"For tonight," NS said, "this is home."
The five of us carried the wooden case into the student cafeteria.
The room had changed since the coup. Tables had become treatment beds, supply stations, and sleeping places for defenders between patrols. The menu board listed radio frequencies instead of food. Sandbags covered the windows facing the northern road.
Only one round table remained untouched in the back corner.
JP lowered himself into a chair with both hands gripping the seat.
"If this is our final meal," he said, "the service is terrible."
"We don't have food," TZ replied.
"Then it is not even a meal. It is just five injured men making bad decisions around expensive alcohol."
HS placed a metal cup in front of each of us.
"Nobody gets more than one small serving. JP is still taking medication. XH has a fever. TZ may have a concussion. NS has bruised ribs."
"And you?" I asked.
"I have functioning judgment. That is my injury."
NS opened the wooden case.
The bottle rested inside dark blue cloth. Its label named a Scottish distillery none of us could pronounce and a year older than every student in the room.
JP examined it respectfully.
"Your father was saving this for something important."
"He was probably saving it for a business deal," NS said.
"Then this is more important. We are negotiating with death."
"We are not negotiating with death," HS said.
"Fine. We are refusing its friend request."
TZ lifted his radio.
"Death has seventy-two thousand four hundred and eighteen mutual followers."
That was the first laugh.
It came out too loudly.
For two days, every loud sound had meant rifles, collapsing barricades, or military engines. Our own laughter startled us into silence.
Then JP started again.
HS tried not to.
That made TZ laugh harder.
Soon all five of us were bent around the table while tanks waited beyond the university wall and acid rain ticked against the roof.
It felt disrespectful.
It felt necessary.
NS broke the paper seal.
"For when you come home," he read from his father's note.
He poured barely enough Scotch to cover the bottom of each metal cup.
"I guess we're home."
The first sip burned all the way down.
JP coughed until HS took his cup away.
"What the hell?" JP wheezed. "Rich people drink this for pleasure?"
"Apparently," NS said.
"No wonder they keep trying to escape the country."
TZ sniffed his cup.
"It smells like furniture."
"It tastes like a hospital disinfectant developed by a monarchy," HS added.
NS stared at all of us.
"This bottle costs more than TZ's motorcycle."
"I don't own a motorcycle."
"Exactly."
The second laugh came easier.
We drank slowly, passing bread between us and chasing every mouthful with water because HS watched like an angry pharmacist. Nobody became drunk. The bottle remained almost full.
That was never the purpose.
The purpose was to sit at one table without choosing factions.
No XH and Kitty side.
No June and NS side.
No Med Track against Public Health.
No injured fighter, guilty corner man, billionaire's son, ignored radio operator, or expelled student.
For one hour, we were simply the five boys who had once believed university would be difficult because of exams.
JP raised his cup.
"Do you remember the first anatomy presentation?"
"No," I said immediately.
"XH labeled the liver as the spleen," TZ said.
"The arrow was unclear."
"You drew the arrow."
"Then the marker was unclear."
HS smiled into his cup.
"Mr. Kim stared at you for nine full seconds."
"He was impressed."
"He asked whether you had attended secondary school."
JP struck the table with both hands.
"And June corrected him from the back of the room without raising her hand. That was when I knew she would control XH's whole life."
TZ reminded us of the first night at NS's mansion, when JP had entered the wrong guest room and spent ten minutes apologizing to a coat stand because the lights were off.
"It was wearing a hat," JP said.
"That does not make it a person," HS replied.
"Rich houses contain unfamiliar dangers."
NS remembered finding us asleep across his living-room floor after we had insisted we would study until sunrise. None of us had finished a single chapter. XH had used an anatomy textbook as a pillow. TZ had fallen asleep holding a game controller. JP had eaten food from a refrigerator he still claimed had invited him.
We remembered the Military Medical School fight differently too.
In my memory, NS and I had stood back-to-back like heroes.
In his, I had stepped on his foot three times and nearly knocked him unconscious with my elbow.
"You said that was tactical," NS told me.
"It confused the enemy."
"It confused me."
"Then it worked on everyone."
Even HS laughed at that.
Those memories had once seemed too ordinary to protect. A wrong room. A stolen meal. Failed studying. Two idiots injuring each other while pretending to fight as one.
Now they were evidence that our lives had contained more than the worst days.
If morning took something from us, it would not own everything that came before it.
The mention of June pulled my thoughts toward the Grand Fountain.
Her hands around my neck.
Her request.
Remember this for me.
My phone contained two messages from her.
They had arrived eight minutes apart.
Did you get back inside safely?
Did you get back inside safely?
Same punctuation. Same words.
I assumed the damaged network had duplicated the message.
When I showed NS, he did not make that assumption.
"Answer both," he said.
"Why?"
"Because she asked twice."
"The network sent it twice."
"Maybe. Answer anyway."
I wrote the same reply beneath each one.
Yes. I remember. I am still here.
NS watched until both messages showed as delivered.
He knew something about June that I did not.
Tonight, I let him keep it.
There had already been too many hours when suspicion mattered more than trust.
At one twenty-seven, our first patrol shift began.
We left the bottle locked inside the cafeteria and walked the eastern interior line. Utopia had become strangely quiet after the evacuation. Chalk arrows marked medical routes across the pavement. Empty shoes waited beneath lecture-hall benches. A child's drawing of five people holding hands remained taped to a pillar.
Outside the barricades, loudspeakers repeated VT's final offer.
"Students of Utopia, your leaders have abandoned you. Return to normal life. Present yourselves for processing before sunrise. Those who remain after the deadline will be treated as armed enemies of the state."
