It was only the second morning of their gym routine, but Bharath and Jorge already felt like they had aged thirty years overnight.

  “I swear, even my ears are sore,” Jorge groaned as they shuffled across the dew-soaked campus wn like wounded soldiers, gym bags slung low like emotional baggage from a failed retionship.

  “I don’t think I can fully raise my arms,” Bharath wheezed. “I had to shampoo my hair with my elbows. My elbows, Jorge. I looked like a drunk chicken in the shower.”

  Jorge winced. “I sneezed this morning and it felt like my rib cage colpsed.”

  Neither of them even considered skipping.

  Not after what they’d seen.

  Not after walking past men in the gym who looked like they’d been handcrafted by Renaissance sculptors on pre-workout supplements, or watching women on the track who ran sprints with the intensity of someone trying to outrun generational trauma.

  “We’re gonna look like that someday hermano,” Jorge mumbled, eyes bloodshot.

  Bharath nodded, then tripped over a sprinkler head.

  The gym loomed ahead of them like a temple built for pain.

  Inside, they stretched, lifted, grimaced, and audibly regretted their life choices. Jorge’s attempt at squats ended with him whispering, “I think my soul left my body,” while Bharath got stuck mid-deadlift and had to be rescued by someone with traps the size of dinner ptes.

  They both still relied heavily on the assisted pull-up machine - the one that practically did the exercise for you while quietly judging your choices.

  But this time?

  It only took two fewer assist ptes.

  Progress.

  “I think I saw my muscle twitch today,” Bharath whispered during a water break. “It might have been a shadow, but it felt personal.”

  They powered through rows, presses, a cable machine that Jorge swore was designed by a sadist, and a “core finisher” that left them lying on their backs like roadkill.

  The real boss fight, though?

  The shower.

  It was still a gauntlet.

  They walked in with towels clutched like armor, eyes locked firmly forward, pretending they were in a steam-filled monastery of ptonic brotherhood and not a communal chamber of horrifying angles and slippery tiles.

  Jorge tried to whistle casually and ended up choking on steam. Bharath nearly slipped on someone’s dropped loofah and had to catch himself on a wall with arms that no longer worked.

  “Why is it so open?” Bharath whispered through gritted teeth. “No curtains. Just horror movie vibes and trauma.”

  “Don’t make eye contact,” Jorge muttered. “You make eye contact, you owe that person a coffee. Maybe more. Also, I’ve been told you do not drop the soap.”

  They showered like fugitives - quick, silent, using exactly one bar of soap between them like it was a sacred artifact. After Jorge’s dire warning they were very careful that it didn’t drop down to the floor. Unfortunately, it ended up with their hands grasping each other reaching for the bar at the same time. That brought a quick end to the shower as they both denied anything ever happened. The lonely soap bar remained forgotten in the shower forever.

  And yet, despite everything - the soreness, the social nudity, the protein-bar-induced regret - they felt it: A rhythm. A routine. A weird, sweaty sort of brotherhood forged in whey powder and communal suffering.

  They emerged ten minutes ter, hair damp, eyes red, bodies sore - and somehow… a little stronger. The light was visible at the end of the tunnel.

  “We lived,” Bharath said, patting his own chest weakly.

  Jorge nodded solemnly. “Barely. But yeah. We’re basically Spartans now.”

  They tried to high-five each other. They couldn’t lift their hands. Gritting their teeth they tried again.

  It was a slow, floppy high-five.

  But it counted.

  Breakfast was a blur. Boiled eggs. Toast. Tabasco. Milk. The boys inhaled their food like they were te for a flight rather than a 10 a.m. lecture.

  “You know we have our first real css in twenty minutes, right?” Ravi said, licking Tabasco off his thumb with zero shame.

  “Right,” Bharath nodded, checking his schedule. “CS 1331. Boggs Hall.”

  “Ten AM.,” Jorge added, groaning. “I hope the chairs are soft. My glutes are toast.”

  Just then, Tyrel strolled past with all the swagger of someone who had already conquered the day. He wore sungsses indoors, a biscuit sandwich in one hand and his Walkman clipped to his belt, headphones slung around his neck bsting Hypnotize by B.I.G.

  “Good luck in geek camp, nerdlings,” he said with a shit-eating grin.

  “You’re not coming?” Ravi asked, chewing.

  Tyrel stopped, dramatically turned around, and took a slow, exaggerated bite of his biscuit. “Mechanical Engineering, baby,” he said, thumping his chest. “Thermodynamics. In a windowless basement. With real men.”

  Jorge raised an eyebrow. “Que mierda! Are you calling us fake?”

  “I’m calling y’all keyboard gardeners,” Tyrel said, gesturing vaguely with his sandwich. “While you’re learning to tickle semicolons and debug feelings, I’m out here solving the energy crisis one torque diagram at a time.”

  Bharath ughed. “We build the future.”

  Tyrel leaned in conspiratorially. “You type the future. We weld it.”

  “Oh god,” Ravi muttered, sipping his milk. “Here it comes.”

  Tyrel pointed at each of them like he was hosting a talk show. “CS majors out here writing ‘Hello World’ while the real dawgs are calcuting heat dissipation in turbine engines. Y’all choose majors where your only enemy is a syntax error. My enemy? Is entropy. And gravity. And reality.”

  Bharath grinned. “Jealous because our bs have AC?”

  “I don’t need AC. I sweat excellence.”

  Ravi deadpanned, “You also sweat through your shirt every day.”

  Tyrel ignored him. “Y’all get homework that starts with ‘Write a function.’ Mine starts with ‘Assume Mars has air.’”

  “Didn’t you say you blew up a microwave st week?” Jorge asked.

  “That,” Tyrel said, holding up a finger, “was experimental research. Uncontrolled combustion is just enthusiasm without supervision.”

  “Did you fix it?” Ravi asked.

  “I wrote a strongly-worded poem about it in my b notebook. That’s what we real engineers do. Expressive thermodynamics.”

  Bharath chuckled, tossing his milk carton into the trash. “Enjoy your dungeon.”

  Tyrel walked backward toward the exit, raising his sandwich like a trophy. “Enjoy programming your loneliness! I’ll be out here learning how to unch rockets and fix motorcycles with duct tape!”

  He spped Jorge on the back, fist-bumped Ravi, and gave Bharath a mock salute.

  “Remember, boys,” he called over his shoulder, “code fades, but torque is forever.”

  Then he disappeared out the cafeteria doors, his Walkman kicking into another B.I.G track, leaving behind a table full of amused, mildly insulted CS nerds and the lingering scent of biscuit and bravado.

  Jorge shook his head. “He’s gonna die in a boiler room, isn’t he?”

  “Wearing sungsses,” Ravi added.

  “Looking smug,” Bharath finished.

  They grabbed their backpacks and headed out. Geek camp or not, css was calling. And apparently, so was thermodynamics.