001: A Corpo’s Wedding

A sweet, melodious tune drifted through the grand hall.

The dome of the ceiling was a star-strewn night sky, supported by pillars entwined with flowering vines. The enchanting music seemed to flow from the blossoms themselves.

A thousand points of fae-light glittered throughout the wedding hall, signifying the presence of a thousand living fairies. Hired specifically for the occasion, the tiny pixies fluttered on shimmering wings, dressed in gorgeous little gowns, serving guests from crystal glasses filled with ambrosia.

One hundred small, lantern-lit tables were scattered across the hall. No waiters stood by, but from beneath each lantern hung a platter of hors d'oeuvres, glowing invitingly for guests to pick at their leisure. The food seemed endless, no matter how much was taken, for the lanterns were spatially linked directly to the kitchens.

Insanely rich people.

If the man getting married today wasn't his best friend from college, Hayden never would have come to a place like this. Even in a formal evening suit, he felt completely out of his depth.

"I've never been to a wedding before," Hayden said, tugging at the collar of his suit. "But when I get married, I'm not doing any of this pompous crap. Come if you want, wear what you want."

Standing beside him, the star of the show, the groom, wore an even heavier and more formal white suit, a large rose pinned to his buttonhole. He wasn't complaining. Hearing Hayden's remark, he just grinned. "I'd definitely show up in my best clothes. But it's been ten years since college man, and I've never even seen you with a girlfriend."

The mockery from a man who had his life together was vicious, and Hayden had no retort. He and his friend, Adam Smith, whom he’d known since their first year of university, were both twenty-nine. Adam had found his perfect match and was getting married today. Hayden, however, had been single for as long as he’d been alive.

Whether it was his looks or his demeanor, Adam had always been surrounded by women for as long as Hayden had known him. So why was it that his friend was getting promoted, becoming a manager, marrying a rich, beautiful woman, and about to hit the peak of his life—while Hayden's romantic experience was zero? Why was there such a vast difference in the fortunes of two men of the same age, from the same university, with similar intelligence? The reason was, of course, more than just the half-hour Adam spent on his appearance every day.

Hayden was well aware of the differences between them.

Adam was tall, handsome, and charismatic—a social butterfly universally praised.

And Hayden? The descriptions he usually got were along the lines of cynical, jaded, arrogant, and undisciplined—hardly compliments. A stark contrast to the model citizen that was Adam.

But friendship is a strange thing. These two polar opposites had met in college and somehow become the best of friends.

Suddenly, the music from the crystal spheres changed, and the hall fell silent. As the bride, Adam’s new wife, walked down the aisle, a collective sigh of admiration escaped the guests.

She was a beauty, a great beauty. Her sea-blue hair, cascading in voluminous waves to her waist, was a clear marker of her upper-class, pre-birth gene-modding. Slender where she should be, curvaceous where it counted. Her porcelain skin and violet eyes, which shone like jewels, were clearly genetic traits beyond the reach of the poor. A straight nose and beautifully shaped, full lips gave her an air of mature sensuality, despite being only in her early twenties. What is that scent? Engineered pheromones?

This lovely, high-society lady, dressed in a simple white gown, glided through the hall with an effortless grace. A radiant aura surrounded her, and her gentle, elegant presence seemed to conjure a swirl of phantom flower petals.

Adam smiled and stepped forward. Their eyes met in a shy glance as they gently took each other's hands. The invited guests erupted in applause. Under their watchful eyes, the couple walked to the dais to exchange their vows.

Seeing his buddy about to marry such a stunning woman, Hayden was happy for him, but he couldn't help but feel a pang of envy.

In this era, if you weren't rich enough, finding a desirable partner was basically a pipe dream.

It wasn't that Hayden was dirt poor. He’d saved up a bit after working for a few years. But no matter how hard an ordinary person worked and saved, their wealth could never catch up to the elites.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the officiant in a golden robe announced, now standing before the couple. "We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of two faithful souls..."

Hayden raised his glass in a silent toast to Adam and downed it in one go. This wasn't the synth-ale he usually drank—that stuff was just alcohol, water, and flavorings pumped with carbon dioxide. For his best friend's wedding, Hayden had not only spent half a month's income on a formal suit but had also shelled out a considerable sum for a gift. But even ignoring the pricelessness of friendship and calculating with cold, hard logic, attending this wedding wasn't a loss.

