Chapter Text
A text from Mira is a surprisingly good way to start off her day.
Kang Mira [05:27]: 'give muri her meds'
It comes through while Rumi’s hunched over her office desk at home, a mess of maps and notebooks scattered around her computer. The same thing happened yesterday morning and Rumi finds herself hoping that two days become three—and that three becomes routine. She bites back a smile and responds, savoring the lightness in her stomach and the smell of coffee.
Ryu Rumi [05:28]: 'Good morning, Mira. Thx!'
Mira probably won't be conscious again til it's 7:30AM when she finally gets up, for real, and says good morning back.
It’s been this way since yesterday: they’ve established this tentative sort of back-and-forth between them by now, and Rumi finds herself chomping at the bit to learn the next little thing about her.
Mira works in design, though the details still elude her. There's a brother somewhere in the picture, and distant-sounding parents. Nussa likes to pose for photos the most and is amazingly photogenic. Dustrag is a silly old man, and the younger cats—Muimui, Fucci—like laying around their big brother Boff as he curls up at Mira's feet while she works.
It is, unfortunately, difficult to offer up as much of Muri in return, so Rumi compensates elsewhere: work, hobbies, books that she likes. Mira always circles back to Muri though—almost like a guiding hand. 'Have you walked her today?' and 'Give her a pet for me?' and 'Could you get her something nice?' or, the much dreaded: 'I'll trade you photos of the cats for Muri's?'
(She’s glad for the pictures she took for Dr. Choi the other week.)
The thing is, Mira is shaving away minutes of Rumi's carefully-allotted time. Rumi spent all of yesterday lingering—slow by the doorway and smiling at her phone before getting to her truck, stopping to take a picture of a swallow along a power line she imagines Muimui might want to chase while walking to her office. It's all terribly distracting—something that she can't really accommodate when the next full moon is coming in just two days, especially since the whole ordeal with Dr. Choi already delayed her preparations badly enough.
And now it’s happening again.
Rumi puts her phone away and resumes what she’s doing: cross-referencing her organizer and her old, fraying camping list.
There’s still so much to be done. The weather outlook is the same as it was yesterday, and it had been foolish to hope for a last-minute change. The recent storm didn't last very long, but it’ll be a few more days before temperatures warm up enough to thaw out the considerable amount of snow and ice that had fallen. She’ll have to accommodate for that. There’s already enough firewood and fuel loaded onto her truck, but the small collection of blankets and coats in her trailer might not be enough for this winter full moon. She’ll order mylar thermal blankets, maybe, and stash them away in the surrounding trees.
She's cleaned and prepared her cookware set and kettle, and is now skimming through the local wildlife authority's hunting regulations again. It hardly ever changes from month-to-month, but that was the one thing Celine had been adamant about checking and re-checking.
She was uncompromising about it. Obsessive, even.
Rumi’s camp and the surrounding woods should be safe enough, though. It’s a little trailer set up in an unpopular camp ground northeast of town, over by Iseungang and halfway up the mountain at the center of the island.
Visitors to the camp are rare during the summer and practically nonexistent during dreary winter months—just the way she likes it. The surrounding forest is thick with pines and towering birch trees, so different from the sprawling oaks of the faraway village she grew up in, but Rumi is slowly learning to love this mountain’s winding roads and steep slopes—and the flowers. Resilient purple blossoms that push their way through the snow in early spring, a sign of longer days and shorter nights approaching. A little ways from the camp is a logging site. Rumi somehow finds the purr of their engines relaxing: some sign of civilization, even so far away from town.
The whole 'trailer out in the woods' thing has worked out well for her the past few years, especially once it became too impractical to drive all the way back to Celine’s property every month. It’s just unfortunate that it had to become so… permanent.
Rumi double-checks her maps, makes sure the hunting lines haven’t blurred in the forests around it, and calls that done. Thankfully everything is in order and there’s no need for a last-minute location change.
There’s a few more things she needs to do, listed down in neat bullet points. She can probably get some of them done tomorrow morning since classes are cancelled, but it’s a bit of a tight squeeze with all the meetings she’ll have in the afternoon.
She glances over her journal’s weekly schedule, trying to find a few meetings and errands she might be able to shuffle around—that's when her phone buzzes.
It's Mira, who seems to have stayed up instead of sleeping again.
Kang Mira [05:56]: 'hey are you doing anything tmrw morning?’
Suddenly her carefully-arranged schedule is subject to change.
Depending on what Mira needs from her, of course.
Thing is, if she doesn’t get these errands done by Thursday morning she’ll have to cram everything on Friday. And sometimes she needs the extra time to sit there and mope a little as the full moon approaches. As one does. For their emotions.
She should just tell Mira she’s busy. She and Dr. Choi have distracted her one too many times at this point.
Mira’s follow-up text comes through in just another moment.
Kang Mira [05:57]: ‘my toaster is broken’
Rumi takes a deep breath.
Kang Mira [05:57]: ‘i thought maybe you’d know how to fix it?’
And it all plays so vividly in her head: Mira, drowsy, deprived of a perfectly toasted slice of bread first thing in the morning. Caring for all five of her cats while her sandwich goes soft and untextured.
Okay, that’s hardly an emergency, but s toaster can’t be very complicated to fix and she could probably wedge in a quick half-hour trip to Mira’s apartment before she runs to the stores tomorrow.
Ryu Rumi [06:02]: ’What kind is it? Can you send me pics? Will be there.’
God.
Kang Mira [06:02]: ‘awesome :) thanks, will do’
She’s such a fool.
