Even Today, the Ranker Dreams of Retirement

“Alright, everyone listen up. First, familiarize yourselves with the handouts I’ve distributed. This school has dormitories, a main building, an annex, an auditorium, sparring rooms, and training rooms…”

The orientation for Class F was in full swing.

‘…She’ll go to Class A, right?’

Yeo Seoyun, who had returned to Class F alone, thought while listening to the Class F orientation.

‘Her name was Habin, written on the name tag.’

She felt embarrassed about how she had chattered away to her earlier.

‘I clung to her assuming she’d be in Class F without knowing anything. She might have been offended.’

An A-rank hunter who entered through special admission, no less.

It felt like they were worlds apart.

‘Class A… Since Class A and Class F are at opposite ends of the hallway, I probably won’t see her much from now on, right?’

She wasn’t sure if not seeing her much was a good thing or a bad thing. Seoyun was a bit scared of that student who was said to be an A-rank hunter.

‘I’m considering dropping out.’

‘If you talk about this, you’re dead.’

‘Crawl on all fours.’

“……”

Mom, I’m scared…

‘M-maybe she doesn’t have it out for me?’

She had looked a bit annoyed when Seoyun clung to her, thinking she was in Class F.

Of course, she did seem to take Seoyun’s side in the hallway.

But it was hard to tell if that attitude was really taking her side or not, which made it even more confusing.

‘Will this be okay…?’

Even before coming to school, Seoyun had received various pieces of advice from her friends.

‘You’re going to a hunter school as an F-rank?’

‘You need to be careful!’

‘Usually, when you become a high school student, bullying and delinquent behavior decrease because everyone’s focused on studying. But hunter schools are different. Since you can get in based on ability alone without studying, sometimes there are scary kids mixed in.’

‘I heard Ullim International High filters students to some extent, so it might be okay?’

Although Ullim International High accepted most Awakened, she heard they filtered out students with character issues based on their student records in the first round.

‘Still, you need to be careful. The atmosphere in hunter schools is completely different, you know?’

‘Unlike other schools that rank students based on academics, they rank based on Awakened abilities. When you put kids in that kind of environment, an invisible hierarchy inevitably forms.’

Sigh.

‘I think I just experienced that.’

Seoyun sighed. But this much was tolerable. The formation of an invisible hierarchy happens in any school you go to. Whether it’s based on studies, looks, or connections. Wherever you go, there’s always an invisible power struggle among students.

‘So what should I do now?’

Seoyun belatedly looked around. She hadn’t had a chance to make other friends because she had been sticking close to Habin until now. It was a moment when the empty seat next to her, where Habin had been sitting until just now, felt especially large.

-Slide!

“What’s that?”

Everyone’s attention suddenly focused on the front door as it opened. The teacher who had been conducting the orientation at the podium swiftly turned his head in that direction.

“What’s the matter…”

“Excuse me.”

‘Huh?’

Seoyun tilted her head. The teacher entering now was the one who had taken Habin away in the hallway earlier. After a brief silence, she continued.

“I’ve brought a student who was overlooked.”

“Overlooked?”

The Class F homeroom teacher wore a puzzled expression.

“Overlooked… Ah! That student? But that student is…”

The Class F teacher’s expression changed moment by moment as if remembering something, from ‘Oh, there was such a student’ to ‘But why is that student here?’

“Yes, it’s that student. She said she wanted to come here.”

“What?”

“Hello!”

While the Class F teacher was flustered, another figure peeked her head through the front door. She was unmistakably dressed in a complete school uniform.

‘Oh, oh?’

Seoyun wore an unbelieving expression as she saw her. The student who just entered was…

“Hi there.”

It was Hyun Habin.

‘She was supposed to be an A-rank hunter who entered through special admission… Why is she in Class F?’

Seoyun covered her mouth.

‘This can’t be. Why on earth?’

Her mind, too shocked to process, was jumping to completely irrelevant conclusions.

‘C-could it be because of me?’

To keep her loyalty to me?!

Seoyun lowered her head, hiding her touched expression.

