Shin-yeong Cho, Psychic
Status: Approved
Mod Notes: None.
Player Name: Emma
Player LJ: zoulvisia
Player Email: eleonie@gmail.com
AIM/YIM/etc.: vertigosleeper (AIM)
Character Name: Shin-yeong Cho
Character Type: Psychic (Pyrokinetic)
Abilities: Creation/manipulation of and immunity to fire, obviously. On the whole his power is moderate-to-greater, neither trifling nor freakishly strong - but that's only if we're talking about potential. His abilities have been something he has almost exclusively avoided, except to keep them under control, 'cause that alone is enough of an everyday struggle for him, thanks. In fact, Shin-yeong has never deliberately started a fire, and only done so twice by accident, a singed carpet and curtain set ablaze shortly after he moved to America when he was stressed and hadn't started learning to restrain himself yet. After that, his only focus has been on preventing himself from setting anything on fire, so in this area he has tremendous skill, but in this area alone. Accordingly, his stamina and precision are incredibly underdeveloped. There are also, of course, general conditions on his abilities. The further away, bigger and/or hotter the flame he's trying to start is, the longer he needs and the more it takes out of him - the toll manifests in headaches, a sore body, and nausea. For a particularly distant, hot or large fire, they may even last for more than a day. At the moment, though, all of this is hypothetical, because Shin-yeong prefers to just... not... set fires. With intensive training he could be pretty damn strong, but he's not comfortable enough with being a psychic to want to do anything but suppress his talents.
Aside from the fire thing, Shin-yeong's been taking taekwondo lessons since he was five or six, originally 'just as a hobby' but pursuing his training with increasing dedication for about a decade and a half now. Since he sucks at anything written and has a tin ear, his art field of choice was always visual, so he's pretty good at sketching, painting and photography. He's an excellent cook, knows how to tie some very complex knots, can do some basic sewing and knows how to operate a construction equipment.
Age: 22
Kinsey Rating: 2. But he steadfastly ignores any of his non-heterosexual impulses because he's kind of homophobic, to put it bluntly, in that passive 'I don't hate gay people but being gay is still wrong' way. Which is funny, considering what he is, but, you know. People have a startling capacity for hypocrisy. And self-deception. As far as the story Shin-yeong tells himself goes, he's wholly straight and never inclined to anything else.
Physical Appearance: Around five-eight, maybe a sixth of an inch or two shorter; his build tends to the slender due to genetics but is far from twig-like, with powerful muscles and a minor disposition toward some excess body fat in the legs, but not bulky either; coarse black hair; dark brown eyes; pale beige skin; thick eyebrows, small full mouth, straight nose.
PB: Ha-joon Yoo
Personality:
Shin-yeong is, on the surface and first dozen or so layers of it, a tough, rather distant person. He doesn't display any but the most perfunctory of emotions very often; when he does, it's almost always anger. Usually he could best be described as calm, a little bit hard - not aggressive or actively unfriendly; capable of a normal conversation; but exuding a certain aloofness. 'Warm' or 'welcoming' would not be anyone's first choice of words to describe Shin-yeong. He's not especially difficult to get along with, too quiet to be abrasive (except occasionally when his morbid, sarcastic sense of humour comes out to play). But he's difficult to get to know.
There's a bit of a contradiction in Shin-yeong's nature. He's a loner and prizes his independence fiercely - the idea of being subservient to another person, or forced to do anything, is abhorrent to him. And yet, when interacting with other people or in a group, he's quite capable of taking a passively accepting role, following orders and going along with another's wishes - generally speaking. This is because he's not a person of markedly strong desires himself. Most of the time he doesn't have a vested interest either way, be it in which cafe to get coffee at, or whether he's stuck scrubbing the floor after taekwondo class. The only caveat is that when he does have his own ideas about what to do, or what not to do, he's as immovably stubborn as a mountain. In any case, nine tenths of the time he goes with the flow, because... well, he just doesn't care about very much.
That said, what he does care about, he cares about with a passion which sometimes frightens even Shin-yeong himself. It's not money or status; although he likes having a roof to sleep under and food to eat, worldly gain doesn't interest him much. Nor is it romance or pleasure; he's a rather judgmental and mistrusting person, preferring to avoid other people because there are few he doesn't find weak or tiresome. And then pleasure is something he denies himself because there is a core of deep self-hatred eating away at him - he doesn't believe he deserves anything good, because Shin-yeong doesn't measure up to his own standards of strength and righteousness either, and he knows it. No matter how hard he tries - and he does try to better himself, striving for it with everything he has, all the time - he's never good enough in his eyes.
