Hana Byeon

A dignified young woman, Hana is one who will always hold a serious persona. Almost every one of her actions is done in a formal manner, whether it being her posture to the way she delivers her words in a polite and respectful manner. Anything which may consider being casual does not have a place within her life, as she has pushed away these informalities. Yet there will always be a way to break off of her typical composure. Hana is quite irritable and short-tempered, easily put off by the slightest mishap or anyone she may consider as annoying. Hana will often find herself chastising anyone that irritates her, often going off on tangents that may last quite a long while. While easily put off, it is quite difficult for Hana to become truly enraged, when she is enraged she simply loses control.

Honest and blunt are two other ways to describe her words. Hana is not the type of person who may sugar coat something. If she does not like a person, she will say it to their face and will always be a type of person to expose a lie the moment she sees it. Hana does know her limitations though, if something is important such as a confidential secret or a lie of another person that depends upon her, she will keep her mouth shut, albeit with much difficulty. Yet due to her honest nature, she holds her emotions on her sleeve, easily expressing any hidden emotions she feels. It is almost impossible for Hana to keep any of her feelings to be kept secret due to this nature of hers, one detail about her that she often regards as her main weakness.

It is difficult for her trust someone. Within her mind, she believes everyone new she meets will betray her. Even for those who she does trust, she always keeps an eye on them for instances they do betray her. Through time, her trust in someone will become stronger, to the point where she places her entire life in their hands. Yet if someone betrays her, there will be no way trust will be able to be regained. Even if the trust Hana had placed in them was small, no amount of consultation will able to rebuild the faith she once had for them, for she can only find herself viewing the person as a traitor.

Through her life, she has been taught to be adaptable. She is able to easily adjust herself to new situations, environments, and opportunities. Her eyes were trained to see beyond the obvious, where one may see a dead end, she sees a road. Any chance that may seem hidden will be seen by Hana due to her observant eyes as well. Her thoughts do not lie in the past, but rather the future. She is an optimist, to say the least. Hana holds hope for the future and if something unpleasant happens, she simply moves on. If she cannot help it, she simply accepts it.

Hana is very opportunistic, willing to snatch any opportunity that lies in front of her at the first chance.  She is willing to take advantage of what she has in order to benefit her. She isn't one to pass up anything and willingly takes any bulls given to her by the horns. Ambitious, she feels the need to succeed no matter what, willing to do anything to reach them. Even so, she understands her limits. Hana sets realistic goals and the moment she sees it is plausible then she will set her standards higher. While with her ambitions, it does not define her as power-hungry. She has no interest in gaining power.

If one seeks forgiveness from Hana, she will not grant them such privileges. If they have done something and requests her to forgive them, why did they do it in the first place? She will grant everyone a single chance, if they do not treat it seriously, why should she give them another chance when they could break it once more? While she is not one to forgive, she is not inherently vengeful. If she believes revenge is useless, why pursue something that has no meaning? The only thing she believes she gains from needless revenge is self-satisfaction, something that she does not need.

She has been trained to be cold-hearted. Hana views her enemies at the same level of cockroaches, useless and not worthy of life. Emotions such as remorse, regret or sympathy will exist within her. Any actions that may be considered as immoral will be delivered through within any thought. Hana does not believe her actions are justified nor does she try to convince themselves that they are. She understands they are inhumane, yet she simply does not care. Although Hana may be amoral, she isn't particularly sadistic. She does not enjoy seeings other's suffer, nor does it bother her. Instead, she feels nothing, an act of indifference.

Hana has a very strong will, her refusal to give up is almost superhuman, even at the lowest point of a situation, she will not call quits just yet. Stubborn is another way to describe her will. Even if she understand something may be beyond her reach she still finds herself achieving for it anyways. Due to this, Hana is very diligent. She completes tasks without a single complaint and places it at the top of her mind. Once she focuses on something, she continues onwards until it will be complete, no matter any circumstances.

While not one someone may call social, she isn't an introvert either. Hana has no problem speaking with others, both those who are her superiors or those whom she is the superior of. Yet, even so, she simply does not like approaching others, rather having others approach her. Hana finds it more difficult to start conversations rather than hold them, another issue she struggles with. Although this may be the case, she does not actively seek to end a conversation, simply she has trouble holding it.

