Chapter Text
“Water demons!”
“Oh great, my favourite.”
Everything is hot, steaming, water rippling at their feet. They run, and the ripples follow.
A slash here, a stab there, demons exploding in showers of pink.
“Don’t let this turn you off bathhouses Rumi! It’s usually really fun and relaxing!”
Rumi slashes down with her sword as Zoey darts away. Her Saingeom. She lifts her head to look and there he is. Running.
Rumi gives chase.
Demons are slippery creatures, so is Jinu as he dodges every slice and ducks under every swing of Rumi’s Saingeom.
Down the hallway she follows him, flipping in front of him, forcing him through a doorway into a sauna.
“Mind the face,” he taunts. “I need it to steal your fans.”
A wooden bucket comes hurtling towards her. Rumi slices it clean in half. Claws rush at her, swiping wildly. She drops to avoid it and retaliates.
The Saingeom misses its mark, Jinu does not.
Rumi hears it first, the ripping of leather underneath the thudding of shoes and swishing of cloth. She feels it a second later, a sudden stinging and a blooming warmth, pulsing with every breath. Rumi hisses.
She brings her Saingeom up over her shoulder and leaps, prepared to swing. Jinu warps and she spins, her foot smashing in the centre of his chest.
“You’re strong,” he smirks despite the blade of starlight bearing down upon him.
The gash on Rumi’s arm is angry and gaping, dripping red over her exposed skin - over the patterns.
Jinu glances. He sees.
Rumi sees too. She’s distracted.
Oh no, no no no.
Jinu shoves, taking the chance.
“A demon?”
Rumi’s palm smacks over the gash. Her chest clamps, thoughts crashing before she can even breathe.
He saw. He knows. Who is he going to tell? Them?
“No,” Jinu mutters, almost to himself. “A demon can never be a hunter.”
He lunges.
Rumi’s eyes widen as she sidesteps, barely avoiding him. She grips her Saingeom harder.
Focus.
“What are you?” Jinu wonders aloud, jumping away from the slashing blade. “Half demon?”
Rumi tenses, just for a second. Just a fraction of a second and that’s all it takes for Jinu to scoff and know he’s gotten it right. Surprise flickers across his eyes, glowing with intrigue.
“A hunter who’s part demon.”
His gaze bores into her own. “Can’t you hear the voices?”
Whatever Jinu is expecting - because he is clearly expecting something - he doesn’t find it. Rumi never gets the chance to ask him what he means, what voices?
A demon comes crashing through a chunk of wall, the concrete giving way to a gaping hole.
“Rumi!”
“What are you doing? Where are you?!”
Zoey.
Mira.
The patterns.
Rumi gasps, clenching her arm tighter. If they turn right now, if they look at her, if they see-
Her fingers come away covered in bright red. The gash keeps bleeding, spilling blood over her skin, over the tear in the fabric of her sleeve.
A streak of starlight whizzes past, followed by a snarl and a burst of pink smoke.
The Shin-kal embeds itself into the wooden wall behind Rumi’s back as Jinu vanishes.
“Rumi!” Zoey is screaming, back pressed against Mira’s, desperately fending off a demon’s gaping jaws.
“Get in here!”
“We need you!”
Rumi stumbles. Do they not see? How have they not seen? She checks again.
The blood, it’s obscuring her patterns, washing over them, hiding them.
They haven’t seen.
“RUMI!”
She jolts, Saingeom materialising in her hand. She sends it hurtling towards the demon at Zoey’s face.
They move together, weaving a path through the hoard of demons, cutting them down. One by one, the creatures fall, until their weapons buzz with energy and Rumi slams her Saingeom down.
The shockwave stitches the Honmoon’s tears, the demons banished to whence they came.
Mira and Zoey are onto her in an instant.
“Rumi, what happened?”
“What was that?”
“Are you hurt?!”
Rumi jerks away from their concerned hands, their touch freezing mid-air.
