dead; food is the language of love
dead krisyeol fic that i started writing back when i first joined the fandom! it's never gonna be finished, unfortunately, but maybe i'll revisit the idea another day.
a thousand touches of the heart
g; 2390 words; kris/chanyeol
canon!fic. chanyeol tries to learn kris' native tongue through food items.
written for sushikabob89 who friggin' gave me the headcanon of kris teaching chanyeol cantonese starting with dimsum, and i had the desire to make it into a love story. it didn't quite pan out.
It starts in Hong Kong, right before the Dome Festival performance.
-
They go to a random caan teng the first day because they arrive in Hong Kong just a little after the optimal time for yum cha. Kris grumbles the most out of all of them, but gamely weaves their group of four--Chanyeol, Baekhyun, Yixing, and Zitao because the rest of them declined braving through the muggy weather and even greater crowds of people just for food they could get in the comfort of their hotel rooms--down the busy streets, pulling his black beanie down as far as he can without obscuring his vision and sidestepping the oblivious streetwalkers. Baekhyun and Chanyeol are the obvious lollygaggers of the bunch, periodically stopping their tracks (regardless of the people walking behind them) and staring up at the huge signs and colorful storefronts.
Yixing doesn’t particularly care what they eat; Zitao just wants to sit inside an air-conditioned building; and Baekhyun wants to eat the Hong Kong food that locals eat. (Chanyeol just wants a bubbling bowl of samgyetang, but he bites back his complaints as Yifan leads them into the cold air of a small restaurant and parks them in a corner table with the wall to their backs.)
-
“Hyung, what’s this?” Chanyeol asks eagerly, pointing at the menu picture with the string of hanja that he never really took the time in school to study. Kris indulgently leans over, putting down his own menu, and looks down at where his finger points.
“Ngau lam fun,” he says matter-of-factly. Chanyeol mouths the words to himself with a furrowed brow. “It’s beef brisket noodles.”
“Nnnao wan fan?” Chanyeol repeats back, smile on his face, and Kris bites back the grin that threatens to spread across his own at his group member’s tones.
“Ngau lam fun,” he says again, slower this time, giving pause to each word so that Chanyeol can hear the rising and falling tones.
"Nnnau laam fun?" Chanyeol tries again, visibly lifting his head while trying to hit the rising tone of 'fun'. Kris laughs this time, a short puff, and ruffles his snapback-covered head.
"Close enough," he allows and moves away when the waitress comes over to write down their order.
-
When Kris greets the fans with a burst of Cantonese and the fans return it with the loudest cheers yet, Chanyeol’s chest feels like it’s about to explode with both pride and not the smallest bit of envy. Here on this particular stage, no one could touch their duizhang--he ruled the audience’s attention with his fast-talking speech, and the flurry of screaming responses from the girls before them only added to his presence.
He and Baekhyun imitate Kris’ words a little at the end of their second talk, obviously exaggerating their accents because at least it’ll be funnier that way than not having their fans understand what they’re saying in earnest. Kris laughs a little, hiding his gummy smile behind a hand, and cuts off the rest of his speech so that they can have their fun. Chanyeol ribs him a little, giving him a conspiratorial wink before nodding at Baekhyun, egging the other boy further with their little game.
-
“Ah, annyeonghaseyo, ye, uh--” Kris clears his throat and slides a glance at the string of boys surrounding him around the twin beds of his and Tao’s shared hotel room. He shakes his head a little, like he’s trying to shake off the Korean that comes first to his lips nowadays, and clears his throat again so that his unused Cantonese can slip through once more. “Ahm, hai, lei ho a, ngo hai hai fong 598 blahblhlahlahldhfkajsdfkla”
Jongdae, Sehun, and Chanyeol titter to each other, all seated on Kris’s bed with a pillow being crushed down in their arms in each lap, while Joonmyeon sits next to Kris, looking intently at him and clutching the room service menu like a lifeline. Tao lounges from the end side of his bed, clicking lazily through the Hong Kongese channels of their hotel television, with Baekhyun lying face-up against his shoulder, leisurely kkt-ing someone on his phone, and Jongin pressed on top of Baekhyun’s stomach, who nudges Tao whenever he passes a channel too quickly. Minseok and Kyungsoo sit cross-legged near the foot of the bed on the ground, quietly playing through a game of poker, also paying no attention to the peanut gallery on the bed. Luhan and Yixing are conveniently holed up in the gym section of the hotel, having cited something about ping pong and a bet.
