#s1:bio

[anthologyrp]

IN THE HOLLOWS LIVES A MARSH RABBIT—

he has been promised to a god, and yet ju hojin has lived to see twenty-nine. while the being slumbers forgotten in the forest, he works as a translator. but when those antlers break free, they will see he is intuitive and wilful. they will see he belongs in the trees.

boys will be boys, that’s what people in town say as they clicked their tongue and shook their heads when they found out you were involved whenever something happened. like… who could forget the time you almost broke your neck trying something stupid? how your poor mother cried her eyes out on the way to the hospital, only for you to jump right back in once you got better? or when you got slapped in the middle of town for everyone to see? just to name a few.

to your credit, it’s not all bad. it’s just easier for these kinds of stories to linger.

they had expected you to leave onyang, you know. the boy who didn’t mind the mess left in the wake of his pursuit of something greater. and they weren’t that far off either. you had, at one point, wanted to leave. that was why you agreed to that pact. there had to be something more to the world than onyang. however, part of you wanted to stay. if only for a little while longer.

you’ve never been the sort of guy to do anything half-assed anyway, so you chose to go back even if it meant breaking the pact. not that it mattered to you; collateral damage had always been hard to avoid. real lucky for you then, that everyone else was on the same page. (though, which part of it is luck and which part of it is the fact that you knew them well enough to see this coming is the question.)

and well, it’s not as if you’ve fully resigned yourself to the fate of small town living. not really, not when it’s always felt as if there’s still something to be uncovered in onyang. a stone left unturned. you’ve heard the stories, know what you’ve been told like the back of your hand, but your gut tells you there’s much more to it all. you may have mellowed out over time but some things never change. at the core of it, you’re a persistent little fucker.

the discovery of the book only proves you right. 

it reignites the fire that went out years ago, when you were forced to contend with the fact that the stories were only just that—tales designed to scare children into behaving well. you’re not quite sure how they’re all connected yet, but you’ll find out eventually. you always have. after all, what else can get to the end of a rabbit hole if not a rabbit?

[anthologyrp]

IN THE HOLLOWS LIVES AN ANGORA RABBIT—

she has been promised to a god, and yet choi eunjae has lived to see twenty-nine. while the being slumbers forgotten in the forest, she works as an elementary school teacher. but when those antlers break free, they will see she is amiable and frivolous. they will see she belongs in the trees.

an onyang native through and through, it's hard for eunjae to go around town without being recognized. of course, that doesn't mean she doesn't try her hardest. having all those eyes on her makes it hard for her to do anything without word getting around. it's bothersome, really, for someone like eunjae who simply wants to breeze through life.

she only agrees to the pact made with her friends to go off to college because they all insist they have to do it together. admittedly, she doesn't think she would've even gone to college without the pact. eunjae imagines she would've chosen to just linger around onyang instead, following in her mother's footsteps and working in the family bakery.

however, she follows along because she's just like that. her life becomes a little easier when it seems pre-planned by someone else.

in that line, her return wasn't actually planned, but it's not surprising either. well, at least to her. when her mother calls to say that she and the whole family misses her, eunjae can't seem to say no—or maybe she was looking for an excuse to come back. come back to the life that she used to know.

and so she returns. the pact is broken, but pacts were made to be broken, weren't they?

somewhere deep down, a voice tells eunjae that it's time for her to step out of this little circle of hers. even after they come back and reunite at onyang, it's almost feels like to her that none of them ever actually left. there's something in the air whenever they gather together, and it's a feeling that eunjae can't seem to shake off.

as much as her brain tells her to snap out of it and grow up a little, she can't seem to. that's the beauty of small towns, huh? it's exactly why she finds herself sucked right back in, despite having grown older and (hopefully) wiser. it's almost like she physically can't get away from it all.

but there's something about the book that spooks her. it's a little haunting. she scan't put her finger on what it is exactly, but something simply feels off. her family's been around onyang for a long time, so it's not like eunjae's a stranger to the tales and stories that linger around town. she's spent so much of her life trying not to think about all that, but the book pretty much shoves all of that into her face.

people have told her that they can't always tell what's going on in the little head of hers, and eunjae simply smiles in response, joking that whatever they think is floating around in her mind is correct. that's exactly how she likes it.

