Chapter 9 — Reports That Don't Match the Blood
News traveled faster than truth.
By the time Kim Jae-hwan was discharged, the story had already evolved into something with clean edges and rounded corners — safe enough to swallow without choking.
Official explanation:
> A wild animal attack caused by a ruptured sewer line. Gas leak panic. Several injured. No fatalities.
He walked out of the hospital with the paper bracelet still around his wrist and the taste of antiseptic lingering in his throat. The sky was bright in that indifferent way skies always were after tragedy, like the weather refused to participate in human drama.
Students stood in small clusters near the gate.
Whispering.
Glancing over.
Not approaching.
He felt the shift the way a sailor feels wind direction change — subtle but decisive.
He was no longer invisible.
Rumor had painted him in new colors: the quiet E-rank who ran toward monsters, the weirdo who didn't scream, the idiot hero, the possible lunatic. Identities layered over him without asking permission.
He ignored them.
Min-seok didn't.
He shoved through the crowd, glaring at anyone who stared too long.
"Don't look like that unless you're donating hospital flowers," he snapped, then grabbed Jae-hwan by the shoulders. "Okay? You okay? Really okay? Not 'your-face-is-fine-but-your-organs-are-secretly-exploding' okay?"
"I'm fine," Jae-hwan said.
Min-seok narrowed his eyes. "…your definition of 'fine' is suspicious."
"Accept it anyway."
Min-seok opened his mouth to argue, then saw something in Jae-hwan's expression and closed it again. He sighed instead.
"You scared everyone."
"I know."
"You scared me."
"I know."
Silence hovered.
Min-seok rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Thanks," he muttered.
"For what?"
"For being stupid in the direction that saved people."
Jae-hwan didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Ji-ah approached more quietly.
She looked different now, though nothing outward had changed — same uniform, same posture, same hair tied carelessly behind one ear. What had changed was the way she occupied space. The world treated her cautiously, like someone who had already stared into something and refused to look away.
"You've awakened," she said simply.
"Yes."
"What grade?"
"Unmeasured."
A beat.
Her lips curved in the slightest, humorless smile. "Of course."
They stood there in comfortable silence for a moment while Min-seok watched them like someone spectating a conversation in a language he didn't speak.
Then the teachers appeared.
Their smiles were brittle.
Their gratitude was formal.
Their eyes were frightened.
"We're very proud of your bravery," one of them said like reading from a prepared script. "But please, from now on, leave dangerous matters to adults."
He resisted the urge to laugh.
Adults.
The same category of people who had looked at an interdimensional rupture and called it a gas leak.
He bowed politely instead.
"Yes, teacher."
The teacher relaxed, mistaking obedience for agreement.
Humans saw what they needed to survive existing.
---
The government moved quickly.
Not to help.
To contain.
Within hours, the field was wrapped in temporary fencing and flanked by men in neutral suits with expressions filed down to professional blandness. Trucks arrived in the middle of the night. Soil was dug up and sealed in metal drums. Cameras were installed but angled carefully away from key points.
A small sign was planted discreetly:
> MAINTENANCE WORK IN PROGRESS
DO NOT ENTER
The earth still remembered.
It pulsed faintly underfoot with echoing wrongness, like a bruise beneath skin. Only those awakened — or those cracked enough already — could sense it.
Jae-hwan stood beyond the tape after school and watched.
He wasn't trying to get closer.
He wanted to see who came.
They arrived in stages.
First: scientists who pretended not to be terrified.
Second: soldiers who pretended they were only escorting a routine operation.
Third: someone who didn't pretend anything.
A woman stepped out of a black car.
Sharp suit. Flat gaze. Movement that conserved energy with uncanny economy.
The air felt heavier around her, as if the world had rewritten gravity just for her convenience.
S-rank.
Not hiding it. Not flaunting it. Just existing with the quiet inevitability of a falling blade.
Students whispered from a distance.
"Is that—" "No way—" "She's really here?"
They didn't say her name aloud.
Names had weight.
Especially hers.
The woman stood at the edge of the field for a long time, saying nothing, touching nothing, simply listening with her whole body in a way only awakened veterans did — not for sound, but for the residue of ruptured reality.
Her head turned.
Her eyes found him instantly in the crowd.
Not because he was obvious.
Because he was wrong enough to notice.
Their gazes held.
Not hostile.
Not friendly.
Just assessment.
Then she looked away, conversation over as far as she was concerned.
He exhaled slowly.
So.
The board was acknowledging him earlier this time.
Good.
Or bad.
He wasn't sure yet.
---
He was called to the administration office later.
The room smelled like old paper and disinfectant. The principal sat behind his desk, hands folded, expression carefully arranged to look paternal rather than terrified.
