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They are running out of coins.
Just a few jenny left, the bronze and silver laying flat on Mark’s palm, sliding and clinking against each other as he shifts them around with this thumb. It won’t last another three bus trips for one, let alone two people. Still, they have so far to go and Mark thinks of ways he can bring some cash in again, in this quiet and desolate land. No part time jobs or matches to win here. Mark and Donghyuck have ridden far out of the city.
The bus rumbles on the sandy road and sways side to side. Motion sickness would cling to you like second skin if you weren’t careful, and thankfully Mark is very careful, and Donghyuck even more so. Donghyuck doesn’t need the pills to stay alert and awake, not giving in to the repetitive motions of the shake, his body and mind so strong the dear sickness would not dare approach in his direction. Even with his eyes closed, Donghyuck is alert, nen flowing around his silhouette like a clear river so prepared, as if he’d wake up to a blade at his heart and not even flinch. Mark doesn’t know if it’s the unrelenting determination and bravery in Donghyuck that gets him through years and years of dangerous, life threatening training, or if it’s the training that gives him such. Mark only knows now, as he looks at Donghyuck, face tilting ever so slightly to the right, that Donghyuck should look peaceful as he sleeps, not cold, the monotonous facade and schooled expression of his that never gives his thoughts away.
Donghyuck, in his army green t-shirt and leather jacket, purple locks of hair falling gently over his eyes, opens his mouth to speak. “Mark.”
Mark freezes, because he hasn’t been staring, he’s sure of it. And if there’s one thing he knows it’s that gazes are the easiest to feel when hunting your prey and one slip up could have them running away. Mark is good at keeping his gaze, hiding it. Mark is a good hunter. “Yeah?” Mark looks away, into the aisle of the bus, the four or five other crazed people on this bus, as crazy as them. The seats are cushioned, thick and comfortable but Mark’s ass is starting to hurt from sitting so long, so he shifts. Hopes it doesn’t make him look suspicious with the way Donghyuck sounds like he’s not having it.
“Sleep,” Donghyuck says, eyes still closed, unmoving. The setting sun outside burns into the sand, the last surge of heat for the day before the icy cool picks up. Mark is not sure if he’ll see another sun in the next week though, with where they’re heading. The wind blows and blows, throwing the finest grains of sand onto the glass window of the bus, blocking the view, but there is not much to see anyway, except the way the sun rays rest on Donghyuck’s nose and cheek, kisses it like a goodbye.
“Later,” Mark mutters. “I’m too restless.” He keeps the coins in his purse, stuffing it into his bag. “We don’t have much money left, by the way.” He takes out his hoodie, knowing the night will come soon. Grabs his back between his boots and brown cargo pants right before it falls forward, pulled by the shake of the bus.
“We won’t need it anymore,” Donghyuck says as Mark slips his grey hoodie on. It’s thick, and he’ll have to deal with the heat right now but he’ll thank himself later when the bus begins to shiver and he’s already trapped enough heat in him to not feel the ice immediately.
“What?” Mark asks, and looks at Donghyuck again. This time, his eyes are open, the lazy rise of eyelids just enough to see clearly, narrow and staring into the distance.
“This is it.”
Mark pauses, hands tugging at the bottom of his hoodie from how he was adjusting it earlier. He blinks, debating the possibility, then frowns. He continues adjusting his hoodie.
“You say that all the time.”
-
When they step off the bus it’s white, covered in snow just like the rest of the area. No more sand. A few crazed souls.
The bus driver doesn’t wish them luck, just stares with pity in his eyes like he’s seen men step foot here a thousand times and never return. He drives off fast, quick to escape, quick to return back before the sky paints black and he’ll have no choice but to stay here for the night. Mark turns to the warm yellow light, a contrast to the bleak of grey and white and slightest tinge of blue, and the solid blue sky. The stage right before it turns dark blue, then darker and darker until black, save for a thousand white stars that make no difference to the flakes of snow against the material of Mark’s hoodie before they melt. The stage usually lasts minutes. Today, the day seems to stretch longer.
The yellow light doesn’t flicker like Mark expects, the sign ‘Come Cozy Inn’ like a beacon, drawing in creatures, hungry, lonely and dazed. Cold. Donghyuck looks at the brown cottage, somehow large enough to fit everyone who's ever come here at one time, although it’s not a lot, because you’d have to be insane to come here. The world has crazy, many of them, but only a few insane. There’s steam puffing out from two chimneys on two ends of the building, the sight of it warms Mark on the inside with the idea of fire. He would love to settle beside a fireplace right now. Then Donghyuck looks away and turns his body front, to beyond the cottage on Mark’s right and Mark loses the heat in his bones.
