A K-pop Idol 63.4

"What do you mean?" Alex asked confused. "Is my English sounding so bad?"

"Oh, don't worry" the other producer said. "We see K-Pop Idols having trouble with English pronunciation all the time."

"But I'm very good in English! At least I thought so…" 

"I see… you lived in United States for some time, right?" 

Those producers had had contact with Alex before the plastic surgeries, so they knew that Kim Hana wasn't exactly one hundred percent Korean. For those professionals who had seen Alex before the surgeries, the label's management had said that she was an American Korean girl who had lived a few years in America. This wasn't the official version presented to the public, so these employees, due contractual obligations, were prohibited from talking about it with other people. 

"Yes, I lived there" Alex said. For longer than you think, he thought. And my English pronunciation is perfect! How could it not be? He was a native speaker, after all. 

"Hmm... I'm sorry, Kim Hana, But it seems that your English has regressed a bit since you returned to Korea. Listen to the recording so you can see for yourself." 

Alex then heard on the headphone his own voice. In the chorus of the song, he saw that the men were right. His English pronunciation was very bad, especially in the word "alright" which was repeated several times. 

The Korean language doesn't have a sound similar to the "r" from English. For this reason, many Koreans find it difficult to pronounce it, saying "l" instead of "r". That was exactly what Alex was doing. Instead of "alright" he was saying something like "allight". 

He couldn't understand how that was possible since he wasn't Korean for real! Only then he realized that he hadn't spoken or even thought in English for several months… But even so, he didn't believe it would be enough to make him forget a language he had spoken his entire life. 

"Maybe I'm just a little rusty" he said. "Let me practice a little."

Everyone waited patiently as Alex tried to say a few sentences in English. But even the most basic ones, like my name is Kim Hana came out with great difficulty and a strong Korean accent. And worst of all, he couldn't remember anything slightly more complex than that. 

"Oh, this is so frustrating!" he intended to say in English, but when he realized it he had said the sentence in Korean.

The feminized man felt even more trapped in his new life as Kim Hana, the girly K-Pop Idol. How could he ever be the old Alex again if he couldn't even speak English? Was that his fate? Would he be Kim Hana for the rest of his life? 

Desperate, Alex began to cry. The girls quickly approached to comfort him. 

"You don't need to cry, sweetie" Choi Hyun said. 

"But, unnie" Alex whined, pouting. "I can't..."

"Now, now that's okay. We're going to help you. You've already helped us so much... Stop crying, doll. I want to see a smile on your pretty face."

That was very strange and ironic. Alex, who was the only native English speaker in the group, needed the guidance of the other girls to pronounce the words in English correctly – well, nearly so… As hard as he tried, he just couldn't say "alright" properly. After several attempts, the producers were satisfied with something that sounded "close". They said the audience would find her accent cute…