Four days after the Moon followed us home, Mashara gave us Saturday off.
By then, we had completed hospital identification checks, infection-control orientation, two simulation sessions, one public-health seminar, and enough forms to prove that bureaucracy survived every national border.
The Water Boom shuttle left campus at nine.
Aina counted us before anyone boarded.
Then she counted again.
Nobody complained.
The previous city trip had taught our hosts why the Utopia students treated headcounts like emergency medicine.
"Twenty-four," Aina announced.
"Twenty-four alive, awake, and wearing sunscreen," Farid added.
JP raised his hand.
"Define awake."
Anna pushed him onto the bus.
Water Boom stood fifteen minutes from Mashara, built against green hills at the edge of the university district. Bright slides twisted above palm trees. Artificial waterfalls covered one stone wall. From the entrance bridge, we could see a wave pool, a lazy river, a children's splash zone, and a tower carrying four different enclosed slides.
The air smelled of chlorine, fried food, and sunscreen.
It smelled nothing like war.
Before we entered, Jihye opened her new tarot deck on the bus seat.
"No," Cherry said. "We are not discovering that the water slide represents death."
"I am checking the third card."
"The first was a collapsing tower. The second was secrets. Maybe stop while the trip is legally enjoyable."
Jihye drew anyway.
The Empress sat beneath a crown of stars, surrounded by water, trees, and growing fields.
"Care," Jihye said. "Desire. Protection. Creation. Sometimes it means a woman deciding what she wants to keep alive."
Kitty leaned over the seat.
"Which woman?"
"The cards forgot to print names."
June looked at the image longer than anyone else.
Her phone vibrated inside her bag.
She closed the deck for Jihye and handed it back.
"The card can wait," June said. "The bus cannot."
Water Boom operated through waterproof wristbands.
The entrance staff scanned our tickets, checked our bags, and explained that the wristbands opened assigned lockers and recorded purchases inside the park. Glass containers, outside alcohol, loose jewelry, and ordinary clothes with metal fasteners were not allowed in the pools.
We rented towels and waterproof phone pouches.
JP and TZ had to visit the first-aid room before receiving ride clearance. The nurse inspected JP's healing leg and gave him a yellow restriction band.
"Lazy river and wave pool only," she said. "No high slides, no sudden drops, and no climbing the tower repeatedly."
JP looked offended.
"What if I climb it once?"
"Then staff will bring you back down without the slide."
TZ received the same restrictions and accepted them with the maturity of someone happy to watch JP suffer.
HS volunteered to remain with them.
"You want to avoid the slides," Bunny said.
"I am providing medical supervision."
"You are afraid."
"Fear is the body's appropriate response to falling through a plastic tube."
Farid made us study the park's safety board before anyone changed clothes. A green flag meant normal operation. Yellow meant slides could close for weather. Red meant everyone had to leave the water, not stand beneath a shelter arguing that thunder sounded far away.
"Staff monitor lightning distance," he said. "If lifeguards clear a pool, you clear it immediately."
He assigned buddy pairs and required every pair to check in through the program group at lunch and before departure. June paired with Kitty. NS paired with me. JP and TZ were placed together until Anna objected that combining two injured idiots did not create one responsible adult.
She joined them as an unofficial third.
Emergency exits, the first-aid room, drinking-water stations, and the main meeting point were marked on our waterproof maps.
The weekend performer in the entrance lobby began an acoustic set while the changing-room queue cleared.
He sat on a small platform beside the fountain wall with a microphone, one speaker, and a dark wooden guitar. Most visitors walked past him toward the pools. NS stopped.
"You play?" I asked.
"A little."
"Your definition of a little probably includes a private instructor."
"My father believed expensive hobbies prevented public embarrassment. He was wrong about many things."
During the performer's break, NS asked whether he could borrow the guitar for one song. The man studied him, then handed it over only after NS demonstrated the opening chord quietly beside the stage.
Our entire group gathered when he sat before the microphone.
"Who is this for?" JP shouted.
NS adjusted the guitar strap.
"A girl."
"That reduces the suspects to half the university."
"Then remain curious."
He began playing "Let Down" by Radiohead.
NS did not imitate the original singer. He kept the opening restrained and almost conversational. The noisy lobby continued around him, but our group became still as the song built.
When the main chorus arrived, he lifted his head and sang from his chest.
The sound surprised everyone.
It was not technically perfect. One high note broke at the edge. That made it more honest. NS repeated the chorus a second time, louder and more desperate, striking the strings until the emotion became larger than the small borrowed speaker.
