Everything about the beginning of Changsub's life was perfectly normal. He had a mother and a father - both loving, he would've said, if you had asked him then. Sure, they did not have a lot of money, and yes, both of his parents worked so much he knew his grandparents' better than he knew them at the time. But, that wasn't strange, not at that age, not where they lived.
Everyone he knew, every kid's parent at school and almost everyone in his apartment building worked at the Samsung Electronic factories. It was a good job, a stable job, with long hours that left a worn out looks on faces but kept families fed. That's what being an adult was, he thought. And that was normal their normal - his, everyones. Normal meant simple joys, it meant weekend trips to McDonalds if he had been good, it meant getting to be wild and play outside with all the other children who had little supervision just like him.
Everywhere was a playground to young Changsub. The playful kind of child who made a big game of it all, a bigger joke of the rest of it. Each tired adult in his life wondered at the creation of him. Where had a child like him come from? What had that spirit been born from? Changsub had made up his own origin, a superhero-manhwa-anime-newspapercomicstrip-sundaycartoon kind of story. Little Changsub had been born from the factory his parents worked at, been given to them as a reward for all their toil, to make two lonesome people come together as a family. The great Lee Changsub was there to serve and protect, beat down bad guys one laugh at a time.
Nothing stayed normal forever. At the age of five and three quarters, his parents sat down a mostly toothless, very goofy and pudgy looking Changsub on their way too big bed and told him he was going to be a big brother soon. This was still within the range of normal, no one who heard would puzzle at the mention of a sibling if you told them but for Changsub this was wild news. Wildly good news. Finally he would have someone to help him be the hero, a side kick to protect until they could grow up to a hero themselves. At age five and three quarters normal had become being aware of what alone could feel like, so constant company would change it all.
Nothing could've prepared him for just how much everything changed. Once Hayoung was born, Changsub didn't spend much time at home, or much time with his sister at all. When he would, he would only see his father and sister, and be told to be very still and very quiet, that the women of the house needed a lot, a lot of rest. Changsub understood, he knew the start and end of things were difficult, and it's the bits inbetween the big parts when you got to have the care free, no rules kind of fun. It was just a matter of waiting.
Nothing came together in the end. At least, not in any expected way. It took a long time for Changsub stop living with his grandparents. Not even a little six year old boys concept of long, but long for everyone involved. When he did, he thought they were finally ready for normal. But the normal he got wasn't the normal he remembered. Mommy was still the same with him, she still scolded him when he did or said something too silly - and she still had her powers of knowing he was awake and thinking about turning on the light to play just a little bit longer were working. But she seemed so tired now with daddy now, the kind of tired he got after a long day with no naps, or when he hadn't eaten very much but still had to keep going without food. The kind of tired that made you mean when you didn't mean it, that made you snap and kick and shake around until your face turned red.
Changsub knew adults had their own version of all of that, even before all of this. That their voice turned super sonic in a way that made walls shake, or very very quiet, so you knew trouble was coming if you heard the low sound. They also sometimes got wet faced and red and shakey too, and rarest of all their feet also stomped at the ground and they made demands he could not understand. What he really didn't understand at the time was why was his mother so tired? All he knew was that his father was working more, and that family weekends were spent with his grandparents more than at home, and that night time meant either his sister kept one of them up or the walls filled up with his parent's whispers.
Changsub remembers more what his mother's goodbye did to his father than he remembers her goodbye at all. Hayoung was almost two when it happened, and Changsub was a full grown up eight years old and more of a big boy than he had been when it all started going downhill. What had been thought to be a momentary hardship stretched on, past the hush hush conversations when he should've been asleep to just silences, past stale birthdays and Christmases, past it all. Changsub remembers bits and pieces - knows his father pleaded, knows his mother couldn't or wouldn't shake off her tired, knows she couldn't see how they had all come together anymore and how it could still be possible, couldn't see her family that was right there waiting for her to come into her own, and all she saw was leaving.
Changsub became the child of divorce and it hadn't been sudden but it felt it. Mostly because before the finality of it, his normal had only shifted at home but remained mostly the same elsewhere. But then everyone knew they had gone from three to four to three again and friends became strangers, neighbors became weird glances with funny frowny eyebrows and no one was laughing at his jokes anymore. No one but Hayoung. For a while, he held on to that, practiced his powers on her and taught her what he knew because even with her limited vocabulary - man could that girl make a crowd smile!
Things didn't trip Changsub up often. He fell often but he always dusted himself off and laughed and ran harder. This would be no exception. If you run in enough circles and for long enough, people will join in for the game of it or ask why. And questions were always the start to a conversation that he could keep going for hours. He made his new normal work, kept making jokes until people learnt to accept or overlook, until most didn't want to make a punchline out of him because they'd rather let him make his own. Some still tried, more with Hayoung than with him - so Changsub eventually learnt how to be strong, not so he could fight but to be a barrier between the mean cold world and his precious sister.
Things remained difficult at home. As they got older, his father struggled past the divorce and straight into how to keep a family afloat on his own. Changsub grew up with memories of his grandparents help and his father's shamed indebted thankfulness that they did. But soon they got too old, needed more care than they could give and Changsub was thankful it happened when he was old enough to step forward and help. The men of the family started to work as best they could, raising Hayoung to know ease and joy in every place they knew hardship existed. He started to work, anywhere he could, from newspaper rounds to convenience stores to local markets, he was trusted to do it all. This was his way of serving and protecting now.
