The Succession Ceremony hall was just as crowded as it always was, especially during the awakening ceremony. It smelled of floor wax, various strong perfumes, and other people's anxiety.
Kang Jihoon had been sitting in it for twenty minutes already.
'Not exactly how the brochure sells it,' He grumbled to himself.
The Succession Ceremony hall occupied the top three floors of the Hwanin Authority building—a fact that the warrior society considered prestigious and that Jihoon considered excessive.
The ceiling was vaulted, and the lighting was the particular shade of white that makes everything else look dirty. Every row of seats was arranged by the clans, or those affiliated with them, which meant the Shin clan occupied the left-center block in padded chairs.
Jihoon's row, unaffiliated, mid-tier families—the people who showed up in ordinary clothes because they hadn't gotten the memo about the proper attire—sat in the functionally identical chairs along the right wall, trying not to make eye contact with anyone.
Casually, he scanned the room the way he always does. Exits first—three, one behind the ceremony platform, definitely staff-only, and two at the rear. Then, the platform itself: a raised circle of pale stone, roughly four meters across, with a column of faint light rising from its center.
The authority called it the Awakening pillar, but Jihoon privately called it a "very expensive lamp."
An official stood to one side with a table and stylus ready. A second official held a ceremonial register—actual paper, which felt like a bureaucratic choice.
'The person in charge of this ceremony must really love paper.' He thought casually.
Around him, other eighteen-year-olds were doing what they usually did. Something that determines the rest of their lives: mostly talking loudly among their peers, laughing as if excited about what's to come.
The girl two seats over was mouthing something—a rehearsal, maybe, or a prayer. The boy across the aisle had his eyes shut, his expression that of someone who had decided that if he couldn't see the hall, the hall couldn't see him.
Of course, Jihoon understood the instinct. He didn't have to think to sympathize with them. But closing your eyes wouldn't change what was coming.
The ceremony hall was large enough to seat roughly eight hundred people. Parents filled the upper gallery, visible through a glass partition that kept their noise at a minimum.
Jihoon's parents were also up there, somewhere. He'd told them the approximate section when they arrived. He hadn't looked since. He felt like looking over was something he'd regret later.
Instead, he looked at the Shin Clan section.
It wasn't hard to find. The Shin Clan occupied their chairs as if they owned everything—the quiet confidence and clarity that this space had been arranged specifically for them.
Two rows of adults in the reserved section behind, then the clan's age-eligible members up front. Three of them, two boys Jihoon barely recognized from inter-school events, both sitting with the composed confidence of one who already knew what they were going to awaken.
And Seoyeon.
She sat at the end of the row, hands folded in her lap, back straight as if a metal rod was stuck to her spine. Her lustrous black hair was casually let down, glinting under the hall's bright lights, almost like stars in the night sky.
Her expression was the same as usual whenever she's in public—composed, barely smiling, and exactly the right amount of dignity and grace. She was watching the platform with her dark-grey eyes, giving it the same attention she gave to everything else: complete and utter indifference. Unreadable to most.
'She must be nervous.'
Jihoon couldn't really explain how he knew that.
Perhaps it was the angle of her shoulders that suggested her nervousness. The way she folded her hands, one thumb pressed against the other in a small, repeated motion she probably wasn't aware of herself.
He'd only seen that sight twice before. Once before a tournament finals and once before a clan evaluation, she'd spent three weeks trying hard not to talk about it.
Silently, he looked away before she could feel it. No, she must've felt his gaze but didn't pay attention to him because of where they were.
"Moon Taeyang, to the evaluation platform!"
The first name was called, someone from a bronze-track family with a good reputation. He walked up with his head down, unconsciously biting his lips, and entered the pale circle in the middle.
The pillar brightened up right after. In the middle of it, floating in air, a skill name materialized in official characters, letter by letter: Stone Strike I.
Moon Taeyang's face brightened up as applause rained down. The official marked the register, congratulating him in a quiet voice overpowered by the crowd. The teen walked off with a hint of confidence, lips curling up into a thin smile.
'One functional skill... He'll be fine.'
Of course, the ceremony didn't stop just because one was over. They moved in order, names were called, and young men and women walked toward the center.
Most names produced polite applauses, barely passable.
But one name—Park Jisoo from the third-floor cluster—who spent two years telling anyone who would listen that she was going to test Gold-track when she becomes a professional, walked off the platform with four skills and the quiet glow of someone who had been exactly right about herself.
Jihoon watched her with a hint of envy, a complicated admiration. However, he had no time to be jealous of others just yet. It was almost his turn.
'Keep moving...' He prayed impatiently.
Slowly, the officials called one name after another. The register in their hands was gradually filled. The applause varied from person to person, not just from their social credit but also from the number and quality of skills they had.
Jihoon watched them all and figured out patterns. Which families sat forward when their children were called, which ones stayed still and confident, and which skill names made the clan sections murmur to each other in ways they thought were subtle?
In that vein, the Shin Clan section has only murmured twice until now. Neither occasion was about Seoyeon, whose turn hadn't come just yet.
The Awakening Ceremony had been running for forty minutes when the air shifted. The atmosphere changed. Not dramatically—no announcement, no change in music to a boss theme, nothing. Just a collective turn of attention, the way a room of people look toward a door right when someone opens it loudly.
Jihoon, too, followed the gazes. There, to the left side of the aisle, Lee Jaewon stood up.
'Oh.'
He'd seen Jaewon before. No, there should be no one who hadn't heard of him before. He ranked at the top of every combined assessment and was recommended for the Gold-track by two separate institutions. The kind of person who made the ranking system look like it was working as an advertisement instead.
He was tall, taller than Jihoon was. With his well-featured face, gentle and confident expression, pomaded swept-back brown hair, and a single glowing piercing in his left earlobe, it wasn't a mystery why people call him a prince.
He walked to the platform without looking at the crowd. He exuded either a focused calm or the specific confidence of someone who had never needed a crowd of nobodies to validate himself.
When he stepped onto the platform, almost as if expected, the pillar blazed.
The official's stylus moved and moved and moved again. Seven skill names were rendered above the platform one by one, each one hanging in the light long enough for the room to read it. Each skill name landed with the particular weight of a high-grade classification.
The applause that followed wasn't polite; it was basically a storm.
Jihoon watched as the letters were absorbed into Jaewon's body, with the expression of someone receiving information he had already heard long before. There's no gaudy performance, no false modesty, just a clean acknowledgement that this was the outcome that he expected. And now, they could all move forward.
'As expected, he really is good.' The thought arrived without much envy or resentment, which surprised him slightly.
It was like a regular person trying to compare himself to a celebrity. Losing out didn't really feel demeaning but rather, a given.
Jihoon watched the clock. Judging by the pace and the position of his name in the list, he would be called in eleven more minutes, give or take one.
His hands were resting on his knees. His back was straight. Jihoon looked at the platform, the pale circle in the middle, and the quiet light it exuded.
'Eleven minutes.'
He settled into his seat and waited.