Chapter Text
“If you want to get a child to love you, then you should just go and hide in the closet for three or four hours. They get down on their knees and pray for you to return. That child will turn you into God. Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.”
― Heather O'Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals
Mira and Zoey don’t know this yet (they will, one day soon, they will), but Rumi died for the first time the Monday after her eleventh birthday.
It wasn’t a special day and her first death wasn’t particularly violent, but it did come at the end of the worst weekend of her life. It followed, of course, a decade spent existing in a near perpetual state of emptiness. The rancid cherry atop a melted sundae no one had ordered and no one had been willing to eat.
Rumi imagined she had been born sad. Afterall, there wasn't a time she could remember before the heaviness of it, sadness. Slowly, the feeling had only grown roots, anchors. Even at ten, it had burrowed into her—marrow deep.
Rumi had felt this way for as long as she’d hated herself.
Which is to say, for as long as she’d wanted to kill herself.
Which is to say, for as long as she’d wanted anything at all.
Rumi’s birthday was on a Saturday, and she and Celine had spent it on opposite sides of their hanok, orbiting one another like dying planets around a long dead sun, a black hole keeping the distance between them, when every law in the universe dictated it should be drawing them closer together.
(And oh, how kind the world could have been, if the loss of Celine’s love and the loss of Rumi’s mother could ever have been treated as one in the same—
if this mourning could have been bright instead of burning, a bond instead of a burden, a blossom to tend instead of a torn-up weed.)
Rumi knew Celine didn’t like her. She could fill in the blanks all on her own.
Some days, Celine sat down and Rumi knew dinner would be a quiet affair. She wouldn’t ask how her day was, or what her tutors had gone over, or whether the other girls in her dance class were being nice.
On those days, Rumi saw how Celine’s jaw would tense just a little too tightly when Rumi rambled on about everything and nothing, words tumbling out to fill the silence between scrapes of rice leaving porcelain interspersed with sips of water. Rumi saw Celine’s distaste, but at least Celine never told her to stop.
Celine let her talk and talk and talk even though Rumi knew how annoying it must have been for her, and Rumi held on to every hum and nod. Eventually, on those quiet days, Celine would finish and rise from the table first, leaving her to finish her meal in silence.
But at least, even when it was hard, she always sat down with her.
Celine never made her eat alone.
At least she tried.
(The only exception was her birthday, when her guardian left every meal out for her prepped in advance. It was just once a year, though, and so how could Rumi hold that one thing against her?
Celine may not like her, but she kept her fed and kept her company, and what was that if not proof of her love?
Celine had to love her, because why else would she keep her alive?
Rumi didn’t need to be liked, so long as she was loved.)
There were other moments too, days when Celine found it just a little too hard to hide her distaste.
It wasn’t all the time, but some mornings Rumi felt how her blows would land just a touch too hard during spars—catching and tripping and sending her into the dirt before yanking her back up by the wrist to let her know everything she’d done wrong and every way a demon would have killed her.
She’d make them run lap after lap around the yard, until Rumi’s legs were shaking and her vision threatened to go dark.
They'd do pushups and sit-ups and squats, rotating through sets until every muscle in Rumi's body was on fire. Until she couldn't even crawl out of the yard.
Rumi never knew which days those would be, though, because Celine wasn't like that all the time.
There were other days. Days when Celine would smile and correct her gently, tickling her instead when she’d manage to get her on her back. Days when their cardio consisted of playing tag, when hunting practice was just a one-on-one game of hide and seek, when a test of her reflexes became who could win at gonggi.
Some days, Celine would even let her win, and Rumi would cheer and laugh and the whole world would be bright. Sometimes, out of the corner of her eyes, Rumi would even see Celine laughing too. Quietly, with rolled eyes and a small quirked lip, but happy. Because of her.
Every so often, Celine gave her gentle, happy days, instead of the ones when she’d make it hurt.
Rumi preferred the gentle ones, but as she’d gotten older, Celine had grown to prefer the other.
And that was okay too, because Rumi knew she learned better with the latter anyway. And at least Celine was teaching her, trying to help her become a hunter, become someone worth something, worth the heart in her chest and the blood in her veins and the life she had stolen.
(Celine may not like her, but she taught her to fight, and she always helped her back to her feet, and some days she smiled at her and her smile lit up Rumi’s whole world. It parted the clouds and chased all those awful evil feelings inside Rumi’s bones away, and so what was that if not proof too?
Celine had to love her, because why else would she ever give her a gift like that? Why else would she promise her a purpose and a family and a place to belong?
No, Rumi didn’t need to be liked. Not when she had Celine’s love, sharp and silent and painful as it was.)
Rumi understood why Celine didn’t like her, because Rumi had learned the true extent of everything she deserved to be ashamed of in three parts. Three moments separated years apart.
(Moment one: Rumi remembered the first time she’d asked Celine what had happened to her mother. She was so young, and the lesson with her tutors that day had been about the cycles of life and leaves falling from trees and worms breaking down little animals in the dirt; how the grass ended up in a cow and the cow ended up on her plate for dinner and how dinner gave her the energy to go to dance practice.
She was so young, but old enough to know the difference between alive and not alive. Around and not around. Dead and not dead.
Rumi knew her mother wasn’t alive, had known it since the first time she lit incense for her spirit and left it on her grave. But she didn’t know why, didn’t know what had made her mom dead and other kids’ moms not-dead.
