When the Bell Rings

The 3:00 PM homeroom bell rang right on time.

When Chabashira Sae pushed open the door to enter Class 1-D, she carried a stack of documents significantly thicker than usual. Instead of taking attendance as she typically did, she placed the materials on the podium, leaned her hands against the edge, and swept her gaze across the room. It was the same look she had worn on the first day of school—businesslike and indifferent, neither warm nor harsh, as if she were appraising a batch of white mice newly delivered to an experimental cage. Yet, if one looked closely enough, they would notice her gaze lingering for a fraction of a second longer on certain individuals: the straightness of Sudo Ken's spine; the hands of Karuizawa Kei, folded on her lap and no longer spinning a pen; the brim of Sakura Airi's hat, pulled firmly above her brow; and the pen in Kanzaki Toru's hand, which had not stopped moving.

"There is only one item on the agenda for today's homeroom," Chabashira said, adjusting her glasses as she flipped to the first page of the documents. "A preliminary briefing for the June special exam."

The classroom did not erupt into chaos as it had at the start of the term. No one slammed their desks, no one complained, and no one shouted, "Here we go again." There was only a dense, restrained silence—a silence that spoke volumes more than any clamor. Since the start of the term, Class D had learned to exercise restraint, though they had paid a corresponding price for it.

"The theme of this special exam is 'Comprehensive Assessment of Inter-Class Collaboration and Confrontation'." Chabashira pressed a remote control, and a title appeared on the projection screen, followed by a string of numbers: LD-B1-0401. Kanzaki Toru's gaze paused on that string. It was identical to the tiny note Chabashira had left in the upper right corner of the semester schedule: Early June, special exam preliminary briefing, LD-B1-0401. The final four digits, "0401," matched the suffix of the inter-class report he had just signed that morning. This was no coincidence. Coincidences did not exist in this school.

Chabashira continued flipping through the pages. The basic framework of the exam appeared on the screen. The exam would last two weeks and consist of three stages. The first stage was the inter-class collaboration phase, where students from different classes would be mixed into various collaborative groups to complete tasks assigned by the school. Scoring would be a combination of peer evaluation and teacher assessment. The second stage was the class confrontation phase, where each class would compete in designated projects, the details of which would be announced after the first stage. Scoring would be based on direct inter-class competition; winners would receive class points, while losers would have them deducted. The third stage was the comprehensive assessment, conducted by the Student Council, the Disciplinary Committee, the Academic Affairs Office, and the respective homeroom teachers to evaluate student performance throughout the entire exam period. Notably, this exam would introduce partial "frozen clauses" under the Old System framework, involving weight bonuses for inter-class collaboration and exemption mechanisms for point deductions during the confrontation phase. Specific details would be released before the start of each stage.

"Frozen clauses under the Old System framework." These words landed in the classroom like a pebble dropped into a calm pond. There was no explosion, but one could hear the ripples spreading—the sound of someone drawing a sharp breath, someone setting down a pen, or someone nudging their neighbor with an elbow.

Kanzaki Toru looked down and wrote a line in his notebook: Old System Collaboration Model Trial Summary (7th Edition)—Under the collaborative model, class points are no longer calculated independently by class, but are instead allocated from a shared pool. This clause was abolished in the fourth year of the school's founding, noted for causing 'irreconcilable internal division'. He closed his notebook and looked up. Chabashira's gaze was shifting away from him toward the rest of the class. "The group lists for the first stage of inter-class collaboration will be posted on the bulletin board on the first floor of the Academic Building tomorrow morning. Assignments are random in principle, but will take into account the collaboration records of each student during this semester's inter-class group tasks."

