As soon as the welcome speeches were over, Woohyun flipped open to the map in the booklet and awed at all of the "restricted" areas. Kaili and her friends were pretty engrossed in the book as well, though Kaili seemed a bit more familiar with some of the stories - probably because Sungyeol had told her. 

After Sungjong and Woohyun did a once-through of the list, they both looked up and glared at the upperclassmen, demanding answers. The two of them couldn't have gotten so far without a good deal of competitive spirit and the constant need to prove that they were better than everyone else. When they entered a contest, they entered to win.

“Geez, what are you guys glaring at us for?” Sungyeol said, making a face at the freshmen. Sungjong looked over to see that Cara and Kaili had joined in with their glares as well, while Rei was listening to Emily babble about the places on the map she wanted to visit.

“TELL US THE STORIES,” the four of them squawked something along those lines, all at once.

Sungyeol crossed his arms, “Ha! I’m not telling you anything! Y’all have to go be social and meet new people!"

“But hyung~ You guys are new people to us!” Sungjong pointed out, speaking with a slightly more high-pitched voice. 

“Ha! That’s not going to work on me!” Sungyeol said, standing up, “I’m going to go say hi to some people, see y’all losers later!"

Sungjong diverted his attention to the others, starting with Sunggyu. “You’re a director, right? Think of all the easy publicity you’d get if one of your future actors,” he pointed towards Woohyun, who nodded along, “Won this little contest…"

Sunggyu squinted his eyes and considered for a bit, while Dongwoo cackled in amusement.

“You know, if you reeaally wanna win, you should ask Myungsoo. He’s the one who knows the most about the school!” Dongwoo suggested.

“Yeah, he’s been caught in pretty much all of the restricted area. Good thing his dad’s the president of the university, or he would have been expelled by now,” Sunggyu said with a grin. Myungsoo glared up at his friends, not particularly appreciating their spilling his scandals. 

“I’m still here because I’m good at what I do, not because my father’s the president,” Myungsoo said sternly, getting up from the table. As he was walking away, though, he stumbled slightly over his feet.

Sungjong and Woohyun exchanged a glance. 

“Wow he was so cool for like half a second."

Sunggyu laughed, flipping open his booklet to the map. “Here, let me get you started. So there actually aren't that many restricted areas, only around...five ish?" he looked around to his remaining friends, who all nodded. "This little cluster right here is one. It's a little set of hot springs and pools. Apparently if you step into a hot spring, it will instantly rise to a temperature of over two hundred degrees Celsius, while the pools will instantly freeze."

"There's a huge forcefield around the area to make sure no one enters, and it's been around since the school was built. That was a long time ago, so I don't really know if anyone actually died there before that..." Dongwoo chipped in, his voice inappropriately cheery for the subject matter.

"Hmm..." Woohyun took a few notes and nodded, "Dangit, I was looking forward to those hot spring..."

"You didn't even know about them until just now..." Hoya muttered, just loud enough for everyone to hear. 

"Well, if I did, I would be hella disappointed right now,” Woohyun grumbled. “Okay, tell us another!"

“Ooh, this one is my favorite!” Dongwoo pointed at the mouth of a cavern on a mountain, “It’s not really dangerous, but an animal - I believe a griffin - makes its nest in here, so we’re not supposed to bother it. There’s only a forcefield around the mouth of the cave for this one, but you can be sure that the griffin has some defense mechanisms of his own.” 

Kaili’s eyes lit up, “A griffin? GRIFFIN BABIES?"

“That sounds so cuuute!” Emily agreed. 

“Don’t try to see the babies,” Hoya advised.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Woohyun wrote everything down on his map, “Tell us mooore!"

Sunggyu shook his head, “Nope! That’s enough from me. You’ve got to go find out the rest by yourself.”

Woohyun made a bitter face at him, and then turned back to Sungjong. “You go try to fish up information from that Myungsoo. I’ll try to dig some more out of these guys,” he whispered into Sungjong’s ear. Sungjong nodded, going to put his plate away as he considered his course of action.

