InsaneJournal

Kei
home is what you make it
NAME. Kei
DOB/AGE. 75, December 30th, 1948
OCCUPATION. Owner of Kei's Delights
SPECIES. Gumiho - Hearth and Home
HOMETOWN. Daeseong-dong, (South) Korea
HOME SHRINE. Destroyed in the war between North & South Korea
RESIDENCE. Apartment above his sort-of-sentient shop

Kei is, above all else, a gentle soul. He's soft and unassuming and very shy and has a strong sense of empathy for those around him which is both a blessing and a curse: he's exceptionally good at putting himself in the shoes of others which serves him well in his day to day life but is also means he's very susceptable to feeling too much, too deeply and hurting himself unintentionally in the process. He struggles with the volume of wrongs in the world and with his own impotence in being able to fix them. All he can offer is what little he has with his own gift and he does that to the fullest extent that he can. It's never enough, but it's all he can do.

Kei feels things extremely deeply across the entire spectrum of human emotion. He feels the most euphoric joys and the most crushing lows, and his emotions are plain to see on his face. He wears his heart on his sleeve and his emotions on his face, those big eyes can't hide anything. He's been known to sob at emotional adverts on the television and be moved to tears by music. He just feels, and that is, in and of itself, a lot to handle. It does mean he can brighten up a room with infectious joy, though, his whole face lights up like the dawn when he smiles. Likewise, though, when he's sad, he truly looks heartbroken and like a kicked puppy: only the most heartless would feel unmoved by Kei's sorrow.

As authentic as he can be while living as a human, Kei despises lying and liars, understanding the necessity of deception but not approving of it. He's aware that's hypocritical: he's been in hiding for a long time and has been masquerading as a human to avoid any unwanted attention, letting those he knows think of him as such but can't stand it when others lie to him. Once you have a friend in Kei, you have a friend for life but he's not one to abide liars: lie to him and this is one of the only things that might break that which tethers a friendship together.

An absolute introvert, Kei faces the public with his choice of job as it's a way of getting the innate satisfaction of knowing that he is fulfilling his purpose, but it takes a toll on him. He spends his downtime alone, or surrounded by as much nature as he can, taking long walks in the rain or sitting alone somewhere where he can recharge. There's nothing he likes more than some alone time where he doesn't have to talk to anybody. He wishes that he had someone to share that with and hopes that when he finds someone he can be close to--in whatever form that takes--he can recharge in their company.

As creative as he is idealistic, Kei finds that drawing and painting are useful outlets for him and he can always be found with a pencil and a sketchbook nearby though he has a number of mediums that he uses. Inspiration strikes at the most random of times and he likes to be prepared. Many of his paintings and drawings are up in the cafe but he hasn't signed them, so no one knows that they're his work as he'd feel too shy to get recognition for them.

He tries to see the best in everyone, even if he struggles to do the same for himself, and is prone to giving second, third, fourth chances to people who haven't proven they would be willing to change. This can lead to him being hurt but his relentless belief in the inherent goodness of people could be inspiring on its own.

Though not particularly outspoken, Kei is passionate about the things he believes in and the people he supports. He has a deep sense of loneliness, a void in his life that he doesn't know how to fill and tries to do so by being there for others and the community, trying his very best to achieve something in the hopes that he feels less alone in the world when really he probably just needs friends.

That isn't to say he doesn't have an uglier side, even if it deeply shames him. He's aware of his people-pleasing tendencies which lead to him being overloaded and ultiamtely often letting people down because he can't do everything he's signed up to, which can lead him to feel extremely guilty and become avoidant for a while, shutting the world out while he deals with the anxiety of failure. He's prone to fits of melancholy where the world is just too much and he, again, shuts down and pushes people away. Though he is never mean, he responds to people trying to push him to talk with uncharacteristic aggression and surlishness that doesn't befit his normal persona. As much as he needs friends, he's also reluctant to put himself out there and risk getting hurt so many of his relationships are superficial at best and he has no idea how to deepen them to make them something more.

