Love Affairs in Melbourne-Chapter 116 - 113: The Test of Distributing Benefits

"Answer wrong, and give me twenty push-ups first," Jiang Zhaoxue issued a new command.

Liu Siyan, being a straightforward person, didn’t say another word and went straight to doing them.

Although the question was quite specific, there was really no good excuse for him getting such a thing wrong. Taking the initiative to admit his mistake was a hallmark of a good man.

"Now you can continue answering the previous question," Jiang Zhaoxue gestured for Liu Siyan to continue.

"Right hand." This time, Liu Siyan’s response was crisp and decisive.

With a choice between two options, after eliminating one incorrect answer, the remaining one must be correct.

"Answer wrong, another twenty push-ups," came the swift command from the entertainment committee member Jiang Zhaoxue right after Liu Siyan finished his reply.

"Besides the left hand and the right hand, where would Lu Ying have a third hand?" The groomsmen team objected to the punishment.

"Wrong is wrong," insisted the bridesmaid team in the face of the groomsmen’s protests. "If you want to know the correct answer, then hurry up and do those push-ups, or the two-handed push-up punishment will change to one-handed."

Liu Siyan cooperated and completed another twenty.

It was midsummer, and though Lu Ying’s room was air-conditioned, Liu Siyan was in a full suit—shirt, tie, dress shoes, and all.

Not to mention whether such attire was suitable for exercise, after twenty push-ups, he was bound to start sweating. The intensity of another punishment of twenty could well be imagined.

"You don’t have to do them all yourself, what are groomsmen for?" Lu Ying watched, "absolutely horrified," as Liu Siyan did another twenty, her elbow starting to twist out without any scruples.

Liu Siyan was a reliable person and was obviously no match for the group of girls. His groomsmen, perhaps due to lack of experience, didn’t know where to begin to help, especially since, in Wenzhou, men generally get married a few years older than women.

The key issue was that the question Ren Jing had just asked was clearly designed to take advantage of Liu Siyan.

None of the groomsmen expected Liu Siyan would agree and accept the punishment immediately.

Neither had Ren Jing.

So after Liu Siyan finished, Ren Jing gave away the correct answer. "The bride said that the first time you held hands, you held both hands together. Think about it—do you remember now?"

"You’re deliberately misleading the groom! How can you ask whether it was the left or right hand when the answer is both hands?" The groomsmen team continued to express their dissatisfaction.

"The groom was so guilty he accepted the punishment right away—what’s your complaint?" Ren Jing shot back.

The "test" for Liu Siyan continued one after another.

Some bridesmaids gave relatively simple questions, like "name twenty reasons why you love Lu Ying in one minute."

The groomsmen team put their heads together and quickly came up with twenty "positive adjectives" through collective wisdom.

Yan Yan was still watching the proceedings with a smile, apparently not yet her turn to ask a question.

Qi Yi took the opportunity, while Liu Siyan was accepting the physical punishment, to send a message to Yan Yan: Don’t ask anything too complicated, remember to let Liu Siyan off easy.

But Yan Yan was so entertained by watching Liu Siyan being tormented that she paid no attention to the message Qi Yi had sent her.

Back when everyone was in high school, everyone was focused on studying. Compared to the non-key high schools and even the second-best ones, Wenzhou High School had many more cultural and entertainment activities.

Be it the Arts Festival or the choir competition, there were annual events. The school would also regularly organize class-based cultural performances.

But those events were geared toward "class honor," and everyone took them quite seriously.

Even if there’s a themed class meeting every few months, it would still be under the regular "inspection" of the school leaders.

But a wedding like Liu Siyan and Lu Ying’s, where you could make a ruckus to your heart’s content, was still a first.

It was also the first time since everyone had "grown up" that they could gather together with the purpose of blessing and "entertaining" a classmate, liberally indulging in gossip and "teasing" classmates.

Everybody carries a bit of the gossip gene, more or less.

In high school, Class Four didn’t have much gossip, mostly because everyone was too busy at the time.

The first wedding among the male classmates, and he’s marrying a girl from our own class.

If not now, then when?

The bridesmaids excitedly took part in the Nine Challenges.

Qi Yi sent Yan Yan a text message right before the third challenge.

Qi Yi watched Yan Yan for a while and saw that she had no intention of looking at her phone, so from the fifth challenge on, he took on most of the physical punishments for Liu Siyan.

The Bridesmaid Team put their heads together to come up with the "physical punishments," which were all very creative.

For example, drinking a specially mixed "cocktail" of life’s five flavors: sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty.

Liu Siyan, without hesitation, took a big gulp, and after half a cup, he nearly spat it all out—the rest was drunk by Qi Yi.

When mixing the drink, the bridesmaids hadn’t held back, but after all, it was just a little hard to swallow and not something that would actually harm anyone.

Yan Yan was a bit surprised; she felt that she might have underestimated the class dynamics between Qi Yi and Liu Siyan.

With as many as nine groomsmen today, Yan Yan couldn’t help but feel that Qi Yi’s actions were out of character.

When it came to Yan Yan’s turn to ask a question, she posed a particularly tricky one.

Yan Yan’s question matched her current personality, the kind that wouldn’t have an answer so easily.

Yan Yan had prepared a tissue with the bride and nine bridesmaids’ lipstick prints on it.

Yan Yan gave Liu Siyan the task: "Please tell us, among the ten lipstick prints on this tissue, which one belongs to Lu Ying?"

Lip prints aren’t easy to recognize to begin with, plus the medium Yan Yan chose was a tissue that hardly retained complete prints.

Even if they were well imprinted, normally few people would distinguish their girlfriend’s lip print.

Normally you only have one wife, so why bother differentiating?

That said, if the Nine Challenges didn’t include something difficult, it wouldn’t do justice to the bridesmaids’ "duty" to give the groom and groomsmen a hard time during the wedding pickup.

The bridesmaids had discussed that for such a "simple but crucial" question, if Liu Siyan answered incorrectly, he would have to choose one of the following punishments: kissing for ten minutes, tossing 100 sticky notes while standing barefoot on an acupressure board, or doing 100 push-ups.

Yan Yan knew the answer to her own question; she didn’t need to have the bride write anything in advance.

Had she seen the text message from Qi Yi, she could have switched to a much easier question at any time.

The question was thought up by Yan Yan, but the punishment wasn’t decided by her alone.

When discussing the punishment, the bridesmaids felt that kissing for ten minutes would be like giving Liu Siyan a huge favor.