AUS Chapter 70: “Liu Jiang”

I never would have thought that I could successfully lift this palm-wide folder with one hand and hit him squarely on the top of his head.

By the time I realized what I had done, I had already stumbled to my feet, looking at him in terror.

The folder had hit him accurately, and I had used my full strength, but “Liu Jiang’s” expression hadn’t changed a bit. Not before the folder fell, not when it hit his head, not even as it slowly tumbled to the ground. He showed no reaction whatsoever.

I just stood opposite him, in front of him as he still knelt on one knee, watching the folder thud to the floor, papers scattering across the carpet. Blood began to seep from his forehead.

My first reaction, surprisingly, was to apologize directly.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

What was I apologizing for at a time like this?!

The blood trickled down from his forehead, right to the tip of his nose. He must have felt the warmth, because he raised a hand to wipe it, then stared at the blood on his index finger, dazed.

He asked, “Why did you do that?”

He was still looking straight at his finger, not at me.

I stood up straight, swallowing the inexplicable apology from a second ago. Now, the fear that had been there from the very beginning reasserted itself, sending a chill down my spine.

His voice sounded again: “I told you, I’ll take you back no matter what. I have my ways.”

After he spoke, he blinked once. His dark pupils rolled upward, looking straight at me. Then, he spread his five fingers and wiped them haphazardly on the front of his school uniform, the bloody handprint stretching out, incredibly jarring.

“Now, you choose,” he said. 

“Either you come with me willingly, or you put up some pointless struggle.”

For the first time, I realized just how big the B-block building was—at least much bigger than the A-block I usually stayed in.

I was having this thought while cowering on the floor below the one I’d been on. I was hiding under a desk in the center of the floor, and I could hear a rumbling sound coming from above my head.

As for why I had run to the floor below, it was because the original floor had been half-destroyed.

When “Liu Jiang” gave me the choice to go with him willingly or be taken by force, I thought he was joking. I even spaced out for a second. But then I remembered that I was the one who had attacked first, and there was absolutely no hint of a joke in his tone.

Even so, I didn’t want to go with him. Not at all.

He saw my intention. His eyes were still innocent, just a little helpless. He bent down and fumbled around the desk, picking up the steel rebar I had originally placed there for self-defense.

At that moment, only one word remained in my mind—run.

A few months after transferring to No. 20 High School, I heard that Liu Jiang had once been considered a troublemaker there.

Brawls, public disturbances—if there was trouble, he was a part of it. But after I transferred, his behavior at school seemed to have toned down quite a bit. Only occasionally would he suddenly disappear during a study hall, and then return with a faint mark on his collar.

If anyone asked, he would rub the dirty spot on his uniform awkwardly and say it was ketchup from lunch.

—I was the one who asked about the stain on his clothes. It was only much later that I learned the truth about the so-called “ketchup.”

He was unwilling to reveal the truth to me. To this day, I still don’t know if it was social etiquette or something reserved just for me. I never deliberately brought it up either. We both guarded this secret well.

It wasn’t until today that I thought of it again.

However, after the “Liu Jiang” in front of me easily sliced through a desk with the rebar, I realized this wasn’t just a matter of combat strength. It was—he didn’t seem to be human at all.

And that led to my current situation.

I fled across an entire floor, listening to the sound of office equipment being overturned behind me, as if I were in the midst of a raging sea storm.

Through the corridor, over overturned desks, the glass of the conference room shattered. Catching me seemed to be his secondary objective. Right now, he just wanted to vent his anger, and he was enjoying it.

Along with the sound of falling objects, I heard his laughter rise from behind me. It didn’t have a pathological tone. On the contrary, it was the same laughter I heard every day when he and I were together as teenagers.

Free, unrestrained, uninhibited. But precisely because of that, it felt exceptionally out of place.

Seizing a gap in his wanton destruction, I escaped down the emergency stairwell to the next floor. He didn’t notice me leave, but that was only temporary. I knew he would catch up soon.

