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Jongin chases gold mines, and Kyungsoo’s just there for the ride.

It’s only the two of them, exploring ancient ruins under the endless, stretching blue. They stay in run-down motels by day and head out by night, past the flashy stripper clubs, the cheap bars that smell of alcohol and broken dreams.

By dawn, it’s back on the road to the next destination - a collapsed building scattered with shards of glass and dusty photographs the glass once held. Jongin picks up a stone and bounces it on his palm, and Kyungsoo picks his way silently through the rubble, watching, observing.

Jongin keeps a memoir from each place they visit, and this time it’s a plastic glow-in-the-dark star. He uses a rock to carve their initials into the wall.

In this moment, in this here and now, Kyungsoo feels better than alright. This is how they leave their mark, with a blazing trail of KJ + DK, burned into a scattered map formed from hundreds of lonely structures.

There’s nothing he would change.

And then the smoldering sunset is swallowing them up, and they’re gone, gone into the crazy world.

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