Chapter 171: Opening Day
Tong Yao stayed at the young girl’s house for three days. Three days later, they returned to Changsha together. The first thing was to go back to the Tong family for a few days. This time, it was Ruan Xi’s turn to be nervous.
“Relax. My brother and I have been saying good things about you in front of my parents every day,” Tong Yao squeezed Ruan Xi’s hand and smiled.
“I rarely talk to Uncle Tong. I don’t know if he’s satisfied with me, how he sees me…” Ruan Xi bit her lip and held Tong Yao’s hand tightly.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tong Yao knocked directly on the door. “An ugly daughter-in-law has to meet her in-laws eventually.”
As soon as she finished speaking, a sound of footsteps came from behind the door. Ruan Xi turned her head and looked at her with a puffed-up face.
“Just kidding. You’re the cutest,” Tong Yao coaxed.
Dongyang watched them flirt, a faint pink like a peach blossom appearing on her face.
A six-year-old child already had a vague understanding of love. She felt that the relationship between her little aunt and Ruan Xi was love. Tong Yao’s intimacy with the young girl was also becoming less and less hidden from Dongyang, because it was impossible to hide it forever. Maybe it was better to let Dongyang realize it herself slowly.
The door opened. Inside, Tong Sicheng was very warm to the young girl. He first asked about her well-being with concern, as if he were at the company, and then he asked the young girl for her opinion of Yao Yao.
“Yao Yao, she… is perfect. She has always given me a lot of help. It’s my luck that she likes me,” Ruan Xi sat upright. “I have the ability to take good care of her.”
Listening to the young girl pouring out her heart on the side, Tong Yao, who was absent-mindedly exchanging pleasantries with Jiang Wu, her ears gradually turned red.
“Not bad,” Tong Sicheng nodded. “Two people together still need to support each other. Only then can it last.”
The young girl nodded repeatedly.
“I’ve looked at your company. The number of game players is very large, and it has potential. Do you have any further plans?” Tong Sicheng asked.
“We plan to continue to invest, optimize the player experience, and make the game content richer.”
“But as far as I know, you’re still quite far from being profitable in your first month, right? The income from selling those skins is not enough, right?”
Ruan Xi was taken aback for a moment. Only the insiders knew about the company’s financial situation. It was easy to guess that it was Tong Hua who had said it. She thought for a moment and answered seriously, “Yes, but we are conceiving a brand new, stable charging model to increase revenue without affecting the free core of the game and the player experience.”
“You want to charge, and you want it to be free without affecting the experience. Is there such a model?” Tong Sicheng smiled. He was not an old fogey. He also understood the game industry. China and South Korea were the pioneers of online games. In these years, there have been many games with free value-added services and charges, but those game items all affect the balance. As for the ancestor, Dota, you also had to pay to buy Warcraft III.
When you open a company, the important thing is profitability. Why are online games and web games so profitable, and yet so many manufacturers are willing to make 3A masterpieces? One of the reasons is that the profit is stable, at least it won’t die suddenly like online games and web games.
And fun doesn’t equal money. There are also games that are so conscientious that they go out of business.
How to design a system that charges money without being cursed by the players for being a money pit is a science.
“Dad, don’t always make things difficult for her,” Tong Yao was dissatisfied, her heart aching. “She’s only 18. So what if she fails once?”
It was said that Steve Jobs liked to corner employees in the elevator and ask them questions. If he was not satisfied with the answer, he would fire them. Whether it was fictional or not, she felt that Tong Sicheng also had this tendency. If the young girl’s answer did not satisfy him, he would not let them be together.
Regarding his daughter’s arm turning outwards, Tong Sicheng was very heartbroken.
“How am I making things difficult for her? I’m just talking about future plans.”
“Yes,” the young girl quickly spoke up for her father-in-law. “Uncle Tong has been in business for many years. His words are very helpful to me and can also represent many outside opinions.”
“Not bad. This is the right attitude,” Tong Sicheng cast an admiring look, and then went on to discuss the future development trend of games with Ruan Xi.
