Chapter Text
Shadows dance across the walls. Slipping through writhing bodies, shards of neon fracture into luminescent mist through artificial fog, warped by the chaotic glow and cigarette haze. Somewhere across the room, hidden from sight, a glass shatters against the tacky, black-painted concrete. A scream erupts from above, the overhanging balcony bogged down with bodies pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, silhouetted against strobes that flicker in erratic burst.
A deep, resonant pulse beats beneath Rumi's feet, a war drum of percussion thumping in single-double-triple time.
On the lifted stage of Lunar Halo, a high-scale nightclub in Hongdae, a pair of amateur DJs groove behind their setup, bouncing with swaying shoulders to the beat of their mix, eyes closed, hands lifted to the ceiling.
The song is — originally — one of aespa's, a homemade D&B remix that sends shockwaves and vibrations up Rumi's spine. The vocal melody is haunting, the rhythm infectious. Primal, in the way that it thrums in her veins and sets her nerves alight. The way a prey animal might perk up, wide-eyed, ears fully vertical, alert, seeking out the predator on its scent.
Easy, confident steps see Rumi through the roiling mass of dancing bodies, hips gyrating to the feeling of the music, head tilting side-to-side in some alcohol-induced fluidity. The din of a thousand, thousand conversations spike and splinter around her; laughter spilling into arguments, arguments breaking into hushed whispers of lust or devotion. Though she hasn't had enough to get her drunk — the two soju bombs she'd pre-gamed with Mira and Zoey, the highball she'd bought from a 7-Eleven, and the cocktail she'd ordered at the bar — she's had enough to have her feeling light and ethereal.
And the best part is this: here amongst the neon fluorescents and unaware people, she can let her patterns glow and glimmer, her shoulders unadorned.
Here, the twisting sigils spiraling over her collarbone and down her arms can catch that pulsating light, silver one moment, shadow-black the next, without so much as a passing glance.
Here, the glint of obsidian claws and the eerie amber glow of her left eye, if she truly lets loose, can be mistaken for a fashion trend or a coked-out hallucination.
Here, she can be invisible among thousands.
It isn't that the public reception to her new "tattoos" has been negative by any means. In fact, by K-Pop fan standards, the response has been positively glowing. Fans both local and international had blown up TikTok with new trends, recreating her patterns with makeup, HUNTR/X blaring in the background. The group gained a new subset of followers and fans from the local alternative scene, adding a sea of tattooed, pierced, black-adorned Hangugin to their hometown shows.
The American press was particularly appreciative about all of it, from what Zoey's told her.
Sure, a few of the more conservative media outlets in Kora had made statements, calling her "feral" or "irresponsible, like the rest of her generation", but they'd done the same to Mira and Zoey over the years. Besides, getting called out by the old stuffies in their starch-pressed suits had never impacted her in the past. Their words did nothing to lessen her newly-gained confidence...
...or the extra zeroes in her bank account.
Even with all of that, it still takes a lot out of her to go out in public without a jacket or long-sleeve coat to wear when she feels the stares burning into her shoulders. When the world outside presses its face in, smushed against the glass cage she feels herself locked into at times. When the handlers overstep, when even Bobby gets too neurotic for her to stand.
So she goes out late at night, feels the press of bodies wrap around her, and dances.
She moves with the tempo, eyes closed in a vacant euphoria, careless and unrefined in her movements. Her sleeveless crop top hugs her torso, stuck with sweat; her cut-off shorts, black denim frayed at the edges, ride up; her platformed leather boots, steel-toed (as always) splattered with dried, spilled drinks. And with each drop of each beat, she channels more and more of the new Honmoon through her body, the swirling whorls and jagged stripes across her skin shimmering in an iridescent light.
Rumi feels, for the first time in her life, glorious. She feels heavenly. She feels untouchable.
A tug on the back of her shirt draws her short, and she whips around, ready to verbally eviscerate yet another trust fund undergrad with too much alcohol in his system and a severe lack of self-preservation instincts, only to see dark, piercing eyes and rouge pink hair, thick winged eyeliner and black lipstick.
"There you are," Mira says, her voice only barely registering in Rumi's ears. Her eyes are wide with frustration, breaths coming slow but uneven. "What gives? You said you'd be back in five."
Rumi blinks, not understanding the problem. "It's only been — "
"Almost an hour." Mira cuts her off, eyes hard, lips pulled into a thin, clearly disapproving line.
The expression reminds Rumi of Celine so keenly that for a moment, she loses all sense in her head. Her jaw tightens, the muscles in her neck drawn so taut she can feel them creak beneath her skin. A deep, unabiding rage slides under her skin like a razor, heat surging up her spine — liquid, magma hot. Her fingers flex against her thighs, nails biting into the muscle, every nerve sudden alight from the sweat cooling on her skin.
She forces the retort about why Mira would care down her throat, swallowing it down like a bitter pill. Instead, she draws her lips into an apologetic smile, ensuring it's sufficiently contrite and sheepish, and mutters, "Sorry. I just... lost myself in the music."
