AFF name: SHadowKPOPpanda

Ulzzang: Jang Hae Byeol -- 1   2   3  

Back-up ulzzang: Ryu Hye Ju -- 1    2   3  

Character Profile

Role applying for: 5. The Strategist

Name: Gong Hyunjoo

Age: 17

Occupation (if any): None as she cannot hold a job.

Weapon:
1^st Choice: Zelo

2^nd Choice: Yoo Youngjae

Personality:

Gong Hyunjoo is a bitter and resentful person, however she will do what it takes to survive. Being the oldest child in her family, she knows how to be responsible and to take care of people even when she does not feel like it. As the one bringing in food and money by thievery, she learnt how to cut off all her emotions and became a cold, calculating machine in order to steal and provide for her family without guilt. She is also a very quiet and observant person, always watching everything and everyone around her due to paranoia of being caught and hearing-impairment. Her resentment and bitterness came from her jealousy of being unable to fit into a society where the majority of people are hearing, and because of her hearing impairment, she was not able to stay in school and people were unwilling to hire her. At times she would become depressed, however she would not go as far as to commit suicide because she knows that her siblings need her to feed them until they can fend for themselves. Hyunjoo does not find joy in many things because her deafness overwhelms anything else in her life and her current living situation does not allow for much joy.

History:

When she was born, she already had partial hearing loss and her parents were too poor to provide medical treatment or hearing aids to help Hyunjoo. However, they did their best and taught her how to sign and while growing up, Hyunjoo also learnt how to lip-read people who did not use sign language.

She attended a public school and used her lip-reading to follow the teacher’s instructions, although she did not do well due to her constant mistakes on what the teacher had actually said. During her time at school, almost no one bothered to talk to her because they couldn’t understand her, and she couldn’t follow a conversation easily. She became isolated and lonely, and eventually she became bitter. The only thing that alleviated her bitterness was her parents and her two younger siblings, who all learnt or eventually learnt sign language (the youngest sibling was only a baby, and the other sibling was starting to learn how to speak) and made sure that Hyunjoo was always in the company of either themselves or another family member/friend that knew how to use sign language. She was taught how to cook and to do various house chores, which gave her something to do.

As she grew older, her hearing grew worse until she completely lost all her hearing at the age of 13. Unable to hear any conversations, music, the natural sounds of rain and laughter or other warning sounds such as fire alarms, Hyunjoo became depressed. By then, she had three siblings, all still under the age of 5 and she could no longer keep her grades up high enough to continue attending school. She dropped out of school to look after her siblings while her parents started to work even harder to provide for the family. As she tried to look after her siblings, she became angrier and angrier about her deafness, but she kept it bottled up for her parents’ and her siblings’ sakes.

A year later, Hyunjoo started to try and look for a job in order to relieve some of her parents’ burden. However, no one would hire a deaf girl, and the ones that did eventually fired her for making so many mistakes due to not quite understanding what was required of her. Eventually, her parents started to fall ill from so much stress and one day, Hyunjoo woke up in the middle of the night to find that her father had died from an heart-attack. Stricken from grief, her mother tried to keep on working but soon followed the father to death. Hyunjoo was left alone to take care of her siblings and to become the head of the household.

Unable to stop and grieve for her parents because of the sudden responsibilities on her shoulders, she decided that she must do something and try to at least bring food to the table or pay off some debts/overdue bills. Driven first by hunger, she considered stealing from a nearby supermarket but decided that it would be too risky from the security cameras and the number of staff around. She then decided to target the nearest food stall to her small residence and she successfully got away with four skewers of warm meat. She felt extremely guilty about it afterwards because she knew that the stall owner, like her, was trying to survive by selling food. However, the smiles on her siblings’ face was more than enough motivation for her to steal more and she learnt how to shut down her emotions in order to steal without feeling guilty.

She began a life of thievery, first stealing from stalls in a busy marketplace to avoid detection, building up to pick-pocketing and stealing from bigger places and more people. She became an extremely successful thief from her ability to shut down her emotions and fear as being a thief requires confidence; years of learning how to read people from their faces and their body languages and from her ability to watch and pick up even the smallest things quickly. Slowly, she was able to pay off all the bills and put some funds towards her oldest sibling (now almost 6 years old)’s school fees, and feed her family with the food she stole.

One day when watching people in another busy marketplace for an ideal picking, Hyunjoo immediately noticed the crowd’s odd behaviour. Looking around, she saw a black shadow at one end of the market place. She watched the people start to panic and she decided to ignore the shadow and use the mass hysteria to steal from as many people as possible. Unfortunately, her ability to ignore her emotions and most importantly, her fear lead her straight into the path of the shadows and because she was not able to hear, she did not see the danger until it was almost too late. That was Zelo pushed her out of the way and turned himself into a shield for her to protect herself. Afterwards, she drops the shield and runs back home with Zelo following behind and once she realised that her siblings were safe, she collapses out of shock and exhaustion.

Youngjae’s version: Instead of Zelo, Youngjae pushes her out of the way.

Likes:
- Watching people (sometimes), her siblings and her parents (until they died)
- Hugging her siblings (and parents)
- Cooking/house chores.

Dislikes:
-People
-The loneliness that comes from the feeling of being isolated in society
-Being unable to work because she was unable to hear.

Trivia:
- Relationship with Zelo: Hyunjoo and Zelo start off somewhat rocky because of Hyunjoo’s resentment and distrust towards people in general and she cannot communicate with Zelo easily because Zelo does not know sign language. However, Zelo understood some of Hyunjoo’s pain and loneliness, and he starts to try and help her trust people and make friends. He became her shield against loneliness and because Zelo’s voice was the first one she had heard clearly in a long time, they both slowly grow close and eventually falls in love (or not, it’s up to you).

- Relationship with Youngjae: Youngjae picks up on the sign language quickly and Hyunjoo quickly picks up on his mood swings, thus they were able to work well together. As thievery requires planning, speed, skill and observations, Hyunjoo was able to carry out any of Youngjae’s plans well and they both became a brilliant team.

- Being deaf means all her other senses are stronger than average in order to compensate for the inability to hear. That means Hyunjoo has a much stronger eyesight and combined with her observation skills and people-watching/reading skills, this makes Hyunjoo’s eyes her greatest asset.

- She can tell a lot about a person from just watching them. Think Sherlock Holmes or Lie to Me kind of deduction. For example, she can tell whether someone is lying, whether they like her cooking or not and certain mannerisms/behaviour/habits.

- Hyunjoo’s sense of smell is strong enough that she can smell whether the rain is coming or not. Her sense of touch is unfortunately too sensitive for her to handle a lot of heat and her heightened sense of taste makes her a slightly fussy eater, but she cannot be too fussy because her family needs to survive.

Do you mind if your character dies?: If it suits your plot, then I don’t really mind. I mean, I’ll be sad, but it’s your story.

Other: I hope this wasn’t too long and I hope Gong Hyunjoo suits your expectations, despite the depressing background. She does smile though, around her siblings. Feel free to change some details around, although I'd like it if you could keep her hearing impairment. :) Good luck with your story! Let me know if you want a poster, because I’ll be happy to make one for you. :)