What Shin-yeong cares about is two things: his family, and self-control. It's no exaggeration to say that he'd die unhesitatingly for his mother and sisters, nor that he'd sooner die than lose control of himself. At the heart of it, beneath his ultimately negative view of other people and the world, Shin-yeong definitely has a hero complex going on. He feels that he has something to atone for. He feels that he's a threat to those around him, who may not match his ideal of righteousness but who are surely more innocent than he is. He views himself as something dangerous which must be reined in tight, punished and suppressed; he doesn't like himself. He exists because he does have a deep love for and sense of duty towards his family - he doesn't think he can ever make them proud, but if he can't do that then he wants to at least spare them any further pain, and be there to protect them if ever he can. There's this driving instinct, this belief that if he does enough good he'll be forgiven someday - by whom, and for what sins, he wouldn't be able to articulate.
This constant sense of burden, of being held in contempt by fate or chance or whatever it is that shapes the path of his life (Shin-yeong is a fatalist, for sure), isn't a comfortable thing, of course. And there's always a part of Shin-yeong which rebels against it - which wonders why he deserves pain, why he should believe he's a horrible enough person to deserve pain, which thinks that it just isn't fair - isn't fair that his world should be the way it is, isn't fair that Shin-yeong should try to live his life the way he does, and that it is in fact his self-denial which makes him a bad person: that he's starving all the parts of him which don't fall into line with his own world-view, all the parts of him which could be so much more, of their rightful dues. So Shin-yeong has this immense well of tension, conflict, a fragmented nature which inevitably translates over into anger. And then when his temper raises its head he can't help but get angrier at himself because he's thwarting his own attempts at self-control and so the cycle continues. When the anger overflows, it's not a pretty sight. Although that happens rarely, some people tend to be nervous around Shin-yeong because if you're sensitive at all, you can tell that there's this intense, constant struggle. There's terror, too - terror that his anger is going to get the better of him and that his dreams of fire will come true.
Underneath everything, stunted and buried, there are other things. By nature Shin-yeong is the kind of person who needs affection, and more importantly people to give affection to, being more inclined toward making others happy than toward being made happy himself. As a child he was loving to the point of clinginess with his parents, displayed a fierce devotion to taking care of his sisters, and was possessed of an open, headstrong, enthusiastic personality, excitable and prone to tantrums but never cruel or selfish. But that time is fifteen years past, now. It's not like he's secretly a gentle, tender person, deep deep down - he's just a person out of whom some gentleness and tenderness might still be coaxed.
History/Background:
Born in Seoul to a family of restaurantiers, Shin-yeong's early childhood was as normal and happy as anyone could expect. The only son of a couple with three daughters, he was a bit spoiled and favoured due to this status, sad to say though it is. Nonetheless, thanks to the discipline of his grandmothers, he was never a tremendous brat. As they all lived in the apartments over the restaurant, his extended family - three grandparents (his mother's father had died years before), an aunt and uncle, and two cousins - was always as much presence in his life as his immediate. So his early childhood looked like this - school and play, taekwondo (which his parents had had him take up at an early age as an outlet for his abundant energy), a couple of other hobbies, and lots of helping out in the kitchen.
When Shin-yeong was seven-almost-eight, everything kind of fell apart. Or rather, burned to the ground.
It happened in the middle of a very hot, dry summer's night. A flame down in the kitchen had been left on by accident, with one of the windows open a little to allow for some coolness - it was a breezy night. The house was made of old, highly flammable wood, with bad fireproofing, and there was a kitchen towel lying right next to the flame to boot. You can do the math. The fire spread through the house like a cold through a preschool. By the time Shin-yeong's grandfather woke up because of the noise and smoke, it was in full burn. He raised the alarm immediately, but it was too late for evacuating to be an easy proposition. The fire, originating in the kitchen as it did, made exit through the ground floor impossible; it had also spread to the back-alley side of the building, blocking any way out through the badly-constructed fire escape.
While Shin-yeong's mother phoned the fire department, everybody else, well, panicked, including two of Shin-yeong's younger sisters. In the chaos, he had been assigned to watch over them - while the adults fetched expired fire extinguishers that had about as much use against the flames as a sheet of linen against a monsoon, and talked about makeshift ropes and so forth, the smoke thickening all the while - but, distracted himself, he only noticed too late when they dashed for the fire escape, having apparently decided that they just needed to get out, not quite understanding the risks. What happened next is all a bit of a jumble in Shin-yeong's memory. He knows that he raced after his sisters, shouting, time suddenly speeding up in that curious way it does during moments of high adrenaline - and then they were all outside on the stairs, in the midst of the fire... and he felt no pain.
It was one of those situations where there was just too much going on to stop and process intellectually; so Shin-yeong simply reacted on instinct. He grabbed at his sisters, pulling them as close as he could while sprinting down the stairs. In what seemed like a heartbeat, they were clear of the flames, stumbling across the pavement into the crowd which had already assembled there. His sisters were ablaze and screaming, quickly smothered in whatever cloth the bystanders could procure. But Shin-yeong had not even hint of singing on him. He had run through fire and come out unscathed.
