There was more than one glowing letter flashing in my sight. The first one told me that I had completed the task and gained the power to heal myself. Restraining my urge to heal this hole in my abdomen, I checked out the other notifications.

[Congratulations for reaching the milestone: Super Motivated.]
[Task: Attain ten superpowers.]
[Reward: All skills level up once.]

I was eagerly waiting to reach this milestone. My plans depended on the improvements that level up would bring my powers. While checking my data panel, I noticed that my energy consumption had increased. It had not doubled as I expected, and neither had the strength of the superpowers.

The level-up had improved my intelligence by only 20% so it was now 240% of my base value. The energy consumption had in turn increased from 100 calories to 150 calories per day.

As for photographic memory, it still didn’t let me memorize data from two senses at the same time. However, now I only needed to burn 40 calories to imprint a page of information in my brain. It was still a power-consuming beast, but a slightly less hungry one.

Endurance added 20 % more glucose storage capacity to my body than the previous double-up.

With Photosynthesis, the sunlight absorption radius remained the same, but the efficiency increased to 2%. Now I could theoretically absorb almost 500KJ worth of energy per hour.

Data vision could show two pieces of information about an object at the same time. That was all for now. And heal my latest power, could though only heal surface wounds, now did that at twice the previous rate, an astonishing 20cal/sec. As for the effect, I hadn’t tested it yet.

My biggest respite was knowing that even though Furnace took away another 5% of the calories digested, it improved my digestion by a whole 33%. I calculated and learned that I could now digest a full meal in 3.6-4.8 hours. Meaning, that I could eat 5-6.6 full meals a day without stressing my stomach. I hadn’t tested how much I could eat in a meal, but at the rate of 2000cal per meal I could at least eat 10000 calories a day. There was no comparison between the calories exempted and the ones gained.

More astonishing than the improvements were the next milestones available. There were two.

The First milestone was called Superman. The task was to attain 51 superpowers for a reward of ten wishes. I was concerned and surprised by the second milestone called allies. The task required was to share a superpower with someone. A free wish was rewarded for achieving this milestone. A free wish could allow me to acquire any superpower without doing the task. The reward was great, but achieving this milestone meant sharing the superpower. This was a scary proposition. Now I knew why the system existed. It probably wanted me to spread the superpowers. I could imagine the next milestones in this series requiring me to spread the superpowers like an epidemic among the people, immunizing everyone until either one had a superpower or they didn’t.

I found it difficult to decide how to go from here. However, everything took the back seat once I moved on to heal my wound.

I easily removed my fluid line. The problem arose when I went to remove the white patches connected to my chest monitoring my heart rate and blood pressure. The machines flat-lined and started beeping as soon as I removed the patch. I panicked and hurriedly pasted the circular patches back on my chest but a nurse hurried to check on me anyway. She caught me red-handed in the act.

“What are you doing?” She berated. “You shouldn’t remove them without permission!”
It was the same nurse who had come before. I was already afraid. Now being alone in the presence of a beautiful girl, I also felt flustered.
“I-- I wanted to go to the toilet,” I uttered and groaned inwardly, wishing for a hole to crawl inside.
“You should have called someone. Don’t be impatient. Do you even know how to put them back?”
“I’m sorry,”
She glared at me for a second before sighing in relief. “You almost gave everyone a scare do you know? Thank God, a code red wasn’t called or you would have been surrounded by a whole team of nurses and interns trying to resuscitate you back to life.” She pushed a few of the machine's buttons and when she removed the receptors the machine didn’t cry to god this time.
“Call me when you are done. You know where the nurse station is?”
I shook my head.
“Go left from the room. It’s at the end of the hallway. I’m sure you will find it.” She said.
“So you will come if I call?”
“Yes,” She said. I don’t know what happened but she squinted and asked, “Are all boys rascals?”
“Only when they are drugged up” My mouth spoke before my mind could understand the question, stunning the both of us.

“Humph,” She snorted and swayed around to leave when she noticed the empty blood bag.
“What happened to the blood bag? Why is it empty?”
“Why do you ask?” I acted.
“There was some blood left in the bottle…” She said worryingly.
I shrugged my shoulders. Then slowly standing up I walked into the bathroom and locked myself inside. “Don’t force it.” I heard from outside. A thought told me she was making fun of me. Another thought told me she was a nurse and this was a part of her job.
“Don’t worry,” I replied, my mouth once again answering before my mind could react. “I always ask for the girl's permission before I do it. So can I-- Do it?”

I heard an abnormally loud thwack from a distant source and knew she had left the room.
  
“What the fucks wrong with me?” I wondered while removing my gown. My usual problem was not having words to say. Now I was speaking faster than I could think, making sexual jokes to a stranger, a beautiful girl... Was it a defect of my increased intelligence?

I shook my head, putting the thought to the back of my mind. Wound first, the rest of the world later.