“Let’s go,” Donghyuck says like a gentle wind, the puff of air visible when he opens his mouth. His cheeks are a little red. Mark looks off into the distance too, and he can’t see anything yet, but…
“Okay,” Mark nods, trudging along in his boots when Donghyuck starts off first, not waiting for his reply.
He sees it later, when they’ve walked at least a kilometer, but Mark knows he still should have seen it earlier anyway because there’s really nothing here but a few trees and a whole lot of snow. Mark still has to put in a relatively large effort in his gyo to see the small hut, and wonders in his head how Donghyuck had managed to spot it so easily so far away.
“Is this it?”
“Yeah.”
Donghyuck stops to admire the building before they reach its doorstep. “Beautiful,” he whispers, eyes shining with wonder. It’s metallic, or at least it looks so because it doesn’t make sense to have metal in the middle of a snow desert. Under the stars it shines, glistening, the skinny rectangular cave of it majestic and even more so with the treasure within it. It is beautiful, Mark agrees, and sad that only a few can see it. “What do you think is inside?” Mark asks, curious.
“If my guts are right,” Donghyuck, whose guts is always right, says, “nothing.”
Mark raises a brow. “Nothing?”
“Nothing on our list, at least.” Donghyuck shoves his hands in his pockets. “A hint to our next destination, probably, to get the veil.”
Mark dares to pout, just a little. In the two months that he’s spent every waking moment (and not) with Donghyuck, he’s held back on his expressions, trying to tone it down for Donghyuck, but now he’s too tired and too cold and they had a chance to ‘Come Cozy Inn’, as the sign had said before but now they don’t. “You said this was it.”
Donghyuck starts walking again. (It was, but it wasn’t the ‘it’ Mark was thinking of and they just have so many ‘it’s, so many things to do and find as a hunter and Donghyuck only cares that it’s one of them. It is true, however, that they won’t be needing the coins anymore, because there is no currency here and no business strong enough to withhold it, out in the edges of the Sphorm Islands claimed like a no-man’s land.)
Donghyuck knocks on the door, and then seeing no knob, pushes it open. “I say that all the time.”
-
Donghyuck is a hunter, one of the best, and that’s how Mark was first introduced to Donghyuck years ago.
They never say what type of hunter. Just ‘a hunter’ and when Mark asks, the people who tell him stories of this legendary boy don’t know either. So he’s heard tales upon tales, how this boy scavenged the seas, knows the oceans like their god. How this boy doesn’t find relics, they go to him instead, because he’s the only one worthy of uncovering them. How this boy once saved the Kingdom of Tanbur, with his affinity to creatures of any kind. The dragon threatening to destroy the kingdom had bowed, wings slowing to a calm, head low as he threaded right above the ground for it seemed it did not think worthy to step on the ground Lee Donghyuck was on. The nineteen year old boy had only looked upon the beast, this gigantic beast the size of the castle and said, “i’ll play with you instead.”
Mark hadn’t even known it was him, years later, stumbling into the early stages of finally completing the ‘real Hunter Exam’, bumping strangely into some dude in the corridor and cursing under his breath. “Sorry,” still he says, because it’s not right to be rude even if you had been there first and the sudden weight of their presence only occurs to you when you bump into them mid-zetsu, and they curse back.
They don’t say sorry back, however, and Mark is pulled by the arm with a hand over his mouth and a glare that silences him right before he can even make a sound. “Don’t do anything,” the boy had hissed, and Mark can feel his hand on his mouth but cannot sense him there, even when he sees him. The boy had brought back his zetsu after a split second, and Mark marvels in awe. It’s the rookie in Mark that tells him to hide his presence with zetsu too, but the boy has clockworks faster than his. “Don’t. If you hide your presence, they’ll feel something missing.”
Mark nods, vigorously enough that the boy understands Mark won’t make another sound, and lets go of him. Mark looks around frantically making sure he can’t be seen, trying to hide behind the pillar that the boy is leaning against. “They can’t see or hear you,” the boy shakes his head in a whisper, “but there are people around, so don’t make a sound.”
“Who--” Mark starts, looking around for the person that the boy might be following. “Are you following someone?”
