I got back, grabbed my phone, covering the camera with my hand, and ran toward my parents' bedroom again.
"Can I bring my wife home today?" I repeated as I entered.
"For the night?" Mom asked, looking up from her laptop, suspicious.
"No, for good."
"How about you wait a couple of months?" Mom grumbled, hastily clicking the save icon on her document just in case.
"But I want to do it now," I pushed.
"Are you planning on becoming a grown-up right now too?" Dad chimed in, pausing his phone scrolling. "Because I'm not funding you off-budget. If you can't wait a couple of months, drop out of school and go get a job."
"I can't do that."
"Well, we can't do this either," Dad concluded smoothly, shielding Mom from my emotional blackmail.
"Fine," I accepted defeat and stomped back to my room to resume my showdown with my future mother-in-law. "Your turn."
"My turn for what?" she asked.
"To let my wife move in with me! Or are you suddenly 'unable' to do it too?"
"Okay, Mom, please just leave!" Christina began physically pushing her mother out of her room. She turned back to the screen, letting out a heavy sigh. "I'm so sorry. She completely ruined the mood."
"For the record, I totally just won that fight," I offered a bittersweet smirk. "So I'm not some total bumpkin."
My parents' words were still ringing in my head. They'd mentioned that my future mother-in-law hadn't been impressed with me and called me a clueless bumpkin.
But Christina gave a crooked, tight smile and ended up spilling the truth anyway: she'd actually been assigned a husband by UKARI once before. It hadn't worked out because she'd rushed things instead of listening to her mom and holding her horses. That guy had been remarkably similar to me, both in personality and looks. Outgoing, affectionate, ambitious, active...
He wasn't like me at all, I thought. I knew myself better than that.
Her mom had been right. It hurt to hear this. I didn't want to know any of it. I wanted to be her first. I felt a surge of jealousy, as if this wasn't some distant past but something happening right in front of my eyes. I was being compared, and the comparison wasn't in my favor. But I couldn't look away or put the phone down, because Christina was staring right at me. I wished she'd turn off her camera, because if I turned mine off, I'd look like a coward.
"Why are you telling me this?" I snapped, cutting her off right as her story drifted beyond simple kissing.
"Well, you're going to reject me anyway, aren't you?" Christina tried to force a fake smile. "I figured I'd at least get to vent one last time."
"For your information, I had an assigned wife before you, too," I bluffed, deciding to level the playing field. (Technically, it wasn't even a full lie.) "So we're even."
But instead of getting offended, Christina actually perked up a bit.
"Look, I'm not your ex, and you're not mine. Can we just forget about it?" I pressed.
"If only it were that easy." Christina's mood plummeted again. She propped her elbow on the desk and rested her cheek against her palm. "Falling out of love after UKARI matches you is almost impossible, and you're talking about just forgetting? You know how it works."
"I don't care if you fall out of love with me, and I care even less if I fall out of love with you. I wanted to get married before I was even capable of falling in love, like, before puberty. I don't care who you are, as long as you have UKARI's stamp of approval on you. UKARI is the only romance I believe in. If you had a husband before me, then fine. That's how it was supposed to be. Just don't tell me about him. Just know that even if UKARI handed me the most hopeless, irredeemable woman on earth, I'd still believe she was the best option for me."
"Why?" Christina looked almost alarmed by my declaration.
"Because I'm a lazy dumbass, not a clueless bumpkin," I said, setting out to explain the conceptual difference between the two.
Christina bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud. The atmosphere called for solemnity and drama, but here was her future husband, namely me, delivering an impassioned lecture on the fundamental distinction between being a lazy dumbass and a clueless bumpkin as if it were a legitimate academic discipline rather than total nonsense.
"So... tell me about your ex-wife," Christina requested once I'd finally settled down.
"Why?" I tried to dodge the subject. Unlike Christina, I had precisely zero juicy stories to share. When Christina No. 2 and I parted ways, we'd literally just waved at each other. We didn't even shake hands. Sure, I did see her bra, but that didn't count since she hadn't intentionally flashed it.
"Well, I need to know where she messed up so I don't make the same mistakes," Christina rationalized smoothly.
Actually, why didn't it work out between us? Why did I reject her in the first place? With her, it was obvious, she wanted a conductor. I got so lost in thought that Christina had to repeat her question, assuming the video call had frozen.
"Because she was more of a buddy than a wife," I finally dug up an answer.
"Right..." Christina didn't sound convinced.
"Look, I can even introduce you two if you want, and you can see for yourself."
"Fine," Christina replied. Her jealousy seemed to fade, though I couldn't for the life of me understand why the idea of her rival being downgraded to "just a buddy" had disappointed her. Oh, crap! Maybe she had heard 'body'—that's bad.
"Really, she is a pal, not a wife," I corrected myself.
"Will you... call me your wife?" Christina blurted out, then instantly caught herself. "Oh, sorry! There I go rushing things again."
"I will," I answered smoothly.
Even through the screen, her excitement was palpable. She tried to hide her beaming smile, clapping a hand over her mouth as if covering a sudden hiccup, but her eyes gave her away instantly.
It felt like I'd just kissed her somewhere scandalously intimate in broad daylight. I remembered seeing a guy in my class do something similar when his UKARI-assigned wife transferred to our school. He was practically groping her, while she tried to disguise her absolute thrill behind fake embarrassment. At the time, everyone knew he was just showing off, and nobody could fathom why a girl would enjoy that kind of attention.
Now I realized I was the only one who hadn't gotten it back then. Christina liked the idea of belonging to me.
"I'll call you my wife. Not fiancée, my wife, straight up," I decided to double down.
Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. Christina calmed down, but she was completely unable to focus on her homework anymore. I had no idea what was running through her head. Maybe she was daydreaming about kids or captioning future wedding photos. (Honestly, I have no clue what else girls dream about.) But she looked genuinely happy. Watching her stare blankly into space, I almost fell asleep right at my desk.
Christina confessed that she was a textbook night owl. Just as I was ready to crash, she was heading off to eat dinner. Personally, I can't eat right before bed even if I've been starving all day, but Christina loved late-night cooking. Apparently, her mom always chewed her out for clanking pots and pans in the kitchen and waking the neighbors.
"You should cook dinner earlier, like at nine!"
"By the time I eat, everything will be cold and gross!"
I decided against virtually spectating their domestic brawl, mostly because it would interfere with my sleep. I said goodnight and hung up.
That night, I dreamed of a magnificent chest, which, sadly, I never got to undress, purely because I hadn't finished my homework. Naturally, the next morning was completely ruined.