Lalala, I am ignoring things!

[ciircee]

I meant to lock comments on the last entry, but thank you, everybody. I just needed to vent about that and it means a lot to me that all of you understand. Today has been a bit of a wringer dealing with Ed's emotional fallout from that.

So I wrote something on and off between real life and the internet and PT for the carpal tunnel!

This is for elfiepike. For no real reason at all. I just felt like I should give it to somebody.

Follows The Girl She Isn't and She's Still Not That Girl



The Girl Who Just Might Be

Kazuko was well aware that she was a tough girl to love. She was a tough girl in general. Usually she didn't mind but sometimes it made life…well, tough. Her current example? She honestly couldn't believe she was holding a diamond ring. And it was hers—if she said yes.

She turned it around and around, watching the fire inside the stone jump and shine. "Ohno Kazuko is a stupid name," she told the ring. The ring gleamed, gold and bright. "No, really, it sounds dumb. Ninomiya at least balances out the ko part." Of course, there wasn't any reason she couldn't keep being Nino. Biting her lip, Kazuko slid the ring onto her finger.

"Shit! Shit!" she gasped, pulling it off. "Holy shit." She was pretty sure she was having a heart attack. Her love affair with cheap fast food and day-olds had caught up to her and she was having a heart attack. Or not. Her heart slowed from its frantic pounding and her chest eased and she took a deep breath. She looked at the ring in her hand and felt her heart pick up. "Okay, you're going in a drawer," she told the ring and put it in her top dresser drawer, under her bras. "And stay there. Quit trying to kill me."

She picked up her phone and called Ohno. "That ring of yours tried to kill me," she told him when he said hello.

His voice was smiling and she could just see the look on his face, happy and quiet. "Yeah, it tried to kill me too. You get used to it."

She put her hand over her heart and rubbed absently. "Why'd you go and buy a homicidal ring, you dumbass?"

Ohno laughed down the line and Kazuko felt her heart skip a beat, like she was some dumb little girl with a crush instead of a grown woman with a boyfriend. Who wanted to marry her. "Because that's your ring," he said, his voice was soft, sweet.

Kazuko couldn't say anything for a minute. She frowned at her reflection in the glass of a framed playing card from Las Vegas and listened to Ohno breathing. "That's dumb," she said after minute. "And it's really pretty." She looked at her drawer and then peeked in, shifting her underwear to see it. "Really."

"Hey, you know what?" Ohno asked her suddenly. He went on before she could come up with a caustic response. "I never told you that I love you."

She sucked in a breath. "What?" she squeaked.

"Can I come over?" he asked.

He was just as homicidal as his ring. Ohno Satoshi wanted her dead. "Why?" Or wed. Something. She was too near death to think straight. She was going to hit him if he did come over.

"So I can tell you," he said reasonably. "I want to see you when I tell you that I—you know."

She hung up on him.

A second later she called him back. "If you come over now and have a long lunch we can try out having sex with each other."

"Cool, a nooner," Ohno said cheerfully. "I'm almost done with my meeting with Jun-kun and then I'm going to stop for some flowers—not roses because then you'll think I'm just getting whatever. Something pretty, though. Something that's you, you know? So I'll be there in maybe half an hour?"

She hung up on him again. "This is your fault," she told the ring as she went to take a shower.



He brought her a mixed bouquet. If she could call it a bouquet. It was more like a fistful of different things—tall irises and lilies, wide-faced sunflowers and daisies, petal rich carnations, delicate orchids, things she didn't even know the names of. There was no baby's breath or green leaves or anything that wasn't a flower. And there was one red rose. He was such a weirdo and it was actually really pretty in a jumbled up kind of way. "Go shower," she told him, taking the flowers.

"But I want to tell you—"

She shoved him. "Shower." She turned to the kitchen, to put the flowers in water. Yuki probably had a vase and if there wasn't, it wasn't like a drinking glass wasn't the same thing. But he caught her. Then he simply stared at her for a long, long time. "Hey!"

"Sorry—you're beautiful; I got stuck."

He was in his stupid, expensive suit and his silk tie and she was in a tank top and cut off jersey shorts with absolutely no underwear on anywhere. Her hair was still wet. And he thought she was beautiful. He honestly thought she was pretty enough to make him forget what he was doing. "Seriously, go shower. Right now."

"I love you," he said simply. He smiled, wide and delighted and Kazuko knew she was blushing because her face was on fire and she couldn't really look at him directly. "I really do, Kazu," he said. He tipped her chin up and she met his eyes. "I love you. Is that okay?"

He was an alien. She wanted to say 'if you don't go shower now I'm going to tear your clothes off right here' and end it with a cutting 'is that okay?' but she couldn't find the words. She could only nod mutely.

"Okay," he sighed in obvious relief. "I'm going to take a shower now."

Kazuko shook herself as he went into her bathroom and then dropped the flowers on the table and went to help him wash.



