"Geez! Why didn't you just contact support right away?" Christina No. 2 said.
"Well..." I dragged out the word, debating whether to admit I was just a lazy ass. "I wanted to get married as fast as possible. I'm the last single guy in my class."
"Well, I'm the last single girl in mine," Christina said, totally buying it. "I feel you. Who wants to deal with all the dating hassle? Honestly, if I could get married tomorrow, I'd do it."
That was my cue to pull out the classic story about the guy who accidentally married a grandma with interest rates. Turns out Christina had never heard it, but she agreed that trial periods were necessary, though six months felt way too long. What if you got into a stupid fight and broke up in the heat of the moment? All that effort down the drain. I couldn't agree more.
Before we knew it, the two of us were bonding over a shared hatred of the government bureaucracy that was slowing down our lives and wasting our time with system glitches. At least Christina got to sit comfortably at home; poor me had to travel halfway across the city. Good thing we didn't meet at the registry office, or we'd both have wasted a whole afternoon.
To make it up to me, Christina decided to feed me. She dragged me into the kitchen, threw on a yellow-and-black striped cooking apron, tied the strings into a messy knot behind her back, and started whipping up scrambled eggs with tomatoes. I'd never tried such an abomination before, but it actually tasted amazing. She also popped a slice of fancy, expensive bread into the toaster, and my inner cheapskate almost choked. That stuff cost as much per slice as a regular loaf of bread. You're supposed to save it for fancy sandwiches! Instead, she managed to burn the edges and scraped the charred bits right into the sink with a butter knife.
Then I had to untangle the knot on her apron. She struggled with it from the side for a minute before deciding to just pull it over her head, nearly taking her T-shirt off along with it. I was not ready for a flash of bare back and a lacy bra. She was so unbelievably ditzy she didn't even realize she'd almost undressed in front of a complete stranger.
"So, listen..." Christina talked with her mouth full. "Did you invite her yet? Your actual wife? Because we almost accidentally started a family here..."
"Crap, I forgot!" I snapped out of it, pulled out my phone, and opened Christina No. 1's profile. The invite link was still valid. I thought about it and checked Saturday and Sunday, that way I could bring my parents along. Man, were they going to be surprised. Maybe I should joke about having two wives...
"Your parents are going to lose their minds when you introduce wife number two," Christina said, giving me a weird sense of deja vu like she'd already said those exact words to me before, or like I was living through this moment for the second time. "Maybe your system is set to Arabic localization and UKARI thinks you're a Sheikh?"
I found that hilarious, even though the glitch was actually a pretty big deal. If UKARI weren't just a recommendation system but a mandatory sentence, I'd have to marry both of them. Christina cracked up at the thought, teasing me that I'd end up with two mothers-in-law. I replied that I didn't need that kind of headache, not that I had anything against my wives' mothers...
"Freudian slip!" Christina grinned at me.
"Don't jinx it!" I huffed, annoyed because I'd been this close to confessing I was just a lazy ass before she cut me off. "Anyway, write to support so they cancel the match on your end."
"Nope, no way." Christina waved her hand dismissively. "I already fed you, so you handle it. Your ticket is enough. Besides, I'm not paying for a second re-roll. If UKARI messed up, I'm owed compensation."
"Why do you need compensation if you're rich?" I asked, raising a fair point. Paperwork is a nightmare.
"I'm not taking cash." Christina's eyes narrowed slyly. "I'm going to make them unlock the full candidate list so I can pick for myself. I'm not waiting until I'm twenty."
"Solid plan," I nodded in agreement. I'd go through the hassle for that, too. Honestly, what's the difference if a girl is a 65% match or a 67% match? In the long run, those two points don't mean a thing. Besides, the law of diminishing returns says it's way easier to bring a weak player up to an average level than it is to boost an average player any higher.
Before we even noticed, we'd talked straight through until her parents got home.
Christina joked that I was just a "practice dummy" for her dating skills, which offended me enough that I blabbed about how UKARI had messed up our match. Surprisingly, her mom called me a responsible young man, "unlike my daughter," and genuinely offered to let me take Christina off their hands since we were already getting along so well. Besides, she pointed out, if we were getting married due to a system glitch, we'd be entitled to premium government benefits, not just the standard ones. People spent years trying to hack the system for unfair advantages, but ours was completely legit.
