CIVILIAN . WHELAN, BAILEY

MALE

HETEROFLEXIBLE

TWENTY

OCTOBER 1, 1991

1/2 IRISH FROM FATHER'S SIDE OF THE FAMILY TREE, 1/2 THAI FROM MOTHER'S SIDE.

FLUENT IN ENGLISH AND PROFICIENT IN IRISH GAELIC. KNOWS A VERY SMALL AMOUNT OF THAI.

WHELAN, WHALE BOY, BELUGA, SRIRACHA, SPERM WHALE. YOU CAN BLAME ALL OF THE ONES BASED ON WHALES ON HIS TWO CLOSEST FRIENDS.

0.5

Civilian

N/A

N/A

N/A

SYLPH

RHIANNON CHOU
GABRIEL KINGSTON
KONSTANTIN LENHOFF

MEDIUM

MURASAKIBARA ATSUSHI FROM KUROKO NO BASKET

Bailey is a soon-to-be college junior attending USC's School of Architecture, and is majoring in -- you guessed it, Architecture. He is currently living in an apartment with his best friend, a certain Mr. Callum Snow, and while it is little ways off from where he attends school, he doesn't really mind the short commute all that much. He does, however, tend to question his decision to shack up with his best friend nightly, because if anyone can be a handful, it's Callum. Aside from being a college student, Bailey also works as a part-time employee at a local candy store that is ran by a rather lovely elderly couple. Sometimes, if asked on a good day during which he has time to spare, Bailey might just be willing to play hairdresser for his friends and closer acquaintances. Surprisingly, he is actually pretty good at cutting and even dying people's hair -- it's a bit of a skill that he has picked up after a few years of trial-and-error on his own hair. Lastly, he is also something of a (very) reluctant urban explorer. Really, it wasn't his idea to go and explore abandoned buildings in the dead of the night. No, blame it on his friends.

As a third culture kid, Bailey has lived all over the world, or at least a good chunk of it. With all of that moving around and world traveling going on, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Bailey hails from an upper middle class family. His family is constantly globe-trotting, so there isn't any one particular place that Bailey calls home away from his where he lives during the school year, as well as summers if he chooses to stay behind to take summer classes like he is this year. For all he knows, he could wake up the next day to a text from his parents stating that they're shacking up in Portugal for a while, or poking around South Africa for the next couple of years or so. He never knows.

Simply put, there is just no way for Bailey to blend into a crowd even if it was to save his life -- and it's not because his hair is usually dyed a shade of lilac purple. Okay, fine, maybe it is part of the reason why, but it definitely isn't the whole reason. Still, it's hard to not turn and stare at a guy with purple hair that tumbles down an inch or two past his shoulders when it is let down to do whatever the hell it wants, whenever it wants -- though that isn't the case all that often here. Bailey will often pull his hair back into a carelessly messy ponytail, because let's be honest, life is a lot easier when your hair isn't constantly getting into your face. He touches up the color every now and again, but only if he has the time to do so. As a result, sometimes Bailey's hair will be dark brown at the roots -- his natural color, which does match better with his hazel brown eyes that are almost always sleepy-looking regardless of whether or not he has slept the night before. 

What makes Bailey stick out like a sore thumb even more than the brightly-colored hair, however, is the fact that he stands at a towering 6'4" in height. How that happened is beyond him -- you see, neither of his parents are particularly tall -- but if Bailey had to guess, he suspects that there were some really tall people back there somewhere up in the family tree that he has somehow taken after. Bailey's height has left him with a rather lanky frame, but years of running has left him with enough lean muscle to fill it out well enough. As a result, there is a certain sense of litheness to his figure, even if he still appears to be one of the skinnier guys. The shape of his eyes and lips are from his Thai mother, but the rest of his features, such as his pale skin and broad shoulders, seem to fall closer in line with that of his Irish father's. His father is also where Bailey got the light sprinkling of freckles across his nose and over the span of his shoulders and upper back.

