# Chapter: My Little Senior Sister is the Cutest!
The registration hall smelled of ink and old wood. Dust motes drifted through shafts of afternoon light that fell across worn floorboards, each beam marking the passage of another anxious applicant shuffling forward in the endless line.
Si-U stood on his toes, craning to see over the shoulders of the boy ahead of him. His threadbare tunic—the nicest one he owned—was already damp with nervous sweat despite the mountain breeze that occasionally whispered through the open windows.
"Next!"
The line lurched forward. Si-U's heart hammered against his ribs as he approached the desk—a simple thing, really, scarred by years of impatient fingers drumming while proctors deliberated over fates. Behind it sat a man whose face looked carved from the same tired wood as his furniture. Deep lines bracketed his mouth. His eyes, when they finally lifted from the paper before him, held the weight of a thousand rejections delivered and a thousand more to come.
"Name?" The proctor's voice carried the mechanical flatness of someone who had asked this question too many times today.
"Kim Si-U, sir." The words came out steadier than Si-U expected. His hands, clasped behind his back, were another matter entirely—trembling like leaves before a storm.
The proctor's brush moved across the page with practiced efficiency, each stroke deliberate. Then it stopped. His eyes narrowed as they scanned the document again, then flicked up to Si-U with an expression that shifted from bored indifference to something uncomfortably close to pity.
"So." The word hung in the air between them. "You want to be a ki master."
It wasn't really a question, but Si-U nodded anyway, that foolish grin spreading across his face before he could stop it.
The proctor set down his brush with careful precision, as if bracing himself for an unpleasant duty. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, fingers steepled. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its administrative drone and taken on an almost paternal heaviness.
"Kid, look at me."
Si-U met his gaze.
"I have to warn you—the moment you sign up for this academy, you're not just becoming a student. You're automatically registering for military service. Do you understand what that means?" He paused, searching Si-U's face for any crack in that infuriating smile. "This isn't like the stories. There are no guarantees. No second chances."
"Yes sir!" Si-U's voice rang clear through the hall, drawing glances from others in line. "I understand, sir!"
The proctor rubbed his temples, a gesture that suggested this conversation was aging him in real time. He glanced down at the papers again—at whatever information they contained that had prompted this warning—then back up at the twelve-year-old boy who stood before him with shoulders squared and eyes bright with determination.
"Your records are legitimate. I don't have the authority to decline your registration." Each word seemed to cost him something. "But I need you to hear this—truly hear it. If you walk through those gates, you *will* die. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next year. But this path..." He shook his head slowly. "It ends in blood and broken bodies far more often than it ends in glory."
The smile on Si-U's face didn't waver. If anything, it grew warmer, as if the proctor had just told him a joke instead of prophecying his doom.
"I know this, sir." The boy's voice carried an enthusiasm that bordered on absurd given the conversation's subject matter. "I understand the risks!"
The proctor sagged back in his chair, studying the child with the exhausted fascination of someone watching a moth fly determinedly toward a flame. When he spoke again, his tone had shifted to something almost gentle—the voice of a man making one last attempt to save a life that didn't want saving.
"Let me guess." He folded his hands across the papers. "You want to join because you need to take care of your family? Or maybe it's the title and wealth you're after?" His eyebrows rose slightly, inviting confirmation. "Because if that's your reason, kid, there are plenty of other ways to earn money. Safer ways. Ways that don't require you to bet your life before you've even lived it."
For the first time, Si-U's expression shifted. The grin became something softer, more genuine—less the mask of youthful bravado and more the face of someone who had thought long and hard about exactly this question.
"Sir, I'm truly grateful that you're concerned about my wellbeing." He bowed slightly, a gesture of sincere respect. When he straightened, his eyes shone with something that might have been tears or might have been the reflection of dreams too big for one small body to contain. "But there's really no need to worry."
The proctor waited.
"Because I'm going to become the strongest ki master there is!"
The declaration rang through the registration hall like a bell. Several heads turned. Someone in line behind Si-U snorted—whether in derision or surprise was impossible to tell.
The proctor stared at him for a long moment. Then, with the air of a man surrendering to the inevitable, he released a breath that seemed to carry the weight of every warning he'd ever failed to deliver effectively. He picked up his brush, dipped it in ink, and signed the form with swift, decisive strokes.
"Here." He held the paper out, his hand steady even as something complicated passed across his weathered features—resignation mixed with the faintest hint of what might have been admiration. "Head to the main entrance. Give this to the guard at the door. He'll let you through."
Si-U took the paper with both hands, clutching it like it was made of gold instead of rice paper and crushed dreams. He bowed deeply—a proper bow this time, the kind his mother had drilled into him before he left home.
"Thank you, sir! Thank you so much!"
He turned and hurried away before the proctor could change his mind, weaving through the line of waiting applicants. Behind him, he heard the tired voice call out: "Next!"
The afternoon sun hit him full in the face as he emerged from the registration hall. Si-U squinted against the brightness, then looked down at the paper in his hands. Official seals. Formal script. His name—Kim Si-U, also written as Kim Si-Woo, 'Si' and 'Woo' together meaning 'divine intervention,' 'Woo' alone meaning 'rain.' The Divine Storm. His father had chosen that name with such hope, such faith that his son would be someone special.
*I won't disappoint you, Father.*
The memory rose unbidden: his father's calloused hands holding out the admission documents just three days ago, on Si-U's twelfth birthday. The shock of it. The impossibility. This academy—the Biseulsan Ki Institute, perched at the summit of Mount Biseulsan like a jewel in a dragon's crown—accepted only the children of noble families, wealthy merchants, military officers. Not the son of a laborer. Not a boy whose mother took in washing just to afford rice for dinner.