I removed my gown and hung it from a hook behind the door. I looked healthier in the mirror. There was meat on my bones and some lard over the meat. The uncovered stitches garnered my attention. They looked like the drawing of a tiny octopus tentacle. The wound was only half a finger long and there were only five stitches, I counted. It still made me scared. I could have died. Had the knife stabbed a little deeper, and perforated my intestines, I could have suffered a long and painful death. The few beads of sweat racing down my forehead told me I wasn’t as calm about the situation as I was showing.

I rubbed my finger on the stitched wound and received weird feedback. It was not as painful as I imagined, but more awkward and...

“Never again,” I firmly told myself and then decided to test heal. 

“Heal,” I muttered and I felt warmth circulate around the stitches. I wondered between completely healing the wound and disguising it later to mask the changes and partially healing it to improve my prognosis. Fear won and I only healed the wound until the soreness and the redness receded from the surrounding skin. What would happen to the stitches if the wound healed completely? The question forced me to stop at this point. Then I disguised some redness and soreness back to the wound to make it appear normal. The doctor was going to check my wound later. I didn’t want to impress him.

Taking a leak, I freshened up, put on my gown, and went out of the toilet. I almost slipped and fell in shock upon seeing the same nurse sitting on my bed, waiting for me. She jumped off the bed upon seeing me and stood beside the bed with a slight blush covering her face.

“You didn’t leave?” My mouth went off again.
“Didn’t seem like you would take that much time. Lie down,” She pointed to the bed.
My eyes opened wider than they had when I splashed my face with cold water. “Miss, you should finish your sentence. People might mistakenly think you have an ulterior motive.”
“Rascal,” She called again, but with much less anger.
“We aren’t that close are we?” I said lying on the bed.
She came and leaned over me to grab the receptors to put on my chest. She was buttoned up and gave me no sweetness, but she smelled of something sweet and savory.

“Like apricots,” My thoughts escaped my lips.

The nurse froze then hurriedly pulled back covering her chest. There was a fire in her eyes, but it wasn’t hot enough to burn down my newfound enthusiasm.
 
“Don’t be angry at me. I was talking about the fragrance of your hair. Besides, you are an orange at least. Why would you think of yourself as an apricot?” Bullets were fired and the enemy ran away.
“Put them on yourself, bastard.” She threw the wired connectors at me and dashed out of the room.

There was no thwack from the door, even when she closed it aggressively. I didn’t realize my mistake until she was long gone. A bastard for real. This was not me. There was something very wrong with me. It was like my mind was working too fast and before I could even understand what I was thinking the words were coming out of my mouth.
“Perhaps that’s exactly what it is.” My increased intelligence was the reason behind my trepidation.
“Wait, does that mean I was not a coward or a selfless guy at all? I was just… dumb?”

That was not possible. How could I be dumb when I worried about every decision? Coincidently, now I had so many thoughts that there was no time to decide anything. My brain was overworked. I groaned this time. It seemed like I would have to, yet again, postpone my plan to burn fat for energy. I urgently needed a superpower that could improve my brain capacity, or my mouth could get me in trouble.

There was also an urge to let the situation continue for a while. I had never managed to land a comeback in a conversation before. This was the first time and I had to say… it felt good. I made a beautiful girl fluster. Some might even consider this a feature and not a side effect. I still decided to let it go. No one liked Sheldon in his universe other than Penny. I was already hard-pressed for friends. Besides, the world didn’t need another Kartik.

I spent time watching a series on Netflix. Before long, it was 3:00 pm and I had my first visitor of the day. When the door opened, I thought it would be my mother and Abhey coming to see me, and was surprised to see Kartik at the door.

“What are you doing here?”
A frown replaced his smile. “Is that how you welcome your friend who came to see you in hospital as soon as he could?”
I would have shuddered like a rat in the corner. Not today. “That depends on the friend, of course,” I poked him with a sharper comeback. 
“What do you mean by that?” He was speechless for a second. “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” He said, almost jumping on the chair by my bedside. “You made me speechless.”
“It was easy,” I said with a snort. “You should try it sometimes. Oh, what I am saying, that’s all you do all day every day don’t you mister motor mouth.”
“Who are you?” He asked suspiciously.
“I know, right?” I jabbed at his face, which made him flinch and I started laughing.
“What the fuck?” He said slapping my hand away, which only made me laugh harder. “I thought you got stabbed. Did you hit your head too? I mean you were fine yesterday. Did something happen--”
“Who told you I got stabbed?” I interrupted.
“Everyone knows.” Kartik said jovially. He seemed impressed with my Pain. He didn’t want me to suffer so he could get some attention, did he?

I watched him closely with squinted eyes while he continued, “Our class teacher announced you got stabbed trying to catch a thief. I firmly believe he must have the person wrong because you, catching a thief? You have to tell me what happened because the teacher didn’t say anything. Just a warning though. You might have some visitors later.”
“You mean our classmates might come to see me? I doubt it. Unless of course, they want to use this opportunity to ogle at some the nurses.”
“Yes, the nurses!” kartik rubbed his hands together in glee. “They are so beautiful man! I asked one of them directions for to your room, but she got angry. She told me your room number but called you a rascal and told me to tell you that you’ll never eat an orange in this life. What the hell did you do to that beautiful, Angel?”

