Chapter 6: Chamomile Confession
The walk back from the MIT shuttle stop was a numb trance. The cold air did nothing to clear the scent of sterile wipes and sex from my memory, or the taste of confession from my mouth. It’s you. Always you. The words felt like a brand, a public declaration of allegiance in a war I hadn’t meant to start.
My dorm room was dark and still. Elise was out, probably at a study group that didn’t end on its knees in a sub-basement. I shed my clothes, the sweater that smelled of library dust and spilled chamomile, the leggings still damp from Meilin’s touch. I stood under a scalding shower, scrubbing until my skin was pink, trying to erase the feeling of her hands, her mouth, the cold table edge. The water couldn’t touch it. The evidence was internal.
I wrapped myself in a towel and stared at the MIT cross-registration portal still open on my laptop. A gateway to a world of sharp minds. One sharp mind in particular.
Tuesday arrived with a stark, winter brilliance. The sun was a pale coin in a hard blue sky, making the snow on Wellesley’s quad glitter cruelly. Every step toward the Babson meeting point felt weighted. I was a specimen moving toward a new observational field.
Kenji was already there, by the stone bench we’d agreed on. He saw me and smiled. It wasn’t his full, luminous smile. It was smaller, tempered. He had a paper bag from the Japanese bakery in his hand.
“Hey,” he said as I approached.
“Hey.” I stopped a few feet away, a buffer zone of my own making.
“I got mochi. Red bean. A peace offering for the… drowned textbook incident.” He offered the bag.
I took it. The paper was warm. “You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.” He shifted his weight. The easy openness was strained, a performance we were both aware of. “So. Walk?”
We fell into step along the cleared path that wound around the Babson campus. The silence was different from Meilin’s—not charged with intensity, but thick with things unsaid. We made brittle small talk about coursework, the weather, anything that wasn’t the tea spill, the text, the kiss.
After ten minutes of this agony, he stopped walking.
“Vy.”
I stopped too, bracing myself.
He looked out at the frozen pond, not at me. “I like you. A lot. That’s not a secret. And I’m not an idiot. I know something happened after you left. I could see it on you when you got on the shuttle.”
“Kenji…”
“No, let me finish.” He finally looked at me, his brown eyes earnest, pained. “I’m not asking for a report. I’m just saying… I’m here. And this,” he gestured between us, “whatever it is, doesn’t have to be a fucking controlled experiment. It can just be two people walking. Maybe holding hands. Maybe more, if it feels right. But it doesn’t have to be this… calculated thing.”
His words were a direct hit on Meilin’s entire methodology. It can just be. The simplicity was breathtaking. It was everything I’d thought I wanted.
And it felt like a trap.
“I don’t know how to just be,” I admitted, the truth clawing its way out. “Not with this. Not right now.”
“Then let me show you.” He said it softly, with no pressure. Just an offer.
He reached out, slowly, giving me every chance to pull away. His fingers laced with mine. His hand was warm, solid. Real. It was a foundational input, as she would say. Basic. Human.
We walked back to my dorm in that charged, fragile silence, hands linked. Elise’s door was shut, a note tacked to it: ‘At the lab till late! xo E.’ The universe was conspiring in its blunt way.
My room was as I’d left it: bed unmade, econ texts sprawling, two empty coffee cups on the desk. A museum of my indecision. Kenji stood just inside the doorway, suddenly looking younger, uncertain.
“This is it,” I said, a useless statement.
He nodded, his eyes taking in the space, the twin beds, the evidence of my life. His gaze lingered on the cups. He said nothing.
The mochi bag was still in my hand. I set it down. The action broke the stillness.
He stepped toward me. Then another step. He was in my space now, the friendly, approachable bubble gone, replaced by something more intentional. His eyes searched mine, looking for permission, for a sign.
I gave it to him. I leaned in and kissed him.
It was different from the library. That had been curiosity, a test. This was an apology, an attempt at a rewrite. His lips were just as soft, but the kiss was deeper, surer. His hands came up to cradle my face, his thumbs stroking my cheeks. A tenderness so profound it felt like sorrow.
We sank onto the edge of my bed. His coat rustled as he shrugged it off. My hands went to the hem of his sweater, and he raised his arms, letting me pull it over his head. His chest was smooth, his shoulders lean. He was beautiful in a quiet, human way.
His fingers went to the button of my jeans. They fumbled, his hands trembling slightly.
