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Outside the dining room, Choi leans in close enough that Jaekwan can see the faint line in his front tooth where it had once been split clean in two. He's dressed up, unseasonably warm for the weather and uncharacteristic of him: his neck wound up in a thin black turtleneck, tucked neatly underneath the black collar of his crisp suit. His lips are drawn thin, as if he has tasted something sour, or is holding himself back from asking for a cigarette he doesn’t actually need.
More conversationally than the moment warrants, he says, “It’s a good day, isn’t it?”
Jaekwan glances at his profile out of the corner of his eyes. He thinks he must have misheard.
Choi doesn't often ungild his words, but there is a difference between casual pleasantries and indecency, and this feels perilously close to the latter.
Is that really what he thinks, Jaekwan finds himself wondering more often lately. Whether it is a kind of smokescreen, some form of strange misdirection. Choi is fond of those: a bright red cloth waved over something unmistakably bleeding.
He could ask. If not now, then when? If one were inclined to test a person’s sincerity, a funeral would be as good a venue as any.
Jaekwan turns fully toward him just in time to see Choi slip his fingers out of his pocket. Earlier, those fingers had been worrying at something small inside his jacket—rolling the half-burned stub of a cigarette, perhaps, between his thumb and forefinger. They vanish behind his back a second later, posture straightening into something almost boyish, like a child who has just shoved sugar into his mouth and intends to deny everything.
He doesn't look particularly guilty.
He hasn’t so much quit smoking as he has redirected it, cutting down in daily life—only to indulge, quietly and incessantly, at the Bureau’s state-mandated funerals.
Jaekwan has always known this. He does not hold expectations on that front.
It still hurts to watch.
So he pretends not to notice. Easier than starting a fight he can't win. He doesn't know what else to do with the things Choi refuses to quit.
“What do you mean?” Jaekwan asks.
“That it really is a nice day.” Choi’s smile coils into something indulgent as he tips his chin faintly toward the windows. “If you look outside, Jaekwan-ah—”
“Agent Choi. What are you playing at?”
They are too old for games. Jaekwan had barely been one himself when they first met, though that hadn’t stopped Choi from calling Jaekwan a kid back then. He’d been barred from missions, still on probation because of his age, trailing behind Agent Haegeum in the lobby. He can still remember the way Choi said it: half-teasing, half-affectionate, just barely shy of patronising; the same tone of voice he now reserves for particularly fussy children too young to understand what’s being asked of them.
That has not stopped Choi from behaving like one himself.
“Why are you being so irritable, Bronze?" he asks lightly. His tone is pitched just high enough to be public, harmless. "It's not like you to ask this many questions.”
His attempt at de-escalation is clumsy enough that Jaekwan notices; he raises an eyebrow at him.
“As I was saying,” Choi continues, undeterred, “if you look out the window, you’ll notice it’s still good weather. It was supposed to rain by now, but the sun's still bright outside.”
That much is true. The warmth from the weekend has lingered stubbornly into midweek, despite daily forecasts predicting rain. That had been part of their calculations, after all. She’d gone on the mission because the skies were clear.
Jaekwan had gone for a run that same morning. The air had been brisk, a little windier than usual, but still pleasant against his face. At the time, he’d thought it refreshing.
Now it feels contaminated.
“For there to be good weather and clear skies, and for all of us to go on smiling. What a noble last wish,” Choi says lightly. He glances back toward the windows, as if to ensure the weather has not betrayed him mid-sentence. “Though no one here except me seems committed to honouring it. Imagine if it were gloomy instead! If it were my funeral, I couldn’t accept that kind of backwards devotion. Looking down and seeing everyone sulking? I'd be upset.”
He shakes his head once, mouth curving upward again. It is the sort of smile that says, Fine. I’ll handle it. As if he is volunteering to bear the indignity of it alone.
Jaekwan’s mouth flattens.
They hadn’t really known the deceased well. She’d been from a different team with conflicting missions, which meant little overlap in their schedules. Even outside, there wasn't much time to get to know her either; she hadn’t lasted long enough for them to.
