By 6:03 the next morning, NS had uploaded a study plan.
It contained twelve pages.
There was a title page.
There was a table of contents.
There were separate review blocks for written knowledge, clinical skills, error correction, sleep, meals, and what he called controlled recovery.
JP read the document in the class channel.
JP: He scheduled unconsciousness.
BUNNY: That is sleep.
JP: Sleep should remain independent.
CHERRY: Why does he have our Military Medical School scores?
The typing indicator appeared beneath NS's name.
NS: The Sleeping Man provided skill categories, not private scores.
NC: Mine says foundational remediation. That sounds private.
NS: It means your written result was stronger than your practical result.
NC: I know what it means. I dislike that you know.
Anna sent a message asking everyone to calm down.
Nobody acknowledged it.
The arguments began before sunrise.
The official review session was still twelve hours away.
The Number Seven bus did not arrive.
Its timetable remained illuminated at the shelter, promising service every eleven minutes while giving us none.
I stood beneath the route map with NC, Anna, and three students from Computing. A black ribbon had been tied around the metal pole.
A new notice covered yesterday's safety announcement.
REDUCED SERVICE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
MAINTENANCE REVIEW IN PROGRESS
NC photographed it.
"They can review maintenance after the midterms," she said.
"Brakes do not know our schedule," Anna replied.
"Then brakes are selfish."
The rain had stopped during the night. The sky was pale and almost clear.
Wind moved through the shelter hard enough to shake the advertisements inside their frames.
The weather application predicted calm conditions.
I had stopped comparing it to the sky.
At 7:19, a bus arrived displaying the wrong route number.
The driver opened the doors.
"Campus 2?" NC asked.
"Until the bridge. You walk from there."
"The sign says Route Twelve."
"Today it says whatever gets you closer."
We boarded.
Every seat was occupied. Students stood between office workers, market bags, and two nurses in pale uniforms. Anna held the overhead rail. NC opened NS's study plan on her phone and began criticizing the font.
"The font is fine," I said.
"Do not defend him before breakfast."
"I defended the font."
"That is how it starts."
My phone vibrated.
June had sent one message.
Bring your medication-calculation notes.
No greeting.
No answer to anything from the night before.
I typed that I would bring them.
She read it five minutes later.
The bus crossed the bridge and stopped two blocks early.
We walked the rest of the way.
At the campus gate, a gust lifted the corner of NC's eligibility printout and tore it from her folder.
It flew across the road.
Anna caught it against a fence.
"If the list is trying to escape," NC said, "let it."
The Sleeping Man gave us a diagnostic quiz at eight.
He called it informal.
He also collected it, recorded our names, and entered something into his tablet after marking each page.
"This is not a grade," he said.
"Then why does your tablet look judgmental?" JP asked.
"The tablet has seen your answers."
Our first topic was medication calculation.
The question described a prescribed dose, a concentration, and a patient who had become endangered by the number of students arguing over the decimal point.
June finished first.
NS finished twenty seconds later.
Kitty checked her work twice.
I reached the final problem and heard the bus hazard lights inside my head.
Red.
Dark.
Red again.
I pressed my pencil harder against the paper.
The sound disappeared.
When time was called, Bunny swore under her breath.
Cherry swore at normal volume.
"You had fifteen minutes," Jihye said.
"The fourth question was written by a criminal."
"The fourth question was multiplication."
"Exactly. Organized crime."
The Sleeping Man marked the pages during our break.
He placed them into five piles.
JP watched the piles form.
"That feels unethical."
"They are grouped by error pattern," the Sleeping Man said.
"People are more than their error patterns."
"Today you are mostly error patterns."
He assigned each pile a review focus.
NS's page did not enter a pile.
The Sleeping Man gave it back to him.
One hundred percent.
I saw the score from two benches away.
NS folded the paper once and put it inside his folder.
He did not display it.
That somehow made it more visible.
"We will use the diagnostic results to organize the six o'clock session," he said.
Cherry looked at him.
"We?"
"The Sleeping Man asked me to coordinate."
"He asked you to help. Coordination sounds like you promoted yourself."
"It is the word in the message."
"Stop using evidence. It is irritating."
The Sleeping Man assigned the groups before the argument could improve.
June, Kitty, and Jihye would review calculations and written integration.
NC, Anna, and Cherry would practice documentation and error identification.
