Middle-aged Love Patch

Translator: zhufree

Editor: A-chan 

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Shi Ye was right, Xu Youyuan is a person with very strong self-esteem.
Even in such a situation, she did not say a word to her friends and family to complain nor ask for help.

When Cang Lu spent two hours driving to find her, she had just finished a set of original drawings for a small company under an alias.
Xu Youyuan’s shoulders were so sore that she couldn’t lift them up.
Furthermore, when she collected the money, she found that the amount was wrong, and was arguing with the client on the phone.
When she saw Cang Lu come in, she pointed to the sofa and continued to talk on the phone while taking out a can of soda from the old double-door refrigerator and giving it to her.

Cang Lu pushed away the computer science textbook on the coffee table, put the take-out box away, stroked the big head of the old dog Ah Shuang, and watched Xu Youyuan walk around the house.
She listened to her and the other party grumbling and arguing about three hundred yuan for half a day.
Finally the other party agreed to pay her another two hundred yuan, so she reluctantly compromised and hung up the phone.

“You’re living in this kind of place now.” Cang Lu looked around, and checked over the small house that was even older than herself in less than two seconds.
She put a cigarette through her bright red lips, but it was taken away by Xu Youyuan just before she lit it.

“Sister Lu, please be more considerate.
In such a small place one puff is enough for me to sleep with a pillow and quilt smelling like smoke.” Xu Youyuan returned the cigarette to her.

Cang Lu said, “What, An old smoker like you now hates the smell of smoke?”

“I struggled to quit, now I get nauseous when I smell it.”

Cang Lu took out a collapsible liquid makeup mirror which just appeared on the market from the bag she carried.
The propped up palm-sized stand on the coffee table, with the surface set in, can be expanded to a square meter bright mirror and magnify her face several times.
With all the details of her face clearly illuminated, Xu Youyuan was so dazzled that can not open her eyes.

“It seems that Fat Liu is indeed trying hard to frame you this time.” Cang Lu said while fixing her makeup, “I heard that you have been added to the group and alliance blacklist, and the slightly large domestic game companies are afraid to use you.
Have you thought about what you’re going to do in the future ? Rely on your aliases  and bump your way clumsily in all directions with no overall goal?”

Fat Liu refers to SQUALL’s boss, Liu Feng.

“Of course I have to think of a way, but while I think, I also have to make money to fill my stomach.
Or, sister Lu,” Xu Youyuan quickly stuck to her side, “Have you come to offer me a job?”

Cang Lu is the one with the most net worth in their circle of friends.
She may be the most unpredictable one, but is also a practical person who does her work  with diligence.

She was Xu Youyuan and Shi Ye’s high school senior sister.
When they met Cang Lu at 16 or 17 years old, she had already started a business, got a gaming studio, and focused primarily on making mobile games.

At that time, the mobile game market was the most profitable.
Cang Lu knew that Xu Youyuan can draw, develop, and do planning .
She gave her 5,000 yuan a month for help with her work.
Shi Ye also followed her to run business outside, talk about cooperation to pull investors, and other miscellaneous work.
The studio only consists of them, but when the game was completed and released, it became popular with a small group of people for a while.
That earned them their first bucket of money in their life.

Xu Youyuan often says Sister Lu is her talent scout.
If she  didn’t skip class to work for sister Lu in her three years of high school, if she didn’t do the work of three people by herself, and if she didn’t accumulate a wealth of valuable experience,  “Reshaping the Universe” would never have existed.

Later, the mobile game market gradually weakened, so the keen-eyed Cang Lu and one of her uncles turned to artificial intelligence.
She did not do a postgraduate entrance examination, and almost failed to graduate from undergraduate school.
Cang Lu spent her whole four years in university working in her company.
Even so, no one thinks Cang Lu is an academic scum.
She has two names in her circle of friends — one is sister Lu, and the other is Boss Lu.

After graduating from undergraduate school, Cang Lu put all her energy into entrepreneurship.
Ten years later, she already became a multi-billionaire.

Shi Ye confessed herself that she is not good at business.
She added that she wasn’t very healthy and did not have much energy to start a business, so after graduate school, she found a stable job.

Xu Youyuan’s obsession with games was overwhelming, and the VR games that were popular at the time did not satisfy her appetite.
She wanted to get rid of the heavy VR glasses and wanted to experience a more realistic, more exciting scenario.

 This was what Xu Youyuan originally intended for “Reshaping The Universe.”

