On the second Monday of December, the Student Council's Disciplinary Committee held the final old-case review hearing of the semester in an empty classroom on the third floor of the Old School Building. This classroom had once been where Ryuen Kakeru single-handedly completed falsified evidence records, where Ishizaki and Sudo had drunk sports drinks side by side, and where the first student consultation meeting on the Reverse Evaluation Clause had been held. Today, it was once again being used as a hearing venue—but this time, the person seated in the review seat and the person seated in the observer's seat were one and the same.
Ryuen Kakeru sat by the window, his notebook filled with observation reports spread out before him. The book Sakagami had left him before retiring was still tucked beneath the notebook, its spine facing the window as winter sunlight fell directly across its gold-stamped title. The chair of the Disciplinary Committee read out the final item on the agenda—the review of the original records concerning Class C's Sato Kenichi, who had been absent for an extended period due to sick leave last semester. At the end of last semester, Ryuen Kakeru had personally retrieved this file from the Disciplinary Committee's discarded document pile, restoring page by page the altered signatures and missing psychological evaluation recommendations. On the title page, he had written, "Completed by: Ryuen Kakeru." Today, the Disciplinary Committee was conducting the final verification of the completed file. Once approved, Sato Kenichi's sick-leave record would be refiled as "psychological stress caused by class conflict, recovered following school intervention," and he would also be entitled to reapply for cross-class collaborative assignments in the new semester.
"For the review of Sato Kenichi's file, one witness has voluntarily applied to attend." The chair nodded toward the door. It