Chapter 2

Although the fat guy had disappeared for three years without any news, I still took him as a role model and worked hard in high school for three years. Finally, I was admitted to the prestigious city where he was studying, which happened to be a neighboring engineering school.

Since I was a money-loving internet addict, I chose a major that could kill two birds with one stone: computer science and technology, with a focus on financial information and services.

At first, I didn’t feel that anything was wrong, until I realized that out of the six classes in the department, I was the only female student.

Especially during the big lectures, this feeling of something being off was particularly strong.

I, a lone queen in the harem.

The three girls in my dorm room were all from the finance department.

The most academic discussion I ever heard them have was about:

“Which is more attractive, the lipstick color ‘Slayer of Men’ or ‘999 Flame Blue Gold’?”

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“Gdusdl oydv vs rzyu vbl tyxl ‘Fosae Mball Ikdtesxp’ okvb xl? Nlv’p qkde y plahla yde rzyu vstlvbla!”

Fsxlsdl kd vbl taswr kxxlekyvlzu alrzkle, “R es.”

Rv vwadp swv vbyv ldtkdllakdt pvweldvp yal pvkzz nssz.

Omnkvlezu, R ypjle, “Ebs yal usw?”

The person replied, “I’m your academic counselor!”

The whole grade remembered me.

Later, to prevent me from feeling lonely and bored, the counselor arranged for me to join a software development club on campus to enrich my leisure time.

I felt a bit embarrassed and said, “Software development is all self-taught, and my skills are not that good…”

The counselor replied, “It’s okay, you don’t need high technical requirements to serve tea and pour water.”

I was taken aback and thought to myself, “Is that all I’ll be doing?”

As naive as I was, on my first day at the club, I brought a pair of rubber gloves for work.

The club president said, “I’ve heard of you, Meng Qiqi, right? As a freshman, being able to write a socket send-receive demo without obvious bugs is pretty good.”

The president assigned me to a small team that was developing a financial software app.

I didn’t want to do it.

But then I thought about the fairly attractive team leader…

So I did it!

After a few weeks of working, the team leader finally realized that there was an extra person in the team.

He questioned me, “Have you participated in developing an app before?”

I replied, “I have always worked alone. I taught myself some programming and it took me half a month to complete the front-end and server response program for the app.”

The team leader was stunned for a moment.

Then he turned to the other team members and said, “Come on, let’s welcome our new member.”

There was a sparse round of applause in the classroom, and then everyone continued to lower their heads and type away at their keyboards.

Me: “Thank you.”

The team leader said, “My name is Zhou Taidi, I’m a senior this year.”

Me: “I’m Meng Qiqi.”

Zhou Taidi exclaimed, “There’s a Japanese toy with that name, Monchhichi.”

Me: “There’s also a species that’s quite promiscuous called Teddy.”

“On closer inspection, the two of you do look alike,” he said.

“Like it’s cute?” I felt pleased in my heart, he’s handsome and sweet-tongued.

“The same,” Zhou Taidi said, “short legs.”

Me: “…”

At that moment, I had the urge to turn from a fan to a passerby.

I teased him, “Do you know the other meaning of Teddy?”

Zhou Taidi said with a straight face, “I’m single.”

“Senior, with such hard work, are you planning to bring honor to your family in the future?” I asked.

“Quite right, my family has been in the mining business for generations,” Zhou Taidi replied.

I was exasperated, “Then why are you putting in four years of hard work programming?”

Zhou Taidi replied, “I chose a cutting-edge technology major like computer science because…”

In my heart, I thought to myself: It must be for noble reasons, like pursuing an ideal.”

Zhou Taidi continued, “It’s so I can use more scientific methods for mining.”

I was speechless.

During my freshman year, I didn’t have a very heavy course load, so whenever I had time, I would work with my group to combine theory with practice.

Zhou Taidi’s app development was already halfway through, and I had a hard time just observing, let alone being of any help.

Zhou Taidi encouraged me, “If you want to learn programming, you have to dive in.”

I replied, “Okay.”

Zhou Taidi continued, “Put in the effort.”

I said, “Oh.”

Zhou Taidi added, “Go deeper.”

I exclaimed, “Ah!”

Suddenly, the president who passed by turned his head and looked at us, saying, “Why does your conversation sound so dirty?”

Later, Zhou Taidi assigned me a task to design a functional interface. I had zero experience in UI, so I learned as I went along, and it required a lot of thinking.

When I was thinking, my gaze would unconsciously fall on things that looked good.

Whenever Zhou Taidi caught me looking, he would say, “Focus on your work. Why are you staring at me?”

I explained, “The leader of our group has such an amazing appearance, I can’t help but look at you.”

“You, as a person, are really…” Zhou Taidi started to criticize, “not practical at all!”

I apologized, “Sorry, sorry.”

Zhou Taidi continued, “What do you mean by ‘amazing appearance’? With my looks, can it be summarized with just that word?”

I quickly changed my words, “Extraordinary.”

“That’s more like it. In our programming industry, the most important thing is to ensure the accuracy of language,” Zhou Taidi explained.

What a nuisance.

Seeing that you are so handsome,

I’ll let it go.

Towards the later stage of development, there were bottlenecks in the development of the financial software app.

Zhou Taidi wanted the product to be more professional and practical.

The team members were several seniors in college, and breaking through their limits was already difficult.

I was confused, “Why can’t we do it?”

Zhou Taidi explained, “Our math isn’t good enough. If we were developing regular programs, general math knowledge would be enough, but when it comes to core algorithms, data structure and computing power are required.”

“I apologize for my lack of knowledge, but what does that mean?” I asked.

“The soul of software. Mathematical geniuses provide the operation methods, and we translate them into programming languages, that’s all,” Zhou Taidi replied.

“So what are we then?” I asked.

“Code carriers,” Zhou Taidi answered.

“Isn’t there a finance major and a math department in our school?” I suggested.

“Not good enough,” Zhou Taidi replied.

“Tsinghua’s math department is good,” I said.

Zhou Taidi even said, “There are better ones.”

He looked serious.

“Are you talking about our neighboring… (a name that everyone knows), ‘School of Mathematical Sciences’?” I asked.

Zhou Taidi nodded.

“Forgive me for being blunt, but if they have that ability, why wouldn’t they develop it themselves? Who would care about our ordinary university’s R&D team?” I said.

Zhou Taidi turned black-faced and retorted, “Who gave you the right to speak bluntly? No forgiveness.”

The team leader had no prospects and was listless, and extracurricular activities were suspended for a while.

Without a project, I had no reason to see him.

No opportunity, so create one.

Neighboring university.

Department of Mathematics.

I made a phone call to my hometown, and through my father’s connection, I inquired about Fatty’s news.

The phone number was obtained.

We hadn’t been in touch for three years, so I was feeling a bit nervous.

“Ring, ring…”

It rang for over ten times before someone answered.

Silence.

I asked anxiously, “Hello?”

No response.

I tried again, “Hello…”

The voice on the other end was noticeably quieter than before.

“Who is this?” The tone was serious, making my back tense up.

I stuttered, “Uh, well, you…guess who?”

He paused for a second.

“Get trained first before going to work next time.”

And then he hung up.

I was left speechless for a while.

It took me about fifty seconds to gather my thoughts.

So, he thought I was a scam caller?