Realistic or Modern 𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 - the cast

[mother of sorrows]

╰┈➤ Your hands are clean. The mind is filth.

Hi, hi and welcome to the character sheets! Some stuff to note before jumping into the sheets themselves;

• This is not first come, first serve.
• Be reasonable with characters. An 18 year old being a renowed journalist would be really extraordinary, as well as someone having military-level fighting abilities.
• You can definitively leave some character secrets for yourself!
• Some of the journalists might have faced prison sentences. Some might have everything to lose. All of them are in danger.
• Please use realistic faceclaims or descriptions!
• Your characters can also have a subset of skills, such as hacking, being good with people, athleticism...

There will not be a traditional character sheet. You can either introduce your character concept through actual writing, a standard CS or a mix of that! If you have any questions or aren't sure about anything, please don't hesitate to ask!

 

[Steve Jobs]

fc subject to change

Objective

To diversify my portfolio in domestic stories

Age

Thirty-Seven (37)

Gender

Male (he/him)

Eyes

Blue

Hair

Short, brown hair, usually combed back

Build

Dad bod

Style

Elevated business casual

Education

Bachelor's of Arts in English from Stanford University

Skills

Athleticism, Firearms Handling, 120 WPM, Project Manager Certification, Forklift Certification, Hacking

References

Available on request

Faceclaim

Christian Bale

Johnny Navidson is an investigative journalist best known for his report on the Prometheus Corporation. Titled, "The Eden Files," he leaked thousands of documents regarding Project Eden, a surveillance program meant to bypass all known encryption services and effectively, remove privacy for any targeted user.

Though he was confident in his work, his editor refused to publish the expose until he removed information linking Project Eden to the NSA. Not one to be deterred, Navidson kept reaching out to different publications, only to find that nobody was willing to risk their credibility for an alleged link to the government.

With no traditional options, Johnny turned to the Internet and released everything on his personal blog as well a few less-than-savory forums.

His story took off like wildfire, earning him national attention. The organizations that previously rejected him suddenly lauded him for his journalistic integrity and the Prometheus Corporation was issuing apologies to their customers. The White House denied the link between Project Eden and the NSA before arresting Navidson on espionage charges. He served ten of his twenty years in prison, but found himself blacklisted from every publication and his website shut down for suspicious activity.

With no other job prospects Johnny has decided to recreate his old success by taking on the Vargas Corporation.

JOHNNY NAVIDSON
Investigative Journalist​

​

​

code by valen t.

 

[RascalRoadkill]

Spoiler: Augustin Rivera-Dawson

Augustin Rivera-Dawson is a twenty-nine year old journalist, but she doesn't seem the part at all- based on people's usual assumptions, at least. She's a tired face in a fraying flannel, torn jeans, and muddied boots. Her voice is quiet and low with a thick north-Georgia accent, and in speech, lacks the articulation most might expect of her profession.

It's exactly these facets that make her so good at what she does. She's all too casual and poor-mannered; no way in hell could this backwater loner do anything to touch anybody. People tend to just do and say shit around her without thinking. No way in hell do they think she could be cunning enough to worm her way into information- or bold enough to act upon it.

Her dad’s the mayor of a small, out-of-the-way town, and her mother is seemingly content doing nothing at all. Life's alright, besides a few details- Augustin has terrible trouble making friends, but she learns how to say what people want to hear so that they'll hang around; a skill she takes into her later profession.

The other was of more concern. In her late teens, Augustin finds that she hears and feels things that other people don't. It's a gradual intrusion. She can't make anyone in town understand. Adults are either amused, concerned, or annoyed, and other kids her age think her disorganized manner of speech is too strange to interact with. Augustin becomes convinced she's haunted. It's pinned on an overactive imagination, but it feels all too real to her. Augustin became paranoid; far too paranoid for any child to reasonably be. She does manage to make one friend; Harlow D’aubigny, who finds her quirks unique and interesting instead of a detriment. Augustin clings to her like a burr to clothing.

School’s hard, but she makes it, and has no idea where to go or what to do. Harlow’s going to college, though. Journalism. Augustin thinks that sounds just fine. She can do that too.

She’s an Appalachian standout that doesn't quite fit, but she's anxious enough to keep her best friend that she stays with this thing that's… fine, but she can't get super into it. Ironically, Harlow has to quit out halfway through for financial reasons and Augustin’s the one left standing at graduation thanks to her dad’s mayoral salary.

