Su Zhezhi took her guild badge to the seventh floor to trade for Ke Chi. The moment she walked in, the Marriage Certificate Bureau assigned her as a reserve bride, stuffing her into a rented wedding dress held together with three pins. When the photographer counted down to the third shot, she tore off the red flower and refused to smile. Eight hundred and thirty thousand people were watching the full-server livestream. A loudspeaker warned that if she didn't smile for twelve shots, she'd be removed as an invalid character. She asked whether crying counted, and what removal meant. Finally, she threw out, "What if I die?" and forced the rules into the open: the dead don't count as brides or grooms, and don't take up a spot in the photos, but after sunrise, the seventh-floor door won't open for her. Ke Chi showed her the White Branch Guild badge pawn ticket, which bore a signature that wasn't hers. She counted them one by one: Ke Chi with his broken leg in the corner, a companion stuck on the third floor, and nine real numbered wristbands among the twenty-three brides. After she counted herself among the "dead," the loudspeaker changed its tune and called her a "reserve." But the person who forged her signature, which photo do they want her to die in?
