Chapter Text
They say your world ends when you die. You stop breathing, your heart stops moving, and you simply… cease to be.
Celine’s world ends on a rainy day.
The ambush is something they should have prepared for, something the Honmoon should have alerted them of the moment the first demon came, but life holds no room for what-ifs. Mi-yeong is three days post-labor, and Hana is making pancakes.
Hana, because she was the best and the kindest of them (she shouldn’t have been alone that night—) dies first. A claw through the stomach. The thought never occurred to them of having to worry about their safety in their own home. After all, the Honmoon was strongest around its hunters.
She had been whistling joyfully because little Rumi had opened her eyes and held her finger for hours. She loves her auntie so much, she had awwed. And in celebration, she decided to cook their group’s favorite.
Her blood had splattered over the counters, staining the innocent dessert red. Celine had never been able to tolerate pancakes after… after.
Mi-yeong, hearing the commotion, had been prepared. But oh, how weak and vulnerable she was. The demons must have known about the recent birth. They had been more active in the wake of Mi-yeong’s pregnancy, hoping to take advantage of her new weakness.
She had rushed straight to the nursery, grabbing little Rumi. Celine, who had been by her side the whole time, protected her as they fought off the hordes of demons. There must have been hundreds. Thousands. They left trails of demon deaths in their wake, but eventually, a demon slipped through their defenses. It had ran its wretched claws through Mi-yeong’s back as she turned to shield Rumi from the blow.
They fought for two nights. That was how long it took until the last demon was felled. It was then that Mi-yeong collapsed onto the ground, unable to hold herself up any longer.
“Celine…” she said, with the tone of someone who knew she was close to death. Celine had not resisted, back then, because she knew it was futile. For Mi-yeong to stay fighting for so long, with all the injuries she incurred, was a miracle.
“Mi-yeong…” Celine clenched her fists.
Mi-yeong smiled. “You were always the most responsible one of us.” She cradled little Rumi’s head, fingers running up and down her cheek. The child had stopped crying sometime during the night, sound asleep due to exhaustion. “Will you grant me one last favor, old friend?”
“Anything. Anything you ask.”
“Take care of my Rumi for me, please. Pass our legacy down, and ensure no other demons will come to harm us again.”
Celine nodded. She sat by Mi-yeong’s side until the other could no longer move, breathing turned static. Only then did she take the child from her mother’s grasp. Only then, were her exhales stolen by the screams that left her throat.
Celine’s world ends on a rainy day, with nothing more than a bloody countertop and two corpses. The only living remnant to come out—because Celine’s heart had died alongside Hana and Mi-yeong and she could not have been considered fully alive, not anymore—was a baby with purple hair and patterns engraved on her skin that all but spelled out DEMON.
Unbidden, the seed planted itself into her head and grew: how was it that two hunters died, but a demon hadn’t?
The weight in her arms should have been light. It should have been, but the universe was cruel, and so was the human mind.
She was holding the child of her very first friend a demon. She was holding a child a demon.
The patterns, as if they had been listening to her thoughts, grew minutely. Celine covered them up with her hand, even when the very touch almost caused her to recoil.
It would be the first, and last time, she touched them.
Rumi thinks flowers are pretty.
She likes the way they smell, the way the petals feel smoother the more the thumbs them. Mostly, though, she loves how many different colors there are. The purple ones are her favorite. She giggles as she plucks one from the ground to tangle in her hair. Often, she runs out of the house just to find a new flower to play with. Celine tells her to not go too far and always reminds her to cover it up, but she’s never too strict. Rumi spends most of her time outside when she’s not training, only coming back in during the night when Celine remembers her bedtime.
Her tummy rumbles.
Rumi scrunches her nose. The sound is weird and stupid, and why would her tummy need to rumble anyway? It’s not a drum, or a pet, but it always rumbles no matter what she’s doing. Arms wrapping around her middle, she curls into a ball on the soft grass. The rumbles were sometimes accompanied by pain, and she still wasn’t quite sure how to fix it, but maybe it was just another part of her bad-ness. Like the patterns on her arm.
