Chapter Text
0.
A clang rings throughout the office. There’s a constant buzzing of the printer, and the temperature of the room is almost scalding. It doesn’t help that it’s humid, either. The office is in shambles, like a town just got wiped out. All the workers slumped over their desks and chairs, practically melded to their cubicles. A ghost town—a beautiful graveyard of minimum wage workers oppressed by the broken AC of the mail office. No one spoke. The heat took away all the words from their tongues, weighed down with sweat and exhaustion. Rumi, amongst the metaphorical dead, is fanning herself while slumped over her desk. When the door slams open, and she finishes her fanning and leans back against her office chair—note, the ignored almost fall—she looks up from her hell. Albeit slowly.
“Good news,” Mystery began, and Rumi almost started cheering despite Mystery not having said anything yet. “We’re getting the AC fixed later today. Three cheers for Romance, everyone.” Mystery was greeted with loud applause throughout the office—a rocket of papers and letters shot up from different cubicles. Rumi would’ve joined, but she stayed melted in her chair.
Heat was suffocating around her—enveloping her in its warm embrace. If she were to die now, she wouldn’t even fight it. The humidity was so crushing that she could barely lift her fingers.
“Bad news,” Mystery continued. The office quieted. A standstill. “We got a message from the central office. We’re adding another area code to our books. That means more mail, people.”
There was a raucous cry of boos.
“Ignoring that, that also means we’re getting a raise. Five cheers for Bobby, and his sacrifice, because Celine had torn him a new one.” There was a solemn vigil held, then flash!
A stunning rise in volume!
Everyone jumped from their cubicles. The workers cheered. Those completely overwhelmed with their joy hugged each other.
“However, it’s the streets of Myeongdeong.”
Everyone fell to their knees. Rumi remained limp on her chair, ruminating.
Jinu poked her from the side. “Looks like it's the two of us. Just got an email from Celine that we’re in charge of one of the streets. Though I’m assuming that Abby also has the same route.”
“I want to die,” Rumi responds.
“Maybe we can get him to come with us on our route?” Jinu completely ignores Rumi’s despondent reply.
And Rumi ignores Jinu in turn.
Rumi peers at her monitor. Unread email from Celine. Spam mail—no, she does not want to use her 20% discount on exclusive promo deals. More unread emails from Celine. Unread text message from her mom on her phone. Another unread email from Celine.
She taps her fingers on the table, peeling herself from the back of her office chair and grimacing at the sticky sound.
“Five minutes till showtime.” Jinu grins at her, getting up and bringing Rumi’s water bottle with him. Probably refilling it. Probably leaving it in the mailcar to force Rumi to get in the car.
She opens one of Celine’s emails.
HELLO, MY STEPDAUGHTER.
I AM EMAILING YOU ON OUR WORK EMAIL BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT ANSWERING YOUR MOTHER’S PHONE.
PLEASE COME HOME FOR FAMILY DINNER. VERY IMPORTANT.
WITH LOVE,
CELINE
Sent from an iPhone
Rumi chooses not to respond.
She gets up from her seat with an exaggerated stretch and a subsequent yawn, wiping sweat from her brow as she stares at her mailwoman cap blinking at her from her desk. She picks it up with great difficulty, setting it on her head with a sad sigh, and resigns herself to a hot, humid, mail-ridden day.
It is a rougher day than most. The oppressive heat doesn’t help so much as they make the day worse, but even Rumi, in her annoyance, cannot find it in herself to be angry. Her feet jump with joy at another busy day, bustled and packed with letters and packages—smiling faces, relieved, annoyed. She loves her job. She loves being the person who can start someone’s day. The person someone’s been waiting for. The person on whom something hinges on.
She loves being the person who can offer words, offer material. Being the person who can ease a yearning person’s heart, the words they read and wished they could’ve heard. Being the person who can foster that connection, the distance immaterial.
And, well, if she wants to die not because she has to work, but because she has to work in this scalding heat…
That’s something she’ll keep to herself.
Rumi trudges through the office, feeling more like a melted, soggy, lopsided SpongeBob popsicle than a person, and throws open the warehouse doors. She stares at her trusty chariot (her stupid van) and Jinu leaning against it like some sort of hotshot movie actor in a low-budget romance movie, hailed by critics as an indie masterpiece when in reality it just follows the same sort of overplayed format of the last “indie masterpiece.”
“There’s the woman of the hour.” Jinu whistles.
“Please, God. Jinu. Not now.” Rumi groans, walking towards her van and sliding the door open. She sees her water bottle front and center on her seat. Stupid Jinu.
“Ice cold water for the queen.” He bows.
“Jinu.”
“Okay, okay! Jesus.” Jinu pulls away from her van and flips his mailcap backwards, crossing his arms.
She moves her water bottle and slips into the driver’s seat, Jinu disappearing briefly to flop onto the passenger’s side. The doors were kept open. It was way too hot. Not like they put any AC in the mailcars anyway.
“Pull up our routes for today.”
Rumi adjusts her black gloves, clenching and unclenching her fingers to get rid of the stiffness she knows will never leave, but she tries anyway. The skin of her hands always felt too tight, and her fingers are another story entirely.
Jinu peers curiously. “It’s way too hot to wear gloves. Are you a masochist, or something?”
Rumi scoffs as she turns the car on. One hand is on the gear shift, the other on the wheel. Jinu already has their planned routes booted up, and Rumi squints at the number of houses she has to deliver to before her day is over.
“And why are you still wearing the winter uniform jacket? It’s summer, dude.”
Rumi is pulling out of the warehouse.
“Less talking, more delivering.”
*
“Do you think she’s coming over today, too?” Zoey leans over her windowsill, trying to peer inside the open window belonging to her very hot neighbor.
Her very hot neighbor. Who is also her very hot wife.
“Zoey.” A voice groans from the window. “She is the mailman. She delivers our mail every day. Of course she’s coming over.” Not even a second later, a mop of pink hair peers through before Mira is staring at Zoey with a sort of fond exasperation one could only have if they’re right where they want to be.
She’s leaning her cheek on her hand, an eyebrow raised as Zoey giggles at her. “God. She’s so cute. Do you think she likes the ‘Why, hello there, mailboy!’ thing or should I kill myself?”
“I don’t think she cares much. But I do think we should stop harassing our mailman before she asks to switch routes.”
“You’re so boring. How are we gonna have her deliver her heart to our mailbox if you’re such a buzzkill about it? What happened to real romance? Chivalry!” Zoey slams her fist down on the windowsill like she was some romance-crazy judge.
“I don’t think chivalry is wolf-whistling at her when she gets out of the mail truck.”
“Semantics!” Zoey disappears in a gigantic puff of her ink black hair, wavy and soft. Long. Mira can hear stomping as Zoey leaves, and, not even a second later, Mira can hear her front door yank open, and the footsteps of Zoey thudding up her stairs. The sight of her overexcited wife greets her once she reaches the top of Mira’s steps, throwing open Mira’s bedroom door. And later, a heap of Zoey in Mira’s arms when she jumps into them.
Mira wraps her arms around her easily, leaning against her window as they peer at the street below.
Zoey scratches her hand over Mira’s scalp, ruffling her short hair and thumbing the hairs at the base of her neck. “I really do want our mailman, though,” Zoey says, a moment later. Mira hums noncommittally. “I know.”
“Like, I really, really want her.”
“Yup.”
“Like really bad.”
“Uh huh.”
Zoey groans and exaggeratedly leans back, Mira’s arm wraps around her back and her other gently cradles her neck, following Zoey’s dramatic fall so that she doesn’t actually fall. Her long hair spills over her shoulders and almost touches the ground, and Mira collects it desperately so it doesn’t. “But she’s always so, like. How do I say it? Quick! Always so in and out. She didn’t even bat an eye at the rose petals I lined up to our doorstep.”
Mira lets Zoey hold her fallen damsel position for another minute before raising her back up and twirling her around, settling her against her side like a well-fitted puzzle piece. “She is working,” Mira comments leisurely, and Zoey plops her head on her shoulder like it should be. “I don’t want to hear that from you. You put on full makeup and a sexy outfit just to sign for a package.”
“She didn’t even look,” Mira says, solemnly.
“She didn’t even look,” Zoey repeats, just as solemn.
Mira pushes off the window and peels Zoey away from her after a couple of minutes of cuddling and basking in the summer sun. She stretches, runs her hand through her silky hair, as Zoey snickers at her.
“Your hair’s so flat when it’s unstyled.”
Mira rolls her eyes, leaving her wife pleasantly tickled at annoying her.
*
Rumi is thriving.
“Rumi, back on the run again?”
“Rumi! You’re just the girl I’ve been waiting to see.”
“Oooh, mail’s here! Mama, Papa sent another letter!”
“Thank God you’re here. I’ve been waiting for them to send this since, like, two weeks ago!”
“I don’t care how many letters the tax agency sends. I am not filing my taxes.”
