Petrichor to his Heart

5.1

The roads were still wet due to the heavy rains last night and to wait for Sun was a far-fetched hope.

"Chal beta Pallavi, before Ms. Garg takes you down in front of everyone, get over with this pattern." muttering to herself she worked on the tricky pattern they were told to submit by 10.

She didn't know it was going to be this tough, she loved the theories, how the searches work, how graphs work but when someone told her to write a code that was when her mind stopped working.

But what kind of a programmer if she didn't know to code the simplest pattern.

She worked on the loops again as Apoorva has tried to put them in her mind last night.

She knew she needed a total of 5 loops, even working on the first FOR - loop was ok but when she worked on others subsequently that's when her problem started.

She forgot the track how everyone was dependant on first and then related to others and was working one by one.

She ran the code on her console and when an infinite loop started crashing on her screen, she cried in frustration.

"the second colon (;), in the third loop, is giving you the trouble, remove it." someone told her from behind her and she didn't remove her hands from her face.

"doesn't matter, this was a copy-paste I don't even know how all this works." her voice showed how irritated she was at this moment.

"suit yourself." the voice was nonchalant and if she was right the person started walking away.

"hey, stop..." she turned and found the back of the tall guy who had thrown his jacket casually on his shoulder, and with the looks, it seemed he had walked to the college.

Without paying her any heed, the figure kept walking like he had no interest in what the hell was happening around.

"suno to." she ran to him and all the time everyone had warned her to run on the wet road came into her mind when she slipped on the wet mud patch some vehicles' tires had left on road.

"aaaa... she clutched his arm for her dear life and it made him lose his balance.

Both fell to the road, she got lucky that the muddy patches didn't stain her clothes but his jacket got smudged in the mud.

"Bhūmiki svāgataṁ, P T USHA." he taunted as he helped himself stand up. (welcome on earth, P T Usha!).

"Raghav..." she was surprised seeing him like that, he always seemed ready to rock the world and this one was a total opposite to the persona the whole college knew or maybe she knew.

"Kya hai..." he asked her and this time it was not a soft sound she had heard a few seconds back and if she was right she smelled something.

She inhaled the air and she was right, he smelled like alcohol, cringing on the smell she stepped away.

"Sorry...I thought it was someone else," she said and started going back to her bench in the park adjoining the entrance of the college.

"Pichi ammai..." he muttered under his breath . "get done with that fast otherwise Bhai ki behna won't leave you..." he commented and kept walking.

"Bhai ki behna..." she stopped in her steps and turned to ask him.

"oh... Professor Rakhi won't leave you," he said and it left her laughing uncontrollably.

The third semester was already about to end and she didn't know many of her batchmates that closely, but this one was the exotic species, the best student of the batch, confident as lion and arrogant like hell.

He didn't like to mingle a lot in the first year when bosses worked them up, at that time he was not even visible but right after they joined the college in the second year of their course he was a totally different personality.

Two guys surrounded him most of the time and since he had grabbed a few medals for his studies and involvement in games, nearly all of the college knew him, so it was no wonder she didn't know him.

Praying for not getting kicked out of the lab or get scolded in front of everyone she tried to work on the programs to decode how they worked in case Prof Rakhi thought to call her and explain how the program worked.

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She heaved a sigh of relief when the class got over and she was not called to explain the code Apoorva has written for her.

She has not thought about it before this day but the small moment this morning has given her some courage.

Though it was a hard try she walked to the back of the lab where Raghav was sitting in front of his system along with a few students who too were not keen to leave the lab the moment the class got over.

She stood beside him and saw him working on the problems written on a printed paper, one glance at the paper kept on his left side, and then his fingers would tap effortlessly on the keys.

A set of blue codes would appear next on the dark console and he would write something on his notebook kept on his right.

It was like therapy to see someone that effortless, perhaps she was not good and that is why she loved staring at his work.

When he was done after a few minutes she cleared her throat..

"Raghav...

He looked up and saw her standing beside him,

"Bolo..." his voice was surprised and soft.at this moment he didn't look an ounce of the arrogant soul he was deemed.

" could you help me with something?" she asked him and one of the guys he was always with looked at them from beside his chair.

"bolo..." the word was the same.

"could you help me clear the basics?" she asked him, her fist has started to hurt her but to ask someone for help and when he was Raghav was a big task.

"kya..." he was surprised.

"programming..." she thought he didn't get her point.

"no...that was not the thing." he looked puzzled for a moment and then a smile came on his face which faded the moment it appeared

"Ok... we can do it before 1 whenever we are free in between the classes," he told her and started collecting his papers.

"Thanks." she smiled and started to make her way out of the lab when she heard.

"what am I going to get in return?"

She could imagine the smug look he was giving behind her back, why didn't she think about it. Nothing was free in the world...nothing.

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Hey everyone, so here it comes - the first chapter of this new shot on them.

I apologize for the delay but the cyclones were rough and we didn't have electricity for a whole day leaving my system dead... I hope you all are doing okay, it was such a terrific one.

Hope you enjoyed their brief character sketch in the first chapter... some basic programming-related words would be used, just ignore them in case you find it difficult to get.

i just thought both leads have a computer science background so could not stop myself to add this information in this one story.

Stay safe and stay home

With love Morusya.