✧ ➻ CHO MISU (it/she/he/they), an imugi hailing from a red river in the sobaek mountains, formerly known and worshipped as minhui. penned by duha (21+, they/them).
he doesn’t even know his name, but he has the scar to show for it.
it takes just one glance, and the memory cuts into him like a knife.
the banquet before him splinters. his reality trembles, comes loose, and misu is in his temple again.
what he remembers of that night is all white, white and ash and snow. they fell through the splintered moon-roof of the ritual room, those ashes like snowflakes curtsying on their way past the embers that rose from the burning debris of the temple. the air was acrid, heady. smoke coiled around his lungs like an old friend while people screamed outside, so loud and frightened, but minhui's eyes were on the gentle moon and he was asking her, or perhaps just anyone who would listen, IS THIS ALL?
legs caked with dried blood and herbs, the bowl where they washed his scales overturned and splintered in half on the floor where it had fallen in the commotion, the altar where witches had bowed to him just a sunset ago: after everything, was this all?
the moon heard. she must have, for she sent him. him, who surely sparked the fire and brought his temple down.
yes, he remembers so much, in all of the wrong ways. pale eyes, pale hair, like a shard of the moon. sharp enough to cut the bonds loose and compelling like the moon that pulls on the tides, enough to coax him outside. to where? misu takes a step towards the frozen figure. minhui's bare foot comes down on a jagged branch. misu shoulders past a group of guests and minhui is knocked down, ears ringing with the crackle of magic and vicious snarling of their guards, and lilting music, and delicate, twinkling glass.
no, everything is all wrong. how did it happen? there had been so much smoke, and fire, and a village that was finally as red as its river. come to jeju. claws, sinking in his shoulder. come. a blade singing as it slices through the air, its glint where it fell to the ground. a howling.
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, OUTSIDER?
fabric twists in his fist as he shoves himself well within the TRAITOR'S face. "i've come." in those pale irises, minhui sees himself, and wonders wildly if he recognizes him.
he reaches for his side, where he has grown used to carrying the sheath of a knife, only to find it bare. no, what a mistake to leave it behind for this banquet, but it doesn't deter him from pushing again, hard enough to take a few steps forward. startled gasps rise up around them. minhui doesn't hear. his god, she shrieks from the burning homeland of his memories, demanding the answer to a question she had asked when he first stepped into the ruins of their temple: "what do you want from me?"
misu overheard it by chance one morning, through a fraught conversation held by the water as he slunk downstream. for a moment, he had thought that it was the voice of the river itself --- and then he had found them. they were plain-looking people with their plain voices, whispering speculations where they thought no one could hear.
anything?
no, not here. it’s been months, we should be looking for a body.
there has to be something. no one just disappears.
yes, they do. misu knows of a pale ghost with pale hair and pale eyes who once vanished right in front of him, but these people -- hunters, he would determine later -- weren’t looking for ghosts. if they had really been searching for so long, it must have been someone close --- if another hunter, then couldn’t it be one of those who came and supped from his village, only then to betray him? did hunters and their crusade for purification not have good reason to baptize the grounds of his village by fire?
he overhears something promising: before their vanishing, the hunter was briefly seen passing through the farmer’s market, despite having never been there before.
so misu follows.
the farmer’s market is a headache of colors. the crates of bananas, mangoes, and tangerines are blinding to look at, blurring unpleasantly when he stares for too long and then moves his gaze too quickly. five minutes after arriving, misu decides that he hates it. perhaps the hunter was swallowed up by the hideous colors somewhere. he picks up a papaya, ugly yellow mottled with ugly green, and studies it critically like it might tell him what it has seen.
he doesn’t notice the stallkeeper until they’re waving a pouch at him, furious. “hey. you touch, you pay!”
misu slants them a narrow-eyed look. “i was picking it up for someone,” he says. without hesitation, he turns to a stranger at the next stall and pushes the fruit in their direction. “here. like you wanted.”
minhui used to dream of dragons. the massive creatures would circle the air, like birds did when it was time to call their kind back to the sky, and minhui would feel a lurch in their chest to answer. that was all it would take for them to suddenly become aware of their own wings unfurling for flight. one---two--- three sweeps, and then they would be flying too, and there would be freedom in the feeling of finally having a body that felt like their own.
