Chapter Text
Rumi saw the gold spreading as she twirled above the crowd on her hoop.
It was working!
She was so close.
Zoey and Mira hadn’t come back on stage, She could hear them in her ear-piece. Something had happened to Bobby, but they were on it. Rumi had to trust that they could handle it.
It was up to her to finish this on her own.
She could do it.
She landed gracefully, and walked towards the end of the stage, arms out for the big finale. She could feel the soul energy coursing around her, flowing between her and her audience. She belted out the last high note. The gold spread to the furthest edge, like a wave racing towards the shore.
She’d done it!
The Golden Honmoon.
Finally.
No more hiding.
Now she could go back to how she was before she felt this crushing shame over her patterns!
She couldn't wait to see Jinu's face when he realised her 'crazy plan' had worked, and he got to stay. She wasn't going to say 'I told you so,' but she was going to make the most I told you so face at him until he said she was right.
The Honmoon shivered, shimmered and then seemed to burst with golden threads.
Then the music stopped abruptly.
It felt like the ground gave way underneath her. Suddenly she was falling.
Everything went dark.
-0-0-0-0-
Rumi was dizzy. She was lying on an unfamiliar floor. It felt like a stage. There was a huge crowd yelling just beyond her line of vision.
It sounded like thousands of people.
Rumi’s stomach twisted with anxiety. Where was Celine? Celine never left her alone when they were at events.
Not ever.
How did she get on stage on her own?
Two enormous, mean-looking girls were next to her. They hauled her up unceremoniously by her arms. They were grabbing at her shoulders, then she heard fabric rip.
They'd ripped her jacket off.
No!
Celine said to never, ever take her jacket off in public, no matter how hot it was or how few people there were around her. Not ever. Now her jacket was off and she was in the middle of a stage in front of thousands of people and everyone could see!
“Give it back!” she shrieked in panic, and jumped. The gigantic mean girl with pink hair held what was left of her jacket too high for her to reach and smirked. Then she started singing about how Rumi was hideous on the inside. The other one pushed her, singing about how she was rotten within.
Hey!
That was just bad manners.
Grown-ups weren’t supposed to push kids.
Rumi pushed her back as hard as she could. She wasn’t going to be pushed around by some giant meanie. She already had her purple belt in Taekwondo!
The mean girl went sprawling on her ass. She groaned as she landed, patterns flickering.
Demon.
Rumi looked around in panic. She was in an enormous arena, and it was full of people, but not a single person was her foster-mother.
Where was Celine?!
Rumi was all alone.
This was Rumi’s first demon fight on her own...but she had so much practice.
She was going to make Celine proud.
Rumi was going to annihilate these mean demon girls.
She yelled a battle cry, and leapt on the smaller girl demon who was still on the ground. Rumi summoned her sword from the honmoon as she leapt.
The crowd cheered!
They were on her side.
The taller girl tackled her mid-air. They slammed back on the floor so hard it knocked the wind from Rumi's lungs. The big mean demon girl wrenched Rumi's sword arm behind her back and got her in a ju-jistu grapple. Rumi cried out in pain.
The crowd booed.
They hated the mean girls.
“Leave her alone, you idiots!” A man’s voice yelled. “She’s just a kid now!”
Suddenly, the big, pink-haired one was being pulled off her. The guy threw her like she was a football. She collided with the other demon. They landed in this big, dazed heap of demon limbs.
The guy crouched down to her level and helped her up. He was wearing all black, so he was probably a stage-hand. He had black hair and a nice face.
“Rumi, are you okay?” he asked. He sounded concerned, and he seemed to know her, even if she had no idea who he was.
Maybe Celine had sent him to help her?
“You knew this would happen!” The pink-haired one screamed at him as she pulled herself out of the demon heap. The two demons both shifted into full demon-mode and got into an attack position.
Rumi’s sword arm was free now, so she threw it at the big demon like a frisbee.
It sliced the big demon in two, right through the torso, before it returned to her open hand like a boomerang.