JP, Bunny, TZ, and I would rotate through dosage calculation and clinical sequencing.
NS would move among all three groups.
"So he gets no weakness?" I asked.
The Sleeping Man looked at me.
"He had no errors on this diagnostic."
"That was not what I asked."
NS turned in his seat.
"I can join your group if that makes the page less offensive."
"You already stand over every group."
"I move between them because I am coordinating."
"Same view from where I am sitting."
The room quieted.
NS's expression did not change.
"Then sit somewhere useful."
The answer arrived calmly.
That was why it cut.
My chair moved against the floor as I stood.
June said my name.
Not loudly.
Enough.
I stopped.
Nothing physical had happened.
The room still felt as if something had.
The Sleeping Man placed my diagnostic page on the bench.
"Station Three," he said. "Use the anger to locate your decimal errors."
JP raised his hand.
"Can I use my anger for unit conversion?"
"You may use it silently."
We separated into groups.
For eleven minutes, the arrangement worked.
Then Bunny accused JP of changing an answer after checking the key.
JP said he had corrected his own thought process.
Bunny called that cheating with philosophy.
At the next table, Cherry crossed out an entire documentation note written by Anna.
"You changed the collection time," Anna said.
"Because your time was wrong."
"It was the time on the scenario card."
"The scenario card is stupid."
"That does not make my answer wrong."
"It makes the whole thing useless."
Anna pulled the paper back.
"Then stop writing on my useless answer."
Her voice was sharper than I had ever heard it.
NC told them both to stop.
Cherry told NC she had not been invited into the argument.
NC replied that the argument had entered the whole room without permission.
At the written-integration table, Jihye photographed a whiteboard formula before June finished correcting it.
Kitty noticed.
"Delete that one," she said. "The conversion factor is wrong."
"I know. I was saving the process."
"Someone will use the photograph later."
"Then I will label it."
"Or delete it."
"It is my phone."
June placed the marker down.
"It is our grade. Delete the damn photograph."
Jihye stared at her.
June rarely cursed in class.
Jihye deleted the image.
Nobody thanked anyone.
The study groups lasted until 9:24.
At 9:25, the Sleeping Man ended them.
"You have converted one diagnostic quiz into three civil wars," he said.
"Four," JP corrected. "XH and NS began separately."
"Thank you for the epidemiology."
He returned us to individual work.
The class became peaceful because everyone was angry alone.
By lunch, the wind had become strong enough to close the umbrellas people were not using.
We sat near the campus lake beneath the stone shelter beside Lantern Bridge. The water moved in short dark lines. Papers needed to be held beneath phones, drink bottles, or hands.
Across the bridge, Business students occupied two tables.
KM stood beside one of them explaining a finance problem with the confidence of someone who had not solved it.
Thoon took his calculator, entered three numbers, and returned it.
KM stopped explaining.
Engineering students had claimed the steps nearer their building. Shinso reviewed a mechanics sheet with HTN and SRM. HTN corrected him once. He checked the equation and nodded. SRM celebrated the correction as though she had made it.
Our majors had returned to separate buildings.
The Floating Village had made that separation feel temporary.
Midterms restored the borders.
JP opened his lunch and looked across the bridge before he could stop himself.
Thoon saw him.
He lowered his eyes to the food.
TZ sat beside him.
"You do not have to avoid looking at the whole Business major," TZ said.
"I am studying rice."
"You have studied the same spoonful for two minutes."
"It contains depth."
Thoon looked away first.
JP exhaled.
"Do you think she hates me?"
TZ's phone vibrated against his leg.
He checked it beneath the table.
Thoon's name appeared on the screen.
JP did not see it.
"I do not think she hates you," TZ said.
That answer was true.
It was not complete.
At 12:18, TZ opened Thoon's message.
THOON: Is he okay?
TZ looked beside him.
JP was accusing a boiled egg of having no emotional range.
TZ: Physically.
The reply came quickly.
THOON: And otherwise?
TZ typed, deleted, and typed again.
TZ: You already know.
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Returned.
THOON: I did not ask him to come toward me.
TZ: He never reached you.
Thoon did not answer for almost one minute.
Then:
THOON: You always answer like a handbook.
TZ: Handbooks are reliable.
THOON: People are not.
TZ looked across Lantern Bridge.
Thoon was watching her phone.
TZ: Some people try.
Thoon read the message.
She looked up.
Their eyes met across the water.
She smiled first.
