“What do you keep muttering?” Kartik asked.
“I’m counting.”
“What? why?” They were both questions, not reactions.
“To calm down,” I explained. “It’s open knowledge that counting backwards helps alleviate anxiety and panic.”
“But you have been murmuring since the school started!”
“So?”
Kartik slapped the back of my head. “So do you take me for a fool?”
“Ouch,” I reacted. “I am not taking you for a fool… because I know you are one.” I believed in taking an eye for an eye; that was how I played.
“Mother fucker! Ahh,” He balled his fists as if wanting to punch me then threw them down in disgust. “So what happened yesterday,” He asked instead.
This verbal punch hit right in my solar plexus, taking all air out of my lungs and making me breathless. I drew some air in to control the nausea and asked, “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m not the one who wants to know.” He said with a laughing tone of voice.

I looked at him and he gestured me to look behind him with his head. Sonam… she wasn’t paying attention but she must have asked him to ask me.

I turned back to him and told him, “There is nothing I have to say about yesterday.”
“Then what about this morning-- what are you hiding?”

I saw Sonam’s head turn slightly in our direction and understood that these two were playing games with me. Truthfully, I was not as enthusiastic about her as much as I was yesterday. The fight in the morning had sucked away my energy. I wished to end the day and move on. Go home. That was what I wanted to do. However Kartik had other plans.

I sighed to relieve my heavy heart. I confessed to Anjali knowing the result. Yet, why was I so damn hurt over her answer?

“I need space,” I said to Kartik. “Let me be for the day. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
Kartik snickered. “Why just space? Take the whole damn keyboard while you are at it with all the little alphabets and numerals. But don’t think I’m letting you off without learning the truth.”
He was so annoying! “Why are you so interested in--”
“Like I said,” He interrupted. “I’m not the one who’s interested. And I’m getting paid.”
“Money?”
“Burger and coke,”
“You sold a friend over fast food?”
“Don’t think so hard. You aren’t that valuable.”

We glared at each other before he snickered and I couldn’t control my laughter either. That was so damn funny. Before I knew it, we were laughing out of our damn minds. I had trouble breathing, I was laughing so hard. I was crying. The tears of joy and sorrow flowed together, indistinguishable from each other. My screams turned into laughter and laughter turned into screams.

By the time we stopped, I had changed. My chest was lighter. My ears no longer rang. My mind was clearer. I was happy again.

For a second, I wanted to tell them everything. Then a spark of selfishness stopped me. It told me Sonam would leave me too if I told them anything. Then I would really lose everything.

I guess I was just as selfish as everyone else was.

Things changed for the good during the seventh period. It was the designated sports period and the whole class went to the ground to play a match of cricket.

For those who don’t know about Cricket, it’s a sport very much like baseball where you hit a ball with a bat. In cricket, the bat is flat and the ball is bounced off a pitch, unlike baseball where the ball is thrown straight at you. Then there are the usual mix of various deliveries that a bowler can throw at a batsman like the slow ball, knuckleball, and fastball.

But there are no home runs in cricket. There are runs, singles, doubles, and triples that the two batsmen on the popping crease complete by running between the pitch while the opposing fielders are fending for the ball. If the ball played across the ground gets past the boundary line it nets you four whole runs; while sending it flying past earns you six runs.

We divided the teams, 8 players each. Not everyone wanted to play and the girls didn’t want to step a foot under the sun. It was a bit hot out there. My battery helped store the excess sunlight away, allowing me to play an eventful game of cricket.

We played a limited-overs match where each team was given ten overs each to score, with each over consisting of six balls or deliveries. In cricket, the overs are divided among many bowlers who bowl in tandem with each other.

We won the toss and decided to bat first. We had one task, to score as many runs. Our democratically elected captain along with another player went out to open batting. Unfortunately, the other batsman was bowled on the first ball of the match.

A game of cricket is played across a straight pitch with self-explanatory batting and a bowling end. The batter's job is to defend his wickets as well as score runs. The bowler's job is to save runs and to eliminate the batsmen. The same as in baseball with the key difference being you don’t get three strikes in cricket. A batsman is given out if the ball hits the wickets (getting bowled), if he hits a flyball and someone catches it, or if he’s found short of the running crease while completing a run.

