The hospital was seven minutes from Central Precinct when every traffic light was green.
NS's driver made it in five.
JP sat beside me in the back of the sedan with a tissue beneath his nose and the torn front of his Yandong United jersey held together by one hand.
Kitty followed with Mr. Kim, NC, Anna, and Jihye in another car.
The butler sat in front.
He made three calls during the journey. He gave our names, summarized the visible injuries, and corrected the driver when he tried to enter through the hospital's main gate.
"Emergency entrance," he said.
"We are not emergencies," JP said.
The butler looked back at his nose.
"That determination will be made by someone qualified."
"I have passed First Aid."
"Then you should know better than to diagnose yourself."
JP looked at me.
"I understand why NS keeps him."
I watched the city through the window.
Bliss disappeared behind the buildings, but blue light continued flashing against every dark surface.
For a moment, it came from farther away.
A red car rested upside down beyond a bend in the road. Its windshield had become a white web. An ambulance moved behind the trees without getting closer.
Someone was waiting at the entrance of a palace.
I blinked.
The red car became a closed pharmacy.
The ambulance became our reflection beneath a blue traffic signal.
"XH?"
JP was watching me.
"What?"
"We arrived."
The sedan had already stopped.
I did not remember entering the hospital driveway.
The emergency entrance belonged to the same private hospital where June remained under observation.
I learned that from the directory.
I learned it again from NS.
He stood beside the registration desk in the clothes he had worn at Bliss. The collar I had pulled was folded incorrectly. A faint bruise had begun forming beneath one side of it.
Cherry slept in a chair near the elevators.
Bunny and TZ were returning from the vending area with water, a charger, and a bag containing June's shoes.
Nobody from either group knew where to look first.
NS looked at my face.
Then at my right hand.
"You cannot close it," he said.
It was not a question.
"Your employee reports too much."
"My employee follows instructions."
"Tell him I said thank you."
The butler stood less than a meter away.
"He can hear you," NS said.
JP stepped between us without making it look like he had stepped between us.
"Good morning. United won two-one. Several of us have been arrested. I believe that completes the sports report."
Bunny stared at his jersey.
"You fought people dressed like that?"
"They were Royal Capital supporters."
"You were all inside a nightclub."
"Football does not observe walls."
TZ handed him one of the water bottles.
"Your nose is still bleeding."
"Victory has a price."
"Hold pressure and stop talking."
JP obeyed because TZ had found the only impossible combination of words.
NS's eyes returned to me.
"June is awake."
"Can I see her?"
"Ask June."
Before I could answer, a triage nurse called my name.
Kitty entered through the emergency doors with the others.
She heard the question.
She also heard the answer.
"Get your hand examined first," she said.
Her voice was calm.
That made refusing impossible.
JP required no stitches.
His nose was not broken, his ribs were bruised, and his left forearm carried the shape of someone's shoe.
"Medical conclusion," he announced when he returned from imaging. "I remain handsome."
Anna held out a clean shirt from the hospital gift shop.
"Medical conclusion. You cannot go home wearing evidence."
JP accepted the shirt.
"This jersey witnessed history."
"It also has someone else's blood on it. Put it in the bag."
He did.
My examination took longer.
The physician removed the temporary wrap and studied the swelling across the outside of my right hand.
"Tell me what happened."
"I hit someone."
"Once?"
"No."
"Any loss of consciousness?"
"No."
Kitty sat beside the wall.
The physician looked from me to her.
"Any period he cannot account for?"
"In the car," Kitty said. "Maybe a few seconds. He has had other episodes."
"I knew where I was."
She did not look at me.
"He told me he saw another person's face during the fight."
The physician placed his pen down.
The questions changed after that.
Head injury.
Alcohol intake.
Medication.
Sleep.
Previous loss of awareness.
Headache, weakness, numbness, vision change, seizure history.
I answered until every answer became another reason not to leave.
"The hand needs an X-ray," he said. "The episodes need neurological assessment. Visual misidentification during an emotionally charged event could have several explanations, but guessing is not an evaluation. You should not drive until you are assessed and cleared."
"I have not been driving."
Kitty finally looked at me.
"He ran through four stations of traffic instead."
"That is not medically safer," the physician said.
"I know that now."
"You knew it then," Kitty replied.
The physician ordered imaging and a neurological screening.
He did not allow me to edit the story into something smaller.
The X-ray room was cold enough to sober whatever remained of the night.
The technologist positioned my hand against the detector.
"Do not move."
The machine clicked.
For one breath, the ceiling was beneath me.
Glass pressed against the side of my face.
My right arm would not move.
Somewhere beyond the broken door, sirens crossed the darkness.
I needed to reach the palace before someone stopped waiting.