“Me?” The boy raises a brow. Mark nods. The boy opens his mouth to say something, but is interrupted by the rustling of leaves behind them. The boy whips around so fast, completely disregarding Mark to look at the opposite end of the courtyard, a sweltering afternoon under the hot sun. Mark inches closer to get a look. From among the bushes emerges a purple creature, covered in glitter and glowing in the light. It looks like the smaller version of a pegasus, stretching its legs and hooves as it yawns in contempt, unaware of any humans nearby. Mark wonders why it’s not bothered by his presence; wouldn’t it feel the danger of a human? Not that Mark knows anything about this creature, but guesses from the way the boy holds his breath even when concealing his presence, like a single puff of air could send that creature flying away and never coming back. Mark guesses this is rare.
Mark also guesses, that he must have been lucky, extremely lucky, the next week when he discovers the identity of the boy, roaming around in the City of Flame for the first time and sees the name Lee Donghyuck large, capitalised on a billboard. And a face exactly like the one he’d seen up close, eyes filled with ice, fire and stone. Mark thinks of the purple creature and it’s beauty, and Mark thinks of purple everytime after that. Mark discovers it was a fairy, very rare and known for its beauty, and Mark thinks of the legendary boy he had only dreamed of meeting and doesn’t know that he thinks of the boy much more beautiful than that fairy.
-
The snow stops. It stops in the morning like it should, and comes again like a nightfall accustomed only for this land of Neturo.
Donghyuck wears the padded jacket like second skin. Mark gathers the mysterious bag that has been granted to them, materialising in the middle of the night for them to wake up to. He looks around the room one last time. They probably won’t come back to this hut; it’s completed its purpose. He’s grateful for the warmth, wood walls and flooring on the inside, wood all around and there’s even a fireplace, too, right on the opposite end of two single sized beds in the room.
It’s a bright blue light that grabs both of their attention, beaming up like an inverted cone from between the wood boards in the middle of the ground. A piece of paper materialises within it, floating and hovering in mid air, the buzz of the blue light vibrating throughout the walls and their bones. Mark looks at Donghyuck, the way the blue reflects unto his face, making him glow, even though he doesn’t really need it to glow at all. It shines in his eyes, this hunger, watching as the envelope is now clearly formed before him. Donghyuck grabs it gingerly between his thumb and index finger, hand extending fully into the light. When it’s safe in his hands, the light disappears, as if eaten whole, a gasp and a careless whisper into the night. Except it’s morning, and a new day, a new journey, and they have just received their new mission that will last them sleepless nights and straining mornings.
“A riddle,” Donghyuck scoffs. Scoffs without the slightest bit of smile but Mark can sense that he is smiling on the inside, Donghyuck’s scoff a happy song ringing in his ears. “Truly.”
“They are very consistent,” Mark agrees, slinging the backpack over his shoulder, ready to leave.
“It’s only the second item,” Donghyuck says. Who knows what will spring upon them next.
-
Four months in and Donghyuck finally asks the question.
“Why are you here?”
“What?” Mark blinks.
“Did the association send you?” Donghyuck asks.
They are fishing for lunch, or what seems like it a few minutes after both Mark and Donghyuck’s stomach growl in unison. Time is only a matter of dawn, sunrise, day, evening, night, and then dusk if you are one for the sentimental feeling of being awake while the world sleeps. Like Mark.
The bag seems to have everything they need, like a portal, or that pouch that blue alien has in the cartoon Mark watched as a kid. Doraemon, was it? The wind blows and Mark shivers, watching the fishing rod wobble with him. There are no fish.
Instead, there is the sudden tightening of his chest, a choke stopped in his throat, the lingering fear of losing someone fighting its way out of the part of Mark’s mind that’s been locked, tucked away and buried not deep enough. And then Mark cannot stop staring, frozen.
“Are you one of Jaehyun’s?” Donghyuck continues when Mark doesn’t respond. “‘Cause I know the Taeyong wouldn’t give a crap where I went, let alone send someone to monitor my every move.”
Mark’s blood runs cold, and it’s not because of the close to minus degrees tracing their outlines, trying to kiss against every inch of exposed skin relentlessly, even though they are both so covered Mark thinks they look like two black rocks in the middle of the desert. He tightens the jacket around him. Donghyuck’s stare is even colder than the ice, and Mark has the audacity to blush. Man, if he wasn’t so doomed right now. (It’s kind of hot. He. Mark. Mark feels hot. No, warm. No, it’s because Donghyuck’s stare is so cold that the ice feels hot in comparison.)
And Mark responds, “aha, you got me.” Not because it’s true but he wishes it would be, wishes he had a reason like that to stay. Wishing he wasn’t just a loser hopelessly in love with someone who sees him as a stranger. “Please don’t tell on me.”