ever since the fire, misu dreams somebody else’s dreams. he dreams with two minds and two sets of eyes: one that hurtles from a bleeding sky into a crimson river, and one that trudges through the forest to meet that fallen thing in the water. in his dreams, he's both the one with bare legs dipped in paradise and the one who slithers from the water to whisper in his ear:
THERE IS SOMEONE WATCHING YOU.
someone. another set of eyes. she always lingered in the backdrop like a dream herself. he knows he’s spoken to her, but only in conversations that he never remembers past waking—she’d simply become another voice, joining the one already crowded in his skull.
it’s been weeks now, and it no longer fazes him. dreams blurred so often into reality these days: all those nights he would wake up with a red glow beckoning him through the dirty farmhouse window and he would stumble, barefoot and half blind, through the forest in search for his river; all those mornings he would then wake, really wake, scuffed with grass under the bough of some tree, and then try to make sense of his way back home. he didn’t think twice about the things he heard and saw in broad daylight anymore.
until now. until this banquet night chock full of dreamlike music and flowers, until his gaze happens to sweep over the room and lands on
HER. IT’S HER.
for a face he scarcely remembers, he’s so sure of it. YOU, the voice seethes, and then he has somehow crossed the room to where she stands. it feels like he’s done this before, and it nags at him, a frenetic, what do you want from me? who are you? “you,” he says without bothering to announce himself. he cuts into her line of vision so that there’s no mistake, wonder and anger flickering across his face. “you’re real.”
hi everyone! i (they/them) am here to bring my most cherished and beloathed little snake misu (any pronouns). they’re an imugi who has spent about 98% of their life not knowing they’re an imugi thx to the cult who found him at birth and raised him for 100+ yrs, worshipping him like he was some kind of vessel for a god (or vengeful monster, depending on who u asked). his links are here for reference but there’s more about him under the cut ! // bio , profile , plots , pinty
he’s only been in jeju for a little while (and in The Real World in general lmao) so if anyone wants to just start writing and see how they hit it off, i’m waving my green flag enthusiastically for threads (including event threads) !! but i love plotting in-depth stuff too, esp. if it can develop and pain both of our muses, so if that’s more your thing, lmk and we can find something together : ]
origins:
before i get too far in, misu’s given name was minhui so you might see me use that to refer to them in the past ! i’ll usually use they/he to refer to him in general + his human interactions, but it/she may also come up whenever i refer to his interactions in his serpent form or when he’s addressing the “god(ess)” he thinks is inside him. i’ll explain it more later, but basically since he’s been raised (brainwashed?) all his life to believe that he’s got a separate creature inside of him (which is really just his serpent form), he’s learned to compartmentalize by treating that side of him as if it really is separate, hence him using distinct pronouns for himself vs the “goddess” but i really don’t mind whatever pronouns you use ic/ooc bc he is all of them ykwim? and my goal is for him to eventually reconcile these parts of himself and heal his identity !!
moving on !! his river was in the sobaek mountains, downstream from a stinky human drilling site. a bunch of minerals were knocked loose from the ground and heavily tainted the water, giving it a reddish tint. minhui was found newly formed further down the riverbank, at a part that happened to run through the village.
it was a veeeery secluded community led by witches and werewolves who had isolated themselves from society for a centuries. it was also pretty much run by a cult . but that is relevant later
when ppl started getting sick from the water, they freaked out and thought minhui’s was the river goddess who had come to punish them.
