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“Hey, so, I,” Rumi says haltingly, “I never said thank you.”
“Mm? For what?” Zoey puts down her notebook and straightens up from where she’d been lounging on the bed.
Rumi looks kind of embarrassed. She rolls a lock of Zoey’s hair between forefinger and thumb. This should be good. “Oh, like. You know.” Rumi laughs ruefully. “Deciding to spare me. That day.”
Mira is still trying to connect the dots—spare what? Which day?—when she sees Zoey’s face fall. It’s like looking at a rapidly progressing chemical reaction and trying to figure out what it is before it’s done. And then the momentum catches up with her, too, and her blissful ignorance goes splat.
“Rumi,” Mira says in her most dangerous voice. “Tell me you are not fucking talking about the fucking Idol Awards.”
Rumi doesn’t look cowed. She looks petulant. “You specifically said we could talk about it.”
“Didn’t I also fucking say not to fucking apologize again?”
“I’m not apologizing! I’m saying thank you!” Rumi says indignantly. “I mean it. I know not everybody would have. I think most people wouldn’t. I think… it just feels very special to me, that you did.”
“Special?” Mira feels like she's been stabbed. “It’s special that we didn’t fucking murder you where you stood?”
Rumi flinches, and Mira feels like the biggest fucking asshole, kicking puppies who don’t even think they deserve to live.
But this kicked dog really, really dislikes losing arguments, and she’s never seen a hill she’s unwilling to—to—build a home and live to old age on. “It wouldn’t have been murder,” Rumi says primly. “‘Execution’ would be more accurate.”
Mira can feel the blood rushing to her head. “Oh wow, should we pull out the fucking dictionary?”
“You’d only have been doing your duty. It should’ve been your first instinct, actually.”
“Sorry, are you scolding me right now for not skewering you through the stomach like kkochi?”
“Well, given your extensive training, it would’ve been reasonable to expect—”
“Will you shut up about the fucking training, you’re not—”
“Mira,” Zoey murmurs, and her hand is wrapped loosely around Mira’s wrist; has been, Mira realizes with a guilty jolt, throughout most of this conversation.
Mira purses her mouth and looks away. She feels abruptly on the edge of tears. But Rumi’s still going.
“I am a demon. I am. There is exactly one category of person you are supposed to kill, and I am in it.” Her back is straight, her face clear. It’s so incongruous, hearing her say these awful things, sitting on Zoey’s bed, wearing her trains-and-teddy-bears PJs. “But you didn’t. So I just wanted you to know that I am grateful, that’s all.”
Mira has nothing to say. If she opens her mouth right now, she will either scream or cry.
Zoey comes to her rescue, her knight in baggy sportswear. “Rumi,” she says gently, “have you ever considered that maybe you don’t deserve to die just for looking kind of scary?”
Rumi grimaces. “It’s not just that, Zoey, you know that. My voice can hurt the Honmoon. I could be a danger to the safety of the whole world. I was.”
“No you fucking weren’t,” Mira snaps. “You saved it. You made it better.”
Zoey nods. “You make things better, Rumi.”
But Rumi is shaking her head. “There was no way to tell. When I was a baby—”
“Great! Now we should be killing babies.”
“I didn’t say that,” Rumi hedges. “But I am grateful to Celine, too. She—”
“Will you stop being fucking grateful!” Mira’s heart is racing. She’s going to pick a fight. “You think you’re only alive by the grace of our benevolence, is that it?”
Rumi meets her eyes, and says plainly, “Yes.”
Mira barrels on. It’s nothing she hadn’t expected. “Wanna repay your debts, then?”
Rumi visibly balks at that. Mira wants to strangle her. Wants to wrap her in the world’s most careful hug. Wants to lay on top of her and tuck every limb around her and never let her get back up.
“Gonna be costly,” Mira warns her.
Predictably, Rumi firms. The little shit cannot resist a challenge. She nods resolutely.
“Great. Let’s start with this. Repeat after me: ‘I, Ryu Rumi’,” Mira directs.
Rumi squints suspiciously, but dutifully repeats, “I, Ryu Rumi.”
“‘Am not.’”
“Am not,” Rumi parrots.
“‘Fucking expendable.’”
Rumi stares at her, mouth hanging open. Of course she can’t say it.
“‘The people who love me are not doing me a favor by not hurting me,’” Mira continues pointedly.
Zoey’s hand slides down to interlace with Mira’s. “‘It’s reasonable for me to expect to be treated with the same care and consideration I consistently show others.’”
“‘Carrying the potential for danger, much like every other fucking person on the planet, doesn’t make me a liability.’”
“‘Plus, I’m really fucking hot,’” says Zoey. Mira loves her so fucking much it’s insane.
She plays along. “‘I hereby pledge to expand my wardrobe beyond three shirts and one sweater.’”
“‘I admit to sneakily eating the last kkwabaegi.’”
“‘I am not as good as Mira at Mario Kart.’”
“‘I have terrible taste in foreign movies.’”
“‘My guitar collection is medium-sized.’” Rumi gasps indignantly at that one.
“‘I am a pleasure to have in the polycule,’” is Zoey’s next contribution, which prompts Mira to go for the jugular.
“‘I am deeply, sincerely, passionately loved.’”
Rumi’s perfect posture crumples. She lets out a noise somewhere between wounded seal and affectionate tiger. And then she’s barreling into the two of them.
“Sorry. Sorry,” she mumbles as she grabs at them, squeezing them firmly in the inescapable vise of her arms. She burrows her face in, rubbing her cheek over Zoey’s hair, Mira’s cheek. “I love you too.”
Mira shifts her position so she can spread out her legs and wrap them loosely around both of her girls, penning them in. Zoey squeezes her hand and reaches out to stroke over Rumi’s face with a thumb, following the stripe bisecting her eyebrow. Rumi makes a shockingly endearing whuffling sound and nuzzles into her palm.
“Stop being grateful for things you should take for granted, okay?” Zoey says, voice low.
“And if you don’t know what you’re supposed to take for granted—which I know you fucking don’t—ask, and we’ll tell you.”
“Here’s a freebie: number one is ‘not being brutally dismembered by the corporeal manifestation of your lovers’ souls’.”
Rumi lets out a soggy laugh. “Okay. Yeah.”
“Yeah? Sure you don’t need to repeat that one a few dozen times?”
Rumi huffs out another soft laugh, then takes a deep breath. She lifts her chin, and says, with her pitch perfect diction, “I am not expendable.”
“Damn straight,” says Zoey.
Mira sighs, lets her forehead drop onto Rumi’s firm, lovely, rounded shoulder. “Okay,” she breathes, affection and relief and sticky, lingering anxiety. “That’s a good start.”