Discipline 16. The Disciplinary Committee Leader Scolds His Comrade
“You came because you wanted to talk, didn't you?”
Kim Dal-bi, swinging on the swing next to Oh Baek-seo, spoke up.
When Baek-seo gave no answer, Dal-bi continued with a smile on her face.
“…See, I've been kept on a pretty tight leash lately. But security's gotten a little loose these days, so I slipped out to find you. Seems like 'that person' isn't doing too well, either.”
Security drones, systematized to detect any mention of the Head Principal, roamed the entire city. They were what Dal-bi called 'listening ears.'
That was why Dal-bi, mindful of those ears, had referred to the Head Principal as 'that person.'
“Let's talk about the Leader first.”
Baek-seo narrowed her eyes and spoke in a firm tone.
“When you asked for three minutes, that didn't mean three minutes of time was permitted from the moment we met, did it?”
“Well, honestly, that three minutes was just a rough estimate. It could've been shorter. Truth is, there wasn't much to talk about at length anyway.”
Dal-bi handed Baek-seo a single folded sheet of letter paper.
“Here. Once you've read it all, burn it or eat it—dispose of it somehow.”
It was a letter containing the message she needed to deliver.
She had prepared it in advance, knowing their conversation time would inevitably run short.
Baek-seo unfolded the letter and read it.
“…….”
A moment later, she raised a surge of bioelectricity and burned the letter to ash in an instant.
Dal-bi smiled grandly and extended her index finger upward.
“What I'm about to tell you is, in movie terms, the intro—”
At that instant, Dal-bi stopped mid-sentence and narrowed her eyes. It was because the movements of the 'listening ears'—the security drones patrolling the district—had turned unnatural compared to usual.
“…Never mind. They've already caught on.”
The Head Principal had noticed that Dal-bi had vanished.
Dal-bi rose from the swing, looked down at Baek-seo with a mischievous smile, and pressed a finger to her own lips.
“Keep today a secret. I've given you information, so you'll behave yourself, right? 'Hey—next time we meet, we're enemies.' Let's end it right about there.”
Baek-seo blinked slowly and let out a sigh.
“May I ask just one thing?”
“No.”
“Why did you leave me?”
Baek-seo remembered the half year she had spent together with Dal-bi.
Dal-bi pretended to ponder, going “Hm.”
Suddenly, a memory flitted through her mind—an image of Woo-jin and Baek-seo walking side by side down Shin Yongsan Street.
Dal-bi kept her smiling face as she answered.
“There wouldn't be much point in telling you now. It was my choice, after all.”
“…….”
“Take care of yourself. See you arou—”
Shwing!
“Oh.”
A blade came slashing in without warning.
Dal-bi bent her upper body back with fluid grace, evading the strike with a light click of her tongue. Just then, brilliant flames began to blossom across her body like gorgeous flower petals.
Right before Dal-bi's eyes stood Baek-seo, sword in hand, glaring coldly at her.
“I said I'd let you go.”
“Too late for that, isn't it?”
Dal-bi smirked slyly.
Fwoosh!
In a heartbeat, Dal-bi's body was swallowed by flames, and a second arc of the blade carved through the fire.
Fwoosh. The flames guttered and died.
Dal-bi was already gone.
She must have been primed to use her escape technique from the very start. Dal-bi hadn't had the slightest intention of fighting.
“…What a troublesome ability.”
Baek-seo sighed quietly.
[ Whatever you're reading right now must never leave your lips! Well—only the parts concerning the Head Principal. ]
Oh Baek-seo never managed to track down the vanished Kim Dal-bi.
It had grown late.
Baek-seo wrapped up her grocery shopping in short order, and on the way home, she recalled the contents of the letter Dal-bi had shown her.
[ The reason your Disciplinary Committee Leader has been targeted recently is the Head Principal's petty revenge. You lot tore down Anomia, which the Head Principal had been secretly cultivating, remember? Why the Head Principal raised an organization like that in secret, and why only on such a limited scale—I don't know either, so you can figure that part out for yourselves. ]
It explained why the incident on Shin Yongsan Street had happened two weeks ago. Thanks to it, Baek-seo was able to piece together the full context of the affair.