Kei's specific gift is attuned to the hearth and home: he's able to make any space feel safe and welcoming to those that step inside, creating an atmosphere that's a home from home to all weary wanderers who step inside his door. He's channelled this into a small bakery and coffee shop called Kei's Delights, which is well known for its baked goods that somehow taste exactly like your grandmother/mother/etc made them. Due to the number of years he has been in the building, his magic has fused with it to give the whole building a sort of magical sentience, and this has begun the process of replacing his Shrine (something previously though to be impossible but Kei has been continuning to live up to his nature as a guardian spirit in this new place).

Kei has the innate ability to tell if someone is a good or bad person, too. It's more of a gut feeling than anything else: he can tell if someone's generally a person of ill-intent or not, or if they have a good heart even if their actions are somewhat questionable. He never lets this affect how he treats them, though.

He has a level of magical resistance, through his fox marble, he is able to absorb the essence of others--either temporarily or permanently--which makes his own abilities stronger, and can gift his marble to a beloved that would allow them to have a small amount of a random Gumiho power. He is immortal, but not invulnerable. When he's in his true form (his nine-tailed fox form) he can communicate telepathically: he's able to speak directly into someone's mind though he can't read any thoughts, just project what he wants to say.

TW: Abusive relationship
If you asked Kei how he came into the world, he couldn't tell you. His earliest memories are as a little fox kit and small child, running around his temple in what is now part of the DMZ in Korea. It is as if he popped out of the ground one day, and perhaps that is true, but Kei doesn't know for sure. What he does remember is that his shrine was only a small one but it was filled with love from the local people that lived there, especially when it became apparent that there was a spirit living there. They would bring treats like cakes and candied fruits, and Kei would nibble on these with delight, staying hidden and granting blessings on those who asked for them as and when he could within his gift. It became apparent, quite quickly, what his gifts were and more people would come to ask for his blessing. Sometimes they even brought meat for him, and those people received an extra special blessing from a very happy little Gumiho kit.

He wasn't even five human years old when the war started. He didn't even understand, really, what was going on. Instead, all he found was that his shrine suddenly stopped getting visitors, or if he did get visitors, they came with very little offerings and a request for things he couldn't give them. When people came back, they were mad at him, and cursed the spirit for not protecting their loved ones. Kei, confused and hurt, didn't understand what was happening until soldiers marched on the town he lived in and attacked.

They destroyed his shrine, but more than that, they hurt the people in his village. The people might have been mad at him, but they were still his people and it was his duty to help them if he could. He was too late by the time he'd rushed away from the damaged shrine and weakend from the shock of his home being destroyed to stop the soliders from attacking the village, from ransacking it and destroying it. All he was able to do was shift into a human form, cradle one of those that had remained faithful to him as she died. He held her in his arms as her life left her and felt a rage like no other rip through him.

The next few years are still nothing but a bloody blur to him. Kei remembers fury, white-hot and boiling uner his skin, he remembers blood and wetwarmdripping and he remembers feasting. He does his best, now, to not think of those times, ashamed at having lost control of himself so thoroughly that he played right into the beliefs of those who felt that his kind had lost their way and were nothing but hollow monsters. By the time he came out of the other side of his feral period, the war between what was now North and South Korea was over and a thick zone was established that neither would cross. It was a new world, now, and Kei had to figure out how to live in it.

He hadn't found his way out alone, though, in fact he had been hurt by the last soldier whose heart he had eaten. The man had managed to shoot Kei in the leg before his heart was torn from his chest, and it was after this that Kei had stumbled to a nearby town, bloody and injured, and looking like a white fox with only one tail. He'd collapsed somewhere and had been found, rushed to a veterinary clinic where he was treated, and his saviour kept him to nurse him back to health. It took a few weeks, but eventually, Kei's grip on the fox form faded and he ended up naked in a stranger's living room, his tails wrapped around him to protect his dignity and ears standing tall atop his head.

It was with this friend that Kei learned about the world as it was: the 1950s were a bustling time elsewhere in the world, even if that wasn't the case in Korea. And this fellow supernatural, a warlock, offered to help Kei learn and find his own way, if he wanted.

