"It's beautiful!"

Mako couldn't help but agree with Nonon as she rushes to view the large chest from all sides, even though she had watched Ira affix the lid to it on its brass hinges not even an hour before Nonon had arrived. It's huge. Huge enough that Ira himself could probably ball up and hide in it while it's empty and only be a little cramped. The wood is neither black nor poisonous to the touch, despite him telling her that it was made of black poisonwood, but what she did know is that it matched Satsuki and Nonon's bedroom furniture set and perhaps outclassed it. He had painstakingly carved oleanders and sunflowers into the lid of it and delicately brought out each detail with a fine rose gold paint with a hand so steady that even Mako hadn't been able to make it waver with her excited bouncing.

Ira sighs, allowing a satisfied smile to spread across his face. "I'm glad to hear that you approve," he says. "I'm only sorry that it's taken me so long to give you my housewarming gift."

"I had the mind to rake you over the coals for it when you called me over, but it's just so perfect that I guess I can let you off with a warning," Nonon replies, running her hands along the lacquered wood.

"Good!" interjects Mako. Already his face intensifies in his steadfast humility, knowing what was to come. "He's been working tirelessly on this whenever he could between his contracts! I'm pretty sure that it was on his mind constantly even when he was working on other things too! He made sure the velvet inside was the softest, most luxurious velvet ever! Feel it! Feel it!"

"Velvet?" Nonon unlatches the chest and gasps at the feel of the void colored velvet within. She almost seems to melt into it and Mako claps her hands in pride for Ira's hard work. "This is my new bed now. Satsuki can have the big bastard bed all to herself now. I wanna be entombed in this, I swear to god I'm putting it in my will."

"You'll be the most luxuriously comfortable skeleton ever!"

"Eh, maybe if Toadie coated it in a nice 5 centimeter thick layer of pure gold, that would be the case. But I have a feeling I'd have to pay for that."

"You could afford it, Jakuzure," Ira quips.

"Sure, sure." Nonon gazes down at the chest again, her fingers tracing the petals of one of the sunflowers. "It really is beautiful. You've gotten far better at working with wood since we left the Academy."

"Thank you."

"Remember the coat rack you tr—"

"I'd prefer not to." Ira's good mood evaporates the instant 'coat rack' is mentioned.

"What coat rack?" asks Mako, sensing a good story in the offing and leaping to attention like a dog on the scent of a gopher.

Nonon leans towards her with an evil grin on her face. "He wanted—

"HERE, I'LL LOAD IT INTO YOUR ENVIRONMENTALLY IRRESPONSIBLE VEHICLE FOR YOU!" he yells with a volume that sends them both reeling right back to their Honnouji days.

Before either Mako or Nonon could say anything further, he hauls the ginormous hunk of wood and velvet out of his workshop and loads into the back of Nonon's equally huge, bright pink hummer, securing it so firmly in place with knots so complex they'd probably end up having to cut the rope instead of untying it. Nonon merely shrugs at Mako, and gives her a look like she'll tell her about the coat rack later. Mako made extra certain to burn it in her mind so she'd remember.

"Are you coming back with me, or are you staying with the toad?" asks Nonon. "I could use some help getting this up to the penthouse and I can already hear Ryuko bitching about the effort the whole fucking way up, whi—"

"Language," barks Ira.

"Noooooo, I'll be staying with Gamagoori-senpai for now~!" She leaps up and wraps her body around his forearm to better illustrate her point.

"Figures," sighs Nonon. "Since Satsuki's working late tonight, we'll be ordering out, so you're not missing anything much if you decide to stay the night." She waggles her brows at Mako, which pulls a giggle from her and makes the color rise in Ira's face so quickly that it has to be a miracle that steam isn't pouring out of his ears.

"I've had enough of your presumptuousness, Jakuzure. Feel free to go on back and waste your venom on Matoi, Senketsu, or that floor lamp you own that's taller than you."

"So cranky," Nonon says cheerily as she climbs into her hummer. "Don't get too underfoot of our dear toad; the four of us want you back unflattened."