[anthologyrp]

IN THE HOLLOWS LIVES A HARE—

he has been promised to a god, and yet seong jungil has lived to see thirty-one. while the being slumbers forgotten in the forest, he works as an associate professor and researcher. but when those antlers break free, they will see he is patient and sarcastic. they will see he belongs in the trees.

jungil can’t exactly pinpoint the moment he realized that he had to go back to onyang. was it the hour he spent chatting with his mother on the phone, so many kilometers dividing the affection by the distance, last sunday? was it the tragic end to his four-month long experiment, where his lab’s latest insecure and frankly daft grad student had killed off all the tests in the agar dishes when she decided to leave the fridge door open for the entire weekend? should he call that defeat?

or was it the way he hadn’t slept well for a really, really long time; was it the ash-grey beneath his eyes? was it the heartbreak? or the loud-and-clear wheezing coming somewhere from behind the tail end of his mother’s voice, distant but unmistakable in the dark, even through the static?

“dad sounds haggard today. is he listening?” he’s fine. do you want to talk to him? “yeah. put him on.”

rumor has it that strange and unkind things have been stirring in the belly of onyang’s cradle. rumor has it that the shapeless nightmares have begun to grow some teeth. that there isn’t anything benevolent waiting in the unmitigated fog. rumor has it that the line between certainty and inevitability blurs when you look at it sideways. rumor has it that seong juwon, history teacher and father to one seong jungil, is fine.

jungil has been thinking in circles now and none of it is of any use. this way and that, the single son born to a pair of parents that loved him without remorse or difficulty— well, they would probably want him back at some point, if only to see the product of their interminable support before mr. seong starts to gasp for air again.

it wasn’t like jungil was running—at least not within the concept of urgency. there’s a billion other voices outside of onyang and that inimitable call by the inauspicious four to sink into the quicksand could just as easily be eclipsed with an invitation to the bar ten minutes from his apartment, or by the possibility of an all-night stint at an approximation to academics, if jungil was certain that he had the stamina for it.

every-single-thing feels like a test of strength these days. what is there at the end of the line for him when nostalgia encroaches like a conflagration at midnight and you’re sleeping soundly in bed, stirred only by the scorching heat that singes your fingertips?

[anthologyrp]

IN THE HOLLOWS LIVES A CAT —

she has been promised to a god, and yet baek jinri has lived to see twenty-eight. while the being slumbers forgotten in the forest, she works at onyang's cafe. but when those antlers break free, they will see she is practical and stubborn. they will see she belongs in the trees.

everyone was surprised when baek jinri left onyang. but no one was surprised when she came back.

jinri has always been a cat-like thing — quiet, watchful, hard to read. she moved like she never fully belonged to anyone, anywhere. not even the very town she called home. she was always the kind who came and went as she pleased, slipping through cracks no one else saw. some called her distant, others called her odd. but most of the time, she was referred to as her grandmother’s shadow.

that never sat right with her.

she comes from a long line of believers, of women who bowed their heads not out of weakness, but out of survival. the baeks didn’t pass down wealth or land. instead, they passed down rituals, drilled prayers into her head as if it was the only thing that mattered. they served a god that only ever cared about obedience. something old. something buried beneath the land itself. at least, that’s what the stories say.

jinri was never a believer.

she spent countless years watching her family kneel for nothing and mourn for everything. she chose to inherit none of it. first her mother, the very image of devotion, taken too soon. then her father, a humble man who worked himself to the bone. people say he was lost to grief, then to the forest — it was never really clear to her. every time she pried, she was met with knowing stares and hushed whispers, but never the answer. all while her grandmother blamed the old god for both, “he takes,” she says, “he takes what he’s owed and what he isn’t.”

at nineteen, jinri took the first ride to seoul and never looked back — not at the altar, not at the graves.

needless to say, seoul was different. she didn’t have to worry about missing rituals and upholding routines. there was no room for superstition in a place that barely stopped to breathe. the city was fast-paced, sleepless almost  — and jinri didn’t want to miss any second of it. 

it was the perfect place for her. a clean slate. no one asked about her childhood, or the ghosts of her past that loom over her from time to time. because no one really cared. everyone only ever cared about moving forward. reinvention was the language, and jinri spoke it well.

she breezed through university, and landed herself straight into tv production. it was easy, fulfilling, and jinri was nothing if not ambitious. she chased work like it might outrun her, sunk her heels into the concrete streets of seoul, determined to take root and never go back. and for a while, it worked. she made a name for herself as the youngest producer to ever climb through the ranks. sure enough, her little apartment filled to the brim with accolades and awards, ears ringing from the praises of colleagues and seniors alike. it was everything jinri could ever ask for.

success has a way of thinning out when it isn’t rooted well.

losing everything was just as easy as gaining it. it didn't take long for the shine to wear off, and for her luck to dry up. every project she touched slipped through her fingers and nothing made sense. everything she worked for began to unravel before her very eyes — but it wasn’t just her career, something deeper had begun to rot, something she could feel crawling beneath her skin.

