At eight fifty-seven, four laptops waited on one table.
The university had reopened the east study hall at reduced capacity. Windows remained open despite the wet morning. Blue tape marked where chairs could stand, and a bottle of sanitizer occupied the center of the table like a fifth student.
June sat across from me.
NS sat beside her.
Kitty sat beside me.
The others joined through a video call projected onto the wall. JP had changed his display name to FUTURE UNEMPLOYED DOCTOR. Cherry threatened to remove him. Anna held her father's repaired silver watch between both hands. Bunny had not stopped moving her knee since the call began.
At 8:58, the honors page displayed a countdown.
At 8:59, it logged all four of us out.
"Of course," Kitty said.
We signed in again.
The one-time codes arrived slowly because the entire graduating class was doing the same thing. Mine came first. NS's came nine seconds later. Kitty entered hers incorrectly once. June stared at her phone until I pointed to the newest message.
"That one," I said.
"I know."
She entered it.
At nine, the countdown vanished.
A document appeared in its place.
FINAL ACADEMIC HONORS
Nobody opened it.
For several seconds, three hundred students who had fought over fractions became afraid of one click.
JP spoke through the wall screen.
"If none of us looks, we remain tied for first in imagination."
"Open it," Cherry said.
June's hand did not move.
I clicked.
The first line carried her name.
FIRST POSITION AND VALEDICTORIAN
JUNE: 96.84
The second position contained three names.
CO-SALUTATORIANS: 96.83
XH
NS
KITTY
Official rounding had compressed three slightly different unrounded records into the same recognized result. The policy from the first briefing applied exactly as written.
June's replacement answer had been correct.
Her final paper became one hundred. Across the three ranked papers, all four of us had earned the same raw total: 298 out of 300. Her earlier coursework weight placed her one hundredth of a point above us in the final composite.
One hundredth.
Smaller than the time it took to blink.
Large enough to decide whose voice would speak for our class.
The projected call exploded.
JP shouted first. Bunny screamed loud enough to trigger her microphone limiter. TZ clapped both hands over his head. NC began reading the document again because she assumed three co-salutatorians had to be a portal error.
Anna cried quietly.
"Papa said we would finish," she whispered. "He didn't say he had to see it."
Nobody corrected her.
HS's bridge-program clearance appeared in a separate notice, confirming his return path for the next stage. JP, TZ, Anna, Jihye, Bunny, Cherry, and NC all showed ELIGIBLE FOR GRADUATION. The call became a collection of people laughing, crying, and trying to speak over one another.
At our table, nobody moved.
June read her line for the fourth time.
"Is it final?" she asked.
"The records are locked," NS said.
"So I answered B correctly?"
"Yes."
"And the other two responses?"
"Restored. Both correct."
June looked at the score again.
"First," she whispered.
I smiled at her.
"First."
She covered her mouth.
The tears came before the happiness did.
Then I saw the three-paper total again.
Question sixty-three returned with perfect cruelty.
I had selected B.
I had checked the note I was forbidden to use.
I had changed B to D.
If I had trusted my first answer, my raw total would have been 299. No rounding rule would have tied it. The valedictory line at the top of the page would have carried my name.
For one ugly second, I wanted the past to reopen.
I wanted to reach through the screen, stop my own hand, and take back the point before it became June's victory.
Then the second passed.
The decision had been mine. June had not taken the answer from me. She had been in another room fighting to remember her own.
NS met my eyes. He had reached the same calculation.
He said nothing.
June followed our silence.
"You would have been first," she said.
"Maybe."
"Not maybe."
"I changed the answer."
"Because everybody was using notes."
"Everybody did not move my hand."
Her first-place line remained reflected in her wet eyes.
"I am sorry," she whispered.
"Do not apologize for the question I got wrong."
"I am not sure that is what I am apologizing for."
Before I could ask, Kitty spoke.
Kitty had imagined first position since Foundation Year.
She had imagined earning it cleanly, hearing one name, and knowing that every sleepless night had moved her toward that exact moment.
Instead, her perfect first paper had become one third of a three-person second place. The student above her had failed an initial clinical station, used a private connection, received an accelerated appeal, and answered a private replacement item.
Kitty also knew every fair answer to her own anger.
June had passed the reassessment.
The technical failure was documented.
The restored answers had existed before time expired.
The replacement question corrected something June had been denied.
Knowing all of that did not make second place hurt less.
"Congratulations," Kitty said.
June lowered her hands. "Kitty."
"You got the speech."
"We all got the same final total."
"The speech isn't shared."
Silence reached the people on the wall screen one by one.
Kitty heard herself too late.
She pushed her chair back.
"I need air."
NS began to stand.
"Don't," she said.
He sat again.
Kitty left through the one-way exit and followed the blue arrows farther than necessary.
NS waited three minutes before going after her.
He found her in the covered stairwell, pressing both palms against the concrete ledge.
"I hate myself," she said.
"That seems excessive."
"Part of me wanted her appeal to fail."
"Feeling it did not make the system fail."
"I smiled when she lost three answers."
"For how long?"
Kitty looked at him.
"One second."
"Then you helped her file the complaint about unequal review times."
"That doesn't erase the second."
"No. It tells me what you chose after it."
Kitty wiped her face angrily.
"Of course you are defending her."