Kris is put on hold for a moment, and he shoulders the landline receiver, pensively frowning at the menu in Suho’s hands. Sehun giggles, caught in a shoving match between his two hyungs, and leans over to pat at Kris’s back.
“Hyung, hyung, say that word again,” he wheedles, “the mmmmm gul baht fang one.” Kris rolls his eyes and checks to make sure he’s still on hold before complying.
“It’s nnm gau baat ho fong,” he says quietly, fingers tapping away at the receiver.
Sehun grins and repeats with glee, “Mmmm gal baa haw fang,” looking eagerly at Joonmyeon, Jongdae and Chanyeol for their reactions, not caring that his tones don’t match at all to the enunciated words Kris offered. Kris quietly snorts, but Sehun ignores it, focusing on the three other hyungs. Joonmyeon claps appreciatively, smiling encouragingly, but Chanyeol scoffs and slings an arm around Sehun’s neck, dragging him down to his pillowed lap.
“That doesn’t sound at all like what Kris hyung said,” he says with a derisive laugh, reaching over and nudging at Jongdae for agreement. “Hyung, say it again!”
Kris scrunches his nose at him, but repeats the phrase quickly again. Chanyeol listens carefully with his mouth open and tongue poking out and mutters to himself once before straightening up, his picture-ready confident smile plastered across his face.
“Mmm gau baat ho fong!”
The hotel concierge returns to the phone just as Kris breaks out into a painful wheeze of laughter, Chanyeol’s deep voice loudly protesting the sudden braying.
-
During their filming at Tsim Sha Tsui, Chanyeol watches Kris vigilantly--when he’s not distracted by the multiple bubble tea places and the numerous hawker stands on the streets and the milling crowds of fangirls boxing them in at each stop they take. It’s a little strange seeing the normally stern-faced boy in this setting; in China, their four native members shine in their natural language, but in Hong Kong, it’s like an additional layer of Wu Yifan has been peeled away. His smiles stretch a little wider, his eyes brighter, and his tongue curls around the vowels and consonants that pitch out clunky and clumsily from Chanyeol’s own mouth like meltwater.
Kris literally shines in the summer-night smog, breathing in the brittle, smoke-flavored air as easily as the native Hong Kong people, and standing up a little taller because of it.
They play with a couple of helicopter toys at a toy shop while their fangirls mutter to themselves with their phones held up high to take proof of their beloved idols right before their eyes. Chanyeol coaches Kris in haggling, smile twitching up more and more, as Kris flits back and forth from his tenser Korean nouns to his fluid and easy-going Cantonese, filing away the sounds he makes under a folder in his mind for later parsing.
Jongdae butts in with a loud, “We have no money!” in desperate English and Chanyeol responds with a loud laugh and repeats the statement imploringly as Kris finishes the last minute bartering with the store owner, meticulously counting out the bills for their new purchases. The owner thanks them profusely, and their group bows back in response, muttering the go-to Mandarin phrasal thanks, hyper-aware of the cameras pushed into their faces.
Kris mutters an extra word of thanks in Cantonese, which Chanyeol catches, and he models the curvature of his mouth after Kris’, repeating his “Do jie sai,” as accurately as possible. Kris raises his brows in mild surprise at Chanyeol’s initiative, but smiles faintly in lieu of any words and gathers the rest of the members to line up in front of the camera.
Chanyeol follows, a stone of smug satisfaction sitting warmly at the base of his stomach.
-
“Lang zai, nei soeng sik me ah? Ngo yau ha gao, cha siu bao, ma lai gou; nei yieu me ah?” asks a cart lady with a steaming steel trolley, topped high with columns and columns of bamboo steamers, stopping just in front of Jongdae’s chair. She looks expectantly at him, hand on her aproned hips, and Chanyeol would laugh openly at Jongdae’s widening eyes and snaking panic if not for the fact his darting eyes had latch onto his own and the lady followed accordingly.
“Nei ne, lang zai? Nei yieu mm yieu fong zhao ah? Seen jook geung? Pai gwut?”
Possibly a whimper escapes his lips. Chanyeol’s not really sure; everything’s slowly fizzing into white noise in his head as he frantically searches for any--any--Mandarin at all that’ll tell this woman he understands nothing of what she’s spewing at him. His face is in a default grin that’s twitching into something more crazed by the second if Jongdae’s fucking snickers are anything to go by, and he desperately wants to punch him in the face right now, but all that he says is, “A-ah, ah, bu hui...ah, zhong wen?”
A large hand falls over his fidgeting hands under the table and squeezes, and Kris clears his throat just once and smiles winningly at the cart lady, effectively drawing her attention away. “Ho dui mm zhu, lang lui, keui de mm sik guangdong wa. (Can we have two steamers of fong zhao, two of pai gwut, three cha siu baos, and five ha gaos? Do you have anything special in your cart that you would recommend for us today?)”
The ahjumma blushes and titters a little, giving Kris a light swipe at the shoulder before replying, “(Of course, you can, you flatterer. My, you boys are so handsome),” while taking off stacks of steamers and setting them around the table. “(We have some really good black bean clams today on the other cart; do you want me to bring it over or do you want to call the cart over yourselves?)”
Kris smiles, wide and gummy, to Chanyeol’s uncomprehending surprise, and his hand squeezes over Chanyeol’s slack fingers once more before moving away, leaving them unpleasantly cold and weightless.
He feels a kick to his shin, a sharp bloom of pain bursting from his leg, and he glares at the perpetrator, a smug-looking Baekhyun who gives him an innocent smile and a quick flicker of the eyes towards Kris’ seated figure before moving back to Chanyeol with a decidedly evil glitter.
Baekhyun can shove it. He kicks back, two times as hard, and throws back a nasty closed-mouth smile, daring him to try again. Baekhyun lifts his chin up and flashes his eyes pointedly; they’ll be discussing this soon in private, Chanyeol knows. But for now, he ignores the warning, and turns his body back to Kris, who’s helping take the steamers being passed over from the cart by the ahjumma.
“What’s this?” he asks curiously, pointing at steamer full of translucent-skinned dumplings. Kris takes a perfunctory look as he passes over two steamers of fiery red chicken feet to Tao’s grabby hands and a steel steamer of soft white bread with red meat filling bursting from the center pleats down to a hungry-looking Luhan.
“Ha gao,” he says simply, and finishes passing out the rest of the steamers. Chanyeol chews on his lip a little before testing out the words.
“Ha gao?” he tries, looking at Kris for his input. Kris gives him a small smile, picking up his chopsticks and plucking one of the mentioned dumplings out of the steamer in front of them.
“Close! The ‘gao’ isn’t a rising tone though,” he offers, and places the dumpling down in Chanyeol’s bowl. “Here’s your reward for a close enough pronunciation though.”
Chanyeol quirks up a small smile of his own, dimpling, but still not fully pleased. He eats it anyway, and points out with his chopsticks at the steamer with the chicken feet, still chewing. “What’s this then?” he asks, words clunky with food in his mouth.
“Fong zhao; literally, phoenix claws. They’re good,” Kris says, his own mouth full of chewed up bread. “Easier to eat with your hands, if you wanna try them.”
The look he gives Kris is sarcastic and disbelieving. “I’ve eaten chicken feet before, hyung, you don’t need to explain everything to me.” He’s vaguely aware that he sounds like a petulant five-year-old and that Jongdae and Baekhyun are currently whispering very loudly about him right across the table, but he’s got his pride on the line right now.
Kris raises his hand in easy surrender, expression amused. He leans over Chanyeol’s plate to grab for the steamer of spareribs in black bean sauce, arm brushing against Chanyeol’s own stationary one on the table, and leans back with an easy grin. “Alright, alright. I’ll leave you to your eating then.”
Chanyeol makes a face and grabs for a claw sulkily. After a few minutes of gnawing on it and spitting out the tiny bones and knuckles, he nudges Kris with an elbow. “What’s this again?” he asks casually, eyes looking at the bones instead of at Kris’ indulgent expression.
Kris chuckles and raises his hand to call over another cart ahjumma. “Fong zhao,” he enunciates. “With an ‘f’ sound, okay?” He bares his upper row of teeth and lightly presses down on his lower lip, sounding out a long ‘f’.
“Pong zhao--ppong zhao--damnit, pong zhao. Pfong zhao, fong zhao, fong zhao!” Chanyeol blows out his breath, ruffling his short-cut bangs slightly, but triumphantly grinning when he softens the instinctive ‘p’ enough to pass for an ‘f’. “Fong zhao!”
