The Eyes of the Disciplinary Committee

Three days after the debate, the campus seemed to have returned to normal.

The cross-class group reports had been graded, and every group was waiting for the final evaluations. Conversations about karaoke and movies had resumed in the cafeteria, and more students were playing soccer on the field. Sudo had started spending entire afternoons at the gym again, and he'd finally replaced his wristbands.

Kanzaki Toru was organizing supplementary materials for the debate by a window on the third floor of the Library. Shiina Hiyori sat across from him, a lending ledger open before her as she twirled a pen in her hand. Her long, light-brown hair was loosely tied back with a plain ribbon. The afternoon sunlight outside filtered through the blinds in long stripes, falling across her profile in shifting bands of light and shadow.

"Ryuen's materials have been sent back by the Disciplinary Committee three times." Shiina turned a page in the ledger without looking up. "They weren't rejected, just returned for corrections. The reasons have gotten more and more nitpicky. The last time, they demanded he add line numbers along the edges of the original documents. It looks like standard procedure, but every correction means starting the review queue over."

"Whose signature?"

"The second-year Disciplinary Committee Chairman's." Shiina closed the ledger and raised her light-brown eyes. "Since Sakagami retired, he's been the person who knows the Old System best. He never takes sides; he only looks at the evidence. Ryuen used to stamp his own dirty business with the Committee's seal. Now someone's using those same rules to demand that he number every line of every piece of evidence."

Kanzaki leaned back in his chair and gazed out the window. The May sunlight was bright, but the Library's air conditioning was so cold that a thin film of fog had formed on the glass. Ryuen had gotten his first taste of being throttled by the rules, but that didn't mean he'd give up. A man backed into a corner might resort to anything.

His terminal vibrated. Horikita had sent a message, just two lines: "Ryuen requested a detailed record of Class D's Class Points changes from last semester. His stated reason was 'to verify cross-class coordination records.' He's changed his angle of attack—not investigating you, but digging through the whole class's old records. One of the incidents that cost Class D points last semester involved the earlier conflict between Sudo and Ishizaki."

After reading the message, he turned the screen toward Shiina. She glanced at it, then gently pressed her fingertips against the ledger's gilded edge. "He's stopped trying to take us down one at a time. Now he's combing through a much wider area for useful scraps." She paused, as if choosing her words. "The last person to do that was Sato, the one who was forced to leave school, according to the Old System archives."

Ryuen was looking for a way out, and for a weapon. If he couldn't get anywhere through the Disciplinary Committee, he'd try to dig up a weakness inside Class D that he could use as leverage. Sudo stood right at that intersection. His past conflict with Ishizaki, the disciplinary record that had yet to be cleared, and his volatile temper all made him a movable piece in Ryuen's eyes.

"Horikita wants me to meet her at the Old School Building. We'll take the staff passage and avoid the Main Building." Kanzaki put the documents in his bag. As he stood, his knee accidentally bumped a paper bag beside the table leg. The bag tipped over, and a yellowed Student Council Log slid out, opening to its final page. A sticky note was attached to the blank page, with an arrow drawn on it pointing to the path below the window. Looking down, he saw Kushida Kikyo walking along the gravel path beside the wall with her schoolbag on her back and a sports bag in her hand—not the light canvas tote she usually carried. Seen from above, her steps were as light as ever, but she'd chosen a route that avoided every camera.

Shiina had also noticed the sticky note. She peeled it off the log and put it in a drawer. "She's advancing her own timeline in a different way. I didn't leave this here, and it wasn't inserted today. The log's most recent loan record is from three days ago."

Kanzaki didn't linger. He slung his bag over his shoulder and left through the back door of the Library. The staff passage was cool, and the fluorescent tubes overhead hummed steadily. Two developments were closing in at once: Ryuen was digging through old records, and Kushida was changing her route. The "coffee without sugar" connection between those two was being bent in opposite directions by very different pressures. One thing was becoming increasingly clear: someone was secretly using the Disciplinary Committee's rules to pressure Ryuen. If Kushida's information network connected with theirs, the time left to move from debate to actually dealing with the old case would shrink even further.

