Because people are too young, they always have too many thoughts.
He Xiaoyuan was no exception.
But after talking with Lu Chen this time and then thinking things through on his own, He Xiaoyuan finally figured it out.
He felt that what Lu Chen said was right. Someone would always step up—if not him, then someone else. So why couldn’t it be him?
What’s more, even if it really was luck, he had already made it this far. People can only look forward and move forward. Was he supposed to give up voluntarily and walk backward just because he felt unworthy?
He would just charge ahead.
After sorting this out, He Xiaoyuan no longer had any sense of “not deserving it” in his work. He focused all his energy on doing the work in his hands well.
At present, his main task was coordinating between Keluo and Barray, ensuring the Q4 launch of Meow Meow Meow.
Yes—Meow Meow Meow had finalized a rough launch schedule, set for the fourth quarter.
The reason was that a small game Keluo had originally planned to launch in October of Q4 ran into some issues and couldn’t go live as scheduled. In addition, as was customary, competing companies would definitely make some user-acquisition moves in the fourth quarter to meet their annual KPIs. After weighing all these factors and holding several meetings, the final decision was made to have Meow Meow Meow step in and launch in Q4.
Originally, if Meow Meow Meow had gone live according to the normal queue, the coordination with Barray would have been handled entirely by Keluo. He Xiaoyuan would have wrapped things up, checked in occasionally, and that would have been about it—he could then move on to subsequent project work.
But now, because they needed to push Meow Meow Meow online as quickly as possible, He Xiaoyuan couldn’t disengage from this project for the time being and had to continue following up closely.
As a result, not only did Keluo reach out to him, even Chang Bei came over to speak with He Xiaoyuan, asking him to bear with it for now and continue tracking Meow Meow Meow.
He Xiaoyuan didn’t find it troublesome. He felt it was only right, and he genuinely cared about the Meow Meow Meow project, so he continued to assist actively and conscientiously.
He was also the kind of person who rarely had ulterior motives at work. As long as he believed a task was his responsibility, he would put in one hundred percent effort to do it well.
Because of this, throughout the entire month of September, He Xiaoyuan was busy with the launch of Meow Meow Meow. Sometimes he was so busy that he wouldn’t even be in the project team’s office for an entire day.
When Yu Xun, Xue Jinming, and Xiao Qiyi—the bosses—were in the office, they even chatted with Chang Bei, jokingly asking whether he was “bullying” the newcomer, since He Xiaoyuan was so busy he barely seemed like a member of the project team anymore.
Chang Bei, taking the ribbing, quickly begged for mercy, saying how would he dare “bully” their little brother Xiaoyuan. They shouldn’t forget that he was Yang Yun’s person.
At that point, Xiao Qiyi reminded Chang Bei that if it weren’t for He Xiaoyuan, the one following up on Meow Meow Meow now would be him instead. By then, he’d be juggling both projects and game follow-ups and would be worked to death—how could he still have time to sit in the office chatting like this?
Xue Jinming also said, “If little brother Xiaoyuan hadn’t joined, with your style, this project wouldn’t have been signed this way, right?”
Chang Bei immediately replied, “I know, I know—I get it.”
Get what?
That He Xiaoyuan had put in a lot of effort and contributed greatly to the Barray project, and when it came time to assign project contribution percentages in the system, He Xiaoyuan’s share would not be low.
Afraid he might forget later, Chang Bei opened the system on the spot. After a series of operations, he filled in the contribution percentages for the other two people on the project while looking at the computer.
He Xiaoyuan only noticed the contribution breakdown for the Barray project later, when he was running an OA workflow and happened to glance at it.
He Xiaoyuan: 40%.
Qin Chengfei: 0.001%.
He Xiaoyuan slowly widened his eyes as he stared at the screen.
Forty percent?
Forty percent?
President Chang gave him such a high project share?
He Xiaoyuan hadn’t expected this at all. He thought that if Chang Bei gave him ten percent, that would already be very good.
After all, the project belonged to Chang Bei, and when He Xiaoyuan first joined, he had been a newcomer who understood nothing.
It was true that he had put in a lot of effort and continuously pushed the project forward, but he also knew very clearly—how could a newcomer reasonably be given forty percent?
That was practically an even split.
In the past, if Chang Bei had given him forty percent, He Xiaoyuan would have felt it was too much and would definitely have gone to Chang Bei right away, politely and gratefully asking about it.
But now, because of his conversation with Lu Chen, He Xiaoyuan didn’t immediately go ask Chang Bei. Instead, he thought about it first and asked himself: Did he really not deserve it?
