Arun arrived at the office early the next morning—mostly because he didn't trust Mumbai traffic and slightly because he hadn't slept well. His brain kept replaying the SUV accident from yesterday, the freeze, the gossip about the mysterious shareholder, and the random memory of the bus girl's sharp eyes.
He brushed those thoughts out of his head and entered the building.
No chaos yet.
The calm before Mumbai inevitably punched someone in the face.
By 10 AM, the punch arrived.
Neha stormed across the floor holding a printout like it had personally betrayed her.
"Arun! I need you."
He joined her at the conference table where a cluster of tense-looking engineers stood.
Neha dropped the file. "Phoenix server logs from last night. Something's wrong."
Arun scanned the printout. A series of unexpected spikes, slowed responses, and one particular request that looped unnecessarily.
"Who deployed last night?" he asked.
A timid hand rose.
The intern.
Of course.
Neha rubbed her forehead. "We need to fix this before the Phoenix committee sees it. They'll tear us apart."
Arun checked the dashboard.
The error wasn't crashing the system, but it was slowing the live processes. A high-priority client was scheduled to test the feature today.
If the logs didn't stabilize, they'd assume the entire team was incompetent.
Arun leaned forward. "I'll isolate the faulty module."
Neha nodded, relieved but trying not to show it. "Good. Quiet room?"
"In there," he said, pointing to a smaller conference room.
He walked in, shut the door, opened his laptop, and dove in.
Lines of code scrolled past.
Most of the system made sense.
Some parts were clumsy.
One part, however—
the part the intern modified—
was pure terrorism.
A misaligned loop.
An unnecessary nested condition.
A missing return.
A log writer that repeated until timeout.
Arun massaged his temple. "This could bring down half the production if the load increases."
He began typing, isolating the function, rewriting the logic, patching exceptions.
But the issue wasn't local.
This particular bug was generating cascading logs in the live Phoenix environment.
The logs were filling too fast.
Arun watched the meter climbing.
Faster.
Faster.
If the logs overflowed, the server would stall.
If it stalled, the Phoenix team would declare the Mumbai branch incompetent.
If that happened—
Somebody would lose their job today.
Arun sighed.
He didn't care about office politics.
But he also didn't want to see utter stupidity ruin entire departments.
He stared at the server log flood.
And then his thoughts slowed.
Not because of panic—
but instinct.
His power pulsed inside him.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just a whisper:
Freeze.
Fix.
Resume.
He checked that the conference room had no glass wall facing the floor.
Good.
He exhaled once and let instinct pull the trigger.
Time stopped.
The quiet hit instantly.
The clock on the wall froze mid-tick.
A paper on the table stopped fluttering.
Even the fan blades in the ceiling paused mid-spin.
Arun's laptop screen remained active—his laptop was always part of his own personal time bubble.
The server flood counter stopped increasing.
Arun leaned over the keyboard, appreciating the stillness.
"No panic now."
He quickly rewound the logs inside his machine, manually corrected timestamps, replicated missing entries, patched the repeating bug, and cleared the corrupt queue.
Next, he restructured the loop using his local build—
cleaner, faster, more efficient than the original developer ever imagined.
He initiated a silent redeployment.
Only possible while time was paused, because the redeploy delay would never be noticed.
Finally, he cleaned the mess.
The Phoenix team would never know.
He stepped back.
"Resume."
Time snapped into place.
The ceiling fan resumed spinning.
The paper floated.
The clock ticked.
Arun looked at his screen.
The server flood counter stabilized.
Neha and the engineers outside let out a collective breath of relief.
A Slack notification dinged:
Phoenix Logs Back to Normal. Good job, Mumbai Team.
Arun ignored the praise and closed his laptop.
He left the conference room to find Neha heading toward him.
"You fixed it?"
He shrugged. "Bug wasn't complicated. Just urgent."
Her shoulders relaxed. "You saved us today. Good work."
"Just doing my job."
"Still—this was massive." She hesitated, then added, "Phoenix team is impressed."
Arun didn't show anything on his face, but he felt something shift.
From today onward, he wasn't the "Chennai transfer" to them.
He was someone the team relied on.
He returned to his desk, put on his headphones, and zoned out.
By 7 PM, he decided to leave early—not because he was tired, but because Mumbai trains after 7:30 were survival games.
He walked out of the office into the surprisingly cool evening air.
The city felt slightly less aggressive today.
Maybe because he won a small battle.
He reached the bus stop near the overbridge. A crowd had already gathered—students, office workers, people with shopping bags, a couple arguing about rent.
He stood quietly, hands in pockets.
A bus approached, brakes screeching like a dying bird. The crowd pressed forward.
Arun waited.
He didn't like pushing.
Behind him, a sleek black SUV rolled slowly to a stop at the signal.
He didn't pay attention until a door opened.
Two security personnel stepped out.
One scanned the surroundings.
The other opened the rear door.
A woman stepped out.
Arun didn't turn—until instinct nudged him.
He shifted his gaze slightly.
Just enough to see her.
Blue top.
Simple black trousers.
Hair tied loosely.
Eyes focused forward with effortless authority.
The same eyes he saw on the bus.
Sharp.
Calm.
Unbothered by the chaos of the street.
His chest tightened—not in shock, not in attraction, just… recognition.
It was the same girl.
She didn't look at him.
Her gaze stayed ahead, scanning the building across the street—the Mumbai office.
She walked forward with a clean, confident stride, flanked by two security staff who didn't crowd her but stayed close enough to be ready.
A corporate ID card hung from her neck.
Arun couldn't read the name.
He didn't need to.
Everything clicked quietly in his mind.
Royal lineage.
Young shareholder.
Phoenix overseer.
Mumbai office visitor.
Bus traveller.
Sharp eyes.
Silent confidence.
He didn't need a dramatic revelation.
He knew.
Aditi Singh Rathore.
He didn't gasp.
He didn't stare.
He didn't even move.
He simply watched as she crossed the road—
gracefully, effortlessly, completely oblivious to the man standing twenty feet away who had paused the universe twice this week.
She entered the building.
Her security followed.
The glass doors closed behind them.
Arun stepped into the bus when it arrived, sitting by the window.
The city moved past him.
The world buzzed.
People talked.
Engines roared.
Inside his mind, everything stayed quiet.
He had no reason to care about her.
But one thought lingered anyway:
Why do I keep running into her?
A second thought came uninvited:
And why did my instincts react before my mind did?
He stared out the window until the city lights blurred.
Somewhere behind him, in a high meeting room, Aditi Singh Rathore would soon be reviewing Phoenix logs.
She would see stability.
She would see a recovery.
She might ask:
"Who fixed this?"
But tonight, she'd hear one answer:
"New backend engineer. Arun Kumar."
Their paths had brushed twice now.
No contact.
No words.
No acknowledgment.
But the universe had shifted.
Quietly.
Subtly.
Inevitably.