AUS Chapter 42: My Summer with Liu Jiang

“Go” is a very ordinary word, but when changed to “run away,” its nature becomes completely different.

In the scorching heat of July, during the aimless summer vacation, in the relaxed city of Liancheng where everything from its people to its nature was languid, I turned my back on the forces that were, to me, irresistible at that moment, and set off towards my destiny.

Fortunately, I had someone to accompany me on this lonely journey, because someone had agreed to run away with me.

So what other choice did I have?

At five in the evening, we got into a car heading for the nearest beach.

Their preparations were a bit more thorough. Liang Yi had called his cousin who owned a barbecue restaurant to drive the family shop’s van, and they even brought a grill and ingredients, saying they were going to have a beach barbecue.

As for Hao Zi, he brought an inflatable mattress and a speaker. If there had been more space in the car, he would have brought a karaoke machine too; a complete and utter optimist.

Then there was Liu Jiang. His equipment was simpler: a guitar case and a backpack with his personal belongings. He had wanted to bring his camera, but considering it would be inconvenient to carry personal items at the beach, he decided against it.

He was still wearing that psychedelic tie-dye T-shirt, the same style as the otaku’s, but he had changed into a pair of beach shorts and slipped on some Crocs, ready to go.

Finally, there was me. Besides the phone in my left pocket and a cream soda I had pilfered from Liu Jiang’s fridge before leaving, I had no other personal belongings.

A minimalist lifestyle, a bit like how I am in class.

I’ve always been the type to only have a textbook and a single notebook. I only use red and black gel pens. As for those complicated and comprehensive error-correction notebooks, I’ve never made one.

But now, heading out with this minimalist style, I felt a little unsettled. On one hand, it was because I had a premonition that my parents would really notice my unusual behavior tonight. On the other hand, this seemed to be the first time Liu Jiang and I were spending the night out together.

The car was noisy and boisterous.

Liang Yi’s cousin was also a fiery character. The two brothers had tuned the radio to the local news and were fervently debating the ingredients and flavors of the city’s barbecue restaurants. Hao Zi was leaning against the middle row door, his elbow clamping a water gun to steady himself, holding his phone and heatedly playing a ranked match. Every so often, he would punch the back of the front seat, telling Liang Yi to tone it down.

Liu Jiang and I were in the back row. The car wasn’t big, and the battle in the front occasionally spilled over to us. Liu Jiang was quieter than usual. While I was spacing out, he suddenly nudged me with his elbow.

“Want to listen to some music?” he asked.

So, for the half-hour drive to the beach, he and I shared a pair of earbuds, listening to a few European and American rock songs, a few Japanese rock songs, and even some K-pop that the girls in our class liked.

I took off my earbud and looked at him, bewildered. He shrugged, giving me the impression that he could drop the earbuds and start dancing to the music at any moment.

We didn’t go to a tourist spot, but to a wild beach known only to the locals. The car was parked, the trunk was opened, and the simple folding table and barbecue grill were set up. Big Brother Liang started fanning the stove to light it, with Liang Yi helping beside him. The two brothers worked in perfect harmony, leaving no room for us outsiders to interfere. We were forced to go to the seaside and watch the waves.

The rocky beach lacked the delicacy of a southern sandy beach, and it didn’t have the same vivid blue water and sky. Instead, it had a touch of nature’s hollow chill.

I stood about a meter away from the water’s edge, listening to the rumbling sound of the waves crashing against the reefs. Liu Jiang was next to me; he had already kicked off his shoes and waded into the water.

On a midsummer evening, the heat was so intense it felt like walking through gas. It was better by the sea. Standing where the spray could reach with just a little more effort, I felt like I had become a pebble on the ground, cool and unrestrained.

Liu Jiang kicked and splashed around in the water for a few turns, then rushed back to the shore. The pebbles hid shells and crustaceans, and after just a few steps, Liu Jiang was pricked and kept hopping. But he persevered, bouncing all the way to my side, and then started taking off his shirt.

“I’m going for a swim,” he said, tossing his shirt at my feet. “Aren’t you coming in?”

I hooked his shirt from the ground with my foot, shook it out in my hand, and replied, “Forget it, I didn’t bring a swimsuit.”

