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It was supposed to be fun. A light question to give the fans some amusing facts about their beloved artists. A way to help the girls relax before the interviewer ambushed them with harder questions later.
Bobby, unfortunately, was the only one who understood exactly where this was heading.
He was powerless to stop it.
“Have you ever done anything out of spite?”
The three girls frowned, giving the question some thought.
“Yes,” Rumi answered carefully, glancing at the other two. “I believe we have.”
“Can you give us an example?” the interviewer asked with a conspiratorial smile.
“I don’t think any of our examples are particularly interesting,” Rumi deflected smoothly.
Mira snorted beside her, while Zoey tried, and failed, to hide her laugh behind a cough. Rumi’s head snapped from one side to the other, thoroughly betrayed.
“I believe your bandmates disagree with you,” the interviewer said. “Mira? Zoey? Any interesting examples?”
Mira leaned forward, a smirk already tugging at her lips.
“Well, we did—”
“Don’t you dare, Mira!” Rumi warned.
“Come on, Rumiiii,” Zoey whined, eyes sparkling with mischief. “It’s been forever. It’s a fun story! The fans would totally love it!”
The audience immediately chimed in.
“Come on, Rumi!”
“Please, Rumi!”
“We want to know!”
“For us!”
Rumi bit her lip and glanced backstage, where Bobby stood with his face buried in his hands in utter defeat. After taking a moment to lower his blood pressure, he gave her a shaky thumbs up.
Rumi sighed, more dramatically than she usually would, purely for the cameras.
“Fine,” she relented, trying to sound far more reluctant than she actually was.
Mira and Zoey knew better. Rumi wasn’t truly against telling the story. She just needed to maintain her image as the responsible leader. Her bandmates had enough evidence proving otherwise.
Mira continued, openly smirking now.
“A few years ago, we were in the final stages of releasing our second album. We just needed the final approval from the board members. We’d sent the draft tracklist, plus a few extra songs we were still debating.”
She paused briefly, purely for dramatic effect.
“We expected minor feedback. Maybe changing the order of the tracks, replacing one song with another, normal stuff. Instead, they wanted to change the entire album.”
Gasps and murmurs rippled through the audience.
Huntr/x was famous for producing some of the best music in the industry. Every album was packed with hits. The idea that an entire album could be considered inadequate felt almost absurd.
Rumi sat perfectly still beside Mira, face blank, posture rigid, staring straight ahead like a soldier receiving orders. Zoey looked seconds away from scowling outright. Mira wasn’t even trying to hide her irritation.
“We were shocked,” Mira continued. “We’d worked really hard on that album and we loved it. They kept saying they wanted something more ‘on trend’. Something they thought would appeal more to current audiences.”
Her tone turned mocking at the memory.
“They picked a handful of songs they approved of and told us to redo the entire album around that sound.”
The silence in the auditorium became suffocating. The disbelief was palpable.
Outside the venue, social media was already exploding with outrage from fans watching the interview live.
“As we looked through the list, we noticed a pattern.”
Mira leaned back in her chair.
“They wanted songs that were super pop heavy. They wanted us to sound like the Sunlight Sisters”
A collective gasp swept through the audience.
“I was furious. Zoey was too. I honestly thought she was about to pop a vein. I don’t know how she did it, but Rumi asked them, in this deeply calm voice, to explain it again. I think she asked at least three times why they wanted to change our album.”
“I was so angry,” Zoey interrupted. “But honestly, after the second time she asked, I started worrying Rumi was having a mental breakdown.”
The audience burst into laughter as Zoey wheezed from the elbow Rumi had just driven into her stomach.
“Celine was there too,” Mira added, almost too enthusiastically. “I swear I saw her twitching. I think she was physically restraining herself from lunging at the guy that kept saying, ‘This is for the best.’”
“That’s impossible.” Zoey rolled her eyes. “Celine would never lunge at the executives. She prefers psychological torture. She probably noticed you were the one about to lunge at them and was prepared to stop you.”