“I won’t.”
Donghyuck is silent and still like a statue beside Mark before he places his rod down, striking it into the ice to hold it in place. Mark had been worried the first time he had seen Donghyuck do that, holding his breath as he waited for the ice to crack and splinter into the air, possibly caving the ground beneath them in. But none of that had happened, and the ice had looked back at Mark like a gleaming child, told to obey their master even if it betrays all previously known logic, holding unto the wooden fishing rod like it was their duty to stay in one piece.
Donghyuck leans back. Lies down flat on the ice and doesn’t seem to feel the cold at all. Then a tug is felt at the end of Mark’s rod, and he snaps back to the hole on the ground, water flopping like the warning of an earthquake beneath it. Mark pulls, rears it in-- and something pink jumps up into the sky. Not like a fish, not like anything he’s seen yet. Instinct reaches out to grab hold, fingers curling unto the mysterious figure Mark can’t see the details of, blinded by the light of the sun as he squints, shielding the ice cold water from splashing on to his face.
Mark gets bitten, but it’s no big deal really, and whatever-it-was had flown away in lightning speed before either of them had caught sight of it. He hisses, taking off his glove to examine the bite mark and blood trickling down his left palm. Donghyuck observes, sitting up now. A frown on his face, but Donghyuck doesn’t frown, not at all, only concentrates really hard when he’s thinking of something like an answer for the riddles that they’ve been chasing after the past months. It scares Mark to think Donghyuck is capable of feeling angry.
“I’m fine,” Mark grimaces as Donghyuck rummages inside the bag for a bandage of some sort. He chuckles bitterly as the icy wind stings the wound, only realising too late when his glove is carried away with the breeze. “Shit,” Mark curses, leaning forward to catch it, but he knows it’s too late, and is glad Donghyuck uses a hand to push Mark back before he could accidentally fall into their fishing hole.
Donghyuck is silent the whole way as he bandages Mark’s hand up, frowning. Then, Mark frowns too. Spilling blood for the unknown. Protection stolen by the force more mysterious than a shadow.
“That’s it,” Donghyuck breathes out, wide eyed, stopping in his movements. His hand lingers dangerously over Mark’s.
“The riddle,” Mark nods, gulps, eyes wide in realisation.
“Shit,” Donghyuck quickly retracts, searching his pockets for the piece of paper. His hands fumble around the material. The idea floats around them like a kite, the string taunting, and they catch it, hold on to it tight. Donghyuck tugs on it. He catches it, pulls it in until he can do what he does, like a commander riding the ship into the direction they need to go. The kite will lead them there.
Mark knows this. He’s looking at his feet, eyes cast down. Donghyuck is a rumble of a storm beside him.
Later on he calls Renjun.
“Where have you been?” His voice reeks worry, tainting Mark’s ears as he feels it bleed through the phone, kicking on snow as he twists his feet. “Geez Mark, you can’t just go off the grid like that.”
Mark holds the phone with his right, his left hand safely tucked in his jacket pocket. In Donghyuck’s left glove. (He can’t really believe it.) “Sorry,” Mark says, because he genuinely is. “Well, I’m showing myself now, aren’t I?”
“Wha-“ and there’s a pause on Renjun’s end, the slightest bit of murmuring and shuffling, and Mark can imagine the frustration and horror on Renjun's face as he seethes his anger out in breaths, not wanting to blow up at Mark. “Why the hell are you in godforsaken Neturo?”
“Yeah, I know I know. it’s— it’s not really my idea.”
“Well seeing as that you’re with someone stupid enough to go on an life threatening adventure into Neturo as an excursion, I’m going to assume that—”
“Or brave,” Mark interjects. He bites his lip. Holds the phone close to his ear as the icy wind bites at his skin. He clenches and unclenches his left fist protected by Donghyuck's glove. Mark wonders how the boy is enduring all this cold without one. “Or stupidly brave.”
Renjun continues anyway. “I’m going to assume that the place you’re going to is more dangerous and further away than you are now, if you’ve the guts to reveal yourself at fucking Neturo.”
Mark doesn’t respond. A few seconds pass, maybe fifteen.
“Wild magical beast?” Renjun says over the phone with a sigh. “They take time. So much patience. I’m sure you know that by now.”
“Hmm?”
“I won’t be seeing you for some time, huh?”
“Is this your way of comforting me? That I’ll succeed?”