at her wit’s end, jinri decides to come back.

not because she wanted to, but because the city had finally let her go.

there was no ceremony, no collapse. just her, a few suitcases, and a key to a house that still stood, as if waiting for her all this time.

her grandmother had died a quiet death, they said — in her sleep, in the same crooked bed she’d prayed beside for decades. she left behind the house, the land, and everything tied to both. there were no notes, no messages. just the address written in her grandmother’s fading handwriting.

jinri thought she’d just come to tie up loose ends — to say goodbye — but the house had a way of holding on.

the walls still smelled of burnt herbs and charcoal, the windows still stuck in their frames. the floorboards creaked beneath her feet like old bones. the shrine remained untouched, unkempt, as if waiting for someone to kneel again. yet since coming back, jinri has taken a quieter path. she spends her days working out of the only cafe in town. she quietly bides her time, watching familiar faces pass by through the cracks she’s been accustomed to. 

“she belongs here,” the town says. “always has.”

everyone was surprised when baek jinri dared to leave onyang. but no one was surprised when she came back.

[anthologyrp]

IN THE HOLLOWS LIVES A LYNX —

she has been promised to a god, and yet chae yurim has lived to see twenty-seven. while the being slumbers forgotten in the forest, she works as clerk in the mayor's office. but when those antlers break free, they will see she is loyal and avoidant. they will see she belongs in the trees.

sleep is a fickle thing for chae yurim. on the precipice of seventeen, she had never known how to lay still. it’s not out of bounds for the girl who’s pulse always burned hot. veins itching to start fires from her callous words, always a little drunk on groundless courage and a craving to claim glory. but since waking in the middle of the forest with something akin to a terrifying hangover—dirt underneath her nails, head pounding with no recollection of the night before—yurim tried to run. early hours at the cafe, mid-day shifts at mija’s, even closing up the sleepy pub. anything to ward off the forest from anchoring her to its ground. up until ten years ago, yurim only followed one god. she came in the form of an old woman who scolded her for wearing booze as perfume, all while ushering her into the warmth of their home. to yurim, grandmother’s word was scripture. it’s why she bit her tongue all the times her grandmother chanted warnings instead of lullabies. when her grandmother’s bones grew frail, yurim swore to never inherit her father’s foolish pride and wilful negligence. a silent promise stitched into a life that no longer belonged to her alone. her race against the trees and their impending crescendo is put to a pause. following the fate of a true, onyang-born child, yurim learns to live a still life. she spends her days at the mayor’s office filing documents, staring at flickering fluorescent lights, blinking sleep away. the old woman calls it stability—she’d rather monotony burn her hollow rather than the eyes of the trees. yurim likes to think of it as penance; a sort of repayment for the night she couldn’t honour her admonitions, an indemnifying act for seeking life within the reach of the forest. even as she fills her days with the soft shuffle of her sickly grandmother, smiling at townsfolk through fatigue—the grove calls. waking with damp feet and the weight of something archaic in her bones, she fears possession less than the comfort that follows. its ivy opens its arms to her, cool against her ever-burning pulse. the sensation is easy to mistake as an embrace, but the forest does not hold her gently. it is not a home. no back and forth, no lullaby—just a cloaked cost carved into her gravestone. and still, she walks.

[anthologyrp]

IN THE HOLLOWS LIVES A DOVE —

she has been promised to a god, and yet cha iseul has lived to see thirty-one. while the being slumbers forgotten in the forest, she works as mail processor and customer service. but when those antlers break free, they will see she is gregarious and calculating. they will see she belongs in the trees.

(cw: non-explicit references to parental death) 

one of the first lessons you learn is that everything is interconnected, so it's fitting, perhaps, that your story doesn't truly begin with you. instead, let's look to the days of antiquity, before even the antler god—or so they say. 

(there was never truly a time before the antler god, your grandmother insists. but this is before we knew what it was. what it was capable of.) 

and if your first lesson is that everything is interconnected, your second lesson is that loyalty runs in the very marrow of your bones, just as it ran through your mother's and your grandmother's and your foremothers before her. this has manifested in many ways, but perhaps the most striking is this: the cha family once tended the daesan temple, you're told, through fire, though discord, through death. belief alone couldn't save a town, but when the will of the people is not enough, is it so terrible a thing to look toward a higher power?

(we? you ask. you're talking like you were actually there, halmeoni. you're an old lady, but surely not that old, right?)

 of course, the temple didn't hold the true answer. not in the end. and so your family turned its allegiance to a new god. sure, the details have blurred over time, and perhaps the tone changed from a cautionary to a reverent sort of awe throughout generations of retellings, but the cha family has never truly forgotten the antler god the way the rest of the town has. if only they remembered the whole story.

