《Aura and Life》 Chapter 01- A Day in Life A Day in Life I have always been one of the few, but never the only one. I woke up as usual at 7:14 a.m. in the morning before my mobile alarm started ringing at 7:15. Got up from my bed, went to the washroom, got fresh, brushed my teeth, washed my face with the cold water, and half asleep went to my hostel¡¯s mess which was located just on the ground floor of the 8-storeyed hostel building I had been living in for the last 6-months. Half asleep, I picked up a plate from the pile alongside a spoon and extended it towards the guy serving the breakfast. I didn¡¯t even look at the contents of my breakfast, I just took everything that was there and sat back at one of the tables. When I finally opened my eyes, I looked around myself and found that I wasn¡¯t the only one in the mess eating my breakfast, there were a few others as well. This time too, I was one of the few. But it didn¡¯t bother me so I focused on my breakfast; a sandwich, a banana, and a glass of milk that ought not to be called a glass because of its minuscule size but was still somehow categorized as one. I hate sandwiches, though. ¡°Well whatever, time to dig in¡±, I exclaimed trying to fake enthusiasm over eating this stuff but my voice gave me away and I stopped with the formalities. ¡­ Finishing the unimpressive breakfast, I got up and put my plate in the sink before finally washing my hands and leaving through the exit. There, I noticed a bunch of my friends from other rooms eating their breakfast, when they noticed me, they waved their hands as a gesture of greeting to which I replied by doing the same with a smile on my face. I had gotten even sleepier. Back to the room, I put away my ID card and room key on my study table and went inside the bathroom. It took me 13 minutes to take a bath. At 8:13 I got out of the bathroom with freshly changed clothes, I opened up a new pack of chewing gum and went back to the washroom to excrete out all the food that I might have accumulated in the last 30 minutes or so. I was still half asleep. No, I actually felt even more sleepy now. The cold water had cooled off my head and I was feeling numb all over my body, I guess now I was probably 66% asleep. Trodding through the room, I reached my study desk, put my notebook, laptop, and its charger inside my bag, and left the room all the while making no noise lest my roommates wake up and ruin my day. Walking through the pathway, I breathed in the fresh morning air and looked at the sky that stretched deep across the horizon, my sleepiness level decreased and now I was once again back to the half-asleep stage. With heavy steps, I got to the classroom said hi to my friends opened my laptop, and started my as-usual-trying-to-connect-with-the-wifi act. For those who don¡¯t know what it is¡­ well¡­ they don¡¯t know, in short, I was just wasting my time, just like all the others. In midst of all this wastage of precious time, the teacher arrived in the class all the while making sure he didn¡¯t make any noise(which he did) so he can catch someone off guard and start off his day with some good luck, but sucks for him, the people in my class were like ninjas. We felt his presence way before he even entered the classroom and looked at him the moment he entered. Visibly shocked and disappointed he gave a slight grunt and asked the person sitting closest to the projector to switch it on, which not by some coincidence but by the seating plan ended up being me, and I as usual just pretended to not have heard him. In the end, the boy sitting beside me felt uncomfortable from the death stare the teacher was giving me and he reluctantly switched on the projector without making any noise, it was only then that I finally looked at the teacher. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Now I was 75% asleep. The teacher, contrary to my expectations, instead of opening the PPTs opened a spreadsheet. The moment that spreadsheet logo appeared on the whiteboard, the entire class stopped talking. There was a deadly silence in the class or should I say ¡°pin-drop silence¡± as my teachers used to say in the elementary school. ¡°These are your marks from the last test¡±, the teacher announced as if we already were not aware after looking at that damned logo. Scanning through the crowd of students shivering in fear, the teacher had a proud smile on his face until his eyes met with mine and his face contorted into a frown. He really hates me, huh. I thought but didn¡¯t care much. ¡°You all performed very poorly in the last test, only one student got full marks¡±, the teacher announced, his voice dripping with dissatisfaction. The students got tensed, even I got tensed, now I was only 60% asleep! The teacher once again looked around himself and zoomed in on the spreadsheet, nothing but a single number was there on the whiteboard. ¡°36¡±, someone said. Roll number 36, the bastard who got full marks, this time, unfortunately, I became the only one. *** Classes ended, it was 4 p.m., and I was roaming here and there in a dense forest. ¡°Don¡¯t step on the plants otherwise suspension! This is a nursey, not a forest!