The Person Who Cannot Be Silent

The discovery in the Old School Building Archive Room was like a stone cast into murky water, the ripples spreading in circles over the next two days.

Kanzaki Toru sent the scanned copies of Tanaka's original interview records to Horikita Suzune and Shiina Hiyori respectively. Horikita's reply arrived that same evening: "In the Disciplinary Committee's official files, this section has been replaced with the standard format of 'party admitted and reconciled.' Page five was reprinted; Tanaka's signature is genuine, but all traces of modification on the first four pages were wiped clean. This is forged evidence, not a gray-area maneuver." Shiina's reply was more concise: "The 'Sato' who was sidelined using fake evidence in the old files is named Sato Kenichi, the former class president of Class C. Ryuen Kakeru only rose to power after he was sidelined."

The baton had been passed. Through her social network among the girls, Karuizawa managed to track down everyone Ryuen had been in contact with over the last twenty-four hours. "Ryuen has met with two members of the second-year Disciplinary Committee these past few days. He also met with Kushida Kikyo at the entrance of the third-floor café in the Shopping Center—he was standing, she was sitting, for about five minutes." The emotional profile Karuizawa transmitted via Perception Resonance was one of alertness mixed with a hint of suspicion. "Kushida handed him a coffee, no sugar, and they chatted and laughed naturally the whole time. I was just passing by to buy a sports drink, and I only circled back to observe after seeing that scene. Kanzaki, those two were clearly exchanging something."

The clues pointed in two different directions. The second-year Disciplinary Committee members were old cards Ryuen had always held, but Kushida was a new one. Ryuen had always been one to leverage others' weaknesses, never to sit down and trade. For him to sit down and talk for five minutes in a public place like the Shopping Center, he was either in desperate need of information she held, or she possessed a weakness he couldn't deflect.

The next day, the classroom was mostly empty after school. The sunset dyed the entire room orange-red through the windows, the air thick with the lingering scent of chalk dust and cleaning agents. Sakura Airi sat in her corner seat, not packing up to leave as she usually did. Her camera sat on the desk with the lens cap off, and her school bag was only half-zipped, revealing the corner of a bento box. Kanzaki Toru walked in from the front door, sat in the seat in front of Sakura, and turned to face her.

"You have something to say."

It wasn't a question. Sakura looked up, and in the purple eyes beneath her hat brim was an emotion he rarely saw—not nervousness, not fear, but a certain quietude born of settling.

"I went to the rooftop to retrieve my tripod at noon today and heard someone on the phone in the stairwell." She handed him the camera and pressed play to show him the screen recording. The footage showed the camera lens pointed at the gap in the rooftop door; the audio wasn't crystal clear, but it was enough to identify—it was Kushida Kikyo's voice. Still gentle, but the pace was slightly faster than usual: "Someone is already handling the report for him, you just need to wait for the result. The items in the Old School Building need to be retrieved by someone in person; Ishizaki made too much of a scene last time."

Kanzaki Toru finished listening to the recording. Kushida was speaking to a student whose voice was mostly muffled by the door, but her phrasing didn't sound like she was talking directly to Ryuen—it sounded more like she was verifying a list with a higher-level third party. During the call, Kushida confirmed that the report about the inter-class incident had been submitted through the Student Council channel and suggested the other party check the Old School Building's visitor logs. She said, "I've already organized Kanzaki's routine; the Equipment Room was taken care of before he entered the Old School Building yesterday." At this point, her tone suddenly shifted to a soft, gentle register: "I just don't want to see classmates hurting each other."

He pressed pause and looked up. Sakura was watching him, her fingers unconsciously turning the zoom ring on the camera lens, but her voice didn't tremble. "Karuizawa told me during lunch last time that Kushida had met with Ryuen. I know I shouldn't have eavesdropped, but she mentioned your name on the phone." She paused, as if arranging misplaced puzzle pieces. "She doesn't want to protect her classmates at all. She just doesn't want anyone to break the state she controls."

Coming from Sakura, these words carried more weight than Horikita's cold analysis or Karuizawa's indignation. The most silent person in the class was willing to break her silence for him. Kanzaki Toru closed the recording, backed up the file to an encrypted partition, then removed the memory card and returned it to Sakura. She took the camera and pulled up the frame he had removed to replay it—in the corner of the frame was the shoe locker by the umbrella stand; Kushida was half-bent over, placing a pair of dust-covered indoor shoes into a dust bag, the soles stained with the brick-red dust unique to the Old School Building. He recognized the trace.

