Archive of Our Own

Come Sunday, and Rumi is back on her terrace arranging plants, nudging a few pots further into the sunlight. Most of her plants don’t need very much upkeep, but she trims the ones that are getting crowded and waters the ones that need it. She checks soil and leaves and eyes a handful of stems, carefully looking over each and every last pot until she’s satisfied that nothing in her makeshift garden has died or rotted in the few days she’s been away.

Zoey offhandedly mentioned that she had checked them, quickly adding that she didn’t really know what to look for, but she thought all of them looked the same since the last time she had seen them. Then they had both gone quiet for a few minutes, because neither of them could remember the last time that actually was. Rumi can’t pinpoint the exact day she stopped letting Zoey or Mira into her bedroom, let alone all the way out to her terrace, but it must have been months ago by now. She hadn’t really lied about anything, not when it came to that specifically. She just...found ways around it, spending more time in the living room or kitchen or dining room, or even popping into their rooms more often than her own.

It was just nice to have a place where she wasn’t risking everything when it came to them. It isn’t like she told them they couldn’t come in, or whatever. It just stopped happening, and Rumi didn’t ask for them to hang out with her, and neither did they. She doesn’t know if that falls on her or them. She thinks it’s probably her fault—most things are. Even if it was their fault in some roundabout way, Rumi was definitely the one who got them to that point in the first place, and she’s...it’s just hard to be upset at them when she knows the heart of the issue lies solely with her. It doesn’t matter what Mira and Zoey did or didn’t do, it doesn’t matter what they didn’t pick up on, or how they reacted, or if they pushed a little too hard or pulled too much; ultimately, Rumi was the one who made them do it at all.

But her plants are okay. She doesn’t think Zoey actually watered any of them, and she’s confident enough in Zoey’s abilities to not outright drown a succulent—she’s equally confident that Zoey could probably point out her succulents—to not be worried.

Rumi spends an extra minute or two on her terrace. She stares out at the sky, arms resting on the railing as she tilts her head and studies the clouds. It’s a nice day out. The weather is a little warm, and she’s sure it’s only going to get hotter as the day goes on, but it’s nice for right now. She brought up going for a run later, and both Mira and Zoey agreed that it might be nice.

They also both offered to come with her, which they haven’t done in years. Or ever, actually, Rumi thinks. Both of them usually tried to wriggle out of running laps around the compound whenever they could, pretty much bolting far away from the hanok so they could claim ‘plausible deniability’ that they didn’t hear Rumi calling for them. 

She smiles, ducking her head. She’s been thinking a lot about their earlier days, back when they were still teenagers and getting to know each other. They’ve talked about their first years together a little, just over the past couple of days or so. Nothing much, just reminiscing on the stupid fights they had, or when Mira finally accepted that she actually liked both of them, or how each of them knew they were in love, or the time that Zoey nearly died because she was trying to do trick shots with her shin-kals while at the top of the tallest tree within the compound. 

Rumi has a lot of fond memories from back then. She has a lot of fond memories from recently, too. She thinks most of her memories with Mira and Zoey are good ones. There are...others that stand out as black marks in her mind, but even now she’s able to look back on that handful and pick out good parts.

Or maybe not...‘good’. Maybe parts that aren’t as bad, or parts that remind her that, regardless of the rest of the memory, there are pieces where Mira and Zoey proved that they still loved her even if she hadn’t realised it while it was happening. 

Some of her most recent memories with them are a little dull around the edges, sort of blurry and hard for her to replay perfectly in her head. They’ve talked a lot over the past few days, all three of them. They’ve talked a lot as a group, one-on-one, in separate pairs that Rumi hasn’t been a part of, with Bobby, even. Rumi fundamentally remembers that they’ve had those talks, and she could probably recite most of what was said in them, but it’s just...hazy. She knows a lot of what happened, she remembers what she felt when it was happening, and she’s been thinking a lot about that, too.

She isn’t sure if she felt what she was meant to. 

Neither Mira and Zoey cried at first, but Rumi has caught them tearing up a few times over the last couple of days. She’s seen both of them act like they weren’t, but even despite everything, she still knows them better than she knows herself. Zoey specifically has always loved to make jokes about them being literal, actual soulmates through the honmoon, and Rumi knows she’s joking, but she’s genuinely believed that since she realised she was one fragment of a whole. She doesn’t quite know how to explain how she feels their souls alongside her own, but she’s pretty sure she does, and even despite all of that, she just knows them. 

She knows that Mira is a quiet crier. She doesn’t cry very often if at all, she’s just never been like that. And yet, even despite that, Rumi has heard her crying in her room more than once. Zoey doesn’t cry a lot either, not anymore. If she does, it’s usually from weeks or months of build-up until she explodes, but she’s never been quiet about it. Not like how she is now; Rumi has caught her dabbing tears off her cheeks without making a sound more than once, too.

Rumi hasn’t cried at all. She hasn’t even felt the choked up feeling she usually gets before she cries, that tightness in her throat or the sharp sting in her eyes. She hasn’t been upset or tired or hurt or anything that she thinks she’s supposed to be, and she hasn’t really felt guilty about any of it, either. She doesn’t—she doesn’t feel good, she just feels...neutral, kind of. 

She only feels bad when she thinks of Mira and Zoey, when her mind starts to slip and spiral. Would they feel better if she felt worse? She’s thought about trying to cry, just so they can see that she’s not just ignoring all that happened, but they would be able to tell she was faking it, and she doesn’t want to do that, anyway. It hasn’t been expanded on more than just ‘no more lying’, but the rule has been put in place for a reason, and Rumi genuinely doesn’t want to break it, not anymore. 

She can hear leaves rustling behind her in the wind. The weather is nice. Rumi tilts her head up an inch or two, letting the sun wash over her face, leaving her feeling warm and content. She closes her eyes for a few seconds, breathing out slowly. She doesn’t remember the last time everything was still like this. She doesn’t remember the last time she had a real break.

She taps her foot against the ground twice, hesitating before doing it three more times. The honmoon hums underneath her, its soft melody picking up slightly louder for a beat. After only a second, if even that, she feels Mira and Zoey’s responses echoing back at her. Zoey’s is more of a greeting, a gentle lull that has Rumi smiling; Mira’s is more of a question, an ‘are you alright?’ that leaves the honmoon buzzing for a few moments longer as it waits for an answer to give.

Rumi opens her eyes and crouches down, reaching out to place her palm face-down against her terrace. The honmoon eagerly trills at her, ebbing its way up her hand and arm, wrapping around her as it chirps and warbles and sings. Rumi smiles a little harder, tapping her fingers against the ground as she thinks, I’m okay. 

The response is immediate—relief from Mira, brief confusion from Zoey that quickly turns into relief of her own. Rumi dips her head, chuckling quietly under her breath before she pushes herself back up to her feet, brushing her hands down her pants. She casts one last look over her shoulder, looking at the sky and the hundreds of buildings that reach up into it, before she turns and steps back inside. 

Maybe she’ll let them come on her run. For now, though, Rumi collapses onto her bed and thinks about finally putting something up on her walls.

“I think I wanna redecorate my room,” Rumi says, hands folded under her chin.

As expected, both Mira and Zoey make synchronised noises of agreement. It’s cute, and Rumi can’t help but grin a little, ducking her head as she tries to commit the sound to memory. 

They’ve always been like that. She’s always been aware that her and Mira are similar in how they go through life and how they handle things, but Mira and Zoey sometimes act like they’re just carbon copies of each other to the point that it’s sort of ridiculous. Rumi adores it more than anything when they do that. And she knows they don’t even realise they’re doing it.

Neither of them stop what they’re doing—with Mira hovering somewhere in the kitchen while Zoey is settled out in the living room with her notebooks—but Rumi knows she’s being listened to regardless. It’s nice. She remembers the first time they figured out how to really exist in the same area as each other, doing separate things while still being close. It took a lot of time to manage that, more than it probably should have. She thinks they were all just sort of difficult when they were teenagers.

Rumi purses her lips as soon as that thought enters her mind. Well, Zoey wasn’t very difficult. She was only kind of difficult, and it was almost always because of something Mira and Rumi had done, and...okay, so maybe her and Mira were difficult, and Zoey was just dropped off in the middle of...all of that. Regardless, they figured it out in the end, so no big deal.

“Is that as far as you’ve gotten?” Mira asks, a teasing lilt to her voice. “Any ideas, or, like...other thoughts?”

Rumi rolls her eyes. “I want stuff on my walls.”

“Big improvements already,” Zoey says, equally as teasing. “How about some stuff on the ground? Oh my god, can I get you another pillow? New bedsheets that aren’t, uh, you know, prison grey?”

“They’re not—” Rumi cuts herself off, shooting Zoey the most pointed look she can manage. Zoey just beams at her, batting her eyelashes as she raises her hands up in mock-defense, looking far too proud of herself. “Whatever,” Rumi mutters, but she’s smiling as she continues, “I don’t know what I’d put in there. I already have a dresser.”

Mira makes another noise, though this time it’s definitely not one of agreement. Rumi directs her attempt at a scathing look to her now, but Mira doesn’t even blink, just giving her a blank, unimpressed stare before she says, “Yeah, because that’s all you need in life. One dresser. For sure, Ru.”

Rumi crinkles her nose and narrows her eyes. “Not all of us brought a hundred boxes of clothes with us when we moved here.”

“You literally have the same amount of clothes as me,” Mira shoots back without missing a beat. “We have a whole floor just for your clothes.”

“For our clothes!” Rumi disagrees, letting out a soft bark of laughter as she defends herself. “You have outfits in there too! And so does Zoey! You just have—you have more clothes that you wear normally! All of the outfits on that floor are, like, show outfits, and that’s different., and you know that.”

Mira nods, but Rumi is well aware she stopped actually listening about ten seconds ago. “Yeah, uh-huh, sure. You know you can have fun stuff too, right? Like your sad grey beanbag?”

“It’s not—nothing in my room is sad and grey!” Rumi protests with a groan. She snaps her head back and forth, making sure to glare at both of them for equal amounts of time. She huffs out a sigh, rolling her eyes again. “Fine. Maybe I won’t redecorate at all. You know what? Maybe I should downsize! I have too much, actually, I’m gonna—I’m gonna donate all of it tomorrow, and then what? What happens when I get rid of all my stuff and I spend the rest of my life living in an empty bedroom that doesn’t even have a floor or ceiling because you guys were mean to me? Huh?”

“Yeah, okay, princess,” Mira says. Rumi makes a frustrated noise from the back of her throat, tempted to one-up herself and continue, but then Mira is saying, “You’re such a drama queen, you know that, right?”

“It’s ‘cause she’s an only child,” Zoey unhelpfully adds. 

Mira hums, nodding sagely. “Mm, yeah, you’re right. That's why she can’t share.”

“I can share just fi—”

“Or why she throws tantrums when she doesn’t get her way,” Zoey interrupts with a sly grin, wiggling her eyebrows up and down as soon as Rumi makes eye contact with her. 

“I don’t—”

“You know she tattled to Celine on me, like, twenty times?” 

Zoey snorts. “Well. To be fair. You probably deserved it.”

“Okay, what the hell, Zo? Who’s side are you on?”

“I’m not on anyone’s side! I’m just saying, you know, hypothetically, I could see why Rumi would—”

“That’s not even—”

“Alright!” Rumi laughs, shaking her head. “Can you guys just help me figure out what to put in my room? I don’t...really know where to start. I guess I had a bookshelf in my room in the hanok,” she offers, giving a thoughtful pause. 

She doesn’t have as many books as she used to. She could probably go back and get some, she’s sure Celine has kept all of them. Her room has been pretty much untouched since the last time she was in it, so maybe she could move over furniture from there? Rumi taps her fingers against the table as she thinks, letting her head loll to the side. She had a desk in her childhood room, and she thought about moving it with her, but she ended up changing her mind last minute.

She mostly just felt like it was weird to effectively gut her childhood bedroom to move into her new bedroom, no matter how many times both Zoey and Mira said it wasn’t, or how many times Celine promised she would replace anything if that’s what she wanted. 

