ㅤㅤ “prelude”

ㅤㅤ “MEET THE CHOI'S”
prelude
joowon's video log
"is this thing even on?" a voice whines. there's some shuffling before the lens finally focus on joowon's pretty face.
"you had to remove the cover, idiot." someone says behind the camera, tone rich with sickening fondness and joowon immediately pouts. he snatches the camera back, all the while murmuring something along the lines of i knew that.
 
seojun is now in the frame, dark hair covering a good part of his forehead. there are prominent dark circles under his eyes and his complexion is a deadly pale. overall, he looks like the definition of a mess but joowon doesn't comment on it.
"okay so i'm gonna start video taping everything cause everyone's growing up so quickly!" he pauses to fix seojun's sweater with a quick flick of his hand before continuing, "we need memories to look back at and say holy i looked like crap back then."
"sounds good to me. can you help me with the grocery list now?" seojun asks with a soft smile. joowon yells an enthusiatic yes and sets the camera down on the kitchen counter, leveled towards the elder boy. he joins seojun's side, taking the notepad and pen from him before jotting down stuff that the elder says.
 
the next few minutes pass with the pair bickering light-heartedly over what should go on the list for the month's kitchen stock. there are a few instances when seojun covers the lens with a mischevious grin and pulls back just as quickly, their lips mysteriously turning a kiss-swollen pink over time.
"ugh, this is going nowhere. you decide on the rest yourself, you prick." joowon playfully punches seojun's shoulder after the elder turned down three of his suggestions. he lifts up the camera, assuming his role of cameraman once again and leaves seojun and the kitchen behind.
 
down the corridor is his next victim and joowon cackles lowly before calling out to jiu who looks like a deer caught in headlights, a cookie halfway into her open mouth.
"ah cookie monster! binging already, huh?" joowon chirps, zooming in and out of jiu's face as she finishes swallowing her cookie and points out the camera.
"why are you carrying that around, oppa?"
"ah, i'm gonna start recording all of our precious memories," joowon explains and then starts cooing, "u-ah, you've grown so well." jiu flushes under the praise, smacking joowon in embarrassment, who just laughs obnoxiously as he pulls her cheeks.
"oppa, i'm not the only one who grew up well though. look at how handsome you are now." she retorts with a wink and joowon pans the camera at himself, making completely unnecessary y expressions with justin timberlake's y back as the background music, courtesy of jiu.
 
"what's with all this noise?" comes a voice from somewhere off-camera. joowon turns to show jubong standing at the foot of the staircase, a thick book under his arm and an expression on his face that resembled a pissed off rhino.
to the side, jiu lets out a small squeak and scurries past the boy, leaving joowon alone with jubong. 
"aye jumong, say hi to the camera!"
jubong scowls beautifully and stomps up to his room while mumbling leave me alone under his breath. the soud of his door slamming shut follows soon after and joowon just sighs, a heavy sound, then continues his journey to the backyard.
 
just as he slides the door leading to the backyard open, an alarmingly loud wail fills the air.
"oh my god what happened?" joowon rushes to jitae, who was seated on his with one knee pulled close to his tiny body. junsoo was muttering soothing words to the young boy but as soon as he spotted joowon, he pulled back and moved to the side with a closed expression.
"he fell on his knee and now it's bleeding so he started crying." seyong narrates from the other side, his arms crossed over his chest and offering no help whatsoever.
"aw my poor baby. does it hurt badly?" joowon examines the bruise and jitae doesn't reply, he just continues to sob. junsoo brings a first-aid kit from the house and promptly starts to clean the cut on jitae's bony knee. soon enough, the small boy was just sniffling and choosing from the various cartoon band-aids that junsoo offered.
"can i have the ariel one?" jitae asks quietly, voice so low that joowon barely caught onto the words.
"of course you can, baby." joowon says quickly, and takes the band-aid from junsoo, whose eyes start twitching in annoyance. jitae smiles widely, and stares at the pink on his knee in an adorable way and joowon can't help but focus the camera on his ecstatic little face.
"why don't you go and sleep with haewonnie in the living room, tae?" junsoo says and jitae nods before skipping back into the house.
 
junsoo and seyong continue their small game of soccer, and joowon sits at the sidelines, recording the whole thing and occasionally cheering for them. it's when the two playing boys sit down and rest that seyong brings up jungah,
"why don't we call her down?" joowon suggests. seyong's eyes light up at that and junsoo just looks plain replused by anything that comes out of joowon's mouth. The camera continues recording the whole thing, a red light blinking next to the lens. Joowon and seyong begin chanting jungah's name, getting rowdier each time they do so and junsoo rolls his eyes at the side.
 
