Work Text:
The first time they meet for rehearsal, Yixing ducks his head in a ninety degree bow, saying ‘sunbaenim’ at the same time Taemin bends over sideways, making a face as he says ‘hyung’, bangs cascading over his eyes. He topples over laughing, Taemin does, and it’s as he’s lying on the floor, Yixing still frozen with his waist half bent and eyes half closed, staring down at the younger boy, that Taemin reaches up and pulls him down as well. “You’re too old,” Taemin says, or at least that’s what Yixing thinks he says—he speaks a little too quickly, a little too unclearly, but he gives in, or maybe he loses his balance, and falls to the floor in an ungraceful heap.
“He’s right,” Kibum says. He latches onto Yixing’s shoulders, and when Yixing tries to rub the back of his neck in embarrassment, Kibum’s arms are in the way. Kibum chuckles, giving his shoulders one last squeeze before he stands. “It’s okay, just call him Taeminnie, no one minds.”
Jinki-ge, Jinki-hyung just gives him a quiet wave. “Let’s get started,” he says. Yixing lets Minho help him to his feet, and stepping into the space that should have been occupied by Jonghyun-ssi, melds his body into the beats of SHINee’s Lucifer.
-
“Ni hao”, Minho says. It takes Yixing a moment before he realises what the other boy with his wide eyes and earnest expression is saying, but when he does, he bows almost instinctively; in part as a greeting, but in part because there’s a smile on his face that he doesn't manage to hide.
“Ni hao,” he says, just as seriously. Hello, annyeonghaseyo. Hello, hello, hello.
“We’re the same age,” Minho says, when they're standing by one of the windows that overlooks the street. There’s a number of teenage girls milling around the entrance, but from down there, they can’t see up here. “I learned Chinese, once.”
“I’m learning Korean,” Yixing blurts out without thinking. The words sound suddenly strange on his tongue, as if they don’t fit, as if the syllables are too large for his mouth, too oddly shaped. He stares at one of the parked cars. There’s a second of silence, where the other boy is waiting for him to elaborate, before Minho laughs.
“I know,” he says. “You’re all learning Korean. It’s better than Henry-hyung’s was, I think.”
Yixing doesn’t know what to say to that, (no, this isn’t true, but time has taught him discretion and he’s learned to swallow words and turn them into careful oblivion, has learned to say ‘I don’t know’), so he ducks his head, and says thank you, “kamsahamnida.” He pauses, glances up, meeting Minho’s eyes. “Xie xie,” he adds, and there’s a sudden grin. Just for once, he doesn’t try to hide it.
Minho grins back. “Good luck,” he says. “Jia you.”
-
It’s hard, at first. But not so hard. It’s not as hard as he thought it would be. They know it’s going to be hard. It’s what they sign up for. Work hard, work hard, work hard—we’ll make you famous, we’ll make you into stars. We’ll turn you into someone new. Before, he thinks he doesn’t need to be someone new. Somewhere along the way, he learns that being someone new isn’t that bad. Somewhere along the way, he learns that being someone new—the company is right, they need to be someone new.
Really, it’s not so hard.
-
Han Geng leaves the company, and something of a death pall falls over the building. It’s a few days before Christmas, and no one knows what’s going on, no one knows what’s happened, the trainees whisper among themselves ‘who’s next’? No one expected DBSK to break up. No one expected Super Junior to begin falling apart, not so early. Sometimes, the trainees look at him. He’s Chinese. He’s like Han Geng. Hankyung. He’s different.
“Hey, chin up,” Henry says, when he bumps into him in the halls some days later. He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Han Geng ge zou le ye mei shen me de,” he says, and with a clap on Yixing’s shoulder and a good natured grin, walks down the hall humming Super Girl to himself.
It’s been over a year since Super Junior M has formed, but Henry’s Chinese still sounds strange to Yixing’s ears. But it works, it takes his mind off the immediate. “圣诞快乐,” he yells down the hall. “Merry Christmas!”
“Yeah, you too!”
It takes a moment for Yixing to decipher his English, to understand what he means. “You too,” he says to himself. “Chin up.”
