Rule 1: The Disciplinary Committee Leader Is Never Late (1)
Beep-beep-beep! The street's unpleasant alarm smothered the chirping of birds outside the window.
I rose from bed with disciplined precision and silenced the alarm in one swift motion. A habitual act, drilled into muscle memory.
Once silence settled over the room, the urge to sink back beneath the covers crept up on me—
Slap!
A face-slap's worth of icy cold water severed the temptation at its root.
Pull yourself together. You have school.
I had studied well into the small hours and barely slept at all.
Over the break, I had been formally appointed as Disciplinary Committee Leader. The workload was guaranteed to be crushing, which meant the time I could devote to my studies would dwindle to almost nothing.
So I'd had to drill my preview work relentlessly throughout the vacation, and in the end, I'd been scraping by on a miserly ration of sleep every single day.
But if I let myself be late on top of all that, it would be putting the cart so far before the horse it fell off a cliff.
I was the Disciplinary Committee Leader, after all—the one person who had to uphold the school rules more rigorously than anyone else!
Ugh, I'm so sleepy….
Yet no matter how hard I cracked the whip over myself, the aftershock of that brutal vacation prep was ferociously powerful. Fatigue clung to me like a leech and showed absolutely no intention of letting go.
My eyes drifted, entirely of their own accord, toward the clock on my phone.
…Five more minutes couldn't hurt, right?
Absolutely not.
That was the one thought I could never afford to have.
I lay back down for just a moment and blinked.
Forty-seven minutes had passed.
For a heartbeat, I doubted my own eyes.
"…Oh no."
Thwap! My hand rose to my forehead all on its own.
This was… very bad.
AAAARGH…!
I threw myself into getting ready, half in a panic. I washed up faster than anyone alive, changed into my uniform, grabbed my bag along with our school's signature cap—the peaked officer's cap—and bolted out the front door… then came right back.
I'd forgotten my dried-flower charm. A charm made of purple peonies. That one I had to remember to carry, always.
Then I burst out of the house again, sprinting down the street as I jammed the cap onto my head.
Average travel time to school: roughly 35 minutes. Time remaining: 30 minutes 45 seconds…! If I shave off just five minutes by running, I can squeak past the deadline and avoid being late!
I did the math against my phone clock.
I could not be late.
Today was the first day of my second-year spring semester. My very first official day of duty as Disciplinary Committee Leader.
If I were late on a day like this, I could already picture exactly how it would unfold.
"Late on day one, and he's our Committee Leader? …Talk about all show and no substance."
"Seriously, why on earth did they pick a guy like that?"
"A Committee Leader is supposed to set an example. And he fumbles it right out of the gate."
"The Committee Leader violating school rules on his first day? Is that guy even sane?"
The members' backbiting already echoed in my ears like hallucinations.
I cannot be late…! Especially not today, of all days!
The Disciplinary Committee of my high school—Ahseong High School—was regarded as the strongest among every Disciplinary Committee in this academy city.
Though to be fair, that was strictly the analysts' aggregate assessment. If the Committees ever squared off against one another, who could say.
Either way, the fact that we were a formidable force was beyond dispute.
Which was exactly why a culture of meritocracy ran through Ahseong's Disciplinary Committee.
But as far as the game was concerned, I was little more than an NPC or a background extra—someone with no meaningful role in the story whatsoever.
I had no innate talent to speak of.
I was merely a cut above the ordinary crowd.
It was thanks to leveraging my knowledge of the game—repeating and mastering an efficient mana cultivation method with relentless consistency since early childhood.
Plenty of the members still doubt I deserve to be Leader. There are even some who question my abilities outright…!
I thought back to this year's Ahseong Disciplinary Committee Leader as he'd appeared in the game.
That guy was a third-rate villain who, thanks to a promising new talent named me showing up, never got to become Leader at all.
He was one of the reasons I'd chosen Ahseong's Disciplinary Committee in the first place.
While all the other Committee Leaders were outstanding, that third-rate loser was the only one I figured I could actually beat. The timing had worked out perfectly.
