The body suit arrived on Thursday morning.
He opened the package in his room with the door locked, which felt both necessary and slightly absurd. The suit was better than he had expected — dense, realistic, the kind of quality that explained the price tag. It covered his torso and upper body completely, adding the approximate bulk of twenty kilograms in a way that looked and felt surprisingly natural under clothing.
He put it on.
Pulled his shirt over it.
Stood in front of the mirror.
He looked exactly like himself from the neck down. The old himself.
But his face was a different matter entirely.
The puffiness was gone. His jawline was visible in a way it hadn't been since school. His cheekbones had definition. His eyes looked larger somehow — less obscured by the soft weight that had surrounded them before. He looked older. Sharper. Like a more resolved version of himself.
The body suit could hide his body. It couldn't hide his face.
He stood in front of the mirror thinking about this for a long moment.
There was nothing he could do about his face. No suit for that. He would just have to let people notice and manage it carefully — attribute it to stress, illness, eating better, whatever explanation was most convenient in the moment.
He practiced a few expressions. Tried to look tired and unwell.
He looked neither tired nor unwell. He looked better than he had in years.
'This is going to be a problem', he thought.
Then he moved.
And immediately understood the second problem.
The suit added bulk but it couldn't add back the way he used to carry that bulk — the slight forward lean, the unconscious effort of moving a heavier body, the particular quality of someone who had never trained a day in his life. He moved differently now. The Krav Maga, the running, the weeks with Marcus — all of it had changed something fundamental in how he occupied space. Upright. Deliberate. Aware.
He looked like his old body but moved like his new one. And his face looked like neither.
He spent twenty minutes in front of the mirror consciously adjusting — softening his posture slightly, letting his shoulders drop a fraction, relearning the movement patterns of the person he used to be.
It wasn't perfect. But it was convincing enough.
He had three months to make it perfect before anyone looked too closely.
'Good enough', he decided.
He got dressed properly and went to his first backlog exam.
The exam hall was exactly as he remembered it — the same rows of desks, the same slightly broken ceiling fan in the corner, the same invigilator who had been supervising exams in this department for what appeared to be approximately forty years.
He sat down, read the question paper once and began writing.
It was — there was no other word for it — trivial.
Not because the subject was easy. It wasn't particularly. But his current intelligence, the disciplined thinking habits he had built over three months, the complete absence of exam anxiety that came from genuinely understanding rather than memorising — all of it combined into something that felt less like an exam and more like writing down things he already knew in an organised order.
He finished forty minutes before time.
He sat quietly for the remaining forty minutes because leaving early felt unnecessarily conspicuous.
He used the time to think through the 7aum Arivu entry plan.
Three exams over three days.
All of them the same experience — read once, understand completely, write clearly, finish early, sit quietly and think about other things.
After the last one he walked out into the afternoon sunlight and stood for a moment outside the exam hall.
A classmate he vaguely recognised fell into step beside him — a tall guy named Abhishek who had the permanently stressed expression of someone in the middle of his final semester backlog exams.
"How was it?", Abhishek asked.
"Fine", Aditya said.
Abhishek looked at him.
"Fine? That paper was — " he stopped. Looked at Aditya's face properly for the first time. "Wait — did you lose weight?"
"A little", Aditya said.
"Your face looks completely different", Abhishek said. Not unkindly. Just with the blunt observation of someone who hadn't seen him in a week and was processing a visible change.
"I've been eating better", Aditya said.
Abhishek stared at him for another moment then shook his head.
"You seem different", he said. "In general. More — I don't know. Settled or something."
"People keep saying that", Aditya said.
"In a good way", Abhishek added quickly. "Just — different."
"Thanks", Aditya said.
They walked in different directions at the gate.
He took the train home two days after his last exam.
Four hours. He spent most of it by the window watching the landscape shift from city to smaller city to the particular quality of the Karnataka countryside — flatter, drier, the red soil and scattered trees that had been the background of his entire childhood.
He had the fat suit on. He had practiced the movement adjustments until they felt close to natural. His face he could do nothing about.
