Chapter Text
When Ryu Miyeong meets Jae-woon, Celine feels indecisive.
The man isn’t from here. He didn’t understand any earthly customs, let alone Korean— it didn’t make sense because visibly, he was Korean. He didn’t understand the language. He didn’t understand any language. His strange clothes, flowing folds of blue and white, weren’t something they’d ever seen.
His social skills were nonexistent. He viewed people with fascination. “I love you humans. You are so funny!” After laughing. A quick, “Wow, interesting.” After Celine worked the blender. He watched Miyeong with fascination and declared, “You are my favorite human.”
Then he started flying.
The man isn’t from here.
Celine feels crazy. Ryu Miyeong falls in love.
Celine asks Miyeong one day, in private: “You aren’t frightened?” Because Celine certainly is.
Jae-woon is faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. Miyeong replies “No.”
They have a child together. It’s a girl.
He suggests the name Rui-El. It’s apparently popular on his planet. His planet. Miyeong explains that while it’s endearing, it isn’t really heard of here on Earth, in South Korea.
They settle on Rumi.
In the beginning, it’s manageable. They all tackle the challenge of raising a child. It takes a village, doesn’t it? There’s some semblance of normalcy about it all. Jae-woon is still otherworldly and Miyeong falls in love a little more everyday. Celine still loves Miyeong.
Miyeong passes on October 24th.
Jae-woon, inexplicably, dies the next day.
Celine, all-alone, cradles their baby.
The house feels so empty. It lacks sunshine. Celine holds the baby close because it’s all she can do. She weeps.
The child, instinctive of a newborn, reaches for her chin. For her mother.
Celine flinches, then softens.
This child, what’s it to be without a mother? Celine isn’t her mother. Ryu Miyeong is gone. But here remains a piece of her— fragile and gentle, all the things beautiful about the world. All the things Jae-woon admired. All the things Miyeong loved about him.
The culmination of all the love they’ve shared.
(Even if she hated how he took her away.)
She will love this child because Miyeong loved her.
So she pulls her impossibly closer and through tears, whisper, “I love you.”
Whenever Celine cradles her with a bottle in hand, she murmurs, “I love you.”
Whenever Rumi takes her first stumbling steps into her arms, she smiles and kisses her forehead, says, “I love you.”
Whenever Rumi insists on helping prepare dinner with her tiny, determined hands— stirring a bowl of buchimgae batter far too big for her— Celine thinks, “I love you. You’re so very special.”
Whenever she and Rumi visit her mother’s gravesite, she holds her close and tells her: “I love you.”
Whenever Celine finds Rumi lifting an uprooted tree high above her head, fifteen meters above Celine, she thinks, “…I love you. You’re so special.”
Whenever Rumi’s height is marked taller on their doorframe, whenever Rumi memorizes the composition to a piano piece, whenever Rumi starts wearing her baby-blanket as a cape and her pajamas as a costume; it all ends with a familiar tagline: I love you.
Eventually Miyeong and Jae-woon’s daughter grows up. One decade, two, several years. She’s skittish like her mother yet curious like her father— with a patience and gracefulness that Celine doesn’t like accrediting to herself.
On her 24th birthday, Celine gives her a proper costume.
It’s stitched together with many hours of labor, love and herbal tea. It’s a striking blue adorned with red. A massive S for Superwoman— that’s what the public's taken to calling her— is embedded on the front.
It isn’t Celine’s best work but Rumi loves it, so she must’ve done something right.
And so Superwoman lives on. She’s fearless and undefined, otherworldly yet so human, and Celine thinks it’s something symbolic about it all.
…
“Do you have everything with you?”
“Yes, eomma.”
“Your documents, your paperbacks? Did you remember your glasses cleaner? You always forget that.”
“Yes, eomma.”
“Are you sure—“
Rumi huffs in amusement. “I’ve got it all with me, I’m fine. I’ve been doing this for years; I wouldn’t just up and forget everything now.”
She’s lying. Because she realizes now, as she’s weaving through the crowded streets of Seoul, that she’s forgotten her identification card, I.E: how she gets into the office. She doesn’t dare mention it.
It’ll be okay, she supposes. They know her. She hasn’t missed a single day of work in four years, not even for supposed emergencies. It’d be unbelievable if they didn’t let her in.
“I know, I know— I just get worried for you. You know you get frazzled easily and forget.”