People tend to come up with various reasons when faced with an inexplicable situation. And those reasons are thoroughly self-centered.

◆◇◆◇◆

‘Ahem, Class F with no sparring is perfect!’

Habin sat in the back corner seat, resting her chin on her hand with an excited expression.

‘This is quite nice?’

From the start, Class A was a trap.

It’s a special class that draws attention from the entire school, and all the students there are promising talents expected to become hunters. There was no guarantee that they would be friendly towards Habin, who suddenly rolled in.

‘I don’t want that kind of development where I enter such a place and face all sorts of annoying checks. Jaljal, you’ve read web novels, so you must have read academy stories too, right?’

It’s usually the rule for protagonists to enter such an amazing class and get entangled with incredible characters.

‘And in that process, it becomes really troublesome and annoying!’

Ahezar, the web novel expert, retorted.

[Ah, no! The academy stories I read weren’t like that. In what I saw, the protagonist enters Class F and grows while enduring hardships from those around them and building loyalty with other students!]

“Huh?”

[It’s a cliché for the protagonist to enter Class F from the start!]

‘What? No way. The ones I read had the protagonist who was the weakest but knew the future and used tricks to enter Class A. Then they grow and sweep everyone away.’

But thinking about it, as long as the protagonist was overpowered, it would make sense whichever class they entered.

[Ahem, come to think of it, these days it seems there’s no cliché that hasn’t been used.]

‘Throw it away. This isn’t a novel, so those clichés won’t work.’

Habin waved her hand dismissively. Just then, the teacher was explaining about the semester’s schedule.

“You can freely decide your schedule within the given credit limits!”

“Oh…?”

That was welcome news in the midst of listening.

‘Freedom, you say?’

This is the best.

At first, Habin thought, ‘Ah, I don’t want to attend classes, so I should find ways to skip.’ So when she came in, she was measuring the size and height of the windows.

‘I was thinking of jumping out and running away if necessary…’

[Jumping out of a school window! I absolutely cannot allow such reckless behavior!]

‘Why are you upset when you’re not the one jumping, Jaljal? I’ll land gracefully, so you just watch!’

[Ugh! That’s not the point! Please control yourself! In school, you should listen well to the teachers!]

‘The teacher didn’t say not to jump out of the window.’

[That’s because it’s common sense that you shouldn’t, so they didn’t need to say it!]

‘Hmm, anyway, thinking about it, there’s no need to escape through the window. Look at this, Jaljal!’

Habin said, spreading out the guide she had just received.

‘It says here you can make your own schedule. Doesn’t it feel like we’ve come to a university? Hehe. We didn’t have this back in my day, is this how high schools are these days?’

Or is it because it’s a hunter school?

Habin looked over the list of courses with a curious expression. True to its name as a magic school, there were many lectures for magic-type Awakened.

-Herbology (3 credits)

-Magical Creature Studies (2 credits)

-Basics of Potion Making (2 credits)

-Communion with Spirits (2 credits)

-Mana Training (1 credit)

-Fundamentals of Magic and Sorcery (3 credits)

-Dungeon Practicum and Sparring (3 credits) (*Not available for Class F)

⁝

[Oho…!]

Ahezar let out an impressed exclamation. It was just like him to be full of fantasies about magic school from the moment of admission.

[This! Let’s take this! Magical Creature Studies! Fundamentals of Magic and Sorcery! The Communion with Spirits course is also very interesting! I want to see spirits too!]

“Eh? But I was planning to take different ones.”

[Did you even have any courses you wanted to take in the first place?]

‘Of course!’

Habin checked off the courses she had chosen with her pen. They were all on the page opposite to what Ahezar had been looking at.

-Film Appreciation (2 credits)

-Appreciation and Understanding of Musicals (2 credits)

-Cooking (2 credits)

-Drama and Mass Media (2 credits)

-Understanding Web Novels and Webtoons (2 credits)

⁝

[…W-what is this?!]

‘What do you mean, what is it? This is the flower of school life, liberal arts!’

[Understanding Web Novels and Webtoons… I’ll let that slide, but what on earth are the others!]

