Chapter 5 — Labels
The aptitude results went live at 6:00 a.m.
The government server crashed at 6:01 a.m.
By 6:04, every teenager in the country was either refreshing, screaming, or pretending they didn't care while refreshing.
The world loved labels.
It always had.
People became letters before they became anything else:
S, A, B, C, D, E… and the silent, humiliating F.
Kim Jae-hwan sat at his desk with the curtains still drawn.
The only light in the room came from his phone screen.
He wasn't refreshing.
He didn't need to.
He waited until the notification popped up on its own.
> NATIONAL HUNTER APTITUDE RESULT AVAILABLE
He tapped the link.
The page took a moment to load, as if even the internet was holding its breath.
Then his name appeared.
KIM JAE-HWAN — E-RANK (LOW)
Mana Affinity: Suboptimal
Combat Potential: Below Average
Recommended Career Track: Support Personnel / Non-combatant
He stared at the screen.
Not surprised.
Not disappointed.
Not amused.
Just… mildly interested, the same way one might look at a familiar painting hung in a different frame.
E-rank this time.
Not F.
How nostalgic.
In some regressions he had started as C, in others D. Once, the machine had glitched and labeled him A, causing a comedic chain of bureaucratic disasters for three weeks. None of it had mattered in the end.
Rank was an opening move.
Not the game.
His finger hovered over the "share" icon for a moment before he turned off the phone and tossed it onto the bed.
Outside his room, his family whispered.
They thought he couldn't hear.
"…open it yet?"
"No, he's calm, that's not a good sign—"
"Maybe it's high and he's just pretending—"
"Don't hope too much—"
He opened the door.
They snapped upright.
His mother's smile trembled. "Well?"
"E-rank," he said simply.
Silence.
Not the loud, shocked kind.
The quiet kind, made of collapsing expectations.
His father cleared his throat, already shifting mental gears. "E is… still inside the registered boundary. With training and the right guild—"
His sister forced a grin too wide for her face. "See? Not F! Congratulations, oppa, you're officially slightly above trash."
He nodded.
Their reactions were predictable.
They were not cruel. Just small. Unable to see past categories imposed by a world terrified of Gates and desperate to quantify worth.
His mother finally exhaled. "E-rank is fine. Safe. Better than dangerous S-ranks who die early…"
She would repeat that same line in every regression where he wasn't "special."
Safety through mediocrity.
He went back into his room without replying.
His phone began to vibrate almost immediately.
Group chats exploded.
[WHAT'D YOU GET??]
[E-RANK OMG LOL LET'S SUFFER TOGETHER]
[I'm C!]
[I'm D, someone kill me]
[NO DON'T SAY THAT]
[WE DRINK TONIGHT I DON'T CARE]
He scrolled lazily.
Then one notification blinked apart from the rest.
Min-seok.
[You awake?]
He typed: [Yes.]
A pause.
Then:
[I got B.]
Of course.
He smiled slightly.
[Congratulations.]
Another pause.
Then:
[What about you?]
He considered lying.
Not because he felt shame — that sensation had burnt out lifetimes ago — but because lies changed trajectories subtly, and he was curious how this world would shift if he nudged it early.
He didn't.
[E.]
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Then:
[…You okay?]
There it was.
Not mockery.
Not pity exactly, either.
Something worse.
Gentle concern.
The kind people offered those they unconsciously began to look down on.
"I'm fine," he wrote. "Meet later?"
[Always.]
He put the phone down.
The ceiling crack greeted him like an old acquaintance. He traced it with his eyes and let the murmurs of the apartment fade into background static.
E-rank, he thought.
Again.
It solved several problems and created none.
Low rank made people underestimate him. Underestimation created blind spots. Blind spots created corridors to move unseen.
He preferred corridors.
He stood, dressed, and left the house.
His mother tried to press a rice ball into his hand on the way out. He accepted it, because nineteen-year-old sons accepted rice balls when mothers looked like that.
The city felt louder than usual.
Laughter here. Crying there. Someone shouting in triumph. Someone else slumped on a bench staring at their hands as if they'd betrayed him.
Guild recruiters were already out like sharks, smiling too wide.
"Prospective C-ranks, this way!"
"We offer full tuition coverage!"
"B-rank candidates get signing bonuses!"
He walked through it unbothered.
No one called out to him.
No one saw E-rank.
That was fine.
He met Min-seok at the same convenience store they had gone to since middle school. It looked the same in every life — flickering sign, old owner half-asleep at the counter, outdoor table scratched with years of carved initials.
Min-seok was already there.
He looked guilty.
Jae-hwan hid his amusement.
"So," Min-seok said, lifting his soda can like a tiny salute. "B-rank."
"Congratulations."
