Dungeon

"No." Thankappan firmly denied Chinnappan on his order.

"Come on, man! Be a good sport about it now, can't you?" Chinnappan said as he nudged Thankappan on his shoulder.

However, Thankappan rejected all of Chinnappan's advances. "Please don't force me." He requested.

"Hmm, so you're not gonna speak of it?" The old man asked.

"I'm afraid I can't speak of it." Thankappan replied.

"Geez, such a letdown." Chinnappan sighed. "You know what? Let me make it easier for you. I'll reveal a secret of mine and you'll tell me about the dungeon and stuff." He spoke.

"..." However, Thankappan didn't answer.

"Okay, cool. I'll tell you mine then. I have this habit of speaking as if I know everything when I know jackshit. In short, my entire thought process is plagiarized from someone else. Remember that one famous person who copied another famous person's review tweet for a movie word-by-word?" He asked.

"No? I don't think anyone knows." Thankappan replied.

"Boy, you should surf through the internet every once in a while to get that sort of tea! Well, at least reading the entertainment page of the newspaper would suffice!" Chinnappan spoke.

"You are a weird old geezer." Thankappan muttered.

"Thank you. I take pride in that." Chinnappan smiled.

"I didn't mean it as a compliment though!" Thankappan thought as he saw Chinnappan's gleeful face.

"Anyway, as I was saying. My thoughts are plagiarized. What do I mean by that? I do not have a single original idea. Like, I use someone else's brilliant idea to appease to people or just sound smart generally. Oh, you want an example? The thing about Glomerans I talked about a bit before; yea, an alien told me back then. Of course, it might be a hoax, however, it made sense, you know? Hence, I made it my brainchild and got all the hatred." The old man laughed as if he had gone senile.

"Geezer, why would you do that?" Thankappan asked, confused about Chinnappan's objective behind doing such a crazy thing.

"Well, in an off chance it actually turns out to be true, they'll regard me as a flipping prophet." Chinnappan laughed hysterically. "You see, it's the faces, my man! Have you seen their faces when someone talks about that shit?" He asked.

"As a matter of fact, I have seen one." Thankappan replied, reminiscing about the time Ponnappan got frustrated with Taro. Ponnappan getting frustrated about it at Chinnappan was also a memory that flashed past, however, it wasn't that long ago to reminisce about.

"So, you get what I meant, right? Their faces get way too twisted when I talk about this 'rumor', now imagine how their faces will become when this 'rumor' actually becomes a fact?" Chinnappan laughed as loud as he could until he choked himself up.

"Drink some water, old man!" Thankappan handed him a glass of water as he struggled breathing.

"I'm fine now. Thank you." Chinnappan declared a few minutes later.

"Sheesh, that was scary. Anyway, you got some balls to actually admit your mistakes or weird sadistic behaviors in this case." Thankappan sweated as he tried giving props to the old man.

"Meh, this is nothing. You get old and you tend not to give a fuck about things." Chinnappan shrugged.

"Ah, I see." Thankappan silently nodded for quite a bit of time.

"So, are you gonna tell me your story then?" He asked.

"When was that part of the deal? You just randomly spoke up about this so-called secret that I could've lived without ever knowing." Thankappan scoffed.

Chinnappan was shell shocked. "Hey, that's not fair! I'm one foot towards the grave and you made me waste my precious time talking about that shit! Hell, you wasted everyone's time!" He cried.

"Do you think I care?" Thankappan asked.

"Come on, man! I'm an old man, I forget things. You can rely on me! The second you say something to me, I would've forgotten about it. I promise!" He swore.

"As if! You're a vily old man. I can't seem to believe you on that." Thankappan sighed.

"Damn, I don't get it! Why don't you talk about it?" Chinnappan cried in frustration.

"Everyone's got their own secret, old man!" Thankappan replied.

"Was it that bad?" The geezer asked him in a concerned voice.

For a split second, Thankappan actually fell for it. "You could say that." He replied.

The old predator wasted no time as he tried pouncing on the prey. " Don't worry. This old man's there for you! This is a safe space. You can talk about anything you want in here." This time, the sly old fox used a soothing voice.

