AUS Chapter 9: Liu Jiang, Who Makes Me Jealous

I said, “You answer first—what are you doing here?”

As I spoke, I felt incredibly righteous, like a noble ruler who would dismiss even the promise of riches without a second thought, my integrity unblemished.

At the same time, I wanted to slap myself. How could I be so pretentious, Yang Pingsheng?

Caught off guard by my question, Liu Jiang’s shoulders twitched. He placed one hand on each knee, his good looks lasting only a second before he reverted to his scruffy teenage demeanor.

He deflected, “I already answered you!”

He repeated the head-shaking motion from earlier, and I realized it wasn’t a shake but a nod of his chin, pointing in a direction.

Following his gesture, I saw a wooden guitar and a notebook by his side.

He was writing songs.

I already knew he’d been writing songs since his student days, but I didn’t know his method was so simple—sitting in a sports storage shed with a wooden guitar and scrap paper.

“You play guitar too?” I asked him.

He nodded, picking up the guitar and strumming it twice with ease. It was the kind of focused charm unique to teenagers. If he played a song in front of the whole class, he’d probably have half the girls swooning.

“Why don’t you pick a brighter place to write?” I asked again.

He grew a bit shy, his strumming hand moving to the back of his head. He chuckled and said, “If people saw me, it’d feel kind of distant, you know.”

For a delinquent with an absurdly wide social circle, his emotional intelligence was surprisingly high.

The gym mats behind us smelled of dust, so I stopped leaning against them and crouched instead, tilting my head to watch him strum the guitar. Then I asked, “What about the band? Why not be the guitarist? Guitarists get more attention than bassists, right?”

What I meant was that the future him would be plenty eye-catching. As a bassist, he’d completely stolen the guitarist’s thunder, so he might as well just be the guitarist.

He didn’t seem to mind the dusty mats, shifting his butt to sit more comfortably before answering, “I don’t really want to be seen by a ton of people. I just want to be seen by the people I care about.”

I thought to myself, that’s not up to you.

I stood up, brushing off my pants. Sunlight streamed in, illuminating the high schoolers running freely outside. For a moment, it felt almost beautiful.

Then I remembered a question I hadn’t gotten to ask earlier.

Amid the renewed sound of his guitar, I asked, “Do you just casually kiss people?”

The guitar stopped abruptly. My gaze caught Liu Jiang’s stunned expression, and he asked, “What kind of question is that?”

“I mean,” I slowed my speech, putting on a serious expression while my mind scrambled, “I’m saying, if someone told you they had a condition that caused them to act like that, would you help?”

It was a rephrased version of “Do you treat me the same as everyone else?” Though it was a bit early for me to ask in this context, I just wanted to know.

Liu Jiang looked away, holding his notebook in one hand and twirling a pen in the other, deep in thought.

He answered, “Maybe. If not kissing them would mean they’d die, I’d help.”

I immediately said, “I’m not going to die if I don’t kiss someone.”

“That’s different!” He got flustered and started to stand but sat back down. “You said it’s a mental illness, triggered because I remind you of someone. I don’t know who that person is, but it sounds like I’m the only one who can help you, right? Ugh, it’s complicated. I can’t explain it clearly!”

He’d already explained it quite clearly, and I took it as special treatment.

Meanwhile, Liu Jiang, flustered by my question and his own explanation, had turned red from his face to his neck.

I could’ve stopped there, but I wanted to ask one more thing.

I asked, “That wasn’t your first time kissing someone, was it?”

That question set Liu Jiang off. I first dodged the notebook he hurled at me, then we started a two-man chase in the cramped shed—me fleeing, him pursuing.

Of course it was his first kiss. I knew it better than he did. Liu Jiang, so popular, yet somehow with zero dating experience?

But when I realized my first kiss was also with Liu Jiang, the joke suddenly wasn’t funny anymore.

Not just for the sixteen-year-old Yang Pingsheng here, but for the twenty-six-year-old Yang Pingsheng outside too. The only difference was that the outside version was a bit more romantic.

I was eighteen that year, just finished with the college entrance exams. After three years of being bottled up in school, everyone exploded. Whether it was testing the limits of staying up all night or challenging their livers with alcohol and greasy food, I thought it was all pretty stupid.

I only showed up at those events because of Liu Jiang. He was popular and always brought me along.

When the drinks ran dry and the crowd dispersed, I hadn’t drunk much, but he’d had a lot, though he was still fairly sober. He said he wanted to clear his head, so we walked to a nearby seaside plaza.

It was almost autumn, and the sea breeze was relentless. When I asked him for the third time if he wanted to leave, he turned and silenced me—with his lips.

A distant bell signaling the end of class yanked me out of my memories. I turned to look at Liu Jiang, who had gone back to pack up his guitar and was standing again.

I felt the emotion that had been lodged in my throat all day suddenly lift. I’d gotten a twisted confirmation—Liu Jiang treated me differently from others.

He said, “Let’s go.”

Teenage emotions come and go quickly. The flush on his face had faded, leaving just a hint of red at the tip of his nose, like he’d been rushing through cold wind. It reminded me of that day by the sea when we were eighteen.

I said, “I want to go too, but there’s a problem.”

Under his expectant gaze, I pushed the shed door again.

It was locked.

Yes, when I came in earlier, inexperienced as I was, I’d accidentally locked the door shut.

He looked at me, and I looked at him. My mind was already picturing the scenario where our homeroom teacher, unable to find us, called the police, and the fire department and criminal investigation team showed up to rescue us from the sports shed.

I turned to him and said, “If we get rescued, just say we got lost and wandered in by mistake.”

Liu Jiang squinted. “Who gets lost and wanders into a shed?”

I was at a loss for words when he lifted his chin. “We’ll go out through the window up there.”

