We don't speak japanese, at all
Title: We don't speak japanese, at all
Pairing: OT12
Rating: PG
Length: 2,021 words
Warnings: un-betaed (sorry ;;;).
Summary: When EXO is about to debut in Japan and they refuse to take japanese lessons. They should have listened to their manager instead.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Notes: Fill for this prompt at exopromptmeme.
‘EXO to make their debut in Japan soon.’
The news are everywhere, from television to magazines, some fans are happy others are sad and sm is about to jump around on money.
“I don’t think they thought about us having to learn how to speak the language, right?” Yifan says, desperate because he knows Korean, English, Mandarin, and Cantonese, but he was never very fond of Japanese, all the kanjis confused his brain, he has Mandarin already, why more kanjis with almost the same meaning but different pronunciation?
“Let’s not think about it, that’s why they’re giving us Japanese lessons and that’s also why we’re flying to Japan earlier.” Joonmyeon calms the fuss down and motions for them to pack. The sooner they get the better, maybe they’ll magically learn how to speak more than ‘Konnichiwa EXO desu! Yoroshiku onegaishimasu’.
Hopefully.
“Hello, I’m Ishikawa Sho, your new teacher, yes I speak Korean too, but for the sake of your learning I’ll reduce the speaking and use Japanese most of the time.” the small looking man with glasses stares at the EXO members and gestures for them to sit down.
“Do any of you know the basics of japanese?” Ishikawa-san asks and Joonmyeon raises his arm.
“I know a little.” the teacher motions for him to speak what he knows and Joonmyeon takes a long deep breath.
“Konnichiwa boku wa exo-k no riida Suho desu.” the room erupts in laughter and Joonmyeon regrets saying he knew, he should’ve played dumb (like he isn’t already).
“Oh well, you know how to introduce yourself.” the teacher says in his accented Korean and hands out papers to the boys.
“What are these lines? Why I’m not seeing kanjis here?” Yifan turns he papers and Luhan joins him. Yixing makes a drawing with all the symbols.
“We have three different ways of writing, like alphabets. Kanjis as you said. Hiraganas for complement like prepositions and Katakana for foreign words. We’ll start with the basics, now study these papers.” the teacher leaves the room, the boys need time to process the information, they were used to only one alphabet.
“I think we should have a tour ourselves around the big Tokyo!” Jongdae screams, they asked the manager to dismiss the teacher that they’d find their own way of learning the language, and what’s better than in practice?
“Let’s separate in small groups so we won’t gather too much attention.” Baekhyun suggests and the rest of the boys agree. “I’ll go with Chanyeol and Jongdae, bye let’s go.”
“Zitao, Jongin let’s go.” Sehun grabs his friends by the arms and starts to walk away.
“Don’t forget we’ll share everything we learn later at the dorms.” Joonmyeon screams and all the boys nod.
“Minseok, Yixing I think I want to order some food.” Luhan says and the other two agree. “See you later then.” he waves at the remaining boys and skips until he’s out of vision.
“I think it’s just us now.” Joonmyeon shakes his head and tries to think of something they can do. “We should go find a good place to eat too.”
Kyungsoo and Yifan agree, they’re indeed hungry.
“We should’ve chosen another restaurant instead of sushi and sashimi, we eat these all the time.” Yixing pats his stomach and Luhan sees something from afar and screams, running at its direction.
Xiumin and Yixing have to run to not lost sight of the brown haired boy, he’s not blond anymore, it’s really hard to localize him now.
“What was that for?” the boys pant when they reach Luhan.
“It’s Tower Records, let’s get inside and take a look.” he enters the seven floors building in which they can find almost all styles of music.
“Look,” he points at one of the shining boards. “that’s us, Oh My, I look so good.”
“The debut is just next month, yet they’re promoting it already.” Yixing says and Luhan turns to him.
“Don’t you know, in Japan they promote it a lot before releasing the real thing.” he says like an expert.
Minseok opens his mouth to argue but instead he decides to walk around the place, it’s really huge.
“Akihabara here I am.” Jongin almost screams when he sees all the neon lights and maid cafes and the people dressed like anime characters and his head is spinning.
“Why did I let you drag us here?” Sehun questions and lets out a yelp when one girl approaches him with a pamphlet.
“Watashitachi no kōhīshoppu ni kite! (Come to our coffee shop!)” she says and Sehun side eyes his friends waiting for help.
“Arigatou.” Jongin says and the girl smiles and goes back to her previous spot.
“How did you know what she was saying?” Zitao looks at Jongin surprised and the latter scoffs.
“I didn’t, just say thank you and be polite, they don’t need to know we didn’t understand a single syllable.” Jongin explains and takes sight of a big shop full of mangas at the other side of the street and he runs for his life until his feet reach the place. Sehun and Zitao follow the boy, they’re not huge fans of those japanese comics but they’re excited to be surrounded by all that paper.
“Irasshaimase! (Welcome!)” the boys just bow because they have no idea what the looking like a doll woman is saying. “Watashi wa anata o tasukeru koto ga dekiru? Nani o sagashi terundesu ka?(Can I help you? What are you looking for?)”
“Mangas?” Jongin motions from him to Zitao to Sehun and attempts to say something in Japanese, hoping the woman can understand him.
He catches the words ‘kawaii’, ‘BL’ and ‘anata ga sore wo suki ni naru deshou(you’ll like it)’ and follows her to wherever she’s going.
