biography: anya choi-katzayev
anya knows how to love. to love the sugar-snow beneath her skis on the canadian rockies. to love the romantic atmosphere as she walks a lonely parisian night. to love the neon markets in downtown seoul. to love the furious scottish seaside, or the tender californian cliffs.
to love the promise of adventure.
her mother, you see, was a showstopper— a monster, if you will, in the world of business as well as in the basest sense of the word.
as a woman who grew up poor in rural colorado, all that stephanie lewis wanted was that she would never again want for a thing. when she moved to seoul for a business internship, three months turned into a year, and one year turned into five.
she did care for anya, at least a little. it was her father she didn’t care for: choi dongwoo, a humble chicken-store owner with the kindest eyes of any man on the planet and a stout, welcoming build. stephanie loved him— really, she did. but they say she was a white bird in a blizzard, or a blue dolphin in the sea: someone like choi dongwoo never had a chance to catch her. when stephanie drops week-old anya on dongwoo’s porch, it’s carelessly, with a warning to allow visits at least once a week.
in the end, though, it was dongwoo who named her.
“my sweet, sweet eunhye,” he whispers as he kisses her small head each night.
age 4.
andrei katzayev comes into their lives on a simple business trip to propose a partnership with stephanie. they want to expand their fine liquor empire’s reach into south korea, you see, and anya’s mother is the clearest choice for her notoriety. she is obviously obsessed with the sheer power that andrei bleeds from every pore. anya, on the other hand, falls in love with his presence.
he is handsome, with blond hair and a fine-boned jawline. he is the heir to the katzayev group, who are affluent and well-spoken and practically russian royalty. but, above all, he is patient and kind: his laugh is a deep, rich baritone, and he has no shortage of it.
one small business trip turns into him staying in seoul out of concern for the way stephanie treats anya. he becomes close with both her and dongwoo, and winds up buying a high-rise in seoul to split his time between in order to keep an eye on stephanie. to keep her in check when it comes to her daughter and ex.
andrei is the one who practically raises anya for her formative years. it’s interesting, the way anya was named by two fathers; he always had a difficult time saying “eunhye.” it’s how the name anya came to be.
it’s through andrei’s intervention at dongwoo’s request that monthly visits with stephanie go from four, to three, to two. and before she knows it, anya is on a private jet to moscow once every few weeks to visit andrei, the generous man who has taken in this girl and her father as his own.
one day, she thinks, she might become a pilot.
age 5.
if the affair between a businesswoman and a nobody was the talk of south korea, then the custody battle between a businesswoman and that same nobody is even bigger news.
this time, though, it’s different. this time, andrei is there to protect the child.
the trial hardly lasts a week; andrei’s brought in the best lawyers money could buy, and the best bodyguards who keep the camera’s from anya’s face. stephanie lewis returns to the states in shame, never to see her family again, and is labelled a cheater, a liar, a minx— but there’s only one label that anyone really cares about.
she is unfit to keep custody.
age 6.
moscow isn’t where andrei wants to raise his child, but cameras aren’t good companions. both andrei and dongwoo agree that anya needs some time away from seoul until the media circus dies down.
when anya and andrei move their belongings into a ridiculously large mansion on the outskirts of paris, it’s with a scream of glee that she leaps into dongwoo’s arms, for andrei had spent the past year applying for a working visa for the younger man. it’s important, he believes, that anya grows up with as many positive influences and support systems as she can. so in come the katzayev aunts and uncles, the grandmothers and grandfathers, the cousins and nieces and nephews, to greet the newest addition to their family. andrei isn’t set to take over the company until the current matriarch passes, so much of his time he devotes to his adopted daughter.
dongwoo earns his keep as the personal chef to the katzayev family and eventually remarries a lovely french artist, cecilia beaulieu, and within a year they introduce anya to her newest half-sister anne-marie. they stay in the katzayev guest house for a few years before purchasing their own townhome in the city.
the choi and katzayev families begin an alliance and friendship that, unbeknownst to them, will last for many more generations to come.
age 10.
but the story isn’t over yet. what proper adventure ends just when things are getting good?
it’s at andrei’s insistence that his daughter grows up to be a clever, well-adjusted, independent young woman. her dream of pilotry is not yet forgotten, so he buys her a plane that he promises she will be able to fly as soon as she is licensed.
as for anya herself . . .
anya is bored. she’s not technically allowed to start practicing pilotry till she’s fourteen, nor is she really supposed to lift a finger. clean? the maids do that. cook? the chefs do that. if there was a way for andrei to spoil her into not having to go the restroom herself, he would.