"XH."
The technologist stood beside the table.
My hand had lifted from the detector.
"Did that hurt?"
"No."
"Then why did you move?"
I looked at the intact ceiling above us.
"I thought I heard an ambulance."
She listened.
The corridor was quiet.
"There is no siren."
"I know."
The second image showed a small nondisplaced fracture near the neck of the fifth metacarpal.
The physician called it stable.
Kitty called it deserved.
They placed my hand in an ulnar-gutter splint, repeated the instructions twice, and arranged follow-up with orthopedics.
No fighting.
No lifting.
No driving.
Return immediately for worsening pain, numbness, weakness, severe headache, confusion, fainting, or another prolonged episode.
"How long?" I asked.
"The hand decides that," the physician said. "Not your pride."
Kitty thanked him with more sincerity than I did.
June learned we were in the same building when Bunny returned with the water.
"XH broke his hand," Bunny said.
NS looked up from his phone.
"Fractured."
"That is what broken means."
"There are degrees."
"You are correcting language at five in the morning."
"It is nearly six."
June pushed herself higher against the pillow.
Her thoughts had stopped drifting, but every movement still required negotiation.
"How did it happen?"
No one answered immediately.
Cherry woke in the chair.
TZ placed June's shoes beneath the bed.
Bunny looked at NS.
"There was a fight after you left."
"With KM," Cherry added. "And the football people."
"Why was XH fighting KM?"
NS knew the shortest answer.
He did not use it.
"KM grabbed Kitty after she refused him. JP intervened. XH escalated it."
June watched him.
"Escalated how?"
NS turned his phone toward her.
He had paused the video before the uppercut.
June pressed play.
The bouncer approached from behind.
XH turned.
One punch dropped him.
The camera swung toward the crowd and returned to XH over KM, striking until Kitty wrapped both arms around him.
June stopped the video herself.
"He came because of me."
"He fought because of himself," NS said.
"You fought outside."
"We did not."
"You were going to."
NS did not deny it.
June touched the place on his collar where the fabric folded badly.
Her fingers remained there.
"Did he do that?"
"It is a shirt."
"That was not my question."
"Yes."
She lowered her hand.
"I want to see him."
NS's face gave nothing away.
"Then see him."
At 6:07, my phone recovered enough signal to ruin the morning.
Two hundred notifications had become eight hundred.
The first viral video showed the football goal, the crowd surge, and JP being pulled into a group of Royal Capital supporters. Its caption called the incident a planned attack by sore losers.
The second began with KM already bleeding beneath me.
The third showed the bouncer falling.
That one had the clearest image of my face.
Someone identified my university within nine minutes.
Someone else posted my full name four minutes later.
By 6:12, the words UTOPIA HEALTH STUDENT appeared above the video.
By 6:15, a slowed version repeated the uppercut three times.
The clip showing KM's hand around Kitty's wrist remained beneath ten thousand views.
The clip showing my punch passed half a million.
A news alert appeared above the videos.
CENTRAL PRECINCT: MULTIPLE DETENTIONS FOLLOW DISTURBANCE LINKED TO FOOTBALL SUPPORTERS AT BLISS
The preliminary statement listed damaged property, injured venue staff, and a disorder involving rival supporters.
It mentioned one student transported for "unrelated medical distress."
It did not mention a sealed glass.
It did not mention suspected tampering.
It did not mention VT.
NC read the statement twice.
"Unrelated?"
"They opened two files," Kitty said.
"The second file began before the fight. How did they already decide it was unrelated?"
Jihye captured the page and added the publication time to her notes.
"They did not decide," she said. "They selected what they were willing to announce."
JP leaned over her shoulder.
"Could we ask them to announce that United won?"
Nobody answered.
He lowered his voice.
"I was trying to stop the room from becoming terrifying."
"It became terrifying before sunrise," Anna said.
Jihye stood beside me in the waiting area and saved every original file she could find.
"Do not comment," she said.
"Mr. Kim already told me."
"I am telling your thumb."
My left thumb hovered above the reply field.
I closed the application.
NC searched for footage of the upper table.
One account had posted a seven-second video of VT offering June a drink.
The video disappeared while she was saving it.
"Deleted," NC said.
"By the platform?" Anna asked.
"By the account."
Jihye wrote down the username and time.
"Can it be recovered?"
"Maybe from the venue copy."
The venue had evidence.
The internet had a villain.
They were not the same thing.
June entered the waiting area in a wheelchair.
Cherry pushed from behind. Bunny and TZ walked beside her.
NS carried her discharge folder.
The two groups formed without anyone asking them to.
NC, Anna, Jihye, JP, and Kitty remained near me.
