The three groups—around fifty people in total—were deep in competition, with rotation assignments reaching a fever pitch. The atmosphere in all three groups mirrored the tension of students before a major exam. Scores were being scrutinized, and every time a grade came out, the trainees would find ways to extract it from HR.
With He Xiaoyuan, the “king of rewriting assignments,” who had redone every task multiple times, leading the way, Groups 2 and 3 quickly adopted the same habit: rewriting assignments.
Group 1: “Thanks, but we can’t keep up, we won’t participate.”
He Xiaoyuan, meanwhile, started leaving the office at regular hours instead of overworking.
Group 1 members exchanged confused glances: “Yuan-ge? No longer going for first place?”
He Xiaoyuan: “Oh, I’m just going to work on it at home.”
At home? Couldn’t he do it at the office?
He Xiaoyuan’s reasoning: now that he had a bunch of appliances, he could cook and work from the dorm.
So he started leaving at his set time, stopping by a nearby supermarket to buy ingredients on the way. Back at the dorm, he would cook while quietly working on assignments. After eating, he could rest for a bit, then continue working or call Lu Chen; if one of them was busy, they just stayed on the call while working separately.
In just a few days, He Xiaoyuan had developed a habit of putting on wireless earbuds as soon as he returned to the dorm, even while reviewing materials.
Once, while wearing the earbuds and on a call, he got up to use the bathroom. Midway through, Lu Chen suddenly spoke: “What’s that sound? Pouring water?”
He Xiaoyuan: “…I’m using the toilet.”
Lu Chen: “Mm, take your time.”
Lu Chen’s light chuckle drifted through the call, brushing against He Xiaoyuan’s ears. He even slowed down pulling up his pants, afraid Lu would notice the sound.
That day, the office felt unusually relaxed. He Xiaoyuan only realized, after Jiang Weiwei reminded him, that it was the second day of the month—payday for the first batch of trainees. Excitement ran high.
Everyone paused their work to chat about salaries:
“I remember when we were recruited, the management trainee package was at least 500,000, right?”
“Yes, it’s in the contract.”
“500,000 over 16 months, that’s roughly 30,000 per month.”
“Includes bonus and performance, so the actual paycheck might be less than 30k.”
Yuan Miao refreshed her banking app: “When will it post? Not there yet.”
At 10 a.m., Yuan Miao jumped up: “It’s here! The money’s in!”
The office erupted. He Xiaoyuan logged in and saw 28,000 deposited. He couldn’t help but smile—getting paid was one of life’s small joys. Now he could pay off some debts.
That afternoon, he transferred 23,000 to his aunt in one go. Unlike other relatives, she had always treated him kindly, though her family struggled—her husband was ill, her son unambitious, and she was the only breadwinner besides He Xiaoyuan.
His aunt was overjoyed, both at the money and at his steady job. They chatted briefly over WeChat, and she invited him to visit once his rotation ended.
He Xiaoyuan: 【Sure, after rotation ends.】
Back in the office, he overheard some boys teasing Yuan Miao for spending two months’ salary on gaming.
Zou Fanping quipped: “No wonder he’s from a wealthy family!”
Yuan Miao: “Shut up!”
Jiang Weiwei: “I spent a few thousand on black resistance bands.”
Xin Rui, planning to buy personal training sessions: “Same here. Money doesn’t last long.”
He Xiaoyuan stayed silent. With debts and responsibilities, he had no room for complaints.
Only Xu Ruomeng, knowing the details, messaged privately: 【Xiao Yuan, you got paid. Paid debts already? Saved any?】
He Xiaoyuan: 【Saved, don’t worry.】
Xu: 【With trainee pay, you can clear everything this year. Go for it!】
He Xiaoyuan: 【Will do.】
Xu sent links to men’s clothing stores: 【Check these out when you have time, it’s hot—need some new clothes.】
He Xiaoyuan: 【Okay.】
While waiting for the new clothes to arrive, all three groups were notified of an official evaluation during the rotation.
They gathered in a conference room seating a hundred, facing a projector that displayed an aging internet product: Sui Sui Xing.
Born over a decade ago as a mini social feature for a once-popular desktop application, it functioned like a virtual “message in a bottle.”
Over the years, the company had acquired many internet products, and Sui Sui Xing came along with one of these acquisitions.
Currently, it had fewer than 8,000 users nationwide—a drop from hundreds of millions—making daily activity negligible.
Task: All trainees must decide whether the company should continue maintaining Sui Sui Xing. If not, propose a reasonable plan to phase it out.
If the company decided to keep it, could there be room for improvement? How could it be improved, and in what way?
This time, the assessment would not take the form of written assignments but a public PPT presentation. Each person would have a maximum of ten minutes to clearly explain their judgment, decisions, methods, and reasoning.
Management would be present to score the trainees on the spot. While scoring was one aspect, their performance in front of the management would directly influence how the supervisors and managers perceived them and could affect their future departmental assignments after the rotation ended.