Things eventually fell into a rhythm. An overwhelming rhythm, the kind that went too fast and too hard and lasted for too long but Changsub was well suited for a high frequency kind of life. He would work and study, work to study, study to work. It was all related - he knew and learnt from the life around him that jokes would only take him as far as the factory doors, and as fine as that was, it wasn't enough for their family, because the middle of their collective story as due for an upward rise.
Being an adult at too young of an age didn't mean he had to stop being a child. Changsub still convinced them to take drives out somewhere fun and cheap every so often, even if it was just for some ice cream or a hike. At the still small but big sounding age of sixteen, normal and childhood shifted for him once again. It was winter and they were driving back from McDonalds, Changsub had enough to get everyone happy meals today and Hayoung got gifted all the toys within which made it an even more special occasion. They were happy, it had been a good day, the kind of moment spent with the people you love that makes you forget how tired you are, how hard and long you've been going in a life most would call unfair. But bad and good came all at once that day. The roads were icy and it was late, late enough for people to be more dangerous and more stupid than ever. Normal can be a car speeding down a cold, dark road and slamming into you, into another car on another lane. Normal can be seeing it all happen in slow motion. These things happen.
Being gifted, actually gifted, filled with actual powers born from real desperation to help where no one could, was a surprise. A God given surprise. Because little grown up sixteen year old Changsub was able to stop normal from happening. Was able to see the car coming the road as the light turned from red to yellow to green, able to feel the impact as they lurched to go. The driver hit the passenger side first, with enough speed and force to send them flying for miles but they didn't. It was a smack and then nothing - nothing but the air caught in his lungs, his father's hands gripped on the steering wheel as his shoulders hunched up for safety, airbags only just starting to deploy, toys mid air and Hayoung's hair floating where the impact had left it.
Being caught in a force field was strange but being the one who made it was stranger. For too long everything and everyone stopped, for a radius so wide that even at that time of the night, people took notice. Calls were made, police notified as the radius became smaller and smaller and the only one paralyzed was the red faced drunk man in the half destroyed car that had slammed into theirs. By the time the authorities came the Lee family was crying, free from the hold that just let them breathe and cry hot tears of worry and confusion as Changsub stared around in a panic. Because this couldn't be real, people don't stop things this bad from happening, do they?
Later, at the hospital, people in suits sat down his family to tell them things like this do happen. That he could learn more about how if he went to Seoul with them, to understand this better, to set out to find his new normal that could no longer be truly normal ever again. That's where Changsub learnt that he hadn't been wrong about himself, about his potential to serve and protect. The Safe Haven taught him that he had the power to do good when good was called upon, to at least stop bad in it's tracks before it even happened. That spring the Haven helped him be one mouth less to feed at home. housing him as he finished his studies and applied to universities.
Later, Changsub's dedication paid off. His school of choice accepted him, full scolarship and all. He was on a path of doing good as a vet, of protecting those who needed protection. Eventually his father was able to quit his job at the factory and with some help from his grandparents and a small loan from the banks in order to open a small korean restaurant. Lee Byung Ho was now the proud owner of a fine establishment, just a local place near to where they grew up all their lives, a chance to be a part of the community, interact and give joy and warmth to all those he knew needed it.
Later, he came to see the grand stories he told as a boy were dreams they had all managed to realize. The Lee's were a family of heroes that suffered as hard as they won in the end. And sure, there were still hard days, they all picked roads in life that guaranteed it, but the good days, the small to big victories, the bits inbetween the hard parts, they were worth always getting up from and trying again, to do things better, to get things right for them, for everyone.
Defense Powers Force Field Manipulation Shield Construction Aversion Field Entrapment Fields Body Immobilization Enhanced Durability Kinetic Energy Absorption Kinetic Ricochet
Name: Lee Changsub D.O.B + Age: February 26th 1991 + 26 Residence: Sindang, South Korea but born in Paldal (Suwon), Gyeonggi, South Korea. Job: Veterinarian at Itaewon Animal Hospital Transport: Ford Focus ST Education: Degree in veterinary medicine from Konkuk University Pets: A mini pig called Armadillo Tattoos: "Do not be defeated from yourself" on his right shoulder blade, “So do not fear, for I’m with you. Do not be dismayed, for I’m your God” from (Isaiah 41:10) on his right forearm and a pocket watch on his right pec, pointing at 3:21 with “Change the game” written above it. Positives: Playing the piano and guitar, volunteers at pet shelters mainly but any volunteer work available to him he'll try to do, has been boxing since he was in highschool, started skateboarding in middle school, has been playing pranks all his life, number one in making silly faces, extremely good with children - comes from raising his sister but also from a natural love of kids, the kind of person everyone feels chill to calm around. Negatives: Smoking, relies too much on take out for food, doesn't keep the tidiest of houses (it's not dirty! just cluttered), likes his caffeine and energy drinks, sings really loudly in the shower (and elsewhere) - but at least he can sing well. |