AUS Chapter 3: Kissing Liu Jiang in His School Uniform

The process of encountering Liu Jiang was far less poetic and picturesque than I had imagined. In fact, it was somewhat boring and a bit frustrating.

The downhill path to the bus stop was harder to navigate than I expected. Was it because I was getting older? Or because I hadn’t exercised in so long during the apocalypse?

As I passed a shuttered storefront, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass. I looked like myself from the year I met Liu Jiang.

My hair, mussed from a night of tossing on the pillow, stuck up defiantly. Thin eyelids draped over my eyes, a straight nose bridge defined my face, and I wore the signature expression of a teenage boy in the throes of youth: utterly devoid of enthusiasm for life.

Was this really the old me?

I raised both hands, pressing them to my cheeks, one on each side. I opened my mouth, closed it, turned my head left, then right. Yes, this was definitely me.

If I had my old body, why was I still getting tired so easily?

At that moment, the same voice that had prompted me to open my eyes spoke again. “Dear tester, as you are currently in the adaptation phase after simulation startup, you may experience a certain degree of physical fatigue and slowed movements. Please do not be alarmed. These symptoms will gradually subside as you adapt to the simulated environment.”

I see. The explanation was quite timely.

I tried responding as such, but I realized the system couldn’t seem to read my brainwaves, though it could clearly observe my actions.

After my futile attempt to speak silently to the sky, its voice came again. “If you have any instructions, please voice your questions directly. I am listening.”

Even though this was a simulated world, it wasn’t an empty one. At eight in the morning, the streets were bustling: students pedaled by on bicycles, and office workers walked with their heads down. Amid the comings and goings, I pointed at myself and asked, “Just talk like this?”

A woman pushing a cart nearby glanced at me, but fortunately, only I could hear the system’s voice.

It said, “Yes.”

Alright then. Since I was the one who tested and launched this system single-handedly, it was normal for it to be less than perfectly intelligent.

I stopped staring at my reflection in the glass and looked up at the clear blue sky. It had been so long since I’d seen the sun that, in that moment, I forgot to squint. The intense sunlight dazzled me for several seconds. When I regained my focus and looked ahead, a massive bright spot lingered on my retina.

The spot was radiant, casting the already overly vibrant spring scene into a kaleidoscope of shifting colors.

I closed my eyes and sighed. “The system may be dumb, but at least the simulation feels pretty real.”

The system didn’t respond.

I slightly opened my eyes, blinking under the sunlight. When you close and reopen your eyes in bright light, everything inexplicably takes on a greenish tint, like looking through the bottom of a beer bottle. I hadn’t expected the simulation to capture even this detail.

The bright spot remained. I marveled at the surreal, dreamlike spring scenery. In a daze, I noticed a bus passing by—it looked like the one I was supposed to take.

At that moment, the system spoke up. “Dear tester, to ensure accuracy during the initial simulation phase, please behave in accordance with the progression of your memories during the program’s deep learning stage.”

What?

The system’s prompt felt a bit disjointed. I stood there, one hand raised to shield my eyes from the sun. My vision finally cleared, and I confirmed it was indeed the bus I needed. It had stopped at the bus stop about a hundred meters away.

The system said, “Friendly reminder: run.”

It clicked. I was going to be late. No, I was going to be late again.

In the blooming, bird-filled March, I embarked on an utterly grueling sprint.

As the system had just reminded me, my body’s movements in the adaptation phase couldn’t keep up with the effort I was exerting. That hundred meters felt like a thousand. By the time I stumbled onto the bus, gasping for air, my breathing was practically a howl.

I staggered to a seat, collapsing into it. In a haze, I suddenly realized: I was about to see Liu Jiang.

This time, I was really going to see him.

At nine-thirty, I arrived at the school right on time—according to my own memory, not the school’s sense of punctuality.

In any case, I saw that familiar group at the entrance to the teaching building—Liu Jiang and his equally tardy crew.

Back then, I couldn’t have picked Liu Jiang out at a glance, but now I could. He stood second from the left in the group, the tallest and palest. Just from his back, I could tell what kind of expression he was wearing.

Head down, eyes blankly fixed on the ground, occasionally biting his lower lip, then glancing up at whoever was speaking. That was his demeanor whenever he got scolded—by the teachers or by me.

