Chapter 286: Dense Forest Borderland

Bai Liu turned his face away from the approaching Spades, he could smell the alcohol on Spades' breath.

Of course, maybe it's not Spades', or maybe it's his.

Bai Liu has probably had more vodka tonight than he's had in his entire life combined.

Although his behavior and thoughts seemed to be smooth, his limbs had a kind of drunken weakness, and as soon as Spades pressed down with his arms open, Bai Liu couldn't help but lean back, leaning his shoulders against the wall for strength.

Spades looked down at Bai Liu, who was blushing red, and this time he didn't ask him why he was turning red - because Bai Liu's face was always red when he drank.

The voices across the wall had become muffled.

Bai Liu slowly raises his eyes to look at Spades, his breathing is warm and light, Spades can see a very light layer in Bai Liu's eyes, a halo colored by alcohol and drunkenness.

The halo causes Bai Liu's eyes to go out of focus, and while his eyes are on Spades' face, Spades always feels as if Bai Liu is looking through him at someone hidden behind him.

"...... I can wear it for you." Bai Liu said very softly, as if he were smiling, a little lazily, "But do you know where to put it on?"

Spades paused as he said honestly, "What place?"

Bai Liu's grin becomes a little more pronounced as he reaches behind Spades to open the drawer that holds a whole box of Battlestar Galactica condoms, from the smallest to the largest, and Bai Liu pulls them all out as he lays them out in a row on the bed.

"?" Spades was slightly confused, "Am I supposed to wear both?"

Bai Liu looked up, resting his jaw in a smirk, his gaze unabashedly mischievous and nostalgic: "Have you ever played with balloons?"

Spades: "Seen it, never played it."

"I was the same when I was little." Bai Liu smiles, his eyes stop on Spades' face, becoming distant, "I grew up in an orphanage, the director and teachers of the orphanage didn't like kids like me, the balloons used for festivals other kids could share two, I didn't have any."

Spades' lips pursed in a straight line, "They should give it to you."

"There's no such thing as should or shouldn't in this world." Bai Liu lowered his eyes, his voice was rambling, "I wouldn't essentially be upset about something like that either, because those wholesale balloons aren't worth much money."

Bai Liu paused, "But the other kid who didn't get a share of the balloons either didn't feel the same way."

"He got a cluster of balloons from somewhere, colored them with markers from the craft room, and handed them to me in front of all the kids who got them."

Bai Liu lowered his head and smiled a little, "I saw the rubber bands on these balloons, he made them from rummaging through the garbage, then washing them and beating them with □□□."

"He didn't really know what they were originally for, but he turned them into balloons that a child would find beautiful to give me."

Bai Liu's eyelashes fluttered very lightly, "I essentially ...... shouldn't be happy about this kind of thing either."

"Because these balloons aren't really worth much, and they're dirty and gross."

But Sheta just looked at him, holding up the balloon and looking at him, with tiny cuts on her hands from rummaging through the trash cans, and Bai Liu picked it up out of the blue.

Then Sheta looked at Bai Liu and gave a very thin smile.

In that moment, those cheap balloons, those dirty and disgusting condoms, seemed to become pure and precious because of Sheta's smile.

It was a wonderful feeling, and Bai Liu realized for the first time that the value of these objects could actually be subjectively biased.

"For the first time I feel that these loaded ...... things turned out to be valuable." Bai Liu said very softly, "because it was given to me by him."

"He makes me feel like birth control/condoms aren't gross."

Spades holds up a box of condoms and, after a long moment of observation, inquires, "Are these really nasty balloons?"

"In my original conception, these were balloons used for very dirty things." Bai Liu looks up, he reaches up to caress Spades' face, pushes his hair away from his forehead, and looks into Spades' pure black eyes with a half-lidded gaze, "It's used to hold the desire of the human flesh to want to make full contact."

Spades is confused, "If you want full contact, why would you use this thing to separate it?"

"Because of mistrust, fear, dread." Bai Liu drops her eyes, "People can't trust that this person they0re in contact with is disease free, can marry them, can bring their children a happy marriage and future, can love them forever, so they use it as a final insurance policy to protect themselves."

"The vast majority of the time, that's the right way to use a condom - because it's true that there's no one in this world who will always love you and won't hurt you."

"But people have always used such excuses to intertwine with each other, and then used the thing to separate themselves from each other - even sometimes without using it - in order to better control and hurt the other person, such as to get the other person pregnant with their own child and to have a better experience of sexual intercourse."

"From a universal logic, it is right to use this thing."

Bai Liu looks at Spades : "I found the logic ironic, so I talked to the guy who gave me the balloons about where they came from and what they were for, and I thought it was disgusting at that point."

"Do you know what he told me?"

Spades stares at Bai Liu and says calmly, "If I am a harmful monster, when one day a person is willing to come close to me, this thing will protect him from me."

"I don't find it disgusting, it's a protective prop."

Bai Liu was quiet for a long time when he said, "Yes, that's what the man told me."

"I can teach you how to use and wear it." Bai Liu's voice was calm, "...... Perhaps there is no second person besides me who will teach you these things anymore."

It's like when Sheta didn't understand that the balloon he was holding up was a contraceptive/condom that everyone laughed at.

"No need." Spades interrupted Bai Liu abruptly.

With no emotion on his face whatsoever, he suddenly reached down and gathered up all the condoms in a brainstorming motion, sweeping them into the nightstand before slapping out the electric light, turning around, and pinning Bai Liu under the covers to cover her up, muffling, "I'm not wearing them anymore, go to sleep."

