I scanned the heading
PAPER - I
Institut d'Études Intermondiales
(Institute of Inter World Studies)
Subject: Aptitude, Reasoning, Current Affairs, Ethics and Fog Phenomenology
Time: 3 Hours
Maximum Marks: 200
First, my eyes ran down the sections,
Mapping the terrain.
Simple data interpretation.
Ethics scenarios about intervention and non-intervention with foreign civilizations approached inside the Fog.
Second, my mind, trained by years of UPSC pattern drills, began triaging. Easy, moderate, time-sink. Attempt order. Time allocation.
Answers flowed—not flawlessly, but steadily. Where I didn't know, I built. Structured guesses. Logical extensions from known data. Where memory faltered, I wrote around it, framing what I knew and clearly marking what I didn't, the way good examiners appreciated even in failure.
Around me, the tension shifted texture over the hours.
At the start, it was—pens hovering, brows furrowed. Halfway through, it turned into calculation—eyes flicking to the clock, pages turning faster. In the last thirty minutes, it became pure, distilled panic in a bottle.
"Last fifteen minutes," the invigilator announced.
I was on the final ethics question.
I outlined the competing interests. Stability versus monopoly. Short-term gain versus long-term strategic dependence. Proposed a middle-path: limited technology sharing under strict treaty conditions, multilateral oversight.
The pen moved more easily than my hand remembered it ever had.
"Stop writing," the invigilator commanded.
Hands lifted, pens hovering an inch above paper.
I exhaled.
Paper One: done.
The break felt unreal.
We shuffled out into the corridor. My legs complained as blood remembered there were other parts of me besides my fingers.
In the courtyard, parents waited at the perimeter.
Vendors had materialized near the gates, selling tea, water, quick snacks.
Ma waved frantically when she saw me.
She just thrust a tiffin into my hands without asking anything.
"Eat," she ordered.
We sat on a bench nearby and I opened it. Flatbread, rolled tight around spiced potatoes. Easy to eat without cutlery.
I glanced around.
A boy nearby groaned dramatically to his friend. "Bro, that cross fog civilization contact question? Totally from last year's coaching module. Sir literally solved the same pattern in class. Easy fifty marks."
Another shook his head. "I think they twisted the tariff question. You guys are all saying 'increase tariffs'; I think the answer was to lower them to encourage regulated trade."
A girl paced circles around her father. "I missed one entire data set Dad. I hope it to be fine"
Her father murmured something soothing about cut-off ranges.
I finished eating, drank water, and leaned back against the wall. My chest expanded more easily than it had six months ago. The cough that came after was small, almost polite.
"Second paper?" Ma asked.
"Ambassadorial aptitude," I said. "Case studies, scenario analysis, probably some language and culture."
She frowned. "You studied, no?"
"For this?" I said. "I've been studying for this since I got out of the bed."
The Archive pinged
[Overconfidence noted for future grading.]
I closed the tiffin and handed it back.
"I have to go in," I said. "They'll start calling us."
She gripped my forearm.
"Write calmly," she said. "Don't try to be clever. Just be yourself."
I smiled, turned, and walked back toward the hall.
PAPER- II
Institut d'Études Intermondiales
(Institute of Inter World Studies)
AMBASSADORIAL AND DIPLOMATIC APTITUDE
Subject: Polity, International and Extraterrestial Relations, Economics
Geography
Time: 3 Hours
Max Marks: 500
Where Paper One had been broad, testing whether you could swim in shallow water, this one checked if you could survive being dropped in the ocean.
Scenarios, fragments of diplomatic correspondence to complete. A question about designing seating for a multi-civilization summit so that no party felt insulted by position. Another about responding to an accidental cultural breach that risked turning a negotiation sour.
Halfway through.
[You appear to be enjoying this.]
"Of course, This is the part I'm good at."
[Good enough to pass?]
"Ask me in three hours."