Celine would know how to fix it. But Celine was already upset about her patterns, and Rumi didn’t want to make her more upset than she already was. Her tummy aches though, and tears pool in her eyes. She wipes them away with the back of her hand.
Just for today. She’d ask Celine today, and Celine will teach her how to fix it and Rumi won’t have to ask her anymore things and have to see her mentor with that scary look on her face again and everything will be okay.
Propping herself up on shaky legs, Rumi makes her way for their home. It’s not very far, so it only takes a few minutes before she’s back inside. Celine is in her office again, so Rumi makes sure to knock three times before letting herself in.
“Rumi?” On her face is visible confusion. “What are you doing here?”
“Ce-ley,” she picks at the edges of her shirt nervously, “can you help Rumi? Rumi’s tummy hurts.”
The older woman’s expression contorts into one of realization and annoyance, and Rumi feels something get stuck in her throat. Did she say something wrong?
Celine sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “The food is in the pantry. You know this, Rumi.”
“I know!” Rumi sniffles. Of course she knows the food is in the pantry, but what is she going to do with it? What will the food do to her tummy? She may not have been very bright, but she knew eating the candy wasn’t going to help, even if it did taste yummy.
“If you knew, why did you come to me? Go eat. You don’t need to tell me if you’re hungry.” Celine goes back to her papers, shooing her away, and Rumi has no choice but to go out.
Her tummy hurts, but Celine told her to eat, and Celine always knew what was best. She knew how bad her patterns were. Knew she needed to hide them. Knew how bad Rumi was, so Celine must be right. Maybe food will help?
Tap. Tap. Tap. Small feet make their way through wooden floors and arrive at the kitchen. Rumi looks through the drawers in the pantry for something to eat before she finds it. There, in the corner, lay a ramyeon cup, her absolute favorite meal. She giggles, tears all but forgotten, and takes it out, eagerly peeling away the cover.
Rumi was not very good at cooking, but she had seen Celine prepare the ramyeon multiple times before. All she did was pour hot water inside it, something that was even easier than plucking flowers. So—so it was just this. It wouldn’t be too hard, right?
Stubborn hands grab hold of a water bottle. The kettle hadn’t been put away yet, likely because Celine forgot to do so after her morning coffee, so it wasn’t very far. A big relief, because if the kettle had been stocked away in one of the top cabinets, Rumi knew she would fall trying to get it, her gripping skills not yet good enough, and Celine would probably be mad.
Rumi doesn't want to make Celine mad.
And so, with the ease that came with daily training, Rumi climbs the lowest countertop, sitting cross-legged as she pours the water inside the kettle excitedly. There are a few stray splashes on the counter, but success! She lets the water sit for a couple of minutes before dipping her finger in, but nothing has changed. The water is still cold.
Maybe it’s like a light switch? Rumi stares at the kettle in concentration, trying to find anything suspicious. She moves it about again and again, trying to activate it, but nothing ends up happening.
Celine would know, but Rumi doesn’t want to bother her again.
And so, after slumping on the counter in frustration, Rumi gives up and grabs her ramyeon cup. She pours the kettle water in it and the ramyeon inside rises but. But it’s ugly and it isn’t soft like how she likes it and she hates it.
The taste is bad. It’s like she’s eating wood and her teeth hurt from chomping down, but Celine said eating would fix her tummy and Rumi eats it all anyway.
At the bottom, she finds some square plastic-thingies. She holds them between her fingers, tongue sticking out unconsciously. Inspects them for a while. Eventually though, the novelty wears off and she throws them in the bin with the ramyeon cup.
The ramyeon was bad, but her tummy doesn’t hurt as much anymore, and Celine is always right. Celine makes the ramyeon taste good, so does that mean that Rumi is just bad? Did her bad-ness make the ramyeon bad?
Her tummy doesn’t ache, but her heart does, and Rumi runs to the flowers because it’s the only thing she knows how to do.
The child unsettles her.