If Chang Bei decided to give him forty percent, was it because he was being polite, accommodating, and indulgent toward him at work—or because he had seen He Xiaoyuan’s contributions and judged that he was worth those forty percent?
He Xiaoyuan analyzed this with a calm, rational work mindset, rather than relying on intuition or emotion.
After thinking it through, He Xiaoyuan decided to accept the contribution ratio坦然, and only then did he privately message Chang Bei on OA, saying that he had seen the project share in the backend and thanking President Chang for the recognition.
Chang Bei’s reply was very concise: 【No need to thank me. It’s what you deserve.】
Seeing this, He Xiaoyuan understood that Chang Bei had indeed made the decision after serious consideration, giving him forty percent as a very rational choice, not for any other reason.
In this way, He Xiaoyuan felt both the joy of being affirmed and a deeper realization that work required rationality. This rationality needed to be applied to every aspect of work—including one’s own mindset.
He Xiaoyuan had learned another lesson.
At the end of September, Meow Meow Meow was imported into Keluo’s backend system. After several rounds of internal testing and discussion, the final decision was made to officially launch it on October 1—much earlier than originally planned.
October 1, Meow Meow Meow went live.
…
During the National Day holiday, He Xiaoyuan finally got a truly complete, one-hundred-percent vacation.
On the night of September 30, he completely pushed work out of his mind. He set all his work group chats to Do Not Disturb, went back to the dorm after getting off work, went to bed at ten, and slept straight through until after nine the next morning—October 1.
On the first, he cleaned the dorm and went to Xu Ruomeng’s place for a get-together.
Xu Ruomeng was wearing home clothes, slouched into the sofa playing a casual game on her phone. The game she was playing was Meow Meow Meow, and she was completely engrossed, muttering nonstop as she played: “These two can breed. These two should work too, right? Damn it, why can’t these two breed? Do they look like they’re within three generations of blood relation?”
He Xiaoyuan sat beside her, smiling but saying nothing.
On the second, He Xiaoyuan met up with a few male classmates he’d been fairly close with back in college.
During the meal, one of the guys mentioned that he’d played a small game during the holiday that was really fun and recommended it to everyone else. The game was Meow Meow Meow.
He Xiaoyuan was a little surprised. He didn’t say that the game was his project, but he quietly felt happy inside.
On the third, He Xiaoyuan went to his aunt’s place.
His aunt’s son was obsessed with games. From childhood to adulthood, he played whatever game was fun. Even when guests came over, it didn’t stop him from hiding in his room with his phone, grinding away at games.
He Xiaoyuan got along reasonably well with this cousin. After lunch, seeing that the cousin stayed holed up in his room and didn’t come out, He Xiaoyuan went in to check on him.
The moment he walked in, he heard a familiar game background track—it was the soundtrack from Meow Meow Meow.
He Xiaoyuan walked over and asked his cousin, “You’re playing Meow Meow Meow?”
The cousin, sitting at his desk with his phone in hand, turned his head. “Yeah! You play it too, bro? This game’s really fun!”
On the fourth, He Xiaoyuan had no other plans and was called over by Lu Chen to pet cats and have a meal.
Curled up on the sofa, petting cats with one hand and scrolling through his phone with the other, He Xiaoyuan opened a few work group chats to take a look. In several Meow Meow Meow project-related groups, colleagues from Keluo had posted celebratory “performance reports” about the launch, saying that Meow Meow Meow’s viral coefficient had reached 0.8. No need to think twice—this was a potential blockbuster. The group was buzzing with excitement.
He Xiaoyuan smiled the moment he saw it.
But at that time—whether it was the other colleagues in the work groups, He Xiaoyuan himself, or even the people on Barray’s side—no one yet had a concrete sense of just how big Meow Meow Meow would become.
That changed on the evening of October 7.
Without any marketing at all, Meow Meow Meow suddenly climbed onto Keluo’s trending list, charging all the way from around number thirty into the top ten, and finally taking the number one spot.
Several trending keywords appeared:
#MeowMeowMeow
#WithinThreeGenerationsOfBloodRelation
#CanTheseTwoCatsBreed
Related trending content: gameplay recordings of Meow Meow Meow.
Caption:
【I’ve been freaking playing this for hours, and now my entire brain is just “these two can breed,” “those two can breed,” “these two are siblings so they can’t,” “these two are grandparent and grandchild so they can’t.” Who would’ve thought that this entire holiday would be spent obsessing over cats breeding【laughing-crying.jpg】. My aftereffect now is that when I see my own cat, I start wondering if these two can breed【laughing-crying.jpg】】
…
At the time, He Xiaoyuan was squatting at Lu Chen’s place, happily devouring king crab. All the Meow Meow Meow-related group chats he’d set to Do Not Disturb were completely boiling over.
