Chapter Text
It had been a little more than three weeks since the events of the Idol Awards, and the barest beginnings of autumn were just starting to make themselves known throughout the city of Seoul. Even the new Honmoon seemed to reflect the colours of the oncoming season, hints of glowing reds and browns becoming ever so slightly more prominent in its flickering white light; however subtle, the steady approach of change was undeniably in the air, for those with the ability to see it.
From the penthouse of one of the city's many skyscrapers, a solitary figure gazed out over the evening, the ever-present noise of the populace dulled to a gentle hum by the thick windows of her room. The patterns on her face - still fresh and new, though no longer painful - seemed to glow just enough to be visible in the window's glass, picking up the ambient sunlight to overlay a secondary scattering of iridiscent lines across the city, framing the faint web of the Honmoon as it shifted like some invisible tide.
So much had changed, and yet so much seemed the same as it had always been.
"I guess I'm just... uncertain what comes next," Rumi said, watching the bustle of the city's traffic and the complementary ripples in the Honmoon, almost invisible in the bright sunlight. "My entire life, I've been waiting for the day when my patterns would be gone and I could be a normal person, not having to hide all the time, but I never really... I guess I never thought about the specifics, about what my life would be like after. How to live like everyone else, when I have no experience of what that means."
"I mean, if you're looking for advice on normality, you're probably asking the wrong guy," Jinu replied.
Rumi spun around, her braid thwacking against the window, and scowled at the man in her bedroom - or more accurately, the reflection of a man who was not standing in her bedroom, or, for that matter, anywhere else in this world.
Jinu's reflection had first started appearing in Rumi's sword about a week after the Idol Awards, to the surprise of both of them, not to mention Zoey and Mira. Initially, there had been some angry words thrown - mostly the three Hunters accusing him of jumpscaring them and demanding to know why he wasn't dead - but once it had become apparent that he wasn't a threat anymore, the girls had begun to begrudgingly tolerate his continued existence. Eventually, Rumi had forgiven him enough to start chatting to him, almost in the way one would talk to a diary, and this had developed into a bizarre friendship-adjacent relationship, mostly consisting of her monologuing about her problems and him giving mildly questionable advice in response.
"Fine, not normal then. I'm still a pop star, normal is kinda out of the question. I meant... I don't know. How to build and maintain relationships that aren't built on lies. How to interact with people without constantly steering the conversation away from dangerous topics. Not to mention, how to live without having a single goal that I've spent my entire life working toward."
The broad, single-edged sword was standing point-down in the side table opposite the foot of Rumi's bed, a faint ripple of iridiscent light marking where it met the wood. Rumi wasn't worried about damage to her furniture - the starlight weapons of the Hunters never seemed to leave unintentional damage on physical surfaces, a small but significant blessing of the Honmoon's magic that had probably saved them billions of won in damage to public property over the years.
"Well, what did you expect?" Jinu's reflection asked. "Change was the nature of your mission; you always knew that the world you would create would be different to the one you had always known, at least for you, specifically. Sure, it didn't happen exactly the way you imagined-"
"No shit," Rumi said, rubbing the glowing marks on her arm.
"-but you had to have some idea that things would feel different, right?"
The sword's position put Jinu's reflection at a little below Rumi's eye level, allowing her to pace around her room while talking to him. The change in height difference had initially felt strange to them - Jinu had been so much taller in person - but with time it had begun to feel essentially the same as talking to someone over a video call. Standing this far across the room from it, Rumi barely had to lower her gaze to meet the demon's eyes in exasperation.
"Yeah, but... I thought, with time, I'd get used to it - that the wrongness would go away, and I'd acclimate to the new circumstances. I didn't think it'd get worse."
Three weeks. Time enough for injuries to heal, especially for those blessed with the strengthening magic of the Honmoon. Time enough for the dust to settle, for lives that had been irrevocably altered to find themselves slipping back into some semblance of habitual normalcy.
Time enough for those who had never been capable of knowing peace to grow restless.
Hiatus had been fun, for a little while. Movies, relaxation, long-awaited spa days at the bathhouse... Life was good. Easy. Demonic activity had dropped to almost nothing, and the record label wasn't expecting any more work from Huntr/x for another two months. For the first time in Rumi's life, there was world enough and time, a chance to truly sit back and not worry.
The adjustment was proving difficult.
"I just..." Rumi sighed. "We were so close to creating the Golden Honmoon! An impenetrable barrier, to keep the world safe forever! My patterns would be gone, we wouldn't have to spend every day chasing demons across the city, we wouldn't have to worry about making each song more popular than the last just to keep the barrier safe..."
