Rebirth: A big star falls in love with me

Zhang Yu stared at the electronic clock in the lower right corner of the computer screen. It was Monday, April 2006, 4.

This is the 83rd day since he came to this parallel universe.

Some unexpected things happened, caught me off guard!

Willow catkins are floating outside the window, and hawkers pushing tricycles and selling pirated CDs can be seen on the streets of Zhongguancun. In the distance, the newly topped-out Yinke Building is glowing coldly in the sun.

"Xiao Zhang, you haven't submitted last week's customer follow-up form yet, right?" Sister Chen at the next workstation knocked on the partition.

This administrative manager in his early forties always likes to clip a ballpoint pen behind his ear and habitually pouts his lips when he speaks, as if he has a sour plum in his mouth.

"It will be ready soon." Zhang Yu inserted the USB drive into the host computer and listened to the buzzing sound of the old computer case.

The office system of the private enterprise network is still in the DOS interface, and the input method must be switched manually every time data is entered.

The clock at the front desk suddenly struck three o'clock in the afternoon, and the clicking sound of the spring could be heard throughout the entire floor.

The smell of burnt instant coffee wafted from the tea room. When Zhang Yu was holding a thermos cup to get hot water, he ran into a few young people from the sales department chatting. "I heard that Vice President Qiu was scolded by the chairman again today? Yes, her marketing plan will cost 200,000 yuan, and the chairman said it is enough to buy three Santanas."

Zhang Yu's fingers gently stroked the wall of the cup. He remembered the scene when he met Qiu Tong in the elevator three days ago.

The woman was holding a filing box that was half her height, with beads of sweat on her forehead and her dark grey suit stretched tight around her round shoulders.

When the elevator suddenly got stuck on the fourth floor, she subconsciously grabbed Zhang Yu's arm, and her nails left a crescent-shaped red mark on his forearm.

"Have you been feeling dizzy recently?" Zhang Yu suddenly asked. Qiu Tong looked up in astonishment and saw the young man taking out an acupuncture kit from his canvas bag. "I graduated from the University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. How about I take your pulse?"

At this moment, the conversation in the tea room is still going on: "I think Vice President Qiu is too serious. What can a corporate yellow pages website like ours do? He is a returnee from Cambridge. I heard that he studied digital media in the UK..."

Zhang Yu returned to his workstation and opened the notebook in the drawer. The yellowed pages were densely filled with notes on the differences between this time and space and the original world: Lao Ma launched the Chengxintong service three years ahead of schedule, Lao Li's forum traffic skyrocketed, and the private enterprise network was still relying on salesmen to visit buildings to attract customers.

He turned to the latest page, circled the words "mobile layout" with a red pen, and put a question mark next to it.

It started raining when I got off work.

Zhang Yu was running towards the bus stop with a briefcase on his head when he suddenly heard a hurried horn behind him.

The black Passat rolled down its window, and Qiu Tong's round face looked particularly pale in the rain: "Doctor Zhang...Doctor Zhang? Do you want me to give you a ride?"

The air conditioner in the car was turned on very high, and Zhang Yu could smell a faint scent of mugwort on her.

Last week, when he was giving her acupuncture, he casually mentioned moxibustion therapy, but he didn't expect her to actually remember it. "Have you slept better recently?" He noticed that the amulet hanging on the rearview mirror was still shaking.

"Just call me Qiu Tong." The woman tightened her grip on the steering wheel. "I slept for five hours yesterday, the first time in six months." When turning, her shirt collar opened slightly, revealing a light brown scar on her collarbone. Zhang Yu remembered the sentence "widowed for three years" in the personnel file.

The wipers left fan-shaped water streaks on the glass.

When passing Wudaokou Village, Qiu Tong suddenly asked, "Can you tell me more about the website transformation plan you mentioned last time?" Her nails tapped the steering wheel unconsciously, "For example, the B2B online trading system..."

Zhang Yu felt his heart skip a beat. On the back seat was the latest issue of Internet Weekly, with the cover title "Survival Rules in the Web 2.0 Era".

He cleared his throat. "Customers are still sending orders by fax. We can develop an online signing platform. Just like Taobao, but for corporate customers..."

When the car stopped outside the mottled courtyard wall, the rain had already subsided. The second-floor window was suddenly pushed open, and Old Lu leaned out half of his body: "Xiao Zhang! The server configuration you mentioned last time..." Seeing Qiu Tong in the car, the middle-aged man swallowed the second half of the sentence and smiled meaningfully.

