Chapter 6 — The Shape of the Cage
By the next day, the school had changed.
The building was the same beige concrete. The halls were the same scuffed floors and faded posters. The teachers were the same tired faces pretending authority mattered.
But the air?
The air was different.
Ranks had rewritten gravity.
A-ranks walked as if the floor chose to exist beneath them.
B-ranks glowed with new orbits.
C-ranks clustered together for warmth and validation.
D-ranks laughed too loudly to hide the crack in their voices.
E-ranks and F-ranks learned the art of shrinking.
Kim Jae-hwan walked through it all with his usual measured steps.
Eyes lingered on him a heartbeat longer than before.
Whispers trailed him.
"E-rank."
"I thought he'd be higher."
"He always got good grades."
"Guess that doesn't matter now."
He didn't react.
He had walked through this exact hallway in this exact atmosphere in so many lives that the sensation had the dull familiarity of déjà vu.
He slid open the classroom door.
Conversations stuttered for half a second.
Not because he was important.
Because classification had just finished sorting him.
Min-seok waved from his seat with the awkward enthusiasm of someone trying too hard to prove that nothing had changed.
"Jae-hwan! Here!"
There was now an empty seat between them.
Not deliberate.
Not conscious.
Just the slow instinct of people adjusting to the new shape of the world.
He sat down anyway, ignoring the subtle tension that followed.
Their homeroom teacher entered, clapped his hands, and pretended authority could smooth everything back into place.
"Congratulations to everyone who received results," he said. "Remember, rank does not determine your value as a human being."
Half the room relaxed.
Half the room stiffened.
Everyone knew it was a lie.
The teacher continued talking — scholarships, academy tracks, government guidance counselors — background noise to the real lecture the world was giving:
You are now your letter.
Jae-hwan rested his cheek in his hand and gazed out the window.
He had once fought desperately against that cage — tried to prove that people were more than numbers assigned by imperfect systems. He had bled, killed, and saved to break it.
The cage didn't break.
It just changed shape.
Sometimes gilded.
Sometimes rusted.
Always a cage.
A paper ball bounced off his desk.
He blinked and looked over.
The same boy from earlier regressions grinned sheepishly.
On the paper was scrawled:
[E-rank bros?]
He huffed a quiet breath that wasn't quite a laugh.
He wrote back:
[You'll live longer than the A-ranks.]
The boy snorted when he read it, earning a glare from the teacher. He mouthed thanks.
Jae-hwan turned back to the window.
He hadn't meant it as comfort.
It was simply statistically true.
A-ranks died first in the early years — thrust into disaster zones, fed into Gates with inadequate support. Nations were greedy with their heroes. The world demanded sacrifices proportional to potential.
He wondered if the boy would survive this time.
He wondered if he cared.
The answer skimmed the surface of his thoughts and drifted away, unanchored.
---
Lunch break carved the school into territories.
The rooftop became the quiet refuge for those who didn't want to watch the new social map being drawn in the cafeteria. Jae-hwan pushed open the door and stepped into bright sunlight and wind that tasted faintly of metal.
Yoo Ji-ah was already there.
She stood with her hands on the railing, staring out at the city as if searching for cracks only she could see.
He joined her without speaking.
She didn't look at him.
"E-rank?" she asked.
"Yes."
She nodded once.
No sympathy.
No fake encouragement.
Just acknowledgment.
"And you?" he asked.
"D."
He tilted his head. "Unfortunate."
She smirked lightly. "Only if you think the letter matters."
He regarded her for a moment.
She was irritated.
Not by her rank — by the way people had started treating her because of it.
"Anything interesting happen?" he asked.
She exhaled slowly. "Two guys from class 2-B tried to 'comfort' me. It took effort not to throw them down the stairs."
He could picture it.
He almost wished she had.
Silence settled comfortably.
Below them, the sports field was dotted with students pretending to play while sneaking sideways glances at newly awakened elites.
"Something is coming," Ji-ah said suddenly.
He raised an eyebrow.
She shrugged. "Call it instinct. Everyone's acting like these letters are the only thing that matters, but… it feels like the ground is moving."
He looked at her properly.
Her intuition had always been good.
Dangerously good.
"Then brace yourself," he said softly.
"For what?"
"For everything."
She gave him a look. "You say stuff like that and expect me not to worry?"
"I expect you to prepare," he replied.
Something flickered across her eyes — annoyance, curiosity, a faint echo of trust she didn't want to admit to.
The rooftop door slammed open.
Three boys stepped out — uniforms untucked, smiles lazy and sharp. He recognized them instantly. Small-time bullies who blossomed into mediocre hunters with inflated egos in some timelines, corpses in others.
Their leader's gaze swept over the roof, landed on Ji-ah, and curved into something unpleasant.
"There you are."
Jae-hwan didn't move.
The leader strolled forward with the entitled confidence of someone who had just learned he was C-rank and believed the world now owed him interest.
"You ignored me earlier," he said to Ji-ah. "That's rude."
"I was busy," she replied flatly.
He clicked his tongue. "D-rank should be more polite when C-ranks talk to them."
There it was.
The new hierarchy, raw and untrained, already baring teeth.
Ji-ah turned back to the skyline. "Leave."
His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.
The world slowed.