“I’m fine!” She blurts. “I’m… I’m fine. I just need to patch this up…”
Mira narrows her eyes. Zoey’s nose scrunches like she wants to say something more.
“Let us know if you need any help,” Mira settles on at last.
Zoey nods along. “Yeah, and if you don’t get done in one hour, I’ll kick down your door!”
They’ve tried helping before, anyway. It never works. This is all they can do.
Rumi’s shoulders sag with relief. This way, there’s no chance that either of them will see the markings on her skin. They’re still together, still a team.
The bandage snags Rumi’s arm tightly. It’s nothing she isn't used to, but it’s uncomfortable all the same. She can feel it underneath her hoodie, rubbing against the fabric.
In the end, she came close to exhausting the one hour granted to her to patch herself up. Zoey’s foot was raised by the time Rumi opened her room door to step outside.
“I’m serious,” Zoey had shrugged, putting her foot back down. “You being okay is way more important than a door.”
“Door fanatic!” Mira’s voice had rung from the end of the hallway. “I’m about to starve and I’m too tired to cook anything. I’m gonna Baemin if you guys want anything.”
Now, it’s late. Bobby showed up and has already left, the trash can is stuffed full of empty takeout containers and the TV is blaring something unimportant and probably equally stupid.
They’re coming up with a new song.
Also, Doctor Han’s tonics aren’t even actual tonics, it’s just grape juice. Which means it’s not going to help with Rumi’s dying voice. She can’t turn the Honmoon golden without a voice.
She decides she’ll go for a run.
The night air whips coldly against Rumi’s cheeks as she sprints from rooftop to rooftop. This is the only kind of running she knows how to do. She could go on and on for minutes on end and still not break a sweat.
The girls chalk it up to insane stamina, Rumi calls it demon physiology.
Occasionally, she comes across a gap. Planting her shoes firmly against tiles and concrete, she jumps. Then she lands and keeps running.
She must make it all the way around the area surrounding their tower by the time she slows her pace, coming to a stop in the centre of the roof of one of the taller buildings.
From here, she can see the glow of the Honmoon, reds and pinks swirling in the distance.
There are so many weak spots. And Rumi cannot sing.
Her teeth find the inside of her cheek, biting down halfway - What is she going to do? How can she fix this?
“Half-demon,” a voice interrupts her thoughts.
Rumi mentally jumps in surprise, drawing her Saingeom as she whirls around to face the voice’s owner.
“You!” She bites, shifting into a ready stance.
Jinu sticks his hands in his pockets, not bothering to remove them. His eyes drift towards the pulsing lines of the Honmoon. “You make it weak.”
“What are you doing here?” Rumi asks, weapon poised.
Jinu counters, “I saw you first. And I have questions.”
“What makes you think I’ll answer any of them?”
He ignores her, asking instead, “How do you escape the voices?”
It is a genuine question, Rumi realises, one that Jinu scrutinises her for.
“What voices?”
Why is she indulging a demon’s questions?
“The ones in your head,” Jinu says, like it’s perfectly normal and she should understand. “Don’t you hear them?”
“What are you talking about?” She keeps her Saingeom aimed resolutely at his neck.
Jinu watches her blankly, like he can’t decide if she’s being serious, or if she’s saying this to smite him. “What am I talking about?” He parrots blandly.
Then, with a disbelieving huff that almost passes for a laugh, Jinu’s head tips back.
“What… What am I talking about? You don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re serious… You…”
His chin snaps back down, suddenly cold, the rage in his eyes mixing with something Rumi can’t identify. He snarls.
In the next second, Rumi brings her Saingeom down to slash at a puff of pink smoke. A second pool of it curls around her from behind. She turns, barely missing Jinu’s torso as he leaps back.
Jeoseung Saja are harder to kill. Cunning, witty creatures of accursed speed. He’s relentless, a diving, swiping, lunging force of a demon. His claws reach for her, miss, and reach again.
And Rumi keeps spinning. She turns to meet him in the middle, blade swishing through empty space each time he moves, keeps teleporting away, and keeps coming back.
