Kim Yujin is a Star of Earth ✩
charactenr ame
Name. Kim Yujin
Nicknames. only as applicable and expected to be used in the story.
Age/DOB. 26 / 15.09
Occupation. Convenience store clerk
Face Claim. Eunkwang
Appearance. Yujin is nothing special in the looks department, or so he thinks (and his mother has always told him). Kinda goofy face, military muscles doing their bestest to atrophy, clothes that his sister describes as "slim professor", Yujin doesn't turn heads while he walks the street. He doesn't mind much, it is as it is.
Personality
Simple, sweet, socially awkward/anxious, anxious in general, polite, helpful, dreamer, imaginative, cowardly, obedient, steady, surprisingly given to negative anxiety, moral
Yujin is like a field of wildflowers in the spring. The sun is shining and it's a simple beauty, nothing special like a field of sunflowers or a sea of lavender, but a simple field of green grasses and wild yellow grains and spots of red and white and yellow and purple. It might not be entirely comfortable, there's some nettles and twigs and nobody has shaped this landscape into easy digestion, but it smells sweet and the birds are chirpin and it might just feel like peace.
Yujin is nothing special. He's a simple boy, a boy without ambitions or delusions of grandeur, one who's resigned himself to a simple life. He's never been particularly good at anything, never had something he really wanted to do, never felt the burning design to achieve something. He's extraordinary in his ordinariness. A little awkward maybe, it's never been easy for Yujin to connect to people (especially womanfolk) and he's always been a little socially anxious. A mild-mannered kid who's polite to his elders, tries to do right by the world, and is always ready to lend a helpful hand where needed. He helps ahjummas cross the streets, is always ready to check in the back if the store has what you need, and spends the rest of the time daydreaming away.
Daydreaming is the one thing he could say that he's good at. He's always been a dreamer, his thoughts slip away at any notice and in his thoughts he goes on adventures, he sees things he'll never see in real life, he'll imagine vast landscapes and deep jungles and hot deserts. Sometimes these daydreams are nearly real and he can smell the aroma of the flowers and feel the wind against his skin and taste the thunder in the air. Sometimes when he opens his eyes he's still in the daydream and it folds around him and he can reach out and the bark of a tree, Then he blinks and it's gone.
His laughter is like the rays of the sun, his real laugh not his polite smiles or awkward half-coughs. The ones with the teeth, the ones that split his face in two and turn his eyes into slits and gift the world with laughter that is not pretty or melodic but booms around the room and into your heart. There's so much good in him, just pure unfiltered good. It's what keeps him going, all he wants is to just do his part to make the world a better place.
There's a lot that worries him, he's anxious about a lot of things lately. His military service has shown him a lot of the bad side of humanity, his parents' constant struggle upstream the waterfall of capitalism is another. He's worried about the Earth, worried about what people are doing to it. Every other week there's a report of more ice melting in Antarctica, more species driven to extinction, more wildfires and droughts and more tax breaks for the rich and more oil pipelines to be dug and more hatred spewed by bad men and women. It's a difficult thing, holding on to your goodness in the face of so much bad. There are moments when Yujin looks out of the window and is sure that everything is falling apart and he'll see the end of the world yet. There are moments when he can see it all around him, when he can feel and smell and taste the end.
Morality is the hardest thing to hold on to, and it seems to be in humanity's nature to let it slip. One thing Yujin knows is he's holding onto his morality tight, that his goodness is the one thing in the world that is important to him.
And now he gets to save the world.
Background
Ah, Kim Yujin. Nothing special Kim Yujin, the boy who would never amount to much. He was never really good at anything except daydreaming, never found any hidden talent or ambition. Ah, Yujin-ah, teachers would say with a little sigh. Not necessarily a bad sigh, not the kind of sign you'd reserve for a good-for-nothing, not the kind of sigh followed by complaints or venting or much emotion at all. This was the sigh of someone looking for anything meaningful to say at all. Yujin-ah... He's a nice boy but... Good-for-nothings aren't really actually good-for-nothings. They're good at something, even if that something is being a jerk. They'll grow up and they'll become a competent bully somewhere else. The world always has work for a bully, Yujin should know, he's been in the army. No, the real good-for-nothings were people like Kim Yujin.
He never minded any of this, he just did what he was supposed to do. He studied diligently even when his grades were just out of mediocre, he never had much of a social life because his mum would remind him that he had to study and he'd go from school to cram school and high school kids weren't supposed to have a life, right? They were just supposed to study. Then he went to a middling college studying economics like his father wanted him to, so he could get into a decent office job. It was horrid, absolutely horrid but he did it because he was supposed to do it. And when it was done he was called up for his military service and he did that as well.