Mira and Zoey are quiet. She realises it after a few more seconds of silence, when the lull in conversation should have been filled by now. Rumi blinks, looking out to the kitchen first, finding Mira standing still with her hands on the counter, back slightly turned to her. She twists her head to the side to the living room after, watching as Zoey repeatedly taps her pen against the spine of one of her notebooks, leg bouncing slightly. 

“What?” she asks, clearing her throat. “What happened?” 

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Rumi has noticed it more than once, even when she doesn’t ask about it. They both get quiet, they say nothing until Rumi prompts them to, and then they look at each other like she’s missing something vital. Rumi knows that can’t possibly be true; she knows them better than she knows herself.

Zoey is the first to come back to herself, shaking her head rapidly before she says, “Um, nothing. Nothing! Just, um, just thinking. Maybe we could get you some, uh, some lights? Like LEDs? Or those really cute fairy lights? I have some in my room, I-I probably have a few spares, honestly. I bet Mira has some, too.”

“Yeah,” Mira murmurs, her voice a little too quiet. “They’re probably old. We might as well just buy new ones. Could get you a new lamp, Ru. Yours burnt out a few months ago, right? And it’s pretty much falling apart, anyway.”

Rumi frowns, but she still ends up nodding. “...Yeah. I’ll...I’ll make a list, I guess.”

Do they think she’s stupid?

She understands wanting to keep things to yourself, she understands not wanting to have to talk about things—it’s practically all she’s been doing her entire life—but Zoey has loved talking at length about these kinds of things after she realised she could with them, and Mira has spent a lot of time working to get to a point where she’s always upfront about everything and expects the same from others. It’s rare for either of them to deflect at all these days, let alone so obviously. Especially when it comes to her.

And what happened to not lying? Do they think she just won’t pick up on the fact that they’re lying to her? That they’re at least not telling the full truth? Even if it’s just a lie by omission, that still counts. Rumi knows it does, because Zoey brought it up when she brought up how she didn’t want any of them to lie to each other anymore, even if she specifically only meant Rumi. 

She should call them out on it. She knows that’s what she’s meant to do, but Rumi stays silent. Maybe it’s payment for all the times they did it for her, or maybe it’s out of fear of getting an answer, or maybe it’s just because she’s selfish. That’s all demons are, right? Selfish? 

She shouldn’t think like that and she knows that, too, but it’s just...hard. Rumi looks down at the patterns along her arms, glowing and bright, and wonders if anything has really changed. She believes Mira and Zoey when they say that they love them, that they think her patterns are beautiful. It’s just that...if it isn’t her patterns, it has to be something else about her, and she doesn’t know what that could be. She doesn’t know what could have possibly triggered their sudden unease from the conversation they had been having. 

Rumi swallows, staring a little harder at the table for a few seconds before she pushes herself up to her feet, sliding her chair back to where it had been. “I’m gonna go...see where I can put stuff,” she quietly says. “I love you.”

“Do you want us to come with you?” Mira immediately asks, finally acting a little more like herself. 

Zoey hums her agreement, as if they both hadn’t just been acting weird only a minute or two ago. “Yeah, maybe we could help lay some stuff out?” she offers, sounding hopeful. “Y’know, like, mapping out spots for stuff on your walls, or whatever. I-if you wanted.”

Rumi sort of wants to be alone. Being alone would make it easier for her to work out her thoughts, to try and piece together a reason for their weirdness. But she thinks they need this more than she needs to be alone, so she says, “Yeah, of course. I’d like that.”

She means it, of course she does. She loves both of them and always has, from the moment she knew they existed, and then she only loved them more after they met—even with all of the backtracking and struggling they had to go through before they could even function in the same room as each other—and she thinks she loves them the most now. She likes doing things with them, and she’s sure she’ll like doing this with them.

Rumi just wishes she knew why they were lying to her, or what they decided they needed to lie about in the first place.

“We’re on hiatus. Stop.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No.”

Rumi rolls her eyes, not even bothering to turn her head and actually look at Mira. “It was a sudden hiatus,” she eventually says, squinting at her laptop as she resumes typing. “We kind of just went radio silent. We literally went rogue, babe.”

Mira is quiet for a second too long before she mutters, “Bobby could handle it.”

“I’m not making Bobby sit through an hour of sending emails,” Rumi mutters back, absentmindedly waving one of her hands in Mira’s general direction. “I can do it myself, it’s fine. It’s not going to take that much time, I only have a few people I need to reschedule with. Do you want me to reschedule for you?” she asks, pausing now, taking the time to look over her shoulder. “You had a few shoots next month.”

Mira purses her lips and looks away, shaking her head. “No, it’s fine. I’ll cancel myself.”

Rumi stares at her. “Are you sure? I’m already—”

“I said I can do it myself, Rumi,” Mira presses, her tone short and final. Rumi raises both hands up in mock defeat, watching as Mira heaves a sigh, dragging her hands down her face. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I’m just...tired, I guess.”

“Well, that’s what we’re on hiatus for,” Rumi reminds her, smiling at the quiet huff she gets in response. 

“Yeah, we,” Mira tells her, a little pointedly. “You know...all three of us? You’re included in that, Ru.”

Rumi crinkles her nose. “Okay, how about—”

“How about you just listen to me for once?” Mira asks. “Seriously, Rumi. It’s not like it’s going to ki—” Mira is quiet for another second, her voice trailing off into a short, shaky breath before she softly continues, “Really, Ru. Please.”

It would be impossible to ignore the pause regardless of if Rumi knew Mira as intimately as she does. She turns all the way around on her chair, stretching her arms out over the top of it as she reaches for Mira. Mira obliges, stepping close enough that Rumi can pull her the rest of the way, gently rubbing up and down her arms, thumbing over the crook of her elbow. It’s enough to get some of the tension out of her shoulders, just like it always is, but it doesn’t completely erase the weird look in her eyes.

Rumi squeezes her arms for a second. “Zoey’s coming back soon, right?”

Mira nods, turning her head to the side. She doesn’t say anything. They’ve done this routine for each other—and for Zoey—a dozen times over, but Mira still finds it difficult to not get flustered and embarrassed over how it helps, so she usually just doesn’t speak until it’s over.

“Okay,” Rumi murmurs. “So she’ll be back in...twenty minutes, probably. Max. If she’s not speeding the entire way, and you know she’s going to, so...generous ten?” she offers, feeling a little burst of pride when Mira cracks a smile, the corners of her lips twitching upward. “I’ll work for ten more minutes, until Zoey’s back. You can pick something for us to watch, and then we’ll eat, and then we can do whatever you want for the rest of the day. Or whatever Zoey wants.”

“Put your laptop in your room after,” Mira mumbles, still decidedly looking nowhere near her. 

Rumi smiles, squeezing Mira’s arms again. “Okay. I will. I promise.”

Mira lets out a shaky breath, nodding again before she pulls her arms back to drag her hands through her hair. “Sorry.”

“You’re okay,” Rumi says immediately. With how hard-pressed she is over taking care of them, Rumi can’t help but remain surprised that Mira still hasn’t managed to figure out that both Rumi and Zoey love to take care of her. “It happens.” She pauses for a few moments, tapping at the back of her chair with her fingers as she considers. After another second or two, she asks, “Do you...want to talk about it?”

“About what?” Mira asks.

Rumi feels her smile drop, a brief wave of irritation crashing over her. It was already obvious that something was wrong, but that only confirmed it completely. Does Mira seriously—? Rumi sighs, clenching her jaw for a second before she shakes her head. 

“Nothing,” she mutters. “I love you.” 

Mira stares at her for a while, as if she has any right when she’s the one acting weird, but she eventually murmurs, “I love you too, Rumi.” Mira looks away after she says it, her lips drawn into a thin, tight line. “You know, um. Even when we were kids, that’s why I was so...” 

Rumi almost wishes she could hate the way the words soothe away all of her frustration. It’s not the first time Mira has admitted to having a crush on her when they were teenagers—Zoey made her spill all of that as soon as she found out, and maybe Rumi has selfishly indulged once or twice too—but it never fails to make her giddy no matter what else is happening. She feels the same when Zoey tells her that she also knew she was in love a few months after she came to the hanok, even in the midst of all of their...problems.

Rumi silently deflates, unable to stop herself from smiling again. “You...what? What do you mean by that?” she teases, feigning shock and confusion. “Mira, are you...oh my god. Oh my god. Really? Really? Are you saying—?”

“Rumi,” Mira warns.

She decidedly ignores that warning. “You can’t be serious. From day one? The first time you saw me? You’re telling me you instantly fell in love with me as soon as you heard my name?”

“That is not true,” Mira protests with a huff, though it’s hard to take her seriously when she’s smiling just as hard as Rumi is. “I thought you were, like, super annoying when I first met you.”

“Hm,” Rumi hums. She flashes Mira a grin that she knows will get her to rise to the bait. “No, I don’t think that’s true.”

Mira scoffs, eyes immediately narrowing. “You can’t tell me what I did or didn’t feel.”

“Well, I just did,” Rumi helpfully lets her know. She giggles when Mira reaches out to push her face away, feeling warm and happy even despite her still-there irritation. “You better hurry,” she teases a second later. “Zoey’s gonna be here soon, and you already know she’s going to make us watch a cooking show you’ll hate.”

Mira tips her head back and groans. “I don’t get why she hates me so bad.”

Rumi snickers, rolling her eyes. “I think she does it so you can show off.”

“She’s a better cook than both of us combined,” Mira bitterly mutters. “Which is fucked up, I know her parents didn’t teach her that.”

“It’s her natural talent!” Rumi says, laughing as soon as she does.

She grins at all the memories that come to the forefront of her mind—everything is her ‘natural talent’ as Zoey so loves to remind them. Anything she’s good at? Natural talent. Rumi has been the target of that about a million times, but she knows it’s worse for Mira, because Zoey loves to watch her perform only to say something intentionally aggravating like, “I bet my natural talent’s better than you”, only to purposefully eat shit or do the worst recreation of whatever it was Mira did. 

As expected, Mira instantly breaks out into more huffing and puffing and scoffing, grumbling incoherently as she finally turns on her heel to go and flop on the couch. “Yeah, whatever,” she says. “Her ‘natural talent’ is speeding, and she’s literally not even—”

The elevator dings before Mira can finish. 

Rumi erupts into laughter, throwing her head back so hard she nearly takes herself out by flinging herself over the back of her chair. She gasps and flails around as soon as she realises she’s going to fall, frantically scrambling for any kind of hold. She just barely manages to get her hands onto the desk, but it’s an admittedly weak hold, especially when she can hear Mira howling with laughter from the couch. It gets worse when she hears Mira’s knees hit the ground, like she’s actually rolled off the couch and collapsed into the coffee table, and—and she did, because when Rumi turns her head to look at her, she finds Mira curled in on herself wheezing.

That’s almost enough to get Rumi out of her chair, giggling so hard it leaves her lightheaded and dizzy. She just barely hears the sound of Zoey’s footsteps before she hears, “Guys! I’m—oh! Oh, something happened here, wow! Actually, you know what? What the hell do you two have to laugh about if I’m not here, huh? What the hell is this? Hello? Why are you laughing without me?” And then, after a short-lived pause, Zoey tacks on, “Cheating?”

It makes Rumi laugh harder; Mira, on the other hand, gasps and demands, “What?”

“You heard me!” Zoey laughs, breaking out into a wide grin.

“Yeah, and—what?” Mira repeats, through breathless gasps. “Who—who would we even—? Are you accusing us of—on each other? With each other?”

Zoey just tuts. “If the shoe fits.”

“We’ve been together for—for five years!”

Rumi wheezes, letting out a choked noise as she tries and fails to get herself under control. She helpfully offers, “Did we ever confirm it? Zoey might have a point.”

“She doesn’t!” Mira protests, shooting Rumi a completely betrayed look. “We were laughing because you—I don’t have to explain myself to you! You’re late!”

Zoey gasps so hard that Rumi is briefly concerned that something has actually happened. When she actually looks at Zoey, Rumi watches the way she clutches at her chest with her free hand, her other supporting all the bags she brought back. “You did not just say that to me. Are you serious? I broke, like, ten laws to get back here! Maybe twenty! I said I’d be back in maybe an hour, it’s—it’s been thirty minutes! Are you serious?” she repeats, looking genuinely offended. “I would never be late when it comes to you! Either of you!”

