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The innocuous little package clutched in Kyoko’s hand tick-tick-ticked, a metaphorical time bomb waiting to blow up in Ren’s face. “You can tell me the truth,” Kyoko said carefully, earnestly. With a return label that said “Fantasy Custom Jewelers”, he was very squarely put in a place where he had to tell the truth, but it was wild, nigh on unbelievable. It should have been a matter settled back in December but he believed sending Ren the product was the jewelry-maker’s way of trying to re-open that door that Ren had slammed shut.
He slid himself deeper into the couch and rubbed his forehead. “Do you recall your eighteenth birthday?”
“It was wonderful!” she said, the end of the words lifting to try to lift him as well. “At Maria’s party, you set up a life-size flower throne, so I could sit on it like a proper fairy princess and eat cakes and drink sparkling juice.”
He sighed, slumping forward. “That wasn’t the original plan. I was going to have that,” he gestured toward the box, “sitting on the throne. And I was going to kneel before the throne and confess my feelings for you.”
Kyoko inched closer to him, and said, ever-so-encouragingly. “That is so sweet! But what prevented that? This?” She held the box out to him, entreating him to open it.
He waved it away. “President Takarada found out about my plan, my request for the jeweler to contact the wardrobe department for your sizing information. He also found out about the grave error the jeweler made before I did.” The booming laugh of Takarada still echoed in his head. “Fortune favors the bold,” was merely the precursor to the very pointed, “It’s a bit presumptuous to give a girl an engagement ring before you even kiss her.”
That realization had come the day before the party, and was quickly followed by perhaps one of the most heated conversations of Ren’s life. Fortunately for him, Kuon was ready and waiting to take the jeweler to task on the blunder and make the ridiculous request to fix the mistake in one day. Naturally, the jeweler refused. A bit unnaturally -- or at least un-customer service like -- the jeweler insisted that this was what he should do for a girl he’d put so much effort in to. That only a coward would back off like this. Kuon’s distaste for being called a coward had him shove the jewelry box back at the jeweler and storm out of the shop.
“It was supposed to be a pinky ring.” He couldn’t emphasize it enough. “The jeweler used the wrong measurement.”
Realizing she would get no more explicit permission than that, she removed the packing tape and bubble wrap from the box and its contents. It was made of rosewood, with vines carved along the edges of the lid and a heart-shaped latch on the front. The gasp from her, he thought, was of it’s elegant design, but not of the shape -- it was too big, too flat to arouse too much suspicion... yet.
She opened the box, and for the longest time, he had to wait for the suspicion to turn to awareness of the gravity of what it wasn’t supposed to be. Inside was a intricate cuff bracelet made of green metal leaves and thorns. A red chain attached to the cuff on one end ended in a rose gold ring with exquisite rose on top. “Oh, my,” she breathed as she removed the cuff and placed it on her wrist. “It’s beautiful!” Her praise sounded so sweet, and the subsequent squeak that escaped her soured it all. He turned his head to bear witness -- the ring was still too big for her pinkie. With trembling fingers, she slid it off the pinkie and moved it toward the next finger.
“Please, don’t,” he said, dismayed. “I may throw myself out of the window if that’s the first ring I place on your ring finger.”
She dropped the ring and let it dangle. “Ren! P-please, it’s not that serious. It’s just a mistake.” She came to his side and sat on the couch next to him. “We’ll laugh about it in a few years. I know it’s not cheap to get jewelry made like this. Money isn’t nothing, but it’s not worth you feeling like this!”
The rational piece of him knew that was true -- and why couldn’t he simply get the band adjusted now? It looked beautiful against her skin. It was a disservice to her to let this one detail keep her from having it. The mad part of himself -- Kuon, who was still angry at the jeweler’s audacity to say that no other engagement ring could compare to one crafted by him -- needed to explain. “I wouldn’t propose to you with something like this. Mother has my grandmother’s ring. It’s incredibly modest in comparison, but it feels -- “ There was a lump in his throat -- why did he care so much about the modest golden thing with a flower pressed into the metal that he only saw on and off when the family’s lock box was opened -- that he needed to press through. “It feels like home.”
Her eyes sparkled with tears unshed. She slid the ring back on her pinkie. “That sounds perfect. And... if I’m honest, I’m glad that things turned out the way they did.”
He scowled, Kuon’s indignation at the mishap still on the surface. She held her hands up defensively. “Let me explain! I... I loved it. I really did. I’ve never felt like such a princess before, sitting on a throne. But, I realized... I was still acting like a child. I was eighteen, a grown woman, but I’d done nothing to prove that I was really grown. Mature. And that you’d only ever see me as a little girl.” She blushed bright pink. “And to think that you’d tell me how you felt, in such a ... scripted, fantastical experience... I just don’t know if I’d have believed you. If I was already deceiving myself about my maturity and what it took to make me happy, I don’t know if I’d have accepted you honestly. In contrast to the way you confessed, how raw it was...” The pink on her cheeks darkened. “That was undeniably true.”
He smiled, despite the way it smarted his pride. He’d spent so long trying to bury the way the mishap had twisted himself inside, it was almost foolish in this light. “I suppose it’s good to know that I can still be charming while unscripted.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. It tingled through his embarrassment. “And so much more.”