so the village took them in and worshipped them, thinking that if they did it right, their river would be purified again. when minhui’s human form came about, they went, “oh my god its worse than we thought. the evil goddess is also using this poor child as a vessel”
minhui was thrust into this role from essentially the moment they were created, so i imagine that any notions of their “Self” as an imugi were overwritten pretty early by the villagers’ beliefs. like i mentioned before, their serpent form was treated like the physical manifestation of the evil Thing (goddess? monster? curse?) that they were told lived separately inside them :\
one day it was found that their scales could be plucked and used in rituals to cure some of the illnesses caused by the river. they rly thought that the village cared for him (They feed me and shelter me and give me poison to kill the monster inside of me :( they love me </3), and they rly believed that they were at fault for the tainted river, so they would let their scales be taken
though it turns out that being treated with a mixture of terror, resentment, pity, and bouts of genuine devotion and adoration really does not give you a stable sense of self image/self esteem.....any time he felt resentment at his situation or anger at the villagers, he would feel so guilty about it that he started to treat those thoughts as a separate “voice.” it was easier for him to handle --- easier for him to feel out all of those negative emotions and chalk them up as the emotions of a vengeful deity
over a century of this life passes, until one day his village is brought to ruins by some outsiders passing through. i left the specific Who & Why vague in case it’s affected by any plots w/ other characters, but the outcome was that minhui was freed that night by someone who saw him as a captive/victim of the cult
which........yes he was, but it was also the only home that he ever knew, and that was his river, so he harbors a lot of resentment and anger and despair and grief about losing them, to the point where he doesn’t even feel glad that he’s free
so anyway he’s in jeju now ! his “saviors” told him to come here bc there was a sanctuary, but he’s also lowkey here to find them and fuck them up for destroying his home. and after THAT (reads smudged handwriting) he’ll go after the remnants of his cult!!!! (and his guilt of feeling these negative emotions still persists, so he believes it’s his god who wants him to seek vengeance). altho it would be fun for him to shatter and realize that No, all of that ugly and righteous and horrible anger is actually just his, and he just has to, like. Deal with it.
i’ll say it’s been a couple of months since he arrived in jeju ? specifics TBA again for plotting purposes >< i’ve temporarily headcanoned that a poor family took pity on him and temporarily took him in and he helps look after their tangerine orchards in return, but soon he’ll fr need a real place to stay + a real job that isnt just standing around being strange and offputting
rn he probably seems cold in a @#*$%& stuck up way , but to be FAIR, his brain has been scrambled eggs for the last few months. also, getting suddenly thrust into modern society has been painful. exciting. mind boggling.
the only thing he has left of his river is a necklace w a vial containing some of his river’s water. it looks mostly clear until it’s shaken and the iron diffuses into the water and makes it all cloudy red. v protective of it and wears it all the time, like a cute little mood necklace but it says You Are Homesick all the time
present + plots:
i put his general views of other species on his plots page, but tldr he’s distrustful of most strangers. at his core he’s all isolation and unresolved grief though, bc where do you go when your home’s been shattered but you’re also learning that maybe it was never really a “home” at all but there’s also nowhere else for you to go?
new connections are welcome but i’d love to figure out some past connections too :o
sneaks off into the woods at night to find some comfort in his rituals. has rebuilt a few little altars around some trees, sometimes he’ll go to one to talk to his god
side obsession is music recently. it’s always helped him empty his head, so radios and music players are magic to him bc, like , you’re saying he DOESNT have to ask someone to come to his altar and sing for him anymore ? he can plop headphones on and blast the most mind numbing songs whenever he wants? sold!!! introduce him to metal. pop. i think he’d like kesha
not sure if he has any friends rn LMAO but maybe befriend him?.....his love language is willingly sneaking some of his own scales in drinks/food to bolster ur health a bit/sneaking you the occasional cherry pit. he still thinks it’s a method of inner cleansing okay, i promise he doesnt know he is Just poisoning you.....but maybe one day he can find a bff he tries to poison for fun 🥺
as he continues to reckon with his identity as an imugi, his feelings about his human/serpent forms have been shifting around. rn he treats himself with pretty poor regard ? (see: would give his scales away a little too easily) so it’s usually a toss up of him referring to himself as a useless meatsack and him getting furious at being touched and him silently running his hands over all the discolorations on his body like he’s mourning how much it’s been through
talks to himself a lot + lots of inner monologuing (im sorry in advance........) so u might see that. and this is in one of his plots, but he also spends a lot of time at his makeshift altars at night, so u might find him there? also often at the library looking into that mf cult if anyone wants to read in utter silence together
maybe u are friends with the family who took him in and one day u suddenly started seeing him helping out in their farm, except like. he clearly has no clue how to operate any of the machinery
sometimes can be found at the ocean too (which is disappointingly nothing like his river)
maybe listen to the free music samples with him at the record store
anything!! we can make it as fun or terrible as we want !!
“Names of heat and names of light,names of collision in the dark, on the side of the bus, in the bark of the tree, in ballpoint pen on jeans and hands and the backs of matchbooks that then get lost. Names like pain cries, names like tombstones, names forgotten and reinvented, names forbidden or overused.”
— Richard Siken, from “Saying Your Names”, in ‘Crush’
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