The university common room buzzed with the familiar symphony of digital life—notification pings, muffled TikTok audio, and the occasional burst of laughter at a particularly absurd meme. Ten students sprawled across mismatched furniture, each absorbed in their glowing rectangles like moths to very expensive flames.
Karan sat slightly apart from the chaos, turning over a paper envelope in his hands. Actual paper. With actual handwriting. In an age where even his grandmother sent voice messages, this felt like discovering a dinosaur bone.
"Holy ancient artifacts, Batman!" shouted Maya, looking up from her phone. "Is that an actual letter? What's next, are you going to tell us you own a landline?"
"Maybe it's from his secret admirer," teased Rohit. "You know, the one who still believes in romance and proper postage."
Karan chuckled and carefully opened the envelope. Inside, on cream-colored paper that probably cost more than most people's coffee budget, was a single line of elegant handwriting: "I hope you never learn how to fit in."
The room's energy shifted as curiosity trumped Instagram for a moment.
"Okay, that's either really sweet or mildly threatening," said Priya, setting down her phone entirely. "Who writes mysterious one-liners? Are you being haunted by a philosophical ghost?"
Karan folded the letter with the reverence usually reserved for handling nitroglycerin or his mother's favorite china. "It's from someone I used to know. Probably the most beautifully impossible person I've ever met."
"Beautifully impossible?" Arjun snorted. "What does that even mean? Was he a unicorn?"
"Close," Karan said, his eyes twinkling. "I once read somewhere that 'one can die from being immortal.' He was exactly that kind of person."
The group exchanged glances that clearly said, "Our friend has officially lost it."
"Right," said Maya slowly, as if addressing a confused child. "So this mystery person was immortal? Are we talking vampire, highlander, or just really good skincare routine?"
Karan leaned back, clearly enjoying their bewilderment. "Let me tell you about Aryan, and maybe you'll understand why someone might die from living forever."
The Suitcase Incident
"Picture this," Karan began, "I'm in my pajamas, when my doorbell rings. I open it to find Aryan standing there with this ancient, leather suitcase that looked like it had survived both world wars and possibly the invention of the wheel."
"Was he moving in?" asked Rohit.
"Nope. He just handed me the suitcase and said, 'They've served me well. Now they need to speak to someone else.' Inside were books—not just any books, but first editions, signed copies, things that probably belonged in museums. One was even signed by a Nobel laureate."
"And he just... gave them away?" Priya's voice pitched higher. "Those must have been worth a fortune!"
"That's what I said! But Aryan just shrugged and walked away like he'd just handed me his old newspaper. No explanation, no receipt, no 'please take good care of them.' Just... gone."
The Room Without Time
"His living space was like something out of a minimalist's fever dream," Karan continued. "Imagine a room where time went to die. No clock, no mirror, no phone. Just a typewriter that looked like it had personally witnessed the Renaissance, a kettle that probably predated electricity, and a window that seemed to frame the world like a living painting."
"How did he know what time it was?" Maya asked, genuinely puzzled.
"I asked him that exact question. He looked at me like I'd asked him why grass was green, and said, 'When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm tired, I rest. I don't ask time for permission to feel.'"
"That's either deeply profound or complete nonsense," muttered Arjun.
"With Aryan, those were usually the same thing."
The TED Talk Rebellion
"The best part," Karan said, warming to his story, "was when he got invited to give a TED Talk. People were practically begging him to accept. It was about living authentically or something equally buzz-worthy. The kind of talk that gets a million views and spawns a dozen self-help books."
"And?" The group leaned in.
"He held the invitation like it was contaminated. Then he said, 'If I compress truth into eighteen minutes for applause, it's no longer truth. It's branding.' And then—I swear this actually happened—he tore it in half. Not dramatically, not angrily. Just... calmly. Like he was disposing of junk mail."
"He turned down a TED Talk?" Priya gasped. "Do you know how many people would kill for that opportunity?"
"That's exactly what I told him. He just smiled and said, 'Maybe that's the problem.'"
The common room had grown unusually quiet. Even the notification sounds seemed muted, as if the phones themselves were listening.
"So what happened to him?" Maya asked softly.
Karan looked out the window where the sun was setting in shades of gold and amber. "I used to think he was impossible. Too strange to be real, too pure for this world. But maybe he just... saw too far."
He paused, remembering something that seemed to come from a dream. "There's this image I have of him, standing on a hilltop at sunset. The valley spread out below, the sky behind him like molten gold. He looked so still, so unshaken. Alone, but not lost. Like a tree that had grown too tall for anyone to reach."
"That's beautiful," Priya whispered, "but also really sad."
"Maybe he wasn't trying to be above us," Karan mused. "Maybe he was just rooted in a different altitude."
The group sat in contemplative silence, a rare occurrence in their hyperconnected world.
"So," Rohit said finally, "what does it mean to die from being immortal?"
Karan smiled, the same soft expression he'd worn when reading the letter. "Maybe it means that when you refuse to compromise your soul for the sake of fitting in, when you choose authenticity over acceptance, when you live so purely that the world can't touch you... maybe that kind of immortality is both a gift and a burden."
He stood up, tucking the letter carefully into his pocket. "Excuse me, I think I have some books to read."
As Karan walked away, the remaining students looked at each other, then at their phones, then back at each other. For the first time in months, the common room was filled with the strange, almost forgotten sound of actual conversation.
Later that night, Karan sat in his room, the letter spread open on his desk. He walked to his bookshelf and pulled out a dust-covered volume he'd forgotten he owned. As he opened it and began to read, he could almost hear Aryan's voice saying, "I hope you never learn how to fit in."
Outside his window, the stars seemed brighter than usual, as if the universe itself was refusing to dim its light for anyone's comfort.
And somewhere, perhaps on another hilltop, perhaps in another dimension entirely, Aryan was probably smiling, knowing that his friend had finally understood the beautiful impossibility of being immortal in a world that demanded you die a little each day to belong.
