Chapter 25: Graduation Ceremony
Chapter 25: Graduation Ceremony
Han Ye-ji and a handful of others stood in a street prowled by white mannequins.
"Figured I'd pass and be done with it."
"They definitely run these exercises hard."
People clustered in twos and threes, grumbling while their eyes darted around, nerves plain on every face.
Han Ye-ji was no different. If anything, her group looked worse off — three people silently scanning their surroundings.
A woman with a large plastic shield strapped to her back took point, with Han Ye-ji and one male cadet behind her.
The other groups all followed roughly the same pattern — one shield-bearer up front, the people with batons and tranquilizer guns bringing up the rear.
This wasn't standing still and shooting at a firing range. It wasn't practicing alone while an instructor shouted advice, either.
It was a graduation exam held on a massive set that had been copied wholesale from some cityscape.
More precisely, it was the exam for their final credits.
That was probably why Han Ye-ji's face had gone rigid — I could see her jaw clenched so tight it must have ached.
[Constellation Lethargic Nightmare advises Han Ye-ji to relax.]
"Y-yes..."
Her expression didn't ease.
Then again, if a single word telling you to relax actually worked, nobody would ever choke during life-defining moments like college entrance exams.
The three of them walked through the mannequin-choked city.
The graduation exam for the final credits changed depending on what career path an incarnation wanted to pursue.
Cadets bound for the front lines, for instance, wouldn't be in this mannequin city — they'd be facing down monster legions surging across open wasteland.
That didn't make any single version of the test easy or cushy.
Han Ye-ji's exam came with its own laundry list of restrictions: patrol a designated area or larger, prevent civilian casualties, avoid excessive force, never linger in one spot too long, and so on.
About thirty teams altogether, tied in groups of three.
Roughly a hundred people roamed the enormous model city — big enough you'd rarely bump into another squad — and from somewhere in the sprawl came shouts and the racket of combat.
Every time the noise erupted, Han Ye-ji and her teammates flinched, shoulders twitching.
Watching that, I figured I ought to help out, even if only a little.
I'd spent a full year observing Han Ye-ji dart around the Academy, and I'd watched plenty of graduation exams in the process.
Constellations sharing information with their incarnations was standard practice, so the exam itself wasn't hidden behind any black fog.
[Constellation Lethargic Nightmare warns you to watch out for pure-white mannequins.]
"Wait — white? White ones?"
"Hm? Your Constellation gave you a tip?"
"Yes. He says to watch out for the white mannequins."
The shield-woman asked the question without looking back, and Han Ye-ji answered.
In the same breath, the male incarnation who'd drawn the tranquilizer gun from his belt shouted.
"Target at eleven o'clock, under the streetlamp — confirmed armed!"
Before the shield-woman or Han Ye-ji could react, two needles fired from the plastic gun had already lodged in the mannequin's shoulder.
The mannequin, which had been pulling a kitchen knife from inside its coat, froze with its arm halfway up and crumpled to the ground, shaking violently.
The shield-woman saw this, kicked off the pavement, charged, flipped the mannequin onto its stomach, and bound its wrists and ankles. A pristine white kitchen knife skidded across the ground beside the shuddering, subdued, pure-white mannequin.
This exam didn't have them taking down the black mannequins they'd trained against in shooting drills.
They had to pick out the hostile mannequins hiding among the sea of ordinary white ones.
It was exactly like how fallen incarnations went around without visible name tags.
"Ah, so that's why..."
"Your Constellation gave you good info. I figured the seniors and those bastards had a reason for keeping their mouths shut."
The shield-woman, who'd just flipped a solidly built 180-centimeter mannequin with one hand like she was turning a fish on a grill, muttered to herself.
Marksmanship, arrest-and-restraint tactics — the Academy split things into separate courses, but one detail had been constant: the training target was always a black mannequin.
Only now did the three of them nod and make sense of all the shouting they'd been hearing around them.
Those other teams had either lacked a Constellation's attention, or they'd gotten careless and failed to stop a white mannequin from attacking the mannequin right next to it.
"Let's keep moving. If we stay put any longer we're gonna lose points."
"This time limit's basically telling us to subdue them fast, right? The clock's tighter than I thought."
Some tension released, the three of them stowed their weapons and began walking the streets again.
So long as they didn't eat a penalty for being caught completely off guard, there was no reason to fail the test.
※
Caps flung skyward, pollen drifting through the air, a storm of flashing cameras and a buzzing sea of well-wishers —
Of course none of that happened.
The Academy was the continent's only incarnation training institution, churning through hundreds of new faces every month and graduating just as many every month's end.
Who had the time to celebrate every single admission and graduation?
No — all you did was turn in your standard-issue gear, like the laptop, and collect a graduation certificate that looked suspiciously like a weekend outing pass.
"Wow... I seriously, actually graduated from the Academy!"
[Constellation Lethargic Nightmare sincerely congratulates his incarnation on her graduation.]
