The resounding blast of the dangdut koplo remix—Cheating is wonderful... as long as you don't get caught! Once you're caught... your future is completely ruined!—echoing across the pristine silence of the Main VIP Table officially cemented a brand-new world record for the most mortifying social disaster of the century.

Mira frantically dove into her small crossbody bag with trembling hands, battering away at her phone screen until the cheerful koplo track choked and died right in the middle of the line "...your future is completely ruined!"

Dead silence blanketed the VIP table. Mrs. Darmawan drew a long, slow breath with an expression that suggested she had just caught a whiff of a rotting alleyway rat, while the uncles and aunts seated nearby averted their gazes, biting their lips to suppress hysterical laughter.

"Sorry... so sorry, Auntie, that was just my cat's automatic rheumatism medication reminder alarm," Mira lied smoothly, flashing a stiff, banana-leaf-wide smile as cold sweat mixed with thick foundation melted down her cheeks once more.

Convinced she had completely run out of oxygen and social standing to survive another second at the elite table, Mira slumped as low as humanly possible in her chair, pretending to be deeply fascinated by the intricate pattern of the table cloth while mentally cursing her life path for turning into a slapstick soap opera.

Yet, amid this profound psychological agony, entirely unknown to Mira, someone across the room had spent the entire evening with their eyes locked dead-center on the VIP table.

At a small round table roughly ten meters away from Mira's seat, a handsome man clad in a sharp, tailored charcoal-gray suit sat casually by himself. Sporting a lean face, sharp jawline, and neatly combed hair, he held a stemmed glass of fresh orange juice in his right hand.

His name was Aris.

Aris had attended the wedding simply as a representative business partner from Satya’s office network, though he had been bored half to death ever since the reception kicked off. All evening, he had been nursing his dessert and wishing time would accelerate so he could retreat to his apartment for a binge-watching session of true-crime documentaries.

However, Aris's boredom vanished the exact millisecond Mira burst into the ballroom.

From his vantage point, Aris had a front-row seat to every single act of cosmic disaster Mira had endured without missing a beat. He watched her storm the entrance with Super Saiyan bangs and a crippled shoe, survive the Borneo-shaped peanut sauce disaster on her chest, attempt a lemon-soap laundering operation in the ladies' room, and cap it all off with a full-body bear hug mistakenly delivered to the groom's father.

Aris took a slow sip of his orange juice, his lips twitching as he fought back the rolling waves of laughter he had been suppressing all night.

"Well, now that is a genuine, walking natural phenomenon," Aris murmured to himself, shaking his head in sheer amusement. "She crashes her ex's high-society wedding looking like a runaway stunt double who bought the wrong costume set. And yet, she's got enough structural steel in her spine to survive sitting right at the Main VIP Table."

Aris resumed tracking Mira’s movements across the room. He watched her slink down in defeat, looking remarkably like an overcooked boiled shrimp desperately wishing the earth would swallow her whole after the catastrophic dangdut ringtone incident. A genuine spark of amusement mixed with profound fascination bloomed in Aris's chest at the sheer, unyielding absurdity of the concrete-updo-wearing girl.

Back at the VIP table, Mira felt the skin of her back prickle as though targeted by a thousand sharp needles, prompting her to cautiously raise her head just an inch to survey the perimeter.

She intended to check whether Mrs. Darmawan was still monitoring her or had moved on to gossiping about someone else. But as her gaze lifted, her eyes traveled straight across the room, cutting cleanly through the crowd of chatting guests to crash directly into the table opposite her.

And there he was: the sharply suited man staring right back at her while sipping his orange juice, a clear, amused smile dancing playfully across his lips.

Aris made no effort to look away. Instead, he lifted his glass of orange juice toward Mira in a polite, solitary toast—a silent gesture of absolute respect offered to a battered warrior bleeding out on the battlefield.

Mira’s eyes bulged in shock. Her heart skipped a beat, not from sudden romance, but from the raw panic of being caught red-handed acting like a walking circus act by an impossibly attractive stranger.

The two of them locked eyes in a tense, long-distance standoff lasting three full, uninterrupted seconds.

Time inside the grand ballroom seemingly ground to a halt.

Instantly, Mira’s clown-blushed cheeks caught fire, blazing with nuclear heat. Mortified at being unmasked as the venue's designated public jester, Mira whipped her head around in a blind panic, ducking down once more to glare intensely at her empty plate while screaming internally.

"I am so dead... that gorgeous random guy across the room just watched my entire life self-destruct in real-time!" Mira hyperventilated, feeling her upright Super Saiyan bangs tremble pathetically in response to a humiliation that knew no bounds.