The school-level competition for the event Lin Qin was participating in took place in early April. Over a dozen teams from the entire school entered, and only five would advance to the next round—the provincial competition.
Each team had five minutes: three minutes for the project presentation and two minutes for questions.
The order of presentation was determined by drawing lots. Lin Qin's group drew eighth—a middle position, avoiding the risk of going first or last. However, if their work wasn't strong enough, they could easily become cannon fodder due to the judges' aesthetic fatigue.
Most teams that made it to the school-level competition were fairly capable. Before the presentation defense even began, Xu Shirui, who was about to give the presentation, was already incredibly nervous.
They sat in the front row on the corridor side of the small tiered classroom. Xu Shirui clutched her laptop, familiarizing herself with the PowerPoint, muttering repeatedly, "What do I do, what do I do… I'm so afraid my mind will go blank the moment I get on stage…"
Yan Mingxuan said, "You'll be fine. Trust yourself."
The encouragement was hardly effective—you can't just conjure up adrenaline out of thin air.
Lin Qin checked the time. There were still fifteen minutes before the defense began, so she asked Xu Shirui, "Want to do a quick rehearsal?"
"…Right now?"
Lin Qin made a snap decision, grabbing her wrist. "I saw an empty classroom next door when we came in. Let's go over there."
She arranged for Peng Fei to stay behind and watch their things, then Lin Qin, Xu Shirui, and Yan Mingxuan headed to the adjacent classroom.
Worried that Xu Shirui might feel awkward, Lin Qin left both the front and back doors slightly ajar.
Xu Shirui placed her laptop on the podium table, faced the two of them, took a deep breath, and smiled. "Good afternoon, esteemed judges. I am Xu Shirui from Group 08. Our team members consist of…"
As she listened, Lin Qin jotted down notes in her notebook from time to time, her phone set aside with a three-minute countdown running.
Xu Shirui stumbled a bit at first, but gradually found her rhythm and grew increasingly fluent.
With about a minute and a half left on the countdown, Lin Qin, seated by the window, caught sight of a group of teachers in formal attire passing by in the hallway, chatting and laughing. One figure looked very familiar. She froze for a moment, then immediately turned to look.
It was indeed Meng Jingnian. He was speaking with the teacher beside him and didn't glance into the classroom. Dressed in a white shirt and black suit jacket, he looked exceptionally distinguished.
Movies always have that shot—when the one you love approaches, everything else fades out of focus.
For those brief two seconds, she truly felt that way.
Lin Qin averted her gaze, her heart still pounding.
With about thirty seconds remaining, Xu Shirui finished her presentation and immediately asked, "How was it?"
Lin Qin nodded. "You could slow down your pace a bit. You'll probably be more nervous during the actual presentation, and it's easy to start speaking faster and faster."
"Did I say anything wrong or miss anything?"
"No."
Xu Shirui let out a long sigh of relief.
A WeChat message came through on her phone. In their four-person group chat, Peng Fei told them to come back to the tiered classroom—the judges had already arrived.
The three of them left the classroom and returned to the defense venue. As soon as she walked in, Lin Qin saw Meng Jingnian seated in the second seat from the left in the first row. A name card with white lettering on a black background stood on the desk, with a bottle of purified water beside it.
At that moment, Meng Jingnian happened to glance up, his gaze pausing briefly.
Lin Qin's steps faltered. She wasn't sure whether she should greet him. In a setting like this, it seemed better to avoid any appearance of impropriety. As she hesitated, she saw Meng Jingnian give a barely perceptible nod, then shift his gaze away.
She returned to her original seat and sat down, letting out a slow breath.
From where she sat, she could only see the back of Meng Jingnian's head. The competition hadn't started yet, but he still sat with perfect posture—as if it were an instinct ingrained by his upbringing.
Lin Qin lowered her head and opened WeChat.
badapple: Little uncle, why didn't you tell me you were one of the judges?
After sending the message, she looked up, her gaze crossing over the desks and chairs to see the phone on Meng Jingnian's desk light up.
He swiped up on the screen, paused for a moment, then naturally picked up the phone with both hands and began typing.
She had never waited for a WeChat reply with her heart racing so fast.
She stared intently at her phone screen and watched as the message quickly appeared from the left side.
mjn: I was afraid you'd try to bribe the judges in advance if you knew.
Lin Qin curved her lips slightly and was about to type a reply when another new message popped up.
mjn: I'm filling in for Teacher Li from the department. He has a business trip this month, and his schedule was only confirmed the day before yesterday—it happened to clash with the school competition.
With that explanation, Lin Qin remembered. On the day of Meng Jingnian's defense, there had indeed been a teacher discussing something about helping out with him.
badapple: Is it too late to bribe you now?
Meng Jingnian sent a sticker of a little hammer hitting a yellow bean character on the head.
mjn: I'll be even stricter. Be prepared.
Just then, the organizing staff began distributing materials to the five judges—likely scoring criteria and introductions for the participating teams.
Lin Qin locked her phone, deciding not to disturb him for now.
Five minutes later, the competition officially began. The host briefly introduced the rules and the composition of the judging panel without wasting any words, then went straight into the first group's defense.
The judging panel members came from the School of Computer Science, the School of Information Engineering, the School of Atmospheric Sciences, and the School of Remote Sensing and Surveying—clearly not a random selection, but a targeted choice based on the students' competition topics.
Each group's defense was strictly time-limited, and even so, it was a full hour before Lin Qin's group was up.
Xu Shirui went on stage to present, while the other three stood by waiting. Thanks to the rehearsal before the competition, despite her nervousness, the entire presentation went smoothly without any major errors.
"Alright, now we invite the judges to ask questions."
The microphone was passed to the head judge, who was from the School of Computer Science. His question cut straight to the core: "You used PyTorch to build your forecasting model—how exactly was it implemented? Please elaborate in detail."
Xu Shirui held the microphone and instinctively glanced at her three teammates. Yan Mingxuan pointed at Lin Qin, and Xu Shirui understood, saying, "This part was completed by our teammate Lin Qin from the School of Artificial Intelligence. She will answer this question."
Lin Qin walked to the center of the stage and took the microphone from Xu Shirui's hand.
She unconsciously sought out the person on the judging panel with her gaze. He was naturally paying attention to what was happening on stage, and when their eyes met, she could see a hint of smiling encouragement in his expression.
She hadn't been nervous at all, but being looked at by Meng Jingnian like that made her breathing feel slightly tighter.
Lin Qin cleared her throat: "The first step is to obtain public weather datasets, including parameters such as date, temperature, precipitation, humidity, and wind speed. The second step is data processing, including handling missing values, standardizing data, and generating training and testing datasets. The third step is model design, using LSTM for time-series prediction. The fourth step is to use PyTorch to define the model, loss function, and optimizer, then train the model and conduct validation and testing."
The head judge nodded after listening and continued with a targeted question: "How do you ensure the accuracy of this model?"
"Optimization was done from three aspects. In terms of data, I ensured the coverage and precision of historical data as much as possible, conducted correlation analysis on meteorological features, and selected meteorological variables with high correlation to the prediction results. In terms of the model framework, first, I increased the number of LSTM layers and hidden units, and second, I added Dropout layers to reduce overfitting. In terms of model validation, I used methods such as cross-validation, performance metrics, and residual analysis to evaluate and improve the model's stability and accuracy."
"Then what do you think are the future areas for improvement for this model?"
"The first improvement direction I can think of is expanding the dataset. Limited by capability and computational power, the current model only considers a few features like temperature, humidity, and wind speed. In the future, I hope to incorporate all seven physical quantities that affect atmospheric motion. The second is model optimization, such as adding more LSTM layers or using GRU for improvement, as well as hyperparameter tuning and long-term prediction…"
Meng Jingnian had a scoring sheet spread under his elbow, and in the comments column, he had already noted down several key points.
Once Lin Qin began speaking, he didn't write another word.
She had never been a talkative person—this seemed to be the first time he had seen this side of her, facing her own field of expertise with confidence, composure, and clear logic.
She was radiant.
He realized that the slightly subtle feeling he had at this moment was called "pride in her achievement."
The head judge was clearly very satisfied: "My questions are done. Do any other teachers have anything to add?" He glanced at Meng Jingnian, as if asking whether this atmospheric science researcher wanted to speak.
Meng Jingnian smiled and shook his head. "You've covered everything very comprehensively. I have nothing to add."
The host said: "Next is the judges' scoring time. Please have Group 8 return to their seats. The specific scores will be announced after the next group's defense concludes…"
Lin Qin and Xu Shirui bowed somewhat uncoordinatedly toward the judging panel, then left the stage arm in arm.
Back in their seats, Xu Shirui whispered, "My hands are still shaking…"
Lin Qin smiled and squeezed her hand a little tighter—no need to say it, she felt the same.
With the defense over, the four group members temporarily set down their burdens and finally had the mood to listen to other groups' presentations.
After that group's presentation ended, Lin Qin's group's scores came out as well.
The host announced: "The five judges' scores for Group 8 are: 96.2, 98.4, 97.7, 95.8, and 97.2… After removing the highest score of 98.4 and the lowest score of 95.8, Group 8's final score is 97.03…"
The scores corresponded to the seating order.
That lowest score—it was the one Meng Jingnian had given.
Halfway through the competition, the host announced a ten-minute break before continuing.
The four group members, their heads spinning, all got up to go outside for some fresh air.
Before leaving, Lin Qin glanced back and saw Meng Jingnian still in his seat, chatting with the head of the defense panel.
She went to the restroom with Xu Shirui, stood by the window at the end of the hallway for a while to catch some fresh air, then returned to the classroom.
Meng Jingnian was no longer in his seat—he had gone somewhere.
Lin Qin sat back down, took out her phone, and sent a message.
badapple: Strict with the scores, huh.
The reply came almost instantly—Meng Jingnian sent a laughing meme.
mjn: Can't play favorites, so I was a bit harsh.
Lin Qin was typing a response when another message came through. She thought she was fast, but Meng Jingnian seemed even quicker.
mjn: 95.8 is the overall score for your project.
Students came and went through the aisle beside her, the world roaring like a tide.
Lin Qin held her breath—
mjn: Your part—I gave it a 100.