Ep. 03 — Song Min-ji
A slightly chilly Saturday morning. The Korea Hunter Academy entrance examination hall.
Song Min-ji fidgeted with her application receipt as she looked around.
They had said this was the freshman track, an exam only for people who had been awakened less than three months ago — so she'd assumed everyone here would be roughly on the same level.
But the kids her age warming up over there already looked like professional hunters to her eyes.
"You got a C-rank this time, right?"
"Sadly, yes. Did you keep training at the dojo you were at before your Awakening?"
"For now. My coach is an Academy alum."
Nearby, the trainees from famous guilds were scanning the crowd for familiar faces. There were children of hunter families whose names alone opened doors, and kids who'd received years of private tutoring even before they awakened.
Song Min-ji clenched the receipt in her hand without meaning to.
I've only been awakened for ten days.
And her ability was an E-rank, the lowest there was. If not for the bonus points she'd received as the granddaughter of a national merit recipient, she wouldn't have made it here at all.
From this point on, it was entirely on her own two shoulders.
Song Min-ji stole a glance down at her equipment. Trying to gear up entirely on a 3-million-won government subsidy, there hadn't been much to choose from. It had looked fairly decent when she bought it, but next to everyone around her, it looked pathetically shabby.
The more her gaze wandered, the more she saw nothing but other kids' gear. Nothing flashy, necessarily, but she recognized every brand name stitched onto it — these were the very items she'd quietly put back on the shelf after asking their prices at the shop.
She lowered her eyes from the sword someone else was admiring.
Would I be a little less nervous if I'd come with one of those, even borrowed? ...Not that I'd even know how to swing it properly. The thought surfaced, pointless as it was.
She tried squaring her shoulders, then immediately hunched them back down.
That morning, her grandfather had checked the straps of her equipment over and over again. Even when she told him she'd fastened everything, he'd insist on undoing them and tugging each one tight once more. Beside him, her little brother had clung to her with a half-asleep face.
'Noona, you HAVE to pass. Fighting!'
Song Min-ji murmured quietly, eyes on her receipt.
"If I fail, I just take it again next year."
Of course, next year she couldn't apply through the freshman track. She'd have to face the far harder general admissions. But she'd made up her mind not to think that far ahead. Only that way could this tightness in her chest loosen, even a little.
Then, out of nowhere, a voice from yesterday drifted back to her.
'...Get going already.'
The way he'd waved his hand as if shooing a fly after she'd thanked him over and over. And yet, when she'd said she'd come find him if she passed, he'd told her to keep the door open.
"All that grumbling. Silly ahjeossi."
A small laugh escaped at the end of her muttering.
Right. At least she'd come here having learned one skill. It had worked pretty well when she'd tried running around in front of the house last night — so all she had to do was make it work today, too.
She let out a long, slightly easier breath, thumped her chest twice, and stepped into the waiting room.
Song Min-ji took an empty seat and laid her receipt across her knees.
She'd already memorized her number, yet she kept finding herself looking down at it anyway. Everyone around her was chatting with their neighbors, and sitting alone staring at nothing felt too awkward.
That was when a girl took notice of her. Cha Seo-rin, standing across the room.
She had come here under trainee status with the Changcheon Guild, and her eyes had kept drifting toward the girl sitting all by herself.
Have I seen her somewhere before?
Neatly tied-back hair and a clear, elegant face. The way she sat quietly with her eyes lowered had a distinctly demure air about it. Hers was a face that, had they ever crossed paths at a family gathering or at the guild, Cha Seo-rin certainly would have remembered.
Looks like her family kept her on private tutoring until just now and finally let her out.
Cha Seo-rin told the chattering trainees beside her to wait a moment and walked over to Song Min-ji.
"You're in our group, right? Group 7."
"Huh...? Oh, yes."
"I'm Cha Seo-rin. And you?"
"Song Min-ji."
She sat down naturally in the seat beside her.
"You're really pretty, you know that? If we both get in, want to hang out together? I was worried it'd be boring without knowing anyone."
"Oh? Ah, sure. I'd like that."
Song Min-ji answered in a daze, then smiled shyly. So she's in the same boat as me — I thought everyone came with their own circle. Once we're in, we can eat lunch together, sit in classes together...
"So which guild are you with? I don't think I've seen your face before."
"I don't have one yet. No one's asked me to join, so..."
"Ah, so you studied privately at home, then. Which family?"
"Um... the Yeosan Song clan. What about you — which Cha family?"
Cha Seo-rin blinked for a moment.