My name is Hana Byeon. Or at least that is the name I identify with right now. I was not born as Hana but born as a nameless individual. That's right, I'm not lying. I have no birth name. I can hear you saying "Hana that's not true, everyone is born with a name. Even if your parents didn't keep you they still named you something. That wasn't the case for me. I never knew them to be honest. All I know was that I was born without a name.

When I was a little baby, I'm guessing only about a month minimum I arrived at Wings of Hope, an orphanage in Ulsan, South Korea. Wings of Hope was not a great name... Today kids in the orphanage have a chance of being adopting. These days adoption is quite common in Korea. That wasn't the case back in the twentieth century. Adoption was a taboo, and many children were shipped away. The orphanage I stayed at was a no shipment orphanage, therefore you either found a house during god knows how long your stay was there or you live there until you're old enough to survive on your own.

Back to my story, I was found near the dumpsters of Wings of Hope. Not even a note or a blanket to keep me warm. It was as if I was left there to die. The people there couldn't let a dying child freeze to death so they brought me in. "Hana it seems like they truly cared for you why are you so paranoid?" That's because that was the only time they cared for me. They were so focused on nursing me back to health they didn't even give me a name. Right after I recovered I joined the other children who did have a name, simply their parents couldn't take care of them so they shipped them to the orphanage.

Growing up I was invisible. That was no exaggeration. It was as if I was a ghost. I wasn't purposely ignored, but simply due to the size of the orphanage and how many children left there, the caretakers had bitten off more than they could chew. Whenever they addressed me, they used words like 'sweetie' or 'girl/child'. Then again they used that for everyone. Due to a number of children that lived there, you would expect for me to have at least a friend right? I would have if I wasn't such a shy girl back then. I despised human interaction, well more of feared in. I didn't make much of an effort interacting with others.

People did try to befriend me, but when I made it especially clear I didn't want to interact with them, they just left me be. Hell, I remember the girl I shared a room with, Nari I think her name was tried for a year straight before she simply gave up. People may think this lifestyle was lonely and miserable, but this was the life that the seven-year-old I loved. But still, in the back of my mind, the itching to make a friend stayed.

My school life wasn't much better. The orphanage had their own teachers, schooling us there rather than in a public school. The caretakers provided us with a chance at an education, but if we did not want to take advantage of this chance they didn't care. I was one of many who took advantage of this. Getting an education was boring, and I didn't particularly care for it, but I knew it would be important so I did so anyways. Yet this was the time I realized how lonely I was. I ate with the other students but not a single person interacted with me. Whenever I bumped into a person in the hall they apologized before forgetting me completely. It was as if my entire existence was in jeopardy. While I didn't like human interaction, I didn't want to feel as if I was disappearing. So I tried to make a friend but no attempts were successful.

That was when I started watching TV. My orphanage had a TV room, every day the caretakers had cued the news. On the news were stories of people taking strange names and dressed in strange outfits battling it out overseas or in different cities. I would later learn they were both superheroes and villains. Most kids my age would have aspired to have their superpowers and fame, yet I had my eye on something else. These people were normal human beings when not in an outfit. They all had an alter ego. What if I could develop my own? An alter ego to match my current one.

That was the moment Hana was born. I chose my favorite name, Hana along with a random surname I saw online.  I first created a personality for her, one that was the completely opposite of mine. A sociable person who was friendly, cheerful and outgoing. She didn't give a damn about almost everything, although she still found herself paying attention to school. Hana was also one who would ignore class in order to become the social butterfly she was. Once I decided this, it was now time to become Hana. It was difficult being Hana at first as my normal personality overshadowed her, but eventually, I found myself playing the role and enjoying it.

This did not go unnoticed. People noticed Hana more than they did to me. I made friends as Hana, had fun as Hana and lived an almost normal life as Hana. I became fearless. Yet Hana was only my alter-ego. The moment I came back to my room, Hana was no more, only I existed. This was the life I was satisfied with.

