Donghae hummed quietly to himself while staring at his computer. He stared at his Facebook page, the mouse cursor blinking repeatedly by the search bar waiting for Donghae to type something, but the other was still too busy biting his lower lip, contemplating as to whether or not he should type in the name of the person he wants to look for in the search bar. 

Lee Hyukjae. 

Such a simple name but somehow even just the thought of saying his name was giving him anxiety. 

"Aish. I just want to know what school he goes to....that's not too weird, right? I mean...it's not like I'm stalking him..."  Donghae said to himself as a form of encouragement. "Yeah. I'm just doing this for research. Nothing else." Donghae pursed his lips together and started typing Hyukjae's name on the search bar. "Just research."

Lee. Hyuk. Jae.

Donghae's lips formed into a pout when he saw the 700+ results that occurred on his Facebook page. He narrowed it down to just "people" then the location to Seoul near his city. The results narrowed down to 126 but even with his careful eye and slow scrolling, none of the photos he saw even remotely came close to how he pictured how the other would be so he sighed disappointedly to himself before exiting out of the page. 

How did he picture Hyukjae?

Donghae heaved out another heavy sigh as he leaned his back against his chair and looked up at the ceiling just feeling midly defeated. He tried to recall his conversations with Hyukjae from before and from those small bits of interaction, formed his own image of the other in his head. 

To him, Hyukjae was someone that had frazzled messy hair. He wore thick framed glasses but rather than block the features of his face it actually accentuated it. The glasses would be placed right by his cheekbones and he'd have that annoying sneering smile on his face and probably some highlights cause he's for sure the rebel kind. Donghae chuckled lightly at his own imagination. 

"Nah... he probably has his hair bleached like an anime." Donghae smirked and started picturing Ichigo from Bleach. "I bet he looks really funny in person. Ha-Ha-Ha." 

Donghae's loud laughter caught the attention of his brother who was passing by his door with his phone at hand. 

"Donghae?" He called while looking around Donghae's room to see if any of his friends were in there with him. "What are you doing? Is someone here with you?"

"Huh? Oh, hey, Hyung." Donghae swiveled around his chair and greeted Donghwa. "Nah, I'm just chilling here by myself. What's up?"

"Why were you laughing so loud then?"

"Hm? Oh....that..uhh," Donghae chuckled sheepishly and scratched the side of his head trying not to look too embarrassed. "I-It's nothing, Hyung. I was...I was just thinking of something," he tittered, then quickly asked a follow up question in order to distract him. "Oh! Hyung, have you heard that they're restricting travels this year? I don't think we're going to be able to go to our trip in Sweden." 

Lucky for Donghae, it worked. Donghwa sighed then looked at his phone with an obvious look of disappointment. Despite Donghae being the one who got the most excited for their trip, it was Donghwa who became distraught the most when he got the notification of their flight getting canceled. 

"Yeah, I know. The airline just emailed me about our tickets. They're not going to refund us the money but they gave us this voucher to use for when things go back to normal again."

"A voucher?" Donghae's brows raised with curiosity before tiltign his head to the side and showing Donghwa one of his encouraging smiles in hopes that it would help boost his mood a bit. "Well, that's good, isn't it? That means we can still go for our trip when we reschedule."

Donghwa looked at Donghae and couldn't help but return the smile his dongsaeng was giving him. "Yeah, you're right, Hae. Once things go back to normal, we'll go."

Donghae grinned at him then turned away from Donghae after hearing his phone beep with notification from his KaKao application. Donghwa watched Donghae for a few seconds before ruffling his hair then laughing lightheartedly when the latter whined at his hair getting messed up before turning around himself and leaving Donghae's room. The latter quickly fixed the mess Donghwa made, although there really was nothing to fix, and read the message in their groupchat. 

strongest_Kangin: Yah! @LEEdonghae is @kimchullie telling the truth?? Did you really go to meet that Lee Hyukjae person!?!

kimchullie: @strongest_Kangin YAH! PABO-YAH THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAID

strongest_Kangin: @kimchullie why are you shouting at me 😤😤😤 I was just asking Donghae a question

kimchullie: I'M NOT SCREAMING

JaeKimJoong: You left your caps on again, Hyung. 

kimchullie: MY SCREEN CRACKED CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT

strongest_Kangin: 😂😂😂😂😂

kimchullie: OFF, KANGIN

kimchullie: AND THAT TIME I MEANT TO SCREAM IT!!!

JaeKimJoong: @LEEdonghae but eyy, for real? Did you meet with that person? Is he real??

