Chapter Text
You open your eyes and see grey, muddy streets, ramshackle wooden huts. Horses carrying their burdens alongside people in tattered, greyed-out clothes, too many a furrowed brows to pay attention beyond their own two feet. The sky is heavy, air thick with moisture from impending rainfall. You know you should leave, lest you get sick too. But you’ve got nothing to show after hours of playing aside from the maw of hunger in you, teeth sharper than ever. You think of your sister back home, her little face pale and your mother holding her, helplessly stroking her hair while stifling a cough.
Just a little longer, you think then, fingers pressed against the strings, right as a cart wheel splashes the puddle right in front of you, startling you into stopping. You quickly put a hand up to shield your bipa.
Hopeless.
You can feel it now, more keenly than ever. It’s like a foot pressing against your very soul, threatening to grind you face down in the mud right there. You look down at yourself, the dirt on your hands, fingers thin and palms bruised and cradling your only remaining possession. The unwashed rough-spun clothes, threadbare in places. The ripples left in the puddle by the wheel cleared away, showing you the downturn of your mouth in its reflection. Long black hair tied back in a topknot and a headband, all the better to see the emptiness in the eyes, the stress lines around dark brows, the slackness in the expression and the hollowness in the cheeks.
You’re going to die. You’re going to die like this. Hungry, forgotten, useless. Worthless.
And that’s when the maw in you morphs into something else, a spark of despair that turns into a roaring fire, cackling and whispering in your ear, hot breath at the nape of your neck. It puts your worst fears into words, the picture painted in your mind locking your body in place like cornered prey. And like any prey, the urge to claw your way out makes you listen for anything that might save you. Because surely, nothing can be worse than this. Surely, you have nothing left to lose.
You straighten your back and stand up. You stare down the throat of Gwi-ma, grip tight on the neck of your bipa, and march right between its flaming teeth, let yourself slide all the way down its gullet.
Soon after that, everything changes.
You don’t know what exactly was done to make you able to stop people in their tracks with your voice now. But maybe it’s something your mortal mind and senses just can’t comprehend. Maybe whatever you were missing before was an inherent thing you were lacking, something intangible yet essential, something that only the spirits could manipulate, to turn you into someone worth listening to.
(But of course, in hindsight, even that was too good of a gift to be given freely.)
You know you’re not good enough on your own to help anyone, not even your own family. Again and again, this was proven to you as a fact. But now you also know, with Gwi-ma’s bargain, you can at least save yourself.
You can’t even say sorry, because it hits you how much you want this. You gave your very soul for this.
I can’t do this, you think but leave unsaid, as you slip your hand away from your sister’s. You stare back at her in horror as what you’re about to do sets in, as you peel yourself away from her. It feels like prying off your own limb.
You can’t say a word as you back away, fingers numb from the despair in her grip as you slipped away. And you’re still so weak, clothes hanging off of you, so raw from the countless days trying to earn a living in the mud. The clawing dread at the thought of going back to practically begging in the streets makes you take another step back.
You don’t take your eyes from her crying little face, the resigned slump in your mother’s shoulders as she holds her back, the guards’ sharp blades against their chests. Your mom is staring back at you too, quietly knowing, silent and eyes brimming with emotions you can’t bring himself to read, and the lack of anger in her face makes it worse. But you don’t go back. You can’t go back. Please don’t make me go back. I’m not strong enough. I want to live. Please don’t ask me to come back.
The doors slam shut. From behind the heavy wood, your sister's sobs echo and hit you tenfold.
You try to breathe.
A servant urges you to follow.
You follow. (Don’t look back.)
You keep walking. You try to breathe. Keep walking.
Walking.
Your mind stays numb for a while, ears still ringing with your sister’s cries, legs still unsteady from your entire world turning on its head. You look at yourself and all your choices through a layer of transparent ice. Beyond the numbness, something raw and searing, like a fresh burn pulses in you, on you, around you.
