Name: Kim Taehyung

Age: 24

Orientation: Beta, but appears for all intents and purposes human.

Scent: Pretty plain. Smells human, and like the teas he brews and the flowers he sells.

Status: Single! And happy!

Former Job: Assistant "herbalist" to a yakuza group branch in Nara, Japan, apprenticeship starting from the age of 8.

New Job: Waiter at a themed tea parlor/florist at flower shop. Same building - tea served upstairs, flowers sold downstairs.

Real Background: With his looks, you'd think that Taehyung was the type of boy who got into the yakuza through a "wrong place, wrong time" scenario - however, nothing could be further from the truth. If his grandmother was to be believed, the Kim family women had served as the most elite poisoners to the yakuza and other groups of organized crime from dynastic days. Indeed, daughters were highly prized in the Kim family, as their perspicacious quickly realized that women usually went unnoticed and were definitely underestimated. As such, the Kims switched from a patrilineal to a matrilineal line after some supposed success in bringing a favored individual to power. The Kim women's roles changed from being whispers in certain ears to actively taking part in eliminating competition.

A family branch planted itself in Japan around the Edo era (or perhaps some time after), where the women again made themselves at home by the sides of the organized crime bosses and eventually flourished. As the roles changed within the families, so too did their perceptions by others. Certain branches of the yakuza were known to treat women with a great deal of respect after the arrival of some well-to-do ladies who'd somehow found their way in and never really left. As the world wasn't exactly the most "girl power" friendly back in the day, Kim ladies were fine with (at least for the sake of their jobs) being underestimated and treated as though they were just silly girls by the majority of the gangs. The only respect they needed - and most definitely earned - came from the bosses who'd required their services or those who wished they could afford said services. Mysterious enemy deaths were chalked up to the supernatural, the uncanny, and perhaps a few local mythological creatures sprung up where the Kim ladies found employment. Organized crime was sticky business - once you got in, you never really got out. Still, the sons were usually allowed to follow their own paths (read: not allowed to join in the family business), and the girls who had huge crises of conscience or who never got the hang of... which herbs mixed with which made what poison... were allowed to leave, free of obligations and certainly welcome in the family.

Again, perspicacious ancestors deemed it appropriate that there be some legitimate branches of enterprise within the Kim family, and ironically enough, said branches of enterprise usually turned out to be great boons. The departed descendants found jobs in the medical fields, law enforcement, agriculture, education, financial districts. Even if the occupations weren't necessarily the most glamorous (i.e. butchers, garbagemen, etc.), they certainly had their uses. Even those family members who simply wished to live a quiet life and raise happy children sometimes found themselves quite willing to put up an out-of-town or down-on-their-luck cousin, provided said cousin helped pull their share of the load.

Fast forward a ways and here we have preschooler Taehyung. Poor kid didn't understand what exactly his family did, just that Grandmama would beckon him over with a wizened finger and tell him all about some fantastical family where the aunts and other mamas were supremely powerful and shaped history, and the papas and uncles provided no end of much needed support. Granted, his mum would eventually turn up right at the most exciting parts and haul Taetae away with hands over his little ears, his grandma and Auntie Mim (such a pretty auntie, with so many fancy clothes and lovely colors on her face) laughing fit to burst. One fateful day, he got himself into Auntie Mim's greenhouse and had himself a nice little tea party with berries and leaves and blooms his chubby little hands had plucked fairly unobtrusively from the plants - and wound up practically paralyzing his tiny body, precipitating a trip not to the hospital but to a "long time family friend" who (according to Auntie Mim) "damn well ing better let us call in one ing favor for once in my ing life."

[Taehyung would have giggled at all the bad words if he wasn't so scared of never moving again and forever being unable to have tea with Sir Pancakes and Dr. Carrots. Though even if he could move, the pink foam clogging up his mouth and nose made it really hard to breathe. Even if it was a pretty color and tasted like the pennies he'd once upon a time when he was very small.]

Long story short, that was Taehyung's introduction to the Kim family's poisoning world of yakuza and organized crime. His latent poisoning abilities apparently lay in the fact that he'd somehow, at such a young age, was able to tell that one particular leaf or berry more and it would have "tasted wrong" or "not be good to drink." Of course, one can't just shove a preschooler into the realm of poisoning, so his informal training began with learning how to take care of Auntie Mim's plants and how to tell them apart.

By the time he was 15, Taehyung practically had an encyclopedic knowledge of the plants used in the family business drilled into his head. Plants could heal, plants could hurt, plants could taste good. His role in the family business had gone from watering the plants to now breeding the best varieties and taking note of their chemical properties. Sometimes he prepared dried and/or powdered leaves for Auntie Mim's business, sometimes he helped measure out the ingredients she needed down to the very precise grains. Taehyung took great pride in being able to help, even though his mom hadn't exactly approved of the whole deal. Things were going quite swimmingly.

And then he met Jesse. And his life changed by degrees until one final cataclysmic event altered it forever.

Fast forward to 2017, and Taehyung's been in hiding for several years now. The Kim family is well known to take in family members in trouble and is generally quite prolific by now, with at least one or two families in every country that would serve their purposes well, but even family can't save him now. He's changed his name, changed his style, and he's tired of running. Several countries later, he's ready to just go to ground and hide.

And that's where this city, rife with the kind of base level crime that Taehyung's family has long since outgrown, comes in. No one blinks twice at his presence. He's got himself a good job, a good cover, and is perfectly content with his tiny studio apartment almost in the back end of nowhere.

 

Real Personality: Taehyung is known for being pretty warm and loving and quite curious. He'll tend to pull back when things start to get a little too heated, and seems to be afraid of getting too involved emotionally and physically. Otherwise, he's quite a friendly soul, if a little jumpy at time.