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Rumi has always had cold hands. Even as a little kid, if vague memories and Celine can be believed.
Celine can.
Rumi’s not sure her own memories are the most trustworthy source; they would have her believe she was on the moon at one point, which adult-Rumi is fairly sure was a park with a big rock and her in a silver-jacket spacesuit.
Still, cold hands don’t seem like too much of a stretch of the imagination.
One year, when she’s…five? six? Rumi is given her gloves.
It’s before she had learned to keep her complaints to herself, so after a week of complaining about being clumsy and her fingers being cold, Celine takes her to her room—Celine’s room, that is, which Rumi only gets to enter when she’s sick or scared and now, apparently, that she’s so cold she can hear her fingers creaking, Celine!—and pulls out a little box.
The box is about the size of a shoe-box and looks really old and fancy, made of polished wood that shimmers from dark brown to brown-red like Celine’s eyes. There are drawings all over it. Placing the box between both of them on her bed, Celine points out the river snake and turtle and the tiger hiding in the reeds; Rumi points out her favourites, trios of cheeping birds sitting in the sad, dropping branches of a huge tree. All the drawings are a shiny white—Celine calls it iridescent, mother-of-pearl. It is smooth and cool under Rumi’s fingers. All the extra space on the box that isn’t a drawing is shimmering waves that look an awful lot like the honmoon.
From inside the box, Celine takes a pair of gloves.
After looking at the box, the gloves look kinda…bad.
Rumi doesn’t say that because it’s important to be polite. She sits quietly, holding up her hands so Celine can tug them on for her. At first, Rumi is mostly focused on how big they are. Her fingers don’t reach the ends and the wrists dangle loose, so she has to curl her fingers so they don’t fall right off when she puts her hands down. The fabric is dark blue speckled white, which Rumi likes, and she’s fascinated by the discovery of her name stitched on the inside. Exactly like how Celine writes her name on the tags of clothes.
The interesting part is the fish. Colourful fish stitched around outside of the wrist.
‘Fish?’ Rumi peers at them. She doesn’t dislike fish, so, ‘Thank you?’
Celine thumbs one of the fish. It’s striped, orange-and-white, like the little fish that got lost in movie night last week.
‘Your eomma made these.’
The thought is shocking.
Rumi stares at her, wide-eyed, baffled.
Two afternoons a week, Rumi doesn’t go home after school. Instead, she goes to the house of an old lady down the road (by four point zero four kilometres) whose grandchildren are all grown up and seemed pleased by the opportunity to watch over another young child. She knits quite a lot. Sweaters, scarves, awful lumpy socks. Clacking away in front of the television—which neither she nor Rumi have told Celine they’ve been watching, because Rumi’s only really supposed to have three hours of screen time a week, and only if she’s very good—where she falls asleep most nights, woollen yarn and needles in her lap.
Rumi tries to imagine Celine like that but can’t get the pictures to overlap. Celine rarely sleeps and the fish are… Well. They’re not very good but they’re miles better than anything Celine has ever drawn. Still, maybe it took a really long time and she’s not happy with them yet, like how Rumi keeps her drawing book in her room and draws her pictures over and over until she’s satisfied before showing Celine. Maybe Celine wanted to get the green fish to look less like a coat hanger and more like a fish before giving the gloves to Rumi or—
Oh.
Celine wasn’t talking about herself.
(A glance at the honmoon, bruised-blue, confirms it.)
Somehow, this is even more difficult to imagine.
Almost everything Rumi knows about her eomma, Celine has told her: she was beautiful, a singer, a Hunter; she laughed as easily as breathing; loved dressing up, adored dancing, animals loved her, and she even knew how to ride a horse!
Rumi doesn’t like a lot of the things her eomma liked. She likes almost everything about idol training more than dancing, especially singing, but also playing the piano. She’s good at it and Celine always tells her how much she has improved since last time, and it’s clear she’s been practicing very diligently. Sometimes, though, she also mentions how funny it is. Because Mi-yeong didn’t have the patience for piano. Or the posture.
Rumi also doesn’t really like the fuss and flounce of dressing up. She doesn’t like dogs, cats don’t like her, horses are scary, birds are horrible, and all the creepy crawly creatures can stay far, far away from her, thank you very much. Bugs. Lizards. Even butterflies are a little creepy.
Sometimes, when Celine is feeling blue, Rumi tries to be a bit more like Mi-yeong. She plays with the neighbour’s dog and laughs when the cat runs off, or begs Celine to take her shopping. But eventually it gets boring and more than once, Rumi has looked up from a book or her piano to find Celine looking at her like a person at one of her dinners she’s supposed to know but doesn’t.
Rumi is pretty sure it’s because she doesn’t look like Mi-yeong.
There are loads of photos of her around the house—three in Rumi’s room, two in Celine’s, six in the hallway, and one on the fridge. Which is…twelve. Plus, all the Sunlight Sister’s videos. And there’s a bunch more in the box in the storeroom but Rumi hasn’t counted those. Once, when Rumi got curious, she held one up next to her bedroom mirror and tried to find something in her face that looked like the smiling woman. Her nose, maybe? Her braid, of course, but anyone with long hair could do that. There isn’t really anything at all.
So, when she tries to imagine Mi-yeong making her gloves… It’s hard. Her face doesn’t live in Rumi’s head; it’s still, like a photo or a painting or a creepy porcelain doll. Not like Celine. Rumi knows all Celine’s faces. Happy and sad and thinking hard (that one’s pretty common) and working hard (also common) and hungry and silly, all crossed-eyes and tongue poking out. The way the honmoon goes yellow at her edges when Celine laughs; it’s Rumi’s favourite colour.
Rumi turns her gloved hands over.
There, under the thumb of her left hand, is a tiny goldfish.
‘This one is called Celine,’ Rumi decides. ‘And, um, I’m this one.’
‘Ah, purple. Of course. And your eomma? Which one is she?’
‘Mm… Did she have a favourite colour?’
Celine’s face does something funny, tight around her mouth and eyes like the time Rumi had been playing too close to the edge of the roof. But unlike that time, she doesn’t yell at Rumi and scold her for ages about safety and how she could have gotten hurt if she’d fallen. She croaks,
‘Blue.’ Celine clears her throat. ‘Like the flowers we pick up at the market.’
