novelSeeking Individuals, Dead or Alive I
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My name is Chalk, and I own a small company along with Fatty and Skinny.
All three of us were both the bosses and the employees.
Coincidences happen and some people gather through fate.
We were all elementary schoolmates who studied together for 12 years, all the way to senior high.
We separated before University and our friendship gradually faded.
University graduation happened four years later in August.
It was that period where people received the most invitations to reunions and old schoolmates from different stages of life would attend respectively.
Naturally, the three of us attended all reunions so we got to meet three consecutive times.
The first meeting was joyful, the second was spent reminiscing, and the third was the time for us to reach a tacit mutual understanding.
When the third reunion ended, the three of us exchanged glances and decided to extend the party.
We got drunk and chatted for a whole night.
Dead drunk, we sprawled down beside the shrubs by the main road and only woke up when the afternoon sun shone down and burned our bums.
My alcohol tolerance was lower than the two of them so I couldn't remember anything from the previous night.
Fatty, however, yelled excitedly, "Let's go! Come to my place and we'll start our company!"
That was how we got to where we were today.
Yes, that was right, we were all bosses.
The apartment was provided by Fatty. His parents had prepared it for him when he gets married, but Fatty was still single.
We were all single, actually.
We modified the apartment into a company and named it 'Seeking Individuals, Dead or Alive, Responsibility Limited Company'.
Sorry, I meant, 'Limited Responsibility Company'.
Of course, it really doesn't matter how you say it since this company was illegal, illogical, and does not conform to rules.
Where were we supposed to get the money to register our company?
Nevertheless, we have all kinds of methods.
Fatty was in charge of site and technology whereas Skinny was in charge of advertising and technical skills.
Me? I'm in charge of food and coffee.
As our company name implied, we seek people out, dead or alive, on request.
We categorized ourselves as private investigators but in actual fact...
Initially, we worked for the satisfaction of cracking cases, but later on, we discovered that such satisfaction was very different from our expectations.
I no longer remember what bold, visionary words I had spouted when I was drunk, but Fatty and Skinny seemed to believe that my proposal would work.
It was true that we enjoy watching detective films and television shows.
Fatty loves Sherlock Holmes, Skinny enjoys Detective Conan, and I appreciate A Miss Mallard Mystery.
The process of establishing our company.
Skinny was a rather proficient hacker and he has been hacking into school computers since elementary days.
In the beginning, he only hacked into teachers' computers to alter his homework and grades.
Later on, he started using his allowance on Internet cafes.
Skipping meals was the main reason why Skinny turned out, well, skinny.
At that time, youngsters visited Internet cafes to play games. Skinny, on the other hand, attended forums to learn computer skills from experts.
In middle school and high school, tweaking school's database became a common occurrence.
I am not sure what he did during University, but his skills definitely progressed significantly.
Fatty and I were shocked when he created a software that automated forum advertising to promote our company.
In the early days, we mostly accepted cases of lost child and only a few cases relating to extramarital affairs.
As for others, there was practically nothing. Not having any major cases made us lose direction.
It was very simple to look for kids, especially with the help of Skinny.
Skinny programmed a very amazing sequence that would automatically post information and distinctive feature or traits about a lost child on all relevant websites.
It would then match key terms and list sites that produced over 70% similarity. Over 10 sites with at least 90% similarity would appear in the system and all that was left to do was give the client a call.
We would hold onto a lost child case for a maximum of one year, and the client would pay us a 365 dollar deposit.
As each day passed, we would return one dollar into the client's account and continue this on until we obtain at least 90% information regarding the child. If we couldn't obtain that information in a year, the full amount would be refunded, but we would still share with them whatever news we have accumulated.
On the other hand, if we managed to find the child at the end of 10 or 100 days, we would refund 10 or 100 dollars respectively.
This was the only way we charge, but the clients would give us red packets when they reunite with their lost child or parent. We would accept their gift and take it as maintenance fee.
The quickest we had managed to finish a transaction was less than a day.
But of course, more often than not, we fail and refund everything along with whatever news we manage to find.
Overall, our success rate was among the highest within the industry despite it being only 20%.
Among the 20% that we have found, only a few were willing to do a DNA test. One party would communicate, and the other would simply nod and take it as it was.
This was basically the main income of our company. We do not enjoy earning it and we have no passion for it, but we still continue on in order to survive.
Moving on to the extramarital affairs...
Such cases were trickier, but Fatty was talented in this aspect.
We take these on to earn extra income since we charge clients 3650 dollars.
We apply the same procedure, except that we return 10 dollars a day for this.
These cases do not come by often, however.
90% of our clients were female, and they would usually tell us their husbands' working hours, places they usually hang out, and we would start our operation from there.
Our magic weapon was the drone, a newly popularized toy but extremely effective nevertheless.
We find out the location of our target and follow him to the pub or hotel.
We would then tip the attendants to get his room number and Skinny would hack into the hotel's website.
Fatty was good at controlling the drone so he would fly it to a suitable height and capture some videos.
Fatty has a surefire way to do this even if the windows were closed. A special probe on the drone would be used as long as the room has an air conditioner.
The pipe connecting the machine to the external engine becomes our target.
Fatty would control the drone to enter the piping and capture everything clearly from the other side.
We would then send the information back to our clients or call them over to catch the adulterous couple red-handedly.
It was all really simple for us. Eventually, the lack of challenge killed our passion.
An old man came to us yesterday.
He was in a western suit and even had two bodyguards behind him.
"I'll pay you 5, 000, 000 to find someone for me, " he told us without preamble.
That was it. The rebirth of our passion.
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