The sliding door rattles as jungah slams it open, her appearance completely dishevelled. there are thick strands of hair over her face, moving with every heaving breath she takes and her boxer shorts are on backwards.
"What is it?" She exhales, hands clutching her stomach as she regains control over her breathing. joowon scrambles to get the camera and starts walking towards the new victim.
"We just wanted you to play soccer with us." joowon states simply.
A vein pops in jungah's forehead, and the camera catches the change in her expressions; from confused to understanding and then straight out anger.
"To play soccer?" Her voice is dangerously low, "you called me out... just because you wanted me to play ing soccer? seriously? you guys know i'm busy studying for my midterms right now. why the hell are you wasting my time!" her voice goes progessively louder and she was positively fuming at the end of her outburst.
seojun pops up behind her, worried at the commotion but before he can say anything, she swivels and marches back to her room, leaving the boys behind in their shocked states. seyong quietly informs what happened to seojun and the two of them quickly follow after jungah. joowon sighs for the umpteenth time that morning and flips off junsoo when the man starts to laugh, clearly finding the situation amusing and joowon tells him just that.
"what? don't blame me for enjoying that entertainment." junsoo deadpans, before shoving past joowon and into the house.
 
joowon turns the camera around, towards himself, "okay so that was... unexpected. to future jungah who watches this, i'm super sorry baby," he does his best aegyo and starts moving back into the house, "i guess it's not a choi morning if we don't have at least one person screaming at the top of their lungs." joowon tries to joke, but it comes out dry.
the frame sweeps to the scene in the living room, where jitae was cuddled up against a napping haewon. the both of them were sharing earbuds, their mouths agape and there was some drool in jitae's case. joowon starts cooing, shooting the sight from all angles and even took some photos on his phone.
 
he glances at the time on the screen and then looks at the camera, "it's gonna be lunch time soon for us so i guess this memory has gotta cut off here. to the future choi's who will watch this, i hope you guys are living happily. bye bye." joowon smiles and waves then the video cuts off.
authors' note
1.3k of the choi's. damn they're complicated af. they are all little s but i love little s so whhoooopppss. - Annie
 
how was that? was it good? bad? feedback, s'il vous plait! so that was the introduction chapter for meet the choi's. hopefully we can make the actual chapters longer but hey, no promises. - beth
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hallyutrash
so... does anyone remember us

Comments

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kanqwu
#1
how could i forget y'all lol
can't believe when this fic was made i was using mark predebut pics and now he's in like 4 groups and touring everywhere
jonginoppar
#2
Chapter 4: i’m actually so sad of seyong’s past and how cold mrs. hwang was towards him in the nightmare he had. what’s sad is that some parents really act that way towards their children and it kinda . a lot. p.s. idk if anybody else does it but i had a hard time matching the names to the faces of our charas so I had to pull up another tab just to hover over their pics to get a name as i read the chapters lmao.
JUBONG PLS NOTICE SEYONG AND GIVE HIM SOME LOVING. HE JUST WANTS TO BE LOVED MAGUUHHD. btw what’s the boy doing eating cheesecake for breakfast? seojun would lecture the crap out of him for that. and excuse why is joowon the one that’s going to busan with seojun LET JUNSOO COME TOO. i cried a lil on the inside until i read “only the important sons and daughters were called there for meetings with them.” rip junsoo. i’m still trying to figure out jubong because he even hates just sitting in the car with the fam- he called them lowly beings that makes me ded af. but okay he def went to far with calling poor jiu fat. it's only the first day of school and it's so crazy for everybody. i can't wait for your next update!!
kanqwu
#3
SCRAMs
ok i'm so busy with school rn but know that i totally read this new chapter update and i will comment this weekend in full !!!!
bless you guys for bringing us that Quality Content
PsyMoo
#4
Chapter 4: love this story!! it got me so emotional and all, love ittt
Layni17
#5
Chapter 4: I'm so glad to get an update!! It was really an emotional chapter already, and somewhat relatable as I had my first day of school on Wednesday and uh, I also have the flu so like this week was a disaster with my siblings and I trying to get ready for school (Out of the seven of us, two are in college and work, one just graduated high school, two of us go to high school, one just started middle school, and the last is in elementary so we have a lot of places to go and only so much time to get everyone there). It's hectic when you have a full house, and even more hectic when you have the individual problems of the Chois. You can slowly see everyone's individual issues seeping out and affecting the others, it's really awesome. Cutie Jitae all excited for school, and then Jubong insulting Jiu's weight and ruining the fragile peace was so like awesome but terrible?? I loved this chapter and wish I had more time to comment but I'm trying to convince my parents to take my sister and I to see Spider-Man again so--
Take your time until the next update!
kanqwu
#6
...what's that status feed mean ,,
derpnonimous
#7
Chapter 3: i only noticed i haven't read the prelude update so i'm legit really glad i fINALLY DID OMG HDDGSKASJ there's a sort of sadness in the vlog thing like idk it's soft and nice and there's a sense of family in it but IT'S STILL SAD,,, like i can feel the whole thing weighing down the family, especially in jungah's outburst i don't even know why smh but anyway!!! i really do hope the future chois are happy.

