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"I want/To think again of dangerous and noble things." - Mary Oliver
It starts with nightmares getting more and more vivid. Rumi wakes screaming some nights, and others in a cold sweat so unpleasant she needs to shower it away. She scrubs her skin until its raw, and when she returns to bed Zoey and Mira are both wide awake, waiting for her.
Then come the irritable moods.
Then the self-isolation she used to practice so well.
Then the oversleeping. She’s late to their songwriting sessions four times in one week.
Finally, she nearly has a panic attack over spilling her bowl of jjigae. It comes out of nowhere for her. Or so she thinks. But Mira and Zoey have been worried for weeks. And clearly, her body knew something was wrong before her mind could catch up.
Then she finds herself at the ferry terminal in Jeju with a weekend bag slung over her shoulder. She texts Celine to let her know she’s coming. Things aren’t quite so fraught between them, but they’re not a picnic either. And perhaps it’s something innate within Rumi that wishes for something old and familiar to stablise her. And perhaps another part of her wishes to begin the delicate process of mending her relationship with Celine. Whatever it is, she makes the trek to her childhood home, alone.
Winter on Jeju has always felt safe. Between the steady, sure presence of all the nature, of the snow crunching beneath her boots, of every memory she formed here, it grounds her.
Celine is standing outside when she arrives. She puts her arms out when she sees her, like she used to when Rumi was a toddler. Then she flinches, like she remembers.
Rumi ignores it and steps into them anyway. It takes a beat or two before Celine fully wraps her arms around her, but when she does, Rumi crumbles. The weight of her pain, her fear, her exhaustion is suddenly too much to bear when the arms that carried her through childhood offer to lighten the load.
“It’s good to see you,” she murmurs.
They stand in the doorway as Rumi cries. Her sobs echo down the path from the house and between the leafless trees. Celine strokes her back and her hair to soothe her, and when that doesn’t work, she hums the Mantra like a lullaby. Not to will the tears away, but as if to honour them and the strength it had taken Rumi to come here and allow herself to fall apart.
“How are the girls?” Celine asks over mugs of citron tea later that evening.
“Fine.”
It dawns on Rumi then that, while she and Celine have been talking more lately, she hasn’t told her anything about their relationship.
“We’re, um, we’re dating.” It sounds clumsy coming out of her mouth. The words don’t quite do justice to what it is they have.
Celine pauses, mug halfway to her lips. She composes herself (as she always does), puts it down again. Rumi poises herself for a lecture and is surprised when she doesn’t get one.
“That’s wonderful,” Celine says. She doesn’t quite smile, but Rumi knows she means it. “I’m happy for you. All of you.”
“Thank you,” Rumi whispers.
“Does anyone else know?” There’s a protective edge to the question that Rumi quietly appreciates.
“Just Bobby. We’re being careful. Keeping it private.”
“I’d expect nothing less. I know you’ll keep each other safe.”
“We always do.”
“How long?”
“A few months.”
“And you’re happy?”
“Yeah.” It comes out breathless, as though she still can’t quite believe it’s real and it’s hers. “It feels good to be my whole self with them and have them see me. It’s… I’m really, really happy.”
“Good.” Celine hesitates like she wants to say more.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I’m just very happy to know that you are so loved. You always have been, but I’m glad you feel truly seen.”
Rumi’s eyes sting.
“I’m sorry,” Celine says hastily. “Did I say something wrong?”
Rumi shakes her head, tears spilling over. “No, I just didn’t… thank you.”
Celine gets up and walks around the table to kneel by Rumi’s chair. Her hand hovers over Rumi’s. She’s still not sure she has the right to take it. Rumi reaches for it and grips it tight.
“You don’t need to thank me,” Celine murmurs. Her eyes are wet now, too. “I need to apologise, for teaching you to think you deserved anything less. Just because I was taught to hide parts of me doesn’t mean I should have pushed that onto you. And for you to believe I didn’t love you… I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Celine.”
“No, I’m not asking for your pity or forgiveness. I just want you to know that I love you. Every part of you. And I am so, so sorry that my own fear forced you to believe anything different.”
Celine’s words hang in the air, heavy and blue, like an aching bruise.
“I don’t know what to say,” Rumi rasps eventually. They’re both openly crying. “And I don’t know how to be okay with it yet.”
“That’s alright. I understand.”
“But I want to be.” She gives Celine a wet, wobbly smile. And maybe that’s enough for now.
The house feels dense with things still unsaid as the next day rolls in. Neither of them feel the need to tiptoe around one another, but equally, they have no idea how to exist around each other like they used to. Things are so different now. Rumi dons long sleeves just in case, until Celine points it out at dinner that evening.
They have the first of many more tense conversations about it. Rumi gets frustrated. Celine lets her. Rumi cries. Celine holds her.
On the third night, Celine finds Rumi in the bathroom at two a.m. with a pair of kitchen scissors in her hand. She knows what it looks like. And after what she’d begged Celine to do six months ago, it’s only fair that she panics and yanks the scissors from her grasp, eyes wild with fear.
But then Rumi looks at her with red-rimmed eyes heavy with guilt and sorrow, and Celine softens.
“What is it, little one?”
The term of endearment shouldn’t fit her so much anymore, but something about Celine saying it now makes it fit again, like an old sweater she's rediscovered.
“Will you cut my hair?” she asks, voice small. She sniffs and wipes her cheeks on her sleeve.
Celine studies her face carefully. She looks like she’s about to tell her to wait until the morning, but then she’s putting down the scissors and fetching a stool.
“Sit down,” she instructs, quiet and maternal.
Rumi does as she says. Celine double checks the length with her before beginning. Rumi holds her breath as the sound of shearing echoes off the bathroom walls and only releases it when she feels the weight dissolve from the back of her head. Celine holds it up to her in the mirror. It's evidence and a goodbye all at once. Something in Rumi’s lungs comes loose, like the bridge of a song she has yet to write. It sounds a little bit like relief.
They don’t talk while Celine tidies up the last few centimeters with precision and delicacy. It’s only when she is cleaning up the back of her neck that they speak again.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Celine asks, running the comb through Rumi's hair. It feels strange that the gentle tug of it stops just above her shoulders, but it’s not unwelcome.
“Talk about what?”
“You’ve been carrying so much pain since you arrived. Longer than that, really. But I can feel it each time you move."
Rumi doesn’t say anything yet.
“I know I’m not the most open person in the world,” Celine treads lightly, “but if you want to talk about it, you can.”
“I’m really tired,” Rumi admits, as though it's a moral failing. “And everything feels so heavy, like I’ll drown if I don’t keep swimming.”
“Grief can be like that.”
“But what am I even grieving?”
Celine lets out a sound caught somewhere between a scoff and a sigh.
“What aren’t you grieving might be an easier question to answer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“An Idol’s life is far from normal no matter how you cut it,” Celine explains. “But what you do? What you went through to get to where you are now; the things you’ve sacrificed and lost, it takes more from you than it otherwise would if you weren’t born into this life.”
“I guess.”
“I felt the same when I was younger,” Celine confesses. “It wasn’t until we lost your mother that I really understood what I was feeling. I thought it wasn’t possible to grieve things that are still living.”
Rumi doesn’t know how she still has any tears left to cry at this point, but they spill down her cheeks silently as Celine talks anyway.
“I was wrong, clearly. And sometimes I think it’s harder when you have to face them each day. But it gets easier.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do,” she says patiently. “It doesn’t go away, but you learn to carry it. Just don’t let it shape you.”
“What if it already has?”
“Then we find a way to carry it anyway.”
“What if I’m not strong enough?”
Celine takes a deep breath behind her.
“Then I’ll be here, just like Zoey and Mira, to remind you that you are.”
Celine hums an old Sunlight Sisters song, one of the slower ones. The kind that’s stripped back and raw. The kind where the three of them would have sat on the lip of the stage, shoulder to shoulder, pouring their hearts out to their fans, their in-ears hanging around their collars so they can hear every voice in the room. Rumi finds the harmony and sings with her. The Honmoon ripples and Rumi’s patterns flicker like they understand.
A couple of days turns into a week.
Rumi trains lightly or goes for a walk each morning, then comes back and eats breakfast with Celine. They talk, they argue, they cry. Celine relents. Rumi forgives.
They talk about Mi-yeong. Celine brings out the old photo albums she used to share with Rumi when she was growing up. She tells stories she never thought to tell her, about touring shenanigans, pranks, costume mishaps. The happier things. And Rumi makes a mental note to write home to Zoey and Mira about it later.
They talk about the hard things, too. About how much the industry has changed, in many ways for the worst. They talk about the end. How the group disbanded; how much Celine regrets the way she’d acted in the days before Mi-yeong passed. They’re both teary-eyed and wrecked when it’s over, but Rumi has never felt closer to her surrogate mother than she does now.
The days continue to ebb and flow and life slowly starts to breathe itself back into Rumi’s bones. Sleep comes easier, the days feel kinder, melodies return like a migration.