…
The members of Group One returned to the office one after another, each more exasperated than the last:
“I’m exhausted from all this competition.”
“I really can’t handle any more overtime.”
“Sui Sui Xing? I’ve only ever heard of ‘碎碎冰’.”
…
Soon, everyone gathered around He Xiaoyuan, and after searching for a while in the personal backend of one of the company’s social apps, they finally located Sui Sui Xing.
The icon was a yellow star. The way it worked was simple: you tapped the star, typed a message, confirmed, and the star would shoot like a shooting star to other users of Sui Sui Xing, meant for making friends.
In short, it was an internet product born at least fifteen years ago.
It had been popular back then, but now it was like a shooting star across the sky that had long since fallen—an outdated relic lost in the void of “past products.”
Jiang Weiwei nearly lost her balance: “Fifteen years ago… I was in second grade of elementary school.”
Yuan Miao corrected her: “At least fifteen years ago. I suspect this product may even be older.”
“This kind of social interaction was only relevant back then.”
There are similar features today, but without the shooting effect—you could do a simple shake of your phone on any social app.
The era? He Xiaoyuan reminded them: “Fifteen years ago, that’s around 2006 or 2007. Not ’97/’96, not ’87/’86.”
Someone questioned bluntly: “Shouldn’t the company have shut this down long ago? Why even keep it? It has no daily active users, let alone traffic.”
“Who knows… maybe for nostalgia? Doesn’t take up space or manpower?”
That afternoon, everyone in Group One’s office started playing with Sui Sui Xing at their desks. They typed messages, launched stars, and soon received responses from others.
Because this relic had almost no active users, but the trainees were all testing it simultaneously, the backend algorithm only sent stars to users who were actively playing. Before long, members of Group One began receiving messages from other trainees.
How could they tell they were from trainees? Because the stars opened to messages like: “Test. Qin Chengfei.”
Group One: …
Sure enough, the other groups were testing it too.
This must be how low the national daily activity had fallen for an internet product to become an office game.
Someone asked: “Do we still need a whiteboard explanation this time? Should we refer to Lu Shen’s opinion?”
Everyone chimed in: “It’s an exam, of course not.”
“The product isn’t much to study anyway. What could Lu Shen possibly advise? If he says cut it, we’ll all make a PPT saying cut it. If he says keep it, we’ll all say keep it?”
“Exactly. Everyone just has to perform on their own.”
He Xiaoyuan sat at his computer, typing, sending, and receiving stars.
After enough testing, he noticed that, due to the extremely low daily activity, some of the stars he sent actually came back to him.
He was puzzled—shouldn’t a product like this have been cut long ago? Why was it still around, and now being used for their assessment?
In such a large company, surely someone must have noticed this product all along.
That night, back in the dorm, He Xiaoyuan continued testing Sui Sui Xing, sending and receiving stars frequently.
He typed quickly, not thinking much, just: “Lu Ge 1, Lu Ge 2, Lu Ge 3, Lu Ge 4…”
When he received the stars, they were mostly random, sometimes just strings of ellipses—clearly other trainees were also testing.
Unnoticed in the group chat, someone in Group One shouted: “Who’s writing Lu Ge? Must be someone from our group testing. What kind of fanboy?”
“You got it too? Me too.”
“Me as well. This is crazy—how much does someone have to love Lu Shen?”
…
He Xiaoyuan didn’t notice, still focused on sending “Lu Ge” stars.
For now, one feature of Sui Sui Xing was the backend compiling frequently occurring hot words over a period of time. Previously, with almost no users, it couldn’t generate hot words, so nothing appeared.
Now, with multiple stars reading “Lu Ge” appearing, the backend counted “Lu Ge” as a hot word, displaying it at the bottom of all opened stars.
Members of Group Three asked Group One: “Why is ‘Lu Ge’ showing up at the bottom?”
Group One: “Hot word. Ignore it. One of our group is testing using Lu Ge.”
Group Three: “Who’s Lu Ge?”
Group One: “A colleague in the company. The male god of our group.”
Group Three: “Which one of you is posting this?”
Zou Fanping: “Not me.”
Yuan Miao: “Not me.”
Xin Rui: “Not me.”
Jiang Weiwei: “Not me.”
…
Everyone in Group One had spoken up in the chat, except He Xiaoyuan.
Group One & Three: “Oh~~ it’s He Xiaoyuan.”
Ge Luming: “Clearly, the handsome guy really loves Lu Ge.”
Xin Rui: “Can’t even laugh or cry.jpg”
The two groups, venting their frustrations in the main chat, also began testing the app while intentionally creating “hot words.”
Soon, the words “Xiaoyuan” appeared as a hot word, ranking just after “Lu Ge.”
The key detail was not just the name—there was also a heart symbol before it.
So when He Xiaoyuan opened a received star, at the bottom of the expanded star appeared: Lu Ge (❤️) Xiaoyuan
He Xiaoyuan: ???