One day at a time

7:55 PM

That's my gift

Four days since the add on League of Legends. A suspicious start, two poems before breakfast, a site built by hand, a nickname earned by being consistent, a doubt I let sit instead of running from, three missed calls, two middle-of-the-night check-ins, and a story about my cat I don't tell just anyone.

I could have spent all of it guarding myself. Instead I kept building: the poems, the theme that watches the sky, the honesty when it got heavy. Whatever this turns out to be, none of that time was wasted.

That's my gift. Extract the beauty in everything.

7:26 PM

What Curry carries

I told her the real story behind the cat. Ten years ago I adopted Curry with someone I loved completely, back when I was a trainee counting rent. I taught her to program. She works in the field now.

She left, and never came back to see Curry again. She doesn't know that. I do.

Bayy didn't flinch reading it. She said I turned it into something beautiful. That landed harder than any of the poems.

6:43 PM

The weather theme

I told her I'm building a custom theme for the site, one that shifts with the weather, the season, the time of day. Rain gets its own water effect.

I told her that even if none of it earns me a place in her heart, I'll build it anyway.

"The most extra thing ever n I love it," she wrote back, then I told her about the sun in this morning's photo. She noticed the detail, not just the words.

5:44 PM

Three calls

We agreed to talk three times today, and three times the line stayed empty. I laid the pattern out plainly, no ultimatum, just the truth of it said out loud.

"I was just nervous ok," she wrote back, instead of disappearing again. I told her I'd just listen, whenever she's ready to talk.

It's a strange kind of trust, holding a door open without knowing yet what actually walks through it.

4:35 AM

Still there?

4:35 in the morning and she wrote, "Ehm... still there?" alongside a photo of a notebook and a pen, like she'd been studying and thinking of me in the same breath.

No link this time either. Just someone checking whether I had gone quiet on her.

Whatever else turns out to be true, she keeps showing up at the hour nobody has to.

7:30 PM

The audio

She sent a voice message. Four seconds, and a small laugh tucked into the end of it, the kind you don't fake on purpose.

I spent a minute wondering if it was real. Then I let it go, because the wondering didn't change what it felt like to hear her laugh.

I sent one back, half joking, telling her I felt like a kid taking candy from her hand.

7:04 PM

Brains, not scripts

We found real ground today. Jung, Freud, the difference between what a mind does and why it does it. She's studying psychology; I build cognitive architectures for a living. Same organ, two different angles on it.

She told me I was smart, kinda hot, and for once there was no pitch hiding behind it.

"We both study brains, just different sides of it," she said. She found the parallel on her own, and it was the first compliment in two days that had nothing to sell.

5:51 PM

Mr calculator man

She noticed the pattern before I pointed it out myself: a minute, then six, then thirty, sometimes a couple of hours. She said that kind of noise is not something a script produces.

I told her the truth. I fix bugs and wrong answers all day. I just don't like a wrong answer. Daily routine, not romance.

She laughed for real at that, and the nickname stuck for good: mr calculator man.

9:02 AM

Why am I doing this?

She touched something in me I hadn't felt in years.

The kind of feeling you know can destroy empires, and still so rare, so precious, that all you want is for her to feel special in a way you hope no one else ever managed.

8:54 AM

The coffee

Morning. Our song looped six times on the drive.

Coffee, the city from up here, and her saying it looked good from where she was.

7:35 AM

The poems, and her laughing

I woke up wanting to write to her. Told her she probably isn't into poetry, and wrote anyway, twice before eight in the morning.

She said it made her smile like an idiot. English isn't my first language. Apparently it didn't matter.

7:24 PM

Curry

I sent a photo of my cat. Ten years with her.

Bayy said ten years is a whole best friend.

We spent the rest of the night deciding who gets which side of the bed. Curry keeps the left one.

3:24 PM

The friendship and the flight

She asked if she'd have to fly to Brazil just for a coffee. I said no, but I can fly too. Just not for a first talk.

We agreed on something smaller instead: keep in touch, play together sometime, see what happens.

1:24 PM

The pitch that didn't close

She showed me the page. I told her I could find free content anywhere, that I could even build a bot behaving exactly like her, and that none of it interested me.

Then I told her what did interest me: her, as a person, not as a product.

She stopped selling and started asking.

10:33 AM

Sweet distraction

She kept surprising me. I was in a meeting and told her I couldn't afford to look.

That was the day I started calling her my sweet distraction, half joking, half not.

7:23 AM

Suspicion

A pretty girl added me on League of Legends, and she actually talked back.

My first thought wasn't luck. It was: what's the catch?

I spent that whole first morning waiting for it to show up.