Stepping into Halmang School of Magical Studies for the first time is a momentous, unforgettable experience. Do Kyungsoo, age thirteen, is already a year older than most First Years. It is a nerve-wracking and somewhat embarrassing thought that lingers even as he is awed by the sight of strange, translucent, airy creatures flitting alongside them, effortlessly hauling their luggage in from the train and the short walk to the school’s entrance. The banners for the three Houses — Koeullang, Pueullang, and Yanguellang — come to life and glow as they greet the newcomers walking single-file into the expansive Dining Hall.

So many eyes descend upon him. Kyungsoo shrinks into his new cloak some more, feeling self-conscious and small. This is terrible. Being placed into Second Year courses does not give him any advantage. Everyone else will have already had a year together to bond and sort out their cliques and friendship circles. This does not even include the year’s worth of coursework that he will have to study in his free time, concurrent with his regular classes. He will be not only a outsider, but behind academically. But his parents absolutely could not afford to send him when his acceptance letter arrived by owl last year. Only by scraping and saving and rummaging through the used supplies and clothes racks in Ilsan were they able to foot his tuition and materials for this year. This is added stress for the newly-turned teenager: to keep his grades high enough that he could earn a scholarship for the rest of his six years here.

They are all made to stand at the front of the hall, something that deeply offends Kyungsoo. He understands that they must be sorted into Houses, and it is an important ceremony that everyone has to go through, but he came all the way from Ilsan, and he is tired and would much rather just be told to which dormitory to turn in for the night than have to deal with all of this formal pomp. He was too nervous to sleep on the train earlier, unlike the tall girl behind him who took up an entire bench in their cabin and slept the duration of the trip after a brief and shy introduction, pulling her shorter hair around her face to partially cover her cheeks, causing most of her words to come out mumbled. That girl seems to have made new friends in the scant few minutes it took for them to be escorted from the station up to the school, and they're clinging to each other behind him, chittering like little birds. Kyungsoo adjusts his thick glasses and scrubs at his messy hair, feeling bitter and abandoned. She’s pretty, it would make sense for her to leap for higher rungs when the opportunity presented itself. He couldn’t blame her.

An old woman in navy robes greets the entire student body with a warm, booming voice and then turns to the newcomers to cheerily explain the sorting process. Five large barrels of grain stand in a ring before them: barley, rice, soybean, millet, and foxtail millet. They are to each come up, collect grain from each barrel, and feed it into the wooden basin in the center, filled with mysterious, glowing, blue liquid. It would then somehow look into their hearts and minds, and know in which House they are fated to belong.

Kyungsoo's turn comes too soon, and on quivering legs and with sweaty palms, he walks up to the first barrel, gathering a modest handful of barley before advancing to the next. The barrel of rice is contaminated with some errant barley grains, and Kyungsoo tries to avoid those areas as he collects more, careful not to let his own meager surplus slip. Some rice manages to fall out of his grasp in the soybean barrel, and by the millet, he is scrambling to grab others' left-behind barley to ensure his own collection has some. Regrettably, he only manages to hold several grains of the foxtail millet pinched between his thumb and forefinger to avoid losing more before striding over to the large bowl. The blue liquid is mirror-smooth now, and he silently curses as some soybeans manage to slip out between his knuckles, skittering in a quiet rattle across the floor. Kyungsoo all but throws his handful into the water before he could lose more, watching as the liquid ripples and goes black.

He holds his breath.

It doesn't matter which House he goes to. Kyungsoo is more worried, deep down, that the bowl would just stay black, and Headmaster Nambich with her cheery demeanor and booming voice would come up and ask him to leave. That he did not belong here at all, and they must have made a clerical error. Clearly, his brother did not merit an invitation to be here, and so why would anyone expect him to be any different? Thank you for your tuition payment, which, oh my, by the way is nonrefundable. Enjoy your life as a farmer or whatever. P