Kagome pressed her forehead on the cool countertop, willing her headache to go down.

She'd been wandering the streets, hopelessly lost, and with her phone flat, she was well and truely sunk.

I'll just go for a quick stroll around the block. Kagome thought sarcastically, mimicking herself from around an hour and a half beforehand. It'll be fun, I said. I'll get the lay of the land, I said. She sighed. What a dumb idea. I have absolutely no idea where I am, or how to get back to the shrine.

'You okay, miss?' Came a halting voice from nearby, and her head shot up so fast she almost accidently tipped herself backwards.

'Waitasec, you speak english?' Kagome shot at the source of the voice before she had consciously located it, which turned out to be the barista of the coffee place she had just wandered into at random, her last five hundred yen on her person clutched like a treasure in her hands.

He shrugged slightly, in that universal kinda-sorta-maybe sort of way, before the server next to him seized his attention momentairily by waving a fistful of order tickets under his nose.

The barista waved his friend off by seizing said tickets, scanning them, and pushing them all on the completed spike, before unlocking and pulling free both coffee portafilters and switching on the grinder.

She couldn't help but shut up at the smoothness of the way he pulled those shots, made the largest, frothiest milk in the biggest milk jug Kagome had ever seen, and made those coffees.

And he wasn't bad on the eyes either, Kagome admitted. He had long, white hair that was pulled back as loosely as possible, as if he hated the idea of having it up at all, but store policy is store policy. Even his friend at the till had his tied back at the nape of his neck.

A plate clattered somewhere in the store and the barista's ears pricked; small, canine-esque ears that perched atop his head that Kagome didn't want to stop staring at at all.

As well as, Kagome had just discovered he spoke a tiny amount of english.

Now, despite the fact that Kagome was technically Japanese, she had been living abroad with her brother, and was now home to live with her mother at the family shrine, to "get back to her roots" as her father had called it.

But the minor flaw in the plan, brilliant as it was, was that her father had conveniantly forgotten to teach her and her brother Japanese, and Kagome had decided to check out the scenery around the shrine.

'What is, the,' the barista was frowning as he poured the last of his order with little to no effort. 'Matter?' The way he tilted his head slightly as if to test out the word Kagome was immidiately reminded of a confused puppy.

She pressed her fingertips to her collarbones. 'I'm lost.' She said as clearly as she could. 'I don't know where I am. Can you help me?'

He turned and looked at her with golden eyes that banished the puppy image from her mind. 'Lost.' He repeated. 'Lost.' He muttered something else to himself, pulling a pained face and drumming his fingers on the countertop, before grabbing a cloth and swiping up some spilled cocoa.

This was clearly more than a little language barrier, but Kagome was not about to give up. 'Do you know where Higurashi Shrine is? Hi-gu-ra-shi shrine.' She repeated.

'Higurashiji?' He looked at her questioningly, sticking his thumb back out towards the front door.

'Uh, yeah,' Kagome nodded encouragingly. 'Higurashiji.'

He conjured another three coffees from the machine seemingly without thinking about it before he started speaking again.

'You go down to finish of street.' He pointed. 'Erm, until, see big-no, tall,' he made out the shape of something with his skilled hands, something that did not help Kagome with her directions, until he gave up, shaking his head in frustration. 'Matte.' He said impatiantly, before sneaking a glance at his coworker. 'You like coffee?' He asked.

'Well, sure.' Kagome shrugged, before nodding. 'Uh, hai?'

And before she had blinked twice, a steaming latte was placed before her, and before she could blink once more he had turned his back to her, an obvious shut down on any form of payment (not that she had any money on her anyway), and started talking to his coworker.

His coworker looked back over to her for a moment, before the corners of his mouth pulled down with a half shrug as the not-bad gesture that was seemingly universal, before raising his eyebrows skeptically to the barista.

The barista elbowed him in the ribs in a half-playful, half-I'm-seriously-going-to-kill-you-in-a-second-but-this-is-a-work-setting-and-I-want-to-keep-my-job sort of way.

Kagome took a sip of the latte before her, but when she lowered the glass again it was only half-full and she was once again marvelling at his skills. It was, unsurprisingly, a seriously good coffee.

'You come,' The barista said, ducking around the counter to stand next to her, and rubbing his hands on his apron as he did so. 'I show you way.'

Behind him, his coworker had moved in front of the coffee machine, but was quite distracted by the girl with the long ponytail who had appeared from out back to work the till.

'Okay.' Kagome said, attempting to finish the rest of her coffee in a dignified way. 'I'm Kagome, by the way.'