That’s right.

Among the available courses, there were quite a few liberal arts subjects as well.

There were courses like baseball, soccer, swimming, drawing, singing, as well as subjects like Introduction to Dating and Understanding Psychology.

‘Among these, the Film Appreciation and Drama and Mass Media courses are blatantly just watching movies and dramas!’

There are midterm and final assignments where you submit reviews, but those are meaningless constraints for Habin who doesn’t care about grades!

‘In the cooking class, you can make and eat right away, you know? The menus written in the syllabus are incredibly fancy. They’re making shabu-shabu on the first day!’

Classes like these are always welcome!

‘Let’s see, and the minimum credits I need to take are… 10 credits. If I take these, that should cover it all.’

And so, a schedule packed only with movies, dramas, webtoons, cooking, and musicals was completed.

‘I’ll go out and play during the rest of the time.’

[Aren’t you taking any magic classes?! Ah, no! Then what about next semester?]

Ahezar, who had become inexplicably anxious, shouted urgently.

‘We’ll think about that when we get there.’

Hyun Habin spun her pen around once with an excited expression. Watching this, Ahezar mumbled in a deeply depressed voice.

[What is this. I was expecting a magic school…!]

‘It looks like a magic school, doesn’t it?’

Habin looked around. While the classrooms and corridors gave the impression of clean and pretty cutting-edge facilities befitting a newly built school, they also incorporated a substantial amount of antique and old-fashioned materials that people might commonly associate with a ‘magic school’.

For example, under the soft sunlight streaming through the windows, the wooden floor and intricate wooden ceiling materials created an atmosphere like a movie set. Instead of fluorescent lights, stylish warm white lights illuminated the classroom, and dreamcatcher-shaped decorations hung by the windows.

[Item—Low-grade Lucky Charm]

Slightly increases mana sensitivity for users inside the installed building. Also helps create a comfortable and stable feeling.

Of course, the attitudes of the teachers and students were unmistakably 21st century Korean.

‘But suddenly adopting a magic school concept is funny too, isn’t it? It would be fun if the principal showed up dressed like Dumbledore though.’

[Principal?]

Ahezar interjected as if he had remembered something.

[Come to think of it, I don’t think we saw the principal during the entrance ceremony earlier.]

‘What?’

The principal wasn’t at the entrance ceremony? What kind of steamed bun without red bean paste talk is that?

‘What about the time for the congratulatory speech?’

Though she doesn’t like speeches.

[That’s right. I was quite curious about the principal’s face too.]

‘Why would you be particularly curious about that? It’s probably similar to other schools, right? It’s probably one of the teachers with a hunter background.’

[Still, we should know who the principal is!]

“Okay… I got it. I’ll tell you if I find out later.”

Habin nodded with an indifferent expression.

Who could it be, the Dumbledore of this school?

◆◇◆◇◆

“…That’s right. It’s known to be the principle for hunter schools to have a principal from among the teachers with a hunter background.”

At that time, in the principal’s office.

The school board chairman, vice principal, and grade heads were all gathered around the table with serious expressions.

“But in this case, of course!”

“It’s none other than Fides-nim!”

“Of course Fides-nim should be the principal, shouldn’t he?!”

“What…?”

And Hyun Siwoo, who was at the center of it all, failed to maintain his composure.

‘What? Principal?’

[An identity I never imagined!]

‘Is this for real?’

“I clearly intended to visit only briefly as a visiting faculty member. Just for a few months at that.”

Hyun Siwoo tried to draw the line. But the chairman didn’t stop.

“Are you aware that in our country, there’s also a system for inviting principals?”

The vice principal beside him chimed in.

“How about an honorary principal?”

“It’s truly fate that the previous principal has just retired and the position is vacant!”

“A few months? No. Even one month would be fine. If Fides-nim would take on the role of our school’s principal, it would be an honor we’d cherish forever!”

“No, I…”

Hyun Siwoo was inwardly breaking out in a cold sweat.

At this rate, he might end up becoming the principal of the school his sister attends.