joong-ki park || district one || fin

At first glance, it is understandable when the claim that you shouldn't have a care in the world is made, whether to your face or behind your back. Coddled in silk scarves and possessing hardly a want in your youth, you represent a member of one of many of the few elite families in your district. You were not quite royalty, but you might as well have been. Or so you've been told, anyway.

Life for you began surrounded by white walls and warm embraces, a luxurious treatment following an easy labor for your mother and you alike in the finest hospital in all of One. Even as a child, you were quiet, but throughout it all the doctor reassured your mother that you were fine, and that there would be nothing wrong with you in the long run.

But outside, oblivious to all, stood your father, ice filling a gaze where most would find warmth. Your first failure already marked on paper, mere hours after air circulated through your lungs for the first time.

And oh, it most certainly would not be the last. Not by a long shot.

From the first moments that conscious thought became capable in your brain, you were held to nothing less than pure, total perfection in each and everything you did. Where others would call their childhood carefree and pure, a world without worry, you had no such thing. Chaos had no place in a world ruled by order, and your father would make sure you knew that at all costs.

And so you were trained, so much that by the time you reached school age that the word perfection was not just a lifestyle but your religion. Perfection, in the form of crisp, polished suits left unwrinkled by proper posture, perfection, drilled through their skull in forms such as basic manners and a smooth, graceful gait, perfection, so acute that to have so much as a hair out of line meant a smack on the back on the head and a command to go back to your room to fetch a comb. Such was the way of life as a youth, and such was your dedication that the word relaxation didn’t enter your vocabulary until it appeared on a vocabulary quiz in school.

And if it was your religion, you would follow it dutifully for much of your youth. And yet, even as you grew and school became work instead of play, it never seemed to be enough. It was as if the definition of perfection between you and your father were two different things, for all the good that your effort did you. You could study for hours on end, days in a row, forfeiting pleasure in favor of duty, and yet at the end, all you would find was his disapproval, only because one time, a textbook had turned out to be a more tempting pillow than object of study. Your grades may have been at the top of your class even as a youth but he didn't care, for the slightest showing of weakness from his own child was a disappointment no matter the circumstances. He was a god, and expected you to be the same, and gods did not fall asleep on the job.

Frustration had already seeped into your psyche by the time puberty hit, and yet loyalty did not waver. This had been what you had been taught all along, after all - perfection was key, and you were a work in progress, for surely not even your father had been the perfect, godlike man that he was now, no matter what he claimed otherwise. Perception grew with age, and by your teens you had seen into his heart of ice, and yet, whether through some twisted sense of optimism or blind naivety, you still believed that behind every cage of ice was a furnace, warm and welcoming to all who had earned it. Surely such tales were true, surely they applied to your father, for how else had your mother became his wife, how else would you be explained, if not for such warmth?

Those were simpler times, and in a way you almost miss being so blind. Ignorance is bliss and all, or so you've heard, and your very life story does little to disprove it.

But it was during those times that an escape was found. Two birds with one stone, their father had always criticized your physique growing up. You'd never been the biggest or strongest kid in your class, and with your tireless pursuit on your studies you had had little in the realm of physical recreational activity. And it was clear that as you grew older, as their body began to change with age, that simple genetics would not suffice for the job at hand.

And so at twelve, you entered your first Career training class, somewhat against your will, your father over your shoulder claiming that the mind of a god meant nothing if they didn’t have the physique to back it up.

You resented it, at first. It burned, it stung, and it was harder than anything you had ever done before in your life. But your father demanded perfection, and perfection would be what you would give.

And eventually, it would turn not into something dreaded, but something coveted instead. Stress was no longer stored but released, cobwebs formed from repeated study sessions were cleared away, and the results became noticeable in more ways than one. Muscle grew where there had once been naught but skin and bone, coordination became sharp and focused, and with each passing year your rank grew.

And yet did your father care? Was praise lavished upon you like you had so desperately craved for their entire life? Had the furnace behind the cage of ice finally melted through to the surface?

For someone who did not possess your naivety at that point in time, the answer should have been obvious. But it was not until days shy of your sixteenth birthday that the truth finally penetrated your skull, the cold hard truth breaking through an increasingly fragile delusion that you had been spoonfed year after year.

The breakthrough came after years of an internal crisis. Identity had always been fluid within you and your tastes alike, labels plastered onto you from outside sources seemed to slide off instead of stick, and the more you thought about it, the more you sought to deny it, the steadier it stuck within.

And when the straw that broke the camel's back fell, it was not because of the inward spark of annoyance that always bristled when you were referred to as your father's son, it was the flat-out refusal of your father to consider that you could be anything but.

Such an event caused something to snap, and like a wave of liquid nitrogen, cold realization swept over you, that your efforts to please the man that radiated ice where there should have been warmth had amounted to naught. He wouldn't be pleased until you were a carbon copy of himself - and there was too much different between you two for that twisted dream to ever become reality.

And so, order gave way to chaos. You'd show up to training early and staying late, intentionally throwing a carefully structured schedule out of whack. Alcohol stored since before the Dark Days was poured down the sink and your throat alike, all caution thrown to the wind as you set out on your crusade.

If he could not accept you for who you were, then by Ripred you would make him regret it with every ounce of your being.

Eighteen came and went, and still the cold war reigned. It's a routine you've settled into well. With age comes independence, and as your father's power over you wanes your own builds. Blessed with genetics that make you appear older than you actually are, it is not a hassle to get into a bar in your downtime or other vices to fuel the borderline hedonistic lifestyle you've taken to. Between that and maintaining your form, grown lithe and muscled after years of sculpting in the training center, keeps your focus away from the man who is your father in name if not in reality.

But where there was once a glacier is now a simple block of ice, and with each passing day it grows just a little bit smaller. No longer the naive child, you've grown used to seeing the world in a new light, with eyes that see more than they ever had before.

There is much to figure out as you continue to blossom from your teens into early adulthood, but for once, you don't feel any pressure to conform.

You are you, the only you that there ever was or ever will be. And that's enough for you.