His service was one of the worst things he'd ever been through, it was like being right back to his childhool bullies. It was incredible how little power a man needs to be twisted into something mean. Conscripted soldiers just a step above them would belittle them, the drill sergeants who'd once been them turned right around to become the next link in the chain of bullies. Yujin didn't understand how someone could have gone through all of that themselves and then turn around and inflict it on others in the same breath. It wasn't all bad, there was cameraderie to be found in his squad, there were good memories watching girl groups on tv with the guys, talking about the things they'd do once they got out. Yujin didn't have much to say there, he had no idea what he'd do once he got out.
He started having weird dreams in his last week of service, but Yujin being Yujin he brushed them aside. It was just the miltiary and constant culture of warriorism doing strange things to his subconcious imagination. He was weirded out, sure, but the first thought isn't oh this dream thing is definitely real and me, Kim Yujin, eternal good-for-nothing has a calling and it's saving the ing world, ya know?
So here he is, back out of the military. He doesn't want to go back to live with his parents, doesn't want to get a job at the airconditioning company his mom works at. He knows he should, he knows they want him to, but it fills him with dread just to think about it. A squadmate who gets out at the same time says his buddy has an extra room free in a sharehouse in Seoul if he wants it. Yujin decides that, maybe, he does. He gets a job as a clerk in a supermarket (so much for the economics degree) and settles into something of a life, no matter how uninspiring and dull that life might be. Sometimes when he's all alone in the shop he starts seeing things, like the daydreams spill out from behind his eyelids into the real world. He's always had an active imagination, he supposes the mindnumbing job is making it work overtime. Sometimes a customer looks surprised when they enter the shop, but he blinks twice and the daydreams are gone and everything is back to normal.
And then someone comes into the shop and tries to kill him.
Relationships
Jung Kwangsoo :: 29 :: Roommate :: adventurous, chill, gregarious, irresponsible, socialist scum :: Doojoon ::
Kwangsoo is chill, too chill. He went to the military early and got out thinking 1. never again and 2. he's gonna use the rest of his time to see the world before it all burns down. He's a freelance whatever you want him to be, spends half the time traveling places on the cheap with the meagre earnings he has. Sometimes Yujin pays rent for him, which he doesn't mind. He's not gonna use the money anyway, he's way too timid to go backpacking through Cambodia even though he wishes he could. And then Kwangsoo comes home with the most amazing stories and they watch a movie together and get along really well. Yujin likes to close his eyes and imagine the places Kwangsoo describes for himself. Treading through the temples of Cambodia, seeing the red desert of the Australian outback, riding on horseback through middle-earth (Yujin can't ride a horse, so that illusion is a little.... weird), staring up at the niagara falls, hiking through the thick bear-infested forests of Alaska...
Power. Illusions
Alternate. Power augmentation/negation
Description. Yujin can create illusions, and shockingly real ones. They feel real, you can reach out and touch anything he's made. You can smell it, you can taste it, as long as Yujin can imagine it, it's there. That means that it's not always accurate, it's limited by Yujin's knowledge. Good thing he really likes watching nature documentaries and cute animal videos.
He uses his ability subconciously aaaall the time. Whenever he daydreams he just makes it real, and for the longest part he just thought that these moments were his imagination working overtime, an extension of his daydream that lingered just a little bit longer, until he manages to escape an angry Star of Heaven who's come to murder him by hiding in an illusion jungle.
He can essentially make anything within a set radius depending on his strenght. He can create the illusion of a cup of coffee that will taste of a cup of coffee and smell of a cup of cuffee but it won't be filling and it won't give you a caffeine boost. He can make himself look like a piece of furniture to hide. He can create the illusion of a thick jungle to lose someone in. The biggest limit is that the illusion will be sensible for everyone, he can't make it for just one person or just for himself.
Trivia.
> He's pretty tidy after all of that military discipline.
> Insects make him nervous but he also doesn't like killing them.
> He really speaks only Korean, his English is woefully bad. He still tries to help tourists when they come into the store to the best of his ability.
> After he starts training his ability he likes to use it to really visit places on earth he'd never visit. Grab a national geographic magazine and recreate the Sahara desert, go to the top of a pyramid, visit the north pole, swim with a whale, watch cat videos except the cat IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOu OH MY GOD.
Questions.
How does your character feel about their destiny? It's kind of incredible and he feels like he doesn't deserve it. Why was he the one given this power? There are so many people more competent, more smart, more strong, more brave that could save the world but instead the power was given to him?? Sounds fake but ok.
Do they believe in fighting for the world or against it? He definitely believes in fighting for the world. He has a really strong moral concept and he wants to do what's right even if he feels woefully unequipped and incompetent.
What price would they be willing to pay to achieve their goals? He's a coward, absolutel. That being said, push comes to shove? Anything.
Would you be okay with your character dying during the course of the story?
Me: Yes. The real question is, can you actually kill Seo Eunkwang?
Password? Mawwage is a dweam within a dweam
Also feel free to ship him with anyone! He can be any orientation, doesn't matter at all, if there are sparks you can make the smooches.
cheatsheet turn in story
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