Chapter Text
“No! Rumi! NO!”
Rumi shot up in bed. “Wait!” She inhaled a shaky breath, and then coughed hard, choking on her saliva.
She heard her own ragged breathing as it echoed in the quiet room, and for a moment the familiar space felt entirely foreign and terrifying. The hewn stone walls gleamed black and loomed claustrophobically around her on all sides. She jammed her fingers into her eyes until she saw stars, and willed herself to calm down. This is your home. You belong here. That was Rumi’s mantra, when everything within her screamed that this was all wrong, she used it to stop from spiraling. She listened intently for any sign that her nightmare had woken her housemates, and collapsed back on the bed in relief when none came.
Rumi didn’t know why she always woke up from nightmares with a name dying on her lips and her hands outstretched, reaching into the dark. She always woke up desperately grabbing for something she couldn’t name and sometimes, she swore she felt phantom fingers slipping out of her grasp.
She groaned with frustration, her face buried in a pillow. Something teased the edge of her mind, something she knew was important, but couldn’t remember.
The details of her dreams always left her as soon as she woke up, and no amount of concentration brought them back. When she was still small and new to this world, she would wake up screaming and crying for somebody that never came. Instead, Jinu would skid into her room, looking panicked, and listen awkwardly as she talked nonsense between sobs and hiccups.
He never said, but Rumi was sure he believed her nightmares to be about her time Before. Before, when she lived among humans. Before, when she had not yet arrived in the demon realm where she belonged.
Her memories of Before were blurry. She recalled warm hands that smoothed her hair, and the feeling of being held by gentle arms made all the softer by the strength inherent in them. There was a feeling of safety and comfort that accompanied those unknown hands and arms.
Mostly, she remembered hazy feelings. She always felt as though she was standing in the outline of memories, the shape and indentation remained, but any identifiable features had been smoothed over.
Tears bled into her pillow as Rumi tried to relax into that memory of safety. “Derpy?” She whispered. Often, after a nightmare, the strange spirit would portal into her room, and lick the tears off of her face.
“Derpy?” Rumi sniffed pitifully when he didn’t show. Derpy was her first, and perhaps only, friend, but he was still a spirit that disappeared whenever he wanted. He sometimes vanished for days at a time and even Jinu didn’t know where he went.
Rumi kept a secret list of things she believed came from Before. She categorized them into three groups, “true”, “maybe true”, and "absolutely not true”. The last category only listed one thing.
Derpy.
Rumi thought her vague memory of running her fingers through Derpy’s soft blue fur had wiggled its way into her impressions of Before because meeting the tiger was the first moment of Rumi’s life that she could recall with total clarity.
Rumi closed her eyes and let herself fall into the vivid memory – the memory she turned to when she felt like maybe nothing existed outside of this place and all of her memories were only dreams. She replayed it like a movie and reminded herself that she arrived, so somewhere else must exist.
In her memory, she was running, sprinting really, pumping her arms and legs as fast as possible. She remembered thinking that she needed to pump her arms faster. A voice rang in her mind, reminding her to move her arms when she wanted her feet to move fast. It was a voice she had heard dozens of times since, but she didn’t know who it belonged to. Rumi wanted—needed—to move fast because something was chasing her. She trusted the voice without question, and despite her exhaustion, pushed her arms to move and felt her feet follow. She was shouting while she ran, calling for somebody to find her. In that moment, she believed with her entire heart that it was only a matter of time before the person she was screaming for found her.
She was running and screaming, and she was so terrified. The sky looked wrong—dark purple—and the dirt was gray, and the rocks were all so black it felt like they were sucking up the dim light that shone through the smog and clouds. Rumi knew that this place was very dangerous, and she had a list of rules to follow when she was in a very dangerous place. She had been doing her best to follow them.
She had dared a glance over her shoulder. Nothing was there, but that didn’t ease her terror. What if it was hiding? Suddenly, stars burst in her vision, and she was flat on her back, gasping, trying to catch her breath.
They caught me, she thought with despair. It’s too late. I didn’t run fast enough. I didn’t give her enough time to find me. Rumi remembered the lessons on what to do if a bad person got close to her. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she curled her hands into fists, remembering to keep her thumb on the outside. With a cry, she leapt into the air and threw her best punch, twisting her hips and following through.
