[crow]

Continuation of this

After a bit of back and forth between the man, another man at a table to his side, and the iPad itself, they finally managed to find The Sound of Music for him. It was probably just as well. As impressive as it might have been for Yo-han to sing in German, he was pretty sure the people here would feel a bit odd about hearing the national anthem of a different country. A couple of the other kids had sung the Korean one, stumped for any other song choice ideas, but Yo-han didn't know that one by heart.

"Whenever you're ready," said the woman.

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Yo-han nodded, and straightened his posture as the music started playing. He took a breath, then began to sing.

His performance wasn't remarkable, but he could carry a tune, and he had good foundations. He didn't stretch himself beyond his means, and his voice stayed clear throughout. Near the end, he tried a few little tricks and embellishments, but they were all things he knew well. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see one of the judges--- a vocal coach, maybe?--- nodding along to his performance.

[crow]

When he was younger, his parents had enrolled him in all sorts of lessons to see what he was interested in. He hadn't kept up with any of them, in the end, but he'd liked singing and music well enough to pursue it a little in his spare time still. Who could have known that it would come up again in this kind of circumstance?

As the song ended, the judges scribbled a few more notes. "Any acting or modeling training?" said one man, but it was clear from his disinterested tone that he wasn't expecting much.

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"Not much," said Yo-han. "I did some drama classes when I was young, but that's it." The man nodded, as if this was more or less what he had expected.

"Alright, you're done. Next."

Yo-han walked back to the ring of boys around the edge of the room. Movement caught his eye, and he looked up to see Ha-jun waving him over. Thinking that a semi-familiar face was as good as anything, Yo-han wandered over to him. When he got close, Ha-jun thumped him in the back.

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"You're foreign?" he said, a note of incredulity in his voice.

"I'm Korean," said Yo-han. "I was just born abroad. Weren't you listening?" It was a rhetorical question though. He wouldn't have asked Yo-han that question in the first place if he hadn't been listening.

Ha-jun rolled his eyes. "We're Korean," he said, motioning around them to the other boys, and then to himself. "All the English we know is stuff like, [How are you? I'm fine, and you?] You were up there saying all kinds of crazy shit! What was that second one? You sounded like you were gargling rocks."

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"[That's not a very nice thing to say about someone else's language,]" said Yo-han, in German. Ha-jun made a face, and Yo-han laughed softly.

"Hey," said Ha-jun abruptly, turning to face him. "You said you were thirteen, right? I'm fourteen. Call me 'hyung'."

"Didn't you know? They don't have that kind of thing in the States," said Yo-han.

"See? What'd I say? You're not Korean at all," said Ha-jun. Yo-han laughed again. "You wanna get something to eat after this?"

"That depends. Are you buying, hyung?" said Yo-han.

"Oh, so now I'm hyung? Have some shame, you foreigner," said Ha-jun.

[crow]

The auditions wound down, and one of the staff told them that they'd be contacted if they passed. It was as much of a dismissal as they were going to get. Ha-jun sighed as they walked out of the building together. "Guess they didn't see anyone they absolutely had to have," he said.

"You mean the callbacks?" said Yo-han.

Ha-jun nodded. "Some of us might get called back, but if they see anyone they want to lock in right away..." He shrugged. "I've been to a couple of other auditions, and that happened to someone at one of them."

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"What was his talent?" Yo-han couldn't help but be curious. Not everyone had done well in the audition they'd just had, but he thought there had been a few that were pretty good. Evidently, however, they weren't anything special by the company's standards, if Ha-jun's words had any truth to them.

Ha-jun laughed, though more sharply than he had done before. "His talent, huh?" said Ha-jun. "That would be his face."

"Ah," said Yo-han. After a moment's thought, he frowned, brows furrowing slightly. "But our faces will change after we get older. How do they know whether he'll still look the way they want?"

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"Those people can tell," said Ha-jun. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and kicked a pebble as they walked. "Something about your bone structure. They screen your parents too, and if there's little things they want fixed, that's what plastic surgery is for."

"Hmm," said Yo-han. He couldn't think of anything else to say. There was clearly a great deal more to the industry than he had ever given it credit for. But then, he hadn't really paid any attention to the whole idol music industry scene until just now.

[crow]

Asian music wasn't even on most people's radars in the countries he had grown up in, and by this point he had already more or less figured out what he liked to listen to anyway. He'd found some nice songs from the Korean indie scene, but...

Ha-jun's voice brought him out of his thoughts. "Well, here we are," Ha-jun said, stopping in front of a shop. "Lotteria. Since it's my treat and all." Glancing up, Yo-han saw the posters in the window--- a burger joint. There was an advertisement for a shrimp burger. Yo-han couldn't help but shoot Ha-jun a dubious look.

"Hey," said Ha-jun, a little defensively. "Don't knock it til you try it, American Boy."

[Wild Pet Found]

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Yo-han shrugged, smiling. "Since you're buying," he said. Ha-jun shot him a smile that was almost more of a grimace in reply, but he rolled his eyes almost immediately after, belying the joke. Yo-han laughed easily, and the two of them headed in.

Hey, Yo-han was a worldly guy--- at least, he thought of himself that way, anyway. How many countries did you have to live in to be worldly anyway? He'd been to enough, at least, to know that anything was worth trying once.

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... The shrimp burger was a bit of a bust though.

"This," said Yo-han, brandishing the offending item in his hand. He had to stop, pressing the back of his thin-fingered hand to his mouth for a moment, biting back the peal of laughter that threatened to spill out. It shouldn't have been possible for it to taste so bad that it made him laugh. but... He made a noise in the back of his throat before taking a deep breath and steadying himself again. "This is terrible."

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Ha-jun had been watching him with an air of curious expectation, his brows arched, but he burst out laughing at Yo-han's words. "That bad?" he said. "For a minute I thought you were going to tell me you were gonna eat your words."

It was Yo-han's turn to laugh now, though it was more incredulous than anything else. "Eat my words? This is shit! Shrimp burgers should be shamed on a national level! Take it off the menu!" he declared, throwing down his burger to emphasize the depth of his contempt.

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"Hey," said Ha-jun. "That's my money you're disrespecting. Even shit doesn't grow on trees, Foreigner."

"It's Yo-han, actually," Yo-han replied easily. "But you're so old, I know I can't expect you to remember." He propped up his face on one hand, elbow on the table, smiling as Ha-jun blinked at him, before snorting.

"Forget you," said Ha-jun, but there was no heat in it. Yo-han laughed again, softly, and sipped at his drink. At least pop was the same in Korea, more or less.

[crow]

Ha-jun wolfed down two burgers while Yo-han picked halfheartedly at the Shrimp Burger of Doom, but he had only been exaggerating a little when he talked about how bad it was. He only managed a couple more bites before he had to declare defeat for real. Ha-jun had grumbled enough about the money that Yo-han didn't want to ask him for something else, but it wasn't as if there was nowhere to eat closer to home.

"Say," he said. "Where do you go to school?"