“No, she was absolutely going to—“
“She almost did,” Rumi interrupted.
Everyone turned toward her.
“What?”
“I talked to her afterward. I believe her exact words were: ‘If Mira had jumped at them, I would’ve followed.’ Then she said she would later claim she was trying to calm Mira down, and any kicks or punches were unfortunate accidents that occurred during her attempts to de-escalate the situation. Plausible deniability and all that.”
The audience erupted again in disbelief, especially the older fans who remembered the Sunlight Sisters days.
“She also said that if the meeting had gone on for ten more minutes, she would’ve done it anyway. With or without Mira starting it.”
Mira turned triumphant towards Zoey.
“See! I knew it!”
Zoey stuck her tongue out at Mira before crossing her arms and slumping into the couch in defeat.
“Why ten minutes?” The interviewer asked.
“Because that would’ve made it the longest meeting she’d ever attended,” Rumi answered matter-of-factly. “She didn’t want that record to be broken by something so infuriating. If she had to spend more than four hours in a meeting with the board, she preferred that it be for something important, not changing an entire album because they suddenly felt nostalgic.”
“Well, that’s good to know.” Mira looked directly at the camera. “Next time we have a meeting, if it goes on for more than an hour, I'll lunge at them. I expect Celine’s full support.”
Rumi muttered something under her breath while looking away.
“Rumi, we couldn’t quite hear that,” the interviewer said immediately, catching her in the act. “Could you please repeat it?”
Rumi looked like she swallowed a lemon.
She glanced at Mira, then at Zoey. Both were smiling innocently at her. They had absolutely heard what she said.
Traitors.
“Of course,” Rumi replied tightly. “I was merely saying that Mira has abandoned me to the vultures. After that threat, I’m fairly certain the board will strongly suggest I attend future meetings alone. They know that Mira doesn’t make empty threats. Or Celine, for that matter.”
Mira gave a predatory smile to the camera.
“Wouldn’t Zoey accompany you?”
Rumi sighed. She really missed the days when demons appeared at the most inconvenient times. She missed sprinting out with flimsy excuses as the Honmoon lit up around them.
Pity their new Honmoon was holding strong.
Maybe if she asked nicely, it would spit out one or two demons to save her from this interview.
“Zoey is explicitly forbidden from participating in board meetings.” Rumi frowned at her. “I’m still not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was because of the time she interrupted one because she’d had an idea for a song and insisted there was no way it could wait.”
Zoey looked unbothered.
“She then spent an hour making us listen to two tones over and over before forcing us to debate which one sounded better.”
Rumi pointed at Mira.
“The slightly lighter one was absolutely the right choice.”
Mira nodded solemnly.
“The executives didn’t appreciate the artistic process. I even heard one mutter something about the tones sounding identical. Can you believe it?”
Zoey looked deeply offended.
“Or,” Rumi continued, “it may have been the time she terrified the legal team with all her hypothetical scenarios. I think they walked out of that meeting convinced Zoey treated the Geneva Convention like a checklist. The fact that she kept crossing things out in her notebook did not help.”
“I saw the head of PR drafting her resignation after fifteen minutes.” Mira added helpfully.
Zoey just shrugged, not a hint of remorse on her face. “It’s called being prepared, Rumi. I like knowing what I’m legally allowed to do and what I’m not. I thought your workaholic self would understand.”
“Of course I’m not against being prepared, but knowing whether—”
“We’ve gotten slightly off track from the original story.” Mira interrupted smoothly.
She raised an eyebrow at Rumi, making it clear she knew exactly where that sentence had been heading and had decided the general public did not need that information.
Rumi huffed. She disliked losing arguments, but managed to stop herself after remembering where she was.
“So,” Mira continued, “we came out of that meeting feeling equal parts furious and miserable. We spent hours in the recording room trying to brainstorm new ideas, but nothing we made felt right. At some point, we started playing the album we had submitted.”
