Lily Moon Saehee's Questionnaire

Lily has just recently moved into an apartment in Oakridge, Vancouver, after her brother moved to live at SFU residences. She lives in a 3-bedroom apartment with two other girls whose names she can't really be bothered to remember because it's not like she sees them at all. The shared living space is pretty but in a way that default, untouched settings are made to be universally appealing --- blank white walls, blank greyscale furniture, maybe the odd cheap potted plant. Other than her cutlery and toiletries, the shared living spaces are devoid of any of her personal items, mostly because she doesn't want to be a bother. 

Her room is slightly less empty, but it also appears considerably less lived-in. Her closet, jewelry storage, books, and even desk are organized perfectly as if they have never been touched. Her bed is well-made without a single wrinkle and somehow her room is spotless. Her walls are lined with fake ivy and fairy lights for a little pizzazz, she has a few musician posters and artist prints up, and her room carries a sweet cinnamon-y vanilla scent from the candle she sometimes lights. It's a lovely sight in theory, but if anyone were to walk in they'd be a little spooked, because it appears like a recreation of a place where someone could live, rather than a place where someone actually lives. It can be owed to Lily's insane perfectionism when it comes to cleaning and organizing, but also the fact that she's rarely home to breathe any life into the space.

Before this, she and Luke lived in a... passable apartment in the Downtown Eastside. That apartment felt even less like a home, because Lily had too many jobs and responsibilities to leave any meaningful traces of herself, and because the air hung with the depressing weight of the tragedies that the siblings faced. Luke was the one who spent any time at the apartment at all, but most of it was spent wallowing in his depression and dangerous addictions.

Their parents Moon Gihyeon and Kwon Yesol immigrated to Canada from Busan, South Korea, shortly after getting married, and Lily and Luke were thus born in New Westminster. Lily and Luke have been to Seoul once when they were kids, but they have yet to visit their hometown, and it is doubtful that they ever will, as their parents didn't leave them many connections to family back home.

Right now, Lily works two jobs, one as an emergency medical technician, and another as a barista at an overpriced bubble tea shop in Downtown Vancouver. She's had the EMT job for longer, having completed the necessary training program soon after graduating high school, meanwhile she got the barista job shortly after starting her nursing degree. She's had a few other jobs in between and managed to save money from those, too. Her education is fully paid for by her academic scholarship.

She spends most of her money on paying rent and putting food on the table. She used to pay significantly more when Luke was around, but miraculously he got a full-ride scholarship that included residence and dining hall, so now she just gives him a monthly allowance. Sometimes, if she even has the time, she goes thrifting. Other than those rare occasions, any excess money she makes goes into savings.

She's been through shit in her life and had to pick up the pieces from so many deaths and blamed herself for not overcoming the challenges of her circumstances enough. After standing face-to-face with the evidence of her failure, she realized that overcoming challenges was not enough. She had to get rid of the challenges altogether.

And so, Lily wants nothing more than to eradicate all pain and suffering in the world.

In her eyes, there is no reason why pain should exist. Pain is linked to illness which kills or otherwise forces barriers on people from doing what they want. Pain strips people off of their joys and can lead them down dark paths that would only serve to cause more pain, either to themselves or others. She wants to get rid of even the very thought of causing another person any form of suffering. In her perfect world, nobody would be sick, nobody would die, nobody would ever have to feel sad anymore, and everybody could just exist in an eternal peace.

She would do almost anything to achieve this ambition, though of course her one caveat is that she does not want to create more pain and suffering in the process. She refuses to kill in any circumstance, which might probably be extremely hard for a Contractor because there's situations in which one would expect killing to be necessary, but she wants to prove exactly that killing is never necessary. On a similar note, she doesn't at all want to give up her life for it. Death would mean failure. To the people she promised to take care of. To her ambition. To Luke.

She will stay alive. 

Lily got back from work early one day and witnessed Luke overdosing on drugs.