“Damn Mark, of course you will.” Renjun is probably tearing up or something, Mark just knows. Renjun never talks angry. Never blows up. Never lets his emotions get the better of him— the opposite of Mark. Renjun only sounds angry but Mark knows, Mark knows that it’s all just something like, “I just wanted a proper goodbye.”
It's Mark's heart that breaks at the sound of Renjun's whispered confession, and he too sheds a tear.
“Take care of yourself,” Renjun says like a ramble. “Don’t fucking die out there, I swear to god—“
“I love you too,” Mark says. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
(Mark remembers when he had chosen to be a magical beast hunter years ago. The answer had been obvious, really, because there was nothing else he would have chosen. He had looked at Renjun, the two of them brainstorming ideas, and only thought of the purple, the purple staining his mind, and the boy that came along with it.)
-
The cave is dark, but that’s not the issue.
It’s that when Donghyuck lights up an orb of light, Mark can only see him. Here it’s musty, wet. Water drips down the roof of the cave in a slow, steady rhythm. Once every two or three minutes. Feet heavy against the stone cold ground.
Textures of the walls of the cave form mini deserts, up and down slopes all coming together like waves. Even the shadows are slightly artistic here. Above Donghyuck’s palm is an orb glowing yellow, against the hard dark blue of the cave and the creatures living within her walls that recede into the darkness. There is another set of breaths, however, apart from the two. A third right in front of them, loud and grizzly and big, so big it towers over them.
The issue is that Donghyuck looks up, a sparkle in his eye, and he smiles. He smiles and Mark actually sees his teeth, baring large and so, so sharp. He smiles and it’s a chuckle that escapes his lips, and Mark is going insane because most people would be cowering in fear, most would run for their lives or fight until the end of it, but Donghyuck is smiling and his teeth are so sharp Mark wonders if the polar bear standing on his two feet in front of them would even dare to take a step closer. The issue is that they are trespassing on bear territory, and Mark should be scared for his life like he would have been, but the yellow glow like a star illuminating all of Donghyuck’s features has him breathless instead and Donghyuck is smiling.
Mark swoons. It’s the first time Mark sees Donghyuck smile.
Just an hour ago they were seeking refuge from the storm. One skittish, one stoic. Climbing into the nearest shelter, close and afraid to lose sight of each other. They had sat side by side, the smallest fire in front of them.
“You never really said it, you know,” Mark tries his best to enunciate the words out of his numb lips. Chin resting atop of his knees as if it’s stuck there, that when Mark opens his mouth so barely only the top of his head moves. “What exactly you’re looking for.”
“Is it important?” Donghyuck sniffles. His nose is runny but it hurts to even touch it, rosy at the tip of it and even rosier cheeks. Stupid cold.
“No.” Mark bores holes into the fire. Spread more, more. It doesn’t matter how warm having Donghyuck right next to him feels if he can’t feel his face.
“It’s hard to explain,” Donghyuck says.
“How hard?”
“Tiring and draining.” Pause. Wind. Continue. “Sounds really dumb when I do it. People don’t understand.”
“What if you explained it to me?” Mark’s fist tightens itself against the cold. “I might understand.” He misses the way he could hide under his fringe when he wasn’t wearing a beanie. He looks at Donghyuck anyway. “They say that when you talk about your passion, it’s supposed to be the best feeling in the world.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
So it takes a while but Donghyuck eventually does talk about it. Intangible, invisible, impossible, he had said as he described it. King of myths, seated so high no one could see his face, so high no one believed it was there. And wasn’t that ironic, because myths are meant to be told, passed on by generations that believe in its story, and myths are meant to be false. But Donghyuck had seen it with his own eyes, the king no one believed, and yet was true.
And Mark who had been told he was too gullible all his life, too naive, too trusting in this world, had looked at the boy and felt the same. The same passion that carved Donghyuck’s very being, licking the depths of Mark’s heart and mind, drowning it in rage. Rage that spoke, and rage that wanted in.
“How the heck has no one believed this?”
“You tell me.”
And now as they stare at the smallest tattoo forming between their thumb and index finger, the logo of a melody note about less than a centimeter long, they wave the polar bear goodbye. Donghyuck looks at Mark first, and oh how unusual it is for that, and then even more unusual that he grins so devilishly, taking Mark’s hand. Mark feels his heart shatter and stitch back together in that split second, the walls of the cave around them cracking and shaking. It’s not the storm.
When the cave breaks open from the top, two sides crashing down into rubble, they see green.
-
“This is it.”
“Stop saying that.”
