AUS Chapter 15: Good Boy Liu Jiang

Compared to polite conversation, direct confrontation was more comfortable for me. I eagerly awaited his next words.

Unexpectedly, he just pursed his lips and said awkwardly, “Sorry, the seal leaked. Wait a moment, I’ll make you another one.”

That’s it?

How disappointing.

I leaned back in my chair and looked at the willows swaying in the wind outside.

“So,” Liu Jiang said, putting a straw in his milk tea, “what do you think of him?”

Of course, he didn’t know the details of my meeting with Gu Tongyu, assuming it was just a normal greeting.

I sat next to Liu Jiang, put a straw in my milk tea, and took a deep breath. The sweetness almost glued my eyelids together. After finally swallowing the sugary creamer, I answered his question, “He’s… pretty good.”

Honestly, Gu Tongyu was much more ordinary than his name suggested.

Just hearing his name, I imagined a rich and devoted second male lead from a romance novel. This image faded slightly when I saw his photo and further diminished when I met him in person.

Now, only the image of an ordinary man with decent looks, slightly taller than me, wearing glasses, and a pleasant voice remained.

…Why did I still feel inexplicably irritated?

But at least we had met. As Hao Zi said, all jealousy could be overcome by reducing information asymmetry. I felt my animosity towards him lessening.

“Is what you usually drink this sweet?” I asked Liu Jiang.

We sat on the rooftop. Liu Jiang squinted in the sun, his aegyo-sal prominent. Without hesitation, he took a sip from my milk tea and asked, “What’s wrong? Isn’t this normal sweetness?”

I stared at the straw he had used and forced myself to take another sip, my eyelids once again glued together by the sugar.

Good. At least it proved our sweetness preferences were the same. It wasn’t Gu Tongyu deliberately trying to make things difficult for me.

Liancheng was a tourist city. The May weather was incredibly pleasant. Liu Jiang’s rooftop wasn’t high, level with the surrounding treetops. The wind blew, and I felt like I was floating in the sky, utterly carefree.

I didn’t resent Gu Tongyu as much anymore, nor did I resent Liu Jiang’s friendliness towards everyone. Because now, it was just Liu Jiang and me.

“By the way,” I asked, “did you take classes to learn these instruments?”

He had been squinting at the scenery. Hearing my question, he let out a self-deprecating laugh.

“No, my family doesn’t have that kind of money,” he said, placing his milk tea on the ground beside him. “My brother taught me at first, and after I got the hang of it, I started teaching myself. Actually, instruments have a lot in common. Once you learn one, you can learn another. It’s easy!”

Gu Tongyu had been formally trained in music, but it was the kind meant for opera houses, which had little in common with Liu Jiang’s aspirations.

I also placed my milk tea beside his, our cups side by side. “Learning music is expensive,” I sighed.

“But it’s lucrative if you’re good,” Liu Jiang said confidently.

I belatedly realized our conversation wasn’t typical for high school students. Most people our age were still clumsily boasting about their affluent lives, like how their mom drove an Audi, their dad owned a company, and they lived in their own apartment.

—Although, for me, those were all facts.

Okay, I shut my mouth and brought the topic back to Liu Jiang.

When I had watched him perform before, I had asked him why he needed so much money. He just chuckled and changed the subject. I never got a straight answer.

So, I assumed it was some teenage secret and, with the wisdom of my past life, simply commented, “There will be plenty of opportunities to make money in the future.”

Liu Jiang sat up straighter beside me, his tone earnest, “I have time, but my grandma might not.”

The wind picked up, a large cloud drifting overhead, blocking out the sun. His squinted eyes opened slightly.

“She has cancer,” he continued. “I want to spend more time with her.”

His tone was as calm as if he were discussing dinner plans, but sincere.

I stared at the darkening sky, my mouth opening and closing, unable to speak.

For a moment, I wanted to yell for the system to pull me out, to bang my head against a wall in the meeting room, hard.

I remembered a day before the apocalypse. I had returned to Liancheng during a holiday and stood downstairs at the old building, looking up at the closed windows.

The weathered walls were slightly mottled, the windows covered in a layer of dust. I took a few steps back and could see that the apartment had been empty for a long time, with no signs of life.

The weather that day was even better than today. I had to shield my eyes with my hand to see clearly.

“Who are you looking for?” a voice suddenly called out from my left.

I turned, still shielding my eyes. The window of the small convenience store opened, and a woman leaned out.

I pointed to the window above. 

“Do you know where this family went?”

“The Liu family?” the woman asked loudly. 

“Their elderly passed away a few years ago, and then they moved.”

I couldn’t find any words, just looked back at the window, then at the woman. “Do you remember what year it was?”

The woman came out of the store and started arranging the drink bottles on display. She tilted her head. 

“A couple of years ago, less than two years.”

I was twenty-four that year. Counting two full years, Liu Jiang would have five more years with his grandmother.

The cloud passed, and I finally found something to say.

“He will,” I said. “With you by her side, she will be very happy.”

It wasn’t a lie. Every encounter with Grandma Liu made me feel she was an incredibly healthy person: healthy, happy, and whole, knowing how to live her life.

Perhaps my sudden maturity made Liu Jiang uncomfortable. He fidgeted with his pants leg, then slapped his knee and stood up.

“Why so serious?” he complained.

“You brought it up,” I said flatly.

“Alright, enough talk,” he said, facing the wind. “I have something for you.”

