Characters-United

“In front of each of you is a steel bucket containing fifty pieces of metal,” the teacher explained as he walked up and down the rows of lab tables. “Five of those pieces are magnets. You need to identify those five magnets in the next three minutes.” The class full of nine and ten year old students, with one purple-haired eight year old, listened to the teacher quietly and without bemoaning the task set before them. The school didn’t tolerate much in the way of acting out and few students were willing to risk the teacher’s attention with either questions or complaints. “Get started,” the teac

Yooji finished cleaning up the floor and turned to the fridge to portion out a little kimchi for herself to eat. Nothing much beyond that however, not with her mother on the war path. Just something to take the afternoon edge off and then she moved to her room to start packing. It wasn’t twenty minutes before she heard the door to the front of the house open again, prompting her to take a risk and peek out. “Appa, is that you?” “There you are, Yooji,” the smiling man said from the entryway. “Is she still having one of her fits?” Kyung-suk was at least ten, maybe twelve years older than Eun-Mi thoug

 “This is the fifteenth formula,” a man said clinically as the silent girl at his side copied down his words.  “Previous formula were either too strong or not strong enough.  The antivenin that resulted for formulae six and eleven killed the patient outright.  Formulae three, five and ten killed the host before enough antibodies could be produced to create an antivenom.  The remaining formulae produced no effect on the host, or else the antibodies produced were too few.  This formulae was potent enough to give the host a severe reaction, but they have already recovered completely.  Hopefully, the resultant antivenom will be

Gaetana Trolleti stepped off the helicopter out into the Japanese night surrounding the landing zone. Her lavender hair whipped about in the strong winds produced by the spinning rotor. She held a briefcase tightly against her chest with one hand and the other straightening out one of her shoes. Dressed in the formal blue business suit, the pose made her slender figure appear all the more feminine and beautiful. “Be careful ma’am,” another woman said as she stepped out of the helicopter and stood beside Gaetana. “You shouldn’t get out of the helicopter so quickly.” The woman stood another five inches tall

Róisín was perfect. There was little else that the man sitting beside her gently sleeping form could say to accurately describe her. Black hair hung loose down to just below her shoulders. Not just black hair, glorious hair that seemed almost as if it was a piece of the night sky draped over her head. The beads of sweat along her locks failed to mat the hair down as it would with any other woman, instead it enhanced the image of the evening spun shawl by glittering like stars against the dark. This was contrasted against alabaster skin that never seemed to tan. Lying beside him now, she seemed a fey ghost of snowy hills against