The demon exploded into pink glitter.
Yes!
She got it!
Her first demon kill!
Eight more demons appeared on the stage in puffs of pink smoke, forming a circle around her and the guy.
They looked angry.
Rumi didn't know if she could kill eight demons.
Her frisbee trick probably wouldn't work again.
The guy swore under his breath. He used the word Celine yelled when their brand new dishwasher broke. Suddenly, he picked her up and held her close to his chest. The ground lurched and pink smoke exploded around them too.
Demon smoke!
Uh oh!
-0-
They landed somewhere outside. It was quiet. Nobody else was here. There was a soft breeze and grass beneath them. The guy put her down on the ground. Her legs felt wobbly and she fell forward, but the guy - no, the demon caught her and held her upright.
He'd done the thing with the pink smoke that the other demons had done in the arena, so he must be a demon too.
“Sorry. That was probably your first time, so you might feel dizzy. But you're safe here,” he said in a non-evil sounding voice. “You might feel better if you sit down.”
Rumi nodded, and played along, like she was listening to him. He sat next to her quietly. He didn't make any movements, sudden or otherwise, towards her and seemed content to let her collect herself.
Rumi used all her training from Celine. She tried to assess her situation like a big, grown-up hunter would.
She was a proper hunter now.
She’d killed her first demon.
It had exploded into pink glitter.
That was awesome.
No, wait - situational awareness.
Rumi looked around, breathing deeply to center herself and trying to get her bearings. It looked like she was in Naksan park. She’d been here once before with Celine, when they’d come into the city a month ago. Celine had taken her to the best view point and told her about their sacred responsibility to protect people from demons. The city was going to be her responsibility, and that had felt like a heavy thing to carry. But she remembered really liking the view.
It looked different now though. There were so many new buildings that hadn't been there a month ago.
There was a demon guy next to her. He’d helped her in the arena. He wasn’t immediately attacking her. His concern about her had seemed genuine.
No. He wasn’t going to trick her into thinking he was nice.
He was a demon.
So she was going to have to kill him too.
That was what hunters did to all demons.
She inhaled deeply, and felt better. She felt battle-ready, and there didn't seem much point in delaying the inevitable. There didn't seem much point in getting to know this demon if she had to kill him anyway. He'd been nice, but...
It was wrong of her to think that the demon was nice.
Demons were never nice.
They were liars and tricksters...and it was working on her because this demon had tricked her into thinking he was nice.
She leapt to her feet, summoning her sword. The demon was still sitting on the ground, and he looked up at her in shock. That was good. She used the element of surprise and went on the attack. She yelled a battle cry and swung her sword in a big arc, aiming for the demon’s head, but he was so stupidly tall and fast that he leaned back and rolled out of the way, so she missed.
“Woah,” the demon said, instantly on his feet, his hands up, palms outwards like he was surrendering. He stepped back from her. She pursued, still swinging wildly at him with her sword, but he kept dodging and jumping out of the way.
“Hey,” he said, leaping back to land on top of the city wall. She followed. “Rumi, chill out,” The demon said as he dodged her again. “It’s just me!”
“Yeah! And you're a demon,” She said, slicing the air where he used to be.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” The demon asked, stepping backwards quickly and trying to avoid her blade as she charged him again.
“I don’t care who you are,” Rumi yelled, throwing her sword at him like a javelin.
It had worked on the other demon.
But she missed this one.
He ducked easily.
“Really? You’re just going to throw your sword at me now? Your form is so much sloppier when you're tiny,” he tsked with a little shake of his head as he stood back up. Then he smirked at her, like he thought he was hilarious.
“I’ll sloppy you!” Rumi yelled back, summoning her sword again.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” The demon squabbled, looking amused. He kept dodging, but he was being lazy about it now. Rumi could tell he was doing it just to humor her.
That made it worse.