However.
There's a risk of getting stabbed in the back.
In the game, the members who doubted that third-rate Leader's competence eventually betrayed him.
They dragged him down.
Because they believed themselves superior to him in ability.
From the start, the Committee members barely obeyed that guy's orders anyway, and morale had long since shattered.
I had no intention of experiencing any of that while I held the post.
Which is why I have to be perfect—more perfect than anyone.
Even when I wasn't particularly smart, I had to pretend otherwise, deliver excellent results, and earn a reputation as a prodigy.
I had to be so模范ly exemplary that I looked ready to commit seppuku the instant I broke a single school rule.
I had to project nothing but charisma, befitting the seat of Ahseong's Disciplinary Committee Leader.
Only then would the finest combat force in the city—roughly four hundred strong—follow me properly.
And yet, late on the very first day of duty as Committee Leader?
My dignity.
My dignity as Disciplinary Committee Leader was going to take a nosedive before it even got off the ground…!
There it is—the train's arriving right now!
I reached the station and hurriedly boarded the maglev train. My destination was Ahseong High School, where I was enrolled.
Not that the train arriving the instant I got there did me much good….
Why is it so slow…? Come on, move, please….
The train was crawling like a caterpillar.
My stomach churned with impatience, ready to burst.
Before long, the robot conductor's pleasant voice drifted through the speakers.
What is the train ahead even doing!?
At this rate, there was zero advantage to having caught the train directly.
Should I just run for it?
If I reinforced my body with mana and sprinted flat-out, wouldn't that do the trick?
No.
It wasn't exactly a short distance, and outrunning the train to my destination was, in principle, nearly impossible.
"Hmm?"
While I fidgeted anxiously, a familiar face caught my eye.
A mixed-race male student dressed in the pristine white uniform of a prestigious academy.
Wait—is that the protagonist?
It had been seventeen years since I reincarnated into this world, but that one guy remained burned vividly into my memory.
Lee Tae-sung—the protagonist of the original story.
He was happily chattering away with his official heroine, the resident tsundere, living out a picture-perfect moment of youth.
The main scenario had been in full swing since last year, when I became a first-year in high school.
Conveniently, Lee Tae-sung and I were the same age, so keeping tabs on how things were unfolding had been fairly easy.
Up until last year, his school had been hit by one disaster after another—villain groups launching assaults, a mysterious black tower erupting out of nowhere, the whole circus.
No doubt he'd weathered all those incidents, scored himself some wonderful opportunities along the way, and diligently stacked up affection points with his heroines. It wasn't even a monogamous setting, so eventually he'd marry every single one of them….
Not that it's any of my business.
Some lingering attachment from watching him in the game, maybe, but I did find myself curious about his movements.
Still, what good would meddling do me?
Lee Tae-sung and I didn't even attend the same school to begin with.
Unless his problems spilled over onto me, I had zero intention of touching the original storyline.
By the way—so even the protagonist of the original work gets to see me being late, huh.
Well, his school was close to mine.
This was probably the perfect departure time for him.
"?"
Our protagonist, Lee Tae-sung, evidently felt my gaze and glanced my way from the corner of his eye.
Of course he senses it like a bloodhound. His skills must have grown a fair amount by now, so I suppose it's only natural.
I lowered my head and pulled the brim of my cap down to shadow my eyes.
It was nice meeting you. Let's not get tangled up in each other's lives.
That was when it happened.
SCREEEECH!!
"Whoa—!"
"What the—!?"
The train slammed to an emergency halt dead in the middle of the tracks.
Only the fact that we weren't traveling fast saved us; at average cruising speed, the dramatic stop would have sent bodies flying.
The students gasped and let out short screams of shock.
What now!?
I was every bit as flustered. Had there been an accident?
A moment later, every door on the train slid open—
and students in combat gear layered over their school uniforms filed in, one after another.
You've got to be kidding me….
I understood exactly what was happening, plain as day.
The other students evidently shared the same thought, unease spreading across every face.
