On the afternoon of the first Friday in September, in an empty classroom on the third floor of the Old School Building. Last semester, this classroom had been where Ryuen Kakeru single-handedly completed the falsified testimony records. On the windowsill sat the light tube Ishizaki had left behind and the sports drink Sudo had left behind. Today, it had been temporarily converted into the venue for the first student opinion hearing under the Reverse Evaluation Clause. Old desks had been moved against the walls to form a circle, leaving a small open space in the middle. Written in chalk on the blackboard was a line: "First Student Opinion Hearing on the Reverse Evaluation Clause. Agenda: Do students have the right to propose amendments to special exam rules? Proposer: Horikita Suzune. Seconder: Ryuen Kakeru. Observer: Kushida Kikyo."
Horikita Suzune sat at a makeshift clerk's desk to the left of the blackboard, with a notebook and tablet spread out before her. She was dressed exactly as she had been last semester, except her black coffee had been replaced with a cup of hot tea. But her fingers moved at least twice as slowly as usual as she organized the agenda materials—not because she was nervous, but because she was comparing the original wording of the Old System clauses against the amendment draft line by line, ensuring that every citation was accurate down to the punctuation. Ryuen Kakeru sat by the window, with his notebook full of observation reports in front of him. It was open to its newest page, where several lines of preparatory notes had already been written. His handwriting was more restrained than it had been last semester, every stroke firmly landing on the paper. Before retiring, Sakagami had left him a book. On its title page were only four