Page 167 of He Is My Bride
“Is your wife expecting yet?” Wu Yiheng asked.
“We are… trying.” Hanjun’s cheeks took on the slightest hint of red. And it wasn’t a lie, really.
“Mm, good.” Wu Yiheng nodded.
Li Ying came from the kitchen with the tea tray.
Don’t you fucking drop it, don’t you fucking dare…Li Ying swore in his mind, it helped him focus. It would obviously be bad luck if the teaware broke during the ceremony, but he made it to the sitting room with everything intact.
He handed the tray to Anne while he and Hanjun kneeled on the pillows set before the family elders, and once he had taken his place, Anne handed the tray back for him so that he could set it on the floor between them. He then poured the tea, after which Hanjun served his grandmother first:
“Grandmother, please drink the tea.” He offered the cup with both hands.
Grandmother Linming accepted the tea, giving a traditional blessing as she did: “May there be a hundred years of harmony.” She lifted the cup to drink. “Oh my,” she chuckled, “that is an abundance of lotus seeds!”
Li Ying smiled at her.
While Grandmother Linming drank, Hanjun served his uncle.
“Uncle, please drink the tea.”Thank you, Uncle Yiheng. And sorry,Hanjun thought as his uncle accepted the cup from him, giving a blessing as well:
“Hundred years of harmony.”
Now it was Li Ying’s turn to offer the tea, first to Grandmother Linming, then to Wu Yiheng, bidding them respectfully to drink.
“May you be blessed with a child soon,” wished Grandmother Linming, and Wu Yiheng did the same.
“I would give Auntie and Uncle as many grandchildren and great nephews as there are lotus seeds in these two cups combined,” Li Ying said, and found it hilarious how Wu Yiheng almost sputtered into his tea, hard as it was to drink in the first place with so many damn seeds in it.
“Let’s not exaggerate,” Wu Yiheng said.
Li Ying grinned, noticing how Wu Yiheng was blushing the same way as Hanjun did. If Li Ying loved something, it was teasing Wus.
“I don’t exaggerate, Uncle Yiheng; I will soon fill your lap with laughing, bouncing babies, and they will look just like little Hanjun!”
Li Ying bit his lip to not laugh out loud while Wu Yiheng kept blushing, frowning deeply as he drank his tea, and the many lotus seeds tickled his mustache.
“Li Ying.” Hanjun scolded gently, and when Li Ying looked, his husband was also blushing down to his neck. Li Ying brought his hand under the veil to cup against his mouth, but failed to suppress his giggle.
“Li Ying, please behave,” Wu Yiheng said sternly.
Li Ying coughed softly. “Sorry, Uncle.”
Anne was fighting the urge to violently facepalm as she stood there waiting. Had Li Ying been like this all this time? No wonder Wu Yiheng had taken his sweet time to give them his blessing, she thought.
When the tea ceremony had concluded, Wu Yiheng and Grandmother Linming having given them a red envelope containing a gift sum of money, Anne led Li Ying away to do final preparations for the actual wedding ceremony. Hanrong and Yiyi left with Hanjun.
Li Ying received his wedding bouquet of roses and orchids with eucalyptus boughs for some green. Li Ying was getting nervous again,but he had decided he would not panic. He set his mind to it, trying to think practically to keep his emotions at bay:
It’s not about you, it’s about the show, so perform your parts and it’ll be over faster than you think.
Okay, it was about him, at least a little. Li Yingwantedit to be about him, even if he knew nobody out there really knew him. Except Hanjun, Anne, and maybe, even if they didn’t know he was actually a man: Wu Yiheng, Wu Hanrong, Grandmother Linming, as well as A-Yi and A-Yu. They had all gotten to knowwhoLi Ying was, his personality, which he had never faked.
He would focus on his and Hanjun’s happiness from here on, on connecting with these members of the family, even if there would always be something about Li Ying they wouldn’t know.
“Li Ying?” Huang Xiang popped into the waiting room.
He was adequately flashy as the emcee, having donned a black sequin jacket, bright pink shirt, a bowtie, and fake glasses with large and thick tortoise-shell frames in his usual style. Gaudy? Yes, but he was part of the entertainment today and had understood the assignment perfectly.
