The first thing Soe Hlaing May learned about storms was this:
They rarely announced themselves with thunder.
Sometimes they arrived as silence—clean, sharp silence, the kind that made a campus full of loud people hesitate before they spoke. The kind that made even laughter sound staged. The kind that turned a university into a courtroom, and every student into a jury member with a phone in their hand.
That morning, YLU smelled like wet stone and fresh ink.
Soe stepped into the Fine Arts courtyard with her camera bag hugging her shoulder like a shield. The strap pressed into her collarbone, familiar and comforting. She'd carried it through exams, through studio nights, through hallways that felt too narrow when rumors were moving.
Today, it felt heavier.
Not because the camera weighed more.
Because she did.
All around her, the courtyard performed normal life: students holding iced coffee, boys leaning against pillars like they were born leaning against pillars, juniors pretending they weren't staring. But the performance was thin. The moment Soe's shoes touched the tiles, she felt it—the hush sliding underneath the surface.
People weren't looking at her.
Not really.
They were looking past her, like she was simply part of the frame.
They were looking for Ka Byar.
Soe's fingers tightened around the strap. She kept walking anyway, pace steady, chin neutral, eyes forward. She'd learned that in Season 1: if you moved like you belonged, the campus hesitated before it tried to shove you out.
A notification buzzed.
She ignored it.
Another buzz.
She ignored it again.
The third one came with the little scarlet icon that made her stomach drop.
Scarlet Thread.
Soe's phone stayed face down in her palm, but her brain filled in the caption anyway. She didn't need to read it to know the vibe:
Scholarship girl: hero or hazard?
Fine Arts' new queen?
Professor Naya Thone's favorite?
Min Yatu's obsession?
The quiet best friend who films everything?
That last one was newer. Sharper. More personal.
That one was about her.
She reached the steps of Studio 3A, paused, and breathed in.
Inside the building, the air changed—less perfume, more paint, the faint ghost of turpentine and charcoal. The Fine Arts wing had always felt like a sanctuary compared to the glossy parts of YLU. But lately, even this place felt like it had cameras in the walls.
Soe climbed the stairs, careful not to rush. Rushing looked like guilt. Rushing looked like fear.
At the second-floor landing, she heard voices.
Not loud. Not whispering. The in-between tone that meant the speakers wanted to be overheard.
"Did you see her last night?" a boy's voice said. "At the podium?"
"She ate them alive," a girl replied, breathy with excitement. "Like she just—decided she's not human anymore."
Another voice, sharper: "No, she's unstable. That's the point. Unstable people are entertaining until they ruin someone important."
Soe stopped mid-step.
She didn't turn.
She didn't react.
She listened.
"Apparently the scholarship committee is panicking," the boy continued. "My cousin's in admin. They're saying she turned the whole thing into a scandal."
"And what about Professor Naya?" the girl asked.
A pause. Then laughter, mean and delighted.
"They always bring it back to him," the boy said. "They can't stand that she might be powerful on her own. So they'll say it's a man. It's always a man."
Soe's throat tightened.
It wasn't the first time she'd heard that sentiment.
It just hit differently now, because Soe knew exactly how much of Ka Byar's power came from Ka Byar. She knew the way Ka Byar built her spine from scratch, bone by bone, rumor by rumor.
She also knew something no one else did.
Ka Byar was not fearless.
Ka Byar was exhausted.
And lately, she'd been holding herself together with a kind of silence that scared Soe more than any public outburst ever could.
Soe resumed walking.
Down the hallway, the Fine Arts door to the dorm wing stood half open. Normally, Ka Byar would be there already—either sketching in the courtyard like she was trying to redraw the campus into something safer, or sitting on that same bench where she'd once been small enough to disappear.
Now, there was nothing.
Just the hum of the building, like it was holding its breath.
Soe knocked once on the dorm door and stepped inside.
The room looked the same: two beds, two desks, the thin curtain that let morning light leak in like a guilty secret. Soe's camera batteries sat lined up in their charger like tiny soldiers. Ka Byar's sketchbook lay closed on her desk, a graphite fingerprint smudged across the cover.
Soe's eyes went to the bed.
Ka Byar's side was made.
Too perfectly.
Soe swallowed.
"Ka Byar?" she called softly.
No answer.
Her stomach sank in slow motion. Not a dramatic drop. A quiet one. The kind that lasted.
Soe walked to the desk and touched the sketchbook lightly, as if it might bite.
Her eyes flicked to Ka Byar's phone charger.
