Chapter 2: The Ice Queen Across the Table

The stage made everything worse.

From backstage, the audience had sounded like weather. From my seat, it became faces. Hundreds of faces arranged in dark rows, watching the eight of us as if we were about to perform surgery on a live principle.

My name card sat crooked on the table.

EVAN XU.

The name underneath had been crossed out with a black marker.

MILO LIN.

The line through Milo's name looked desperate, like even the marker knew it was lying.

Across from us, Jinghua's name cards were printed in matching font. Of course they were. Their pens lined up. Their water bottles matched. Victor Wang's tie looked expensive enough to have opinions.

Clara Shen sat diagonally across from me.

Her folder was already open. Three colored tabs marked her pages. She wrote one small note, capped her pen, and folded her hands.

Calm.

Not the calm people pretend to have when they want to intimidate you.

Real calm.

That was worse.

The moderator introduced the motion.

"This house believes mandatory real-name verification benefits public discussion online."

We were proposition.

Jinghua was opposition.

I blinked at the screen.

Mandatory real-name verification.

Public discussion.

A topic with privacy, accountability, cyberbullying, free speech, misinformation, chilling effects, platform governance, and every possible way to ruin a Saturday.

Ryan leaned toward me. "You remember what I said?"

"Building on fire," I whispered.

"Good."

The moderator smiled at the audience. "Proposition first speaker, you may begin."

Ryan stood.

Ryan was good. Not national champion good, but naturally forceful. He had a big voice, a square jaw, and the useful ability to sound certain even when reading a cafeteria menu. He framed our case around accountability: public discussion needed traceable responsibility; anonymity allowed organized harassment and misinformation; verification could protect rational speakers by deterring malicious abuse.

It was coherent.

It even made sense.

Then Jinghua's first speaker stood, and the room remembered what polish looked like.

Sophie Lin was not loud. She did not need to be. She spoke as if every sentence had been weighed, sharpened, and placed exactly where it would cut.

"The proposition asks us to believe that attaching legal identity to speech creates responsibility. We ask you to consider whom that responsibility burdens most. Not trolls, who adapt. Not corporations, who profit. It burdens vulnerable speakers: whistleblowers, survivors, employees, students, minorities, and citizens whose safety depends on the ability to speak before power can punish them."

The audience went still.

Sophie did not waste a word.

Privacy risk. Chilling effect. Misuse of data. False sense of safety. The difference between platform accountability and state-style identification. Three minutes later, Ryan's case looked like a cardboard umbrella in heavy rain.

Victor Wang rose for cross-examination.

Jordan took the question.

Poor Jordan.

Victor smiled down at his notes. "Does your side agree that some speech online is socially valuable precisely because the speaker can remain unknown?"

Jordan said, "Some, yes, but--"

"Thank you. Then your policy reduces socially valuable speech."

"No, because--"

"So you deny your own first answer?"

"I mean it depends--"

"On what? Please give the bright line. Which abused worker deserves anonymity, and which troll deserves exposure? Who decides?"

Jordan looked at Ryan.

Victor did not.

"If your system cannot protect the vulnerable while identifying the malicious, it is not accountability. It is a net thrown over everyone because you failed to catch anyone."

There was a sound from the audience. Not applause. Worse. Recognition.

My stomach burned.

The heat from the liquor should have made the room blurry. Instead it made it clear.

Too clear.

Victor was not answering our model. He was dragging us into an impossible version of it. He had equated real-name verification with public identity exposure, then attacked the exposure. But our side could argue verified-backend identity with front-facing pseudonyms, traceability through due process, tiered disclosure, audit protections, and penalties for abuse by platforms.

He had built a straw man and lit it on fire.

Nobody on our side noticed.

Ryan scribbled furiously. Jordan's mouth opened and closed. Leo, sitting beside the team as timekeeper, looked like he was watching a bridge collapse in slow motion.

Clara Shen had not spoken yet.

That should have comforted me.

It did not.

She watched the round with her pen resting across her fingers, expression quiet, not bored. Focused. Waiting. It was the look of someone who did not need to swing early because the ending belonged to her.

I felt my old panic reach for me.

It knew the path. Tight throat. Shaking hands. Empty skull. The endless white noise of being seen.

Under the table, my hand found my backpack.

The bottle was cool against my fingers.

I should not.

I knew that.

I also knew six hundred people were watching us lose, Professor Chen was in the front row, and Victor Wang had just called me a mascot.

I unscrewed the cap without lifting the bottle above the table edge.

One small swallow.

Fire again.

Then clarity.

The room sharpened into lines and pressure points. Arguments separated from performance. Fear shrank from a fog into a fact.

Facts could be handled.

Ryan slid a note toward me.

DO NOT TALK.

I stared at it.

Across the table, Victor caught me looking and mouthed one word.

Gift.

The free debate was about to begin.