“You are up to something, aren't you?” My mother asked suddenly.

I jumped up in fright and told her that it was nothing. She didn’t believe me. She wouldn’t be my mother if she did.

“Don’t lie to me.” She glared at me with her big brown eyes. “Tell me, did you do something at school? Are your teachers going to call us again?”

“There is nothing going on, Ma!” I shouted. It did nothing but make her angrier.

“You better be right, or you learn to cook. I’m not feeding a rascal son.” She said and walked away with heavy stomping footsteps.

“I can’t talk to you at all!” I shouted behind her, but she was already gone by then.

It took me a while to calm my heart. My mother was too perceptive. She had the senses of a cat and the anger of one. You bug her some and she slaps the shit out of you until you run away. I wasn’t planning something insidious. It was my latest task. Last night, I asked the system for a power that could help me absorb food faster and this was the result.

[The Daily superpower system has heard your wish!]

[Furnace is an excellent superpower that passively improves your ability to break down all kinds of organic and inorganic substances be it food or cement. You can eat it all. Beware: the power is only as strong as your body.]

[Task level: E]

[Make your mother disgust you at the dinner table.]

[Would you like to accept the task to acquire the ability? Yes/No]

It was still an E-level task and the system was back to its usual antics. After finessing my brother, now it was asking me to collide wits with my mother. Why did it want me to do that? Did it want me to become estranged from my mother? What would it get out of it? My mother was already against me. I didn’t want to antagonize her even more. I even thought of giving up the task. But I needed this superpower.

Perhaps, that was exactly what the system wanted to see: if I could beg and fight for my desires, if I could be selfish.

I thought hard and long thinking about the task and its consequences. I only went to sleep after making a decision. I decided to do it. I needed this superpower. There was no way around it.

I tried to go for it in the morning, but my mother didn’t even listen to me and stopped cooking after making the usual breakfast. What could I do? Fight with her? She would have made me fast for the rest of the day. Besides, I had a bus to catch in the morning. Usually, we only had a small five to ten-minute window to finish breakfast. We missed that and we had to take our breakfast to go and finish it on the bus.

I had been eagerly waiting all day for school to end so I could come home and finish the task. But my mother caught me before I even started.

I stared, glared, fully aware of everything happening in the kitchen, my feet tapping impatiently. I couldn’t wait for her to start cooking. Even Rani had the same thoughts. She patiently sat on the doormat, blocking the kitchen door. She was hungry and this was her way of showing it.

The staple food in our house was chapatti and dal-sabji.

A chapatti is a round flatbread that takes just a couple of minutes to bake on a flat iron pan. And even less if you are as proficient as my mother. Each chapatti contains around one hundred to one fifty calories depending upon the weight and size of it.

My mother baked them on the heavier side. I usually only ate two of them at a time. Lately, I had been eating four in turn, making it a seven to eight-hundred-calorie meal. The result of this was starting to become visible around my waist.

My mother started cooking and I hurriedly went inside the kitchen to quietly fill a bowl of curd. There was no distinct odor of the cooked food in the air. So I couldn’t prepare for what she had cooked. My face fell when I saw the sabji in the pot. It was radish, cooked with spices in water until it became a bitter somewhat sweet paste. This was gonna be a problem. I didn’t like radish, neither the taste nor the texture of it. I glared at my mother. She was working as usual, kneading the dough from wheat flour, ignoring me. I knew she did it deliberately. This was her way of taking her anger out on me. I understood it, but really… radish. Yuck.

“Isn’t there something else?” I pleaded. I feared I would fail the task otherwise. “What about the beans we ate last night?”

“Your father took them to the office for lunch.” My mother said calmly. Her voice was plain and uninterested.

“Then… then… yes, what about the dal fry you made a couple of days ago.” I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one.

My mother let out a snort. “What do you think?”

“Couldn’t you have made something else?” I let out with a groan. “Did you have to make radish? You know I don’t like it.”

Suddenly she stopped kneading the dough and I hurriedly stepped out of her attack zone. “There are other people in this house.” She said glancing over her shoulder. “You are not the only one who eats here.”

“And he calls me choosy,” Abhey taunted me from behind.

I glared at him. He ignored it with a snort before coming into the kitchen. I saw him eyeing my plate and picked it up before he could. He clicked his tongue and pulled another from the rack. He took whatever he wanted in whatever quantity and left the kitchen. Leaving me stranded with a temperate volcano.

“You want something else?” My mother said cleaning up the kitchen slab after herself.