It turned out the shed had more than just the low, impassable window. There was another, slightly higher one, wide enough for a person to slip through, though it was a bit high up, requiring gym mats to be stacked as a step.

Why didn’t he say so earlier? I thought we’d really have to be carried out.

The makeshift stack of mats wasn’t very stable, so we had to balance carefully to climb up. I went first, with Liu Jiang behind me. When I pushed open the window, I breathed in the fresh outdoor air, feeling a sense of boundless freedom.

Stepping onto the windowsill, I said to Liu Jiang, “You sure know how to pick a spot.”

He grinned. Liu Jiang never shied away from praise—a good habit.

We both crouched on the shed’s outer windowsill, at a height close to the announcer’s platform but slightly lower than the second floor. We could feel the early summer breeze without being quickly spotted by teachers in the school building. It was indeed a great spot.

But my intention wasn’t to sit there and enjoy the view. I couldn’t find a place to step down.

The windowsill was narrow. Liu Jiang leaned out to look at me and pointed to a nearby drainpipe. “Go down from there!”

Eyeing the rickety, rust-covered drainpipe, I gave him a skeptical glance.

He defended himself. “It’s sturdy. I’ve climbed up it before.”

As he reached past me to test its stability, I blocked him with one hand, took off my school jacket, and tied it around my waist as a makeshift safety rope.

He questioned, “So scared for your life?”

I replied, “I’m not about to break a bone and still have to tag along to your gigs.”

He muttered something about how he’d jumped from that height without issue, but as I stepped onto the ledge by the drainpipe, he suddenly seemed to remember something.

“By the way,” he called out, “don’t come to my place the next couple of nights.”

I was focused on my footing and asked directly, “Why not?”

He answered, “I’m going to see my brother the next couple of days.”

His brother?

Since when did he have a brother?

My thoughts spilled out as I lifted my head to ask, “Since when do you have a brother?”

It sounded like I’d known him forever, and Liu Jiang probably found it odd, but he answered anyway.

His hair fluttered in the wind, his voice slightly muffled. “Just a guy I’ve always been close to. I’ve called him my brother since we were kids.”

I missed a step, my eyes filled with nothing but clear blue sky.

The emotions that had just lifted from my throat came crashing back, making it hard to breathe.

I ended up at his house anyway.

I didn’t fall, of course. The window was only a little over two meters from the ground, and Liu Jiang grabbed me. But he grabbed the wrong spot—my funny bone.

So I swatted his arm away, but he was quicker, switching to his other hand to catch me. We landed safely, though my T-shirt was now missing a sleeve.

Now I was sitting primly in his living room. Liu Jiang’s grandma, wearing reading glasses, was meticulously sewing my sleeve back on. I sat awkwardly to the side, wearing one of Liu Jiang’s short-sleeved shirts.

He wasn’t taller than me now, but he was skinnier. Luckily, he liked oversized clothes, so the shirt fit me perfectly, though it wasn’t my usual style.

It was a limestone-white short-sleeve shirt. The front had a geometric design that looked like a mix of a bird and a horse’s head, and the back bore a bold, all-caps English phrase spanning the entire width: I can’t tell you why.

It was a song from an Eagles album, but as the phrase suggested, I couldn’t explain why either.

When I changed into the shirt in Liu Jiang’s room, the full-length mirror behind me reflected my face, brimming with mixed emotions, alongside that profound phrase. As I stared at my reflection, I heard Liu Jiang call from outside the door, “I’m going to buy milk tea!”

So I sat alone in the kitchen, where dinner hadn’t yet been served, waiting for Liu Jiang’s grandma to finish sewing my shirt.

As Liu Jiang had said, no one else was there today. Without the usual bustle, the old house didn’t feel empty but rather had a unique charm. Still, being alone with an unfamiliar elder was a bit awkward.

People who know me say I’m the type teachers and parents trust. Despite having a face that doesn’t scream “model student,” my politeness and good grades make me likable.

But politeness is largely an act, and truth be told, I was restless.

Liu Jiang’s grandma used a seam ripper to cut the thread, flipped the shirt over, and shook it out. The sewing was impeccable—the shirt looked as good as new.

With the shirt in hand, Liu Jiang still hadn’t returned. Grandma took off her reading glasses and started chatting with me.

Her tone was warm. “I knew you were a good student the moment I saw you!”

I smiled and deflected modestly, inwardly cursing, Liu Jiang, where the hell are you?

She began tidying her sewing kit, murmuring softly, “The kids at Number Twenty High School are all pretty good, just not many love studying. You’re a great influence. Get him to study more. He’s a bit playful, but don’t hold it against him.”

Unlike my dad’s lectures, Liu Jiang’s grandma didn’t seem worried about his grades. Her words felt like what someone raising a child should say.

As I watched her tuck the last spool of thread into the tin box, the question I’d been suppressing roared in my mind, urging me to ask it.

I finally blurted out, “Grandma, does Liu Jiang have a brother?”

She nodded. “There’s a neighbor’s kid he grew up with. He’s been calling him ‘brother’ since they were little. He’s a year older, studying at an art high school.”

The smile on my face froze, but thankfully, Grandma turned to put away the sewing kit.

I pressed further, “Are they close?”

She was at the sink preparing vegetables, still answering earnestly. “Very close! All those instruments Liu Jiang plays were taught to him by that boy!”

Then she asked me, “Want to meet him? I’ll invite him over next time.”

I quickly declined, my interest in everything fading. As I pushed the chair back into place, preparing to head upstairs to wait, Grandma’s voice came from the sink again. “The milk tea shop Liu Jiang always goes to is run by his family. He’s been gone a while—maybe he’s with his brother. Want to go check?”

My arm went numb, as if someone had pinched it.