Passing through rows of parallel desks, I retreated to the middle of the floor, hid in the gap between a partition and a desk, and crouched on the ground, eyes wide, panting.

What should I do now?

He was dead set on pulling me back into the “As Usual Plan,” and his words had made his purpose clear—he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me there.

“The rest of my life” is a nice phrase, but in this context, it had no romantic connotation at all. Instead, it was utterly chilling.

Since “he” could travel from the virtual world to reality, then there must be a way for me, a person in reality, to be synced into the virtual world.

According to him, I would spend an endless spring with him there.

Do I want that?

I don’t.

If I go, who will wait for the real Liu Jiang to come back?

No, I can’t hide anymore. I have to think of a way, at least a way to stop him for now.

I lifted my face and looked at the layers of workstations in front of me.

If I remembered correctly, this floor belonged to the IT department. Near the edge of the floor was the warehouse for the entire building’s spare electronic equipment.

I had only been inside when replacing equipment. It was a maze, with shelves reaching the ceiling, piled high with new and old computer parts. On the floor, under the shelves, were scattered bundles of power cords, looking like some kind of robot slaughterhouse.

Wait, power cords—

I have an idea.

In the empty office floor, a scraping sound approached from a distance. It was the sound of a steel pipe scraping against the wall. “Liu Jiang” was here.

He wasn’t trying to hide his presence. Instead, like an overexcited child, he deliberately amplified the scraping sound, making it ear-piercingly loud.

I could hear him descending the stairs, the steel pipe hitting the handrail, the vibrating echo resounding from the corridor. Then his footsteps entered the office area, stepping onto the carpet, turning into a muffled thud like a heartbeat.

“Stop hiding!” his voice boomed through the floor.

I huddled in a corner of the equipment warehouse, not daring to breathe.

He wasn’t in a hurry to find me, slowing his speech as if to negotiate with me.

“You know? You and I are actually the same.”

I didn’t respond. His clear, lingering voice echoed through the floor.

“Are you thinking in your heart, ‘He’s fake anyway’? How funny. Are you so sure that I’m fake? You can clearly see me, you can touch me. You know I understand you best, and you know everything about me. If someone like me is fake, then what is real?”

The biggest difference between “him” and Liu Jiang was “his” confidence in my emotional experience.

My fear, my retreat, my hesitation, my doubt—none of these mattered to him. He believed I was just being temporarily stubborn.

Liu Jiang wasn’t like that. Liu Jiang never was.

I took a deep breath and looked up at the “trap” I had set on the top shelf. I had to let him know I was here.

“Let me put it another way,” his voice came from nearby. “If you think I’m fake, are you so sure that you yourself are real?”

He was getting closer.

The warehouse didn’t have a carpet. When I heard his footsteps lose their muffled quality, I knew he was getting closer and closer.

Which side would he approach from?

The left—or the right?

The trap I had set was on my left, triggered by a connection of discarded data cables. Suspended above it were the computer mainframes I had hastily piled up.

If he came from my left as I expected, all I had to do was release the rope, and the mainframes above would fall. They wouldn’t necessarily hit him, but it would be enough to startle him. While he was disoriented, I could run out and lock the warehouse.

The warehouse equipment was some of the most valuable stuff in the company, so the lock was naturally on a different level from a regular office. There was also a fire shutter above the door.

Lock the door, drop the shutter. That should hold him for a while longer than a normal room.

And then what?

Then he’s trapped in here, and becomes a pet?

The more nervous you get, the more your mind wanders. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath, as if to expel all my thoughts.

When I opened my eyes again, I felt something to my right.

I don’t know when, but “Liu Jiang” had already arrived beside me. He stood there silently, facing me, quietly staring at my side profile.

Upon realizing this, the breath I hadn’t finished taking froze in place.

He whispered to me, “I was asking you a question. Didn’t you hear?”

I turned my head stiffly and met his gaze.

The warehouse lighting was dim. His dark, shining eyes glowed faintly, as if they were trying to suck me in.

He asked me again, “Do you think you are real?”

I remembered the first thing he had said just now—we, are actually the same kind of existence.