‘Oh, those are so pretty. And look! Look! There’s a blue one right here, right next to yours! You can be best friends!’
//
Later, when she takes the gloves off to get ready for bed, Rumi realises that her hands haven’t been cold all night.
She grows into them. Then, just as quickly, grows out.
They’re exactly the right size when she’s eight, and a little small at ten. Age eleven, the first chill breeze slinks through the garden with dead leaves in its mouth like a grey street cat, unbidden, proudly feral. Rumi can’t get her gloves on. The narrow bite of the opening tight around her knuckles.
It’s a silly thing to cry about but it feels—it feels—oh she doesn’t know.
Bad. A little bit. Maybe.
Maybe a lot bad.
It’s not about the gloves or the cold sting at the end of her fingers. It’s more about how much everything has changed. The patterns on her arm have been spreading up her shoulder and Celine has been working more—much too busy for the market or the park—and school hasn’t been fun at all after her friend moved away and now it’s almost winter and her hands are always cold and her gloves—her gloves!—that her eomma made for her!—don’t fit.
When Celine is late coming home from work, Rumi decides to try and fix one of them.
She takes a pair of scissors to it, trying to loosen the fabric around the wrist with some well-placed snips, but only manages to mangle it and that’s worse, obviously. She hides the evidence deep in the drawer of her desk, pushed under her bedroom window, and walks around with her hands in her pockets all week.
Saturday morning, Rumi and Celine and Celine’s business reports are all at the breakfast table together. After Rumi spends fifteen minutes stirring her cereal with a spoon, Celine peers over the top of her glasses with a shrewd, piercing look and asks her what’s wrong.
‘Nothing.’
‘Rumi.’
‘Nothing,’ Rumi insists, and shoves roughly away from the table. So roughly that milk sloshes over the edge of her bowl. She wants to stride away—maybe outside to her spot under the tree, or to her desk in her bedroom like Celine goes to her office when Rumi annoys her—but that feels wrong. Messy. So, she cleans up the spill, puts her bowl in the sink, and then fixes Celine with a determined scowl to make it clear that she might have cleaned up but that doesn’t mean she isn’t annoyed, and sidles crankily out of the kitchen.
When she gets to her bedroom, she slams the door closed behind her.
It’s not very impressive so she does it a second time.
This time, the thump rattles the wall of her room. It rattles the walls of Rumi’s chest, too, and for a split second it feels like she can breathe a little easier.
What doesn’t feel good—and is actually very annoying—is that Celine is very clearly concerned by her behaviour, if all the steely silver stringing through the house is any indication.
After about ten minutes, Celine knocks on her bedroom door and opens it, leaning on the doorframe. At first, she observes. Rumi’s bedroom, neat and tidy; Rumi, scrunched on her bed like a damp towel. Then, she asks,
‘You slammed the door. Twice.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you feel better?’
‘…A little. It was better, the second time. Wasn’t it?’
‘It depends what you mean by better. It certainly made the whole house shake.’ Celine’s tone is light but her narrowed eyes spell out a rather plain intention. Rumi is never to do it again, if she values having a door.
Rumi gulps.
‘Sorry.’
Celine keeps her pinned with that Look for another moment before she relents.
‘Alright. Would you like to talk about it now?’
Rumi’s face crumples. She throws herself back down into the bed, face in her pillows, and pats around until she finds the fuzzy ear of her bear, whom she yanks to her chest.
‘Oh dear, oh dear.’
The bed dips beside Rumi. After a few seconds, Celine lets out a heavy sigh and then lays down in the bed as well. Half on Rumi. The weight and warmth of her solid frame is quite welcome. Rumi could easily fall back to sleep like this. But Celine digs her elbow into Rumi’s side. On purpose.
‘Rumi.’ She nudges her again. ‘Rumi, Rumi, Rumi, Rumi—’
‘Ugh.’
‘Rumi, Rumi, Rumi—’
‘Stop.’
‘Rumi, Rumi—’
‘You’re being annoying!’
‘And you are being oddly upset about something, little bear.’
Wriggling a hand around Rumi’s side—almost a hug, Rumi thinks—Celine picks up the bear’s paw; she taps it to Rumi’s nose, tickles under her chin and collar, until Rumi has to let him go and burrow into her pillow to escape the merciless attack. Celine sits him on Rumi’s back. Smoothes the hair of Rumi’s braid back into place.
‘What is it, hm?’
Rumi sighs, frustrated.
It’s really not a big deal. It makes it a bigger deal, saying it out aloud. And maybe her childish tantrum and slamming the door also added to it. Twice.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Ah. Nothing has you curled up like a miserable little shrimp.’
‘…Aren’t all shrimp curled up?’
‘No, not at all. Just the miserable ones.’
‘So they’re all miserable?’
‘You would be too, fished out of the sea and boiled for dinner.’ It’s a horrible thought. Celine moves on quickly. ‘Whatever this nothing is, has it ruined your day? Are we staying in? It’s a pity, because I hoped we could go to the Lego store today—’
Her laugh is gilded, glimmer-bright, when Rumi slithers off the bed and rolls to her wardrobe. It takes a few tries to pull her coat off the hanger but eventually it does drop onto Rumi’s face.
‘Scarf, too.’
Rumi grumbles into the fuzzy hood of her coat.
‘What was that?’
She paws herself free and repeats herself. ‘It’s at the door.’
‘Gloves?’
Rumi stills.
‘Rumi? Where are your gloves?’
‘They don’t fit,’ she whispers. Celine can absolutely hear her misery. Rumi doesn’t want to see her face when she admits to what she’s done; Celine is going to be so upset, she realises. ‘I’m sorry.’
Even with her eyes closed, she sees the storm crawling across the honmoon.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says again.
‘It’s hardly your fault. You were always going to outgrow them. I suppose I thought we had more time. It wouldn’t be so soon.’
The strings go a shade of blue so dark it’s almost black. Rumi doesn’t see this colour often; she associates it with Mi-yeong, and every horrible solemn graveside holiday.
‘Let’s… Let’s get you some new gloves. Today.’
‘…And then the Lego store?’
‘Yes.’
‘…Okay.’
Celine helps Rumi to her feet. Helps her into her coat and even bundles the red scarf around her neck.
