AUS Chapter 39: Liu Jiang, I Am Here to Save You

Of course, I couldn’t just ignore the fact that my parents suspected I might have a girlfriend and run off to have a private rendezvous with him. That would be walking right into my parents’—mainly my mom’s—line of fire.

So I had to find someone to take the fall for me.

In the second month after my mom suspected I was secretly dating a girlfriend, I felt that her suspicions about me had faded. I came home with a top-notch report card to ask for credit and rewards. As my mom tried her best to restrain the urge to grin from ear to ear, I timely said to her: “I’m going to a classmate’s house for tutoring during the vacation. I’ll be staying at the apartment, not coming home.”

“Tutoring?” My mom raised her eyes. “Is that necessary? Aren’t you only going into the second year of high school?”

I had already thought of my excuse: “But think about it, is our home environment suitable for studying at all? Besides, is it too early?”

What elite ladies fear most is a cognitive gap. Her tone shifted, and she asked me: “What classmate?”

“His family has a spare room, so I can rest there during the lunch break. The teachers are on duty at school, so I can go to an empty classroom for self-study, and I can find a teacher anytime if I have any questions I don’t understand.” My lies were already prepared. “If you’re not reassured, I’ll have him come and meet you.”

I was well aware that taking a step back opens up a wider world. My mom looked swayed and asked me again: “Who? Is he a reliable classmate?”

I maintained my posture of holding up the report card, my fingertips sliding down and pointing to Qin Bowen’s name.

Yes, the person I found to take the fall was Qin Bowen.

After the text message incident, he seemed to have realized that the stupid things he did were all in league with his vanity. So he became much more honest in class, spent less time hanging around the student council, and was no longer arrogant and domineering in class.

I later asked Liu Jiang if he had watched those family education films. I didn’t expect that this Qin Bowen had actually watched them, and even wrote reviews, showing them to Liu Jiang every few days.

So, taking advantage of the opportunity of him turning over a new leaf, I couldn’t help but exploit him thoroughly.

Specifically, I notified him that he was to act as a good student pretending to be my good friend, and that my mom might even interview him—but luckily, my mom decided to let me off the hook.

“He looks like an obedient one,” my mom asserted after looking at the class photo.

Perfect!

So, Liu Jiang’s and my summer vacation began in August.

At first, I wanted to move into Liu Jiang’s house openly and brazenly, but given that his entire family knew Liu Jiang had a secret about his sexual orientation, I decided not to impose. There was no other reason than that I always felt I still had an unfinished mission.

And for someone in the prime of their youth, doing anything was more fun than being in a relationship.

On the seventh day of summer vacation, I appeared outside Liu Jiang’s window as agreed.

It seemed that ever since that one time I climbed in through the window, I had fallen in love with the feeling of not using the main entrance. I didn’t come to see Liu Jiang on the first day of summer vacation because I knew that although his family didn’t care about grades, they valued family ties, so as soon as the vacation started, he would be visiting relatives all over the place. Unlike my family, my family only had small capitalist gatherings, and then I would have to listen to my parents talk about bourgeois matters that I, a high school student, couldn’t understand.

In short, after Liu Jiang was done being busy, I came to see him again.

However, there was one thing that I found strange. Since their family valued family ties so much, why had I never seen Liu Jiang’s parents come home?

I had imagined what his parents looked like. Liu Jiang probably resembled his mother more, with the same fair skin and fox eyes. His father was probably a quiet and gentle person who wore glasses and would put his arm around his wife’s shoulder in photos.

—Anyway!

I had arrived at the window.

Liu Jiang was not here. I took off my shoes and came in by myself, put down my backpack, and stepped into the corridor.

There was a rustling sound coming from the living room downstairs, as if someone was talking, mixed with the sound of leaves rustling in the midsummer. I couldn’t hear clearly. Just as I was about to get closer to listen, a hand suddenly grabbed me.