“Sorry,” he murmured, his breath warm against my neck.
“Don’t be.”
He got the button open, the zipper down. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of my jeans and my underwear and peeled them down my legs in one slow, deliberate motion. The air was cool on my bare skin. I shivered.
He knelt on the floor between my spread legs. He looked up at me, his eyes dark, his expression unbearably open. He kissed the inside of my knee. Then higher, on my thigh. His lips were soft, worshipful.
“Tell me,” he whispered, his voice ragged against my skin. “Tell me what she did to you.”
The question was a lightning strike. It wasn’t clinical. It was raw. It was a boy asking how he could possibly compete with a phantom, asking to know the shape of the ghost so he could try to exorcise it.
I couldn’t speak. My throat closed.
He didn’t press. He just lowered his head.
His mouth touched me, and a broken sound escaped my lips. His tongue was soft, questioning, so different from her targeted, efficient assault. He licked into me with a gentle persistence, learning my shape. He was tasting her. He was tasting everything. The realization made me burn with a shameful, dizzying heat.
He moaned, the vibration traveling straight to my core. His hands gripped my thighs, not to hold me in place, but to steady himself. His tongue swirled, lapping, drinking me in with a desperate devotion that felt like forgiveness. He was consuming the evidence, every trace of her and my own complicity.
“She tasted like this?” he mumbled against my flesh, his voice thick. “She fucked you like this?”
“Kenji…”
“Tell me.” He sucked my clit into his mouth, gentle then firm, his tongue flicking. “Did she make you come? Did you scream for her?”
The filthy, jealous questions, wrapped in the most intimate act, shattered me. “Yes,” I gasped, the truth torn from me. “Yes, she did.”
He groaned, a sound of pain and wild arousal. He drove his tongue deeper, fucking me with it, his nose grinding against me. It was messy, emotional, imperfect. His technique wasn’t calibrated. It was hungry. He was trying to overwrite her memory with the sheer volume of his need.
My hips bucked off the bed. The climb was different—not a steep, urgent ladder, but a slow, swelling tide. It built from a deeper place, weighted with guilt and this shocking, compassionate hunger. I tangled my hands in his soft brown hair, not guiding, just holding on.
“Come for me,” he begged, pulling away for a second, his chin glistening. “Just for me. This time, just for me.”
The “this time” broke the last dam. The orgasm rolled through me, a deep, wrenching wave that had tears springing to my eyes. It was less a sharp peak and more a vast, subsiding ache. I cried out, a ragged sound that was half-sob.
He held me through it, his face buried in my thigh, until my shuddering stilled. Then he stood up, his own jeans straining. His eyes were wild, his kindness stretched thin over a primal wire.
He pushed me back onto the bed, following me down. He yanked his jeans and boxers down just enough to free himself. He was hard, thick. He hesitated for a second, looking down at me, his body trembling.
“I need to be inside you,” he said, the words a strained confession. “I need to be the one there.”
I nodded, unable to speak. I was empty, clean, scraped raw by his mouth. I wanted to be filled with something simple.
He pushed into me with one smooth, desperate thrust. I gasped. He was bigger than I’d imagined, stretching me, a blunt, undeniable reality. He stilled, buried to the hilt, his forehead dropping to mine. A single, hot tear hit my cheek. His or mine, I didn’t know.
“You feel…” he choked out. “God, you feel…”
Then he moved. His rhythm was frantic, deep, seeking. Each drive was a claim, a plea. He fucked me with a losing battle’s fury, as if he could reach through my body and claw out the shadow of her. His breath came in harsh grunts against my ear.
“You’re mine right now,” he panted. “Say it. Just for now.”
“I’m yours,” I whispered, the lie feeling true in the vortex of sensation. “Right now, I’m yours.”
It was what he needed. His pace turned punishing, slamming me into the mattress. The bedframe knocked a dull rhythm against the wall. I wrapped my legs around his waist, clinging to the physical reality of him—the sweat slicking his skin, the smell of his shampoo, the desperate sound of his pleasure. I met his thrusts, my body responding to the sheer, animal intensity of it.
His control snapped. With a raw, broken shout, he came, pulsing deep inside me. He collapsed, his full weight on me, his face buried in my neck. We lay there, a tangled mess of limbs and denim and overwhelming aftermath.