She’s sweating. Her jacket suffocates her with an oppressive heat, but she finds that she can’t care under these whimsical conditions. Her shoulder bag jostles with every step she takes, as she runs across streets and tosses mail into mailboxes and newspapers onto steps, knocking on doors and laughing along with the residents as she makes her way down the street.
There’s a floaty quality in the way she prides herself on her work. It’s the community, really. No one really considers how important mail is until you go a whole week without it because of understaffing.
She loves it.
She loves getting to see people brighten at the fact that their package arrived, or their pen pal had sent a new letter, and she loves seeing the little kids who greet her every now and then. The stickers she keeps for them are snug in her breast pocket—she stopped carrying candy after the last time someone’s pet bird jumped her.
There’s the sound of honking, tires skidding to a stop as she makes her way across the street.
“Rumi!”
Rumi picks up her pace. Her heart swells. Her feet are jumping on clouds, and it’s like she’s carrying pieces of the world in her bag. “Halmeoni!” Rumi calls back, and she slows into a small jog as she stops at the front of the elderly lady’s doorstep.
“Oh, I am just so happy to see you.” The woman croaks, and her smile reaches her eyes.
Rumi laughs fondly. The old woman’s face is kind as she ambles over towards where Rumi is standing. Her back is hunched over, steadying her weight with a walking cane as she gently pats Rumi’s cheek. Rumi places a newspaper into her slightly trembling hands tenderly.
“Don’t get too excited over the sudoku, halmeoni. You know I’m still trying to beat your last record.” Rumi pokes her teasingly, and she swats at Rumi with fondness.
“Oh, you quit that!” She laughs, before Rumi helps her back into her home and gently closes her door.
It’s things like these that make Rumi so proud of her job. She knows from every newspaper delivery that this elderly woman lives alone–her daily newspaper is one of the few interactions she has every day. Her son visits her from time to time, but ever since her husband died, she’s been alone.
Rumi’s glad to be one of the highlights of her day.
The next couple of deliveries follow in the same kind of pattern. Rumi pants as she makes each stop, but even with her exhaustion, her utter mirth cannot be smothered by any hot summer day. Her joy rivals it, really.
Jinu’s waiting for her by the time she makes it back to the mailvan. “Last stop for the day.” He grins, leaning back against his seat with his arms behind his head.
“Last stop for your day. Get out.” Rumi giggles, nudging at him until he leaves the car.
*
Rumi slows her car to a gentle stop. The morning had cooled in that very distinct, nostalgic summer way. Gentle breeze, a kind heat that caresses instead of smothers, and a sky that is just so gently beginning to tuck itself into bed.
Her bag is pleasantly less empty than it was a couple of hours ago. There is a happy feeling that settles in Rumi’s chest once she finally notes it. She hums to herself as she plods her way across the street, gently rapping her fist against doors and slotting mail into mail slots and mailboxes. Scanning packages and avoiding the neighborhood dog, who, as expected, is barking and biting at the window as if he could reach Rumi from the glass.
Rumi skips about every now and then, with her unfettered joy. By the time she gets home, she’ll barely have enough time to make dinner before getting ready for bed. She took an early shift tomorrow morning.
Her eyes drift upwards towards the sky. She can see the moon even when the sky is turning a pleasant orange, and her smile softens into something gentle. A tangerine is peeled somewhere, offered to an energetic child as they bound across the living room floor, slipping around as their socks on the hardwood floor knock them off kilter. Her heart feels like that image. She can feel her feet pick up unconsciously, a sort of giddiness.
She pulls a muscle.
Rumi skids to a halt, hunching over and cupping her calf with an agonized groan, before settling onto her feet like some sort of creature. Mail spills out from her bag, and she makes another agonized sound as she scrambles to pick them all up.
A warm light washes across her like an ink spill, the sound of a creaking door pulling open, and a home’s warm hands drifting out in the form of lightbulbs doing their due diligence. Rumi can faintly hear a movie playing.
When Rumi lifts her head, she is greeted with the sight of smooth, long legs. They’re gently hugged by the warm light.
And a pair of pink fuzzy slippers.
The sight gets even worse, because as her eyes trail up even higher, she gets a face full of panties.
“Late night delivery, Rumi?”
“Ooh, look at what the mail brought in!”
She falls on her ass.
She sputters, her cap falls over her head with comedic timing, and she swears that she could hear birds chirping, swirling over her head as the sound of two women laughing at her echoes like a really bad refrain. Her arms windmill before settling behind her as she rips her cap off with great difficulty.
“Need some help there?” A deep voice rumbles.
“No!” Rumi squeaks, jumping to her feet (she is ignoring the fact that her bag almost pulled her back to the ground, nearly killing her), and gathers all of the mail she had spilled onto the sidewalk. She coughs into her hand.
Composure. She obviously did not make a fool of herself. She turns to the married couple standing by the door, looking wildly amused and godawfully attractive. There is a want swirling in their eyes that has Rumi wanting to run for the mountains.
Rumi rummages in her bag for the package meant for 505-01.
“Soooo,” The shorter of the two inches forward. Rumi gulps.
Zoey. Long, soft, wavy hair. Unfairly toned. Rumi distinctly believes that she chooses to buy tight tanks just to give women a crisis about their sexuality for maybe a good twenty minutes. “You look so tired. I saw you running around the street all day.” She drawls, sensually leaning against her wife and putting a hand on her hip, taking her cigarette from her lips.
“Busy day.” Rumi answers, still rummaging about in her bag. “Must’ve been so busy.” Zoey echoes.
Dear God, where is that package? Where is that package?
Her fingers sift through all the mail.
“You know, I read in the newspaper you delivered yesterday about a really good destressing exercise.” Zoey reaches a hand out to trail a finger down Rumi’s chest. “And, you know, Mira and I were thinking about having some extra company ove–”
“Aha!” Rumi cartoonishly pulls out a small parcel from her bag, looking incredibly proud. It forces Mira to turn around to hide a laugh, and Rumi makes a point to ignore Mira’s ass.
She shoves the parcel into Zoey’s hand, quickly procuring a clipboard, and shoves it in Mira’s face.
“Sign here, please.”
Rumi’s running off, cradling her beaten dignity, not a moment later.
At least she got the signature.
1.
Rumi, with all her wisdom, does not know how much more she can take. This has been her everyday life for the past month or so since Celine threw her into residential mail and business mail. She would go through her stops for the day, reach her final route, and have to deal with either Zoey’s very blatant flirting or Mira’s very subtle attempts to do the same.
Yesterday, they were both wearing shirts that said I LOVE HOT MAILMEN, with Zoey obviously having cut it poorly to resemble a crop top.
Every single time, Rumi has pretended to be oblivious. She had laughed at their shirt. “Whoa! These gag shirts get really specific, don’t they?”
They do not.
But the one thing that Rumi just does not get is that they are not like that at all when she shows up to their respective businesses!
Like this one time when Rumi had delivered a gigantic box of who-knows-what to Mira’s atelier. She had hauled the gigantic box out on her trolley and into the small, quaint, cozy store. Tailored outfits were scattered around in the back, whilst the finished, for sale pieces were neatly arranged at the front. Rumi eyed a nice patterned shirt and slacks worn by a mannequin in the atelier’s shop window.
“You can leave it right there.” Mira had said, hunched over a sewing machine, her wrist pin cushion completely filled with needles and pins.
Clackclackclackclack.
Rumi had warily set the box down. “I’ll need your signature for this delivery, if you could.”
“Alright.” Mira unfolded herself from her work station (Rumi still can’t get over how lanky the woman is), and rummaged in her tool hip pouch.
Rumi had stared at her obviously, then. “What?” Mira laughed, took Rumi’s offered clipboard with a lenient give and a fond smile.
“Nothing.” Rumi had said. Mira raised her brow.
“I’m on work hours.” Is all Mira had to say on the matter.
Rumi had left her atelier feeling vaguely uneasy. Like when you see a dog wearing jeans, but like, long hotdog style. What did she even mean by work hours? She owned the store. She was the only employee. She was the boss—she could do whatever she wanted!
The same thing happened with Zoey. The little trinket-making woman was arguably the worse of the two about her attraction, but when Rumi had come to do a pick-up for Zoey’s shipments of orders to send out—she had left feeling very unattractive and very undesirable.
Rumi had walked in, heard the little jingle that sounded oddly like a poorly constructed bomb–a sad thump, and multiple smaller hissing and pops as the wood of the door chime slid against each other. As Rumi made her way through the store, she almost tripped over a protruding floorboard with a muted curse. Zoey was hunched over behind the shop counter, swirling side to side on her stool while nursing a cigarette between her lips.
“Hey. I’m here to pick up your shipments?” Rumi had called out, and Zoey perked up like a dog at a shop window. “Oh! Rumi!” She had scrambled out of her chair, almost dropped her cigarette onto a wooden figurine, and ushered her over with very energetic, waving hands.
