章 24: Team building

The second thing that happened was of Yu Chen's doing. They were having the period before lunch free as their English teacher had called in sick. Yu Chen, Xi Hua and Huo Zenghai sat talking.

Xi Hua: "Hey guys, have you heard about the 99-software open competition!"

Huo Zenghai: "Yeah. It's definitely going to be the most amazing coding competition of students in the whole century."

Xi Hua: "Yeah. I heard there will be three rounds. For the first round, competitors have to prepare a code for a game and submit it. But that's easy. You can ask anyone to code for you at home."

Huo Zenghai: "Yeah yeah yeah!!! So the second round is the live coding competition. It will check the speed of the coders."

"And last but not the least, the different participants will try to find mistakes in the code written during the previous rounds by their competitors." they both said in unison.

Xi Hua turned and said, "What's wrong, Chen. Surely you must have heard of the 99-softwarw open competition."

Huo Zenghai: "Yeah. It's going to be held in less than two weeks."

Yu Chen: "Ummm, about that. I want to tell you guys something."

"What? Don't tell me that you are thinking of participating?" Xi Hua joked.

"Umm I'm not thinking. I have participated and have half written the code. And I want you both to be on my team for the competition."

"WHAAA-AAAAT!!!" Xi Hua screamed. But next second she and Yu Chen burst out laughing. Huo Zenghai was looking like someone had asked him to marry them. He had tears in his eyes, and was nodding vigorously with his hands on his mouth.

It took a while for both of them to calm down. By the time they were able to speak properly, lunch break had started.

As they went to the cafeteria and sat down with their lunches, Yu Chen asked again, a little timidly, "Will you guys do it?"

Huo Zenghai: "Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!!"

Xi Hua: "Zenghai, calm down. She is not asking you to marry her." she rolled her eyes and continued, "As much as we would like to, we are both no match to you."

Huo Zenghai also calmed down, "That's right. We can never code at the same level as you."

Yu Chen: "That's alright. Actually, I may have written the code myself but I still need someone to double check. Also..." she continued fidgeting with her lunch, "I cannot participate without a team."

"So you don't yet have a team?" asked Xi Hua.

"Well, until you both agree." mumbled Yu Chen under her breath.

Huo Zenghai: "Well of course we agree. But don't complain when our coding skills irritate you." he said looking at Xi Hua, who nodded her head.

Then Xi Hua shouted, "GROUP HUG!!" and took both Huo Zenghai and Yu Chen on her arms. Yu Chen noticed that Huo Zenghai seemed to be blushing. But before she could dwell on the matter further, someone came at their table.

"Oh great, look who is here." Huo Zenghai mumbled. And Xi Hua said, "How come the queen herself is gracing us with her presence." The sarcasm in both their voices told Chen that it could be none other than Yuan Zuan.