Rumi snickers, rolling her eyes fondly as Mira continues to pick a fight, which in turn makes Zoey argue back even harder, and the cycle just keeps going on and on and on. She already knows their food is going to be cold by the time they finally stop arguing with each other and decide to actually eat. Still, she can’t help but grin the entire time she packs up her laptop and takes it to her room; sometimes it’s hard for her to wrap her mind around the fact that they ever figured out how to play nice with each other.

By the time Rumi comes back out into the living room, Mira and Zoey are still arguing, but it’s turned into a series of displeased noises traded back and forth between them; they’re not even real words, just sounds. It’s kind of hard to take seriously, mostly because Zoey is on the couch now and Mira has migrated into her lap, chin on her thigh, but Rumi has to commend them for trying. She doesn’t think they’ve ever been all that good at fighting with each other, those two especially.

“Done?” she teases, laughing at the way both of them start grumbling at her instead of each other. Rumi holds up her hands, ducking her head as she rescinds, “Okay, okay, sorry.”

She sits down on the opposite side of Zoey, pressing a kiss to her cheek. Zoey preens, and Rumi can feel the way she starts to grin. It only takes another displeased noise from Mira for Rumi to realise that Zoey has stopped playing with her hair—or maybe Mira was trying to get her attention?—and she laughs again, gently nudging Zoey back in Mira’s direction. 

They settle like that for a while. The food isn’t cold by the time Zoey finally claps her hands together and starts unpacking the bags, thank god. Rumi is quiet as she watches both of them, feeling warm and content. There’s a weird nagging in the very back of her head though, one she can’t quite shake no matter how hard she tries. It’s like something is missing—a feeling, maybe? Or something close to it? 

Rumi does her best to ignore it. She focuses on the show Mira picks for them, laughing at all the right beats, genuinely smiling whenever Zoey bursts out laughing or picks a fight like the characters can hear her. 

It’s a good day, but the feeling that she’s missing something doesn’t go away for even a second.

“Rumi?” Zoey asks, clearing her throat right after in the way that she does when she’s nervous. 

Rumi twists her head to the side, glancing over to where Zoey is sprawled out on her bed. “Yeah?” she asks back, waiting for Zoey to continue. Rumi isn’t sure if she actually will, but eventually Zoey shifts, clearly considering her words.

It takes another second or so before she actually makes a noise, and then another few seconds before Zoey finally murmurs, “Um. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, or, um, whatever, I was just kinda wondering, I guess. And—really, it’s totally fine if you don’t want to answer, maybe it’s invasive? Or, like, too personal? I just—”

“Zoey,” Rumi interrupts, laughing quietly under her breath. “It’s okay. You can ask me anything.”

She means it. There isn’t really anything that Zoey and Mira don’t know about her these days.

Zoey hums, her voice still sounding a little shaky. “Okay. Okay, okay, cool. Right. Um. I just...I just wanted to know why you never really...” she trails off for a moment. “Your room in the hanok was, um, was pretty similar to your room here. I guess I just—” Zoey groans, heaving a sigh before she rushes out, “You don’t decorate and I know it’s not because you’re a minimalist so I just want to know why I guess.”

Rumi blinks. Oh. She doesn’t outwardly ask—she already knows Zoey is kind of sensitive to things like that—if that’s actually the question that had Zoey so worked up, but Rumi still considers it. It’s not like it’s an insane question, or anything. She’d argue it’s actually a really normal question, but maybe she’s missing something.

She’s been feeling like that a lot more recently. That weird, nagging feeling in the back of her mind still hasn’t gone away even days later, and Rumi keeps feeling like she’s been left out of the loop in some way or another. It’s not quite like a barrier between her and Zoey and Mira, it just feels sort of...weird, or whatever. She doesn’t feel distant, and she doesn’t really think that either of them feel distant either, it’s just...

There’s something off, she knows that much. She just hasn’t been able to figure out what it is. 

She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like not understanding them or their actions or why they’re doing what they’re doing. She can’t get a grasp on any of it, because she just—Rumi fundamentally does not understand what has both of them acting so weird all the time. They’ve talked a lot about their whole lives, they’ve had several conversations about how to move forward with their relationship, they...they’re doing better, aren’t they? Everything is meant to be better now, so why does it feel like the opposite?

“I guess I just never really...got into it,” Rumi offers. She didn’t grow up wanting for anything—Celine was always good about making sure she had everything she could ever need or want, but she never really thought too much about it. Or put any effort into doing it, she guesses. 

Zoey makes another noise. “Yeah, but...why?”

Rumi does laugh this time, turning over her shoulder again to give Zoey a look. “Why?” she repeats, blinking a few times. “I just told you, I—”

“I know!” Zoey rushes. “I know! I just, I just think that...I dunno, you have a really good eye for that kinda stuff. You’ve helped me, like, a billion times with my room. And Mira, too. And you always like to be the one in charge of the sets for our shows if you can, and you used to read a lot, right? So you...you mentioned your bookshelf. I just...don’t get, um, why your rooms have always been so empty. A-and I mean Celine’s, like, crazy rich. And so are we! So...” Zoey purses her lips and looks away. “Did you...did you ever think it was, like, a waste of time?”

Rumi blinks again, screwing up her face as she considers Zoey’s words. She doesn’t really see how any of that translates over into it being weird for her not to decorate or to have very much in her room. Zoey’s right that she isn’t a minimalist or anything like that, but she’s just never had much of a reason to bother.

Rumi pauses. She replays her last thought and Zoey’s last question a few times in her head, twisting and turning the words over each other. Waste of time, never had much of a reason.

Why? 

What was stopping her? What would she have lost if she was decorating? She just...Rumi frowns, staring firmly at her rug. She remembers that it took weeks for Mira to finally badger her into it, and then it took months for them to actually go and look at rugs to pick out because she kept dragging her feet. She remembers saying it was pointless. She didn’t need it. 

Which is true, she guesses. She doesn’t need it, but there was really no reason to act like that so fervently. It’s literally just a rug, and Rumi remembers acting like she was getting killed just over the idea of looking at a few of them, let alone buying them. Money has never been an issue for her, she’s never had to worry about that. If anything, she thinks she should probably be more conscious of how much she’s spending. 

She had other things on her mind? The goal of turning the honmoon gold and getting rid of her patterns had been ever-present at the front of her mind for her whole life, but Rumi still isn’t sure if that justifies the way she was so weirdly opposed to putting things in her room; she’s also just now realising that she was weirdly opposed. She remembers being frustrated whenever Zoey and Mira would press her on it. Why would she be frustrated about that?

“I...” Rumi swallows, frowning harder. “I don’t know.”

Zoey’s voice comes out a little wobbly when she says, “Oh.”

Rumi immediately winces at Zoey’s tone, convinced she must have said something wrong. She quickly rushes, “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I think I just never had the time, so, you know. Um, maybe it felt like a waste of time? We always had a lot to do, so...you know. Maybe I just never thought about it? Or something?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Zoey quietly says. “But you’re thinking about it now. That’s, um, nice.”

“Yeah,” Rumi agrees, just as softly. It feels like the wrong thing to say, but what else is there to say? “Um.” Rumi clears her throat. “Is it...is it a big deal to you?”

Zoey laughs. Rumi immediately recognises it as fake, coming out all wrong. And then Zoey breathes out and says, “Um, no. No, n-not at all. Definitely not.”

Rumi looks down at her hands. She studies the patterns that loop over her fingers, iridescent and ebbing from colour to colour. She doesn’t feel sick looking at them, just...disconnected, maybe. They’re part of her. She’s learnt to tolerate them and to accept that they belong to her and that they don’t make her any less of a hunter or a human just because she has them. She twists her hands to the side, staring at her palms now. 

She raises her head back up to catch Zoey’s gaze. Zoey is lying to her. She’s been lying for most of this conversation, really, and...

Rumi doesn’t know what to do. She feels beyond lost, and it doesn’t help that Zoey was the one out of the three of them to come up with the ‘no lying’ rule. And—and yet here she is, lying directly to her like it’s not obvious, and Rumi doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do about it. Call her out on it? She’s tried to do that a few times, and both Zoey and Mira just act like there’s nothing wrong, and it’s...it’s not like she has any room to judge, given how she’s spent the better half of her life, but aren’t things supposed to be different now? Isn’t that what they agreed to? That things didn’t have to be the same, that there would be no more lies, that they didn’t have to hide anything, that their faults and fears could be seen without ruining them? 

Is she being selfish? Is she not doing enough? Rumi taps her foot against the ground, chewing on her lower lip for a moment before she quietly offers, “I’d, um, I’d still really like it if you and Mira helped me decorate. I know it’s kind of our room.” Rumi pauses, her lips curling up into an involuntary smile. “I know all of our rooms are kind of ours, but...I don’t know. I think it would be nice. If you wanted?”

“Of course I do,” Zoey rushes. Rumi is a little surprised when Zoey reaches out and grabs her wrists, thumbing over her hands as she leans in close. She still looks upset, sort of like there’s more she wants to say. After another beat of silence, Zoey softly continues, “Maybe we can do that this weekend?” She breaks into a smile after that, giving a dumb, exaggerated wink when she adds, “Unless you’ve got plans, gorgeous?”

Rumi snorts and rolls her eyes. She leans down just enough to capture Zoey in a quick kiss, smiling against her lips. “Only with you and Mira,” she assures her. “I’ll talk to her about it when she gets back home.” Rumi kisses the corner of Zoey’s mouth, murmurs, “I love you.”

Zoey makes a soft noise in return and kisses her properly again. “I love you so much, Ru. You, um, you know that, right?”

Rumi does her best to not outwardly react to that. What? Of course she does. They’ve been together for five years now, of course she knows that Zoey—and Mira—loves her. They wouldn’t be with her if they didn’t, and they definitely wouldn’t still be with her after...everything...if they didn’t love her. 

“Of course I do,” Rumi mumbles in return. The words still come out a little choked and off-beat, but...everything Zoey has said and done for the last ten minutes has come across as choked and off-beat. Rumi doesn’t understand where any of it has come from. 

She pauses for a few seconds, pulling away just enough so she can cup Zoey’s face. It’s half a ploy to study her a little, trying to work out whatever it is Zoey is attempting to get out of this just by picking up on any fleeting microexpressions. It’s useless and Rumi knows that—it’s not like she’s going to find the answer in the way Zoey’s lips twitch or how her brows scrunch up—but she still can’t help but try.

As expected, she turns up with nothing at all. If anything, she feels like she might have more questions than answers.

Rumi swallows. She thumbs across Zoey’s cheekbone and quietly asks, “Do you know that? That I love you?”

Zoey stares at her, twisting up her whole face. “Where did that come from?” she asks with a quiet laugh. Rumi picks up on the way she sounds unsure, how tentative and cautious she’s still being about all of this. “Yeah, Rumi, I-I know that. I mean, you kinda suck at being subtle, so...”

“Mean,” Rumi teases. She can’t shake the unease she feels, no matter how good Zoey is at making her feel like nothing is wrong. That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? But she’s not...she’s not doing anything to dissuade her. She should say something, she knows that. What does she say, though? ‘I know you and Mira are both lying to me so...what’s up with that’? As if she has any right when she—

“You can talk to me about anything, um, just by the way,” Zoey suddenly rushes out. “Especially, um, you know. If it’s, like, important. Like decorating.” She says that with a grin that doesn’t meet her eyes in the slightest. Rumi doesn’t know if Zoey thinks she’s just stupid or if she genuinely doesn’t think Rumi knows her at all, because that was—that was one of the first things Rumi learnt about her, one of the first things she ever picked up. Zoey smiles more with her eyes than she does with her mouth, when she’s actually happy it’s impossible not to notice because she’s so expressive through her whole body, and...

Why is she hiding this from her? They agreed, they talked about it, they...Rumi doesn’t get it. What the hell is so impossible to talk about that it has both Zoey and Mira avoiding it? What could possibly have them both dancing around the subject? She knows it’s not her patterns even if that seems like the obvious answer to her. They’ve both gushed about them a thousand times, and she knows they’re not just pretending for her sake. And she just...what else could there be? They’ve talked about her patterns, the lying, all of it. She doesn’t know what she’s missing. 