"It doesn't feel real."
"It is."
Min-seok rubbed the back of his neck. "And you…"
"E."
He said it casually, and watched.
It landed.
Min-seok flinched just barely before plastering on a smile.
"Hey, E-ranks are important," he rushed. "Logistics, analysis, support— Not everyone has to fight. We'll still— you know— stick together."
There it was again.
That phrase.
Stick together.
He wondered whether Min-seok realized how often he said it in every life, like a cursed refrain. He wondered whether somewhere in his bones, the boy felt the gravity of repetition too.
"I know," Jae-hwan replied.
He meant: I know exactly how far that promise stretches before it snaps.
They clinked soda cans.
They drank.
The afternoon light slanted across cracked plastic tables. Middle schoolers laughed too loudly nearby. Two girls walked by glancing at Min-seok differently than yesterday.
Labels changed gravity.
Min-seok felt it too.
He didn't gloat. He wasn't cruel. He was simply beginning unconsciously to inhabit his new orbit.
People didn't become worse when their rank rose.
They simply became themselves with less restraint.
"So," Min-seok said, attempting cheer. "Plan?"
"Study," Jae-hwan said.
"For guild exams already?"
"For the future."
Min-seok groaned. "You're impossible."
Jae-hwan smiled faintly.
If only he knew.
---
By evening, social media had turned into a battlefield of letters.
Screenshots of results.
Fake modesty posts.
Real modesty drowned under desperation.
"I guess I'm just F forever lol" typed with shaking hands.
Jae-hwan lay on his bed, phone dark beside him, listening to the city's digital pulse vibrate through the air.
Rank distribution charts would appear soon. News panels would debate the "national combat readiness outlook." Academics would write papers on statistical clustering of rank by geography.
None of it mattered.
The Gates would not care.
He closed his eyes.
His mind went not forward, but sideways — across timelines where he had started high, low, average. The divergence point had never been his rank.
It had always been his choice.
He sat up.
His notebook waited patiently on the desk.
He opened it to his Phase One page.
He added a new line:
— use "E-rank" to lower expectations
Then, beneath it:
— exceed expectations only when necessary — assign credit to others when beneficial — avoid early spotlight — build silent influence
He tapped the pen against the paper.
Someone knocked on his door.
His sister peeked in, not meeting his eyes at first. Then, abruptly, she walked in, sat on the edge of the bed, and shoved a candy bar into his hand.
"For your useless E-rank life," she muttered.
He looked at the candy.
Then at her.
She was trying.
Clumsily.
He almost — almost — felt the ghost of something warm stir in his chest. Not forgiveness. Not affection. Just a memory of what those things used to feel like.
"Thanks," he said.
"Don't die," she added quickly, as if the words escaped against her will. "Even E-ranks die now. In Gate accidents and stuff. Just don't."
He nodded.
"I'll be careful."
She left before he could say anything else, embarrassed by her own concern.
The room fell quiet again.
He unwrapped the candy and took a small bite.
Sweet.
He chewed thoughtfully.
He wasn't sentimental enough to believe his family loved him unconditionally. They loved comfort. They loved survival. They loved the idea of him that fit into those.
But moments like that complicated things.
He hated complications.
He finished the candy anyway.
He placed the empty wrapper neatly beside the notebook, then turned to a fresh page.
This one he titled:
AWAKENING VECTOR
It wouldn't happen today.
Or tomorrow.
But the path to it had already begun the moment the aptitude machine cracked. Pressure was building. Something in the world had recognized the wrongness of him — the density of memory, the unnatural stacking of lives.
He wrote:
— proximity to catastrophic event accelerates onset — physical stress is catalyst — emotional stress irrelevant
He paused.
Then, carefully:
— observer interference: unknown variable
The presence in the mirrors.
The hum in the machine.
The unblinking attention that wasn't mana, wasn't human, wasn't anything that fitted into language.
He didn't fear it.
He simply acknowledged it.
He closed the notebook.
The city outside glittered as evening thickened into night.
Somewhere, a boy celebrated his A-rank until his throat went hoarse. Somewhere else, a girl cried herself quiet over F. Parents toasted. Parents argued. Futures swayed like candle flames.
Kim Jae-hwan sat in the center of his quiet room, an E-rank with forty-seven lifetimes behind his eyes.
Labels, he thought, are fragile.
He turned off the light.
Darkness wrapped around him like water.
Tomorrow, guild scouts would begin circling the school. Rumors would calcify into social hierarchies. Lines would deepen.
He lay back.
Not restless.
Not eager.
Not afraid.
Simply waiting.
Iteration forty-seven had been given its first label.
It meant nothing.
The world had not yet understood that the most dangerous person alive could be written off as E-rank, low.