THE LOVE ALGORITHM

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Romance

Eli Huxley notices the details first-broad shoulders, a mouth built for trouble, eyes like they've already solved him. It's just observation. Data points. But when the variables spell Leo Cynclair, the conclusion is always the same: dangerous as hel...

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CHAPTER 2 - //: floral.input + allergy.crash

Start from the beginning

by ChaseMonre

                                        
                                                  Eli rubbed at the bridge of his nose, then forced his focus back to HeartCode's console. The cursor blinked like a metronome counting down to some inevitable crash. He typed:
def detect_emotional_anomaly(input):
      if input == "Leo":
      return "bug"
      return "safe"
He stared at it. Deleted it. Typed it again.
Behind him, Leo shifted. Pulled out his earbuds. "...you okay now?"
Eli didn't turn. "I'm fine."
"You looked like you were about to hack up a lung."
"I didn't."
Leo's bed creaked. Then soft footsteps. Then—goddamnit—he was behind him. Too close. Just enough for Eli to feel it. Heat. Gravity.
"Didn't mean to break your system."
Eli snorted. "You didn't. The flowers did."
Leo leaned down slightly, voice near his ear. "Right. Of course. The flowers. Not me."
Eli held still. "You're not a variable in my system."
A pause. Then Leo laughed—low, wicked, a little too pleased. "Sure I'm not."
He backed away, flopped onto his bed again, and rolled to face the wall.
Eli exhaled. Slowly. Thought about updating his firewall. 
Instead, he typed: 
// anomaly confirmed
// variable: L_Cynclair
// status: unpredictable
// threat level: pending...
The rain picked up.
 So did the pulse in his neck.
 And somewhere deep in the system, something shifted.
[SYSTEM LOG: 2025-09-02 | 23:17:02]
 USER: ELI_HUXLEY
 INPUT: UNEXPECTED BOUQUET DELIVERY (ORIGIN: UNKNOWN)
 PROCESS: ALLERGICRESPONSE.EXE TRIGGERED
 CONFLICT DETECTED:
 → THROATTIGHTNESS++
 → EYEIRRITATION++
 → VARIABLE L_CYNCLAIR PROXIMITY = HIGH
 → NEURALFOCUS: SCRAMBLED
 RESPONSE:
 // FOREIGN OBJECT IDENTIFIED
 // ENVIRONMENTAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED
 // IS THIS SABOTAGE... OR SENTIMENT?
🜃 🜂 🜁
Thursday Morning – Public Humiliation.exe
The printer betrayed him.
Eli stood at the front of the lecture hall, holding the corpse of what should've been a perfectly formatted Ethics report.
Eight pages of smeared ink, ghost text, and what looked suspiciously like a grease fingerprint near the middle. No, he didn't eat greasy food. Yes, he shared a room with a chaos goblin.
His professor raised an eyebrow. "Mr. Huxley, is that... readable?"
Eli wanted to disappear into the floor tiles, or possibly upload himself to a cloud server where nobody had a face, let alone Leo Cynclair's smirking one in the back row.
"I, uh—yes. Mostly." He held it up like an offering. "Minor rendering issues. But the content's intact."
Behind him, Leo coughed. Loud. Dramatic. Possibly laughing. Eli didn't look.
The professor sighed. "Just submit the digital copy next time."
Eli nodded, retreated to his seat like a defeated knight dragging his own armor. Slid in beside Leo, who leaned over with a half-whisper: