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Rumi stood before Celine, her ears ringing. The Honmoon was still rippling into the distance, blue turning a crying, bleeding pink, and the words "This is why-" had just left her mother-yet-not's mouth.
Her vision was blurry. Time seemed to stretch in silent, glass-fragile moments. Celine didn't say anything else. She didn't…she didn't finish her sentence, actually.
Rumi looked up, finally, dragging her eyes back up to Celine and the tree.
Neither moved. Nothing did.
The world stood still. Leaves were suspended mid-air, dust caught before it could fall. There was no breeze. No noise. Just Rumi. Just her tear-blurred vision and stuttering breaths.
They were very loud, in a place where nothing else moved. Rumi blinked slowly, trying to make sense of it. Trying to parse out something through the haze of her thoughts.
Rumi blinked.
And suddenly, someone else was there.
They stood between Rumi and Celine, towering in a way that blocked most else behind them from sight. Only the tree stood taller, crowning them with their distant boughs. Rumi edged backwards, breath catching, as she stared up at them.
It was a not a human, opposite her. Maybe an approximation of one, if she was being generous. There were two legs, two arms, a torso, and something that was almost a head.
Their body was almost solid. It shifted between colors Rumi would call gray or green or maybe blue at times. If she focused, she could see the trees and dirt behind them, their body changing in transparency.
Lines—rings, really—rippled up and down them, eventually dispersing across the ground at their feet until they faded from sight. The rings wrapped around their limbs and body, outlining them as if they were a drawing cut into horizontal slices. Around them, different rings lazily encircled the human-like-thing, like halos around an angel. Yet there were no eyes. Not even on their head.
Rumi barely stomached taking in their form, because pocked throughout it were missing chunks. Every one was lined in pink, jagged and glowing as if neon was leaking from them. Half of their head was just gone. It was like something had blasted through it.
Almost like someone had ripped out chunks with demonic claws, or slashed through it with a tearing voice.
The being's half-there head tilted, and with no mouth, they spoke to Rumi.
"Beloved hunter," the Honmoon itself said.
It's voice was not one, but many. If Rumi concentrated, she could almost pick out her mothers'.
"You wish to perish," it said softly, plainly. "Why?"
Celine had said, once, that the Honmoon didn't have favorites. That it was not a living thing, even if it had some manner of sentience. It picked hunters, and it picked weapons that suited them, but it didn't pick favorites.
And yet, Rumi had never heard of the Honmoon actually appearing to someone. Anyone. Let alone one that was half demon, and tearing it apart with their own voice.
Maybe it wasn't that the Honmoon had favorites. Maybe it just wanted to save itself too.
She stared at the dark, glowing wounds, how the ancient apparition of the Honmoon seemed almost withered, like the tree behind it. Something Rumi had done. She had caused this.
It was why she had come here in the first place. Why she needed to be stopped.
Celine had already denied her. She wouldn't love Rumi, but she wouldn't kill her. So if not even the best hunter Rumi knew, the one who had taught her their duty, wouldn't, then maybe-
Maybe the Honmoon itself would see reason. Maybe the very thing Rumi had harmed, had doomed, would be able to do what her family couldn't.
"I hurt you," Rumi warbled, voice wobbling from tears instead of demonic power this time.
"And this is why you wish to perish?"
Rumi knelt again. She didn't know if she could even summon her saingeom right now, with the Honmoon quite literally in front of her, so she didn't try. She just knelt and bared her neck.
"I'm a demon," Rumi choked out. "Please. I can't…"
I can't hurt you. I can't hurt them. Not again. Please, please, please- I have to- I have- I can't do this anymore-
"I shouldn't be alive."
The world continued to hold its breath. Rumi did too.
The Honmoon hummed. Like a thousand insects, like a thousand voices, it hummed. The noise shook through Rumi right to her bones. It was like she had stood too close to a speaker, the sound rattling the very air in her chest.
