It was evening when my phone rang, displaying an unknown number. I hesitated at first when a little voice popped up in my head and told me that standing up for myself also meant picking up unknown phone calls and talking to strangers. I shook my head to push the voice away, but it encouraged me and told me I’d be fine, that it was just a phone call. I could always end the call.

Knowing I’d be safe, I picked up the phone.

“Hello,” I said. No answer; only shallow breathing noises through the receiver.

“Who’s this,” I asked again. I found it easier to take a call than I had imagined. The fruits of my improved intelligence were varied and versatile.

“Sahil?” Finally, a girly voice spoke and I almost jerked up from the bed. Thankfully, I had healed the wound and nothing bad happened.

“Sonam, is that you? You finally called, huh?” I winced at my mouth and almost threw away the phone in fear. What the fuck was that?

I guess even she was stunned to hear those words because she didn’t speak again for a while.

“How… are you?” came a snotty, trembling voice from the phone speaker.

“I’m fine. Except for the gruel they are feeding me down here. Everything else is just fine. Perfect. What about you? How are you holding up without me? You didn’t miss me, right?”

“Wha!” We both screamed at the same time. Gosh! I was like Jim Carry in the movie Mask. I was fighting myself over control. I wasn’t going to become a different, volatile, outgoing, and sleazy person. Was I?

I heard the phone fall from her hand. Then there was a panicked scream and hurried footsteps before Sonam picked up the phone again.

“Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?”

“How could I not? That was a nice scream by the way. Very inspiring. You should try t--”

“What’s wrong with you?” She yelled at me. “Why are you acting like… Kartik?”

“I’m on drugs. That’s why. By drugs, I mean painkillers. So don’t start screaming again. Though, I liked the excitement in your voice. It made me happy.”

“I make you happy?”

“Very,”

Drugs were the excuse I was using to explain my yapping. My mother glared at me from the side of the room, acting as if she knew the truth. Her face got so red I thought she would explode and send a wave of hot gases at me. Then I remembered she already believed I was an addict. Perhaps, my recent behavior was only cementing her doubts. So really, all I was doing was kicking my own leg and hammering my own foot. So much for improving my intelligence, I just felt dumb. However, the best proof of intelligence is to know your own shortcomings. Perhaps, I was intelligent or it was just--

Shit! I was letting my mind run circles around my will again. I needed to sort this out or this was going to be a problem. Fuck aesthetically gorgeous abs, I needed a superpower that could calm down my possessed mind.

“How was school? Did anything exciting happen?” I asked normally, controlling my urge to spit out a dictionary full of sentences at her.

“The school was normal, boring, and long. As for something exciting-- you scored full marks on the physics test!”

I could hear the joy in her voice. It was contagious. It made me feel warm inside. It was refreshing. Then I said, “Why is that exciting? You don’t believe in me, huh.”

“It’s not like that?” With a weak squeak, she said, “I believe you.”

“That’s right. Don’t lose hope in me. I’m counting on you.” I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about but it was making Sonam embarrassed.

“So…”

“So?”

“When are you coming back to school?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,”

“Not tomorrow. You are going to rest at home for a few days.” My mother chimed in from the side.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“Is your mother in the room with you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Do you want to talk to her? It’s going to happen eventually. You might as well get started now.”

Then the call suddenly disconnected. I tried calling her back but no one picked it up.

“Huh, she could have just said no.” I saved her number in my contacts under the name Sunflower. Then I went back to reading physics.

“Is she your classmate?” My mother asked. I answered her with a short and dry ‘hmm’, hoping she’d understand I wasn’t gonna answer her question.

“What’s her name?” She didn’t understand. I hummed again.

My mother threw a curved ball at me. “Does she know you do drugs?”

“I just told her I’m on drugs and she was fine with it because she believes in me. Do you?” I hit a home run. My mother didn’t ask me another question again. She simply snorted and got back to watching her favorite reality show on the phone.

The improved skills were amazing. The sunlight coming from the window was doing a great job of juicing me up. I had four thousand or so calories stored in the battery and now photographic memory only burned 40 KJ of energy per page.

