Dongbaek/Story
Background
Before the League
She grew up in the same hometown as most of her fellow League members; such as Yi Sang, Dongrang, Gap-ryong, Aneung, and Nul-in in particular. Their birthplace in District 19 was a pastoral, farming village, where Dongrang rescued an orphaned yellow calf and nursed it back to health. Members such as Gap-ryong remember taking turns feeding the calf together with Dongrang, leading to his love of rescuing injured animals in the future.
It was their hometown where Dongbaek could see the stars in the night sky so clearly, having fun watching them with her childhood companions. The village was also home to numerous spicebush flowers, their yellow petals and piquant scents becoming a source of nostalgia for Dongbaek, years after she left for Nest T.
Look. Even if it’s all black and white, you can still see it, right?
Fire makes such a warm color.” ”
Dongbaek later became a member of the League of Nine Littérateurs, a group of nine researchers who left District 19 due to S Corp’s political corruption and economic turmoil, resettling in Nest T under Young-ji and Dongrang’s guidance. Hearing that T Corp. was seeing remarkable technological growth and the Wing backing many new technologies, the members immigrated there for better opportunities.
There, they worked menial jobs in factories and sold their inventions to fund their conferences where they presented technologies developed as a hobby between them.
Blossoming League of Nine Littérateurs
Much to Dongbaek’s laments however, the light pollution and factory smoke clouding the night sky, she could no longer see the stars as she did back in their hometown. And due to T Corp. restricting colors for the wealthy in District 20, the Nest is perpetually in a literal monotone of black and white; where even the flowers outside the League’s lab couldn’t blossom into beautiful shade. Dongbaek would often invent fireworks at the illuminators’ conferences, as a way of replicating both of these sources of nostalgia that were stolen away by T Corp’s classist greed.
When Young-ji invented the glass window, a singularity capable of gazing into alternate Mirror Worlds and overlapping them onto the current world, Dongbaek was racked with concern. She surmised that Young-ji didn’t purely intend this invention to be a mere plaything for amusement, worried if he was still fixated on an unspecified loss he suffered in the past being the motivation behind creating the glass window.
While he didn’t confirm nor deny her worries, Young-ji had picked up Yi Sang’s curiosity over the tech, he encouraged his junior to improve upon his designs and recreate it in his own way. The next illuminator’s conference, Yi Sang refined Young-ji’s work into the mirror, amazing everyone in the League—including Dongbaek. Staring into the mirror that showed a myriad of unblurred possibilities—Yeonsim—Dongbaek tried to downplay her sheer wonder at the marvel, with Dongrang teasing the stars in her eyes. Though she admired its beauty, she still saw what the mirror worlds inside it possessed—possibilities within where her current reality lacked—the reality she just had to settle with and make the best of.
However, only seen within a fragment of Yi Sang's personal memories, she made a pledge that she would give her life for him in gratitude for giving her such a moment of wonder.
But when Yi Sang announced he had no intention of marketing the invention and to merely keep it as something only for amusement within the League, Dongbaek at the time could only cheerfully jeer at Yi Sang’s humble plans for the device.
Rowdy League of Nine Littérateurs
But as news spread of Young-ji's glass window, investors and other greedy vultures flocked the League’s lab to capitalize on the group’s inventions, much to Dongbaek’s chagrin. When Young-ji received the offer to visit the second Wing that sought to recruit him, he asked Dongbaek to accompany him, but she refused to leave the group behind.
However, the increased attention eventually backfired, as the group soon received an official notice from T Corp’s tech agency. The group’s gathering, as well as new inventions, had to be publicly registered and permitted by T Corp; if the League did not comply with their demands, they would face immediate disbandment and arrest, and have all their works be confiscated.
Withering League of Nine Littérateurs
Rather than allow the Wing to take advantage of their knowledge and research, the Sang-heo brought in a concept incinerator into the laboratory, a device that could not only destroy their inventions, but all memory of these devices as well. Dongbaek was in favor of destroying most of their works so they couldn’t be warped and twisted by the Wings, much to others' apprehension of the very act.
