Death and Destiny

"I see dead people." It's something that I don't necessarily find myself saying very often, but also something I'm not ashamed to admit.

These kind of conversations, though, can only go one of two ways. Either one's conversation partner can accept the fact that one can see the dead, or they accuse one of being crazy, of hallucinating.

Unfortunately, if the laughter coming from Detective Maysayoshi and the strange look Detective Osamu sent my way were any indication, things had not changed.

"I'll ask you again, Ms. Higurashi, How did you know about Naraku Watanabe?" Detective Osamu asked in a no-nonsense voice.

I sighed. Was it just me, or did the official officers in Kyoto love the sound of their own voice? We'd been through this before, folks. Nothings going to change just because you ask the same question nine times over again. "And I'll tell you again, Detective, I. See. Dead. People."

Detective Osamu took an aggravated sip of his Coffey, a clear sign that his patients were slipping, and he was trying to hold his temper. Unfortunately for him, I could see the falseness in the move. He was about as moved to anger as you get when you can't find a matching shirt to go with your brown belt and deck shoes.

"And these... dead people," Said Detective Maysayoshi, a chuckle slipping past his hold, " They what? Led you to him? Told you about the bomb he was planting in the hotel?"

I thought for a moment. "In more or less words, he did."

"He?" That seemed to capture Osamu's attention. "There was a he?" Detective Osamu glared at the pile of papers in front of him. "I didn't know there was a he. Why didn't we know there was a he?"

Rolling my eyes, I frowned at the unprofessional detectives in front of me. "You wouldn't. He's dead."

Osamu seemed to snap and threw all the papers around the table. "There are no such fucking thing as spirits, girl! Get it through your hallucinatory brain and tell us what we want to hear!"

Maysayoshi quit his girlish giggling and held his partner at bay, "Osamu-san, calm down. We are professional detectives, and you need to act like it. If Ms. Higurashi wants to spout some crap about dead people, and a ghost guy who led her to Naraku's bomb, then we need to take it for the bull it is and be respectful about it."

Osamu sat down in a huff, and Maysayoshi turned to me. "Now, Ms. Higurashi, you should probably tell us what we want to hear before my partner here decides not to let me hold him back. When he's ready to rumble, he's ready to rumble, girl. Nobody can stop him."

I rolled my eyes again. "Oh, please. Detective, your partner is about as bad an actor as you are." With a sigh, I stretched the chains on my wrist as far as they would go and rested my elbows on the metal table of the interrogation room. "Look, Detectives. If you want me to tell you how some man in a black mask came up to me and told me a man named Naraku planted a bomb in Yaesu Fujia Hotel, I will. It'll be a lie, but hey, whatever makes the cranky detectives happy."

They seemed at a loss for words at that. Apparently the detectives in front of me weren't used to being told off by a sixteen year old girl.

Detective Maysayoshi seemed to recover first. "I think we've gotten off on the wrong foot. Ms. Higurashi, how about you just start at the beginning and we'll go from there?"

With a sigh, I sat back in the uncomfortable metal chair, slumping down and crossing my legs under the table. "Gladly."

And so I began.

I was three when my parents first noticed just how different their baby girl was. What with imaginary friends who broke vases and picture frames within my toddler reach, drawing pictures of bloodied knives and decapitated bodies, who could blame the other children for staying away?

After my fathers death when I turned six, and I told my mother how I could see dad, and how he wanted me to tell her how much he loved her, and that he was wrong for not believing me, my mom decided to put me through counseling. Counseling soon turned into therapy, though, and as soon as I deemed myself old enough, I stopped going. My mother would walk me in the building, and sign me in, and as soon as she left, I'd walk out the fire exit, only to return again when it was time to be picked up.

My charade didn't last long though, and mother found out. She signed me out of therapy for the last time that day.

When I entered my freshman year of high school, I had one friend, Sango Daiki. She was a tall, thin thing with an athletic build and a tough exterior to match. And she believed me when I told her what I could do.

Well, maybe believe isn't the right word. More like, she knew it was true when I found her younger brother, Kohaku scaring away everyone who wanted to go near her from his place beyond the grave.

She had died in a house fire the summer before my Sophomore year, and came to wish me good luck, and to tell me to tell her boyfriend, Miroku Fumio how much she loved to hit him when he groped other girls behind her back.

It was the second semester of the loneliest year of my life when he first came. I was eating lunch underneath the Goshinboku tree in my families shrine when I heard his growl above me.

I had to crain my neck to look at him, pinned by an arrow to the very same tree, covering the strange scar that had been on the sacred tree since before I was born.

"Who are you?" I asked the strange boy. He looked about my age, with the long silver, tangled hair that seemed it should belong to an elderly man, and not that of a seventeen year old boy. He had handsome features. A strong jaw, narrow lips, broad shoulders. But his most haunting feature seemed to be his eyes. Yellow like the sun... or maybe gold like fire?

He looked down at me and seemed startled. "Y-you can see me?"

I looked around the empty yard that led to the red shrine my family had dedicated themselves to taking care of since it was first built. "Well, there's nobody else around but you and I."

The boy seemed to frown. "Well it's no wonder you can see me, Kikyo. After all, you are the one who put me here."

"Kikyo?" I pointed to myself. "I'm not Kikyo. I've never even met anyone named Kikyo before in my life." I stood from my perch on the white picket fence surrounding the large sacred tree and held my hand out to the boy. "My names Kagome. Higurashi Kagome."

He glared down at me, something twitching above his head. A closer inspection told me they were what seemed to be dog ears. Like that of a dog, two silver triangles sat just before his bangs, twitching with every breath I took, almost as if he were listening.

"You sure look like her, though." His nose twitched, and his fingers curled in on themselves, forming two fists at his sides. "You don't smell like her, though." With a smirk set on his handsome face, he told me, "She smelled better."

I pursed my lips and glared at the ghost before me, my hands on my hips as I made my retort. "Yeah? Well at least I'm not dead!"

That made him frown. "I'm not dead."

That made me frown. "Yes you are. I've seen dead people my entire life, I think I'd know."

Reaching up, I touched the end of the arrow poking out of his chest, "It's obvious what killed you. B-but why haven't you moved on, I wonder?"

The boy frowned. "I aint dead, woman."

Ignoring the irritating boy, I grasped a hold of the end of the arrow, watching in wonder as it denigrated in my hand, freeing him and letting him slump to the ground by the tree.

He looked up at me in wonder. "Y-you can touch me?"

I nodded. "For some odd reason, I found when I was little that I can communicate with the dead just as effectively as I could communicate with the living. It's not as great as it sounds though." I touched the scar on the side of my throat, "Because when you can leave your mark on them, they can leave their mark on you."

The boy frowned, and then seemed to turn arrogant again. "Keh. What makes you so sure that I wont do the same?"

I pushed a piece of my black hair behind my ear. "You probably can. I've found a few ways to protect myself though, over the years. Not only that, but it's pretty darn hard to kill me."

The boy paused in his affronted agitation. "Someones tried to kill you?"

I nodded my head, "I've been pushed off the shrine roof, drowned in my friends back yard pool, thrown out my second story bedroom window." I looked at him. "It's not so easy to kill a Seer. You can go ahead and try if you want to, though."

That was the first of many conversations to come.

Did You Know: That this story was inspired by another of my stories that I'd yet to upload to fanfiction called Dead Girls Guide?

Did You Know: That this story is dedicated to my friend who has begged me to call her AngeryRainbows. Don't ask why, she's strange like that.

Did You Know: That AngeryRainbows will be my co-author to this story?