By the time the afternoon rolled around, Eunhyuk just wanted to get out of the clinic as fast as possible. It was the same thing over and over again – dead girlfriend they couldn’t get over. Embarrassing childhood memories of humiliation. Disappointing moment of rejection by a current crush. A click of a button there, a few careful cuts and there. No more bad. And always, he could sense his sore eyes and exhaustion, remembering the breakdown he'd had yesterday. 

It was amazing Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi hadn’t commented on how twitchy he was getting.

They probably didn't know him well enough to tell, and they'd worked together every day for two years now. Eunhyuk couldn't explain why that made him feel even more rotten. 

It practically reached a breaking point when he looked down at the name of his next patient. “Not him again,” he muttered, reaching for the office phone and frantically dialling the number for one of his colleagues. He really was going to scream if he had to go through with this. She didn't pick up, so Eunhyuk was forced to leave a garbled message requesting for her to come over. A few moments later, Doctor Song stepped into the room.

“What’s the matter?” Victoria asked, raising her perfectly plucked eyebrows at his desperate expression. Her coifed hair and tasteful but subdued jewellery always made Eunhyuk feel slightly intimidated. God, how did Victoria and Siwon manage to look like expensive healthcare professionals, while he looked like an interning university student that just photocopied things all day? It almost made him want to push up his sweater paws. Almost.

“Can you take this patient instead? Please?” Eunhyuk practically begged, altogether willing to get down on his hands and knees but fairly certain Victoria would just ignore it. She reminded him of girls in high school that he had never been able to impress. After staring at him sceptically for a moment, she sighed and held out a hand. He handed her the file with a feeling of deep relief.

“Kim Ryeowook? What’s wrong with him? Is he troublesome? Are you trying to push difficult work onto me?” Victoria gave him a shrewd look.

“This is his sixth time here,” Eunhyuk stated flatly. “I’ve erased his memory five times already.”

“Rebound or because it didn’t take?” She was flipping through the records now, frowning a little.

“Rebound. It’s always rebound – come on, you know the type,” Eunhyuk explained, “One of those guys obsessed with deleting all their embarrassing or disappointing or unhappy memories – failing tests in middle school, bad job interviews, sad days, things he said that weren’t right, moments where he was miserable or lonely – and he’ll delete a little bit each time, and then come back again, and again, and again, because I guess I didn’t satisfy him the last time. If I have to delete one more memory of his lousy life, I’m going to scream.”

Victoria eyed him for a moment, and then sighed. “Fine, but you have to take my case, then. Just a routine overview for a guy who’s deciding whether or not to go under.”

“Deal!”

At that moment, the small, rather child-like face of Kim Ryeowook approached the doorway. “I have a two o’clock with –”

“You’ll be having it with me instead; I’m Doctor Song,” Victoria cut in smoothly, carefully manoeuvring Ryeowook around so that he wouldn’t enter Eunhyuk’s office.

“But I was scheduled with Doctor Lee?”

“Doctor Lee is…” Victoria glanced over at Eunhyuk as though searching for an excuse. Eunhyuk flailed for a moment, and then threw himself over his desk in a poor impression of a sudden heart attack. “Passed out from exhaustion. If you’ll just come right this way, Mr Kim.”

“Shouldn’t we check on him?”

“Oh, he’ll be just fine. Now, I hear you have some memories of rejection in high school to remove?”

Their voices faded down the corridor, and Eunhyuk sighed. After several long minutes of trying to get his paperwork out the way, he groaned and dropped his pen, getting to his feet. He poked his head into the adjoining room out of boredom to check on what his colleagues were up to. Kyuhyun appeared to be playing StarCraft while occasionally cataloguing files, while Zhou Mi was flipping through another book and online shopping at the same time. Leeteuk would probably have been very disappointed with this, using his best "I've been let down" face that they taught you at company leadership workshops, but Eunhyuk had stopped caring. What they did, or rather, didn't do, was none of his concern. “The rent for my place is getting ridiculous,” Kyuhyun was saying, “I’m going to have to end up bumming at my parent’s place if this keeps up.”

“My landlord’s not much better,” Zhou Mi commiserated, “I’m almost certain she doesn’t like anyone Chinese, because she keeps insinuating that my visa should be expiring soon.”

“Yeah, you mentioned her last night." Glancing up from his game, he noticed Eunhyuk standing rather awkwardly at the door. "Oh, you're here. That was a good restaurant you missed, Eunhyuk.” 

“No Ryeowook for today,” Eunhyuk announced, feeling a little left out from these new shared memories. He shuffled his feet uncomfortably and hoped the subject wouldn’t come up again. 

It was just nice, caring about something again. 

Eunhyuk mentally told Mrs Kwon to shut up, politeness for your elders be damned. 

“There is a God,” Kyuhyun said decidedly, bringing Eunhyuk back to the present.

“He isn’t that bad,” Zhou Mi insisted, “I mean, there was that other guy last week… The really narcissistic one? What was his name?”

