talented, she’s good at pretty much everything she tries out, but Rumi doesn’t think she actually sees that. And it’s not like Rumi can tell her that she’s doing a good job with anything, because god forbid Mira takes it as Rumi mocking her.

But she would mean it. She would mean it completely. Mira is talented, she’s incredibly hard working and she’s good at what she does. She’s smart, determined, and genuinely skilled. Rumi still can’t fully wrap her head around half of what Mira does, especially when it comes to dancing. She’s an actual prodigy, anyone could see that. Rumi’s not even half as good as her.

Rumi forces herself to look away before Mira catches her. She stares down at the planter in front of her, wishing she knew how to make any of this better or easier for either of them.

For now, Rumi plants the tomatoes Celine wanted her to plant and listens to the honmoon sing around both of them, and wonders how she’s supposed to do any of this.

Rumi tells her to keep the gloves for the time being. Rumi mentions that she’ll actually buy Mira proper gloves that fit her better, mumbling something under her breath about how she’s sure Celine is going to make them keep doing this, so she needs to get gloves that actually work for her. Mira is left more stunned than she’d care to admit, unable to wrap her head around the fact that Rumi is going out of her way to do fucking anything at all for her, especially after how poorly their first attempt in the greenhouse went.

Mira was put on watering duty, and she hated every second of it. Rumi explained exactly how to water the plants in the most confusing way possible—what the hell did she mean by watering the planters until they overflow and spill onto the floor to wash the dirt out, then to water them again to properly water them? Overflow? Isn’t that the opposite of what they want to do? She’s heard Celine talk about the importance of not overwatering, so why would she intentionally...? Whatever. Mira listened to her the best she could, but she could never tell for sure if she was watering too much or too little. 

By the time Rumi finally came back over to her after planting the tomatoes, she made a comment that Mira was doing a ‘good job’ and that it wasn’t as hard as it seems. And by that point, Mira was already so frustrated with herself for feeling stupid over some fucking plants and a hose that she bristled instantly at the comment and sprayed Rumi directly in the face with the hose. They just stood there staring at each other for a while, Rumi soaking wet and dripping, Mira with her heart racing in her chest while she did her best not to burst out laughing, and then Rumi just sighed and dragged her hands through her sopping-wet hair. 

She turned away and walked off after that. She left the greenhouse and Mira stood there like an idiot, shame burning up the back of her neck as she just held the hose and waited for something to happen. Rumi came back in different clothes and with her hair tied up, and then she intentionally stepped on the hose to make it stop flowing. Before Mira realised that that’s what she was doing, she already raised the hose up to eye-level to check if she had accidentally turned it off, and then she blasted herself right in the face.

She was so unfathomably mad, so ready to rip into Rumi and tell her off—and she knows she wasn’t being fair, she literally did it to Rumi first, she had no right to complain—but then she turned and saw Rumi grinning, her eyes scrunched up at the sides. Water still dripped down her face, down her lips, running off the side of her jaw and onto the ground.

“So...” she had said, cocking her head to the side. “Did something happen, or...?”

Mira couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief, more shocked than anything. She rolled her eyes and took her glasses off, practically pressing them into the palm of Rumi’s hand, said, “Clean these, then,” and to Rumi’s credit, she did. 

The rest of their time in the greenhouse was spent in quiet. The air didn’t feel as tense as it did beforehand. Mira kept watering, Rumi flitted around the greenhouse to and from. They didn’t talk to each other or fuck with each other past that. And then by the end of it, Rumi pulled her aside and said that she’d get her new, better gloves, but that she should keep the old ones for the time being.

Mira still can’t completely wrap her mind around anything Rumi has done to her today. Rumi has had so many opportunities to fuck with her, to make Mira embarrass herself, to completely screw her over. For a second, Mira had thought she was going to do that with the hose, though she knows that’s not what Rumi was doing now. Rumi could have not given her gloves, she could have handed the plastic packs over to her without warning her, she could have blown up on her when Mira sprayed her in the face like a little kid. The most retaliation she provided was spraying her back. 

Something of equal weight, Mira guesses. For once. 

They go back to the hanok soaked. Celine looks both of them up and down and rolls her eyes—Mira doesn’t try to stop herself from bristling—before she does that weird sort of half-smile she does and tells them to get changed because lunch is ready. Mira feels...weird about all of that for a reason she can’t quite make out in her head, so she changes and then gets in her shower for a full forty minutes. She knows Celine and Rumi would wait for her for at least fifteen, maybe twenty, but nearly an hour? Definitely not.

And then she comes back downstairs and turns the corner, and—oh. There they are. Great. 

So Mira sits and eats, mutters some kind of ‘thank you’ in Celine’s general direction, and doesn’t pay any mind to Rumi sitting across from her. She doesn’t like when they’re expected to eat as a group. She’s always waiting, always expecting, always trying to figure out when she’s going to fuck up or say something wrong. Half the time she’s convinced Celine is going to use this as an opportunity to tell her to get out. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Nothing happens; all three of them are quieter than usual, and Mira even tells them she’s going to her room before she washes her dishes off and quickly makes her escape. 

Those stupid gardening gloves are still on her desk. She didn’t even—she brought nothing with her other than one backpack that barely fit a few shirts and a couple pairs of pants, so she absolutely didn’t have time to haul a whole fucking desk to the compound. Rumi was the one who apparently dragged it in from one of their spare rooms. When Mira asked her why she didn’t just...put Mira in that room, Rumi shrugged and said that it wasn’t big enough. Mira has seen the size of their doors and she’s seen the size of that desk. How Rumi single-handedly got that desk into this room is still beyond her.

Sometimes Mira is struck by how excited and nice Rumi had been when they first met. Rumi was the one who set up her room and brought her pretty much everything she would need for the first couple of days: her own phone charger, any and all toiletries and shower care. a few changes of clothes after she must have noticed Mira’s backpack. She offered to go into town and get her more stuff if she needed or wanted anything different. Mira didn’t like how on edge she felt the entire time Rumi was doing that. People weren’t just nice to her. There was always a cost, always a price attached. She had tried to convince herself that the price was that her soul was picked by the honmoon, that Rumi was only being nice to her because she didn’t have much of a choice.

But Rumi has still been nice to her even now, even after everything. Mira knows that there’s supposed to be three hunters, but Celine was a solo hunter for however long, and the world didn’t end. She’s pretty sure that Rumi and their third hunter could do it in two if they really had to. It’s not like she’s made herself easy to be around. Celine could kick her out of the compound and what could she say? ‘No’? Mira would just have to deal with it. She doesn’t know why Celine hasn’t yet, other than because the honmoon chose wrong. Celine’s an older hunter, though. Surely if anyone can see that the honmoon chose wrong, it would be her.

Celine hasn’t kicked her out yet. Mira is starting to hate that she hasn’t just gotten it over with, because it’s making everything...difficult. Whenever it eventually happens, Mira already knows she’s going to be caught off guard by it, that it’s going to sting worse than it would have had Celine just done it sooner. She knew it was coming from her parents, and that hadn’t made it hurt any less. Maybe it hurt more. She doesn’t know.

Mira heaves a sigh and collapses onto her bed. She buries her face in her pillows, squeezing her eyes shut as she tries to force her mind to turn to static. She doesn’t want to think about Celine kicking her out and she doesn’t want to think about Rumi and how she’s still been way too nice even when Mira doesn’t deserve any of it. That’s another thing that she hates about Rumi. She hates that Rumi can’t get it through her fucking head that Mira’s not worth her time. How does she not see that? Everyone else in Mira’s life has never had an issue with that. She doesn’t get why Rumi is still trying when she very easily could choose to ignore Mira until the honmoon is sealed and they never have to be in the same room as each other.

Isn’t that what she would do?

Mira screws up her face. She groans into her pillows, frustration coursing through her. She doesn’t know. Maybe? She hates Rumi for a dozen different reasons, but half of those reasons just make her a good teammate. Rumi’s pretty much the perfect idol and perfect hunter. Mira hates her for that, but if she were anyone else, Rumi would be a huge asset, and she just...

She doesn’t know. 