He hadn’t looked at me when he said the last part, so it took me a moment to turn and look at him.

“What is it?” I asked.

But by the time I spoke, he had already taken off running.

On the empty rooftop, it took me two seconds to react and turn around, catching only the fluttering hem of his uniform.

What was he up to?

I stood up and followed, then remembered to grab the milk tea. It was a bit sweet, but it was still a sugary drink—I should drink more while I’m young and my metabolism is still fast.

Liu Jiang ran down the stairs and stopped in front of his room. Seeing me following, he waved.

His room looked messier than last time, probably because he had been busy with small gigs recently. Colorful fabrics were strewn across the floor and hanging from the clothes rack. He ducked under the open wardrobe, pulled out a few unopened stage outfits, and tossed them onto the bed.

I frowned.

Shamefully, I also had OCD, probably inherited from my mother.

For a while, probably during college, the first thing I did whenever I went to his room was tidy up. Put the guitar away on its stand, stack the CDs neatly, then the clothes, and the accessories. Liu Jiang’s clothes were always adorned with trinkets that would tangle in my hands, making them a pain to organize.

I walked to the bed and glanced at the pile of clothes.

Liu Jiang’s style wasn’t as distinct back then. His stage outfits were just t-shirts with logos like “So-and-so Integrated Stove” or “○○ Shopping Mall,” nothing eye-catching.

Suppressing the urge to tidy up for him, I cleared a space in the pile of clothes and sat on the edge of the bed, watching him.

Rummaging through the wardrobe, Liu Jiang finally found what he was looking for. Unable to free his hands, he turned and called out to me.

I listlessly went over to him. He had pulled out a brand-new garment bag—I recognized it. It was the kind given out at luxury brand stores. My mom always brought a few home after business trips.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Try it on,” he said, tossing the bag to me. I caught it with both hands.

“What for?” I asked again.

He had straightened up, leaning against the wardrobe. Scratching his head, he said, “Didn’t I rip your clothes last time?”

I realized he was talking about the incident in the equipment room.

I had been worried because that shirt was from a well-known luxury brand, bought by my mom at the airport duty-free shop when she was on a business trip to Shanghai. It cost four figures. She had intended to buy it for my dad, but they had a fight that day, so she gave it to me instead. It fit me perfectly, even better than it would have fit my dad. From then on, it became mine.

However, my mom, realizing later how much it cost, became particularly concerned about it, always asking if I had dried it properly and hung it up in the closet.

As luck would have it, I had been wearing that shirt when I climbed through the window in the equipment room. As luck would have it, Liu Jiang grabbed it. And as luck would have it, he saw the brand label when I handed it to him.

I still remembered his expression—confusion, innocence, then shock.

“Damn!” he cursed. “You’re wearing such expensive clothes!”

I quickly played dumb. “My mom bought it. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

“How can it not matter?!”

Muttering to himself, he took the shirt downstairs to his grandma, then walked past me, still muttering.

We hadn’t mentioned the shirt since then, until now.

I wasn’t someone who lacked a sense of entitlement. If the adult Liu Jiang wanted to give me something, I would definitely accept it. But this time was different.

Especially after hearing why he worked so hard to make money.

“Really, there’s no need,” I said, handing the bag back. “You still have the receipt, right? Return it.”

“I threw it away,” he said, not taking the bag and even taking a couple of steps back.

I knew this brand was ridiculously expensive in Liancheng. Although Liu Jiang earned money from his gigs, this shirt must have cost him several months’ to half a year’s worth of savings.

He must have decided to buy it the same afternoon he ripped my shirt, then gone to the mall and put the new shirt at the bottom of his wardrobe.

And during that time, I had been busy being jealous of someone, getting into a fight, and then being kicked out by the system.

Shameful, truly shameful.

As I was trying to figure out how to explain my refusal to a sixteen-year-old, he had already backed away to the door.

“Just try it on! I’ll go out and wait for you in the hallway!”

He closed the door, leaving me alone in the room with the mountain of clothes and my own tangled emotions.

Damn.

My mind went blank for a moment. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at the full-length mirror opposite Liu Jiang’s bed. The Yang Pingsheng in the mirror, with both arrogance and innocence written on his face, stared back at me.

I took off my school uniform jacket. I was wearing a black t-shirt underneath.

Someone once said black suited me. My hair and eyes were both dark. Once, when I was standing by the window memorizing vocabulary, Liu Jiang looked at me and said, “When you’re quiet, it’s like you’re going to suck people in.”

I rolled up my sleeves, revealing an arm yet to be tanned by the sun. My bones were still growing, and there was a thin layer of muscle on my upper arm.

How did someone like me end up with Liu Jiang back then?

He seemed so much brighter, at least brighter than me.

Even though I knew Liu Jiang was waiting outside, my thoughts wandered. When I finally remembered to open the garment bag, I suddenly realized that another “person” was watching me.

I looked up at the ceiling and asked the system, “Tell me, am I being too materialistic?”

I knew it wouldn’t give any constructive answers. I just didn’t want to feel so alone and awkward. But unexpectedly, my question had an effect.

Static crackled, followed by the system’s voice: “Hello tester. Congratulations on passing level 1-2 ‘Resist societal expectations.’ You will now be redirected to the lobby. Please be prepared.”

What?

Did “societal expectations” refer to… myself?

Before I could ask, my mind plunged into darkness.