Clack. Clack. The armed students took up positions along the center aisle.
"Attention."
KAANG!
A male student in combat gear, a skull tattooed along his jaw, smashed the floor with a long-handled axe, and the students flinched as one.
The doors sealed shut, and the train began to move again.
"From this moment on, this train belongs to us. Stay quiet and behave, and nobody gets hurt. Try anything stupid, and that changes."
The tone was pure intimidation—a command meant to crush resistance before it started.
Ah… right. I'd forgotten.
One fact I had overlooked for seventeen years came flooding back.
Just as murder follows Detective Kim and Detective Conan wherever they go—
satisfaction events follow the protagonist wherever he goes.
AAAAGH, NOOO…!
I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs.
Why…!?
Why today, of all days!?
O heavens above!!
"Wh-what's going on?"
"Villains…!?"
"E-expelled students? Or dropouts…?"
The students on the train were petrified.
It was a matter of prejudice, admittedly, but dropouts and expellees were widely regarded as objects of fear.
After all, the criminals who committed acts of terror—the villains—were mostly drawn from their ranks.
And in a city where academies meant everything, who knew what bitterness festered in the hearts of those who'd dropped out or been thrown out?
Small wonder the internet was flooded with ghost stories about dropouts, or webtoons and web novels casting them as the villains.
"That logo—it's Anomia…!"
One male student said in a trembling voice.
Of all things—Anomia….
Anomia.
Greek for the absence of divine will and law.
Despite boasting a name straight out of a chuunibyou fever dream, they were, surprisingly, one of the larger villain organizations.
The forces seizing this train had to be a detachment of Anomia's ranks.
And those guys were especially troublesome.
Their stated goal was to tear down the academy city's entire system and order, forging in its place a city where everyone was equal and free.
Their tendency was to weigh every situation not by cost and benefit, but by conviction alone.
"You there!"
"!"
When the tattooed student bellowed a mana-laced roar, the students flinched bodily.
He strode toward a girl seated by the window.
"Were you filming just now?"
"N-no! No, that's not—! Hnngh!"
The tattooed student growled like a beast and wrenched the phone from the girl's hands.
Then—CRUNCH! He ground it to pieces underfoot.
The girl teared up.
"My phone…."
"Listen up, all of you—get this through your thick skulls. Sit still, stay quiet, and no one gets hurt. Pull another stunt, and next time it won't be a phone getting stomped—it'll be your heads!"
The tattooed student roared his threat at the passengers.
Anxiety was etched plainly across the students' faces.
Clunk. Clunk!
"Where are we going…?"
"I'm scared…."
Students whispered among themselves.
The train switched tracks and barreled off along a completely different route.
Apparently Anomia had seized the driver's cabin as well. They'd subdued the conductor and were piloting it themselves, no doubt.
But more importantly—
I remember now. The train event, was it….
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Truly, I wanted to cry.
I had painstakingly recorded and memorized every scrap of game knowledge I could, but I hadn't catalogued down to the exact day, hour, and minute when each event occurred.
So this event was happening today—the first day of the second-year semester, of all days.
Which meant, in the end—
Being late is confirmed….
Even as I resigned myself, an imaginary chorus of Disciplinary Committee members launched into a relentless roast at my back.
That the 45th Disciplinary Committee Leader was a fool who showed up late on day one; that he broke the very rules he was supposed to enforce by example; that he was unfit for the post at all….
Disciplinary Committee Leader Ahn Woo-jin's stock was plummeting along a steep downward curve.
…Fine. Let me just organize my thoughts.
No amount of regret changed anything.
What had happened had happened.
I exhaled slowly and deeply, soundlessly, and reined my emotions back in.
What was the train event supposed to be about again?
I combed through my memory.
…A kidnapping, right? Their target was a student riding this train. Who was it again?
I couldn't quite recall.
A first-year at one of the schools, wasn't it?
She'd played no real role in the game's train event and was mentioned only in passing, which made her extremely hard to dredge up.
