Chapter Text
Mira kept her eyes closed for most of the ninety minute train ride. Her mind was wide awake, but her heart was exhausted. Besides, it kept the older woman in the adjacent seat from talking to her. Outside, the countryside sped past in a wet green blur.
Sometimes the thrill of all the new experiences coming her way overtook her, and Mira was able to forget for a few minutes. It never lasted. Her thoughts circled the memory of her mother’s parting words like water swirling down a drain. She was never going to see her parents again.
The disownment had been coming for years, since before Mira’s first long term stay in the psych ward at sixteen, before the eating disorder that still, despite her best efforts, haunted her any time she ate in front of another person. It had crouched at the foot of the long table in the formal dining room for almost as long as Mira could remember. She’d never been a perfect son, and now, evidently, she was an utterly unsatisfying daughter.
She bit her lower lip hard every time that thought lingered for too long. As far as Mira knew, no trans girl had ever been one of the Trio of Hunters. If nothing else, she would arrive tear free, with flawless eye makeup.
She was going to fight demons and see the world. She was going to be worth something, a lot of somethings. And maybe her favorite cousins would still text from time to time, even if their parents disapproved.
Taking a resolute breath, Mira opened her eyes. She was ready. She had to be. There was no turning back.
Until she arrived in South Korea, Zoey felt pretty good about her Korean fluency. Her parents spoke it to each other all the time, and she’d spent the last few years devouring manhwa left and right. Sure, she had to double check the scanlations a lot, but she was almost always right about what the characters were saying, even when she didn’t know all the words. She knew all the polite small talk phrases to keep her grandparents in West Covina and Flagstaff happy, and all the curse words her mother used when they were stuck in traffic.
Then the baggage claim attendant at the airport in Busan asked Zoey what her checked bag looked like, and her carefully rehearsed vocabulary words froze and died on her tongue.
“It’s okay,” her mother said, squeezing her arm. “You’ll have plenty of time to practice, and I’ll be here to translate for as long as you need me.”
Zoey trailed after her mother through the throngs of arriving tourists, towing her bag and hugging her notebook to her chest. She was glad she wasn’t all alone in an unfamiliar country, but she hoped her mother wouldn’t need to be there for too long. Zoey would be eighteen in three days, after all. She was ready for the scary adult independence of the protagonists of her favorite coming-of-age novels. And maybe a torrid love affair or two, if she was lucky.
Celine paced back and forth in front of the row of girls, periodically pausing to study each face. “The three of you have been handpicked from hundreds of potential candidates,” she said. The American girl’s mother repeated her words in English. “Over the next several weeks, I will train you in combat, dance, and, of course, song to prepare you to forge your connection to each other, your audiences, and, eventually, the Honmoon. Are there any questions?”
The American girl had one. Mira watched her hunt through a Korean-English dictionary, then give up and whisper something to her mother. Their easy intimacy with each other stung, just a little.
“Lyrics,” said the American girl’s mother.
Her daughter’s face lit up. “Yes! Will there be time for us to talk about writing song lyrics? Because I have some ideas already.”
Celine favored her with a small smile. “Your enthusiasm does you credit, Zoey. You’ll have time to rest and recover between our training blocks each day, but you’ll probably be too tired to make much use of it until your muscles learn to do what we need them to. You have no formal dance training, correct?”
Zoey licked her lips as her mother translated, looking nervous. “I did ballet for a few months when I was three.”
“We’ll help you,” said Rumi. “Right, Mira?”
The other girls turned to her, and Mira felt a flutter of… something. “Sure thing,” she said.
Zoey windmilled her arms desperately, trying to follow the frantic pop beat. “Like this?” she asked, knowing she was miles off.
“Almost,” Rumi and Mira chorused.
Zoey was beginning to wonder whether the word she thought meant ‘almost’ actually translated to something more like ‘hopeless trash.’ She knew better than to expect to be a master dancer after only two weeks of practice, but her slow progress was still daunting. “Can I watch you do it again?”
“Of course,” said Rumi, hitting replay.
The track started up again. Rumi and Mira slid seamlessly into action, their long ponytails bouncing. Even with the obvious gap in the three-person formation, they pivoted and twisted around each other like gears in a well-oiled machine.
“And seven, eight, we’ll customize this part once we know what weapons each of us can summon,” Rumi finished. “Does that make sense, Zoey?”
Zoey’s cheeks were hot. “I know what it should look like,” she said, speaking slowly to give herself time to remember the right words. Her mother had only been able to take a few weeks off of work, so now Zoey’s battered Korean-English dictionary was her best friend. “It’s just hard to make my body… do that.”
“You’ll get it,” said Rumi. “Want to practice through our next rest period?” Her eyes sparkled the way they always did in unhealthy optimism mode. Zoey really liked this girl, but she could be a lot.
Zoey made a face. “I think my arms and legs will lock up if I don’t take a hot bath in the next thirty minutes, but I appreciate the offer.”
“How about this?” said Mira from directly behind Zoey.
Zoey jumped. Mira had a bad habit of accidentally sneaking up on people. Still, Zoey liked her too.
“Sorry,” said Mira, not sounding too sorry. “What if we go through the choreo again, and I help you move your arms? Sometimes feeling what I’m supposed to do is better than seeing it.”
“Okay,” said Zoey, her cheeks hot now for a different reason.
Up close, Mira’s hair smelled like lavender. Sweat glistened on her muscular shoulders, and Zoey was too bisexual for this. Mira rested one hand on Zoey’s right hip and the other on her left elbow. Her touch seemed to tingle and burn, but Zoey knew that was all in her head.
