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One of the few phrases that her father— may he rest in trash —ever said to her that actually stuck was, “Once is an instance; twice is a coincidence; three times is a pattern”.
He usually said it when she dallied a moment too long before getting to her chores, but she digressed.
The Honmoon was enacting a pattern; Celine couldn’t deny it any longer. Though she really wished she could.
The first instance she waved away in hindsight as being nothing but a result of statistics and probability.
Because of course her manager would convince her that doing a series of lectures on the entertainment industry at schools around the world would be a good idea; she had always dreamed of teaching, in one form or another. Doing the lectures would be a great way to find out if she would really enjoy it, or even be good at it. A nice little practice run for her inevitable retirement from the industry.
And of course one of the best performing art schools in South Korea would want her to do one there. And of course she couldn’t just avoid that one because of what country it was in; nevermind she hadn’t set foot in said country in closer to a decade than not, and for good reason.
Andof course if one wanted their child to have the best chance at making it in such a cut-throat industry, they would send their child to the best school they could. Especially if it’s in the very country that they live in.
And of course said school would have fairly strict ideas on dress code and things such as what color your hair could be. Even “art” schools have their own ideas about conformity.
So, in hindsight, it simply made perfect sense that when Celine strolled into the lecture hall, her eyes instantly clocked one of the children seated in the very first row and she subsequently tripped over the edge of the small raised stage she was meant to be lecturing from.
Because the girl— definitely one of the youngest in attendance by several years at least —had hair in a very distinctive shade of purple, and a smile that looked far too familiar to the soloist, even if she hadn’t already seen photos of the girl.
Photos shown to her by a nosy demon with far fewer boundaries than she would prefer.
Photos of his and Mi- her daughter.
Photos of Rumi.
Celine recovered from her slip up— physically, at least; she managed to not become acquainted with the floor in front of a live audience —and passed it off with a joke before smoothly transitioning into the lesson that everyone is capable of falling; what matters is how you get back up.
The rest of the lecture went smoothly. Celine worked hard to make sure she neither ignored the purpleheaded girl in the front row, nor paid her any more attention than any other student present. She performed her short syllabus; told funny stories about this behind the scenes mishap or another; answered questions and encouraged follow-ups; and, upon request, ran through some of her preferred vocal warm-ups. She even prompted the watching students to try the routine for themselves right then and there.
She expected the pulse of brightness that reverberated through the Honmoon when she opened her mouth to sing a few scales; the glowing lights still beautiful to see even while it caused so much ache in her heart.
She even expected Rumi’s bright eyes to track the exact same pulse as it flowed through the room; demons could naturally see the barrier, so it made sense that a child of one could as well.
What Celine didn’t expect, was for Rumi to open her mouth and make the Honmoon glow even brighter with the notes that floated out of her.
Oh, Celine thought, her heart slowly descending into her shoes, She’s a hunter.
Oh no.
Celine wondered if they knew. They had to, if Rumi was able to affect the Honmoon at such a young age; it would explain why she was in this particular school, far as it was from ho- from where they had last been living together. She wondered how they had taken the revelation. She knew how she would have taken it. How she was taking it.
How much the revelation pained her.
-Oh, you poor girl.
Celine had loved being a hunter— performing; fighting; being with her girls —but it was a calling she would not wish upon her own daughter; not that she’d ever intended on having children. A call into a war that never seemed to end and at times felt more like plugging a massive dam holding back an ocean using nothing but your own hands.
And to add being half of what you were tasked to kill on top of that? This girl, who should have had her whole life ahead of her— God, she wasn’t even eight yet, was she? —was instead tasked with a duty that almost guaranteed she wouldn’t live to see sixty; maybe not even fifty. The average lifespan of a hunter was decades lower than it had any right to be.
Though she supposed that was to be expected, when one is literally fighting for the sake of the whole world.
Maybe that’s what compelled Celine to approach the young girl at the end of the lecture; an easy enough endeavor, as the girl looked like she was dawdling behind in the hall as well, waiting for Celine to finish speaking with some admirers.
“Enjoy the lecture?” Celine asked as casually as she could as the rest of the hall cleared out and every staff member attending had given her their thanks.
“I did! Thank you so much for coming all the way here to give it,” Rumi answered with a polite bow, and a smile Celine couldn’t help but think was a perfect blend of Soo-ho’s toothy grin and hers.
“I managed to catch your voice during the warm-ups. I’m a bit impressed; you copied my notes perfectly on the very first try.”
“Thank you. My eomma and imo have been teaching me,” she said, bringing her braid up over her right shoulder and fiddling with the end of it.
“Yeah?” Celine intoned, ignoring at how her heart clenched at the mention of who could only be her girls. “Do you enjoy it?”
“I do! I love singing! It’s the best!” Rumi chirped, eyes sparkling with excitement, “And dancing! And all the music!”
Celine chuckled, “You going into show business when you grow up?”
“I hope so,” the girl said, her energy waning ever so slightly as her eyes slowly fell to the floor. “I- I wanna be an idol when I get bigger. Like my eomma and imo...” Her left hand let go of her braid, only to wrap around her right shoulder. To anyone else it would have simply appeared as yet another mild nervous tic. And in truth, it was.
But Celine knew it was more than that. Could remember glimpsing, for a split second, a pale purple stripe dancing across a far too small shoulder, the night her world had shattered.
“-I wanna be the best,” Rumi continued, knocking Celine back out of her head, “I want to inspire people. And...I’m scared I won’t.” She looked up at the older singer with the biggest, saddest brown eyes she had seen in years.
“Do you...ever feel like that, seonsaengnim?”
...God help me I would have spoiled you rotten if things had been different, Celine internally grumbled to herself. She never had been able to say know to either of her girls’ puppy dog eyes and evidently Rumi had learned from both of them.
It also didn’t help that she was already so stinking cute!
Shaking off the veil of ‘could’ve-beens’, Celine crouched down in front of the young girl and pulled something out of her pocket before she could think better of it.
Silently asking for Rumi’s hand, Celine held it open in one of hers— too small- too small- why the fuck is it so small?! —and gently placed the trinket into her palm.
Celine had always hated being idle, ever since she’d been young, and so had picked up a number of hobbies over the years. One of her favorites lately— and a far better substitute than other hobbies she’d indulged in since that night —had been wood carving. And while the unvarnished fat little tiger wasn’t her best work, she was thankful it was what she had at hand regardless.
She thought it fitting, to have a creature on hand with stripes that maybe Rumi could find some solidarity in.
And if she thought that Rumi fiddling with her braid reminded her of a little tiger cub playing with its own tail, well, that was her business and her business alone.
“...Fear is normal,” Celine said softly, folding Rumi’s fingers around the small gift. “Everyone feels fear sooner or later. What matters is how you react to it.”
“Like falling down?” Rumi asked quietly.
“Exactly,” she nodded with a small smile. Clever girl. “Just because you’re scared of something, scared of failing, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.”
Especially if your fear could lead to breaking something beyond all repair, she thought bitterly; though she’d rather bite off her own tongue than say that to the girl in front of her right now.
“Just- Remember this; bravery isn’t about not being scared; it’s about doing what you need to in spite of the fear. Okay?” Celine asked, letting go of Rumi’s hand.
Rumi brought the little wooden figure up to her face, eyes wide as she took in the carved details. She looked amazed; like it was a masterpiece instead of the unpainted amateur trinket it actually was.
“Okay!” she grinned, looking at Celine with such a wildly earnest grin that the soloist had to bite to tongue to keep from doing something crazy; like crushing the small child into a hug. Aside from being inappropriate— she was practically a stranger to the girl, regardless of how many times Soo-ho had gushed about his daughter —the odds of Celine crying over it were definitely not zero.
