welcome to the yosul school for witches and wizards
song seunghyun
11.25.1986 (32)
potions and alchemy prof (beauxbatons alumni)
pure-blood
tw: murder, death mention
one.
ghang sihyung is erratic.
family and friends, coworkers and countless acquaintances he waltzes around with, he speaks enough, he speaks a lot, in fact, but mostly about things that are no reflection of his specks. he is his own being, in his own world; too deep in his own world of fascination for potions and alchemy, world of pure beauty and perfection. knowledge and immortality. gods, goddesses and endless knowledge.
two.
ghang sihyung had a dream. a dream to be this platonic creature of pure rationality.
yet anyone will never thought that someone so distant, so gifted and pensive could, in the end, be such a believer. today we are used for those intellectuals being cynics and disbelievers-quicker to discount something unexplained then to entertain it. sihyung, who was taught by a divinity and ran the woods with a god, believed enough that death was no great sacrifice for him. he believed, he killed, he loved and he didn’t apologise for any of it. just another failed experiment.
three.
ghang sihyung is a cold ideas of beauty and perfection.
he is the male mona lisa of contemporary novels if you wish. the more closely you look at him the more elusive he becomes. he comes from nowhere and is going nowhere. he is nietzsche’s dream. beyond good and evil. a pure endeavour to transcend one’s cultural milieu, of defying consciousness and guilt. on his thirty-two years of life, he has made life into an art-form descending to the darkest depths of the human psyche. oh, he is bigger-than-life, he defies life and life will not forgive him the transgression. he must, eventually, pay the price.
lee danbi, the youtuber + manager at jules who moved into the sweetheart sharehouse four years ago. we hear she’s staying in 1C, and that she wants to be a stylist or designer under hyun mi nielsen. good luck with that.
PAST.
“I guess it all started there,”
A camera begins to focus from the blur of dark hair and pale skin to the youthful face of a young lady, she is making eye contact with the camera so intimately it almost feels like she’s looking at you individually.
“One comment and I was done for, almost like… love at first sight?”
She laughs and reveals a very old lady cackle as she almost falls backward from her own joke, very different than what you would expect from a delicate beauty.
“I always thought that fashion and the aesthetic that came with it were something extraordinary. I mean, I started this whole youtube channel just to share my style with the world.”
Dark eyes are unwavering from the lens as she shift in her seat, the girl seems to be in a bedroom where she is sat atop of a bed with bright yellow covers, and the walls around her are surrounded by pictures of designs by what must be either hers or Hyun Mi Nielson.
“When I picked up a bit of a following on my videos, I thought I should go back to my original platform… instagram.”
The video cuts to what must be her instagram, pictures varying from posed ones of the same beautiful girl in clothing that seem out of this world, candid where she seems to be staring intently at material as she sews, and pictures of beautiful clothing on mannequins with Jules tagged as the location each time.
“I found my voice on youtube, but I found my eyes on insta.”
A voice narrates, the same one earlier, though the voice seems more personal now. Closer to your ears.
“On the explore page, I found Christine along with a few other accounts and mass followed them. I liked their looks after all.”
The screen now shows the comment from user hyunmi.nielsen in which one word is written but the rest begin to blur as affects probably from the editing. ‘pretty.’
“But I’m getting ahead of myself, first I was just another country girl in Jeju.”
Though she does seem to have a slight accent from the dialect, it’s not very noticeable until she pointed it out.
“My life wasn’t anything too extrodinary or intresting, I grew up in Panpo-Ri… if you never heard of it I’m not too shocked it’s mostly just farmland after all.”
The girl seems to press her lip into a straight line, obviously cringing before continuing on after a beat. “I wasn’t very good at the family trade, my family in particular raised orchards. You know like, the fruit trees, that was our contribution.”
She seems to be smiling fondly before catching herself,
“I’m not sure if you know, but to take care of a orchard you need a lot of able-bodies and hands to help. Which is why my parents got to work having four children pretty back to back,”
Her expression softens again as she leans forward with a wink,
“though we weren’t much help for the first ten years or so, we would just run around and climb the trees back than.”
She laughs again, or should I say cackle as she covers her mouth this time to be modest before continuing
“Two older brothers and a one eldest sister.”
