The Darkroom of the Old Schoolhouse

On Saturday afternoon, Kanzaki Toru spent the entire afternoon alone at a window seat on the third floor of the library.

Spread out before him was the structural diagram of the old school building, which he had examined countless times. On the yellowed blueprint, he had circled several locations in red ink; the old staircase at the end of the third floor, sealed off by a wall, was marked three times. The old wooden cabinet embedded in the wall that Shiina Hiyori had mentioned earlier should be located somewhere near that spot.

Sunlight from outside the window drifted slowly across the edges of the book pages, while the sounds of turning pages and soft keyboard clicks intertwined within the library. He held a pen in his right hand, while his left hand unconsciously kneaded a mint candy—one that Shiina Hiyori had placed in his palm as she passed by before he entered the library, the same kind she had given to Sakura earlier. She had left as soon as she dropped off the candy, leaving behind only the words, "The key to the old wooden cabinet isn't in the administrative office's registry." In other words, even the school's management might not know that the cabinet still had a key.

The mint candy felt slightly cool against his fingertips. He popped it into his mouth, folded the structural diagram into his pocket, and stood up.

At four in the afternoon, he met up with Shiina Hiyori in the third-floor corridor of the old school building. The hallway was dim, with only a single remaining fluorescent light flickering overhead. Shiina stood before the sealed-off staircase, clutching a flashlight and a ring of old keys. She handed him one of the verdigris-covered keys, her fingertips brushing lightly against the teeth of the key.

"This was left behind by a librarian who retired three years ago. She said this key can open all the archived wooden cabinets on the east side of the third floor, though it doesn't include the official filing cabinets in the administrative office. Which one it opens is a matter of luck."

The beam of the flashlight cut through the darkness in the corner, revealing the old wooden cabinet embedded in the wall. The cabinet door was sealed tight with dust, and the copper lock was covered in green rust. When Kanzaki Toru crouched down and tried the third key, the lock cylinder emitted a soft click, like the cartilage of a throat that had been asleep for years finally loosening, and the cabinet door swung open. Inside, there were no moth holes or mold spots; instead, a row of dark blue folders was neatly stacked. Each spine bore the same stamp: "Advanced Nurturing High School: Trial Records of the Old System."

He pulled one out at random and opened it. Although the paper had yellowed and become brittle, the fountain pen handwriting was as clear as if it had been written yesterday. The first page contained only a single handwritten title: "Inter-class Cooperation System Trial Summary (Seventh Edition)." Below it followed a passage that had been repeatedly circled and crossed out in red ink: "Under the cooperation model, class points are no longer calculated independently by class, but are instead allocated from a shared pool within the group. Class boundaries are blurred, and the original inter-class confrontation mechanism is no longer applicable—this clause was abolished in the fourth year of the school's founding, with the reason noted as 'irreconcilable internal division'."

Shared pool. Blurred class boundaries. Ineffective confrontation mechanisms.

He flipped through the pages. The writing in the second half of the book was noticeably more hurried and scrawled than the first; it was no longer in the format of formal meeting minutes, but rather like raw notes left behind in haste by someone during the course of events. One passage, heavily crossed out but still barely legible, read: "During the second inter-class group experiment, multiple students were subjected to systematic psychological pressure within their groups, and one female student applied for long-term sick leave as a result. The perpetrators could not be held accountable under disciplinary regulations because the oppressive behavior occurred entirely within the gray area of internal group discussions."

Next to it was a line of even finer text, the ink extremely faint, appearing to be a supplementary note: "The female student ultimately failed to complete the semester and withdrew from school."

Kanzaki Toru's fingers lingered on the paper for a moment. A gray area—oppression within the rules, pressure that could not be disciplined, and a student who withdrew because of it. A Cold War-style war of attrition, forcing opponents to collapse within the bounds of the regulations. This was identical to the methods Ryuen used, always walking the edge of the rules and using others' hands to strike. Ryuen was a student, and this file also recorded the actions of students. The same methods, used by different people at different points in time. This meant that such tactics were never Ryuen's original invention, but rather a dark undercurrent that had always lurked within the frozen history of this school.