How embarrassing is that. One fucking day spent in that greenhouse with Rumi, and she’s already feeling worse and weirder than she has the entire time she’s been at the compound. Mira tries to bury herself further into her bed, silently wishing the world would open up and swallow her whole so she didn’t have to think at all, but it never does. She just stays there and futilely tells her thoughts to shut up. 

She can hear the honmoon around her. She feels it. Mira rolls her eyes and pushes herself up onto her hands, twisting her head sharply to scowl at the ground. The honmoon just ripples back at her, flowing around her floor in waves, sort of like the ocean. It scales up her wall a second later, multi-coloured threads wavering at her. The honmoon is usually blue, pink whenever there’s a tear. She’s only ever seen it turn near-iridescent like this when Rumi is...

Oh, great. Rumi is outside her room. Mira doesn’t know how she knows, she didn’t even hear Rumi’s footsteps and she hasn’t knocked or said anything at all, but it’s just...it’s just a bone-deep sort of knowledge. She feels Rumi in her chest.

Mira hates that. Oh, she hates that. She feels her breath hitch, anxiety crashing into her full force. She’s never realised that before. When did that happen? Since—for how long has she been able to do that? Mira grabs at her shirt, hand over her chest, near her heart, and tries to even out her breathing before she freaks out worse than she already is. Her heart beats steadily under her palm. The honmoon warbles from behind her. 

She can’t feel anything like this. Not physically. But she still knows that she can feel Rumi somehow, and it’s enough to make her sick. 

The honmoon lets out a quieter note, and when Mira manages to get herself to turn and look at it, it’s gone back to being blue. Rumi must have left. 

Mira deflates, burying her face in her hands. Her heart stutters unevenly and starts to race harder that it was before. Fuck. Okay. That has to be normal for hunters, she knows that logically. Celine said she was completely serious when she said all hunters are effectively soul-bonded to each other, which is fucking weird and terrifying and Mira hated the idea of that more than anything else Celine had told her, because—why doesn’t she ever get a choice? She doesn’t get to choose who she’s soul-bonded to, and she doesn’t get to choose who she gives her soul to? How the fuck is that fair?

She doesn’t—she doesn’t want to give it to Rumi. She knows Rumi hasn’t been a dick back to her just because she’s wanted to be, and she knows Rumi would be nice to her if Mira was just nice first, but that’s not, that’s not the point. Rumi doesn’t need someone like her. No one has ever needed someone like her. It would have been so much easier if she wasn’t in anyone’s life, least of all Rumi. All she does is make things harder. Why the fuck did the honmoon—?

Mira breathes out. It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to get so in her head about it. She’s about to settle back down, but then she catches sight of the stupid gardening gloves on her desk again, and...

Mira groans and flings herself back, throwing her arms over her eyes. Goddammit. She doesn’t get Ryu Rumi and she doesn’t think she ever will.

Rumi didn’t think Celine was seriously going to keep making them do this. She guesses she should have expected it; Celine has always been strict and firm, especially on anything and everything hunter-related. It makes sense that she’s being especially strict and firm when it comes to how Rumi and Mira get along, or, rather, how they don’t. But Rumi still hadn’t fully expected it, and she just—how long is this supposed to go on for? She gets what Celine is trying to do. She’s trying to make them work together in a small area where she’s not at so they can talk more freely, or whatever.

Celine is just failing to acknowledge the fact that Mira literally doesn’t like any of that, and that it’s probably not going to help. Mira doesn’t like sitting in a smaller area with her, and Mira definitely doesn’t like talking to her or being forced to talk to her. This isn’t going to go the way Celine wants it to go. Rumi feels bad about thinking like that, she feels bad about how little hope she has, but how is she meant to feel any other way? She’s tried so hard to get Mira to like her or to at least tolerate her, and Mira has seemed pretty dead-set on doing none of that at all. Rumi doesn’t want it to be like this, but she doesn’t think Celine’s plan is going to work. She guesses she hasn’t had any better ideas, so whatever. 

She’ll come out to the greenhouse and pretend to work as many times as it takes for Celine to realise that this just isn’t going to work that way. And, okay, it sucks a lot that Mira clearly can’t stand her, but Rumi can live with that. Mira doesn’t have to be her best friend and she doesn’t even have to like her, she just has to help seal the honmoon. They work well together in a purely technical sense. Rumi is still bad at dancing and Mira still likes to rub it in her face, but they’re kind of getting better at reading each other and working off of each other. At the very least, they’ll look good on stage. Rumi doesn’t have a problem reading Mira’s body language and Mira doesn’t have a problem working around Rumi at the drop of a hat if need be. They’re good at that.

It really only rubs salt in the wound. How can they manage to work so well together when it comes to technical stuff, but they can’t do that in real life? Why can’t it extend? Rumi knows how to read Mira, she’s gotten way better at reading her emotions just generally. Mira has always been good at adapting and working with and around Rumi when it comes to dance. Like, she won’t let Rumi push herself too far back into a corner, or she’ll make her stand front and center, or she’ll just do about a dozen things to make her specifically look good. Mira has been really good at boosting her confidence on stage, and Rumi genuinely appreciates that. She’s been trying to do the same thing for Mira when it comes to sparring, but she doesn’t think she’s gotten very far.

She just...doesn’t know what to do.

Rumi is beyond thankful she bought Mira better gloves, though. The ones she gave her before were kind of old and were definitely way too tight on her fingers. If they’re going to be out here near-constantly like how Celine clearly wants them to be, Mira doesn’t need to fuck up her hands. 

They barely have anything to do that couldn’t be done by one person. Rumi asked if Mira wanted to do watering again, and she laughed in her face before taking the hose and going to the other side of the greenhouse. Rumi noticed immediately how she pretty much is guarding the excess hose behind her, probably so Rumi can’t step on it again and get her sprayed in the face for a second time.

She thought Mira was going to kill her for that. It was really funny and she had been laughing, but as soon as Mira looked at her, practically seething, Rumi was very convinced nothing was going to be funny ever again. She didn’t expect Mira to laugh and pass off her glasses for Rumi to wipe off and clean on her shirt. It was so close to being something, like, normal. They weren’t fighting. They fucked with each other, yeah, but it was all low-stakes. It wasn’t like they got into another fight, Mira wasn’t screaming at her. It was just...normal.

Things had been somewhat calm after that for the next couple of days. And then Rumi tried again to correct and help Mira’s stance when it came to holding her gok-do, and Mira lashed out at her. It was basically nothing, honestly. It was barely even a fight, more of a brief disagreement, but Celine was out and she saw it, so...now they’re back in the greenhouse for a repeat round. Whatever.

Rumi tries to focus on the vegetables again. Most of their herbs are fine and don’t need to be taken care of—most of everything in here doesn’t need that much work done, not enough to warrant both of them being in here for two hours like Celine wants—but she can at least pretend to work a little more when it comes to the vegetables.

The silence is almost suffocating.

Rumi tries to ignore it, but it feels like it’s pressing down on her to the point where she can barely breathe. She screws up her face and scowls at the stupid planters. Why does—? Ugh. She clears her throat and raises her head, catching Mira’s gaze almost immediately from the other side of the greenhouse.

“She’s not going to make us stop unless we get better at...” Rumi waves her hand between both of them. “You know.”

“What?” Mira asks back, giving her a look. 

Rumi feels like being drawn and quartered might be easier than this. “Talking to each other,” she specifies. “And just, you know, being around each other. Like, generally.”

Mira scoffs at her. Rumi tries to ignore the flicker of irritation followed by the wave of disappointment she feels over the fact that they’re already about to start fighting. What else is she supposed to say? Does Mira want her to lie? It’s not like Mira doesn’t know they suck at both of those things. Mira of all people should know just how much she hates being around Rumi.

After another second, Mira shakes her head and mutters, “Yeah, whatever. I don’t know what you’re mad about. You like being in here.”

“I’m not mad about anything,” Rumi says, sort of pointedly. “I don’t care if she makes me come out here every single day, that’s, like...I don’t know, that’s not the problem. It’s just that she’s going to keep making us come out here, and I know you hate it. Maybe this is surprising to you, Mira, but I actually don’t want to make you do something you hate.”

“You don’t need to worry about me, Rumi,” Mira sneers back. 

