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It is a quiet spring afternoon, the cherry blossoms dripping from the trees outside, the air warm. That is the moment he chooses to ask the question he has long been considering.
“I suppose you sold that first ruby I gave you?”
Sayuri looks up from her tea, grey eyes blinking once in shock.
“Nobu-san has given me so many presents.” she says, bright and innocent. “I have been lucky to benefit from such favor.”
Nobu snorts. Sayuri’s nose wrinkles in mischief and she continues on, voice light and airy as a sparrow’s chirp.
“Although some say my Nobu-san is prickly as a chestnut, I think he is soft at the center. But I’ve been told it is quite a secret.”
Nobu is prickly as a chestnut. He wears that on his chest with all his medals of honor, the same way she wears her beauty and cleverness as a beautiful mask to hide behind.
“Do you ever say what you mean?” he asks, shaking his head.
“I think Nobu-san likes the challenge of riddles.”
And she is very much a riddle, his Sayuri. One he can never quite unravel. She is a lake that shows his reflection, and that of her surroundings, but there are hidden depths to her even after all these years.
Nobu still wishes to drown in them. To let her wash over his many wounds and ease them with her wit, her grace.
“Sayuri,” he growls. “The ruby. If you sold it to eat, I’d have done the same. Probably before you thought to. But I’d like to get it back for you, now that I can.”
She settles her tea cup back on the table and folds her hands neatly in her lap. He watches her look around the small apartment he pays for, at once his respite from the world and the symbol of her precious independence.
“I fear I must have lost it.”
“Lost it?” he echoes. “My first gift to you and you lost it.”
The sigh she releases sounds like it belongs to a much older woman. She shakes her head as if to dislodge the thoughts that have stuck in her mind like pebbles accumulating at the bottom of a lake.
“If you must know, Nobu-san, I gave it away the night you gave it to me.”
He slams his own cup onto the table in irritation. She watches him, unblinking, the same way she always watches him. He suspects she knows his moods better than he himself does by now. At least she knows that his anger is always brief.
That she will always quench it.
“Why would you do such a thing? I know you did not wish for me to be your danna when you were young, but I had thought—”
“It was not my choice.”
Emotion colors her words as she lowers her gaze to the table. He waits, in silence, while she gathers her swirling thoughts.
“The ruby was the most beautiful gift I had ever received. The first gift I had ever received from a man as well-regarded as you. It meant the world to me. When I close my eyes, I can still picture it in my hand. The weight. The color. It turned my fingers pink in the streetlamp and you…”
She giggles to herself, covering her lips with her hand. “Only Nobu-san can give a gift and make it seem like a chore. I will cherish that memory the rest of my life, I promise.”
He cannot keep the confusion from his voice. “And yet, you gave it away?”
“Mameha-san told me I would have many gifts.” Sayuri lifts her eyes to the apartment, the elegant scrolls on the walls, the beautiful altar with the carved tablets. “She was correct. Nobu-san has been generous, as have so many others.”
“Mameha told you to give it away?” He slams his fist on the table. The cups rattle. “She had no right to take it from you. I will-”
“Mameha-san only wished to give me my freedom. A goal Nobu-san also wished for, although you could never understand how much danger I was in when you met me.” She lowers her eyes, as if ashamed. “I was a foolish child. I had made many mistakes. I beg your forgiveness for them.”
“You would make many more before you were done,” he points out.
“As would Nobu-san.”
His lips twitch upwards. She flicks her eyes up, the warm glow of affection in them loosening the tension in his shoulders. He reaches over the table, extending his fingers until she places her delicate hand in his.
“Mameha-san told me to take the ruby to Mother. To earn her favor, protect me from my rival in the hanamachi. It worked. Nobu-san saved me more times than I can even count. More times than you know.”
She holds his gaze and twines her fingers with his, squeezing lightly.
“Perhaps I have never expressed my gratitude,” she says slowly.
He releases a breath he had not realized had been caught in his chest. “I have never told you that you have saved mine.”
“Nobu-san is strong as a pine tree,” Sayuri defends stoutly, forehead wrinkling in distress, “or a rock that splits the stream.”
“Even the pine tree needs the rain, and even the rock needs the earth.”
“Nobu-san is in a poetic mood.”
“Last night I dreamed about the first time I saw you dance,” he says bluntly. “And how much of a fool I was.”
Sayuri’s expression softens. “I can dance for you now, Nobu-san.”
“You could. Every time you do, I’m reminded there is beauty in this world. That it is worth preserving. Worth living for.”
“Nobu…”
“There is something about the way you dance,” he continues, nonplussed. “The first time I saw it… it was like the whole world stopped. I swear I could feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. I thought…”
He trails off. Sayuri waits patiently, her thumb tracing a circle in the center of his palm until Nobu chuckles ruefully.
“I thought that I had finally found a person who understood pain. Grief. You were so young, and yet you danced as if you had lived a thousand lives. As if you had lost all the things I had lost. I felt a kindred spirit in you, Sayuri. That is the moment I knew.”
“And so you presented me with the ruby?”
“I presented you with my heart,” he snaps, “and you thought it was a ruby, like a child.”
“Perhaps Nobu-san should have told me how he felt?” she says. “Instead of… what is it he told me? Wasting my youth on those that did not deserve me?”
The laugh that spills from his lips is more bitter than the tea in the cup.
“Would you have taken me?” he asks. “A broken, ugly, scarred man? When the whole hanamachi threw itself at your feet? After all the time you spent avoiding me and your destiny?”
“I wished to choose my own destiny,” she says slowly.
“You walked with your eyes closed while I shouted from the train platform that you were on the tracks.”
She laughs, most likely against her will, bringing an elegant sleeve up to cover her mouth. Nobu’s own lips twist into a smile in response.
“Did you?” he asks quietly. “In the end, is this the destiny that you choose?”
Sayuri turns to look out the sliding door and across the roofs of the hanamachi. He wonders if she’s thinking of the okiya she left, her decision to strike out on her own, the dance lessons she gives and the art she creates.
He wonders if she is considering if this life is enough. If it is enough to simply be who you were meant to be, with whom you were meant to be. It is peaceful, and beautiful, and he feels that he has conquered the world.
But he didn’t know that once, a long time ago, a young girl had held a ruby in her hand and felt the need to give it away to secure her future.
“I did,” she says simply. “And I am glad of it.”
She picks her teacup up, wears her mystery smile, and sips quietly. “I do not need another ruby, Nobu-san. I have no use for it anymore.”
No. He supposes she does not. She already has his heart, and she always has. A ruby now would just be foolish.
But, perhaps, it is his turn to be foolish.
“Would you like me to dance?” she asks, lowering the delicate teacup.
He holds out his hand instead. She unfolds herself from her knees and stands without another word as she circles the table before settling back down in a smooth, elegant motion, just like a motion of a dance.
“I will buy you another ruby,” he promises, “and anything else you desire.”
She wrinkles her nose, the expression she always wears before she says something guaranteed to exasperate him. “Perhaps I wish for a pet monkey. Or a koi pond full of gold.”
“The pet monkey will have to live elsewhere. I’ve had enough of being in rooms with stupid creatures.”
She laughs, her fingers cupping his scarred cheek, unafraid. The light pressure turns his face towards her and she leans in, brushing her beautiful nose against his misshapen one.
“I have everything I wish for, Nobu-san,” she repeats. “I am happy.”
She finishes her sentence with red lips pressed to his, and Nobu allows her to win this argument while he gathers her in his arms.
Finally, they are happy. Ruby or no ruby.