The fire brigade arrived not three minutes later. It was much longer before the flames were extinguished, but they set to work on extracting the rest of Shin-yeong's family from the blaze, and getting everybody to the hospital. Nonetheless, the aftermath was brutal. Two of Shin-yeong's grandparents, his aunt, a cousin, one of his sisters and his father were dead; everybody else suffered burns and smoke-inhalation related complications. The building was irreparable. Most of their possessions had been destroyed. Still, even among the other concerns, Shin-yeong's miraculously non-injurious jaunt through the blaze was far from forgotten.
However, it wasn't discussed. It hung between his interactions with everyone like a raincloud, heavy with a storm nobody wanted to unleash. Everyone knew what it meant. Nobody knew what to do about it. In the end, a few months after the fire, when things were starting to return to normal, Shin-yeong's family decided to send him to live with his other aunt and uncle in America. It was a decision made quietly, after long discussions between the adults behind closed doors - a decision made for the good of the family, for the good of Shin-yeong, for the sake of harmony. His presence was unsettling. His presence brought up so many uncomfortable questions. His presence was maybe even dangerous. Shin-yeong's aunt and uncle, on the other hand, were well-equipped to deal with a person like him. His uncle was Korean-American, a minor legislator in San Francisco who worked on defending supe rights, his aunt - his mother's sister - a philanthropist who worked with street youth. Informed of the decision, Shin-yeong was confused and overwhelmed and consumed by a guilt the origin of which he couldn't trace - and so he didn't object, he didn't put up a fuss even though the idea of going to a new country for a vague unspecified amount of time was terrifying, because he felt that then he'd be causing even more trouble than he already had. And that's how Shin-yeong moved to San Francisco.
In that time, everything for Shin-yeong was pure turmoil. He was away from his family, in a place full of strange-looking strangers who spoke a strange language. His father was less than half a year dead. His aunt and uncle were - are - wonderful, kind people who did their best, but there was only so much that could be done. Shin-yeong, unable to shake the idea that he was being punished for something, didn't allow himself to feel properly. He internalized, he locked down, took the pain upon himself as something he deserved, not something he should be allowed to move past. Basically, his coping mechanisms were overloaded far beyond their saturation points. Still, he did cope in a manner of the word, putting on a facade of coping while inside he addressed absolutely none of his issues, shoving them away into his subconscious as best he could. His aunt and uncle tried to keep things as 'normal' as possible for him, encouraging to keep up his old hobbies. That was the first point at which Shin-yeong truly applied himself to taekwondo with anything resembling discipline. There was something calming in it, something weightily reassuring about the feel of control it gave him.
Meanwhile, Shin-yeong's aunt did her best to equip him to get a hold of his powers - meditation and focus exercises, and so on. With the two accidental fires, Shin-yeong fully realized what his abilities meant, and was, well, scared out of his mind. He had incessant nightmares about fire - fire burning around him which all of his attempts to stop only fed, fire burning inside him. Fire he started, fire he couldn't control. Fire which destroyed innocent people, fire which destroyed him. So he did the only thing he could, which was to throw himself with a desperate zeal into gaining the tightest grip on his power possible. 'The tightest grip possible' is, mind, never enough for Shin-yeong's peace of mind. He can always feel the fire, itching to get out, sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker. Usually he doesn't have to actively think about controlling it, but every now and again - when he's upset, or just, as far as he can tell, in random phases - not letting it escape is an active effort he has to maintain.
It's not an experience which makes Shin-yeong happy, to say the least; and it seems that the older he gets, the more powerful and frequent the fire's push against his boundaries. As a child it was like the sound of a brook babbling in the distance, and an occasional tickle in his mind; now, as an adult, it's like standing at the edges of Niagara Falls, and not-infrequent kicks against the walls of his head.
Anyway, returning to Shin-yeong at eight years old, slowly his life returned to something resembling ordinary. He spent a few weeks during the summers with his family, visited them on holidays, got the hang of English and the basis of control over his talent. The tragedy receded into time and Shin-yeong... functioned. He didn't make many friends, and spent most of his free time in solitary pursuits - practicing forms, sketching, reading. He came to think of himself as not particularly happy, but not unhappy either - kind of empty, devoid of thoughts of the future and past, willing to let the course of his life take him where it would.
The rest of Shin-yeong's childhood was marked only by a handful of notable milestones. When he was thirteen, his family decided to take him back to Korea. There he graduated from high school with unremarkable grades. He was accepted to the University of Seoul, but due to lack of funds chose not to attend. Instead, he decided to fulfill his compulsory military service immediately, spending roughly two years in the army. During that period, after a lot of thought, he settled on returning to America for good after he was done. There was - is - a constant layer of tension between him and his family which, even after so many years, hadn't gone away. It was suffocating for him, and only seemed to grow more acute with time, rather than things easing back into the way which they once were. All the waiting for things to be right again was fruitless, and he had no choice but to realize it much though he wanted to stick his head in the sand.