Zoey nodded. “We listened to it maybe four or five times.”
“That’s when we realized,” Mira said dramatically, “that it was actually a good album.”
“Not like we didn’t already know that.” Zoey muttered with a scowl.
Rumi hummed in agreement.
“We knew it was good,” Mira continued. “We knew our fans would love it. It was very … us. So we made a decision.”
Mira paused and looked at the audience, at the camera. Everyone was at the edge of their seats. She could almost hear their racing heartbeats.
Good. She had them where she wanted them.
“The album was getting released."
The audience hung onto every word. Mira’s voice was the only sound in the set.
“We still needed the approval, though, and technically we couldn’t resubmit the album without making changes. So, after a whole night of plotting, we finally sent them a revised version.”
The three girls smiled at the memory.
It was not a guilty smile.
“What did you change?” the interviewer asked, leaning forward in his seat.
Mira leaned in too, as if preparing to share a state secret. “We changed the title of every song on the album.”
The interviewer stared at her, his years of professional experience not enough to hide his disbelief.
“Oh my god.” Someone in the audience whispered.
“It’s honestly a shame the board didn’t appreciate the message we were trying to send.” Mira went on. “Instead, they emailed us back demanding we ‘make actual changes’. Naturally, we had no other choice but to comply.”
A loud snort came from somewhere in the audience.
Mira looked pleased. Their fans knew them so well.
“We spent an entire hour working on the next version,” she stated solemnly. “It truly made us rethink our creative limits.”
“What did you change?” an audience member shouted impatiently.
The girls chuckled, pretending to search the crowd for the culprit.
“We changed only a word or two in the lyrics of a few songs.” Zoey admitted with a grin.
The audience exploded in laughter.
The host looked like he was mentally taking notes. He understood the industry well enough to recognize just how insane this story actually was.
Once the audience finally calmed down, Mira continued. “Well, long story short, they still didn’t like the changes.”
The audience booed loudly.
“So, as the hard-working professionals we are, we continued making adjustments. Constantly striving for perfection.”
Rumi, who had been trying to maintain some level of professional composure throughout the interview, finally broke with a snort.
“Please. As if adding another layer of vocal doubling, adding a single beat at the end of a song, or making each intro a second longer was difficult.”
The interviewer nearly choked on air.
The audience roared.
Mira ignored all of it and continued speaking completely seriously. “Rumi even had to send emails explaining in excruciating detail the changes we made because apparently they couldn’t tell the difference.”
“Seriously,” Zoey scoffed, clutching her chest in offense. “They own a music company and still couldn’t tell when that one chord changed from a C to a G.”
“We went back and forth like that for a while.” Mira explained.
“Two months.” Rumi muttered into her microphone.
The audience groaned in sympathy.
“After about thirty revisions that barely changed anything, they finally relented. Well…not completely. They warned us that if the album flopped, we’d be the ones absorbing the losses and yada, yada, yada.”
The mood in the room shifted instantly.
The audience looked outraged on their behalf. Somewhere in the crowd, people were already organizing a raid on Sunlight Entertainment. Others were searching for pitchforks on Amazon.
Before anyone could exit to set the building on fire, Mira pushed ahead.
“Anyway, we released the original album a week later. And honestly? We were incredibly happy our fans loved it so much after everything that happened.” Her tone became softer. “It was actually kind of humbling for us that it became even more successful than our first album.”
“It helped us learn to trust ourselves more,” Rumi added softly. Her eyes sparkled.
The audience collectively awed at the conclusion.
“It was also an extremely humbling experience for the executives.” Mira finished, her tone once again sharp, but pleased. “They were so convinced the album would flop that they negotiated for a smaller percentage of the profits because they thought we’d need the money to pay them back afterward.”
Mira grinned.
“So, really, joke’s on them.”
The room erupted in thunderous applause.
People were cheering loud enough that the interviewer had to wait before speaking again.