Rumi’s happy to learn that Mira’s toaster is a normal one: no app, no Bluetooth connection, no email registration. Thank fuck. It’s an old reliable one that has a browning knob and a lever.
She’s watching a simple repair video on YouTube while she scoops a spoonful of peanut butter onto one of her nicer plates, twirling it as tastefully as she can before peppering it with cinnamon and some sugar. She increases the volume of the video before opening one of the upper cabinets.
Apparently the most common things that break are the lever mechanism, the wires in the heating element, or just loose bits of metal causing a short. The browning dial can give it some trouble too, with contact prongs getting loose or lodged with grime.
She continues listening to the video as she searches for the little medicine bottle prescribed for ‘Muri Ryu’. She shakes a pill out and walks back to the counter, then gently presses the pill into the little peanut butter concoction she’s made. She lays the whole thing out onto a rubber placemat on the floor, still half-heartedly listening to the video, then shucks her shirt off.
The 'crepe place', as her brother lovingly calls it, is the smallest sit-in cafe Zoey's ever seen in her life. It's tucked into the very back of the campus library, almost like an aquarium: a long box with floor-to-ceiling windows for three of its walls.
Half of the space is taken up by the coffee bar and display, along with shelves and counter space pressed against the far wall. The other half has three little tables, and the whole place is brought together by a tasteful combination of brick, wood, and earthen tones, with the occasional plant here and there. It's quiet and quaint with a steady trickle of both students and professors.
Zoey and her brother are lucky enough to snag a highly-coveted table and order the same thing: a simple crepe filled with Nutella and sliced bananas. So far, it's lived up to the hype—perfectly thin with crisp edges, and filling that wasn't so thick that it became overwhelmingly rich towards the center. Zoey takes a bite and savors the decadent texture of chocolate spread evenly between each layer, well-matched with her coffee, a dusting of powdered sugar giving it just the right amount of extra sweetness at the tip of her tongue—fleeting and light.
She doesn't add anything else onto her crepe, having since outgrown her sweet tooth, but Yeon-so's looks like it's been buried in a mountain of whipped cream. Zoey's about to tease him about it when she very quickly remembers that he kinda got that habit from her.
She watches as he spreads the cream like it's a dollop of peanut butter—and is completely caught off-guard by the bittersweet sting of nostalgia.
Zoey is suddenly fifteen again, sitting beside a five-year-old version of him at the breakfast place near Incheon airport, their whole family huddled together at the crack of dawn to drop Zoey off for her flight back to America.
She'd smother her own crepes with cream, and he'd huff and puff with pouty lips until she'd reach over to help him do the same with his.
He was always a little temperamental when it was time for her to go back home after the summer. She often wished she wouldn't have to leave him behind again. But he's here now—a full head taller than her—and she isn't going away anymore.
Yeon-so looks at his phone half-way through a ramble and bite. “You don’t have to go for work yet, right?”
“Nah,” Zoey technically has a pile of paperwork and a clinic to open soon, but she decides that Abby will survive—probably?—and it can wait for today. “I’ve got time.”
Yeon-so grins at her and digs in.
“Yeon-so,” Zoey watches in horror as he scarfs down the last of his food. “Are you even chewing?”
“Mhmmph—!”
Zoey taps on his glass of water and he quickly follows, downing it like he’s been stuck in a desert.
They talked about pretty much everything: his Project Zomboid fixation, her failed attempts at a vegetable garden, the new truck simulator DLC. He rattles off another string of complaints about the professor who keeps giving him grief (and she honestly sounds like a piece of work, based on what he’s told her), but she carefully avoids every question about work.
It’s just kind of uncomfortable. Her first week taking over the clinic was rocky at best, with more than her fair share of clients that seemed apprehensive about the sudden change in management.
'You look a bit young,' one of them said, followed by, ‘Will Dr. Park still be around at least?'
Her saving grace is the Rumi and Mira of it all—with Muri in the middle. It was such a refreshing change from the rest of her week, despite all the times she wanted to throttle one or both of them. They listen to her. They take her feedback seriously and trust her to care for their companions. She can tell. It means a lot.
Even Rumi, clueless and misguided as she is, obviously cares. For Zoey, that’s enough to work with. But if it were her mother at the clinic that day, well, Rumi wouldn’t have even been given the benefit of the doubt.
Thankfully, the choice is now up to her. She just has to remember that.
Yeon-so elbows her. “You good?”
“I’m—” Zoey almost says fine, but nope! She catches it at the last minute. Old habit. “I’m just thinking about stuff.”
“Stuff,” Yeon-so repeats. He sounds a little whiny, and rightly so with how pathetically vague of a response that was.
Zoey spends about two seconds thinking about client confidentiality agreements and good workplace practices, but technically Yeon-so, in spirit, owns a bit of the clinic too so maybe she can get away with just changing their names and calling it a day. She taps on the table for a few seconds, deliberating.
“So there’s this girl.” Zoey starts slowly. “At work.”
Yeon-so leans in closer, eyebrows raised. He looks pleasantly surprised. “A girl.”
“I like how the ‘work’ part completely flew over your head.”
There’s a pause. “Is she pretty?”
“Case in point. Yeon-so, she's a client.” Zoey says while pointing her fork at him, then, softer: “But yes."
"Is she kind?"
That one is much easier to answer. “Yes.”
“So what’s so special about her?
“Thing is,” Zoey mumbles. "There's actually two of them."
Rumi makes it to her 8AM Signals lecture thirty-six seconds late, iced coffee in hand, and hair a little less-than-perfect.
Most of her students are already seated and ready, and every single one of them looks a little surprised. She’s never late. In fact she’s always five minutes early.
Rumi doesn’t hurry though, making no outward indication of rushing. She just walks to the front of the room while calmly pulling out some chalk from her folio, easing right into the second half of their pre-final review.
"Today we'll go over Fourier transforms and series,” she begins, ignoring how some of the students wince and groan. “We’ll have problems on finding the energy in a function, finding the response of an LTI system given an input and using the Eigenfunction property, then decomposing signals to frequency spectra. As usual I’ll solve the problem sets with you and pause to ask questions—you’re welcome and encouraged to ask for clarifications at any point.”
She pauses to look around. No one says a word, but there’s a few nods letting her know they’re at least paying attention.
“Follow along.”
Rumi takes out her notes, already arranged by topic, and begins writing on the board, appreciating the smooth glide of well-made chalk on a clean blackboard.
It’s the part of the semester where everyone seems to be holding on for dear life. Her poor students look exhausted—obviously sleep-deprived and stressed. She’s no exception at this point: the morning had slipped away from her and suddenly she was scrambling to make it to campus on time. She’s distracted today. Not completely out of it but a little off-center.
This class, unlike Circuits, isn't very intuitive to learn or teach. Everything is an abstraction. From the very beginning, it’s already hard enough to concretely define what a signal even is. All this math that they’re learning isn’t a physically observable phenomenon but is instead a set of rules that you can apply to anything that could be defined as a signal—so how does one even effectively get that point across?
Through effort and patience. Both of which she’s willing to offer up for her students.
“At each frequency, we get a magnitude and phase." Rumi pauses to stare at the expectantly, sweeping the room. "What's the initial phase at 3ωₒ?”
“3π/2.” Someone answers.
“3π/2 what?” Rumi taps on the board with her chalk. “Burgers? Bears? It’s an angle—what is the unit?”
“It’s. Um.” They stutter. “Rads?”
“Good.”
There’s a buzz in her pocket, then a flutter in her stomach. Rumi ignores it for now and keeps writing out the rest of the solution, clearly explaining every step.
Is the message from Mira? Is she sending her a photo of breakfast for today?
Or maybe Dr. Choi finally replied to her email asking about dental chew toys?
It's silly but she was self-conscious about potentially having bad (dog) breath during the home visit. And if Dr. Choi was going to insist on having her undergo a full dental inspection then Rumi could at least try the best she can to make sure her teeth and gums (and fangs) are clean.
Rumi zones back into the problem she’s working on, left on autopilot.
“Excuse me—Professor Ryu?”
“Yes?” Rumi turns to face her students.
“I think there’s supposed to be a minus sign over there.”
“Where?” She frowns, facing back towards the board to re-trace her work and check against her notes. Her shoulders droop when she sees it. It’s a solid seven lines of math up from where she stopped.
“Oh.”
She was going to have to start over from that point on.
“You’re right. Thank you.”
Rumi picks up the eraser to undo half of her work so far and tries not to smash her head into the blackboard.
Zoey is convinced that if her brother paid attention in class the same way he did while she spilled him her workplace drama, he’d be out of uni with flying colors.
Yeon-so was so invested. It was adorable. They were nearly kicked out of the library cafe with how loud they were at some point, then had to rush to the engineering building because he almost forgot about his lectures for the day. He had dragged her through the university courtyard, pulling on Zoey’s jacket sleeve and refusing to let go until she made it to the end of her story, so cheerful and animated as he listened and reacted. She feels better already, his warmth melting away the stress that sat heavy on her shoulders.
They make it to his floor with a few minutes to spare, the current classes just now beginning to end.
“You’ll find your way out just fine?” He checks, hiking the strap of his backpack up his shoulders.
“I’ll be fine,” Zoey shoos him away. “Go on, go on! Don’t be late!”
“Will you come over for dinner later?”
“You just want me to bring you food.”
“Shumai from the dim sum place, please?” He grins. “I also have the sneaking suspicion that Abby’s seeing someone and I wanna know more!”
“Oh my god, when did you become so nosy?” Zoey groans. “Fine. Since it’s our last night of peace before your parents home.”
“I promise to remember to make rice! Okay, I gotta go for real—I’ll see ya!”
Zoey retraces her steps down the hallway after waving him off, trying to go as quickly as she can before the hallway gets crowded with students. She pulls out her phone to check her calendar and is happy to see that she doesn’t have any morning appointments. Maybe she’ll pick a coffee up for Abby on her way back—or some lunch?
Then she hears an awfully familiar voice.
She stops, brows pulling together in an attempt to hear better. It’s coming from the doorway she just passed. She leans back to take a little peek into the classroom and—oh.
It’s Rumi-nim.
She’s in a stylish button-up shirt and slacks, explaining something to a full classroom. But more than just the way she looks, it's the way she's standing in front of the room: confident and unyielding.
It's such a surprise. She seems so different from all the times Zoey’s seen her at the clinic. But Zoey supposes it makes sense because it isn't like she's the same at work and outside of it herself—and it’s only when Rumi-nim turns and makes eye-contact with her does she realize she’s been staring.
Rumi sees her near the end of her lecture.
She's looking through the doorway of the classroom, left slightly ajar, staring at her all pretty and confused and surprised. Rumi falters mid-sentence for the first time the entire semester, her words coming up to an abrupt stop when she meets Dr. Choi's eyes through the door. The silence is brief but it stretches long enough, far longer than she'd ever allow, and all the while something warm and light is coiling in her stomach.
Dr. Choi looks different when she isn't wearing scrubs.