The single sip of wine he'd just taken was worth half the price of his suit. As the emerald liquid slid down his throat, a fiery energy surged through his chest. From his scalp to his toes, every weary cell in his body was instantly revitalized.

This small glass contained enough high-concentration mana to power Hayden's work for three days, its essence distilled from the sun's rays captured in morning dew. Only a master alchemist could successfully distill such a spirit. It refracted different colors depending on the speed and direction of the glass and had to be enjoyed at extremely low temperatures; a slight increase in warmth and it would instantly evaporate.

Expensive, rare, and a hassle. But the upper class still served this premium liquor at their weddings, if only to flaunt their wealth.

"Adam Smith, do you take Alicia Clarice Kazmouk Apsara to be your lawfully wedded wife..."

The officiant was still speaking, but Hayden wasn't really listening. It wasn't important. He sipped his wine and glanced at the front rows. Most of the people sitting there were impeccably dressed elites. A finely attired couple watched their daughter's wedding with smiles. They looked young themselves, with jet-black hair and wrinkle-free skin.

With enough money for rejuvenation magic, anyone could look young these days. It was simple—just a matter of downing a couple of potions. But a single dose of a rejuvenation potion cost as much as an ordinary person's fifty-year salary.

"...I now pronounce you lifelong partners."

The officiant waved his scepter high above Adam and his wife's heads, showering them with a cascade of silver stars that swirled around their embracing forms. A pool of molten gold spread from the center of the hall, forming a shimmering dance floor. A band in golden jackets marched onto the stage and struck up a more cheerful tune. The newlyweds took the first dance, earning enthusiastic applause from the guests.

And Hayden? Most of the guests were from the bride's side, meaning Hayden knew none of them. He couldn't possibly ask anyone to dance, not that he knew how anyway. What respectable person learns ballroom dancing? Only the idle rich and the social climbers bothered with that sort of thing.

He'd never been to a wedding before, so he couldn't say how the rituals of the rich differed from those of the poor. But he knew for a fact that a normal wedding didn't feature a thousand glowing jewels for lighting, nor did it have a thousand fairies hired as waitstaff. Damn, just one sip of the wine here was worth several days of his hard work.

Mulling this over, Hayden picked up a peach offered by a fairy. It was as red as a maiden's blush, its hues as vibrant as a landscape painting. Gods knew how much one of these cost.

"Who comes to a friend's wedding just to stuff their face? You haven't changed a bit."

A crisp voice, like a chanted spell, reached his ear, making Hayden turn in surprise.

He had been too busy eating to notice. But at some point, a familiar green-haired elven woman had appeared beside him, her willow-leaf eyebrows slightly furrowed.

Elves were naturally blessed with an otherworldly beauty, and she was a cut above the rest. Though it was harder to guess an elf's age than a rejuvenated human's, she appeared to be about seventeen or eighteen. Slender and fair-skinned, she wore a tailored business suit that hugged her slim frame, and her movements were as graceful as a fawn's. When it came to beauty, elves left other races far behind.

Seeing a college classmate at a college classmate's wedding wasn't strange, but Hayden was still stunned. "Kallen? What are you doing here? Did Adam invite you?"

"Of course not. Company business."

The elf in the business suit twitched her long ears and scanned the room.

"The daughter of a business department exec is getting married, so HR has to send someone. Since I'm a classmate of the groom, I got stuck with the errand."

Many guests were sneaking glances at the elf. It wasn't just her corporate HR suit, but the fact that she was an elf, which marked her as a person of status, an elite. Elves were always high-class. They hosted shows, anchored the news, worked for PR firms, became spokespeople for ad campaigns, conducted orchestras—all sorts of glamorous, elegant, and stylish things. Most elves were wealthy, lived for centuries, and held high social standing.

But looking at this particular elf, Hayden felt a sense of dissonance. He remembered her from college. He remembered how unkempt she used to be, tinkering in the alchemy lab with a green mop of hair like a bush, never caring if she was covered in soot from an explosion. He also remembered her flamethrower of a tongue. She took crap from no one, not even professors. Often, for some slight or rudeness that other students would ignore, she would unleash a verbal retaliation sharp enough to scorch the earth.

