Dongbaek/Story
Prior to Limbus Company
Time in the League
Dongbaek grew up in District 19. She hailed from a farming village was also home as many of her fellow League members, such as Yi Sang, Dongrang, Gap-ryong, Aneung, and Nul-in, and from there, where Dongbaek could see the stars in the night sky and enjoy her days with her companions. It was also home to numerous spicebush flowers, which became a source of nostalgia for Dongbaek, years after she left for Nest T. Like her companions, Dongbaek had always carried an interest in technology, and enjoyed creating explosives.
These days of calm would come to an end as S Corp.'s political situation declined, the rampant corruption and unstable economic situation led many in the District to expatriate. Dongbaek was invited by Dongrang to join the League of Nine Littérateurs, a group of friends and researchers that formed around Young-ji, and together they would move to T Corp. in search of new opportunities, as the Wing had recently been seeing remarkable technological growth.
The members of the League, Dongbaek among them, began taking various jobs in T Corp., although their idea of a safe harbor turned out to be quite different from the truth: even in the foreign Wing, they were subject to harsh working conditions, strict regulations that stifled their creativity, and high taxation, that were heavier on the group due to their state as immigrants. Life in T Corp. saddened Dongbaek in many ways, as the light pollution and factory smoke hid the stars and the District's lack of colors made the world dull, stealing the beauty from even the floors outside the League's lab.
For Dongbaek, the brightest moments about this period where the League's reunions: in their free time, the group would organize illuminators' conferences, meetings where they would show each other the technology they developed as a hobby rather than as part of their jobs. Out of nostalgia for her hometown, Dongbaek often made fireworks that reminded her of the starry nights in District 19 and showed them off at the conferences held by the League.
When the leader of the League, Young-ji, invented the glass window, an invention capable of gazing into alternate Mirror Worlds and overlapping them onto the current world, Dongbaek was racked with concern. She believed that this invention, which seemed to nearly revive the dead, had been motivated by lingering feelings of a past loss, rather than being made as something to amuse the others. Furthermore, the invention appeared to be of a scale too big to be simply a recreational item. Young-ji did not respond to her concerns, and instead encouraged Yi Sang, who had been enraptured by the invention, to improve upon his design. At a later meeting, Yi Sang revealed the Mirror, Yeonsim, a more stable version of the glass window which reflected the world clearly, and even Dongbaek looked upon the invention with stars in her eyes. When Yi Sang requested that the Mirror stay between them, having no intent to market it, Dongbaek could only respond with amusement at his humble plans. Dongbaek's intuition regarding the potential of these inventions was correct, as Young-ji started being contacted by various Wings that sought to recruit him and make use of his glass window. When Young-ji received a second offer to visit one such Wing, he asked Dongbaek to accompany him, although she refused as she did not wish to leave the group behind.
The attention the group had gotten would eventually backfire, as the League soon received an official notice from T Corp.'s Technology Administration Agency. The group would need to publicly register their inventions and receive official patents, and if the League did not comply with their demands, they would face immediate disbandment and arrest, and have all their work be confiscated. As the League's intent had always been to create for the sake of invention, a member of the League suggested that rather than allow the Wing to take advantage of their knowledge and research, they instead destroy all of it, by bringing a concept incinerator into the laboratory, which would've destroyed both their inventions and the memory of them. This sparked a heated debate between Dongrang, who believed his work could be used by the Wings to save lives in the City, and Dongbaek, who believed giving up their inventions to the various firms would only result in them being warped and used only for financial gain. In the end, Dongrang agreed to burn his work in the incinerator, but began harboring a deep resentment towards Dongbaek and the League.
With the laboratory's location having been discovered, the League was treading dangerous waters. In an attempt to find a solution, Young-ji proposed the idea of surrendering his glass window, but Dongbaek was the first to shoot it down, reminding him that leaving an invention so powerful in the hands of a Wing could have grave consequences. Few members of the League started fleeing and going into hiding, with Dongbaek suggesting Young-ji to do the same, while she and Dongrang would carry the glass window and the Mirror to safety. However, when the League’s laboratory was finally raided, the plan fell apart, as the Time Collectors were already aware of the existence of the invention: it became obvious someone had sold the League out. Dongbaek, suspicious of the other members of the League, asked for the traitor to reveal themselves, but the true culprit, Dongrang himself, never stood up. At that point, having obtained no answers, Dongbaek blew up the laboratory with her fireworks, and the League burned down.
