The fluorescent lights overhead felt like shards of glass driving straight into Nadia’s optic nerves. Her head throbbed violently, beating in time with a heart racing far too fast from two days of near-total starvation. In her trembling hands, the final presentation slides for her introductory economics class seemed to dance, the letters blurring into a single, suffocating black mass.

"Nadia? You're up," Professor Baskoro’s voice cut coldly from behind a towering stack of graded papers.

Nadia tried to stand. Yet the moment she rose from her chair, the world tilted sideways. The floor beneath her boots felt like shifting water. She forced herself forward down the aisle toward the front of the classroom, her legs feeling as though they were shackled to heavy iron weights. Every heartbeat brought a sharp, high-pitched ringing in her ears—the cumulative toll of days spent surviving on scraps of sleep between grueling evening shifts at the noodle shop.

She opened her mouth to begin. "Good morning, Sir. Today... I will be discussing... discussing..."

Her voice vanished.

Her throat was bone-dry. She looked out at her classmates, but their faces were smudged, indistinct blurs. Siska, sitting near the front row, stared up at her with an unreadable expression—a lingering ghost of the pity born back at the restaurant.

Nadia forced herself forward, gesturing mechanically toward the projector screen. "As we can see... along this curve..."

Her body buckled.

Her vision tunneled into absolute blackness, as though an invisible hand had yanked a heavy theater curtain shut across her eyes. Cold sweat poured down her temples, soaking her forehead and matting against the collar of her faded blouse. Her fingers, gripping the laser pointer, went completely slack, sending the device clattering hard against the linoleum floor in the dead silence of the lecture hall.

"Nadia!" someone shouted.

Before her knees hit the timber floor, Nadia’s hand lashed out by pure reflex, catching the edge of the professor’s heavy oak desk. She gripped it with every ounce of remaining strength, sending a cascade of textbooks sliding off the edge. She stood there gasping, clawing for oxygen that seemed entirely absent from the room. She hadn't completely lost consciousness, but her awareness balanced on a knife-edge.

"Enough!" Professor Baskoro stood up, slamming his binder shut with a deafening snap. "Presentation suspended."

Nadia slid down to the floor, panting raggedly. Waves of blinding humiliation washed over her. She was a scholarship student—someone expected to model relentless dedication—yet here she sat, looking like a derelict who couldn't even manage basic hygiene or focus.

"Nadia, I know you have external struggles. Rumors travel fast around this campus," Professor Baskoro said, his tone locking out any room for negotiation as he stepped around the desk to loom over her. "But this institution is built for those who maintain absolute focus. I don't care how brilliant your past records were; your recent academic output is an insult to our university's standards."

Nadia kept her head bowed, hot tears stinging the corners of her eyes. She couldn't explain that she had to break her body laboring just to draw breath. She couldn't admit that she studied by melting candle stubs in a roach-infested hovel on an empty stomach. In the eyes of the university, she was simply a student failing to carry her weight.

"Your grades have plummeted past the danger threshold, Nadia," Professor Baskoro continued, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp register. "If you cannot turn this around within the next seven days—if your midterm exam scores remain below the cutoff line—I will have zero choice."

Nadia jerked her head up, staring at the professor with bloodshot, desperate eyes. "What do you mean, Sir?"

Professor Baskoro looked down at her with chilling detachment.

"I will bar you from this course, which will automatically trigger the revocation of your scholarship and lead to your expulsion. You have exactly seven days to prove you belong here. If you fail, the gates of this university will close to you permanently."

The words landed like a death sentence. Nadia knew Professor Baskoro's reputation; he was a man who never offered second chances. Outside these walls, she might manage to dodge her uncles, but inside this lecture hall, she was pinned hard against the wall. Lose her scholarship, and she lost everything.

Nadia dragged herself out of the classroom, leaving her scattered books behind. She walked down the open-air corridor, staring up at the bruised, overcast sky. The true storm hadn't come from Uncle Tono after all; it came from the crushing demands of a life demanding an impossible price. Seven days. Exactly one week to reinvent her fate before the world collapsed entirely around her.