The tension in the hall was different this time. Less shared. More individual. In Paper One, most people knew whether a question was doable. Here, answers lived in grey zones.
At one point, the boy two rows ahead of me put his head down on the desk for a full thirty seconds, then snapped back up and scribbled furiously as if outrunning his own doubt.
"Last ten minutes," the invigilator announced.
My hand cramped. I flexed it discreetly, finished the final advisory note, and re-checked my answers.
"Stop writing."
Pens down. Silence.
The rustle of papers being collected.
That was it.
Six hours of proving to a faceless panel that I wasn't just a statistic with damaged lungs.
Stepping out of the hall at four-fifteen felt like exiting a different weather system.
The light outside had shifted to late afternoon gold.
"It was so easy, man," one kid was saying loudly. "If you did the coaching mock series, half the questions were straight lifts."
"Shut up," his friend hissed. "Why are you saying that so happily? Now cut-off will go higher."
Near the gate, a girl clutched her bag strap and tried not to cry.
"I blanked on the second case study," she told her mother. "I knew it. We did the same thing in class. But when I saw the names, my brain just… froze."
Her mother wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "You wrote something," she said firmly. "You don't know. Sometimes they like different angles."
Two boys argued about a specific answer.
"The tariff question— I told you, lowering is better for long-term soft power."
"And I told you, you're overthinking. They want stability, not idealism."
Off to one side, a quiet girl who had sat three rows to my right in the hall said to her father, "I think I did okay. Not perfect. But… okay. If they want perfect, they'll pick the guild kids."
Her father's jaw tightened. "If they want perfect, they can hire machines," he said. "They built this exam for people like you. Don't reduce yourself before they even mark the paper."
Ma stood near the tea stall, neck craned, hand shielding her eyes from the sun.
When she spotted me, her shoulders dropped in visible relief.
"How was it?" she asked.
I considered my answer.
"Honest paper," I said finally. "Not generous. Not cruel. I did what I could."
She searched my face like she was looking for something between the words.
"That's… good?" she ventured.
"It's… real," I said.
She nodded slowly.
"Come," she said.
We didn't go to the library that evening.
We went home first, so I could wash the residue of exam tension off my skin. But by late evening, I found myself standing at the library's familiar sandstone steps anyway.
Ma had insisted on coming.
"I'll go to the factory tomorrow," she'd told her supervisor over the phone. "Today, I have somewhere else to be."
Rao was at his desk.
He looked up when we approached.
"Arin," he said. " and Mrs. Valen."
Ma folded her hands. "Namaste, sir."
He inclined his head.
"Well?" he asked, eyes on me.
"Well," I echoed. "We did our respective jobs."
Ma shot me a warning glance.
Rao's mouth twitched.
"Good," he said. "An exam's first duty is to be written. The second is to be forgotten until results."
He reached into a drawer and pulled out a small packet wrapped in old newspaper.
"Here," he said, tossing it lightly.
I caught it, barely. Inside: laddoos. Two, slightly misshapen, sticking to each other.
"My wife's fault," he said. "She keeps sending them 'just in case someone clears something.' Today seemed like a just-in-case day."
Ma looked mortified. "We can't—"
"You can," he interrupted. "Think of it as… carbohydrate support for future study."
He studied my face more closely.
"You're not coughing," he observed.
"Not as much," I said.
"Good," he said. "Interview boards dislike candidates who collapse mid-answer."
"You're assuming I'll clear written," I said.
He shrugged. "I am assuming nothing. I am merely preparing my blood pressure for possible futures."
He leaned back.
"Go home," he said. "Do something that is not reading for one evening. Come back tomorrow. The shelves have missed you."
Ma stood up and I followed behind her.
We stood at the Bus Stop as the sky darkened.
"Arin" my mother quietly said
"Ma?" I replied
"Even if you do not pass, remember-" she turned to face me
"I am proud of you"
I didn't say anything, just nodded and for the first time felt in both of my lives.
It was worth it