So at twenty years old, once finished with his army duty, he ran, basically.
Back in San Francisco, he set up in a shitty apartment in the outskirts of the city and started working construction. Originally it was just intended as a temporary step, easily-accessible pay for someone with few qualifications, but Shin-yeong discovered he actually kind of liked the job. As the years went by, he stuck with it, supplementing it with a position teaching evening classes in taekwondo at a community center near his apartment. And that pretty much brings us up to the present. There have been some promotions, occasional courses taken at a community college (recently he's been considering full-time university to get a degree in engineering), a handful of short-lived girlfriends (Shin-yeong sucks at holding down relationships, in case you wouldn't be able to guess), some better times, some worse. He's not expecting things to change any time soon.
But you never know. He may be wrong.
RP Sample:
"Yo."
It was lunch break on Saturday, late July, heatwaves rising up from the pavement in the distance. Shin-yeong was sitting on the stairs of the mall next to the condominium building they were in the middle of constructing, with a paper cup in hand still half-full of coffee. Jake, approaching from above with a take-out wrapped sandwich, all but fell onto the step next to him, obviously harder than he had intended, letting out a sharp 'ow' when his tailbone hit the ground. Shin-yeong didn't glance over or acknowledge the greeting or the pain, continuing his impassive considering of the people passing by below and next to him. "Jesus," said Jake. He never had been and probably never would be deterred by any of Shin-yeong's reticence. "How the hell can you drink coffee on a day like this? It's hotter than the fire under the devil's ass, to steal a phrase from my darlin' mother."
Shin-yeong smiled, briefly and thinly, and took another sip. "Being sleepy on the job sucks," he answered after a moment's thought. "Figured I could use the kick." He didn't elaborate, of course, that being tired usually meant that his control felt fuzzier, senses less alert and focus more distracted, and that his control over himself wasn't something he could afford to treat lightly. Especially not when the itch had been more persistent than usual these past couple of days.
"Yeah?" Out of the corner of his eye, Shin-yeong could see Jake smirking like a coyote. "You up late yesterday, huh? Had a night on the town and didn't invite me?" Shin-yeong just rolled his eyes. "Hey, man, hey," laughed Jake. "I ain't judging. If it were me, I would've been out havin' some fun the minute that stony bitch kicked me to the curb, not a week later."
"Don't call her that," Shin-yeong said, a bit absently, with a bit of a frown. "She was a nice girl."
With a shrug, Jake started unwrapping his sandwich. "Whatever you say. From where I'm standing, she was a cold-hearted snob. Not the right chick for you at all."
"I think she just didn't like you," murmured Shin-yeong. He set his cup to the side, draping his hands between his knees and systematically lacing, unlacing his fingers. Anne had been nice, maybe not the most cheerful person around, but who the hell was he to judge for that? She'd been patient with him, largely undemanding - not half bad in bed, either. No wonder she'd dumped him. He let out a soft laugh, a single wry sound. Now that was edging dangerously close to self-pity, he thought. He'd have to be careful about that. Meanwhile, Jake tore off a bite and spoke, mouth full:
"Eh. So anyway, where'd you go?" He smirked again, tone very quickly plunging into lewder shades. "Who'd you meet?"
Shin-yeong sighed, picking up his coffee again. "Nowhere. Nobody. I was up writing a letter." Dumbass, he considered adding for a second, but it would - oddly enough - sound too teasingly familiar for him to feel comfortable saying it. So instead he kept his language curt.
Jake was silent for a bit, staring blankly over at Shin-yeong. "Letter?" he echoed finally, his tone suggesting that Shin-yeong may as well have been speaking Korean.
Swallowing the last of his coffee, Shin-yeong said: "Yes. Letter. As in, pen on paper, dear so-and-so, yours sincerely."
"Okay, okay. Back up a sec. Who the hell - writes letters? I mean, hey - e-mail? Telephone? And you? I don't think I've seen you touch a pencil in my life. Like, no offense, my friend, but you don't seem the writing type, know what I mean?"
Tempted though he was to just remain silent and let the matter drop there, trusting that Jake would quickly jump to another topic, Shin-yeong found himself replying: "My mother likes getting letters." Then he shut up, very abruptly, feeling strangely naked and vulnerable - like he had, in the impulsive comment, exposed too much, exposed something too personal. He didn't talk about his family at work.
But Jake didn't seem to notice at all. "Oh," he said, sounding disinterested now. "Huh. Okay then. Well you know, man, that's sad. You've gotta go enjoy yourself sometime soon. I'll take you to a club or something. All work and no play, yadda yadda."
Crumpling his cup in his hand, Shin-yeong got to his feet in one fast motion. "Break's up in three minutes," he said, starting to head down the stairs. "You might wanna finish that sandwich quick." And with that, he jumped the last few steps and started walking with his accustomed brisk pace back to the construction site, tossing the cup in the trash as he went.
