Chapter Text
Relief came first. It had to. Raw, and instinctive as the deafening noise that had drowned out even the pounding of her heart cut off like it had never existed. There was no receding roar like the cheers of the fans that slowly died with contented exhaustion at the end of a concert. There was no ambient sound like the heavy stutters of breath that heaved through her headset as the music went silent. No, this roaring crackle of fiery damnation, ladened with the sound of Gwima’s voice that dug like a thousand pounds of pressure into her skull, went blissfully silent with the combined voices of her and her sisters.
Elation came next. The clear sky, the roar of the fans, safe and unharmed. She lifted her head high, the support of Mira and Zoe pressed warm and close beside her.
Rumi’s skin tingled with the absence of the burning heat.
Relief. Cool. Clarity.
She moved to take a step forward, and nearly crumpled to the ground, her legs jelly beneath her, as the heartache came roaring in. Jinu’s face still emblazoned in her mind’s eye as he had faced her just minutes before. The apology in his eyes. The peace as well.
He was gone, crumpled and absorbed in some way, by her sword? By Gwima? A bolt of pain lashed through her body as if punishment for trying to recall the moment. Her vision went white for a moment and she stumbled forward again, her legs weakening even further. He was gone and she couldn’t— she couldn’t—
“Rumi!” Mira’s voice came as if from the end of a far away tunnel, and Rumi turned toward it instinctively, drawn by the jubilation of the voice. “Rumi!” The second call from her friend soured into distress, and then Mira’s voice was nearly in her ear, “oh my god, Rumi—“ she hadn’t realized she was falling until Mira caught her by the arm. The searing pain that radiated from her friend’s touch was another surprise. She didn’t have the strength to choke back the cry of pain. The hand jerked away, and Rumi could hear the tinge of panic in Mira’s voice, joined suddenly by an urgent Zoe. Their words blurred together into drops of sound for a moment before coming suddenly back into focus.
“Rumi, just one more minute, okay? Can you stand up? Just let everyone get a glimpse of the three of us— pretend we’re okay just for a moment and—“
It took every drop of strength to stand up straight, to hold her head high and triumphant, her vision blurred but not so completely gone that she couldn’t see traces of the gold still streaking across the sky.
Then she was moving, guided by the familiar hands of her sisters, down, out of the sun, away from the roaring crowd of safe fans, and—
***
“You can’t ban fireworks from our show forever, they’re—“
“Watch me, girlie.” It was strange to hear Bobby’s voice so sober, none of the usual jolly cheer that naturally infused his tone. It wasn’t out of character - no, Bobby used that tone to whenever and wherever he needed to, to keep them safe. Just, not usually in front of his girls. Rumi couldn’t quite remember what it was that must have upset him so badly, but her energy was more directed in swimming painfully upward to breach full consciousness. Something must have alerted him that she was waking up as the manager’s voice came suddenly closer.
“Hey, hey Rumi, that’s it, you’re okay.” The tone was low and soothing and guided her more easily into wakefulness. “You wanna open your eyes for us, girlie?”
She did, Rumi found, want to open her eyes for him. She grew conscious of the feeling of a warmth under her palm and wrapped her fingers gently over the slim fingers - Mira since Zoe’s hands were smaller - but found no strength to squeeze.
“There you go, she’s coming,” Mira’s voice announced quietly, the notes of relief prominent. Rumi pulled her eyes open at the sound of Zoe’s soft squeak.
Bobby, Mira, Zoe.
They all were looking down, the same expression of concern and hope imprinted across their faces.
“Thank God.” Mira spoke first, breaking the silence, pulling in a deep breath as if shrugging off a huge weight. Bobby and Zoe’s eyes filled with tears at the exact same moment, the manager burying his face in his hands while Zoe had to be yanked away from an attempt to climb fully onto the bed.
A stern-mouthed nurse came into sight, her disapproval dimming Zoe’s determination very little as she continued to try to crawl under the covers with Rumi.
“Thoughtless touch will hurt her,” the woman said, which finally discouraged Huntrix’s maknae. It also brought Rumi’s consciousness to the unpleasant sensations that streaked across her skin.
“What…?” She croaked, noticing the bandages that crisscrossed from the very tips of her fingers to the middle of her back.
“I’m so sorry, Rumi.” Bobby’s voice cracked a little. “There was some mishap with the fireworks and you—“ his voice broke again and she looked over at Mira’s whose brow was arched in warning.
Fireworks? But how was the rest of it - the Saja boys, Gwima, the mass hypnotism, being explained? Her head hurt just at the thought and she closed her eyes again.