“Here, here, come here.” She shuffled off quickly towards the back, flailing her arms in a jogging motion that suggested a high speed her legs didn’t quite get the memo of.
The rest of the time went smoothly. Rumi scanned and put parcels into bins and then into the trolley, and had made it back to the truck with not a single comment about how sexy she looked in uniform, or how she was so tired and sweaty and could use some break time.
It felt very wrong. It was like she was waiting for a punchline that never came.
Zoey noticed, of course, and laughed. She patted her shoulder solemnly. “Work hours, gorgeous.” She had said, blowing smoke away from Rumi and padding off after.
Rumi couldn’t help but ask.
“What does that have to do with,” She gestures vaguely, “to you, you know.”
Zoey shrugged. “Keeping it professional. You’re just trying to be in and out, just as much as I am!” She smiled, hands on her hips. “Plus, I need to keep it in my pants here. No need for pants at home! Booyah!” She had cackled, turned around, and closed her shop door with an audible slam.
Rumi had gone back to the office that day feeling both oddly desired and undesired at the same time.
She would find that Zoey was not lying when she said she kept it in her pants at work, either. For the first time in a couple of months, Rumi finally had a delivery and not a shipment for Zoey’s small shop. She had pulled over and slapped on her hazard lights, jumped out with a trolley full of boxes, and made her way to the shop door with Zoey waiting outside.
She was wearing a black apron, hair tied up, and with tan working gloves. Her pants were completely covered in wood shavings. “Nice! I was waiting for this.” Zoey clapped, rummaging in her apron pockets for her pen. “Where do I sign?”
Rumi had stared at her blankly then. “Uh, over here.” She pulled out her clipboard for Zoey to sign, and then waited expectantly.
It was gonna happen any minute. Zoey was gonna find a nonexistent piece of dust on her tie that could, of course, only be reached by tugging on the strip of fabric. Then she was gonna trail her fingers down her arms and probably ask her to go in the back of her shop.
“Ok. Thanks!” Zoey put her pen back in her apron and then pointed at a cluttered spot behind the shop counter. “You can leave them over there.”
Rumi blinked. “Are you not,” She began, “Are you not gon–are you good?”
“What?” Zoey stared at her incredulously. She did not know what Rumi was getting at.
“Nothing. Over there, right?”
Rumi shivered when she got back to her car. It felt so wrong. She never got over it, awed by the switch in personality from which building that the two decided to occupy.
2.
The weather began to shift. It was getting colder, the sky beginning to darken quicker earlier in the day, and the night was kind in its gentle chill, contrary to summer’s tender, warm caress. Rumi’s uniform began to feel less suffering to wear, now a pleasant sort of weight. Rumi was working late again.
Her breath puffs out, Rumi watching as it manifests as little curls of steam while she makes her way down the street. The lampposts flicker on, marinating the street in a warm yellow glow. Rumi has a very distinct thought of a lemon, which she giggles at. The cold is sour, but when added with the warm lights of houses and moving, shadowed figures obviously unburdened and joyful, it tastes good. Sweet. Flecks of white fall on her black leather gloves.
It’s snowing, Rumi notes.
Her smile grows.
It’s snowing.
She turns to see children pressed up against the glass of their windows, pointing at the falling white as if it’ll be the last time they’ll ever see it. Then they’ll see her, moving to press their letters into their mailbox and wave vigorously as if they’ve never seen a mailman in their life. Rumi will wave back, overjoyed at being able to see this childlike snippet of a family’s life.
She continues her leisure route. She could afford to be a little slower today. This was her last route, last stop. Take it a bit easy.
Her stomach growls, and Rumi frowns. She had skipped lunch today. And breakfast.
It wasn’t uncommon for her to skip meals like this—her mother used to scold her for it a while ago. But ever since getting busier, Rumi had less time to visit. Which meant less getting fed like a starving child by her mother. But that also meant she’d have no time to make breakfast in the interest of getting to work on time. And even with her lunch break, she’d have no time to pack herself lunch the day before—her work shift being just as crammed. When given the opportunity to go out and eat, she’d instead spend her time in her office cubicle doing more miscellaneous postal work-related things and gnawing on a beef jerky stick. Which didn’t help matters at all.
It didn’t bother her, not really. Sure, she didn’t fill in her shirts, and her clothes hung wrong, but she doesn’t mind the hunger if it means being able to deliver her letters. That was a whole type of food in itself. A food of the soul!
Rumi pauses at her last stop. 505-01.
The lights were on. She can see its warm glow from the window.
She rummages in her bag, finds that there’s only one package left, and smiles at a work day well done. Her eyes catch on the tag attached.
Happy Anniversary
She smiles wider. How cute. You’d be surprised how much you learn about a person simply by the type of mail they get. A little window to the little bubbles of everyone’s world. She pads towards the doorstep, pressing the doorbell before gently placing the parcel on their welcome mat.
She can faintly hear slow, low jazz music from the door given her proximity. It fades off as she leans away and turns to make her trek back towards her car.
The door opens, and she’s flooded with a gentle yellow. It stretches over the sidewalk and doorstep, softening edges, and Rumi can feel the heat of their home warming her face. The escaping heat is not unkind. It brushes through her hair, pats her cheek.
Mira’s standing by the doorway. Her hair is slicked back this time, and she’s wearing a beautiful red dress that hugs her thin frame. Zoey’s behind her in a cute, puffy white dress. Both of them are nursing champagne glasses, looking flushed.
“Mail—man!” Zoey hiccups, padding over in her socked feet and skidding to a halt. She teeters on her toes. Mira jolts a hand out to keep her wife from falling. “Rummmi!” Mira slurs, and Rumi has to hold back a laugh. Seems like they’re enjoying their anniversary.
“Hey, you two. Having fun?” She smiles warmly at them, her hand gently resting on the strap of her shoulder bag. “You bet!” Zoey bellows, wincing at her volume, before going back to speaking at the exact same volume.
“You cannot believe the–hic. Day we had.” Mira began, and Rumi nodded along.
Mira usually is silent, but Rumi guesses she gets chatty when she’s loosened up. It’s an endearing image.
“--and, and. Hey, Rumi, are you still there?”
Rumi blinks.
“Sorry, I got a little lost in my head there. You were saying? I think you left off somewhere about unlimited margaritas.” Rumi chuckles, looking at Mira expectantly. Mira squints her eyes at her.
“I’m so, sooo sorry. I must be–be hic. Holding you up. You must’ve had such a long day.”
Rumi is fond as her laugh escapes her. “No! No. You’re my last stop for the day.” Her hand vaguely gestures around. “I can stick around for a little conversation.”
Zoey shivers, and then Rumi realizes that they’re just standing at their doorway in just dresses and likely freezing their socks off.
“Or not.” She sheepishly grins at them. “You should probably head back inside.”
“You’re so thin.” Zoey suddenly butts in. Points at her when she says it.
Rumi blinks again. Winded. What’s that supposed to mean?
“Uh?”
“No, right? Like, so thin.” Mira turns towards Zoey with her arms crossed.
Rumi’s stunned into silence. How can–she’s wearing layers. There’s no way that they can see her gaunt form from under her uniform. She opens her mouth to say something, but they’ve both disappeared back into their house with the door slightly closed. Ajar. The heat escapes and touches her anyways.
Well. That’s that then. Rumi turns back around to make her way back towards her van, but the door yanks open again, and suddenly her hands are full of tupperware and various leftovers. “You need to eat well,” Zoey’s breath smells like champagne and a little bit of tobacco, “it’s no good working as much as you do on an empty stomach.”
Rumi sputters, “It’s okay–”
Mira is shoving a thermos into her bag. “It’s getting colder, so it’s good–hic, to have soup during this time.” Her hands are clumsy in her inebriation. Zoey and Mira started a small assembly line. Zoey would hand Mira leftovers, and Mira would shove them into any pocket or space Rumi had on her person.
Rumi can feel the warmth from the food through her leather gloves. It warms her hands.
“Eat well!” Zoey slurs out, “Yummy, yummy.”
Their door clicks shut.
Rumi can still feel the warmth of the tupperware even when it was all tucked away safely in her bag.
3.
“You can leave that right there.” Mira gestures vaguely towards a general area as she hears Rumi make her way into her atelier. She’s folded over her work table, arduously handsewing a sleeve as Rumi balances six boxes in her hands, waddling slowly and carefully towards an empty space (she assumes it’s empty, she can’t see) and plops them down.
“Thank you,” Mira says, once she hears the hefty sound of the boxes hitting the floor. She didn’t bother lifting her head in acknowledgment. Rumi purses her lips.
She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to it. The day before, Mira had brushed her hand over Rumi’s temple to tuck a stray hair and purposely lingered her fingers on Rumi’s jaw. Brushed nonexistent dust from her coat. The Mira then is different from the Mira now.
