As soon as the lecture was over, Hyukjae stormed over to Sungmin, where he was seated in the front row because he’d been late to class that day. Hyukjae glared at the bewildered student and ignored the looks from the other people around them. The look of betrayal on Hyukjae’s face was plain for all to see. “How could you?”

“How could I do what?” Sungmin asked back in a guarded tone, frowning lightly at the fuss Hyukjae was kicking up. “Calm down. What’s the matter?”

Hyukjae took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before asking, “Did you send roses to Physio?”

Sungmin raised an eyebrow. “I did.”

“Peach roses?”

“Yeah?”

“So it was you!”

Sungmin didn’t quite like Hyukjae’s hostile tone. “Yes it was me, I managed to find peach roses at Blooming—”

“You ing sent roses to Donghae after you promised you wouldn’t?”

The second the sentence was out of Hyukjae’s mouth, he regretted it immediately. One, because the look of confusion and eventual apprehension on Sungmin’s face told him everything how the older student felt about being shouted at like this, and two, because it didn’t make sense anymore now that he’d actually said that sentence out loud. 

“Not everyone is as obsessed with your anatomy professor as you think they are, Lee Hyukjae,” Sungmin answered coldly, before standing up and turning to leave. “Yes, I sent peach roses to Physio, because, in case you’ve forgotten, Kyuhyun works there too.”

“W-Wait, Min, I’m—”

“Sorry?” Sungmin sighed shakily. “Did you think I was trying to get between you and your professor again, after everything I said yesterday?”

“I— I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry, I’m an idiot. I know you wouldn’t.”

Sungmin just shrugged and grabbed his bag. “I’m off. Text me when you’ve figured things out, or don’t. See you later.”

Hyukjae thought he caught a flash of hurt in Sungmin’s eyes before the slightly shorter student hurried out of the classroom. He badly wanted to call Sungmin back, but he hesitated just a second too long, and by the time he’d snapped out of his daze, Sungmin was already long gone.

His gaze landed on a furry little pink notebook sticking halfway out of the desk drawer. Hyukjae was pretty sure that it belonged to Sungmin, since he loved the colour pink and refused to let anyone bully him out of it (“Pink started out as a manly colour!” Sungmin often screeched).

He fished it out of the drawer and opened the first page to look for Sungmin’s name — there it was. The book must have fallen out of Sungmin’s bag when he left. Hyukjae quickly closed the book and stuffed it inside his own bag, meaning to give it back to the elder student later during practice.

Thinking about the practice later and how awkward it would be if Sungmin was still angry at him (and rightly so), Hyukjae let out a huge sigh. He hadn’t meant to yell at Sungmin over the peach roses. He was just really worked up over the fact that Donghae posted a story about the bouquet of peach roses Hyukjae hadn’t gotten him and told the sender that he’d love him for a thousand years. 

Love.

He hadn’t even gotten to that stage with Donghae yet (making love didn’t count, in his opinion), and here the professor was, posting an ambiguous caption on his IG stories for everyone in his friend circle to see.

Sungmin hadn’t sent Donghae the flowers. He’d said before that he was looking for roses for Kyuhyun, which totally made more sense than the stupid scene Hyukjae just conjured up in his head. Hyukjae had been out of his mind to even think that Sungmin would do such a thing. But still, who sent the flowers to Donghae?

Looking at the huge bouquet of maybe twenty, thirty roses, Hyukjae had an inkling that the person who sent this was a certain Dean with the surname Choi. 

After finally calming down to think, he deduced that Prof Choi was the only one who would be able to spend so much on a bouquet without batting an eyelid. Hyukjae had already gone over his budget when he put down the minimum purchase of five peach roses for the custom order at his florist. A bouquet like what Donghae received easily cost a few hundred bucks more than Hyukjae’s weekly allowance.

The next question was, why did Prof Choi send Donghae flowers in the first place?

And thirdly, did Donghae even know that the bouquet wasn’t from Hyukjae?

After all, Hyukjae had only been sending Donghae single-stalk red roses before. Would the professor think that the same person who sent him those red roses also gave him that bouquet?

Hyukjae had another terrifying thought.

What if Donghae never even guessed that the red roses were from Hyukjae? If the anatomy professor never put two and two together, it meant that Donghae would be happily accepting (and maybe even anticipating) flowers from a ‘stranger’ while being in a relationship with Hyukjae.

Then the joke would be on him, because Donghae would be effectively ‘cheating’ on Hyukjae with… Hyukjae.

…And the sender of this peach-coloured rose bouquet who wasn’t Prof Choi.

Hyukjae groaned loudly and messed up his hair in frustration. To be frank, he knew that all he had to do was reply to Prof Lee’s story and ask him who he thought the bouquet was from. If Donghae guessed Hyukjae, which the student thought wasn’t quite possible, then he’d just keep quiet about the whole thing and pretend he didn’t just think that Donghae was ‘un-cheating’ on him. But if he guessed Prof Choi or somebody else, then Hyukjae was going to have to have a gentle talk with Donghae that night. 

They’d just promised to be exclusive with each other yesterday, after all. And Hyukjae was more than willing to still give Donghae the benefit of doubt.

~

@eunhyukee44 replied to your story.

Hey ❤️

Nice flowers

Who'd you get them from?

🤔🤔

🤭

It’s a secret ;)

Should i be worried?

🤔😂

Maybe not ;D

Can you keep a secret?

😳😳

I think I have a secret admirer

;D

Don’t tell my partner I said that ;)

😅😅

I’ll try

Gtg next class

See you later! ​​🥰

Donghae grinned stupidly as he stared at the roses on his desk for probably the twentieth time in the past half an hour. He was barely getting any work done, but he didn’t quite want to care. Being a sappy romantic at heart, Donghae was pleasantly shocked at what he thought was such a bold gesture from the student. And how cute of Hyukjae too, to follow up with him after he’d posted it on his stories, certainly for gauging his reaction from the surprise bouquet. 

The professor had decided to mess with Hyukjae a little in his IG DMs. It was fun teasing the student back for his little surprise, and Hyukjae must have gotten really embarrassed towards the end when he suddenly disappeared after saying he had class.

“At the rate you’re staring at the roses, hyung, you’re gonna burn a hole through them,” Kyuhyun said, suddenly appearing beside the professor’s desk and making him jump. Donghae quickly regained his composure after a bit and playfully glared back at his assistant. 

“It’s not like you haven’t done anything un-special to your roses either,” he teased back as he gestured at Kyuhyun’s peach bouquet that was already sitting in a water-bottle makeshift vase. Kyuhyun’s cheeks reddened slightly as Donghae continued talking. “I’ve looked up the meaning of peach-coloured roses online. Do you want to hear it?”

“Does it mean ‘I’m sorry’ or something like that?”

“Close,” Donghae replied with another wide grin. “It’s sincerity. Proof of your little boyfriend’s sincere love and feelings towards you. Or a sincere apology, in your case. I think.”

“You think.” Kyuhyun’s lips curled up into a gentle smile as he thought about it. “I guess I think so too. I mean, you don’t come across these colour roses on a regular basis. Minnie must have gallivanted all over the city to find them.”

“So you’ve forgiven him already?” Donghae asked in a gentle tone. “I don’t know what he did to you that warranted a rose apology, but you’ve been the happiest I’ve ever seen in the past week.”

“I’d stopped being angry at him since a long time ago,” Kyuhyun answered softly. “I was just worried about him.”

“Yeah, so worried that I dared not talk to you for a while because you were brooding so much,” the professor added with a laugh, squealing when Kyuhyun playfully grabbed him and started kneading his shoulders mercilessly. “K-Kyu, stop that! S-Stop, it’s ticklish! Nooooo! Have mercy on me!”

“Mercy is for the weak!” Kyuhyun said with a snicker.

“I see you guys are having lots of fun without me,” a familiar voice suddenly sounded from the doorway to the office.

Donghae and Kyuhyun both stopped manhandling each other and glanced at the door. Siwon stood there with a playful smirk on his face. He was folding his arms on his chest as he leaned against the door frame, seemingly waiting for an invitation to go in. 

“Siwon hyung?” Kyuhyun was the first to recover and quickly pulled himself away from Donghae. “What are you doing here?”

“Delivering more work to you,” the Dean said, lifting the small pile of paperwork in his hands to show them to the lab assistant. Kyuhyun rolled his eyes when Siwon plopped the sheaf of papers directly onto his desk. Of course, Siwon caught sight of the little bouquet of peach roses on Kyuhyun’s desk as well. “Ooh, pretty.”

“You should see the one Hae hyung got, someone bought him the whole shop,” Kyuhyun said with a snigger as he walked back to his desk to see what the papers were all about. “Oh, the experiment is scheduled for Friday? That’s fast.”

“A whole shop, eh? You think so?” Siwon chuckled. “Yeah, it would almost be midterms after that, so I thought we should hurry up with phase two this week, finish up the report by midterms, and then plan for phase three after their midterms.”

“Assuming that there would still be participants still willing to fap amidst all the exam stress, sure,” Kyuhyun added with a snide remark. 

“You shouldn’t be surprised at how ma