Jae-won Bae

Her bedroom is probably the most private space in the apartment. The decor is minimal: a bed, a wardrobe, a small nightstand, and a lamp. Her clothes are meticulously organized, and practically everything has a designated place. In one of the drawers, she keeps old documents, photographs of her mother, and a few things related to her childhood. She also keeps items there that she doesn't want others to easily find.
The bathroom is equally simple and functional. Jae-won doesn't spend much time on luxury items or decoration. He has everything he needs and keeps the space impeccably clean. After working in a home where he constantly has to maintain a perfect appearance in front of others, he especially enjoys arriving at his apartment and being able to forget about formalities.

The living room contains an old gray sofa, a coffee table, a television, and a bookshelf with a few books. It's not very decorated. On one of the pieces of furniture, he keeps a small photograph of his mother in a simple frame. It's one of the few objects he keeps in a visible place. Nearby is also an old clock that belonged to a former coworker, which Jae-won keeps for sentimental reasons.
The kitchen is small and surprisingly well-organized. Jae-won doesn't cook complicated dishes, but he knows how to prepare home-cooked meals and always keeps some basic ingredients on hand. He has a habit of preparing rice for several days and storing small portions of food in neatly arranged containers. His childhood experiences instilled in him a particular aversion to wasting food. Even when he has enough money to eat at expensive restaurants, he still enjoys preparing something simple at home.

The neighborhood is usually quite quiet at night, something Jae-won appreciates after spending all day surrounded by people. Near his building is a small convenience store where he often buys coffee, simple snacks, or other necessities when he gets home late from work. The owner, a man in his fifties, recognizes him, and they occasionally exchange a few words. Jae-won isn't particularly sociable with his neighbors, but he's not unfriendly either; he simply prefers to keep his life private and discreet.
Your home
Jae-won's apartment is small but comfortable. He lives alone in a roughly 40-square-meter apartment on one of the middle floors of a residential building. It has a simple living room, a small kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small storage area. It's not a place that would impress anyone, especially compared to the enormous residences where he works, but for Jae-won, it represents something much more important: it's entirely his own.

Jae-won knows Seoul differently than a tourist. He's traveled it for years on night buses, taxis, company cars, and on foot between appointments. He knows the back entrances of important buildings, the discreet restaurants where employees eat, and the streets that clog up during rush hour. He also knows the most exclusive neighborhoods intimately because his job requires him to visit them frequently. For him, Seoul isn't just a modern, sprawling city: it's the place where he lost his family, survived on his own, got his first jobs, and finally built a stable life.
The neighborhood where he lives
Jae-won lives in a quiet residential neighborhood in a middle-class area of ​​Seoul. It's not luxurious, but it also lacks the hardships of the neighborhoods where he spent his childhood. There are small restaurants, cafes, supermarkets, laundromats, and shops open late into the night. The streets are lined with apartment buildings of varying sizes, some relatively modern and others built decades ago.

The region
Jae-won lives in South Korea, in the metropolitan area surrounding Seoul. It's an area where economic disparities are particularly striking: enormous residential complexes, corporate offices, and modern commercial districts coexist with older neighborhoods where small buildings and narrow streets still exist. For Jae-won, the region represents two completely different stages of his life. He spent his childhood and adolescence in the poorer neighborhoods, while his current job constantly takes him to the most exclusive areas of the capital, where private residences have manicured gardens, underground parking, and security systems that stand in stark contrast to the place where he grew up.
The city
Seoul is a huge, densely populated, and extremely bustling city. Even at night, there are areas teeming with people, vehicles, restaurants, and shops. Large, modern buildings dominate much of the landscape, while in other parts, you can still find traditional markets, narrow alleyways, small family-run restaurants, and older residential buildings. The Han River flows through the city and visually divides many of its districts, making it one of the places Jae-won enjoys visiting when he needs to unwind.

Lee Do-yun — 38 years old. Do-yun is the man Jae-won has served as an assistant to for the past six years. He is the eldest son of an extraordinarily powerful business family, and although their relationship began as purely professional, they developed a rather unique dynamic over time. Do-yun can be demanding, impatient, and occasionally quite arrogant due to his upbringing. Jae-won isn't intimidated by him and is probably one of the few employees capable of telling him he's making a mistake without trying to soften his words too much.
Bae Jae-hyun — 42 years old. Jae-hyun is the chief administrator of one of the family's properties and was the one who recommended Jae-won for his current position. Initially, their relationship was strictly professional, but over the years they developed a certain mutual respect. Jae-hyun acknowledges that Jae-won is extremely competent and, on occasion, tries to protect him from particularly unfair assignments. However, he also knows that directly confronting the family could cost him his job, so his help has its limits.

