History;

[feastmaker]

In Terra, the planet Arknights is set in, there's one particular nation called Yan that's based on China (just "mainland" China). Yan boasts the longest history out of all modern Terran nations... but most people don't know that it used to host a large number of powerful, immortal beings called Feranmuts that the ancient Yanese people called "Xian" or gods and worshipped out of both awe and fear. Because Terra had pseudo-divine beings just running around in the open, no big deal.

Eventually, one Yanese emperor became tired of the gods' authority, so he began the Great Hunt with the aim of subjugating them, banishing those who surrendered and killing those who resisted. A Feranmut named Sui joined hands (claws?) with the emperor with the goal of taking over Yan as the only god once the Hunt ended, but the emperor defeated It as well, forcing Sui to shatter Its consciousness and powers into twelve fragments. Despite recuperating from the heavy toll the Great Hunt took on the nation, the emperor locked Sui's remains and the twelve fragments into a secret tomb just outside of the capital city of Baizao and started working on multiple anti-Feranmut safety measures such as strengthened military power, and government institutions specialized in handling Sui's fragments.

Despite being imprisoned, Sui's fragments weren't properly watched, likely because Yan needed to handle the effects the Great Hunt inflicted on the nation, such as monster threats and cultists wanting to revive Sui and bring the age of Feranmuts back. Inside the tomb, the twelve fragments began to ask themselves "Who am I?" and develop their own unique personalities, regarding each other less like pieces of a dead god just lying feet from themselves but siblings from a single parent-- they started becoming actual people. With these developments, the siblings left the tomb one by one to experience the human world and further develop themselves.

For some hundreds of years, only one fragment stayed behind, unable to answer the question of "Who am I?" for himself. He was considered the youngest of all of them solely because he took the longest to even start wondering about who he was, and his body reflected that status. He eventually left the tomb without answering it.

Unlike his siblings who knew what they wanted and had specific crafts or paths they wanted to pursue, the youngest did not have such expectations for himself and took in everything he could see, which was primarily misery and suffering, because in the thousand years between the end of the Great Hunt and the present day, Yan-- and by extension Terra-- became a hotbed of conflict against both other people and monsters. Hence he watched humans light fires and share food with each other for survival and companionship, and eventually joined them. He began to neglect his godly powers to the point of forgetting them, and became interested in fire and the stove, which eventually turned into an interest in food and the art of cooking. He began to roam with the intent of experiencing each Yanese region's cuisine, learning the essential skills of a chef, and feeding the hungry without asking for compensation.

He also met with his older siblings from time to time, and was given the name "Yu" by the fifth eldest. However, she died a little over a hundred years ago in Baizao due to a scuffle between the second eldest and the secret agents known as Sui Regulators, trained specifically to handle Sui and Its fragments. It just so happened that the day before, she and their second eldest sibling had been celebrating in Yu's tiny but newly-opened restaurant in the city, which affected both of them greatly and solidified Yu's insistence on being neutral to his family's internal conflicts-- one faction among the siblings, led by the second eldest, wanted to revive Sui and control It, and the other, led by the ninth sibling, wanted to kill It instead. Yu didn't want to choose sides solely because he loved them all, and considered them to be a single entity at the end of the day.

Amusingly, the Sui Regulators would become nervous over Yu's restaurant because they misremembered the date he arrived and settled in, believing the sibling's death was the catalyst for him moving into Baizao. Furthering their anxieties over him was the restaurant because his siblings would come and visit on occasion, especially since the plot was owned by the seventh eldest sibling, hence them sending their own agents to act as Yu's assistants.

Yu and his restaurant became an open secret in Baizao, watching the city change and his customers grow from babies to making children of their own. And no, he never did answer the question "Who am I?" because once he dedicated himself to cuisine, he stopped caring about it, his priority shifting from answering that question to fully immersing himself in mundane life and living from day to day just like his customers.

The end of Yu's stay in Baizao came a hundred years after he moved in, and he made the decision because he felt a massive change to Yan coming with his family as the eye of the storm. The birthday of the emperor was coming, thus the city was busy preparing for it... and certain individuals were preparing for something else. While Yu assisted a woman named Blaze find leads about her late father who used to work for the imperial court-- which is a whole thing in itself but only barely related to Yu since he was just one of the many customers Yu had over the years-- he handed the reins of his restaurant to his assistant. His second final act in Baizao was to feed his second eldest sibling in secret, because the man was about to commence his plans for resurrecting their so-called father, Sui. His actual final act was to communicate with Sui's remains one last time and express a desire to return his powers and divinity to It, though that likely never happened.

Almost immediately after leaving Baizao, he was tricked by his ninth sibling into joining a transnational organization called Rhodes Island that pursued cures for various illnesses and performed humanitarian aid across Terra. Deciding to make the most of it, he became a fixture in its kitchen, because what else was he going to do but cook.