Her eyes popped open when she only hit empty air. In front of her, having easily dodged her punch, was a large blue tiger with giant eyes. She giggled when his tongue gave her fist a lick. The tiger nudged her chest and then grabbed her by the shirt, dragging Rumi along with him. He was so familiar, but Rumi didn’t know why.
Eventually, the tiger pulled her onto his back and led her far away from the demon chasing her. He took her to a large house made of black stone, and he made a warbling cry that brought a demon out of the house.
Rumi opened her eyes. Any memory of what happened before this was erratic. Some moments she could recall in exact details, and others felt like giant empty spaces. She ran through what she remembered anyway. The demon she had run from earlier, the one an older Rumi decided had dragged her away from Before, was mean and scary. She remembered before she had managed to escape him, that a bright yellow light had flashed in her face and she’d wailed as the sickly purple of the demon realm eclipsed the comforting yellow light.
That demon had shaken her roughly to stop the wails. “Shut up!” his voice echoed, layered and cruel.
Shocked by the rough treatment, Rumi had snapped her mouth shut and went limp. Held under the demon's arm like a package, she’d studied the new surroundings with big eyes. Even with teary vision, it had become clear that this was a brand new place.
Rumi recalled feeling extremely confident that she was lost in a scary and dangerous place, and she was supposed to stay in one spot. But the mean demon was already carrying her away from the spot where she was meant to wait.
She had known with the same confidence that the next step in getting lost in a dangerous place was to run away from danger, and shout so she could find her. She just can’t remember, who is she?
The dark sky and the malicious glowing eyes that had peered at Rumi from the dark places of this dark world had paralyzed her with fear. She hadn’t wanted to run, she just wanted her to be here.
“When darkness finally meets the light. Remember Ryu Rumi, you are the light wherever you go.”
Rumi can remember how the paralyzing fear had suddenly fled as the voice echoed in her mind, encouraging her. She had seized all her courage and strength, and turned to her last resort, biting as hard as she could on the demon’s forearm.
Her mouth had filled with bitter black blood that made Rumi gag and retch, but the demon had shrieked and dropped her, and she subsequently bolted. Gutteral, animalistic growls had sounded behind her. She’d pumped her legs and taken heaving gulps of air as she called for somebody to help her.
She’d run, feet pounding into the gray dust, dodging giant boulders and reflective puddles. She’d run, and, as her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, the dark shadows had given way to grotesque humanoid silhouettes that watched but strangely did not pursue.
She had run and yelled out for help, so she could find her. She had believed with all of her heart that she would come for her.
You are just very far from them right now. You have to give them enough time to find you. You can be strong enough to give them enough time to find you. She had pictured warm hands pressing against her head, the way they always had before that low, certain voice told her she could be strong.
Her breathing had turned ragged, and pain had burned in her muscles, but somehow, the growling had faded away.
You have to be strong Rumi, you have to give them enough time.
She’d pulled on her last reserves, and ran with renewed vigor, and these fragmented moments led to her finding Derpy.
Finding Derpy was the last thing she remembered before she had arrived at Jinu’s house.
Her attempt to escape had been futile. As she stumbled away from Derpy on shaky legs, a large hand grabbed her arm hard enough to bruise. When she turned, Rumi saw a muscular, pink haired demon. He glared as he towered over her.
Rumi whimpered. The demon had horns and fangs, glowing yellow eyes, and the hand around her bicep was clawed The tips of which pricked into her skin painfully drawing beads of blood.
“What the hell is a baby demon doing trespassing here.”
Her jaw locked and her vision felt stretched wide with terror. Pink flared across his body, as his patterns lit up with anger.
She’d failed. She didn’t give them enough time to find her. She wasn’t strong enough.
She closed her eyes tight and flinched as the demon raised a clawed hand.
Please come, please come, please. I’m sorry. I tried to be faster. Please come find me. I wanna go home.
A soft body pushed its way between Rumi and the angry muscular demon. Derpy. He growled low at the demon, and snapped at the hand holding Rumi until the bruising grip disappeared.
Rumi buried her face into Derpy’s soft fur, and tried to hide her tears from the demon in front of her.
“Abby, bro, are you scaring the water demons again?”
The scary demon growled back.
“God,” the second voice muttered, “you are such an idiot.”
As the new voice approached and muttered words that Rumi didn’t recognize under his breath, Rumi tried burying herself into Derpy as much as possible.
