Flower Siyao
The replies under the post kept updating continuously.
As expected, only one of them is unknown.
It's normal for An Siyao and Liu Manman to be recognized, as well as Yan Wei from Baiyue College. Even Xia Yuxue from Huada Affiliated High School can be barely accepted. But why do you know that Yin Ling from the affiliated school?
I can tell that you often focus on the school department, which is terrifying.
I am more curious about that beautiful lady. Although she is beautiful, with that chest, is she really not a male dressed as a woman?
I know her! She's the former assistant of Yu Liang, the richest man in Nanming. She often appeared with Yu Liang in newspapers!
Shocked! I'm going to post it on the forums of Baiyue College and affiliated high school.
New information, the student council president also went!
Brothers, let's team up and have a look! Hurry up, group number 906666858.
Although most people would just enjoy the excitement online, some others still believe in seeing things with their own eyes.
If it were just one of these six women, they wouldn't be so eager to check it out in person. After all, looking at sister's P-picture online is pretty fun too.
However, when all six appeared together, from students to working women, they couldn't sit still.
Timid people joined the group and teamed up to go see, while others who were bolder went directly to the bubble tea shop.
Their influx made the originally spacious milk tea shop suddenly crowded.
Xia Yu, who was planning to slack off and then leave work, was baffled.
The queue in front of him had already reached the door.
Although making milk tea was done by Duan Yi and Yan Wei, handing it over to customers was still exhausting.
With no time to wonder where these people were coming from, Xia Yu threw himself into his busy work.
At the same time as the customer flow became uncontrollable, the back of the house also experienced an unnoticed chaos.
Yan Wei made a cup of milk tea and handed it to Duan Yi.
Taking a sip, Duan Yi was amazed.
"This needs less, it will suppress the sweetness of the milk tea..." Yan Wei suggested adjustments to the recipe.
Duan Yi was constantly nodding, admiring that Xia Yu was such a good partner. He even asked a master like this for the milk tea shop and brought in so many customers without any reservation.
Was her 10% commission too stingy?
However, now was not the time to consider that.
Duan Yi continued to immerse herself in the busy work, learning new proportions from Yan Wei and starting to make new milk teas. She also thanked Yan Wei enthusiastically.
Yan Wei responded with a smile, feeling very delighted inside. She felt that her decision to learn milk tea preparation from her senior was the right one.
This milk tea shop belongs to Xia Yu, and being able to help him would surely earn her a lot of points.
However, Yan Wei completely misunderstood Xia Yu. Xia Yu was now hoping for the milk tea shop to go out of business sooner.
Looking at the ever-growing queue and the customers who exclaimed, "It's so delicious" after finishing their drinks, Xia Yu was utterly confused.
Busy until 10 pm, Xia Yu took off his shop assistant uniform and handed the work back to Duan Yi and Kangkang.
It was already late. Yu Ningmeng left with An Siyao and Yin Ling, Yan Wei also left the milk tea shop. Xia Yu and Yuxue, as well as a few other girls who had helped, remained.
Xia Yu finally had time to analyze this strange explosive situation.
He found the posts on the forum and realized that the popularity was all brought by himself.
He had underestimated his own ability to attract traffic.
However, attracting traffic was only a temporary measure; to last long, it still relied on real strength.
In the catering industry, this strength was taste.
When Xia Yu came at noon, he had tasted the milk tea; the taste was obviously ordinary back then, but now, it could be considered excellent.
With both traffic and taste, Xia Yu couldn't imagine a milk tea shop that could be popular if this one wasn't.
The location of the milk tea shop wasn't bad either; it was only surrounded by competitors. Now, the competition could no longer be called competition; this milk tea shop was the standout in the University City area.
Xia Yu waited until 12 o'clock to close the shop, he wanted to see how much profit was made today.
By 11:30pm, there were no more customers, and Duan Yi and the other girls were counting the money.
At twelve o'clock, Duan Yi summed up the profits of the day.
"Ten thousand yuan!" Duan Yi excitedly announced to Xia Yu.
Ten thousand was already a high turnover, since there was no take-out or online ordering in the world, only relying on offline sales.
It wouldn't be that popular in the future, but it could still maintain a relatively high level, and it would only take a little over a year to break even, and the rest would be all profit.
