“Why am I stuck with these two idiots?” Jihyun asked in frustration while looking at Jimin and Jongup.

Jihyun wasn’t the only one who was complaining. Jongdae kept asking whether they could redo the groupings after being grouped with Mijin and Jaehwa.

“How rude of you!” Mijin exclaimed at Jongdae who was having his own mental breakdown.

“How come you two are together? This app is biased! Biased I say!”

“It’s fate. Don’t blame us and the app just because you’re not fated to be with anyone.” Jaehwa added and bursted into laughter along with Mijin.

I looked around. Jaejong is pretty much cool with anyone in the class and so are Hyunjae and Hoosook so them being in one group doesn’t worry me much. Minseok is also one of the chilled out ones in the class and doesn’t mind doing the challenge with Yuna and Choa. The two girls on the other hand are more than happy that the app has put them together in a group along with one of the more bearable boys. Minho doesn’t seem to mind being in a group with Minah and Eunji either. He does seem a little disappointed that he couldn’t do it with his friends. My group wasn’t too unbearable either. It’s just Minhwa and Myungsoo after all. I can handle those two. I was just worried about about two groups in particular.

Youngjae, Junhong, Sunhi. Sunhi, she is a little afraid of ghosts I guess. She isn’t afraid to scream though so I guess she might actually be fine. Youngjae and Junhong are quite blunt and do cause trouble sometimes but they aren’t as bad as some of the others. They actually mind their own business most of the times unless they are together with the rest of the boys in the class.

Then there is Sehun, Jongin and Youngmi. Although the boys claimed to have made up this challenge ‘together’, I can sense that this idea originated from Sehun and Jongin especially after seeing them stare at the lighthouse earlier on the day. Well I don’t want to call any of the guys in my class troublemakers because they can be nice sometimes but these two are probably two of the most mischievous members of the class. I have a bad feeling that they might actually plan something in the forest. Also, Youngmi is a little sensitive when it comes to ghosts. Knowing those two, they might scare her even more. It pity her a little.

I went up to their group.

“Youngmi, will you be okay with these two?” I asked. She looked a little uncertain and fidgeted quite a bit but tried to give me a reassuring smile.

“If you want, I can swap with you. I can trust Minhwa and Myungsoo to sensibly taking you through the forest but I’m not sure about these two…”

“You don’t trust us?” Sehun asked. “Aw, that’s pretty mean pres!”

“Wouldn’t it be a lot more fun seeing the pres screaming for her life though? That would be an awesome sight to see!” Jongin added.

“Hey, Hyunsoo. If you volunteer to swap with someone then swap with me!” Jihyun shouted from her team.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine Jihyun. No ghost is going to approach you anyways! You’ll be fine by yourself too.” I joked back.

“I’m serious!”

“What about me?” Jongdae asked. “I don’t want to do this with these two! They’ll be screaming all over the place. They won’t be able to help. Besides, they’re your friends.”

“Why do you need to swap? You found your match. You were getting along with those two just a while ago.” I laughed looking at Mijin and Jaehwa who smiled back.

“Do you want to swap with me Sunhi?” Hyunjae asked Sunhi.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine!” She gave Hyunjae a reassuring smile. I looked back at Youngmi.

“Well?”

“I don’t want to ruin the fun for you Hyunsoo. I think I’ll be fine too.” She smiled. How noble of her…

“Just let me know if you want to swap before my group goes in! Or call me if you need help with your phone!”

I was about to go back to my group just before Jongin and Sehun stopped me.

“We have a favour to ask.” Jongin started off.

“Can we go before your group?” Sehun continued. I looked at the two of them. Why would they ask such a thing anyways?

“It’s just that if Youngmi needs help, you’d be in the next group!” Jongin added.

“Why, is something going to happen to Youngmi? Besides, since when did you start caring this much about her?”

“Come on. We were nice today weren’t we? You should seriously learn to trust us more!”

I shrugged.

“But let me get this straight. If you try anything funny, I’ll show you something scarier than that ghost that is supposed to lurk around in there!”

“Don’t worry, Youngmi will be fine!” Sehun reassured. I still didn’t trust them. I still went back to my group. There was nothing else I could do anyways if Youngmi is fine where she is.

“What happened?” Myungsoo asked.

“She said she’ll manage in her group.”

“Well, as long as she is fine it’s okay.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Besides, where did Minhwa go?”

He pointed towards Jaejong and Jimin who were talking with Minhwa.

“Apparently he wants to check if the challenge is actually okay for us to do.”

