"I started watching ironically. Twenty minutes later I was fully invested in fictional people ruining my emotional stability." — @TooAttachedTooFast

"That knife disarm in the tunnel was cleaner than my academic record." — @SuspendedButWatching

"Meanwhile Hollywood spending 200 million dollars to make movies with less personality than this." — @CorporateCinemaVictim

"Peak University students out here building an entire cinematic universe while my group project can’t even align PowerPoint fonts." — @FailedPresentationLeader

And then, as the recommendation algorithm aggressively began linking the two films together, a second realization started spreading across both comment sections simultaneously.

"Wait. Same cinematography credit

"Same campus tags."

"Same production group? Wtf is going on!"

"Hold on. Are these people secretly building the best student film collective in the country right now?" — @FutureDocumentaryNarrator

"No because WHY are all their productions shot like someone gave film students military funding?" — @TaxpayerConcerned

"Ghost Signal feels like an award-winning thriller. Unfinished Business feels like the spinoff that accidentally becomes more rewatchable. Together they feel like a studio." — @StreamingServiceScout

"Someone seriously needs to identify the bodyguard actor." — @InvestigatingRespectfully

"If that’s actually the tycoon Stan acting in these films for fun, then humanity is simply facing an unfair build." — @CharacterStatsTooHigh

...

Zack found Stan in the cafeteria late that afternoon.

He dropped into the seat across from him with his phone already in hand and the expression of a man thoroughly enjoying the possession of important information.

Without a word, he turned the screen around.

Combined views across both platforms.

740,000.

Stan looked at the number for a moment, calm as ever.

Zack leaned back in his chair. "I wrote that script in three hours," he said. "I just want that officially acknowledged somewhere because I’m not entirely convinced I deserve these numbers."

Stan took another bite of food. "The description helped."

Zack pointed at him immediately. "Exactly. Also a Student Film, Before You Ask is the greatest six-word sequence I’ve ever created."

Stan gave the faintest hint of a smile. "Yes, but it’s not just that, the fact things are like this just shows that your script is peak..."

Zack sighed as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. "Maya’s film is at 2.3 million now."

Stan’s chopsticks paused halfway to his mouth.

"Two point three million," Zack repeated. "Less than twenty-four hours. Her Vtube channel had twelve thousand subscribers yesterday morning." He shook his head once, still sounding impressed by the scale of it. "The flyboard clip alone passed eight hundred thousand. At this point it’s spreading independently from the actual short film."

For a brief moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Stan quietly set his chopsticks down.

"The comment sections," Zack continued, his tone shifting slightly, "have become very interested in you specifically."

"I know."

"You were already popular before. Now people are trying to identify you globally."

"I know."

"And some of them are getting surprisingly close."

That made Stan finally look up properly.

Zack unlocked his phone again, opened a thread, and slid it across the table.

Someone from the Film Arts department had done actual investigative work.

The post contained a side-by-side comparison between a frame from the bridge landing sequence and old campus security footage that had circulated online two weeks earlier for an entirely unrelated reason.

The comparison wasn’t perfect.

But it was good enough to make people pay attention.

The same build.

The same posture.

The same oddly controlled stillness Stan carried even when he moved.

Whoever made the thread had noticed all of it.

The post already had hundreds of likes, and the comments beneath it were steadily drifting toward agreement.

Stan read through the thread once without any visible reaction.

Then handed the phone back.

"Does it matter?" he asked simply.

Zack considered the question honestly before answering.

"Probably not in a bad way," he admitted. "You were campus famous before, but right now you’re getting famous on a global scale. Your life is becoming significantly less quiet."

Stan picked his chopsticks up again.

"It was always going to," he said calmly. "The Lamborghini made more noise than any film ever could."

Zack stared at him for a second.

Then slowly nodded.

"...Fair point."

He finally pulled his own tray closer and started eating while the cafeteria buzzed around them with conversations that, increasingly, seemed to involve their names.

Stan almost smiled. He looked at Zack across the table, at the carefully maintained casualness over something that was clearly, genuinely significant, and said:

"Congratulations. On Unfinished Business."

Zack made a dismissive gesture. Then stopped making it, because the honesty of how much the words landed was visible for exactly the duration of one unguarded second before he could arrange his expression back into something cooler.

"It’s a start," he said.

"It’s more than a start."

Zack held his gaze. The look of a person receiving something they’d wanted without knowing they were waiting for it.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Maybe it is."

They ate. The cafeteria moved around them, conversations, trays, the ordinary weekday rhythm of a campus that had no idea two of the people sitting in it had spent the past three days making something that was currently being discussed in Star Entertainment’s internal communications as a benchmark production.

Somewhere in the comment sections, the internet continued its patient, methodical work of getting very close to a name. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Neither of them talked about that part.

There would be time for it later.

At that moment, Stan pulled out his phone with a faint smirk curling across his face. Of course, he hadn’t forgiven Vivian. She had made his life a nightmare for far too long for him to let everything go so easily.

If she believed she could torment him for months and wipe it all away just by spreading her legs for him, then she was in for a brutal lesson. He would strip her of her position first, make her experience the humiliation of losing the authority she once flaunted over everyone else.

Eventually, reality would force her to understand exactly how fragile her situation had always been. Only then would she truly regret the way she had treated him, she would come crawling back to him on her knees, begging for another chance.

Just as she had once tried to force him to bow before her, even though he had never bowed or knelt, she would soon learn what it truly meant to kneel.

Only then, perhaps, would Vivian finally realize there were certain people she never should have crossed. Some things weren’t erased that easily.