Her little brother, whom she'd worked so hard to keep alive, whom she poured all her effort into keeping under a roof and nourished with food. Her only living family member in Canada whom she watched grow up and practically raised. Her baby, her precious little brother, her Luke... sprawled all over the kitchen floor and barely clinging to life. If she had come home any later, he would have died, and Lily's life would lose all its meaning. But if only she had come earlier... or if she had just known and paid attention to him. 

Lily realized then that she was too narrow-minded in her ambition to "keep her family alive". She was keeping them alive alright, by making sure that all their basic needs were met. But she was so caught up in that bare minimum that she failed to account for the fact that just because someone was alive, it didn't mean that they were truly living. Someone can be alive but be in excruciating pain. Someone's brain can be intact enough to sustain living but be incredibly mentally ill. In other words, she failed him, perhaps worse than she'd failed her parents. She'd ignored the whole world just for him and yet she couldn't even do her duty of keeping him alive properly. Hell, she didn't even know him outside of the fact that he was her little brother that she had to take care of.

She decided that simply keeping him alive was not enough. This was her final straw. She had to get rid of the concepts of pain and suffering entirely. 

Luke Moon Saebyeok:

Lily's 18y/o brother who is currently lives at and does a double major in Criminology and Psychology at Simon Fraser University. He's brilliantly intelligent but also incredibly reserved and keeps to himself most of the time... and that's about all that Lily really knows about him, because the two never talk outside of financial discussions. Luke blames himself for his family going to shit and is eternally haunted by the sight of his father fucking shooting himself in the head, and as such spent most of his youth in crippling depression and turning to harrowing vices to get by. Lily's biggest regret is never being there for him emotionally, but she presently still doesn't make an effort to get to know him. She thinks they've run out of time to form a proper sibling bond after everything they've been through, and that it would be a lost cause to try to dig deeper when they both kind of know how badly their situation affected them. Luke also thinks their relationship is a lost cause because he's been nothing but a burden to her, and even if he wanted to talk to her, he doesn't want to disturb her and waste more of her time. Lily's relationship with Luke only reminds Lily of her failure... in a way, her expanding her ambition to the entire world acts as a distraction for her from that failure.

Justin Jaden Chachki:

Lily's 24y/o friend from high school, whom she considers her best friend. Or really, her only friend. He's a talented dancer with a charming smile and impeccable fashion sense. Due to family instability, his education was delayed to Lily's cohort, so the two saw each other relatively frequently. They got along quite well because they both related to the idea of growing up far too quickly because of their home situations. They were each other's only real friends in high school and the only person the other stayed in contact with, and sometimes if Lily's schedule permits it they'll have a coffee or thrift together. Much of Lily's fashion and musical sense are influenced by him. Although they have similar family stories, they're extremely different people. While Lily continues to be a loner who drowns herself in her work, content with just being able to get by, Justin found his community in ballroom and performance and doing something with the life he has. He's not satisfied with just staying alive the way Lily is -- he wants to live. Lily secretly admires him for being able to focus on himself, but she thinks it's too late for her to make such a change, that she's too deep into her work and care for others to ever do much for herself.

Luna Cornelia De Angelis Valdez:

Lily's 19y/o coworker at the bubble tea store. They share all the same shifts so it's no surprise that they'd end up getting to know each other eventually. Luna is the oldest of four siblings but lives a very privileged and comfortable life, so she doesn't at all relate to Lily's struggles as the older sister. In contrast to Lily's usual quite gloom, Luna is bright and bubbly, and customers who see their nametags often joke that they should swap names because Lily is more like a "moon" (haha, if only they new her surname). Despite their differences, Lily and Luna get along very well, and Lily enjoys hearing Luna infodump about the books she reads, and she's started to try getting into reading if time permits. Lily's starting to come to view Luna as a younger sister figure, both because Luna keeps making random comments about wanting a heroic older brother, and because Lily subconsciously want to redeem herself. 

Lily's childhood was one of joy, comfort, and relief, much unlike her current life.

