Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng’s wedding was held in the spring of the following year.

Getting married is a simple thing — two people take their identity documents to the civil affairs bureau and it’s done.

But a wedding is an elaborate affair.

Lu Yicheng knew his means weren’t sufficient right now, that he couldn’t give her a grand, spectacular wedding. All he could do was put in twice the care and give her the most unforgettable wedding possible. The wedding photos were taken by a friend of Lu Yicheng’s — a friend with excellent photography skills. Jiang Ruoqiao wasn’t fond of some of the current trendy styles either; she preferred something more natural. The family of three went back to places they had visited before and took many, many photographs.

It wasn’t just a photo shoot — it was a journey through memory.

Originally, Lu Yicheng had planned to hire a professional emcee, but to his surprise, both Du Yu and Wang Jiangfeng were interested in the role. In the end, Wang Jiangfeng won out, because his eloquence was superior. He had experience from the student council, and had since returned to his hometown and passed the civil service examination. Du Yu often said Wang Jiangfeng was bound for a smooth and illustrious career in public service — a future leader through and through — so naturally there was nothing lacking in the way of speech.

Wang Jiangfeng enthusiastically drafted a long and impassioned script.

It had only been a short while since their undergraduate graduation, really — add just a few more years and everyone would have their own families and their own lives, and it would be hard to gather again with this kind of warmth and energy, as though they were about to do something that would shake heaven and earth. Lu Yicheng had always been well-liked — everyone who could help, did. And all of them pitched in voluntarily: some edited the video reel, some designed the banquet hall décor, some enthusiastically volunteered to sing or perform magic tricks. In any case, judging by the rehearsal schedule, the wedding day was sure to be lively and fun.

Because Lu Yicheng’s only family was an aunt, the wedding was held in Xi Shi. Lu Yicheng also extended an invitation to his aunt.

Lu Yicheng’s savings were limited. He wanted to give Jiang Ruoqiao the best in other ways.

Such as a nicer wedding dress, a larger diamond ring, more expensive wedding shoes and wedding bag…

That left a limited budget for other things, and many matters required personal hands-on effort. In the week before the wedding, Lu Yicheng came home very late every night.

One day, Jiang Ruoqiao came across Lu Yicheng’s accounting notebook.

She had been curious what expenses he’d been recording each day — and found, on the opening page of the new notebook, a few lines written in ballpoint pen.

First, a date, followed by: honeymoon trip.

The date was one year out. The budgeted amount: one hundred thousand.

Jiang Ruoqiao leaned back against him and asked, “One hundred thousand? That extravagant? You wouldn’t even need that much for the Maldives.”

Lu Yicheng replied, “You’ll definitely want to go shopping at the duty-free shops.”

Shopping at the duty-free shops meant buying things, naturally.

After the honeymoon, there was: buy a home.

The tentative date was five years out, with no budget listed.

After that: buy a car, with no date written — just a question mark.

“I’m not sure whether to buy a car first or a home first,” Lu Yicheng said, gently holding her hand. “I’ll see what we need at the time. I’m fine taking the subway, but I’m thinking it might be more convenient for you to have a car then. We’ll see.”

Jiang Ruoqiao got up from his arms, went to the coffee table drawer, found a pen, and wrote carefully and deliberately after “buy a car”:【The car shall be purchased by Jiang Ruoqiao. No rebuttals accepted.】

When she was thirty-two, she had given the thirty-two-year-old Lu Yicheng a car.

So she could do it too.

They were so young — right now they might have nothing but each other, but in time, they would surely have everything.

On the eve of the wedding, with the exception of Jiang Ruoqiao herself — the bride, who was relatively free — everyone else was run off their feet. Even Lu Siyan had been recruited by Lu Yicheng as child labor to blow up balloons. The day before the wedding, the venue had to be decorated, and both Lu Yicheng and Lu Siyan became nothing but balloon-inflating tools. All that effort paid off — the entire banquet hall looked dreamy and romantic. It was the very best the Lu Yicheng of today could give Jiang Ruoqiao.

On the day of the wedding, Lu Yicheng arrived with his groomsmen to escort Jiang Ruoqiao.

Naturally, Jiang Ruoqiao’s friends made things difficult for them in every imaginable way.

The bridesmaids were full of creative ideas, turning the bridal escort into something like a grand adventure board game. Starting from the elevator entrance, with Jiang Ruoqiao’s room as the finish line — the door left slightly ajar — only Lu Yicheng alone could walk to the end and claim his bride. No one else could do it in his place. Answer a question correctly: advance one step. Answer wrong: retreat three steps. The cleverness of the questions left the groomsmen wide-eyed, for example —

“What is Ruoqiao’s favorite color?”