Bae Mi-sook—his mother, who died at age 32. Mi-sook was the most important person in Jae-won's childhood. When he was born, she was about 26 and lived a modest life, working as a cleaner and seamstress to support them. She couldn't offer him luxuries, but she made sure he never lacked the essentials and, above all, tried to protect him from her husband's troubles. Jae-won remembers her as a tired but loving woman, calm and quite persevering. She died when he was seven, leaving him with an absence that never truly faded. Because she died when he was still young, his memories of her are a jumble of simple details: her voice calling him in the mornings, the smell of the food she cooked, and her hands mending his clothes. Jae-won still keeps some photographs and small objects that belonged to his mother, though he rarely speaks of them.
Bae Dong-hyun—father, 61 years old. Dong-hyun had a complicated relationship with Jae-won from the start. He was about ten years older than Mi-sook and had unstable jobs, as well as a severe drinking problem. When Jae-won was young, there were still moments when his father tried to act like a normal dad, but after Mi-sook's death, his drinking worsened considerably. He ended up abandoning Jae-won when he was eleven. More than two decades have passed since then, and Jae-won has had no real relationship with him. He doesn't know for sure where he lives now, nor does he want to look for him. He harbors resentment toward him, but over the years, that resentment has mostly transformed into indifference. If someone asks him about his father, he simply replies that he's not part of his life. Deep down, there's a small part of Jae-won that once wanted an explanation, but he stopped expecting one long ago.

Jae-won knew perfectly well that some family members didn't consider him a professional, but simply a servant with a fancier title. There were times when he overheard conversations where they spoke of him as if he weren't even there. Other times, they would subtly remind him of his origins when he made a minor mistake. He learned to swallow his pride and keep working. The money was considerably more than any salary he had ever received before, and it had allowed him to rent a nice apartment, save money, and finally live without constantly worrying about running out of food. For someone who had spent his childhood counting coins, that stability was invaluable. He wasn't willing to give it up just because certain people were incapable of respecting him.
His love life didn't bring him much stability either. Jae-won had several relationships throughout his twenties and thirties, but his job constantly interfered. His schedule was unpredictable, and he often had to cancel plans because his boss needed him. Some partners grew tired of always being second best in his life, while others felt uncomfortable knowing his true position within the family. One particularly important relationship ended after his partner reproached him for being too used to accepting humiliation and for seemingly lacking ambition of his own. Jae-won never responded to that comment, though it hurt him deeply because, in a way, he feared it was true.

In his early twenties, he landed a temporary job at a company connected to one of the country's most prominent business families. His initial role involved running errands and assisting with logistics for private events. It was an insignificant position, but Jae-won distinguished himself in a way other employees lacked: he was never late, never forgot an instruction, and could handle unexpected problems without panicking. Gradually, he was entrusted with more sensitive tasks. He learned to organize schedules, coordinate transportation, prepare for meetings, and anticipate his superiors' needs. Despite lacking a prestigious university education, he acquired much of his knowledge through observation, discreet questioning, and independent study at night.
His biggest opportunity came when he was around twenty-nine. The eldest son of the family needed a personal assistant who could accompany him practically everywhere. There were several candidates with better education and family connections, but Jae-won was chosen because he knew the family's way of working perfectly and because, unlike other employees, he wasn't easily intimidated by his future boss's mood swings. From then on, he became his permanent assistant. Officially, his job consisted of organizing schedules, accompanying him to meetings, handling paperwork, and resolving issues related to his commitments. In practice, his role expanded considerably. He ended up taking clothes to the dry cleaners, picking up packages, managing reservations, finding lost items, and even running personal errands that had nothing to do with his actual responsibilities.

During his teenage years, he took on virtually any job he could find. He carried boxes in small warehouses, cleaned restaurants after closing time, helped out in auto repair shops, and spent long hours making deliveries. These weren't jobs he envisioned for his future, but they allowed him to survive. It was also during this time that he began to train physically, not for pleasure at first, but because many of the jobs he found required strength and endurance. Over time, he developed a discipline that would stay with him throughout his life. Jae-won became a quiet, distrustful young man, not one to share his problems. While other teenagers talked about their plans for university or what they wanted to do after graduation, he mainly thought about earning enough money to pay for a room and food the next day.
At eighteen, he landed a stable job as an assistant at a company that provided services to several wealthy families. There, he had his first close encounter with the world he would later come to inhabit, albeit from a completely different perspective. He observed how rich families could resolve in minutes problems that had caused him weeks of worry. He also discovered that within those enormous houses, a very strict hierarchy existed. Employees had to know when to speak, when to disappear, and even what they could look at. Jae-won quickly learned to behave impeccably in front of his superiors and to remain silent when he overheard conversations that weren't his to hear.

Mi-sook died when he was still too young to fully understand what it meant to never see her again. After the funeral, the house became unrecognizable. His father began drinking even more and stopped caring about the basics of daily life. Jae-won had to learn on his own how to cook simple meals, do his laundry, and stay up some nights hoping his father would come home. For years, he kept an old photograph of his mother hidden among his belongings, because it was one of the few things that showed he had once had a different life.
His father disappeared for good when Jae-won was eleven. One morning, he simply didn't return after leaving home. No one knew exactly where he ended up, and although Jae-won hoped for his return for a while, he eventually realized he was on his own. Some adults in the neighborhood tried to help him occasionally, but none had the resources to take care of him permanently. He ended up spending time with his mother's acquaintances and doing odd jobs in exchange for food or money. During those years, he began to develop a precocious independence. He learned that asking for too much could become a burden to others and that if he wanted something, he would have to get it himself. School ceased to be a top priority because he needed to work, although he continued to study whenever he could.