Their parents tell them they were from Busan, which is partially true since they lived there before they immigrated to Canada, and that they were given a warm blessing to start a whole new life all across the globe. However, that cannot be further from the truth of their origins. Unlike the bright, metropolitan city of Busan, Moon Gihyeon and Kwon Yesol spent most of their lives in the extremely rural province of Gangwon-do, bordering North Korea. They were high school sweethearts and planned a whole life away from the countryside and hopefully abroad, but their respective families rejected their dreams, and by extension, their relationship. Of course, they rebelled against their families, and in a whirlwind fairytale romance, made it out of Gangwon-do and eloped in the bustling city of Busan, finding the Christian faith along the way. Being 3 years younger, Yesol barely made it past her first year in university when Gihyeon finished. Their dreams of moving abroad were fulfilled when Gihyeon miraculously got a job offering in lower mainland British Columbia upon graduation, and Yesol followed him wherever he went.

Gihyeon and Yesol were sickeningly in love, and the love they had for each other was far surpassed by the love they had for their children. While they weren't materially rich by any means, they sure had a wealth of love and care to provide, and they doted on Lily and Luke with the little things -- taking them out on walks, watching shows, participating in their hobbies. They recognized Lily and Luke's love for music and funded their dreams of playing the violin and piano respectively.  They went to church every Sunday, the predominantly Filipino one down in New Westminster, and made close connections with the people there. Lily and Luke bonded over their shared love for music and later their interest in "reading people's minds". 

Lily did incredibly well in school. Nowadays she's known for her expertise in Biology and Chemistry, and it's true that she picked up the sciences at a significantly quicker pace than anybody else did, but she'd excel at most subjects if she worked hard enough. She mostly kept to herself even from elementary school because she's never been the most socially adept, but she was generally treated well by everybody.

Lily doesn't remember many details about her childhood, but she knows that it was objectively good. For as long as Lily was a child, her family was happy, their life was happy, and she was happy.

Lily has never been in love in the romantic sense, and she doesn't ever want to be.

The practical reason is that she just doesn't have the time to pursue anything romantic. She's too absorbed in all her work to have strong emotional bonds with people, especially none of the romantic kind. She's resigned herself to her fate that she would never date anybody even if she felt like it, 1) because it's a hassle to fit dates and whatnot (she doesn't even know what a relationship entails) into her schedule and budget, 2) she's not socially skilled enough to communicate on that level, and 3) it's unnecessary. Even before her life went to shit, she's never had a crush on anybody beyond admiring their talents. She's unable to particularly regard anyone as higher or more special to her, much less make peace with the concept of monopolizing them; it feels unfair to join lives with someone and be beholden to standards of partnership like that. Justin tells her she's probably aromantic-asexual, and she figures she agrees.

On a deeper level, she just thinks that love only brings more pain, suffering, and uncertainty. She knows that love can work out extraordinarily for people, but she also knows that the pain it causes is just as intense. She's seen the breakdowns people have when their love is not handled well. She's saved people from losing their lives to heartbroken impulses. She lost her faith, her father, her mother, and almost her brother, all because Luke fell in love and tried to show it, and that love was deemed "filthy" and "demonic" and "wrong". Maybe in a perfect world, love would truly be the warm and all-benevolent concept that people seem to enjoy so much, but until she stops encountering the needless exhaustion, anguish, and recklessness that their love demands of them, Lily wants no part in it. 

It's easy to say Lily's worst fear is death, and in some ways, you'd be right. After all, she's dedicating her entire life to widening the gap between people and death as much as possible. One would assume that seeing so much death happen around her would've made her more desensitized to it, but the more she witnesses death, the more she detests it. She thinks it's unnecessary for a life to exist just for it to end. She thinks the concept of a divine punishment taking form of death is bullshit and that if some creator really did exist and "love" their people they wouldn't even think about ending their lives. Lily completely abhors the concept of death, and so she does everything in her power to prevent death from snuffing out as many people's homes and dreams as possible.

But no, Lily doesn't quite 'fear' death. There is a certain complicated relationship with death that comes with having lost both of your parents at a young age, but fear isn't part of that relationship Lily has. She runs from death not out of fear but rather spite. She knows it's inevitable, but the one delusion she allows herself is the thought that maybe if she honed her newfound powers enough she could get rid of it altogether.