Lu Yicheng thought for a brief moment and answered, “Last year it was avocado green. This year it’s yellow.”

The bridesmaids erupted in laughter. Yun Jia, the most brazen of them all, shouted toward the room, “Jiang Ruoqiao, Jiang Xiaoqiao — your husband just personally confirmed it: you like yellow!”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “…”

She wasn’t sure whether to say it was Yun Jia asking for a beating, or Lu Yicheng asking for one.

Inside the bedroom, Jiang Ruoqiao was seated on the bed. She wore a traditional Chinese-style bridal outfit — a wedding gift from the owner of the hanfu shop.

The embroidery on this bridal ensemble was masterfully crafted, with every detail brought to its most exquisite finish. In this moment, Jiang Ruoqiao was radiant and luminous.

Questions like favorite color, favorite food, least favorite food — the answers to these were all too simple. As long as you paid just a little attention, how could you possibly not know? But marriage required far more than a little attention. Lu Yicheng proved through action that every bit of his thought and care had gone into Jiang Ruoqiao — when Yun Jia asked him Jiang Ruoqiao’s college entrance exam score, he answered without even a moment’s hesitation.

In short, Lu Yicheng reached the finish line in the fastest possible time, arrived at the doorway, and saw his bride — his wife.

In the instant their eyes met, it was as though everyone else in the room ceased to exist.

Lu Yicheng felt as if his ears were ringing — he lost his hearing, and lost his sense of smell.

He looked at her.

His mind drifted back to a very long time ago: he was standing in a crowd, and she was walking toward him in formal dress. Jiang Ruoqiao in a relationship was no different from other girls — she too loved to ask certain questions, like when exactly had he fallen for her, and what was it about her he liked. She needed to hear all of it clearly. She would ask once, hear the answer once, and perhaps a month or two later she would ask again.

The more she asked, the more he found himself racking his mind to recall those fragments.

Those fragments he had thought were long since faded away.

It went without saying that there was the freshman welcome event — he had already written about that in the campus forum at the time. Sometimes he would even think: if he had run into her again, if she hadn’t been Jiang Yan’s girlfriend at that point, perhaps things would have unfolded differently.

The second time they met, she appeared in the capacity of Jiang Yan’s girlfriend.

He had known about the dormitory dinner, and had hurried onto the subway after leaving a student’s home, then walked briskly toward the restaurant from the station exit. Before he even reached the door, he saw her. He still remembered the weather that day was beautiful, the sky awash with golden sunset. An elderly person in ragged clothing seemed to want to ask for directions — likely unable to speak Mandarin well, making communication difficult. There were others nearby, all of them turning away and moving around the old person; she was rushing over herself, yet she still stopped. Unable to hear the elderly person clearly, she bent slightly forward, expression focused and attentive as she listened, and then pointed out the way.

That was the second time he had seen her, after the freshman welcome event.

Appetite, desire, human nature.

Lu Yicheng had later thought: if it hadn’t been Jiang Ruoqiao, if it had been any other girl, would he still have remembered that encounter so vividly?

Of course he wouldn’t.

Because it was Jiang Ruoqiao, he had remembered her.

He always felt that, even if Siyan had never come into the picture, perhaps years later — perhaps just as in a dream — he would have run into her at a hospital. Perhaps just a silhouette from behind, and he would have recognized her, then called out to her. To call it “like” — just two encounters, it wasn’t really that. And yet he always felt that those two encounters had become a seed, planted quietly in his heart.

Did the Lu Yicheng of that time ever imagine that one day, that dazzling girl would truly become his bride?

……

The wedding was both romantic and lively, with as many of their classmates and friends as could make it in attendance. Many people were recording short videos. Whether still in school or already working, the stars of this day were Lu Yicheng and Jiang Ruoqiao. Far away in another city, Jiang Yan also saw the videos and photos shared in the class group chat. Of all those many classmates, not a single one remembered that he had once been in a relationship with Jiang Ruoqiao. From now on, whenever anyone mentioned Jiang Ruoqiao, the first thing they would think of was her love story with Lu Yicheng.

No one would ever remember again that, among those who had loved her, before Lu Yicheng, there had been a Jiang Yan who had loved Jiang Ruoqiao — and who had loved her first.

After graduating from university, Jiang Yan did not stay in Jing Shi. He drifted from place to place, with no fixed home.

Yet somehow, this rootless existence made him feel more at peace.