“Oh my god, why does it always have to be like this?” Rumi demands. She feels her composure starting to slip. “Why do you think it’s just, like, fucking impossible for someone else to like you or not want you to, I don’t know, suffer? I don’t want you to have to do something you hate. I know you think I’m, I don’t know, just a bad person, or whatever, but I don’t know how to make it more obvious that I don’t hate you and that I don’t even—I don’t even not like you, Mira. I’m not trying to mock you, or anything. I’m being serious about literally everything I say when I’m talking to you. I don’t have a reason to lie to you.”

Rumi feels her heart twist harshly after that. Almost all of what she said was true. She can feel her patterns burning along her shoulders, threatening to creep down her arms and spread across her entire body. It’s not the same, she tries to soothe to herself. It’s different. She’s going to get rid of her patterns when she seals the honmoon, and Mira and their third hunter will never have to know about them. It’s...different. 

Mira is quiet for a very long time. Rumi tries not to scoff under her breath. She goes back to staring at the planters, feeling worse and worse the longer the silence stretches on. She doesn’t know why she thought that would change anything. She doesn’t know why she thought she’d finally be good enough to make Mira understand—

“Thanks,” Mira mutters. Rumi snaps her head to the side so hard that she swears she almost breaks her neck in the process. Mira just stares at her, the look in her eyes one that Rumi can’t quite parse. “For the gloves,” she clarifies. “...Thank you.”

Oh.

Rumi blinks rapidly, opening and closing her mouth a dozen times. What does she say to that? What could she possibly say to that? That’s huge, isn’t it? Or is she looking too into it? Maybe she shouldn’t say anything at all? What if she says something and she ends up pissing Mira off and all of this just burns up and dies before it even gets a chance to begin? And, okay, nothing is probably ‘beginning’, or whatever, but—

Rumi clears her throat. She shifts on her feet for a few seconds before she manages to smile at Mira. 

“You’re welcome,” Rumi says. “Anytime.”

She means that. She hopes Mira finally realises that she means that. 

Mira just nods and looks away, and that’s the end of that. They don’t talk for the rest of the time spent in the greenhouse, but the silence isn’t nearly as suffocating as it was. Rumi smiles to herself as she works, and she very, very tentatively allows herself to feel a little hopeful again.

Mira really doesn’t fucking get her.

Nothing Rumi does makes sense. Nothing she does makes sense. Mira gets to fuck up and be downright awful to her for months, and Rumi just tells her that she’s meant every kind thing she’s ever said about her? How does that make sense? Why would she—? Mira didn’t think Rumi was being serious. She figured, after the first few fights, that Rumi was just saying things because she felt like she had an obligation to keep trying even though Mira wasn’t salvageable. She didn’t know why Rumi kept making an attempt, and now she...

It doesn’t make sense. Mira hates how Rumi has turned her entire view upside down, on its head, with one stupid conversation. God, maybe that’s why they’ve never really been able to talk like that before. Given how freaked out Mira is over the whole thing, maybe it’s for the best if they just never do that ever again and she doesn’t have to worry about how much of Rumi was real or not. Apparently all of her. That makes her feel sick, more than she’d care to admit.

Mira knew she was being awful. She knew Rumi didn’t really deserve most of it, but in her head, she was fairly convinced Rumi was a liar and wasn’t being honest about half of what she was saying, because why would she be? Mira just didn’t know that she was apparently being nothing more than scum, because Rumi apparently meant all of it. She was being genuinely nice this entire time. There was a part of Mira that thought Rumi at least deserved a little of it, because there was no way she was being entirely sincere.

And now what? She just gets to live with the knowledge that she’s fucked all of this up because she’s, what, a fucking freak? Because she’s a monster? Because she can’t do anything in her life without ruining it in the end? Rumi was nice to her when they first met, and Mira had taken it as just basic politeness. Maybe to a degree it was, but that’s not like it would have even given her the right to treat Rumi how she did, and—

Fuck. Mira hates this, she hates herself, she hates how she always fucking does this and how she never learns and how thai is just how it’s going to be for the rest of her life. When does it stop? When does she stop? Is that even something she can do? She doesn’t know. She wishes it was. She wishes she could be better than this. She wishes so badly she wasn’t the way she was, but she doesn’t know how to be anything else. Half the time, she doesn’t even fully know if she wants to be anything else. 

She’s been like this for so long that doing anything differently feels like a death sentence. And the more logical part of her brain urges her to remember that she’s in an entirely different place with entirely different people, she’s not with her parents or brother anymore, the hanok and the compound and Rumi and Celine are all different, but it’s still impossible for her to wrap her mind around any of that. Not completely. She can acknowledge it and she knows it’s technically the truth, but she doesn’t know how to make it matter beyond that.

Like, yeah, okay, Rumi is different. Rumi has been endlessly nice to her even when they’ve been fighting. Rumi has only bit back and fought back when Mira has pressed her too hard and too far, but Rumi has never been the one between them to go out of her way to pick a fight or start shit. Rumi used to praise and compliment her near-constantly until Mira must have bitten too hard and got her to stop doing that. Would she still? If Mira didn’t...?

What does it even matter? Clearly it’s—

Mira lets out a frustrated snarl. She stalks the length of the graveyard, only getting more and more angry at herself. She came out here to try and cool her head, but nothing has helped. She tried throwing herself into drills she could do by herself, because god knows she wasn’t going to ask Rumi to spar with her. She knows she could have, and she knows Rumi would have said yes, but Rumi is the fucking problem right now. Mira doesn’t think she’d be able to handle seeing her, much less talking to her. 

She’s being stupid about this and she knows that. She’s acting like a total idiot for no reason. If, just for a second, Mira takes Rumi completely at her word and chooses to believe her, then that means Rumi has meant everything she’s said. And if she meant it when she was complimenting Mira on her form, on how quickly she’s been learning, on practically everything she was doing, then that means she was being sincere about all of it. She only stopped because Mira started to blow up harder and harder at her for it until she apparently got it through Rumi’s mind that she should just give up. If Mira stopped doing that—or, god forbid, asked her to start again—then Rumi would probably go ahead and do it. 

That’s the part Mira doesn’t get. Why is she allowed to fuck up so many times here without punishment? She went months of acting horrible before Celine stepped in and decided to make her work in the greenhouse, and that’s—what kind of punishment is that? Mira expected something infinitely worse, she knows she deserves infinitely worse, so why is this the extent of her punishment? She just has to work with plants with Rumi? And, yeah, Celine joked and said she’d ‘sell both of them’ if they killed any of her plants, but she wasn’t being serious, Mira knows that.

She just...doesn’t get why she’s allowed to be here at all. She’s done so much wrong, she’s been difficult about literally everything, and she’s been outright awful to Rumi for months now. Why would Rumi still make an attempt with her? Why is Rumi effectively offering the idea that they could go back to how they were acting with each other during the first week, before Mira’s anger had really flared up in full? Why does Mira get to get out of all of this for free? She hasn’t done anything to deserve it. She’s suffered no punishment. 

And that’s another thing she doesn’t get. Rumi doesn’t even want to see her suffering. That doesn’t make sense at all. Even if Rumi was serious about everything else, wouldn’t she at least feel a little good at watching Mira get berated or insulted or punished? Wouldn’t she feel a little good knowing that Mira’s actions have had consequences, no matter how small? Rumi would have every reason to revel in all of this. It’s not like Mira has ever given her a reason not to.

The answer is simple enough. Rumi is a better person than her. But even then, she just...why would Rumi...

Why her? Why is Rumi trying so hard with her? What the hell does Rumi see in her? Mira doesn’t understand how she’s managed to convince or trick Rumi into thinking she’s worth the time and effort. She doesn’t even know how she did that in the first place, because she’s done nothing but push Rumi away and intentionally do horrible shit to her just because she’s...

Afraid, maybe.

That logical part of her brain can admit it; the rest of her cannot. Rumi and Celine are different from everyone in her life because they’ve never gone out of their way to make her feel afraid of them, and in turn, she’s terrified of both of them. They haven’t done anything to her. Neither of them have intentionally hurt her just because they could. Neither one of them have ever hit her purposefully. Celine has never screamed at her. She’s only raised her voice maybe once, but then she lowered it almost within the same breath. 

Neither of them have done anything, and that’s the part that scares her the most. 

