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empatheias
Player: Aly
Contact:
Age: 27
Current Characters: Ryunosuke Ibuki
Character: Kang Mireu
Age: 18
Canon: White Christmas
Canon Point: Post-series
Background: series wiki; series recap (Mireu is most featured in episodes 3, 6, and 7, though he plays a more tangiental role in the others);
Personality:
In a school like Susin High—a boarding that is secluded in the mountains of South Korea, where the top students of the country are pushed deep into their studies for all but one week of the year—there aren’t many who make a lot of noise. Most keep to their studies and deal with things in a seemingly subdued manner, out of the eye of many other students and the school’s staff.
And then there’s Mireu. He’s undoubtedly an outlier in every single regard. From his appearance with dyed red hair to this everyday theatrics, he isn’t the sort of person who goes around unnoticed. But that’s the way he likes it; his theatrics and ways of acting out are extremely purposeful, and he knows when and where to behave appropriately. For the most part, though? He does his best to be the outlier. Rather than follow Susin’s strict rules, he tends to march to the beat of his own drum, even if it costs him demerits and leaves him on the verge of being expelled from the school. In many ways, he’s like a kid that’s starved for attention, pulling big stunts and reacting in big ways to the things around him just to get a reaction from people.
Sometimes, it’s making loud threats or pointing a (not loaded) gun at someone else. Sometimes, it’s bungee jumping off the school roof with a cameraman to document his every last move. Even being carted off by teachers, he’ll wave and bow his head like a celebrity that’s pulled an extreme stunt. Not everything he does is for attention—even on his own time, he’ll do things that are pretty damn reckless just so see if he get away with it. It’s teenage rebellion at its finest, and while all that has done a lot to earn him those nicknames, Mireu is far from really being “mad” in any sense of the word. If anything, he somehow manages to be one of the more level-headed students snowed in during Susin’s Christmas break.
So much of what he does is just theatrics. He speaks in an animated tone, he monologues, and he does these extreme things. But when going beyond that? Mireu is very obviously doing so much of that for show, to seem bigger and tougher than he really is. And despite those theatrics, Mireu is actually a pretty honest person.
He’ll be the first to own up to the things that get him in trouble, but all the same, he doesn’t want to stand for being on the verge of expulsion when someone tries to frame him. He’s quick to make use of his own skills to try and suss out the real culprit… even though his methods are really not any better. He willingly sneaks back into the school through a passage in the air vents, he hacks the school’s security system so he can monitor the CCTVs (both to find who he’s looking for and to avoid detection himself), and rather than ask questions? Well, that would be too easy when he could just beat the hell out of the person he thinks is responsible. Or the person who is actually responsible, once. Even then, though… he does have a sense of responsibility and accountability. Despite being initially angry that Yoonsu had framed him for breaking a statue, the demerit that would ultimately lead to his expulsion from the school, once Mireu hears his reasons, he has a bit of a change of heart.
He isn’t so single-minded that he can’t forgive a person, and he’s not so single-minded that he can’t see when he’s wronged someone. So after learning that his bungee jumping stunt had destroyed Yoonsu’s only chance of being able to leave Susin for good, he feels remorse. He owns up to his mistakes, he apologizes, and he genuinely feels bad for what happened. Rather than continue to harbor a grudge, he considers the situation resolved and is content to move along his own way and take his leave from the school—especially considering he wasn’t supposed to be there at all, unlike the others who had chosen to stay behind over the break.
His sense of responsibility shines through in other ways, too. When he’s forced to return to the school thanks to the snow, and he realizes that trouble is afoot, Mireu is quick to use his head to come up with a plan to help them. Sure, he could have left them be and continued to exist in secrecy with the woman he’d met and brought back with him, but he didn’t. Instead, he figures out a way to keep their serial killer guest Kim Yohan at bay (without… really even knowing the whole of the situation) and save his schoolmates. Including the ones he doesn’t like at all. Further than that, once they’ve got Yohan locked up and the kids decide “oh hey, let’s get drunk,” Mireu is the one person responsible enough to realize that the gun they’ve taken from Yohan shouldn’t be fully loaded around a bunch of drunk teenagers. He’s sharp enough to take the bullets and keep them on his person, so nobody else can make a stupid mistake.
