Waking up at half past two in the afternoon, Hyukjae feels well-rested. He messaged his fans on Bubble saying he just woke up and bantered a bit with them who were arguing that he shouldn’t greet them with “Good morning” when it’s already afternoon. Feeling light-hearted, he decided to keep his spirits up by taking a relaxing bath.

As he was contently lying in the bathtub and browsing his phone, he suddenly remembered Kyuhyun’s remark earlier about Donghae’s post. Curious about the man’s social media account, he tried to search for the name Lee Donghae on Twitter and Instagram, but too many results turned up.

Thinking hard, he realized that if Kyuhyun saw his post, then he was following Donghae. But Kyuhyun is only following select celebrities on Instagram and Twitter. So maybe it’s his private Twitter account? Kyuhyun must really have felt comfortable with Donghae then if he's following him using that account. He then proceeded to check out the people Kyuhyun is following in his private account, and bingo! There it is.

Donghae

@aidenlee

Unfortunately, the account was private. His profile photo is of him with his back facing the camera. Checking his profile even if it’s private, his header is another picture of the sea.

How much does this guy love the sea?

Pushing his luck, he opened Instagram again and entered aidenlee, hoping that he’s using the same handle. And yes, he is! But damn, the account is also private. Surely it would be weird if he follows Donghae out of the blue despite the man asking him to be his friend, right?

Sighing, Hyukjae clicks at his profile again.

What’s with the name ‘aidenlee’ though?

Curiosity is eating at Hyukjae and he realizes that he literally went through all those measures just to find out Donghae’s social media accounts.

Looking at his Instagram profile photo again, Hyukjae lets out a snort. It’s of Donghae taking a mirror selca but the phone is hiding his face.

Is this man purposely hiding his handsome face in his profile pictures so the world can’t see it?

Still debating if he should follow Donghae or not, his phone chimed in notification. Speaking of the devil (or thinking of the angel), it’s Donghae who sent the final recorded versions of the songs they recorded yesterday, now already finished.

Right, they will meet again tomorrow for the choreography meeting, and then many days and weeks after. He’d have plenty of time to get to know him better without resorting to stalking him on social media……And in the first place, why is he even doing this?

Ugh, what the hell.

Shaking off his thoughts about Donghae, he decided to finish bathing and immerse himself in movies instead.

Hours later, he was distracted from his movie marathon when Kyuhyun arrived with Shindong, carrying groceries. They were loudly talking, Shindong teasing Kyuhyun about something. Hyukjae hurriedly went to the kitchen to join them.

“What’s up?” He asked just as he was checking out the plastics if Kyuhyun bought something for him.

“Ya! What are you doing?” Kyuhyun asked him, annoyed.

“Did you buy milk for me?”

Shindong laughed. “Probably not. He was busy being paranoid the entire time.”

Hyukjae looked at Kyuhyun who’s wearing a frown. “What happened?”

Kyuhyun huffed and sat down. “Well, I was at the supermarket, wearing my usual hat and mask. And there’s this person who I kept seeing in every aisle I went to, wearing a hoodie with its hood up and a mask.”

Hyukjae gasped. “A sasaeng?”

“I thought of that at first, but I realized that that person arrives at the aisle I need to go before me. So the person isn’t following me at all, but rather predicting where I was about to go.”

Shindong snickered at that and Kyuhyun shot him a glare.

“And then?” Hyukjae prompted Kyuhyun to resume.

“By the seventh time that happened, I was already freaking out. Trying to act indifferent, I walked past that person and reached for a container of gochujang above that person’s head, gauging if they would react. They didn’t. And as I did so, I saw that the person was checking something on the phone. I was a lot taller so I was able to look at the phone effortlessly.”

“So? What did you see?” Hyukjae asked, impatient at Kyuhyun’s penchant for telling stories dramatically.

“The person was looking at the recipe I sent on Bubble.”

Hyukjae laughed along with Shindong while Kyuhyun looked amused but exasperated.

“Turns out that’s why we were both going on the same aisles. The person was looking at my recipe after all.”

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