While Bailey doesn't exactly consider himself as someone who is particularly fashion-conscious, he definitely manages to make something of a statement of sorts -- even if that isn't his intention in the slightest. A typical outfit of Bailey's is likely to consist of a long-sleeved shirt that is just a tad too loose on him (his favorite one is the v-neck one with wide black-and-white stripes), skinny jeans (it's easy to tell which pair he wears the most, because he has somehow managed to wear a sizable hole into one of the knees), and a pair of high-top Converse that used to be just plain old black until one of his artist friends got a hold of them and painted them to resemble a myriad of galaxies and nebulae (he isn't exactly about to complain here, because wearing outer space on your feet does sound pretty badass). He rolls up the sleeves of his shirts when it gets hot out, and conversely, will throw on a dark purple hooded jacket over everything when it starts to get chilly. Bailey isn't one for accessories, but he does wear hair-ties around his wrist. You know, just in case the one in his hair breaks and he requires another one right away.

To be perfectly honest, he usually isn't the first person most people would think to approach in a room -- even if Bailey is usually one of the first ones to get noticed thanks to both his height and hair color. Neither of those mean very much when you have a tendency to appear relatively uninterested in your surroundings, and it doesn't really help that Bailey isn't the sort to talk unless he is spoken to first -- nor is he one to freely give out smiles or go into spontaneous bouts of laughter. It isn't that Bailey means to appear to be unsociable, but he does tend to come off as such. The truth of the matter is, he's the kind of person who keeps to himself, and will really only reach out to others if they reach out to him first. Otherwise, he just simply feels that it isn't worth his time or his effort. If someone wants to be friends with him, then they will work to keep him in their lives. Prove to Bailey that your friendship is worth his while, however, and Bailey will be more than happy to meet you halfway. Bottom line is, he doesn't want to waste his time on a relationship of any sort (platonic or romantic or whatnot) if it's only temporary.

Those who do find a way to manage to worm their way into his life, however, will find themselves rewarded with a friend will help them watch their backs be it for better or for worse -- even if he can be a bit of a spoilsport at times because of it. You see, among a group of friends, Bailey is most likely going to end up being that one guy who, for lack of a better word, will almost always point out when something as a potentially bad idea -- even if everyone else seems to think that the idea is the most brilliant thing ever. The colloquial term for this is party-pooper; Bailey prefers to call it being the voice of reason. After all, common sense is actually less than common, and if Bailey can talk some into his friends, then by all means, he will try his darnedest to talk some into them. Unfortunately, the one with common sense is often the one whose advice is ignored the most, and out of concern for those that he regards as near and dear, Bailey often finds himself ignoring his own advice as well. Hypocritical, yes, but someone has to be in charge of tagging along to make sure that no one does anything too moronic. Maybe they'll listen someday, but that day will certainly not be today. Or tomorrow, apparently. 

But until that day, patience will just have to be (a very, very necessary) virtue. It's a blessing really, the fact that Bailey is a fairly long-suffering individual, because it takes a someone who can just grin and bear it to deal with some of the people who he hangs around -- or in his case, sigh and shake his head. For better or for worse, Bailey is willing to put up with people's shenanigans to more of an extent than most, and is usually fairly calm and levelheaded when dealing with others. Usually. Bailey might have what some people would call the patience of a saint, but he is no saint -- and besides, even saints must have their moments too. He might have a longer fuse than most would think to give him credit for, but that does not mean that Bailey is a doormat. He won't hesitate to smack you upside the head and tell you to sit your ass down once his bullshit quota has been met. Luckily for those around him (and maybe unluckily for him), that quota is a fairly high one. (At times, Bailey wonders if some people exist solely to reach that quota.)

Unsurprisingly, Bailey is also a fairly good listener, and is more than willing to lend an ear to those that he bothers to associate himself with. He supposes that it comes as a part of a package deal along with being patient, but in all honesty, he really doesn't mind it when those within his social circle vent to him about things, be it as transient as an bad a day or as groundbreaking as a secret that they haven't told any other living soul. Those that Bailey considers as friends are few and far in between, and to know that they think of him as someone close enough to speak to about personal things is something that he will never, ever take for granted. If anything, he values the trust that he is given to a fault. Yes, your secrets will be safe with him, but maybe a little too safe. It is something of a double-edged sword, because regardless of who it will hurt in the end, Bailey's lips are sealed for good. There are secrets better off told... but good luck getting him to admit it.