Mako gives her the best salute she could manage, dangling from Ira's arm as she does. Ira hardly waits for Nonon to drive away, her hummer so comically dwarfing every other car on the road as she does, and takes them back inside his workshop before the classical music blaring over the sound system has even faded fully into the mundane afternoon traffic of Kanagawa. Mako scurries up to plop, belly down, on his shoulder.

Wordlessly, he presses a pair of work goggles onto her face, dons his own and sets about cleaning up all the shavings strewn upon and around his smaller spinny-metal-carver thing.

A lathe, she recalls suddenly. She likes the feel of the word on her tongue.

Before Nonon had arrived and after he'd screwed on the hinges and latch of the chest, he had started on something smaller that he said wouldn't take too long to make while they waited for her to arrive. As she hummed, she had watched him make a few ball point pens, which he set aside one by one on a workbench nearby. Altogether, he'd made four nearly identical pens before he had to stop to do his gifting.

"Who're the pens for?" she asks. "Are they for you?"

"No, these are a too small for me to write comfortably with," he says as he marks a little metal rod with a couple dashes. He consults a small whiteboard, like what Satsuki and Nonon have at their penthouse, but instead of reminders and haikus and doodles, there is a rough diagram with arrows leading off to numbers. "I'm making them for Inumuta for his birthday. Iori says he has a better chance handwriting if the pens have an appreciable weight to them."

"Ohhhhh, I gotcha. Are you gonna make them special at all, because right now they look a little plain, you know? You gotta really make sure a gift sings the feelings of your heart just right, although I don't know why I'm telling you that when you're the king of making gifts special."

He smiles at that. "That means a lot coming from you." In a rare and spontaneous show of affection, he traces the curve of her cheek with a gentle pass of the jut of his knuckle. "Of course I'll make them special, but that will have to wait until tomorrow, when I have more time to babysit the anodizing, dying, and etching processes."

"An-anotherizing?"

"When I make a metal take on another color."

"OH, like the knives you gave the sisters!"

"Exactly. The blue I'd like to make these pens will take a little more care than letting the titanium soak in the dye while I work on something else."

"What color blue~?"

"Sky blue. Or robin's egg. More delicate than the blue I used for Lady Satsuki's knife handle. And then along the barrel—" He indicates the middle of the now half finished pen. "—I'll etch his name into each one."

"Oh, oh! What IF, whatifwhatifwhatIF! You put a cute little doggie on some of them?"

"Now that's a thought…"

She shimmies with excitement while he finishes the current and then final pen, setting them both alongside the other four, their uniformity oddly comforting on the worn and scarred wood of the workbench. He hands her each one to test out and she delights in the reassuring weight of them twirling in her fingers. Satisfied with her positive report, he removes each of the ink reservoirs and tiny, little springs and sets them all aside in a small drawer and then, once again, cleans up all the streamer- and tinsel-like shavings and tips them all into a bucket.

"That's a lot of waste," says Mako, peering into its glittering depths.

"All salvageable," he says. "Do you like any particular kind of jewelry?"

"Me?"

"I'm… it's a little late to get invested in my other commissions, but too early to head home for the day. I thought I'd melt this back down and… make something for you, since you keep me company while I work so often and I'd like very much to show my appreciation to you."

"Oh, you don't gotta~"

"I'd like to."

His voice is so, so, so soft then and his face is turned sheepishly away from her, but she feels the heat of his blush radiating from his neck alone. For as powerful a man as he is, however intense his aura could be, Mako almost forgets that she was ever scared of him. It's much same with the others now, as time carries them farther and farther away from that terrible bend they'd made their stand on, but she has come to know the softnesses of Nonon, Satsuki, and Ira the best. She couldn't truly forget his fierceness, but it looks different from this side of a man who had put himself between her and that crazy girl. It looks different from this side of a powerful man who, upon his first good, honest look at her, didn't underestimate her. So of course, Gamagoori Ira's softness struck her quite deeply.

Mako has a soft spot for softness.

