S039 - Lung-Romney, Zhijuan [DECEASED]

#1

Name: Zhijuan Lung-Romney
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Listening to true crime podcasts, reading books, playing the trumpet in the marching band, taking care of her mother’s garden, going on walks, volunteering as a page at the school’s library

Appearance: Zhijuan is 5'2" and weighs approximately 110 pounds. She has a lean build from the physicality of her hobbies. She has almond-shaped, brown eyes with short eyelashes and thick eyebrows. She has a broad and round nose. She has thin lips with a pronounced cupid’s bow. Her chin is defined and her jaw is squared. Due to her Chinese and Caucasian heritage, she has olive skin that progressively darkens during summer and then pales during winter. She is acne-prone, often breaking out on her forehead and her chin. Zhijuan does not wear makeup. She has straight black hair, reaching just above her clavicles. She usually wears it down on her shoulder. Zhijuan usually puts her hair up in a bun when she is going on a walk or when she is in the marching band.

Zhijuan has a small dragon tattoo on her left forearm and a Forget-Me-Not tattoo on her calf. Her ears are pierced, and she usually wears small steel hoops.

Zhijuan does not have a clear-cut style when it comes to clothes. The majority of her wardrobe comes from sales at low-end stores, resulting in mixed and various pieces. While she doesn’t quite know how to arrange them together, she often tries to wear a themed outfit, preferring neutral colors like gray and pastels.

On the day of the abduction, Zhijuan was wearing a pair of jeans with a sky blue shirt with white stripes. She was also wearing a dull gray cardigan, and a small beaded necklace with her name written backward with square beads. She was wearing used black sneakers, stained with mud.

Biography: Zhijuan Lung-Romney was born to her mother, LaDeana Romney, and to her father, Shihong Lung, on the 30th of October 2002. LaDeana is a health and wellness counsellor, working at WORK Inc, a nonprofit NGO, and Shihong works as a field application scientist for 908 Devices Inc., solidly putting the family in upper-middle class status. Zhijuan has a little sister, her name is Changying and she is 10 years old. They currently reside in the suburbs of Salem, Massachusetts.

During her younger years, Zhijuan’s childhood was defined by two aspects: her nanny, Rosalind, and an early interest in books. Due to her parents' very busy schedule, Zhijuan had to hire a nanny to take care of her. Rosalind was a British immigrant, searching for work that would accommodate her needs as a recent college graduate. Rosalind immediately took a liking to Zhijuan, and the feeling was reciprocal.

Rosalind was monumental for Zhijuan’s development. She was usually the first person to witness Zhijuan’s milestones from the age of one to four. For a short moment in time, Zhijuan had started calling Rosalind her mother instead of LaDeana. While it was quickly corrected by both Rosalind and LaDeana, their relationship was still more akin to a caretaker and their child than a service.

When she was four years old, Zhijuan started to read on her own with the support of Rosalind, and the encouragement of her parents. Zhijuan’s fascination for books came from an overactive imagination. She tended to create her own stories from the books she was reading, often retelling the stories to her parents or her nanny by modifying the characters and the outcome. Her favorite retelling was to change the name of the main character to Zhijuan and to change the outcome with Rosalind saving the day.

As she entered elementary school, Zhijuan found it quite easier than she had anticipated. While originally anxious to be away from home, and especially away from Rosalind, she found the new academic setting quite enjoyable. She treated school as a game, where she scored points to gain awards, and this motivation stuck through for the remainder of her life. Her parents, especially her father, encouraged her through gifts for good grades, reinforcing her philosophy. Zhijuan often received books and toys for her academic success. Later, the gifts became outings like going to the movies or the mall. Rosalind’s babysitting often ended up with Rosalind helping Zhijuan with her homework, making her more and more academically competent. Socially, Zhijuan wasn’t quite as popular as she was good at school, but she maintained a social circle from girls in her music class. She was rarely seeing them outside of school, preferring to stay at home. Her close friends were more than welcome to spend time at her home. She still maintains a handful of relationships from her elementary school. However, it was when Zhijuan was 11 years old that it became evident for Zhijuan that she was fundamentally different from her peers. Zhijuan had always struggled with empathy, often seeing other people in her life like characters in her personal book. While she wasn’t a confrontational child, she started playing her own game with other people, adding and subtracting points when she interacted with others based on what she said. Her philosophy was something personal that she never elaborated on with people, knowing that it would make her lose points in her social interactions.

As she started middle school, Zhijuan started to expand her skill set in an attempt to gain more social points. She originally joined the orchestra, playing the transverse flute, but then transferred to the marching band where she picked up the trumpet at the demand of her band captain. While her trumpet skills could use some ameliorating, she was capable of keeping up with her peers. While she originally didn’t particularly like the marching band, Zhijuan grew to like it due to the structure and the physical exercise. Zhijuan supplemented her knowledge about marching bands with her personal reading. In a way, she wanted to impress her band captain about her knowledge of formations and musical instruments. This is something she continues to read up about to potentially use for later during college if she is to continue her marching band career.