Instead she nodded, said “Good”, stood up, and said good-bye before walking out the lecture hall door. Leaving the girl that, in another world, could have been her dau- niece behind her once more.
And that was that.
Until it wasn’t.
A couple years later found Celine walking around somewhere north of Los Angeles, once more as a result of her manager. This time around she was providing the singing voice for some cartoon princess; how her manager came across these gigs baffled her, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t enjoying learning a new facet of the entertainment world.
It helped that the princess actually had something of a backbone underneath all that make-up and pretty clothes-
“-Give it back!”
Celine paused her steps, blinking back into sudden awareness of the world around her. She’d been so lost in her thoughts after a long session in the recording booth she hadn’t been paying much attention to where her feet were going. The soloist realized she was right next to what was evidently a skatepark, separated from the sidewalk she stood on by a chest high chainlink fence.
Head swiveling, it wasn’t hard to find the source of the high pitched cry.
There, halfway between the fence and what looked like a drained swimming pool, were a group of kids, encircling a smaller figure and tossing something back and forth over their head. It looked like some kind of notebook, and the kid in the middle— a girl, she thought, though it was hard to tell from this distance —frantically tried to snatch it back out of the air, her fingers never getting any closer than a few inches each time. The bigger kids— mostly boys from the look of them —were throwing the notebook so hard that a few pages were even falling out.
“Pass it here!”
“I’m open, I’m open!”
“Ha ha! Look at her! You gonna cry, Choi?”
“C’mon, please!” the kid cried; it certainly sounded like a girl. And one close to tears at that.
She jumped again for her book, landing too close to one of them for the tormentor’s liking, as he was quick to shove her back, hard.
Celine was over the fence before the girl even hit the ground.
A few long strides was all it took before she was in range to pluck the flying notebook out of the air.
“Hey-” one of the kids squawked, whirling around to face her. Celine probably shouldn’t have taken pleasure at watching how his face paled the more he had to tilt his head up in order to meet her face; but she never did like lying unless truly necessary.
She slowly bent down until she was eye-level with the teenager; though perhaps tween would be a more accurate assessment. None of them looked older than thirteen, if that, and the girl now sitting on the concrete looked even younger.
With a glare she knew sent literal demons running for the hills, Celine bit out in slow English, “Go. Home. Now.”
The boy puffed up his chest even as he took a half step back from her; clearly deciding to put on some bravado in front of his friends.
A poor choice.
“Or-Or what? You ain’t my ma-MAH!” he shrieked as Celine— after a casual glance around to ensure there weren’t any nearby witnesses —grabbed him by the front of his shirt with the hand not still holding the notebook and straightened back up. The height difference between them meant the boy was just barely able to keep his toes on the ground, his hands shooting up to try and pry her grip loose.
“You’re right; I’m not your mother,” Celine intoned lowly, bringing his sweaty face close to hers; his feet scrabbled even harder against the concrete as he became completely suspended by her hand.
“-Which means I’m not emotionally attached enough to you to care whether you walk away from this situation; or limp.”
Spinning away from the group, Celine casually tossed him across the concrete towards the fence. She was quite proud of herself for only throwing him a few meters away instead of all the way across the park, like she wanted to. He bounced and rolled and scraped his skin against the unforgiving ground; at least judging by the pathetic squeaks and whimpers he let out as he went.
She turned back to the group, biting down a feral grin when they flinched under her resumed attention.
“Last warning: leave.”
They listened. Within ten seconds there was no one around except Celine and the girl who was looking up at her like she’d just performed an impossible magic trick.
“Are you alright?” she asked, softening her tone and her stance as she bent over, offering a hand out to the girl.
She nearly fell over when, instead of taking the offered hand, the girl’s eye went wide as she all but screeched, “DIANA?!”
“...I feel like you’re a bit too young to know who I am,” Celine chuckled once the shock of hearing her stage name fall out of the mouth of a preteen wore off.
She wasn’t overly fond of the new name, but when she finally pulled herself out of the gutter and back onto the stage she just...couldn’t do it under her actual name.
Well; she could have. Probably would have made returning to the spotlight easier, to be honest, using whatever traction she could get via being a former member of the Sunlight Sisters.
But she couldn’t.
Not when hearing it in any relation to performing made her think of them.
Not when using it so publicly meant that they would have an easier time finding her. If they were still looking, at any rate. Soo-ho had eventually learned to stop bringing their previous efforts up like that.
It’d been a decade, but the mere idea of so much as seeing them again gave her palms an itch that could usually only be soothed by holding a bottle.
And on top of the name changeand hair change— the blonde chunks had also taken some adjusting to —she’d also completely changed genres. It had been easier than she thought to transition from KPop to what her manager marketed as “alternative rock”. Celine mostly thought of it as “venting her feelings with instrumental backing”, but either way her target demographic was quite a few years older than what the small girl in front of her seemed to be.
“Dad’s a fan!” the girl explained, finally accepting her hand. It felt far easier than it should have been to lift her off the ground, but Celine chose to write it off as her body unconsciously comparing the girl’s weight to the moron she had just tossed.
“Eomma’s a fan too-” she carried on, heedless of Celine’s thoughts, or her surprise at hearing hearing the Korean title in California of all places. The girl may have looked Korean, but her English sounded completely native to Celine’s ears, so she’d naturally assumed it was her only language.
Serves me right for assuming, Celine thought to herself.
“-It’s just about the only thing they can agree on these days...” the girl finished, voice petering out towards the end and- oh. Oh no. Celine recognized that tone and that face. She’d caught glimpses of it on her own face back when she was a child, too many times to count.
The one that came about whenever she had to think about her less than stellar home life.
Desperate to wipe it off this small child’s face— why do they make kids so small these days?! —she darted her eyes around trying to find a solution. Flexing her fingers reminded her of the notebook still clutched in one hand and she breathed a small sigh of relief.
“I believe this is yours?” she said softly, holding the book out to its owner.
“Oh! Thank you!” the girl said, giving a small if late bow after she took it. A flutter of motion brought their attention to the half dozen or so loose sheets of paper lying all about them, and the duo quickly set to gathering them all up before the wind did.
Celine had just grabbed the last one nearest to her when the writing on it caught her eye.
Specifically the Hangul written across the top.
It was a song title; specifically one of their song titles. From their very first album no less. Back when they were just starting to nail down what their sound was.
Back before everything fell apart.
But what surprised her even more than seeing the old song handwritten on a random child’s sheet of notebook paper— complete with random little doodles in the margins —was reading what language the lines of text below the title were written in.
Because while the original song was sung in Korean, these lyrics were written in English.
“Is this a Sunlight Sisters’ song?” she asked the girl before she could even think of holding her own tongue.
“Hm- Oh! Yeah it is!” the girl— ‘Zoey’, if the words “Zoey’s Awesomeness Vol. 4” on the front of her notebook meant anything —grinned before seeming to remember herself and started toeing bashfully at the concrete. “I, uh, really like their music— my eomma showed them to me —but I didn’t like how the English cover of that song is done, so I, tried to fix it?”
Celine hummed and skimmed over the lyrics. Personally she was in full agreement with the kid; the guy the label had contacted to write a cover of this song and a few others of their debut album was not half as good as he had claimed to be. Oh the singers he’d used had sung it well enough, but Celine would swear that the man who did the translating couldn’t actually understand Korean, nevermind well enough to understand certain nuances of the language, and-
Celine blinked. She brought the page closer to her face and read it again, slower this time.
