CH 89

Chapter 23.2 (TL: Bara Chou)

Ruan An’an didn’t think much of Gu Jue and the band-aid on his face at first, but that was until she visited the school forums.

Ruan An’an was confused, so she opened the thread. The more she read, the more her face exploded with heat.

Gu Jue.

How.

DARE! HE!

Great.

Now, the whole world knew, Gu God’s face was cut by a thin sheet of paper.

And Ruan An’an, his girlfriend who cared for him so much that she worried about infections on even the smallest cuts, insisted on him wearing a band-aid.

Unable to argue with his girlfriend, Gu Jue complied and ended up wearing a little flower on his face out in public.

Ruan An’an scrolled through the forum expressionlessly and found two more threads on this topic.

Ruan An’an: …

Ruan An’an: … The f̲u̲c̲k̲, festering.

Gu Jue’s face had already healed by the second day, but Ruan An’an believed his lie about it still being red and gave him another band-aid for backup. This one had a little yellow flower on it.

And so, the treading post for the day was:

Later, there was even a post that directly addressed Ruan An’an:

This was the 3rd day. Reading that post and thinking back on it truly felt embarrassing. Unable to take it anymore, she ripped off the yellow flower from the source of her embarrassment.

Despite ending the problem at its root, the story still made it around. Originally, Ruan An’an had planned to join the RuanGu-shipping army, but after this whole ordeal, she was too embarrassed to visit the forums again.

The band-aid memes stayed on the home page for a whole week. Its popularity only started diminishing halfway into October.

Within the school, training for the Games Championship intensified, as there was just about a month before the competition period.

In the previous month, they had already done introductions and basic training. The following classes would all be focused on working with their teams in mock competitions.

In a nutshell, the five-man team emulated running a company. Each team needed a name that would represent their company, which will be used in the actual competition as well. Unexpectedly, it was Chen Song who came up with the name for their team.

To be fair, using Chen Song’s suggestion was their last resort.

No one in their team studied liberal arts, and, coincidentally, all sucked at naming. The suggestions were either too cringy, too formal, or so generic that they already existed in real life.

In the end, Chen Song slammed the table in annoyance, “how about this, we use our hometowns!” He looked around, “the three of us all came from the same town. If I recall correctly, Ruan God also mentioned growing up in a town. So, Gu God…”

Everyone turned to Gu Hue, who swiftly concurred, “same as my girlfriend.”

The trio: …

Ruan An’an: ………

Ever since Ruan An’an and Gu Jue officially started dating, every time the team needed to make a decision, Gu Jue’s inputs had become devoid of opinion: “You guys decide, I’m with Ruan An’an.” “Didn’t my girlfriend already speak? Her words are mine.” “My girlfriend…”

For outsiders, the name “Ruan An’an” could no longer be heard from Gu Jue’s mouth. If anything, it was all about his “girlfriend.”

“Ahem,” Chen Song quickly readjusted himself, “then, it’s easy.”

He looked elated, “see, the three of us had always been the top 3 in our town. I bet that’s also the case for you two gods as well. With this coincidence, we might as well call ourselves ‘Hope of the Towns’!”

“…”

Perhaps it was the tiresome naming process, or perhaps it was the instructor rushing them, but in the end, this ridiculous name passed with all 5 votes.

And so, in every mock competition from thereon after, Ruan An’an felt a deep regret.

Look at the names of the other groups!

Even “Love and Peace” is better than theirs!

The system used for training was open to the whole school. Just like playing on the same server in a game, when the two DEM classes trained at the same time, they would meet in the system and compete together.

So, after once or twice, the entire department knew about a super strong team called “Hope of the Towns.”

One day, after another mock competition in the computer room, Ruan An’an was reviewing the records to look for misses.

It was a bit like how pro gamers would look back at their competition footage for analysis. The trio jokingly called this process “the expert’s review time”.

At first, the trio participated actively in this process, but they soon realized the couple was on a completely different level from them. They were unable to keep on in the conversation, getting lost after a few sentences, and couldn’t offer any help.

Beyond that, Qiu Yan also once secretly shared her speculations with the other two. “Look, not only are we no help, but we’re also being mega third-wheels just standing there. I’m sure we’re getting in the way of their intimacy… something like ‘I’ll give you a kiss for every point-lose or misstep found.’ Hehe.”

Thus, the trio rushed off afterward every time and stopped attending the reviewing sessions.

Gu Jue was very satisfied with this arrangement.

To be fair, it didn’t matter to him if there were people around. He’d still do whatever. However, his girlfriend was way too bashful, and wouldn’t allow a lot of things when they weren’t alone.

Ruan An’an pointed to the screen: “Is my purchase from this step the problem?”

Gu Jue held the mouse in one hand, and her hand in his other. Keeping a clear logic even as he multitasked work and pleasure.

“No, the purchases were fine, the market you chose was also fine.” Gu Jue clicked a few times, bringing out a set of data, and scrolled down slowly, “but once we made that our product, our opponent became this company, CN Science. You predicted that, for the next two years, they would be focused on products related to electronic information. In reality, they focused mainly on chemical engineering… God knows why they did that.” Gu Jue couldn’t help but exclaim at the end.

“Yeah, why? How—” Ruan An’an stared at the screen in disbelief, “this can’t be a bug, right?”

“Probably not,” Gu Jue said. “I think it’s like a chance encounter in games… not impossible but will only trigger at a low chance. Under normal circumstances, your logic would be correct. Taking something like this into consideration would only be a waste of time. After all, under what logic does it make sense for a tech company to start selling chemical products… fertilizers at that too, what the f̲u̲c̲k̲…”

Gu Jue wanted to swear the more he scrolled down, but he held it back. “All in all, this CN Science is an AI opponent that came with the system, we were just unlucky.”

“You know…” Gu Jue suggested, “you could assign certain tasks to the others. You couldn’t check back since you were handling so many things at once.”

“…” Ruan An’an was troubled over this, “I’ve thought about this as well, but I’m really bad at delegating jobs and stuff.”

It was because she had always been a lone wolf.

Back in the international competition, she only landed in 10th place, most likely due to small errors like these. To be fair, though, she joined the competition for fun and didn’t put in her best efforts. Everyone was anonymous, so no one knew who any of the competitors were, and the end of the competition was the end of it.

However, the person at the top of the rankings stayed in her memories.

That person’s ID looked like they just slammed some random keys and was followed by China’s flag. They surpassed second place by a whole extra digit.

This “Key-Smash” God made all the Chinese proud.

Somewhere along the remembering, Ruan An’an realized something was odd.

“I’ve expected this for the market as well.” Teacher Gu hadn’t noticed anything wrong and continued, “you focused on Country A, since the first year…”

Ruan An’an looked puzzledly at the person next to her.

This system perfectly emulated how companies run, the only difference was the rate at which time flowed.

Considering the number of details in running a company, the system could only provide result summaries under large categories, such as market, sales, finance, etc. … as for where the specific points were lost, it was up to the participants themselves to figure it out.

That was why the reviews were important.

To be honest, Ruan An’an was a little annoyed with this type of points system, telling you how many points you’ve lost but not how you lost them. It felt terrible when you couldn’t figure out where you lost your points.

Plus, looking for these small errors wasn’t one of her fortes. It would take twice as long if not for Gu Jue.

Not that she was narcissistic, but…

Doesn’t that mean, Gu Jue – a real university student – is better than her – a graduate …?

“… That’s about it.” Gu Jue looked to point total at the top left of the Word document, “I’ve found all the lost points, my girlfriend, can we finish now?”

Ruan was immersed in self-questioning and took a second to respond. “Huh? What?”

Gu Jue was still holding onto Ruan An’an’s hand. With a light tug, her computer chair came rolling towards him, bumping into his. Due to her arm being held and the inertia from the motion, she stood from her seat.

Before she could steady herself, though, she was pulled into his arms.

Gu Jue sat comfortably in his seat, and Ruan An’an sat comfortably on his lap.

Her confusion about what had just happened was apparent in her widened eyes. Her black eyes also reflected a miniature version of him. Her lips were slightly parted, bare of any products, seductively soft and pink.

The temperature in the room was just right.

The computer room contained only the two of them.

The only sounds were the quiet whirring of the computers.

His girlfriend… looking lost, smelling great, and yet to be kissed even after dating for half a month.

Gu Jue’s mouth had already felt dry from all the talking.

He grabbed her chin and went in straight for a kiss.

“I’ve helped you review so many times already…” Gu Jue’s words were mumbled from holding her lips in his, “it’s time I take some payment.”