The characters found in I Wish.
open/close all folders
Lyu-Jin
A highschool student that lost her family in a plane accident. She wanted K to use his powers to bring her family back to life, but as that goes beyond his scope, he wasn't able to fulfill it.
She's a hot-headed person that often leaps into action before thinking things through, often leading to getting her or others in trouble. She does try to improve on this, though as she's surrounded by magical creatures or alien species with powers beyond her level, she's often out of her league.
- Berserk Button: Insulting her family, she even got into a fight with a schoolmate over it.
- Fantastically Indifferent: Flat-out tells a 150-year-old vampire that she's pretty much immune to surprises, considering the things she's seen. note
- It's All My Fault:
- Blamed herself for her family's death because she thought that wishing for the plane to explode was actually her doing. It turns out that it wasn't.
- Blames herself for forcing K into fulfilling Li-Hun's wish, not realizing that death was his deepest desire, and seeing K attempting to commit suicide. It wasn't her fault, but a miscalculation on Li-Hun's part.
- Blames herself for persuading her friend to make a wish to K, which resulted in her friend's father dying.
- I Wished You Were Dead: Angry at being left behind because of a cold, Lyu-Jin thought that 'the airplane should just explode' and learns that it actually happened. A flashback even shows that she told her brother to 'go ahead and die' before he left for the flight.
- Ordinary Highschool Student: A regular highschool student that meets a lot of weird creatures and life circumstances while working for K.
- Sick Episode: Ends up sick in Volume 6 with a bad cold, though most of her illness is off-screen. It focuses more on K being sick, proving that he's fallen in love and is assimilating to her.
- Stepford Smiler: Shows more of these traits as the series goes on, hiding the fact that her family's death is affecting her a lot more than initially believed.
- Through Her Stomach: Realizes that K loves her when she sees a table full of dishes he's cooked for her.
- Unlucky Childhood Friend: Had a crush on her childhood friend Byeong-Hui for a long time, but was always scared of confessing because he'd agree to date her, simply to not hurt her feelings. When she does confess, he rejects her.
K
A wizard that fulfills a person's wish, in exchange for their deepest, most desired thing. He's been around for ages and was under the tutelage of his master in terms of being a wish-fulfilling wizard and acting human.
He's from an alien race that starts off as complete blank slates, which required his master to teach him what being human entails, ranging from emotions to their mindset. As they get closer to someone and fall in love, his race starts to assimilate to their loved one completely.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Becomes horribly jealous and clingy when in love, not wanting to leave his beloved's side and getting angry when someone seems to be getting too close to them.
- Defrosting Ice King: Gradually warms up to Lyu-Jin as time goes by. And taken rather literally, as his hands are ice-cold by nature, but become warm as he begins to assimilate.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Starts off with his hair tied back into several ponytails that resemble a starburst, but gradually loses the ties and lets his hair down as he warms up to Lyu-Jin.
- The First Cut Is the Deepest: His first love was his master, but because K was forced to remove his love through magic, the pain and regret of losing him remained for millenia. This is why K says he has such difficulty learning about love.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: His smoking is indicative of his mental state. He started smoking after Jay died, probably as a form of grieving, but stops as he warms up to Lyu-Jin. And then starts up again when Seven took his love away.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Intended to pull one in Happy Birthday, when he says that he'll resurrect Lyu-Jin's family as a birthday gift. He knows that this will kill him because it's beyond his capabilities, but he wants to make Lyu-Jin happy and atone for his sins. It doesn't work out because Lyu-Ui warned his sister beforehand.
- Interrupted Suicide: When he tries to commit suicide because Li-Hun's most desired thing was death, Lyu-Ui's ghost appears and grabs K mid-fall and brings him back to safety.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Proves to be a lot kinder under his cold and emotionless exterior. K doesn't grant the wishes of his friends because he doesn't want to take their most desired thing from them, and he doesn't meet Jay beyond either of their birthdays because he knows that Jay will die when he's too happy. And if someone's most treasured thing is something really valuable, he won't take it. Which makes his uncaring attitude over a client's 'payment' being their father in the final arc shocking.
- Look-Alike Lovers: An attribute of his race, who assimilate themselves to their loved one. They begin by feeling the same emotions as their beloved, start to imitate their hairstyle and clothing preferences, and they will die from a broken heart when their beloved dies.
- My Greatest Failure: His inability to save his master's life ten-thousand years ago. Also the death of an actress and a corrupt politician, as he refused to fulfill her wish because he was personally against it, and she ended up killing the politician and herself.
