Philip lifted a hand to his forehead, massaging the very soul of his suffering.
Rosalind didn't move. She only raised an eyebrow, wearing the expression of someone about to send herself a five-real PIX for patience.
Mac, on the other hand, stopped halfway, confused—the genuine confusion of someone who just walked into a play without memorizing the script.
"W–What happened here?" he asked, looking from the White Light to the floor, and from the floor to Rosalind, as if trying to solve a riddle.
And Philip could only think about how much of an idiot he was.
The White Light let out a trembling sigh, placed a hand dramatically on her forehead, and declared to absolutely no one in particular:
"I… I just wanted to help… but she… she pushed me."
The dramatic pause would have been more convincing if she hadn't ruined the timing by sneaking a glance to make sure Mac was watching.
He was.
And Philip watched, in growing horror, as Mac was three seconds away from falling into the trap.
"Rosalind, how could you push her?" he burst out, indignant in the worst way possible.
Philip closed his eyes. Slowly. The amount of secondhand embarrassment in that room was lethal.
Rosalind turned to Mac with the same expression someone has when hearing that the Earth is flat and managed by pigeons.
"Push her?" she repeated, incredulous.
The White Light held her Olympic-martyr posture: hand on chest, pained gaze, drama dripping from every pore.
"I… I was only trying to help," she murmured in such a fragile tone that even the air seemed to pity her. "And then… she…"
"She what?" Rosalind crossed her arms, impatient.
Philip finally intervened—because if he didn't do it now, he wouldn't get another chance. He would die right there, buried under an avalanche of secondhand embarrassment.
He took one step forward—and it was as if someone hit the pause button on the universe.
Everyone stopped. Everyone stared.
The wind stopped.
People froze mid-movement—the girl scrolling on her phone stayed with her finger suspended in the air, the professor walking by was frozen mid-word, even a pigeon outside stopped moving as if it had turned to stone.
And then, like every low-budget Chinese drama:
Everyone turned at the same time.
Slowly.
In silence.
That perfectly synchronized dramatic turn that no human being does in real life, but which somehow felt completely normal in that world.
A girl gasped.
Another placed a hand on her chest.
A boy dropped his notebook to the floor in slow motion.
And Philip, standing in the middle of the restaurant corridor, stuck in a pose he didn't even remember striking, stared back at the frozen audience.
"Rosalind… I didn't expect to come back from my trip and see a scene like this right away."
The effect was immediate.
People, previously frozen, began thawing as if someone had pressed "play" on the world.
And of course, the whispers began.
"Who is he?!""My God… he's back??""Isn't he that…?""Did he get hotter or is it just me?""This feels like a special drama episode…"
Even the White Light lost her breath for a second, as if she had just taken a slap to the soul.
Rosalind lifted her head slowly, surprise lighting her eyes—the classic heroine look of someone who doesn't know whether to faint, run, or cry.
And Philip, holding his pose like a true veteran of cliché dramas, thought:
This is it. I'm in the story now. And I entered by kicking the door down.