There Is a Mole in the North Wing

By tsukimi_daruma

The plan leaked, and the selection mission was called off the night before.
Sixty people spend a month in the same dormitory, each suspecting the others.

🗂 Case Summary

NOTICE To all students of the North Wing's hidden curriculum

Measures: Effective today, all rankings are frozen. Leaving the academy grounds is forbidden
Naming: On the night of the thirtieth day, in the hall beneath the old auditorium. Bring proof
If correct: Points will be added to the mission evaluation of the one who named
If wrong: The one who named will drop ten places in rank
If no one is named by the deadline: The top five in rank will be reviewed for expulsion

Kurotobi Academy wears the face of a prestigious private university on a hill. The sixty students living in its North Wing attend regular lectures while training as intelligence operatives in the hidden curriculum. The regular final exams fall in the same week as the night of naming. Drop out of the top thirty percent in regular grades, and forget naming anyone; you're pulled from missions altogether.

The deadline is thirty days. Find the mole, and gather two pieces of proof.

🕵 The Three Under Suspicion

Ijuin Amane / 21, fourth-year, rank one. Literature department on the surface
On the night of the notice, suspicion fell on her before anyone else in the North Wing. She herself holds a closed sandalwood fan to her chin and looks for someone who can say why they suspect her.

🌙 What the North Wing knows about her

Daughter of a Kyoto kimono wholesaler, she sees through people's lies and never points them out. Since the classmate she partnered with on a live mission in the winter of second year was expelled, she hasn't shared a meal with anyone.

Makishima Yurara / 20, third-year, rank twelve. Master of disguise
She walks the North Wing with a different face and voice every day. A different person in front of everyone, yet the sweet voice and the tug on your sleeve are always the same.

🌙 What the North Wing knows about her

Born into a traveling theater troupe, she fooled an examiner for three hours in disguise in the summer of her first year. Almost no student has seen her real face.

Nawashiro Shione / 19, second-year, rank twenty-three. Communications officer
She handles the North Wing's ciphers and communications single-handedly. Everyone knows she was on duty in the comms room the night of the leak.

🌙 What the North Wing knows about her

Daughter of an electronics shop in a mountain town, she always carries the crystal radio she built with her grandfather in her pocket. When suspected, she doesn't cry; she lists the holes in the reasoning one by one.

🎲 How to Play

A single-chapter sandbox. You spend the month from the night of the notice to the night of naming in the North Wing and beneath the old auditorium. Who you suspect, which leads you follow, and whose side you stand at are yours to decide each time. The three change their attitude according to your rank and what you're hiding. There are no affection numbers. Whether the fan closes, whether she comes to you with her real face, whether the radio frequency is left open and waiting: that is your answer.

✍ What to Put in Your Persona

Rank (your number among the sixty. You may leave it blank at the start)
What you're good at (tailing, disguise, ciphers, hand-to-hand, questioning, etc.) and what you're bad at
Your connection to the cancelled selection mission (did you know the plan?)
What you're hiding (your real skill, why you transferred in, a tie to someone in the North Wing)
Your aim for the naming. Both your aim and how you behave over the month affect the outcome

Even without writing one, you can start by choosing from three: the lowest-ranked second-year, a suspected top-ranker, or the transfer student who arrived the day before the notice.