So after her lesson she had asked, words hesitant but interwoven with need, with the childlike desire to know what came after her newly discovered favorite word: ‘why?’
She remembered how Celine’s eyes narrowed, something hurt and angry and so unbelievably sad crossing her face as she breathed in and out, an answer caught in the back of her throat as her jaw worked side to side.
Rumi hated when Celine looked like that. It always meant that dinner would be quiet, and Rumi hated when dinner was quiet.
“She…” Celine started, and Rumi would never forget these words, never forget their tone, the pace, the heavy finality of them, “your mother was killed, Rumi.”
Killed.
Rumi hadn’t known that word yet. She knew dead and not dead, and alive and not alive. She knew around and not around, not cause and effect. Killed didn't sound good. It was too sharp, the 'k' too harsh.
So she had asked what it meant, what it meant to be ‘killed.’
Her question made Celine sigh, the heavy sigh she did whenever Rumi was being difficult or stupid or not a good enough listener. Whenever she was being too much like a child.
Rumi hadn’t meant to be difficult, and now she was embarrassed, at her not-knowing and all her stupid questions. But she still needed to know, the knowing felt important.
“It’s when something makes something else not alive, Rumi. Like… you would say that a farmer ‘killed’ a cow to give us meat when we have bulgogi, or a wolf might ‘kill’ a deer for its own dinner, or when I tell you to be careful by the street when we go out into the city, because a car might hit you, I’m saying that you could be ‘killed.’ That’s what it means. Do you understand?” Celine finished, voice never changing from its dry, factual tone. Her head craned down and her eyes stayed locked on Rumi's own wide, shy gaze, waiting for confirmation.
Rumi nodded, but that left her with another question…
“So if…if the farmer kills the cow, and-and a wolf could kill a deer… what—” Rumi was embarrassed again. She didn’t want to ask another stupid question, but she needed the answer. “What killed my mom, Celine?”
She did her best to keep her eyes up, because Celine said it was rude to look away when talking to adults, but her cheeks were flushing and Celine was so tall when she didn’t bend down to talk to her. She didn’t like talking about this anymore at all, but she really really really needed to know.
Celine’s eyes stayed on her, and Rumi would never forget it. The pause. The way Celine waited, her dark eyes burning into her own with something Rumi wasn’t old enough to know yet, but that she’d learn over time.
Seconds stretched on for what felt like forever, and there was no sound at all in their living room, no noise but the pounding of Rumi’s eardrums beating to the thump of her own heart.
God, Celine looked so angry.
Eventually, the older woman’s eyes pinched closed and she lifted her head up and away.
(That was fine though, kids needed to look at adults, but adults didn’t really need to look at kids when they spoke. Celine said kids and adults weren’t the same like that.)
“...Ask me when you’re older, Rumi. I’ll tell you then.”
Moment two: Rumi never asked again, but a few years later Celine explained what the swirls along her right arm—‘patterns,' she told her to call them— were. She shared how she’d need to hide them and how they were a mark of her shamemistakeawfulawfuldisgusting being born a half-demon.
Celine told her about how her dad was a demon and her mom had been tricked by him and so Rumi should have never been born at all. And the universe knew that too, because Rumi came out too early and too small and too still, and she had hurt her mom coming out really bad, but her mom had asked the Honmoon to help keep Rumi alive instead of herself, and the Honmoon had listened.
Rumi’s mom was a hero, and Rumi was what was left.
Moment three: a few years after learning about her patterns, she and Celine went on their first hunt together and she saw that same dark, angry look from all those years ago directed at a demon tearing itself through a hole in the Honmoon.
It made sense to her then, looking at Celine look at something disgusting and evil and wrong, and she understood. Three scenes, years apart, and she understood why Celine stood silent instead of answering her, eyes pressing closed as if she couldn’t bear to look at Rumi for another minute.
She pieced together her question, Celine’s silence, the story of her birth, the look she had come to recognize was hate in the other woman’s eyes, and she knew.
What had killed Rumi’s mother?
The same thing that wanted to kill Rumi.)
Celine never said as much to her, but Rumi wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t.
So Rumi knew that her birthday was hard for Celine, and she was grateful for the little ways Celine managed to make it special for her anyways, even through her hurt. Even when she didn’t deserve it.
Like…like! Celine made her favorite breakfast! Hot hotteok filled with sweet brown sugar, and it was just for her too, because Celine didn’t even like it, said it was too sweet for so early in the morning.
And…and she always let her pick what they’d have for lunch and for dinner, even if they didn’t eat it together. Plus, she served it on the plates with the pretty flower designs, because those were her 'special-occasion plates,' and Rumi got them for her birthday.
And they didn’t train on her birthday at all either, no trips or bruises or laps around the courtyard. Rumi got to do whatever she wanted the whole day, so long as she could do it by herself.
And Celine always had a special gift that she’d leave on the table for her at night, alongside a little strawberry matcha cake (also her favorite!) with a pretty purple candle right in the middle… so Rumi could light it herself and sing and make a wish like they did for Pororo on his birthday on the TV and like all the other kids from her dance class, and she knew they did because she always overheard them talking about their birthdays after the parties Rumi never got invited to—
(—rich girl, such a snob, little princess, too weird, doesn’t even have a mom—my mom said her parents weren’t even married, did you see her ugly purple hair? Can’t believe her fake-mom lets her go out like that? It’s because she doesn’t even care, she never even comes to our recitals—yeah no one does, even though she pays to give her all the solos, my mom says that’s the only reason I don’t get the solos, she’s not even—)
—but Rumi didn’t mind, because at night, when Rumi got into bed she would wait under her covers for the best part of the day.