Which brings us to Lily's real worst fear -- failure.

In terms of achievements and skills, Lily has admittedly always been running on a consistent high. Where the things completely out of her control fail, the actions and circumstances she has full control over completely succeed. She's Asian and while her parents weren't super strict by any means they always pushed her to success, so she already has that innate fear of failure. Her absolute horror in the face of it, however, manifested in her years of working and working and working to keep her and Luke's lives afloat. If there's one thing that had to go well in her life, it was her work, and she's never faltered there. But because she's come to associate her successes with survival, she consequentially associates failure with... well... death. She believes that one minute slip-up could completely void all her successes, and so she painstakingly works to perfect all the finer details, and perfect them even more.

She has no room to fail. Her life depends on it.

Lily doesn't really have many particularly prized things. She's learned not to put much emotional weight on non-living objects because of how easily they can slip away -- she readily sacrificed her bag in the freezing Russian contract because she could easily replace all of those things. When their mother died and they had to figure out how to stay alive, they ended up having to sell a lot of their non-essential things, and Lily had to say goodbye to her books, her plushies, and her violin. She's resigned to the fact that she must prioritize practicality over sentimentality.

That being said, there is one thing that she particularly cares for more than anything else, and that she will actually protect -- her thick silver ring with the rod of Asclepius on it. In her day-to-day life, she wears it on her right ring finger, but after almost losing it in Yakutsk, she's made the mental note to keep it on her person but not flaunt it around people.

The first reason it's so important to her is the circumstances surrounding it and how she obtained it. Luke was a month into drug rehab and was living at the center itself, and Lily happened to be free that day, so she decided to visit him with his favorite homemade bulgogi. That was the first time in what seemed like months since the siblings were able to have a conversation and for once, things seemed like they would be okay. It was like they were kids again and knew each other. Towards the end of her visit, Luke told Lily about a very obscure thrift store that he remembered being nearby, and that "you should go find something nice for yourself while you're out doing nice things for everybody else". Lily laughed it off, went to the thrift store, and immediately had one of those destined Moments upon seeing that ring. The rod of Asclepius, symbol for the Greek god of healing and medicine, the rightful mark of a physician -- it almost felt like a birthright for Lily to have, and so she grabbed it immediately.

The next reason it's so important to her is the power it seemed to have granted her. When the ring made contact with her skin, she felt revitalized, and the little energy it gave her got her through finals season. When she tripped or scratched herself, the ring would glow and stitch her wounds up till they were good as new. Lily knew magic existed, but she'd never witnessed it in person, so having it come from herself was a little crazy. Even on days when she wasn't wearing the ring, if she happened to be touching something with the staff of Asclepius on it, she would still exhibit the same effects.

Lily no longer believed in God, but this felt all too much like some kind of divine acknowledgment of her dedication to healing and life. A medal, perhaps, for keeping Luke alive this long and even finally talking to him about something of substance. So because she associates it so strongly with that one happy memory with Luke, as well as the powers it seemed to have granted to her, Lily protects that ring with her life.

Honestly, she's just absolutely fucking dogshit at socializing like a normal person.

She has excellent grades and cordial relationships with the people she meets. She does well at her jobs. She's just not great when it comes to organic social situations because most interactions she has with people are of the problem-solving kind. Where she sets up the atmosphere with polite corporate or child-speak and let her knowledge do the talking. Recently she's been trying her darndest to improve her social skills but she still finds it hard to divorce a person from their status and speak to them like they're a real human being and not a Co-Worker or a Patient or a Responsibility.

Not only does she have issues with appropriate tone, but also with topics of conversation. What the fuck do people talk about? The only people she talks about anything other than work or school with are Justin and Luna and they're usually the ones initiating conversations with unique topics. Lily doesn't really know how to do small talk or ease into more in-depth conversations. She approaches conversations with an attitude of "What would you like? What issues do you have that I may help you with?" and not much else because that really is just what she's used to.

