I Miss You

Chapter 162

County A, Clear Water Blue Sky Residential Complex.

The air conditioning in the bedroom was on full blast. The air carried a faint scent of lavender, mixed with the unique sweetness of young girls.

On the large bed, two girls wearing matching silk pajamas were lying haphazardly.

Ye Zhenzhen was lying on her stomach on a pillow, her two pale, slender lower legs swinging unconsciously in the air. She clutched her phone tightly in her hand.

The faint glow of the screen illuminated her anxious little face.

Three minutes ago, Gu Ran had replied to her text: "I've arrived. Getting ready to start work."

The girl stared at this line of text. Her fingers tapped away in the input box, typing and deleting, deleting and typing.

"Take care of your health?" ...Too much like a neighborhood committee auntie doing her rounds. Delete.

"Go to bed early?" ...He was obviously going to handle an emergency. Too fake. Delete.

"I miss you?" ...No! If I send this, can I unsend it? It's too forward! Ye Zhenzhen, snap out of it!

Finally, she resigned herself to sending a dry reply: "Then get to work, don't tire yourself out too much, and remember to drink water."

Click send.

The next second, the girl buried her face in the blanket in frustration, like an ostrich wishing it could plant itself into the dirt, and let out a muffled groan.

Ye Zhenzhen, oh Ye Zhenzhen, where did your courage from the Ferris wheel go?

So cowardly!

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. The sour stench of love is so strong that the air purifier in my room is about to sound the alarm."

A teasing voice came from beside her.

Pei Susu sat up cross-legged, crunched on a potato chip, and swept her gaze over the girl before locking precisely onto her lips.

"Ye Zhenzhen, leniency for those who confess, severity for those who resist."

She brushed the potato chip crumbs off her hands and, like a starving tiger pouncing on its prey, pinned the defenseless girl beneath her.

"Ah! Susu, what are you doing!" Ye Zhenzhen cried out, trying to struggle, but was suppressed by Pei Susu with a single hand.

"Stop playing dumb!"

Pei Susu narrowed her eyes, putting on the posture of interrogating a spy. "You two were acting weird at the amusement park today. When you came out of the haunted house, your face was as red as a monkey's butt, and when you got off the Ferris wheel, you couldn't even walk straight. And..."

Saying that, she extended a finger and gently poked the corner of the girl's mouth. "Here, why is it a little swollen? Don't tell me a mosquito bit you. Is this mosquito's surname Gu? And does it have pretty good teeth?"

Hearing this, the girl's face instantly flushed completely red, her eyes darting around. "It's... it's just a bit of internal heat from eating spicy strips."

"Internal heat?" Pei Susu sneered. "Fine, internal heat. Then explain to me, how did that cat ear headband get crooked? I checked it, that thing is super tight. Unless someone was holding the back of your head..."

"That... that was from bumping into a wall!" The stubborn girl was still making a dying struggle.

"Oh—bumping into a wall." Pei Susu dragged out the last syllable with a wicked smile. "This wall is pretty high-class, huh? A constant temperature of 37 degrees, soft and chewy texture, and it even comes with a heartbeat function?"

Ye Zhenzhen bit her lower lip and completely played dead.

"Zhenzhen, we grew up wearing the same pair of pants."

Pei Susu softened her tone, coaxing patiently. "Tell me, what stage are you at? Holding hands? Hugging? Or..."

She leaned in close to Ye Zhenzhen's ear and whispered two words: "Kissed?"

The girl's body trembled, her eyelashes fluttering like a frightened butterfly.

After a long time.

She buried her face deeply into the pillow, her muffled voice coming out as thin as a thread.

"...Yeah."

"Holy crap!"

Pei Susu was so shocked she practically launched herself off the bed, her eyes wide as brass bells.

"You really kissed?! Who initiated it? Did that dog Gu Ran force you? I knew that kid was full of dirty tricks..."

"N-no!"

Hearing her best friend misunderstand her Gu Ran, Ye Zhenzhen immediately grew anxious. She jerked her head up, her face so red it looked ready to drip blood, but she still mustered her courage and whispered, "It... it was me."

Pei Susu: "???"

The air froze for three seconds.

"You?" Pei Susu pointed at her, looking as if she had just seen a ghost.