That wasn't what she'd been asking.
"...Really? What rank is your ability?"
"I'm E-rank. It's called Nimble Movement... you might not have heard of it."
The smile on Cha Seo-rin's face thinned just a little at the answer.
"...Did you say E-rank?"
"Yep. But it's combat-class, at least. What about you...?"
"Oh."
Only then did Cha Seo-rin's gaze drop below the girl's shoulders. The standard-issue chest guard and the cheap mass-produced sword — the things she'd missed while dazzled by that face now came into belated focus.
Having seen enough, Cha Seo-rin rose from her chair.
"Sorry. I have something to check with my coach before the practical."
"Okay! It was nice meeting you. Let's both pass and get close!"
Song Min-ji waved with a smile, but the girl only turned away without a word, the warmth drained from her face. Back among the gathered Changcheon Guild trainees, she didn't so much as glance this way again. She was already laughing with the kid beside her, as if nothing had happened.
"...See you later."
The belated farewell shrank to nothing in Min-ji's mouth. Her half-raised hand hung there, awkward and abandoned. She used that hand to brush her hair back once, then unfolded the receipt on her knees again.
The first event of the morning was basic attribute measurement.
Compared to the applicants measured before her, she was at the very bottom of the rankings. No — she was simply dead last. Song Min-ji's shoulders were sinking lower and lower when the proctor peered into the measuring device and spoke up.
"Agility is 8.4, hm?"
At that voice, she lifted her head slightly. But the proctor glanced at the E-rank ability written beneath her sheet — Nimble Movement — and nodded right away, his face saying the number made perfect sense now.
"All done. Please proceed to the next test room."
After that came the physical fitness test, the written exam, and a clearing assessment in a space reproducing the interior of a Tower, where they had to handle traps and sudden emergencies. By the time all of that was over, only the final exam remained.
The applicants were gathered in the Central Training Hall — the facility that appeared in every single introduction to the Korea Hunter Academy. The ceiling was high enough to make your neck ache, and a faint glow flowed from the mana circuits running along the walls. The four house-sized transparent cubes sitting in the middle were far larger than they'd looked in the promotional videos.
Under any other circumstances, she would have wanted a photo. But Song Min-ji was in no state to appreciate the view.
I'm doomed...
She had somehow scraped through the physical fitness test. The written exam had paid off, too — all those nights of cramming meant plenty of questions she recognized.
The problem was the clearing assessment. She hadn't even been sure whether she was allowed to touch the objects in front of her, while the other kids were already hunting down exits and opening them. Whenever she tried to figure out where a trap might be, someone disarmed it before she got there. And so, trailing behind everyone else's backs the entire time, the exam came to an end.
They were all really good, though...
She'd grown despondent over it, but in truth there was something she didn't know. The children of powerful guilds and families possessed restored materials from past exams — the so-called "leaked question banks" — and they had already run countless mock drills in spaces just like these. In a way, the result was only natural. But not knowing that, Song Min-ji was blaming nothing but her own inadequacy.
"The final event is the survival assessment."
The instructor who stepped forward pointed at the cubes.
"Random virtual terrain and monsters will be projected inside the capsules. Identical conditions apply to all applicants, and the difficulty rises as time passes."
As he spoke, the shapes of rocky pillars and monsters flickered briefly beyond the transparent walls.
"Three valid hits and your assessment ends. Whether you fight or run is up to you. Survive as long as you can."
Song Min-ji swallowed dryly.
"Number 1, Kim Kang-seop. Number 2, Choi Na-young. Number 3, Lee Ho-seop. Number 4, Kang Chan-ho. That's the first group, step forward."
The exam ran four applicants at a time.
Applicant No. 4 — Kang Chan-ho
Survival Time: 54 seconds — ELIMINATED
In the very first group, someone hadn't even lasted a minute. Most applicants were eliminated somewhere between two and four minutes, and whenever a rare record crept past the six-minute mark, small gasps rippled through the onlookers.
When one applicant broke ten minutes, even the supervisors at the other capsules turned their heads. It happened to be the capsule closest to her seat, so Song Min-ji watched that kid intently to see how they held out — but there was nothing she could learn from it. And no wonder. Every time a monster approached, a wave of fire swept it away.
...That's not something I could ever copy.
She fiddled with the grip of the sword she'd bought at the Hunter Mart during their miracle mega half-price clearance sale, then let her hand fall away.
And so time slipped by swiftly, tension coiled tight in her chest — until at last—
"...Number 178, Song Min-ji. Please step forward."
Her turn had finally come.