“I’m glad he is actually making himself a bit more useful than before. Geez, I’ve never heard of a Captain getting stepped on by his subordinated.”

“We had no choice than to join. They blackmailed Minhwa with embarrassing childhood pictures and stories.”

“Now that you bring that up, he does have a lot of embarrassing stories from when he was small. I do have to admit that he was kind of cute when he wasn’t crying all the time.”

“Geez, don’t you start too Hyunsoo! Jaejong and the others are already giving me a hard time. Seriously, I should have burnt all the evidence when I had the time to!” Minhwa joined in the conversation since he was done talking to Jaejong and Jimin.

“You’re forgetting that I probably have the most pieces of evidence followed by Jaejong!” I laughed. “Besides, have you cleared everything up with them?”

“Yeah, we just have to tell the rest of the class now.”

He gathered the rest of the class and started to explain.

“Since we have the groups and the order of who is going to go first, we just have to discuss the rest of the challenge. The second group will leave fifteen minutes after the first team left and so on. The group who comes out with all the items and the photo using the least amount of time wins the challenge.” Minhwa started off and the whole class was listening to him in silence. “I will send everyone a text message of the things we have to bring back in order to win the challenge.”

That was all Minhwa had to say. Everyone gathered up in their own little groups and Minhwa was busy typing the list of items for them challenge. He put his phone away when he was done and one by one everyones phones went off. We took our phones out and read through the message Minhwa sent.

But why are all the things we have to collect so useless….

“Any questions before we start?” Minhwa asked. Jongin put his hand up.

“This isn’t exactly a question, but our group would like to go third so before your group if it’s alright with everyone else.”

“Well, I don’t really mind. You should ask Hyunsoo, she mig-”

“We already asked her and she is fine with it.”

“If Hyunsoo is fine with it, then I guess it’s okay.”

“How about we start at midnight? We might have a chance to see a real ghost that way.” Jaejong suggested.

“I like the idea. It will make things a little more interesting.” Hyunjae agreed.

“You guys are just wasting time.” Myungsoo pointed out.

“Aw, come on Myungsoo. We hardly get the opportunity to do things like this. It will be fun!” Jaejong tried to convince Myungsoo. Myungsoo was probably the only boy who still wasn’t into this who ‘Test of Courage’ thing. Since Minhwa was given the responsibility to lead things as by Jaejong and Jimin he found himself busy with that and stopped whining about how he doesn’t want to do the challenge anymore.

“You certainly seem into all this, Hyunjae!” I pointed out. She looked at me with an excited expression. She loves these kinds of things. You could say that she seems a lot more excited that most of the boys in the group.

“There aren’t any creepy legends around in our area so this is perfect!”

“Now that you mention it, what is the full legend anyways?” I asked.

“Good question. Jaejong didn’t tell us the whole story.”

“Do you want to hear the full story?” He asked. We nodded.

“Well, I’m not sure if this is true since we heard it from the boys that were sitting on the dining table near ours. Apparently the lighthouse inside was built by a man who lived around here somewhere. His family wasn’t exactly rich and the lighthouse was probably the only possession they had besides their house which wasn’t big itself. He had two sons but only one of the boys could inherit the lighthouse while the other one would only be left with the house. He decided that the eldest son would inherit the house while the younger one would inherit the lighthouse. After writing the will, he passed away and left the boys what he had originally planned to give them. However, the eldest son wasn’t satisfied with just the small house. He wanted the lighthouse instead and only found one way to get it.”

“He killed his younger brother, right?” I asked.

“Indeed. He was so jealous of his younger brother, he pushed him off the cliff over here. No one witnessed it, so it was assumed that he had fallen off the cliff by accident and drowned. The brother lived fine after he killed his own brother. He received the lighthouse he wanted for so long and got married. But that’s when the misfortune started to happen. The younger brother who trusted the older brother so much never let him alone. He had trusted his older brother so much, it ended up being the reason of his death. He didn’t want his brother to live a happy life and started haunting him. However, as the months past the older brother couldn’t bear it anymore. He decided to leave a note behind explaining the cause of his brothers death. He ended up explaining that his brothers soul is still haunting him and that the only way for him escape his grudge was to die. The older brother then committed suicide and jumped off the same cliff.”

“Did the haunting stop?” Myungsoo asked.

“Since when were you interested in these kinds of things?” I asked him.