My mother came back to the hospital at three. It was 4:57 pm and I had finished reading half the book during this time. Reading still felt like a waste of time, however. I could really be using this time to do other things. It was fine for now since I was bedridden, but I might not want to sit still reading books over an extended period in a couple of days. I finally decided to look into a power that could help me read books with a touch. Although I wouldn’t understand the knowledge contained in the book, the information would be forever stored in my mind and I could always look back at it and understand it slowly over time.

Then I wouldn’t have to sit down and scribble notes on a piece of paper. I would be saving tons of paper and pencils, saving who knew how many trees in the process. I would contribute to reducing carbon emissions and protecting our planet. Just thinking about it made me laugh. Who knew higher intelligence also meant degeneracy?

Abhey and our mother shared a glance when they saw me laughing out of nowhere. I ignored it because what else could I do? I couldn’t tell them every single one of my thoughts. They would still have the same misunderstandings about me. Why bother?

However, there was one thing I was noticing. Abhey had been uncharacteristically quiet for the whole time he had been here. I believed he’d make fun of me, talking about my new hole or something. But he was as cold as an ice block. He sat in the distance like a shadow, immovable and untouchable.

I wanted to talk to him, which was impossible with our mother in the room.

Then at 10 past six, the doctor finally visited the room along with my father. He checked my report for the past half a day, before getting surprised after looking at my stitches.

The look scared my parents a little and me a lot.

“Is there something wrong?” My father asked.

“Nothing serious,” The doctor replied. “It’s just the area around the stitches is generally swollen red for the first few days; inflammation is the symptom of the body fighting sickness. Look at the stitches, the wound has already started healing around it. That’s very strange.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

I looked at my stitches and I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. That was a lesson in professionalism for me. I still fucked it up a little bit, huh. I disguised the area around the wound, but not the wound itself. It was a rookie mistake. Hopefully, I won’t need to make more such mistakes.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” My father asked.

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” The doctor replied coming out of a daze.

“So can I leave now?”

“I don’t see any reason why you can’t. There are some procedures you need to follow for the care of your wound.”

“I’m all ears,” I was pumped.

“Are you always so hyped up?” The doctor asked curiously.

“He says it’s the painkillers,” My mother said.

“Who gave you painkillers?” The doctor asked sternly.

“I was joking.” I was panicking and my mind went on fire trying to do damage control. “I was just being sarcastic. Haven’t you seen those videos on YouTube where the patients under anesthesia become increasingly truthful?”

The doctor and my father shared a glance. I didn’t know what they decided but the doctor said, “ “Maybe we should keep him here for one more night just to be sure there is absolutely nothing wrong with him. We’ll also do a few more toxicology and pathology tests while we are at it. If that’s all right with you?” He asked my father.

I guess I, the patient, had no say in this decision. My father agreed and I was back on the bed wondering what the hell just happened. If I had heard my parent’s conversation with the doctor, I would have noticed that the doctor was now suspicious that I might be taking drugs.

Then night came and I finally managed to send my mother back home to rest. Abhey stayed. There was an extra bed in the room and he took it for himself. He lay there with his back to me, keeping to his phone. He seemed increasingly reluctant to be in the same room with me. My suspicion deepened with the night because he didn’t make a single joke or jab at me while he was there. It was as if he had suddenly lost his glib tongue. I wished the doctor was there so I could ask him if that was a symptom of something. I was definitely mad at him for keeping me in the hospital for another night.

“Abhey?” I called.

“Hmm?” He said without looking up from his phone.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” I said. I was stern, but he shook as if someone had dropped an ice cube down the back of his shirt.

Eventually, he rolled over on the bed, and facing me he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“You tell me.”

“What do you mean?” He asked and looked away.

His behavior made me nervous. The Abhey I knew was an asshole, an asshole, and an asshole. He was many other things too but not a… coward.

“Did anyone say anything? Did something happen at school?”

He dropped his head again and denied strongly.

“Then what happened,” I asked calmly, and quietly. “You are not acting normal. Let’s not talk about making fun of me, you haven’t talked to me all day. You say there’s nothing wrong and I don’t believe you.”

