“Why must we do this now? I was working,” Satya whined, melodramatic as a telenovela actress in the hope that Olivia wouldn’t notice her trying to shuffle backwards at the pace of a socially-anxious snail.This was time being wasted, time she could be spending on her latest architectural project; if that wasn’t bad enough, she was wasting it in the company of these people .

It wasn’t that Satya disliked them, but they were all so different. So overwhelming. Disparate voices, faces, scents, making her desperate to run.

“Because you need a break, mi cielo !” Olivia matched her whining tone and slashed into Satya’s panicked thoughts. She wrapped her arm around Satya’s waist, urging - dragging, really - her forward as the line moved up a step. “I need one too.”

The line moved again and they were at the counter, facing an Omnic coated in pastel paints. Satya stared at the Omnic; her mouth opened and closed several times like a short-circuiting machine. What was she meant to say? To order? Every time she tried to focus on a flavor to decide if that was what she wanted, little sparks of irritation at being dragged out of her workspace melted away the consideration. Her brow furrowed and her teeth clenched.

Olivia had been with Satya long enough to know that signal - she was overwhelmed, and growing more frustrated, so she took the lead and pointed at the board. “Two mint chocolate.”

Satya was still lost in the amount of options by the time Olivia had their frozen yogurts and was guiding her to a table. “They have too many flavors,” she stated firmly. “We were not meant to have such temptation, and in so many vari-Mmph!”

Olivia interrupted her, jamming a spoonful of yogurt right into Satya’s mouth.

“...Mmph.” Satya relaxed, focusing on the flavor to blot out the distractions around her. The internal cogs that orchestrated her ground to a screeching halt and began to turn backwards, taking the pressure from her muscles and letting her body relax. She let Olivia press the spoon into her hand and dug at her frozen yogurt, content to be in her own little bubble of mint chocolate and silence.

Olivia, on the other hand, ignored her own treat. She just watched Satya, chin in hand, and pushed her own cup over when Satya was halfway through the first.

“Look at them,” Olivia said minutes later, quiet as a thief in the night. She nodded towards a table in response to Satya’s confused glance.

Two young girls were sitting at the table; they couldn’t have been more than sixteen, perhaps seventeen. They were holding hands, and their noses were buried in a pile of books. Students, Satya assumed; a dim beacon flickered in her memory reminding her that it was May. Definitely students, studying for exams, she decided.

“What about them?”

Olivia just smiled and nodded towards them again, prompting Satya to take a closer look.

She scrutinized them the way she did a building. Was it their clothing? It was fairly standard, reasonably-priced designs inspired by haute couture, but clearly off in the cut and stitching. As soon as she had the thought, Satya discarded it. Olivia would never have noticed that.

The hand-holding? Perhaps, if Olivia’s interest was that another couple of girlfriends were present, but that was too obvious and pointless. It had no meaning.

The books? Yes, the books. Recognition dawned on her. One of the girls was invested in a pile of books that hinted very strongly towards architecture, or engineering; the other was clearly a student of the computer sciences. It still didn’t mean much, though.

Olivia saw the flash of understanding followed by questioning and continued, “They took time to relax.It didn’t destroy their work, corazón. ”

Satya put her spoon down and sighed, her eyes turned to the side. “Fine,” she muttered, relenting to Olivia’s attack. “I suppose rest is not the enemy of productivity,” she agreed reluctantly, her words clipped and stilted. “Not too much rest,” Satya was quick to add, lest Olivia take it as an invitation to keep her away from her work for the rest of the day.

“Nope. We’re eating our yogurt,” she stabbed another spoonful into Satya’s mouth to block her argument, “and then we’re going to a movie. Something dumb and sappy.”