The Debt

The whispers started the moment I stepped into the corridor.

"Professor Anu pulled him out first thing this morning."

"They went to the old seminar hall."

"Is he in some problem or what?"

They were wrong.

Just not in the way they thought.

I kept walking, my head down. The corridor smelled heavily of industrial phenyl floor polish and the chalk dust that always seemed to hang in the stale air of the science block. Above me, a dying fluorescent tube light buzzed with a rhythmic, irritating click. My canvas backpack felt unusually heavy today, the strap digging a sharp line of tension into my shoulder.

Sameer fell into step beside me after a few seconds. He didn't say anything right away.

He waited until we turned the corner, away from the worst of the crowd.

"You're walking like you're about to get called to the principal's office again," he said, his voice low. "If you're planning another disappearing act, at least give me a better story this time. Last time I said food poisoning, and half the class thought you were dying."

"I'm fine."

"That's what you said the day you ended up on the hospital floor." Sameer stopped, grabbing my arm to pull me out of the flow of students. His voice dropped entirely, the usual banter vanishing. "You've been off since then. You zone out in the middle of sentences. You're checking your phone under the desk like an addict. If something's going on, Rishi, just say so. I'm not going to laugh."

I looked at him. My only real friend in this college. The guy who had covered for me, who had awkwardly stood by my hospital bed.

The words sat on my tongue for a second.

I wanted to tell him. The guilt of lying to him was a cold, heavy stone in my stomach. But how do you tell your best friend that you're seeing glowing numbers? What if he looked at me the way the doctors had—like I was fundamentally broken? Or worse, what if he looked at me the way gamblers look at a lottery ticket? I couldn't bear losing the only normal thing I had left.

I shook my head once, forcing a tired smile. "Just stressed about the fees, Sam. Later, okay?"

Sameer watched me for a long moment, searching my face. Then he let out a short, defeated breath. "Okay. But if you collapse again, I'm not carrying you. My back still hurts."

The joke was light. The worry underneath it wasn't.

I nodded and kept walking.

The rumors weren't the real problem. Sameer's questions weren't even the real problem.

The real problem was that I had already given Professor Anu one piece of the truth.

I had told her about the glow.

She had looked at me like I needed to go back to the psychiatric ward.

But she had still put money on Vardhan because of what I said.

Twenty percent.

That number was sitting between us now, heavier than any corridor whisper.

Appa's words from the dream still pressed against my ribs. I had already handed her one brick. The question now was how many more I was willing to give, and what she would build with them.

If I showed her nothing, I stayed alone with an ability I barely understood. If I showed her too much, I might stop being a student and start being a tool.

I needed a middle path.

A controlled test. Something small enough that I could still walk away if I had to.

✦ ✦ ✦

In the staff room, Professor Anu sat with her laptop open and her tea gone dead cold.

The green number next to Vardhan AutoSystems was still there.

+20.14%.

She had put five thousand rupees into Vardhan after that strange, impossible conversation with Rishi. A student who had collapsed in her lab and then claimed, to her face, that he could see glowing stock names.

It still sounded utterly ridiculous. A symptom of a nervous breakdown.

But the number on the screen was real. The money was real.

She closed the portfolio tab and stared at the empty desktop. Rishi had known about Vardhan before anyone in the department was talking about it. He had asked the right question at the exact right time. And somehow, against every logical financial explanation, the stock had moved perfectly in line with his expectations.

She didn't believe in glowing names on a screen. She still didn't.

But she couldn't ignore the fact that he had handed her a lifeline.

The staff room door opened with a squeak of hinges, breaking her train of thought. Professor Anand walked in holding his ceramic mug, a careful, perfectly manufactured smile on his face. He smelled faintly of cheap clove cologne and stale cigarettes.

"You're looking deeply focused today, Anu," he said, taking a slow sip. "Heard you had a long talk with the boy who fainted. The same one who was staring at his laptop instead of your lecture last week."

Anu didn't look up. She kept her hands steady on the keyboard. "It was about coursework. He missed two weeks."

