Chapter 108 - 78: I Do
Listening to her heartfelt words, the smile on Chen Lin’s face became more genuine.
"What a coincidence," he said, leaning forward slightly. "I actually do have something I’d like to ask you to help me with."
"Oh?" Shen Yan asked curiously. "What is it?"
Chen Lin gave a mysterious smile and didn’t answer right away. Instead, he picked up his chopsticks and pointed to the dishes the waiter had just brought over, which were still steaming.
"No rush. It’s a long story," he said with a relaxed tone, giving her a wink. "Let’s eat and talk."
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「Half an hour later.」
Chen Lin contentedly swallowed the last mouthful of Wagyu fried rice. He savored the exquisite flavor as the rice, infused with the aroma of top-grade beef fat and a special sauce, melted on his tongue, and couldn’t help but let out a heartfelt sigh of admiration.
"It’s expensive, but for good reason. This tastes amazing."
Shen Yan, sitting across from him, took a small sip of her hot tea before lifting her gaze. Her clear eyes held a hint of contemplation as she asked, "So, what you’re saying is... you want me to come work at your new company?"
"Yes." Chen Lin put down his chopsticks, leaned back against the soft chair, and nodded.
During the past half-hour, he had concisely explained everything to Shen Yan: his initial plan to partner with Peng Yifeng to start a technology consulting firm, how Principal Chang Kai wanted the university to get involved, and his preliminary plans for the company’s future business.
Upon hearing this, Shen Yan fell into thought.
Watching her, Chen Lin had a good idea of what she was worried about.
He added, "Of course, I also know your life plan is to follow a pure research path. If you want to continue on to a master’s and a doctorate after you graduate..."
Before Chen Lin could finish his sentence with, "I’d completely understand, so don’t feel any pressure," a firm voice from across the table cut him off.
"I do."
"Huh?" Chen Lin froze for a moment, not quite processing it.
Shen Yan looked up, her gaze fixed on him, and repeated herself clearly, word for word.
"I said, I do."
Chen Lin: "?"
He looked at Shen Yan’s pretty, earnest face and couldn’t help but complain inwardly.
’Good grief, if anyone who didn’t know the context heard those two words, they’d probably think I was proposing, wouldn’t they?’
But jokes aside, Chen Lin was ecstatic.
A huge smile instantly bloomed on his face, and his tone became cheerful. "That’s fantastic! And don’t worry, as for your salary, I’ll definitely give you the highest possible!"
But Shen Yan shook her head, her clear eyes perfectly calm.
"I don’t really care about the salary," she said honestly. "Besides, I’ll be a junior when the semester starts, and my major courses are demanding, so I have to study hard. Even though I’ve already self-studied a lot of the material, I probably won’t have any large blocks of free time until my senior year."
She looked at Chen Lin and earnestly laid out her thoughts. "So, before my senior year, I can probably only help you with a few things in my spare time. Once I’m a senior, I can officially start working at your company. When that time comes, you can just pay me a normal intern’s salary."
"No way!" Chen Lin rejected the idea without a second thought. "Waiting a year is no problem at all, but paying you an intern’s salary? Absolutely not!"
He looked at Shen Yan and said, half-joking and half-serious, "You’re the future technical core of my company! For a top-tier talent like you, one in a million, I absolutely have to bring you in with the best compensation package!"
Hearing him spout this solemn nonsense, Shen Yan couldn’t hold it in anymore and let out a laugh with a "PFFT."
Her cool, aloof features instantly softened, like ice melting for the first time at the dawn of spring.
Chen Lin was momentarily stunned by her rare, radiant smile. He then praised her sincerely, "You’re beautiful when you smile. You should do it more often."
This compliment was far more sincere than his jokes from before.
A captivating blush instantly rose on Shen Yan’s cheeks, but she quickly regained her composure.
Her eyes, curved into crescents, looked at Chen Lin, a faint smile still playing on her lips as she tossed the topic back to him.
"Then you’ll just have to talk to me more and make me laugh more in the future."
Hearing this, Chen Lin froze again.
He looked into her eyes, and for no reason at all, his heart skipped a beat.
Then, he came to his senses and broke into a frank smile.
"Okay."
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For the next two days, Chen Lin’s life fell back into a regular and fulfilling routine.
Every night, without fail, from 8 PM to 11 PM, he would punctually enter the "Little Mathematician" state, single-mindedly dedicating all his energy to his graduate thesis research on the Monge-Ampère equation.
He divided most of his daytime into two parts.
First, he continued to conquer Hollow Knight.
After an initial painful period of getting stylishly demolished by all sorts of bosses, Chen Lin’s gaming skills improved by leaps and bounds, thanks to the help of guide videos and the enhanced vision, reflexes, and manual dexterity granted by his "Little Champion" title.
He could now skillfully use the "down-pogo" technique to bounce repeatedly across all kinds of spike-filled terrain. He could even pull off some extreme maneuvers in certain boss fights that even the creators of the guide videos would find difficult to execute.
The other part of his time was spent picking his long-neglected studies in large-scale AI model programming back up.