Yu Chen asked Si Xia, "What are you doing here?"
Mo Kio jumped before Si Xia could reply, "Oh I took pity on him and brought him here. Did you know, he was so worried about why were you going to meet me that he wasn't even paying attention in class. He jumped up and was like 'what?' when the teacher threw a chalk at him." Then he went on to tell them all about how it had happened.
As the story progressed, Si Xia and Yu Chen got redder and redder. Yu Chen, because she remembered how almost the same thing had happened to her, and Si Xia due to embarrassment. Mo Kio and Huo Zenghai couldn't stop laughing as Zenghai told about Chen during the class.
But Xi Hua had an unreadable expression on her face. She cut in, "Okay. Enough with the tales. Let's start the competition."
Mo Kio got up and explained, "We will do it in this way. Here is an app that we were asked to create as our assignments. We will write a code for it."
Yu Chen: "Sure. But what's the prize?"
Mo Kio: "Well, if I win, you will treat us all to hot pot, in the shop behind the school."
Yu Chen: "What if I win?"
Mo Kio: "Well that's next to impossible. But if you do win, you get to go on a date with Xia."
Yu Chen instantly turned very red. She mumbled, "Are you crazy?"
Mo Kio: "What did you say? Couldn't hear you over your heart beating so loudly."
Si Xia: "...."
Huo Zenghai: "...."
Xi Hua: "...."
Yu Chen: "I said YOU ARE CRAZY!! If I win, you will treat us in the best restaurant in the city."
Mo Kio: "Done. But only in one condition..."
Yu Chen: "If you utter the world date one more time, I swear I will...."
Mo Kio: "No no no. I just wanted to say that the code you write could be used by Si Xia for his assignment."
Si Xia: "What! No! I can and will write my own code."
Mo Kio: "Oh shut up Xia. We both know you are going to be up all night writing a code that is going to have so many mistakes that I will need to stay up the next night just to check it."
Yu Chen: "Well sure he can use the code. I will anyway have no use for it."
Mo Kio: "Okay, so we write the code. And whoever finishes first gets 1 point for each minute the other takes after the first has finished."
Yu Chen: "And then we check each other's code, and get 1 point for finding out each mistake."
Mo Kio: "Done."
Yu Chen: "Done."
And so the competition started, Si Xia was given the task to measure the time, while Huo Zenghai and Xi Hua sat looking at Yu Chen and Mo Kio coding in a daze.
Si Xia announced when an hour had passed, and both of them were still coding in almost a daze. 8 minutes after that Mo Kio jumped up. "Did it. Dit it. I dit it first."
There was no reaction from Chen as she continued typing.
13 minutes after Mo Kio had completed, Yu Chen also got up and said, "Done."