Heirs of the Two Strongest
Kim Taeseok sucked the last of his coffee up through a straw and asked, “Do Suho's a done deal. Good face, established fandom, a natural-awakened A-Rank with Giwon. His narrative is already written for him. He's going in the main lineup, no question.”
He jerked his chin at the application form sitting beside him.
“But who's Lee Sihyun?”
“An application that just came in yesterday. From, you know, Sung's guild.”
“...Seongyeon?”
“Yes. The one that went completely under.”
“That thing's still breathing? In a sense, legends really do stay legends.”
An involuntary, humorless laugh slipped out of Kim Taeseok.
There had been a time, once, when simply turning on the TV flooded every channel with content tearing into Seongyeon and Sung Jeyeon. Kim Taeseok, a rookie back then, had spent whole nights editing archival footage, slapping captions like BETRAYAL and DECEPTION OF THE NATION over the top of it.
The directive had come from above.
They buried him thoroughly. With real intent.
And in the middle of that boiling public fury, certain parties walked away with sweet profits. The government seized Seongyeon's vast assets. Giwon rose to become the undisputed number-one guild in the country. Ryu Sungho emerged as an icon of conscience and parlayed it into a political career.
And I'm one to laugh, really.
Back then he'd cursed his seniors under his breath for moving exactly as the higher-ups instructed. Now here he was, producing a show with the Association's fingerprints all over it.
Too many interests were riding on this to count.
Kim Taeseok swallowed the bitter thought along with his coffee. It had been far too long in this business for him to start lecturing anyone about justice now.
“So this Lee Sihyun kid came out of there? Anything worth looking at?”
Anyone willing to join a guild running on nothing but the memory of its name was bound to be a nothing applicant. A low grade, a useless class—or maybe just a pretty face.
“Well, about that. They're an S-Rank awakener.”
The coffee inside the straw gurgled loudly.
“What?”
“The first S-Rank since the final conquest ten years ago.”
“Is the kid insane? An S-Rank, passing over Giwon, joining Seongyeon?”
“You'll understand once you see the class.”
Oh Jihun pressed a finger down on one corner of the application.
Class: Summoner
A collective groan of “Ah...” rippled through the meeting room.
“Figures. Of course it had to be a summoner.”
Summoner had only been a strong class back when Sung Jeyeon was around. These days it had weakened so badly that people openly called it trash-tier.
“Contracted summon?”
“None yet.”
“A summoner applied without a summon?”
“They awakened yesterday.”
“S-Rank talent, and luck so rotten it's insulting.”
“Still, doesn't this feel like old history repeating itself?”
“Old history?”
Oh Jihun laid two profile photos side by side.
“Twenty years ago, a boy and a girl, the same age, met on the first floor of the Tower and climbed it together. The mage Ki Taewon, and the summoner Sung Jeyeon.”
His fingertip moved from one name to the other across the photographs.
“And now—a level 1 mage from Giwon named Do Suho, and a summoner from Seongyeon named Lee Sihyun. Also the same age.”
“Wow.”
“They're the same age and go to the same school. Doesn't that give you chills? Just like those two back in the day.”
A teaser trailer was already cutting itself together inside Kim Taeseok's head.
“Come to think of it, everyone always wondered, didn't they? Whether those two really stayed just friends for ten whole years.”
“Not just that. People used to place bets on which of them would reach the top first, if they hadn't climbed it together.”
Oh Jihun's eyes gleamed.
“The strongest duo of a new era works. So does the rivalry of the century. Giwon and Seongyeon? We could even get a modern-day Romeo and Juliet out of it.”
“Man, either way it swings, the picture sells itself.”
Kim Taeseok clapped his hands in excitement—then suddenly smacked his lips.
“But the summoner's way too weak, that's the problem.”
“That's... true. They wouldn't survive the guild preliminaries, let alone the actual competition.”
“Giwon won't stand for their brand-new golden boy being paired off with Seongyeon, either. And the fandoms won't sit quietly.”
The two men looked at each other and sighed at exactly the same moment.
“All three of those are going to be problems.”
“Call them in anyway. The only S-Rank to appear in ten years—we'll get at least one usable storyline out of them.”
“Which storyline?”
“The heirs of the two strongest.”
Kim Taeseok tapped Do Suho's application.
“One: an A-Rank mage who will inherit the legend of Ki Taewon.”
Then he set Lee Sihyun's application down beside it.
“And two: an S-Rank summoner who will turn the legend of Sung Jeyeon to dust.”
Sihyun left school and headed straight for the Seongyeon office.
