Kitty reached my door eleven minutes after her message.
She knocked once, waited for half a second, and knocked again as if the second attempt carried legal authority.
"I know you're inside."
I remained on the edge of the bed.
"The door isn't locked."
"Then say come in."
"Why?"
"Because I am trying to respect your privacy."
I looked toward the bathroom. Water still covered part of the tile. The towel I had used lay twisted beside the sink, and my wet shirt hung from the shower pipe.
"Give me a minute."
"You have ten seconds."
"That is not a minute."
"You have developed a bad relationship with ten seconds."
I almost told her it was not funny.
Then I heard the tremor beneath her voice.
I stood, pulled a clean shirt over my bruised ribs, and opened the door.
Kitty carried my pathology notebook beneath one arm. A lunchbox was balanced above two printed slide packets. Her backpack hung from the opposite shoulder, and a charging cable trailed from one pocket.
She examined my face.
I examined the lunchbox.
"You brought an invasion."
"You look terrible."
"The physician said I look medically acceptable."
"The physician did not say that."
"You were there."
"Exactly. Move."
She entered without waiting for the invitation she had demanded.
The room was hot from the power cut. Kitty placed the food and papers on my desk, opened the window another few inches, then unplugged my dead lamp as if it had personally wasted electricity.
My pathology notebook rested on top of her notes.
She had added colored tabs to the pages I had missed.
"You were gone for less than two hours," I said.
"And you missed twenty-eight slides, one lecturer complaint, and TZ misunderstanding chemotaxis."
"How badly?"
"He said neutrophils follow chemicals because they are easily influenced."
"That is not completely wrong."
"Mr. Kim said the same thing, which encouraged him."
The ordinary conversation entered the room carefully.
For a moment, I allowed it to stay.
Kitty opened the lunchbox. Rice occupied one side. Fried egg, vegetables, and chicken occupied the other. Everything had been separated with more care than anybody used for cafeteria food.
"Did you make this?"
"I assembled it."
"That means no."
"I supervised the cafeteria auntie with great emotional commitment."
"You pointed at things."
"Eat."
The smell reached me before hunger did. My stomach turned from the concussion and the hospital medication.
I closed the lid.
Kitty reopened it.
"I am not hungry."
"That is unfortunate."
"Kitty."
"The discharge sheet says food before the pain medicine."
"The discharge sheet belongs to me."
"You left it in the plastic hospital bag. I read it while you argued with a card reader."
She placed the spoon in my hand.
I held it without eating.
"You don't have to stay."
"I know."
"You have clinical skills after lunch."
"I know."
"Then go prepare."
"I already prepared."
"Stop behaving like I am dying."
The room became silent.
Kitty's eyes changed first.
She did not look offended. She looked frightened.
My grip tightened around the spoon.
"That came out wrong."
"Yes."
"I meant I am not helpless."
"I know."
"Then stop watching me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I might disappear if you look away."
She lowered her gaze to the bruises across my hand.
"You did disappear," she said. "Inside that cage, you disappeared while I was looking directly at you."
I had no answer that could make the sentence smaller.
Kitty pulled the desk chair beside the bed and sat.
"Eat three bites," she said. "After that, you can continue pretending you are in control."
I ate four because giving her exactly three felt like surrender.
She said nothing about the fourth.
The notes were better than mine.
Kitty had copied the lecturer's explanations beside each slide, marked the likely quiz points, and placed a question mark beside anything she wanted to verify. She had even drawn a small angry face near the section on chronic inflammation.
"Why is the macrophage angry?"
"That is Mr. Kim when Bunny asked whether emotional damage counts as chronic inflammation."
"What did he say?"
"He said only if JP continues writing poetry."
The joke ended when both of us remembered where JP was.
I turned the page.
"Any update?"
"Stable. Still unconscious. The ICU is limiting calls. His mother and sister were reached this morning, but they have not arrived yet."
"Did they know he entered the tournament?"
Kitty hesitated.
"I don't think so."
The words entered a place already crowded with blame.
