Who is the Informant

Kanzaki Toru zoomed in on the photo Sakura had sent him to the maximum limit. On the outer wall of the old school building, a figure was scaling the wall. The time of capture was 7:12 PM last night, when the sky was transitioning into dusk and the streetlights had just flickered to life. The resolution was high enough that, upon zooming in, one could see the person glancing back—not a full frontal view, but a side-rear angle. That specific vantage point had managed to evade all security cameras, but it could not escape the camera Sakura had set up on the edge of the rooftop.

Sakura Airi stood on the other side of the rooftop, clutching her camera, her fingers trembling slightly. "I was originally trying to photograph the night herons on the high wall after sunset. It wasn't until I went back to organize the photos that I realized I'd captured... this person." Her violet eyes looked exceptionally uneasy in the twilight. "He's from Class C, Ishizaki Daichi, right?"

"Correct." Kanzaki zoomed in on the shoulder area of the photo; there was a faint, stained mark on the inside of the school uniform sleeve, looking like a smudge from red brick dust. The same fine dust was embedded between the window sill of the old school building and Ishizaki's fingers. "He isn't trying to drop out; he's looking for something."

"Looking for what?"

Kanzaki did not answer. He looked toward the window on the third floor of the old school building, the one closest to the pipes Ishizaki had been clinging to—that was the storage room adjacent to the restricted archives sealed off last semester. Whatever Ryuen had sent Ishizaki to find was likely some original transcript that hadn't been destroyed yet. However, he didn't intend to tell Sakura all these details, merely transferring the photo to his own terminal.

"Don't tell anyone about this photo for now."

Sakura nodded, not asking why. A few flower petals were blown up through the gaps in the railing by the wind, landing on the brim of her hat; she didn't brush them off.

As they descended from the rooftop, she paused at the stairwell. "Kanzaki-kun." She called out to him, weighing her words. "Manabe didn't kick my chair today. But I don't know if she's just waiting for the next time."

Kanzaki turned around, waiting for her to finish.

"In the past, when I encountered people like that, I would just hide and never tell anyone. But it's different now—I can continue reporting through Karuizawa-san's channel and keep a record of every single incident."

He said "alright," then helped her pull open the door leading to the hallway. She walked a few steps ahead of him, her hat brim pressing firmly against her shoulder-length black hair; her pace wasn't fast, but every step she took was steady and grounded.

Back in his dorm, Kanzaki put the photo of Ishizaki scaling the wall and the screenshot of the anonymous warning into the same encrypted folder. The folder was named with only two characters: "Whistleblower." The photo was taken last night, and the anonymous warning text had been sent during that same window. Either the same person had seen Ishizaki's movements, or someone else had seen Sakura photographing that corner.

He dialed Horikita Suzune.

"Ishizaki was scaling the wall outside the third floor of the old school building last night. No report was filed, and there were no blind spots in the surveillance. I received a photo and an unsigned warning letter. Both signals arrived almost simultaneously. Another question—do you think Ryuen knows Ishizaki is digging into old files on his own?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end. "If he knew, Ishizaki wouldn't be sitting peacefully in the classroom today. So, he doesn't know yet."

"Then the whistleblower isn't one of Ryuen's people."

"It could be a third party." Horikita's voice deepened. "You received Sakura's photo, and the warning letter arrived at the exact same time last night. There is a time lag between the photographer and the informant, yet they overlap at the same location. If this is a three-way intersection, someone is not only watching Ishizaki but also monitoring your path of reaction."

A blurred, smiling face flashed through Kanzaki's mind. It wasn't Ryuen, it wasn't Ishizaki, and it wasn't any opponent he had already tagged. It was the person who had treated everyone with gentleness since the start of the school year, the one who never revealed a single flaw to anyone.

"I'll look into some new leads on my end," he said.

After the call with Horikita ended, he opened the Goddess Illustrated Handbook. Sakura Airi's favorability remained steady at seventy, and a new tag had been added to her status bar after "Proactive Threat Recording" and "Evidence Preservation Assistance"—Eyes of Trust: Actively assists you in securing key evidence. Karuizawa Kei's Perception Resonance tag was glowing, indicating that she was currently making rapid judgments of friend or foe within a certain group, filtering out noise for him. Shiina Hiyori's Silent Archive was running continuously, with all textual intelligence being pieced together chronologically. And at the end of the handbook, in the center of a cold-light page that hadn't fully unfolded, a line of never-before-seen text appeared—Intelligence network initially formed; new strategic-level entry unlocking soon.

He closed the handbook and lay on his dorm bed, staring at the sliver of light leaking through the curtain gap onto the ceiling. Whistleblowing. Someone was preventing Ishizaki from finding what he was looking for. While stopping Ishizaki, that same someone was also warning him—be careful. And as for the person who blocked Ishizaki's climb and sent the anonymous warning, were they trying to protect the secrets of the past, or were they trying to keep someone who shouldn't be involved from getting trapped? He had to find that record Ishizaki had missed outside the third floor of the old school building before Ryuen did.

As the night deepened, he sat up, opened his terminal, and submitted an application through the backup channel for the sports equipment room to inspect the fire safety equipment in the old school building early the next morning—signed as a volunteer helping Hamaguchi organize the field. He had already mapped out the audit list for this path while investigating Sakagami-sensei's files; he only needed to insert it into an inconspicuous time slot to avoid being specifically flagged by the grade-level administration.

Then, he closed his eyes. In his dreams, the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling of the old school building flickered on and off, and the old key Shiina had lent him was inserted into the lock core of a filing cabinet, the handle warmed by his body heat. A figure glided silently past the end of the hallway, leaving behind a blurred smile and a folder that, no matter how he straightened it, always tilted to the left. He knew that one more step forward, and the answer to the whistleblowing would no longer be hidden in the shadows. And this step was no longer just the endgame of a battle of wits; it was a decisive verification of himself as the White Room's greatest masterpiece.