The silence returned, but it was a different kind. It was the silence of a battlefield after the charge, littered with the wreckage of good intentions.
Slowly, he softened, slipped out of me. He didn’t move away. He just held me, his breathing slowly evening out.
“I ruined it,” he whispered into my hair. “I tried so hard not to, and I still ruined it by making it a competition.”
“You didn’t ruin it.”
“Yes, I did.” He finally pushed himself up on his elbows, looking down at me. His eyes were red-rimmed, clear. “Because you’re not here with me. You’re still there with her, comparing. And I just proved her point. I became a variable.”
He rolled off me and sat on the edge of the bed, his back to me. He pulled his clothes back on with quiet, definitive movements.
“Kenji…”
“It’s okay,” he said, standing. He found his sweater, pulled it on. He looked at the two coffee cups on my desk, then back at me. He offered a small, broken version of his smile. “The data is conclusive. I hope your model works out, Vy.”
He left, closing the door with a quiet, final click.
I lay in the wrecked bed, the scent of him and sex and red bean paste hanging in the air. My body hummed with the echoes of him. My mind was clearer than it had been in weeks.
He was right. The data was conclusive.
I had sought softness and found a war.
I had sought simplicity and authored a devastatingly complex equation.
Both sides had now been tested under conditions of extreme honesty.
And I was alone with the result: a profound, resonating emptiness that felt like the only truth I’d earned.
The emptiness wasn’t quiet. It was a high-pitched, ringing void. It echoed with Kenji’s broken hope, the wet sound of his devotion between my legs, the final click of my door. I lay there, feeling the slow, warm trickle of his come seeping out of me onto my sheets. A tangible result. A biological outcome from an emotional variable.
I needed it out.
I shoved myself up, the motion violent. In the cramped dorm bathroom, under the stark fluorescent light, I cleaned myself with mechanical brutality. The sight of him on the toilet paper, the smell of him and me mixed, fueled a nauseous panic. I scrubbed until I felt raw. It didn’t matter. The contamination was internal. A risk, stupid and profound, thrumming in my belly.
I needed noise. I needed a different kind of oblivion.
A text thread from a Wellesley group chat was blazing with notifications about a party at a Harvard final club. ‘No IDs, no gatekeeping, just pure id.’ someone had posted. It was a siren call. I pulled on a tight black dress, something that promised no conversation, just consequence. I didn’t look in the mirror.
The mansion was a Greek Revival monster, pulsing with bass that vibrated up through the frozen ground. Inside was a sweaty, shouting chaos of bodies. The air was thick with beer fumes, cheap cologne, and the sweet, chemical smell of vaporizers. I pushed through the crowd, a ghost seeking a furnace.
A guy with a red plastic cup shoved it into my hand. “Pre-game potion,” he yelled over the music, winking. “Special ingredient. Opens all the doors.”
I didn’t ask. I drained it. It tasted like battery acid and candy. Then I took another from a passing tray. The alcohol was a blunt force trauma to my system. The ‘special ingredient’ was a subtler invasion—a creeping, tingling heat that started in my stomach and fanned outwards, making my skin hypersensitive to the brush of strangers. My thoughts, which had been a sharp, painful cacophony, began to blur at the edges, muffled by a dense, buzzing static.
Someone grabbed my hand. “Spin the bottle! Circle in the library!”
I was pulled into a wood-paneled room, away from the worst of the noise. A dozen of us fell onto Persian carpets amidst scattered throw pillows. A expensive-looking bottle of empty bourbon was placed in the center. The rules were simple, stupid. Truth or Dare. Spin. Act.
The pill in my drinks turned the game from childish to carnivorous. Truths became graphic confessions of kinks and betrayals. Dares became physical escalating commands. I saw a guy lick the sole of a girl’s boot. I saw two strangers French kiss with such ferocity their lips bled.
My spin landed on a man sitting cross-legged in the corner. He hadn’t spoken much. He was beautiful, not in Kenji’s soft way or with Meilin’s sharpness, but with a polished, unreal perfection. High cheekbones, full lips, eyes the color of dark honey. He looked familiar in a way my liquor-fogged brain couldn’t place.
“Dare,” he said, his voice a smooth, low baritone that cut through the haze. He was looking directly at me.
The circle whooped. “Dare you to make her come with your hands in three minutes,” someone slurred. “Clock starts now.”