This demon was so annoying. She made a noise of frustration. She was going to get him so bad. She was going to get him for real. She lunged again, but he side-stepped her with a big grin, like this was fun for him.
“I think we’ve got off on the wrong foot here,” The demon said reasonably. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise…" he paused and shifted on his feet, looking uneasy for the first time since she'd met him. "I’m sorry about those two demons on stage. They were idiots,” The demon said, like their evil demonic behaviour embarrassed him somehow.
He stepped backwards from her again, even though she had stopped swinging her sword at him in sheer surprise. His hands were still up in the surrender position, so he really was trying to show that he wasn’t hostile.
She almost believed him.
He definitely hadn’t been in evil cahoots with the mean-girl demons.
They’d been pretty angry at him back at the arena.
“So what’s your evil plan?” she asked. She didn’t lower her sword, but just kept it pointed at him like an accusatory finger. “Why did you kidnap me?”
The demon seemed put on the spot. “I didn’t kidnap -” he started to protest, sounding annoyed, but then he looked at her and seemed to realise several things at once.
Rumi made an unimpressed face at him, to make it clear she was thinking ‘Yeah, that’s right, dummy! She was a kid. And he’d taken her somewhere without her guardian’s knowledge or consent.’
That was textbook kidnapping.
“Oh, okay. Yeah, I guess technically I did. The kidnapping was an accident,” the demon admitted.
“What kind of idiot kidnaps someone by accident?” Rumi asked, waggling her sword a little at him.
“ I didn’t know what else to do and it seemed like the best idea at the time. I didn’t have an evil plan or anything,” The demon explained.
“That I believe,” Rumi said, still making her unimpressed face and trying to make it clear that she didn’t think this guy could plan his way out of a wet paper bag. “So what happens now?”
The demon was quiet for a moment, clearly thinking.
Oh, jeez.
He was trying to come up with a plan now.
Rumi had no faith in his abilities in this area.
The dummy accidentally kidnapped people.
“I'm going to get you home safely. Mira and Zoey will probably know what to do,” The demon said after a long pause.
“Who are Mira and Zoey?” Rumi demanded, waggling her sword at him again.
“When you're older, you're in a band called Huntrix. Mira and Zoey are your bandmates, but you guys are really good friends too. The three of you live together but it’s a bit far from here. They look like those girls on stage. Do you remember them at least?” The demon asked, looking like he really cared about the answer.
Rumi felt uneasy. It felt like when Celine gave her a surprise quiz on something she hadn’t studied for. She couldn’t remember people she had never met, but the way this demon was asking her made her feel like she should.
“Those girls were so mean,” Rumi said petulantly, looking around feeling awkward. She hated not knowing things. “How did I get here anyway?” She avoided the question by asking one of her own.
“I don't know,” the demon replied with a hopeless shrug.
What an idiot.
He didn’t even know how his own pink-demon-smoke power worked.
“You're the one who did it. We just went floof in pink smoke. That wasn’t me who did that, dummy,” Rumi rolled her eyes at him in exasperation.
“Oh sorry, You weren’t asking about how you got de-aged and turned into the world’s most annoying brat. You're asking about here here,” The demon said, pointing around to the rest of Naksan Park. “The… floof was teleporting. It's how demons travel... but we might not use it to get you home safe, because hunters will throw sharp things at demon smoke.”
Huh.
He really did seem to want to get her home safe?
And he'd actually put some thought into how he was going to do this.
“So you're not going to try cook me over a fire then eat me and steal my soul?” Rumi asked, curious despite herself.
“Gross,” the demon wrinkled up his nose. “That would be like… cannibalism. Is that what you think demons do? What the hell kind of bedtime stories is Celine reading you?” He asked, sounding very judgemental of Celine’s parenting.
“How do you know about Celine?” Rumi demanded.
“You told me about her. You said she was your guardian after your mother died,” the demon said quietly, sounding somber. It was like they knew each other well and the fact that her mother died when she was a baby made him sad too.
Rumi didn’t want to think too much about that, so she went on the attack again.