Choi, of course, had made a habit of checking on rookies from other teams anyway. That was the sort of person he was. He would always complain about it—the lack of rookies in their own team, chiefly—before glancing sideways at Jaekwan, adding mischievously, Though I don’t need another one. My adorable junior is obviously staying for a long, long time.
Jaekwan had never known what to say in response. He would just stare at the faint lines at the corners of Choi’s eyes and feel vaguely cornered by affection.
“Ah, stop looking like that.” Choi pauses, brows knitting slightly as if contemplating a complex moral dilemma. Then he unwinds his hands from behind his back just so he can poke a finger into Jaekwan’s cheek. “You shouldn’t disrespect the dead like that,” he scolds. “Smile. Smile!”
"What is there to smile about?" Jaekwan asks, perfectly serious.
"If it were my funeral, everyone has to smile," Choi continues blithely. "It better be a huge celebration. I want good food—expensive, too. Soju. Lots of loud cheering. No one is allowed to be miserable."
"It won't be your funeral any time soon."
"Well, you never know."
A strange, faraway glint enters his eyes, like he's remembering something precious that he'll never get back. A childhood pet. A lost home. He'll tell the rest a different story every time, but Jaekwan knows that's also the closest they've come to acknowledging it—the thing that's been hanging between them since the accident.
Tenderly, his knuckles graze Jaekwan's brow. "You really shouldn't frown so much, Jaekwan-ah. Unless you want your handsome face permanently frozen like that."
He hadn’t even realised he’d been frowning. "It doesn't matter."
“I’ll add another clause in my will,” Choi says thoughtfully. “Someone has to stand beside you the whole time to make sure you’re not scowling at my memorial portrait.”
Jaekwan does not want to continue this conversation. He knows he doesn’t look happy, and Choi knows it too. That must be why Choi is no longer looking at him, but back at the window instead.
“What’s wrong with turning it into a grand celebration?” Choi adds. "It’s like we’ve made it into the KBO league. Making it this far.”
Jaekwan stares at him. “What sort of comparison is that?”
Choi clicks his tongue. “When was the last time you watched anything besides disaster briefings, Bronze?”
Jaekwan doesn’t even need to look closely to see it now—the imperfect seam in Choi’s front tooth. The cheaper filling he’d chosen over the root canal. He’d joked once about replacing it with gold, saying it would make him look expensive when he smiled.
He is still smiling now. Still talking. It's proof that he’s still alive.
Jaekwan should feel relieved by that.
He doesn’t.
There is nothing stopping Choi from running headfirst into the next suicide mission. Nothing stopping him from stepping back into the kind of operation that had once nearly snapped his neck—skin split open, blood soaking through his collar, the medical report clinical about the number of stitches he'd had, how close it had been.
It'd been easy to hide the damage on his teeth. The scars crisscrossing his neck were another matter entirely. At the hospital, he'd even laughed and told Jaekwan, coaxing, that it wasn't a big deal. That these things happened to people on the field all the time. And wasn't he lucky? He'd have a cool scar now.
Jaekwan hadn't been able to control his tears back then, rubbing at his eyes until his skin burned, until everything was raw and red and humiliating. He had cried and cried until he was certain there was nothing left in him.
Looking in the mirror that same night at his own swollen eyes and blotched cheeks, he couldn’t help but think the scar had looked angrier. Redder.
Nothing has changed between them, back then and now. If anything, Choi has only grown more opaque with time: brighter on the surface, harder to read underneath.
Jaekwan cannot keep watching like this, waiting for the day he finally kills himself.
But he has to keep his eyes open. He needs to. Someone has to be there to stop Choi from killing himself in front of him.
His shoulder bumps lightly against Jaekwan’s. “You really don’t know any teams? You should watch the sports channels at least. It’s good for morale.”
Jaekwan exhales through his nose. “You know this isn’t a game.”
“No, it isn't,” Choi agrees easily. He shifts his weight, hands still hidden behind his back, rocking once on his heels. His posture seems loose, unburdened; his eyes are not. "But you know how it is,” he says cheerfully. “There's always a lot of teams that don’t make it to the end of the season. And all they want is to play a good game.”