𝐓𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐫𝐞

𝟑𝟔. 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐝

"Dang it!" I slam the counter hardly when the laptop screen displays,
"Code not compiled. 9 errors found."

"Take it easy, Eva." Agastya walked up from behind me, and stood next to me as I sat there in despair looking at the laptop screen that has me frustrated from an hour.

"Did you debug the code?" He asked.

"Ofcourse I did. And there are no effing errors!" I reasoned back, my voice thick with irritation.

"Let me check it." He smoothly slid the laptop towards him and I watched him glide his fingers over the keypad.

In a matter of few minutes, he did some wonders to the code and then turned the screen to me, as it read : code compiled with 0 errors.

"What! It had no errors! How- why-what did you do?!" I exclaimed as I sat there shook because my mind was fucked from the past hour doing the same shit that he did in just a few minutes.

"Relax Eva, sometimes we miss the little things. You've got to take a step back sometimes. Get out of the weeds. Focus on the system as a whole, not just the bits and bytes."

I exhaled sharply, shaking my head. "How do you even see all that? It's like you've got an entire algorithm in your head just waiting to fix things."

Agastya smiled, but there was something behind his eyes—something that didn't quite match his casual demeanor. "It's just practice. You'll get there."

I couldn't help but smile, even though the feeling of inadequacy still lingered in my chest. I couldn't deny it. He made it look so easy. His confidence was... infectious. And that bothered me, in the most confusing way. I didn't know whether I was impressed or irritated by how effortlessly he fixed things.

With Agastya gone back to his own work, I tried to focus again. But my mind kept drifting, back to the way he'd fixed everything with just a few keystrokes. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, but my thoughts wandered, like they always did when he was around. Why does he make it look so easy? I asked myself, trying to ignore the flutter of something I didn't want to recognize.

And then, out of nowhere, Joy appeared at my side, practically reading my thoughts. He always had a knack for that—walking up at the most inconvenient moments, right when my thoughts were getting too tangled. I hadn't even heard him approach, but he was there, standing beside me, grinning like he already knew what was going on in my head.

"Aha!" Joy's voice cut through my thoughts, playful and teasing. "I saw the way you were looking at him, Evara. I get it."

I blinked, startled, my eyes widening as I looked at him. "What are you talking about?" I asked, raising an eyebrow, trying to sound nonchalant. But I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. I hadn't even realized I was staring at Agastya—how could Joy have noticed?

Joy smirked, clearly enjoying this. "Oh, come on. The way you were glancing at him while he was coding? The way you were practically eyeing him?" He laughed lightly, his voice laced with mischief. "It's obvious, Evara. You've got a crush on him, don't you?"