With a Ring on It

This wasn't the first time he'd seen them. But it was certainly the first time he noticed them.

And at first, he really didn't worry about them, either. After all, they were only little bands of metal, thinner perhaps that the Buddhist ring Miroku wore, and less ornate than those adorning the glittering fingers of the rich, arrogant Feudal Lords, but still only metal bands.

The thing was, everyone in that future time, in Kagome's world, seemed to have one.

The young women trotting down the street, arm in arm with beaming young men had them. The old ladies chatting and gossiping outside the shops, their old arms heavy laden with bags of shopping or little hand bags wore them. The middle age men walking purposefully along the sidewalk wore them. Hang it all, even Kagome's mother and her grandfather wore them. Why would so many people wear a ring?

And even still, why would so many people not wear a ring? Kagome didn't wear one. Her brother Sota didn't wear one. None of Kagome's friends wore any.

So what was the point?

"Yo." He greeted her one day as she climbed from the Bone-Eater's Well. The yellow backpack she carried seemed heavier than normal as it dropped to the ground at the girl's feet. She followed quickly after it, sighing heavily, her face red from the effort of climbing out. "Jeez, what did you pack along this time?"

"Oh, a little of this, a little of that," she puffed in answer, pushing her hair back, though to little effect. The dark strands tickling her nose simply returned to where they were before the moment her hand left.

"So, your whole room?" he scoffed, peering into the bag. "Stupid."

"Get out of there," Kagome said quietly, waving her hands to shoo him away before leaning down and lifting the pack. He could almost hear her spine shrieking in protest as her breath hitched. It only took a few wobbly steps before he lifted the bag off her back in exasperation. It was too painful watching her struggle away, and annoyingly slow.

"Hey, what are you-"

"I'm not dealing with this right now," he answered dryly, slinging the bag across his own shoulder and beginning to walk away. "I'll just carry it to your weird contraption, and then you can ride around with it."

Kagome hesitated for a few moments from behind him. He couldn't hear her move.

"Yo, are you coming or not?"

"Yeah." There was a soft thumping and Kagome appeared at his side, grinning. "Thanks, Inuyasha."

"Keh."

They continued in silence for a couple minutes, the only noise coming from the birds and the insects. The grass was pleasantly soft still from the morning dew, and the sun was telling him it was about 7 in the morning. To his left, Kagome seemed somewhat fidgety, tugging at the hem of her sleeves and skirt, running her fingers through her hair, looking this way and that.

He glanced down for a moment at her wandering fingers. There was nothing on them. Just like he had noticed before.

"Hey, Kagome?"

"Yes?"

"Why does everyone in your time wear a ring?"

Kagome looked at him in mild surprise. "A ring?"

"Well, that's what I said, isn't it?"

Kagome pursed her lips, but let the snarky comment slide. "Well, there's a lot of reasons why people wear rings. Sometimes it's for fashion, or it's for fun. But usually people wear it in… Commemoration of something I guess."

"Well, what about the ones that your mom and your grandfather wear. What are those?"

"Those are called wedding bands. When two people get married, they wear rings to show that they are."

"What? People don't just know that they're married?" The question was to be expected; Inuyasha had, after all, been living alone for most of his life, and in the few years he had spent around people had all been in small farming towns like the village by the Bone Eater's Well, where each person knew everyone else and their mother's dog.

"Well… My time… There's a lot more people there, Inuyasha. We don't all know each other like we do here."

"Huh." The half demon nodded slowly, looking at the village on the horizon. The flooded rice paddies sparkled in the sun as men harvested their contents. "So people just wear them to show that they belong to each other."

"Er, I guess so. For the the most part, yeah," Kagome agreed, a little awkwardly. The passive tone Inuyasha was talking in was telling her that he didn't really care about the symbolism of a wedding band. "People also give the person they're in love with one when they ask them to get married."

"Keh! Sounds like a dumb tradition to me," scoffed the hanyo, speeding up.

And though he said it, he didn't really believe that.

It was pretty obvious that Kagome was entirely taken with concept. He had learned several months ago that the girls of Kagome's time married much later that those of his time; sometimes they reached their thirties before starting to have children, while those of Feudal Japan were typically married off by their fathers almost as soon as they became women. But even so, he noticed that Kagome and her friends seemed to enjoy fantasizing about "being proposed to" and "becoming a bride".

And while it did seem kind of senseless, like how he saw giving flowers (honestly, who wanted a bunch of dead plants?) or being a pacifist, it made her happy, so he accepted it. Once or twice, he even caught himself thinking about the idea before silently shaming himself. It was only worse on his human nights, when human emotions clouded his "better judgement", and their group was unable to move forward with their most valuable asset able to fight. Those nights where he could only sit against a tree, gazing through the fire at one of the only people in the world he would throw himself in front of a flying arrow or falling sword for.

And then Kagome disappeared.

And she was gone.

For three whole years. Years that lasted lifetimes, alone.

And when she came back, it was like he could breathe freely again, like an enormous weight of worry and pain that had been pressing heavily on his lungs was suddenly lifted. And when she came back he wanted nothing than to make her happy, and keep her safe. To make that promise to her.

So he gave her a ring.

A/N (I made a few minor edits.) Hahah, I literally have no idea. Is it sad that I've just gotten into InuYasha? Yes, yes it is. But I think one of my favorite tropes is just the little things of modern day that we take for granted just completely befuddling poor Inuyasha, and then Kagome trying to explain it to him. I only wrote this in an hour or so, so it's super lazy and not written very well, but whatever. This was just me experimenting on whether I should write stories for InuYasha to begin with, hahah. Thanks for reading, tell me what you think, I guess. Love yourselves, byeee.

Cover art by me. I love the short hair and idk why.