It was barely noon, but the dining hall was packed - a rolling tide of trays, metal cutlery clinks, and the low hum of gossip bouncing off every wall. A special kind of energy thrummed through the air, chaotic and electric.

  Everyone could feel it.

  And at Table 7 - near the corner window, half tucked away but impossible to ignore - sat the epicenter of the storm.

  Bharath. Marisol. Sarah.

  Fnked by Jorge, Ravi, Cami, Tyrel, LaTasha, and Nandita, they cimed the entire ten-seat table. One chair had been dragged in from another spot. Ravi was double-stacking trays. LaTasha was sipping soda straight from the 32oz cup like it was a sacrament.

  They weren’t just eating lunch.

  They were shielding the holy ones again as they had been doing so for the past couple of weeks.

  Sarah was sitting on Bharath’s left, still glowing faintly in jeans and a Georgia Tech jacket, but the aura of “I made out with two people and broke the campus” hadn’t dimmed. She was picking at her sad, smiling quietly as she listened.

  Marisol was on his right, holding his hand like it was a matter of national security. She’d only just stopped gring at the people who kept walking past their table twice - or thrice - just to get another look.

  Bharath?

  He looked like a deer caught in an emotional paintball fight - bruised, colorful, and vaguely thrilled to be alive.

  Cami arrived st, sliding into the seat next to Jorge with a tray of French fries and a look of wide-eyed amusement.

  “So,” she said, drawing the word out with a grin, “I heard a freshman peed himself during your hallway make-out session this morning.”

  “Yeah, he’s on bedrest,” Tyrel said, nodding solemnly. “Campus health center’s calling it 'emotional hydration loss’”.

  “One girl said she bcked out for twelve seconds,” Cami added. “She thought she’d seen Jesus. Turns out it was just Marisol’s hair catching the sunlight.”

  Sarah didn’t even blink. “Which one?”

  That set the table off.

  Ravi choked on his Sprite. Tyrel cackled loud enough to make two people at the adjacent table jump. LaTasha threw her napkin in the air like it was a confetti cannon. Jorge leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, like a proud producer watching the show unfold.

  “Okay, okay,” Nandita said, raising her hand like they were in court. “Let’s get this straight. Are we confirming that today’s events are the most chaotic Georgia Tech has seen since the Great Parking Lot Flood of ’95?”

  “Yes,” said Jorge solemnly. “But with more hormones.”

  “And less structural damage,” Ravi added. “Well, physical structural damage.”

  “My roommate said you guys caused a spiritual panic,” Cami said, pointing her fork. “She said her boyfriend just stared at the floor for fifteen minutes whispering, ‘How?’”

  Bharath groaned. “Can we not-?”

  “No,” Marisol said, smirking. “You broke the world, baby. Own it.”

  Sarah grinned and leaned her head on his shoulder. “We’ve already achieved myth status. Now we’re just feeding the legend”

  Tyrel set his soda down with a dramatic thud. “You wanna hear what I heard in the mechanical engineering building?”

  “Absolutely,” Marisol said.

  “So apparently, this senior - Charles something - was in the hallway when Sarah kissed Bharath, saw the crowd, and fainted. Legit dropped like a sack of logic boards.”

  “Oh my god,” Cami whispered.

  “I’m not done. When he woke up, he allegedly said, ‘I’ve wasted three years here. I’ve seen everything, and still... I wasn’t ready.’”

  Sarah looked stunned. “He fainted?”

  “Witness accounts,” Tyrel said. “Very credible. One girl said he looked like a Sim being deleted.”

  Bharath rubbed his forehead.

  “I need to transfer,” he muttered. “To, like… Denmark.”

  “You’d break Denmark,” Jorge said. “Too pure.”

  LaTasha leaned in. “Y’all don’t get it. I saw a flyer. Someone’s organizing a campus walkthrough tour called ‘Path of the King.’ It starts at the CoC building and ends outside the Calculus hall.”

  LaTasha showed them a copy of the flyer: “Come walk the Path of the King? — free t-shirt if you cry on the steps.”

  Nandita gasped. “Stop.”

