Small Errors

Kash Shaikh was not unkind. He simply misunderstood people.

He had read somewhere — he could no longer remember where — that the secret to likability was “warmth.” So, Kash practiced warmth. He smiled at everyone, even when he didn’t feel like it. He nodded too often. He leaned forward during conversations, eager to show engagement. He thought this made people comfortable. It did not.

On Monday mornings, when his coworkers shuffled into the office bleary-eyed and grim, Kash would be waiting near the coffee machine. “Big weekend?” he’d say, as though the question was an inside joke. He’d hold the smile until they responded, which they usually didn’t. When they avoided eye contact, he assumed they were shy. He tried harder.

By midyear, his coworkers had perfected the art of the side route — ducking behind cubicles or heading to the far stairwell to avoid his greetings. Kash noticed, but misread that too. He thought they were busy, that they didn’t want to be interrupted. So, he began sending emails instead. Subject lines like “Nice tie today!” or “Great effort on that spreadsheet!” popped up in inboxes throughout the office.

The HR manager, a patient woman named Meagan, called him in one day. She chose her words carefully. “Kash, I think your enthusiasm is wonderful, but maybe give people some space. Some folks need quiet to focus.”

Kash nodded solemnly, interpreting it as encouragement. “Absolutely. I’ll give them space to feel appreciated.”

That week, he brought in homemade muffins for everyone, leaving them individually wrapped with notes- You’re valued!

The muffins were too moist — undercooked, really — and the notes were written in a bold, looping cursive that made them feel more like love letters than office morale boosters.

By Friday, Meagan emailed again- Please stop leaving food on people’s desks.

Kash lived alone in a neat apartment near the river. His books were alphabetized, his dishes dried and stacked. On his windowsill sat a row of succulents he never watered correctly but which somehow survived anyway.

He wasn’t lonely, or so he told himself. He had a sense of belonging, though it was abstract — like he belonged to the concept of society, if not to anyone in particular.

That changed when he met Hillary.

She was new at work, brought in as a consultant for the logistics department. The first time Kash saw her, she was laughing in the break room, head thrown back, eyes shining with something he mistook for invitation.

When he smiled, she smiled back.

It was a polite, reflexive smile, one she’d probably given a thousand times in her life. But to Kash, it was an opening.

He introduced himself immediately, offering his hand and holding it half a second too long. “Welcome aboard,” he said. “I think you’ll like it here.”

She laughed again — softly, uncomfortably. “Thanks. First day’s going okay so far.”

He stored that sound in his mind. The laugh. It was musical, like punctuation to a sentence he wanted to write.

That night, he replayed their conversation. The handshake, the tone, the warmth. He felt something stir — a conviction that she had noticed him in a way others hadn’t.

He decided to nurture that.

Over the next few weeks, Kash began timing his coffee breaks to match hers. He asked her questions, thoughtful ones- Did she prefer mornings or nights? What kind of books did she read? Did she like dogs?

Hillary answered politely, but always in short phrases. When she shifted her body slightly away from him during conversations, he took it as shyness, not discomfort. When she avoided the break room entirely, he worried she might be overworked.

He left a small box of herbal tea on her desk one morning with a note- For when you need calm.

She threw it away.

When he saw the empty spot on her desk, he assumed she’d taken it home.

The first complaint came from another coworker, Sean. He told HR that Kash was “hovering around Hillary.” Meagan called Kash in again, this time with a firmness that startled him.

“Kash,” she said, folding her hands on the desk, “you need to give Hillary her space. She’s expressed that your attention is making her uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable?” The word dropped like a stone. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“No one said you did. But perception matters. Sometimes what feels friendly to one person feels invasive to another.”

He blinked. “She smiled at me.”

“I’m sure she was just being polite.”

Something in him twisted. “You think I imagined it?”

Meagan sighed. “I think you misread the situation. Please don’t approach her outside of work matters.”

That night, Kash couldn’t sleep. He sat at his kitchen table, hands clasped around a mug of cold tea, staring at the faint reflection of himself in the window.

He didn’t understand how kindness could be threatening. He’d only wanted to connect. To be known.

His phone buzzed with a company email reminder about the upcoming team retreat. A weekend at a lakeside lodge, mandatory attendance. Kash smiled. Maybe there, outside the sterile office setting, people would relax. Maybe they’d see he was harmless. Maybe Hillary would too.

The lodge was beautiful — tall pines, still water, a scattering of cabins. Kash packed carefully, bringing his best sweater and a new notebook.

The first evening, the team gathered for dinner. Hillary sat at the far end of the table. Kash waved; she didn’t wave back.

Later, while others gathered by the firepit, he found her alone near the dock, looking out over the lake. The moonlight made her hair shimmer. It felt cinematic, almost destined.

He approached quietly, meaning to say something casual, like “Beautiful night.” But she startled when she turned and saw him.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“It’s fine,” she said, stepping back slightly. “I was just heading inside.”

“You don’t have to rush off,” he said, too quickly. “I just wanted to talk. I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

She frowned. “About what?”

“Us.”

“There is no ‘us,’ Kash.”

He froze. “I know that. I just mean… the way people have been saying things. I think they’re wrong about me. I’m not some creep, Hillary.”

“I didn’t say you were.” Her voice softened, but she was scanning for a way out. “Look, it’s been a long day. Let’s just—”

“Why can’t you just be honest?” His voice cracked. “You liked talking to me. I could tell.”

“I was being polite.”

The words hit like a slap.