“Yes, there is work.” Cang Lu said as she pressed the unlit cigarette to her lips.

“And?”

“I’m afraid you can’t do it.”

“It’s not like you’re going to ask me to murder people, right?” Xu Youyuan retorted.

“How can I?” Cang Lu smiled, “Although your sister Lu has done a lot of jobs and made a lot of money from gray areas, it is not to the point of doing blatantly illegal crimes.
I do have a job for you, and it’s your old job.”

“Making games?”

Cang Lu nodded.

“Then what game can’t I make?”

Cang Lu’s smiling eyes circled around Xu Youyuan’s face, before  she threw out two words with some derisive meaning: “Love Games .”

Xu Youyuan froze for two seconds as the parting words of her ex-wife hit her heart hard.

“You don’t even know what love is now.
.”

Cang Lu is a busy person.
If her friends threw a party ten times, she would attend once, only to just talk about business.
After leaving some profit to her friends, she would quickly disappear.
She is not married, not in love, and not doing anything to delay her money earning.
Right now, she is the type of person whom young women are envious of and aspire to be like the most.

She has been featured in many magazines and has been interviewed numerous times, so her golden words of being single have been circulated everywhere on the internet.

She could probably lead a project by herself even at 80 years old.
For such a hardworking role model, the only thing that could be difficult for her is “love”.

“The market is like a cycle.” Cang Lu finished her makeup, then leaned on Xu Youyuan second-hand sofa, which was quite soft and comfortable, “For so many years, players have been playing your sandbox game, shooting birds in the sky, catching fish in the sea, busy seizing planets, developing planets, and building the universe.
They would eventually get burnt out and long for something new.
Earlier, I had an  idea to do a holographic love game, a retro EDU, a nurturing type of game.”

Xu Youyuan thought for a while and nodded: “Good idea.
Even now, a large number of people do not want to get married, but love will always be a human need.
It’s been a long time since the last love game has been a hit, so if you can make a good one, the possibility of bringing back the trend is high.
Have you already done the market research?”

“Do you think your sister Lu looks like a fool who only works by intuition? The project team is almost finished.”

“So you’re just short of the master planner? You’ve messed up the order.”

“No, I had a suitable candidate for the master planner a long time ago, and just now I even made a joke with her.
Youyuan, ” Cang Lu grabbed her arm and said with certainty, “You’re that person.”

“Boss Lu  asked you, who just got divorced, to make a love game?” Shi Ye also thought it was a bit hard to digest when she heard this, ” Does she not know what happened between you and Xiao An?”

“She should , considering  her good relationship with Xiao An .
It is said that this time, she was the one who helped Xiao An go abroad.”

“Then she ……” Shi Ye thought about it again and said, “In the industry’s view, the only person who brought the game world into a new era, with an eye-opening experience, is you.
In fact, Boss Lu had intended to hire you for a long time, right? It’s just that you used to be so prosperous in SQUALL that she couldn’t poach you directly.
So what do you think about this matter? Even I, a layman, can see that this incident  is a good opportunity.”

“Yes, I have talked to Sister Lu in detail, it indeed is a good opportunity for me to turn over.
Now, she is the only one who dares to use me and is not afraid of getting into trouble.” Xu Youyuan paused here, then added, “so I have no intention to refuse, I want to try it, I want to try to rediscover the feeling of falling in love and make a good game.”

She finally got to the point. 

“So you were looking for someone to fall in love with? And found my sister?” Shi Ye was confused.
“When did you two meet ? She has been busy after returning to China, going out early in the morning and back late at night.
There is no time for her to……” Shi Ye paused, organizing her thoughts, and suddenly came to a realization.

“In fact, her time is not all spent on work, right?”

Xu Youyuan: “Why’re you asking me?”

“Doesn’t she spend all her evenings on a date with you?”

“I’ve only met her once before today!” Xu Youyuan said angrily, “The other times can’t really be considered ‘meetings’!”

“Can’t really be considered meetings?” Shi Ye did not understand.

Xu Youyuan looked at her out of the corner of her eye: “I saw her in “Darkroom”.”

Hearing the word “Darkroom”, Shi Ye’s face changed to six different colors in one second, and wanted to scream, but was pushed back by reason: “Damn you, Xu Youyuan, you’re a beast, harming my sister in that place! Are you even human?!”

Xu Youyuan was completely unmoved: “Shut up and listen carefully, you will see your good sister in a different light after this.”