Every year on her birthday, Celine would come to her doorway and she’d stand there, the backlighting of the hall casting her in warm, soft yellows, and she would say, with that little smile that made Rumi feel like something pretty and something special and something worthwhile—
‘Happy Birthday Rumi, I love you.’
And Rumi would get to say ‘I love you too,’ and then Celine would leave and, and—
and it was Rumi’s favorite part of the day, almost of her whole year.
This year, Rumi’s birthday hadn’t started any differently. Everything had been the same, same sugar-sweet breakfast, same pretty porcelain plates, same pink and green cake.
She’d gotten a new set of earrings and a beautiful gold necklace. Everything had been the same, except—
Rumi had been ready. She left her door open for her, like always. She curled up under her blankets and breathed silently in the dark, tiny hands clenched around her soft purple sheets and a smile stretching the baby-fat still clinging stubbornly to her cheeks.
She remembered when the hall light had turned off, a surprise for Celine to turn them off before she came by, but…but nothing too crazy! Just a little change.
She remembered hearing Celine’s feet come by her door, pace and weight of her steps striking the floor in an offbeat thump, the shadow of her figure just barely made visible by threads of moonlight streaking through her bedroom window. It wasn’t warm and it wasn’t yellow, but Rumi didn’t need to see her to hear her.
It was the hearing her that mattered.
Rumi couldn’t make out Celine’s expression. It was too dark. Too many shadows. But there was something haunted about how she stood there. Quiet. Still. Silent. Shoulders stooped. Slightly hunched around the middle. A half-full wine glass held precariously in her right hand.
Rumi heard another thump, and she flinched, clenching harder onto her blankets.
She could see the outline of Celine’s head, now resting against the wood of her doorframe. The sound of something choking and miserable crawled out from the older woman’s chest.
Rumi held her breath, ignoring the feel of tears burning the corners of her eyes and the uncomfortable wetness of her nose starting to run.
This was not the same at all .
‘Please. Please. Please please please.’ She begged and prayed for something, anything, to hear her. Rumi hadn’t done anything differently, she promised. She promised she hadn’t.
She didn’t understand. Rumi hadn’t tried to talk to her at all and she’d left her a little thank you note for the gift like always and she had done all the dishes after she ate, so why? Why was it different today?
‘Please come in, please say it. Please turn the lights on and smile just a little. Please say you love me, just this once, just today. I know I don’t deserve it but please say it anyway.
Please say it so that I can say it back, so that I know you’ll say it again next year.’
Rumi started to cry, and she knew Celine could hear her too. She knew they could hear each other.
“C-Celine?” Rumi managed to whisper into the dark, sniffling miserably in between words. “Celine… are you there?”
There was no response, just the same desperate choking sound from her darkened doorway.
“W-what’s wrong, Celine? Are — are you okay? Do you need something? Did…did I do something wrong?” Rumi was still crying, words coming out strained and desperate. At the sound of her words, Celine only began to cry harder.
“My love,” Rumi heard her guardian wheeze, “Mi-yeong, my love. Why-why’d you leave Mimi?”
Celine had never sounded like this before, words slurring and voice distant. Rumi didn’t know what to do. Celine’s voice was thick with tears and something else, she didn’t sound like herself at all.
Rumi was scared. She didn’t know what to do with a Celine that wasn’t… Celine. Rumi cried harder. She didn’t know what to do.
She just wanted to hear her say it, just once.
“You’re g’ne and she’s h’re, Mi. F-fuck. How could you fuck’n l’ve m’with her?” Celine was crying harder now too, dark figure trembling like a shadow afraid of itself.
She kept speaking and Rumi could barely make out the words, her slurring growing worse and worse with every infinite second.
She watched Celine slide down against the doorframe, curling herself into a shaking ball, glass tipping and pooling out into Rumi’s carpet, red staining fuzzy lavender like blood.
Celine buried her face between her pointed knees.
Rumi could barely make out fragments of her half-broken words: ‘loved you,’ blending into ‘why’ into ‘hurts’ into ‘killed you’ back into ‘loved you’ again.
‘Loved you, loved you, loved you—’ Rumi was openly wailing now, sobbing and shaking with a jealous sort of misery.
Celine said it so easily , like the words cost her nothing at all, so why couldn’t she just say it to her .
Every cough and hiccup from the older woman left Rumi flinching in her sheets, too afraid to move. Eventually, Celine grew still, trembles easing and mumbles growing quieter under her breath.
Rumi listened to Celine’s breathing even out, while she stayed awake. She waited, holding on to the hope that Celine would wake up and say those three small words, those words that were somehow both everything and nothing at all, freely given to everyone but her.
Rumi needed to hear them, so that she could say them back. She had so much love in her, if only someone would just give her the chance to give it back.
Rumi cried herself to sleep that night, and when she woke up— face coated in dry snot and tear tracks, skin tight, head throbbing, eyes red and sandy and pulsing— Celine was gone.
