Chapter 33

He calmed down and looked at a world blooming with fireworks.
“Gege… gege, look! That one looks like a jellyfish!”
He turned around.
Xi Siyan was already kneeling on one knee in front of him, a ring in his hand.
“Your wish came true, Jing Miao.”
“I will always love you. Love you most. Never leave you. Miss you every second even more than you miss me. You’ll never ‘grow out’ of me. I’ll tell you I love you three hundred times a day.”
“I love you. I love you. I love you.”
His voice grew firmer, and gentler, with each repetition.
“Now… is it your turn to grant gege’s wish?”
Jing Miao stared at him, stunned, tears spilling.
“Mr. Jing Miao, now an adult—are you willing to marry Xi Siyan?”
Fireworks over the border-island sea kept exploding, falling, rising again—like a life that would not stop.
In that brief brilliance, Jing Miao remembered the very first image of Xi Siyan in his limited, chaotic memory:
a white hospital room,
the beeping of machines,
an oxygen mask on his own face…
He lay there.
Xi Siyan stood there.
Behind him, only blurred white.
He appeared at the first moment Jing Miao became conscious.
For a long time, Jing Miao’s subconscious believed the world was exactly that:
endless white.
He knew colors. He wasn’t colorblind. His vision and nervous system were fine.
But whenever he looked at Xi Siyan, his world faded on its own.
Only white could match Xi Siyan’s brilliance.
After becoming conscious, he learned there were many things in this world greater than love.
Between knowing and doing, humans had an unbridgeable gap.
Books, TV, people—all told him: don’t. Control yourself. Have boundaries. Don’t occupy and erode another person’s life. Everyone is an independent individual.
Pathological taking and unrestrained giving were both wrong.
Even the sea could not hold everything.
Xi Siyan should not devote his whole life this way.
And Jing Miao should not, regardless of Xi Siyan’s will, open his body and soul unconditionally and offer everything up.
He understood all the principles.
But he was powerless.
In front of Xi Siyan, he was a human without a self-control system.
His emotions were wrong. His worldview was wrong.
Maybe he was a fool.
Maybe a monster.
But gege had always accepted him.
Jing Miao thought:
They were both extremely abnormal.
Then… stop resisting.
Crying, he put on the ring—brighter than the fireworks—and threw himself into Xi Siyan’s arms.
“I do.”
Complete.
Seeing Xi Siyan kneel, then the two of them hugging and kissing, everyone knew the proposal had succeeded.
A bunch of younger kids charged in with party poppers like little cavemen, celebrating wildly. Leading the charge was Wang Song—almost thirty, same as Xi Siyan.
Xi Siyan was helpless.
He wanted to share joy, but not like this.
The elders, egged on by Su Wan and Xi Yucheng, also ran toward the beach.
Some of them were probably still processing “Xi Siyan and Jing Miao” one second earlier, and got swept up by the atmosphere the next.
“Should we just hold the wedding banquet right here?” Xi Yucheng said cheerfully. “Friends and family are all here!”
Su Wan glared at him. “Are you reckless? My sons’ wedding with nothing prepared, just done here? We haven’t even invited all eighteen generations of relatives!”
Mrs. Wang agreed. “Exactly! Don’t they need formal wear? If you really do it here, at least book the whole southern coastline.”
Gan Zisen’s father inserted quietly, “The state may not allow that.”
Mrs. Gan sighed. “What a pity. Can’t we pay extra?”
“And the planner has to be top-tier. Maybe find a foreign planner, make it stylish!” Mrs. Chen added.
Chen Tianruo smiled. “I attended two male classmates’ weddings abroad—they were just okay. We have good planners here too.”
“I know one wedding-planning company,” Wang Song’s father said, opening WeChat. “Very expensive, but everyone says it’s worth it. Expensive for a reason. I’ll push you the contact, Lao Xi.”
Xi Yucheng grinned so wide he couldn’t close his mouth. “Good, good, send it to my household boss to review. I don’t get final say. Spending money extravagantly is her department.”
Su Wan glared. “How is it ‘extravagant’ when it’s our son’s wedding? Say that again properly.”
“When we got married, we had poor conditions. Now we’re not short of money. Doing it well is not extravagance.”
“Okay, okay, not extravagant, absolutely should do it well,” Xi Yucheng surrendered.
“A wedding is so old-school,” one high-schooler said. “Brother Xi should do a travel wedding with little sister-in-law. That’d be cool!”
Another cried out, “Then we can’t see anything! Can we livestream the whole thing?”
“You all are something else,” Wang Song said. “We have a nationally top-level talent here. In my opinion they should marry at Huada. Arrange seats like this: master’s students standing-room, PhDs seated, professors in the middle, academicians in the front row. Glorious, right?”
Gan Zisen immediately agreed. “Yes, yes, yes. Earth’s strongest.”
Auntie Jiang quietly inserted, “Immediate family should sit front row. Academicians can be second row.”
…
Xi Siyan listened to the chirping chaos, speechless, as if they were the ones getting married.
He pressed Jing Miao—already embarrassed enough to die on the spot—into his arms.
“That shy, baby?”
Jing Miao whimpered, “Why do they all know? When can we go back, gege?”
Xi Siyan held back laughter and finally interrupted:
“Everyone… did any of you ask the groom’s opinion?”
The noisy crowd slowly went quiet, only then noticing the leads were still sitting in place.
Impressive. They had forgotten the protagonists entirely.
Xi Siyan stood up with Jing Miao in his arms.
“If you don’t let us hide now, my wife is going to jump into the sea.”
Jing Miao heard that, lifted his head with a red face—
“I wouldn’t!”
Then saw a full circle of eyes on him, gave a despairing little cry, and buried his face again.