Discipline 17. The Disciplinary Committee Leader Is Not Misunderstood
Park Min-hyuk, secretary of the Ahseong High School Disciplinary Committee, had one secret hobby.
It was the weekend. Hood pulled up over his head, round glasses on his face, a large bag slung over his shoulder, Min-hyuk strode into the figure shop. A smile spread across his entire face, as if he were stepping into paradise.
His feet came to a halt in front of a certain limited-edition figure. The box blazed with a dazzling brilliance in his field of vision.
The Iron-Blooded Girl Marina: Silver Armor, Second Version…!
Min-hyuk quietly let out an excited breath and purchased the figure.
Let's rewind to the past.
Until only recently, at the start of this year, Min-hyuk had never been this obsessed with figures. He had simply lived faithfully to his romantic feelings for real-world women.
But alas, those romantic feelings had brought him nothing but dismal results, every single time.
— "I'm sorry. Honestly… you're just not my type."
— "I appreciate the confession, but this is just me being honest. You know you have a reputation for being creepy, right?"
— "Do I look that easy to you…?"
— "Wow, I had no idea you thought of me that way. I always just thought of you as a friend… I'm sorry, but couldn't we just stay friends?"
— "Ugh, Min-hyuk… How could you confess to Na-yeon of all people? Who's supposed to run the class announcements now?"
Min-hyuk's memory was sharper than anyone else's. His confession results were never forgotten — they piled up in vivid, crystalline detail, until gradually his head sank lower and lower.
Kicking his blanket in shame before falling asleep was a common occurrence.
He wanted to flee from his own memories, to hide away in the narrowest crack he could find. In the end, Min-hyuk had resorted to stuffing himself inside lockers and trash cans.
It made him feel severed from the mundane world, and somehow that put his heart at ease.
Then one day, Min-hyuk realized something.
Why bother craving love from people who were going to avoid him anyway?
What caught his eye at that moment was a two-dimensional character.
An ideal being who could never plunge him into self-loathing.
From then on, Iron-Blooded Girl Marina — the heroine of an anime he'd long enjoyed — began to look different to him.
That was the beginning of his "fandom."
In other words, the beginning of "love."
Min-hyuk slung the bag holding the figure box around to his front and hugged it against his chest. Then he left the shop.
He scanned his surroundings warily.
No suspicious figures in sight.
I will not repeat what happened last time.
Min-hyuk repeated the mantra to himself like a self-hypnosis exercise.
On the day he'd been abducted by Anomia, he had lost his limited-edition Iron-Blooded Girl Marina figure. Naturally, that experience had remained burned into his brain like a trauma.
The sales window had long since closed, and the online secondhand marketplace offered nothing but figures stained with someone else's fingerprints. In the end, Min-hyuk had given up on it forever.
And so he had made a solemn vow.
I will NEVER — no matter what happens — lose Marina-chan again!
Min-hyuk maintained a state of extreme vigilance. Cold sweat poured down his face.
He advanced at a brisk clip, keeping watch in all directions. Even the sound of his own breathing felt risky.
But of course, anxiety has a way of becoming reality.
Without warning, a hand shot out from an alley and yanked Min-hyuk off his feet.
"Huek!"
Whoosh! Helpless, Min-hyuk was dragged away like a fish caught on a hook. His heart plummeted.
The person dragging him along was a mysterious woman in sunglasses and a face mask.
Anyone could see she looked suspicious.
"N-no…!"
Min-hyuk's voice trembled with horror.
So the heavens truly meant to deny him Iron-Blooded Girl Marina.
Remembering the attack he'd suffered before, Min-hyuk reached a conclusion.
The woman before him had to be a villain out for his life.
"S-save me…!"
Like a cornered young deer, Min-hyuk shook and quivered all over.
But what had to be protected, had to be protected.
Curling into himself, he clutched the bag to his chest for dear life.
"No — in fact, you can do whatever you want to me…! Just let Marina-chan go home. Marina-chan, at least…!"
