Chapter 18: The Wedding

Ever since her mother made her stance clear that day, Jiang Wanwan began seriously considering her relationship with Shen Tingjun. At first, she had only agreed to be his girlfriend because he had coerced and tempted her. She was momentarily dazzled by his good looks and, in a moment of weakness, gave in.

Once she started a relationship, she felt she should be genuinely invested in it, but she never really thought about marriage. The whole idea of dating for a year and then getting married was just something she said as a convenient excuse. After all, she had only just graduated from high school in her previous life, and it wasn’t uncommon for people she knew to be over thirty and still single. Jiang Wanwan felt she was still just a kid; how could she even be thinking about marriage?

But Xu Huirong’s wedding was a splash of cold water, a slap of reality. Xu Huirong was only a year older than her, and she was always so loud and straightforward; every thought was written all over her face. Her demeanor was far less mature than her classmates from Jiang Wanwan’s past life. Yet this immature, unsophisticated person was getting married.

There was no wedding dress. Xu Huirong simply wore a bright red shirt and a plastic flower in her hair as her wedding “gown.” Her colleagues spent ages doing her makeup, but the result—a face that was far too rosy and two thick, black eyebrows—was, to be honest, less attractive than her natural look.

And the so-called wedding? It was a speech from the groom’s superior acting as the officiant. Likely out of respect for Xu Huirong’s father, Secretary Sun from the machinery factory came to preside. After a speech full of era-specific platitudes, the wedding guests started eating the feast.

The feast itself was just a single table set at both the groom’s and bride’s homes, where relatives, friends, neighbors, and close colleagues came for a simple meal. While the food was nothing special, only families with a very good financial standing could afford such a spread.

The Xu family set up a table in their courtyard. Since Jiang Wanwan’s mother wasn’t much of a cook, they hired the head chef from the cafeteria to help. As for the groom, although Li Shiyuan had just been assigned a small, ten-square-meter room in the machinery factory’s dormitory, the wedding feast was held at his stepfather’s house.

Li Shiyuan’s stepfather, Zheng Dahai, was a worker at the slaughterhouse. In a time of scarcity, this was a highly sought-after profession, and his outgoing and generous personality meant he had many friends. The Zheng family shared a large courtyard with several other households in Pearly String Alley, so the wedding feast was held right there in the courtyard with neighbors and Zheng Dahai’s friends filling the courtyard to the brim. Jiang Wanwan, as a member of the bride’s party, stepped out for a breath of fresh air. When she tried to go back inside, she found herself completely unable to squeeze through the crowd at the entrance.

“Exciting, isn’t it?” someone next to her suddenly asked.

She responded with a deadpan face, “It’s so exciting, it’s giving me a headache.”

Only after she spoke did she realize and turn her head. Of course, the person standing next to her, hands in his pockets, watching the courtyard’s festivities, was none other than Shen Tingjun.

“What are you doing here?” Jiang Wanwan asked, surprised.

“Li Shiyuan and I are high school classmates, and we’ll be brothers-in-law, too. I had to come and give a gift.”

“So, where’s your gift?”

“I had Sun Laosan bring it in for me.”

After that, Shen Tingjun didn’t say anything else. Jiang Wanwan didn’t ask any more questions either. The two stood together in a rare moment of quiet, watching the bustling crowd in the courtyard.

After a while, Shen Tingjun spoke again. “What were you thinking about just now?”

“I was thinking about the relationship between Sun Laosan and Sun Lao’er.”

Shen Tingjun turned his head in disbelief, frowning at the seemingly-distracted Jiang Wanwan. “That’s all you were thinking about so intently? I thought you were thinking about our wedding!”

“I’ve already got it all planned out. A bicycle is a bit low-class for a wedding. When we get married, I’ll borrow the jeep from the machinery factory for the procession. And we’ll have the feast at the state-run restaurant. How does that sound?”

Jiang Wanwan turned to look at Shen Tingjun’s excited face, wanting to say something, but she hesitated. Finally, she asked tentatively, “What if we get married in ten years?”

“What did you say?” Shen Tingjun thought he must have misheard her.

“I want to get married in a wedding dress. I think we’ll be able to wear them in ten years.”

“What’s going on in that brain of yours? Getting married in a wedding dress? That’s bourgeois thinking! And what if you still can’t wear a wedding dress in ten years? Are you going to make me wait another ten?”

Shen Tingjun felt that Jiang Wanwan was just spoiled, taking advantage of his affection to make one ridiculous demand after another. Wait ten years? He could barely wait another year!

Jiang Wanwan stuck to her guns. “I think we’ll be able to wear them in ten years.”

“Okay, even if we can wear a wedding dress in ten years, can’t we just get married now and have another wedding then? If you really want to wear that thing, my grandmother had one when she got married. It’s an old item from the Republic of China era. I can dig it out, and you can put it on.”

Jiang Wanwan was speechless.

Shen Tingjun watched her pout with a look of injustice. He couldn’t help but take a deep breath. He turned and glanced around, seeing that a few people had noticed them. Sun Laosan was waving at him from a short distance away, apparently calling him over.

To hell with that, Shen Tingjun thought. My girlfriend is about to leave me. Who has time for anything else?

He grabbed Jiang Wanwan, turned, and walked away from the courtyard, following the alley to its end and into a small side street.

“Okay, no one’s here now. Let’s talk about this properly.”

He stretched out his arm, trapping her between himself and the wall.

“You just don’t want to get married, do you?”

Jiang Wanwan hesitated for a moment before finally nodding.

Shen Tingjun ground his teeth. A vein bulged in his neck, his throat bobbed, and he stared intently at Jiang Wanwan as he asked again.

“Do you… love me?”

Jiang Wanwan blinked. She thought for a while, then lowered her eyes and shook her head.

Shen Tingjun’s heart dropped to his stomach. A chill spread from his chest to his limbs, and his body went rigid.

But then Jiang Wanwan added, “I don’t know.”

He let out a sigh of relief. The warmth slowly returned to his limbs, but her ambiguous answer still left his heart in his throat.

“Okay, now imagine that I married another woman. I’m being affectionate with her, and we’re having children. How does that make you feel?”

At his words, Jiang Wanwan’s previously confused eyes flashed with a sudden coldness. Gritting her teeth, she said, “I’d kill you and that tramp!”

Shen Tingjun finally relaxed, a look of relief washing over his face. But to be safe, he asked one more question. “And what if I was kicked out of my family, became even worse off than Li Shiyuan, had nowhere to live, and only earned a dozen or so yuan a month? Would you still be with me?”

Jiang Wanwan paused and truly began to consider the question. She looked up at Shen Tingjun’s face, then down to think, her expression one of great difficulty. Just as Shen Tingjun was certain she would say no, Jiang Wanwan spoke. “I suppose I could. But you’d have to hand over your entire salary, you’d do all the housework, you couldn’t hang out with your useless friends anymore, you’d have to start working hard, and you couldn’t be so extravagant with your money…”

Before she could finish, he pulled her into a tight hug.

“That’s what love is, you fool.”