synopsis: silas uninstalled the maps app on his phone to make room for candy crush, and these are the consequences. takes place anywhere but brooklyn.
Silas was disinclined to several things. If he was a polygon, in fact, he would be but a minuscule dot without sides or angles to save his life, which was likely what had saved his life several times. He was a quiet decimal point without connections and with common sense, and he was perfectly content to be so when he got on the bus in the morning. There were two problems caused by the briefest of breaks from common sense, currently, and Silas was very disinclined to answer how either of them came to be. Should the information have abruptly become crucial to his survival, however, it was a hangover and a trip so long he couldn’t help but sleep for a while that brought about his untimely demise via waking up a couple of stops too late. Seven months in the city, one would think that he’d had left the tourist mentality somewhere along the way, but the borough’s unfamiliar surroundings revealed nothing of the sort.
He'd been wandering for a couple of minutes, hands in the pockets of his jacket and eyes darting to every sign on the street. Taxis seemed to be taken within the millisecond they stopped, so his only hope was somehow straying to the subway. Then again, he hadn’t much business to attend to aside from a meeting long gone, so perhaps it was best he enjoy the view. The view then turning into the cold, hard pavement as he crashed into another person. Getting up as soon as he could, he greeted the unfortunate soul with a wide smile.
“Oh, hey! How have you been?” In all his faux excitement, he could only focus on one thing. Not whether the elusive ‘you’ was someone he’d ever talked to long enough to earn clearance for his clumsiness, not on the fact he’d paused so unnaturally between each word he could’ve been a text-to-speech voice. He needed an excuse, a conversation he could slip in and out of with directions and hopefully without someone who wanted his head off for slipping in the first place.
“Nah, I’m good. Consider this one on me,” Elliott said, shaking his head at the offer. It wasn’t as though he were hurting for cash; there was a certain clout that came in buying drinks for others. “You ever heard of a canvas tote bag. White women everywhere are obsessed. You should give it a try — might solve the whole ‘paper or plastic’ debacle for you…”
Silas had been an avid subscriber to gratitude all his life, reading each magazine the minute it was left upon his mental doorstep and practicing its columnal advice whenever possible. It was without doubt that gratefulness dealt to a smiling stranger was to be doled out with caution, but he wouldn’t call the other a total stranger.
“Thank you, really. I’m usually more of a food guy in spades, but you have good taste.” His appreciation of such good taste was punctuated with downing the drink just a tad too quickly. Everything in moderation, Silas figured, until it was time to impress a guy who was more or less the gilded Gucci to his Hello Kitty lunchbox. “Do you go here often, then, or is it a skill gained from scanning the menu for whatever’s most colorful? Either way, works very nicely after a weekday.”
Setting the glass down, he chuckled at the eco-friendly suggestion. “Oh, yes, where better to study white women’s obsessions than Costco? I’ll give it a go, but then comes the entire debacle of choosing a pattern, a decoration. Any suggestions there?”
There was a sort of purgatory that Silas found himself in, were any sort of disturbance to invite itself to his otherwise heavenly life. Upheaving all roots established in his hometown had been the first of such events, and ignoring all recent reports of rat hybrids in his apartment had been the latest. An experiment so limited couldn’t possibly have conclusive results, and ‘latest’ wasn’t usually defined as nearly a year ago. What he did not find were wall rodents (yay). What he did find was a drink and company (yay, but likely to turn to a nay should either secretly be a government spy).
“Thank you.” He took the other man’s offer with a smile of his own and a slight sigh. “It isn’t as though I’m new to rejection, there’s just always this voice in my head saying that anything to the grocer insisting everyone go paper as I trudge on in shameful plastic is going to ruin my life.”
“So, what can I buy you for? Something cheap, I hope.” The half-joke tasted strange on his lips, still curled despite his more awkward demeanor. Most of his daily conversations were that of business or errands or being pelted with verbal produce as punishment for his environmental neglect, after all. He did his best to untie the knots in his stomach as he sipped.
who is silas kang and why should he never be given a bag of microwavable rice again?