“No it didn’t stop. Apparently the ghost of the younger brother is still looking for the older one not knowing that he had died a long time ago. The ghost waits near the lighthouse knowing that his brother will be bound to come to the lighthouse he had always wanted to own. That’s not all. I remember them talking about that place being quite unlucky. Apparently quite a few tourists were injured around there. It’s as if the ghost of the younger brother is taking his anger out on other visitors.”

“That doesn’t make that ghost any different from his brother. His brother killed him for the lighthouse, but now he’s hurting people who haven’t done anything to him. Seriously, that’s foul move!” I commented.

“Why are you getting so worked up? It’s just a legend. Don’t tell me that you actually believe in ghosts!” Myungsoo said.

“Of course not. Who do you take me for? I just pointed out that it doesn’t make the younger brother different from the older one!”

“It’s good to know that the pres thinks like the other girls too sometimes.” Jaejong commented.

“Not you too…”

“Shall we get going?” Hyunjae asked after looking at the time. It’s exactly midnight. Hoosook, Hyunjae and Jaejong gathered together and checked the list of items once again.

“Good luck you guys.” The boys shouted.

“We’ll get going then!” Hyunjae said.

“Take care!”

The first group has left. The had to get over the cliff first but it seemed like they were fine with that.

“Now we have to wait fifteen minutes for the next group. Jimin, Jongup, Jihyun, you’re up next at quarter past!” Minhwa announced. He is working pretty hard. I looked at Myungsoo who was next to me.

“How long do you reckon it will take?” I asked trying to start a conversation with him.

“It depends on how chicken you are. It will take longer if you’re scared.”

“Well aren’t you clever Einstein? Of course I know that!”

“Then what do you want to know? Be a bit more specific in your questions!”

“Geez, I just wanted an estimated time of how long it will take.”

“I guess it will take around 20 minute per group. Since we are competing everyone will try to get it over and done with as soon as possible. But then again, I don’t know how deep we have to go into the forest to find the lighthouse.”

“You do have a point…”

“We can work around the time it takes Jaejongs group. They will probably be one of the fastest groups anyways since Hyunjae and Hoosook don’t seem like they’d be bothered by ghosts. Jaejong doesn’t seem like he’d get scared either.”

“Well he used to be a bit of a scaredy cat back then but I haven’t seen him scream recently.”

“Either way, it will be a long night. There are eight groups so it will take around two hours for the last group to go in!”

Two hours…..

“I think I have to change the plans a bit!” I walked up to the front of the class. “We’ll have the next group leave ten minutes after the first group! If we stick to fifteen minutes, it will take forever to get it done!”

“You do have a point!” Minhwa said. “I should inform Jaejong that the next group will come in ten instead of fifteen minutes then.”

Good thing Myungsoo mentioned that. Otherwise we’d be dragging things out and only notice it at the end.

“Seriously, you should have mentioned this earlier. If you didn’t say anything we would have been here forever!” I scolded Myungsoo.

“I thought that you’d be smart enough to figure that one out by yourself.”

“Well, obviously I’m not as smart as you think then!”

Ten minutes past and Jihyuns team took off. She still looked a little unsatisfied with her team but it can’t be helped. With her around I guess the team will be fine. With her team gone, the third team with Youngmi was getting ready to go.

“Youngmi, are you sure that you’ll be okay?” I asked. She just nodded reassuringly. When their team was about to go, Hyunjaes team returned.

“19 minutes and 54 seconds.” Minhwa noted down. Myungsoo was close with his estimation.

“We ran quite a bit on the way back hence we made it back so early!” Hoosook smiled. Now that she mentioned it, they look a little out of breath.

“Was it hard finding the place?” Some of the girls asked. The first group was flooded with questions.

Soon, Youngmi left too with her group consisting of Sehun and Jongin. She made sure to reassure that she will be fine before leaving. I still couldn’t help but be a little worried about her. She doesn’t like these kind of things after all. Minhwa returned to our group as we were the next ones ready to go. Myungsoo, Minhwa and I were getting ready to go in a couple of minutes. We waited for Jihyuns group but they haven’t returned yet. Then again, Hyunjaes group ran back so it makes sense why they got here first.

“You guys are up next. Good luck.” Mijin said.

“Be safe!” The other girls added.

Ten minutes were over. It was our turn to go. Our team departed and headed towards the forest past the cliff.

Author note - Another update yaay! (and another cliffhanger...) 

What do you think is going to happen in the forest? Will things go smoothly? I've got another poll for you guys ^^

What are your opinions? Do they seem suspicious to you guys too or is Hyunsoo just imagining things? Also, who do you think will win the competition? Will it be Hyunsoo and co? I'd love to hear your opinions ^^