Oppa, Want To Go To A Gate Together?

After a morning that romantic, we went to the community service center and had Sia’s canceled legal identity restored to what it had been.

I’d wondered whether an identity already processed as deceased could even be recovered, but the Republic of Korea’s administrative system turned out to be more meticulous than either of us had imagined.

“Oppa. It’s called a resurrection application form. Isn’t that seriously funny?”
“Yeah. Back when I first heard these existed, I thought it was somebody’s joke. Who’d have guessed they were real.”

I’d heard that a form like this exists because missing persons occasionally turn up alive again. I never dreamed the one filling out that resurrection application form would be our Sia.

Once the paperwork was done, we headed next to the Rank Assessment Center, which the Hunter Bureau runs directly.

“Anyone who used to be a Hunter has to renew their rank immediately after the resurrection application is approved, apparently. What kind of law is that.”
“Right? Why does the world have so many strange laws?”

I think I’d once heard of some American state with an absurd law obliging the principal to look after the horses for the day if students ride them to school. This law seemed about as useless and strange as that one.

Anyway.

Having to go straight to the Rank Assessment Center the moment the application was approved was an enormous hassle, but at least Sia could use teleport. We teleported over, and the moment we arrived, she set about filling in her forms.

“Unnie.¹ When I get my rank assessed, I have to go in by myself, don’t I?”

Sia put the question to the receptionist while she filled in the form, but the receptionist earnestly told her otherwise.

“If you’d like, you can go in with your companion. The law changed recently.”
“Really? What a relief.”

Even while she talked with the receptionist, Sia kept her body pressed snugly against my arm as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Then she set down the pen and turned to me with a question.

“Oppa. Since you’re here anyway, want to get your rank re-evaluated with me?”
“Me too?”
“Mm-hm. You have to renew your rank once every two years anyway, it’s mandatory. How long has it been since you renewed yours, Oppa?”

That hadn’t even crossed my mind. I’d spent a year living like a wreck, with everything Hunter-related wiped clean out of my head. When had I last had my rank remeasured?

“It’s been a year and… ten months.”
“Then it’s about time you got tested! Perfect. Since you’re here, get yours done with me before we go.”

Sia took one more form from the receptionist and handed it to me. She wasn’t wrong, so I went along with her and decided to take the re-evaluation too. Once the forms were finished, we headed for the assessment room.

What rank am I going to get, I wonder.

Barring anything unusual, the odds were high I’d come out the same D-Rank as before. With bad luck an E-Rank might turn up, but they say a rank hardly ever drops. And my awakened class, of course, was never going to change.

If anything, the rank I was curious about was Sia’s, not mine.

Her rank had been D, the same as mine. That no longer held.

In her human days, Sia had been nothing more than a D-Rank Hunter. As she was now, though, she was a dragon who had lived twenty-five hundred years, a being utterly beyond all standards.

She wielded a mysterious power called the Dragon Word², one I’d never so much as heard of, and she could casually toss out high-order magic like teleport without a formula. Those two facts alone put her power on a level no one had ever reached, and likely no one ever would. On top of that, if my guess was right, everything she’d shown so far was a mere drop in the bucket next to her full strength.

Taking all that into account…

Isn’t this going to come back Unmeasurable?

Ordinarily, an Unmeasurable verdict only comes out when a person’s power is so feeble that measuring it is meaningless in the first place. But there’s another case, one most people don’t know about, that exists only in theory. When the subject is so strong that no rank in the current system can define their power, the verdict comes back Unmeasurable as well. That case existed on paper alone, though, and not once had it ever been reported.

Forget Korea — the whole world would lose its mind.

This would make international headlines at the very least.

Full of anticipation, I looked over at Sia.

But.

For all my excitement, Sia herself didn’t seem to give her rank a second thought. The whole way there, she’d had eyes for nothing but me.

“Sia, is there something on my face?”
“No, it’s just that it feels strange to have come here together with you, Oppa. It makes me happy and also a little weird.”
“Hmm. Now that you say it, same for me.”

There had never been any reason to bring someone along to a rank assessment, so I’d come alone every single time. Hearing Sia put it that way, I felt a little odd myself.

In any case, the moment we reached the testing room, a staff member called both our names.

“Mr. Yun Minjun, Ms. Jeong Sia.”
“Yes!”
“The two of you came together, I see. Which of you would like to be tested first?”
“Sia, do you want to go first?”
“No, you go first, Oppa. I’m fine.”