"I like rings," she answers. "Don't get the wrong idea though! Mankanshoku Mako is determined not to tie the knot until she gets her certification as a practicing therapist! You better believe it, buster!"

If anything, this embarrasses him even further, but he glosses over the mention of marriage easily.

"So you have an idea of what you want to pursue now?" he asks and tips the scrap metal into the melty cup—CRUCIBLE, she corrects herself—for his forge.

She nods solemnly. "More than an idea. A purpose and resolve to see it through, no matter how long it takes."

"That's an admirable line of work."

"I wanna help my friends with their troubles! Everyone has so many of them and I mean there's plenty of great therapists around out there, but is there really any out there yet that we could talk about Life Fiber stuff with? I don't think so. Not yet. I bet I'm not the only alimony—ALUMNI—of Honnouji Academy that wants to be a therapist after all, that'd be silly. But I think I'm closest to both sides of it, you know? Of potential therapists."

"That you would be," he agrees. "I believe in you, Mako."

Her heart burns as hot as the fires he stokes up around the crucible. He makes the fires awaken with a roar as he pumps the bellow with his foot. While the metal melts, he pulls out a ring that bore a bunch of smaller rings and asks her which finger she'd like the ring on best. Despite her determination to forego marriage for now, Mako does entertain her left ring finger as an answer, just to get him all riled up again, but decides against it and offers her right middle finger for him to size.

From there, the ring-making itself becomes a blur. She remembers the act of chattering at him as he worked and she definitely being amazed at each step as he does it. He's always careful not to obscure her view of his process, and especially careful that she's as protected from accidents as he is. She's more entranced by the shape that emerges bit by bit from the titanium than anything else, a shape she hadn't expected beyond the usual ring shape.

He pulls a bunny out of metal like a magician. It's one thing to make knives or tools with metal, but to watch Ira bring life to metal in form of a bunny with cute little toes and a tiny nose ready to wrap around her finger is something else only akin to magic.

By the time he finishes, the windows of the workshop are dark. He beckons for her to hold out her hand, and when she does, he slips the ring onto her finger.

"It's adorable~" she says, gazing into the bunny's lovingly shaped eyes. "It looks like it actually has fur!"

"Is it comfortable?"

She nods enthusiastically.

"If it isn't once the novelty wears off, please bring it by so I can adjust it."

"I will."

Mako slides forward off his shoulder, just enough so she can give him a quick little peck on the lips. She enjoys the sequence of emotions that play across his face and that she can feel the thrum of his heart pick up the pace. They've kissed more deeply than that before, but sometimes Mako finds it terribly easy to overwhelm him with joy, and finds her own joy in pulling it out of him. His joyful face is a treasure.

"You said your mom and uncle and aunt are busy tonight, right? Because if that's right, I wanna take you out to dinner as a thank you!"

"But—"

"No buts!" She stands up fully on his shoulder, her borrowed goggles beginning to droop off of her face as her hands cross above her head. "You've worked hard all day making people happy with your skill! You almost didn't take a lunch! What kind of state would you be in if I hadn't shared mine with you? Huh? Huh!? You and me, dinner! It doesn't matter what you eat as long at you get something on your tummy! We'll go anywhere you like, and eat however much you like! I mean it! I mean it! I mean it!"

Ira sighs, but not with frustration. She's been getting fewer of those kinds of reactions lately. He sighs with more joy. "If you insist," he says.

"I do!"

"Let me clean up and make myself presentable."

"A job isn't finished until you've cleaned up and put everything away, so I'll allow it!"

"I appreciate your understanding."

Later, with his workshop tidied up and locked for the night, they sit in what is essentially the first restaurant they saw—a small hole in the wall kind of place—side by side. Without the focus of his work to wind him up, Ira is relaxing, and the rumble of his voice as he talks is hypnotizing. She asks him why he electrifies the metal to color sometimes and pull out the dyes other times, and listens as deeply as she can as he explains it to her.

All the while, she turns the bunny ring over and over and over on her finger with her thumb, delighting in the minute details in it, and the love in each suggestion of fur.