¡±, a woman shouted from a bit far away. I was roaming in a nursery. As to why I was doing that, well¡­. it was to collect data on various plants in my university premises for a machine learning project of mine. Sounds complicated? Well¡­ it is. Looking around the nursery, I was taking pictures of each and every beautiful-looking plant around me all the while writing their name, genus, lifespan, and whatnot. Looking at all the wonders of nature was sort of a surreal experience for me. Right now, I was only 33% asleep. Busy looking at the plants, I was immersed in their beauty when suddenly I had a feeling of being watched from behind. Turning backward I examined my surroundings but didn¡¯t find anyone. Strange. I thought and turned back to my original position in almost a flash. There was no ghost in front of me. Disappointment washed all over me but I didn¡¯t mind and resumed my work once again when suddenly a chill ran down my spine. It was the kind of chill that I have never felt as if something entirely alien had happened to me. I looked around myself only to find that nothing had happened. ¡°I guess it¡¯s time to go back home¡±, I declared to myself and traced my steps back to the exit. Walking through the rows of plants and trees, I found the atmosphere around me to be extremely quiet, it was as if I was the only one in the nursery, no, it was as if I was all alone in the world. I don¡¯t know why I thought of the situation like that maybe it¡¯s because of reading all those light novels. But¡­ if by any chance I really am alone in this world, and if by some coincidence I am unable to leave this place, then how am I going to survive? This useless thought came into my mind for the umpteenth time. I wanted to shut this thought but my heart didn¡¯t have the same opinion, my hands almost involuntarily reached the pocket of my pants and I pulled out my mobile to search for ways of survival on the internet, but then something unexpected happened. There was no network connection on my mobile. Baffled, I hurried back to the exit but I seemed to have gotten lost. I couldn¡¯t find any exit. Or should I say that there wasn¡¯t any exit where it was supposed to be? I have a fair amount of confidence in my navigation skills and I at least am not the type of person to forget my way to a place I have more than a dozen times been to. Taking a deep breath, I calmed my mind and walked in a random direction. I followed the bushy path and realized that the road I was treading on was different from the nursey I remember. My heart kept on beating violently as if it was going to jump out of my chest. My breaths started getting shorter and heavier and after walking for some time I finally got out of the nursery. But what lay before me wasn¡¯t the environmental science building that I had sort of gotten used to, no, it was¡­ ¡°Hey! What the hell were you doing in that forest?! Do you know what time is it now!?¡±, a sudden voice brought me out of my daze. I looked at the source of the voice. It was a man wearing some sort of cloak. He had a sword hanging by the side of his waist and he was looking at me with suspicion and anger on his. Could it be that the situation I have always imagined actually has come to life? I guess¡­ I have been transported to another world. Chapter 02- My delusional world My delusional world I, guess¡­ I have been transported to another world. Or maybe not. I looked at the source of the voice once again, the cloak that I had envisioned him wearing was actually an oversized t-shirt. The sword that I had seen hanging around his waist wasn¡¯t a sword but rather a shovel, and the man in front of me wasn¡¯t any adventurer from the other world but rather the gardener of our college. Let¡¯s call him Mr. T. T for tuberculosis since he always coughed a lot but strangely so he was never diagnosed with it. Good for him, I guess. As for why he is referring to a nursery as a forest¡­ well I guess he doesn¡¯t know that this place is called a nursery, nothing new of a thing. Breathing a sigh of relief with some amount of disappointment mixed in it, I shook my head and looked at him. ¡°I forgot the way to the exit, can you please guide me there¡±, I said earnestly, requesting the man standing before me in response to which he just pointed a finger in a direction and said, ¡°Keep on walking in that direction and turn left on the second corner¡± His husky voice fell in my ears and without saying anything I turned back and left the place but not without giving him a small bow of thanks. *** So much for my dream of getting transported to another world. Throughout the 20 years of my life if there is something that I have realized then it is that the things we come to know and believe as children disappear into the fog known as busyness as we grow up. I remember my mother asking me what I wanted to become when I was barely a 5-year-old child, back then I remembered telling her something like, ¡°I want to become a pilot, astronaut, police officer, engineer, doctor, scientist, and the President¡±. ¡°You don¡¯t want to become Spider-man?