It’s weird, though, how easily he comes into money. Sure, he’s the mayor- but the town’s not that big, and Augustin can’t tell where the money’s going anymore. Not where it should be, obviously, with its shoddy infrastructure that they’ve had more than enough money to fix.

Her dad is inadvertently her first subject of investigation- her career starts off small. She’s reluctant to do it- he’s still her dad, after all. Still, she reveals all kinds of hallmarks of corruption. So, she finds what she can and makes her case.

Augustin’s investigations only snowball from there. Just when she thinks she's found the worst, there's another, bigger fish to fry. It becomes a vicious cycle- Augustin always thinks she’s done, then something else rears its head and she can’t leave well enough alone. Harlow is a grounding force, and is quite frankly all she's got.

Those are her biggest problems- besides the other matter of her seeing and hearing fiction. It used to be small-potatoes, but now that she's older, it feels so much worse. They're out of their small, decades-behind town now, and maybe there's a doctor that knows a thing about it. Apparently, she's not actually "haunted". It's a thing of the brain instead- hallucinations and delusions, they said, and they give her a prescription she doesn't super understand to mitigate it. Augustin still doesn't know much about the fancy words.

She doesn’t tell nobody. She knows how misunderstood it is- it’ll be used against her for certain. Claims that she just imagined wrongdoings or had deluded herself would become common if it were more public knowledge. Her medication is produced by the Vargas corporation, and hindsight will eventually become 20/20.

Paranoia seeps in as time goes on, and it's not exactly unwarranted. She stays private, draws in, starts swapping out pseudonyms whenever she puts something to paper. Augustin’s sheer hypervigilance and self-isolation ends up saving her from some of the more harrowing experiences of her colleagues. She has no "real" evidence, but she's convinced she's being watched.

It's out of the blue, and it's recent. Harlow’s missing. Last known location: their shared apartment, having left for work at Vargas. They claim that Harlow never showed up for the job that day. Augustin’s paranoia knows better than to trust them with what she’s learned.

She's already stuck her hands into something they didn't belong in, and someone wants retaliation. So, Augustin wants to know what the company behind the chemicals she's been putting in herself for years has been willing to do. That, and she’s never exactly been swimming in money- she’s had barely enough to fend off lawsuits but that’s been the extent of her power. Augustin’s close to being at the end of her rope.

Plus, she's got a best friend-roommate-crush that she wants back. This time, Augustin hasn’t struck first. She had no intention of looking into Vargas until this. She’s on the backfoot, and has no idea what to expect.

Augustin doesn’t exactly have the best arsenal to be bringing into this. She’s a decent photographer, at least, athletic, with a mean punch and an unrefined tongue. If there’s two important things she excels in, though, it’s resourcefulness and makeshift solutions.

It's way easier to risk yourself if there’s no one left to be hurt by who you’re fuckin’ with.

 

[mother of sorrows]

Ladislaw Bacsik

the dog in the gutter.

♡coded by uxie♡

The sunglasses when it's cloudy, certificated in four languages, journalism as an honor, Annenberg graduate, SoCal douchebag.
╰┈➤34. Bisexual. Slovenian/Hungarian.

Ladislaw began - like most people - not at his birth, but at his parents. His mom was a landless vineyard worker and his dad from a miniscule pig farming family, met together during the high summer agricultural fairs. The following conflict of communism crashing down was not brutal, but the outfall was; Ladislaw, then still a barely-conscious kid, had just enough experience with it to loudly proclaim his opinion without really remembering it at all. Tanks. Bombs. Economies already singing their swan song getting crushed overnight.

His parents packed up what little they owned and Ladislaw along with it. Western Europe felt hostile and they held no relatives elsewhere; and the USA, despite it's terrifying excess, still held the appeal of hard work bringing success.

They moved to California. Modern-day gold seekers.

Lush green grass in the desert. Smiles with dental work worth thousands. People here are so friendly it's uncomfortable, and his parents took it as a sign that they're just as accepting, too.

They raised Ladislaw in their old anxieties, raised him proper and likeable. He wasn't taught to lust after millions, but that any man should have God's corner, a classic woolen vest, leather shoes and a nice house with an educated wife, kids that play the piano. Ladislaw took this to heart. He picked a nickname easier to pronounce and wiggled his way into the good graces of kids who's mommy and daddy have marble pillars in front of their doorway. Ladislaw was baptised in secret as a baby; in America, faith is everywhere.