Disinterested wouldn’t be the right descriptor, because Rumi knows that she is. Held back isn’t the right description either. It is something that lingers in the back of Mira’s mind, integral.
“You can sign here.” Rumi pressed a clipboard into Mira’s open hand, watching as Mira fumbled about for a pen, her eyes still locked onto her current project. Without looking, she signs her name seamlessly on the dotted line before returning to her sewing without missing a beat.
Rumi tucks the clipboard under her arm. She can faintly hear Zoey next door hammering something, likely sculpting another piece she knows will be sent out in the next shipment.
“How was the food?” Mira suddenly cuts in. She isn’t looking at her still. But now her attention is a false sort of dedication, because the tenseness in her shoulders gives away her anticipation. Rumi can still distinctly feel the heat of the tupperware on her fingers. Her leather gloves make a crinkling sound when Rumi unconsciously clenches her fist, as if savoring the warmth.
“It was really good. You have a talent in the kitchen.” Rumi smiles at her, and that’s when Mira finally pauses to look up and stare at her.
She opens her mouth, closes it. “That’s good.” Is what Mira settles with.
Rumi chuckles, and she swears that she can see Mira melt.
“I really enjoyed the–”
Rumi’s pocket vibrates.
“Sorry.” Rumi sheepishly stares at Mira, and Mira waves her off noncommittally.
She rushes out of the atelier, pulling out her phone and staring at the caller ID that blinks back at her. It’s her mother. Rumi’s finger moves on her own before she can even stop it, swiping to accept the call and pressing the phone to her ear.
Her mother’s tinny voice from the other end greets her. There’s shuffling on the other end, quiet whispers, and the sound of something clanging. Her mother must be cooking. “Ru?”
“Hi, Mom,” Rumi answers after a moment of silence. There’s a breath of relief. “There you are. Why haven’t you been answering your messages?” Her mother’s voice is kind, gentle. It’s always been that way. Rumi knows that’s just how Miyeong is. But it still doesn’t reassure her the same way that it used to.
“Sorry. I’ve been busy. The office is understaffed, so I had to fill in for the other departments.” Rumi thumbs a stray fabric of her coat. “Well, I know that.” Miyeong chuckles. “But that still is no reason to leave me in the dark. I worry.” Miyeong’s voice steadies, and Rumi winces.
“I know.” Rumi looks down at the sidewalk. Notes the spit out gum and the well-marked trail of a sidewalk that’s been thoroughly walked on.
“Have you been taking care of yourself?”
“Yes, mom.”
Miyeong makes a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat over the phone, nothing but a static hiss when it reaches Rumi. “I know that sound. You haven’t been eating properly.”
Rumi sighs, “Not on purpose.”
“Mhm. Never on purpose.” There’s a rustling over the phone. She can hear a small smack of lips–Celine.
However, Celine doesn’t say anything. Even when knowing it’s Rumi on the other end of the line.
“Will you be coming home this week for family dinner, at least?” Rumi can hear her mother switching rooms, the sound of her feet gliding over the wooden floorboards of her childhood home, and she can already envision the scuff marks on the way to her mother’s bedroom. “I’ll try. I think I took up some shifts.” Rumi leans against the atelier’s shop window, arms crossed.
“Have you been looking into colleges?”
There’s the kicker. Rumi knew these calls were always just check-ins, but she also knew that it was also a chance for her mom to prod her back towards picking up her degree again. “No,” Rumi says quietly, “I haven’t been.”
She can hear her mother hum.
“When do you think you will?”
“I don’t know, Mom.”
Rumi’s hand stills. “I know,” Her mother begins, and Rumi already just doesn’t want to hear it. “I know that it’s been busy for you, and that you’re still figuring things out, but I really do want you to finish your college education.” Miyeong is gentle in her approach. Rumi is skittish by nature.
“I don’t want to spend your money on my tuition if I don’t even know what I want.”
Miyeong is silent for an agonizing minute. “I know, honey.”
There’s the compromise. There’s the ledger. There’s that pit in her chest again that makes her feel both loved and burdened by simple nature. One gap year had turned into two, and eventually, she had just dropped out. She didn’t know what she wanted. She still doesn’t. She’s finally found a passion where she can settle, but even then, it’s not enough. Miyeong would support her even if she said she didn’t want to go to school again, but it’s the fact that Rumi doesn’t want to. Miyeong is so gentle in her hope of seeing Rumi back in university, and it makes Rumi feel like she’s broken something fragile between them when that’s no longer in her cards.
It’s not that Miyeong pressures her. She’s supportive, steady, like mothers are. It’s the fact that Rumi knows the support is a resignation derived from love. It’s what makes it worse. But she was always her mother’s daughter, and she is just as resigned as Miyeong; Rumi let go of the heart that might’ve fought back. A peace is a peace, fraught and balanced on books as it is.
But then, really, it all just compounds. Rumi is a quiet thing; she feels strongly, but she exhales quietly. Her relationship with her mother is strenuous just as much as it is tense and taut with Celine. She is frustrated with both of them. But that frustration is resigned in the way that you remain quiet during an argument, because you know what you say will change nothing. Her love for them overrides her aching chest, but that doesn’t mean the frustration is gone.
The frustration was never about school. School just became a broader placeholder because putting a name and pointing it out, like they were playing Where’s Waldo, will topple the already wobbly foundation that they have going on.
It just builds.
She is angry. But it is a quiet, not particularly suppressed, anger. One that stays at the bottom of your throat. One you could never shake off. It is not really surrender, either. Just a simple truth that stares at her and Rumi, in her kindness, in her want to be gentle to herself when she knows she can never really quite be, accepts it.
“Take care of yourself, okay, honey? Eat well. Don’t worry me like this. I love you.” Miyeong says quietly, sensing the shift.
Rumi just hums and hears the quiet tap that the mic picks up when Miyeong ends the call.
Rumi gingerly pockets her phone. Her hand falls limp at her side.
A bell dings.
Mira’s staring at her quietly, observing in that way she does. Rumi notices Mira has a habit of that—observing. Watching. It’s not unwelcome, but Rumi doesn’t quite understand why Mira wants to observe her mailman so badly.
Or perhaps she does. Because Mira’s observation is both genuine in its interest and in its care. Rumi has always teetered on the rope of their attraction. At some point, Rumi truly believed that the married couple simply liked the bit of it all. The joke. The whole “being in love with your mailman” thing an extended jest because it was just something that made their day. Rumi’s fine with that.
But then Rumi started noticing the glisten in their eyes and the sparkle that said, I want to understand you. I want to hold you. I want us to be your last route every day, for the rest of your life. I want to be an end and a beginning, and I want to be the letters you wake up to every morning, tucking us into your bag like we’ll never leave.
Rumi is not blind. She is not oblivious. She knows when someone likes her, and she knows how these things go. She’s never considered herself shy of it or awkward about it. Just unfamiliar. She had always been so busy bouncing between jobs and majors that she just never had time to learn the intricacies of modern-day romance and couple-y toeing around each other.
She considers herself sociable, but only in the way of the kind stranger whom you’d strike up a conversation with while waiting at the bus stop. She’s confident, but only in that she’ll comment on your book choice in the bookstore and offer her recommendations, delving into rants about novels. But in romance? In dating? That’s something she simply never had time for, so she never learned. But she’s read, she’s seen. She’s watched.
So she’s not oblivious.
She knows when something is genuine.
Mira's gaze is gentle. It’s understanding that Rumi is not a puzzle to piece together. A smile inches across her kind face.
“You know,” Mira crosses her arm. “I think you’d make a really good mailman.”
Rumi’s laugh comes out startled. Then it builds. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Rumi wipes a subtle tear from the corner of her eye. “What makes you think that?” She eggs, and Mira takes the bait. “Just think that you have a really good mailman air around you. Like, your outfit just speaks mailman to me.”
Rumi stares down at her uniform, and she lets out an amused huff. When she looks up, Mira has something in her hand. It’s extended out to her like an olive branch.
It’s a tie.
Rumi thumbs the fabric of it. She can’t feel it, not over her leather gloves, but the sentiment inches across the material and seeps into her burned hands.
She turns it over. It’s a charcoal gray with a subtle patterning of the fabric. The texture, Rumi can tell, is ribbed.
On the back of the tie, there’s a hand-stitched envelope symbol. Embroidered on the top of it,
You’re a whole package!
Mira shoves her hand into her pants pockets. Stares at the street, sniffing.
“Is this..?”
“It’s for you, yeah. If you want it. I mean, it’s cool if you don’t but,” Mira flops a hand up, gesturing to it. “You can have it.”
“Did you make this?”
“Well.” Mira coughs.
Rumi clenches the tie in her hands like Mira would take it back from her any minute now. A laughter bubbles up in her throat, aghast, shocked, unexpected, until she’s wheezing and clutching her stomach in her joy. A warmth spreads through her tummy. It warms her from the inside out, pats her back, and gently fixes the lapels of her coat. She feels seen, but the thought of “seen” doesn’t make her shiver. It doesn’t feel like she’s being scraped off of the pavement and shoved under a huge microscope.
