Chapter 11 — Home
And thus begins Chapter Eleven.
The final chapter.
Now, children.
Everything
was done.
The council opens the quest log.
Tournament?
Won.
Demigodz?
Defeated.
Crown?
Acquired.
MVP?
Nuo.
Hex’s bone tag?
Also Nuo.
Dog?
Petted.
Police encounter?
Survived.
First kiss?
Acquired.
Random water condom warfare?
Somehow also complete.
The council stares at the list.
Children.
This trip had achieved objectives I did not even know existed when we boarded the bus.
The known quest had been simple.
Go to NIT Calicut.
Play Dota.
Win,
preferably.
Instead,
the universe had apparently loaded several side quests without informing me.
And somehow
complete.
Complete.
Complete.
Complete.
The council nods.
There was nothing left to do.
So
home.
Now.
Transportation?
Auto.
Then train.
The council pauses.
Train?
You came by bus.
Correct.
Why train back?
Children.
Ask Hex.
The council turns toward Hex.
Naturally.
That information belonged to Logistics Department.
Perhaps train was easier.
Perhaps cheaper.
Perhaps faster.
Perhaps Hex simply decided:
Train.
And because my established travel philosophy remained
Hex knows.
Follow Hex.
I accepted.
The council nods.
First problem:
auto.
There was no convenient auto stand nearby.
At least none I remember.
Did I solve this?
No.
Did I even become aware of the logistical process?
Barely.
Children.
Hex did something.
Spoke to someone.
Called someone.
Summoned transportation through whatever strange social sorcery I had outsourced to him.
And eventually
auto.
The council applauds.
Infrastructure restored.
We climbed in.
Now.
Previously,
we had compressed five gamers into one auto.
A questionable but proven configuration.
This time?
Six.
The council freezes.
Six?
Children.
We had acquired an additional party member.
Stalker.
Of course she was coming to the station.
And apparently human anatomy is far more flexible than medical diagrams suggest.
Leg here.
Arm there.
Someone shifts.
Someone leans.
Someone occupies half a seat and three quarters of another person’s rib cage.
The council watches in horror.
And somehow
everyone fits.
Compression.
The beauty of the human body.
The council refuses to include this in anatomy textbooks.
We travelled.
Cramped.
Probably uncomfortable.
Completely irrelevant.
Because the trip was ending.
NIT slowly moved behind us.
The fest.
The computer lab.
The classroom bedroom.
The trees.
The luxury plant pots.
The battlefield where contraceptives had briefly become artillery.
All of it
behind.
Eventually
railway station.
The council straightens.
Tickets.
Acquired.
How?
Children.
Do you really need to ask?
Hex.
Likely.
The five person team would return by one train.
Not all the way to one place.
Different stops.
Different cities.
One by one,
people would peel away from the party.
Hex and I?
Same city.
So we would remain together longer.
The other three?
Their respective stops.
Simple.
But Stalker
different train.
Different direction.
Different part of Kerala.
The council grows quiet.
Her route separated here.
And suddenly,
for perhaps the first time since meeting her,
there was a boundary.
Not a tournament clock.
Not Hex calling us for food.
Not a make out session eventually ending.
An actual departure.
The others boarded.
Hex.
The three teammates.
Bags.
Seats.
Train waiting.
And I?
Stayed on the platform.
With Stalker.
The council looks toward the clock.
Fifteen minutes.
Approximately.
Children.
Fifteen minutes until my train left.
Enough time.
Not a lot.
But enough.
And neither of us seemed particularly interested in spending those minutes apart.
So we stood there.
Talked.
Maybe laughed.
Maybe replayed pieces of the weekend.
The exact conversation is gone.
The feeling is not.
I did not want to leave.
The council grows quiet.
Which was strange.
Because two days earlier,
this woman did not exist in my life.
Then
dog.
“You’re Nuo, right?”
“I’m your stalker.”
Dota.
Plant pots.
First kiss.
Hand holding.
Strategy.
Water war.