And she doesn’t get why they’re hiding this from her specifically when it absolutely can’t be worse than what she hid from them. How could it be? She spent their whole relationship lying about who and what she was, and...and they said they understood why she did all of that and that they weren’t that mad at her about it, not after she had explained why, and so...what’s worse than that? How could anything be worse than that?

Rumi breathes out. She presses her face to the side of Zoey’s, squeezing her eyes shut as she lies, “I know.”

It continues on like that for a while. 

Rumi doesn’t exactly halt the progression of decorating her room, but she more or less steps away from it in favour of trying to work Mira and Zoey out through her head. She hasn’t come up with very much; if anything, she feels more lost than she did when she first realised they were both acting weird. 

She spends most of her time carefully watching them both, trying to figure out why they get locked up and when it happens and how to make it stop. She catches Mira crying two more times and catches Zoey pacing in the kitchen—like, full-blown pacing. It’s been years since Rumi has seen her pace like that, so trapped away in her mind that she didn’t even realise Rumi was there, and...

She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get any of it, and she doesn’t know how to make it stop or how to make it better, and neither one of them will say anything to her. Both of them keep pretending like everything is totally fine, like there’s nothing wrong, and Rumi knows that’s not true. She’s not an idiot. She knows them better than she’s ever known anyone, she would be able to figure out that something was wrong even if they weren’t making it painfully obvious. 

That’s something that confuses her just as much—they’re not doing a good job at hiding it. If they really didn’t want her to know, wouldn’t they hide it better? Does she just know them well enough? Rumi swears that can’t be true, because both Mira and Zoey are adamant that everything is fine and that they’re fine, and then they act the complete opposite. They’re not even trying to pretend. Rumi doesn’t know how to take that. Is that good? Are they trying to get her to ask about it rather than having to admit that something is wrong? She could at least understand that, but they’re so—

God, she doesn’t...she doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand what they’re doing, and she’s practically been driving herself insane attempting to figure it out. 

Rumi paces in long, wide circles around her room. It’s moments like these where she’s grateful she barely has anything in her bedroom. She runs through the list she’s made in her mind, carefully going over each individual point. She’s confident that the two of them aren’t acting weird over her patterns; Mira has complimented them no short of ten times in the last two days, and Zoey spent nearly a full hour mapping them out along her body after pretty much begging to do so. Her patterns—for once—aren’t the issue. She had mostly already established that, but Rumi is completely certain now.

The years she spent lying is also out of the option, she thinks. She had casually brought it up, apologising offhandedly for it, and both Zoey and Mira sprung to tell her that it was fine and that they had long since gotten over that after everything settled and they realised why she had done it. Rumi still doesn’t think she deserves how sweet they’ve been about that, how understanding they’ve both been, but she’s grateful nonetheless. 

Nothing has really happened during their hiatus. They’ve spent most of their downtime inside or going on real, actual dates now that they have the time for it, though they’re still largely in the tower. Zoey and Mira both seem to be set on effectively hibernating, and Rumi’s not going to deny them that. They deserve the break more than anyone. 

It’s not her patterns, it’s not the lying, it’s nothing that’s happened recently within the last few weeks. They haven’t gotten into any arguments or fights. Rumi feels like she’s losing her mind.

Is this how they felt? Did they know she was hiding something even though they could never name what it was? Rumi hasn’t stopped tearing herself apart for that, guilty constantly weaving through her thoughts and wrapping around her like a vice. It’s such a suffocating thought that she leaves the penthouse for two hours to just run, to attempt to clear her head and forget she even thought about it in the first place. It doesn’t work, but it at least makes her feel less like she’s going to be sick. 

Rumi draws in a long, trembling breath. She goes still for a few seconds, tapping her foot to the ground in beats of five as she lightly hits her hand to her hip. 

She knows, realistically, that she has to talk to them first. She has to be the one to bridge the gap and reach out because it’s obvious that neither Zoey or Mira are willing to do it, and Rumi doesn’t want this to get worse. How bad has it already gotten? She still hasn’t been able to get over the fact that she’s caught Mira crying, that she’s seen Zoey get so stuck in her own head that she hasn’t even realised Rumi has been in the room with her. 

Rumi buries her face in her hands. She breathes out again, turning on her heel to stand in front of her terrace for a few moments. It’s hard to believe that so much has happened within only a matter of months. It’s just barely turning to autumn, the trees shedding their leaves. Rumi has kept her terrace open for longer and longer, just sitting in her bed, feeling the breeze. She’s not used to doing nothing. She’s not used to being on this side of the aisle. She’s not used to being the one with no secrets.

She scoffs, shaking her head. She shouldn’t think like that. It’s not...it’s not doing anyone any good even if it’s technically true. She’s not even mad at Mira and Zoey—she doesn’t really think she has a right to be after all that she’s done—she just wishes they trusted her enough to tell her what’s happening with them. She just wants them to be okay. She just wants to know how she can help them, because clearly she’s doing something wrong or maybe she’s not doing enough, because it’s obvious neither of them are getting better, and Rumi is so scared that they’re just going to get worse.

They’re all at home today. They haven’t done much barring their dates, so it wasn’t very difficult for her to pick a day and assume they’d all be together so she could talk to them. Maybe she should have asked if they could talk, she knows they both would say yes to her in an instant, but that felt too...formal, maybe? Too real? And—and obviously this is real and important and serious, Rumi knows that and she’s going to make sure she treats it like that, but she just...she didn’t want to scare them. She didn’t want them to freak out. 

Rumi curls her hands into fists, then relaxes them, then clenches them again. She repeats this process for a few minutes before her heart stops pounding. She still feels a little sick, that tightness at the back of her throat never fully going away, but it’s more manageable than it had been before. She pivots toward her door, hesitating when she reaches up to grab the handle. 

She swallows harshly and twists the doorknob. 

Rumi isn’t surprised to find Mira and Zoey out in the living room, both of them curled up on the couch. She’s struck by a heavy pang of guilt when she sees how intertwined the two of them are, and it only gets worse when she hears Mira’s low voice followed by Zoey’s bright laughter. Once she gets closer to the couch, she can see that Zoey’s holding her phone and Mira is the one scrolling through it, and they’re so...

Rumi is so in love with them that it aches. That only makes the guilt worse.

She’s just as unsurprised when she watches Zoey’s head twist to the side, a soft smile curving up on her lips when they lock eyes. It only takes another second before Mira is looking over at her and is quietly saying, “Hey, Ru. Come sit with us?”

“Um.” Rumi clears her throat. She wants to so badly. She wants to sit with them and pretend like there’s not a problem more than practically anything in the world, she wants to lay with them and just forget about everything, she wants to move on from this, but she...

Rumi stays exactly where she’s at. She gathers her bearings as quickly as she possibly can so she doesn’t make either of them nervous, tentatively asking, “Can we...can we talk?”

As expected, Zoey and Mira immediately detangle from each other. It doesn’t make her feel better. 

Zoey looks at her first, her face screwing up in confusion and worry, brows scrunching up together. She’s never been good at hiding how she feels; she shows absolutely everything she feels throughout her whole body. Beside her, Mira isn’t really hiding it any better, though she at least doesn’t outwardly look as worried as Zoey does. Not like it matters, Rumi thinks. She can see the way her leg starts to bounce and how her jaw flexes every few seconds, because Rumi knows she’s tapping her teeth, and she only does that when she’s either nervous or annoyed about something, and...

“Y-yeah, always,” Zoey promises. “What’s up, Rums?”

“Do you want to sit down?” Mira adds, a little hesitantly. “We can move if you want.”

“No,” Rumi rushes out. She shakes her head and clears her throat, continuing, “No, um, here’s fine. Here’s fine. I...” 

How does she start this? How does she phrase any of this? ‘I know you’re hiding something from me so come out and say it’? Absolutely not. But—maybe? She knows she has to be direct or else they’re going to spend an eternity dancing around the problem, but she doesn’t know how direct is too direct, especially with how hard they’ve both been trying to pretend nothing is wrong while not making an effort to be convincing about it. Rumi doesn’t think she can stand to see Mira crying in the kitchen or Zoey wearing down their floors in the living room more than she already has.

She fidgets with her fingers, running her thumb over her knuckles before she slowly says, “You guys are acting weird. About me. Don’t say you’re not,” Rumi quickly tacks on, because she can already see Mira and Zoey opening their mouths as soon as she’s spoken. “Don’t say that you’re not, because I know you are, so, just...I just want to know what’s wrong. I can’t figure it out. Is it because of me? Did I do something?” Rumi asks. 

Zoey and Mira are both silent. 

Oh, Rumi thinks. It is because of me.

And then Mira looks away, her jaw flexing and her lower lip trembling. And Zoey just swallows and shudders, her head dropping for a second before she starts to mess with her hands, too. And they’re both—they’re both still quiet and they’re not saying anything at all, but Rumi can feel the discordant note ripple through the honmoon that signifies that both of them are deeply, deeply upset. She feels her fingers twitch, instinctively reaching for the golden threads in an attempt to soothe both of them. 

She doesn’t move when she touches the honmoon—she’s long since figured out how to reach it without physically interacting with it—and gently presses against their souls, always in tandem with her own. I’m okay, Rumi tries. I’m here. I’m okay. You can talk to me.

Mira looks back to her first. Zoey isn’t slow to follow. For another second, they both say nothing.

“Rumi, you were...you were going to...” Zoey starts, her voice dying off halfway through her sentence. Rumi watches her throat bob before she chokes out, “You were going to kill yourself. I-I just, we—we’re just, um, we just...we’re...”

“It’s...it has to be harder for you,” Mira whispers. “So, um. We figured you didn’t want to...talk about it.”

Zoey nods. “W-which is fine! You, you don’t have to.”

Mira breathes out, “We didn’t want to make you feel like you, I don’t know, had to. Or whatever.”

“Exactly,” Zoey softly agrees. “I-I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to make you feel weird about it, I just, um, I just...we’ve, um, you know. It’s...”

Neither of them speak once Zoey trails off and doesn’t pick back up on her train of thought.

Rumi stands there in stunned silence for a few seconds.

“What?” she asks, screwing up her face. “I didn’t—what are you talking about? I didn’t try to—what?” Rumi tries again, trying and failing to get out the words. “I didn’t try to kill myself.”

Zoey and Mira stare at her like she’s grown two heads.

“Rumi...” Mira starts, a little slowly. “After the Idol Awards, you told us you went back to the compound. And you found Celine. And you told her to kill you. You said—you said you gave her your saingeom and told her, you told her to, to...kill you.” Mira’s voice breaks on the last word. Rumi feels her heart clench in response. “What else would you call that?”

“Not—not killing myself,” Rumi presses. “That wasn’t the same. That’s not—I wouldn’t do that. You know that. You have to know that. Right? That I wouldn’t?”

Zoey opens and closes her mouth a few times before she says, “But...but you did, Rumi. You did. That’s what—that’s what you did.”

Rumi shakes her head, stumbling over her words as she rushes, “No, it’s not. That’s not...I didn’t, I wouldn’t do that. I’m not—” Rumi cuts herself off, more stunned than anything. “I’m not suicidal. I’ve never been...”

She feels like there’s so much more she needs to say. Clearly, she thinks, because both of them have the completely wrong idea and they’ve...has it been about this the entire time? Have they been tearing themselves apart because of something that’s not even true? Rumi feels a horrible, sharp stab of guilt right below her heart. It gnaws away at her until she feels raw. 

Rumi covers the distance between her and them. She doesn’t get on the couch with them, opting to sink to her knees in between Zoey and Mira. She grabs Mira’s hand first and thumbs over her knuckles, taking Zoey’s hand a second later. She doesn’t know what else to say. What could she possibly say to fix any of this? How does she...?

“Rumi,” Zoey whispers. “What do you think you did? When you...when you asked Celine to...” She doesn’t finish that sentence. 