Mira's eyes flutter shut. She sighs, head moving side-to-side in a rapid motion. "It's fine. Let's - let's just go. Zoey ordered bottle service again. She's freaking out."
And without another word, she twists on her heel, stalking back toward the stairs leading up to the VIP section. Rumi, ever the loyal hound in the face of Mira's anger or Zoey's distress, bids goodbye to that lovely, untouchable feeling and follows silently.
She trails after Mira, the once-comforting pulse of the crowd now too loud, too close. The bass that had earlier curled around her like a second heartbeat now hammers against her temples, each thud an unkind reminder of the ice in Mira's eyes. Heat swells in the narrow stairwell, the press of bodies making the air heavy with sweat, perfume, and the faint electric tang of the fog machine's haze. Every step toward the VIP section feels like pushing upstream through a river she no longer wants to swim in.
They pass idols from other groups — sunlit smiles and familiar faces under the flicker of strobe lights. Some nod, others wave, their greetings bright and joyful in way Rumi can't even hope to emulate. Her mouth moves on instinct still, bowing her head, curving her lips into a polite smile.
But now, her mind is counting down the minutes until she can leave, clinging to the thought of the cool solitude of her room in the penthouse.
Mira doesn't slow. Her clipped pace dares Rumi to fall behind, and Rumi refuses to give her another reason to jump down her throat. They break past a final knot of strangers and step into the open space of their table. Zoey jerks forward, a glass of champagne clutched in one hand, knuckles white. She tips it back hard, gulping down the entire glass, and when her eyes land on Rumi, she slams it down with a hollow thud.
"Dude, where the hell were you?" she demands, eyes wide, voice sharp enough to cut through the music entirely.
Rumi opens her mouth to apologize, but Mira cuts her off. Again.
"Down there in the crowd, dancing," she snaps. "Alone, again."
"Alone?" Rumi asks, both incredulously and rhetorically, and glances down from their balcony and to the floor where she'd just been, where hundreds of people still move in time with the tempo. She turns back to her girls with a flat look. "I just lost track of time."
"You could've been —" Mira cuts herself off, refusing to even look at her. She just stares at her shoes, the argument cut off by her clenched jaw.
"Jesus, Rumi," Zoey says, her voice cracking with something awfully close to dread. "We looked everywhere. The last time we lost track of you..." She trails off, throat flexing uncomfortably, and the unfinished thought hangs in the air, waiting for one of them to pick it up.
But like most of their disagreements lately, it remains unvocalized.
Still, the guilt drops heavily, settling low and cold in Rumi's gut. She hadn't thought about how worried they might've been.
Three months have passed since Gwi-Ma's downfall, and she tells herself she's fine, mostly.
So what if she still can't bear to look at herself in the mirror some mornings?
So what if the voice she hears in her mind, her conscience, the driving force behind her decisions, isn't even her own, but Celine's?
So what if sleep drags her into dreams of Mira and Zoey with their weapons leveled at her, their eyes gone cold and fearful?
So what if that betrayal stings less than Celine's?
So what, Rumi thinks venomously, if she thinks some days that Celine could've spared all of them so much trouble by simply taking the sword Rumi had offered her and doing her duty?
The black mood overtakes her quickly, a creeping shadow along the edges of her thoughts. She knows that they can see it — Mira's gaze narrows. Zoey's shoulders tighten around her ears. The air feels too warm all of a sudden, the champagne's bite too sharp in her nose.
"Look," she begins, tone firm and resolute as she can possibly make it, "I'm sorry for worrying you. Really, I am. But I can take care of myself. And - and I'm not going to hurt anyone, if that's what's bothering you. I'm in control. You don't have to do..." she hesitates, gesturing helplessly, unsure of how to word it, and settles on,"...this."
She flinches at the openly hurt look on Zoey's face and turns away, biting her lip.
Mira opens her mouth, no doubt ready to deliver an ego-nuking rebuke, but then the chatter of the DJs onstage slices through the tension.
"Lunar Halo, how are we all feeling tonight?!"
A roar ripples through the crowd. Rumi feels it shudder through the floorboards and into her boots, up her thighs, humming in her ribs. Faintly, a discordant note rings out, drowned out almost entirely by the screams and clapping. It's... familiar, in a way that prickles the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. Some slow-release valve clicks in her hypothalamus, a steady drip-drip-drip of dread pooling at the base of her spine.
"That's what we like to hear," the other DJ says with a laugh. A man in a three-piece suit steps up to the stage, speaking rapidly into his ear, and he nods. "I'm being told that it's last call at the bar. We have one more song for you tonight — "
Despaired cries interrupt him, no doubt people enjoying their nights far more than Rumi's enoying hers, but the DJ laughs them off. "Gwaen-chan-a! We'll be back for another set tonight!"
The other DJ nods his head to a beat in his IEMs, adjust the mix on his turntable, and the first chords begin to fade in. Rumi's blood runs cold at the choral arrangement, the Latin ritualism in it, the distorted bass line.