The words feel less foreign on his tongue than the Korean he’s learning, day by painful day. He calls his parents that night, and listens to his mother complain about the snow, listens to his father tell him about his cousin’s child, listens to the sounds of home, and wonders why he gave it all up—but chin up, he thinks. 加油, jia you.
-
When his voice breaks Yixing loses track of what he wants to do with himself. “I want to focus on studying,” he tells his father, his friends. It’s not entirely true. The stage is magnetic, and he misses it day by day. He’s looking for something, something, one day, when he finds a stack of tapes in the bottom drawer of the TV cabinet. They’re labelled: year by year, month by month, stage by stage. He’d gotten home early from school, having felt unwell, and there’s still hours before his parents will be home. He turns on the TV, and he’s nine again. Ten, eleven, twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. “许多小鱼”, he sings to himself. His voice cracks. He laughs.
But: “I will participate in 快男,” he writes, and he means it. But: I will be remembered, he thinks. And he means it too.
They give him a chance to be famous. He takes it.
-
“You want to go home.” It’s not a question.
Lu Han sits with him in his room, SHINee sunbaenim’s debut album playing in the background, interspersed with Super Junior and DBSK’s far more extensive discography. He leaves it playing by habit—his muscles shift subtly along with the changing beats.
“No,” he says. Lu Han stares at him. Yixing shuts his eyes, leans back on the heel of his hands. “I don’t. I want to stay. I want to debut.”
Lu Han reaches over Yixing to his laptop, opening folders and tapping at the keys. Yixing opens his eyes to watch him, but he doesn’t stop him. Sorry Sorry is replaced halfway through with Wang Leehom’s 完美的互動.
“I forgot I had this,” Yixing says.
“You have a lot of music,” Lu Han says.
Yixing laughs, shifting so he’s lying on his stomach, chin pillowed on his arms. Lu Han pats him on the shoulder, sitting down next to him. He pulls something from his pocket, and Yixing isn’t surprised to see Lu Han’s fingers deftly twist the multi-coloured squares on the Rubik’s Cube. Chinese shifts into Korean, and unlike when the song had first come out, Yixing has no problem anymore understanding what had once seemed so foreign, so alien.
“Saranghaeyo,” Lu Han says. Yixing glances up, and Lu Han grins at him, forming a heart with his fingers. “I love you!”
“Ge.” Yixing rolls his eyes, cheek falling against his arms.
They cycle through the entire album like that, Yixing lying on the floor, Lu Han arranging the cube into perfect patterns of matching three by three by threes before mixing them up again, and putting them into order. At one point, Yixing flips onto his back, and he watches the way Lu Han’s fingers arch, cradling the cube, spinning white against white, inexplicably destroying neatly set lines of orange and red, only to end up with blue and green nestled on the matching edges.
“It’s cool,” Yixing says.
“Yeah?” Lu Han looks up from where he’s finishing the last face and meets Yixing’s eyes—when he looks back down, he’s forgotten what he was doing. Lu Han laughs. “You broke it.”
“Just do it again, it doesn’t take you very long.”
Lu Han shrugs. He tosses it at Yixing, and Yixing just barely manages to catch it before it lands on his chest. “Why don’t you give it a go?” he says, and stands.
Yixing frowns, getting to his feet as well. “I don’t know how.”
Lu Han opens the door. He pauses, hand on the doorframe, his bag slung over his shoulder, head cocked in consideration. “나도 몰랐어.”
The door stays open behind him.
-
He buries himself in the little pockets of Chinese that exist, tiny sanctuaries, bubbles, brief conversations in bathrooms and bedrooms and kitchens and in the convenience store down the street with the rickety stairs and somewhat cheap bread. Simple snatches of words, exchanges of 你是那来的 and 我是张艺兴, the occasional phone calls with his parents. Where are you from, I'm Zhang Yixing, hi mom, hi dad, I love you.