She feels seen, and it doesn’t give her goosebumps.
When Rumi can finally see through her laughter again, Mira is standing there with a small smile and her arms crossed, pleased. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t do anything. Her stance is relaxed, and her shoulders are light. She is ten paces away, but it feels like she’s only two. Steady. Rumi feels like she’s leaning on her without it feeling transactional.
“What’s the silly work going on over there! Without me?!”
Zoey bounds over not a moment later, crashing into Mira’s open arms and poking at Rumi’s sides until Rumi swats her away.
4.
Rumi nurses a cup of coffee in her hand, hair loose as she runs her fingers through the purple strands.
She’s standing in front of her fridge, one of her arms wrapped around herself, hand tucked under her armpit. The steam wafts from her mug, assaulting her face.
Rumi isn’t just standing and staring to admire her fridge’s silver color. Her magnetic calendar waves back at her, simple words written in black chattering away.
December 19
Dad’s Anniversary and Celebration of Life
Rumi finishes her coffee and sets it down in the sink with a silent thud.
The rest of her morning is quiet. Almost like the smallest sound can destroy a bubble that encases the entire world. A fragile sort of stability, similar to a Jenga tower.
Rumi was always bad at Jenga. Sucked at it, really.
Her fingers gingerly mess around in her closet for her uniform. She glances over to her mirror.
Burned back. Burned body. Skin glistens unnaturally, the way that it does when it heals over but never quite heals right. It curves and spreads across her entire back, arms, and torso. Scars and bite marks here and there. Skin pulled taut over skin. When Rumi lifts her hands to brush hair from her eyes, they blink at her innocently.
It’s innocuous. Two fingers missing from her left—index and middle fingers, thumb is missing from her right.
She’s always been a bit unluckier than most. She can remember the whole ordeal and, really, it feels like something out of a cartoon. Walking across the street to do a delivery, and an ice cream truck screamed its jingle before it gave her a really big hug and a big bang.
She survived. A little worse for wear, but it wasn’t the first time she’s been hit by a car. And her injuries never really bothered her. Rumi stares at herself in its entirety, pulling her slacks on and cuffing them–for some reason, today, the skin is stretched a bit too tight and the stumps of where her fingers used to be tingle unnaturally.
Rumi buttons her shirt, tucks it into her pants, and the fumbling of it all is more noticeable today than it was yesterday. She rummages around in her drawer for her prosthetics, slotting them over something missing, which had been missing for months.
She slides on her leather gloves. Natural. Like nothing ever happened.
December 19
Dad’s Anniversary and Celebration of Life
Rumi puts on her shoes.
How do you celebrate a concept? Her feet pad across her home, and she opens her door.
December 19
Dad’s Anniversary and Celebration of Life
How? How? How? She never knew her father. He wasn’t even in her life. She didn’t even know he died until her freshman year of high school. The fracturing between her and her mother was because she had never told her that her papa had died. Because Miyeong never thought it was important enough to note, because little Rumi didn’t even know what papa looked like. Because Miyeong was too focused on her career and taking care of Rumi that her husband became a footnote.
But Miyeong should’ve known that Rumi would figure out about the nuclear family eventually. That her life would then become why did Papa leave? Why did Cece take his place? Why did Cece frown when Rumi would mention Papa?
Then it becomes why did Papa die, and why did no one grieve him in the way it would surround their home in a warm embrace? Cece always looked sad about it, but Cece said nothing. Because Cece knew Miyeong had too much to lose if she touched that metaphorical gravestone in their home.
You can’t mourn a concept. Rumi has always been unconventional, so she does anyway.
When she makes it to the office, the rest of her work day is solemn, but it is kind because Rumi lets the day grieve simply by courtesy.
“Rumi.” Celine peers over her cubicle. “Can you come to my office?”
Rumi hums, pulls away from her desk, and follows her stepmother into her little office. Her lithe fingers drift over her desk, and she seats herself behind the mahogany.
Celine folds her hands on her desk in that very specific way where someone is trying to be both normal and understanding. “I,” Celine clears her throat, “understand today might be hard.”
“Celine,” Rumi whispers. “Please, what is it?”
Celine looks down at her desk. A tender compromise. Meeting ground. Celine opens her drawer and pulls out a wrinkled envelope, already peeled open. “I thought this was something that you might want to have.”
When Celine slides it over her desk, and Rumi’s eyes catch on the name–
Her breath hitches.
“That's all I have left.” Celine murmurs.
“Why now?” Rumi asks. It is not mean. It is curious.
“I just found it today.”
Celine pushes off from her desk, leaning against her expensive office chair, and taps her fingers on its surface. “I didn’t know I still had it. And, well. It certainly has great timing.” Celine purses her lips, realizing that might have been a bad joke in retrospect, but Rumi says nothing because again, the love overcomes the frustration.
“Rumi. I know I haven’t been the best. I know that there are some things I can never quite fill and some things I can never quite fix.” Celine plays with her fingers in her hand, looking awfully small. “And it’d be wrong of me to jump in now, acting as if I was.”
“Mistakes,” Rumi says, a moment later. An objective truth. Murmured quietly under Rumi’s breath, like it had the capacity to explode.
“Yes,” Celine says with a puff of her breath, fond. “I have made a lot of them, apparently.”
There is a silence, and then there is a resolution.
“Thank you, Celine,” Rumi murmurs into the air, a quiet truce. “Thank you.” She takes the letter in her hand, fingers fumbling with trying to get enough friction to pick it up. Quietly, she leaves her office, and Celine’s gaze at her back felt less suffocating than it had been for almost her entire life.
It isn’t forgiveness. It isn’t hate, either. Just two people standing on different flooring, but it’s the same ground anyway.
She presses herself small back in the cubicle of her office, thumbing the letter with hesitance because this is the closest she will ever get to her father. There is a quiet fear in opening it, pulling the yellow, aged paper from its cocoon. But then Rumi thinks, whatever, and yanks it out like ripping off a bandaid.
It’s just a bank statement.
It’s just a bank statement, but the weight of it is heavier than anything Rumi will ever lift into mail trucks and cart off into homes and businesses.
Rumi grips her desk. Finds that the grip is weak. Grip marred, fingers gone, letters scattered around her like someone had taken a rocket and launched it–exploding her into little neat letters that rattle her into obscurity.
Rumi’s breath heaves. She is a bulwark broken into two, perhaps not even that. All roads lead back into this one vice, this one sinking, swirling hole that she can never quite fill. She had taken this job for a reason, yes, but in the end, she is someone selfish and someone yearning because she couldn’t quite reassure that small child inside her.
No stickers, no lollipops, no amount of gentle swaddled words can reassure the newborn that festers in her chest–or perhaps it had never festered at all. It was something there from the beginning.
Pythagorean theorem. Easy maths. All points, sharp and unassuming, and it is a measurement as well as a truth, both. But it is because the truth is sharp, so it might never be a circle. It slopes towards her anyways.
Rumi thumbs letters and words she will slot into mailboxes of those who grieve and yearn both–perhaps balm or open an aching hole while she leaves, perhaps joyed, but she is just as open and bare as the next door.
She wants her papa. But “papa” is a word she had never known until preschool, and “papa” is a word as foreign to her as the average person is to wealth. And “papa” culminates in an unassuming letter, ignorant of its weight because all it is, really, is just his bank statement, old and yellowed.
But it was proof he existed. Perhaps Rumi’s missing fingers are a result of the fact that she couldn’t hold onto him. Can’t now. Her grip would be too weak. A beached whale comes to mind.
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She jolts up from her desk, rushing towards the janitor’s closet without looking like a complete madman.
Rumi almost chokes on her sob. It is just a purchase at the end of the day. But she had never met her papa. He was gone before she ever learned the word.
It’s just a purchase. It’s just a purchase, but the weight of it is terrifying. Rumi begins to laugh, an overjoyed sort of thing that chokes over into old melancholy. She covers her mouth, but her fingers don’t have enough strength to properly press down and muffle it, so her cries escape into the open air anyway.
Papa loved her. He didn’t die and leave because he was overcome by the weight of family. Papa knew his little baby Rumi, pudgy fingers and clumsy legs, needed supplies and was waiting for him. He was expectant the way people are when they think they have more time.
Rumi presses the yellowed, old, kind, infant, gentle bank statement to her lips. Fingers curl around it, crinkling it. But it is gentle as if her weak fingers could have crumpled it into a fine dust.
Pestle and mortar. Ground her grief into a fine paste. It smears, but somehow, it’s almost like jam on toast.
Rumi smiles, a fond laugh blubbering out over her sobs. “Papa,” She chokes out. “Pa–pa.” She sobs.
