Chapter 153 - Moderator (1/2)
After the reunion party, life went back to normal for everyone. For Scarlet, she was more cheerful and even Pamela noticed the change. Scarlet became more glued onto her phone than before and the manager had an inkling the singer wasn't talking to her sister or close friends. That smile on Scarlet's face wasn't one that the manager was familiar with. Still, Pamela tried not to pry too much. After all, Scarlet was a girl in the springtime of her youth.
While it was true that ever since Scarlet and Alex were given moderator permissions to fool around with the chat room that Elfie released on the app store, the girls found themselves incredibly addicted to this new world of chatting with mysterious individuals hiding behind an anonymous identity. On some days Scarlet would troll and on some days, Scarlet would find herself acting as a counsellor to listen to troubled peoples' ranting.
The singer didn't really mind playing the role of a therapist or listening ear. As a writer, hearing the thoughts of individuals and snippets of their lives gave her great inspiration for future character development plots and personalities to model after. The Human Observation Journal was finally becoming more interesting after a long time. Instead of focussing on the less desirable entertainment industry and the top bitches who ruled it, Scarlet enjoyed writing more about the mediocre worries of a regular person. It was easily relatable and she hasn't received such good feedback from her readers for such a long time.
The reason for that genuinely happy smile on her face was because Scarlet found that she was actually able to meet more kindred souls and like-minded individuals who shared her views about some beliefs that she hadn't been able to openly talk about with the people she knew. Of course, some were nasty but others were understanding. Scarlet enjoyed it the most when some of the people she chatted with became regulars in some rooms. It would sound odd but Scarlet was enjoying this strange form of friendship.
It hadn't been long since the alpha launch of the chat room but already, there were thousands of downloads and hundreds of users at any one point of time. Even Elfie was having a hard time moderating the chat contents while fine-tuning the coding behind it. There were forums reporting a lot of bugs in the chat room even after beta testing that Elfie had to fix. The poor programmer didn't have enough resources to look at the moderation logs.
In the previous video call that Scarlet had with Elfie, the programmer looked a lot worse than she ever remembered him to be. To lessen the burden on Elfie's shoulders, Scarlet suggested opening up the moderation positions to all the E.C. Class and Special Class members. Initially, Elfie declined but after three more days of being overwhelmed, Elfie conceded reluctantly.
After the moderators were increased, the E.C. Class and Special Class members found themselves frequenting the chat room more. While it was always nice to chat with each other, it was also fun chatting with other anonymous users. As moderators weren't able to see each other's unique number code, the E.C. Class and Special class had made it a game of hide-and-seek to uncover who each moderator was.
For Elfie, he was nervous. He honestly didn't expect the success of this chat room to blow up. It was initially an excuse so that he could match-make Edward and Scarlet to fulfil his end of the bargain. Now that the success had taken the tech world by storm, Jake and Wilmer decided to step in and help Elfie out on the business aspect. The poor hacker wasn't given a break and was once more employed in Kiwi Cat Studio as a freelance developer to manage the chat room app. Edward and Scarlet had yet to meet and the programmer felt bad for the delay.
Unknown to him, Scarlet had been acquainted with Scarlet since the second day of the app's launch. There was a particular user who never changed his username so Scarlet found him interesting enough to talk to. The user went by the name Jedd77 and Scarlet often wondered if there was a meaning behind it.
The two hit off as fast friends and slowly their conversations became deeper in topics. For the first time on the internet, Scarlet felt vulnerable. Without her speaking much about her thoughts, Jedd77 was able to accurately guess her feelings and plans. It was also one of the contributing factors to why Scarlet had the courage to face the Pineapple Group's CEO at last.
Pamela had rescheduled the meeting a total of six times before Scarlet finally agreed to have a dinner meeting with Ming Yang. The restaurant Ming Yang reserved was very famous and obviously meant for the upper class. Scarlet didn't feel comfortable attending alone and Raven didn't want her to go alone either but Scarlet bit the bullet because it was Ming Yang's request.
”It's ok, Scarlet. If he hints at anything, just tell him that you're only interested in girls,” she whispered to herself in the car.
Raven raised a brow at that. For some reason, Scarlet has been acting strange the past few days ever since she agreed to meet the CEO of Pineapple Group. The bodyguard reported this to Claire who also confirmed that Alex was seen acting oddly from time to time. The girls were both glued onto their phones and while the bodyguards weren't able to figure out what's going on, they've concluded that whatever Scarlet and Alex were doing wasn't enough cause for concern as they weren't malicious in nature.
Scarlet was beyond nervous. She expressed her worry about meeting someone she didn't know and gave off bad vibes. The singer had postponed the meeting several times because while she was curious to jump on the opportunity and dig for dirt about Anastasia's dealings, she understood the complications if something should go wrong with her meeting. The CEO of Pineapple Group didn't just deal with business in China. They also worked closely with other companies that could potentially threaten the Wilde Empire.