There are in-betweens with Mireu; he doesn’t just go from a wild, reckless and carefree to totally responsible without a myriad of other feelings in the middle though. The thing with him is that most of what he feels is shaded by what he shows. He’ll throw a punch or make an elaborate threat at a guy he doesn’t like, but Mireu also has his secrets. Even he lays claim to the fact that truly hating someone is something he does in secret—a feeling that is supposedly saved for Choi Chihoon. Mireu considers Chihoon something of a rival, a person who always one ups him in pretty much everything. It drives him crazy, but he also isn’t open about it, making the rivalry extremely one-sided. But despite the level of disdain he seems to have for Chihoon? Mireu doesn’t really hate the guy. It bothered him when he was lead to believe that Chihoon was dead, and he was the person in the biggest panic after Chihoon’s leg was broken and his health was faltering. That moment was one of the only instances we see Mireu really lose his cool and yell out in desperation for someone to actually help them, which really goes to show he cares more about the people he “hates” than he even lets himself believe.
His other impulses come out at various times too. After meeting Junghye, a woman who seemed as wild and carefree as he acted, he was pretty quick to develop an attraction to her, and Mireu went as far as to try and pursue it. The attempt was a failed one—a very failed one—but it didn’t stop him from trying anyway. And when he later learned of her true intent, that she was a crazy, stalker fan of Yohan’s and that she had come to Susin to aid him, Mireu’s betrayal was obvious. He was hurt by it, and while maybe not heartbroken over the matter, he was definitely upset with the way things played out. It’s in those few moments that he’s been wronged or hurt that Mireu’s vulnerabilities can be seen, and it shows that underneath his animated exterior is still just a teenage boy with a lot of the same problems and struggles as anyone else.
He has his breaking points too, and while he manages to stay largely the same throughout the course of the series, the events that occurred in that week were able to put cracks in his armor. Are monsters born, or are they made? was the question of the week, and while he wasn’t part of that “experiment” set in place by Yohan, a bit of the egg cracked. Enough so that when all was said and done, when they were brought to safety and able to recover a bit, learning of Yoonsu’s suicide as a result of Yohan’s prodding was enough to set Mireu off. At that moment, he became willing to do what was necessary, and while he hadn’t snapped the way Muyeol had, he was willing to hold back the people trying to chase after them, and just as willing to help throw Yohan off the roof of a hospital to put an end to his twisted game. He may not have been the initiator, but he became a willing accomplice. Despite everything, and despite how detached he’d been from the group of students who had stayed behind that week, their shared experiences had given them a certain kind of camaraderie that meant no matter what, Mireu would stand behind them. Even when the police questioned them over the matter, Mireu kept mum, going along with the version of the story the group had concocted to absolve themselves of any crime.
Which probably doesn’t make much for a well-adjusted adult, but somehow, he manages to stay the most sane and true to himself throughout. The fact that his animated front played up a certain free quirkiness that Mireu naturally has may have had something to do with it, but there’s little doubt that much of what Mireu did in that week was full of experiences that were both liberating and chaining all at the same time. Regardless of what he thinks or feels, there’s very little about him that will change anytime soon. He’ll still be a bit on the reckless side, he’ll still act out for attention and draw it to himself in theatrical ways like a ham, and he’ll keep every last bit of scathing hatred buried deep inside of him, not to be shared with anyone else. He’s not a bad guy, and even if some of his actions are questionable, he does ultimately want the right things. He doesn’t want innocent people to be hurt, and he wants those who are evil to face the consequences for their actions. And really, he just wants to be able to also live freely, though being a student at Susin may not allow for that sort of freedom anytime soon.
Abilities:
He may not be hacking national security anytime soon, but he’s well on his way to being able to. Mireu is good at figuring these things out and making it work to his advantage, though he has obvious limitations. On top of that, he’s reasonably in-shape and athletic; he’s fairly strong, but no more so than that of a slightly above average 18 year old boy.
Alignment:
Other:
Sample: over yonder!
Questions: