➥ added a note: Jayden Cho is both laid-back and quietly burdened. On the surface, he’s the kind of guy people find easy to be around, quick with a dry joke. His humor isn’t loud like Ailun’s, but he's on that spectrum of stupid. He’s the type to play things off with a shrug and a wry smile, even when the weight of something has him by the throat.
➥ There’s an older brother instinct to Jayden that runs deep, which goes for most people that are younger than him. Ever since Vivian came into his life, he’s felt this need to protect, guide, and ground her, even when she doesn’t ask for it. It’s in the way he checks in without making it obvious, keeps an eye on her when things go tense, or steps in with a quiet word when she’s spiraling. He’s not overbearing, just there in ways he wished someone had been for him growing up. Now he tries to be like that toward most people.
➥ Jayden is not good at facing his emotions directly; especially from his toxic relationship with Kimsa, left problems he still doesn’t know how to tend to. He rarely talks about it, not because he doesn’t feel, but because feeling it out loud makes it too real. Confrontation, especially with his own pain, makes him uncomfortable. So, he avoids, deals with it through substances. He deflects. That avoidant nature doesn’t mean he’s cold, far from it. He feels deeply, but he’s just careful about who gets to see it. Vulnerability, for Jayden, is something earned. He just seems nonchalant.

➥ added a note: Jayden Cho’s childhood relied on the his mother, a woman who held ton of patience, she was everything to him, his greatest role model. His mom worked tirelessly to support them, often taking on multiple jobs to ensure he had a home. She worked herself to the bone to keep food on the table, taking late shifts and odd jobs just to keep the lights on. Jayden adored her. She gave him everything she could even though they had next to nothing. But despite how caring his mother was, Jayden grew up with a gaping absence in his life: his father.
➥ His father had left before he was born, no explanations, no apologies, no trace. As Jayden got older, that absence grew heavier. Because before Jayden was even born, his father left. He drained their savings and vanished without a trace, leaving Jayden’s mother penniless and pregnant. She never badmouthed him, but Jayden knew the truth even though his mother never told him anything. They were dirt poor, and it was because of him. Why hadn’t his father stayed? Why hadn’t he tried? Jayden couldn’t help but internalize the abandonment, quietly wondering if he had been unworthy from the start. The resentment that brewed inside him would eventually become a huge part of him.
➥ By high school, Jayden carried that bitterness quietly. He poured himself into football and basket ball. He found comfort in the friendships he formed with a group of boys who would become his second family. Together, they formed a Football team Anhyphen, it felt as if he had six brothers. He loved these six guys as if they were his own family. These boys gave him something his father never did: stability. It was also a distraction from a toxic relationship, which would impact a majority of his adolescence and part of his adulthood. But atleast he had them as his support system.
➥ In high school, Jayden entered a relationship with Kimsa, his childhood best friend. They’d known each other since they were four, and Jayden believed she'd be the one he'd marry. She'd always been there for him when they were kids, especially when he was struggling mentally. At first, the relationship was good, something that felt stable in his life compared to how much he was struggling internally. But by their second year together, something in Kimsa changed. Their relationship started to feel like a trap. Kimsa grew controlling, obsessive, even physically harming him at times. She manipulated Jayden’s emotions with subtle guilt and sharp words, twisted his need for reassurance into an obligation to prove his love to her. She didn’t just isolate him from his friends, she controlled who he spoke to, where he went, and how he expressed himself. When Jayden met Vivian, his newly discovered stepsister, Kimsa became insecure and unhinged, even though Vivian had just transferred into their school. She would accuse him of hiding things, monitor his phone, twist his words, and guilt him anytime he pulled away. It was a trauma bond.
➥ At sixteen, that’s when Vivian entered the picture, his father’s other daughter, who suddenly transferred to his high school. Suddenly, the girl he’d only vaguely heard about became his classmate, his friend, and eventually, something more like a sister. Which he needed in the mental state he was in cause of his relationship. Vivian wasn’t what he expected. She was guarded, and clearly troubled. But Jayden saw past the surface. It didn’t take long to realize she was hurting too, shaped by the same man who had failed him. Their father hadn’t been good to her either. He treated her badly, with a kind of emotional distance that left scars in different ways. At first, they were strangers with a shared wound, and that pain became something they grew a bond over. Vivian and Jayden became close, closer than anyone expected. Through her, Jayden found someone who understood what it felt like to be mentally overlooked. But through her, he also found a path to the very thing that had haunted him his whole life: his father. When Jayden finally met him, it wasn’t the emotional closure he had dreamed of. It was disappointment. His father wasn’t some complex man with tragic reasons. He was a deadbeat. Irresponsible, cold, careless, barely able to look Jayden in the eye. There was no apology. No shame. Just avoidance. Jayden had spent his whole life building this man up in his head, someone powerful enough to ruin him, someone he could finally confront. Instead, what he found was a coward. Someone not worth the pain he’d carried. Worse, he saw how his father had treated Vivian and her mother, neglecting Vivian, and hurting her mother. Vivian wasn’t at all cherished. Just another person he failed. And yet somehow, she and Jayden had found each other through that failure.
➥ By the time Jayden was 20, he was ready to leave behind the aspects of his life that hurt: his father and his ex. With his Football team, he made the decision to move to Korea. Jayden wasn’t just running from something; he was choosing himself, leaving his ex-girlfriend was one of the most difficult decisions he made. Little did he know she was even crazier than he thought.