The thing is, despite everything, Bailey does care a little too much about those that he is close to at times. Maybe it's because there are so few out there that he even bothers to associate with, but Bailey is actually very, very aware of exactly what space he occupies in the lives of his friends -- and he will do everything he can to make sure that he stays in that space. While he has managed to trick himself into thinking that he is being a reliable and dependable friend by doing this, the truth is that he is fearful of losing them -- and most definitely wary of losing them to other people. Growing up, he has had very few people aside from his parents that Bailey has managed to stay close to, so the few that he has managed to keep in contact with had better not leave him for even supposedly greener pastures. Bailey is very reluctant to admit it, but at the core of everything, he is a very jealous person who is more than just a little bit possessive over the select few that he considers near and dear. (He's working on it, really, he is, but it's difficult, very much so.) If Bailey was one of the seven deadly sins, he would most definitely be envy.

There isn't much that Bailey remembers about living in Bangkok, much less living in Thailand. All he knows (and it would only be because he asked much, much later on in life) is that Thailand was here his father met his mother -- Oscar Whelan had met Mayura Wongsawat during what was supposed to be a short stay that was to last no longer than three months at most, and just... simply kept finding excuses to travel back to see her over the course of five years. He asked for her hand in marriage at the end of those five years, and then another year and a half would pass before Bailey Whelan was actually even born. Most couples would have found it wise to settle down for good once they learned that a child was on the way -- but such was not the case for the Whelans. It just simply was not an option, as Bailey's mother and father came to learn very, very quickly.

Bailey's father's job as a photojournalist took him all over the world, and he was constantly away in this country and that country. In other words, he was rarely ever home, and Bailey's mother knew that there were only two options: she could either let the strain of her husband's constant traveling take its toll on their marriage, or pack up her bags and go with him wherever he went -- even if it meant taking little Bailey in tow with her. Bailey was just a little over two years and six months old when he watched his mother pack up their lives into suitcases, bags, and boxes. He remembers her saying to him as she sealed a box shut with duct tape, "Next time Daddy has to leave, we'll leave with him." Unbeknownst to Bailey, this would be the start of what the next fifteen or so years of his life would be like -- a constant state of moving from one place to another, never staying anywhere for more than a few years at a time at best. A constant state of leaving everything and everyone behind. But at that moment in time, Bailey was very, very young, and he had told his mother dearest, "That's good. I wanna see Daddy too!"


He doesn't remember much about living in New Zealand either, at least, not until the very end of his stint there. Because they didn't stay a very long time in Auckland at all, and if anything, Bailey was still too young to really think of the world as... well, the world. He was still at that age where an hour felt like forever and a day, where the number twenty still sounded like some unfathomably large amount that once, when he had overheard his father talking to another man about how there were only twenty-some-odd number of a specific animal left out there in the wild, he had chimed in that twenty-something was a lot. It was a story that would become a favorite of Bailey's father, one that he would tell to relatives for many, many years to come, much to Bailey's chagrin. In his defense, he doesn't remember saying it. Then again, he does not remember a lot of childhood things.

What he does remember, however, is leaving. There was a lot that he didn't understand still when he noticed that his mother and father putting things away in boxes and suitcases again. If anything, it just confused poor little Bailey. Where was Daddy going now? Daddy had to be going somewhere if Mommy was putting things away again. "Daddy found us another home," his mother told him when he asked her why she was packing up everything again. "A nice home, but we'll have to follow Daddy if we want to go there." But "home" was something that Bailey would stop believing in after a while, because home was somewhere that people could always go back to, somewhere they could stay. No matter where he went, he was never allowed to stay. But for now, he was still just another innocent little boy, bright-eyed and nodding at everything his parents told him. "Then let's go to the new home!" he had said with the most naive of smiles . Oh, if only it was that easy -- or rather, if only it could have remained that easy.


They didn't stay very long in Quezon City at all. If Bailey was to be very, very honest, he would admit that his family had never actually unpacked all of their belongings during their short stint in the Philippines. Things like clothes and kitchenware were unpacked, yes, but things like his toys and his mother's jewelry and his father's many books would remain untouched. He remembers a small apartment, with all of their boxes and suitcases crowded into a corner of the living room. Maybe once or twice a month, his mother would go ahead and dig through the boxes for things like her knitting needles or a flashlight to see if the pipe under the kitchen sink was leaking. The thing was, the apartment was a very sparse, lonely sort of place, and even as young as Bailey was back then, he was starting to realize that this wasn't what home was supposed to be like. It didn't feel like home, if that was saying anything. Homes, they were not supposed to feel so... empty.

