Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha. Or anyone else, for that matter. Yup, I just know that everybody thought I did. But I don't. Alas.
Summary: Eri, Yuka, and Ayumi were supposed to be having a carefree day swimming in the ocean. That is, until they find a boy's body lying on the sea bottom. And what's this strange scroll wrapped around his wrists? They should probably ask Kagome what it means ( she does live in a temple, after all... ) But she's been sick so much lately, they don't really want to get her entangled in their problems...even if not asking for help could kill them.
A/N: Yay! This is my first fic!
The first chapter is sort of weird and doesn't have very much to do with the rest of the story. But whatever. Read it anyway. Oh, and Eri is the one with the straight hair and the headband, Yuka is the one with the short hair, and Ayumi is the one with the curly hair. In case you were wondering.
Old Serenity
The water was clear and beautiful, warmed gently by the summer sun to perfect swimming temperature. Fine grains of sand sprung up from the sea bottom as Yuka hit it sharply with her foot as she pushed off and swam out towards the horizon. By the time the other three caught up with her, she was floating peacefully on her back, lazily tracing the flight of the gulls overhead with one finger.
"Dammit, how did you get so good?", were Eri's words, but her tone was pleasant, full of the strange, lilting laughter that had suddenly appeared a few months ago and showed no intention of ever leaving. Yuka plunged under suddenly, reappearing a few seconds later with her short dark hair plastered flatly against the back of her head, wiping water out of her eyes. "Talent, I guess. C'mon, Eri. You can't keep sulking forever."
"Yeah, we'll teach you, right Kagome?" The fourth girl nodded, brushing sea water away from her face. "I mean, everybody's got to know how to swim, right? I mean, what if you were in a boat and it, it capsized or something? Then you'd have to know how to swim."
Ayumi nodded, smiling at Kagome and Eri in turn. What Kagome had said had been true, but there was a slight falter to her smile as she looked at her friend. From the way Kagome talked nowadays, every boat was simply waiting to capsize, every animal rabid, and every driver on the freeway had a death wish. Not that Ayumi blamed her in the slightest. After all, she had been sick with nearly every disease imaginable, one on top of another, for years. Ayumi had been so worried that she had applied to medical school in hopes of finding a cure for her friend. Now that she was there, she couldn't help but think that Kagome was some sort of medical miracle. If her grandfather was to be believed ( and Ayumi did believe. Ayumi always believed, unlike Yuka, who always doubted; and Eri, who sometimes seemed to not even care. ) Kagome had come down with diabetes, stomach cancer, and, inexplicably, gangrene; all within a few days of each other. Having them all clear up on their own a few days later was supposedly impossible, but somehow, Kagome had managed to do it.
Having that sort of thing happening all the time was bound to make anyone a little paranoid, she reasoned. Still, at least it was good that Kagome was now apparently disease-free, and Ayumi had been thrilled to hear that she would come swimming with them today. Kagome smiled back, and Ayumi turned her attention back to the other two girls, who were arguing in the pleasant, strangely aggressive way that best friends have. "You spent all fucking day Saturday shopping for that bikini, don't tell me you're not going to actually, you know, learn how to swim in it!"
"I know, I will, ok?" Now Eri was laughing, hand clasped daintily over her mouth. Last Saturday, she had dragged her friends through nearly seven hours of shopping, trying to find the perfect bathing suit. Over the past few years, she had become quite the fashionista, and when she finally found the perfect one, Yuka had almost fainted over the price tag.
"It's quality! You can't expect quality to be cheap."
"It's overpriced, that's what it is. Come on, Eri, you could buy, like, ten pairs
of shoes for the price of that one thing. It's fucking murder."
"You could not buy ten pairs of shoes for...well I guess you could. Cheapskate."
Ayumi had simply stood there and smiled while her friends argued. If Eri was
going to insult Yuka's shopping habits, she shuddered to think what would
happen if her friends found out that the new sweater they had both complimented
vigorously had actually cost the same as the average meal out at WacDonalds.
