Anna was born in April 18th 1981 in New Jersey, USA, from an American mother and a South Korean father. Her mother Isabel was in South Korea at the time of conception but her father died before she was born from a freak accident while doing his military service. Her mother promptly returned to the US and raised Anna as a single mom with the help of her father, Jack, a retired US Army Colonel.

Anna was raised in an affluent upper middle class background in New Jersey. Her mother and grandfather loved her very much and indulged her every whims. Although of a Korean father, the family never really incorporated any Korean culture into her education, something she started to resent in her late teens as she started College.

She grew up to be a real stunner right off puberty, which attracted a lot of attention from boys, and a lot of jealousy from girls. She was always at the top of her class, but had quite an extreme partying habit. She started to have sex at 15 and was a heavy drinker at parties. She would eventually pick up weed and cocaine in College.

Because her grades remained excellent and she was quite the model daughter at home, her mother and grandfather never paid much attentions to rumors from nosy neighbors and other school parents, and they never really confronted her on her extra-curricular activities, granting her much more trust than she actually deserved.

In September 2003, Anna is 22 year old and is starting her Senior year at NYU. She is majoring in Arts. She is very gifted, but has been giving more and more into her vices and got a reputation for being quite the wild party girl. Men are all willing to pay for her drinks and drugs at parties.

She has her own apartment right in the East Village near NYU's main campus, which affords her a lot of freedom. She has a well paying part-time job and her mother gives her extra money. She spends it all on Art supplies, books, movies, music, lots of fancy clothes and taking care of herself.

Our story start when she meets Takashi at a Halloween party in one of the Dorms.

Takashi was born on July 14th 1984 in South Korea. His Korean father Min-Sik and Japanese Mother Itsuki have taken great care of him, and pushed him to excel at school. He had a typical childhood and quickly showed a great talent for science, which his parents dutifully nurtured.

He grew up to be quite a handsome young man, easily turning heads everywhere he goes, but he remained very shy and focused on his studies in general. He had sex for the first time when he was 17 with a prostitute a friend of his found for him in a seedy area of Seoul. He has been known to be jealous, but generally, more at ease with repressing those feelings than exploding with them.

He is an avid blood donor, taking this task very seriously at least 4 times a year. The first thing he did when entering the university is immediately sign up as an organ donor too and got his blood donor card.

His well-connected father managed to delay his army (3 years military service in South Korea) so he could study in the US first. He moved to the US right after he graduated from high-school. He is a foreign student and studies Engineering and Computer Science.

Karyn is a typical young girl who grew up in New Jersey from an affluent family. She was actually born in San Francisco, California, but her parents moved to New Jersey when she was 8. Her father has a great job opportunity in finance.

She has known Anna since grade 8 and they have been best friends ever since. They are both very smart, but Karyn is really the model girl with a few wild outtings, but generaly, studious, and calm. She feels very close to Anna even if she disapproves of her ways, which she acknowledges have gone worse since Anna started university. she's always there for Anna, always giving her advice, and Anna listens, most of the times. Karyn is Anna's conscience.

Karyn is cute, but not gorgeous. She has dorky tendencies (she wears thin rectangular glasses) that definitely diminish her immediate appeal.

Josie was born in Italy of an American mother and an Italian father in the early 50's. The entire family moved to the US in the early 60's and established themselves in Brooklyn. Her parents are still alive, and living there still.

Josie showed at a very young age a pre-disposition for analysis, logic, and a keen sense of observation. Under the guidance of her father, she applied to the NYPD and quickly ascended the ranks to become a top detective. Her strange skills of deduction and her almost unnatural hunch often gets her at odds with her superiors who want most of the times cases that are closed quickly, unconcerned with the details that seem to always nag Josie.

She is beautiful even in her older age, and very lady-like, with a slight accent and top vocabulary and diction. She learnt some English at a young age with her mother while growing up in Italy, but she never got rid of a little bit of Italian accent. She is a Police officer and so she won't wow a runway audience, but she has a knack for the little details, and a posture that definitely makes her noticed. She likes scarves and nice shoes and treats herself to the top of the line of each whenever she can.

Her upbringing was quite religious, and she attended Church every week while she was growing up. But in her late 20's, maybe as an effect of working in the Police force, she stopped believing. She stopped going to Church on regular hours, preferring instead to go there in week days, or afternoons, when there isn't a crowd, and when she can simply take a break from the madness of the city. She particularly likes to spend time in St Thomas church in Manhattan. She likes the moody light, great murals, and the Organ, which is played often in off hours.

Edward is Josie's assistant. In his early 30's, he is a young promising member of the NYPD, on track to become a Detective. He was born and raised in the Bronx. He is caucasian.

Isabel is Anna's mother. She is the daughter of a US Army colonel (Jack). She has traveled the world, speaks several languages (French, German, English), and is very well educated. She is in her early 40's, and white-Caucasian. She fell in love with a young Korean man who was doing his military service and got pregnant when she was 19. The man however died in a freak accident during a military maneuver and Isabel returned to the US to have her baby (Anna) and raise her there. Her father took an early retirement and moved back to the US with her to help.

Jack is Isabel's father, Anna's grand father. He is a retired US Army Colonel with assignments that spanned the globe. He worked in Germany for close to a decade in the 60's. Isabel, his only child, was born there in 1962. He then took an assignment in France for several years, and finally came to South Korea in the mid 70's. After Isabel returned to the US, she broke the news to him that she was pregnant and Jack immediately took an early retirement to return to the US and help his daughter with her baby.

The Super is Anna's building Super. He is in his late 40's, big guy, always out of breath. He is not US-born. Maybe South America, or eastern-European. Definitely Foreign.

Takashi's father. A successful real-estate/construction businessman in Seoul.

She is the head nurse at the university's health center. She is effective, but not very compassionate and has a hard time dealing with the generational gap between her and the students she takes care of.

Avital is an Israeli foreign student studying Arts and Acting at NYU. She became close to Anna just a year before the story starts and they hang out a lot. She likes to party, is a couple of years older than everyone else because she went through the army in Israel and go to the University a couple of years later than most people in the US.

Charles is a Frenchman, born and raised in Paris, France. He is doing a Masters in Photography at NUY and is Avital's boyfriend. He has some French accent though he is fully bilingual. He is very smart, but is a big joker. He loves to tell dirty jokes while dining and gross out people. Both him and Avital were born on the same day. when they met, they liked that and it was yet another small thing that made them click.

Dina is the coroner doing Anna's autopsy. She appears in a strong scene and says detailed medical jargon. There is a complicity with Josie, as they have worked together for a while.

John is Takashi's roommate. A freshman. Although at first Takashi finds him annoying (John is quite the frat-type with crude language ), they eventually warm up to one another. Although John eventually gets his own place after the first semester, they still see one another regularly for movies and all.Takashi tried to educate him on movies and see more foreign fares. John's ethnic background is flexible, but he is American.

Frank is Josie's boss, an older guy, typical chief of police for the CSI department, always on the go and working to close cases fast. Although he has the most respect for Josie and the quality of her work, it really bothers him when she prolongs cases to search for the truth when the simple answer is completely satisfactory to him. He cares about facts more than motives. Josie on the contrary is always obsessed by the "Why?".

There are a couple of radio spots in the story, including a wacky weather announcement with two DJs messing around with one another and joking, and a radio blooper.