She’s terrified of fucking up so badly that even Celine and Rumi get tired of her, and yet she’s still been barreling for that to happen. It would be easier to handle and accept if they hated her or kicked her out. Because if they can both handle this, if they can take her at her worst, then why could no one else? It makes more sense if she’s the problem. If she’s the reason everyone hates her, that’s—that’s fine, that makes sense, If her parents were right about her, that makes sense. But if Rumi and Celine aren’t doing any of what her parents did, if they keep letting her stay even despite all that she’s done, then...

Then maybe she was worth something, and she had it ripped out from under her. 

Mira almost feels like she’s going to throw up. 

She slowly sinks down to the grass, settling close to one of the giant trees near the graveyard. She presses herself to be flush against it, dragging her legs up to her chest, setting her chin on her knees. She wraps her arms around herself and tries to even out her breathing. Thank god she’s not still inside. She thinks the stuffy air within the hanok would have been enough to actually make her sick.

Mira jolts when the honmoon suddenly starts to buzz at her. She stares down at it for so long her eyes start to unfocus. She shakes her head and breathes out, waving her hand toward it. “Not right now,” she mumbles. “I don’t even know what you want from me.”

The honmoon starts to trill a little louder. She doesn’t know how or why, but something deep in her chest recognises it as Rumi’s voice. It’s decidedly not Rumi’s voice even a little, but her soul is telling her that it is. When Mira looks at the honmoon again, she sees that it’s turned iridescent. 

Great.

Mira knows she could probably run. She could get up and bolt somewhere else in the compound, and Rumi would probably give up rather than encouraging their impromptu game of hide and seek. But Mira is exhausted and tired and she feels like she might throw up if she gets up too quickly, so she stays where she’s at. Whatever. If Rumi wants to come out and waste her time by seeing her, she can do that.

The honmoon trills again, a little more excitedly, right as Mira starts to hear footsteps. She raises her head just in time to find Rumi directly in front of her, bundled up in a sweater. She has...

Mira almost wants to laugh, though she feels like she’s been slapped. Rumi has a second sweater in her arms. Mira tried to sleep and then got too in her head, so she came out here, dressed in barely anything at all. She didn’t even realise she was cold until now.

“Hey,” Rumi starts, sort of cautiously. 

“...Hey,” Mira mumbles back. “Did it snitch on me?”

Rumi actually smiles at that, her eyes crinkling at the sides. She shifts the sweater to one arm, using her free hand to touch the ground. Mira watches as the honmoon ripples around Rumi’s palm, watches how it ebbs up her arm before wrapping around her eyes and along her jaw. She doesn’t know if Rumi sees it, but this is almost always how Mira sees the honmoon. It doesn’t respond to her as much as it responds to Rumi, she doesn’t see it as much as she’s sure she probably should, but she sees it like this the most.

On Rumi, around her, Rumi interacting with it. The honmoon seems to be the most willing to allow Mira to see it when Rumi is there, too.

After a second, Rumi looks back up at her, still smiling, and nods. “Yeah, kind of. Sorry. I figured you were fine, but you weren’t in the hanok so...” She shrugs. “I wanted to check.”

Before, Mira thinks she would have snapped at that. It still feels sort of mocking, but she’s...she’s trying. She’s trying to believe her and take her at her word. So Mira just says, “...Yeah. I’m fine.”

Rumi hums. She sits down across from her, holding out the sweater. Mira feels a little stupid when she immediately reaches out to take it from her. “You don’t usually disappear like that, though. Did something—?”

“Rumi,” Mira warns. She lets out a quiet bark of laughter, rolling her eyes. “You’re going to piss me off.”

“Oh,” Rumi says back. “Sorry.”

Mira is a little taken aback. And then she feels like a fucking idiot, and she can’t help but break out into a dumb grin as she messes with the sweater. It was just that easy? All she had to do was tell Rumi that she was going to cross a line, and Rumi just...stopped? Of course she did, Mira bitterly thinks. Rumi has never crossed over any lines before, not like Mira.

They stay like that for a while, just sitting there in silence. Rumi eventually clears her throat and asks, “Are you cold?”

Mira blinks at her. “I...guess, kind of. It’s the middle of the night.”

Rumi inclines her head toward the sweater that Mira still has in her hands. “Then maybe...stop being cold?” she offers, grinning now. “I brought that for a reason. It’s probably going to be a little small, sorry.”

“Not your fault you’re below average,” Mira mumbles under her breath. She pulls the sweater over her head as soon as Rumi starts sputtering at her, laughing a little harder than she means to when she finally pops her head out of the collar and sees that Rumi is furiously glaring at her. “What?” Mira teases. She feels the corners of her lips start to curl upward.

“I’m literally above average,” Rumi pointedly tells her. “You know what’s not my fault? The fact that you’re ninety percent leg.”

Mira can’t help the way she laughs. She gives Rumi a look, tilting her head to the side as she starts to involuntarily grin. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Rumi says with a soft laugh. She rolls her eyes, shaking her head a little. “Whatever.”

The quiet lull returns. Mira expects to be uncomfortable and on edge, especially with Rumi sitting directly in front of her saying nothing at all, but it’s not...bad. She feels a little weird with how obvious she’s being when it comes to looking at Rumi, but Rumi isn’t trying very hard to not look at her, either, so maybe it’s fine. Maybe they’re both just trying to figure each other out. 

She feels stupid the longer they stay there. She doesn’t have to stay. Mira knows she could get up at any point in time and she could leave, and Rumi probably wouldn’t even follow her. She doesn’t know if Rumi would trail her back to the hanok at the same time or not, but if she went further into the compound, she’s pretty sure Rumi wouldn’t come after her. Before, maybe she would have. But Mira just stays where she’s at, back to the tree, and studies Rumi.

She’s...pretty. It’s really the only thing Mira thinks; she has pretty features and a nice voice—obviously—and this has always been true. Mira guesses she just never actually spent that much time just looking at Rumi without any sort of ulterior motive, like figuring out the fastest and best way to pick a fight with her. Rumi is very genuinely pretty. She has a stupid way of grinning, but it’s...

Mira doesn’t know. She crinkles her nose and breathes out, clearing her throat when she eventually says, “I know the honmoon told you, but you didn’t have to come out here.”

Rumi shrugs one shoulder, tipping her head to the side. “Yeah, but I wanted to.”

“Why?” Mira presses. “If I was actually, I don’t know, in danger, it would have told you that.”

“Yeah,” Rumi agrees. “It’s not like you have to be in danger for me to worry. You know that, right? Not everything has to be life or death. I think it’s actually pretty reasonable to be concerned by you disappearing from the hanok at...” Rumi pauses, pursing her lips as she clearly considers. “What, three in the morning?”

Mira screws up her face and looks away. “It’s closer to four.”

Rumi makes a noise. “Right. That makes it better.”

Mira rolls her eyes. She messes with the hem of her sweater; Rumi was right, it’s a little small and a little tight, but it’s undeniably warm. After another beat passes by, Mira quietly mumbles, “You’re so weird.”

“What?” Rumi asks back. “No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are,” Mira says with a snort. “You’re super weird.”

“And you’re not?” Rumi suddenly demands, apparently deciding to pivot. She glares at her, but Mira is fairly certain she’s not actually upset. “Why am I weird?”

Mira outright laughs now, ducking her head. “You just are.”

Rumi scoffs. “No, I’m not! Why am I weird?”

“Why are you so hung up on it?” Mira grins. She raises her head just in time to see Rumi cover some of the distance between them, getting right up in Mira’s face. “Rumi—”

“No, tell me,” Rumi insists. She’s grinning now, too. “You literally brought it up. Why am I weird?”

“Why am I weird?” Mira asks back. “You said I was.”

“Because you said it first!” Rumi laughs. She looks a little stunned that she laughed at all, blinking rapidly before she rolls her eyes and jabs a finger to Mira’s knee, saying again, “Tell me.”

Mira sighs. She holds up her hands in mock defeat, ignoring the pleased glint in Rumi’s eyes when she does. “I just don’t get why you came out here when you knew I was fine,” she says. “That’s weird. I wouldn’t have done that.”

Rumi makes a noise and gives her a look. Before Mira can place the emotion and tone on either of those things, Rumi is saying, “No, I think you would have.”

“I wouldn’t,” Mira disagrees.