She closed the file and adjusted her glasses. The silence in the classroom felt like solidified resin, and everyone was struggling to think within it. The activation of Old System clauses, the inclusion of inter-class collaboration records in the grouping criteria, the exam code matching the suffix of Kanzaki's report—all these pieces of information combined meant that Ryuen Kakeru's perjury from the previous semester, Ishizaki Daichi's recanted testimony, Manabe Shiho's bullying record, the punch Sudo Ken had endured—all these conflicts and choices, seemingly unrelated to the exam, had been recorded in the school's database. Now, over the next two weeks, they would be converted, point by cold point, into a score.

"During the exam, all individual point rewards and changes in class points will be displayed in real-time. You can check your class's ranking on your terminals at any time," Chabashira added. "Are there any questions?"

Horikita Suzune raised her hand and stood up. "Teacher, what are the activation conditions for the Old System frozen clauses?" Her tone was as flat as ever, like a blade without a curve.

Chabashira looked at her, or perhaps, looked through her to weigh how much of an answer these students could handle. "When the results of inter-class collaboration are formally cited and archived, and the signature of the archive requester passes the Academic Affairs audit. Once these two conditions are met, the system will automatically activate the relevant clauses." She scanned the room, her gaze finally resting on Horikita. "Which specific clauses are activated will be announced before the start of each stage. You only need to know that the rules for this exam are more complex than any before—and more fair."

The homeroom ended, and the students filed out of the classroom. When Sudo stood up, his chair scraped loudly against the floor, but he caught it before it could hit the desk behind him. Karuizawa walked over to Sakura and whispered something; Sakura nodded and tucked her camera into her bag. Shiina Hiyori sent a message from the library saying she was compiling a simplified comparison table of the Old System clauses for everyone to check that night. Horikita Suzune remained in her seat, reading the electronic version of the exam instructions in silence, making annotations on her tablet word by word.

Kanzaki Toru leaned against the window sill in the hallway, watching the twilight deepen. The searchlights on the high walls began their slow rotation, sweeping beams of gray-white light across the lawn between the playground and the Academic Building. Tonight was the last day of May. The group lists on the bulletin board tomorrow morning would decide who everyone would be standing next to during this two-week special exam. And inside that unopened folder of Old System clauses lay the shared-pool rules abolished in the school's fourth year, the gray areas redacted from the seventh edition of the collaboration summary, and the final note signed by Sakagami before his retirement from the third-year social studies department.

Back in his dorm, he opened the file he had brought from the Old School Building. On the blank margin of one page, he found a line of pencil writing, barely noticeable: Example of Stage 1 collaboration task: Deserted Island Survival. Trial classes: Class 3-A and Class 3-D. Result: Collaboration terminated due to systemic suppression of Class D in the shared pool allocation. Archivist: Sakagami.

He closed the file, turned off the desk lamp, and opened his eyes in the dark. Tomorrow morning, the group lists would appear on the bulletin board, and behind those names might stand the ghosts of those long frozen in history.

The twilight of the last day of May slowly faded into the cold light of the vending machine at the corner of the Academic Building. Before returning to her dorm, Karuizawa Kei took a small detour to place a can of the newly released red bean soup on the bottom shelf of the machine—not the brand she usually drank, but the one Sakura had mentioned in passing at the dessert shop as something she "wanted to try but couldn't bring herself to buy." She set the soup down, took a photo of the vending machine's serial number, and sent it to Sakura: Machine 2, row 4. Don't forget your straw tomorrow morning. As she straightened up, she saw Chabashira standing at the other end of the hallway, holding a proof of the group lists she had just retrieved from the printer. The two of them stared at each other for a second across the cold white glow of the vending machine. Chabashira offered no explanation for why she was still in the office so late, and Karuizawa did not ask. She simply nodded to the teacher and turned toward the dorms.

In the dark corner at the end of the hallway, she looked down at the encrypted image she had received yesterday. The image had no context, but in the background, a student ID number suffix matched Manabe Shiho's exactly. The sender's signature was just a single symbol: "&". She locked the image deep within an encrypted album and did not forward it to anyone.

The motion-sensor light at the end of the hallway never turned on.