The adrenaline crash hit him the moment he stepped out of the ground.
Arjun stood on the pavement, the heat of the afternoon radiating off the asphalt through the soles of his thin Bata school shoes. His body, which had been running on pure dopamine for the last hour, his shoulders ached from the heavy backpack. His calves, unused to the sudden sprinting between wickets, throbbed with a dull, rhythmic pain.
He checked the time on a shop clock. 12:45 PM. He had fifteen minutes before his "Maths Tuition" started at V-IGNITE.
He couldn't go in like this. He felt hollow. It wasn't just hunger; it was a biological deficit. He had burned more calories in that one hour of cricket than he usually did in a week of his 2011 life.
He walked towards a small, rusty pushcart parked under the shade of a massive banyan tree. It was a popular spot for students—the "Bandi" that sold boiled eggs and bread omelets.
The smell hit him and his mouth watered may be due to hunger or nostalgia.
"Anna, two boiled eggs," Arjun said, digging into his pocket. He pulled out the ten-rupee note he had saved by walking half the distance. The vendor, a man in a checkered lungi with a towel wrapped around his head, nodded without looking up. He fished two eggs out of the steaming vessel, peeled them with practiced speed, sliced them in half, and sprinkled a generous amount of salt and pepper.
He handed them to Arjun on a piece of newspaper.
Arjun leaned against the rough bark of the Banyan tree and ate. The yolk was dry and chalky, sticking to the roof of his mouth, but to his starving body, it tasted like food from heaven. He closed his eyes, letting the feeling flow. When he opened his eyes, he looked at the wall behind the cart.
It was a public wall, plastered with layers of torn posters. Movie posters for Dookudu, advertisements for "Spoken English Classes," and political slogans. But under a torn layer of a cinema poster, something yellow caught his eye. It was a cheap, printed flyer, half-peeled off the wall.
SUMMER CRICKET CAMP & SELECTIONS Organized by: Visakhapatnam District Cricket Association (VDCA) Age Group: U-14 & U-16 Venue: Zinc Ground Selection Date: May 20th, 2011
Arjun stopped chewing.
He stared at the date. May 20th.
His mind, sharpened by years of data analysis, did the calculation instantly. Today was March 14th. May 20th was roughly 67 days away.
A cold shiver ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the sea breeze. He remembered this date. Not from a calendar, but from a memory buried deep in his regrets. In his previous timeline, on the same day, he had been sitting in a Chemistry tuition, staring out the window, miserable. That same evening, his friend Ravi had come over, bursting with excitement, saying he had cleared the first round of District trials.
Arjun touched the rough paper of the flyer. It felt gritty with dust.
May 20th. He had exactly two months and one week.
Two months to transform this weak, skinny, noodle-armed body into an athlete who could bowl 10 overs of pace. Two months to convince his parents that cricket wasn't a death sentence.
He crumpled the newspaper plate and tossed it into the dustbin. The deadline was set.
He washed his face at a municipal tap, scrubbing the red dust from his neck and ears. He gargled to hide the smell of egg. He dusted off his trousers, transforming back from a cricketer into a student.
He walked into the V-IGNITE Coaching Center. The transition was jarring. He stepped from the chaotic, noisy, vibrant street into a sterile, air-conditioned tomb. The glass doors shut behind him, cutting off the sound of the world.
The lobby smelled of floor cleaner and anxiety. The notice board had lists of names—rank holders, toppers, the "Elite Batch" students who were destined for IITs.
Arjun walked into his classroom. It was packed. Sixty students squeezed onto narrow wooden benches, a sea of white and grey uniforms.
He found a spot in the last row—the backbencher's sanctuary—and slid his heavy bag between his legs. He sat down, and the adrenaline finally left him completely.
And in that vacuum, the darkness crept in. The room was silent except for the hum of the AC and the scratching of pens. It was too quiet. Too still.
Arjun looked at his hands. They were small, smooth, unscarred. He looked at the boy sitting next to him—a kid picking his nose while secretly reading a comic book inside his physics textbook.
A sudden wave of nausea hit Arjun. Is this real? The thought terrified him. It was the first time since he woke up that he truly paused to question the reality of it.
What if I'm not back in time? What if I'm lying in a hospital bed in Bangalore, hooked up to a ventilator after a car crash?What if this whole day—the Old Man, the sugarcane juice, the match, the egg vendor—is just a dying brain firing its last neurons? A "life review" simulation before the lights go out forever?
He thought about the Old Man at the sugarcane stall. The man had smiled and said, "If you know you made a mistake... why don't you correct it?" It sounded too perfect. Too scripted. Like a line from a reincarnation novel.
Arjun gripped the edge of the desk. He dug his fingernails into the wood until it hurt. Wake up, he thought. Wake up.
Nothing happened. The boy next to him turned the page of his comic book. The teacher at the front coughed and tapped the whiteboard.
Arjun closed his eyes. He tried to summon the sensation of the ball hitting the bat earlier. The shockwave that traveled up his arms. The heaviness of the bat. The burning in his lungs when he ran the double.