"We're going to try this again," Kazuko told the ring after Ohno left. Her legs still felt like jelly and she was pretty sure that she was walking funny but it was something she had to do. "And no funny business this time, got it?" she warned.

Putting it on and seeing it on her finger felt like getting electrocuted.

"This is why I don't wear you, you know," she told it and put it away again.



Still, she couldn't leave it alone. Every day she took it out, looked at it. Every day she put it on. It felt like getting zapped. Sometimes it felt like she imagined a punch in the gut would feel. Sometimes she felt faint. But she kept doing it, kept putting it on, and she started to get used to that feeling.

She'd had a feeling she would because she'd been through it before. It had started with some weird guy telling her she had cute hands, taking her breath away so badly that she'd had to leave the room and she hadn't even been able to go back. She was mostly used to it now. Sometimes he still caught her.

"It's just because I like him so much," she muttered to the ring as it sat on her finger.

The ring winked at her.

"Shut up," she told it. "I can call it whatever I want."

"Kazuko-chan?" Yuki poked her head into the room, looking wary and confused.

Kazuko whipped the ring off and hid it behind her back. "I can talk to myself if I want."

"You often do," Yuki informed her. But Yuki was distracted, looking at her. At where her hands disappeared behind her back. "And sometimes you don't," she smiled smugly. "Dinner is almost ready."

Dinner…? "You're cooking?"

Yuki grinned, pleased. "Ohno-san is bringing something over. He texted earlier but you ignored him, he said."

Because of the ring.

"Shut up," Kazuko said. She wasn't sure who she was even talking to—the ring or Yuki or herself. She dropped it in her drawer, ignoring Yuki's laughter. "What's he bringing?"


She couldn't stop from carrying the ring in her pocket when she brought Ohno lunch. She figured she had to face everybody there eventually. It wasn't like he was going to quit just because he was a terrible embarrassment. She could feel the eyes of everybody on the floor following her as she marched her way to his office.

"Lunch," she said, leaning on his door. She nearly fell through when Aiba opened it.

"Leader isn't here—let's see it! Let's see!" He seized her hand and then dropped it in disappointment. "I want to see you. The new you! THIS you! I only got a tiny peek the last time you were here!"

"You've seen me since then. You and Jun nearly took over our living room with that stupid project just last week."

Aiba beamed at her, all sunshine. "Yeah, but you never wear your ring where people can see it—Yuki said it's only in your room and only if you think nobody is home. But you're finally back here so I thought you'd have it on."

Without meaning to, Kazuko touched her pocket.

"Let me see!" Aiba said, reaching for her.

"No!" Kazuko turned away. A moment later Aiba was wrapped around her. "Ack!"

"I won't let go until I see! Put it on? I want to see it on!"

"Harassment! Help!"

"Jesus, Aiba," Jun's voice muttered. A moment later Kazuko was free. "Sorry. Ohno-san is on his way down. You can wait while I take this one to get smacked."

"Try neutering him," Kazuko smiled at Jun. He grinned back and shut the door as he towed Aiba away.

Kazuko pulled the ring out. It had been here before and it shone like it remembered it, the smile that would have been on Ohno's face. "This is your fault," she sighed. She paused for a moment before putting it back in her pocket instead of on her finger.



There was more to consider than just the obvious, Kazuko thought as she wrote code. "There's Yuki, for one," she told the ring on her hand. "If I marry Oh-chan and move in with him, she'll have to get a roommate or something. And what if they rape her? Lesbian rape her."

The ring glowed in the light of Kazuko's computer monitor.

"And then insurance changes, you know. Apartment insurance, life insurance, health insurance—that all has to be dealt with and there are times I doubt Oh-chan's ability to tie his shoes without help."

Glittering in the low light, the ring didn't say a word.

"Plus he lives father away from here than I do. I'd have to re-plot the cheapest route to work. And there would be grocery bills, too. I can't carry groceries for two around on the train. Not if the other one of the two eats the way he does."

The ring flashed.

"Okay, I made that up; Yuki probably eats more than he does. But there's a lot to consider here." Kazuko stretched her hands up over her head, arching until her spine popped. "Who knows if he's thought of any of this, right?"

"What's right?" asked Shun.

Kazuko jerked her hands down and fumbled the ring off. "I'm right. All the time. Get to work—this code is a bitch and I'm sick of fighting it. I've been here since four-thirty this morning and one of us is going to die."

"Oh my god you are engaged," Shun beamed.

"I am not!"

"I saw the ring! Let me look! Let me look!"

Kazuko pushed him away. "This is sexual harassment!" she yelped as he dug through her pockets. "I don't care how long we've known each other!"

"Ni-no-niji, he loves you!" Shun said, holding up the ring to the light. "Look at those suckers." He tilted it. "You know, from the right angle, this looks kind of like that u.f.—oh, god this game is about him! Alien Bride is about your boyfriend. You are cute! Daigo! Daigo, look how cute Niji is! She's writing a game about her alien lover!"

