➽ lux et veritas! welcome to yale, ( DANIEL ‘DANNY’ PARK ). you’re a ( STUDENT ), aren’t you? your form says you’re ( TWENTY-THREE ), go by ( HE/HIM ), and excel in ( ANTHROPOLOGY ). but looking back at your college essay, i’d describe you as ( GETTING CAUGHT DAYDREAMING OF ADVENTURE DURING CLASSES; CRUSHED ENERGY DRINK AND BEER CANS IN OVERFLOWING TRASH CAN; LAUGHING AT 2AM UNTIL YOUR STOMACH HURTS ). keep out of the shadows! [fc: jeon jungkook]
danny park, just your average twenty-three year old friendly neighborhood spiderman nobody. a kid who you spot at the grocery store, trailing after his extremely loud but good-natured korean mother, sullenly adding things into the cart as she shouts them out. a kid who you might have known in high school for making that one winning shot for the basketball team, but then missing every game afterwards because he broke his ankle skateboarding. a kid who just left for yale university, way over his head amongst all the wealthy, well-educated elite students who made it here based on their own merits, not their uncanny ability to somehow manipulate elements (completely by accident, most times). danny shuffles behind the crowd in his baggy t-shirts and black cargo pants, wishing he could erase smell of despair and impending student debt.
his story? well, it began when his parents immigrated from south korea to los angeles, full of big dreams and empty pockets. his father was a bellman at a luxury hotel near koreatown, and his broken english was no hinderance when his enthusiasm took center stage. he guided those tourists to the best routes, found them discount tickets, booked them taxis to grand restaurants, showed them all the facets of LA his little family could never afford. his mom found work in a korean restaurant, and that’s where danny remembers most of his childhood, kicking the back of his brother’s seat as he ignored homework in favor of stealing slices of meat from the kitchen.
his, um, talents developed sometime around his tenth birthday, when the pool party he was hosting turned into some sort of tsunami. a neighborhood kid had been picking on him, making fun of the banchan his mom had set out beside the chips and dip, threatening to push him in the pool. danny’s anger exploded, and somehow the pool did too, the water churning dangerously and wiping out the lawn chairs with enormous waves. the kid got knocked into the pool, and the fear in danny’s gut had somehow ended the waves. the kid was okay, and ran from danny for months.
( danny spent the next year thinking he’d get a hogwarts letter. it never came. )
after that fateful day, danny felt like he couldn’t escape his newfound powers. they came unexpectedly - one day, he’d forgotten to start the oven for his mom, and terrified of getting yelled at, he pleaded with the oven to heat up quickly. it shot to 500 degrees in a minute, and danny almost burned his hand checking. or the time he was hiking with friends in high school and rocks slid down the side of the mountain, almost knocking them off the ledge, until danny’s fear became so overwhelming that the rocks bounced over the small group, as if they were under a bowl of air.
there was no rhyme or reason, and it happened so infrequently that danny could uneasily write it off as coincidence. until his third year at community college, when he decided to join the soccer team - and the wind would shift every time he got near the goal, sending the ball soaring through the air straight into the corner of the goal. everyone lauded him as the next big thing, and reps from universities came to watch him play. it felt ridiculous, danny knew he was mediocre at best at sports, but this? out of nowhere, he made every single goal? this was insane.
and then one day, he was visited by a representative, and took an exam that made absolutely no sense, and two weeks later he got an offer for a full ride to freaking yale university. he was twenty-three, only one year from finishing an associates degree and maybe finding an admin job somewhere, and now yale wanted him to attend their prestigious school, sit next to prestigious future lawyers and businessmen and senators? and play soccer, but that part didn’t really matter - it was almost like an afterthought.
his parents were thrilled (if not bemused), and danny couldn’t really decline such an incredible offer. they also said he could choose any major, so he went with his imagination and chose anthropology. all those Indiana Jones movies he binged as a kid endlessly were finally making good use. so he packed his bags that summer and moved into the dorms two weeks before the semester started - only to be met by the Admissions Director, Madeline Gaines, and told that he had magical abilities and would need to protect the country from a portal to hell.
so it’s been a weird two weeks, to say the least. his emotions are all over the place - at one moment, he’s happy he’s not alone in his magical abilities, but then he’s also scared shitless as the prospect of learning to control it, and then intimidated by all the other members who somehow have their shit together and understand their magic. and yale is enormous, and he gets lost ALL THE TIME.
he’s glad he’s got his roommate (WANTED CONNECTION) to help him along the way.
personality wise, danny is just a goddamn sweetie pie, head filled with more fluff and laughter than actual serious thought. he enjoys being a watcher rather than a participant in activities, and when you think he’s just in the corner dozing off or glancing into space, he’s usually taking in everything and storing it away for later. but you can trust him (unless he’s one too many drinks down, and then you can never know what’ll come out of his mouth).
