Episode Two

Jason had always been good at games. When games had any monetary compensation or in the matters of winnings to be distributed or calculated, he was the quickest bookie in any room. He remained "the luckiest motherfucker" for years before any person beat him. That was Kashish. Kashish played chess for his school and won games internationally. if Jason played, Kashish would ride the knight in bets and distribute Jason's hard-earned cash in treats and pay off his debts. Kashish would not always win, but he won enough to keep Jason on his toes during any game. He was also his best friend. They'd be playing chess through class, and when they went out with others for dinners and lunches, they'd take the bus to each other's homes and watch films. Then discuss its meaning. Kashish always had a contradictory explanation to that for Jason. If Jason believed, the main ship characters got together because they'd fallen for each other through a set of principles that they both followed. Kashish would insist it was rather the duplicity on part of the girl who only liked the guy for his good looks, his exquisite physique, and his slow-mo action scenes. Not to forget how seamlessly he's able to look rich and well-todo without having to resort to wearing expensive clothing and perfumes. His favorite actor was Shah Rukh Khan because he'd never been able to get over the ending of Dil Se, he cursed Mani Ratnam for turning such a serious character study into a comedy by the use of lackluster CGI. He also cursed Ra One for its story. Because one of his core memories included being thrashed by his mother for asking what a condom was. He'd never gotten over that incident and decidedly ended his loving relationship with the King of Bollywood.

Kashish being albeit the scholar in his family always came second to Jason. What this comeuppance of seconds and competition bore for their relationship remained secret to him. Did Kashish hold a grudge, or did he believe he'd to compete with his best friend? This issue was somehow sorted when amidst their 9th-grade physics practical, Kashish informed him that he hated the subject. However, he'd have to study it because he wished to be a doctor. This loosened up a lot of tension in Jason's mind because he wouldn't have to overtake or maneuver his attention to Kashish's ego. They could compete separately in their different fields and continue remaining best friends. They could fight wars but not in the same ones. To each his own, they continued. They joined the same college when it came to high school. But Jason studied statistics and programming languages whereas Kashish delved into the animal kingdom, and study of biomolecules, breaking his head over Freudian theories in his spare time.

It was 2 years of a Boschian nightmare trip into a waking hellscape. Both scraped through with the skins under their toes peeling off. Girls had been Kashish's weakness. He'd have been beaten to a pulp if it were not for Jason's steady friendships with men much bulkier and honestly scarier than either of them. He helped out at local Kabaddi competitions and learned kickboxing at the gymkhana. Kashish fell in love with a new girl every day, he'd text them, follow them, ask them out, they'd grow wary of him and he would cry his final tears to Jason before moving on to the next one. One of these times, he had gotten into the DMs of a former classmate whom Jason didn't know very well. They almost got together before the girl's male best friend decided that Kashish "only wanted her for her body". Which was true. The fight that broke out after that ended only when one of them ripped out the best friend's earring and fresh drops of blood fell to the floor. When blood is drawn, fights end rather than continuing into mayhem. Traumatized by the aspects of chasing girls he knew, Kashish surfed the internet and fell into the traps of addiction to e-girls. 

However, it would be this trap that would bring him back to Jason for help. Even years after departing from their friendship, he knew if he asked, Jason would help. He knew Jason would give up everything for preservation, that this was his weakness. Jason didn't. So he exploited it. When he fell for a girl who reportedly lived near him, shared his fear of snakes and dick fractures, told him most interesting recently googled the top ten psychotherapies for raging nymphomaniacs, and briefly discussed his interest in film, it was Jason who pointed out anyone who knows him this well and still decidedly keeps their life a secret only to be taken one inexpertly crafted stories taken in small doses, is not a woman. But rather a collective of men, young kids, and teenagers who have been pranking him because he's an idiot. Kashish envies him for being able to look at it objectively. And without taking offense, he ends the relationship.

So when 3 years into engineering, when they'd stopped talking due to Kashish failing his medical entrances and guilting himself for years he comes back with a bigger issue. He knows Jason will tell him what to do. Which he does. Also bringing himself into the light by exposing his own secret. Unintentionally. 

There's a running scam on this trash website better known as Omegle. Unsecured and scammer-worthy, Kashish had familiarized himself with this place. After being rejected multiple times, he ended up in the unscientific, methodic cycle of revenge porn. He was greeted by a topless woman in one of his Omegle calls, and she decides to ask him to touch himself for her as she does for him. They do the deed. Kashish even forgets how the orgasm felt within half a minute. He remembers he's done himself to ones that felt much more mentally satisfying. He thinks about settling with the foreign girl even. Who although a stranger let him watch her with such beauty and an eagerness he could not understand. The moment they shared would forever seal itself behind a closed door in his brain. She asked for his Instagram, but he didn't refuse, he let her follow him and the scammers later revealed themselves as cousins. Jason found it interesting that cousins let each other see them naked. He'd found his cousins attractive too because of the genes they shared had attractive features, sharp noses, dimpled chins, chiseled jawlines, and high metabolism wrapped with a cute bow on top. He wouldn't wish to see them naked anyway. The man cursed at Kashish and threatened to send the video they took of him masturbating to the female followers in his following list which consisted of women he wished he could fuck, his cousins whom he didn't want to fuck, and his classmates whom he did want to fuck if they were female and not nerdy (I know the conditions as to fucking classmates mustn't be that hard, but you must understand that Kashish dropped out of medical study and NEET to study sports management, now he couldn't physically deal with nerdy people. He was tired of them.), meme pages whose admins he might've wanted to fuck depending on if he knew they were female, and celebrities he'd jerked off to day and night whom he'd definitely fuck. The scammers targeted his classmates mostly because they were the largest category of females who looked like they were teenagers.

They sent and unsent the video to a couple of his classmates and threatened to release it on social media if he persistently declined to give them 15,000 rupees. Now you must understand, 15000 is a huge sum for a student. So he definitely could not cough up 15000 to shut them up. Also, he didn't know whether their demands would end at 15,000 even if they accepted it or promised not to take anymore. 

He tried Jason. Jason would do anything for the preservation of their friendship. He swooped in and tried to be the big man. He called his contacts. At this point in his life, Jason should've been in prison. He constantly dodged the authorities and they didn't know he existed apart from the cop who 'came for his passport verification' and decided to say he wasn't there. Due to this Jason had to go meet the said police officer at the police station, and although Jason didn't fight him, he seemed to have scrubbed the officer the wrong way with his talks who vowed if there were ever to be a case on him, he'd have him tortured whatever the charges were or were not. 

Jason's contacts sent them to this old, stinky garage in Bhangar Gali. The place looked like the trashiest neon parlor for tire removal and exchanges. The man in the back knew how to hack. He was a vodka-chugging warrior who reportedly did not work for the Russian government which he seemed to address time and time again despite no one actually thinking that he worked for the Russian government. I think he did work for them but was tired of no one thinking that he did. Anyway, the man in the back said he could reverse-hack the scammers and get their data, if paid a certain amount he could even surveil them to get "more data on the hotter Philippine cousin" and would be willing to share that with them. Kashish said yes. Then Jason declined on their behalf. Once the reverse hack worked, the scammer's systems were wiped and they were threatened to be outed to their government, they fled. Celebrations burst out with Kashish exclaiming how helpless he'd felt and he always could count on Jason. Jason affirmed he could. But he couldn't affirm the hacker recognizing him. As the man in the back points out, weren't you one of the boys who got into the top 100 AIRs for JEE 2021? I always remember the faces of those whom I help. What do you mean,,, the JEE Mains were hacked? Kashish says. Jason cannot meet his eyes, he's staring at the floor. What can he even say to this?