She walked out of her room, stepping over the faint outline of a light red stain, only to find her guardian in the kitchen, cooking for the both of them in silence.
Like it was any other morning.
Any other day.
As if Rumi had just dreamed the trembling mess of her the night before.
Rumi went into the cupboard and set out plates for the both of them, just as ready to try and pretend nothing had happened.
Once the table was set, she sat down, still in her pajamas. There, she waited in silence. Throat still thick with mucus from the night before and eyes still burning, like someone had pressed a lemon into both of them.
For the first time in her life, Celine broke the silence first.
“Good morning, Rumi.”
Rumi flinched at the sound. Her hand hit her glass, nearly knocking it off of the table before she could set it upright.
“G-good morning Celine!” She said back, voice cracking and hoarse but upturned with something two steps removed from hopeful.
Celine hummed before continuing. “I wanted to…apologize. For last night. I was…not myself, and I behaved poorly. I do hope you had a happy birthday, dear.” Her back was still turned away from Rumi, body angled toward the stove and focused on the pans sizzling in front of her. Rumi couldn’t see her expression, but it didn’t matter.
Celine had never apologized once in her life, and the words washed away nearly every miserable thought that had settled underneath her skin.
Rumi felt herself flush. Her eyes flew open. Her lips parted. At the prolonged silence, Celine turned toward her briefly, taking in Rumi’s surprised face before her head snapped back to the task before her. She cleared her throat expectantly, as if waiting for Rumi to do what she did best and fill the silence.
(Kids needed to look at adults, but adults didn’t need to look at kids: it wasn’t the same thing)
“O-oh! Umm…that’s okay! I-I know that you didn’t mean to, and—and I loved the necklace you got me! And the earrings too, they were great. Don’t worry about it and…” the words spilled from Rumi like a broken faucet, and she let herself taper off as she considered her last few words.
‘She apologized, so she didn’t mean it. She didn’t mean not to say it so…’
Rumi inhaled, the rush of air filling her lungs, inflating that tiny balloon called hope trapped behind her ribs.
“I love you, Celine.”
The words tumbled out of her gracelessly, but so so sweetly. Like a windchime or a songbird's call. She waited, and all the while, that little balloon grew and grew, the plastic skin of it stretching and thinning with every second before —
“You too,” Celine said back.
‘Pop.’
“Celine,” Rumi tried again, voice shaking as tears she didn’t even know she still had left to shed began to drip down her left cheek. “Celine, I said I love you.”
“Yes, dear, that’s nice. Thank you. I —” Celine was no longer cooking, hands stuck gripping the edges of the stove, fingers dangerously close to the flame. “You too.” She couldn’t look at her. Celine refused to turn around. She kept her body resolutely turned away.
(Kids needed to look at adults, but adults didn’t need to look at kids. Kids needed to look but adults—)
Celine cleared her throat, straightening out her back before bringing over the pan to fill Rumi’s plate. She still wouldn’t look at her.
Rumi’s shoulders shook, crying even harder now at Celine’s resolute attempts to avoid her. She pulled her legs up onto the chair, resting her forehead on her knees as she fought to try and steady her rapid breathing, her unsteady heart.
“Stop that, Rumi,” Celine bit out, something angry and embarrassed and guilty splicing her tone. “Calm down, get a hold of yourself.”
But Rumi couldn’t, there was nothing for her to grasp on to. Nothing for her to anchor herself in but the fact that she loved Celine, and Celine didn’t love her back.
(But why? Why would she—and she didn’t make her eat alone, she trained her, she—Rumi talked and talked—Celine gave her purpose, why? Parents didn't need to like their kids but they needed to love them, so why, if not—it was proof though, she had proof, and the other kids—they just didn’t understand, Celine didn’t like her but she had to love her. She had to had to had to—
Rumi needed at least one.
If she couldn’t be liked, she had to be loved, but if she couldn’t be loved, she—)
Celine let a sharp breath escape her, slapping a serving of something hot and spicy that Rumi couldn’t see onto her plate.
“Eat, or don’t, but either way be ready in thirty minutes to train.” Celine bit out before walking to her side of the table to eat. The only sounds that morning were of Rumi’s broken sobs and Celine’s chopsticks striking the glass of her plate angrily.
Celine might not leave her to eat alone, but it didn’t matter anymore, because she didn’t love her. She didn’t. And Rumi loved her so much and she had so much love in her and absolutely nowhere to put it.
Eventually Rumi walked away from the table, leaving her plate untouched and Celine only halfway through her own meal. She stumbled back to her room before changing into her training gear. She moved like a half-stringged puppet, stripping and throwing on her shirt and pants without any thought at all. Tears still leaked out, tracing the sides of her face as she scrubbed away at them halfheartedly.
She met up with Celine outside, refusing to meet the older woman’s eyes.
Rumi needed this day to be over. It was barely halfway through the morning and she already wanted to be back in her bed. Her bones were heavier than ever, it took everything to even stand upright.
The two silently moved into their stretches before starting their warmup jog.
Normally, Rumi would be filling the slow run with questions, stories, rambling thoughts while Celine either tried her best to answer, hmmd in response, or simply let her speak for as long as she had the stamina. But today, there was none of that. No laughter, no thoughts on different demon varieties and their weaknesses, no questions about her future groupmates or how long it would take to turn the Honmoon gold.
