To Live Again, For the First Time!

As Grace and Noah spoke of Doorii, Emilin was in fact, secretly proud like a mother who had heard others praise their child.

This was a feeling that she didn't have, even when her own identities like Master M and Master Lin were being praised.

In fact, when it came to those identities, she always felt an indescribable sense of alienation.

Perhaps a feeling that stemmed from the fact that the things she knew from those fields required no hard work on her part other than the tedious typing and constant managing to keep the identities alive.

Thus the lack of gratification and fulfillment.

Sadly enough, she felt more pride in her blurry photos of which the context could not be clearly decerned and was to be possibly discarded in the future than in the procedures she had uploaded, saving thousands of lives, and even more in the long term.

But of course, that was only pride.

She still knew that she was saving lives and felt like it was a good thing.

But that feeling was more of a matter of course rather than pride.

How could one feel pride in an achievement that didn't even feel like your own?

As for her initial embarrassment, that also dissipated after a while of unease.

Emilin was able to talk herself out of it.

"Man, if everyone plays like this, then I can understand why we weren't able to win a single game all along," Grace's whole body relaxed as she laid on the couch with a sigh.

This past week, she had started questioning herself as the losing streak affected her mental health quite a bit.

Now she felt like everything was explained and thus a knot in her heart was loosened.

It wasn't her fault, and she wasn't incompetent!

It was just that everyone else was too perverted!

Grace felt like she had been playing the game wrong the same way one would be reading wrong if they held their books upside down reading from back to front.

She clearly hadn't been given a manual…

"That shouldn't be it... I've seen worse players streaming and isn't it quite strange that both of us haven't won a single round? Not one between the both of us!"

Noah still found it incredulous to this day, though this didn't deter him nearly as much as it did Grace.

Then, Emilin, who seemingly thought of something just now, voiced out her thoughts.

"Well... why don't you guys play against each other? If you two are in opposing teams, won't one of you win either way?"

This was just a sudden thought from Emilin.

She didn't actually mean much by it as she too was curious as to why neither of them had a win under their belt.

What she didn't know was that such a sentence of hers would be followed by such passion.

Grace and Noah's eyes met after that comment, and at that moment, sparks flew as a sign of the beginning of a new war.

As for Emilin, at first, she was worried.

It wasn't her intention for them to start fighting again.

But after watching for a while and observing how heated up their discussion was getting, Emilin felt like she was enlightened once again.

There was some chemistry going on! Sparks were flying!

This clearly wasn't your normal friendly quarrels.

And then in the very next instant, Emilin felt disgusted and happy at the same time, as if having eaten a sour lemon covered in honey.

I like dog food, but not too much of it okay.

So can you guys do the love-hate thing somewhere else?!

In order to get a better idea of the teenage female mind as well as how relationships and friendships work, Emilin had been reading more and more mangas and novels as well as binge-watching some popular animes and tv shows.

Purely for research purposes. ;)

And thus her whole mind had been plagued with Manga and novel laws that told her that the type of interaction between Grace and Noah would surely end up in a relationship!

Emilin's eyes rolled after she realized what was going to happen next and for a moment, she felt like a 200-watt lightbulb.

They were going to have another lover's spat...

Emilin estimated that it was going to last at least a week or two.

And so to not impose on the two, letting them do their thing, she excused herself to actually go to the bathroom.

It didn't matter to admit that she hadn't gone before now with her actions since she had already been silently exposed anyways.

***

"Boss Wie, why have you called?"

An unmistakable female voice sounded from the other side of the phone.

Though the woman on the other side was very stern sounding, her voice was just too soft and cutesy to be mistaken for a voice anything other than that of a woman's.

"Yanyan, I recently found the need to look into whether our algorithm for sorting players to play against people of similar skill levels is working properly. Have you received any reports on this matter?"

Emilin spoke casually through the voice modulator which made her sound like a mature woman to the person on the other side.

