The accusation reached Utopia before breakfast.
A photograph showed our quarantine bus leaving Yandong International Airport beneath police escort. Somebody had added red circles around the windows and an arrow pointing toward the seat where I had been sitting.
THE BUTCHER OF UTOPIA BRINGS HOME THE FOREIGN VIRUS.
The account that posted it had existed for nine days.
It had already published four thousand times.
By eight that morning, the photograph had been shared across hundreds of pages. Some captions called us the Malaysia Twenty-Four. Others called us the Foreign Cluster. A short video combined Bunny's ambulance entering the observation wing with old footage of bodies being carried from The Walls.
The final frame showed my face beneath one sentence.
HOW MANY PEOPLE MUST DIE BEFORE XH STOPS CALLING HIMSELF A HERO?
My phone continued vibrating while Mr. Kim began our online lecture.
I turned it facedown.
The vibration traveled through the desk anyway.
Bunny's name was not included in the first posts.
It appeared forty minutes later.
Someone published the aircraft seating chart, her Mashara residence building, and a photograph taken at Water Boom. The post claimed she had hidden symptoms so the cohort could escape Malaysia before the border closed.
None of it was true.
Bunny had reported chills on the aircraft. She had been assessed before leaving. She entered medical observation immediately after developing a fever. Every traveler in our cohort completed fourteen days of quarantine. No public-health investigation had linked her to a community case.
Truth occupied three paragraphs.
The lie needed one photograph.
BUNNY: Should I say something?
The group chat filled at once.
JP: Give me the account names.
TZ: For documentation, not fighting.
JP: Those goals can cooperate.
HS: Do not confirm any additional medical information publicly.
CHERRY: I am saving every post before they delete them.
NS: Save the link, time, username, follower count, and screenshot. Do not argue in replies. We need patterns, not twenty-four separate fights.
Kitty called Bunny directly.
I watched their names disappear from the chat while NS created a shared evidence folder. Identical captions were appearing from accounts using different profile pictures. Several misspelled Yandong in the same way. Others posted within seconds of one another and linked to an exile channel still claiming MALT remained the lawful national leader.
VT had lost Utopia.
He had not lost his machines.
NS and Kitty spent the next hour comparing the accounts through a shared screen.
They did not break into anything. Every clue was public if somebody remained patient enough to collect it. Creation dates. Repeated captions. Identical punctuation. Profile photographs stolen from unrelated people. Links that all returned to the same three exile channels.
Kitty found one account that had used the phrase Foreign Cluster two days before Bunny's diagnosis became public.
"How could they know?" she asked.
"They didn't," NS said. "They prepared a story while the class was still in quarantine. If nobody tested positive, they would have called us an expensive government vacation. Bunny gave them a detail they could attach to the story already waiting."
"Can we prove that?"
"We can prove the timing. Intent is harder."
NS exported the posts into a dated archive and sent them to the restored cybercrime unit, the Wall Raid evidence commission, and two independent journalists. He preserved the original links so nobody could accuse the students of inventing screenshots after deletion.
Kitty watched the upload bar move.
"You always know what to save," she said.
"My family taught me that records are more loyal than people."
"Your family also taught you how to hide things."
NS looked at her through the screen.
"Yes."
The answer carried June's secret, his father's escape offer, and years of feelings Kitty had only recently allowed him to name.
"Thank you for helping Bunny," she said.
"I am helping all of us."
"That sounds like something XH would say."
"Do not insult me while I am working."
Kitty almost smiled.
For twenty seconds, the terror outside their screens became quiet enough for two people to remain beside each other without asking what would happen after it.
"These are bots," JP said during an emergency video call.
"Some," NS replied. "Not all."
He shared his screen.
Beneath the automated posts were comments from real people. Parents afraid of schools reopening. Shop owners who had lost income during lockdown. Families still waiting for Wall Raid compensation. Citizens who believed international students received privileges ordinary travelers could not access.
"Bots do not create every fear," NS said. "They find one that already exists and give it a target."
My face remained at the center of the screen.
"Then give them me," I said. "Leave Bunny out of it."
Kitty returned to the call.
"You are not protecting her by teaching everyone that blame becomes true when you volunteer for it."
"They already want me."
"That doesn't mean you should deliver yourself."
June's camera came on.
Three handwritten schedules covered the wall behind her.
"We release one statement as a cohort," she said. "No patient details. No argument about XH. We state that everyone followed the airport and quarantine procedures, then link the Health Ministry report."
"And when they call the report fake?" I asked.
"We do not let people who lie professionally decide whether truth is worth saying."
Her phone lit beside the keyboard.
A.V.: Do not attach your name to XH's scandal. Your mother is already speaking to the university.
June turned the screen over.
"Put my name first," she said.
Utopia published the statement at noon.
All twenty-four students signed it.
The university confirmed that the cohort had been screened on arrival, transported directly into quarantine, tested according to public-health guidance, and released only after completing the required observation period. The statement asked media outlets to protect the infected student's privacy and correct false claims that the class had entered the community before clearance.
For twelve minutes, the replies discussed evidence.
Then somebody posted a photograph of June and me running through Kuala Lumpur International Airport while holding hands.
THE WALL COUPLE USED POLITICAL CONNECTIONS TO ESCAPE MALAYSIA.
