Tao woke up to another busy morning in the EXO-M dorm. He rubbed the sleepiness and fatigue off before stretching his arms out. He blinked a few times and stared at the ceiling before grabbing his phone. There, without fail, is the constant voice message from Sehun.

"Tao-yah! Good morning!"

Today, Sehun decided to address him as "Tao-yah". Other days, it's "Tao-hyung" or "Tao-ge" or sometimes just simply "Tao". Sehun can only do simple Chinese greetings for now, so all he can say in the messages are "Good morning" or "Stay safe" or "Fighting", but Tao was happy enough that Sehun was trying to learn Chinese as much as he's learning Korean. The two of them had agreed to exchange messages and greetings in order to help each other be fluent in their own respective languages, which somehow resulted to them sending voice messages.

He clicked the message again and replayed it.

"Tao-yah! Good morning!"

Tao smiled at the sound of the simple greeting. He saved the message to the folder where all Sehun's messages are. Afterwards, he recorded his own greeting.

"Sehun-ah! Good morning!"

... and sent!

~*~

Sehun laid on his bed waiting for Tao to return his message. They both agreed that whoever wakes up first should send a voice message first. Today, he woke up without receiving one, so it was safe to assume that he woke up first. After a few more minutes, his phone rang and he grinned from ear to ear as he opened the message.

"Sehun-ah! Good morning!" 

Tao still has that cute accent whenever he speaks in Korean. He clicked the message and saved it in the folder where he keeps all of Tao's voice messages.

He looked through the folder and realized how much messages they have exchanged so far. He went to play some of the messages then played his most favorite message so far.

"Sehun-ah. How are you? Did you sleep well? Saranghae~"

The Chinese member is a lot more fluent in Korean than Sehun is to Chinese, but he's doing his best to improve. He wanted to be able to send him longer messages and the only way to do that is to expand his Chinese vocabulary. He is taking his Chinese lessons seriously but learning a foreign language is extremely hard. He is making some good improvement and somehow, he kind of wanted to show off what he learned so far.

Sehun went to record something as a reply.

~*~

Tao  was about to get up from his bed to get ready for another busy day when his phone rang. Confused, he checked who the sender was and found that it was Sehun. They never did this before; replying after the other end sent a voice message back, but Sehun did today. He opened the message and listened to it.

"Take care of yourself. I'm always here to support you."

It was a long message, the longest Sehun ever sent him, complete with new Chinese words. He should've been proud that Sehun was improving his Chinese, he should've been. But "proud" wasn't exactly the right word he'll use to describe what he's feeling right now. But he's clueless as to what it was he's feeling.

"Tao. Are you sick? You're face looks red." Xiumin asked when he came back from the washroom.

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Akira: Chapter 8 tomorrow ^o^