Mark pushes a heavy leaf the size of his body away to clear a path. More trees. Lush, dark and light greens, way too many butterflies. A lot of sun. “There’s no way this is it.”
“What happened to letting me say that all the time?” Donghyuck pouts.
“I’m helping you,” Mark deadpans. He doesn’t even need to try to look ‘done’ anymore, the look ever stuck on his face. “Saving you from disappointment.”
He jumps over the muddy pond, sticking out a hand for Donghyuck who sticks out a tongue in retaliation and jumps much further than Mark, proving the pond to be no trouble at all. Mark sighs and follows after.
“You’re not getting tired on me, are you?” Donghyuck sing-songs. Oh, the little devil.
“Never,” Mark scoffs. Of course not. As if the sudden change in their dynamics has done anything but made Mark more in love. He looks up, an uncontrollable smile playing dangerously on his lips. He stops.
“Hyuck,” he gapes. The boy doesn’t respond, skipping a long further. “Hyuck,” Mark repeats, more urgent now, an alarming tone.
“Hmm?” The younger hums, turning around with wide, innocent eyes.
“Look up,” Mark says in a strangled tone. His eyes haven't left its spot.
Donghyuck looks, and they are wrapped in a deafening silence. He hears himself breathe some twenty seconds later. “This is it,” Donghyuck says. Their eyes meet, shining. The world at their fingertips. Mark nods. This is it.
Climbing into the spaceship doesn’t take that long, once they’ve figured out how open it. Their palms interlock and the two melody notes meet, flashing bright white. A rope ladder lets itself down, swaying as it nearly reaches the ground. Donghyuck goes up first, but doesn’t see a door. He places his hand on the sleek metal above his head, then gasps when his hand goes through it.
Hidden in the trees, somehow parked hovering mid air, visible only with gyo in all its silver glory. Only those marked with the melody can enter, who’ve signed their lives to the king and sworn to secrecy. The ship looks brand new too, Mark observes as they step into the somehow cool of the control room. So many screens and so many buttons. One seat for each of them.
There are controls for both seats, meaning both can pilot, but only one at a time. Mark nods to Donghyuck, signalling for him to take the controls that light up upon touch. Beneath them, the engine roars to life, the sound like magma right before it turns into lava. Donghyuck sets it into gear, then hesitates.
“What are you waiting for?” Mark blinks.
Donghyuck frowns. The slightest pout as he looks Mark firmly in the eye. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Mark blinks again. Dumbfounded. Donghyuck continues. “You know once we leave, unless the world out there is a whole much shitter than this planet Earth is, I won’t think about coming back.”
At that, Mark softens into the fondest, most gentle and stupidly in love expression ever. “I wouldn’t have followed you all this time if I was worried about that, silly.”
Donghyuck lights up. “Really?”
Sure, Mark has a promise to keep, and he doesn’t intend on breaking it anytime soon, but Renjun can wait. He wants to introduce the two people he loves most to each other eventually. Mark knows they’ll make amazing friends.
“I have something I’m searching for too,” Mark says, relaxing into his seat as Donghyuck powers up the ship for take off.
“What is it?” Donghyuck shouts over the loud buzz, drowning out their voices. The ship prompts for take off, T-10 seconds showing across the middle screen. Mark looks over at the boy who holds his heart.
He’s never seen the boy more excited. He’s never been more excited to see the boy this excited. Things are happening. Things are changing. Mark feels the pressure hit him when the ship bounces up slightly, the boosters pushing the metal crate above the trees. Then, in the chaos of an ending and a new beginning, Mark shouts over for what it’s worth.
“I already found it!”
Donghyuck looks over, a raise of eyebrows. “Huh? Can’t hear you!”
Mark only laughs, imagining that he’ll have so much explanation to do if Donghyuck actually hears him and figures it out, but Mark knows Donghyuck won’t, and he’s fine with that.
They take off into space, the bright blue sky enveloping them, then a blinding white eating them whole. Donghyuck with his eyes, big and so, so round, holding the stars in them never blinking as they approach the dark. Mark doesn’t take his eyes off him. He’s fine with them living in their own little world in which all they need is each other.
In which Mark follows Donghyuck to the ends of the earth. In which Mark is a hunter, and so is Donghyuck, and what hunters do is they hunt their prey but they also worship it, and Donghyuck doesn’t know it but he is Mark's prey, and Mark worships him. Donghyuck hunts his prey, and Mark hunts Donghyuck-- but he doesn’t know how to do it other than to love, love again, and love some more.
In which Donghyuck is the one whose existence Mark is always following.