But that satisfaction only lasted a short while, I grew dissatisfied with my life, my identity. I yearned to be more than a nameless girl in the background, yet my social anxiety prevented me. I could always escape to being Hana yet as time went by she slowly became forgotten. Her behavior changed for some reason. Her own personality began to combine with my own. At the time I simply thought it was this orphanage which was causing all my problems. In order to solve it, I had to leave it.

Leaving it at our age was basically suicide. We had no way to support ourselves if we did as no one wanted to hire a fifteen-year-old. Even if they did, we still didn't have enough of an education to hold a job that can actually provide for us. Sure there were other alternatives, but many were undesirable for the both of us. The orphanage didn't care whether you stayed or not, they believed if you wanted to run away you'd learn how harsh the world was the hard way. When you returned they welcome you back with open arms. So at that point, it was either stay here and be miserable or leave and suffer in the outside world. That is before I came across a piece of propaganda.

It was around this time where a small skirmish between North and South had gotten quite tense, so the army was conscripting young men and women. I learned that I could join, although the minimum age to join voluntarily was eighteen. I couldn't wait any longer, we couldn't wait any longer. Both of us wanted to leave. And that was what happened.

I-, well Hana knew a person who dealt in illegal workings: hackings, counterfeit money, and most importantly fake IDs. Hana and he struck a deal, he would make a fake ID for her if she could pay him 570020 South Korean Won (the equivalent of 500 USD) by the end of the month. I don't know how it happened, but we managed to cough up the money. By the end of December, an ID was made and we were ready to join the army.

I joined the army a few months before my sixteenth birthday. The training itself was rough. I cannot express to you how much we both suffered. But the army was changing me. I didn't have much time to revert back to the girl I was behind the scenes. That girl didn't belong there, she wasn't fit for the army. Due to this, Hana let her die. I let myself die during training. That was when I fully took on the identity of Hana Byeon.

I was sixteen when I finish training. The entire process took little under a year, yet I was now a trained killer. I was sent home to wait until I was called for duty but I had no home. I left the orphanage and did not intend to go back. Even if I did make many friends there, I had no interest in the place. It was a constant reminder... of the girl, I let die in the training camp. Fortunately, a fellow recruit that graduated with me, her name was Young, had allowed me to bunk with her. We both rented an apartment in Seoul where we would live our lives: Young as a waiter at a local restaurant and me who would act as a cashier at a supermarket. We both would attend college, taking classes in the night until the fateful date came. We were called into duty.

It was a small fight. They sent an army to invade South Korea and we were to fight them off. This was the first time I saw blood with my own eyes and for the very first time, I took a life. It was very difficult at first. The act of taking a life was something that kept me awake all night for the first week. But as the battle reached the three-month mark, I began feeling numb. Deaths began to bother me less. It wasn't until the fourth month until the battle end. We managed to fend off their attack but not without our casualties, one of them being Young.

After the battle life without Young was difficult. Not only had a close friend died but I had to support myself. I was on the brink of bankruptcy. Yet the moment I began to tip across the line, someone caught me. The government had been asking for a hundred healthy soldiers to help in a project at the risk of their own health and life. Yet if it were to succeed they would gain power, wealth, and fame they all imagined. I had no interest in the power and fame, but I needed money to support myself.

That was the story how I ended in Project SKUPID or South Korea's United Powered Individual Division. While the name I thought was stupid, everything else wasn't. They researched how Powered Individuals came to be so they could recruit them into the army. The country assumed that it was random so they chose 100 of us, to test.

As promised, their experiments were harmless. They tested small experiments on us, but none of them inherently life threatening. When they inflicted injuries on us it was always by mistake in which they would also apologize for. But our safety had never been guaranteed. After all, the base where this took place was on the outskirts of Daeseong-dong, the city that bordered North Korea. It was only a short matter of time before we were captured and when they realized what we were doing they took Project SKUPID into their own hands, renaming it Project NUKE or North (Korea) United Killing Empire. They were going to use us as deadly weapons against our own country.

Their methods were far less humane than the South were. We were promised freedom, delicious food, warm clothing and any other luxuries we could think of if we could only show a small sign of power. They understood it before us, powers were rare. In a group of a hundred soldiers, it would be lucky if one of us had a power. They weren't willing to give up when they had no results.