A man in a gray suit sat beside him.
Another one.
This one younger.
Polite.
Dangerous in ways that didn't require visible weapons.
"Kim Jae-hwan," the principal began. "This gentleman has a few questions for you. Purely procedural."
The man in gray smiled faintly.
"I'm from the Disaster Safety Response Bureau."
He did not offer a card.
He did not need to.
"I'd like to hear, in your own words, what happened yesterday."
Jae-hwan told the same lie again.
Almost the same.
Tiny differences.
He omitted nothing important — he simply replaced vocabulary with words that couldn't be prosecuted.
The man listened without interruption.
No note-taking.
No reactions.
Only his eyes moved, measuring, cataloging, not the story but the storyteller.
"You're very calm," he said when Jae-hwan finished.
"Yes."
"Were you frightened?"
"Yes."
"You don't look it."
"I don't perform fear well."
A ghost of a smile flickered across the man's mouth.
"And the… anomaly. You touched it?"
"I don't remember clearly."
"But you do remember enough to know you awakened afterward."
"Yes."
"What do you feel now?"
Jae-hwan considered the question carefully.
He did not answer honestly.
He answered precisely.
"Noise. Directionless pressure. Increased clarity."
The man's eyes sharpened.
"Increased clarity?"
"Things feel… louder. Not sound. Just… intention."
The man leaned back slightly.
"You'd make a very good liar," he said conversationally.
"I'm a very good student," Jae-hwan replied.
The principal laughed too loudly.
The man didn't.
He stood.
"That will be all for today. Rest. Avoid stress. If you notice any unusual symptoms — auditory hallucinations, visual distortions, compulsions — report to the nearest Bureau facility immediately."
"I will," Jae-hwan said.
He would not.
The man paused at the door and added casually:
"And Kim Jae-hwan… congratulations."
"For what?"
"For stepping into the future ahead of schedule."
When he left, the room felt lighter.
The principal sagged, relief pouring out of him like air leaving a punctured balloon.
"You must be more careful," he said weakly.
Jae-hwan bowed again.
"Yes, principal."
He left.
He walked down the hallway.
He did not look back.
---
That night, the apartment felt smaller.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
Awakening was like becoming a taller person in a childhood room — the walls stayed the same size, but somehow, they began to press.
His mother fussed over him.
His father asked questions and didn't know how to react to the answers.
His sister hovered between fear, admiration, and the selfish but honest resentment of someone who sensed family dynamics shifting around them without consent.
"You'll be scouted, won't you?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Will you go?"
"Yes."
His mother's chopsticks clattered.
"You're still a child."
"I'm not."
"You're my child."
"That won't change."
She turned away, shoulders trembling once, then steadied them as if rearranging grief into something more manageable.
"Eat more," she whispered.
He did.
The food tasted like memory.
Warm.
Distant.
Already fading.
He washed his bowl.
He went to his room.
He closed the door.
The notebook waited on the desk where he had left it.
He opened to a fresh page.
He wrote:
— early manifestation confirmed — Bureau interest unavoidable — S-rank observation probable — Min-seok latent potential moderate to high under pressure — Ji-ah intuitive alignment high; avoid catalyzing trauma paths #3–#7 — observer proximity increasing
His pen slowed on the last line.
He set it down.
He turned off the light.
Darkness filled the room quickly, as if eager.
He did not lie down right away.
He stood in the middle of the floor and simply… existed.
The presence filled the space where shadows pooled.
Closer than before.
Almost intimate.
He felt it the way you feel someone standing just behind you in an empty corridor — not touching, not speaking, but heavy enough that your body recognized another gravity.
He spoke softly.
"You don't blink, do you?"
No answer.
He closed his eyes.
Memories of forty-seven ends flickered across his mind — fire, ash, collapse, betrayal, cold water, hot blood, ecstatic power, absolute failure.
"Are you enjoying the show?"
Silence.
But not absence.
He tilted his head slightly.
"If you want me to break," he said, "you'll have to do better than this."
The darkness pulsed once.
Not threatening.
Not gentle.
Acknowledgment.
He smiled.
Something in the walls creaked softly, like a house settling around its occupant.
He finally lay down.
Sleep came slowly this time.
Not because of fear.
Because his mind refused to idle.
He saw branches.
Possibilities.
Vast forests of futures, some he recognized, many he didn't. His interference had already bent timelines into unfamiliar shapes. He no longer stood on a road he had memorized — he stood on the ruins of dozens, building a new one with his bare hands.
It felt… good.
Terrifying.
Free.
He whispered into the quiet:
"Let's see who breaks first."
The city outside exhaled.
The hairline cracks in reality whispered back, too faint for anyone else to hear.
The world was listening now.