"It looks very nice on you, Eri.", she eventually ventured. The girl's face had
broken out in that million-dollar smile that could light up the entire room, and Yuka
had simply crossed her arms and sighed.
Ayumi was broken out of her memory by a small, sharp, stifled sound. It was a sneeze, and a small one at that. But because it had come from Kagome, the other three were suddenly gathered around her, fussing about and jabbing her with seemingly incessant questions. Ayumi was asking her if she had ever had symptoms like this before, lethal amounts of concern dripping from her voice. "'Symptoms'? C'mon, Ayumi, it's only a sneeze. I'll be fine."
In a way she wished she had never allowed her grandfather to keep making all those ridiculous excuses for her. It was silly, she knew, but she sometimes wished she had simply dropped out, wished she hadn't conned everybody into believing she was sick. Think of all the money Hojo spent on me. He must have had to start working extra hours just for me. And why did Ayumi have to go to med school? True, becoming a doctor was hardly a bad thing, however you looked at it. But Kagome knew for a fact that she had previously had her heart set on being a teacher. She changed ( damn! ) her whole ( damn! ) life just to find a cure ( damn! ) for a bunch of ( damn! ) stupid diseases I never ( damn! ) even had ( damn! ). It made her feel unclean, as if all the phantom sicknesses were clawing at her skin that very instant, clinging to her like toxic ooze.
And the worst part was that Ayumi, out of all of them, had believed her lies so completely. She believed that Kagome had gotten the flu 108 times in the space of four years. She believed that she had come down with an infection on every available body part at least once ( including several that Kagome couldn't believe anyone would use when making excuses for their own granddaughter ). She believed that Kagome had gotten ten different varieties of cancer and miraculously didn't drop dead.
In fact, the only thing that she didn't believe was that Kagome wasn't sick now. And she thinks I'm paranoid. Ayumi's round, worried face hovered in front of her, her petit mouth twisted into a small, almost puzzled, frown. "Are you sure?" She pulled away from Kagome, and for a minute was outlined against the mid-afternoon sun. Ayumi was one of those rare people who can manage to be very attractive and very plain at the same time. She was also a person who could carry around ten extra pounds of fat and somehow not look at all chubby ( this was a mystery that Eri and Yuka had been intent on solving for several months now, and with no success ). She was pretty, but at the same time, lacked distinction. She had none of Eri's sudden beauty queen-in-training glam; none of Yuka's spiky, angular thinness ( half of the girls at school had been convinced that Yuka was anorexic, but Kagome doubted it. From what she had seen of Yuka's family, her mom was even skinnier than she was ). "I think you should go home, Kagome, if you're not feeling well", she added as she leaned forward once more, her still-dry curly hair whispering over her shoulder.
A few minutes later, Kagome was being dried off and packed off home. She still wasn't entirely sure how it had happened, but apparently she was so sickly that even a sneeze meant she could no longer stay in the water. "I could drive you home", offered Eri, pulling a key ring out of a designer pink purse that matched her new bikini perfectly. Kagome shook her head rapidly, sending drops of seawater flying all over. "Trust me, I'll be fine. You should all stay here and keep swimming."
"You sure?", asked Yuka, about to suggest that they could all go over to Ayumi's house and rent some movies instead. But Kagome was already walking away from them, treading lightly across the soft, sandy beach.
She turned to wave them goodbye. And in a way Yuka sensed a strange sadness in her, a sadness that had nothing to do with all the illnesses the Ayumi so readily accepted and that she couldn't bring herself to believe in anyway. In the real world, the sun was high in a gorgeous robin's-egg sky, cloudless and warm and serene in the way of things that are secretly bursting with life. But in the world reflected in Kagome's eyes the sun was setting, falling silently beneath a sea full of a different kind of serenity; the beautiful, sad serenity of old things as they slowly fade away. Kagome, how did you get so old?