There is no calculation, no arrogant smirk or sneer breaking through his movements, this is nothing like the deliberate attacks in the bathhouse. These are wild, untamed charges. Serious.
Once, Jinu warps, a flash of muted pink leaping for her throat so quickly Rumi barely has time to blink and swing her blade up to block him. And then he warps again. Mid-air, right in front of the Saingeom’s shining starlight.
He will appear behind her, eyes burning into the back of her head with a hatred so deep it makes him reckless. And he will come for her with a snapping jaw while her back is turned, knowing she’ll deny him his kill, again and again and-
A stinging pain explodes on the side of her arm, bursting angrily up her shoulder, past her elbow, all the way down to her wrist.
Jinu’s claws tear through the cloth of Rumi’s hoodie, its sleeve ruined, through the white of her bandages, staining a dark red where blood spills from the gash now reopened.
Her gasp is a sharp jolt from her chest, a hiss snaking past gritted teeth, her grip on the Saingeom’s hilt wavering.
It’s a second of weakness, and it’s also a second too long.
Rumi recovers quickly, jaw tensing, flipping her Saingeom for a jab at Jinu’s retreating forearm.
Jinu is faster.
When the cloud of pink descends, it isn’t from a distance, no demon leaps out of the darkness towards her. No. For all the times Jinu forced Rumi to turn and keep him in her sights, now he throws a curveball.
Smoke erupts in her face, blinding her. A barrelling weight slams into her front, a pair of glowing amber rushing in through the fog of pink.
Rumi staggers, thrown rudely off balance. Her feet trip over themselves, concrete slipping out from under her and he drags her under.
Her back hits the roof with a muted thud, echoed by her own grunt as Jinu lands on top of her.
Bearing down from above, Jinu’s grip clamps one-handedly around her wrists, dragged to one side in an awkward stretch that yanks on the torn muscles of her arm. His thighs straddle her, his other hand locked around her throat, crushing, squeezing.
“You don’t hear it,” Jinu hisses, teeth bared, gnashing together so hard that his words come out as barely more than a curling mess. “You don’t hear the voices - How?”
His voice drips anger, pain, poison, growling hotly around Rumi’s ears, so close she thinks he may sink his fangs into her neck and snap it in half.
Jinu snarls, grips tighter as Rumi gasps for a breath that doesn’t come.
“How?!”
She chokes, splutters, clinging to the sword in her grasp, desperate not to let it go.
When Jinu digs his claws deeper and forces her wrists into the concrete, Rumi’s grip fails. The Saingeom clatters, disappears, the sound warping in her ears. She can’t breathe. Black spots dance across her line of sight, the colours blending together in an unsteady swirl. Her chest strains. Rumi can’t breathe, she’s going to pass out.
A shaky sigh is all the warning she gets before her lungs flood with oxygen, the burning giving way to cold waves of stabbing relief, rushing in as the squeezing loosens.
“I almost forgot,” Jinu inhales, the glow of his eyes dimming just enough for a semblance of rationality, features swimming blurrily before Rumi’s vision as she gasps. “I’m supposed to drive that group of yours apart, not tear you to pieces.”
He exhales in a cold puff, staring down at her, his gaze sharp.
Even now, Rumi cannot figure out what it is in his gaze that skirts around her understanding. It doesn’t match the fury in his voice. Something Jinu hides behind his fury and refuses to let her see, something worse than anger.
She hates this, the way he sits and watches and observes her like a specimen under a glass, helpless, squirming. If not for the hand shoving her down, Rumi would’ve driven her forehead up into Jinu’s nose. So instead, she bites back at him as furiously as she can.
“Get off me!”
Her frustration manifests in a scowl as she struggles against his iron hold.
“I don’t think so.”
Rumi’s arm aches, the coppery scent hitting her in the face letting her know she still bleeds, her every strain firing jolts that sink into her bones.