  “I’m serious. I think they’re charging.”

  “I need a cut,” Sarah said. “We’re the attractions.”

  Marisol smirked. “We should offer autographs.”

  Jorge shrugged. “You are gonna be an urban legend by Friday.”

  “You already are,” Cami added. “Someone drew fan art and stuck it on the bulletin board in Glenn Hall.”

  “Fan art?” Bharath croaked.

  “Yeah. Like a medieval tapestry. You were on a throne. Marisol had a fming sword. Sarah was levitating.”

  Marisol blinked. “Where was this?”

  “Next to the vending machine,” Cami replied, deadpan. “Right above the missing cat poster.”

  “Unbelievable,” Bharath muttered.

  It was surreal.

  People were still circling the table. Some tried to pretend they weren’t looking. Others didn’t even try. One guy btantly held up a disposable camera and snapped a photo. Another whispered something to his friend and pointed, as if confirming a sighting of Bigfoot.

  “I think that one’s a sociology major,” Sarah whispered.

  “Analyzing us like a mating ritual,” Marisol whispered back.

  “I feel like a museum exhibit,” Bharath said.

  “Correction,” Ravi added. “You are a miracle.”

  “Can’t lie,” Jorge added. “Watching Ayesha blow her fuse and get annihited? Easily the best ten minutes of my semester.”

  “Really?” asked Cami smirking.

  “You know what I mean…” mumbled Jorge as everyone Laughed.

  “Oh my god,” Nandita said, ughing. “What happened there?”

  Everyone turned to Marisol.

  She sat back, picked up a french fry, and chewed slowly like a seasoned war general.

  “She insulted him. Called him a FOB, told him to go back to India, said we were using him.”

  LaTasha winced. “Ohhh no.”

  “I went off.”

  “She really did,” Sarah added proudly.

  “I gave her a warning,” Marisol said, licking salt from her finger. “She didn’t take it.”

  “What’d you say?” Nandita asked.

  Marisol shrugged. “That if anyone’s got a problem with him, they come through me. Or Sarah.”

  “Queen behavior,” Cami whispered.

  “I kissed him in front of everyone,” Marisol added. “And told the crowd to deal with it.”

  “And then they cpped,” Jorge said, grinning.

  Sarah added, “Like literally. It started with one guy. Then everyone joined in. It was a round of appuse.”

  “It was like the end of a Disney movie,” Ravi said. “But with more tongue.”

  Bharath dropped his head into his hands. “I hate all of you.”

  “No you don’t,” Marisol said, kissing his temple.

  Sarah patted his knee. “You love us.”

  “Unfortunately,” he muttered, cheeks pink.

  They all paused for a moment, the table surrounded by the buzzing cafeteria, the constant orbit of eyes and specution.

  Despite the noise, the chatter, the whispered myths building around them like storm clouds - at this table, there was peace.

  Cami tapped her nails against her cup. “You know what’s weird?”

  “What?” asked Tyrel.

  “They’re our friends. Like, yeah, the rest of campus thinks they’re living out some erotic Cinemax fantasy - but to us?” She shrugged. “They’re just… them.”

  “Bharath’s still the dude who eats toast with pin yogurt,” Jorge offered.

  “And drops dumb lines like, ‘Do you want to review recursive algorithms?’ like that’s forepy,” Ravi added.

  “We’re not legends,” Marisol said. “We’re hungry. We’re tired. We’re a little horny and a lot confused most of the time.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Sarah said, sipping her Coke. “I’m always hungry and very horny.”

  Marisol cackled.

  Jorge nodded. “But that’s the point. They’re just them. That’s why it works.”

  LaTasha smiled. “I don’t care what anyone else says. To me, y’all are just our weird, wonderful friends.”

  At the edge of the cafeteria, someone snapped a photo.

  This one wasn’t sneaky. It was from across the room - a clear shot of the full table: ughter, hands touching, heads thrown back, ptes scattered, a moment of pure realness in the middle of the myth.

  Someone would post it on the dorm wall ter with a marker:

  “Campus Royalty. But Just People.”

  And under it, someone else would scrawl:

  “And that’s why it matters.”