- Through His Stomach: The first thing he ever learned about love was caring for someone through food, like when his master found and asked him if he had eaten yet. K also cooks a lot for Lyu-Jin.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: The last thing his master still had to teach him, but hadn't managed yet. He does tell him that K will learn about it gradually, as he takes care of Lyu-Jin.
Lyu-Ui
The older brother of Lyu-Jin and the master of K and seven other disciples, whom he taught millenia ago. He was supposed to stay home from the fatal flight because he had a cold, but he infected his sister to get healthy and went in her stead.
Lyu-Ui was cursed millenia ago with repeated reincarnation, with his latest life having been Lyu-Jin's older brother. He's a very handsome man and aware of this, with his confidence in his looks ranging into arrogance.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When he realizes that K has fallen in love with him and will die soon because of Lyu-Ui's own impending death, he kneels before Seven and begs him to save K by removing his love.
- Balancing Death's Books: Knew that it was his family's destiny to die in a plane explosion, so he got his sister sick and went on the fatal flight himself.
- The Casanova: In several of his lives, including his latest, with frequent love confessions from highschool students. He even says he's so popular because he was an Arabian prince once.
- Chick Magnet: Had a ton of fans in any school he was in, but never really dated anyone except the Ice Queen.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Several of his deaths across his various lives because of the curse Seven placed on him. He has been beheaded, died of disease, been eviscerated mid-air from an airplane explosion, and was once the victim of a serial killer that chopped him into pieces.
- Curse: Was cursed by Seven to be reincarnated a million times, while also suffering death a million times, and none of them would be peaceful.
- The Gadfly: Loves teasing and annoying people with his odd antics.
- Go Out with a Smile: A flashback dealing with his latest death had Lyu-Ui sad on his last day, as dying was always painful for him. But when his then-girlfriend, K, and even Lyu-Jin all give him smiles in their own ways before saying goodbye, he smiles himself before heading onto the plane.
- Proud Beauty: Well-aware of just how handsome and good-looking he is, even jokingly saying that his beauty could be considered a curse.
- Really 700 Years Old: His exact age is never stated, but it's implied that he's ancient and was actually a deity that came down to Earth several millenia ago.
- Reincarnation: Keeps getting reborn because of the curse Seven placed on him.
- Sink or Swim Mentor: Was a pretty brutal master, especially when it came to teaching K things like what 'getting a shock' meant. He took him to a lake, asked if he could swim and then shoved K in and almost let him drown.
- Talking in Your Dreams: He appears in Lyu-Jin's dream in the beginning of Happy Birthday and warns her to not get tricked by K, who is planning to resurrect her family and die as a form of atonement.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Originally planned to only teach K the bad kind of emotions and the pain that humans have to go through, as he was trying to prevent K from eventually falling in love and assimilating himself to the point of death. He does admit his way was wrong when K learns compassion through not wanting others to experience his pain.
Jay and Yuri
Jay
Yuri
Jay is an old friend of K's and one of Lyu-Ui's disciples from millenia ago. He belongs to an alien race of people that die when they become too happy and was taught by his master to control his emotions, so he wouldn't suffer from simple compliments and similar.
Yuri is of the same race as K and was taken in by Jay as a disciple, so that he could teach her how to be human. She's spent the last century with him learning everything, but still remains gullible about nuances of emotions.
- Cannot Tell a Lie: Jay is horrible when it comes to lying. The only reason his lie to Yuri initially even worked was because she hadn't been lied to before, and literally didn't know that lying was a concept.
- Foil: To K.
- Jay is openly emotional and friendly, compared to K being emotionless by nature. Their respective racial traits also mean they needed to learn the opposite of each other, with K learning about emotions and Jay learning about controlling them.
- Yuri is more emotional than K, too, despite being from the same race. But her teachings were balanced by Jay and not focused on teaching mostly bad emotions, the way Lyu-Ui did to K millenia ago.
- Go Out with a Smile: A trait of Jay's race, where they die when they become too happy. K actually mentions this to be a good thing because it meant that he'd die with a smile on his lips. Yuri is also last seen smiling before dying when her heart breaks.
- Look-Alike Lovers: Being of the same race as K, Yuri will assimilate to her beloved. But despite her feelings for Jay, she doesn't seem to have assimilated his appearance yet.
- Nice Guy: In complete contrast to K, Jay is openly friendly and helpful.
- Secretly Dying: Jay is actually dying because he's incredibly happy with Yuri.
- Together in Death: Their ultimate fate, as Jay dies happily and Yuri follows him after her heart breaks.
- What Is This Feeling?: When Yuri tries to explain her feelings for Jay, she says it's love. Jay tries to avoid this situation by saying she's simply constipated.