“Wait,” Zoe cried in disappointment, “you only just woke up—“
Rumi was vaguely aware of the nurse’s words, “…heavily drugged and healing, she’ll sleep a lot…” before she fell back into darkness.
***
“You have a lot of explaining to do, Rumi.” Mira’s voice was as blunt as ever, but she was doing a bad job hiding her softened eyes.
“I agree,” Zoe’s voice was less harsh, but her dark brows were furrowed tighter than usual. “There’s a lot I don’t understand. Primarily your— patterns.” Her voice sounded tight, foreign to her usual bubbliness as the last word forced its way. “That’s what they are, aren’t they?”
They had been incredibly patient. It was five days since the Saja boys concert and the golden Honmoon. Her fellow band mates had made little mention of the actual events of that night, or of the disagreements that had never been resolved before that. They’d simply plied her with ramen cups and jellies, much to the nurses disapproval, and found more and more creative and entertaining ways to continue sneaking them in after they were confiscated. They’d switched off sleeping over in her room, and had even graciously allowed Rumi to choose between the two movies they had presented her with: Inception (Mira’s choice) and Barbie (Zoe’s). Zoe had barely even pouted when Barbie lost.
But the bandages that had previously covered the burns were removed earlier that morning, showing off the scars of the patterns in all their raw, red glory. The story that the doctors bought was that the fire had somehow caught onto the greasepaint used as a sort of decoration for Rumi’s costume. But the Huntrix girls all knew the truth.
Patterns. Or scars of them anyway, now.
Rumi had no choice but to nod at Zoe’s question, that’s what they are, aren’t they? her gaze falling down to the thin hospital blanket where her fingers picked at it absently. There was a heavy silence for a moment.
“As far as we’ve been taught,” Mira’s words were oddly measured, sounding thin as if forced through a filter to remove the natural gruffness, “patterns mean demon. Is that, somehow, not true?”
“It is true.” Rumi felt her words die in the quiet of the hospital room. “I’m— my father was a demon.” She looked up. Mira’s eyes were locked on her face, scrutinizing with a poker-like countenance. On the other side Zoe’s hand had gone slack in hers, the maknae’s lips crumpled at the corners.
“And that’s why you were trying to talk with Jinu?” Zoe asked softly. “It had something to do with your father?”
“No!” Rumi wasn’t sure why it was so important that both girls understand just how little her father meant to her. “It had nothing to do with that. I’ve never once sought out anything to do with my father. I don’t care about him! I only think about him in so far as I plan how to seal the honmoon and remove every mark of him from my body as soon as I can. And we did! We did that—“ her voice caught, weak as it was already, spasming into a cough. At least this time she could be content in the fact that this time it was simply a healable ailment. “Jinu was… different.”
“Different how?” It was Zoe who asked the question, though Rumi processed that a moment late. The chill in her tone was far more common to Mira.
“Just— he wasn’t what I expected. He wasn’t—“
“A demon?” Zoe’s brow arched a little, her eyes locked tightly onto Rumi’s face with no sign that she noticed the way Mira’s expression was contorting into a warning. Rumi shrunk back a little, unused to whatever this was from her youngest bandmate.
“He is— was a demon,” Rumi said softly. “But he didn’t want to be. Gwima was controlling him.”
“You’re saying he had no choice but to do all the things he did?” Mira asked, her tone straightforward and doubtful but not entirely closed off. Rumi shook her head,
“No, I mean, he made his choices. They were just— his reasoning was more complicated than simple evil. There was something worth saving. He was more than just a pawn, and— he was the one who saved us, you know.” She added the last part a little desperately, aching with the suspicion and dislike from both her bandmates at every mention of Jinu’s name.
“What does that mean?” Mira’s eyes narrowed a little and Zoe stiffened.
“You didn’t see? The way he got between me and Gwima? The way he gave his soul to help me?” Rumi scrubbed at her eyes, straining her memory back to that moment. Was it something she alone had been privy to? Mira and Zoe’s expressions were identically stony.
“As far as I’m aware,” Mira said finally as Zoe made no effort to speak, “it was the three of us who turned the Honmoon golden. I heard no other voices besides ours.”
“You think we needed a Saja boy to help us with the Honmoon?” Zoe said, her lip twisted a little.
“I’m not saying we did, but you can’t deny—“
Rumi cut off as Zoe stood suddenly, her lips pursed to keep them from trembling.
“I need some air,” was all she said before stalking from the room, leaving Mira and Rumi staring after her.
“I think,” Mira said after a long, heavy moment, “the last week has just been a lot. For all of us.”
