Chapter Text
Her hands were cutting flowers from her garden.
Carnations, dahlias, and gardenias for both bouquets. Magnolias and chrysanthemums, Poppy's favorite flowers, as well as sunflowers and orchids for Mi-yeong's bouquet.
The bouquets looked uneven, definitely not cut in the best way or arranged to be placed on two graves.
But they were her girls' favorite flowers, and she thought they might like them, even if the bouquets were upside down and poorly arranged.
They always liked it when she gave them flowers.
She headed for the graveyard, beyond the small hill in her backyard. To the place they had chosen as their own before they died, facing the sunset, with no trees blocking the clouds or stars.
She knelt down in front of their graves.
She bowed her head, her hands and forehead touching the grass, in a deep reverence to those who had once been her elders, her Unnies, whom she missed deeply.
She rose from her position and began to speak. She spoke directly to the stones covering the graves, unable to address the people buried two meters underground.
She spoke and spoke and spoke about Rumi, about how she is slowly repairing her relationship, about Mira and Zoey, about how protective and kind they are to Rumi.
How sorry she is. How sorry she is for pushing Rumi to the point of telling her to kill her. To kill her daughter in everything except blood.
She talks about how recently, Rumi called her eomma for the first time in years, how she wishes she could call her daughter but thinks she doesn't deserve to say that.
Quickly, without complications.
Then, just as she was about to get up, the new Honmoon hummed inside the land of the graves.
A tug, a pull that brought her back down in an undignified manner.
She places her hands on the ground, feeling the Honmoon. Feeling completely alive for first time in 23 years.
Before she noticed, her nails were digging into the earth, her fingers curled, grabbing as much soil as possible beneath her bare hands. Digging, pulling up dirt, stones, and worms from the healthy soil.
Her hunters choose such a beautiful resting place.
Her hands were not enough, she needed something more, something tangible and something that could dig more.
She frantically lifted her head, searching her surroundings for a tool that would help her dig.
To desecrate the graves of Mi-yeong and Poppy.
At that moment, she couldn't care less. All she could think about was getting to their coffins as quickly as possible. She couldn't stop.
Her eyes found a shovel she had left on the trunk of the Hunters' tree.
She picked it up and started working again. Quickly.
Fast.
FASTER.
Suddenly, her shovel struck wood.
She exhaled sharply.
Then she continued digging, partially unearthing both graves.
Her hands returned, scooping up all the dirt on them and clearing it from her path.
She stopped abruptly when both tops were uncovered.
She couldn't— she couldn't open them. She didn't know what she would see there.
Only decomposed bodies? Only bones covered in funeral clothes? Or their mummified bodies, as she had seen others?
Even though Honmoon urged her to do so, she couldn't.
She was there, sitting between the two coffins of her... somethings. Her girls.
She literally desecrated their graves. She couldn't do anything else.
"What do you want from me? What else can I give you?" she whispers.
After what felt like an eternity, which lasted approximately ten minutes, she stood up. Deep in a hole she had dug in a moment of desperation. A moment of weakness and... not knowing what was wrong with her.
"... It's like burying them again," she stated. Grabbing a handful of dirt and then dropping it on Mi-Yeong's grave, right where her feet would be.
She exhale one more time.
Taking another handful of dirt, she prepared to throw it onto Poppy's coffin.
Tok tok.
"LEt me OUT I can't See!!"
"CelLINE CELINE HELP, I CANT BREATH! CELINE! "
"CELINE!"
There were loud noises at her feet, voices she recognized even though she hadn't heard them in years.
She didn't think.
Fell to her knees one more time, six feet under in a hole of her own creation.
Hard and sharp blows, kicks, and screams filled the space.
Celine growled. Her hands tried to be strong enough to grab the door of the coffin and tried to lift it, after being underground for 23 years, they were stuck together. But definitely in better condition than expected.
She managed to lift the first one. Then headed straight for the second coffin without stopping to see what—who, came out of it.
The second coffin put up less resistance than the first one.
Poppy shot up, sat in her coffin, one hand going to her chest and the other to her head, breathing heavily without understanding the gravity of the situation.
Mi-Yeong got out as fast as she could, screaming and kicking, her hands first just above her heart and then searching Celine.
Lifting herself up, she threw herself on Celine, wrapping her arms like two boas around the... now older girl, but they didn't knew that.
Poppy didn't hesitate to throw herself on them too.
Celine just hugged them, in shock at what was happening.
"…what."
Celine's hands rose, trembling, unsure if this was real. Without touching them more than necessary, without looking at them completely.
"Mi-Yeong? Poppy?"
She wanted to vomit.
She didn't… she didn't want them to see her. Not now.
The moment she saw them emerge from those graves, wearing the same clothes they were buried in and looking the same age they were when they died.
She couldn't take it anymore.
"Celine, Cece were are we—" Mi-Yeong said, her hands wandering, grabbing Celine's blazer tightly, her knuckles white and her eyes closed as her head was buried in the now older woman's chest.
"My god those are coffins?" Poppy taking her arm, holding on her and staring at the dirt floor.
She held back the bile rising in her throat. She had Mi-Yeong and Poppy in her arms, but they were still inside their graves. On the wooden boards of their caskets.
They had to get out of there.
"Up," she said, as she lifted them and pulled them out of the hole. Her hands were steadier than she knew, while they were lighter than she expected, than she remembered.
Now she was used to lifting Rumi, Mira, and Zoey at the same time. Lifting Poppy and Mi-Yeong was no challenge.
She pulled them out of the grave, and they fell to the ground quickly, their legs not stable enough to stand on their own, and the adrenaline subsiding now that they knew Celine was there with them.
Celine got up on her own, and her gaze turned to the... girls. They were at her feet. The people who had the faces of her loved ones.
She couldn't hold it in, fell to her knees between them, and threw up her breakfast, right at the foot of the graves.
She didn't even notice the hands that reached for her gray hair, lifting it so it wouldn't get dirty, or the palm on her back, patting her, trying to comfort her.
When she was done, her body trembled from the effort, her throat burning from the bile in her stomach, breathing heavily and weaker than she had expected.
She looked up. She noticed their hands and slowly turned around.
Black hair, loose, one long enough to reach the knees of the person that have it, and the other curly, fluffy, gently brushing her face.
The smell that came from them... She couldn't quite describe it. It was a combination of the smell of something that had been stored away for many years, earth, metal, and something deeper.
Sweet? Some kind of decay?
She didn't want to think about it, or she would again start to—
"How—" She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, removing the remains of vomit.
"How are you alive?"