“You probably would,” Rumi disagrees right back. “I think if the honmoon started telling you that I wasn’t where you last saw me, you’d probably go and at least figure out where I was. And if you saw me sitting in the graveyard surrounded by dead people like a weirdo, you’d probably be concerned. So...yeah. I think you would have.”

She says all of it so sincerely that Mira is almost able to gloss over the ‘weirdo’ comment. She swallows back the retort she feels on the tip of her tongue, trying to process everything else Rumi has just said to her. It’s...admittedly difficult. She can’t even begin to work out whatever version of herself that Rumi apparently has up in her head. What the hell does Rumi see when she looks at her? Because it’s a stark contrast from what Mira sees when she looks at herself in the mirror, or thinks about herself too hard.

Would she have come out? Mira doesn’t...know. The honmoon rarely interacts with her like that, so that’s already a stretch. But if it did, and she knew Rumi was out somewhere in the compound and hadn’t even said anything about leaving...

Mira still doesn’t think she would go looking for her, but she thinks she would probably stay awake until Rumi came back. That’s not the same. That isn’t even remotely the same as intentionally going to try and find her, but it’s not doing nothing, either. She guesses. It’s still not enough. It wouldn’t be enough. But it’s...

Something. Kind of.

Mira makes a noise from the back of her throat. She turns her head and looks back toward the compound, ignoring the weird stutter of her heart. After another minute, she pushes herself up and away from the tree, going still as soon as she’s on her feet. She looks down at Rumi, then gently inclines her head toward the hanok.

“It is late,” Mira says. “So...”

Rumi smiles up at her and stands a second later. The walk back to the hanok is quiet. Neither of them speak, but they walk side-by-side and don’t fight about anything. Mira internally rolls her eyes; what kind of progress is that? She guesses it’s still leagues ahead of where they were, so...whatever. Sure. She’ll count it as some kind of weird, fucked up win. She’s sure Celine would be thrilled with them.

When they get to the door, Rumi pauses both of them. Mira doesn’t have a chance to ask what she’s doing before Rumi is saying, “Hey. If something happens again and you have to go somewhere else, you can tell me. If you want. You don’t, you don’t have to,” Rumi quickly clarifies. “But if, um, if you wanted to, you could. I probably don’t get it, but I can try.”

Mira swallows. She nods, looking down at the ground. “Yeah, probably not.” At Rumi’s huff, Mira smiles and continues, “Um, but...thanks. You...you too.”

When she looks back up, Rumi is beaming at her. 

And then Rumi presses open the door, still grinning when she says, “Goodnight, Mira. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Mira follows after her sort of blindly. She murmurs, “Goodnight, Rumi,” before she splits off from her and goes back to her room. The buzzing in her mind has died down almost completely. The honmoon happily trills at her before its ripples turn back from iridescent to blue, and it wavers out of her sight. 

She breathes out. 

Fuck. Okay. 

“Are you going to bite me if I show you how to do this?” Rumi asks, motioning down to the plastic flats. Celine brought them in, but half of the plants are going to stay in said flats until they make more room. She swears to god Celine has been investing in this greenhouse way more than she ever has before, and she knows she’s doing it just because she wants to give Rumi and Mira more work to do.

Mira scoffs at her. “Maybe stop asking stupid questions and I won’t.”

“It’s not a stupid question if it’s an actual problem,” Rumi helpfully says back. “Maybe I’ll just bite you. How about that?”

Mira sticks out her arm almost instantly. She’s practically pressing it against Rumi’s mouth within the same second, and she has such an infuriatingly smug grin on her face, eyes crinkled at the sides, clearly amused. 

Rumi can’t fucking believe her. She huffs and looks away, which is enough for Mira to laugh at her. She sounds beyond pleased when she says, “Oh, no, you don’t want to now? I thought you were going to? Did you chicken out, princess?”

“You know what?” Rumi demands. She grabs Mira’s arm, hesitating for just a second too long. Mira breaks out into more laughter, grinning harder than she had been before. It’s stupid how Rumi starts to smile, rolling her eyes when she drops Mira’s arm and shoves her back. “Go back on watering duty, actually. I’ll do this.”

“How about you water for once in your life?” Mira presses back. “No. Tell me what you want me to do. I’m not going to freak out on you, Rumi. Chill out.”

Chill—chill out? Rumi nearly does the opposite of chilling out, but she manages to sink her teeth into her tongue just in time before she starts a fight. One of Celine’s more extended rules for ‘greenhouse time’ as Rumi has started to call it is that they’re not allowed to fight. Like, at all. In any capacity. Anything that could be remotely considered a fight counts. She doesn’t even know how Celine’s making them stick to that, because it’s not like she’s out here with them, but whatever. Rumi has been trying to honour that, at least.

And Mira hasn’t been doing half-bad, either. 

Rumi thinks this genuinely is the best their relationship has ever been since Mira came to the compound. They talk a lot more freely, they’re starting to joke around with each other like this, and Mira seems infinitely less inclined to rip her head off at any given moment. Rumi doesn’t feel as stressed as she used to, Mira seems way less flighty, and they’re just generally doing...better. She doesn’t know if she’d say ‘good’, but they’re something close to it. 

She’s pretty thrilled about that. Rumi will happily take what she can get when it comes to Mira.

Rumi smiles, tapping her finger to the flats. “Okay. It’s really easy, it’s just going to be annoying. So basically...”

“I can’t believe she let you do that,” Mira mumbles. She looks up and to her left to meet Rumi’s eyes, grinning when Rumi immediately rolls them and gets back to work. Mira had been working, but then she decided to take a break and sit, leaning up against one of the wooden supports. She’ll move again soon enough.

Plus, Rumi’s clearly fine with doing her half of the work, so what does she have to rush for?

Rumi sighs. “She didn’t really have a choice, I guess. I mean, the honmoon picked me, so...what was she going to do? Tell it no?” Rumi snorts. “Plus, I was pretty good about it! I didn’t really touch my saingeom until I was a little older. I didn’t want to, like, impale myself, or something.”

Mira snickers. “I thought you couldn’t hurt yourself with your own weapon? That’s what you told me.”

“You can’t,” Rumi agrees. “Just like I couldn’t actually hurt you with my saingeom. But I was also literally seven years old and Celine didn’t tell me that, so I thought that if I messed up, I was just going to straight up die.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell you?” Mira asks, a little curiously. 

“I guess it just slipped her mind?” Rumi offers. “She told me when I actually asked, but it was years later. And I was not going to test it myself. I’ve seen what I can do to demons,” she mutters. “I wasn’t going to risk it. If I cut my arm off, I was going to be so upset.”

Mira rolls her eyes and smiles a little harder. “You would have been fine with just one arm. You still can kick my ass and it’s been months.” Rumi suddenly turns back to face her. Mira blinks at how serious she looks. “What?” she asks, trying to press down the weird sort of nervousness she starts feeling.

Rumi purses her lips. “Can I compliment you, or will you not take it?”

“What?” Mira repeats, a little stupidly. She clears her throat quickly and shakes her head, amending, “I don’t...care.”

“Great.” Rumi starts smiling again. “Mira, I literally just told you that I summoned my saingeom for the first time when I was seven, I’ve had it pretty much all my life. You summoned your gok-do ten years older than I was. You’ve had way less time to get used to it than I have. I’m only better than you because I’ve been doing it for longer, but you’re really, really talented. You’re really good with your gok-do already, and there’s been tons of times where you kicked my ass. Stop selling yourself short.”

Mira stares at her in genuine disbelief.

Rumi stares back until she clears her throat and looks away, adding, “I mean it. And also you’re way better than me at dancing, and you don’t even mess with me over that. You just need to give yourself more time. We haven’t even found our third hunter yet. We’ve got plenty of time. Seriously.”

“Who are you?” Mira asks. She tries to ignore the tremor in her voice. “Are you, like, a demon who replaced the real Rumi, or...? Because the real Rumi makes me wake up at six in the fucking morning to—”

“Because those are training hours!” Rumi laughs. She shoots Mira a look, a wide grin across her face, and ducks her head after another second. “God, whatever. You’re really bad at taking compliments, did you know that, or is this news to you?”

