Hyukjae returned to the cafe flustered and a little annoyed as he couldn't shake the image of that girl clinging on Donghae's arms out of his head. He entered the store only to find Yesung leaning over the counter flirting with Ryeowook. 

"Eunhyuk! Welcome back!" Ryeowook greeted him as he pushed Yesung's face away from his sight. "How did it go?"

Hyukjae tried to smile but was worried it might have come out more as a grimace. 

"Um...good," he said. "I think they really liked the food."

Yesung pouted at Ryeowook pushing him away but hearing Hyukjae's less than enthusiastic tone started to wonder if his plan had failed afterall. 

"Did you see anyone interesting?" He asked; his tone obviously hinting at Donghae. Hyukjae glared at him as an answer before stalking off to the back of the cafe. "Guess not," he muttered before following him. 

Hyukjae went towards the sink in the back and just randomly started doing the small stack of dishes. He was too upset to talk to anybody and cleaning things has always been his stress reliever. Angrily grabbing for one of the dishes placed on the sink, Hyukjae dumped it under water and started to scrub his frustrations away. Hyukjae wasn't even that upset at Donghae really. He was more upset at the fact that he wasn't allowed to be upset at what he saw because Donghae's single now. Donghae is allowed to date and flirt with whomever he wants. No matter how clingy or annoying or ty-

"Eunhyuk!" 

Hyukjae snapped out of his thoughts by Yesung's voice that he accidentally dropped the plate he was holding in the water. Seeing Yesung in front of him, Hyukjae scowled again before submerging his hands back under water and scrubbing the poor unsuspecting plates again. He was too annoyed at himself that he really didn't want to be further annoyed by the latter. 

"What do you want?" Hyukjae mumbled. 

"Why are you so grouchy?" Yesung asked but his eyes were wandering down towards the poor plates. Hyukjae was scrubbing them so hard that he was worried he might just break them in half with his bare hands. "I thought you'd be more excited or at least not look like you were carrying the world's problems on your shoulders when you got back."

Hyukjae dropped the dish he was holding to the other sink compartment with the clean water before he turned to Yesung with a huff. His hand on his waist and the other hand unintentionally splashing suds at the other as he pointed at him in frustration. 

"You! It's because of you!"

"Because of me? What did I do?" Yesung asked innocently - totally unaware of what fault he might have done. 

Hyukjae growled then grabbed another dirty plate to angrily scrub out. "You sent me there and I had to see him with-with-ugh!" Hyukjae couldn't even finish what he wanted to say and just pursed his lips together while he put all his energy out to the more-than-clean-and-already-shining plate. Yesung watched him like he was a crazy person and cautiously reached out to stop him from scrubbing the plates out of existence. 

"Okay, hey. Don't take out your frustrations on my plates. These were expensive." Yesung said as he carefully pulled Hyukjae away from the sink. Once he was sure that the latter was a safe distance away, he asked, "What happened? Didn't you see Donghae?"

"Oh, I saw him alright." Hyukjae confirmed bitterly. "I saw him and all the leech that he's surrounded with!"

"Leech?" Yesung repeated completely bewildered as to what Hyukjae meant. "What are you talking about?"

Hyukjae groaned in frustration at Yesung's cluelessness because, really, how much clearer can he be?

"Is everything okay?" Ryeowook interrupted by coming to join them. He looked back and forth between Yesung and Hyukjae and quickly sense the latter's growing agitation so he distracted Yesung by directing him to go back outside and cater to the customers. "I think Jongin needs some help in the front. Make sure the lobby looks presentable for customers."

Yesung looked doubtful as he still wanted to figure out what was going on with Hyukjae but Ryeowook insisted. He reluctantly obliged and once Ryeowook was sure that he was out of ear shot he looked at Hyukjae to observe him from afar. He waited for him to start talking first before saying anything. Instead, he went around Hyukjae and towards the dirty dishes where Hyukjae was letting his frustrations out on earlier and started doing it himself, but a lot gentler. He hummed a song while washing each plate and kept it at that. Hyukjae watched him from the side not quite sure what Ryeowook wanted but he could tell that he was just waiting for him to say something but he just couldn't figure out the right words to say.

Was he allowed to be jealous of someone who barely acknowledges his existence?

"You know," Ryeowook broke the ice for the both of them. "Yesung and I met in college. He was really popular back then too. He may seem silly at times with his clumsiness and general annoying personality," Ryeowook grinned when he heard Hyukjae chuckle, "but he's really charismatic and a lot of people really really liked him. I just got lucky that he picked me out of the crowd."

"I'm sure that's not true." Hyukjae commented as he himself recalled how Donghae just picked him out of the crowd when they were in high school. "There was probably something he liked about you beforehand."

Ryeowook finished washing the last dish before turning to Hyukjae with a huge smile. "You think so?"

Hyukjae found his childlike smile interesting. "Of course. I haven't known Yesung long but so far, he hasn't done anything without reason."

"You mean like him insisting you to make a delivery even though we've never delivered anything ever?" 

Hyukjae was stunned for a second but then it sunk that even though Ryeowook probably doesn't know what was going on with him, he has a strong enough intuition to be able to tell that Yesung's trying hard to play matchmake. Not that he was any good at hiding it because he's been really very obvious about the whole thing. Laughing sheepishly at Ryeowook's implied guess, Hyukjae's mind finally forgot about the little incident with Donghae earlier. 

"I might not know a lot about your situation but Yesung says it's important that you don't give up, so don't." Ryeowook encourage. "Things will work out in the end I'm sure."

There really wasn't much that Hyukjae could say after that so he just nodded his head in agreement with a smile of his own. Besides, he still had 40 days with Donghae. The fight's not over yet...right?

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

Donghae was going over several proposals that was handed to him at his desk when a knock at his door interrupted his thoughts. He looked up and saw his secretary peering her head in with a familiar face behind her smiling at him. 

"Someone came to visit you," Sooyeon joked before opening the door completely to let the man behind her in. "I'm about to go on my lunch! You should go take yours as well."

Donghae rolled his eyes at her playful attitude but did give his guest a warm welcoming smile. "Hey, Kyuhyun. What are you doing here?"

"I just came to see how you were doing," he answered while walking up to his desk; eyes scanning over the scattered papers everywhere. "You read all this?"

"I skim the important parts." Donghae placed the folder he was holding to give the latter his full attention. "How are you doing?"

"Hanging in there. You know it's been tough at the studio ever since..." Kyuhyun let the rest of his words hang in the air as he didn't want to trigger any ill feelings from Donghae by bringing up Hyukjae's name unnecessarily. Donghae was able to catch on his drift anyways and smiled sadly. The atmosphere between them quickly dampened so Kyuhyun quickly changed the subject. "Anyways, wanna grab lunch?"

Donghae observed Kyuhyun closely and knew there was something else he wanted to say so he agreed. 

"Sure," he answered then pushed himself away from his desk and walked out with Kyuhyun. It must be important since Kyuhyun doesn't really seek out his company much ever since the accident. Donghae feels a little guilty knowing he probably contibuted to that thinking byt not making too much of an effort in telling him otherwise. 

Kyuhyun chose a Korean restaurant that was known for their food fusion specialty of Korean food mixed with Western and South East Asian cuisine. It was the furthest he could think of so that there wouldn't be any accidental overlap with anyth