What unsettles Jamie most is not the noise online. It is the pattern underneath it. CJ does not guess. He places himself close enough to names, routines, and systems that people stop asking how he knows so much.

Valentine’s Day should have been harmless. Hearts on doors, roses in lecture halls, and campus-wide delivery notes written like jokes. Then Jamie hears her name in a crowded hallway and sees the paper roses. CJ did not message her. He paid for witnesses.

Two voices behind Jamie are low, casual, almost bored. “Apparently it was from CJ.” The name lands like a stone. Not a random admirer. Someone with reach, someone who “runs half the group chats,” someone who has turned rumors into narrative before.