Shiina Hiyori crouched beside him, her flashlight resting on her knees, its beam illuminating the pages in his hands. She watched quietly as he turned each page. When he spread open the line about the "voluntary withdrawal" for her to see, she was silent for a few seconds, then touched the line of text lightly with her finger—not stroking it, but as if touching something that was still burning hot.

"Something happened within Class C last semester, too. A girl was isolated in a group project for two whole months. There were no rule violations, no violence; she was just silently excluded by everyone." She paused here, looking at the silent fountain pen ink on the page. "She later applied to transfer to Class A, but it was practically the same as dropping out—her entire personality changed."

"Was it Ryuen's doing?"

"Not directly." Shiina withdrew her finger. "He just made the girl's best friend believe she had stolen class funds. No one doubted what he said, including the best friend herself."

Kanzaki Toru did not press further. He used his terminal to photograph the key pages one by one, then returned the folder to the cabinet exactly as he had found it. Before closing the cabinet door, he discovered something at the very bottom that did not belong to any folder—a thin meeting record book with a teacher's meeting label on the back cover. Opening the first page, he saw that in the list of attending faculty, Teacher Sakagami's name had been circled more than once.

He recognized the handwriting of those circles. It was the same red ink used to circle the seventh clause of the inter-class cooperation system in the file just moments ago.

As he carefully tucked the meeting record book into his bag, Shiina Hiyori pressed down gently on his wrist. It wasn't a forceful grip, just her fingertips resting on his pulse—like confirming a heartbeat from beneath a layer of ice. There was little outward emotion in her eyes, but that pause was more direct than any question.

"Some of the things inside are likely closer to the bottom line than we anticipated. If you, Kanzaki-kun, are going to investigate this, then see it through to the end. But don't do it alone."

He said he would. Then he stood up, and together they closed the wooden cabinet—the old wood emitted a dull thud as it shut, and all the grains of secret sand sank back into the deep pool. A soft and steady new light began to unfold slowly along the edges of the illustrated book pages, and a small line of text appeared beside Shiina Hiyori's page: "Echoes of History—Shared Secret Key grants +8 Favorability, current Favorability: 45. Unlock Reward—Silent Interpretation, preliminary form."

Echoes of History. When they were reading through those records of the victims, their fingers had each paused on the same line of text. Two silences had crossed decades of time, overlapping across a thin sheet of paper. And the keys and materials she had entrusted to him were subsequently engraved into the illustrated book as trust.

When he walked out of the old school building, the sky had already darkened to a deep blue. The air remained sultry, and the chirping of insects in the lawn rose and fell. He carried his school bag in one hand, while the other still gripped the verdigris-colored key—the small copper ring of the key handle leaving a shallow indentation in his palm. The preparation for the next stage was no longer a single-line search; he had to translate the contents of the files into their report one by one before the inter-class group assignment deadline, all while remaining vigilant against Ryuen discovering that someone was digging for usable items in the wreckage of the old system.

And hidden among all these report pages he was about to step into was another thought he could not yet speak to anyone. The chill that had crept up his spine when he closed the file just now was not solely because of the old events recorded in the book—it was because he saw himself in those old events. That behavioral pattern of dismantling an opponent through methods within the rules that could not be held accountable, that cold calculation of causing someone to collapse gradually without directly laying a hand on them—it was not unfamiliar to him. It was not some strange technique he needed to deliberately imitate, but a part of his instinct, soaked into him by countless trainings in the White Room.

Sorting through these old papers was, in a sense, sorting through a possibility that could emerge from the bottom of his heart at any moment.

He gripped the key tightly, pressing it against the outermost layer of clothing over his chest, and walked toward the dormitory.