"This... is a ring passed down from my mother. They say it's been handed down for several generations. Just like your grandmother's wedding dress, I thought I should at least follow her wishes and personally give it to the girl whose heart resonates with mine."
"Of course, I know that proposing before a great battle, pulling that 'Once this battle is over, I'll go back home and get married' thing, is the ultimate death flag and seriously unlucky. But if I died before even saying something like this, I know I'd regret it forever, so I thought..."
"...Um... Anyway... I..."
A proposal should have been accompanied by solemn, reserved words of devotion as everlasting as the seas running dry and the rocks crumbling. But Ash, who always became terribly awkward at times like this and had no intention of sharing his thoughts with anyone else, could only think of one thing that wouldn't go wrong.
"Ai, I like you."
At those words, the girl's pupils shrank into wine-red points of light. Looking at the ring, which possessed no dazzling radiance, she felt strangely dazed. It was as if she had suddenly stumbled into a fragment of a fairy tale called reality.
"I..."
Her hair, lifted by the cold wind, clung to her slightly parted pink lips. Her fingertips, still stained with salt from the barbecue earlier, unconsciously clutched at her skirt, where several glaring grease stains had spread across her favorite dress.
But she had no energy to care about any of that now.
"What... But..."
The half-formed breathy sound squeezed from her throat never became words. Mixed with countless thoughts, it eventually became a question.
"But why me?"
Even the cold wind around Aida Mana seemed to halt with her breathing as she swallowed audibly. Though the turmoil in