She’s in a cropped sweater and a pair of shorts over her leggings, a fascinating choice given that it’s freezing outside. Rumi swallows thickly without realizing what she’s doing, eyes glossing over when she turns back towards the board where all the writing now looks foreign to her. She pulls on her collar, suddenly a bit warm.
Right. The math—she’s teaching. She’s still in class.
Rumi blinks at herself at the front of the room, shaken out of a daze, and the last thing she sees when she looks back is Dr. Choi waving at her all apologetic before she dips out of sight—as though suddenly realizing she was being quite the distraction.
Her students are watching her like nosey little hawks.
Some are already looking out the door, catching all but a second of Dr. Choi disappearing into the hallway. Rumi quickly schools her expression, smooth and unreadable, but there's not much to be done about the flush she can feel crawling up her neck and ears just as the clock hits the end of the hour.
She probably doesn't need to run away—and she isn't!—but she’s pretty sure that Rumi-nim—her client—the one with the possibly, mildly illegal dog—just caught her ogling her at her workplace.
Which is kind of awkward.
So of course Zoey books it.
She weaves through a river of students that all tower above her. Just her luck, it looks like she's been caught in-between class hours. When did kids get so tall? She cranes her neck, trying to find the building entrance she and her brother had taken on the way in.
"Dr. Choi?"
Through it all, Zoey's still in her head and thinking about Rumi-nim.
She looked so ruthlessly intelligent, standing in front of a room that was under her complete control, the space so quiet that Zoey could almost hear the scribbling of lead onto paper at every pause of her clear, effortless voice. It reminds her a little of the first time they met, back at the clinic, when Rumi had stood up and smiled at her and offered her a handshake. If she wasn’t so annoyed that time she would have probably thought she was charming.
"Um—Dr. Choi?"
That wasn't the case last Monday though. Zoey remembers it as she shoulders through another bunch of students—the way Rumi showed up with a goofy smile and a box of cupcakes then walked up so, so close to her.
But—ugh!—she can't give in to all that accidental charm. She has a dog to take care of. She has stupid decisions to be mad about!
Zoey finally spots the exit, unfurling the jacket pinched beneath her arm as she walks towards the cold outside.
"Dr. Choi!"
Zoey whips her head around, her brisk walk slowing to a sudden stop. She frowns. The hallway is noisier now and she can’t hear very well, but did someone just call after her? Was that—?
Something warm bumps into her shoulder, gently, and it's Rumi-nim. She's standing right next to her, flushed and winded. Did she chase after her through the hallway? The thought tickles at her chest.
"Sorry!" Rumi-nim fusses over her, hands landing on her shoulders to steady her. She looks relieved to have finally caught up to her, even as she awkwardly lets go of Zoey's arms once there was no longer a risk of falling over. "I didn't mean to be bump into you," she smiles sheepishly. "You just stopped so suddenly, I don't think you could hear me earlier. Are you alright?"
"Hi!" Zoey squeaks. "I'm—I'm good. I prommy."
She sighs in relief.
Here, outside of the clinic, Zoey allows herself the luxury of looking—for real.
Ryu Rumi is apparently a professor at her brother's college and is infuriatingly attractive when she's at work. She has glasses pushed up to the crown of her head, the top two buttons of her loose dress shirt left opened and sleeves folded up. Good god. It's a little unfair—and so is all the turmoil that this woman throws her into once she remembers everything else about her. She can already feel a little headache creeping up when she's reminded that her strange and beautiful dog could be within two feet of a bottle of cough syrup at this very moment.
"I didn't mean to distract you earlier." Zoey finally says, meeting Rumi's smile with her own apologetic one. "It was kind of fascinating, though, no lie! Like, I could visibly see the train of thought get completely derailed and fall to the side of the cliff—"
"And so did all my students."
Zoey nods sagely. "And so did all your students. Did the train explode at the bottom of the canyon too? Did you at least get recover the lecture?"
"It was a lost cause, sadly. Thankfully it was about the end of the period."
"So not too horribly-timed of a distraction."
"Nope." Rumi-nim grins. "Besides, you're always welcome to."
Zoey raises an eyebrow.
Rumi quickly clarifies: "I mean it's always good to see you—distraction notwithstanding. ”
There it is again, that disarmingly earnest look on her face that's gotten her out of so much trouble. Zoey doesn't fight the feeling, at least not this time, and she doesn't fight it either when Rumi takes a quick glance to her watch, then asks:
“Would you like to have some tea in my office?”
As soon as Rumi closes the door behind her, Dr. Choi turns in place and gives her an expectant look. The light from her office window is dreary and washed out in white, but it does nothing to dull the color of her green sweater and the rosy flush of her cheeks, reddened by the cold. Rumi does her best to be polite and not stare, at least not so obviously, but she almost can't help it: Dr. Choi is beautiful.
“Well. Have you been good?”
And is apparently going to kill her dead in her office. Rumi’s mind screeches to a halt.
“Sorry. Am I—what?”
“Muri’s meds.” Zoey clarifies with a mischievous grin. “You made me a promise!”
Clarity catches up to her, and Rumi’s shoulders relax as she laughs, red in the ears, feeling a bit of second-hand embarrassment at remembering her own words from a few days ago. That was a different Rumi. That was seven-hours-of-meetings-on-a-Monday Rumi. Today's Rumi just wants to not make a fool of herself to the pretty girl in her office.
“Of course. Yes.” Rumi answers. “She hasn't missed a day, Dr. Choi.”
“You really don't have to call me that. Zoey's just fine.” She insists, hands clasped behind her back. “In fact, shouldn’t I be the one calling you Dr. Ryu today?”
Rumi wrinkles her nose. “Oh, god. No.”
