At seven-twelve the next morning, I removed the bottle from beneath my mattress.
I did not open it.
That felt like an accomplishment until I remembered that normal people did not congratulate themselves for avoiding whisky before breakfast.
June had sent me three messages.
Inquiry at nine. I will wait downstairs.
Please wear the clean shirt. The cameras are already outside.
Then, eleven minutes later:
Inquiry at nine. I will wait downstairs.
The repeated message made my chest tighten.
I told myself she was exhausted. Everyone repeated things after a week without proper sleep. Everyone forgot why they entered rooms. Everyone checked a locked door twice.
I carried the bottle into the bathroom and twisted off the cap.
The smell reached me before the liquid touched the sink.
For several seconds, I stood there listening to the small voice that promised one swallow would make the inquiry easier. It did not sound like VT. It did not sound like MALT. It sounded exactly like me, which made it harder to fight.
I poured the whisky down the drain.
It was not recovery.
It was one decision made at seven-fourteen in the morning.
I decided to let that be enough.
The Independent Commission on the Seven Days held its first public testimony inside Utopia's least damaged lecture hall.
A retired judge chaired the commission. Beside her sat a trauma surgeon, a civil-rights attorney, a representative chosen by victims' families, and one former army colonel who had rejected MALT's orders on the second day.
No Utopia administrator sat on the panel.
That mattered.
The inquiry was not a medal ceremony arranged by the university. It was meant to determine what had happened, who had given each order, how civilians had been trapped, and whether decisions inside The Walls had saved lives or placed more people in danger.
The hallway outside was packed.
Some students touched my shoulder as I passed. Others avoided looking at me. The father from the northern gate sat in the second row holding his son's photograph.
June waited beside the witness-room door in the clean blouse she had worn during our disciplinary hearing before the coup. Kitty stood with her. NS had ignored medical advice and arrived wearing his eye patch. Mr. Kim carried three folders thick enough to use as defensive weapons.
"You came," June said.
"Apparently threats work."
"Good. I have more."
Kitty looked at my shirt.
"She told you to wear the clean one?"
"Three times."
June's smile disappeared for half a second.
NS interrupted before I could ask anything.
"Don't perform for the cameras," he said. "Answer the question they ask. If you don't know, say you don't know."
"You practiced that speech, didn't you?"
"My father paid many lawyers to teach me one useful sentence."
The doors opened.
My name was called.
The commission asked about the first flower given to MALT's soldiers.
I explained how VT's camera crew had used that photograph to claim the country was peaceful while the same red-armband unit prepared live ammunition behind its shields.
They asked about the order to shoot civilians.
I repeated the words we had heard over the military radio.
Shot to Kill.
They asked about the false seventy-two-hour claim, the bot accounts, the blocked embassies, and the roads where soldiers waited beside food warehouses and cash machines for desperate people to arrive.
Then the questions reached The Walls.
"Did you help produce firebombs?" the former colonel asked.
"Yes."
"Did you know they could kill?"
"Yes."
"Did you encourage students to remain at Utopia after VT announced an amnesty corridor?"
The room became perfectly quiet.
"I told them the corridor was not verified," I said. "People who had already left through similar corridors disappeared. We later learned they were taken toward Lake Clear."
"That is not what I asked."
I looked at the father in the second row.
"I told people that leaving through VT's route could be more dangerous than remaining. Some stayed after hearing me."
"Were they free to leave through routes your group trusted?"
"Yes. We evacuated children, elders, injured people, and female students. Others could request a place. We did not have enough routes for everyone at once."
"Did anyone who asked to leave get threatened as a traitor?"
"Not by my order. If it happened, I want it investigated."
The victims' representative leaned closer to her microphone.
"Why did you remain?"
"Because sending myself out through NS's father's private extraction while poorer people stayed behind would have made every speech I gave a lie."
"Do you believe your decision was right?"
I could have given them a heroic answer.
The cameras wanted one.
VT's accounts wanted one even more.
"I believe surrendering to VT would have sent people to Lake Clear," I said. "I believe resisting gave constitutional forces time to reach us. I also know people heard my words and died inside Utopia. I don't know how to make those truths cancel each other."
"If placed in the same situation again, would you make the same choice?"
The rooftop from my fever dream flashed behind my eyes.
An abandoned Utopia Tower.
June trapped inside VT's house.
Kitty buried overseas without friends beside her.
JP drinking alone in a country where he had learned to keep his head down.
My hands began to shake beneath the table.
"I would pray nobody is ever placed there again," I said. "That is the cleanest answer I have."
It was not clean at all.
The chairwoman accepted it anyway.
The father waited for me outside.
The cameras lifted as soon as he approached.
He looked at my bandaged hand, then at the doors behind me.
"You said his name during the closed session," he said.
"He carried two injured people from the eastern passage. It belongs in the record."
"He carried three."
"Then I will correct it."
He nodded once.
He did not forgive me.
I did not ask him to.
When he walked away, he left a copy of his son's photograph in my hand.
That was heavier than forgiveness would have been.
Mr. Kim found us beside the stairwell.
He was holding a single white envelope.
"University records recovered part of the disciplinary server this morning," he said.
My body understood before my mind did.
The verdict that had been waiting at nine o'clock on the morning of the coup.
The decision buried beneath the blackout.
"They finished it?" Kitty asked.
"At eight fifty-one that morning. It was never released."