At the morning meeting three days later, Qiu Tong announced the establishment of a strategic research team.

When Zhang Yu walked into the small conference room carrying a laptop, Sister Chen, who was drinking soy milk, choked and coughed.

The blue light from the projector shone on Qiu Tong's newly bought light blue suit, and Zhang Yu noticed that her waist was obviously thinner.

"First, we need to open up the payment link." Zhang Yu pulled out the PPT he had made overnight, and the cursor stopped on a case of a valve factory in Zhejiang. "This customer reached a deal through our website last month, but the remittance was ultimately completed offline. If there had been a guaranteed transaction system at the time..."

Qiu Tong suddenly raised her hand: "Excuse me, Mr. Wang told me last week that their finance department doesn't know how to use online banking." Her voice was much clearer than usual. "How do we solve this situation?"

"We can organize customer training." Zhang Yu clicked on a new page, "Just like teaching the elderly how to use their mobile phones, we can teach them how to install digital certificates. Of course, this requires the cooperation of the marketing department..."

The meeting lasted until noon. When it was over, Qiu Tong called Zhang Yu and took out a brown paper bag from her Hermès handbag: "This is the sour jujube kernels from Baicaotang. When you said you had insomnia last time..." She paused, "The chairman will be back from Hong Kong tomorrow. I want to organize your plan into a report."

When Zhang Yu took the paper bag, he touched her cold fingers.

The window at the end of the corridor was open, and April poplar catkins poured in like snowflakes.

He suddenly thought of the live streaming sales in 2023 in his original time and space. The post-00s who placed orders in the virtual live broadcast room overlapped with the migrant workers who were delivering goods on tricycles outside the window at this moment.

The next morning, Zhang Yu met a courier who was delivering a package in the elevator.

The young man was wearing faded overalls and had an orange Taobao badge on his chest. As Zhang Yu stared at the logo, the courier suddenly said, "It would be great if your website could do online transactions. We have bosses coming to our outlets every day to ask how to open an online store."

The elevator stopped on the seventh floor, and Zhang Yu watched the courier disappear around the corner of the corridor.

There was a quarrel at the front desk. A customer with a Shanxi accent was slamming the table: "What the hell is the Internet! I want sales that can drink, not these fancy web pages!"

The door of Qiu Tong's office was ajar. Zhang Yu saw through the crack that she was making tea for the chairman.

White mist rose from the purple clay teapot, and the woman's round profile was faintly visible in the hot air.

He touched the USB flash drive in his pocket, which contained a business plan that he had rushed out overnight. The first page had the words "Five breakthroughs in the Internetization of traditional industries" written in bold font.

The sandalwood in the chairman's office makes people dizzy.

Zhang Yu looked at the plan on the mahogany coffee table. One part of the cover was wet with tea.

Qiu Mingde, 60, took off his reading glasses, and the gold-rimmed glasses chain swayed on the front of his suit: "Xiao Zhang, you said you want customers to put real money online. What's the difference between this and stuffing money into a computer case?"

"We can introduce a third-party guarantee..." Zhang Yu was about to explain when there was a sudden noise in the corridor.

Through the carved glass window, I saw the marketing director grabbing the courier by the collar and saying, "How many times have I told you to put Taobao's parcels in the mailroom?"

Qiu Tong suddenly stood up and opened the window. The warm April breeze brought in the hawking voices from downstairs: "Buying old computers - color TVs, refrigerators, washing machines -"

When she turned her head, her earrings shone silver: "Dad, do you remember when we rented a stall in Yiwu in 1998? At that time, you also said that no one would buy buttons across half of China."

The old chairman tapped his fingers on the armrest of the Huanghuali chair. Zhang Yu noticed that there was a tiny crack on the jade ring on his ring finger, which was exactly the same as the one his father had worn for thirty years in the original time and space.

"First, select three customers for the pilot." Qiu Mingde finally spoke, "But the staff in the marketing department cannot be moved. Xiaotong, you can recruit people from your own team."

He suddenly stared at Zhang Yu's canvas shoes and said, "Young people should still wear formal clothes when meeting clients."

When she came out of the chairman's office, Qiu Tong's high heels tapped out a brisk rhythm on the marble floor.