She held up three fingers and began to name them off,
“My eldest brother is now the town doctor… I think, and the other one married rather quickly and has land of his own… while my sister is going to take over the family farm with her husband.”
With all fingers down, she lowers her hand off screen before sighing.
“I never really fit in, both in the family or in the town. I was a bit too… let’s say eccentric and I stood out from the first day of elementary school. But I stayed until I graduated from high school, where I studied fashion and design at Hongik University. ”
The girl pulls up the collar of her shirt to reveal the whole sweatshirt and the school logo on the front. “
Which I’m currently repping with the merch that I definitely bought while in school and was not given free by somebody at all..but this is not sponsored by… yet.”
She raises and eyebrow before laughing, that infamous laugh again.
“From there, I collected lots of debt since I paid for college on my own without any help and I didn’t have any job while attending school and ended up having to go to a sharehouse after getting my bachelors.”
Leaning over, to reveal a necklace in the shape of what seems to be an island peek out from her sweatshirt as she reached her hand out to the camera before smiling knowingly.
“And well from there… it became quite an adventure.”
The screen turns black before a variety of social media is displayed after on the darkened screen with music playing in the background, the music is folksy and the it doesn’t last too long before the video ends completely.
PRESENT.
After Lee Danbi finished school, the debt that seemed to pile up from her time in university prevented her from being able to afford a flat all her own. Reluctant to move back home right after graduating, the twenty-one year old decided to look into other housing. Within a week, the lady luck shined upon her and she found an ad for a share house.
Though she had never lived with anyone outside of her own family, she wasn’t opposed to the idea. In fact, she looked forward to it. She believed it would be no different than living with her extended family all pushed into one living space as they found camaraderie with one another in the cramped spacing.
Four years later, Danbi is one of the longer staying tenants and acts as the younger sister/older sister to everyone in the house as she looks out for them and tries to keep morale up with her bubbly personality. Though being the mood maker of the house, along with keeping up a persona on the internet has taken a toll on the young girl as she has since developed major depression disorder. Though she hides this from her housemates and audience for their sake as well as her own.
She works at Jules full time; helping customers, stocking and restocking and most importantly styling the mannequins. Danbi found the job at the same time as the share house, both on the ads page of the newspaper. She was pretty sure she was the only one in this day and age who enjoyed the printed news. Thanks to her enthusiasm and hard work she was able to become the manager at the store and has since begun to bring a touch of Christine with every outfit she wears to work.
All awhile, she juggles her hobby of youtube, managing the store and getting along with everyone at the house. She isn’t sure how long she can handle under all the stress and expectation and if she can keep that bright smile on her face forever.
welcome to the yosul school for witches and wizards
ra hyejin
10.13.1997 (23)
student (cheong ryeong)
pure-blood
tw: violence mention
[ bgm ]
Hye (慧) for wisdom, Jin (珍) for treasure.
Teach me one thing and I learn five. They want diplomacy but I want monopoly. We’re supposed to smell like ink and parchment and mint but I offer none. I remember spraying on my father’s cologne but the scent got lost in my clothes and I never managed to find it again.
They say I have a nice smile but some say I show too much teeth.
I have curly hair but it gets straight when it’s wet. I stopped getting straight perms at the age of 16 because they take too much of an effort get done every few months. I stopped wearing glasses when someone accidentally threw a bludger into my face during second year.
So I accidentally broke their fingers a month later.
They say that’s how boys play and make friends so I go along with it. It’s not revenge but coincidence. People talk and they forget and afterwards they forgive.
They like me as quiet and humble, they like me as kind and generous. So I go along with it. My mother’s conception dream of me was of her following the road that she was on until she saw a white fox sleeping underneath an evergreen tree.
