The Ignition Point

Ryuen Kakeru stood before the window of the empty classroom on the third floor of the Old School Building, watching the sky gradually darken. May evenings arrived later than those in April, and the setting sun dragged a long, orange-red ribbon of light across the high gray walls. Wind poured in through the gaps in the broken glass, whipping up dust and scraps of paper from the floor. He gripped an access card in his hand—it wasn't his; the card bore the blue official seal of the Academic Affairs Office and a six-digit serial number.

He had found this card in his drawer that afternoon. There was no envelope, no note, and no trace that could lead back to its source. Tucked beneath the card was a handwritten schedule, marking the shift rotation gap for the Encrypted Server Room between 6:30 and 7:00 that evening. He recognized the handwriting—it wasn't Kushida's, but the turns and strokes of the pen overlapped almost perfectly with the signatures she had previously provided on Disciplinary Committee assistance materials. She was teaching him how to proceed without leaving any evidence behind.

"I found it." Kondo pushed the door open, holding his phone with the Disciplinary Committee's public inquiry page displayed on the screen. "Your application regarding Sudo has been rejected. The rejection note says, 'The original record time anchor has been verified and matches the case closure time; there is no possibility of tampering.' That guy Ishizaki didn't say a word, even though he was the one shoving Sudo in the Old School Building—all he had to do was come forward and provide supplementary testimony."

Ryuen did not turn around. The rejection meant that the server logs had been preemptively fortified; someone had meddled with them before he could. Kushida was right—the Disciplinary Committee path was a dead end. The blade of the rules had already been drawn from its sheath by someone else.

"Forget about Ishizaki for now." Ryuen pocketed the access card and turned to look at Kondo. "Kushida left one path open—6:30 tonight, the Encrypted Server Room. We don't need the Disciplinary Committee's seal; we'll pull that video of Sudo directly from the raw data. Once it's sent to the class group chat, Class D will implode on its own. No Student Council approval required."

"Send the video directly? Without waiting for the Disciplinary Committee's process?"

"The Disciplinary Committee's process? Those people are currently scrutinizing every application I submit with a magnifying glass. By the time the process is finished, Ishizaki will already be sitting at the discussion table in Class D." Ryuen pushed open the classroom door, his footsteps echoing in the hallway. "Since the rules won't let me win by the rules, I'll use their methods—let's see who blinks first in a place where there are no rules."

The Encrypted Server Room was located on the basement level of the Main Building's east wing, right next to the Logistics Archives Room and the abandoned Mail Room. At 6:30, the duty teacher left for the cafeteria right on time, leaving only the hum of the air conditioning units in the hallway. The moment the access card touched the sensor, a green light flickered on, and the door lock clicked open with a crisp sound. Ryuen pushed the door open, greeted by the low roar of the server racks.

He located the dedicated Disciplinary Committee terminal and used the permissions attached to the access card to log into the Student Behavior Record Database, typing Sudo Ken's student ID into the search bar. Dozens of records popped up, most of them routine notes related to gym class and other activities, with only one record marked "Verbal Warning." He opened the record, and in the attachment column was a thirty-second video—footage of Sudo and Ishizaki shoving each other at the entrance of the Equipment Room after gym class last semester. The footage wasn't clear, captured only from a side angle, but it was enough to see Sudo reach out first. If this video were clipped, edited, and paired with leading text, the moment it hit the class group chat, the fire Sudo had barely managed to suppress in Class D would be reignited. And that was exactly what Ryuen wanted—Sudo losing control, Class D losing points, and the core argument of "improving inter-class communication" in the cross-class report falling apart. If you can't win a war with rules, you win it with public opinion.

Ryuen copied the video to a flash drive and logged out of the system. He didn't notice that as he logged in, another window in the corner of the server had launched itself, locking onto every data access and copy log generated during his session. He turned off the lights, pushed the door shut, and disappeared into the end of the hallway without haste.