“That was… not what I was expecting. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t an incredible story,” the host said breathlessly, his gaze distant, as if trying to find somewhere to land where the story he just heard hadn’t completely changed the way he saw the young women in front of him. “It was just, wow. You’ve told us a story of all of you being petty. Now, I really need to ask: out of the three of you, who is the pettiest?”
Zoey was quick to answer. “Mira. Definitely Mira.”
Mira’s head snapped towards Zoey. “I am not!”
“Yes, you are.” Zoey deadpanned. “You ate all my American snacks because I accidentally ate your slice of cake.”
“You ate my piece of chocolate cake. I was saving it for after the photo shoot I had that day. I’d been dreaming about it for hours, and when I got home at eleven at night, it was gone.”
“It didn’t have your name on it. I didn’t know you were saving it!”
“You should have asked!” Mira raised her voice. Her arms waved around furiously.
“I apologized. I even bought you a new one!” Zoey defended. “You ate ten bags in an hour. How could you even eat that much in such a short time?”
Mira looked at Zoey with a completely straight face. “They are more air than snacks. It wasn’t difficult.”
Which, honestly, fair.
Zoey always complained about how hard they were to get and how little they had in them.
“It wasn’t intentional when I did it. You knew exactly what you were doing. That makes it worse.”
“Of course not. It was payback. Now we’re even.”
“That’s not how it works. You—”
A snort from between them interrupted their argument. They had forgotten about their leader.
Rumi.
“What’s so funny?” Mira asked.
Rumi didn’t look at either of them. “Oh, nothing, nothing… It’s just that Zoey is right. You are the pettiest out of the three of us.”
“Thank you!” Zoey said, looking vindicated.
Mira’s eyes snapped toward Rumi.
New target acquired.
“Ohhh, I see how it is. You’re just siding with Zoey because you want her to forget the time you hid the controller of her gaming console after she took the batteries out of the TV remote for it and didn’t replace them.”
Zoey gasped beside them, suddenly remembering the transgression.
“I spent an hour trying to figure out why it didn’t work. She could have left a note.” Rumi defended.
“You could have just let it go!” Mira countered.
“You could have just let the cake thing go!”
“It’s not the same. I was exhausted and wanted my piece of cake after dreaming of it all day.”
“Well, I would’ve appreciated not spending an hour thinking our TV had stopped working after answering emails all day.”
“Well, I would—”
“I think we can conclude that Zoey is the least petty out of the three of you,” the interviewer interrupted nervously, trying to defuse the situation.
The audience had been watching the argument in silence. Their heads moved from one girl to the other like spectators at a tennis match.
Mira and Rumi stopped glaring at each other and their heads turned toward him in perfect sync. They had forgotten he was there.
“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty obvious who the least petty one is. I mean, I’m the victim of their supposedly justified paybacks.” Zoey smirked.
It took a second for Zoey’s words to register in Mira and Rumi’s brains.
“You?” Rumi asked in disbelief.
“The least petty?” Mira finished in the exact same tone.
“Obviously. You guys just admitted in front of everyone how you attacked me.” Zoey clutched her chest dramatically.
“Zoey, you literally made my coffee salty for a month. Sometimes you weren’t even there when I made it! I still don’t know how you did it!” Mira protested. “All of that because I forgot to bring you a boba when you asked me to. I apologized and went back out to get it!”
“You hid all my gardening tools after the thing with the controller,” Rumi added. “I even bought new ones and you hid them too!”
Zoey shrugged, unbothered, a smirk on her face. “I learned from the best.”
Mira and Rumi looked at each other and shrugged as well.
“Yeah, Celine’s a good teacher.” Mira admitted.
Rumi snorted. “She really went all out on those lessons.”
“Wait, what do you mean—” the interviewer tried.
“Oh, oh! Do you remember the time she started scheduling meetings with the board every day and at different times, only to never show up.” Zoey happily stated while bouncing up and down in her seat.
Rumi and Mira chuckled.