TZ lowered his phone.
Before he could lock it, another notification appeared.
SRM.
SRM: Reliable man. Did you save the boat videos?
TZ turned slightly away from JP.
TZ: All of them.
SRM: Even the one where I nearly fell?
TZ: Especially that one.
SRM: Cruel. Send it.
He sent the video.
SRM reacted with a laughing face.
Then another message arrived.
SRM: Engineering library printers are dead. Does Health Track have one?
TZ: One. It hates everyone equally.
SRM: Save me a seat later?
TZ looked toward the Engineering steps.
SRM had moved away from Shinso and HTN. She leaned against the railing with her phone held close to her chest.
TZ: I can save two.
SRM: Expecting someone else?
His thumb remained above the screen.
Thoon's chat waited beneath hers.
TZ: No.
"Who are you messaging?" JP asked.
TZ locked the phone.
"Transport coordinator."
"Tell them Route Seven has committed treason."
"I will."
TZ placed the phone face down.
He was a reliable person.
That did not mean every answer he gave was reliable.
NS spread his review plan across the stone table.
The wind attempted to remove page seven.
June caught it.
"We should keep the groups," she said. "The argument does not make the structure wrong."
"The structure put you with people who already know the same things," I said.
"It put us with the same error category."
"According to him."
NS looked at me.
"According to the diagnostic."
"You wrote the categories."
"The Sleeping Man approved them."
"You enjoy saying that."
"I enjoy facts that do not change because you dislike me."
The wind lifted the edge of every page at once.
The sky darkened above the campus lake.
No cloud had crossed the sun.
Kitty put her hand over the review plan before it could scatter.
"Can we stop?" she asked. "We have nine days."
"Nine days is enough," NS said.
Cherry laughed from the end of the table.
"For you."
"For all of us if we stop doing this."
"Doing what?"
"Using one another as the reason we are afraid."
The sentence silenced the table.
Even I understood why the Sleeping Man had chosen him.
That made me resent it more.
June gathered the pages and handed them back to NS.
"I'll follow the schedule," she said.
Her phone vibrated before his hand left the papers.
She read the message.
The tension in her face loosened.
She typed beneath the table.
NS put his phone into his pocket without checking it.
Or he had checked it before I looked.
There were too many possible explanations.
I chose the one that hurt.
"Of course you will," I said.
June looked up.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"His plan makes sense. You said so."
"Then why did you make it sound like an accusation?"
"Maybe everything sounds like one now."
"That is not everyone else's fault."
She stood.
In front of the group, she placed my medication-calculation notes beside my lunch.
"You forgot these in the laboratory."
The gesture looked caring.
Her eyes did not.
"I am studying with NC and Anna after lunch," she said. "You should review the errors you made this morning."
"I know what I should do."
"Then do it."
June walked toward the main building.
NC and Anna followed after gathering their bags.
Nobody commented.
JP opened his diary beneath the table.
He wrote one line.
The university divided us by weakness, and we immediately proved we had more than the form allowed.
He looked at the sentence.
Then added:
XH and NS are arguing about study plans because saying jealousy before lunch would be socially aggressive.
He closed the diary before I could ask what he had written.
Kitty found me in Laboratory Two at 1:37.
I had taken an empty corner bench and opened the medication-calculation notes June returned.
The room was not scheduled until four. Covered microscopes stood along the far wall. Sunlight moved weakly through the blinds.
Kitty placed a folder beside me.
"You used the wrong concentration on Question Six," she said.
"Hello to you too."
"Hello. You used the wrong concentration on Question Six."
She showed me her copy of the diagnostic.
Her working filled the margin in small, careful handwriting.
"The prescription gives milligrams," she said. "The stock is milligrams per milliliter. You converted the dose twice."
"I know."
"You found it?"
"The Sleeping Man circled it with enough force to damage the next page."
Kitty sat beside me.
Not across.
Beside.
"I brought practice questions," she said.
"For me?"
"For the empty room. You happen to be inside it."
"Deniable."
"Very."
We worked without speaking for several minutes.
Kitty read the scenarios. I calculated the doses. She checked each answer with a red pen.
The fifth answer was wrong.
The sixth was right.
The seventh depended on whether the examiner expected rounding before or after conversion.
We argued quietly and found that the answer key agreed with neither of us.
"Criminal," I said.
"Cherry was right."
"Do not tell her."