“I thought I was breaking the honmoon,” Rumi whispers back. “I thought I was ruining it, and I didn’t want to—I didn’t want to ruin anything more. I thought I ruined you both, um, and I didn’t want to...I didn’t think...”

“So you asked her to kill you,” Mira interrupts. “Instead of, instead of anything else, you went to Celine and you asked her to kill you.”

Rumi shakes her head again. “I-I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she tries. “I just didn’t want to—”

Zoey cuts her off, “You thought you had to die to fix everything?”

“Yes!” Rumi hisses. “Or—no, no! I didn’t, I just—” She cuts herself off with a strangled noise, leaning back on her legs. She breathes out, pulling her hands out of Mira and Zoey’s to drag them down her face. “No. No. I just didn’t, I didn’t know how to make things better, and I was scared, and I-I thought I had ruined everything. I thought I ruined you. And, I don’t know, it just—it didn’t...nothing happened. Nothing happened. I knew Celine wasn’t going to do anything to me. And I, I wouldn’t have gone to her if I did think she’d do something to me, because I didn’t...I didn’t want to...”

Her voice dies out in the back of her throat. She can’t make herself say it. Is it true? Did she not want to die? Rumi doesn’t know. She doesn’t think she wanted to die. She just wanted everything to stop. She wanted to be better, to be able to fix everything, and when she couldn’t, she just...Celine had always handled everything before. And it’s not like Rumi had even really expected to be here in the first place, not this long, and—

...Oh. What? That can’t be right. What? No, she just...

All very suddenly, Rumi realises that she has never once imagined herself...here. She has never once imagined herself past her teenage years. She doesn’t remember a time where she thought she was going to be alive this far into the future. She hadn’t—she hadn’t thought that she was going to die, and she absolutely didn’t think she was going to kill herself, but she just...she never...

Why would she look into the future when it didn’t matter? She would either turn the honmoon gold or she wouldn’t be here, and that would be that. She knew that from a very young age. Nothing else was important.

The talk she had with Zoey hits her hard and fast, square between the ribs. 

Did you ever think it was a waste of time?

Maybe I just never thought about it.

Rumi doesn’t know what to do. She stays there, her mind working overtime as she desperately tries to process everything she’s been told within the last five minutes. Maybe it’s been longer. It feels like the whole world has come to a standstill while somehow skyrocketing forward, and Rumi barely knows where she is anymore. Her thoughts drift all the way back to when she was young; she remembers now, more clearly. She never thought very hard about the future in a tangible sense. All of her hopes and dreams for her future circled around turning the honmoon gold, but that was it. Rumi remembers how she could never see herself at seventeen, or twenty, or twenty-four. 

She remembers that still being true even after she met Mira and Zoey. It never seemed real. It never seemed like something that would happen. It never seemed like she would...

Get there. Get that far. Be alive by then.

But Rumi—Rumi swears to god she didn’t want to die. She would have known if she wanted to die, right? That would...that would be obvious. And she definitely would have known if she wanted to kill herself. There’s...there’s just no way she wouldn’t have known. She’s never been depressed, she couldn’t have been suicidal. And aren’t there, like, signs? Things to look out for? Mira and Zoey would have noticed, at least. And if not them, then Celine absolutely would have. Rumi would have noticed. 

Because, because she’s been working her entire life toward turning the honmoon gold, and she’s never really needed to back out or take a break. She’s never felt like she had to quit or had to escape what she was doing. It wasn’t hard for her to get out of bed, or to take care of herself, or to...do anything, really. And just because she had a hard time seeing what her life would be like in the future doesn’t mean...that doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t have to mean anything. She’s sure there are thousands of other people who just have a hard time seeing ahead of where they’re at, that’s...that’s normal. That’s normal. It has to be. Why wouldn’t it be normal? Rumi knows it has to be because she isn’t suicidal, because she didn’t try to...

“...Rumi.” Zoey slides off the couch and gets down on the ground beside her. She hesitantly reaches forward, ghosting her fingers over Rumi’s knee. “Breathe for me, okay? Can you do that for me?”

“I-I’m fine,” Rumi tries. Her voice comes out stilted and uneven, cracking on the words, and...oh, her lungs feel like they’re on fire. 

When did she start hyperventilating? She draws in a shaky breath, doing her best to focus on Zoey’s voice and the feel of her hand on Rumi’s skin. She can see the way Zoey’s chest rises and falls, can hear the slow breaths she’s taking. It isn’t hard for her own body to adapt and work to the rhythm Zoey is setting; this is how it’s always been, this is how they’ve always been. Rumi sees Mira settle on the floor out of the corner of her eye, feels her hand on her shoulder a second later. Both of them touching her is the quickest tether back to reality she’s ever experienced.

It only takes her a few more minutes before she feels like she can breathe on her own again. Rumi raises her trembling hands, settling one over the back of Zoey’s, tangling her hand in Mira’s shirt to pull her closer. That’s all she wants right now. Her world feels like it’s falling apart and nothing makes as much sense as it used to, and she just wants both of them against her, holding her, touching her. 

Rumi takes another second to fully get herself under control. Her brain still runs restless, cycling through hundreds of thoughts and what-ifs. She can practically feel the headache already.

“You okay, Ru?” Mira gently asks. Zoey lets out a hum that carries the same question.

Why are they asking her that? If they really were worried about her—about her killing herself, shouldn’t she be the one comforting them? Not the other way around? She tried. She tried, and both of them didn’t believe her. If anything, Rumi thinks she must have stressed them out worse than before. 

“I’m fine,” Rumi says again, her voice a little stronger this time. “I’m okay.”

She’s not sure if either of them believe her now, either. But they both still hold her, they both still have their hands on her, and Rumi finds herself falling into them fully. Her mind won’t stop replaying their words. They think I tried to kill myself, Rumi thinks. They think I wanted to die.

She repeats that over and over and over again until the words blur together and all that’s left in her head is noise. Through the static, her mind quietly asks, are they right?

And Rumi doesn’t have an answer to give.

Barely even a day has gone by since they had their conversation, and all Rumi can think about is what they’ve said to her. You were going to kill yourself. You thought you had to die to fix everything? What else would you call that?

Nothing she’s said or done has convinced them otherwise. Rumi has been going over it in her mind, constantly wracking her brain in an attempt to come up with a better or a different answer that they’ll finally take, but Mira and Zoey only continue to look at her like they’re worried she’s genuinely lost her mind. They’re both insistent on her taking at least a few weeks to think about what they said and to really think about her life, both right now and before, and so Rumi has. Even if she didn’t want to, she doesn’t think she’d be able to think about anything else other than...this.

Zoey and Mira think that she was going to kill herself. Rumi is having a harder and harder time trying to convince all three of them that that isn’t true. Because they’re...technically right that she went to Celine and asked Celine to kill her. She did that. Rumi has never shied away from the fact that she did that, but that’s not the same as her trying to kill herself. How could it be?

She still swears she wasn’t suicidal, because she was never depressed. She’s been constantly moving and constantly doing things since she was young. Rumi knows about the base bones of depression, she understands fundamentally what it is and how it looks, and she never once went through anything close to that. She’s never had an issue with working and getting out of bed and sticking to a routine. She’s always preferred that, honestly. She wasn’t depressed. She wasn’t. How could she have been? And she thought about it before, but she knows there are signs, things to look out for. She knows there are certain symptoms that can go overlooked, but she doesn’t think that Celine, Zoey, and Mira would overlook those. At least one of them would have picked up on it.

Did they pick up on it and just not mention it? Rumi doesn’t think that’s true. If she was depressed when she was young, prior to meeting Mira and Zoey, Celine would have noticed. Celine was always hypervigilant when it came to her, especially when she was a kid. There’s no world where Celine didn’t notice or at least pick up on the fact that something was wrong; Celine would have gotten her into a doctor, or into therapy, or in some kind of treatment if she ever suspected for even one second that Rumi’s mental health was less than perfect, Rumi knows that. If it got in the way of her being an idol and a hunter, Celine would have taken care of it.

How could she be suicidal without being depressed? That’s the way it goes. People don’t just spontaneously choose to commit suicide without a history of depression or some kind of, some kind of general mental struggle. Rumi has been obsessively reading about it, she...

Even if she was both depressed and suicidal—which she still swears up that down that she’s never been—how would going to Celine be considered an attempt? Rumi didn’t do anything to herself. She didn’t try to do anything to herself. If Celine had killed her, which is an insane thought that never would come to fruition, then it would have been murder. Plain and simple. Rumi wouldn’t have had a hand in it beyond telling Celine to do it, but that—that wouldn’t be her killing herself. That would be her being killed. There’s a difference. She didn’t do anything to herself.

Rumi knows it’s meant to be cut and dry. She’s never been depressed or suicidal, and, thus, she didn’t try to commit suicide. She’s been trying to repeat that to herself for days, trying to get it through her head, but it hasn’t managed to stick. She feels like she believes herself less and less the longer she thinks about it, which is—that’s just ridiculous. If she had actually tried to kill herself, wouldn’t she feel something about it? Wouldn’t she feel a certain way? That’s not something you just, what, come back from without any issue. 

But she’s fine. She’s been happy. She’s been really, really happy with Zoey and Mira, and she’s happy to be on a hiatus and to finally get to take a break and go out on real, proper dates with them. She’s been happy. She thinks she’s probably the happiest she’s ever been in her life, and it’s not like she was ever unhappy, or anything, not really, it’s just...she’s happier now. Wouldn’t that be the opposite if she had actually tried to kill herself? Rumi doesn’t think she would be doing as well as she is if she had actually made an attempt on her own life. She doesn’t think that’s something she can just brush off.

No wonder Mira and Zoey are concerned about her. They think she tried to kill herself, and she’s been happier than she has been in years, and she never brought it up or addressed it. Of course they were stressed out of their minds and treating her like she was on the edge; Rumi knows she would have been doing the exact same thing if one of them had...

Her mind floods with noise. If Mira or Zoey had gone to Celine and begged her to kill them, would that be them—?

Rumi crushes that thought as soon as it occurs. She swallows back the dread she suddenly feels, the never-ending swirl of restlessness and anxiety she’s been feeling ever since they had their talk. Zoey and Mira have been nothing but patient and sweet and kind with her, but Rumi can tell they’ve been waiting for her to bring it up again so they can talk about it properly, rather than her freaking out like she did last time. She doesn’t think she can even blame them. If either of them were acting like how she was, she’d do the exact same thing.

She just doesn’t know where to begin, or what they want her to say. She still swears up and down that she didn’t try to kill herself and she means that. Where do they go from there? How are they meant to have a conversation when all of them disagree with what really happened that night? Rumi knows it’s ridiculous, because it should be incredibly obvious and clear and it shouldn’t be something they have to even debate each other on, because she either tried to kill herself or she didn’t. There can’t exactly be a middle ground there.

Rumi is drawn back to the idea of Mira or Zoey being in her position and her being in theirs. She can’t get the thought out of her head in time, and she’s provided with the helpful response that yes, if it had been them, she would think the same thing. If they did exactly the same thing that she did, Rumi would think that they had tried to kill themselves. 

Is it different when it’s you? her mind almost taunts. Rumi wants nothing more than to say yes, it has to be, because if it’s not, then—? If it isn’t different, then she tried to kill herself, and Zoey and Mira are right. But Rumi swears, she’s not...she’s not the kind of person who would. She’s never been depressed and she’s never had issues like this in the past, she’s never been the sort of person who would ever, she’s just...it’s not...it doesn’t make sense for her to have tried to kill herself. 

And she doesn’t even fucking feel any kind of way about it. Every time Rumi makes herself relive the memories of her sinking to her knees and trying to hand off her saingeom to Celine, all she remembers is the exhaustion and dread she felt that night. She remembers how exhausted she had been. She was afraid and she was convinced she was ruining the honmoon and killing the whole world itself just by proxy. She doesn’t feel like she did anything wrong, though, not really. She’s not...she doesn’t feel upset over doing it. She can look back on that memory and feel nothing at all. She remembers how she felt, but she doesn’t feel much of anything.

If she had tried to kill herself, shouldn’t she at least feel something about it?

