What kind of study buddy? And what is this check-in thing?
Ji Wenyu was utterly confused. After watching TV for a while, Wang Xinno ran downstairs to eat snacks. Sitting alone on the sofa in the upstairs study room, Ji Wenyu studied Qinghe for half a day without figuring it out.
In a very inconspicuous corner of the Qinghe Plaza, there indeed was an announcement for a check-in event.
[Qinghe Campus Autumn/Winter Check-in Event: Come claim your study buddy now!]
The event used a points system, with points calculated based on the interaction volume between the study buddy pair and the number of clicks their notes received in the plaza. Interestingly, the prize for the check-in event was guaranteed internship placement opportunities at several well-known top internet companies. The top three pairs in the points ranking, meaning six users in total, could directly choose any of the listed companies to intern in a role matching their major.
Among the listed companies was Sunrise East, a top internet company Ji Wenyu had wanted to apply to since last year. Being study buddies with Big Shot X didn’t hold much appeal for Ji Wenyu. However, if he could genuinely secure a direct internship at a major tech giant, participating in this event was definitely worth a shot.
As for what exactly needed to be done for the check-in, he read the event rules several times and still couldn’t figure it out.
Anyway, since his buddy was X, the top-ranked Big Shot, wouldn’t he be carried to victory even if he just lay back and did nothing? Thinking of this, Ji Wenyu gave up on figuring it out himself and decided to just copy X’s homework.
By evening, the music downstairs finally stopped, and Mr. and Mrs. Ji escorted the guests out to the villa’s exterior one by one. Ji Wenyu had just finished a round of a video game and came downstairs from the upper floor.
When he reached the living room, his parents were saying goodbye to Xue Yaning and her family of three at the entrance.
“Stay for dinner, won’t you? Eat before you leave,” Zhu Hong, dressed in an extravagant qipao, said while linking arms with her best friend.
“No, no. It was already not easy for Wenyu to come back for a visit, so you guys enjoy a nice family dinner. We’ll head out first,” Xue Yaning refused.
After seeing everyone off, Zhu Hong greeted her son, who had just come downstairs: “A-yu, we didn’t know you were coming back, so your dad and I invited some friends over today.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. It’s a holiday, after all,” Ji Wenyu said indifferently. Anyway, he had long since been used to a bustling household.
“What would you like to eat tonight? I’ll ask the housekeeper to add another dish,” Zhu Hong asked.
The young man waved his hands: “No need, anything is fine.”
The first-floor dining room was left in a mess waiting to be cleaned, so the three of them went to the small dining room on the second floor.
Mr. and Mrs. Ji’s dinners were always healthy, expensive, and complicated, yet healthy.
Delicacies of land and sea were cooked with minimal seasoning to bring out their most primitive flavors. The sea cucumbers soaked in millet had almost no fishy taste, but they were simply hard to swallow.
Ji Wenyu merely poked at his food a couple of times before already feeling full.
Although they were all in Beijing, he rarely went home under normal circumstances. The family business was busy, and Ji Wenyu and Zhu Hong were either out talking business or on their way to talk business, mostly flying to different places separately. Ever since he entered middle school in his early teens, he had been accustomed to a year where the number of times he saw both parents at the same time could be counted on one hand.
However, this didn’t affect Ji Wenyu’s relationship with his parents. Seeing each other rarely, his parents never hovered over his studies, nor did they lock him up at home. Instead, it spared him a lot of trouble and gave him plenty of freedom.
“Xiaoyu, have you been having a good time at school lately?” Instead of asking about her son’s grades, Zhu Hong’s first question was whether her boy was happy at school.
“Pretty good. I’ve been preparing for the graduate school recommendation lately,” Ji Wenyu said as he picked up a slice of green vegetable.
Ji Zhiming chimed in as well: “Preparing for the recommendation? Don’t you want to study abroad?”
Ji Wenyu shook his head: “Dad, you know as well as I do that for our major, going abroad is just troublesome.”
“Hmm, then study domestically,” Ji Zhiming agreed. “Where are you aiming for? Your own school? Or across the street to Peking University?”
For students of Bauhinia University, if they wanted to pursue graduate studies without dropping below the standards of their own institution while switching schools, the only option was Peking University.
“My own school, I suppose,” Ji Wenyu replied. “Artificial Intelligence is slightly stronger at Bauhinia University; there’s no need to go across the street to study.”
Regarding the graduate recommendation, Ji Zhiming and Zhu Hong only asked a couple of casual questions without pushing any further. Matters of further education had been decided by Ji Wenyu himself since he was young, with the couple only responsible for providing a safety net, as they had no wish to pressure their son. Halfway through the meal, Zhu Hong shifted the topic.
“Around this time next year, Nuonuo will also be entering university. Shouldn’t you two get engaged by then?”
Ji Wenyu, who was in the middle of drinking soup, couldn’t hold it together and choked into a cough.
“Isn’t that a bit early?” Ji Zhiming looked at his son hesitatingly.
“Early, what’s early?” Zhu Hong stirred the soup in her tureen leisurely. “Xiaoyu and Nuonuo grew up together and have known each other for so many years. If we don’t get them engaged early, what if Nuonuo gets snatched away by someone else in college?”
“Mom…” Ji Wenyu put down the spoon in his hand.
He realized he liked guys starting from the moment he first laid eyes on Xu Yuanzhe in college. But because he had never thought about the possibility of being with that person, naturally he hadn’t considered coming out to his parents either. While Mr. and Mrs. Ji were certainly open-minded, hearing out of nowhere that he liked the same sex would probably require a period of adjustment for them.
He hesitated, speaking slowly and in a muffled voice: “Wang Xinno and I don’t have that kind of feeling.”
Zhu Hong and Ji Zhiming exchanged glances and didn’t force the issue: “Then does Xiaoyu have someone he likes at school?”
The young man’s dense eyelashes drooped unnaturally: “Not really. I’ve been busy with the graduate school recommendation lately, Mom.”
Zhu Hong smiled and patted her son’s head: “Alright, focus on your matters first then. But if you do like Nuonuo, you have to be honest with us, okay? Don’t just watch our own girl get snatched away by someone else.”
“Got it,” Ji Wenyu raised his gaze and shrugged helplessly. “Don’t worry, the two of us really are just childhood friends, no other thoughts.”
After dinner, he took a stroll in the garden downstairs with his parents and then returned to the living room to watch TV for a bit before a Qinghe notification popped up on his phone screen.
Ji Wenyu tapped it open and saw a message sent by X.
It was unclear whether the message was sent automatically by the system or manually entered by X.
[X: Vocabulary check-in: 200 words]
Ji Wenyu clicked into X’s homepage and saw that the other person’s recently posted note was a screenshot of a vocabulary app’s completed task. Below the note was a long string of likes, with quite a few “666” and “Keep it up” comments in the comment section.
Was this considered part of the check-in event?
He tapped back into the homepage of the Qinghe Campus Autumn/Winter Check-in Event and looked through the study buddy leaderboard. Without scrolling down much, he spotted X and himself displayed at the very bottom of the first page. Although the two of them had only officially formed a study buddy pair today, their points value had already successfully squeezed into the first page out of the three pages on the event interface. The points progress bar next to them showed the number 103, which looked like it came from the interaction volume on X’s notes.
He couldn’t rely entirely on the Big Shot to carry him; he couldn’t drag them down either. Since X memorized 200 words, he should memorize 200 words too.
With this thought, Ji Wenyu grimaced as he opened the vocabulary app favored by the Big Shot.
Based on the human brain’s memory cycle, the app planned out study schedules. If set to 200 new words per day, the check-in required for the next day would be the 200 words of that day plus the 200 words from the previous day.
Gritting his teeth to set the number of words, Ji Wenyu went back upstairs to the study room, sat down at the desk, and began memorizing along with it.
200 words, even though he recognized a large portion of them, he still ended up spending the entire evening upstairs. Finally finishing up, he posted a screenshot of the completed task as a note. On the check-in event interface, the points for himself and X ticked up by a few points.
Ji Wenyu collapsed onto the sofa and tapped open his chat history with X.
The page was parked on X’s previous message.
“Vocabulary check-in: 200 words”, it wasn’t randomly generated.
Ji Wenyu long-pressed to copy it and sent it back to X word for word.
For the next three days, X maintained a pace of 200 words a day, continuously posting notes on the plaza for check-in and simultaneously sending the check-in message to him. Aside from vocabulary, X also sent records from a tree-planting app, which similarly served as a check-in for the Qinghe event. X seemed to spend every single day in the school library, racking up a screen-lock time on the tree-planting app of up to ten hours a day. After returning to school from home, Ji Wenyu controlled his phone usage as much as possible, yet he still only managed two-thirds of the Big Shot’s check-in duration.