Just a verbal attack, though.
She’d stopped swinging her sword at him a while ago.
“Wait - cannibalism? That would mean you were a person once. And you're not. You're a demon. And demons lie. You are probably looking at me thinking I'm so tasty.” She did a little wiggle to emphasise her deliciousness.
“Well, you're half-demon. Do you want to eat people?” The demon shot back, sounding irritated again. “ Are you looking at me and thinking I’m tasty?” he copied her and did a little wiggle of his own.
“No! Gross,” She replied. Then she mimed vomiting for good measure, so he would know how gross he was. “Blurgh.”
“Well, that’s how I feel about eating people. It would be blurgh,” He replied, copying her pretend vomit.
She looked at him a little gobsmacked, because he was actually… a complete doofus.
He accidentally kidnapped people, and copied her insults, and even the way he pretended to vomit was goofy.
He hopped off the wall, and held out his hand to help her down, seeming unafraid of her sword. It should have irritated her, the fact that he wasn’t scared of her at all.
But she also didn’t want to hurt him.
He made her curious.
She’d never talked to a demon before.
He wasn’t like how she expected a demon to be at all.
She put away her sword, since he didn’t seem like he was an immediate threat, so maybe ... she didn’t need to kill him straight away.
He smiled at her like a big dork when she did that, like he’d won some kind of prize now that she clearly wasn’t trying to kill him. He held his hand up a little higher for her to hold.
Rumi made a face at him, and stuck out her tongue.
Maybe she’d decided against killing him, but she still wasn’t going to hold his hand to get off a wall!
He was treating her like she was a helpless baby, just because she was a kid, but she wasn’t a helpless baby.
She was nearly ten years old, so she could get off a wall by herself.
She was an independent woman!
She swatted his hand away, then jumped, landing lightly on the grass again. She stood with her hands on her hip. “Why did you bring me here anyway?”
This guy clearly didn't have much in the way of a plan, but he’d chosen this spot for a reason when they teleported here.
“You invited me here once. It was the safest place I could think of off the top of my head,” the guy said with a shrug. “I just thought that I needed to get you away, because the crowd was going insane at the stadium, there were some bad demons around and I didn't know what the gold honmoon had done or how Zoey and Mira would respond to your patterns.”
He mentioned her patterns so easily, but she and Celine never told anyone and…
Her jacket!
She still didn’t have it.
She’d been so distracted by trying to kill this demon doofus that she’d forgotten to try and cover her patterns. She'd gotten so distracted by this idiot that she just forgot about everything else.
Rumi looked down, frantic. Maybe she could use her shirt to cover them? She was wearing a tight, sleeveless high-neck top that showed her tummy and white shorts and boots, but nothing else. There was no way this white outfit would cover it!
The little flower of purple on her right arm was visible for everyone to see!
Even though everyone was just this one demon doofus, who already seemed to know about her patterns and didn’t seem bothered by them, Rumi still felt panicked deep inside. Her stomach was doing anxious flip-flops. She slapped her arm over her patterns. Then she looked up to see her worst fear come to life.
The honmoon was gold, but her patterns had stayed.
She started rubbing at her arm, trying to rub the patterns off and pleading quietly under her breath. “No, no. Go away, stupid patterns. Please go away.” She felt a prickle of tears in her eyes and a sour lemon in her throat.
The demon was suddenly right next to her. He crouched down so he was in her level. His big hand closed around her wrist gently. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” the demon was saying quietly, like he was trying to soothe her. “You don’t need to hide them from me.”
She let him move her hand off. He’d already seen them anyway, so there didn’t seem much point in hiding them. She let her hands fall at her side forlornly. She didn’t know what to do now.
The golden honmoon had been Celine's only plan and it hadn't worked.
“You don’t understand. They’re meant to be gone. The honmoon is gold and they’re meant to be gone,” Rumi said desperately. Her voice had a pre-cry hitch in it that she couldn’t hide. She felt absolutely mortified that this demon now knew she was about to cry, but she couldn’t stop it.