'Your name, Kagome?' He said as they headed for the door. 'Jya, ne!' He called over his shoulder, and his coworker who was now stuck at the coffee machine shook a halfhearted fist in his direction as they left.

'That's right,' Kagome replied. 'I'm new in town.'

'Orenonamae, InuYasha.' He grinned at her nervously, the outside sun streaming around them.

'Uh, InuYasha?' Kagome tested out.

'Hn.' He nodded, before looking around to orientate himself, then tugging on her sleeve to pull her in the right direction. 'Higurashiji, kocchi. Uh, this way.' He grinned at her.

She grinned back. 'Finally. The right direction.'

Her words were lost on him, but he picked up on the relief that they were spoken with. She could almost see the slight swelling of his chest as he took on the importance of his task.

'What about your coworkers?' She nodded back to the coffee shop as the started walking. 'Um, your friends?'

InuYasha shrugged. 'They fine.' He muttered something else like him that had all the tone and own-private-joke feel to it of if they could survive without me. He turned his attention back to her. 'You, your face,' he struggled, 'you, look like, us nihonjin. You know no nihongo?'

'Sorry?' Kagome looked at him confusedly.

'Uhm, er,' he pulled a pained face. 'Language? Eigo, english?'

'Oh, you want to know why I don't speak Japanese?' Kagome realized. 'Well, um, I was raised overseas, and just came here.'

He was still looking at her expectantly, but clearly everything she had said had slid straight over his head. Which had tilted so he looked like a confused puppy.

'Um, I came, to Japan. Yesterday.'

'You come to Japan? Yesterday?' He confirmed. 'Why?'

'Oh, well, to learn.'

'Learn what?' He questioned as he guilded around a corner down the street, around a statue of some description that shed a little light onto his gesturing earlier.

'Japanese, Higurashi Shrine, and everything.'

'Souka.' He said, without any sort of translation or connecting sentence.

They walked along in quiet for a minute, before she spoke up again. 'So you live here in Tokyo?'

'Yes. Close by.' He replied. 'But other way. Almost at Higurashiji.'

'Ah, right.' Kagome flushed slightly as some old women walking the other way tittered at them, sharing a universally recognized knowing smile.

She glanced a peek sideways, to see he was flushing too.

'You are in Tokyo with friends? Or boy?' He looked back towards her, shoving his hands in his pockets almost too casually, obviously thinking he was being subtle.

'Yes, actually.' Kagome teased, watching as he almost lost his footing and fell into the gutter. 'My brother. My family.'

He stuck his jaw out at her for a moment before he composed himself, shrugging his shoulders far too casually. 'How old brother?' He attempted to smooth.

'Ten.' Kagome held up both hands and waved her fingers at him.

'He very young.' He glanced her up and down for a moment, before realising what he was doing. 'Mitte, look,' he corrected himself, before gesturing in the suddenly very familiar direction of a set of stone steps and a shrine gate the next block up, on the other side of the road. 'Is that it?'

'Yes!' Kagome exclaimed, seizing his sleeve and making to drag InuYasha across the road without even a second thought, before he seized her hand with both of his and stuck his heels in, so that she was pulled up short, just as a car whizzed right in front of where she was standing.

'Crazy girl Kagome.' InuYasha shook his head as Kagome stared at the place she would have been had he not stopped her. 'You want you killed? Cars very dangerous.'

'Oh, sorry.' Kagome, more carefully this time, crossed the road, being significantly more mindful of traffic this second time around.

Of course, she was still also very mindful of the fact that InuYasha had forgotten to drop her hand, and she wasn't precisely about to remind him.

'You live, at shrine?' He questioned as they landed safely on the opposing footpath.

'Yes, my family is Japanese.' She smiled back at him.

He blinked stupidly a few times, before suddenly realizing what he was still loosely grasping, and released it like he was dropping a spider, flushing beet red. 'Gomen! Sorry!'

Kagome found herself going red as well, and bounded up a few of the shrine. 'Well, thanks for helping me!'

'Not problem!' He replied, scratching at the back of his neck nervously, before turning back up the street as Kagome hopped up a few more steps, before pausing, hoping her nerve would hold.

'Wait, InuYasha?' She said, turning back to face him, and he started from the few steps he had taken almost back to his original position.

She raced back down those steps until she stood upon the last one, seized him by one of his apron ties and pecked his cheek as fast as she could.

'Um, jya ne, InuYasha?' She smiled nervously, already wishing she could take it back.

But it looked more like she'd hit him over the head with the shrine gate, and he looked back at her dazedly, raising his fingertips to his cheek, before smiling stupidly. 'Jya ne, Kagome.'

She couldn't stop smiling all the way back to the shrine.