This sales volume shocked the girls present, and Yuxue seriously calculated that she could earn 600,000 yuan in a month; she could buy ten of the cameras she had now!
If it was a set of equipment, she could only buy four or five sets.
Yuxue was very tempted and wondered whether she should encourage her brother to open more shops.
"Don't think too much, it's only popular these few days, later it'll be decent to make a few thousand yuan a day." Xia Yu said to them, dampening their spirits.
"But that's still tens of thousands a month at least," Kang Kang pointed out.
Upon hearing that they could only buy one camera in a month and may not even be able to afford a full set, Yuxue's enthusiasm was suddenly dampened.
It wasn't worth it to let her brother work so hard just for the price of one camera.
Unaware that the camera he bought for Yuxue had become the standard by which she measured value, Xia Yu sighed inwardly as he watched Duan Yi's cheerful mood.
He never thought a milk tea shop destined to fail would actually succeed; fortunately, he still had a backup plan.
Taking his own share of the profit, Xia Yu casually handed it to Yuxue.
Yuxue happily accepted the money.
The two returned to the villa together.
The next day, Xia Yu didn't go to the milk tea shop. With the help of Yan Wei, the milk tea shop had become so popular that the daily profit was still around five to six thousand yuan.
Three days later, a message finally arrived from Abnormal Catering Management Company.
On the first page of the local newspaper's finance section, it reported the news of Abnormal Company declaring bankruptcy.
The main product of this company was the unique milk tea shop; according to Yu Ningmeng, the milk tea shop had been losing money; it had been relying on pulling in new franchisees and making money by collecting franchise fees and material costs. Now that they made enough money, it was time for them to run away.
Below the newspaper article, there was another report about the same company. It mentioned that the contracts this company signed had legal traps, which had caused a group of franchisees to be deceived.
Xia Yu did not continue reading. He tossed the newspaper aside and looked at his phone. Five minutes later, Duan Yi sent him a message.
"Cold."
The message only had two words, but they were loaded with meaning. "Cold" referred to both the weather today and Xia Yu's own inner feelings, a pun in itself. The second word conveyed a sense of helplessness, and the full stop signified an ending, corresponding to the "cold" mentioned earlier, forming a cause and effect relationship.
Xia Yu felt that he could not invite Duan Yi over just yet; he needed to maintain some restraint. He directly called Duan Yi.
The phone rang for five seconds before Duan Yi answered.
"What's the specific situation?" Xia Yu asked.
"Everything's gone. We purchased everything from that company, and now everything has been confiscated. We can only get it back through legal procedures," Duan Yi explained, assuming Xia Yu didn't know. "I don't understand the details, but there were traps in the contract, and the boss was planning to run away all along. Our milk tea shop probably can't continue operating. We might have to pay some compensation, but the money we've made these days can cover it."
Xia Yu expressed his sorrow and offered his condolences to Duan Yi.
Then he extended an invitation to Duan Yi, "A one-time failure is nothing. Since your project has already failed, why not come and join me in mine?"
"What are you working on?" Duan Yi asked, somewhat dispirited.
She was at the peak of her success when she was suddenly knocked down by an unexpected situation. Now she was wondering whether to get up quickly or lay on the ground for a while.
"Mobile games," Xia Yu replied.
"Mobile games? What's that?" Duan Yi was confused, as the concept of mobile games did not exist in this world yet.
"It's like computer games, but on the phone."
"Do you mean games like playing cards or mahjong on the phone? Why would you want to make those? Everyone's used to the old software from established companies, who would switch to a new platform?" Duan Yi couldn't understand.
"It's not like playing cards or mahjong, but more like computer games. You don't need to worry about anything else. Are you in?" Xia Yu couldn't fully explain his idea either, especially as this world had yet to see the advent of pay-to-win mobile or online games – the gaming industry still revolved around pre-pay cards and one-time purchases.
"I don't have any money left to invest," Duan Yi said.
"You don't need to invest. I need your talent," Xia Yu clarified. Realizing his words might be taken the wrong way, Xia Yu added, "I mean, I need your abilities."
