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“Whoa! How are you doing that?”
Celine snapped her head up from where it had been bent over what she hoped were the beginnings of a hit song. Sihyeon, sprawled on her stomach at the foot of Celine’s bed, had paused midway through re-loading film into the Kodak to stare at her. She sat a little straighter against the headboard. A fortnight into their training to be the next generation of Hunters had been sufficient for her bed to basically become a common area, but not for her to become accustomed to Sihyeon and her...exuberance. “Doing what?”
“That thing with your tongue.” Mi-Yeong, responsible with her instruments if nothing else, leaned the guitar she'd been noodling about with up against the bed and swung her legs up so her nightgown pooled in her lap (two weeks had also been long enough to ascertain that Mi liked her nightgowns the way she did her skirts: short. Celine wasn't sure how she felt about that, because while they looked good on Mi, they made her feel...odd). In illustration she stuck out her own tongue, then crossed her eyes as she worked her lips and tried to mimic whatever Celine had been doing.
“No, it was more like-“ Sihyeon abandoned her sentence in favor of a demonstration of her own that, judging by the adorable way Mi wrinkled her nose, was a similarly poor impression. (wait, ‘adorable?’ Where did that- no, no, one mystery at a time).
“You gotta curve it more at the sides...” Mi-Yeong tried again to recreate the scintillating oral phenomenon, now using her fingers to curl the edges of her tongue upward. “ ‘ike ‘is...”
Celine blinked, taking a moment to try and figure out just what exactly the girls were getting at, then gasped, slamming a hand over her mouth.
Oh.
That.
It was stupid. Really, Celine was mildly embarrassed she could do it at all. She would have happily traded it for literally any other pointless party-trick. But, regretfully, that was not how genetics worked.
It was part of her birthright: Eomma’s austere features that were beautiful in their severity and Appa’s relentless drive to be better than his best existing alongside the incongruous ability to roll her tongue.
Again, it was stupid. And pointless. And ridiculous. And stupid enough to warrant using that word a third time. Appa and Eomma had agreed, and worked hard to break her of the habit of rolling her tongue while writing.
Apparently, they had not been as successful as she’d thought.
Great.
She cleared her throat, tentatively lowering the hand. Time for some damage control. “Mianhae. I...thought I’d broken that habit.”
They still stared, unblinking, Sihyeon with her tongue hanging out of her mouth. Maybe redirection? “So, um, any thoughts on the chorus?” Celine started paging through the notebook again. “I was thinking something like-“
“Holy crap that’s wild!!!” Sihyeon fairly shrieked.
Celine's hand froze. “That’s not a very good chorus.”
“No, that tongue thing!” Sihyeon bounced up from her belly to her knees, jostling the bed and sending the Kodak bouncing across the coverlet; Mi reached down to steady the guitar. “Daebek! I didn’t even know people could do that! It’s awesome!
It was what?
Mi nodded, smile lighting something in Celine’s chest (again, one mystery at a time). “It’s, like, weird, but in a really cool way!”
“Wish I could do that.” Sihyeon sighed. “All I can do is-“
“GAH!!!” Celine and Mi recoiled as Sihyeon bent her fingers back in a way that, frankly, human fingers should not be able to accomplish. Sihyeon giggled devilishly, clearly used to this reaction to her gift of double-joints and very much enjoying it.
”Sihyeon!” Mi half-snapped, half-giggled. “Cut that out!”
”You don’t think this is cool in a weird way?” Sihyeon teased, edging closer.
”No!” Mi yelped as she jerked away, bumping into Celine, the heat from her body seeming to linger on the hip she nudged. “Just weird!”
”Celiiiiiiiiiiine?” Sihyeon drew out her name and wiggled closer in a way that was sufficiently ridiculous that Celine found herself loosing a sputtering giggle.
”Ha! Got you to laugh!” Sihyeon shot up, setting her fingers to rights and pumping her fists in the air. "I have achieved the impossible!"
Biting her cheek lest she add laurels to Sihyeon's 'victory,' Celine rolled her eyes as Mi applauded. "Fine. Now can we please get back to the song?”
Mi and Sihyeon exchanged a conspiring look. “Only if you do that tongue thing again.”
Well, this songwriting session was clearly derailed.
Celine frowned. “No.”
“Aw, come on Cece!” Mi reached over to grab Celine’s foot and shake it as she buried her nose back in the notebook. “Please?”
Celine yanked her foot out of Mi’s grasp and shoved her nose deeper to hide a flush (she really needed to figure out how to control that before she turned red as a stoplight during an interview just because Mi brushed her elbow or something). “No.”