“Well, at least they learned not to stand Celine up again.” Mira rolled her eyes.
“And the time Mira told her she didn’t understand how hard it was to balance training and a degree, only for Celine to get the same degree before her.”
Mira grimaced. “Yeahhh, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“And that time where—”
“Wait, hold on. Hold on for a second.” The interviewer cut off Zoey. “Are you talking about a college degree? You guys debuted when Mira and Rumi were 17 and Zoey 16. You would have been idols already when you got your college degree.”
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the audience.
The three girls looked at him blankly. Zoey looked thoughtful and started counting on her fingers.
“Ohhh, ohh, I understand where the confusion comes from.” Rumi said triumphantly. “Mira graduated school at fourteen, the year we started training together. Celine was adamant she couldn’t slack off just because she was done already.”
“Mira’s got, like, three degrees already.” Zoey gushed, beaming with pride.
Mira turned to look at the girls while frowning. “Wait, wasn’t this, like, common knowledge?”
The three girls glanced backstage, where Bobby was frantically scrolling through his phone. They looked at him until he ran a hand through his hair and shrugged.
The girls shrugged back.
“So let me get this straight. Mira graduated school at fourteen. She started pursuing a degree in…”
“Mathematics,” Mira clarified.
“Thank you. A degree in mathematics. Then she told Celine, in a very angsty teenager way, that Celine didn’t understand her. Celine then proceeded to study the same degree and finished it before Mira. Just to prove that she could and shut Mira up.”
“Yep, that’s about right,” Zoey confirmed enthusiastically.
The host buried his head in his hands for a few seconds. The set silently witnessed his breakdown. He slowly raised his head. Looking at the three innocently smiling girls dead in the eyes, he tried to take control of the conversation.
“So Mira, what degrees have you earned?”
“Well…” Mira counted on her fingers. “Mathematics. Physics. Modern Dance.”
“Don’t forget the psychology and law degrees that you're about to finish.” Zoey chimed in.
“Law? I’m not studying for a law degree!”
“Oh come on Mira! You promised you wouldn’t hide another degree. I mean we literally had to cancel our vacations in the third year because you needed a valid excuse for why you hadn’t finished your thesis and needed an extension.”
“I wouldn’t touch a law book with a ten-foot pole. What gave you that idea?” Mira jumped up from the seat.
“I saw your law book last week on the kitchen counter! You can’t deny it!” Zoey followed Mira.
“I don’t even own a law book! Come on Rumi, back me up. You know I’ll never study law.” Mira protested.
“Don’t listen to her Rumi. We both know who the studying addict is here.”
Both girls were now looking at their leader, whom they’d been ignoring.
“No way!” Zoey gasped.
Rumi was flushed red. A guilty smile spread across her face.
“The book isn’t Mira’s,” Rumi mumbled, not looking either of them in the eye.
Zoey gasped, looking utterly betrayed. Mira looked at Rumi as if she didn’t know her.
“Why would you do that to yourself?” Mira asked, horrified.
“It was because of this guy.”
The audience gasped.
“Not like that!” Rumi retorted, glaring at the audience.
“There was this contract we needed to sign, and I had a question about it. I was already in the building, so I went to the legal department,” Rumi crossed her arms petulantly. “I just needed to know if I’d understood one section correctly,” Rumi said through gritted teeth. “It was a yes or no question.”
Rumi started waving her arms around furiously.
“The head of the legal team wasn’t there, so I had the misfortune to meet this guy. He spent over an hour telling me every nitty-gritty detail of the contract. Things I already knew. Just as I finally decided to leave, he said: ‘You should leave the hard things to us in the legal department. Your only job is to sing and look nice.’ I stormed out of the office. I slammed the door so hard that I heard one of the piles of documents fall to the floor.”
“Wait, is that the same day you came back home, broke one of our punching bags, and broke your bedroom door?” Zoey asked, her brow furrowed.
