Chapter Text
"I brought tteokbokki! Come and get it!" Rumi called into the apartment. Her only answer was a run made across the keys of the baby grand, just out of sight of the elevator doors. She stepped out, intrigued and aptly listening. And there sat Zoey, playing with chord progressions at random, then in a sequence that had been honed by repetition, then random again.
Rumi set her bounty down on the kitchen counter before sauntering into the living room. The barest turn of Zoey's head in her direction was the only acknowledgement she gleaned. Stood at her left, placing an anchoring hand on her shoulder and catching the small hints of muscle as she continued to press along the piano keys. Easily she recalled the last time she's come upon Zoey in the throes of her creativity spirals a few weeks back. This time, though, she noted the lack of tension in her back—no signs of visible frustration or excess energy that had rendered her inert with indecision.
"No drums today?" Rumi asked, conversational.
Zoey shook her head as she ran through an elementary scale expertly and stopped again. "Not yet," she said. "I wanted to try something first."
Then she turned and craned her head to look up at Rumi, smiling with invitation. "Sit with me?"
Rumi did, the bench creaking beneath her as she shifted and got comfortable. "What're you working on?"
"A ballad, I think," she frowned thoughtfuly. She rested her fingers on the keys, mapping with her eyes where they should go next.
Rumi hummed, surprised. "That's different."
"Yeah, I've been getting that a lot," Zoey snickered softly, but her smile was wan, even regretful. Then she sighed and her hands fell into her lap where she fidgeted with her fingertips. "I know I should be working on the next single but—"
"Hey," Rumi coaxed, nudging Zoey's shoulder with her own in an attempt at playfulness, "we just released the first one not that long ago, we've got plenty of time before we need to do another reveal. Don't burn yourself out."
Zoey snickered again, a heartier sound compared to the first. "That coming from you is crazy."
"Do as I say, not as I do," Rumi nudged her again, harder and more insistent, but still smiling. Then she added with some concern, "Talk to me, Zo. What's going on with these side projects of yours?"
"I don't know. They're just… coming out of me."
"Hmm. And you feel okay?"
"I feel fine, I think. Energized." She held up her hands, palms up, and flexed her fingers—open then closed then open again. She laid them back on the piano keys and pressed a few tinny notes in an impulse to fidget. "The joy of creation, am I right?"
Rumi winced in sympathy. "Do you plan to release them?"
"… I don't know. Maybe not?"
"Not even as a solo project? Idols do it all the time."
"Yeah I know, it's just—it wouldn't feel right, I don't think. It wouldn't be the same without you guys."
Rumi looked ready to insist and encourage, but she held back, letting the little selfish part of her win. "Well we're not going anywhere," she assured confidently. Then she redirected their attention back to the piano. "What do you have so far?"
"Oh! Here," Zoey said, and played what she's generously named the intro and a pre-chorus in light of having barebone lyrics. No chorus yet, and she's confident in adding a bridge further along. Her eyes grew far away when she mentioned the latter, the mere feeling of it was there as potently as the poetry stuck in her throat every time she'd thought about it.
She mouthed the sparse lyrics of the first verse under her breath as she played, not quite singing, and most of the words were half formed and sonic nonsense that still kept on beat. The shape of it was there, and Rumi listened with rapt focus.
"Wanna help me bang out the chorus?" Zoey eventually asked at the end of the short demo.
"I'd love to."
Zoey smiled and reached up for her phone, ending the current recording, and starting a new one before replacing it against the sheet music stand. Then they got to work for the next hour, refining each measure and playing with tempo until the foundation and scaffolding to build a chorus was in place.
"How about this?" Rumi proposed and reached for a major chord. Their fingers brush, but they don't pull away. They exchange a look, soft and mutually questioning. Is this okay? What should we do?
