A06: YU-MI LEE

#1

Name: Yu-Mi “MiMi” Lee
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Hobbies and Interests: Video games, competitive gaming (specifically fighting and third-person shooters), watching YouTube, anime, bonsai

Appearance: Yu-Mi is short with a skinny figure, standing at 5'1 feet and weighing 100 lbs. She is of Korean descent, with skin that is unhealthily pale due to lack of sunlight. Her face is oval with a pointed chin, similar in shape to a seed, and she has low, flat cheekbones. Her eyes, which lie beneath unkempt eyebrows, are a dark brown with prominent eyebags from an irregular sleep schedule. Her nose is low and flat, and her lips are thin and pale. She does not bother with any sort of makeup.

Yu-Mi’s hair is black and straight, cut to chin-length. It is parted on the left side, and her bangs are so overgrown that they have a tendency to cover the right side of her face if she does not make the conscious effort to push them away. Her hair is only lightly combed, if at all, and thus looks disheveled, stringy, and even greasy at times. As for clothes, Yu-Mi has an inclination for comfortable, oversized wear, like hoodies, sweaters, and sweatpants. She has a soft spot for anything associated with games or anime she likes, and so owns a lot of merch clothing.

Yu-Mi’s Avatar looks almost exactly the same as her real-life appearance, thanks to a desire to make her CR experience as “realistic” as possible. The only changes she makes are removing blemishes from her face—excluding her eyebags, as she considers those her “trademark”—and getting rid of the nasal cannula she is required to wear while using CR. On the day of the attack, Yu-Mi was wearing an oversized black turtleneck sweater with a print of a female gijinka of the Nintendo Switch console, baggy gray sweatpants with blue streaks on the sides, black and red sneakers with untied laces, and black wireless cat ear headphones with red accents.

Background: Yu-Mi Lee was born in San Jose, California, the only child of Joshua and Seoyun Lee. Joshua and Seoyun are both in the tech industry, with this shared line of work being how they met and bonded in the first place; Joshua works as a cybersecurity analyst and Seoyun is a software developer. Although Joshua was hesitant to have children, Seoyun managed to persuade him, and her pregnancy went smoothly enough that the couple had plans to have more children after Yu-Mi. Those plans were disrupted, however, when the infant Yu-Mi’s newborn screening test came back positive for cystic fibrosis.

The Lee family’s large income allowed them to pay for Yu-Mi’s various lifelong treatments for her illness, but Yu-Mi spent a large part of her childhood in hospitals regardless. Although they tried to be as present as possible, Yu-Mi’s parents were often away at work, leaving her with only the hospital staff and fellow patients to socialize with. She developed the reputation of a very chatty child, talking to any staff member who came into her room about anything that came to her mind, even if it didn’t make sense, and got upset if they left before she finished. Joshua originally insisted that Yu-Mi attend school normally, but Seoyun, paranoid about her daughter’s health and guilty over her absence due to her work, convinced him to let Yu-Mi be taught by a group of tutors she’d hand-selected. She figured that hand-picked tutors would allow her to be present in her daughter’s education, even if she couldn’t be present for her normally. Thus, Yu-Mi’s early education was handled by a network of tutors Seoyun had hired. Yu-Mi herself was never particularly interested in school, usually taking her tutoring sessions as an opportunity to gush to her tutor about whatever interested her at the moment.

Yu-Mi was the type of child to get bored easily, so she was always surrounded by things to entertain herself with. Out of all of them, she took to video games the most. Her first console was a Leapster, an educational handheld console aimed at very young children. She spent hours playing with it, and often roped any nearby adult into watching her play. Noting her love for her Leapster, Yu-Mi’s parents gifted her an Nintendo 3DS for her seventh birthday. Yu-Mi became as absorbed in her 3DS as she was with her Leapster; the combination of bright colors and immersive gameplay quelled the boredom that being stuck inside for large periods of time wrought in her. Her favorite games were The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity. Her love for her 3DS led to a love for video games that has persisted throughout her life.