After a primary scan of the room, it seemed like there weren’t that many people who were interested in completing the challenge. A couple of groups were dutifully making rounds through the room. Sungjong wasn’t sure if Woohyun was planning on creating an alliance with Kaili and Cara, and if not, they would most likely be their strongest competitors considering their previously existing connections with upperclassmen.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Myungsoo slipping out of the room. Following behind at a reasonable distance, Sungjong made his way back to his own room, giving himself a reasonable guise in case he was caught. He saw Myungsoo enter his own room down the hall.

He propped the door open upon arrival, an method that many people had advised to make more friends, though his only purpose was to be able to see when Myungsoo was going anywhere else. 

While he was there, one of his suitcases caught his eye. That suitcase wasn’t for clothes, but rather the parts of his hoverboard, which had basically been his lifeline in the few years after he had dropped out of school. He had built it to be easily portable, and it only took snapping a few parts into place for him to have it completely set up. He sat on the ground, leaning against the bottom bunk, and admired his noble steed. It had a golden base and ers, while its sail was bright red with a hexagonal pattern, golden streaks outlining the shapes.

“Hoverboard, huh?” a voice came from the entrance. Sungjong looked up with a confused look on his face to see Myungsoo leaning against his door frame, sporting crossed arms and a slight smirk. He had taken off his bowtie and the jacket of his suit and was now only in his gray dress shirt and black dress pants, the top two buttons undone. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I know you were following me out here.”

Sungjong raised an eyebrow, “Then, I suppose you know what I want from you.” 

“That’s a very suggestive statement,” Myungsoo said, walking into the room and leaning down over Sungjong with one arm holding onto the pole at the corner of the bed. Sungjong refused to break eye contact with him as his face moved closer. “You should be more careful. There are lots of scary upperclassmen who will try and take advantage of delicate little freshmen."

“I can take care of myself.” 

Myungsoo’s face became bemused as he leaned back away from Sungjong, “You’re pretty confident for a freshman. Alright, then. Beat me in a race,” he examined the sail of Sungjong’s hoverboard, “And I’ll give you what you want.” 

Sungjong grinned. “Deal."

“Meet you out there in five."

With that, Myungsoo walked out of the room. After a few moments, Sungjong got up to close the door so that he could change into something more appropriate for hoverboarding. Instead of his formal outfit, he had found a pair of gray joggers, white converse sneakers, and a baggy, white, long-sleeved, batwing shirt with a v-neck and a black stripe on the sleeves. He pulled on a pair of fingerless gloves that would help his grip on the hoverboard before collapsing the sail and grabbing it to make his way up to the deck of the ship.

The sky was lit with thousands of stars, now much more visible due to the lack of light pollution. Still, the lighting up there ran low, with only a few lanterns providing it. It was empty up there, outside of a few shiphands, as most people had gone off for dinner.

Myungsoo was already there, sporting black sweatpants, a fitted black T-shirt, and matching high-top sneakers. His hoverboard was similarly colored, sporting a black sail with pale blue lightning bolts streaking across it. The base was silver and shining, probably recently polished. 

“How are we going to race, anyways? There’s not much atmosphere here for it to really work."

Myungsoo pointed up at a small flag flying on a sail the top of the ship. “Whoever reaches it first,” he then tossed a water gun at Sungjong. “If you get hit, you have to make a loop around the bottom of the ship before coming back up.” 

Sungjong nodded. “Sounds good. What’s the range on these like?"

“About fifty feet. Refills would take forever, though, so I’d suggest you use it carefully.”

Sungjong examined the gun for a tad more before stepping onto his hoverboard. “Let’s do this.”  

Hello again! I just wanted to add a note here (in case I haven't previously mentioned it) that this fic is based on Treasure Planet, which is my favorite movie of all time! So, if you want to get more out of this fic, you may want to watch it. This fic is kind of like a sequel to that movie, with Sungjong taking over Jim Hawkin's role - thus, his backstory is basically Jim Hawkin's story in the movie.

Also, to better envision the upcoming hoverboard race, a clip from the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ainH4-EuwU