Love and Rivalry

Chapter 5

The weekend went by quickly for Aria and was soon back to work again on Monday. She was able to get out with Yugi and the gang over the weekend, but she actually looked forward to getting back to work to continue on her assignment. It was exciting trying to write a program for a specific purpose while also obeying the parameters of said program.

She suppressed a giggle at how nerdy that sounded. She really did fit into her group of friends that Kaiba had dubbed "The Geek Squad". Which was kind of ironic as Kaiba was probably the biggest geek out of all of them. He just had the billion dollar price tag to go with it.

Kaiba...things have been interesting between them. Especially at school. When Aria walked into her history class on Monday, she had caught his eye. She wasn't sure how to acknowledge him, so she just gave a quick nod and took her regular seat. It used to be so much less complicated when she just thought he was an arrogant jerk. At least then she knew how to act around him. But now, she wasn't so sure.

Aria's mind whipped back to the present. She almost forgot she was sitting at her computer at Kaiba Corp.

Aria refocused herself and continued working, her eyes darting quickly back and forth as she read and deciphered code. She heard a frustrated sigh from beside her. She looked over to see her co-worker, Jim Roberts, pull his hands through his hair in exasperation.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"I keep getting these stupid error messages whenever I try to add my layer of code to the already existing ones. No matter how many times I go through it I can't seem to find the problem."

"Maybe it's not your layer that's the problem. Maybe it is something in one of the other layers that isn't compatible with yours."

"No, I don't think so," he replied. "Langley himself approved the other layers."

Aria rolled her eyes. "Well I'm sure Langley's not perfect, just because he approved them doesn't mean they're not infallible. Why not ask him to review the previous layers, see if he missed something."

Jim let out a snort. "I think I'd rather keep my job." He shook his head. "No, I think I'll take my chances and try and get my layer to work."

Aria looked at him in astonishment. Were all the men in this room really so spineless? And to Langley of all people. "Tell you what, how about you send me over the previous layers and see if I can find anything amiss."

He looked back at her quizzically and then shrugged. "It's your funeral."

Soon Aria had the previous layers loaded onto her screen. After about half-an-hour, she found something in the second layer. It was easy to see how it was overlooked, as the coding worked fine with all the other layers, it was just the last one that it wasn't compatible with.

Aria doubted that Jim would have the nerve to bring this to Langley's attention. Maybe if she did it then the other workers would see that they didn't need to cower in fear of Mr. Langley.

Aria got up from her work station and walked up to the front of the room to Langley's desk. She stood a few feet away and cleared her throat. "Excuse me, Mr. Langley?"

"What is it Miss Ito," he replied without looking up at her.

Annoyance welled up inside her at his rudeness, but she quickly squashed it back down. "I was helping a co-worker with the five layered system. It appears there was a discrepancy in the second layer that was prohibiting him from adding the final layer."

Langley finally stopped what he was doing and looked up at her. "What are you doing working on the five layered system? And I already approved the second layer."