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致相关人士, (I’ve been told not to write in Chinese, since I should practice my Korean.)
Dear Soulmate,
Nice to meet you. My name is Zhang Yixing and I’m born on October 7th. Which is today. I turn 18 today. Yeah. Today is my birthday. That means I can send and receive letters to and from you.
I wonder what you’re like. Jinki is currently telling me I should tell you about myself. Well, I like dancing and singing. I am from China and I moved to South Korea about 5 years ago. I’m a trainee for an idol group (my idol name is Lay), we’re supposed to debut in the next six months or so, but we’ve been delayed a few times. My team-mates are telling me we might get delayed because Wonsik is too young to fit our concept (he’s 15, nearly 16), but I’m optimistic.
I’ve been a trainee for about 4 years now. I’m not supposed to tell anyone about our debut, but I think you can keep a secret. These letters are confidential, anyway, but I signed a contract saying once I can send my letters, I have to withhold some information, which I think fair. I can’t tell you what agency I’m with either, since you could spoil the surprise of a new boy group. I’m pretty sure Minhyuk’s soulmates know what agency, but I don’t think Jisung’s soulmate knows what agency he’s with.
We’ve started to record our songs and I think I’m doing great. The other four guys are training really hard. I’m so proud for them. We’ve come a long way.
I’m the fourth oldest of my group. There’s six of us in total: Jinki (he’s the oldest), Minhyuk, Jisung, Yixing (ME!), Seokjin, and Wonsik. I’m the only Chinese member, so it’s little weird to only speak Korean to these guys. We we’re going to have another Chinese member, but they decided against it. It makes me miss home a little bit when I don’t have another Chinese person with me. I would like to have someone to speak Chinese to, but I have to deal with it! I’ll be able to speak Chinese to other idols and trainees!
I’ve been debating for the last few days whether I should write my letters in Chinese or Korean. I crossed out my Chinese at the top, since the first thing that went through my head was that I should practice my Korean. My manager the same thing, but I feel like I’m being more myself if I write them in Chinese. Maybe I’ll do neither and write in English. I know no English, but I can try. Maybe you don’t speak any of them and I’ll have to learn French or Italian. That would be so cool!
Since we already have our group set, we have our dorms. It’s three and three, since we have six members. I room with Seokjin and Jinki. Minhyuk, Jisung and Wonsik room together. I already had my little birthday celebrations with the group, it’s actually almost the next day. I’ve been so busy training and having my birthday that I forgot to write my letter. In my family, we never really talked about the letters. I don’t have any siblings, so I was never really exposed to the letter sending. My parents weren’t really keen on talking about the letters, they didn’t marry their soulmates. I want to marry my soulmate though, if you don’t mind.
Jinki and Seokjin keep bugging me about writing my letter. They can both read this letter right now (it’s in Korean, but if you can’t read Korean you won’t even be able to tell) and it’s a little irritating. I know for a fact that neither of them knows Chinese, so I might just switch to spite my manager and my group members.
Once Seokjin turns 18, he’s not going to hear the end of this from me, but he still has about a year and a little bit to go (he’s turning 17 in a month or two). I’m so going to torment him about this. Jinki is turning 21 in a few months, so he’s been writing letter for a long time now. He’s just doing this to bug me, but it’s a little annoying.
It’s getting late here in Seoul. I’m going to send this letter off now, before I get any tired. I have all the time in the world to explain myself, I don't need to explain my life story in one letter.
Thank you for reading it.
Sincerely,
Zhang Yixing