“Teach me,” Minho asks him sometimes, so Yixing obliges, repeats the 我爱你s and 你是我亲爱的宝贝s when they run into each other in the halls, and with a conspiratorial grin, whispers 他妈的, before warning him not to use it too often. Minho agrees solemnly, but later, Yixing overhears Kyuhyun laughing uproariously while Minho stands nearby looking sheepish, Zhou Mi demanding to know who taught him that. Yixing backtracks, goes down the stairs and takes another route, rounds a different corner.
He goes back home for two weeks and is blindsided by familiarity. Familiar accents, familiar smells, the familiar taste of the words that slip off his tongue as he answers the flight attendant when she asks if he would like water or coffee. (白水, he says. Just water, please.) Old classmates jostle for his attention, and suddenly, the words he’d forgotten he’d had, the words he’d hidden away if only because he’d had no way to say them come tumbling out. He laughs at their jokes, comments on girls’ legs, and maybe what’s between their legs, even if he hits them on the shoulder afterwards, scolds them for being so inappropriate. His teachers ask him how he’s doing, and he smiles and says he’s doing well, he’s training hard, and hopefully, hopefully, yes, he’ll be able to debut soon. He wanders the streets with his old friends, but they can’t stay out long, they have to study, they have homework, exams. His parents fuss over him, and he protests that he’s too big for that now, too old, but he lets them anyway.
There’s something comforting about the stage, even though it's small. There's room to dance. There's room to sing. There's room to laugh.
“You’ll do well,” his father says to him when he drives him to the airport.
Yixing nods, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. “I’ll work hard,” he says.
“加油.”
-
Zitao is more quiet than he seems. He’s also louder than he seems. He raps, he sings, and most importantly, he can kick anyone’s ass. Not that that makes him many friends.
Yixing catches Zitao taking selcas in the washroom one day, and he leans against the wall, waiting for Zitao to say something. Zitao ignores him, opting to snap a few more shots before tucking his phone into his sweater pocket, sliding his hands in as well. “What’s up?”
“Weibo update?” Yixing asks, nodding at his phone.
Zitao shrugs. “Maybe. We’ll see.”
Zitao has a tendency to mumble, his words getting stuck together, one sound sliding into the next. It’s altogether at odds with his cocky smile, his abrupt movements, the sharpness around his eyes. Yixing doesn’t always understand how this boy can project so much confidence on one hand, and swallow himself in the background noise on the other.
“How’s your Korean coming along?”
“It’s coming.” Zitao shrugs again. Yixing quirks an eyebrow. “What, it’s not like they’re going to debut us in Korea anyway.”
He has a point, but Yixing shakes his head. “That doesn’t mean you can slack off.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t work hard.” Zitao snaps back, and suddenly, his words are clear, cut sharp at the edges, matching his flashing eyes, the jerk of his neck.
Yixing shakes his head again. “We all work hard,” he says. He mirrors Zitao’s movements, hands in his pockets—his fingers brush against something cool and smooth. He pulls out the Rubik’s cube, its edges still mismatched. Yixing hides a smile. He’d stayed up for nights, watching videos online, following image guides, finally managing to put it all in place. And then again. And again.
Zitao is staring at the toy in his hand, his eyes darkly curious when Yixing looks up.
“Here,” Yixing says, holding it out to him. “Try it.”
“I don’t know how,” Zitao says, and this time, Yixing doesn’t bother stifling his smile.
Lu Han’s words run through his head, 나도 몰랐어 echoing softly. The Korean syllables sit on the edge of his tongue. Yixing shakes his head. “Neither did I,” he says instead. 나도 몰랐어.
Zitao takes it, the bathroom door shutting behind him.
-
“You make it look easy,” Jonghyun complains. They’re sprawled on the floor of the practice room, Jinki-hyung having finally called it quits for the day. Jonghyun sits in one corner, watching, monitoring, making the odd remark when Yixing’s longer limbs don’t mesh properly with the spaces Jonghyun has left behind.
“The dance is hard,” Yixing replies. He rubs at the back of his neck, sweat dripping down the back of his shirt. But: “we learn all the dances. As trainees.”
“It’s true,” Jinki pipes up. “Not that I remember any of them anymore.”
Kibum suddenly turns to Yixing with an excited look on his face. “Hey, hey, did you ever learn Gee?”