Jae-hwan didn't sigh, but he felt the urge. Violence bored him. Predictable cruelty bored him. He had witnessed gods devour worlds — a teenage boy drunk on a letter felt like a child waving a plastic knife.
Ji-ah's eyes sharpened, body tensing.
Before she could react, a hand closed over the bully's wrist.
Not hers.
Jae-hwan's.
The boy blinked down at his own trapped arm, confusion rippling into irritation.
"Let go," he said.
"No," Jae-hwan replied calmly.
He tightened his grip minimally.
Not enough to injure.
Enough to communicate that breaking bone would take no effort at all.
The bully tried to yank back.
His expression changed.
Pain crept in around the edges of his bravado.
"Hey— what the hell—"
His friends shifted uncertainly.
Letters flickered in their eyes.
C-rank.
E-rank.
Their brains couldn't reconcile the labels with the reality of their bodies.
"You're hurting her," Jae-hwan said softly.
His voice never rose.
His face never shifted.
The boy swallowed.
"Let. Go."
Jae-hwan released him.
The bully stumbled back, clutching his wrist, eyes wide with something that had nothing to do with physical pain.
Fear of something he didn't have a word for.
Ji-ah rubbed her wrist once and exhaled slowly.
The bully spat a curse to save dignity.
"This isn't over."
"Yes, it is," Jae-hwan said.
The simple certainty in his tone froze the boy mid-turn.
For a heartbeat, their gazes locked.
The bully saw nothing remarkable in Jae-hwan's expression.
He felt something, though.
Something wrong.
Something deep.
He broke eye contact first.
They left.
The rooftop grew quiet again.
Wind tugged gently at hair and sleeves, as if trying to erase the moment.
Ji-ah looked at him sideways.
"You didn't have to step in."
"I know."
"You did anyway."
"I dislike noise."
She snorted. "You're impossible."
He didn't answer.
He watched the field below instead, but his mind was elsewhere — tracing invisible lines branching from that tiny incident. Futures bent subtly around such moments. The bully would avoid Ji-ah now. He would tell others.
A rumor would form:
E-rank Kim Jae-hwan is dangerous.
Good.
He preferred that over invisible.
Ji-ah leaned on the railing again.
"Thank you," she said finally.
He nodded.
Not because he needed gratitude.
Because she needed to give it.
The bell rang.
They left the rooftop without speaking further.
---
Classes dragged.
Teachers pretended to care about math and history while glancing at rank lists on their phones when they thought no one noticed. The principal made an announcement about "equal respect for all ranks" that managed to insult every rank simultaneously.
By the time the final bell rang, the hallway buzzed with a tired, jittery energy.
Guild scouts waited discreetly outside the school gates.
Not recruiting openly yet.
Just watching.
Measuring.
Picking favorites.
Min-seok bounded up to him, smiling too wide.
"Some guys from Silver Spear Guild talked to me," he said breathlessly. "They said I had potential."
"You do," Jae-hwan replied.
Min-seok flushed with pleasure he tried to hide. "You… didn't get approached?"
"No."
"Oh."
A beat of awkward silence.
Min-seok opened his mouth, closed it again, then clapped him on the shoulder with forced casualness. "Their loss, right?"
Jae-hwan smiled.
"If you say so."
They walked together for a while.
Their shadows stretched long across the pavement, side by side yet already drifting along different trajectories.
Min-seok talked about training regimens and equipment and how he'd buy his parents a new house. Jae-hwan listened and filed away each dream for later use.
At the intersection, their paths split.
"See you tomorrow?" Min-seok asked.
"Yes."
"Stick together."
Always that line.
"Of course," Jae-hwan said.
They parted.
He watched Min-seok's back for a few seconds — the eager way he moved, the slight bounce in his step, the outline of a boy still unaware of how much the world could ask of him.
Then he turned away.
Evening flowed slowly over the city.
He walked home without hurry, the quiet hum of traffic and distant laughter wrapping around him like a thin blanket. A stray cat watched him from atop a wall, blinked once, and lost interest.
He climbed the stairs to his apartment.
Unlocked the door.
His mother greeted him.
His father asked the same empty questions.
His sister pretended not to care while hovering nearby.
He responded with the same practiced warmth.
After dinner, he retreated to his room.
He opened the notebook.
He wrote, under Phase One:
— establish "unpredictable E-rank" reputation — avoid early guild contracts — maintain proximity to key figures — protect Yoo Ji-ah until divergence point
His pen paused on the last line.
Protect.
He tapped the page lightly.
He didn't know yet why he'd added it.
Maybe utility.
Maybe habit.
Maybe a ghost of a feeling he refused to name.
He turned to the next page.
At the top, he wrote:
FIRST GATE: 127 DAYS
The number stared back at him.
Unchanging.
Unmerciful.
He underlined it once.
The shape of the cage around the world was becoming clearer.
Not made of letters.
Not made of ranks.
Made of inevitability.
Kim Jae-hwan closed the notebook gently.
He leaned back in his chair and listened to the faint sound of a television through the wall, a dog barking somewhere far below, the soft breathing of a city unaware it was living in borrowed peace.
He exhaled.
Not a sigh.
Just a release of air.
Iteration forty-seven moved forward.
The cage was forming.
He was counting the bars.