A week had passed. I'd been hanging out with Christina No. 1 every single day after school until late at night, and today she was inviting me out on another date.
"Look," I said, mentally assessing the mountain of backlogged homework I owed. "How about we take a day off from each other?"
"My parents won't be home tonight," Christina dropped her trump card. "It's their anniversary, so they're going to the theater."
"What about your sister?" I asked, almost crumbling on the spot.
"She won't bother us. I'll put her to bed early."
"It's not that I don't love you, it's just..." I tried to weigh all the pros and cons in my head. "Look, our first time isn't going anywhere."
According to the official guidebook, the optimal time for virgin couples to have sex for the first time is after six months, right around the wedding. But even assuming Christina had already tried some, I still needed to ride out my standard three months of waiting to let my feelings reach their full potential.
"Wait, have you...?" I stumbled, feeling flushed. "I mean... never mind. Forget I asked."
I didn't actually want to know how much experience she'd had, because I'd just start getting stupidly jealous again.
"No, not 'forget it'!" Christina panicked instantly. "If you don't tell me what's eating at you, I'm going to start jumping to conclusions again." Her tone shifted into hurt. "You could have told me yesterday so I wouldn't get so upset today. That's really unfair..." She caught herself mid-sentence. "I'm sorry."
New lovers weren't supposed to fight during their very first week together or start making demands. At this stage, everything was supposed to be purely voluntary.
"Hey, why are you rushing things so much? Did that other Christina really scare you that badly with her speech about expired kisses?"
"It's just..." Christina hesitated. "Fine. Forget it."
"Oh, no way. Now it's your turn," I protested, calling out her double standard. "I'm supposed to fulfill my marital duties here, too."
"I'm scared you're going to leave me for her," Christina mumbled quietly.
"Why would I do that?" I asked, genuinely surprised, though it came out sounding like a blunt attack, like "Why the hell don't you trust me?"
"She's a better match for you. What if making me your partner was a mistake? I'm sorry."
"I literally put your name down on the official form as my..." I cut myself off when I heard a soft sniffle over the speaker. "Are you crying?"
"No," Christina lied, terribly.
I switched on my front camera. Five seconds later, Christina's face appeared on the black screen. Tears were welling up in her eyes.
"What if UKARI..." Christina wiped her left eye, "...assigns you someone else? What if this whole thing is a massive system glitch?"
"Well, then they'll assign you someone better than me," I tried to reassure her, but it had the exact opposite effect. I had to pull out the heavy artillery. "Statistically speaking..."
Before I could even finish the sentence, Christina slammed her phone face-down on the table and burst into full-blown tears.
"UKARI is just a recommendation!" I shouted into the mic. "Even if they cancel everything, we can still get married!"
Of course, doing that would strip us of all government benefits and social support programs because "society shouldn't invest in those who go against the public interest for their own reckless risks." Nobody forbids you from experimenting. You just have to pay for it out of your own pocket. That exact fear of going off-script was why I used to refuse to even dream about the girls I randomly fell in love with naturally. And I felt guilty lying to Christina, because if UKARI actually assigned me another wife, I'd trust UKARI, not my own heart.
And she clearly sensed that. That's why she wouldn't stop crying. I never should have told her the truth about the duplicate system message in the first place.
"All right, fine," I gave in. "If this really turns out to be a mistake, I'll hand my whole compensation package over to you." I had no idea if that was even legally possible, probably not, but I had to calm her down somehow. "I know vouchers, priority queuing, and government perks aren't enough, but that's all the insurance coverage I've got. I can't promise you till-death-do-us-part love if the UKARI system doesn't back it up. Honestly, I'm a lazy ass, but for you, I'm doing stuff I'd never do in my right mind. I'm giving you love on credit because UKARI vouched for you, and I'm trying really hard not to think about this all being a mistake. Because if I start doubting it like you do, I won't even touch you. I'm way too lazy to invest in something that has no future. I'm not one of those 'seize the day' guys. I'm a minimalist who only moves to keep from dying. But if you don't want a lazy lump like me and need a live wire instead..." I remembered her previous assigned husband. I was nothing like him. "...then UKARI really did make a mistake. And there's nothing I can do about it, because I'm too lazy. I'm not going to run away from you, simply because I'm too lazy to bother. You can forget about every single suspicion except for that one. If I don't come home on time, it's because I was too lazy to run for the bus. If I don't take out the trash, I was too lazy. If I don't take a vacation, I was too lazy to fill out the paperwork. I'm just lazy. I'm just crazy lazy. And today, I'm too lazy to drag myself over to your place... even if you offered me sex."
"I didn't mean..." Christina blushed bright red, realizing what I'd assumed when she mentioned her parents being away. "How about I come over to your place instead?"
"Well, if you're okay with sitting there watching me do homework under my parents' supervision, be my guest," I grumbled. "But I won't be paying attention to you."