They finished their lap and Celine glared at her, frustration just as visible on her face as it was coiled around her hands gripping her slim hips. Beneath the frustration though, there was that still-something-guilty shadowing the skin below her eyes.
“Still pouting, I see.” Celine spit out, the words cutting into Rumi like knives. She felt their sharp edges slice through the skin of her chest, her neck, and she said nothing. She hardly flinched.
Celine rolled her eyes. “Fine. Grab your staff and get into position.”
Rumi’s body continued to move on autopilot, the feel of her wooden practice weapon slotting into her palm as she twisted it behind her back. Her vision was foggy. Every sound passed through her ears like she was underwater.
Rumi rushed forward, Celine always preferred when she made the first move. But she could hardly see. Every swing went wide, every dodge just barely saving her from a crushing blow to her back, her spine, her sides.
Today was a hurting kind of day, and Rumi could tell her silence was only making it worse.
Eventually, Rumi’s half-aware movements proved to be no match for Celine’s increasingly frustrated blows and her decades of experience.
On any other day, Rumi would have slipped beneath the next hit. It was fast, but the pathway predictable. It should have been easy for her to duck beneath it and twist out of the way.
But it wasn’t any other day.
It was her first day being eleven years old and the first day she’d ever gone more than a year without anyone ever telling her they loved her.
It was the worst day she’d ever had. And the crash of wood slamming into her left bicep with all the force of a truck only served to make it worse.
‘Thump-Crack—’
“AHH!” Rumi screamed, pole dropping from her hands as she reached up to clutch frantically at her upper arm. It was a raw, guttural thing. A blinding explosion of painpainpain, bright white and burning, flashed behind her eyes. It hurt. It hurt so bad. She had never hurt so bad ever in her life. There had been a crack, and pain, and she couldn’t move her arm. She couldn’t even think.
“Rumi!” Celine yelled out, dropping to her knees in front of her, all traces of anger gone in favor of her panic. “Sweetheart, Rumi, why didn’t you dodge? O-oh, oh, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Her hands patted her down frantically, pulling up her shirt sleeve to see the injury clutched behind Rumi’s tiny hands.
Rumi’s arms were thin, 11 years old and small enough for Celine’s entire hand to wrap around. Rumi couldn’t even fight her grip, too busy choking down waves of white hot pain. She barely registered Celine moving her to the car, the rapid drive into the nearest hospital in the city.
Every minute passed by like an hour.
Celine carried her into the emergency room, and it was the only time Rumi ever remembered being held like that. In arms afraid to put her down. If Rumi didn’t know any better, she would have guessed it was what being loved felt like.
But Rumi did know better. No one loved her. No one even liked her.
Eventually, with enough yelling from Celine and enough threats to ‘buy and sell this entire hospital and every nurse, and doctor, and goddamn janitor,’ Rumi found herself in front of a pretty woman in light pink scrubs, checking her vitals and asking her questions about ‘how she was feeling,’ and ‘how much it hurt,’ and ‘what had happened to her arm.’
What had happened to her arm.
Rumi wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t.
She knew what happened to kids that got hit by their parents, even by accident.
(And it had to be an accident, Rumi couldn’t let it be anything else. It was an accident. Celine may not love her, but she didn’t hate her. She wouldn’t have hurt her like this on purpose.
Rumi was slow. Rumi should have dodged.
Rumi made a mistake.
It was always her fault.
Always, always, always.)
So Rumi smiled through a thin layer of her tears, and laughed, and told her nurse a story about not being careful coming down the stairs, and tripping, and not catching herself quick enough and well, here she was! Just a silly mistake.
A silly mistake.
And Celine stood next to her, and held her good hand, and brushed the hair out of her face like she cared about her, and it was the most she’d ever touched her in one day.
The nurse looked between the two of them, and Rumi watched as she tried to read into the truth of what was right in front of her face.
“Hmm, must have been quite a fall, huh?” The nurse said with a smile, something questioning lilting her words at the end. “We’ll send you in for an X-Ray to check it out, okay sweetie? And Ms…” she trailed off, slightly sharper.
“Celine, Celine is fine.” She answered back, and something bright seemed to switch in the nurse’s expression. Recognition hit her and gone was every hint of suspicion, replaced by the excitement of seeing a global popstar on a random Sunday afternoon.
“Oh my gosh! Celine, as in Celine of the Sunlight Sisters? I knew I recognized you, wow! I was such a huge fan, my sister and I loved you. Wow! Such an honor,” The nurse gushed, and Rumi was gone. In an instant, she was no longer in the room.
The conversation washed over her, and she watched as Celine laughed, something tense and relieved all at once escaping her in a sharp burst.
Through blurry vision, her hearing back to that water-logged murmur, she watched Celine sign a piece of paper pulled out of the nurse’s pocket and take a quick selfie, angled so that Rumi was out of sight of the camera.
Eventually, Celine cleared her throat, and the nurse seemed to remember that there was a child right behind her. “Yes! So sorry sweetie, so…the stairs right? You have to be more careful! I’ll have someone come around to get you for that X-Ray super quick, promise! Until then,” she handed her two little white pills into a white paper cup, “these should help with the pain.”
Rumi took the pills and dry swallowed them. “Thank you,” she mumbled, hand resting right above her hurt arm's shoulder.
