rhys qin | 秦修澜

+ PROTECTIVE  ◌   ADVENTUROUS  ◌   DECISIVE  ◌   COMPASSIONATE
– IRASCIBLE  ◌   IRREVERENT  ◌  HEADSTRONG  ◌  STUBBORN

A tall woman with asymmetric dyed-navy hair that fades into a neutral cream-blonde at the tips, Rhys draws attention wherever she goes. Her sharp eyes and a sharper tongue belie a bleeding heart: at her core, Rhys has always been a protector, a champion of the weak. She struggles to stay silent in the face of perceived injustice, habitually stepping up in others’ defense—with or without their express consent. She doesn’t like to meddle, per se, but there’s a part of her that never looks before she leaps, always a step away from overstepping.

Despite her best intentions, her methods often come off as misguided at best and outright patronizing at worst—her fondness for blunt honesty and “tough love” often gets her in more trouble than it’s worth. Rhys finds it difficult to stand by when people are being taken advantage of, but she also finds it infuriating to watch people who stagnate in their own weakness. As much as she’s kind at heart, Rhys believes that the world is inherently cruel and that the selfish will always take advantage of the selfless, if you aren’t careful. In a cruel world, nobody will stand up for you if you don’t stand up for yourself—not everyone is as selfless as she is, after all.
Her emotions often get the best of her: Rhys can seem headstrong and capricious one moment, and stubborn as a mule the next. Rarely does she ever stop to take others’ advice into fair consideration when she’s like this, too caught up in her own convictions. Rhys makes choices quickly, and it’s common for others to mistake her decisiveness for impulsiveness, given her temperament. Her temper flares often and easily, her targets indiscriminate—she’ll chew out a coworker one minute and her boss the next, a habit that’s lost her plenty of jobs over the years.

Despite this, Rhys finds it genuinely difficult to hold a grudge; she’s just as quick to anger as she is to forgive. Moreover, she does consider her options evenly before making a decision—but Rhys is someone who knows herself better than anyone else ever will, someone who knows what she will or won’t regret. It doesn’t take much thought, especially if she thinks she can do some good in the world. The world is a cruel one, but she wants to believe that she can change that, at least for her loved ones.

tl;dr - Rhys is born to a relatively well-off family in Qingdao that sends her and her younger brother off to school in Meteor City under the nominal guardianship of a distant relative, only visiting every couple of months. She struggles to fit in at first, and “fakes it ‘till she makes it” for her little brother’s sake; eventually, she hits her stride and—to her teachers’ consternation—does quite well in school despite her penchant for delinquency. Taking her effective role of guardian and role model seriously, Rhys enrolls in Meteor City University to stay close to her little brother as he enters high school; at MCU, she majors in Anomaly Studies. She continues on with her studies after graduation, going back for a two-year master’s degree. Wanting to spread her wings, she takes a year off school (after nabbing grant funding) to do some research in the field in preparation for her thesis on the physical and psychological effects of long-term anomaly exposure. Given that her choices are 1.) working with the MCPD or 2.) seeking out a private detective agency, Rhys opts for the latter, thus bringing her to LQCC’s doorstep. Will personal involvement confound her data? Probably. But that’s ethnographic fieldwork, baby!

——— ◈ ———

Qingdao, as much as Rhys will romanticize it in the years to come, is a city like any other. Its summers are humid and uncomfortably sticky, its winters cold enough to invite the occasional bout of snow, its autumns and springs unremarkable but for the air of festivity that permeates the city on holiday weeks. Rhys spends much of their childhood gazing out of train windows at the ever-present expanse of ocean that seems only ever a step or two away, watching boats sail to and fro as they dot the horizon of Jiaozhou Bay with a sea of sails and lights and life—and after, for years, this is how they remember Qingdao. A light sea breeze in the evening glow, the rattle of an elevated train across one bridge or another, and the hustle and bustle of cars and boats and people always racing by in steady waves, always eager to get from one place to another. Always busy, always moving—and their parents are no exception.

