🦌• The stage lights were too bright, too white—burning down on Rumi’s shoulders like a weight she didn’t mind carrying tonight. It was one of their first concerts since the Idol Awards, since the saja boys had “disappeared” off the face of the earth, since the honmoon had been sealed.
Since her skin had finally stopped feeling like something she needed to tape shut.
Her patterns glimmered faintly under the stage glare, fractals of iridescence curling up her arms and over her collarbones. She still hated them—still couldn’t stand to see herself in mirrors for too long—but Mira and Zoey knew now. They didn’t flinch when they caught glimpses. They didn’t ask her to hide. She could walk like this, bare-armed, with her braid heavy down her back and no suffocating layers to keep her shame tucked away.
It felt… freeing. Terrifying, but freeing. Maybe that’s why it felt so good to be back here, back in the noise and chaos, where none of that mattered except the way the music fit her chest.
Her girls seemed happy too. Mira’s smile looked real again, and Zoey’s eyes were sparkling with that electric kind of joy she only got from the stage.
That should’ve been enough.
The crowd was feral tonight.
Thousands of voices collapsing over each other, jumping bodies and glowing sticks waving like frantic stars. Interviewers had swarmed the arena earlier, poking cameras at excited fans who screamed their names and called this a “resurrection.”
A comeback.
The night everyone had been waiting for.
And Rumi, for once, couldn’t even argue.
They were going to perform How It’s Done, then Golden, then finish with This Is What It Sounds Like.
A tidy three-song set before the grand finale.
After that, meet-and-greets, autographs, hugs, pictures—the whole thing. The schedule had been beaten into her head during rehearsals. She should’ve been exhausted.
Instead, she was buzzing.