On a deeper level, and Lily can't clock this for herself, Lily's biggest problem is how consumed she is by her work and responsibilities. She thinks it's alright because she's just so used to it, but the very fact that she is used to work being everything to her is proof that she is not alright. She doesn't have much of an identity aside from being the hard worker. The lifesaver.

Lily Moon is not a person. She is but a vessel through which healing and help can be imparted to others.

And the fact that she is content with this is the scariest part.

Lily wakes up at 5:30 everyday. Not a minute earlier, not a minute later. The time she goes to sleep can vary but the time she wakes up is always the same.

She gets up and makes her bed perfectly. Not a single crease or wrinkle. It's easy, because she doesn't move much, if not at all, in her sleep. She follows a strict wash schedule that she has never missed. As she showers, she plays an audio recording of her reading out her notes for class. She cannot be caught lacking.

After her wash routine, she prepares her meals for the day. This is the part of her routine that she can afford to be flexible with. She usually cooks a breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and packs the latter two in her bag to eat the rest of the day since she definitely won't be at home. Sometimes she makes bigs batches if she's free on the weekends and just portions them appropriately. However, since becoming a contractor, she packs enough food to last 3 days, not really for herself but in case anyone she's with gets hungry enough.

After eating breakfast, she dresses up. She is very consistent with her makeup style and doesn't tweak it unless for special occasions. She is also very consistent in the colors and silhouettes she wears. That's literally just so much easier than crafting new things out of nowhere. Justin is great at it, but Lily does not quite care enough.

She packs her bag with whatever she needs for the day, slings it over her shoulder, checks through everything to make sure she did not forget anything, and leaves the house.

She is comforted by her consistency in this routine.

Lily would find this an odd question. Why would she go anywhere without looking her best? She's always made it a habit to dress to the nines with whatever she has in every situation. It leaves a good impression on the people around her and certainly would impress prospective employers. It surrounds her with an air of put-togetherness. Her personal life may be chaotic, or incredibly boring, but if she's dressed well, people aren't going to notice anything wrong with her. So Lily always does her best to look "her best".

Anyways, in the hypothetical situation that begs for more perfection than she already regularly gives, she would start getting ready a full hour before the timeframe she usually allocates towards grooming. She already wears nice outfits anyway, but she would try to pick the ones that look the classiest and are made out of the strongest materials that would not crease easily. She'd amp up the accessories, leaving no layer looking empty or unfinished. She'd spend the most time on her makeup, making sure everything is equal, there are no smudges, and if there's glitter, the glitter stays perfectly in place. She'll fix her bangs in place and ensure the waves in her hair are consistent. She'll scrutinize every detail of her outfit, her face, and her hair, and even every detail of whatever purse and items she brings. She will leave no room for imperfection.

Lily's birthday is on the 25th of October. (A/N: taken from the birthday of Stray Kids' Lee Know lol)

She's never really done anything on her birthday since historically she's always been too busy to even remember it. When she does remember it, and if there's even more time in the day, she'll eat some cake from Dairy Queen. She tries to do more for others, like get Justin and Luke presents or straight up just give them money, and maybe buy them a fancier cake. But for her birthday, she tends to not think there's anything worth celebrating, so she's never put in the effort. 

Since becoming a contractor, she's been hit with the terrifying fragility of her own life. All this time protecting and celebrating others who previously had it worse than her made her forget that she, too, was living a life of her own and that she, too, could lose it at any moment. It was then that she realized maybe there was worth in a little celebration. That Justin's insistence on doing something for her wasn't because he wanted to waste her time with obligatory niceties but rather because he viewed her life with the same care that she did his.

So, for her next birthday, Lily will make sure that she's completely free. She'll take someone out, maybe Justin or Luke or both, honestly, and they'll eat ramen and bingsu together. This is where her plan stops, but apparently, the other two are planning more for her, and this time she'll let it happen instead of trying to convince them that she's not worth the inconvenience. It's not an inconvenience, she recognizes, when these people genuinely want to do something nice for her. It's not an inconvenience to others for her to want and enjoy things. Wanting and enjoying things is part of living a life, and if Lily can't even acknowledge that part of staying alive for herself, how would she ensure others keep that privilege?