Secret Messages

Chapter 1: The Secret Messages application

Shancai nodded immediately and then stared sternly at the three young men. Daoming Si was the first to give in, unable to resist the young woman's gaze, and his friends followed. "Good!" Lizhen said, looking satisfied. "Come with me to a place where we can talk quietly. The library, perhaps?"

***

Once settled in a secluded working room of the library, Lizhen and Qinghe facing Shancai and the three members of the F4, the two members of the Student Council spread a substantial file in front of them. "Well, let's start at the beginning!" Lizhen said, as if she were at a business meeting, "I'll tell you what the Secret Messages application is all about. This application will be open mainly to students in Mingde, and eventually to students from surrounding universities. For example, we have also invited Jiang Xiaoyou to participate."

"Oh, is it true?" Shancai exclaimed, enthusiastic.

"Is it Miss Milk Tea?" Ximen asked, smiling, looking interested. He quickly shut up when he saw the young Dong's dark glare.

"The Secret Messages application is designed to allow meetings between people who might not have had the chance to meet each other or have never dared to talk to each other before. We want to encourage friendships between students from different backgrounds and even from different universities. We wish to broaden our horizons as much as possible to encourage interdisciplinary projects. But above all, we want to allow us to work in a pleasant and friendly atmosphere on campus." Lizhen continued as if nothing had happened.

Daoming Si glanced more or less discreetly at Shancai, and Meizuo started to sneer. "Oh, there are already some management students who had broadened their horizons with nutrition students!" he said smirking. The Maple hotel chain young heir was about to beat him, and Ximen, laughing hard, held him back by passing an arm around his shoulder.

"The other objective is to improve our writing skills. Above all, we want to allow each person to open up to the other through correspondence by letter." Lizhen continued in a doctoral tone. Next to her, Qinghe was beginning to fall asleep. "To spice up the experience, we decided to bring a little mystery by making the correspondents anonymous. You will have to choose a pseudonym without giving any clue as to your real identity, fill in a questionnaire, and your pen pal will be chosen more or less randomly."

"More or less?" Daoming Si asked, surprised. "How can we choose more or less randomly?" Lizhen bit her lips, embarrassed, and glanced at Qinghe to ask him some help. The young man seemed to wake up and took over.

"In fact," he says, "the main purpose of the application is to introduce people who might never have spoken to each other in real life. The application will, therefore, take into account the curriculum of the participants (so that they are not classmates), but also their sexual orientation."

Shancai startled, blushing violently. "Sexual orientation?" She huffed, offended. "Seriously? We have to give that kind of intimate detail?" Daoming Si looked at her, smirking, as Meizuo and Ximen turned away to hide their laughter.

"Don't worry!" Lizhen told her softly. "It's not a love application, either. But it is more interesting to have people of the opposite sex interact (or not depending on sexual orientation) because they are often quite different. And it is these differences that the application wants to highlight because they do not necessarily oppose people; they can also be complementary." Shancai thought about that for a moment and finally nodded, a little more convinced.

"Do you have any questions?" Qinghe asked. The four concerned looked at each other, a bit stunned by the amount of information given in a few minutes, but they seemed to have understood everything.