"That's kind of expensive for a piece of plastic," Kris said and inspected the ID card. To him it looked real. Even the holographic images were perfect and it would probably need an extremely keen eye to detect that it was fake. He doubted that anyone would even look at it twice unless they absolutely suspected the owner to be an illegal immigrant. "And Hohhot as birth place? Seriously? He doesn't look Mongolian at all."

The old hag shrugged. "Take it or leave it, boy," she said with a lazy hand gesture. "Hohhot at least explains his non-existent Chinese. If anyone asks, just make something up. Tell them he was kept in a tent by his nomad family because they thought he's the reincarnation of the Sun God, or whatever other stuff they believe up there."

Kris was about to disagree to keep the price down, when Luhan and Canlie suddenly grew noisy. Luhan had probably translated every single world that was uttered, so chances were high that Canlie was in the middle of imagining himself as a higher being. This was exactly why Kris was leading the whole project. Luhan and Canlie alone probably would have ended up with a stupidly high price for a piece of crap. Neither of them seemed to be particularly good when it was about business transactions but there was no choice. Canlie needed the ID and Luhan was the only Chinese member who could translate for him. Kris would have taken Xiumin but the hag hated to deal with foreigners, especially if they understood her insults.

"You could have just made it a place around the Korean border," Kris said and cleared his throat as he gave Luhan and Canlie a warning look. "There are thousands who fled the country there."

It was as if the hag had just waited for that argument. A sly smile formed on her lips. "Thousands with fake IDs," she said. "If you're from any place in Jilin and you don't speak Chinese nowadays, they know there's something wrong with you."

"Just make an ID that looks real and there shouldn't be a problem," he said and gave the plastic card another sceptical glance.
She was obviously right though. Jilin, as the province bordering Korea, had always been full of refugees, even back when the country was still divided, so the Korean minority there was particularly large. It probably was too likely for the fake ID of a Korean in China to read Yanji as their hometown, so they had already avoided it on Xiumin's. Both Luhan and Xiumin were officially born in Chengdu now.
He knew and she knew he did, just like how she was aware that her forged papers were the best around. "Well, I'm not going to change it, so buy it or leave me alone already."

In the end he did pay more than originally intended but still less than what Luhan would have carelessly handed over. Luhan's family's motto seemed to be that money wasn't an issue for work that was well done, so he probably couldn't really help it, but that didn't change the fact that it was pretty annoying at times. It was exactly for that difference in standards that they had never become friends when they were children.
But well, at least this part Kris was through with now. Canlie had been with them for a while now and had integrated himself just fine. Not even the language barrier was that big of an issue anymore. There either was someone to translate or they got along with just single words and gestures, as if language wasn't really all that important.
That's why Kris decided to get him an ID. As a slave Canlie could go wherever his owner went, so he technically didn't need it as long as he stayed with the crew, but Kris didn't really like the whole ownership system. He didn't want anyone to follow him just because he acquired them like a thing. That just didn't seem like a particularly good basis for trust. So like Xiumin he gave Canlie the choice in form of an ID. Either he stayed with them out of his own free will, or he could leave the moment he paid back the whole sum Kris had used to buy him free. It obviously wasn't that much of a choice. His price during the auction had been pretty high and his ID was still fake, so without any language skills he wouldn't get far by himself. But well, Kris never claimed that it was completely fair.

"Any idea how to get rid of the bar code?" he asked as they were about to leave.
The hag just waved him to get out off her shop already and shrugged. "You could cut off his ear."
"Right," he said and tried not to laugh at the slightly belated look of utter horror Canlie gave the hag as Luhan translated her words.

They went back while having a conversation about places in China as Canlie didn't really seem to know anything about the world. Their current base was in Shanghai which, as a metropolis, probably was about as similar to Seoul as possible. But even the fact that he could not only move within the city but outside of it seemed to baffle Canlie so much, he probably couldn't really imagine what a place like Inner Mongolia must have been like. Hohhot, too, was just another big city, so it wasn't that bad a his new fake place of birth, but just to tell him where it was and why it was chosen for him felt like trying to explain the world to a child. It made Kris wonder whether Canlie understood what an ID card really meant, seeing that he had trouble with even the tiny hints of freedom they had given him so far.
Well, in the end it wasn't so much for Canlie but for Kris' own conscience anyway.

When their rusty mini truck reached their base in the outskirts, Xiumin already waited for them outside. They unloaded the few goods they had bought in the central area and before Kris had a chance to ask whether anything had happened in his absence, Xiumin hurriedly pulled Luhan away. "There's something I need to talk about," he said in Chinese, obviously finding it better to shut out Canlie rather than Kris.
Kris sighed and looked at Canlie who seemed a little lost. "Let's go upstairs," he said while giving Canlie a hand sign and walked off. Canlie nodded after frowing a the door behind which Xiumin and Luhan had disappeared, and followed.

Luhan and Xiumin had a secret. Kris had no idea what it was and had never actively bothered to find out because he didn't think that it had anyhing to do with him or their work. But it was still quite obvious.
Xiumin talking to Luhan in Chinese wasn't normal. Before Canlie had arrived they always spoke Korean to each other, that secretive language only the two of them understood, and Kris figured that the only reason why Luhan had learned it to begin with, was Xiumin. That was maybe why Kris thought of getting another Korean member, just to forcefully break that endless cycle of secrecy and mistrust.
The only thing Canlie's presence changed though, was the way the two used language now. It almost felt like a weapon. Chinese now meant that they were deliberatly hiding things from Canlie, Korean still meant that they didn't trust the ones they had been with for so long. And even to catch some of their vague conversations didn't really change anything about the fact that they were definitely keeping a secret of dimensions Kris couldn't grasp.

"Did you forget Luhan on the way?" Tao asked as they entered the common room and looked up from his TV program about domestic animals.
"Xiumin took him somewhere," Kris said as he went to the kitchen to get himself a bottle of water. The smog in the central city was so bad sometimes, it always felt as if someone had poured ash into his throat. When Kris came back into the room Canlie had already sat down next to Tao on the couch.
"They always leave behind their baby lately," Tao said exasperately and gave Canlie a pitiful look, just to be ignored. He turned around to Kris again. "But seriously, did they tell you what they were doing this time? I thought it was annoying that they were always talking in a foreign language but now that they disappear all the time and leave behind that idiot who can't even talk to anyone..." He shook his head and Kris shrugged.
"Well, it's not like they harm anyone," he said and sat down at the table opposite Lay, who was going through their list of customers and who was acting as if he couldn't hear them.

Kris sometimes wondered whether Luhan's and Xiumin's problem maybe had anything to do with a medical condition because there were moments when he suspected that Lay knew. Lay usually avoided any conversation about that ominous secret and although that didn't have to mean much, did it always make Kris feel a little uneasy. He probably didn't just want to be the only one who had no clue and he hated the idea of waking up one day to be told that either Luhan or Xiumin had broken down for some reason. It would make him look incredibly stupid if he worked any of them to death, just because he was too dense to notice that they were sick.
An illness would have explained a lot, their reason to run away for example or to get a fake ID for Luhan. But he didn't want to jump to conclusions either.

Tao on the couch suddenly burst out into laughter, startling both Kris and Lay who accidentally drew a long black line across the list.
"Who came up with that idea to make him Mongolian?" Tao laughed and waved around Canlie's new ID card.