Translating something from one language to another was never perfect; something was always lost no matter how fluent one was in either language, and while this song was no exception it was far closer than she had expected it to be. Yes, some of the lines had been moved around in order for some rhymes and meters to work, but the heart of it— what it was supposed to say—was still there.
Hell, Celine could almost hear the voices of her and her girls singing this version as she read it.
“You wrote this?” she asked the girl
“Um... Yes?” Zoey admitted, shoulders hiking up so high they almost rose above her ears.
“This is good,” Celine said, re-reading it for a third time, “Like, genuinely good. Great, even.”
“R-Really?!”
“Yes, really,” she chuckled, waving the sheet slightly, “Far better than what the original English cover sounded like, in my opinion. I especially like what you did with the pre-chorus.”
“That’s my favorite part!” the girl squealed, bouncing in place, “It took forever to figure out how to mimic the number of syllables in the oh-gee version! I really don’t get how the translator got-” she sang the pre-chorus from the bad English cover “-out of-” and the same again in the original Korean, “-Like? Was he on crack when he wrote it?! I’m ten and even I can hear it doesn’t match!”
“You are too young to know what crack is,” Celine heard herself mumble distantly. She would have thought of something better to say— such as an agreement on the man’s mental state while he’d been working —but she was far too busy trying not to stare at the Honmoon.
The Honmoon which had lit up as soon as Zoey had opened her mouth and started to sing.
Because Zoey, apparently, was a hunter.
She couldn’t even wave it off as her eyes playing tricks on her because Celine could very plainly see Zoey’s eyes tracking the pulses of light as they moved around them. The girl didn’t comment on them at all— she simply continued ranting about all the obvious mistakes of the English cover —which immediately brought to mind Celine at her age, and having learned the hard way that no one else could see what she could and that it was better for everyone if she didn’t bring it up at all.
If I had a euro every time I met a new hunter- Celine thought despondently, -I’d have two euros; which isn’t a lot but it’s insane that it’s happened twice.
Tossing a quick dirty look at the Honmoon— which the damn thing didn’t even have the decency to react to —Celine gently broke into Zoey’s verbal train of thought; which, during Celine’s musings, had somehow changed into one about microphone preferences.
“Have you covered any other songs yet?”
The look of pure joy on Zoey’s face as she asked could have lit up an entire city, and then some.
They spent over an hour just talking, taking over a nearby bench.
Looking through Zoey’s notebook— with her nervously cautious permission —proved to Celine what she had already suspected after reading just one page of her work; the girl had a talent with words.
Her vocabulary was still on the young side, but far beyond what one would expect from a ten year old; and in two different languages, no less.
“Your Korean is very good,” Celine praised her, looking through more pages. She spotted a few lines here and there written in Spanish and silently upped the language count to three.
“Thanks! Eomma made sure I could speak it!” Zoey beams, her little feet— Celine was just going to have to get used to the fact that kids were small, wasn’t she? —kicking back and forth in the air as she sat, “Though I still have trouble with pronunciation sometimes.”
“That’s just a matter of practice,” Celine stated, still looking through the book, “Do you want to be a songwriter when you grow up?”
“Better! I wanna be a rapper!” the girl grinned brightly before dimming down once once, “But everyone always laughs at me when I say that.”
Celine’s eyes narrowed, “Like those other kids earlier?”
Zoey nodded glumly.
“Well I hope you don’t let the thoughts of idiots like that stop you from trying,” Celine tsk’d, “I’ve been making music longer than you’ve been alive. I know good lyrics when I see them, and these?” she held up the notebook, “These are good, Zoey.”
The girl looked absolutely starstruck; which Celine thought was funny since she’d already said literally the exact same thing an hour ago.
Does no one ever encourage this girl?! she thought with no small amount of annoyance that she somehow managed to keep off her face.
“Diana— the Diana —thinks my work is good!” Zoey whispered, looking like she didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream, or attempt all three at once. She then groaned and buried her face in her hands.
“No one is gonna believe this!!”
“Pft- Well that’s easy enough to fix,” Celine chuckled, pulling out a marker she always kept on her person, holding it up for Zoey to see when she finally deigned to look up, “May I?”
“Holy shi-take mushrooms!” she exclaimed, making Celine genuinely laugh, “Yes! Please!”
Celine flipped to the inside of the front cover— there wasn’t an inch of space available on the front that wasn’t already covered by a sticker or drawing —and started writing.
“You know, I bet if you actually did the cover of that Sunlight Sisters’ song, they’d notice you for sure,” she stated as casually as she could, signing her stage name. Celine chose not to think too hard on the fact that she took extra time with her name for once, writing it with a little flourish before she gently closed the book.
“You really think so?” Zoey said, taking the notebook back carefully like Celine had transformed it into pure gold.
“I know so. Sunlight Entertainment— their new label —is always looking for new talent.”
Even if you weren’t one of the new trio of hunters that they’re looking for.
Her phone buzzed from her pocket. Pulling it out revealed that she was wanted back at- Ah, I forgot I was working!
“Sorry, but I’m afraid I have to go,” she apologized as she stood and slipped her phone back into her pocket. Zoey grumbled but stood as well. She looked down— damn kids and their tiny ass heights —and felt a small pang in her heart at the sad look in Zoey’s eyes as she stood there clutching her book to her chest.
“What’s your full name?” she asked.
“Zoey Choi- Er- Choi Zoey!” Zoey spat out, straightening up like she was answering a teacher in school.
In another world, maybe she would have been.
“Well Zoey Choi, Choi Zoey,” Celine teased with a warm smile as she held out her hand, “I look forward to hearing more of your work in the future.”
Zoey gasped, reaching out to shake her hand after only a second of hesitation.
Still smiling warmly once she let go, Celine turned and walked away; hopping back over the fence the way she’d come just to get a reaction out of the young girl, who didn’t disappoint by letting out a little giggle. With one last wave, she put her hands in her pockets and started making her way back to the studio.
She didn’t catch Zoey watching her until she turned a corner out of sight. Nor did she see her carefully opening up her notebook to see what had been written inside.
Zoey,
The world will always need
a light like yours.
Never stop shining.
~Diana
Celine did however, manage to catch the high pitched squeal that echoed along the street behind her; the sound making a smile crack wide upon her face.
The third and final incident— and the confirmation that the Honmoon was a four hundred year old little shit! —happened a mere two years later.
Celine was in Paris— on her way home from a long day in the recording studio —and thankful she’d had the foresight to drive her car instead of walking through a drizzle that was promising to become a proper rainstorm sooner rather than later.
She was almost halfway there, quietly admiring the city speckled with the last struggling lights of the sunset, when the Honmoon flickered to life all around her just as she came to a stop sign.
Celine blinked, looking at the pale blue lights and feeling her heart stutter in her chest.
She hadn’t been singing. Hadn’t even been humming and yet the Honmoon was reacting like she had.
Which meant a hunter was nearby.
Her first thought was that it was them; that Soo-ho had caved and finally confessed to where she lived and they were here and trying to find her-
Celine shook her head, violently casting the thought out.
No. No, Soo-ho knew better than that. Would have at least warned her if he thought they were going to be near her. He’d done it before, when she or they were out on a tour and were at risk of running into each other.
And furthermore— as she took deep breaths to force her heart to settle —her own manager made a point of also keeping tabs on the duo. And as Celine calmed down she distinctly recalled that they had some show or another lined up in Korea today; there was simply no way they could be in Paris right now. Short of Soo-ho teleporting them here himself, it was impossible; and again, she didn’t think he’d do that.
