The Eyes of the Disciplinary Committee

Three days after the defense session, the campus seemed to have returned to a state of calm.

The grading for the cross-class group reports was complete, and every group was waiting for the final comprehensive assessment results. Discussions about karaoke and movies had resumed in the cafeteria, and more people were playing soccer on the field. Sudo had returned to spending his entire afternoons in the gym, finally having replaced his worn-out wristbands.

Kanzaki Toru was organizing supplementary materials from the defense at a window seat on the third floor of the library. Shiina Hiyori sat across from him, a borrowing register spread out before her. She twirled a pen in her hand, her long, light-chestnut hair loosely tied back with a plain ribbon. Outside the window, the afternoon sun was sliced into long strips by the blinds, falling across her profile in a flickering dance of light and shadow.

"Regarding the Disciplinary Committee, Ryuen's materials have been returned three times," Shiina said, turning a page of the register without looking up. "Not rejected, just returned for corrections. The reasons for the corrections are becoming increasingly trivial; the last time, they demanded he add line numbers to the margins of the original documents. On the surface, it's standard procedure, but every correction forces him to re-queue for review."

"Whose signature is on it?"

"The Disciplinary Committee Chairman himself, from the second year." Shiina closed the register and lifted her light-brown eyes. "After Mr. Sakagami retired, he became the person most familiar with the Old System in this school. He never takes sides; he only looks at the evidence. Ryuen used to use the Disciplinary Committee's seal to push his own agenda, and now someone is using those same rules to demand he account for every piece of evidence down to the line number."

Kanzaki Toru leaned back in his chair, looking out the window. The May sun was bright, but the library's air conditioning was set so cold that a thin layer of mist had condensed on the glass. It was the first time Ryuen had tasted what it felt like to have his throat gripped by the rules, but that didn't mean he would surrender. A man pushed into a corner might resort to anything.

His terminal vibrated. A message from Horikita arrived, consisting of only two lines: "Ryuen has requested the class point change logs for Class D from last semester. The stated reason is 'verifying cross-class coordination records.' He's changed his point of attack—he's not investigating you, he's auditing the entire class's old accounts. Among the incidents where Class D lost points last semester, one involves the record of the previous conflict between Sudo and Ishizaki."

He finished reading the message and turned the screen toward Shiina. She glanced at it, pressing her fingertips lightly against the gold-leaf edge of the register. "He's no longer trying to break us one by one; he's started scavenging for usable fragments on a larger scale." She paused, as if weighing her words. "The last person to do this was Sato, the one in the Old System archives who was forced to withdraw."

Ryuen was looking for an exit, but he was also looking for a weapon. If the path through the Disciplinary Committee didn't work, he would try to dig up a flaw within Class D that could be used as leverage. And Sudo happened to be standing right at that intersection—his past conflict with Ishizaki, his disciplinary record that still hovered near the threshold, and his notoriously short temper all made him a movable pawn in Ryuen's eyes.

"Horikita wants me to meet her at the Old School Building—take the staff passage and bypass the main building." Kanzaki Toru packed his materials into his bag. As he stood up, his knee accidentally bumped a paper bag beside the table leg. The bag tipped over, and a yellowed Student Council Log slid out, landing open on the last page. A sticky note was attached to the blank page, with an arrow drawn on it pointing toward the path below the window. He looked down; Kushida Kikyo was walking along the gravel path against the wall, carrying a sports bag—not her usual light canvas tote. Viewed from above, her pace was as brisk as ever, but her route avoided all surveillance.

Shiina saw the sticky note too, peeled it off the log, and tucked it into a drawer. "She's advancing her own timeline in a different way. I didn't leave that there, and it wasn't inserted today—the last borrowing record for this log was three days ago."

Kanzaki Toru didn't linger, slinging his bag over his shoulder and exiting through the library's back door. The air in the staff passage was frigid, and the fluorescent lights overhead hummed with a steady, low drone. Two pieces of information were closing in simultaneously: Ryuen was digging up old accounts, and Kushida was changing her shoes. The "black coffee" connection between those two was being bent in a new direction by entirely different pressures. And one thing was becoming increasingly clear—someone was secretly using the Disciplinary Committee's rules to pressure Ryuen, and once Kushida's information network linked up with that party, the time from the defense to the actual handling of the old cases would shrink even further.

