Secret Room: Book 1 - Chapter 23

Playing Fish Trapped in Secret Room

Book 1: The Storm is Coming

Chapter 23

“Ah?”

No one knew the answer to his question.

Inin thought for a while and felt that he shouldn’t be so intrusive, but he just couldn’t suppress his curiosity.  He could not help adding another comment,  “En…...they work so well together and it feels like that they must practice together very often…...Oh.  Maybe they practice together mostly in private.  Maybe they are a couple so they understand each other……”

He started to talk to himself and completely forgot about the many girls around him who were shocked by his hypothesis.

What kind of situation is this……

The atmosphere for dinner was very awkward.  The male team members, who were spread out on three tables, ate very quietly.  The three newcomers among them were especially embarrassed.  But the female team members were very excitedly chatting.  Occasionally they burst out in shouts of shock and disbelief.

The management didn’t know what the women’s team was talking about.  They could only speculate that maybe this fifteen years old boy, Inin, was especially popular.  After all, he was the StarCraft 2 champion from the American Region.  Maybe he had brought his own crown?

This harmonious and beautiful atmosphere lasted until the end of dinner.

SP dinners were always scheduled at 5 to 6 o’clock in the afternoon.

After dinner at 6 o’clock, it was always followed by three hours of training.

They followed the same schedule even when they were in Korea.

Since the newcomers’ introduction took about ten minutes today, Solo let everybody go to the training room at 6:10.  It was at the second floor of Baona’s small villa.  Solo then led the four newcomers away early.

After everyone arrived at the training room and setup the computers individually.  They found that Solo was not there, only Slide and Xiaomi were chatting next to the table where the five of them had set up their computers.

Following walked over and patted Slide’s shoulder.  “Do you remember that my friend had bought a computer from your store?”

Slide paused and looked at Following carefully.  “Oh~I remember.  I remember.  You and I played Need for Speed and I gave you 5% off because you won.”

Xiaomi felt that Following was coming off a bit unfriendly, but Slide didn’t seem to notice it.

“Yes.”  Following laughed like a seasoned fox.  “How about we play another game again?”

“No problem.”  Slide agreed readily.  “What do you want to play?”

These were the first words Ai Qing heard when she walked in the training room.

Following was one of the experienced players in team games.  Ai Qing had picked him to play the grievance round between SP and K&K several days ago when they got to Korea.  There was no doubt about his ability.

But he was not a serious person, who was always joking and laughing around and he usually wouldn’t offend anybody. Why was he challenging Slide in public at such a sensitive time?  

She had a question mark over her head, but she didn’t say anything and just waited to see what come next.

“Minesweeper.”  Following pulled over the chair next to him.  He sat directly next to Slide.  He opened the small Microsoft bundled Minesweeper game on the computer in front of him.  “This one is simple.  Let’s play this.”

Slide raised his eyebrows.  “No problem.”

He took off his black gloves.  The back of his left hand had an obvious scar.  Ai Qing remembered that when she met Slide again in 2010 summer, his hand was already like that.  It looked like it was from a fight, but she just never asked him.

“Boss.”  The young girl standing besides Ai Qing asked in a hushed voice,  “Why are they playing Minesweeper?”

This was SP’s temporary training room.  There were various computer equipment provided if anyone wanted to play any game.

Why did they choose such a kiddie game?

“Minesweeper is a good game.”  Ai Qing smiled and frankly pointed out the essence of the game.  “The design was very nice.  Do you know what kind of game Minesweeper belongs to?”
“It is a computer bundled game.”

“Be more professional.”

“......Microsoft bundled game……”

“Minesweeper is a strategic game.  It requires very precise judgement and very fast hand speed.”  Ai Qing finally started to explain.  “In Minesweeper’s official platform record three years ago, the average finish time for expert difficulty was around 33 seconds;  for intermediate, a Danish guy got 8.5 seconds;  and for beginner, the minesweeping record was 1 second.”

The young girl was stunned.  “That fast?  Probably they were just lucky?”

“There is some luck in it.  But some people calculated that the probability of beating a game of Minesweeper in 1 second was 0.00058% to 0.00119%.”  Ai Qing didn’t deny the possibility of luck.  “But to professional players, ‘luck’ is like talent, it's not something you can rely on.”

Of course no matter how wonderful it was, this one was still a little game.

Once you grasp the logic of Minesweeper and practice it diligently, then you could accurately and quickly sweep the mines.  You could do it like a robot.  This was a game fit for players who were bored enough to play.

And it so happened that there were indeed many professional players that found themselves very bored.

Furthermore, both Slide and Following were the best among the bored players.  Both of them were obviously mine sweeping experts.  The mouse clicking speed on the two screens were already too fast for onlookers to keep up.

The gray computer screen background displayed the blue mines and various colored numbers.

Nobody would be out when experts swept mines, rather it was a competition to see who could sweep all the mines first.