Inu

Inu is a young Korean man with a healthy build and pretty average or slightly above average facial features. While no one would describe him as exceedingly handsome, he wouldn't be considered unattractive either, especially with his taller height.

He has naturally jet black hair and brown eyes, but wears cyan blue contacts and dyes a strip of his front bang cyan blue.

As someone who grew up without much resources or external help, Inu tends to be pretty resourceful (+) and can sometimes think of strange ways to solve a problem. While he’s had his fair share of problems just like everyone else, he tries to keep an optimistic (+) outlook on life, doing his best to bounce back from failures or setbacks relatively quickly. Despite his introverted nature and having spent most of his youth cooped up indoors, he’s grown up to be pretty easygoing (+), generally enjoying the company of others with the tendency to not overthink things. He believes that when things happen outside of your control, there’s no need to overly worry, fuss or mourn, and it’s better to distract yourself in the moment, living and learning to move on.

Still, because of this attitude, he tends to be rather unmotivated (-), lacking the intrinsic drive or motivation some other people have to succeed and “be the best you can be” in life. Having tried hard and failed in the past, his coping mechanism was to develop a rather passive (-) outlook on life. He isn’t the type to take initiative at all, and often passes up on taking extra work that could lead to raises or promotions at work or even in life in general. Though despite his efforts to appear like a cool and casual person, Inu is surprisingly emotionally sensitive (-), particularly to critique or hurtful comments directed at him. Caring much about his image, while he might externally brush it off, Inu has a rather unproductive tendency to carry negative comments about him for a while.

Daeshin Go (고대심) was born in Daegu, South Korea, to a lower-middle class family. As the only son, he was treated considerably well in childhood, but had exceedingly high expectations to bring the family more wealth and succeed in life. Growing up in a populated urban city, as he attended school he was constantly surrounded by peers who had more than him. Envying their wealth and privilege, while he was grateful that he wasn’t extremely poor, he still felt left behind especially when it came to clothes.

His parents, who both had to work full time jobs to support rent in their area, didn’t have a lot of extra money to spare on brand name clothes for themselves or their son. Though since they were generally friendly people, they would often befriend other parents in the neighborhood and sometimes end up receiving extra clothing from their wealthier friends. When Daeshin was a child, he would be extremely excited whenever he got a black trash bag filled with an abundance of worn clothes that seemed new to him. But entering middle school, when a few of his classmates asked why he was wearing “their jacket”, he became embarrassed. After this event, he became more sensitive to his appearance and the clothes he wore, and was less avid to accept clothes from others.

Around this time, he became obsessed with wanting to find trendy clothes and styles, being especially drawn to the strange fashion worn by those in the K-Hip hop scene. While Daeshin certainly couldn’t afford any of those clothes, he began to become increasingly interested in K-Hip hop music especially, even attempting to start a cringey rapping YouTube channel while he was in grade 6 (it didn’t go viral, to his own disappointment then, but to his relief now).

Though upon reaching middle school, his parents seemed to suddenly change their more relaxed method of discipline, and switched to pressure him to study extremely well. While his grades had never been a major issue and he had gotten into a decent middle school anyways, the pressure to perform even better was thrusted onto Daeshin out of seemingly nowhere.

Without the same financial resources as his peers to afford after class tutors, he had to utilize online resources and study late into the night on his own, either at home or at libraries. The little friends he had also began to drift away from him as Daeshim needed to study more, and this situation only worsened after he entered high school. With most of his life during high school spent studying at a desk, even during the school breaks, Daeshin became increasingly more and more miserable. He began to resent how he couldn’t play games, hang out with friends, or make the same good memories as many of his peers did. During this time, he didn’t make any close friendships, but on his way to and from school he enjoyed playing with and sometimes feeding the neighborhood stray dogs. Finding comfort in animals, he always kept a sausage or two in his backpack.

Even so, despite all his efforts, his studying did not pay off. On the day of the CSATs, he was so stressed the previous night that he wasn’t able to get any sleep. Feeling tired and groggy, Daeshim did not perform to the expectations his parents had set for him, scoring barely enough to go to a second quartile university. Despite some of his teachers and friends advising him to wait another year and retake the CSATs, Daeshin couldn’t bear the thought of having to go through another year of hell and decided to apply to some universities anyways, ending up at Jeju National university.

While at first he was miserable, Daeshin slowly began to become more optimistic and accept his situation, learning to look at the bright side of things. Jeju Island for one was significantly less crowded than Daegu, and as he had spent most of his teenage years cooped up inside, never fully used to crowds, it was a great relief for him. He felt like he was able to breathe easier without the feeling of being sucked up in a sea of people, or the possibilities of more eyes on him. The scenic beaches and hiking trails of Jeju Island were also fun to explore, and the distance away from family allowed Daeshim to live easier and get to know his classmates in college.

