The following weeks fell into a comforting rhythm. My days were filled with lectures, coding assignments that pushed my abilities to their limits, and increasingly frequent encounters with Suzume.
Professor Tanaka's class became our shared battleground, a proving ground where we tackled complex algorithms and dissected lines of code with a shared passion. We often found ourselves huddled together in the library, poring over textbooks and arguing over the most elegant solutions to programming challenges.
I was amazed by her mind, sharp and intuitive, her grasp of abstract concepts as quick as my own. But it was her kindness, her willingness to patiently explain things I didn't understand (and there were many), that truly disarmed me. She had a way of making me feel seen, even when my own anxieties threatened to pull me back into the shadows.
One particularly frustrating afternoon, I found myself wrestling with a particularly nasty bug in my code for a machine learning project. Hours of troubleshooting had yielded nothing but a growing sense of frustration and the sinking suspicion that my coding skills were utterly inadequate.
As I slammed my laptop shut, ready to admit defeat, Suzume placed a comforting hand on my arm. Her touch, gentle yet firm, sent a jolt of unexpected warmth through me.
"Hey, everything okay?" she asked, her brow furrowed with concern.
"It's this stupid code," I muttered, gesturing at the screen in disgust. "I've been staring at it for hours, and I still can't figure out what's wrong."
"Mind if I take a look?" she asked, her voice calm and reassuring.
I hesitated, my usual defenses rising. I hated showing my vulnerabilities, especially when it came to my coding. But there was something about Suzume's gaze, a blend of intelligence and empathy, that disarmed my usual defenses.
"Sure," I mumbled, stepping aside to let her see the screen.
She leaned in, her brow furrowed in concentration as she scanned the lines of code. I watched, mesmerized, as her fingers danced across the keyboard, her movements swift and precise.
"Ah, I think I see the problem," she said after a moment, her voice tinged with quiet triumph. "This loop is in a infinite one that is messing with this variable so it causes the program to glitch as this loop is not closed in time by the future function."
She pointed to a line of code, my face burning with a mixture of embarrassment and relief. Of course! It was such a simple mistake, yet one that had completely eluded me.
"You're a lifesaver," I said, my voice filled with genuine gratitude. "I don't know how you saw that."
She shrugged, her smile lighting up her face. "Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is all it takes," she said. "Besides, two heads are better than one, right?"
As we worked together to debug the rest of my code, laughter replacing my earlier frustration, I realized that Suzume was right. There was a strange comfort in sharing the burden of my struggles, in letting someone else peek behind the curtain of my carefully constructed self-sufficiency.
Our friendship, much like the algorithms we studied, followed a pattern, a series of inputs and outputs that defied my usual anxieties. We discovered a shared love for spicy ramen, devoured manga in quiet corners of the library, and spent countless hours wandering through the vibrant streets of Shinjuku, marveling at the city's ability to be both chaotic and comforting at the same time.
Suzume, with her easy laughter and genuine curiosity, began to chip away at the walls I'd built around myself. I found myself opening up to her in ways I never had with anyone else, sharing my anxieties about my studies, my struggles with Japanese, and even my secret passion for writing poetry (a passion I kept hidden from even my closest friends back in Bangalore).
She listened without judgment, her gaze steady and reassuring. She didn't offer platitudes or try to "fix" me. She simply accepted me, awkwardness and all.
One cool evening, as we walked along the banks of the Sumida River, the setting sun painting the sky in hues of orange and pink, I felt a surge of gratitude for her friendship.
"Thank you," I blurted out, my voice thick with emotion.
Suzume stopped walking, turning to face me, her brow furrowed in concern. "Thank me for what?"
"For...being you," I stammered, suddenly self-conscious. "For being my friend."
Her expression softened, a warm smile spreading across her face. "dude," she said, her voice soft as the evening breeze, "you don't need to thank me for that."
"But I do," I insisted, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. "You make this...everything...bearable."
She tilted her head, studying me for a moment with those unnervingly perceptive eyes. "And you, Aditya," she said, her voice barely a whisper, "make everything...better."
That night, as I sat in my room, the city lights twinkling outside my window, I wrote in my diary, my heart overflowing with a strange mix of gratitude and a longing I couldn't quite define:
October 12th
Thealgorithm of friendship is a complex one, full of unexpected loops andvariables. But with Suzume, it feels...natural. Effortless. Like breathing. I'mstarting to believe that maybe, just maybe, some connections are meant to bedecoded.
YOU ARE READING
The Secrete I've Held for 1 and a Half Year Part-1
RomanceAbout a Introvered Computer Science Geek boy who has axienty, and scared of speaking to women, who went to japan for his studies and developed fellings for a girl and how it took turns.
