Chapter 21
The Proposal Arc: Start
"I'm sure you're all wondering why I called you here today," Kenichi sat opposite three of his friends at the restaurant they frequented, glancing around suspiciously as if anyone could possibly be seeking to eavesdrop. "I can assure you that it is of utmost importance."
"What is it?" Niijima asked, stroking his mustache curiously with an open notepad in front of him in case it was important enough to warrant notes.
"It may seem out of nowhere, but I'm telling you, there is a method to all of this," Kenichi reassured, although none of the three needed reassurance.
"Just spit it out!" Tanimoto spat, squirming in his casual clothes. He was now unaccustomed to wearing his Hermit attire, and sitting with three other people like old friends made him triply uncomfortable.
"Okay," Kenichi sighed. "I will. But first, I'm going to ask you each a question."
"What could it be?" Siegfried inquired with his usual sing-song tone.
"Niijima, Tanimoto, Siegfried," Kenichi inhaled and exhaled deeply as he glanced at each. "I need to ask you about women."
"Women?" the three asked in confusion.
"Then why am I even here?" Tanimoto demanded gruffly.
"Gah! Is that a question?" Niijima laughed. "You were Prince Tanimoto! You could have had any women who'd ever laid eyes on you, even Miu if you'd tried!"
"Hey!" Kenichi objected, but Niijima waved him away.
"Still, what in the world makes you think I'd give you advice?" Tanimoto growled. "It's not like I all of a sudden started liking you!"
"Please help me!" if he hadn't been sitting at a table, Kenichi would have openly fallen to his knees and scraped his forehead against the floor. "I'm hopeless! I have no idea what I'm doing! I'd never even spoken to a female outside of my family until I was 16!"
"It's true," Niijima affirmed.
"That's just pathetic," Tanimoto scoffed. "Listen, Shirahama, I'm only telling you this so you'll get out of my hair. But are you really stupid enough to ask me for advice?"
"What?" Kenichi was confused. This was a great idea, in his opinion.
"If Miu wanted me, she wouldn't fallen in love with you!" he raised his voice pointedly. "What are you asking for womanizing techniques for?"
"Not womanizing!" Heat rose to Kenichi's face. "Just... how to stay on a girl's good side! That's all!"
"Well, in my experience," Tanimoto muttered. "All it takes is thinking of them- especially their feelings and stuff- before your own. Girls like it when you're really considerate." Niijima let out a brief chuckle.
"That's your advice? To be nice?" Niijima laughed. "Maybe that worked on high school girls, but no way will that work on a grown woman!"
"Whatever! I gave my opinion, now I'm leaving!" Tanimoto disappeared as soon as the words left his mouth.
"Bye!" the three called after him.
"Is your advice different?" Kenichi asked, turning to Niijima.
"Of course! You were wise to come to me, weak-knees!" Niijima crossed his arms triumphantly. "After all, a married man has much more experience than a high school romancer!"
"Whatever, alien," Kenichi grumbled, resenting Niijima's use of his old nickname. "Just tell me."
"Alright; this is what happened:
"When you left a year or two after high school, everyone obviously knew about you and Miu's relationship (or at least what it would become), and Izumi was heartbroken. She felt like a loser, which she technically was, and like she wasn't good enough for a man.
[Kenichi: "That's brutal! She's your wife!"; Niijima: "So what? Don't interrupt me!"]
"She came to me and asked me for help; I guess to become a better woman, or a prettier one or whatever. Since I gather data, she rightly assumed that I knew what most of the guys liked in girls. And since I'm such a nice guy, I decided to give her a hand.
"So I let her have my data. She did a bunch of stuff to her hair so it would look better, she started wearing contacts, wore different clothes, and the worst part was when she tried to lose weight in any way that she could. Since I said I would help her, I let Izumi do whatever she thought she had to, but I definitely thought anorexia was an extreme step to take."
[Kenichi:"A-anorexia?"; Siegfried:"That's horrible!"]
