Released – Chapter 24

When the tea ceremony is finished, we gather up Usagi and Oyama and make our way back to the main street. We had a long lunch and tea with Minamoto, and it’s around four-thirty now. Jiro’s not done with the surprises, though. He takes me to a small saké bar where the four of us sit and drink and eat together for a few hours. Usagi pops into the business next door and grabs paper for each of us and a brush pen. We write our Tanabata wishes and tie them to the wire tree outside when we leave.

I wish for peace and health for myself and my family. I just want a few quiet months before we leave and more to come when we get to Yūsei. I hope that’s not too much to ask.

After we’re done at the bar, we walk back to the Sakai building the long way and drop off Oyama. Jiro pulls my hand and takes me to the transitway with Usagi in tow. We take the train up and around the city, and I close my eyes and rest my head on his shoulder, not paying attention when the train glides into the station.

“This is our second to last stop.” Jiro pulls me off the train at Ku 10, the farming ward, and I immediately freeze up. Usagi is right behind me, though, so I can’t turn and sprint for the doors before they close and the train pulls away. Only a few people disembarked at this station, and they have already scanned themselves and gone inside.

“Jiro, I haven’t been outside in a long time now. You are planning on taking me outside, right?”

“I am. Do you know what time it is?”

“Uh, sometime after eight?” I haven’t checked the time since before we left the saké bar, but the lights were dimming in the domes, and I can only assume that it’s night now.

It’s night.

I remember all of those nights I spent at the house in the desert with my cheek pressed against the window, gazing at the stars and the moon, watching for the shuttles zipping back and forth from the elevator to the space station.

Now it’s my turn to pull Jiro, and I take his hand and drag him along with a huge smile on my face. “Come on, Usagi! Don’t dawdle!”

Usagi chuckles, and I think that might be one of the few times he has ever laughed in my presence.

We make it to the long corridor to the outside, and I shudder with a small twinge of anxiety when I think about the last time I was here. I grip Jiro’s hand even tighter and pull him closer to me.

“Will you be all right?” He turns his smile on me. “I know how much you love the stars. Maybe we’ll see Orihime and Hikoboshi tonight.”

“Jiro, you’re such a romantic,” I say, pinching him on the arm.

He turns and backs into the door, opening the latch with his elbow. “It’s true. I am. But nothing is more romantic than the stars.”

The night is hot and clear, and the sky is bright with millions of pinpoints of light above us. The moon is absent, but its light would have obscured the cloud of the Milky Way stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. I only look up; the sky is amazing in its brilliance.

If this were day, my eyes would be on my feet, and I would hope I wouldn’t pass out, but I can’t tear my eyes from the stars. Jiro gently leads me out farther and farther past the door and the tarp that shelters the entryway. When we get far enough out, he pulls me to him, and I turn my gaze as high as it can go, past his face which is soaking in the stars as well.

We stand quietly for a while, just watching, and when my neck begins to ache, I close my eyes and bring my face down to his chest.

I take a moment to breathe in Jiro and place this memory safely in my head. I’m lucky tonight. When I open my eyes, Beni stands with Usagi off to the side and both are smiling at us.

“Beni, what are…?”

I stop when my eyes hit the ground. A blanket is laid over the tan gravel with a pot of rice wine and three cups. My heart starts hammering in my chest, and I look up at Jiro who is smiling down at me.

“Yoichi’s wedding was an eye opening experience for me in many ways. Watching you pace that floor and worry about me and my family, agonizing over doing the right thing? You’re a very selfless person.”

Thinking back on that day now, I’m so embarrassed by the way I acted. “No. I’m completely selfish. I panicked because I wanted to keep you, and I was sure there was no way we could be together.”

His hands come up and hold my face, and he shakes his head and laughs lightly. “You’re so full of fire, it kills me. I’m only sorry about one thing. I called you my fiancée, and I didn’t make it official. I’ve had this planned for weeks now. I’ve gone to your aunts and asked their permission. I’ve informed everyone in the family. Sanaa, will you marry me? Right now?”

Beni comes forward out of the shadows and opens her hand and in her palm are two rings. One for me is platinum with a series of three square diamonds. The other is a plain matching band.

Jiro takes them both from Beni’s hand. “These are from my other side of the family. My mother’s mother and father. I visited my grandmother and got them both.”

I’m speechless. I just keep looking at the rings and then Jiro and then the rings and him. The look of shock on my face turns to a wry smile. “Aunt Kimie and Lomo must have died when you came to them.”

“Lomo cried and Kimie rolled her eyes.” I burst into a tear-filled laugh picturing the two of them with Jiro. I bet it was quite a scene. “So, is that a yes?”

“Oh! Yes, Jiro! My gods, I’ve been saying yes in my head for the past minute and not saying it aloud.”

He laughs and kisses me, kisses me under the stars with the rings clasped in his hand between us.

“Come and sit down.”

Jiro leads me over to the blanket, and we sit seiza opposite each other with the cups between us.

“San-san-kudo. You weren’t kidding about getting married right now.”

“There’s no priest here to purify us or bless the rings, but we can drink from the nuptial cups. Beni and Usagi will be our witnesses. From here we have a party to go to.” He hands the rings back to Beni who sits next to me, and Usagi sits next to Jiro.

“A party to celebrate? You’ve been busy. I love this. It is over-the-top romantic, even for you.”

“Yes, I know. Let’s be thankful Kentaro is not here.”

I can’t think of a better wedding ceremony than this, a grand gesture and us sitting and poking fun at it because that’s what we do.

Beni pours the rice wine in the smallest cup, and Jiro and I pass the cup back and forth and drink three sips apiece. Then the next cup and the next. I want Usagi and Beni to be a part of this too — they are now as much my family as anyone else — so after Jiro and I have sipped from the last cup I pass it to Usagi and he passes the cup to Beni.

Beni gives us back the rings. Jiro puts mine on my finger, and I gaze down at it for a second. The diamonds are bright and sparkly, and the ring fits a little loosely, but I love it. I’ll have to thank Jiro’s grandmother next time I see her. She never came to Miko and Yoichi’s wedding because she’s housebound. I take Jiro’s ring and put it on his finger. I wiggle it around, and it seems to fit nicely.

Leaning across the blanket, I put my hands on his knees, and he holds my face and we kiss. My heart is beating so fast, and my head is so light and happy, and then he literally takes my breath away when he gasps from the strength this love between us. I press my cheek into his hand and feel the ring around his finger, and when we break apart I look up at the sky and the stars. Perfect.

“I love you, Sanaa.”

“I love you, too, Jiro.”

“Congratulations!” Both Beni and Usagi say bowing.

Jiro and I bow back.

I laugh and look down at my hand. “For some reason, I thought I would only ever get weapons from you and never a ring.”

He shrugs his shoulders and smiles. “I like to surprise you.”

I like it, too. I’ll never bug him to tell me things when he wants to be secretive ever again. It would ruin the fun.

“We have to go. Thirty minutes outside tops. Even tonight when the radiation is low.” Jiro is the voice of reason, though I don’t want to leave. I want to lie down on this blanket with him beside me and watch the stars all night long.

We stand up and Beni packs everything away into a bag. I slip my arm into Jiro’s, and we walk back to the door.

“Sanaa, this is for us, this ceremony, these rings. As long as the law stands in our way, we can never be married legally. I promised Mark.”

“It’s a good compromise.” And it is. I’m not even sad about it.

“I’d like to call you my wife when we’re with family and friends, fiancée when it’s business. Is that okay?”

“Deal, husband. Maybe we can change the law someday when things are settled. Who knows what’ll happen when we get to Yūsei?”

Jiro holds open the door for me. “Yūsei could be anything or everything. But we’ll worry about that when we get there.”