"Beloved hunter," it hummed again, "that is not true."
No—no it- it had to be. It was.
(Because how else could Rumi pay for all that she had done?)
She choked on her answer. The words got caught somewhere in her throat, tangling her tongue. Rumi—renowned idol on a worldwide scale—couldn't get a word out. Not beyond her mind, screaming and tearing away at her insides, that the Honmoon was wrong. She was wrong.
Rumi shouldn't be alive.
The Honmoon rippled. Its body shifted, human-like arm raising as if through water, echoes of honmoon rings left in its wake for a bare moment. It held out a hand.
"You do not believe this," the Honmoon softly said. "May I show you, then?"
Rumi blinked back her tears, confusion taking over the maelstrom in her mind. "What?"
"Allow me to show you."
"Show- show me what?"
The rings around the Honmoon spun, growing. They expanded, nearly brushing Rumi now.
"Allow me to show you what would change, if what you believe was to be true."
And, well.
Rumi had come here expecting—hoping—to die. Zoey and Mira had seen her patterns, and driven her away. They must hate her now. She was a demon, and Rumi, in the back of her mind, had never expected it to go differently, if they ever discovered the truth. The fact that she had been alive to kneel herself before Celine was a mercy she hadn't expected.
And Celine. Her mother in all but name. The mother who hadn't let herself truly be one. A person who loved Rumi but not all of her. A mother who loved a daughter for who she could be, but not who she was right now. She had raised Rumi to make the Golden Honmoon. Then, and only then, could Rumi be made right. Only then could she be loved as a human could be.
But Rumi hadn't been able to make the Golden Honmoon a reality. She had broken the one thing she had been raised to protect. The one thing she had worked for all her life—now out of reach. Her friends knew the truth, and Celine had refused to do what she should have a long time ago.
Rumi had no one, now, and nothing to lose.
So she reached out, and took the Honmoon's hand.
The rings washed over her first. They chilled her skin where they touched, like weightless water lapping up her arms. Towering over her, the Honmoon hummed in a thousand voices, and lightly held Rumi's hand.
Rumi blinked.
She blinked, and found herself somewhere else. A very familiar somewhere else.
"What?" she breathed.
Because this—this was Zoey's room. Back home, in their tower. Those were Zoey's posters, her corner made entirely of stuffed animals. The tangled half-dozen blankets that made up her nest of a bed.
The Honmoon stood behind her shoulder, still glowing with magenta injuries.
"In one future," it hummed, "you die."
Rumi's breath stuttered, but she nodded. She had gone to Celine expecting it. She had gone knowing it was what had to be done. Her last resort to save the duty she had been raised for. Rumi was a demon, and demons had to die.
"Celine helps reseal the barrier before Gwi-ma breaks through," the Honmoon continued. "They mend me in their desperation, but you are gone."
"So it- it works out then, if I-"
"No."
Rumi snapped her jaw shut. She heard Celine in that tone, in the way grief was laced through the steel of sternness.
Still hovering behind her shoulder, the Honmoon nudges her, pointing with a mottled-colored hand. "Beloved hunter, look and see."
Rumi carefully turned, looking towards where the Honmoon pointed.
The tears came back almost instantly.
Zoey walked in, and quietly clicked the door shut behind her. For a moment she just stood there. She leaned her forehead against the wood and just…stood.
When she turned, her eyes—tired and aching and empty in a way Rumi hadn't seen in ages, not since the last time she'd been in the middle of her parents arguing—skipped right over the Honmoon and Rumi. Like they weren't even there.
"She can't…"
"No," the Honmoon hummed, "she cannot see us."
Zoey walked right through the Honmoon, not even pausing. But she made a b-line for her desk. Rumi, after a moment, cautiously followed. Even as Zoey sunk into the chair in front of it and sighed like it was too much work to keep the air in her lungs.