An old bank statement manifesting to be the obscure warm figure of her father. Bought diapers. Baby formula. Clothes. It left her feeling hugged. It left her feeling empty. A warmth. It’s not closure, no. Nothing can ever close that yawning need.
But she is loved. She was loved; Papa’s lingering pocket money in a time she will never know proved it. So she smiles and laughs and sobs, caught between new joy and old hurts.
The janitor closet door clicks open softly, like it was scared it’d hurt a bird.
Celine strokes her back. She sat with her on that cold floor and both leaned against the wall in their quiet compromise. Neither said anything.
*
In the end, Celine quietly stood up and left, leaving Rumi, who had wiped her tears and took steadying breaths in the hopes it would cover up the ways in which she had just emotionally exploded in the janitor’s closet. The letter was tucked in her inner breast pocket, and Rumi had spent the rest of the time loading her mail truck in preparation for her routes for the day.
Her schedule seemed light. She knew who was to blame. But things are already fragile, so she won’t break through their small truce with indignation because she loves her job and loves to work, and she’ll take the kind gesture for what it was supposed to convey.
Delivering the mail helped. Seeing glimpses into peoples’ lives through the doorway and the windows and the routine of it all helped. It eased her. It didn’t make anything better. She knows nothing can make anything better. But she’s not trying to ease the pain of it. The grief is there like a well-worn sweater you can never truly get rid of, because you love it, but it just doesn’t fit you anymore. The memory of it is reassuring, though, so you keep it folded neatly on the top corner shelf of your wardrobe.
Snow packed itself in the crevices and corners of the sidewalk, shoveled to the side to create a clear walkway. She enjoys how it made the city look like a Christmas movie–the snow’s presence still felt despite it no longer covering the entirety of the sidewalk. Her feet slosh against the melted sludge of the snow on the sidewalk–nothing more than sad goop now–and stop gingerly at the front of 505-01.
Something kind bubbles in her chest, and she already can hear Zoey’s cheesy, terribly bad attempts at flirting and Mira’s quiet fondness. She raps her hand on the door, rings the doorbell for good measure, and slips the letters into the mailbox. The door yanks open not even a second later.
“Why hello there.” Zoey drawls, “I didn’t know Amazon started delivering gorgeous women.”
“I don’t work at Amazon.” Rumi retorts.
Zoey ignores her entirely. Mira pops out not a moment later and reaches out to adjust Rumi’s cap on her head, fingers tugging her coat even more closed despite it being buttoned up. Her fingers linger on it.
“It’s just so cold out there. So, so cold.” Zoey plays with Rumi’s tie.
“I think I’m quite warm, actually,” Rumi replies, and Zoey ignores her again. “It’s like you’re going blue from how cold it is outside, because you look so cold.” Zoey leans in.
“But guess what. Guess who has a heater in their house.”
“Oh my God, Zoey. That was so bad. That was so bad it’s actually criminal.”
“What?” Zoey whirls around to stare at Mira, who is looking the other way with her hand covering her mouth, trying to smother her laughter.
Rumi laughs with her, but her heart is not in it. Mira senses the shift, and Zoey’s finger twitches to show that she’s noticed it too. But they don’t say anything and simply stare at her fondly. It sends their message: they understand and won’t press her. They disappear into their house after, not without Mira tugging on Rumi’s tie and Zoey tickling the hairs at the back of Rumi’s neck.
When Rumi is halfway across the block, their door yanks back open, and Zoey is waving her over frantically. “Sexy mailman! Yeah, you! Get over here!”
Rumi jogs over, a car screeching to a halt and braking with a loud nails-on-a-chalkboard sound, and Zoey winces terribly.
Rumi pauses at their door, stares at her expectantly, and notices Zoey is holding a stack of tupperware boxes filled to the brim with food. She shoves it into Rumi’s hands.
Rumi opens her mouth to say something, but Zoey shakes her head.
“You’re as thin as a power line. Eat.” Zoey peeks from behind her door. “And you work too hard. You need that energy so that you can deliver my mail and I can harass you.”
Rumi bursts out a laugh, endeared. Zoey smiles at her.
Something gentle develops. Rumi finds that she isn’t scared of it.
Zoey kisses the palm of her hand and, in an action that weighs more than it should have, presses her palm to Rumi’s cheek.
It was warm.
The door closes, and Rumi is still standing there holding tupperware boxes, one of her hands gently grazing her cheek. The cold bites at it, but the warmth subsists.
5.
By the time Rumi had made it to her third route for the day, something had gone terribly awry.
The house she was delivering to had left their door ajar.
This is not something new to Rumi, because she knows she’s had some residents—if they knew Rumi was gonna be over to deliver their packages—leave their door open for her. But it was the fact that this house in particular never left their door open.
Rumi pushes past the front gate with a box tucked under her arm, slightly wary. Sometimes things deviate from the norm, Rumi guesses. Shouldn’t be something she should be too concerned about.
It was something to be concerned about.
When Rumi gently placed the box inside the house on top of their shoe mat–and closed the door halfway–a chill ran down her spine.
The ground shook. It didn’t really shake, but metaphorically, it did. With each step the beast took.
Rumi turned around slowly. A chihuahua peeks out from the side of the house.
“Oh,” Rumi mutters under her breath, “oh, no. No.” She takes slow steps backwards, a strained smile spreading across her face, and a bead of sweat dripping down her neck despite it being winter. “Good dog. Good puppy! Oh, look at you, so sweet!” Rumi has her hands out in front of her in what she hopes is a placating gesture.
“Don’t come over here–! You’re such a good puppy.” Rumi coos at the beast, but then it slowly starts approaching, and Rumi swears she’s drenching her collar in her nervous sweat.
The owner peers out from the side as well, after a moment. She was dressed in a thick scarf and coat; her dog was dressed similarly. Yellow puffer jacket and a thermal that covers the entirety of its small frame. Little boots.
“Oh, Rumi!” The woman waves, “Did you just deliver my package? Thank you so much. I’ll go grab it in a second.” The woman disappears, and the beast patters forward.
Rumi flinches back like a startled cat.
The dog tilts its head at her.
But after a long moment of staring at each other, Rumi slowly untenses with a shuddering breath. “Aww,” She softens, “you are so nice.” She doesn’t attempt to pet the beast, but she is taking its benevolence as a chance to get away, because she and dogs do not mix well.
A growl breaks through the air.
Rumi stops in her tracks.
“Uh.” Rumi smiles weakly. Goosebumps on her arm.
Rrrrrrrrrrrrr.
There’s a loud bark, and then–
The crashing of footsteps jangles around in her ears as Rumi begins running. The beast is on her tail, barking and growling wildly, nipping at her heels.
“Ahh–ahh!” Rumi screams, “No! No! Bad dog! Bad!” She holds onto her mailcap, clutching the strap of her shoulder bag as she blitzed across the block. “Ack–! Please, please get your dog!”
She can hear the owner yelling, “Gommie, no! Get back here!”
But the dog does not care, and the dog is hyperfocused on trying to gnaw on Rumi till she is nothing but bones.
Rumi sprints across the street. A car skids to a halt just inches before hitting her, giving her a small love tap with its front.
“Hey! What the fuck are you doing?!”
BARK! BARK! BARK!
“Sorry!” Rumi yelps, jumping over the hood as the beast comes bounding down the crosswalk, barking and snarling and growling the entire time. Rumi continues running. Her breath comes out in harsh pants as she cuts through alleyways and various corners in sudden twists and turns in hopes of throwing the dog off her trail. She bumps into crowds of people, sometimes shoving.
She shoots across another street, a truck whizzing past her, just barely missing her with a blaringly loud horn, leaving the beast barking at her from across the street as the truck passes by in a blur. Rumi is already gone by the time it clears the road.
She keeps running anyway, and eventually slips on snow goop. She flails her arm around in an attempt to maintain her balance and keep from falling on her ass. She succeeds, thankfully, and clutches her chest as she leans over, steadying herself with a hand on her knees.
“Oh–oh, my God.” She coughs out, sucking in harsh, greedy breaths.
“Rumi?”
Rumi whips her head around, and she sees both Mira and Zoey staring at her with confused awe. Mira’s in a tan long coat, with white mufflers on her ears, with a soft flannel scarf. Her glasses are slightly fogged. Zoey’s in a big, fluffy wool jacket that makes her look like a walking Q-tip. She’s wearing a bear snood. Mira had her hands full of groceries in brown paper bags, and Zoey was busy carrying a holiday wreath. Rumi must’ve caught them coming back from one of their shopping trips.
“What–I don’t think we have anything being delivered today.” Zoey looks over to Mira. “Do we?”
Mira shook her head, “No. And we already got our mail for the week.” They both turn to Rumi.
She stares at them back.
The sound of a cog being turned and gears grinding can distinctly, metaphorically, be heard as they took their time observing the state that Rumi was in. Flushed, winded. Uniform askew. Whatever conclusion the married couple had come to left Rumi very scared and very amused. Because they both had brightened up like the Christmas tree down in the city, bright and blinding.