No, homes were supposed to be warm and happy places, or at least that was what all of the picture books said. He had a hard time understanding why all of the pictures and photographs of homes always seemed to have the furniture out and arranged nicely, why there were no boxes in the living room and why everything seemed to fall so neatly into place. Whatever the case was, if none of the homes in books and magazines looked like the one that he lived in, then there had to be something wrong with his home, right? Because his home certainly did not feel so picture perfect. What would the picture perfect home be like though? Bailey might have been young, but he had ideas. So many ideas of what a perfect home would be like, and it would all start with a messy little doodle of a house in purple crayon. He would be drawing houses for a long time to come.


At some point, he realized that there was something different about the kids he attended school with in Galway. There was something about them that wasn't quite the same as the other kids he had gone to school with up until then, something that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Whatever it was, Bailey couldn't quite figure it out. It was, to say the very least, a mystery to him, and he was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Somehow, these kids seemed comfortable -- as if they somehow managed to seamlessly blend into each others' lives without having to try. That sense of comfortable was something that Bailey couldn't quite wrap his head around -- what exactly caused it, and why did these kids have it? Whatever it was, Bailey wanted it. He wanted to know why the other kids seemed comfortable, because it seemed so warm. Warm, he learned, was a good thing.

It would all click together in his head in due time, why the other kids seemed to effortlessly emanate that strange, warm sense of comfort. The kids around him seemed to fit perfectly into the pictures of their lives, because they had, at the very least, almost always been a part of that picture. At most, some of them had moved houses once or in couple of case twice, but none of them were like him. They weren't like the kids he had gone to school with before, who were like him and moved around a lot. No, these kids, they weren't like him. These kids, they had stayed in the same place for, at the very least, almost all of their lives. There was perhaps one case where someone had moved in from another country when they were too young to remember, but as far as Bailey knew, he was the only person who had moved three times and lived in four different countries -- and still counting. (He would be much older before his parents told him that the school he had gone to while he was in Ireland was the only non-international school he had attended as a child, and that was why the kids there did not move around much.)


It was difficult to stay friends with people that you never saw ever again. By the time Bailey found himself in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, he had long lost count of how many friends he had to leave behind. He couldn't remember the ones from Thailand, and could maybe remember one or two from New Zealand, but the ones from the Philippines and Ireland -- he could still remember their faces, their voices, their names. Was it going to be worth it to try again in Bolivia? Or was it all just destined to be a repeat of last time and all the times before, where he would be forced to leave everyone behind all over again? Sure, he had his parents to go to, but at the end of the day, no matter how close he was to them, that was what they were to him -- parents. There were certain things that only friends could do that parents couldn't, and Bailey was very much aware of this by now -- but it seemed like such a sad thing, to make friends with others only to have to say goodbye indefinitely after a short while. Bailey truly did resent moving all of the time.

He did try to reach out at first, tried to make friends at his new school. The kids there would understand, he was sure -- kids in international schools tended to move around just like him, after all. If anything, they would understand just as well as he did that friendships were fragile, fleeting things. But unlike before, Bailey now had a point of reference as to what his life would have been like had he not been a third culture kid. Ireland had given him a taste of what a normal childhood would have been like, and with that in mind, it was difficult to not want that in Bolivia too. Experience dictated that he wouldn't be staying in Santa Cruz de la Sierra for very long though -- and if there was one thing that Bailey believed was true back then, it was that you couldn't take your friends along with you no matter how hard you tried. No, there was just simply no way, and that was why, somewhere along the way in Bolivia, he simply stopped trying to make more friends and drifted away from the ones that he had made. It was his own decision to do so, of course, and it certainly did make the departure just a little less painful. At least, he believes it did. (To be honest, he isn't really sure whether or not it did help him.)


He didn't even have to guess anymore -- time and time again only told Bailey that this time would be no different than any of the other times he had moved. Once again, trying to make friends was a moot point, because hell would probably freeze over before he had a chance to see any of them again. But not making friends meant that there was very little to do after school once homework and studying was out of the way. And with no one to distract him, academics didn't take up quite as much time as most kids tended to claim that they did. Bailey tried to turn to television to pass the time, but save for a small handful of channels (if even that), there wasn't much on South Korean television that he could understand. Needless to say, thanks to the language barrier, it didn't take long for Bailey to switch from television over to the internet. What he didn't count on, however, was for the internet to turn out to be the gem that it did -- ask Bailey, and he will tell you that discovering the internet was the greatest thing to ever happened to him.

