AUS Chapter 40: Finding Some Fun with Liu Jiang

The father and son went out. After looking left and right, Mother Gu decided not to stay indoors for long either. She said: “I’ll just… I’ll just go out and see if they need any help.”

After saying that, she put on her high heels and ran off so fast that one could say she disappeared in a cloud of dust.

The door closed. The sound of wind blowing through the leaves came from the crack in the window, and then there was no other sound.

I stood where I was, holding my breath and listening. I only heard faint human voices—what socialites they were, even controlling the volume of their arguments to be within a range others couldn’t hear.

Of course, I wasn’t some busybody who insisted on listening to other people’s privacy. I withdrew my attention, didn’t probe any further, and prepared to go upstairs to find Liu Jiang.

Unexpectedly, a figure flashed at the top of the stairs. I saw him walk out from the corner of the staircase.

Liu Sisi had seen the whole thing. Now that she saw the two of us together again, she probably knew what was going on.

“I’ll leave the downstairs to you two,” she chose to be an irresponsible manager.

Actually, it was also because she noticed that the atmosphere between the two of us was not quite right. A woman’s intuition should never be underestimated.

I still maintained my politeness, stretching my neck to express my gratitude for her hard work. Liu Sisi couldn’t be bothered with me, nor could she be bothered to look at my deliberate good-student appearance. With a wave of her hand, she left without looking back.

Seeing Liu Jiang stop in front of me, I awkwardly pulled out the shirt I had tucked into my waistband. The two of us stood there in silence.

“Did I overact?” I asked him.

“A little,” he replied to me.

Actually, if Gu Tongyu’s parents were left to think about it carefully, they would definitely notice that something was wrong. This was already the information age. Why would a deliberately dressed-up good student come to the door specifically to state the facts for a matter that could be solved with a phone call or a text message?

But the key was that their awkwardness and self-esteem did not allow them to think carefully, because the thing they feared most had been exposed, which was a fig leaf called “good child.”

A good student who could have let his parents hold their heads high in front of their neighbors and relatives had gone astray in a way that no one wanted to see. Or perhaps because of the absolute expectations of his parents, going astray had become an inevitable result.

The him now was not a complete saint, nor a complete bully. He could be reckless and arrogant in front of his peers, but when he returned to the home that had once made him tremble in fear, he retreated again. The him now was an incomplete entity, containing both duality and uncertainty.

Why was I so clear about this? Because I almost went down this path myself.

Before I transferred to No. 20 Middle School, I got into a fight with someone from my original high school.

I had long forgotten the reason, but I remembered the feeling I had before every fight. It wasn’t for any particular reason, just because I had grown up carefree. I was good-looking, I was excellent, I was loved by my parents and peers. I could be free for a bit, I could go and make a scene with flailing limbs, no one would blame me.

The past me seemed to have had the same attitude towards Liu Jiang.

I was well aware that I was being cared for.

But I was also lucky. I might have been just a little smarter, or perhaps I was cared for by Liu Jiang a little more, or maybe my parents were slightly better. In short, Gu Tongyu and I eventually walked different paths in life.

And this incredibly lucky me, standing here, the first emotion I felt was actually a secret delight.

I was secretly delighted, but immediately afterwards, I felt ashamed of my own secret delight.

Liu Sisi came down from upstairs again, this time clearly in a bad mood. She held Mother Gu’s handbag in her left hand and Father Gu’s briefcase in her right. Apparently, both of them had left in a hurry and forgotten to take their things, and were too embarrassed to come back and ask for them. Liu Jiang, who had just been called a “bad student,” was not a good choice, and at this moment, Liu Sisi, who didn’t even have to study, became their best means of communication.

She glanced at each of us, had nothing to say, kicked open the door with one foot, and strode away.

Half a minute later, she kicked the door open from the outside again and went upstairs on her own.

I took the initiative to admit my mistake, but unfortunately Liu Sisi had already left. I could only turn to Liu Jiang and say: “Adolescent kids are quite annoying.”

I was talking about myself, and by the way, about Liu Jiang.

Liu Jiang, however, smoothed things over for me. He said: “She used to be like this too, always getting angry with me for no reason.”

I, on the other hand, felt that given the level of trouble the two of us usually caused, Liu Sisi’s temper was already incredibly good.

If nothing unexpected happened, today’s RV trip was definitely going to be canceled. Liu Jiang looked at the quiet courtyard outside the window and muttered to himself: “It’s over.”

“Yeah, it’s over,” I answered him.

To be honest, it was resolved more easily than I had imagined. Next, we could enjoy our perhaps carefree summer vacation.

Saying this, I went to straighten out the wrinkled shirt that had been pressed by my waistband, and was about to raise my hand to take off my glasses.

“Don’t move,” Liu Jiang called to me. “Don’t take them off. You look good with them on.”

This seemed to be the first time he had made a request of me. Usually, even if someone else’s request was reasonable, I would instinctively rebel against it. But I don’t know what was wrong today, I actually stopped, letting this pair of glasses that I was usually too lazy to wear stay on my face.

“Really?” I asked him.

After saying that, I turned my gaze to the arched mirror hanging on the wall.

