Five men could not move together through the space between the reception desk and the first sofa.
That was the only reason the first ten seconds did not end the fight.
The man nearest the vending machines reached me first. He threw a wide right hand, more anger than technique. I stepped inside it and drove my forehead beneath his chin. His teeth snapped together. Before I could follow, the second man caught both arms around my waist and carried me backward.
My lower back struck the edge of a sofa.
Pain climbed through the ribs NS had damaged in the tournament. My breath disappeared, and a fist landed against the side of my head while I was still trying to find it.
The red lobby tilted.
Someone laughed near the stairs.
I planted one foot against the floor, turned my hips, and drove my elbow backward. It struck the man holding me somewhere below his cheek. His grip loosened. I tore one arm free, caught the back of his neck, and pulled him into my rising knee.
He folded against the sofa.
The first man recovered and rushed again. His shoes were wet from the rain. Mine were too.
We collided, slipped, and crashed into the low table between the sofas. The table broke beneath one corner. My right palm scraped across the tile, but I came up first. I hit him once behind the ear and shoved him into the dead vending machine.
The metal shook hard enough to release a bottle of water.
It rolled slowly across the lobby while the other three closed around me.
KM remained near the trophy cabinet.
He had not moved.
"That is two," he said. "You still counting, doctor?"
"You talk a lot for somebody who invited four friends."
"Five against one was your idea."
The third man kicked the back of my thigh.
My knee dropped against the tile. The fourth caught my shirt from behind and pulled it tight across my throat. I reached over my shoulder for his wrist, but the third drove a kick into my stomach before I could turn.
The air left me again.
The tournament had taught my body many things. It had also left instructions inside every bruise. My right side warned me when I twisted. My throat remembered the referee's hands. My jaw had not stopped aching since NS put me down in the second round.
I had come to fight five men with a body that had barely survived one.
The fourth man dragged me backward.
I let him.
When my spine touched his chest, I stamped down on his foot, lowered my weight, and threw him across my hip. He did not fly. Real bodies did not. He struck the arm of the sofa, rolled badly, and landed on his side with a noise that ended his confidence.
The third man charged before I could stand fully.
His shoulder hit my stomach. We drove into the reception desk together. A plastic tray, three visitor forms, and a dead telephone fell behind it. He tried to lift me, but I widened my stance and trapped one of his arms beneath mine.
I punched his ribs twice.
He struck the back of my head.
I punched his ribs again.
His grip weakened. I turned and sent him face-first across the desk. His hands caught the edge before his head did. I pulled him backward by the shirt and drove a short hook into his jaw.
He fell beside the visitor forms.
Something struck my left cheek.
The first man had returned.
The punch did not knock me down. It erased half a second.
When the lobby returned, I was against the trophy cabinet and he was hitting me again. His second punch caught my forearms. The third slipped between them and split the inside of my lip against my teeth.
I tasted blood.
He smiled.
I kicked the side of his knee.
Not hard enough to break it. Hard enough to turn him. When his shoulder faced me, I caught his shirt and drove him chest-first into the cabinet. The glass shuddered. Trophies knocked against one another behind it like small bells.
I struck his body until his elbows fell, then hit the side of his jaw.
He sat down against the cabinet and did not rise.
The bottle of water completed its journey across the lobby and stopped beside my shoe.
Four men were on the floor.
Only KM remained standing.
The livestream had climbed past six hundred viewers.
Students watched from the staircase, the upper-floor railings, and the open corridor leading toward the common kitchen. Some held phones. Some shouted for KM. A few called my name as if this were another sanctioned match and not an ambush in a dormitory with no working cameras.
KM removed his watch and placed it beside his phone.
"You could have done that for JP," he said.
I wiped blood from my mouth.
"I tried."
"No. You stood outside the cage holding a towel while I took his dignity."
He stepped away from the trophy cabinet.
Unlike the others, he kept his hands high. Unlike the others, he did not rush.
KM had lasted through organized rounds. He understood distance. He had knocked JP unconscious after carrying him into deep water and waiting for exhaustion to make the final decision.
He also knew I was hurt.
His first kick struck the same thigh his friend had targeted.
My leg weakened immediately.
His second kick did not come. He used the expectation to step forward and jab my swollen cheek. I raised my guard. His right hand moved toward my head, then changed direction and drove beneath my ribs.
I stumbled into the broken table.
KM did not chase recklessly. He stood outside my reach and watched me breathe.
"NS already beat the intelligence out of you," he said. "I only need to finish the body."
