Discipline 18. The Disciplinary Committee Leader Thwarts the School Villain's Plan (1)
The Disciplinary Committee was a large armed organization, so it never stayed out of anything tied directly to student safety—and the practical assessment was no exception. We were expected to handle the supervisory duties outright. Once again, the culprit was the perennial shortage of staff.
Before anyone knew it, the practical assessment was only a week away.
The final draft of the Disciplinary Committee's supervisory plan had landed on my desk, awaiting my approval. The most critical item under review was when, where, and how to deploy our personnel.
I need to place them carefully. Assume one of the Six Sinners is hiding among our students….
This was not a problem I could afford to treat lightly.
After all, I had no way of knowing exactly when one of the Six Sinners would make their move.
…The Necromancer.
In the game, the one of the Six Sinners who attacked Ahseong High had been a student known as the 'Necromancer'—or simply the 'Necromancer' by its other name, the Corpse Weaver.
Because the Necromancer hid their appearance behind a skull mask, no one had ever been able to figure out who they were.
Why of all things during the practical assessment? …No idea.
It would have been nice to pin down the reason in advance, but that proved nearly impossible.
Either way, in the game, Ahseong High let the Necromancer slip away. That must never happen here.
The Disciplinary Committee couldn't afford to botch this. After all, the Necromancer's attack was one of the major catalysts behind the game's Ahseong Disciplinary Committee Leader getting impeached.
All the more reason to be careful.
The practical assessment took place across sprawling grounds over four days, one grade level per day.
The Disciplinary Committee's supervision was divided up so that second-years covered the first-years' assessment, third-years covered the second-years', fourth-years covered the third-years', and the remaining personnel covered the fourth-years'.
If I could at least figure out which grade's assessment they'd strike during, responding would be that much easier….
But I couldn't.
And I couldn't just park our strongest members on duty for the entire duration, either.
The practical assessment ran long. They were only human—fatigue would wear them down—and more to the point, a Necromancer who'd made up their mind to strike Ahseong High would never miss suspicious patterns like that while standing around blankly.
I'll need countermeasures for necromancy too.
The Necromancer commanded the dead as minions. In other words, they specialized in attrition warfare—sheer numbers.
So I would have to prepare anti-necromancy measures without letting any student in the school see anything suspicious.
First, the suspects….
I went back over the documents I'd prepared on my own. They were a list of students with high mana readings, compiled from a school-wide mana measurement survey.
The criterion: figures that wouldn't be out of place for a 5th Tier.
The Six Sinners were fundamentally powerful.
The Necromancer was on the weaker end among them, granted, but still among the very strongest at Tier 5—which meant their mana reserves would have to be high.
Worse, under the right conditions, they could display strength that even a Tier 6 would struggle to handle.
About fifty suspects.
As one of the premier academies, Ahseong High had gathered more than its share of Tier 5 and above prodigies. But even so, the raw number wasn't large, which narrowed the candidate pool down to fifty.
Of those, the Disciplinary Committee accounted for twenty-eight—the highest proportion by far.
It was fitting for the club that sat at the top of the school's combat rankings. But it was also proof that even the Disciplinary Committee couldn't be trusted.
It'd be nice if I could properly confirm everyone's Unique Abilities too.
Identifying a suspect's Unique Ability was difficult unless the person came out and admitted it honestly themselves.
There was a widespread culture of treating one's Unique Ability as sensitive private information and refusing to reveal it, and it was also common for people to conceal or keep their ability secret out of caution.
Very few people ever bloomed a Unique Ability in the first place. No one knew how their rare gift might be exploited. There was always the chance they'd become a target for criminals. It was a social phenomenon born of a tangle of overlapping reasons.
So I cross-referenced the students whose Unique Abilities had been clearly revealed and struck from the suspect list anyone whose powers were obviously unrelated to necromancy.
Build, though… no way to tell.
The Necromancer spent all their time wrapped in a hooded robe, so their frame was a mystery.
For now, I knew they weren't a towering giant of a person, so I also ruled out the unusually tall students….
Knock, knock.
Just then, a knock sounded at the door of the Disciplinary Committee's executive office.
“Come in.”
I was the only one in the office, so I raised my voice to answer.
The door opened, and our resident talent—owner of a first-rate poker face—stepped inside. My expressionless junior.
She came around to the front of my desk, bowed, and snapped to attention.
“Thank you for your hard work, President.”
A flat, dry tone. A meticulous blankness spread across her entire face.
I looked away from her and back down at the documents awaiting my signature.
“Report.”
These days, the intensity of her surveillance mission on Lee Se-ah had been scaled down from before—basically just keeping an eye on her whenever she happened to be visible and reporting the highlights.
