The aisle leading to the platform was longer than it looked from the seats.
Jihoon walked it at the same pace as everyone else did as he observed. > Of course, changing his pace didn't really change anything; however, matching everyone else's pace made his heart feel at least slightly calmer.
His eyes locked onto the floor, a particular shade of polished marble gray that reflected light back up like a mirror. His shoes made no sound, suggesting it was no ordinary material.
The officials held their stylus and pen, looking at him as he approached. Then, they glanced at the register before looking back with the neutral expression of someone simply doing their job or recording, not anticipating outcomes.
After taking a deep breath, Jihoon stepped onto the pale circle.
'Okay,' he thought. 'Here we go...!'
The Awakening Pillar was brighter up close. Its light felt warm against his face. The kind of light that would have been pleasant in a different context.
He could feel the room, everyone's eyes behind him, looking at it. Over eight hundred people, a gallery behind a glass-walled section, went quiet. The same silence that assembled itself when a name had just been called, and everyone was waiting for the result.
He had been one of those gazes for the past hour, but now that he was the target, their gazes had a different weight.
It was too late to do anything, anyway. And it wasn't like he "could" do anything. He could only let the pillar do whatever it had to.
A skill name would appear, then maybe another, if he was lucky. Then, the official's stylus would move, updating his register, and then, the room would respond with a welcoming burst of applause. A polite clap for one, or a celebratory one if he got three, or a torrent if he got more than that.
Then, he'd walk off the platform, find his seat, and spend the rest of the ceremony feeling proud of his new skills.
That was the plan he had for weeks already.
The next moment, the pillar hummed against his sternum. It was warm, almost comfortable. The same light that greeted the ones before and those going after him later.
He waited, but... the light didn't change.
'Any time now...' Jihoon gulped nervously.
The pillar hummed at the same frequency continuously. It remained like that for a few seconds, making everyone feel weirded out. Nothing appeared above the platform.
The official's stylus hadn't moved an inch, waiting with bated breath.
Jihoon kept his eyes forward and felt the silence shift behind him. From waiting to realization. Two completely different things. The difference between anticipation and noticing the truth of the matter is understanding what they were looking at.
He waited another three seconds... then five.
"Oh..."
The official checked his tablet, then checked the register. His expression had not changed; it was the same professional flatness as before. But his eyes moved twice across the same line. The same way one's eye would move when reading something that didn't make sense, and rechecking in case they'd made an error.
However, no error had been made.
The stylus finally moved. Once. A single entry.
Jihoon heard it clearly, the soft scratch of the nib against the screen. Beside him, another one wrote on paper with the ballpoint pen. Their hands moving at the same time, seemingly spelling the same words.
Then, the official's voice, the same even tone he'd used for all other evaluatees, echoed clearly in the entire hall:
"Kang Jihoon. Skills awakened: Zero. Unranked."
The silence that persisted after that was deafening, lasting for a good few seconds.
Then, a small voice leaked out from somewhere.
"Pfft...!" A stifled laugh.
It wasn't cruel, exactly. It was the involuntary kind, the same one you do when you realize you wore the wrong pair of socks in a rush, looking comical. Or the kind when you've just recalled a really funny joke.
But it didn't really matter what kind it was, because laughter was laughter, no matter what excuse they say. The laughter echoed from up in the back, rolling down to the front seats that are barely populated now.
Not everyone joined in the roaring laughter, but still, a majority of them did. And those who didn't laugh did something worse: they just continued staring forward, waiting for the next one, for the ceremony to come to an end. Completely indifferent.
Jihoon stood in place, almost as if he was frozen.
His jaw was hanging open, and his expression had gone somewhere between confusion and disbelief. He was feeling embarrassment, disappointment, and various other negative emotions all at once.
His hands were hanging by his sides lifelessly, his back hunching slightly. The pillar had already stopped humming by then, returning him to his senses.
"Zero..."
He turned, walking back down the aisle.
The laughter hadn't fully stopped yet, and it didn't really need to. The damage was done in the first three seconds, and everything after was just noise to Jihoon's ears. He passed the row of his classmates, some looking at him with pity. Some were examining the floor with great interest.
He kept his pace the same as on the way up, because changing it now would mean something.
Soon, he reached his row, sat down, and put his hands on his knees.
The ceremony moved on, as if nothing changed. The official called the next name, and someone stepped onto the platform. The pillar lit, showing a skill name properly.
'The pillar wasn't broken...' Jihoon huffed.
Unconsciously, his gaze turned to the side. Somewhere above—the Shin Clan's section. There, he met a pair of eyes looking straight at him. Filled with an unreadable emotion from afar.
'And she didn't look away...'
Seoyeon had been watching him with her hands clasped over her lap, fingers intertwined together as if offering a prayer. She didn't look down at her hands, nor at the platform, nor anywhere else. She'd watched him walk from the platform back to his seat with that same unreadable expression, precise and controlled.
Something bubbled up Jihoon's throat.
He felt like he wanted to shout, to vent, to cry. All at the same time. The ceremony of the last three awakeners felt like it happened from a distance. He registered the sound and the visuals without committing them to memory. One skill, two skills, applause at a moderate volume.
Just like that, without mentioning how he got zero skill or how it even happened, the ceremony ended. A guild-authorized representative did the closing remarks, recounting the proud tradition of the Succession Ceremony and the promising cohort that had assembled today.
Jihoon listened to approximately twenty percent of it.
After even that was over, the ceremony was officially over. The hall started getting even emptier. Parents came down from the upper gallery, welcoming their child, who achieved something, at least.
There were conversations, some of them loud, but most were not the kind anyone wanted to hear. He let the row clear around him, then stood and walked toward the rear exit, rather than the main doors.
The stairwell was cool.
The door at the bottom opened onto the side of the building where the foot traffic hadn't reached yet. A strip of pavement lay between the Hwanin Authority wall and a low concrete barrier. The city continued its business on the other side with complete indifference.
Jihoon put his back against the wall. The air was cold enough that he shivered from the lightest breeze. He breathed in, then let it out, slowly. He turned his head, looking at the grey strip of sky between the roofline and the building across the street.
Zero.
The word echoed in his mind, spiraling like a nightmare he couldn't forget. He closed his eyes, turning the figure over in his head. However, nothing changed. He couldn't even joke about it if there was someone there to make it to.
It sat in his chest like a stone that hadn't decided yet how heavy it wanted to be.
'Alright, so that happened.' He sighed, finally catching up to reality.
Somewhere above him, through the Hwanin Building's glass walls, the ceremony's social hour—for the big clans and wealthy people—was probably underway. A place where Jaewon and Seoyeon were probably receiving handshakes and congratulations with the same clean composure they'd shown on the platform.
Jihoon looked at his hands, then pushed off the wall and stood up straight, tilting his head up.
'Now, I have to figure out what comes next.'