Chapter Text
The first time Rumi did it, it was out of curiosity. She was fifteen, in the back of her bathroom in Celine’s house.
She was curious because she knew her saingeom wouldn’t hurt a human, but it would hurt a demon.
Would it hurt her? A half-demon?
She didn’t want it to. The Honmoon protects its hunters. The Honmoon had to protect its hunters. She wanted to be human enough for it.
At first, the blade didn’t hurt her. It merely left a line on her skin. A dent - like if she’d left an elastic around her wrist for too long, except slimmer.
Of course it didn’t cut through the skin on her first attempt. She was doing this to herself - of course she was going to be more gentle with herself than with any demons that were going to pop up around her.
But her thoughts…
Demons don’t bleed. “Will I?” Rumi whispered, too soft for anyone to hear but herself.
She needed to find out.
She pressed the blade of her saingeom to her skin again, harder this time, sliding the blade across it. It stung. Rumi compared the sensation to getting a rugburn. But she didn’t stop until she saw a thin line of red.
Blood. She was bleeding.
For a moment, she felt a faint sense of relief. She was human enough to bleed.
And then the gravity of what she’d done hit her like a thousand pounds of… something. She couldn’t tell anyone about this. Celine would just tell her ”Your faults and fears must never be seen,” like it was the first time she was hearing it.
And nobody else could know about her demon patterns anyway. So long as Celine was keeping them covered up, nobody would know about this moment anyway.
Fifteen-year-old Kang Rumi walked out of her bathroom that day with a sweater on, and a new secret to keep.