I moved left.
He followed.
"Maybe that is why June chose him. At least he can afford the hospital bill after he gets somebody else's girl pregnant."
My hands tightened.
Stop.
I heard the counselor's voice as clearly as if she were behind the reception desk.
Place both feet on the floor.
KM kicked my thigh again.
"Or did you make her pregnant and hide behind Kitty before NS could find out?"
I stepped forward.
He caught me with a straight right.
The back of my head struck the wall beside JP's photograph.
My legs remained beneath me.
"That is the problem with your girls," KM said. "They keep choosing men who need somebody else to clean up after them."
The crowd reacted with the ugly sound people made when cruelty entertained them.
I looked at JP's printed face beside mine.
Name the consequence.
Expulsion.
KM feinted another kick and stepped closer.
I did not move.
"Nothing to say?"
"June already answered you."
His smile changed.
"June answers everybody. That is why nobody knows whose child it is."
I hit him.
The right hand landed across his mouth before the sentence finished. KM recovered faster than the other four. He answered with a hook that caught my temple, then drove his knee into my stomach when I bent.
We fell into the broken table together.
His forearm pressed beneath my chin. I caught one wrist, turned my face away from the pressure, and drove my fist into his side. Once. Twice. The third strike found the lower ribs.
KM released my neck and tried to rise.
I trapped one of his legs and pushed forward.
We rolled across the wet tile. He ended above me and punched down. The first strike hit my guard. The second struck my forehead. I bucked my hips, caught his arm, and turned. He posted one hand to stop the reversal, but his palm landed on the water bottle.
It rolled beneath him.
His balance broke.
I came over the top and drove him onto his back.
KM covered immediately. He knew how to survive beneath another fighter. Both forearms protected his face while his knees tried to create distance between us.
My first punch hit his guard.
The second did too.
He tried to turn onto one side. I followed and kept my weight across his hips.
"Get off," he said.
I pulled one of his wrists away.
"Keep."
The punch struck his forearm and glanced across his cheek.
"Her."
The next landed above his eyebrow.
"Name."
He covered again. My fist hit both gloves and still drove them into his face.
"Out."
His knee struck my back. I stayed above him.
"Of."
The punch found his mouth.
"Your."
KM turned his head. My knuckles struck the side of his jaw.
"Fucking."
Blood appeared across his lower lip.
"Mouth."
The final punch landed through the opening between his arms.
His head struck the tile.
The lobby went quiet.
I raised my fist once more.
"And this one is for my boy JP."
I hit him.
KM's arms dropped beside his face.
For one second, I remained above him with my fist ready and nobody holding it back.
Then JP's voice returned from the frozen hospital screen.
Do not turn it into another fight.
I stood.
KM did not.
The original five remained on the floor.
I had won.
It felt nothing like winning.
The first bottle came from the staircase.
It struck my shoulder and broke the silence.
"He jumped them!" someone shouted.
"Five of them invited me."
Nobody cared.
Students descended from the upper floors. Some had watched only the final minute. Others knew KM from class, football, or the Engineering club. In the red emergency light, the truth became whatever the largest group shouted first.
I counted eight men at the bottom of the stairs.
More filled the landing behind them.
My right hand had begun to swell. My left eye was narrowing. The damaged thigh trembled whenever I put weight on it.
The counselor had instructed me to leave the location.
The side entrance was behind the crowd.
The main doors were locked.
One of the students stepped over KM and looked down at him.
"You did this in our dorm?"
"Move and let me leave."
"You are not leaving."
He pushed me.
I pushed him back.
That was enough.
Three moved at once. I caught the first with a short left, but the second struck my ribs from the side. The third grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me into the group.
Hands replaced faces.
A fist struck my ear. An elbow caught my shoulder. Someone kicked the back of my knee while another tried to hold both arms.
There was no technique left. Only bodies, tile, wet shoes, and the instinct to protect my head.
I drove forward until the sofa stopped us. One man fell over it. I turned and shoved another into the reception desk, but a punch landed against my kidney before I could see who had thrown it.
My knees almost gave way.
"Enough!"
The voice came from the lobby entrance.
Nobody stopped.
NS forced his way through the side door wearing the same dark shirt he had worn at the hospital. Rain covered his shoulders. TZ was several steps behind him, shouting into a phone.
NS took in KM, the four men on the floor, and the crowd around me.
His expression did not become angry.
It became tired.
"XH," he said. "Walk away. Now."
