Chapter 284: The Dense Forest Frontier

Guy on the stage, with his hands on the microphone, laughed and shouted: " Bai Liu! Promise him!"

"This nice young man just asked me to borrow his wedding dress!" Guy laughed so hard he was in tears, "I didn't borrow it, I just gave him the veil, he looked drunk, he borrowed the veil and then tried to steal my wedding dress, he nearly tore it off me!"

Alex jerked his head up, his arms around Guy's waist in a daze, and scanned around solemnly, "- where's the nice boy who's going to rip Guy's wedding dress off!"

Guy laughed more and more joyfully as he looked down and kissed Alex.

A drunken Alex was silenced by the kiss, Guy raised his eyes and looked at Bai Liu with eyes that shone with genuine tenderness and blessing.

"Promise him, Bai Liu, that you are truly in love."

Guy's happy smile hides a very light layer of sadness.

"Don't wait for your lover to die to mourn him, every moment you spend together is as shiny and precious as gold."

Spades was on his knees, head tilted back and holding a bouquet of flowers as he waited doggedly for Bai Liu's answer.

The crowd around them jumped around meaninglessly, waved, laughed and opened bottle after bottle of champagne, the sweet, intoxicating bubbles of sparkling wine flew all over the room, countless splendid golden fragments of fireworks fell from the roof, and the sound of laughter outside the windows rang through the night.

A few small shiny fragments have fallen from Spades' hair.

Bai Liu lowered his eyes as he reached out to gently remove the fragments, then ruffled the strands of hair from Spades' forehead.

The eyes under Spades' hair are dark and clear, clean, reflecting Bai Liu's shadow in its entirety, as if Bai Liu were the only one visible in this noisy world.

"Will you marry me?" Spades asked seriously, holding the bouquet almost up to Bai Liu's nose.

Bai Liu opened his lips, there was so much he wanted to say, to ask.

The desire to speak was a rare to impossible thing for him to do, but at the moment it was happening.

Because the person he wants to ask doesn't remember anything, doesn't understand anything, and sometimes Bai Liu isn't even sure that the person with the missing memory is the Tavel he remembers.

They look so different.

But Spades always gave Bai Liu a ...... sense of unspeakable familiarity, letting him know that Spades was the one.

Edmond, an NPC from the last game, tells Bai Liu that people are not vessels made of memory and flesh, that something above that level exists in each person, separating them from the monsters they are exactly like.

This kind of thing is love.

So even if a person's flesh and memory are completely different, love still exists.

Bai Liu doesn't believe in this, but he Buming understands why the previous Spades could find themselves out of so many [Bai Liu].

Buming: Where did his impulse to accept the bouquet come from at this moment?

Clearly this is just a game.

Bai Liu looked down calmly at the kneeling Spades and asked, "Why do you want to marry me?"

Spades said, "I hope you don't hate me."

Bai Liu easily figured out Spades' logic, his eyes half closed, "...... Why don't you want me to hate you?"

"There are so many players who hate you, and you have to marry every one of them so they don't hate you?"

Spades paused, frowning and shaking his head, "They've always hated to fear me."

"I don't want to be married to them."

Bai Liu calmly asks in return, "If you're going to marry someone who hates you, why not pick someone else?"

"They fear you and will easily agree to your requests, and will not keep fighting against you, or even hurt you three times, as I have done."

Bai Liu's long eyelashes dropped and her voice was so soft it was almost inaudible, "...... I was never the best choice for you."

"I've been ...... killing you."

"You have not killed me." Spades looked straight at him, "If I ever die, it will be by my own choice."

Bai Liu's breathing slowed down: "...... So many choices, why did you have to pick me?"

-- Even after dying twice for me, you're still picking me.

Bai Liu is reflected in Spades' eyes and his tone is flat and serious: "Because you're not like everyone else."

Bai Liu asks, "What's different?"

Spades stared for a long time and gave his answer, "They can hate me, but I don't want you to hate me."

Bai Liu was quiet for a long time, he laughed softly and he raised his eyes, "Why can't I hate you?"

Spades was quiet for a moment: "...... I don't know, I just don't want you to hate me."

Bai Liu's face unconsciously softened, "Just as much as I hate you, for no reason is there?"

Spades lowered his voice as if a little depressed, "...... hmmm."

"Promise him! Promise him! Promise him!"

The roar grows louder and the red-faced soldiers shout as if they are threatening Bai Liu, but they are laughing and waiting for him to open his mouth with a look of anticipation and eagerness to see a second couple.