The demon was a lot of things, but a liar wasn’t really one of them; he’d spent years proving himself a man of his word and Celine could begrudgingly admit it was the truth.
So, it wasn’t them affecting the Honmoon right now. And it wasn’t her. So that only left one option.
It was one of the new hunters.
Celine had her car parked on the side of the road and her umbrella in hand as she got out into the slowly increasing rain before she even realized what she was doing.
Opening her umbrella up, she wasted no time hitting the sidewalk; trying to trace the pulses echoing through the Honmoon back to their point of origin.
She doubted it was Zoey; from what she had gleaned from the girl’s personal life during the brief time together, her family wasn’t the type to travel to anywhere that wasn’t Korea or the States, and even then only around the holidays.
Also Celine may or may not have attained the habit of lurking on the girl’s socials from time to time— in her defense, the material Zoey was sharing was worth listening to and constantly improving as well —and Zoey would have absolutely mentioned leaving the country for one reason or another. Especially if it was somewhere as noteworthy and new-to-her as Paris, France. So it was highly unlikely to be the Californian.
Rumi, on the other hand, was a different story. Celine knew she had traveled extensively with the duo when she was younger, and could very well have managed to do so on her own if she was half as ‘mature for her age’ as Soo-ho claimed she was.
And furthermore, she was half-demon; what if she had the ability to teleport like her father? What if she’d come here purely by accident and now couldn’t figure out how to get home? She was- what? Less than fourteen now? Did she even speak French? Or English? Even if she did she probably wouldn’t have any euros on her. She might not even have her phone, though Soo-ho claimed she was as attached to it as any other teenager. But what if she didn’t and now she was here and alone and maybe scared and singing to herself to try and cheer herself up and keep calm and it was raining and getting dark and-
Celine rounded a corner. Her feet, which had been moving as quickly as her thoughts had, came to an abrupt stop as she finally found the hunter affecting the Honmoon.
It wasn’t Rumi.
Or Zoey.
Or even one of her girls.
It was-
“-You have got to be kidding me,” Celine grumbled, feeling her shoulders slump.
There, sitting under the awning of a bus stop, glaring down at the sidewalk like it had personally offended her, was a young girl, with the uniform of a fancy nearby boarding school peaking out beneath a rather nice looking beige pea-coat and a fine leather bag tucked into her side. Celine was too far away to catch whatever words were coming out of her mouth as it moved, but she could clearly see her watching the Honmoon as it flared and dimmed in time with every note.
Another new hunter.
The final new hunter.
Which meant that against her best attempts, Celine had now come into contact with all three of the next generation.
And she was sitting outside. In the rain. At sunset. And far closer to what was generally considered the ‘bad part’ of the city for Celine’s liking.
What the hell is she doing out here alone? Celine thought as she crossed the street at the corner, slowly approaching the bus stop.
The girl noticed her approaching— not a difficult feat, given that there wasn’t another soul to be seen on this street —and her mouth clicked shut while her back straightened, her glare transitioning into one of pure aloofness as she pointedly stared across the street.
“Mind if I join you?” Celine asked softly in French as she reached the front of the shelter, the rain starting to come down even harder now.
“I don’t really care what you do, lady,” the girl shot back flatly in Korean, “Just don’t bother me.”
“Hm. That’s a bit of a rude answer,” Celine replied, also in Korean, making the girl’s gaze snap over to hers.
“...Sorry,” the girl murmured, looking away again, “You can sit if you want to. It’s not my bench.”
“Thank you,” she nodded, shaking off the excess water from her umbrella as she closed it and wondered what the hell she was doing as she sat down on the other end of the bench.
She hadn’t been prepared for this.
Hadn’t even considered she needed to prepare for this!
What were the actual odds of her running into all three of the next generation?!
She spared a quick glare off to the side for the Honmoon. She swears it gave the slightest flicker in response.
Nosy ass world-sized shield. It’s worse than the literal demon that keeps popping into her living room!
She took a few slow breaths to calm herself; taking in the sound of the rain as she sat on a random bench in Paris with yet another baby hunter.
And she did not know what to do.
At least with Rumi and Zoey there were circumstances that allowed for her to speak with them in such a way that they knew she wasn’t a threat; the lecture for one and the idiot bullies for the other.
But with this one...how did one strike up a conversation with a girl sitting at a bus stop in the rain that wouldn’t come off as creepy?
‘I liked your singing’? she idly considered as an ice-breaker before dismissing it just as quickly, No; I couldn’t hear what she was singing, and wouldn’t even be able to guess if she asked.
‘Lovely weather we’re having, huh?’ ...No. Too corny. And she doesn’t seem like she’s in a joking mood. The girl’s...current negative disposition had been evident from the other side of the street. Up close it was even harder not to notice, in spite of what was clearly the girl’s best efforts to do so.
She sniffled; twice, since Celine had sat down. And while they could have been played off as caused by the weather, her eyes could not. They had a red tinge to them that spoke of tears being held back for quite some time; and judging by how her makeup looked, it seemed she had been rather successful in holding them in place.
She looked angry. But the kind of angry that acted as a mask for feeling hurt.
Celine sorely wanted to ask her if she was okay. And without any better ideas, that’s what she did.
“Are you alright?” she asked, still speaking Korean since that was what she had heard the girl speak the most in, though she could clearly understand at least a little French.
“I’m fine,” the girl said, turning her face away from Celine, “And even if I wasn’t, I don’t see how it’s any business of yours.”
“You’re right, it’s not,” Celine admitted with a shrug that probably didn’t come off as casual as she hoped it would, “But the idea of a young girl sitting by herself at a bus stop at night is concerning to me; so I guess I’m making it my business.”
“Well stop, because I’m fine!”
“Most common lie in the world,” Celine couldn’t help but grumble under her breath, catching a rather impressive glare from the girl as she evidently heard her. She winced; Nice going, Celine.
“Sorry; something a...friend of mine used to say,” she said aloud, “But really: do you need help-”
“-No I don’t!” the girl snarled, “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be from some strange-ass woman I met on the street!”
Celine’s brow twitched. “As opposed to a strange-ass woman you met anywhere else?”
“Fuck you! I don’t need help! Yours or anyone else’s!” she all but screamed, leaping to her feet; eyes ablazed in an entirely different sense now, “I’m strong and I’m smart! Smart enough to know that you’re probably just a freak looking for a quick easy lay!”
“-Ack! Freak?!” Celine squawked affrontedly, jolting backwards in her seat. Hey now! There’s being rude and then there’s saying that!
“Yeah!” the girl growled as she stormed out of the bus stop with a ferocity that surpassed the actual storm raining down overhead and utterly heedless of how quickly her dark hair began to be soaked, “Go find another target, pervert!”
At this Celine— she would later be embarrassed to admit —flat out panicked; fear instantly slicing through any anger she felt at being so wrongly insulted.
Here was this girl— young and fierce and taller than she’d expected, but still so young —walking alone and in the rain and towards the part of town that cared about facts like that in the worse kind of way! And while the Honmoon could do a lot to protect its hunters it wasn’t perfect and more than once a hunter had been lost before they could be found and she was so young and getting farther away and-
“-♪ We are hunters, voices strong ♪,” Celine sang out, her voice succeeding where her mind had faltered. She cringed as she realized what song her tongue had supplied, but admitted it had the desired affect.
The girl slammed to a halt, feet freezing in place as her head first snapped down to watch the Honmoon light up before she twisted around to stare at Celine; jaw dropped wide, and eyes opened even wider.
...Oh well: in for a penny, in for a pound, Celine sighed, I guess hadn’t been much older than her when I learned the truth.