Rumi doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t know how to talk to Zoey and Mira about this, and she doesn’t know if she actually tried to kill herself or not—which is stupid and ridiculous and she knows that—and she doesn’t even know where to begin. She feels like she’s doing this all wrong. How is she doing this wrong? Where is she meant to go from here? 

She doesn’t have the slightest clue on where to even begin. That almost makes her feel worse than anything else.

Can you try to kill yourself even if you’ve never been depressed? 

Rumi feels like her search history is going to get someone called on her, but she doesn’t know what else to do. She doesn’t want to stress Mira and Zoey out more than she already has, and she doesn’t want to worry them in a different way. She doesn’t think she’s depressed, but if they’re dead serious about her trying to kill herself, then...maybe she can focus on that. Maybe she can focus on what happened rather than the precursor to it, even if it doesn’t make sense in her mind.

Realistically, Rumi knows that it’s, like, possible. You don’t technically have to be depressed to kill yourself, that’s something that anyone can do, but why would they if they weren’t—? Rumi screws up her face and locks her phone, throwing it onto her bed half a second later before the page even really loads. She hates this. She hates how stupid she feels, she hates that she doesn’t get this, and she fucking hates that she doesn’t feel what she swears she’s supposed to feel. That’s the part that’s really been getting her for the last day or so now. 

Why doesn’t she feel bad about it? 

Rumi doesn’t feel apathetic or cold or disinterested, she’s sat down and made herself really focus on everything that she’s actually been feeling, and she’s been met with just...neutrality, maybe? A step below that? It’s not that she doesn’t care, it’s just that it doesn’t bother her. When she thinks about that night, she just remembers how she felt prior to going to Celine. She remembers she felt hopeless, but not hopeless enough to...

Rumi breathes out. Pinpricks of discomfort ghost across her skin. She clenches her jaw as she tries to work that thought out of her head. Did she feel hopeless enough to...try and kill herself? Because...Zoey and Mira weren’t with her and Rumi thought they hated her, and she knew she was tearing the honmoon apart without meaning to. She was scared. She remembers being scared and hurt and hopeless and frustrated, and then she went to Celine because she didn’t know where else to go or what else to do. 

You thought you had to die to fix everything?

She doesn’t know. Maybe? Nothing else she had been doing was working, nothing else was fixing the honmoon, and she certainly wasn’t. She was actively destroying it and she knew that. Maybe she thought that, if she died, the honmoon would be okay and everything would go back to normal, except then she’d be dead. And nothing would be normal and she wouldn’t even have known because she wouldn’t have seen it because she would have been dead.

Rumi hates the way that tastes in her mouth. She hates how heavy it feels around her throat. If she had really tried to kill herself, then wouldn’t she feel the opposite? Shouldn’t she want to die? Isn’t that the whole point? But it’s not, and she knows that, because all she’s been doing has been looking at stories of survivors who said that they didn’t even really want to die, they just wanted the pain to go away or for something to change or...a million other reasons that didn’t focus around death. Some of them wanted to die. Rumi doesn’t think she wanted to die. She just thinks that she probably thought it was her only option. 

Has that been her only option her entire life? Is that why she was so staunchly against decorating or doing anything permanent? She could never see herself getting older, but that was...that’s different. That has to be different. She had other options. She had to turn the honmoon gold and get rid of her patterns, or else—

Or else what? 

Logically, what would have happened if she didn’t do either of those things? Which...she didn’t, the honmoon isn’t gold and she still has her patterns, but she didn’t know either of those things could even happen, and neither did Celine. Rumi assumed that if she didn’t turn the honmoon gold, then she must have failed in some way or another. She did think that when she went to the compound. And the option she chose, after assuming she failed, was to die. 

...Oh.

Oh.

Rumi clamps her hand over her mouth and tries not to throw up.

Rumi spends the rest of her day sandwiched between Zoey and Mira. She tries to apologise a thousand more times, but neither of them let her. She can’t stop thinking about how if it had been them, if they told her they felt the same, if they...

She can barely stand it. So Rumi buries her face in the crook of Zoey’s neck and holds onto Mira as tightly as she can, keeping them both as close to her as physically possible. She doesn’t let herself—or them—move away for hours. It’s so hard for her to wrap her mind around everything, to really parse together how she feels, but she knows she feels nothing but guilt over how much she worried them. If the roles were reversed, Rumi doesn’t know if she’d be able to take it as well as they have.

Rumi holds them and doesn’t let go. It doesn’t silence the noise in her head, but it at least helps dull some of it.

And when she thinks to herself, did I really want to die? Rumi isn’t able to deny it.

Rumi visits the compound the next weekend. 

She bounces on her heels outside the hanok door, hitting her hands to her thighs as she waits for Celine to answer; she had texted, called, and thought about sending an email before Mira and Zoey laughed at her over that last one and told her to just go and talk to her. They then proceeded to add themselves to the trip without asking her, but Rumi guesses she can’t really blame them for it. She did make them sit out in the car for the actual conversation part. She doesn’t...it’s not like she really thinks anything is going to happen. She doesn’t even know if she’ll bring up what she wants to bring up. She just doesn’t want the two of them to worry more than she already knows they do.

It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for the door to swing open. Almost immediately, Celine is ushering Rumi into the hanok and offering her tea or coffee or breakfast, and all Rumi can do is laugh and duck her head at the same time she holds her hands up and murmurs, “Celine, it’s okay. I’m okay. Thank you.”

Celine clearly doesn’t believe her—Rumi sort of hates that that’s a common theme in her life these days—but she relents. She guides Rumi the rest of the way to the kitchen, pausing at the kitchen table. Rumi sighs, but her lips curl up into a sort of half-smile at how obvious Celine is making it that she’d like for Rumi to sit. Rumi eventually settles; as soon as she’s in her chair, Celine turns on her heel and goes back to where she had been standing by the sink, the window wide open, the breeze sending the curtains billowing to the side. 

They’ve never been very good at this, she thinks. 

Rumi asked to talk, Celine agreed. And now what are they doing? This is the same early morning routine they used to have back when Rumi was barely a teenager, where she’d sit out at the kitchen table and read or study while Celine did the dishes and prepped for all three meals of the day. When Rumi got a little older, she would help out after she was done studying for an hour or two. She almost wants to laugh at how quickly they’ve reverted back to this, how neither of them are talking at all. 

Rumi breathes out, stretching her arms across the table in front of her. She glances down to her patterns, watching as they sort of catch in the light, responding back to the sun. Whenever the light passes over them, they glint and glow and get a little brighter, shifting through their hues. 

“Celine,” Rumi starts. She knows Celine won’t go first, especially not when Rumi didn’t tell her what she wanted to talk about. She just...didn’t know how to bring it up. She wanted the option to back out. She knows she needs to ask, though. Just to soothe some of the anxiety in her head. 

Celine hums quietly in response. If Rumi were anyone else, maybe she wouldn’t notice the way Celine’s entire body language shifts to something far more restless and on edge, like she’s waiting for a physical blow. Rumi wonders if she does that, too. Is she doing that right now?

Rumi clears her throat. She takes another second to steel herself before she asks, “Do you, um...did you ever think I was depressed? Like, as a kid? Or maybe when I was older?”

Celine is quiet for a while before she turns her head halfway over her shoulder. Her face is almost impassive, but Rumi can see the small scrunch of her eyebrows. She’s either confused or upset. “Where is this coming from?”

Rumi hesitates. What does she say to that? ‘Because Zoey and Mira are worried I tried to kill myself through you and now I don’t know if they’re right or not’? 

“I was just wondering,” she mumbles instead. Rumi looks away, finding herself intently studying a spot on the wall. 

Celine is still for another beat. She eventually says, “You were a happy child, Rumi.”

That isn’t what I asked, Rumi wants to say. She sits there silently, wondering if this is what Mira and Zoey heard during their conversation. Was Rumi this dismissive about it without meaning to? And she...

Celine raised her. If Celine is being dismissive now, even if Rumi doesn’t think she’s trying to be, then...

Oh. 

Rumi drums her fingers against the table as she thinks. She hates the answer her mind provides her with; if she had been dismissive to Mira and Zoey in the same way Celine is being dismissive to her now, Rumi must have learnt it from her. Celine has not answered her question. Celine is dancing around it, and Rumi knows why she’s doing it, she knows what Celine is really saying—why would you be depressed? And isn’t that the point she’s been trying to prove this whole time? Why would she be? What reason would she have? 

If Zoey and Mira weren’t as insistent as they are, Rumi would mark this off and she would never think about it again. She would push it to the very back of her mind, she wouldn’t have even considered it in the first place, and that would be that. But she holds everything they say and think in the utmost regard, and if they’re insistent and certain and concerned, then Rumi isn’t just going to brush them off, no matter how easy it would be. She’s done with that, and she’s done with lying to them, and she’s just—she’s sick of not being able to know herself entirely because of how much she’s compressed and crammed down. 

Rumi glances over her shoulder, toward the window by the door. She taps her foot against the floor and tunes into the honmoon, feeling Zoey and Mira all around her as soon as she does. She breathes out slowly. “I should probably go soon,” Rumi murmurs. She knows it’s wrong to do, especially since she’s only been here for a few minutes, but she doesn’t want to sit in this kitchen and feel the world close in around her for any longer than she already has.

Celine leans forward over the sink for a second. She turns back to face Rumi after a moment passes, her face still completely impassive. Rumi doesn’t know if she’s ever noticed before just how easy it is for Celine to completely clear her face of any emotion. Rumi knows she must have learnt that from her.

“...Alright, Rumi,” Celine quietly says back. “Thank you for visiting. You’re always welcome here, you know that.”

“Yeah,” Rumi agrees. She moves to stand, pushing the chair back toward the table. “Thank you, um, for having me. I’ll stay for longer next time. Zoey and Mira are just—you know.” Rumi offers up a weak smile. “If I’m not out in the next ten seconds, they’ll probably break down the door.”

Celine lets out a soft huff. “Good. They love you. That’s what I would expect from them.”

Rumi blinks rapidly, but she manages to quickly come back to herself. She ducks her head and smiles a little harder when she says, “Yeah. I love them, too. Um. Bye, Celine.”

“Bye, Rumi. Tell Zoey to drive safe.” Rumi rolls her eyes as she walks to the door, flinching when Celine raises her voice and drawls, “Ryu Rumi.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry!” Rumi laughs. “I’ll text you when I get back home.”

Celine laughs now, low and quiet. “Thank you. Goodbye, Rumi.”

Rumi jogs out of the hanok after that, practically racing out of the clearing to get to Mira and Zoey. She knows there’s no real rush, it’s not like Celine is going to come out and make her stay—god knows neither of them had a good time during that talk—and it’s not as if Rumi is going to change her mind and go back inside to try and push the topic further. That’s just not what they do. Rumi has long since accepted that.

She makes her way back to the car, sliding into the back without saying anything. Both Mira and Zoey immediately pivot in their seats and twist all the way around to look at her, two pairs of eyes staring her down as they very expectantly wait for her to start talking.

Rumi heaves a sigh. She drags her hands down her face, collapses back against her own seat, and mumbles, “Can we order out tonight? And watch something really stupid? So I don’t have to think for, um, five or six hours?”

“Done and done,” Zoey instantly agrees. Rumi almost laughs at how quickly she turns the car on and starts to pull out. “Are we gonna talk about anything now, or no?”

“There’s...not a lot to talk about,” Rumi admits. She pulls her hands away from her face, staring out her window as they drive away from the compound. Her gaze lingers on what little of the graveyard she can just barely make out; if she didn’t know what she was looking for, she doesn’t think she’d ever realise that that’s what it was. 

Mira makes a noise. “You weren’t in there for very long. Was she—?”

“She was just making breakfast,” Rumi says. “And probably lunch. I didn’t stay for any of it, I just...” She shrugs and stares out her window a little harder. The world sort of blurs around her, her head starting to hurt the longer she goes without blinking. “I don’t know. I guess, um, talking to her just...it didn’t really help. It hasn’t really helped,” Rumi admits, quietly laughing after. “It didn’t really help, but, um, I guess I realised a few things.”

“Good things?” Zoey probes. “Bad things? Uh, neutral things leaning on good or bad or maybe both? Something kinda in between? Maybe things?”

