There were multiple possible paths Eunhyuk had expected his life to take, but crying on his bed on a Tuesday evening over a dead cat he’d just erased was not one of them. 

It hadn’t even been a cute cat, one of those ugly, disgruntled Persian things that clawed at the sofa all the time. It hadn’t even been his cat. He wasn’t even a cat person! He knew he should have given that case to Victoria or Siwon to handle, but then he’d always been a er for little old ladies that clutched their black leather handbags to their bosoms and stared at him with teary eyes and went, “But you can erase my little Shoo-shoo, can’t you?" 

Stupid Mrs Kwon and her emotional manipulation. 

If only his Tuesday had gone by in the predictable, mind-numbing haze that Eunhyuk had grown depressingly comfortable with. It had begun that way, at least.

He managed to sluggishly crawl out of bed five minutes after his alarm went off, once he couldn’t ignore the blaring anymore. After walking into the wall next to the doorframe, he oriented himself enough to figure out where the kitchen was, listlessly shoving undercooked instant ramyun into his mouth at the bare and empty wooden table, watching a few feeble snowflakes fall outside the window. The clinks of his spoon reverberated too loudly for his liking. He wished the last tenant hadn’t been a family of four. 

Once he’d shrugged on his clothes and spent fifteen minutes figuring out where he’d put his house keys and phone (they were always right next to the ugly flowerpot Kyuhyun had given as an uninspired birthday present), he checked the light on his answering machine. As always, there was a message from his mother. The bright, forced cheer in her voice echoed throughout the empty apartment when he pressed the button:  

Hi, Hyukjae. How are you doing? Hyoyeon called again, I can’t believe you aren’t going to the wedding. Are you eating well? The dog is fine. She misses you. (a long pause) Well, call me back. Wear warm clothes. Love you.

He picked up the receiver, sighed deeply, picking up the wedding invitation still lying next to it, reading the warm and familiar message asking him to RSVP. Staring at the words for a long moment, Eunhyuk shoved it under a bunch of bills. He left the necessary perfunctory message:

Hi mum. I’m fine. I’m too busy to go the wedding. Hyoyeon knows. I’m eating fine. That’s good. I miss her too. Thanks for the call. I will. Love you too.  

Putting down the phone, he’d stepped out of the apartment into the blistering cold air, waiting alone at the bus stop, tugging at his beanie to ward off the chill. Once aboard, he sat at the back, flipping through his music and reminding himself that he needed to download something new because if he had to hear his sister’s playlist of Be Natural by S.E.S. one more time, he was going to throw his phone out the window.

He never did download something new.

Finally, the aggressively modern façade of SJ Memory Clinic settled into view, and he got off the bus and trotted reluctantly towards it. He always felt slightly nervous near the gleaming metal surfaces. It gave the impression that he wasn't the right sort who was meant to be there. Pushing open the glass door, he yanked off his hat and coat to see the slightly artificial smile of the receptionist Jessica Jung, talking on the phone. “Hello, SJ Memory Clinic, please hold. No, I’m afraid Doctor Park will not be able to schedule a Friday appointment, but we could potentially schedule you in with Doctor – I see. Well, next Wednesday will be the earliest he can make it. Thank you. SJ Memory Clinic, please hold.”

She mouthed ‘late’ at Eunhyuk as he walked past with evident distaste, and Eunhyuk grimaced. He made a wide berth of the desk as he passed through the gleaming, sterile corridors decorated with posters promoting wipes, promising ‘You won’t even remember missing it!’ There were leaflets of the latest surgeries - now instead of erasing memories, they were testing the opposite direction, to make your memory scarily good, but it apparently wasn't catching on much. Other posters detailed images of the brain, and the faces of past customers, reassuring them that if someone as famous as Kim Tae-hee could go for memory erases and come out just as good, what was stopping you? 

Wrinkling his nose, he reached his office space, tossing down his coats and flopping down beside his desk. It was a very bare area – Eunhyuk had not gotten around to decorating – and consisted of his desk, computer, papers scattered about, complimentary employee calendar of a photo shopped landscape, and a picture of him, Zhou Mi, and Kyuhyun in the medical area that Zhou Mi had insisted he showcase. Eunhyuk's smile looked unbelievably forced in the photograph. The heater wasn’t perfect, and he pulled on his sweater, giving himself sleeve paws. Things couldn’t be that terrible if you had warm sweater paws.  

He poked his head into the adjoining medical area where his two assistants were. Zhou Mi, the memory technician, was seated in front of his work station, a large computer screen covered in buttons, keyboards and a variety of other dials, engrossed in a book. He looked up when Eunhyuk coughed, and smiled, pushing up his pair of fashionable spectacles that complimented his carefully picked-out outfit. Eunhyuk was distinctly aware of the fact that his socks didn’t match and Zhou Mi was probably judging him for it. “Morning,” he said, “You’re late again.”

Eunhyuk had been late nearly every day for the past two years, so he merely smiled mechanically and said tonelessly, as always, “Yeah, I need to set my alarm earlier."

Then, for politeness' sake, he added disinterestedly, "Whatcha reading?”