The footsteps stopped and she heard a choked gasp. Several silent moments passed.
“Abby…what the fuck…is that..that girl doing here.”
In response, Derpy chirped and yowled.
“What? Derpy, no way,” He scoffed in disbelief. More sounds followed along with growling. “Please, no. I can’t, you know why I can’t,” he pleaded with Derpy, his voice strained and desperate.
Then, Derpy disappeared. Rumi’s eyes opened, just in time to watch as he sank into a blue portal, friendly eyes fixed on her. She stared with dismay as the tips of blue ears disappeared from view and the portal shifted back to gray dirt.
Rumi yelped as she felt herself being lifted into the air. She dangled from the second demon’s grasp. He stared at her, and Rumi watched as a complicated series of emotions that she didn’t understand crossed his face.
His mouth was twisted in displeasure and he glowered at her through thinly slitted eyes.
Before any more conversations or explanations were made, the first demon, the one that shook her when she cried, appeared and charged at Rumi, only to skid to a stop when he caught sight of the one holding her in the air.
“Jinu-nim!” He bowed deeply. “Honored elder, thank you for capturing the sacrifice. Allow me to take her from you, so you can return to your evening.”
“This girl, she’s Gwi-Ma’s sacrifice?”
“Y-yes.”
“The sacrifice foretold a thousand years ago by ancient spirits would bring the hunters to their knees?” Jinu questioned. “That sacrifice?”
The bowing demon audibly gulped and nodded.
“I see.” Rumi was still dangling in the air. Her eyes darted back and forth between the demon holding her, Jinu, and the demon trembling before him.
“I think,” Jinu drawled, “that I should make sure that the sacrifice safely makes it to Gwi-Ma’s court.”
The lesser demon snapped up out of his bow, his face outraged.
“Be gone.” Jinu dismissed him with a wave of his fingers.
The demon’s expression became angry, and he growled at Jinu. “I grabbed her from those two bitches. I risked my neck out there, not you! And you aren’t taking my reward!”
Jinu froze, and narrowed glittering eyes. A humourless chuckle rang out.
“Oh, a reward,” he said. “Is that all you want? Well, don’t worry, I can reward you.”
Rumi whimpered. She felt she could see the danger dripping from Jinu’s tone. The lesser demon's eyes flared with fear and panic.
“No! I–!”
He disappeared in a pink flash before he finished shrieking.
“Be gone,” Jinu spat, “I hope it takes you 1000 years to crawl back here.” He looked down at his free hand with disgust. “Ugh, it’s going to take forever for that stench to get out from under my claws.”
Hot tears slid down Rumi’s cheeks and she trembled violently. “Please, please, I wanna go home.” She closed her eyes. Maybe when she woke up this would all be a dream. “Please,” she whispered, “please, come find me.”
The demon let go of her shirt and she fell like a rag doll to the ground. Rumi looked teary eyed at the demon that was both her savior and new captor.
He stood over her crumpled form, dispassionate, and examined her. “Nobody is coming to find you, little girl.”
She stifled a sob. He walked away, back towards the house made of black stone, before he paused one final time.
“You will never go home again. You better start getting used to that.”
The purple sky darkened even more as he walked away.
Rumi blinked and, suddenly, she was woken up by Jinu’s rough voice as she sat in a dark corner inside the house. She couldn’t remember how she had gotten from the dirt in front of the house to inside, but clearly she’d curled herself into the darkest smallest nook she could find. Rumi thinks she managed to doze, but with no windows in the house and no real sun outside she could never be sure.
“Come with me.”
Rumi looked up at Jinu from the dark corner she’d claimed as her own. His face twisted with impatience when Rumi didn’t respond.
“Come with me, now!”
With a startled jump and a clumsy bow she stumbled down the stairs towards the front door.
The house is cold and barren, with the pink fire doing little to illuminate the space. Rumi shivered at the dancing shadows on the walls.
A flicker of movement, too sharp to be something cast by candlelight caught her attention. Rumi froze, when she saw glowing eyes meet hers from the shadow. More demons? Her breath shortened. She wanted to go back to her dark corner.
A harsh hand grabbed her shoulder and suddenly she was being dragged down the last few stairs and out the door.
“Let’s go demon girl! I don’t have time to watch you jump at every shadow.” Jinu groused. “I just want to hand you over and then forget everything for a few more hundred years.”