It trots around with Mi-yeong’s face, smiling at her. It doesn’t cry, not anymore, but it used to, when it was much smaller than this. Celine had not known what to do then. She knew she was supposed to hold it, rock it in her arms until it calmed down, but seeing the patterns on its skin and the unnatural hair color that could only have come from its bloodline, she couldn’t.
A blanket. That was the only thing that quieted it. Whenever the child cried, she threw a blanket on it and waited until it stopped crying. It didn’t pick up so much of a fuss in the weeks, months, years after that. Of course, it grew, and with it, Celine’s apprehension, but blessings came small and appreciated. It did not seek her out.
It learned not to, after the first time, when Celine all but stiffened under its touch and could offer no comfort to its pleading face. Not when it cried and all she could hear were the sounds of weapons clashing against claws as a baby shed tears for something it could not fathom. Never again, and Celine was grateful for that.
Against her will, though, the child had to be trained. It moved with a strength and grace that unnerved her, but she could not argue against its effectiveness. Celine would raise the child to be a good demon hunter, better than she had been, better than they had all been, and they would rid the child of its marks when the time came for the Honmoon to shine gold.
Then, she would be able to look the child in the eyes, and see something other than it.
The face of a woman she once loved.
The marks of a man she despised with her very being, who had taken everything from her.
(“She’s small,” Celine says.
“Babies are supposed to be small, you know,” Mi-yeong replies teasingly. She sends Celine a knowing glance. “I want to name her Rumi.”
Celine’s eyes widen.
They had pooled together a list of names for the baby, back when Mi-yeong entered her second trimester. It had been the three of them wracking their brains for boy and girl names, searching up hidden definitions and all sorts of nonsense. At some point, Hana had suggested the name Bap, joking that rice was the heart of Korean life, and the soon-to-be Bap would thus never go hungry. Celine had whacked her upside the head.
Rumi. That was the name Celine had chosen. For Mi-yeong to choose it as well...
It was perfect.)
“So does that mean I have to hide it, all the time?” the child asks.
“Yes.” Celine hums as she brushes through its hair. “Demons will hunt and kill, feasting on souls simply because it satisfies them. Your duty as a hunter is to make sure they are vanished from this world and thrown back to Gwi-Ma’s realm, and to do this you must seal the Honmoon. Until then, no one must see.”
“So…” the child scrunches up its nose, “are there no good demons in this world?”
“Never,” Celine answers viciously, face twisting in an almost-snarl. The child has its back turned to her, so it does not see, but it feels the way the Honmoon shifts in response to the venom. Weapons clashing and crying and blood on the countertop and—there are no good demons.
It turns its head look at her sadly, and then at its hands. “Am I good?” it says with hope, eyes boring into her in that same expression it always had when it was searching for something. Celine looks away.
“Celey?” There is a whine in its tone, bordering desperate. “Am I good? Can I be good?”
Celine does not look at it, still. Cannot look at it. She brings her hands to her lap. “We will turn the Honmoon gold, and it will fix you. You will be perfect.”
The child is quiet.
“You will be perfect, Rumi,” Celine reassures it, lowering her tone. She will fix this. They will fix this.
Something shifts in the air. The child shuffles on the grass until it is facing Celine, a sweet smile adorning its face. There is a gap in the place of its front teeth, but the smile is soft and warm, filled with all the affection a child could muster. It is the same smile the child gives her, all those times Celine called her by its her name.
Rumi pulls something out of her jacket; a flower, or a purple hyacinth to be more precise. She clasps Celine’s hand, placing the flower atop her open palm. “I… I got this flower for you.” she says shyly. And then, quieter but filled with hope, “I love you.”
Celine pulls her hand back at the touch. There is no fire but she is burning and there is a demon pressing against her and she does not want it to touch her again.
I love you, it says.
I cannot love you, Celine does not say back.
She keeps the flower in her pocket and, later, buries it next to a grave.
I’m sorry, Celine falls to her knees. It is raining and the world is not ending but it feels like it is. I am so, so sorry, Mi-yeong.
