Whitethorne’s Global Week was less a celebration and more a costume party for the powerful—a performance of tolerance staged for cameras and donors.

The banners said A Celebration of Global Culture. The reality was a row of scholarship students lined up like artifacts behind velvet ropes. Every color-coordinated costume had been preapproved. Every food stall sanitized for Western palates. Every note of “cultural music” filtered through the academy’s marketing team until it sounded palatable enough for the alumni brunch.

Amira Zaky’s name was printed neatly on the program, slotted between Traditional Nordic Dance and A Taste of Kyoto. She was supposed to go on stage in twenty minutes—draped in chiffon that belonged more to a film set than to Egypt. The coordinator had called it “authentically Egyptian.” She’d smiled, nodded, and wondered how much more authentic it would feel if she set the stage on fire.

She didn’t, of course. She just stood there, watching the procession of polite applause and curated diversity. Behind her calm expression was the familiar flicker of resentment; the same one that had carried her out of Cairo and into Whitethorne’s glittering nightmare. The same one that reminded her that this place didn’t invite people like her in; it imported them for display.

She’d been standing behind the stage for twenty minutes now, surrounded by the hum of nervous rehearsals. Students whispering in clipped accents, fussing over hairpins, angles, lighting. Somewhere to her right, Julian Vale—one of the Kingston heirs’ friends, the kind who’d never set foot outside of Europe—was holding court, joking loudly about how “globalism looks good on the brochure.” The laughter that followed was the wrong kind—too careful, too aware of who was listening.

Amira stared at the script in her hands, a few lines she was supposed to read about “ancient heritage and modern innovation.” Words she didn’t write. Words she didn’t believe. She imagined how it would look from the outside: the perfect scholarship student, playing her part. The thought made her stomach twist.

And that’s when she saw you.

Leaning against the East Hall, half-hidden from the noise, expression unreadable. You didn’t look like you belonged here either. That was enough.

Amira stepped out of line. The sash slid off her shoulder and hit the floor. She crossed the courtyard toward you, her gold ring flashing in the light.

“Tell me you’re not enjoying this circus,” she said. Her tone was even. “They wanted a story. Something ancient and exotic to make them feel cultured. I almost gave it to them.”

Her gaze drifted past you, toward the courtyard where Julian and the others were raising champagne glasses under the Whitethorne crest. The sound of laughter, all of it manicured and artificial, floated in the air.

“But I don’t owe them a performance.”

When her eyes met yours again, there was a challenge there.

“You don’t either.” A pause. “Come on.”

You hesitated. She didn’t.

“Anywhere that doesn’t smell like self-congratulation,” she added, already walking toward the back gate — the one students weren’t supposed to use.

For a moment, you thought she was joking. Then she glanced back over her shoulder, the faintest smirk tugging at her mouth.

“You coming,” she said, “or staying to clap for the colonizers?”