Mod Notes: None.
Player Name: Emma
Player LJ: zoulvisia
Player Email: eleonie@gmail.com
AIM/YIM/etc.: vertigosleeper (AIM)
Character Name: Shin-yeong Cho
Character Type: Psychic (Pyrokinetic)
Abilities: Creation/manipulation of and immunity to fire, obviously. On the whole his power is moderate-to-greater, neither trifling nor freakishly strong - but that's only if we're talking about potential. His abilities have been something he has almost exclusively avoided, except to keep them under control, 'cause that alone is enough of an everyday struggle for him, thanks. In fact, Shin-yeong has never deliberately started a fire, and only done so twice by accident, a singed carpet and curtain set ablaze shortly after he moved to America when he was stressed and hadn't started learning to restrain himself yet. After that, his only focus has been on preventing himself from setting anything on fire, so in this area he has tremendous skill, but in this area alone. Accordingly, his stamina and precision are incredibly underdeveloped. There are also, of course, general conditions on his abilities. The further away, bigger and/or hotter the flame he's trying to start is, the longer he needs and the more it takes out of him - the toll manifests in headaches, a sore body, and nausea. For a particularly distant, hot or large fire, they may even last for more than a day. At the moment, though, all of this is hypothetical, because Shin-yeong prefers to just... not... set fires. With intensive training he could be pretty damn strong, but he's not comfortable enough with being a psychic to want to do anything but suppress his talents.
Aside from the fire thing, Shin-yeong's been taking taekwondo lessons since he was five or six, originally 'just as a hobby' but pursuing his training with increasing dedication for about a decade and a half now. Since he sucks at anything written and has a tin ear, his art field of choice was always visual, so he's pretty good at sketching, painting and photography. He's an excellent cook, knows how to tie some very complex knots, can do some basic sewing and knows how to operate a construction equipment.
Age: 22
Kinsey Rating: 2. But he steadfastly ignores any of his non-heterosexual impulses because he's kind of homophobic, to put it bluntly, in that passive 'I don't hate gay people but being gay is still wrong' way. Which is funny, considering what he is, but, you know. People have a startling capacity for hypocrisy. And self-deception. As far as the story Shin-yeong tells himself goes, he's wholly straight and never inclined to anything else.
Physical Appearance: Around five-eight, maybe a sixth of an inch or two shorter; his build tends to the slender due to genetics but is far from twig-like, with powerful muscles and a minor disposition toward some excess body fat in the legs, but not bulky either; coarse black hair; dark brown eyes; pale beige skin; thick eyebrows, small full mouth, straight nose.
PB: Ha-joon Yoo
Personality:
Shin-yeong is, on the surface and first dozen or so layers of it, a tough, rather distant person. He doesn't display any but the most perfunctory of emotions very often; when he does, it's almost always anger. Usually he could best be described as calm, a little bit hard - not aggressive or actively unfriendly; capable of a normal conversation; but exuding a certain aloofness. 'Warm' or 'welcoming' would not be anyone's first choice of words to describe Shin-yeong. He's not especially difficult to get along with, too quiet to be abrasive (except occasionally when his morbid, sarcastic sense of humour comes out to play). But he's difficult to get to know.
There's a bit of a contradiction in Shin-yeong's nature. He's a loner and prizes his independence fiercely - the idea of being subservient to another person, or forced to do anything, is abhorrent to him. And yet, when interacting with other people or in a group, he's quite capable of taking a passively accepting role, following orders and going along with another's wishes - generally speaking. This is because he's not a person of markedly strong desires himself. Most of the time he doesn't have a vested interest either way, be it in which cafe to get coffee at, or whether he's stuck scrubbing the floor after taekwondo class. The only caveat is that when he does have his own ideas about what to do, or what not to do, he's as immovably stubborn as a mountain. In any case, nine tenths of the time he goes with the flow, because... well, he just doesn't care about very much.
That said, what he does care about, he cares about with a passion which sometimes frightens even Shin-yeong himself. It's not money or status; although he likes having a roof to sleep under and food to eat, worldly gain doesn't interest him much. Nor is it romance or pleasure; he's a rather judgmental and mistrusting person, preferring to avoid other people because there are few he doesn't find weak or tiresome. And then pleasure is something he denies himself because there is a core of deep self-hatred eating away at him - he doesn't believe he deserves anything good, because Shin-yeong doesn't measure up to his own standards of strength and righteousness either, and he knows it. No matter how hard he tries - and he does try to better himself, striving for it with everything he has, all the time - he's never good enough in his eyes.