with that, a permanent nest is set up in the corner of the estate library with strict orders by her-ten-year-oldness herself not to touch it. not even her beloved cousins are allowed in, for anya loves to learn. andrei has hired a tutor for her to learn latin, french, brush up on her korean and russian and english. the nest is complete with soft blankets, overstuffed pillows, and books— admittedly— dog-eared. it’s anya’s second home.
her third home is parisian streets. anya looks often mismatched when she slips on her well-loved tennis shoes, muddy with adventure, with a light sundress. and over that comes her favorite woolly cardigan, too large but satisfyingly fuzzy. then over that, a purse: one that her stepmother cecilia crocheted herself, and in it anya religiously stuffs a frozen apple, some cheese crackers, jam, and an orangina bottle with a couple scoops of sugar. the gps tracker goes on and attaches to her stockings. the navy blue baseball cap is painstakingly adjusted over a lovely low bun. jingling with coins, young anya sets out everyday in search of a new story to tell.
age 13.
her frozen apple for the day has thawed out enough to eat when anya decides to settle down next to a trash can by the mona lisa and eat her meal. she’s used enough to the routine that she’s good at sneaking food behind security guards’ backs. andrei is out for the next week, and it happens to be one of the weeks that dongwoo is working on opening his own restaurant and cecilia is going to be at her art house. so for tonight, anya’s got paris.
the venus de milo is stupid, and the seine smells a little bit gross, and anya’s hair is down as she walks the same streets with a sense of romantic languidness.
but that— that’s new. curiosity piqued, anya steps closer to a little glass door. the light refracts off it in a vibrant rainbow. she hasn’t seen this building before; and what she hasn’t seen in paris is that with which she is in love.
it’s the movement of an angel, accompanied by voices— resonant, clear, in an octave where anya cannot tell if it is a man or a woman. she peeks through the door, colors falling upon her face, and watches and listens for hours. their legs are like marble sculptures, contrapposto— their arms like paintings, chiaroscuro. the old masters catch her eventually, of course. they chase her away with a broom, because who cares if she’s the heiress to the katzayev empire? she laughs with glee as she hikes up her skirts and teases them over her shoulder, the wind catching her hair as she makes her grand escape.
she knows now.
she has to dance.
age 18.
to give up one dream for another is a dangerous game. her flying lessons have been going spectacularly, and the door is open for her to inherit the katzayev liquor business. she’s everything to make her father proud, and an outspoken, opinionated, fierce young lady.
even more dangerous is the return to korea, where the face of her younger self was plastered across tabloids. but five years of being a dancer aren’t enough to cut it, not for anya; she’s made up her mind to return to korea, where she’ll work with performance groups, then return to france or russia or america, and bring the culture there. she sings until her voice gives out, dances until her ankles are sprained, then dances after they’re snug in a compress.
eventually, she hears about an audition opportunity, and to her, it’s her next big chronicle-in-the-making. she becomes a main dancer for starscape records on hard work alone.
age 23; present-day.
anya katzayev, which she shortens in korea to anya katz for the sake of pronunciation, fancies herself a well-rounded person. educated, skilled, protective, commandingly charismatic. . .
. . . and a bit of a spitfire. maybe it’s the environment in which she grew up, but it’s a bit of a tough role to chew as she snags a spot on popstar survival. She’s talented enough that she manages to land a spot in the group, but her family always told her to speak her mind. in conservative korea, that’s a bit of a vice. it’s obvious how much she tries to bite her tongue. but when she can’t . . .
“why are you feeding her so little?” she says critically to a staff member who buys only a salad for one of her fellow trainees. “don’t starve my sister.”
“it’s not fair that those luxuri girls had to conform to what the public thinks their concept should be,” she mentions offhandedly with a resolute nod as the group walks through the airport. “let strong women be strong women.”
“someone should give prism a break,” she announces, the bold words at odds with the delicate way she eats her kimbap. “they have to deal with sasaeng fans— who, by the way, hardly pass as fans— and strict schedules? it shouldn’t be allowed.”
“my mother is nobody to me, no matter how influential she may have been,” she declares, because by the time people realize that anya katz is businesswoman stephanie lewis’ daughter, cat.eye has debuted. “my father raised me to understand that family doesn’t treat each other the way that woman treated me.”
all on camera, too. “she’s a handful,” is what the staff members say about her. “that anya is a handful.” but she is a fighter. she so obviously cares for her group members in that way that her russian family raised her to. it’s that which sings to the public.
anya katz: the flaming dancer who can take on the force of the world.
