Come, each darling take an invitation, let's go feast at the wedding banquet~ Happy Lantern Festival~!
Silk strings stir, drums and gongs clamor, layers of sound tumbling over crimson waves.
Today's Phantom Sound Pavilion has shed its former days of decadent pleasure, replaced by the warmth of mortal life.
Crimson silk cascades like waterfalls from the eaves of the five-story pavilion. Great red lanterns hang beneath the eaves, double-happiness paper-cuts adorn the window lattices, and even the old tree with its swing is tied full of red cords, swaying gently in the breeze like countless threads of fate reaching toward the human world.
The flower girls had all changed into ordinary young ladies' gowns, no longer needing to bare this or that, nor to flatter and please their patrons.
Today, they too were guests.
Some leaned against the railings to curiously observe the ceremony, others laughed and scrambled for wedding candies, even the rarely seen servants crowded among the people hoping for a bit of good fortune.
"Will I ever have a good man to ransom me out in this life?" A flower girl's choked voice suddenly spoke. She lifted her sleeve to wipe her eyes, then smiled and tugged her sister beside her hand, "Sister, how about we bow to each other, and pretend we're the ones getting married this once?"
Those words stirred a mix of tears and laughter among the crowd.
"The auspicious hour has arrived—"
A loud call pierced through the noise, and the crowd fell silent in an instant.
The young bride stepped forward slowly in her phoenix coronet and cape of red. Golden phoenixes held tassels that fell before her brow, silver fish-shaped hairpins swayed gently with her steps, and one could vaguely see her brows like paintings and her lips like cherry blossoms.
She held a fan before her face, embroidered with mandarin ducks playing in water, her face like a peach blossom reflected in the fan.
The brazier burned bright.
She lifted her skirt and stepped over the fire pan, the golden threads on her hem shimmering like a figure from a painting.
On the other end of the red silk, a young man in red robes, his ink-black hair bound with a golden crown, set off his brows and eyes with crisp handsomeness. He stood silently, the red silk stretched taut in his hands, his gaze never straying from her, unblinking.
When she had crossed the brazier and steadied herself, he stepped before her and bent down slightly.
Laughter and teasing rose kindly from the crowd, and an older matron called out with a smile: "Bride, go on up, it's only proper!"
Behind the fan, the young woman revealed curved, laughing eyes and gently lay herself upon his back.
He held her steadily, rose.
In that moment, his steps were steadier than ever.
She lay on his back, the tassels of her phoenix coronet falling upon his shoulders, swaying gently with each step, while crimson silks surged throughout the courtyard, as though paving a path for the new couple.
At the seat of honor, Jiang Zhiyu and Song Yueyao had been dragged there by Xiaomi to act as the parents.
They sat side by side, watching the perfect pair approach step by step.
A cross-breeze swept through, blowing at the bride's hem and the groom's robe, rustling loudly, matching the thunderous beating of their hearts within their chests.
Heaven and earth as witnesses, the sun and moon as matchmakers.
Not until the couple stood before them, at that very moment.
A strange, indescribable feeling surged in Jiang Zhiyu's heart, and he frantically pinched his own thigh to keep from shedding tears on the spot.
He leaned secretly toward her and whispered: "Yueyao, why do I feel like I'm truly marrying off my own child?"
He thought for sure she'd scold him harshly for being sentimental at such a time, but when he turned to look, Yueyao was quietly wiping her tears.
He rarely saw her cry, and he was stunned for a moment.
He only heard her answer quietly: "You feel it too? The first time I saw Xiaomi, I felt an indescribable familiarity, as if she were my own flesh and blood."
Otherwise, with her nature, she would never have let her guard down around anyone at first sight.
Jiang Zhiyu's jaw dropped: "Me too! I've been afraid to say it, worried you'd call me crazy."
Song Yueyao glanced at him: "You probably are crazy, hit by me."
Just as they were getting into it, a pebble suddenly flew from somewhere and landed squarely on both their heads.
They clutched their heads at the same time, grimacing as they looked toward the source. There, a white cat stood on the second-floor balcony railing, performing a set of cat-style martial arts gestures as a warning.
Only then did they realize that the couple had already begun to bow to the parents. They quickly sat up straight, eyes forward.
The white cat blew on its whiskers, grumbling in dissatisfaction: Young people, so unstable. It would've been better to let me be the parent!
The local custom was to have the fan ceremony, so Chai Xiaomi did not need a red veil.