“Hmph,” I picked up my plate, put some of that radish on it, and left the kitchen. I stared at the gooey, thick yellow paste that was the radish and wondered how I was going to get past this.

I tried to hype myself up.

You can do this, I told myself. It doesn’t matter if you eat five or ten more. She’s your mother. If you are hungry she’ll feed you. But the more I spoke and heard my voice in my head, the more I felt like it wouldn’t work. I needed help and so I turned to Abhey. The things you do for power.

“You like radishes?” I asked him, hoping for a response. He didn’t bat a rat ass. So I had to continue my single play and play the instruments alone.

“Don’t you think it tastes like plastic? I mean it also grows under the ground but it’s completely shit compared to its cousins, carrot and daikon. Carrots are sweet, while daikon has a citreous and tangy flavor that works well for it as a pickle. But a radish is both sweet and sour. It just tastes bitter in my opinion.”

Abhey sighed. “Ma’s, right.” He looked over. “You are acting weird today. What do you want?”

I ignored the question and carried on with my quest. “Let’s have a competition. Let’s see who can eat more today.”

“Why? I thought you didn’t like radish.” He looked uninterested. But when had he ever shown interest in anything other than mocking me?

“That’s exactly why,” I said excitedly in fake, deliberate, overacted excitement. I almost slammed my hands on the table but checked myself at the last moment. “I don’t want ma to make radish ever again.”

“But I like it,” Abhey ate a spoonful with relish. “So good,”

“I’ll help with your homework,”

Abhey chuckled. “No thanks,”

“What can I do to make it up to you?” I needed this superpower. No matter the cost. So I begged.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

He didn’t look interested at first but then his sharp mind thought of something sinister and a smile grew on his face, a scheming, vile smile. “Anything?”

My brows furrowed in worry. “What do you want?”

“Give me your laptop.” It was a headshot.

“What?” I said, followed it with a barely audible no. I desperately shook my head. Anything but that.

Abhey sat back in the chair with his arms crossed. The smile had grown into an evil grin. “I thought you would do anything. I guess you don’t want to complete. Tch, tch, tch…”

“Why do want my laptop?” I said in a pleading tone. “That’s the only thing I have left. You have already taken away everything else!”

“I need to share it with one of my class girlfriends.” He said innocently as if that wasn’t a bomb drop. “We have a class project. I asked her to join me but she said she doesn’t have a computer. So,”

“So what,” Suddenly, I remembered. “Besides, don’t you like Arzoo?”

He looked me up and down, shook his head, and said, “Can’t I like more than one girl?”

I couldn’t retort. And thought maybe I should learn something from him. Between Anjali and Sonam maybe there was no need to choose. Besides, I only had one option. I could continue drowning in the past one-sided hopeless and uninviting relationship, or move on. Anjali had. Perhaps, I should too.

“Don’t talk while eating,” Our mother appeared behind us like a grim reaper. She put five or six chapattis on a plate and asked. “Do you want to do more?” She asked because we usually only ate three chapattis at a meal, but I had been eating more for some days.

“Yes,” I said and pleaded to my little brother with puppy eyes.

“What about you?” Ma asked Abhey.

“Do I want to eat more? What do you think?” The shady guy was asking for my answer in a disguised way. But there was stuff on my laptop--

“I guess, it’s enou--”

“Yes, yes! He has to eat. Look at him, how thin he is. People talk you know. They say his mother doesn’t feed him enough.”

“What?” My ma got enraged. “Who said it? Tell me and I’ll go invite her to our home for dinner.”

She looked left, glaring at the wall, as if there lived the person whom I was talking about. I wondered if there was a story there. If there was an aunt in our neighborhood who didn’t like my mother.

I wished for her good health and told my mother, “Don’t worry ma, it’s just some stranger we met on the way. Oh,” I look past her at the kitchen. “Can you smell something burning?”

“I can smell it too,” Abhey said smelling the air around me before taking two sniffs of my head. “I think it’s your brain.”

I drank the bitter insult down and my mother returned to the kitchen with Rani running after her with her tail wagging. I could almost see her drooling. Then my mother called her inside the kitchen and she ran inside like a bullet escaping the gun.

“So we are really competing, huh?” Abhey said in my ear leaning over.

“Obviously,”

“All right then. Let’s see who wins.” Abhey started making a chapatti roll so he could eat faster.