Dee
Another student of Lyu-Ui's that always wants to do good with her magic and solve problems, but she's not very good at it and often messes up. She often undergoes training to improve herself, but her reckless usage of magic often leads to her causing more harm than help.
- Break the Haughty: Her introductory arc revolves around knocking some sense into Dee, to make her stop using magic so freely before it backfires horribly on her.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Has difficulty admitting her feelings for Wye, so they end up fighting a lot.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Her reckless use of magic made her this for a long time, before she finally learned to control herself a little. She locks K inside of a tree-prison, throws the key away, and tries to teleport him out. When the spell fails, Dee ignores looking for the key and instead chooses to leave for intense training to improve her skills for years.
- Heavy Sleeper: Falls asleep as soon as the sun sets and won't wake before daylight again. This is why she never saw Wye without his bandages and was convinced that he was an old man.
- Rich Bitch: Used her magic to obtain riches and a castle.
- Tsundere: The harsh type towards Wye because she can't be honest about her feelings around him, but eventually settles down when their feelings turn out to be mutual.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Certainly means well with her actions, but she never thinks things through and her ideas are a little too out there. She created a medicine to make Jay unhappy to keep him alive, and spiked K's drink because she wanted him to experience the warmth of love.
Wye
Without his bandages
An old wizard that became arrogant because of his skills, even daring to resurrect the dead. He became a disiciple of Lyu-Ui's because he became disillusioned with humanity and the world itself, and Lyu-Ui wanted to prove to him that there was still something worth living for.
- Bandaged Face: Keeps his face and extremities covered during daytime, to avoid the gaze of the sun. He ditches them when he gets resurrected, and the love potion on him stops working.
- Brought Down to Normal: His wish to K. He wished for all of his magical power to be given to Dee because he knew she was walking down the same path he was once, and he had a plan behind it to cause Dee to become more responsible with her magic.
- Cool Old Guy: Certainly doesn't look old, but his voice is stated to rasp and he has a speech pattern of an old man. Other than that, he's pretty laidback and willing to smack young whippersnappers for doing dumb things.
- Death Seeker: He was one millenia ago. After becoming sick of humanity for loving and fearing him and his powers, he headed off into the desert to die. Lyu-Ui stopped him and promised to help Wye find something that would make him regret, if the world were to end.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Throws himself in front of Dee when her obsessed stalkers are about to kill her. But since Dee got all of his magical powers, and this included a spell to resurrect the dead, Wye came back to life.
- Manipulative Bastard: The entire introductory arc of Dee is based on Wye's plan of making her reckless attitude towards magic become such a problem for her that she was almost at her wit's end. And then Wye sacrifices himself, allowing Dee to see the consequences of her actions and learn to be more responsible.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Used a love potion on himself that caused everyone to fall in love with him on sight. Unfortunately, the potion was so powerful that even the sun itself began to fall for him and was going to descend onto earth to be near him.
Seven
The last of Lyu-Ui's disiciples and a mutant of K's race. He seems to have a good grasp on emotions, even without Lyu-Ui teaching him anything. He's abrasive and refused to make nice with anyone millenia ago.
- Belated Love Epiphany: Seven promised to laugh out loud when Lyu-Ui initially died, but ultimately couldn't because he realized his heart had broken.
- Disproportionate Retribution:When K was late to Lyu-Ui's funeral in the 18th century, Seven decided to torture K by causing harm to his beloved and ultimately kill him.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Has very fine facial features and long hair, with Lyu-Jin's friend initially wondering if Seven was a man or a woman. Lyu-Jin figured it out really fast, and then Seven used her hand to pat his chest.
- Knight of Cerebus: Seven's name being mentioned already causes K discomfort. And his appearance in the final volume leads the series onto a very dark route, showing just how terrible things can go when Seven decides to step in and use his powers.
- Mutant: A mutant of K's race, meaning that he won't assimilate himself to his beloved, and he can come back to life after his heart breaks because it can regenerate itself.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After realizing that he loved Lyu-Ui, Seven regretted ever placing the curse on Lyu-Ui and begged K to help him save their master.
- Never Got to Say Goodbye: Tries desperately to find Lyu-Ui's latest reincarnation before his inevitable death, but never manages to get there in time.
- Reality Warper: His powers revolve around making a person's worst fear becoming a reality. Those powers were sealed when he became Lyu-Ui's student.
- Really 700 Years Old: Exactly how old he is gets never stated, but he's old enough that he refers to the ancient Lyu-Ui as a 'greenhorn'.
