AUS Chapter 74: Liu Jiang Lost Me

I don’t know why I did it.

Why I walked out of the bathroom stark naked and stood in front of him.

I seem to recall hearing somewhere that if you want to ask someone for a favor, you should first make a request that both parties find utterly unattainable. After they refuse, you can then fall back to what you actually wanted.

That’s exactly what I just did.

I wanted to know what Liu Jiang was planning to do to me. I wanted to know the whole truth, but I knew he was unwilling to say it. So I beat him to the punch and asked him first, “Do you want to have sex?”

Wait, it seems I’ve already defaulted to the assumption that he doesn’t want to sleep with me.

However, in the way he looked at me, I found no indication that he didn’t want to. Although his gaze was fixed unwaveringly on my eyes, I could feel a searing heat just as intense as in the past.

I was trapped, unable to move a muscle. I retreated back to the floor, waiting for him to make his choice.

But the fact was undeniable: he was indeed using me for something.

He stood up, picked up a blanket from the nearby sofa, and stood before me. He wrapped the blanket around my back and draped it over my head, covering my body.

What a virtuous man.

I gripped the edge of the blanket. Seeing him turn away again, I watched as he returned to the dining table, this time with a heated can of baked beans in tomato sauce.

He walked past me, still frozen in place, and sat down at the table.

The can was opened, and the aroma of tomatoes filled the room. He motioned for me to sit across from him.

The dining table was simply set. A roasted chicken, fresh from the oven, sat in the middle, accompanied by frozen salad. The drinks were canned orange juice mixed with vodka, and for dessert, canned red wine cake.

—Everything was clearly stockpiled from the apocalypse, but it was also clear that it had been prepared with care.

After I wrapped the blanket tightly around myself and sat down, he pushed a plated serving of roasted chicken and baked beans in front of me, then began to serve himself.

Just as I thought the tension between us was about to dissolve into the fragrant dinner, he suddenly asked me a question.

He said, “Do you still remember how long it’s been since the apocalypse began?”

What a boring question.

“Of course I do.” I frowned. 

“It started—”

My words died in my throat. He faced me, still continuing his actions, slowly placing food onto his plate without looking up at me.

When did the apocalypse begin?

In my memory, I had always been counting the days. I would keep track of the seasons. It felt like human civilization had only collapsed three or five years ago, but when I tried to trace it back, I couldn’t for the life of me recall a specific starting point.

Three years ago? Five years ago?

Or had my entire life been like this?

I looked at him, hoping he would give me a definite answer to quell my growing panic.

He still didn’t look at me, his expression unchanged. He said quietly, “Or perhaps, do you remember when we lost contact?”

My mouth opened, but after searching my memory, I couldn’t find a specific time.

Why did we break up?

Belatedly, I felt a drop of water slide down my spine. Soon, I realized it was my own cold sweat.

Under the blanket, I fidgeted restlessly. I turned to look at the quietly burning fireplace, trying to push my memory further back.

I remembered we were both unhappy that day. We seemed to have had a phone call. The call was on the subway, but the scene inside the subway wasn’t as ordinary as my usual memories.

Closing my eyes, I thought I could recall some bizarre shifts of color—white, red, and then a sunless black.

I snapped my eyes open.

Liu Jiang had finished portioning the food. He placed the empty can on the table.

I realized this can was the same kind I had eaten a few days ago—the one I had heated up in the office, only to find the label had been scraped off.

Now, the can on the other side of the table was facing away from me, so I couldn’t see if its label was still intact.

Liu Jiang suddenly said to me, “You guessed right. After this meal, I am indeed sending you back into the simulation.”

I shot my head up, staring at him in disbelief.

“Why would you do that?” I asked him.

He clearly knew what I had done during the apocalypse, and he had brought me home. Yet, after warming me for a fleeting moment, he was going to send me back into the simulation of the eternal chase?

“That’s a question I should be asking,” he interrupted me.

“I’m the one who wants to ask you that, Yang Pingsheng,” he said. 

“I’ve been looking for you for a long, long time, but every version of you refused to look back at me, not even for a single glance.”

The dinner on the table still gave off a faint aroma, but my appetite was completely gone.

“Yes, I’m the selfish one,” Liu Jiang said.

“Because of my selfishness, I projected the emotions I should have borne onto you. Because of my selfishness, I locked you in here, hoping that one day you would truly come back to me.”

“But you are always so clever, so independent. You never follow the path I set for you. You are always thinking about breaking out, to see where I really am, to see what is truly driving all of this.”

He closed his eyes, pressing his thumb against the corner of one eye, then said softly, “I lost.”