Dazed, you find yourself alone in a room. You look around at the pristine woodwork, the beautiful wall decorations, the clean robes folded on the bedding.
It’s just you here. Your family’s out of your hands now. Cold relief and horrified shame come in waves, one after the other. You don’t have to look at them anymore, feel responsible for the grime on their clothes, the thinness in their cheeks. The cough in your mother’s chest.
You remember how the sound of it stuck with you yesterday, in you, like a hangnail snagging on the fabric of your psyche. Like a boulder on your back. How it became your reason to keep trying, the shaky pinprick of hope that you can make it go away.
You did. Not how you imagined it, not how you intended.
But you did.
Rumi wakes up with centuries-old sobs for Oppa in her ears, gasping for air at the grief, the shame, the hunger.
"C'mooon Mira, it's too early for this!" Zoey whines, mouth full of breakfast cereal. She sits on the couch in classic "shrimp" posture, clutching her bowl and spoon against her chest like a dragon hoarding gold. She's swimming in her oversized hoodie, and the tips of her fuzzy socks peeking from under the blanket on her lap completes her current commitment to maximum coziness.
Mira swishes in place, knees locked and core engaged. Her hand makes a sweeping motion that goes from one shoulder to the next, neck rolling in an elegant curve, hair swaying with the motion. "Well, you were the one playing that song on loop yesterday." She grumbles while staring a hole into the carpet, caught up in piecing it all together. "At this point I need to come up with a dance routine for it, just to get that damn thing out of my head."
Zoey tilts her head. "Wouldn't that just keep it stuck in your head for longer?"
"No way, this is my outlet. It's like scratching an itch, or solving a puzzle." Mira exhales, tight and controlled, smoothly transitions from her step-work into a high kick. "Or finding the right box to put stuff in. Once I figure it out," She does the kick again, faster, sharper. "it's out of my system."
"Huh." Zoey takes another spoonful of cereal, slurps and crunching noises galore before swallowing. "Well, we're not gonna be able to use it though. It's not based on one of our songs."
Mira huffs at that, pausing in her motions for a moment before resuming. "Yeah, I know, but it's not like everything we do has to be for work, right?"
"True!" Zoey nods. "We're on a break, after all." It's a mantra they have to keep repeating, until it hopefully sticks.
Mira nods, just as determined. "Damn right!"
Rumi then stumbles into the living room, bleary-eyed and frizzy-haired, still in her pajamas and sporting the same braid she slept in. She stumbles into a nearby chair, then promptly curses and hops in place, clutching her other foot. Zoey hisses in sympathy.
"Woah, you okay?" Mira stops her self-inflicted dance project to look in Rumi's direction.
"Huh?" Rumi looks up, and finally seems to wake up properly. She shakes her head, blinking away the leftover fog. "Yeah, I just- lost my head a bit. Had a weird dream. Nightmare. I think."
"Oooh, want me to bring out my dream dictionary??" Zoey pipes up, bowl now set aside so she can face Rumi, leaning her upper body on the back of the couch. Her fingers skitter against the back cushion like a jolly tap-dancing spider. "I've been wanting to try it out for a while now, but I can never remember what's in my dreams! It's a really cool way to figure out your inner thoughts, like a secret part of yourself you don't even know about!"
"Maybe let her have breakfast before you break out the tomes, though, Zoey." Mira then turns back to Rumi, takes in her rumpled clothes and shaky stance. "You look like you could use some coffee, too."
"I... yeah, I guess so." Rumi's slow nod and wobbly shuffle towards the kitchen area makes the other two stare at her, then turn to each other for a few prolonged moments. There's the sound of cupboards opening and closing, and the crinkling of packages moved around. Then they hear Rumi's breath hitch, and they quickly vault across the room towards her.
"Hey what's going on?"
"You okay, Rumi?"
Rumi stares down the neck of an opened bottle of strawberry milk, hand gripping the glass like it's a lifeline. She blinks, eyes glistening.
