The first bottle made the comments quieter.
The second made the morning disappear.
By the fourth day, six empty nips stood behind my anatomy textbooks where the camera could not see them.
I ordered the next bag through a delivery app. The courier left it at Utopia's security gate after checking my identification through the glass. A residence worker brought it upstairs with my groceries and recorded the delivery on the contact log.
Rice. Instant noodles. Bottled water. Four more nips wrapped inside a brown paper sleeve.
The university tracked every visitor who entered campus.
Nobody tracked what entered a room inside a grocery bag.
I did not drink because I enjoyed it.
The taste remained bitter. The smell clung to the mask hanging beside my desk. Each bottle gave me twenty quiet minutes followed by a heavier version of everything I had tried to remove.
At night, I returned to The Walls.
I woke hearing VT's boots inside the corridor. The radiator became a rifle bolt. An ambulance crossing campus became the vehicle that had carried bodies from Utopia. When rain struck the window, I saw the memorial before I saw the glass.
Drinking shortened the dreams without ending them.
It also shortened the mornings.
I stopped showering. Clean shirts remained folded inside the suitcase from Malaysia. Food containers collected outside my door because opening it meant admitting that another day had arrived.
The worst part was how ordinary the collapse looked through a computer.
A black camera square did not smell like alcohol. A muted microphone did not show shaking hands. An unanswered message resembled bad internet until enough people stopped believing it.
I attended lectures with my camera off. When Mr. Kim called my name, I blamed the microphone. When the counseling office sent another appointment, I moved it to the next day.
The next day became the day after that.
Outside, the country counted infections, deaths, hospital beds, missing masks, and money MALT had stolen.
Inside, I counted hours by which bottle was empty.
June noticed during an online patient-care tutorial.
Mr. Kim presented a case involving an elderly man with fever and worsening shortness of breath. The class had to identify which symptoms required urgent escalation.
"XH," he said. "What is your first concern?"
I unmuted myself.
The words on the slide would not stay still.
"His travel history."
"Read the case again. He has severe difficulty breathing and cannot finish a sentence."
"Then ask where he traveled."
Nobody laughed.
"Camera on," Mr. Kim said.
"It is broken."
"Your camera worked yesterday."
"Then yesterday was luckier."
I left the virtual classroom.
June called immediately.
I rejected it.
She called again.
I switched off the phone and opened another bottle before the trembling in my hands could become a decision.
June tried the methods allowed by distance first.
She called.
JP called.
TZ sent a message insulting my absence. HS sent a short list of warning signs and the counseling number. NS wrote only that he was informing residence staff if I did not answer within ten minutes.
Kitty placed a container of soup at the women's residence desk and asked Aina to send it through the meal team.
"Do not tell him it came from me," she said.
"Why?" Aina asked.
"Because he will turn it into forgiveness, and then into another reason to hate himself. Just make him eat it."
June volunteered to carry the meal.
Aina did not approve immediately.
"You cannot enter his room," she said. "You are not his nurse, counselor, or treatment."
"I know."
"Do you?"
The question sounded like Kitty.
June looked at the welfare badge waiting on the desk.
"No," she admitted. "But I am trying to learn."
NS joined the call from his room.
"If he becomes aggressive, you leave," he said.
"He won't hurt me."
"That is not what I said. If he shouts, frightens you, or makes you responsible for whether he survives the night, you call staff and step away."
"You think I cannot handle him?"
"I think loving someone makes it harder to recognize when handling them has become dangerous for both people."
June wanted to argue.
Instead, she wrote his instruction inside her notebook.
Aina checked June's temperature, issued gloves and a volunteer mask, and added her name to the residence contact log.
"You deliver the meal," she said. "The professionals conduct the welfare check. Keep those roles separate."
June nodded.
Then she carried Kitty's soup through the rain.
The residence meal team reached my floor after six.
Lockdown rules prohibited visitors, but Aina had organized student welfare volunteers to help staff deliver sealed dinners and identify untouched meals. Volunteers received temperature checks, wore masks, signed the floor log, and remained outside every room.
June carried my dinner.
The lunch container was still on the floor beside my door.
So was breakfast.
She placed the new meal beside them and knocked.
"XH."
I remained on the bed.
"The residence record says you haven't collected food all day."
"I ate."
"What?"
"Something."
"Open the door."
"This is lockdown. Go back to your building."
"I am on the authorized meal list."
"Congratulations. Leave it there."
Thunder moved over Campus Two.
The lights flickered but stayed on.
June knocked again.
"Mr. Kim said you left class."
"Then Mr. Kim can teach the students who still deserve to be there."
"Open the door."
"Go have dinner with A.V."
Silence followed.
I hated myself before she answered.
"So this is what you want to discuss?"
"I don't want to discuss anything."
"You have been drinking for days, ignoring counseling, and hiding from everybody. But the part you can say clearly is another man's name."
"He can give you what you need."
"What do I need?"
"A future that doesn't require rescuing me every month."
The door remained between us.
"You think destroying yourself is a generous way to leave me?" June asked.
"I think staying near me makes you a target."
"I was a target before I met you."
"Your mother is right. Every disaster becomes worse when you stand beside me."
"Stop using my mother as evidence against me."
"She has specialists. A.V. has connections. NS knows how to protect you. Kitty knows how to survive me. Everybody has a better use for you than I do."
June struck the door once with her palm.
"I am not an object you can assign to the safest man."
"I am trying to remove the burden."
