VERSUS MISSION 001 : hello82 recording solo
COUNT : 512 words
despite his debut, wookjin felt like he was slowly becoming more of a language student than an idol. first the hangul quiz, now hello82 was having him learn japanese, mandarin, and english. now, realistically, he knew mandarin and japanese were a wash. he liked anime, but hadn’t learned a single bit of japanese in his years of watching--and mandarin was completely foreign to him. but english--he had to do well at that. he was american of course! he could hear his parents nagging him, “we fly 6,000 miles to give YOU a good life and you can’t eve learn the language why i ought to-” and on and on.
it wasn’t that he didn’t understand english. he spent most of his life in american schools, speaking, reading, and writing in english all day, everyday. but then he moved to korea, trained in a korean company, with koreans glore. when he first arrived in seoul, he struggled to adjust to all korean all the time. but he’d managed it, worked on adopting the language into his mind (while also learning the ends and outs of singing and dancing), to where now he was fluent.
in the mean time using english had fallen to the way side. there was too much to do, too much to study--wookjin had to prioritize. so, english became less and less of a priority, until the only people he spoke english to regularly were a couple of his foreigner friends. even that was rare. so, he’d fallen out of practice.
but, he was determined to show off. wookjin hope to become a variety king in the future, so he knew performing well just as his public career was beginning was important. so, in preparation of their hello82 filming, he downloaded duolingo and got to work. he looked at mandarin and japanese...but quickly was disgruntled and unmotivated as he failed over and over again. but with the english tests he knew enough to get by fairly well. for about a week, all through their promotion schedules, every free moment the group had a familiar ding and cheer could be heard from wookjin.
while at the hello82 recording and waiting for everything to be set up and ready, he continued his duolingo grind. while the language learning was important--or whatever--wookjin had become quickly addicted to the game of it all. checking his status on leaderboards constantly, he was determined to be number one. plus, anytime anyone asked him about it, he could argue it was “for work.”
he was so into it however, he (accidentally) ignored their manager calling the boys to take their marks as the filming was about to begin. “i’m coming...” he just needed to get another 10 points and he’d jump 5 places in the national ranking if he could just... “WOOJIN!” he was alerted to attention by his manager, looking angry in the face at him. “sorry,” he apologized, standing straight at attention and bowing lowly. he discarded his phone and hurried over to where they were supposed to be, his face red out of embarrassment.
