Chapter 269 - 157: The Plan 2
"Lu Jia, you’re so inflexible."
Chu Ge took the lollipop out of his mouth and used the stick to point at the cluster of Markov chain formulas.
"You’re trying to win over a girl by calculating normal distributions and state-transition matrices? What do you think human behavior is? A random number generator?"
Chu Ge leaned back in his chair and shook his head, his tone laced with exasperated disappointment.
"For this kind of problem, using algorithms to calculate probability is the dumbest, most inefficient method."
Lu Jia frowned.
"So you have a better empirical model?"
"Empirical my ass."
Chu Ge scoffed.
"Why calculate transition probabilities to figure out her food preferences? Just give me half an hour."
Chu Ge turned around and placed his hands on the keyboard.
"The school cafeteria’s POS card readers upload their data to the logistics network center’s server at eleven o’clock every night. That piece-of-shit server is running Windows NT without even a decent firewall. It relies entirely on the physical isolation of the LAN."
Chu Ge’s fingers tapped unconsciously on the keyboard a couple of times.
"I just need to write a simple packet-sniffing script and disguise it as a cafeteria terminal node. When it syncs its data, I’ll intercept the packets. As long as you give me her meal card number, or even just her student ID, I can get into the database in ten minutes. I can find out whether she’s been eating rice bowls on the first floor or congee on the second for the past two weeks. I can even pull up a list of whether she added a braised egg or not."
Chu Ge turned his head to look at Lu Jia.
"The raw, underlying data is right there for the taking. Why are you here building probability models?"
Lu Jia was stunned speechless by Chu Ge’s simple, brutal, internet-era takedown.
He opened his mouth, trying to argue back from a moral and ethical standpoint.
"This... This is illegally hacking the campus network. It’s a serious offense. What if the network administration center catches you..."
"If I get caught, it’s on me."
Chu Ge waved his hand dismissively.
"Technical methods are always more direct than theoretical deductions."
"You’re both taking your pants off just to fart."
Wang Dayong, who had been leaning against the doorframe eating a sweet potato, finally couldn’t take it anymore.
He tossed the last bit of sweet potato skin into the trash can by the door and dusted off his hands.
Dayong walked to the whiteboard, glanced at the complex diagrams, and pursed his lips in disapproval.
𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂
"Lu Jia, listen to your big bro. If you want to chase a girl, all these fancy formulas and code are completely useless."
Dayong stuck out his arm, gesturing in mid-air.
"Why calculate times? Why check data? Just go wait for her at the cafeteria entrance."
Dayong’s logic carried a kind of raw, Northeastern pragmatism.
"It’s snowing heavily, and the roads are all icy. She’s a girl walking alone. What if her feet slip out from under her? You’ll be right there to dash over and catch her."
Dayong even demonstrated, sinking into a horse stance as if catching someone.
"Isn’t that a hundred times more effective than bumping into her on the stairs and saying, ’What a coincidence’? Hero saves the beauty, physical contact... Won’t that heat things up between you two right away?"
Chu Ge was amused, his chair SQUEAKING as he spun around.
"Dayong, what if the upperclassman has a solid stance and doesn’t slip? Lu Jia can’t just go and push her over, can he?"
"It’s fine if she doesn’t slip."
Dayong said, full of confidence.
"When you get to the cafeteria window, no matter if she’s getting spicy hot pot or congee, you just run up ahead of her, swipe your meal card, and get two of the most expensive orders of braised pork and chicken legs. Shove them onto her tray and just say: ’Senior, it’s cold. Eat more meat to stay warm.’"
Dayong clapped Lu Jia on the shoulder.
"Women like guys who are down-to-earth. You buy her braised pork, and she’ll remember you for a lifetime. You calculate her probabilities behind her back, and if she finds out, she’ll just think you’re a creep."
Lu Jia was stunned by Dayong’s hardcore meal-buying theory.
An image of himself forcefully shoving braised pork onto the upperclassman’s tray flashed through his mind, and he broke out in a cold sweat.