"Sounds like you'd be out of a job."
"Good!" Rumi strode across the room, gesturing wildly. "A world where people like me didn't have to exist would be better for everyone, I really believe that!"
"I thought you'd accepted that there's nothing wrong with being half demon?"
"Not half demons." She sat down hard on the end of her bed. "Soldiers."
"Ah."
"All my life, I've been primed to bring an end to this eternal war. All I know, all that I am, revolves around what I do, and what I do was always in the service of making my job obsolete. And now..." Rumi put her head in her hands. "My patterns have stopped spreading, but they're still here, and now everyone knows about them. I broke the Honmoon, violated the single task of every Hunter that came before me. I just... I feel like I've failed, you know?"
"Hey," Jinu said, moving as if he wanted to reach through the reflection and put a reassuring hand on Rumi's shoulder. "You also created a new Honmoon, stronger than ever. You didn't fail."
"I mean, sure, it's stronger than the last one, but demons are still coming through, souls are still being stolen, and who knows if the new Honmoon even can be turned golden? I might have ruined any chance for future generations of Hunters to succeed where we couldn't, locked us in to a world where a permanent solution is out of reach forever." Rumi trailed off, looking out her window at the iridiscent glow of the city. "Is this really the best we could hope for?"
"To be honest with you, I was never really certain if the Golden Honmoon was even possible."
Rumi looked back to the reflected demon, confused.
"Not possible? What are you talking about?"
Jinu shrugged.
"As I understand it, the Golden Honmoon represented... let's call it false bravado. Our faults and fears must never be seen, right? You and I both know that that kind of facade can't last forever, however perfect it is, because that's all it is - a facade. Hiding shame behind a mask doesn't make it go away. Even if the Honmoon was fully transformed, I think it would eventually weaken again on its own, given enough time - no single song can unite the entire world indefinitely, after all."
"Why try to fight us, then, if you didn't even think we could succeed?"
Jinu shrugged again.
"Gwi-Ma seemed to believe that it was possible, and he had something I wanted. Gold or no gold, it made little difference to me, but the fact that it mattered to him made it a good bargaining chip. Selfish, I know, but this is me we're talking about."
Rumi rolled her eyes.
"It sounds like the major issue here is that you're feeling directionless," Jinu continued. "It's an understandable problem. What comes next after achieving your life's purpose? What do you do with the skillset you've cultivated when it no longer serves you?"
Rumi looked at him expectantly.
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"What's the answer?"
"How should I know? I'm a talking sword."
"Ugh!" Rumi sprawled back dramatically across the meticulously-made bed.
"I'm honestly not sure what you want me to tell you! Maybe you just need to give it more time - three weeks is barely anything, it might just get easier on its own. Or maybe not. I don't exactly have a lot of relevant experience to offer."
"You're four hundred years old - what happened to age bringing wisdom?"
"There's a pretty hard limit to how much wisdom can be gained when you're locked in a pit full of demons. Besides, it's not like I had to worry about what I wanted to do with my life, given that I didn't have a life to speak of."
Rumi stared glumly up at her ceiling, thinking about all the years she had spent throwing herself into her work, siezing any distraction to avoid having to think about what she wanted to do. Yeah, she thought, not having a life had made things so much simpler.
A knock sounded on Rumi's door - a light and quick tapping, as familiar as the sunrise. Rumi couldn't count the number of times she had heard that noise on dressing room doors over the years. In the past, it would have sent her scrambling to grab her jacket before letting anyone in; now, of course, her patterns were no secret, but old habits died hard, and her housemates still maintained a careful respect for her privacy.
"You can come in, Zoey," Rumi said, a smile rising to her lips.
The door opened, admitting the exuberant face of Rumi's youngest friend.
"Hi, Jinu," Zoey chirped, waving at the reflection in the sword. Despite her initial reservations, she had gotten at least somewhat used to the idea of Rumi chatting with the demon inhabiting her sword, even if she wasn't thrilled with the idea, and had fallen into the habit of greeting him like anyone else.
"Fuck off, Jinu," Mira said, not looking at the sword as she followed Zoey into the room. Mira had decidedly not gotten used to Jinu, and made a point of letting him know where they stood on a regular basis.
"Zoey, Mira, always a pleasure," Jinu replied, giving the girls an amused smile.
"Whatever," Mira said.