(feh. little brat.) 

but we've not even gotten to you yet, have we? it would be a pity to not center you in your own story …

… even if that sort of feels like the story of your life. you've always been something of a supporting character, from your birth (where the joy of new life was overshadowed by the scandal of nobody knowing who your father was), to your youth (which could be clearly delineated into a time before and after your mother passed away), and now in your adulthood (as the caretaker to your spitfire of a grandmother). 

this has never bothered you in a way that matters, though, because the way you see it, being a supporting character means that you are surrounded by an ensemble, and that has always been something infinitely more valuable to you. a therapist would probably diagnose this part of you as a complex stemming from your parental issues—and you're pretty sure that they wouldn't be entirely wrong in that judgment—but you ultimately know that the answer is something fundamentally simple: it makes you happy to see the people around you happy. 

(and to this i ask: are you ultimately motivated by benevolence or selfishness? the self in the mirror looks away.) 

of course, the world isn't a simple place. your third lesson is that to succeed in this world, you must either be strong to the point of undeniability, or flexible to the point of untouchability. though you're no pushover, you don't have the domineering will of some of the people around you. instead, you learn to emulate the mountain wind, ephemeral in form but constant in presence. warm when you need to be, cutting when it suits you. does that make you duplicitous? you don't think so. the forms you take are all facets of you, in the end—even if they're technically facets of you you've incorporated into yourself. you may have only recently decided to become a collector, but you've been collecting things your whole life, haven't you? secrets, mannerisms, memories. you cherish them all dearly, both the knowledge and the knowing. it's one of the biggest reasons you've never left onyang (or at least the only one you'll let yourself consider, other than your grandmother. but that's something to unpack another day). 

(and to this i ask: do you seek knowledge as connection or as control? the self in the mirror says nothing.)

but sometimes, that isn't enough. often, that isn't enough. what can one girl do against bills piling up? people leaving? grandmothers getting sick and being too stubborn to seek out further treatment? a town wheezing out a slow death? 

and so i ask again: when the will of the people isn't enough, is it so terrible of a thing to look toward a higher power? your grandmother always spoke of the antler god with a hushed sort of reverence. it's not like you woke up one day and decided that the antler god could fix all your problems. frankly, you're not totally sure if you completely believe that it will. (you hope so, though. you really hope so. and you'll believe in the antler god until proven otherwise.) but you've a loyalty to the town in your heart, and you've a loyalty to the antler god in your bones, and for now, that's enough. after all, it's not like it's harming others or taking too much of yourself to help out the antler god. and you've always been the type to extend a listening ear—why should the antler god be any exception? (right?)

tl;dr: iseul's a little bit fake, but she's very sweet, and everything she does is all out of good intentions, promise. she comes from a family that has always been tied to the spiritual side of onyang, first as temple-keepers in the mountain temple, then as loyal (and subsequently not-so-loyal) servants of the antler god. though details of the antler god have been lost to time, iseul's a bit more aware of the antler god than most of her generation, due to hearing stories from her grandmother (who was iseul's sole guardian, as her father was an unknown outsider and her mother passed away when she was a child). she's lived in onyang her whole life and has never expressed a particular desire to leave—she genuinely loves the town and the people in it, her grandmother most of all. she's willing to both help and hear out the antler god, because as far as she knows it's powerful and can help the town, and the requests made of her have been harmless … so far, at least.

[anthologyrp]

IN THE HOLLOWS LIVES A LAMB —

she has been promised to a god, and yet han jiyeon has lived to see twenty-nine. while the being slumbers forgotten in the forest, she is unemployed. but when those antlers break free, they will see she is pragmatic and reclusive. they will see she belongs in the trees.

