Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or claim to. This is a work of fan work and by no means makes this lowly author any money. All copyrights belong to their respective owners.

The Perfect Wife

A soft smile, one of peaceful contentment, spread across her pastel pink lips as her fingers move gingerly over the black, wooden beads. She moved one up, moved over a row, moved one down, moved back to the row she'd been on prior, slid another up, then moved to the one before that one and slid another up. It was an odd way to pass the time she supposed, but it was fun and brought a sense of joy to her dreary life, distracting her from cold droplets of rain pelting the windows and the earth or the moving of feet above her head and the small chatter of her husband. This object her father had gifted her when she was nine, an abacus, was what kept her sane as she found herself cooped up day upon day upon day.

She lifted her head up, the abacus in front of her leaving her sight. She turned her pointed grey gaze towards the door as the bronze handle turned slightly and the oak door was pushed open. Her husband, a man named Kouga, waltzed into the little room he'd given to her when she moved in, acting as if this room was just like any other. She smiled at him, pushing away the pain as he waltzed into her space once more, followed by men she'd never met and would probably never meet again, not even asking to come in. He knew if he asked she had no reason to say no. He owned this house, he cared for her, he loved her.

"Ah, Kagome, do you know if I left Emperor Taizong's Concubine List in here?" Kouga asked as he shifted through books and scrolls he'd given to her over the years of their marriage. Kagome's husband was a collector of sorts, mostly dealing in objects that had belonged to royalty, especially Asian royalty. Taizong, if she remembered correctly, was a Chinese emperor of the Jin dynasty. She held back a sigh. When Kagome was younger, a woman not bound to any house or any man, she would never have known that Taizong was an emperor, let alone one of the Jin dynasty. She knew now though, Kouga had asked her to learn, so she did. He was her husband after all, and he had requested quite kindly that she do so, even giving her his reasoning behind this. She had no room to complain.

"I haven't seen it. You know I avoid those lists." Kagome smiled, her eyes drifting back to her abacus as her face flushed a brilliant shade of red. She heard one of Kouga's guests, most likely a buyer, chuckle softly at her innocuous actions. Her eyes drifted up again to see if Kouga was displeased by her lack of knowledge or upset over her embarrassment but just found him grinning at her amusedly. She looked back down, her smile growing. Kouga was happy with her still.

She saw his socked feet as he approached her, the soft thumps as the hit the hard wood floor reaching her ears. Her husband squatted down beside her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her in for a tight embrace. She smiled leaning into his touch though her hands didn't move from their place on her abacus. The smile on her lips resembled that of one a child would wear if they had just accomplished something that he hadn't thought possible and was now bragging to his loving mother and father. She smiled, gratified by the feel of Kouga's warm breath rushing over the shell of her ear and the feel of his hands as he moved them over the silk kosode she wore.

"We shall talk about your manners in front of my guests tonight." He pulled away after saying that, the wolfish grin she'd mistaken for an amused grin still on his face. Kagome bent her head in shame, her eyes focusing on the abacus to block out the sadness of disappointing Kouga. She bit her bottom lip hard, half-listening as Kouga's customers said goodbye while chuckling. She could feel Kouga's angered glare as if it were an actual object. If it had been an actual object, it would've weighed a ton.

Kouga was gone again, and Kagome was once more left to her own devices, her boredom and her abacus. Her hands returned to moving rapidly over the wooden beads, letting the sound of wood hitting wood in sharp clacks fill her ears. She had made Kouga unhappy. She'd made a mockery of him by acting like a silly child, not a respectable wife. She deserved the scolding she would get tonight and she would do nothing to stop it. That was what being foolish got her, and Kagome was very foolish.

"Kagome-sama, Kouga-sama has requested your presence in your bedroom."

Kagome's eyes moved up from the scroll in her hands that detailed the short life a particularly cruel Shogun. Inuyasha, the butler of the house, stood in the doorframe dressed as always in a black pantsuit. Inuyasha, normally a spitfire of spirit, had his head bent as he waited for the wife of his employer to stand and be led to the room she'd travelled to a million times before. He didn't look into her eyes; he was not the type to do so when Kagome's husband was to scold her for her insolence. She didn't understand his regret towards doing this job, it was what she deserved. She was too foolish for her own good. His avoidance of the subject did not help her either, though she normally pressed him for his discomfort despite his lack of interest in entertaining that topic.