What Shin-yeong cares about is two things: his family, and self-control. It's no exaggeration to say that he'd die unhesitatingly for his mother and sisters, nor that he'd sooner die than lose control of himself. At the heart of it, beneath his ultimately negative view of other people and the world, Shin-yeong definitely has a hero complex going on. He feels that he has something to atone for. He feels that he's a threat to those around him, who may not match his ideal of righteousness but who are surely more innocent than he is. He views himself as something dangerous which must be reined in tight, punished and suppressed; he doesn't like himself. He exists because he does have a deep love for and sense of duty towards his family - he doesn't think he can ever make them proud, but if he can't do that then he wants to at least spare them any further pain, and be there to protect them if ever he can. There's this driving instinct, this belief that if he does enough good he'll be forgiven someday - by whom, and for what sins, he wouldn't be able to articulate.
This constant sense of burden, of being held in contempt by fate or chance or whatever it is that shapes the path of his life (Shin-yeong is a fatalist, for sure), isn't a comfortable thing, of course. And there's always a part of Shin-yeong which rebels against it - which wonders why he deserves pain, why he should believe he's a horrible enough person to deserve pain, which thinks that it just isn't fair - isn't fair that his world should be the way it is, isn't fair that Shin-yeong should try to live his life the way he does, and that it is in fact his self-denial which makes him a bad person: that he's starving all the parts of him which don't fall into line with his own world-view, all the parts of him which could be so much more, of their rightful dues. So Shin-yeong has this immense well of tension, conflict, a fragmented nature which inevitably translates over into anger. And then when his temper raises its head he can't help but get angrier at himself because he's thwarting his own attempts at self-control and so the cycle continues. When the anger overflows, it's not a pretty sight. Although that happens rarely, some people tend to be nervous around Shin-yeong because if you're sensitive at all, you can tell that there's this intense, constant struggle. There's terror, too - terror that his anger is going to get the better of him and that his dreams of fire will come true.
Underneath everything, stunted and buried, there are other things. By nature Shin-yeong is the kind of person who needs affection, and more importantly people to give affection to, being more inclined toward making others happy than toward being made happy himself. As a child he was loving to the point of clinginess with his parents, displayed a fierce devotion to taking care of his sisters, and was possessed of an open, headstrong, enthusiastic personality, excitable and prone to tantrums but never cruel or selfish. But that time is fifteen years past, now. It's not like he's secretly a gentle, tender person, deep deep down - he's just a person out of whom some gentleness and tenderness might still be coaxed.
History/Background:
Born in Seoul to a family of restaurantiers, Shin-yeong's early childhood was as normal and happy as anyone could expect. The only son of a couple with three daughters, he was a bit spoiled and favoured due to this status, sad to say though it is. Nonetheless, thanks to the discipline of his grandmothers, he was never a tremendous brat. As they all lived in the apartments over the restaurant, his extended family - three grandparents (his mother's father had died years before), an aunt and uncle, and two cousins - was always as much presence in his life as his immediate. So his early childhood looked like this - school and play, taekwondo (which his parents had had him take up at an early age as an outlet for his abundant energy), a couple of other hobbies, and lots of helping out in the kitchen.
When Shin-yeong was seven-almost-eight, everything kind of fell apart. Or rather, burned to the ground.
It happened in the middle of a very hot, dry summer's night. A flame down in the kitchen had been left on by accident, with one of the windows open a little to allow for some coolness - it was a breezy night. The house was made of old, highly flammable wood, with bad fireproofing, and there was a kitchen towel lying right next to the flame to boot. You can do the math. The fire spread through the house like a cold through a preschool. By the time Shin-yeong's grandfather woke up because of the noise and smoke, it was in full burn. He raised the alarm immediately, but it was too late for evacuating to be an easy proposition. The fire, originating in the kitchen as it did, made exit through the ground floor impossible; it had also spread to the back-alley side of the building, blocking any way out through the badly-constructed fire escape.
While Shin-yeong's mother phoned the fire department, everybody else, well, panicked, including two of Shin-yeong's younger sisters. In the chaos, he had been assigned to watch over them - while the adults fetched expired fire extinguishers that had about as much use against the flames as a sheet of linen against a monsoon, and talked about makeshift ropes and so forth, the smoke thickening all the while - but, distracted himself, he only noticed too late when they dashed for the fire escape, having apparently decided that they just needed to get out, not quite understanding the risks. What happened next is all a bit of a jumble in Shin-yeong's memory. He knows that he raced after his sisters, shouting, time suddenly speeding up in that curious way it does during moments of high adrenaline - and then they were all outside on the stairs, in the midst of the fire... and he felt no pain.
It was one of those situations where there was just too much going on to stop and process intellectually; so Shin-yeong simply reacted on instinct. He grabbed at his sisters, pulling them as close as he could while sprinting down the stairs. In what seemed like a heartbeat, they were clear of the flames, stumbling across the pavement into the crowd which had already assembled there. His sisters were ablaze and screaming, quickly smothered in whatever cloth the bystanders could procure. But Shin-yeong had not even hint of singing on him. He had run through fire and come out unscathed.