Mira laughs under her breath; it does nothing to dispel the way her heart is still hammering in her chest like it’s desperately trying to break free. “People just...never meant them,” she admits. It’s more than she wanted to say, but the words are already out there. “And,” Mira futilely continues, “I don’t know, I just didn’t get them a lot. So.”

What the hell? She needs to be shot.

“Well,” Rumi starts, “I can change that, if you’ll let me. I mean everything I say to you.”

Mira lets out a shaky exhale. She pushes herself back to her feet, whirling around to face the planter she had been propped up against beforehand. She stares down at the soil so hard her vision starts to blur. Her heart still hasn’t stopped racing. She feels so much warmer than she did even just a minute or two ago, sort of like she’s going to melt out of all her clothes if she doesn’t do...something. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do, they still have an hour of greenhouse time, and—

Jesus Christ, she’s even starting to talk like Rumi, what the hell is her problem? 

“Cool,” Mira rasps out. “Sure.”

“Cool,” Rumi echoes, her voice soft.

Mira spends the rest of the hour trying very, very hard to keep herself from looking into things more than she knows she should. It’s hard to do when she catches Rumi staring at her more than once, always looking at her like she’s trying to figure her out; Mira is beyond terrified that she might want her to.

“How long have you been working with stuff like this?” Mira asks. “With plants, I mean. Like, did Celine just kidnap you and make you stay in here for a full week, or what?”

Rumi snickers. She’s on hose duty today, largely because Mira absolutely refused and threatened to kill her in the greenhouse if she made her pick up that ‘fucking hose I swear to god Rumi’, so Rumi took one for the team this time around. 

They didn’t even really get into a fight this time around. They were sparring, Mira was getting frustrated, and Rumi suggested they take a break. Mira almost snapped at her but didn’t, but she did insult her, and Celine was there, so...greenhouse time. Rumi doesn’t know if Celine considers what happened to be an actual fight, or if she’s just shoving them in here every single time they so much as have a minor disagreement or argument over something, but whatever. She’s not really complaining.

Things have gotten a lot easier between them. Mira doesn’t pick as many fights with her, Rumi isn’t as frustrated with her in return, and they’ve just been doing...well. Really, really well. Rumi genuinely likes hanging out with her, and she’s starting to think Mira likes hanging out with her, too. Actually, Rumi is pretty sure she does like it, because otherwise Mira wouldn’t be going out of her way to talk to her literally at all. 

And it’s been really, really nice. 

She likes talking to Mira and she likes that Mira has started to talk to her back. She likes not having to be nervous about saying or doing the wrong thing, because Mira has managed to learn how to tell her before she crosses a line she didn’t even know was there in the first place. They’re still sort of dancing around each other and Mira still snaps at her, and sometimes Rumi snaps back or gets huffier than she should, but they’re doing arguably super well, all things considered. 

“No,” Rumi answers, “I asked when I was pretty young. I thought it looked fun, and then Celine kidnapped me and made me stay in here for a week.” She grins when that makes Mira laugh, feeling her heart soar in her chest. It’s stupid, maybe, but...she likes hearing Mira laugh a lot more now that Mira’s not laughing at her in a mean way. “Um, but yeah. I just thought it looked like something I would like. Celine did make me work pretty hard, but I liked it.”

Mira snorts. “You really just can’t relax, huh?”

“This is relaxing,” Rumi shoots back without missing a beat. “It’s not stressful at all! I mean.” She pauses with a very intentional, very exaggerated glance down to the hose in her hands. “Maybe it’s a little stressful.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Mira says with a scoff. She rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling, so Rumi takes it as a win. “You know what? You can deal with the hose from now on. I don’t want to touch that fucking thing ever again.”

Rumi giggles, grinning to herself as she moves to the next planter. “It’s not even—”

“Rumi.”

“What?” Rumi laughs, glancing back to Mira. “I’m just saying!”

Mira squints at her. “Well, stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Saying.”

“You—” Rumi rolls her eyes so hard she nearly gives herself a headache. “Okay, Mira. Sure. But you were just getting good at it! You finally stopped freaking out over turning it on!”

Mira scoffs at her, so loud the noise echoes throughout the greenhouse. “I was not freaking out over turning it on. Are you, like, okay?” she asks. “Did you actually get replaced by a demon?”

Rumi tries very hard to ignore the pang of fear that tears through her. She has to remind herself that Mira is joking, Mira doesn’t know, how could she possibly know? She swallows down her terror and teases back, “If I was a demon, I’d spray you in the face right now.”

Mira stares at her. Rumi stares back.

So maybe it’s not really her in control of her body when she slowly, slowly raises the hose up further. Mira glares at her so hard that it makes her giggle, but Mira doesn’t make an actual attempt to move away. Which is why it’s not Rumi’s fault when she snaps the hose to the side and blasts her directly in the face. She guesses she should have probably expected that Mira wasn’t just going to take it, because before she knows it, Mira is charging her full on. Rumi gasps when Mira’s gok-do slams into her ankles, effectively taking her out instantly. 

She lands on her back and drops the hose. It’s already soaked through her shirt by the time Mira finally grabs it and puts it in her face. Rumi can hear her cackling from on top of her. She can’t help but laugh, coughing when she ends up swallowing way too much hose water as a result. She squirms out from underneath her and grabs the hose from Mira’s hands, quickly scrambling to turn it off before they flood the whole greenhouse and Celine actually, genuinely kills them.

For a second, both of them sit there panting, soaked to the bone. And then Mira breaks out into a wide grin and throws her head back as she laughs, and Rumi can’t help but grin right back at her, overtaken by breathless giggling. It’s hard for her to take her eyes off of Mira for even a second; she’s so...beautiful. Rumi has noticed, obviously. She thought Mira was beautiful from the moment she came to the compound.

But right now, with her hair in her face, laughing so hard she’s grabbing at her stomach and doubling over, Rumi thinks she might be the prettiest she’s ever been. 

And very distantly, there’s a thought in the utmost back of her mind that wonders what it would be like to get to kiss her.

Mira wonders if Celine knew it was going to turn out like this. 

She’s in the greenhouse, but they hadn’t been fighting beforehand. It just...felt a little weird to not go in there. She guesses they can talk to each other outside of the greenhouse and they do, they talk when they eat and they talk before bed and they talk literally all the time these days, but there’s just something different about it when they’re in the greenhouse. So Mira goes in willingly, and Rumi trails right after her, and they get to work without even saying anything to each other.

It’s a little funny how Celine’s plan worked. Mira is sort of bitter about it, just because she’s annoyed that it worked in the first place given how ridiculous it was, but she guesses she’s not really complaining. She feels like a total idiot, but she...really likes Rumi. Like, a lot. Way more than she thought she would. It’s hard for her to look back on the first few months she spent at the compound without feeling profoundly guilty over how she treated Rumi. It’s also hard for her to look back and see herself in any of her memories.

Mira isn’t nearly as angry now as she used to be. There’s something about Rumi that sort of soothes over the anger she does feel these days. Rumi doesn’t smother her, she’s never been suffocating, but she’s good at making Mira feel like, maybe, she doesn’t need to bite first and ask questions later. It’s weird. Mira has never been the kind of person to not dive headfirst into a fight or to consider just not getting in the fight at all. She’s always been so ready to get herself fucked up, and now it’s like the urge has been subdued. She doesn’t crave it as much as she used to. 

She’s sure a decent part of it has to come from the fact that, the longer she stays, the more it’s made apparent to her that Celine and Rumi are nothing like her family. That should have been obvious to her from the moment Celine took her in, and it sort of was, but it took her a while to really come to terms with it and accept it as true. She isn’t as afraid of being kicked out anymore, since it’s painfully clear that Celine was never going to do that, no matter how Mira acted. She’s not as terrified of being swept aside or replaced, given how Rumi goes out of her way to hang out with her pretty much every single day.

Mira still isn’t sure how she got so lucky with Rumi. Anyone else, and she’s sure she would have gone past the point of no return ages ago. Despite everything, Rumi has still been willing to try again with her. Mira can’t quite wrap her mind around it, but she’s grateful regardless. 

Now that she’s less afraid and angry, Mira has had more time to feel other things. 

She hasn’t exactly stopped staring at Rumi.

