The Logic of Illusions
The next day, the city's early morning pulse had already synchronized with the relentless hum of commuter traffic. I was walking toward the railway station, my boots clicking against the uneven pavement, flanked by the one person I couldn't seem to outrun: my older brother, Leo.
After the chaotic dust had settled from yesterday's circus—and specifically after the calculated trap involving Kiara Adani—I had quickly realized that staying close to Leo was my safest bet. The roads were already a buzzing hive of activity despite the early hour. Office workers in crisp formal wear hurried past, their leather briefcases swinging like metronomes. Freshmen and seniors walked in loose clusters, their voices rising and falling as they debated schedules, while the occasional bicycle bell rang out sharply, slicing through the ambient noise. Small convenience stores were just rolling up their metal shutters, and the warm, golden scent of freshly baked bread drifted heavily from a corner bakery.
Not that any of that mattered to the crowd.
Leo was the kind of anomaly who fundamentally altered the atmosphere of whatever room—or street—he walked into. As we navigated the concrete stairs leading toward the main overhead platform, I noticed commuters subtly turning their heads, their eyes tracking him with a mix of curiosity and involuntary admiration.
He moved with an effortless, almost casual grace. His white hair swayed gently against the morning breeze, catching the pale sunlight and flowing like a pristine waterfall of milk. But it was his eyes that really threw people off—they were a striking, brilliant blue, so sharp and clear that looking into them was like staring directly into glacial water.
And then, of course, there was his height.
Standing at a towering 190 centimeters, Leo didn't just walk through a crowd; he parted it. He completely dwarfed every single person on the pavement.
Including me.
To put it in the modern terms he'd probably despise, he was casually mogging every single guy in a fifty-meter radius.
Including me.
Especially me.
Walking right next to him was a masterclass in humility. It made me feel like an utterly ordinary, low-resolution background character forced to stand next to the high-definition protagonist of a prestige anime series.
"Did you meet Kiara? I saw her livestream yesterday."
Leo didn't look at me when he spoke. His voice was soft, carrying his trademark gentle, kind cadence.
For some reason, that mild tone only made it infinitely scarier.
A sudden, icy chill shot straight down my spine, my muscles locking up beneath my jacket.
"Y-Yeah! I was actually about to tell you about that..." I stammered, cursing the slight hitch in my throat.
"When? Now?" he asked, turning his head slightly to offer me a perfectly pleasant, serene smile.
I nearly peed myself right there on the platform steps.
*God, please save me...* I desperately prayed in the silent sanctuary of my own mind. *Give me a distraction. Anything.*
Then, as if the heavens had decided to grant my prayer in the most bizarre, violent way possible, a chaotic commotion erupted just a few meters ahead of us.
I whipped my head around.
A young man was sprinting through the oncoming crowd at full speed, a leather shoulder bag clutched tightly in his fist. He was aggressively weaving through commuters, knocking people aside. Far behind him, an elderly man was struggling to give chase, his face red as he desperately pointed a trembling finger forward.
"Thief! Stop him! Somebody stop him!" the old man shouted, his voice cracking with panic.
So, the guy charging directly toward our lane was a thief.
My instincts flare up. I immediately shifted my weight, dropping my shoulder and preparing to lunge forward. My left hand reached out, intending to snatch the collar of his shirt the moment he crossed my path.
But before my fingers could even close through the air—
Leo calmly stepped forward.
There wasn't a single trace of tension in his features. No sudden spike of anger. No dramatic, heroic martial arts stance. He simply shifted his weight as naturally as someone moving a fraction of an inch to avoid stepping into a muddy puddle on the sidewalk.
Then, his leg rose.
It was a terrifyingly fluid, gentle-looking motion. It seemed entirely effortless, devoid of any aggressive wind-up.
The back of his foot met the oncoming thief's face with surgical precision.
*Thump.*
The sound of the impact wasn't even loud—it was a dull, heavy click of flesh against bone.
The thief's forward momentum stopped instantly, as if he had run headfirst into a solid titanium wall. For a millisecond, his body hung suspended in the air, and then he collapsed flat onto the concrete pavement like a puppet whose strings had been cleanly severed.
Silence descended on the immediate radius of the walkway.
The stolen bag slipped from his limp fingers, rolling lazily across the dusty floorboards before coming to a halt near my boots.