She’s still unsure if I’m supposed to be the fox or the tree.
here is what he remembers of the beginning: the room he grew up in was cold; the gazes of his peers weighing heavy on the downward slope of his shoulders even colder. shuttled between families who couldn’t quite wrap their minds around how practiced, how lonely he was, he grows too familiar with kids just as broken, just as desperate as him whispering reminders that your parents never loved each other (it’s the only thing blunt enough to drag the smile off of his lips) and that’s why no one will love you.
ii. fissure, aching
here is what he remembers of childhood: an elderly couple he now calls mom, dad sweeping him from the cold, enveloping him in a warmth he still struggles to believe he deserves. learning to equate home not with the bleary brick-walled orphanage nor the transient, heaving metal of cars that would drive him back-and-forth from almost-promises to square one (they just weren’t looking for a child like you), but with a small, cozy apartment in mokdong; with a palace as bright as a blank canvas for him to start his story anew in. there remain times when he feels too small for the dynamic world he’s been tossed into, but unfamiliarity replaces itself with robes of red: in times of calibration, he learns to seek a white tiger.
iii. skyward, yearning
here is what he remembers of youth: suspended among the clouds, a broom beneath him, handfuls of air flitting between his fingertips—he supposes this is euphoria. a family where mom and dad spend quiet hours in the living room, the walls carrying framed photographs of three, happiness exuding from ink and ink alone. a family where his closest friends tether him to the ground, keep the smile on his lips heartfelt and genuine. he supposes this—laughter torn from the walls of his throat by the handful, the closest thing to pure bliss as he tumbles into the ground, his friends following suit—is happiness.
iv. stasis, numbed
here is what he knows of loss: in a split second, he hears something that’s been breaking (that he’s been shuffling to the back of his mind, stubbornly neglecting) conclusively crumble, crack, shatter. he has no future in quidditch anymore; no future in the dream he’d been so desperately clinging to. the first time he cries in front of his parents is to apologize for causing them so much trouble. my son, his mother hums, we’re sorry to you. we love you.
v. repose, renewal
he always chooses the highest seat at the stadium, head a little woozy as he squints to get a better glimpse of the pitch below him. if he closes his eyes, the wind seems to embrace him, seems to envelope him in a strange warmth, as though to say i’m sorry too. he stretches his arms above his shoulders, lets his head loll back, the sun bright against his cheeks. if he found his family, found his happiness, he’s sure he will find his dream once more.
light spills over the horizon as the sound of a baby’s first cry fills a house overlooking the sea. mere moments later a second baby’s cry joins the first. sky, and her twin brother cloud are brought into the home of a young couple, so overwhelmingly in love that it lingers in the woodwork, in the soft furnishings. sky and cloud know nothing but unconditional love, worry and loneliness not something they’re familiar with.
they’re five when it happens. there’s a large pond behind their house, in the thick of the forest where the twins like to play. dragonflies flutter above the water, flitting through the reeds in the shallows, perching on lilypads. it’s quiet, serene, their little hideaway. until one day sky wades into the water, the braver of the twins, and tells cloud to come out with her. her brother, having always followed sky in the past, does so. sky doesn’t remember what happens, not really, she just remembers cloud struggling, his feet slipping out from under his and his head disappearing beneath the surface. the struggling, the gasps desperately drawn in the seconds his face breaks the water, it’s all a blur. sky runs. runs for her parents back at the house. when she returns with them, it’s too late. cloud floats on the surface of the pond, eyes open, glued to the sky above him, unblinking.
the house that once was so warm, frosts over. sky’s parents try, they try so hard, for her. the love is still there, but every night, when sky bolts awake, shrieking her brothers name, crying out for him, it chips away at her parents, who themselves are hurting. but with time comes healing, and as the years go on sky’s nightmares don’t come as often, her parents smiles seem genuine, at least sometimes. the bedroom sky and cloud shared when they were young remains untouched, left as it had been on the morning that sky and cloud set out for the pond.
sky’s magic blossoms around her seventh birthday - later than expected, but celebrated all the same. her parents hold a party, with all their other magical family friends, and though sky manages to smile, to thank the adults congratulating her, she can’t draw her mind away from wondering - would cloud have been celebrating his own magic if he were here with her?
as the years go on sky manages to get her spirit back, to find her smile again, and by the age of nine, things feel warmer. no longer does walking through the front door of her home feel like sinking herself into an ice bath. but the news of her mother’s pregnancy shakes the ground she stands on. it takes some convincing to believe they’re not trying to replace cloud, that he’s still their son, and always will be. the birth comes just before her tenth birthday - a baby boy. they name him lark.
it turns out that lark is the best thing that could have happened to their somewhat uncertain family - his arrival breathes new life, new hope, into their home. often, sky’s father will awaken to lark crying, and drag himself out of bed, only to find sky already in his room - the room sky and cloud shared as children, now let go of, reused, reloved - cradling the baby in her arms and singing softly to him. sky takes to lark, like a lark takes to the skies.