Jiyeon is something of a mistake, a blimp in her father's otherwise carefully planned out life. He'd managed to tie down a humble, hard-working woman; then got her to make him his very own heir all on the first try. Jiyeon is unneeded, unplanned for, too girl for his liking. He doesn't hold her, refuses to let her near as if it weren't his blood running through her veins. But, eventually, he learns to tolerate her like pet he didn't want but grew fond of despite it. Well, he'd need someone to take care of him when he got older anyway. Their big house is lonely. Father focuses on work, mother focuses on making sure brother grows up ready to take over such work. Jiyeon stares out windows, tied up in frilly skirts with too neat hair. She still too young to know that jealousy is what she feels as she watches mothers kiss her classmates' foreheads, laugh as they show off their grass-stained socks. But an unattended child makes for a precocious one. She knows better than to say anything about the girlfriends her brother sneaks home, the women that whisper at her father on the landline, the secret smiles her mother saves for the letters in the mail. They all have their secrets, happy to dance around one another and pretend. She blossoms into an awkward teen. Her teachers treat her well, if mostly to avoid what her brother had put them through (away from their father's watchful gaze, boys get up to the craziest things). Middle school is uneventful, mostly. Boys don't know she exist. Girls don't care to learn. Jiyeon gets by relatively unscathed. High school is a blur of a memory she can do without. Burgeoning hormones, teens (figuratively) at each other's necks. ("Do you even know what a blowjob is?" Jiyeon shudders at the thought). After graduation is when life really starts, at least according to all the coming of age movies she binged under the covers of her bed. But after graduation is really just watching people you know from high school work at their part-time jobs for the rest of their lives rather than the limited hours between the end of the school day and curfew. People get older, still stuck where they were over a decade ago. And life passes them by just like that. Jiyeon has the great luck of not needing to be formally employed. Shortly after graduation her mother comes down with an illness of sort; a nebulous, undefinable thing that has even doctors questioning the veracity of their teachings. Maybe she's a hypochondriac, is what most conclude. Maybe she's just sick for the hell of it. Her father cares, briefly, uncharacteristically struck by the immense tragedy of having to watch his wife wither away in bed. It doesn't last long, though. Her brother is getting ready to take over (it's not a sure thing, though); he's already made sure that Jiyeon feels morally obligated to stay by her mother's side (no need for those pesky home nurse bills); all he had to do was find a widow in town stupid enough to disregard his still living wife, and take care of him. She could kill him, honestly. Some days she catches herself daydreaming about it, others she laments what could have been have her life. Jiyeon can't imagine that her mother's life was one good enough to hold onto so strongly, so stubbornly. Sometimes when her mother sleeps, Jiyeon lays her head against her mother's chest and listens to the faint beat of her heart. Guiltily, she hopes one day it'll just stop.

[anthologyrp]

IN THE HOLLOWS LIVES A FOX —

he has been promised to a god, and yet nam uiseong has lived to see twenty-nine. while the being slumbers forgotten in the forest, he works as a mail courier. but when those antlers break free, they will see he is tenacious and impulsive. they will see he belongs in the trees.

nam uiseong is a shadow caught between what was and what never was—his life always seemed to move like the grandfather clock’s pendulum to the left of his family’s parlor. the one that his grandmother never got around to fixing. their family picked up jobs around town. everything temporary, nothing short of transient. that type of impermanence grows on a kid. always swinging, even when time itself seems to stutter. it moves through the dark and always finds a way to cut through the silence between onyang and himself. he always hoped to leave—just never planned it. he didn’t want to come back, he didn’t plan on that either. maybe the fox’s skin is less of a choice and more of a second nature born from hunger. but it’s moss over stone and his will to endure—a self imposed, quiet trial—pulls him back to town. it’s his slice of earth that seemed to make sense even when it didn’t. it’s what he thinks he knows and that is good enough for him to find comfort in. born on onyang soil and shaped by its mishaps, he only dreamed of leaving town until he finally does. his greatest mistake was not leaving, but rather, it was forgetting to cut the root. what seemed like a brief reprieve from his bustling city life¹—years spent in back kitchens, cutting his teeth from dishwasher to line chef—becomes a one-way ticket and a yearlong (and counting) stay with the weight of ancestral ghosts² that followed his great grandparents to onyang. and the townsfolk whisper—they never really stopped. too loud to ignore, too quiet to name. uiseong listens when they think he’s gone. if they insist he’s a thief maybe he’d become one. not of coin but of secrets. the kind whispered too loud behind closed doors. he’d take every muttered warning and prayers cast into empty yards. it was the kind of truth only a name like his could feed on. it’s a miracle, his grandmother says, that the town ever gave him the courier’s post at all. but it’s a start—maybe the only start left—to mend what the nam name broke. so nam uiseong keeps his head down. delivers the mail. carries the silence. just to let it out in onyang’s forests. it seemingly embraces what he has to offer. gives him a sort of welcome. the fox in the forest. sometimes on his routes, uiseong finds the paths folding inward, as if the forest remembers him. like it shifts when no one is looking. when he sits on the soil or some gnarled root, he sits with the insidious hope that all debts always come due. an imposed thief, now a courier. but above all, a sort of collector. ¹ upon his departure from onyang, uiseong enrolled in a vocational program in the city for culinary arts. he was working across various restaurants until the last year. ² the nam family is not reputable for being able to hold a steady income. most of their family's financial gains are through manual labor, possibly theft/other illicit pursuits.