Through the gaps in the mandarin duck embroidery on her round fan, she vaguely caught sight of Wu Li's bony hands desperately clenching the other end of the red silk. He was gripping so hard that the veins on the back of his hand stood out, crushing the red cloth into a wrinkled mess.
As if he were a drowning man, clutching his last hope.
When it came time for the husband and wife to bow to each other, she saw him stealthily winding the red silk around his wrist, tighter and tighter, until it almost bit into his flesh.
And her end of the red silk was being silently pulled toward him, inch by inch.
"What are you doing, Lili?" Chai Xiaomi whispered softly from behind her fan.
It was only because he was tall and his wedding robes were wide that he could hide these little movements from prying eyes.
The fan was like a film of rosy mist, and his striking, unusual eyes passed through the gold-embroidered flowers to meet her gaze.
He stared at her without blinking, his long eyelashes trembling violently.
His lips moved, a welter of complex emotions churning in his eyes, as if he were mentally steeling himself.
Squeezing the last bit of toothpaste was easier than this struggle. The two were still bowing to each other, and she waited patiently until her waist began to ache before she heard him force out half a syllable from between clenched teeth.
She puzzled over it for a long time.
"Ji"? "Ge"? "Chi"?
What was that supposed to be?
It was as if he'd finished, or perhaps not quite, but in any case he fell silent.
Before being led into the bridal chamber, Chai Xiaomi asked, puzzled: "Are you hungry? Want some chicken?"
With all the busyness these last few days, she really hadn't seen him eat much.
So she especially considerately patted his shoulder: "The ceremony's done, go have something to eat first. The banquet tables have chicken cooked every which way. Don't worry about me, anyway I can only drink some stomach-soothing porridge for a few days. Ah, I can't even eat at my own wedding feast."
As she finished, she muttered with a face full of regret.
Wu Li: "..."
He turned his head to look at the girl, whose face was half-hidden by the round fan, only a pair of moist eyes showing. His lips parted as if to speak, then hesitated.
Just now, on a whim, he had wanted to please her.
But for some reason, the address he wanted to call her just wouldn't leave his mouth.
It had been so easy to call others before, coming naturally to his lips.
Why, when facing her, had it become so hard to say?
Calling her that wouldn't cost him a piece of flesh, so what was he hesitating and being awkward about?
Perhaps it was because he felt that if he called her that, she might never again call him "big brother" or "older brother."
Thinking this way, it wasn't just a piece of flesh—if she really refused to call him that again, it would hurt worse than stabbing him in the heart.
The night was like water, the moon on the branch tips.
He had thought Wu Li would have to stay outside, toasting and socializing, dawdling for an hour or so before returning to the room.
But Chai Xiaomi had barely warmed her seat when she saw someone slip through the window.
His wedding robe was slightly rumpled, the collar undone to reveal a hint of collarbone, the tips of his shoes and the edges of his robes wet—clearly signs he had secretly poured away a lot of the wine offered to him.
Such a lively occasion was probably something he had never encountered in his life.
And so, he had fled back to the room as if escaping disaster.
Lili looked up and met Xiaomi’s round, curious gaze.
Xiaomi blinked: “?”
He cleared his throat, face still holding traces of panic he hadn’t yet smoothed away, as if defending himself: “It’s not that I can’t hold my liquor and had to escape—it’s those people who are insane! Drinking is fine, but they had to grab at me. Especially that Jiang Zhiyu. When he got drunk, he mistook me for Song Yueyao and hung on my neck like a dead pig, yelling ‘Yao Yao’ over and over. I swear he must be blind, mistaking a guy for a girl.”
As he said this, the disgust on the young man’s face nearly overflowed.
“And he called me ‘gorgeous,’” he continued, his brows knitted into a storm cloud, teeth almost grinding. “That word is meant for women. Is he sick in the head?”
As he spoke, the tips of his ears and the corners of his eyes flushed a thin red, whether from anger or the alcohol. By the end of his venting, he swayed slightly, still propping himself against the wall in a forced show of sobriety.
Xiaomi tossed aside her round fan and hurried over to steady his swaying body before he fell.
How had he gotten this drunk so quickly?
“And you have the nerve to mock my tolerance? That’s like the pot calling the kettle black. You’re not much better!” she muttered angrily, hooking one of his arms over her shoulder as she guided him to the armchair in front of the desk.