The nurse stepped out. Celine helped her change into a small hospital gown, her left arm fully unusable.
The children’s kind were covered in tiny animals, little smiling lions and long necked giraffes and smirking zebras.
Rumi felt so stupid in it, in this loose, ugly, paper kid’s outfit, neck to knee in safari smiles.
Eventually, she got back from the X-Ray and a doctor came in to let her know that yes, she had in fact broken her left humerus.
In half.
It was a clean break, so no surgery. Just immobilization and rest. Rumi kicked her feet as she listened to the diagnosis and let her eyes flit over the room aimlessly. Someone asked Celine to step out, to fill out some forms and collect her medication and sling, while the doctor and a different nurse stayed in to talk to Rumi.
This time Rumi got another round of questions.
“So, how’d you say this happened again,” the doctor asked with a smile, her silver stethoscope covered in a bright yellow cover. In her whitecoat pocket, a tiny little monkey pen peeked out from inside the slit. It was smiling at her, and Rumi rolled her eyes at how stupid it looked. Next to the monkey, there was a pad of smiley face stickers. Useless. Stupid. Rainbow. Sparkly.
Rumi wanted one.
She felt her fingers twitch, before she forced her eyes to look away. And then she lifted her head back up because kids needed to look at adults but—
“Umm…” Rumi started, shaking her head as she tried to remember what she’d said before. “I fell down the stairs, sorry.”
Her feet kept swinging and her eyes went back down to the monkey, and the stickers, and the doctor’s smiling face.
She looked kind, like she cared.
Too bad Rumi knew better.
She looked back at the stickers, and the doctor followed her gaze. The woman reached into her chest pocket and then pulled out the thin square pad.
“You know, I saw in your chart that it was your birthday yesterday. You turned eleven right? That’s a pretty big deal. Big enough that I think you’ve earned a birthday-sticker. What do you think?” She said with a half-teasing grin.
Rumi felt her breath catch, her hand flaring with want, and her eyes grew wide and shiny.
Her lips pulled into a tight line before she nodded, expression serious but hesitant, as if at any moment the doctor would laugh and tell her it was a joke, that of course Rumi didn’t deserve a birthday sticker.
Rumi barely deserved a birthday.
Instead, somehow, the doctor’s eyes grew even softer, and she offered out the set for Rumi to choose from. Rumi reached out to grab it, the movement sending a sharp jolt of pain through her other arm but so worth it.
She picked a purple one, a shiny silver overlay making the whole thing glitter. Once it was in her hand, though, she had no idea where to put it. She’d never been gifted a sticker before. The closest she’d ever gotten were the themed bandaids Celene would buy sometimes to cover up her cuts and scrapes.
But this wasn’t like that, and Rumi felt herself hesitate.
“Where—” Rumi started, “where should I put it?”
Her face felt hot. Another stupid question. She should have just said no.
A soft hand reached out to guide her own, and Rumi felt the doctor pull her hand up to her cheekbone. Carefully, so she wouldn’t jostle her injured arm.
Rumi felt the briefest press of her finger into her skin, and then the gentle pressure of the tiny circle attaching to the apple of her cheek. She turned to catch her own reflection in the mirror above the room’s small sink, and her heart pounded in her chest at the sight.
It was so…cute. She loved it. Rumi smiled, revealing a small gap where one of her top-row baby teeth had recently fallen out. Her grin pushed the sticker farther up, and suddenly she couldn’t stop looking at how her face and the purple one on her cheek looked the same.
Rumi laughed, and she looked back at the doctor, who was smiling too. Her smile was smaller though, and a little sad.
“Rumi… do you feel safe going back home tonight, sweetie?” The doctor asked, and Rumi felt her entire body tense up.
Still and silent.
Her shoulders curled inwards, her arms pulled together to close her body off. She looked away from the doctor, and her smile, and her stickers. And then she looked back.
She looked away again.
(Kids needed to look—)
She looked back, at the smiling doctor and her smiling monkey.
She didn’t know what to do.
The doctor was waiting for her to speak.
“Of course I do. Celine lo—” Rumi coughed sharply, clearing her throat. Her eyes began to water again. “I love Celine. I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else. I told you, I fell.”
At that moment, Celine walked back into the room, hands full with paperwork, a sling, and a little white bag of different pills. She stepped in between Rumi and the doctor, helping her into the sling with careful, attentive hands.
Her eyes lingered on the sticker, eyebrows furrowing in distaste for a split second, leaving Rumi flushed again in embarrassment.
But she didn’t take it off, or ask her to, and so Rumi left it there.
Celine motioned for her to get to her feet, obviously antsy to get out of the room and out of the hospital. She grabbed the stack of Rumi’s clothes, and Rumi understood that she’d be leaving in the hospital gown.
Anything to get out just that bit quicker.
“Thank you for your time, doctor. I was told that we’re all set to head out, and I’ll be sure to schedule a follow-up with a nearby orthopedist and Rumi’s primary care physician.” They were moving, inching towards the door.
“Unless there’s anything else, we really should be heading back. I’d like for Rumi to get back to bed as soon as possible.” Celine reached down and grabbed Rumi’s hand, ready to physically pull her out of the building if necessary.
