"A lie can wear a perfect face, but its shadow never lies."
The library was quieter than usual, almost too quiet. The soft hum of the overhead lights, the distant whir of the printer, and the occasional rustle of pages couldn't mask the weight that hung in the air like a storm waiting to break.
Aluna sat at the farthest corner, her laptop open, but her eyes weren't reading the notes on the screen. Her fingers hovered above the keyboard, frozen. A thousand thoughts swirled in her mind, but one stood out above the rest, the file. The one Said had promised to destroy.
She hadn't opened it. Not yet. But she had it, tucked away in a hidden folder with an inconspicuous name. It had appeared in her inbox with no message, no subject, nothing. Just the title: Midterm Answers – CS Dept.
Aska's voice echoed in her memory.
"We're not criminals. We're just students who made a mistake."
But was it still just a mistake if they kept the lie alive?
Across campus, in the dimly lit IT lab, Said sat alone, the glow of his dual monitors reflecting in his glasses. Code streamed down the screen, lines and lines of defense for the breach he never meant to take so far. What began as a desperate move to survive, to protect their scholarships, their futures, had spiraled into something uglier.
He wasn't even sure when he'd lost control.
He clicked open a terminal window, fingers flying over the keys. Firewalls, logs, encryption, everything he'd ever used was now being used to cover his tracks. Again.
A small voice inside him whispered: You could still walk away.
But another voice — louder, sharper — hissed: And lose everything?
---
Meanwhile, Aska stormed down the corridor of the psychology building, jaw clenched, heart pounding. He had seen the email.
Not the file — no, that would be too obvious. But he recognized Said's username. And the timestamp. And he wasn't stupid.
He burst through the stairwell door and into the rooftop access, the wind slapping his face like an icy warning. Ara was already there, her hair dancing in the breeze, her eyes staring out at the gray horizon.
"You saw it too," she said before he could speak.
"I saw enough," he replied.
They stood in silence for a moment, the city buzzing far below them, unaware of the chaos brewing in four students' hearts.
"Do you ever wonder," Ara murmured, "what would've happened if we had just… failed?"
Aska laughed bitterly. "We weren't allowed to fail."
She turned to him. "But now we're not allowed to breathe either."
---
That night, all four of them received the same message.
Anonymous. Untraceable.
"You think secrets buried deep will never surface. But even the cleanest hands leave fingerprints."
Their blood ran cold.
Someone knew.
---