Rumi laughs again. She swallows thickly, ignoring the way her eyes start to burn as she wills herself not to cry. “Um. Things, I guess. Can we talk about it later?”

Zoey hums. “Later. What do you want to eat?”

Mira immediately interjects, “I’ll send you a link, there’s this new restaurant that opened pretty close to us. We could probably walk and get if we wanted to. Ru brought it up months ago.”

“Okay,” Zoey says with a snort. “So it’s not a new restaurant.”

“It’s only a few months old,” Mira protests. “Like, three months old. That’s a baby. That’s new.”

“Yeah, but three months isn’t like a fresh baby,” Zoey disagrees. “That’s, like, baby baby, y’know? Like, it’s been around long enough that—”

“What the hell are you even saying to me right now?” Mira demands. 

Rumi laughs. She doesn’t fully choke back her tears, feeling them trailing down her cheeks as soon as she starts to giggle alongside Zoey, but they don’t overwhelm her like she thinks they would have had she been alone. She keeps her face pressed to the glass, watching other cars go by, watching the city, the trees, everything. She listens to Mira and Zoey bickering from up front and does her best to keep herself from being sick. 

Her whole world has been flipped on its axis, and yet it’s still turning. It hasn’t stopped moving. How does she handle any of what’s happened? Any of what she’s realised? 

Rumi still doesn’t know. She knows nothing at all. She feels sick to her stomach and hates how this is the one thing she can’t seem to figure out.

“Am I a bad person for not feeling anything about...” Rumi waves her hand. “The incident?”

That’s what they’ve been calling it, mostly because Zoey and Mira seemed to realise that continuing to go ‘you tried to kill yourself’ wasn’t really working for Rumi. Calling it ‘the incident’ is stupid and it makes Rumi feel ridiculous, but it’s easier to say than ‘my suicide attempt’.

Which is what it probably was. Rumi has spent days reflecting after what Celine said to her, and it feels...obvious, she guesses. She can’t believe all it took was one talk with Celine—effectively the same as looking into a mirror—for her to realise that Zoey and Mira were right, that Rumi was wrong. Celine was so quick to brush it off and ignore the question, and Rumi was doing the same thing, and...that explains a lot about her and the way she’s always been. 

Rumi knows a fraction more than anyone else in the world when it comes to what happened to the Sunlight Sisters, what happened to her parents, what happened to Celine and their third hunter, Kimmy. Celine has still kept a tight hold on what really happened that night, but she’s spilled more and more details as the years have gone by. There was an outbreak in the compound, her mom and dad were killed in the fight, there were...issues...between Celine and Kimmy, Kimmy left, and Celine raised her. Rumi had only been four, and Celine was twenty-four when she was left alone. She was actually a few months younger than Rumi is right now. 

How do you just...deal with that? Rumi remembers thinking Celine always had everything under control when she was young. She still thinks that, honestly. It’s hard not to look at Celine and see how good she is at handling things and making sure nothing goes awry. She’s always been on top of everything, she’s always been good at working toward the goals she’s set for herself without distraction.

And where else would Rumi get that from?

She was raised by Celine. For a good portion of her life, the only person Rumi even knew had been Celine. They spent pretty much every waking moment together, and Rumi was trained by her from the moment the honmoon took her in and made her a hunter. Rumi can look at Celine and it feels the exact same as looking at her own reflection. If Celine, for twenty-four years, hasn’t allowed herself a chance to think too hard about what happened to her or what she’s gone through, then it makes sense that Rumi has emulated her. 

She just doesn’t know what to do from there. She’s able to say the words out loud, or she’s at least able to think them. She...tried to kill herself. Technically. That’s technically what she did even if it’s hard for her to grapple or come to terms with, because Rumi is still convinced that she’s never really been suicidal, and that her feeling nothing at all when it comes to the—the attempt is just another thing that points to her not really being suicidal. 

Mira and Zoey both stop what they’re doing. Rumi feels a little bad, because they had been play fighting on the couch before she came out of her room and asked, but she knows they’d much rather her interrupt than to sit and stew on it. 

“Why would you be a bad person, Ru?” Zoey asks. Rumi can’t help but smile as she detangles from Mira, managing to get her arm out from under Mira’s legs after a couple of seconds. “Seriously. Why would that make you a bad person?”

Rumi gives a halfhearted shrug, glancing down to her feet. “I don’t know. It just feels like, you know. I should feel something about it. But I don’t. And, and I mean, I know I hurt you, and—”

Mira holds up a hand, effectively interrupting her immediately. “Rumi, you didn’t try to hurt us on purpose. You didn’t even know it would. You don’t have to feel bad just because we feel bad about it. That’s not how that works. You know that.”

Rumi shifts on her feet. “I guess.”

“It’s a complicated thing,” Zoey offers. She gives Rumi a soft smile, tipping her head to the side. “I think you—um, I think you’re being really strict on yourself about literally all of this. Like, how you’re supposed to feel, stuff like that. But I don’t think you have to feel any kinda way, y’know? I think it’s different for everyone.”

“...Yeah, probably,” Rumi mumbles. “I just feel like I should...feel worse. But I don’t. I don’t, um, I don’t really feel anything. Like, I don’t feel bad or upset or like it even really happened, and I just, I don’t...”

“Rumi,” Mira interrupts her again. Rumi gives her an incredibly unimpressed look, and Mira just laughs and holds up her hands before she continues, “You’re freaking yourself out, Ru.”

“I’m not,” Rumi disagrees, sort of petulantly. “I’m not freaked out.”

Zoey snorts this time. “I can see you shaking over there, babe. You’re kinda freaking out. Like, just a little. Do you want to sit down?” she asks, inclining her head toward the couch, then to the coffee table after a second. “You don’t have to stand there.”

Rumi rolls her eyes, ducking her head when she smiles. She knows Zoey doesn’t mean it like that, but she can hear the quiet exasperation in her voice. She eventually heaves a long, defeated sigh and trudges over to plant herself on the very edge of the coffee table, resting her face in her hands as she hunches forward. Mira instantly crinkles her nose and starts glaring at her, and Rumi can’t help the way she grins. She relents, sitting up properly after another second.

They’re all quiet for a few moments. Rumi doesn’t know what more to say that won’t get her shut down as soon as she opens her mouth; she is sorry and she does feel bad—what else is she supposed to feel or say? She tried to do something awful and it hurt Mira and Zoey more than it hurt her, shouldn’t she at least feel a little bad about the...action...itself? Because she doesn’t. Rumi doesn’t feel bad about it at all. She only feels bad that she hurt Mira and Zoey through it. 

Rumi clears her throat, looking down to the floor. “It doesn’t feel like...a big deal, I guess. And—and I don’t mean that it wasn’t, it just, it feels like nothing to me. Like, it happened, sure, yeah, but it doesn’t feel like it really did anything to me. And I don’t think it did,” she admits, looking back up to them now. “I’ve been really thinking about it, and I don’t feel any different or...worse, or like I want to do it again, or that I even did it in the first place. It just sort of feels like...” Rumi shrugs. “Like, ‘yeah, that happened’. Does that make sense?”

Zoey is the first to nod. “Yeah, it does. Also, you didn’t even think it was, uh.” She waves her hand, looking a little sheepish. “That until we brought it up and you talked to Celine. So. I think that makes sense, right? That it’s not a big deal for you? Because you—you’d tell us if it was, right? If it actually made you feel...”

“Of course I would,” Rumi quickly rushes out. “Of course I would, I promise.”

Mira gives a content sort of hum. “Then you don’t have anything to feel bad about, Rumi. I mean, I...okay, um.” Mira suddenly fidgets back and forth, messing with her hands before she mumbles, “When I was a teenager, I thought about it. You know. Killing myself. But not, like, it wasn’t a huge thing, or whatever. It was just, like, I thought about it. Like, if I was walking somewhere and there was a car, I wouldn’t have moved, you know? And I literally only still think about it because I feel stupid, because I met you guys...” Mira shrugs. “A few months later?”

Rumi stares at her a little harder. She doesn’t need to look to know Zoey is doing the exact same thing. And she knows that Zoey is looking at Mira for partially different reasons than why Rumi is looking at her, but all Rumi can think is, oh.

Because, at any point in her life, if there was a chance she was going to die, Rumi is realising that she doesn’t think she would have fought it very hard. She never would have actively tried to kill herself. But if she had gotten attacked by demons and got overwhelmed, or if she somehow managed to get close to death in any other way, she doesn’t think she would have really...

“Me too,” Rumi admits, quietly. “I think...I think I was like that, too. But not anymore.”

She’s more sure of that than anything else; not anymore, not after them, not with them, not now. Not anymore.

Zoey makes a noise before she says, “Okay, I mean, I guess, like...me too? But I was, like, seven. How old were you guys? Teenagers? Mira, you were—what, seventeen?”

“Seven?” Mira demands back. “That’s way worse, what the hell, Zoey?”

“What?” Zoey blinks at her. “No, yours is—okay, being seven was just, that’s, that’s what kids do, right? Or think? Like, yeah, ‘cause I was seven and didn’t understand what that actually meant, that’s way different than—”

“Okay, most seven year olds don’t even think about dying at all,” Mira interjects with an incredibly pointed look. 

Zoey just purses her lips and shrugs. “I guess I was ahead of the curve?”

“Do not say that.”

Rumi buries her face into her hands the longer they bicker back and forth, because she’s also pretty sure she felt the same way when she was seven, if not younger. Which ties in perfectly to why she couldn’t see herself in the future, why she never bothered decorating or making long-term plans, why she didn’t...

How did she miss this? How did she overlook all of this? How is it only just now that she’s realising how much of her life has been fucked up and not normal? Or, well, kind of normal? Because both Mira and Zoey have experienced it too, but that’s—that’s not good! At all! That’s actually super bad! And Rumi had no idea either of them ever struggled with something like that, which makes her feel a million times worse, because this whole time she’s been trying to pound it into her head that she couldn’t have been suicidal because she wasn’t depressed and didn’t hit all the markers, but what about Mira and Zoey? Would she say that to them? No, obviously not.

Rumi laughs between her fingers. She squeezes her eyes shut and mumbles, “I can’t believe we made it this far.”

It’s a little funny how both Mira and Zoey stop arguing and turn to look at her, their expressions softening almost immediately. Rumi laughs again and pushes herself off the coffee table, stumbling forward until she collapses into the couch and starts screaming into the cushions.

It’s even funnier to her how Mira instantly puts a hand on her back and how Zoey starts rubbing her hands up and down Rumi’s arms in an attempt to soothe her. Rumi groans, pulling back with a frustrated noise. She grabs Zoey by the collar of her shirt before she whirls around and plants her head to Mira’s shoulder, miserably muttering, “I don’t want to be a Celine clone. How do I not end up like her? I-I love her, but I can’t do that, how do I not do that?”

Zoey makes a noise that sounds incredibly close to a laugh before she soothes, “Babe, you’re nothing like Celine when it comes to, uh, this. Or, well—”

“Don’t,” Mira warns. 

“You’re a little like Celine,” Zoey presses. “But not really! Because she would literally never talk about this or even, like, think about it. You’re already not being like Celine by talking about it. And you have us,” she adds. “We wouldn’t let you ignore this, Rumi. I promise.”

Rumi lets out a shaky breath into the crook of Mira’s neck, nodding pathetically. “...Okay. Okay, thank you. Sorry. I just...” She swallows. “I didn’t even—realise any of this. If you didn’t bring it up, I never would have...I never would have known. Or realised, I guess. And that probably would have gone on for forever, and it probably would have been really bad, and I don’t want it to be like that.”

Mira’s hand is in her hair a second later, nails scratching against her scalp. “But it didn’t go on forever,” she says. “We talked about it, we’re talking right now. None of that ever happened. You don’t have anything to worry about, Ru. Stop creating narratives.”

Zoey laughs outright this time. Rumi can feel her shove Mira back, but it isn’t enough for her to be jostled at all. “Don’t be mean to her! I mean, Mira’s right, babe, you’re totally creating narratives, but still! It didn’t happen like that! So we’re okay. Cool?”

Rumi smiles even despite herself. She nods again the best she’s able to, eventually agreeing, “Yeah. Cool.”

