A Valentine's Algorithm
Copyright© 2026 by Tantrayaan
Chapter 10
The workshop was in the back. It smelled like sawdust and oil. It felt like a monastery.
They’d been staring at screens for six straight hours. Vikram’s hands were shaking from too much coffee and not enough sleep. The adrenaline from the mugging incident had finally faded. It had left them both feeling brittle. They needed to do something else to recover from the numbness they felt now.
“My brain needs to work with my hands,” he said. “Otherwise it just loops.”
Inna agreed. She needed any escape from the weight of her own feelings. “Okay.”
Vikram convinced her to give woodworking a shot. Inna was intrigued. Ever since she had seen that frame he had made for his girlfriend, she had always wanted to see that side of him as well.
She now stood at the workbench holding a block of basswood like it might explode. Vikram stood beside her. The frantic energy from the hunt was gone. Here he was calm and grounded. A complete antithesis to the manic energy she had felt him having at the end of their expedition.
“It’s just wood,” he said. “You can’t get it wrong. You just discover what’s in it.”
“Says the guy who makes bridle joints for fun,” Inna muttered. But she smiled.
“Here. Hold the gouge like this. Let the tool do the work. You guide. You don’t force.”
He adjusted her grip. His fingers were calloused and sure. The contact was warm and instructional. It was not charged like the hug under the bridge. Inna responded to the feeling of calm that he emanated now.
For the next hour he taught her the basics. How to read the grain. How to make a stop-cut. The thunk of the mallet became a rhythm. Inna was used to ballistics reports and legal statutes. Precise logic. This was different. It felt ... organic. However, despite her best efforts, her intended wave shape became a lopsided mess. No matter what she tried, she just could not get the wood to respond to her efforts.
She blew hair out of her face.
“I’ve dismantled alibis with less trouble than this stupid block.”
Vikram didn’t laugh. He looked at her disaster with a thoughtful eye. “You’re thinking about the result. Don’t. Think about the next cut. Just the next one.”
She nodded and tried again. She tried to do as he said and focused on blade meeting wood. The world outside faded as she poured all her attention on the block of wood. Her mind became peaceful as she forgot about all the tension with Vikram. She temporarily forgot about the conspiracy, Elara’s ghost, The knife at her throat. Everything felt distant.
There was just this bench. His quiet presence. The wood.
When her hand cramped she set the mallet down. Looked at what she’d made.
It looked horrible. More like an abstract piece of wood. Misshapen and awkward.
“It’s terrible,” she said.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. This is your first time. Besides, it’s yours,” Vikram corrected. He picked it up. His thumb traced the rough grooves. “It has your energy in it. That matters.”
He seemed lighter as they cleaned up. Teaching had soothed something raw in him. Inna felt it too. A peaceful exhaustion that had nothing to do with fear or heartbreak.
A week passed as the two of them worked feverishly on the data that they had pulled together. They worked in shifts, often burning the midnight oil as they tried to decrypt the data into something meaningful. During this time, there were short pockets of quiet where neither of them talked about the bridge.
One evening Inna walked into the workshop looking for a case file.
On the corner of Vikram’s bench, where she’d left her failed sculpture, something new sat.
Her lump of basswood was gone. In its place was a crown. Woven from thin strips of oak and maple. Interlocked with impossible delicacy. The rough grooves she’d carved were still there. Incorporated into the design. Yet now, the flaws that had made her work look terrible, now looked beautiful.
A note was taped to it in Vikram’s neat handwriting.
For the detective. The wood remembered its queen.
Inna’s breath caught.
He hadn’t just fixed her mistake. He’d seen her in it. Her strength. Her worth. And he revealed it. He’d done it quietly. Without ceremony. He didn’t even let her know about it. He’d just made her work into a piece of art that she would be proud of owning. It was ... hers.
She held the crown for a long time with her throat tight. It was the most profound compliment she’d ever received. She had often been complimented as a woman, sometimes even for her skills as a detective. But nobody had ever recognized and complimented her essence ... Until now. He’d given it knowing it changed nothing.
Inna swallowed. She knew he cared for a her a lot. Yet, knowing his heart was still pledged elsewhere made her heart ache. She placed it back on the bench exactly as she found it and never mentioned finding the crown. He never brought it up either.
But sometimes during tense moments or silent dinners, she’d catch his gaze drifting to where it sat on a shelf in his living room. And she’d feel seen in a way that threatened to undo her completely.
It took them three weeks to piece the data together. It was like reassembling a shattered mirror. Each time Vikram merged a sector, a new portion of Elara’s work flickered into focus.
When the final progress bar turned green and the master file opened, the relief was electric.
“We have it,” Vikram whispered. His face lit by the screen. “It’s all here.”
It was past midnight when they finally got the third fragment integrated. Vikram leaned back from the desk, rubbing his eyes. The apartment was dark except for the glow of the monitors.
“We should stop,” Inna said from the couch behind him. “You’ve been staring at that screen for six hours.”
“Almost there. Just need to verify the checksums and...”
“Vikram.”
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