Elvin chapter for elisoniackibumster♥ running late af right now for Viet, no a/r's lol

Eli sighed, looking out the window of his plane. He was leaving ia, he was actually leaving his sweet, farmland of ia behind.

               He looked at his luggage laying atop, reminding him that he’d be spending this time in some weird city in California. What was it – Danville? Apparently it was one of the most wealthiest cities in the United States.

               He didn’t know how he would fit in, he didn’t really want to at all. It’d be a weird, awkward place with a bunch of people that loved shopping. He would just be left out, sitting in the corner, studying his Kung Fu and Tai Chi.

“Kevin! You’re getting the solo again!”

               Shifting his eyes over to the girl that was speaking to him, Kevin smiled. “Yep!”

               She smiled, walking over to sit next to him. “Anyways, I hear that there’s going to be a new kid in our school.”

               His smile faded a bit as he turned over to her. “Really?”

               “Yeah, and get this: he’s Korean, too. Like you.”

               “Oh.” Kevin’s smile temporarily came back as he thought about it. “I wonder if he’s going to join the choir too.”

               “Isn’t it? Aren’t, like, all Koreans good at singing?”

               He blinked a bit, looking at her strangely. “What? No…”

“What…the freak…” Eli looked at the school standing before him, his face morphed into a disgusted look. “It’s so…big.”

               “Yep!” a voice chirped behind him. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

               Eli turned around to see a boy around his age, a bit shorter, with a light, caramel colored hairstyle. His skin was perfect, and his eyes glowed. “You must be the new student. I’m Kevin Woo!”

               Hesitantly shaking the Kevin boy’s hand, Eli said, “Hey…I’m Eli Kim.”

               “Well, I guess I’ll introduce you around the school, then!” Kevin smiled again, not letting go of Eli’s hand as he dragged the boy into the school.

               Everywhere they went, Eli noticed, everybody said “Hey” to Kevin, asked him how he was doing, smiled at him. The boy would always wave back, only replying to people he knew the names of.

               “You’re…really popular, aren’t you?” Eli observed, saying it without thinking.

               He felt the hand that was holding his get a bit sweatier as Kevin shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m the lead of the school choir, and we have a lot of performances in the school. I guess maybe that’s how they know me?”

               Eli didn’t respond, being cut off by the sadistic smile of Kevin’s face.

               “Well, this is your class! Have fun, hyung!” Kevin smiled.

               “Hyung?” It sounded funny when he had said it, like a random Korean word in an entire mush of English.

               “Might as well keep some of our Korean roots while we’re here, right?” Kevin said, as if he was trying to tell Eli something important.         

               The older boy just shrugged, not knowing what he was getting at.

“Hyung!”

               Eli looked up from his desk to stare at the only person who would bother calling him hyung. His classmates that had been slowly trickling out of the room stopped, wondering what the oh-so-popular Kevin Woo was doing talking to the new kid. And in some language they didn’t even know.

               “Oh. Kevin.”

               “Call me Sunghyun!” Kevin said in Korean.

               “…What…why aren’t you speaking English?” Eli asked, his reply still in America’s language.

               “I just…wanna try speaking Korean. There aren’t many Koreans here, so I just thought it’d be nice to try it out!” Kevin made that smile of his again, still talking in Korean.

               “…I didn’t even speak in Korean in ia.”

               “So? There’s a first for everything!”

               Sighing, Eli decided not to argue with Kevin anymore. The boy could be really stubborn when he wanted to. “Fine. Korean. You happy?”

               While Kevin just smiled and took his hand to drag him away, his classmates gave him wary looks.

               “Don’t you have…other friends?” Eli asked, desperately wanting to hide in that corner now.

               “Well, yeah. I just wanted to hang out with you today.”

               “Because I’m Korean?”

               That look, like the look he’d gotten this morning, overcame Kevin’s face. “Yeah…it’s like…we can bond over something like that, right?”