Se-ah had already caught on that I was watching her, but I couldn't exactly stop watching altogether, could I?
There was another reason I insisted on verbal reports, too: to leave no written record.
“Nothing unusual to report. Se-ah continues to lead her little crowd and devotes herself to performing good deeds. Same as always.”
“Good. Thanks, as always.”
That was usually where the reports ended.
Part of it was the reduced scope of the mission, but the bigger reason was that Se-ah simply hadn't made any major moves at school.
That said, even someone like Se-ah would have no choice but to move in earnest by next semester. The season when she becomes the head of the Dohwapa mafia and the ruler of the Black Market was this very second semester.
The time of her death falls in the same window.
…But that could wait.
“Well then, I'll take my leav—”
“Han Seo-jin.”
“Yes.”
My expressionless junior answered evenly, without any particular reaction.
“How's Disciplinary Committee life? Settled in yet?”
Seo-jin was on the suspect list.
What's more, this latest round of investigation showed her mana levels were far higher than I'd expected. Call it proof she was as promising a talent as I'd judged her to be….
Which meant I couldn't help but pay attention to her.
Because she was one of the prime suspects—the so-called 'Priority One Suspects' for the Necromancer identity.
The Priority One Suspects were to be secretly and intensively shadowed by the Disciplinary Committee's strongest members: myself, Oh Baek-seo, and Ha Ye-song, each taking a target.
The expressionless junior was mine.
She was the talent I'd had my eye on, after all.
And since today happened to be her final report before the practical assessment, I'd decided to have a simple chat.
“…….”
Maybe it was because I'd tried to make conversation, unlike usual.
Seo-jin stared silently into my eyes for a moment, as if trying to read my mind, before speaking.
“…I still have shortcomings, but I've adapted to most of the work. The seniors have taught me very well.”
“Glad to hear it.”
I lifted my eyes from the paperwork and met hers.
“Now that I think of it—you said you joined the Disciplinary Committee to uphold order, didn't you?”
“Yes.”
Just as I thought.
Even with that sanctimonious, embarrassing recruitment motive—parroting the Committee's official creed—thrown out, Seo-jin's expression didn't shift by a hair.
“So, is there anything you'd like to do going forward? Anything for yourself?”
“…I don't follow the point of the question.”
“I mean it literally. It just seems like you're never really honest about yourself.”
“…….”
For some reason, Seo-jin gave no answer at all. I'd only thrown it out casually, but apparently it had landed on the mark.
“Starting with your reason for joining. If that was your honest answer, then I apologize.”
“…It wasn't. Truth be told—though I should have said this sooner—I joined to build up my credentials. I thought I needed to show enthusiasm in the interview, so that's what I said. If that disappointed you, I'm sor—”
“I wasn't asking for an apology. Everyone's reason is more or less the same. Mine included.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
I leaned back against my chair.
“My goal is the same as yours. If I see my term as President through without incident, I'll have my pick of good positions even after I graduate. In other words, I'm building credentials too. Most people here are probably no different from you or me.”
“…I see.”
“That's what I want, then. A reasonably good position, a reasonably comfortable life. Do you have something like that?”
Seo-jin lowered her eyes and thought for a while before finally speaking.
“…I want to see the sea.”
“The sea?”
“Nothing else comes to mind.”
The sea, of all things….
For an instant, it seemed like a small crack ran through that blank expression. I could tell this was the first time Seo-jin, who had always buried her feelings, had ever given a truly honest answer.
From my past life and the various media of this world alike, I knew:
The vast blue sea stretching beyond the sand had a power to stir people's hearts.
It was only natural to dream of it.
But in this day and age, going to the sea was forbidden.
There wasn't even a safe route to get there in the first place.
The only way was to graduate high school, obtain an explorer's license, and go beyond the walls—and you'd have to accept that along the way you could lose your life easier than an insect, with dangerous monsters crawling all over the outside world.
“…Are you going to laugh at me?”
“?”
Another unexpected remark tumbled out of Seo-jin.
She looked me dead in the eye, her expression as unreadable as ever.
“Why would I?”
“Because it's nonsense. Everyone knows how dangerous it is—and it's not as if the sea is even beautiful anymore, by all accounts. Wanting to see that with my own eyes.”
So she considered her own wish worthless.
I thought back to the accounts of the sea that explorers had brought back.
The image of the ocean had been carefully reshaped these days so that no one would… actually want to go see it for themselves.
Even so.
“Nonsense? I think it's admirable.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
I couldn't understand why Seo-jin was so cynical about the very thing she wanted.