Rumi is not an artist, but it doesn’t stop her love of drawing. A smiley face here and there, the occasional cat, and just about anything her mind could imagine. In particular, she likes doodling pretty swords. She imagines herself wielding one, when she’s finally old enough to tap into the Honmoon’s magic, and the thought feels like a missing puzzle piece slotting into place.
She’s just finished her most recent drawing—a longsword that spanned the length of her forearm—when Celine walks in.
Fwhip. The sound is almost audible with how fast she moves. She hides her arm behind her back sheepishly, and Celine raises a brow but makes no further comment. “Hiya, Celine.”
“It’s time for practice. You’ll be coming with me outside.”
“Wait, outside?” Rumi jolts up. She’s been out of the house and away from the forest a grand total of four times in nine years. Officially four times, but unofficially… well, the locals didn’t know her name, but they knew her. They gave her treats and told her she was good at things.
You’re so mature for your age, one would say.
Smart gal. Keep that head with ya when you’re older and you’ll go places, another would praise.
And like the greedy, selfish thing that she was, Rumi could not resist.
“We’re finally going outside?”
Celine nods, looking at her watch. “You have twenty minutes,” she says, leaving before Rumi can get another word in. Rumi huffs, flopping on the bed. She takes about five minutes reloading her brain before the realization sets in that, yes, she is about to go on a trip outside with Celine, and no, this is not a dream. It almost sends her careening to the shower as she cleans up in record speed and throws on one of her hoodies.
She meets Celine at their residence gate, panting. She’d crossed the distance between here and her room in seven seconds, leaving behind nothing more than a blur, and now that she’s here…
Rumi rocks back and forth on her heels, resisting the urge to beam. Celine never liked it when she smiled too wide, so she tries her best to imitate her mentor and her calm, collected demeanor. A grin slips out either way.
“Come,” Celine says, and Rumi follows.
They make their way through the vast expanse of the forest and into civilization in less than an hour. Her friends (can she call them that? she doesn’t really know what having friends is like, but she hopes they are) wave at her when they see her, and Rumi keeps her head down, but she sees the kind old woman who had given her soup last time and can’t resist. Celine tugs her arm down harshly.
Her grip is tight and her knuckles are bordering on white but she doesn’t let go of Rumi’s wrist. “Try your best not to interact with the humans,” she whispers, and there is an odd quality to her voice that Rumi can’t decipher.
Rumi runs it over in her head. Right... She wasn’t one of them, and she wasn’t fixed yet, so getting too close was a risk they couldn’t take. What if she accidentally hurt someone?
Guilt fills her up like a balloon. She hadn’t thought of that before.
Thankfully, Celine caught on before she could make it worse than it already was. Rumi murmurs a quiet thank you, and the grip on her wrist loosens.
It does not let go.
They arrive at a dark alleyway in one of the more desolate areas in the town. It’s squished between two motels, but there’s plenty of running space to go around. Rumi catalogues the routes in her mind, the act almost instinctual—a part of her hunter traits, she thinks—and she senses the disturbance before it happens.
Inhale. She takes in the air and does not vomit, because she had smelled and eaten worse, but it does not stop her stomach from churning. The smell is, well, terrible—like overripe fruit mixed with incense; an offering left too long at a shrine.
She hears a distant, “Don’t move. Just observe,” before her sight is taken over by a flash of white and magenta. Celine summons her weapons from thin air, a pair of sai that glimmers in the lightless space, and the Honmoon rips apart. Demons rush out of the breakage, but it is futile. Celine is a veteran, and she moves like it, weaving between hordes of demons as she slays them all one by one.
Rumi is entranced. By the movements, by the ripples coming from the Honmoon, and by the song. Celine sings and her voice does not waver once. It is beautiful.
There are parts that feel empty, though. Missing.
Distracted as she is, Rumi doesn’t notice when one of the demons slips out of Celine’s circle. It clacks its teeth together as it runs to her from the side, and she is too late to dodge. She holds an arm up to defend herself, but the demon claws at it without remorse.