“New research paper on memory wiping technology!” Zhou Mi chirped happily, either oblivious to or ignoring Eunhyuk's tone, “I’m on Chapter Seven right now, it’s about the possibilities of defective software in current machinery causing incorrect wipes and producing feelings of deja-vu, embedding memories into dreams, I can quote you a fascinating little paragraph –”

“Is it the same one you’ve quoted to me six times already?” Kyuhyun had spoken up from his workstation. He was in-charge of processing memory files and information, and repair work, and unlike Zhou Mi’s immaculate area, had somehow managed to turn his little corner into something Eunhyuk wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot pole even if he were paid for it. He probably should have said something about it, but what did it matter? It wasn't like it would improve the surgery, and if Zhou Mi had a problem with it, he could sort it out with Kyuhyun himself. It wasn't Eunhyuk's problem. 

The technician sulked. “Maybe?”

“Then Eunhyuk doesn’t want to hear it.” Kyuhyun hadn’t lifted his head up from where he was archiving months worth of memory footage, but he made a gesture in Eunhyuk’s direction that disagreeing would carry punishment with it. With Kyuhyun, this was rarely an empty threat.

“Are you watching people’s memories?” Eunhyuk asked suddenly, realising what was on Kyuhyun’s screen.

“There is nowhere in company policy that says I can’t.”

“Can you…not, though? You look like you’re playing a really creepy version of the Sims,” Eunhyuk commented flatly.

“Nobody plays the Sims anymore, Eunhyuk, get with the times.”  

“You said the same thing about Dance Dance Revolution at the company retreat and that was because you tripped,” Eunhyuk insisted grumpily, recalling the one and only time he’d ever made an effort to bond with his co-workers. That had been a long, long time ago.

“I tripped because you bumped into me,” Kyuhyun retorted defensively.

“That was because you stepped on my foot.”

“Hush Eunhyuk, one of us needs to be doing legitimate work around here and watching happy memories to be reminded how much our lives ,” Kyuhyun said airily, plugging in his earpieces and swivelling about in his chair, fingers flashing on the keyboard. Eunhyuk deflated, unable to refute either statement. From what he'd eavesdropped on, Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun weren't getting out any more than he was, feeling disappointed that their co-workers couldn't be bothered to make any sort of workplace connection. Zhou Mi had returned to his book with a weary air, while Kyuhyun hummed vaguely to himself as he tapped away at the computer. Sighing to himself, Eunhyuk retreated to the office space.

*

He spent most of the morning either attempting to do paperwork, or perform routine memory wipes on patients. Ex-fiancée that nobody wanted to remember, gone. Unhappy childhood memory of a wayward prom date, disappeared. Second place in a dream tennis competition, erased. Unhappy, embarrassing, unsatisfactory – he stumbled through decades worth of memories, picking out the pieces people felt no longer fit, pried them loose, and smoothened all the edges down so that nobody could notice the difference anymore. He was the calm, professional, detached medical supervisor who didn’t twitch when the patient burst into frantic tears over the boys-meets-girl beginning, or any other good stuff.

It had to go, he told them. I'm sorry, he told them, and didn't mean a word of it. They'd signed the forms. They knew what they were getting into. 

“And now I’d like you to close your eyes and count backwards from ten,” he said monotonously at the end of each session, reciting the company-approved speech, “And when you open them, you’ll be lying in your bed at home. Good day.” 

Then he returned to the familiar medical area to see Zhou Mi giving him a thumbs-up that the procedure had been successful, and the patient was promptly passed over to the transport team to bring them back to their homes. He noted Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun discussing where they were going to eat afterwards, and didn't bother to invite himself along. 

After an altogether tasteless lunch he glumly purchased from a cheap restaurant two blocks down, he settled down to get even more paperwork out of the way. It was at the moment when he was zoning out and idly doodling on the edges of his notebook that the head of the clinic knocked brightly on his door. Leeteuk stepped in, flashing that award-winning, magazine advertisement smile that usually meant Eunhyuk needed to do something. “How are we today, Doctor Lee?” Leeteuk asked.

“Same as usual,” Eunhyuk replied, chewing absently on the end of his pen and trying not to appear to be frantically concealing his doodles with his sweater paws.

“I would say not,” Leeteuk said in the manner of a game show host that’d been told the contestant was about to fall into the water. He produced a sheet of paper. “You’re late for your quarterly appointment with the psychiatrist and therapist.”

“Oh.” This wasn’t exactly surprising because he’d been getting progressively more passive-aggressive e-mails asking him to confirm a date for an appointment, which he’d either cunningly ensured went to his spam box, or deliberately ignored. Yixing was nice and all, but Eunhyuk really didn’t want to talk about his problems right now. Not that he had problems. Probably. “I’ve…had a lot of cases and it slipped my mind?” he lied.

Leeteuk sat down at the edge of his desk like a disapproving parent. “Hyukjae, you know that it’s strict policy that you need to get it done. After all, what’s our motto?”

“We’re emotionally-dead, soulless neurosurgeons fixing what’s wrong with your life?” Eunhyuk said dully.

“See, this is why Sungmin is in-charge of advertising and not you, even if he did insist our last advertising cycle be in pink.” Leeteuk clucked his tongue. “A peaceful mind is a good mind. That applies just as much to our employees. We don’t want something to go wrong during the neural link-up because of erratic behaviour or issues.”

“Yes, sir,” Eunhyuk mumbled shamefully, but not quite enough to make him feel like heading over to see Yixing right this moment. He’d seen snails with more erratic behaviour than him. He was fine. Probably.  

“Good man. I expect to see you in Yixing’s office before the end of the week.” Hi