AUS Chapter 1: Youth is Pain

I still remember the day I first met Liu Jiang.

It was an unusually warm day, though the wind was a bit strong. I set out from the city center, took the wrong bus twice, and then, battling swirling poplar fluff, I finally made it to the top of the hillside.

I headed toward the most imposing building I could see, assuming it was Number Twenty High School. But when I got to the entrance, I realized it was a church. A man dressed as a priest at the gate bowed slightly and asked if I had come to seek the truth of God’s love for the world.

Out of breath, I asked him where Number Twenty High School was. He pointed, and I turned to look, nearly missing it entirely.

As I headed downhill, I already had a sinking feeling I was going to be late. Fortunately, Liancheng is surrounded by the sea on three sides, so the air wasn’t too dry. I caught my breath in the spring air and managed to face my tardiness with a relatively dignified posture.

Sure enough, I was late.

My dad had told the discipline director I’d arrive by eight, but it was already nine-thirty by the time I got there. The discipline director was at the gate scolding a few students who’d climbed over the wall to sneak in. I tried to slip past them, but one of them grabbed me.

He said to me, “Buddy, if you’re late, don’t even think about sneaking by.”

The others snickered, and one voice among them muttered, “Idiot.”

I was about to turn around, but the discipline director stopped me. He’d recognized me. Pulling me aside, his face gleamed with an oily smile. “Isn’t this President Yang’s son? How come you’re only here now?”

That voice calling me an idiot piped up again from behind. “He’s late, duh!”

I wanted to turn around again, but the discipline director blocked me once more. He called out, “Come to the administrative office and wait a bit. Your paperwork isn’t done yet.”

I thought this was special treatment, but it turned out to be a case of all roads leading to the same place. Five minutes later, the group of truants came stomping in. They were there to write self-criticism essays.

There were four desks in the office, and the seven of them took up the other three. The last one, holding a piece of paper in one hand and a pen in the other, sauntered over to me reluctantly.

He was tall, wearing an oversized school uniform with the zipper pulled all the way up, his chin tucked into the collar. His hair was long enough to irk the school administrators.

I looked at him. He didn’t look at me. I looked again, and finally, he met my gaze.

He said, “What are you staring at?”

I said, “You’re the one who called me an idiot earlier, right?”

The other six in the room looked up. I realized then that this guy was something of a ringleader among delinquents.

He wasn’t intimidated. He locked eyes with me without hesitation, his hand coming up to fiddle with the zipper near his face.

I noticed his eyes were long and narrow, but his eyelids seemed too lazy to open fully. His irises were so dark they made his entire eyes look black.

Like a fox. He looked dangerous.

I’d transferred from my last school because of a fight. Just when I thought my first day at Number Twenty would inevitably end with me fighting all seven of them, the discipline director pushed the door open.

He called out to me, “Yang Pingsheng, your paperwork’s done. Class Five, let’s go!”

Great. Now my personal information was exposed to the enemy, and I didn’t even know this punk’s name. So, I left the office, turning back every few steps. The punk watched me with a faintly amused expression.

Ten minutes later, I stood at the front of the classroom, calmly finishing my self-introduction. The classroom door opened.

The punk leaned against the doorframe as if he had no bones in his body. He was in Class Five too.

If someone had told me back then that he’d end up clinging to me later, I would’ve punched him even harder.

Truth is, the moment I locked eyes with him in the office, I knew we’d end up fighting, sooner or later. As it turned out, that fight came faster than I expected—on the very first day, at noon.

I don’t remember why it started. It wasn’t even that heated. It just felt like something we had to do.

With the help of three of his lackeys, he still couldn’t beat me. We both got hauled into the principal’s office.

I might’ve hit a bit too hard. The school nurse came, disinfected a scrape on my knuckle, then went to check Liu Jiang’s face. She clucked her tongue twice and said I’d been too rough.

The nurse left. Liu Jiang and I sat side by side outside the administrative office, while his buddies were inside getting scolded. We were next. It was strange—this school’s students didn’t seem to care about studying, only about causing trouble.

I looked around, tilting my head back. Liu Jiang stared at the floor. A quartz clock ticked steadily in the hallway. Suddenly, I heard him sniffle.

I didn’t dare look directly. Pretending to check the time, I stole a glance. Damn, he was actually crying.

