The campus café was unusually quiet for a Friday afternoon.
Books lay open like sleeping birds across the tables. Outside, the sky shifted between drizzle and sunlight—the kind of weather that couldn't make up its mind.
Karl sat near the window, sketching something halfway between a proof and a constellation in his notebook. Every few seconds, his hand stopped as he checked the entrance.
Then Sophia arrived.
Her red braid glowed against the gray light; a tablet hugged to her chest, a smile somewhere between confidence and curiosity.
"You're early," she said, sliding into the seat across from him.
"I calculate for contingencies," Karl replied, then frowned. "That sounded better in my head."
She laughed. "You talk like you're defending a thesis even on a date."
"It's a professional hazard."
They ordered coffee—hers black, his too sweet—and for a few minutes neither spoke, listening instead to the gentle hum of espresso machines and distant student chatter.
Sophia broke the silence first.
"So, philosopher, what's the most important question in the universe?"
Karl looked up. "Why anything exists at all."
She nodded approvingly. "Good. My turn. What do we do once we know the answer?"
He hesitated. "We learn how to live with it."
That made her smile. "You'd survive a research committee."
Their talk flowed from metaphysics to technology, from dreams of sustainable energy to the ethics of time travel. Sophia's eyes lit up whenever she described data patterns as "poetry with a deadline."
Karl countered with how philosophy was "math that forgot its numbers."
At one point she leaned forward. "You really believe in the Absurdium theory you're developing?"
"It's less belief and more... curiosity turned into a compass," he said. "Sophia, everything I've built so far feels like trying to translate a feeling into equations."
"Maybe that's what all creation is," she said softly. "Feeling expressed through form."
For a moment, the café disappeared. Only their voices existed, orbiting each other like twin ideas tracing the same theorem.
When the rain finally stopped, they stepped outside. Puddles reflected the spires of Cambridge in broken light.
Sophia held her notebook to her chest. "You know, you're not what I expected."
"Disappointed?"
"Curious," she corrected. "You think in impossible directions, and somehow it makes sense."
Karl chuckled. "That's my brand of chaos."
They walked along the river until the library bells began to chime. Conversation drifted into comfortable silence, the kind that doesn't need filling.
At the bridge, Sophia paused. "If your Absurdium Core could change one thing about the world, what would it be?"
He thought for a long time before answering. "I'd make understanding easier—so that people wouldn't need to suffer just to see."
She looked at him as if memorizing the words. "That's... beautiful."
They stopped at the library steps where their paths split.
"So," she said, "do philosophers do second dates?"
Karl smiled. "If reality permits."
"Then let's negotiate with reality," she replied.
They exchanged a handshake that lingered a heartbeat longer than courtesy.
As she turned to leave, Karl caught a glimpse of the setting sun in her hair—red fading into gold, like an idea still half-formed.
[CORE STATUS]
Emotional equilibrium: steady.
Motivation parameter: elevated.
Observation note: Sophia Hirotomi—variable of significance.
Karl tucked the notebook under his arm, the equations on its page suddenly looking more like constellations than logic.
He whispered to himself, "Every theorem begins with a meeting."