Seven years later, the corporate world had transformed her into someone almost unrecognizable.

"How did you end up in HR at Mithra Group? I remember you saying you wanted to work in alchemical reagent development."

Hayden handed her a glass of wine. The only reason a commoner like him knew an elf was because they were classmates. He and this elf—Kallen Starflower—had been in the potions club at Evergreen State University's College of Arcane Arts and had crossed paths a few times. Even so, their relationship was limited to casual chats, banter, and jokes in college... and that was it.

After all, elves mostly befriended and worked with other elves. A friendly-elf-girl-next-door who preferred humans? That was the stuff of TV dramas. Most elves looked down on humans, just as most humans looked down on orcs and goblins.

"Not every graduate gets the job they want. I'm just one of them," Kallen said, taking the wine. She cast a disdainful look around the hall, glanced at the bride, and snorted softly. "Besides, I can't completely ignore my parents' wishes. I still live in their house. It's a miracle I've managed to fight off being married off for office politics."

Hayden could understand that.

Not everyone in the world gets to live their dream; some don't even have the luxury of having one. You gotta eat, after all. Still, seeing his old classmate so completely changed after seven years (he could think of no better word), Hayden felt a wave of irritation.

Why does everyone who leaves school and enters society have to be ground down into a cog or a screw for the world's machine?

"What about you? We haven't been in touch for years. How's work been since graduation?" Kallen asked, turning to him, her curiosity piqued, oblivious to his thoughts.

Hayden suppressed his annoyance and shrugged. "Freelance, at the moment."

The elf froze. "Huh?"

"I quit the job I found before graduation after a month. It was supposed to be low-level spell development, which is what I wanted. But after starting, I found out they had no senior employees, everyone's tenure was short, there were no holidays, and no overtime pay. They promised six thousand a month at the interview, but my actual pay was four. The rest was supposed to be discretionary, based on performance, but any fool could see their KPIs were impossible to meet. I clocked one hundred and fifty hours of overtime in the first month, so I walked."

Making quick, decisive cuts was Hayden's creed. If something wasn't right for him, be it a job or anything else, he'd drop it without a second thought.

"I haven't found another suitable company in the years since, but it's not so bad. Freelancing suits my personality."

This, perhaps, was the main reason Hayden was still single at twenty-nine.

Who would want to marry someone with an unstable job?

Even Kallen, who was an old friend of sorts, was shocked by his words. "I know you were like this in college, but aren't you afraid of starving one day? Humans only live a hundred years without rejuvenation magic. You plan to freelance for the rest of your life? What about when you get old?"

"Nothing about it."

Hayden took a bite of cheese from the platter, his expression calm.

"Finding a job, quitting a job—it's all my own decision. When it comes down to it, don't you want to be the master of your own life?"

Warmed by the wine, he got carried away and started gesturing wildly.

"What's so wrong with being self-centered? Why should I kneel to others? Rather than kill my own spirit worrying about what others think and live every day in a stupor—I'd rather become the most self-centered man in the world!"

Needless to say, this kind of bravado rarely impressed anyone, but Kallen was stunned into silence. For a moment, she realized that even though she was an immortal elf, the human standing before her was the one who hadn't changed at all since college.

"Keep being that self-centered and you'll really never find a girlfriend."

Before Kallen could respond, the groom himself walked over, his wife on his arm. He had finished his dance and had likely overheard Hayden's drunken rant from the corner of the hall.

The executive's daughter, the bride on Adam's arm, offered Kallen, the representative from HR, a polite smile. It was the picture of professionalism, the very model of a good, supportive wife.

But the sight of the bride's doll-like, courteous smile sent a jolt of irritation through Kallen, and she viciously gulped down the wine Hayden had given her.

Adam was probably right. But Hayden, likely emboldened by the wedding wine, blurted out something shocking.

"Finding a wife is easy if you're not picky. You think I couldn't shack up with some orc or goblin from the lower districts, even with my job situation? Please. I just don't want to. Who the hell would?"

At his words, Kallen's expression turned icy. Even Adam was taken aback.

Drunken rants at a wedding weren't uncommon, but shouting so loudly, so crudely, was bound to be overheard. A few guests who had noticed the commotion in the corner couldn't help but cover their mouths to stifle their laughter.