They say you can’t hide it when you’re staring at someone.

He quickly noticed my gaze, but just before he could turn around, a greasy, shiny face blocked my view.

It was the discipline director. He said, “Well, isn’t this President Yang’s son? Why are you only here now?”

I tried to dodge his face to see Liu Jiang, but that big face was nimble, shifting and weaving to block my line of sight completely.

I had no choice but to stand still and reply, “I got on the wrong bus.”

As the discipline director’s face lit up with understanding, that familiar voice came from behind him. “Idiot.”

It was Liu Jiang who said it.

In that moment, I understood a truth: no matter how beautiful something is in your memories, reality is always reality. If you get a chance to go back to the past, you’ll still get mad about the same things.

Take this “idiot” comment, for example—it successfully enraged the me who had just furiously sprinted a thousand meters.

But before I could react, the discipline director lost it first. He whipped his head around, leaving me with a view of his equally shiny scalp, and let out a deafening roar. “Did I tell you to speak?!”

So he had that kind of temper.

Even I fell silent.

After the silence, the discipline director quickly turned back to me, putting on a deliberately calm expression. “Come with me.”

Since the discipline director and I were walking side by side, I didn’t dare look back at the group the whole way. But as I said, you can’t hide it when you’re staring at someone. Until I stepped through the doors of the teaching building, I could feel a gaze boring into the back of my head, practically burning a hole through my skull.

In the administrative office, I sat with my backpack, waiting. Then I realized I might have messed up.

I heard another round of the discipline director’s angry shouting from the hallway.

Because my response had been so idiotic, it prompted a certain tardy delinquent’s “idiot” remark. This perfectly timed shift in the world’s timeline successfully infuriated the discipline director, so now they couldn’t sit and write their self-criticism essays—they had to stand in the hallway to do it.

I decided to call out to the system, which had witnessed this whole fiasco.

I tilted my head back to stare at the ceiling and whispered, “Can you hear me?”

The system’s response came immediately. “Dear tester, I am listening.”

I asked, “What’s happening now seems different from my memories. Will this have any impact?”

Though it could be a bit dumb at times, the system was quick to answer questions. It said, “The changes occurring are within the system’s executable range and will not cause severe consequences observable to the naked eye.”

I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the system’s next sentence popped up. “However, to ensure the efficiency and accuracy of deep learning, please make choices according to the system’s prompts going forward.”

Choices? What choices?

I was about to ask more, but the office door opened. The discipline director stood in the doorway and called out, “Yang Pingsheng, your paperwork is done. Class Five, let’s go!”

That was consistent with my memory.

But didn’t this mean I’d miss my chance to meet Liu Jiang?

As I stepped out of the office, I realized I’d been overthinking. Because the moment I turned my head, I locked eyes with Liu Jiang. He was leaning against the wall by the door, writing his self-criticism. His draft paper was held perpendicular to the ground, his face parallel to the paper, but his attention clearly wasn’t on the essay. That’s why he could meet my gaze the instant I walked out.

He hadn’t changed one bit.

Fox-like eyes, a narrow, long face, an oversized school uniform, and hair that clearly violated school regulations by anyone’s standards.

He asked, “What are you staring at?”

I moved my lips but couldn’t say anything. It felt like the hallway I was standing in suddenly stretched infinitely, the people on either side rapidly fading away, leaving just me and him at the center of the world.

But obviously, I was the only one who felt this way. To him, I wasn’t just an idiot who got on the wrong bus—I was an idiot who stood there with his mouth open, unable to speak.

If this were the fearless me from back then, I could’ve confidently spat out, “You’re the one who called me an idiot earlier, right?” But after everything I’d been through with him, I couldn’t muster the dignity.

I stared at him and, in a tone entirely unfit for a fifteen-year-old high schooler, said, “Liu Jiang, I’ve been looking for you for years.”

He said, “Huh?”

I continued, “The world I come from is already apocalyptic. Water resources are depleted, populations are migrating underground, and you’re in a simulation program right now. You’re not even a real person.”

He said, “Huh??”

I was getting carried away, ready to keep going, when the system suddenly spoke.

“Dear tester, you have failed to follow the system’s prompts for making choices. The synchronization test has failed. Please log in again later.”

