"Do you know me?"
Min-a asked.
I did.
We had lived on the same floor for five years. When our rations were cut off, we shared a loaf of bread cut in half. When Ha-yoon's lungs were damaged, we stayed up all night together. And at the very end, we had looked at each other while bound to the wall.
You died because of me.
But I couldn't say that.
"No."
My voice came out flatter than I expected.
"I'm sorry. I mistook you for someone else."
"Oh……."
Min-a adjusted the book in her arms.
"I guess I must look like someone you know."
"Someone I knew."
With that, I turned away.
Only after taking about three steps did I feel her gaze leave my back.
For now, this is the best I can do.
She hadn't Awakened yet. An unawakened body didn't produce mana, and the research institute had no interest in people who couldn't produce mana. The moment I approached her and called her by name, the three syllables of Seo Min-a's name would appear on someone's list.
Just as mine had seven years ago.
＊
The assessment room was smaller than I remembered.
White walls, a white floor, and a single ventilation duct in the ceiling. A waist-high pedestal stood in the middle of the room, with a fist-sized crystal resting on top. A measurement terminal was attached to its side. One corner of the screen protector was peeling away.
A man sat behind a desk. He was in his mid-forties, and his name tag read 'Counter No. 3, Oh Se-jin.'
It had been the same man seven years ago.
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha. Twenty-one years old. This is your first assessment, correct?"
"Yes."
"The procedure is simple. Just place your hand on the crystal and count to ten. Don't remove your hand before you're finished."
Oh Se-jin didn't look up from his paperwork. He sounded like someone who repeated the same instructions a hundred times a day.
"Your Awakening status will be confirmed immediately, and your skill name and Combat Aptitude Index will be calculated within thirty seconds. There's no pain involved. Some people experience dizziness, though, so you can sit down if you prefer."
"I'll sit."
"Whatever you're comfortable with."
I pulled over a chair and sat down.
The crystal was now at eye level.
Before placing my hand on it, I narrowed my eyes out of habit.
[Structure Inspection].
My vision shifted slightly. Lines emerged across the crystal's surface, forming a fine lattice.
One, two, three.
I maintained my focus.
Four, five.
I could barely make out a single outer layer.
And that was as far as I got.
The moment I tried to look deeper, my vision came to an abrupt halt, as though it had struck a wall. A dull pressure built inside my temples. Something throbbed in a place my fingers couldn't reach, no matter how hard I pressed.
I exhaled.
……Of course.
Until yesterday, I could have penetrated the second layer in a single second. I could see where the circuits narrowed and even identify the points where mana lingered for 0.02 seconds.
Now it took me five seconds just to see the outermost layer.
I couldn't even begin to reach what lay beneath it.
That was what returning to my twenty-one-year-old body meant.
All seven years' worth of blueprints remained in my head. I knew what to look for. I even knew where to dig.
But the depth I could perceive was nowhere near what it had been.
There was an entire seven-year gap between what I knew and what I could actually see.
I had to close that gap.
And quickly.
"……Excuse me, you need to put your hand on the crystal."
Oh Se-jin tapped the pedestal with his ballpoint pen.
"Ah, right."
I placed my palm on the crystal.
It was cold.
And then it wasn't.
＊
One.
Something opened inside my wrist.
Two, three.
It felt as though a passage that hadn't existed before was forming inside me. Something flowed through a place separate from my blood vessels. It was neither hot nor cold, but I could clearly feel it moving.
Four, five, six.
This is mana.
Seven years ago, I had remembered it as nothing more than 'a strange sensation.'
Now I knew better.
Awakening was the process of activating a power source inside the body. The total amount of mana was determined at birth, and no amount of training could increase it by even a single drop.
The vessel had already been decided.
Today was merely the day its capacity was confirmed.
Seven, eight, nine.
Ten.
I removed my hand.
A window appeared in the upper-right corner of my vision.
[Awakening confirmed.]
[Assigning a Unique Skill.]
[Skill Acquired: Structure Inspection]
[Calculating Combat Aptitude Index.]
The measurement terminal emitted a low hum.
Oh Se-jin raised his head for the first time.
"Huh."
"Is something wrong?"
"No, this happens occasionally. Just a moment."
The humming continued.
Ten seconds.
Twenty seconds.
Seven years ago, my heart had nearly burst during those twenty seconds. I had believed that a longer assessment meant something extraordinary was about to appear.
Now I knew better.
When the machine took too long, it meant it was struggling to make sense of the results.
The numbers appeared.
[Combat Aptitude Index: 0.00]
[Assessment Grade: F]
Oh Se-jin's shoulders sank slightly.
"……Mr. Yoon Jae-ha."
"Yes?"
"Could you take a look at the screen?"
He turned the terminal toward me.
Four entries were displayed.