JP had joked about hiding the fight from his mother. We had laughed because JP hid everything from her until it became impossible to hide. Bad grades. Broken phones. A week when he lived on instant noodles because he had spent his allowance on football tickets.
This time, the thing he had hidden was breathing through a machine three floors above us.
"I should go to the hospital."
"Not today."
"I need to be there when they arrive."
"Mr. Kim said the family needs space first."
"His mother is going to ask why nobody stopped him."
"Then we tell her the truth."
"Which truth?"
Kitty looked at me.
"All of it."
I turned another page even though I had not finished reading the first.
"That answer will not help me."
"It is not supposed to help you. It is supposed to be true."
Rainwater moved down the window in crooked lines. Somewhere beyond the dormitory, a generator shut off and the air conditioners tried to restart. Mine clicked twice but produced no air.
Kitty used one of the printed packets as a fan.
"Mr. Kim spoke to Student Affairs," she said.
"About what?"
"The lectures."
I stopped turning pages.
"He received temporary permission for you to observe remotely while the panel reviews whether observation counts as participation."
"That sentence sounds like Utopia."
"There are conditions. The camera can show only the lecturer and slides. No student faces. No patient material. You cannot answer attendance questions, submit work, enter a lab, or receive credit until the panel decides."
"So I can watch everyone earn the credits I am losing."
"You can keep up."
"Unofficially."
"Yes."
"From a room I am not allowed to leave for class."
"Yes."
"And if they expel me, none of it matters."
Kitty placed the packet on the desk.
"If they let you return and you stopped studying, that will matter."
"You already decided they are letting me return."
"No. I decided they do not get to make you quit before they make their decision."
Her voice was calm, which made it harder to fight.
She opened her laptop and turned it toward me. Mr. Kim had sent a link for the afternoon emergency-medicine lecture. Beneath it was a list of rules long enough to make education feel illegal.
I read every one.
"You asked him before I was discharged?"
"During the pathology lecture."
"You should have listened to the class."
"I did both."
"Why?"
Kitty leaned back.
"Because you would have done it for me."
I thought of the arcade, the slap, the secret dates, and all the ways we had hurt one another while insisting we were protecting something.
"You don't know that."
"I know you. That is more inconvenient."
NC arrived at twelve with Anna and Jihye behind her.
"We agreed not to come all at once," Kitty said.
"Three is not all," NC replied. "It is a committee."
Anna carried a power bank large enough to operate medical equipment. Jihye brought a flash drive containing the slides the portal had locked, along with a written list of which files Student Affairs had approved for me to view.
"I checked the metadata," she said. "Nothing patient-related. Nothing confidential. If they complain, they will have to invent a new rule."
"They are good at that," I said.
NC placed a folder beside Kitty's notes.
"Statements."
I did not touch it.
"Whose?"
"Mine, Anna's, and Jihye's. Only what we personally saw. Jihye has the original event footage from her camera. The timestamps prove some clips circulating online were cut."
"The disciplinary office has not requested your statements yet."
"It will."
"You don't need to defend me."
Anna looked around the room as if searching for the correct response.
"We are not saying you did nothing wrong."
"That is a terrible beginning," NC told her.
"It is an honest beginning," Anna replied. She faced me again. "You did a lot wrong. NS did too. VT created that event, changed the rules, broadcast private lies, and encouraged everyone to treat you like animals. The university cannot put all of that into one file with your name on it."
Jihye nodded.
"The deepfake files have compression artifacts and inconsistent audio room tones. I can demonstrate that."
"Would the panel understand any of it?"
"I will make them understand."
She said it with enough certainty that I believed the panel should be afraid of her.
My phone vibrated beside the folder.
The message came from NS.
NS: DID THE DOCTOR DISCHARGE YOU?
Nobody asked who had written it. Kitty saw the name before the screen dimmed.
I typed one word.
XH: YES.
The typing symbol appeared, vanished, then returned.
NS: GOOD.
That was all.
In Year 1, NS would have insulted my defense, sent a private physician, and demanded a rematch in the same message.
Now he sent one word from the other side of everything between us.
I placed the phone facedown.