“Understatement of the year.” Rumi’s laugh was a little watery. Mira nodded.
“Maybe it’s just better not to talk about Jinu. For now anyway. I don’t know what he meant to you but clearly— there’s things we don’t know. I don’t know if they’re worth dwelling on for now.”
Rumi nodded. There was wisdom to Mira’s words, even if they sank like an anvil down to the pit of her stomach.
Oh, Jinu .
***
Rumi let out a long breath, nails tapping absently against the tube of cream. She craned her neck again in the mirror, eyes tracing down the unique design of burns that followed her former patterns exactly. Gwima’s parting gift to her, some sort of cruel consequence of facing him so directly. At least she had gotten off easy, she was alive unlike—
She swallowed down stone at the back of her throat, determined to erase it. Only time would tell if the scars faded entirely. If one day she could wear costumes that bared her arms and shoulders. For now they would stay as hidden as ever, if only to keep speculation from the fans at bay. For now, the general consensus among the public was that there had been a firework mishap at a Huntrix concert. The Saja boys had been seemingly entirely erased from public consciousness. Perhaps it was for the better. No, it certainly was for the ease and safety of their identities as hunters. Even if their job was more or less completed, barring any major sort of disaster, it was still better if no one knew.
Still, it felt wrong, unfair , that there was nobody but herself to appreciate Jinu’s final sacrifice. Yes, Mira and Zoe knew technically. And it wasn’t as if they didn’t believe what she said, but they certainly attributed far less to him than he deserved. If anything, they clearly felt the sacrifice was warranted, an appropriate punishment for his sins.
Perhaps it was.
Rumi didn’t know, or maybe didn’t want to think about. Appropriate or not, the back of her throat still stung with a persistent ache of grief every time she thought about him. She could see that Mira and Zoe saw that. She could feel their disapproval, even as they did their best to hide it for her sake. What’s done was done, the Honmoon was golden, and everything was as it should be.
Rumi shook her head again, the movement more snappish as her eyes fell back to the tubes of burn and scar cream. The hospital staff had been applying the medications for the past days, but now that she was released, it was her own responsibility. It was a relatively uncomplicated one, beyond the hard-to-reach burns that ran down her back. Her heart pounded at the thought of asking for help with them, but it was truly impossible to do alone. And perhaps it would be good to offer an olive branch of the casual intimacy she had kept from her bandmates for years. She had seen the way it hurt both of them, Zoe especially, and she couldn’t deny that she had craved this kind of affection all too many times.
She pulled in a steadying breath, wrapping her fingers determinedly around the bottles, and opening her bedroom door. She forced her way past the instinctive prickle of exposure, the unease of her arms bared anywhere but in the privacy of her own space.
Zoe was sitting on the couch, her round, pretty face a little swollen, tired and frowning as she stared down at one of her notebooks. It was a familiar expression, accompanied by the idle pen spinning that meant the maknae was getting very little done at the moment.
A perfect opportunity.
“Zoe,” Rumi said quietly. Zoe looked up, her eyes darting over the sight of Rumi’s shoulders and back, bare in nothing but a bra, the scars of the patterns on full display. “Are you available to help me for a second?” The question was more of a formality really, Rumi didn’t order her band mates around, but she never expected the way that Zoe’s eyes dropped suddenly and decisively back down to the empty page.
“Sorry, Rumi,” the maknae’s voice was light but there was a chill to it that Rumi was fairly certain wasn’t imagined, “could you ask Mira? I’m a bit busy— inspiration, you know?”
“Oh— of course,” Rumi replied instinctively, hoping the near physical weight of the rejection that slammed into her chest didn’t show on her face. “Inspiration.” She had absolutely no desire to confront Zoe on the obvious lie— they both knew what it was and knew what it meant.
Rumi all but stumbled to Mira’s door, knocking lightly and twisting the handle with relief as Mira gruffly called entrance.
“Rumi?” Concern etched itself in the furrow of Mira’s brow, her eyes darting the same path across Rumi’s exposed arms shoulders as Zoe’s, but Mira stepped closer rather than further at the sight.
“I—“ Rumi clutched the tubes of medicine a little tighter in her hand, heart still pounding from Zoe’s rejection, bracing for one equally painful and perhaps deserve from Mira. Maybe it really was too much to ask them to forget her years of hiding— though they had seemed so eager to discover these parts of herself before. “I need help.”
“With your medicine?”
“Yeah. It’s the burn cream and scar cream. Just at the very back where it’s hard to reach.” She gestured awkwardly.
