The dorm felt empty. Alexander hadn't just vanished; he had retreated. For two days, there was no sign of him. No unsolicited advice, no lectures, no flickering lights. It was just… quiet. The kind of quiet that was heavy with guilt.
Mason was miserable. "I'm the worst friend in the history of friends," he groaned, his head in his hands. "I turned his biggest trauma into a meme."
"Yep," Chloe said, not unkindly.
"We have to fix this," Jade said. "We can't let Brad Jenkins have the last word. Not like that."
"How?" Liam asked. "He's not wrong. Alexander did fail. What can we possibly do?"
Ethan, who had been silently typing at his laptop, looked up. "He's not wrong about the past. But he's wrong about now. Alex isn't that kid anymore. He's helped us. He's smarter than any of our actual professors. Brad defined him by his biggest failure. We need to redefine him by his biggest success."
"And what's that?" Mason asked.
Ethan smiled. "Us."
The new plan wasn't a roast. It was a rebuttal. A thesis to Brad's antithesis. They would make their own video, but not for Mason's channel. For the university's official philosophy department channel, which Ethan, thanks to his backdoor access, could temporarily commandeer.
They called it: "A Ghost's Refutation: Why Failure is Not an End."
They didn't script it. They just sat in their common room, with a single chair for Alexander, and started talking to the camera.
"He helped me pass my midterms when I was ready to drop out," Ethan started. "And not by giving me answers. By making me ask better questions."
"He turned my anxiety from a crippling weakness into… just a part of me I have to manage," Liam added. "He called it 'the dizziness of freedom.' It sounds weird, but it helped."
"He's the reason I finally stood up to my terrible lab partner," Jade said. "He said my 'aversion to conflict was a form of self-betrayal.' He was right."
"He's an insufferable, pedantic know-it-all," Chloe stated. The others stared at her. "What? He is. But he's our insufferable, pedantic know-it-all. And he's a hell of a lot more useful than a guy who thinks a weeping statue is peak paranormal content."
Finally, it was Mason's turn. He looked directly into the lens, all his usual bravado gone.
"Brad Jenkins called Alexander a failure," he said, his voice raw. "And yeah, his thesis was rejected. But you know what's a bigger failure? Being so afraid of looking stupid that you never have an original thought in your life. So afraid of not being the best that you spend your time tearing down other people. Alexander isn't hiding. He's right here, still trying, still learning, still teaching. What's Brad doing? He's making fun of a dead guy for getting a bad grade. Who's the real failure?"
They didn't know if Alexander was even watching. But they had to try.
Ethan uploaded the video to the philosophy department's channel with the title: GUEST LECTURE: Post-Corporeal Pedagogy & The Value of Intellectual Resilience.
It was a brilliant bit of academic trolling. Within an hour, it had more views than Brad's exposé.
The comments were different this time.
"This is actually really profound."
"I'm crying? In the club?"
"Wait, is the ghost single?"
"Brad Jenkins just got ethically deconstructed."
The climax came from an unexpected source. Professor Higgins, of all people, left a comment.
ProfHiggins: While Mr. Plath's thesis was, and remains, impenetrably dense and stylistically catastrophic, his persistence is… noteworthy. His understanding of Kierkegaard, in particular, seems to have improved posthumously. A fascinating data point for the mind-body problem. B+ for effort.
It was the closest thing to an apology Alexander would ever get.
A soft glow began to form in the empty chair. Slowly, Alexander Plath materialized. He looked at each of them, his luminous eyes shimmering.
"You… you defended me," he whispered.
"We defended our friend," Jade corrected gently.
"You used the tools of the institution to launch a counter-hegemonic narrative that re-contextualized the dominant paradigm of failure," Alexander said, a slow smile spreading across his face. "It was… masterful."
"We roasted him with facts and feelings," Mason translated.
"A sophisticated roasting!" Alexander agreed, his spirit lifting visibly. "A roasting that acknowledged the hermeneutic complexity of the situation! You didn't just insult him; you dismantled his entire worldview!"
"So… we're good?" Mason asked, hopeful.
Alexander floated over to him. "You exploited my deepest psychological wound for internet clout, plunging me into a days-long spiral of despair and self-recrimination."
Mason winced.
"However," Alexander continued, "your subsequent actions demonstrated a capacity for growth, empathy, and strategic thinking I had previously thought you incapable of. The synthesis of this dialectic is a stronger, more resilient friendship. So yes, Mason. We are 'good.'"
He turned his gaze towards the window, where on the quad below, they could see Brad Jenkins filming another video, looking flustered and out of ideas.
"As for Mr. Jenkins…" Alexander mused, his tone shifting to one of mild, academic interest. "His argument was predicated on a fundamental ad hominem fallacy. He attacked the author, not the work. A weak, intellectually bankrupt position."
"So what do we do?" Ethan asked.
"We do nothing," Alexander said serenely. "He has been publicly refuted. His credibility is shattered. To engage further would be to validate his premise. The most powerful response is to simply… move on. To continue our work."
He floated towards Ethan's laptop, where a line of code was waiting.
"Now, Ethan, about this recursive function. It's a perfect metaphor for the cyclical nature of history, but your syntax is an abomination. Let us begin."
The Great Roast War was over. Team Ghost had won. Not with a sick burn, but with something far more powerful: a solid argument and a group of friends who had his back. And as Alexander launched into a lecture on coding and Hegelian dialectics, the Survivors Club knew, with a deep and certain satisfaction, that they had the most annoying, and the absolute best, secret weapon on campus.