Forcing herself to look calm, Celine stood up, opening her umbrella before slowly walking a few steps closer; though she made a point of stopping well short of actually reaching her.
“...You’re right; I am a stranger,” she said, making contact with wide brown eyes still tinged with red, “But I’m also one of the few people in the world that can see what you see.”
She tapped her foot a few times, the blue lines around them shining in time with the beat. The girl’s eyes flickered between the Honmoon and her, her breath coming the slightest bit faster.
“I’m not a pervert-” Celine swore; lip curling in disgust before she could catch it at the mere thought, “-and I don’t mean you any harm. I just wanna talk.”
The girl swallowed; hard. Her grip tightened so much on the strap of her bag that Celine swore she could hear the material creak in protest even from meters away.
“...Talk about what.”
“About this,” she nodded towards the Honmoon, “And what you being able to see it actually means.” Celine took a quick glance around, her eye catching on one of Paris’ countless of restaurants that happened to be practically right beside them.
She gestured towards it, “I’d also like to get out of this rain and get some food. Have you eaten dinner yet?”
The girl didn’t verbally respond, but at the mention of food her stomach let out a gurgle that managed to reach Celine’s ears even through the rain; and even if it hadn’t the telltale blush painting itself across the girl’s cheek would have given her away anyway.
“I’m buying,” Celine stated, in case it wasn’t as obvious as she hoped.
The girl shifted on her feet; her gaze flicking between the Honmoon, the restaurant, the rain, Celine, and back again.
After a long minute she huffed and muttered, “Fine”; marching over to the restaurant doors without a second glance to check if Celine was following her or not.
Well; this’ll be fun, Celine sighed, following along after her. She entered the restaurant— a typical Parisian bistro —to find the girl waiting for her at a table she’d already picked; arms crossed and her chin up even as her eyes looked down at the tabletop.
Celine sat across from her, with her back to the door; far from her favorite position, but if the girl felt better with her own back to the wall then so be it. The waiter arrived shortly and they gave their drink orders in French: water for the girl and coffee for her, though Celine would have preferred something stronger. She distracted herself from the urge by noting that Mira’s French was good, with barely a trace of a Korean accent.
“So-” the girl spat, once the waiter had left them, “-What are they?”
“After the food gets here and only if we speak of it in Korean,” Celine said calmly, opening up and perusing the menu like this was a completely normal situation.
“What? Why?!” she snarled.
“Because I don’t want the people around us to think I’m crazy and in case you think I am and run off I at least don’t have to worry about if you went to bed hungry or not.”
The girl stayed silent for a long moment— Celine could see her staring out of the corner of her eye but diligently kept her own eyes looking away —before she hmph’d and opened up her own menu.
“...May I ask what your name is?” Celine asked gently.
“Tsk- Are you ever going to offer yours?”
Celine opened her mouth, and closed it just as quickly.
She was going to answer with “Diana” but...if she was going to tell this girl the truth about what her life was going to be like, starting it off with what felt like a lie seemed...wrong.
And she’d seen first hand what happened when hunters lied to each other, after all. Best to start setting a good example here and now.
“...My name is Celine,” she said after what she thought had been too long of a moment. The girl clearly agreed, if the narrowing of her eyes was any indication. Still, the teen chose to not comment on it.
For the moment, at least.
“Mira,” the girl responded, her own eyes flicking as if reading over the menu; though something told Celine it was more a ruse than anything.
“And how old are you, Mira?”
“Eighteen,” she answered far too quickly.
Celine raised her gaze and her brow. Bullshit, she thought, She might be tall for her age, but not by that much. Not to mention most age gaps between hunters aren’t nearly that big.
She let her thoughts flow freely across her face, taking little pleasure in the resulting squirm from the girl sitting across from her.
“...Sixteen?” the girl tried again.
Celine rested her chin in one hand; silently telling the girl to try again.
Her shoulders slumped and she sulked at the tabletop. “...Thirteen.”
“Thank you,” Celine nodded; that one sounded accurate. Around Rumi’s age then; which would make Zoey the maknae of the three. Fitting, she mused, recalling the other girl’s energy.
“Word of advice; maybe don’t try lying about your age while wearing a school uniform.”
Mira blushed, pulling the lapels of her coat closer together.
“Eighteen year olds wear uniforms too,” she mumbled with a pout.
Celine tilted her head, silently conceding her point. She’d explain the hunter age gape later.
If the girl let her get that far, that is.
The waiter returned, gave them their drinks, and happily took their orders before leaving once more with their menus in his hand.
“...So what are you doing out so late in this kind of weather?” Celine asked, adding several teaspoons of sugar to her coffee. Her lips quirked as she watched Mira’s eyes widen incrementally with every ensuing scoop.
“I don’t know. What are you doing out so late?”
She felt her eyebrow twitch a little once more; was this girl going to answer every question with another question? It could quickly become aggravating if it didn’t remind her so much of herself at that age; fed up with her home life and suspicious of every adult who tried to speak with her. Celine would freely admit that she did not make her early training days with their mentors easy.
She felt a tension growing in her spine at the thought that perhaps this girl— Mira —was acting like she had acted, because she was going through something difficult as well.
She hoped she was wrong.
She had a feeling she wasn’t.
“I was on my way home from the studio when I caught sight of the Honmoon reacting to someone,” she answered, switching to Korean once more.
“The Honmoon? Is that what you call the lines of light?” Mira asked, looking truly interested for the first time since she’d met her before her brows furrowed, “Wait- What kind of studio?”
“Music. I’m a singer.”
“A singer...” Mira mumbled, eyes narrowing. She blinked and jolted back slightly. Before Celine could ask what was wrong, the girl proceeded to dig around for something in her bag while the she watched on curiously. After a few mumble-filled moments Mira pulled out a magazine with a familiar looking cover, flipping it open and rifling through its pages. The girl’s jaw dropped once again just as Celine placed where she’d seen that specific cover before, and the older woman braced herself for what was coming.
“-Wait- Waitwaitwait!” Mira spluttered, eyes wide as she flicked her head back and forth like she was following a ball at a tennis match between Celine and a certain page towards the middle of the magazine.
One that Celine was fairly certain contained a spread of her leaning against a motorcycle for some interview or another; they all blended together after a while. Though she did really like the bike they’d picked for that one.
“You- You’re Diana?!” Mira shrieked in what was thankfully closer to a whisper-shout than not and also still in Korean.
“That is the stage name I go by, yes,” Celine confirmed, taking a sip of her coffee. She was thankful she did, as the cup was helpful in hiding the smile that threatened to spread across her face as she watched the teen’s face go on quite the journey as she tried to comprehend who she was about to share a meal with.
“Diana-Diana?!”
“Last time I checked. Though there is a drag queen on the other side of town who does a pretty good impersonation; swear they can do some of my moves better than I can sometimes,” Celine stated thoughtfully.
“Wha- What in the world are you doing talking to random girls in bus stops?!” Mira demanded, after doing her own impersonation of an oversized goldfish.
Celine sighed. “I told you: I followed the Honmoon to you. I...honestly mistook you for someone else,” she admitted, “But my earlier statement still stands; I’m not a fan of young girls sitting by themselves, at a bus stop, in the rain, at what has since become night.”
“So- What? You were afraid of me getting hurt or something?”
“Yes?” she answered simply, quirking an eyebrow, “Is that really so hard to believe?”
Mira gazed dropped away, mumbling something Celine failed to catch under her breath.
“I’m... Sorry,” the girl managed to get out a long few moments later, “For how I acted earlier. I...I didn’t expect anyone to actually care. Not about...someone they just met.”