When passing the fire escape, she suddenly grabbed Zhang Yu's sleeve, her eyes gleaming with a girlish light: "You know what? This is the first time I have convinced him in three years."

The blood pressure monitor on her wrist suddenly beeped, and Zhang Yu remembered that she had not had acupuncture today.

At ten o'clock that evening, in a rental house in the urban village.

Old Lu squatted on the creaking folding bed and fiddled with the circuit board. The blue light of the monitor reflected his three-day-straight beard. "You want an online payment interface. Do you know how difficult it is to get an SSL certificate now?" He threw half a piece of peach cake over. "Unless we can find someone from the bank..."

Zhang Yu was disinfecting the moxibustion box when he heard the words and suddenly remembered the Taobao work badge of the courier during the day.

The neon signs outside the window blurred into blocks of color in the humid air. He suddenly grabbed his coat and said, "Let's go to Houhai."

When the taxi stopped at Yandaixie Street, Lao Lu was still muttering: "Why are you coming to a bar in the middle of the night to look for a bank..."

Before he could finish his words, they were drowned out by deafening electronic music.

Zhang Yu walked straight to the bar, where a girl in a deep V dress was sitting. Her name badge on her chest read "Alipay offline promoter."

"Will you get a free POS machine if you open an online banking account?"

The girl leaned close to Zhang Yu's ear and shouted, the scent of perfume mixed with tequila, "Apply now and get a free..."

Her voice stopped abruptly when she saw Zhang Yu took out the acupuncture bag. "What are you doing?"

"You have an old injury three inches below the third rib on your left side."

The silver needle on Zhang Yu's fingertips glowed coldly under the laser light. "It will hurt like a knife on rainy days, right?" The wine glass in the girl's hand fell to the bar with a clang.

At two o'clock in the morning, Zhang Yu helped the drunk Old Lu back to the rental house.

A new email notification flashed on the computer screen - the Alipay North China channel manager invited them to a meeting tomorrow. Old Lu suddenly came to his senses: "Did you know that the promoter had a hidden injury?"

"Her left pinky finger curled inward unnaturally when she held the wine glass."

Zhang Yu flipped open the yellowed notebook. The latest page showed the layout of the bar. “And she was sitting in the most windproof corner.” The moonlight shone through the iron fence onto the paper. A line of small words could be vaguely seen: “Meridiverse mutations of SARS survivors in 2003.”

The customer training meeting the next afternoon turned into a farce. Boss Liu from Hebei Iron Foundry kicked over the projector and said, "I don't trust you! I lost 200,000 orders last time because of that shitty website!" The gold chain around his neck, as thick as his little finger, rustled as he moved.

Just as Qiu Tong was about to speak, Boss Liu suddenly collapsed to the ground, holding his chest.

When the crowd was in an uproar, Zhang Yu had already torn open the man's shirt and inserted three silver needles accurately into his Tanzhong acupoint.

He looked up and shouted to the stunned secretary: "Quick-acting heart pills! In his suit pocket!"

Afterwards in the ambulance, Qiu Tong's stockings were torn by a metal chair hook.

She grabbed Zhang Yu's sleeve without realizing it: "How do you know he carries medicine with him?"

"People who socialize a lot have a smell of nitroglycerin on their collars."

Zhang Yu still had the bloody silver needle between his fingers. “But his real problem is hyperactivity of liver yang. That kick just now…” The sound of the ambulance siren drowned out the rest of his sentence.

Three days later, Zhang Yu was awakened by the vibration of his cell phone.

Qiu Tong's text message popped up on the screen: "Boss Liu agreed to be a pilot, on the condition that I check his pulse every week." Then the second message came from the chairman's secretary: "Bring your acupuncture bag to the board meeting at 10 o'clock."

When passing by the security room, Zhang Yu heard the new security guards chatting: "I heard that someone from Taobao came to see Vice President Qiu yesterday? Yes, he waited in the reception room for two hours with a fruit basket..."

The moment the door of the conference room was opened, all the sounds disappeared.

At the end of the oval conference table sat a white-haired old man in a Tang suit. The agarwood bracelet in his hand suddenly broke, and the sandalwood beads rolled to Zhang Yu's feet.

Qiu Mingde's voice trembled a little: "This is Mr. Li from Genting Investment. He wants to see your golden needle."