"Alright, you don't care about profit or loss anyway, right?" Duan Yi had noticed during the times Xia Yu was with the six girls that An Siyao and Liu Manman wore and used expensive items.
Even the camera Xu Xue used for taking photos was a well-known luxury brand.
With this, Xia Yu managed to recruit Duan Yi, and he assigned her a task: to go to the computer science institute and gather a group of skilled programmers, preferably those with game development experience.
"Okay," Duan Yi agreed readily.
After hanging up the phone, Xia Yu started preparations as well, beginning with writing up the game mechanics and main modules.
The most important part was to set up the in-game purchases module.
When he played the game before, it seemed easy, but trying to write down the key points presented some difficulty.
After three hours, the proposal was completed, and Xia Yu began writing the program.
He would build a framework and then divide it into various tasks to be assigned to other programmers.
There are too many programs involved in a game, and if he wanted to complete it all by himself, he would have to become a ruthless coding machine.
At this moment, his phone rang.
Picking up the phone, Xia Yu found that the call was from Duan Yi.
"I found the programmers you need!" Duan Yi said excitedly, apparently not too affected by the earlier incident at the milk tea shop.
Feeling relieved about her mood, Xia Yu became curious.
How could Duan Yi's actions be so fast?
"How many did you find?" Xia Yu asked.
"Two of them, both in their third year of college. Is that too many? Do you want me to cancel one?" Duan Yi replied. Actually, she didn't really recruit them; she just asked if they were available to help.
Xia Yu hadn't told her the scale and investment of the project, so she treated it as a casual thing, feeling that two programmers helping in their spare time would be enough.
The reason Xia Yu didn't tell Duan Yi was that he hadn't even finished writing the game plan, and he didn't expect Duan Yi to start working so quickly.
If it were an ordinary in-app purchase game selling illustrations, two skillful programmers would be enough, but Xia Yu had nearly 40 million in his hands and wanted to make something higher-end.
He silently took a screenshot of his bank card balance and sent it to Duan Yi.
As long as it's needed, all of this can be invested into the game.
Duan Yi had thought Xia Yu was just an ordinary rich person with a bit of family connections, but she didn't expect him to be this wealthy.
I'll make a plan today, you start recruiting tomorrow.
Having finished, Xia Yu continued to work on the proposal.
In the meantime, An Siyao came over and glanced at his work. She wanted to tell Xia Yu that her grandfather would be coming and expressly wanted to meet him, but seeing that Xia Yu was busy, she didn't disturb him.
Entering the piano room, An Siyao lifted the piano lid and placed her hands on the keys.
A lively rhythm appeared under her fingers.
This was the Tranquil Princess piece that Xia Yu had given her before, named after a legendary flower.
In a vast grassland, the blue Tranquil Princess was hidden among the boundless green grass, swaying with the wind.
She played the notes one by one, and the camera slowly zoomed in, focusing on the blue flower.
As she played the third part, when the blue flower filled the entire screen, An Siyao paused for a moment before continuing.
In her mind, she recalled how Xia Yu initially treated her as a mere tool, but gradually became ambiguous.
Was the joyful and melodious rhythm of this third part solely due to the observer's happiness upon seeing the blue flower?
That blue flower must also be happy for moving from the edge of the frame to occupying the entire screen.
When the piece was over, An Siyao closed the piano lid, propped her elbow on it, and rested her chin on her hand.
In the song, the Tranquil Princess gained all the observer's attention, which made her happy, but in reality, it seemed she hadn't gained all of Xia Yu's attention.
She sat up a bit, swinging her legs as she thought about the matter.
She couldn't come up with an answer because she was not good at giving answers, whether to others or herself.
As she was troubled, a pair of hands grasped her waist.
Lifting An Siyao from the stool and holding her in his arms, Xia Yu was smiling at the young girl.
Xia Yu felt that when he touched An Siyao, her body tensed up for a moment, which meant that his surprise was successful.
An Siyao didn't get angry because of this; she held Xia Yu's hand and pressed her body even closer to him.
She remembered the secondary reason for coming over this time.
"Grandpa wants to see you," she told Xia Yu. She wanted to chat with more like-minded people about the "Life Exchange Game" and followed "Excellent Reading Literature" on WeChat to see and chat about life and find friends.