The man looked at him for a moment without speaking.
His expression did not change. His eyes, however, moved over Guiying with slow and unhurried attention, not out of rudeness but out of habit. The habit of a man who was accustomed to evaluating things quickly and accurately.
"Why should I marry you?" he asked. His voice was even, neither warm nor cold, simply direct. "You are clearly not in my league."
Guiying did not flinch.
"You are here alone," he said. "No one comes to a civil affairs bureau alone."
The man regarded him. "What if my partner is simply running late?"
Guiying met his gaze without blinking. "Then I suppose you will have to choose. Your late partner, or me."
A beat of silence passed between them.
"And why should I choose you?" the man asked.
Guiying straightened slightly. When he spoke, his voice carried the calm confidence of someone who had already decided the outcome of this conversation and was simply walking the other person toward it.
"I am pretty," he said. "I am young. I am, genuinely, the best option you are going to find in this building today." He paused. "And I can guarantee you one child."
Something shifted in the man's expression. It was not quite a smile. It was the thing that existed just before a smile, carefully contained.
"What if I want more than one?" he asked.
Guiying was quiet for a moment. When he answered, the lightness had left his voice, replaced by something measured and sincere.
"If we ever fall in love, we can discuss it. But I want to be honest with you. I do not want my children growing up in a house where they have to beg for love. I have seen what that does to a person." He held the man's gaze steadily. "Frankly, I would prefer not to have children at all. But I know that any family would expect at least one, and I refuse to let that child be at a disadvantage because of a cold household. So. One child, raised properly, or none at all."
The man looked at him for a long moment.
Then he stepped forward.
He reached out and took Guiying's chin between his fingers, tilting his face up slightly. His grip was light, not forceful, more the gesture of someone examining something they found unexpectedly interesting than anything else.
"What if I get bored?" he asked quietly. "What if I grow tired of you?"
Guiying did not pull away. He held the man's gaze from that slight angle and said, with complete composure, "Give me three years to entertain you. If you are still bored after three years, you can throw me away."
The man studied him for another moment. Then he released his chin, and the almost-smile finally arrived, brief and quiet at the corner of his mouth.
"Alright," he said. "You are prettier than the woman I was originally going to marry, in any case."
Guiying's lips twitched.
He should really thank his mother for that.
The paperwork did not take long. The clerk processed everything with the mechanical efficiency of someone who had witnessed stranger things than two young men who had clearly just met filing a marriage registration together. Forms were signed. Documents were stamped. Red booklets were produced and handed across the counter.
Guiying accepted his copy and looked down at it.
He opened it.
His eyes found the name printed neatly beside his own, and he went very still.
Liu Liuxian.
He read it again. Then once more, as though repetition might somehow produce a different result.
"Don't tell me," said the voice beside him, carrying that same quiet amusement it had held throughout the entire exchange, "that you married me without even knowing who I was." A brief pause. "Did you simply want a handsome face?"
Guiying's lips twitched for the second time in ten minutes.
He had genuinely not known.
He had walked into this building with one objective: marry anyone who was not Shen Zihao. He had looked across a crowded room, found a man who was tall and composed and waiting alone, and had made his decision in approximately four seconds without conducting even the most basic investigation into who that man actually was.
Liu Liuxian. Scion of the most powerful family in the country. A name that appeared in financial news, in society columns, in conversations held in boardrooms and dining rooms across China. The same name that the Xue household had always spoken of in careful, lowered voices. The kind of family that made other powerful families straighten their backs and choose their words carefully.
A name that Xue Guiying, in his frantic and single-minded desperation, had not stopped to consider even once.
He closed the red booklet carefully and tucked it into his bag.
Well, he thought, with the composure of a man who had already died once and therefore had a reasonably high threshold for alarming developments. At least he was very handsome.
Guiying closed the red booklet and tucked it into his bag.
He stood quietly for a moment, turning the name over in his mind. Liu Liuxian. He had heard that name spoken in careful, lowered voices his entire life.
The kind of name that made other powerful families straighten their backs and choose their words deliberately. The kind of family that could, without particular effort, reduce the Xue household to dust.
He looked at the man standing beside him.
Tall, composed, watching him with that same unreadable expression he had worn throughout the entire exchange, as though he had all the time in the world and found the situation privately entertaining.
Guiying made a decision.
"I want to be transparent with you," he said. "I did not marry you because I knew you were Liu Liuxian. I genuinely had no idea who you were when I walked over to you."
"I know," Liuxian said.
"However." Guiying reached out and took both of his hands, wrapping his fingers around them with the careful deliberateness of someone making a considered and intentional gesture. His brown eyes were very direct. "Now that I know who you are, I have a request."
Liuxian looked down at their joined hands, then back up at Guiying's face. His expression did not change.
"Don't let me fall into Shen Zihao's clutches," Guiying said. His voice was steady and unhurried, as though he were discussing something entirely reasonable.
"Don't let the Xue family touch me. That is all I am asking." He tilted his head slightly and added, with complete composure, "Is that too much to ask, Hubby?"