She lets herself fall into both of them again, just as she always has, as she always will. Rumi lets them hold her and she holds them back. Her world feels less like it’s being ripped apart, and the idea of what she did no longer feels as pressing. It sort of fades somewhere to the back of her mind; Rumi is far too focused on how much she loves Mira and Zoey and how she knows they love her back to pay any attention to anything else.

Rumi breathes out and breathes them in, and she sinks into the safety net they’ve always had out for her. 

They talk about it more. Sometimes they go for weeks without so much as bringing it up. Sometimes Rumi can’t get it out of her head that she tried to kill herself; sometimes it’s easy for her to move past, sometimes it makes her feel sick to her stomach. Weeks turn into months turn into the better part of a year, if not just over. The world keeps turning and it never stops. Rumi is alive despite how close she came to death. 

It’s hard to fully reconcile with. For as genuine as she was and is about not feeling particularly strongly about it, there are days where she’s hit with the realisation that she tried to kill herself and that she, arguably, probably wanted to die for longer than she ever knew. She’ll be doing the dishes, or she’ll be listening to Zoey, or she’ll hear Mira singing from the next room over, and she’s hit with the knowledge that she almost missed this. She almost never had this. Even though she knew Celine would have never actually hurt her, she still...what if something went wrong? Rumi could have died. She could have died, and none of this would have happened.

That’s the part that gets to her above all else. The idea of being gone and not having Mira and Zoey with her is enough to make her sick, even if she guesses she wouldn’t technically know in the end. She can’t imagine what they would do without her or what would happen to the two of them. She can’t imagine living without one of them if they had done what she was trying to do. The hardest part of what she did is being forced to realise just how close she was to losing all of this. 

Rumi talks it through with Mira and Zoey more than a thousand times. Sometimes they’re the ones who start the conversations. Sometimes they talk about how both Mira and Zoey felt the same way as her when they were kids, and Rumi feels especially ridiculous for that. Yeah, of course none of them noticed—literally all three of them were going through the same thing to effectively the same extent, it’s no wonder Rumi fell through the cracks, because both Mira and Zoey also fell through the cracks. 

Rumi is endlessly grateful that they still managed to fall into each other rather than hitting the ground.

She stands on her terrace, leaning over the edge with her arms thrown across the railing as she watches the sky. It’s early in the morning, early enough that she’s the only one awake. Rumi is sure that Zoey and Mira will wake up soon; she’s never been able to fully get them onto her schedule, especially not now that they’re still on hiatus, but she’s been trying to coax them into getting up earlier just to appease her. She’s also just as sure that they’ll sleep for another hour, probably. They were up late.

She doesn’t mind. Rumi turns her head over her shoulder, her whole body lighting up as she watches them in her bed, intertwined and cuddled up together. It never fails to make her giddy and take her breath from her when she looks at them like this. Zoey and Mira fit so well together, slotting in perfectly. It steals all the air from her lungs when she gets to be reminded that she has both of them, that both of them are hers, that she’s theirs and that that’s how it’ll always be. Rumi doesn’t understand how she managed to get so lucky, but she’s hardly complaining,

Rumi smiles and looks back to the sky. She watches the birds fly by and feels the breeze on her face. She closes her eyes and tips her head up just a little, listening to the honmoon as it trills and warbles around her. It’s sort of quiet, like it’s trying to not wake up Mira and Zoey. Rumi turns around and crouches down, gently setting her hand to her terrace. The honmoon immediately wraps around her fingers and starts trailing up her arms, buzzing as it happily sings at her.

She glances toward her plants. She’s been trying to show Zoey and Mira them more often, though both of them are dead petrified of fucking them up. Rumi has laughed at the two of them more times than she can count for that; she loves her plants and she loves how long she’s had most of them, but she loves Zoey and Mira infinitely more than her collection of succulents. Even if they did manage to kill every last one of her plants by accident, she’d still try to get them out here to help her more often. 

She just likes spending time with them. Rumi knows it’s sort of ridiculous how even now she’s still desperate to spend all of her time with them, but she can’t help it. She knows it’s especially ridiculous, given how that’s pretty much all they’ve been doing since they’ve been on their hiatus, but...still. She loves them. Rumi loves them so much, more than absolutely anything in the world, and she can’t imagine herself without them.

Rumi breathes out. She nearly topples over when she hears the sliding glass door open, eyes flitting up to meet Mira’s almost within the same second. Mira just smiles at her, head tipped to the side as she makes a vague gesture out toward her. After another beat, Rumi realises that Zoey is shambling toward them, clearly still half-asleep.

“Hi,” Rumi whispers, the word catching in her throat. They’re both so beautiful. Rumi swears she could stare at the two of them forever if they let her. That’s been her plan for the last eight years, at least. 

“Hi, Ru,” Mira murmurs back. She fully comes out to the terrace, sitting down about a pace away from her. In the same breath, Zoey stumbles out and flops down next to Mira, throwing her head on her shoulder as she lowly grumbles, something about how ‘fucked up and evil’ it is for her to be awake right now.

Rumi laughs at the sight of both of them, pressed together and intertwined even now, and feels nothing but warmth and adoration and fondness deep in her chest. She scoots closer to press her knees to Mira’s, reaching out to take Zoey’s hands in her own. She feels a little ridiculous when Mira grabs at her arms, as Zoey hooks a leg over Rumi’s lap, because can they really not be touching for one second? But Rumi isn’t protesting and arguably thinks they need to touch her more and that she needs to touch them more, so she happily lets them tangle themselves up with her.

Rumi squeezes Zoey’s hand. “Good morning, Zo. You guys didn’t have to—”

“We’re already up,” Mira interrupts. “The honmoon started bothering me.”

“What?” Rumi demands. She scowls down at the glowing ripples all around them, unable to bite back her bark of laughter in time when it sheepishly ebbs away from her like a guilty animal. “It was being quiet with me!”

Zoey lets out a noise of disagreement. “It was pretty much singing in my ear,” she mutters. “‘Cause it hates me crazy style.”

Mira snorts. “Yeah, that’s totally it. No other reason.”

“No other reason,” Rumi solemnly agrees. She breaks out into a grin at the scathing glare Zoey shoots her way, laughing when Zoey wriggles and twists and has to practically unravel herself from both of them so she can glare at Mira, too. She manages in the end, impressively enough.

They stay like that for a while—Rumi with her back against the terrace railing, Mira and Zoey across from her. She doesn’t pretend like she’s not looking at them, and they don’t pretend much, either. Rumi traces the curve of Zoey’s jaw and the freckles that inch down toward her neck, lingers on the little wrinkles at the corners of Mira’s eyes that she’s never been able to stop kissing. She’s rendered completely breathless. Rumi still doesn’t know how they ever went even a few months without being in love with each other so openly. She can barely imagine a time where she felt like she had to hide her adoration for either of them. 

Rumi lets out a sigh, her whole body settling and relaxing completely. “I love you,” she says, the words stolen from the back of her throat. “Both of you. More than anything.”

“I love you more,” Mira immediately says back. Her eyes sparkle as her lips curve up into a soft grin, clearly challenging.

“I love you both most,” Zoey counters. And before Mira specifically can pick a fight, Zoey throws her hand over her mouth and lunges forward to—oh. Rumi giggles against her lips, happily tangling her hands in the hem of Zoey’s shirt as she’s kissed utterly senseless. 

Who is she to argue with either of them, really? Rumi is very confident and very sure that she loves them most, because how could anything else ever compare to how much she loves them? But she’s more than happy to let both of them have their win—Zoey this time around—because she knows it makes them happy, and she loves them most, so...it’s an easy problem to solve. 

Rumi watches in a bit of a daze as Zoey pulls back and moves her hand off of Mira’s mouth, kissing her right after. She grins and props her head up against her knuckles, beaming so hard it leaves her face hurting as she watches the two of them. She’s left completely dizzy by the time Zoey moves away, and she barely hears it when Zoey announces, “So there.”

Mira laughs, dropping her head. Rumi can see the way she chews on her lower lip—how she always does when she’s nervous or embarrassed—and mumbles, “...Yeah, whatever. But only because I love you most.”

“I’ll kill you,” Zoey threatens with a giggle. “Why’re you so competitive, huh? It’s so early in the morning. It’s way too early for you to be doing this, babe. How about we all go back inside and sleep for another five hours? That sounds really nice. Okay, cool. Good talk. Let’s—oh, you suck!”

Rumi breaks out into wild laughter of her own when Mira wraps her arms around Zoey’s waist and tugs her right back down. Rumi immediately joins in, practically throwing herself across Zoey’s lap. She hooks one arm around Zoey’s back and stretches out so she can set her chin on Mira’s knee. She reaches for Mira’s hand with her other arm, running her thumb across Mira’s knuckles.

She murmurs, “Ten more minutes? I’ll make breakfast.”

“I can make breakfast,” Mira disagrees. 

“Wow, you’re both such gentlemen,” Zoey teases. Rumi is about to pick a fight back with her, but that urge drains right out of her once Zoey starts threading her fingers through her hair, and Rumi is helpless but to melt into both her and Mira’s laps. “Let me take care of you guys. You’re both gonna sit on that couch and be comfortable until I tell you to move. You wanna know why? ‘Cause—”

“Zoey,” Rumi laughs. She grins and rolls her eyes, adds, “Have you ever considered that I love you most because I’m letting you?”

“Because you’re a control freak?” Mira asks. Her tone is so close to being sweet, which immediately makes the insult a thousand times worse. Rumi raises her head to scowl at her, though she doubts it comes across very threateningly. It’s hard for her to feel anything other than pure contentment when Zoey has her hand in her hair.

Zoey giggles. “Not very kind of you, Mir.”

Mira just hums, sounding beyond pleased with herself. Rumi is sure she is. “She can take it. She could move if she wanted to.

Rumi rolls her eyes again. “I’m right here.”

“Really?” Mira asks, feigning shock. “I had no idea.”

“Shut up,” Rumi mumbles into her knee with a soft laugh. “You’re so mean to me. I love you so much.”

Mira’s fingers brush against her face, tracing along her jaw before she whispers, “I love you too, Ru. Were you just hanging out here? Before us?”

Rumi hums her response. “Yeah. It was nice out. I didn’t want to wake you up or just, like, open the door, so...” Rumi can’t really shrug, but she makes her best attempt. “It was so nice. It’s still really nice. It’s better,” she amends. “Now that you’re both out here.”

Zoey kisses the top of her head, Rumi can just barely feel the brush of her lips. “You’re so sweet. It is really nice.”

Rumi smiles harder than she had been. She squeezes her eyes shut, feeling nothing but fondness for both of them. She genuinely doesn’t think she could ever put it into words just how much she loves them, how much they both mean to her. How could she? Where would she even begin? Rumi loves them beyond words, beyond all other human experiences. 

They stay out for longer than ten minutes. It must be closer to half an hour before Mira finally complains about being uncomfortable, and then they’re shambling back inside. It’s a long, arduous process to get out of Rumi’s bedroom and out into the living room, let alone into the kitchen, but they eventually manage. Rumi happily settles on their countertop to watch as Zoey makes breakfast, hooking her legs around Mira’s waist to trap her there. Largely for selfish reasons, like to kiss her and to get to watch Zoey kiss her, too.

Rumi spends her morning in love, happier than she’s ever been, and she spends every last second watching Mira and Zoey—she falls in love with them no less than a thousand times within the first hour of their morning alone, if not more.

There’s nothing special about today. They’ve spent almost a full year like this, it’s become so routine to spend their time like this now. It’s more expected than it isn’t. 

Rumi’s world didn’t end sometime in July. She sits on the countertop and laughs and listens to Mira and Zoey as they talk to each other and loop her into the conversation. She kisses Zoey when she passes her by, and she presses endless kisses to the side of Mira’s cheek from where she has her trapped. Rumi feels the sun on her skin and can’t take her eyes off of either of them for even a second.

The world has continued to spin and it will continue like that for the rest of time. Rumi plans on spending the rest of her life just like this, with them, and she’ll treasure every last moment of every last day until the day she dies. 

But that day won’t come for a very long time. And before then, Rumi plans on decorating her room.