Bai Liu looks at the ceiling, the bed faintly bumping and gasping, but he smiles for some reason and asks, "Why don't you use it anymore?"

Spades was silent in the darkness for a long, long time before he replied, "I'm not sure you're going to get hurt."

"This protective prop looks fragile."

Bai Liu's voice was calm, "Haven't you already hurt me? Now you don't want to?"

"That's when my instincts told me I should have to separate you from that heart." Spades The tone was a little low, as if he felt he'd done something wrong.

Bai Liu asked, "What about now?"

Spades said, "Now my gut tells me I shouldn't hurt you anymore."

Bai Liu turns a slight nod as he squints at Spades, mimicking the man's tone, "Why, again, no reason is there?"

"There's a reason." Spades said, "We're married, under oath."

In a queer accent he solemnly imitated the vows which the GIs had said in imitation of the priest's witness to their marriage, "--From this time and for ever, in good times and in bad, for richer and for poorer, in health and in sickness, in joy and in sorrow, I will love and cherish you for ever and ever. "

Bai Liu didn't hold back a light chuckle, but he quickly began to splash cold water, "It's just a game you play in your life, you don't have to take it so seriously."

"All I have in my life is games." Confused, Spades asks back, "Why can't I take it seriously?"

Bai Liu went quiet as he turned his back to Spades, "Good night."

Spades is lying flat against Bai Liu, ohs and closes his eyes.

When he heard Bai Liu's breathing even out, Spades gingerly opened the nightstand, looking down at the condoms for a moment before reaching down and pulling out a box.

There was a very sharp gasp from the next room.

"This thing, so it's a balloon, no wonder you have to use your mouth ......" Spades nodded in realization, muttering to himself, "So Guy, they're blowing up a balloon and can't catch their breath? "

Then Spades fell into a new round of questions, "Why do people blow up balloons with two people on their wedding night?"

But Bai Liu behind Spades is really asleep this time, and there is no one to answer his endless questions.

When Bai Liu woke up the next morning, he drew his gun for a second and pointed it at the white spherical objects in the room.

One night later, Bai Liu was like a new room, filled with balloons of all sizes.

Having established that the room was the same one he had slept in last night, Bai Liu stowed his gun, dressed, and with a grimace to his face, tore down a balloon, the size of a faceplate, that had been affixed to the wall.

He saw the ball gag, a yellowish rubber ring.

Bai Liu's movements paused for two seconds as he buttoned his shirt and walked to the nightstand to open it before his movements lurched again.

At least six boxes of unopened condoms that were in there yesterday have long since been used up, leaving only a few empty boxes lying in the drawer.

Bai Liu slowly adjusted his breathing, cleaned and packed up all the balloons in the room, threw them in the trash, turned and walked out of the room.

As soon as he opened the door, he saw Alex and Guy outside, probing at the door, and Bai Liu suddenly drew in a breath of cold air as soon as he came out.

Guy was frank and direct, looking at Bai Liu with a creepy look, "You're still alive! I thought Spades had killed you ......!"

Bai Liu was quiet for a moment as he looked over at Guy with a questioning gaze.

Guy's eyes wander uncontrollably around Bai Liu's waist, "Spades came out for condoms last night."

"Asked for twelve boxes of any size." Alex The sight was particularly eerie as he said slowly, "But we've got six boxes in the house already, which adds up to almost two hundred ......"

Bai Liu: "......"

Guy, unable to resist, glanced curiously around the room, "What did you guys do in the house last night? Did you use so much in one night?"

Alex remembered Tang Er hit, looking at Bai Liu more and more wrong, slyly emphasized, "also any size ......"

Bai Liu skipped over the topic as if nothing had happened and calmly asked, "What about Spades?"

Alex looked very mixed: "We met Spades in the morning and he said he didn't have enough and went to town to buy condoms ......"

"We thought you wouldn't be getting up for a while." Guy is slightly teasing as he squeezes his eyes, "After all, Spades seems to be in a hurry and feels like he'll be right back to continue using with you."

Bai Liu: "......"

Guy was right, after Bai Liu smiled and loaded his gun, and said he was going to find Spades, Spades came running back on his own.

Bai Liu was stunned when he saw Spades.

The man's face was covered in various paint coatings, he was holding up a bunch of huge balloons that were very much abstract paintings, and his hair was covered in all sorts of paint splotches intertwined with colorful lines.

Spades walks up to Bai Liu, the man breathing with a rare gasp.

Bai Liu noticed a ring of red marks around the man's mouth - you could tell he'd been blowing up balloons pretty hard all night.

Spades held up a pile of maybe seven or eight paint-broken balloons, his black eyes looking like they were sparkling at the pile of oozy colors, "Didn't find a marker, borrowed paint."

Bai Liu is quiet - he realizes that this guy is mimicking Sheta's act of drawing a balloon with a marker and giving it to him.

But it's not good at all, so it's made such a bunch of even more disastrous artistic masterpieces.

But Spades himself doesn't seem to think so, and with his back straight, he says, "I've been blowing all night, and these are the best ones."

"Here, they didn't give you the balloon." Spades said as he shoved the balloon into Bai Liu's hand, emphasizing, "You should have had it."

Spades gasped, sounding extra serious, "They certainly didn't blow up as many balloons as the two of them last night as I did alone, and our marriage won them over."

"I just asked, and we're the only two who have used the most condoms that night for anyone who's gotten married here lately, so we should be the best at tying the knot."

Bai Liu tilts his head at the dirty Spades, who eventually takes the balloon, then gives Spades a hug and says, "Yes."

"We tie the knot well."