Rumi glanced over the desk out of habit. Zoey always had new trinkets or notebooks scattered over it. Shiny rocks, small figurines she'd noticed in shop windows, and loose leafs of paper were common.
It wasn't like that now. Once she started looking, Rumi couldn't tear her eyes away.
Strings were tacked up behind the desk. They had been there for a while now, always occupied by printed polaroids, but there were even more clipped to them now. Every single one had Rumi in them. On the desk itself were…a lot of things. That wasn't unusual. What was, was that Rumi knew all of them.
Some of them were gifts. Things Rumi had seen that reminded her of Zoey, so she had bought them. Notebooks, patterned stationary, fancy pens, jewelry—just small things she'd seen. Small things she'd gifted. A habit of affection she'd picked up from Celine.
Others were Rumi's own things. Her two favorite mugs. A small plant that was in her room, last Rumi remembered, now trailing vines down the side of Zoey's desk. Bracelets and tour mementos—few as Rumi had kept—and even some of the empty plant pots she had sworn she would do something with one day.
They were all gathered there, under pictures of her and her girls. Memories in every piece.
Rumi only managed to tear her eyes away when Zoey moved. She reached into her pocket, and pulled out a hair tie. It was gingerly settled beside the small plant. Zoey stared at it for a another moment before grabbing for a notebook.
Peering over her shoulder, Rumi watched her write. Zoey being Zoey, she spoke aloud as she wrote as well.
"Gray hair tie," she said quietly. "Found under the sink February twenty-first. That makes for forty-eight, twenty-fifth that wasn't snapped."
Zoey exhaled and closed the book, carefully putting it back where it had been. It was one Rumi had found three months ago. On the cover were a variety of sea animals, including a turtle and a sea lion.
Zoey had talked about seeing sea lions back home. Just something random she missed, mentioned offhandedly. So when Rumi had seen the notebook, she bought it, and gave it to Zoey.
Seeing it set up in a shrine to herself…it had Rumi feeling off-kilter.
"She…"
"You are mourned deeply, Beloved hunter," the Honmoon said. "They never hated you."
"But- but they saw my patterns. They know I'm a demon."
"And yet, with your death, they want for nothing more than your continued life."
It didn't…make sense. Not to Rumi. They had to hate her, right? She was a demon. She had patterns. She had lied to them, for years. Hunters hated demons, and her girls hated liars.
They had to hate Rumi after what she had done…right?
But there was devastation in finding out her belongings—now no longer hers, in this future—were something honored. Something gathered and treasured, because she wasn't there anymore. They were all that was left of her.
So Zoey kept the pictures. She saved the trinkets, the mugs, and even one of her plants. All because…all because they had been Rumi's?
Zoey got up while Rumi was staring, trying to piece out why she would do this. She stood like something was weighing her down.
For a moment, Zoey just stood there, eyes closed, breathing. Rumi didn't know why until Zoey sniffled. Not until she swiped at her eyes with her hoodie sleeve. Not until her expression crumbled, no one there to see it but Rumi and the Honmoon, but still swiftly hidden in her elbow.
Zoey had admitted before that she didn't do well with losing people. Rumi hadn't remembered that until now.
Dying was supposed to fix things, it was supposed to be justice for Rumi hurting the Honmoon. Justice for being born wrong. For everything Rumi had broken. She had already lost everything, was already rejected by those she loved most, so what else did she have left but to make it right?
But it didn't…it didn't feel like it , watching Zoey cry, and being able to do nothing to comfort her. Because in this future, Rumi was dead.
It was still instant instinct to reach for Zoey. To at least try to comfort her. But Rumi's hand went right through her shoulder. Zoey didn't even flinch, just shuddered with sobs she was trying her best to stifle.
"Stupid, stupid," Zoey muttered as she violently shook herself. "It's been months—stop it. Can't- can't break down after every hair tie. You're fine."
The Honmoon hummed behind Rumi, a thousand distant cicadas.
