Chapter 3 — Scooter
And thus begins Chapter Three.
Now, children.
There I sat.
On the back of a scooter.
Unknown destination.
Unknown woman.
Unknown intentions.
Neon green hair whipping backward in the wind
and occasionally brushing across my face.
The council watches carefully.
Romantic?
Potentially.
Safe?
Absolutely unresolved.
Story Nuo had already considered the possibility that his organs were about to enter the secondary market.
And then
she spoke.
“Chill out.
I’m not kidnapping you.”
Silence.
The council freezes.
Children.
That is exactly what a kidnapper would say.
No kidnapper in human history has ever begun proceedings with:
“Hello.
For legal clarity,
this is a kidnapping.”
Of course not.
You reassure the cargo.
Keep the kidneys calm.
The council nods grimly.
But Story Nuo?
I responded with something along the lines of:
“Do what you must.”
The council stares.
Do what you must?
Yes.
Children.
Apathy.
Pure.
Weaponized.
This was Sad Nuo.
Important.
Before roads.
Before the philosophy.
Before I knew a place could sometimes loosen the weight inside my chest.
Before Kasol taught me anonymity.
Before Rishikesh taught me stillness.
Before Varkala taught me curiosity could be enough.
Before I had a word for any of this.
Wandering?
Not yet.
Story Nuo did not know movement could heal.
He did not know that leaving a familiar room could sometimes change the pressure inside his head.
He simply knew
life was heavy.
And sometimes,
when life feels sufficiently heavy,
self preservation becomes less dramatic than it should be.
The council grows quiet.
Not nonexistent.
I wasn’t actively trying to die.
But if a suspiciously attractive neon haired woman appeared and said:
Hop on.
Sad Nuo’s risk management department responded:
Eh.
Sure.
The council does not endorse this.
Nor should it.
But the Archive does not clean up the old operating system.
It records it.
So
scooter.
Wind.
Green hair.
Potential kidnapping.
Apathetic compliance.
And onward.
Eventually
we arrived.
The council perks up.
Kazhakootam?
Children.
No.
Not yet.
That comes later.
For now
beach.
Silence.
Nuo’s internal systems reactivate.
Beach?
Beach.
Children.
I love beaches.
Established fact.
Ocean.
Sand.
Waves.
No explanation needed.
And beach with attractive anime looking woman?
The council sighs.
Nuo loves considerably more.
I am only a man.
The moment the scooter stopped near the coast,
the organ harvesting theory lost nearly all emotional relevance.
Because now there was
ocean.
Hot green haired woman.
Night.
The council looks concerned.
Survival instincts?
Muted.
Again.
Now.
Beaches at night are interesting things.
Elsewhere,
perhaps
lights.
Bars.
Bonfires.
Music.
Late night stalls.
People wandering beneath strings of bulbs.
Kerala?
Children.
Different.
At least the beaches I knew.
Night often arrives and everything simply
switches off.
Shops close.
People thin.
Lights vanish.
And what remains?
Darkness.
Silence.
Waves.
The council listens.
And somehow
vibe.
Not absence.
Not dead space.
Vibe.
The sea does not need lighting.
You don’t even need to see it properly.
You hear it.
Wave arriving.
Breaking.
Retreating.
Again.
Again.
The horizon disappears.
Water becomes a moving black shape.
Sand becomes whatever your feet tell you it is.
And somehow the darkness makes the ocean feel larger.
Children.
That night,
we sat.
On the sand.
Close enough to the water that waves occasionally reached our feet.
Cold touch.
Retreat.
Then another.
No crowd demanding attention.
No shops.
No music.
Just
us.
And the sea.
The council grows quiet.
For a while,
perhaps neither of us explained anything.
Which was absurd,
considering the situation.
This woman had called me.
Used information from my book to find me.
Arrived outside my house.
Put me on a scooter.
Driven me to a beach.
And I had still not asked:
Why?
Eventually,
she did the work for me.
She looked at me.
“Don’t you wanna know why I called you here?”
Pause.
The council nods vigorously.
YES.
Finally.
A sensible adult.
She continued.
“You should be more curious.
Or cautious.”
Children.
Imagine the scene.
The person who has potentially kidnapped me
is now criticizing my kidnapping prevention strategy.
The council laughs.
She seemed almost offended.
Not because I distrusted her.
Because I didn’t distrust her enough.
Like:
Sir.
Have some standards.
I could be dangerous.
The council approves her concern.
A responsible possible kidnapper.
Exactly.
And I
for once
answered with complete honesty.
“You’re hot and you have green hair.
What do you want me to say?”
Silence.
The council covers its face.
Published author,
ladies and gentlemen.
A man professionally associated with words.
