AUS Chapter 59: A Moment of Leisure with Liu Jiang

According to the scenario I concocted, that was indeed the case.

My gaze flickered from side to side before I asked him back, “Yes, what about it?”

He replied, “Your description reminds me of The Truman Show.”

The Truman Show is a classic dystopian film about a protagonist trapped inside a television show. Liu Jiang and I had seen it together. He loved it and had watched it many times on his own. The time we saw it was a theatrical re-release.

Back then, I found it a bit comical and absurd, but the plot left a deep impression on me. Now, so many years later, just hearing the film’s title brought its classic scenes back to mind.

“It’s not the same,” I retorted. 

“In the film, the protagonist doesn’t know he’s in a man-made world. But in my scenario, the protagonist knows. He even asked to enter the level himself.”

Liu Jiang then asked, “So what’s the difference between the world inside the level and his real world?”

Actually, there was no difference.

This wasn’t like Alice in Wonderland, where the protagonist jumps down a hole and arrives in a fantastical world where nothing follows the rules of logic. In my “As Usual Plan,” the simulation was merely a prelude to reality—no, a variation. Only as the level continued to develop would the two eventually overlap.

“There is no difference,” I answered truthfully. 

“You could say the world in the level is the second installment of the real world, but it’s a prequel.”

I drew a few arrows on the blackboard to indicate the sequence of the plot’s development, then turned my gaze to Liu Jiang. He was still resting his chin in his hand and, with barely a moment’s thought, offered a solution.

He said, “Since the protagonist can return to a time before everything happened within the level, why not have him go to the very beginning of it all and look for any useful clues?”

Seeing that I didn’t quite understand, he hopped down from the mat, walked over to me, picked up another piece of chalk, and drew a straight, right-pointing horizontal line—an X-axis—in the blank space below the stick figure.

“This is the progression of time,” he told me.

I nodded.

He drew a circle on the left side of the X-axis, then another one further to the right. He continued, “The one on the left is the past, and the one on the right is the present.”

Seeing I understood, he drew another circle parallel to the one representing the past. 

“This is where the plot of the level is located,” he said.

—So that’s how it was.

I was suddenly reminded of the Liu Jiang I saw in my dream, the one sitting at the foot of my bed. The next line of the song he sang was:

“I had to find the passage back to the place I was before.”

I had to continue with the “As Usual Plan” to find the slightest trace leading to the future.

In other words, I just had to keep playing, right?

But Liu Jiang interrupted my speculation. 

“But I don’t think you should proceed with the level in the conventional way.”

I paused, then replied, “I’m the one controlling the protagonist.”

He blinked and rephrased, “You shouldn’t control the protagonist to proceed with the level in the conventional way.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Didn’t you just say the protagonist can communicate directly with the game system?” He looked at me. 

“Since the game developers included a function that lets the protagonist break the fourth wall, the way to beat it is definitely not just to play through the level.”

“Or, to put it another way, simply playing through the level might get you to an ending, but the true ending—the true ending—is definitely not something you can achieve by just following the level’s flow.”

My mind was in a bit of a turmoil.

Liu Jiang’s path to clearing the game wasn’t without merit, but understanding it in theory didn’t mean I could understand it in practice. How was I supposed to find clues about the real world within the “As Usual Plan”?

It felt like from the very first time I entered the simulation, all I cared about was Liu Jiang and everything that existed around him.

Time, place, other characters? I never paid any attention.

Did this mean I had to go through the level all over again, just to notice the details I’d missed?

The blackboard was a mess of my handwriting and his, set against a background of old chalk dust that wouldn’t wipe clean, just like the chaos in my head right now. I needed a place to pause, to think about what other paths I could take.

“Are you leaving? Going back to play the game you’re stuck on?” Liu Jiang asked me.

In theory, yes. I still had an unfinished task. But the way he asked made me feel like he had a request to make.

Sure enough, his eyes were bright as he looked at me.

He said, “You promised me before that if I helped you solve your puzzle, you’d take me out for burgers.”

He actually remembered that.

But then again, I had made that promise, and I’d said it with such conviction at the time, without ever thinking about when I’d fulfill it.

I felt ashamed.

But I still had time to make up for it.

“Fine,” I told him. 

“Let’s go now.”

Let’s go now, without a thought for the consequences.

When we walked out of the sports equipment storage room, the sky had, at some point, begun to clear. A crack opened in the distant clouds, offering a glimpse of the blue sky hiding in the shadows.

Puddles lay quietly on the ground, tempting one with the urge to run up and splash them apart.

I knew the fast-food place Liu Jiang was talking about. Before we went to that live music show for the first time, we had browsed a secondhand market. The restaurant was in the indoor commercial street below the market, empty and deserted.

But Liu Jiang had told me the food there was good. It was hard to imagine how much free time he had, free enough to try out restaurants in a place like this.

Then again, it was something he would do, so it made sense.

After Liu Jiang walked out of the sports equipment storage room, the world seemed to become a little more real. Vague figures of pedestrians appeared on the streets, and cars began to pass by. Standing at the bus stop, I could smell the fresh scent of a late summer rain.

We were the only two people on the bus, sitting near the back. The bus didn’t stop again for the entire journey.

For a moment, I really thought my initial idea had come true—that we were really going to ride a last bus out of an American teen movie, heading towards another state to embrace our new life.

But the bus was ultimately just one of Liancheng’s common, old-fashioned tin boxes. The air inside carried the faint, earthy smell of a rainy day. The windows were hazy with fog, and the plastic seats, covered in velvet, sat empty in the cabin. It was just Liu Jiang and I, admiring the scenery of this moment.

Half an hour later, we arrived at our destination.

In the parking lot, the secondhand market was just as it had been the last time we were here, lonely and unnoticed, as if Liu Jiang were its only customer.

