ㅤPERSONALITY.ㅤ

ㅤARKADI OBRAZTSOVㅤ is a young man who strikes most people as a carbon copy of his father, though where his father's ambition burned quietly, ㅤARKADIㅤ's smolders with an intensity that is, to some, frankly terrifying. He wants to be a healer, and he wants it with the kind of hunger that usually belongs to men planning murders, which is an unfortunate impression to give when one's face is already set in a hard, nonchalant scowl. As the legacy of the ㅤOBRAZTSOVㅤ name, he carries a reputation for brightness and a future as a haruspex that a Changeling once told him would surpass even his father's; a claim he knows better than to trust, but keeps close anyway, both to feed his ego and to steel his determination not to bring humiliation to the family name. He is courageous to the point of foolishness, thinking nothing of staying outdoors for hours in a place crawling with airborne plague, and he is perceptive enough to read a room before most people have finished walking into it. What few realize is that beneath the detached, blunt exterior, the man who speaks literal facts and lies only when necessary, who can be abrasive even to elders if they push him, there is a deeply humane streak, especially toward children who have lost or been abandoned by their parents to the plague. He is persistent and tenacious, sometimes to the point of cantankerousness and belligerence, and it takes considerable convincing to make him think twice before charging ahead with his own reckless methods. People call him wise, though never quite as wise as his father. When exhaustion sets in and the nagging doesn't stop, his tact deserts him entirely, leaving behind a sarcastic remark sharp enough to make anyone finally leave him alone.

ㅤSECRETS.ㅤ

ㅤOO1.ㅤㅤEveryone in the steppe respects him for his family name, ㅤOBRAZTSOVㅤ. To the locals, that name is synonymous with guardian angel — the figure who saved the town during the plague that swept through back in the day. It's the only name they know him by, and it carries a weight of reverence that ㅤARKADIㅤ has never quite figured out how to carry himself. What most people don't realize is that hardly anyone actually knows who ㅤARKADIㅤ is himself; other than he is known for ㅤYEFIMㅤ's son. The steppe is a strange place — half of its population consists of people who came there to be "thrown away," outcasts and wanderers with nowhere else to go. The other half are locals who've simply forgotten him, because he spent years away in the city studying medicine.ㅤOO2.ㅤㅤRumour has it that the ㅤOBRAZTSOVㅤ family are all cannibalistic, eating the healthy organs of fresh corpses that aren't needed for haruspicy. It's a grim rumor, the kind that sticks to a family name like tar, and like most rumors, it's only partially true. Not all ㅤOBRAZTSOVㅤ are cannibals — ㅤYEFIMㅤ, for one, certainly isn't. But ㅤARKADIㅤ is one of them. Who could really blame him, though? The steppe is a poor side of the country, the kind of place where a single meal costs half of a person's fortune. His defense is simple and honest: he is poor. He's got to eat what he's got to eat to stay alive, and he stays alive so he can save people. There's a certain logic to it, even if it makes people's skin crawl.ㅤOO3.ㅤㅤChildren in the steppe are afraid of him. They say he looks more like the grim reaper than a healer — and even the children his father took in say the same thing. They always compare him to his father, who had the gentle face of a true healer, the kind of man people trusted on sight. The children greet ㅤARKADIㅤ with something akin to, "Has Mister Reaper come to take my life?" It's a morbid little ritual, and despite his annoyance with these kids, ㅤARKADIㅤ always humours them. "Yes. And he wants to eat you too."ㅤOO4.ㅤㅤㅤARKADIㅤ isn't much of a picky eater. You might find him eating grass for the love of the game. It's not a cry for help or a display of poverty; he's just genuinely unbothered by what goes into his mouth.ㅤOO5.ㅤㅤHe listens to Queens of the Stone Age and King Crimson. It's an odd detail for a man who looks like he stepped out of a plague doctor's nightmare, but there's something humanizing about it.ㅤOO6.ㅤㅤHe's a fighter, not a lover. That's what he tells himself, anyway. But that doesn't mean he's not capable of feeling love — it just means he doesn't know what to do with it. He has a crush on a doctor he met in the city, and that's for a start. He has his own way of loving and committing.ㅤOO7.ㅤㅤHe is always seen wearing a medical mask. Part of it is practical: protection from the airborne plague that still lingers in the air. But there's another reason, one he doesn't talk about. He has scar tissue from stitches on the edges of his lips. It's quite terrifying to the children, so for the sake of his father's love — even in death — ㅤARKADIㅤ decides to keep wearing a mask whenever he goes out.ㅤOO8.ㅤㅤThe city folk introduced ㅤARKADIㅤ to something that is rarely found in the steppe, and one of them is a fruit called an apricot. He said the taste and smell of apricots are what he likes the most.ㅤOO9.ㅤㅤDespite living in the city for ten years, ㅤARKADIㅤ is still living in an old civilization. He doesn't understand technology at all, other than basic things. The city folk introduced him to a phone before, and he broke it the first day he tried to get comfortable using it. It wasn't out of carelessness; he simply doesn't have the instinct for it, the way some people do. If you're gonna ask him how to communicate in the steppe from one place to another, he always said that they always use letters, or someone delivers the message by telling him.