Still, my head-bashing had paid off on at least one point: the details surrounding the target came back to me.
Anomia's target normally commuted by car, chauffeured by her bodyguards.
But for reasons unknown, the car had broken down on the morning of her very first day of high school. Anomia's doing, of course.
So she'd decided to seize the moment—instead of the usual armored routine, she wanted to fully savor the thrill of her first commute by train.
And of all the trains in the city, it had to be this one.
I remember she was someone the mafia cherished.
The mafia of the academy city… though calling it that was generous; its members were all young kids, and it felt closer to a game of house than a real crime family.
Still, it was by no means an organization small enough to dismiss.
This was right around when the mafia and Anomia clashed head-on, wasn't it? This situation was part of that conflict too. But why hijack a train…? …Ah, right—because otherwise they'd have too many enemies to handle.
Surveillance drones for crime prevention filled the academy city's skies at all times, and security robots exchanging data with those drones patrolled the streets.
If they tried to abduct the target directly, the drones would spot them first, and they'd clash with the security robots immediately after.
Even if they managed to smash through the robots, their next opponents would be the police academy, or the Disciplinary Committee of the district's governing school.
Unless they brought a truly overwhelming force, a straightforward kidnapping was practically suicide.
But what if they abducted the target along with the train she was riding?
All of Anomia's anticipated problems evaporated on the spot.
Of course, if they failed to achieve their objective quickly enough, they'd inevitably collide with the enemies they'd worked so hard to avoid.
"Hey, you people… what's your objective?"
Out of nowhere, our ever-righteous protagonist Lee Tae-sung stepped forward. Unable to simply watch, he'd apparently resolved to sound them out.
His expression, the cadence of his speech, even his line delivery—every bit of it was textbook protagonist.
Shhhk.
"Stay down. Keep it up, and you'll get hurt."
The tattooed student extended his axe beneath the protagonist's chin in warning.
The protagonist tilted his head back, brow furrowed.
Mana pulsed through the axe blade. A deep violet mana, matching the wielder's eye color.
Mana influenced the pigmentation of the iris—its hue tinted its owner's eyes in its own color.
And here we go… this'll play out as a tense standoff, then end.
How could the protagonist and his companions possibly handle these guys right now?
The train event had to progress to a certain point before a counterattack became possible.
The police academy students—responsible for public spaces and outlying districts—would chase them down doggedly and arrive as reinforcements.
And as a bonus, a police academy girl would join the cast of heroines.
"Tch…."
After a brief staredown, the protagonist sized up the situation carefully, wore a look of suppressed fury, and backed off.
"That's right. We'll let this one slide. There won't be a next time."
The tattooed student sneered at the protagonist, who had tucked his tail between his legs.
Should I intervene?
I mulled it over, fingers resting on my cap's brim.
This was another school's autonomous district. If someone bearing the title of Disciplinary Committee Leader interfered in an incident without legitimate cause, it would be treated as interference in internal affairs, and the aftermath would become a bureaucratic nightmare.
But whatever the rules said, resolving this situation right now seemed like the better call.
Hm?
Through the window, a familiar clock tower came into view.
A structure that belonged in Ahseong High School's jurisdiction.
Why can I see that already?
The answer came to me at once.
The train had swerved onto the wrong route and was tearing along like a runaway express.
Which meant—
This is our school's district, isn't it?
…So much for worrying about internal interference.
And then, suddenly—
a single thought flashed through my mind.
Wait a second. This….
The corners of my mouth curled up on their own.
I might just be able to make up for being late after all.
I pressed my peaked cap down firmly and walked toward the tattooed student.
"Who the hell are you?"
The tattooed student's eyes snapped open in fury as he shifted into a combat stance.
A boy with his cap pressed low was walking straight toward him.
One glance at the black uniform made it obvious: an Ahseong High School student.
He was Ahn Woo-jin.
The moment those razor-sharp eyes locked onto him, the tattooed student flinched despite himself.
It was the poker face Woo-jin had honed to embody the dignity of a Disciplinary Committee Leader—though the tattooed student had no way of knowing that.