Empty.
Ka Byar hadn't left her phone behind. She never did that. Not after everything. Not after Scarlet Thread taught them that privacy was a myth.
Soe exhaled, controlled.
Okay. Maybe she went out early. Maybe she needed air. Maybe she was sick of being watched and decided to move before anyone woke up.
Soe's phone buzzed again.
She couldn't ignore it anymore. Not when her hands were already shaking under the calm.
She flipped her phone over.
Scarlet Thread. Pinned post. New.
Soe stared at it for half a second too long before she clicked.
The screen filled with a photo of the scholarship-stage podium, Ka Byar caught mid-sentence. Her jaw set. Her eyes bright with something that looked like anger from far away but, up close, was more like grief that had stopped asking permission.
Caption:
SCARLET THREAD // SPECIAL FEATURE
Scholarship Girl or Ticking Bomb?
Last night, YLU's golden scholarship stage turned into our own courtroom when Soung Ka Byar used her "thank you" speech to drag the university's silence, rumor culture, and her own status as entertainment.
Bravery? Arrogance? Both?
Are we seeing a new kind of queen rise—or a problem the administration won't be able to control?
The comments were already alive, multiplying like flies.
Soe didn't read them.
She scrolled once, fast, and stopped.
A second image.
A blurry shot from the side of the stage.
Ka Byar at the mic.
And behind the curtain edge, half-hidden in shadow—
Soe.
Not the whole of her. Just enough.
Her shoulder. The curve of her hair. Her camera strap.
The angle made it look like she was filming Ka Byar, like Ka Byar was a project, like Soe was part of the narrative machine.
A comment sat at the top, highlighted by likes:
"Quiet media girl has been behind her the whole time. Are we sure she's not the one controlling the story?"
Soe's skin went cold.
Not because the comment was smart.
Because it was dangerous.
It was the kind of story people loved. The kind that made the audience feel clever. The kind that let them turn friendship into manipulation and intimacy into conspiracy.
Soe locked her phone and sat down hard on the edge of her bed.
For a moment, she stared at her hands.
They were steady.
That was the problem. Her hands were always steady.
Everyone else got to fall apart publicly. Everyone else got to scream, to cry, to throw chairs, to look human.
Soe had trained herself to become a container.
Someone had to be.
She pressed the heel of her palm into her eye socket, hard enough to hurt.
Then she forced herself to stand.
She crossed the hall to the studio offices.
The corridor smelled like old paint and new fear.
Halfway there, a familiar figure leaned against a pillar, as if he'd been waiting for her—too casual, too composed, too much of a rich-boy statue to belong in the same reality as a girl like Soe.
Min Yatu.
His tie was loosened like always, but today his eyes looked tired in a way that didn't match his polished uniform. He was holding his phone in one hand, screen dark, like he'd already read something that made him want to throw it.
He glanced up when he heard her footsteps.
"Soe," he said, voice low.
She stopped a few feet away. "Have you seen Ka Byar?"
Min's expression tightened.
He didn't say no.
He didn't say yes.
He said, "She doesn't answer my messages."
Soe felt the floor tilt, just slightly.
"She always answers you," she said before she could stop herself.
Min's gaze flicked to her. Something almost amused tried to surface, then died.
"Not today," he replied.
Soe's fingers curled around her camera strap again. "Where would she go?"
Min shrugged, but it wasn't careless. It was the shrug of someone trying not to panic.
"When she feels watched, she goes somewhere she can control the frame," he said. "Somewhere quiet."
Soe's heart thudded.
There were a few "quiet" places on campus. The library archive rooms. The unused corridor behind the sculpture lab. The rooftop access near the admin building that students weren't technically allowed to use but did anyway, because rules were suggestions when you had enough confidence.
Min studied her face, and his voice softened slightly.
"She's not alone," he added. "Not the way she used to be."
Soe swallowed. "You don't know that."
Min's gaze sharpened. "I do."
The certainty in his tone irritated her. Not because he was wrong. Because he didn't have the right to sound like he owned Ka Byar's loneliness.
Soe adjusted her bag. "If you find her—"
"I will," Min interrupted. "And if you find her first, tell her to stop playing martyr. This campus doesn't reward martyrs. It just collects them."
Soe stared at him for a beat. Then nodded once and walked past.
She didn't trust herself to speak.
She found herself in front of Professor Naya Thone's office before she fully realized she'd chosen that direction.
The door was half closed. Light spilled through the crack, pale and stark. Inside, the faint scratch of a pen.