Rumi turned red again. “Yes,” she answered, deflating at being exposed. “When I calmed down, I knew I couldn’t ask for the guy to be fired. That would be unfair. He may have a personality problem, but I suppose he was a good worker. That would have been an abuse of power.”
“And nepotism,” Mira added.
“What? Why would that be nepotism?” Rumi asked, puzzled.
“People would totally take your side because you’re both your mother’s daughter and Celine’s daughter, and no one would want to be on Celine’s bad side.” Mira explained.
“That’s without even considering the fact that Celine wouldn’t care if he was the best lawyer in Korea. He would have been fired the second you closed the call.” Zoey noted.
Rumi spluttered.
“Well, that doesn’t matter. I couldn’t do anything about it, so I decided we weren’t ever setting foot in that department again, even if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Wait a second. We?” Mira challenged.
“Okay,” Zoey said at the same time.
“Yes, we. I’m not letting you guys go in there and be belittled because you don’t have a fancy law degree.”
“You’re about to get that same fancy law degree,” Zoey mumbled, completely ignored by the other two.
“You could have asked to only speak to the department head. You could have gone to another firm for representation. You didn’t need to get a whole degree!”
“I—I didn’t think about that,” Rumi said, startled.
Mira and Zoey facepalmed.
“Did you at least enjoy studying for it?” Mira asked.
“Well—no. I absolutely hated every second of it, but every time I remembered his smug face, I pushed through.” Rumi shrugged.
“Well, I guess we know who the pettiest one is.” Mira quipped.
“That proves nothing!” Rumi protested, jumping out of her seat. She pointed at Mira. “You would’ve done the same.”
“I wouldn’t. I would never voluntarily touch a law book.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t add another degree to the dozen you already have, but you would have done something equally dramatic to wipe that smug smile off his face.”
At Mira’s silence, Zoey chuckled. Rumi turned toward her.
She pointed at Zoey, “And you. You’d ignore the problem until it snowballed, then somehow find a way to make it their problem.”
“I think we can safely conclude that you’re all equally petty,” the interviewer said, making all three girls jump.
They had forgotten he was there.
They had forgotten the live audience was there.
One teenager in the audience seemed to have permanently forgotten how to close her mouth.
Mira raised an eyebrow in challenge. Rumi tried and failed to say something. Zoey looked lost in thought.
“Rumi, you promised!” Zoey ignored the interruption at the memory of the betrayal.
“What? What did I promise?” Rumi immediately zoned into what Zoey was saying.
“You said you wouldn’t get more degrees. You promised not to add being a study addict like Mira to your workaholism. Now, I’m the uneducated one.” Zoey pouted.
Rumi’s gears were visibly turning.
Mira looked amused.
“First of all, you're not uneducated,” Rumi stated firmly. “You did a double degree in Practical Music and Music Technology. You are sufficiently educated. Secondly, I promised that if I started studying for a degree I would tell you so we would have the same amount and not be left behind by Mira.”
“Hey!” Mira protested.
“As it stands, you have two and I’m about to have the second one. We’re even. I have not broken our promise.”
“You don’t get it. Now that you have a second degree, things are unbalanced again. Mira already has her quintillion degrees. You now have two degrees and know, like, a quintillion languages and then there's me with just two degrees.”
“Zoey, you are bilingual and speak comfortably in two other languages. That is already impressive.” Rumi tried to de-escalate.
“Maybe I should start a marine biology degree so we’re even.”
“No!” Mira and Rumi said in unison.
“See! You just don’t like me succeeding!”
Mira grabbed Zoey by her shoulders. “If you start a marine biology degree, we are retiring. You literally don’t sleep now. When would you sleep with a degree on top of everything else?!”
“I do sleep,” Zoey mumbled.
“You don’t. How many times this week have we dragged you kicking and screaming to bed after finding you tweaking songs at four in the morning?” Rumi countered.
“Three,” Zoey answered reluctantly. “I still don’t get how you knew. My bedroom is soundproofed.”