"Min-hyuk, it's me."
"…?"
The woman stripped off her sunglasses and mask in one motion, revealing her face.
"The wild Ha Ye-song has appeared!"
Ha Ye-song, Ahseong High's Disciplinary Committee officer for public decency enforcement, greeted him cheerfully with her signature line.
"…."
Min-hyuk's expression went cold.
The moment the terror that had filled his chest drained away, his mood swung hard in the opposite direction — into icy territory.
Ye-song draped an arm around his shoulder with a sheepish grin.
"So the no-chill Min-hyuk was just now saying 'Marina-chan, Marina-chan.' What's inside that bag, hmm? What could it be? Eh? Min-hyuk-kyun?"
"I'm going to kill you."
"Pfffhaha!"
Ye-song burst out laughing.
"Forget your privacy~. I don't care one biiiit, honestly."
"Trampling my innocent heart like that… unforgivable…."
Tears welled up in the corners of Min-hyuk's eyes.
His fragile heart was already in tatters.
"Anyway, so THAT'S why you weren't checking your messages?"
"Messages?"
"There's a super important situation right now!"
"There is no situation in my life more important than going home right now."
"Come with me."
Min-hyuk, weak of body and will, had no choice in the matter.
Ye-song poked her head out of the alley and sniffed the air.
"This way!"
And so she led Min-hyuk somewhere.
"Heheh, good thing you're in disguise too."
"What are we doing?"
"Tailgating someone."
"Ahh, stalking. Please do that pathetic stuff alone, will you? I'm not talented enough to sink to that level…."
"The Leader and Vice Leader seem to be on a date."
"!"
Min-hyuk immediately snapped into full combat readiness and moved seriously alongside Ye-song.
"Where are they? Track them by scent. Now."
"There they are. …Wait, am I the dog here?"
Min-hyuk did not deny it.
The two of them spotted a couple entering a large hamburger restaurant. The Disciplinary Committee Leader, Ahn Woo-jin, and Vice Leader, Oh Baek-seo — both in casual clothes.
"Let's go."
"Yeah."
Ye-song and Min-hyuk moved with the stealth of trained spies.
"?"
Though to any passing pedestrian, they looked like nothing more than a suspicious stalker and an otaku moving as a pair.
The burger restaurant was spacious. Thanks to that, there were plenty of blind spots from which to secretly observe Woo-jin and Baek-seo.
Ye-song and Min-hyuk ordered a hamburger set, then took a seat at a distance from where Woo-jin and Baek-seo sat. A structural corner kept them safely out of the Leader and Vice Leader's line of sight.
"Here you go — one double steak burger and one teriyaki burger."
After collecting their sets, Ye-song and Min-hyuk munched away while shooting furtive glances at Woo-jin and Baek-seo. It was doable if you peeked just slightly past the corner.
"A weekend, just the two of them, at a burger joint… this, this reeks of something suspicious, doesn't it?"
"The love life of our heaven-sent Leader. I must verify it properly and offer my blessings…. If they truly are lovers, then protecting the two of their relationship shall be my sacred duty…."
Ye-song and Min-hyuk held a whispered conversation of collective monologues.
Just then, a girl with a golden-blonde ponytail walked into the burger restaurant.
Yoo Do-ha, treasurer of the Ahseong Disciplinary Committee.
She spotted the two people who, to anyone's eyes, were unmistakably Ye-song and Min-hyuk, and came straight over.
"Hey, Ha Ye-song."
"Yoo Do-ha, welcome, welcome."
"Why did you drag me out on a weekend in broad daylight? You were carrying on like it was some emergency — 'code red' this, 'urgent' that…."
"First things first — cover that face."
"?"
Ye-song plopped a hat she'd prepared in advance onto Do-ha's head. When Min-hyuk frantically gestured for her to duck down, Do-ha lowered her upper body.
"And keep your voice down," Ye-song told her.