Their mother is a senior professor at the Ocean University of China, always busy with lesson plans and public lectures and there are always more papers to grade, always more graduate students to advise, always more to do at work than there is at home. Their father isn’t much better, though he tries more to be present. He tries, he does, but Rhys has always noticed the bitter undertone to his words, the fragile ego of a man feeling overshadowed by his more-successful wife. He had worked as a lecturer at the China University of Petroleum; before that, he’d been a middling chemical engineer for one oil company or another, and after that—well, after the kids were born, the responsibility of childrearing was foisted summarily upon him. Rhys’ father was kind enough though, and the qualms he had with his own wife were kept to himself, away from the prying eyes of his children. It was enough to fool Rowan—though he wasn’t Rowan then, not yet, still Xiuyun, still an infant—but Rhys outgrew their childhood ignorance quickly, ever the precocious child. But it’s enough, until they enter middle school and Xiuyun enters primary school and suddenly—it isn’t.

Their parents break the news suddenly, with finality. There are better schools on the other side of the world, and English is the language of the future. After all, they have an aunt in Meteor City, another successful academic doing research in one thing or another, a scientist who’d moved there to do research on ANM-01 and its lasting effects on the surrounding ecology. They’ll be sent to live with her, and enrolled in the best private schools their parents can afford, and it will be an investment in their future, or so they say.

Rhys has mixed feelings from the start—they’ve always wanted to see the world and get out of Qingdao, but they’re still a child. They’re nervous, and hesitant, and too obedient to say much in protest. They know their mother, after all: what she says in the household goes. Their father is sympathetic though, and promises that they’ll visit frequently—or, at the least, that he’ll visit. The distinction isn’t lost on Rhys.

They’re nervous and afraid—but there is always Xiuyun. They need to be brave and take care of their little brother, their father tells them, and Rhys understands, because they’re a mature kid, or so they tell themself. It’ll be fine. It has to be.

——— ◈ ———

Meteor City is nothing like what Rhys expects. The city is nothing like the city Rhys knows and loves, and the breeze that comes in across the lake is sweet and clear and tastes like nothing but freshwater, with none of the salt and brine they’ve grown so accustomed to. The city’s trains are dilapidated and dirty compared to those at home, and the streets at night are so much scarier, so much more dangerous. Rhys doesn’t like it, but they hold their tongue and make the most of it, greeting the city with a smile for Xiuyun’s sake. He’s a young kid, impressionable—they need to be brave for their little brother, after all.

They move in with their aunt, though they soon learn that she comes home even less than their mother—there are always more tests to run, and the facility she works at is under such tight security that plenty of researchers find themselves spending their nights at the compound instead of going to the trouble of decontamination and clocking out. Rhys isn’t sure what she studies exactly, but it’s something about microbes and parasites and anomalies, those strange things that seem so much more common here than back home. Their aunt’s research is dangerous, which is why she comes home so rarely, they’re told. When she does come home, she tries her best to bring them treats and buy them nice food, but their aunt is awkward at best and outright avoidant at worst, more comfortable with anomalies than with kids. But they deal. They practice English at home with their aunt when they can, and Xiulan becomes Rhys and Xiuyun becomes Rowan, and they start going to school.

Rowan takes the transition better than Rhys does, especially at first. Rhys is past the age of usual language acquisition, and they don’t have the luxury of Rowan’s introductory English classes; they stumble in and out of ESL programs, and it takes a good two years before their English is solid enough to get them out of the supplementary programs and into a regular, everyday English class. But the language learning is fine. Rhys doesn’t mind it—they find it enjoyable even, even if they complain day and night about the irregularities of the English language and the structureless grind of North American school systems. They do better in their math and science classes, where their existing knowledge is more easily transferable—needless to say, the language of math and chemistry is universal, and Rhys manages to pull into honors classes in their first year in Meteor City from numbers and equations alone.

Classes are one thing; the cruelty of children is another. Rhys, from day one, doesn’t fit in. They’re picked apart at every turn, from their fashion to their accent to their general air of non-belonging, of obedience, of weakness. It’s not bullying, not really, but they’re always aware of how they’re different—and different, of course, is a code word for inferior. But they’ve always had an air of rebellion about them, and without the stringent eye of their mother there to keep them in line, they retaliate in the only way they know how.

If they’re to be different, they may as well make themself as different as they can possibly be.

It causes quite the stir when Rhys comes into eighth grade orientation with ripped jeans, a leather jacket, and bleached hair, chopped short and uneven with kitchen scissors. But their aunt had never particularly cared what they did in their spare time, so long as they didn’t get themselves into too much trouble—and after all, their parents were an ocean away. So they get away with their small rebellions, and they revel in their difference, and if they skip a math class or two, well—it was the fault of these American schools for designing such droll curricula, anyway. (Really, geometry? In eighth grade? They’d already covered all of trigonometry back in primary school, much less geometry.)  

