AUS Chapter 43: I Only Feel That I Failed to Protect Liu Jiang

It was Gu Tongyu.

I cannot count how many times I have met him in such an unexpected way, in short, it was him again.

He was standing by the freezer, still wearing the clothes from noon, but his expression was much more dejected. He looked like he had spent this afternoon hiking around the entire city of Liancheng, or perhaps had taken a stroll to the end of the world.

He faced me, his gaze wandering. After staring for a long while, he did not say a single word, turned around, opened the freezer door that I had just closed, and pulled out a cold drink for himself.

He muttered to himself: “My parents usually do not even let me drink beverages.”

I did not speak, watching as he tried to twist the bottle cap twice, only to fail due to his weakness. Then, he seemed to remember that he had to pay first and glanced towards the counter.

“Can you pay for me?” he asked me.

I did not answer, first asking the question I was concerned about: “Are you following us?”

“Following?” He laughed, his tone full of ridicule, “My parents are going to send me to a work-study school before sending me abroad. I escaped, and it took me all afternoon walking to get here. Who knew you would be here too!”

After he finished speaking, he finally managed to twist the bottle cap open and started chugging the soda.

The store clerk had long noticed the situation over here. She looked young, probably a part-time student. She was already startled by this tall man who had suddenly appeared, and now she was even more afraid to speak.

I lifted my chin at her, signaling that I would pay this person’s money. The clerk hurriedly nodded, retracting the hand that was about to call her supervisor.

“So where are you planning to go now?”

Gu Tongyu finally had his fill of the drink, and I asked him.

It was strange, compared to his previous appearance, I actually found his current roguish look a bit more pleasing to the eye.

“I do not know.” His answer was as dazed as he was.

A moment later, he said to me again: “My parents know what I did to him.”

Him.

There was no third person here, but I knew who Gu Tongyu was talking about. He was talking about Liu Jiang.

He was talking about hiring people to spread rumors.

Seeing that I did not reply, he asked me again: “You know about it too, right?”

I replied without hesitation: “I know.”

My answer was met with a long sigh from him, as if he was deflating. He rested his hand on the glass door of the freezer and pointed at me with the half-empty drink bottle: “Since you knew, you should have said so earlier! Go tell my parents! If you had let them catch me earlier, I would not have had to walk all afternoon to escape. What are you acting for, what are you playing along with me for!”

His words were barbed and his tone was unkind, but my emotions did not fluctuate in the slightest, because I knew that the most pitiful person right now was not me, the one being accused.

As expected, he leaned against the freezer and slowly slid towards the floor. I grabbed his arm and pulled him up onto the seat by the window.

His voice was choked with sobs: “Thank you.”

He could actually spare the energy to say “thank you” to me.

“I do not know your parents, and I am not their child.” I did not sit down, but stood beside him, “But I know that to gain the trust of adults, you cannot just rely on words. You should do something practical.”

“Practical?” he replied feebly, “What can I do in this state?”

I cast my gaze out the window and answered him: “You can do a lot of things, for example, apologize.”

Liu Jiang was standing in the corner of the convenience store. He could not see me, but I could see him from here. Gu Tongyu clearly had not expected him to be here as well. His expression froze for a moment, then he averted his gaze as if trying to hide himself.

“No, I cannot see him.” He spoke as if his breath was a mere thread.

I used my knee to straighten the chair under his butt and said to him: “You have the energy to hurt him, but you do not have the courage to face what you have done?”

I thought what I said was very reasonable, but it did not get a response from him. Standing behind him, I felt like I could even hear the sound of him grinding his back teeth.

After another moment, he asked me: “Did you two come out together?”

“Yes,” I replied, my tone neither salty nor bland, “He is in a bad mood because of what you did. I am just keeping him company to cheer him up.”

What a passive-aggressive person you are, Yang Pingsheng.

Unexpectedly, my aggressive words actually got a laugh out of him. He stood up, looking much shorter than usual.

He said to me: “You two are good together. Protect him well, take good care of him, be good to him.”

I also laughed, retorting without mercy: “You are not qualified to say that.”

Gu Tongyu was stunned by my comeback for a moment, then just shook his head, stood up, and stumbled outside.

I did not stop him. I just called out his name, then took a five-yuan bill from my pocket and gave it to him.

“Use this to take the light rail back,” I said.

He was probably thinking of some grateful words, but in the end, he just waved at me. I watched him walk into the night, in the opposite direction from Liu Jiang.

The clerk said to me: “That bottle of his is fifteen yuan.”

My hand, which was about to pay, paused, and I cursed loudly: “So expensive!”

The clerk’s expression was helpless: “That is why I was trying to give you a look just now!”

I thought she was asking me for help.

I had nothing to say and paid his bill.

Walking out of the convenience store, Liu Jiang had already finished his cigarette and was staring blankly into the night. I pressed the soda can against the back of his neck, and the cold made him jump.

He whipped his head around. Seeing it was me, he took the can from me and asked: “What took you so long?”

I told a lie without my face turning red or my heart skipping a beat: “The cash register was broken.”

He said “oh,” not suspecting me at all.

On the way back to the city, only Brother Liang and I were awake in the van. The others were sleeping, leaning in all directions. Liu Jiang and I were still sitting in the last row of the minivan, only this time he was not next to me. He had moved to the other side, leaning against the car door to sleep.

The vehicle traveled through a dimly lit tunnel, and everything around was exceptionally quiet. I thought back to what Gu Tongyu had said.

“Protect him well.”

Could this be considered as me having protected him well?

I then thought about what I had said to Gu Tong-yu—you have the guts to do wrong, but not the guts to face it.