Before I could react, there was a commotion inside the office. It seemed his lackeys were done getting chewed out. I felt the awkwardness hit me first.

I sat up straight. “Stop crying. They’re coming out.”

It didn’t work. I swear it looked like snot bubbles were about to form.

I got anxious and asked, “Seriously, you’re gonna cry in front of them?”

He wiped his nose with his sleeve, his eyes red and swollen as he looked at me. He was something else—I shut up immediately. Then I took off my school uniform jacket.

When his three buddies came out, Liu Jiang had my jacket draped over his head, hands in his pockets, leaning against the wall. I stood there in my short-sleeved undershirt, pretending to be calm in the chilly hallway.

Lackey One: “What’s wrong with Boss Liu?”

I said, “He’s tired. Resting his eyes.”

Lackey Two: “You dared to hit our Boss Liu? You’re done for!”

I nodded quickly. “Sure, no problem.”

Lackey Three was about to throw in another threat when Liu Jiang, from under the jacket, growled in a low voice, “Get lost!”

The three of them left. Liu Jiang pulled the jacket off his head, used it to wipe his eyes and nose, then wiped his eyes again before tossing it back to me.

He stopped crying, but my jacket was unwearable. I held it in my hands, stuck in my short-sleeved shirt in the March chill, still trying to play it cool. I asked him, “Why were you crying?”

He looked down at his hands and said quietly, “It hurts.”

In the years that followed, he said that word to me many times, but most of the time, I didn’t believe him. I thought he was enjoying himself.

I remember my first year as an intern. At a department dinner, a colleague with no filter teased me while toasting, saying I seemed well-behaved but probably turned into someone who could snap a belt at the bedside once the door was closed.

The table went silent. I quickly changed the subject, and in the midst of everyone’s laughter, I downed my drink in one gulp.

He was right, but also not. I usually didn’t do it by the bedside—bedsheets are a pain to wash.

Anyway, when Liu Jiang told me “it hurts” that day, I didn’t think he really meant it.

I’m getting off track. The point is, after that fight, he started sticking to me.

Liu Jiang’s vibe fit Number Twenty High School perfectly. He came to school just to be there—not to study or to get into college. The next class was PE, and he called me to head downstairs together. I hadn’t finished my problem set and told him to shut up and wait.

He swung a leg over the seat in front of me, straddling the chair backward, resting his chin in his hands as he watched me.

He had no concept of my grades. He asked, “How good are your scores?”

I didn’t even look at him, scribbling formulas on my paper. “Get the admissions directory, point to any school, and I can get in.”

I was exaggerating. But considering there were only five schools I couldn’t get into out of three thousand, the odds of him picking one of those were less than one percent.

He muttered that college didn’t sound fun but still waited patiently for me to finish my problems.

In the five minutes he stared at me, I didn’t lose focus for a second. Back then, he wasn’t that tall or that good-looking. His hair wasn’t dyed, and he didn’t wear a bunch of random piercings. He was clean-cut, just kind of boring.

When did I first think he was good-looking? Probably the start of the next school year.

He was still always late, while I’d joined the student council, specifically to catch people like him.

At the tail end of summer, I stood by the wall waiting for him. Sure enough, he showed up, but I didn’t recognize him at first. He’d dyed his hair—not fully white, but half-black, half-white. The roots were white, the tips black.

He wasn’t wearing his school uniform either—just a white long-sleeved shirt with rips, one shoulder exposed, a spiderweb printed on the chest, rings and necklaces jangling, and a bass guitar case slung over his back.

When he smiled, his eyes squinted, and that day they looked especially fox-like, his grin stretching almost to his ears.

He crouched on top of the wall, looking down at me, and shouted, “Do I look good?”

I suddenly noticed how pale he was. I shouted back, “Get down and write your self-criticism!”

In the administrative office, I watched him write his essay. He’d write a few words, then look up at me, but I kept my eyes glued to my vocabulary book.

He said, “Yang Pingsheng, I’ve got a performance this afternoon.”

I grunted, memorizing the word “boring.”

He pressed the cap of his pen against his lips and continued, “My family cleared it with the school. No punishment for not wearing the uniform.”

I didn’t look at him. Boring, boring.

He kept going. “No punishment for dyeing my hair either.”

I reluctantly lifted my eyes and told him, “I’m busting you for being late.”