My center of gravity quickly shifted backwards, and my foot slipped, causing me to fall into the room used as a closet. In the small space, Liu Jiang and I were face to face.

Why was he here?

I couldn’t ask, not because I was too shocked, but because my mouth was being covered by him.

After confirming that I wouldn’t shout, he let go of my mouth. I was still in a state of shock from his domineering action. In my memory, Liu Jiang had always been gentle when he was about to do something to me.

“He’s downstairs,” Liu Jiang’s hand pointed downwards.

He, who? Wait—Gu Tongyu.

It was as if two dogs from feuding families could smell each other from opposite ends of the neighborhood after a five-minute walk downstairs. In the distant and blurry sound of conversation, I caught that voice that annoyed me the most.

I was about to stand up on the spot, but my head hit the light bulb hanging from the closet ceiling. I couldn’t even cry out, and sat back down, holding my head.

After a long while, I looked up at him with teary eyes and asked: “Why is this bastard here?”

Given that my head hurt like hell, this curse of “bastard” was delivered with no force at all. Liu Jiang rested his hands on his knees and looked at me. I felt he was a bit speechless.

But he still explained to me.

“He came with his parents. They said they rented an RV and are planning to go to the nearby mountains to stay for two days. They want to take me with them.”

As he spoke, his voice grew smaller and smaller, and he ended up scratching the top of his head with his hand, a look of distress on his face.

I knew that this kind of invitation from elders one was not quite familiar with was the most difficult to refuse. Besides, in two days, Grandpa Liu and Grandma Liu were going to a villa in the countryside for vacation. Liu Sisi was also leaving. She was going to the next city to attend a beauty exhibition and stay with a friend who was also a beauty blogger.

Only Liu Jiang was left.

“I couldn’t refuse at all. They just made the decision for me. We have to leave this afternoon,” he said, covering his face with both hands. The tips of his ears, which were exposed, were deathly pale.

As peers who grew up together, Liu Jiang definitely couldn’t tell his elders about Gu Tongyu’s true colors. Even if he didn’t care about the other family’s face, for the sake of his own grandparents, he had to at least maintain a good relationship between the two families.

That’s true.

Sometimes there aren’t that many satisfying dramas in reality. At that time, I was only thinking of coming to see Liu Jiang to shield him from Gu Tongyu’s harassment. I hadn’t thought about what to do if I encountered this kind of situation.

“You don’t want to go with them, do you?” I asked tentatively.

Liu Jiang didn’t answer me, but sighed heavily. This seemed to be the first time I had heard him sigh so genuinely.

I suddenly looked up: “When are your grandparents leaving?”

Liu Jiang was puzzled: “A little earlier than me, around noon—what’s wrong?”

I suddenly stood up, this time being careful to avoid the light bulb. I said: “I’ll be back in a bit.”

He also stood up with me, pushed the light bulb aside, his eyes full of confusion: “What’s this all about?”

“You said before that his parents were very dissatisfied with him getting into fights, right?” I asked Liu Jiang.

Liu Jiang nodded.

“You also said that his parents hoped he would grow up well as a normal top student, right?”

Liu Jiang nodded again.

“No,” he asked me back, “what does this have to do with his parents wanting to go camping together?”

For someone like Liu Jiang, who came from a harmonious family with simple relationships, parent-child relationships were as straightforward as could be. Naturally, he couldn’t understand the gap created by the difference between parental expectations and a child’s abilities.

But I understood, because I was a fortunate, excellent child who happened to meet my parents’ astonishing demands. So I understood best what people like him, who failed to satisfy their parents, feared the most.

So, come on, an eye for an eye.

At one-thirty in the afternoon, Grandpa Liu and Grandma Liu boarded the minibus to the senior resort. The only ones left at home were Gu Tongyu and his parents, who were temporarily staying in the living room, as well as Liu Sisi, who was innocently left to entertain the guests.

