The Failed Prodigy 3
My vision blurred for a moment. No one had called my name, and no loud sound had broken the silence. I simply realized, belatedly, that my thoughts had drifted too far away. I drew in a slow breath. Cold air filled my lungs before slipping out again.
“Haa…”
The short exhale startled me. I had been alone, the training hall completely empty, yet the sound felt unnaturally loud. When had it started? Even when I was by myself, I had become this quiet. In the past, being alone only made everything louder. With no one else around, my mind would chatter on its own. Things that were already over refused to stay finished and resurfaced anyway. Words I had never said whispered beside my ear as if I could still speak them now.
Elementary school classrooms. Middle school gymnasiums. Scores written across exam papers. “Still not awakened?”
Even with my eyes closed, they never stopped. But now everything was strangely silent. So silent that the quiet itself felt unsettling.
When I lifted my head, the familiar sight of the training hall stretched before me. High ceilings studded with lights. Magic patterns etched across the entire floor. Shock-dispersing runes, safety measures to prevent fatal injuries, protective barriers for emergencies. As expected of Korea Academy, the facilities were almost excessively perfect. And empty. Right. Class had already ended. Everyone had left. The lights were still on only because cleanup time hadn’t arrived yet. Right now, I was the only one here.
This wasn’t the past. This wasn’t the middle school academy days. This was now. I was a high school D-class student who had suffered a complete defeat in today’s practical lesson. The fact settled slowly, heavily, into my chest. A dull throb pulsed near my solar plexus. The spot I had been hit earlier still hadn’t fully faded. Every deep breath sent a twisting sensation through something inside. If I exhaled any deeper, the pain would sharpen into something unmistakable. But this much was fine. I was already used to pain like this. My body didn’t break easily, recovered faster than expected, and adapted quickly to most impacts. It had always been that way since I was young. Falling, colliding, getting back up.
The problem wasn’t my body.
I lowered my gaze. My shadow stretched long across the black magic patterns. The angle of the lights made it appear even longer, more distorted, as though it belonged to someone else.
Today, I had confirmed it again. No matter how thoroughly I prepared, no matter how much I practiced, everything could become meaningless the moment a skill entered the equation. The sparring had been the same. For the first few exchanges, I had clearly held the advantage. Distance. Angles. Rhythm. The timing when my opponent’s breathing shifted. The moment their steps grew slightly longer. The tiny pause before transitioning into the next movement. It was the kind of fight I had repeated thousands of times. A way of fighting that didn’t require being an Awakened. Combat measured by non-Awakened standards.
But the instant my opponent used a skill, the rules changed. It wasn’t a matter of power. It wasn’t a matter of speed. The very framework of the fight had shifted. I was still fighting by non-Awakened standards while Jae-hoon moved according to Awakened ones. That gap wasn’t something effort alone could bridge.
I lowered my sword and sat down on the floor. The cold sensation crept slowly up through my hips and thighs. The chill of the floor seeped through my uniform and into my skin. Sitting there made the training hall feel even larger. And emptier.
‘Here again.’
The thought was familiar. But this time, I didn’t sink into the past. I didn’t recall the elementary academy days or the middle school academy days. Those times had already passed. This was after.
I raised my hand and called up the status window. A blue light appeared before my eyes.
Name: Han Do-yoon
Skill: Awakening conditions not met.
Still the same. Nothing had changed at all.
I stared at the sentence for a while. The letters that had once refused to register gradually regained meaning. Now they were so familiar that neither anger nor despair rose easily. When I had first seen them, my hands had trembled, my breath had caught, and my mind had gone blank. Why only me? I had asked that question countless times. Now, no emotion surfaced. Irritation and anger no longer rose the way they once had. Instead, I felt strangely calm.
‘Right. Nothing today either.’
The thought almost made me laugh. As if I were simply checking the weather. Ah, no rain today. Ah, no awakening today either. That level of detachment.
I closed the status window and shut my eyes for a moment. I inhaled slowly, then exhaled. The breath filled my lungs and left again, as though nothing had happened. I knew for certain now that there would be no answer. There was no standard, no explanation, not even a hint. Some people awakened in dangerous situations. Some awakened at the end of rage. Some simply awakened one day without warning. But none of those conditions applied to me. I had been pushed to the brink of death. I had pushed myself to the point of madness. I had reached the edge of giving up. Still, nothing happened.
So the way I thought about it had already been decided. I had learned dozens of times over that thinking about it would never produce an answer. If I didn’t know, then I would do what I could.
I rose slowly from the floor. I had been sitting longer than I realized. When I put weight on my legs, a faint stiffness rose through them. My balance wavered for a second before I steadied myself. This, too, was familiar. Almost falling, then standing again as if nothing had happened.
First, mana control.
I drew up the smallest amount of mana possible. So little that it would go unnoticed without deliberate focus. By now, even the phrase “drawing up” felt imprecise. It was closer to carefully taking out what was already there. I gathered it above my palm. There was no light. No flash. Only a faint sensation circling inside my hand. Neither warm nor cold. But undeniably present.
I kept my breathing steady. In, out. If my breathing wavered, so would the mana. It would leak, scatter. So I fixed my breath first. I held the mana above my palm so it wouldn’t scatter. So it wouldn’t leak. So it would keep its shape.
I stayed like that for a while, maintaining the sensation resting on my palm. Only the feeling that it was there. Whenever the mana tried to slip between my fingers, I caught it with the smallest adjustment. I didn’t force it. I didn’t push it in. I simply didn’t let it go. This wasn’t training meant to improve. It had become something closer to a habit ingrained in my body.
Inhale, exhale, again. Draw up the mana, maintain it, don’t let it spill. I had stopped counting how many times I repeated this. I had been doing it since elementary school. Through middle school. And now. Nothing had changed. I still hadn’t awakened. The status window was still empty. There was still no explanation anywhere. Even so, I couldn’t let go. Because if I didn’t know, I had to do what I could. Because that was the only way I could choose.
I picked up the sword again. A training sword. Familiar weight. I began the basic forms once more without raising the edge. Slash. Stop. Recover. Thrust. Shift center of gravity. Reset breathing. Each movement deliberate. On days when my body ached like today, the fundamentals stood out more clearly. Push even a little and balance would break, breathing would falter. Since I couldn’t force it with mana like an Awakened could, I had to be more precise. Slower. Smaller. More certain.
Sweat traced down my forehead. The sound of it hitting the floor seemed louder than it should have. The training hall clock quietly marked the passing time. I didn’t lift my head even as I heard it. In this moment, time didn’t matter. Neither did awakening. Neither did the midterm evaluation. Neither did anyone’s gaze. Right now, only this single movement remained.
I lowered the sword and drew up mana again. Not in my palm this time, but at the tips of my toes. The surface touching the floor. Weight distribution. The angle of my knees. I layered the smallest amount of mana. Not too much. Not enough to overflow. One step. Then another.
This was how I had survived. To someone else, it might have looked insignificant. Pointless repetition that went nowhere because I couldn’t awaken. But I knew. The moment I stopped, it would truly be over.
So I continued today as well. Even while knowing there was no answer. Even while knowing there would be no result. I simply did what I could.
The lights in the training hall began to go out one by one. Soon it would be completely dark. I steadied my breath one last time and gathered the mana. Even in that moment, I still didn’t know that somewhere, a paper bearing my name was being quietly turned over. That someone was erasing my potential and fixing my present in place. I only felt, with strange clarity, that a choice I would be unable to choose was about to be placed before me.