Her eyes lock onto Mira and Zoey, who stare back at her with the same dread she feels.
"You've been an amazing crowd, so we decided to give you all a treat." The first DJ leans in, moving knobs and adjusting levels, smiling darkly. "For a bit of a throwback."
Rumi's eyes glisten with unshed, unwanted tears.
And Jinu's voice, distorted and pitch-shifted, slips into her ears from the grave: "I'll be your idol."
Zoey's champagne flute slips from her fingers before she realizes she's let go. The stem hits the table's edge, explodes into glittering shards, and the golden liquid splashes across her sequined dress in a spray of sticky cold and fizz. A darker warmth blooms across her fingertips, blood welling from the soft inside of her hand in fat drops that run down her palm and wrist. She doesn't even look at the cut, already yanking her phone from her clutch, thumb stabbing at Bobby's contact.
"Bobby? Bobby — get us a car. Now. No, now. I don't care if it's across the city, I don't care if you have to go hot-wire it yourself, get it here." Her voice wavers, but her words are clipped, panicked, straining against the volume of the crowd.
A moment of stiff silence, such that it is in a club at two-thirty in the morning, and then Zoey nearly launches herself out of her seat, screeching, "Do you not hear what song is playing right now?!"
A beat.
"She's — " Zoey's eyes flicker to Rumi's pale face, and then away. "No, I'm not explaining here. Just get the car. Please."
Mira doesn't even glance at Zoey. Her eyes are locked on the stage, pupils blown wide, jaw tight enough to crack bone. The glare she levels at the DJs could melt steel beams. A growl rumbles in her throat, sharp consonants breaking into vicious mutters as she stands and bolts for the stairs.
She takes them three at a time, looking like she might rip the stage apart with her bare hands if the song doesn't cut off in the next five seconds. "Rip the decks apart — make him choke on his teeth — see if he plays it then — "
Around them, the other idols in the VIP section stare unashamedly. Some with wide-eyed pity, others with nothing but curiosity. But they stare all the same, and of course they would. The Saja Boys' disastrous, unplanned, illegal concert had been a spectacle burned into industry memory — ending with police swarming, half of Namsan Tower in flames, the night ending in absolute chaos. But the real story had thankfully never reached the public.
Not the blood, not the screaming and crying, not the dread, fell things that crawled out of the music or the ever-living flame that had threatened their souls. Not the gleaming, iridescent celestial thing that had sent those haunting creatures back, or the girls who had saved them.
All they know is that HUNTR/X was involved in some fashion, obviously on the opposite end. So the whispers start, soft as feathers, passing from one mouth to another.
And Rumi?
Rumi is inundated with the sound of Jinu's voice, the 808 kick and snare, the memories.
She registers all of this going on around her only distantly, as if it's happening to someone else three rooms away. Her brain has gone silent but for one single command: escape. And tucked beneath that, the instinctive plea that's always been there: get to safety.
Once, when she was very small, safety had meant Celine's arms, lying in the shadow of her mother's gravestone, the solemn quiet of the estate. Later, after meeting her girls, safety was wherever Mira and Zoey were. A hotel room in Osaka, a shared bunk on a tour bus, a green room before a show.
But now? Now, with everything between them — the silences, the awkward, hesitant fights, the memories — the truth blooms cold and cruel in Rumi's chest.
She has no safety. Not here, and not anywhere.
Her legs move without her input. She turns from the table, from Zoey's blood-slick hand and Mira's vanishing figure, from the stares and whispers. She turns away from it all, and without any real control of her demonic abilities, simply shoves her fellow idols out of the way and glides down the stairs. She pushes into the crowd, letting it swallow her whole. She doesn't look back.
Zoey calls her name once, high and tight with panic, but Rumi is already gone gone gone, slipping deeper into the press of bodies, further from them.
She doesn't remember consciously making the choice to run, only the violent lurch of her body breaking into sudden motion, the desperate bulldoze through the press of swaying bodies. Terror claws at the back of her throat, tightening until she can barely breathe, until her legs feel like they might seize and lock under her weight. Still, she forces herself forward.
The crowd warps.
A laugh bursts too loud beside her, and when she glances, the girl's mouth is splitting wide — skin peeling back, stretching into a jagged, ear-to-ear gash, rows of fangs slick with spittle and blood.
Hands, once lifted in beat-driven ecstasy, curl into hooked claws, swiping through the air toward her. She ducks beneath one, heart battering her ribs, and the bass-heavy song reverberates, mutating into a low, rumbling growl.
Flames flicker scarlet in her periphery, then violet, settling on a multi-hued pink. She can smell it — hot metal, scorched flesh, the sharpness of ozone — and Gwi-Ma's voice slithers into her ear, the same jeering tone from that night:
Flee, little huntress. Run like you always have. It won't save you.
Her chest tightens. Every nerve in her body is screaming for air, for her to stop running. The conscious part of her, the mind beneath the mindless beast scrabbling for shelter, digs its fingers into her brain, telling her to go back.