‘Not about me’ Celine swore she heard Mira avoid saying, and her heart ached for the girl seated before her.
“There’s nothing wrong about being cautious,” Celine gently assured her, “Though I would typically wait until someone gives me a good enough reason before being rude. But then again, I’ve been told I don’t have the most ‘pleasant’ of tempers, myself, so maybe I’m not the best person to get advice from.”
Mira looked back up at that; eyes wide and bright with what Celine hoped was recognition that Celine understood where she was coming from. That she had been where Mira was now and that she wanted to help, she wanted to-
The waiter arrived with their food and Celine used the interruption to pull herself back a bit.
She just met this girl. Honmoon chosen or not, they were still strangers. She could not rush this.
She had no idea what she was trying to ‘not rush’, but she’d be damned if she didn’t try.
They began eating in silence and Celine watched and waited until Mira had cleaned off a good third of her plate before she chose to keep her word.
“What do you know about ‘demons’?”
One Hour Later
“-So let me get this straight-” Mira said, rubbing at one temple and sighing in a way no thirteen year old had any business doing, “-I’m one of three magical girls whose ‘duty’ it is to slay demons?”
“Mhm,” Celine hummed, taking a sip from her newest cup of coffee. She focused on the burn to keep from arguing that, since they didn’t have a ‘magical transformation’, she didn’t think they counted as magical girls; lots of characters could summon magical weapons that were not considered as such.
It was a long standing ‘conversation’ she used to have with her girls, but not one she thought it was time to have with Mira just yet.
“Demons that are mostly kept in the literal underworld because of the glowing lines of light that’s called the Honmoon?”
“Yes.”
“And part of our duties— which are a secret by the way —is to act as a trio of popstars for the rest of the world?”
“Correct.” She’s caught on quick.
“And it’s traditional for KPop singers to do this?!” Mira asked, voice going higher by the word.
“Well the exact genre has drifted over the past four hundred years, but these days, yes.”
“And why, exactly, do the demons only seem to be Korea’s problem?!”
Celine shrugged, “The working theory is that while the underworld is beneath us— our ground is their sky —their geography doesn’t match our world. The only way they can get through the Honmoon is by physically touching it, and the only way they can do that is by using the highest points in their realm; which, evidently, lines up with most of Korea. They can appear in other parts of the world, but it’s rare.”
Mira’s mouth opened a closed a few times, before her gaze drifted down to the table and her mostly empty plate.
“...Why me?” she asked after a long few moments of silence.
“You’ll have to ask the Honmoon. It’s the one that picks.”
“...Will it answer? Can it answer?”
“No. Or at least not in a way I find helpful,” Celine answered, sending a side-eye towards the lines on the walls.
They responded by flaring upon their mention.
“So, what- I’m gonna have to fight demons now?! On top of homework?!”
“-No, no; you don’t have to fight them right now. Not for another few years,” Celine quickly explained, “The...current generation of hunters are still going strong. You shouldn’t have to take on the mantle until you’re older.”
Mira’s shoulders sagged slightly with relief. “And the current hunters are...?”
Celine twitched; she should have known this question was coming, it was a good question to ask after all. And she’d already promised to not lie to the girl either, even if only to herself.
“...Have you ever heard of the Sunlight Sisters?”
“Yeah, who hasn’t-” Mira cut herself off, eyes going wide. “Wait. No. No way!”
Celine nodded, “Mhm. They’re the current hunters.”
“The Sunlight Sisters— The Sunlight Sisters —are secretly demon hunters?!”
Celine nodded. “Keeping the Honmoon strong since 1997,” she dryly added.
“Whoa...” Mira breathed quietly before her brow furrowed again. “Wait, I thought they were a duo... And you said only hunters can see the li- the Honmoon. So what are you. then?”
...Well I suppose her being smart enough to notice is a good thing, Celine sighed.
“I...used to be a hunter. I’m retired now.”
“That’s an option? Retiring?”
“Not typically,” Celine cringed, “Just- something that came about.”
“What, did they kick you out or something?” Mira asked, looking mildly distressed at the notion.
“No. Nothing like that,” Celine admitted, thumb rubbing against her cup, debating on how much she could get away with not saying.
“We...had a falling out. It was a long time ago. I wouldn’t be too concerned about it if I were you.”
“I mean... You said hunters train the next group, right? Won’t that mean I’ll like, meet them eventually?”
“Yes. But what happened between me and them is exactly that; between me and them,” Celine stated firmly, “Your generation should focus on each other; not us.”
“My generation...” Mira mumbled under her breath, eyes drifting before refocusing back on Celine. “Do...Do you already know who my girls are?”
“I do actually.” Celine bit her lip, wondering how much she should say even as her heart warmed at Mira already referring to them as ‘hers’. It was probably a bad idea, now that she thought about it. Mira would indeed meet the others eventually and if she was already so well informed on things, well, the odds of them putting two and two together and realizing Mira had met her were a bit higher than Celine liked.
Oh, but Mira looked so intrigued, even while trying to seem like she wasn’t. She was poking at the remains of her food now, but Celine could just tell she was itching to hear more by the way her eyes kept flicking up towards her.
...
...Fuck it. I’m already this deep into it; might as well.
“...One of them is called Rumi,” Celine eventually bit out, “She’s about your age. Good singing voice. And she’s actually...one of the Sunlight Sisters’ daughter.”
“She’s the daughter of a hunter?” Mira blinked, looking surprised, “Is that normal?”
“It’s not unheard of, but it is on the rarer side.”
Mostly because most hunters don’t usually wind up having kids to begin with, she silently added, For one reason or another.
“The other one is called Zoey. She’s the youngest of you three and has quite the gift with words.”
“Zoey...” Mira murmured, eyes narrowing while her brow furrowed; like the name actually meant something to her already.
Her eyes blinked, “Wait- Is she an American? Dark hair, big eyes? Likes turtles and stuff?”
“Yes, actually,” Celine answered, surprised, “How’d you know?”
Mira blushed, looking so much like a normal school girl for the first time since Celine met her that the older woman almost laughed at the sight.
“I follow her online. She does covers of songs she’s translated into English; she’s really good...”
Ah, so that’s how, Celine sighed in relief, Thank god for the internet these days.
Hm; maybe that would be a good way to spin how she already knows so much...
Their conversation petered off after that. To the point that when the waiter returned and Celine sent him away once more with her card and folded her arms on the table.
“Do you want a lift back to school?” she asked as casually as she could, “My car’s not far from here.”
Mira scoffed. “Wouldn’t matter anyway. I missed curfew; gates closed by now, so I won’t be able to get in anyway.”
Celine frowned at that, checking her watch and wincing when she saw that they had been sitting in the restaurant for quite a while. She glanced outside, where the raindrops had swelled in number to the point where she almost had trouble seeing the buildings just on the other side of the street.
“...Well then, I guess we have two options,” she told the sullen looking teenager, who had also been looking out into the wet night.
“I can set you up in a hotel for the night,” Celine offered; keeping the bit where she would stay firmly down in the lobby to forestall any rumors that would undoubtedly arise should word get out that she was seen in such a place with a school girl to herself.
Mira’s face twitched into a grimace before she schooled it back into a neutral looking mask. “...Or?”
Celine shrugged, “Or you can try to sleep on my couch.”
Mira raised an eyebrow, “You’re one of the biggest music stars in the world, but you can’t afford a spare room?”
“I have a spare room,” Celine defended her testily, “I just- don’t entertain much-” Or rather at all, “-and so it became a studio a long time ago.”
“You have a studio in your home? Why were you coming back from one then?”