And suddenly she was somewhere else. Another familiar place.
Mira's balcony.
It was far more bare than Rumi's corner jungle, and always had been. That hadn't changed. There were still three chairs, little tables between each of them, and a stand for an umbrella. Empty, with the winter snow Rumi could see gathering in the city below.
But there were still three chairs.
It took Rumi a moment to realize Mira herself was there too. She was sitting on the ground, back against the glass railing, also staring at the three chairs. It had to be cold—freezing, even, since Mira didn't seem to be wearing a thick enough jacket. Just a hoodie and some leggings.
Yet she didn't move. Just stared, eyes glazed over, but gaze unmoving from the right-most chair. The one closest to the door.
The one that had always unofficially been Rumi's, whenever Mira convinced them to sit outside for a bit.
Rumi jumped when Mira started speaking.
"I snapped at an interviewer today. Nearly punched them," she said quietly to the cold air. "Because they asked about you."
Rumi glanced around. There was no one else there, not even Zoey. And the Honmoon said neither could see them, so why-
"Celine hates it," Mira continued, huffing as she pulled her legs to her chest. Her breath fogged in the cold air. "Says I'm being childish, getting angry like that. But fuck her. I can be angry. She does have a say anymore. Not since- since you-"
Mira made a strangled sound, and knocked her head back into the glass to stare upwards. Rumi cautiously sat on the ground opposite her. The Honmoon stood, ever watchful, from the doorway.
"I'm so fucking angry," Mira rasped.
And that—that was what Rumi had been expecting. It was almost a relief to hear. Mira being angry at her—for being a demon, for hurting the Honmoon, for lying, for dying—was something Rumi knew would happen.
She wasn't expecting the tears that began dripping down Mira's face.
"We miss you so much," Mira said hoarsely. "It's so stupid—I'm not even angry at you, and you're the one that's gone. You chose to die. But I just miss you."
Oh.
Oh, Mira wasn't-
Rumi had seen this from Mira before. Her grief and sadness turned to anger, sometimes. When it was strong enough to make her defensive. When it was potent enough to make her just want to get away instead of seek comfort. Because if you were angry enough, prickly enough, then people left you alone.
Anger was easier, too. It burned warmer than grief's sinking cold. A fire instead of emptiness. Mira had said before that that fact embodied her entire childhood.
She wasn't angry at Rumi. She was angry that Rumi was gone.
"I wish we'd never drawn our stupid weapons," Mira whispered, closing her eyes now. "I wish we'd just—done it all different. Maybe then you'd- you'd be alive."
Even knowing it wouldn't do anything, Rumi still shuffled over to sit side-by-side with Mira. Something in her chest felt…shrunken. Like it was cowering away from this reality.
This wasn't even something Rumi was meant to hear. This was Mira talking to a ghost—except Rumi was right there.
"I wish we'd gotten to say sorry," Mira said. "I've said it a thousand times, I know. I just—wish we had. Maybe if you'd heard that, we could've…done something. I don't know. Anything's better than this."
Mira shivered, making her huff in annoyance at her body's own response. But she rolled her head forward again to rest between her folded knees.
"I should check on Zoey," she mumbled. "Stupid hair tie. Why'd you even have one under the sink."
Mira got up, and left Rumi in the snow. Reeling.
Rumi had come here with nothing. With no one. She was convinced her friends hated her—it would make sense for them to. All logic and training said they should. Everything Rumi knew, everything she had been told…
She was just shown, twice over, that it wasn't true.
The Honmoon came into view, hand extended. Rumi looked up.
"One more, Beloved hunter," it said.
Rumi nodded, and reached out.
She found herself nearly back where they had started. The compound. Nearer to the house, this time, but Rumi could still easily see the tree from here.
In front of her, on the porch, she could see Celine.
She looked…older. More wrinkled. Exhausted.
Haunted.
Rumi supposed that made sense; she had two ghosts now.