Celine had promised.
The honmoon was gold, so Rumi had done everything perfectly.
And she still had patterns.
It wasn’t fair.
She turned and took three steps to the city wall, trying to hide her face against the old bricks.
She wasn’t going to cry in front of this stupid demon.
She was tougher than that.
She was a hunter… just like her mother. And hunters were tough.
But her shoulders were shaking and that sour lemon in the back of her throat was being squeezed, and now the tears were squeezing out her eyes, and a little sob had burst out too. She hadn’t been able to suppress it.
He was next to her again. She felt his hand patting her shoulder. “It's a part of you. It’s half of you. I don't think you can get rid of it,” the demon said gently. "But it's okay."
"It's NOT okay," Rumi yelled, beating her fists against the bricks in desperation. She watched in horror as demon pink rippled out through a golden honmoon from where she'd struck.
She'd done that?
She was demon enough to ruin a golden honmoon.
She covered her eyes with her hands, trying to press the tears back into her eyes and get control of herself. If she could control herself and not feel angry and upset and sad, then it wouldn't happen again. It only happened because she'd let her feelings out, and that was why Celine taught her so many control techniques.
The demon put his arms around her slowly, so as not to scare her with a sudden movement, like she was a skittish horse. Rumi stood frozen in shock and didn't stop him even though she had the chance, because a demon was hugging her and she'd never had any hug training, so she didn't know what to do.
She didn't expect it. She was pretty sure hugging a demon back was against some kind of hunter rule.
But it wasn't a bad feeling...being hugged.
Rumi didn't get many hugs.
Celine loved her, but she wasn't a hugger.
This demon might be a hugger though, because he was hugging her and telling her not to cry and saying that everything was going to be okay. He felt warm and safe and maybe Rumi liked being hugged by him.
It was probably bad that she thought it was nice.
It was definitely against the rules that she hugged him back and squished her face against him and cried on his shirt and got it all snotty.
The stupid demon was making her cry more by being so nice about everything and hugging her. She pushed him away suddenly and wiped her eyes furiously. He stepped back, arms up with palms facing out, like message received loud and clear.
Celine had taught her how to control her emotions better than this. She did the breathing trick to suppress big feelings, but it wasn’t quite working. “I'm still half demon,” she confessed forlornly. “But I don’t want to be bad.”
She’d been taught that all demons were bad, and Celine would always quickly say But you're not one of them Rumi, whenever Rumi made an upset face.
But Rumi was!
She didn’t want to be, but she was, and she couldn’t help it. She just wanted to be normal, be a hunter like her mother, but no other hunter had ever had patterns.
That was why Celine was always so worried about hiding everything from Auntie Dasom and the Diamond grannies.
They only saw them in winter when Rumi could wear layer and layers and have an excuse.
If the other hunters saw her patterns, they’d kill her just like any other demon.
Even if they loved her as Rumi, they’d never understand and they’d probably try to kill her and Celine had promised that she would never, ever let that happen, but it was better not to tempt fate and it was better to hide it until they could fix it.
But the golden honmoon hadn’t fixed anything.
The demon didn't hug her again, but he knelt in front of her and put both his hands on her shoulder, so she had to look at his face.
“Hey, Rumi. It's not a bad thing with you. You’re lucky. Gwi-ma doesn’t control you or force you to do bad things. You're not a bad demon. You're a good demon,” he said, sounding serious.
“Wait. There are good demons?” Rumi asked with some surprise.
Celine knew everything about demons, and she said all demons were bad, but she’d been wrong about the honmoon, then maybe she was wrong about this. If there were good demons then maybe...
“Of course there are. I'm looking at one right now,” the guy said, and he sounded so sure, and he was a demon so he would actually know.
“Are you a good one too?” Rumi asked, excitedly.
His face fell, and his hands dropped from her shoulders and he stepped back. He looked away from her, like he suddenly couldn’t bear to face her. “No, sorry. I'm a bad one.”