I understood his game and instead of following his act, tore half of the roti, put some radish in, dipped it in curd, and then holding my breath --because I didn’t like radish sabji-- took a bite and started chewing. Our sense of smell plays an equally important role in the flavors we taste while eating. So when we hold our breath while eating, it makes it easier to eat unpalatable things. That was what I had heard. I could still taste it though.

We stared at each other as we chewed. Chewing faster and faster as if we were in a real competition. I found it funny to see Abhey getting riled up. Before we knew it, we had finished the six or seven chapattis and were yelling at our Mother for more.

“MA, ROTI,” Abhey was slightly faster than me. What could I do? He liked the sabji while I abhorred it. We were on two different tracks. So I was bound to lose… the game and my laptop.

It didn’t take long before our mother came rushing out of the kitchen with four chapattis on a plate. She gave us two each and then asked again. “More?”

“Yes,” We both said at the same time and then started eating like two hungry dogs. For the first time in our lives, we agreed on something.

“Eat slowly,” Ma, chided us. “The food is not going to run away.”

We ignored our mother and started tearing through the task.

“Idiots both of them,” She said on her way back to the kitchen. And while she was still there we had already finished ours.

“Ma!” Abhey said first, grinning from ear to ear. This wasn’t those previous thoughtful, meaningful grins. This smile was genuine, more personal. He was enjoying this competition.

“Are you boys even chewing them?” Ma said running back from the kitchen and by the time she came I had also finished my portion.

“How much more are you boys going to eat?”

“Just a few more,” I said even though we had eaten five each.

This continued until we had eaten eight each before Abhey raised his hands in surrender and said he’d had enough. I also felt like my stomach was gonna explode, but the task wasn’t over yet. So I couldn’t stop.

I was groaning and moaning when my mother came out of the kitchen again. This time she was putting the flour back in the fridge. I had difficulty breathing, but I hadn’t completed the task yet.

“What are you doing?” I asked her. “I’m not done eating yet.

“You are.” She ordered.

I sprang up from my seat in a forceful demonstration of something. It was like a bluff in poker. I put all of my acting skills into it, but the bluff seemed too fake, like there was no good reason behind it.

I stomped my feet on the ground and told her, “I want to eat!”

My mother paid no attention to me. “Have you looked at your face?” She said holding the fridge door. “You look like a constipated pig,”

“Pft,” Abhey started laughing and crying in pain holding his stomach. “Ma, don’t,” He said wheezing and hissing. “It hurts.”

“You are no better than this pig. Humph,”

I saw the situation getting out of my control and seeing no other choice, picked up the plate and threw it on the ground. It was a steel plate; the noise it made was a thunder crackle on a bright sky. “I said I’m not finished eating yet. Are you going to feed me or not?”

Rani started barking instantly. I knew I messed up, but the ship of regrets sailed with the plate hitting the floor. The way back was gone. I could only get to the other side of this turbulent river or drown trying.

My mother had a short temper. But she didn’t explode this time. She only said, “I have. You can cook yourself if you are not full.” then slammed the fridge door closed and started walking toward her room. Even though it was late in the summer, her forehead was still wet from the sweat. It gets pretty hot in our kitchen during cooking, since we don't have an exhaust system to take the smoke away. She looked tired and in pain, but the system task was still not over yet.

I felt bad for doing this, but I did it anyway.

“Then what do we have you for?” I scrapped my heart to say it.

That turned out to be the last nail in the coffin. The system notification rang in my head and the burning words indicating task completion fizzled in and out of existence in front of my eyes.

I had won yet I only felt disgusted at myself. I went too far. Was it the system changing my mentality or this was the real me? A greedy, self-absorbed, narcissist who only cared about himself? Who only needed a hint of power and self-confidence to come out of its shell?

In time, I would have the power to change people's fate with a snap of my finger. What if I couldn’t control myself and used it to destroy half the world’s population to fulfill my whims? Citing it was inevitable.

My super brain couldn’t answer. It said time would tell. Truthfully, I didn’t want to know.

While Abhey moaned and groaned beside me, holding his stomach, my latest power, the furnace, quietly started doing its job. Although it didn’t digest everything right away, I could feel my stomach loosening with each passing minute. According to the system, the power improved my digestion ability by 33% at level 1. Where it used to take 6-8 hours to digest a meal, it would now take approximately 4.5-6 hours.

I took our dirty plates to the kitchen sink and started washing the dishes. I thought that if I washed the dishes and cleaned the floor, my mother would see that I wasn’t an ungrateful bastard. Perhaps, her anger would have calmed down by then. So she would forgive me easily when I apologize.