He paused. “Why didn’t you say so earlier—I would have lent you one of mine!”

“Lend me swim trunks?” My brow furrowed. “You lend out personal things like swim trunks to just anyone?”

He fell silent, retreated into the water, and somehow found a shell. He held it high and threw it towards me, shouting, “How dare you look down on me!”

I wasn’t looking down on him, I was just questioning his actions. If he was willing to lend them to me without hesitation, he would surely be willing to lend them to others without hesitation.

I went to pick up the shell he had thrown and tossed it back at him. Moving in the water was slower than on the shore, but he had the advantage of the water as cover. After a few rounds of this, he shouted to me, “Come on in and wade with me!”

I emphasized to him once more, “I didn’t bring a swimsuit!”

He probably got bored splashing around by himself, so Liu Jiang returned to the shore.

He had indeed grown taller. The robust upward growth hadn’t stopped him from putting on muscle. The lines from his shoulders to his back were smooth and defined, covered by a thin, firm layer of muscle. The sun was setting on the horizon, casting a golden fringe on his pale skin, giving him a warmth that was different from his usual temperament.

Suddenly, as if he had thought of something, he spoke quickly to me, “Then how about we strip naked and go for a swim?”

“Huh?” My reaction was exactly what I was thinking. “This is a public beach, skinny-dipping is illegal!”

Liu Jiang’s response was also simple and direct. “Are you just shy? I can strip with you if you want.”

I didn’t answer. I turned to look back at the shore not far away. Hao Zi had finished his game and was video-chatting with his little goddess. The Liang brothers were still busy at the grill, each with their own task. No one was paying attention to us over here.

When I turned back, my eyes met Liu Jiang’s. He beckoned to me. “Over here.”

The wild, rocky beach was at the base of a gentle cliff. A grassy dirt path led down to a platform perfect for watching the sunset. Walking further behind the reefs led to a shallow sea area with a less open view.

There was no one in the shallow sea area right now, just the two of us walking, one foot deep, one foot shallow. I was on the reef, he was in the water.

You couldn’t see the sunset from here. It wasn’t until the afterglow disappeared behind a protruding rock that Liu Jiang said to me, “Okay, no one can see us now.”

It was just the two of us, but I started to get nervous. It would have been fine with the lights off, and the atmosphere of a bathhouse would have helped, but in a public sea like this, neither of us wanted to be the first to take the plunge.

After a long hesitation, I steeled myself, pulled my shirt off over my head, and tossed it onto a nearby rock. I turned to see Liu Jiang looking at me.

Compared to him, my muscles were more solid. This was a natural advantage of mine; I’d had good explosive power and endurance since I was young and was almost scouted by the school’s sports team.

—But being watched by him like this, I felt a little uncomfortable.

The afterglow vanished, and the world was left with nothing but a thorough blue. I turned to him. The wind between us seemed to slow down, until I squatted down and directly pulled off Liu Jiang’s swim trunks.

Perhaps my action was a bit roguish, and I ran too fast, because it took him a few seconds to react. From behind me came his vigorous shout, “Yang Pingsheng—I’ll—fuck your—grandpa!”

Our chase scene only lasted for about a dozen meters. On one hand, the resistance in the sea was significant, and counting the time before the apocalypse, I hadn’t run in the sea for about ten years. Not falling over was already the greatest luck.

On the other hand, I was holding back, letting Liu Jiang catch up to me wasn’t a bad thing.

In short, he stripped me too. He wasn’t as adept at mischief as I was and even needed my help while I was holding back. In the end, the two of us stood stark naked in the sea, like we were scrubbing each other’s backs in a bathhouse. The scene wasn’t as intimate as I had imagined.

But it was a lot of fun.

After sunset, it still took a while for the sky to become completely dark. In the ambient light, where we could see each other but everything was slightly dim, we swam a few laps in the thundering waves.

When the only light source left was the illumination from the distant harbor, we returned to the shore. Since I was soaked to the bone, I could only temporarily curl up on a rock, with a towel Liu Jiang had brought covering my lap.