Rumi's hand twitched, making to pull away, but then the warmth of Zoey's palm resting on the back of her hand stilled her, and their fingers aligned into one. At Zoey's half smile, Rumi bit the inside of her cheek and pressed on the keys. In this way, it looked like Zoey was the one playing, and the intensity in which the she studied their shared motions more than showcased how she was commiting it all to memory.
"I like that," Zoey said when Rumi had finished. Languidly, she separated their hands and recited the chords for herself, combining it with what's come before as one long sequence. Hearing it all at once, it really cemented that this was turning into an honest-to-god song.
There wasn't any question of its purpose or its place in the Huntr/x canon—just the simple act of playing together was enough. It was freeing in a way that neither of them have felt in a long while.
Rumi joined in, first with her left hand to play the bass notes, then her right floated to the octave below middle-C and soon they were locked in a delicate duet. It mattered little of what they played then; the line between what were the bones of the chorus or what was just mindless riffs blurred and floated in a rosey haze as they serenaded the empty penthouse.
Eventually, they came to a gentle stop, a soft landing that Rumi improvised with a beautiful flourish that ended on B and F sharp.
Zoey tilted her head to the sound, curious. Soft landing… Hm.
"Do you have any lyrics for the chorus?" Rumi couldn't help but wonder as her avidity to hear more reared its head. That in and of itself wasn't anything new, but it didn't come from the professional place of being a pop idol. What looked at Zoey wasn't Rumi, leader of Huntr/x, but rather Rumi who took genuine pleasure in the art of unfettered creation.
Zoey only shrugged and replayed from memory Rumi's measure that had brought their impromptu duet to a close. "Bits and pieces," she said. "I don't know if they even go together honestly."
"Would you let me hear them some time?"
"Maaaybe," Zoey drawled cheekily. Then her expression turned pensive and she stopped playing. She turned to Rumi and looked at her like a puzzle had suddenly appeared on her face. Or maybe Rumi herself was a piece of a larger whole and she'd just now realized.
"What?"
"Can I show you something else?" she asked.
"Of course," Rumi said without thinking because it's Zoey, what other answer could there possibly be?
Then Zoey took hold of her hand and soon they were in the recording studio. Rumi took a moment to observe the drum kit stored in the larger booth. She smiled, recalling the many deliveries made to the penthouse made since that first day, all addressed to Zoey. Presently, the kit had more attachments and modifications, with an array of cymbals in all their forms; hi-hat, toms, and snare in organized procession arranged specifically to Zoey's needs.
"So," Zoey chirped from her perch at the soundboard. Rumi came over as she spoke, "Mira helped me with a thing a few weeks back and hearing you play just now is giving me some ideas."
"You guys recorded a song?"
"Ehhh, kind of." Zoey qualified with a sheepish wince.
"Kind of?"
"I mean, it never got finished cuz of the single and I got stuck on what should come after the second chorus," she sighed and scrubbed through the timeline to point out the empty space that started after an abrupt end of a sound byte. "I was thinking of putting an instrumental break here, something to help change up the tone, or maybe a key change? But, I dunno, nothing sounded right no matter what I tried."
Rumi studied her a moment, then smiled knowingly. "You want me to improvise something for you?"
Zoey folded her hands in front of her chest. "Yes, please!"
"And you want it on piano?"
"I think so…? I have some guitar riffs I was playing around with but I was thinking about sprinkling it in for a bridge instead." At this, she played a sound byte from somewhere on the timeline and the languid plucks of an electric guitar came through.
"Sounds cool. Jazzy," Rumi remarked. "You want something like this for the instrumental break?"
"We can try that. You don't have to make anything crazy, obviously. I just need something to get over this block."
"Well, let's hear what I'm working with first, yeah?"
"Oh right, yeah that's important. But, just giving you a head's up, you're about to have your mind blown."
Rumi raised a brow. "What do you mean?"
In lieu of an answer, Zoey only smiled smugly and pressed play.