By day six Celine makes a remark about how not even she is immune to burnout. The statement is pointed, but soft around the edges, so instead of rising to argue, Rumi just rolls her eyes and reclines against the couch with her book.
On day seven, Rumi’s morning hike is halted in its tracks by a large, fluid shape in the sky.
Starlings, dramatic and sonorous. Free.
Rumi thinks of all she has lost and all she has gained and she feels another pang of grief. It reverberates in her chest, knocking at her ribs, her diaphragm. But it doesn’t try to claw its way out the way she expected it to. And suddenly, it doesn't seem so insurmountable.
You learn to carry it.
The birds are breathtaking as they move as one. A chorus. Like an arena thrumming with bodies all chasing the same high, the same unity. Together. There’s no call or response. The birds just know; connected by something otherworldly, unnameable and so devastatingly real.
She thinks of Mira and Zoey. Of how the tree of them dance and flow, and dip and rise and thrive together. A perfect flock of three.
She misses them, and knows in her bones that they miss her too.
It’s early so they’re probably still curled up in their bed - probably Mira’s bed - breathing in synchrony and staunchly refusing to acknowledge the start of a new day.
She pulls out her phone and opens their group chat.
Rumi: I’m thinking about starlings.
Zoey responds almost immediately. So much for them sleeping in.
Zoeyyy🐢💙: What kind? Daurian? Red-billed? Rosy???
Rumi: Not sure. There's a group of them murmurating here.
Zoeyyy🐢💙: What about them?
Rumi: Just thinking about how they move together as one. Made me think of us
Zoeyyy🐢💙: Rumiiiiii!!!
Rumi: Sorry, that’s probably really corny
Mira✨️: It’s not. That’s beautiful
Mira✨️: Miss you <3 come home whenever you're ready
Rumi: Miss you too
She wants to ask about work. They're well into writing their next album and the temptation to ask what she's missed is fierce. She types, deletes it, types again, deletes that too. She can ask them when she gets back. Finally she simply writes:
Rumi: I love you
She looks back up at the starlings then. Something about their fluidity against the bright grey sky convinces her that she’s been gone long enough. She's lost count over the years of all the times she's wanted to take flight and never land again. But now all she wants to do is fly home.
Celine hovers in the doorway of her old bedroom as she packs her things. Rumi promises to visit again soon, perhaps with Mira and Zoey next time. Celine promises not to give them a stern talk about how to treat her adoptive daughter and they both laugh.
Celine drops Rumi off at the airport after one more dinner together. She’d wanted to enjoy the ferry and the drive again, initially, but she wants to tumble into her own bed and fall asleep with the loves of her life as soon as possible a whole lot more.
She texts Mira and Zoey a selfie of her in her plane seat, smiling under her cap and mask. The caption reads: ‘coming home.’
Mira gives it a ‘heart’ react and Zoey sends her that gif of two monkeys hugging. Then another of two cats cuddling. Then another. Rumi chuckles and sends a heart emoji before putting her phone away to watch the ground disappear from beneath her.
The penthouse is warm when she returns. Mira steps out of the bathroom in just her robe as the elevator doors close, and her eyes go wide with joy when she sees her. Rumi drops her bag and runs into her arms, letting Mira take all of her weight as they hug.
Mira whispers a gentle ‘welcome home’ before leaning in to kiss her. Zoey barrels into the hallway a second later and tackles her into another hug.
“I missed you so much,” Zoey mumbles into her neck.
“I missed you too. Both of you.”
Zoey cups the back of her neck to draw her into a kiss and frowns. She strokes the skin it softly, then pats her back like she’s searching for something. Rumi realises, belatedly, that she has finally noticed that her braid is gone.
She pulls the cap off Rumi’s head and gasps.
“Rumi! Your hair!”
Rumi runs a hand through it self-consciously.
“Do you like it?”
Zoey reaches out to touch it.
“I love it.” She takes her face in her hands and kisses her. “Do you love it?”
“I think so? It feels good, but it’ll take some getting used to.”
“If it feels good, then it is good,” Mira says sagely. “You look beautiful, jagiya.”
“Thank you.”
“Did the trip help?” Mira asks, taking her hands and intertwining their fingers.
“I think so,” Rumi answers truthfully.
“And you’re okay?”
“I will be.”
“That’s good enough for me.” Mira gives her a warm look.
“I’m sorry for running away for a whole week," Rumi murmurs.
“Don’t be,” Zoey chirps, throwing an arm around her waist. “We’re just happy you came home.”
"Always."