Chapter 3

"Yeah, no kidding," I replied.

I figured life would just keep rolling along like this, me, the chill single girl, getting the occasional "when are you settling down?" from my family, watching other people's golden fireworks go off.

And honestly, I was totally at peace with it.

Everything changed that afternoon.

Our company dropped a new project, an otome-style romance game called Destiny's Darling.

At the weekly meeting, the boss smacked the table and declared, "We're going to create the most authentic romance simulator in the industry!"

"Players need to experience genuine heart-flutters!

"So, Department of User Prosperity and Arcane Development Division, you're teaming up. Data sharing, joint development, full collaboration!" he added.

Then he dropped a bombshell that left me completely frozen.

"Persephone, you're being transferred to the Arcane Development Division's temporary project team for a three-month cross-departmental collaboration."

"Why me?" I blurted out.

"Because you're single and have plenty of time to work overtime," he replied.

I couldn't even argue with that.

The Arcane Development Division was on the other side of the fourteenth floor.

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 vice versa.

Lucky for me, I'd taken a basic coding class in college (almost flunked it, but hey), so I could sort of understand both sides.

Every day, my job was to turn the Department of User Prosperity's demands into something the Arcane Development Division could actually work with, then spin the Arcane Development Division's problems into explanations the Department of User Prosperity wouldn't lose their minds over.

And Finnegan?

He was the lead engineer in the Arcane Development Division, the guy in charge of all the core code.

Which meant I had to coordinate with him at least a dozen times every single day.

At first, everything was pretty normal.

"Finnegan, we need to tweak the logic for this button," I said.

"What needs changing?" he asked.

"When the user clicks 'Heart-flutter,' instead of showing 'Added to Favorites,' it should pop up 'They're crushing on you too,'" I explained.

"What's the difference?" he asked.

"One's just a matchmaking site, the other's an actual romance game," I said, half-joking.

He went silent for two seconds, typed a few lines, and said, "Done."

"...That fast?" I blinked, a bit thrown off.

"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.