"Dayong, that’s too reckless. It doesn’t suit my personality..."
Lu Jia waved his hands frantically.
"Sigh, you intellectual types. You think too much and have no guts."
Dayong sighed, full of disappointment.
Chen Zhuo was leaning against the back of Chu Ge’s chair.
He listened to Chu Ge’s hacker proclamations and Dayong’s hardcore practical advice.
’This is pretty pathetic. A whole damn group of single guys trying to teach someone how to hit on a girl.’
"Lu Jia."
Lu Jia turned his head and looked at Chen Zhuo as if grasping at his last straw.
"Brother Zhuo, do you think there’s a problem with my mathematical model?"
Chen Zhuo straightened up and walked over to the whiteboard.
He put on a show of carefully examining the normal distribution equations and state-transition matrices Lu Jia had listed.
"Hmm... As far as I can see, there’s probably nothing wrong with the formulas. If you took this to the School of Economics and Management to apply for a cross-disciplinary project on consumer behavior, the professors would definitely approve your funding."
Chen Zhuo gave a very fair academic assessment.
Lu Jia’s expression relaxed slightly, and hope rekindled in his eyes.
"Does that mean if I follow this plan tomorrow, the success rate is seventy-two percent?"
Chen Zhuo turned around, looked at Lu Jia, and said with a straight face, a faint smile playing on his lips.
"If we were in a vacuum, then yes."
Chen Zhuo took the whiteboard marker from Lu Jia’s hand and drew a large question mark next to the parameter on the board representing today’s snowfall and sudden drop in temperature.
"But there is one problem."
"What problem?"
Lu Jia nervously adjusted his glasses.
Chu Ge and Dayong also leaned in, curious.
Chen Zhuo tapped the question mark with the tip of the marker, his voice tinged with amusement.
"It’s the first snow of the season outside today. The wind is strong, and the temperature is two degrees below zero."
Chen Zhuo looked into Lu Jia’s eyes.
"In your Markov chain, did you include a state option for what happens if the upperclassman decides it’s too cold outside and doesn’t want to go downstairs at all?"
Lu Jia froze.
Chen Zhuo continued in a gentle voice.
"What if she asks her roommate to bring back some fried rice? Or worse, what if she decides it’s too cold for the cafeteria and just sets up a little tray table on her bed and makes a bowl of Master Kang’s Braised Beef Instant Noodles?"
The dorm room instantly fell silent.
Lu Jia remained frozen in the act of adjusting his glasses, as if someone had hit the pause button on him.
He stared wide-eyed at the dense, flawless formulas on the whiteboard.
A few seconds later, the light in his eyes died completely.
CLANG.
Chen Zhuo casually tossed the marker into the whiteboard tray. The sound was like the last straw that broke the camel’s back.
Lu Jia’s legs gave out, and he collapsed into his chair.
"Instant noodles..."
Lu Jia stared blankly at the ceiling, muttering to himself.
"That’s right... When it’s snowing, a girl doesn’t have to go outside..."
The perfect model he had spent several nights building, mobilizing all his knowledge of calculus and probability theory, was instantly shattered by Chen Zhuo with a single bowl of Master Kang instant noodles.
"PFFT—HAHAHA!"
Chu Ge was the first to react. He bit down, crunching the lollipop in his mouth, and pointed at the slumped figure of Lu Jia, laughing so hard he doubled over, nearly tipping his chair over.
"Hahaha, Professor Lu, your mathematical model just got wrecked by a bowl of instant noodles!"
Wang Dayong caught on too, letting out a simple-minded laugh.
"See? I told you all that stuff was useless. Lu Jia, listen to me. Go stake out the cafeteria tomorrow, or just buy her the braised pork."
Dayong walked over and slapped Lu Jia on the shoulder, nearly sending him face-first onto the desk.
Even out in the hallway, you could hear Chu Ge’s unrestrained laughter and Lu Jia’s sigh of utter despair.