Since the Lees had enough money to manage at-home treatments for Yu-Mi, she was allowed out of the hospital much more frequently as an adolescent. It was at this time she was introduced to Cyber Reality by Joshua, who thought it would help Yu-Mi “experience the world” despite her illness, which left her mostly housebound. With Seoyun’s agreement, Yu-Mi was granted nigh-unlimited access to CR, under the pretense that she would log off immediately if she ever started to feel sick and would wear a nasal cannula in case the “sensory override” of CR interfered with her breathing. She was instantly infatuated with “Cyberspace,” and began spending large amounts of her time in it. CR offered to her a world of sensory experiences she wouldn’t otherwise have. Although she enjoyed visiting museums and zoos and other places it would normally be difficult for her to go, she gravitated most to the CR gaming community. Her knack for the games as well as her enthusiasm for them netted her a group of gaming friends, a circle that she is close to to this day. She began to go by her online handle more: “EpicGamer__MiMi__69,” a title she claims to be “ironic” and is usually shortened to just “MiMi.” It was at this time Yu-Mi developed an interest in competitive games, specifically third-person shooters like Overwatch and fighting games like Super Smash Bros. The adrenaline rush the competitive nature of the games—and winning—gave her was thrilling.

Yu-Mi’s happiness with CR allowed Joshua to convince Seoyun to make a compromise: forego the tutors and, instead of a real, physical school, sign Yu-Mi up for Virtual School for the last two years of her middle school education. Although Yu-Mi always felt outcasted due to her late arrival, she enjoyed being able to have a “normal” school experience nonetheless. After she graduated, she was signed up for Sycamore High School. Despite the many high school horror stories her gaming friends had regaled her with, Yu-Mi found herself feeling excited for high school nonetheless, as this time she would be able to integrate herself with the student body from the start. When school was properly in session, she found herself enjoying exploring the server, using the amenities, and talking to her peers, although she was never all that interested in the education aspect. Because of this, her grades are solidly average; she puts in only as much effort as she needs to. The only exceptions to this are biology, as she enjoys spending time in the greenhouses, and computer science, both of which she sustains above average grades in. Seoyun, who has made it her job to handle her daughter’s accommodations, has already worked out with the faculty privileges for Yu-Mi to log out for health reasons; Yu-Mi herself does not use these privileges unless she absolutely has to, as she’d rather her peers not know about her cystic fibrosis so she doesn’t have to deal with uncomfortable questions.

Yu-Mi’s online friends were the ones to first introduce her to anime, since many of them held an interest in it. Her only prior experience with it had been with the Pokémon anime, so she relied on her friends’ recommendations. She has a preference for Seinen anime, such as Serial Experiments Lain, Monster, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. She also watches seasonal anime together with her friends, mostly to trash it. During their seasonal anime watchings, Yu-Mi developed a deep distaste for isekai as a genre, stemming from the sense of jealousy she felt while watching it. Not long ago, one of these friends approached her in a private DM to tell her about a beta of an ego-shooter she had gotten ahold of, and asked if Yu-Mi wanted to try it out with her. Yu-Mi was no stranger to illegitimate gaming—she has pirated games more than once—but after a while to think she refused the offer. In hindsight, how long it took for her to refuse disturbs her a little.

It is thanks to these same friends that Yu-Mi discovered and came to terms with her sexuality. Yu-Mi always found herself unable to take discussion of being attracted to men seriously, seeing it all as some big societal joke. When it came to discussing attraction to women, however, usually in the form of her online friends discussing the anime girl of the week, Yu-Mi could relate and participate a lot more. At first, she internalized it as “a weeb thing,” but after an offhand comment by her blossomed into a full-scale conversation Yu-Mi came to the realization that she was a lesbian. Nowadays, Yu-Mi is open about her sexuality, although she won’t label it unless you ask her directly.

One night, while on a YouTube binge, she stumbled across a video detailing the care of bonsai. Yu-Mi had occasionally tossed around the idea of caring for a plant before, but the bonsai showcased in the video impressed her enough to make her want to have one for herself. She convinced her parents to buy her a bonsai kit, and subsequently named the tree “Buddy,” which she’s diligently taken care of since. She’s very proud of the way it’s turning out and frequently takes pictures of it.