Technology Liberation Alliance
Dongbaek survived the explosion, but was physically scarred by it and the right side of her face was permanently injured—losing her eye and her hair prematurely graying. She was able to escape the Collectors and eventually flee T Corp. Disillusioned with the use made of technology in the City, and still unable to return to her hometown, Dongbaek eventually joined the Technology Liberation Alliance and took on a leadership role, gathering former researchers of renowned firms that shared her same feelings.
The Alliance took interest in K Corp. after Ran, a scientist of the Wing who had learned the truth of the Singularity, joined the Alliance and informed Dongbaek about the cruel reality behind K Corp.’s healing ampules. Aware of K Corp. having recently turned a Lobotomy Corp. branch into a research facility, the Liberation Alliance performed a terrorist attack on the branch and took control over it. They continued to attack K Corp.'s facilities and made good use out of what was left behind at the L Corp. branch they now occupied. They learned a method to extract E.G.O from the Abnormalities and distributed these Lobotomy E.G.Os to their members, with Dongbaek’s E.G.O of choice being Sunshower.
After a lack of a significant response from K Corp., Dongbaek sent a threat demanding that Dongrang make a public statement exposing the truth of K Corp.’s Singularity, and if he continued to stay silent, the Technology Liberation Alliance would release an Abnormality from the L Corp. branch into the streets of Nest K. She had never intended to actually act on this threat, but the Brazen Bull escaped from the Alliance’s control and attacked the Nest just as the threat promised.
Canto IV: The Unchanging
Just after Yi Sang and Dongrang reveal to the other Sinners that they were once compatriots, Dongbaek joined the reunion, holding a Golden Bough as well as Dongrang’s photograph of the League of Nine Littérateurs during their prime. Ignoring Dongrang’s request to give the photo back to him, she rushed towards Yi Sang and stabbed him in the chest with the Bough, believing him to have sided with Dongrang. She dropped the photograph, then disappeared.
Dongbaek followed the Sinners and Dongrang through the building using a ‘veil’, to conceal her presence, revealing herself after they reached the Screening Room at the top of the tower. She elaborated on her goal to destroy the source of the healing ampules, knowing how they can take lives just as easily as they can restore them. By using a concept incinerator, Dongbaek planned to destroy the Singularity and everything related to it.
Upon seeing that Yi Sang was alive and uninjured despite her stabbing him not long ago, Dongbaek shows relief. She acknowledged his wish for his own death, and despite wanting him to die for his apparent alliance with Dongrang, the thought of granting that wish was deeply unpleasant to her. Yi Sang refused to comment on Dongbaek’s speculation, and with the conversation ended, she fought the Sinners using her Lobotomy E.G.O::Sunshower.
After the Sinners defeated Dongbaek, Dongrang revealed the true source behind the Singularity: the Tearful Thing. The Tearful Thing was surrounded by glass windows that display videos of tragic events that were recorded by K Corp.’s security drones. Dongbaek was disgusted by Young-ji’s technology being used in this way, getting into an argument with Dongrang where he mocked her desire to recreate the past for future generations and calls out her hypocrisy in using L Corp.’s technology to further her goals. This sent her into a state of emotional distress, hearing a voice inside her head and almost distorting. Seeing Dongbaek seemingly lose touch with reality, Dongrang proudly claimed that only he can shake her mind in this way, which she responded to by declaring she feels as if her mind is in fact blooming as she manifests her personal E.G.O, Spicebush.
With her newfound E.G.O, Dongbaek fought the Sinners once more. After her second defeat, Dongrang took the chance to reveal to her that N Corp. has started a new League of Nine Littérateurs with the help of Gubo, who tracks down old members for recruitment and kills any who refuse to join. He then stabbed Dongbaek with the Golden Bough, claiming it to be an act of "compassion" due to the threat of Gubo. Dying in Yi Sang's arms, she lamented how she always wished to be a bud about to bloom in the same way that he always wished to have wings to fly, and that all she had wanted was to be buried alongside her old friends in the League.
Dongbaek’s death, recorded by K Corp.’s security, played out on a loop on the glass windows to make the Tearful Thing cry once more.
Reminisced League of Nine
In her final moment, as Dongbaek lay dying in Yi Sang’s embrace, Dongrang revealed himself as the traitor that sold out the League to T Corp. This revelation sent Dongbaek into a fury as the Golden Bough lodged into her resonated with her wrath. The Golden Bough twisted and morphed the environment into an absurd geometry, constructing the entrance towards the Dungeon it hid itself in. Travelling into the fathoms, Dongrang smugly greeted the Sinners with his pensive expression in the simulated facsimile of the League’s laboratory in Nest T—during the days before the group’s dissolution.
Dante spotted a stack of papers on one of the lab’s desks: letters written by Yi Sang a long time ago, structured in a form of play’s script. Dongrang conjectured that if Dongbaek’s consciousness were absorbed by the fathoms before she died, they must act out the ‘play’ in order to draw her out. Faust speculated that if they don’t go along with the play, the memories in the dungeon would become unstable and prevent them accessing the Golden Bough. Ultimately, the Sinners took their given scripts to reenact the lives of the League of Nine Littérateurs to progress, with Yi Sang and Dongrang playing themselves throughout the performance, whereas what's left of Dongbaek's dying consciousness recited her past experiences unaware that the Sinners were playing the roles of her past compatriots.
While the combatants resurrected by the Golden Bough intruded the play, they’re not perceived by Dongbaek’s apparition as intruders, and she instead believed the undead horde to be the angry bar owner coming into the lab to get Gap-ryong to pay off his tab. The fathoms recounted the days of the laboratory that split them apart, bringing Dongbaek much grief, amounting to the day when Yi Sang presented the League his Mirror, Yeonsim, an invention that deeply moved Dongbaek.
Recreating the days of unwanted attention, Dongbaek is displeased at the rowdy laboratory filled with investors and curious parties crowding the group. Dongbaek was squabbled with Nul-in crowded into the group at the time; it was here where Dongrang found his epiphany. While in the past, Dongrang was displeased with Dongbaek’s lack of understanding with why he would go through such lengths for treating animals that couldn’t pay him back, it was Nul-in’s words that tilted him to the path he led now. Dongbaek’s apparition echoed her doubts over Dongrang's inventions that encouraged him to destroy his technology to heal injuries, with the man bitterly casting away that hard work he lost before back into the flames of a simulated concept incinerator.
The play continued to accurately perform the reenactment of the of the League’s gradual fallout with Dongbaek’s refusal of the very idea that Young-ji surrenders his glass window to T Corp. among several others with the League members slowly dwindling one by one. During the recreation of the scene in which she asked who among the League members was the traitor at the arrival of T Corp. agents arriving, Dongrang broke character: rather than staying silent as he had back then, he reveals himself as the traitor. The apparition of Dongbaek was caught off guard with the revelation, screaming out for Dongrang as the fireworks go off. Diverging from the truth, Dongrang began a final confrontation with Yi Sang.
In the midst of the final battle with Dongrang and temporarily being swallowed by doubt of the past, Yi Sang's fathoms finally brought him back to the laboratory, with Yeonsim sitting on the desk, as Dongbaek stood across from him. She reminisced about the day when Yi Sang first showed the League his mirror, recalling her feelings as she peered into the lens, feeling the other worlds possessed wonders that their current reality lacked, and possibilities so far away that she felt like accepting their current reality was settling for something lesser, just like how she had to settle for the fireworks that never sparked as bright as the stars of their hometown.
Dongbaek finally reminded Yi Sang that what the mirror had shown were in fact possibilities, all within reach, and that he never needed to envy the mirrored images, as those had always been his own possibilities as well. Dongbaek’s encouragement was essential for Yi Sang to realize he had never lost his wings, allowing him to work up the resolve to face the coming days head on and land the finishing blow on Dongrang. Even with her gone, Yi Sang recalled her fondly while watching spicebush flowers from his Mirror.