He could have went into economics, or chemisty. Something just fine and in the middle, respectable. But even in high school he harbored an interest for writing and reporting, an interest that grew from the school newspaper into university. He learnt all the communication and ethnical standards that go into sharing news with the world. In his mind's eye, he could see himself on some well-respected program, smiling a cheerful 'good morning, America' or making a segment about national puppy day. He wanted to be in the tailored suits, reporting live about the most pressing, most interesting stories.

Ladislaw, however, has always been painfully stuck between doing what is good for his career and doing the right thing.

 

[SavannahSmiles]

Nari Jeong

# Lee Ji-eun

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[tieflinq]

still smoothing out the edges but this is where i'm at!

Spoiler: Alice Guiraud

Depending on who you ask, Alice Guiraud got her start in one of two ways. As far as most people know, she started blogging as a precocious teen, writing searing takedowns of her school's faculty on an anonymous blog that soon became host to all manner of articles. She started with local issues but quickly broadened her horizons, somehow digging out stories that journalists with ten times her experience were struggling to crack open. By the time she went public with her identity, she was sitting on a neat pile of social media accounts with followers in the hundreds of thousands, and her success only grew from there. However, there was a little more to Ms. Guiraud than first met the eye.

Behind the story of a whipsmart high schooler with a blog and a drive to uncover the truth was the real Alice Guiraud - the daughter of Michael Christie, a not-so-silent investor in a number of news outlets. Although her first few blog posts were genuine, her father was quick to take advantage of his daughter's newfound success and hastened to nudge seasoned journalists away from their stories right before they were completed, allowing Alice to get there first with only a fraction of the work. Her passion for journalism quickly faded, but by that point, it was far too late to back out.

Alice is aloof and standoffish in the many social situations that she's now thrust into. It goes without saying that her career relies on her father's influence staying hidden, so she's forced to obfuscate large portions of her life - detailing her childhood in France with her mother and her stints in international schools, but skimming over exactly how she'd found many of her big breaks. Though she's pleasant enough to look at, thanks in no part to an expensive wardrobe of turtlenecks and blazers and a thorough skincare routine, the illusion tends to be shattered after a prolonged conversation.

These days, she's basically on autopilot. Her rent is paid by Wondery guest spots and the odd New Yorker piece - and by her father, of course. Her public appearances seem to be less Sherlock Holmes, and more Elizabeth Holmes. In short: Alice Guiraud is a miserable nepo baby. That's not to say that she's without talent, though. Despite the fact that she's stiff and hard to warm to in person, she flourishes online. She's juggled countless digital personas with ease, infiltrated tight-knit circles in a matter of weeks, and can sniff out an online secret with nothing but a glass of wine by her side. If she could turn back time, she'd have kept her anonymity and her blog, and been all the happier for it.

Instead, she's been 'gifted' another case by her father. A journalist investigating the Vargas corporation suddenly vanished into thin air, and Mr Christie had kindly dropped all of their work right into Alice's lap. As always, she'd felt obligated to finish the job, and instead quickly discovered that there was far more to this than met the eye. Alice is deeply troubled by the string of disappearances that seems to follow Vargas, and now she's desperate to tie everything up with a nice bow - just in time to get that Betterhelp sponsorship.

---

tl;dr Alice Guiraud started out as a teenager with a genuine interest in justice and public information. However, her wealthy father quickly leveraged his connections in the journalism industry to boost her career, and now she's floundering in a space that she's deeply uncomfortable in. Her skills lie online, instead; there, she's charismatic, persuasive, and adept at navigating tightknit communities and deeply private websites alike. I think that her father's connections and finances probably count as a 'skill', too - or at least an asset. She's found herself investigating the Vargas corporation through no fault of her own after 'inheriting' the research of a disappeared journalist, but she's determined to actually solve this one herself.

 

[AI10100]

title

artist

Journalist

R

equisite.

name

Killian Rivera

a.k.a.

Kil / Bobby

age

42

hair c.

Brown

eye c.

Brown

skills

lockpicking, stealth, firearms proficiency, cartography, physically active, fistfighter

s

tory.

Boots thud against the ground followed by several more.