She guesses this was probably always going to happen. Rumi is beautiful, sweet, kind, and unfortunately charming. Mira has absolutely no idea how she managed to be charmed by Rumi’s stupid grin or the dumb way she opens every single door for Mira or how she has a beautiful laugh or—ugh. Mira kind of hates that she’s been won over so hard that she just outright has a crush on her. Which is stupid. She knows it’s stupid, but she can’t really stamp it down, and god, she’s been trying. She’s been trying so hard to convince her brain that she’s wrong, but it’s not working. 

Mira still looks at Rumi and feels her heart start to race. She’s finding herself going out of her way to seek her out, to be around Rumi, to spend more time with her than is strictly necessary. Like, sure, they live together and they work together and they’re expected to spend most if not all of their lives together, but that’s—what she’s doing is different. Mira doesn’t have to eat every single meal at the same time as her, she doesn’t have to go out of her way to watch the same shows as Rumi, and she absolutely did not have to go into the stupid greenhouse knowing that Rumi would follow her, which is why she did it in the first place, and...

God, she’s such a loser. 

As soon as Rumi enters the greenhouse with her, she’s putting that stupid fucking hose into her hands, and Mira just lets her do it. She makes sure she huffs and scoffs at her, but Rumi just flashes her a dumb grin and prances off to the opposite side of the greenhouse. She’s such a loser, too. That’s part of what makes this whole thing so embarrassing. She doesn’t know how she managed to be charmed by Ryu Rumi of all people. She’s literally seen Rumi trip and eat shit because she forgot to tie her own shoes. And Mira still wants to kiss her. If she’s being honest with herself, she probably wanted to kiss her more because of it. 

She’s feeling awfully bold today, more than she really should be. Mira is halfway through watering one row of planters before she says, “I like girls, you know.”

Rumi is quiet for a second. Mira suddenly wonders if she’s fucked up massively without even really thinking about it, but then Rumi says, “I like girls, too. And boys. I mean, I guess I never really had much of a chance to think about it.” Rumi hums after that, like she’s considering. “Not until recently.”

Not until—?

What?

Mira snaps her head over to stare at her, and she must look insane, or something, because Rumi quickly throws up her hands and stumbles out, “Um, I meant, like. Uh, I didn’t—well, I didn’t not, but, like...oh my god.” Rumi looks firmly down at the ground. “You know.”

“I know?” Mira repeats, sort of incredulously. “How recently is recently?”

“I don’t, I don’t know?” Rumi offers. She’s awfully bright red for someone who ‘doesn’t know.’ “I guess, like. Recently. Was it recent for you?”

Mira almost laughs at her. “No.”

“Oh.”

“But maybe I was reminded,” Mira says. “Recently.”

Rumi snaps her head toward her this time, her eyes widening near-comically. “Like...so, how recently is—”

“Rumi, I swear to god.” Mira does laugh this time, pressing her gloved hand to her eyes, grinning as she shakes her head. “Figure it out. Connect the dots. I believe in you, princess, I know you can do it.”

“First of all, I don’t like your mocking tone,” Rumi mutters, but Mira can hear the amusement shining through her voice. “And second of all, I...” Rumi shrugs a little helplessly. “I think if you need a reminder, I can give it to you.”

Mira can’t believe she likes her. This genuinely might be the most embarrassing moment of her life.

It’s more embarrassing when she grins and turns off the hose. She drops it and makes her way to Rumi’s side of the greenhouse, leaning up against one of the planters. She can see the way Rumi’s eyes dart down to her lips. Did she—has she been doing this the whole time? And Mira just didn’t notice? Mira suddenly feels beyond nervous, her heart thudding heavily in her chest. 

Rumi slides her gloves off her hands. Mira feels her heart catch in her throat when Rumi cups her face, thumbing along her cheekbone for half a second before she murmurs, “So...can I?”

Mira’s mouth has gone completely dry by the time she manages to choke out, “Yeah. You can.”

Rumi leans in close enough that their lips brush. For a second, she hesitates, but then she covers the rest of the distance between them. Mira immediately raises her hands up to tangle in Rumi’s shirt or something, but she falls short, far too distracted by the feel of Rumi’s lips on her own. Distantly, Mira has the thought that Rumi is a really good kisser for someone who has never done this before. She leans into her, finally managing to get her hands in Rumi’s shirt, yanking her closer.

She swallows the quiet laugh Rumi lets out, kissing her harder. Rumi obliges, kissing her back just as firmly until Mira is breathless and forced to pull away unless she wants to pass out. She considered it. She doesn’t think she’d mind very much.

Mira stares at her for a few seconds. Rumi’s face is flushed and her lips are slightly parted, and—okay, maybe Mira can understand why she wanted this as badly as she did, maybe she’s a little less embarrassed over the whole thing now. She leans forward again to press a far more brief kiss to Rumi’s lips, then kisses the corner of her mouth. 

“So,” Rumi starts, grinning now. “Was that a good reminder, or do I need to try again?”

Mira groans, tipping her head back as she shoves Rumi away from her. She can’t help but smile when Rumi breaks out into wild, giddy laughter, flushing a little when Rumi wraps her hands around Mira’s wrists and makes her way right back to her. “You’re such a loser,” Mira mumbles. She doesn’t think she does a very good job at keeping the fondness out of her voice.

Rumi beams up at her, eyes sparkling. “You kissed me, though.”

“You kissed me,” Mira corrects.

“You let me kiss you,” Rumi shoots back, grinning harder. “That’s kinda like the same thing. And then you kissed me the second time.”

“I’m never going to kiss you literally ever again if you keep talking,” Mira warns. Rumi crinkles her nose, but she snaps her jaw shut. She’s still smiling. Mira sighs, unable to help herself when she adds, “But whatever. I did let you kiss me. I guess.”

“You—you guess?” Rumi demands. “You did!”

Mira grins at her and gives her best attempt at an unaffected shrug. “Yeah, I guess. Can you let me go back to watering your stupid plants, or...?”

Rumi scoffs, but she’s still smiling just as hard as Mira is. “Whatever, just say you hate me,” Rumi mutters. She lets go of Mira’s wrists, and—Mira doesn’t really expect it when Rumi suddenly presses up to her tip-toes and kisses her again, far more gentle than the first or second time. “For reference,” Rumi murmurs, “I really, really like you.”

Silently, Rumi’s promise of ‘I mean everything I say to you’ runs through her mind. She means it, Mira knows she does. She’s spent months getting to actually know her, and she fully, wholeheartedly trusts and believes everything Rumi says to her. She believes her without a doubt. The thought should be terrifying to her, and sometimes it still is, but for the most part, it leaves her feeling kind of warm. Content, maybe. She never thought she wouldn’t second guess absolutely everything someone says to her, but...

She believes Rumi. She believes Rumi more than anything.

Mira swallows past the lump in her throat and whispers back, “...Good. I really, really like you, too.”

Rumi is pretty convinced her plan is going to work.

After kissing Mira in the greenhouse, they spent the rest of their allotted greenhouse time talking in between kissing. Really, they probably kissed each other way more than they actually talked to each other, but whatever. They still talked. Mira opened up and confessed a lot about herself, about her home life, about her family, about what she used to live through prior to coming to the compound. Rumi held her hand through the whole thing and offered up bits and pieces of her own life, though none of it ever really came close to remotely compared to what Mira was telling her.

They spent such a long time talking that Celine actually came to check that they were both alive. They shamefully broke away from each other—and Rumi is still pretty sure Celine knows, which is mortifying, but maybe they managed to hide it in time?—and went back inside about ten minutes after Celine left. They spent the night in Rumi’s bedroom and kissed way more, but they also talked way more.

It’s been about...close to a month, since then. Not like Rum has been counting the days, or anything. She definitely has not kept track of all twenty-seven days, or anything like that. Not at all. Regardless, it’s been about a month, and they’re still kissing and talking. They haven’t actually called it anything, but Rumi is fairly certain they’re girlfriend-girlfriend even if they haven’t technically said the words. 

She feels insurmountably guilty for keeping her patterns from Mira.