As soon as the words landed, everything in front of me rapidly receded. This time, it wasn’t just my imagination adding drama—it was really happening.

I fell backward, plunging into a chaotic darkness, while the sunlit school hallway seemed like a microscopic diorama floating in the void. In my fading field of vision, Liu Jiang’s expression shifted from confusion to shock. He could clearly see me dropping out of the world.

How could a program run by just me go so smoothly? Of course, something went wrong.

With a loud crash, I slammed into the server mainframe.

The long-neglected mainframe instantly erupted in a cloud of dust. The sudden impact left me dizzy and nauseous, and I inhaled a lungful of dust, unable to tell whether my throat or my stomach felt worse.

I’d been kicked out of the simulation.

The simulation headset was still flashing a red light, and the system’s prompt kept repeating. “Dear tester, you have failed to follow the system’s prompts for making choices. The synchronization test has failed. Please log in again later.”

Unlike the heavenly voice in the simulation, in the real world, the system was just a blinking red dot on the headset.

I crawled over and pressed the return key, silencing the incessant repetition.

“Why do I feel like someone kicked me?” I gasped, asking the system.

The system’s red light flickered, as if it were thinking. “During the simulation test, the tester’s muscles and corresponding brain regions are in an active state. Abruptly stopping the simulation causes a sudden halt, similar to inertia.”

So I kicked myself out? I touched my still-spasming abdomen, pretending to ponder while inwardly feeling like the system had delivered the kick.

Seeing it eager to go into standby, I woke it up again. “I’m asking you—what did you mean by making choices according to the system’s rules?”

The system replied, “Making choices according to the rules refers to the backend calculating the development path most aligned with the system’s simulation and suggesting choices accordingly.”

I asked, “Does revealing I’m from the future count as a simulation failure?”

The system replied, “You are correct.”

I added, “So the rules are like game conditions. If I do it right, the game continues.”

The system replied, “You are correct.”

Mulling it over, I suddenly spotted a flaw. “Could it be that you didn’t actually suggest any choices for me to make?”

The system was smart in a dumb way and dumb in a smart way. Its dumbness lay in claiming it had given me prompts that never appeared. Its smartness was in shutting up the moment I, with my full human intellect, pointed out this flaw.

The red light on the headset flickered futilely.

I sat back in the tester’s seat, lifted the headset to my head, and reminded it, “Give me the prompt.”

Then my vision darkened, and I was pulled back into the simulation.

By some coincidence, the timing landed exactly at the moment I stepped out of the administrative office, locking eyes with Liu Jiang. It felt like I’d blinked once, and the Liu Jiang across from me didn’t notice anything amiss.

He still said, “What are you staring at?”

At that moment, the system’s prompt arrived. “Level 1-1, Prompt: Please meet Liu Jiang in the correct way.”

What?

There were levels now?

I thought the system would give me specific instructions or, at the very least, an actual prompt—something like “be friendly” or “be direct.” What did “meet Liu Jiang in the correct way” even mean?

But there was no turning back now. I stared into Liu Jiang’s eyes, engaging in my own futile thinking.

Our meeting could be summed up as “no fight, no friendship.” Though the choices leading up to it differed this time, the outcome was the same: we had to fight. So why not go all in and make this future the present?

I tossed my backpack aside, aimed at Liu Jiang’s face, and threw a righteous punch.

It seemed my adaptation phase was over. The punch was swift and solid, landing squarely on his nose bridge. The next second, I heard him let out a sharp yelp and saw him stumble back, clutching his nose. The others in the hallway, who’d been watching, weren’t about to stand by anymore.

Then I was surrounded by the other six. I felt someone grabbing my throat, others pinning my arms. I heard the discipline director’s voice—he must have noticed the commotion and was shouting as he ran toward us.

If you looked down from above, the scene of me being grabbed by six people at once would probably resemble a classical oil painting.

How had I managed to fight off so many people back then?

It didn’t matter anymore, because I was kicked out of the simulation again.

For the second time, I crashed into the server mainframe. This time, I was prepared. Instead of struggling, I lay flat, waiting for the nausea surging in my stomach to subside.

When I finally felt like I’d clawed my way back from the edge of life and death, I called out to the system. “Can you give me an actual prompt?”

