The classroom clock was ticking too loud.
Seo Juwon sat at the back of the room, eyes half-lidded, watching the second hand twitch along its crooked path. Someone had tried to fix it with transparent tape. It hadn't worked.
He didn't need to look at the time. He already knew the lecture had seven minutes left.
And no one here was listening anymore.
Not really.
The professor at the front continued with dogged enthusiasm, gesturing at a projector slide titled:
"The Modern Study of Leylines: From Theory to Practice."
There were diagrams of spiritual nodes, primitive mana arrays, half-translated ruins from the Southern Expanse. Half the class had mentally checked out five minutes ago.
The rain tapped against the windows in slow, lazy rhythms. One of the overhead lights flickered, buzzed faintly, then steadied again.
Juwon didn't take notes. He didn't scroll through his phone either. His screen was off, the battery dead since morning. He simply sat with his hands folded neatly over his notebook—empty, except for a single page filled with tight, clinical handwriting.
He'd written it two days ago. It read:
Mana is the illusion of order in a world ruled by chaos.
A structure built atop something that cannot be tamed.
He didn't remember why he wrote it.
"Yo."
A voice beside him. Quiet, but persistent.
Minho, the self-declared "survival partner" Juwon had never actually agreed to.
He slid a wrapped pastry onto Juwon's desk.
"You're going to pass out at this rate. Eat."
Juwon didn't answer.
Minho leaned over, stage-whispering, "You haven't eaten anything all day. I saw you staring at the vending machine like it had offended your ancestors."
Still nothing.
Minho sighed. "Okay, fine. I'll trade you two sugar rolls for the notes from last Thursday."
"I didn't take notes last Thursday."
"You heartless bastard."
There was no edge to it. That was just Minho—loud, shameless, and impossible to shake.
Eventually, Juwon reached for the pastry. He didn't smile, but Minho grinned like he'd won a bet.
Minutes passed. Outside, the rain intensified, and the sky dimmed unnaturally fast.
By the time the professor dismissed class, half the students had already packed up. The other half filed out with glazed eyes, half-asleep and overworked.
Minho stretched, slinging his worn backpack over one shoulder. "You headed to the lab?"
"No."
"Want to split dinner?"
"No."
"You want to—"
"No."
"Cool," Minho said, unfazed. "See you tomorrow, Ice Cube."
Juwon watched him go.
He didn't get up right away.
He stared out the window instead.
The rain had stopped.
Completely.
Not faded. Not slowed.
Stopped.
Droplets still hung in midair, suspended between sky and earth, unmoving.
Juwon blinked once.
The crack in the upper corner of the glass—there since the semester began—was glowing.
The lights in the lecture hall flickered.
Then the screens cut out.
Then the sky turned black.
It wasn't darkness—not the absence of light, but a presence, as if a vast ink-slick curtain had been pulled over the world.
Then came the chime. Clear. Too clear. It rang inside his chest like it was striking bone.
And then the message.
Projected not on screens or glass but across the sky itself, burning in pale white light:
❖ Welcome to the Operations.
Your world has been selected.
Participation is mandatory.
Evaluation is continuous.
Survival determines reward.
Failure results in deletion.
You have 60 seconds to prepare.
Nobody moved.
The silence broke first. Someone in the hallway screamed. A wet, choking sound that cut off halfway through.
Another student—someone sitting three rows up—just vanished. One second they were there. The next, their clothes dropped to the ground, empty.
Someone else cried out, scrambling away from the desk. Another person ran for the door, only to slam into it as if the room itself had locked down.
The message pulsed again.
❖ 47 seconds remaining.
Please prepare for transport.
The professor muttered something—an incantation?
Nothing happened.
A few students screamed for help, crying to gods they didn't believe in five minutes ago.
Juwon did none of that.
He remained seated.
It wasn't shock.
He was thinking—coldly, clinically.
The message had said Operations.
Not "event." Not "disaster." Not even "test."
An operation had a goal.
That meant this had rules.
And rules could be broken.
Or bent.
He stood, slowly.
His body felt heavy—not from dread, but from the weight of clarity. The kind of clarity that comes just before impact.
He stepped away from his desk and looked up at the glowing words burning into the ceiling of the world.
❖ 16 seconds remaining.
Transport initializing...
He whispered, "So this is how it starts."
The rain outside still hadn't moved.