The porch steps didn't take any thought to climb. Rumi knew which boards creaked, knew this was the corner Celine liked to sit. Usually it was in the early morning. Sometimes, it had been to watch them train, or to see them goof around in the yard with their free time.
Now, the yard was empty, and the large house was silent.
They could see the graves from here too. Rumi looked over, to try and find what Celine found so intriguing about the same gravestones that had been there for as long as Rumi had been alive.
She found another one, a new one, right beside her mother's.
"She withers," the Honmoon said softly. This time, Rumi was certain she heard Miyeong's voice. "And Huntrix falls apart. I am fragile, with your death. Gwi-ma will almost certainly succeed in the near future if new hunters are not found. Your death would not fix what you wish it to, Beloved hunter."
"But I'm- I'm dangerous-"
"So too is every hunter. I have had more than one make a deal with Gwi-ma and attempt to rend me. So tell me, why are you different?
"I broke their-"
"You are not the first to break the hearts of other hunters either. Nor the first to lie, or recover from such a thing. Try again, Beloved hunter."
"I- I…"
Rumi tried to lay it out plainly in her mind.
She came up relatively empty. It had…it had seemed so clear, offering her sword to Celine. Rumi was a demon, she had hurt the Honmoon, and her friends hated her—so, thus, she should be dead. She should have been dead for a long time now.
But the Honmoon itself was…forgiving her? Maybe? Forgiveness bestowed by a being who never blamed her in the first place. It was showing her she was wrong, that it didn't need her to be a sacrifice as penance for her own existence.
And- and Rumi's friends didn't hate her. Not enough to want her dead, at least. She was forgiven and mourned and, despite it all, loved-
Her death didn't even fix the Honmoon, here. It was fragile, tenuous, and liable to break in this future. Celine was in no state to train new hunters, and neither were Zoey and Mira. No one could help. Nothing was solved by Rumi's life ending.
Dying didn't fix anything.
Rumi suddenly felt like she was drowning. She could do anything. Not in her present, and not in this future. Dying didn't fix it, but would living be any different? Would she even be able to scrounge up something to solve this?
She fell to her knees, right there on the porch of her old home. Future-Celine didn't even bat an eye. Rumi was a ghost here. As silent as the grief Celine had always hidden away.
Was it worse, then, to see but be unable to intervene? Or to try and fail, to reach out for something better and fall short?
There was no answer in the sight of her own gravestone. Merely an end to existence, an end to her involvement in this future.
Could she fix it? How did she fix it? The Honmoon—it was being torn apart. Like a ragged, claws-torn quilt, it laid in tattered lines across the world. Without her girls—was there even a way she could mend it?
It played on a loop in her mind, brain caught in a tangle like fishing line. How do I fix it? How do I fix it? How do I-
Gently, drawing Rumi's attention, the Honmoon said, "Beloved hunter, we are out of time."
Rumi looked up, and startled at the sight. Because the Honmoon stood over her, falling apart.
The wounds were growing. Pink glowed, corrupting, flaking pieces like gray ash off of its body. As if the injuries were festering, almost. Eating away at the Honmoon with magenta rot. One arm was entirely gone. The stump glowed, bleeding magic. There was now a hole, like a collapsed cliff, in its opposite side, where ribs might be. What halo-like rings remained were crumbling away like shaken shale.
"We are out of time," it softly repeated, "so I must return you."
Rumi scrambled to her feet, viciously wiping at her eyes as she looked up at the Honmoon. "How- how do I fix this? Fix you?"
The being hummed, tilting its head. Rumi wondered if it would be smiling sadly, if it had a mouth. "There is no fixing me now, Beloved hunter."
"But—I have to! Why else- why else would you show me this? If you can be fixed here-"
"I am ancient, young one," the Honmoon hummed-whispered-sang in many, many voices. "The first hunters created me from what already was. But the world has changed, while I remain as they made me. I am no longer what this world needs."