He was also — and this surprised him slightly — genuinely looking forward to being home.
Not with the complicated mix of obligation and mild restlessness that home visits had produced before. Just straightforwardly looking forward to it. His mother's cooking. His own room. The particular unhurried quality of days that didn't require anything from him.
He hadn't expected that.
His father picked him up from the station.
They drove home mostly in silence — his father was not a man who filled silences unnecessarily, which was a quality Aditya had inherited and was increasingly grateful for.
His father looked at his face for a second longer than the road strictly allowed.
"You look different", he said.
"I've been eating better", Aditya said.
His father looked at him once more then returned his attention to the road.
"Good", he said simply.
That was the entirety of the emotional reunion on his father's side. It was exactly right.
His mother was another matter entirely.
She met him at the door, looked at him for approximately two seconds and said — "You've lost weight."
He had been in the house for less than thirty seconds.
"A little", he said carefully.
She stepped closer and looked at his face properly — the way mothers do when they are conducting a full assessment and have no intention of pretending otherwise.
"Your face", she said. "Aditya your face looks completely different. You look like you did in class ten."
He opened his mouth.
"Are you sick?", she asked immediately. "People lose weight from their face when they are sick. Are you eating? Have you seen a doctor?"
"Amma I'm not sick", he said. "I've been eating properly. I told you — nutritionist, meal plan — "
"A nutritionist doesn't change your face in two weeks", she said.
"It's been longer than two weeks", he said carefully. "I've been working on it for a while. I just didn't mention it because I knew you'd worry."
She looked at him for a long moment.
"You should have told us", she said.
"I know", he said. "I'm sorry."
She studied his face one more time — unconvinced but choosing to accept it for now.
"Come eat", she said finally. "I made bisibelebath."
He followed her inside.
The smell hit him the moment he crossed into the kitchen.
His mother's bisibelebath. The specific combination of dal and rice and vegetables and spices that she had been making his entire life and that existed nowhere else in the world in quite this form.
He sat down at the kitchen table.
She put a bowl in front of him.
He took the first spoonful.
And felt — something. Not dramatic. Not overwhelming. Just the quiet unmistakable feeling of something returning to its right place after a long absence.
'Home', he thought simply.
He ate two full bowls without speaking and his mother watched him with the satisfied expression of someone whose cooking had said everything that needed saying.
He spent three days at home.
He slept properly for the first time in what felt like months — his own bed, the familiar sounds of the neighbourhood outside, no alarm set for any particular purpose. He ate his mother's cooking at every meal and felt his body responding to it in a way that Dr. Priya's carefully calibrated meal plan, excellent as it was, had never quite managed.
He talked to his parents properly. Not the surface level check in calls of a student living away from home but actual conversations — about his father's work, his mother's sister's upcoming wedding, the neighbourhood news that had accumulated since his last visit.
He was present in a way he hadn't been before leaving. More patient. More genuinely interested. Less in his own head.
His mother noticed.
On the second evening she sat across from him at the kitchen table after dinner and looked at him with the expression she used when she had been thinking about something for a while and had decided to say it.
"Something happened", she said. "I don't know what. But something happened to you."
He looked at her.
"Good or bad?", he asked.
She considered that.
"Good", she said slowly. "Definitely good. You just seem — " she searched for the word. "Present. Like you're actually here and not somewhere else in your head."
He didn't say anything for a moment.
"I had some experiences", he said finally. "That changed how I see things."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she nodded.
"Good", she said again. Simply.
She got up and started clearing the table.
He sat for a moment longer.
'She's not wrong', he thought.
He took the train back to college on the fourth day.
On the journey back he opened his notebook and turned to the 7aum Arivu planning pages he had been building over the past week.
The film — a 2011 Tamil action thriller about a circus artist named Sakthi who discovers his ancestor was Bodhidharma, a sixth century warrior monk who had mastered an ancient form of martial arts and hypnotism. The story involved genetic memory, a biological weapon and a villain trying to exploit ancient knowledge for modern destruction.
He had seen it multiple times. He knew the plot, the key characters, the critical moments.
