The second date was, by all metrics, another successful deployment. They went to a quiet, quirky bookstore café that Kairos had somehow unearthed, a place that felt like a secret he was sharing just with her. The conversation was even easier, the silences even more comfortable. They'd successfully navigated the treacherous waters of a second date without a single mention of middleware.
The third "date" was a working session that somehow involved more shared headphones and listening to terrible music from their childhoods than actual work.
The fourth was a walk through the city park, arguing good-naturedly about the best Genshin Impact characters, a debate that ended with Ares surprising him by knowing an alarming amount about the meta.
It was on the precipice of the theoretical fifth date that Kairos found himself staring at his code, a bizarre and unsettling thought occurring to him. Everything was going… too well.
The app was thriving. The "Campus Fix-Up" challenge was a viral hit on campus. Their user base had grown exponentially. The head of maintenance, Bill Miller, had sent them a photo of his team high-fiving over a fixed handrail that had been the monthly winner.
His relationship with Ares—a term he still only dared to think in the privacy of his own mind—was progressing with a shocking lack of catastrophic error. There had been no major misunderstandings, no epic fights, just a steady, warm, and increasingly familiar rhythm.
It was unnatural. It was… statistically improbable.
He was Kairos Trevor. His life was a series of connected unfortunate events. A cascading failure was his default state. A successful API call was a cause for celebration. A successful date should have required a minor miracle.
He opened his chat with the Council.
Kairos: guys. serious question. Robin:Did you finally break up with her over the Genshin thing? I told you, bro, you gotta let the Waifu Wars go. Kairos:No! The opposite. It's all… good. Really good. Sam:And this is a problem because…? Kairos:Because it's ME. When have things ever been 'really good' for this long? Remember the Hackathon? I won, and then my room flooded. I finally go on a date with Ares, and my code immediately creates a meme factory. There's always a catch. A cosmic balance. A plot twist.
There was a long pause from the other end.
Drake: Bro. You're having a protagonist moment. Kairos:What does that mean? Sam:It means you've become aware of the narrative structure of your own life. You're expecting the second-act turn. The obligatory conflict before the resolution. Robin:He's right. You're waiting for the author to drop a bomb on you. You think we're all just characters in some weird, slice-of-life, rom-com coding novel?
Kairos stared at Robin's message. It was a joke, of course. But it hit a little too close to the strange feeling that had been nagging at him.
Kairos: …aren't we? Drake:Whoa. Meta. Sam:If that is the case, then statistically, the author is likely building towards a climax. Perhaps a final project presentation? A external threat to the app? A misunderstanding between you and Ares born from your own chronic self-sabotage? Kairos:That's what I'm afraid of! Robin:Well, you can't just sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop. That's boring. If you're the protagonist, then act like one. Be proactive. If you think there's going to be conflict, get ahead of it.
Kairos chewed on that. Be proactive. It was the opposite of his usual strategy, which was to brace for impact.
Later that evening, during his nightly video call with Ares, the feeling persisted. They were discussing the final touches on their project submission, their shared document open between them. Everything was smooth. Efficient. Perfect.
He took a deep breath. "Hey, can we talk about something off-script for a second?"
Ares looked up from her monitor, a curious frown on her face. "Sure. Is everything okay? Is it the schema for the user logs? I knew we should have normalized it further."
"No, no, it's not the code," he said, running a hand through his hair. "It's… this. Us. Everything is going… really well."
Ares's frown deepened. "And that's… bad?"
"No! It's great. It's amazing. It's just… my life doesn't usually work like this. My code has bugs. My pipes leak. I have a historically proven track record of things going wrong at the worst possible moment. I feel like I'm waiting for the glitch in the matrix."
Ares was silent for a moment, processing. Then, to his surprise, a slow smile spread across her face. "You think we're due for a narrative catastrophe."
"Aren't we?"
She leaned closer to her camera, her voice dropping to a mock-conspiratorial whisper. "What if the author is lulling us into a false sense of security? What if the next chapter involves a sudden love triangle with a handsome, sophisticated exchange student who's also a full-stack developer?"
Kairos groaned. "Don't even joke about that."
"Or," she said, her smile softening into something more genuine, "what if the author is just… giving us a break? What if the conflict was the Hackathon, and the leaking sink, and the algorithmic chaos, and our stupid fight? What if this is the part where the characters get to be happy for a little while?"
The simplicity of it, the sheer hope in it, was a balm to his anxious soul. She wasn't waiting for the other shoe to drop. She was just… enjoying the walk.
"You think?" he asked, his voice small.
"I think," she said, "that if this is some kind of story, the readers have probably had enough of your misery for a while. They'd probably like to see you win. And," she added, her eyes sparkling, "if the author does decide to throw a plot twist at us, we'll handle it. We're a good team. We've debugged worse."
Kairos let out a long breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. She was right. They were a good team. Maybe the story wasn't about the chaos that happened to him. Maybe it was about who was there to help him fix it.
"Okay," he said, a real smile finally breaking through. "Okay. You're right. No more waiting for glitches."
"Good," Ares said. "Now, can we get back to the user logs? Because I really think we should consider a non-relational database for the audit trail."
The conversation slid back into the familiar, comfortable territory of code. But something had shifted. The fourth wall had been gently tapped, acknowledged, and then left behind. The meta-anxiety had been debugged.
He didn't know what was coming next. Maybe there would be a plot twist. Maybe there wouldn't. But for now, the code was clean, the app was working, and the girl was amazing.
Maybe that was enough of a story for one chapter.