.one. replacement

"We rushed over here as soon as we heard the news." Chuyen said the moment she pushed the door open to the hospital room and saw her brother Tao on the bed with medical machines hooked up to his skin. His leg was being poised up on a sling from the ceiling and he smiled at the sight of his family, despite the pain. Her parents followed into the room close behind their daughter and closed the door once inside. Outside of the hospital room were security guards, stationed to keep the wrong people from entering the room. At the time, only family members, or management from SM Entertainment were allowed to see him.

He rolled his eyes playfully at her, downplaying the injury that had him in the hospital. "Relax Yena." He fondly called her by her nickname. "The doctors will fix me right up and I'll be back on stage in no time."

But he didn't know just how wrong he was.

Yena crossed her arms over her chest impatiently. Ever since her brother had left China to join SM Entertainment's EXO, she had seen less and less of him in person. His time was always taken up by interviews, concerts, game shows, and loads of other things he needed to do to promote the group. The game shows were the ones she liked least because she had heard so many stories and read so many articles about how some artists suffered injuries during the extreme activities they had to perform for the shows and their ratings. Now her brother was in the hospital due to the carelessness of their management.

"You broke your leg, Tao." Yena reminded him as though he had forgotten.

"A hairline fracture was what the doctor said, actually." He corrected her.

The two adults in the room, especially their mother, were too much in shock after seeing their son in a hospital bed to even speak at first and only watched their two children bicker back and forth. His sister Yena cut the distance between them, as she had been standing at the foot of his bed, and she placed a hand on his forehead to feel for his body temperature. "I tihnk you're delirious. We should probably call a doctor." Looking to her parents, she added, "I think he's in post traumatic shock."

He swatted her hand away in annoyance. "I'm fine, Yena. But I do need you to do me a huge favor. I need you to be my replacement in the group."

Chuyen let out a laugh, thinking his words ridiculous--maybe even a joke. "You're crazy."

Now she definitely thought he was delusional.

He gave a shake of his head. "I'm being serious, Chuyen." Chuyen. That was how she knew he was actually being serious with her, when he called her by her first name. "Two members of SM Entertainment's management are coming to talk to us--mostly you--in a little bit about taking over in my place while I recover."

"Isn't that the reason why EXO has twelve members?" She asked him, still in disbelief with his request. She knew how the popular kpop groups in Korea worked, and she had read somewhere that the reason why the groups were so big was so that they wouldn't need to replace anyone who decided to leave the group--or who suffered some kind of injury just like her brother. It was insane that they would ask of her--his sister--to take his place, and expect that everyone would completely and unquestioningly buy it. It was like something out of a bad drama series. 

He looked at her with pleading eyes.

"Tao," She began with a sigh. "You have to understand that I can't just leave everything in China behind like that. You have your music stuff and I have my studies at the University of Nanjing." 

"Where you're majoring in music." He pointed out.

"Classical music. This is very important to me." She reminded him. While he and his group sang pop and dabbled in rap, she had always loved the classics, and even opera music. It was her passion and what she most loved.

She had even been very close to applying for a study abroad scholarship that would take her to one of the most prestigious music schools in California for a semester. There, she would no longer be seen as Tao from EXO's sister. How she dreaded that. She loved her brother, and was very proud of his accomplishments in the music industry, but she wanted her own. She wanted to be known as Huang Chuyen, not her brother's sister.

"Its only a few months." He insisted.

Chuyen eyed him suspiciously, considering the possibility of caving in. "By a few, how many is that exactly?"

He gave a rather nonchalant shrug of his shoulders considering he had a broken--or as he liked to call it fractured--leg. Despite his very coherent phrases, she still thought his mind was foggy, possibly from the pain killer drugs he had been likely given, if he thought they could get away with passing Chuyen--a girl--to pass off as her brother. "Two to three at the most." He replied to her just as the door opened once again.

This time, two people dressed like executives entered the room. Speaking for the first time since they arrived, Tao's mother approached them to ask for an honest answer on his condition. "He doesn't want to tell us, but we think its a bit worse than we thought." Their mother said in a cracked voice.

One of the executives, a woman with a cold expression was the one who spoke first, "We talked to the doctor and Tao will live. But he does have a rather severe fracture which will take about six months to a year to heal." Pausing for a moment to glance at her cellphone screen, she replied to a text message before continuing, "This is why we asked Tao to talk to his sister Yena. We'd like her to take over in his place, pretend to be him until he can return. They're siblings and she could easily pass off for him if we put our best make up and hair crew to work on her."

Yena scoffed at their cold manner in which they referred to everything. Then she pointed out a flaw in their plan. "Tao is like six feet tall." She shot them a taunting smirk. "I'm only five foot five. How do you plan to solve that?"

The other one, a man, replied, "Ever since we found out about the injury, we started brainstorming and already contacted Adidas South Korea. Their design team is already preparing a pair of platform shoes custom made for you to wear that don't look like platform shoes, but rather look like regular sneakers."

Her taunting smirk was wiped clean off. 

They definitely thought of everything, Yena thought to herself.

Finally, she gave her last argument, one that she thought would stump their plans entirely. "That's fine and all, maybe I can fool the fans. But do you think I'd be able to fool the other boys? They'd see right through me. Especially Kyungsoo, I mean you do remember he and I dated for a few months last year."

"Kyungsoo will be clueless, just like the rest of the guys." Tao assured her from his hospital bed.

She rolled her eyes at him, but finally huffed in mock annoyance. "Fine. I'll do this for you, Tao. Geez, the things you make me do."

"You know I couldn't ask anyone else for this favor." He pointed out.

"Or maybe you just need to learn to take better care of yourself." She snuck a glance at the unapologetic executives in the room. She also put the blame on them--most of the blame--but she would never say it aloud for her brother's sake. "If you know things like this are dangerous, don't do them. If I'm going to take your place, I refuse to take part in crazy game shows like that."

"Consider it done." Tao nodded.

"And I want something in return--well, two things." She demanded.

"Anything." He nodded again. He knew that while they were all there, she could make all kinds of demands, but once she really got started, SM would find a way to bombard her with red tape and a binding contract. He didn't want that for his sister, but it was only temporary. Then he would be back and she would be released to continue with her own life.

"I want you to pay my study abroad program in America," She started, and finished with, "And I want you to take me to a Super Junior concert when this is all over." A smile formed on her lips as her inner fangirl made a momentary appearance.

Tao chuckled, and feigned being offended. "You're not a fan of your brother's group?"

"Of course not." She scoffed. Quickly adding, "I mean, I support you, but-"

"If you'll just follow us." The woman executive tapped her on the shoulder, "We need to get you prepared as soon as possible, and frankly we think its going to take us a few days. We need all the time we can get."

Yena nodded, "Let me just say goodbye to my family."

The woman shook her head, grabbing her by the arm and practically dragging her out of the room. "You'll see them soon, but we can't waste any time."

With that, she left the hospital with two strange people.

-

a/n: so here's the first chapter of replacement for you guys. on wattpad i already have about fifteen chapters posted, so i'll be taking them from there as i go along. if you liked the story so far though, and want to continue reading, feel free to look for me on wattpad under the username @ claryvette. i have other exo fics on there, that i'll eventually post on here as well.

i will try to post another chapter tomorrow, since they're already written, and i hope you like this story.

also, again please bear with me. im a new fan and might not know absolutely EVERYTHING about EXO. 

*note* this story takes place in the summer of 2013 by the way, when there were still twelve members in EXO.

thank you for reading and have a great day!

-clary (baekshands)