It was the internet, after all, that gave him something that he thought he would never be able to have -- friends who he would still stay friends with him no matter where he was in the world. Of course, it didn't occur to Bailey at first that he could make friends on the internet. No, it wouldn't be until someone in an online game he was playing asked him if he had a handle on a chat client. That would be the day that he struck a friendship with a very certain Callum Snow (who would then incidentally turn out be his future real-life best friend and college flatmate, but he didn't know that at the time). It would be through his friendship with Callum that Bailey would eventually meet other friends through the internet, and this time, when it came time to pack up his life in Busan to take elsewhere, Bailey wasn't sad at all. No, because he had friends waiting for him this time around. All Bailey had to do was to wait until he had good access to stable internet connection again.


All good things had their down sides, and it wouldn't be very long until Bailey found out about that part of having online friends. Timezones made it so that he either only got to talk to them on weekends, or live with what was perhaps one of the strangest sleep schedules he had ever heard of anyone having. This meant going to bed the moment he got home from school, then waking up during the night to go online in order to play with and talk to his friends while doing his homework at the same time. Not exactly the most efficient or healthy way of doing things, to be very honest -- and that was why Bailey decided that he wanted to go to university somewhere closer to where most of his online friends resided -- the United States. Seeing as how his entire life had basically been one big, long stint of studying abroad if he really thought about it, the idea and possibility of having to move to another country to attend school was not a novel idea to Bailey at all.

The one difference would be that he would be traveling there without his parents, which was fine -- he could go see them over the summer and winter holidays. It was a trade-off that Bailey was more than willing to take though, as there were plenty of reasons why this was a win-win scenario for him. One, his parents, despite their warning to him, were actually very supportive of his decision, and promised to keep in contact and alert him whenever they had to move. Two, it would mean that he would no longer have to wake up and sleep at odd hours of the day and night in order to be able to talk to his friends, because for once, he would at the very least be in a timezone that was closer to theirs. There would be no more of having to catch them on just as they logged on or just as they were about to log off. Applications and required supplementary materials were sent out, and the letters of both acceptance and rejection started coming in throughout the months that followed. In time, Bailey chose to attend the School of Architecture at USC.


Bailey's first year of university passed by in a whirlwind blur, and for more reasons than just simply one. Shortly before he had left from Wales for California, he had learned that a number of his online friends would also be attending schools that were in relatively close proximity to USC. Needless to say, hanging out in real life became an actual possibility, and when Bailey wasn't trapped in the architecture studios at school, he had the option to do just that. In retrospect, Bailey isn't quite sure where he found the time to sleep during his freshman year, because oh, boy, did a lot happen. For one thing, he never expected that he would get dragged into exploring abandoned buildings with his friends. Now that had been an interesting experience -- and one that he finds himself repeating time after time again, even if he does have a lot to say about how they shouldn't be trying trespass into places that have been abandoned for who knew how long? Who knew how many close calls they may or may not have had? Sometimes, Bailey sort of wonders about his life choices he made during that year. But then again, he questions plenty of things. (Oh, he would do it all again in a heartbeat though -- maybe.)

The summer of his freshman year was spent in Russia with his parents (who had moved there sometime during his second semester) -- an experience that he is not too keen on repeating. While he is sure that the country has its charms somewhere, the environment there simply wasn't for him for a multitude of reasons (some of which are rather humorous, but the list goes on for miles), and Bailey decided right there and then that he was going to find a way to spend his next summer in Los Angeles. After all, Californian summers were supposed to be pretty nice, right? He kept that note in mind all throughout his second year of at USC -- which panned out much like the first year did, aside from the fact that he had almost failed his physiology class (whose brilliant idea was it to list that under general education again?) -- and the moment registration for summer classes opened up, he signed up for the upper level writing course that was apparently mandatory for everyone so that he could kill two birds with one stone. Now he had a reason to stay in California during the summer, and he could get one of the classes that he had to take anyways done and over with. Indeed, life was looking to be pretty good.