She happily hands him one pink manga that reads ‘世界一初恋(The World's Greatest First Love)’ and ‘純情ロマンチカ(Pure-Hearted Romantica)’ and obviously Jongin doesn’t understand a single symbol, and she gestures to the whole section.
At the end they come back earlier to the dorms with an armful of pink colored mangas that they didn’t even bother to check what it was.
The woman looked pretty satisfied while saying how ‘uke’ and ‘seme’ the three of them looked and Jongin didn’t know what she was talking about.
Differently from the other boys that went to seek for food, or otaku stuff like Jongin, and Zitao and Sehun who were dragged into the adventure, Baekhyun, Jongdae and Chanyeol waited until everybody disappeared from the dorms entrance, so they could go inside and sleep, then pretend they arrived earlier than everybody.
“What we’ll say when they get back and find us here?” Jongdae asks worried, not getting any reply he opens a laptop that was lying on the table and tries to make a quick search.
His obnoxious laugh is heard after a few minutes of web surfing and Chanyeol comes back to the living room to see if something happened.
“Did they arrive?” he asks and Jongdae looks up, trying to calm his laughter.
“No, but ‘re-mon no ire-mon’ it means ‘a container for a lemon’ you know, iremon for container and relom for lemon because the ‘L’ is pronounced as ‘R’. And also ‘arumi kan no ue ni aru mikan’ meaning ‘A tangerine on an aluminum can’ because ‘arumi’ for ‘aluminum’ and ‘kan’ for ‘can’ and ‘mikan’ means tangerine and-” he bursts out laughing once again with all the stupid oyaji gags he found around and Chanyeol realizes he should’ve stayed on his bed.
“We’re here!” the door slams opened and Sehun enters, followed by Zitao and Jongin, all the three of them carrying bags full of something Jongdae assumes are mangas and he sprints from his seat to take a look.
He’s a fan just like Jongin.
“Oh no you didn’t! Jongin!” Jongdae puts down the comics he had in hands and shivers. “You just did not buy the whole collection of Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi and Junjou Romantica!”
“Sekai-ichi I don’t know what and this Romantica thing, what are those?” the boy asks and opens the comics. “I actually didn’t check and the woman said they were good. I think she said, because we didn’t understand a single word.”
“Are you actually into yaoi my friend?” Jongdae questions, his brows disappearing on his bangs as he gives Jongin a nervous glance.
Sehun and Zitao drop the bags and start rolling on the floor.
The doors open once again and Luhan, Minseok and Yixing enter the room.
“Hey guys, you’re back already.” Luhan puts some bags on the table and takes a glance at the boys laughing and Jongin’s face that screams horror. “What happened?”
“Jongin bought boys love manga.” Chanyeol snickers and slaps Jongin’s arm, surprisingly the boy was flipping through the first volume.. “What do you have in that bag?”
“Oh, you won’t believe, we went to see a music store and they were on sale and I ended up buying a lot of jpop cds to learn how to pronounce Japanese while singing.” he takes out a handful of cds and shows them to everybody. “I got three Arashi’s like Beautiful World, Popcorn and Love, and the salesman also said that this group called AKB48 is pretty popular and I got four of their albums and a dvd, I’m going to the room to start studying them, bye.”
“Yah!” Jongin shouts and throws the manga to the wall. “I’m not reading that ever again.” he runs to the bathroom and slams the door closed.
Sehun crouches down and takes the comics on his hands, he flips the pages and laughs some more, oops, Jongin may be traumatized by now.
“We’re home!” Joonmyeon screams and slumps on the couch, Kyungsoo and Yifan groan when they finally take a sit.
“Finally, I thought you guys got lost.” Baekhyun appears from the bedroom, he slept a lot already and he’s up to see what the boys were doing while he was off.
“If Yifan here didn't have started screaming in the middle of the streets because he thought he saw Sadako somewhere, we would’ve arrived way earlier.” Kyungsoo taps Yifan’s head and gets up. “I’m going to shower, goodnight.”
“Wait I think I’m going to shower too.” Yifan runs to the bathroom first and Kyungsoo sighs, now he has to share the bathroom, great.
Every member regrets having rejected the lessons by now.
By the time their manager comes to the dorms to check on the boys, they’re already sleeping, so he decides to leave it like this.
At the shared room with Yifan, Kyungsoo and Sehun some noises and chatting are heard.
“Do you think he’s doing it on purpose?” Sehun whispers to Kyungsoo, their bed are side by side and Yifan is snoring and mumbling at the same time.
“Stay away! Wǒ bìng bùxiǎng sǐ! (I don’t want to die!) Ani ani! (No no!)” Yifan fights with his blankets and the boys decide that sleeping on the living room would be a better idea.
Before leaving the room Sehun pokes Yifan, who jolts awake with a horror movie like scream.
“Manager hyung, can’t we just do like Infinite did when they debuted in Japan? They had a translator, I don’t think we can learn the language in less than a month.” Baekhyun asks, face serious and the rest of the members agree, Japanese is making their brains twist.
“As long as you study the lyrics for the songs and also the language for your next release here, I’ll see what I can do.” their manager leave the room and calls someone in.
“It’s good to see you guys again, now will you pay real attention to the lessons?” the same man from before enter the room, Ishikawa as they remember, with an armful of papers. “It’s for real this time, and I’m hoping to make you guys even better than Tohoshinki.”
The boys nod. Running away is not the solution after all.
‘EXO successfully debuts in Japan, next month activities and releases are already planned. Stay tuned!’
started: 14/02/07
finished: 14/02/08