Chapter 63: The Two Low Lines
Chapter 63: The Two Low Lines
At seven fifty-nine, Jin’s results from the examination had not yet been released.
Apparently, this was somehow his fault, according to Elsa.
"You broke it," she told him, refreshing the page again, this time for the ninth time in a minute. "You stared at it too hard last night and broke the entire examination portal. For every candidate."
"I was asleep last night."
"Suspicious."
All of the family members were crowded in the front room, meaning there was no moving anywhere without bumping into someone. Elena had just come off her shift and not even changed yet – she was perched on the edge of the cot in her hydroponics outfit, exhausted, eyes bloodshot, watching the phone in Elsa’s hands with the single-mindedness of a woman who had worked for twelve hours and would not go to bed until she saw the number. Arthur was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, projecting a serenity so deliberate that no one was fooled. His good hand was tapping rhythmically against his elbow.
Jin was seated against the far wall with Glitch at his side, giving an excellent impersonation of someone who couldn’t care less.
Behind the impersonation, his stomach was in knots.
Because this was the moment when the investment that had gone into Glitch’s egg was going to pay off, one way or the other. Fifty thousand credits. All of the family’s savings, poured into an Iron-quality egg that they were teased for because Jin needed a beast that could take the examination – every credit Arthur and Elena had saved over years of factory shifts and under the soil, gone into a lizard that everyone in the Shelter had made fun of. If the number that loaded in the next minute was poor, then all of that had been wasted on an extended version of failure, and he was going to have to watch his family learn it alongside him.
He held a neutral expression. He’d had practice at it.
"It’s 08:00," Elsa declared. "It’s 08:00 precisely. Load. Load. Load."
The page loaded an error message.
Then another one. Then the spinning circle that had to spin and spin before throwing up a third error, because frightened candidates in the Shelters had all tried to access the page simultaneously.
"It’s overloaded," Jin said. "Everyone is on it. Give it—"
"Don’t tell me to be patient, I’ve been patient for two weeks—"
"—give it a minute—"
"I refuse."
Elena, without even opening her eyes, said quietly, "Elsa. Breathe, sweetheart."
Elsa took a breath. She refreshed the page as she was breathing.
And on the fourth attempt, the spinning circle stopped, and the page loaded.
The first thing that appeared was the header, and the family leaned in unison.
[National Entrance Examination – Candidate Result]
[Candidate: Jin Astor]
[Public Talent: C-Rank Data Appraisal & Device Link]
[Contracted Beast: Grey Rock Lizard – Iron Quality]
[Final Evaluation: Passed]
Passed.
The air in the room was let out at the same time after fourteen days of anticipation. Elena put her hand over her mouth. Elsa let out a sound somewhere between a scream and sob. Even Arthur’s shoulders relaxed a bit, as did his folded arms.
"You passed," Elena said, her voice breaking in the middle. "Jin. You passed."
"Told you I would," Jin said, and for a second the neutral mask slipped and something else shone through because ’passed’ meant that the fifty thousand had not been wasted. ’Passed’ meant that there was a future for him ahead.
Then the detailed assessment loaded, and the room’s joy turned cooler.
[National Top 1,000 Placement: Not Achieved]
[Overall Placement Band: Upper-Middle]
[Shelter 7 Educational Quota: Qualified]
[Scholarship Consideration: Eligible]
Below that were the detailed scores:
[Survival Assessment: Excellent]
[Command and Adaptability: Excellent]
[Combat Output: Above Average]
[Beast Quality Assessment: Low]
[Talent Growth Projection: Low]
Jin read the assessment twice. The second time hurt.
"Not achieved. I haven’t made the Top 1,000," he said.
He knew precisely why. He could see the algorithm used by the machine laid out plainly in the two "low" lines at the end – the system had taken into consideration his C-Rank supporting talent and an Iron-quality lizard and done the calculations it was supposed to do. Excellent survival skills. Excellent adaptability. And then it had capped the entire evaluation off, because the machine was allowed to be impressed with what he’d done, but not with what it thought he was. Good handler. Poor material. He had excellent combat output. He had poor growth potential.
He knew the assessment was wrong. He knew what was sleeping curled at his side. He also knew how much growth potential was waiting behind that seemingly harmless little game. The algorithm had no idea what Glitch was.
However, it made no difference that he knew it was wrong, because the assessment was still there. For a minute, he let himself see how the rest of the world was going to see him – everyone who was outside of the room, reading the results of the candidates in the list and seeing three facts and nothing else:
C-Rank talent.
Iron-quality beast.
Not ranked.
That was going to be his entire story for everyone outside of the family. It hurt more than he had expected.
Arthur saw it. Of course, he did.
He moved away from the wall, crossed the small space in the room, and crouched in front of Jin with the painstaking care of a man who had a badly damaged leg – lowering himself to eye level as he had done at the gate of the entrance exam.
"Look at me," he said. "Not the screen. At me."
Jin obeyed.
"Do you see what it says above? The talent, the beast?" Arthur tapped the result carefully. "It says C-Rank. It says Iron. And with those two words written in your file, you managed to enter the upper-middle placement band." He shook his head. "Don’t you understand how impossible this looks? A support talent and an Iron-quality lizard, yet you’ve performed better than most of the candidates with both better beasts and more powerful talents. There were applicants who had both and still failed to achieve your placement band."
"I didn’t make the Top 1,000," Jin said.
"The Top 1,000 wasn’t for you to make. Not with those two things in your hands," Arthur’s tone remained neutral, but there was something else in it, something that had been waiting to get out for weeks. "I risked everything we had for that egg. I knew what people said about it. I heard them in the corridor. And still, I bought it and spent nights lying awake wondering whether I’ve wasted your mother’s efforts and your sister’s future on a gamble." He glanced at the sleeping lizard and back. "And today, this gamble gave you an opportunity for an education. For real choices. This is not a failure, Jin. This is the best money I ever spent."
The tension left his shoulders when he said it. Truly left, for the first time in weeks, as a great weight coming off. He was not a man who cried. However, his eyes were bright, and he grabbed Jin’s shoulder for a brief moment, and that said enough.
Elena was crying now, but happily. "You passed," she kept repeating, as if anything but that single line didn’t matter. There was only one line for her and it meant everything that she wanted it to mean.
As for Elsa, she had gone from celebration to something completely different.
"Low growth projection?" she read aloud, her voice rising. "LOW? What are they thinking – Glitch fought a whole battle. His command is Excellent. His survival is Excellent. How can they write Low Growth Projection like he’s going to peak next Tuesday? Who wrote this? I want a name. I will find them."
"Elsa."
"I am going to write a letter."
"Elsa. It’s alright."
"It’s not alright. They insulted your beast right in your face, in writing—"
"You’re taking my insults too seriously," Jin said, nearly wanting to laugh at it, except watching his little sister getting angry for Glitch’s sake did something strange to him. "It’s alright. Really. Let them be wrong."
Glitch, having heard his name said a couple of times in raised voices, lifted his head up and decided that none of it mattered and returned to sleep.