Saturday morning began with thirty-nine seconds of darkness.
The ceiling fan stopped above me. My laptop screen became the only light in the room, and the rain against the window sounded louder without the fan's weak mechanical breath. I waited for the backup generator to wake.
It did not.
I had already answered twenty-six questions from a forty-question UWorld block. The timer kept moving on battery power.
The twenty-seventh question described a young man with chest trauma, low blood pressure, distended neck veins, and muffled heart sounds. Three weeks ago, I would have recognized cardiac tamponade before reaching the end of the stem. That morning, I read the same four lines twice and saw JP falling backward beneath KM's last punch.
I closed my eyes.
Not the ring. A question.
Not JP. A patient.
I chose pericardiocentesis and moved on.
By the time the electricity returned, I had finished with twenty-eight correct answers out of forty.
Seventy percent.
It was not brilliant. It was not failure either.
I wrote every mistake inside my handwritten notebook under the same heading I had used all week.
WHY I GOT IT WRONG
Question 8: knew the mechanism, changed the answer because I panicked.
Question 19: confused association with cause.
Question 34: stopped reading when one word reminded me of the fight.
I underlined the last sentence twice.
My self-made Anki deck waited beside the notebook. First Aid lay open beneath it, its margins crowded with arrows and abbreviations that only made sense to me. Dr. Najeeb's lecture on autonomic pharmacology was paused at one hour and forty-eight minutes. A Goljan audio file waited in another tab, ready to turn pathology into a conversation I could follow instead of a wall I had to climb.
The room continued without me, but for three hours that morning, I managed to continue too.
Then my mandatory counselor called.
"Seventy percent is good," she said after I told her.
"It is acceptable."
"You are allowed to call something good."
"That sounds academically dangerous."
She did not laugh. I had started to respect that about her.
The counseling appointment happened through video because transportation workers had reduced weekend services again. Her office appeared behind her, empty except for one dying plant and a framed certificate that tilted slightly to the left.
"Studying is giving you structure," she said. "What happens when the structure ends?"
"I make another schedule."
"That was not my question."
I knew.
She folded her hands on her desk.
"What will you do the next time someone says something cruel about JP? Or June? Or Kitty? What will you do when you feel anger before you have time to turn it into a study plan?"
"Walk away."
"Have you practiced walking away?"
"I have been suspended inside one room. I have practiced staying still."
"Those are different skills."
The rain thickened behind me. Thunder arrived several seconds later, low enough to shake the water inside my glass.
"Name three people you can call before you act," she said.
"Mr. Kim."
"One."
"Kitty."
"Two."
I looked at NS's name in my recent messages.
"I am still deciding the third."
"Then decide before anger decides for you."
She gave me an exercise that sounded insulting because it was simple. Stop. Place both feet on the floor. Say aloud what consequence would exist tomorrow if I acted today. Call one of the three people. Leave the location.
I wrote it beneath my incorrect answers.
It looked childish beside cardiac pathology.
That did not make it wrong.
JP's mother allowed us four minutes.
"Four rounds, four minutes," JP whispered when his face appeared on Kitty's tablet that afternoon. "I am becoming consistent."
His voice was rough. A pale dressing crossed one side of his forehead, and the hospital pillow seemed too large beneath his head. His little sister held the phone while his mother remained somewhere beyond the camera.
We had gathered in an unused discussion room because it had the best signal during the rolling blackouts. Kitty sat nearest the screen. June and NS stood behind her. NC, Anna, Jihye, Bunny, Cherry, and TZ crowded around the table. Mr. Kim watched from the doorway as if he had entered accidentally and then forgotten to leave.
"You look terrible," Bunny said.
"Thank you. I trained four rounds for this face."
Cherry covered her mouth, laughing and crying at the same time.
JP moved his eyes slowly across the screen.
"Where is Thoon?"
Nobody answered quickly enough.
His smile remained, but something behind it lowered its head.
"Ah," he said. "Consistent again."
TZ leaned closer to the tablet.
"Forget her for now. Get better first."
"Easy for you to say. Your face is still symmetrical."
"It was never symmetrical," NC said.
For a few seconds, JP sounded like himself. It was almost cruel how much hope four bad jokes could produce.
Then he asked to speak to me.
The others moved away from the tablet without leaving the room.
I sat in Kitty's chair.
"I am sorry," I said.
"Bad opening. Try a joke."
"Your face is still better than TZ's."
"Weak, but medically accurate."
