The second mechanism took shape over the following three weeks.
Kang Min had been watching for it since the anteroom conversation, running through the options Bak Junho had available to him within the ranking system's structure. The ranking wasn't a single number. It was a composite across four assessment categories — theory, practical, integration, and what the academy's charter called professional conduct, a category broad enough that its application required judgment rather than measurement. The first three categories had objective components that limited how far they could be adjusted without the adjustment being visible. Professional conduct had no such limit.