The third time Liu Sisi sent a message asking Liu Jiang if he wanted to kick them out, I knocked on the door from outside.

Perhaps my image this time was very different from usual. Liu Sisi was stunned, and then she was about to turn her head to ask Liu Jiang what tricks they were playing. But I took a step into the house first and pushed up the glasses on the bridge of my nose.

I scanned the room, then asked: “Excuse me, is classmate Liu Jiang here?”

In the past hour, I had summed up the image of a perfect good student in the eyes of parents and teachers, and then temporarily dressed up.

Now, the good student himself—I, Yang Pingsheng, made my grand entrance.

Before reappearing, I had specially flattened my usually fluffy hair a bit, and found the glasses I was unwilling to wear, hung them on the bridge of my nose, and while I was at it, I popped the collar of the polo shirt I had specially worn today and tucked the shirt into my waistband.

One hand in my pocket, the other holding a textbook. Liu Jiang looked at me and chose to press my popped collar down.

“You’ve overdone it,” he said.

So now I was wearing a polo shirt with the collar not popped, holding a textbook, and appearing in the living room.

Liu Sisi recognized me, so she almost couldn’t hold back her laughter. Gu Tongyu also recognized me, but after seeing me, a kind of instinctive fear actually appeared in his eyes—not directed at me, but at the other two people sitting on the sofa, that is, his parents.

His parents were sitting on the sofa, both in the same dignified and tense posture. His mother was wearing a tight-fitting suit dress, and his father was wearing a linen short-sleeved shirt. Both of them looked like elites.

Very similar to my parents, but not as elite.

With no adults at home, Mother Gu naturally took on the role of the person in charge of the house. She stood up, a smile on her face: “Are you looking for little Jiang? He’s still upstairs packing.”

The time I was pulled into the closet by Liu Jiang was when he used the excuse of going upstairs to pack. He had escaped for a good two hours and hadn’t come down at all.

He was still hiding upstairs now, not because he wasn’t cooperating with my performance, but because I suggested he let me perform on my own.

I was afraid he would laugh if he was there.

I turned my gaze to Mother Gu and replied: “There’s no need for him to come down specially. I’m just here to inform you that for the next week, we will have a special training session for the students in our class who need improvement. As the specially appointed outstanding student for this training, I will definitely be responsible and work hard to make good use of the summer vacation to improve classmate Liu Jiang’s grades to above the passing line.”

Liu Sisi turned her face away. I saw that her cheeks were puffed up to be twice their normal size.

When Gu Tongyu first saw me, he still had a hint of a polite smile. Now, the smile on his face was completely gone, because he heard that I had deliberately emphasized the three words “top student.”

He lowered his voice and asked me: “What kind of act is this?”

The corners of his mouth were still turned up, but it wasn’t a smile, but rather a kind of helplessness from being provoked to the extreme. I took a step back, clearing my relationship with him.

“Perhaps, are you Liu Jiang’s parent? If there are other students around you who need improvement, you can send them to our summer training camp at any time. For students who fight, brawl, and do not abide by the school rules and regulations, we also have strict control measures.”

Saying this, I turned my gaze to Father Gu. Although he hadn’t spoken from beginning to end, I felt that the power of life and death for the entire incident was in his hands.

Sure enough, the moment our eyes met, Father Gu denied my statement on the spot: “No, we don’t have any bad students around us!”

The atmosphere in the room immediately sank a degree. Liu Sisi stopped laughing, cleared her throat, crossed her arms, and pretended to inadvertently move aside to let us have free rein.

“Is that so? Then I am very sorry for misunderstanding you,” I said with a fake smile, and wanted to say something more, but the topic was actively interrupted by them.

“Hasn’t the car been checked yet?” Father Gu asked in a deliberately relaxed tone, then turned his head to call his son, “You come out with me for a bit, we’ll go check it.”

Not good.

I turned my head to look at Mother Gu’s reaction. It was indeed not good.