"You are the burden, XH. Not because you are broken. Because you keep deciding that loving you removes my right to choose."
The sentence reached somewhere the alcohol had not covered.
I opened the door.
Only the width of the security chain.
June stood in the corridor wearing a mask, gloves, and a clear volunteer badge. Rain darkened the windows behind her. Her hair was damp from crossing between buildings beneath the covered walkway.
She saw the bottle in my hand.
Then she saw the others behind the books.
"Give them to me."
"No."
"You haven't eaten."
"The bottles don't ask questions."
"Neither does poison. That doesn't make it kind."
"Do not turn this into another thing you have to save."
"You don't get to disappear and call it protection."
I threw the bottle.
Not toward the door.
Not toward June.
It struck the wall on the opposite side of the room and shattered above the wastebasket.
June flinched.
The movement sobered me more than the glass breaking.
I stepped away from the door.
"I would never hurt you."
June's eyes filled above the mask.
"You are hurting me now."
The residence nurse arrived with the floor supervisor seven minutes later.
June had called them before knocking.
At first, I accused her of setting a trap. The nurse waited until I stopped shouting and explained that three untouched meals, missed classes, repeated counseling cancellations, and visible intoxication required a welfare assessment.
"Are you planning to harm yourself?" she asked through the door.
"No."
"Have you taken medication or any substance besides alcohol?"
"No."
"Did you fall or hit your head?"
"No."
"Will you open the door so I can verify that?"
I looked at June.
She stood several meters down the corridor now, exactly where the supervisor had told her to wait.
She was not crying anymore.
That frightened me more.
I removed the chain.
The nurse entered wearing a mask, eye protection, gloves, and a disposable gown. She checked my temperature, pulse, blood pressure, orientation, and blood oxygen. She examined the room for medication containers and injuries. My speech was slowed, but I knew my name, location, date, and what I had consumed.
"How many?" she asked.
"Today?"
"Today first."
I counted.
Then she asked about the previous days.
The number sounded worse when arranged inside a medical history.
She did not call me weak or irresponsible. She documented the amounts, removed the broken glass, and contacted the university physician and crisis counselor.
"You are not showing signs that require emergency transport right now," she said. "That can change. You will not drink more tonight. You will not stay unmonitored. If you vomit repeatedly, become confused, have trouble breathing, cannot stay awake, or tell us you may harm yourself, we escalate immediately."
"Monitored by whom?"
"Professionals first. Friends second. Not one frightened student trying to become your entire treatment plan."
June heard from the corridor.
She nodded before I did.
The counselor appeared on my laptop at eight.
I wanted to hate him.
He refused to become interesting enough for that.
He asked direct questions about sleep, nightmares, drinking, the Wall Raid, the comments, and whether I wanted to die.
"No," I said.
"What did you want the alcohol to do?"
"Make everything quiet."
"Did it?"
"For a while."
"And afterward?"
I looked at the stain beneath the wastebasket.
"Everything came back louder."
We made a plan for one night, not a repaired life. The residence nurse would retain the unopened alcohol for disposal. I would drink water, eat, keep the phone on, and attend a follow-up appointment the next morning. Staff would check twice overnight.
The counselor asked whom I trusted enough to call.
"Nobody right now."
"That is not the same as nobody."
He waited.
I gave him five names.
NS. JP. TZ. HS. Mr. Kim.
Then two more.
Kitty.
June.
The group call began after the nurse cleared the room.
Nobody used inspiration.
JP said, "I wanted to drink after the ICU. I didn't tell anyone because I thought wanting it made me pathetic."
TZ replied, "You are pathetic for many reasons. That is not one."
HS created a meal and sleep check without pretending a spreadsheet could treat trauma.
NS looked directly into his camera.
"June is not responsible for keeping you alive."
"I know."
"No. You know how to say it. Tomorrow you prove it by answering the counselor when she is asleep."
Kitty remained quiet until the others finished.
"Surviving badly still counts as surviving," she said. "But only if you keep doing it."
"Are you forgiving me?"
"Do not become greedy."
For the first time in four days, I almost laughed.
Mr. Kim joined last.
"Camera on tomorrow," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"Sober."
"Yes, sir."
"And eat the food June carried across campus before it becomes a second public-health emergency."
June remained outside while I ate.
The supervisor allowed her to sit across the corridor for twenty minutes because she was already registered on the welfare shift. My door stayed open. We both remained masked when we were not taking a bite, and neither crossed the threshold.
She had brought two portions of soup.
"When did you last eat?" she asked.
"Just now. You watched me."
June looked down at her container.
"I meant before this."
"Yesterday. Maybe."
She wrote something inside the small notebook on her knee.
I could read three lines from the doorway.
XH: food.
XH: counselor, 9:00 a.m.
XH: do not let him call leaving protection.
"You wrote me into tomorrow," I said.
"Tomorrow is easier when I organize it."
The supervisor told her the visit had ended.
June stood slowly.
"Call me when the thunder gets bad."
"You need sleep."
"So do you. We can fail together from separate buildings."
She returned to her dormitory and kept a video call open while we both prepared for bed. Residence staff checked my room at midnight and again at three. The counselor's appointment remained on my screen for morning.
June fell asleep first.
Her notebook rested open beside her face.
I took the remaining unopened bottle to the hallway disposal box under the supervisor's observation.
The rain did not stop.
The comments did not disappear.
Nothing inside me felt repaired.
But when I returned to the screen, June was still breathing softly on the other side.
For one night, quiet no longer had to mean being alone.