Soe hesitated.
Naya wasn't her professor. Not officially. But he had become, in Season 1, a gravitational force you couldn't ignore. Not because he was loud. Because he was precise. Because his silence held weight.
Soe knocked.
"Come in," Naya's voice said.
She stepped inside.
His office looked like a place where time came to be judged. Books stacked in careful chaos. Sketches pinned to the wall, some anatomical studies, some abstract charcoal storms. A coffee cup that had been reheated too many times. A desk lamp casting a circle of light like a confession booth.
Naya looked up from his notebook.
His eyes went immediately past her, like he was searching for someone behind her.
Soe felt her pulse jump.
"Professor," she said. She didn't know what else to call him.
Naya's gaze returned to her, expression neutral. "Ms. Soe. You're early."
Soe took a breath. "Ka Byar isn't in the dorm."
Something flickered in his face. Not panic. Not fear. Something older and more controlled.
He set his pen down carefully.
"How long has she been gone?" he asked.
Soe hated that her throat tightened.
"I don't know," she admitted. "Her bed was made. Her phone charger was empty. She didn't leave her sketchbook, but she took her phone."
Naya's jaw flexed once. "She's not missing," he said, more like a command than a guess. "She's avoiding."
Soe didn't like how relieved she felt at that.
"Scarlet Thread is posting about me now," Soe added, because the words were burning. "They're implying I'm… controlling her story. That I'm filming her. That I'm part of it."
Naya's eyes narrowed, but not at Soe.
"At them," Soe realized.
He stood and walked to the window, staring out at the courtyard below as if he could see the rumor page floating above it like a parasite.
"Rumor pages don't create stories," he said quietly. "They exploit what already exists."
Soe swallowed. "And what exists?"
For a second, Naya didn't answer.
Then he turned back, gaze steady.
"A girl who became a symbol," he said. "And everyone wants to own a symbol."
Soe's hands trembled—finally, finally—just a little.
"She's my friend," Soe said, voice small but firm. "She's not a symbol."
Naya looked at her for a long moment.
"You're the only person on this campus who still says that sentence like you believe it," he replied.
Soe didn't know whether that was praise or warning.
She shifted her weight, forcing herself to meet his gaze.
"I need to find her," she said. "Before admin does. Before Scarlet does. Before the campus decides what her silence means."
Naya's eyes softened by a fraction—so small you could miss it if you didn't already know how to watch people.
"You won't find her by chasing her," he said. "You'll find her by remembering what she avoids."
Soe frowned. "What she avoids?"
Naya's gaze slid toward Ka Byar's sketchbook on his desk—one she must have left here at some point, or one he'd kept for critique. Its cover was worn at the edges.
"Rooms where she is not in control," he said. "Rooms with witnesses."
Soe's mind clicked.
Control.
Frame.
Ka Byar didn't vanish to be dramatic. She vanished to breathe.
To choose the angle.
To decide which version of herself would survive the morning.
Soe nodded once, tight.
"I think I know," she said.
As she turned to leave, Naya spoke again.
"Ms. Soe."
She paused.
His voice lowered. "If you find her… don't tell her to be good."
Soe's fingers curled.
Naya's eyes held hers.
"Tell her to be whole," he finished. "Good is a story other people use to control you."
Soe's throat tightened. She nodded and stepped out into the corridor.
The building hummed around her. Voices drifted. Phones buzzed. Somewhere, someone laughed.
But Soe only heard one thing:
Her own heartbeat, steady and stubborn.
She moved through the hallway like a ghost with purpose.
Past Studio 2B.
Past the sculpture lab.
Past the old storage room that still made her skin crawl when she thought of Klar's feral eyes afterward, the way a queen bee had started breathing like prey.
She didn't go there.
Not yet.
Instead, Soe climbed higher—up the back stairwell where fewer students walked, where the air smelled like dust and forgotten rules.
She reached the rooftop access door.
A sign screamed NO STUDENT ENTRY in bold red.
Soe stared at it, then at her own reflection in the narrow window.
In that glass, she didn't look like a quiet girl anymore.
She looked like someone who was about to step into a story whether she wanted it or not.
She pushed the door.
It was locked.
Of course it was.
Soe exhaled slowly, then reached into her camera bag.
Not for a lens.
For a thin metal hairpin she kept taped inside her battery pouch—an old habit, a small relic of growing up needing to fix things yourself because no one was coming to fix them for you.
Traditional, practical, unglamorous.
Effective.
