I placed the box where she was sitting and stared at it, its contents full of wonder. A jewelry box? I imagined what its color was, what its shape was, what its material was. But nothing clear popped in my mind. The only possible way to know was to merely open the box.

Grasped in my left hand was her business card. When I took a look at it more closely, her phone number was slightly smaller than her name. Its print reminded me of the eye-sight test. As I continued to blankly stare at the card, I pondered who she gave out her card to. Who did she work for? What did she work for? The more I stared at the card, the more these type of questions attacked me. 

I shoved it in my pea-coat and stared at the grass. Norah Jones came back to me, but not as vivid. I started to get a little cold so I decided to head back home.


I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, thinking more about her. Was she an entertainer of some sort? I really didn't know. Asking her was no point, since she wasn't the type of person who'd tell me so easily. She was an anonymous woman who refused to go further in the depths of vision, like a camera reaching its maximum zoom.  What if she was at the airport and I was a passport security guard? I would've seen her name, and her personal information seconds after she hands me her passport. If I thought she was suspicious, I had the power to not let her through security check, I thought. I wish I was an airport security guard.

I checked the clock at it was past twelve. With nothing else to do, I decided to open the box. Even though I knew what was inside already, I needed to see what it really looked like. In fact, hearing about things 100 times was not as great as seeing it once, according to Zhou Chongguo.

I grabbed a xacto knife and a pair of scissors from my desk. I cut through the strong wrapping paper with the knife and was able to unravel it. The box itself was a mikan box. It read, in hiragana, みかん, although I was 99% sure that there wasn't going to be any mikan in this box. I cut the tape that attached the flaps, and opened it. In it were peanuts and bubble wrap. As I dug my hands deep in the box, I felt a hard, rather metal object. I grabbed it, and brought it out from the package and out came a glazed, mahogany jewelry box. The size was rather small, almost equivalent to the size of a 5x5 Rubik's cube. As I looked at it more closely, it seemed similar to a ring box than a jewelry box. Curious as hell, I opened it and slipped inside was a note folded in half. Without any hesitation, I unfolded it and read it. It was handwritten.

Can't you ever make your own decisions in life and stop taking orders from people?


There was something else in the box, though. Securely resting in the box was a shiny piece of jewelry. A shiny piece of jewelry? I carefully inspected it and finally came to realize that it was a diamond ring, its karats sparkling. This wasn't one of the cheap kinds of diamonds; this was a diamond that was worth more than one could imagine. Only a wealthy, decent, and brave person would ever consider getting this. It looked very much like a proposal ring. How much of a dream it must be for a woman to receive this ring from her fiancee. On the note read something else on the bottom.

P.S, you may wonder why you received a diamond ring. I'm disclaiming you on this. I am not trying to propose to you (In fact, it would be more manly if a man proposed to a woman anyway.) I feel that you are just a responsible, trustworthy, and, I don't want to say this to you straight, but, a gullible being. Please keep this ring for me. I want you to have it for a while. If I feel the need to take it back, then I will tell you so. But for now, please keep it in a safe place. 


Asami


I read this note over and over again and couldn't grasp her words. Why is she giving me this? I thought. First she told me that I couldn't make my own decisions, and now she gave me a diamond ring. Did she receive it from her husband? Did she even have a husband? Was this ring even her's? Accumulating questions kept on bugging me.

I took the ring out of its case, and examined it like I was a diamond worker. It was glittering like the stars on a clear, windless night. The diamond itself was no bigger than the eraser attached to a pencil, but its quality was striking and powerful. Just by slightly moving my fingers, the diamond sparkled. I put it on my ring finger to see how it would look on me. It shone, nothing changed. I opened and closed my hands to really see the diamond shine. It was the first time I'd seen such a beautiful and pleasant thing in a while. The meticulous craftsmanship of this diamond was phenomenal, and its weight was perfect. It securely slipped in my finger, and the construction was very durable. There was no flaw in this ring, although it very subtly seemed as though it has been worn for some time. The only possible person would be Asami, I figured. But all in all, the ring was perfect.

I continued to stare--frozen, actually-- at the ring. I was like a student stuck on a math problem, not willing to come back to it later. Staring at the ring somehow seemed to relax me. It gave me peace, pouring away all the excess stress that had been rooted in my mind.  It was my inanimate shrink.

But it did not hold up as I expected it to. As I stared at the diamond, I began to feel a little gloomy. It might have been the fact that I slept too much, or the fact that I was suddenly shocked by Asami's call right after I took a refreshing shower. Whatever it was, it spun around my mind like Saturn's rocks and distracted my conscious. My head got heavier, and my body felt stiff, as if I got a nasty fever. I might've stared at the diamond for too long. I shut my eyes for some time, trying to get my mind back on track. Carefully, I opened my eyes, almost like a woman seeing herself in the mirror for the first time after her makeover, and examined the room. As if I was in a natural hallucinogen, things surrounding me started to get blurry, the diamond the only object that was focused in my vision. I raised my eyes away from the diamond and looked around me, but my vision was blurred. Things started to feel weird. I felt I was hypnotized and sucked into a different dimension, a dimension full of mystery. The diamond was controlling me.

I continued to examine the room, like a customer inspecting an open house, but things continued to not seem right. At this point I thought I couldn't get back to reality. The dining table started to move to and fro, nobody was moving it but it was moving. Somebody was moving it. I looked under the table and saw something similar to a hollow. It was a mixture of sky blue and white, and it was floating. I looked closely at it and found out it looked awfully similar to Norah Jones' head. Its expression full of nothingness. It made eye contact with me and we stared for a while, my face expressionless while simultaneously in shock. Then, as if loathed by my presence, made its way out from under the table and floated around the room and became bigger and bigger, and disappeared somewhere, possibly into a wall or some sort. The room started to wiggle and flop around, like a swimming pool after someone had jump in. But I wasn't moving. I was able to be still, like a statue. I closed my eyes, in fright, trying to wake myself up. Perhaps I was having a bad dream. But I wasn't. I knew that I wasn't. I felt it. I scratched my eyes with the front of my thumb fingers and looked around. But nothing changed. Everything seemed twisted, not right.  Everything was cringed, like it had been sucked into some kind of vortex. Then my vision started to transition into a white sheet of blankness. I couldn't see anything but white, or, maybe grayish white. I couldn't tell. Whatever the case, reality faded away. Whiteout.

Surrounding me was the color white. It wasn't snow. It wasn't anything but the color white. I couldn't tell if I was looking up or down, whether I was standing or floating, whether I was upside down or upright. I was brought into a world of nothingness, as if I was a text that had been imprinted on a book. There was no sound, no wind, no nothing. Just my breath and my heartbeat beating faster than a fat man walking up the steps. I couldn't move forward, I couldn't even talk. I stood there, in the middle of nowhere, frozen. I looked at my blurry hand and the diamond ring was there. It was clear. Nothing seemed blurry or obscure about it. It was very clear in my eyes. But my hand and everything else wasn't.

The diamond began to project a thin beam of light, and wobbled to and fro my left ring finger. Frightened, I flung it off my finger and threw it on the floor. It shook more rapidly. I stood there, frozen, looking at the diamond. It was just the diamond and I in this white world.