JP looked immediately at June.
Bunny did too.
After everything between NS and June, the meaning appeared obvious.
June did not look flattered. She looked sad.
NS's eyes never settled directly on the person he meant. During the final chorus, however, he looked past June toward Kitty for one unguarded second.
Kitty was smiling because she believed the song belonged to someone else.
That nearly broke his voice.
Then June checked the written reminder inside her waterproof pouch, momentarily uncertain why she had placed it there.
NS saw that too.
He knew what the others did not. Her strange pauses were not only exhaustion, and the future she feared was already taking small things from her. He carried that knowledge into the last lines without naming it.
The song was for Kitty.
The grief inside it belonged partly to June.
When NS finished, the lobby applauded. The performer reclaimed his guitar and told him he should join the evening set.
"I only know one song today," NS said.
Kitty handed him a bottle of water.
"Who was she?"
NS looked at her for a long moment.
"Someone who deserves a better dedication than this one."
Kitty glanced toward June.
"She probably understood."
"Probably," NS said.
He drank the water instead of correcting her.
Only after Aina completed another headcount were we allowed to enter the changing rooms.
The changing rooms separated us for twenty minutes. We met again beside the locker building wearing swim clothes, rubber sandals, and enough sunscreen to shine beneath the sun.
Scars became harder to hide without uniforms.
The wound near NS's ribs had left a dark line. JP's leg remained thinner beneath the knee. A healing mark crossed TZ's shoulder. My body carried yellow bruises and several cuts that had closed but not faded.
Local visitors looked only briefly.
Nobody knew which scar belonged to a tank, a soldier, VT, or our own stupidity.
That anonymity felt like another kind of vacation.
The first ride was a six-lane racing slide.
XH before the coup would have challenged NS.
XH after the coup checked the exit pool, counted lifeguards, and asked whether the starting signal contained a siren.
NS heard me asking.
He did not laugh.
"We can take the open lanes," he said. "You can see the bottom from the top."
"I wasn't afraid."
"Neither am I. That is why we are both choosing the easier slides with dignity."
KM would have insulted us for ten minutes.
NS simply waited.
We climbed.
Kitty, June, NC, and Anna took the lanes beside us. Jihye, Bunny, and Cherry remained below to decide who had to photograph everyone looking terrible at the finish.
The attendant counted down.
We pushed off together.
For six seconds, gravity removed every complicated thing from my life.
Water struck my face. Blue sky opened above the slide. I reached the pool first and stood too quickly to celebrate.
June arrived half a second later and crashed into my back.
NS hit the water beside us.
"I won," he said.
"You were third."
"The timing system respects social class."
Kitty surfaced laughing so hard she could not argue.
The photograph showed all four of us splashing one another like people who had never held a barricade.
I saved it before anyone could become embarrassed.
For the next two hours, we let the park decide our problems.
Bunny forced HS onto a family raft slide and recorded him shouting throughout the entire descent. Cherry challenged three local students to race through the obstacle pool. NC lost one sandal in the lazy river and followed it for almost a full lap.
JP floated past us wearing a life jacket and dark sunglasses.
"This is recovery," he said.
"You have moved twenty meters in ten minutes," Anna replied from the tube beside him.
"Recovery should not be rushed."
At the wave pool, a horn warned swimmers before the machine started.
The sound drove me beneath Utopia for one terrible second.
A warning siren.
Red-armband soldiers behind the northern gate.
The ground shaking before the tank entered.
Then a wave struck my chest and pulled me backward.
June caught my arm.
Kitty caught the other.
"Feet down," Kitty said.
"Look at us," June added.
I found the textured floor beneath my toes.
The next wave lifted all three of us together.
"I'm okay," I said.
"We know," Kitty answered.
Neither released me immediately.
People around us shouted because the waves were fun. Children jumped into them. Lifeguards watched from high chairs with rescue tubes across their laps.
I forced my body to learn the difference.
By the fifth wave, I was laughing.
We ate lunch beneath a wide canopy beside the lazy river.
The menu offered fried rice, noodles, grilled chicken, fruit, and drinks sweet enough to count as medicine for sadness. A small counter near the adult pool sold beer.
I noticed it.
Then I ordered lime soda.
Kitty noticed that.
She said nothing, which made the choice feel like mine.
June sat at the far end of the table with her waterproof pouch resting in her lap. Her phone lit beneath the clear plastic.
A.V.: You promised me a photograph.