"The Leader and Baek-seo-ching seem to be on a date right now. You've heard the rumor lately, right? That the two of them might be dating?"
"I couldn't care less about gossip like that…."
"Our mission is to secure concrete circumstantial evidence that the Leader and Baek-seo-ching are together. Etch it into your memory."
Do-ha furrowed her brow.
"Why go through such an absurd hassle?"
"Because I'm the public decency officer, duh? Which means I have a duty to verify whether the Leader and Baek-seo-ching are dating or not."
"Then why would you need to call me at all…?"
"We can't freeze out Do-ha-ching, can we? Something this fun, everyone has to get to verify it together."
"So it's all glitz and grand talk, and in the end it's just for your amusement."
"Heheh."
Do-ha decided not to press any further.
"Hmm."
Whether the Leader and Vice Leader were dating or not, she couldn't have cared less. But since she'd come this far anyway, she resolved to satisfy her own curiosity on the question.
After all, the Leader was her sworn superior, and this was information worth noting down for future reference.
Do-ha sat down at the same table as Ye-song and Min-hyuk, and the two of them chewed their fries like rabbits while intensely surveilling Woo-jin and Baek-seo.
I had stopped by the burger place for a simple meal with Oh Baek-seo. But somehow, a pack of bizarre stalkers had latched onto us.
One was Ha Ye-song behind sunglasses and a mask; the other was Park Min-hyuk, hugging his precious bag for all it was worth. And Yoo Do-ha had just been added to the roster.
What are they up to…?
I pretended not to notice.
Their getup practically screamed please pretend you don't know me.
Surveillance? Out of nowhere?
So I was being tailed. I hadn't noticed until we'd entered the burger place — but apparently they stood out more here.
It suddenly struck me how impressive that expressionless junior of mine was, the one who used to keep the closest eye on Lee Se-ah.
Baek-seo must have noticed too, right?
There was no way she'd missed it when even I had.
Just then, Baek-seo sipped her drink through a straw and spoke up, perfectly composed.
"Hey, Leader."
"What?"
"Have you heard that rumor going around lately?"
"Which one?"
I asked, sipping my own drink through my straw.
"The one about you and me dating."
"Kh-hk! Cough!"
I went down wrong mid-sip and broke into a coughing fit.
There's a rumor going around that we're dating?
"Are you okay?"
"Oh dear… went down the wrong pipe."
She didn't seem to be joking.
Why didn't I know about this?
Had I been too busy lately to hear it?
Baek-seo rested her chin on her hand and gave me her usual warm, considerate smile.
"…Really?"
I asked, just to be sure.
"Mm. I heard it's been making the rounds in the Disciplinary Committee. Not that I mind one bit."
Well, I mind.
Maybe you can afford to ignore your reputation, Baek-seo, but I can't.
Then those three…?
Now it made sense.
They came to check whether Baek-seo and I are dating?
They must have been desperate if it drove them all the way to a full stakeout.
Impressive initiative, I'll give them that.
That said.
This is my own blunder.
It was a rumor more than ripe for spreading.
With Baek-seo living next door these days, walking to school together had simply become routine.
And high schoolers, the lot of them, will get all worked up over the smallest male-female interaction — "Ooh, aren't those two dating?" — and spin a rumor out of thin air.
Romance is endlessly fascinating to a population brimming with curiosity at its peak. Even more so at Ahseong, where on-campus dating is practically taboo.
I should have been more careful.
Truthfully, I had been worried about this.
But.
Baek-seo, living right next door, had framed it as watching out for threats against me, and once she'd insisted on commuting together, prying her away was no easy psychological feat. Not that I'd actually wanted to.
Still, it seemed I needed to start being careful now.
I was, after all, the one bound to uphold the school regulations without exception.
For now, the best move is to plant the impression in their heads that Baek-seo and I are nothing more than friends — not a couple.
Let's keep pretending we don't know they're here. They went out of their way to disguise themselves to avoid being spotted, after all.
