The following day, Chanyeol and his teammates started working on a plan for the next task.

Jongin figured it’d be a good idea to speak with Kwangsoo about what sort of creatures lurked in the forest. So, during his free period, he and Seulgi went to visit the game keeper. Due to Chanyeol’s schedule being different, he couldn't accompany them.

Having finished their meeting with Kwangsoo, the two met up with their other teammate in the courtyard. The Haetae’s now sat on the fountain ledge to go over what information they were able to obtain. “So?” Chanyeol asked taking a seat next to Jongin.

“Kwangsoo said there are a lot of creatures in the forest.” Seulgi sighed.

“Anything you can think of could be in there.” Jongin added. The three huffed.

This would be harder than they thought.

“Let’s talk about it over lunch.” Chanyeol spoke up, getting up and patting his stomach. “Maybe some food will help us focus and figure this out.” As they walked down the corridor towards the Great Hall, they saw Baekhyun running out of the opened doors. Spotting the three champions, he jogged towards them. “Minseok’s team just figured it out,” he said when he was close enough.

“Really? Did someone tell them?” Seulgi asked, as Baekhyun gravitated towards Chanyeol’s side wrapping his arm around the taller’s waist, catching his breath.

“No, they were talking about it at their table. I was eavesdropping.” Baekhyun smiles. “You know how Sunyoung talks with her hands?” Jongin and Seulgi nodded. “She knocked over a cup of water and it spilt all over Juhyun’s papers and the pearl.”

“That means everybody has the clue now,” Seulgi said nodding as they continued walking.

“No. There’s still Jongdae’s team.” Jongin spoke up, causing Seulgi to laugh. “Sunyoung is definitely going to tell Amber how to get the clue. And Minseok could tell Jongdae too.” Baekhyun nodded with her suggestions.

Entering the Great Hall, they saw the Bulsajo team crowded around each other. Probably writing down the clue as it appeared.

“I guess Minseok would go easy on Dae this time,” Jongin said as they walked towards their table. “We’re not going up against dragons this time.”

“We have no clue what we’re going up against this time,” Chanyeol said as they all took their seats.

“Maybe there are books in the library?” Baekhyun suggested, getting a nod from Seulgi in agreement.

“We’ll be fine.” Jongin shrugged, “If we can handle a dragon, we can easily deal with anything in that forest,” he said smugly.

The remaining three all glance at each other with concern.

“Where’d Kris go?” Yixing asked Luhan as they started heading to their dormitory. Luhan startled for a second before collecting himself. “He’s going to study with Junmyeon.”

Yixing nodded as they continued walking.

As they got closer to their dorm, Luhan realized they couldn’t quite enter until Minseok gave him the signal. Quickly coming up with an excuse Luhan spoke up. “Hey Xing, I just remembered I need to pick up a book for Divination. Would you come with me?”

Luhan doesn’t wait for his answer before he was dragging his friend down the hall, in the opposite direction of their dorm, towards the library.

Getting lost in the labyrinth of bookshelves, Luhan remembered he needed to finish somethings for his astronomy class that night. So a stop at the library wouldn’t hurt either of them.

“Do you remember what the homework for astronomy was?” he asked as he scaned the books.

Yixing nodded, grabbing Luhan the correct book and telling him the assignment. “I thought you needed a book for Divination?” Yixing questioned.

Luhan stiffened. “Uh, yeah, I’ll just pick it up when we leave.” He chuckleed nervously. “I just remembered I didn’t do tonight’s homework for astronomy.”

Finishing the questions on the paper, Yixing put the astronomy books back while Luhan filed his papers back into his bag. Out of the corner of his eye, Luhan saw a flashing by the entrance to the library. Looking up he saw Minseok peeking around the door, motioning for him to come.

Yixing put the last book on the shelf right before Luhan grabbed his wrist and dragged him out of the library and back towards the dormitory. “What about your Divination book?” Yixing asked as he was being pulled down the hall. He was answered with a shrug as they came up to the round door to the Kumiho dorm. 

“I’ll pass the class without it,” Luhan said, knocking the correct rhythm on the giant Kumiho engraved into the wooden door, it opened slowly for them to enter.

“It’s darker than usual in here,” Yixing said as they entered the common room of the dorm.

“Surprise!” The lights came on and confetti fluttered around the room engulfing his group of friends in the center. “What?” Yixing asked confused, looking back to Luhan.

“It’s your birthday! And we wanted to do something special.” Luhan smiled, wrapping his arm around Yixing and pulling him towards their friends.

Once the duo was close enough, the group embraced them into a group hug as they aing ‘happy birthday’ in a mixture of Korean and Chinese. “Ok guys, here comes the best part. Make way for the cake.” Kyungsoo piped up as he and Junmyeon walked from where they had placed the cake safely away from the confetti to Yixing in the center of the room.

The cake was simple, with its creamy colored frosting and white swirled t, on the top Happy Birthday Yixing! was written elegantly in a light blue icing circled by a few candles. Yixing smiled at the badly drawn unicorn and cute little flowers with colorful sprinkles speckled across the top too. “Kris drew the unicorn and flowers, and Junmyeon got carried away with the sprinkles.” Kyungsoo chuckled as Kris lit the candles with the tip of his wand.

“It looks perfect,” Kris said as he stepped back.

