The emergency department gave my arm six stitches and June four hours of questions.
They checked her temperature, blood glucose, blood pressure, oxygen level, medication list, and the time of her last proper meal. A doctor asked whether she had fallen or struck her head. Another asked whether the confusion had started suddenly, whether she had taken anything new, and whether she had recently been ill.
Nobody allowed us to blame every symptom on Alzheimer's before ruling out everything else.
The blood tests showed exhaustion, mild dehydration, and nothing that explained the episode better than the disease, stress, and two nights without enough sleep.
"That does not make it harmless," the neurologist told us. "It means we reduce every pressure we can control and monitor what we cannot."
June sat behind the curtain beside my bed. She still wore the rehearsal dress beneath a hospital blanket. A rust-colored stain marked its sleeve where she had held my arm inside the ambulance.
Every few minutes, her eyes moved to the white bandage around my forearm.
"Does it hurt?" she asked.
"Yes."
She looked down.
I had learned not to protect her with false answers.
"It hurts less now," I added.
"You needed six stitches."
"The doctor has excellent sewing skills."
"Stop making it small."
"Then stop making it the only thing that happened."
June gripped the edge of the blanket.
"I kissed NS."
"I know."
"I thought he was you."
"I know that too."
"Then I saw you and felt nothing."
That was the wound neither of us could cover.
"You felt afraid," I said.
"Of you."
"Of a stranger wearing my face."
"That sounds like something people say because the truth is worse."
"The truth is worse. It is also still the truth."
She began crying again, more quietly than backstage.
"Are you angry with me?"
"I am angry with the disease. I am angry that NS knew before I did. I am angry that I saw you kiss him and, for one second, wanted to believe the cruelest explanation because it was easier than being scared."
June forced herself to meet my eyes.
"Are you angry with him?"
"Yes."
NS heard me from the other side of the curtain.
"You should be," he said.
He stepped inside without his graduation gown. Kitty followed him but remained near the entrance.
NS placed June's blue medical folder on the chair.
"I froze," he said. "Then I kissed you back before I understood what you believed. It lasted seconds. That does not make those seconds yours to carry."
June wiped her face.
"Did you want to kiss me?"
NS took time before answering.
"Some part of me has wanted many things I had no right to take. When I understood you thought I was XH, I stopped. I should have stopped before that."
I looked at him.
"Yes," I said. "You should have."
He accepted it without defense.
Kitty's expression tightened, but she did not rescue him from the consequence.
The hospital asked June to repeat the night's sequence before discharge. She remembered entering the quiet room. She remembered finding what she believed was my black gown. After that, the corridor survived in fragments: thunder, NS's blue shirt, a blade on the floor, my heartbeat beneath her ear, and blood on white fabric.
She signed the incident report herself.
She refused her mother's request to describe it as a stage accident.
"I became disoriented and frightened," June dictated. "I picked up a utility knife and injured XH while he prevented me from falling down the service stairs. The knife should not have been unsecured. My illness should not be hidden. Neither fact cancels the other."
The graduation office suspended the next day's rehearsal. Stage management locked every tool cabinet, added full emergency lighting to both wings, and assigned one trained staff member to the quiet room.
June agreed to all three changes.
She did not agree to withdraw from the speech.
Three nights later, the storm finally left Yandong.
The city air had been washed clear enough for stars to survive above the lights. June and I climbed to the enclosed roof terrace of Campus Two after the rescheduled rehearsal. The door remained unlocked behind us, and Kitty knew where we were. Those details mattered now.
My left arm remained bandaged from wrist to elbow.
June carried two paper cups of tea and a folded copy of her speech. She had completed the entire rehearsal without losing her place, then forgotten where she had put her phone while it was still in her hand.
Neither event erased the other.
We sat against the warm concrete wall beneath the railing. The campus looked smaller from above. The Grand Fountain shone in the courtyard below, its water turning gold and silver beneath the lamps.
"Do you remember the last time we sat under a sky like this?" June asked.
I looked at her.
"Do you want the answer or a cue?"
"Neither. I remember."
She leaned her head against my shoulder.
"I only wanted to know whether you did."
"I remember too much. It is one of my worst qualities."
"It may become useful."
The joke hurt both of us, but June smiled after she said it. I let her own the joke instead of turning it into another emergency.
She raised her cup toward the sky.
"Which one is your guiding star, XH?"
"That one."
I pointed to the brightest light above the eastern dormitory.
June narrowed her eyes.
"That is an airplane."
The light blinked and moved.
"I was checking whether your vision was affected."
"Liar. Choose again."
I pointed toward a cluster near the northern horizon.
"The small one beside those three."
"You do not know any constellations."
"I know several. That one is the Medical Student Carrying Unpaid Debt."
"And the three beside it?"
"His parents asking when he will become a real doctor."
June laughed into my shoulder.
For a little while, we were not a patient and an emergency contact. We were two students hiding after rehearsal because neither wanted the night to end.
