Diary Entry — Day 5 since the change.
Raj clicked his pen twice, the sound echoing louder than expected in the quiet of his room. The windows were shut. Curtains drawn. His hoodie thrown over the chair. The faint ticking of the wall clock tickled the edge of his hearing.
He stared at the blank page of his diary for a full minute.
Then he wrote:
I can lift a car.
Not a metaphor. Not a gym daydream. He had actually lifted a car. A red Honda Civic, to be precise. The memory of it scraped against his brain like broken glass wrapped in velvet.
It was the third night after the "incident."
Some neighborhood kid had screamed. Something about a dog trapped under a car tire. Raj hadn't even thought—his body moved before his fear could catch up.
And the Civic? It had gone up like it was made of styrofoam.
He'd set it back down gently. Carefully. No one saw him, thank God.
But the dog had wagged its tail and licked his face like Raj was Superman.
He added to the list:
Super strength.
Super jump.
Super speed.
He underlined that last one.
Speed was weird. He didn't run so much as... vanish. Blink from one spot to another in bursts of sunlight and inertia. He tried to measure it once on the school track but stopped when the numbers started sounding like engine specs for a missile.
He wrote:
I can run fast enough to snap my own shoes.
Rest in peace, Shoes. They never stood a chance.
The pen hovered again.
Raj tapped the tip against the paper and muttered, "What are you becoming?"
It wasn't just the powers.
It was the heat.
Even now, sitting still, he felt it. A low simmer under his skin. Like his body was absorbing the room's light and turning it into energy, into pressure, into this pulsing something that refused to die down.
Like an internal solar panel… with rage issues.
He scratched out a new line.
My body hums when I'm in sunlight. Too long, and I glow. Literally.
Yesterday's cafeteria incident was still a cautionary tale.
Poor apple never stood a chance.
He flipped the page and paused. His handwriting had changed. Tighter. More precise. Like his hands were steadier now—or perhaps like he no longer feared what he was writing.
My skin has stopped bruising. I tried testing it. I punched a brick wall. The wall cracked. My hand didn't.
He leaned back, eyes narrowing.
His heart rate was steady. Even after admitting something that, objectively, should've sent anyone into an existential crisis spiral.
Raj just felt… focused.
That scared him more than the superpowers.
A normal human should've been panicking.
Not cataloging.
Not adapting.
And yet here he was.
A fair-skinned teenager with sun-charged muscles and a diary full of escalating red flags.
And somehow, writing it down made it all feel real.
Like if he could trap the truth in ink, it wouldn't explode from his body in a blaze of gold.
He took a breath. Wrote the next part slowly:
No parents. No ties.
Nothing to stop me if I fall.
There. That was the truth.
Not poetic. Not self-pity.
Just reality.
His parents in this world—his world now—had died in a car crash when he was twelve. His alternate self had inherited everything. House. Savings. No debts. A life that should've been normal. Safe.
Until he arrived.
Raj's real self. The one from another place.
Another universe, maybe.
Another dimension.
He didn't even know.
He'd been hit by a truck in Delhi.
Woke up here.
Same soul. Different body.
Or… maybe not so different.
His fingers curled, watching golden sparks flicker briefly under his nails.
"Okay," he murmured, voice rough from disuse. "Let's not set the desk on fire."
He stood and crossed to the window. Drew the curtains an inch open.
Sunlight spilled in like syrup.
His body shivered.
A low thrumming filled his ears, like a chorus of tuning forks vibrating through his bones.
He stepped back.
Curtains shut.
Too much sunlight, and the "glow" returned. The shimmering light beneath his skin that looked like molten gold veins—beautiful, alien, and very, very obvious.
He didn't want Peter Parker to see it again.
Peter already suspected too much. The hallway. The cafeteria. The science lab...
Raj grimaced. His spider-powered classmate had the subtlety of a conspiracy theorist with Wi-Fi.
Still, Peter hadn't told anyone.
And part of Raj respected that.
Feared it, too.
He sank back into the chair, clicking the pen again.
Peter knows something. Not everything. But enough to be dangerous.
He hesitated.
Then added:
He offered to help. I didn't say yes. But I didn't say no either.
His thumb traced the spine of the diary. He could feel heat bleeding into the pages, like his body didn't know how to not radiate.
"Relax," he whispered to himself. "No one's watching."
The diary trembled in his hand.
Raj snapped it shut.
"Okay, that's enough introspection for one morning."
He slipped the diary into his desk drawer. Not a lockbox—just one layer between his thoughts and the world.
He looked in the mirror.
Sixteen years old. Brown eyes. Fair skin. Tousled hair. The same face this world remembered.
But different now.
Sharper. More symmetrical. His jawline looked like it had been sculpted overnight. His eyes caught light in odd ways. And his skin? Too perfect. Not a blemish in sight.
Raj squinted.
"Are you... evolving?"
The thought slithered across his mind like a whisper.
Not just powered. Not just mutated.
But changing. Daily.
He flexed his hand.
Fingers that once struggled to open a jam jar now crushed steel like paper.
A body that once tripped over stairs now leapt three stories without a sweat.
A soul that once belonged to a normal kid now carried the burden of—
He stopped the thought.
Cut it off like a rotten branch.
Whatever this was, wherever it came from… he would own it.
Not run from it.
Not yet.
His watch beeped.
School in twenty minutes.
Raj grabbed his bag and hoodie.
Paused at the door.
And whispered to no one, "I'm not normal. But I'll figure out what I am."
Outside, the sky was clear.
Sunlight awaited.
Raj stepped into it cautiously.
The warmth curled around him.
And though his skin didn't glow—not yet—he could feel the light sinking in.
Feeding him.
Fueling him.