She slid it into the lock.
One twist. A soft click.
The door opened.
Cold air hit her face, sharp and clean compared to the campus below.
She stepped onto the rooftop.
The city stretched out in gray distance—Yangon's low sprawl, the haze of morning, the faint outline of pagoda gold far away like a memory of something sacred.
And near the edge of the roof, sitting on the concrete ledge like she belonged to the sky more than the campus—
Ka Byar.
Her knees were pulled to her chest. Her hair was loose, moved by the wind. Her uniform looked slightly rumpled, as if she'd dressed fast without caring who saw.
She wasn't crying.
That almost scared Soe more than tears.
Ka Byar's head turned slightly, sensing movement.
Her eyes landed on Soe.
They were clear.
Too clear.
Like she'd already made a decision.
Soe walked closer, careful. Slow.
Like approaching an animal that might bolt.
"Hey," Soe said softly.
Ka Byar's gaze didn't flicker.
"You shouldn't be here," Ka Byar replied.
Soe swallowed. "Neither should you."
Ka Byar's mouth twitched—not quite a smile.
"Rules," Ka Byar murmured, as if tasting the word. "Funny concept."
Soe took one more step, then stopped at a respectful distance.
The wind tugged at her skirt, at her hair, at the camera strap across her chest.
Below them, YLU kept moving. A thousand little dramas, a thousand little posts.
Up here, the air was honest.
Soe's voice came out smaller than she wanted.
"They're posting about me now," she admitted. "About us. About… what I am to you."
Ka Byar's gaze drifted away to the skyline. "Let them."
Soe's chest tightened. "Ka Byar—"
Ka Byar's voice cut in, not loud, not cruel. Just final.
"I'm tired, Soe."
Two simple words.
Not "I'm fine."
Not "I can handle it."
Not "Don't worry."
Just: I'm tired.
Soe felt something inside her crack open quietly.
She took another step, close enough now that she could see the faint graphite stain on Ka Byar's fingertips. The same kind of stain that had once made Ka Byar look like a frightened artist. Now it made her look like someone sharpening a knife.
Soe didn't reach out yet.
But her hand hovered, like a question.
Ka Byar looked down at that hovering hand.
For a second, her face did something unguarded—something almost soft.
Soe's breath caught.
It was a small moment, insignificant on the surface.
The kind of moment rumor pages never caught on camera.
The kind of moment that, later, would matter more than any speech.
Soe finally spoke, voice trembling but steady underneath.
"Come down with me," she said.
Ka Byar's gaze lifted back to her.
"Why?" Ka Byar asked.
Soe didn't lie.
"Because if you stay up here too long," she whispered, "you'll start believing you don't need anyone."
Ka Byar stared at her.
The wind moved between them.
Soe's hovering hand shook slightly.
Ka Byar's eyes flicked to it again.
Then, slowly—carefully, like she was choosing the shape of the moment—
Ka Byar reached out and took Soe's hand.
Her fingers were cold from the wind.
Her grip was gentle.
But the meaning of it was not gentle at all.
It was a confession without words:
You are the only place I still know how to rest.
Soe's throat tightened. She squeezed back, just once, a quiet promise.
Ka Byar's voice came softer now, almost bitter.
"They want to watch me," she said. "Fine. But they don't get this. They don't get—" She swallowed. "They don't get you."
Soe felt heat rise behind her eyes.
She didn't cry.
She didn't perform.
She simply stood there, hand in Ka Byar's, wind in their hair, the whole campus below them like a beast half-asleep, half-smiling.
And for the first time, Soe understood something she'd tried not to understand all of Season 1:
She wasn't just Ka Byar's friend.
She was part of Ka Byar's survival.
And that meant, whether she wanted it or not—
"Don't let them turn you into a weapon," Ka Byar murmured.
Soe swallowed.
Her answer was simple. Honest. Quietly doomed.
"I'm not a weapon," Soe said. "I'm the witness."
Ka Byar's thumb brushed lightly over Soe's knuckles.
A touch so small it could be dismissed as nothing.
But Soe felt it like a match struck in the dark.
Ka Byar stood, still holding Soe's hand.
"Then walk with me," Ka Byar said.
Not a request.
Not a plea.
A decision.
Soe nodded once.
And together they moved toward the rooftop door, hands linked, stepping back into the world that would try to separate them—because the world always tried to separate girls who held each other like truth.
Behind them, the wind erased their footprints from the concrete.
Below them, the campus waited, hungry for the next scene.