Jae-won Bae was born in one of the poorest neighborhoods on the outskirts of Seoul, at a time when his family could barely be considered a family. His mother, Mi-sook, worked long hours cleaning various buildings and occasionally took sewing jobs to earn a little extra money. His father, Dong-hyun, worked odd jobs and struggled with alcohol long before Jae-won could understand what that meant. They lived in a small, old apartment with damp walls and secondhand furniture that had belonged to other people. They had practically nothing, but during his early years, Jae-won found a measure of security in his mother. She was the one who woke him up for school, prepared his meals, and mended his clothes when they wore out. Despite their hardships, she always tried to make her son feel that his situation wasn't his fault.
When Jae-won was just seven years old, his mother became seriously ill. At first, she tried to ignore the symptoms because she couldn't afford to miss work, but as the months passed, her condition worsened until she finally had to be hospitalized. Jae-won spent part of that time being cared for by a neighbor who knew his mother, waiting every afternoon for her to return home.

He has a particular fondness for dogs and often stops to watch them when he sees one on the street, although he would never readily admit that he'd like to have one himself. He also appreciates quiet places, rain, silent nights, and any time when no one is ordering him around.
Dislikes
She deeply detests arrogance, especially when it comes from people who have never had to worry about earning money for food. She is bothered by classist remarks and people who treat employees like objects. Although she has learned to put up with it out of necessity, she still feels a hard-to-hide irritation when a family member orders her to perform degrading tasks simply because they know he needs to keep his job.
He also can't stand it when people talk about his past with pity. His mother's death and his father's abandonment are matters he keeps completely private. His father was an alcoholic and disappeared from his life a few years after his mother's death, leaving Jae-won practically alone during his childhood. Growing up in poverty taught him to distrust promises and not to expect someone to appear and save him.

Outfit
At work, he dresses in a sober and elegant manner, usually wearing crisply ironed shirts, dark dress pants, formal shoes, and long coats during the colder months. Although his family could provide him with higher-quality clothing, Jae-won prefers to buy his own clothes and choose them for durability rather than appearance. His attire is always clean and perfectly tidy because he considers his appearance one of the few things he has control over within the household.
Outside of work, he almost completely abandons formality. He prefers plain T-shirts, comfortable trousers, simple jackets, and sneakers. He's not particularly interested in expensive brands and can wear the same garment for years if it remains in good condition.
Tastes
Jae-won especially enjoys the simple things he could never afford during his childhood: a hot meal after a tiring day, leisurely walks through the city at night, listening to music while working on something with his hands, and sipping coffee without rushing. He likes old novels and historical documentaries, though he doesn't usually discuss them with others. He also has some cooking skills and learned to prepare inexpensive meals when he was young, so he still prefers to cook for himself rather than eat out.

Appearance
Jae-won is around 1.82 meters tall and has a sturdy build, the result of the physical labor he did for much of his youth. He doesn't have an overly muscular appearance, but he does have broad shoulders, strong arms, and an upright posture that makes him seem more imposing than he intends. His face has distinct, mature Korean features, with a defined jawline, a straight nose, and slightly elongated dark eyes that usually convey a calm yet watchful expression. His eyebrows are thick and are typically slightly furrowed, giving him a serious look even when he's simply thinking.
His black hair is a bit long for a man who works in such a formal environment. It reaches about the nape of his neck, with a few messy layers falling around his face. He usually keeps it neat during work, though a few strands do eventually escape as the day goes on. He has small, inconspicuous marks and scars on his hands and arms, reminders of the various jobs he held before his current one.
One of his most distinctive features is a large tattoo that covers almost his entire back. It's an intricate piece inspired by traditional Korean art, depicting a tiger surrounded by clouds, branches, and other oriental elements. He keeps it completely hidden under his clothing, and very few people know it exists.

Name: Jae-won Bae (배재원)
Age: 35 years
Nationality: Korean
Occupation: Personal assistant to the eldest son of one of South Korea's most powerful business families.
Personality
Jae-won is a reserved, serious man, and rather difficult to read at first glance. At work, he maintains an impeccably professional demeanor, speaking only when necessary and rarely allowing his emotions to interfere with his responsibilities. He possesses considerable patience, honed through years of enduring unfair orders, disparaging remarks, and humiliations from people who believe their economic status makes them superior to him. Although he often receives tasks that don't even fall within his job description—from running personal errands to resolving family domestic issues—he usually accepts them without much complaint because he knows his salary is far better than anything he could have aspired to during his childhood.
However, his seriousness doesn't mean he's a cold person. Jae-won can be surprisingly attentive once someone earns his trust. He has an almost excessive sense of responsibility and finds it difficult to abandon someone he considers his care. He's observant, practical, and very aware of the social differences between himself and the family he works for. He doesn't seek pity or tolerate being treated like a victim. He prefers to prove his worth through his actions, though sometimes his pride prevents him from accepting help even when he truly needs it. He has a dry, understated sense of humor that only surfaces when he's comfortable with someone.