Their teachers don’t take well to it, but Rhys doesn’t pay them any mind. They resolve to ignore the stares and to prove themself worthy in their own way—they’ll climb up the school rankings, get into Meteor City University, and (unlike their family) they’ll be there for their little brother. Rhys is fond of Rowan, always has been—he’s a good kid, kind at heart and innocent to a fault, and they’ll be damned if they won’t protect that for as long as they can. It’s just Rowan and Rhys, against the world.

(Until he gets tired of them, anyway, which Rhys expects he will. It’s only natural, after all, and Rhys supports their brother’s right to his own bout of teenage rebellion. They’re almost looking forward to it.)

They set their goals, and they pursue them with a dogged devotion. It becomes a routine. Irritate their teachers one way or another before leaving, picking up Rowan on the way home from school, and studying their ass off until the next morning. Rinse and repeat. If Rhys is anything, they are dedicated, especially when they’re motivated—and nothing is quite as good of a motivator as pure, unadulterated spite.

Rhys graduates with the stunning title of the school administration’s most hated salutatorian. They beam, all teeth, when the principal hands them their diploma. The long-suffering principal’s smile falters in front of the camera, a Kodak moment.

Rhys has their graduation picture framed, that asshole principal’s pained smile immortalized for posterity. And they get an acceptance letter from Meteor City University.

——— ◈ ———

Fast forward. Rhys gets their bachelor’s degree in Anomaly Studies in three years as Rowan goes through middle school, and by the time they enter their master’s program, Rowan’s just started his freshman year of high school. Their parents do visit every so often, once or twice a year, and occasionally Rowan and Rhys go back for the summers. If their parents don’t like Rhys’ new sense of fashion, they have the decency to keep it to themselves, sidelong glances from the extended family notwithstanding. After all, their parents aren’t their guardians anymore, and hadn’t been for years now. But they’re not on bad terms, exactly. They get along well enough during visits, and Rhys’ parents are approving—even encouraging—of their academic success.

Maybe they’ll become an anomaly researcher, they think. They want to do something that matters, something that helps people. And there’s nothing more cutting-edge than anomaly research. But the deadline to figure out her master’s thesis is fast-approaching, and Rhys isn’t fond of the idea of more lab work, or more research studies, or more academic mumbo-jumbo in general. They’re tired of the grind.

They want to do something that matters. Something that really helps people, in the real world. Something they could see with their own eyes, something they could build with their own two hands. So they decide on something that sounds good enough to sway a grant committee in their favor. They decide to do their master’s thesis not on anomalies themselves, but on the people that deal with them on a day-to-day basis. Not the researchers holed up in their cushy labs—the people on the frontlines. Glorified animal control. The funding is approved, and they’re freed from their academic obligations for a year while they collect data for their thesis. All that’s left to do is to pick a sample population—and Rhys doesn’t relish the idea of working with the MCPD.

Which is how they end up at the front door of a nondescript building in the Meteor City commercial center, pushing open the double glass doors to the LQCC office.

After all, Rhys reasons, a crumpled recruitment flyer in their hand—they’re hiring, aren’t they?

• still reads / speaks mandarin chinese fluently (with a qingdao/shandong accent). can understand some hokkien, though she can’t speak it to save her life.
• has a ridiculously high alcohol tolerance, though she hasn’t tested its limits.
• her brother rowan’s chinese name is qin xiuyun 秦修昀!
• doesn’t really have a preference for pronouns and doesn’t get why english needs to be so unnecessarily gendered anyway; doesn’t care for labels + is ambiguously Girl (female gendered terms/endearments ok!).
• had a tumultuous fling with someone in college and is on pretty awful terms with their ex now...
• pinterest board here!

• good coffee (the stronger the better!)
• people who stand up for themselves
• hiking, a good workout, fieldwork
• the smell of warm vanilla and fresh rain
• cringe romance / fantasy webnovels
  
  

• tea (boba excluded)
• doormats (of the human variety)
• deskwork / paperwork...
• hot or sunny weather
• soggy or messy food (esp. finger food)