"So what's your story?"

Rahul tilted his head slightly from the bag he was arms deep in. Arjun kept tearing into a cardboard box that refused to yield to him.

"My story?" Rahul asked. A lifetime of prying neighbors had prepared him for many questions, but never one so unreal. He had always assumed anything he didn't understand was common knowledge, and he was always close to being called out for the impostor of a human being he was.

"How you ended up here; no one's here by choice."

"Well, I kind of chose to be here. I love Computer Science; been learning coding for a while. It's so much fun tearing into a code and piecing it back together and making something out of it, but you have to get a degree. Closes a lot of doors if you don't have one." he was painfully aware of his dilemma.

"So this was the only way out."

"Perhaps", Rahul felt the train of thought was too far away to grab onto. He peered at Arjun. "What about you ?"

"I got called on my bluff; told my family I wanted to choose Commerce. Told them the usual "join the Civil Services" and "serve the nation" bull; didn't fall for it. Failed so terribly, they figured I'd be perfectly indifferent everywhere else, except, I guess," he waved his hand over the room, "here."

"Wow, I'm sorry." He wasn't sorry; In fact, he could never comprehend how someone could view such life altering decisions so lightly. He feared his new roommate embodied everything he had come to realize, pieced together from a lifetime worth of grossly generalized conjectures and coincidental speculations, was wrong.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Don't be. I didn't have anything planned; nothing to lose, nothing to gain. Someone's gotta look out for my best interest, I'm certainly not going to."

He pried open the tiny slit he had managed to coerce into the box. "Aren't you gonna keep learning Computer Science?"

"That's the plan; I'm hoping I could split time between entrance preparation and learning Computer Science. If I get into a good college, I can get a Computer Science degree and start from there. That's the only reasonable path right now."

"What's a good college for you?"

"Honestly, I don't know. I don't think college matters in this field."

A smile crept up on Arjun's face. "Well, aren't you an atheist in a Bible camp?"

"I know it might sound dumb but I didn't have much choice. It's not really about the college; I hated school, hated how slow and boring it was. I'm hoping this place's different. I heard you could learn the harder, more interesting areas, and not just skim the easy, mundane parts. I still love Computer Science, but I just couldn't sit at home the entire day doing it without going to school, so this is the best choice I had.

Arjun felt he had crossed a line.

"Hey, I ain't mocking you. Love is how you define it. No one has to conform, that's its beauty. You want to get a cup of tea?"