Chapter 03
I had to walk down a long hallway, pass a water cooler that always made weird noises, and a nearly–dead office plant that looked like it was begging for mercy.
Clutching my laptop, I stood at the entrance to the Arcane Development Division like a new transfer student, feeling totally unfazed.
‘It’s just a desk swap. What could go wrong?‘ I thought. Then I saw Finnegan.
He was sitting by the window, sunlight streaming in behind him, three monitors in front of him.
His fingers flew across the keyboard, code pouring down the screens like a waterfall.
He wore a faded gray T–shirt, his hair a bit long, messy bangs falling over his forehead.
Whenever they got in his eyes, he’d just brush them back with a quick, casual flick.
He looked like your typical programmer, pretty much exactly how I’d pictured him from seeing him at a distance before.
Then I looked up at the Heart’s Compass floating above his head: “? ? ?:??%“.
Just question marks, as always.
Seven years later, and those question marks hadn’t budged.
I stared at the Heart’s Compass above his head for a good five seconds.
Maybe I was staring a little too hard, because suddenly, he turned to look at me.
Our eyes met.
His eyes were pitch–black and deep, like still water, totally unreadable.
“You need something?” he asked, his voice low and a bit raspy, like he hadn’t fully woken up yet.
“Uh… I’m Persephone from the Department of User Prosperity. I’ve been transferred here for the project collab,” I said, waving my laptop a little awkwardly.
He looked at me, nodded, and pointed to the empty desk beside him. “Sit there.”
Then he turned back and kept typing away at his code. The whole exchange took less than ten seconds.
I sat down, opened my laptop, and snuck another peek at the Heart’s Compass above his head: “? ? ?:??%“.
No change at all.
Man, this guy was a total enigma, I thought.
Had nobody caught his eye in seven years? Or was his crush literally an alien, and my superpower just couldn’t even read them? I wondered.
Forget it, it had nothing to do with me.
I was there to work, not to play detective.
So began my life as the ultimate cross–department go–between.
Honestly, “collaboration was just code for playing translator.
The Department of User Prosperity spoke in a way the Arcane Development Division couldn’t make sense of, and
“Yeah,” he said.
And just like that, the conversation was over.
He never said more than he had to.
And he never held eye contact with me for more than three seconds.
Whenever I spoke to him, his gaze was either locked on his screen, his keyboard, or fixated on some invisible spot about ten centimeters above my shoulder.
At first, I thought he had social anxiety.
But then I realized he was like this with everyone, concise, efficient, no pointless chatter, and absolutely no eye contact.
Felix Tinker from the Arcane Development Division once whispered to me, “That’s just how Finnegan is, the quietest guy in the whole company. Word is, if you lined up every ‘Mm‘ he muttered last year, it’d circle the globe.”
“Does he write ‘Mm‘ in his code comments too?” I asked. “Nah, his comments are more like, ‘Don’t touch this code. I have no clue why it works either,” Felix replied.
“… Is that programmer humor?” I asked.
“It counts,” Felix said.
But what really caught my attention wasn’t his silence.
It was that mysterious Heart’s Compass above his head.