"But without you-"
"The first hunters made me," it repeated carefully. "Beloved hunter, I can be made again."
Rumi stopped. She went still, her thoughts quieting for a moment.
The Honmoon had always been there. It was a constant in Rumi's life. Always there, waiting for her like tuned guitar strings waiting to be strummed. As she had grown, it stayed that way. It was predictable, strong, and unmoving. Something it had needed to do to keep people safe.
It was snapping, now, at the press of demons' claws. Brittle and liable to break instead of bend. Even if it could be patched up, held together by single threads like it was in this future, it wouldn't…it wouldn't work long-term.
The demons would return again, even if they patched up the Honmoon. They would learn. They would win, if nothing changed.
The Honmoon's remaining hand came up, hovering above Rumi's cheek for a moment. She looked up at it's half-gone head and wondered if it was looking at her softly.
"You are Beloved," it said. "Not in spite of your nature or who you came from. All hunters are born as life dictates they must be. Who one comes from is of no significance. It is who my hunters become that is important."
The tears were back. As was the helpless drag of not knowing how to fix this, to make it better. The wish that things could be solved so simply as removing herself from the equation.
But it was the first time anyone had said who her parents were didn't matter. That she didn't need to make up for who they were, and what it had resulted in.
It was the first time someone had seen Rumi, all of her truths and all of her lies, and told her she could be loved. All of her, without having to change a part of herself.
"I am suffering," the Honmoon whispered once more, "as is the world. Beloved hunter, it is time we began again."
Rumi sniffled, choked on a sob, but still attempted to pull herself together. The Honmoon itself was asking this of her. It was asking to be made remade.
It had done more than forgive her. It had told her—shown her—that she was loved, and would continue to be.
"I'll try," Rumi croaked.
"Thank you, Beloved hunter."
Rumi blinked.
"-we have to hide it! Our faults and fears must never be seen—it's the only way to protect the Honmoon!"
It was jarring, being back in the present.
Celine was moving again, looking in the general direction of Rumi but not directly at her. Her eyes were on the glowing lines of rot that were consuming the Honmoon. The pink that was ripping it apart at the seams.
There was no sewing it up, now. The Honmoon had said it was too far gone now, too damaged to be fixed by anything but a temporary patch job. It had to be remade. Redone, recreated. Something new built on the bones of what had been.
Ironic, Rumi supposed, that she would probably be doing the same. If she survived this, if they succeeded, she'd be…she'd be starting over. Beginning again, based on the bones of her life before, but without the lies.
She hoped so, at least. Provided her girls didn't hate her after all, and they all survived Gwi-ma. Provided the world didn't collapse while Rumi tried to figure out what to do.
She had an idea though. One that only may work, but it was better than nothing.
It was all she clung to, right now. A thread of hope. And for now, it was enough.
Rumi took a breath. She was conscious of the air in her lungs, how her ribs expanded to keep her alive. Celine's eyes skittered ever-moving across her. Never settling for long. Never looking her in the eyes. Never focusing on how one was glowing gold.
Maybe she couldn't love all of Rumi—but still, she did love her. It was just that Celine was more mourner than mother.
Rumi could…she could do something about it later. Right now she had a goal. A new one.
Face Gwi-ma—already pulling at the strings of the barrier until Rumi could feel how they frayed—and remake the Honmoon. Simple.
Rumi blinked.
Her soul fizzled, rising to her call. It was…less agonizing, this time, teleporting herself somewhere.
But she blinked, and found herself at the gates of Namsan Tower.
She breathed, and felt two souls tug on her own, pulling her in. They called out to her. The memory of what she had just seen flashed in her mind, treasured trinkets and conversations with a ghost in the cold. A mother mourning thrice over. Withering under the weight of her grief.
A Honmoon holding out a hand and telling Rumi that it was time to start over. A rebirth, a remaking, for both of them.
Rumi blinked, she breathed.
And began to sing.