"I- I'm just-" She looks up, stares at the jar of honey on the counter, moves to the newly delivered box of snacks from Bobby, up to the gochujang container peeking out of the cupboard. "I'm really-" Catches her own reflection in the polished metal of the fridge door, and freezes for a moment before shaking her head. "That dream really did a number on me." Rumi sighs, and it sounds just on the side of exhausted. "I dreamed of-" Her stomach grumbles, and her face crumples in a complicated expression. She puts an arm up to cover her middle, like a shield against the noise, a band-aid to muffle it.
"Rumi?"
Rumi looks up at the ceiling, arm still pressed against her stomach, blinking away the shine in her eyes. "I think-" her voice comes out shaky, a weak attempt at levity landing sideways "I have a more active imagination that I thought. Either that, or..." she presses her lips in a flat line, and says no more. Stays focused on breathing, in and out, slower and quieter.
Mira puts a hand on her shoulder, Zoey sliding on Rumi's other side. They wait, watching their friend closely.
Rumi sighs. "I dreamed about Jinu." And that's enough to bring a cold breeze in the room. Rumi looks at them both. "I know you didn't exactly get to see him the way I did, but-"
"None of that, Rumi." Mira squeezes her shoulder, warm and resolute like a firm hug.
"Yeah, he clearly meant a lot to you." Zoey pipes in, leaning against her side. "And besides, he sacrificed himself to save you in the end. That alone says a lot."
Mira nods once at that, rubs Rumi's shoulder some more. "And it makes sense you're still shaken after he- you know. It makes sense you'd dream about it."
Rumi turns to look at Mira, and the look in her eyes gives the latter pause. "But that's just the thing." Rumi breathes, equally haunted and baffled in turn. "I didn't dream about his death." She swallows, looks back down at the milk bottle still in her grip. "I was him. I saw him from back when he was a human. I felt it, lived every moment as he took Gwi-ma's deal. After he-" Rumi then peels a hand off the bottle, brings it up and stares at it. "Oh." She exhales shakily, looks back up at Mira and Zoey. "When we first met that night, when he told me about the patterns-" She looks back down at her own fingers. "He kept staring at his hands when talking about his shame. It's because he-..." She trails off as she flexes her hand, curls her fingers around empty air as if searching for something.
"So..." Zoey starts, curious yet subdued. "You saw one of his memories? Is it because you-" Then she blinks. "Wait, you said he became a demon 400 years ago. You mean you saw a memory all the way from the Joseon era?" She can't really keep the amazement out of her tone, the implications buzzing around in her head.
Rumi gives her a fond, amused look, but her mood quickly goes back underwater like the dream put stones in her pockets. She flexes her hand again, clutches the milk bottle to her chest with the other one. A dragon hoarding gold. "Yeah. It was... awful. They were starving. He tried so hard, but nothing worked. And then, it just kept getting worse. He thought he had nothing left to lose, but Gwi-ma somehow managed to take even more from him."
"Of course he did." Mira mutters, tone dark and low like a tiger on the prowl. She doesn't stop rubbing Rumi's shoulder, and it helps keep the static in the latter's head at bay. "So he was tricked by Gwi-ma? And that's how he turned into a demon?"
Rumi stares into space, trying to recall details of the dream. "I think so?" She squints her eyes like trying to discern an object in the distance, then shakes her head. "I knew he's-... was hard on himself, but... seeing it from the inside is something else. I knew it was bad, but-" She exhales, tight and controlled. "He didn't want to do it, not if he had a choice, but the fact that he left them behind, even under pressure, under threat of starvation, even when- the fucking guards pointed their spears at-!" She braces herself, exhales. "The fact that he did it, that was enough to never forgive himself."
She looks up at her friends, and the naked pain in her eyes may be just an imprint left over from the raw edges of a dead, morally grey demon, but it's enough to make them go in for a group hug. Mira picks up the bottle gently from her hands, puts it on a surface nearby. Rumi falters a moment, then hugs them back, fills her hands with theirs, squeezes and breathes.