Little Yu

Lu Jim continued, "And they landed up in the third place. So I invite the team 'The geeky guys' on the stage. Please come up guys."

Six very scrawny boys stood up from a table in the third row and headed towards the stage.

Xi Hua whispered in Yu Chen's ear, "Well their team name suits them. The look like basically the guys who will always live in their mom's basement."

Yu Chen gave her a warning look, "No Hua. They are in third place. They all might even be better than us."

Huo Zenghai: "Pfft, please. We're gonna be the first."

Yu Chen: "Let's hope so."

After the geeky guys were congratulated by all the judges and they returned back to their seats, Lu Jim spoke again, "Before we proceed further, I want to tell you all something. The teams in the second and the first place were decided so amazingly that it seems it has happened the first time in the open competition's history. But what it is, I will reveal when I reveal the winner."

He looked at his laptop and spoke, "The team in the second place is... 'The first everywhere'. They got Seventy Six points for their code and Four points were taken for errors. So the total comes out to be Seventy Two. Congratulations. Could the team come up please."

On this, the tall boy and his team stood up from their table and climbed upto the stage. Yu Chen noticed that all of them had really peculiar looks on their faces. The other five boys had shock and disbelief written over their faces. But the tall one was looking around the room at every person, with a smile full of curiosity.

After they were also congratulated, Lu Jim spoke again, "So now for the winner of this round. Are you guys ready?"

There was a nervous cheering from the room. Yu Chen was so nervous that she was starting to sweat now. She looked at Huo Zenghai and Mo Kio and saw that they were both the same. Mo Kio had balled his fists and his knuckles were white. Huo Zenghai was looking at the stage as though trying to hypnotise Lu Jim. And Xi Hua had put her fingers in her ears, claiming that she could not hear.

Lu Jim continued after the cheer had died down. "Now, the most extraordinary thing was that the winner team got lesser points for their code than 'The first everywhere'. The boys had Seventy Six whereas the winner team only had Seventy Four. Yup. But the most amazing thing was that there was not one error, not a single error in the winner team's code. And the winner of the first round of the '99 open software competition' is..... 'Little Yu'.

Upon hearing this, Yu Chen could not believe her ears. They had won the first round, they had actually won the first round.

And her code had no error in it. YES!!!!

Seems like it was actually worth coming back.