Claire and Kai


Claire was being haunted by rings.

The wooden table, the centerpiece of her – no longer their – house: covered in water rings from countless cups of coffee and tea, juices and milk bottles. She didn't use coasters because she believed in messes and imperfections. He had spent a long time frequenting aged hotels rife with battered furniture and ragged sheets as he pursued an endless summer. He was not shaken by water rings on a table.

Goddess, that table. It was where she had spent each morning – planning the day's work, checking her accounts, making phone calls to the market, and gathering herself for the daunting challenges that always faced her: saving money to reinforce the barns, planting a new season's crops, smashing stones for expansion, and, in the summers, making time to visit Kai on the beach for a snatch of conversation laden with hope. In front of that table, she had bared her heart to him for the first time. Wordlessly, heart filled to the brim, she handed him a feather the color of an autumn sky.

"For real, Claire?" At her nod, he had continued. "I'm always so happy whenever you stop by. In fact, others come by all the time, but none cheer me up like you. What I'm trying to say is…I really love you, Claire."

Ah, what beautiful words they had been to her at the time. As that summer – her fourth in Forget-Me-Not Valley – dwindled down, she no longer made casual conversation with her fiancé – how honey-sweet that word felt on her tongue – on the beach. They chattered gleefully about their upcoming wedding in the heedless manner of two people shamelessly in love. All was well.

After their marriage, when Kai was integrated into Claire's life, the rings on the table began polluting the area in front of the unused chair. It was a small sign of their shared home and their quiet mornings spent at the table, planning and enjoying the simplicity of each other's company. That ringed table harbored memories beyond their engagement. It wore their Starry Nights, their Winter Thanksgivings, and their blizzard day conversations, their worries and their successes. That table told the story of Claire's before and their wedded present.

Though there were rings on both sides of the table, it now told the story of a bitter after. It sagged under the weight of a conversation and an ending and a lonely young woman, head in her arms on its ringed surface.

Her field, fertile, full of barns and crops – her visual bounty – had once housed a line of five pineapple trees, proud and tall, lush with blooms and new leaves come springtime. Claire had spitefully noted that there was a tree for each year of their formerly blissful marriage. In her disgust, she had ruefully clobbered at the trunks of each tree with her axe. It had been a slapdash job, one performed in a desperate grasp for catharsis. The tree stumps sat in their line, all five ringed with their age. Each time Claire went to that section of the field, she was assaulted by the view of the ringed stumps of trees she had planted for Kai.

Originally, she had planted one tree.

"Pineapple's worth a lot," Takakura had told her, nodding in approval. It was during that first spring, when she was struggling with money and spent each day trudging around in premature defeat. His comment made her happy. Money was a necessity and trees were easy. Come summer, she would be reaping the benefits of this tree.

She met Kai the last day of spring. She had been drawn to him with that initial contact, but as they acquainted themselves throughout that summer, "drawn" became a weak word for what she began to feel toward him. After she found out that he loved pineapple, her plan of making good money from the trees was replaced by her plan to garner his attention with the fruit.

When she planted four more trees at summer's end, Takakura had looked at her quizzically. On the day that each tree was felled, exposing those damn rings, he did not question her or her waste of good lumber.

Kai had given his excuses and left her in the midst of a bitterly cold winter. The valley was barren and so were the remnants of their marriage. Sitting at their ringed table, he gave his reasons for the departure from Claire, from four seasons, from the valley.

"I loved you, Claire. I do still love you; don't doubt me. I live for summers, though."

She had been horrified. Her husband, her Kai, her dearly beloved – leaving her to pursue his endless summer.

His departure plunged her into an endless winter that lasted through that bitter winter's conclusion and into the following spring.

She had kept their rings in a decisive moment of self-torment. Weren't wedding rings meant to represent an endlessness? The cyclical nature of love? The rings, misrepresentative and tortuous though they were, sat on her bookshelf. She often considered them and their flat meaning. Forever…ha.

These were the rings that haunted her – the ringed table that acted as the beginning, the centerpiece, and the end of their marriage. The pineapple tree stumps that had fed their affections, given them a common ground, given rise to conversations and knowing. The wedding rings that had once represented their bond. They now represented a shell, a shadow, an echo.

And yet.

And yet, looking out the window, Claire saw a ring of light around the midmorning sun, weak in its early spring splendor. She began wondering. She looked to the weddings rings gathering dust on the bookshelf. She had a few pineapples in storage. She had told herself that they would be shipped soon, but had she believed that? Wasn't she saving them for Kai? Didn't she wish for his return?

Perhaps it was time for her to find Kai once more. Though his leaving had thrust her into an endless winter, he had once been her endless summer. His love had been her warmth, his smile her sun.

She would pursue her endless summer rather than sitting and waiting for it to come as she had in the past. She didn't know what sort of outcome to expect, but she brought the wedding rings and a pineapple along with a proposition to follow summer together during the winters. Takakura, she knew, would support her. He, too, had once been haunted by his own set of rings.

When she proposed her idea to him, her neighbor and mentor, a fortress of strength and will during her lowest moments, spoke one word.

"Go."

Claire set out to find Kai, her heart filled with hope and a pineapple in her rucksack – it was similar to those summers of years past. No matter the end result, the two were about to come full circle – their journey had become its own ring.

She had an inkling that, despite their failings in the past, this ring of their marriage's second coming would be continuous.


I feel that the use of rings in this may be overdone, and at the same time I'm pleased with the outcome. This needs work, I know, because I started out with one idea and halfway through segued into another idea and ended up joining the two somewhere in the middle. For now, I am presenting it as is because I'm really excited about it and I am dying to get some feedback.

I've been wanting to write about Kai and Claire (from DS Cute, not More Friends of Mineral Town) for years. The idea was different, and I thought it was just fantastic, but it never quite worked out for some reason. I think it's because I always had Kai leaving at the end of summer and Claire waiting around for him to return the next summer. The way I write Claire, she's not a waiter. She will never be written as someone who waits around for a person's return, because, let's face it: I write myself into every character I write about, even if it IS fanfiction.

No promises here, but I might continue their story with some of these prompts. I'm curious about what happens next, but I also like to leave things open-ended. Thoughts?

Thanks for reading!