An unreadable pressure radiated off Woo-jin.
It was as if the very caliber of the man standing before him existed on a different level.
Primal unease crawling up his spine, the tattooed student barely suppressed the tremor in his emotions and funneled mana into his axe blade.
"Didn't I warn you to get lost, you punk!?"
"From this point on, this is our jurisdiction."
"What?"
Woo-jin spoke like a judge delivering a sentence, pulling black gloves over both hands.
"On-site arrest is now in effect. Criminals will be punished to the full extent."
The official declaration the Disciplinary Committee issued when apprehending offenders in the act.
His voice was as unyielding as a magistrate pronouncing a verdict.
"What did you just say, you little shit!?"
The tattooed student swung his mana-coated axe in a fit of nerves.
Some instinctive premonition had reared its head—that if he didn't take this man down now, things were about to get very dangerous for him.
Whoosh. Woo-jin twisted sideways.
SHEEAK!
The axe cleaved through empty air.
The blade skimmed past Woo-jin's body by a margin at once razor-thin and exquisitely calculated—as if he had intuitively computed the arc the axe would trace.
In the same motion, Woo-jin stomped down hard on the tattooed student's right foot.
CRACK!
"Gakh!"
The train floor buckled beneath the impact. With the sickening snap of shattering bone, even the combat boot crumpled.
It was body reinforcement through internal mana manipulation—a technique available to practically anyone—but Woo-jin's execution was on an entirely different plane from most students.
Agonizing pain lanced through the tattooed student.
At that instant, a black baton sprang from the holster at Woo-jin's waist.
He flicked it downward with crisp precision.
SNAP-CLICK!
With a crisp ring, the steel rod compressed inside sprang outward, locking into its full form.
A three-section staff.
ZZT! Woo-jin's mana converted into teal-white electricity and coiled through the staff's mana circuits.
Then he swung it with crushing force.
WHUMP!
CRASH!
"GUHAGH!"
The impact rang out like nothing a three-section staff should produce.
No—it was closer to an explosion.
The bone-rattling blow caved the tattooed student sideways and hurled him toward the door.
In the instant of contact, the teal lightning raced through the man's entire body, convulsing him with electrocution before discharging into the air.
BOOM! The tattooed student slammed into the door.
"Gghk…."
He clawed his fading consciousness back from the brink.
Had he not reflexively flooding his combat gear and skin with mana to reinforce his defenses, he would have blacked out on the spot.
His arm bone and ribs were broken.
The current still seething through him left his whole body twitching and shuddering uncontrollably.
The tattooed student could not, for the life of him, comprehend what had just happened.
The students around him struggled just as hard to process what they had seen and heard.
It had all unfolded in far too short a span.
"Senpai!"
"You insane bastard!"
The other Anomia members shouted. Having sensed the commotion from the adjoining car, they poured in and squared off against Woo-jin in battle stances.
But Woo-jin paid them no mind whatsoever.
As if they were nothing at all.
As if he were looking down at insignificant insects.
His eyes, shadowed beneath the brim of his peaked cap, swept coolly over his enemies—teal irises betraying not a flicker of feeling.
"You… what the hell are you?"
Gritting his teeth, the tattooed student forced himself upright.
"'Enforcement' this, 'punishment' that… who the hell do you think you are, spouting that crap!?"
…Ah.
Only then did Woo-jin realize.
In his rush out the door, he'd left his armband behind.
He needed to make his authority to detain and arrest visibly manifest.
Just as no one would question a man in a police uniform making an arrest, the badge had to be seen to be believed.
Shhhk.
Woo-jin drew a red armband trimmed in gold from inside his jacket and fastened it around his left arm.
The red armband of the Disciplinary Committee.
The outward mark of one empowered to carry out its duties.
And the gold trim, among them, symbolized the Leader.
The moment the Anomia members laid eyes on that armband, every last one of them went pale.
"The Disciplinary Committee."
Woo-jin answered, tapping the armband once with his finger.