I stared down at the unconscious thief, his eyes rolled back into his head. Then I stared up at Leo. Then back at the thief. Then at Leo again.
What the hell was that?
There had been absolutely no wasted movement. No theatrical posture, no visible display of overwhelming force. It looked so completely casual that if the guy wasn't snoring face-down on the ground, you would have thought it was a harmless gesture.
Which, under the circumstances, made it ten times more terrifying.
Leo calmly lowered his leg, looked down at his trousers, and casually dusted a microscopic speck of dirt off his sleeve.
"Oh. He passed out," Leo murmured, his tone carrying nothing more than mild surprise.
That was the part that sent a cold sweat running down my back. The man who had just delivered a flawless, single-kick public execution of a running criminal's consciousness looked significantly more concerned about the state of his dry cleaning than the body at his feet.
Forget the thief. I was the one who was in actual, mortal danger if Leo decided to pivot back to the topic of Kiara Adani.
"Huh?!" I frowned, leaning down to lift the discarded leather bag.
The moment I picked it up, my brow furrowed. It felt strangely light—almost weightless. Intrigued, I unzipped the main compartment and looked inside.
"It's empty..." I announced, looking up.
Instantly, two men in the nearby crowd raised their hands in a panic, breaking character.
"Wait! Wait! It's a prank!" one of them yelled, waving his arms frantically.
"We were shooting a prank video! We're YouTubers!"
Another guy with a hidden camera rig came running out from behind a concrete pillar, hurriedly kneeling down to assist the "thief" who was currently rolling around on the pavement in a state of absolute misery, cradling his bloody jaw.
I walked over and looked down at him. Up close, his smile looked suspiciously incomplete now. A couple of his front teeth were clearly missing, left behind on the train station floorboards.
"Good. Then go to a dentist and get a general checkup," I said, my voice dripping with flat, unapologetic sarcasm. "And about your teeth... well, maybe the doctor can help you piece that puzzle back together. Amen."
Placing one hand flat against my stomach and raising the other toward the sky like an ascetic monk offering a solemn blessing, I silently prayed for his dental recovery.
The bleeding prankster glared up at me, his eyes making it very clear that he wanted financial compensation rather than spiritual blessings.
I entirely ignored him.
Instead, I looked around at the hidden camera equipment, the fake victim who was now casually walking over, and the forced social experiment setup. Everything about the scene had been carefully manufactured. The panic, the heroism, the stakes—all of it was a staged lie.
For some reason, looking at the expensive lenses and the fake distress left a strange, hollow feeling in my chest. I watched the production crew huddle around their injured actor, whispering fiercely about liabilities and medical bills.
A cynical thought crossed my mind.
Nowadays, reality feels far too heavy for the average person to bear. The weight of existence is too crushing, so instead of living, people choose to rent illusions. And the truly tragic part? They call those illusions their happiness.
Views. Likes. Subscriptions. Comments. For a few fleeting moments of digital validation and algorithms pushing their metrics, people willingly turn themselves into low-tier actors in stories that never actually happened.
I wasn't sure whether that realization was profoundly sad, or if it was simply the baseline of how the modern world operated now.
Beside me, Leo looked quietly at the broken-toothed content creator, his expression perfectly neutral. "Should I pay for his medical treatment?" he asked softly.
"Absolutely not," I replied without a second thought. "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
"Ah. That's a relief," Leo murmured.
Somehow, the calm indifference in that response scared me significantly more than the flawless kick he had delivered two minutes ago.
We walked right past the arguing group, leaving behind what was likely a lifelong, painful lesson on the boundaries of street performance. The further we moved into the station, the lighter my mood became. The grand entrance of the railway terminal was finally visible in the distance, a massive sea of commuters flowing through the turnstiles. Office workers hurried past the turnstiles, and the morning sun cast long, dramatic shadows across the iron tracks.
And most importantly—Leo hadn't brought up Kiara again.
*Yessss! I win! I winnnn!* I cheered victoriously in the privacy of my mind, practically doing a mental victory lap. I had survived the interrogation.
Just as I was celebrating my absolute survival, that familiar, melodic, terrifyingly calm voice reached my ears again.
A bead of cold sweat instantly formed on my forehead.
"From tomorrow, you will start streaming."
My triumphant smile froze solid on my face.