"Be serious," she whispered. "Which one guides you?"
I searched the sky once more, pretending the answer lived there.
Then I lowered my hand and pointed at her.
"You."
June stopped smiling.
I leaned close enough that the next words belonged only to her.
"You're my guiding star."
Her eyes filled immediately.
"That is a dangerous responsibility to give someone who keeps losing directions."
"A guiding star does not walk the road for me," I said. "It gives me somewhere to look when I lose north."
"What if I forget that you said it?"
"Then I say it again."
"What if I forget to ask?"
"Then I remind you without making it a test."
June placed her palm against my chest, directly over the heartbeat that had helped her find me backstage.
"And if you lose me completely?"
I wanted to promise something larger than medicine would permit.
Instead, I covered her hand with mine.
"Then I will still know where I was trying to go."
June kissed me beneath a sky neither of us could name.
It was not desperate like the Grand Fountain or hidden by rain like Malaysia. She kissed me slowly, with her fingers resting against my cheek and my injured arm held safely between us. When we separated, she remained close enough for our foreheads to touch.
"Say it once more," she said.
"You're my guiding star."
She opened the voice recorder on her phone.
"Again."
I laughed.
"You're my guiding star, June."
She saved the recording under a title only she could see.
Then she kissed me again before I could ask what she had named it.
Kitty waited beside the Grand Fountain while NS reviewed three international pathway brochures as if one of them contained an answer key.
The overseas transfer seminar had given them more questions than choices. Credit recognition differed between universities. Scholarship offers depended on final ranking. Visa interviews could take months. Some programs wanted another English examination, while others required clinical modules Utopia had postponed during the pandemic.
"You have family money," Kitty said. "Why are you reading the scholarship page?"
"Because using my father's money means accepting my father's route."
"And what route did he choose?"
"The one farthest from every decision I have made without him."
Kitty sat on the fountain's stone rim.
"My mother wants the safest country. My adviser wants the strongest program. The ranking committee wants us to smile beside matching medals so nobody asks why three people tied for second."
"You are still angry about the result."
"I lost first place by less than one question in an online examination where everyone had a textbook open beyond the camera. Of course I am angry."
"You also beat almost everyone."
"That sentence is why nobody likes salutatorians."
NS folded the brochures.
"Wherever you go, you will do well."
"That is not the same as knowing where I belong."
"No," he said. "It isn't."
Water rose behind them and fell in a soft illuminated curtain. Without the storm, the courtyard felt too honest. There was nowhere for either of them to hide inside rain.
Kitty looked toward the roof terrace.
"Do you think they will survive this?"
"Tonight? Yes. The future? I stopped insulting the future by pretending I understand it."
"Very poetic. Did you prepare that for June?"
NS looked at her.
"The song at Water Boom was for you."
Kitty's teasing expression disappeared.
"Everyone thought it was for her."
"I know."
"You let me think that."
"I have wasted too much time letting you think the wrong things."
Kitty studied him for any sign that June's mistaken kiss had pushed him toward the nearest open door.
"Are you asking because she chose XH again?"
"June did not choose anyone in that corridor. She was ill. I will not use her confusion to decide this for me."
"Then decide."
NS stepped closer.
"If I choose to be your man, will you let me be him?"
Kitty held his gaze for three long seconds.
"No."
NS blinked.
Kitty's mouth curved.
"That sounded like a business acquisition. Ask like a human being."
He exhaled, almost laughing.
"I have been waiting too long. I wasted too much of Foundation Year watching you watch XH. Then I wasted Year One pretending jealousy was patience. I do not know which country either of us will enter, what our grades will buy, or whether our families will make the decision before we do."
He offered her his hand.
"Let me try to be your boyfriend before uncertainty becomes another excuse. A trial period, if that is all you trust me with."
Kitty looked at his hand.
"How long?"
"Thirty days."
"Performance review after two weeks."
"Cruel."
"Nonexclusive renewal rights."
"Rejected."
"You are terrible at trial periods."
"I intend to pass."
The quiet confidence of it warmed something she had protected for years.
Kitty placed her hand in his.
"Fine. You may become my man temporarily."
"When does the trial begin?"
She rose on her toes and kissed him before the question ended.
NS went still for one shy heartbeat. Then his hand settled at her waist, and he kissed her back.
Their first kiss was careful. Their second was not.
Years of delayed choices broke open beneath the fountain lights. Kitty caught his collar and pulled him closer. NS smiled against her mouth, surprised enough to become young again, then kissed her with every feeling he had once hidden inside songs, grades, and perfectly measured answers.
When they finally separated, both were breathless and embarrassed.
Kitty kept her forehead against his.
"Your evaluation has started badly," she whispered.
"What did I do wrong?"
"You waited too long."
She kissed him again beneath the falling water.
Above them, June kept a recording of the person who called her his guiding star.
Below, Kitty and NS began a future neither could grade, schedule, or guarantee.
For one clear night, uncertainty did not stop any of us from choosing a direction.