AUS Chapter 14: Did You Find Liu Jiang?

Walking to the subway station, I felt my confidence surge. Sitting in the empty carriage, I was filled with ambition. Arriving at the company building, I was eager to get started.

Before even entering the building, I went to find Hao Zi.

He was sorting relief supplies in a truck. Seeing me, he excused himself to his supervisor and jumped down from the truck bed. We stood in the nearby rest area. When he heard me asking how to deal with jealousy towards someone close to the person you like, he almost spat out his instant coffee.

“Did you find Liu Jiang?” he asked.

I quickly shook my head. “No, it’s just a hypothetical situation.”

He wiped the coffee from the corner of his mouth. “Right, because that definitely wouldn’t be your first question if you had.”

Indeed.

And if I found Liu Jiang, would my first concern be jealousy?

He pondered, swirling the coffee in his paper cup. “In my experience—information asymmetry.”

“Information asymmetry?” I narrowed my eyes.

“Information asymmetry,” he affirmed.

According to Hao Zi, all conflicts in relationships stemmed from poor communication, in other words, information asymmetry.

I didn’t explain my situation, just pretended it was a hypothetical scenario. I told him I had a dream where I had a new lover, and there was another person who made me jealous. After waking up, I didn’t know how to resolve the situation, so I came to ask him.

Hao Zi, as always, was eager to help, or perhaps he assumed I had moved on. He didn’t just leave me with “information asymmetry” to analyze on my own but offered several hypothetical situations.

“Do you communicate much with this person?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Almost never.”

“So, you don’t know much about him?”

I nodded. “Very little.”

He put down his cup, propped his chin on his hand, and assumed a thoughtful expression. “Then, from your perspective, is he someone much better than you, someone you can’t compare to?”

I wanted to say, “How could that be?” but thought it best to be modest.

“We’re about the same,” I said.

Hao Zi nodded. “Then you should take the initiative to get to know him. The first step to overcoming jealousy is understanding. Maybe once you get to know him, you’ll find that things are actually quite simple.”

He was indeed a relationship master, having dated the class beauty since our school days. I felt confident of victory and was about to thank him and say goodbye when a possibility suddenly struck me.

What if this “about the same” was just my subjective assumption?

I asked Hao Zi again, “What if, hypothetically, this person is much better than me in every aspect?”

Hao Zi, with his high emotional intelligence, replied, “Then I can only wish you good luck.”

Good luck.

In the ascending elevator, I replayed Hao Zi’s words.

The elevator reached my floor. The doors opened to the empty office area.

Regardless, I would meet him, this person who might be “about the same” as me, or might leave me in the dust.

I sat on the small stool in the office. The server started up, the fans whirring. I fell into the empty blackness. When I perceived light again, I found myself standing in the hallway, my hand being held.

Time rewound to the moment Liu Jiang grabbed my hand.

This time, I felt it clearly. He was holding my pinky and ring finger.

But as I turned around, he quickly let go, took a step back, and said, “How can you be fine? The class teacher said you’re being suspended.”

People are strange. No matter how intense the emotions felt at the time, once the moment passes, everything becomes insignificant, even a little funny.

I stared at him. He seemed to notice the nonchalance on my face and his furrowed brows relaxed.

“There’s a bit of trouble,” I said. “Because I don’t have to go to school for the next two days.”

A grin spread across my face as I spoke.

The confusion on Liu Jiang’s face turned to suspicion, then to annoyance. “Huh??” he exclaimed.

I rubbed my temples. “It’s not as serious as you think. Just a fight. See, I’m fine.”

If Qin Bowen could keep his mouth shut, things would be even finer.

Liu Jiang started lecturing me, “So, your gloomy act was all fake!”

Seeing my indifference, he asked, “Why did you fight?”

I wanted to explain, but there was a problem: Lao Diao was waiting for me downstairs.

“I’ll tell you at your place tonight,” I said.

But I said it on purpose because I knew he was meeting his brother these days.

So, after making the suggestion, I feigned sudden realization.

“Oh, your brother’s coming, right? We’ll talk next time,” I said, turning to leave.

As expected, he grabbed me within two steps, but this time it wasn’t as ambiguous. He grabbed the back of my uniform.

“You make it sound like I’m going to bully you—Fine, fine, I’ll take you!”

I smiled smugly, my back to him.

I didn’t turn around, just waved at him. “See you tonight!”

I maintained this slightly disgruntled air until I reached the stairwell. In the hallway, I pumped my fist and let out a triumphant “Yes!”

A problem that could have been solved by simply speaking my mind had been overcomplicated by me in the past. It was truly unnecessary. Fortunately, I had a second chance.

This time, I would reclaim my glory!

I maintained this jubilation until I reached the building entrance. Seeing the people waiting there, my smile instantly vanished.

