Chapter 19: 018

“You’re working overtime? What kind of overtime is that, a chicken’s overtime?!”

“Can’t help it—the branch leadership from the city is coming tomorrow to inspect work; everyone has to stay late.” Fang Qingye sat on his chair, lazily replying on his phone.

“This fucking bullshit… Your senior sister, the bank manager, won’t give you any special favor? Today’s your big moment!” Song Dahai complained over the phone.

“Fine, whether I go or not doesn’t matter. You all eat well, drink well, and have fun.” Fang Qingye chuckled.

“Don’t worry—we won’t spare a single cent on Jiang Chen!”

“Alright, bye.” Fang Qingye hung up, a faint smile on his face.

He didn’t really want to go.

Even if he stayed late, it wouldn’t be long—finish at five, work a bit more, he could still make it to the hotel in time.

But with so many classmates, he’d be drunk under the table tonight anyway; no need to stand out.

Sure enough, overtime ended before seven. After eating the boxed meal arranged by the boss, Fang Qingye rode his scooter straight home and started building his model.

First, data preprocessing: the Dongguan girl had sent him a huge pile of investment data from an investment bank, which needed cleaning and transformation.

Data cleaning meant handling missing values and outliers; data transformation meant standardizing, normalizing, and other dimensionless processing.

Fang Qingye brewed himself a cup of tea and sat by his computer, studying on his own.

When you’ve got something to do, time flies fast—it was already past ten. Fang Qingye stretched.

Rest. Do it tomorrow.

Pull an all-nighter?

Too much.

He’d worked like a beast in his last life; this life, he didn’t want to be so tired.

First, play a game.

Fang Qingye had just opened World of Warcraft when his phone rang. Seeing it was Song Dahai, he picked up—immediately, Song Dahai’s loud voice blared through.

“Holy shit! Ye Zi, you didn’t show up tonight—you missed out big time! Twelve tables of classmates, everyone was completely drunk!”

Fang Qingye found this odd. “Twelve tables? That’s nearly a hundred classmates—how did so many show up?”

“You didn’t know? Several classmates working in the city and neighboring counties rushed back. Some who weren’t even in the group heard about it and joined immediately—it was insane… It’s been years since high school graduation, but never before have we had such a full turnout!”

“Did Jiang Chen break the bank?” Fang Qingye chuckled.

“Damn right—he drank five whole cases of Mengzhi Lan! Jiang Chen’s face turned green by the end. He was supposed to go karaoke after, but he faked being too drunk and slipped out the hotel’s back door! Hahaha… But the monk can run, the temple can’t! He’s definitely paying for karaoke! Even Jesus can’t stop him!”

Holy shit…

He’s really drunk—he’s even quoting lines now.

“Alright, alright, see how you pull it off.”

They chatted a bit longer before Fang Qingye hung up.

It wasn’t just Song Dahai calling—everyone drunk and buzzing with energy, some even asked Fang Qingye to teach them stock trading; he flatly refused.

“Teach what? I took a gamble, got lucky—I’m still losing money on my stocks.”

“You ask if it’ll go up or down next? I can’t say for sure—I’ll get out the moment I break even.”

By the time Fang Qingye finished chatting with these drunk classmates, it was already eleven.

Forget the game. Shower and sleep.

The next day, Fang Qingye showed up for work on time—but to his fury, he received another notice from his department: the city branch leadership’s inspection had been canceled suddenly due to an emergency, and would be rescheduled!

All that effort yesterday was wasted.

But that’s how the workplace works—bosses can rearrange their schedules anytime; subordinates can’t.

What’s most infuriating is you spend a whole day preparing, and the boss shows up, glances around for five minutes, then leaves—what a pain in the ass…

Fang Qingye was used to it by now. Since no one was coming to inspect, he could focus on his own work.

Dimensional processing, descriptive analysis, then begin formal modeling.

As required, Fang Qingye built a predictive model—common methods included time-series forecasting, regression analysis, machine learning, Markov prediction, or combinations thereof.

Use regression analysis for prediction…

He worked all day again, finished the model, and the next step was model evaluation.

This step was crucial—proper evaluation metrics accurately measured model performance. He didn’t have time during the day; he’d do it tonight.

At night, Fang Qingye continued his work. He decided to use second-order mean squared error (MSE), root mean squared error (RMSE), and other metrics for evaluation.

Hmm…

The results were good.

Done!

Fang Qingye logged into QQ.

Several groups had unread messages, but he ignored them. The little penguin kept bouncing—its avatar was a sailor-suited girl named Chuan Shihui.

It was the Dongguan girl’s.

Every time Fang Qingye logged onto QQ, her avatar blinked—but he usually ignored it, unless there was something serious to discuss, like today.

Fang Qingye clicked open her avatar—immediately, a flood of messages appeared.

“Husband, you there?”

“Husband, your wife misses you. Even though you’re not beside me, we’re still in the story. Even if I’m not with you, you’re still my protagonist.”

“Hey, bastard, did you finish your model? If not, I’ll do it myself!” Followed by a cluster of bloody knives.

Looking at this nonsense, Fang Qingye sighed and replied: “Done.”

Her avatar lit up instantly—her reply came right away.

“Husband, you finally showed up—I’ve missed you so much.”

So fast?

Fang Qingye suspected she was always holding her phone or keyboard.

“Miss you, sister.” Fang Qingye replied bluntly.

“But I don’t have a sister—I’ve got a cousin. Are you thinking of Empress Ehuang and Empress Nüying?”

“Blushing” “Blushing” emojis.

Fang Qingye felt utterly speechless: “If you keep talking nonsense, I’m signing off.”

“Alright, alright—you said you finished?” The Dongguan girl instantly turned serious.

"Yeah, I'm sending it to you. Payment and delivery happen at the same time." Fang Qingye reminded her.

“Don’t worry—you’re my husband. How could your wife ever cheat you?”

Fang Qingye said nothing, just sent over the completed document.

The other side fell silent for a long while. Fang Qingye wasn’t in a hurry—he knew she was evaluating the model.

He poured out the now-tasteless tea and brewed a fresh cup, sipping slowly.

After about twenty minutes, her avatar began blinking again.

“Well written, husband—you’re amazing.”

“Don’t flatter me. Pay up!”

“OK, send me your account—I’ll transfer right away.”

Fang Qingye sent his salary card number—and his real name.

“Husband, your name is Fang Qingye? Such a literary name—was your dad a teacher?” Her message came with a cheerful tone.

She guessed right.

His father, once a literary youth, had given him this name—but Fang Qingye didn’t care to explain.

“Transfer the money!”

Five minutes later, his phone buzzed with a text alert: 200,000 RMB deposited.

Fang Qingye finally relaxed.

He’d feared she’d trick him—take the model, pretend to evaluate it, then vanish.

Good thing the Dongguan girl had some integrity.

Fang Qingye typed “Received” on QQ and prepared to log off—when she suddenly sent another message: “Want to build another model?”