“Hit the track,” said Mira.
Something was different this time. Zoey felt it even before it was time for her to move. There was a fizz in the air around them, tying her to the other girls. Guided by Mira’s gentle hands, her arm swept out in an arc at the perfect time for Rumi to duck under it and emerge back-to-back in a pose that would be perfect for cultivating a dynamic stage presence or covering each other in a fight.
“Now loosen your hips, raise your right arm with the microphone or weapon above your head, and twirl… now,” Mira said in her ear, her breath hot on Zoey’s neck.
To Zoey’s amazement, she did just as Mira asked. Both of Mira’s hands held her hips now, soft yet firm. And Rumi was there, going low as Mira went high, then high as Mira went low. Her elbow rested on Mira’s shoulder.
Then Rumi gasped. “Look! There!”
For just a moment, as all three of them touched, they could see it. The Honmoon shimmered beneath their feet. Maybe Zoey was imagining it, but it felt like it was excited to see them too.
They collapsed in a heap on the studio floor as the final strains of their backing track died away. Zoey was sweatier than she’d ever been in her life, but she was brimming over with joy. They’d done it. They’d really done it!
Rumi broke their elated silence at last. “We should definitely work through our rest time. That was so cool!”
The other two’s simultaneous groan sent all three of them into a fit of giggles.
“What weapon do you think you’ll get?” Zoey asked Rumi as they wound their way up the steep, rocky path to the mountain shrine. A spiritual quest to help awaken them as a trio, according to Celine.
“My mother had a saingeom,” said Rumi quietly. She fiddled with the straps of her hiking bag. “It would be nice to have that kind of connection to her.” After a moment, she added, “But I don’t know if I’m worthy of that.”
“Of course you are!” Zoey exclaimed. “You work harder than any of us!”
Mira let the two of them pull ahead, too caught up in their chatter to notice she wasn’t keeping pace with them. Zoey’s room back at the training lodge was plastered with snapshots from home: cosplays, holidays with her grandparents, and, over and over and over, her mother and father.
“We don’t always see eye to eye, but they’ve done so much for me,” she said once, catching Mira studying the pictures. “They work so hard, you know? They always wanted me to have a better life than they did growing up.”
It was hard for Mira to look away from the snapshots after that. There was baby Zoey in a frothy pink dress, floating airplane-style in her mother’s arms. There was Zoey, five or six years old, smiling a gap-toothed smile in a Princess Leia costume some loving hand had sewn for her. There were Zoey and her father at a petting zoo, utterly mobbed by hungry baby goats and laughing their heads off. In the pictures, Zoey’s parents were always smiling, always touching her. It made a mean, lonely part of Mira’s heart clench horribly.
The last time Mira had spoken to her mother, neither of them had looked the other in the eye. There was too much hurt there, and a wall of pride too thick to breach. Mira was never going to speak to her again. All the nevers in her life made her dizzy.
“Where’s Mira?” Zoey asked up ahead. “Mira? There you are.” She jogged back down the hill and grabbed Mira’s hand, tugging her onward. “Look! We’re here.”
***
The three of them knelt beneath a statue of the first Trio of Hunters. It seemed to shimmer faintly in the starlight the same way the Honmoon had in their brief glimpse. Rumi handed around water bottles full of a murky liquid.
Mira unscrewed the lid of hers, sniffed it, and pulled a face. “What’s in this?”
Rumi shrugged. “Celine stuff. Herbs, I guess. It’s to ‘enhance our connection to the Honmoon.’”
“So drugs.” Mira crossed her arms. “You didn’t mention you were into that stuff, Rumi.”
“I’m not!” There was a note of panic in Rumi’s voice. “This is just part of the ritual.”
“Relax.” Mira bumped her shoulder. “We like a party. Right, Zoey?”
Zoey had taken her first bong hit at a house party the previous summer. She hadn’t been able to stop coughing, and everyone else had laughed at her. “Uh, sure,” she said. “I party.”
Celine’s mystery drink was thick and unpleasant, with a too-strong aftertaste like the hellspawn of rosemary and peppermint. Zoey said so, and the others laughed.
“Now what?” Mira asked.
“Um.” Rumi scrabbled in her pockets, retrieved a scrap of paper, and studied it. “Now we wait ‘until we feel our connection to the warriors of the past begin to bloom,’ then hold hands and sing the first Trio’s song. Easy enough.”
Minutes passed, and Zoey felt… something. An itch in the back of her mind.
Mira nudged her. “Hey, move your leg. You’re kneeling on a sharp rock.”
Zoey did, rubbing the sore spot on her knee. “Thanks. I didn’t notice.” She paused. “How did you notice?”
“Felt it.” Mira shrugged. “It’s weird as fuck.”
“It’s time,” said Rumi with a Jack-o-lantern grin. “I’m starting to feel it too.”
“Me too, I think.” Zoey took the others’ hands, and all of them gasped.
The connection shimmered between them, a web of blue-white strands brighter than the stars. It felt…
“Like the first time I get a dance move exactly right,” said Mira, completing Zoey’s thought. They locked eyes. “I can hear you. Rumi too, but not as well.”
“I’ll work on that,” said Rumi, reddening.
Hearing was the wrong word, Zoey thought. Mira and Rumi were just… available whenever her mind reached out to them.
“The song,” said Rumi, squeezing both of their hands. Zoey felt Rumi’s hand in Mira’s as well as her own.
Their voices rose in harmony, echoing the words of the ancients and rising into the starry sky. The Honmoon blazed beneath them.
It might have been Celine’s herbs, but in that moment, everything was perfect.