Third floor of the Old School Building. Horikita Suzune leaned against the railing of the old staircase, the cold white light of her terminal glowing. She skipped the greetings and turned the screen toward him, scrolling through it page by page. "The Disciplinary Committee accepted Ryuen's request for Sudo's records. It's only an initial review, but the request is highly targeted. Last semester, Sudo and Ishizaki shoved each other after PE. It was recorded as a verbal warning, and the case was handled by a second-year member of the Disciplinary Committee, who signed off on its closure. By the rules, a record closed more than three months ago can't be used as grounds for expulsion. But Ryuen attached a request for a time verification, issued under his own name as a Disciplinary Committee assistant."

"He wants to tamper with the Time Anchor. Reactivate an expired record."

"Technically, verifying the Time Anchor requires the original server logs. That server is in the Academic Affairs Office's Encrypted Server Room. He can't get in alone—unless someone helps him open the second security door." Horikita turned off the screen and looked up at him. "Kushida went to the Main Building East Wing this afternoon, where the third-year academic affairs team's access control is. She used the excuse of delivering materials for Chabashira to get into the Mail Room. Guess what? The Mail Room is separated from the Encrypted Server Room by only a firewall, and you can get around it through the Logistics Passage."

Kanzaki knocked twice on the old staircase railing. The metal pipe gave a dull ring. "She won't go into the server room herself. All she has to do is leave an access card in some corner of the Mail Room, then tell Ryuen to pick it up. If anyone investigates, the logs will only show when Ryuen entered. She'll be an innocent victim 'used' by Ryuen."

Their eyes met for a brief moment. Horikita's dark eyes gleamed sharply in the dim stairwell. She said nothing, only pressed the record button on her terminal and gestured for him to continue.

"Since she's left a window for passing the card, we can put something in there too. I'll request access from the Academic Affairs Office to verify last semester's student support records, under the pretext of cross-class group research. That'll give me access to the master logs for the Logistics Passage between the Mail Room and the server room. If that access card is activated at an unusual time, the system will automatically lock in the user's fingerprints and terminal ID. We won't need to trace it back to her. We just need to make the passage itself a witness."

Horikita saved the recording and loaded it onto her tablet. "Leave the request to me. But I'll warn you: adding a trigger log inside the Mail Room wall also means leaving a record of your own search on the same log server. If Ryuen counterattacks later, he'll use it to claim you 'accessed someone else's files without authorization.'"

"Let him counterattack." Kanzaki drew his hand back from the railing and slipped it into his uniform pocket. "I'm not looking through his files. I'm investigating the forged chain of evidence from the Disciplinary Committee under the Old System. Whether my search was unauthorized depends on whether the records I accessed fall within the informed-consent framework for cross-class academic research. And the scope of that consent is defined by the Old System index Sakagami signed off on just before retiring."

The door to the rooftop at the end of the corridor swayed slightly in the breeze. The two of them were alone again by the old staircase, beneath a fluorescent tube that continued to flicker. After a stretch of silence, Kanzaki spoke again. "Kushida will notice the access anomaly first. She never leaves anything in a room she can't escape from. But she's trapped now. If she doesn't use the access card, Ryuen's plan stalls. If she does, the evidence she handed to the Disciplinary Committee gains another piece of physical proof. We need to guard against not just the choice she makes this time, but whatever third move she makes to escape this dilemma."

"A third move?" Horikita frowned slightly.

Kanzaki took the tablet from her and opened a map of the campus, drawing a line between the Main Building East Wing and the Old School Building. "We can't catch her in the Encrypted Server Room, and the Disciplinary Committee can't catch her either. But she needs to bring the whole thing to a halt. The only way is to draw everyone's attention away from the server room. The fastest way to do that is to set off an even bigger incident—one that grabs the headlines."

His fingertip traced from the Old School Building toward the edge of the sports field, stopping above the gravel path that ran alongside the high wall.

Horikita's gaze followed the tip of his pen and settled on the spot. Neither spoke again. Only the line of ink on the map remained, its other end resting quietly on the path Kushida had taken earlier. The rooftop door's soft creak and the fluorescent tube's hum blended together, forming a sustained low note in the heart of the Old School Building.