"I, I'm fine! I was just worrying because... I'm no good at making garlands, and..."
—That shouldn't be a lie.
I had started out worrying about my failure to improve and my clumsiness in comparison to him. It was true that the topic had turned from there, and gone on to him himself, but that had been the original cause. Even I was unsure whether or not I was lying, but in order to keep him from feeling down, I would make my own clumsiness out to be the villain.
"Hmm... You're putting too much force into your shoulder, Mary."
"...I, I know that, but..."
Because I was clumsy, I put force into it whether I tried to or not. Clumsy me failed over and over by putting force into it, and then ended up putting force into it again anyway. I knew that I was trapped in that vicious cycle. Actually, the first stems I had braided were well done as they were. But the more I put together, the more my feelings of pressure and unease grew, and now it was growing difficult for me even to make a loop properly.
—In the moment that my shoulders slumped, his hands quietly stretched out to me...—
"Let me touch for a minute."
"Ah..."
At those hands covering my palms from above, my cheeks reddened. My heart also beat faster, and my whole body seemed to be growing hotter. And yet he, concentrating on my fingers, refused to notice. I suppose he was using my fingers to demonstrate, and trying to let me build up experience. And yet, I was hardly looking at my own fingertips.
—...Ah... His eyelashes are longer than I thought...
As he stared at my hands, his face and mine were quickly growing closer than they had been until now. Then we were so close that, if I could have summoned a little courage, I could have kissed him. When the distance between us was so little that a sigh from either of us could have crossed it, my breast beat so fast it seemed it might burst. I was turned towards his serious-gazed expression, and focusing so as not to miss even its faintest movements.
"There. That does it."
"Huh? ...Huh...? Oh..."
—Called back to reality by his words, I found a small garland of flowers completed in my hands. It must have been because he had begun helping me partway through making it. The garland, about the size of a finger ring, was the most prettily shaped I had ever made. In the moment I spent admiring his skill in being able to make this pretty a garland moving not his own, but another's fingers, he quietly withdrew from before me.
—Ah... He's going...
His quietly retreating figure was so lonely that my hand made to reach out to him of its own accord. But the tiny garland in my hands stopped it. It was only natural that that garland, our first collaboration and so well made as to be unique—at least in my personal experience—should be my treasure. I wanted to avoid losing or injuring it if I possibly could.
—Besides... he would never leave me.
"Oof."
Just as I had anticipated, he sat down softly beside me. He went on swiftly weaving the Dutch clovers he had picked just as he had been before. I admired the fluid movements of his fingers, which I could not bring myself to believe were made of the same stuff as my own, a "certain thought" suddenly popped into my mind.
"Hey... won't you make a ring for me?"
"Hm...? Sure, but... why?"
"It's a secret. If you make it for me, I might tell you."
"Huh...? What's that supposed to mean?"
—Although he sounded dissatisfied, his fingers moved skillfully.
He was so kind. I was sure he would make a ring for me as I had requested. As proof of that, the movements of his fingers, which until then had been trying to make something large, changed. As I watched the small, firm knitting movements produce a finger ring in the blink of an eye, I felt a smile come to my face.
"Here. It's finished."
"Eh heh heh... thanks."
As he turned to me and proffered the finished ring, his face quietly reddened. Even he, insensitive as he was, must have understood what it meant to give a girl a ring. At his embarrassed appearance, my chest began to throb again.
—...Was his heart fluttering too?
It would make me happy if it were so. No, a feeling of wanting it to be so reflexively gushed forth from within my breast. I didn't quite understand what that meant. And yet, I felt certain it wasn't such a bad thing.
—While I encouraged myself in this way, I held my "treasure" out to him in offering.
"Then, take this in return, okay?"
"Huh...?"
With a dumbfounded expression, he directed his gaze at the "treasure" in my hand—the ring we had just made together. Judging by his totally uncomprehending expression, it seemed that he did not yet understand what an exchange of rings meant. Then... I was in luck. I would get my way before any strange preconceptions got a hold of him.
"When someone gives you a ring, you have to give them one back."
"Is that... so?"
"Yes, it is."
—...Yeah. That shouldn't be a lie.
I had only deliberately concealed the information that "this only applies to wedding and engagement rings." Besides, I felt confident that, dull-witted as he was, he would probably never realize. I didn't even understand why I was doing such a thing myself, but I felt certain that it was not mistaken. I couldn't explain why, but I was convinced of that.
"Well, in that case..."
—So saying, he took the ring from my hand, and gently placed it on his finger.
Wearing it on the middle finger of his left hand, he quietly turned his palm to the sun.