sky learns a lot about magic - she learns to make flower blossom for lark, learns to create little sparks, and lights that bounce in the shallows of the ocean. she learns other things too that don’t require magic - sailing, baking, dancing. but too soon she’s to leave lark, and her mother and father, for a school far from home. the only solace is that her cousin is already there, a cousin she remembers running through the sand with, climbing trees with, reading in the long grass with.
the school is unlike anything she’s ever seen before, but excitement blossoms in her as she steps into the next chapter of her life, leaving the ocean behind, the pond in the forest, the dragonflies in the reeds. it’s easy to fall into her place as the playful, creative hyeon mu girl with the bright smile and loud laugh. some know her simply as the cousin of pip banthou, but she knows she’s much more than that.
ever since stepping through the doors of yosul sky’s life has changed - her magic has blossomed, her friendships, her confidence. her days filled with laughter, playing around with friends, learning new things, makes the few nights when she sits in the darkness, tears on her cheeks, calling out softly to cloud, all that easier to bear.
welcome to the yosul school for witches and wizards
reinhardt junho ryu
08.08.1995 (24)
grad student (baek ho)
pure-blood
“school again rein? thought you couldn’t wait to graduate back in school?”
he’s rolling his eyes at the question, as he places the occamys back into their nest. it isn’t as if he didn’t know about his constant complaining as a child. he wailed the first day he was dropped off at beauxbatons. he thought it completely unfair that his parents forced him to pursue an education despite his dream job not even requiring it. he grew out of that quickly and reinhardt found himself throughly enjoying his time at hogwarts and beauxbatons. he’s tossing some mice into the awaiting mouths of the occamys as he defends himself.
“it’s graduate school and no one said too much education was a bad thing. besides, i’m thinking about getting some auror training. the illegal dealings are getting out of hand and these research jobs are interesting but they’re not getting me anywhere.”
the second he looks away to answer a hungry occamy is attacking his hand and really he should be angry, but that’s his fault for not paying attention to a creature that was known to be finicky and aggressive. after dropping the last of the mice he’s dusting of his hands.
“i’m gonna hate leaving these lovelies, but it’s time to get back to my roots as well. just hope my korean is good enough to keep up.”
welcome to the yosul school for witches and wizards
kim minji
17.11.1997 (22)
student (ju jak)
half-blood
the batman of the wizarding world is how she sees him; how she speaks of kim jaeho when she tells his stories. she speaks of all the bad guys he’s put behind bars, and of all the justice he has brought into the community. in her eyes, he is as close to a superhero as one can get.
someday, she thinks, she will be like him, too.
kim minji. she’s got the world at her feet. arrogance in its sweetest form; this girl truly believes that there is nothing that can stop her. dreamer, or dedicated? the line between both can be dangerously thin, and perhaps she’s crossed it more than once in the past. but she knows what she’s doing. she knows to work hard for the things that she wants. she knows to be kind, but she knows when to fight, too.
as she so often says: ju jak is the revolution. she will be the revolution. kim minji: superwoman.
someday, she thinks, her grandchildren will tell her stories, too.
welcome to the yosul school for witches and wizards
park yunho
03.30.1997 (23)
pro quidditch player/ student (cheong ryeong)
half-blood
“yunho, sir, over here–” cameras, lights and way too many people crowding around the table. “how does it feel to be drafted to the korea national quidditch team?” he ponders on that thought, not waiting too long to answer.
“it’s a complete honour and i feel very fortunate and lucky to have this opportunity.” was that too much? an obvious media training tactic?
“how have the other team members treated you so far? have they welcomed you with open arms?” really? they’re really going to be asking these mundane questions? what’s the point of this press conference.
“yeah, everyone has been really nice and i feel privileged and excited to be able to work and learn from them.” he answers with a smile he hopes that doesn’t appear too fake. ten more minutes pass with the boring questions before one catches him off guard.
“if you’ve already been drafted, then why are you still attending yosul next semester?”
because i don’t know if want to do this for the rest of my life or even for the next year. “i only have one more year of school left anyway, might as well graduate.”
