Chapter 286: The Dense Forest Frontier

Bai Liu turned his face away from the approaching Spades, whose breath he could smell was still distinctly alcoholic.

Of course, maybe it wasn't Spades', or maybe it was his.

Bai Liu has probably drunk more vodka tonight than he has in his entire life combined.

Although he seems to be behaving smoothly, his limbs have a drunken weakness, and as soon as Spades opens his arms and presses them down, Bai Liu leans back and leans his shoulders against the wall.

Spades looked down at Bai Liu, who was flushed, and this time he didn't ask why Bai Liu had turned red - because Bai Liu's face had always been red after drinking.

The voices across the wall had become muffled.

Bai Liu slowly looks up at Spades, his breath warm and soft, and Spades can see a very light, drunken glow in Bai Liu's eyes.

The halo of light makes Bai Liu's eyes lose focus, and while his eyes are on Spades' face, Spades feels as if Bai Liu is looking through him at someone hiding behind him.

"...... I can put it on for you." Bai Liu said very softly, as if he were smiling, a little lazily, "but do you know where to wear it?"

Spades paused, and he said honestly, "Where?"

Bai Liu smiled a little more obviously as he reached behind Spades to open the drawer, which contained a whole box of God of War condoms, from small to large, and Bai Liu took them all out, lining them up on the bed.

"?" Spades was slightly confused, "Do I have to wear them all?"

Bai Liu looked up, his jaw resting on his head with a smirk and a look of undisguised mischief and nostalgia, "Have you ever played with balloons?"

Spades: "Seen it, never played it."

"I was a kid, too." Bai Liu smiles, his eyes resting on Spades' face, becoming distant, "I grew up in an orphanage, where the director and teachers didn't like kids like me, and other kids got two balloons for the festival, but I didn't."

Spades' lips pursed in a straight line, "They should give it to you."

"There's no such thing as should or shouldn't in this world." Bai Liu lowered his eyes, his voice careless, "I wouldn't essentially be upset about something like that either, because those kinds of balloons that come in wholesale aren't worth much."

Bai Liu paused, "But the other kid who didn't get a share of the balloons either didn't think so."

"He got a cluster of balloons from somewhere, coloured them in with craft room markers and handed them to me in front of all the kids who had got them."

Bai Liu bowed his head and smiled a little, "I saw the rubber rings on these balloons that he had made after rummaging through the trash and washing them and beating them with an air gun."

"He didn't know what they were originally for, but he turned them into balloons that a child would find beautiful and gave them to me."

Bai Liu's eyelashes fluttered very lightly, "I essentially ...... shouldn't be happy about this kind of thing either."

"Because these balloons aren't really worth much, and they're dirty and gross."

But Xie Ta just looked at him, holding up the balloon, with tiny cuts on her hands from rummaging through the rubbish bin, and Bai Liu took it by surprise.

Then Xie Ta looked at Bai Liu and gave a very subtle smile.

In that moment, those cheap balloons, those dirty and disgusting condoms, seemed to become pure and precious because of Xie Ta's smile.

It was a wonderful feeling, Bai Liu's first experience, that the value of these objects could be subjectively skewed.

"For the first time, I felt that these things that had been packed ...... turned out to be valuable." Bai Liu said very softly, "because it was given to me by him."

"He makes me feel like condoms aren't gross."

Spades holds up a box of condoms and, after a long moment of observation, inquires, "Are these really nasty balloons?"

"In my mind, these are balloons for very dirty things." Bai Liu looked up, he reached up and stroked Spades' face, parting his hair from his forehead and looking into Spades' pure black eyes with half-closed eyes, "It's used to hold the desire of human flesh to be in full contact."

Spades is confused: "Why use this as a barrier if you want full contact?"

"Because of mistrust, fear, fear." Bai Liu lowered his eyes, "People can't trust that this person they have 0 contact with is free of disease, can marry them, can bring their children a happy marriage and future, can love them forever, so they use this thing as a last insurance to protect themselves."

"The vast majority of the time, this is the correct way to use condoms - because there really is no such thing as someone who will always love you and won't hurt you in this world."

"But people always use such excuses to intertwine with each other and then use this thing to separate themselves from each other - and even sometimes don't use it - in order to better control and hurt each other, like getting the other person pregnant with their child and having a better experience of intercourse."

"In terms of universal logic, it's right to use this stuff."

Bai Liu looks at Spades: "I found the logic ironic, so I talked to the person who gave me the balloons about the origin and use of the balloons, which I thought was disgusting at the time."

"Do you know what he told me?"

Spades gazed at Bai Liu and said calmly, "If I were a monster that was so harmful, this thing could protect him from me when one day a person would come near me."

"I don't find it disgusting, it's a protective prop."

Bai Liu was quiet for a long time before he said, "Yes, that's what the man told me."

"I can teach you how to use and wear it." Bai Liu's voice was calm, "...... Perhaps there is no one else who will teach you these things, except me."

It's like when Xie Ta was also Buming White and the balloon he lifted was a condom that was ridiculed by everyone.

"No need." Spades interrupted Bai Liu abruptly.

There was no emotion on his face as he suddenly reached down and gathered up all the condoms in a single swipe, sweeping them into the bedside table before slapping out the electric light, turning around and pushing Bai Liu under the covers, saying in a muffled voice, "I'm not wearing them anymore, go to sleep."

Bai Liu looked up at the ceiling, bumps and gasps faintly coming from the bed, but he smiled for some reason and asked, "Why don't you use it anymore?"