“I use my home studio to rough out my songs before I go in and have someone who’s better at using technology than me polish them up. We’re getting distracted. Which one do you prefer? Hotel or couch?”
Mira’s eyes flickered between Celine’s and the rain outside, debating silently to herself.
“...Couch, please.”
“Alright,” Celine nodded, thanking the waiter as he returned just then with her card. Internally she wondered— for the umpteenth time that evening —what the hell she was thinking, before shaking the thought away as quickly as it had come.
Mira was a hunter. Hunters helped each other. It was as simple as that.
“Ready to go, then?” she asked the tall teenager.
Mira nodded and the pair silently stood and walked to the front door.
As they left the restaurant, stopping just shy of the curtain of rain falling before them, Celine opened up her umbrella, holding it over both of them as they stepped out from under the meager awning sticking out from the building. She made sure to walk on the side of the pavement closest to the road, and together the pair started retracing her earlier path back to her car.
Fortunately there was little wind to speak of, leaving the rain to fall straight down on them. Unfortunately, Celine’s umbrella wasn’t really sized for two people, even if one of them was a beanpole of a school girl. Grateful she was at least wearing one of her favorite leather jackets, Celine shifted her arm until the umbrella was completely covering Mira. The raindrops made a constant plattering sound as they struck her shoulder, but mostly slid off the water-resistant material. Sadly there was little she could do about them dripping down her sleeve and onto her hand, even as she tucked it into her pocket.
They reached her car and Celine stayed by Mira’s side as she opened the passenger door for the girl, keeping the teen covered as she climbed into the car and carefully closing the door behind her. The older woman moved around the hood of the car, taking her own seat behind the wheel, and grimacing when the rain hit her while she closed her umbrella once more.
“It’s not a far drive,” she said, more to break the rain-troddened silence than anything, “We’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
Mira hummed an acknowledging note but didn’t say a word. When Celine turned her head to check on her, the girl snapped hers away a moment too late. Celine wasn’t sure, but she thought the girl had been staring at her shoulders; both sides now damp after the pair had crossed the street and Celine had subsequently swapped sides with the girl.
Silence filled the car as Celine pulled back onto the road. She let it stay unbroken until a thought she probably should have had earlier finally occurred to her.
“Do you have a phone?” she asked, “It’d probably be a good idea to let your parents know where you are. Especially if the school called them after you didn’t show back up in time for curfew.”
Mira scoffed, turning her gaze out of the window and crossing her arms, “As if they give a damn.”
“Language- Woooow-” Celine grimaced, cringing hard at herself, “-I did not just say that. Ugh, I sound like my mother.”
She heard a snrk from Mira, catching her shoulders jerking out of the corner of her eye, but otherwise the girl offered no response to her comment.
“...Why wouldn’t they care where you are?” Celine asked when the silence descended once more.
“Because they don’t!” Mira snapped, “They don’t even-” She cut herself off just as the car came to a red light. As they came to a stop, Celine looked her way, trying to meet her eye. Mira was staring resolutely away from her, but her reflection in the window was biting its lip, while her fingers dug into her coat sleeves so hard Celine half feared they’d stabbed straight through it.
“...Don’t even...what?” she asked softly; even though she feared she already knew the answer.
Mira didn’t answer. Didn’t utter so much a single sound.
Not after the light had turned green and they carried on down the street. Not as Celine pulled into the underground parking lot for her building and parked. Not as she led her over to the elevator and silently rode it up. Not even when Celine opened the door to her apartment and the woman made a joke “apologizing” for the non-existent mess.
No, the girl didn’t say a word, until she returned from using the shower— bedecked in an oversized t-shirt and a pair of drawstring sleep shorts that Celine that grabbed for her —and found that Celine, now sans her leather jacket, had fully made up the couch with bedsheets, a real pillow, and the comfiest blanket she had.
“So I actually thought about it for longer than two seconds-” Celine started when she noticed standing at the edge of the living room, hair still damp even though she had heard the hair dryer going, “-and decided that I’m going to take the couch instead. You can have my bed.”
“W-What?!” Mira stuttered, eyes wide, “No, I’m not- I’m not taking your bed?!”
“Yes you will, because I know for a fact this couch sucks for anything longer than a nap.” Something she had learned the hard way several times and was the primary reason she kept the damn piece of furniture in the first place to increase the odds of her actually sleeping in a real bed.
“-Also my door has a lock on it. Not that you need a lock, but its the principle of the thing-”
“I am not taking your bed!” Mira snarled, marching over and vaulting over the back of the couch, landing butt-first with a bounce. She crossed her arms and glared up at Celine as fiercely as she could as if daring the singer to try and move her.
“...That glare would probably be a lot more effective if you weren’t currently wearing my ‘no talk, me angy’ t-shirt,” Celine deadpanned, nodding towards the picture of a tiny kitten printed on the shirt.
Mira’s cheek went red so fast Celine feared they would pop, “Why do you even have this shirt?!”
“My manager thinks she’s funny,” she shrugged, “Now seriously, hop up.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I have to go back to the studio tomorrow after I drop you back off at school and-”
“-No- Why are you doing this?!” Mira ground out through her teeth, startling Celine not with her tone but with the tears that started to fill her eyes, “Why are you being nice to me?! Why, when not even my own parents-”
She cut herself off once more, her jaw snapping shut so sharply that it was like she was trying to bite a hole out of the air itself. Mira curled inward, glaring down at her lap; shoulders shaking with each increasingly ragged breath.
And Celine’s heart ached.
For a moment, a split second, she wasn’t looking at some girl- some child she had met mere hours ago.
She was looking at herself.
Young and scared and alone and so, so angry at the world for allowing her to be that way. For not protecting her, like it should have. For making it seemed like everyone else got to have a family except her.
If it hadn’t been for the Honmoon— for it giving her her girls —Celine doesn’t know who she would have grown up to be.
If she had lived long enough to grow up at all.
And now, history was repeating itself, in the form of a thirteen year old girl, hugging herself on her couch like she’d fall apart otherwise.
And Celine felt her heart crack. In way it hadn’t since that night.
Ignoring the shake that had suddenly appeared in her knees, Celine slowly moved; picking up the folded blanket she’d left on the couch and moving it over so that she had room to sit down besides the trembling girl. She kept every movement as slow and telegraphed as she could, until finally she was fully sat next to Mira, their thighs barely an inch apart.
Celine rested her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands together. She had to; otherwise she would absolutely pull this girl in for a bonecrushing hug. Just like the ones she used to give her girls when the world and the weight that sat squarely upon their young shoulders proved to be too much.
But she couldn’t do that here. Not yet. Not until Mira made it explicitly clear that she would even accept a hug from someone who was still such a stranger to her.
Mira let out her shakiest breath yet, and Celine felt the bones in her hand creak as she clenched them ever harder.
She wanted to ask. Ask what she didn’t know. But she wanted to ask and just when she opened her mouth to do just that, Mira beat her to it.
“...Summer break starts next week,” Mira said, speaking towards the floor in a tone of voice that Celine was all too familiar with. The kind that was one step away from turning into something that one would hardly want to show to a stranger.
The kind that was filled with pain.
“I got a message from them today,” Mira continued, heedless of how every word out of her mouth was already sending agony into Celine’s heart like they were shards of glass. “They said- That they weren’t going to let me come home this time. Tha-That my grades weren’t good enough, and so I should ‘stay there and study’! As if the worst fucking grade I got this years wasn’t a damn eighteen!”
Celine felt her eyebrows lift. Considering French schools graded things on a scale of twenty, eighteen was pretty good. It was the equivalent of getting a ninety percent, and that being her lowest grade wasn’t good enough for her parents?