“Professor Ryu?”
“Never call me anything my students do." She insists. "Just Rumi, please?”
Zoey laughs. "Well, since you're asking so nicely!"
"Muri's meds haven't been giving her any stomach problems? No appetite loss? And where’s that mess you were talking about on our way here?” Zoey says, looking around while Rumi waits for her kettle to boil. “Because this is probably one of the cleanest offices I’ve ever seen in my life!”
“She hasn’t had any trouble with the medicine, no.” Rumi answers, taking out two mugs and some tea. “And I just meant that my office is a bit cluttered today. I wasn’t, erm, expecting a guest?”
Zoey laughs, crouching by her philodendron to inspect its leaves. “I’m a vet—you cannot imagine the kind of messes I’m used to at work. You get desensitized to shit. Literally!”
"Literally?"
"Yes, literally." Zoey stands back up then side-steps her to walk towards her bookshelf, giving her desk a little shake as she passes it. Rumi tilts her head, curious. Why'd she do that?
“You have a lovely office, Rumi." Zoey says sincerely, admiring the thriving spider plant she has on one of the middle shelves. "It’s cozy. I get the feeling you spend a lot of time here, so I'm glad."
“Thank you.”
"Cozier than your apartment, at least!"
"That was almost a compliment." Rumi chuckles.
"You'll just have to trust me when I say that it is!" Zoey gets up to her tip-toes to get a closer look at a small plant at the very top of row of the bookshelf. “What’s this one?”
“Let me.” Rumi steps in closer, placing her hand at the small of Zoey’s back as she reaches up and over from behind to pick up the little pot. She feels Zoey tense for the very brief second that her front presses up against her—and then Zoey relaxes, almost leaning into the steadying presence of her palm. “It’s called a ‘string of turtles.’ Turtles are your favorite, right?”
“How did you know?” Zoey asks, pleasantly surprised, as Rumi hands her the small pot. It’s still very young—it’s barely long enough to droop out of the edges of the pot. Rumi doesn’t immediately let go, letting her hand linger over Zoey’s smaller one in case she drops it.
“You were putting up some turtle ornaments at your office, I think. During Muri’s first check-in.”
“Not that she was there.” Zoey raises an eyebrow.
“I know, I know.” Rumi says defensively. "But you did get to meet her eventually!”
"Except that time, you weren't there." Zoey doesn't relent.
Then Rumi lifts up the hand hovering beneath Zoey's until they're both cuppping the small pot, holding it up between them. Rumi looks at her very seriously. "I'll make it up to you. I swear it on my tiny plant?"
"I can't believe this is about to work."
Rumi breaks into a grin. "Is it?"
“You have got to stop doing this to me.” Zoey says with sigh, though she doesn't sound very upset. She pushes the plant back into Rumi's hands so she can return ito the shelf.
“So the tiny plant's working?”
"No." Zoey leans in to brush away some dirt from the pot that had fallen onto Rumi's collar.
Then she straightens it out so that it evenly frames her neck, and all the while Rumi stays very very still, her hands hanging awkwardly at her sides as she holds her breath.
"The big, brown, and charmingly sad eyes are.”
Zoey cradles her warm cup of tea with both hands, sitting at the opposite side of Rumi's desk from her. She’s looking up at her diplomas, framed on the wall above her chair.
“Did you always want to be a university professor?”
“Pretty much. At least as far as I can remember. My aunt said I wanted to be a firefighter for a bit when I was a kid, though.”
Well. There’s a mental image.
Rumi throws her the question back. “Did you always want to be a vet?”
“What I always wanted to be, as a kid, was like my mom.” Zoey chuckles. “But at some point I began to want it for me too.”
“So the clinic was practically yours since you learned how to walk, huh.”
“Not really.” Zoey pauses to blow on the curling steam. “I think she didn’t want to pressure me into it. But I know it means the world to her. We had to close down the clinic for a bit when we moved to the States for a few years, but it broke her heart. She had to come back. My father fell in love with his job there, so.” Zoey shrugs.
“Divorced parents,” Rumi echoes what Zoey told them the first day she met her.
"Bingo." Zoey nods. “Am I oversharing yet?”
“You’re good,” Rumi smiles. “Here, I’ll share back. My aunt taught me how to garden.”
“The one who kept Muri before you?”
“Yeah.” Rumi wraps her hands around her mug, pulling it closer. “We had a pretty big yard where I grew up. It’s uh, south of here. Do you know Ara?”
"That’s like—way past the desert!”
“We’re closer to the coast.” Rumi continues. “Our property had this hedge with a small gap in it. I—or, what I mean is, Muri would jump through the gap when she was much younger after running around in the forest.”
Zoey feels her blood pressure spike yet again. “You let her loose in the forest as a puppy?”
“It’s different out there! And she was fine!”
Rumi’s laughing. She’s laughing.
“Celine never said anything, but she’d always trim that part of the hedge in case it grew new branches.” Rumi pauses, a little contemplative. There’s a small, sad smile on her face. “She didn’t want Muri to get hurt or scratched on the way back home, I think.”
“Have you visited lately?”
“Mm, nope.” Rumi shakes her head.
“Right.” Zoey feels silly. “The estrangement.”
“It’s okay.” Rumi shrugs. “I like things the way they are just fine.”
Zoey doesn’t quite believe her.
Well, fuck.
It’s seven in the evening and she got almost nothing done. Rumi leans her elbows onto her desk, massaging her temples as she looks over her organizer’s checklist, woefully unmarked:
· drive the supplies over to the campsite before Friday
· buy the blankets and stash them around the trails
· plan for a big meal that afternoon (minimize hunt?)