She shoves into another dancer, but he turns as she passes — black shirt, black pants, sharp jaw, swooping, dark hair — and his face melts, revealing Jinu in the moment he died, flames consuming him as his eyes locked onto hers, that half-smile burning into her memory.
What is left of her sanity fractures into a sob that's half a scream.
The crush suffocates her, the skin of a hundred people brushing hers like crawling insects. Their smiles stretch wider and wider, their eyes too black, their fingers grasping for her. The music is no longer music, but the sound of gnashing teeth, the crackling of demonfire, the wet tearing of flesh. She is back there. She is going to die here.
Her knees give out just as the stairs appear in front of her, and she stumbles down them, shouldering past the last string of people. She can taste salt and copper, tears hot on her cheeks, the sharp sting of her bitten lip. And then —
— she crashes through the club's doors, the heavy slam of the weight rattling behind her, and cold, humid air slaps her across the face.
The street is mostly empty. A few stragglers stand across the way, smoking cigarettes and jeering at one another. The silence bleeds into Rumi's ear, deafening her with its suddenness. Above, the moon hangs full and swollen, a pale, blue-white lantern in the void.
For once, it does nothing to settle her.
Beneath her feet, she can feel the Honmoon pulsing gently, its presence eternal and thoughtful and silent, trying its best to reassure her.
It doesn't work. At least, not the way it used to.
Rumi's gaze catches on the distant gleam of the penthouse tower, a beacon above the city's haze. For a heartbeat she hesitates, torn between waiting for Zoey and Mira, but the crawling paranoia sinks in, thick and suffocating, and she turns away.
Never seeing the shadows that slip between the cracks in the sidewalk, stretching, grasping for her like fingers.
The bass is still pounding when Mira leaps bodily onto the stage, shoving the first DJ right off and into the crowd, and rips the connecting cables out of the turntables. The music cuts off at once, driving everyone to a halt. Confused murmurs and jeers of upset meet her uncaring ears, but her voice cuts over it all with a sharp, "Club's closed. Out," and then, when not a soul moves, her face contorts into something truly evil. "Now."
The house lights snap on harsh and unforgiving, bleaching the crowd into a sea of sweaty, glistening bodies and running makeup. They gripe and bitch, shuffling toward the exits in clumps. Mira gives exactly zero fucks. Her pulse roars in her ears.
She slips off the stage and sees Zoey slipping between bodies in the dispersing crowd. They meet at the bar, jaws tight and hands balled into fists. Zoey speaks first.
"Mira, she's gone. She ran." Her voice cracks at the end, too high-pitched, a tell informing Mira of how close she is to losing it.
"Gone," Mira repeats, her own tone laced with steel, but her chest very suddenly feels hollow. "Gone. Why?"
Zoey twists around, hands fisted in her hair, and for the first time in seven years, looks up at Mira as if she may in fact be the stupidest person she's ever met. "Why? Didn't you see her face?"
Mira had, in fact, seen her face. She's seen Rumi that frightened on two occasions. Once, when Zoey had taken a bad hit during a hunt, nearly throwing her off a five-story building. The other... the other, she chooses not to think about.
And then they're moving, weaving between stragglers, shoving others out of the way, ignoring anything that isn't the sight of pale skin or violet hair. Mira curses her poor decision-making skills for not wearing her glasses — all she can see is a blurred mass of color, unable to make out specific details or faces.
Zoey swallows, trying to speak through the din. "They say — uh, they said she was screaming, crying. Something about red lights."
Mira's stomach drops, ping-ponging through her body, and bottoms out somewhere near her ankles. The murmurs swell around them — "looked possessed", "some kind of freak", "scary eyes".
"What happened?" Zoey hisses, almost to herself. "She was fine. We were fine."
Mira snorts, a harsh, short, mean sound. "Fine. Right."
"What?"
Mira glances over and sees Zoey fuming, nostrils flared as if smoke might start billowing out of them. That's the thing, right? That not only haven't they sat down with Rumi to get all of what happened out in the open, but she and Zoey haven't talked to each other, either. All of it just... hanging there, willing to be healed but untouchable. Too painful to speak about without screaming their throats raw and bloody. The lies, the betrayals, the conditioning.
Still. "She's been jumpy," Mira says carefully, still scanning the crowd. "Since, well — "
"Since we pointed our weapons at her, fully intending to kill her if we had to?"
Mira doesn't answer. Can't, even though she knows Zoey is right. The image has already slid in, a burnt-out VHS rewound to her most hated moment — Rumi, the night of the Idol Awards, frozen under their stares. Her hair, blown out and wrenched from its braid. Her top torn and tattered. Her patterns.
And worse, the way her eyes shifted from crazed and fearful to dead and empty. Like she'd already accepted whatever was coming. That mournful, resigned set to her lips, a hurt, loving smile — like she'd seen it coming. That she'd known exactly how they would react all that time.
Fucking "Takedown."
