048 This is Very Reasonable
Facing the message from Sun Xingsi, 【You’ll be there next Saturday, right?】, Wang Heng struggled for a long while, mainly hesitating on how to refuse. But suddenly, a small gray thing jumped onto his laptop keyboard.
This magical hamster spun and leaped on the keyboard, dancing wildly as if in a seizure, leaving Wang Heng stunned. After a series of “tap-tap-tap” sounds on the keyboard, it actually managed to type a complete sentence. Finally, its little paw stepped on the spacebar and sent it.
【No problem. See you next Saturday.】
“You can’t do this…” Wang Heng moved his lips silently, but was met with a small, warning glare.
So he fell silent.
These past two days, perhaps because it had been acting like an ordinary hamster, Wang Heng had almost forgotten that he was actually raising a Spacetime Administrator. And now, Mr. Administrator had made his presence known, and the key point was that he had clearly expressed his demand for Wang Heng to participate in the mixer next Saturday. This was worth pondering.
Would something major concerning the worldline happen at that mixer?
Wang Heng grabbed the hamster, closed his laptop, walked to the balcony, and closed the door between the balcony and the dormitory.
He protested in a small voice, “You can’t make decisions for me, can you?”
The hamster: “Is there any substantial difference between me explaining why you can’t refuse and you agreeing, and me just agreeing on your behalf?”
Wang Heng: “Of course there’s a difference. The procedure is completely different, okay!”
The hamster crossed its two front paws on its chest. “Alright then. I’ll tell you that if you refuse Sun Xingsi’s invitation again this time, your anomaly will become more and more obvious. I’ve told you, you can’t act too abnormally among normal boys your age.”
Wang Heng thought for a moment, feeling that this requirement was a bit vague, and asked tentatively, “If my money-making plan goes smoothly, I’ll have a seven-figure asset by the end of the year. That should be considered particularly abnormal, right?”
The hamster shook its little head. “No, because you can explain it. Before you invested, you told your father, and later you also told Lu Qi about your optimism for Bitcoin. For an eighteen-year-old boy’s sense of novelty, to have a strange expectation for a new thing like Bitcoin is very reasonable.”
Wang Heng argued forcefully, “Then wouldn’t it be more reasonable for me not to go to the mixer next weekend!”
The hamster: “Give me a reasonable explanation.”
Wang Heng: “Not interested is not interested. What other explanation is needed?”
The hamster sighed and counted on its little paws. “Because based on the personality you’ve shown so far, you don’t have a suitable excuse to refuse. Sun Xingsi just needs you to be there, and your roommates just need your guidance. In short, no one expects you to pick up a girl on the spot, so why are you so timid?”
“This isn’t being timid, it’s just reasonable risk aversion…” Wang Heng also sighed. “Forget it. You’ve already agreed for me anyway. It’s useless for me to say anything now. But you should at least tell me first, will there be any acquaintances there?”
The hamster: “The girls from the University of Finance and Economics participating in the mixer?”
Wang Heng: “Yes. Will there be someone like Han Yixuan…”
The hamster looked up at the sky. “Who knows? But you’ll find out the answer then anyway.”
Wang Heng gritted his teeth, suddenly feeling the urge to throw the little thing in his hand from the fourth floor.
However, the Spacetime Administrator had already seen through his thoughts and sneered, “I’ve already told you, this is just an avatar I’m controlling. Let me remind you, it’s best not to look for trouble and waste your energy.”
Wang Heng: “Hehe.”
The hamster’s tone suddenly softened. “Think about it carefully. Have I ever screwed you over so far?”
Since he didn’t have the confidence to have a complete falling out, Wang Heng could only go along with it. “Alright then. Since just refusing a mixer once will cause an anomaly, then isn’t it even more abnormal for me, a mere freshman, to be able to work at Penguin Company?”
The hamster said confidently, “You can rest assured about that. Just like now, if it really causes a worldline anomaly, I will definitely notify you in advance.”
**
A week passed.
The university freshmen were still busy with military training all day. The only exception in the class, Wang Heng, was also busy with his own things all day—besides programming and browsing tech and finance news, he would occasionally guide Pei Ningle’s video production plan, remotely teaching her how to use the simplest video editing software.
For Wang Heng, the days were busy, fulfilling, and a little dull. But for the members of Penguin Games’ Group One studio, this period was a bit terrifying.
The short-term outsourced worker, who was originally thought to be just a temporary helper, had actually played a crucial role. At the beginning, no one except Lu Qi took Wang Heng’s opinions seriously, but as he proposed one prophetic idea after another, no one dared to underestimate him anymore. In the new round of project meetings, the technical director, Lu Qi, specifically praised Wang Heng and received the agreement of other colleagues.
After the meeting, the colleagues dispersed, but Lu Qi asked Wang Heng to stay behind.
“You really… surprise me.”
Lu Qi looked at the young man standing in front of her and couldn’t help but exclaim.
In just one week of joining the project team, this kid, although he hadn’t written many lines of code, had solved more than one or two problems. If each problem was like a maze, then what Wang Heng did was to guide everyone out with his eyes closed, and he hardly took a single wrong turn in the process.
Wang Heng: “Surprised?”
Lu Qi: “The progress this week was originally planned to be completed in a month.”
Wang Heng: “Does that mean Sister Lu’s leadership was effective?”
Lu Qi was amused and shook her head. “It’s mainly because your support was good, like you had a map hack. I don’t dare to take credit for this, otherwise, my subordinates would think I’m an idiot. So I’m quite curious, how were you able to do it?”
Wang Heng couldn’t help but fall into deep thought.
The reason he had performed so outstandingly was, on one hand, that he really couldn’t stand watching his colleagues waste time on problems he already knew the answers to. But on the other hand, and more importantly, he was testing the limits.
After messing around for a week, that hamster hadn’t given any warning at all. Didn’t that mean that in terms of programming, no matter how advanced he appeared, it wouldn’t be a problem?
Lu Qi waited for a while, but seeing that he was still in deep thought, she teased, “When you ask a top student why they got 145 on a math test, the top student says they just needed to get one question wrong—you’re not going to say something like that, are you?”
Wang Heng shrugged. “Something like that. Anyway, I just used the time others spent playing games and dating to write code. It’s very reasonable, isn’t it?”