Because it wasn’t just Lao Diao waiting for me, but also my dad in a suit, along with his lawyer.

Outside the plan, I was an adult who had figured some things out. Inside the plan, I was a hapless high school student being escorted home by his parents after getting into trouble.

The lawyer drove. My dad and I sat in the back. I looked at the sunny People’s Park on the left, while my dad stared at the slowly moving refrigerated trucks from the slaughterhouse on the right.

My parents didn’t bother having heart-to-heart talks about life lessons with me. Perhaps it was because of the lawyer’s presence. In any case, halfway through the drive, the lawyer spoke up, telling me that the other party wanted to settle privately. It wasn’t a big deal, and I could go back to school after two days of rest.

I nodded in acknowledgement. My dad let out a timely sigh, expressing no particular opinion.

When we arrived, the lawyer handed me a business card. It was for a private counseling clinic run by a physician from the city’s top-tier hospital. He told me to go if I had any problems, preferably within the next two days, to talk to a professional.

The only thing he seriously emphasized was, “Let’s find a time for the three of us to have dinner. Your mom isn’t angry with you.”

I agreed to everything.

After my dad’s car drove away, I entered the apartment building. The first thing I did was throw the business card in the trash. The second was to dismiss the idea of dinner with my parents.

I was going to see Liu Jiang!

I didn’t wait until evening to go to the old district. Liu Jiang skipped school that afternoon. Saying “skipped” wasn’t quite accurate, as he had legitimately made up an excuse to the class teacher and left. Whether it was personal leave or sick leave, such behavior was highly discouraged.

Anyway, Liu Jiang successfully arrived home at 2 PM and messaged me to come over.

Smartphones were just becoming popular back then. I used a model that still had a home button, while Liu Jiang used one that hadn’t evolved to have one yet. Our emojis weren’t always compatible, so the message I saw from him looked something like this:

A string of large and small “”, followed by “Arrived, come see,” and ending with a tilde and an exclamation point.

Later, I learned that the string of characters was his emoticon, supposedly quite cute. It was a pity I couldn’t see it, but it didn’t matter. My primary focus wasn’t on him yet.

There was someone I wanted to meet alone.

At 3 PM, I arrived at the old district where Liu Jiang lived, but my first stop was the nondescript milk tea shop at the intersection.

The door opened, the wind chime above tinkling. I stood at the glass door, my back to the afternoon sun. Inside, a boy in a white shirt looked up from saying “Welcome” and our eyes met.

I was there to see Gu Tongyu.

At 3:30 PM, I arrived at Liu Jiang’s place with two cups of milk tea. I didn’t go through the front door, though. Instead, I expertly climbed over the wall, made my way to the roof, and climbed up, startling Liu Jiang, who was waiting for me, strumming his guitar.

As I steadied myself, he was even more surprised by the two cups of milk tea I had brought along. “Did you go to the milk tea shop first?” he asked.

Yes, Liu Jiang’s “brother”—Gu Tongyu—didn’t know me but recognized my school uniform because Liu Jiang always wore it when visiting him.

So, the milk tea shop boy’s first words were a casual greeting: “You’re a Twenty Middle School student too, right? What would you like to drink?”

I was more direct. “What does Liu Jiang usually drink? I’ll have the same. No, make that two.”

With this exchange, I vividly demonstrated that I was close to Liu Jiang, cared about him, and was about to see him. But as I sat down waiting for him to make the drinks, I felt I had come across as a bit too aggressive, which gave me a sense of unease, like I was already losing.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to recapture my past confidence.

I started a conversation. “Do a lot of Twenty Middle School students come here?”

His voice was mixed with the noise of the sealing machine. “Not many. Just you and Liu Jiang these past few days.”

For some reason, such a simple sentence made me perceive his sunny and positive personality. I began to doubt if we truly had anything in common, and whether this kind of personality would really make teachers and parents beam with approval.

I was starting to dislike this warm and sunny persona, but harboring such thoughts only made me seem more gloomy.

He finished the first milk tea, shaking the cup up and down, the ice clinking inside.

Liu Jiang’s favorite milk tea was jasmine green milk tea, extra sweet, with extra ice. Just hearing the ice hitting the sides of the cup made my jaw ache in anticipation of the cold.

During a lull in the noise, he initiated conversation again. This person was truly strange. Just listening to the tone of his questions, I could feel the midday sun beating down on my face, painfully so.

“Are you the student who recently transferred to Twenty Middle School?” he asked. “I heard about you from Liu Jiang.”

I was flipping through the sticky notes on the glass table. Every milk tea shop had a sticky note wall in those days. His words made me look up. The first thing I saw was a message on a blue sticky note.

Two words: Win.

“Really?” I replied. “I’ve heard about you from Liu Jiang too.”

The sealing machine abruptly stopped. He paused and looked up at me.