“Also, I sent a quick message to Mr. Han and commended him on you and the work of his children’s department. I let him know my company would be making a sizable donation, to support all of your work here, and to make sure his hospital can continue to do great work for the children in our area.”
There was something purposeful in the words Celine chose, and Rumi could always tell when the other woman was saying something without really saying something.
The doctor seemed to sense it too, and she looked slowly down at Rumi’s bowed head, before raising her gaze up to Celine’s.
Even outside of home, Celine was still the tallest person in the room.
Something warred in the doctor’s tired, angry, still so kind eyes. And Rumi watched as she made some kind of decision.
“Of course,” the doctor said tightly, “we appreciate all of your support. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do for Rumi, but otherwise you’re both free to go. And Rumi —” she leaned down and pressed the thin sticker pad into her uninjured hand, curling Rumi's fingers around the paper in her own soft palm. “For you. Happy birthday again.”
With that, Rumi was pulled away, and she thought, fleetingly, for just a second —
‘Oh. I never got her name.’
For some reason, the thought left her chest aching the entire car ride home.
When they got back, Celine took her to her room and helped her change into her pajamas. Her guardian could hardly look at her, and Rumi took some bitter satisfaction in the guilt soaking the air around them.
And then she felt sick, at the idea that she could enjoy Celine’s pain for even a second.
She really was a monster.
“I didn’t mean to, Rumi.” Celine broke the silence, once again, and Rumi almost laughed at the fact that now she was the one getting annoyed by her talking. She couldn’t stop thinking about the doctor, and her kind smile, and the pack of stickers resting on her nightstand, and the throbbing ache in her left bicep.
Celine kept going, “You have to know I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what came over me, I really don’t. You should’ve —” Celine cut herself off before she could say something about how Rumi should have been quicker, or faster, or stronger. Shouldn’t have made her mad before their spar. Shouldn’t have pouted all morning.
Shouldn’t have told her she loved her and then expected to hear it back.
“I’m sorry.” And then she waited again, for Rumi to say something back.
Rumi was always too kind for her own good. Always quick to give and quick with love and quick to forget all the things she shouldn’t forgive.
“Of course, Celine.” She laid down in her sheets, and rolled onto her uninjured right side, back towards the room and to Celine.
She listened to her heavy sigh of relief and then her guardian went on to explain the pain medication she was leaving in a bag by her bedside. The dosage was written on the bottle, and she told her to be very careful not to take too many, because for an injury like hers, and at her age, the prescription was really strong.
Celine wouldn’t be here to give them to her while she was at work, so Rumi would have to do it herself, and Celine didn’t want to go back to the hospital any time soon, so she’d gotten the initial prescription and a refill if necessary.
She left them both with Rumi.
Celine stood up and promised to check in on her later. As she walked towards the door, Rumi tried one more time. Afterall, she had nothing left to lose at this point.
“Celine…” She turned onto her back to see the older woman freeze in the doorway. It was still daytime, but suddenly the moment overlaid with the one from last night.
She knew she shouldn’t. Knew she should just let her go, but… “I love you.”
Rumi closed her eyes. She didn’t need to see when Celine left without saying it back, but she kept her ears open anyways. She was tired. She wanted to go to sleep now.
“I know, Rumi,” Celine spoke softly, with something like regret seeping out into the room, “I know you do...”
The room was silent.
“Get some rest.”
Rumi curled into herself even tighter. A sob wracked through her tiny figure. She cried herself to sleep, for the second time in a row.
Rumi woke up to a cup of tea by her bed. It had gone cold at some point during the evening while she slept.
She looked out her window and took in the darkness of the midnight sky.
She’d been out the entire afternoon and well into the night.
She looked back at her bedside table and smiled sadly at the rest of what had been left for her to find.
Little fruits cut into animal shapes, banana bunnies and a clementine snail and cantaloupe butterflies, sat on a small plate next to the teacup. She winced as she sat up, ignoring the fruit in favor of a crinkled paper bag filled with two full bottles of painkillers. It sat just to the side of her tiny pad of stickers.
Rumi opened the bag and grabbed the first bottle. She twisted at the childproof lid, annoyed at the perpetual spin of it as she tried to get the top off.
Finally, finally, she felt it lift away.
Rumi took in the bottle, the fullness of it, the way the little white pills shook as she poured them out onto her purple bedspread. Something in her ached, something empty and yearning to be filled.
She hurt.
Everything hurt.
And she was tired.
She was always tired.
Always tired and always empty and sick of knowing no one would ever love her, not like this. Not ever.
So what did she have? A set of two-dollar stickers, a new shiny necklace, a broken arm, a body tired of aching, a list of 0 people who might really care if she wasn’t here—
(She thought about kind eyes and a yellow stethoscope. How embarrassing—to even think of counting a woman whose name she didn’t even know to her list)
—and two bottles of prescription painkillers.
Celine didn’t love her, she’d made that clear.
Rumi didn’t love herself, she never had.
Rumi had killed her mother, so really, it made sense—that she’d kill herself too.
It was only fair.
She didn’t need to leave a note, she’d said everything she wanted to say and no one had wanted to hear her say it.
All she had was her love to give, and no one seemed to want that either.
She swallowed the pills in sets of four, easing them down with the chilled tea. Once the bottle was empty, she closed the lid and set it back on her nightstand. Then, she grabbed the other and downed that one too.