JP leaned on a borrowed cane.
"He really needs new material."
"He has tanks," TZ said. "He thinks that counts as a personality."
The loudspeaker continued.
"XH and the criminal organizers around him are responsible for preventing your safe departure. Every death after sunrise will belong to them."
My name moved across the empty campus.
The words were propaganda.
They still found somewhere to enter.
People had remained after I shouted at VT. Defenders had strengthened The Walls after I rejected surrender. By morning, some of them might die.
"What if he's right about one part?" I asked.
NS stopped beside me.
"Which part?"
"That people stayed because we did."
"Some did."
"Then what happens to their deaths?"
"They belong first to the men who shoot them."
"First isn't the same as only."
NS looked toward the northern floodlights.
"No. It isn't."
He did not give me innocence because I asked for it.
That was why I believed him.
"After this," he said, "some people will call us brave. Some will call us stupid. Families may hate us because their sons heard our voices and stayed. We don't get to choose which story grief needs."
"How do we live with that?"
"We survive long enough to try."
The loudspeaker repeated my name.
Somewhere outside The Walls, VT was already building the version of history that would follow me after the shooting stopped.
I kept walking.
We returned to the cafeteria at two forty.
The countdown read:
05:17:36
Sleeping Man found the bottle before we sat down.
He looked at the five cups, then at HS.
"You approved this?"
"Medically, no."
"Socially?"
"Also no. I accepted that preventing it would create additional noise."
Sleeping Man picked up the bottle and read the label.
"I drank this once."
NS blinked.
"How?"
"Before you were born, your father and I knew some of the same terrible people."
He placed the bottle down without explaining further.
"Your northern shift begins at four. If any of you become impaired, I will personally send you through the wall in a rice sack."
"Understood," we answered together.
He left with the smallest trace of a smile.
JP watched the door close.
"Every adult in this country has a secret history."
"We will too," TZ said.
"Our secret history is mostly romantic stupidity."
"Speak for yourself," HS replied.
JP pointed at him.
"You once called Anna and stayed silent for forty seconds because you forgot why."
"That was a network problem."
"You were in the same room."
HS stared into his cup.
"Continue speaking and I will reopen your stitches."
We laughed again.
Then the laughter faded, and the things we had avoided gathered around the table.
I turned to JP first.
"I should have thrown the towel sooner."
He knew exactly which towel.
"Yes," he said.
"I thought letting you continue meant believing in you."
"It meant you wanted my victory more than you listened to my body."
"I know."
"And beating KM afterward didn't honor me."
"I know that too."
JP held my eyes for a moment.
"Good. Then stop apologizing like you can change it. Be better when somebody trusts you next time."
"You think there's a next time?"
"There better be. I did not leave intensive care to die before collecting sympathy gifts."
He touched his cup against mine.
Not forgiveness that erased what happened.
Forgiveness that expected something afterward.
TZ went next.
"All of you ignored me unless a radio broke."
"That's not true," NS said.
"You also remembered me when you needed a dollar."
"I never needed your dollar."
"Then return it."
"I don't have it."
"Exactly. The corruption began with him. MALT was inevitable."
NS removed a folded bill from his wallet and placed it before TZ.
"With interest."
TZ examined it.
"This is only one dollar."
"The national banking system is closed."
"Excuses from the wealthy."
TZ took the bill anyway and smiled.
HS did not need a joke to say his part.
"When I left Med Track, all of you treated it like I had vanished," he said. "Public Health was not where I expected to be. But it was not nothing. I needed friends, and most of you were too busy destroying each other."
No one defended himself.
NS lowered his head.
"We failed you."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
HS divided the last drops in our cups until each contained the same amount.
"Now you can assist me tomorrow by not becoming avoidable patients."
Finally, NS and I faced each other.
The nightclub, June, Kitty, VT, and every punch between us remained present without being named.
"I wanted to beat you more than I wanted to understand you," I said.
"You did beat me. Several times."
"This is serious."
"I know. I needed one last joke before apologizing."
He took a breath.
"I used June's confusion because I wanted what you had. I kissed her knowing it would hurt you. I kept secrets because being necessary felt safer than being honest. And when VT pulled us apart, I helped him without admitting it."
I felt the old anger.
It no longer controlled the whole room.
"I used Kitty to hurt June," I said. "Then I blamed everyone when I couldn't control what happened. I made you my enemy because losing my brother was easier than admitting I missed him."
NS's eyes reddened.
"Are we brothers again?"
JP raised his cup.
"Please say yes. The emotional tension is exhausting."
I reached across the table.
NS took my hand.
"We never stopped," I said.
For the first time since Military Medical School, nothing stood between us except a bottle neither of us knew how to enjoy.
At three fifty-eight, we carried our cups to the northern barricade.
The rain had stopped.
Low clouds trapped the sulfur smell over Yandong. Beyond the wall, red bands moved beneath military floodlights. Soldiers checked rifles and loaded ammunition. Engines started one after another until the ground beneath Utopia vibrated.
We poured the remaining Scotch from our cups onto the soil beside the barricade.
One drink for home.
One for the people already gone.
One for the version of us that had almost ended before the coup began.
The countdown read:
04:00:00
Four hours remained, but MALT's forces were no longer waiting.
A tank at the center of the northern road switched on its headlights.
Then it rolled forward one meter.
JP tightened both hands around his cane.
TZ checked the radio.
HS fastened his medical bag.
NS stood beside me.
"Just like old times, huh?" he said.
I watched the second tank begin to move.
"Old times had fewer tanks."
All five of us laughed one last time before the final night became morning.