Author's Note: Hello, hello! This is Chapter 9! Here it is! Such a great present to myself! It's my birthday today so, after all the festivities of the day, I decided to write the next chapter. Hope you like it. The conflict starts REAL soon! Please Read and Review! Enjoy!

(I realized that I haven't put the disclaimer's thing for all eight of my other chapters. Opps! So, here I am!) Disclaimer: Yeah, okay, I don't own Fruits Basket.

Chapter 9

The Question of a Lifetime

Tohru wept bitterly as she thought of the conversation that she just had with her Grandmother.

"You must marry in ten days,"

"Why, Grandmother, why?"
"Your grandfather passed away, and you need a King by you side to rule,"

"I can rule on my own without a King!"
"The councilors have already reached this agreement and they aren't willing to assist you in your reign unless you marry. I'm sorry. I couldn't do anything to prevent them,"

"I'll marry Yuki then!"

"You have to marry a man of nobility!"

"I don't care for nobility! I love him!"

Ever since she first laid eyes on him, she had loved him and wanted to be with them forever. All of her dreams were now shattered. She had to marry some greedy, Prince who will only marry her for her money.

"I can't tell Yuki just yet. I'll try and resolve this on my own. There's no use in getting involved in something like this,"

"Tohru!" Yuki came towards her with a wave of his hand and the other hid behind his back.

"Oh, Yuki!" she jumped as she was knocked out of her reverie.

"I have something for you," he smiled secretively.

"Really, what is it?" her curiosity got the best of her.

"These. In the rush of you leaving, I never got a chance to give you your Christmas present. So, here's part of it," he handed her a bouquet of luscious red roses.

She gasped as she carefully arranged them in her arms. "They're beautiful. It must have been hard to try and find roses like these in this weather," she smiled as she buried her head into the petals.

"Well, Ayame let a hand," Yuki smiled sheepishly.

"The rift! It's closing! That's wonderful! I'm so glad that you two are on better terms now than you were before!" she laughed jubilantly while jumping up and down like a ten year old.

Yuki laughed with her after a moment. It wasn't often that anyone heard his laugh. It was like bells in the cold atmosphere of the courtyard.

"Meet me tonight in front of the gates at eleven. I'll give you the rest of your present," he kissed her gently on the cheek before backing away from her saying, "I have to go prepare some more! Enjoy your day!" he smiled and turned around with his hands in his pockets.

Tohru cocked her head and smiled while smelling the flowers again.

She got a vase and put the roses in and set it down on her desk. She smiled fondly at them before turning around and shutting the door. As she bounced down the stairs, she crashed into someone. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry!" she bowed and repeatedly apologized.

The surprised girl looked at her and bowed her head low and run up the steps as fast as she could like a rabbit scampering back to it's hole when a fox chased it.

Tohru stood frozen to the spot. The girl looked exactly like her mother. The auburn hair, and her eyes, they were the same soft blue ones. Tohru resembled her father more than her mother, but all the same, you could see the resemblance. Could it have been that the girl was her younger sister? She shook the thought out of her head. "That's not possible. Don't be silly," she shook her head as if to clear her thoughts and continued down the stairs, but with a little less enthusiasm. When she reached the stairs, she found a red rose with a note clipped to it on the side of the large window. Tohru picked it up carefully and read the note:

Tohru,

Wishing you many happy days to come during the years of your reign!

Love,

Yuki

Tohru smiled and put the rose behind her ear and walked on, humming to herself.

All throughout the day, there were roses pinned to notes clipped everywhere that Tohru was most likely to go. It was just like Yuki to think of her like that and make her laugh in her time of sadness. She tried to go on with life as much as she can without worrying about the people that have left her forever. It will affect her life deeply, but it wasn't going to stop her daily life.

After her morning duties of signing papers and negotiating with her councilors. She smiled to no one in particular and went back up to her room to decide what to wear that night.

Tohru opened the doors of her closet and looked at all her casual wear. There were jeans, skirts, formal dresses, slacks, suits, blouses, the list could go on forever! She decided on a dress of a deep red color. It reached to her knees and flared out gracefully. Her back was bare and there was a collar that connected to the front of her dress and went around her neck. Over it, she wore a lace coat that reached only up to about her chest. Over that, she wore her overcoat of charcoal black. You could see the part of her skirt that flared out so it looked like a skirt. Her stockings of black and her black high heels went perfectly with the rest of her outfit. She put her hair up in a bun and slipped one of the roses from the vase into her hair.

It took her nearly three hours to pick out an outfit and then another two hours to do her hair and make up on her own and make it look perfect. Now it was 10:50 PM and she decided to start going down the steps to the doors which led out to the outside.

She waited a few seconds to calm her nerves. She felt that there was something different about this night. She breathed one last time and pushed open the door and slowly walked outside. She slowly walked towards the figure that already stood there. Her heels made a thudding sound on the ground. Yuki looked up at her and smiled. Tohru reached his side and gave him a sweet kiss on the lips. "Thanks so much for the flowers and notes that you put everywhere that I usually go. They really brightened my day," she smiled happily up at him.

"I'm glad. Come on, I want to take you somewhere," he offered her his hand and Tohru gladly accepted.

As they walked hand in hand, for a while, Tohru questioned him. "Where are we going?"

"We're here," he looked ahead and Tohru was mesmerized by what she saw.

In the shape of a heart, there were candles that flickered in the night. Yuki led her to the middle of it. And sighed before smiling down at her and beginning to speak. "I've been meaning to ask you this for a long time. When I first got to know you, slowly, that wall that I built around my heart, began to crumble and all of the scars started to heal. You were the sunlight in my life. I love you. And I never want to be apart from you again. I want to spend the rest of my life with you," at that moment, he got down on his knees, and took out a black velvet box out of his coat pocket and opened it. "Tohru, will you marry me?"