Chapter 2: Shop Dust Dreams

  The blue light of the previous night had left a physical residue in Arjun’s mind. When he woke up at 5:30 AM to the sound of his father coughing near the well, the first thing he did wasn't check for Priya’s ghost. He checked his retinas. He blinked rapidly, half-expecting the translucent blue numbers to still be floating there, hovering over the mosquito net.

  They weren't. The world was back to being a low-resolution reality of gray mist and the smell of wet cow dung.

  He felt a strange, hollow ache in his chest—a mix of the adrenaline from the "Truth-Sight" and the crushing weight of his bank balance. He had ?40. In the world of Aviator, where the minimum bet was ?10, he had exactly four lives. Four chances to prove he wasn't just a boy in Baridih who hallucinated on a rooftop.

  The Ledger of Disappointment

  By 7:30 AM, the heat was already beginning to bake the red soil of the courtyard. Arjun sat in the corner of the small house, watching his father, Ramesh Kumar, hunch over a thick, red-bound ledger. The ledger was the "System" his father lived by—a record of every sack of rice, every packet of salt, and every credit (udhaari) owed by the 230 households of the village.

  SLAM.

  The sound of the ledger hitting the wooden table echoed like a gunshot.

  "?2,800," Ramesh growled, his voice vibrating with a decade of suppressed frustration. "All day yesterday, you sat in that shop, staring at that glowing plastic in your hand, and you only managed ?2,800 in sales? Half of that is credit! How are we supposed to pay the wholesaler in Itki? How am I supposed to send money to your Bua in Lapung for the house construction?"

  Arjun looked down at his feet. His toes were stained with the dust of the field. "The power was out, Papa. No one came in the afternoon."

  "Excuses!" Ramesh stood up, his tall, weathered frame towering over Arjun. "You think life is a joke? You think money falls from the sky like the rain? Look at you. You’re twenty years old. When I was your age, I was carrying two quintals of grain on my back to the Ranchi Mandi. You? You can't even keep a ledger straight."

  Arjun’s hand tightened into a fist, but he didn't raise his head. Internally, his mind was doing something it did every time he was humiliated: it translated the scene into a Manhwa panel.

  [Current Status: Weakling Son] [Quest: Survive Father’s Rage] [Reward: 1 Cup of Chai / 0 Respect]

  In his head, he imagined a "Ripped Arjun"—an MC with a sharp jawline and glowing blue eyes—standing up and throwing a bag of gold coins on the table. But the real Arjun was 5'8", slim-built, and had arms that looked like they hadn't seen a day of hard labor in years.

  "Go," Ramesh spat, waving him away. "Go to the shop. And if I see you on that phone during a sale, I’ll throw it in the well. Ladai lad, Arjun! Fight for your life! You’re living like a dead man."

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  The Shadow of the MC

  Arjun walked to the kirana shop, the iron shutters feeling heavier than usual. As he sat on the rickety wooden stool, he began his daily ritual: cold showers and bodybuilding dreams.

  He had started taking cold showers at the well, a habit he picked up from a "Success System" manhwa. He told himself it would build his "Willpower Stat." He stared at his reflection in a small, salt-stained mirror behind a stack of Lifebuoy soaps. He tried to flex his bicep. It was small, soft.

  I need more than a System, he thought. I need a body that can hold the power. If I win the money, I can't look like a boy who gets blown away by the wind.

  He opened his phone, his thumb hovering over the Aviator icon. His heart hammered. ?40. Minimum bet ?10. He closed his eyes. System... if you're there, show me again.

  Nothing happened. No blue glow. No glitch. The app loaded normally. The red plane took off. 1.2x... 1.5x... CRASH. He didn't bet. He couldn't afford a mistake. He needed to wait for the "feeling"—the electric shiver in his spine that told him the Decryptor was active.

  The Humiliation at the Akhada

  Afternoon in Baridih brought a different kind of pressure. To keep the village boys "disciplined," a local elder ran a small wrestling pit (akhada) near the primary school. It was a patch of tilled earth where the boys of the 1,304-person population proved their worth.

  Arjun usually avoided it, but today, he felt a strange pull. If he was going to be a "Returner," he had to face his weaknesses.

  The air at the akhada was thick with the smell of earth, mustard oil, and sweat. A crowd of village youths, some of them his former classmates from Vidya Public, were cheering. In the center of the pit was Vikram—a boy from the nearby village of Garhagaon who was built like a young bull.

  "Oh, look! The 'Scientist' from Bero College is here," Vikram mocked, wiping mud onto his chest. "What's the matter, Arjun? Did the Jio signal go out? Come, show us some of that 'city magic' you've been learning."

  The crowd laughed. Arjun felt the heat rise to his ears. He stepped into the pit, his jeans rolled up, his thin frame looking out of place against the muscular, oil-slicked bodies around him.

  "Just a friendly match, Vikram," Arjun said, trying to sound confident.

  The match lasted less than thirty seconds.

  Vikram moved with the speed of a predator. He grabbed Arjun’s lead arm, stepped inside, and with a grunt of "Chalo beta!", he executed a perfect hip throw.

  THUD.

  The air left Arjun’s lungs in a single, painful gasp. He hit the mud face-first. The world spun. He could hear the raucous laughter of the boys, the "distressed" clucking of nearby chickens, and the sharp whistle of the elder.

  "Arjun, stay in the shop," someone yelled. "The earth is for men, not for dreamers!"

  He picked himself up, the red Baridih dust clinging to his skin, filling his mouth. He walked away without a word, his knee bruised and bleeding, the laughter echoing in his ears until he reached the quiet of the paddy fields.

  The Ominous Stars

  That night, the stars over the 225-hectare expanse of the village felt closer, heavier. Arjun sat on the rooftop again, his bruised knee throbbing in time with his heartbeat. He didn't even look at Priya’s photos. The pain of the wrestling pit had replaced the pain of the ghosting.

  He looked up at the sky, his eyes stinging.

  "Universe," he whispered. "I'm fighting. I'm taking the cold showers. I'm taking the insults. Give me the System. Not just for a minute. Not just for a glitch. Give it to me so I can show them. Show Papa. Show Vikram. Show her."

  The stars didn't move, but the atmosphere felt... charged. The crickets suddenly went silent. The air grew cold, a sharp contrast to the humid Jharkhand night.

  He opened his phone.

  The screen didn't flicker this time. It turned a solid, deep indigo. A single, pulsing heartbeat sound echoed from the phone's speakers—low, rhythmic, and powerful.

  [HOST CONFIRMED: ARJUN KUMAR] [COMPATIBILITY: 100%] [INITIALIZING WEALTH-GROWTH INTERFACE...]

  Arjun's vision blurred. A wave of exhaustion hit him, deeper than the exhaustion from the wrestling pit. His head slumped against the water tank.

  He fell into a dream of blue screens and golden numbers. He saw himself standing in the center of Ranchi's Main Road, the city traffic frozen in time. He saw Priya looking at him, not with pity, but with awe. And behind her, a giant red plane soared into the sky, never crashing, climbing higher and higher until it pierced the sun.

  He woke up at 3:00 AM, drenched in sweat, his heart racing. The phone was lying next to him. The screen was black. But when he touched it, a small, blue icon was now permanently burned into the corner of the home screen.

  It wasn't the Aviator app. It was a new icon: a golden eye with a blue pupil.

  [The Tutorial is Over.]