Since Sia gave way, I got to have my rank remeasured before her.

“The remeasurement procedure is identical to your first rank measurement, so just make yourself comfortable.”

I went through into the testing room while Sia waved at me from the waiting seats. A short while later, my remeasurement began. Well, I didn’t expect any dramatic change in my case, so I wasn’t especially nervous.

The staff member’s voice came through the speaker inside the testing room.

— Once you’ve channeled mana into the ring provided, please strike the dummy when the signal comes.

Just as the attendant said, I let mana flow into the rank-measurement ring, then gripped my wooden sword. A moment later the signal came, and the instant it did, I sprinted for the dummy on the far side. And then, as soon as I’d closed the distance,

— Whoosh!

I swung my sword with everything I had.

— Clang! Clang!

My combat instincts had gone rusty, and the first blow felt like it hadn’t quite landed.

But.

Better than I expected.

With each strike after that, I could feel the instincts I’d forgotten gradually coming back.

— Clang! Clang! Clang!

A rank-measurement dummy gives off an alien impact sound you almost never hear outside a rank test. Pleasant it wasn’t, but I ignored that and swung for all I was worth until the time limit ran out. For this moment at least, it really did feel like I’d gone back to a year ago.

— Measurement complete! Please wait just a moment.

Following the staff member’s directions, I sat down beside Sia in the waiting seats.

“Good work, Oppa! You did great! Your skills haven’t rusted at all, have they?”
“Y-you think?”
“Mm-hm. I was a little worried you might not get to show your real ability. But apart from the first minute or so, that was the Oppa I know.”

I’d felt the same way, and hearing it from Sia made me even more confident about the results. They didn’t take long to come out.

The staff member opened the door and came in to tell me.

“No changes to either your rank or your class. Thank you for your time.”
“Thank you. Phew, this isn’t bad at all.”

Apart from my Mana stat dropping by 1, nothing much had changed. Considering the past year’s hiatus especially, the result was far from bad. Sia seemed to know how I felt, too; she told me I’d done well and gave me a pat.

“Next is Ms. Jeong Sia. Hmm, one moment, please.”

But then the staff member, who had been going over Sia’s paperwork closely, gave a violent start as if she’d seen a ghost.

“Ms. Sia, you’re… here for a rank remeasurement after a resurrection application, for an awakened person?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my goodness. Then, um… are you a Returnee? No way. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a Returnee!”

Right up until a second ago she’d kept a composed tone, but the instant she confirmed Sia was a Returnee, the staff member turned chatty. The dead-fish eyes every office worker wears had somewhere along the way become the eyes of a girl brimming with curiosity.

“I’ve only ever run into Returnee stories on the news now and then — seeing one in person is a first! Wow… what did it feel like when you came back—”

She had forgotten herself on the job for a moment. Then she seemed to feel Sia’s eyes and mine on her, and she broke off and cleared her throat.

“Ahem. I’m sorry. That was rude of me…”
“Not at all. I’d have been the same. Returnees aren’t exactly common.”
“Thank you for understanding. Rank remeasurements for Returnees like yourself take a little longer to prepare, so I’d ask for your patience on that.”

Back to her usual level of energy, the staff member began preparing Sia’s measurement.

In that short wait, with no result out yet, a picture was already taking shape in my head. The system flashing Unmeasurable, the flustered attendant, the absurd record that came out after the remeasurement… The Hunter Bureau’s higher-ups coming in person for an interview, and some top guild or other laying a blank check in front of Sia and starting a full-blown recruitment war…

I’m proud of you, our Sia.

If that happened, how should I congratulate her? Should I act unimpressed at first, then congratulate her properly once Sia got flustered?

While I was lost in delusions like that, Sia’s rank measurement began.

She could probably play with that dummy over there like a toy. Built for rank measurement out of a special material, the thing was sturdy enough that under ordinary circumstances it wouldn’t take so much as a scratch, but whoever made it could never have designed it with the strength of a being beyond all standards, like a dragon, in mind. What kind of obliteration was that dummy about to suffer?

With that kind of anticipation, I watched Sia’s re-evaluation.

And yet.

“…?”

Where had the overwhelming power she’d shown at our reunion gone? Sia was hitting the dummy with ordinary magic, like any ordinary mage. She looked just the way she had before she was reincarnated, every bit the run-of-the-mill D-Rank mage.

