Rumours
1383 Words
By the next morning, the campus no longer felt the same.
Nothing obvious had changed—the buildings were still the same, the walkways still crowded, the lecture halls still noisy with early complaints—but there was a subtle shift in how people looked at each other. Not openly. Not directly. It was the kind of change that lived in glances, in whispers that stopped the moment someone turned around, in laughter that came a second too late or ended too quickly.
Akira noticed it first while walking to her morning lecture.
Two girls ahead of her were talking, their voices low but not low enough.
“…I swear they were locked in there for hours.”
“Who?”
“That girl and the… the roommate.”
Akira kept walking.
She didn’t slow down. She didn’t react. But something in her chest tightened in a way she didn’t have a name for.
Roommate.
They weren’t supposed to know that detail.
She passed them without looking, but the conversation followed her anyway, like sound had decided to cling to her skin.
“I heard it was the storage room behind the student center.”
“Why were they together that late?”
“Apparently the system glitch isn’t fixed yet.”
A pause.
Then, quieter:
“Wait… is that even allowed?”
Akira walked faster.
By the time she reached her lecture hall, the feeling had settled into something heavier. Not panic. Not fear. Something more irritating than both.
Awareness.
Inside the lecture hall, students were already seated in scattered groups, phones in hand, conversations rising and falling like waves. Akira chose a seat near the middle, away from clusters. She placed her bag down, took out her notebook, and focused on nothing in particular.
But she could feel it.
Eyes.
Not all of them. Just some.
Not staring openly. Just… lingering.
Then the notifications started.
She didn’t check her phone at first.
She already knew.
Still, when she eventually opened it, it was worse than expected.
A group chat she had been added to—she didn’t even know when—was active.
Messages stacked rapidly.
“Is this true??”
“No way they locked them in together overnight 😭”
“I heard the roommate is actually a guy pretending??”
“That’s what I said!! The system must be wrong”
“Bro that dorm is wild 💀”
Akira stared at the screen for a long moment.
Her fingers tightened slightly.
Then she locked the phone and placed it face down on the desk.
Her expression didn’t change.
But something inside her did.
Across campus, Morgan was experiencing something similar.
He didn’t notice it immediately either.
At first it was just looks.
People glancing at him longer than usual.
A pause in conversations when he walked past.
A slight hesitation before someone spoke to him.
Then it escalated.
A guy from another class leaned toward his friend and said something under his breath. Not quietly enough.
“That’s him, right? The one from the storeroom thing.”
Morgan pretended not to hear.
But he did.
Another group near the cafeteria laughed softly when he walked by. Not loud enough to be cruel. Just loud enough to be intentional.
Then someone asked him directly.
“So are you actually in the girls’ dorm or what?”
Morgan stopped walking.
Just for a second.
Then he smiled politely.
“It’s complicated.”
That was all he said.
But the answer only made things worse.
By afternoon, the story had mutated.
It was no longer just about a locked storeroom.
It had become something else entirely.
Different versions existed depending on who told it.
One version said Morgan and Akira had been locked in a room overnight intentionally as part of a university experiment.
Another said they had broken dorm rules and were being investigated.
Another said Morgan wasn’t actually a registered student and had been placed incorrectly.
And the most persistent version—the one that spread fastest—was the one that didn’t bother with accuracy at all.
“They’re together.”
Not in a confirmed way.
Not in a factual way.
But in the way rumors prefer to exist: suggestive, unfinished, flexible enough to fit whatever people wanted to believe.
By evening, Akira heard it directly.
She was returning from the library when a girl from her hall stopped her near the entrance.
“Hey,” the girl said, voice light but eyes sharp. “Is it true you and your roommate got locked in the storage room?”
Akira looked at her.
“Yes.”
The girl smiled slightly, like she had been waiting for that answer.
“And… you were alone the whole time?”
Akira’s expression didn’t change.
“Yes.”
A pause.
Then the girl tilted her head.
“That’s interesting.”
Akira didn’t respond.
The girl continued anyway, lowering her voice just a little.
“People are saying it’s weird. Like… really weird.”
Akira finally spoke. “People say a lot of things.”
The girl studied her for a moment longer, then shrugged.
“Just be careful. That’s all.”
And walked away.
Akira stood there for a few seconds after she left.
Careful.
About what, exactly?
She wasn’t sure.
But she had a feeling it wasn’t about safety.
It was about perception.
Later that night, back in Room 4B, Morgan sat on his bed scrolling through his phone with a quieter expression than usual. Akira came in without speaking, placed her bag down, and went straight to her desk.
The room was silent for a while.
Then Morgan spoke.
“They’re talking about us.”
Akira didn’t look up. “I noticed.”
Another pause.
Morgan exhaled slowly. “It’s getting worse.”
Akira turned a page in her notebook. “It always does.”
That made him look at her.
“You’re not bothered?”
She stopped writing.
For a moment, she didn’t answer.
Then—
“I don’t care what they think.”
It was said too quickly.
Too clean.
Morgan didn’t believe it.
But he didn’t challenge her.
Instead, he leaned back against the wall.
“I told someone it was complicated,” he said quietly.
Akira’s pen paused.
“That’s what you said?”
“Yeah.”
“…Why?”
He looked at her.
“Because I didn’t want to explain it.”
Akira nodded once.
Then went back to writing.
But neither of them really focused on what they were doing after that.
Because the silence in the room wasn’t normal anymore.
It was heavier.
More aware.
As if something had been placed between them without either of them agreeing to it.
The next day made it worse.
Then the day after that.
People started asking Morgan if Akira was “his type,” even though no one knew what they meant by that.
People started asking Akira why she “never corrected the situation.”
People started watching them more closely in hallways, waiting for something to confirm the story they had already decided on.
And the strangest part was not the rumors themselves.
It was how quickly they became reality in other people’s minds.
By the end of the week, Akira noticed something she didn’t expect.
Morgan had stopped reacting as strongly.
Not because it didn’t affect him.
But because reacting made it worse.
He had learned to smile, to answer vaguely, to step away from conversations before they turned into traps.
And Akira noticed something else too.
He never joked about it anymore.
Not once.
Which somehow made everything feel more serious than before.
One evening, as they crossed campus together after a late tutorial, someone shouted from across the walkway.
“Hey! Roommates!”
A group of students laughed.
Morgan kept walking.
Akira didn’t turn around.
But for the first time, she felt something shift—not in embarrassment, not in anger, but in something quieter.
Something uncomfortable.
Not because of what they said.
But because for a split second—
she had almost looked.
And she didn’t know why that mattered.
That night, Room 4B felt smaller again.
Not because of the walls.
But because of everything people were now putting inside it without ever stepping through the door.
- Writer