While Dongrang protested to protect his healing technology, reasoning that his hard work could save lives in the City, Dongbaek expressed her true doubt that his research would change things for the better in the City. Coldy downplaying Dongrang’s blood, sweat, and passion he put his research into, he silently relents and burns his technology in the incinerator, plastering a false smile on his face. While Dongbaek was mostly unaware of the full extent of his true feelings, Dongrang harbored a deep resentment towards her and the League—for trampling over his life’s work and the idealistic dreams he strove for.
Ultimately, these attempts did not deter T Corp, as the League still withheld Young-ji’s and Yi Sang’s glass technology from the Wing. Aneung, under threat to be forcibly repatriated back to S Corp, squealed the League’s location to the tech agency; earning him Sang-heo’s and Dongbaek’s ire. One by one, members such as Yurang were forcibly abducted by T Corp. or left of their own accord, dwindling the League’s members to a handful as they continued to hide from authorities.
Young-ji regretfully proposes the idea that he surrenders his glass window, with Dongbaek outright refusing for risk of the League’s immediate dissolution and the grave consequences of what could happen if the Wings got their hands on the singularity.
Anticipating the raid, Dongbaek warned Young-ji to go into hiding as she planned to have the other League members block the lab’s door, so that she and Dongrang could carry the glass window and mirror kept in the basement to safety. Unfortunately, the collectors sent by T Corp. already knew where they were hiding the glass technology, causing the plan to fall apart. Dongbaek suspected that it was Gap-ryong who sold the League out, given the fact that he was nowhere to be seen that day, nor the day before, though Sang-heo tells her at this point, it doesn’t matter.
Sang-heo urges Dongbaek to escape with the other members of the League, but she had other plans—having rigged the entire laboratory to explode with her fireworks. Once more, she asks her fellow League members if none of them are traitors, with Sang-heo and Yi Sang confirming they are not. Unbeknownst to them all, it was Dongrang that betrayed the League’s trust, and was the one that tattled the glass technology’s location to T Corp.
Emptied League of Nine Littérateurs
The laboratory is then blown to smithereens, leaving who escaped and left alive a mystery to the survivors of the incident. Dongbaek was physically scarred by the explosion, leaving the right side of her face permanently injured—losing her eye and her hair prematurely graying from the stress of the situation.
Like other members left aimless and wandering throughout the City after the League’s dissolution, Dongbaek eventually found employment in K Corp—the same Wing where Dongrang planted himself with the grace of the League’s former reputation.
A few months before…
A few months before the events of Canto IV: The Unchanging, Dongrang’s department began using the abandoned L Corp. branch below one of their laboratories as a research facility. Upon the discovery of the Abnormalities and Golden Bough, Dongrang and Dongbaek were assigned to head the research on the entities. However, employees such as Ran soon learned of the true nature of K Corp’s Singularity and left the laboratory, resenting how the Wings could just capitalize on the citizens’ suffering; Dongbaek was among the disgruntled employees.
She has always been good at attracting like-minded individuals and encouraging them, so it must have been a breeze for her to gather the abandoned.” ”
She always had the knack of bringing people together, a virtue twisted by the despair of the League’s destruction, as she brought a coalition of disillusioned researchers under her wings. With her experience with the Abnormalities and Golden Bough kept in the L Corp. facility, she became a leader of a subgroup within the Technology Liberation Alliance, and staged a coup against K Corp. The TLA under Dongbaek’s leadership eventually learned of a method to extract E.G.O from the Abnormalities and stabilizing it using the Golden Bough’s properties of Qliphoth Deterrence, distributing the equipment amongst the researchers.
While the E.G.O equipment transformed the combat-inexperienced researchers into competent fighters, the Lobotomy E.G.O they produced weren't as compared to the ones manufactured by L Corp. These new E.G.O were still unstable enough to slightly subject their wearers to E.G.O Corrosion, overlapping the emotions of the Abnormalities the gear was extracted from onto the researchers. And due to the fact that the TLA lacked the preventive measures to assign gear only to individuals that could handle the E.G.O, equipment was given out on a first come, first served basis. This caused a numerous number of researchers to suffer the mental strain of E.G.O Corrosion, with Dongbaek in particular ailing from the depressive pessimism of the Lobotomy E.G.O::Sunshower.
