The high from the Innovation Showcase was a sustained, humming energy that carried them through the following week. The business card from Nneka at Paystack sat on Kairos's desk, propped against his monitor like a talisman. It wasn't just an invitation; it was validation on a level he'd never dreamed of. He'd catch himself looking at it during a coding break, a disbelieving smile touching his lips.
The dynamic between him and Ares had shifted into a new, comfortable gear. The partnership felt solidified, tempered by the fire of their argument and hardened by their shared success. They fell back into their routine—coding separately, syncing up in the evenings—but the conversations were lighter now, punctuated by a shared sense of accomplishment.
Kairos: Just pushed the fix for the notification delay. Should be live now. Ares:Perfect. I'm adding a 'trending issues' section to the home page. Things with the most upvotes in the last 24 hours get promoted. Kairos:That's genius. The geology lounge leak would have been trending for sure. Ares:Exactly. Gives more immediate visibility. How's the backend holding up? Kairos:Smooth. It's handling the small traffic spike from the showcase without a hiccup. Our architecture is solid.
It was during one of these exchanges that a new message popped up, not from Ares, but from a unknown number.
Unknown: Hey, is this the guy from the CampusFix app? Kairos:…Maybe. Who's this? Unknown:Ben. Geology grad student. You fixed our lounge ceiling. That app is LEGIT.
Kairos's eyebrows shot up. user_48b1d9 had a name.
Kairos: Ben! Hey! Glad it worked for you. Was it fixed okay? Ben:Dude, it was fixed the next day. I've been telling everyone about your app. My friend in the chem department used it to report a fume hood that wasn't sucking. Also fixed. Kairos:No way. That's amazing. Ben:Way. Anyway, a bunch of us from the grad student association were talking. We've got a tiny budget for stuff like this. We want to sponsor a pizza party for you and your team. As a thank you.
Kairos stared at his phone, a lump forming in his throat. A pizza party. It was the dorkiest, most heartfelt reward imaginable. It was better than any prize money.
Kairos: That's… honestly, that's the best thing anyone's ever offered us. We'd love that. Ben:Sweet. I'll DM you deets.
Kairos immediately screenshotted the conversation and sent it to Ares.
Kairos: You are not going to believe this.
Her response was a string of wide-eyed emojis followed by:
Ares: We're getting pizza? From real people? Because we fixed their ceiling? Kairos:I think that's exactly what's happening. Ares:This is the highest form of praise. I'm… weirdly emotional about this.
The following Friday evening, they found themselves in a reserved corner of a noisy, popular pizza place near campus. Ben was there, along with half a dozen other grad students from various departments. They were a lively, smart group, full of stories about broken equipment, frustrating bureaucracy, and their sheer relief at having a tool that finally worked.
"You have no idea," said a woman named Chloe from the biology lab. "I spent three weeks emailing about a broken autoclave. I used your app on a whim, and a tech showed up in two days. I almost cried."
Kairos and Ares just listened, absorbing the praise. It was one thing to see a resolved status in their admin panel; it was another entirely to see the face of the person whose PhD timeline had just been saved by it.
Robin, Sam, and Drake had also been invited, their roles as "moral support" and "early investors" (as Robin put it) honored with double helpings of pepperoni. They held court, telling exaggerated stories of the hackathon and Kairos's various misfortunes, much to the delight of the grad students.
At one point, Ares nudged Kairos with her elbow. "Look at them," she said, nodding toward their friends. "They're so proud of you."
Kairos looked. Robin was animatedly describing the Great Database Lockout of the hackathon, and Sam was solemnly correcting his technical inaccuracies. Drake was showing someone the app on his phone. A warm feeling spread through Kairos's chest. They were proud. And he was proud to have them there.
He looked back at Ares. The low lighting of the restaurant softened her features, and she was smiling, a real, relaxed smile that reached her eyes. The constant pressure of the last month was gone from her face.
"They're proud of us," he corrected gently.
Her smile deepened, and she held his gaze for a moment longer than necessary. "Yeah," she said softly. "They are."
The conversation flowed around them, a river of laughter and shared frustration and newfound hope. In that moment, surrounded by friends and the very people they'd built their app for, the lines between them blurred completely. They weren't just the quiet coder and the mysterious princess. They weren't just project partners.
They were the people who had fixed the ceiling. They were a team.
And as Kairos reached for another slice of pizza, offered to him by a grateful chemist, he knew with absolute certainty that this—the messy, human, real-world impact of it all—was better than any trophy, any prize, any business card from a big tech company.
This was what building something was all about.