pick-up sticks
kurobasu/exo crossover
i.e. the miragen is exo-j
i.e. i don't know
1516 words with no proper ending
It was just as well that the project was kept a complete and total secret, even from the most loyal, most persevering of fans, because when EXO-J debuts exactly two whole years after its Korean and Chinese counterparts, everyone in the industry is taken by surprise. That’s because on top of everything being kept under wraps, there are no sculpted, wide-eyed, perfect-looking Korean kids to be found in this group. Instead, every one of the six members is one hundred percent born-and-bred Japanese.
Clearly there was a divergence from the norm of merely importing ready-made Korean bands into the Japanese market. Daiki finds out about this the day he signs his trainee contract, seated with a dozen other boys his age in a meeting room in the company’s headquarters in Ginza. Word was going around that it was politics. Daiki wasn’t too smart, but the Korean wave that his mother kept going on about was apparently all the rage, and one of the other guys who was offered a trainee contract as well, a real slimy-looking type with glasses and a Kansai dialect, went around telling people that they were setting up an all-Japanese boyband to deal with the inevitable backlash that would occur while they entered the market. So they’d be totally Japanese, but also totally Korean, capturing the best of both worlds. Daiki didn’t think too much about that. Politics wasn’t his thing.
Four months before that Daiki was scouted on the streets by a shady-looking man wearing sunglasses and a muffler and a generic store-bought padded winter coat, like something that Uniqlo would put out on sale half a year after the winter season. If it wasn't for Satsuki he wouldn’t have paid the man any heed, but Satsuki had accepted the name card on his behalf and bugged him (“Dai-chan, they’re from a reputable Korean company! You don’t fit the Johnny’s image anyway”) until he went for one of their walk-in auditions. They told him that although his dancing could do with some polishing, his rapping wasn’t half bad, and he was a “rugged type of handsome” that fans would surely appreciate. They offered him a nose job though, just to make the tip a little more defined, and paid for all of it. Satsuki threw him a party after that and told him that he looked completely different.
Occasionally the company’s other flagship acts would stroll in and out the headquarters to prepare for their Japanese gigs and engagements. Girls’ Generation was a huge deal then, but none of them had tits worth anything, so Daiki mostly stayed out of their way when they crossed paths, the bulk of their interaction being the furious exchange of ninety-degree bows. They were quite enamoured with Ryouta though, because he was a quick learner and smooth talker (in what little Korean he knew, always awkward on purpose) and most of all, he was cute.
“Aominecchi,” he’d asked Daiki one day, almost glittering with sincerity, “do you need some tips on how to talk to girls?” and Daiki almost wanted to sock his modelesque face right there and then in the room where they were reviewing their notes on media training.
He couldn’t do that, of course. SM was a company that knew what it wanted, and from the day the six of them were chosen to form the Japanese counterpart of EXO, they had readily-defined roles from the start. Ryouta was the face of the group, even though his singing and dancing were both pretty solid, but Daiki supposed that no one else really came close in the looks department. “You want people to recognise you right off the bat,” one of their coaches had told Ryouta, who listened with rapt attention, “you want people to think of EXO-J when they see your face.” Daiki couldn’t possibly go around punching the lights out of him.
*
After three years of training in which Daiki juggled not going to school and a whole lot of falling asleep in dance studios, they debut on Music Station, all at the ripe old age of nineteen. Right before they go on stage Seijuurou gathers the group around in a circle, gets them to pile their hands on top of one another’s and leads them in their group cheer, “Let’s love”, adopted from their brother groups, but if anything, Daiki knows that none of them mean it. Seijuurou was always the favourite among the bosses - and that was why he was made leader even though he was the youngest of the six - and he didn’t want anything except for the band to excel in all areas. There wasn’t any space for love, only excellence. Seijuurou’s word was the law, even when they were trainees.
“We share the same concept with EXO-K and EXO-M, but we’re a completely different group and have our own unique style too,” Shintarou tells the interviewer before they perform their debut single, stating the obvious.
They introduce themselves one by one, and Daiki’s glad that they didn’t give him a stage name because he would most likely flub it up - he wouldn’t be able to introduce himself as readily as Ryouta (“Hi everyone, I’m Ryo!”) or Shintarou (“I’m Shin, nice to meet you”) did without screwing up and saying his given name. He’s also glad they didn’t give Atsushi one, because outside of being really good at dancing, Atsushi doesn’t have enough brain cells to handle anything else. Taiga, who was probably chosen solely because he was raised in America, does as he was told and introduces himself in perfect English, and Daiki thinks he can see one of the girls in the audience keel over.
Daiki doesn’t get it. Taiga isn’t that good-looking.
The next two weeks are a sleepless whirlwind of endless promotions - going on TV shows, going on radio broadcasts. They even get to fly in to Korea to perform with EXO, the real thing, Daiki thinks, as if EXO-J isn’t any more of a real thing than they are. The members are friendly and polite enough, just like how they used to be when they met once or twice in the past, but there’s a limit to how much you can learn about one another when you can’t even converse in the same language. The stage is one huge mess with this many people crammed onto it, but nothing stops the fans from being dizzy and delighted as all hell, and Daiki even hears people chanting at them in Japanese when any of them delivers a line - good things, not bad things, although Ryouta certainly gets the loudest screams. Hardly any other rookie gets this sort of treatment, but Daiki also supposes that hardly any other rookie has trained their ass off day and night in this sort of crazy, rigid, structured environment for years.
There’s a lot to cope with, the lack of sleep, the late nights and the early mornings, living with five other boys in one dormitory, a complete and utter lack of privacy and therefore a complete and utter lack of alone time in the bathroom for browsing through Mai-chan’s photobooks, but when he’s got some time left over, the cracks of time in between flitting from one activity to another, there’s one thing that Daiki inevitably thinks about. How things in the group would have been different, maybe, if Tetsu was still around, if Tetsu hadn’t left right at the time SM was about to offer him a full-time contract, just like they did with Daiki and Ryouta and everyone else. The more trainees there were, the more hectic things got, and Tetsu just wouldn’t stand for it. Daiki didn’t really understand, because sure, competition was rife and sometimes things got ugly, and it was each man for his own, but at the end of the day, all of them were training to be idols, and wasn’t that what Tetsu wanted? There was one point of time at which he wanted to give up because things were getting so tough, but Tetsu, who was far less talented but far more hardworking than any of them, was the one who convinced him to stay, so stay he did, even when it got to the point that what they spat out was what the machine had fed them. What Daiki didn’t expect was Tetsu’s answer as to why he wanted to leave: “It feels terrible to hate doing something you love so much,” and to this day, even as he’s running through his scripted lines for a telecast, even as he’s rehearsing dance steps that he knows he’ll forget in an hour’s time, Daiki imagines what it would be like if Tetsu was here, doing the same things as they all were, and wonders if he would still be hating it.
i.e. the miragen is exo-j
i.e. i don't know
1516 words with no proper ending
It was just as well that the project was kept a complete and total secret, even from the most loyal, most persevering of fans, because when EXO-J debuts exactly two whole years after its Korean and Chinese counterparts, everyone in the industry is taken by surprise. That’s because on top of everything being kept under wraps, there are no sculpted, wide-eyed, perfect-looking Korean kids to be found in this group. Instead, every one of the six members is one hundred percent born-and-bred Japanese.
Clearly there was a divergence from the norm of merely importing ready-made Korean bands into the Japanese market. Daiki finds out about this the day he signs his trainee contract, seated with a dozen other boys his age in a meeting room in the company’s headquarters in Ginza. Word was going around that it was politics. Daiki wasn’t too smart, but the Korean wave that his mother kept going on about was apparently all the rage, and one of the other guys who was offered a trainee contract as well, a real slimy-looking type with glasses and a Kansai dialect, went around telling people that they were setting up an all-Japanese boyband to deal with the inevitable backlash that would occur while they entered the market. So they’d be totally Japanese, but also totally Korean, capturing the best of both worlds. Daiki didn’t think too much about that. Politics wasn’t his thing.
Four months before that Daiki was scouted on the streets by a shady-looking man wearing sunglasses and a muffler and a generic store-bought padded winter coat, like something that Uniqlo would put out on sale half a year after the winter season. If it wasn't for Satsuki he wouldn’t have paid the man any heed, but Satsuki had accepted the name card on his behalf and bugged him (“Dai-chan, they’re from a reputable Korean company! You don’t fit the Johnny’s image anyway”) until he went for one of their walk-in auditions. They told him that although his dancing could do with some polishing, his rapping wasn’t half bad, and he was a “rugged type of handsome” that fans would surely appreciate. They offered him a nose job though, just to make the tip a little more defined, and paid for all of it. Satsuki threw him a party after that and told him that he looked completely different.
Occasionally the company’s other flagship acts would stroll in and out the headquarters to prepare for their Japanese gigs and engagements. Girls’ Generation was a huge deal then, but none of them had tits worth anything, so Daiki mostly stayed out of their way when they crossed paths, the bulk of their interaction being the furious exchange of ninety-degree bows. They were quite enamoured with Ryouta though, because he was a quick learner and smooth talker (in what little Korean he knew, always awkward on purpose) and most of all, he was cute.
