• All those friendly people - Funeral Suits
• Senseless - Portugal. The Man
• Woodland - The Paper Kites
• Jersey - Granville
• Wendover - The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die
• Back To School - A Great Big Pile of Leaves

Emil can be best described as theatrical. There is something uncanny about many of his facial expressions; not quite fake, they seem to always linger for a few seconds too much or little, as if he were following some sort of internal script rather than reacting to the world around him. His body language too comes off as exaggeratedly confident, with shoulders tossed back and a raised chin. It comes to no surprise, then, that people generally assume Emil to be presumptuous and avoid him. Yet, that assumption barely scratches the surface of Emil's character.

Truthfully, Emil is plagued by self-doubt and an obsessive belief he is not good enough. He makes up stories - labelled a pathological liar by some - without even thinking about it. And those stories become wilder each time, because he feels a need to constantly one-up himself. Although Emil does not go out of his way to attract attention, the moment he finds someone who is not instantly put off by the rumours surrounding him, he latches onto that person and madly seeks validation.

This need of validation and reassurance plays into Emil's clinginess. He comes to care deeply for those he grows close to, and being told off by them makes him panic. Despite Emil's desire to appear relaxed, he is extraordinarily enthusiastic, and that enthusiasm becomes blatant whenever he starts talking about something he is passionate about. Emil is also very emotional, and often makes hasty decisions based exclusively on feelings. Empathetic and easily moved, crying comes to him naturally, though he prefers to hide it.

Upon becoming pregnant with Emil, his mother was urged by her family to drop out of university to take care of him. The woman was in her final year of medical school and had her heart set on neurosurgery; the kind of person that always sees her plans to the end and relentlessly chases ambitions, she did not think having a son (whose father was a mystery) would be a setback. And it was not.

Emil’s early years were happy despite his mother being so busy with her studying and residency. He spent so long in pre-school (and eventually school and afterschool activities) that it made the rare time spent with his mother all the more precious. He struggled to make friends due to his need for attention, hyperactivity, and general pushiness towards other children. He was not quite lonely, but Emil understood that he preferred to spend time with his mother than other children. And his mother too cherished their time together. They were often alone: Emil having no other parent and his mother not being particularly close with her family.

That two-person family was perfect as far as Emil was concerned. He entered adolescence friendless and awkward and plagued by a new kind of self-doubt; Emil had spent his middle school years desperate to make friends, inventing stories, trying to force himself into social circles that had made it clear they did not want him there. He thought high school would be different, that he just had to try harder, become more adaptable, learn to be the person he thought his classmates wanted.

And in the meantime, his mother started dating again. Emil was supportive, though he never fully considered the implication of having a potential step-parent. He was too busy with school after all - more specifically, the event in his second year that singlehandedly made his classmates despise him.

Emil often felt that his mother was more of a friend than parent but the feeling was not mutual; Emil’s mother was fiercely protective of her son and ready to fight anyone who she felt did not treat him fairly. She was known to be “one of those parents” among Emil’s teachers. When in Emil’s second year of high school his grade was going to send a student abroad for a semester, everyone knew it was going to be anyone but Emil with his poor attendance and lacklustre grades. But his mother pulled enough strings to have him go - unintentionally killing any chance of Emil making friends. The semester abroad was fun, at the very least.

Thus Emil began his third year resigned to the knowledge that everyone hated him and that once more he was going to stay friendless. To add insult to injury, his mother found a girlfriend. While Emil liked the woman too and was ecstatic to see his mother so happy, he began to notice how the girlfriend would take up time that his mother used to devote to him; he started to see how activities the two used to do together now also involved this girlfriend and, for as absurd as he knew it was, Emil grew jealous.

So he decided he was going to run away. It made sense to him: nobody in school wanted anything to do with him and not even his mother needed him anymore. He had no real plan on where to go or what to do but he thought those were no more than details to figure out later. All he knew was he was going to leave alone. At least, until he met Matieu.

Emil immediately became fascinated with the boy and decided he was going to try his hardest to befriend him and, against all odds, it worked. Unaccustomed to having a friend, Emil spilled the beans of his running away plan despite knowing he should have kept it secret. But, surprisingly, it only deepened their friendship. Emil learned that Matieu felt similar unhappiness and though he had never considered the idea of running away himself, became intrigued by Emil’s plan - enough so to choose to participate.

So the two live day to day in the sprawling metropolis, between school and exploring the city and, of course, preparing to run away. A plan that gets constantly pushed back further and further, a plan that gets more vague and desperate as time goes on.

trivia

• Passionate about crabs and wants one as a pet someday
• But has no reservations with eating crab and actually likes it a lot
• Goes on an yearly skiing trip to the Alps with his mother every Christmas, it's a tradition they've had since Emil was a child
• Struggles to fall asleep without some sort of background noise
• Really enjoys watching terrible B-movies, especially anything with monsters and action
• Often jokes about how his hair is too dark to be blond but not red enough to be a redhead, therefore making him "the world's worst ginger"
• Has his earphones on whenever he can

design

• Reddish-blond hair rather than regular blond
• Loves hats of all types
• Hair is slightly longer on his right side
• Clothing style tends to be flashy-casual?? Like, hoodies, shirts, etc. but also colourful and with fun patters!
• Anything star/space related is a solid choice

Matieu

Emil's only best friend! He made Matieu tolerate him with enough insistence and took no time at all to open himself up to him; nor did he take any time in deciding he was going to stick by Matieu's side. Now the clinginess and insecurities have (mostly) disappeared, leaving behind only an extremely solid friendship - if an unlikely one, seeing how different Matieu and Emil are.