· inspect windows' weather-proof seals and gaskets
· fill up the camper’s fresh water tank
· double-check that the generator is running
She should have expected for her afternoon meetings to run late. Should have had the foresight to do this earlier in the week.
(But, somehow, she can’t bring herself to regret spending her only free hour of the day getting to know Zoey over a cup of tea.)
There’s more time tomorrow, even if Thursday is cutting it close. If she manages to fix Mira’s misbehaving toaster quick enough, then she can be in and out in less than half an hour and use the rest of the morning for a few trips up to Iseungang.
Mira's apartment is colorful.
Rumi almost needs a moment to adjust. It's more color than she's used to seeing in a single room, but it works, somehow. Less chaos and more strategy: a selective blend of hues that pop out in some places and mellow out in others. She feels an itch to index and study and characterize every surface in Mira's living room until she's figured out what makes it all come together so well—just like how she feels an itch to know Mira herself.
Both of their apartments are facing the same way as far as she can remember, but there's so much more sunlight in here. It stretches out from Mira’s three windows, draping across the space as the morning passes. It spills over her orange couch and vibrant carpet before physics forces it to angle through her glass coffee table, bright and a bit uneven. Off to the side, sitting atop a narrow display table against a wall, are the flowers she gave Mira last Saturday. They’re already beginning to wilt, but they’ve been watered and placed in a vase with care.
One of the room's most prominent fixtures is a tall and complicated cat tower. There are also little wooden cubbies that have cushions in them, and a few boxes that have been set aside. Tucked away in the corner is a pile of plushies: worms and bananas, along with something that looks like a tiny fishing rod.
In the middle of it all is Mira—and Rumi hasn't really figured out the words to go with that particular buzzing in her head quite yet.
"Okay, Bob the Builder," Mira teases, stepping back to give Rumi space to move through the doorway.
"Bob the—?" Rumi huffs as she adjusts her grip on her tool bag. The protest dies on her tongue when she sees Mira's little smile. Rumi stares down at her tool bag. "Better to have it and not need it,” she mumbles.
Mira raises an eyebrow. "Even a mallet?"
"If everything goes sideways I could at least threaten your toaster into behaving itself?”
That makes Mira laugh, and Rumi finally steps into the apartment with a bit of self-satisfaction as the sound rings around her. She carefully slips out of her shoes, sets them aside, and turns around to look at her.
Mira’s pretty—that much Rumi's known for a little while now.
But she'd like to think about it, still: her hair lazily thrown up in a claw clip, her glasses, the oversized sweater she's bundled up in. Rumi might be imagining it, but Mira's even got a dusting of pink along her cheeks.
"Well, here I am." Rumi smiles up at Mira, even as she awkwardly shifts her weight between her feet. "At your service?"
Mira’s eyebrows inch up, and her face reddens the tiniest bit more. “At my—?” She huffs out a short laugh.
Rumi just shrugs.
“Come on,” Mira beckons her to sit on the couch, smiling in amusement. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
Mira has five commissioned paintings of her cats framed and hanging on the main wall of her living room.
Super normal. For sure.
It is, in Rumi's opinion, objectively a little funny. At the same time they're also really, really good paintings. It makes perfect sense given what she's learned about Mira: she’s very artistic, seems fairly wealthy, and loves her cats more than life itself.
Rumi does her best to appreciate each of the paintings while she waits for her coffee. There’s a different style for every cat. She can recognize them from the photos Mira had sent her the past few days, and is increasingly thrilled when she realizes each style matches their personalities a little.
Muimui’s painting is made with bold strokes and and playful colors; Dustrag’s is muted and dignified, like an old war general’s; Nussa’s portrait is vividly romantic, framed in plants and almost dream-like; Fucci’s is stark and mysterious and reminds her a little of film noir.
She feels something warm nuzzling against her shin before she can take a good look at the last painting, and it's—vibrating? Making a little sound? Rumi blinks and finally looks down, and—
It's Boff!
In the flesh!
As charming and polite as he looks on his painted portrait, looking up at Rumi with bright and curious eyes. It seems he's resolved his indecision with regards to her character, and Rumi is surprised at how relieved she is to see him willingly approach her. The other cats are hiding away for now, but she supposes that's better than active hostility?
"Hi," she says gently, her hands curling and uncurling on her lap, unsure what to do.
He meows, his face upturned towards her and his ear twitching. She’s gripped by the urge to hold him—is helpless against it, really—and she slowly extends her hand, nervous that she might scare him away. He takes a curious sniff.
Rumi wonders if he knows who she really is. She has a working theory that other animals could tell. They’re always more alert around her: cats were more suspicious and dogs a little scared.
But Boff doesn’t seem to mind, if he does.
He leans forward until she feels his whiskers tickle against her knuckles, until eventually there’s the little boop of a wet nose against her fingers. She turns her hand over. There’s a second of deliberation. Then Boff leans up again, nuzzling into her hand fully, and Rumi feels something that she doesn’t quite know how to name burst in her chest, warm and giddy and wonderful.
“It’s nice to see you again,” she says with a delighted laugh, scratching behind his ears. “Would you like to be friends this time?”
“Pretty big improvement from last time you dropped by, if you ask me.”
Mira's back now, two steaming cups in hand. She’s grinning at her by the archway to the kitchen, a small gray and striped cat weaving between her legs.
Rumi gives her a wry smile. “Much less hissing, yes. I’m sorry to have startled them like that.”
“You’re good,” Mira waves it off, approaching the couch with long and graceful strides. “But you’ll have to forgive me for sequestering most of them into my room this morning. I left the door cracked in case they want to come out, but it seems only these two feel sociable today.”
The smaller cat—Muimui—hides behind Mira as she shyly follows. Boff continues to warm up to Rumi, now rubbing his side along her shin as she pets him.
“He probably remembers that you were nice to him at the vet when the other dog was stressing him out,” Mira takes a seat next to Rumi on the couch, mindful of the two cats around them as she sets the mugs onto the coffee table. “The others might take a bit more convincing. But this one here might be curious?”
Muimui’s looking at Rumi but remains hidden between Mira’s legs, curling between them with her tail slinking around a slender ankle. She looks even smaller in person, like Rumi could scoop her up in the palm of her hand if she really wanted to—the littlest of the bunch. She tries to push her luck, slowly moving the hand that’s been petting Boff closer towards Muimui, but she hisses and quickly darts away.
Rumi can’t help the little pout. “I’m guessing she can smell Muri on me.”
“She’s just shy,” Mira says, watching Muimui sprint back into the hallway and to her bedroom. “Give it a few weeks. Before you know it she’ll be running around the living room and trying to land on you from the shelf like a sugar glider.”
“Will she—will she actually?”
“Could happen.” Mira laughs. “Wouldn’t be the first time!”
Mira likes that Rumi’s pretty respectful of Boff and Muimui’s space. There was no exaggerated cooing, no entitled chasing around, no attempts to wrangle them from the ground for a cuddle—something that she absolutely hated about a few guests she’s had in the past. Her cats live here. This is their home. They aren’t attractions or entertainment.
Rumi seems to instinctively understand this, patiently letting Boff sniff at her hand and leg.
Then he does something that catches the both of them off guard: he leans back and jumps up from the floor onto Rumi’s lap.
Mira’s eyebrows shoot up.
Rumi panics, letting out a startled little ‘oh!’ when he lands, her arms swooping in like she’s about to try to catch and steady him, but he is a cat, so there is no need, and now she’s just sitting there on the couch with her hands up in the air, staring up at Mira with big, wide eyes and a startled expression on her mouth.
“Mira, Mira! He—” Rumi whispers excitedly, and Mira bites back a smile because why is she whispering? Why is that so cute? “He’s sitting on me! Wait, why is he a little sharp—ow, ow, claws?”
“Huh.” Mira pulls out her phone from her pocket. “He likes you more than I thought.”
“What is that—is he purring?” Rumi looks equal parts nervous and elated, like she doesn’t know what to do with him or herself, and Mira can just perfectly imagine an excitedly wagging tail and flattened little dog ears on her with the look on her face.
Which. Hopefully it wasn't a weird thing to imagine on your neighbor.
Then Boff starts turning in place, kneading at her legs with his paws until he settles down and sits curled up on himself, Rumi watching with such obvious wonder.
Oh, this is going to kill her head. In, like, a good way. The butterflies rally in Mira’s stomach, strong as a storm, and she’ll ignore for it now—please, please, not now—she needs to find the stupid fucking camera app on her phone before Boff moves.
“Rumi,” Mira says, voice coming out softer than she expected. Rumi takes a little while before she looks up at her, like she can’t help but stare down and coo at Boff a moment longer.
Mira points her phone at the both of them, tilts her head from behind the camera.
“Smile?”
“Are you two just… going to keep watching me work the whole time?”
Rumi groans, red in the cheeks. She’s fiddling with a device that has a display and a pair of probes, one in red and one in black, touching the red one’s metal tip along the different prongs connected to the toaster’s browning knob until it beeps.
Nussa had decided to come out of Mira’s bedroom a little while ago. They were expecting a whole lot of hissing, but maybe Boff’s ease around Rumi had softened the others’ nerves. She just walked into the kitchen and completely ignored Rumi, until she eventually hopped onto the opposite end of the table from her to sit.
And stare.
And judge.
“I’m getting a bit of performance anxiety."
It doesn’t help that she can see Fucci from the corner of her eye, a little dark spot peeking through the edge of the kitchen entryway, curious yet wary, happy to keep his distance but an audience still.
Thankfully, it seems Boff and Muimui are preoccupied with whatever thing she can hear jingling and flailing around from the living room.
"You literally teach in front of a class for a living.”
"You'd be surprised how few toasters I actually fix at work.”
“Oh.” Mira says with a teasing lilt. “Should I call someone else to fix it, then?”
Rumi pauses, looks up at her with a raised eyebrow, then.
"It'll be the crunchiest, most even piece of toast you've ever had when I'm done with this."
She can’t bring herself to be too huffy about it when Mira’s laughing all amused like that.
"By the way, the bone—"
Rumi starts, absentmindedly, forcing one of the bent contact prongs into shape. Mira appreciates how her forearm flexes as she does it, her tendons straining by the wrist while she grips her pair of pliers and twists. The metal yields against the tool, and Rumi isn’t even really breaking a sweat.
Mira crosses her arms and stares up at the ceiling. She’s feeling a little hot under the collar. “Yeah?”
“Um.” Rumi suddenly stops like she just caught herself about to say something stupid. “Actually, never mind.”
She looks pale as she backtracks, but Mira is curious.
“Wait, no. Tell me? The bone?"
"For Muri," Rumi clarifies, clumsily dropping the pliers as she fumbles for the device she was using earlier—a multimeter, she called it. She turns the dial all the way to the upper right then touches the probes together and it beeps. “The one you picked out at the store. It was well-received and very enriching."
Mira snickers. "She tell you that?"
"Yep."
"I see you've taught her great communication skills along with all that math."
Now it’s time for the moment of truth.
They slot two slices of bread into the toaster and push the lever down.
Rumi’s pleased to see the little indicator light turn on, along with the hum of something happening. When the heating coils begin to glow red, she allows herself a self-satisfied smile.
She leans in closer to watch, and beside her Mira does the same. They’re shoulder-to-shoulder as they crowd over the toaster, a giddy sense of anticipation setting around them both as they wait for the bread to pop up. Even Nussa, who seemed determined to give Rumi the cold shoulder, walked over to take a peek between them, while Fucci took her spot at the far end of the table, sitting on his hind legs and trying to get a look.
The seconds pass—sure, it’s toasting now, but it has one last hurdle to clear: is it going to pop the bread back out?
They watch with bated breath as the toaster continues. It doesn’t take long for Rumi to start tapping in impatience. Nothing yet. Nothing yet.` It’s going to happen any time now, they’re sure, just a few more seconds and—
Click.
The bread pops out.
They both gasp in delight.
“That’s sick!” Mira grabs at Rumi’s arm with her hand, shaking her in excitement, spooking away Nussa who yelps and jumps off the table.
“Yeah?” Rumi gives her a lopsided grin, evidently pleased with herself.
“Yeah!” Mira nods, her hand curling around Rumi’s arm now, the pair of them still kind of smushed together over the toaster. “Come on.”
Mira reaches over to grab one of the pieces then holds it up towards Rumi.
“Fair that you get the first try.”
Rumi hesitates, ears bright red, looking at the piece of toast then back up towards Mira, who’s just staring at her expectantly with an easy expression on her face.
Mira doesn’t seem to be making a big deal out of this. Rumi can do that too. She can be chill. About being hand-fed bread. By her beautiful neighbor.
“Okay.”
She takes a bite. It’s somehow the best piece of toast she’s ever had in her life.
“Good?” Mira grins.
Rumi bashfully looks down towards the table, nudging Mira with her shoulder, smiling at herself.
“It’s pretty dang good.”
Fucci falls asleep on the couch next to Rumi.
Mira finds them there when she comes back from preparing a little takeaway box of stir-fried vegetables, insisting that Rumi take some home.
She’s watching him quietly with her hands folded on her lap. She’s so careful with him. Gentle as she runs the back of her knuckles along his fur, light enough not to wake him. He’s close enough to her that his body’s touching her leg a little—probably enjoying Rumi’s seemingly endless warmth—and Mira wonders: Is he dreaming? Is it a good one, full of softness and safety and warmth?
“Thank you for today.” Mira says as she hands the container over. “It’s almost noon. You ended up staying a couple hours.”
“It’s fine,” Rumi slowly takes it, the tips of their fingers brushing as she does. “Anytime.”
“I might take you up on that.” Mira warns lightheartedly. “Just so you know.”
Rumi gives her a lopsided smile. “I look forward to it.”
Rumi, laying anxious and awake, remembers being small enough to get carried home in a thick blanket.
She'd wake up feeling warm—the numbness of her fingertips fading away as she nuzzled into the shelter of arms wrapped around her. She'd hear the crunch of snow with each step Celine took, and when she opened her eyes everything slowly came into focus: the glittering branches coated in ice, the familiar shape of their house just a stone's throw away.
Sometimes, she'd be able to catch the full moon as it dipped into the horizon, its pale glow already washing out as the sunrise grew stronger with every passing minute. She remembers asking Celine how she always finds her.
'You'd always let me know when you're home, aegi.'
She thinks about it again.
'I just have to listen.'
Is anyone listening this time?
Anxiety creeps along like the frost on her window pane. She pulls on her blanket until it covers her bare chest, curling up until she's small again. Celine had never minced words, reminding her again and again why it was important to prepare as diligently as possible. When she wakes up the next morning, naked and miserably alone in the snow, frostbite can set as early as fifteen minutes. Hypothermia in forty. And then in an hour, or two—
Her phone buzzes and it cuts her train of thought. She didn't even realize that her breathing picked up. Who's texting her at this hour?
Kang Mira [23:47]: IMG121125.JPG
Kang Mira [23:47]: dustrag pic bc you didn't see him today. he was just sleeping the whole time
Kang Mira [23:48]: wait why does it say read. are you awake?
Rumi lets out a shaky laugh.
Ryu Rumi [23:50]: I couldn't sleep. Travel jitters for my trip tomorrow. Thank you for the photo of Dustrag. :)
Kang Mira [23:51]: ah. bummer
Kang Mira [23:51]: nervous flyer?
Ryu Rumi [23:51]: Something like that!
The bubbles come and go for a minute. Rumi lets her phone fall onto her chest, warm against her skin. She picks it up again to see if Mira's done typing, and then decides to check her other notifications.
Zoey Choi | [email protected] | 12/11/2025 23:14
Subject: Chalk Video-
pls watch this video about some chalk that math teachers apparently go crazy abt. but actually maybe you already have twenty five boxes of Hagoromo chalk. lowk i think you would! :) anyway i didn't want to grab your number from the file that didn't seem very professional but i just HAD to so, anyway, goodnight!
Rumi's tentative smile grows wider. She clicks on the video—but not before sending a polite reply to Zoey with her number signed at the end. Might as well spare her the anguish of stealing it from her file.
As soon as the video starts, Mira's reply comes through, the small notification badge popping up at the top of her screen.
Kang Mira [23:57]: [38 image attachments]
This time, Rumi's laughter is full and unrestrained.
Tomorrow will be fine, she realizes. Just like all the other days before it.
art by chrysa3tos
