"You came late," I told her.
June's face remained inside the small video window on my laptop. Behind it, a blank document waited beneath the title VALEDICTORY ADDRESS, DRAFT ONE.
It was twelve seventeen in the morning.
Her first draft was due in sixty-eight hours and forty-three minutes.
She had created a countdown.
"How late?" she asked.
"Late enough that everybody looked at the door."
"Why?"
"Because Foundation students have nothing better to do before a lecture begins."
June did not laugh.
"Where did I sit?"
"In the empty place close to me."
"Close to you or beside you?"
I tried to see the old classroom properly.
Rows of plastic chairs.
Fluorescent lights.
Students pretending not to study one another.
The memory would not sharpen simply because June needed it.
"Close enough that I noticed you," I said.
"That sounds like something you invented for romance."
"You asked for my version."
She opened the voice recorder on her phone.
"Say it again."
"Which part?"
"All of it."
So I began again.
This time, June typed while I spoke.
She created six headings.
FOUNDATION YEAR
YEAR ONE
YEAR TWO
THE WALL
THE PANDEMIC
TOMORROW
Beneath Foundation Year, she placed Campus Two, our first medical terminology lessons, the blood-pressure practical, the friends who had not yet learned how much they could hurt one another, and the Grand Fountain before it became a place where we kept returning to unfinished feelings.
Some memories came from her immediately.
Others arrived only after I supplied one detail.
"The Lover Statue," she said. "That was Foundation Year."
"Year One."
Her fingers stopped.
"Are you sure?"
"During the Kings and Queen Selection."
June looked away from the document.
"I told you the story then?"
"You told me two lovers could stay close enough to touch and still be separated by eternity. The man keeps reaching. The woman keeps waiting."
"And they never stop trying to return to each other."
"That was your interpretation."
"What did you say?"
"I called it a dramatic campus legend."
June gave me a wounded look.
"You were terrible."
"I was realistic."
"You were emotionally underdeveloped."
"Past tense?"
That earned the laugh I had been waiting for.
June moved LOVER STATUE into the Year One column.
Then she stared at the words.
"I can remember telling you," she said. "I cannot remember which one of us was standing on the left."
"Does the speech need that?"
"No."
"Then let it go."
"You make forgetting sound generous."
I stopped smiling.
June saw it and immediately returned to the document.
"Next," she said. "Tell me about the first time everybody ate together."
I answered.
Twenty minutes later, she asked the same question again.
At one forty, the timeline contained thirty-seven fragments and no speech.
June wanted dates. I remembered weather.
She wanted order. I remembered faces.
She wanted to know when Kitty first protected me, when NS first lied for us, when JP turned humiliation into a joke, when Anna began carrying her faith quietly, and when Utopia stopped feeling like a campus and became a country inside a country.
Every answer opened three more arguments.
"The rooftop ghost was before the health fair," I said.
"No. After."
"Before."
"Prove it."
I searched the old class photographs rather than trusting myself. The timestamps agreed with me.
June enlarged one photograph until the pixels broke apart.
"I don't remember this shirt."
"It was mine."
"Why was I wearing it?"
"You weren't. It was tied around your waist because you spilled something on your skirt."
"What?"
"I don't remember."
June relaxed when I admitted it.
For a moment, forgetting belonged to both of us.
Her medication alarm vibrated beneath the papers.
She silenced it without taking anything.
"June."
"I will do it after this paragraph."
"Do it now."
"You have become annoyingly responsible since the Wall."
"You made me practice."
She took the tablet with water and showed me her empty palm as proof.
"Satisfied?"
"Deeply."
"Tell me again how I entered the classroom."
The question came so naturally that, for one second, I almost answered without noticing.
"We already recorded it."
June looked toward her phone.
The red timer showed one hour and twenty-nine minutes.
"Right," she said.
She wrote LISTEN BEFORE ASKING XH AGAIN at the top of the timeline.
"Sleep," I told her.
"The speech is still blank."
"The speech will remain blank if the valedictorian stops functioning."
"That would solve the speaking problem."
"June."
"Fine."
She moved the cursor to the first line.
Typed We began.
Then deleted it.
"Tomorrow," she said.
"Tomorrow," I agreed.
Neither of us spoke about how little she trusted that word.
I did not sleep after the call.
At two eleven, I sent NS a message.
How long has June been repeating questions?
His reply took seven minutes.
Everybody repeats things during finals.
She asked me twice how we met.
The typing indicator appeared, vanished, and returned.
She is exhausted.
That is not an answer.
It is the answer I can give you.
I sat up in bed.
You said no more secrets after the Wall.
I said I would not abandon you. Those are different promises.
Anger carried my fingers across the screen.
Does A.V. know?
NS did not answer that question.
Instead, he wrote:
Did she take her medication tonight?
I stared at the message.
I had never told him about the alarm.
Yes. Why do you know about it?
The typing indicator never returned.
At three, I opened the old Foundation Year photographs and began arranging them by date for myself.
I told myself I was helping with the speech.
The truth was simpler.
For the first time, I was afraid that June and NS shared a past happening in the present, one that everyone had agreed to keep outside my sight.
The first graduation coordination meeting began nine hours later.
The ceremony coordinator occupied the central screen in Utopia's small lecture theatre. June sat at the front as valedictorian. Kitty, NS, and I sat one row behind her as the three co-salutatorians, each separated by an empty marked seat.