“And there are just enough sprinkles,” Junmyeon butted in.

“Did you spill the entire container on it.” Jongdae laughed as they all gathered around Yixing and the cake, now sitting at the coffee table.

Yixing smiled at each of his friends smiling faces, before leaning forward and blowing at the candles. Baekhyun, Chanyeol, and Jongdae start shooting confetti out of their wands again, while Jongin handed the birthday boy the few presents his friends were able to get.

Majority of the cake had been devoured, wrapping paper laid carelessly on the floor, and confetti sprinkled the common room floor as the moon rose higher in the night sky, signaling that the few that had to needed to head to class. Kris and Tao waited outside the dorm for their other two classmates as they collected their things for their astronomy class. Baekhyun ran to catch up with the four walking down the hall, having helped clean up a little before his leave.

The eldest, Kris, Luhan, and Yixing, walked ahead of the two who were walking a little slower and chatting.

“Thank you guys,” Yixing smiled, looking between his two friends. Kris wrapped an arm around Yixing’s shoulder, as Luhan wrapped an arm around his waist. “No problem Xing.” 

“Junmyeon wanted to do something special since it’s our last year,” Kris said smiling his gummy smile.

“Jongdae’s party was crazy.” Luhan laughed, causing the other two to laugh along as they remember the wild antics that happened that day.

Baekhyun and Tao joined in the conversation at the sound of the laughter, in turn adding more as they continueed to talk about the day of Jongdae’s birthday.

They laughed all the way to the astronomy tower, having filled the moonlit hallways along the way.

After Yixing’s birthday time seemed to fly by. With one day left until the second task now.

All four teams had figured out the clue and were planning for going into the Celestial Forest. The only piece of information they didn’t have was – What was going to be taken from them?

“How do we know it’s going to be a person?” Sehun huffed. 

Jongin rolled his eyes at his friend’s frustration. “It clearly states ‘the ones who rest’, what else could it be other than a human?”

Sehun grumbled, before spotting a head of fiery red hair.

“Soojung!” he called out motioning for her to come over. But she simply flipped her hair and continued walking. Sehun called for her again, but was still ignored.

“We want to talk to you about the task!” He all but cried out. Why was she ignoring him? Rolling her eyes with a huff, Soojung turned around and headed over to the two.

“What do you want?” She growled.

Sehun stood up at her tone. “Soojung what’s wrong?” He placed his hands on her upper arm. “Soojung?”

She let out a huff. “Nothing. What do you want?” she said again, trying to sound less pissed off. It wasn't working.

“It’s not nothing. What’s wrong? Why are you mad?” Sehun continued to push.

“For someone who calls me their princess and treats me as such,” Soojung started. “One would think they wouldn’t forget her birthday.” She snapped, stomping on Sehun’s foot and smacking Jongin on the back of the head for laughing as she turned to leave.

“You guys .” She snarled.

“I wasn’t laughing at you! I was laughing at Sehun being an idiot! Soojung!” Jongin called out to her, who turned to flip him the bird before disappearing into the building with her friends.

“.” Sehun groaned. “Her birthday! How did I forget that!”

Jongin chuckled at the panicking boy in front of him.

“You’re always with her. How did you manage to forget?”

Sehun shook his head, thinking back to what he had been doing that day. It was a Saturday; he wasn’t doing anything.

“It must have slipped my mind, with the second task coming up and I think we had tests that Monday and quidditch practice. I was pretty sure I told her happy birthday,” Sehun said taking his seat next to Jongin again, his head in his hands. “She hates me now.” Sehun sighed.

“It’s not like she liked you much before.” Jongin shrugged, which earned him a punch to the shoulder.

“How am I going to make this up to her?” Sehun asked.

“You better do it soon, because the second task is tomorrow,” Jongin said. “If you two aren’t on good terms, she might just accidently let a jinx slip out of , with the end of the wand facing in your direction.” He warned.

“I’ll come up with something. I’ll tell her how sorry I am, and bake her a cake and give her an amazing present. She’ll have to forgive me!” Sehun said triumphantly, before hesitantly asking. “Right?”

“For your sake, I hope so.”

Hello everyone!! First of all I want to say sorry, I can't believe it's been a year since I've updated and I feel so bad just leaving and not keeping you guys up to date. College has literally drained me of writing and even drawing, and I've had this chapter finished for a long time and just got stuck in writer's block with the other chapters. Plus I was working on some of my other fics too so something like this doesn't happen again cause I do feel really bad about not updating. 

I'm so happy to see that even though it's been awhile since this fic has updated it's still getting subscribers!! Thank you all so much~ 

Well during the summer I've trying to get a lot of writing done but during July a lot of things happened with my family and I had to deal with that stress and it was awful :(, but everything is getting slowly getting better. Also, I'm going to be transfering schools and moving at the end of August, so I'll be busy with that but I won't let it stop me from writing. 

Again thank you all so much!! 

Oh! One more thing I've joined seven different fic fests because I've been stuck on writing these chapters and maybe writing something will help me get back in the flow so I can finish this fic! I just submitted the final piece for EXOgeddon's fic fest and I'm really excited, see if you guys can tell which one I wrote :) 

Also, chapters nine and ten are currently in progress and I'm hoping to update something soon! 

So I guess I'll see guys next chapter!!