Sunrise.
Tournament.
Victory.
And now
train station.
Children.
Humans can enter a life very quickly.
Sometimes before the brain has time to build a sensible category for them.
To me,
she was still Stalker.
But no longer random.
No longer merely:
hot girl with nerd glasses who knows Dota.
She had become
someone I did not particularly want to say goodbye to.
The council nods.
Still.
Train.
Time.
Reality.
Eventually I said something like:
“Guess this is it.”
The Archive does not preserve the exact wording.
But the meaning?
Goodbye.
This was fun.
Now we return to our separate lives.
The council watches Stalker.
And she said
“Does it have to be?”
Pause.
Children.
Story Nuo required clarification.
Of course he did.
“What?”
Or some equivalent.
Because remember
this was still the man who,
less than two days ago,
responded to:
“I thought we were gonna make out”
with:
“We can make out.”
The council nods.
Romantic inference remained under development.
So Stalker clarified.
“Do you wanna be my boyfriend?”
Silence.
The council freezes.
Children.
No metaphor.
No coded language.
No possibility of misunderstanding.
Direct.
Beautifully direct.
And Story Nuo
did not think.
At all.
No weighing options.
No:
We barely know each other.
No:
You live in another city.
No:
How would this work?
No internal council meeting.
No risk assessment.
No application form.
The council waits.
I nodded.
Yes.
Instant.
The council erupts.
BOYFRIEND ACQUIRED.
Children.
That was it.
That is the story.
The representative of virgins worldwide had arrived at NIT Calicut with:
zero kisses.
zero girlfriends.
a Dota team.
cigarettes.
and Hex.
He left with:
a tournament victory.
MVP.
a second bone tag.
his first kiss.
and
his first girlfriend.
The council stands in astonishment.
Productive weekend.
Extremely.
We exchanged numbers.
A sensible step,
given that our relationship had just begun approximately thirty seconds earlier.
The council laughs.
Until then,
we had somehow managed an entire romance arc without basic contact information.
Priorities.
There had been Dota.
Then
one last kiss.
The council grows quiet.
Not the first.
Not the frantic discovery behind the trees.
Not the comfortable little kisses during the night walk.
This one had an ending attached to it.
Train leaving.
Different directions.
A goodbye that was no longer exactly goodbye.
We kissed.
Pulled apart.
And then
movement.
My train.
The council hears the first mechanical shift.
Time.
I had to board.
So I did.
Children.
No cinematic running alongside the train for five kilometres.
No dramatic declarations shouted through windows.
The train began moving.
I got on.
Found the doorway or my place.
Looked back.
Stalker stood there.
And slowly
she receded.
The platform moved away.
Or we did.
Same visual result.
Her figure becoming smaller.
The station stretching behind us.
The council grows quiet.
And then
phone.
Buzz.
Message.
From
Stalker.
The council smiles.
Her contact?
Stalker.
Obviously.
Children.
Government names are for forms.
I looked at the message.
Whatever it said is gone.
But I remember smiling.
That mattered.
The train carried me toward home.
Eventually,
she caught her own train.
Different direction.
Different city.
And we texted.
The council nods.
Through the journey.
Back and forth.
A relationship beginning in little glowing messages between two trains moving away from each other.
There is something mildly ridiculous about that.
Also
nice.
Children.
Very nice.
And this time,
departure did not mean disappearance.
Because now we had numbers.
Now there was a next conversation.
A next meeting.
A next tournament.
The council smiles.
And yes
we would meet again.
Other tournaments.
Other days.
More kisses.
More make out sessions.
Little pockets of heaven inserted into ordinary life.
Nothing grand required.
Sometimes simply seeing each other again was enough.
The council nods.
But those belong to the life after NIT Calicut.
This Wandering ends here.
With the train.
With the text.
With Story Nuo smiling at his phone,
perhaps still processing the absurd quantity of things that had happened since arrival.
Children.
Look at the original objective.
Dota tournament.
That was all.
