Come on, What Kind of CEO Chases His Roommate Back to the Country? - Chapter 40

“Mom,” Pei Song flipped through his mother’s old art collection, “Your drawings are really good.”

“Yeah,” Pei’s mother gently stroked the yellowed sketchbook. “Back then, my biggest dream was to get into an art academy. Every time I see your photos from Country D, I feel so envious.”

She turned to the last page of the collection. A half-finished oil painting.

“This was the piece I prepared for my school application years ago,” she said. “But I never picked up a paintbrush again.”

Seeing the hint of sorrow in his mother’s eyes, Pei Song had an idea. “Mom, why don’t you apply again?”

“What? No, no, no!” She waved her hands dismissively. “I’m way too old for that!”

But Pei Song’s enthusiasm didn’t waver. “Which school did you want to go to?”

“I wanted to study art history at M University.” Her eyes lit up. “When I was learning to paint, I loved studying art history the most.”

“M University?” Pei Song was momentarily stunned.

“Yes,” she chuckled. “That’s why I kept pushing you to apply to M University when you planned to study abroad.”

Pei Song pulled out his phone and messaged Shi Yancheng.

Soon, Shi Yancheng replied, “I contacted an art history professor at M University. They’re willing to give your mom some guidance.”

The next day, Shi Yancheng visited Pei Song’s mother in person.

“Auntie,” he handed over a stack of documents, “This is an introduction to M University’s art history program, along with some past exam questions.”

She took the documents, her eyes slightly red. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“It’s nothing,” Shi Yancheng said. “If you need any help, just let me know.”

Watching his mother seriously read through the materials, Pei Song felt reassured. This was a new beginning.

A few days later, Pei Song’s mother received an email from Country D.

It was from a professor in the M University art history department, detailing the program and offering remote guidance.

“This must be Shi Yancheng’s doing, right?” She looked at Pei Song.

He nodded. “He heard you wanted to study art history and happened to know a professor there.”

Pei’s mother was silent for a moment before saying softly, “He’s a good kid.”

Meanwhile, at the Pei household, Grandma Pei was still berating her daughter-in-law for being “heartless.”

“Look at this mess since she left!” she scolded Pei Song’s father. “Now is exactly when we need the Zhang family’s help, and you’re still hesitating?”

Pei Song’s father sat in his study, staring blankly at a family photo on his desk. In the picture, the three of them were smiling warmly. Now, looking back, those happy days were truly gone.

When Pei Song came to pack up his mother’s belongings, he saw his father’s weary expression and felt a complicated mix of emotions.

Some wounds, once inflicted, could never be healed.

“Dad,” Pei Song stood at the study door, “Are you really sure about this?”

Father Pei didn’t respond, only burying his face in his hands.

“The Future Hotel?” Pei Song took the project proposal from Zhou Feng, unsurprisingly. Zhou Feng had already mentioned it before.

This was SNK’s key project in the Asia-Pacific region, an ultra-smart luxury hotel where everything, from room controls to dining services, would be powered by the latest AI technology.

“Given your success with the Jin Shang Xuan project, the company wants you involved in this one,” Zhou Feng said. “But the technical aspects are complex, so I’ve paired you with Liu Yan.”

Liu Yan, sitting nearby, smirked subtly. “Welcome aboard, Manager Pei. We’ll make sure to work well together.”

During the task allocation meeting, Liu Yan volunteered to handle supplier negotiations. “It’s best to let someone experienced take care of this part.”

But when it came to actual assignments, he dumped the toughest smart system supplier on Pei Song.

“This company’s technology is cutting-edge,” Liu Yan said with a grin. “Perfect for a newcomer to learn from.”

Pei Song soon realized just how “educational” this challenge was. His first meeting with the supplier was a disaster. 

It was an online video conference, and despite his thorough preparations, the technical director cut him off immediately.

“Excuse me, but we’re discussing a deep learning-based system,” the director adjusted his glasses. “Let me ask a basic question, do you know the difference between TensorFlow and PyTorch?”

“Uh…” Pei Song was momentarily speechless.

“I thought so,” the director sneered at his colleague. “SNK sent someone who doesn’t even understand deep learning frameworks? Are they even taking this project seriously?”

“If you have no knowledge of AI, how are we supposed to discuss neural network structures and training parameters?”

Pei Song forced a professional smile. “I’ll make sure to study the relevant topics.”

“It’s not about studying,” the director cut him off. “Do you even realize how complex these algorithms are? The smart voice interaction system alone needs to process multimodal inputs while handling noise cancellation and speech separation. The backend has to coordinate over a dozen deep models. Do you think an outsider can grasp all this?”

“Send us someone who actually understands AI,” the director said before hanging up.

Pei Song spent a week cramming AI knowledge and finally secured another meeting. But this time, he was ridiculed over his pronunciation of a technical term.

“You can’t even pronounce LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory Network) properly, stop wasting our time.”

Suppressing his frustration, Pei Song said, “I understand the concept, it’s just the acronym—”

“Understand?” The director scoffed. “Then explain the function of the forget gate and input gate. What activation function does the output gate use?”

A barrage of technical jargon hit him like bullets. Pei Song had no choice but to admit he still had a lot to learn.

By the third meeting, he pulled an all-nighter making a 100+ page PPT, translating project requirements into technical documentation.

“To be fair, this is quite detailed,” the director said slowly. “But look at this system architecture diagram, your data flow is completely wrong. You connected the distributed training module directly to the inference service? That’s suicide.”

He zoomed in on another slide. “And here, using a Naïve Bayes classifier for multimodal data processing? That’s a decade-old algorithm. You think this is acceptable?”

Every word felt like a slap in the face. Pei Song clenched his fists, nails digging into his palms.

“My suggestion? SNK should send someone competent to handle this, or your whole project will collapse.”

Back at the office, Pei Song saw Liu Yan leaning against the door, smirking.

“So, how’s it going? Had a nice chat with the experts?” Liu Yan chuckled. “I’d suggest you just admit defeat, this is one tough bone not everyone can chew.”

Ignoring the taunt, Pei Song opened his laptop and dove back into technical documents.

That night, he received an email from the supplier, CC’d to Zhou Feng, “Given your company’s serious lack of technical expertise, we strongly recommend assigning a more qualified representative. Otherwise, we will reconsider our partnership.”

Pei Song stared at the email, his hands trembling slightly.