Meanwhile, on the roof of the Academic Building, Sakura Airi aimed her telephoto lens at the only ventilation window facing the exterior of the Encrypted Server Room—a window hidden behind a row of old filing cabinets at the end of the Logistics Passage. It was small, but it provided just enough of a view to catch the cold glow of the server room's fluorescent lights. By the time she had set up her camera, the surroundings were already dark, with only the neon lights of the distant Shopping Center bleeding into the horizon. She pressed the shutter just as a figure moved sideways inside the ventilation window—Ryuen. The photo was transmitted to Kanzaki Toru's terminal two minutes later, the image clarity sufficient for identification, with a timestamp accurate to the second.

Kanzaki Toru's phone vibrated. He looked up from his desk in the dormitory, staring at the photo Sakura had sent and the server backend logs that had just popped up. He then exported the data trail left by Ryuen's login, encrypted it, and sent it simultaneously to Horikita Suzune and Shiina Hiyori.

Horikita's reply was a question mark.

"This is the full operation log, along with the original video file he accessed. I've compared this data against the rejection appeal he submitted to the Disciplinary Committee—none of his actions tonight were officially authorized. Keep these for now; don't use them yet. You're close to Chabashira-sensei. Find an opportunity next week—not in the office, but in the hallway, by a vending machine, or during a casual break—and let her 'accidentally' see the printout of this comparison table in your hand. Don't submit it formally; just leave it as a piece of paper where she can see it. She won't ask you anything, but she will connect all the dots herself."

Horikita was silent for a moment, then sent a message back: "You're becoming more and more of a schemer—but your direction is correct." A few seconds later, she typed another line: "Who were you on the phone with just now? The line has been busy the whole time." He did not answer.

Immediately after, Shiina called him for a real-time conversation. "The logs have been reformatted and organized into an index that can be submitted directly into the Disciplinary Committee's internal channels. The evidence attachments are ready and can be bound for submission at any time. But there is one thing—Ishizaki just returned a book to the archives. Before he left, he tucked a folded note into the front page of the Old System document collection. He wrote the date and time of the Disciplinary Committee's next regular meeting on the note and drew the location of the Logistics Passage door next to the gym equipment room. He didn't sign it."

"He's drawing his own path." Kanzaki Toru leaned back in his chair, letting himself sink into the darkness sliced by the dim light. Every move from here on out was a solid strike: Ryuen's video existed in an encrypted partition at the bottom of the server, and touching it would leave fingerprints that couldn't be deleted; Ishizaki's note had been filed with the Old System documents, leaving an index number in the Disciplinary Committee's automatic filing system; the Academic Affairs Office had posted a new circuit maintenance notice this afternoon, stating that power outages would begin from the floor housing the Main Building's server room, cutting power to the servers layer by layer from the bottom up, with the initial outage time covering the exact timestamp of Ryuen's login.

Three people, three different paths. They hadn't even told each other "what time tonight," yet they had completed a relay of extreme precision as if they had rehearsed it—one accessed the data, one returned a book, and one captured the shadow in the ventilation window.

His terminal vibrated for the third time. Karuizawa Kei sent a voice message, her voice kept very low, with the faint reverb of karaoke and the distorted tail end of someone singing a chorus in the background: "Kushida didn't go to karaoke tonight. She told me she'd be there at seven when she invited me, but it's almost eight and she still hasn't shown up. I called her, but she didn't pick up, and she isn't replying to messages."

Kanzaki Toru sat up straight. Kushida hadn't appeared at karaoke tonight. She had left the card for Ryuen, left the schedule, opened a secret passage straight to the server room—and then retreated into the shadows where no surveillance could reach. She hadn't disappeared; she was waiting for a signal. He looked up at the night sky, now completely black, as a thin beam from the Guard Tower's searchlight slowly swept across the outer east wall of the Old School Building.

He sent an encrypted message into the darkness, pushed simultaneously to Sakura, Shiina, Horikita, and Karuizawa. The recipients didn't reply, but every branch of the Class D operation lit up at that moment—not because anything needed to be confirmed again, but because every path knew it was standing on a critical threshold. The rooftop and the library, the server room and the Mail Room, the neon of the karaoke bar and the gravel path outside the Old School Building—everyone was waiting for a signal. And that signal had yet to arrive.