"Hyung!" Donghae called out to Heechul as soon as he saw him hanging out at their usual meeting spot in the morning. His face was scrunched up in slight distress at the lack of sleep he got last night. After his strange phonecall with the "Hyukjae" fella, he couldn't get the name out of his head, and after twisting and turning around on his bed for a while, he was able to manage a good three hours in before going to school. 

"Oh, Hae, what's up?" Heechul greeted him with a smile which slowly dropped and changed into a confused stare as he took in Donghae's look before his eyes. "What the hell happened to you? Why do you look like you just got hit by a truck?"

Donghae scowled at his comment and took the phone Heechul gifted him out of his pocket and waved it in the air. "This! Because of  this 'thing' I couldn't get any proper sleep last night!"

Heechul looked at the device in Donghae's hand and chuckled lightly as he miscontrued Donghae's meaning completely. 

"Well, Hae, I know cellphones can be addicting but you just gotta give yourself some time to pull away from social media so you don't end up looking like a crazy person."

"It's the operator!" Donghae argued, his voice louder than he intended it to be but the looks his scream gathered went completely unnoticed by him as he was too tired to care about anything at the moment. His mind still echoing the name "Hyukjae" in his head and the ever so increasing annoyance he felt inside at the nagging feeling that he should recognize that name but couldn't. "He called me again last night and it's really bugging the daylights out of me." 

Heechul looked at him with a curious raised eyebrow. "The operator? Called you again?" He repeated, not quite sure if Donghae was pranking him or being completely serious. Judging by the distress he was in, he couldn't help but feel it might be the latter, although...Donghae did join the drama club last semester so he could have just gotten his acting skills to be better. He certainly sounded and looked convincing enough. "Why would the operator call you at night?" 

"I don't know!" Then, as though to prove his point, he unlocked his phone and dialed to access his voicemail. "Look. I'll prove it to you. Maybe if you talk to him then he'll leave me alone."

Heechul was now worried for Donghae but remained silent and just waited for whatever it was Donghae wanted to show him. He watched as his dongsaeng put the phone on speaker then waited with him to hear what the voicemail has to say. 

Welcome to your voicemail. The voicemail system has not yet been set up. If you would like to record your welcome greeting press-

"No!" Donghae ended the call then dialed it again. The sound of the automated recording of the company played again which caused him to groan out loud while Heechul frowned and slowly attempted to take Donghae's phone out of his hand. 

"Uhm...okay, Hae. Maybe you should take a break from your phone for a while."

"I'm not lying, hyung!" He argued. "There really is someone that keeps calling me using my number."

"And I believe you." The monotone sound in Heechul's voice implied differently. "Let's get you to class for now before you spiral out even more." 

~+~+~+~

Much like Donghae, Hyukjae wasn't able to sleep that well after ending their phone call. Despite his best efforts, the feeling of overwhelming shame and embarrassment was just too much and too hard to ignore. Once morning came, he lazily got out of bed and blindly turned off the alarm on his phone, not at all interested to see how much sleep he lost last night and just forced himself to get up out of bed. He stretched his arms out while yawning, trying to get rid of the sleepiness he felt in him followed by some of his routine morning stretches. He was in the middle of his morning twists when his eyes landed on the old phone he found in the attic and stopped. 

The awkward conversation he had with Donghae before echoed in his head that made him bite his lower lip in hesitation. None of it made sense to him and quite frankly, he feels like he might be losing his mind just a little. 

"This is crazy..." he muttered under his breath as he once again found himself gravitating towards the phone and staring at it. He chewed on the inside of his lower lip as he debated whether or not he dared to access the voicemail message system again and risk accidentally speaking to Donghae again. He hummed quietly to himself as he debated and tried to muster the strength of dialing that one number down while mentally preparing himself for the worst. Hyukjae's pondering took more than a minute as the next thing he heard was his sister's routine loud banging on his door telling him to get up. 

"Yah! Lee Hyukjae! Get your out of the bed and get ready for school. I'm not gonna be late for work again because of your lazy !"

Hyukjae scowled and glared at her through his closed door. "Just leave without me!"

He heard her scoff followed by one final bang against his door. "Get ready!" 

Hyukjae sighed and rolled his eyes. He placed the phone down back on his bedside table and annoyingly grunted out loud as he opened his bedroom door and made sure that Sora was able to hear him. She turned around from her way to the kitchen to give him the finger to which Hyukjae happily reciprocated. The chaos in the Lee household started bright and early as usual. 

~+~+~+~

"I'm telling you guys It's true!" Donghae insisted while trying his best to repress the frustrated groan that threatened to come out of him. "His name is Hyukjae and whenever he calls me it shows up on my screen as my own number. He said he was just prank calling me but I don't believe him at all. There's something weird going on with this phone."

His friends all shared a troubled look together seeing how distressed Donghae was about his situation. It already lunch time and Donghae still hasn't let up talking about Hyukjae and how his and Hyukjae's phone are connected by "an outside force" and his theory of Hyukjae being an alien threatening to mess with his mind was a new kind of crazy talk, even for Donghae. 

"Donghae," Yunho called to him carefully when Donghae looked like he was about to cry. "Are you sure it was your number? It was probably just a similar one. The last digit was probably different. You know it's impossible for two people to have the same number, right? That's a glitch a multi-billion dollar company can't afford to make." 

Donghae face palmed himself before ultimately dropping his head down on the lunch table and wrapping his arm around himself. Yunho patted the top of his head softly while looking around their table and asking with his eyes what the heck should they do? Jaejoong shrugged his shoulders with the rest doing the same. 

"Let's go get lunch," Sungmin suggested while grabbing Changmin and Shindong's arms to get out of the table with him. "We'll be right back."

The three of them left and as soon as they were out of sight, Heechul took the initiative of grabbing Donghae's phone out of his hand and accessing his voicemail. Donghae barely lifted his head up to see what his hyung was doing with Jaejoong, Yunho, and Hankyung all looking at him curiously to see what he was planning to do. As soon as the automated recorded voice message was heard, Heechul pressed the speaker icon on Donghae's phone followed by pressing the number '2.'

"At the tone, please record your voicemail greeting. Once you are done recording, you may hang up or press 1 to listen to your recording."

*Beep*

"Yah! Listen here Hyukjae -- you better stop harrasing my dongsaeng before I come at you and claw your eyes out. It's 2020 for goodness sake; find a more creative way to pester people!" 

Donghae's eyes went wide and immediately dove across the lunch table to grab his phone out of Heechul's hand and ending the call. Yunho and Jaejoong h