The morning after the scandal broke, a strange silence hung over the school. It was a digital silence, one that Zaid felt the moment he woke up and reached for his phone. His first instinct was to check Khamis's channel, to see if the storm had calmed overnight.
But the channel was gone.
Instead of the familiar page with its highlight reels and subscriber count, there was a blank, generic error message. A cold knot tightened in Zaid's stomach. He threw on his clothes and practically ran to Khamis's dorm room.
He found the door unlocked. The room was dark, the curtains drawn tight against the morning sun. Khamis was sitting on the edge of his bed, still dressed in the clothes from the day before, staring at a blank wall. The usual chaotic energy of the room, once a command center for con
