KHIL JAE-IN.

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biography.

BEFORE THE OUTBREAK: When Jae-in was born early in August, his mother died during childbirth. A life for a life. That's all his father would say whenever it was brought up, and Jae-in would never learn what his father had meant by that. The first few years of Jae-in's life, it was mostly Jae-in's aunt that looked after the boy while his father was at work, and Jae-in developed a strong connection to his aunt. When Jae-in started school, he mostly led a normal life. Though his father was a strict and at times cold man, making Jae-in feel like a failure and disappointment to his father, at school it was a different story. He made several friends there, and it didn't take long for the boy to realize that the only way to get any attention at all from his father, was when he did something that got him in trouble. And as his aunt was told by his father to be less involved in their life when Jae-in had started school, Jae-in became quite a bit of a troublemaker as a kid. This, however, would eventually come to backfire on him. Despite his trouble-making, however, Jae-in managed to perform well in most of the subjects, seeming to have a natural gift for learning quickly.

When Jae-in was 13 years old, his father got a more luxurious job offer in The United States of America, and thus suddenly, Jae-in had to move to an entirely different country and start over. To make matters worse, his father, who had already pondered what to do with Jae-in's increasingly poor behavior, decided that with this new, fresh start, and with the extra money he would earn, he would have Jae-in home-schooled, hiring a private teacher to do so once they had settled into their new home, figuring that the only way to ensure that he learned respect and proper behavior was by removing him from fellow students who might be a poor influence on him, and put him in an environment where all the focus would be given to Jae-in, so that it would be easier for the teacher to lecture him and be a better influence on him.

Thus, Jae-in's life quickly went from a life filled with friends he had become as close to as brothers, to a life of loneliness and isolation. His father's plan was mostly successful in that it saw Jae-in's behavior improve, however, for Jae-in, it came at the cost of his mental health taking a dent (Not that he would openly admit to it.) As a result, a part of him resented his father for moving to the US and for not letting him to go a school with other people his age, but the stubbornness in him was determined to prove to his father that he would live up to the challenge his father presented to him.

When the time came for Jae-in to either find a job or continue his studies, Jae-in opted to continue his studies, aiming toward medical school. Taking the prerequisite courses needed, he decided to major in psychology, before attending med school. After finishing med school, he finally underwent additional military training and field surgeon preparations, learning how to operate in combat zones, work with limited resources and how to perform surgeries in less than ideal environments, before eventually gaining a job as a military field surgeon at the age of 32.

Being deployed as part of a military operation in a conflict zone across seas, Jae-in actively worked for 15 months before returning home. During this time, he witnessed war first-hand, and more importantly, the severe injuries and countless causalities caused by both sides. Though the first couple of months did affect him, he soon found himself becoming desensitized to all the violence and brutality he witnessed, and whether that was a good thing or not in the long run, it did make him more efficient at helping save the life of the soldiers that could be saved.

Returning home, though, Jae-in realized that this was not the work he wished to continue doing. Though he knew that saving people was supposed to be an important and honorable job — to him, it felt like a waste of his time and skills. All these soldiers who were scarred for life, who would never live a normal life again, traumatized both by the horrors they'd witnessed as well as their injuries which were often crippling. Could he even say that he had saved them? Or had he just prolonged their suffering? The amount of times they had begged him to put them out of their misery, and the amount of times he had considered doing it... And maybe he should've. Maybe ending their life would have been the kind thing to do. The humane thing to do.

It didn't take long after returning home before Jae-in found his true purpose in life. Working as a regular surgeon was not an option. The laws prevented surgeons from saving the lives of those who needed it. Or at least, many of those who needed it who could've gotten help, if not for laws preventing people from selling their organs to those in need. So, he soon found himself involved with the black market. They were always in need of someone with his education, it paid well, and it helped save the lives of those who the law didn't care about.

And he continued working as a black market surgeon for four years before it happened.

THE OUTBREAK: It paid well to leave morals behind, and though he tried not to do it too often, once in a while, someone would bring him a fresh, dead body and offer him a great sum for the organs within. This time should've been no different. Remove the organs, get paid, easy-peasy. But in the middle of the procedure, the body began to stir. He had heard on the news, several states away, about something strange going on, something about sick people becoming aggressive and violent, but never in his wildest imagination could he have seen what was coming next. The dead man came to life right there on the table. Although came to life was perhaps a bit too generous. A mindless, violent husk of what had once been alive; the body was moving, but the man was certainly still dead.

Using his scalpel, Jae-in slit the dead man's throat in hopes that it would kill him, but despite the blood spilling out of his neck and mouth, the corpse fought to get up, trying to bite him in the process. Thankfully, he didn't manage it, or it would've been the end of Jae-in's story that evening. Instead, Jae-in aimed for the brain next, knowing fully well that's the part of the body that controls all the body's functions. And it worked. The body went still. Silence befell the room, as Jae-in and his client both stared at the now lifeless corpse, in shock and horror.

After what felt like minutes, Jae-in managed to pull himself back to reality, and grabbed the client, demanding to know what the fuck he had brought with him, but the scared little shit didn't seem to know. Refusing to just let the guy go, he locked him down in the basement with the corpse before heading upstairs, only coming back once to leave the guy some food, before leaving him down there again, as he tried to figure out what to do with him, and the dead body.

Just as he had thought out a plan, chaos broke out. People who died were coming back to life. Attacking people. Biting them. Killing them. Eating them.

Rushing to the basement, he once again demanded that the guy told him what the fuck was going on, and once more, he insisted he had no idea. Refusing to believe him, he instead locked them both inside the basement. And though he didn't believe the guy had no clue what was happening, he still explained the situation happening in the nearby city to him, and they agreed to stay until things had calmed down. Several days, they spent down there, sharing what little food was left, and storing up water from the sink into bottles, just in case something would happen to the water supply. The first day, they could hear sirens passing by in the distance, weapons being fired, explosions... It persisted for a couple of days, slowly ebbing out more and more into... Nothing.

During that time, Jae-in learned that the guy's name was Evan, and that he was paid by some people to kill people like the man who had come back to life. Except this was the first time one of them had come back to life, of course... Jae-in did an improvised autopsy on the body, but found nothing to indicate why that might have happened. On the fifth day, someone on the outside grabbed the door handle and tried to open it. After making sure it was someone alive, Jae-in and Evan let the person in. A woman named Marie. She quickly explained what she had witnessed while out there the past couple of days, the dead becoming monsters, all the people who had tried to leave the city and died, the police and military that had tried to help, and given up, how she had managed to get out herself and all the way here, looking for any other survivors on the way...

Long story short, the trio decided to work together to find more people, more supplies and weapons, and try to find a safer place to stay together. Days became weeks became months, became years... There was no safety. The dead were everywhere, and the living were changing along with the traumatic situation and survival instincts kicking in. For Jae-in and the group he was surviving with, there were too many hungry stomachs, too little food, and too little medicine. When the first incident where one person in their group named Daniel got severely injured following an attack by another group, they looked to Jae-in to save him; after all, he used to be a field surgeon back in the day. So, when he deemed Daniel a lost cause, they all took his word for it, as he had given them no reason not to. Jae-in offered to be the one to put Daniel out of his misery, and while he was still unconscious, Jae-in killed him. Returning to the rest of the group, Jae-in lied and told them that he had briefly woken up and Jae-in had told him that he wouldn't make it, upon which Daniel had told him they shouldn't let his death be for nothing. That they all had to do what they needed to, to survive.

Jae-in didn't say it outright, but they all knew what that meant, and, driven by the maddening starvation, they all agreed to honor "Daniel's wish". Though Daniel didn't keep them fed for long, and soon, they found themselves starving again. Coming across another hostile group, they were quick to defend themselves, and managed to drive the group off after killing some of them, and they didn't have to debate about what to do with the bodies. There was scarcely any other food to be found at this time of year, and these people had tried to kill them first. It only served them right.

It was Jae-in that eventually suggested they started hunting other humans, groups who preyed upon others would now be preyed upon by them. They would cull them out, leaving the world a safer place for the remaining survivors. And so, they started calling themselves The Cullers, which eventually became the official name of their group, with Jae-in becoming their leader, and with each year passing, their hunts became more and more ritualistic, almost like a new religion where they believed that in order to make the world a safe place once more, they needed to cull out the "vultures".

abilities.

universes.