He didn’t hesitate. He simply unfolded himself and in one fluid motion lifted me from the circle, carrying me through a nearby door into a dim, book-lined study. He kicked the door shut with his foot, muting the chants. He set me on my feet against a giant oak desk.
“Consent?” he asked, his hands already at the hem of my dress. His gaze was focused, professional almost.
“Yes.” The word was a vapor.
He pushed my dress up to my waist. My underwear was a flimsy barrier he snapped to the side. His fingers, long and skillful, found me immediately. I was already wet, a slickness amplified by the drugs, by the spectacle, by the ruthless efficiency of his touch.
“Clock’s ticking,” he murmured, not to me, but to himself. Two fingers slid inside me, curling upwards, finding a spot that made my knees buckle. His thumb pressed my clit in a precise, rotary motion. It wasn’t loving. It wasn’t hungry. It was masterful. A virtuoso performance on an instrument.
“You’re the girl from the cross-reg debate on monetary sovereignty,” he said, his face close, his breath smelling of gin. “You eviscerated that Princeton guy. It was beautiful.”
Recognition flickered. He was Alexander Chen. A junior. Economics prodigy. Undergraduate fellow at the Kennedy School. His face had been in The Crimson. He was a deity on this campus.
Before I could speak, he dropped to his knees. His mouth was an instrument of devastating expertise. His tongue lapped broad stripes, then focused to a pinpoint oscillation that felt like a targeted electrical current. He added a third finger, stretching me, fucking me with a steady, piston rhythm. The combination was clinical and utterly devastating. He read the twitches of my thighs, the hitches in my breath, adjusting his pressure and speed like a mechanic tuning an engine.
“Come on,” he commanded softly against my flesh. “You want to win the dare, don’t you?”
It was that—the sheer, absurd vulgarity of it—that tipped me over. My orgasm was a sharp, screaming peak, a white-out of sensation that had nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with engineered friction. I cried out, my hands slapping back against the desk for purchase.
He stood, unfastening his trousers. He was hard, impressively so. He didn’t ask. He just lifted me, my back against the bookshelves, and guided himself into me with one firm, uninterrupted thrust. He filled the raw, empty space Kenji had left, frictioning away the last of that tenderness.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his composure slipping for a second. “You’re tight.”
He fucked me with a powerful, measured pace. Each deep stroke was a lesson in anatomy. He angled my hips, changing the depth, finding spots that made me see sparks. The books rattled on their shelves behind my head. His mouth was on my neck, sucking a mark that would bruise. He was claiming something, but it wasn’t me—it was the victory of the dare, the proof of his own famed skill.
“You like that?” he grunted, his pace quickening. “You like being the smartest girl in the room getting fucked stupid?”
I couldn’t answer. I was just a body, a set of nerve endings being expertly played. My second orgasm built faster, a wave crashing over the first. I clenched around him, milking him, my nails digging into the fine wool of his sweater.
He swore in Mandarin, a guttural, beautiful sound. His thrusts lost their perfect rhythm, turning ragged and deep. “I’m going to come inside you,” he panted, a hot confession against my ear. It wasn’t a question.
The permission was in my moan, in the way I locked my ankles behind his back and pulled him deeper. He shuddered, his whole body stiffening, and I felt the hot, urgent pulse of his release filling me. Again. Another man’s claim deposited deep, another variable introduced.
He held me there, pinned, for a long minute, both of us breathing heavily. Then he gently lowered me. He fixed his clothes with swift, efficient movements. He handed me a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket, pure white linen.
“A standing ovation,” he said, his smile now genuinely warm, post-performance. He looked at the wet patch on the front of his sweater, then back at me. “We should discuss liquidity traps sometime. Without the audience.”
Then he was gone, slipping back into the party, leaving me leaning against the bookshelves, my dress rumpled, my body thrumming with a hollow, skilled ecstasy, full of a stranger’s come. The dare was won. The data was corrupted beyond all recognition.
The data was corrupted beyond all recognition. Alexander’s linen handkerchief was a crumpled, damp flag in my fist. I used it, the absurd delicacy of it smearing the evidence of him and Kenji and my own shocking compliance. My legs felt unsteady, a structural weakness. The bass from the main rooms pulsed through the floor, a rhythmic throb that matched the ache between my thighs.