Before getting Off the Bus
Of course… It produced a lot more tears. All thanks to you.” ”
As the conflict waged on, Dongbaek sent a threat to Dongrang to expose the truth of K Corp’s Singularity to the public, or else the TLA would release an Abnormality into the streets of Nest K. Of course, this was an empty threat—but one that would still be sent—as the Brazen Bull breached from the control of the TLA and escaped the facility anyway.
The Abnormality had resonated with the Golden Bough, which absorbed the traumas of the K Corp. employees, and transformed it into a much more powerful form than what the Qliphoth Deterrence could handle at the time. The bull proceeded to rampage across Nest K, its carnage being filmed by K Corp’s drones, unknowingly benefiting K Corp’s tear production.
And to Dongrang’s luck, the LCB, whom he had been keeping an eye on for so long had encountered the Abnormality, leading to the Sinners fighting and suppressing the threat.
Main Story
Canto IV: The Unchanging
Dongbaek attempting to end Yi Sang's misery.
The Golden Bough resonating with their emotions.
The last photo ever taken of the League.
Part 1
She first appears at the end of Part 1, showing herself to the Sinners, Dongrang, and Samjo from the depths of the abandoned L Corp. facility. Carrying a Golden Bough, she uses it to stab Yi Sang before leaving with it, but not before discarding a picture of her time in the League of Nine Littérateurs.
Part 2
Near the end of Part 2, when the group manages to reach to top of K Corp's building, she reveals herself to the Sinners when she reaches the Screening-room and drops her 'veil' — a Singularity-infused item that allows its wearer to go undetected.
She states that the regeneration ampules that K Corp uses are dangerous and should be destroyed. This prompts Samjo to dive into a tank of it to prove it's safe, killing him due to the unrefined tears produced from K Corp's singularity. She then reveals that she has become one of the leaders of the Technology Liberation Alliance, wanting to destroy the singularity with a Concept Incinerator in an effort to "return to the past". She then fights the party with her Lobotomy Corp E.G.O::Sunshower, but is defeated.
Dongrang then gleefully reveals the true source of the Singularity, a giant eye that cries constantly at the glass-window's recordings of the suffering that occurred in Nest K, all filmed by the Wing's security drones. Videos of the rampage of Brazen Bull that escaped the Alliance and Kromer's slaughter of Sinclair's hometown flash onto the glass-window's screens, causing the eye to weep and produce K Corp's tears. With the realization her efforts have only furthered K Corp's singularity and Dongrang's callous words, the emotional distress nearly causes Dongbaek to distort. Conversing with the voice inside her head, she instead manages to stave off its temptations, manifesting her own personal E.G.O, "Spicebush", and continues the fight against the Sinners.
After losing once more, Dongrang reveals that N Corp. has started a new League of Nine Littérateurs, with Gubo tracking down old members for recruitment — and killing those who won’t comply. He then stabs Dongbaek with her Golden Bough branch as a form of "compassion" due to the threat of Gubo. She dies in Yi Sang's arms, lamenting how she knew she was going to "wither", but still wanted to die with her old friends in the League.
The entire fight was recorded by security and the video was immediately played back on the glass-window, repeating Dongbaek's final moments and causing K Corp's singularity to shed tears yet again.
Part 3
In her final moments as Dongbaek lay dying in Yi Sang’s embrace, Dongrang revealed himself as the traitor that sold out the League to T Corp. way back when. This revelation sent Dongbaek into a fury, the rush of emotions and breaking of her previous worldview shattering her fragile E.G.O, as the Golden Bough lodged into her resonated with her wrath.
The Golden Bough then twists and morphs the environment of the K Corp. laboratory into an absurd geometry, constructing the entrance towards the Dungeon it hidden itself in. This scale of reality-warping is new even to Faust, as the other Sinners are left flabbergasted with the absurd capabilities of the bough. The Golden Bough had also partially resurrected the corpses of the fallen TLA members and K Corp. guards into mindless zombies, along with drawing in the Abnormalities from the L Corp. branch down below into the dungeon.
After fighting off the reanimated corpses, the Sinners make it to the entrance of the Dungeon manifested from the fathoms of Yi Sang’s ego and his memories of the League of Nine Littérateurs.
