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Xiao Qing is at university when the ruling comes through.
In truth, it came both earlier and later than she might have expected it. A-Qing is nineteen and in the second year of her mathematics course at Fudan, living over a thousand kilometres away from home; but despite her fathers’ protests, she boards a flight back to Chongqing the moment she finishes settling her emergency leave with administration.
“No, we’re not going to wait until summer,” she says firmly, as an overexcited Ouyang Zizhen piles her bags into the DiDi that Sizhui and the rest arranged for her. “You and Diedie have been waiting twenty years, Ba. We’re not waiting any longer.”
“I know, I know,” her father soothes. “But—listen, A-Qing—you have school, and think of the lines at court! The marriage bureau will be booked out for a month now that the ruling’s been passed, and you know your Diedie hates—”
“I called the courthouse yesterday morning, Xiao-daifu,” Zizhen bawls, putting his face close to A-Qing’s ear. “You and Song-shu have an appointment for Friday morning at ten. Can you make it?”
“Hello, A-Zhen! It’s been a while since I heard from you,” Xiao Xingchen exclaims. And then, blankly: “What?”
“You need to call and confirm the reservation—or visit, I don’t know—but you and Uncle Song just need to show up and sign the papers after you confirm the booking, and you’ll be done!” Ouyang Zizhen shouts, at the top of his lungs. “My father has an old friend at the Yubei courthouse, and he agreed to pull a few strings when he heard that you and Song-shu were talking about getting married in Europe sometime—”
“And it’s already settled?” Xiao Xingchen says faintly. “Did you know about this, A-Qing?”
“Zizhen did say he was going to get me a good present for my twentieth birthday,” A-Qing laughs, before wincing as Zizhen slams the trunk closed and flings himself into the DiDi’s back seat. “And this is better than the necklace he was looking at, so…”
“Wait—is that a car in the background?” her father cries. “Xiao Qing, if you don’t tell me where you are this instant—”
“I’m on the way to the airport,” A-Qing says hurriedly, before kissing the receiver and throwing her backpack into the car after Zizhen. “Zizhen is going with me to the terminal—and the boys already ordered another car to bring me home, so don’t skip work to pick me up!”
With that, she says a hasty goodbye: and then she joins Zizhen in the back seat and shuts her eyes.
“Hey,” Zizhen whispers, a few minutes later. “How are you feeling?”
“Dizzy,” A-Qing confesses. “It almost feels like I’m walking on clouds.”
She cannot quite muster the words to explain that her fathers’ love for one another has been as much a constant of her world as she is herself; and that the lack of recognition for that love was equally present all the while. Diedie was not granted the right to make medical decisions for Ba when their guardianship application was approved, and neither was he permitted to take guardianship of A-Qing—and so, every school form and doctor’s note she ever had was signed only Xiao Xingchen, father, despite the fact that her A-Die loves her just as fiercely as Ba does.
Ba’s older cousin—Sizhui’s father—had elected to leave China entirely after three years of such a life with his own husband. The two of them moved to Belgium and married there over a decade ago; and Sizhui had officially been renamed Lan Sizhui not long afterwards, because Lan-shushu was allowed to adopt him just before his and Wei Wuxian’s first wedding anniversary.
But leaving was never an option for Ba or Diedie: and for good reason. They were happy in Chongqing, with their respective jobs and their two-bedroom flat with its little rooftop garden, and A-Qing was happy, too. She is deeply fond of her friends—Zizhen and Jingyi and Sizhui’s cousin Jin Ling, though she only saw Lan Sizhui himself every other summer—and her home-town is so dear to her that she still grows homesick sometimes, even amid the rush and bustle of her life at university.
Neither she nor her parents could have borne to leave such a life (a near-perfect life, A-Qing has always thought) to build a new one elsewhere, but now—
“We’re here,” she hears Zizhen say presently. “Come on, A-Qing. I’ll get your bags out, and you go find a trolley.”
So she goes, unable to keep herself from smiling; and after they say their goodbyes, she finds herself climbing out of a taxi near her parents’ apartment building in what seems like no time at all.
They come running to meet her in sweaters and pajama pants, brimming with questions about her flight and her last few weeks at Fudan. But this too feels like a dream to A-Qing, and so do the two or three days that follow: and nothing seems truly real until A-Die takes them out to buy clothes for the wedding.
“I’d like to look at a cream tuxedo for my fiancé, please,” he says to one of the staff at the evening-wear boutique, as soon as the three of them are welcomed in. “One with a dove-gray vest and bow tie; and a black one for me.”
“Why a cream suit?” Ba asks, as the shop attendant scurries off with a heap of catalogues in his arms.
“I always thought a white one would wash you out,” A-Die replies, just as a young woman arrives to sweep A-Qing away to the women’s side of the room. “And black wouldn’t suit you. Gray wouldn’t, either—not that much gray—but it would suit you as an accent color.”
And then, hesitantly: “Tell me if you don’t like it, Xingchen.”
“I do like it,” Ba says slowly, “but—”
“I’ll go after him and tell him not to bring the cream suit," A-Qing hears her A-Die say, seemingly in no small amount of distress. “Wait here.”
“It’s not that, Zichen! Only—well, you know I used to think about us getting married now and then. I even started making plans to move to Europe, like Xian-ge did. But I never imagined that you would…”
His voice breaks: and a bashful silence ensues. In her fitting room around the corner, surrounded by tea-length dresses in shades of green and orange, A-Qing is somehow certain that her A-Die is too embarrassed to meet Ba’s eyes.
“I’ve always been thinking of it,” A-Die mutters. “I picked cream because you were wearing a cream dress shirt when we first met, that time in the emergency room. I saw it through the lapels of your coat, and I thought—”
“Oh!” Ba replies, in a choked voice; and after that, A-Qing hears nothing more for a long, long while.
* * *
The wedding morning is cool and misty: and unusually calm and still, for Chongqing. A-Qing and her parents dress at the courthouse, since none of them had liked the thought of risking their new clothes on the damp streets: and later, when the witnesses are asked to sign the marriage certificate, Ba takes A-Qing’s hand and leads her up to the judge’s desk.
“Our daughter will be the first witness,” he says. “Here, Qingqing.”
She signs her name with tears burning in her eyes; and just like that, the wedding is over.
“Xingchen,” is all that A-Die says, afterwards: that one word, and nothing more. He bows his head, and Ba lifts up his; and after they part, A-Qing abandons all semblance of calm and flings herself into her fathers’ arms.
A-Qing cries more than they do that day, much to their surprise. She sniffles through the judge’s congratulations and Ba’s impromptu video call to Xian-shushu, and all through lunch at A-Die’s favorite restaurant—and back at home, while her parents are busy choosing a place for the wedding photographs they took at the courthouse, A-Qing withdraws to her room to finish her cry in private.
But before she closes the door, she hears a faint ping! echoing from the depths of her purse and realizes that she must have missed a text message from Ouyang Zizhen.
How was it? he asked—probably while A-Qing was busy with lunch, judging by the timestamp.
Come on, A-Qing! I’m dying to know! Tell me everything.
A-Qing smiles.
There isn’t much to tell, she texts back. But they belong to each other now, and all the world knows it.
So as far as I’m concerned—it was perfect.