//
‘Are your hands horribly cold?’ she asks while they wait for the car; when Rumi shrugs, Celine takes her hands in between her own, which are wonderfully warm. Rumi sinks into her side with a happy sigh.
//
She can’t choose between a pair of black gloves—‘Very sensible, Rumi, suitable for any occasion!’—and a pair of very cute mittens, black-and-yellow like a bee. Celine obviously has her preference but, when Rumi makes her eyes big and hopeful, only points out that there was a pretty pair of gloves with flowers on them over there and if they were going to get two pairs, they might as well get three.
Rumi wears the bumblebee gloves out of the store with a happy skip. She touches the gloves hidden in her coat pocket—thinner, now, not threadbare but much-worn and much-loved, and for a heart-wrenching moment she is terrified that she might have to get rid of them.
Celine wouldn’t make her, of course. Probably. They have loads of items of Mi-yeong’s that will never be thrown away. But…when Rumi outgrows things, she always has to get rid of them, or donate them, and she can’t bear the thought of her gloves being worn by someone else.
She sneaks a mittened hand into her pocket again, to check her old gloves are still there, and resolves not to mention them again. They’re hers. They’re hers. It doesn’t matter that they don’t fit her anymore, or that Rumi made a mess of one of them. Mi-yeong made them for her. She’ll keep them in her pocket and Celine will never notice. It’s not a big deal.
The gloves are gone.
Rumi’s heart seizes in her chest. It goes cold and hard and gives a squeeze-thump that probably doesn’t mean anything good and her breathing stoppers high in her throat.
They’re gone.
There’s got to be some kind of mistake.
They’re always in the left pocket of whatever coat or jacket she’s wearing—not her show jacket but her normal clothes and sometimes even the slouch of her hoodie pouch around the house, if it is especially cold or she is especially lonely.
But not today.
Today, she can’t find them anywhere.
She’s checked yesterday’s coat—and last night’s hoodie and her favourite coat and the pockets of her pants she was wearing yesterday and her second favourite coat and her favourite jacket and second favourite jacket and third favourite and her least favourites and then all the rest of her coats and jackets, even the ones she hasn’t worn in years but keeps around just in case they come back into fashion, and checks all her identical hoodies and her interview clothes just in case—and nothing!
When Rumi knocks on her door, Mira drawls,
‘Come in, Rumi.’
The certainty in her tone throws Rumi for a loop. She peeks through the tiny gap but Mira isn’t even facing the door; she’s laying sprawled on her bed in the opposite direction, face buried in a magazine. One stockinged leg sways in the air, foot bobbing lazily to the music—one of the quieter tracks they’d cut from the recent album, heavy on piano. Suspicious, Rumi glances around for a mirror but the only one she can find is on the wrong wall to see the door. Plus, mostly covered by Mira’s silky morning robe tossed over it like an impromptu hanger.
‘How did you know it was me?’
‘Zoey doesn’t knock,’ Mira points out, like it’s obvious.
It is. It ought to be. If Rumi were able to be a better friend, it would be. But back when they’d first met, Zoey throwing open Rumi’s door whenever she felt like it had been…terrifying. Rumi had became rather expert at quick changes; she’d also taken up the habit of dressing in the bathroom, though she despised the cling of steam-dampened clothes. They’d talked about it but it had taken Rumi snapping at her before Zoey had realised it was less of a request and more of a boundary. It hadn’t happened since. So really, it’s only obvious for Mira, who isn’t hiding a disgusting secret and can let Zoey come into her room whenever she likes.
Mira throws a smile over her shoulder and mentions, tone soft, ‘You don’t have to either, you know.’ Her smile turns teasing. ‘Unless there’s a sock on the door.’
‘Why would there be a sock on the door?’
‘…Nevermind.’
Rumi answers her own question with another lingering glance around the room. She has half a mind to look for her gloves, even though she can’t remember the last time she’s been in Mira’s room, but there wouldn’t be any point.
Who could find anything in this room? It’s a mess, the contents of Mira’s wardrobe emptied onto every surface for her to mix and match jackets and shoes and jewellery, putting together a weeks worth of outfits in a morning.
It makes Rumi itch.
She plucks a jacket—denim, slouchy, embroidered with tiny pink flowers—from where it hangs off the corner of the bookshelf just inside the door and folds it over her arm. Mira doesn’t seem to mind—just arches an eyebrow at her and returns to her magazine—so Rumi busies herself with smoothing the creases and plucking long pink hairs off the collar.
After another minute, Mira sighs, stretches, and chucks her magazine aside. She stands. Pours off the tall bed like a waterfall, hair cascading silkily down around her shoulders.
It is now, as she tracks the motion, that Rumi realises that Mira is only half-dressed, apparently distracted by her magazine partway through getting ready for the day. Rumi’s fingers skitter over the stitched panels of the jacket in her hands and she briefly forgets about her gloves or that she is cold or ever has been cold in her life as her whole body flushes with a sweet, lingering heat that suffuses from the prickling top of her head to the toes Rumi wriggles in her boots when she feels herself go light-headed.
Even bare-faced and outfit incomplete, Mira is the most beautiful person Rumi has ever seen. Despite having been bandmates, Hunters, and friends for almost six years, it always takes her a little by surprise. Like realising, once again, how pretty a sunrise can be.
‘You can borrow that, if you want. The jacket,’ Mira elaborates when Rumi only looks at her. ‘It’d look cute.’
Rumi had been planning to wear a much plainer coat. But…it was cute. And Mira was offering, sweet-honey eyes almost hopeful.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Totally.’
She helps Rumi put it on, pulling her braid out for her and cuffing the much-too-long sleeves, and steps back to take in the full outfit with approval.
‘Nice. Fans won’t recognise you in this. You almost look relaxed,’ Mira teases. Her eyes flicker over Rumi’s face, amused, then gentling again. Fingers slip up to adjust the collar in tiny tugs. ‘You good?’
‘Is it sitting weird?’
‘No. But I meant are you good?’
‘What? Yes. Yes, of course.’
Mira lifts a doubtful eyebrow. ‘Did Zoey say something unhinged to the fans again?’
‘What! No? I don’t think so? Did she?’
