I left before Christina's parents got home.
I didn't manage to finish my homework. The next day at school, I had to activate full stealth mode for every single class I wasn't prepared for, which was all of them, honestly, because my mind was still spinning from yesterday. Especially that goodbye kiss at the door. I had genuinely fallen for my future wife. It wasn't a bad thing, but it was insanely distracting. Now I didn't just want us to do homework together. I wanted us to sit in the same classroom.
"So, how's the wifey?" asked Lena, the only girl in our entire grade who was still unassigned, making her the sole remaining member of the Bachelor Club.
"UKARI is wilding," I replied. "I thought they'd assign me a hardworking homemaker type like you."
"And what did you actually get? Also, I am not a homemaker," Lena feigned offense at the compliment.
"Well... how do I put this?" I paused, carefully choosing my words so I wouldn't accidentally say something out of line. "Put it this way: we're gonna end up getting a bed before we get a fridge."
"You better not say that out loud to the other guys," Lena warned me. "Girls take their sweet time with this stuff, you know."
I shot her a confused look.
"In case you forgot, I'm a girl too. I actually talk to our female classmates. I'm not just 'one of the guys.' And trust me, if a girl is showing more initiative than a literal log at a sawmill, you better keep it to yourself. Otherwise, your buddies will beat you up out of pure envy."
Before I could respond, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Christina, not No. 1, but No. 2:
[Wanna go with me to a lecture on marital duties?]
"Of course you want to," Lena chimed in, invading my privacy as she stared at my screen, assuming Christina Flute was my actual assigned wife. "They hand out free condoms and hotel vouchers! Ninety minutes of awkwardness for a pocketful of freebies. Don't be a cheapskate who works a job just to buy his wife flowers. The government needs new citizens, so let them foot the bill."
"Right," I countered. "Then what are the condoms for?"
"Think of them like free samples! The main goal is to get you two hooking up. Once you start, you won't stop, and BAM, new babies in the pipeline. Everybody wins: you get bliss, the state gets new taxpayers, businesses get consumers, and UKARI gets fresh data for the pool."
"Maybe you should go work as a UKARI relationship counselor?"
"I'd love to follow in my parents' footsteps, honestly. Though I'd end up like a shoemaker with no shoes. 'Excuse me, miss, how did UKARI help you?' And I'd be like, 'Dunno, kids, never tried it myself.'"
I snorted, and Lena laughed too.
I couldn't exactly tell her that Christina Flute was a massive UKARI system glitch.
I stepped off to the side and dialed No. 2's number.
"Turns out you've been cloned," Christina No. 2 blurted out by way of greeting.
As it turned out, the official inquiry email I'd sent hadn't even reached our assigned coordinator. It had been routed to an entirely different regional office, the one where, on paper, everything between me and Christina No. 1 was completely legit. And in Christina No. 2's file, her assigned husband showed up as an "Alex" with a single, exclusive backlink pointing back to her. The real kicker was that nobody could actually cross-check the two entries because no employee had the security clearance to snoop around in someone else's private data.
Her coordinator had even suggested that if she was just trying to get revenge on her best friend, she should see a therapist instead. Her argument that "giving away your husband isn't how revenge works" went completely over the coordinator's head. In the end, they just reassured her that the system was 100% foolproof and that her husband would never be assigned to another Christina. Then they handed her a pair of tickets to a sex seminar for newlyweds.
"Honestly, now I just want to go out of pure spite," No. 2 concluded, "and then sue them for pushing decent citizens into infidelity! Can you imagine the scandal?"
"I don't want a scandal," I said.
"Well, without one, I don't think they're gonna move an inch."
"Wait... how do you even know both offices are running in parallel like that?" I tried to figure out where the catch was, because there was no way UKARI could mess up this badly. Did I have a secret twin brother my parents never told me about?
"I called Christina and asked her to do the exact same thing on her end. We're registered under different regional branches, and those bureaucrats are way too lazy to pick up the phone and call each other. The only difference is that Christina's coordinator is a cheapskate who didn't offer her any freebies to shut her up."
"Not surprising," I grumbled. "UKARI isn't socialism—it doesn't guarantee equal benefits for everyone. You're rich, your parents pay more taxes, so you get better perks."
"Okay, see, that is totally unfair," Christina Flute sounded genuinely bummed. "You guys need those perks way more than I do! I can literally take my husband on a mountain getaway for the entire winter break using my allowance alone. What the hell do I need a local hotel voucher for?"
"Capitalism," I replied.
Like they taught us in social studies, it's not the only way to run a society, but nobody's invented anything more stable yet. So even UKARI was soaked in market logic. At least now I knew for sure that the people working there weren't much different from retail store clerks: when you buy into the system, they smile at you, but when you try to return a defective thing, they treat you like trash, as if you broke a "100% working" product on purpose.
"So... will you keep me company so we can shake up those lazy bureaucrats?" No. 2 asked after a brief pause. "I'm not forcing you, but going to a seminar like this by myself is just awkward."
"Let me ask Christina first."
"Ooh!" Christina Flute perked up instantly. "Why don't all three of us go together?"
"Is that even allowed?" I assumed those invitations were strictly for couples and you couldn't bring a hype squad along.
"It's an educational lecture! Education is for everyone."
I called Christina No. 1, but it turned out she'd already attended that exact lecture with her previous match, which was probably why she hadn't been offered a second ticket. Apparently, the system issues those invites about five months after an assignment to prepare couples for their wedding night.
Along with the lecture, they don't just hand out condoms. They give you lube, scented candles, and a bunch of other random goodies. Plus, if both partners submit a form listing their personal preferences, they can get a free session with a sexologist. Christina assured me that neither she nor her ex had filled out the form. They just sat there and listened.
So, going with the other Christina probably wouldn't hurt. If anything, the extra info couldn't hurt. Besides, a few of her moves during our kiss yesterday had clearly been lifted straight from that lecture. If I learned them too, we'd stumble a lot less.
"Is it really that much better than the official manual?" I asked, skeptical.
"Way better," Christina No. 1 confirmed. "Everything is in 3D, and the speakers even demonstrate stuff on themselves. You can ask questions whenever you want... No, no, I didn't ask anything! But there are always brave people who do, or the instructors just read the room and explain things more clearly."
"Sounds like a huge time commitment, though."
"Yeah, it takes all day, from morning till evening. But they feed you."
"Got it." I rubbed my temples.
During the next recess, I called Christina Flute back and laid out the intel I'd gathered.
"I'm gonna lose my mind sitting in one spot for that long," No. 2 groaned. She paused, then added, "But I know for a fact you won't go on your own. So we're basically stuck in a gym-buddy situation: we have to force each other to go out of pure guilt."
"We could just... both not go."
"Nope, not an option! I promised I'd be your number one fan, and I'm not gonna let you embarrass yourself in front of Christina and ruin your first time. Like that song says: 'You can't make your first omelet without breaking the hen.'"
"You mean the egg."
"An egg is just a severely undercooked hen."
"That makes zero sense."
"Having two wives doesn't either."
"Not everywhere. In some Arab countries..." I cut myself off, realizing where this was heading.
"So?"
"Fine, you won."
"I wasn't competing. We need to generate some hype on social media, or this case will never get the traction it needs. And I can't hen-dle it alone without your lending hen-d."
"Fine," I surrendered. "When is it?"
"Why wait? Let's go tomorrow... Oh, wait, let me check the schedule... Yup, tomorrow! Nailed it on the first guess."