Bunny, Cherry, and TZ remained near June and NS.
Only Mr. Kim stood in the middle.
June looked tired, pale, and fully awake.
I stood too quickly.
The waiting area moved half a step to the left.
Kitty caught my uninjured arm.
NS noticed.
June noticed him noticing.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"The doctor says I am stable."
"Did they find what it was?"
"Not yet."
"I can stay until they do."
"They discharged her with observation instructions," NS said.
I looked at him.
"I asked June."
"And I am answering," June said.
The words stopped both of us.
She held NS's sleeve near his wrist.
Not dramatically.
Not accidentally.
"NS is taking me home," she said.
Kitty's hand remained around my arm.
I looked at June.
"I came as soon as PL called."
"I know."
"I ran from four stations away."
"I know that too."
"Then why are you looking at me like I did something to you?"
June's eyes moved to the splint.
"Because you keep turning care into damage and expecting the care to be the only part I remember."
Nobody moved.
The sentence did not sound like something created that morning.
It had been waiting longer.
"I did not fight KM for you," I said.
"That does not make it better."
"I know."
"Do you?"
For the third time that morning, someone asked me the same question.
I had no new answer.
June's expression softened by a degree.
"Thank you for coming," she said. "But do not use what happened to me as another reason to hate him."
She did not have to say NS's name.
"He is not the one I hurt."
"Not tonight."
NS looked away first.
That was the only mercy either of them offered.
Mr. Kim's phone rang before the hospital doors opened.
He listened without interrupting.
"Send the notice in writing," he said. "I will make sure both students receive it."
He ended the call.
JP removed the tissue from his nose.
"How ruined are we?"
"The university has scheduled an emergency conduct meeting for Monday morning. Until the review, you and XH are prohibited from representing the university at events or entering student entertainment functions. You are not suspended from class."
"So we can still attend Emergency Medicine?"
"You will attend Emergency Medicine."
"After an emergency?"
"Consider it revision."
JP put the tissue back.
Mr. Kim looked at me.
"The conduct office has already received the bouncer video."
"Of course."
"They have not received the complete venue footage. Jihye, preserve what you collected. NC, keep the original messages. Nobody edits, crops, or adds captions."
"What about the drink investigation?" PL asked from behind us.
She had entered unnoticed.
Her black dress was hidden beneath a borrowed hospital coat. The temporary military medical school card remained clipped inside her bag.
"The officer told me they would follow the evidence," she said. "Now he will not answer."
Her phone lit in her hand.
VT: COME HOME. YOU HAVE DONE ENOUGH.
PL turned the screen facedown before anyone else could read it.
"I am not going with him," she said.
No one asked which him she meant.
Outside, morning had arrived without sunlight.
Clouds covered Yandong in one unbroken layer. Thunder moved somewhere above the hospital, but no rain fell and the flags near the entrance remained still.
NS helped June into the passenger seat of his black-and-gold Ferrari.
She did not release his sleeve until she was seated.
Cherry and Bunny entered the second car with TZ.
Before NS closed June's door, he looked across the driveway at me.
My right hand rested inside the splint.
His bruise rested beneath the collar I had damaged.
Neither of us apologized.
My phone vibrated.
The message came from him.
NS: RIGHT HAND?
I looked at him across the driveway.
XH: SMALL FRACTURE.
NS: THEN YOU HAVE ONE ARM.
He was repeating something I had not heard him say at the hospital.
XH: STILL ENOUGH.
NS read it.
His reply arrived as he closed June's door.
NS: I KNOW.
It was not friendship.
It was not a threat.
The problem was that it contained enough of both.
Kitty entered the sedan beside me.
She waited until the other cars left before speaking.
"Do not ask me to become proof that you do not care about June."
"I did not ask you that."
"Not out loud."
I looked through the window.
June's car turned beyond the hospital gate.
"Are you going to leave?" I asked.
Kitty looked at the splint, the cut beneath my eye, and the phone still open to NS's message.
"I am going to make sure you attend the neurological appointment."
"That is not what I meant."
"I know."
She took my left hand.
Her answer remained incomplete.
That was more than I deserved.
My phone vibrated again.
Grandmother had called during the police interview.
One voicemail waited.
Her voice sounded smaller than it had on Sunday.
"I put food aside. Come when you are free. Do not worry about the appointment. It is only another test."
She coughed before ending the recording.
I pressed call.
It rang until voicemail.
I told myself she was sleeping.
I told myself there would be time after Monday.
At 7:03, the video of my uppercut crossed one million views.
The city had spent less than three hours deciding what happened at Bliss.
It chose the football shirts.
It chose the broken furniture.
It chose my face.
By sunrise, everyone had found someone they were allowed to blame.