               Eli stopped himself from being dragged by Kevin, now quietly walking beside him. “Is there a reason to this? Wanting to speak Korean and hang out with me because I’m Korean?”

               Kevin halted for a second, thinking if he should tell Eli what was going on – he was practically using the older boy to his advantage. But then again, he’d only known Eli for a short while. “Well…” He looked around the hallways to make sure nobody was listening in – but it was like anybody could, because they were speaking in Korean after all.

               “I told you how I was in the school choir, right?”

               “Yeah…”

               “Well, I really want to be a singer. A little while over winter break, my mom and I flew over to Korea to visit some family members. When I was there, I auditioned…”

               “And you made it in,” Eli finished, nodding his head.

               “Yeah.”

               “When are you moving?”

               “In a few months.” Kevin scratched his head, letting go of Eli’s hand. “I should’ve gone a while ago, but…I was really scared. Like, I’m the American boy, and they’re all Korean, they’ve lived in Korea for all their lives, they know everything about it. And here I am, just a moderately fluent speaker, not used to their customs or how they live. I just don’t want to mess up!”

               “…Is that why you’re trying to do this Korean thing with me?” Eli joked, trying to lighten up the environment from Kevin’s scared aura.

               A weird look came over the pretty boy’s face, and he nodded. “I’ve been waiting for somebody Korean to transfer over here so that I can just…have somebody my age to talk to. Like…a friend.”

               “You’re moving, aren’t you? In a few months?”

               Kevin bit his lip, nodding frantically.

               “…I’ll do it, then. I’ll help you.”

               “What? Really?!”

               Eli laughed a bit at Kevin’s over joyous reaction, then did a little nod. “Yeah.”

That became their schedule, their way of life during school. The school came to know Eli Kim, and his popular rose by a ton. He was known as that “one Korean fob who stayed with Kevin”, even if he wasn’t even born in Korea and he spoke less Korean than Kevin did.

               On random days, Kevin wouldn’t be by his side, but the boy would just pop up later on and say some random fact about the people in Korea. Sometimes it made Eli laugh, at others, it made him just want to yell at Kevin for leaving him so many times.

               “HEY! KYOUNGJAE!”

               Eli turned around, almost wanting to him Kevin for the thousands of times he’d told him not to call him that. He didn’t even want to tell Kevin his Korean name, but somehow, the boy had broke into the school’s office and looked up his profile.

               “Yeah?” Eli grumbled, telling himself not to hit Kevin.

               “Nothing, you were just walking too fast.” Kevin smiled at him, but for some reason, his smile wasn’t the same. “I was just wondering if you’d like to go and get some coffee with me after school today.”

               “Coffee?”

               “Yeah. It’ll be on me…like…a date! Think of it as a date.”

               Eli blinked at Kevin’s strange attitude, and nodded. “Alright then.”

               The somewhat fake smile of Kevin’s lips faltered a bit as he said, “Meet me up by the flagpole later, okay?”

               “…Okay…hey, Kevin, are you okay? You seem a little off today.”

               “Off?” The smile fell a bit, then forced itself to return. “I’m…fine.”

               “No, you’re not –“

               “I’m fine,” Kevin enforced, looking around the hallways at his waving schoolmates. “Just…meet me after school today, okay?”

               Nervously, Eli nodded again. “I know…”

It wasn’t only Kevin that had something to say at the ‘date’ after school. Eli was pondering over whether or not to tell him the truth, but he just couldn’t bring himself to say it. Kevin looked sad enough as it was.

               “You remember…how three weeks ago when you moved here, I said that I’d go over to Korea in a few months?” Kevin said, sounding unsure of himself. He played around with his coffee cup, sliding it between his index fingers.

               “Yeah…”

               He cleared his throat, looking up. “Well, I’m moving tomorrow.”

               Eli swore his eyeballs fell out of their sockets. “Tomorrow?! But…we’ve only been with each other for…three weeks.”

               “I know!” Kevin howled, making Eli guilty. Even if he wasn’t moving tomorrow, there was a way that Eli was going to break them up.

