The Ace (Stray Kids Kim Seungmin)

5

"It's gotta be somewhere around here," Minho muttered to himself, hands roaming over the ivy-covered North wall. Eyebrows knitted in frustration and bottom lip tucked between his teeth, his confusion was evident.

The field was a piece of parched terrain indented with holes Minho had created since the day he arrived and heaps of soil beside them. It lay in the North-East corner of their enclosed base and served as a good trap to limit the amount of wolves that scouted their land at nighttime.

Now, Minho had his hands pressed against the stone brick wall, hands disappearing behind the vines adorning it. The other boys circled around him, watching indently as he quickly grew irritated.

"I don't get it!" he finally yelled, retreating his hands and running them through his now-sweaty hair instead. "I swear I saw it here yesterday! It was here! How could it just disappear?"

Jisung raised an eyebrow, "you weren't dehydrated yesterday, were you? Perhaps your mind was playing tricks on you."

"No!" he retorted. "I'm not crazy! It was here!" He sighed, taking a seat on the dusty ground and mumbling, "Somewhere."

Noticing the elder's exhaustion, Seungmin exhaled loudly as he pulled his sleeves up to rest around his elbow.

"Then it's here," the Ace uttered. "If you saw it and swear you did, then it's here. And I'm not returning to the shed without seeing it for myself!"

He grabbed Minho's shovel that had been thrown onto the ground hours prior and used it to chop the vines off the wall. Jeongin quickly followed suit, using his own spade.

"What exactly are we looking for, Minho?" Jisung glanced at the boy as he helped rip the cut vines off the wall. "What did you see?"

"I don't know for sure what it was but it was a drawing... Possibly a clue."

"What did it look like?"

"It was... gosh, I don't remember, a mountain, I believe... I-I can't remember exactly but I know when I saw it, it was important."

"What were you doing searching through vines yesterday anyway?" Jeongin asked with a fatigued huff.

Minho rolled his eyes, picking himself off the ground and taking his shibel out of Seungmin's hands, "I wasn't searching them to start with. I was digging that hole over there when I noticed something glowing from the wall. So I decided to check it out and found that drawing."

"Was there anything written on it?" Seungmin asked, helping Jisung with removing the vines. "Anything other than the drawing? And what was glowing?"

"I don't remember. It's like it was almost completely removed from my memory overnight. As if they didn't want me to see it."

They. Changbin had been the one to introduce Seungmin to the term all those years ago. He remembered Chan had referred to them as gods and rightly so. No one knew who or what they were at the time. But Seungmin knew better now. They were not gods -- gods aren't that sloppy with their work.

"That's a good sign," Jisung smirked, leaning against the wall. "It probably is a clue then."

"Let's not get too ahead of ourselves," Seungmin reminded them. "There's still a chance this was Chan's doing."

None of the other boys knew the group Seungmin often talked about. They had arrived long after Hyunjin burnt the whole place down. But that didn't stop the Ace from being them up in conversation whenever necessary. He liked to use it as a reminder than none of them can be completely comfortable with their lifestyle.