Still, after years of not socializing, he became rather quiet and reclusive during the beginning of his first year in college. Afraid to talk to others and be judged, he mostly kept to himself until a Japanese international student approached him one day in their introductory computer science class. Introducing himself as Akira, they hit it off well immediately despite the occasional language barrier. Introducing Daeshim to lots of his friends, the gacha games he liked to play, and a few restaurants near campus he had found, the two quickly became close friends.

One day in conversation, Akira, who had frequented between Japan, China and Korea since his youth, mentioned how he found it funny that Daeshim’s last name Go sounded similar to the way of saying ‘dog’ in Mandarin, all while Daeshim absolutely loved the friendly stray dogs around Jeju island. As a joke at first, Akira began to call Daeshim by the nickname of Inu. Though since the friend group Akira hung out with the most were other Japanese international students, when their peers heard Akira referring to him as Inu, the nickname somehow stuck around. It even got to the point where their Korean peers would also refer to Daeshim as Inu, so he gladly adopted the nickname as a mark of his new identity, hoping to be rid of the reclusive and lonely boy of his youth.

Beginning to introduce himself in casual settings as Inu (이누) from then on out, with his newfound identity and freedom he began to continue to work hard in his coding classes while taking on a remote internship on the side. With the extra cash, he began to finally splurge on luxuries he hadn’t before, including decorative or fashionable ‘statement’ clothes, nice shoes, new tech, skincare, and video games- All things he had keenly yearned for as a middle and high schooler. Taking the time to improve his skills in Japanese, Mandarin, and English with Akira, his college days went by quickly. Thankfully, he was able to make lots of friends and great memories on Jeju island. In a sense, Inu became grateful for what seemed to be a curse at first of not performing extremely well on the CSATs and getting rejected to Q1 universities. From the late night snack runs, to the group hikes, even to the all-nighter study sessions he and his friend group pulled, all of them helped bring the friend group closer together.

Following his graduation, while he initially planned to enlist before beginning his career, he received a sudden job offer from overseas working as a backend developer at a United States tech firm with fantastic pay and great benefits. So with some thought, Inu took up the offer. Since the firm was based in the US, it meant forgoing his sleep schedule and needing to be up at strange hours, but after getting used to it he didn’t mind it.

After getting the job, he returned home to Daegu for a little bit and reconciled a bit with his parents, while also giving them some money. Although in his youth he sometimes resented his parents for forcing him to study, Inu grew up to understand that they did it because it was the only way to climb up on the social ladder from their perspective. Still, he enjoyed his space alone and liked how much quieter Jeju was compared to the hustle and bustle of Daeju, so he would continue to live there to stay in closer contact with some of his friends.

Over the next couple of years, he continued to put off his military enlistment, hoping to buff up his savings account in case the job would lay him off while he was serving his mandatory 2 years. He also took the opportunity to travel around a bit, visiting both Japan and parts of China with Akira, who landed a more stable office job in Seoul also working on backend development. While the work Inu did was sometimes stressful, he generally was living a pretty relaxed day to day schedule at his apartment in Jeju City- Until May 31st of a certain year.

With a solar eclipse due to happen the following day, Inu hadn’t thought much of it. And as someone who spent most of the day either sleeping or cooped up in his room due to his remote work schedule, imagine his confusion when he woke up to a flurry of texts from Akira and a few of his other friends.

“The sun is glitching, are you seeing this Inu?”

With communications from his work friends overseas halting to a stop, and the sun’s apparent glitches plunging the earth’s surface into complete darkness at sporadic intervals, he spent the most of the day calling his friends while trying to follow the ever updating flow of rapid news. That was, until the entire world plunged into total darkness, and Inu fell unconscious. Upon awakening in a strange city, Inu felt confused and disoriented, but quickly realized that he needed to get a grip- He wasn’t in Jeju City anymore.

The plasma that had been powering technology up until then seemed unstable, some even exploding cars a distance away. While he was a little afraid of continuing to use his phone, in a strange city, he held onto it on the hope that one day it would be able to receive connection again and he would be able to contact Akira, his family, and other friends outside of the strange city he was in. Black patches of what seemed to be void of anything, swallowed up unfortunate victims who ran into them. With the unsettling realization that he was facing a disaster incomprehensibly large, Inu did his best to stay on guard.

Following a crowd that seemed to be huddled around boxes filled with strange, flat electronic devices called COMPS, Inu squeezed in and grabbed one as well. Turning it on, he and those around him were all met with the same message.

“Greetings Player! Welcome to Dimension 0. Today is the beginning of the first Judgement Day. Allow us to register you into our database."