˗ˏˋ miss choi mi-rae ˎˊ˗

was that CHOI MI-RAE i just saw over at NORTH TEXAS UNIVERSITY? you know, the THIRTY year old PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE AND PRODUCER OF MANHWA that’s been around willow glen for THIRTY YEARS. people around town say they can somehow both be COMPETITIVE and ALTRUISTIC, but if you were to ask them, they’d probably say they’re more like MELANCHOLIC ACADEMIA FILLED WITH ANNOTATED. SYLVIA PLATH NOVELS, COFFE-STAINED POETRY JOURNALS, LATE-NIGHT PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATES, HEAVY GOLD RINGS TAPPING AGAINST WOODEN DESKS AND INTELLIGENCE SHARPENED BY LONELINESS. the town sure has been rumbling about them lately, apparently they ARE PREGNANT EXPECTING A BABY FROM THEIR EX . . . but who knows if that’s true, i guess i’ll just have to stop by MAGNOLIA RIDGE and find out !

while her architecture colleagues see her as a woman of clean lines and digital precision, mi-rae’s home office is a chaotic battlefield. one desk holds her high-end drafting laptop and architectural scales; the other is cluttered with copic markers, ink bottles, and a high-end drawing tablet. she often forgets to scrub the ink from her cuticles before a faculty meeting, telling her colleagues it’s "specialised drafting ink" when it’s actually the remains of a particularly emotional manhwa panel she drew at 3:00 am.

mi-rae speaks english with a soft, refined british-adjacent lilt (having studied the classics), but she "thinks" in korean when she is stressed or grieving.

she keeps a jar of her grandmother's recipe kimchi in the back of the fridge. She rarely eats it because the smell is "too loud" for the sterile, elegant life she built, but she can’t bring herself to throw it away. on her hardest nights, she eats it with plain white rice, standing over the sink in the dark.

in the architectural world, she is famous for her use of negative space.

she design buildings that always have a "solitary spot"—a window seat that fits only one person, or a courtyard that echoes. critics call it "minimalist genius," but in reality, she is subconsciously building spaces where it’s okay to be alone, so no one feels as crowded by "ghosts" as she does in her own home.

since the divorce, her father has become even more silent. they spend sundays together at the farm in a way that would look like a standoff to outsiders. they sit on the porch for hours, he with his tea and she with her sketchbook, barely speaking ten words. it isn’t that they have nothing to say; it’s that they both know that if they start talking about the women they’ve lost, they might never stop crying.

she publishes her comics under a pseudonym—perhaps something like 'the architect of rain'.

she once saw one of her students reading her latest chapter in the back of a lecture hall. Instead of reprimanding them, she felt a terrifying jolt of intimacy, as if that student knew her better than her ex-husband ever had. she gave that student an "a" on their next project, purely out of a sense of exposed gratitude.

she hasn't changed the "emergency contact" on her phone yet. every time she sees her ex-husband's name in her settings, she experiences a physical ache in her chest. she sometimes goes to the grocery store they used to frequent just to see if they still stock his favourite brand of tea, only to feel a bizarre sense of relief and devastation when she sees it’s sold out.