| Mio | |
|---|---|
| |
| Before and after Dicership | |
Description
| |
| First Appearance | Chapter 07 |
| Status | Dicer |
| Rank | A |
| Skill | Clairvoyance |
| In X's chess | Black Bishop |
| Main Stat | Unknown |
| Other Stats | Unknown |
Mio is the female deuteragonist of the series and a classmate of Dongtae, Taebin, and Eunju. She shares with the first two a past of suffering due to self-image problems, bullying, and low self-esteem. Like them, too, her life changed completely after she became a Dicer.
Appearance[]
Mio's case is only slightly less extreme than Taebin's, and she is one of not many Dicers who "became a completely different person" by investing Dice points heavily on her looks.
Originally, Mio wore glasses, was overweight and had freckles, her hair was a dark brown and her skin was paleer. She walked with a slight hunch.
As a Dicer, she became slim and elegant, with smooth skin, reddish-pink hair and an endearing smile. By dropping her glasses, she also revelead the one aspect of her appearance that did not change: her deeply green eyes.
History[]
(In chronological, rather than story, order.)
Lacking any attractive physical attributes, Mio's attitude in school was to try and compensate by excelling in academic performance. She succeeded and was one of the best students in school, studying so compulsively that even her health seemed to suffer at times. However, one day she realised academics wouldn't let her escape her life of misery, marked by snide remarks from male students and a lack of friends.
The only person who showed genuine care for Mio at the time was Eunju, who said at one point that everyone has a kind of beauty to them. Mio didn't swallow that and was divided between appreciation for Eunju's esteem and jealousy of her appearance and popularity. At around the same time, she first took notice of Dongtae, who was the class official loser and bread shuttle at the time. Originally she merely noted that both led similar lives, but later she grew to admire him as she realised he had the courage to put himself in danger for the sake of getting closer to Eunju. Mio considered writing him a letter but gave up in the end.
Soon afterwards, Dongtae became a Dicer and immediately escaped his own predicament, leaving Mio to lament the fact that she was completely alone. It was at that time that she and Dongtae first exchanged a few words, when he literally stumbled upon her on turning a corner quickly. This was her first appearance in the story proper (the above events occurred in flashbacks) and later she was an onlooker during Byungchul's rampage.
One day, she was among the students who collected Dice scattered around Byungchul's corpse on the school grounds. When she realised what Dice were capable of, she stopped going to school for a period, during which she collected at least 125 Dice and changed herself completely.
Mio reappears as a mysterious girl, first drawn without facial features by the author, who goes around the school investigating things and showing interest in Dongtae and Eunju. She is the one who gives a Die to Gilma in exchange for information on Eunju. Later, she is referred to by other students as a girl who is "giving out Dice".
When X launches the mass quest targeting Eunju, Mio observes from the sidelines and when it becomes clear that Dongtae is going out of his way to protect her, she decides to take his side, and manages to buy him essential time by kicking Daewoong downstairs and preventing him from joining the fight in a critical moment. Later, she witnesses as Dongtae reveals to the school that he was the one that allowed Dice to spread among them and announces the creation of a Guild to protect non-Dicers and share the profits of quests equally. Contrarily to Eunju, Mio understands his goals immediately. Mio doesn't join the guild, thinking it a utopic pipedream, but uses the aftermath of the fight to approach Dongtae, having realised he is trying his best to keep a distance from Eunju to protect her.
In the next few days, as Eunju begins to face hostility due to her attitude towards Dicership, Mio reluctantly saves her from three girls who wanted to steal her unactivated Dice. The two girls have a conversation in which Mio scolds Eunju for suspecting Dongtae's motivations to protect her, and also declares she cannot understand why Eunju won't use Dice. Ironically, she uses the talk to confirm that Eunju doesn't consider Dongtae as anything other than a friend, but the content of the conversation ends up making Eunju apologise to Dongtae and the two grow closer again.
Undeterred by Dongtae's infatuation with Eunju, and determined to put up a fight, Mio makes more advances on him and secures a promise from him to spend the next Saturday with her. However, he stands her up due to Sungchul and Gilma's plot to kill him. The two eventually meet and Mio turns the situation to her advantage by compelling him to let her spend the night at his place. Not coincidentally, doing that is the content of the A-Rank Quest given to her by X.
Beat around the bush, and Mio will beat you around.
At that point, Dongtae is disgusted with himself after finding out Eunju had been the one who asked Taebin out and not the other way round, and is determined to distance himself from her. Mio seizes the opportunity, and makes bolder and bolder advances on him. The two get very close to actual intercourse, but he has second thoughts in the last moment due to lingering affection for Eunju. This causes Mio to snap and she beats him badly. In the end, she extracts from him a promise of another date as the sun rises. At that point, she completes the quests and, taking care not to let Dongtae see the Golden Die arrive, she rolls it, only to find out later in the day that she has acquired the Clairvoyance skill.
On parting, Dongtae asks her, without revealing that it is the promise embodied in the S-Rank Die, what she would do if she could change the world at will. She answers that such power is unfathomable, and that maybe changing one person is more than enough. She is later shocked to find out that her skill allows her to see herself, to her dismay, in her pre-Dicership appearance.