"She went there that day, too," Kanzaki Toru said.

"Which 'she'?"

He didn't answer directly, only letting the Illustrated Guide open quietly in the depths of his consciousness. Kushida Kikyo's page remained blurred, the favorability rating still devoid of numbers, but the status line "Boundary between surface and inner self to be confirmed" was brighter than ever before. It wasn't a warm light or a cold light, but a luster like unstable electrical current, rustling across the surface of the Illustrated Guide.

"This matter might become more complicated. Don't tell anyone you have this recording—including Karuizawa and Shiina. It's not a lack of trust; the fewer people who know, the less pressure there is. You have a few more opportunities to capture the main entrance of the Old School Building from the rooftop. If it's convenient, please continue to stake out the 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM slot for the next two days to see if she appears in the shoe locker area again. But don't take risks; if it feels wrong, give it up," he said.

Sakura nodded gently, packed away her camera, zipped up her bag, and stood up to leave. She stopped at the door without looking back. "Every time she smiles, she looks at different people. She looks at the eyes when smiling at girls, at the forehead or shoulder line when smiling at boys, but she stared directly at Ryuen for a long time. That day at the Shopping Center entrance, she didn't smile at Ryuen at all."

Kanzaki Toru looked at her. "You observed the bullseye."

"She chose the wrong opponent," Sakura said, then gently pulled the door shut and left. Her footsteps faded down the hallway, but a weight of silence remained in the classroom—not the emptiness left by her departure, but the lingering vibration of her words in the air. Kushida Kikyo didn't smile at Ryuen. This judgment from the class's most silent observer was more lethal than any recording.

Late at night. He sat alone at his desk, with several photos of the rooftop printed by Sakura and a marked-up organizational chart of the Disciplinary Committee spread out before him. Sakura's frame-by-frame playback was fixed on the left side of the monitor, the old Sato file Shiina had retrieved from the Library was in the center, and on the right was the original interview record he had just pulled back from the encrypted partition. Most of the lights were out, and the faint light from the hallway filtering through the gap in the curtains outlined his profile. The white wall was sliced into a sharp gray line by his slanted shadow.

The key to the next phase was clear: the information chain between Kushida Kikyo and Ryuen Kakeru had to be severed. And before cutting that chain, he first needed to obtain physical evidence of the brick-red dust on those soles.

He opened his terminal and sent a short message to Shiina Hiyori: "Can you retrieve all the shoe locker cleaning reports for the evening slots this week for the Old School Building area that is in the blind spot of the surveillance cameras?"

Shiina's reply was brief, like the soft closing of a book in the depths of the Library at night: "Cleaning reports are archived by the logistics team and are not networked with the Disciplinary Committee. I'll have them organized for you tomorrow." He closed the terminal and lay on the bed, hands behind his head. The light filtering through the curtain gap cast a pale, narrow path across the ceiling, and in the shadows, all the puzzle pieces were silently falling into place—the rooftop, the shoe lockers, the Old School Building; evidence, accusations, and whistleblowing; and people. Those who hid behind every door, each gazing at the other's back.

He closed his eyes and reopened the sound Sakura had recorded in the darkroom of his consciousness. Kushida said, "I just don't want to see classmates hurting each other." She had said this many times in many situations, but only in this instance was her tone devoid of inflection, her breathing without a trailing edge, like lines that had been rehearsed too many times. What truly made this statement change wasn't her tone, but the background noise—the intermittent rhythmic tapping on the other end of the line, three short and one long, sounding exactly like the "Enter" confirmation sound of the Disciplinary Committee's internal file query system. The person she was talking to was nowhere else but in front of a terminal in the administration or the Disciplinary Committee.

This final point wasn't a new clue, but it carried more weight than all the others: behind Ryuen and Kushida stood someone who could access the official system in real-time. It was she who organized Kanzaki Toru's routine into a schedule, and she who suggested the other party check the visitor logs. The anonymous path that once pointed only to "whistleblowing" now began to outline its true ownership without pretense. The opponent Kushida Kikyo had chosen was no longer just Ryuen. Her chessboard was larger than anyone had imagined. And she didn't yet know that the class's most silent lens cap had been opened.