In his naivety, he agreed. He wanted to see the world, he wanted to learn new things and he wanted, so desperately, to belong somewhere. He felt alone and adrift in a world that didn't need him and he had no idea where he could find others like him, if there were others like him. Gumiho, he had been born to understand, tended not to see others of their own kind: they stayed with their shrines, lived and died along with the people that prayed to them. He'd already broken the rules by surviving. What was one more?

The warlock quickly convinced Kei that they were in love, and maybe Kei might have been: someone who saved him, the first to show him kindness in his short life, the first to treat him like he was something special. It seemed easy when the warlock suggested they be bound more permanently, with spells and exchange of tokens. He gave Kei a bracelet (unbeknownst to Kei charmed with a binding spell so he couldn't be more than five hundred yards from the warlock without feeling unimaginable pain) and Kei, in turn, was to give him his yeowoo guseul. The warlock took his marble and had it fashioned into a pendant for him to wear around his neck. With it, he developed an ability related to luck and fortune which he used to gamble his way into a fortune, buying and selling stocks, raking it in in casinos as he dragged Kei around the world, holding his magic hostage and the Gumiho right along with it.

Looking back on it, Kei isn't particularly proud of how long it took him to realise that he was being used. To be fair to him, he had no other frame of reference for what it was like to be loved be someone, or, indeed, to love. For nearly thirty years, Kei was stuck, tied to a warlock who "loved" him, but really only wanted his powers. By the mid 1980s, however, Kei had digested enough media to understand on some level that what they had wasn't love. Still, every attempt to leave resulted in failure, the binding bracelet (leaving an indelible scar on his wrist as it burned him with each attempt to flee) combined with the warlock's uncanny luck meant that Kei was unsuccessful until one day, the warlock's luck came back to bite him in the ass. He'd been on a winning streak three months long in the early 1990s in Las Vegas when he won big against the wrong person. Someone from the Italian Mafia who had managed to keep a modicum of power following their decline in the 1980s was suspicious of the warlock's lucky streak and followed him back to his hotel room where he found Kei in his Gumiho form. Rather than hurting Kei, he laid in wait and killed the warlock when he came in, ripping the marble off his neck.

In a panic that he'd get trapped again, Kei launched at the mobster and killed him, ripping out his heart and swallowing it, along with his marble again. He had the presence of mind to shower and grab the warlock's winnings--and the cash that the mobster had on him, too--and then fled with a duffle bag of clothes and cash.

He travelled America for the next ten years, money safe and gathering interest after he'd managed to put it into a savings account, depositing little bits at a time so it didn't look too suspicious, keeping a low profile and finding connections to get him 'human' documentation that he was able to get refreshed every few years. Currently, the documentation he has says he was born in 1997.

When the war hit, Kei lay low where he was somewhere in Nebraska. He didn't know what to do to help, and so stayed out of the way, assisting with what little he could, offering refuge for those that needed it. In 2004, right before the end of the war, some hunters found his location and he had to pack up his things and run, starting over somewhere new.

The next year, 2005, he settled in New York City and with a little bit of help from a kindly shifter, Kei bought the building that would be come Kei's Delights and started his business. It started as a small clothing shop but it didn't seem right, then changed course in 2015 to become what is now the bakery cafe with electic, but homey decorations and he lives above it as he owns the whole building.

He's finally settled, and though he's got several regular patrons, he's not done a great job at making real, true, friends.

The war was a waste of life, and proved--again--that the winning side never win gracefully and instead trample and stomp over everything.

Kei loves humans, he was created to help protect and look after them and he takes that very seriously. He doesn't like the pro-human sentiment that's around currently but he understands where it's coming from. Doesn't sting any less when some of his regulars are leaving shitty leaflets on his countertops, though.



NAME. ali TZ. gmt PB. jeon jungkook
CONTACT. discord / dropbox CONTACT INFO. discord on request
AVAILABILITY. most weekdays