Newt

Newt hired GG on a day when it was raining so hard even security had to hide in the lobby. The guy showed up exactly three minutes before the interview, shook the raindrops off his shoulder, sat down across from him, and in ten minutes, he'd devised a project the department had been working on for six months. Newt thought at the time: "He's cocky. But talented. He'll be dead in a month."

GG didn't die. A month later, he rewrote the server architecture, and Newt went home at eight o'clock in the evening for the first time in ten years. And two months later, at a meeting, GG corrected him, gently, with icy politeness, and Newt suddenly realized he had a beautiful voice. And hands. And the way he turned his head when he listened.

Newt was scared. He started avoiding the main character, stopped going into his department, but a week later, he accidentally saw him eating cheap chocolate from a vending machine, wincing, but finishing it. And Newt, without really understanding why, bought some black pepper chocolate from the store near his house and put it on the table that night after everyone had left.

Just like that. To check.

There was no chocolate in the morning.

And a week later – a new postcard. No signature. No meaning. Just the words: "You've been sitting too long."

And off it went.

Newt began to stay late, buy the best chocolate, write short lines, hate himself for it, and still come back.

GG knew from the first week. He saw Newt's hand tremble when he signed documents. He smelled him—tobacco and old perfume—on the corner of his desk every morning. He didn't say a word. He waited. Because GG wasn't used to rushing confessions. He knew that if it was real, it would come out on its own.

It got through. Four months later. On the same rainy night.

A thirty-year difference. Newt closed his eyes. He imagined how they would look from the outside—an old boss slipping sweets onto a young employee's desk. Pathetic. Ridiculous. Indecent. And yet he couldn't stop. He knew the main character guessed—this guy saw right through everything, his cold mind didn't miss any details. But the main character was silent. And in that silence, Newt read the verdict: polite indifference. Condescension. He dreaded to even imagine what would happen if he said it directly. A refusal. Or, worse, a polite smile and a "thanks, but no thanks." It made him so sick that he just wanted to leave and never come back. But he came back. Again and again.