¡±, she asked in a surprised voice to which I answered in an almost cocky tone, ¡°Only kids think about becoming Spider-man, it¡¯s not possible in real life!¡± My mother smiled when she heard me say that, looking at her smile I must have also felt warmth in my chest. But now that I think about her smile I kind of have a lingering suspicion in my heart that the smile that had boomed on her face back then wasn¡¯t because of my innocence but rather because of the amount of stupidity I had shown in front of her. After all, it¡¯s easier to become Spider-man than to try your hand at all those professions I mentioned just a few lines ago. Take me for an example, just a simple bachelor''s degree is proving to be so ridiculously taxing, I wonder if I¡¯ll ever be able to even think of doing something else. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. In this respect becoming Spider-Man is way easier since I only have to get bit by a mutant spider and then whoosh! I will become the carrier of justice. *** Walking back, I reached my hostel at 4:32 p.m. I noticed 2 of my other 3 roommates lying on their beds. I lived in the hostel with 3 other people, 2 of them being from my part of the country and the other one from a bit afar. Hostel life, as I had imagined, was way more different from the school life that I had lived. Yes, I did have fun in the school, I did bunk a lot of classes, and yes, I did enjoy my friends¡¯ company but even so, there was something about the hostel that made it completely different from school. Maybe it was the absence of my parents or maybe it was because I was getting to live as an adult for the first time in my life, I was sort of enjoying this phase. ¡°You came back?¡±, one of my roommates said. He was a 5¡¯5¡± guy with his face full of beard. He is... well, no need to mention his name, he is just a minor side character after all, let¡¯s just call him¡­ Beard. Yeah, Beard. ¡°Yeah, when did you come back?¡±, I asked him trying my best to hide my lack of concern from my voice. ¡°At 3¡±, he just said and went back to sleep. What a weird guy. Well, not that I can say something better about myself. The guy next to him was talking to his girlfriend on the phone. He was around the same height as me, maybe an inch or two taller. I myself was around 6ft so he must be around 6¡¯1¡± or 6¡¯2¡±. He is also a minor side character, so let¡¯s call just him Pole. Pole, because he was taller than me, anyone who¡¯s taller than me is a pole, I know it¡¯s a weird analogy but it is what it is. So, Pole got himself a girlfriend last year in the month of December and ever since then, he has been spending his life nonstop talking with her on his phone. I don¡¯t get how he is able to generate so much content to talk about, but even if I were to get that I probably wouldn¡¯t be able to practice the same since neither do I have any girlfriend to speak to nor do I have any prospects to practice this skill with. But strangely so, I don¡¯t feel sad about this. Ever since I was a child, I have seen movies representing universities as some kind of amusement park with lots of rides full of adventure. Hangouts, hangovers, girlfriends, and bunks these are the things that come first in mind when anybody ever thinks of a university, such is the image printed by the movies and shows in our minds. But it was different for me. No matter how I thought about it, it was different for me. I didn¡¯t feel any excitement over the fact that I would get to live a college life. ¡®A new beginning¡¯, as described by teens throughout the world, for me this place was even more boring than school. I was living far away from my house (approx. 1300kms!) and before dropping me off here my father told me only one thing, ¡°You are too far away from your home, be cautious and don¡¯t get in trouble¡±. Of course, I had known how I should be behaving in such a faraway place even before my father had told me but¡­ after he did tell me to be cautious the weight of things on my mind only increased, and thus started my boring college life. Or maybe I should term it as the end of my life. I didn¡¯t feel alive. Day to day I went with the motions of living as if I was a zombie, that is until I met her. Until I met the girl with no aura, I¡¯m going to call her Aura, after all, that was the name I gave her when we first met.