As Zoey and Mira entered, they were followed by the shapes of the penthouse's other two occupants, curiously wandering in to see why all of the humans had gathered in one place. Orange eyes staring in slightly different directions, the great blue tiger gazed curiously around the room, his wide head turning back and forth idly as he waited patiently for his next thought to turn up. Seated on his back, the six-eyed magpie with the tiny hat gave a quiet squawk, revealing the tiny sharp teeth that hid within his beak.
It was almost surprising how naturally the tiger had been accepted by the other girls. When Rumi had found out that he had remained on this side of the Honmoon, she had worried about how her housemates would respond to the new pet (if he could be called that) that stubbornly refused to stop showing up in her room, especially now that they were no longer keeping secrets from one another. Thankfully, her panicked and convoluted plans to introduce the cat had proven unneccessary - she had been awoken one night by a crash from the kitchen, and had rushed out to find Zoey and Mira staring slack-jawed as the gentle brute clumsily attempted to right the overturned kitchen bin, only succeeding in spreading rubbish in a slowly widening circle across the floor. After some quick explanations, the conclusion was reached that, supernatural or otherwise, such a sweet, empty-headed creature couldn't be that dangerous, unless one happened to be a cylindrical object capable of accidentally being knocked over.
Since then, the big cat (whom Rumi had taken to calling Derpy) had been effortlessly adopted into the household, as had the hatted magpie that followed wherever he went (whom Rumi had dubbed Sussie). They seemed friendly enough, and it wasn't like the girls could keep them out of the apartment, after all - despite the many overturned casualties of his bow-legged march, Derpy was fully capable of phasing through walls when he wanted to, a fact that had prompted the snacks to be moved to higher shelves of the kitchen cabinets, much to Zoey's occasional frustration.
"Is this a good time?" Mira nodded slightly toward the sword. She had done her best to make it clear to Rumi that her distaste for Jinu was entirely personal; that however much she disapproved, she couldn't control who Rumi talked to, and wouldn't try even if she could. As such, she was very careful not to outright interrupt their conversations if she could avoid it, always checking in to see if she should come back in a little while when she walked in on the two of them chatting.
Rumi stood up, going from supine to vertical in one extended, unhurried motion at the entry of her bandmates. Rumi had never explicitely barred the other two from her room, but they hadn't made a habit of visiting her in here, and it felt awkward to be the only one not standing. It was still very novel to invite them in so readily, with her arms uncovered and her patterns clearly visible, and she had to push down a slight nervous thrill at the sight of them standing in her space.
"Yeah, it's fine," Rumi said. "What's up?"
"We were thinking of going out for dinner tonight - there's a new restaurant a few blocks over that Zoey's been wanting to try." Mira shot the shorter girl a mildly amused glance. "The reviews aren't great, but..."
"It's just super underground!" Zoey protested, holding up her turtle-cased phone defensively, the restaurant's reviews already open for use as supporting evidence. "I know someone who knows someone who says they just got a new chef who's a real genius-"
"Okay, okay," Rumi laughed, forestalling the rest of Zoey's impassioned pitch. "You've convinced me; I'll give it a try."
"It does only have four reviews," Jinu remarked, peering at Zoey's phone from his reflection. "Even one unsatisfied customer could drag the rating down further than it deserved."
Zoey and Mira looked uncomfortably at the sword; unconsciously, they had positioned themselves as if there were only three people involved in this conversation, boxing him out of the circle with their body language in a way that instinctively felt rude but that neither of them really wanted to correct.
"What?" Jinu seemed to misinterpret their hesitation as confusion. "I'm not a complete dinosaur, I know how ratings work."
"I have always wondered, how do you know so much about modern stuff?" Zoey had long ago honed the skill of covering her discomfort with the practiced mask of polite small talk, until it had become an almost reflexive response to any percieved awkwardness.
"Radio."
Mira paused halfway into her facepalm.
"Radio?" she asked, sounding skeptical.
"Sure," Jinu said. "The development of radio was a huge tipping point in the conflict between demons and mortals. The Honmoon resonates with all the music of the mortal world, and suddenly there was all kinds of music being played at all times of the day, making it stronger than it ever had been before. It irritated Gwi-Ma like nothing else, partially because it meant we - I mean, demons - had something to listen to besides his voice."
Jinu turned back to Zoey. "I spent a long time listening to the echoes in the underside of the Honmoon. Music, talk shows... A lot of things were difficult to understand without context, but you learn a lot by listening. It was one of the things that kept me sane, despite everything."
Zoey's eyes were wide as her mind raced with the possibilities.
"Right, demons can hear radio waves. Sure." Mira rolled her eyes.