With his long strides, distance quickly started to grow between them and with a yelp of fear at the idea of being left behind Rumi scrambled to her feet and ran to catch up. Jinu was mean and scary, but he’d killed that demon, the one that called her a sacrifice, and Rumi could feel the eyes on her watching from every angle. Demons were watching, waiting for their moment to separate her like a weak calf from the herd and go for her throat.
Maybe Jinu is a nice demon, Rumi hoped. Maybe he knows the getting lost list and he’s taking me back to where I first got lost so she can find me!
Lost in her thoughts and hopes, she didn’t see that she had fallen behind, her little legs not able to keep up with Jinu’s long strides. Another angry shout, though, made her eyes grow wide with fear.
Rumi tried to move faster, but everything hurt, and her legs felt like ramyeon noodles. As if in slow motion, she tripped, stepping wrong on a pebble, and she fell hard. Instantly, her knees and palms erupted in pain. She immediately burst into tears. She sobbed and screamed, with her mouth wide open and eyes screwed shut. Her tears cascaded down her face.
Even the sudden presence of somebody beside her did not scare her out of her grief. She cried, because she wanted to go home, because she wanted her to find her already, and because her hands and knees hurt and she knew that nobody in this place would kiss them better.
“Nonono, be quiet!” A heavy hand covered her mouth and nose to silence her screams. At this Rumi’s eyes flew open. “You have to stop! Demon girl be quiet!”
Rumi licked his hand. The demon recoiled in disgusted horror. “Gross!”
She kept crying and screaming, but now with her eyes open, Rumi saw everything was glowing blue around her. Blue threads flowed all around her, fading into pink as they stretched out across the landscape. This unfamiliar sight only made her cry harder.
Jinu’s eyes darted between the glowing strands, his jaw tight and shoulders rigid. His gaze stayed fixed on the threads as if he couldn’t look away. As Rumi continued to cry, the threads twisted tighter and tighter, weaving around each other. Through her blurred vision Rumi thought it moved like something alive, but it all fell away in an instant when something hit her face so hard that her vision flashed white. Her teeth clacked together hard, the force of the blow snapped her head.
The sound of the slap reverberated in the sudden silence. The crying stopped, with Rumi too shocked to do anything but bring her hand to her burning cheek.
Jinu breathed erratically, looking at his hand like he’d never seen it before. Horrified eyes met Rumi’s scared ones. He reached out, and Rumi flinched back.
“I-I didn’t mean to, I promise.” He reached again, and this time Rumi forced herself not to move backwards, not to try to escape. “I didn’t want to do that, I swear, but I had to make you stop crying!”
He reached out and picked her up, gently and gingerly, like she might shatter if he held her wrong. He brushed the dirt of her clothing, and summoned a cool cloth for her cheek.
“You understand, right? I didn’t have a choice, demon girl.” Rumi couldn’t possibly begin to understand what this demon wanted from her. He hurt her, but now begged for understanding, and it looked as though he might shatter to pieces if she did anything but agree.
For some reason, she felt far more afraid of this guilty, frantic gentleness than the harsh anger. Everything was slightly off, like she was entering a familiar room, but some stranger had moved all the furniture slightly to the left.
The cool cloth soothed her cheek, and Rumi felt so afraid, so she nodded. “I understand,” she whispered.
His shoulders sagged, and he released a trembling breath. He scrubbed his face with his hands and muttered under his breath something Rumi couldn’t make out. The pink threads had returned, replacing the blue and their whirlpool. The pinprick of light had vanished too.
Jinu sat for several minutes, just staring at the sky. That broken, horrified look in his eyes vanished, replaced by the sharp eyes and twisted smirk he’d worn when she first met him. He studied her, head cocked to the side, like an extremely complicated puzzle. His eyes glinted, and his lips twitched.
“What is your name, demon girl?” he asked. Rumi jumped at the unexpected question.
“R-Ryu Rumi.”
“Yea, that’s what I thought,” he said. Then he laughed.
He laughed and laughed until he was clutching his stomach and tears gathered in the corner of his eyes. She couldn’t see what was so funny. She wrapped her arms around her knees and tried not to cry again, since her cheek still stung.
“Ohh, Ryu Rumi. Wow, I really can’t believe this.” He looked again at the threads above their head and this time grinned in earnest, his fangs flashing dangerously. When he finally turned his manic, and calculated gaze to Rumi she felt a terrified shiver travel down her spine.