The moment she opened the door, the eyes of the three people inside swung toward her all at once.
“You again?”
Lee Jena checked the wall clock.
“Shouldn't you be in school right now?”
“Oh, I quit, actually.”
The office went dead silent.
“...What?”
“You quit school?”
Kang Jisu and Jung Hoyeon shot up from their seats in unison.
“Hey, Lee Sihyun! You had a few months left to graduation and you dropped out?!”
“What am I going to do with this kid, seriously.”
“First thing, we go see your homeroom teacher. If the paperwork hasn't gone through yet, it might still be reversible.”
All three were already reaching for their phones.
“I didn't say I dropped out. I said I don't have to go anymore.”
Every movement in the room froze at once.
Sihyun pulled her awakened registration card out of her wallet and held it up.
“When I showed them this, they said I qualified for—what was it—special attendance or something. As long as I show up for the graduation ceremony, I'm done.”
“......”
Jena lowered her phone, very slowly.
“Sihyun.”
“Yes?”
“Could you maybe lead with that next time?”
“You didn't ask.”
“Who would've phrased it like that?!”
Hoyeon clutched his chest and exhaled.
“God, my heart nearly gave out.”
Only then did the three of them put their phones down and drift back to their seats.
“Anyway.”
Sihyun set her bag down and took the leftmost spot on the sofa.
“From here on out, all I have to do is focus on the survival show.”
“Right, right. Then that means...”
Jisu stopped mid-sentence, eyes going wide.
“Our Sihyun's due for her first summoning.”
The atmosphere in the office changed in a heartbeat.
“Whoa, a first summoning. How many years has it been?”
Hoyeon leaned forward.
“First summoning!”
Jena's eyes lit up.
“Why are you the most excited?”
When Jisu asked with a laugh, Jena answered without a shred of shame.
“Because it's finally my turn to have a maknae of my own to look after.”
“I remember your first summoning.”
Hoyeon grinned.
“You were bragging you weren't nervous at all, then stood on the magic circle with your hands shaking like a leaf.”
“You were clutching the hem of Jeyeon-unni's clothes the entire time.”
Jisu pitched her voice high, mimicking her.
“Unni, is it going to eat me? Are you sure I'll be okay?”
“I never said that!”
“It's true. You even cried.”
“I did not cry!”
Sihyun watched the three of them banter and smiled to herself.
She cried.
She'd started crying before the summon even showed itself, and right up until the contract began she had Jeyeon in a death grip around the waist, refusing to let go.
The summon that finally appeared, for all that, had been a tiny spirit even more timid than Jena herself. The two of them had cowered at opposite ends of the circle, each terrified of the other—a sight still vivid after all these years.
“It was even worse for Jisu-unni's, wasn't it?”
Jena fired back.
“Her summon demanded a different price out of nowhere, right before the contract.”
“That it did.”
Jisu admitted it readily enough.
“Wouldn't even glance at what we'd prepared. It told us to bring it a moonlight herb that bloomed only that one night.”
“And then?”
“Jeyeon-unni and Mujin-oppa went out and got it on the spot. Nothing bloomed anywhere nearby, so they had to clear two whole dungeons for it—and those weren't guaranteed-reward clears either. They gambled on drops until it showed up.”
Jisu smiled faintly, as if seeing it all again.
“They got back at dawn, clothes shredded to ribbons, leaves stuck in their hair. And Jeyeon-unni, looking like that, pressed the moonlight herb into my hand and laughed and said, 'Made it in time.' I still think about that.”
For just a breath, the smile at the end of the story dimmed.
Along with the old habit of her left hand brushing down over her ring finger.
Sihyun dropped her gaze for a moment at the name she hadn't heard spoken in so long.
“That sounds like Jeyeon-unni.”
Jena picked the conversation right back up, smooth and natural—as if she'd never noticed that little hitch at all.
“Ahem! And why is nobody asking about mine, huh?”
Hoyeon inserted himself with a theatrical throat-clearing.
“About what?”
“My first summoning. I'm the most senior person in this room, you know.”
“Oh, right. How was it, Hoyeon-oppa?”
Hoyeon tipped his chin up a notch.
“Nothing to tell. Jinmyeong answered perfectly on the first call. Accepted the medium without a fuss, and my contract closed the fastest of anyone's.”
“Huh. Didn't expect that. You had actual talent, oppa?”
Hoyeon crossed his arms and nodded as though it were obvious.
“This, my friends, is what they call the dignity of a senior.”
Sihyun stared at him for a moment, then snorted inwardly.
Yeah, right. You were the biggest disaster of the lot, pal.