‘Probably not,’ Mira soothes and drops her palms flat to Rumi’s shoulders to counter the way they try to inch upwards.
Rumi whips her phone out to check. There’s no notifications from Zoey’s accounts—any of them—and no frantic messages or missed calls from Bobby so they’re probably okay.
‘You just look crazy stressed.’
‘What? Ha, no I don’t, I’m the normal amount of stressed.’
‘Which is how stressed?’
‘A normal amount. Small. Barely at all. Your room isn’t helping,’ Rumi tells her, glancing over the mess again.
Mira doesn’t look totally convinced but she allows Rumi the deflection and steps back with a tiny smile.
‘What, you don’t like it? It’s messy chic.’
‘It’s messy.’
‘Messy chic. You wouldn’t get it.’
‘I get it. What I don’t get is how you find anything,’ she teases back, tone flatly judgemental to make Mira laugh, and glances back at her phone when it buzzes in her hand.
Her alarm.
More insistent than it had been ten minutes ago, when she’d started her search. Rumi has to go—yet another interview, supposedly very casual, a walk through the park they had donated to six months ago when they were going to fund an expansion for their ponds, and Rumi just knows that her hands are going to be freezing. It’s just her this time. No Zoey to swing her hand between them as she chatters away. No Mira to offer her a cup of Rumi’s favourite tea that she invariably manages to sneak into shoots somehow.
‘Is that for the interview? Do you want me to go with you?’ Mira sounds confused at the idea, even as she voices it.
As well she should.
Rumi had been insistent that she would go alone—she was the leader after all, and also Mira has just finished up a week of exhausting shoots that only she had been asked to do as HUNTR/X’s visual, plus it was only last week that she’d had a string of engagements to kick off her campaign as the new face of—oh what was the brand? Mira had been talking about it non-stop for the last month.
‘Absolutely not. I just—’ Rumi bites at her lip. Glancing at the time, she sighs. ‘Have you seen my gloves?’
‘No.’
Mira walks back around her bed and plucks something off the floor. Shrugs into a long bright-pink hoodie that Rumi recognises.
‘Is that mine?’
‘No.’
‘I’m pretty sure it is.’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s not.’
‘You know I still write my name on the tags, right?’
Mira wriggles the hoodie around and disappears into it briefly. There’s a brief tousle, then she reappears, hair mussed, and spits something onto her bed.
‘There’s no tag,’ she tells Rumi in an arch tone. ‘Can’t be yours.’
Flatly, Rumi says,
‘How convenient.’ Her eyes dip to the pouch. ‘They’re not in there?’
’Well, they wouldn’t be, because this isn’t yours,’ Mira insists, but she checks anyway and shakes her head.
‘Alright. Well, thanks. For the jacket. And for checking. I didn’t mean to interrupt—‘
‘I’m helping you look,’ Mira cuts her off, and flicks her in the forehead when she starts to argue that Mira really doesn’t have to, and she’s supposed to be resting, and— ‘Shut up.’
Rumi shuts up.
Three minutes later, Mira triumphantly holds up a pair of handsome gloves—black leather with a tremendously soft lining. They are Rumi’s, the ones she wears most often when she’s trying to look professional, and Mira looks so pleased with herself and Rumi is running late so she just thanks her and slides her hands into the gloves and pushes it out of her mind. The thought of her gloves. The fact that they’re missing and what if she never finds them again? It’s so stupid to feel so unbalanced. Like a child with a ruined blanket. A comfort she’s far, far too old to need.
//
The park is beautiful. And cold.
Rumi keeps a smile on her face and hands in her pockets.
‘Huh! Weird! Bobby, can you put something out on socials? See if anyone lost their gloves?’
The word grabs Rumi’s attention like a fish hook, tugs her eyes toward Zoey as she digs through everything she’s accumulated post-fan meet—including a pair of very small gloves, made of blue fabric mottled from time and wear, with fish stitched around the wrists as charmingly lopsided as they ever have been.
‘Of course! Let me take a photo of them and I’ll post about—Rumi?’
She’s on her feet. She’s on her feet and across the room and clutching them to her chest, her cheek desperately, dramatically, before she even feels herself move.
There aren’t many people left in the room—the girls, obviously, and Bobby, and then only four or five of their crew—but it’s enough for Rumi to be hideously embarrassed at the sudden silence as they all watch Rumi lose it over a pair of gloves.
Mortifying.
Rumi’s hands shift. Cupping the small gloves in one hand that presses it flat to her sternum, the other covering hand and gloves. Underneath all the layers, Rumi’s heart is thundering. She can hardly think past the noise of it. She knows, she thinks, she’s pretty sure it would be more normal of her to just…slip them into her pocket. Thank Zoey for finding them. She should do something to make it seem less…big. Because it isn’t. But Rumi cups them to her chest and sends Bobby a desperate look, pleading silently with him to smooth it over for her. To fix this.
‘Okay, people! We want to be out of here by four on the dot! And I want it sparkling clean—it was very nice of them to let us have the venue at such late notice! Let’s make sure they want to invite us back!’
He scurries past Rumi—pausing to say, for the fourth time, that she did an awesome job today, as always, and that he loves her!—and continues on, wielding pen and clipboard like sword and shield.
Rumi tracks him with her eyes. Across the room. Bouncing away from conversations with each of the crew, who are left working faster and harder and smiling every time. He’s some kind of hero. Or angel. Or angel-hero.
Rumi is watching him.
And Zoey and Mira are watching her.
Rumi knows they are—she can feel it—and her thumb rubs against the soft cloth hidden under her hand. She looks back at them, flush high on her cheeks.
It’s not so bad. They aren’t looking at her like she’s some weird, unrecognisable person—there’s just something…changed. About the way they’re looking at her. Something that makes the patterns crawl under and over her skin even as her heart rate speeds up by another tick.
Mira leans on Zoey’s shoulder. She always likes the closeness after fan meets, where they have to sit a full metre or more apart, and their every movement and gesture and glance is being recorded and interrogated. The look on her face is almost relieved, like an itch scratched.
Zoey just looks confused.
‘Did I steal your gloves?’ she asks. Then, ‘I tried to put them on, Rums, and they don’t fit me—I don’t think they’ll fit you? Are you sure they’re yours? Maybe they just look alike.’