The fire brigade arrived not three minutes later. It was much longer before the flames were extinguished, but they set to work on extracting the rest of Shin-yeong's family from the blaze, and getting everybody to the hospital. Nonetheless, the aftermath was brutal. Two of Shin-yeong's grandparents, his aunt, a cousin, one of his sisters and his father were dead; everybody else suffered burns and smoke-inhalation related complications. The building was irreparable. Most of their possessions had been destroyed. Still, even among the other concerns, Shin-yeong's miraculously non-injurious jaunt through the blaze was far from forgotten.
However, it wasn't discussed. It hung between his interactions with everyone like a raincloud, heavy with a storm nobody wanted to unleash. Everyone knew what it meant. Nobody knew what to do about it. In the end, a few months after the fire, when things were starting to return to normal, Shin-yeong's family decided to send him to live with his other aunt and uncle in America. It was a decision made quietly, after long discussions between the adults behind closed doors - a decision made for the good of the family, for the good of Shin-yeong, for the sake of harmony. His presence was unsettling. His presence brought up so many uncomfortable questions. His presence was maybe even dangerous. Shin-yeong's aunt and uncle, on the other hand, were well-equipped to deal with a person like him. His uncle was Korean-American, a minor legislator in San Francisco who worked on defending supe rights, his aunt - his mother's sister - a philanthropist who worked with street youth. Informed of the decision, Shin-yeong was confused and overwhelmed and consumed by a guilt the origin of which he couldn't trace - and so he didn't object, he didn't put up a fuss even though the idea of going to a new country for a vague unspecified amount of time was terrifying, because he felt that then he'd be causing even more trouble than he already had. And that's how Shin-yeong moved to San Francisco.
In that time, everything for Shin-yeong was pure turmoil. He was away from his family, in a place full of strange-looking strangers who spoke a strange language. His father was less than half a year dead. His aunt and uncle were - are - wonderful, kind people who did their best, but there was only so much that could be done. Shin-yeong, unable to shake the idea that he was being punished for something, didn't allow himself to feel properly. He internalized, he locked down, took the pain upon himself as something he deserved, not something he should be allowed to move past. Basically, his coping mechanisms were overloaded far beyond their saturation points. Still, he did cope in a manner of the word, putting on a facade of coping while inside he addressed absolutely none of his issues, shoving them away into his subconscious as best he could. His aunt and uncle tried to keep things as 'normal' as possible for him, encouraging to keep up his old hobbies. That was the first point at which Shin-yeong truly applied himself to taekwondo with anything resembling discipline. There was something calming in it, something weightily reassuring about the feel of control it gave him.
Meanwhile, Shin-yeong's aunt did her best to equip him to get a hold of his powers - meditation and focus exercises, and so on. With the two accidental fires, Shin-yeong fully realized what his abilities meant, and was, well, scared out of his mind. He had incessant nightmares about fire - fire burning around him which all of his attempts to stop only fed, fire burning inside him. Fire he started, fire he couldn't control. Fire which destroyed innocent people, fire which destroyed him. So he did the only thing he could, which was to throw himself with a desperate zeal into gaining the tightest grip on his power possible. 'The tightest grip possible' is, mind, never enough for Shin-yeong's peace of mind. He can always feel the fire, itching to get out, sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker. Usually he doesn't have to actively think about controlling it, but every now and again - when he's upset, or just, as far as he can tell, in random phases - not letting it escape is an active effort he has to maintain.
It's not an experience which makes Shin-yeong happy, to say the least; and it seems that the older he gets, the more powerful and frequent the fire's push against his boundaries. As a child it was like the sound of a brook babbling in the distance, and an occasional tickle in his mind; now, as an adult, it's like standing at the edges of Niagara Falls, and not-infrequent kicks against the walls of his head.
Anyway, returning to Shin-yeong at eight years old, slowly his life returned to something resembling ordinary. He spent a few weeks during the summers with his family, visited them on holidays, got the hang of English and the basis of control over his talent. The tragedy receded into time and Shin-yeong... functioned. He didn't make many friends, and spent most of his free time in solitary pursuits - practicing forms, sketching, reading. He came to think of himself as not particularly happy, but not unhappy either - kind of empty, devoid of thoughts of the future and past, willing to let the course of his life take him where it would.
The rest of Shin-yeong's childhood was marked only by a handful of notable milestones. When he was thirteen, his family decided to take him back to Korea. There he graduated from high school with unremarkable grades. He was accepted to the University of Seoul, but due to lack of funds chose not to attend. Instead, he decided to fulfill his compulsory military service immediately, spending roughly two years in the army. During that period, after a lot of thought, he settled on returning to America for good after he was done. There was - is - a constant layer of tension between him and his family which, even after so many years, hadn't gone away. It was suffocating for him, and only seemed to grow more acute with time, rather than things easing back into the way which they once were. All the waiting for things to be right again was fruitless, and he had no choice but to realize it much though he wanted to stick his head in the sand.