Over the span of several days, the chat box with X remained simple and rustic.
[X: Vocabulary check-in: 200 words]
[Little Fish: Vocabulary check-in: 200 words]
[X: Today’s tree-planting duration: 10.2 hours]
[Little Fish: Today’s tree-planting duration: 7.5 hours]
The conversation with the Big Shot felt like chatting with a bot. Ji Wenyu thought about typing “transfer to human agent” and throwing it into the chat box several times.
After returning to school, he earnestly studied the ideas X had provided earlier and finalized the direction he wanted to pursue in depth for graduate school.
Although doing scientific research was quite interesting, Ji Wenyu felt from the bottom of his heart that he wasn’t cut out for academia. Once his master’s degree was finished, he would most likely enter the workforce and probably wouldn’t continue studying further. At that time, he might enter a major tech company, or he might go back to inherit the family business. If that was the case, choosing a cross-disciplinary direction would be much better. His biology grades in college were decent, and choosing a cross-disciplinary path with biology meant there would be plenty of pharmaceutical and medical enterprises to choose from for future employment.
Once this direction was chosen, his advisor was basically set. There was only one master’s student advisor at Bauhinia University specializing in bioinformatics, who happened to teach their computer vision class this semester. The professor’s surname was Chen, and his full name was Chen Wang.
Ji Wenyu recalled carefully. Over the first month of the semester, he had attended the computer vision classes every week, and the week before last, he even represented his group on stage to give a presentation. Even if he hadn’t left any particularly stellar good impressions with Chen Wang, he shouldn’t have left any terrible bad impressions either. He had also prepared earnestly for last week’s quiz, answering most of the questions, so there was an eighty percent chance he would get a decent score.
Calculating it this way, Ji Wenyu felt his approach toward securing a mentor was practically foolproof.
Getting a mentor wasn’t difficult in itself; if anyone was to blame, it was simply that he himself was truly exceptional.
With the general direction for his upcoming efforts roughly taking shape, Ji Wenyu started getting a bit full of himself.
His phone vibrated once with a message from X, another vocabulary check-in.
The Big Shot really was self-disciplined; 200 words every single day without fail.
Ji Wenyu smiled helplessly and opened the vocabulary app as well. But perhaps because he was in a good mood, or perhaps because the golden-tinted red glow of the sunset outside the library window was too gorgeous, after finishing merely two sets of words, he stopped.
The sunset was red mixed with gold, casting its brilliant yet gentle glow across the garden downstairs. It was enough to catch anyone’s attention instinctively with just a passing glance.
[Little Fish: The weather is really nice today]
He sent a line of text over in the chat box in response to X’s check-in.
[Little Fish: I’ve figured out the direction I want to study next, and I plan to aim for the one cross-disciplinary with biology]
He shared his latest decision by the way, since X had previously provided him with help.
This time, the Big Shot finally converted back from a bot to a human.
[X: Mhm, sounds pretty good]
The weather was great, and his mood was great too; why not go down to the court and shoot some hoops?
Thinking this, Ji Wenyu closed the notebook on his desk.
Since he would be back shortly anyway, he simply left his things on the library desktop.
He took the elevator down, followed the scattered stream of people out of the library, and rode his bike to the basketball court he frequented.
Being still during the holiday period, even the usually bustling court was blissfully quiet.
Ji Wenyu locked his bike and took off his jacket. Before shoving his phone into his jacket pocket, he subconsciously glanced at the Qinghe interface once more.
He saw a newly posted note by X.
The latest post wasn’t about a check-in.
It was a photo taken by that person of a rouge-colored sunset, the rosy light and white clouds lingering together in silence.
[X: The weather is really nice today]
It felt like being scratched by a kitten with soft paws, a little ticklish, as delicate emotions slowly rose from the bottom of his heart.
X was using the exact words he had sent over to make a public post.
Ji Wenyu couldn’t help but tap into the chat box to confirm.
Yep, it was the exact phrasing he had sent to X.
A gentle breeze blew past, messing up the loose strands of hair on the young man’s forehead.
Today’s weather, really did seem quite nice.