And of course, Rumi was right. Mira had been the first to lift her gokdo, the starlit glaive catching the eerie light glinting off Rumi's patterns. And Zoey, terrified and so, so confused, had followed suit with only a moment's hesitation. Just doing what Celine had drilled into them.
"Patterns are a liability. Non-humans are a threat. No exceptions."
No hesitation, no mercy.
Seven years under that woman's tutelage, and the one skill they'd never been taught was to ask questions. Act first, neutralize the threat, always.
Mira feels that old, comforting heat of rage flare up, sharp and familiar. The knee-jerk urge to condemn Rumi for running again, to lash out and demand — Why wouldn't you just say something?
Why had she kept this locked up until it exploded? It was the same goddamn wall she and Zoey slammed into every time they thought they were breaking through to Rumi.
But even as that thought forms, she knows the reason.
There had never been a good time, a good way, for Rumi to tell them about her patterns. Not once in all the years they'd fought, danced, sang, eaten, lived together. The good little soldiers they were... It wouldn't have just torn the team apart, it would have signed Rumi's death warrant. They'd been Celine's guillotine all that time, and Rumi had known exactly where that blade would fall.
Zoey is speaking again, voice fried. "...been different. Quieter, y'know? Three months, Mira, and we haven't even written a word together. And when I try to ask, she just. Shuts down. What if..." Her throat works, swallowing down bile. "What if she doesn't want us anymore?"
She learned it from Celine, Mira realizes all at once. Our faults and fears must never be seen. She couldn't show us who she was.
Their training ensured that they'd see only the threat, not the person.
Guilt sinks its claws in even further, slow and deliberate, like it's testing how deep it can go before she screams. Mira tries to shove it down, but it clings stubbornly, tendrils curling around her ribs. It doesn't budge, and why should it? It just sits there, pulsing around her heart, a steady reminder of everything she can't undo.
She doesn't even have the words to assure Zoey, so she reaches down and grabs her hand instead.
"Let's go," she says, clearing her throat. "We need to find her before someone else does."
Or something, she thinks, refusing to voice it aloud.
Zoey trails along swiftly, taking three steps for every one of Mira's, and feels nausea rippling through her gut. Every step feels like wading through thick, murky water. It weighs her down, making her feel sluggish and useless. She isn't thinking about blame, not like Mira is. She doesn't care about whose fault it is. She doesn't care who did what or why.
Blame doesn't bring people back, and it doesn't undo damage.
She's lost one family that way — letting rage and guilt and misplaced blame rot them from the inside, letting it all fester, until there was nothing left to salvage. Faces she loved became strangers overnight. Laughter curdled into awkward, uncomfortable silences that she always tried to remedy. She's not going to watch it happen again. Not with Rumi and Mira.
Not with her girls.
Of course the guilt is there. By now it's an old friend, lodged under her ribs where lungs ought to be, shifting every time she breathes. She knows they're never getting the Rumi they had before back. That version of her, avoidant and distant, but always clear-eyed and protective, is gone. Six feet under. Pushing daisies. Sleeping with the fishes. Taken out to the pasture and Old Yeller'd. Bucket well and truly kicked.
Zoey grieves that girl because she never truly got the chance to live, but she knows — knows, with a certainty — that this version of Rumi is better, because she is real.
And anyway, she knows that grief isn't the point. Love is.
And right now, love means moving. Love means finding Rumi before she vanishes into the night completely and forever.
Still, the guilt has teeth and it knows just where to bite. It sinks in deeper because she can't shake the thought that she's failed them both, again. Gwi-Ma's words in her ear — too much, and never enough — echo in her head. She's always been this way, talking too fast, filling silences with unnecessary words. And yet, never good enough when it counted. Too easily distracted, too soft, too... Zoey. That's how folks put it when they wanted to make her feel like the punchline without saying it out loud.
Rumi and Mira had been the first people who didn't treat her like a joke or a burden. They didn't sigh and look away when she started rambling about her hyperfixations, didn't tell her that she was talking too much or too little. Didn't call her out for going a day or two without speaking at all. They'd listened in a way that made her feel steady for once in her life. Like she could stop measuring every word and still be worth protecting, worth loving.
And now Rumi is gone into the dark, and the thought that Zoey's voice, her presence, hadn't been enough to keep her here, where she belongs, is a lance to her heart.
The scene replays in her head on repeat constantly, whether she wants it to or not: Rumi, bowed and broken and screaming. The hope in her eyes, dashed and shattered. The trembling, the tears. How her voice broke when she begged them to not leave.
Begged.
Zoey had never heard Rumi beg before, not once in seven years. Not when Celine would push her harder than Zoey and Mira, more threatening and cruel than encouraging. Not when she threw herself into a blow meant for Mira, arms and legs and chest ripped open and covered in scars meant for someone else. The sound had hollowed her out, and she has felt empty ever since.
But she refuses to freeze. She pictures Rumi out there right now, terrified, hurting, and alone, and feels every cell in her body revolt at the thought. If she lets herself delve into how that terror might be tangled up in them, she'll crumble. So, she doesn't. She compartmentalizes.