“Guess I really did a number on you, huh?” Jinu doesn’t let go. He speaks as if this were a normal conversation, as if his knees aren’t digging into her ribs, leaving bruises.
Rumi doesn’t dignify him with a response.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” Jinu goes on, unfazed. “You, a half-demon. Yet still a hunter, just by the human blood in your veins.”
His gaze travels up her neck, his claws press, just enough that she feels her pulse hammering against them. Right there.
“So then I thought - What about someone whose blood is more demon than human?”
…Huh?
“What do you mean?” Rumi growls, silently wishing she could move her palms even an inch. She can’t summon her Saingeom, not with the way they’re spread flat against the concrete rooftop.
“Obviously, you were born this way,” Jinu answers, humming. “A human and a demon had you. I didn’t even know that was possible. So then, what happens if it’s more demon than human?”
The thought unfurls like rot, sick and crawling as Rumi realises where this could be going, what Jinu is trying to say is-
“A demon child with just enough human blood,” he hisses, canines glinting with every word. “The Honmoon could still choose it. And if this is what you do to the Honmoon - destroying it - just imagine what a hunter who is more demon could do. The Honmoon would be weak.”
“Stop it.” Rumi jerks against Jinu’s grasp, against the weight crushing her. “This isn’t some sick game. I would rather die than have anything with you!”
“Oh, Leader-nim,” Jinu’s claws drag, scratching underneath her chin. “What do you think will happen when they find out?”
He’s taunting her, mocking her.
“They’ll kill you.”
“Shut up. They won’t. Mira and Zoey would never-”
“You don’t know that. They don’t even know what you are, a demon. And to sleep with one on top of that? They’ll kill you, Rumi. They’ll despise you.”
Rumi swallows harshly, the lump in her throat refusing to be pushed away. Mira and Zoey. Rumi wants so desperately for them to understand. Would they hate her? Want her to die? Do it themselves?
No, no… Stop it!
But the truth hurts. The truth is that Rumi doesn’t know what they’ll think of her. She can’t know, because she never told them, and it’s allowing the webs of despair to wind around her heart.
Jinu’s finger lifts, no longer a claw tipped purple. It traces over the sides of Rumi’s face, under her eye where the burning of a pattern flickers to life. His touch is soft, almost gentle, like he isn’t trying to drag her within an inch of her life.
She wants to wrench away and tear her skin off where he touches.
“These,” he says, a low snarl forming, viscous in his throat. “Are a reminder of your shame. Soon, they’ll be carved into someone else. It’ll be a brand of what you let me do, Leader-nim.”
He moves, away from her face, one arm keeping her from calling to her weapon, the other going to the button of his jeans.
Rumi wiggles, as best as she can with her shoulders already numb. “Stop, just- This is…” Her voice frays. “You’re disgusting.”
Jinu doesn’t blink, doesn’t pause. He agrees. “I am. I’m disgusting, and I hear it every second. But you-” his lip curls. “You walk through the world with their love. And that’s what I’ll take from you.”
Now Rumi can see it, the emotion that’s been there this whole time, buried beneath cunning and hatred.
Jealousy.
Raw and unadulterated.
He’s still moving, reaching for her now, too.
“Don’t touch me,” she tries to snap. It comes out wobbly. She can feel him down there, tugging, fiddling. Shifting. “Don’t.” She's choking, panic weaseling out from where she tries to shove it down.
“No-”
Her breath hitches. His weight comes back to crush her and all she can think of is that it hurts.
It hurts it hurts it hurts.
It hurts where he presses, where he doesn’t, and in the hollow panic clawing at her chest.
Rumi doesn’t beg. She does not beg, but she pleads. She pleads for him to stop. A pleading that never makes it past a screaming in her mind.
Please.
And he does. An eternity later, hands bruising at her hip, her neck, under her ribs.
Please.
There are scratches over her skin, on her shoulder, on her thigh. He lets her go and she doesn’t move.
Please, please… pleasepleaseplease-
The rooftop is empty and Rumi doesn’t move.
Don’t hate me.