It was a pair of half-frame glasses. My eyesight was fine, my nearsightedness was not severe, to the point where I could see the blackboard clearly without squinting when sitting in the front row. So this pair of glasses, a gift from my parents, had always been kept in its case, and I had almost never thought of them.

Okay, I remembered now why I always wore glasses at the company.

Apart from the inevitable decline in vision that comes with age, Liu Jiang’s expectations must have also played a part. In reality, he might have also said this “Don’t take them off” to me.

Actually, my appearance wasn’t one hundred percent that of a good kid—a straight nose bridge, hair as black as ink that翹 upwards, a fierce gaze, and silkworm-like bags under my eyes when I smiled. No matter how you looked at it, I seemed like the kind of existence that would make the bad kids in the class secretly call out “big brother.”

But with the glasses on, the parts that I considered fierce were hidden, leaving only a sharp chin and thin lips.

Perhaps this was the part of me that Liu Jiang liked, a less ostentatious, less aggressive Yang Pingsheng.

To put it inappropriately, it was as if with this layer of covering, my cruel and unrighteous attributes were hidden. My malice was gone, but it was ready to come out at any moment.

I’m getting sidetracked.

I turned my head and saw a Liu Jiang who was slightly clearer than usual.

“Good-looking?” I asked him.

“Good-looking,” he didn’t hesitate at all.

I cleared my throat slightly and asked him: “They’re gone. Do you have any plans?”

I had originally planned to spend a whole vacation annoying Gu Tongyu, but I didn’t expect that I would be the one to give him the first blow. After this battle, I felt that I wouldn’t see him for a short period of time.

I had also completely made an enemy of him.

—A good thing!

“No plans,” Liu Jiang was not as cheerful as I was. After answering me, he turned around and went upstairs.

Wait, if he wasn’t going to appreciate it, wasn’t I wearing these glasses for nothing?

No, a perfectly good summer vacation can’t be ruined by this inexplicable mood! I decided to follow him and win him over with my pestering and charm.

An hour later, the two of us were both collapsed on the floor, laughing until we were out of breath.

“And then, and then…” I had originally taken off my glasses to wipe my tears, but now I put them on again.

With the glasses on, my expression transformed into a serious one, as if possessed by a best actor: “If you are not satisfied with the compensation result from our fried chicken restaurant—then take it. This is my child, he’s yours, my first child.”

As my words fell, the two of us collapsed again. Liu Jiang had originally been wriggling on the bedsheet, but he was so amused by my previous performances that he rolled onto the floor. Now he couldn’t even make a sound from laughing, and could only clutch his stomach and pound the floor frantically.

I didn’t know what I was performing either.

I don’t know which of us started it. At first, we were just imitating the ordinary classmates in our class who had little presence. Then, I suddenly had a great inspiration and started to imitate some classic characters from TV shows I had seen.

As for the fried chicken restaurant manager I had just performed, it was probably a combination of the fried chicken shop owner from Breaking Bad and some online bloggers. I didn’t know if my performance was accurate, but it successfully amused Liu Jiang.

My laughter had stopped, but his was still going. I sat up, propping my hands on the bedsheet, and looked at him from across half the bed. He had rolled over and was lying on the floor, panting.

“Are you in a better mood now?” I asked him.

He didn’t speak, but sat up and asked me: “Want some ice cream?”

It started to get hot in the afternoon. The weather in Liancheng was never very hot, but that day was a bit stuffy, and it might rain.

Liu Jiang’s family’s refrigerator was not big, but they made up for it in quantity. They even had a freezer dedicated to a small convenience store. When summer came, the freezer was filled with wholesale local brand ice creams, giving off an air of being free for the taking.

I took a crispy coffee-flavored ice cream for myself and gave him a milk and raisin one. This kid liked the taste of milk, I remembered that quite clearly.

His room had a PS4, which was said to have been bought for him by his parents on one of their trips back home. Although he was a child who didn’t study, he was also quite self-disciplined. Other than going out to earn money, he focused on honing his skills and rarely turned on the game console.

On this idle afternoon, I lay on his blanket and watched him take off the cloth cover of the game console, turn on the screen, and enter the game selection screen.

My interest in games was average, because they were a part of my future work. The colorful screens on the console interface were just frequent visitors in my competitive analysis.

So I lay there and finished the ice cream, then chewed on the ice cream stick while looking at his CDs, listening to the sound effects from his game console change from the sound of horse hooves in the west to the sound of speeding cars in Miami. I started to feel bored. When I propped myself up, I saw that the popsicle stick in his mouth was about to melt.

While complaining about him being messy, I pulled away the popsicle stick and wiped away the sugary water that had dripped all over his chin. He was obedient and didn’t dodge, just letting me wipe him.

He suddenly said a sentence: “Boring.”

“What the fuck is boring?” I raised my eyes and threw away the trash in my hand.

“The game is boring,” he replied to me.

I was quite helpless. Perhaps boredom was the base color of youth. Every moment that once felt extremely boring was a happiness that could never be chased back in the future.

I was quite interested to hear what other opinions he could express about boredom, but I didn’t expect him to have some new ideas.

He suddenly looked up and our eyes met: “Let’s find some fun.”