| “ | I'm sorry... about everything. I don't have the courage to fall in love with someone else... or the courage to forget about you. But since you saved my life... I'm going to live it. | „ |
| ~ Yul's final words to Sian. |
Chae Yul is the main male protagonist and later-revealed-to-be antagonist of the webcomic Secret Alliance. He cross-dresses as a woman and uses his sister's identity, Chae Yuri to get close to Eun Sian because of her fear of men.
Appearance[]
Yul is revealed to be a crossdresser in the second chapter when he undresses in his apartment. In his female attire, he wears a straight dark purple wig that reaches all the way down his back. His real hair is the same color, usually cut to his neck and framing his face. One notable strand lies in the middle of his face which is pushed over to the side for a cleaner look when wearing his wig. In his feminine attire, he usually wears long-sleeved, flowy dresses with a shade of pink that stop at his knees.
When not in disguise, he wears casual outfits usually containing black clothing. Chae Yul is a young man of 22 years and stands a below average height of about 5ft 6in (1.68 m); he has a slim, even feminine-looking build for a man, to a point where kids bullied him for his “girlish” appearance, but muscular build along with angular purple eyes and jet-black hair. On his right wrist is a scar he received after Sian's mom attacked him with a knife. In a flashback, he stated people avoided him because he was prettier than most females. At the end of Secret Alliance, he has shorter hair than before and is seen carrying a crate with earmuffs on and a uniform at his job. While he was writing the letter for Sian, he was wearing a white tank top with his usual black jeans and shoes.
Biography[]
Yul lived at home with his parents and sister up until his twenties. He was a timid boy who had a tragic life growing up; his relationship with his parents was very strained and he was physically abused and experienced no love given to him from his family. In one instance, Yul is seen heading out for school and getting into an argument with his parents over his attitude. He didn’t greet his dad, causing the former to lash out and throw a bowl of rice at him for being disrespectful. Yul storms out after smashing the bowl while his dad suggests sending him away to a mental institution.
At his school, his classmates relentlessly attacked and mocked him for his feminine appearance, making him a victim of being heavily bullied and assaulted by his classmates at a young age. Due to his short temper, he retaliated against his classmates, shown to attempt to attack girls with a box cutter after they mocked him. Instead, he was beaten up more. In another instance, boys from his class told him to take back what he said, likely an insult. He refuses, and they threaten to assault him.
However, this all changed when he met who he thought was the love of his life, Eun Sian. When he first met Eun Sian, Yul originally thought of her as just another one of his bullies and constantly rejected every attempt she made at being his friend, speaking to her with hostility. Sian admitted she thought Yul was "pretty", but Yul was disgusted by this compliment. One day though, Sian appeared at Yul's rescue from a group of bullies with a paper bag over her head, and when she revealed herself to him, he broke down crying, asking why she was being so kind to him. Eventually, Yul abandoned his hostility towards Sian and the two grew closer to the point where he started to develop feelings for her.
Unfortunately, things started going south for him when he was invited to Sian's house one day. When Sian's mother first saw Yul, she rushed at him with a knife and slashed his wrist in a fit of rage, and moments later, he was rushed to a hospital with Sian. She later confronts Yul to ask him whether he did it on purpose to which he reluctantly admits that he provoked her mom and states that he could give her scars, making Sian scared of and distancing herself away from him.
When Sian moved away from high school, Yul dropped out of school during his third middle school year as he was shown going into a depression because she wasn’t going to be there. At the beginning of the manhwa, he is seen stalking Sian at her new school, but she does not recognize him due to his disguise of his younger sister and the fact that she repressed traumatic memories of him.
Personality[]
Even though Yul appears to be a kind-hearted boy at first glances, he's shown to be very manipulative and controlling. For example, back in middle school while he and Sian were still dating, Yul told her to change her profile picture since guys might have dirty thoughts about her. He also told a classmate to go up to Sian aggressively and treat her rudely, so Yul could give Sian the impression that other boys were bad, and that significantly added to her fear. Sian was often willing to give him what he wanted, likely due to a fear of his anger, and the fact that she had nobody else to truly rely on.
Yul is shown to have explosive anger issues and generally being described to have a very quick temper, evident when he gets into fights with his parents, threatens to kill his bullies where he exploded at and attacked a classmate who dressed him up like a girl and mocked him to where a few of their other classmates had to physically restrain him from harming the girl with a knife (that appeared to be a box cutter) he had, and on occasion even lashing out at Sian, though he apologizes right away to her. He erupts in anger when things don't go according to plan and is the perfect example of a male yandere personality type. After an incident with a drunk man at the female-only cafe where Sian worked, in which Sian was threatened, he later stalked this man while dressed as Yuri, and eventually followed the man into a dark alley. He knocks the man unconscious with a taser and then beats him up, which the employees at the female cafe are talking about the next day.
He displays symptoms of borderline personality disorder to an extreme and some sadistic tendencies, and he cleverly manipulates others to bring his plans to fruition. However, when around Sian, he has a much more complacent and sweet side (though his composure quickly breaks when he doesn’t get what he wants). When faced with the fact that Sian liked Yujin more than she liked Yul, he's willing to act desperately, telling Sian that even if she doesn't love him, he just needs to "stay by her side". He genuinely loves Sian and states many times he’ll do anything to get her to stay by his side just to have “Sunbae” or “Noona” all to himself, even if it means crossdressing as a female (which he admits he hates), stalking, extortion, invasion of privacy, breaking and entering, assault, and other crimes.
As time passed, his relationship with Sian started to become an unhealthy obsession, and due to his mental illness, he not only dropped out of high school but was unable to focus on further studies, or anything else for that matter, since he didn’t even have the required material satisfactions of leading a normal life. He never left his room, didn't take proper care of himself, and was overall just a mess. His downfall lay in getting attached to Sian during middle school, which cast a lifelong shadow of pain and suffering thereon as he was subliminally unable to move on from the lowest point of his life. Ultimately, Yul’s mind was stuck in those years of incessant bullying and abuse, unresolved angst simmering far past his teenage years. Yul thought he was never going to fall in love ever again, especially after Sian had left. He was so heartbroken he felt like he couldn't continue living without her but was reminded when the sun rose that morning that everything moves on.
Trivia[]
- His bio is listed in the epilogue of the manhwa. According to his bio:
- He's 22 years old, which is one year younger than Sian.
- He's 168 cm (5 ft 6.5 in), making him 2 cm shorter than Eun Sian, who is 170cm (5 ft. 7).
- His blood type is AB in comparison to Sian who's a type A
- In contrast to Sian who is a Libra, his horoscope is Scorpio.
- Ironically, people with a Scorpio Zodiac sign are said to have a terrible compatibility with those who have a Libra.
- His birth flower is a lobelia.