NS accepted the accusation without using Kitty's pain to move closer.
"I am defending you."
That made her cry harder.
He remained one step away until she reached for his sleeve.
June's mother called while the result page was still open.
She did not say congratulations first.
"Do not speak to the press yet," she said. "The university will coordinate the announcement. Your first speech draft is due Monday. A.V. will review the public language before anyone outside the family sees it."
June's tears stopped.
"It is my speech."
"It represents the institution and the recovery government. You cannot improvise around the Wall Raid."
"I lived through the Wall Raid."
"Which is why you are too close to it."
I heard every word from across the table.
June looked at me, then turned the volume down.
"Did you ask them to put my appeal first?" she asked.
"I asked them not to bury a valid case."
"That was not my question."
"People will criticize you whether you win honestly or lose politely. Give them something worth remembering."
Her mother ended the call.
A message appeared immediately afterward.
A.V.: Congratulations, June. First position suits the future your mother has protected for you. I look forward to hearing the speech.
She hid the screen.
I had seen only the initials.
They were enough to bring back every unanswered question.
"Who is A.V.?" I asked.
June placed the phone facedown.
"Not today."
"That is what NS said yesterday."
"Then for once, listen to both of us."
The happiness left the table without saying goodbye.
By noon, the honors document had reached the news.
One headline called June the brilliant face of a recovering generation.
Another called her first position the product of family influence.
The anonymous forum placed her clinical remediation beside the expedited appeal and treated them as proof of a single conspiracy. VT's surviving accounts spread the claim that Utopia rewarded its favored students while ordinary families waited in technical-review queues.
My own name became useful again.
Some posts praised the "Wall hero turned co-salutatorian." Others said the university had created three second-place titles to prevent me from looking defeated. The truth was less dramatic. Rounding had tied us, and the written policy recognized the tie.
Truth performed badly online.
The university released a technical summary confirming that June's two responses had existed in the local log and that the final question had never reached her device. By late afternoon, the two students whose cases had remained queued received the same review standard. Both appeals were upheld.
That should have ended the argument.
Instead, people asked why fairness had required a connected mother to arrive first.
There was no answer clean enough for a headline.
I found June beneath the covered walkway that afternoon.
The rain had weakened to a thin mist. Beyond the campus fence, traffic moved through streets still carrying repaired concrete from the Wall Raid. June stood beside the Grand Fountain with the honors page open on her phone and no expression that resembled victory.
"Your mother looking for you?" I asked.
"Everyone is looking for the valedictorian."
"I was looking for June."
She glanced at me. "Did you find her?"
"I think so."
"You sound uncertain."
"She keeps hiding behind dramatic questions."
June turned the phone off.
"The speech frightens me."
"More than the final?"
"The final asked what I knew today. The speech asks me to stand in front of everyone and remember who we were for two years."
"You do remember."
"Pieces."
"Everyone remembers in pieces."
"Not like this."
The mist gathered along her hair. I raised the hood of my jacket over her head without thinking. It was not large enough to cover both of us properly.
"Then use our pieces too," I said. "Ask JP what made us laugh. Ask Anna what we lost. Ask Kitty what we survived. Ask NS what the rest of us were too distracted to notice."
"And you?"
"Ask me what you meant."
June looked toward the Lover Statue beyond the fountain.
"What if your answer is different from mine?"
"Then put both in the speech."
For the first time since the result, she smiled without forcing it.
"My mother will hate that."
"Now it sounds like your speech."
Mr. Kim ended the class call before evening.
"Every person on this screen is academically eligible to graduate," he said. "That sentence matters more than your order on a list."
JP raised his hand.
"Sir, my order is low enough that I strongly support this philosophy."
Laughter returned carefully.
Mr. Kim captured a screenshot while we were still laughing. Masks hung beneath some chins. Several cameras were dark because of unstable internet. Anna held up her father's watch. Kitty had returned, though her eyes remained swollen. NS sat near her without touching her.
June appeared in the center square because the platform had recognized her voice most recently.
For one frozen image, nobody was first or second.
We were simply still there.
Afterward, the graduation office sent its first packet.
Mandatory rehearsal.
Gown fitting by appointment.
Temperature screening and limited guest passes.
Masks required except at the lectern and during the official photograph.
A recorded backup ceremony in case public-health restrictions changed.
The three co-salutatorians would lead the class pledge together.
The valedictorian would deliver one address summarizing Foundation Year, Year One, Year Two, the losses of the Wall Raid, and the future beyond Utopia.
Maximum length: twelve minutes.
First draft due in seventy-two hours.
June read the instructions twice.
Then she opened a blank document.
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS, DRAFT ONE
The cursor waited.
Foundation Year.
She remembered rain on the Grand Fountain.
She remembered a jacket lifted above two heads.
She remembered the Lover Statue and a boy who had laughed at its promise.
She could not place those memories in order.
June called me after midnight.
"Tell me how we met," she said.
I smiled into the dark.
"You came late."
"I know that."
"You acted like the empty seat had been waiting for you."
"Was it beside you?"
The question erased my smile.
"Close enough," I said.
June became quiet.
"Start from the beginning," she whispered. "Tell me properly."
I began with the day she entered our classroom and changed the shape of it.
I thought I was helping her write a graduation speech.
I did not yet understand why she needed me to remember it for both of us.