"You initiated it? On the Ferris wheel? Ye Zhenzhen, look at you! Usually so quiet, but when you make a move, it's an instant kill? You're playing the pig to eat the tiger!"

Bombarded by her words, the girl was so embarrassed she wished she could evaporate on the spot. She grabbed the blanket and wrapped herself into a silkworm cocoon, exposing only a pair of sparkling eyes, stubbornly refusing to come out.

"Ah, stop asking... Sleep! I want to sleep!"

...

Meanwhile.

Qinglin City Sci-Tech Innovation Center, 16th floor.

There was no lavender scent here, only the strong smell of tobacco and the crisp sound of empty Red Bull cans being crushed.

Unlike the previous low-pressure atmosphere, the current mood at GR Gaming Company was so heated it bordered on fanaticism.

"Clack clack clack clack—"

The sound of mechanical keyboards clicking merged into a continuous wave.

Gu Ran sat at the core position of the workstations with three monitors in front of him, firing on all cylinders as he pounded the keyboard.

"Boss, the optimization plan for the rendering layer is stuck."

A lead programmer wearing thick-rimmed glasses ran over, sweating profusely. "According to conventional logic, to run at 60 frames per second on low-end devices, we have to cut 30% of the particle effects. But then the graphics will be unwatchable, just a mess of pixels."

"Who told you to use conventional logic?"

Gu Ran didn't even turn his head, his fingers typing furiously on the keyboard. "The bottleneck for low-end devices is GPU bandwidth, not computing power. Change the particle rendering from full-precision floating-point to half-precision, and preprocess it with the vertex shader."

"Ah?" The lead programmer was stunned for a moment. "But that will result in a loss of precision..."

"A loss that is invisible to the naked eye is not a loss."

As Gu Ran spoke, he directly pulled the lead programmer's keyboard over.

The next minute became a "miracle moment" that the entire tech department would never forget for the rest of their lives.

They watched Gu Ran's fingers fly across the keys; he didn't even need to think.

Lines of obscure, low-level assembly instructions mixed with C++ code poured out.

"Enter, compile." Gu Ran stood up and pushed the keyboard back.

With trembling hands, the lead programmer pressed F5.

The screen flickered, and then the game footage, which had previously stuttered like a slideshow in the emulator, instantly became incredibly smooth. The sparks from colliding gold coins were so detailed it made you want to reach out and grab them.

"The frame rate... a stable 60?!"

Lead programmer Wang Hao's eyes were about to pop out of his head. "This... this optimization efficiency has increased by at least 40%! Boss, did you practice this hand speed by being single for eighteen years? This algorithm is simply a dimensional strike!"

Gu Ran: "..."

You brat... have you never suffered the cruel beatings of a capitalist?

Forget it, considering you're a hardcore tech otaku, I won't dock your pay.

The observing programmers gasped, looking at Gu Ran with somewhat strange expressions.

Is this really a high school student?

This is practically the founding grandmaster spoon-feeding him, and chasing after him to do it!

Damn it, I'm going to fight you talented freaks to the death!

"Don't just stand there. Package this module and update it to the server within half an hour."

Gu Ran's expression was calm, as if he had just done something completely trivial. "Next, everyone switch projects."

He pressed enter, and the projector's beam hit the whiteboard.

A brand new, never-before-seen logo appeared on the screen—a sharp katana slicing through a juicy watermelon.

Fruit Ninja.

"This is our nuclear weapon."

Gu Ran pointed at the screen, his aura fully unleashed. "For the rest of tonight, I want to see a running demo of its core gameplay."

"Ms. Li."

Li Sinan, who had been standing to the side serving tea and managing logistics, quickly stepped forward. "I... I'm here."

"How are things on the public opinion front?"

"As you instructed, the 'green tea' PR campaign has been rolled out."

A flash of excitement crossed Li Sinan's eyes. "Right now, Weibo and Tieba are filled with voices feeling sorry for Boss Chou being used by capital. The ghostwriters we hired aren't scolding Penguin directly; instead, they're pretending to be 'rational fans,' bitterly condemning Penguin's plagiarism for bringing hate to Boss Chou. Now, Boss Chou's fan base has completely exploded, and many people are rushing to Penguin's official Weibo to apply pressure."

"Excellent." Gu Ran laughed out loud. "Keep adding fuel to the fire."