He no longer had friends to play basketball with; he would go alone at night to a court near wherever he was staying and shoot hoops by himself.

Eager colleagues and seniors would enthusiastically try to set him up with someone, and he could never muster any interest.

As time went on, it seemed his life contained only himself.

Watching Ruoqiao in the video, so happy, so joyful — he had long since made his peace with things, yet now found himself feeling something unexpected: a faint thread of relief. He was calm — no heartache, no sorrow. It was only on the walk home from work that he stopped to buy some alcohol, and when he got back to his rental room, he found a film he had once watched with her, watching it as he drank. In the end, he somehow drifted off into a dream.

He dreamed of another version of himself.

He dreamed of that self’s tangled, passionate history with Ruoqiao — dreamed of the unbearable anguish of that self after the breakup, and also of the married life alongside Lin Kexing.

In that life, he was very successful in his career, just like his father had been in his time. His wedding with Lin Kexing had been the talk of the town; everyone present said they were a golden couple, perfectly matched, deeply devoted, and wished them a lifetime together until their hair turned white. He had never known that growing old together could be a kind of curse.

After the wedding, he became a very bad person.

On one side, the person he carried in his heart, the one he loved, was his first girlfriend; on the other side, he was attentive and caring toward his wife. He knew it was wrong — but the more he couldn’t let go of Ruoqiao, the greater his guilt toward Lin Kexing became. Lin Kexing had finally grown up too. Once, she had only wanted to be with him — but the human heart is greedy. What starts as simply wanting to be together eventually becomes wanting to be truly, mutually in love.

Lin Kexing had sensed who it was that he carried in the deepest part of his heart.

He had tried. She had tried. They still appeared devoted and affectionate on the surface — but after Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng got together, his jealousy became impossible to conceal. He knew he had long since lost any right to pursue love, yet he still felt the loss, still felt the jealousy, still felt the rage. All of it was witnessed by Lin Kexing. Beneath the peaceful surface of their relationship, there were hidden currents.

One year, two years, three years…

Perhaps there was truth in the saying that men are shameless. His guilt had gradually worn away entirely over those years. Arguments broke out between him and Lin Kexing. In the early quarrels, his mother would still scold him for it — but as time went on, his mother no longer bothered.

Just when the marriage was on the verge of collapse, when he thought the final outcome would be divorce and even felt a faint sense of relief at the thought, Lin Kexing became pregnant, and gave birth to a child.

Life became a mess of loose ends. For the child’s sake, he tried to return to the state their marriage had been in shortly after the wedding, wanting to give the child a complete and warm home. But somewhere along the way, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law who had once been close as mother and daughter began to quarrel over the child. His mother wanted to be closer to her grandchild and to make things easier for the young couple, while Lin Kexing — having accepted that he would never love her — had channeled all her heart and soul into the child she had carried for ten months and brought into the world.

By the time his career had grown large enough to no longer need the support of his wife’s family connections, the relationship between the two women had taken on an almost adversarial edge. One morning, his mother slipped and suffered a stroke. Only his mother-in-law and Lin Kexing had been present that day. He suspected there was more to his mother’s stroke than it appeared, but before he could investigate further, his mother — now bedridden and paralyzed — desperately covered for Lin Kexing and her mother, insisting it had nothing to do with them, that she herself had simply been careless, and begging him not to pursue it further. He had no recourse.

Looking back on it all afterward, he found that none of it — not the meteoric rise, not the wealth and splendor — held any flavor at all.

The truly happy, unrestrained times of his life were in university. When she was still by his side.

And she had married, had children, was living with another man — the very kind of life he had once wanted to give her.

……

In the haze between dreaming and waking, Jiang Yan seemed to glimpse that other self of his, who let out a quiet sigh and said, “How is it that this time I still lost her.”

At Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng’s wedding, no one gave a single thought to Jiang Yan.

Jiang Ruoqiao walked to the altar arm in arm with her maternal grandparents.

Lu Siyan, dressed in a tailored little suit, stood behind her like a small grown-up knight.

She felt complete. At the far end, holding the bouquet, was her husband.

At her side were her grandmother and grandfather. Behind her was her child.

This time, a new photograph was added inside the pocket watch.

In the photo, Jiang Ruoqiao in her wedding dress held Lu Yicheng’s arm, while Lu Siyan stood in front of them both deliberately striking a cool pose. Her grandparents stood at her side as well, both beaming with joy, small colorful ribbons in their hair, the whole scene full of festive delight.

In her twentieth year, she had crossed paths with him. In that same year, they had come to know each other and fallen in love.

At twenty-three, she married him.

How wonderful.

—