One moment they’re talking Chopin and Jeyun’s finished his self-introduction—the next, the stranger’s up and walked out with the 1989 Italian Merlot Jeyun’s just placed an order for. Were it not for the other man’s subtle invitation by way of a twitch of the eye (that was the hint, right?) and Jeyun’s gnawing curiosity, Jeyun might have reported him and called it a night.
“Hey,” Jeyun calls out, clutching to his sides. He’s finally caught up with the man after leaving his card behind at the bar for them to charge. He’ll be back for it in the morning, but for now he plays along—
“Took a detour just in case they caught on.” He explains between haggard breaths. They come out short and sharp and balmy night air soon replaces the secondhand smoke in his lungs. His body feels lighter already. He wraps a hand around the neck of the bottle of merlot, prying it away from the man’s grip as he reveals a brown paper bag. “I did manage to make away with this before stepping out.” A white lie. Jeyun had asked for it. “But you really did surprise me back there! And right as you were about to tell me your name.” He slips the bottle into the paper bag and can’t help but laugh. “Please tell me I’m an anomaly and that everyone you meet isn’t subject to this.”
Yuriy is born in the midst of one of Russia’s prolonged winters to his Koryo-saram father, Sergey Shin, a politician, albeit not well-liked–powerful, and his mother, Yuiliya, heiress to a fortune built on nuclear defence.
Quickly, his parents realise he is unlike other children, he doesn’t cry, nor does he respond to the touch of his mother. And, after an abundance of tests, the use of technology unavailable to the public, he is diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder, congenital insensitivity to pain with partial anhidrosis.
He’s written off by his parents around age 10 as they can no longer withstand his own actively self-destructive behaviour, putting himself in dangerous situations as experiments–tests, to see if he merely possessed a high pain tolerance or no feeling at all. It started out as simple things–paper cuts, and burns from hot liquids–and then escalated once he was free of his home to the point where purposely put himself in the way of an oncoming car or attempted jumping out of a two or three story window.
He’s kept in his room from now on. Being cooped up had benefits, in a sense. He was with books and things to keep him company, keep him occupied. Computers, to keep him with information. And a desire to leave. As a result, he spent time learning as much as he could, given there wasn’t much else to do at all. Basic things, school subjects, of course were idle past times and contributed largely to his intelligence. He’s a genius, to put it simply, though his solitary confinement assisted in that, forcing him to cram knowledge into his head to keep from going entirely insane. He was smart before, and then he became more than that. Useless facts, useful facts–he knows them. A lot of them. However when it comes to people, it’s still drawing a blank in his mind.
Time spent locked up and away from people, time spent solidifying the ‘understanding’ that he was born to be alone, has contributed to his technologically savvy personality and hacker abilities. Coding and wires and binary became his friends, things that didn’t run from him and that, like himself, couldn’t feel pain. They were refreshing to him, computers and screens and electricity-run systems and they became a sort of ‘home’ for him, when his home became a prison.
Over time, he became more and more interested and read up on more subjects involving computers and the internet and every technological advance, furthering his understanding. It was curiosity and a time passer at first, when he could still experience emotion, but as life went on it more so became habit, familiarity, and something he could bring with him regardless of where he went. Nostalgia isn’t something in his bones or his own genetic coding, but the need to have something of his own something that allowed him to leave that little room in his mind and in his home brought a means of solstice.
His parents blocked most sites allowing communication with others, and he made it his goal to override them. It became a game for him and a stress to his family, having their child constantly outdo them. They gave up, eventually, and he became bored. He never had any interest in talking to anyone online anyway–it was just the only way he had to interact with his parents anymore and once it was gone, he was left unhappy again. Still, it was something he could understand and thus decided later to use his talents for brokering when it came to the digitisation of private information, as well as other various things, so it wasn’t entirely useless.
Eventually, he leaves. Somewhere around his 18th birthday; he forges a Korean passport, opting to change his name for a couple of reasons, one of which being the simple distaste in his mouth when saying or thinking about his old home and a name given unto him by his parents is an association with that past.
Considering he finds himself to be a glitch, often depicted by an arrangement of static noise, his name was chosen to further embody the nature of being inhuman, of not belonging, of being a glitch in the system. He is greyscale static in a world of colour and clear sound, thus prompting the name ‘소란’ to be taken on.
“You’re adorable.”
Nose scrunches in small increment as corners of twin brims pull downward to form a faint yet obvious frown upon visage. Words are processed, given denotation and connotation within the circuitry of mind and he finds them to be unwanted–pertaining to a child, really, and he is not a boy with scratched up knees and broken crayons.
Now he bears worse battle scars and breaks worse than drawing instruments, but that is not part of point he wishes to make at given time.
“I’m not adorable.” Simple response, marked by slight confusion as well as agitation for he fails to find what it was he has done to warrant such term. Such an unwanted term. Being called a kid or a brat, he could handle fine; remarks such as ‘cute’ or ‘adorable’ or 'endearing’ make him feel belittled. Not to mention the dry blood sticking to the back of his undershirt, or the scars littering his body. The knuckles of silver that fall over fists during brawls that scream that he will break apart flesh and bone when trifled with. His very core is violence, a whirlwind of inner calamity and selfish desires that are achieved through any means he wishes to utilise.
