Old Enemy

Empowered by newfound determination, Kai immersed himself in the  books borrowed from the library, tirelessly burning the midnight oil until he turned the last page and completed each one.

"Hah, Finally..." Kai sighed as he stood up from his chair and looked at the clock.

It was five in the morning right now and he was dead tired at this moment.

His eyes barely opened as exhaustion seeped into him. " I still have three hours left for rest.

Despite his exhaustion, Kai knew that he had to make the most of the few hours of rest he had left before facing the day ahead.

As he tried to relax and drift off to sleep, his mind was still buzzing with the information from the books he had just finished reading. The contents were frankly disappointing to him. He had thought that maybe he could find some familiar names of people or TV series or Animated characters but to his dismay, there were none.

"Agh! Stop thinking and sleep!" Kai grumbled as he drifted off to sleep.

In those few hours of rest, Kai's mind and body tried to rejuvenate. His dreams were a mix of random thoughts and images, reflecting the mental activity he had experienced while reading the books.

But then something wonderous happened, the incoherent mix of random thoughts, images, and insights he derived from the frankly large number of books started arranging themselves in a coherent fashion which would make it easy for him to access this knowledge by just associating with some key words inherent to the knowledge.

After a few hours of rest, Kai stretched and slowly opened his eyes as mischievous rays of sunlight entered the room through the narrow openings between the curtains as they danced through the air.

"Good Morning..." He waited for a reply but then remembered that he was all but alone in this room.

A habit hard to forget.

As Kai woke up, he felt an unusual sense of clarity in his mind. It was as if the rest had not only rejuvenated his body but also organized and consolidated the vast amount of information he had absorbed from the books. He could feel the knowledge at his fingertips, waiting to be accessed.

"How?" In just a second all his morning laziness was gone and replaced by curiosity and excitement.

He decided to test this "Uh..." new mental organization.

He thought of a keyword, "World War," and instantly, a flood of information related to the world wars filled his mind. He thought of another keyword, "Harrison Wells," and historical facts and figures related to him came rushing in. It was like having an indexed library stored within his head.

"It works! It really works!" Kai was ecstatic but then after a moment he added "But this won't help in increasing my direct combat prowess which is still abysmal, so I have to work hard into translating this into something more useful in my survival"

"It would have been awesome if I had this ability when I was in my school, I would have aced all my exams!" Kai lamented the fact he didn't have this ability earlier in his life.

After that he got up from the bed and drank a glass- no two glasses of water and then made his way to the washroom.

After about an hour, Kai stood in the hallway beside his door after doing his morning business.

He glanced up ahead, searching for signs leading to the cafeteria.

He was hungry.

'But why did I not feel hungry before and only my need for water remained, Was my body being sustained through some other means?'

And strangely this question never arose in his mind earlier.

As he was musing, he saw the sign leading to the cafeteria and started walking towards it and saw it leading upstairs to the first floor.

Kai reached the cafeteria on the first floor and gently opened its doors.

Instantly, a soothing aroma of food started wafting out. He took a deep breath and a smile grew on his face.

He took a plate from the nearby table and stood in line where a rotund lady with average features was handing out food one by one.

Soon it was his turn and the lady prompted him to bring his plate closer, "One serving or two servings of porridge" Her tone filled with impatience.

Kai looked at the rotund woman with a deadpan expression and then sighed.

Indeed, his old enemy 'Porridge' has returned.

***

After about half an hour, Kai stood outside the cafeteria with a relieved expression. "Finally, out of the abyss"

"Why is such a good smell coming out of this hell, When they have nothing to show for it!"

One of the blandest things he experienced in his previous life was porridge. No matter how people glorified it and said it was good for health and made new recipes out of it. He couldn't accept that and it blew his mind that people ate it daily for breakfast, and it looked like porridge was the first one to 'greet' him in this new world.

It seemed that even in this new world, some things remained consistent

Glancing up ahead he saw the signboard for important locations on the first floor and located the library, it was pretty close to where he was standing.

***

Coming from the library, Kai was in a thoughtful mood as he carried back the new books he had taken from the library and made his way back to his room.

His mind was wavering to the quote he read on one of the statue's, it read "Sometimes you make the right decision and sometimes you make the decision right"

Its meaning itself was not as important as much as its origin, because this quote was from a war hero named Ragnar Hastings.

The problem arose when this quote was also used by a famous person named Phil McGraw in his previous life.

Was this simply a coincidence or had he found a senior, who was also teleported here in this foreign world as him?

Kai simply had no idea.