What he was focused on now was what he could realistically gain from entering this world.
He wrote it out clearly.
Goals — 7aum Arivu world:
1. Varma Kalai — the ancient pressure point martial art practised by Bodhidharma. More sophisticated than Krav Maga. Targets the body's vital points directly. Permanently retained on return.
2. Hypnotism — Bodhidharma's specific form of hypnotic suggestion. Rare, powerful, practically useful across any world.
3. Physical conditioning — Bodhidharma's training methods are extreme. Entering this world will push his physical stats significantly beyond current levels.
4. Tamil language consolidation — he already had Tamil at level 2 from the NZT learning session. Operating in a Tamil world for an extended period will push it to native level.
5. Ancient medicinal knowledge — Bodhidharma's understanding of the human body, pressure points, herbal medicine and healing is centuries ahead of modern understanding in certain respects. Practically invaluable.
6. Points — interacting with main characters, participating in story events, making changes to the storyline will generate significant accumulation.
He looked at the list.
Strong goals. Clear objectives. Nothing vague.
He checked the system.
7aum Arivu. Tier 1. Points required — 5000.
He paused at that.
Higher than he had anticipated. Significantly higher than Limitless. But then Limitless was a world of human intelligence and financial markets — grounded, realistic, close to his own world's energy level. 7aum Arivu was something else entirely. Bodhidharma controlling elements. Ancient medicinal knowledge spanning centuries. Varma Kalai targeting the body's vital points with precision that modern medicine still couldn't fully explain. Hypnotism that went beyond suggestion into something closer to genuine mental override.
Of course it cost more.
He checked his current points.
5780
He exhaled slowly.
Enough. Just enough — with 780 to spare.
'Good thing I didn't waste points carelessly', he thought.
He had one thing left to do before entering.
He needed to sort the two million dollars.
He opened a new page in his notebook and started planning.
That evening back in his dorm room he checked his stats one final time before the next phase began.
"Khushi."
"Yes, host."
"Show me my current stats."
[Host : Aditya]
[Species : Human]
[Gender : Male]
[Age : 22]
[Stats]
[Health : 12] (Normal person : 10)
[Energy : 0]
[Strength : 13] (Normal person : 10)
[Speed : 11] (Normal person : 10)
[Endurance : 14] (Normal person : 10)
[Intelligence : 14] (Normal person : 10)
[Attributes : 0]
[Skills : Driving (level 2), Swimming (level 2), Coding (level 4), Hacking (level 3), Krav Maga (level 3), Tamil (level 2), Telugu (level 2), Malayalam (level 2), Mandarin (level 2)]
[Equipment : Modified NZT-48 x2000 , Cash $2,000,000]
[Points : 5780]
He looked at the points for a long moment.
Just enough to enter the next world with a small buffer.
Everything else intact. Every skill. Every stat above normal. The pocket space holding its contents perfectly.
He set the phone down.
He had come back from the Limitless world and slotted back into his real life without missing a step. Exams cleared. Family visited. Plans made. Everything in its place.
Three months ago he had been sitting in this same chair watching a movie on a dying phone, pissing himself from a lightning strike, with no direction and no ambition and no particular sense of what he was supposed to do with his life.
He looked at the stats screen for a long moment.
'Not bad', he thought. 'Not bad at all.'
He wrote his end of day notes.
Exams — cleared. All three. Effortlessly.
Body suit — working. Face is the real challenge. Managing it.
Home — three days. Good. Needed that.
Cash — conversion plan in progress. Details next week.
7aum Arivu — ready. Points — 5780. Cost — 5000. Buffer — 780.
Entering after cash situation resolved.
Confidence — present. Controlled. Not performing. Just there.
He paused.
Then added one final line.
The real world is just another world to move through. Move through it well.
He closed the notebook.
Outside his dorm window the campus settled into its evening quiet.
He sat in it comfortably.
No restlessness. No impatience. No feeling of being in the wrong place.
Just a person who knew exactly who he was and exactly where he was going.
Waiting for the right moment to disappear again.