When Rules Bit for the First Time

Another day passed. Before the second class that morning, a sound came first from the aisle by the windows in the back row.

Sudo kicked his chair backward, and the backrest slammed into the desk behind him.

Gu Heng sat in the middle row, his gaze fixed on that aisle, his knuckles resting against the edge of his desk.

Before PE class, two boys in the back row stood on the other side of the aisle, only two desks away from Sudo, talking about the uninhabited island exam.

One of them casually said:

"Just make sure nobody causes trouble for the whole class first again."

His voice was not loud.

And he had not named anyone.

But Sudo had already been on edge these past two days.

He immediately kicked his chair back and stood up.

"Who the fuck are you talking about?"

The atmosphere in the classroom instantly tightened.

The boy's hand clenched around the back of his chair, but his mouth remained stubborn.

"I didn't name anyone. Why are you getting so worked up?"

The moment those words came out, several people in the front row turned their heads.

That flimsy cover of "I didn't name anyone" had exposed itself.

Sudo squeezed out from beside his desk, half his body pressing into the aisle.

One more step forward, and he would be behind that boy's chair.

His fists had already clenched.

Someone in the front row instinctively looked back.

Hirata had just risen to his feet.

Horikita's pen had also stopped beside her notebook.

Based on the rhythm of the past few days, this would probably have turned into another round of persuasion, restraint, and calming people down.

But this time, Horikita's notebook was lying open on her desk.

Horikita sat by the window in the front row, her notebook spread to the right of her textbook.

She snapped it shut, rose to her feet without going around her desk, and her voice cut straight across the aisle.

"Sudo."

Sudo froze. His shoulders turned slightly toward her, but his toes still pointed at the two boys.

Horikita held her pen against the paper, its tip perfectly steady.

"Take one more step, and I'll write it down."

The classroom fell silent.

The people in the back who had been watching the show no longer made a sound.

The veins stood out on the back of Sudo's hand as it pressed against the desk.

"Write my ass."

"I'll record you escalating a classroom conflict and disrupting class discipline."

Horikita's tone did not waver in the slightest. "According to the first rule Gu Heng set, if one warning is ignored, your name gets recorded."

"You dare?"

"You can try."

Once she said that, even Hirata did not immediately respond.

He stood nearby, one hand still on the chair back, his attention drawn to the notebook at Horikita's side.

"I didn't even hit anyone!" Sudo gritted out.

"That's why I'm only warning you now." Horikita pressed her pen tip to the record page. "If you keep going forward, it won't be a warning anymore."

The two boys had fallen completely silent.

Neither had let go of their chair backs, but their mouths seemed pinned shut by that pen as well.

But now, Horikita held that pen in her hand, and everyone could see it.

Gu Heng did not rush to speak.

He merely remained in his seat, his knuckles pressed against the desk's edge.

The shoulders of Sudo's uniform were stretched taut, but he stopped himself right before taking that step.

That one step lay exactly between two desks. Ahead of him were the people provoking him; behind him was the notebook the entire class was watching.

For a moment, even the air seemed stretched tight across that narrow aisle.

Sudo's chest rose and fell twice, his clenched knuckles turning white.

In the end, he forcibly pulled that step back.

The sole of his shoe scraped against the floor with a harsh sound, and he retreated to the side of his desk.

No one in the classroom dared make a sound.

Someone in the front row even softened their breathing.

Sudo had forcibly taken that step back.

Horikita did not use the chance to scold him further.

She simply lowered her head and wrote a line in her notebook.

"One warning."

As those four words landed, someone in the back row unconsciously sat up straighter.

Sudo's teeth ground together with an audible click.

"You actually wrote it down?"

"What else would I do?" Horikita straightened the record page. "If a rule is only spoken to you and never written into the ledger, what kind of rule is that?"

After she said that, the people in the back who loved to stir things up all lowered their heads. No one continued the conversation.

The bell rang right then.

The teacher pushed open the door, set the chalk box down on the podium, and swept her gaze toward the back row first.

"Who was making trouble just now?"

Many chairs shifted half an inch toward the back.

But before anyone could speak, Horikita had already closed her notebook.

"It's already been handled according to class rules."

The teacher's hand paused halfway toward her notes.

But she did not pursue the matter. She merely tapped the chalk against the podium.

"It had better be."

Then she began teaching.

No one in the classroom dared explode again.

Even after the teacher started the lesson, no one in the back row made another sound.

For the entire class, Sudo sat stiffly.

He held his pen.

He barely absorbed any of the lesson.

But he did not dare make too much noise again.

Because Horikita's notebook was sitting at the front.

Like a ruler that could come down at any moment.

The moment the bell rang, Sudo was the first to stand.