Li Sinan nodded, then cast a somewhat worried glance at the big watermelon on the screen.

"Boss, fighting a war on two fronts... isn't the risk too high? Temple Run hasn't stabilized yet, and now we're starting a new project. What if..."

"There is no 'what if'."

Gu Ran interrupted her, his gaze sweeping over everyone present.

"Penguin thinks they've set up a deadly trap, wanting to drown us in traffic."

"But they forgot that traffic is a double-edged sword."

As he spoke, he picked up a marker and drew a heavy horizontal line on the whiteboard, as if slicing through something.

"Tomorrow morning at ten o'clock, when players all over the country are rallied by Penguin, holding their phones and waiting for Everyday Parkour."

"What we need to do is serve up a 'fruit platter' they have never tasted, or even imagined."

"I'm going to use the stage Penguin built to put on our own show."

"Pull an all-nighter tonight, and you get triple pay. After the project goes live, everyone gets a five-figure bonus, paid in cash right on the table!"

With that, he tossed the marker aside. "Get to work!"

"Yes, sir!!!"

Listening to the office instantly boil over with energy, Gu Ran twitched the corner of his mouth.

Sure enough, no empty promises could ever beat the practicality of handing out cold, hard cash.

...

Bishui Yuntian Residential Compound.

The night was late, and the moon outside the window had hidden behind the clouds.

Ye Zhenzhen wrapped herself in her blanket, listening to Pei Susu chattering away with her analysis.

"The Thirty-Six Stratagems of Love," "Playing Hard to Get," "Push and Pull Tactics"—it made her head buzz.

"Susu..." The silent girl finally couldn't help it, poking half her head out from under the covers.

"What? Figured it out? Ready to listen to my Training Manual?" Pei Susu leaned in excitedly.

Ye Zhenzhen blinked and suddenly asked, "What about you?"

"Me? What about me?" Pei Susu paused.

"You and Ye Jinliang."

Ye Zhenzhen sat up, hugging her knees, and looked at her best friend with an innocent face. "Today at the amusement park, you were the one who invited him, right? Gu Ran didn't even have to ask."

Pei Susu's face stiffened. "That was... that was because I was afraid you two would be awkward! I did it for the greater good! I invited him... to be the hype man!"

"Oh~, the hype man."

The suddenly enlightened girl nodded and dropped another bombshell. "Then the fact that you both applied to universities in the capital, was that also for the hype?"

"That was a coincidence! Pure coincidence, got it?!"

Pei Susu's voice suddenly rose an octave. "It was obviously your Gu Ran who agreed to go to the capital with him, and now he bailed on him. What... what does that have to do with me?!"

Despite her words, her eyes couldn't help but dart around in a panic.

Ye Zhenzhen mercilessly exposed her. "You were the one who helped Ye Jinliang pick his university choices, weren't you?"

"I... I was just being helpful!"

The girl, seeing through everything, went in for the kill and continued to press, "Then you..."

Before she could finish, Pei Susu got anxious, her cheeks visibly turning red. "I... I'll rip your mouth off!"

Ye Zhenzhen: "???"

You really can't take a joke!

"Ah! Help... Hahahaha..."

"Where are you touching..."

The two girls rolled into a ball on the bed, their laughter mixed with screams sounding especially crisp in the summer night.

Tired of messing around, the two lay side by side on the bed, panting heavily.

Pei Susu looked at the ceiling and suddenly sighed. "Zhenzhen, do you think... we'll always be like this?"

"We will." Ye Zhenzhen turned on her side, looking at her best friend's profile with a firm tone. "No matter what happens in the future, we'll always be like this."

"Tch, so sentimental." Pei Susu curled her lip.

Just then, the phone on the nightstand suddenly vibrated.

It was Ye Zhenzhen's PHS cell phone.

She quickly grabbed it. The screen lit up, and a new text message lay quietly there.

Sender: Gu Ran.

The content was very simple, only a few short words, but it made the girl's heart skip a beat.

[I am thinking of you.]

Ahhh, he has no shame...

The girl held her phone, the corners of her mouth curving up wildly and uncontrollably, the sweetness in her eyes almost overflowing.

"It's over, it's over."

Next to her, Pei Susu rolled her eyes and pulled the blanket over her head. "With this sour stench of love, there's no way I'm getting any sleep tonight."