"I don't have any particular initiative regarding the content," Leo continued, his voice smooth and untroubled as we approached the platform line. "So think of an idea yourself. Just make sure you keep streaming whenever you encounter Kiara or any of her prominent fans."
I slowly turned my head toward him, my neck moving with the stiffness of a rusty mechanical gear.
"With the recent shift in your personality, she will undoubtedly try to scheme against you," Leo said, looking straight ahead. "And given your track record, you'll probably walk right into her traps, just like you did yesterday."
He paused, stopping near the edge of the platform as the horn of the oncoming train echoed in the distance. He turned to me and gently tapped the top of my head with two fingers.
"So be cautious, and leave it to me to do my work as your big brother."
His voice remained entirely serene, gentle, and utterly unyielding until the very last syllable. Then, without waiting for a response, he simply turned and walked past me, disappearing seamlessly into the dense crowd of passengers boarding the train.
Leaving me standing there. Alone. Completely shattered.
The grand victory parade in my head collapsed into a heap of rubble.
"Yeah... Big brother..." I mumbled weakly to the empty air.
Watching his tall, striking figure vanish into the sea of commuters, a cold truth finally settled into my chest. You can run from a thief. You can run from clout-chasing pranksters. You can even run from your own immediate problems if you're fast enough.
But you can never run from an older brother who has already mapped out your entire future.
An hour later, I finally arrived at the gates of my actual university.
The road leading into the campus grounds was old, the heavy stone pavement worn down and smoothed by the weight of countless footsteps over the course of decades. Small, jagged cracks and moss-lined dips ran along the walkway, giving the entire perimeter a profound sense of history and age that newer, polished institutions completely lacked.
The university gate itself looked ancient, constructed from heavy, dark iron bars that looked as though they had been anchored into the ground since the early 1900s. Time and weather had oxidized the metal, leaving patches of rustic patina, but the structure still carried an undeniable, quiet dignity.
Passing through the threshold, I set my sights on the main administrative block. The architecture here was unmistakably British colonial. Massive, gray stone walls rose several stories high, punctuated by tall, arched windows that gave the structure a timeless, authoritative appearance. Climbing aggressively across those weathered stone facades were thick, wild lemon vine plants, their vibrant green leaves and pale yellow blossoms spreading across the stone like nature's patient attempt to reclaim human history.
It was a surprisingly beautiful, cinematic sight.
Then, a sudden shift in the campus atmosphere caught my attention.
A massive crowd of students had gathered near the central courtyard ahead. They were packed tightly in a wide circle, whispering furiously among themselves while staring directly toward the center of the lawn.
Naturally, my dormant curiosity was instantly awakened. Slipped my hands into my pockets, I hurried over and began expertly squeezing my way through the dense wall of shoulders. What I found at the center was exactly the kind of high-stakes dramatic spectacle that college students absolutely lived for.
A public confession.
A boy was kneeling on one knee on the manicured grass, holding out a pristine bouquet of flowers toward a girl standing in front of him. The boy looked like a completely ordinary student—plain clothes, standard haircut, nothing particularly remarkable or striking about his appearance.
The girl, on the other hand, was fairly attractive. She wasn't overwhelmingly beautiful, but her features were definitely above the campus average, and she carried herself with an air of complete awareness regarding her own status.
Looking at the pair and reading the rigid body language of the girl, I felt a familiar, cynical intuition stir in my chest. I already knew exactly how this story was going to end. Judging by the amused, pitying expressions of the surrounding spectators, most of the veteran students seemed to think the exact same thing.
Then, the sharp sound of whispered voices caught my ear from the immediate right. A small group of girls had already begun gossiping under their breath, their eyes locked on the scene.
My left ear practically twitched. My focus shifted instantly.
Forget the generic confession on the grass. The real entertainment, the actual raw human data, was happening right over here.
Moving toward the whispering group at godlike, imperceptible speed, I seamlessly blended into the shadow of a nearby pillar, adopting the posture of a guy casually checking his phone.
Some people in this world possessed extraordinary eyesight. Some were blessed with supernatural hearing. As for me—Anirudha—I possessed the unparalleled, supernatural ability to detect high-grade campus gossip from several meters away. It was a gift. A curse. The irresistible, intoxicating scent of drama had called out to me, and I had answered.