But this time, he did not go after those two boys.

Nor did he flip a desk on the spot.

He walked straight down the back-row aisle to Gu Heng's desk, brushing past a chair along the way without turning back to look for anyone.

He planted a hand on the desk and asked through suppressed fury:

"This counts too?"

Gu Heng put down his pen.

"You think it doesn't?"

"I didn't fucking hit anyone."

"You really didn't." Gu Heng said. "That's why she only recorded one warning."

"But you wrote my name in front of the whole class. Isn't that still targeting me?"

"It isn't targeting you." Gu Heng withdrew his fingertips from the desktop. "It's because, at that moment, you were the person most likely to treat the rules like scrap paper."

Sudo's back teeth tightened. He did not respond for a long time.

Gu Heng continued:

"You think I protected you earlier so you could keep getting by on your temper?"

The hand Sudo had braced on the desk edge pressed down harder.

"Then what was it for?"

"To give you a chance to be brought under this system first."

"Once you're in it, if you still dare cross the line in front of the entire class, then it should bite you."

"Otherwise, all that effort protecting you earlier would have been wasted."

Sudo's chest rose and fell twice. His anger was still there.

His back teeth clenched tightly. The breath rising in his throat was forcibly pushed back down.

"So from now on, I can't even curse at people?" he asked sullenly.

"You can," Gu Heng said. "As long as you don't curse so hard that you drag the entire class back into the same pit."

"Easy for you to say."

"It isn't easy." Gu Heng's gaze passed over Sudo's shoulder and settled on the closed notebook in the front row. "It's just that you're not the only one blowing up now."

Sudo's Adam's apple bobbed. The words at the tip of his tongue got stuck, and his fists loosened before clenching again.

"What about those two assholes who started running their mouths first?" Sudo finally asked.

"They'll be recorded too," Gu Heng said.

"What?"

"They started it. The class will record them too."

Gu Heng tipped his chin toward the two boys nearby, who were already sitting uneasily.

"You really think that notebook is only watching you?"

Sudo's hand on the desk stopped.

The next second, Horikita had opened the notebook, moved her pen tip to the next line, and spoke in a voice cold and hard.

"You two, stay after lunch."

The legs of the boys' chairs scraped at once.

"We didn't—"

"You did." Horikita cut them off directly. "Implying provocation and deliberately stirring things up. That gets recorded too."

With that, the last murmurs of "Are they just suppressing Sudo?" vanished from the classroom.

Hirata stood nearby and quietly let out a breath.

The tension that had been held in his shoulders finally eased a little.

"How was that?" Gu Heng asked softly.

"Went smoother than I expected," Hirata said.

"Not smoother." Gu Heng listened as the desks in the back finally stopped making noise. "This time, someone finally got hurt for real."

This time, Hirata did not smile.

His fingers released the chair back, and he did not speak for a long while.

During lunch break, Horikita placed the notebook on Gu Heng's desk.

"Take a look."

Gu Heng opened it.

On the first page, there was one entry after Sudo's name.

Tendency to escalate conflict before class. One warning.

Below that were the two boys.

Deliberately stirring things up and provoking a classmate. One record.

There were not many words.

The strokes were steady, without even a trace of unnecessary force.

"Nicely written," Gu Heng said.

Horikita tapped the notebook cover with her knuckles and asked coldly:

"So this is what you wanted?"

"More or less."

"Do you know that the whole class looks at that notebook like it's a knife now?"

"Good." Gu Heng closed it. "At least they know now that it isn't just sitting there for decoration."

Horikita did not respond.

Her fingers pressed against the notebook cover, not lifting away for a long time.

"Do you regret it?" Gu Heng suddenly asked.

"What?"

"Taking this position."

Horikita held down the corner of the notebook and paused before answering.

"I don't regret it," she said. "It's just more troublesome than I thought."

The corner of Gu Heng's mouth relaxed slightly, and that edge in him receded first.

"Then that's right."

"What do you mean?"

"Positions that actually matter are troublesome to begin with."

Horikita pulled the notebook half an inch back toward herself.

"Your way of comforting people is really terrible."

"I wasn't comforting you."

The moment he finished speaking, Gu Heng's phone gave a soft vibration.

He lowered his head and tapped open the screen.

It wasn't Hirata.

It wasn't Kushida.

It was a very short message.

The sender still had no name saved.

There was only one sentence.

"Your class is finally starting to look like something."

The phone remained in his palm, and Gu Heng's thumb did not press the lock button for a long moment.

He stared at that line for two seconds before curling his fingers more tightly around the phone, his eyelids lowering with it.

Gu Heng turned off the screen, the corner of his mouth lifting ever so slightly.