The young girl talked eloquently. “In the future, with the development of mobile phones, games will definitely pay more and more attention to the mobile end. It’s not impossible to port large-scale online games to mobile phones.”
“In the current internet field, which company are you optimistic about?”
“ByteDance,” Ruan Xi took out her phone and pointed to the app on it. “They are developing very fast. Toutiao has a large number of users, and they are very good at using information. And they are financing and expanding every year.”
Tong Sicheng nodded. “You’ve done a lot of work.”
Ruan Xi gave a wry smile. Of course.
She had studied desperately just to have the confidence at this time.
A wealthy and noble family does not necessarily look down on a poor child like her. On the contrary, they are very willing to invest, as long as you let them see your potential. The road to success is not crowded, because there are not many people who are qualified and can persevere to the end.
In the kitchen, Tong Yao was helping Jiang Wu prepare lunch. Jiang Wu asked her, “How far have you two developed?”
Tong Yao’s heart tightened, and she said, “Just… holding hands.”
“Hah,” Jiang Wu knew that her daughter was not being honest. “Do you think I’m easy to fool?”
Tong Yao was completely speechless.
After they had finished talking over there, the young girl came over to help. The kitchen was big enough for them to whisper. Tong Yao whispered to Ruan Xi about what had just happened.
Ruan Xi was surprised after listening. “Auntie knew a long time ago.”
Tong Yao: “?!”
“One day when you came back, you were walking a little abnormally…” The young girl blushed. “I’m sorry.”
This “I’m sorry” was very subtle, making Tong Yao feel that she was very weak and needed to be taken care of.
She also knew that in her mother’s heart, she had long since not been that pure daughter.
**
On February 20th, the start of school caught the tail of winter.
Ruan Xi’s school started in March. On the first day of Tong Yao’s work, the young girl proposed to go to the branch campus to see.
“On what grounds can you enter the school?” Tong Yao raised an eyebrow.
“On the grounds that I’m a family member,” Ruan Xi said with a grin.
As long as you tell the guard, outsiders can indeed enter. “I’m quite busy today, and there’s also the opening ceremony,” Tong Yao said after entering the school gate. “You can just wander around by yourself.”
Ruan Xi smiled and said okay.
On the sports field, the three grades were assembled. The speeches on the stage were passionate, and the students below were chattering among themselves. The two sides did not interfere with each other, and the track in the middle was like the Han and Chu rivers. They hadn’t seen each other for a winter break, and many people had gained weight. Tong Yao suddenly remembered that she had forgotten something very important—she found Xia Zhi in the crowd. Seeing that the girl’s condition was the same as before, not good or bad, she felt a little guilty for her negligence.
Because of her appendicitis, she hadn’t been to school for the last period of time. She didn’t even know where Xia Zhi had spent her winter break. With this child’s personality, she would never ask her for help. She didn’t know… how much hardship she had suffered.
After the opening ceremony, when each class was returning to their classrooms, she called Xia Zhi aside.
“Xia Zhi,” she looked at the thin girl with concern. “Where… did you spend your winter break?”
“I stayed at my middle school teacher’s house,” Xia Zhi said softly. “The scholarship came down, and I gave her the rent.”
The middle school teacher was naturally unwilling to accept it, but she insisted. In the end, the teacher only symbolically accepted a little for food.
“That’s good,” Tong Yao let out a sigh of relief. “Then, your dad… didn’t go to find you, did he?”
Xia Zhi shook her head, and her head drooped again. “I haven’t heard from him in a long time.”
Maybe he had completely given up on her, this daughter.
This should be a good thing.
Anyway, that home… no one was waiting for her.
But Xia Zhi’s heart was empty. From now on, she had no relatives. Living alone in the world, she had to bear everything by herself.
Sometimes she would also think of the good side of that man. That kind of man would also have a conscience and occasionally be a kind father. Although it was fleeting, it was like a dream that was hard to let go of, making her cry in countless nights.
