Chapter 61: How Did I End Up in This Conversation

“Hm?” After leaving the office of the Foxmail CEO, Zhang Xiaolong suddenly noticed that the large open workspace in the company was still brightly lit.

“That’s odd. There wasn’t any plan for overtime today, and yet they’re all working late?” Zhang Xiaolong found it strange. While working overtime was common for programmers, the tech world hadn’t yet developed the fanatic 996 work culture of later years, so employees willingly staying late was highly unusual.

With curiosity piqued, Zhang Xiaolong quietly entered the workspace and discovered that more than half of the company’s forty-plus programmers had stayed behind, glued to their computers, typing away incessantly.

Looking closer, Zhang Xiaolong was even more astonished—all of them were chatting on QQ, fingers flying over their keyboards, each one wearing a lovesick grin.

“This makes no sense!” Zhang Xiaolong’s confusion deepened. Programmers, after all, are a peculiar breed. Most can talk endlessly about games, football, the military, sports, or code. But when the topic shifts to women, or to anything more literary or artistic, they clam up instantly, unable to utter a single word.

It’s much the same online. Rarely do you find someone who’s tongue-tied in real life but becomes a smooth talker on the internet. In fact, if they can’t chat in person, they’re likely just as silent online—let alone flirting with women, even communicating with clients over the web would leave them at a loss for words.

But now, all these people were suddenly chat masters, digital Casanovas, utterly absorbed and unable to tear themselves away.

Being a keen observer, Zhang Xiaolong decided not to alert them. He stood quietly to the side, watching how they chatted, hoping to uncover the key to this mystery.

It didn’t take long for him to realize what was happening.

First, the people on the other end were definitely women—he could tell from the lecherous expressions of his staff. Second, the chat partners were clearly strangers; their conversations were polite, filled with introductions—just the sort of exchange that happens only between people who’ve just met, never between old acquaintances.

He also noticed that the pace of the conversations was incredibly fast—not that they were typing quickly, but that the replies came almost instantly. Whether it was his own programmers or the women on the other side, responses usually arrived within a minute.

This astonished Zhang Xiaolong. He’d once been a fan of QQ chat himself but knew that when talking to strangers, especially women, replies were slow. A reply within an hour was considered prompt, let alone within a minute.

Of course, this didn’t mean friends replied faster; sometimes they were even slower.

But seeing an entire group getting replies within a minute, and as a collective phenomenon at that, was almost unbelievable.

Finally, Zhang Xiaolong noticed that as they chatted, the programmers seemed to be counting—every message sent was accompanied by a calculation, and when a certain number was reached, the excitement was palpable, as if they’d hit the jackpot.

All these discoveries only deepened Zhang Xiaolong’s curiosity. Just then, one of the programmers noticed him, and the whole group stood up in unison to greet him. Yet even so, they didn’t abandon their conversations.

“It’s alright, the workday’s over. Relax. Are you all chatting on QQ?” Zhang Xiaolong asked with a smile.

“It’s not QQ, it’s a new chat app called OO!” someone quickly explained.

“OO!” Zhang Xiaolong was even more surprised. He’d assumed it was QQ, since the UI was nearly identical. But after hearing otherwise, he sat down at a computer for a closer look and realized this wasn’t QQ after all—the color scheme was different, much more vibrant and pleasing, even to someone as particular about colors as Zhang Xiaolong.

But the color scheme was a minor detail. The main point was that there was now a second chat app capable of luring his staff away from QQ, even making them give up their breaks and voluntarily work late—this was no small feat. A wild and incredible idea began to form in Zhang Xiaolong’s mind.

“What’s the story behind OO? Does it have any interesting features?” he asked.

“No idea. It’s only been out for less than half a month, but its growth has been explosive. At first, it was their OO Farm that attracted several of the women in the company. Then three days ago, they launched this Drifting Bottle feature, which is truly captivating!” The speaker gave an embarrassed smile—after all, being so obsessed with chatting was a little shameful.

“Can you find out who’s behind OO? Is it a product of a tech company, or some rogue operation? Is there any investment backing?”

“It feels like all of those, yet none of them,” the programmer replied, shaking his head. “Their promotional tactics are unconventional, nothing like established companies. But their product is polished, updates come fast, and the tech is mature—clearly the work of an organized, large-scale team. It feels like a big company product.”

“Interesting,” Zhang Xiaolong murmured, falling silent. He decided to try out the Drifting Bottle feature himself. Upon entering, a new page popped up, with a simple animation of an unfolded letter, prompting Zhang Xiaolong to leave a message for a stranger.

After some thought, he wrote, “I have wine—do you have a story to tell?”

“Whoa!” someone behind him exclaimed. With just that one line, he had outclassed all the other programmers’ attempts by a mile.

Impressive!

“What do I do next?” he asked.

“Just choose to throw the bottle out,” someone explained. Zhang Xiaolong clicked to send off his virtual bottle, and the system displayed a message: “Now automatically matching you to a female stranger who threw a bottle within the nearest time frame.”

Soon, another prompt appeared: “Congratulations, match successful! The mysterious stranger threw her bottle 0.035 seconds before you. You are the most in-sync pair of strangers at 8:47:36 PM on August 7th. Establishing your exclusive Drifting Bottle connection!”

“System: The connection is complete. You can now both see each other’s bottles!” With that, an animation showed a bottle washing ashore, picked up by a hand and opened.

“Looking for the right person,” read the note inside the bottle.

“Interesting—just from the first message, you get a strong impression of the other person,” Zhang Xiaolong mused. Then another system message appeared.

“Both of you, please roll a die. The one with the highest number gets to send the next message. After opening the bottle, please reply within one minute, or your connection will be lost forever! The message must be between 10 and 100 characters.”

Two dice appeared on the screen. Zhang Xiaolong clicked one, and it spun before settling on three. His partner’s die rolled a few seconds later and landed on six.

So, the other person got to speak first.

“My story isn’t worth hearing—are you sure you want to listen?” Ten seconds later, her message floated through. Zhang Xiaolong smiled and replied, “A good story can touch the heart, a sad story goes well with wine. As long as it’s your story, I want to hear it.”

After a short wait, her reply came drifting back: “Young man, you really know how to play the artsy type!”

“I am an artsy type—24 karat, pure artist!” he shot back quickly, tossing his reply into the bottle. Then, as he gripped the mouse, his hand suddenly froze.

“How did I get into this conversation so easily?” In Zhang Xiaolong’s eyes shone an immense disbelief.