“Why not?”
Celine huffed, slumping back against the headboard. They weren't going to let this go… “Because." Lifting her chin, she assumed Eomma's tone, the one that brooked no disagreement as it stiffened her spine and sanded her edges so only the image of outward perfection remained. "It’s ridiculous.“
“So?” Sihyeon scoffed, thoroughly unfazed.
Celine tried not to look as incredulous as she felt. Leave it to Sihyeon to treat Eomma's dictates as if they were sawdust rather than teak. “So we’re here to be Hunters and Idols, and-“
“-And we are literally in your room in our PJs.” Sihyeon poked at the leg of Celine's pajama pants, accentuating her point with pilling flannel and faded cartoon ponies that Celine knew she was too old for, but, well, they were comfortable.
“Not very Idol-like right now." Mi flopped down onto her back, smiling upside-down at Celine and speaking in a lilting singsong that traipsed through the room like sunbeams and hummed pleasantly in her chest.
A good point.
Still…
Pajamas or not, she still had an image to maintain, one that had been ingrained into her long before she'd been scouted and selected for the Sunlight Sisters. She needed to be professional, pressed, perfect no matter the audience; no matter if it was just for herself; no matter if it was just for Mi and Sihyeon. Letting that carefully cultivated mien slip was not an option. For that would be to fail, and she could not be a failure.
What would be left of her if she was?
"Cece." Mi rolled over and propped herself on her elbows, staring earnestly at Celine. Her breath caught in her lungs, arrested; in two weeks, she hadn't noticed how soft Mi's eyes could be. “You can loosen up,” she smiled (oh, that smile…) and gave a slight shrug, the sleeve of her nightgown slipping down her shoulder in a way that had the flush threatening to return and sent the night simmering (…on second thought, perhaps some mysteries were best left unexplored). “I know we have a lot riding on us, but it's just the three of us right now. We can let loose a little. No one will ever know. Just you and me-" she paused to flash a vixen's grin as she tilted her head towards Sihyeon- "and Sihyeon's freaky fingers."
“Hey!”
Celine rescued the Kodak from being bounced to the floor as said ‘freaky fingers’ avenged themselves by tickling the daylights out of Mi and launching a tempest on the mattress that sent the guitar propped against it jiggling with chuckles of its own. The first flutterings of a smile tugged at her lips.
”Don’t idle, Celine.” Appa’s voice drifted from the back of her mind, like smoke on the breeze. "You're better than that, Celine." The memory of Eomma's pinching fingers hissed beneath her skin.
She probably should go somewhere else and work on those lyrics. Live up to the expectations of her parents and mentor and self. But the air around her, always so full of tension, seemed to ease in the face of Sihyeon and Mi's fooling around, and some of the stress of expectations and duties and being worthy of all this- the prestige of an Idol, the honor of a Hunter- leeched away, sopped up by Sihyeon’s brash laughter and Mi’s giggling smiles.
She hadn’t thought people could do that, make life feel like it weighed less on your shoulders even as the world began to press harder and demand more. Like it was...acceptable to not force herself into perfection all the time, or at least when it was just the three of them.
And to look ridiculous, like the girls sprawled in breathless truce on the bed before her.
Celine chuckled, then stuck her tongue out, lips pursed so the edges rolled up toward each other forming a tube.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Not that the girls cared. Mi and Sihyeon erupted into a chorus of delighted squeals and shudders and “how are you doing that?”, so much like the first tingle of spring sunshine on her skin after desolate winter that Celine soon found herself laughing along.
Sihyeon, of course, launched into another double-jointed impossibility to compete, necessitating a resurgence of the earlier tickle war, this time two against one.
The notebook was splayed on the floor next to the miraculously-upright guitar when they at last stopped to catch their breath, flopped on their backs across the mattress. Beneath the sounds of their panting Celine could just make out the thrum of the Honmoon vibrating around them. She was still learning to read it, to keep it, to ply its strands, but sensing was getting easier, slowly, and in this moment it felt…contented.
For once, she could say she knew the feeling.
“Aw, you all look so cute!”
Celine smiled, wider than usual, as Zoey gushed over the photo album splayed across Rumi’s lap. “Thank you, Zoey.”
Mira peered at the pages over Rumi's other shoulder, a wry grin curving her lips. “Yeah. But not as cute as us.”
“Mira!” Rumi gave her a shove that held more jest than reprimand, patterns flashing in glorious iridescence as they caught the light. “It’s not a competition!”
