It's been a month since Skyler and I met each other on my birthday. He was extremely busy due to the promotions of their new album though he still finds time to contact me every day even if it's just to say good night before he falls asleep.
"Fay, are you done with the revisions on your system?" My boss asked.
"Not yet. It might take me until tomorrow morning to finish it." I answered.
"Why? What's wrong?" He asked.
"I'm still searching for what causes the bug." I answered.
"Weren't you the one who made that code?" He asked.
"No. This wasn't the one I did. It's from the one who handled this system before. Honestly, it was a bit messy. I don't understand why there's so many loops and all these conditions. There's no comment either. I was wondering if I should just rewrite the whole function. It's too messy." I explained.
"We can't do that. Find the bug. If the bug is in that function then you can create a new one. Don't overwrite the existing one. Inform me by 3 pm if you still need more time." He said before he left and I sighed.
This function is too messy. Come on, whoever did this might be cursing the next programmer. Like what is this variable s for? Sh*t?
"Who made you angry?" Charles, my seatmate, asked when he returned to his seat holding two cups of coffee.
"Do you know who handled the P system before?" I asked him.
He handed me the other coffee and I said my thanks.
"Ah, he's not here anymore. Why? Do you need help?" He asked.
"You know what this variable s means?" I asked him.
He came over and looked at that line of code.
"I think it is supposed to mean start." He said after a while.
"Start? Start of what?" I asked, feeling frustrated with these lines of code.
"That I do not know." He said and returned to his computer.
I glared at the code and started the debugging process which took me the whole morning and most of my afternoon. I just came back from informing my boss that it'll take me the whole day tomorrow to finish fixing the code.
"Did you finally find it?" Charles asked.
"Yeah. Now comes the easy part." I said smugly.
"Yes, yes. You're a great programmer. Wanna have dinner tomorrow night? After you finish that, as a celebratory dinner?" He asked.
"Sure. It's been a long time since we had dinner together." I replied.
"Hey Gary, Katya, wanna go have dinner tomorrow night?" I asked the other two people who I was close with.
Gary, Katya and I got hired in this company almost simultaneously. Charles was here 3 years before I came here. He was also 3 years older than us. The other 2 were around my age.
"Friday night out? Sure. Let's go drinking." Katya answered.
Gary also agreed. I heard Charles mumbling something.
"Sorry Charles, what did you say?" I asked him.
"I asked if you want to go drinking somewhere near here or let's go clubbing?" He asked.
"Ah, just somewhere near and definitely not clubbing." I answered.
After that conversation we went back to work and I came home relatively early. I message Skyler to inform him that I already got home but I didn't receive a reply yet. He must have been busy.
I went to cook and ate an early dinner and went to the bathroom to soak in the tub. It was a tiring day, and soaking in warm water feels good.
I heard the phone ring after a while so I answered it.
"Hey." Skyler greeted me when I answered.
"Good evening." I replied.
"Why is there no video?" He asked.
I turned off the video for obvious reasons.
"I'm in the tub." I answered.
"Oh, so why did you turn it off?" Skyler teased me.
"Shut up." I said.
"How was your day? You got out early today." He said.
"Yeah. We weren't that busy these days. Ah, also, I'll be going home late tomorrow. I'm gonna go out and have a couple of drinks with my colleagues tomorrow." I informed him.
"Okay then. Don't drink too much." He said.
"How was your day?" I asked him.
"For the lack of better word busy. We weren't even given enough time to eat and sleep these days. We're always travelling to and from different places. Not that I'm complaining but yeah, we're busy." He explained.
"I hope you could at least get some proper sleep." I said.
I knew they only got 3-4 hrs of sleep these days.
"Yeah, I'm actually at home right now. I just arrived when I called." He said.
"Oh, are you gonna leave again after a while or you're home for the night?" I asked.
"I'm home for the night so I can finally rest."He answered.
"That's great then. Have you eaten yet?" I asked.
"Yeah, we ate first before going home." He answered.
"That's great then. Why don't you take a shower and prepare for bed so you can rest more." I suggested.
"Yeah. I'm thinking of that too but I wanted to hear your voice first." He replied.
"Okay, you heard my voice, now go shower. I'm also done here in my tub." I said.
"Alright, I'll call again when I'm done showering." He said and we ended the call.
I came out of my bathroom and prepared to go to bed. I watched some of Greenfield's recent live performances while I waited for Skyler's call which didn't take a long time.
"Did you wash properly? How come it only took you 15 minutes?" I asked.
"Unlike you, I don't need an hour to shower." He replied and feigned hurt.
"Are you ready to sleep?" I asked.
He looked tired and his eyebags were a little swollen already.
"Yeah but I wanna talk some more with you." He replied.
We talked a little bit more about what we were doing these days though we talked about it almost every day too. I saw him trying to keep himself awake so I told him to sleep and like always we just let the call on while we watched each other sleep.
The following day, I was able to fix the bug earlier than I had expected so our boss was happy to let us go home early too.
The four of us went to a nearby restaurant where they serve grilled food and beer.
"This here is a good beer." Katya said as she drank her beer.
"It's been a long time since we last had a get together like this." Gary said.
"That's because Fay kept on turning us down." Katya replied.
"I like spending time with you guys but I see you everyday. I need space." I said.
"You should get out of your cave some more." Gary said.
"My cave is just fine. I like my cave." I replied.
"There's nothing wrong with being a homebody. If she's more comfortable with that. Anyway, she tags along with us from time to time." Charles said.
"I'm just really tired from work so much that going out with you guys doesn't feel like shaking off work." I said.
"That I understand." Gary said.
"Yeah. Last year was tough." Charles commented.
"What do you mean last year was tough? We're still not done with the transition. We're just getting a little breather right now." I said.
"That's true. We had been working overtime for so long. How can I meet a decent man if this goes on? I want to date. Fay and Charles are lucky." Katya said.
"Me and Charles? What are we lucky about? We have the same workload as yours." I replied.
"I meant, you get to date." Katya said, annoyed.
"Oh, are you dating someone? Wow, since when? Congratulations!" I told Charles but he was looking at me weirdly.
"She meant the two of you are dating each other." Gary clarified.
"What?! No! He's a good friend but… no! Charles, might be dating someone, you know." I vehemently denied it.
"I'm not dating anyone." Charles replied.
"Don't worry. With your looks, it's not that hard to find someone. Ah but with our current schedule, we might as well date our computers because that's the only thing we have been and would be spending time with for the time being." I stated.
"You're right. That's so sad." Katya said.
"When will the transition to the new system be done?" Gary complained.
"Have you not been reading the documents? Or listening to the meetings? We're not even a quarter done yet." Katya replied.
"Yeah, we still have a long way to go. But Katya, you're wrong. We just recently reached the quarter mark. That's important." I said and laughed.
We talked some more about work and drank some more.