Third floor of the Old School Building. Horikita Suzune leaned against the railing of the locked staircase, her terminal glowing with a cold white light. Without pleasantries, she turned the screen toward him and flipped through the pages. "Ryuen's application to pull Sudo's records has been accepted by the Disciplinary Committee. Although it's just an initial review, the content is highly targeted—it concerns the shoving match between Sudo and Ishizaki after gym class last semester. It was recorded as a verbal warning, and the officer in charge was a second-year Disciplinary Committee student who signed off on the case. By the rules, records older than three months cannot be used as grounds for expulsion, but Ryuen attached a time-authentication request to his application, signed by himself in his capacity as a Disciplinary Committee assistant."

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

"Technically, authenticating a Time Anchor requires the original server logs. That server is in the encrypted server room in the Academic Affairs Office; he can't get in alone—unless someone helps him open the second security gate." Horikita turned off the screen and looked up at him. "Kushida went to the Main Building East Wing this afternoon; that area has access to the third-year academic affairs group. She used the excuse of delivering materials for Chabashira to enter the mail room. And guess what—the mail room is separated from the encrypted server room by only one firewall, and you can bypass it through the logistics passage."

Kanzaki Toru tapped the railing of the old staircase twice, the metal pipe emitting a dull echo. "She won't enter the server room herself. She only needs to leave the access card in a corner of the mail room and notify Ryuen to pick it up. If it's ever traced, the logs will only show Ryuen's entry time. She'll be the innocent party 'used' by Ryuen."

The two shared a brief look. Horikita's dark pupils were sharp in the dim light of the stairwell. She didn't respond, simply pressing the record button on her terminal to signal him to continue.

"Since she's left a time window for the card hand-off, we'll place something inside as well. I'll apply to the Academic Affairs Office for access to verify student auxiliary records under the guise of cross-class research; that should give me access to the master control logs for the logistics passage between the mail room and the server room. Once that access card is activated during an abnormal time, the log will automatically lock the user's fingerprint and terminal ID—we don't need to chase her, we just need the passage itself to become the witness."

Horikita saved the recording and put away her tablet. "I'll handle the application. But I'm warning you—by adding an extra trigger record to the wall of the mail room, you're also leaving your own search trail on that same log server. If Ryuen counterattacks later, he'll use this to claim you were 'accessing unauthorized files.'"

"Let him counterattack." Kanzaki Toru pulled his hand from the railing and shoved it into his school uniform pocket. "I'm not investigating his files; I'm investigating the forged Disciplinary Committee evidence chain within the Old System. Whether it's unauthorized or not depends on whether the records I pull are covered under the informed consent framework of the cross-class academic research. And the scope of that consent is defined precisely by the Old System index that Mr. Sakagami signed off on before he retired."

The door leading to the rooftop at the end of the corridor rattled slightly in the wind. The two of them were alone again at the old staircase, the fluorescent light overhead flickering intermittently. After a silence, Kanzaki Toru spoke again: "Kushida will discover the access abnormality first; she never leaves things in a room she can't retreat from. But she's caught in a dilemma now—if she doesn't use the access, Ryuen's plan stalls; if she does, the materials she personally delivered to the Disciplinary Committee gain an extra piece of physical evidence. We aren't guarding against her choice this time, but rather the third move she'll make to escape this dilemma."

"A third move?" Horikita frowned slightly.

Kanzaki Toru took the tablet from her, opened a campus map, and drew a line between the Main Building East Wing and the Old School Building. "The encrypted server room won't catch her, and the Disciplinary Committee won't catch her, but she needs to bring the whole thing to a halt. The only way is to make everyone look away from the server room. The fastest way is to trigger a larger, more headline-grabbing event."

His fingertip extended from the Old School Building toward the perimeter of the playground, landing on the gravel path hugging the high wall.

Horikita's gaze followed his fingertip and settled. The two didn't speak again; only the ink line drawn on the map remained, its other end resting quietly on the path Kushida had just walked. The soft click of the rooftop door closer and the hum of the fluorescent tubes merged, blending into a persistent bass note within the heart of the Old School Building.