“Why?” He dropped his head. His voice was quiet and lacking strength. It scared me. I waited for me to complete the question but he didn’t.

“Why what?” I asked after waiting for a while.

“Why did you do it?” He said raising his head. His voice shook. “Why did you run after the guy? I know you. You are a scared, shy, introvert. You are a coward,”

“Excuse me?” I said. He didn’t.

Abhey continued aggressively and unabated. “You are not a chaser. You don’t even like running! You are someone who would sit through a stampede if you knew the bulls wouldn’t charge at you.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about me. Why do you think I did it?”

“Because…” He bit his lips and clenched his fists. As if his thoughts were clashing, like he… blamed himself.

I understood and started laughing.”You think I ran after the thief because you told me to stand up for myself? Is that it? You think if you hadn’t said those words then I wouldn’t have ran after the guy and I wouldn’t have been stabbed? Is that right?”

I wasn’t asking a question.

“That’s not what happened,” I told him and myself. I also needed clarification as to what actually happened that evening. “Your words only nudged the decision slightly in the favor of me running after the thief. Our interaction was a very small gear in a very long chain of events that led to this.” I said pointing at my abdomen.

“Besides, I saved a life today. Did you know that?” He looked at me with wet eyes. “The money that the thief stole was for someone's heart operation. The uncle had loaned it out from various people and barely managed to get together those 1.5 lakhs. If I hadn’t stopped the thief, his son would most definitely have died today or tomorrow. So blame the thief if you want to blame someone. Blame our system that forces people to pay before operation. Heck, you can blame me too! I should have thought more about all the people I would be concerned with my actions. But don’t blame yourself,”

“I am proud of you. If you weren’t my brother maybe I really would have ignored the thief and come back home. Maybe I would have heard from someone about the robber and the boy’s death and hurt myself wondering if I could have done something. Who knows what could have happened? All I know is that I’m fine and the boy is fine too. They also caught the thief. So what’s the problem? Wait--”

I suddenly remembered something. “You didn’t record that-- did you?”

We both looked at his phone and then he started giggling through the tears.

“I forgot,” He said through the wet sniffs.

I remembered the night he was born. It was a windy October night and I was standing outside the hospital with my father and my grandma. I remember the nurse rushing out of the ICU and asking my father’s opinion about opting for a bigger operation because there were some complications and it would cost more. My father agreed without hesitation. I used to take care of him growing up. Warm milk for him and put him to sleep in the makeshift sling that my father had hung from the roof in our lobby. On his first day in school as a three-year-old, he bothered his teacher so much that she dropped him in my classroom. He kept talking to me in class and I being a serious student at that time complained to the teacher. I was afraid the teacher would punish me, but the teacher said it was all right and I could talk to him and I felt such relief. I was a stupid big brother. I still am.

“Say,” I said to get his attention and continued after he raised his head to look at me. “When was the last time we watched a movie together?”

“Last year,” He answered as if it was sitting on the tip of his tongue waiting to be said. “We binged the lord of the Rings series in one sitting.” He said with a nervous chuckle.

“Why don’t we watch another one together? Have you watched the latest Scream movie? The reviews say it’s pretty good.”

He glared at me.

“What?” I chuckled knowingly.

“A stab victim watching a slasher movie…” He said seriously.

I snickered and then we were both laughing. I controlled my laughter so it wouldn’t affect my stitches, but he was laughing so hard he had to push his face into a pillow just to hide the noise.

In the end, we watch a different movie together. Then it was 11:37 and Abhey went to sleep. I waited until midnight struck to see what kind of absurd mission today’s task would give me. I knew what kind of power I wanted.

I liked this loud-mouthed maniac that I had become, but I was not him. I wanted to be rid of him. According to my understanding and data vision’s interpretation, the reason behind it all was my suddenly increased intelligence. My brain couldn’t handle the stress. Postponing my beauty treatment, I decided to ask for a power that would strengthen my brain and neural networks to prevent me from becoming Kartick’s body double and to prevent a brain hemorrhage, hernia, swelling, and Alzheimer’s.

I asked the wish from the system when midnight struck and was stunned by the task. It wasn’t as gross as drinking blood, but it was not any less tedious.