DISCLAIMER: I don't own Inuyasha. If those rights belonged to me Kagome would be one happy girl…

If You Only Knew

By: Lara Winner

It was a normal Friday evening. Tokyo's streets were bustling with the usual activity. Leaving the movie theatre Kagome listened to her friends with a wry smile as they began the short walk to the Sunset Shrine.

"Can you believe how scary that movie was?" Yuka asked.

"I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep tonight." Said Eri.

"I can't stop thinking about the ghost with scarred face… eww." Ayumi shuddered.

When Kagome failed to add her own commentary her three friends gave her a curious look.

"Kagome didn't you find the movie scary?" Ayumi asked.

For a moment Kagome was at a loss as to what to say. "Uh… well not really."

Yuka gave her an incredulous look. "You mean to tell me that when the ghost guy appeared in the mirror you didn't jump five feet like the rest of us?

The only mirror I find scary is the one Kanna carries around because she's tried to suck my soul out of my body with it…

"Nope. It was predictable."

Ayumi chuckled. "At least the zombie girl doing that creepy crab crawl out of her grave had to freak you out a little right?"

Real corpses don't move like that. Sometimes without Inuyasha's nose we can't tell the difference.

Distorted frame speed and an extremely limber actress were hardly frightening, Kagome thought, especially after facing off against walking corpses such as Bankotsu and his gang or worse when Kagura would use her 'Corpse Dance' maneuver and make REAL zombies complete with maggots…

Kikyo was technically a zombie and she was far more graceful than me.

Kagome shook her head, more to chase the thought away than to answer her friend.

"I mean really Kagome!" Yuka accused.

"It's just make up and special effects." Kagome sighed. "So not scary."

The three girls came to a stop on the sidewalk and surrounded their "friend", though Kagome was feeling more like prey at the moment, each issuing their own version of a determined glare.

"Then what about the room with all the body parts?" Eri pressed. "Talk about gross. And all that blood, you can't tell me that didn't scare you a little bit."

Blood… I've seen more of it than any one person should ever have to.

After finding entire villages destroyed leaving only the dead to bury and bandaging up her friends when their wounds sometimes needed stitches but having to make due without made the blood on a theatre screen seem phony.

Not to mention it doesn't even look real. Blood isn't bright red and when you wear the same bloody clothes for hours the stains turn brown and dried and get all crusty…

A detail her "normal" friends wouldn't realize. But then Kagome had been covered in enough blood for days at a time to know that bit of info for a fact.

And dismembered body parts?

After seeing Naraku piece himself together, all those heads Yura collected for their hair and poking around the pieces of lesser demons to take back their shards…

Kagome went a little pale.

Okay that sounds creepy even to me…

Ayumi grinned. "We know you got scared a little, just admit it."

It was at that moment Kagome realized how far removed from her old life that she had become. It wasn't that she didn't know it or that she didn't notice she was "out of the loop" as her friends liked to tease, but times when she really considered what she faced on a daily basis in the feudal era made her see that she wasn't an average teenager anymore.

Yuka, Eri and Ayumi would never understand that she had indeed lived most of the horror scenario's that they went to the movies to see. And thinking back she couldn't remember at what point such things stopped being strange and horrifying and became nothing more than another obstacle.

That demons and corpses were the norm was suddenly a very unnerving thought.

And to look at me people think I'm so well adjusted.

Yet contemplating her friends, she knew why she did it. So that they could live in their innocently unaware reality and not have to face things right out of their nightmares.

It wasn't as if it was a sacrifice. Sure she missed the usual teen drama, trips to the mall and girl talks at Wackdonald's but it was a small price for the people she left behind in the past that were more like extended family than mere friends.

And of course there was Inuyasha, the only reason she felt confident enough to face her own nightmares.

He'll always protect me, I know that. With him by my side I'm not afraid of the things I can't see.

While what she would find returning to the feudal era did not strike fear in her heart, the narrowed gazes of her friends did.

Should she try and tell them what she really thought? That after dealing with things like the walking dead, soul stealers, insect youkai bigger than small buildings, even real ghosts…. a horror movie was like a breath of fresh air.

Nah. She didn't have it in her heart to turn their perception of reality upside down.

Not that they'd believe me anyway. I wouldn't believe me…

And she might have been able to lie better if there wasn't an impatient hanyou waiting at the shrine for her at that very moment. Still, Kagome tried for a convincing smile.

"All right I give. That movie was really scary."

A.N. – This is just a little character piece that struck me when some friends and I had a similar conversation and I thought it would be amusing to see how Kagome would react to a horror movie considering just what she does in her free time.

Thanks for reading.