Chapter 1

At our eighteenth wedding, Shen Mo called off the ceremony again because I was a beat late with my vows.

She looked at me with utter disappointment. “You know I’m a perfectionist. Why can’t you follow the wedding schedule exactly?”

“If you still can’t keep up next time, perhaps you should let your friend get married for you.”

Everyone knew my friend Ji Yan was a master of punctuality. Shen Mo used him as the standard I had to meet.

If I came downstairs one minute after him at the end of the workday, she drove off with him.

If I stepped into the restaurant half a pace behind him on Valentine’s Day, she gave him my candlelit dinner.

If I reached the airport twenty seconds after him for an anniversary trip, she refunded my ticket and took him instead.

She had even canceled our wedding seventeen times and let Ji Yan run through the ceremony in my place each time.

To make the eighteenth attempt work, I filled the hall with clocks that counted out the seconds and rehearsed on my own for more than two hundred nights.

But ten seconds before we were due to take our vows, Ji Yan jumped the cue and said, “I do.”

Shen Mo ignored me and the hundred-plus clocks chiming in unison, and canceled our wedding for the eighteenth time.

It had never been my timing that wasn’t perfect. It was the fact that I wasn’t him.

Fine. I would give her the perfection she wanted.

Shen Mo took Ji Yan’s hand again. “Watch carefully. We’ll demonstrate one more time.”

I smiled and slipped the wedding rings onto their fingers.

“No need to pretend. May you have a long and happy marriage.”

……

The hall went quiet for a moment. Then Shen Mo spoke.

“That line isn’t in the script. Delete it.”

She glanced at me, plainly annoyed that I had added words of my own.

I stood there, a bitter ache rising in my chest.

Even now, she thought I was still playing along with her perfect-wedding game. Anything I thought or wanted was just a bug she could delete.

It wasn’t only that line.

She had deleted the Cantonese food I loved from the wedding menu and replaced it with Ji Yan’s favorite Sichuan food.

She had deleted my closest childhood friends from the wedding party and invited Ji Yan’s colleagues to be the groomsmen.

Even the wedding outfit passed down through three generations of my family had been replaced by a suit Ji Yan liked.

Whenever I objected, she said his choices were a more perfect fit for her wedding theme.

She chose perfection and disregarded everything I liked. Yet when Ji Yan made a mistake, she put perfection aside for him.

Seeing me frozen there, Ji Yan smiled and tried to smooth things over.

“Don’t be so rigid. Chen meant well. Besides, I think wishing us a long and happy marriage makes the ceremony even more perfect. Don’t you?”

I was about to tell him not to bother. Once she made up her mind, she never changed it.

But the next moment, under his gaze, Shen Mo relented.

“Fine. We’ll add it.”

My fingers curled slightly. Something small and sharp caught in my chest.

Through all those disappointments, I had tried to fight back.

She had never once compromised with me.

Our worst fight had been over the watch my father left me. I insisted on wearing it at our wedding. I wanted my parents, wherever they were now, to witness my happiness.

I pleaded. We argued. Shen Mo wouldn’t budge.

Even when I pretended to give in and put it on only as the ceremony began, she canceled the wedding. She did it five times, until I gave way to her principles.

Now a door I had never managed to open swung wide at one word from Ji Yan.

So she could make exceptions. I just wasn’t worth making one for.

While I stood lost in thought, Shen Mo put her arms around Ji Yan and hit the cue for a staged kiss, their faces angled to make it look real.

The guests cheered.

“Oh, come on!” someone called out, laughing. “We all know you love Yan. Do you have to throw a wedding every few months just to rub it in?”

“We’ve seen this groom-switching act enough times. Give us something new next time!”

Shen Mo didn’t answer, but her eyes were smiling.

She let them go off script. She let them turn me into the fool who had been replaced eighteen times.

I looked around the hall. Every guest was a relative or friend of hers or Ji Yan’s.

The relatives who actually cared about me had long since stopped coming, worn down by eighteen rounds of humiliation.

No wonder no one recognized me as the groom anymore.

What Shen Mo didn’t know was that even the most dedicated clown got tired.

One day, he would want to undo every restraint and take his final bow in her perfect performance.