AUS Chapter 64: I Lied to Liu Jiang

The interview went smoothly.

Including my final, somewhat deliberate and clumsy, hands-on demonstration.

When the interview ended, the supervisor looked quite pleased. He chatted and laughed as he saw me to the elevator, and I managed to respond with ease. While we exchanged pleasantries, my eyes darted to the laptop tucked under his arm.

Copying the project’s source code was taking longer than I’d expected, probably because the system was still in its original version and the company network was slow.

To be honest, it was a little too slow.

While the supervisor was off finding the head of the IT department, I paced anxiously in my spot, glancing up at the movement outside the glass door, then down at the progress bar crawling across the window. A chill started to creep up the back of my neck.

One minute, two minutes—the supervisor’s footsteps sounded outside the conference room.

I darted back to my original seat and reached for the USB drive, ready to pull out my incriminating evidence the second before he walked in.

Was I going to fail?

No.

Because just as the supervisor was a step away from the conference room, the IT employee he had just been speaking with suddenly called out to him. The supervisor stopped and turned around.

By now, my hand was already on the metal casing of the USB drive, just a second away from pulling it out.

The IT employee had a loud voice. Through half a floor and a glass door, I heard him clearly.

He said, “The machine I just gave you seems to have a problem—come back, I’ll get you another one!”

Luckily, the supervisor was too busy looking back at him to notice my hand furtively moving away from the computer’s port.

He craned his neck and replied with something. Compared to the shout from the other side of the floor, his voice was too quiet; even I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Sure enough, the IT employee’s loud voice came again: “What did you say?!”

The supervisor, looking embarrassed, turned to me and made a “just a moment” gesture before quickly walking away. Judging by the distant shouting, they were discussing the batch number of the spare machine.

As soon as he was out of sight, the stiff smile on my face vanished. In a flash, I wheeled the chair back to his computer. The progress bar was already past the halfway mark.

I breathed a sigh of relief and, trying to remain calm, returned to my original interviewee’s seat to begin an agonizingly long wait.

The supervisor returned ten minutes later.

His steps were heavier than when he had left, likely worn down by the loud-mouthed employee. After two trips back and forth, he finally returned with the now-unnecessary laptop.

As the conference room door pushed open, I, the subject of the interview, was sitting upright in my original seat, wearing a modest and composed smile.

He suppressed a sigh, composed his expression, and sat down. He made a couple of pleasantries with me, his tone slightly apologetic, though he was really mocking the colleague he had just dealt with.

Then his expression changed, as if he noticed the order of the windows on his computer had shifted slightly. But after a brief moment of hesitation, he concluded he was just overworked and confused.

He said, “Sorry about that—where were we? Shall we continue?”

Of course, I nodded in agreement, my expression unruffled, my left hand discreetly pressing down on the pocket of my hoodie.

The USB drive I had just removed was still warm from the machine’s operation, radiating a faint heat in my pocket, like a branding iron that wouldn’t kill you instantly.

I got it.

The interview concluded, and the laptop episode came to an end. The supervisor was very satisfied with me, and the look of pleasure returned to his face.

He said, “I’ll report back to the head of the relevant department. If all goes well, we’ll send out an offer as soon as possible, alright?”

My gaze shifted from the laptop beside his hand. The USB drive in my pocket had cooled, now lying cold against my left chest.

I smiled and agreed, stepping into the elevator and shaking hands with the supervisor to say goodbye.

The elevator descended, stopped on the first floor, and with a chime, I stepped out into the city center, where night had already fallen.

During the second half of the interview, I hadn’t heard a word the supervisor said. I was busy trying to figure out a breakthrough point.

First, I thought I should start with the Attendant.

When it came to the strangest part of the As Usual Plan, I believed it was him.

In reality, I wasn’t involved in the development of the artificial assistance system for the simulation game, but I had heard them mention it a few times in meetings. The prevailing opinion at the time was to create a pretty girl character.

Understandable. Customers like to see beautiful women.

But then, another employee mentioned that the proportion of female players was also significant, and that we should also respect the preferences of some male players in the sexual minority community. So, a young, handsome butler should be added.

I strongly agreed.

Subsequently, another employee stated that we should also respect the preferences of female players in sexual minority communities, so the pretty girl was kept as well.

But ideals are lofty, and reality is blind. After review by the higher-ups, it was decided that there should be no gendered settings in the game, so both the handsome boy and pretty girl proposals were scrapped, and we were back to square one.

The last time I had a meeting with the department responsible for the artificial assistance system, I heard them fiercely debating whether the robot’s image should be more anthropomorphic or more cartoonish. I pretended to casually glance at their chosen design concepts, and after seeing two images that strongly resembled a certain large-scale online children’s game from years ago featuring a mole as the protagonist, I chose to say nothing.

Silence was a form of mercy.

I don’t know which image they ultimately chose for the launch, but it definitely wasn’t the Attendant’s current appearance—so I should start with him.

But—wait, I think I might be getting a little ahead of myself.

If the As Usual Plan is essentially a sensory illusion, then its principles are no different from a game.

With the source code, as the game’s developer, I can step outside the timeline and the rules of physics. In other words, I can begin to observe everything from a god’s-eye view.

An unprecedented feeling suddenly washed over me, but it wasn’t the pleasure of knowing I was about to become a god, but rather a fear of seeing everything.

As someone in the gaming industry, I know that things are often not as they appear to the player’s naked eye. For example, the ordinary city I see before me might just be a hollowed-out cardboard building. If I shift my perspective, everything could be completely different.

In that case, what would Liu Jiang look like?

My thoughts instantly froze. Night had fallen, and the surrounding greenery was adorned with decorative lights, twinkling on. The area was filled with pedestrians.

They laughed without a care, as if deliberately putting on this act to accentuate my solitude.

I stopped in front of a green space between two buildings. A birch tree was planted in the clearing, its branches wrapped in decorative lights. Beijing in winter was always like this, decorating far too early for the New Year, making the winter seem less desolate.

But I didn’t stop here to admire the view. It was because, for a while now, I had felt like someone was watching me.

A breeze blew between the buildings. After dark, the autumn wind started to bite. My face tingled with sharp, intermittent stings, accompanied by the unsettling feeling of being watched. I turned my head.

Amidst the brightly lit streets, standing directly behind me, was a figure.

For a moment, I was speechless. Then I realized I should say something.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

The question sounded like I had a guilty conscience, so I deliberately raised the pitch of the last word, trying to curve it into a laugh. But I failed. The effect was even more like a thief caught in the act.

Liu Jiang stood not far from me. He probably thought the same.

He had a bass case slung over his back, likely just finished with band practice. I didn’t know his work was nearby, so after the lie on the phone a few hours ago, I had come here without a second thought, assuming I wouldn’t run into him.

I had lied to him, told him I didn’t want to go out anymore, that I would stay with him until graduation, that I didn’t want to find a job, didn’t want to deal with adult things, and that we would stay just as we were.

I lied to him.

I took a step towards him, wanting to explain something, but Liu Jiang took a timely step back. We maintained a constant distance, just like my relationship with him throughout the entire apocalypse.

He said, “Why did you lie to me?”