Background

Fleuros are native but rare denizens of Korea, prominent mainly in folklore as living links and intermediaries between the spirit and the material. Once protected by royal law, everything changed when the Japanese took over and promptly began murdering every Fleuros they could find — not just out of greed for their tails, but because many freedom fighters could and did wish their lives away to turn the tide of the war. The few lucky enough to lack visible characteristics hid their Fleuros heritage: others fled to distant temples and mountaintops, where they were shielded by priests and mudangs. Fearing for their lives, most hid from society proper even after Korean independence, and few fell to the chaos of the civil war. Despite this, Fleuros have never been in the spotlight due to their distrust of the government. Associated with the primitive, tribal, and “backwards” due to their historical connection with the mystic and the occult, they were treated as undesirables in a rapidly modernizing Korean society, overlooked at best and actively persecuted at worst.

Unable to find regular employment, some Fleuros entered into service with mudangs. Due to their supernatural origin, Fleuros could cross into the spirit world and destroy demons at their source, whereas a human, no matter how gifted, was limited to chasing them from the material plane. Deadly and thankless a job though it was, many found their life's calling in the work, while others married their partners and patrons, unknowingly continuing a tradition that had lasted for hundreds of years: prehistoric clans that believed Fleuros god-touched intermarried with them wherever they were found, and their children became the earliest mudangs. Over time, the bloodline was diluted further and further until only traces of latent magic remained, but that was enough for the emerging generation of mudangs to be overwhelmingly Fleuros, trained in the art of exorcism and waging spiritual warfare from a young age. Fascination with the species was growing fast, influenced by the global hype over their magic and wish-granting abilities, and the majority of young Fleuros would leave to seek new opportunities in the cultural mainstream: but still others stayed, and took up arms as their ancestors had to defend their kinsmen against the yawning threat of the unknown.

On Magic

Though born from the union of Life and Death, Fleuros magic is fundamentally different from either. Their core ability - granting wishes - is pact-based. To access any other abilities, such as healing or teleportation, a Fleuros must first convert their siphoned life force into magic and conduct it through their tail. A damaged tail means leakage and ultimately weaker magic: a broken one cuts it off entirely. Siju bypassed this by making a pact with demons (the Devil's Buff) to repair her shattered tail and draw on vast reserves of demonic magic. Once the contract was signed, her biological functions began automatically filtering the granted power into a usable form. The result is a hybrid fusion that is essentially unrecognizable from yet exponentially more powerful than her original Fleuros magic.

Physically, Siju is exactly as strong as you'd expect an untrained teenager to be, which is to say: not very. Against malicious spirits, her sworn enemies, she's a magical powerhouse, trading out versatility for raw strength: unlike normal Fleuros, objects she conjures (a useful, basic skill) will be always be tremendously destructive, exploding at the slightest provocation. Demonic magic is volatile and alien and notoriously difficult for a mortal to wield. Some of it works as you'd expect it to, but most of it... doesn't. This is because demons size each other up by reputation: magic in the spirit world is primarily used to impress and intimidate, with lots of flashy, spectacular and often deadly displays. Siju made a pact for power, and power is what she got. As it turns out, demonic power is not great at doing anything other than blowing everything up into tiny pieces, but she's creative enough to make it work without too much collateral damage.

Siju is immune to most direct forms of Fleuros magic. Demonic magic diametrically opposes the material, being from a different dimension, and the two bounce off each other like magnets. She can't be healed or damaged by other Fleuros (except for Milkmaid, whose powers adhere to game logic) because their magic will just slide off and fizzle into nothing. This works the other way round as well, making it ideal for ritualized fights or friendly bouts of sparring between mudangs. Additionally, Siju's magical signature, being unlike either Fleuros or demonic powers in nature, is impossible to track even for those with the Devil's Buff, since the taboo magic transforms every Fleuros uniquely.

As for how she made the pact in the first place, Siju emerged dripping with spiritual viscera and murderous intent after killing every single spirit that hurt her and her mother, a feat equally impressing and terrifying to most demons, who culturally revere dramatic acts of vengeance and scorn most mortals for being weaker than them. As such, her contract was rather more favorable to her than it might otherwise have been. The life-bleed is fairly slow, an extra fourth of each year: with 4 years counting as 5, she'd live to 62 when she should have lived to 80. Siju doesn't regret it - she'd have made the deal a hundred times over - but is nonetheless acutely aware that she has less time than most, resulting in a certain edge to her ambition, and the determination to grant wishes where she can.

• Siju's birthday is August 15th, also known as Korean Independence Day. Her Chinese zodiac is the Rabbit and her Western sign is Leo.
• Since she only speaks Korean, Siju uses a translator device when traveling overseas. However, she is fluent in written Chinese and often takes shorthand notes with it.
• Siju has chromesthesia or "colored hearing": her vision is overlaid with tints of color and patterns that constantly shift with pitch and timbre. She currently has no idea that this is unusual in any way.