He pouted, scratched out the title he’d spent ten minutes on, and started over.

Within five minutes, he called me again. “Yang Pingsheng, let me tell you a secret.”

He leaned closer. I noticed he seemed to be wearing lip gloss, and that realization made it take me a full minute to process what he said next.

He said, “I got my ears pierced.”

As I shifted my gaze from his lips to his eyes, he lifted his hands to push back his hair on both sides. One round stud in each ear, with traces of iodine disinfectant still visible.

I closed my vocabulary book, slid my chair closer, and stared at him. “Just got them?”

He nodded, pressing his lips together as he looked at me. I reached out and pinched his left earlobe. I swear I didn’t use force, but his eyes immediately welled up.

He said, “It hurts.”

But he didn’t pull away. How was I supposed to know if it was real or fake?

I waited two more seconds before letting go, then looked down and reopened my vocabulary book. He asked, “Are you coming to my performance?”

His voice sounded like it really hurt.

I said, “No.”

The word in my book was now “burning.”

I didn’t go that day, though I later watched a few of his practices and rehearsals. The first time I actually went to one of his performances was when I was twenty.

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I had a girlfriend at the time.

He confessed to me the year he graduated high school. I’d known for a while—I’m not clueless. People who say high-achieving students have low emotional intelligence are lying. Or maybe he was just too obvious.

Anyway, I got a girlfriend to shut him up. A confession didn’t stop him. Rejection didn’t stop him. Even kissing didn’t stop him. So I had to rely on someone else to do it.

He took a train all the way to my university just to pick a fight with me.

We argued outside the cafeteria. It was overcast, almost snowing. He was already tall enough, and he wore an oversized hooded sweater that was loose even on him, floor-length pants, and combat boots—all black, with white hair. He was impossible to miss.

But somehow, I didn’t see him. Maybe because I was rushing to bring my girlfriend an umbrella.

He grabbed me by the collar and dragged me into the alley next to the cafeteria.

After the fight, he cried again. He was almost six-foot-three, but his personality was the same as it was in high school. This time, I didn’t have a school uniform to give him to wipe his tears.

I told him the last long-distance bus from the west gate left at eight. If he didn’t leave soon, he’d be stuck spending the night on Zhongguancun South Street.

I don’t know if he made it out, but after a month of our pretend cold war, he sent me tickets to his performance—two of them.

Unfortunately, three days after he left, I broke up with my girlfriend. So I went alone, and, of course, I was late again.

The music venue was standing-room only. By the time I squeezed in, the only open spots were on the second floor. I lied and thanked my way into swapping seats with a girl on the balcony to get closer to the front.

Liu Jiang spotted me the moment he looked up.

Maybe stages just have a natural filter, but he stood at the edge, playing his bass. Who says bassists aren’t noticeable in a band?

His position was far from center, but to me, everyone in the room was watching him, and he was only looking at me.

I was standing higher up, and he tilted his head to look at me. It felt a bit like that time when the latecomer met the one catching latecomers, except the roles were reversed.

He looked even better than he did that day.

His ear piercings were too many to count. I couldn’t remember if I’d touched them all, but I did remember his lip ring grazing my mouth and his tongue stud.

During a break in the music, he lifted his hand from the bass, pointed at me with his index finger, and squinted with a smile. The girls behind me nearly deafened me with their screams.

See? I told you—everyone here came to see Liu Jiang.

What happened after?

I hate to say it, but my memories of Liu Jiang end there.

We fought again later, then kept up the cold war. It was all over trivial stuff, I guess. In any case, Liu Jiang disappeared after that and never contacted me again.

At twenty-two, I graduated smoothly from that prestigious university on Zhongguancun South Street.

I stayed on at the gaming company where I’d interned, working in R&D. It was a major firm—there were peers, mentors, and endless prospects.

At twenty-four, I became a team leader, starting to work on the company’s holographic network project.

Sounds like a promising start, right?

Leading a team just two years after graduating, on track to climb to manager, then director, maybe even CEO, kicking out the executives, with a life revolving around houses, cars, membership stores, and luxury resorts—it’s like none of it had anything to do with Liu Jiang anymore.

But that’s not the story I want to tell, nor the future I want to live.

What I want to tell is the story of how I saw Liu Jiang again.