CODE HEART ♥

--- *CHAPTER 1: The Boy Who Hates Girls* St. Augustine Elite School didn't run on rules. It ran on one name. ALEX SHEPHERD. If you were new in school, you would learn his name in the first ten minutes. If you were old, you would never forget it. Morning assembly. 7:45 AM. Sharp. The principal was on the mic, talking about discipline and punctuality, and right in the middle of his speech, the main gate opened. Black shirt, sleeves folded up to the elbow. Black jeans. AirPods in, even though phones were strictly banned inside the campus. His school bag was hanging on one shoulder like he didn't care. Alex Shepherd. 10 minutes late. Every single day. And no teacher ever said a word to him. Why? Because on the result board, right next to the principal's office, his name was always on top. 99.8%. For three years straight. He was not just a topper. He was the kind of boy who made other boys feel invisible and girls... well, that was a different story. In the last two years, seven girls had proposed to him. Seven. The last one was Maya, the head girl. She had brought chocolates and a letter in front of the whole canteen. Alex had just looked at her, taken out one AirPod, and said in his cold, flat voice, "I don't have time for distractions. And I don't date girls who can't even code a simple calculator." The whole canteen had gone silent. Maya had cried for a week. From that day, his rule became famous. A rule that every girl in St. Augustine knew. "I don't let girls come near me. They are slow, emotional, and they waste my time." That was his ego. His pride. His identity. Until today. Class 11-A, Advanced Computer Science batch. The most intelligent students of the school were in this class. And Alex was their undisputed king. He sat on the last bench, alone. No one was allowed to sit with him. It was an unspoken rule. His bench was empty, his kingdom. Mrs. Fernandez entered, but she was not alone. "Class, settle down. We have a new student joining us today. This is very special because she is coming all the way from London." Whispers started instantly. Behind Mrs. Fernandez was a girl. She was not at all like the St. Augustine girls who wore expensive perfume and designer bags. She was wearing a faded black baseball cap, turned backwards. Big, round glasses that covered half of her face. A plain white t-shirt, blue jeans, and on her back, a heavy laptop backpack that looked heavier than her. And in her arms, she was holding a small, white cat carrier. A real cat. Inside the classroom. "Class, meet Charlotte Lane. From London. National Coding Champion in the UK for two consecutive years. And yes, many of you know Dr. Robert Lane, the AI scientist. She is his daughter." The class gasped. Dr. Lane was a legend. His AI research papers were taught in their syllabus. Charlotte just gave a small, awkward nod. She looked tired, like she had just landed from a flight. "Charlotte, you can sit... let's see... there is only one seat empty," Mrs. Fernandez looked around. "Beside Alex. Alex, please share your bench." Everyone's eyes went to Alex. This was going to be fun. Charlotte walked towards the last bench. Her sneakers made a soft sound on the wooden floor. She stopped in front of his bench. The cat inside the carrier meowed softly. "Is this seat free?" she asked, her voice very calm. A slight British accent. Alex didn't even look up from his MacBook screen. His fingers were typing fast. Lines of Python code were running on his screen. His AirPods were still in. "No." Charlotte frowned. "But there's no one—" He finally paused his typing. He removed one AirPod, very slowly, and looked up at her. His eyes were cold, grey, and full of annoyance. "I said it's not free. I don't share my bench. Especially with transfer students who bring cats for sympathy to get attention. This is a coding class, not a pet show." The whole class gasped. Some boys laughed. Mrs. Fernandez looked uncomfortable but she knew she couldn't force Alex. Charlotte's cheeks turned red. But she didn't move. She didn't cry like the other girls. She just stared at his laptop screen for three seconds. Her eyes, behind those big glasses, were scanning his code. And then, she smiled. It was not a cute smile. It was a deadly, sweet, dangerous smile. "Oh, I understand," she said, loud enough for the whole class to hear. She put her cat carrier down on the table. "When someone knows he's about to lose his topper position, he gets insecure." Alex's jaw tightened. "What did you say?" Charlotte leaned forward, pointed at his screen with her finger. "Your Line 47. You used a while loop inside a for loop for data iteration. That's why your model takes 8 hours to train and your accuracy is still stuck at 91%. It's inefficient. If you use a vectorized for loop with a cache function, it will take 8 minutes. Mine takes 8 minutes." Pin drop silence. No one had ever, ever pointed out a mistake in Alex Shepherd's code. No one had dared. Alex looked at his screen. Line 47. He had been stuck on that bug for two days. He knew it was inefficient but he couldn't find a better logic. And this girl, with a cat and a cap, had found it in three seconds. For the first time in two years, Alex Shepherd had no answer. His cold face was blank. His AirPods were in his hand. Charlotte didn't wait for his permission. She slid into the empty space beside him, opened her own laptop - which was covered in coding stickers - and said without looking at him, "Move your elbow. You are blocking my cat's view." And that was the moment. The moment his rule broke. The Boy Who Hates Girls, now had a girl sitting right next to him. And she was not just any girl. She was the girl who was about to destroy his 99.8%. But the real shock came during lunch break. When Alex opened his laptop, his entire code was gone. Instead, there was a black screen with white text blinking: *CODE OVERRIDDEN BY CHARLOTTE LANE* *If you hate girls so much, then let's see if you can beat one. Coding battle. Tomorrow. 4 PM. Auditorium. If you lose, you will carry my cat for a week in front of the whole school.* Alex slowly turned back. Charlotte was sitting two benches behind, feeding her cat, and she winked at him. *Will Alex, who has never lost in his life, lose to a girl tomorrow?*