" Spades, people don't marry people they hate." Bai Liu said softly, "It doesn't follow the logic of normal people."

Spades knelt motionlessly, as if he had been thrown into a strange whirlwind of thought by the destruction of the logic of the proposal.

According to him, two people who hate each other can get married and then end their dislike for each other by getting married, but Bai Liu's comment about the cause and effect being reversed leaves Spades stalled in place.

It wasn't quite what he had in mind.

Bai Liu's eyes dropped to the bouquet on Spades' hand and he said, as if to himself, "But you and I are both drunk now."

"So we can do things that are not logical."

Bai Liu reached out to take the bouquet from Spades and smiled at the unresponsive Spades.

"I do."

Guy shoved his index finger and thumb into his mouth and whistled with unimaginative mad laughter, "- Now the groom can kiss the bridegroom!"

Bai Liu walked slowly into Spades with his bouquet in hand, his head slightly tilted and raised as if he was about to kiss him, looking intently into Spades' eyes.

Streaks of golden flowers fell over their heads, people from strange lands they didn't know banged chaotically against each other with empty beer bottles, bobbing their heads to the beat of a wedding march, and in the distance, on a dimly lit bar, men in wedding dresses and drunken grooms kissed passionately.

Bai Liu had never imagined herself getting married until the moment she jumped out of the plane.

But at that moment in time, he was thinking about it.

Bai Liu thought his monster fantasy wedding scenario would be grotesque, bizarre and unattended, but strangely enough, his imaginary wedding to Tavel is what all normal people in the world aspire to be.

Vulgar, hilarious, with a large group of strangers with whom they have only the slightest connection to witness, who then make a thousand promises to each other over a noisy backing track - we will be together forever, until death do us part.

Until death do us part.

Bai Liu thought that after that, after he found Tavel ...... he might ...... be able to try to accept a wedding.

Now he did get it, although it didn't seem to be quite what he thought it would be.

Every time it happens, he seems to have an inexhaustible supply of bad luck, and then that person, that person always finds a way, as if to exploit the whole world, to bring back to him what Bai Liu wants in all sorts of strange ways.

--The storybook torn and then glued back together, the long, thin ghostly doll with the face missing.

The wedding after the parting.

This person has been clumsily reassuring him, giving Bai Liu the gifts he wants most to cheer him up.

Even if that gift comes at the cost of one's own life.

A soothing soundtrack played in the bistro and everyone swayed and danced in pairs around each other, the lights dimmed and only vague glimpses of light could be seen.

Bai Liu circled the back of Spades' neck and held it against his jaw, his eyes blinking slightly.

With Bai Liu holding the back of his neck, Spades struggled to look back at the movements of Guy and Alex, who were hugging each other in the centre of the dance floor - he hadn't been married and he needed a post-marriage template to learn from.

Guy is swaying around Alex's shoulders and they are kissing non-stop, Alex's hand is already in the hem of Guy's wedding dress.

Spades' eyes flicked back and forth between Guy and Bai Liu before he pressed his ear to Bai Liu and asked hesitantly, "- am I going to kiss you now?"

He remembered how a random kiss to Bai Liu had made this man angry before, so he asked in advance this time.

"People don't kiss people they hate, Spades." Without looking up, Bai Liu answered Spades softly.

"But we're married." Spades replied with great conviction, "Married people are supposed to kiss each other."

Spades felt Bai Liu, who was resting against his shoulder, seem to laugh lightly.

Then Bai Liu said, "Didn't you ask me before how long I was going to hate you?"

Spades quickly followed up with, "How long?"

Bai Liu looked up, his eyes rippling with a watery sheen, the smile on his face pure and clear, with a touch of mischievousness that was not very well hidden.

"-forever, I'll always hate you."

Spades stopped all movement as he tried to argue, "We're married, we're supposed to kiss, and if you hate me, you can't kiss-" lol.

Bai Liu's eyes dropped as he pulled Spades down a little and closed his eyes to kiss him.

After the kiss, Spades gazes at Bai Liu: "You say you hate me, but then you kiss me of your own accord."

It's so paradoxical that Spades can't understand such things, he's confused and depressed: "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I'm drunk." Bai Liu didn't close his eyes this time and moved closer to kiss Spades one more time, "- I can marry someone I hate when I'm drunk and I can kiss someone I hate."

He kisses and closes his eyes calmly.

"I would stay with the one I hate forever until death do us part again."