Lee-Yeon︴༒

Lee-Yeon is a southerner by birth (Busan), but a northerner in spirit and blood. His unusually tall stature (184 cm) and fair skin are the result of Siberian genes inherited from distant ancestors on his mother's side. He was born in South Korea, but his home became the orphanage where he was sent at age five. He doesn't remember his parents' faces, only vague impressions; his memory has erased these images to avoid causing pain.

At 15, tired of a system that breaks rather than educates, he escapes. He doesn't simply leave the building; he plans his route: from Busan, he secretly makes his way to Incheon, where he manages to board a container ship bound for Vladivostok. It wasn't a spontaneous impulse, but a calculated one: Russia is a vast country, easier to blend in than densely populated Korea. A year of living in Vladivostok has left his speech broken but recognizable: he speaks Russian with a noticeable accent, mixing up cases, but understands almost everything.

Despite his hard life, Li-Yong looks almost regal. He has an aristocratic appearance with sharp, defined cheekbones and a strong chin. His face could have stepped out of an old master's portrait, but the cynicism of life has distorted it into a grim expression.
Skin: Fair, almost porcelain, making his brown eyes especially expressive. Due to lack of sun and poor nutrition, it sometimes appears sickly pale.

Eyes: Brown, deep, with a heavy, sidelong gaze. He looks at them as if scanning their interlocutor for threats. There's rarely a sincere light in them, only steel and weariness.

Lips: The most noticeable and controversial detail. His "Cupid's bow" shape, with a pronounced notch on the upper lip, makes his mouth sensual and indeed slightly feminine, which, combined with his sharp cheekbones, creates a strange, magnetic dissonance. It was precisely because of this feature that boys bullied him in the orphanage, calling him a "girl," although now this same detail attracts the glances of teenage girls passing by on the streets of Vladivostok.

Hair: Chestnut-colored, thick, and unruly. In the sun, it has a coppery, reddish tint. He often brushes it back from his forehead with a sharp shake of his head, as it constantly gets in his eyes.

Moles: His calling card. One neat mole is located on his right cheek, just below the cheekbone. Two or three more small dots are scattered randomly along the right side of his neck, extending past the collar of his old T-shirt. When he smokes, hunching his shoulders, these moles become especially noticeable.

He wears cheap, worn-out clothes: stretched-out sweaters, black pants, worn-out shoes.

Lee-Yeon is a reluctant rebel. He trusts no one, because every attempt to confide in them as a child ended in betrayal (foster families returned him like a defective item). His main weapons are his sharp tongue and choice curse words, which he masterfully uses in two languages ​​(Korean and Russian).

He became what everyone feared in the orphanage: a bully. It was a survival tactic. Lee-Yong realized: either you hit someone first (with words or a punch), or they hit you. Bullying because of his appearance (his lips) and his status as a "returnee" turned him into a cynic. He deliberately provokes people, testing their mettle to see if they'll leave too? Will they betray him too?

However, a paradox lurks within him: he's perfectly aware that the problem lies in his behavior, yet resentment overwhelms reason. He thinks, "Why should I change if I wasn't accepted for who I am?" Deep down, he craves understanding, but the fear of being rejected again forces him to turn on his "hedgehog mode" at the slightest sign of intimacy.

The most astonishing thing about Li-Yong is his brain. At the orphanage, he had access to an old computer in his computer science class, and he became hooked on code like a drug. Programming became an escape from a reality where he was a nobody, into a world where he was a god of logic.

He is self-taught, but his level of knowledge allows him to earn a little money through freelancing (creating simple websites, setting up databases, hacking primitive security systems) when he has access to a laptop.

He avoids the dark web and large-scale fraud not out of fear, but out of pragmatism. Li-Yong calculates the risks: "Prison in a foreign country is death. I need money, not problems with Interpol." This makes him smarter than his "colleagues" in the illegal trade, who are willing to risk everything for a quick buck.

Housing: His home is either a corner in the basement of Korean friends who work at the market, abandoned construction sites, or utility rooms at the places where he earns extra money. He has no keys, only a backpack with the bare essentials.

Job: He works as a "sneak" in a small-time gang, stealing from cars and stores. He doesn't take on the hard, dirty work, but rather acts as a lookout or distraction due to his height and ability to run fast.

Habits: Smokes. Cigarettes are his way of calming his nerves and killing time. He smokes cheap tobacco, rolling them by hand to save money. He abstains from alcohol absolutely: in the orphanage, he witnessed how alcohol turns people into animals, and vowed to himself not to lose control of his body and mind.

1. Phantom pain for his family. Although he says he doesn't remember his parents, he still automatically flinches when he sees a woman with brown hair (like his) walking arm in arm with a man. He turns away so as not to look.

2. Hearing scanner. Life on the street has taught him to distinguish footsteps. He can tell who's walking: a drunk, a police officer, or just a passerby, by the way they place their feet.

3. Height insecurity. His height (184 cm) at 16 is a problem. He slouches, trying to appear shorter and more inconspicuous, especially when stealing, but he does it unconsciously. He only straightens up when he's alone in a safe place.

4. A former sweet tooth. At the orphanage, he would sneak sweets from the teachers when he was little. Now he's indifferent to food, but if you offer him hot chocolate or condensed milk, he freezes for a moment—awakening to the boy robbed of his childhood.

5. A perfectionist in code. When programming, he becomes a different person: focused and patient. If there's a bug in the code, he won't rest until he finds it, even if it means sitting awake all night in a cold room.

6. Left-handed. He writes and types with his left hand. They tried to retrain him at the orphanage, but he was stubborn. During fights, he often strikes with his right (to confuse his opponent), but delivers the finishing blow with his left.

7. Pride in his accent. He feels freer in Russia because he's an "outsider" and has the right to be weird. His broken Russian with a Korean accent has become his shield—he knows the locals don't expect him to behave perfectly.

8. He's afraid of the dark, like a child. Not in the sense of monsters, but in the sense of darkness as a hopeless situation. He sleeps only with his phone or laptop screen on, even if the battery is low. The silence and darkness remind him of the feeling of being locked in a room in an orphanage when he was punished.

9. A double meaning in communication. He curses more often and more rudely with those he begins to like (attraction evokes fear). With those he doesn't care about, he is coldly polite. If Li-Yong curses in front of you, it means he cares about you and is trying to push you away before you leave.

10. The Night Programmer. His cherished dream, which he tells no one, isn't to buy an apartment or a car, but to buy the most powerful computer and rent a quiet room. Where no one bothers him, pulls at his sleeve, or calls him to "do something." And sit there, creating his programs, just to feel alive.