Mr. Kim attended as faculty adviser.
The coordinator reviewed the schedule.
Two blocking rehearsals.
One technical rehearsal with microphones, captions, lectern height, and the teleprompter.
One full-dress rehearsal in gowns.
Arrival ninety minutes before the real ceremony.
Temperature screening at the entrance.
Limited guest passes registered by name.
Masks required backstage and in the audience. Speakers could remove theirs only after reaching the lectern. The official photograph would be taken outdoors if weather permitted. A complete prerecorded ceremony would remain ready in case new public-health restrictions cancelled the live event.
"The valedictory address is twelve minutes maximum," the coordinator said. "Approximately thirteen hundred to fifteen hundred spoken words, depending on pace. The captioning team needs an approved transcript forty-eight hours before the ceremony. Any names in languages unfamiliar to the announcer require phonetic guidance."
June wrote every instruction.
Then she wrote twelve minutes again beneath the first line.
The coordinator continued. "The speech should acknowledge your academic journey, major losses, and the class's future. It is not a campaign address, an appeal hearing, or a response to online commentary."
Several students glanced at June.
Kitty looked straight ahead.
"The co-salutatorians will lead the graduate pledge together," the coordinator said. "You will each receive marked positions and individual microphone checks. Do not compete for the center."
JP, watching from the back row, whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear.
"They know this class."
Even Kitty smiled.
June's mother joined the meeting by video without appearing on the original participant list.
"I have circulated a suggested structure," she said.
An email reached us before the coordinator could respond.
The attached draft was already twelve hundred words long.
It praised national recovery, the Lady President's education initiative, international partnership, and the resilience of young professionals. The Wall Raid occupied two sentences. None of the dead were named. The ranking controversy did not exist. The class appeared grateful, polished, and almost untouched.
Tracked comments carried A.V.'s initials.
Avoid language that implies institutional responsibility.
Emphasize opportunity rather than trauma.
End with overseas medical leadership.
June scrolled to the final page.
"This isn't my speech."
"It is a foundation," her mother replied.
"It is an advertisement."
The coordinator adjusted her glasses. "Family members normally do not participate in editorial meetings."
"My daughter is not a normal valedictorian. Her speech will attract national coverage."
"She is still the author."
June's mother looked past the coordinator and found me in the second row.
"Some people around her encourage emotion without considering consequence."
I leaned toward my microphone.
"Some people call removing the dead a consequence."
June turned around.
Her expression told me not to make the first meeting a war.
Mr. Kim intervened.
"We will collect memories from the class before shaping the draft. June should know what her classmates want represented."
He assigned every student one task.
One moment that defined Foundation Year.
One moment that changed them in Year One.
One truth from Year Two.
One name or loss the speech must not erase.
One reason to believe in a future after Utopia.
The answers were due the next evening.
June's mother closed her copy of the prepared draft.
"Seventy-two hours pass quickly," she said.
"Then stop using mine," June replied.
The call ended before either of them could say something permanent.
That night, June opened two files.
Her mother's draft began with national recovery.
Her own began with a blinking cursor.
Voice messages arrived from the class.
JP remembered laughter in rooms where none of them expected to survive embarrassment.
Anna remembered her father's belief that education should make a person useful to strangers.
Kitty sent only one sentence.
Tell the truth, even if you do not make it beautiful.
NS sent a folder of dated photographs, event notices, and old schedules. Every file carried the name of the people inside it.
June understood what he had built for her.
She did not thank him in writing. A written thank-you would leave another clue XH might someday find.
Bunny remembered the first laboratory session where half the class wore gloves in the wrong size because nobody wanted to admit they did not know what to choose. Her message ended in laughter and then, unexpectedly, tears.
Cherry remembered that their worst arguments had usually begun when two people were frightened and too proud to name the fear.
TZ submitted a story about friends who made mistakes, left, returned, and discovered that apology was a direction rather than a destination.
NC remembered the first time the class crossed Campus Two beneath one umbrella after sudden rain. Nobody had stayed dry. Everybody had pretended the attempt mattered.
Jihye sent a photograph of the four tarot cards she had drawn during the Mashara exchange.
The Tower.
The Moon.
The Empress.
The Chariot.
Beneath them she wrote:
I thought the final card meant reaching home. Maybe it only meant that the journey would keep asking who was holding the reins.
June moved that line into the TOMORROW column.
Then she added the names of the classmates who had not returned from the Wall and the relatives lost during the pandemic. She checked every spelling against Mr. Kim's verified list. When she reached U Daniel Aung, she stopped the recording and prayed quietly for Anna before continuing.
The speech was no longer blank because June lacked words.
It was blank because too many lives were asking not to be reduced to twelve minutes.
She opened the recording of my voice.
"You came late," I said from the speaker.
June placed her fingers on the keyboard.
This time, she did not delete the first line.
We entered Utopia at different times, carrying different dreams, and still found ourselves inside the same story.
She added a second.
Before medicine taught us how to preserve a life, our friends taught us why a life must be remembered.
June saved the document as VALEDICTORY ADDRESS, DRAFT ONE.
She closed it, listened to three more voice messages, and returned to the folder.
Then she created a new blank document.
She titled it VALEDICTORY ADDRESS, DRAFT ONE.
The cursor waited beneath the name.