So at twenty years old, once finished with his army duty, he ran, basically.
Back in San Francisco, he set up in a shitty apartment in the outskirts of the city and started working construction. Originally it was just intended as a temporary step, easily-accessible pay for someone with few qualifications, but Shin-yeong discovered he actually kind of liked the job. As the years went by, he stuck with it, supplementing it with a position teaching evening classes in taekwondo at a community center near his apartment. And that pretty much brings us up to the present. There have been some promotions, occasional courses taken at a community college (recently he's been considering full-time university to get a degree in engineering), a handful of short-lived girlfriends (Shin-yeong sucks at holding down relationships, in case you wouldn't be able to guess), some better times, some worse. He's not expecting things to change any time soon.
But you never know. He may be wrong.
RP Sample:
"Yo."
It was lunch break on Saturday, late July, heatwaves rising up from the pavement in the distance. Shin-yeong was sitting on the stairs of the mall next to the condominium building they were in the middle of constructing, with a paper cup in hand still half-full of coffee. Jake, approaching from above with a take-out wrapped sandwich, all but fell onto the step next to him, obviously harder than he had intended, letting out a sharp 'ow' when his tailbone hit the ground. Shin-yeong didn't glance over or acknowledge the greeting or the pain, continuing his impassive considering of the people passing by below and next to him. "Jesus," said Jake. He never had been and probably never would be deterred by any of Shin-yeong's reticence. "How the hell can you drink coffee on a day like this? It's hotter than the fire under the devil's ass, to steal a phrase from my darlin' mother."
Shin-yeong smiled, briefly and thinly, and took another sip. "Being sleepy on the job sucks," he answered after a moment's thought. "Figured I could use the kick." He didn't elaborate, of course, that being tired usually meant that his control felt fuzzier, senses less alert and focus more distracted, and that his control over himself wasn't something he could afford to treat lightly. Especially not when the itch had been more persistent than usual these past couple of days.
"Yeah?" Out of the corner of his eye, Shin-yeong could see Jake smirking like a coyote. "You up late yesterday, huh? Had a night on the town and didn't invite me?" Shin-yeong just rolled his eyes. "Hey, man, hey," laughed Jake. "I ain't judging. If it were me, I would've been out havin' some fun the minute that stony bitch kicked me to the curb, not a week later."
"Don't call her that," Shin-yeong said, a bit absently, with a bit of a frown. "She was a nice girl."
With a shrug, Jake started unwrapping his sandwich. "Whatever you say. From where I'm standing, she was a cold-hearted snob. Not the right chick for you at all."
"I think she just didn't like you," murmured Shin-yeong. He set his cup to the side, draping his hands between his knees and systematically lacing, unlacing his fingers. Anne had been nice, maybe not the most cheerful person around, but who the hell was he to judge for that? She'd been patient with him, largely undemanding - not half bad in bed, either. No wonder she'd dumped him. He let out a soft laugh, a single wry sound. Now that was edging dangerously close to self-pity, he thought. He'd have to be careful about that. Meanwhile, Jake tore off a bite and spoke, mouth full:
"Eh. So anyway, where'd you go?" He smirked again, tone very quickly plunging into lewder shades. "Who'd you meet?"
Shin-yeong sighed, picking up his coffee again. "Nowhere. Nobody. I was up writing a letter." Dumbass, he considered adding for a second, but it would - oddly enough - sound too teasingly familiar for him to feel comfortable saying it. So instead he kept his language curt.
Jake was silent for a bit, staring blankly over at Shin-yeong. "Letter?" he echoed finally, his tone suggesting that Shin-yeong may as well have been speaking Korean.
Swallowing the last of his coffee, Shin-yeong said: "Yes. Letter. As in, pen on paper, dear so-and-so, yours sincerely."
"Okay, okay. Back up a sec. Who the hell - writes letters? I mean, hey - e-mail? Telephone? And you? I don't think I've seen you touch a pencil in my life. Like, no offense, my friend, but you don't seem the writing type, know what I mean?"
Tempted though he was to just remain silent and let the matter drop there, trusting that Jake would quickly jump to another topic, Shin-yeong found himself replying: "My mother likes getting letters." Then he shut up, very abruptly, feeling strangely naked and vulnerable - like he had, in the impulsive comment, exposed too much, exposed something too personal. He didn't talk about his family at work.
But Jake didn't seem to notice at all. "Oh," he said, sounding disinterested now. "Huh. Okay then. Well you know, man, that's sad. You've gotta go enjoy yourself sometime soon. I'll take you to a club or something. All work and no play, yadda yadda."
Crumpling his cup in his hand, Shin-yeong got to his feet in one fast motion. "Break's up in three minutes," he said, starting to head down the stairs. "You might wanna finish that sandwich quick." And with that, he jumped the last few steps and started walking with his accustomed brisk pace back to the construction site, tossing the cup in the trash as he went.