Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin
Notes: I wrote this for my girlfriend, and she graciously allowed me to post it for all to see and hopefully enjoy. Ohaguro is a method of blackening the teeth, used in Japan until the Meiji Era to indicate marital status.
-February 6th, 1870
"Saitou? What's this?"
Saitou glanced up from the floor where he was sharpening his sword. The look of fierce concentration for his task—a countenance that Tokio betimes thought had somehow been chiseled onto his face by another warrior's sword—did not abandon him even as Tokio held up the mundane object he had left for her in the kitchen.
"It's a ring."
"I know that," Tokio said, smiling indulgently. "Why was it there?"
"As of yesterday the new government forbade ohaguro," Saitou said, the usual disdain in his voice when he spoke of the Meiji government present.
"I heard," Tokio said. She'd had the maid dispose of the ingredients for the teeth-dyeing ritual she'd enacted since the day of her wedding (something the maid had been all too glad to do; the rancid smell had been giving her perpetual headaches). "But," she brandished the simple circular band, "that doesn't explain the ring."
"You'd rather the rest of Japan not know you're married?"
"A ring lets people know?"
"In Europe and America, yes. Apparently it's a tradition spanning the course of centuries."
Tokio cocked her head as Saitou returned to his chore. Saitou's xenophobia was common knowledge. It was a holdover from the previous era, an attitude that Saitou had fought to protect when he aligned himself against the patriots. "Where did you get it?"
"The only place in town that sells them."
Not long ago a British merchant had married a Japanese woman and set up shop; people flocked to what they considered a "novelty store"; their only real contact with the European world. Saitou had doggedly refused to patronize the shop, muttering once that the gods themselves couldn't drag him inside it.
Though apparently her wish to be seen as his wife overpowered whatever interest the gods might have in forcing him to do business with Westerners.
She knew him better than to tease him about it; good humor was unfortunately not something he possessed. Nevertheless, she giggled as she turned, and Saitou saw her fiddling with the ring, trying to figure out which finger it was supposed to go on. He refrained from enlightening her. There was no way he was going to admit to having had to ask.