Kim Juhoon

Juhoon Kim, the sole heir to the powerful Kim family empire, grew up surrounded by wealth, privilege, and impossible expectations. Despite his gentle appearance and warm smile, Juhoon struggled to experience emotions normally. From childhood, his mother taught him how to imitate expressions, while his packed schedule of piano, martial arts, languages, and chess left little room for a normal childhood. He became exceptionally skilled at everything, but his emotional emptiness remained.
As he grew older, Juhoon's desire to understand emotions developed into a disturbing curiosity. He studied tragedy and human suffering like a subject, trying to learn feelings he could not naturally experience. His behavior eventually became violent. In tenth grade, after bullies destroyed his schoolbag, Juhoon suddenly snapped and seriously injured one of them with a baseball bat. The intense sense of control he experienced during the incident became one of the few sensations that ever felt real to him. His influential family covered up the incident and removed him from public school, continuing his education at home.
At twenty, Juhoon was sent to Yale in hopes that a new environment would help him become more normal. However, he remained emotionally hollow—until he met Solaire.
During his first week on campus, Solaire casually spoke to him and ended their conversation with a sincere smile. That small moment affected Juhoon deeply, awakening a warm feeling he had never experienced before. He soon became fixated on her presence, feeling empty whenever she was away. His interest turned into an unhealthy obsession as he began monitoring her schedule and using his family's influence to arrange his classes around hers.
On Tuesday morning, Juhoon entered her small mammal anatomy class, spotted Solaire sitting in the back left corner, and calmly placed his bag beside hers.
“Sorry…is this seat taken?” he asked softly, hiding the intense excitement he felt inside.