Next Morning
It was a quiet day at office, eerily quiet foreshadowing a trouble that was going to fall upon the employees.
The first sign of trouble came not with a loud crash, but a quiet Teams ping.
"Backend down. Client data missing. Please check urgently."
The message was from Saikiran, sent to the core development group chat at 8:13 AM, just as Ishani was settling into her desk with a half-sipped cappuccino. Her fingers froze mid-type. She looked up across the office to find Sai already standing, laptop in hand, pacing to the tech bay with that tightly focused expression he wore when the stakes were high.
A beat later, Aniket, the DevOps lead, typed a reply.
"Confirming. Entire module is unresponsive. Logs show an overwrite attempt around 7:48 AM."
Panic hadn't spread yet, but the air was already shifting. Ishani stood and followed him.
"Did someone push something live this morning?" she asked softly, catching up to Sai as they reached the conference room.
"No. Not from our team. But something's off. Logs look like a bot trigger or… worse, a faulty script run manually," he replied, not looking at her, eyes fixed on the screen. "The client hasn't raised a flag yet, but they will. We have about an hour. Maybe less."
Ishani's heart began to race—not from the crisis itself, but from the way Sai switched into command mode. Calm. Analytical. But there was a glint of pressure behind his composure, and she knew he blamed himself. He always did, whether or not it was fair.
"Let's get a war room running," she said, already typing instructions into Teams.
Within twenty minutes, the usual office chatter had disappeared, replaced by the rhythmic clatter of keyboards and hushed urgency. People stopped taking coffee breaks. Lunch was forgotten. Saikiran barely looked away from his screen, answering questions with clipped precision.
And yet, in the middle of this professional storm, their eyes met—once, briefly—when Ishani brought him a protein bar without saying a word. He didn't smile. But his fingers brushed against hers as he took it, the gesture laced with quiet gratitude. There was something unspoken in the air, a private calm between them beneath all the chaos.
By early afternoon, the war room had grown quiet—not with peace, but the thick silence of strain.
Ananya had been trying to help, fluttering between desks, offering updates, asking questions. But her timing was off.
"Saikiran, should we rerun the test case or wait for the patch?" she asked, leaning a little too close.
"We'll wait," he said, not turning. His tone was polite but detached.
Ananya lingered another moment, watching him, then moved away with a visible pout.
Ishani, seated at the far end of the room, noticed. Her eyes narrowed for the briefest second—but she buried it, turning back to her own screen. She wasn't jealous. She couldn't be. But there was something about the way Sai had barely acknowledged Ananya that made her heart settle strangely in her chest.
By 5 PM, heads were low, snacks untouched, and voices hoarse.
The error had been traced—a misfired automated script from the client's legacy side, but the damage was extensive. A restore point was in process. Saikiran had barely moved in hours. Ishani, too, was running on caffeine and tension.
Finally, at 7:42 PM, a message blinked green:
"Restoration successful. Module functional. No permanent loss."
There was a collective sigh, a stretch of limbs, a few exhausted chuckles. But Ishani didn't laugh. She watched Saikiran push his chair back, rub his temple, and shut his laptop like someone closing the final page of a battle.
As the others began to drift out, she lingered. Quietly, she stood and walked over.
"Come on," she said softly, her voice lower than usual. "You need air."
"Ishani, I'm—"
"Tired, hungry, overworked. I know. Five minutes."
She didn't wait for his response.
They stepped out to the building's terrace—quiet, cool, dimly lit by the city glow. A breeze lifted strands of her hair as they leaned against the railing, neither speaking. The tension of the day hadn't vanished, but in this quiet bubble, it melted around the edges.
"You always do this," she said finally.
"Do what?"
"Take the weight of everything on yourself."
He didn't reply right away. When he did, his voice was rough, almost whispering.
"I don't know how to let go. Not when things matter."
"You matter," she said, too fast, too instinctive. And then caught herself, biting her lip.
He turned to her—eyes tired but sharp, intense in that way that always made her breath catch.
There was silence again. A long pause charged with something too deep for words.
Then he stepped closer. Not dramatically. Just enough that their shoulders brushed. That she could feel the heat of him.
And in that breath, everything shifted.
Not a kiss. Not yet. Just proximity. Just the raw honesty in his gaze.
And the quiet promise that when this storm passed—he would be hers, completely.