GLENN

classified information

BIRTH NAME: Kumagai Arisu[break]
BIRTH DATE: February 20th[break]
BIRTH PLACE: Furano-shi, Hokkaido, Japan[break][break]

the rising star

His earliest memories are of white walls and the beeping machine monitoring his vitals. Sickly since birth, he was in and out of the hospital for the first few years of his life. A simple cold could knock him down and be life-threatening, and there were multiple times when he had to be resuscitated. His mother would remain by his side each and every time, only leaving when told to by the hospital staff. Between treatments, she would hum or sing to him to keep him calm. As time went on, they would sing together, his mother giving him lessons both in and out of the hospital.[break][break]

She had once been a well-known opera singer, so the foundation she taught him was solid.[break][break]

He enjoyed learning from his mother, but it soon came at the cost of his already limited freedom. She began to film his singing under the pretense of home videos. In truth, she was sending the tapes off to talent agencies, producers for talent shows, etc. Unable to achieve her own dreams anymore, she wanted to push her son into the spotlight.[break][break]

And it worked.[break][break]

The cute four-year-old with an angelic voice began to appear on local shows before branching to the rest of Hokkaido. As he grew, his mother pushed for larger shows around Japan. He was scouted for commercials before making his official acting debut on a children's show. His career did not slow down, even after he began school. His mother pushed for bigger and better roles, all at the expense of her son's health.[break][break]

the missing star

When he was ten years old, Arisu collapsed in the middle of the filming for a game show. He was rushed to the hospital with a high fever and labored breathing. They managed to stabilize him, and he was to be hospitalized for the remainder of the week.[break][break]

Unfortunately, he was only allowed half a day before he disappeared entirely.[break][break]

Kidnapped in the dead of night when the nurses were too preoccupied with other patients, Arisu vanished without a trace.[break][break]

the cellar

Arisu awoke in a cold, damp room, barely lit by a small light over a set of stairs that could only be reached on the other side of a wall of metal bars. He was not alone, a handful of other people, ranging from children to young adults, huddled in various places. The eldest slowly approached once he stirred and placed the back of their hand to his forehead to check his fever.[break][break]

They tried to explain the situation, but a language barrier prevented much from being understood. The most they could do was communicate their names.[break][break]

He pieced together bit by bit his new reality. Their captor liked them for their talents and their looks, and he would descend from the stairs early in the morning and late in the evening and pick someone to perform for him. Obedience and a brilliant show were rewarded. Disobedience or mistakes during performances resulted in harsh punishments.[break][break]

While he learned by watching, punishment was unavoidable for Arisu. Their captor had little patience for the language barrier or Arisu's weak body, and he couldn't recall a single day in the first few months that he wasn't in pain.[break][break]

He picked up bits and pieces of the captor's language, enough so that he could figure out what was wanted without aggravating him. Punishment became sparse for a short while.[break][break]

Until no matter what he did was never enough to satisfy their captor. As the months dragged on, he realized he was being targeted, called upon day after day, morning and evening.[break][break]

Eventually, he snapped.[break][break]

reunion

Nearly three years had passed since the child star had vanished without a trace. A separate kidnapping case led to the raid of a house in an affluent neighborhood. In Greece.[break][break]

Police flooded the house and searched every room until finding a door with five different locks that went to the basement. There they found more than they were expecting: nine emaciated people of various ages locked behind iron bars and two bodies covered in blood near the stairs. Their suspect was dead, and the one who ended it all had passed out from his injuries and fatigue.[break][break]

He awoke one week later to a white ceiling and light that flooded in through the window and from the lights overhead. Gentle humming and a warm hand holding his greeted him, the faintest wince as he became increasingly aware of the pain causing the hand to tighten around his.[break][break]

He was unable to speak for over a month, and he was bedridden for two months. His mother slowly recounted everything that had happened while he was missing, from the divorce to the new man his mother was seeing. That man was to become his new father, not that he would make it easy on him. Yet, he could not find it within himself to be mad at his mother for trying to live her life under such circumstances. She had poured every last drop of her resources into finding him, even when his biological father was ready to cut their losses after barely a month had passed.[break][break]

His mother's new partner was a man from overseas, a business tycoon with pockets deep enough to fund his mother's search. The man wore a bright smile on his face as he greeted the boy in the hospital bed, but Arisu could not return one in kind.[break][break]

And he never would.[break][break]

rebirth

Once he was released from the hospital, they did not return to Japan. His mother had already moved to Scotland to live with her current partner, and a room had been set aside and decorated with all of his old belongings in the hope that he would one day reappear. Having already outgrown his old wardrobe, all of his clothes were soon replaced. He was given time to adjust to his new surroundings without any expectations to leave the house for a while.[break][break]

He did not step out of that house until his mother's marriage. With the last name change, they went ahead and changed Arisu's name. A clean slate and a means of hiding from the past, Blair Glenn was born.[break][break]

To catch up on the years he missed, he was home-schooled until he was eighteen. Thanks to his new father's connections, he was able to attend university with little hassle. Of course, his parents were reluctant about his choice of study: mortuary science. They supported him in the end. He had not expressed concrete interest in anything for a long while, so they were not about to put up a fight about the first thing he had asked for in years.[break][break]

Blair graduated at the top of his class and only stuck around for a few more months before moving to a different town for work. The years slowly ticked by until a strange livestream disrupted the monotony.