The demon looked like he was having some big feelings of his own. He was doing the breathing trick to try and push whatever they were down.
His patterns on his hands glowed pink and he looked at them sadly for a moment.
She'd only just found out good demons were possible, and now the nicest demon she'd ever met was a bad demon too?
Had his kindness just been a demon trick?
“Are we enemies?” Rumi asked, feeling wary again. She took a step backwards.
Demons lie. This demon could have been tricking her the whole time. Maybe being nice to her about her patterns was just a way of getting her to trust him so he could do something evil.
But he just admitted to being a bad demon, which would kinda ruin whatever his evil plans were.
But then again, this demon was dumb.
“I don’t think all that matters now,” The demon said philosophically, gesturing at the golden honmoon spread out below them.
That wasn’t a no.
It wasn’t a yes either.
But Rumi had asked a yes or no question.
This demon wasn’t telling her the full truth. He knew so much more than he was saying. There had been a few times when they were talking, a slight hesitation here, a quirk of the lip there, that told Rumi he wasn’t telling her everything. He was hiding something. Rumi was a champion at hiding things and lying and she knew how to spot a liar when she saw one.
The demon looked over the wall and seemed a bit lost in in his own thoughts. He’d let his guard down completely around her. He seemed to trust her completely. He wasn’t scared of her at all, so he wouldn’t see it coming.
She had the element of surprise on her side. She could get her sword and…
No.
She wouldn’t.
She didn’t want to kill him.
But she needed some real answers.
And this demon was lying about something.
And she was going to find out the truth.
She crouched silently and picked up a big rock. She turned slightly towards him with it hidden behind her back.
“Mr Demon, I have something to tell you,” she said politely.
He looked a little confused, but did what she expected. He took two steps so he was in front of her. He knelt down so their faces were level, and he seemed interested in what she was about to say. He’d been pretty good at getting on her level to talk to her ever since she stopped swinging a sword at him.
It was handy because it eliminated the height difference problem.
“What is it, Rumi?” he asked, all unsuspicious and trusting.
Whack!
She bopped him on the head with the rock, knocking him out cold. He landed with a thud in a crumpled heap of gangly limbs.
What to do with him now?
The honmoon shimmered on the wall, giving her an idea.
Celine said it was possible to pull other things aside from weapons out of the honmoon when the need was great. Rumi's need was great.
Rumi had made this honmoon gold and it hadn’t helped her patterns, so it owed her a favour.
She reached in and thought rope, and pulled out an iridescent cord.
She shoved the demon up against the wall, in between two arrow slits. His head lolled to the side, but she tried to lean it up against the ancient bricks, so he’d be a little more comfortable. She passed the rope under his arms and through the holes in the wall a few times before tying it tightly and firmly. It was honmoon rope, so he wouldn’t be able to use his demon powers to break through it.
She got more rope and tied his hands together.
Then she did his feet too.
Then she stood back to admire her handiwork.
She’d killed a demon and trapped a demon all in one night, and she wanted to feel proud, but was this …too much?
It could be overkill, tying his hands and feet, since this demon didn’t seem dangerous.
He’d done nothing but try to help her...though granted, helping her had involved accidentally kidnapping her and taking her away from Celine… but she'd been able to handle herself. He was a dumb demon who couldn’t plan his way out of a wet paper bag and had been outsmarted by a nine-year-old, so she couldn’t expect too much from him.
And…
He said he was bad, but he’d been nothing but kind to her, and not all of it was a lie. He’d said demons were forced to do bad things by Gwi-ma before he’d admitted to being bad himself, but did it really count as being bad if you were forced?
Rumi really should kill him. Hunters were meant to kill everything with patterns and he had them.
But so did she.
And he was the first person aside from Celine to ever see them and he’d been so sweet about them.
She’d let him live for that alone.
But he better answer her questions properly when he woke up, or she’d hit him with the rock again!
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