Well, now there was me.

We stepped through the automatic glass doors and walked through the indoor commercial street, where almost no shops were open. The fast-food restaurant’s red and yellow sign was a solitary beacon of light. We were the only customers in the store.

We each got a combo meal and sat facing each other by the window. Unwrapping the burger paper, we both took our first bite at almost the same time.

Good, my taste buds were still as rich as a high schooler’s.

As I’d grown up, other changes weren’t so obvious, but the one thing I’d noticed was how my sense of taste for food had changed.

People often feel that the meals they ate as children were the most delicious, that the snacks from their school days were the most enjoyable, but they can never find that taste again. Some say it’s because the old recipes have changed; others say it’s because adult taste buds no longer crave the nourishment of food.

Having traveled back and forth between the borders of adulthood and youth twice, I now find myself agreeing more with the latter view.

Or maybe it was because, in my youth, I had Liu Jiang fighting with me over food.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than Liu Jiang snatched a fry I was about to grab. I reached back to snatch it from him, but he put on an expression of utter grievance.

“How about you have this instead?” he bargained, shoving an egg tart into my mouth as he spoke.

It was a red bean-filled egg tart.

How did I know? Because he had already taken a bite out of it.

In the end, we finished our meal on less-than-peaceful terms. It turned out I still hated cloyingly sweet red bean paste. After downing a whole cup of Coke, I swirled the paper cup with only ice cubes left in it, the feeling of syrup burning a path from my throat to my stomach.

Liu Jiang, completely unbothered, popped the red bean egg tart I’d taken another bite of into his mouth and, for good measure, dumped my leftover fries onto his own tray.

After we ate, it started raining again. Gazing at the uncovered bus stop a hundred meters away, I decided to waste a little more time with Liu Jiang.

Upstairs was the secondhand market I had once visited with him. We took the familiar escalator up to the empty warehouse space. The sales clerk was, surprisingly, the same big sister with smokey eyeshadow and a sullen face from last time.

She was chewing gum, leaning against her workstation and scrolling through her phone, completely ignoring us, her only customers.

A rainy day, no other customers, a vast warehouse space, and countless secondhand goods. What did that mean?

Heaven.

The two of us pushed a shopping cart large enough to fit a person and a half inside, wandering from the first aisle to the last, trying on every piece of clothing we wanted to, regardless of season, whether it was menswear or womenswear.

This time, it wasn’t just the outfits he wanted me to try, but also the ones I subconsciously felt would suit him. I didn’t have his fashion sense; all my preferences were driven by instinct, like a mesh top, or a studded leather jacket.

There was only one fitting room in the warehouse, and with no other customers waiting, we just dived in together.

The curtain was drawn. The fitting room was small. I could hear the hum of the central air conditioning vent above my head, as if we were trapped in the crevice of a moving maze, about to be crushed by walls closing in on the center.

The thought amused me. Seeing me laugh, he started grinning too, and then, without warning, we both burst into raucous laughter.

It was the first time I’d seen someone laugh so happily without knowing where they were.

Anyway, we tried on more than a dozen different looks in front of the mirror.

Liu Jiang hadn’t brought a camera, or maybe, in this timeline, I hadn’t given him one.

But as if we were putting on a show for the world on the other side of the mirror, we bounced freely out of the fitting room, commenting on the noteworthy points of each other’s outfits.

In the mirror, we were like snapshots from one parallel universe after another.

Sometimes serious, sometimes relaxed. Sometimes despising each other yet inseparable, other times so familiar it was like a bond of socialist brotherhood.

In any case, there was no option where we passed each other by, remaining strangers.

There were many clothes that suited Liu Jiang, and quite a few that suited me, but alas, the cash we brought was limited. In the end, we each chose one outfit that the other liked.

It was about four in the afternoon when we sat side by side on the pebble beach by Liancheng’s wild sea.

I was wearing an overly bright Hawaiian shirt, a pair of Levi’s jeans of indiscernible vintage, and still had my canvas shoes on, because I had firmly rejected the resort-style Birkenstocks Liu Jiang had picked for me.

And Liu Jiang, next to me—was wearing a dinosaur head mask.

This wasn’t my choice; it was his own last-minute pick before we left. It was made of rubber, very realistic, and covered his face so completely that he bore no resemblance to a human.

After a moment of silence, he suddenly ripped the mask off, gasping for air.

“Nobody said this thing wasn’t breathable!” he yelled indignantly.

Couldn’t you tell just by looking at it that it wasn’t breathable? I thought to myself, but I spared him the embarrassment and kept my mouth shut.

We just sat there by the sea without a word. The sky grew overcast for the umpteenth time, and the lights of the distant port began to turn on. I heard the whistle of a cruise ship docking.

I should go.

After recklessly enjoying this moment that belonged to no particular time, I had to return to a meaningless reality.

Did I really have to go?

Did I really have to go now?

A sense of helplessness and confusion from an unknown source enveloped me. A heavy feeling urged me to stop, to stay here a little longer, just a little longer.

But I really had to go.

I pushed myself up from the ground. In the misty dusk, the sea breeze blew through my clothes. I, too, wanted to be this unrestrained.

Just as I was about to turn my head back, Liu Jiang, who had been sitting calmly on the ground, suddenly looked up and grabbed my hand.

He said, “That game you were talking about, I think I have another solution.”

I paused, then turned to look at him. The sea breeze was calm. His face was expressionless, but it betrayed a burgeoning excitement.

He spoke again. 

“Maybe you can let the protagonist stay in the game, stay in the level, and stay by his beloved’s side forever.”

As we looked at each other, the waves continued to crash relentlessly against the stone beach. After he finished speaking, the next wave was exceptionally loud, as if it were urging me to answer.