But somehow, through some sacrifice Si-U couldn't even begin to imagine, his father had secured this chance.
*I'll make it worth it. I'll make you proud.*
The path to the main academy building wound upward through gardens that seemed torn from a painting. Cherry trees lined the walkway, their branches heavy with late-blooming flowers that drifted down like pink snow. Ornamental stones marked the edges where grass gave way to carefully raked gravel. Every few paces, stone lanterns stood sentinel, their empty chambers waiting for nightfall to be lit by the hands of servants Si-U would probably never see.
He slowed despite himself, drinking in details his eyes could barely process. Lotus flowers floated in a pond to his left, their petals so perfect they looked carved from jade. A small bridge arced over the water, its wooden rails worn smooth by countless hands sliding across them over the years. Somewhere nearby, wind chimes sang their gentle song, each note crystalline in the mountain air.
*This is real. This is actually happening.*
His heart felt too large for his chest. Joy and terror warred within him in equal measure. Yes, he was nervous—terrified, actually, of whether he could make friends, whether he'd be accepted, whether the other students would see through his borrowed legitimacy to the poor boy underneath. His father had warned him about this, speaking carefully over their last dinner together.
*"Because of our status, others will look down on you,"* his father had said, his eyes sad but firm. *"You must never let that hinder your progress. Never let their opinions become chains that bind you."*
Si-U knew this. He wasn't naive enough to believe the world was fair or kind. But somewhere in the secret chambers of his heart, he nurtured a small, stubborn hope: maybe, just maybe, if he worked hard enough and stayed quiet enough, no one would notice. Maybe he could simply be another student, learning and growing and becoming strong enough to change his family's fate.
The path curved upward, and suddenly he was there—standing before the main entrance to the academy proper. Massive wooden doors loomed above him, each panel carved with scenes of legendary ki masters performing impossible feats: splitting mountains, calming seas, ascending to the heavens on currents of pure spiritual energy.
And before those doors stood a guard.
The man was enormous—not in the way of someone who simply ate well, but in the way of someone whose very presence seemed to expand beyond the confines of his physical form. His jacket hung open in the casual manner of someone utterly confident in his ability to destroy any threat, revealing a black shirt with white characters that read "鹹" (Salty). His left hand rested with deceptive casualness on the hilt of a katana that hung from his belt—a blade so large it seemed more fit for cleaving demons than for ceremonial guard duty.
But it was the aura that made Si-U's breath catch in his throat.
Ki rolled off the guard in waves of tangible force, warping the very air around him. Si-U had just begun his cultivation journey, had barely touched the first realm of ki mastery, but even he could sense the depth of power before him. Fourth realm, his instincts whispered. And more than that—this man had reached the second tier of spiritual understanding, earning the rank of General through not just raw power but comprehension of the underlying principles that governed reality itself.
The pressure hit Si-U like a physical blow. It was as if gravity had suddenly doubled, then tripled, then increased beyond measure. His knees threatened to buckle. His vision swam at the edges. The air itself seemed to thicken into something solid, pressing down on his shoulders with crushing inevitability.
*This is a test,* some rational part of his mind insisted through the panic. *First day. First gate. They're seeing who breaks.*
"Stop!"
The command cracked through the air like thunder. Si-U jerked to a halt, his body obeying before his mind could process the order. He staggered back a step, then another, his breath coming in short gasps as the guard's aura intensified—flames of crimson and gold that seemed to bend reality around them, turning the peaceful garden into something primal and dangerous.
*I can't... I can't breathe...*
The pressure mounted. Si-U felt his consciousness beginning to fray at the edges, felt his body preparing to drop to its knees in submission to this overwhelming force. In another moment he would crumple, would be crushed into nothing by the sheer weight of this man's killing intent.
But...
*No.*
The word rose from somewhere deep within him, from that same stubborn core that had made him smile in the face of the proctor's warnings.
*I didn't come this far to fail at the door.*
Gritting his teeth until his jaw ached, Si-U forced himself to stand upright. His master's voice echoed in his memory—
*"When pressure comes, you don't fight it head-on. You flow around it. You become like water—yielding yet unbreakable."*
Si-U closed his eyes and began to circulate his ki along his meridians. The energy was thin, barely more than a trickle compared to the raging inferno of the guard's aura, but it was *his*. He guided it through the pathways his master had shown him, building it slowly from a trickle to a stream, from a stream to something approaching a current.
Then, just as his master had taught him, he extended his own aura.
It was laughable compared to the guard's—a candle flame trying to stand against a forest fire. Si-U's cultivation hadn't even reached the ki-forming stage yet. But it was enough. Just barely, it was enough to create a thin shell around himself, a membrane of resistance that offset the crushing pressure by the smallest degree.
Enough to breathe.
Enough to move.
Si-U took one step forward. Then another. Each movement felt like wading through deep water, but he pressed on, jaw clenched, sweat streaming down his face, his small hands balled into fists at his sides.
The guard watched him with eyes that revealed nothing—neither approval nor disdain, just flat assessment.
Five steps from the door, Si-U stopped. He gathered what remained of his strength and dropped into a formal bow—back straight, head low, arms at his sides in the position of a junior greeting a senior.
"Junior greets senior!" His voice came out louder than he'd intended, cracking slightly on the last word but carrying clearly through the garden.