No Graduation, No Escape
That devilish bitch…
My lips trembled as I stared piercingly at the screen.
Unauthorized cheating, teaming penalty?
No way—when did I ever team up?! I just wanted to live! And they call that teaming?!
I felt like tears of blood would well up from the sheer injustice. To dismiss my desperate survival instincts as mere cheating… these heartless bastards.
But the outrage lasted only a moment. The real, fundamental reason for my pathetic score soon surfaced.
…Right. This exam was kill-count based, wasn’t it?
Not who you took down, but how many. A completely insane system. And no matter how stubbornly you clung to life like a cockroach, if you weren’t the last one standing you got zero survival points. Absolute garbage balance.
Which absolute bastard designed this trash exam?!
I was sighing and metaphorically strangling the grading system’s creator when a new tab caught my eye beside the [Freshman Welcome Tournament Scores]: [Entrance Exam Scores].
The entrance exam that had taken place before I possessed this body. Curiosity suddenly sparked—just how badly had the original owner of this body performed to get treated as trash by every department and dumped into the unaffiliated pile?
As if hypnotized, I stretched out a finger and tapped the tab.
The moment the screen changed—
Cadet Han Siyul’s final entrance exam grade is [ F ]
“….”
My mouth fell open and I froze solid as a rock.
F. F? Straight F’s across the board?
…What the hell happened, original me before possession?! How do you even take a test and come out with all F’s?!
I could’ve kicked the OMR card around with my feet and still scored better than this.
Even after all the disgraceful running and hiding I’d done in the welcome tournament—plus the cheating penalty—I’d still scraped a D-.
Yet the original owner of this body had somehow drilled straight through the floor and into the earth’s core to earn an F. I simply could not comprehend it.
While I sat there pale-faced from the sheer shock, Chloe across the table propped her chin on her hand and smirked.
“Siyul… how should I put it? You’re the type whose every thought shows right on your face, aren’t you?”
Anastasia, arms folded beside me, lit up with curiosity as well, her eyes gleaming sharply.
“What? How shitty did the scores come out for your face to look like that? Hey, let me see.”
She suddenly thrust her head toward my phone screen.
I jerked in alarm and frantically clutched the phone to my chest.
“N-no!”
My fierce refusal only made a mischievous spark flare across Anastasia’s face.
“Who do you think you are? When I say show me, you show me. Hand it over.”
“W-wha—?!”
It happened in an instant.
Anastasia’s powerful hands clamped both my wrists at once; with her free hand she plucked the phone clean out of my arms.
This was exactly what people meant by “having your nose stolen right in front of your open eyes.”
I lunged desperately, but she simply raised the phone high overhead. My short arms never stood a chance.
Just as Anastasia’s blue eyes were about to roll toward the screen—
I poured every ounce of my soul into a plaintive wail.
“Aaaah! Please, Noona! Don’t look…! Please… okay? Pleeease….”
Dignity, pride—everything discarded for pure, pathetic pleading.
The moment that ugly scream rang through the corner of the cafeteria, Anastasia’s gaze froze on my face instead of the screen.
“….”
She stared down at my teary-eyed face for a long second. Something flickered in her eyes.
A moment later she looked away with a rough cough and suddenly thrust her hand out.
“…Here.”
I snatched the phone back like a drowning man and exhaled a huge sigh of relief.
Whew… th-thank god….
If these top-tier elites had discovered my scores were all F’s… being daily bullied and publicly roasted by that polar-bear woman would have been the least of it.
And maybe—just maybe—I would have lost the first friends I had ever made in this world. The worst possible fear gripped me.
I patted my racing heart and quietly sat back down. Then, putting on the most casual voice I could manage, I turned to Chloe, who was still watching me with interest, chin in hand.
“…Um, Chloe. Hypothetically—purely hypothetically, okay? This is absolutely not about me. It’s about an acquaintance of mine… anyway, just hypothetically… if someone’s grades are really bad, are there any disadvantages or anything…?”
Chloe laughed softly at the transparent question.
“Fufufu. Hmm? Nothing fatal, I don’t think. Like I said earlier, scores are basically material to show off to the nation or big guilds, plus a way to earn points. Oh—and scholarships and dorm priority, I suppose.”
Whew… thank goodness.
I cheered silently. Scholarships and dorms I could live without, and giant-guild scouting offers were never on my radar to begin with.
I was just letting out a deep breath of relief and starting to relax when—
“Ah. And you might not be able to graduate?”
Chloe tossed the line out as if it were nothing. My heart plummeted.
“N-not be able to graduate…? Wh-what happens if you can’t graduate…?”
“…You can’t leave this academy city. Forever.”
“What…?”
I made a dumbfounded noise. Forever?
Chloe explained in a gentle, matter-of-fact tone while I stared in horror.
“Well, of course. Babel Academy is a place of learning for the Awakened, but it also monitors and isolates dangerous ability users from all over the world. To ordinary people, Awakened are… well, outright monsters. Letting people who can’t control their powers or who fall short of a certain standard just walk free into society is way too risky. So only those who clear the bar get to graduate and leave.”
Anastasia, scraping her tray with a fork beside me, added roughly:
“Basically it’s a prison. They dump the useless trash and the uncontrollable dangerous ones all in one place so they don’t have to let them loose outside. There’s even a real containment facility for Awakened on this island.”
A cold chill raced straight down my spine.
I started trembling violently. Chloe smiled sweetly and offered comfort.
“Still, don’t freak out too much. Even if you can’t graduate you can always repeat a year, and some people use the points they’ve saved to open little shops on the island and live pretty well.”
Ah… so you can repeat years, huh.
Color was just beginning to return to my deathly pale face when Chloe suddenly wiped every trace of smile away. Her expression turned terrifyingly serious and her voice dropped low.