Another player took the batsmen’s place and the game continued.

I was still waiting for my turn sitting with my other teammates and silently counting my numbers when the system notified me of task completion. My world changed. For a second the whole world turned into lines, paths, and rays. I got so scared I fell backward and lay there on the ground with my eyes staring at the lines and the geometrical figures that constituted everything. It took a while for my world to calm down and return to normal.  

I was still in a daze when I heard someone calling my name. I saw the captain telling me to come to bat as another one of our wickets had fallen. Rajesh had gotten out in the second over after giving a catch to the wicketkeeper.

Not sure what to do, I picked up a bat of my desired weight and went out to play.

With the superpower came a general understating of it. Data vision was an active power and could be turned on and off at demand. According to my understanding, the vision could show me the personal data of an individual or the mathematical data between two objects.

I activated data vision and suddenly lines appeared in my sight. One line stretched from me to the other end of the pitch and a number popped out on it reading 17 meters. Then I saw a widget denoting wind speed of 3 mph floating in the air. Beside it was a floating thermometer reading 28 degrees Celsius. It was a slightly warm day.

Then the play started and I had to pay attention to the game. The bowler started running and I saw his running speed, his energy, and concentration, then he threw the ball. The ball was moving toward me at the speed of 120km/hr, which was not bad considering we were recreational players and not Professionals. A line denoting the ball's future path grew from the bowler's hand and went past me. The bowl followed the same path a second later, whizzing past me before I could react.

I was left stunned, not by the speed of the ball, but by my superpower. I could see the ball trajectory, damn it! Even the professional players played according to their instincts. Even they don’t know where the bowl would go after getting pitched. I did. Didn’t it make me the greatest player of all time?

“Great one, Sameer! Throw it straight next time. He can’t play. Bowl him out!” The wicketkeeper encouraged the bowler from behind the wickets.

I ignored him and eagerly waited for the next delivery. The bowler bowled. The ball trajectory suggested the ball would be slightly toward my legs. I took a step back in advance and slightly nudged the ball to my left upon arrival. The moment the ball struck the center of my bat, I knew it couldn’t be stopped. The ball won the race against all fielders and raced away for a four. Our score shot up as did my confidence.

For the moment, I forget everything about Anjali and her boyfriend. All my focus was on playing the game of cricket.

The next ball came. The ball trajectory suggested it would be a bouncer coming right for my face. I was scared and angry at the same time. Thankfully, we were playing with a rubber ball so even if it hit my head it wouldn’t hurt much. Knowing the ball trajectory, I took a step back again and safely played it to the off-side for a single.

I played for the next six over and in the twenty-five balls I faced I scored forty runs with two sixes. The same classmates who didn’t even talk to me were left amazed and slightly frightened. It felt good. Finally, I had something to be happy. In the end, we scored eighty-five.

Then it was our turn to field and I had all the time to play with the skill.

I picked Kartik on the left to experiment and a few numbers popped up in my vision. They told me he was five feet and seven inches tall. He weighed just over 55 kg and was healthy. A battery floated on top of his head indicating that he had half his energy remaining. The vision also marked his chest, waist, and bust sizes, which gave me a jolt of adrenaline.

My eyes shot straight in the girl’s direction. Knowing I could know their secrets raised my heartbeat a little. But they were too far away for me to see anything clearly. Defeated, I turned back to Kartik.

The information given by Data Vision also included the price tag of his clothes It also included the cost price. Because we were in school uniforms almost everyone wore the same priced shirts and pants, only their cost price was too damn low. Every shirt with a retail price of 680 had a cost price of 120 rupees. There was more than five times price difference! No wonder they say all the money is in business. I could imagine how much our school earned from selling the clothes. They were bloodsuckers!

The data vision also gave me the price of his haircut, his eye vision, and his shin shade. It also gave me the price of priced watch that he so dearly loved. It turned out to be a fake. It was so damn cheap even his haircut cost more. It made me laugh a little. Finally, I had something I could use against him during a confrontation.