“Okay,” Mira said, nodding once and reaching for the medicine. Rumi blinked. Even without an outright rejection, she had still expected more awkwardness on Mira’s part, perhaps a little balking at something so openly affectionate. It wasn’t to say Mira was bad at skinship, but she certainly liked to pretend that she was.
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” Mira shrugged, a little overly casual but not too much. She was clearly aware of the significance of the moment, of Rumi’s bare shoulders and the vulnerable request for help. But in her quintessential Mira way, she was trying not to make a big deal of it. Rumi was endlessly grateful. “Sit down,” Mira ordered, gesturing to the bed. Rumi sat, offering up the medicine into Mira’s capable hands.
“How much?” Mira asked, turning the tubes over in her hands.
“About a pea sized amount of each for about every two hands-breadth’s of skin,” Rumi responded, subdued. “That’s what the doctor said.
“Okay.”
Mira was quiet then, squeezing out a little of the cream before looking over at Rumi again.
“Does it hurt?”
“A little,” Rumi admitted. “But I’ll be okay. Just— be gentle?”
Mira grunted and Rumi braced herself instinctively, her neck prickling with awareness at the closeness of Mira’s fingers. Goosebumps broke across her skin, running up and down her arms at the first, feather-light touch from Mira’s fingers. They were warm on the skin at the base of Rumi’s neck, steady, growing more sure as Mira applied the creams down the lightning shaped patterns. Mira finished the area of her back all too soon, and Rumi suppressed a flush of aching disappointment as the fingers pulled away.
“Thanks,” she said, turning back to reach for the creams. “I’ll just finish my arms and—“ but Mira gave her a deathly glare, pulling the tubes out of her reach and squeezing out another daub of product onto her fingers.
“Don’t be stupid,” she grumbled, gently seizing Rumi’s wrist and turning her to a better angle. “Let me finish.” She began tracing the patterns down Rumi’s arms, even those most accessible to Rumi herself, the pressure of her fingers soothing against the raw skin, still a little painful but far less than any of the hospital nurses.
She was halfway done with the second arm when Rumi finally spoke again.
“Zoe was in the living room,” she said. “So I asked her to help me first.” Mira hummed a listening noise, her fingers slowing slightly in their path down the patterns. “She said she was busy.” There was no need to explain to Mira as the words hung heavily in the air. A question more than a statement.
What did I do wrong?
Things had been awkward with Zoe since they’d asked about her patterns the day before. Mira didn’t answer until she had finished with the very last few strands of burns on the tips of Rumi’s fingers, huffing a sigh as she finally let go, and looking up.
“Why are you asking me?” Mira whined preformatively. “I’m the least qualified in this group to talk about emotions.
“We both know that’s not true,” Rumi chuckled softly. “Even if you like to pretend it is.”
“It is ,” Mira sulked, but the protest held little heart. Rumi’s lips melted a little in instinctive fondness. It had taken some real spats in their pre-debut training years, but it had been a long time since Rumi had seen past the gruff front Mira naturally presented and into the warm, softer heart below. It took a little digging at times, past a lot of barriers and an inclination to avoid heavy emotion, but there was a comforting stability to Mira, to the knowledge that the girl would see into the heart of a situation and never back down from confronting it.
“You want to know what I think, Rumi?” Mira said finally, her eyes suddenly narrowed and serious.
“When has my wanting it ever stopped you from telling me?” Rumi joked weakly, but Mira’s expression remained unwavering.
“I think that both of us are wondering why a demon served as a better confidant to you than us.” The words were straightforward, unsurprising though Rumi had to fight not to jerk away from them nonetheless. “And I think that it’s harder for a lover to forgive that—“ Mira tilted her head meaningfully toward the door, “than a fighter.” She nodded down at herself, her eyes softening as she looked back up, catching the tears that Rumi was scrubbing away with the back of her hand.
“It wasn’t about you guys, you know that right?” Rumi insisted. “I wanted to tell you so many times, it was just—“
“You may have wanted to Rumi, but he knew first,” Mira said. Her tone was gentle in its honesty. “I can believe you had your reasons, but Zoe’s never been quite so logical.”
Rumi nodded, scrubbing again at her eyes.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know,” Mira said arching a brow. “Just like how you know Zoe won’t be upset forever. Maybe it’ll take a little longer, but she’ll forgive you.”
“And you?” Rumi said, looking up and batting her eyelashes. Mira snorted and rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be stupid, Rumi. And get out of my room, I’m going to bed.”