Dreams are hazy, he reasoned, his logical mind fighting the panic. Dreams skip the boring parts. You don't dream about waiting for a bus. You don't dream about the specific, chalky taste of a dry egg yolk. You don't dream about the dull backache from sitting on a wooden bench for twenty minutes. This boredom... this crushing, mundane boredom of a physics lecture... was the ultimate proof of reality.
He opened his eyes. He let out a long breath. He was here. Real or not, simulated or magical, he was here. And the clock was ticking towards May 20th.
He looked at the front of the room. The lecturer, a man with thick glasses and a weary expression, was drawing a diagram on the whiteboard.
Coordinate Geometry: The Locus.
"Listen carefully," the lecturer said in a monotone voice. "This concept carries 4 marks in the Board Exam and is crucial for IIT-JEE mains. If a point moves such that its distance from two fixed points is equal, the path it traces is called the Perpendicular Bisector."
The students frantically copied the definition, terrified of missing a word.
Arjun stared at the board. PA=PB (x−x1)2+(y−y1)2=(x−x2)2+(y−y2)2
In his previous life, as a 14-year-old, this formula had looked like alien hieroglyphics. He had struggled to memorize it, terrified of the square roots.
But now? He looked at it through the eyes of a 30-year-old software architect who built logic systems for a living. It wasn't a complex formula. It was just a condition. Point A is here. Point B is here. Where can I stand so I am equal distance from both? Obviously, the middle line. It was intuitive. It was simple logic.
He blinked. He looked at the next problem the teacher was writing. It was a "tough" problem that usually stumped the class. Arjun solved it in his head in three seconds. I don't need to study this, he realized with a jolt. I already passed this level.
A slow smile spread across his face. He leaned back, the tension in his shoulders releasing. He had been worried about how to balance cricket and studies. He thought he would have to pull all-nighters, studying for 10 hours a day to keep his parents happy.
But that was assuming he had to learn the material. He didn't have to learn it. He just had to output it. That's the trade, he thought. His parents didn't care about "learning." They cared about the Report Card. They wanted the 'A' grade. They wanted the rank. If he could give them the Rank without doing the time... he could buy his freedom.
He could finish his homework in 30 minutes. He could ace the unit tests with minimal preparation. And that freed up... everything. The 4 hours of evening tuition? Cricket. The 2 hours of morning study? Fitness. He wasn't going to rebel against the system. He was going to exploit it.
The Test
"Arjun!"
Something hard hit him square in the forehead.
Crack.
Arjun jerked back, his hand flying to his head. A piece of broken chalk bounced off the desk and rolled onto the floor. The classroom went dead silent. Sixty heads turned around to look at him.
The teacher was standing at the podium, furious. He dusted the chalk powder off his hands.
"Sleeping?" the teacher sneered, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "First day of the summer course and you are staring out the window like a poet? Do you think your father is paying fees for you to dream?"
The boy next to him shrank away, terrified of the blast radius.
"Stand up!" the teacher shouted.
Arjun stood up slowly. He rubbed his forehead. It stung. A small white mark remained on his skin.
"Since you are too bored to listen," the teacher said, pointing to the board, "come here. Solve this. If you get it right, you can go back to sleep. If you get it wrong, you stand outside the class for the rest of the hour."
Arjun looked at the board. Find the equation of the locus of a point equidistant from A(2,3) and B(4,5).
He walked down the aisle. He could feel the eyes of the other students on him. Some were pitying him. Some were snickering. They expected him to fail. They expected him to cry or apologize.
Arjun walked up to the podium. He picked up the marker. He looked at the teacher. The man was smirking, arms crossed, waiting for the humiliation.
Arjun turned to the board.
In his mind, the grid appeared. Midpoint of (2,3) and (4,5) is (3,4). Slope of AB is (5-3)/(4-2) = 1. So, slope of perpendicular bisector is -1. Equation: y - 4 = -1(x - 3). y - 4 = -x + 3. x + y - 7 = 0.
He didn't write the steps. He didn't write the formula. He just uncapped the marker and wrote the final answer in big, bold letters.
x+y−7=0
He put the cap back on with a loud click.
He turned to the teacher. "Is that correct, Sir?"
The teacher blinked. The smirk vanished. He looked at the board. Then he looked down at his textbook. He flipped the page to check the answer key. He frowned. He checked the calculation again.
It was correct.
The teacher looked up at Arjun, confusion warring with anger. He opened his mouth to scold him for not showing the steps, but he stopped. The answer was right.
"Don't... don't be smart," the teacher stammered, his authority punctured. "Just... go sit down. And open your book."
Arjun didn't smile. He didn't gloat. He just nodded and walked back up the aisle. The silence in the room was different now. It wasn't fearful. It was stunned. The boy next to him looked at Arjun as if he were an alien.
Arjun sat down. He slumped back in his chair and looked out the window again. The fear was gone. The doubt about the dream was gone. He had a plan. Ace the exams. Train in the shadows. Make the team. May 20th was coming. And he would be ready.