Work Text:
Aiba pushed the door to the conference room five minutes after the meeting started.
A man dressed sharply in a suit was standing in front of the room, presenting his product. Trying not to make any noise, Aiba slipped in one of the empty chairs and silently apologized to his department chief, Kimura, who glared at him from across the room.
“You’re late.”
On his right, Sho passed him a cup of coffee. Aiba thanked him wordlessly and took a sip out of the cup.
“What did I miss?” he whispered back to Sho.
But his department chief looked at him again, making him shut up.
Aiba moved his attention to the front, where a woman was now holding out a box with the product inside. The man smiled at her and took out a ring.
“Humans crave for companionship. We all have friends and family, but what we are looking for every day on this earth is love,” he said. He showed the ring to everyone in the room. “We at Connection aim to strengthen the bond between people by helping them find their soulmate. And with Akai Ito, this will now be possible.”
Kimura cleared his voice. “So you’re saying that with this ring people will find their perfect match.”
“Exactly.”
“How is that possible?”
The man smiled. “Ah, well. Until we have a contract, that’s the secret we can’t give away, I suppose.”
Kimura tapped his pen on his notebook. “So you want us to finance your project, is that right?”
“Yes,” the man replied. “As of now, we don’t have enough resources to produce this on a large scale, but with the help of your company we’re sure we could get this out very soon.”
Kimura looked at his notebook, and stood up.
“We have a deal.”
As soon as the meeting ended and every participant had been given a ring so they could try out the product, Kimura stayed behind with the people from Connection for some additional details.
Aiba walked to his desk, playing with the little ring box in his hands. He sat down at his desk and opened the box, staring at the ring and trying to understand how something so small and apparently useless could have such an enormous power.
“Does this thing really work?” Jun, sitting at the desk next to him, frowned while reading the proposal they had received together with the rings.
“It’s probably just a scam. I can’t believe our boss got tricked into it,” Nino said, shaking his head. Walking behind Jun’s seat, he ripped the page from his hands. “‘Put on a ring from the Akai Ito collection on the little finger of your left hand. If your soulmate is also wearing one, both of your rings will warm up and become red when you’re close to one another,’” he read. “That’s bullshit.”
“Doesn’t it make you curious though?” Ohno intervened. “What if you could find your soulmate that easily?”
“Well, the whole department gets one ring each as per part of our agreement. If you want to try it, be my guest,” Nino mocked him.
Sho sat on Aiba’s desk, looking at the box in his hands.
“Are you thinking of trying it on too, Sho-chan?” Nino asked, looking at him curiously.
Sho smiled at him. “Of course not,” he said, looking at Aiba and taking one of his hands as discreetly as possible, interlocking their fingers. “We already have each other, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“That’s sweet,” Ohno said, at the same time as Jun exclaimed “Ugh, that’s so cheesy!” and Nino pretended to gag.
Aiba giggled shyly at Sho as they all went back to their own desks. He observed his boyfriend put his ring box in the pants of his pockets as he walked away, and looked down at his again. Did he really want to open Pandora’s box?
“You’re not thinking about it, are you?” Jun said, looking at him concerned.
“No way,” Aiba said, putting the box in a drawer, hoping it would be enough to stop the temptation.
Aiba yawned as soon as he set foot inside his apartment.
It had been a long day, as he had been in charge of writing some new contracts, and it had taken him the whole afternoon. He looked at his phone and checked his last message from Sho, saying that he would be done soon too. No one at the office knew about their relationship except for their three friends, so they always tried not to go in or out of work together at the same time.
Dragging his feet to the couch, he threw himself on it. As soon as he sat down, he winced from the pain. Frowning, he reached behind his back to retrieve whatever it was that he had sat on.
It was the ring box from Connection. He had put it in his back pocket sometime that afternoon, afraid he’d be losing it, and almost forgot about it.
He stared at it. It was nothing fancy, just a black box with gold refinements. On top of the lid, in golden letters, the words Akai Ito were written in cursive.
Aiba opened the box curiously and took out the small instruction sheets inside to look at the content. The ring inside was pretty nondescript. It was a thin silver band, almost like the one Sho and him had made for their first anniversary together.
Hesitantly, Aiba took the ring and observed it. Then, he cautiously put it on his left pinky, just to see how it would look. The metal felt cold as it slid against the skin of his finger. Once he had pushed it to the base, he put his hand in front of him and stared at the ring from afar.
It looked like a normal silver ring under the lights of his living room. If he hadn’t known any better, he wouldn’t find it weird to see someone wearing a ring like that.
A ping from his phone distracted him.
“I forgot my keys to your apartment at home, babe. Open up?”
Aiba sent a quick “okay” to his boyfriend and walked to the door. He almost didn’t realize he was still wearing the ring, but he noticed in time before Sho got inside with a bag of take-out.
“Food!” Aiba exclaimed.
“Food.” Sho chuckled as he walked to the kitchen.
“I knew there was a reason why I chose to go out with you,” Aiba joked, as he took some dishes and glasses and brought them to the table.
Sho laughed again. “Who cares about that stupid soulmate thing, right?” he said, giving him a kiss on the cheek.
Aiba felt his heart stop for a second. He was suddenly aware of the ring in his pocket, as if its weight had increased all of a sudden. He needed to get rid of it, no matter how curious he was. If Sho had seen him wear it, he would be devastated.
“Yeah,” he said, casually. “Who cares about that.”
‘Can’t miss what I never knew...’