The next morning at the Chennai office, Arun walked in with his usual expression:
neutral, unreadable, slightly annoyed at existing.
But inside?
He felt like he was carrying a secret nuclear weapon in his pocket.
The kind of weapon every Indian employee would sell their soul for:
A way to avoid blame during escalations.
He reached his desk.
Opened his laptop.
Sipped water.
Mind calm.
Until—
"ARUN!"
He turned.
His team lead, Murugan, power-walked toward him like a man late for his own wedding.
"Yes?" Arun asked.
"We have a BIG problem."
"What else is new?"
Murugan ignored that. "Client found a bug in the live environment. They're angry. They want RCA in one hour."
Arun tilted his head. "What bug?"
Murugan handed him a printed sheet.
Printed.
In 2025.
Arun sighed internally.
He scanned it.
Missing menu items. Wrong pricing. A broken form.
Typical.
Basic.
But on production?
Not ideal.
"Fix this ASAP. Before manager comes!"
Arun nodded once and got to work.
He SSH'd into staging.
Opened logs.
Checked last deployment.
And his eyes slowly widened.
Half of the deployment was messed up.
Files missing.
Functions mismatched.
Someone merged the wrong branch.
This was not a small bug.
This was an "everyone will get shouted at in 15 minutes" bug.
Arun frowned.
Senthil leaned over. "Bro… who deployed yesterday?"
Arun checked the commit history.
His eyes narrowed.
Rajeev.
Of course.
Perfect.
Murugan returned. "Arun! Found anything?"
Arun opened his mouth to respond, but before he could—
Manager Shankar stormed into the cubicle area.
Shankar was the kind of manager who shouted first, asked questions never, and loved finding scapegoats like a hobby.
He slammed his laptop bag on the table.
"WHAT IS THIS MESS?! CLIENT IS FURIOUS! WHO DID THIS?!"
The entire team froze.
Except Arun.
He looked at the clock.
10:15 AM.
Meeting at 10:30.
Shankar continued yelling.
"We will have to explain this immediately! Arun, pull up all logs!"
Arun nodded but inside:
I need time. Literal time.
He clicked open the deployment logs.
Too messy.
Too many branches.
Too many conflicts.
Shankar hovered behind him like a vulture.
"Hurry! I need an answer now!"
Arun's eye twitched.
In this atmosphere? Even God can't debug peacefully.
Slowly, casually, Arun placed one hand under the table, pretending to adjust his chair.
And whispered under his breath:
"Stop."
Silence fell like a curtain.
The office froze mid-chaos.
Shankar's angry face paused mid-yell, mouth open like he was about to swallow Arun whole.
Murugan froze mid-step, hand raised.
Senthil froze staring at his monitor with the concentration of a man trying to understand quantum physics.
Even the AC noise stopped.
Arun stretched.
"Aaaah… finally."
He stood and walked around the frozen office, eyeing people.
One guy was picking his nose.
Frozen mid-dig.
Arun covered his face. "Bro… respect yourself."
He walked to Shankar and gently closed his open mouth.
"You look less like you're going to eat me now."
Then he went back to his desk.
Time to debug in peace.
With no distractions, he dove into the logs.
Line by line.
Commit by commit.
File by file.
He traced the issue:
Rajeev had merged branch pricing_v2 instead of pricing_hotfix.
Then deployed from staging without testing.
Then left early to "beat traffic".
Arun let out an exhausted laugh.
"So senior knowledge."
He fixed the merge.
Restored correct files.
Cleaned up broken sections.
Redeployed staging.
Ran through the menus.
Everything worked.
He glanced at the clock.
Five minutes had passed in real time?
No.
Time was frozen.
He could work for hours and return to the exact second.
He checked one more thing —
the production server.
He needed to know EXACTLY why it broke.
He opened a missing file.
Inside, Rajeev had literally written:
// temporary fix, will handle properly tomorrow bro
Arun stared.
"Bro, unakku naan… never mind."
He cleaned that too, ensured tests passed, and prepared a full RCA report.
It took him maybe 40 real minutes of work.
But in frozen world time?
Irrelevant.
Finally, satisfied, he whispered:
"Resume."
Time snapped back.
People continued yelling exactly where they left off.
Shankar finished his half-yell:
"…WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG?!"
Arun didn't even flinch.
"Sir," he said calmly, "I found the issue."
Shankar blinked. "Eh? Already?"
"Yes."
Murugan leaned forward. "So fast-a?"
Arun turned the monitor toward them.
"This file was overwritten by a wrong merge. I fixed it. Logs are clean now. Staging is stable. Production fix will take five minutes once approved."
Silence.
Everyone stared at him like he had performed black magic.
Shankar cleared his throat. "Good… good. Yes. Excellent initiative."
Senthil whispered, "Bro… how are you so fast?"
Arun shrugged. "Practice."
Shankar stared at the log.
"So who merged the wrong branch?"
The room tensed.
Arun had two options:
Throw Rajeev under the bus.
Let karma handle him later.
Arun simply said:
"It's in the commit history."
His tone was neutral.
Professional.
Shankar scrolled.
Saw Rajeev's name.
His eyebrows shot up.
"Oh. HIM."
He closed the window. "Never mind. Problem solved. Good job, Arun."
Arun nodded once.
Inside?
This power is insane.
He just solved a half-day debugging crisis in what felt like minutes.
People resumed their tasks.
Senthil whispered with admiration, "Bro… you're like… time management god."
Arun didn't smile, but he felt a warm flicker of satisfaction.
This wasn't heroism.
This wasn't dramatic.
This was practical.
The first major corporate advantage.
Now problems could never overwhelm him.
Deadlines could never scare him.
Escalations? Child's play.
Lost data? He could find it in frozen time.
School project group members? He could—
Well, that part of life was done.
He opened the RCA template and filled it out perfectly.
As he typed, he thought:
This is just the beginning. Imagine what I can do in Mumbai, the big office…
His email notification chimed.
HR: "Arun, your Mumbai transfer details will be finalized by end of week. Please review attached form."
Arun leaned back.
There it was.
The next stage of life.
He wasn't scared anymore.
He wasn't anxious.
He was ready.
And this time… he had an unfair advantage the entire world didn't.
Time.
Later in the evening, as he left office, Senthil patted him on the back.
"Bro, today you saved the team. Manager is so impressed. If Chennai had superhero, it would be you."
Arun chuckled.
"If I were superhero, I'd resign immediately."
Both laughed.
But inside, Arun felt something else.
A quiet hunger.
I want more moments like this. I want more control. I want more power.
Not over people.
Over life.
He walked toward the bus stop, hands in pockets, expression calm.
He didn't notice the butterfly that froze mid-flutter for a split second as he passed by.
Practice was making the power instinctive.
And he didn't even realize it.