Rumi squeezes between several people who’ve decided to stop in the middle of the sidewalk and have a conversation, murmuring excuse me’s and sorry, coming through. “I don’t get frazzled easily! I just get—“ she accidentally shoulder-checks someone and they exclaim profanities. “Sorry! I’m sorry! Uh, no, I don’t get frazzled, I just get a little overwhelmed sometimes.”
“Yes, right, of course,” Celine says, humored. “Are you coming over for dinner?”
Right, dinner. They always have dinner together on Wednesdays. That wouldn’t be possible for the average person— Jeju Island is a long ways away from Seoul. An eight hour drive long.
Luckily for Rumi, she is her own plane. She makes it there in five minutes.
“Yeah, yeah, of course! What’re—“ Rumi crosses a street and is nearly clipped by a bus. “Oh! Can we have yukgaejang? Please? I tried making it and it didn’t taste like anything and I wasted like thirty dollars worth of ingredients and it took forever to cook—“
“I’ll make your yukgaejang, don’t worry,” Celine says. “I’ll make it exactly how you like it.”
“With lots of scallions?”
“With an unfathomable amount, yes.”
Rumi smiles. Little victories.
She approaches a building. Yooksong Publishing Towers. She never imagined herself working as a photojournalist but the field spoke to her. Photographs are timeless. There isn’t a better way to depict the now.
“I’ve gotta go,” Rumi says, sliding through the double-doors. “I’ll see you tonight, eomma.”
“And I’ll see you on the news.”
They exchange goodbyes and Rumi hangs up. Immediately afterwards, her briefcase catches on the door and its contents spill onto the floor. Everyone stares. She smiles nervously. They continue on. She thinks “how embarrassing…”
She scrambles her belongings and stumbles forward towards the elevator, slips on spilled water (that doesn’t have a wet floor sign over it) and almost face-plants into the awaiting elevator.
There’s dozens of people in it.
She adjusts her glasses and politely smiles.
Rumi says, “Fifth floor, please.” Then her briefcase promptly snaps open again.
She’s well aware that her polaroid photograph of her childhood cat, Derpy, is staring up at her alongside several very, very important documents. She crouches and stuffs it back into her briefcase and makes sure to latch it close.
It is quite possibly the longest elevator ride ever.
Once they’ve reached the floor, it’s a mad dash. There’s people everywhere but it’s an organized chaos— someone is complaining about an editorial critiquing mandatory cellphone shutters and someone yells fuck, fuck, fuck! Because they’ve spilled coffee on their keyboard.
Rumi squeezes through the crowd, to her manager's office and lingers awkwardly outside the door after realizing that he’s engaged in conversation.
“…We need to pull the curtains back. Just last month, Gwi-Ma’s satellite drones “malfunctioned” and killed seven people in Africa and no one is talking about it, yet here he is unveiling another big project.”
“Yeah! And I heard he’s buying out publishers so he can control what news gets out, how it gets out, and when! It’s illegal, Bobby, he can’t do that!”
“I understand your concerns, girls, really. But we can’t poke at a lion or it’ll eat us! Eating being, bankruptcy, by the way. Now, where’s the papers…”
“But isn’t it our job to report the truth and nothing but the truth, even if it includes jeopardizing sales? We're the only paper in Korea that has the guts to take on that self-righteous jerk.”
“It is! Of course it is—!”
Rumi knocks on the doorframe. She’s standing there awkwardly. She gives one of her big smiles. “Good morning.”
Bobby pats his forehead with a handkerchief. “Rumi, yes, hi— do you have the editorial?”
“Yes, sir, it’s—“ She opens the briefcase, searches through it, grabs a folder, and hands it to him. “—here, sir. I’m sorry I’m late, I didn’t think it’d be so much traffic—“
He tucks it underneath his arm, exasperated. “It’s fine, Rumi, it’s only a few minutes overdue! And please stop calling me sir, just call me Bobby, okay?”
“Yes, of course, sir.”
Bobby doesn’t even try correcting her— he gives her a quick, strained smile and rushes out the room, presumably to his office to deal with the mounting pile of paperwork.
“Hey…” Mira bumps Rumi’s shoulder with hers, if only to see her blush. They head out the office to their quarters together. “You’re not obnoxiously late today.”
Rumi scratches the back of her neck, flustered. “I thought I’d finally break the habit. What were you guys talking about?”