Attack Power: 0.00
Defense Power: 0.00
Recovery Power: 0.00
Support Effect: 0.00
"These are the only four things the assessment device measures. Attack Power, Defense Power, Recovery Power, and Support Effect. It measures and combines those four values to calculate your Combat Aptitude Index. After all, those are the four things people ultimately need to make it out of a Gate alive."
"What if an ability doesn't fall under any of those four categories?"
"Pardon?"
"I'm asking what happens if a skill doesn't fit into any of those categories."
Oh Se-jin put down his pen.
"……There are no such skills."
"Isn't it more accurate to say that you have no way of measuring them?"
"I understand what you're saying, but those are the Association's standards."
Those were the standards.
Seven years of my life were contained in that single statement.
That number wasn't the result of my weakness.
It was the result of not having the right measuring tool.
If you tried to measure weight with a ruler, the result would be zero. That didn't mean the object was weightless. It meant a ruler couldn't measure its weight.
The world didn't distinguish between those two things.
It assigned grades without making that distinction, divided people according to those grades, and pushed them into the places designated for them.
I had been pushed all the way to the very end of that system.
Basement Level 4.
"My skill allows me to read other people's skills."
"……What do you mean by 'read'?"
"I can see their activation conditions, cooldowns, and weaknesses. Which of the four categories does that fall under?"
Oh Se-jin looked at the screen again.
He studied it for quite some time.
"I suppose it would be closest to Support Effect, but Support Effect refers to abilities that increase a target's numerical attributes. Information isn't…… a numerical value."
"Then zero is correct."
"……Yes."
Oh Se-jin took a card from his drawer.
It was a temporary Hunter ID, gray with a large F printed on it.
"I'll be frank with you. Being F-rank doesn't mean you can't work as a Hunter. Plenty of people register as porters or rear support personnel. The hazard pay is lower, but so is the accident rate."
"I see."
"However……"
Oh Se-jin stopped halfway through handing me the card.
He wasn't a bad person.
If he had been, he wouldn't have bothered saying what came next.
"I know this must be disappointing, but this isn't something you can change through hard work. It's something you're born with. Mr. Yoon Jae-ha, you simply…… don't have a talent for combat."
Seven years ago, I had nodded when I heard those words.
I had nodded, accepted the card, opened the door, and walked outside.
Then I had met the smiling man waiting beyond it.
This time, I took the card first.
Then I spoke.
"That's not true."
Oh Se-jin blinked.
"Excuse me?"
"It's not that I lack talent. It's that your machine can't measure it."
"……."
"Those are two different things."
I stood up. The chair scraped against the floor.
"Thank you for explaining everything. Those four categories were very helpful."
＊
I stepped into the corridor.
Fluorescent lights stretched along the ceiling in a long row. The exit was at the far end on the right, and the waiting room was on the left.
It was exactly the same corridor as seven years ago.
A shout erupted from in front of Counter No. 5.
"B-rank!"
A young man who looked about twenty held his card above his head. His mother, standing beside him, covered her mouth with both hands.
Applause broke out among the people waiting in line.
Strangers were applauding him.
B-rank.
Numerically, that meant a score in the high sixties. With a single skill, he could venture into the middle layers of a Gate. If someone received that card at twenty, three different guilds would contact him before the day was over.
And roughly three years later, he would hit a wall.
His total mana capacity wouldn't increase, and his skill circuit would remain exactly as it had been when he first received it.
Eventually, he would reach a point where no amount of experience could raise his index by even a single point.
That was when he would begin receiving advertisements for 'Skill Enhancement Procedures' from research institutes affiliated with the Association.
Thirty million won per session.
I had designed the principles behind those procedures in Basement Level 4.
I walked past the applause.
Nobody looked toward the person holding the gray card.
After another six steps or so, a man pushed himself away from the pillar he had been leaning against.
A neatly pressed shirt.
A thin document folder in his hand.
And a smiling face.
"Excuse me, are you Yoon Jae-ha?"
My breath caught for the briefest moment.
It had been seven years.
I hadn't seen this man again after that day. Once he had delivered me to the research institute, his job had been finished.
"Yes."
"If you wouldn't mind, could I have a moment of your time?"
"You have quite an extraordinary ability."
The man's mouth froze halfway open.
"……Pardon?"
"That's your next line, isn't it? 'You have quite an extraordinary ability. Would you consider working with us at our research institute?' That's the order, correct?"
His fingers tightened around the document folder.
The smile remained on his face.
But it was a hollow smile, with nothing left behind it but the movement of his facial muscles.
"I don't know where you heard that, but……"
"Please give Director Han Do-gyeong a message."
I raised my card to the height of my shirt pocket.
Gray, with a large F.
"Tell him my blueprints aren't for sale."
I turned and walked away.
Behind me, I heard the sound of pages being flipped through a folder.
Hurriedly.
I pushed open the exit door.
The afternoon sunlight touched my face.
A window appeared at the edge of my vision, then vanished.
[Target information updated. Grade F. Management Classification: Non-Combat.]
[……Classification category does not exist.]