I stumbled back into the roaring heart of the party. The noise was a physical wall. Bodies swarmed, a kaleidoscope of sweatshirts and glitter and bared teeth. Someone looped an arm around my waist, pulling me into a grinding dance. I let them. My brain had filed a temporary cease-and-desist order on thought. Sensation was the only currency that mattered here.
“You look absolutely fucking wasted,” a voice shouted in my ear. It was a girl with a severe silver bob, her eyeliner sharp enough to cut. She pressed a fresh, cold can of something into my hand.
“I’m not,” I shouted back, the lie automatic. I cracked the can and drank. It was sour and citric, washing away the lingering taste of panic.
“Even better.” She grinned, all predatory amusement. “Means you can’t blame the alcohol later.”
She danced closer, her hands finding my hips, guiding their sway. Her touch was proprietary, devoid of Meilin’s analysis or Kenji’s reverence. This was a transaction of heat and movement. Her mouth grazed my jawline. “I saw you disappear with Chen. He’s a technically proficient little shit, isn’t he?”
The casual vulgarity, the accurate assessment, it pierced the fog. I pulled back to look at her. “You’re watching.”
“Everyone’s watching. It’s the whole point.” She licked a stripe up my neck. “I’m Clara. Let’s give them something better to watch.”
She led me, not to another hidden room, but to a wide, carpeted staircase. People were draped on the steps, kissing, passing joints, a tableau of staged decadence. Clara stopped halfway up, where the view from the foyer below was clear. She pushed me against the banister, her body slotting against mine. The polished wood dug into my back.
“Put on a show,” she murmured, her mouth capturing mine. It was a performative kiss, all tongue and teeth, designed for the audience below. A whistle cut through the music. My skin crawled and ignited simultaneously.
Her hand slid between us, under my dress, pushing the ruined underwear aside. Her fingers were blunt, impatient. “How many times have you come tonight?” she breathed into my mouth.
“I don’t—”
“Count.” She thrust two fingers inside me. I was swollen, oversensitive, a raw nerve. The stretch burned. “Is that three? Four?” She worked her fingers, a brutal in-and-out that ignored finesse for friction. The banister shook with our motion. “Come for the crowd, you greedy slut. Let them see.”
Shame and a jagged, sparkling pleasure twisted together. My climax was a shallow, sharp thing, ripped from me by sheer force of will—hers. A thin, choked cry escaped my throat. A smatter of applause echoed from below.
Clara removed her hand, wiped it casually on my dress. “See? Better than Chen.” She disappeared into the throng upstairs, leaving me exposed and trembling on the staircase.
I needed air that wasn’t recycled through a hundred lungs. I pushed through a set of French doors, stumbling onto a wide, empty terrace. The winter night was a slap, freezing the sweat on my skin. I gripped the stone railing, gasping. Below, the frozen garden lay under a thin crust of snow, pristine and silent.
“The escape artist.”
I turned. A figure leaned in the shadows by the door, the ember of a joint glowing. He stepped forward. It was the guy from the circle, the one who’d dared Alexander. He had a lazy, amused posture, messy dark hair, eyes that caught the distant light.
“I’m not escaping,” I said, my voice raspy. “I’m calibrating.”
He laughed, a low, genuine sound. He offered the joint. I took it, the hit expanding in my lungs, layering a new, fuzzy static over the chemical buzz. “Calibrating to what? You’ve been the main event all night.”
I passed it back. “Was I?”
“Leaving a trail of wrecked men and one terrifying woman.” He took a drag, studying me. “It’s impressive. And kinda sad. You’re like a heat-seeking missile for validation.”
The accuracy was disarming. “Fuck you.”
“Maybe later.” He smiled, no threat in it. “I’m Leo. I’m just here for the data.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
“Relax. Economics joke. I’m a Sociology grad student. I study ritualistic hedonism in elite institutions.” He gestured with the joint back toward the party. “This is a goldmine. You’re a fascinating case study. The conscious participant who thinks she’s running the experiment but is clearly the prime subject.”
I stared at him. The pounding music felt miles away. “You’re watching. You’re all just watching.”
“And you’re performing. Beautifully.” He crushed the joint under his shoe. “But you’re shivering. Come on.”
He didn’t lead me back inside. Instead, he opened a discreet service door off the terrace, revealing a narrow, darkened hallway lined with supplies. It was cold and silent. He pulled me in, closing the door, plunging us into near-total darkness. The only light seeped under the door.
“What are you doing?” My voice was small in the dark.
