By Monday morning, the rumor mill wasn’t just gossip anymore; it had evidence. Screenshots. Circulating quietly, spreading like a leak in a production environment.

It began with a harmless Slack capture someone forwarded “for fun.”
A snippet from the Vega 2.0 thread:

Sameer K: You’re impossible, Naidu.
Radha N: You missed that.

And the worst part, the emojis that followed, two smirks and a heart, glowing like digital confessions.

By 10 a.m., the screenshot had traveled a full circuit through the office and landed squarely on HR’s desk.

Radha heard the fallout first.
Priya caught her outside the pantry, worry etched across her face.

“Radha… you need to check your email.”

Radha frowned. “Why? What now?”

Priya hesitated. “HR wants a quick discussion. About the chat.”

Radha’s breath stopped cold. “No. No, no, no. Tell me you’re joking.”

“I wish I were,” Priya said softly. “It might be nothing. Just… stay calm.”

But Radha already felt it, that sinking, nauseating tension tightening around her like a warning alarm.

The meeting wasn’t confrontational, but it hit like a slow punch, controlled, professional, and deeply wounding in ways HR would never put in writing.

The conference room smelled faintly of sanitizer and stale air, the kind of place where emotions were politely suffocated.
The HR rep smiled in that careful, neutral way people use when delivering bad news wrapped in soft language.

“We just want to ensure that professional boundaries remain intact,” she said, voice smooth as a script.
“And in situations like these, perception can influence credibility. Especially for leads.”

Perception. Credibility.
Words sharpened by implication.

Radha sat still, fingers interlocked tightly in her lap, feeling each phrase land like a quiet verdict and not accusing, but not innocent either.
As if she’d committed a breach by simply… caring.

“We’re not asking you to stop working with Sameer,” the rep added, leaning forward. “You’re both excellent at what you do. This is merely a reminder to be mindful.”

Mindful, the corporate code for watch yourself,
for people are talking,
for don’t give them more to feed on.

Radha forced a polite nod, thanked them for the “clarity,” and stepped out of the room.

Her posture stayed straight.
Her face stayed calm.
But inside, something twisted painfully, humiliation, frustration, fear… and beneath it all, a flicker of anger she didn’t dare let show.

The door shut behind her with a soft click, but the tension followed her like a shadow.

Rohit didn’t have to say much; the heaviness in the room told Sameer everything before the conversation even began.

He walked in expecting a discussion about the failing deployment pipeline. Instead, he found Rohit sitting with his laptop closed, shoulders tense, the kind of posture managers use when something “non-technical” has exploded.

Sameer dropped into the chair opposite him.
“So I’m guessing this isn’t about API latency.”

Rohit rubbed his forehead. “I wish it were. HR looped me in a few hours ago.”

The pit in Sameer’s stomach tightened. “This is about the screenshot, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Rohit admitted. “The Slack message. The emojis. The… implications.”

Sameer looked away, jaw tightening. “Unbelievable. We write half the system in sarcasm and this is what they care about?”

“It’s not about the message,” Rohit said gently. “It’s how people are spinning it. And once HR hears a whisper, they have to act. You know the drill.”

Sameer let out a sharp breath that was almost a laugh. “So we’re guilty of bad optics.”

“Sameer…”
“It’s ridiculous,” he snapped, voice low but shaking with frustration. “We deliver on time, we fix fires, we carry half the damn sprint but a single joke becomes a compliance risk?”

Rohit didn’t fight him. He just nodded, sympathy weighing down his features. “People twist things. They create stories. HR just wants to make sure no one can accuse us of favoritism or bias.”

Sameer’s laugh turned bitter. “Ah yes. The mythical bugs HR actually cares about.”

Rohit leaned back, arms crossed. “Look, man… I know this sucks. But maybe you and Radha should keep some space. Only for a bit.”

Sameer swallowed hard, his expression softening just for a moment.
“Distance,” he repeated quietly. “Everyone’s favorite fix. Even when it breaks everything else.”

Rohit didn’t have an answer for that.

Sameer had barely stepped off the elevator when he saw Radha slipping her notebook into her bag, shoulders drawn tight, the glow from her monitor casting a muted blue halo around her. She looked tired not the usual sprint-week tired, but the kind that sits behind the eyes, heavy and unspoken.

He walked toward her desk with a purpose he didn’t fully understand until he reached her.

She glanced up, expecting a Jenkins update… and froze at the tension in his expression.

“So,” Sameer said, voice low, controlled, but trembling at the edges, “you had the talk too?”

Radha’s breath left her in a small sigh. “HR called it a ‘friendly reminder.’”

Sameer let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “Friendly. Yeah. Like a power cut during deployment.”

She opened her mouth, but he wasn’t done.

“I’m not angry at you,” he said quickly, almost defensively. “I’m angry at..” His hand motioned vaguely around them. “....all of this. The fact that we work well together, trust each other, deliver projects better than half the team… and that’s the thing HR thinks is suspicious.”

Her expression softened. “I know. I hate it too.”

He met her eyes really met them and the frustration simmering under his skin flickered into something more vulnerable. “They’re acting like us being… close… is some kind of compliance bug.”

“Sameer...”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” he challenged, voice barely above a whisper.

Radha swallowed hard. “You’re not wrong. But we can’t fight perception. Not here. Not in this company. You know the politics.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “You really believe distance is the answer?”

She hesitated. That one moment, that one pause, cracked something in him.

“I believe,” she said slowly, “that I like my job. And I’d like to keep it.”

The words hit him like a punch. Not because they were wrong but because they were right.

He nodded, but the muscle in his jaw twitched. “Got it.”

“Don’t do that,” she said quietly, stepping toward him. “Don’t make me the villain for being realistic.”

“I’m not,” he said, eyes darkening. “I just thought....”

He stopped. The sentence died halfway too honest, too raw to finish.

“Thought what?” she asked softly.

He shook his head, turning away. “Nothing. Forget it.”

“Sameer,” she called, reaching out before she could stop herself.

Her fingers brushed the sleeve of his hoodie, a barely-there touch, but enough to make him freeze mid-step.

“This isn’t about not caring,” she whispered. “It’s about protecting what we have, the work, the part of us that actually survives here. This place… it eats people alive if they’re not careful.”

He let out a slow exhale, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I know.”

Radha offered a soft, tired smile, the kind that didn’t reach her eyes but still held warmth. “We’ll figure it out. Just… not right now.”

Sameer finally turned toward her, meeting her gaze with something bruised but steady.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Not right now.”

But the way he looked at her was like a door he wanted to open, but had no permission to tell her everything he didn’t say.

When he finally walked away, Radha lowered herself back into her chair as if gravity had doubled. The glow of her screen blurred at the edges, code lines melting into one another. The cursor blinked steadily, patient, cold, relentless, a tiny pulse reminding her of the question she didn’t dare to answer:

If not now… then when?

She closed her eyes, exhaling slowly. The office hummed around her, empty and hollow, like a shell after high tide.

That night, long after she thought the silence would stretch until morning, her phone buzzed.

Sameer K: So HR says we should ‘minimize personal interaction’.

Radha stared at the message, equal parts irritated and amused.

Radha N: Sounds romantic when you say it like that.

A few seconds.

Sameer K: Yeah, nothing says love like compliance guidelines.

Despite everything, the tension, the meeting, the ache under her ribs, she smiled.

Radha N: We’ll survive this.

A longer pause this time. Then.

Sameer K: You always say that.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, the truth weighing heavier than she liked.

Radha N: Because it’s true.

No reply. Then, finally.

Sameer K: You sure?

Radha stared at the question longer than she intended. Her breath caught, her mind racing through the last few weeks, the banter, the late nights, the way he said her name like it meant something.

Her answer trembled onto the screen.

Radha N: Mostly.

Sameer didn’t respond again.

He sat in his dark apartment, laptop closed, thumb frozen on his phone screen, replaying her answer until it felt like a bruise he kept pressing on purpose.

Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving behind a silence that didn’t soothe but echoed. It was the kind of stillness that made everything louder on the inside.

For the first time in weeks, the distance between them wasn’t playful.
It wasn’t accidental or temporary.
It was imposed with heavy, deliberate, and painfully real.

And as they both tried to fall asleep in separate corners of the same sprawling city, one thought lingered like a stubborn notification neither of them could clear:

Maybe the story that started in Jira comments
- shy, sarcastic, unexpected..
was headed toward a place neither of them had prepared for.

Not an ending.
But a test.
A harder one than either had ever logged.