"Must have been highly important coursework." Anand's voice stayed smooth, but he stepped closer, leaning his hip against the edge of the communal table. "Students talk, you know. Especially when a professor starts giving one particular student extra time. People notice these things. Some of them enjoy talking about it."

"Let them talk, Anand. I have grades to log."

"Do you?" Anand tilted his head. "Because someone in the faculty lounge was just mentioning how interesting it is that a junior professor, who has been openly struggling with faculty pay cuts, suddenly happens to drop money onto a mid-cap auto supplier just hours before a historic merger."

Anu's fingers froze over the keys.

Anand smiled, his eyes cold. "And the very next morning, that same professor is seen dragging an impoverished second-year student into an empty seminar hall for a private chat. If I didn't know you better, Anu, I'd say it smells exactly like an insider trading tip. SEBI ruins careers for much, much less."

She finally met his eyes. Her voice stayed completely even, masking the sudden spike of adrenaline in her chest.

"Thank you for the career advice, Professor Anand. If you have accusations, make them to the Dean. Otherwise, I can manage my own students and my own finances."

He raised his hands in mock surrender, smiling like he had scored a massive point. "Of course. Just a friendly warning. Remember—once a story starts moving in this department, it becomes very hard to stop."

He left, letting the heavy wooden door click shut behind him.

Anu sat alone in the quiet room. She leaned back in her chair, pressing two fingers hard against her throbbing temple.

Anand was a snake, but he was right about one thing — it looked suspicious. Even though she had done nothing wrong. Even though she had no idea where Rishi got his information.

She needed to speak to Rishi again.

Not because she believed his crazy story about a glow—but because she needed to know exactly where he was getting his information from, before the whole department, or worse, a regulatory board, started watching them.

✦ ✦ ✦

I stayed in the computer lab long after the last class ended.

Most of the machines were already powered down.

Only two final-year students remained in the far corner, headphones on, screens glowing faintly in the dim light. The air in the lab was suffocating, smelling of hot plastic, ozone, and old dust settling into the cooling fans of the CPU towers. The ceiling fans turned slowly overhead, making a soft, uneven click-clack that drilled into my skull.

I took the seat by the window, opened the browser, and started checking stocks the only way that made sense anymore.

Suryanet Power.

Nothing. Just a flat green arrow and ordinary numbers.

Aryan Tech Systems.

Still nothing.

Shraddha Bank.

The price moved a few paise. No pull. No light.

Triveni Metals. Skyline InfraWorks.

I kept going, scrolling slower each time, waiting for that quiet sensation at the back of my head—the same one that had appeared with Tasha and then with Vardhan.

It never came.

My eyes started to sting after twenty minutes. A dull headache began to pulse at the base of my neck. The fluorescent lights above felt harsher than usual, reflecting glaringly off the smudged monitor. I leaned back in the cheap plastic chair, rubbing my face with both hands, letting out a frustrated breath.

This wasn't working. Brute force wouldn't trigger it.

I couldn't just keep clicking random links and hoping for magic.

I had a meeting with Professor Anu tomorrow.

I had already handed her the impossible truth. I see a glow.

There was no walking that back now. I couldn't fake financial expertise I didn't have. I was a nineteen-year-old computer science student who barely had enough pocket money for the bus ride home.

But telling the truth wasn't enough. Not for a finance professor. She needed proof. She needed to know Vardhan wasn't just a lucky lottery ticket I had stumbled upon.

I needed to bring her one more stock. Just one. To prove I wasn't crazy and to prove I wasn't playing games with her savings.

But I had no control over this thing.

I stared at the dark reflection of myself in the monitor's thick bezel.

I had no Demat account. No capital. No way to use this ability alone.

Anu was the only person who knew. And tomorrow, I would have to ask her for help—not give her another prediction, but admit I didn't know how any of this worked.

I let out a long, slow breath. The headache was getting worse.

Tomorrow. I would just tell her I didn't know how to trigger it.

I reached for the heavy, yellowed plastic mouse, finally ready to close the browser, pack my bag, and go home to my mother.