Love O2O- Beyond a Beautiful Smile

Chapter 39- Orchids, Lillies, and Chrysanthemums

A/N: Buckle in... this is a looooong chapter. Two reasons;
1. once I finish this one I really need to return to the assessment work that I've been neglecting over the weekend (These are not good study habits, kids. Do as I say, not as I do. 😔) and I really wanted to get the Wedding Night written- it would have been easy to write an entire chapter just on the ceremony and one for the banquet but that would have pushed the wedding night even further away and I didn't want to do that again. So, assume Ban Shan had a lot of fun with his role as celebrant and I'll throw flashback in as necessary.
2. This was originally a slightly longer chapter (about half again), that included the wedding night, but the unexpected happened. I said this would be updated last night but I didn't expect to have an audience reading over my shoulder while I typed. While he helped with input from a male perspective, it slowed the whole thing down considerably. And then we got distracted. When I went to upload it this morning I discovered that while we'd been distracted my laptop had decided to update and restart and all bar the first 1000 words had been lost! Serves me right for relying so much on the auto-save function of Wattpad. When I've tried to rewrite it, the first part kept morphing so it's been split into two chapters again that I'm updating at the same time. The next chapter (Chapter 40- The Wedding Night) is R18+ and is my red packet to all of us.

The ceremony probably would have been sweet, had anyone other than Ban Shan officiated. As it was, not only did he insist on going off script (the Art Department had printed out transcripts of the ceremony in the game and were trying to video the event so they could work on timing and atmosphere- Ban Shan's adlibbing kept throwing their timing off) but it seemed as though he and Qui Yong Hou had a running competition for most amount of bad jokes in a short amount of time. KO looked at Mei, who nodded. With steely determination they advanced on a grinning Ban Shan, who only realised what they had planned when it was too late.

    After a brief scuffle, the ceremony continued with a slight change- the official was bound and gagged while A Shuang was unwillingly dragged into the mix, standing behind Ban Shan and reading the script like a ventriloquist with a human puppet. When the ceremony concluded and the in-game script called for an exchange of gifts, Ban Shan finally succeed in spitting out the gag.

    "You may now kiss the bride!"

     Whatever he was going to say next was drowned out with a chorus of "Yeas" and "Kiss E-Mei"...

    Mei eyed them all.

    "Don't let the dress fool you- I'm still all man."

    Jeers and catcalls echoed off the office walls. He scowled at his peers: so rowdy and no one had been drinking!

"Okay, okay," he leaned towards KO but a shout made the pair freeze.

"No!" Wei Wei rushed forward. "Not like that- do it like it's a wedding photo shoot. Look, Wang Wei will take the photos but he's only so talented- he can't make a weed look like a flower."

When Mei and KO (and every other male in the room) simply looked at her blankly, she pulled Xiao Nai into the spotlight. When she stepped into him, his arms automatically wrapped around her waist and his hands rested at the small of her back. She leaned into him before arching her back, creating a graceful line, while looking in to her lover's eyes. When Xiao Nai lowered his head her eyes widened and she froze. With a small smile, he kissed the tip of her nose and only Mei and KO were close enough to hear him murmur "if only you were this bold without the audience."

Mei coughed and KO smoothed his face as best he could.

"Okay?"

"Let's just do it. Then they can feed us and we go home."