[ Anyway, for some reason, right now they seem to be choosing to observe the situation. Whether they've had a change of heart or simply lost their mind, I couldn't say. ]
It was when she read this paragraph that Baek-seo understood why Dal-bi had summoned her.
At the time, there had been almost no time to talk, and she'd had to grasp the letter's contents in a hurry. Amid all that, Baek-seo would have been able to quickly absorb anything concerning the Head Principal.
[ And be careful. ]
Next, Dal-bi had written down something else important.
[ One of the Six Sinners is hiding in your academy. As a student. I don't know who it is, but don't let them get the better of you easily. You're allowed to speak of this information out loud. Talk it over with your Leader. ]
And with that, the letter of her memory came to an end.
“…….”
One of the Six Sinners was hiding in Ahseong High School.
Baek-seo deliberated over whether to believe those words. Kim Dal-bi, a Sinner of the Six herself, was hardly a trustworthy individual to begin with.
Yet Baek-seo couldn't easily imagine what benefit Dal-bi could possibly gain from telling such a lie, either.
Then was it information offered out of the affection of an old friend?
That, too, remained unknowable.
Before she realized it, Baek-seo had arrived at Woo-jin's home.
Beep-beep.
Baek-seo naturally punched in the door lock and stepped inside.
“…Baek-seo?”
“Oh?”
Baek-seo froze mid-step.
Humidity pressed against her skin.
Moments later, a naked Woo-jin, towel in hand as he dried his hair, came into Baek-seo's line of sight.
The moment Woo-jin's bare flesh filled her vision, Baek-seo reflexively swallowed a gasp.
A brief silence passed.
Woo-jin looked down at his own body.
Whoosh!
Then he kicked off the floor with lightning speed and dove into the nearest room.
CRASH! A resounding thud rang out as Woo-jin's body slammed into the floor.
“Oh my…”
Baek-seo let out a soft exclamation before she could help it.
For a while, her feet refused to move.
Even Baek-seo found it difficult to keep her composure. She was, after all, still just one girl who had never gotten to satisfy her carnal curiosity. Merely managing her expression was the best she could do.
“…….”
Baek-seo stealthily covered her mouth with her hand.
Ridiculously enough, the sight of Woo-jin's naked body blew away her worries as dramatically as a raging storm and seized complete control of her mind.
“Kim Dal-bi left behind a letter, and it said that 'one of the Six Sinners is hiding in Ahseong High School disguised as a student'… Right?”
Ahn Woo-jin and Oh Baek-seo, wearing aprons, were prepping the groceries together. Woo-jin had summed up what Baek-seo had told him.
Though calling it a summary was generous—it was, quite literally, word for word.
Baek-seo nodded.
“And the letter was burned.”
Woo-jin judged that the information was likely true.
'One of the Six Sinners appearing this time… rather than having breached Ahseong High's security, they were an Ahseong High student from the very beginning?'
It was a hypothesis he had already entertained, but with no clues whatsoever, he hadn't been able to feel certain about it.
Now, though, the contents of the letter Dal-bi had supposedly left behind lent that hypothesis weight.
'No hard proof at the moment, but there's no harm in leaning heavily toward that possibility. …It'll happen during the practical assessment, won't it. I'll have to hunt for the suspect.'
The Six Sinners would show themselves during the practical assessment.
He would not, however, let the assessment be canceled because of it. Otherwise, there'd be no telling when or how the Six Sinners might make their next move—the risk would balloon beyond all reason.
So the smart play was to identify the suspect during the practical assessment, quietly keep watch, and then apprehend them. Catching them beforehand would be even better.
'That said….'
Woo-jin fixed his gaze on Baek-seo.
“Why did you go alone?”
He couldn't understand it.
She had sensed Dal-bi's presence, yet she'd gone off alone without saying a word to him.
“That was way too dangerous.”
“It seemed like she had something to say. She was giving off a presence that only I could sense, after all. If I'd brought the Leader along, Kim Dal-bi might have just run off.”
“Why did she call for you alone?”
“I couldn't tell you.”
“…….”
Woo-jin assumed it was because Dal-bi had felt a certain guilt about facing him herself.
More importantly, though—
“Baek-seo.”
“Yes?”