"Yeah, well I thought it was pretty horrible too. But her determination was admirable. I guess I kinda liked her then, and I started thinking of her like a woman instead of some pathetic girl I had to help out.
"Eventually, I got sick of watching Izumi do that to herself. We argued, but as always I got my way and stopped helping her. She was killing herself, I didn't want that on my conscience, and I had no powerful desire to help her get a man anyways. I even tried to get her to stop it all, but somehow my persuasion techniques didn't work against her! It was perplexing, but if even my powers didn't work there would be no dissuading her.
"So Izumi and I parted ways. She kept trying, trying to gather data on her own. Of course, it was useless since there was no way her amateurish information gathering skills could compare with my superior experience! I went to college and came back here with a job as a newspaper journalist some years later. Even when I came back to town, Izumi and I didn't speak for a long time.
"One day, her eating disorder got to the point where she had to be hospitalized. Naturally, since I initially supported her aim, I felt responsible and went to see her. Not to mention the fact that if she was going to die, I didn't want her to go around telling people it was my fault.
"So I visited her. I'll never forget how much she'd changed; she looked weak, flimsy. Her cheeks were sunken, her bones were visible. Her hair and makeup were flawless, of course, but it was sad to see such a cute girl become nothing more than skin on bones. It was scary to think that Izumi was depressed enough about herself that she thought she needed to do this.
"Then I did something I hadn't done since, quite literally, the day I was born. I cried.
"It wasn't those silent manly tears either; I kicked and screamed and threw a fit. But just as soon as they came, I pushed the sadness away and turned to Izumi with anger. I was mad at her for letting it get this far! These are the first words she said to me when I'd finished ranting:
"'It's good to see you.' Just like that. No response, no anger or sadness or grudge for having left her. She always was this impossibly sweet, naive girl. She wasn't even mad!
"For a moment, I thought about leaving. After all, if she wasn't mad there was no reason for me to be worried that she might blame me. But something held me back. Then I kind of started yelling again.
"I called her a lot of names. I was in a phase where I was fond of name-calling, but they were all true at the time. Foolish girl. Idiot. Always making stupid decisions. And to each one she smiled. After each name I called her, she just said 'thank you,' like it was a pleasure to have me insult her.
"Later on, I found out that no one else who visited had blamed her or gotten mad. There was sympathy, pity, sadness without direction, but no one had reacted like I did. No one said it was her fault, when everyone knew that it in fact was.
"Anyways, when I was finished yelling we both fell silent for a while, each of us staring at each other. She laughed at my mustache, asked how I've been doing, and generally was the same sweet girl she was in high school. Right then and there, I decided I would cut her a deal.
"I said, 'Izumi! You did this because you thought you weren't good enough. Don't argue, you told me so yourself all that time ago. So I'm going to dare you to do something you might not want to at first, but I promise it'll be worth your while.'
"She asked me what it was, of course, and I said, 'You think you're not good enough for a man? You think you're so pathetic? I dare you to marry me, and I bet you'll beat anorexia and make me happy at the same time.' It was by no means quick, but she eventually regained weight and beat the disorder, and she also went back to wearing glasses and braids again. She was cuter that way anyways."
"So we got married, had a baby, and that was that!"
Kenichi and Siegfried stared at Niijima in silence. Neither had heard this story before, and it was so shocking, appalling, and downright mind-boggling that they were left speechless for a long moment.
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"Okay..." Kenichi massaged his temples. "So, ignoring your meanness to your own wife, what you're telling me about my problem is what exactly?"
"No! Don't ignore the meanness!" Niijima snapped with annoyance. "That was the whole thing! In my experience, you have to be mean to girls!"
Kenichi and Siegfried both blinked.
"Think about it! She appreciated the fact that I called her names!" Niijima waved his arms. "This is revolutionary information! You've gotta be cruel to be kind, as they say!"
"My lord, I think you missed the point of your own story," Siegfried pointed out curiously.
"Oh yeah? Well, why are you here?" Niijima demanded. "You're not married, and you don't have a history of being good with women?"