Heart thundering against his chest. Blood rushes to his ears as he clutches the camera tight in his hand. He sees an opening into a building— a window that he unceremoniously crashes into. Shards go flying everywhere but he keeps going, ignoring the wetness of his free palm. Bullets whiz past his head, some getting too close but not close enough as he rounds a corner for cover.

It isn't long before he finds himself cornered. The footsteps are getting closer and he makes the last minute decision to chuck the case of his camera outside and he watches as it drops into the river, alongside every single thing he had documented. It sinks and he prays and hopes someone finds it.

A bag over his head.

People talking around him in a language he barely understands.

He is shoved into a room where he is questioned mercilessly and deprived of his freedom. Without the sun, he would remain uncertain of how long he had been in that singular room with scraps to eat and feeding the desperation to survive that would continue to be unmatched for the rest of his career. The man keeps his lips tightly sealed and it is only by the grace of some higher being that he is not killed enough— the name of the press is both a target and a shield.

He hears it first as he rouses to the waking world. Bullets and yelling and the door bursts open. Guns train on him as he sits up, mildly blinded by the lights. Someone else enters and it's a familiar face. She kneels beside him and convinces him to leave with her and the men that had entered.

"You found it...?" He mutters as he stumbles even in her hold.

"We did. And now we're going to get you to safety."

The man is taken out of the country and goes straight into rehabilitation. It had been months since his original disappearance and it would take a long time for him to come back to himself. However, one day, Robert "Bobby" Jones disappears for the final time. His work as a journalist would be talked about for only a few weeks before the world moves on to the next catastrophe, for the next hero, for the next villain. The world continued to turn.

l

ife

"... pretty cool story, eh?"

"Yeah! I wanna be like him, daddy!"

Killian laughs as he ruffles his daughter's head. "Well, you have to get through school first. Then we can talk about what kind of job you'll pursue." His daughter laughs alongside him before turning to the door as it opens. She rushes towards her mother, telling her all about the story Killian had just told her.

He smiles warmly at them as he moves to his wife and presses a kiss to his cheek before letting her go.

He has learned to be thankful for the life that he has formed. With the blessing of the government, he has been given an avenue to keep a life of peace. For all anyone knew, he was already dead. A post-mortem award was given to him and a sizable reward for the job he had accomplished allowed him to live a comfortable life elsewhere. Now with a family and a small job at the local store, Killian felt like he had already fulfilled his life goals.

He had accomplished many things that a normal person would not have been able to and he had succeeded against adversity many would bow to.

He is satisfied.

But the phone rings like the death's bell.

Killian answers and signs his name on a contract he doesn't read properly. For a friend, he is willing to go above and beyond. Besides, this should be a simple enough case. Take down a conglomerate because they're allegedly corrupt? It won't be as bad... right?

g

allery.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[Blobs]

Salma Khan

Contributor to the Prescott Daily

Salma is a bit of a failure.

Ever since she was young, growing up in a cramped one bedroom apartment in New York, Salma had always yearned for freedom. To spread her wings and fly off into the horizon, letting the wind carry her from place to place, never to roost for excitement over a new adventure. She had three siblings, two old as hell grandparents, two strict as hell parents, and a plethora of monetary issues looming over their heads, threatening as a blade. Others would have dreamed about something stable, in her position: engineering, medicine, architecture. God knows those were the paths her siblings had taken, the path her parents wanted for her.

But Salma had always been taken to flights of fancy, and her flight of fancy lay in books. Stories, bursting off the pages and rotating about in her mind. Magazines- Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Times, New Yorker (all of them stolen, stashed underneath her bed. She still reads them sometimes.) The newspapers that lay in the kitchen closet, used to mop up awry spills or to cover the AC in winter, when the wind would rattle through the grates and make her room all but freeze over. Her father would find them in the grocery stores littering their neighborhood, sold for a dollar each. He'd buy them up, and before repurposing them for a life of being soaked in mysterious spilled liquids, he'd let Salma leaf through them.

He'd always wanted to be a writer, but life had thrown him a fast ball- poverty, immigration, and the burdens of childcare, a degree that meant all for shit, and a dead end job at Domino's meant that writing was a pipe dream. Instead, Salma had inherited that dream, and her intention was to follow it.