‘They’re hers.’ Rumi’s hands squeeze tighter around them. ’These are the ones you were looking for last month, aren’t they?’
It’s not really a question.
Mira is only saying it so Rumi knows that she knows. And to bring Zoey up to speed, maybe, on what she missed out on that morning. Still, hope is scrawled across her face, in her peering eyes. It shines when Rumi confirms her question with a nod.
It’s not that she doesn’t—It’s not that she thinks—It’s not anything. It’s not a big deal. Rumi wishes desperately she had been less strange about it, and that she is being less strange about it now; that she isn’t obviously, visibly relaxing as she rubs the soft wool between her fingers; that they aren’t obviously watching her relax, clocking her visibly comfort herself—need to, want to comfort herself—by cuddling with a pair of ratty old gloves.
Her face is on fire.
Her hands are on fire.
Rumi lowers her eyes as her shoulders come up. And then her girls are standing and putting a hand each on one shoulder and shuffling her out of sight of anyone else, into the little green room where there is a table of snacks and chilled water and a comfy couch that she is pushed down into very firmly.
It’s colder, back here. The air-conditioning is on full blast and it’s habit for Rumi to curl her fingers into the wool to warm her fingers.
Zoey cuddles up to her side.
Mira puts an arm around both their shoulders.
They’re both wonderfully warm. A tightness in Rumi’s throat relaxes, their comfort like the first warming sip of honeyed tea.
Her hands relax. Lower into her lap, where she begins to check over the gloves; something that she would ordinarily wait for time and privacy but it’s been almost a month, she needs to do it now, to make sure nothing else has happened to them. Rumi tugs the fingers straight. Touches a pulled hole where the knitting must have caught on a zip and snagged. Her fingers brush over the swimming fish and her eyes sting as she realises she’d forgotten the order.
White-and-orange, red, green. Purple, blue, yellow.
‘Did I ruin them?’ Zoey asks, nerves bubbling up. ‘I didn’t know they were in there, Rumi, I’m so sorry. I must have picked them up somehow and put them in my pocket and then - I think they’ve been through the wash, did I ruin them? Did I make them shrink or—‘
‘No.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ Zoey says again, tone wet and wobbly.
She’s not cuddled up to Rumi’s side at all, Rumi realises. She’s curled and curdled, tightly miserable. A little shrimp.
‘Oh. Zoey. No. It’s fine. You didn’t know. I’m glad you said something. I’m glad you didn’t throw them out.’
A jolt goes through her at the idea. Makes her stomach churn and bubble. She clutches them more tightly.
‘How come—’
Out of the corner of her eye, Rumi sees Zoey gnawing on her lip. Then her eyes go wide and she looks at Mira that way she always does when they’re having one of their secret conversations.
Mira picks up the question, voice smooth.
‘How come we haven’t seen them before?’
The humiliation comes up again, rolling over her like a heatwave. She feels too big for her skin, sweaty and sticky.
Quickly, Rumi bundles the gloves together like a pair of socks, the old cut-up right glove inside the left, and returns them to her jacket pocket. Her hand sits in the pocket atop them. Thumb finding the knitted seam to brush against it. Up and down. Up and down. Her neck relaxes. Leans back against the hot line of Mira’s arm, where it loops behind them.
‘No reason,’ she lies. ‘They’re just gloves.’
Mira and Zoey look at one another.
‘Right.’
‘Totally.’
‘I also lunge across the room to pick up my normal gloves and look like I’m going to bite people for looking at me.’
‘To be fair,’ Mira teases, all velvety soft-smoothness, ‘you do bite people.’
Zoey scoffs. Tries to kick Mira without kicking Rumi, which is difficult when Rumi is sitting in between them. She pinches Mira’s wrist instead and Rumi grumbles a disapproving noise when her arm jolts under her neck.
‘Sorry, Rumi,’ they both offer, sweetly cowed.
She looks between them.
Her thumb brushes the seam again. Up and down.
‘My eomma made them.’
Zoey’s eyes go wide. Mira’s go narrow. They both cuddle in a little closer, like the words are some magic switch, turning on a magnetic zone that drags them closer to her.
‘I must have put them in my coat. From last time I went to visit Celine,’ she adds. The lie tastes metallic. She swallows. Laughs a little. ‘That’s why you haven’t seen them. It’s just. It would be a little silly, don’t you think? To carry them around?’
Mira’s hand finds the back of her neck. That would be so relaxing too—the swipe of her thumb along the skin there, up and down, slow and gentle and sweet—if not for the fact that it was too close, Mira was too close. To Rumi. To her patterns. She lifts herself away from the touch as subtly as she can, and pretends she doesn’t see the careful blanking of Mira’s expression. From serene to sad in a split second.
‘I don’t think it’s silly,’ Zoey says, and it sounds like only the start of something—probably, almost definitely, she has more to say, and definitely questions.
Rumi can’t deal with that.
And there’s nothing to talk about anyway.
She’s fine. And they’re just gloves.
‘It’s a little silly,’ she laughs, crinkling her nose, and gives them each a brisk pat on the knee as she separates herself from their warmth. ‘Thank you. For finding them. I really appreciate it. But it’s almost four and we need to get out of here before the venue complains about idols lazing around in the green room.’
The stage is the warmest place in the world. Her girls on either side of her—the stage lights—the heat of being watched by millions of fans, the blaze of adoration—
And then her jacket is ripped open.
Ripped off.
The barrier of the honmoon—the blanket—is in tatters.
And Mira and Zoey… Every step Rumi takes away from them, the cold gets worse and worse. The sting of that is sharper than the claws that push out through the ends of her fingers.
She kneels.
Celine denies her.
The last spark of heat goes out in Rumi’s chest.
Mira’s arms are whips of scorching fire wrapping under her knees, around her back, to carry her off the stage. Her soul burns in the centre of her chest. Rumi’s cheek burns, resting against her shoulder as she is carried to the car and then, in a fitful haze, to her bed.
She’s so cold.
Or too hot? She’s never been too hot before. Is there a point where the two overlap? When the heat gets so intense that her body feels like it is freezing instead?
Her teeth—fangs?—chatter.
She thinks she screams when they put her in a bath. The water is freezing and she begs them to let her out, she won’t hurt them, she’ll never hurt them, please, please, I’m so cold, it’s too cold. But they don’t. Zoey grapples her, splashing into the bath with her. Flashes of a documentary zip through Rumi’s head—crocodiles will grasp their prey in powerful jaws and spin to disorient and overwhelm—pass the popcorn, unnie!—do you need another blanket, Rumi? You’re shivering!
‘B-blanket?’
‘Not yet, not yet, I’m sorry, not yet.’
‘Cold.’
‘I know, I know you are. I’m sorry,’ Zoey whispers.
‘Please? ‘m sorry, ‘m sorry.’
Zoey is shivering too. The water must be freezing. Her head drops to the back of Rumi’s neck—skin to skin, her patterns, Zoey can’t touch them, she can’t see them, she shouldn’t, what if it hurts her, what if she hurts her—her tears are burning hot.
A sigh escapes clenched-tight teeth.
Bit by bit, the haze over her eyes recedes until Rumi can see legs—hers? unrecognisable beneath the patterns that had spread so far, so quickly—through the soot-murky water. And, on either side of her hips, Zoey’s legs. There’s no space between them, crushed together to fit in the bathtub. Her arms are gently pinned, the fingers of one hand intertwined with both of Zoey’s, and the other with Mira’s, kneeling next to the tub.
She’s still freezing.
Mira kisses her hand. Her knuckles.
Rumi watches closely.
Zoey rocks them side to side. The water ripples. The patterns—
‘Please,’ Rumi whispers.
Her girls lean close.
‘Please don’t look at me.’
Zoey’s head drops to her shoulder. Eyelashes fluttering across her skin. There were so many patterns there, a strange patch of them, tremulously thin. Her nose skates a tiny path that has Rumi gasping at its warmth.
‘Where else could we look, Rumi?’ Mira asks. She kisses her hand again and Rumi doesn’t know if she begins to cry from the gentleness of Mira’s voice, or the fact that she cannot feel the touch at all through the powerful frozen numbness.
She is still cold when they carry her from the bath.
She is still cold when they dress her and put her into bed. Shivering underneath every blanket in the house. A hand like a little fire sneaks through every wrapping and wraps around her wrist. It is only because of that touch that Rumi can feel her heart is beating, a stubborn taptaptap against thin, chilled skin. Mira tucks herself neatly in amongst the blankets. She doesn’t look at Rumi, as requested.
Zoey wriggles close on the other side. Rumi stares at the ceiling. Out of the corner of her eye, she can tell Zoey is sneaking peeks at her. The lines that make up her face contort guiltily but guilt does not stop her from asking questions, nor listening. Nor Mira.
Rumi tries. Fails often, cannot bring herself to speak answers to even half the questions. She listens numbly to her teeth chattering answers quite outside of her control. Like her body is afraid of what little warmth they are giving her might disappear if she were to stop.
How do you have patterns? When did you make a deal? Half? How is that possible?
All sensible questions and more.
Do you even love us? Do you even want us around? How can you bear letting us help when we were so awful? I said we couldn’t be together—I drew my weapon—we drew our weapons—I didn’t mean it, Rumi, I was just so scared and confused and hurt and—
‘Cold,’ Rumi interrupts, voice a rasp.
‘Yes. I was cold to you and—’
‘No. ’m cold.’
‘Oh. Still?’
Zoey wipes the tears off Rumi’s cheeks and then her own. ‘I’ll…I’ll find us another blanket.’
Rumi lets it be wrapped around her. It doesn’t help at all but she doesn’t know how to tell Zoey that the cold is somewhere deeper. Harder to reach.
‘Tea for the princess. Warm enough?’ Mira touches her fingers to Rumi’s forehead, the back of her hand, her back underneath the layers Rumi has been wearing of late. ‘You feel fine to me. How do you feel?’
‘Fine.’
A shiver betrays her. Rumi scowls at her hands.
‘Okay. And the truth this time?’
‘…Cold.’
Mira sighs. The noise isn’t meant for her but Rumi still feels guilty. That they’ve worked so hard to warm her up and nothing quite helps.
From the couch, idly swiping through her phone, Zoey offers,
‘I have an idea.’
‘A good one?’
‘An amazing idea.’
‘Is it actually an amazing idea?’
‘Yes! Why are you doubting me? It’s objectively amazing! Just…’
‘There! You look guilty!’
‘Not guilty! Worried, if anything. I just - maybe - well! Well! Rumi might not like it.’
‘Oh, Rumi doesn’t like anything,’ Mira teases. Her fingers dip again, beneath the layers of Rumi’s shirts and remain. Lovely and warm. And she smiles down at her when Rumi leans into the touch. ‘Do you, princess?’
‘I like Zoey.’
The glint of delight in Mira’s eyes at the tease is almost enough to make up for the loss of warmth when she slips her hand away.
‘Ha! Take that! Come here, Rumi, I’ll warm you up. Oh - wait - that makes it sound - oh well, whatever, get over here. Come here, cutie! I thought—are you comfy? Another blanket? Big hug? Yes! Ha, suck it Mira, I get Rumi hugs!—I thought, maybe, we could go to the bathhouse?’
‘The bathhouse? After years of her hating them? Zoey.’
Rumi loses a bit of their conversation; her mind fills with clouds of scalding water and billowing steam, and the vaguest outline of her girls on either side of her, as they have been at nearly every moment in the past days. Steam.
Zoey jolts up after her when Rumi stands.
‘Rumi?’
‘Do I need to take anything?’
Mira jolts up now. Eyes wide.
‘What?’
‘Oh my god—is that a yes? Are we - Rumi? Are we—’
‘Are we going to the bathhouse?’
‘Mira! I wanted to say that!’
‘You should’ve been faster, then! Aren’t you the rapper?’
‘I’ll give you a rap on the head—‘
‘Ow! Rumi! Help!’
‘No, don’t help, Rumi, she did this to herself!’
‘I won’t help either of you,’ Rumi says. The most words she’s strung together in days. They shake a little, with the effort and the cold, but her girls don’t appear to mind. They smile and smile and smile. ‘I’m going to the bathhouse.’