Thankfully, I wasn’t drinking anything at that moment and Kartik survived getting bombarded by the wet-bomber.

“Nothing,” I limped past the question.
“I believe you,” Kartik said knowingly. “Anyways, tell me her name. She’s right up my alley. I’ll try my magic trick on her. I’m sure she’ll like it.” He said and pulled out a feather from somewhere up his sleeve. Where did he keep the feathers, man? They weren’t his, were they?
“Settle down. You came to meet me in your school uniform. She knows you are a high school kid.” I stabbed him and his scrunched face showed that I hit the lottery. “Besides these nurses are not like those girls you pick up in the mall who don’t know the difference between your four and average six inches.”
“Jesus Christ almighty,” He wasn’t a Christian. I didn’t believe he was anything. “Never expected you to deliver such sick burns man, jeez.”
“I’m on painkillers. What do you think?”
“Say…” He said glaring at me expectantly with sparkling eyes. “Can I see it?”
I knew what was coming and it made me smile. “I thought you liked girls. I left you for a day, and my brother, you turned gay?” I found this comeback way too funny and had another laughing fit. Kartik didn’t like it that much.  
“I would have fought you if you weren’t injured.” I heard him. I couldn’t see him because I was bucking over in laughter. “Stop laughing. I was talking about your wound. Can I see your wound?”

I had barely controlled my laughter to answer him when I saw him making a long face and started laughing again. Thankfully I had healed some of the damage otherwise this laughter would have ended in gasps and cold sweats.

“It’s impossible to do it here,”  I said through the wheezing. “You might have to lift my garb and only then will you see it.”
“Fuck you!” Kartik said and started trying to remove my gown.  I fought him to keep it.

We were just joking around and having fun when the nurse arrived at the wrong time and started admonishing us.

“What are you doing to the patient?” She screamed in fright and lunged at Kartik to get him away from me.
Kartik remembered or realized the seriousness of the situation and let her push him away and stood back with his arms raised.
“We were just playing around. I swear.”
The nurse ignored him and started cursing me instead. “Who told you to sit up? Haven’t I told you to lie down? You just had surgery. What if your stitches open? Do you want to bleed again?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Please behave appropriately.” The nurse said tucking me under the blanket. “This is a hospital. Not your private room,”
She was so close to me. I couldn’t help but lean closer to her and take a whiff. I think I smiled too, which she saw, causing her to grimace.
“You make me sick.” The nurse aggressively pulled the blanket over my head and left it there. I rushed to uncover my head, only to see her leaving the room.  Kartik was also looking at her with his arms raised. He dropped his arms and glanced back at me in confusion when the door opened with an aggressive thwack and he raised his hands again in fear. The nurse walked back carrying the same grimace. She noted my heart rate, oxygen levels, and blood pressure in a file before glaring at me and leaving the room again.

 “I think,” Kartik said, dropping his arms, “She likes you.”

“I think she’d like to prod my body with sharp needles.” I raised my arm to show him my I.V. and he burst out laughing.

“That was funny,” Kartik, said wiping his tears. “I hope you stay like this forever. I like this version of you.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t like it very much. I will be back to being the same old me tomorrow.”

“That’s sad, brother,” Kartik stressed the word and patted my arm. “I’m going to miss you fearless Joe. A heads up. I gave Sonam your phone number. So she might call you when she gets home.”

“She asked for it?” I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t. I was only sweating because it was hot in the room.

“Yes and no,” Kartik said. “Does it matter?”

“Nah, we’ll cross the bridge when we come to it.” Talking about relationships, I also remembered something. “Say… what do you think about Kusum?”

Kartik gave me a whole list. “I think she’s a class a bitch. She should be in a Zoo somewhere, away from people. So she can’t harm anyone. No,” He shook his head. “That will be disrespectful to all the other zoo animals. She’s cute, otherwise who would even talk to her? I certainly wouldn’t. Have you seen her face when she gets angry? Her eyes crinkle and her nose flares. She stretches her lips like they are rubber bands. It gives me Goosebumps, man. I’m telling you, I would have given her a beating if she wasn’t Sonam’s friend. Sonam’s an angel compared to her. You are lucky she’s even interested in you.”

I ignored his last words and poked him. “That’s a lot of thoughts for someone you don’t care about.”

“What do you mean?” His eyebrows rose in question. He was just as expressive as Kusum. No wonder the data vision put them at such a high risk of getting together.

“I mean, you both are very similar to each other. I think you will like each other company.”

“Me and her? No way.” Kartik shook his head. Then started pondering and shook his head again. “Absolutely not,” He acted as if that was the end of the matter, but I could see him mulling over it

The seed implanted in his mind, my work ended. Whether the seed could blossom was up to him.