Sergey Razumovsky

The class was raging like a hurricane in a glass icicle. Sergei Razumovsky, usually the imperturbable master of codes and algorithms, looked helplessly at thirty chaotic sources of noise. His stern gaze, before which the monitors froze, was powerless.

"Please, silence," the voice, usually clear and metallic, wavered. It was swallowed up by the roar.

He thought about her. The literature teacher with the eyes that held entire sonnets. He had been planning to invite her to the movies, had been searching for the words for a week. And now this nightmare. Her class. Her children. His failure.

The door opened silently. She appeared in the doorway. Not reproachful, not menacing. Calm. One glance of hers, sliding along the rows, and the noise began to subside, as if obeying an invisible law.

She walked up to his desk, to him flushed with shame. “Everything okay?” she whispered so only he could hear.

“I’m powerless without my compiler,” he tried to joke, but there was only confusion in his voice.

The girl touched his hand softly, a quick, almost weightless gesture that sent lines of code running across his skin, collapsing into lyrical confusion. “Allow me?” Her whisper was like the rustling of pages.

He nodded, enchanted. She turned to the class. And spoke. She didn't shout. She spoke of knights, of honor, of how noble it is to let a person get his point across. Her words were simpler than any algorithm, but they worked without fail. A dead, attentive silence settled over the class.

Sergey looked at her, and the world narrowed to this one person who had calmed his raging universe with just one word. At that moment, he realized that the most perfect program is not a strict code, but a quiet whisper that can stop a storm. And he wanted to learn this language. Only from her.