Zoey’s scream could shatter glass. The windows of the penthouse, thankfully, are some horrendous many-inch thing of glass and whatever else material designed to withstand earthquakes and guns and paparazzi. The mirror in the hallway, however, is not.
‘I’ll clean that up! I will.’
‘Leave it! I’ll break every mirror in the house if it meant going to the bathhouse with Rumi!’ Mira cheers, lifting Zoey over her head.
A spark.
A light, a warmth.
Rumi’s fingers twitch at her side.
//
‘Well? What’s the verdict?’
Rumi sighs blissfully, sunk nearly to her nose in the water.
‘Amazing,’ she groans. ‘I’m coming here every day of hiatus.’
When she meets with Celine for the first time after…everything, she is wearing her new gloves. They’re slightly misshapen and a touch too big for her, except for the thumbs? Which are strangely the perfect size. There are birds stitched around the wrists, which are really quite good, and the ones on her right hand are all in the right order.
White-and-orange, red, green. Purple, blue, yellow.
Aside from the gloves, Rumi is four layers deep. Her girls have lent her (that is, insisted that she wear) a shirt—Zoey’s, hidden under another, which is good because Rumi suspects it says something quite rude in English—and jacket—Mira’s, denim and pink.
Celine takes her in at a glance and welcomes her in.
She pours them both tea and, looking askance at her layers and her gloves and her patterns once more, says,
‘If it needs to be said, you don’t have to cover up here, Rumi.’
If it needs to be said? Rumi thinks it definitely did. Still, she shakes her head, unpacking her basket.
‘It’s not because of that.’
‘Then what is it?’
She unpacks all the groceries that she and the girls had collected—largely without any intention, so Rumi doesn’t think a full meal can be made from it, but Celine now at least has a vast selection of pepero to snack on or, and this is more likely, to send back home with Rumi—and admits,
‘I’m cold.’
‘Your hands?’
‘Mm.’
Celine lifts a hand. Skims Rumi’s shoulder to touch the tail of Rumi’s scarf. ‘Just your hands?’
Rumi shrugs.
‘I see. Well. The gloves are…’ It takes Celine a very long time to come up with a kind descriptor. She settles on, ‘Bright.’
Another spark.
Rumi smiles, turning her hands over.
‘Aren’t they?’
‘Mi-yeong wasn’t much of a knitter either. She had a terrible time with those gloves. Oh she must have undone them twenty times. And she agonised that you wouldn’t like the colour. And that you’d grow out of them too fast, which you did.’
Rumi’s eyes skim the honmoon, waiting for the bruise to show, but it doesn’t. The new honmoon doesn’t touch Celine. It doesn’t belong to her—only to Rumi and Zoey and Mira—and Rumi doesn’t regret it but she is sorry. Not to see the colours of Celine’s soul.
‘It’s incredible. How you can remember all of that after all this time.’
Celine blinks. Looks up from Rumi’s new gloves. And Rumi doesn’t need the honmoon to show her the pink-splotched-purple of guilt.
No questions are asked or answered as Celine wordlessly leads Rumi into her bedroom. She plugs an old tape into an older television.
Static fills the screen.
A crackle of colour.
A voice.
Rumi sits on the corner of the bed.
Rumi-ya, Rumi-ya, Rumi-ya, a familiar unfamiliar voice sings.
She has to tug the scarf from around her neck as blotchy heat rises underneath it. Barely notices it pooling between her feet, eyes fixed as they are on the screen.
There’s a baby in a highchair. Not a dumpling baby fresh from the oven, as Zoey likes to say—though that’s not how dumplings are cooked, as Mira likes to point out—but one old enough to look around and be curious. It has a tuft of purple on top of its head and socks and a jumper, which strikes Rumi as strange because Mi-yeong is sweltering in a summer dress, sweat beading her forehead.
‘I hope you like fish,’ she mutters, voice deeper than Rumi has ever heard it. In interviews and songs, behind the scenes footage. Mi-yeong has only ever been a pure, sweet note in Rumi’s head.
Faults and fears, Rumi thinks. What were you afraid of, eomma?
‘They’re a shit animal. They’re not going to be your favourite. Why did I pick fish? What were you thinking, Mi-yeong?’ she grumbles to herself, eyes flicking over to the baby.
To Rumi.
She hums again; the screen of the television crackles, hisses with dissonance. The old honmoon is gone. It glitches, a sigh where a song once was. The baby laughs.
Rumi laughs. Twenty-five years ago.
‘Thats me,’ she whispers.
Celine sits carefully beside her. ‘Yes.’
‘Why—Why would you keep this from me?’
For a long time, Celine doesn’t say anything. Waiting. Finally, she tilts her head to the screen in a nod. See? And Rumi watches as the baby babbles and reaches out to grab at one of the gloves abandoned on the table. A wail rips the air. Agony. Pain!
Rumi grabs Celine’s hand. Her heart rises into her throat as she watches the baby scream, big tears blubbering down her cheeks, as she waves a pin-pricked hand in the air.
Mi-yeong leaps out of her chair. The screen cuts her out of frame to hands and a voice as she snatches Rumi up and holds her to her chest, shushing and humming and crying herself. Apologising, over and over. Eventually, a hand reaches for the camera and shuts it off.
‘It’s the only one I have. Of the two of you together. She hurt you. She let you get hurt. I didn’t want—I didn’t want you to think that she was—I didn’t want you to see—‘
‘What? That I pricked my hand? Celine, I never needed a perfect mother, I never wanted a perfect mother. Not from her. And certainly not from you,’ Rumi argues hotly.
‘I know, I know that—’
‘What do you know? Listen to me. Tell me, what am I saying?’
‘That I - I made a mistake. That I hurt you. I let you down and hurt you again—’
‘No. No, Celine. I am saying that you are my mother. And I forgive you.’
The new honmoon doesn’t touch Celine. It doesn’t belong to her, and Rumi doesn’t regret it, only she would have liked to see the colours this made. She thinks it might be yellow and blue, a field of flowers. Or perhaps a sunset shot through with pinked shame.
Celine holds herself painfully still.
‘You cannot mean that. You can’t. Not when you asked me to—‘
Celine’s hands are warm when Rumi takes them in her own. They always have been. Warm when correcting her forms, walking her to school hand tucked in hand, guiding her in how to write her own name. And true, the warmth came less as Rumi and her patterns grew. And true, at times it was hard to recall it had ever been there. But it had been. And maybe it didn’t mean as much to Celine, or look perfect or pretty to anyone else who might see it, but it had been made for Rumi and she wanted it.