Yu-Mi’s cystic fibrosis is a lifelong condition, so she has a variety of ways to manage it the best she can. She’s on a variety of medicines, like antibiotics for lung infections, bronchodilators to widen her airways, dietary supplements to prevent malnutrition, and mucus thinners. Taking all of her prescriptions through all the different ways they’re meant to be taken—orally, inhaled, or intravenously—has always been a bit of an ordeal, but despite her complaints to Seoyun, it’s one she’s gotten used to. She also uses a high-frequency chest wall oscillation device, an inflatable vest meant to loosen mucus in her airways that she colloquially refers to as “The Pear Wiggler.”

Yu-Mi’s relationship with her father has become increasingly strained over the years, as he disapproves of the amount of time his daughter spends in CR, seeing it as preventing her from living in “the real world.” He fears that by introducing Yu-Mi to CR, he has made it impossible for her to live without it. Yu-Mi resents him for this, as she sees CR as her only way to experience things she would not otherwise be able to experience due to her condition. The two of them don’t talk much as of late. Yu-Mi’s relationship with her mother, on the other hand, is much better, as Seoyun is more accepting of her daughter’s habits. Seoyun is still very attached to her daughter, wanting to be as involved in her life as possible to make up for being absent so much in her formative years; she even switched the companies she worked for in order to get hours that would allow her to be with Yu-Mi more. Joshua and Seoyun’s marriage has silently suffered in recent years over disagreements on how to parent Yu-Mi, with Joshua willing to force her into independence if necessary and Seoyun wanting to always be present in her life. Because of how much Seoyun does for her, Yu-Mi is attached to her mother in turn. She jokingly complains about Seoyun in front of her friends, but she really does love her, and worries what her life would be like without her. Yu-Mi is uncertain about her plans after graduation. Her dream would be to go into Esports and make a living off of competitive gaming, but she knows her father would wholeheartedly disapprove. As a backup plan, she would like to be involved in the programming of Cyber Reality, her goal being to make it more realistic and improve the sensory experience.

Personality: Yu-Mi has retained the social nature she’s had since she was a child, although it presents itself in a more lackadaisical way. She has a very carefree outlook on life, indulging herself in what interests her and paying little attention to what does not. She doesn’t care much for “personal space” and does whatever makes her the most comfortable, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Yu-Mi has an odd way of speaking; she frequently makes nonsense noises and draws out her words. Despite her apparent lack of energy, if you mention something she’s interested in to her she’ll talk your ear off. She doesn’t have much of a filter, just saying whatever comes to mind. Although she tries to be a friendly person, her aforementioned lack of filter often leads to her saying rude things by accident. She is the opposite of fatalistic, in that she’d rather not think of death at all and instead enjoy life to its fullest. People who obsess over death frustrate her. Occasionally, Yu-Mi enters periods of melancholy where she resents people who spend most of their lives in CR despite not needing to—ie. her friends—but she manages to brush these feelings to the back of her mind.

Reputation: Among her like-minded peers, Yu-Mi is well-liked; she is considered a fun person to talk to and a good sport about games. If you ask her to play a game with her, her answer will always be an enthusiastic yes. Outside of her immediate circle, however, Yu-Mi’s reputation isn’t the best. She’s known to be lazy and careless, the type of person to sit on your lap just because there’s no extra seat. Her more peculiar mannerisms have also netted her a reputation as a “weirdo.” Those who have actually had a chance to talk to her either soften to her or have their distaste deepen. Her teachers are often disappointed in her, as many of them believe she could do better grades-wise if she bothered to put in the effort. Despite Yu-Mi’s efforts, it is common knowledge that she is chronically ill in some way. If one attempts to bring it up to her, however, she brushes it aside.

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Designated Number: A06

Designated Weapon: W-23 — SIG Sauer AG SG 552 Commando [5.56×45mm NATO]
Designated Utility: U-9 — Enemy Tracker

Evaluation: "With a hand of cards like this, Yu-Mi here is primed and ready to make all her enemies go 'mi-mi-mi'—permanently. Make like a good veterinarian, A06, and put all the rabid dogs out there to sleep." — [MCKINLEY], Armorer and Site Security (Querida / Site B)