“Nature always runs in cycles. Somewhere out there, the sea might well have recovered its old beauty by now. Quite a lot of time has passed since 'The Hole' closed, after all.”
The Hole.
The name for the colossal gate that had once opened in the Pacific Ocean.
The Hole had unleashed countless monsters, starting with the Golden Ram—the only being ever to be classed as Tier 9—and turned the world upside down.
These days, the Golden Ram had put an end to it.
“Which means you might be the one to find that beautiful sea, couldn't you?”
“……?”
“Harboring a wish like that—I think it's admirable.”
I meant it, pure and simple.
Desires like that are what push the world forward.
Seo-jin blinked slowly. But no emotion surfaced on her face.
“…I see. Thank you for looking kindly on it.”
She bowed her head in gratitude.
After that, there wasn't much left to say.
It wasn't as if I could come out and probe her with 'Are you one of the Six Sinners?'
Han Seo-jin was a talent I had personally recognized.
A rising star.
Which was exactly why all I could do was hope—sincerely—that when the truth came to light, she wouldn't turn out to be the Necromancer I'd have to fight.
“Dismissed.”
“Yes. Then, have a good day, President.”
Seo-jin saluted and left the office.
Having left the office, Han Seo-jin walked the corridor, lost in thought.
Her plan was to unleash the dead during the practical assessment, see her mission through, and then leave Ahseong High behind for good. But ever since enrolling, she'd run headlong into a variable she never saw coming.
The Disciplinary Committee Leader.
Back when the Head Principal had assigned her the infiltration mission at Ahseong High, the Committee Leader had not been flagged as a person of interest.
Even the news that he had single-handedly resolved the Anomia terror incident hadn't impressed her much.
But then, after joining the Disciplinary Committee as part of her mission—
Seo-jin had been blindsided by the Leader.
— 'In other words, you're ordering me to surveil my own classmate, Se-ah?'
The Disciplinary Committee Leader had handed Seo-jin herself the task of watching Lee Se-ah.
Seo-jin had tensed up, wary. Why me, of all people? Could I have drawn suspicion somehow?
She remembered asking the Leader why he was assigning her a personal task.
— 'Because you're both first-years in Class C of Maehwa Hall. And out of that group, you were simply the one who stood out most.'
A flimsy excuse.
An answer too vague to accept at face value, yet not blatant enough to call a lie outright.
At the time, Seo-jin had quietly used one of her abilities as the Necromancer.
A derivative of her 'Sixth Sense.'
A faculty for discerning whether a person's words were true or false.
And what she learned was this:
He was lying.
Seo-jin judged that the reason the Disciplinary Committee Leader gave was a lie.
He was undoubtedly concealing an ulterior motive.
Somehow, without realizing it, I must have shown him something suspicious.
There had been rumors that the Disciplinary Committee Leader possessed inside knowledge about Anomia.
Seo-jin had written those off as mere gossip—but when the man summoned her separately and handed her a mission wrapped in a lie, suspicion became impossible to avoid.
— 'Thank you for entrusting me with this, President. I will bring back the finest results.'
So, to slip past the Leader's suspicion as much as possible, Seo-jin had thrown herself into the mission and even gone above and beyond, handling tasks no one had asked of her.
It was an act—a performance of a devoted Disciplinary Committee rookie.
The intensity of the current surveillance mission on Se-ah had weakened, yes. But Seo-jin still couldn't afford to let her guard down.
The plan must not be compromised. If the Disciplinary Committee Leader shows signs of doubting me during the practical assessment too….
If it came to that, she would have no choice.
She would simply have to eliminate the Disciplinary Committee Leader first.
Even as she thought this and kept walking, Seo-jin suddenly stopped and turned her gaze to the window. In the distance, the outdoor swimming pool came into view—a facility used for swimming classes.
— 'Harboring a wish like that—I think it's admirable.'
“…….”
The Disciplinary Committee Leader's words kept echoing through her mind, over and over.
It had been that way ever since she used her ability and confirmed that what he'd said was genuine, beyond any shadow of doubt.
She looked back on the past.
Every time she'd ever mentioned wanting to see the sea, the responses she'd gotten were lies dressed up as 'how nice'—hollow platitudes through and through.
More often than not, she'd been treated like a dreamer locked in her own little world, or a fool chasing a pointless fantasy.
The only person who had never laughed at her wish was the Head Principal.
But she had never imagined she would one day hear a genuine 'that's admirable'—and so Seo-jin had been left floundering in confusion for a while.
She lowered her eyes and murmured quietly to herself.
“…He's a good person.”
After turning the Disciplinary Committee Leader's words over in her mind for a long while, Seo-jin finally started walking again.
…
Time passed, and the practical assessment began.