Basic Evaluation (1)
The name was obviously Han Min-ha. Even on second glance at the photo, it was the same girl who had handed me the handkerchief earlier. Let’s see… how did she get accepted? Hero descendant extra points? So that was the reason. I’d been wondering how someone so timid and perpetually shrinking into herself could have made it into the academy, but the preferential points explained everything.
The hero descendant system was a form of preferential treatment granted when one’s parents or grandparents were current or former heroes. In mundane terms, it was the equivalent of special admission for children of national merit. The exact bonus varied by the hero’s rank, but it was usually enough to secure entry. After all, talent for aura often ran in the blood. From the academy’s perspective, it was far more efficient to nurture students who already carried some potential than to start from zero with completely ordinary children.
But… something was off. Why was the family relations column blank? For anyone admitted through the hero descendant quota, that section should have listed the relevant hero’s callsign and rank. At the very least, the names of parents or siblings ought to appear. Was she an orphan? Even if her parents had died, if they had been heroes the information should still be recorded. Or perhaps her grandparents were the heroes and both parents had passed away. Hmm… What exactly was going on here?
Not that I could march back to the administrative office and ask. It wasn’t urgent information, so I decided to look into it slowly later. Nothing else in her file particularly caught my eye.
So they wanted me to raise this girl to S-class. Or rather… were those words even a real quest? Once doubt took root, it tended to spread. I shook my head, pushing the suspicion aside. Unlike the usual stories where possession came with a friendly status window and tutorial, this world offered no such kindness. In a situation with zero information, it was best to cling to even the smallest clue. At least I knew the entire story up to its conclusion; a solution would present itself eventually.
Back in my lab, I finished the simple preparations for tomorrow’s basic evaluation. I had already gone over everything multiple times during faculty meetings before the entrance ceremony. These things were the same every year, so it didn’t take long.
Once everything was done, I habitually collapsed onto the sofa. The coughing had stopped, but standing for so long had left me exhausted. I closed my eyes and began drifting off when my phone suddenly rang. A message from Professor Jin Se-yeong.
It was a link to a site I’d never seen before. When I opened it, the morning’s entrance ceremony had been uploaded as a news segment. The anchor’s clear, pleasant voice played over footage of new students walking through the main gate. And there I was, standing like a scarecrow and awkwardly waving my hand… Damn. It looked far too unnatural.
Fortunately, the embarrassing scene of me coughing violently and bolting from the stage was nowhere to be seen. They must have edited it out since it wasn’t exactly newsworthy. I scrolled down to the comments and immediately frowned. The entire section was flooded with talk about one specific person.
I stared at the screen in disbelief. Professor Jin Se-yeong… Out of all the videos she could have sent, why did she link me to this weird community? She didn’t seem like the type to browse places like this at all.
Just in case, I typed “Graford Entrance Ceremony” into the search bar. The related searches that poured down made me sigh. “Graford Main Gate Professor,” “Entrance Ceremony Main Gate Professor,” “Academy Sickly Beauty,” and so on. Academy Sickly Beauty? What the hell was that?
When I clicked it, a somewhat shaky video—probably filmed by a student—began playing. It showed me in the middle of my self-introduction suddenly coughing violently and stepping down from the stage. Seeing it from this angle… it really was pathetic.
Reading the comments under that video, I couldn’t hold back a curse.
“Damn it.”
I had wandered into the completely wrong side of the internet. Almost every community was flooded with discussions about me. On top of that, Yoo Hee-won’s interview was trending. It had been filmed in front of the auditorium after the ceremony, and it perfectly captured both her striking beauty and her signature arrogance.
In a way, it was almost fortunate that the attention was on me instead of Han Min-ha. If someone asked whether I could successfully guide that girl to graduation while overcoming both her personality and the pressure from her parents, I honestly wasn’t sure. The original Kyo Suhyeon might have managed it, but I had my doubts.
Hmm… Han Min-ha…
I reopened the personal information sheet I had photographed earlier. Messy black hair, oversized glasses, and a completely dejected expression. So I was supposed to turn this girl into an S-rank hero…
The next day, all the professors from the faculty gathered in one place for the basic evaluation. Running the entrance ceremony itself was the administration’s job, but the basic evaluation was entirely the faculty’s responsibility since it was so closely tied to the students’ grades.
“You all know how important the basic evaluation is, right?”
At the department head’s question, the professors nodded in agreement. The basic evaluation was incredibly important for academy students. It sorted them by ability level and assigned appropriate guidance. The rankings and scores from this test rarely changed significantly by the time of graduation.
It made sense. The top group trained together with high-level instructors and received special supplementary education from the academy itself. The more successful heroes an academy produced, the higher its prestige. That was why they poured resources into students with a high chance of reaching A-class or above. Most of those top-tier students had already received private tutoring before even enrolling.
As for the rest… The lower groups received only the bare minimum required education. The academy essentially collected their tuition and pushed them through to graduation. Most of those students started at F-class and stayed there. Instead of fighting villains, they ended up doing manual labor at construction sites as human heavy machinery, until the crushing reality drove them to voluntarily withdraw from the Management Bureau.
That was why new students bet everything on the basic evaluation.
“Especially this year… You all know why, right? The chairman’s daughter. Understand?”
He was talking about Yoo Hee-won.
“It would be troublesome if she finds any fault with the evaluation, so let’s be thorough. Objective and fair.”
“Understood.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Professor Kyo.” The department head pointed at me.
“Yes, sir.”
“Watch yourself. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“I understand.”
He was referring to how my face had taken over every online community. As we left the faculty office, Professor Jin Se-yeong approached me.
“What do you mean ‘watch yourself’? You didn’t do anything wrong, Professor Kyo.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. You need to stop saying you’re ‘fine’ about everything. That’s why the department head keeps underestimating you.”
“Haha, yes. I’ll keep that in mind.”
The basic evaluation took place on a massive set that used the academy’s entire second sports field. There, new students would undergo comprehensive testing of their physical abilities, reflexes, muscular endurance, judgment, and calculation skills. On the surface it was merely a “basic” evaluation to gauge the freshmen’s level.
But from the students walking toward the testing ground, I could feel something like a burning flame of determination that wasn’t visible to the eye. At the very front was Yoo Hee-won with her shining golden hair. True to her personality that loved being the center of attention.
She spotted me from afar and gave me a coquettish smile. I deliberately looked away from that smile and searched for Han Min-ha instead. But I couldn’t find the black-haired girl with the gloomy, hunched posture anywhere in my line of sight. She must have been pushed somewhere toward the back.
When the new students lined up in front of the faculty, the department head stepped forward and spoke.
“From now on, you freshmen will undergo the basic evaluation. As you all know, this is an extremely important test.”
The students’ faces stiffened with tension at those words. Only Yoo Hee-won maintained a relaxed smile.
“The professors of our faculty will evaluate you fairly, so I hope you all demonstrate your full abilities and aim for the highest possible scores.”
The faculty assistants divided the students into random groups of ten.
“See you at the exit, Professor Kyo.”
Yoo Hee-won gave me a flirtatious smile and walked off toward her assigned area. Ignoring her words, I turned to look at the group standing in front of me.
“Huh?”
There she was—Han Min-ha with her long, slightly disheveled black hair, wearing thick glasses, her shoulders hunched as she stared down at the ground.