"I as well was curious about that," Siegfried and Niijima turned to Kenichi. "Why am I here, commander?"
"Oh! Well," Kenichi blushed and scratched his head. "I-I guess since you have a child with Freya, you must have... I mean, you know..."
"Oh! You're wondering how Siegfried got laid!" Niijima laughed. He turned again to his old subordinate. "Well, Siggy? How'd it happen?"
"Nothing much happened, really," Siegfried shrugged. "Of course, I'd always respected her as a martial artist, so it isn't really that strange at all.
"She left to America to study law, since she'd always been keen on justice," Siegfried recalled, vocalizing his story as if it were a ballad. "Ukita hardly cared at all, and what with his obvious affections towards Kisara, Freya had no choice but to back off. She wasn't very happy about that, but a woman like her had to know when enough was enough.
"I went with her to America because I thought it might be a good idea to start my symphony there! My idea was to combine the melodies of all my experiences- battle, hope, fear, friendship- into one song! It really was quite wonderful.
"However, it wasn't going so well. Something was missing, although I didn't know what. Freya wasn't doing so well either! She was losing a lot of sleep and her classes were taxing; her English was strong, but finding work was still difficult for her!
"We spent a lot of time together as platonic friends, but eventually we started doing it-"
"Wait, what?!" Kenichi shrieked. "Eventually you started d-d-doing it?"
"What does that even mean?" Niijima asked in confusion.
"Well, it was all so natural I can't really think of an instance where either of us actively seduced the other," Siegfried admitted with his usual singer's voice. "I do remember the first time, though. Do you want me to relay that to you as well?"
"Definitely not," Niijima and Kenichi said quickly in unison.
"Very well!" Siegfried shrugged happily. "Anyways, she was with child, and I stayed with them until Lisa was several years old. At that time, my symphony was coming along nicely, but the melody of friendship and nostalgia was growing too thin in my memory. I longed to return to Japan, but of course I had a responsibility in America.
"In the end, Freya knew what I wanted to do and told me to go. I argued a little bit, but one does not simply win an argument against women, and definitely not Freya. So I came here and promised to return when I finished my symphony. Now I'm just revising and practicing, so I guess I'll be rejoining her soon!"
"But you weren't married?" Kenichi asked.
"That's true! From what you've told us it seems you've both had plenty of opportunities to marry," Niijima nodded.
"There were several reasons," Siegfried said. "Number 1! Freya was not entirely over Ukita when all this happened! Number 2! We both knew I would be traveling a lot while working on my symphony! Number 3! We never really discussed that since neither of us really brought it up!
"But do you want to?" Niijima and Kenichi leaned in and stared at the musician. "Do you want to get married?"
"Sure," Siegfried grinned. "I would not have planted my seed in her if I did not want a future!"
"Siggy!" Kenichi blushed profusely at his metaphor. Niijima rolled his eyes at him.
"Well, that's interesting. I've never heard that story before," Niijima said to Siegfried.
"I've never told it before!" he admitted.
"Aaargh!" Kenichi smacked his forehead down on the table, which cracked a little from the force of the action.
"What? What's wrong?" Niijima asked in alarm.
"This is so confusing!" Kenichi whined in panic. "Tanimoto said I should be nice to girls! You told me I should be mean! And now Siegfried told me to do nothing! What am I going to do!"
"What are you going to do about what?" Niijima asked. "You never told us what you were asking for!"
"Why are you panicking so much? As far as I know, nothing has changed in your relationship with Miu since you arrived, commander," Siegfried reminded.
"Yeah, but I'm planning something big," Kenichi said. "I'm planning to do something that could change my life, and her life, forever. Something I've been thinking about doing since I first became a master, something I've wanted to eventually do since we first discussed our dreams together. Something I hope will make her happy, something I hope won't be a total mistake. Something fragile, important, nerve-racking, and impossibly scary."
"You don't mean-?"
"Yes, Niijima," he said with conviction. "I'm going to propose to Miu. I'm going to ask her to marry me."