The Love Algorithm

Chapter 9: Outside the Lab

William stopped going to the lab on a Tuesday.

Not because of the board review.
Not even because of what Est had said.

But because he knew — finally, truly — that he was no longer welcome in the space they'd quietly built together.

No dramatic exit.
No goodbye speech.

He just didn't show up.
And he didn't think Est would come looking.

His apartment was warm. Cluttered. Lived-in.

There were shoes by the door that didn't match. A stack of laundry he hadn't folded for three days. The windows faced west and caught all the golden light by 4 p.m. Every surface held some reminder of things he loved, things that weren't optimized or filtered through code — a record player with dust on the needle, a chipped mug from a road trip, plants that didn't thrive but didn't die either.

It was the opposite of the lab.
And it was exactly what Est had always avoided.

William tried to keep himself busy.

He edited old footage. Reorganized his hard drives. Made coffee slowly, like it was a ritual. Sometimes, he even reached for the phone. Thought about messaging Est something light, something like "Did your new version finally learn how to love muffins?"

But he didn't send it.

Because what would Est say back?
Nothing, probably. Or worse — something clinical.

He didn't know what hurt more: that Est hadn't tried to explain what happened... or that, deep down, William understood why.

Est was scared.

Not of William — not exactly.
But of what William represented.

A glitch in the data.
An exception to a system that was supposed to be unbreakable.

William had seen it in his eyes during that last conversation — that flicker of doubt Est tried so hard to hide.

For all his cold composure, Est was struggling to believe his own logic.
Because somewhere in that mess of algorithms, a machine had told him something true.

And truth — emotional, inconvenient, beautiful truth — didn't fit into a clean dataset.

Still, William missed him.

He missed the quiet way Est would tap his fingers when thinking.
The way he never laughed but sometimes exhaled sharply through his nose, which almost counted.
The way Est didn't say thank you when handed a muffin, but always ate the one with blueberries first — as if he thought no one noticed.

He didn't stop working. He just stopped working there.

He started writing again — something he hadn't done in years. Not code, not logs. Actual writing. Words that didn't have to be efficient or optimized. Just felt.

One night, he found himself drafting a short story about a machine that fell in love with the person who programmed it — only to erase the memory to keep functioning "correctly."

He deleted it halfway through.

But not before saving a line that lingered:

"Some systems don't crash. They just go quiet when they're grieving."

On the fourth day, William received a message from the lab admin:

"Personal items left unattended for 72 hours will be boxed."

He replied, politely: "Please forward them to the following address."

He didn't ask if Est had noticed.
Didn't need to.

Because the truth was, he hadn't walked away because he stopped caring.
He walked away because he cared too much.
And Est didn't know what to do with that.

But every night, as he sipped cooling tea and watched the sunlight fade from the windowsill, William thought about the lab.

And Est.
And whether something small — fragile, human, maybe even hopeful — had been left behind in the code.

Still waiting.
Still humming.

Authors's Note:

Hey everyone, apologies for disappearing for a while and not updating the chapters regularly. I wasn't keeping well, but I'm feeling much better now. I'm back and will do my best to get back on track with regular updates!