Mira deadpanned. “Well, for it to work you’d need to close the door.”
Zoey gasped, suddenly betrayed by her past self.
“We know you already have the next album planned, even though we haven’t even started touring for this one yet.” Rumi stated.
“We even know about the songs you sell under a pseudonym. I even heard the spoon song on the radio. You gave it to someone else,” Mira said, sounding genuinely hurt. “I spent thirty minutes dropping a spoon over and over in order to try to recreate the exact sound it made the first time. And you sold it. All my effort.”
Zoey crossed her arms over her chest and pouted. “It’s not my fault your spoon dropping technique was lacking.”
Mira gasped. “You little—”
“Girls!” A voice called from backstage.
“Yes Bobby?” The girls answered in unison. Mira froze mid-lunge toward Zoey.
“We need to leave or we’ll be late for your next appointment.”
Instantly the three girls stood up, perfectly poised and bowed to the host.
“Thank you for having us here today.”
Then they turned to the audience.
“Thank you for accompanying us this morning.”
Without waiting for a response, they exited the set. Their footsteps echoed all through the studio.
A ringtone cut through the silence.
“Hi Celine!” Rumi’s voice was heard once more. Her mic still connected. “Oh my god! We forgot. Hold on for a second. Could one of you guys—”
“Nope.” Mira’s voice vibrated through the set.
“You’re the leader,” Zoey replied.
A deep sigh was heard as footsteps became louder. Rumi appeared through the side of the set. Emerging from the same place they had vanished moments earlier.
“Hi everyone. Thank you for accompanying us this morning. Please remember that the dates for the tour stops will be released tomorrow—”
“Tonight,” Bobby’s voice interrupted.
“Tonight,” Rumi corrected. “Thank you for your continued support and we hope we have met all of your expectations with our new album. Until next time.”
Rumi exited the stage. As soon as she was no longer visible, her voice boomed through the set again.
“Celine, yeah, I made the announcement. Yeah, I’m sorry, we’ll remember next time.”
After a brief silence while Celine answered.
“Wait, why are you coming to Seoul?” Rumi’s voice pitched upward. “No, I’m not giving you the name of the lawyer guy… No, leave it… I’m over it… I already have the degree! I’m not giving you the date… don’t go over four years of security footage—”
Finally, Rumi’s mic was disconnected.
The silence in the set felt deeper than when it had been empty. Not a single sound came from the hundred-plus people in the studio.
The host shook his head. He looked down at one of the unused cue cards and crumpled it into a tiny ball.
“Huntr/x everybody!”
The applause was automatic.
Finally, the red light on the camera disappeared.
A month later, a new post appeared on the official Huntr/x page. Mira and Rumi with caps and gowns, smiling as they held their new diplomas. A selfie of Zoey outside the Marine Biology building. A blurry photo of the three of them followed. It was clear that Rumi and Mira had tackled Zoey before she could enter the building. Finally, three photos of three doors, each with a crooked handwritten sign taped to it:
Ryu Rumi
Bedroom, Huntr/x legal department.
Kang Mira
Bedroom, study hall
Choi Zoey
Bedroom, Producer
Producing closing time:
20:00
3:00 IN YOUR DREAMS
21:00
2:30 That’s barely better.
22:00
2:00 You need at least 8 hours of sleep to function properly.
23:00
1:30 We’re trying to compromise. This is not healthy.
23:00
1:00 TRY IT! I’LL TIE YOU TO YOUR BED IF I HAVE TO!
23:00 :(
After the comments on the graduation post finally died down, a new post appeared. A younger Celine standing beside the teenage members of Huntr/x, a diploma in her hand. Mira scowling. Then three different photos of Mira, older in each one, Rumi and Zoey at her side as she held a diploma. Then Rumi and Zoey with their diplomas and gowns. Zoey held two while Rumi held just one. Mira at their side.
In the caption, it said:
“Sorry for the delay, we thought we had posted them years ago.
Better late than never.
Oops!”