He quickly changed back into his swim trunks. To avoid worrying our other friends who came with us, Liu Jiang ran over to find them once.

I was left alone on the shore with only the sound of the waves. My phone had just been returned to the van, so now I had no communication devices with me. For a moment, I thought I was going to be abandoned between heaven and earth.

But Liu Jiang wouldn’t leave me behind.

The lights of the harbor in front flickered. He returned, holding a paper bowl, wearing someone’s flip-flops on his feet.

“Freshly grilled barbecue! I stole a little, try it first.”

As he spoke, the bowl came under my nose, and the authentic aroma of Liancheng barbecue filled my nostrils. A seventeen or eighteen-year-old’s body is great; you can eat heartily at any time. I sampled two chicken wings, and Liu Jiang and I faced the sea and spat out the bones together.

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

Liu Jiang didn’t answer right away. After spitting the last bit of bone from his mouth, he replied, “Yang Pingsheng, I’ve discovered you’re gentler than I imagined.”

“Huh?” I held my chicken wing, dumbfounded.

“Yeah,” he leaped off the rock, squatted by the sea, and washed his hands in the waves. “When I first met you, I thought you were the kind of person who would break people’s hearts.”

He looked up at me. “So at first glance, I wasn’t too happy to see you. A bit annoyed, actually.”

I spat out the last bone too. “You’d bring someone you found annoying at first sight home? Besides, you had only known me for a day.”

He immediately started making excuses for himself. “Well, wasn’t it because I saw you were sick!”

At this point, we both fell silent. It seemed that since then, I had never continued my “I am sick” performance. Especially now, I thought of a detail I had overlooked before.

The day we were following Qin Bowen, he had asked me a question in the fast-food restaurant. He asked if my “sickness” was the same as his.

A condition that couldn’t be widely accepted by the world for the time being, so it was collectively called a sickness.

He was asking if I liked men too.

I had indeed admitted to him in the gym storage room that I liked men, but that confession, which I myself hadn’t expected, was met with a time reset. This Liu Jiang, who was now enjoying the sea breeze with me, knew nothing.

He still didn’t know I liked men, much less that the one I liked was him.

“Oh! They’re calling us!” Liu Jiang suddenly shouted and then stood up.

In the distance, under the sea cliff, Liang Yi was jumping up and down. It was the signal that dinner was ready. Seeing the towel wrapped around my waist, he shouted loudly at me, “You two—were you just having a secret affair—”

Liu Jiang burst out laughing, which earned him several punches from me. In the end, I only agreed to go back after I had my clothes on. Liu Jiang followed behind me, calling me pretentious.

We ate dinner facing the sea. Big Brother Liang’s skills were truly worthy of a restaurant owner; the barbecue was perfect in color, aroma, and taste. We a group of half-grown boys ate ravenously, producing two boxes of trash from all the skewers.

—But rest assured, we would take this non-biodegradable trash with us. Naughty as we were, the people of Liancheng still loved Liancheng’s sea.

After dinner, Liu Jiang and I, the two who hadn’t participated in the cooking, were in charge of cleaning up.

The nearest trash station to the wild beach was about eight hundred meters away. It was in a parking lot. Under a streetlight, Liu Jiang and I threw the cardboard boxes we had carried all the way into the trash can.

The terrain here was higher than where we were just now, and we could see the harbor lights reflecting on the sea’s surface. Behind us was the bright-lit human society. Liu Jiang and I stopped in our tracks in unspoken agreement.

“I’m having a smoke,” he decided.

After the crisp click of the lighter, I smelled that familiar citrus and tobacco scent. Just standing here was a bit boring. I pointed my thumb over my shoulder at the convenience store nearby.

I said, “I’m going to buy some drinks.”

The convenience store wasn’t big. It was located not far in front of the trash station, facing the harbor.

Pushing open the door, I heard the familiar convenience store welcome jingle. After an afternoon of being cut off from the world, I once again felt the beauty of human society.

After grabbing two bottles of drinks from the cooler, I was about to go to the freezer section next to it to get some popsicles for Big Brother Liang. But just as I closed the cooler door, I realized someone had suddenly appeared in the aisle.

Wait.

I turned my head stiffly.

Why is it him?