"If you don't shut him up I will quit!" Kazuko shrieked, snatching the ring away. Sometimes Shun reminded her of Aiba. A lot.

"Right," Daigo said slowly. He blinked bemusedly. "First: why are you cute?"

"She's engaged and writing a game about her alie—you know, this is going to take some time. Where's Mao-chan? She needs to hear this! I want to tell it twice but I can't wait that long. How long does it take her to get here, anyway? She's the boss, shouldn't she be here?"

"I'm am here," Mao said, stepping out from behind Daigo. "And I've heard enough. Shun, work the code. Daigo, quit standing there and get back to the scripts. Nino-chan—show me that ring."

Kazuko opened her mouth and then snapped it shut. Like Mao wasn't the devil herself. "We're not engaged," she sulked, showing the ring. "It's kind of a trial thing."

Mao smiled at her. "Uh-huh. Sure."



Kazuko didn't want to say she was panicked but she was right on the thin line between sanity and screaming. "Come on, where are you? You can't be gone, you son of a bitch," she cursed. She hadn't gone out all day. It had to be there. Somewhere. She went through all of her drawers twice, eyes and hands both.

She moved her dirty laundry pile and looked at the floor. And then she started shifting it back to its place, one article at a time, shaking upside down anything with a pocket. Nothing gleamed or twinkled or winked or shot pretty lights at her.

"Don't say a word," she snapped at Yuki, Aiba, and Jun as she stormed through their work-based invasion of the apartment. Nothing shimmered by the kitchen sink. "Seriously, shut up," she said as she stomped over to her game systems and searched the tangle of video cords. No glint, no glimmer. "I mean it," she warned as she rifled through their papers and markers and graphs and snacks. Nothing. "Damn it."

She swept through the bathroom. Nothing on the shelves, nothing shiny mixed in with the towels and washcloths. Nothing on the sink by the toilet.

"Quit being such a bastard," she muttered as she stalked back into her room and slammed the door. She leaned back against it. How could she have lost it? She'd kept in her drawer for weeks. She'd carried it around for months. She'd worn it in secret for hours at a time, doing home-y tasks and work and doing the shopping at a market where nobody would know her just to see—and now the ring was gone.

It couldn't be gone. She refused to accept that the ring that Ohno had got for her—the one he'd bought after their first date, the one they'd both carried—was gone. She just needed to look harder.

"You little shit, you come out of there," she snarled as she crawled under her bed. There were dust bunnies, game cases, a notebook, stray socks, a used condom that she'd stuffed under there and forgot about, and a handful of spilled candies. But nothing that glittered like a tiny ufo. "Please." She swallowed her pride. "I really want you."

Her door opened quietly and Kazuko pillowed her head on her arms under her bed. "Go away, Yuki," she said sullenly. "I lost something."

"I know. She told me you've been tearing this place apart for the last hour," Ohno said. Kazuko felt a hand wrap around her ankle. "Maybe I can help you find it." And she was tugged, sliding across the floor to emerge from under the bed.

Great. Ohno was here and she'd lost the ring. He'd been banking on it being their future and while she knew they could have a life without that ring, without any ring at all, it just felt like a terrible omen. She sat up. She had to tell him. "Oh-chan," she felt her shoulders slump in defeat. "Satoshi." It still felt strange in her mouth. Like she was saying too much, showing off her heart each time. "I—"

"You've got dust in your hair," Ohno said, fingering a strand and then sliding a dust bunny free. "And my ring on your finger."

Kazuko stared at him in shock and then looked down at her left hand and felt her jaw drop, her head spin. Her drawers and her pockets had felt empty without the ring there while her hand had felt natural, normal, right. The ring practically smirked at her, brilliant and beautiful. "Smug bastard," she told it.

Ohno took her hand and rubbed his thumb over her fingers, nudging the ring. "Kazu," he said quietly. "I really want to marry you. Can I—" he looked at her hopefully.

Kazuko let out a laugh. "Oh, go ahead. Anything is better than the bathroom."

But Ohno didn't laugh. He got up on his knees and faced her, holding her hands and meeting her eyes with steady, solid determination. "Will you marry me?"

She stretched up and put her arms around his neck. "I love you," she whispered in his ear. His arms tightened around her and she closed her eyes at the feeling. She might have been a tough girl to love, but he did. He wanted to. She loved him despite everything, because of everything—every stupid moment in that dumb café, all the random moments in between, right through his seventh-floor ladies room proposal to this dust-covered moment of her own making. "I love you."

"Kazu?" he asked quietly.

"Yes, you idiot," she laughed, hugging him tighter. "It means yes."

"Okay," he sighed in obvious relief. Kazuko sat back and then pulled the ring off, tossing it on to her bed. "Um," Ohno said, looking from the ring to her face.

She leaned close to him, whispering against his ear, "Let's go shower."


The ring sat in the middle of the bed, the sunlight hitting it so that the lights danced inside of it and all around it.