But even though she spoke so casually, Yanyan didn't dare take the matter lightly as she too understood her boss's way of operating things.

Boss Wie has so much trust in her employees that if there was nothing serious, she would allow her to take care of and make all the decisions in their company.

If she was calling specifically for something about company matters, then it had to be a big deal!

Otherwise, whenever Emilin was calling Yanyan, it was always about personal matters such as how she was doing, catching up during holidays or congratulatory words when they sealed another deal, etc.

Never about anything business-related unless Yanyan were to call the chairwoman herself.

This often made Yanyan, as an aspiring strong and independent woman, incredibly touched.

To her, Boss Wie was not only her role model but also someone she aspired to be like.

In truth, that was just Emilin giving the young woman all the work after having first created the game as well as the company.

Yanyan had pretty much single-handedly built the whole company after Emilin built the foundation, also oftentimes giving the young woman business and game-orientated advice when help was needed.

This was also why Emilin had generously given 30% of the company shares to the then young woman, despite being the sole investor in the company.

She was investing in Yanyan's abilities as well as in her future laziness.

Emilin would feel bad if Yanyan wasn't getting a big share when she was doing nearly all of the work.

But of course, Yanyan didn't feel that way.

She just felt like she was being wholeheartedly trusted by her boss, which felt incredibly good.

Either way, things worked out.

"I'll check right away."

Some typing sounds from the other side could be heard as well as the sound of Yanyan talking to someone else.

As for the specific content of the conversation, it couldn't be heard by Emilin clearly.

On the other side...

"CEO Yan, there's nothing on this matter. We haven't received any such reports and the IT department hasn't found any bugs that would lead to such a problem," the head of the IT department was sweating bullets as of this moment.

Their CEO was notorious for being a strong woman despite her cute voice and petite figure, which had brought many troubles to their company in the past.

Yanyan's current presence was completely unlike when she was talking to Emilin.

She was much more domineering, confident, cold, and headstrong.

If anyone other than her role model/ idol called her Yanyan, her given name which she often found way too cutesy, just like her outer appearance, she would probably give them a good thrashing.

Everyone around here knew that no one other than the chairwoman, who was often forgotten due to her lack of appearances, could call their CEO, Yanyan.

Everyone else had to respectfully call her CEO Yan or the conversation would probably end there if she were in a good mood.

As for if she were in a bad mood...

Well, stubborn women in bad mood like her would hold grudges, and Yanyan had no trouble admitting it.

She was very strict with forms of addressing during working hours.

Of course, outside of working hours, her employees could address her differently.

When they were drinking together after a big project, everyone just called her Sister Yan, no matter their age.

There were in fact many employees that were older than Yanyan, but none of them minded considering how competent their CEO was.

At first, people had troubles adapting to how differently their CEO Yan acted inside and outside of work, which was equivalent to the comparison between the devil and an angel, but soon, people got used to it.

In fact, people even started liking and admiring such an attitude.

This was exactly the attitude of someone who could distinguish between work and private matters, which was very admirable.

But after all, the employees were still people who had feelings.

Many of them felt like Yanyan was being pretentious at first.

But what really got to them was how unapologetic she was on the matter, as if it were only natural that the order of the matters was like this.

As well as how cute she was when drunk.

But mostly the first thing.

Yeah, that one… what was it again?

Ah, yes, unapologetic about her distinctions between private relationships and work relationships.

She had no fear of hurting one's feelings when they were seriously slacking on the work they were delivering to the table.

This made the employees work much harder as they knew that their hard work would always be recognized.

Yanyan made sure of it.

As for why Yanyan called Emilin Boss rather than Chairwoman, despite her strictness, that was because Emilin had told Yanyan to address her in that way because she felt like Chairwoman sounded too old.

Of course, Emilin didn't tell Yanyan that reason and Yanyan didn't ask.

Since the Boss said so, she would comply.