The hall was quiet, save for the sound of pens scratching furiously on paper and the occasional nervous cough. For others, that final question—Problem 10(b)—was nothing short of a cruel joke. It involved deriving the behavior of fast neutrons in an unstable isotope inside a confined thermodynamic chamber, factoring quantum tunneling and relativistic spin corrections, topped with a trapdoor clause referencing an obscure principle from Dirac's 1933 lectures.
By the 45-minute mark, half the class had skipped it.
By the two-hour mark, some had broken into sweats, mentally erasing entire answer pages.
Agniveesh sat perfectly still, lost in the rapture of calculation. He didn't notice the clock. He didn't need to. He worked the problem like a chess master, anticipating the logic several moves ahead. His margins were filled with sketches, decay trees, wave function approximations. When he reached the final result—an elegant, unexpectedly simple solution—he smiled. The kind of smile that wasn't for pride but for the beauty of truth unveiled.
When the bell rang, he stood up calmly and turned in his paper. Outside, he squinted into the winter sun and walked back to the hostel, a small skip in his step.
Three days later.
The notice board outside the Department of Physical Sciences was swarmed. Rumors were already flying—It was the toughest exam in ten years… Only six passed in full… One guy got full marks in Problem 10(b)? Impossible!
Agniveesh walked up last, his hands in his pockets. Aadesh and Veer were already there, both looking over students' shoulders, trying to spot his name.
"Bro," Veer called out, waving, "You did it. I think you actually broke PINE."
Agniveesh pushed his way through the crowd.
There it was.
Agniveesh — 98/100Full marks in Problem 10(b) — Verified by review.
A moment of stunned silence passed. Then came the murmurs. Then the eyes. The "who is this guy?" kind of attention.
Behind him, someone whispered, "Even Dr. Joshi said that problem was unsolvable. Said he wouldn't attempt it without simulation software."
And just like that, Agniveesh Raath, the quiet physics boy with a stubborn brow and steady hand, became a name that carried weight.
That afternoon, an emergency town hall was called in the Central Auditorium. Rumor had it that Dean Avinash Keshari himself was going to address the entire science wing.
Students packed the hall. Agniveesh sat somewhere near the back, flanked by Veer, who looked like he was ready to cheer, and Aadesh, who kept patting his shoulder like a proud elder brother.
When the dean took the stage, even the faculty sat upright. Clad in his usual charcoal Nehru jacket, Dean Avinash looked unusually animated.
"Students of PINE," he said, his voice echoing cleanly through the domed hall, "we are an institution that has produced ministers, scientists, defense advisors, and constitutional minds. Yet it is rare—very rare—that we see something so… humbling."
He paused.
"There was a question—one of my favorites—buried into the first-year physics paper. It was placed there not to be answered, but to remind you of the beauty of impossibility. It had been unsolved in student circles for decades. Until now."
Gasps filled the hall.
Agniveesh sank slightly lower in his seat.
"Mr. Agniveesh," the dean said, looking straight into the crowd, "please stand."
Slowly, reluctantly, he rose. Applause followed—scattered at first, then rolling, growing louder.
"In front of you stands a rare kind of mind," the dean continued. "The kind that redefines the curve, not just tops it. And as tradition demands—" his voice turned playful now "—we suspect, like all brilliant minds in history, that this young man is absolutely, hopelessly single."
The crowd erupted in laughter. Aadesh nearly fell off his seat laughing. Even Veer whistled.
But Agniveesh didn't laugh. He looked up for a moment, and his eyes scanned across the crowd—until they caught someone.
Second row, left aisle.
She was there.
The girl from the canteen. The girl with the calm eyes and the handkerchief that had stopped his bleeding.
She wasn't clapping wildly like the others. She was smiling. Just that—a soft, almost amused smile. Their eyes met briefly.
And just like that, the crowd disappeared for him. For a moment, everything else—the exam, the attention, even the achievement—faded into the background.
After the ceremony, Veer shoved him playfully. "You gonna find out her name or keep being shy and mysterious forever?"
"I'm not mysterious," Agniveesh said.
"You're the most mysterious man on campus right now. Full marks on that paper? Are you even human?"
Aadesh joined in. "I heard even the AI the institute uses to verify answers short-circuited trying to solve that last question."
"Very funny."
As they walked toward the academic block, they passed Professor Iyer's room. It was dark inside, except for a lamp illuminating what looked like handwritten schematics and old neutron density charts taped to the wall.
"He was there too, wasn't he?" Agniveesh said, nodding toward the door.
"Who, Iyer?" Aadesh asked.
"He heard everything. Didn't say a word."
"Maybe he's impressed," Veer said. "Or maybe he's wondering how to kidnap your brain."
They all laughed, but something lingered in Agniveesh's mind. That same equation, the same curiosity, but now... it carried new weight.
He glanced once more toward the corridor behind them. The girl was gone. But the strange warmth in his chest remained.