Ming Ming returned to the real world completely confused.
Wait… that was it?
Clear complete?
Revived???
This felt even less reliable than watching a three-minute gaming “resurrection” cutscene.
To this day, she still doesn’t understand how the revival system worked. From the very first world, the “clear key” had nothing to do with her. If she didn’t follow the main plot and suffer through it herself, she could only rely on the heroine’s conscience. If the heroine happened to be a decent person, Ming Ming could hitch a ride on a side quest, clear.
She had fully lived up to her role as the supporting female character.
But the final world hadn’t even followed that formula…
It made no sense.
Wait—was that… a hidden bonus?!
Her eyesight was perfect now!
Oh my god!!
Why?!
After thinking about it and failing to come up with any explanation, Ming Ming decided on one conclusion:
Heaven had finally decided to treat her like its own grandchild.
Nice.
Yeah… wasn’t that a form of love?
Back in reality, Ming Ming once again became the fragile, helpless “white lotus” type. She tried to use all the business experience she’d gained in those other worlds to turn her life around, but quickly discovered that novels were, in fact, full of lies.
…It was all nonsense.
Soon, senior year rolled around. By the time fourth-year students finished their internships, everyone had to go their separate ways. Before that, the school required everyone to secure and submit a three-party agreement so they could feel confident their “kids” had somewhere to land.
This was when the real survival show began.
The top students already held multiple offers and were waiting for conversion after interning at major companies. Students with family connections had their parents stamp internship certificates with their own corporate seals. The rest were forced to run around begging capitalists for a bite of food.
Ah, the evil capitalists!
In the end, twenty people in the class hadn’t managed to sign an agreement.
Including Ming Ming.
That was nearly half the class.
…The other half had gone to grad school and didn’t need one.
The counselor gathered them together, gritting his teeth while still forcing a smile and putting pressure on them:
“This is for your own good.”
“Signing this means you’ll at least have a basic way to feed yourselves after graduation.”
“I don’t care what methods you use—before graduation, you must hand these in to me!”
Ming Ming felt miserable. When she’d chosen computer science, everyone said it was a field with endless prospects and a high ceiling. Four years later, the “hot” major had turned into a “scalding” one—too many people, higher and higher entry requirements, and too much competition.
She deeply regretted it.
Fine… maybe she’d just take the civil service exam.
Then she saw that a position recruiting one person already had over a thousand applicants.
Who spread the brainwashing rumors that government jobs were easy to get?!
In the end, only ten people still hadn’t secured agreements. The counselor gave them a final ultimatum.
Ming Ming let out a long sigh and went to the food wholesale market to buy a second-hand mobile cart.
She dragged it to the front gate of the school…
And started selling grilled cold noodles.
Why grilled cold noodles?
Because she felt it didn’t require any real skill.
As for whether they tasted good?
Ming Ming felt that it depended on personal opinion.
She thought they were delicious.
Even though she had never tasted her own cooking.
Her price board clearly listed options like extra egg, extra sausage, extra pork, and so on.
And at the very bottom, in bold red letters:
Accepting outsourced programming jobs.
She was waiting for a boss with sharp eyes to discover her talent and give her an offer.
When the other nine saw what Ming Ming was doing, they snapped and followed her lead. Each of them set up their own mobile stall and became highly visible fixtures at the school gate.
Ming Ming immediately felt a strong sense of crisis and warned them:
“No one is allowed to sell grilled cold noodles like me!”
So people started selling candied hawthorns, ice jelly, hand-grasped pancakes, sushi, takoyaki…
At the same time, they offered graphic design services, paper-writing services, homework tutoring…
It became a beautiful and chaotic scenic line.
Every time the counselor walked past to and from work, both sides would exchange intense death stares.
Neither side liked the other.
Ming Ming felt that, although she now had more competitors and her survival space had been compressed again, she had no choice. After all, society was cruel and competitive: if you weren’t ambitious, your rivals would be…
She drifted off topic.
The real situation was: her grilled cold noodle business was painfully slow.
She’d originally thought she might get rich selling them, or at least develop super-strong arms.
Instead, she got no money and no strong arms.
She stared at the student next to her, who was selling hand-grasped pancakes and thought gloomily:
Why didn’t I think of selling those?
One day, after they once again sent the counselor offto work with synchronized death stares, Ming Ming suddenly had a bright idea.
“Why don’t we register a company together?” she said.
Everyone else: ???
“Once we register, we’ll have an official company seal, right? Self-sufficiency!”
Everyone else: !!!
“That makes sense!” they said in awe.
So everyone scraped together some money and barely managed to cover the company registration fees.
Holding the freshly issued company seal, Ming Ming burst into tears.
Damn it! For this empty-shell company, they’d still have to pay several thousand a year just for maintenance.
All just to prove that after graduation, someone wanted them as corporate slaves.
Sadly, Ming Ming’s grilled cold noodles made even less money than programming outsourcing, completely crushing her dream of entering the food industry.
The others comforted her:
“The food industry isn’t lucky enough to have you.”
But one thing did surprise Ming Ming.
Their joke of a company, which had never hired anyone, kept attracting job seekers.
And they were all graduating students from their own school.
These fake humans would start by talking about dreams and ideals. When they realized Ming Ming remained stone-faced and unmoved…
They finally admitted:
They just wanted to sign a three-party agreement.
“President Ming! Save us!”
“President Ming! The counselor is going to kill us!”
“President Ming! Your grilled cold noodles are way better than the sushi and takoyaki next door!”
The classmates who sold those foods couldn’t stand it:
“Hey, hey, don’t踩一捧一 when you’re sucking up! We’re also company founders! We’re shareholders! We have veto power!”
They were coldly shut down:
“Useless. The company seal is in President Ming’s hands.”
“President Ming! I support you! You’re my goddess! Once I sign the agreement, you’ll be my only boss!”
Ming Ming floated a little.
It suddenly felt like she wasn’t holding a company seal…
But an imperial jade seal.
“Ahem—rise, rise… no, I mean… maybe it’s not impossible…”
Her partners tried to pull her back to reality:
“Wake up, they’re just trying to use us!”
“Why should people freeload off the company we built?”
“Exactly.”
But…
They called her “President Ming.”
Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152