Oh- Celine realized with a sneer, -They’re those kind of parents.
She knew of the type— the ones who put so much emphasis on “good grades” —but had only ever met one example and that was when...when she’d met the parents of one of her girls.
She had a feeling she would like Mira’s about as much as she had liked that older couple. Which is to say: not at all.
“Th-They didn’t even have the guts to tell me themselves!” Mira growled, the corner of the one eye that Celine could see threatening to overflow with tears before the teen angrily rubbed at it, “They l-left a message with the fucking front desk to pass along to me! And she only passed the message along when I happened to be passing by on my way to lunch!”
“...Is that why you were out and not at school?”
Mira sniffed, rubbing at her nose with the back of her wrist, and nodded.
“B-Break is all anyone has been talking about,” she explained, the shake in her voice getting worse by the word, “About where they’re going, w-what they’re gonna do. Snf- I was- so excited to go home. To-To be in my city and have some real street food, n-not the fancy ‘hoity-toity’ shit they have here!”
“You must not have been to Mashisoyo’s over on the west side yet,” Celine tried to joke, “Tastes just like home, I swear.”
Mira scoffed, “Guess I’ll have time to try it now, since I’m- I’m-” She choked on what sounded like a sob, her hand clamping over her mouth as if that would keep it, contained, keep it under control-
And Celine promptly had enough.
“Stop that,” she spat out unthinkingly; regretting it as soon as Mira stiffened up and tried to wipe at her eyes.
“No that’s not-” Celine cringed, just barely avoiding smacking herself in the head for her own stupid mouth. She took a breath and tried again.
“I’m sorry, what I meant was, stop holding back,” she explained, heart breaking at the look of utter shock on Mira’s face as her face snapped over to look at her. As if no one had ever apologized to her before.
Pushing the implications of that out of her mind— along with a half-baked plan on hunting the girl’s parents down —she continued, “If you wanna cry, then cry. Keeping it in will only make the later explosion bigger. Trust me, I know.”
Mira looked at her for one beat, two, three- before her face absolutely crumbled along with the brittle wall she had been trying so hard to keep up. Her head bowed, followed by her back, and if it wasn’t for the laws of physics Celine thinks she would have simply folded all the way onto the floor. Tears streamed down her cheeks and dotted the shorts that caught them as they fell.
A matching set fell from Celine’s own eyes and she made no move to wipe them away.
“Mira- Sweetheart-” the endearment snuck out before she could stop it, and she wasn’t sure she would have anyway, “-Can I- Can I hold you? Ple-”
Her arms were full of a shaking girl before she even finished saying ‘please’. Mira wrapped her arms all the way around Celine like she was afraid the older woman would vanish if she didn’t and Celine returned the favor with twice as much fervor after literally dragging the girl to be fully sitting in her lap.
“That’s it,” Celine murmured, pressing a damp kiss into dark locks, “That’s it, sweetheart, let it out. Let it all out. I’m here. I got you. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
Mira whined and wailed, fingers digging into Celine like a lifeline while the spot where her face was buried against the singer’s chest became noticeably damper.
And as the storm raged both outside and within her arms, Celine swore to herself that she would not take that trust lightly.
As Celine laid reclined on her couch, she naturally had a few thoughts concerning the tall gangly child that was now passed out on her chest after a crying session that had apparently been years overdue.
One thought was wondering why the Honmoon seemed to pick hunters from broken homes more often than not. Thinking through all the hunters she did know, the only one who didn’t fit that description was Rumi; at least she prayed that was actually the case. She might actually wind up killing Soo-ho if she ever found out otherwise.
Another thought she had was that her couch truly did suck as badly as she remembered, and that next time this happened they were absolutely doing this on her bed-
Then she realized she was already planning on there being a “next time” and let out a defeated sigh that she swore made the Honmoon glow in what could only be described as smugly.
She glared down at it as it stretched across her floor and couch; its strings brightening slightly wherever either of them touched it.
Glowing, pompous, music staff-looking prick!
She would swear until her dying day that it flickered in response.
“Is this the last time I’m going to see you?” Mira asked quietly as they pulled up to the front of her school, its gates now wide open.
The morning had gone as well as to be expected when one woke up curled up on the chest of a rockstar they had just met and subsequently cried their eyes out on the night before. Celine had made them both breakfast— Mira demurely complimenting her on what Celine considered her basic-ass gyeran bap —and after the girl helped her clean up, they both got ready and set out to begin their respective days.
Mira had sat quietly beyond giving Celine directions on how to get to her school, and Celine was more than happy to let her.
“Probably not, seeing as you know where I live now,” Celine hummed, eyeing a security guard that was eyeing her car the longer it sat idle; wondering where the hell that sense of duty was last night when one of their students didn’t come back.
“...And, for what it’s worth, if it comes back down to visiting a ‘strange-ass woman’s’ apartment or wandering the streets; I hope you stop by for a visit instead.”
Mira’s head whipped around, eyes so wide it was downright comical and Celine really could not help but laugh. In her defense it was either that or cry because how could this girl— who she let drool on her through the night —possibly think that Celine would just drop the world changing news that demons were real and it was her destiny to hunt them on her, and then just vanish?!
“R-Really?!”
Celine nodded through her dying chuckles, holding out her hand palm up. “Can I see your phone?”
The chuckles started up again as the girl tore through her bag in search of her phone, and Celine had to gently remind her that she’d stuck the device into her coat pocket.
Taking the phone, Celine wasted no time typing in her name and number into a fresh contact, sending a text to herself and smiling when she heard the resulting ping from her own phone.
“I trust you won’t be spreading this number around to anyone?” she asked teasingly, passing the device back.
“Oh hell no!” Mira grinned, staring down at the newly made message chat like it was made of gold. “I doubt anyone would believe me anyway.” She clicked the screen off and carefully stowed it back into her coat pocket.
“-Speaking of which; any ideas on what I should tell them when they ask where I was last night?” she asked, jerking her thumb over towards the guard who was definitely giving them the stink eye now.
“Eh. Just tell’em...you were staying with your aunt,” she offered with a shrug, “Most westerners seem face-blind when it comes to any sort of Asian ethnicity anyway, and I’m certainly tall enough to seem related to you.”
Mira stared at her for a moment before abruptly looking away, murmuring a thanks. Taking a breath she opened the passenger door and began clambering out.
“...Hey Mira?” Celine called as the girl finished straightening up.
“Y-Yeah?” the girl asked, bending down so fast to meet Celine’s eye she nearly beamed her head against the car.
“You said summer break starts next week? Did you mean, early in the week, or...”
“-Friday!” Mira answered, cringing slightly at the speed she’d replied, “It- It starts end of day on Friday. ...Why?”
“No reason,” Celine shrugged, suddenly finding the texture of her steering wheel very interesting. “Have a good day in class, Mira.”
“Thanks, you too.” Mira’s face pinched shut and she slammed the door shut on Celine’s resulting chuckle.
Celine watched— resolutely ignoring the still glaring security guard —until tan of Mira’s peacoat vanished into the school’s front door with one final look back at the car.
She then dialed her manager’s number and put her phone on speaker-mode as she finally pulled away from the school.
“Bonjour, HB,” Celine greeted in French as the call finally connected, “I might be a little late coming into the studio today; could you shift my booth time back a bit?”
[“Sure, that should be manageable,”] the woman on the other end of the line answered, the clicking of her keyboard sounding off in the background. [“Everything alright? It’s not like you to move things.”]
“Everything’s fine. I just need to do some shopping. I’m in the market for a new couch; one with a pullout mattress.”