She looked around before opening the camera.
I watched her take a selfie with wet hair against the bright-blue water. She did not smile at first. Then she adjusted her expression into something softer and took another.
Her reply appeared beneath the picture.
You said blue suited me. Were you right?
She sent it.
The answer arrived before she put the phone down.
I would need to see you in person to be certain.
June typed:
Then be patient.
I stood so quickly that the table shook.
June locked the phone.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"You are terrible at nothing."
"And you're becoming very good at it."
The others stopped eating.
Kitty looked between us.
"Not here," she said.
I walked away before anger made the decision for me.
Kitty found me beside the rental counter.
She had wrapped a towel around her shoulders. Water remained in her hair.
"Ask June," she said.
"She lies every time I ask."
"Then ask better."
"Why are you helping me do this?"
Kitty looked toward the canopy where June sat with her back to us.
"Because every secret becomes my problem eventually. Yours. Hers. NS's. Mine. I'm tired of finding out what my relationship means through someone else's accident."
"I don't want to hurt you."
"You already do sometimes."
The honesty did not come with cruelty.
That made it hurt more.
"Are you telling me to choose June?"
"I'm telling you to stop treating confusion like kindness."
"What do you want?"
Kitty's eyes moved to mine.
"I want one day when loving you doesn't require pretending I cannot see where you're looking."
Before I could answer, NS called to her from the entrance of the family raft ride. Bunny and Cherry needed a fourth person, and they had chosen him and Kitty.
Kitty tightened the towel around herself.
"Go talk to June," she said.
Then she walked toward the ride with NS.
He saw her face and understood she had been hurt.
He did not question her in front of everyone. He simply moved to the outer seat of the raft so his body would take the strongest impact on the first turn.
Kitty noticed.
She sat beside him without speaking.
The sky changed shortly after three.
Tropical clouds moved across the hills faster than I expected. The sunlight disappeared, but no thunder followed. Staff closed the tallest slides as a precaution while keeping the ground-level pools open. Lifeguards announced that all water attractions would close immediately if lightning entered the safety radius.
Warm rain began.
Most visitors remained in the pools.
Some lifted their faces toward it. Children celebrated as if the park had activated one more attraction.
June left the lunch canopy alone and entered the shallow edge of the lazy river.
I followed.
Rain covered the water with thousands of small circles. Artificial waterfalls continued pouring from the stone wall. For once, drops touched my skin without burning.
June did not turn around.
"Who is A.V.?" I asked.
"You already asked."
"You didn't answer."
"A family friend."
"Family friends don't ask for pictures like that."
"Maybe yours don't."
"Your mother told you to reply to him. He asked whether I suspected something. Now you're flirting with him while sitting beside me."
June turned.
Rain ran across her face.
"You watched my private conversation."
"You typed it at the table."
"That does not make it yours."
"Then tell me what part is mine."
The current pushed slowly around our waists.
June's expression hardened.
"He is someone my mother wants me to consider."
"Consider for what?"
"A stable future."
The answer reached deeper than jealousy.
"With him?"
"Maybe."
"You kissed me beneath the Grand Fountain before we thought we were going to die. You called me your guiding star last night. Now there is a man waiting for you at home?"
"There has always been someone waiting for one of us," she said. "Kitty waited for you. NS waited for me. You waited until the world was ending before deciding what you wanted."
"So you're punishing me?"
"No."
"Then why are you doing this?"
Her anger broke enough for fear to appear beneath it.
"Because maybe I need a future that does not collapse every time you become afraid of loving me."
"Do you love him?"
"I barely know him."
"Then you're using him."
"He knows what he wants."
"Do you?"
June stepped backward.
"That is not a fair question."
"It is the only question."
"You don't get to demand certainty from me after giving me years of hesitation."
She turned to leave.
I caught her hand.
June stopped.
"Let go," she said.
I released her immediately.
She faced me again.
"Don't hold me unless you mean it, XH."
"I meant it."
"For how long?"
The rain became heavier, drumming against the lazy river and empty lounge chairs.
I had no answer large enough for her fear.
So I gave her the smallest honest one.
"Right now, I don't want you walking away."
June moved closer.
"Right now has always been our problem."
"Then stay until it becomes something else."
Her fingers touched the scar beside my ribs.
The park blurred behind the rain.
I did not see Kitty return from the raft ride.
I did not see her stop beneath the palm trees with my towel in her hands.
I saw only June lifting her face toward mine as the warm rain closed the distance between us.