First, it was publishing "news" articles online in middle school, on a crap blog she had begged her brother to code for her. Once she'd learned what embarrassment was, she deleted them and started a culture blog, dumping whatever random rants about fashion or art or feminist praxis she had. Then, it was the high school newspaper for her, where she became Editor in Chief (not that she had much to do. There were five others, and two of them were favored much more highly than Salma was). There was yearbook, where she became almost a god at photoshop and a genius behind the camera, with a second Editor in Chief promotion underneath her belt. (This also did not matter, as Salma yet again was not given much to do, nor was she favored.)

College, afterwards, and a pretty decent one. Not too amazing, but the tuition was affordable- mostly covered by financial aid, and the rest by a slew of part time jobs- and the journalism program was overwhelmingly decent. She did what she had to do: she joined the school newspaper as a news writer, and reported on the goings on at campus. She published an op-ed detailing the rather concerning remarks made by a particular professor in regards to one of his students, which made a splash in the faculty before the incident was swept under the rug and promptly forgotten about. She joined an independent newspaper (The Prescott Daily) as a guest contributor and published rote articles on fashion and dating and top ten ways to tell if your husband is losing feelings in your marriage. Hi, what should I do if I'm feeling neglected by my spouse and there's a colleague at work I'm attracted to? Top ten BIGGEST fashion trends of 2016.

Those articles were fine. They were dandy. They were what the people wanted to see. And she didn't hate writing them. They were fun, even if she had to convince Mildred for the nineteenth time that no, just because he said sorry after dropping her beloved peacock vase, that he was not the one.

But still, something inside her yearned to move past the gossip mags and the lifestyle column and truly sink her teeth into something deep, to be noticed. She had a shit part time job, and when she got home, she worked on a soulless column before falling asleep, waking up, and doing the whole cycle again. It stung her, as she sat at her desk on late nights staring at the ceiling. She'd never been noticed for her genius, simply tossed aside like a rag doll and left to rot at the wayside while someone undeserving got her part.

And then came the missing girls.

First, Crystal Rojas. Then, Shelley Lin, Sarah Smith, Veronica Wu, Maya Taylor, Shrishti Barobhiya. Missing posters, plastered onto streetlamps and sidewalks. Scared mothers and fathers, huddled inside with their children. And, almost predictably, eager reporters, waiting for a scoop.

Through a stroke of luck, Salma knows one of the girls. At her part time job at a fast food joint, she met her, the first victim: Crystal, manning the till. They'd been friendly, saying hi and chatting sometimes about the annoying customers in the drive through while getting their orders ready. The day she disappeared, August 24th, a week before school started once more, she had left work early, and in a hurry.

Salma visits her mother, and tracks down the clues. She'd been talking to a man, from the looks of it, someone who'd graduated fresh from her high school. Shelley Lin had known him- so had Sarah, Veronica, Maya. It was a match.

That was, at least, until she'd found the bones buried underneath the park bench, which belonged to the kid, along with his wallet and id. Fuck. She scraped that part of the investigation and began anew.

The police weren't doing much. Whenever she'd call them for information, they'd bluff.
"Oh this is confidential information."
"Oh, we aren't at a place to tell you this now ma'am."

Salma roughs the investigation out on her own- a year, then two years, tracking down clues as the bodies began to pile up. It all clicked one crisp autumn morning when she'd gone over the evidence and stumbled on a familiar face- Johnathan Sanders. Arrested for a year on the charges of stalking and harassment. All the evidence pointed towards him, she was sure of it. She trailed his movements, caught him trailing a girl, chased him down, and managed to confiscate some evidence to send to the police. A week later, a search warrant was had, and Johnathan was arrested on the charges of kidnapping and murder.

Salma, as the star reporter who single handily caught the creep, published her in depth report on the case first, and people lined up to interview her. The lifestyle writer who'd caught a serial killer, the reporter who'd risked her life to catching a monster! It was all grand and exciting at the start, and there were even talks of adapting the case into a true crime special!

Of course, none of those things happened. Like with all things, the case fizzled out, and interest waned. She still gets thank you notes and whatever from the victims families, which was all fine and dandy, but still. The second she had her big break, it was ignored and thrown to the side for the newer, sleeker mysteries. Who cared about Salma's hunt of a serial killer? Who cared about Salma's work?

Salma's big break was three years ago. She's 29 going on 30 now, and she's back to editing the same advice column for the Prescott, though she sometimes gets to write full length articles about politics or art installations or whatever else strikes her fancy. It didn't pay much, but hey, at least it pays. She dabbles in a bit of fictional writing from time to time, but her life has mostly reverted back to the pre- murder mystery days.