She just knows they have to reach her. No one else will. It has to be them.
Rumi stumbles through Hongdae's narrow side streets, her breath coming in ragged, uneven pulls, the cool night air soothing her burning throat. The neon glow bleeds across slick pavement, bending the warped glass of storefronts.
The clamor of the city presses in — motorbikes whining past in quick, metallic bursts, muffled bass spilling from nearby clubs, the clink of empty bottles in recycling bins, a man's voice shouting in a delirious, drunken slur two blocks over.
None of it is loud enough to drown out the pounding in her head.
She comes to a halt beneath the weak, washed-out glow of a flickering streetlamp and wraps her arms around herself as if she can physically hold the panic in. It ebbs and flows now, leaving an emptiness that feels like a black hole in her breast. Guilt claws upward from her gut now, cold and sharp.
She left them. She left them.
A flash of memory — Zoey's broken expression as Rumi tore off — cuts deeper than any wound she's ever taken.
"You idiot," she mumbles to herself.
She moves again, slower now but calmer and more alert. Her eyes sweep the street ahead. Storefronts are shuttered, metal grates tagged with looping graffiti. A convenience store on the corner hums with fluorescent light, throwing the street into a scarlet relief. A gaggle of college students rush past, laughing, not even sparing her a glance. Even so, she watches them stride past until they turn a corner, shoulders hiked around her ears.
Somewhere in her mind, Celine's voice creeps in, low and impatient:
"Life as a Hunter is a life of constant danger. You will live with eyes on your back — if not each other's, then your own. That mindfulness will keep you alive."
Rumi's jaw snaps shut, clenching until it aches. She doesn't want to hear Celine. Not now, maybe not ever again. Not after the cracks she'd driven into everything Rumi knew and loved, the way her teachings had opened an uncrossable divide between her and the only two people she's ever loved. She doesn't want to be shaped by Celine anymore.
And yet, the words are there, echoing and unmistakably true.
She moves deeper into the district, their tower a lighthouse drawing her into port. Still, the city feels like a maze, twisting into unfamiliar side alleys and dead ends she can't remember ever seeing before. Each turn she takes feels quieter, more isolated. Somewhere a few streets over, she hears the ear-splitting whine of braking tires and a blaring car horn.
They'd won, hadn't they?
They'd banished Gwi-Ma, rebuilt the Honmoon into something new, something better. They'd paid the price for that and survived. Then why does her chest still feel tight? Why does every dark corner breathe at her like it's alive?
Is this all there is now, she wonders, being a broken, damaged thing that never stops flinching?
She digs her phone from her back pocket, thumb already pressing the passcode in to call Zoey, but her stomach drops when she stares down at it. The screen is shattered into a spider's web of jagged lines, chunks of the corner bent and dislodged. She taps it repeatedly. Nothing.
"Fuck."
She holds down the power button, hoping beyond hope. Swipes at the screen. Presses shattered glass back into place. Slaps the screen on her thigh, praying. It stays dead, and Rumi huffs a bleak, humorless laugh through her nose. Just my luck, she thinks. As if tonight hasn't already chewed her up and spit her out.
She tucks the phone back into her pocket, muttering under her breath, "What else could go wrong?"
A bottle rolls across the asphalt behind her.
Hairs on the nape of her neck prickle, goosebumps pebbling her skin. She knows the gaze of a predator all too well, sharp and cold as a knife's edge. Her body stills before her mind catches up, years of training and pure reflex gearing her up for an ambush. For a split second, she imagines Celine's smug face and banishes it back to the shadow realm where it belongs. But old instinct has won out regardless.
She turns slowly, scanning the alley's mouth.
Empty.
The shadows stretch long and deep, swallowing up the light carded off from storefronts and the twilit, nascent sun. But everything is still and stagnant.
Rumi sighs, closes her eyes in relief, and turns —
— face-to-face with a demon.
Its skin stretches too tight over its skull, eyes burning like molten tar. Its breath is hot and rancid on her skin, heavy with rot and ash. The rictus grin pulls even tighter as it faces her down.
"Found you," it rumbles.
From behind it, five more demons stalk out of the shadows, bleeding from the shadows and into the world. Bestial, inhuman shapes rippling with patterns that mimic her own. Nightmares given shape and form and the will to wreak havoc. A wave of some dark energy surges beneath her feet, an eldritch pink glow translucent underneath the earth.
A call for backup, she realizes, though she doesn't know how.
She falls back a single step, slightly crouched, eyes never once leaving the beast in front of her. She swallows, mutters, "What do you want?"
"Want?" the demon asks, genuinely confused. It looks at its companions, who all look just as lost. It turns back to her, fangs ripping into its own skin, and shrugs, answering simply.
"Blood."
Rumi is surrounded on all sides, ringed by demons with no chance for escape.
Rumi is still perhaps forty percent tipsy.
Rumi is coming down from the mother of all panic attacks, worried sick about her girls, and terrified that this time she might have fucked up too badly to forgive.