That seemed to be scolding myself as well.

Especially Gu Tongyu’s extremely pitiful appearance, it even made me start to project onto myself.

I used to be an extremely impatient person, with an extreme sense of entitlement for what I possessed. If someone took what I had from me, I would only complain that fate was unfair, never considering that the hands separating me from happiness could very well be my own.

After entering the As Usual Project, I had indeed seen many different versions of Liu Jiang, and had also created a brand new version of myself, walking towards a life I had never considered in the past.

I get to know him properly, I make him like me, I protect him, I can welcome a life with a happy development—and then what?

Will I have a perfect, happy Liu Jiang who never thinks I have hurt him?

After realizing this, a sense of powerlessness suddenly washed over me. I turned my head sharply to look at Liu Jiang, wanting to say something to him.

But the words were stuck in my throat. After pausing for three to five seconds, I lowered the hand I had raised at some unknown point. His sleeping expression was still peaceful, completely unaware of what I was thinking at this very moment.

The headlights flashed, and I suddenly felt a piercing white light coming from my left. I turned my head to the left, and a sudden jolt instantly swept through my entire body.

In the next second, I sat up abruptly in the front hall. After a few sharp gasps, I calmed down, as if waking from a long dream.

I had cleared the level.

But unlike the previous times, I seemed to have been expelled into the front hall. What awaited me was the not-so-soft sofa in the lobby’s waiting area, and the sound of a phonograph in my ears.

After pondering for a moment, I turned my head towards the reception desk. I could imagine the expression the Attendant would have on his face as he looked at me, yet my first glance failed to capture him.

He was not there.

At first, I thought it was a prank. Although he was a game character, I felt that with his character setting, he would definitely do something like this, for example, suddenly popping up when I walked up to the counter, calmly and self-assuredly watching me get startled by him.

So I approached the counter a little more slowly, turning sideways to look inside. The result was only an empty counter, and myself with my neck tilted awkwardly beside the counter.

He really was not there.

I stood up straight and looked around. This seemed to be the first time I was surveying the front hall without the Attendant present. At this moment, I suddenly felt a sense of being pardoned.

It was like one day when playing a game, you suddenly discover you can turn off the player protection in the console, so now I am invincible, I am God.

Leaving the counter, I took two steps toward the corridor. He did not emerge from any corner, so I began to walk forward boldly, crossing the lobby and taking the stairs to the second floor.

Just as the Attendant had shown me, here were the levels I had previously cleared. The level numbers on the doorplates were clear, and the corridor was empty. After pausing for a moment, I continued to advance upstairs.

Actually, it was not much different from when he was here.

The usual carpet, ordinary room numbers, common hotel decorations, except for the occasional music and the faint, rustling operating sounds coming from the corridor, it was no different from when he was by my side.

I stepped onto the third floor, the doorplate beside me read 2-2—this was the level I had just cleared.

I turned my head to look up. In the emergency exit, I could still see the stairs leading up. I could go directly to the next level I was heading to from here.

The fourth floor was quickly reached. The layout here was the same as the previous floors. Future levels were lined up along the corridor, and level 3-1 was right in front of me. I reached out to try the doorknob, and the door opened with a click.

Oh? It seems I can play just fine on my own.

The room’s layout was the same as before. A standard room, a floor lamp, a red bed runner. Stepping inside would usher in the next level, allowing me to continue spending the rest of my life with Liu Jiang during the summer vacation.

But, is this what I want?

A sudden feeling of frustration swept over me. I seemed to suddenly understand the feeling of “boredom” that Liu Jiang always talked about in the evenings.

Boring.

I took a step back, closed the door, and then walked to the next room on the right. To my surprise, this door was also open.

If there had been someone inside the room, they would have surely seen the change in my expression as the crack in the door gradually widened, from having no expectations, to being stunned, then to being slightly horrified, and finally the door was slammed shut by me with a bang.

I stood outside the door, holding onto the doorframe, my hand covering my mouth.

Wait, can levels be skipped?

That is to say, I can jump from the current ordinary high school student’s summer vacation directly to the end of the college entrance exams, or even directly to the year we two separated?

I quickly ran back to the stairwell and looked up. Between the crisscrossing stairs, I realized I was not far from the top floor.

I ran back to the floor for level 3, trying every single doorknob. They were all unlocked, I could go in at any time.

Facing the corridor that I could see to the end, I took a few steps back and fell into deep thought.

That is to say, I can now go directly to the end of the As Usual Project and see what our ending is.

Should I go and see?

I remained where I was, my hands and feet feeling as heavy as lead. I felt the doors of the rooms on both sides twisting and deforming, rapidly closing in on me standing in the middle, until a short, soft note of music drilled out from a corner, pulling my attention back.

Glancing to the left, I noticed a slightly ajar door in a corner of the corridor’s end that I had not seen before. The music was coming from there.

The instinct for human sounds drove me forward. Stopping a meter away from the door, I saw the light and shadow seeping through the crack.

The light was not on inside the room. The light flickered, as if some kind of disc was playing.

Turning back, the corridor behind me was empty, without even the slightest sound from an air conditioner or ventilation duct. Turning back again, the door in front of me was the only place with a human presence.

It seems that no matter what I choose, I will choose to move forward.

But just as my hand was about to touch the doorknob, I heard a voice speaking from inside the door.

A person’s memory of sounds is not particularly sensitive, but memories associated with sounds are always exceptionally profound. The moment that voice sounded, an indescribable feeling poured into my chest.

Because that was Liu Jiang’s voice.

—Not only that, it was not the voice of the teenage Liu Jiang, but the adult Liu Jiang, that is to say, the one I had been searching for all this time.