Woo-jin stepped closer to Baek-seo.
There was a height difference between them. The top of Baek-seo's head stopped just at his lips, so Woo-jin looked down at her.
Baek-seo silently stared into Woo-jin's eyes. The air between them hung heavy. The usual tender smile was absent from her lips.
'I know perfectly well she's more capable than I am… but this time she went too far. It was a situation that looked suspicious to anyone watching.'
It seemed Baek-seo had been worried about Woo-jin himself and had gone to meet Dal-bi on her own. Ever since her clash with Dal-bi two weeks ago, Baek-seo had been sticking close to him out of concern.
Even so, Woo-jin couldn't bring himself to simply honor that sentiment, and he resolved to reprimand her. She had shown a tendency not to rely on him or the Disciplinary Committee.
If Baek-seo had been ambushed, Woo-jin wouldn't have realized it right away. Just imagining it made him dizzy.
And the opponent had been Kim Dal-bi, no less—someone immensely powerful.
It had been extremely dangerous.
So unless there had been some unavoidable circumstance, Woo-jin judged that, as the Leader, he needed to push Baek-seo for answers about not relying on the Disciplinary Committee.
“You could have called in the Disciplinary Committee, or told me—we needed to draft a plan, didn't we? Whatever your reasons, if you'd gone in alone and enemies had been lying in wait…”
“……!”
“?”
When Woo-jin drew near to scold her, Baek-seo took a step back.
'What's going on?'
Woo-jin was taken aback.
He took another step closer, and Baek-seo retreated again.
“I'm sorry… I misjudged. And letting her slip away—I can hardly hold my head up. I'll reflect on it.”
“Then why do you keep backing away?”
“Do I?”
Despite the gravity of the moment—despite the serious words that should have been passing between them—Baek-seo simply could not steady herself whenever Woo-jin drew near.
Her senses were locked onto his bare skin.
The human brain performed a wondrous operation. The memory data of Woo-jin's naked body had been stored vividly in her mind, and the process of outputting it played out—until the Woo-jin standing before her seemed to shimmer with a ghostly image of his nude form.
A sexy male specimen is approaching.
With such thoughts crowding in, she couldn't focus on his words at all.
“Leader, I'm sorry, but.”
Baek-seo struggled to manage her expression, but she couldn't calm what was churning inside her.
“A little… farther away, if you could…”
She barely managed to soften her plea for him to step back. Woo-jin took it exactly at face value.
There was no way Baek-seo's true intent could properly come through, of course.
'…Don't tell me she's grown distant because I was about to scold her?'
Or was there something she couldn't bring herself to say?
All manner of worries bloomed in Woo-jin's chest.
He couldn't let the situation pass like this.
Forgive him, but he decided he would not so readily accommodate her wishes.
“Baek-seo.”
Woo-jin took hold of her shoulders so she couldn't escape.
Baek-seo's body flinched.
As he held her gaze dead-on with both eyes, Baek-seo consciously fought down the corners of her mouth as they threatened to lift. But she couldn't stop the flush rising to her cheeks.
Before long, Woo-jin spoke in a grave tone.
“If something's bothering you, tell me.”
This physical contact is making me uncomfortable.
“Honestly. Did something happen?”
I saw your naked body. And that… private thing as well.
“…Woo-jin?”
At last, a name—not 'Leader'—escaped Baek-seo's lips. Woo-jin recognized it instantly for what it was: her own form of forceful insistence.
Baek-seo began letting her usual tender smile flow back into place, but her voice alone trembled faintly.
“I'm, ah, feeling a little embarrassed today. Could you restrain yourself?”
“…….”
“…….”
“…Oh.”
Only after Baek-seo blurted out her feelings that honestly did Woo-jin finally understand the situation.
The heavy air shifted, in an instant, into something delicately awkward.
Afterward, the two of them pretended everything was perfectly normal, made stilted small talk, and ate curry rice together.
“Sleep well.”
“Mm…”
After Baek-seo left, Woo-jin stood staring at the front door for a long while.
'My dignity….'
had just sunk through the floor.
“Ughhhh…”
Shame and disillusionment washed over him in waves.
Feeling the heat climbing to his face, Woo-jin covered his face with his hands and groaned.