“Fate has seen fit to give me a gift in my fight against Gwi-Ma,” Jinu mused, “a key to a door I have been unable to open.”
Jinu grabbed her by the hand, and though his hand was gentle, it did not feel safe. “Don’t worry Ryu Rumi, I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
Even now, awake in the dark, carefully going through every part of her first day in the demon realm, Rumi can never remember much after that statement. She knows they went and talked to Gwi-Ma, and that Jinu somehow bargained for her life. He told her that when her patterns appeared, her family had been so disgusted and horrified by the creature in front of them that they had called the demon hunters to kill her. Jinu had said they struck her down and damned her to the demon realm. Gwi-Ma had wanted to kill her due to the human blood that stained her veins red, but he had begged the Demon King for a stay of execution, and argued that Rumi could prove her usefulness to his rule.
The first time that Rumi heard this part of the story, she couldn’t stop the feeling of wrongness that seeped into her mind. She believed Jinu when he said that Gwi-Ma wanted her dead. And she knew that hunters killed demons, without any doubt in her mind that was true, so if a hunter saw her pattern, of course they would kill her too. It all made sense, and yet, it rang false against everything Rumi believed in her heart.
Shortly after this conversation, Rumi had made the first category of her list about Before. Only three lines were written in the ‘true’ column.
- Warm hands on my head.
- Strong arms around me, holding me, and I know I am safe.
- My name is Ryu Rumi
Gwi-Ma had given Rumi a special mission, and Jinu said that if she could accomplish this task, she would officially be pardoned for her unforgivable sin of being too human. The human world would always hate her for being a monster, but the demon world could learn to love Rumi and her red blood. If she could sharpen her voice into a weapon and use it to take down the cruel hunters that raised their weapons to a child’s throat, Jinu promised that Rumi would belong and that Gwi-Ma would let her live.
Jinu told her all of this once they had returned from Gwi-Ma’s court and were back in that obsidian windowless mansion, and Rumi had clenched her fist, swallowed hard, and thanked Jinu for saving her. And during that first night in the demon realm, she did not sleep, but she also did not cry. Rumi locked the tears away, and decided in the night that she wanted to live.
On the last column of her list, Rumi put everything that she remembered, but feared were only the hopeful imaginings of a lonely child adjusting to a new and terrifying reality. She only thinks of this list on the darkest of nights, when her mind is already hazy with sleep. Only in those moments does she allow herself this indulgence.
- Women singing, all the time.
- Mama, but also another woman. Two mothers? Or an aunt?
- A voice that whispers in my head, reminding me that among the enemy, my faults and fears must never be seen. Showing me how to hide and how to fight. Promising me, that she would always find me, no matter what.
She lay in that same bed as she did her first night here, the same hard mattress, staring at the same stone ceiling. She reminded herself, as she often did, that she didn’t know if anything on this list was real. Maybe these memories were just lies created by a child to soothe herself. As much as her heart ached to believe that the woman would come find her, Rumi could not ignore the truth that weighed heavier each passing year. If, after eight years, she hadn’t come yet, the promise “I will always come for you” had likely been broken. That is, if the promise had ever been made at all. The thought stole her breath. In the utter stillness of her room, she clung to a stubborn, childlike part of herself that whispered the promise was real, and not broken, just yet unfulfilled. She wanted, so desperately, to still be waiting.
She placed her own hand on her forehead, mimicking the loving caress she remembered from Before. According to Jinu, whoever had once touched her so gently, now hated her for her patterns. She couldn’t imagine how such a tender touch could sour. If they loved her enough to hold her like that, the only thing that could make them change their minds was seeing the real her, the monster. Love for a human baby girl could never survive once it belonged to a demon. So in a way, that love was real, it just stopped belonging to Rumi.
At night though, she dreamed that the hunters found her and ripped her out of those strong arms. She could imagine their voices breaking as they cried and screamed for Rumi, and they fought for her to stay. She imagined that they reached for her. She let herself believe they were still looking for her, and that if she just waited long enough, she, whoever she may be, really will find her.
She imagined this tonight, after another nightmare where she woke up reaching for something, and fell asleep with her own hand on her forehead, stroking back her hair as if she could summon that warmth again in the dark.