It started as a joke.
A one-page list titled: "How Not to Die in Daejin High."
Rule 1: Don't look Division 2 in the eyes.
Rule 2: If someone gives you candy on the rooftop, it's laced.
Rule 3: Never eat lunch alone three days in a row—makes you a target.
Rule 4: If someone says, "I just want to talk," run.
By the time Chan-mi was done with it, the list had turned into a 200-page document. She gave it structure, gave it tone—made it something between a survival guide and a resistance memoir. Min-ji edited for accuracy, cutting stories too close to exposing real people. Sun-woo annotated it with fight breakdowns and defensive diagrams. Tae-yul added a layer of encryption so strong even the school's firewall wouldn't catch it unless you knew exactly how to find it.
Dae-hyun wrote the introduction last.
He stared at the blinking cursor for almost an hour before typing the first line:
> This isn't about glory. This isn't revenge. This is a record of what was done, and what we did to survive it.
That line never changed.
By the end of the month, The Grey Manual was complete.
They didn't publish it. Didn't advertise it. Instead, they buried it deep in the school's intranet under a fake club's shared drive—The Astronomy Club, which hadn't existed in three years.
Only people who'd experienced the same kind of pain would know how to find it.
And when they did, it would be waiting.
---
The school itself had changed, though not in the ways most expected. The armbands were gone. The daily surveillance programs had been dismantled. Teachers were quieter now—watching students with wary eyes, unsure who had been part of the Grey List and who had simply watched from the sidelines.
The halls felt... freer. Not peaceful—fights still happened, rumors still spread—but something unspoken had lifted. Power no longer belonged to the invisible. It had been dragged into the open.
Students didn't fear it anymore.
They understood it.
Dae-hyun still walked the corridors with quiet confidence, but he no longer had to keep his head down. Students nodded to him. Some stopped him to ask if he'd really fought "the Kraken." Others simply watched him pass, eyes wide with the kind of respect you can't earn through violence alone.
He never confirmed or denied any of the rumors.
He didn't have to.
His story had already been written by others—distorted, exaggerated, twisted.
And he was fine with that.
He wasn't interested in becoming a legend.
He just wanted to finish high school.
---
Ji-woo hadn't returned. Not officially. But every now and then, Dae-hyun received a text. A photo of a distant coastline. A news article about a student protest. A receipt from a café they used to visit as kids.
She didn't say where she was.
She didn't need to.
He kept her seat open during every group ramen night, knowing she'd show up eventually—when she was ready.
The others kept moving too.
Min-ji joined the student council—not for power, but to make sure no one tried to rebuild the system under a different name. She scared the hell out of the new president, a third-year who clearly wasn't ready for her intensity.
Tae-yul was offered a university scholarship for cybersecurity before even finishing his final semester. Government-backed. He declined it twice before accepting—only after they agreed he could work on his own terms.
Sun-woo went back to sports, surprisingly. Turned out Division fights made him a better boxer than any gym coach ever had. He still hit harder than most adults, and now had enough control to make it count.
Chan-mi... became a ghostwriter. Anonymous blog posts, insider columns, quiet exposés about Korea's most corrupt schools. No name. No credit. But her words hit deep.
And Dae-hyun?
He stopped carrying the Queen of Hearts.
He didn't need it anymore.
---
One afternoon, just after midterms, a younger student knocked on his classroom door.
"Senior Dae-hyun?" the girl asked.
He turned. She looked nervous—first-year, maybe second. Holding a binder too big for her backpack.
"Yeah?"
She stepped closer and whispered,
"I found the Manual."
He blinked.
"What?"
"The Grey Manual," she said. "I thought it was a prank at first, but I checked the metadata. It's real, isn't it?"
He looked at her carefully.
"How much did you read?"
"Enough to know what I've been feeling isn't just in my head."
She opened her binder. Photos. Notes. Class logs.
"I think there's something happening again. It's not the same as before. But it's... starting."
Dae-hyun took a deep breath.
"We stopped the system," he said. "But we didn't kill the idea."
"What do I do?" she asked.
He handed her a small folded card.
On it was a single word:
Observe.
"Don't rush," he told her. "Watch. Listen. Take your time. And when the moment comes—you'll know."
She left quietly.
Min-ji, who had been sitting nearby, looked up from her notes.
"Another one?"
He nodded.
"Third this week."
"We're not done, are we?" she asked.
"No," he said. "But it's not our fight anymore."
"Then whose is it?"
He looked out the window.
The girl from earlier was walking down the hallway now, shoulders a little straighter, eyes a little sharper.
"Theirs," he said.
---
Graduation came faster than expected.
The ceremony was simple. Speeches, applause, tears. None of the administration brought up the Crimson Division. It had been erased from the official record.
But not from memory.
When Dae-hyun's name was called, the students didn't clap.
They stood.
Every single one.
The faculty looked confused. The Principal cleared his throat and tried to move on.
But it was too late.
The message had already been sent:
> You don't need a uniform to lead.
You don't need a Division to matter.
You just need to stand—when it counts.
---
Months later, on his first day of college orientation, Dae-hyun received a message.
Unknown number.
> "You still owe me a rematch."
He stared at it for a long time, smiling.
Then typed:
> "Queen vs Knight. Any day."
---
End of Chapter 17