and for the chapter 1, jitae's perspective made me so sad JSDHLKALSAKL like he's a child, a baby TT TT why does a child like him have to be so sad, he just wants to be loved,,, but it's nice that he's the first one, because the pain was raw, like the whole thing. you can immediately feel pain because it's a child we're seeing, thinking and acting based on his experiences. it's sad how some children grow up like that, like they become used to the feeling of being alone, it's not a good thing, especially for children his age. and the worse thing is that we see them trying, the family members, but since the chois all have problems of their own, it's hard to deal with it like how do you help someone else if you can't even help yourself? i just want to protect jitae--- i'm so TT TT i like how haewon retorts badly towards seyong whenever he says something bad and how her anger gets out of control, like we all get that she's trying to correct him and at the least make things a bit better, but we kind of see how young she is too since she really can't handle dealing with it in a mature way. it's in this sense that we see the significance of an adult in a family, they're okay and happy to an extent, but there's this dysfunctionality and silent chaos in how they're together. FOR BONUS!!! THOSE NEIGHBORHOOD AUNTIES ARE AWFUL!!! WHY NOT GIVE THE CHOIS A CHANCE TO REDEEM THEMSELVES??? THE KIDS LIKED JITAE, HE'S JUST A CHILD. the thing i hated most was jitae crying.

this is so long lmao. i'm anticipating getting to know more of the charas so i can talk about them too lmao i wanna see how everything unfolds. choi family, fighting! annie and beth, fighting!
MissMinew
#8
Chapter 3: i keep reading it and i keep losing my words so i can't really make any eloquent comment and for that im honestly sorry but its just ... this chapter is amazing. i love the way jitae is portrayed, i love the bittersweet birthday he has because i dont really see much happiness in it, but still there are people who care for him and love him and its just ... still bittersweet somehow. i really just love it. so yeah, im speechless and this is an unworthy comment but i really dont know what to say. T_T
kanqwu
#9
Chapter 3: ok after school has finished kicking my , i'm back to comment :)

i think it's nice to have the perspective of jitae for our first chapter. mainly because as the youngest member of the choi's, he has the clearest vision of the family in their purest form (drawing from the fact that kids are the most honest). on top of that, we get to see them engage in his birthday (sort of) celebrations. i like that false sense of security that builds either out of your diction or jitae's perspective (or both). you get the feeling that this will be a really sweet moment with the family- and it is, for a half second- only for it to dissolve. there's also that moment of a look into the mind of jitae with him seeing no one having time for his birthday. it really shows his background and also the relationship with the rest of the choi's. it's a little bite of reality to impact the sweetness of that birthday scene.

then we get a glimpse into jitae's life at school. i remember quite a bit from jitae's app, so i had a good idea of what was coming. one of the lines i really liked was "in his head, jitae has responded several times with something dramatic, making everyone admire him and follow his lead as he walks away from the table proudly" because of how real that is. kids always fantasize of being the hero, but it never really works out like that. also, is this the segment where annie got that cameo ? is she the teacher ? if so, that's a pretty kick cameo lmao. way to save the day :)

(see replies for more)
jonginoppar
#10
Chapter 3: finally on my spring break so i got to sit down and read through what's posted so far--
i'm so upset for jitae... when he said he was used to his birthdays being that way it
just broke my heart so much. you know things are bad when that type of behavior
from the family dynamic just becomes so normal. :/ and the fact that the neighborhood
moms are being petty over the family not saying hello when they came is just so infuriating!
kudos to seungmin for welcome jitae so openly and fast. i'm sure he really enjoyed just
his short moments of being a regular kid. i swear i'm going to virtually poof myself into
the story to tell minhyuk off! hdu say pink is not a color for boys >:(
i lowkey am not familiar with everyone's faces so i have to keep clicking back on the forward
to check who is who! but so far, i'm really loving that jiu gave something for jitae to kind of
just breathe and enjoy the day since it was going so bad. idk if it'll ever happen but i hope
for the day that seyong can properly respond to jitae in the way that he wants, rather than
ignoring him. i'm loving it so far! junsoo reading to children is making me swooOOOoooon.
<3