Spades was silent in the darkness for a long, long time before he replied, "I wasn't sure if you would be hurt."

"This protective prop looks fragile."

Bai Liu's voice was calm: "Haven't you already hurt me? And now you don't want to?"

"At that time my instincts told me I should have to separate you from that heart." Spades spoke with a somewhat lowered tone, as if he felt he had done wrong.

Bai Liu asks, "What about now?"

Spades said, "Now my gut tells me that I shouldn't hurt you anymore."

Bai Liu turned his head slightly as he squinted at Spades, mimicking the man's tone, "Why, and there's no reason, is there?"

"There's a reason." Spades said, "We were married and took vows."

In an eccentric accent he imitated with all seriousness the vows that the GIs had said when they were witnessed by the priest: "- From this time to eternity, in good times and in bad, in wealth and in poverty, in health and in sickness, in joy and in sorrow, I will love and cherish you forever and ever. "

Bai Liu couldn't hold back a soft laugh, but he quickly began to throw in the towel: "It's just a game in your life, you don't have to take it so seriously."

"All I have in my life is games." Spades asked confusedly in return, "Why shouldn't I take it seriously?"

Bai Liu fell silent as he turned his back to Spades: "Good night."

Spades is lying flat against Bai Liu, oh, and then closes his eyes.

Once he had heard Bai Liu's breathing even out, Spades gingerly opened the bedside table and looked down at the condoms for a moment before reaching for a box.

A very violent gasp came from the next room.

"This thing, it turns out, is a balloon, no wonder you have to use your mouth ...... " Spades nodded in realization, muttering to himself, "So Guy, they blew up a balloon and couldn't breathe? "

Then Spades got into a new round of questions, "Why do people blow up balloons on their wedding night with two people?"

But behind Spades, Bai Liu is truly asleep this time, and there is no one left to answer his endless questions.

When Bai Liu woke up the next morning, he had a second to draw his gun and point it at the Buming white spheres in the room.

By the end of the night, Bai Liu had changed his room and it was filled with balloons of all sizes.

Having established that the room was the one he had slept in last night, Bai Liu put his gun away, dressed and expressionlessly tore off a balloon, the size of a washbasin, that was taped to the wall.

He saw the mouth of the ball, a yellowish rubber ring.

Bai Liu's movements pause for a couple of seconds as he buttons his shirt and walks over to the bedside table to open it, and then there is another pause in his movements.

At least six boxes of unopened condoms that were in there yesterday have long since been used up, leaving only a few empty boxes lying in the drawer.

Bai Liu slowly adjusted his breathing, cleaned and packed up all the balloons in the room, threw them in the trash and turned to walk out of the room.

As soon as he opened the door, he saw Alex and Guy outside, poking their heads in the doorway, and Bai Liu gasped when he came out.

Guy is straightforward and looks at Bai Liu with horror: "You're alive! I thought Spades had ...... killed you!"

Bai Liu is quiet for a moment as he looks to Guy with a questioning gaze.

Guy's eyes wandered uncontrollably around Bai Liu's waist: "Last night Spades came out asking for condoms."

"Asked for twelve boxes, of any size." Alex sighted particularly eerie as he said slowly, "But we've got six boxes in the house already, adding up to almost two hundred ......"

Bai Liu: "......"

Guy couldn't help himself and his eyes darted curiously straight into the room, "What did you do in the house last night? That much in one night?"

Thinking of Tang Erda, Alex looked at Bai Liu with a more and more misplaced gaze, emphasising slyly, "And in all sizes ......"

Bai Liu skips over the subject as if nothing had happened and calmly asks, "What about Spades?"

Alex looked very mixed: "We met Spades this morning and he said he didn't have enough and had gone to town to buy condoms ......"

"We didn't think you'd be up for a while." Guy teased slightly as he squeezed his eyes, "After all, Spades seems to be in a hurry and feels like he'll be right back with you to continue using it."

Bai Liu: "......"

Guy was right, and after Bai Liu smiled and loaded his gun and said he was going to find Spades, Spades came running back on his own.

Bai Liu was stunned for a moment when he saw Spades.

The man's face was covered in all kinds of paint, he was holding up a huge pile of very abstractly painted giant balloons, and his hair was covered in all kinds of paint splattered with intertwined coloured lines.

Spades walks up to Bai Liu, who is breathing with a rare gasp.

Bai Liu noticed a red mark around the man's mouth - it was clear that he had worked hard to blow up the balloon overnight.

Spades held up a pile of maybe seven or eight paint-broken balloons, his black eyes shining as if in a pile of oozy colours: "Couldn't find markers, borrowed paint to draw with."

Bai Liu is quiet - he realises that this guy is copying Xie Ta's act of drawing balloons with a marker and giving them to him.

But it's not good at all, so it makes for such a bunch of even more disastrous artistic masterpieces.

But Spades himself didn't seem to think so, his back straightened and he said, "I've been blowing them all night and these are the best ones."

"Here you go, the balloon they didn't give you." Spades slipped the balloon into Bai Liu's hand saying, emphatically, "You should have had it."

Spades gasped and sounded particularly serious: "They certainly didn't blow up as many balloons last night between the two of them as I did alone, and our marriage won them over."

"I've just asked around and we're the only two people who have used the most condoms that night in recent marriages here, so we should be the best tied."

Bai Liu looked up at a dirty Spades, who eventually took the balloon and then gave Spades a hug and said, "Yes."

"We tied the knot nicely."