Blood trails down her arm, and far away, she hears the sound of a battle being finished. The demon beside her is killed by the quick throw of a sai, but she pays no heed to it.
It is painful, and she could scream (she really wants to, in fact). Except, Celine would be mad at her. “Our faults and fears must never be seen,” she would probably say, and her guess is right.
Celine stoops down next to her, inspecting the wound. Finding the injury acceptable, she hands Rumi a brown handkerchief. “Wipe this off before we go back.”
Rumi takes it, cleaning the blood off her arm. Everything feels… muted, somehow. Touching her fingertips against each other, she does not feel anything more than a tingling sensation. She shakes her head, refocusing on the cleanup. It’s not too bad. There is a lingering pain, and a faint scar on her arm that quickly fades away, but nothing more.
Rumi heals quickly, she knows, after all the training sessions she’s had with Celine. This is the first time, however, that the thought of it stays in her brain. Cogs turning, Rumi runs a hand over the spot where the demon had taken her flesh. A drawing of a longsword had sat there just minutes ago, and now it was gone, leaving nothing more than pure, untouched skin.
She stares at her forearm, and then at the area near her shoulders.
An idea festers inside her, twisting and turning. It aches. It is stupid and smart and good and bad but it strikes at the desire that had always lay hidden inside her chest and she is terribly, terribly weak to it. When she follows Celine back home, she is trembling.
The idea sits there as just that—an idea—for the better part of three years. At night, it keeps her up, and during the day, when Celine makes her recite the mantra of “Hide the patterns until they can be fixed”, it blares loud in her head.
The only reprieve she gets is when she’s exhausted herself and is forced to… retreat, for lack of any better word. Rumi retreats and the fog that had been a constant companion in her life thickens until it reaches into her lungs and steals the breath from her being. No longer does she have any control of her breathing, unconscious or otherwise, and a different entity that is both Rumi and not pushes her body to operate.
She lets it.
During those times, she is nothing more than a spectator in her own mind, watching and waiting. She feels nothing and thinks of nothing, because what need is there for her to do so when she can stay in the cold, comforting clutches of the fog?
Everything hurts less, when she lets it happen. The pain in her stomach lessens (she is so, so hungry and she wants food but the pantry ran out and Celine gets angry when she asks for more and it hurts), and her thoughts quieten.
Which brings her to now.
Shredded paper drifts to the ground in slow motion, and Rumi wants nothing more than to disappear.
“You—You.” Celine pants angrily. Her hands are splayed on her desk and she had stood up so abruptly that Rumi flinched back into the door. “Refrain from calling me that name again. Understood?”
Rumi, heart stuck in her throat and fog making its way up her lungs, can only whimper. Her mentor slams her hands on her desk again.
“I said. Understood?”
“Y-yes.”
“Good,” Celine says. She glances at her desk, at the shredded papers on the floor, and at Rumi. Rationality comes back to her all at once, and she sighs, collapsing into her chair with her head in her hands. “I’m not your mother.”
“‘M sorry. I just wanted to give you a—”
“I am not your mother, Rumi.” Celine’s voice is level. Like the calm before the storm. Rumi’s hand grapples for the doorknob, a primal sort of fear radiating throughout her body. Her arm shakes but her grip is strong, because Celine is angry and when she is angry Rumi is bound to take the fallout.
“Have you ever thought that, maybe,” her mentor pauses, and Rumi braces herself, “I never wanted to have a daughter like you?”
And oh.
Rumi thinks of flowers. Beautiful and wonderful and every good thing she could not be. How the world had taken them as a symbol of warmth. Of endearment. Of adoration. Curious, isn’t it? How much love is poured into a flower for it to grow from a mere seed to something that has its roots planted firmly to the ground? An undeniable mark left on the world despite its short lifespan.
Rumi has always wanted to be a flower.
In the end—
In the end, she is nothing more than a passing wind. A stain on the sidewalk. Something she has forced her mentor to pay attention to because of how much space she takes up despite being such a mistake. The fog is oh so tempting, then, and she lets it spread from her lungs and into her bones until there is nothing left to distinguish the fog from the girl.