Mr. Kim handed me the envelope.
Inside was a recommendation for expulsion.
The panel had acknowledged VT's manipulation and KM's dormitory ambush. It had still concluded that my deliberate entry into the Engineering dorm, continued violence after gaining control, and history of disciplinary incidents made probation insufficient.
For nine minutes before the city went dark, Utopia had already decided I should leave.
"Is this final?" June asked.
"It requires ratification by the university board," Mr. Kim said. "That meeting never occurred."
"Then it isn't final."
"No. But the Wall Raid does not erase what happened in that lobby."
The Lady President's office had sent every school an emergency request for academic amnesty covering absences, missed examinations, protest participation, and actions taken to protect lives during the coup. It did not command Utopia to ignore violence committed before the coup.
The board would hold a special session the following morning.
I folded the letter along its original crease.
After everything, I still might not belong there when classes returned.
"Say something," I told the others.
Kitty crossed her arms.
"You want the kind version or the honest version?"
"Since when are those different?"
"Since you entered that dormitory knowing KM wanted you expelled." She took the letter from me and read the last page. "You did something reckless. Saving people later does not travel backward through time and make it wise."
"There it is."
"I wasn't finished."
She handed the letter back.
"The university said probation could not contain you. Then, when armed soldiers entered this campus, you contained yourself when it mattered. You fought VT, but you did not execute him when he was down. You protected patients. You stayed for people who could not buy an escape. The board has to consider all of you, not only the worst hour they recorded."
NS nodded.
"My father's attorneys will submit the verified dormitory livestream and the inquiry evidence. No pressure from his companies. No threats. Just the complete record."
"Your father knows how to do things without pressure?"
"We are introducing him to the concept."
Mr. Kim did not smile.
"Do not enter tomorrow expecting national service to purchase forgiveness," he said. "Ask for the chance to prove that discipline can still change you. Those are different arguments."
I slipped the decision into my folder beside the dead student's photograph.
One document described the worst thing I had chosen before the coup.
The other reminded me that even a necessary choice could leave someone else's family destroyed.
I would carry both into the room.
June's mother arrived before we left the building.
Her car passed two checkpoints with temporary credentials issued by the President's recovery office. She entered the hall beneath a black umbrella, saw June beside me, and walked directly toward us.
"Come home," she said.
"I will after the board meeting."
"You have done enough waiting for his disasters to finish."
June looked toward the cameras.
"Not here, Mom."
"There is nowhere private anymore. Your photograph is on every channel. The UK program called me this morning. They are reconsidering the timing of your placement because your academic year has been disrupted again."
Again.
The word landed between them with a history I did not understand.
"I am not leaving the country while my friends are still in hospitals," June said.
"Your place will not remain open forever. You have already lost too much time."
"What time?"
June's mother stopped.
NS moved closer.
"She means the school year," he said calmly. "We all lost it."
June looked at him as if she needed to confirm the answer.
Her mother recovered quickly.
"Yes. The school year."
Then she faced me.
"If you care about her, stop making every road in her life pass through your pain."
June stepped between us.
"He did not call you. I did not ask you to rescue me."
"You should not have to ask your mother."
"And you should not use my love as evidence that I am confused."
Her mother's face broke for one instant.
Not with anger.
With fear.
Then the expression closed again.
"The car will wait ten minutes," she said.
June did not enter it.
The cameras recorded that too.
By sunset, VT's surviving accounts had given the scene a title.
A MOTHER BEGS XH TO RELEASE HER DAUGHTER.
I bought another small bottle before the eastern shop closed.
This time, I paid.
I carried it to the damaged Grand Fountain and sat beneath the lovers' statue. One stone hand had broken away during the tank assault. The remaining figure still leaned toward the empty space where its partner had been.
Rain began as a faint hiss across the courtyard.
I had not opened the bottle when June found me.
She approached from the direction of the Science Building, though the dormitory stood on the opposite side of campus. NS remained beneath the covered walkway behind her. When our eyes met, he tapped two fingers against his wrist.
June checked the note beneath her coat.
Then she came to me alone.
"You promised," she said.
"I promised to attend the inquiry."
"You know which promise I mean."
"Your mother wants you in the UK."
"My mother wants to defeat death through scheduling. She has always been ambitious."
"Maybe you should let her."
"Maybe you should stop agreeing with anyone who tells you to disappear."
Thunder opened above Utopia.
For one second, the fountain became a rooftop beneath eternal clouds. I saw a white dress at the edge of another memory, then the present forced its way back through the cold sting of rain against my face.
June held out her hand.
"Give me the bottle."
"I am not okay."
"I know."
"I might not be okay tomorrow."
"I know that too."
"Love isn't going to fix this."
"No," she said. "And I am not your clinic just because I love you. Mr. Kim found a trauma counselor. Your friends made a schedule. You are going to need all of it."
"And if I become your worst memory?"
June crouched before me, the sulfur rain darkening her hair.
"Then stay long enough to become something after it."
I placed the bottle in her hand.
She did not call it a victory. She put it inside her bag and sat beside me beneath the broken statue.
My phone vibrated.
UTOPIA UNIVERSITY SPECIAL BOARD SESSION
FINAL STATUS REVIEW: XH
Tomorrow at nine.
The hour that had waited for me since before the country went dark.
June threaded her fingers through mine.
For the first time since the final gunshot, I wanted morning to come.