“You–You wanted to see us.” Mira gasped.
“What?” Rumi’s mouth drops open in her confusion, stunned.
“Oh. Oh.” Zoey drops her wreath comedically.
“Huh?” Rumi, fittingly enough, smiles in her awkwardness and confusion. But the two of them took that as charming and alluring, because it only widened their eyes with their joy.
Zoey steps forward in her awe. “Rumi. I know the holidays are coming up, and I know damn well you’re gonna have a day off.”
“Wait, wait, I think you guys are–”
“And, if you’re so inclined, we want you to spend that day off with us. That must be the reason why you came all this way, right?” Mira looks at her expectantly.
Rumi stares blankly, winded. Her mind, frankly, is all over the place. She had just narrowly escaped another hospital visit, and now she’s being asked out on a date by the two hottest women she has ever met in her entire life, but also, her rationality is genuinely out the window.
“Yes…?”
Zoey squeals and jumps up. “Eeeee–ohmygodohmygodohmygod!” Zoey shakes Mira aggressively, causing the taller woman to groan in a panic as the groceries in her hands almost begin to topple out of the bags. “I know just the place. It’s a small bar–don’t worry, they have non-alcoholic drinks if you don’t drink like that–and it’s soooo cute! It’s decked out for Christmas, and it’s just so cozy and quaint, and the bartenders dress up as Santa!” Zoey keeps hopping in her excitement, and Rumi feels like her head is spinning.
“Do you have your phone on you? I’ll text you the address.” Mira looks at Rumi again, a quiet excitement brimming over from her wide, brown eyes.
Rumi pats her pocket. Fuck. She left it in the van.
“No, I–uhm. Here. Just write it down here.” Rumi rummages in her breast pocket for her pen and notepad, but there is something noticeably missing.
Her notepad.
It must’ve fallen when she was making her grand escape.
She sweats. She just has her pen. Mira and Zoey are looking at her like she’s about to offer them the world from her pocket, and she knows that they don’t have a notepad either. A more rational Rumi would have just said, “Oh, here’s my number, just text it to me later!”
But, with her brain fried from being chased by a chihuahua for over twelve blocks, she does the next best thing.
They wouldn’t mind, right? Of course they wouldn’t. And even if they did, what is Rumi supposed to do about it? She’s still going to deliver their mail and their packages. They’d just have to suck it up and deal with it.
Yeah. They’d just have to deal with it. She’s totally not shaking and terrified out of her mind.
She trembles as she pulls her glove off her left hand. She might as well have just gone and flashed the two naked.
The sun brushes over the black material of her prosthetics. The metal joint winks at them, and her burned, scarred hand is glossy the way that healed skin is. The skin stretches taut across the back of her hand, waxy white blooms across her knuckles all the way down to her wrist–and even farther, hidden by the cuffs of her sleeve. Between the tighter areas of skin around the tendons of her hand, it contrasts with milky pink and a ruddy brown.
It wasn’t that she was self-conscious about it. It’s the fact that it’s something vulnerable and open, because she knows the reaction it garners. Sharp gasps. Coddled words. The distinct shift in her identity in their minds, because now she is someone to pity rather than someone to just talk to. It wasn’t a shame. It was a fear. Because she doesn’t want to be anyone else but Rumi. Not someone who’s been in every single freak accident in the world. Then people get curious, equating her to nothing more than an interesting story to gawk at.
There’s a small silence. Rumi forces her other hand to steady as she extends out her pen. “Here.” Her voice breaks through the quiet. It’s a deceptive calm. “Just write the address down on my hand.”
Mira’s brow slightly raises. Zoey’s eyes widen just the smallest bit.
Rumi waits.
But nothing comes. They say nothing.
“Okay!”
Zoey takes her hand, picking up the pen from her other hand, and, wow.
Rumi didn’t know how warm she could be. Zoey’s hand could be the sun. It warms her inside and out, and now Rumi doesn’t think she can go back to just feeling her warmth through the thin barrier of her leather gloves. Zoey holds her hand in her palm, not like it was something fragile, no. She holds it like the truth. There’s nothing hidden behind the gesture; it wasn’t false normalcy masking an empathetic shock.
Mira is the same in that regard, too. Because instead of looking at her hands, she’s looking at Rumi.
Somewhere, someone crosses a bridge.
Rumi feels like she did, too.
They don’t note it. They don’t have to. It’s just like being in a lecture hall, your professor reading something off a slide, and you make that purposeful choice not to write it down in your notes.
You don’t have to.
You know you’ll remember it when the time comes.
Rumi can feel the wet slide of ink spreading across her palm. Artisanal. Precise. As if the very meeting place where she’d see these two women is something that seeps into the lines of her palm–burned off as they were.
“We’ll see you tonight,” Mira says, and Rumi huffs out a small laugh and a nod. She slips her gloves back on like she never took them off in the first place. They all look at each other.
“Yeah.”
Somewhere, someone crosses a bridge.
Rumi amends her last thought. She feels like she’s met a person or two midway.
*
The bar isn’t loud. That’s the first thing that Rumi notes in her head when she passes the threshold. It’s decked out in jolly decorations—tinsel, wreaths, garlands. And, fuck, Zoey was right. The bartenders are dressed up as Santa.
The lighting is low and, honestly, it’s a very intimate space. There’s secluded booths in dark wood, and the clinking of glasses and quiet chatter is something that Rumi welcomes.
She was expecting maybe upbeat music, people dancing, bodies crashing together, and having to yell at each other to get a word across. But instead, all she gets is jazzy, faintly Christmas-y music in low tones.
Zoey and Mira, she finds, are in a small corner of the bar—Zoey rigorously waving her hand over as she extends her body over the table, and Rumi laughs as she slides into the booth seat across from them. They’re beautiful. Zoey’s hair is long and free, but she had obviously styled it because it looks wavier than it usually does. Mira’s hair is slicked back this time as well, but slightly off to the side, and a couple of stray strands fall over her forehead.
She isn’t wearing glasses, so Rumi assumes that she’s decided on contacts. Their makeup is light, simple; a sort of understanding that this isn’t like you’re trying to flashbang someone with your beauty. It is an understanding that you will be beautiful to your partner regardless, but still deciding to emphasize it because you’re evil and want their heart to race.
They’re dressed faux casual, like they want to come off as not trying to impress, but are definitely trying to impress. Zoey’s dressed in a spaghetti strap red dress over a ruffled long-sleeve white blouse. Mira has on a white turtleneck with a nice, black handbag. Long gray skirt that hugs her hips and legs, and some nice black Mary Janes.
Rumi feels a bit self-conscious now, because she’s wearing a simple black turtle neck and a loose, cedar brown colored long skirt. A nice beige long coat. Brown formal shoes, she polished all night.
She feels out of her element here, out of her uniform. Especially with two women she’s only known when she was in uniform, so she doesn’t really know how to act.
“Happy Holidays.” Mira huffs through her nose. Zoey nudges her, and Mira’s head falls back with a loud groan. “Ignore her. She loves Christmas more than I do. Isn’t this place just so cute?” Zoey’s voice squeals near the end, squishing up in that happy way that shows she’s very satisfied with the decor. Rumi blows a breath out through her nose, incredibly endeared and fond.
“Well. It’s certainly decked out for the holidays.” She turns her head to watch an array of equally jolly-dressed folk mingling.
She can see a group of people in the back singing along to the Jingle Bells instrumental piano.
When she turns back around, Mira and Zoey are looking at her like she was some sort of snow angel. Rumi just shakes her head in that faux-accepting way. “Drinks?” She offers, and the three laugh and lean over the table, cramped over one whole drink menu despite there being two just off at the corner of the table, giggling when their heads knock together.
*
By the time night fully rolls around, they’re all pleasantly buzzed and enjoying Christmas-themed appetizers of bread and crackers topped with salmon and cream cheese. There’s a bunch of desserts on the other end of the table, but those are all reserved for Zoey. Because Mira and Rumi do not have a sweet tooth.
“You know, we were always curious,” Mira begins.
“Hm?” Rumi turns to her, slightly wobbly, and her face is flushed a quiet red. “What do you do in your spare time? We never really see you around unless you’re on the clock.” Zoey finishes for her, and Rumi pauses for a minute.
Well. She delivers mail.
And, and, she–uh…
Shit.
Rumi is sheepish in her answer, “Honestly, I’m always on the clock.” They both hum. “So, I can’t say I do much in my free time other than sleep and the occasional reading.” Rumi taps her fingers on the table along to the beat of the music and picks up one of those salmon crackers.
“Ah!” Rumi snaps her fingers, “I used to sing, back in high school and college. Not so much now.”
Mira leans in, and Zoey flops against her shoulder. “Really? I guess I can see you as the type.” Mira hums.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rumi laughs easily. “You have a nice voice! It makes sense you’d be a nice singer, too.” Zoey responds, tossing an overly sugary powdered croissant bite into her mouth.