His eyelids lowered, then lifted again with effort.
"I should have thrown the towel earlier," I said.
"I shook my head."
"You should not have."
"You listened to me. That was your mistake."
"I was your corner. I was supposed to know when you could not make that choice anymore."
JP stopped smiling.
"Then learn it," he said. "Do not turn it into another fight."
The room became very still.
"KM is showing everyone that video," JP continued. "My sister found it before my mother did. He wants you angry. Do not give him another hospital bed to point at."
"You are asking me to ignore what he did to you."
"No. I am asking you to remember what happened to me."
His mother spoke beyond the camera. One minute.
JP looked toward the voice and then back at me.
"Promise me."
My mouth opened.
The call froze.
For three seconds, JP became a collection of blurred squares. Then the hospital connection dropped.
His unanswered request remained on the black screen.
Mr. Kim asked me to walk with him before I returned to the dormitory.
Campus 2 looked abandoned beneath the afternoon rain. Water ran along both sides of the covered path, but the campus lake below us had withdrawn from its stone boundary. A dark line marked where the surface should have been. The grand fountain stood dry with rainwater collecting inside its empty basin.
"The weather office says the reservoirs should be recovering," Mr. Kim said.
"They are not."
"No."
Two foreign men in dark raincoats stood beyond the lakeside fence with a university maintenance officer. One carried a silver instrument case. The other photographed the exposed mud near a drainage pipe. When they noticed us, the maintenance officer moved between the camera and the lake.
Mr. Kim watched them for a moment, then continued walking.
"I received an informal indication from the panel," he said.
I stopped.
"What indication?"
"It is not a decision. Do not repeat it as one."
"I will not."
"The preliminary recommendation favors retention."
For a moment, the rain stopped making sound.
"Retention?"
"Strict conduct probation. Mandatory counseling. Supervised return to practical work. Temporary loss of extracurricular privileges. A written rehabilitation agreement. There may be other conditions."
"But not expulsion."
"The panel's recommendation may not be expulsion. The Acting Rector can approve it, modify it, or return it. Until the signed decision reaches you, nothing is guaranteed."
I started walking again because standing still made the possibility feel too fragile.
"Why are you telling me?"
"Because I would like you to behave like a student who may still have a future here."
My phone vibrated inside my pocket.
"And because," Mr. Kim added, "someone will probably try to convince you that you do not."
The anonymous post had already crossed three student groups.
It contained no synthetic video this time. Jihye's forensic report had made that weapon less useful. Instead, the account arranged six real photographs beside one another and allowed the caption to manufacture the lie.
June leaving the clinic after the nightclub.
NS holding an umbrella above her.
Kitty entering my dormitory with a lunchbox.
Me outside the disciplinary chamber.
June carrying a paper bag through the rain.
NS standing beside her beneath the covered walkway.
The caption read:
MED TRACK'S REAL SCANDAL: XH MADE JUNE PREGNANT, REFUSED RESPONSIBILITY, HID BEHIND KITTY, THEN LET NS BECOME THE FALL GUY. NOW THE TWO GIRLS ARE FIGHTING WHILE HE PLAYS THE VICTIM.
My first impulse was not to believe it.
My second was to find the person who had written it.
My third came from the counselor's notebook.
I stopped.
I placed both feet on the wet pavement.
"What consequence exists tomorrow?" I said aloud.
Mr. Kim looked at me.
"Expulsion," I answered myself.
"Good."
I sent screenshots to Jihye and the disciplinary office. Then I called Kitty.
Two of three.
She answered on the first ring.
"Do not go anywhere," she said.
"Hello to you too."
"I am serious. June has seen it. NS has seen it. Everyone has seen it."
"Is June all right?"
There was a small pause.
"She is furious," Kitty said. "That is different from not being all right."
June posted her response before I reached the dormitory.
I am not pregnant. XH did not abandon me, and NS is not covering for him. Stop using my body to punish men you dislike. Every claim in this post is false.
Kitty added her own response beneath it.
There is no fight between June and me for anybody's entertainment. Report the account. Do not share it.
Their words were clear, adult, and final.
The replies beneath them were none of those things.
By evening, the city had lost power again.
The pilot strike had grounded most international departures. News channels showed stranded passengers sleeping beside their luggage at Yandong International Airport. Several embassies advised nonessential staff to reduce movement until transportation resumed. Electric workers had joined the wider stoppage, and entire districts rotated through darkness while negotiations failed.
