Chapter Text
“No!”
Rumi recoiled as if physically struck by her former mentor, like the last time they had sparred (or the time before that, or before that, or… Anyway.)
“No!” she cried again. Her eye twitched, then flashed gold. She re-read the page.
Not just my father, but my mother too?
After the initial shock, she took stock of her options.
Well, it’s so obvious: there’s only one option. REVENGE!!!
But she needed a plan.
She kept flipping through the pages of her mentor’s diary:
- Local Felidae and how to dye them blue without mottling their fur: no, that wasn’t it.
- A detailed list and notes about the amount of times she had eaten toothpaste as a kid, and then thrown up her breakfast, snacks, lunch, dinner. While interesting, especially given the detail with which Celine had recorded every meal, it was not what she wanted right now.
-“Fashion Sense for Kids!”: Oh, so this was where Celine got those ideas for her childhood clothing. Some part of her still resented it. Why not just tear this page out and burn it?, thought she. Well, she didn’t have a lighter or a flame on hand, but kindling never hurt. She reassigned it to her pocket..
- A how-to guide to skydiving and how to teach others skydiving force your trainees into skydiving, too—no, though this day she still wondered how Celine made the Honmoon charge the hair-dryer…
Aha! There it was! The address book section! Yes!
Rumi wasn’t quite sure why it was near the end of the diary, but oh well!
Time to go nuclear.
It was nearly midnight and she could hear his concern. A light fever was what the doctor had said. Still, at their ages, even a light fever could be disastrous.
“Can you not sleep, Jung-ho?” Young-sook Kim shifted around to look at the sweating form of her husband next to her, the man who had been by her side for the last fifty years. In fact, they had just celebrated their anniversary a few days earlier.
“No, my dearest Young-sook, I cannot rest,” came his reply. “I have the strangest feeling that some horrible fate is about to befall us. And I fear what it might be. I worry it will be unnatural, end in unnatural light and sound.”
Silly goose.
In all the years they had known each other, Jung-ho had always been a bit of a worrier. Indeed, it had been somewhat of a miracle that they had met each other; but they got along swimmingly and had raised three beautiful daughters, one of whom had gone on to have a successful career in the music industry.
“I have a feeling,” he continued, “that it has something to do with Sue-jin.”
He paused. There was a niggling feeling in his mind, that there was something important about to happen, or something important that he had forgotten, or something important was happening.
Hmm. What was Sue-jin’s stage name again?
He marshalled all his resources to consider this question, sweaty and feverish and feeble as he was. Yes, it was something rather close to her real name, the elderly man was certain of it. But, for the life of him, he simply could not recall what it was. Maybe Young-sook still remembered? He proposed to ask her.
“Pristine?”
No, that wasn’t it. He frowned, tried again.
“My Queen?”
That was wrong, and he knew it. Only further confirmed by his wife shaking her head, and frowning. He hated when she did that, especially with the explosive rage that shook the rafters and floorboards.
“CELINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Hmm, no, that wasn’t it.
A bit too on-the-nose, thought he.
Wait, why was Young-sook screaming?