Fortunately none of her subjects had dragged on beyond the two-month extension window, so Han Ye-ji had finished in exactly one year, and she was now waving the graduation certificate in circles in her hand.
A card the size of her palm — essentially a national ID, incarnation certification, and Academy diploma rolled into one — glinted under the lights.
She'd changed into the graduate incarnation's uniform, subtly different in design from the cadet uniform, and as she brandished the certificate, eyes were drawn to her.
No matter how overflowing with talent these souls were, they all carried the weight of Academy graduation.
[Constellation Lethargic Nightmare advises you not to rush.]
"Rush? Oh... okay. I wouldn't mind a little rest anyway."
Once she boarded the sightseeing ship now approaching in the distance and sailed for the Eastern Continent, Han Ye-ji would no longer be treated as an Academy cadet — she'd be an incarnation, pure and simple.
An incarnation who'd enjoy enormous social consideration and admiration, and, for that same reason, be bound by a crushing list of restrictions.
'Honestly, it's kind of messed up...'
Exactly one year had passed, which made Han Ye-ji a high school senior — nineteen years old.
A minor who hadn't even turned twenty.
I fished a can of lemon soda out of the fridge and gulped it down, but the cold only scratched my throat — it did nothing for the unease sitting in my gut.
The unease was all about Han Ye-ji.
With her tall frame, mature build, composed bearing, and now the official incarnation uniform on top of it, she looked every bit the full-grown adult.
But nobody knew better than I did how young and fragile her mind was underneath. Maybe I knew that better than she did herself.
Was I really supposed to shove a girl — the same one whose hands trembled with terror at the thought of failing, who had actual Nightmares about her Constellation contract being dissolved, who'd spooked herself half to death with anxious fantasies about disappointing me — straight into grinding for points?
"It's not like anything's really urgent..."
I tossed the empty can into a corner and muttered.
The whisper bordered on self-justification.
Having spent decades in a ruined world, I knew in my bones how precious childhood's ordinary days were.
My monthly income of five thousand points had already let me pick up several basic Authorities.
They were all under ten thousand points apiece, but I'd bought the effective ones.
So there was no rush. Nothing was pressing.
[Constellation Lethargic Nightmare urges you to spend time with your family.]
"Yes. I will, Constellation."
Han Ye-ji wasn't from some warrior tribe, and she sure as hell wasn't a lunatic who'd holler "Wahaha, die, die!" while gleefully spraying gunfire.
I had no intention of sending a nineteen-year-old straight to work.
I mean, back when it all ended, I'd holed myself up in an underground shelter's solitary cell with every intention of sleeping until I died.
Without future anxieties or an immediate threat to your life, laziness becomes an excellent luxury.
It was a luxury worlds removed from the way Han Ye-ji had lived — a girl who'd been the head of a parentless household since roughly her early elementary-school years.
Sure, she'd gotten financial aid, but she'd still packed her life full of studying and part-time work to outrun the dread about her future.
Who would dare point a finger at her for taking a single year off on her Constellation's orders?
It wasn't like she was goofing off for a full, solid year, either. Rest up hard for about half a year, then once she turned twenty she'd start contributing as an incarnation — simple.
While I was turning these thoughts over, Han Ye-ji had reached the harbor and boarded the bus without ceremony.
She leaned her head against the window and lifted her smartphone. A stream she'd been following — a streamer's gameplay —
"Oh, what the fuck. What garbage game is this."
My hands hit the keyboard immediately, but the damage was done.
[Constellation Lethargic Nightmare urges her not to watch such a disgusting broadcast.]
"Constellation? Huh? Why? What's wrong?"
On the screen, crudely polygon-modeled characters were sprinting around.
A petty thief player trying to steal protein supplements, and the muscle-bound gym-rat NPCs hunting that thief.
Calling their outfits micro-bikinis wouldn't even be accurate.
These muscle women had nothing but a single line drawn across their pectorals in marker, their nipples glowing red as they gave chase — some cheap comedic horror game.
The female streamer shrieked in a high-pitched wail, yelling at the floppy, disgusting tits to get away from her, but she was bad at the game and immediately got a game over.
Watching that, one thing became dead certain.
'That is one hundred percent going to show up in a Nightmare, fuck...'
An image that intense? No question it'd leave its mark in Han Ye-ji's unconscious.
A muscle-bound creature easily two meters tall.
An eight-pack, not a six-pack, carved into its gut, its dehydrated, drawn-up flanks creased and wrinkly.
Arms swollen into thigh-sized masses, pectorals impossible to classify as female breasts or steroid-blasted male pecs —
And to top it off, the character was supposedly "female," so it came sprinting at you with its pretty twin braids whipping alongside those thigh-thick biceps.
Honestly, I'd rather just twist a rusted-shut pipe open with my bare hands.
Collecting fragments of Nightmare... really losing the desire for that.