“The usual. Gwi-ma and Saja Co are being evil.” Mira sighs. “He’s trying to buy out independent publishing companies so they can control the market just in time for his latest project reveal.”
That doesn’t sound good. “Oh, jeez. I’m guessing that’s what we’re doing today.”
“We’re just gathering more info about the case. We want to be sure before we publish anything defamatory,” Mira smirks. “I think Bobby would have a heart attack if he got sued by Saja Co.”
“It isn’t defamation if it’s true!” Zoey practically yells, catching up. She was almost swallowed by the crowd. Poor thing. “I mean, anyone with two eyes could see what they’re doing. Isn’t there a word for this? Hori… horizon…?”
“Horizontal integration.” Rumi finishes.
Zoey snaps her fingers. “Yeah! That! Saja Co already owns everything. It’s like adding more toppings to a deluxe pizza! It’s just too much.”
“That’s what happens when you’re trying to be the king of the world,” Mira shrugs, sipping her coffee. “Gwi-Ma and Saja Co are having a conference this Friday. We’re, like, totally crashing it, right?”
“Hell yeah!”
Rumi blinks. “Conference?”
“They’re unveiling some government sanctioned technology achievement or whatever the hell he keeps talking about on twitter.”
“We’re gonna go down there and actually ask questions. Yeah, the hard-hitting ones! Huntrix doesn’t kiss the boots of corporate Korea!” Zoey pauses, then. “I mean, we do, it’s kinda our job, but that’s beside the point!”
Mira sniggers. “Wow. Good save, Zoe.”
Huntrix is their unofficial group name. It wasn’t intentional— Rumi, Mira and Zoey just happened to be paired together during work. Zoey declared that “we should have a name! All cool groups have a name!” And that’s how Huntrix came to be.
Rumi thinks Zoey’s right. It is cool.
“We—“ Rumi stumbles and nearly falls. Mira catches her arm. “We weren’t invited, were we?”
“Of course not, that’s why we’re sneaking in.”
“Do you think Superwoman will be there?” Zoey asks. “I mean, she did get her ass kicked by that A.I robot and that was created from a subsidiary of Saja Co—“
“Superwoman didn’t get her ass kicked, she actually did really, really good—“
“—I doubt it, she was pretty beat up and she doesn’t tend to show up twice in a row.” Mira finishes.
Rumi sighs. She didn’t get her ass kicked. It was just a slight… challenge. I mean, she got flung through a couple buildings but that happens to everyone—
“Woah, that’s like, a good observation, Mira! I’m adding that to the Superwoman whiteboard!”
The Superwoman whiteboard is exactly that— a massive, winding whiteboard with pictures of Superwoman, her, plastered on it. It’s meant to detail her movements and try to piece together her identity. It’s funny. She doesn’t think her identity is that hidden. Is her huge purple braid not indication enough?
Nevertheless, Rumi likes posting misinformation on it and watching everyone in the office scramble. Wait, is Superwoman really from Kazakhstan? Is this verified?
Zoey rounds the corner and towards her desk. It’s completely cluttered. There’s papers and books and coffee cups shrewd everywhere. “Where’s my sticky notes? I need my sticky notes!”
“You know what they say…” Rumi begins. Zoey searches through a box labeled ZOEY’S! DON’T TOUCH!!!!! “…the key to a clear mind is an organized desk.”
Eventually, she finds them, scribbles something on it, and goes to gather around the whiteboard with several other people voicing their theories.
Rumi’s smile dulls. She understands. Everyone is trying to crack Superwoman’s identity. It’ll be the best news story to date.
But she doesn’t think it’ll go over well with Zoey and Mira, considering she hasn’t told them about it.
She doesn’t want them to see her as a deity, or a god or whatever people try to frame her as. She isn’t. She’s just someone that wants to help (even if she can’t deny, the attention is nice.)
Rumi sits her belongings at her desk (which is organized neatly) and begins stifling through her briefcase. She comes across the documents she’s looking for: her current editorial.
Mira promptly snatches it from her hands.
Rumi looks amused. “Uh, what are you doing?”