NC looked at the folder rather than me.
"Mr. Kim said nobody should pressure you today," she said. "So we are leaving this here without pressuring you."
"You formed a committee in my room."
"A quiet committee."
"Anna brought a generator."
"Power bank," Anna corrected.
"Jihye brought forensic evidence."
"Organized forensic evidence," Jihye said.
Kitty folded her arms.
"They are bad at quiet."
For the first time that morning, the laugh escaped before I could stop it.
It hurt my ribs.
I held my side and laughed once more anyway.
The afternoon lecture began at one.
Kitty returned to the Medical Sciences Building while I stayed at the desk. She positioned her phone beside the lecturer's tablet, aimed carefully away from the students, and tested the sound through her earphones.
The image reached me with a five-second delay.
The lecturer's shoulder occupied half the screen. The emergency airway slide occupied the rest.
"Can you see?" Kitty whispered.
"Mostly your professor's sleeve."
The screen shifted.
"Better?"
"Now I can see his entire elbow."
Someone near her tried not to laugh.
The lecturer looked toward the phone.
"If our suspended observer has finished reviewing my anatomy, we will begin."
The class laughed softly.
I looked away from the screen until the sound ended.
Then the first slide appeared.
INITIAL ASSESSMENT OF THE UNRESPONSIVE PATIENT
For one second, I saw JP beneath the cage lights.
Then I saw NS beneath my arm.
My fingers stopped above the notebook.
The lecturer discussed scene safety, responsiveness, airway, breathing, and circulation. I copied each point. The handwriting leaned badly because of the injured wrist, but the words remained readable.
When the screen froze during another electrical interruption, I continued writing from memory.
The room was not the classroom.
The lecture still reached it.
That had to be enough for one day.
By evening, everyone had returned to their own obligations.
Kitty left after placing the remaining food in my small refrigerator and making me promise to take the next dose of pain medicine. NC's committee went to the library. Bunny and Cherry sent separate voice messages because their lab had ended late. TZ remained at the hospital with NS and promised to visit after the doctors allowed him to leave.
At 6:54, the dormitory power failed again.
The hallway emergency lights turned red. Students opened their doors and complained into the heat. Someone climbed toward the upper floor searching for a signal.
I stepped into the corridor with my phone raised above my head.
Two first-year boys stood beside the stairwell. A girl wearing a foundation-year lanyard was arguing with them.
"It is a woman," she said. "My roommate saw her hair from the courtyard."
"Your roommate said it was raining," one boy replied. "She saw a plastic sheet."
"Then why did the sheet move against the wind?"
The second boy noticed me.
"Senior, is the Campus 2 rooftop door still open?"
"Why?"
"The seven o'clock ghost."
The girl rolled her eyes.
"Nobody knows if it is a ghost. Some people say it is a student waiting for somebody."
"A male student," the first boy said. "There was blood on his collar."
"You said it was a woman yesterday."
"Different witness."
The stories changed depending on who told them. A woman with long hair. A man in a damaged uniform. A faceless student standing beside the rooftop fence. Some said the figure waved. Others said it only appeared in the reflection of the locked door.
"It is a Campus 2 rumor," I said. "Every campus invents one."
"So the door is open?" the boy asked.
My phone screen brightened as the signal returned.
6:58 PM.
Something dropped through my chest.
The hallway narrowed. The red emergency light reflected across the phone until the numbers looked wet.
Six.
Fifty-eight.
I had seen the time before. Thousands of times. It was only two numbers separated by a colon.
My body did not believe me.
"Senior?"
I locked the screen.
"Don't go up there."
The first-year girl smiled.
"You said it was only a rumor."
"It is."
"Then come with us."
"No."
The answer left too quickly.
All three watched me.
I adjusted the bandage around my wrist and forced my voice to become ordinary.
"I have a concussion. I am not climbing stairs to help first-years chase a plastic sheet."
"We can record it for you," one boy offered.
"Don't. Security will suspend you too."
I returned to my room and shut the door.
The clock changed to 6:59.
My pulse did not.
Somewhere above me, a rooftop door opened.