It was time to focus on talking with Baek-seo.
"Baek-seo."
"Yes?"
"A rumor that the Disciplinary Committee Leader and Vice Leader may be violating the school regulations is a disgraceful thing. We need to be seen as model students — the kind who uphold the rules with blade-like discipline, beyond a shadow of doubt. So for the time being, we should be careful about…."
Just as I was laying it out with conviction —
"Leader, one moment."
"Huh?"
Baek-seo picked up a napkin, leaned her upper body toward me, and wiped the corner of my mouth.
"You had ketchup on you."
"Ah, thanks… but aren't you a little too close?"
She was leaned in uncomfortably far — close enough to be overwhelming.
And even though she'd supposedly finished wiping off the ketchup, for some reason her hand didn't leave the corner of my mouth.
"Baek-seo? Hold on, what are you…?"
Her face drew closer and closer, angling toward my cheek.
As if she were about to kiss my cheek.
I swallowed dryly without meaning to, tension coiling tighter and tighter —
"Leader."
Out of nowhere, Baek-seo's voice moistened against my ear.
"Incoming."
"?"
Baek-seo smiled slyly.
A moment later, two figures came rushing toward us.
Whoosh! One of them flung off her sunglasses and mask.
"Gotcha! We caught you! Caught you kissing on camera!"
Ha Ye-song. She pointed at us and bellowed like a reporter who'd just landed the scoop of a lifetime, chest puffed out in triumph.
Beside her, Min-hyuk in his round glasses pointed at us with identical shock plastered across his face.
And so my and Baek-seo's gazes swung around to them.
"You three…?"
"Hi there~"
Baek-seo greeted them as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Baek-seo-ching, so it's true — you and the Leader really WERE in that kind of relationship!"
"Leader, is it really true that you and the Vice Leader are…?"
Then Baek-seo held up her smartphone screen for Ye-song and Min-hyuk to see.
"Ah."
In that instant, Ye-song and Min-hyuk froze solid as ice.
Baek-seo's smartphone displayed footage of the two of them creeping toward us from the street.
"A trap?"
When Ye-song asked, Baek-seo nodded. Do-ha had just sauntered up behind the two of them as well.
Baek-seo slid back into her seat and pocketed her phone.
So she knew from the start… and was toying with them.
"We only meet because of work, you see. The rumor is false, so don't misunderstand, alright?"
Wearing her usual gentle smile, Baek-seo delivered the words I had been meaning to say.
Actually, this works out better.
Apparently I'd been overthinking things.
Either way, that saved me the trouble.
"Oh…? If Baek-seo-ching says so, then I suppose it must be…."
Ye-song and Min-hyuk looked oddly deflated. Probably because a story they'd expected to be fun had fizzled into nothing.
The two exchanged a look with Do-ha, and then Ye-song turned to me.
"So what do we do now, Leader?"
"Why are you asking ME?"
After I'd lectured them for a while on the matter of tailing me and Baek-seo —
we went to a karaoke room.
Since we'd all run into each other anyway, we'd reached a consensus that karaoke was the natural next step.
It was actually pretty fun.
In a darkened chamber, a girl in an Ahseong High School uniform ran her training drills over and over. A Disciplinary Committee armband was fastened around her sleeve.
Wails of the dead — a chorus of gaaaah — echoed from every direction. The girl watched her minions battle with a face devoid of any expression, utterly still and silent.
That blankness was precisely what the Ahseong Disciplinary Committee Leader had once rated so highly.
Eventually, the expressionless girl raised her arm and snapped her fingers.
Snap!
With a crisp pop, the dead that had manifested across the floor were swallowed by darkness and sank into the ground.
Only gouges from massive claws remained — scored into the training dummies, the walls, the floor.
At the Ahseong practical assessment too, the field would be left littered with claw marks.
"…Pretty useful."
A flat, unbothered voice.
The expressionless girl turned her back and left the chamber.