               Break them up. Huh.

               It sounded like they were a couple.

               “…I’m going to move to China next week,” Eli finally said. Kevin’s head popped up from the ground, staring at him.

               “What? Why?!”

               “There’s nothing for me over here. Well…except you,” he sheepishly managed out. “I was contemplating with my parents. Contemplating. Look at me, failing high school, yet using big words. But seriously, I’m failing school. I’m thinking of dropping out of high school and moving over to Beijing by myself, study some kung fu. It’d be better than this.”

               “By…yourself?” Kevin gulped, his eyes getting wider by the second.

               “Yeah. My parents have a life here, and I doubt anybody wants to go to China with me. So…I’m just going to do it on my own.”

               Kevin tried to breathe, but it only came out in shakily. “But…you’re going to be all alone…”

               “I’ll be fine!” Eli laughed. “Don’t worry about me. You’re going to go on and become a famous K-pop star, so don’t forget me, alright?”

               “But Eli!” Kevin wailed, his feet kicking the legs of the table. “You can’t move to China by yourself!”

               “I can, and I will.” Eli breathed in again, pulling his chair closer to Kevin. “Look, just…just think of it as if I’m still here in Danville. You can go and become the best Korean singer out there, and I’d just be at home, watching you from my screen.”

               “But you’re not going to be at home! You’re going to be in China!” Kevin protested. “What – what if they make you work in sweatshops? Eli –“

               “Calm down!” he laughed again. “I promise you that I won’t be working in any sweatshops, alright? I’m just going to study some karate. The next time you see me I might be on a Jackie Chen movie.”

               “Yeah, and I’d be winning a GoKPOP award,” Kevin snorted.

               “You will, trust me. I can almost sense it.” Eli looked down at his full coffee cup, then back at Kevin’s sorrowful face. “You’re the one that’s leaving tomorrow, not me! You have an entire future ahead of you, alright? Think of me as…as a stepping stone. I did my duty of helping you, now you can move on.”

               “But you’re not just a stepping stone!” Kevin cried. “You’re…Eli…I think I love you.”

               “Yeah, I love you too.”

               “No.” Kevin breathed in, trying again. He thought about the way Eli helped him overcome his fears of being the American boy, about all the happy things that Eli had tried saying to him, about the jokes that he made, about the way that he hugged him when he had started crying that one time for dropping a hot plate on his foot. He didn’t want to mess up again, but he didn’t want to let the chance go. “I really do think I love you, Kim Kyoungjae.”

               Eli smiled, a sincere smile that he hoped Kevin would make in Korea. “I know, Kevin. I love you too, Woo Sunghyun.”

               Hearing Eli say that, Kevin’s eyes became to rim in tears. “Don’t…don’t die in China, alright?”

               “And don’t overwork yourself, alright?”

               Kevin just nodded, looking around the café that he would never see again. “…Saranghae.”

               “Nado saranghae.”

One year later

“Ready to give this another go, Kevin?” Kibum asked, throwing himself onto a couch.

               Kevin groaned, putting his head into his hands. “XING didn’t work out too well, did it?”

               Kibum shrugged. “Well, let’s give U-KISS a try. They said they had all the members laid out, right? Seven guys?”

               Nodding, Kevin looked up. “They won’t tell us the names, though.”

               Kibum just smiled, giving him a pat on the back. “It’s okay…”

               What would Eli do right now? Kevin thought. He smiled, trying to imagine Eli just cussing everybody out and forcing he names of the new members out of the CEO’s mouth.

               “Oh! Kevin – hey – the fourth member they chose is here.”

               Kevin stood up, pulling his shirt down without taking his eyes off of his shoes. “Hey, I’m – oh…my…God…ELI!”

               The said boy smiled, opening his arms. “Hey.”

               “I was…just thinking about you.”

               Just as Kevin threw himself into Eli’s strong muscles, the older boy his hair. “I’m glad you still think about me, then.”

               “I’ll always think about you.”