Reminisced League of Nine
Dongrang smugly greets 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 spots 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 conjectures that if Dongbaek’s consciousness was absorbed by the fathoms before she died, they must act out the ‘play’ in order to draw her out. Faust speculates that if they don’t go along with the play, the memories in the dungeon would become unstable and prevent them access toward the Golden Bough. Ultimately, the Sinners take their given scripts to reenact the lives of the League of Nine Littérateurs to progress, synchronizing with the emotions and memories of the League members they play as.
The Sinners took the roles of the following Littérateurs:
| Faust = Rim | Don Quixote = Gubo | Ryōshū = Unnamed Littérateur |
| Meursault = Unnamed Littérateur | Hong Lu = Young-ji | Heathcliff = Gap-ryong |
| Ishmael = Yurang | Rodion = Nul-in | Sinclair = Aneung |
| Outis = Sang-heo | Gregor = Aseah |
Yi Sang and Dongrang play themselves throughout the performance, whereas what's left of Dongbaek's dying consciousness perfectly recites her past experiences, unaware of the Sinners playing the roles of her past compatriots. Dante, due to being inaudible aside from their ticking, takes a backseat to the play and is mostly relegated to the background as usual.
Together, the Sinners and Dongrang reenact the formation of the League with Outis, as Sang-heo, recounting their history of leaving District 19 due to S Corp’s economic turmoil, and having to resettle in T Corp. under Young-ji and Dongrang’s guidance. Ishmael, in place of Yurang, is caught in exasperation with Dongbaek’s fireworks display for the illuminators’ conference that day, questioning her fascinations with the explosives.
Dongbaek laments that due to the light pollution and factory smoke clouding the night sky, she could no longer see the stars as she did back in their hometown. Plus, due to T Corp. restricting colors for the wealthy in District 20, the Nest is perpetually in a literal monotone of black and white. Dongrang during that conference didn’t have any inventions to show off, rather, he was busy treating animals on the street, when he still had a soft spot for animals ever since raising that yellow calf back in his hometown.
Unfortunately, the TLA and K Corp. guards resurrected by the bough affecting the entire K Corp. building were also dragged into the dungeon and attacked the Sinners. Dongbaek perceives the undead horde as the angry bar owner coming into the lab to get Gap-ryong to pay off his tab. As they have no ties to Yi Sang, their presence would only interrupt the play and halt their progress, with more and more of the dead invading as the fathoms grow more unstable over time. Given the fact that not following along with the play will only create more instabilities in the fathoms, the Sinners swiftly dispatch the corpses and continue acting out the play
Blossoming League of Nine Littérateurs
The fathoms recount Young-ji’s creation of the glass window, the technology capable of such terrifying possibilities that Dongbaek was worried of Young-ji’s regrets motivating him to create it. The scene after was the day when Sang-heo discovered Gap-ryong’s invention—the one he made in their lab—sold at the market, breaking the League’s rules and bringing to light the financial strain the League and members were put under. When Ishmael broke character upon learning of Yi Sang’s high salary as an architect, the resurrected broke into the fathoms again and attacked once more—much to the mockful teasing of Dongrang and Heathcliff.
On the day when Yi Sang refined the glass window into a mirror that showed a myriad of unblurred possibilities, Yeonsim—like the other members of the League at that time, Dongbaek was amazed by the piece of work, with Dongrang teasing the stars in her eyes. Despite the immensely great capabilities of the mirror, Yi Sang announced he had no intention of marketing the invention and to merely keep it as something only for amusement within the League.
While Dongbaek at the time could only cheerfully jeer at Yi Sang’s humble plans for the device, Dongrang silently held back his displeasure for Yi Sang’s restraint.
Rowdy League of Nine Littérateurs
Flashing back to the days where the League gained attention for their inventions, Dongbaek is displeased at the rowdy laboratory filled with investors and curious parties crowding the nine. Reliving the missed conference where Young-ji was invited by the second Wing seeking to recruit him, Dongbaek was squabbling with Nul-in crowding into the group at the time; it was here, where Dongrang found his epiphany. While back then, 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.
“That no matter how hard I try, if technology doesn’t have an immediate use… no one will give it a passing glance…” ”
Breaking character, for just a moment, he laments the fact that his efforts were meaningless in the grand scale of things, and that his dreams would help no one in the careless City they lived in.