Synths, ambient and airy. Piano, slow and doleful. Rumi gave Zoey an amused quirk of her brow. Sure it the sound wasn't aligned with Huntr/x's brand of pop, but there wasn't anything out of the—
Then Rumi's breath halted.
Everything stilled, and time itself seemed to dilated at this very point as the most haunting vocals reached her ears; and she knew, utterly, that this voice would sooner await her in dreams than ever fade from her memory.
"That's Mira?" she asked, her voice candlelit with awe.
"Yeah," Zoey said in mirrored reverence. She sighed, knocking her smile into a crooked smirk, "She's been really holding out on us, huh?"
"She's beautiful," Rumi answered before she could even think to save herself from the blush warming her cheeks.
"You should've seen her in the booth."
All too soon, the song ended—abrupt and oh so tantalizing in its obvious incompleteness.
"So," said Zoey, "whatcha think?"
Rumi broke herself out of her stupor, but still entangled in the deep understanding of why Zoey had such difficulty finishing the song in the first place. She shouldn't be surprised at all that Mira would set the bar up so high, she just didn't expect she'd have to be the one to try and surpass it, let alone meet it. How in the world was anyone meant to follow up on a sound like that. She hadn't felt the fire of challenge since their pre-debut days.
Regardless, she managed a meager, "I'll see what I can do," before going into the booth to plug in and switch on the keyboard. Then she sat and tapped at the keys, trying to pick out by ear where she should start. She played the preceding chords of the second chorus. Then she played it again. Then she played it again but with a new chord at the end, experimenting—like a lockpick trying to find just the right combination.
Zoey stared on intently, meanwhile, replaying the vocal track whenever Rumi called for it. Though they were separated by glass, they were unified beneath the drawl of Mira's singing, the basking of it, and the siren call of challenge that dared them to listen one more time just one more time.
"Again," Rumi called out. Then she listened, she played the chords—Zoey's chords that she could help but rephrase in parts trying to match Mira's raw performance—then the second chorus neared its end, the track losing tracks right in front of her, her fingers playing, no, chasing ahead of it to lay down more before she could derail.
Then Mira's voice was gone and—
Rumi's fingers froze, holding the chord just shy of middle C. She held the note, frowning and squinting her eyes at the rest of the keyboard as if to will it into showing her where she needed to be. But nothing came. No divine intervention, no flash of inspiration or sign of clarity. Just Rumi dangling from a chord.
"Damn," she hissed to herself.
Zoey grinned wryly and chimed in through the booth speakers. "You see what I mean?"
"You really wrote yourself into a corner here, Zo," Rumi agreed and finally released the chord to let the space lapse into unresolved silence. She crossed her arms over her chest, staring down at the row of keys like a soldier beholding another across a battlefield. But a few seconds pass and her imagination commits its first betrayal as the keyboard became so charged with meaning, that it began to blue, and soon the adversary at the end of the field became Mira herself.
You're not making this easy for me, Rumi mused, and the Mira of her mind smirked in response just as she had in the days of their trainee rivalry.
You gonna do something about it then?
"Not me," Zoey defended. "I don't even remember where I was going with it before Mira happened."
Rumi chuckled. "I bet if she were here right now she'd get a laugh out of giving us a hard time with this."
"Or she'd be too shy and embarassed to really notice our struggle," she joked, propping herself up against the soundboard by the fold of her arms.
"Gonna be honest here, Zo. You're not giving me a whole lot to work with. What were you hoping to hear exactly?"
"I don't have the answers you seek," Zoey moaned dramatically, burying her face into the crook of her elbow that made her voice come through the speakers muffled. "Earlier when you improv'd the ending it was like you were giving us a place to land, you know? I thought maybe that's what I'm missing."
A part of her wanted to be cheeky and remark that, yes, that's what song endings usually are: the point where all the measures and their moving pieces could come to a conclusive rest. But something about the choice in Zoey's words… she sat with it for a long time. There were moments like these where she fnds herself swept up in an unexpected current, catching on Zoey and her effortless poetry.
