It was 5pm in the evening. Nishant had been waiting for more than 3 hours now. Shradha had gotten through the first round of coding competition and was currently inside the conference room where the second round was being conducted. Shradha had told that she would probably come out quickly and had made sure that Nishant wasn't going to leave here alone, by handing him the duty of watching over her stuff. The contestants were allowed to take only a notebook and pen. So she did not even have a phone inside. Nishant had been studying all the while, but now he was feeling bored. He wanted to know the results badly.
Just when Nishant was thinking of asking one of the organizers about the status of the 2nd round, people started coming out of the conference room. Nishant suddenly felt that he was more excited about the results than Shradha. She came out almost at the end, but her face had this beautiful glow. She was thinking about something and smiling. As soon as she spotted Nishant, she rushed towards him and started talking about the competition.
"You know, what was the challenge? Java programming; that too some advanced features that was not part of our syllabus so far. Initially I was like, 'I'm done! No hope for me!' then this senior came and he was just giving out general ideas. He explained about the challenge in general and also the feature. Then I remembered that I had heard about this from @sorry_Bro a few days ago. He had kinda explained it to me. So I quickly tried a few things and it worked! Nishant are you even listening to me? IT WORKED!!!"
"Yea. I am listening. By the way, would you mind telling me if you are selected for the next round or not ?" Nishant was clearly enjoying her excited phase. He had never seen her this happy about anything.
"Oh I did not get through. They only selected 20 people, based on code efficiency, time taken to write the code and something else. I took a lot of time as I was using brute force method - you know the classic trial and error method. Also I don't think my code was efficient as per industry standards. "
"Oh so why are so happy when you were kicked out in the second round? " Nishant imitated Shradha's usual tone when she made fun of him.
"Hey hey! Don't be so me! I was happy because one of the judges came and spoke to me. She said that the approach I used was really good and innovative. But the efficiency and timing could be improved. So I told her that this topic was new for me and I'll surely work on improving the other things. She was impressed to hear that. She was like 'that is one hell of an attitude that every engineer should have. You did not know the concept but you experimented and solved the problem, you never gave up. That's amazing. I hardly say this to people, but you my dear young lady have a bright future! Keep up this attitude in life and you will go places!'. Nishant, she actually praised me!! she said that I just need to learn a few things and brush up my knowledge and by next year I can easily win this thing! Can you believe that! "
Shradha felt that she was on top of the world. No one had ever praised her like that. Even though she wasn't selected for next round, Shradha was filled with hope for next year. She thought, 'This semester has been really going well. I finally have a good friend and now I even have hope in life! '.
It was getting late and they decided to head home. Nishant wanted a treat for her victory and Shradha had promised that they will go out on Saturday to celebrate this day. As usual Nishant accompanied Shradha to her home. It had been a habit of sorts lately. They both had their 2 wheeler with them, and they would ride side by side to Shradha's home. They would stand under a tree near her house and chit-chat for a few minutes; eat some roadside snacks, before Nishant would leave for his home. They followed the same ritual but Shradha noticed that her father was home early. So she bid goodbye to Nishant in hurry and went inside.