The next post showed A.V.'s government-marked sedan outside the consular cordon.
WHO ORDERED SPECIAL TRANSPORT FOR XH?
June called me.
"Do not answer them," she said.
"They are dragging you into it."
"I was already there."
"Because of me."
"Because I chose to go."
"You had to promise that man a dinner."
"That was my decision."
"Your mother was right."
Silence entered the call.
"About what?" June asked.
"Being near me costs you."
"Being near anyone costs something. That is not the same as regret."
"You could have taken the private document and left before the airport became a disaster."
"Without Kitty? Without NS? Without JP, TZ, HS, Bunny, and everyone else?"
She began listing names.
Halfway through, she stopped.
"And everyone," she finished.
I noticed the missing name.
I did not know whether she had forgotten it or only lost her place.
Before I could ask, June said, "Do not make yourself guilty because strangers need a villain."
"Some of them are not strangers."
"What does that mean?"
Another message appeared on my screen.
This account belonged to a real person.
His younger brother's name was carved into the Wall Memorial.
You returned with every passport. My brother returned in a numbered bag. They gave you a medal and gave us an apology. Now another crisis follows you home. Tell me why your decisions always become funerals for other families.
I ended the call.
The Health Ministry held its briefing at three.
A public-health physician displayed the timeline without naming Bunny. One passenger developed symptoms during controlled quarantine and tested positive. Close contacts were monitored. No secondary case had been detected among the cohort. No confirmed community transmission originated from their flight.
"Infection is not a moral failure," the physician said. "People who report symptoms protect the public. Harassing them encourages the next sick person to hide."
The briefing also confirmed that Yandong's local outbreak came from several unrelated travel chains already under investigation.
The facts were clear.
The Foreign Cluster continued trending.
VT's network clipped the physician's sentence after the words tested positive and removed everything that followed.
By evening, several news programs stopped using my name and began calling me the controversial student leader. Others replayed the Wall Raid inquiry beside the new outbreak map.
The two crises became one story because repetition demanded less effort than truth.
Congress met remotely that night to debate emergency relief.
The stolen treasury shaped every argument. Hospitals needed masks, oxygen equipment, testing supplies, and staff. Closed businesses needed support. Families displaced by the coup were now being told to stay inside temporary housing never designed for distance.
MALT appeared from exile through a prerecorded statement.
He blamed the elected government for allowing "politically favored students" to import disease while ordinary citizens suffered.
Behind him stood a national flag he no longer governed.
The Lady President responded during her evening address.
"The people who emptied our hospitals, stole our reserves, and fled our laws do not get to lecture this country about protection," she said.
She announced public purchase records for medical supplies, weekly legislative review of emergency restrictions, and international assistance negotiations. Reactor-output and pollution readings would remain public even during the health crisis.
Outside my dormitory, sulfuric rain struck the empty campus.
The grid failed halfway through her speech.
My room went dark.
Before the connection disappeared, Utopia's counseling office sent every Wall survivor an appointment link.
Mine had already been scheduled for the following morning.
I canceled it.
The counselor rescheduled it for the afternoon.
I canceled that one too.
Mr. Kim called before I could reject the third invitation.
"I am not going to ask whether you are fine," he said. "You have mistaken that question for a test you can pass by lying."
"Then why call?"
"To tell you that attending counseling is part of the academic recovery agreement that kept you enrolled."
"So this is discipline."
"Today it is a door. You can decide what it becomes after you enter."
"Everything is a door with you people."
"And you keep standing outside every useful one."
Lightning cut the video into blocks.
"Tomorrow at two," Mr. Kim said. "Camera on."
The call failed before I could answer.
I told myself the outage had made the decision for me.
June's mother called her during the outage.
"Remove your name from the statement," she said.
"It has already been published."
"Then issue your own clarification. Say you acted under university instruction. Say XH made the consular decision."
"He did make it. We all signed the authorization."
"This is what happens around him. Every disaster becomes a stage, and he makes you stand beside him while people throw stones."
June lit a candle on her desk.
The flame reflected against three separate schedules.
"He did not ask me to go after him. He told us to leave."
"And you still went."
"Yes."
"A.V. can have several stories removed. He can protect your future if you stop embarrassing him."
"I am not his future."
"You need stability, June. Specialists. Structure. Someone capable of caring for what comes next."
"Stop speaking as though I am already gone."
Her mother's voice softened.
"Then make decisions while you still can."
June ended the call.
For several seconds, she could not remember whether she had taken her evening medication.
She checked the weekly organizer.
The compartment was empty.
That meant yes.
She wrote it down anyway.
Power returned to my dormitory after ten.
Every notification arrived at once.
Support from strangers.
Hatred from strangers.
Messages from survivors thanking me for refusing surrender.
Messages from grieving families asking who had given me the right.
One sentence appeared beneath every photograph of the memorial.
Everything XH touches becomes another list of names.
The small liquor bottle remained inside my desk drawer.
I took it out.
The seal broke with less sound than a passport stamp.
My phone displayed six missed calls from June, three from JP, two from Kitty, and one from Mr. Kim.
NS had sent no comfort.
Only one instruction.
Do not be alone with whatever those comments are telling you.
Thunder moved above Utopia.
I lifted the bottle.
The first swallow burned.
For several seconds, every voice became quieter.
That was enough to make the second swallow easier.