AUS Chapter 12: Liu Jiang Wrote Me a Letter

We both paused for a few seconds, then I abruptly turned my head.

Liu Jiang, as if realizing the strangeness of his action, quickly let go of my hand and took a step back, looking at me.

“How can you be fine?” he said. “The class teacher said you’re being suspended.”

I lifted my face and met his gaze. Liu Jiang did look a little flustered, but not beyond the level of concern between friends.

I had indeed concluded from Liu Jiang’s words that he perhaps cared about me more than others, but I treated it as a good start, a fresh start, unrelated to the past.

Now, I felt a little dazed. The Liu Jiang of the past loved to grab my hand.

During arguments, during breakups, during times when we could barely speak to each other.

Even though grabbing the wrist offered a better grip, he always grabbed my hand, my fingers. He would use his index and middle fingers to hook my pinky and ring finger, and only after holding them would he speak.

He let go too quickly this time. I didn’t have time to feel how his fingers gripped mine.

Facing him, looking at the worry in his eyes, I suddenly felt like he was acting along with me.

As if he were also a player in the game, pretending to get to know me again, holding back laughter at my every awkward line, feigning ignorance after every hint I dropped.

“Liu Jiang,” I said, “it’s you, isn’t it?”

The Liu Jiang in front of me changed his expression. His worry turned into confusion. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

I continued, “You always said that if we had the chance, we’d get to know each other again, that we’d start over. Now I’m back. Can you tell me how we can both have it easier, be happier?”

I heard the noise that preceded the system’s announcements begin to ring in my ears. An irresistible force pulled me from behind.

“Liu Jiang,” I said, “I want to have a good life with you again.”

As soon as I finished speaking, I was yanked out of the hallway. This time, I didn’t fall onto the meeting room floor. The immense force threw me backward. I reached out and grabbed a nearby server, barely managing to steady myself.

The system’s classic notification rang in my ears again: “Hello tester, the synchronization test has failed. Please log in again later.”

In the office filled with servers and electrical equipment, I sat on a small round stool, leaning against a server. The helmet on my head echoed my failure. Combined with the words I had spoken before leaving the simulation, the whole scene was incredibly ridiculous.

But this time, the system didn’t finish its classic prompt. Before I could take off the helmet, its tone suddenly changed.

“Hello tester. We kindly remind you not to attempt to awaken the self-awareness of characters in the simulation. This will cause unforeseen catastrophic consequences. Repeat, please do not—”

“Wait,” I put the helmet back on. “Are you saying that the characters’ self-awareness can be awakened?”

The system paused for half a second. I could feel it choosing its words.

“We advise you not to try,” it said.

Rational dissuasion, of course, could not extinguish emotional impulses. “If I want to awaken it, how should I try?” I asked directly.

If the system had expressions, I guessed simple helplessness, indignation, or mockery wouldn’t capture its current state.

Maintaining its emotionless tone, it continued, “Awakening character consciousness is impossible within the program’s settings. When the system detects your attempt to awaken consciousness, it will automatically terminate the simulation. This is to protect your personal safety.”

I hesitated and asked, “Could awakening consciousness… affect me in real life?”

The system replied, “Current experimental results indicate that events within the simulation can, to a certain extent, affect the tester in reality.”

Real-life effects?

Was this like those classic Japanese role-playing games with isekai themes, where the player controlling the character is warned at the beginning, “If you die in that world, you will also die in the real world”? Would I?

As I was about to ask further questions, I suddenly heard a noise, not from the simulation helmet, but from outside the meeting room.

Someone was coming.

I instinctively turned off the simulation helmet, then rolled my chair back and switched off the power to the meeting room. As the surroundings plunged into darkness, I peered out through the blinds.

Among the rows of desks, I saw the receptionist searching around, followed by a man in a waxed cotton coat. The man was short and moved quickly. It was another sandstorm day, and it took me a while to make out his features.

My eyes widened when I realized who he was.

The receptionist jumped when she saw me suddenly open the door. I quickly explained, “Sorry, I was just running a test.”

It was normal to be wary in the apocalypse. Who knew if the person looking for me was from a doomsday cult or simply a homeless person lacking supplies.

I reminded her, “Be careful downstairs. Make sure the lock is secured.”

The receptionist nodded, signaling for me to talk to the man behind her alone. After she went downstairs, the man silently took off his hoodie.

It was Hao Zi.

Hao Zi had lost a lot of weight and grown a stubble, but he didn’t look too haggard, just less prosperous than before. He looked at me with a complicated expression. After a moment, he sighed, “You haven’t changed a bit.”

We had a meal in the cafeteria downstairs.

Today’s lunch was frozen Xianghe meat pies, simply heated in a steamer, served with thin seaweed and egg drop soup. The pies were filled with chives and had been in the freezer for a while, emitting a slight smell of staleness. I poured myself half a bowl of vinegar at the condiment station.

Seeing my vinegar bowl, Hao Zi exclaimed sincerely, “You still love vinegar so much.”

I sat down, put a piece of pie on my plate, and felt that his words carried a deeper meaning.

Hao Zi wasn’t here for anyone else but Liu Jiang.

He had been holding a cardboard box since he was behind the receptionist. Meeting my gaze, he first commented on how I hadn’t changed, then asked, “Do you know where Liu Jiang is?”

I was slightly nervous before he spoke, fearing the box in his hands held some deeper meaning. But the truth was simple: it contained Liu Jiang’s old belongings, left with him years ago.

“Three—no, four years ago, he borrowed my car to move. It was a long time after he moved that I found a cardboard box tucked away in the trunk. He told me to open it and see what was inside. I opened it and found old things like photo albums, and he said to keep it for him and he’d pick it up later.”