“Um, yeah,” Yixing says, caught off guard, and before he knows it, he’s hauled to his feet, Jonghyun groaning, Minho and Taemin clambering to their feet as well, grinning in amusement.
Jinki sighs, but pulls out his phone anyway. “Are you really? I think I’m going to get tired just from watching.”
“Oh be a good sport and start the music,” Kibum says. It’s a few days before Christmas. Their eyes meet in the mirror. Taemin laughs. Minho laughs. Yixing laughs. Jinki presses play.
“Hey. Listen boy.”
-
It’s easiest to bury himself in the practice room, music in his ears and him in the mirror. Lock pop lock, body wave, step right, right, right. Sometimes, Lu Han will join him, and they’ll alternate who gets to choose the song. They’ll start after dinner, and go for three, maybe four hours non-stop, or until someone comes to get them, chase them home to bed, remind them not to shower too late. Sometimes Jongdae will sit and watch him, not quite understanding where he gets his energy from, not when they’ve all cut down their meals to bare necessities.
To be honest, Yixing doesn’t understand either.
He comes down with a bad cold, or a fever, or something, that lands him on the floor of the practice room for a few hours, when Wu Fan comes by to see what’s keeping him, and then in bed for the better part of a week.
“There’s something called working too hard,” Wu Fan says, when Yixing’s fever breaks.
“Who said.” Yixing rolls over until his back faces Wu Fan, pulling the blankets up past his chin.
“You’ll miss Zitao’s birthday, you know. He’s a little upset.”
Yixing laughs weakly. “That kid. He’ll live.”
“Although you’ll be alright for Baekhyun’s, probably. So they’re not speaking right now.”
Yixing bursts out laughing despite himself, Wu Fan’s carefully measured Chinese only adding to the ridiculousness of the entire situation. Someone, or a few someones, trickle into the room, drawn to the sudden bouts of sound.
“You’re awake!” Jongdae’s Korean matches Lu Han’s Chinese, Minseok following a few steps behind.
“So noisy,” Yixing complains jokingly. He thinks about sitting up, but burrows deeper into the blankets instead.
Wu Fan brushes his hair back from his face and stands to chase the others out. “Okay, okay, let him rest,” he says, pushing them out despite their protests.
Yixing’s eyes flutter shut, and he doesn’t really have the energy to say no, let them stay. He listens to their chatter through the door, and doesn’t notice when muted conversation is replaced by the tangles of indistinct words of his dreams.
He wakes up when Jongdae walks into the room. It’s dark, and night. Jongdae notices him stir, and catches his eye. “Hwaiting,” he says. Yixing smiles.
A few minutes later, after the lights are off and Jongdae has tucked himself under his own blankets, a quiet “加油” comes from the other bed, but Yixing has already drifted back to sleep.
Jongdae sighs, and pulls the blankets over his head.
-
He has to wonder if there’s a point to all this. He has to. And he does.
There’s his fans. That’s the easy answer. Lu Han points this out to him sometimes, something he has that they don’t, reads him their messages, occasionally amused, occasionally stopping mid-sentence with a quick ‘never mind’ as he scrolls on.
And there’s his dreams. Their dreams.
“I’m really happy,” he tells them. “I’m really thankful.”
They’re going to debut. They’re going to debut. “Wo men yao chu dao,” Jongdae says, frowning. “Was that right?”
“It’s good,” Yixing says. He’s on his laptop, headphones around his neck, scrolling through the messages on the bar, on the forum. He’s only listening half-heartedly to Jongdae’s practice, and he feels a little guilty about it.
“What do you need help with?” he asks, turning in his chair.
Jongdae frowns. “Wo de meng xiang shi,” he begins, my dreams are. Their eyes meet, and there is a sudden loss of words.
-
“Hyung!” Taemin waves at him when he sees Yixing approach, and Yixing hesitates before waving back.
“Hello,” Yixing says. Despite the time they’ve spent together, he’s still torn between sunbaenim and the careless Taemin-ah the others use. “How’s Japan?”