“”“—The bystander theory states that the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in emergency situations under the assumption that someone else will handle it.”” Mira reads. “However, it is just a phenomenon, not a generalized viewpoint—“”
Rumi cringes. “Don’t read it aloud, I always cringe when people read my stuff out loud—“
“”Humanity isn’t inherently black and white, good or evil— humanity is simply undefined, unrestrained by such concepts. It is important to remember this in the darkest hours of our current society because it leads to one road— the right road.” Mira finishes. She looks over her glasses. “Rumi, what the hell is this fluff?”
“”Fluff?””
“Yeah, this…” She handwaves. “This. This isn’t a feel good story, Rumi. It’s about the corruption of one of the world’s leading frozen dinner distributors.”
“I felt as if I could use the situation to lead into a more positive conclusion,” Rumi explains. “Y’know, like, encouragement and stuff!”
“I feel like you could be more objective. It’s just—“
“Oh, c’mon.”
“It’s too… soft. I feel like you’re not telling the full story here.”
Rumi adjusts her glasses. “It isn’t soft! It’s just a little more… optimistic. And! I am telling the truth! I’m just putting a little spin on it. Trust me, it’s 100%. I wouldn’t give less.”
Mira squints at her. Rumi gives her a wide smile. That always works.
Mira relents. “I trust you,” she smiles. “You know I do.”
It always works.
It’s quiet between them— as quiet as can be, considering the crowded office space.
“We missed you yesterday, the restaurant we went to was so nice…” Mira murmurs. “I wish you could’ve came.”
A wave of guilt crashes over Rumi, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I was busy with—“
“Work. Yeah, I know.” She finishes. “Front page is a big deal. I get it.”
“I’ll come next time, I promise.”
“I know, I’m just worried about you, y’know? You’re always working and never just, I don’t know. Existing.” Rumi frowns. She’s worried? She shouldn’t be worried. Worried is a strong word. “Don’t you get tired of it?”
Rumi doesn’t get tired. It’s the perks of having superpowers. She can work for several days without sleep but that’s not the answer Mira wants to hear or one Rumi wants to say.
The response is simple. “Yeah, I do— sorry, I just… have a hard time relaxing.”
It isn’t untrue. Not at all.
Mira wraps her slender arms around her shoulders. “Let’s relax this weekend, okay?” She says, pressing a kiss against Rumi’s cheek. “No work, no phone calls, Let’s just crash on your couch and watch shitty movies until we fall asleep or make out.”
“I’d really like that!” Rumi exclaims just a little too loudly. Chill out, Ryu, you’re scaring her.
Thankfully, Mira just laughs, “You’re kinda a loser. I like that.”
“Thank you.”
Zoey passes by them, simply says, “PTA isn’t allowed in the workplace.” and giggles to herself.
…
“You’ve actually made it through the day without being breaking news? I’m impressed.” Celine says the moment Rumi passes the threshold. She’s standing at the stovetop stirring something.
Rumi removes her glasses, her suit-jacket and shoes. Her childhood cat, Derpy— that ancient thing, he’s been around for almost two decades and still going— rubs against her leg and she pets him. “I actually tried really, really hard this time around. I was like a ninja.”
She wasn’t. Everyone saw her. Her suit is bright blue and red and she stopped a bus from plowing into evening traffic before arriving.
“How was work?”
“It was good. I, uh, made it to the front page.”
“Front page?” Celine looks up from the stove, incredulous. She approaches Rumi and hugs her. “Rumi, that’s great news. I’m so proud of you.”
“Thanks, eomma.”
“Look at my girl on the front page of Korea’s biggest publisher— my goodness, did you bring a copy? Tell me you’ve brought a copy? Why didn’t you tell me beforehand, I could’ve made bungeo-ppang.”
God she wished she’d told Celine beforehand. Bungeo-ppang is her favorite. “I wanted to surprise you! I knew you’d be super happy.”
She opens the briefcase and takes the newspaper with her name (her name!) accredited to it. Celine holds it like it’s a newborn.
“You should frame it, put it next to my baby pictures.” Rumi jokes and is a little taken aback when Celine looks at her like she’s discovered fire.
From there, they arrange themselves servings of yukgaejang (with an overwhelming amount of scallions) and talk about their respective days. It’s cozy, peaceful.
Rumi misses Jeju. It’s so quiet compared to the city. One day, Rumi would like to return to the confines of Celine’s compound, where she’s something of a myth. The Jeju defender, not Superwoman. Superwoman is too definitive. It’s a little suffocating.
But for right now? Everything is okay, and Rumi wouldn’t have it any other way.