“Offering a control environment. No audience. Just feedback.” His hands found my shoulders, turning me to face the wall. His body pressed against my back, warm and solid. “Tell me to stop anytime.”
His mouth found the side of my neck, not biting, but soft, open-mouthed kisses along the tendon. His hands smoothed down my arms, then over my hips. He gathered the fabric of my dress, pulling it up around my waist. The cold air hit my bare skin again. He traced the curve of my ass with a single, slow finger.
“You’re all used up, aren’t you?” His whisper was almost kind. “Everything’s rubbed raw.”
A shuddering breath left me. He undid his fly. I heard the slick sound of him stroking himself, getting hard. He pressed the head of his cock against me, not entering, just resting in the damp cleft of my ass, teasing lower.
“Here?” he whispered. “Or here?” He nudged against my entrance. I was so swollen, so thoroughly fucked open, the pressure was an electric jolt.
“I don’t care.” The truth of it was absolute.
“I know.” He shifted, spitting into his hand, wetting himself. He guided himself to my other hole, the tight, forbidden pucker. “This. I want this. It’s the only place no one’s been tonight.”
A spike of pure adrenaline shot through me. This was a new line. A profound, stupid violation. I nodded into the darkness, my forehead against the cool wall.
He pushed. The initial breach was a searing, impossible stretch. I cried out, a ragged gasp swallowed by the dark. He held still, letting my body clench and fight against the invasion. “Breathe,” he murmured, his hands anchoring my hips. “Just breathe.”
Slowly, with an excruciating patience the others had lacked, he worked himself deeper. The pain blurred, transformed into a devastating, full feeling. He was splitting me open in a fundamentally new way. When he was fully seated, he stayed there, motionless, his breathing harsh in my ear.
“Okay?” he asked.
It wasn’t. It was the least okay thing that had ever happened to me. “Yes.”
He began to move. It was a slow, deep, pulling drag. Each withdrawal felt like a precipice, each thrust a conquest. The pleasure was complex, layered over a bedrock of pain, a shocking intimacy in the total anonymity. He fucked me with a relentless, focused rhythm, his hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise.
“You take it so well,” he grunted, his pace increasing. The wet, slapping sounds were obscene in the tiny space. “You’ll take anything, won’t you? Any data point. Any cock. You just need to be filled.”
His words were the final catalyst. An orgasm built, not from my clit but from the deep, violated heart of me, a dark wave rising through my spine. It crashed silently, a convulsive locking of my entire body around his invading length. He swore, his rhythm fragmenting.
“Where?” he demanded, his voice breaking. “Tell me where.”
“Inside,” I begged, the word a ghost. “Just fill it.”
He slammed into me one last time, burying himself to the hilt. A hot, liquid rush flooded my bowels as he came. He held there, pulsing, for a long moment. We were both trembling.
He withdrew slowly. A hot trickle followed. I heard him fasten his pants. He didn’t touch me again.
“The data is always corrupt, Vy,” he said, his voice now detached, the sociologist re-emerging. “The experiment is always the self.”
He opened the service door. The light and noise from the party flooded back in, a grotesque carnival. He slipped out without a backward glance.
I slid down the wall to the cold floor. The physical reality was a screaming chorus: the throbbing ache of my ass, the sticky chill on my thighs, the metallic taste of blood in my mouth from where I’d bitten my cheek. I had sought a wild, fun climax to the night. I had found a silent, dark annex where I let a stranger destroy a final boundary for the sake of a completed dataset.
I pulled my dress down. The fabric clung unpleasantly. I stood on legs that felt alien. I walked back through the party, a ghost moving through the living. No one noticed me now. The spectacle was over.
Outside, the cold was a mercy. The walk to the shuttle stop was a million miles. I sat on the empty bench, waiting. My body was a palimpsest, written over by hands and mouths and cocks, a living record of corruption.
The shuttle arrived, doors hissing open. I boarded. The only other passenger was a guy asleep in the back, snoring softly.
As the bus pulled away from the crimson glow of the final club, my phone buzzed in my clutch. A single notification glowed on the cracked screen.
It was a calendar alert.
Project Review - Meilin Zhāng. 9 AM. Sub-basement Lab B.
The experiment was waiting. The primary investigator required her results. I had no clean data to bring her. Only the wreckage of the night, and the profound, echoing emptiness where my own hypothesis used to be.
The shuttle drove on into the dark.