"We're arcanists, man! We have degrees! We've got the power to literally bend reality. Four hundred years of modern magic, all starting from Alice Newton! What's the point of all that power if not to make your wishes come true, huh?"

Hayden was still flailing his arms.

"So if I want a wife, you bet your ass I'm gonna use my magic to build the perfect one. What's so wrong with designing her myself?"

Kallen immediately shot back, "If you just want a talking robot fleshlight, you can buy one on the market. You want an AI that can think like a sentient being? Sorry, but even modern magic can't create true sapience."

Adam, however, had no time to argue technicalities with them. Hayden was his guest, and his in-laws were now looking over, having heard the commotion. His new wife, still on his arm, was giving him a strange look.

If Hayden made a scene at his wedding, Adam would be the one to lose face.

But a true corpo knows how to turn a crisis into an opportunity. An idea sparked in Adam's mind. He smiled and said smoothly,

"That's not really a problem."

Hayden fell silent, looking at Adam with curiosity.

"Robotics isn't the only path to a custom companion. Our company's New Atlas branch is currently co-developing a personality chip with Tezcatlipoca Bioconstructs. It's made from a mix of skill-softs and sim-sense programs and comes pre-installed with the memory routines needed to form specific behavioral patterns."

Adam spoke eloquently.

"By purchasing a suitable fertilized egg and performing gene-splicing, anyone can customize any biological body they desire. Then, you just use a standard growth acceleration spell to mature it and finally install the custom personality chip onto the blank brain. And there you have it, everyone can design their own ideal partner—no, they can fulfill any of your needs, not just as an ideal partner!"

If you can't make a good enough AI, just use a living consciousness, right?

His speech, of course, wasn't just for Hayden.

On one hand, Adam was maintaining decorum and giving Hayden an out. On the other, he was defusing the awkwardness for the other guests. In fact, Adam never expected Hayden to actually spend money on such a bio-wife; it was far too expensive. Hayden was just an opportunity for an advertisement. The wealthy and interested guests in attendance—they were the ones who would become a measure of Adam's performance.

As expected, several lavishly dressed guests showed interest at Adam's polished pitch. The world was never short of people who wanted to create their ideal partner, of whatever gender.

The bride on Adam's arm, seeing her husband's quick thinking, also smiled with satisfaction.

"Huh? A wetware fleshlight?"

But Hayden, already quite drunk, sneered.

"You're a real sicko, you know that?"

And you're such a pain in the ass— Before Adam could retort, the unexpected happened.

Kallen exploded.

"You're the ones with sick minds! Both of you, Hayden! Is there nothing in your heads since college besides women?! Why do you have to be in a relationship? Why do you have to get married?! Do you think getting married makes you superior?!"

Though Kallen hadn't had much to drink, it was her turn for a drunken outburst.

It was only then that Adam realized he'd made a mistake. He now remembered that Kallen, ever since college, had always hated any talk of DNA manipulation, eugenics, or designed babies.

"You think you're more mature just because you've slept with someone? Don't you have more realistic things to think about, like retirement plans and pensions?! I don't need to get married! As long as I plan for my old age and make enough money, I can live to be four hundred without ever getting a husband!"

This was a disaster.

If Hayden was just a drunkard spewing nonsense at a wedding, not fundamentally ruining the atmosphere, Kallen's words were a direct refutation of marriage itself. What's more, she was the HR representative sent to the wedding. What did it mean for her to say such things now?

Several guests, including Adam's in-laws, paled.

Word travels fast. It wouldn't be long before this wedding fiasco appeared in the tabloids. But as corporate people, they couldn't just step in and silence Kallen, the representative from HR.

"That's bullshit! What's so wrong with wanting to get married?"

At that moment, only a drunk Hayden could fire back at Kallen.

"You ever come home to a cold, empty place and realize it's just a box, not a home? Ever been sick, burning up, wishing someone was there to even get you a glass of water? You know how creepy it is when it's just... dead silent? Sometimes, just having someone to talk to changes everything!"

Fueled by the alcohol, he raised a finger high in the air and declared,

"So just you watch! I'm gonna show you all what a real, ideal, artificial wife looks like!"