Not everyone can say they’ve been to the Big Apple, but [ SILAS KANG ], a [ 34 ] year-old [ MALE ] has lived in [ BROOKLYN, BUSHWICK ] for [ SEVEN MONTHS ]. This is the city of dreams and [ HE ] knows it, because they came to NYC to be a [ COOK ]. Well, that and as an [ EMPLOYEE ] to [ BEA TORRES ]. Living in the city means they meet all kinds of people, but everyone always seems to think they look like [ STEVEN YEUN ]. They even got away with free cab fare once because of it!
BASIC INFORMATION:
Full Name: Silas Seo-Won Kang
Nickname/s and Alias/es: Sil (pronounced sih-l)
Age: 33
Date of Birth: January 18
Hometown: Grove, Delaware County, Oklahoma
Current Residence: Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Gender: Cisgender Male (He/Him)
Sexuality: Asexual Aromantic
Ethnicity: Korean
Nationality: American
PHYSICAL APPEARANCE:
General Appearance: Silas knows of the importance one’s first impression can have, having wordlessly understood social customs and codes at quite a young age–perhaps too young, but it’s far too late to be bothered about all that–and such can be seen in how he presents himself. His wardrobe is composed of darker, muted tones between the line of business and casual, always dry cleaned to perfection. His face is a ritually cleaned portrait of sharp cheekbones, pale skin, and dark eyes crinkled into a smile of some form, whether it be remorseful or rejoicing. His hair, never lightening from a jet black, is well-groomed and most often parted to the right. His glasses and short facial hair come and go at irregular intervals, but are always as taken care of as himself. His slight eye bags may hint towards the facade falling in New York City nightlife, however.
Height: 5’7
Items of Note: Wears a simple gold bangle around his right wrist.
PERSONALITY:
General Personality: In a word, Silas is subtle. Subtly charismatic, subtly strategizing his every move in New York City, very subtly failing in both areas; neither electrocuting all he approaches with eclectic extroversion nor wholly retreating to pursue the path of a reticent recluse, he strikes a balance between boundaries defining thinking and feeling, pragmatism and principles that he tries to make good with. He’s become comfortable with his most common position as a quiet leader put in charge of nothing but necessities of the work, loosening up the cuffs of his culinary uniform to be honest whenever possible. Self-assured rather than arrogant, preferring the predictable rather than shaking up his schedule like the world’s worst cocktail, he’s a politely calm person at best and a blunt apathetic at worst. While he struggles with long-inborn insecurities, he’s far from passive and will firmly assert himself and his abilities if needed. Rational, judging, and possibly a bit too focused on achievements, Silas may not handle all his emotions in the best way possible, but he’s always striving to meet his own goals without hurting others. Intentionally, that is. He could always just joke about it later, right?
BACKSTORY:
[content warnings: mentions of death, alcohol, and bullying]
Born as a second-generation immigrant and the younger of two boys, Kang Seo-Won was lauded by every peripheral Asian auntie in the state for the supposed deed of saving his parents’ marriage. Indeed, the union of Kang Seung-Ho and Han Mi-Jung was akin to a very large dinner wherein the chef got progressively more tempted to sneak a sip or five hundred of the nearest wine bottle. There was no denying the love between them, the spark that had pushed two pairs of parents just waiting to welcome their first grandchild into the world into setting up every meeting for them possible. Considering how boring their area of Oklahoma had gotten (and continues to be, if one was wondering), a few other family friends joined the fray to make sure of the couple’s future together. They had their first son, Si-Won, only a year after their marriage, but Si-Won’s growth to the age of seven was marked by turbulence: the death of Mi-Jung’s sister, the dearth of employers willing to let Seung-Ho work at their establishments, and the dashing security guard at Si-Won’s school who seemed to find any excuse to talk to Mi-Jung. What Seo-Won brought, at least temporarily, was respite. Hope for that future their families had worked so hard for, a future. Their collective faith restored, Mi-Jung and Seung-Ho decided to get Seo-Won baptized, opting to keep his original name in the middle and letting him be known by his baptismal name from then on. Si-Won followed suit, becoming Simon Kang.