“Not bad!” Kris rewards him with a scoop of clams and a few choice spareribs, but it’s the gummy smile, proud and wide, on his face that Chanyeol basks in.
as you can see, i also needed help with the actual cantonese bc i am a fail. whatever.
a thousand touches of the heart
g; 2390 words; kris/chanyeol
canon!fic. chanyeol tries to learn kris' native tongue through food items.
written for sushikabob89 who friggin' gave me the headcanon of kris teaching chanyeol cantonese starting with dimsum, and i had the desire to make it into a love story. it didn't quite pan out.
It starts in Hong Kong, right before the Dome Festival performance.
-
They go to a random caan teng the first day because they arrive in Hong Kong just a little after the optimal time for yum cha. Kris grumbles the most out of all of them, but gamely weaves their group of four--Chanyeol, Baekhyun, Yixing, and Zitao because the rest of them declined braving through the muggy weather and even greater crowds of people just for food they could get in the comfort of their hotel rooms--down the busy streets, pulling his black beanie down as far as he can without obscuring his vision and sidestepping the oblivious streetwalkers. Baekhyun and Chanyeol are the obvious lollygaggers of the bunch, periodically stopping their tracks (regardless of the people walking behind them) and staring up at the huge signs and colorful storefronts.
Yixing doesn’t particularly care what they eat; Zitao just wants to sit inside an air-conditioned building; and Baekhyun wants to eat the Hong Kong food that locals eat. (Chanyeol just wants a bubbling bowl of samgyetang, but he bites back his complaints as Yifan leads them into the cold air of a small restaurant and parks them in a corner table with the wall to their backs.)
-
“Hyung, what’s this?” Chanyeol asks eagerly, pointing at the menu picture with the string of hanja that he never really took the time in school to study. Kris indulgently leans over, putting down his own menu, and looks down at where his finger points.
“Ngau lam fun,” he says matter-of-factly. Chanyeol mouths the words to himself with a furrowed brow. “It’s beef brisket noodles.”
“Nnnao wan fan?” Chanyeol repeats back, smile on his face, and Kris bites back the grin that threatens to spread across his own at his group member’s tones.
“Ngau lam fun,” he says again, slower this time, giving pause to each word so that Chanyeol can hear the rising and falling tones.
"Nnnau laam fun?" Chanyeol tries again, visibly lifting his head while trying to hit the rising tone of 'fun'. Kris laughs this time, a short puff, and ruffles his snapback-covered head.
"Close enough," he allows and moves away when the waitress comes over to write down their order.
-
When Kris greets the fans with a burst of Cantonese and the fans return it with the loudest cheers yet, Chanyeol’s chest feels like it’s about to explode with both pride and not the smallest bit of envy. Here on this particular stage, no one could touch their duizhang--he ruled the audience’s attention with his fast-talking speech, and the flurry of screaming responses from the girls before them only added to his presence.
He and Baekhyun imitate Kris’ words a little at the end of their second talk, obviously exaggerating their accents because at least it’ll be funnier that way than not having their fans understand what they’re saying in earnest. Kris laughs a little, hiding his gummy smile behind a hand, and cuts off the rest of his speech so that they can have their fun. Chanyeol ribs him a little, giving him a conspiratorial wink before nodding at Baekhyun, egging the other boy further with their little game.
-
“Ah, annyeonghaseyo, ye, uh--” Kris clears his throat and slides a glance at the string of boys surrounding him around the twin beds of his and Tao’s shared hotel room. He shakes his head a little, like he’s trying to shake off the Korean that comes first to his lips nowadays, and clears his throat again so that his unused Cantonese can slip through once more. “Ahm, hai, lei ho a, ngo hai hai fong 598 blahblhlahlahldhfkajsdfkla”
Jongdae, Sehun, and Chanyeol titter to each other, all seated on Kris’s bed with a pillow being crushed down in their arms in each lap, while Joonmyeon sits next to Kris, looking intently at him and clutching the room service menu like a lifeline. Tao lounges from the end side of his bed, clicking lazily through the Hong Kongese channels of their hotel television, with Baekhyun lying face-up against his shoulder, leisurely kkt-ing someone on his phone, and Jongin pressed on top of Baekhyun’s stomach, who nudges Tao whenever he passes a channel too quickly. Minseok and Kyungsoo sit cross-legged near the foot of the bed on the ground, quietly playing through a game of poker, also paying no attention to the peanut gallery on the bed. Luhan and Yixing are conveniently holed up in the gym section of the hotel, having cited something about ping pong and a bet.