The system said, “The prompt has already been provided. Please meet Liu Jiang in the correct way.”

I furrowed my brow. “Please define ‘correct.’”

The system fell silent. It clearly lacked the intelligence of sci-fi movie AIs.

I decided to rely on myself, on my human intellect, to solve this.

I entered the simulation for the third time, this time with a fresh, objective definition of “correct.”

The moment I locked eyes with Liu Jiang, I had my prepared speech memorized. I was going to discuss the most practical and correct topic: studying.

In the bright spring light, I launched into my spiel. “Every year, tens of millions of students step into the college entrance exam halls. The gaokao is the path to changing our lives. The gaokao is the ladder to success. The time until the exam is both long and short. Starting today, we must study diligently, bearing our parents’ expectations and our teachers’ hopes. Our future will be bright and dazzling!”

The hallway was shaded, but I felt like I was back on the stage at the hundred-day pledge rally, reciting lines I’d memorized dozens of times with the whole school.

Back then, I wasn’t this passionate, but now I had the emotional preparation I needed. I felt a glow shining on me, a breeze brushing past my ears. Even though Liu Jiang was looking at me like I was a complete fool, I had a sense of triumph.

This time, it had to work.

Then I realized the breeze and the glowing light were all precursors to being kicked out of the simulation.

But no worries—I was prepared this time.

I’d hauled over the sofa cushions from the break room, placing one on the left and one on the right, so even if I got kicked out, I wouldn’t risk a concussion.

But I landed perfectly in the middle, right in the gap between the cushions, lying on a floor seam that felt tailor-made for me. Once again, I pondered the system’s intelligence, or lack thereof.

When I finally calmed down and climbed up, the red light on the headset, representing the intelligent assistance system, flickered and went out. It was as if the system, seeing I hadn’t actually gotten a concussion from hitting the floor, decided to play dead.

You can’t wake a person pretending to sleep, but a machine? Maybe. I pressed the wake key and silently placed the headset back on my head.

Today, I was going to fight this thing to the end!

Speaking of which, my life has had its share of frustrating moments, like every time I fought with Liu Jiang.

When Liu Jiang and I were still in contact, we’d argue over the smallest things. But when something big happened, he was surprisingly calm—like when I got a girlfriend, but that’s a story for later. For now, just the fights.

One time, he called me in the middle of the night, going on about his band signing with a record label. I was exhausted that day, having run through three internship interviews and gotten nitpicked by HR. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to him ramble passionately about things I didn’t understand.

Maybe the coldness in my tone was too obvious. He quickly cooled off too, and then we were fighting.

I’ll admit I didn’t try to smooth things over because I was a jerk. Hearing someone dredge up old grievances gave me the illusion of being cared about. Or maybe it was because his voice was nice—how could a band guy’s voice not be nice? So I could plug in my earphones, do my own thing, and listen to him, tired to the point of falling asleep, still grumbling about what I’d done wrong.

I was such a jerk.

I reappeared in the breezy school hallway, smelling the damp scent wafting from the distant washroom. Liu Jiang was to my left, about to ask, “What are you staring at?” in the next second.

I knew what to do when he was mad. I knew what those feelings were that I’d deliberately avoided back then. Even if now wasn’t the time, I had to do it.

If I got kicked out, so be it. I’d just try again.

Maybe my gaze was too resolute, because Liu Jiang’s mouth closed. He didn’t ask why I was staring or question why I suddenly stepped forward.

I did something I never would’ve thought of or done back then.

I placed both hands on the sides of his face and kissed him. Me in my school uniform, kissing Liu Jiang in his school uniform.

He hadn’t gotten his lip piercing yet. His lips were soft. I knew he had a habit of showering in the morning, and at this distance, I could smell the fresh scent of body wash behind his ears. I closed my eyes, feeling the spring light glowing brightly beyond my tightly shut eyelids.

I waited for the system’s simulation failure prompt, just as I’d come to this virtual world in the apocalypse for moments of seemingly real beauty.

But I heard nothing—only, a few seconds later, the discipline director’s furious roar. “What are you two doing?!”

I hadn’t expected that I’d actually pass the system’s Level 1-1 by acting like such a hooligan.

But all roads lead to the same place. Liu Jiang and I were still sent to the principal’s office.

We were disciplined for fighting.