The Kang family dynamic was familiar, almost nuclear had it not been for both sets of grandparents being protective enough to insert themselves within the household. Though they shared fond moments, non-rehearsed family photographs were few and far between, and Silas could point how their grins never quite reached their eyes in every single one all these years later. His feelings about his parents have complicated over the course of decades spent with and without their presence, but a general sentiment of desuetude had been made to their love with each other by the time graduation came about. It just took a while for him to recognize it, he figures, and such was to be blamed unto his brother. Simon Kang had a handful of hobbies, in Silas’s humble opinion, and all of them were in some way going to end in torment towards his younger sibling. He had his fair share of involvement in the vitriol, that was definite, and they were too far gone in their rivalry to reconcile by the time Simon went to work abroad.
Elementary and middle school were blurs, strokes of unremarkable paint fading and washing into one another as report cards passed and birthday parties went by without half an invite his way. Silas was sure he’d made acquaintances at one point or another, just none close enough to leave a mark. It was better than being completely alone, he reassures himself, and it was much better than being socially scarred so early in existence. Besides, he had his grandmother, his halmeoni, and she was enough. Careful to not spoil the boy, they grew close nonetheless as she cooked up delicious dish after miraculous meal. As Simon went on to join a multitude of sports clubs, Silas watched his grandma make masterpieces with ingredients he’d helped buy, developing admiration beyond that he’d ever felt before for her handiwork. All the while, she implanted proverbs of dedication’s value and sacrifice’s worth that Silas wouldn’t trade for anything.
It was his eleventh birthday. For the first time in his life, he’d been tasked and trusted to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Whether it was the sheer laziness of his parents that day or a rite of passage given to all those deemed the sorcerer to a wok’s wand, he was thrilled to oblige. Thrilled and terrified, of course, and it only got worse when Simon came in to reveal what main ingredient he’d be constructing a grand castle of flavor with: microwavable rice. Silas stammered, stuttered, gasped for breath. They didn’t even have a microwave. A day for firsts, he let his mouth remain open a smidgen too long and ended up sent to his room for use of an expletive. He wouldn’t allow that to be the defining moment of his eleventh birthday, not at all! He used his marvelous masculine wiles (see: begging) and got one more opportunity. Armed with annoyance, a heat knob he hoped would work as a microwave, and his grandmother’s moderately concerned support, he rushed to serve the most brilliant bibimbap ever served in the Kang home. He failed in all aspects of the assignment, from the solid, burnt rice to the rawest egg in Oklahoma to the vegetables salted with only tears. However, he wouldn’t let that be the defining mindset of his eleventh birthday, would he? It meant he could only go up from there. It was vacuous, it was vapid, and yet it made sense, even more sense than all the other jobs he’d scribbled haphazardly during career day. He hadn’t found his forte in finger painting, he hadn’t a chance of curating journals in chemistry class, but he could create something that would fill people. For the first time in his life, he was filled with constant purpose. He did his best in all of high school, still falling a bit behind in Science and leagues behind Simon in terms of how many yearbook pictures were taken with a scowl. He vaguely remembers making a few friends, then, though just as many slipped away with not so much as a text when he spent more time at his part-time job than being the apple of the academy’s eye as Simon was previously. He wore the badge of a rotting fruit with pride, when all was said and done, and could only shoo the incidents of insults for his ‘slit eyes’ or ‘dog eating’ away with the sizzle of a pan and the clinking of coins into the tip jar.
The second he was given the opportunity, Silas went to study the culinary arts in Chicago through experience and education. Working at a small restaurant his uncle four-hundred-times-removed-but-somehow-still-related owned, he developed a foolproof system for dealing with stress: not dealing with it at all. Be nice, be good, don’t sob into the soap and sponge, and study hard. He kept up communications with his parents for a while, awkward as they were, for even a hint of conversation with halmeoni. Her speech was deteriorating, they said in a horribly even tone, but she’d lived a good life. When he received news of her death, he was done. Setting the phone down and gathering all his savings earned from a combination of culinary labor and investments, he ran to the place where dreams came true. Then he went to NYC with the mouse ears to prove it.
Having moved to New York City and found a sufficiently welcoming home in the borough of Brooklyn, Silas has all he needs: a rapidly developing social circle, stable employment, and an escape from Delaware County. What he wants? A different story entirely, and one that will have to be told with much precariousness…
TL;DR: Brought up by spite for his brother and his grandmother’s weary hands that always smell like tteokbokki, Silas Kang is trying his best.