Kris is put on hold for a moment, and he shoulders the landline receiver, pensively frowning at the menu in Suho’s hands. Sehun giggles, caught in a shoving match between his two hyungs, and leans over to pat at Kris’s back.
“Hyung, hyung, say that word again,” he wheedles, “the mmmmm gul baht fang one.” Kris rolls his eyes and checks to make sure he’s still on hold before complying.
“It’s nnm gau baat ho fong,” he says quietly, fingers tapping away at the receiver.
Sehun grins and repeats with glee, “Mmmm gal baa haw fang,” looking eagerly at Joonmyeon, Jongdae and Chanyeol for their reactions, not caring that his tones don’t match at all to the enunciated words Kris offered. Kris quietly snorts, but Sehun ignores it, focusing on the three other hyungs. Joonmyeon claps appreciatively, smiling encouragingly, but Chanyeol scoffs and slings an arm around Sehun’s neck, dragging him down to his pillowed lap.
“That doesn’t sound at all like what Kris hyung said,” he says with a derisive laugh, reaching over and nudging at Jongdae for agreement. “Hyung, say it again!”
Kris scrunches his nose at him, but repeats the phrase quickly again. Chanyeol listens carefully with his mouth open and tongue poking out and mutters to himself once before straightening up, his picture-ready confident smile plastered across his face.
“Mmm gau baat ho fong!”
The hotel concierge returns to the phone just as Kris breaks out into a painful wheeze of laughter, Chanyeol’s deep voice loudly protesting the sudden braying.
-
During their filming at Tsim Sha Tsui, Chanyeol watches Kris vigilantly--when he’s not distracted by the multiple bubble tea places and the numerous hawker stands on the streets and the milling crowds of fangirls boxing them in at each stop they take. It’s a little strange seeing the normally stern-faced boy in this setting; in China, their four native members shine in their natural language, but in Hong Kong, it’s like an additional layer of Wu Yifan has been peeled away. His smiles stretch a little wider, his eyes brighter, and his tongue curls around the vowels and consonants that pitch out clunky and clumsily from Chanyeol’s own mouth like meltwater.
Kris literally shines in the summer-night smog, breathing in the brittle, smoke-flavored air as easily as the native Hong Kong people, and standing up a little taller because of it.
They play with a couple of helicopter toys at a toy shop while their fangirls mutter to themselves with their phones held up high to take proof of their beloved idols right before their eyes. Chanyeol coaches Kris in haggling, smile twitching up more and more, as Kris flits back and forth from his tenser Korean nouns to his fluid and easy-going Cantonese, filing away the sounds he makes under a folder in his mind for later parsing.
Jongdae butts in with a loud, “We have no money!” in desperate English and Chanyeol responds with a loud laugh and repeats the statement imploringly as Kris finishes the last minute bartering with the store owner, meticulously counting out the bills for their new purchases. The owner thanks them profusely, and their group bows back in response, muttering the go-to Mandarin phrasal thanks, hyper-aware of the cameras pushed into their faces.
Kris mutters an extra word of thanks in Cantonese, which Chanyeol catches, and he models the curvature of his mouth after Kris’, repeating his “Do jie sai,” as accurately as possible. Kris raises his brows in mild surprise at Chanyeol’s initiative, but smiles faintly in lieu of any words and gathers the rest of the members to line up in front of the camera.
Chanyeol follows, a stone of smug satisfaction sitting warmly at the base of his stomach.
-
“Lang zai, nei soeng sik me ah? Ngo yau ha gao, cha siu bao, ma lai gou; nei yieu me ah?” asks a cart lady with a steaming steel trolley, topped high with columns and columns of bamboo steamers, stopping just in front of Jongdae’s chair. She looks expectantly at him, hand on her aproned hips, and Chanyeol would laugh openly at Jongdae’s widening eyes and snaking panic if not for the fact his darting eyes had latch onto his own and the lady followed accordingly.
“Nei ne, lang zai? Nei yieu mm yieu fong zhao ah? Seen jook geung? Pai gwut?”
Possibly a whimper escapes his lips. Chanyeol’s not really sure; everything’s slowly fizzing into white noise in his head as he frantically searches for any--any--Mandarin at all that’ll tell this woman he understands nothing of what she’s spewing at him. His face is in a default grin that’s twitching into something more crazed by the second if Jongdae’s fucking snickers are anything to go by, and he desperately wants to punch him in the face right now, but all that he says is, “A-ah, ah, bu hui...ah, zhong wen?”