Rosalind stayed in Zhijuan’s life until middle school. She often watched over Zhijuan, and later her little sister, while working as a tutor for a private client. While the attention had been split between Changying and her, Zhijuan still enjoyed seeing her nanny when she came back from school. She did however start to feel jealous about the attention her little sister was receiving, especially as she started middle school when adults in her life slowly gave her less attention despite her academic successes. Rosalind was one of the people that noticed Zhijuan’s response to be being ignored and they had multiple talks to reassure her. It was then that Rosalind noticed that there was something wrong with Zhijuan and how she perceived the world. Rosalind tried to discuss it with Zhijuan’s parents, but they mostly blamed it on her transition from child to teenager and her puberty mood swings. Rosalind still tried to talk some sense into Zhijuan, but to no avail.

Academically speaking, Zhijuan was still the same high achiever. She kept treating her grades as a game, pushing toward scoring good grades as a way to leverage more points for her inner dialogue. Zhijuan’s inner worth as a person became more centered around her intellect, prizing herself as a smart individual. It was around that time she began to see herself as smarter than the people around her, a trait mostly confined to her thinking but that sometimes shined through in social interactions.

Her social circle struggled in middle school. While her friends matured and came out of their shells, Zhijuan’s mentality stayed noticeably childish. Her treatment of social relationships as a game became more apparent to others as she would change her behavior depending on who was around her, and sometimes treating others poorly when others around her did. Because of that behaviour, most of her friendships were either short-lived or superficial, something that didn’t bother Zhijuan as long as she was able to convince herself that she was winning her own game. Despite this, she was mainly seen as inoffensive. However, when people either jokingly or seriously called her dumb or naive, Zhijuan snapped at them. While people originally thought it was funny, Zhijuan’s escalation from silent treatments to verbal insults and threats started to create a gap between her and her classmates. Her friends learned to circumvent that behavior, and lived in fear that Zhijuan would snap at them if they commented on her intellect. Her parents didn’t notice her behaviour for a myriad of reasons involving their intense work schedules, their happiness for their daughter’s academic success and their youngest daughter’s needs. They did notice her less-than-ideal social skills, which they blamed on her academic focus.

As a teenager, she realized that she didn’t know a lot about her father’s history. While she knew about her mother’s, and she sometimes visited her grandparents during the weekend, Shihong’s parents were a blindspot to her. Curious, Zhijuan started to ask her father questions about his life and about his parents. It was then that Shihong revealed to his daughter about his escape from the communist regime in China. As Zhijuan continued to ask more questions about her father's parents and his life, he revealed his story of how he left his life with his parents to find greener pastures, first in Finland and then the United States of America. Zhijuan used this conversation as social leverage in her interactions with others. While she didn’t embellish the story, she did turn it around and made it seem that her father was grander than he was. It was mostly a way to cope with the new and abundant information about her father, turning it into an engaging story as a way to soothe herself. Another way she found to cope with this information was to gain as much information about the topic, starting to read about Chinese history and culture.

After graduating from middle school and entering high school at the John Endecott Memorial Academy, Zhijuan continued her streak of good grades, extracurricular activities and less-than-ideal social interactions. It was then that her life philosophy became more visible to observers as she started to take notes of others and their liking. While some people caught on to her people-pleasing tactics, Zhijuan still managed to make friends despite her abnormal mentality and her noticeable arrogant behavior toward certain people.

The school librarian noticed that Zhijuan spent quite a bit of time at the library reading books and magazines during her lunch hour and sometimes after class. They approached Zhijuan during one of those occasions, commenting and praising Zhijuan's reading habits. Zhijuan particularly enjoyed the attention, and the librarian suggested that she could help out as a page. Zhijuan was overjoyed as she was finally noticed for something she perceived as her intellect, and she became a volunteer at the library. Zhijuan deeply enjoys helping out at the library since it is one way for her to feel gratified about her efforts from the compliments she receives from the librarian because of her excellent work and from her teachers when she helps them to find books. She also enjoys the peace and the quiet, helping her to de-stress from her daily activities. Before the quarantine, she used to go there twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, and she picked it back up after returning to her classes.

When the quarantine started, Zhijuan was severely bored. While she was able to perform academically, she was still lacking physically from being unable to do her marching band activities. Zhijuan chose to start going on walks when the sun went down, enjoying the quiet and empty atmosphere of the world during the pandemic. It was then she started to listen to podcasts. Her favorite podcasts are true crime. While she doesn’t quite know why she enjoys true crime, Zhijuan thoroughly enjoys stories about criminals and their crimes and the investigation surrounding them. She avoids unsolved stories as it bothers her that they lack an ending. After the quarantine, Zhijuan’s night-walking habit quieted down since she had to sleep for school. She does still go on walks, but less than during the pandemic and often right after class instead of during the evening. Zhijuan started reading about true crime because of this new interest. Her favorite true crime book is “I'll Be Gone in the Dark” by Michelle McNamara because the killer was recently apprehended. Her other favorite authors are Diane Fanning, Vincent Bugliosi, and Jack Olsen.