Rumi knows Celine has told her to. It’s been so hammered into her mind to not let anyone else know about her patterns and about her heritage, and Rumi has always genuinely agreed with Celine; she’s always seriously thought that that was the best way to go about it, and that it wouldn’t matter, anyway. Her patterns are going to go away when the honmoon is turned gold. Why would she need to tell anyone else when her patterns aren’t going to be a permanent part of her? She’s applied the same logic to Mira before, but that had been before they kissed, and now things are...different. And a lot more complicated. And Rumi also feels like the worst person in the world for lying to her and not telling her about this specific part of herself when Mira has spilled so much about herself without Rumi even having to ask.

If Mira can be brave and vulnerable, why can’t Rumi?

And she knows, she knows it’s different. She knows that her being a demon isn’t comparable to anything Mira went through. These are completely different situations and Rumi knows that, but it’s so hard for her to not feel horrifically guilty over keeping it from Mira at all, let alone now that they’re sort of together. 

Which is why Rumi has made a plan that she’s mostly confident in—she’ll take Mira to the greenhouse, she’ll admit that she has patterns, and they’re notably not allowed to fight in the greenhouse. So if Mira tries to kill her, she’ll at least have to be a little honourable about the whole thing and wait until Rumi steps foot outside of the greenhouse, which she just will not do, so they’ll be stuck at a standstill for the end of time.

Yeah. She’s sure it’ll work out just fine for her.

She’s already enacted step one of her plan. She slipped away from the hanok about ten minutes ago and has been waiting in the greenhouse ever since; she knows Mira will come looking for her soon enough, if she’s not already. The honmoon will tell her. 

Rumi doesn’t expect the honmoon to tell her. It starts excitedly trilling at her, buzzing frantically around her as it basically screams ‘Mira is here! Mira is here! Mira is here!’ at her. Rumi nervously stares at the entrance to the greenhouse, her heart pounding out of her chest before she even catches a glimpse of Mira.

Mira ducks in half a second later. She immediately smiles at Rumi, raising her eyebrows wordlessly before she gestures out toward her, then back out behind her. “You called?” she teases. “You know you don’t have to hang out with me in here, right?”

“I know,” Rumi promises. “I just, uh, I wanted to talk.”

Mira’s face twists up for a second before she nods, staying where she’s at. “Okay...” she starts, very clearly waiting for Rumi to continue or to add onto that in any capacity. “Go ahead, then. What’s up?”

Rumi licks her lips and looks down at her shoes. “You know how the only rule we have in here is to not fight?”

“Uh-huh...” Mira slowly agrees. “Why?”

“Can you, like, acknowledge that out loud for me, or something?” Rumi asks. When Mira gives her the world’s most unimpressed look, Rumi throws her hands up and practically pleads, “Mira, just do it, okay?”

“Okay!” Mira says back, her voice catching in a laugh. “Yes, Rumi, I know the only rule in here is that we’re not allowed to fight each other. Okay? Is that better? Seriously, what’s up with you?”

Rumi breathes out. Is this the wrong thing to do? Is she making a mistake? It’s just—Mira has shared so much of herself, and Rumi should be doing the same. Shouldn’t she? It’s not like she’s ever really minded hiding her patterns, if anything, she’s the one who’s fallen right into it, because it’s not like she likes looking at them, but...still. And what if she’s completely wrong and has misjudged everything about Mira and Mira is actually going to kill her?

She internally scolds herself for that. No matter how Mira reacts, Rumi knows that Mira wouldn’t actually hurt her. Not physically. 

So Rumi shifts on her feet for another few seconds, drawing in a trembling, unsteady breath before she manages to force herself to say, “I...have patterns. Um, my dad was a demon. I didn’t make a deal!” she rushes out, taking a step away from Mira, just in case. “I didn’t, I wouldn’t do that. But I, I have patterns. ‘Cause...you know. My dad was a...” Rumi trails off, her voice dying in her throat the longer she tries to speak. 

Mira says nothing.

Rumi almost frantically adds, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, it’s not that I didn’t trust you, it’s just that—Celine, um, Celine told me to hide them, and that no one else could know, and I, I don’t know, I guess I just never really thought about it too hard, and then you—we—us, um, you know. You know. And, and so I wanted to tell you, I just didn’t want...I didn’t want you to freak out, or to be mad, because I know it’s a lot to take in and you’re probably mad, which is fine, I’d also probably be mad, I just—”

“Rumi,” Mira interrupts. “Can I see them?”

“What?” Rumi asks. She blinks a few dozen times before she nods dumbly, feeling like an idiot. Oh. That makes sense. Of course Mira would want to see them to confirm she’s not lying. She yanks up her right sleeve, wincing when her ugly, purple patterns are exposed to the light around them. She looks away from the marks, chewing on her lower lip. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “They’re kind of ugly.”

Mira takes a step closer to her.

Rumi quickly rushes, “You can’t kill me, that’s, like, going against the rules super bad.”

“I’m not going to kill you, stupid,” Mira says back with a scoff. That’s all the warning Rumi gets before Mira is in front of her, one hand on her shoulder, the other...tracing along her patterns. Like they do this all the time, or something. Like any of this is normal. After a second of this, just touching Rumi and her patterns, Mira quietly murmurs, “Your dad was a demon?”

“Y-yeah,” Rumi agrees. “I never met him. I’ve had them since I was born.”

“Just here?” Mira asks.

Rumi tries to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “Um. Yes, but they spread. Sometimes. Not all the time. I don’t know why. They used to be just...” She gently ghosts her hand over Mira’s, guiding her up to the crest of her shoulder. “Here. They started spreading more a few years ago.”

Mira hums. She doesn’t say anything for another minute, just touching Rumi along her patterns, going over each individual one. Rumi is practically trembling by the time Mira finally says, “Okay. Cool. Good to know.”

Rumi stares at her in complete disbelief. “You’re kidding.”

“Why would I be kidding?” Mira asks back, giving her a look. “I mean, you’re right. I literally can’t kill you in the greenhouse, that’s against the rules, so...” She shrugs, flashing Rumi a teasing, taunting grin. “I guess you’ll have to come out for me to do that. Sucks that all I can do right now is kiss you, probably.”

“You...” 

Rumi laughs a little, shaking her head rapidly as she tries to make sense of everything that’s just happened. Mira is still grinning at her, and—god, maybe she got too in her head over this. Rumi makes the move first, shooting out one hand to grab at Mira’s waist, pulling her in close so she can kiss her. Mira laughs against her lips and hooks her arms over Rumi’s shoulders, pressing herself flush against Rumi.

Even when Mira pulls back, they stay pressed against each other. Rumi finds it almost maddening to be this close to Mira and to not kiss her, but it’s clear that Mira is trying to catch her breath, so Rumi doesn’t budge. She’s also a little too nervous to do anything other than look at her, her heart still slamming against her chest like it’s going to explode soon. She hopes it doesn’t. She’d probably die, and that would really defeat the point of her doing everything she just did.

Mira lets out a soft sigh, tipping her head to the side. “I’m not going to kill you, Rumi. I’m not even, like, mad, I guess. I mean, I didn’t tell you about my stuff until...” She shrugs again. “Way later.”

“Yeah, but being a demon is—”

“You were born with patterns,” Mira interrupts, giving her another look. “I can literally feel your soul in my own chest, dork. I know you didn’t make a deal. Then I would be mad.”

Rumi giggles. She raises her free hand to place it solidly to Mira’s chest, right against her sternum. She leans forward a fraction of an inch, grinning when she murmurs, “Yeah? Right there?”

Mira’s throat very visibly bobs. “Maybe you should leave the greenhouse,” she mumbles, her voice higher than usual. “Just a suggestion.”

“Hm. No, I don’t think I will,” Rumi disagrees, still beaming at her. “Thank you. For, um, for taking this so well.”

“Yeah, it was really hard,” Mira teases. Her voice is still a little squeaky. “Kiss me again and maybe I’ll forget about it?”

Rumi laughs, but she does exactly as she’s told. It takes a very long time for her heart to stop racing—largely on account of the fact that she keeps kissing Mira and that’s always enough to make her heart go into overdrive—but she calms down completely within ten or so minutes. They eventually pull away from each other and start actually working, Mira on hose duty once again, Rumi making sure none of the cucumbers have died in the frost.

It’s almost funny how easy all of it is. Rumi guesses she maybe psyched herself out for no reason at all.

And when they finally leave the greenhouse to go back to the hanok, Mira slips an arm around her waist and kisses her softly. It might be the sweetest death Rumi could ever ask for.