At 1:58, the laboratory lights went out.
The room remained bright from the windows.
Every covered microscope became a dark figure facing the wall.
The ventilation system slowed to silence.
Somewhere in the building, a backup alarm sounded once.
The note was almost the same pitch as an ambulance siren beginning far away.
My hand stopped above the page.
The red mark beside Question Eight lengthened.
For one second, it became light reflected across broken glass.
I blinked.
Only ink remained.
"XH?"
Kitty had put the pen down.
"The power surprised me."
"You stopped breathing."
"People do that when surprised."
"Not for that long."
The lights returned.
The ventilation restarted.
Outside, thunder crossed a clear sky.
Kitty watched my face.
"Your appointment is today."
"Everyone has memorized it."
"Because you keep joking like we will forget."
I looked down at the practice sheet.
"Maybe I want you to."
"I won't."
The words were quiet.
They remained between us after the room became ordinary again.
Kitty moved the folder closer.
Our shoulders touched.
Neither of us moved away.
"Question Nine," she said.
"You skipped something."
"The blackout?"
"The other thing."
Her hand tightened around the red pen.
"We are studying."
"Deniable."
"You said that already."
"Are we pretending the lobby didn't happen?"
Kitty looked toward the laboratory door.
No one stood there.
"Everyone else is," she said.
"June isn't."
"I know."
"Do you regret it?"
The question sounded different when she asked it without wine, rain, or witnesses.
I looked at her.
"I regret what it did."
Kitty's eyes lowered.
"That isn't an answer."
"I know."
"You always know after."
She picked up the pen again.
I touched her wrist before she could mark the page.
Kitty looked at my hand.
I released her.
"Sorry."
"Do not apologize for the smallest part."
She turned to Question Nine.
We studied for another hour.
The intimacy did not disappear.
It became organized.
At 3:02, Kitty closed the folder.
"Same room tomorrow?"
"The official review is at six tonight."
"That wasn't my question."
I understood the shape of my own words when someone else used them.
"Same room," I said.
"One-fifteen."
"Deniable."
Kitty smiled.
"Not anymore."
June stood outside Laboratory Two when we left.
NC and Anna were with her. Their folders were open against the window ledge.
June looked at Kitty's red pen.
Then at the practice sheets in my hand.
"Where were you?" she asked.
"Studying."
"With Kitty?"
"Yes."
NC became extremely interested in a dosage table.
Anna looked as though she wanted to leave but feared movement would become commentary.
June smiled in front of them.
"Good. He needs someone to stop him from converting the same dose twice."
Kitty held her folder against her chest.
"We only reviewed the diagnostic."
"I didn't ask what you reviewed."
The smile remained.
The temperature did not.
June's phone vibrated.
She checked it.
Her reply came immediately.
I watched her thumbs move.
"Your appointment," she said without looking up. "You will be late."
It was 3:16.
"I know."
"Then go."
Kitty stepped toward the stairwell.
"I'll walk with him."
June's fingers stopped above her screen.
For half a second, nobody performed anything.
Then June nodded.
"Make sure he gets there."
It sounded reasonable.
Everything dangerous had learned to sound reasonable.
Student Wellness occupied the third floor of the old administration wing.
Kitty walked beside me until the corridor narrowed near the reception area.
"You don't have to wait," I said.
"I know."
She continued walking.
"You have the six o'clock review."
"So do you."
"NS will begin without me."
"That is one of his talents."
At the final corner, Kitty stopped.
The reception desk was visible twenty meters ahead.
"I should go," she said.
"Because this is where studying becomes difficult to explain?"
"Because you have to enter alone."
That answer removed the joke from me.
Kitty adjusted the strap of her bag.
"You do not have to tell me what you say in there."
"What if I say nothing?"
"Then at least someone will see what that costs you."
The air-conditioning stopped.
Wind struck the sealed corridor windows hard enough to make the glass tremble.
For an instant, Kitty's reflection wore white.
Not her blouse.
Not a laboratory coat.
Something longer.
Formal.
Waiting beneath distant lights.
I turned toward her.
Her clothes were unchanged.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing."
Kitty studied me as though deciding whether to challenge the lie.
The reception door opened before she could.
A woman holding a blue folder looked into the corridor.
"XH?"
My appointment time appeared on the wall clock behind her.
3:30.
Kitty stepped back.
"Go," she said.
I entered.
The door closed between us.