This realisation causes her to lose her cool at the prospect of seeing Dongtae again: the stats boxes she can see using Clairvoyance tell her whom the people she is looking at like, and she is afraid obtaining confirmation that Dongtae still likes Eunju. Thus, when he comes to call she refuses to open the door, but is surprised to hear him say that he has decided to sort his feelings out and let go of his infatuation with Eunju. He asks her to wait until he has done that to ask her out, and this makes Mio regain her courage: she looks at him finally and sees that he likes her in addition to Eunju.
When the War Quest is announced, Mio goes against Dongtae's request and instead of remaining neutral becomes the only one to join him in Defence. He gets angry at first, but she convinces him of her usefulness and determination to help.
As Dongtae leaves to confront Hood and Samsusaeng, Mio stays with Eunju to protect her as someone important to him and because Clairvoyance enables her to see that the girl is carrying not only ordinary Dice but a Cloaking Die. She is shocked to listen to Eunju's story. At the same time, she is able to identify teacher Kim as an A-Ranker (as well as his skill, though not his team) and tries to keep away from him, not without triggering his suspicion as well.
Meanwhile, Eunju, who had not asked to be protected in the first place and has her own plans, spots Taebin amid the crowd and runs after him to obtain a confirmation that he is the source of the Dice that spread in the school. She breaks down completely on being told the truth and apologises profusely to Mio, who in turn is ambivalent when Eunju says she wants to apologise to Dongtae, too.
The two girls then try to find the second target, Ethics teacher Chun Nobong, before members from the Attack team do, but teacher Kim gets to him first and uses a clever ruse to prevent them from reaching the teacher. Later, the two witness Kim escaping from the place where he managed to incapacitate teacher Chun and win the second period.
Mio tries to give chase, but Eunju stops her saying that it is pointless. Mio becomes angry at her, but is forced to admit she has a point when she remarks that both Attackers and Defenders are playing to X's tune and if no one had chosen Defence, there would have been no War Quest to begin with.
X notices Eunju's train of thought and uses the opportunity to try once again to goad her into becoming a Dicer. This time, being quite desperate about the way things are going, she really considers it, but Mio dissuades her by pointing out X is making specious promises, the whole idea of becoming the strongest Dicer all of a sudden is absurd and by reminding Eunju of her own ideals (quite hypocritically, since Mio herself does not believe those ideals).
Having received information about the third target - any 64 people from the entire school, irrespective of their status as Dicers or not -, the two then proceed to find the teachers.
Abilities[]
Mio combines great academic skill with agility, and knows where to place her kicks. Other than that, though, she doesn't seem to have unnaturally enhanced a given physical attribute as other Dicers have done.
As a Clairvoyant, though, she has the same abilities as her predecessor Jihae, which include the ability to investigate on X himself and to uncover the characteristics of other people she sees, including other Dicers.
Further in the series, Clairvoyance acquires the ability to hack the statuses of other players, also known as "hijacking", she can control information making them, "Paralyzed" , "Controlled to attack their own teammates" and many more, but this requires a large amount of die, and this only affects non-A rank players.
Personality[]
She means business.
Mio has a forceful, no-nonsense personality and is quick to decide what she wants and to act on it. She asks Dongtae whether he loves Eunju directly and is quite pushy in her advances towards him. She delivers blunt words when she disagrees with someone and can lose her temper quite easily. However, she reads situations and personalities well and realises Dongtae's motivation to create the guild immediately. This proactive personality can lead to untoward consequences, as her using Dice to get answers about Dongtae and Eunju during the Pandora arc led to Gilma becoming a Dicer, for example.
Morally, Mio is uncorrupted by Dice like Dongtae and Taebin, but she ultimately considers them a good thing and is somewhat ticked off by Eunju's adamant opposition to them. She understands human nature well enough, though, to see that trying to control Dicers via guilds is a fool's errand.
Behind her veneer of assertiveness, though, Mio is pretty insecure and has feelings of inadequacy that are probably remnants of her past self-image of an ugly, fat, worthless girl. She reacts very angrily to Eunju's intimation that she "liked Mio as before".
Relationships[]
Dongtae: Mio clearly has designs on him, having begun to admire her classmate before he became a Dicer. She wants to be his girlfriend and is ready to share her intimacy with him, but is very annoyed by his indecisive behaviour. This doesn't keep her from trying to get past his barriers, and more recently he has begun to reciprocate her feelings leading to him asking her to go out with him and she responded by kissing him and now they are officially dating.
Eunju: Mio doesn't feel very comfortable around her initially. While she acknowledges her unprejudiced personality, and always remembers how Eunju respected her as a human being before she became a Dicer, her own insecurities and Eunju's rejection of Dice prevent Mio from being at ease with her. This is made worse by the fact that Dongtae initially only had eyes for Eunju, and Mio definitely feels jealous towards the girl as a consequence, but as Dongtae seems to move away from his infatuation and Eunju shows Mio her weaker side, Mio feels guilty for treating her harshly and the two girls begin to cooperate more.