“Kim-something?”

“Was it?”

Jessica rapped sharply on the door, interrupting them. Eunhyuk scurried out of the room and sat himself down, trying to appear as though he were doing work. Jessica poked her head in and raised a scathing brow. Eunhyuk looked down at his desk and realised the medical report he was annotating was upside down. He flashed her pained smile and quickly turned it over, resting his sweater paws over it. “Mr Lee is here to see you. No, Doctor Song isn’t available right now, there’s been a slight mix-up, so Doctor Lee will be seeing you instead.”

In walked taco-eyed, slow-moving guy from the day before, carrying a file with him. The man blinked several times, mouth falling open. “You!” both of them cried. Eunhyuk flushed as he remembered what he’d said, resisting the urge to hide under his desk. Well, Leeteuk was not going to be happy about this if he found out, and that would inevitably lead to why he'd done it, and that meant a visit to Yixing. With great reluctance, he accepted the file from the guy, shielding his horrified face with it. Some professional he was. Well, he'd already known that; the patients didn't, until now. 

“It’s fine,” the guy spoke up mildly, “You had somewhere you needed to be.” 

“I’m still sorry for being so rude,” Eunhyuk mumbled, bowing his head.

“Really, it’s okay. I mean, you don’t have a face that’s easy to be angry with. I mean, it’s funny. I mean, not in a bad way. Just… Am I making things worse?” the guy asked, a dopey and somewhat bewildered expression overtaking his glum face.

“Yes,” Kyuhyun said as he walked past, empty coffee mug in hand. The guy opened his mouth again, and then shut it, instead staring awkwardly at the stack of business cards Eunhyuk had not taken with him. An embarrassed silence followed. 

Eunhyuk went even redder, reaching up to touch his face and check, then forcibly grabbing his own wrist to stop himself. Donghae stared at him like he'd grown a second head. Eunhyuk quickly scanned the contents of the file to prevent himself from saying or doing something dumb and completely messing up, ears burning. Lee Donghae, he read, born October 15. Same age as me.

“So…Mr Lee,” he began, putting down the file on his table, still open.

“Donghae.”

“Right. Donghae. You’re interested in undergoing a memory wipe, correct?”

Donghae cocked his head. “This is a memory wipe clinic, right?”

If that had come from Kyuhyun, Eunhyuk would have known it was sarcastic, but Donghae just sounded perplexed. Considering the fact that he’d been lost yesterday, Eunhyuk supposed it was a normal thing. He wondered idly if Donghae had ever gotten as far as the operating theatre before discovering that no, he didn’t want his liver removed, he’d thought this was the dentist.

“Ye-es,” Eunhyuk said, dragging out the sound. He flipped a page in the file and checked the medical report. “Right, you’ve passed all the physical criteria to undergo the procedure – no history of any health problems and drug allergies. No instances of prior brain damage. Not currently suffering from any mental illness or mood disorders or taking any medication that would impair your judgment.”

“It was a lot of tests,” Donghae commented vaguely. Eunhyuk wondered whether they’d been accurate, because Donghae seemed incredibly out-of-it, and more than a little unhappy. But then, his job was to work off what he'd been given. 

“Can’t get around it – we’re tampering with a really delicate part of your body. We need you to understand fully what’s going to happen to give your informed consent,” Eunhyuk explained, “So, that’s why I’ll be going over the whole surgery to you today, and all the risks or complications, and you can decide whether or not you want to go through with it.”

When Donghae didn’t respond and just continued to stare at his files on the table, Eunhyuk said tentatively, “Is that okay?”

Donghae blinked, and nodded. Clearing his throat self-consciously, Eunhyuk began. “What we do is identify the memories that you want removed within your brain, and put you to sleep. Risk number one: there’s a slim portion of patients who don’t wake up from the anaesthetic. Of course, you'll be checked over to ensure that the dosage we give you is appropriate for your body, but as always, it can happen. Just letting you know that. Following that, your recall process of these memories is retriggered – in other words, you’re going to experience the memories you want to forget. During this time, the surgeon involved is going to be there alongside you. We’ve found patients feel comforted knowing there’s a professional with them to make sure that they don’t panic and guarantee that the memory has been correctly identified and then removed.”

“You’ll be there?”

“Well, maybe not me,” Eunhyuk said evasively, concealing his trembling hands under the table. Why the does my dog’s name bother me so much?

“But someone’s going to be there to see the memory?” Donghae pressed.

Eunhyuk gave a thin smile, guessing that the memories might be of an embarrassing nature. Ten dollars it’s an ex-girlfriend, he thought cynically, judging from Donghae’s good looks. “Think of it like a museum tour guide – I’m there to…make sure you enjoy the ride. Don’t worry – you won’t remember I was even there.”

Donghae chewed his lip before nodding. Eunhyuk continued. “Don’t think of the process as deleting files within a computer – we’re more of shutting off your biological ability to remember that particular memory when you're in the process of recalli