Taemin shrugs, makes a face, rolls his eyes. “I’m tired,” he says. “But never mind, congratulations, hyung! Jongin told me, it’s pretty much official now, isn’t it?”
Yixing blinks. “Is it? I guess so.”
“It is, I’m sure. You’ll be in China, right, so you’ll get to go home. And Jongin is going to stay here. I’m glad. About Jongin, I mean.” Taemin pauses. “I guess I’ll miss you.”
Yixing nods, smiles. He knows that Taemin won’t actually miss him, that he hasn’t missed him any more than he might have missed any other trainee who wasn’t a friend. He doesn’t think that Taemin’s had the time to miss anyone, to be honest, or the energy. “China will be good.”
Taemin nods, suddenly wistful. “I didn’t realise how good Korea was until it wasn’t there,” he says. “How do you do it?”
“We work hard,” Yixing says before he can stop himself.
But Taemin just laughs. “We’ll work hard too,” he says. His phone buzzes, and Taemin glances at the text, his face brightening considerably.
“That was Jongin,” he explains. “I have to go. Anyway, bye hyung! Good luck!”
“Thank you,” Yixing says. He watches Taemin run down the hall, before he turns into the practice room where the others are waiting.
-
He’s not actually sure why he’s sitting here, at a restaurant, Minho-ssi on one side and Kyuhyun-ssi on the other, with Changmin-ssi sitting across from him, plates of dumplings between them and little bottles of vinegar besides their chopsticks. It’s a few days before Christmas, and he’s been buried up to his neck in teaser filmings and dance practice and the last bit of vocal training.
“Come eat,” Minho had said, ignoring Yixing’s protests that he was on a diet. “If you don’t eat now, you’ll never eat,” he’d said, and there was the sort of knowledge that came with experience in Minho’s eyes, and Yixing had followed him docilely after that.
“The thing is,” Kyuhyun is saying, “you can’t give in.” There’s also a few empty bottles of soju now, although Yixing had only taken meager sips of his own glass.
“I haven’t,” Yixing says, but Kyuhyun had never been waiting for a response.
“Whether they like you or not, you have to remember what you want. If you still remember what you want.”
“What are you trying to tell him,” Changmin deadpans. “Get to the point.”
Kyuhyun rolls his eyes. “Shut up, you. You just came along for the food, anyway.”
“And then offered to pay!”
“Hyung.”
“Right. So like I was saying—what was I saying?”
“To remember what I want,” Yixing supplies, when three pairs of expectant eyes turn on him.
“What you want,” Kyuhyun echoes. He pauses. “Also, don’t talk about earthquakes. Or leaving. Or anything that might make them hate you. Which is a lot. You’d be surprised.”
“I won’t,” Yixing promises. He knows exactly what Kyuhyun is talking about. He remembers every word. He remembers swallowing his own words.
“Try not to get into car accidents too. I don’t think that’ll help.”
Minho chuckles, and Yixing has to hold back a chuckle, although his is significantly dryer. “Hyung,” Minho says, “don’t be like that.”
“You too,” Changmin suddenly says, turning to Minho. “Don’t lose any members of your group, yeah?”
He’s joking, but even so, there’s a sort of solemn reality lying behind his teasing jab. For some reason, Jinki-hyung suddenly comes to mind.
“But most importantly,” and Kyuhyun isn’t done yet, “stay true to yourself. Sometimes it’s easy to forget who you are.”
“I will,” Yixing says. “I won’t.”
Kyuhyun chuckles, placing a hand on Yixing’s shoulder. “Jia you.”
-
It’s minutes to their showcase. The SM photographer asks them to gather, do a cheer for the camera. It’ll go up on the site, on facebook, on weibo. They do. He says smile. Yixing tries. They all try. They’re all nervous.
“Zitao gave me this yesterday,” Lu Han says, walking Yixing over to where their bags are. He pulls out the Rubik’s cube, this time, properly arranged. “He said you gave it to him.”
“I did,” Yixing says. Something flutters in his stomach and lodges in his throat. Lu Han nods. He understands.
“We’re home,” he says.
“加油.”