Ling Yi is a teen passenger aboard the Kerberos, accompanied by her mother Yuk Je. She's dressed as a geisha, yet she and her travel companion speak Cantonese. The two of them flee to America after Ling Yi accidentally killed one of her friends in an attempt to spike her drink and steal her spot on the ship headed to a new world. Taking the robes and the lessons up that her friend was supposed to, in the opportunity given to her, Ling Yi sets sail for a better life, pretending to be a Japanese geisha.
Ling Yi feels intense pressure as she lives out her pretend persona, and increasingly trapped and suffocated living up to the expectations and obligations required of her in her stolen role. The end of their journey is fast approaching, and they will be expected by Virginia to complete their side of the deal. She rebels at being made into a prostitute and being forced to pretend by Virginia, while also despairing at and accepting its inevitability and her inability to escape.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
Ling Yi grew up in China on a small junk boat, where she and her mother lived. Her mother made occasional money as a prostitute, hiding her daughter from her clients when they came aboard. Yuk Je often drugged her male clients with sleeping drafts.
Ling Yi is friends with some of the young girls who work at the brothel in town, namely Mei Mei. Ling Yi longed to escape her life of extreme poverty and was jealous of Mei Mei's opportunity to travel to England and America. She planned to drug Mei Mei and then steal her friend's ticket to England. A miscalculation in drug dosage lead to the accidental murder of Mei Mei. As a result, they disposed of Mei Mei's body and both Ling Yi and her mother fled China using Mei Mei's tickets and belongings.
Working for Virginia[]
Before boarding the Kerberos, Ling Yi and Yuk Je have spent several months in England. While there, Ling Yi was instructed in Japanese language, dance, culture, dress, and courtesies. She is now able to present herself as a high class Japanese courtesan.
Virginia Wilson, Ling Yi's employer and madame, is escorting her through the final leg of the journey on the Kerberos. Virginia requires the pair to be discreet and compliant, and hide both her relationship with them, and conceal that they are Chinese, rather than Japanese. However, after the ship goes off course to search for the Prometheus, Ling Yi isn't sure how much longer she can endure wearing the makeup and costume of a geisha, to which Yuk Je replies that had she simply accepted her fate, they wouldn't be in this predicament. Yuk Je then instructs her to practice her Japanese, playing a Cantonese to Japanese recording. They will only have to pretend a little while longer. "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."[1]
Killing Mei Mei[]
Ling Yi has a dream that she's locked inside a chest, sinking to the bottom of the ocean. She awakens in her bed on the Kerberos to whispers telling her to "wake up." After breakfast, she reports to Virginia, who performs a health check on Ling Yi, during which point, she discovers that Ling Yi's a virgin, meaning she's an imposter as Virginia was under the impression that Ling Yi was one of her best working girls. Nevertheless, she intends to make the best of their predicament by selling Ling Yi to Lucien for the night. After getting into a fight with her mother, who tried to protect Ling Yi from the life of prostitution, Ling Yi flees the cabin and hides in a crate on the upper deck, where she is found by Olek, who offers her a safer place to hide, but in his absence, she is forced to relive the memory of having accidentally killed her friend Mei Mei, whose body she hid in a box and dumped.
After being comforted by Olek, Ling Yi returns to her cabin, where she admits that her mother was right about them not having dreams. And if they took what didn't belong to them, their dreams would turn to nightmares. As planned, Ling Yi prepared for her first session with Lucien and performs an intricate geisha dance for him, displaying the polished skills she learned at Virginia's behest. However, to her surprise, he didn't want sex. He simply wanted to stay in her cabin for a while, as he had a seizure.[2]
Yuk Je's death[]
Ling Yi exits the bathroom to discover that her mother has left the room. She follows her mother and the other passengers up to the main deck, where she calls out to Yuk Je, who looks back at her before going overboard, along with several other passengers, who all appear to be in some kind of trance caused by a ticking sound on the ship. Following her mother's suicide, Ling Yi seeks comfort in Olek.[3]
Developing a bond with Olek[]
Ling Yi follows Olek and the other men to the engine room, where they begin shoveling coal into the furnaces to get the ship up and running again. She accompanies him up into the coal bunker to help pull the stuck lever. In the process, he drops his photo of the Statue of Liberty, which Ling Yi presumes is from a girl, but it is in fact from his brother, who lives in America. Ling Yi says that Olek is so different from other men and then kisses him.[4]
Once the ship's engine is back on, Ling Yi joins Olek in the bridge to steer the Kerberos and prevent it from capsizing in the storm. However, she hears her mother call out to her from the upper deck, where Yuk Je stands in spite of the rain. Ling Yi races down, only for her mother to disappears with the storm. Ling Yi is nearly knocked off the ship when a large wave floods the deck. Olek rescues her, and he is knocked into the water below instead. She remains on the deck throughout the duration of the storm and as the ship is consumed and taken to the archive.[5]
Ling Yi is not convinced by Maura's claims that they're trapped in a simulation and begins searching for a way off the ship with some of the other passengers. However, while trying to escape the spreading virus, she and Ramiro are separated from the others. At some point, the cabin doors begin to disappear and doors to memories appear in their place. She and Ramiro enter his memory, but she is startled when she discovers Mei Mei trapped in a well and flees into Olek's memory, where she finds him in a tar pit and follows him through a passage way that leads back onto the ship, where she reconvenes with the others, and they watch as the corrupted simulation self-destructs.[6]
Appearances[]
Season 1[]
Trivia[]
- Ling Yi's Chinese name is 玲兒.[7]
Gallery[]