The five of us smoked the mandatory joint.
Boarded a bus.
Went to Calicut.
Simple.
Then
the bus stop gave me police.
NIT gave me a fest.
The fest gave me a dog.
The dog gave me Stalker.
Stalker gave me conversation.
Conversation gave me a secluded spot.
The secluded spot gave me my first kiss.
The first kiss gave me the biggest grin Story Nuo had ever produced.
The night gave us alcohol.
Dota strategy.
More kissing.
A random walk.
The random walk gave us a water balloon.
The water balloon gave us war.
The war consumed the condoms Virgin Nuo had optimistically carried in preparation for an entirely different future.
The council laughs.
The bench gave us sunrise.
Hex gave us food.
Two samosas and tea gave us enough life to enter the finals.
The finals gave us Demigodz.
Demigodz gave us one hell of a match.
And when their Ancient fell
victory.
The council nods.
Victory gave me MVP.
MVP gave me Hex’s bone tag.
And then departure
gave me a girlfriend.
Children.
This is why the main quest is rarely the whole Wandering.
The tournament was the reason.
Everything else was the experience.
The council grows quiet.
And the relic?
Again
Story Nuo had no idea.
Hex’s pendant was not sacred.
It was not NIT Calicut’s official tag.
It was simply something I had won from my best friend because we made a stupid wager.
Haha.
Mine.
Only much later would it become evidence of this place.
This version of me.
Gamer Nuo.
The era where Dota was religion.
Where Hex handled humans.
Where I could play in front of a room full of people without anxiety,
then become functionally useless when a woman suggested kissing.
The council smiles.
A very balanced skill tree.
The Twelfth Wandering was not a pilgrimage to Calicut.
I barely knew Calicut.
It was not tourism.
I did not come seeking the city.
I came seeking a tournament.
NIT was the arena.
And then,
somewhere inside that arena,
I wandered into everything else.
Children.
That is often enough.
A place does not need to be the objective to become the memory.
Sometimes you travel for one thing
and the edges become just as important as the centre.
The Dota final survives.
Of course it does.
The falling Ancient.
The roar.
The crown.
MVP.
But so does
a dog.
A girl with thick framed glasses.
“I’m your stalker.”
Upside down plant pots.
“This is great.”
Her hand in mine.
Water exploding against us in the dark.
A joint at sunrise.
Two samosas.
Hex taking off his necklace with visible reluctance.
And a railway platform where a goodbye became
“Does it have to be?”
The council grows quiet.
No.
Apparently it didn’t.
Not yet.
Story Nuo boarded the train with his first girlfriend existing somewhere behind him,
waiting for another train.
And for the entire journey home
messages.
A little connection stretching between cities.
Children.
I had come to Calicut with a team.
I left with a trophy,
a relic,
and a person.
Not bad.
The council raises an eyebrow.
Metaphorical trophy.
Fine.
A victory.
Better.
And so ends the Twelfth Wandering of the Unbegun.
NIT Calicut.
The Wandering of Gamer Nuo.
The Dota religion.
The police Jeep.
The dog.
The stalker.
The first kiss.
The water condom war.
The sunrise strategy session.
The finals.
The crown.
The MVP.
The wager.
And
the first girlfriend.
The council closes the file.
Thus concludes Chapter Eleven.
The Final Auto.
The Six Human Compression Problem.
The Train Station.
The Fifteen Minutes.
The Almost Goodbye.
The Question:
“Does it have to be?”
The Proposal.
The Instant Acceptance.
The Last Kiss.
The Moving Train.
And The First Text From Stalker.
Children.
I went to NIT Calicut to play Dota.
I won the tournament.
Won MVP.
Won Hex’s necklace.
And somehow
acquired a girlfriend.
The council considers the weekend.
Objective completion rate?
Absurd.
And somewhere on the train home,
my phone buzzed.
Stalker.
I looked at the screen.
And smiled.
Thus concludes
the Twelfth Wandering of the Unbegun.
NIT Calicut.