“Nope. Because we have Zoey.”
Rumi considered Huntr/x's famously adorable maknae. "Fair point."
From where she was seated on the steps of the porch, Celine leaned back against the sun-warmed wood, basking in the sound of the girls’ good-natured bickering as Zoey, ever the Sunlight Sisters devotee, valiantly defended the cuteness of Sihyeon against the combined efforts of Mira and Rumi, who insisted that humility only made their own maknae that much cuter (a losing battle, in Celine's mind; she loved Sihyeon, but there really was no contest).
She had missed this.
It had been a long, slow, difficult road rebuilding her relationship with each of the Huntr/x girls after the truth about Rumi's heritage came to light; at times she’d thought she may have lost them for good (or at the very least Mira, who hated as deeply as she loved). The text messages she'd ventured had gone unanswered, the emails unread, the few phone calls she had dared to attempt had been permitted to go to voicemail (well, the ones to Rumi and Zoey; she suspected Mira had flat-out blocked her number). The sole time she'd managed to talk to the girls the call had ended with her feeling like she'd been impaled by gok-do, shin-kal, and saingeom all at once and all in different, damaging way.
So she'd followed the girls' lead and kept things strictly professional, letting Bobby relay her messages to them and vice versa (he really was a lifesaver). It was what they wanted- needed- but knowing that did not make the months that slipped by any warmer even as flowers blossomed and leaves sprung afresh from boughs. Or the regret and guilt piercing her chest any less sharp.
But then seasons had turned; there was a hesitant text from Rumi on her phone, a cautious request, and Life began anew.
So now here they were, her and her Hunter/x girls, on a beautiful summer's day, the Honmoon whole and sparkling above as they enjoyed one another’s company like- dare she say it- family.
(she had missed that, too; having one)
For this visit, she’d gotten out some photo albums filled with candid shots of her and Mi and Sihyeon that the paparazzi would have killed for, ones even Rumi hadn't seen. For a long time the memories pressed between the covers like long-dead flowers had been too...painful for her to want to revisit. But part of treading that long and winding road had been addressing other wounds, older ones that she hadn’t realized had never fully healed. She had finally found it in her to give herself permission to grieve her Hunter Sisters and was now ready to indulge an old, old request of Rumi and, later, Zoey: to talk about Mi and Sihyeon not as Hunters or Idols but the other two-thirds of her soul.
And like the ones of a different ilk her group once released, the albums were a hit. Each turn of the page brought a fresh round of smiles and exclamations over hairstyles and outfits and antics captured by the old Kodak that devoured film like the girls did kimbap, Celine readily sharing the stories behind every one. It was cathartic, in a way she hadn't fully anticipated. Reliving the memories behind the pictures made her almost feel like Mi and Sihyeon were still here, beside her, saying-
“Whoa! Is that really you, Celine?”
“Hmm?” Celine pulled herself back to the present, sun and songbirds and the whispering susurrations of wind chimes on the breeze. Mira had the album now, turned to face her mentor, slender finger planted on one particular photo.
Celine leaned closer...and slapped a hand over her mouth.
Oh.
Her and Mi and Sihyeon, flopped on a bed that had become a common area in a fortnight, wearing their pajamas and laughing up at the Kodak, the latter two bandmates making faces for the camera as if trying to outdo the ridiculousness displayed by Celine, smugly rolling her tongue.
They had never meant anyone else to see that…
“Yes,” Celine sighed, more sheepish than she would have liked as she rubbed the back of her neck with an abashed hand (promising no more secrets had its downsides). “Back before our debut.”
"Lemme see!" Mira relinquished the album to Zoey. Immediately she whipped her gaze from photo to Celine and back, eyes wide. "…Wow." (she could have maybe pictured Mi-Yeong doing that; definitely Sihyeon. But Celine…nope. No, this was no on her bingo card).
Rumi's brow creased with the effort of reconciling the elegant and sober Celine we knew with the polar opposite in the photo. "I’ve never seen you do that." Then, before Celine could explain about bad habits she had finally managed to kick: “Do you think you still can?”
"Well, it's genetic," Celine hummed thoughtfully, eyes tracing along the Honmoon. "So probably."
All three girls shared a look, and Celine knew exactly what was coming.
Honestly, a part of her had been hoping they'd ask.
For one glorious moment the photo came alive again as the girls burst into peals of shrieking laughter at the sight of their mentor rolling her tongue with that same ridiculous expression from the photo.
And beneath the contented hum of the Honmoon, she swore she heard Mi and Sihyeon laughing along.