At first, He Xiaoyuan didn’t know anything was going on. He was taking pre-cut crab legs from Lu Chen, sucking out the meat, when he noticed the phone set off to the side lighting up over and over again.
He wondered who was looking for him, sending so many messages.
He wiped one hand clean and picked up the phone to check. There were messages from Chang Bei, from several colleagues at Keluo he’d been working closely with lately, and from Vice President Zhang on Barray’s side—all of them excitedly telling him that Meow Meow Meow had exploded and made it onto the trending list.
He Xiaoyuan immediately opened Keluo to check the trending page himself. Sure enough, Meow Meow Meow was sitting at number one.
!
!!
!!!
At this moment, He Xiaoyuan was actually fairly restrained. He wondered whether getting on the trending list might be part of some traffic-pulling marketing strategy. It wasn’t until he saw all the relevant work groups erupting in heated discussion about the trending topic that he confirmed it—this was an organic trend, driven by natural traffic.
He Xiaoyuan: !
He Xiaoyuan shot to his feet, phone in hand.
Across the table, Lu Chen looked up. “?”
Eyes wide, He Xiaoyuan looked at Lu Chen, thrilled, and exclaimed, “Meow Meow Meow is trending! It did it on its own!”
Lu Chen raised an eyebrow.
He Xiaoyuan had already stepped away from his chair, phone in one hand and a king crab leg in the other. Too excited to contain himself, he bounced in place several times.
Lu Chen watched and laughed.
Seeing Lu Chen smile, He Xiaoyuan treated it like sharing earth-shattering good news. He went over to Lu Chen, draped an arm over his shoulder, and leaned in, practically vibrating with excitement. “It exploded, it exploded! It really exploded!”
Lu Chen smiled, genuinely happy as well, and let the young man cling to him.
The next day, the eighth, as soon as He Xiaoyuan arrived at the company, he went straight to Keluo’s floor.
He walked quickly through the open office area outside and headed directly for the conference room where they usually held discussions. The moment he pushed the door open, he saw that many of the colleagues involved in Meow Meow Meow were already there. On the projection screen at the front were various backend data metrics for Meow Meow Meow. Most of the data was dynamic. There was one relatively static number that everyone in the room clearly knew the meaning of—and He Xiaoyuan knew it too.
It was Meow Meow Meow’s current total number of users:
1.5 million.
Seven days. One and a half million users. Far beyond what they had originally projected for the first seven days.
It had exploded—truly exploded—and it would only get bigger from here.
Even so, He Xiaoyuan stayed cautious. After entering the room, he still asked calmly, “So, how is it?”
How is it?
One colleague answered directly, “It exploded.”
Three words—enough to set the entire room on fire.
Everyone lit up with joy. Someone started clapping—for Meow Meow Meow, for the results, for all the effort they had put in over such a long stretch of time.
He Xiaoyuan was smiling too, clapping along with everyone else.
At that moment, Chang Bei pushed the door open and walked in. He Xiaoyuan turned his head. Chang Bei lifted his hand toward him, and He Xiaoyuan raised his hand in response. The two of them slapped palms in perfect sync.
After the high-five, Chang Bei grabbed He Xiaoyuan’s hand and gave it a firm squeeze. He leaned in naturally, shoulders brushing in something like a half-hug, while his other hand came up to pat the young man on the back.
“Great job. You worked hard,” Chang Bei said.
He Xiaoyuan smiled. Even though he had trained himself to be as rational as possible at all times at work, in this moment he still couldn’t help but feel emotional. One simple “you worked hard,” the buoyant atmosphere filling the conference room, the success of the game, and his own efforts—all of it stirred something deep inside him.
He returned the gesture, lifting his hand to pat Chang Bei on the back as well.
After that, He Xiaoyuan experienced the popularity of Meow Meow Meow firsthand in all kinds of settings—
In several class group chats, people were talking about Meow Meow Meow nonstop.
In the company cafeteria, plenty of people were playing Meow Meow Meow while they ate.
In elevators, he heard the Meow Meow Meow background music playing behind him.
One day after work, He Xiaoyuan deliberately took the subway, just to see whether people outside his immediate circle—outside the company—were also playing Meow Meow Meow.
When he boarded the train, there were seats available, but he didn’t sit. He deliberately stood.
He rode several stops, paying attention the whole time, and sure enough, he saw quite a few people playing Meow Meow Meow. Groups of friends even played while discussing it animatedly.