Hao Zi ate with his usual gusto. Having lost weight, he no longer had the ability to make people laugh just by looking at him, but his features were still kind.

“He never came to get it, and I couldn’t reach him. And then… well, now it’s like this.”

We exchanged glances and smiled awkwardly, eating in silence, neither of us mentioning the word “apocalypse.”

Finally, Hao Zi spoke again. “Actually, I thought you’d forgotten all about me. With your personality, you never remember faces or names, except for that one person.”

That one person was Liu Jiang.

Hao Zi was right. I almost forgot him at first. If I hadn’t reviewed my memories in the simulated world, I wouldn’t have recognized him so quickly.

Hao Zi was the band member closest to Liu Jiang, staying with him until after college graduation. Later, a new vocalist joined Liu Jiang’s band, and Hao Zi retreated to the sidelines to focus on his wife—his wife was the class beauty he had a history with, named Peng Xiaoxia.

Every couple with a complicated history has a friend who has said everything good and bad, yet remains unsure of their true relationship. The couple I’m referring to is not Hao Zi and his wife, but Liu Jiang and me. Hao Zi and Peng Xiaoxia’s love story was smooth sailing, a true success story. Liu Jiang and I, on the other hand, were the kind of messy thing that Hao Zi could never figure out.

“But I figure if even you don’t know where he went, probably no one else does either,” Hao Zi said, holding his bowl and falling silent again.

Hao Zi’s situation was similar to mine. His family of three, with his wife and young daughter, drew two spots in the lottery. He gave the spots to his wife and daughter, choosing to stay outside and make a living. His family wasn’t too far away, and he could even apply to see them every month.

He had found me today because his livelihood had changed—he had joined the local relief distribution association and was living in a simple prefabricated house provided by the association.

He tentatively asked, “Why did you two lose contact back then?”

I shook my head. “We had a fight.”

He asked again, “And you’ve been here ever since?”

I was silent for a moment, then replied, “We didn’t contact each other for a year, and then it became… this.”

His “here” and my “this” both referred to the apocalypse.

To break the silence, I turned the conversation to the box. “Can I see what’s inside?”

Hao Zi nodded and pushed the box towards me.

It wasn’t big, just a standard kraft cardboard box commonly used in company archives, the kind with handles on the sides. I weighed it; it wasn’t heavy. There probably weren’t many photos inside.

I opened the lid and first saw a black and white object on top. I pulled it out and unfolded it slightly.

It was a school uniform.

The uniform was neatly folded, zipper pulled all the way up. The blank spaces were covered in student signatures, some of which looked familiar, others completely unknown. I turned the uniform over to the front. A name on the left chest was particularly large, separated from the surrounding signatures.

Hao Zi sat across from me and said, over the uniform, “Liu Jiang wouldn’t let us sign on the left chest. He kept avoiding people, half-jokingly saying he was saving it for a special someone.”

Who was that special someone?

Me.

Liu Jiang had found me in the classroom. He pulled a marker out of his pocket and pointed to his left chest.

There was a height difference of about five or six centimeters between us. To make it easier for me to sign, he sat on a desk in the front row. I bit off the cap, smoothed out the fabric on his left chest, and, taking advantage of his affection for me, wrote my name in large, bold strokes.

He said it tickled and laughed, his breath brushing against my hand. I started to feel ticklish too and told him to stop laughing, and he did. He pursed his lips and watched me finish signing. When he took the pen away, his index finger brushed against my palm.

My signature wasn’t perfect. My pinky finger had smudged my name, blurring the bottom part of the character “sheng.” The smudge of ink remained on the uniform, looking like it had been signed yesterday.

I folded the uniform and discreetly wiped my eyes. Hao Zi didn’t dare look at me, busying himself with examining his bowl and chopsticks.

I closed the box and said what I wanted to say most at that moment, “He must be very angry with me.”

Hao Zi stopped examining his tableware but didn’t look up. I continued, “Otherwise, he would have gone to get these back from you.”

I had glanced inside. Besides the uniform, the box contained old things. Liu Jiang keeping the uniform with them was probably the limit of his expressed anger.

Hao Zi straightened his bowl and chopsticks and said softly, “If he’s angry, then just coax him back, wouldn’t that be fine?”

I was suddenly amused. I understood why the class beauty had fallen for him. He was someone who always remained emotionally stable and provided emotional support—in contrast, I always stood on the sidelines making sarcastic remarks.

Hao Zi and I parted ways before dark. His current residence was very close to my company, within walking distance. I took the subway, holding the cardboard box, and began the long journey home, swaying with the movement of the train.

If the four seasons were still cycling normally, it should be late spring, approaching summer, the same season when I first met Liu Jiang.

When the subway emerged above ground, I noticed the sky had cleared. The yellow sand had retreated to the horizon, and above me was a rare clear sky.

As if possessed, I opened the box again and took out the uniform in the empty carriage. Intuition told me that Liu Jiang hadn’t retrieved these belongings because he was angry, but intuition also told me that things couldn’t be that simple.

The uniform was well-preserved, still carrying the scent of fabric softener as if fresh from the dryer. I ran my hand down the sleeve, then held the uniform up to the sunlight.

Finally, I noticed something.

Near the inside of the pocket, the fabric was opaque, as if something had been sewn inside. I turned the uniform inside out, and sure enough, there was a hidden pocket.

The stitching wasn’t strong, but it was enough to hold the contents securely. After pulling apart the stitches, the contents were revealed.

It was a letter?