Rumi is, at this moment, far from her best.
Rumi is the single greatest Hunter to have ever been chosen by the Honmoon.
In a moment, the panic bubbling in her gut dies, flattened into numbness. She sees the moment her face must reflect the loss of her fear, where the demon's smug expression falters, confused and now on edge.
Where it realizes she isn't some easy mark. Where she is not prey, but predator. She opens her palm, curling starlight and divine energy into existence, the first sparks of her saingeom glimmering in her hand.
The demon shifts, ready to strike.
Rumi strikes first.
The club doors crash open with enough force to nearly rip them from the hinges, spilling Mira and Zoey onto the Eoulmandang-ro sidewalk.
Humid, neon-lit air greets them, the late-night/early-morning haze of Hongdae interspersed with faint sounds and railway traffic. The exiting crowd has thinned almost entirely, leaving the pair the only frantic figures moving through the dissipating mass of confused and upset club-goers. Mira’s eyes are sharp and watchful as they can be, but it’s a trite gesture at best — her eyesight is even poorer at twilight. Zoey’s hands twist nervously in the sequins of her dress, eyes darting from shadow to shadow.
Eventually, Mira has enough of simply looking. “Rumi!” she bellows, her voice raw with urgency. “Rumi, where are you?!”
The few remaining club-goers perk up at the sound of their leader’s name, and Zoey knows they’ll be dealing with the fallout of a scandal before the end of the day. Even so, she adds her voice to the call. “Rumi!”
As the club presenter steps up to speak with Zoey, Mira jerks her head toward a small group of guys gathered outside a 7-Eleven, a faint verdant glow washing their faces in light.
She runs over, shoving past the few stragglers now giving her open-eyed, starstruck looks. “Hey, have you seen a girl out here — purple hair, tattoos on her arms and shoulders?”
One of the younger guys nods, drawing the cigarette from his lips, pointing eastward with the ash. “Ryu Rumi, yeah? Saw her sprint off that way, probably — what, five minutes ago?” he adds, asking the other smokers in the group. They all nod along, adding their sparse comments. Mira exhales a dragon’s breath of relief, thanks them, and grabs Zoey’s arm.
“Let’s go!”
The pair tear through the streets, weaving past late-night vendors, darkened, closed cafes, and the occasional taxi crawling along the road. Mira’s mind whirls in a cyclone of self-indictment and guilt and anger the entire time. If we don’t find her, if we lose her, if she gets hurt … The thought grips her heart and squeezes. No no no no no.
Through the neon-splashed alleyways lined with food carts selling tteokbokki and skewers of sizzling meat, the air thick with spice and sweat and spilled alcohol. Past the walls plastered with band flyers and peeling street art. Across the plaza where buskers had been dancing earlier in the night, now empty save for a lone man strumming a guitar under a flickering lamp. Down side streets barely wide enough for a scooter, where the shadows pool and the laughter of strangers drifts overhead from rooftop bars.
Time warps. Ten minutes becomes twenty, twenty becomes forty. Each block they cross feels like another layer of the city peeling back to reveal only more of the labyrinth beneath, more faces they don’t recognize, more noise drowning out their thoughts.
For almost an hour they pour over Seoul desperately, lungs burning, legs aching. Mira’s hands are scraped from brushing against brick walls, Zoey’s hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. Just when despair truly hits — when Mira is reluctantly beginning to feel that they might never find Rumi — the sounds hit them.
Steel on flesh. The zephyrous language of a blade cutting through air. And then, above it all, the unmistakable roar of something diabolic.
“There!” Zoey shouts, pointing toward a cluster of rooftops, the pitch of the battle carrying clearly in the rapidly-lightening air. Mira pivots instantly, sprinting, and Zoey is right beside her, feet pounding the uneven pavement.
The Honmoon answers their call for aid, guiding starlight into their palms — Mira’s gokdo and Zoey’s shin-kal materialize just as they leap from the fire escape and onto the rooftop.
The sight that greets them makes them both freeze for a heartbeat before instinct drives them forward. Rumi is there, surrounded by at least a dozen demons, each more grotesque and warped than the last. Ash piles stain the concrete, remnants of attackers already destroyed, but the fight is far from over.
Rumi’s body is bruised, skin torn and lacerated in places, deep cuts streaking her torso and face. Blood glints in the low light, mingling with sweat and grime. A cut on her forehead weeps blood over one side of her face with no sign of stopping. She’s visibly dragging, each strike of her blade slower and slower, but her face is pulled into a feral, hateful expression. Her patterns flare a deep, pulsating red in the chaos.
Mira explodes forward, launching herself into the fray without a moment’s hesitation. Zoey’s blades whir past her head from behind, digging into vital spots. Mira’s boots land heavy on the rooftop’s edge, and she swings her gokdo in a wide arc, the weight of it crushing a demon’s jaw with a sickening crack. Its head crumples, and she digs the blade into its gut before it can recover. It explodes into ash before it can scream.