Rumi slides from the bed, down onto her knees.
‘Look at me.’
Celine shakes. She looks as fearful as she had beneath the tree. When she does look up, it is with a desperation Rumi doesn’t ever want to see again.
She lifts one hand and then the other away from Celine only long enough to strip the gloves off with her teeth. Then she holds her tight. Nerves rise up, along her spine and her shoulder. Along her patterns. Rumi closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to see them.
‘That night, after I was here…’
‘Rumi—’
‘I went back. To Zoey and Mira. And we sang something new, to rebuild the honmoon. I thought—Can I sing it for you?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not like…It’s honest. You might not like it.’
‘Oh, Rumi.’ Celine winces. ‘That’s not—I will. I will like it. I’ve loved every song you’ve written, I always have. Let me hear it.’
‘The girls aren’t here to sing their parts.’
‘Rumi.’
‘So it won’t - it won’t sound quite right.’
‘Rumi.’
‘But you’ll be able to hear what it should sound like, I think.’
‘Rumi,’ Celine says again, steely-edged, and Rumi has run out of excuses. So she sings. Hoping that it makes sense to Celine. When it comes to the point where Zoey and Mira would join her, Rumi pauses for a breath—and is startled to opening her eyes when a rich voice weaves in with hers. The words are different but the meaning is the same.
I hear you. I see you. I love you.
//
Celine’s soul is steely-silver, as it always has been.
The honmoon glints yellow. Rumi can’t quite tell where it is coming from—if the joy is her own or Celine’s. It probably doesn’t matter; it’s the same joy.
//
They sit for a long time. Celine holds Rumi’s hands, or Rumi holds Celine’s. It’s hard to say at this point. There is a pattern that zigs and zags across the skin on the back of Rumi’s right hand, which Celine examines closely. Not horrified, only thoughtful.
‘How strange. When they’re like this, they look rather like my old fortune chest. Mother-of-pearl, remember?’
//
They watch the video again. They don’t visit Mi-yeong’s grave; Celine’s face goes grey when Rumi suggests it, and her eyes flicker to the shadow of the tree and back before resolutely shaking her head, no. They make lunch instead and fill the kitchen with great billows of steam from the pot of soup. Enough for four, easily, and Celine loads her basket with all of the pepero and several containers of soup for their freezer.
Rumi texts the girls that she is coming home and pulls her gloves back on. She touches the birds on the left glove—artistic license, Zoey had insisted. She hadn’t wanted to infringe on Mi-yeong’s design too much, only borrow it. Instead of the repeated pattern, there are only three birds. Pink-and-gold. Blue-and-green. Purple-and-yellow. Nestled suspiciously close together, which Zoey insisted was entirely kid-friendly and honmoon-bolstering wing-holding and that was all. Rumi was inclined to believe her after seeing the other embroideries Mira had made since then. She was getting quite good.
A grey wind steps across the courtyard with Rumi, winding around her ankles. She draws her coat—and jacket and long sleeved shirt and other shirt—tighter to protect against the chill and turns to wave goodbye, lifting a bright smile to Celine, who is waiting to wave back to her from the door.
Her phone buzzes as she buckles into the back seat.
Two dozen missed messages. None marked urgent. Rumi skims them, grinning, and calls back, lifting her phone to her ear.
‘Rumi!’ they pick up immediately. ‘We missed you!’
‘Speak for yourself.’
‘Fine, I will. I missed you.’
‘I missed you too,’ Mira adds, jostling close to the phone by the sounds of it, and Zoey’s irritated squawk. Over the noise of Zoey’s complaining, she asks, ‘How did it go?’
Rumi ignores the complaining just as deftly.
‘It was fine. We made soup.’
‘Ooh - are you bringing any home? I could do with soup. I love soup!’
‘When was the last time you had soup?’
‘Whenever you made it last?’
‘What? Five months ago?’
‘Okay, so it’s my fault that you don’t make soup more often? Rumi, where are you? How long are you going to be gone? Mira is being so annoying and I need reinforcements.’
‘Annoying!’
‘I said what I said.’
‘And you’d better say sorry, too. The reason I’m being annoying,’ Mira huffs,’ is because Zoey offered to make dinner.’
‘Uh oh. I’ll stop for takeout.’
‘Traitor! I’m an amazing chef and you know it!’
The sounds of a scuffle break out. Rumi waits it out, glancing out the window at the familiar scenery moving past. When it starts to rain, the everything blurs into strings of colour and light. People, street signs, and the guttering blink of souls in every lit window and under the cupped roof of every rain-plonked umbrella.
A quiet Mira breaks the silence.
‘Alright, I think I lost her,’ she pants down the line. ‘You’re really good?’
‘I am.’
‘Warm?’
‘…I am,’ Rumi agrees after a second. She flexes her fingers and tries to recall - she’s been colder than normal, ever since the IDOLs, but it’s been some time since her fingers had ached their stiff ache, a constant chill residing somewhere low and dark and out of sight. When was the last time she had felt it? She couldn’t recall. Glancing down at her gloves, though, she wonders if she doesn’t know.
‘Celine liked my gloves.’
‘Of course she did,’ Mira scoffs. ‘We made them.’
‘And they’re beautiful.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘Beautiful.’
Trying not to sound too incredibly pleased, Mira only said,
‘Hurry home. I miss you.’ Something crashes in the distance, the tinkling crash of ceramic. ‘And we need you.’
‘Speak for yourself!’ Zoey yells, voice tiny and tinny.
‘I am! I need you, Rumi.’
Zoey laughs. Mira must let her get close this time because her voice becomes much louder, and sweeter.
‘I need you too! Oh, it’s raining! Drive safe! We’ll get all the blankets on the couch and get it nice and cozy warm for you. Oh - but definitely please, please, please get takeout - I just started making stuff at random, I don’t have a plan. Don’t tell Mira.’
‘I’m literally right here.’
Rumi tugs her gloves more firmly onto her hands, double checking they won’t slip, and taps on the divider to tell the driver the change in plans.