A craftsman of language.
Given a strange,
beautiful nighttime encounter
with a mysterious woman who had tracked him down through his book
and his contribution to literature:
You’re hot and have green hair.
The council applauds.
Pulitzer.
Soon.
She stared at me for perhaps half a second.
Then
laughed.
Children.
The first laugh.
Important only because it would not be the last.
She laughed properly.
Not a polite little:
Heh.
A real laugh.
The kind that told me she had not expected that answer.
And suddenly
the situation felt lighter.
Maybe I wasn’t getting murdered.
Maybe.
The council keeps the file open.
Do not become complacent.
Too late.
Then,
for perhaps the first time since answering the phone,
I asked something approaching a sensible question.
“How did you buy my book?”
Or
“Why did you buy it?”
Something around there.
The Archive preserves the question more than its exact grammar.
Now.
Was I asking because I wanted to understand my mysterious reader?
No.
Because I wanted market research?
No.
Because I wished to learn what had compelled this stranger to seek out the author?
Children.
Please.
I wanted to apologize.
The council laughs.
Because even then
Story Nuo knew.
The book?
Not good.
Present Nuo now calls “not good” extremely generous.
But even the younger version of me had enough self awareness to recognize:
Below average.
At best.
The council raises an eyebrow.
At best?
Yes.
Future Nuo considers even that phrase a charitable act.
Children.
The thing had been written from pain.
Mostly.
Raw feelings.
Not yet shaped by enough craft.
Not enough distance.
Not enough control.
A lot of:
I am hurting.
Please observe.
Then some narrative duct tape around the edges so it could legally masquerade as a book.
The council nods.
And someone had apparently spent money on it.
Real money.
That burdened me.
Not emotionally.
Financially.
Like:
You could have purchased food.
Instead you bought this.
I am sorry.
So I asked.
Why?
How?
What series of unfortunate decisions brought my book into your possession?
She looked at me.
Then said
“I didn’t buy it.”
Pause.
Children.
Interest
piqued.
For the first time that evening
for a reason unrelated to green hair.
The council leans forward.
You didn’t buy it?
No.
Now we had a genuine mystery.
Because there were not exactly millions of copies circulating.
Children.
This was not some cultural phenomenon.
You did not accidentally stumble across my book in every railway station.
There weren’t pirated copies being sold outside stadiums.
No underground network of readers trading contraband Nuo literature.
Single digits.
Remember?
A microscopic ecosystem.
So if she had not bought the book
how did she have it?
Borrowed?
Found?
Stolen?
Received?
Did one of the seven sacred purchasers lend it to her?
Had my father’s kidnapping brochure somehow entered secondary circulation?
The council becomes invested.
Finally.
A valid question.
Exactly.
For once,
the green hair temporarily moved into second place.
Only temporarily.
Let us not imply radical personal development.
But yes.
Now I actually wanted to know.
I turned toward her.
The waves continued.
Darkness around us.
Water occasionally touching our feet.
And the woman who had summoned me from my house
had just revealed that she had not even purchased the cursed object that gave her my number,
my address,
and my face.
Children.
The plot thickened.
Story Nuo
still sad.
Still apathetic in ways Present Nuo understands better now.
Still utterly unaware that the simple act of leaving his room had placed him on another road that would one day become an Archive entry.
Still no concept of Wandering.
Still no belief that a place could offer temporary relief from the weight.
He was simply
here.
At night.
On a beach.
Beside Green Hair.
Curious at last.
The council smiles.
Progress.
Very small.
But yes.
And perhaps that is where this Wandering truly began opening.
Not when the phone rang.
Not even when I got on the scooter.
Those were the door.
This?
The first question.
Because up until then,
I had allowed the evening to happen to me.
Call.
Come out.
Hop on.
Drive.
Beach.
Children.
Passive.
Now
I wanted to know.
If you didn’t buy the book
then how the hell did you get it?
The council leans toward the next page.
Good question.
Finally.
Thus concludes Chapter Three.
The Neon Hair In The Wind.
The Non Kidnapper Reassurance.
The Extremely Concerning:
“Do What You Must.”
The Sad Nuo Era.
The Beach.
The Kerala Night.
The Waves In Darkness.
The Kidnapper Criticizing Her Victim’s Lack Of Caution.
The Honest Explanation:
“You’re hot and have green hair.”
The First Laugh.
The Attempted Apology For The Book.
And
The Answer.
“I didn’t buy it.”
Children.
For the first time that night,
my curiosity had nothing to do with how attractive she was.
The council marks this as significant character growth.
Do not exaggerate.
I was still staring at the green hair.
But now?
I had a question.
If she hadn’t bought my book
how did it find her?