However, the charm did not work for the second time. This time, Thankappan caught the whiff of the trick. "Nah, old man! You can't go all psychiatrist on me! Been treated worse back in the dungeon." He scoffed.

Chinnappan smiled. "Good, that's a great start. Why don't we speak more about it?" He asked.

This irked Thankappan. "Fuck off, old man!" He quickly got away from Chinnappan.

"Sheesh, as I said before, you're no fun." The old man pouted.

Meanwhile, the duo didn't notice that hours had already passed by and it was evening. "Grandpa!" Chinnappan's grandkids enter the scene.

"My cutiepies!" Chinnappan ran towards his grandkids and hugged them tight. Taking advantage of this moment, Thankappan quietly slipped out of the house.

Outside, Lonappan and Ponnappan were waiting for him. "What the hell are you two doing outside? Couldn't you have saved me back then when I was questioned by the old man?" He cried.

Lonappan scratched his head. "To be honest, we kinda wanted to know about the dungeon too." He replied as Ponnappan nodded.

"Fuck you two! Respect someone's privacy now, will ya?" He flipped off the finger and walked off.

"Sheesh, what's wrong with him?" Lonappan asked his friend.

"I don't know. Maybe he got that temper of the old man?" Ponnappan shrugged.

Thankappan on the other hand, was really pissed off as before. However, this calmed down a little when he saw Gibli, Kunjan and… "Wait, where's Taro?" He asked.

Gibli and Kunjan exchanged a few looks before Gibli finally opened his mouth. "About that. What happened is…"

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The dojo master fearlessly headed towards Taro who had been stalking him for days now. He believed in his own strength and if things go awry, he was sure that he could subdue Taro. However, before that, he wanted to have a chat with Taro.

"What do you want? I mean you've been around for pretty much the whole time now, so I'd like an answer." The master demanded. However, Taro couldn't understand shit and stood still.

Seeing this, the dojo master tried harder. "What do you want? You here to kill me or something?" He asked. However, yet again no reply came from Taro' s behalf.

Taro tried his best trying to understand the body language, however he got a whole lot of nothing. According to him, the Earthlings move differently as they talk. You can never decipher something unless you have a translator and you end up hearing what it is from the cat's mouth.

"Oh, you're gonna give me the silent treatment, huh?" The dojo master got into his fighting posture, ready to attack at any given time.

This time, Taro finally saw a familiar posture. He was aware of why the master was taking up the pose, it was to attack the stalker. However he saw it as his chance. This was his only chance of actually explaining his intentions with his actions. Therefore, he bowed deeply towards the dojo master.

This move thoroughly confused the dojo master. He would understand if the guy tried attacking him, however, the one before him was bowing. "Are you apologizing?" He asked.

"No, you idiot! Understand his actions for goodness sake!" Gibli silently cried in the shadows.

"Shh, let him figure it out by himself." Kunjan whispered back.

"Well, how dense can one be?" Gibli asked before quickly turning his attention back to the scene unfolding before him.

"Hey, do you even understand me?" The dojo master relieved himself off his stance and asked. However, Taro did not answer. Instead, he continued bowing towards him.

"Wait. You shit head! Crap taker! Asshole! Bitch!" The dojo master suddenly riled up a series of profanity towards Taro. However, yet again, Taro remained unflinched.

"What the hell is that guy doing? Maybe I should go beat him up a bit." An enraged Gibli tried advancing, but was quickly put to stop by Kunjan.

"Wait and watch. The specimen is achieving a breakthrough moment!" He instructed Gibli. Therefore, Gibli stayed back yet again.

"Wait, by any chance, don't you know Malayalam?" The dojo master shouted before trying to collect his thoughts. "Wait, wait, wait. All this time, were you trying to be my student? You just didn't know how to communicate, huh? I apologize." The dojo master bowed his head too. Noticing this, Taro raised his head back up. "So, why don't you enter into the dojo this time around, instead of staying on the outside?" The dojo master invited him in by grabbing his hand and dragging him in.

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