Why…?

Why was she hiding her power?

While I sat watching her test, thoroughly puzzled and with no idea what she intended, Sia’s result came out just as quickly.

“…Huh?”

The staff member, who’d checked the results first, tilted her head at the test sheet as though something were off.

“That’s strange. There’s no change in your stats at all?”

The numbers the staff member showed us were almost exactly what Sia’s had been back when she was human. The staff member scratched her head in confusion, but Sia just kept smiling brightly, perfectly unbothered.

“It isn’t a common case, but Returnees like you, Ms. Sia, generally come back stronger than before. Their stats go up at least a little, or they gain a special skill. But in your case… there’s no change from before at all.”

The attendant gave her a sympathetic look.

“Am I an unusual case, ma’am?”

I was still thoroughly confused, but Sia asked the staff member as though she knew nothing about any of it.

“Yes. Usually, to a greater or lesser degree, Returnees either have their stats rise or awaken some other power… Just in case, let me measure one more time.”

The attendant ran the measurement again, and this time too the result was the same.

The attendant frowned at the results, puzzled, but before long she handed Sia the forms for reissuing her Hunter ID.

“You must be very disappointed. You’ll get a separate call later, Ms. Sia, but if any problem at all comes up before then, please contact us right away.”
“Yep. Let’s go, Oppa!”

With that, Sia took my hand and led the way, as though she hadn’t the slightest attachment to her measured rank.

“…”

So we handed the forms in at the counter, got her Hunter ID reissued and came back out, and by then I couldn’t hold in my curiosity any longer.

“Sia, why did you deliberately take a low rank?”

I’d checked for people nearby and made sure there were none before I whispered it.

“Is it because of me?”
“That’s right. It’s exactly what you’re thinking, Oppa.”

Sia didn’t deny it.

Don’t tell me she’d kept it low out of consideration for my pride, since I was a D-Rank Hunter.

Sensing my expression darken, Sia cast Silence over the area the way she had yesterday and picked up where she’d left off.

“What are you thinking, Oppa! It’s because if the rank gap is too big we can’t go into a Gate together!”
“…What?”

It wasn’t written into law, exactly, but Hunters had an unwritten rule. Barring a Gate Break or some special circumstance, you didn’t clear a Gate together with Hunters two or more ranks apart from you.

“…You’re impossible. Really.”

So she’d faked her rank measurement for a reason as cute as that.

When I turned my head toward her, Sia was smiling a soft, bashful little smile, as if it were nothing at all.

Still, if she’d shown her true power, she’d have rewritten Hunter history. Wasn’t that a waste, for her?

Or so I’d thought, until it struck me all at once that to Sia, a dragon, a reputation this superficial could hardly matter much. If that sort of thing mattered to her, simply staying in that other world would have been more than enough, and yet this was Sia, who had crossed dimensions and come here for me alone.

In any case, overflowing with gratitude that she’d done all this thinking of me, I ambushed her with a kiss on the cheek.

“Thank you.”
“Hehe.”

Apparently embarrassed, Sia squirmed and twisted in place.

And then.

“Oppa. Since it’s come up, why don’t we go to a Gate right now?”
“A Gate…?”

Not a date?

“Mm-hm. Since it’s come up, and to bring back old memories too. We used to go into Gates together all the way back in our Hunter Academy days, didn’t we? Is that no good?”

A Gate, of all things, instead of an ordinary date. It struck me as a little odd, but…

If Sia wants to go, then we go.

The one problem, if there was one, was that I’d been on hiatus for the whole year without Sia… Whatever the remeasurement said, I might not be able to properly pull my weight in a real fight, and my old psychological problem might take hold of me all over again. With Sia, a dragon, at my side, none of that would be a serious problem, obviously, but…

To Sia of all people, I don’t want to show a disappointing side of myself.

I knew it already. In front of Sia, a transcendent being, no matter how brilliantly I performed I could only ever look disappointing. Even so, if I could show her myself giving it everything I had, I figured I wouldn’t have to feel ashamed in front of her.

So, no overthinking it. Let’s go.

Sia’s true feelings had been perfectly clear from the moment she came back here to Earth anyway. Rather than worrying about what she might think of me, I’d give it my best so I could hold my head up in front of her.

“No reason not to. Let’s go now.”