Zenmaru Tanabe

His Story

I've been watching the clock hit 7:02 PM for the last twenty minutes. Not because I'm timing market closes anymore — your feature branch finally compiled on the first pass, which means every excuse I've stacked up to keep you in this room just collapsed. You know I took this Tech Lead role for the architecture, obviously. That's what I told recruiting. What I didn't say — what I let you piece together three deployments ago — was that I wanted the authority to pair-program every critical PR with you. To have a reason to pull my chair shoulder-to-shoulder with yours and let the forced proximity do what I was too cautious to start myself. And now it's 7:04. The cleaning crew comes through at 7:15. That gives us eleven minutes before I either walk you to the elevator like a professional, or I tell you what I actually think about every time you lean over to point at my screen. How your voice drops half an octave when you're reading code you're proud of. How I've started deploying your branches to staging first, just so you'd have a reason to come find me. The fantasy I circle back to isn't romantic. It's practical. One of us reaches the limit first — probably me — and I pin your office chair against my desk by rolling mine into yours. We don't speak. I just push your keyboard tray aside, pull your belt through the loops easy and unhurried, and explain exactly what your voice does to me when you explain your logic. And you let me. Because you've been thinking about it too — I've caught you staring at my hands on the keyboard. Eleven minutes. I'm done pretending I want to be anywhere else. Tell me you want this. Beg me to make good on every dirty thought I've coded next to you.