Withering League of Nine Littérateurs
Reaching the scene recounting the day where the League received T Corp’s official notice to disband their unauthorized activities, the concept incinerator once more appears to erase their technology from existence and memory.
"But… you think that’ll change anything? The world will still be a terrible mess.” ”
Dongbaek’s apparition echoes her doubts over his inventions that encouraged Dongrang to destroy his technology to heal injuries, with the man bitterly casting away that hard work he lost before back into the flames of the simulated incinerator.
The play continues to accurately perform the reenactment of the of the League’s gradual fallout: Aneung’s squealing of the League’s location to Sang-heo’s and Dongbaek’s outrage; Yurang’s and another Littérateurs’ arrest; Dongbaek’s refusal of the very idea that Young-ji surrenders his glass window to T Corp; and the League members slowly dwindling one by one. Upon reaching the moment when T Corp’s tech agency came to apprehend Young-ji and confiscate his glass technology, the series of events were replicated smoothly by the Sinners—until the point where Dongbaek reveals her plan to bomb the lab, way back when. As she asked once more who among the League members were traitors, with Yi Sang and Outis as Sang-heo, confirming their innocence; Dongrang reveals his treachery.
While catching the apparition of Dongbaek off guard with the revelation, the fireworks still go off and destroy the laboratory just as they did that day. Dongrang, breaking character just to admit his guilt, Yi Sang remarks how the former never admitted his betrayal during the bombing—that Dongbaek since that day always harbored suspicion in her heart that one of the League lied to her at the very last moment.
Who Denies All
After the final battle with Effloresced E.G.O::Farmwatch - Dongrang who managed to stalemate with the Sinners at last second, Yi Sang is caught up in the lamentations of the past as he loses himself in the unstable fathoms of his ego. While Hong Lu only briefly synchronized with Young-ji’s memories and emotions, he suggests that the script of the play they received weren’t simply letters Yi Sang intended for the man inside the mirror. Perhaps, those letters were meant to be read by the ones he met in his past, the ones he had beside him in that present, and for those he would meet in the future—such as the Sinners that accompany him now.
Dante then implores Yi Sang to think back on what was on his mind the night he left N Corp. and parted ways with Gubo. While he found the stars in the sky had lost their twinkle, and his body and spirit left crippled, Yi Sang still held onto a thread of hope that he could find a refuge where he could not just survive, but live—even if he lost his wings and left on limping legs.
His fathoms finally bring him back to the laboratory, with Yeonsim sitting on the desk, as Dongbaek is back in the flesh to greet him once more. While this apparition bears the same bleached white hair and dirty K Corp. uniform she wore during the painful reunion with Yi Sang in the ruined L Corp. facility—her right eye is now intact, looking at him fondly with the other.
"You’ve had them all along.” ”
She reminisces the day when Yi Sang first showed the League his mirror, how when she viewed into the lens, she saw the mirror worlds that possessed wonders that their current reality lacked. Possibilities so far away from them, she felt like all she could do was to just settle for their current reality—just like how she had to settle for the fireworks that didn’t hold a candle to the flowers of their hometown.
"…That’s what I wanted to tell you.” ”
But she knew, what the mirror had shown, were possibilities—something Yi Sang saw in his invention from the start—possibilities Yi Sang held inside him all along.
Helping to push Yi Sang with the realization that he kept his wings this entire time, facing his past to build his future, he works up the resolve to face the coming days head on and land the finishing blow on Dongrang with his E.G.O, Crow’s Eye View.
Legacy
With the death of the TLA's leader, Dongbaek, the CEO of K Corp, Alfonso, concludes that the rest of the terrorist organization would soon fall apart.
While Dongbaek may have failed in wiping away the parasitic stain left on Young-ji’s work, her efforts weren’t all for naught. Yi Sang, inheriting her striving for a better tomorrow, resolves to wipe away the mistakes the League have left behind and to endure, not to bend or kneel, the harsh road ahead of him. While he realizes he no longer is alone in struggles, he still looks into his mirror at the spicebush flowers of his League’s hometown, the very flowers Dongbaek had loved so much.
He is, for the first time on his long, arduous journey—content—staring fondly at Yeonsim, filled with the yellow petals Dongbaek missed so much, in its lens.