I was just starting to feel awkward about turning down her mother's generous offer when Christina saved me. She declared that I wasn't a conductor and that, given that an elephant must've stepped on my musical talent at birth, I stood zero chance of getting into music school anyway, even with government perks. A deaf guy would have a better shot at passing the audition than I would. In any other situation, that would've been offensive, but right then, I was thoroughly grateful for her ironclad, rock-solid argument.
Then Christina's dad walked into the kitchen and started cooking. Turns out, he was a head chef at some ultra-elite restaurant and even ran his own cooking livestream. Naturally, he was deeply ashamed of his daughter, who hadn't learned to make anything other than scrambled eggs. Christina's defense was that eggs, bread, and a vegetable constituted a fully balanced meal packed with macronutrients and vitamins, so fancy culinary art should be left to the pros.
Honestly, I agreed with her. My own cooking repertoire consisted entirely of the microwave: either reheating whatever my mom made or zapping frozen store-bought meals when I wanted to feel sophisticated.
Her dad pointed out that it was precisely her nonchalant attitude toward basic housework that had kept UKARI from finding her a husband, and just like her mom, he tried to pawn her off on me too. Man, she really was useless around the house. I actually felt a little bad for her. It's kind of sad when your own parents write you off like that.
"At least she plays the flute really well," I offered in her defense.
"Credit where credit's due," her dad said, serving risotto and chicken julienne to me, then to his wife, and finally to Christina. He sat down at the table with just a cup of tea and a single tiny cookie. "She's loved whistling since she was a kid. She actually wanted to be a traffic cop stationed at a busy intersection. But she picked up the flute fast and fell in love with it."
"Just like she fell in love with getting on people's nerves," her mom chimed in smoothly.
"You guys!" Christina protested, looking outraged. "With sales pitches like that, even a UKARI-assigned groom is going to run for the hills."
"UKARI takes everything into account," her dad said, taking a delicate bite of a macaron. "There's no lying to the system. So your future husband will probably love you for that exact trait."
"Right, except you were just complaining about my laziness," Christina grumbled, shoveling risotto into her mouth.
"I was complaining about housework," he corrected. "There aren't many young men who can afford a full-time housekeeper."
"I know how to do stuff!"
"Well, I know how to drive, but I don't own a car," her dad replied, taking a sip of tea. "Don't you see? UKARI has to find a guy who is an even bigger slacker than you are. Someone who won't notice when the apartment starts growing mold, or who can sleep on the same bedsheets for years until you finally decide to wash them."
"It is not that bad!" Christina shot me a look, clearly desperate for me to believe her.
"Your father is exaggerating," her mom clarified gently. "Young guys need a mommy figure way more than a muse. A man needs to live on his own first to learn how to be independent, and that doesn't happen early on, or even at twenty. If you really wanted to jump into marriage the second you got the chance, you should've paid attention in Home Ec instead of staring at your phone during class."
"Mom, please, not in front of Alex!" Christina turned bright red, then quickly looked over at me to explain. "We had this essay assignment on our future life plans, and as a joke, I wrote 'Get married.' I accidentally turned in the wrong draft, and now they bring it up literally every single day."
"Well, I actually wrote a serious essay about wanting to get married at fourteen," I bragged. "They even posted my essay on the official UKARI bulletin board at school. Of course, a year went by and I still didn't get matched, so to cover up their blunder, they took it down and replaced it with some romantic nonsense written by a married senior girl. It's still hanging there. That's when I realized they weren't going to hand me a wife on a silver platter." I smirked and added a shameless lie: "That's why I became the president of the school's Bachelor Club."
Christina giggled but didn't call me out. Her parents didn't quite get the reference, but they chalked it up to a generational gap. Back in their day, early marriages weren't encouraged, even by UKARI itself, and matches were designed more to keep teenagers from ruining their lives by trying to solve their romantic problems on their own. But I already knew all that from my own parents.
After that, we ended up bonding over a shared round of bashing the government, chatting right up until dusk. I even had to call my parents to let them know I was still alive and well.