Drunken Kissing at the Banquet

Drunken Kissing at the Banquet is a decisive reversal in the relationship between Shen Tang and Gu Huaian. What begins as a formal public appearance by a contract couple becomes an intensely private episode: Gu Huaian drinks too much, behaves with uncharacteristic dependence and tenderness, embraces Shen Tang, and ultimately kisses her in the car. The encounter does not immediately resolve their relationship, but it changes the meaning of their marriage agreement by moving physical intimacy from performance into an uncontrolled, emotionally charged act.

Public Marriage and Private Disruption

At the banquet, Gu Huaian and Shen Tang appear together in the manner expected of a socially recognized couple. The occasion is more formal than Shen Tang’s previous banquet, and its guests have come to seek cooperation rather than provoke conflict. Gu Huaian enters arm in arm with Shen Tang and introduces her to two kindly elders as his wife. Their marriage therefore functions first as a public role: the agreement requires them to appear loving at occasional family dinners while freeing Shen Tang from ordinary wifely duties. In exchange, she receives five million per month, has her living expenses charged to Gu Huaian’s card, and is promised a two-hundred-million settlement when the two-year agreement ends in divorce. The banquet exposes the instability beneath that arrangement. Gu Huaian’s conduct shifts from his usual controlled manner into drunken dependence. When he approaches Shen Tang, he looks at her pitifully and addresses her as “Wife~,” a term that surprises her precisely because it sounds less like contractual etiquette than spontaneous attachment. His flushed face signals how much he has drunk, while the childish tone temporarily reverses the usual balance between the composed businessman and the woman treating their marriage as a practical financial arrangement.

The Banquet’s Intimate Turn

Because Gu Huaian is in no condition to return downstairs, Shen Tang decides to take him home. In the resting lounge, the scene becomes private and physically revealing. When Shen Tang turns toward him, she finds Gu Huaian half-naked, his exposed physique sharply contrasting with his normally restrained presentation. She tries to redirect the situation by offering to turn on the air conditioner, but Gu Huaian pulls her into an embrace from behind before she can do so. The embrace communicates what neither character states directly. Shen Tang’s smaller figure fits against him, and she hears his strong, rapid heartbeat. Gu Huaian then nudges his head against hers and tells her that she smells nice. In another context, the behavior could be treated as sexual harassment; within their already existing marriage, however, the scene is framed as an awkward and destabilizing breach of the emotional distance they have maintained. Alcohol does not create a new legal or social bond between them, but it strips away the careful self-control that has allowed their contractual relationship to remain emotionally ambiguous.

The Kiss and Its Immediate Consequences

The decisive beat occurs after Shen Tang draws back. Gu Huaian plaintively asks whether his wife does not want to kiss him. She denies having any intention of kissing him, reacting so defensively that even the driver glances back. Gu Huaian remains confused because he believes he has heard her inner voice express a desire to kiss him. His question, “Then can I kiss my wife?”, converts the previously indirect tension into an explicit request. Before Shen Tang can answer no, Gu Huaian raises his head and leans toward her. Their lips meet in a soft, tender kiss. Shen Tang experiences the contact physically through a tingling spine and a loudly pounding heart, and the narration emphasizes her stunned recognition that she has actually been kissed. The event therefore shifts the relationship from suggestive proximity to consummated romantic contact, even though neither character has yet openly defined the relationship as love. Gu Huaian’s mind-reading ability makes the aftermath more complicated. Hearing Shen Tang’s inner complaint that he has no right to forget what happened, he becomes confused about his own conduct. He vaguely recalls that he kissed her, then feigns calm while his red earlobes betray his embarrassment. Shen Tang, unwilling to let the situation expand into an explanation, grabs his arm, pushes him out of her room, and tells him to leave because it is her room. Her action restores physical boundaries without erasing the kiss’s significance.

Relationship Value Shift

The episode’s dramatic force comes from the gap between expectation and result. Shen Tang initially treats the marriage as a controlled economic exchange: appear affectionate when required, accept the monthly payment, and wait for the two-year settlement. Gu Huaian’s drunken conduct turns that arrangement into a scene where the public label of “wife” acquires private emotional force. The value at stake shifts from contractual security to romantic vulnerability. Before the encounter, intimacy is something the marriage merely imitates; afterward, the imitation has produced an experience neither partner can easily classify as acting. The scene also creates a contrast between performance and involuntary feeling. At the banquet, introducing Shen Tang as his wife is a formal social act that protects the couple’s public image. In the lounge and car, however, Gu Huaian’s flushed face, clinginess, praise, and physical closeness undermine that polished performance. Shen Tang’s denials likewise coexist with an intense bodily reaction, so that her spoken resistance and her physical response pull in different directions. The kiss is consequently not a clean declaration or a settled romantic commitment. It is a breach in the structure that had kept their feelings deniable, and its uncertainty becomes the source of the next stage of their relationship.

Narrative Significance

Drunken Kissing at the Banquet establishes the central romantic tension of Shen Tang and Gu Huaian’s Marriage and Romantic Relationship: a bond created for money and appearances begins to generate genuine attachment. Shen Tang’s financial motives remain part of the relationship’s foundation, and Gu Huaian’s intoxication means the moment cannot function as a fully deliberate confession. Yet the encounter has lasting narrative weight because it makes distance impossible to maintain in the same way. Gu Huaian remembers enough to recognize that he crossed the boundary, while Shen Tang’s hurried dismissal reveals that the kiss has unsettled her rather than left her indifferent. The event is therefore both comic and structurally important. Gu Huaian’s transformation into an affectionate, embarrassed husband temporarily overturns the formal hierarchy of the banquet, but the return to sobriety brings embarrassment, denial, and renewed attempts to control the situation. The kiss does not end the Contract Marriage State; it gives that state a new emotional charge. A relationship once designed to terminate cleanly after two years now contains a physical memory that exposes the possibility that the contractual couple may become real partners.