“You’re working overtime? What kind of bullshit overtime is that!”
“No choice. The municipal branch leaders are coming to inspect tomorrow, so the entire bank has to work overtime.” Fang Qingye sat lazily in his chair, replying into his phone.
“Damn… Your senior sister manager isn’t cutting you any slack? Today’s supposed to be your moment to shine.” Song Da Hai complained through the phone.
“It’s fine. Whether I go or not doesn’t matter. You all enjoy the food and drinks and have fun.” Fang Qingye laughed.
“Don’t worry, we won’t go easy on Jiang Chen’s wallet!”
“Alright then, bye.” Fang Qingye hung up, a slight smile appearing on his face.
He really didn’t want to go.
Even with overtime, it probably wouldn’t last too long. If he finished work at five and stayed a bit later, he could still make it to the hotel.
But with so many classmates there tonight, he’d definitely get drunk if he went. There was no need to steal the spotlight anyway.
Sure enough, overtime ended before seven. After eating the boxed meal ordered by management, Fang Qingye rode his scooter straight home and started working on his modeling.
First came data preprocessing – Dongguan Girl had sent over a large amount of investment data from some investment bank that needed cleaning and transformation.
Data cleaning meant handling missing values and outliers, while data transformation involved standardization, normalization, and other dimensionless processing.
Fang Qingye made himself a cup of tea and settled in front of his computer to study the data.
Time flew when he was busy, and soon it was past ten. Fang Qingye stretched lazily.
Time to rest, he’d continue tomorrow.
Working through the night?
No way.
He’d been an overworked drone in his previous life – he didn’t want to work that hard in this one.
Better play some games first.
Just as Fang Qingye opened World of Warcraft, his phone rang. Seeing it was Song Da Hai, he answered immediately to hear his friend’s booming voice.
“Holy shit! Yezi, you really missed out by not coming tonight! Twelve full tables of classmates, everyone went crazy drinking!”
Fang Qingye found this strange. “Twelve tables? That’s nearly over a hundred classmates. How did so many show up?”
“You didn’t know? Several classmates working in the city and neighboring counties came back. Plus, some who weren’t in the group chat joined after hearing about it. It was wild! It’s been years since high school graduation, but we’ve never had such a complete reunion!”
“Jiang Chen must have spent a fortune?” Fang Qingye laughed.
“Absolutely! We drank five whole cases of Mengzhilan! Jiang Chen’s face turned green by the end. We were supposed to go karaoke after drinking, but that guy pretended to be too drunk and actually slipped out the hotel’s back door! Haha… But he can run, he can’t hide! He’s definitely paying for karaoke! Not even Jesus could stop it!”
Damn.
He must really be drunk, even using movie lines.
“Alright, alright, do what you want.”
After chatting a while longer, Fang Qingye finally hung up.
Song Da Hai wasn’t the only one calling – many drunken, excited classmates with nowhere to vent their energy called. Some even asked Fang Qingye to teach them stock trading, but he firmly refused.
“Teach what? I just gambled and got lucky this time. I’m still losing money on my other stocks.”
“You’re asking if it’ll keep rising or fall? I really can’t say for sure. I’m getting out as soon as I break even.”
By the time Fang Qingye finished dealing with all these drunken classmates, it was already eleven.
Forget it, no gaming tonight. A shower and then bed.
The next day, Fang Qingye went to work on time, but to his frustration, he received another notice from the department: the municipal branch leadership had canceled their scheduled inspection due to an urgent matter and would reschedule for another day!
All that hard work from yesterday had been in vain.
But such is the workplace—leaders can adjust their schedules at will, while subordinates cannot.
What was most infuriating was spending an entire day preparing diligently, only for the leaders to breeze through their inspection in just five minutes. It was utterly exasperating.
Fang Qingye was already accustomed to such situations. Since no one was coming to inspect, he could focus on his own tasks.
He handled dimensional processing, conducted descriptive analysis, and then began formal modeling.
As required, Fang Qingye was building a predictive model. Common methods included time-series forecasting, regression analysis, machine learning, Markov prediction, or combinations of other approaches.
He opted for regression analysis forecasting.
After another full day of work, the mathematical model was completed. The next step was model evaluation.
This step was crucial too, as appropriate evaluation metrics could accurately measure the model’s performance. It seemed there wasn’t enough time during the day, so he decided to tackle it in the evening.
That evening, Fang Qingye continued his work. He decided to use metrics like the second type of Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) for evaluation.
Hmm.
The results were quite good.
Done!
Fang Qingye logged into QQ.
There were unread messages in several groups, but he ignored them. The little penguin icon kept bouncing—it was Nakae Chie’s avatar, dressed in a sailor uniform.
It was Dongguan Girl.
Every time Fang Qingye logged into QQ, he saw her avatar flashing, but he usually ignored it unless, like today, he had serious business to discuss.
Fang Qingye clicked on Dongguan Girl’s avatar, and a flood of messages immediately appeared.
“Husband, are you there?”
“Husband, your wife misses you. Even though you’re not by my side, we’re still in the story together. Even if I’m not with you, you’ll always be my protagonist.”
“Hey, you slacker, have you finished that mathematical model? If not, I’ll have to step in myself!” followed by a series of bloody knife emojis.
Sighing at the chaotic messages, Fang Qingye replied, “It’s done.”
Her avatar lit up instantly, and a message arrived right away.
“Husband, you’re finally here! Your wife missed you so much.”
So fast?
Fang Qingye wondered if this person was glued to her phone or keyboard all the time.
“Miss you, my foot,” Fang Qingye retorted bluntly.
“But I don’t have a sister! I have a cousin though—are you thinking of Ehuang Nuying?” followed by “shy” emojis.
Fang Qingye felt utterly speechless. “If you keep spouting nonsense, I’m logging off.”
“Okay, okay, you said it’s done?” Dongguan Girl immediately turned serious.
“Yeah, I’ll send it to you. Payment upon delivery,” Fang Qingye reminded her.
“Don’t worry, you’re my husband. How could I cheat you?”
Fang Qingye didn’t respond further and sent over the completed document.
After receiving it, there was no reply for a while. Fang Qingye wasn’t anxious, knowing she was evaluating the mathematical model.
He poured out his now-tasteless tea and brewed a fresh cup, sipping it slowly.
About twenty minutes later, her avatar started flashing again.
“Not bad, husband. You’re amazing!”
“Cut the flattery. Pay up!”
“OK, send me your account details. I’ll transfer the money right away.”
Fang Qingye sent over his salary card account number, along with his real name.
“Husband, your name is Fang Qingye? Such a literary name! Is your father a teacher?” The other party playfully sent a line of text.
She actually guessed right.
His father, once a literary youth, had given him this name, but Fang Qingye didn’t want to dwell on it.
“Transfer the money!”
Five minutes later, Fang Qingye’s phone received a notification: 200,000 RMB had been deposited into his account.
Fang Qingye finally felt relieved.
He had been genuinely worried that the other party might trick him—taking the model, pretending everything was fine, then logging off and disappearing.
Fortunately, this Dongguan Girl had some credibility.
Fang Qingye replied with “Received” on QQ and was about to log off when the other party suddenly sent another message: “Want to build another Mathematical Model?”