"Lakshman should seriously know better," one of the girls whispered, leaning in close to her friend. "Riya was practically using him to finish her entire final semester project, you know!"
"But it's totally Riya's fault!" her friend countered in a hushed, fierce tone. "She shouldn't have given him so much hope if she wasn't interested."
"Please, Lakshman should've seen the writing on the wall months ago," a third girl chimed in, scoffing. "They're from the same village back home. She never liked him like that, right?"
"Yeah, that's true, but still... it's completely wrong to lead someone on for months just to get your academics sorted..."
I listened to the unfolding backstory with absolute focus, my face remaining a mask of pure, deadpan indifference while I pretended to scroll through my Nokia's empty menu screens.
Then, the script of the drama took a sudden, violent detour.
Another guy—someone dressed in trendy, expensive casuals—abruptly stepped out from the inner edge of the crowd. He didn't say a word. He walked straight up to Riya, reached out, and kissed her right on the lips, right in front of the kneeling Lakshman.
The entire crowd froze solid. The collective intake of breath was loud enough to rustle the leaves on the lemon vines. Even I was briefly stunned by the sheer audacity of the move.
What shocked me wasn't the physical act of the kiss itself. It was the devastating reality that Riya didn't pull away. She actively let him do it. She leaned into it, completely receptive, right in front of the entire university population.
Right in front of Lakshman.
The boy on the grass stood there, completely motionless. The confession speech died in his throat. He didn't just look rejected; he looked fundamentally broken, his entire reality shattering in real-time. The vibrant bouquet of flowers slipped from his numb fingers, tumbling onto the dirt.
For a few agonizing seconds, he simply stared down at the discarded petals. Then, without a single word, he pushed through the dense crowd and walked away.
There was no angry shouting. No tears. No dramatic, heartbroken speech to vindicate his pride. Just a heavy, suffocating silence.
Riya hadn't merely rejected his feelings; she had engineered a public execution of his dignity in front of the entire campus. It was brutal, clinical, and deeply painful to watch.
But as I watched his retreating figure, a dark thought crossed my mind.
*Congratulations to humanity.* Human evolution had finally reached its absolute peak. Love had been successfully downgraded to a tool for strategic manipulation. Loyalty had been recontextualized as a pathetic weakness, and every single genuine conversation had been transformed into a calculated move in a game of social chess.
For the rest of the day, through every lecture and lab session, I couldn't get Leo's parting words out of my head.
*Streaming.*
What exactly was I supposed to stream? What was the angle? I spent the entire afternoon staring blankly at the chalkboards, the problem turning over and over in my brain.
Do people actually understand what thinking is? Most people assume thinking is just sitting quietly around a room and staring blankly at a wall. Wrong. True thinking is the systematic process of running high-intensity simulations inside the matrix of your own mind. You take an abstract idea, isolate it, examine it from every conceivable angle, look for structural flaws, hidden advantages, long-term risks, and statistical possibilities. You break the concept down to its absolute bare bones and put it back together until it either survives the pressure test or completely collapses under its own weight.
Of course, before you can build a simulation, you need to master the baseline variables.
Take streaming, for example. How does digital broadcasting actually function? How does the underlying algorithm prioritize content? What specific kind of psychological triggers attract viewers to a screen? Why do they stay? How do successful creators maintain retention over hours? How do they generate that initial spark of attention in a crowded market?
Question after question filled my head, the sheer volume of data making my brain feel like it had run a literal marathon by the time the final bell rang.
But as I walked out of the ancient stone building, a definitive idea finally crystallized within the chaos.
I would stream my daily life.
Not because it was glamorous. Not because I was trying to sell a fake, perfect lifestyle like Kiara Adani or offer toxic, plastic motivation like the peacock senior. I would do it because I wanted to show student life exactly as it was—unfiltered, raw, and unpolished.
The crushing academic stress. The brutal, unceremonious failures. The profoundly embarrassing public moments. The quiet, suffocating loneliness of navigating a massive city. And most importantly, the microscopic, small victories that absolutely nobody else notices but mean the world to you.
Maybe if I shared those raw, unedited pieces of reality, someone sitting on the other side of a glowing screen—feeling entirely overwhelmed by the weight of their own life—would look at my broadcast and feel a little less alone in the dark.
At least... that was the high-stakes theory I decided to gamble on.