Inside my room, Kitty lit two candles and placed them far from the notes.
"If you burn First Aid," she said, "the university may expel you for a different reason."
"At least that hearing would be shorter."
She sat on the floor beside my bed. NS remained near the window with his phone against his ear.
It was the first time he had entered my room since the fight.
"NC and Anna are with June," Kitty said. "Cherry and Bunny are reporting every repost. Jihye is tracing the first upload she can find. TZ is at the hospital."
"And you two were assigned to guard me?"
"Nobody assigned us," NS said.
"That is somehow worse."
Kitty and NS exchanged the same exhausted look. It was not affection. Not yet. It was the recognition of two people who had spent too long protecting the same difficult person from himself.
NS ended his call.
"My father's legal team can send preservation notices to the larger accounts. June agreed."
"Your father is helping me now?"
"Do not become emotional. He is helping me. Your benefit is an unfortunate side effect."
I almost smiled.
Then a live notification filled all three screens.
KM stood beneath the bright entrance of the Engineering boys' dormitory. Four men waited behind him, the same four from his earlier challenge. Students moved through the background, pretending not to watch.
"Maybe the future doctor wants to explain something," KM said into the camera. "Did he make June pregnant and run to Kitty? Did he let his rich friend handle the problem? Or is Med Track dignity only something JP talks about before somebody puts him to sleep?"
Kitty took my phone from my hand.
"No."
"Give it back."
"No."
KM laughed on NS's screen.
"JP lasted four rounds because I allowed it. XH will not last one hallway."
My chair moved backward.
NS stepped in front of the door.
"This is the test," he said.
"Move."
"The panel is recommending retention. VT knows it. That is why this appeared today."
"KM said her name."
"June already answered him. Kitty answered him. They do not need you to answer with your fists."
The sentence struck harder because it was true.
I looked at the notebook beside my laptop.
Stop.
Name the consequence.
Call someone.
Leave the location.
I sat down.
NS watched me for another minute before moving away from the door.
"Good," Kitty whispered.
For almost two hours, I believed her.
At 10:17 p.m., Kitty returned to her dormitory. NS left for the hospital to relieve TZ. Mr. Kim called once to check whether I had stayed inside.
"I am studying," I told him.
It was true when I said it.
At 10:31, the anonymous account sent me a private video.
KM stood beside a printed photograph of JP's unconscious body in the Engineering boys' dormitory lobby.
He taped it to the wall beside the residents' noticeboard.
"Your boy asked you not to come, didn't he?" KM said. "That is why he lost. Med Track boys beg before they fight, and hide after their girls get pregnant."
A location pin followed.
ENGINEERING BOYS' DORM. SIDE ENTRANCE. NO CAMERAS DURING THE BLACKOUT.
Then one final message appeared.
Unless the king needs his kingslayer to protect him again.
I placed both feet on the floor.
"What consequence exists tomorrow?" I asked the empty room.
The answer was still expulsion.
I opened Mr. Kim's contact.
I did not press call.
JP had asked me to remember what happened to him.
I remembered every second.
I remembered his head striking the canvas. I remembered KM standing over him. I remembered JP's mother asking what kind of friend watched until the choice disappeared. I remembered the photograph taped to the wall.
The counselor had taught me how to interrupt anger.
Nobody had taught me what to do when anger waited quietly for two hours and returned wearing the clothes of loyalty.
I closed First Aid.
The Engineering boys' dormitory stood beyond the dark campus lake.
Rain crossed the grounds in silver sheets whenever lightning opened the sky. The water level below the bridge looked lower than it had that afternoon. Somewhere beyond the boundary wall, machines produced a steady vibration too deep to be thunder.
My student card failed at the main entrance. Med Track access did not include the Engineering dormitory after visiting hours.
The location pin led me around the building to a narrow side entrance where the fire door had been propped open with a broken fire extinguisher case.
Mr. Kim called while I stood outside.
The screen lit my hand.
I let it stop.
Inside, emergency lights painted the lobby red.
One step.
Then another.
The door closed behind me.
KM waited at the far end of the dormitory lobby with four men spread around him. Two blocked the staircase. One leaned beside the silent vending machines, and the last stood near the reception desk. KM's phone rested against a trophy cabinet, already broadcasting. JP's photograph remained taped beside the residents' noticeboard.
KM looked at the clock above the dark reception desk.
"I thought doctors hated being late."
I took off my wet jacket and placed it on the floor.
"We are not doctors yet."
The five of them began to move.