Rumi closed Mira’s door gently behind her, heart a little lighter than before. She looked around, ready to bid the maknae a goodnight, but Zoe was gone from the main room now, her door tightly shut as Rumi glanced over. The ease that had loosened her muscles at her Mira’s gentle touch knotted back into a familiar path through her shoulders. The wide-open penthouse living area felt suddenly claustrophobic, despite the huge window offering a streaked, foggy view of Seoul. Rumi stopped by the entryway, staring down at the plastic slippers neatly arranged where she had stepped out of them before. She slipped her feet back into them suddenly, grabbing at somebody’s hoodie draped nearby, and pulling it on. She paused, hand hovering over the handle, before she pulled out her phone and typed a simple ”going out to clear my head” into the huntrix girlz kakao chat, before shoving the phone away and slipping out.
Rain misted down, not heavy enough to drench, just enough that every light cast a hazy halo, its illumination falling shorter than usual and leaving the streets gloomy and a little eerie.
Rumi walked, long and far. Seoul was a city she knew as intimately as Huntrix’s first song, the streets as familiar as the words and melodies that Zoe had penned years ago. But much like the author of the song, the streets today felt strange and distant, as if the words meant something else tonight, as if the city was unsure in its footing around her.
An empty crosswalk turned red just as she stepped up to the curb, leaving her standing along the empty street, waiting for the reddish glow to flick back to green. The street was really too small to have a proper crosswalk at all, and abandoned as it was, there was no real point in waiting for it. But Rumi stood there all the same, waiting for the light to turn, trying not to remember the ice in Zoe’s voice, the expression on Jinu’s face, the melting, burning heat of Gwima—
She turned sharply at the rustling sound that came from too-close behind her. It was likely just some animals getting into trash but her nerves were trained from years of demon hunting and—
Her heart jumped and then melted in quick succession at the sight of two huge, yellow eyes staring out at her from the darkness. The figure melted out of the shadows, and just above the two yellow eyes blinked three much smaller ones.
“Oh,” she said softly, “hello.” She stepped forward, reaching out a hand and placing it gently onto the tiger’s soft blue fur. He blinked, up at her, staring into her eyes for a long moment. “I wouldn’t have imagined you’d still be here,” she said. Had she thought about the tiger she would have assumed he was closely enough connected with Jinu that he wouldn’t have survived his owner’s death. “You poor thing. You must miss him.” The traitorous ache threatened again at the words and she transferred the pain into a heavy pat onto the tiger’s nose. He nuzzled into the touch for a brief moment before pulling away suddenly.
Rumi frowned. The tiger had never before turned away a chance to be petted by anyone. If anything he tended to eagerly demand affection. But he was turning around, determinedly away from her hand.
It hurt, more than it should have, to think the tiger might blame her for what happened to its owner. She blinked back tears at the rejection. But a moment later he had turned around again, eyes bright and hypnotizing and focused on her. He stared deeply before turning around again, taking a few more determined steps before, yet again, turning back. Rumi took a hesitant step forward. “Are you asking me to follow you?” The tiger gave a long blink and turned around again, this time not stopping as she followed hurried in its footsteps.
It strayed off the more main roads and into the steep, twisting alleys of Seoul. It padded past the more run down convenience stores, with ahjussi’s and overburdened office workers smoking outside and stepped around piles of dirty yellow food waste bags, unbothered by the faint sewage smell wrinkling at Rumi’s nose. She followed, the pace picking up, until she nearly ran into the tiger as it stopped, suddenly, between two buildings.
“Here?” She said aloud. A brief glance showed little more than a pile of badly sorted garbage - certainly in violation of the recycling laws - and a worse-for-the-wear delivery bike that had clearly been abandoned. “Where did you bring me? Why here?” Rumi demanded of the tiger, but it ignored her, its gaze focused oddly on the pile of trash. She followed the look reluctantly, the darkness hiding any clear view of it, but the tiger seemed so focused that she stepped a little closer.
A rustling sound put her instantly on guard, her fingers moving instinctively backward, ready to pull her weapon from the air, before a low moan softly rent the air. Rumi’s breath caught in her throat, and a moment later she was on her knees next to the garbage, peering into the darkness and finding more than the shadows this time.
There was a face - if it could be called that - disfigured and mangled as it was with streaks of lighting rending themselves across the skin. But if hers had been unsightly burns, the patterns on this face seemed carved and rotting deep into the skin, the smell of decay clinging to the surrounding air.
It was another low moan that snapped her out of the moment of instinctive horror as the eyes cracked slowly open. They were hazy, delirium clouding them with a glassy sheen that approaching death. But they were familiar all the same.
Rumi’s throat nearly refused passaged to the single word she breathed.
“Jinu?”