I've always believed that emotional stability is the result of discipline and that if you approach life with the same structure you'd apply to an organized Excel file, things will eventually fall into place. Not easily, of course, and not without some occasional formatting error here and there, but well enough that you can spend your time without worrying you've accidentally embedded chaos in cell C4.
Which is why I find it irritating that the collapse of my mental stability began with a coffee order.
To be specific: a medium black coffee, no sugar, no milk, no smiling of any kind. I asked for it very clearly and with a tone in my voice suggesting strong denial towards meaningless conversations. The barista nodded, her hands moved, and I was already calculating the optimal route back to my desk when I felt someone brush past me. It was a light contact, barely a contact at all actually, but enough to send the paper cup flying off in the air like a poorly coded UI element.
The collision was quick and it struck the man next to me straight in the chest.
"Ah...!" he stepped back blinking, looking down at his soaked shirt, then up at me. His eyes didn't seem to be remorseful about it, instead they were calm, almost… amused?
"Well. That's one way to say good morning" he said.
I opened my mouth to try a very short apology and get out of that awkward situation but I did not get the chance, because in that moment, something in my head beeped very loudly.
And then a line of bright flashing text scrolled across my vision like a pop-up window from hell.
"HEART.OS INITIALIZED."
"Emotional system reactivated."
"Syncing romantic proximity sensors…"
My first reaction was to assume I was hallucinating. Maybe it was some sort of psychotic episode caused by caffeine withdrawal. My second reaction was to stare at the man in front of me and ask, "Did you hear that?"
He tilted his head, unbothered by the situation. "Hear what?"
"Target identified: High-risk interaction."
"Potential situational tension: 78%."
"Initiate scenario? Y/N"
The man, who still hadn't introduced himself (and honestly, at that point I was in no mental state to ask for any sort of question), reached for a napkin. I noticed then that his fingers were long, his nails clean, and there was a faint scar on the side of his hand, like something he might have got from grabbing a hot pot without thinking. He smiled as he aired his shirt.
"It's fine, it wasn't even hot. But if you were trying to flirt with me, that's a little aggressive."
"I wasn't" I said immediately, because I wasn't. That was something people who believed in fate would do, not me. I believed in numbers and statistics and a very good and structured code. I'm a UI developer, you see.
"Target classified as 'Min Jae.'"
"Storing emotional data fragment."
His name auto-saved without permission in the system's memory.
"I'm Min Jae" he added casually, like this kind of thing happened to him regularly. "You okay there?"
"Am I...?" I asked... myself. "Yes. No. I'm fine. This isn't a… thing."
"New mission generated: Make him smile."
"Reward: Clarity Boost +2."
"Penalty for failure: Shame Lock (duration: 3 hours)"
I don't remember what I said after that. Some sort of apology I guess, probably in the form of a weird sentence with no emotional tone at all. I do remember the barista handing me a second coffee on the house, while giving Min Jae a look that clearly said "he doesn't do socializing, be kind."
I left before the system could say anything else.
Back at my desk, I stared at my monitor for five minutes before realizing I hadn't opened a single tab. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, but I couldn't remember what I was supposed to type. For someone whose job means a lot of routine and minimal disruptions from it, this was a catastrophic event.
"Welcome back, User! We've missed you! Your last emotional event occurred: 1 year, 2 months, and 17 days ago. Impressive restraint!"
"I didn't install this" I said to myself.
"Oh, you didn't. You were born with it! But you stopped running updates, and frankly, your vulnerability firewall was becoming hard to manage. We're here to help!"
I stared blankly at the desktop.
"Mission still active: Make him smile. Hint: sincerity often leads to high success rates!"
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then I reopened them. Min Jae's face flashed in my mind like an annoying app push notification.
Nope, not happening. This was not a love story, this was very much a technical failure. A glitch in the Matrix. I just had to debug it and then fix it. Right...?