“Aominecchi,” he’d asked Daiki one day, almost glittering with sincerity, “do you need some tips on how to talk to girls?” and Daiki almost wanted to sock his modelesque face right there and then in the room where they were reviewing their notes on media training.
He couldn’t do that, of course. SM was a company that knew what it wanted, and from the day the six of them were chosen to form the Japanese counterpart of EXO, they had readily-defined roles from the start. Ryouta was the face of the group, even though his singing and dancing were both pretty solid, but Daiki supposed that no one else really came close in the looks department. “You want people to recognise you right off the bat,” one of their coaches had told Ryouta, who listened with rapt attention, “you want people to think of EXO-J when they see your face.” Daiki couldn’t possibly go around punching the lights out of him.
*
After three years of training in which Daiki juggled not going to school and a whole lot of falling asleep in dance studios, they debut on Music Station, all at the ripe old age of nineteen. Right before they go on stage Seijuurou gathers the group around in a circle, gets them to pile their hands on top of one another’s and leads them in their group cheer, “Let’s love”, adopted from their brother groups, but if anything, Daiki knows that none of them mean it. Seijuurou was always the favourite among the bosses - and that was why he was made leader even though he was the youngest of the six - and he didn’t want anything except for the band to excel in all areas. There wasn’t any space for love, only excellence. Seijuurou’s word was the law, even when they were trainees.
“We share the same concept with EXO-K and EXO-M, but we’re a completely different group and have our own unique style too,” Shintarou tells the interviewer before they perform their debut single, stating the obvious.
They introduce themselves one by one, and Daiki’s glad that they didn’t give him a stage name because he would most likely flub it up - he wouldn’t be able to introduce himself as readily as Ryouta (“Hi everyone, I’m Ryo!”) or Shintarou (“I’m Shin, nice to meet you”) did without screwing up and saying his given name. He’s also glad they didn’t give Atsushi one, because outside of being really good at dancing, Atsushi doesn’t have enough brain cells to handle anything else. Taiga, who was probably chosen solely because he was raised in America, does as he was told and introduces himself in perfect English, and Daiki thinks he can see one of the girls in the audience keel over.
Daiki doesn’t get it. Taiga isn’t that good-looking.
The next two weeks are a sleepless whirlwind of endless promotions - going on TV shows, going on radio broadcasts. They even get to fly in to Korea to perform with EXO, the real thing, Daiki thinks, as if EXO-J isn’t any more of a real thing than they are. The members are friendly and polite enough, just like how they used to be when they met once or twice in the past, but there’s a limit to how much you can learn about one another when you can’t even converse in the same language. The stage is one huge mess with this many people crammed onto it, but nothing stops the fans from being dizzy and delighted as all hell, and Daiki even hears people chanting at them in Japanese when any of them delivers a line - good things, not bad things, although Ryouta certainly gets the loudest screams. Hardly any other rookie gets this sort of treatment, but Daiki also supposes that hardly any other rookie has trained their ass off day and night in this sort of crazy, rigid, structured environment for years.
There’s a lot to cope with, the lack of sleep, the late nights and the early mornings, living with five other boys in one dormitory, a complete and utter lack of privacy and therefore a complete and utter lack of alone time in the bathroom for browsing through Mai-chan’s photobooks, but when he’s got some time left over, the cracks of time in between flitting from one activity to another, there’s one thing that Daiki inevitably thinks about. How things in the group would have been different, maybe, if Tetsu was still around, if Tetsu hadn’t left right at the time SM was about to offer him a full-time contract, just like they did with Daiki and Ryouta and everyone else. The more trainees there were, the more hectic things got, and Tetsu just wouldn’t stand for it. Daiki didn’t really understand, because sure, competition was rife and sometimes things got ugly, and it was each man for his own, but at the end of the day, all of them were training to be idols, and wasn’t that what Tetsu wanted? There was one point of time at which he wanted to give up because things were getting so tough, but Tetsu, who was far less talented but far more hardworking than any of them, was the one who convinced him to stay, so stay he did, even when it got to the point that what they spat out was what the machine had fed them. What Daiki didn’t expect was Tetsu’s answer as to why he wanted to leave: “It feels terrible to hate doing something you love so much,” and to this day, even as he’s running through his scripted lines for a telecast, even as he’s rehearsing dance steps that he knows he’ll forget in an hour’s time, Daiki imagines what it would be like if Tetsu was here, doing the same things as they all were, and wonders if he would still be hating it.