He felt heat rush to his face, confusion tangling into anger. “So you lied? You made me think—”

“Kash, please.”

He stepped closer. She stepped back. The wood beneath her heel creaked.

In that second, something broke — a line between awkwardness and fear.

She bolted toward the lodge.

Kash stood frozen, the sound of her footsteps echoing. When Meagan found him later, still standing at the dock, he didn’t try to explain.

He just said, “I didn’t touch her.”

The next morning, HR asked him to leave the retreat early.

He packed in silence, heart thudding like a fist inside his ribs. The others avoided his eyes. He caught a few whispered words — “creepy,” “obsessed,” “unhinged.”

He drove home through rain, vision blurring. By the time he reached his apartment, his sense of injustice had hardened into something sharp.

He opened his laptop. The company chat system was still open. He hovered over Hillary's name, then typed-

You didn’t have to lie about me. I would have respected you if you’d been honest.

He deleted it before sending.

Instead, he opened a blank document and began writing a letter. Not to her, not exactly — to the version of her that lived in his mind. The one who smiled back.

He wrote until dawn.

Two weeks later, the official email came- Your position has been terminated, effective immediately.

Kash read it three times, waiting for it to change meaning. It didn’t.

He sat very still, listening to the hum of the refrigerator. He wasn’t angry anymore, not exactly. More… hollow.

In the days that followed, he took long walks by the river. He told himself he was better off without that place, without people who couldn’t see who he really was.

But the world didn’t soften for him. The barista at the coffee shop stopped making small talk. His neighbor avoided eye contact in the hallway. Each small rejection fed the quiet storm building inside.

He started writing more letters — imagined conversations, rewrites of what should have been said. In them, Hillary always listened. Always forgave. Sometimes she cried and said she was sorry for misunderstanding him.

Those versions felt real. More real than the memory of the dock, or her frightened face.

Spring came. The river thawed.

One afternoon, Kash saw an online post from a former coworker — pictures from a baby shower at the office. In one of them, Hillary stood near the cake, smiling, a hand resting lightly on her belly.

He stared at the image for a long time. The caption read- Can’t wait to meet little Bryan!

The air seemed to drain from the room.

He hadn’t known she was married.

He hadn’t known she was expecting.

Something inside him collapsed into a single, desperate certainty- She had never been his story to tell. And yet, she lived in his head like a ghost who refused to leave.

Kash tried to start over. He got a part-time job at a local library, shelving books in the quiet afternoons. It suited him. People didn’t expect conversation. They nodded politely and went about their day.

But sometimes, when someone smiled — a stranger, a customer — he still felt that old spark of confusion, that perilous hope.

He began avoiding eye contact altogether.

The head librarian, an older man named Mark, once said kindly, “You’re a good worker, Kash. You don’t need to hide.”

Kash smiled weakly. “It’s safer this way.”

Months passed. The letters stopped. He began to feel almost normal.

Then, one morning, while returning a stack of donated books, he found a familiar name scrawled on the inside cover of a paperback. Hillary Hahn.

It wasn’t her handwriting — just someone with the same name, probably. But it didn’t matter. His hands shook as he flipped through the pages. A folded note fell out.

It wasn’t addressed to him. It wasn’t even recent. A grocery list, maybe. But the coincidence cracked open a door he thought he’d locked.

He pocketed the note.

That night, he dreamed she was standing by the lake again, her expression unreadable. When he reached for her, she turned away — not out of fear, but pity.

He woke with tears in his eyes.

The next week, Mark asked if he could cover the front desk for a few hours. Kash agreed.

Near closing time, a woman came in to return a book. She smiled faintly as she handed it over. Something about her — the hair, the tilt of her head — made him flinch.

It wasn’t Hillary. But for a heartbeat, it could have been.

He felt the old panic rising, the sense of a trap he couldn’t name. He forced himself to breathe. “Thank you,” he said, quietly. “Have a good evening.”

She nodded and left.

Kash sat there long after she was gone, staring at the empty doorway.

The truth came to him slowly, like thawing ice- all those years, all those smiles, all those misunderstandings — it wasn’t the world that was broken. It was his ability to read it.

He realized, finally, that he didn’t understand the language of human connection. Every nod, every look, every word had always been filtered through a translator that lied to him.

He felt grief, sharp and clean. But beneath it, something like relief.

That night, he wrote one last letter — not to Hillary, not to anyone, but to himself.

He began-

You were never cruel. You just didn’t know the rules.

He paused, pen hovering. Then continued-

Learn them now. Learn them slowly. Don’t mistake politeness for love. Don’t confuse silence for approval. Listen, really listen. Watch for fear. You’ve hurt people without meaning to. That means you can also choose not to.

He signed it Kash Shaikh, folded it, and tucked it into a book on emotional intelligence he’d borrowed months ago.

The next day, he placed the book back on the library shelf.

Then he went outside, into the faint chill of early spring, and walked toward the river.

He didn’t smile at anyone he passed, but he nodded once — small, respectful, enough.

Kash's story is not a tragedy of malice, but of misinterpretation. He isn’t a villain. He’s a caution- proof that misunderstanding is not benign when left unchecked. A wrong smile, a misplaced word, a gesture misread — these can build into avalanches.

The world is a conversation written in invisible ink. Most people learn to read it intuitively. For others, like Kash, it’s a lifelong translation project.

And when translation fails, consequences escalate — not from evil intent, but from the quiet, stubborn belief that one is right about what one sees.