I really cannot fully explain just how much The Case Files of Jeweler Richard means to me. I will never not be grateful about having come across it when I did. Like, Iām from India, and India isnāt the best place to actually be exposed to what being queer means. For the longest time I didnāt even know that the acronym went beyond the letter T. The word aromantic meant nothing to me because it wasnāt a word I knew. All I knew was that when my friends were getting crushes and dating, I was desperately trying to find new excuses for why I didnāt have anyone I was interested in. Because āI donāt want to be in a relationshipā was an answer that earned me strange looks.
I did eventually learn that something called aromanticism exists by the time I went to college, but I never really bothered to learn what that entailed. Then I met a friend who happened to be asexual, and she pointed out that based on what I told her, I might be aroace. And I thought about it for a while, but wasnāt really convinced. More importantly, the idea of sticking a label to myself kinda scared me because it felt like it was something irreversible.
And then Jeweler Richard happened. I really enjoyed the first episode, even shed a couple of tears. The inclusion of a canon lesbian character in the second episode was a pleasant surprise (I did not know about Tatsuki back then. Present day me is annoyed we never got to see her in the anime). But it went from an anime I simply enjoyed to a story I absolutely fell in love with in episode 8: The Angel's Aquamarine. This was the episode in which we first found out about Tanimotoās views on romance, and I found myself understanding where she was coming from. Online people were discussing how she came off as aromantic, and that made me think again. But, again, āstickingā that label to me wasnāt something I was comfortable with.
That changed when I came across a certain passage in volume 6. For those of you who havenāt read the novel yet and are okay with spoilers, Tanimoto visits Ćtranger after being invited by Seigi. There she has a conversation with Richard, during which he tells her this:
āHumans are creatures that can only recognize the present moment as reality. But that present changes, moment by moment. For example, someone who was bisexual in their twenties might decide to identify as heterosexual in their thirties. Or someone who considered themself heterosexual at age seventeen might realize that theyāre gay at age twenty-five. Someone who may have considered themself polyamorous and open to relationships with anyone might feel as though theyāve met their soulmate at age fifty-five and become monogamous. Of course, this isnāt true of everyoneābut from a statistical perspective, changes of this nature arenāt at all unusual. Itās just like how, if left to their own devices, our hair and nails will continue to grow.ā
The reason I was scared of declaring myself as aro was because I worried that it was something Iād never be able to take back. That becoming aro to the people around me wouldnāt allow me to one day say, āno, I donāt think I actually am aromanticā. I wouldāve rather stayed in a state of being confused than make a decision I couldnāt undo. But then Richard told Tanimoto that itās fine. Itās fine to change your mind later on. That a label isnāt fixed to you, and isnāt something you have to carry throughout your life if itās something you no longer identify with. And idk if I can even begin to explain how important that was to me. Because those were the words I needed.
Itās okay that Iām not interested in being in a relationship. Itās okay if I call myself aro. Itās okay for me to no longer make up excuses because a simple āIām not interested in datingā is enough. This is a comparison that only Omniscient Readerās Viewpoint fans will get, but The Case Files of Jeweler Richard is to me what Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse is to Kim Dokja. JR did not save my life in the way that TWSA did for Kim Dokja, but it had a bigger impact on my life than any other story. Iād like to believe that the love I have for JR is similar to the love Dokja holds for TWSA.
As a final point, this confidence in myself and my identity isnāt all that JR gave me. Another important thing that happened in my life thanks to it is that I made many lovely friends in the fandom š
