The first mistake they corrected was this: they stopped treating the crisis as a “youth problem.” Because it wasn't. Youth were only the visible symptom—the fever. The disease sat in the bloodstream of the adults who had built the environment: the parents who handed over a smartphone as a pacifier, the schools that replaced curiosity with rank, the workplaces that replaced dignity with “performance,” the culture that replaced belonging with branding. They had raised a generation inside an attention economy and then acted shocked when the children became attention-addicted. It was raining again in Noida when the wave began. Not dramatic rain—just that persistent drizzle that makes the city look like a damp spreadsheet. Dr. Farah stood in her clinic’s waiting room, where the usual coughs and complaints had been replaced by a different kind of restlessness: students, young professionals, and a few surprising older faces who were not here for medicines. They were here because they had tasted something unfamiliar. Relief. Not the relief of escapism. The relief of connection. Shukla Master arrived with a cloth bag full of old pamphlets and newer printouts. He looked like a retired teacher, which he was, but he had the calm intensity of a man who had finally stopped complaining and started building. Kabir entered last, holding his phone like an object he had learned to use without being used by it. Aarav and Meera followed. Dr. Farah wrote one sentence on the whiteboard. No medical terms. No diagnosis codes: “Love while life is, not life was.” She underlined it twice. “That,” she said, turning to them, “is the vaccine.” Kabir let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “And how do you distribute a vaccine in India?” he asked. Shukla Master smiled. “You don’t distribute it,” he said. “You flood it.”