Sitting across the table from him, I shook my head gently. 

“What are you talking about?”

I had no idea what he was talking about—I couldn’t understand any of it.

Wasn’t he the one who had been trapped in the simulation all this time?

Liu Jiang wasn’t in a hurry to explain. He sniffled lightly, then placed his hand on the now-empty can.

He said, “I was the one who scraped the image off your can.”

I froze, staring at the back of the metal can.

About ten days ago, I was shivering in the office, heating up my breakfast, when I discovered the label of a can I had been hoarding had been scraped off.

The metal can was perfectly preserved, and the contents were untouched. Only the portrait on the front had been scraped away, revealing the rusted metal underneath.

No matter how you looked at it, it seemed like a prank.

That’s what I thought at the time. I told myself not to be nervous, that it was just a coincidence, an illusion, or some other similar phenomenon.

He did it?

Things were becoming absurd at the most inappropriate moment, yet I couldn’t bring myself to laugh.

Liu Jiang fell silent, then turned the can on the table to face me.

The face on the can was smiling carefreely. It was an American-style cartoon of a girl with a round face and a healthy complexion.

The moment my eyes met that beaming face, a humming sound from deep within my mind blocked my ears.

I knew that face well. It was the girl who had confessed to me in the Normalcy Project. I knew the brand name, too: Winnie.

It was her.

Was this the real reason I couldn’t remember her name or what she looked like?

Because she never existed at all.

Her so-called crush on me, her pursuit of me, our relationship—was it all just something I had imagined, based on the packaging of a can I ate day in and day out?

Beneath the image on the can, a slogan ran across the label. They were the exact words “Winnie” had said to me after I had clearly rejected her.

—”May you remain clear-headed.”

From across the table, Liu Jiang’s voice came: “I ran many tests, but there are still uncontrollable bugs in the simulation. She is one of them.”

I narrowed my eyes. The way he explained it reminded me of another, unrelated person—the Attendant.

He had said something similar. Under my interrogation, he had told me this wasn’t the first simulation test, nor was I the first Yang Pingsheng he had met. But as for the previous forms and the stories that had occurred, he knew nothing.

All he knew was that I had to keep the game going.

My voice was hoarse. 

“You’re the Attendant?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He picked up his spoon and stirred the food on his plate.

We had once agreed never to argue at the dinner table, but this scene now was horribly reminiscent of the years we fought the most.

He said, “I am his creator.”

That heart-stopping roar returned. I fought back the churning nausea in my stomach and stood up from my chair.

The blanket slipped off, and I was once again naked.

He made the Attendant.

So he also made the ever-growing code in the Normalcy Project.

Could it be that I was the one who was virtual?

I looked down at my feet, then at my raised arms—everything before my eyes was incredibly real.

The protruding veins, the texture of my skin, the joints slightly reddened by the cold—all of it indicated that I was a real person.

I would bleed when injured, shiver when cold, and feel a slight itch when touched—didn’t all this prove that I was a real, existing person?

But, in the Normalcy Project, the Liu Jiang I saw, those characters I was certain were virtual—they were all incredibly real too.

If I were fake, then everything would make sense.

Why my memories were so chaotic, why the Attendant said he had met me many times, why I never seemed to get older.

Why the apocalypse happened so suddenly, why there was still a running subway in the apocalypse.

But if I were fake, why would “he” still chase after me so relentlessly? No, to take it a step further, if I’m fake and the Liu Jiang in front of me is real, why would he care about the feelings of this fake “me”?

He could just shut down my program and take me wherever he wanted.

Or, if he had the ability to create one of me, he had the ability to create many. He could just make another one.

After all, I’m not irreplaceable, am I?

Liu Jiang put down his spoon, walked over to me, and picked up the blanket to cover me again.

But I didn’t want his concern. I swatted his arm away.

The blanket fell without a sound. All the roaring was inside my head, unable to affect the world in any way.

He bent down, picked up the blanket again, and patiently draped it over me once more.

He said, “I created the Attendant, but not this world. And not you.”

This time, I didn’t struggle out of the blanket. I looked forward, my gaze meeting his eyes again.

His appearance hadn’t changed; there wasn’t even a trace of black stubble in his silver hair. His features were still the most vivid image from my dreams.

The only thing that made me feel he had changed was his eyes.

I couldn’t say what kind of expression it was, but I was certain it wasn’t something I would see in the Liu Jiang of my own age.

And my first impression was—his eyes seemed to have aged.

He didn’t avoid my gaze. Looking straight at me, he said slowly, “Many years ago, I lost you once.”