"Please lead the way Inuyasha-san." Kagome waited as the finely dressed man turned about face, eyes still completely avoiding her own, and led her down the familiar looking halls of the European style home. She passed by doors to rooms she knew held valuables that were worth more than everything Inuyasha owned combined. She passed by windows that looked out to the European style garden with plants imported from countries like Germany, France, and Italy that could grow in the climate and soil Japan had to offer. This house was full of antiques that originated in Asia but everything about it, from its architecture to the man who resided in it appeared to come straight from the rolling moors of Britain

Inuyasha cracked open the door to the room Kouga and Kagome slept in every evening, eyes still burning holes in the floor. Kagome's grey gaze lingered on him. What thing did he know Kouga would do to her today he thought so awful?

"Inuyasha-san, worry not about me," she said in her proper dialect. Upon Kouga's request many months prior, Kagome had stopped using the slang and modern terms she'd grown up with while growing up in middle-class and living like any normal person would. She spoke now only with proper grammar and polite tones. Kouga praised her highly for the change in her vocabulary.

He didn't reply as she stepped over the threshold, closing the door softly behind her, locking out Inuyasha from seeing this. The boy was very nice but not very smart. He didn't understand that what she got was what she deserved. She was a wife; her husband had every right to say what he didn't please him when it came to her and expect her to change it.

"Kagome, you screwed up. Again."

Her grey eyes were dull, lifeless even, as she stared into the mirror above her marble sink. Black hair fell past her shoulders, only slightly covering the gold kosode she wore. Her skin, though still tan like any Asian's skin was, it was pale from her lack of time in the sunlight. It wasn't the she truly minded being pale. In many countries, being pale was seen as a blessing and it made a woman infinitely more attractive. No, her problem with the washed out tone of her skin was the way it highlighted the black eye she was forming and the nasty bruise discoloring her lower lip and the skin around it. She had her bangs brushed forwards unlike how she normally kept them swept back, but that was only to hide the scabbed over gash near the top of her hair line.

She deserved this though, she told herself as she stared into the mirror, a chill in the air seeping past her kosode and making her shiver to the bone. She deserved this for making a mockery of her loving husband. She deserved this because of how impolite she was to his buyers. She could've cost him a sale! She deserved everything she did to him, she completely agreed.

So why was she crying?

It was probably because of what Inuyasha had said in a fit of rage in the hallway after she'd gotten what she deserved.

"Where in your marriage contract did it say that the wife gave up her right to safety if she slightly inconvenienced her husband?"

Nowhere.

She stared into the mirror. What would her friend's from high school say if they saw her now? Did they even still realize she was alive? She hadn't left the house in over a year. Kouga had told her that it was for her own protection. Had that been a lie? Did he not want anyone seeing what he said and did to his wife? When was the last time she contact her mom? Was her grandpa still okay? How about Souta, her brother, how was school for him?

Had she really given up her life for this man called Kouga?

She shut her eyes. She'd rub her temples but that was not what a lady did. A lady was prim and proper. Never speaking out against her husband, letting him do as he wanted, lay a hand on her if he chose. A lady spoke in a proper dialect and only wore clothing that left everything to the imagination. She spoke to as few men as possible but she was not rude in how she went about it. A lady didn't blush, she stood tall, her face a wall of ice.

Kagome had never been a lady.

She stepped out of the bathroom, into the room she shared with Kouga. Her husband had always snored loudly, though she'd never said anything. A wife didn't do that, especially not a proper wife. She always sat and took it.

She smirked for the first time in years.

Kagome opened the door into the hallway, noting that Inuyasha was ready to duck into the room he'd been given upon his employment. This was her chance. Kouga was asleep and the closest thing to a friend since her marriage was now alone, at her beck and call and perfectly willing to do anything to help get out and into a better life. It was now or it was never.

"Inuyasha!"

Author's Note: Thank you for reading this humble authors attempt at entertainment. If you enjoyed it, that brings a smile to my face and I would love to know why. If you didn't, please won't you tell me why that was? You can do this by leaving a review.

This piece was spawned after a dream I recently had of an abacus. For those unaware, I'm very into dream interpretation so an abacus means outdated points of view. Decided it was high time to finish this one-shot I started a week back before falling ill again.