Their motivation consisted of starvation, electrical shocks, and fear. They were unwilling to harm us to the point our bodies suffered permanent damage, yet they seemed to have no problem mentally scarring us for life. When we weren't being tortured we were subjected to endless Propaganda, the North's way of trying to brainwash us. Those who did not comply were not treated kindly.  This was our reality, our everyday life.

Looking back at the two years I've spent there, I don't regret a single second. If I hadn't been there, I couldn't have known. The world isn't so black and white after all. Us powered weren't the real villains. Sure, a few of us become thieves or murderers but we have our own reasons. Here I learned the harsh reality. Those without powered are the true villains. Who forced us to conform to the laws or else we would be considered as rogues or villains? Who were the people who caused the trauma to gain our powers? Who wanted to exploit the powered for their own personal benefit. I learned those without powers are the true villains, the powered were simply the victims.

The North eventually got their desires. A former colleague of mine, Hye was discovered with a power. After being caught stealing some extra bread, he was punished. We were all forced to come attend this public punishment, one of the many ways they instilled fear into us. Yet in the midst of a punishment, a mystical purple veil surrounded his body and once the baton simply touched the force, it shattered into a million pieces. His power had appeared.

The soldiers overjoyed offered him a position in the military, in NUKE. You'd think he declines. You'd think he would be unwilling to betray his country, to betray his own people, to defect to the North. Imagine our anguish when he agreed. I don't blame him when I look back on it, the fear and brainwashing was too much for him.

The North couldn't handle letting us go back to the South. After all, they wanted to keep a clean image, just like all countries wished to keep a clean image behind their dirty interior. They ordered to have us all executed. After all, they believed only Hye was the powered individual.

They planned on executing us in a group so we were blindfolded and shipped off to a field where we were bounded together. From an unseen distance, a missile fired at us. If the initial explosion didn't kill us, the shrapnel would definitely do so. I don't remember much of what happened since then. Adrenaline flowed through me, more than when I fought in the battle. More than when I witness Young die. The will I had to live was strong.

As the missile approached I felt time slow down, my life flashed in front of my eyes. Yet I felt something awaken within me, my hidden potential. The missile approaching us began to slow down, it wasn't noticeable at the first second but by the fifth, it fell to the ground. While it was falling, ice crystals began to stretch around the missile, as it collided it shattered into a million pieces. We were saved from our doom. I had awakened.

I don't remember how I escaped. Everything that happened after that was the blur. All I remember was the rope binding us broke, we all made a break for the escape... Many of us did not survive the escape. Yet once we did escape the facility the government ordered a manhunt on us. I was the only survivor that made it back to South Korea. The rest of my colleges were either missing, dead or defected.

When I came back, I was discharged from the army. The time I spent in Korea had been enough to change me and the government wanted time for me to heal. But they didn't know I had gained powers. They had assumed that one of the dead or missing were the ones that saved me, and hadn't questioned the fact. But the fact still remained, I was not safe here. The North wanted all of us dead. To protect my country, I took a plane to Berlin, Germany the first place I could think of. I never looked back since.

I was twenty when I arrived, confused and lost. I had no home, no job and had nothing but the clothes on my back. I spent my time on the streets. Compared to the life I had back in Korea, this was a paradise. But the fact still remained, I was lost. I found my true self once more in the dark time, the nameless girl that I was born as. Until I met a certain young woman. She approached me one day, most likely noticing one of those instances when I tried to hone in my abilities with a beer can. She offered me a home, she offered me a purpose in life, she asked me to join Gesellschaft. I accepted, becoming one of Gesellschaft. I became a part of the Infantry. I became part of their cause. I found my purpose.

Six years later, I am still a loyal member of Gesellschaft. Looking back at my youth, as my past as Hana and Nameless, this was the best outcome that could have happened. Each detail I had leading up to this point was necessary for me to be who I am. Not simply just Hana, while she is a large part of me, Nameless is as well. She's grown out of the role of the shadow in the darkness, now being the face of my identity. Her role as the soldier in the Infantry. Hana may be in the background now, their roles have been switched, but both Nameless and Hana agrees, they both couldn't be happier. I couldn't be happier to be myself.