Chapter Text
Mira meets her first demon long, long before the Honmoon embraces her.
She’s seven and absolutely furious.
Her parents had believed her brother when he said she’d messed up his homework; they always believed him over her, despite the fact Mira learned a long time ago to never go anywhere near his things. She’d been looking forward to listening to the old records she’d found again, left in the attic by the last owners of this house that Mira doubted that she’d live in for long, but her parents had taken them as a punishment.
It was unfair. The sight of those records in her mother’s hands while her father scolded her had made Mira’s hands shake, made her scream and cry and just made a whole mess. That hadn’t helped Mira’s case but that hadn’t mattered. There was absolutely nothing she could say or do to make her parents take her side over their son’s. She’d screamed then because it felt good too.
Just like singing now, loud and probably off key, felt good.
The backyard was filled with trees, bushes and flowers. It was one of the larger backyards they’d had as the house was on the outskirts of the city. Normally she wouldn’t care, she never liked nature all that much and preferred to stay inside listening to music or practicing, but she couldn’t stand to be in that house with her parents and brother. Not today.
So; she sings.
Admittedly, not as good as the girls on the cover of the record. The Sunlight Sisters music made something in Mira’s chest twist, her stomach drop and raise. Mira loved music, but listening to that record made her feel like she was hearing it for the first time all over again. Mira can’t remember it good enough to dance to it, not yet, and she can’t look up how they danced to the music, but she does remember most of the words and that’s gotta be enough.
She’s onto the fourth song of the album when she spots the girl, hiding in the shadows of an overgrown bush.
The girl dressed weirdly. Old fashioned, super old fashioned, in a boy’s hanbok; a plain one, no patterns or any bright colors, just all matching dull browns and black which makes her purple hair stick out. There is no flowing chima like the hanbok Mira’s mother made her wear for her aunt’s wedding, instead her baji’s are tucked into a pair of tall shoes that come up to the girl’s shins.
Really she doesn’t know if the other kid is a girl but Mira doesn’t think any boy could look half as cute covered in dirt. It’s everywhere, coating her hands and round cheeks.
Mira’s voice trails off at the sight of her, which makes the other girl frown, and for a long moment they stare at each other. Mira, standing on the stone path way she’d been marching along while she sang, and the girl, who stays badly hidden in under a bushes leaves.
Mira is good at staring, a lot of her teachers said so, but the other girl is better. She doesn’t even blink!
“What are you doing here?” Mira finally asks.
The girl blinks— finally. “ I like your singing.”
Which is not what Mira asked but she isn’t about to throw away a compliment. “Thanks? Did you climb over the fence? It’s super tall!”
Purple hair, messy like it had been cut short and left too long without a trim, gets even more ruffled when she shakes her head no. She does nothing else, staring at her with deep brown eyes.
Mira opens her mouth to say something— she doesn’t know what— but her mother starts shouting from the house about dinner. She turns to shout back, angrily, and it's only a moment. A split second at the most but when she turns the girl is gone.
Rumi does not whine, even if Jinu’s hand on her wrist is tight enough to hurt.
He doesn’t take her to Gwi-Ma which is the most leniency she expects to be granted. He says nothing and Rumi instead spends this forced march trying to remember how the songs sounded on her ear. It hadn’t been polished like Jinu’s music is when she succeeded getting him to play. Her voice cracked, she stumbled over words, hummed whole parts at a time.
Yet Rumi heard it all the way down here. The Honmoon didn’t like it when she crossed over, it was told that demons needed to stay put and while Rumi doesn’t think the Honmoon is a person, it has feelings. Those feelings were unrecognizable to her like Tiger’s was, but they existed and it didn’t like her going to the human world.
But it allowed that to come through. A human girl her own age had sang and the Honmoon gave that music to her. She had to hear it up close.
Jinu doesn’t agree.
“What were you thinking?” He finally says.
Rumi crosses her arms and sits on the rocky dirt. There aren’t a lot of building in the demon realm but Jinu is one of the few that has one. Not because he’s powerful but because Rumi is or feared to be someday. It’s not much, just a mud brick hut, but it’s enough to keep their conversations and practices to themselves.
Jinu continues, “Do you how dangerous it was for you to leave ? What if that human had realized what you are? Or worse, what if Gwi-Ma noticed your absence?”
She can’t help that spike of fear. Gwi-Ma can’t track her like the other demons but he has made it clear that she can’t go up without a demon he trusted— a true rarity. The last time she’d disobeyed….
“I’m sorry,” she says. She picks at the dirt that coated her clothes.
Jinu kneels in front of her, “Don’t go up there again. I mean it, Rumi. There’s nothing for you up there. You look human enough right now but the second they realize you aren’t… you won’t come back here, not like the others.”
Rumi thinks of the green grass, of the bright sunshine, and most of all she thinks of a girl with a really nice voice and hair the color of blood. Then she remembers Gwi-Ma’s punishments, of Jinu’s sacrifices and most of all how humans have hated her since the moment she was born.
So she quietly promises that she won’t because she won’t be responsible for anyone else dying for her.
Mira forgets the entire thing by the end of the week. In another six months her family moves out of the house and by the time Mira is sixteen she forgets even the house itself, because Celine tells her of the Honmoon, of demons and her duty.
But Rumi? She remembers. When Gwi-Ma reminds her of how much she owes him when she doesn’t want to help the other demons— she remembers a girl’s song. When she’s sixteen, her patterns fully formed, teeth sharped into fangs, claws like steel…. She remembers.
And she pities that girl, whoever she was because Gwi-Ma will have her soul. Sooner or later.