Tong Yao was silent, not knowing what to say to comfort her. In the end, she could only gently pat Xia Zhi’s shoulder.
“Go back to the classroom. At school, study with peace of mind. In the future, no matter if it’s psychological or about your studies and life, you can come to the teacher. Even after you graduate.”
Xia Zhi pursed her lips and nodded almost imperceptibly. She knew that Teacher Tong was very good, but time and distance were as ruthless as flowing water. After this semester, they would be divided into liberal arts and science classes. By then, it was very likely that the homeroom teacher would not be Teacher Tong. Not being in the same class, even classmates would drift apart, let alone a teacher.
“Let’s go.”
“Mhm.”
The first class of the school year was math. Most people were in a daze, as if they were listening to a heavenly book. Tong Yao assigned some problems. As she walked down, she found a boy who was so engrossed in reading a manga that he didn’t even notice the teacher’s approach when his classmates reminded him. As the homeroom teacher, she confiscated the manga. The boy saw her and was embarrassed and stiff. Tong Yao glanced at the name of the manga and found that it was still the young girl’s work, Dream Walk.
Not bad taste.
She didn’t say much, so as not to affect the class.
“After you finish these few problems, we’ll stop here with the sum and difference to product… what are you looking at in the back?” Standing on the podium, she found that a few students in the back row were always looking out the window, so she frowned.
Those few students immediately became well-behaved, but as soon as she turned to write on the blackboard, the whispering below had a tendency to become more and more intense.
“You’re not going to listen, are you?” she said a little fiercely. To find out what they were looking at, she directly opened the front door, and then found the young girl on the hallway, stepping on the edge of the accumulated water and playing.
Ruan Xi was wearing a white pom-pom hat. An 18-year-old female university student, for this group of boys who were two or three years younger, did have a fatal attraction. But in terms of beauty, there was still Teacher Tong to suppress them. More importantly, someone had recognized that it was the manga artist Tamamo, so they were all extremely excited.
“Ruan… Ruan Xi, what are you doing here?” she changed her words at the last minute.
The young girl looked at her and said with a beaming smile, “I came to find you. Did I affect your class?”
“You didn’t affect me, but that group…”
In the classroom, because there was no teacher to maintain discipline, more and more people were talking.
“Is that Teacher Tamamo?”
“Who is Tamamo?”
“How does she know Teacher Tong?”
“Stupid, don’t you know that Tamamo is Teacher Tong’s previous student?”
“Everyone, don’t talk…” Xia Zhi’s forehead was covered in fine sweat, and she was having a hard time managing the talking classmates.
Suddenly, Tong Yao from the door poked her head in. The classroom was quiet for a moment, but then, Ruan Xi also came in and smiled at them.
“Oh!” Everyone cheered.
“Quiet,” Tong Yao patted the podium with the blackboard eraser. “Let me introduce you all. This is my previous student, your senior, Ruan Xi. She got into A University.”
“Hello everyone,” Ruan Xi waved her hand.
The class was in an uproar. Even those who didn’t know Ruan Xi were very happy. As long as they didn’t have to go to class!
“Yao Yao asked me to share some of my study experience with you,” the young girl said with a smile.
“Ooh!” Everyone keenly caught the form of address “Yao Yao” and all started to jeer. Tong Yao turned her face away in embarrassment—I told you not to call me that. It must be on purpose!
Ruan Xi tilted her head, her lips curled up, and said warmly, “Actually, when I entered the school, I was just like you. My grades were very poor, probably in the four or five hundreds of the grade. At that time, I never thought I could get into A University.”
As soon as she opened her mouth, the classroom quickly became quiet. Everyone was curious about the celebrity’s past. What? Four or five hundred? That’s too bad. How could she get into A University later?
“The one who changed me was Teacher Tong,” her form of address was finally normal. She held out her hand and spread it in Tong Yao’s direction. “Believe me, she has the power to change you. If you work hard now, it’s not just in time, it’s practically preparing for a rainy day.”
“So, I’d like to ask you to believe in her too.”