And then she hears about the Vargas Corporation.

She's heard things about Vargas. Research facility, lab, powerful. Backed by the shark tooth grins of law students and shady lawyers, with their fingers in anything and everything related to pharmaceuticals. There's even talks that they might have had a hand in the drug epidemics of the 80's. They were interesting to Salma, but not so interesting as to drop her whole life for. But then, she hears about the disappearances. Possible money laundering? Dumping illegal waste into local river supplies. And a missing journalist who went snooping in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Vargas is a powerful entity. Vargas is a mighty entity. And Salma has an ego that's a bit too big, some pretty decent research skills, the gift of gab, photoshop, a camera, and sheer tenacity to see her through. In fairytales, the just always win, triumphing evil with little more than a penny to their name. Hopefully, Salma can recreate that success.

coded by phnx.

 

[Colorless Spectrum]

JANNA KANG

Name: Janna Kang
Nickname: Jan-jan
Age: 24
Skills: photography, videography, design, cooking, driving, financing, running, sneaking

The sun lit the horizon painting the blue sky into a deep red-orange, the sun was setting once again. The smell of the hospital never seemed to disappear no matter how many scented fresheners she uses. She had forgotten how the sun felt on her skin, she missed the breeze of the shimmering city, and the noise of a busy street.

"Mrs. Kang, it's time for your medication." A voice spoke from the door. It was unfamiliar, different from the dull voice that she usually heard. “Starting today I am officially assigned as your nurse! I hope we get along well.”

Mrs. Kang turned her head, and her sullen eyes fell on the bright smile of her new nurse. It was warm, like her daughter’s. The woman started to wonder how her little Jan-jan was doing. It's been too long since she saw her daughter and there was a heaviness in her chest that sought for her baby girl.

“How are you feeling today?”

“I feel… fine.”

“That's good! Now if you could just let me get a bit of blood for your work up” The pain of the cold needle disappeared as quickly as it came. “… and done!” The nurse hummed happily as she transferred the red liquid into a cylinder bottle along with others just like it. ‘H. Kang’

“Have you seen my daughter?” She asked, the last thing she remembered about her little girl was how they celebrated her seventh birthday not too long ago.

"Janna? Oh, she was here yesterday. She brought you fruits and a new framed picture of you guys together, right there by the table.” The nurse pointed out while she organized the medicine that Mrs. Kang was supposed to drink.

The woman reached for the picture and brought it close to her, both women in the photograph looked familiar but unfamiliar at the same time. "You're wrong, Jan-jan is only seven. I don't know who these are, where is my little girl?!” She threw the frame at the floor. Its glass cracked upon impact, staining the beautiful smiles of Janna and her mother.

“Where is my daughter?! Why isn't she here?! She should be with me!" Thoughts start to swirl in her mind as panic finds its way to her chest. Her breaths became labored as she got up, tossing the tray of medicine aside.

“Oh shit." The nurse gasped as she pushed a gray button and called for backup. Her colleagues were quick to respond and sedated Mrs Kang in an orderly fashion.

Once their patient had calmed down, only two were left to clean up the mess and provide the woman with her medicine.

Her consciousness faded every so often, words of quiet exchange made their way to her ears.

“She didn't recognize her daughter in the photo?"

“No, she's been forgetting a lot more recently. I’ve been doing some rounds on Mrs. Kang for a few months now and I think it's only been getting worse. I feel bad for her daughter. It must be hard to see your parent slowly forget about you.”

“I can't even imagine. Hardworking that kid is too, right? She's taking in a bunch of gigs to bring in some money to pay for her mother's hospital bills?"

“Yeah. I honestly find it amazing how she could laugh and put up a happy face even through all of this. Anyway… we should go and let Mrs. Kang rest. I’ll come back later to check up on her.”

Nothing. She saw nothing but darkness. It was cold and lonely. Her steps echoed in the black void. She called and called but no one answered. “Eomma.” She turned around to see a child, just around seven years of age looking at her.

“Jan-jan!" She called, somehow her daughter’s smile seemed as bright as the sun. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you."

“What do you mean?" She asked innocently, cocking her head slightly to the side.

“You…” Mrs. Kang blinked. A woman stood where her daughter once was, her smile just as brilliant as her child’s. The young woman ran towards her and enveloping her in a tight and unexpected hug. “Right… my little Jan-jan is all grown up now.”

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