LEEdonghae: 🙄 yeah...but nothing happened. He was a no show

SungminLee: what!? you got stood up??

strongest_Kangin: 😂😂😂

SungminLee: how'd you get stood up?

strongest_Kangin: I told you he was getting catfished. None of you ever believe me

LEEdonghae: @strongest_Kangin hyung! it's not like that!

kimchullie: THAT MF BETTER NOT SHOW HIS FACE TO ME IF HE KNOWS WHAT'S GOOD FOR HIM

JYunho: ...why is Heechul hyung upset?

JaeKimJoong: he's not. he dropped his phone again and broke the screen

kimchullie: I DIDN'T DO IT ON PURPOSE. THE CONCRETE BROKE MY SCREEN NOT ME

Donghae burst out laughing then immediately caught himself. He took a quick look behind him to make sure Donghwa wasn't anywhere near his room before stifling his laugh and typing in his reply in the group. Their group chat quickly veered away from Hyukjae as the topic now that they were all ganging up on Heechul and how he he had broken yet another phone. Once or twice might be considered an accident but when it's your sixth broken phone, and second one of that year, it kind of starts to reflect on your character a bit. 

Donghae grinned and was busy immersing himself with their chat when all of a sudden his phone started vibrating. He looked at the caller and his eyes widened seeing those familiar series of numbers showing at the top of his screen. 

"Oh...what do I do? What do I do?" Donghae groaned, his thumb twiddling over the screen of his phone, torn between answering or ignoring the caller. He furrowed his brows together and decided that no, he won't answer Hyukjae's call to him right now as punishment. "Tsk. serves you right for not showing up, pabo. Hmph." 

Donghae felt triumphant and swiped the missed call notification out of his screen and resumed his group chat with his friends. However, this time, his attention was already split between his friends and thinking about the conversation he could have had. 

Hyukjae will call again... right?

Donghae took a momentary pause before exiting out of his Kakao and staring back at his computer screen. His mind thinking about whether or not he should search for Hyukjae's name again and see what comes up. Maybe...this time, he'd find someone closer to his age and that lives around his area...

Did he want Hyukjae to call him again?

Donghae pondered over that question for a while but when he finally realized what his answer was, he frowned and felt even more confused. 

...why?

~+~+~+~+~+~

Hyukjae and Kyuhyun both shared a look together when they heard the automated voicemail finish its message followed by a beep. Junsu, who was sitting across from the two of them, crossed his arms together and raised a curious eyebrow. 

"What the heck? Are you two playing a prank on me?"

"No, Su! Really- Donghae is real!" Hyukjae insisted one more time and crossed his eyebrows as he looked at the device in his hands, tempted to redial the number over again. "I'm really serious. Even Kyuhyun has spoken with him."

"Well..." Kyuhyun did a quick breath intake before putting his hands behind him and leaning against it. "I told you. Whoever it was I spoke to on the phone, it wasn't Donghae."

Junsu's curious brow was kept raised as he looked back and forth between Kyuhyun and Hyukjae. Somehow, starting to get worried for his friend who seemed to be developing some sort of obsession with the device he found in their attic. 

"Hyuk-ah, why don't you take a break from your phone for a while," Junsu suggested and reached for the phone in Hyukjae's hands. The other saw what Junsu was reaching for and caught himself tightening his grip on said device. Hyukjae was so startled by his own actions that he ended up almost throwing the phone to Junsu. 

"Maybe that Donghae person really has superpowers cause you, my friend, are whipped."

"Yah!" Hyukjae reached over to Kyuhyun and hit his leg for saying such an outrageous thing. "I'm not!" 

"You've had that phone for over a week and ever since then not once have you stopped talking about Donghae. The guy was a no-show, Hyuk. He's obviously just some AI virus that probably never got deleted." Kyuhyun reasoned then reached over to Junsu and took the phone from him so he could analyze the device further by taking a closer look at it. "It makes sense why the owner would abandon it." 

"The one-phone-one-connect initiative didn't happen until 2030, ." Hyukjae retorted then stole his phone back from Kyuhyun's hands. "This phone came out in 2020, a decade before the green bill got approved. Whoever owned this phone before could have just gotten a different device."

Junsu took his phone out and searched something really quick before coming out with his own aha!moment. 

"According to Papago, during the 21st century, due to the rampant capitalist market, cell companies came out with a brand new phone each year contributing 3.5% to global warming. After approving the New Green Deal Initiative, UN allied countries allocated new innovative ways to help lessen population carbon emission." Junsu scrolled through the screen, his eyes quickly scanning over the details of the article he was reading before continuing out loud with the part he d