Guy, still standing on the stage, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted with a laugh, "Bai Liu! Say yes!"
"This handsome young man just asked to borrow my wedding dress!" Guy laughed so hard he was nearly in tears. "I didn't lend him the dress—I only gave him the veil. He looked drunk. After putting on the veil, he even tried to pull off my wedding dress and nearly tore it right off me!"
Alex suddenly lifted his head, still clinging to Guy's waist, and looked around seriously despite his drunkenness.
"—Where is this good young man who tried to tear off Guy's wedding dress?!"
Guy laughed even harder, lowered his head, and kissed Alex.
The drunk Alex immediately fell silent after the kiss.
Guy then raised his head and looked at Bai Liu. His eyes shone with warmth, filled with sincere tenderness and blessing.
"Say yes, Bai Liu. You really love each other."
Beneath Guy's bright smile lay a faint layer of sadness.
"Don't wait until your lover is dead to mourn him. Every moment you spend together is as precious as gold."
Spades remained kneeling on the ground, bouquet in hand, head raised stubbornly as he waited for Bai Liu's answer.
Around them, the crowd jumped and shouted meaninglessly, waving bottles, laughing, and popping champagne. Sweet, intoxicating foam sprayed through the air. Golden confetti rained down from the ceiling like fireworks. Laughter drifted in from outside the windows and echoed into the night.
A few shining fragments landed in Spades' hair.
Bai Liu lowered his gaze. He reached out gently, brushed the fragments away, and smoothed the loose strands from Spades' forehead.
The eyes beneath his dark hair were clear and deep, reflecting Bai Liu's figure entirely—as though in this noisy world, only Bai Liu existed within them.
"Are you willing to marry me?" Spades asked seriously, holding the bouquet almost against Bai Liu's nose.
Bai Liu parted his lips. He had many things he wanted to say. Many things he wanted to ask.
Hesitation was rare for him—almost impossible. And yet, in this moment, he hesitated.
Because the person before him did not remember anything. Did not understand anything. And sometimes, Bai Liu wasn't even certain that this amnesiac Spades was the Tawil he remembered.
They felt so different.
And yet— Spades always gave Bai Liu an indescribable sense of familiarity. Enough to make him certain.
Edmund, the NPC from the previous game, had once told Bai Liu that humans are not merely containers of memory and flesh. There is something higher that exists within them—something that distinguishes them from monsters identical in body and mind.
That thing is love.
Even if memory and flesh are completely different, love remains.
Bai Liu had never believed that. And yet he still couldn't understand how Spades had found him among so many versions of Bai Liu before.
He couldn't understand the sudden impulse urging him to take the bouquet now.
This was just a game.
Wasn't it?
Bai Liu looked calmly down at Spades and asked, "Why do you want to marry me?"
Spades answered without hesitation. "I don't want you to hate me."
Bai Liu immediately understood his logic. His eyes narrowed slightly.
"…Why don't you want me to hate you?"
"So many players hate you. Do you plan to marry all of them so they won't?"
Spades paused, then shook his head.
"They have always hated and feared me."
"I don't want to marry them."
Bai Liu asked evenly, "If you want to marry someone who hates you, why not choose someone else?"
"They're afraid of you. They would agree easily. They wouldn't oppose you the way I do. They wouldn't hurt you repeatedly."
Bai Liu's long lashes lowered. His voice grew so soft it was almost swallowed by the noise. "…I've never been your best choice."
"I've been… killing you."
"You have never killed me," Spades replied, looking straight at him. "If I die one day, it will be because I chose to."
Bai Liu's breathing slowed. "…There are so many choices. Why do you always choose me?"
—Even after dying for me twice, you still choose me.
Spades' eyes reflected only Bai Liu. His voice was calm, steady, and serious. "Because you're different."
"What's different?" Bai Liu asked.
Spades thought for a long time before answering. "They can hate me. But I don't want you to."
Bai Liu was silent for a long time. Then he let out a quiet laugh and raised his eyes. "Why can't I hate you?"
Spades lowered his gaze slightly, his voice faintly subdued. "…I don't know. I just don't want you to."
The expression on Bai Liu's face softened unconsciously. "Just like I hate you without a reason?"
Spades nodded slightly. "…Yeah."
"Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!"
The cheers grew louder. Red-faced, drunken soldiers shouted as if threatening Bai Liu, though their expressions were filled with joy and anticipation. They were eager to witness a second wedding.
Spades remained kneeling, waiting.
