Chapter Four: Yu Jia
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Qiyou Summer Huaxing Domain White Bridge Branch.
This was an immense floating structure.
Its surface was clad in large swathes of ink-black scale-like material, capable of efficiently converting the radiant energy emitted by the solar rings of the universe into electricity.
At this moment, within this skyscraper powered by the pinnacle of human technology, all of Qiyou’s operations managers had gathered to discuss matters concerning the mid-year event.
Wang Fafu, the middle-aged director of Qiyou, had just finished explaining the final project detail. He massaged his dry throat before addressing the two hundred operations managers before him:
“Hmm, that’s all for the mid-year so far. If anyone thinks there’s anything unreasonable, please speak up and we’ll discuss it together.”
As Wang Fafu’s words fell, the conference room instantly fell silent.
In the workplace, the rule was to talk about problems in private; mentioning them during a meeting was tantamount to contradicting the leadership—no one was foolish enough to do so.
“But Director Wang, about that Quest Activity, I think…”
Just as everyone thought the meeting was coming to an end, a dark-haired, dark-eyed young woman in her twenties, petite and exquisitely featured, stood up in the back row and raised her hand.
The young man beside her, also an intern operations manager, quickly shot her a warning glance.
Yet the girl ignored him completely, her expression earnest as she looked at Wang Fafu.
As long as he nodded, she would share her insights.
Wang Fafu’s jowls quivered as he saw Yu Jia stand up, and an obviously stiff smile appeared on his face. “…Speak.”
...
...
The meeting ended.
The operations managers, like students just released from school, hurried off to their offices with palpable relief.
Yu Jia was no exception.
Unlike when she arrived in the company of five other intern designers, now the other four kept their distance.
In their eyes, Yu Jia’s career as an operations manager would end with her three-month internship. They didn’t want to invite unnecessary trouble for their future work.
Yu Jia didn’t care; or rather, she was accustomed to it.
She was extremely serious about everything she did, always striving to do her best with no reservations.
This uncompromising approach often caused her to offend others without realizing it, making her virtually an insulator against friendship.
“Yu Jia, this isn’t university.”
Back in the interns’ office, Yun Ying, the supervisor responsible for training the intern operations managers, immediately spoke up to reprimand her. “You were too impulsive.”
“Think about it here.”
“Ye Yu, you and the others come with me to Group One to see how Lao Mu and his team choose which games to sign.”
With that, Yun Ying led the other four designers out of the office.
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Yu Jia was left alone.
Her elegant brows furrowed for a moment, but soon relaxed.
She had just frowned, pondering whether she’d really been impulsive—however…she hadn’t.
So there was nothing to ponder.
She turned and booted up her computer, beginning to manually review the newly released games in the Qiyou operations manager’s backend.
The job of a Qiyou operations manager was to sift through the vast sea of gaming junk and select the outstanding works, sending contract notifications to their creators.
As an intern, Yu Jia had thirty opportunities during her internship to send out such notifications.
To be officially hired, at least one of her thirty selected games needed to achieve monthly sales of fifty thousand units, or ten games to reach ten thousand units each.
It was difficult. Each batch of Qiyou interns had five members, but usually only one made it through—sometimes, not even one.
Her fair fingers tapped rapidly across the screen.
She quickly scanned names, synopses, designer information for game after game.
The Qiyou platform released a tidal wave of games daily. If every operations manager played each one, it would be an astronomical waste of manpower—resources the platform didn’t have to spare.
So the usual method was to filter by game name and synopsis; only those that seemed interesting got a trial.
If the trial met the manager’s standards, a contract notification would be sent.
Yu Jia finished reviewing the newly released games from the past few days, but failed to find a single one that caught her interest.
But that made sense—if there was a promising seedling, the seasoned managers with sharp eyes would have already snatched it up, leaving only scraps for the interns.
“Let’s look again.”
Yu Jia rubbed her temples, feeling a headache.
It wasn’t that her standards were too high; it was that the names of these games were increasingly bizarre.
Titles like “The Bald Uncle’s Fame List,” “North Sea Shakes the Elderly Children,” “Make the Lovestruck Boy Change,” “Only One Maggot Left in the World,” and so on…
If any of them had a halfway normal name, she’d at least give them a try.
But in the end, they didn’t give her a chance.
Serves them right to flop!
“Hm?”
Yu Jia’s finger suddenly paused; at last, she saw a somewhat normal title.
For some reason, she felt inexplicably moved. It was a rare thing.
“My Little World…a game about creating a home, embarking on adventures, and making miracles.”
Reading the synopsis, Yu Jia immediately opened the game’s detailed page.
Here, she could see not only screenshots, but also the designer’s real name and gender, and what other games they had made.
“This graphics…”
Yu Jia blinked, wondering if there was something wrong with her eyes.
There were games deliberately made retro, but come on—there had to be a limit!
This was practically prehistoric!
Yu Jia’s tiny fist clenched; she felt the urge to smash her screen, but ultimately held herself back.
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“Rare to find something that looked normal, but I suppose I was being optimistic. Sigh~”
Yu Jia felt drained; Qiyou’s operations managers had it far too hard.
She’d only been here a short time—if she worked for years, wouldn’t her blood pressure skyrocket?
She shook her head, raising her hand to close the game’s detail page, but then—
“Yin…Yin Jian?!”
Yu Jia’s dark eyes widened, her hand frozen mid-air.
She stood there dazed for a long time before coming to her senses.
“Probably just the same name,” she thought.
Because in her memory, anyone could become a game designer—but never her university desk mate, Yin Jian.
Back in college, his most frequent saying was:
‘Too small. Your vision is too small. How can you become an outstanding operations manager with such a limited perspective?’
This man had made becoming the strongest operations manager his lifelong goal. How could he possibly switch to game design midway?
“I wonder what he’s doing now. He must have joined one of those major online game companies.”
Yu Jia stared at the screen in a daze.
Yin Jian was one of her few friends.
She felt their personalities were similar—both charging toward their goals, undeterred.
Both indifferent to what others thought.
On the eighth day after parting with Yin Jian, she missed him.
Yu Jia patted her cheeks, rallying her spirits.
Yin Jian was already forging ahead toward his goal; she couldn’t afford to fall behind.
She reached to close the “My Little World” page, but as her finger touched the screen, she paused again.
“Fine, for the sake of your name, I’ll give you another chance.”
She scrolled down and clicked into the game.
Suddenly, a world she had never touched before opened its doors to her.
...
Hours later, Yu Jia’s consciousness returned to her body through the optical brain’s transmission.
Her tightly shut eyes opened, once black as ink but now gleaming with radiant light.
“Yin Jian…” Her soft lips curved into a beautiful smile, her fingers gliding as she sent a contract notification to the designer also named Yin Jian.
ps1: Suddenly want to change the name of the female lead. My mother’s side has about forty people with the surname Yu…my uncle is called Yu Jia, so it feels weird.
ps2: Please vote! Comment! Share your thoughts or guesses so I can borrow them.
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