Shuffle. She picks the shredded paper off the floor and leaves. Celine does not look at her.
Childish handwriting colors the page. What was left of it.
There, laid lovingly and with carefully made illustrations, were five words.
“Happy mother’s day!
Love, Rumi.”
The thoughts are louder that night.
Or, not the thoughts, because Rumi can feel them passing through her fingers every time she tries to think. The idea.
Skin was replaceable; temporary. On weekends, Celine would take her demon hunting and show her the ropes, often leaving her to get rid of the demons by herself. So, Rumi was used to it. The smell of blood. Wounds that went away after a hard battle.
Wasn’t it only natural for her to think: 'I could carve it all away'?
Vision going hazy at the edges, Rumi opens the door to her bathroom and steps in the tub. All those times she tried to bathe herself, the metal had felt cold to the touch.
Today? It felt scalding.
What was that phrase again? Rumi touches her fingers to her lips. Oh, right. ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’. A hiccup escapes her mouth and she quickly suppresses it, pressing her teeth down on her knuckles. Rumi had done more than just bite. It made sense for her to face the consequences, no?
Celine… had torn apart her letter as if it meant nothing. As if Rumi meant nothing.
The tears are quick to gather in her eyes, but she doesn’t know how to let them fall. It fuels her numbness. Rumi plays with the knife in her hands and thinks: I really am a demon, aren't I? Crooked and bent and wrong. She doesn’t even know how to cry properly.
Doesn’t even know how to unburden the only person who ever looked out for her.
And that was, perhaps, the most heartbreaking part. Rumi loves Celine, loves and adores her because she is a demon in all the most revolting ways, but Celine took her in regardless. She clutches the knife in her hand. Maybe this time, Celine will find a way to love her back. Maybe, if this can fix her, Celine will look at her without the grief that clouded her eyes and the hatred that led to too-tight grips and too-cold words.
It doesn’t take much thought on her end.
Trickle.
The skin on her arm is cleaved away. It is rough and messy and painful, but Rumi doesn’t care. For once, she has hope to fix things. Through half-lidded eyes, she watches the wound knit itself back together. Her hand is still holding the knife, and she is willing to try as many times as necessary to fix herself.
It heals quickly, a large scar taking over its place. Her chest feels empty, like a part of her soul had been taken away, but—
The patterns are gone.
Rumi washes the blood clean. To be presentable.
Celine would be mad, if she came to her and stained the floor. But, the blood is okay. It doesn’t hurt as much anymore. Her head feels light even though her face in the mirror is wrong wrong wrong who are you distorted. That was also okay.
Shoulders steady, Rumi knocks on her office door. It’s night already.
She can’t remember what her mentor's said, but one moment Celine is sitting and the next she is holding her by the wrist and pushing her sleeve up. Eyes wide.
“Rumi, what did you do?”
A tilt of the head. Rumi looks at her arm. The scar is still there, and some parts of the pattern are growing back again. It’s faint. Slow. Barely noticeable unless you know what to look for.
She takes Celine’s free hand and places it against her cheek. Smiling. The warmth helps chase away the cold. “It’s ‘kay, I’ll go deeper next time and it’ll take longer to come back.”
Celine recoils. Rumi stares at her in confusion.
“Why would you do this? You’re not supposed to—” Celine cuts herself off, and. There. Rumi sees the panic.
Why is Celine panicking?
“This. You can’t do this again, you hear me?” Her mentor is not herself when she says it. She says a lot of things, after. Moves her mouth and her hands and paces around the room, but Rumi’s ears are ringing.
She isn’t focused on her voice.
Or on much else, really.
Rumi hides a smile behind her hand because she knows Celine wouldn’t like it. The smile stretches her cheeks and Celine stares at her in horror, but alas.
Rumi is twelve years old. Baby fat is still present in her cheeks. She is twelve years old and there is blood on her hands, but.
Celine is looking at her.
It is a wondrous day, indeed.