"Spades," Bai Liu said quietly, "people don't marry someone they hate. That's not how normal logic works."
Spades froze, as if caught in a whirlpool of confused reasoning.
In his mind, two people who hated each other could marry and use marriage to end that hatred.
But Bai Liu had reversed the cause and effect.
It disrupted his logic completely.
This was not how he had calculated it.
Bai Liu's gaze fell to the bouquet in Spades' hands. His voice turned softer, almost as if speaking to himself.
"But you and I are both drunk."
"So we can do things that don't make sense."
He reached out and took the bouquet from Spades' hands.
Then he smiled at Spades, who still hadn't fully processed what was happening.
"I do."
Guy shoved his fingers into his mouth and let out a piercing whistle, laughing without any concern for his image.
"—Now the groom may kiss the groom!"
Holding the bouquet, Bai Liu stepped slowly toward Spades.
He tilted his head slightly upward, as if about to kiss him, and gazed directly into Spades' eyes.
Golden fireworks drifted down around them.
Strangers from a foreign land clinked empty beer bottles together, swaying off-beat to a mangled wedding march. In the dim tavern light, beneath falling sparks and drunken cheers, a groom in a borrowed veil and another holding a bouquet leaned toward each other.
Before the moment Bai Liu jumped from that plane, he had never once imagined what his wedding might look like.
But in that moment, he had thought about it.
Bai Liu had once believed that a wedding imagined by a monster like him would be strange and unattended. Yet oddly enough, the wedding he imagined with Tawil was the same kind that ordinary people all over the world longed for.
Vulgar. Lively. Surrounded by a crowd of strangers who shared only the faintest connection with them, serving as witnesses while, amid the noise, they made the same promise everyone else made—
We will be together forever, until death do us part.
Until death do us part.
Back then, Bai Liu had thought that after he found Tawil… perhaps… he would try to accept a wedding.
And now he had one.
Though it wasn't quite what he had imagined.
It was always like this. He seemed to carry endless misfortune.
And that person—that person would always try his best, as though challenging the whole world, to return what Bai Liu had once wanted in the strangest, most absurd ways.
—A storybook that had been torn apart and painstakingly taped back together.
—A tall ghost doll with a missing face.
—A wedding after separation.
That person had always been clumsy in his comfort, trying awkwardly to make him happy by giving Bai Liu the gift he had once wanted most.
Even if the price of that gift was his own life.
Soft background music drifted through the tavern. People swayed in pairs, holding each other as they danced. The lights dimmed until only shifting shadows and faint glimmers remained.
Bai Liu slid his arm around the back of Spades' neck and rested lightly beneath his chin, blinking once.
With Bai Liu holding him there, Spades strained slightly to glance toward Guy and Alex in the middle of the dance floor. He had never been married before; he needed a reference.
Guy had his arms around Alex's shoulders as they swayed together. They were kissing continuously, and Alex's hand had already slipped beneath the hem of Guy's wedding dress.
Spades' gaze flickered between them and Bai Liu.
Then he leaned closer to Bai Liu's ear and asked cautiously,
"—Am I going to kiss you now?"
He still remembered that he had angered Bai Liu once by kissing him without warning. This time, he asked first.
"People don't kiss someone they hate, Spades," Bai Liu replied softly without looking up.
"But we're married," Spades said with complete confidence. "Married people should kiss."
Bai Liu, resting against his shoulder, let out a quiet laugh.
"Didn't you ask me earlier how long I would hate you?"
Spades immediately followed up, "How long?"
Bai Liu lifted his head.
There was a sheen in his eyes. His smile was bright and clean, with a faint trace of mischief he didn't bother to hide.
"—Forever. I'll hate you forever."
Spades froze mid-motion, attempting to process the contradiction.
"We're married, so we should kiss. But if you hate me, then we can't kiss—"
Before he could finish, Bai Liu lowered his gaze, pulled Spades down, closed his eyes, and kissed him.
When they parted, Spades looked at him seriously.
"You said you hate me. But you kissed me first."
The logic didn't align. He couldn't understand it. Confusion clouded his expression, tinged with faint frustration.
"Why?"
"Because I'm drunk," Bai Liu answered.
He didn't close his eyes this time as he leaned in and kissed Spades again.
"—When I'm drunk, I can marry someone I hate."
Another kiss.
"And I can kiss someone I hate."
He pressed their lips together once more, eyes finally closing, his voice calm and steady.
"I'm willing to stay with the person I hate forever. Until death do us part. Again."