Christina paused to think. I knew I'd hit her exact weak spot: efficiency. She could look at me through a screen just as easily, and if I couldn't interact with her anyway, a date made zero sense.
"I get good grades, I can help you with your homework," Christina offered, adjusting her phone again so her face was fully in frame.
"You don't need to come all the way to my house just for that," I replied.
"Are you really that sick of me?" Christina's face fell again.
"No, I'm not sick of you. I just want us to understand each other better."
"Like you and that other Christina do?" she asked, her jealousy flaring up again, though she tried her best to disguise it under a professional, businesslike tone.
"Honestly, until you mentioned it, I hadn't really thought about it that way," I admitted. Though... yeah. It kind of felt like the other Christina and I were on the exact same wavelength. If she hadn't been set on finding a conductor husband, and if I'd fallen for her right away, we probably could've built a decent family. "Look, the thing is, besides our relationship, you and I don't really have anything else to talk about. So we end up manufacturing drama out of thin air. The only difference is that I'm too lazy to care, while you're sitting there plucking your own feathers out like a stressed-out parrot. So now we've got a parrot with special needs sitting on a perch next to a completely plucked parrot... while the other Christina is just flying around in circles, crowing like a rooster."
"Wait, why is she crowing like a rooster?" Christina sniffled, letting out a sudden snort of laughter.
"I don't know! It just feels like something she'd do out of pure boredom. She'd drive me just as crazy as..." I realized I was a millisecond away from saying "as you are," but the context made it pretty obvious anyway. "You're not driving me crazy. What I mean is, you want love, while nobody knows what she wants. With you, I can actually talk things through and find a compromise, but with her..." I couldn't even finish the sentence because I had no idea what to do with her. "Look, I'm not against spending literally all my time with you. It just needs to be on top of my baseline priorities, not replacing them."
"So... if we lived together, you wouldn't try to hide from me?"
"I'm not hiding from you now."
"And you'd sleep in the same bed with me?" Christina bit her lip, her eyes wide with nervous anticipation.
"Well, yeah," I said, not really seeing the issue. "Unless you snore like a badger or toss and turn all night, because then I wouldn't be able to sleep."
"So when you threatened my mom that you were taking me back to your room... you were actually serious?"
"Ah, that's what's bothering you," I finally put two and two together. "Look, my parents are reasonable people, but they hate rushing into things. We agreed they'd let me move my fiancée in three or four months after the assignment. Coming to them with that request any earlier would be like getting married without UKARI, entirely at our own expense. And I don't even have a job yet."
"That's not what I meant," Christina tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "You won't... restrict my freedom or anything, right?"
"Well, depends on what you mean," I refused to give her a blanket promise. Renovating or rearranging the furniture without my consent was a hard no, even if she optimized it to assembly-line efficiency. I was used to things the way they were, and I was way too lazy to re-learn my own room. "If it's small stuff, sure, no problem."
"What if, say... I hugged you while you were doing homework?"
"As long as it isn't a distraction..."
"Without bothering you!" Christina interjected quickly.
"Then obviously no, I won't stop you. I've told you a thousand times: I'm a lazy guy. If it doesn't bother me, you can sit on my head for all I care. I'm like a capybara, but in reverse. I'm down for whatever. I'm not the type who needs marriage to strictly follow an instruction manual. I just hate stressing out and reinventing the wheel. If you unscrew a piece of the bike or slap something new onto it and it keeps rolling, I won't say a word. But if I have to put in extra effort to pedal, I will whine all the way to the final stop, and no amount of 'come on, be a man' shaming will save you."
I went on to share a classic family story from my kindergarten days, when I first figured out the perks of being a girl. I used to pretend I had gender dysphoria purely so adults wouldn't dump extra responsibilities on me and would let me be weak. The child psychologist saw right through my scheme, though, pointing out that girls spend twice as much time getting dressed, basically using my own laziness against me.
I also used to ride a bike with a rope tied to it, or rather, someone else towed me around, because my legs were shaped like pirate hooks and the chain kept popping off. Sure, my parents had ways to force me into doing things. Threatening that I'd never find a wife, unlike all the other boys, was a big one. But instead of motivating me, it just terrified me. What do you mean I'll have to do everything for myself? To my kid brain, a wife was basically a second mom. Back then, I had no idea my mom and dad had a completely different dynamic. In fact, because my dad slept in the same bed as my mom, I assumed he was even more helpless than I was.
"Wait, how?" Christina asked, completely baffled by my childhood logic.
"Like, she had to sing him a lullaby, and if she didn't cuddle him, he couldn't fall asleep. And she probably had to wake him up in the middle of the night so he wouldn't wet the bed."
Christina burst into hysterical laughter. I felt genuinely offended, crossing my arms and pouting like a kid.