A Ring of Trust
Putting on a couple ring with Amelia. Taking off the couple ring I shared with Kang Areum. Both had been decided from the start. From the moment I accepted this contract, these were events that would never change.
But I still wasn't ready.
Not yet. Not yet.
"This isn't an ordinary ring. It's an artifact enchanted with several kinds of magic."
Amelia's explanation reached me from behind an expression I couldn't quite read.
An artifact...
I hadn't taken it for an ordinary object, but hearing what it actually was made it feel all the more extraordinary. The ring had probably been crafted by Rosemary — and the price of an artifact produced by Rosemary would be something I couldn't even begin to imagine. But as things stood, I couldn't bring myself to take the giver's intentions as goodwill. Because, for reasons I couldn't fathom, she seemed to dislike Kang Areum.
"Among them, a few I can explain: a Barrier, Vital Link, Location Tracking, and Messaging."
I was already uneasy enough for a number of reasons. Why she'd chosen me as the partner for this contract. The fact that the contract had no set duration. That was the kind of unease you couldn't just brush aside, and it had been stacking up. And now the enchantments Amelia was listing off were only making it worse.
Barrier. Messaging. Those two didn't feel particularly strange. Plenty of artifacts sold for self-defense came with features like these, and if this was something made by Rosemary, its power would be incomparably greater than anything on the commercial market.
But the remaining two were clearly off.
Vital Link, and Location Tracking. Vital Link was typically enchanted into artifacts used for patients — magic employed in modern hospitals to monitor things like blood pressure and heart rate. And then Location Tracking. That was magic used by overly cautious parents, or for managing the identities of criminals. Otherwise, it was the kind of enchantment inscribed on valuables that absolutely could not be stolen.
And that was on this ring?
"What the hell... are you trying to do."
"Hmm. You don't seem terribly pleased."
How many people in the world would take something like this gladly? A handful of people with particular tastes might accept it readily, but I wasn't one of them. I didn't have those kinds of tastes. And I didn't want to accept something this suspicious besides.
"All of this magic is for your sake, Yeonho."
"What does Vital Link and Location Tracking have to do with being for my sake."
Magic for my sake. Checking where I was and how I was feeling — that was supposed to be for my sake? What Vital Link revealed wasn't just blood pressure and heart rate. Rumor had it the magic could even read your condition and your mood. Not that I was planning on doing anything weird. It still felt creepy.
"Yeonho, Vital Link and Location Tracking will only activate in specific situations."
"Specific situations...?"
"Emergency situations, for example — when your heart rate or blood pressure exceeds the normal range, or when there's an abnormal change in your blood volume."
If it only kicked in during emergencies like that, then it was useless in its own way. And besides, I had no way of trusting those activation conditions. I couldn't handle mana. Whether an artifact this sophisticated was actually working or not — I had no way of telling. Even if it really only activated in emergencies, it would still be useless. If it ran all the time, that was nothing but a leash and a surveillance feed. If it only ran in emergencies, it was nothing but a fatality alert. Either way, it amounted to useless magic.
"You just thought it was useless, didn't you?"
That wasn't exactly it. I liked the Barrier and the Messaging, after all. Through the messaging magic, I'd be able to have conversations at a distance that I could never have over a device. And when things got dangerous, the barrier could buy me time.
"There's actually one more, but I'm not going to tell you."
There's one more?
What other magic could possibly be hidden in there. It was only a hypothetical, but if there was explosion magic on it...
"Stop imagining weird things! It's not that!"
"I didn't even say anything...?"
"You were thinking of something like explosion magic, weren't you. Everything shows on your face, Yeonho."
Was I that easy to read...
But Kang Areum had rarely ever seen through me. The only times she'd caught me were when I was stressing over my grades. Other than that, never. And yet I was this easy to read?
"There's no explosion or anything! I have to wear this ring too, so why on earth would I put some insane magic like that in it!"
I could feel Amelia's whole atmosphere shift as she said it. If up until now she'd been giving off a composed, I'm perfectly at ease kind of air, now it was more like she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
Ah. Of course.
The intent might be unclear, but if you handed someone a gift and they looked at it thinking this is a bomb, isn't it? — anyone would react like that.
"You're going to wear the same ring?"
But that was something I couldn't just let slide. She was going to wear the same ring as me?
"There's a saying in Korea that you should hear a person out to the end."
The reply came in the form of a proverb, which might have sounded a little off-topic. But it hit me right where it hurt. I'd been jumping to wild conclusions without even hearing the whole story. That made me feel bad.
But she could've led with the part about wearing the same ring...
It was pretty rich of me to start blaming her when the fault was clearly my own. In the end, it had all been my misunderstanding.
"This ring isn't one-way. It works both ways, between the two people wearing it."
"Both ways..."
Even two-way, wasn't it still surveillance? That thought could occur to someone. But the moment it went from one-way to two-way, this stopped being a matter of surveillance and became a matter of trust.
"There's also a special function. The kind of ability that could save a life..."
"...Alright..."
What I saw in Amelia's serious expression, I didn't know. And I still didn't know, even now, as I brought the ring to my finger. A vague sense that Amelia had some kind of agenda. But a conviction that whatever it was, it wouldn't hurt me. I didn't know how I could feel that kind of conviction when we'd barely just met...
But I trusted my gut.
"But I'll have to take this off..."
The couple ring with Kang Areum. It was the first gift I'd given her after we started dating. I'd saved everything I could save, scraped together everything I could scrape together, and barely managed to get it... By now it had taken on the wear of my hands, its shine faded with time — but I didn't want to take it off. I knew this wouldn't look good to Amelia at all. But my body wouldn't move.
"Haa... Really, I suppose it can't be helped."
Amelia let out a deep sigh, then said it couldn't be helped and gave me permission to keep wearing the ring.
"But! The ring I gave you absolutely must be worn on the ring finger of your left hand."
I nodded happily at Amelia, who made it clear this was something she would not compromise on. Even if this was only a contract — if I could still wear my ex-girlfriend's couple ring on a different finger, any arrangement was fine.
"We've spent quite a lot of time. Let's hurry and get going."
Taking off Kang Areum's ring would expose the dark band of a mark engraved into the finger beneath it. Amelia's eyes seemed to tremble as she looked at it — then she whipped her head away. I didn't know why she did that.
For now, I put the ring on.
And what I felt was the messaging magic connecting me to Amelia. She seemed to have already been wearing her ring before she gave me mine.
I've never even seen her ring...
That was proof I hadn't been paying her enough attention. And at the same time, I could feel what messaging magic was like.
So this is what messaging magic feels like...
Even though I couldn't handle mana, this was like a kind of device. Except it ran on the mind. Right. Magic that even I could use.
Amelia's voice came through the message. She was probably suggesting we talk through the magic as a kind of test. If so, there was something I wanted to say — an apology, among other things.
That voice, laced with laughter, was clearly teasing me. It was an unexpected side of her. Amelia, teasing me.
Could this even be called trust? The question crossed my mind, but if she believed this was trust... then it already was. That was what trust was.
I needed to open my heart a little to someone like that. Fighting with Kang Areum, hiding so much from me, making me take off the old couple ring. The last one had been unavoidable. Anyway, those things had happened.
Amelia was clearly showing me goodwill. I had to admit that now. Of course, I still didn't know if that goodwill was love. Borrowing the power of the messaging magic, I sent her something sappy.