“…But.”
She whispered as though sharing a ghost story.
“That’s only the story for a tiny handful of people who have plenty of points. Staying in the academy burns through a lot of them. Most of the dropouts… either scrape by day to day taking part-time jobs and menial commissions, or they can’t stand the misery and eventually turn into villains.”
Chloe’s mysterious eyes glinted coldly.
“Then they raid shops, do shady illegal jobs in the back alleys… until they die in a gutter or get caught by commissioned cadets and dragged off to the containment facility.”
Thud—
I collapsed face-first onto the table.
If I don’t graduate I’m stuck on this island forever, either working part-time or becoming some pathetic villain?
My future self flashed in vivid, merciless detail.
Could someone with zero usable abilities even find a part-time job here? Convenience-store shifts would be filled by Awakened with superhuman physiques. Who would ever hire an all-F stick insect like me?
I saw myself failing every interview, wandering the alleys, and slowly starving.
Then, unable to endure the hunger any longer, I’d steal a single piece of bread from a restaurant… and get caught. And then…
I was seized by enraged Awakened shopkeepers, bound to a cross in the middle of the plaza, and burned at the stake—my imagination unspooled the whole panorama right before my eyes.
Watching my imaginary self turn to ash in the roaring flames sent another full-body shiver through me.
It was horrifying. I had crossed into this deadly other world only to end up burned at the stake as Bread-Thief Villain A for stealing a single slice of bread!
“No…! I can’t live as a shut-in loser even after coming here…! And for my end to be getting burned for bread theft…!”
Still face-down on the table, I clutched my head with both hands and shook it frantically in pure denial.
Watching me completely lose my mind and thrash about,
“Ahahahah!”
Chloe clutched her stomach and burst into bright, sparkling laughter. Tears even pricked the corners of her eyes as she turned to Anastasia, thoroughly entertained.
“So that’s why Anya keeps dragging Siyul around everywhere?”
Then she added toward my still-trembling, collapsed form:
“It’s okay, it’s okay. The cutoff isn’t ridiculously high or anything… so you’ll probably graduate just fine, Siyul~”
After shoving me all the way to the edge of hell she now smiled like an angel and offered comfort. I muttered into the tabletop.
…This black-hearted little devil.
I was still grumbling and barely piecing my mental state back together when Chloe, who had been watching my reactions with keen interest, suddenly propped her chin up again and asked with a puzzled look.
“Come to think of it, Siyul, you’ve been a little strange this whole time.”
“Huh? About what?”
“Basic concepts about magic and this academy city. They teach all of that in the ‘Freshman Preparatory Camp’… Siyul, did you just sleep through the whole thing?”
I slowly raised my head and put on a blank face.
“Huh…? Camp? What’s that?”
“Hm…? You mean you didn’t go? They hold them in Korea too, of course. The mandatory pre-admission education each country runs before you officially enter Babel Academy. Did you skip it?”
Chloe’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
Damn this possession risk. At least give me the original body’s memories!
I have no idea whether I attended or not…!
Desperate not to get caught, I forced an awkward smile and waved my hands frantically.
“Ah, th-that? O-of course I went! I went, I just… kinda forgot for a second….”
Chloe still looked dubious at my flimsy excuse, but after a moment she simply smiled brightly and nodded.
“Is that so…? Well, that can happen.”
…Whew. Dodged it.
Cold sweat poured down my back.
I really knew far too little about this world. With no memories and no tutorial, I could get tripped up and suspected at any moment, anywhere.
Later, when I was alone, I would have to dig through the community boards and thoroughly cram the basic common knowledge.
Making that resolution, I lowered my gaze back to the phone screen.
The catastrophic report cards still sat side by side.
Haa… Entrance exam all F’s, welcome tournament D-. I’m really going to have to grit my teeth and work my ass off….
I was about to close the depressing scores when one line of text caught my eye again.
Unauthorized Cheating (Teaming Penalty): −5 points
…Wait a second. If I got a penalty…
Didn’t that mean that platinum-blonde polar-bear woman got the exact same one?
I carefully gauged the mood and opened my mouth.
“Come to think of it… Noona. Did you maybe get docked points because of me…?”
Anastasia answered half-heartedly to my timid question.
“Hm? I haven’t checked my scores yet.”
“Is that so…? Still… I’m sorry. I feel like you took a pointless penalty because of me….”
When I shrank into myself and tried to read her mood, Anastasia propped her chin up and snorted.
“…Forget it. That girl already said earlier—scores don’t matter much to us. I just ran around beating people for my own satisfaction. And I racked up a pretty high kill count, so even with the penalty I’ll still get at least an A.”
That sheer confidence made me look at her with pure envy.
But a moment later I hung my head again.
“…I’m still sorry.”
Even if she claimed it was just for fun, watching her smash everything so enthusiastically throughout the whole tournament made it obvious she had wanted a good score deep down.
Leaving an unnecessary blemish because of a deadweight like me was clearly my fault….
When I genuinely shriveled up with apology, Anastasia glanced at me and tossed out a line as if annoyed.
“…If you’re that sorry, just buy me a coffee after the afternoon schedule.”
Color instantly flooded my face.
“Ah…! Yes, I’ll buy it!”
I nodded vigorously, relieved I could lighten the guilt even a little—right when Chloe across the table suddenly cut in.
“Whaaat~? Nooo~ I was going to talk with Siyul alone after this~ Too bad….”
Chloe curled the corners of her lips into a devilish little smile.
“Then… should I just say it now?”
She gave a light cough to clear her throat, then leaned her upper body toward me.
“There’s not much lunch left for beating around the bush, so I’ll be direct.”
Her secretive voice slipped into my ear.
“Siyul. Would you mind telling just me a little about your ‘ability’?”