After the shopping ambush, life settled into something calmer. Softer. Once I'd recovered and actually paid attention to the clothes my mother and Anna had picked out, I had to admit they were right. They felt like me. Just a little neater and a little warmer. Like they knew exactly what I was comfortable in and gently upgraded it. I kept grabbing the soft grey sweater without even thinking.
The group… Leah still decided to stick with Syntax Sultan… had moved past panic mode. We weren't scrambling anymore. The model worked. But the annoying part is fine-tuning it until it didn't embarrass us.
This means long hours in the lab, staring at charts that felt like they were mocking at us. One afternoon, Leah slammed her head gently on the desk. "It's messing with us," she groaned. "We fix Italian sentiment, and now it thinks German politeness is straight-up aggression. We've created a very unstable linguist."