Seeing this made He Xiaoyuan incredibly happy.
This kind of happiness was even greater than seeing the project land successfully or the game launch smoothly. If he had to describe it, it was like not only raising a child to adulthood, but also watching that child grow capable and accomplished.
Yet He Xiaoyuan felt there was more to it than that—something else.
What exactly it was, he didn’t yet have a clear concept of. All he knew was that seeing the game loved by so many people, seeing so many people playing Meow Meow Meow, made him extremely, deeply happy, along with some other, harder-to-name emotion that ran even deeper.
What was it?
He Xiaoyuan didn’t figure it out just yet. He quietly noted it down and stored it away in his heart.
—
With Meow Meow Meow officially launched, the Barray project formally came to an end.
When He Xiaoyuan saw the project marked as completed, he felt a brief surge of emotion. Time had gone by so fast. In his memory, joining the Barray project felt like something that had happened not long ago. Now, not only had the project been completed—the game had already launched and become a blockbuster.
Sitting at his desk, He Xiaoyuan stared at the screen for a moment, pressed his lips together lightly, then closed the Barray project page.
That evening, when He Xiaoyuan went over to Lu Chen’s place, he saw a brand-new banner hanging there. This time it read: Warm Congratulations to Manager He Xiaoyuan on Successfully Completing the First Project of His Career.
He Xiaoyuan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Last time, Lu Chen had said that whenever there was something worth celebrating, he would make a banner for him. Turns out he wasn’t just saying it—he really meant it.
There was a bouquet of flowers as well.
He Xiaoyuan took the flowers and, this time, consciously stepped in front of the banner.
Lu Chen took out his phone and praised him. “Very good.”
He Xiaoyuan laughed. “Good thing a project takes several months to finish.”
If there was a banner for signing the contract, another for project completion—two banners every few months—then in a year it would be, what… six banners? Eight? At most ten?
He Xiaoyuan thought about it. Mm. Not too many. Still manageable.
With that thought, he raised his hand and flashed a peace sign at Lu Chen’s camera—more proactive than last time, and more confident too.
And in October, there was something else new as well—He Xiaoyuan checked his paycheck: just over seventy thousand.
He Xiaoyuan: ?
Why so much?
He Xiaoyuan deliberately logged into the system and pulled up a detailed breakdown from his personal backend. He discovered that fifty thousand of it was bonus money.
Not understanding why the bonus was so high, he privately messaged the HR staff responsible for this. HR told him the salary and bonus amounts were correct, then explained:
“I checked our backend. Everything’s correct. Your salary structure includes a contract signing bonus, and there’s also a project commission bonus. Those two parts add up to this amount.”
“[Screenshot.]”
He Xiaoyuan opened the screenshot and saw the breakdown of his bonuses. The contract signing bonus was thirty-two thousand, and the project commission bonus was a little over eighteen thousand.
So his salary really was over seventy thousand.
He Xiaoyuan quietly sucked in a breath. That’s a lot!
Project team pay is really high!
Considering that all this income was only possible because he had joined Chang Bei’s project, He Xiaoyuan privately treated Chang Bei to dinner that same week.
While they were talking, the topic of bonuses and project commissions came up. Chang Bei explained that what had just been paid was September’s salary. Since Meow Meow Meow hadn’t launched in September, the project commission was still small. When October’s salary was paid out in early November—that would be the real project commission.
Chang Bei smiled like a fox, eyes narrowed, deliberately teasing as he said, “Your project share is forty percent. Take a guess—how much do you think you’ll get then?”
He Xiaoyuan honestly had no idea. He thought about it and gave a conservative estimate. “A hundred thousand?”
But even that amount didn’t feel conservative to He Xiaoyuan—it already felt like a lot.
Chang Bei let out a low chuckle.
He Xiaoyuan blinked. “More?” Could it be several hundred thousand? That would be huge.
Chang Bei extended one finger across the table toward He Xiaoyuan. He Xiaoyuan looked at it, confused. He thought, surely it’s not one—
Chang Bei enunciated clearly, each word crisp and distinct:
“One million. At least one million.”
He Xiaoyuan: “!”
!!!!!!!!!!!
That night, Lu Chen called He Xiaoyuan and asked whether he had finished dinner with Chang Bei.
He Xiaoyuan: “Yeah, we’re done.”
After those three words, he went quiet. The call was completely silent.
Lu Chen was puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
He Xiaoyuan, sitting motionless at his dorm desk, staring at the computer with eyes so bright they could rival the sun: “Nothing. I’m looking at houses.”
Lu Chen: ?