Rumi shrugs. “I don’t sing as much now, though.” She giggles. “Always been so busy.”
Mira eyes the open mic on the stage. “Well, you’ve got time now, don’t you?”
All three stare at each other, something playful inching across the table and stretching lazily.
By the time it settles, they’re all fumbling out of their seats, snorting laughter as they run towards the bar stage, bellowing Jingle Bell Rock.
6.
It’s Christmas Eve.
Rumi can tell. There’s an overabundance of Christmas music bellowing from every restaurant and store she drives past, and almost every person on the street is dressed appropriately for the holiday. Rumi is too, but it’s subtle because, well. She’s on the clock.
She’s wrapped her shoulder bag in a festive garland, and there’s tinsel in her braided hair for the holidays. She has spent the better part of her early morning being shushed by giddy parents and partners, asking her to leave the package at their back door because it’s a present.
She’d press a finger to her lips in their shared secret, giggly.
“There’s my Santa!” A man had cried, before shooing her off towards their garage door so the dogs wouldn’t bark and wake his kids.
She can see children running across their lawns, throwing snowballs, and making poorly made snowmen whilst their parents fuss over their clothes.
Rumi smiles.
This was the perfect way to spend her Christmas Eve. She feels like she’s injecting holiday spirit with every last-minute gift delivery. Though, she feels that she’s kind of expending all of her Christmas energy, because she knows she has to be just as jolly on Christmas morning. She’s working on the holiday, of course.
She’s always lived alone, and even though Celine and Miyeong invite her over for Christmas every year, Rumi never goes. She finds that she likes watching the Hallmark movies at home by herself rather than having to explain to her relatives that, no, she’s not in school and no, she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Then repeat the same thing during the gift opening and breakfast.
She also doesn’t have people to buy gifts for. She frankly doesn’t have the money to buy presents for all of her relatives, no less knowing that they won’t like them anyway, and toss them away.
Rumi makes her way across the street. A thought comes to mind. Well, that’s changed, hasn’t it? She’s forgotten that Zoey and Mira have become such essential moving parts of her life, seeping into her thoughts and her everyday whether it be from work or by chance meetings in the city.
They became people who were no longer bunched into Rumi’s general descriptor of “community” and “residents.” They just became them. Zoey and Mira. People she could never quite call friends, but never strangers, and certainly not acquaintances. But they are people who matter to Rumi. Has come to matter.
Christmas is all about appreciating those people you’ve come to learn and love, right? To the people you care about and care for you in turn.
A sound rumbles from her throat in her mulling. A word sticks and rings at her like a really loud gong.
Love.
Rumi pauses.
Her heart races.
Oh.
She thinks she’s about to die.
Oh my God.
A laugh bubbles out of Rumi’s chest in her shock, and she presses both hands to it like it’ll quell the drum that suddenly started performing inside of it. She didn’t notice. In the ways they had forcibly crawled into her life that one faintful delivery–she had failed to notice that she had been delivering something else this entire time.
No, that’s not right.
They delivered something of their own.
This epiphany comes to her like a blinding white light, completely enveloping her and stunning her in its size.
She doesn’t know what to do with this sudden joy. Or this sudden fact that must’ve become fact before life deemed it such.
There’s a loud honk, and Rumi’s life blasts into a blur, whizzing across her head like a really fast teacup ride. She hits the ground with a loud thud, knocking her off-kilter, and there’s the sound of a car door opening. She’s face-first on the ground, and then she realizes something.
She doesn’t have presents. Christmas is tomorrow.
She never showed them how she felt, told them. She had basked in that warm, easy middle ground because they let her take her time.
She doesn’t want a middle ground anymore. She wants the whole package.
“Oh my God! Are you okay?! Hold on, I’ll call an ambulance–”
Rumi jolts up, hands flattening against the road as she pushes herself up on her knees, whipping her head to the woman desperately trying to input the emergency number into her phone.
“How long does it take to get to the nearest mall?!” Rumi shouts at her.
“H–Huh? Like, thirty minutes–woah!”
Rumi gets up and takes off, running towards the city with her lungs burning.
“Wait, lady–you just got hit by a car?!”
*
The early morning is bright and very cold. Snowflakes accumulate on Rumi’s lashes as she stands in front of an open door. Two women in their pajamas, awake earlier than they should be.
Rumi plays with her cap. A gentle gesture as her hands shuffle against the leather of her gloves. She’s at a crossroads. She’s been on many before. Both metaphorically, physically. She guesses it's fitting for someone like her, who teeters on life’s balancing act like some sort of circus monkey. She’s had so many lives, lucky enough to find one comfortable enough to settle in like a bug snug in a rug.
She flexes her fingers, the ones she has left, and in the two women in front of her, she finds that she is at an impasse.
It’s a hard decision. It’s harder than the one time she’d had to work from 7 AM to midnight, because so many people had decided on overnight deliveries. It’s harder than standing in Celine’s office, staring at an opened letter from the one person she’d yearned to know.
It’s harder than trying to fit all the day’s mail into her shoulder bag. Harder than lugging her large shoulder bag around, besides. Harder than choosing, in that one gap of time, to take off her gloves like she was offering something inconsequential.
Being a mailman lets you see into every facet of one’s life, somehow. To the widow, awaiting the letter of her next payment of government support. To the prospective college student, eagerly awaiting their acceptance letter. To the halmeoni, excited for the daily newspaper.
And for Rumi, a married couple excited to see the hand that plops it in their mailbox.
She knew, in the end, that the uniform she wore was just as much of a pride as it was a phone box. She fosters connection, can be that one person who makes or breaks someone’s day. She knew in the end someone would want to peer past the uniform and see who she is. Maybe all they’d find are letters, letters she’s written and sent and, in turn, delivered.
Maybe they’d find her little packaged heart. Neatly with a bow. Addressed to 505-01, the little house in Dongdaemun.
The house that she’s in front of. Two warm hearts with the expectation of their mail for the day. Rumi, in the end, is a simple woman. Her heart flutters, rattles like letters in their sorting bins when she carts them away.
“Special delivery.” Rumi coughs into her hand. It’s early. Too early. They know this, and they are kind in their observation. Rumi purposely chose to lighten their doorstep before her day started. She knows she’ll have to haul ass to get to work on time after.
Rumi shuffles a small, paper-wrapped box in her hands. She sets it into Mira’s own, steadier than hers will ever be.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
“Ooh, our mailman got us a gift–!”
Rumi presses her cap to her chest in her anxiety. They unwrap it carefully, peer inside the box full of her feelings manifested into a small bear.
It’s holding a small letter.
Are you an inbox? Cause I sure want to be delivered to you!
Zoey looks up after, staring at her with such fondness that it could surely be a car. It hits Rumi nonetheless.
“Merry Christmas,” Rumi says, for lack of anything better to say.
“Well, then,” Mira replies fondly. Zoey finishes for her. “Does this package need a signature for proof of delivery?”
Rumi nods.
And Rumi, by the end, has two signatures of lipstick marks on both sides of her cheek. It is a kindness. One that she carries now, as she’s running down the sidewalk with mail jostling in her bag and her heart right where the mail is.
“Rumi, on your run again?”
“Well, there’s the face I’ve been looking to see all day!”
“Rumi, be sure to drink water. It’s always a treat to see you!”
Her shoes slam against the street, her smile too big for her face, and joy drips from her forehead. The imprint of her proof of delivery, like the falling snow and the Christmas lights, she whizzes past. She’s laughing. She’s laughing and she’s giddy, and she’s sure today is gonna be just as good a day as it was the day before.
She jumped into her van.
There’s always more joy to deliver. Always more to receive. Rumi is glad to be both the recipient and the deliverer.
And, with that, the mailman is gone with a puff of smoke from her exhaust, the sound of rumbling tires, and a mailman singing along to the radio.
*
The lampposts flicker. The sky is a dark blue, stars flickering across the great expanse as if jittering with their laughter and soft joy.
Rumi stands in front of 505-01. Faint Christmas music is heard from their door. The light spilling from their window washes her face in a warm yellow, softening every edge. Her breath puffs out in white steam in front of her. The door yanks open, and hands grab at her.
“Get in here, you!”
“Rumi!”
The mailman is pulled into the warm, glowing home by her arms, laughing the whole way. Two wet smacking kisses to her cheek.
A mailcap falls to the ground, snow piling atop it. Someone opens the door, and the light spills out, coating the cap in its glow.
“Hurry up and get back in here, you’re letting my good heat out!”
“Okay, okay. I’m coming!”
Rumi picks it up and pats it off, gently.
The door clicks shut, and the light leaves with the click. The sound of laughter is the only present it leaves behind.
From the window, three shadowed figures lean over a coffee table flanked by an obnoxiously big Christmas tree.
∞.