When he died, I thought my life was over.

Inuyasha. The night he died – no, the night he was killed – was the last day I ever saw the Sengoku Jidai, and the first day of my re-modernized life as a present-day teenage girl. It was also the night I couldn't stop crying.

That is, until /he/ came to get me. When he finally found me… That night was both the worst night and the best night I'd ever had. The best parts are sitting next to me right now, and the worst part is the most persistent of my countless stalkers: Naraku. The night he killed Inuyasha, the Fayth rewarded him with the gift of immortality. Yes/rewarded/. It was Ki's idea to kill Inuyasha.

Ki, the Fayth of spirit, is one narcissistic little wretch.

A long time ago – maybe fifteen years ago – I was created by someone. I was an illusion.

He was lonely, with few friends. He was so sad. He was the kind of kid you look at once, then know something awful happened to him, just because he looks so pitifully sad. When he finally realized how lonely he was, he created me, a companion. We ended up falling in love.

One starry evening, when I had already fallen asleep, Ki visited the orphanage with a proposition for my creator: If I created an illusion of my own, and it was killed, I would become real. He wanted to know what Ki would get out of this, and Ki didn't answer with but another question: "Does it matter?"
So, this creator of mine agreed eagerly, unaware that this also meant the promise of our separation.

When he created me, I was automatically 'assigned' to the family that would best suit his so-called description of me. The family turned out to be of Haruno Sakura, my elder sister and best friend. She, too, lived with us at the orphanage, as did many others. Those others were Naruto, Sasuke, Auron, Axel, Ryou, and Soujirou.
He and I were very close. Painfully so, in fact, to the other boys at the orphanage, save Naruto and Sasuke. They didn't really think much of it.

But, whatever. Back to the story. When I had really grown attached to the other children at that orphanage, I was around fourteen years old. It was then that Ki chose to take me away; when I would me most apt to /want/ to make an illusion. That is the most common purpose of an illusion: to be a replacement.

Next thing I knew, I was a human, and my last name was Higurashi. I had a little brother, and I had parents that weren't dead. I even had a grandfather. Life seemed too good to be true, until I realized my friends weren't there. I was really hoping they had ended up with that fate, too, but it was not so.

At fifteen, I stumbled into the Sengoku Jidai for the first time. There, I met Inuyasha, my very own illusion. Of course, I had no clue that he was an illusion at all, and so I treated him as I would anyone else. Sort of.

Ki's plan /was/ to make me fall in /love/ with my illusion, after all. And it worked. By the age of nineteen, I was married to Inuyasha, living in bliss with some newfound friends in the Sengoku Jidai. And it was on what would have been Inuyasha's twenty-first birthday that his life ended, and I became real.

The Fayth – one for each element, making nine in total – each shot Inuyasha once with a gun. A real gun. I couldn't believe my eyes, not to mention my stinging ears. The shots were loud. The bullets were meant to tear him apart, but the purification of the Shikon no Tama had prevented it. He was weakened, though, and the Fayth knew that there was only one being alive who could kill him with the jewel infused with his flesh. It was Naraku.

Naraku could only kill him because he was weakened.

And it was then that my life both ended and began.

"Kagome!"

I turned around to see Sakura standing there, looking impatient, with her hands on her hips. Her pink-blonde hair hung messily out of the bun into which she'd failed to tie it, and her vivid green eyes were flashing with excitement and anxiousness.

"Are you feeling okay?" she asked, giving me a light shove. "You wouldn't answer me."
A smile made the ends of my lips curl upward. "I'm fine," I told her. I returned the shove, but with less force than that of her own. I was weaker than she was. "You ready?"
"Does it look like I'm not?" She was right. We were headed for a concert – my concert – and she was indeed ready to leave. She had on a purple sleeveless shirt with the band logo on it, a pair of tattered black shorts, and her favorite thigh-high boots. They had belts going up from the ankle to above the knee, and were made of a shiny black material appropriately called pleather. "You're the one who isn't ready, Kagome."

I rubbed the back of my head. "Sorry." Apologizing too much was one of my worse habits. "All I have to do is get my shoes. Then we can go!" I searched the room for my boots, found them, put them on, and folded my arms across my chest. "Okay, let's go."

"Right." Sakura grabbed the keys from the counter and bolted out the door. I followed as quickly as I could, but steel-toed shoes make it difficult to run.