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Chi Cheng was planning to register his marriage with Wu Suowei, and he had chosen to do it in the United States. Given his time in jail, traveling abroad often meant jumping through extra hoops for a visa. Fortunately, he had a green card, thus the U.S. was the most convenient option. More specifically, he chose Las Vegas. The city's marriage registration process was famously simple, requiring almost no tedious paperwork. Just like in the movie Anora, anything could happen on an impulsive, romantic night — a boy slipping a ring onto his girl's finger, vowing never to part.
He was thirty now, and it had been three years since he met Wu Suowei. Wu Suowei had taken a long leave from work to come along. It was his first time in Las Vegas. From the moment they stepped off the plane, Xiaocubao(the little snake) looked unusually happy. The hot, arid air of the Nevada desert seemed to awaken every inch of a cold-blooded creature's skin. Wu Suowei clung tightly to Chi Cheng's arm, complaining about the heat, while Chi Cheng's strangely cool skin made him the perfect portable shade.
Following the procedure, they went to the marriage license bureau to submit their application. Once they had the license, they could go to any chapel in town, where a pastor would witness their vows.
But things didn't go as smoothly as expected.
After checking Chi Cheng's profile, the clerk looked at him apologetically and said the system showed he had already been married here — at the age of twenty-one — to an American citizen named Wang Shuo. The marriage was still legally valid.
Chi Cheng had completely forgotten about the marriage. That had been Wang Shuo's last year by his side. Their relationship back then was like a frenzy roller coaster, lurching wildly between fights, reconciliations, and sometimes knives — screaming up and down with reckless intensity. Chi Cheng remembered the scars he'd left on Wang Shuo's body, the ones Wang Shuo had pointed out countless times to him, proudly displaying them as badges of love. Their emotional threshold had been pushed so high that even marriage — something that should have been a milestone in their life — felt trivial in those days, like tossing a pebble into the ocean.
Was it during one of those reconciliatory trips? He searched through the mess of his memories. Yes. He could recall it.
Wang Shuo had loved snakes all his life. He'd cried until his voice was torn, then looked at Chi Cheng with reddened eyes and said, “Britney's having a concert in Vegas, and the guest circus has a giant snake… Let's go see it.”
So they hopped on a plane without hesitation.
It must have been one of those typical Vegas nights — the air thick with the mingled scents of poker chips, cheap perfume, and overworked air-conditioning. They had wandered into a "fast-food" wedding chapel, its pink neon angels flickering overhead. A 24-hour, never-closed assembly line for eternal love. They had no rings, so Chi Cheng bought a pair of alloy ones from a vendor. Wang Shuo unscrewed his tongue piercing and wedged the two little beads into the ring settings. When the pastor recited the vows, Wang Shuo's almond-shaped eyes brimmed with tears — not the usual kind, laced with grievance and accusation, but something else entirely. They were tears of someone blindsided by sudden, overwhelming happiness, trying and failing to hold it back. That tearful face was indistinguishable from countless others in Chi Cheng's memory.
“Chi Cheng?” Wu Suowei's voice pulled him back, his cool arm gripped in concern.
Chi Cheng shook his head. Such vivid recollections might just be illusions, conjured by being here. Stepping aside, he called Guo Chengyu to ask for Wang Shuo's U.S. telephone number. Guo Chengyu told him it hadn't changed.
It took a long time for the call to be answered. Wang Shuo's voice was thick with sleep and confusion, as though he didn't recognize Chi Cheng.
Chi Cheng explained the situation briefly. Wang Shuo fell silent for a moment, then replied in a tone of incredulous amusement:"Married? My boss, is this your new method of teasing me?”
In Wang Shuo's memory, this marriage might as well never have existed. Chi Cheng began to doubt the clerk — maybe America really was a sloppy circus act — until he sent a screenshot of the registry record. Only then did Wang Shuo believe him.
They had loved for three years, hated for six, and been friends again for another three. Wang Shuo's voice was calm as he said he'd look for the paperwork, book a ticket, and come over tomorrow.
"How's it going? Your brother… still hitting you?" Chi Cheng tried to make small talk, in the tone of an ordinary friend.
"I'm better than ever," Wang Shuo said, sounding cheerful."Just finished a treatment — MECT or something like that, my brain feels much clearer. Wang Zhen's still working, so no one's keeping an eye on me. I'll fly over and help you sort this out. And don't worry, the wedding gift will blow you away.”
Not long after, Wang Shuo messaged that he had booked a room at the Wynn using his family card. Chi Cheng simply replied, "Okay," and said they could meet there tomorrow.
That night, Chi Cheng slept soundly. He dreamed of the faint, cheap scent of lilies drifting through the air, of a pastor's overly rehearsed blessing. He didn't dare see whose hand he was holding as he walked down the aisle — only that it was warm and dry, trembling slightly at the fingertips. He thought it could be Wu Suowei's hand. Chi Cheng felt a quiet happiness.
The next morning, walking toward the Wynn, Chi Cheng felt inexplicably guilty. Even if he and Wang Shuo had agreed long ago that nothing between them would ever change, even if he no longer loved him, they were still friends. But asking someone to fly all this way just to make a place for his new marriage — no matter how you think about it, felt like unreasonable, asshole energy. He thought he should make it up to him — maybe have Wu Suowei design and renovate a top-tier reptile room in Wang Shuo's home back in China.
Just as he neared the hotel, his phone chimed with a familiar voice message from Wang Shuo:
“Hei, Boss, look up.”
Chi Cheng instinctively tilted his head back. The bronze-tinted glass of the Wynn soared into the clouds — nothing to see. Wang was always appearing out of nowhere, moving like a snake in silence. Perhaps this was just another harmless prank, and the next moment a hand would clap his shoulder.
Instead, bits of paper drifted down from above, fluttering like snow — or sand. They had been shredded by something razor-sharp, then crudely stapled together into a ragged little booklet. Chi Cheng struggled to read with his clumsy English.
Only when he realized it was an official marriage certificate, stamped and sealed, along with a gaudy church "commemorative" certificate adorned with white doves, did a muffled sound reach his ears. It was almost drowned out by the blaring music from a passing tour bus, but the hotel security reacted faster than he did, rushing to cordon off the area.
In Vegas, someone got married, someone got divorced, someone killed themselves, and someone became widowed — every single day.
Only then, from the scattered scraps on the ground,did Chi Cheng piece together his own name and Wang Shuo's name.
By the time he truly understood where he was, and who he was, the police were already calling from afar:
“Sir, what was your relationship to the deceased?”
His mind went blank. His English had been clumsy after all these years. For a few seconds, he hesitated between "was" and "is".
What should he say?
Opening his mouth with no words, he heard himself answer in a strangely calm voice — one that didn't quite sound like his own:
"He is my husband."