A place to land…
They were nowhere near the end of the song, of course, but maybe…
"Run it again, top of the second verse," Rumi said, and Zoey sat back up in the chair and replayed it.
The chords came as easily as breathing by this point, enough to let the muscle memory carry her as she closed her eyes and tuned her ear to Mira. In the phantom theater of her mind's eye, she was running beneath the pain, looking up and trying to catch up to the sun falling out of a twilight sky as it professed the shameful shamelessness, indulgeance of vices in the verse: I'm sorry for what I was, for what I let it shape me into.
The verse ended, the second chorus barreling through, and the sightless void loomed just beyond. She hit the chords with more punch behind them, trying to be heard over the inevitability punctuated by the drums, the weightless surrender of the synths that promised a numbing peace. But no, those couldn't be the only answer to this. Inevitability and surrender and the inevitability of surrender were a false balm to an old wound that didn't know how to close itself.
In her mind's eye, she kept running, and the shape of the coming void wasn't nothing but the edge of a cliff. She didn't flinch before it, she just kept running, kept playing, and kept playing—I'll catch you, I'll catch you—!
The chorus ended, about to careen straight off the cliff—
And Rumi's right hand found G-sharp. She held it there for a beat. The recording had ended, but she knew and Zoey knew, profoundly, that there was something here.
She played the note again. Her left hand coming in beside it with an accompanying chord. And like a current freed from a dam, another note followed and another until they came in a steady stream. Jazzy, like the snippets of Zoey's guitar. Not at all Rumi's preferred style, but nothing about this song was meant to be familiar, but something new. Like coming to meet a new facet of a beloved friend. What she gave was not a place to land, but a respite all the same. A partner in stride, an accepting presence; her answer and rise to the inadvertant challenge Mira had left behind.
By the end of the sequence that would maybe lead into a bridge or the final chorus, a bead of sweat had rolled down her left temple. In the midst of her triumph, the booth had grown surprisingly warm and she was breathing hard through her parted lips. Her heart was loud in her ears and yet never before had silence felt so empty.
Then she looked over at Zoey and the unmittigated look of revelation
"Good?" Rumi wondered, surprised by the little croak that caught in her voice.
"Y-Yeah."
Rumi nodded, relieved, but still hungry. "Again?"
"Again."
Mira scrolled through her phone, laying on her bed on her stomach with her legs dangling over the edge. Music played softly through her bluetooth speakers atop her dresser and the early evening peeked in through the parted curtains.
A notification banner dropped down from the top of the screen showing a text from Zoey. Smiling to herself, she tapped on the banner and her phone opened the message app.
[Zoey]
hey so remember that song you were helping me out with?
Mira scoffed. Simply saying that she remembered that song would be an understatement and she texted as much.
[Zoey]
oh good! well here you go
courtesy of rumi's hard work on the ivories <3
A second message soon followed bearing a sound file almost three minutes long.
The portion she recorded was barely over two. What did Rumi make? She turned her music off before playing the file.
The familiar intro that she's had stuck on a loop flowed from bluetooth speakers. She turned it up and closed her eyes, remembering the booth, the singing voice that she barely recognized as her own, Zoey's gaze on her, only on her. She noticed right away how different the piano sounded here. There was more punch behind the chords, different from the way Zoey had played.
In no time at all, the second chorus neared its end. But the piano continued on and sounding so, so different than before.
Mira's eyes opened, bewildered. Rumi?
She sat up in the bed, listening.
I see you, said notes.
Here I am, assured the chords. I'll see you to the end.
Then it was over, and its silence hung in the air like smoke.
She texted Zoey back, asking if the song was finished.
[Zoey]
im thinking about adding a bridge and maybe one more run of the chorus to close it out
why? :3c
She tapped the side of her phone, deliberating. That emoji wasn't subtle in the slightest. She knew what Zoey was after and, honestly, she wanted it too.
[Mira]
let me back in the booth