Zhijuan noticed that her mother needed help with her garden, and while she didn’t ask for help, Zhijuan saw it as an opportunity to spend time with her mother. Zhijuan was also growing more and more lonely because of the quarantine, so spending time with her mother made her feel less alone during that time. Since LaDeana was also working from home, the two women bonded over their garden in their yard, often planning their day around it. They grew various plants like vegetables as well as flowers and medicinal plants. While Zhijuan isn’t that well-versed in botany and plant care, she has learned enough to gain an interest in her reading. She sometimes surprises her mother with facts about the plants in her garden, particularly enjoying the positive attention she receives from them.

Zhijuan’s current topics for her readings are as follows: botany and plant care, Chinese history and culture, marching band culture and music, and true crime and other disaster events. Zhijuan reads because she enjoys learning about various topics. As she puts a lot of her self-worth toward her intellect, reading books essentially reinforces her mentality that she is smarter. She also uses her reading as an excuse to surprise people about her knowledge, often reading up on certain topics before interacting with people so they’d find her more interesting than she actually is. While she prefers non-fiction, she does have an interest in speculative fiction involving dystopian societies. Her favorite series is The Giver Quartet by the author Lois Lowry. She enjoys this genre because she loves to see people put through situations that appear to be seemingly insurmountable and yet manage to make something out of it.

Her relationship with her family is noticeably better than her relationship with her school peers. She is quite close to her little sister, one of the few exempt from her inner philosophy. The two girls spend quite a bit of time together during the pandemic because Rosalind was unable to continue to be a nanny due to the quarantine. Even after she came back to continue her functions, they started to all hang out together after school when Zhijuan wasn’t busy. Shihong noticed Zhijuan’s interest in China through the books sitting on her shelves. They often talk about it. While Zhijuan’s lack of empathy makes her a tad insensitive with her questions to her father, she still sees her father as her hero. Zhijuan still takes care of her mother’s garden after the end of the pandemic, continuing to bond with her mother on weekends. Sometimes, her sister joins them in the garden.

For her 18th birthday present, her mother LaDeana paid for two tattoos for Zhijuan, something that she had asked as a reward for her future graduation. Zhijuan took the opportunity to honor her parents. Her first tattoo is a dragon because of her last name Lung, meaning dragon in Chinese. For her mother, Zhijuan received a tattoo of a Forget-Me-Not as it is one of the flowers that they have in their garden. Zhijuan plans to have more tattoos in the future.

Personality-wise, Zhijuan can be best described as a narcissist. She currently shows five criteria toward the narcissistic personality disorder, enough to land her a diagnosis if she were to be treated. However, Zhijuan has been high functioning enough to avoid suspicion. As a result, she doesn’t see her behaviour as problematic, and she has not sought any treatment for her undiagnosed personality disorder. Her parents did however notice her behaviour, partly blaming it on her weak social skills and lack of friends. Despite several attempts from her parents to establish a dialogue about her issues, Zhijuan maintains that she is fine and that she does not need help.

Socially, she continues to purposefully change her opinions depending on who is around her. While this pleases a certain type of self-centered individual, this has caused friction between her and her classmates. Alongside her tendency to see herself as smarter than the others around her and having an inner dialogue on whether or not she should try to game the relationship, her social circle severely dwindled. She pretends that she doesn't care about it, but she is often left dejected and annoyed that others don't want to spend time with her.

Zhijuan does not have a clear plan for the future, but she does have a vague idea about what she wants to accomplish, such as graduating from college and moving out from her family home. She is currently enrolled at the local community college to get a degree in Library and Informational Sciences, using her reference from the high school librarian as a means to validate her choice. While she sees the future as pretty vague, she knows that she wants to work at a library in the future. She enjoys the peace and quiet and the fact that she would be in control of it. She also knows that she would enjoy learning more about the topic from her discussions with her librarian. She still doesn’t know if she will get her Master’s to become a librarian, but she is ready to adapt depending on her future goals.

Advantages: Zhijuan knows a handful of edible and medicinal plants, which could come in handy in the event of illness or from a lack of rations. She is lean and fit from her time in the marching band and from walking in her free time. When she isn’t being arrogant and self-centered, Zhijuan is good at navigating social interactions because of her tendency to purposefully change herself to please others.
Disadvantages: Zhijuan is a known people pleaser, and she can easily be manipulated into behaving in a certain way. She is also arrogant and believes herself to be smarter than those around her, leading her to underestimate others.

Designated Number: Student No. 039

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Designated Weapon: Butterfly knife

Conclusion: Butterflies are nice Butterfly knife, not as much - Abby Soto