#agent choi

Me personally? more of an otter Choi truther

Every expression is a series of muscle movements. Smiling is no exception, but it's more difficult than most others. It's not just an upturn of the lips, although that simple movement takes uses more muscles than frowning. Who knew joy takes so much energy?

Look at the sky. Admire the roses. Cook some food. Make yourself appreciate the process. Eat the food. Even if it's not great, tell yourself that at least you made it. Savor each bite. Be present. Live in the moment. What an exhausting series of thoughts that's needed for a little bit of simple, brief, temporary happiness.

Ah, but he's getting off topic: smiling.

Joy is one of the most useful expressions to have. People have more favorable impressions of you if they perceive real joy. People tend to underestimate you if they perceive any joy, real or otherwise. In either scenario, you get the advantage. People talk more freely when they have a good impression; people have looser lips when they have a demeaning impression. Not to mention the reaction times. The moment of shock when a weak person turns out to be strong or when a good person turns out to bad— that pauses of hesitation can be life or death. 

People are, generally speaking, gullible enough to think a smile equates joy. So raise those lips, even if it's taxing on your muscles. If you have dimples, make sure to smile strongly enough for them to show. And then, eyes. Shows like to say stuff like 'eyes are the windows to the soul,' right? That's bullshit. Eye muscles do convey a lot of emotion, though. Squint your eyes just slightly, so that your eyes seem to curve with your smile. Raised eyebrows tend to be a sign of surprise while scrunched eyebrows show judgement or tension, so keep them relaxed and lower them a bit, so you seem like you're comfortable and content. Ideally, turn your face towards a light source, subtly, to increase the chances of the light reflecting off your eyes. And there's your smile: upturned lips, curved eyes, relaxed brows, sparkling light. 

lol thank you for enabling me. I think you'd like Agent Choi a lot actually, you should join us in reading gsgw.

I found you chasing butterflies.

[Prompt List]

(Takes place in an imaginary near future where KSE temporarily (?) rejoin the Bureau. Don't think too hard on it. AU where they get to be a little bit happy.)

"But really? Chasing butterflies? Is that really something I'd have done as a child?" Choi wondered aloud, as they pedalled back towards the bureau.

The rescue mission was successful. They managed to extract the civilian with no casualty. There was only one brief hiccup.

Childhood Memory Lane. A ghost story developed by the Cheerful Research Institute where you meet the child version of yourself and must lead them along the major path following signs for the exit. Along the path, happy childhood memories and entities resembling your loved ones will appear and try to lead your child-self astray, but if you stray too far from the path or dwindle in one place for too long, traumatic childhood memories will begin to surface, and the direction becomes harder and harder to navigate. It is impossible to leave the disaster without your child-self, and dragging the children by force is also impossible.

The civilian who called for the rescue was quite shaken when they found him and his child-self, but was physically unharmed. However, once they managed to coax his child entity back to the main path and began to relax, little Choi managed to ran off chasing a butterfly, causing another detour.

Fortunately, the worst of Kim Soleum's traumas are all from the past four years, and Choi recalled almost nothing about his childhood at all. So the three of them decided to split up. Bronze guiding the citizen along the path to the exit, while Choi and Grapes attempted to wrangle Choi's child-self back to the right path without using force. After witnessing several embarrassing childhood memories from Agent Grapes, the two of them managed to exit safely.

"The child entities are based on our memories and impressions of our childhood selves, they're not necessarily accurate." Agent Bronze answered.

"That's the thing, tho. Would I have chased a butterfly? Only children in stories and commercials chases butterflies."

It was a good thing he didn't say this in front of the entity itself, who knows how it would have reacted if it got told by the original that it wasn't doing a convincing enough job being him.

"I chased butterflies before," Kim Soleum offered, "back when I didn't know catching them would damage their wings."

"Really, Grapesie?" Agent Choi's eyes brightened from this freely offered tidbit of information. "How 'bout you, Jaekwan-ie? Did you ever catch bugs?"

"I kept a caterpillar for class once."

"But neither of your kids ran off in the middle of a Disaster. Do I seem like such a carefree person?"

Bronze was very slow and careful when he opened his mouth again. "Shouldn't you ask yourself that, Choi-seonbae? The entity is based on your own impression, after all."

"That's the thing, Bronzie. I don't know. I think I would have been a happy child, at least. I must have been, to have such a positive outlook on life now."

There was a brief period of silence. Neither of them knew quite how to answer that.

The environment of the Disaster had aspects from Kim Soleum's own life, while others seemed to match with what Agent Bronze had shared about his, back then, and some others were probably from the civilian. Were any of it from Agent Choi? Perhaps those were the oddly blank areas, where things became fuzzy around the edges.

"You seem like the type to catch cicadas," Kim Soleum said, "I could see you chasing butterflies."

Ryu Jaekwan made a sound of affirmation.

"You were probably pretty active, outdoors a lot. You seemed like you'd run around in the forest in the summer."

"Did you ever do that, Grapesie?" Agent Choi asked softly.

"Nope, I was more of an indoors kid. I liked reading and going on the internet. But I had friends like you. That was probably why our kid selves got along pretty well in there." Once he'd opened his mouth, it was hard to stop. The words poured out of him, an imaginary childhood that never was.

"That's because you and Bronzie were good kids, you'd have gotten on with anyone."

"You'd have gotten in trouble a lot, and Bronze-nim would have told on you, but I'd have kept my mouth shut."

"I probably would have," Agent Bronze agreed, smiling.

"You'd have told us about your adventures and showed us the beetles that you caught. Or some rocks you found. Maybe you'd embellish it with some popular media, you strike me as a Power Rangers fan—"

"Nah, I'd probably still pretend to be secret agent from the government. But my stories would be bad, cause imagination isn't my strong suit, but you'd have retold them back to me, and it'd somehow be better." Choi laughed, bright and warm like the setting sun. It was infectious. A chuckle rose helplessly from Kim Soleum's chest, warm and impossibly fond. Something lodged in his throat.

The agents stopped in their tracks.

"Grapesie... you've really—" Agent Choi's eyes were shining with... something.

Kim Soleum had to look away.

He'd said too much.

"You're right, Agent Choi," he said, to the road beneath his bike and the passing scenery, "you'd have been a happy kid."

—Fin—

[AO3] <- LEAVE COMMENTS PLS!