"The door is behind them."
"Then come through them without hitting anybody."
"Excellent plan."
NS entered the crowd with both hands open.
"Move," he told the nearest student. "This is finished."
"You are his friend?"
NS looked at me.
"Unfortunately."
The student shoved him.
NS allowed it once.
"Do not do that again."
Somebody behind the student recognized him.
"That is the rich bastard from the tournament."
"The kingslayer," another voice said.
"VT paid both of them."
The student swung before NS could answer.
The punch caught NS across the cheek.
His head turned.
He remained still for a moment, looking toward the dark window as if the rain outside deserved more attention than the man in front of him.
Then a second student tried to hit him.
NS slipped the punch and drove a straight right into the man's chest, not his face. The student fell backward into two others.
NS rubbed his cheek.
"I came here to stop you," he told me.
"You are doing great."
Another man rushed him from the side. I caught the man's shoulder and pulled him away. NS turned and struck the body. We moved without discussing it, each covering the space the other could not see.
My back touched his.
For half a second, the lobby changed.
It was no longer the Engineering dormitory. It was the military medical school corridor, months earlier, when VT's men had tried to corner us and none of us had yet learned how completely friendship could fracture.
NS breathed out something close to a laugh.
"Just like old times, huh?"
I raised my swollen hands.
"Old times had fewer engineers."
The laugh escaped both of us.
It was small, injured, and completely inappropriate.
Then the crowd moved again.
We did not defeat the whole dormitory.
Nobody could have.
We survived the next minute by making the staircase useless. NS pushed the broken sofa sideways while I held two men away from the opening. The furniture narrowed the path until only one or two could reach us at once.
He fought like he had in the tournament, direct and economical. A jab stopped one man. A kick to the thigh stopped another. He did not chase anybody who fell.
I was less controlled.
Every strike cost more than the last. My right hand could no longer close fully. When I punched, pain ran from the knuckles into my wrist. I began using my forearms and shoulders instead, turning bodies away rather than trying to put them down.
TZ reached the reception desk and pulled the fire alarm.
Nothing happened.
"Blackout!" someone shouted at him.
"I know that now!"
He grabbed a metal wastebasket and struck it against the desk like a bell.
"Campus security is coming! Everybody stop being stupid!"
Nobody listened to the first half.
The second half described all of us too accurately.
A student climbed over the sofa. NS caught him, turned, and lowered him onto the floor instead of throwing him. While NS bent, another man raised a chair behind him.
"NS!"
I crossed the space and took the chair across my upper back.
The impact drove me to one knee.
NS turned.
Whatever restraint he had carried into the dormitory disappeared.
He hit the man once in the stomach and once across the jaw. The chair fell. NS caught it before it struck me and threw it behind the reception desk.
"Can you stand?"
"I am considering it."
"Consider faster."
He pulled me up.
White light appeared through the lobby windows.
Not lightning.
Flashlights.
Campus security entered through both doors with the dormitory warden behind them. Mr. Kim followed in the rain without an umbrella. Kitty, June, NC, and Jihye stood outside the glass, held back by another guard.
"Hands where I can see them!" the security supervisor shouted.
The crowd finally separated.
NS raised both hands.
I looked at KM.
He had rolled onto one side and was breathing. Blood marked his mouth, but his eyes were open.
I raised mine too.
The supervisor moved first toward me.
I did not hit him.
That was the smallest possible evidence that the counselor had taught me anything.
He forced my arms behind my back and secured my wrists with a plastic restraint. Another guard did the same to NS despite his objections. Engineering students shouted that we had invaded their dormitory. TZ shouted that there had been a livestream. Jihye held her laptop against the glass and yelled that she had already preserved it.
Kitty did not shout.
She stared at the blood on my shirt and then at my restrained hands.
June stood beside her with one hand covering her mouth.
Mr. Kim entered last.
He stopped in front of JP's photograph, the broken table, the bodies on the floor, and the five men security had begun separating from the crowd.
Then he looked at me.
"You had one night," he said.
There was nothing I could say.
My phone vibrated inside my pocket while the guard led me toward the door.
The screen turned against my leg, but I saw the first line before it disappeared.
UTOPIA UNIVERSITY DISCIPLINARY PANEL
Preliminary recommendation: Student retention under supervised probation...
The guard pushed open the lobby door.
Cold rain struck my face.
The future I had begged them to return was waiting unread inside my pocket.
Behind me, the Engineering boys' dormitory continued broadcasting the reason they could take it away again.