A large hand falls over his fidgeting hands under the table and squeezes, and Kris clears his throat just once and smiles winningly at the cart lady, effectively drawing her attention away. “Ho dui mm zhu, lang lui, keui de mm sik guangdong wa. (Can we have two steamers of fong zhao, two of pai gwut, three cha siu baos, and five ha gaos? Do you have anything special in your cart that you would recommend for us today?)”
The ahjumma blushes and titters a little, giving Kris a light swipe at the shoulder before replying, “(Of course, you can, you flatterer. My, you boys are so handsome),” while taking off stacks of steamers and setting them around the table. “(We have some really good black bean clams today on the other cart; do you want me to bring it over or do you want to call the cart over yourselves?)”
Kris smiles, wide and gummy, to Chanyeol’s uncomprehending surprise, and his hand squeezes over Chanyeol’s slack fingers once more before moving away, leaving them unpleasantly cold and weightless.
He feels a kick to his shin, a sharp bloom of pain bursting from his leg, and he glares at the perpetrator, a smug-looking Baekhyun who gives him an innocent smile and a quick flicker of the eyes towards Kris’ seated figure before moving back to Chanyeol with a decidedly evil glitter.
Baekhyun can shove it. He kicks back, two times as hard, and throws back a nasty closed-mouth smile, daring him to try again. Baekhyun lifts his chin up and flashes his eyes pointedly; they’ll be discussing this soon in private, Chanyeol knows. But for now, he ignores the warning, and turns his body back to Kris, who’s helping take the steamers being passed over from the cart by the ahjumma.
“What’s this?” he asks curiously, pointing at steamer full of translucent-skinned dumplings. Kris takes a perfunctory look as he passes over two steamers of fiery red chicken feet to Tao’s grabby hands and a steel steamer of soft white bread with red meat filling bursting from the center pleats down to a hungry-looking Luhan.
“Ha gao,” he says simply, and finishes passing out the rest of the steamers. Chanyeol chews on his lip a little before testing out the words.
“Ha gao?” he tries, looking at Kris for his input. Kris gives him a small smile, picking up his chopsticks and plucking one of the mentioned dumplings out of the steamer in front of them.
“Close! The ‘gao’ isn’t a rising tone though,” he offers, and places the dumpling down in Chanyeol’s bowl. “Here’s your reward for a close enough pronunciation though.”
Chanyeol quirks up a small smile of his own, dimpling, but still not fully pleased. He eats it anyway, and points out with his chopsticks at the steamer with the chicken feet, still chewing. “What’s this then?” he asks, words clunky with food in his mouth.
“Fong zhao; literally, phoenix claws. They’re good,” Kris says, his own mouth full of chewed up bread. “Easier to eat with your hands, if you wanna try them.”
The look he gives Kris is sarcastic and disbelieving. “I’ve eaten chicken feet before, hyung, you don’t need to explain everything to me.” He’s vaguely aware that he sounds like a petulant five-year-old and that Jongdae and Baekhyun are currently whispering very loudly about him right across the table, but he’s got his pride on the line right now.
Kris raises his hand in easy surrender, expression amused. He leans over Chanyeol’s plate to grab for the steamer of spareribs in black bean sauce, arm brushing against Chanyeol’s own stationary one on the table, and leans back with an easy grin. “Alright, alright. I’ll leave you to your eating then.”
Chanyeol makes a face and grabs for a claw sulkily. After a few minutes of gnawing on it and spitting out the tiny bones and knuckles, he nudges Kris with an elbow. “What’s this again?” he asks casually, eyes looking at the bones instead of at Kris’ indulgent expression.
Kris chuckles and raises his hand to call over another cart ahjumma. “Fong zhao,” he enunciates. “With an ‘f’ sound, okay?” He bares his upper row of teeth and lightly presses down on his lower lip, sounding out a long ‘f’.
“Pong zhao--ppong zhao--damnit, pong zhao. Pfong zhao, fong zhao, fong zhao!” Chanyeol blows out his breath, ruffling his short-cut bangs slightly, but triumphantly grinning when he softens the instinctive ‘p’ enough to pass for an ‘f’. “Fong zhao!”
“Not bad!” Kris rewards him with a scoop of clams and a few choice spareribs, but it’s the gummy smile, proud and wide, on his face that Chanyeol basks in.
as you can see, i also needed help with the actual cantonese bc i am a fail. whatever.