July 10, 2013 SHU-I released their second EP: 기죽지마/Don’t Be Down
SHU-I (슈아이) was a five-member boy group under YeonJun Media. They debuted in 2009 with the song “Bomb Bomb Bomb” after two years of training. They mostly promoted in Japan, and made a couple Korean comebacks. In 2015, it was announced that the group was disbanding and members would be going their own ways.
Honorable Mentions:
2013 - Jay Park (박재범) - I Like 2 Party
His single track: “I Like 2 Party”
[Tae Sung Jin] will reside in the [Midnight Blue] tent. At home, he is assigned to home number [237]. [Supernatural Hearing] will be useful to the Midnight Circus. Remember our only rule: Once you join, you cannot leave.
Faceclaim Information
Name: Park Hyung Jun / PJ
Group: PJ Band / Shu-I (disbanded)
Character Information
Name: Tae Sung Jin // Tai Jin
Stage Name: Echo
Age: 25 (January 26th, 1993)
Tent Assignment: 3@ Midnight Blue
Home Island Cottage Assignment: #237
Skill: Supernatural Hearing - Jin’s hearing is sensitive enough that he can hear a pin drop miles away. While with concentration he can focus enough to listen to just a single thing, generally all the noise is too overwhelming for him, leading to debilitating auditory migraines. To counter this he wears specially made ear plugs that are specially calibrated to allow him to hear people speaking to him if they’re within a few feet of him, but can also be adjusted to leave him basically deaf instead. Otherwise he reads lips, and will primarily communicate one-on-one via sign language and written text rather than speaking himself, though he is capable of it.
Member Status: new
Performance Details: Mainshow Act: Jin doesn’t his powers as part of his act. Completely unrelated to it, he is a juggler. He uses a number of props, including balls, hoops, clubs, and daggers. Because he uses his fully deafening ear plugs while performing to avoid later migraines, he performs in the center ring where no one is able to approach him from behind while he can’t hear it, rather than in a sideshow tent.
Personality: While he’s considered disabled by the world at large, Jin has never let anything hold him back. Rather than express himself audibly, he’s chosen to decorate his body instead, with a rainbow of ever-changing hair colors. He’s friendly, occasionally silly, and always moving.
Background: Jin was a happy child, growing up in Osaka as the child of Korean immigrants. Because of this he was raised bilingual, eventually adding in English as well once he started school. Everything about his life seemed to be perfectly average, until puberty hit.
He didn’t notice it right away, how things slowly seemed to be getting louder, how things he never would’ve noticed before seemed to thunder in his ears, how sounds from the other end of their apartment, block, street, were audible to him. He picked up a pair of foam earplugs, but those weren’t enough.
Expert after expert after specialist was consulted, and a seemingly endless battery of tests was run on him. No one could find anything wrong with him, diagnosing him simply with extra sensitive hearing. Finding life in the city too overwhelming, Jin withdrew from high school and his mother moved to the country, taking up residence in a small agricultural village. He had his first pair of custom earplugs made, and while they dampened the sound around him, he still found himself suffering from migraines frequently.
Finding himself further and further isolated from the world, he looked for other ways to amuse himself, eventually taking up juggling. It allowed him to move around while not overwhelming him with sound.
With time his hearing stabilized, and he was able to start learning to control it, but the effort it took was draining, so instead he chose to block it out. Thanks to technological advances he was able to have bluetooth enabled ear plugs that could be calibrated to allow from no sound at all to low levels, letting him be able to hear voices within a small area around himself.
Eventually tiring of his self-imposted isolation, he decided to look out other options. Rumors of a circus arriving nearby caught his attention, and he decided to go and check it out.