I turned away from him and finally looked at the data that I was most interested in seeing.

I checked myself and got a full chart of things. The power told me that I had about seven thousand calories stored in my body, one thousand six hundred of which were in the form of glycogen and the rest was fat. My ATP was constantly depleting and replenishing. My blood sugar level was normal, as was my blood pressure, but my heart rate was a little higher at 76 bpm.

In terms of height-to-weight ratio, I was slightly overweight though considered healthy. I tried to see if I could get a blood test with the skill, but it was not possible. It was probably a skill-level issue. My libido was as low as my mood. It displayed a sad face beside my battery indicator. Most surprisingly, my battery had almost 4103Kj of energy stored and it was increasing at 480kj/hr. Since 4.8 kJ was equal to 1 calorie that mean I could absorb a hundred calories from sunlight every hour. It was not a bad result though slightly underwhelming. It also meant that as long as there was sunlight I could survive without eating. However, I would still need to take some supplements because our bodies also need various minerals, fats proteins, and salts to work properly. Perhaps, one day I would be able to absorb all those from the earth and would really become independent.

Data Vision also told me that the battery could only store 48000 kJ or 10000 calories at level one. I also realized that the data vision was consuming 1 KJ of energy every second to stay active, or 750 cal per hour, which was very reasonable. A person consumes the same amount of calories after an hour of intense workout.

This kind of data was readily available without any need to calculate it.

I could even choose two objects and see the probability of them colliding. That was the biggest find of it all. I selected one girl and another boy and wanted to find the probability of them getting together and it came out to be just over 3%. There were just not that many similarities between them. Since I was doing this, I had to check the probability between Sonam and I. It was 80%. That surprised me. Her happiness index was a tad over 4 out of 10, which was lower than average. She was sad, even though she smiled and laughed with her friends. Then I had the urge to check the probability of Kusum and Kartik getting together and it came out a very healthy 69%. It was a funny number, to be honest.

The energy consumption shot through the roof every time I calculated a probability. Each of the calculations consumed 100 KJ of energy from the battery. I also saw my mental freshness dip with each use which gave me quite a scare. Thankfully, it was recovering at a slow rate. I was not damaging my brain. That was good news. However, I decided to keep this power in check. Ablest I melted my brain trying to calculate something too powerful like the probability of a lottery number. I imagined my brain melting inside my skull before I could even calculate the first digit. It sent goosebumps up my arm.

“Catch it!” The call came and I saw the ball flying toward me. I saw the ball’s flight path. It was a bit far, but I knew I could get there and I did. I caught the ball diving forward and we won.

I saw Sonam waiting for me with Kusum on our way back. I knew because the rest of the girls had already returned. Remembering the data I had calculated, I pulled Kartik along with me. Who knew? Maybe one day their compatibility could turn from 69% to 96%.

“That was a great game,” Sonam said. “Do you play regularly?” She couldn’t hold her smile. It was overflowing.
“No, not really. It was just the atmosphere. Friendly matches are always easier to play.”
“You don’t know, but she was holding her breaths when you were playing,” Kusum interjected from the side.
Sonam tried to shut her up, but Kusum was more agile and far wittier.  

“I saw her clenching fists,” Kusum added. “She almost jumped when you hit the first six,”
“Kusum, shut up or I’ll show you.”
“I’ve already seen everything that’s going on in your heart. What else do you want to show me?” Kusum said dodging a left and right combo from Sonam.
I was afraid something would happen if Sonam caught her, but Kusum pleaded guilty when Sonam’s smile faded and Sonam forgave her after twisting her waist a little.  

I didn’t need data vision to see where her happiness stood. It was definitely above average. But I activated it anyway.

Two things stood out to me right away.

Firstly, our compatibility had risen from 80% to 90%. She must have really liked me playing out there. Secondly, I would have never guessed it from her loose school uniform. She was actually a size 22D.

p.s: Just noticed the 12th ch was missing. I've uploaded it now.