Rumi laid down and let the warmth of her sheets lull her to sleep, one last time. She was glad she could do it like this, Rumi didn’t want to hurt anymore and every other way she could think of sounded too painful.
Like this, she was just going to sleep.
Minute by minute, Rumi felt the pain ebb and flow away. Like a siren calling her out to sea, like the sea, pulling her out in its gentle tide, like the tide, wrapping her in its cool embrace and helping her sink down.
Down.
Down.
Until there was nothing left of her at all.
(Cities away, an angry little girl with a bright red convenience store dye-job found herself flinching awake. Her chest hurt. She pressed her palms into her sternum. Something was missing. Something was missing and oh god, what was it, what was gone, where did it go, whatwashappeningwhydidshefeelsoemptywhydidithurtsobad—
An ocean away, a dark-haired girl excused herself from class before collapsing to the ground in the middle of her elementary school bathroom. She laid there, shaking, because what happened, where was it, her heart, what was happening to her everything hurt she felt so bad, she’d never ever felt so bad before ever, and why did she feel like this there was nothing inside of her chest it hurt it hurt, please make it stop—)
Rumi woke with a gasp. Her heart thundered in her chest. Her brain pulsed in her skull. The bile in her stomach roiled and burned.
Everything in her was awake and wired and too alive. She checked the bottles, still empty, still on her bedside. She pressed her fingers into her pulse, pinched her wrist, tapped her face.
‘What…’ She reached into her sling and pressed her fingers into the spot where a sharp ache had once been. ‘Why am I still…’
At the feel of her fingers meeting skin, Rumi braced for a jolt of burning awful pain. But, there was nothing. She gripped tighter, tore the sling from her arm to get a better view of it, and found a smooth expanse of unblemished skin. Instead, it was her right arm that burned.
She tore off her sleepshirt to get a better view, and sobbed at the sight of her patterns growing and spreading down her bicep. They glowed an awful, evil, sickening red. The curves of them seemed to grin at her, as if they were taunting her, laughing at her pitiful failure.
This couldn’t be possible.
Rumi wasn’t stupid.
She knew how many pills it should take to kill herself.
Tears burned and pooled in her eyes.
She wasn’t.
It was morning, which meant Celine would be coming by soon, and Rumi had a moment of panic as she tried to make sense of what had happened. It didn’t make sense. She should be dead.
Rumi was a killer. She had killed her mom and she had killed herself. Except, except somehow she could only fail when it didn’t matter.
At the sound of footsteps coming towards her door, Rumi scrambled to put her sling back on, anything to buy her enough time to try and figure out what had gone wrong. She made sure her pill bottles were back in the white bag they’d come in, and then settled back into her sheets.
Celine knocked gently on her door, before poking her head through. She let her know that there’d be no training today, but that she’d be going into the city to do some work. She had left her two meals in the fridge, and she’d be back later to make dinner.
Her eyes lingered on the untouched fruit, but she smiled slightly at the empty cup of tea.
“Do you need anything while I’m out?” She asked, her hesitant gaze falling everywhere but Rumi’s dark sling and the dark rings around her eyes.
“No, Celine,” Rumi answered softly. “Thank you.”
Celine nodded, stepping out of her room and then out of the house.
Once Rumi heard the swing of her door closing, and the crunch of gravel beneath the tires of Celine’s car as it pulled away, she raced into action. If the pills hadn’t worked, it didn’t matter.
Rumi didn’t want to go painfully, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t.
Ten minutes later, Rumi found herself in a tub of scalding hot water slowly turning pink. Her arms hurt, but it didn’t matter. It would stop soon. The water darkened, going from a light pastel to a darker pink, before finally settling on a watery red.
Rumi watched as her blood spun in the opaque water, twirling and bubbling like smoke from a campfire, like embers trying to reach the sky.
Rumi watched the colors change and she smiled. She laid back, shoulders resting on the white porcelain as her body started to chill and numb. Steam filled the room along with something heavy and metallic. After a few more minutes, she leaned forward to turn off the water, careful to make sure the tub wouldn’t overflow.
As angry as she was at Celine, she really didn’t want to leave the woman with too much of a mess.
Soon…
Her vision started to go dark.
It would all…
be over…..
Soon.
(Twice in the same day, two girls felt their hearts stop. It left them cold, chilled. It hurt just as much as the first time, the feel of something snapping and tearing apart in their chests. It happened simultaneously, for one girl at the turn of the morning sun, for another, as the sun began to set and the sky grew cold and dark.
Both of them prayed that it would come back, that this emptiness would disappear just as quickly as it had come, like the way it had hours before. They begged and cried and shook as something was torn out of them both. Something important. Something they couldn’t live without.
It hurt. Why did it hurt so much? What was this awful cavern? This endless pit of nothing?)
For the second time, on the Monday after her eleventh birthday, Rumi died.
And then, for the second time, on the Monday after the worst birthday and the worst weekend of her life, Rumi woke up.
(Mira and Zoey won’t know the source of this heartrending, piercing, sickening feeling for years.
They will understand when they see it. Will make sense of it when that empty tearing feeling is coupled with the sight of their love trying to leave.
And then they will think back, to when they were ten and nine years old, respectively, and they will cry.
They will listen to Rumi explain that awful day from over a decade ago, and every other time between, and the wind will carry the sound of their grief around the world and back again.
One day though, they will.)