"Radio waves, no; sounds carried by radio waves, yes. It has something to do with the... significance of spoken and sung words, I think. Demon bodies aren't bound by physics the way mortal bodies are - that's why we don't leave a mess when you cut us into pieces, we're really just magic skinned over with illusion. We don't have to be physically capable of picking up radio frequencies; the soul can hear music even when the ears can't."
"Almost like how most people can't see the Honmoon, but Hunters can," Rumi said, nodding along. She had already had several similar discussions with Jinu about demon physiology - trying to determine where on the spectrum between demon and human her body could be placed, if indeed there was a spectrum at all. So far, she seemed to skew a lot further toward the mortal end of the scale - eating, sleeping, and bleeding were all human activities - but her patterns certainly had no origin known to modern medicine, which indicated that there was likely more going on underneath the surface.
"Exactly." His expression turned thoughtful. "Actually, maybe Hunters could learn to do it, too. You see the Honmoon with your soul, not your eyes; maybe you could learn to hear it as well, although from what I could tell it's not a skill that comes easily even to most demons."
"You were also a musician in life, Jinu," Rumi added. "Maybe that's part of it - you already had an ear for music, so listening came more naturally to you."
"Maybe. In that case, you'd all have a much easier time."
Zoey and Mira exchanged an almost imperceptible glance, feeling the shift in the conversation as the other two began talking more to each other than to the group. Seeing these two chat so easily always made them both bristle slightly, and the fact that Rumi never seemed to notice only made it worse.
"Well, anyway," Mira said brusquely, "we were thinking of heading out shortly. Do you need time to get ready, or..."
"No, no, just give me five to grab my disguise," Rumi said. "I think I'd like to actually try this place before accidentally giving them an endorsement, especially after the thing with Doctor Han."
Zoey winced - following their incognito visit, Doctor Han had very publicly capitalized on his new celebrity clientel, which had led to him almost immediately getting arrested for fraud, breach of doctor-patient confidentiality, and a laundry list of other crimes. Rumi was still making no official admission that she had even met the good doctor - the fraud allegations were all being made by other irate former patients - but the record label was intent on suing him for copyright infringement over his unauthorized use of the Huntr/x brand.
"It won't be like that this time!"
"Relax, she's just teasing," Mira said, putting a reassuring hand on Zoey's shoulder and beginning to steer her out the door. "Take your time, Rumi, we'll be ready to go when you are."
The two women left, closing the door behind them. The tiger gently bumped his head against the wood, considered for a moment, and then simply walked forward, disappearing through a blue-white circle that opened in the door's surface.
Rumi smiled to herself as she walked over to her dresser and began to pull out items of nondescript clothing. Lately, she had begun to enjoy the novelty of short sleeves, but this was an occasion that called for her patterns to be hidden once more. One of her many internal battles was convincing herself that covering up in this way wasn't the same as the years she'd spent hiding - learning to recognise the difference between shame and simply not wanting the inconvenience of attracting attention.
"Whoa, hey, still watching," Jinu called out, covering his eyes.
"Oh!" Rumi blushed, her patterns standing out even more. "Sorry, I'll dismiss the sword."
"All good. And, about what we were talking about before..."
Rumi looked at him expectantly.
"I can't tell you what the right decision is. Your life is yours to live, and you're already living it a lot better than I did mine. That said..." The demon hesitated, wanting to give advice but cautious of making recommendations in an area outside his experience. "If what you're missing is having a goal to work towards, maybe you can set new goals for yourself. Find a new horizon to chase. Everyone needs a hobby."
Rumi considered this. Up to this point, her goals had always been set and defined by others - really, by Celine and the expectations that stretched back through generations of now long-dead Hunters. Now, however, those expectations had become obsolete, and Celine was someone she hadn't spoken to since the night that she had still not told her two bandmates about. If there was truly nobody else at the reigns of her destiny, maybe that power did fall to her, along with all the terrible responsibility that came with it.
"Thanks, Jinu. I'll keep that in mind," she said. With a flick of her wrist, the sword unravelled into strands of iridiscent light, the smiling face of the long-dead boy vanishing like mist on the breeze.
Find a new horizon... Rumi couldn't help but turn the words over in her head as she stepped out to meet her friends, all three of them done up in their various disguises, Zoey fussing over the big blue tiger and Mira feeding cheese balls to the six-eyed magpie. More pressing matters now demanded her attention - the as-yet unknown quality of the dinner that awaited them, for one - but the idea currently sparking in her brain would wait for her to come back and work on it.
After all, she didn't have anything else to do with her time. A project might be just what she needed.