➥ added a note: Ailun is the kind of person who’s always being ridiculously stupid, almost never showing a serious side. He’s a natural at lifting people’s spirits, or completely annoying the hell out of them. He can be extremely irritating, often without realizing it, and he’s not exactly great at picking up on social cues. Hints tend to fly right over his head. Right now, he’s actually in the process of getting diagnosed with high-functioning autism, which has helped make a bit more sense of how he sees and interacts with the world.
➥ Even when his friends are down, Ailun is there to do something idiotic to try and make them laugh or stun them. In a way, being funny is his way of caring, even if it means never truly addressing the core of anyone’s problems, including his own. He’s never been comfortable opening up about the things that have hurt him, avoiding those feelings by burying them under jokes and distractions. To him, revisiting the past feels too overwhelming, so he keeps it locked away, even from those closest to him. He never talks about his feelings, he's too afraid and runs away from them. The guy who never seems to take anything seriously, and that’s just how he likes it. Being a source of entertainment gives him purpose, and he relishes being the person who makes people happy, even if it means sacrificing his own vulnerability.
➥ Conflict is especially hard for Ailun. He struggles with confrontation, arguments, or moments where emotions run high. If people around him are fighting or something serious happens, he tends to shut down. He’ll minimize the situation, go quiet, or have responses that sound as if he's on autopilot. He hates tension, hates when things feel broken. Instead of addressing the problem, he’ll try to move past it as fast as possible, hoping that time will make it disappear.
➥ Interestingly, this way of living doesn’t leave Ailun feeling lonely or super depressed. He finds real fulfillment in talking to people and trying to get them to like him, seeing it as his purpose and way of connecting. Although few people ever see beyond this side of his, he only wants to have fun. It gives him a sense of belonging and value without the weight of vulnerability. He’d rather be defined by being ridiculous than any other aspect of who he is, and he’s perfectly content with that. For Ailun, making others laugh is a way to heal himself.

➥ added a note: Ailun as a child, felt out of place and constantly confused. His earliest memories were of kids whispering behind his back, of teachers sighing when he spoke. He was different, and everyone noticed. People called him strange, too odd, too irritating. There was even quiet suspicion that he might be neurodivergent, but no one cared enough to find out. Instead, they just labeled him. He was bullied often, mocked for the way he was, the things he liked, and how he’d drift off into his own world. Overtime, this caused him to completely go mute during his childhood. There was only one place he felt accepted, and that was the ice rink.
➥ His mother, a retired ice skating champion in China, introduced him to the sport at an early age. She had been serious about skating most of her life, and when she saw that Ailun shared a passion about skating, she began teaching him herself. They’d skate together for hours, and though she pushed him to be precise with his technique, it never felt like pressure. It was their thing. He competed, and he was good. Judges often commented on his form and control, how composed and fluid he was on the ice.
➥ His mother had always been his everything. She raised Ailun entirely on her own after his father walked out shortly after he was born. The man couldn’t handle the couldn’t accept that she had come out as a lesbian. Instead of facing it, and trying to coparent Ailun, he disappeared. No calls, no support, not even a single attempt to reach out. He made it clear he wanted nothing to do with Ailun because of how rejected he felt by his mother. His mom let him leave easily, never begged for money, never asked for help. Instead, she poured everything she had into her son. She worked multiple jobs just to provide for them, often running on little sleep. Even so, she always made time for the rink. It was their space. No matter how tired she was, she’d meet Ailun on the ice.
When Ailun was six, they moved to the U.S. hoping for better opportunities. For a while, things felt like they were finally falling into place. But life had other plans. When Ailun was twelve, his mother was diagnosed with cancer. It came quickly, and it developed rapidly. One day she was still standing beside him, smiling even as the illness began to take its toll, and then she was gone. He remembered standing beside her hospital bed, holding her hand, feeling like he was watching everything go blank inside him.
Her death broke something in him. The grief was too much to handle. But he didn’t cry at first. He didn’t scream. He just… Shut down. He stopped talking about her. Stopped skating. Stopped feeling much of anything for a while. Just empty.
➥ After her passing, Ailun was taken in by his maternal grandmother, who had recently accepted a job in the States. She took him in the best she could, and though she couldn’t fill the void his mother left, she never tried to. She simply stayed, and for Ailun, that was enough. Still, he never spoke about his mother. He wouldn’t even say her name. The ice rink became unbearable. He quit skating entirely. It hurt too much to return to the place where he spent so much time with her.
➥ In middle school and early high school, Ailun was painfully shy and socially awkward. He kept his head down, said little, and tried to disappear the best he could. He didn’t want attention. He was already struggling from losing his mother, but then came another dilemma. A female teacher, that Ailun trusted and filled the place his mother left, ended up grooming Ailun for two years. She used his silence and vulnerability from his grief against him. No one knew. And when she was finally arrested, he chose to remain anonymous when being interviewed. Even now, most people don’t know. It robbed him of his trust in others, especially women, and left him confused, guilty, and with anxiety he still struggles to comprehend. For awhile, he was terrified of girls, but he didn't despise them. Therapy didn’t come until much later. He still doesn’t like talking about it. But he’s trying to work through it now.
➥ After those two years, something in him cracked. Suddenly, Ailun wasn’t quiet and awkward anymore. Overnight, he became loud and hyper. He learned that if he was funny enough, no one asked questions. If he wasn't serious, he could even ignore his own issues. People were concerned. They saw the change and didn’t know what to make of it. But Ailun knew exactly what he was doing: distraction. He crafted a version of himself that could outrun his own problems.
➥ It wasn’t until he joined the football team that he found something real again. The team became a second family. They pulled him out of his own head. With them, he could feel accepted. By the end of high school, Ailun had fully reinvented himself, he was extremely extroverted. After graduation, he and his friends made the decision to move to Korea.