Her eyes flick to Rumi, still moving through the swarm with a dancer’s grace, and her chest tightens. Even wounded, even bleeding out, Rumi is a leaf on the wind, lethal and untouchable.
Zoey leaps in from behind her, an acrobatic arc that allows her to throw her shin-kal into a nearby demon’s eye, before she lands on her feet, blades flashing. She glances at Mira, seeing her thankfully unharmed, and then Rumi, heart hammering. How is she still standing?
Every parry and step draw Zoey’s eyes like a magnet. Every risky maneuver that pays off makes her stomach tie in knots, worry and desire fighting for dominance.
Rumi dances across the concrete, arcs of starlit steel and shadow tracing her patterns in the air. Each strike leaves nothing but ash and something smeared black and inky on the rooftop. She weaves in and out of reach, almost elegant despite the chaos. Mira and Zoey move with her, almost a decade of training and familiarity making them synchronized. There is an unmistakable tempo to the battle, a rhythm that is impossible to ignore. Rumi can hear it in the stomp of her boots, the metallic rattle of Zoey’s blades striking together in midair, the furious, bestial grunts that Mira lets out as she strikes another demon down.
Zoey’s chest tightens as she lunges, wrapping her legs around a demon’s head to throw it to the ground. She sinks her shin-kal deep into its jugular, only for another demon, hidden in the failing shadows, to lunge at her.
A sword blocks its claws, and then a glaive removes them from its arms entirely. Hands clutch at her arms, lifting her to her feet. And then they’re all moving again.
They move as one, every moment threaded with the fragile, almost painful awareness that any moment could be the last. One misstep, one mistake, one stupid, idiotic decision — like running off on your own, Rumi — could mean the end. And yet, there is something beautiful in that fragility. Something untouchable, a thread that connects their souls together. Zoey sees Rumi and Mira in a way no one else ever will, and they in turn see her the same. They are destined. Fated.
The Honmoon doesn’t simply choose its Hunters. It ensures them — taking whatever steps it can, making whatever moves it can, to call them into existence. The Honmoon knew that Zoey, Mira, and Rumi would be born long before they ever took their first breaths. It knew their souls, swimming somewhere in the ether, and called them forth, and in doing so, took the star stuff of their lives and twisted, threading them together.
There is no Rumi without Zoey and Mira, no HUNTR/X without all three of them. Even Mira, who laughs in the face of predeterminism, cannot deny the siren call of her girls.
That thread is how they knew Rumi had been lying to them from the beginning, that her trust in them was not absolute. It’s how they knew her “cough” during the “Golden” rehearsal was something more, something worse. It’s how they knew that cutting her off after her patterns were revealed had destroyed something pure and eternal. How they knew that their new connection, their new thread, was weaker, despite the Honmoon’s new strength.
And that weakness is what fuels the current of worry that flows beneath the surface of the fight. Amidst the violence and smoke and ash, Rumi is reckless in a way she never was before. She’s wounded, bleeding. She shouldn’t be standing this long, much less fighting. Every movement she makes that isn’t perfectly guarded, every stumble she covers with a flourish, twists itself into a dull blade of panic in their hearts. But they can’t stop — not while their enemies still surround them. They can only move faster, strike harder, and hope that Rumi isn’t as badly wounded as she looks.
By the time the last demon collapses into a pile of ash, all three of them are completely out of breath, hearts hammering, covered from head to toe in blood and ash.
Mira leans on her gokdo, chest rising and falling in heavy, uneven breaths, her gaze on Rumi’s form as it shimmers in the rising sun. Zoey doesn’t even stop — the moment the last demon falls, she’s moving, flying toward Rumi, arms open wide.
She throws herself into Rumi’s arms, sobs racking her body as relief and terror compete for dominance in her mind. A tiny, broken whimper meets her ears, and Zoey buries her face in Rumi’s hair, inhaling the scent of blood, sweat, and smoke.
Mira follows almost immediately, breathless, tears streaking down through the grime on her face. She crashes into the pair, three bodies locking into an embrace without any semblance of space between them. A delirious desire hits all three, a need to be without anything separating them. Even the air molecules, even the clothes and skin on their bodies, is too much. Rumi wants to rip herself open and mix her blood with theirs, to entwine their very souls together into one.
For this long, brittle moment, there is nothing but the sound of their cries, the heat of bodies pressed together, and the early morning hum.
Rumi’s saingeom clatters to the ground, sparks scattering like white embers across the concrete. The girls pull back reluctantly, eyes on her, only to find her delirious and insensate. Her lips tremble, quivering in a fragile, wordless smile. Her eyes — one a deep, rich brown, the other a gleaming, inhuman amber — glisten with tears. A shaking hand rises to brush against Zoey’s cheek, fingertips trembling.
And then she collapses, a marionette cut from its strings.
That moment of pure, unfiltered horror, when Rumi falls, is when Mira notices the gaping wound in Rumi’s abdomen — dark and raw, viscera and blood spilling onto the rooftop, mingling with the ash and dirt below.
Rumi’s head hits the ground.
Zoey screams.