Kagome wasn't the type of person to constantly take charge and burn bridges, but when she walked past the alleyway where four demons were hassling a single white-haired one, she knew she had to do something. Something about the confrontation seemed more intense than a regular fight, and she had the feeling that if she did nothing, things would end very very badly. She glanced around the street to see if anyone else noticed the fight, too. It was ten o'clock on a Monday in the summertime. All the usual adult traffic was safe working in their air conditioned offices, leaving the street nearly bare.
The four demons were catcalling in low voices, saying things Kagome couldn't hear but could tell were offensive to the silver headed demon. His ears were pressed flat against him, like an angry dog. Kagome squirmed, feeling the extremely tense atmosphere.
The lone silver haired demon finally said something lowly, but ended very loudly in, "the FUCK UP!"
Kagome braced herself for the inevitable impact. A brown and scabby-looking demon shoved his shoulder, hard, and the silver demon stumbled. His face turned slightly toward her, and she realized he was about her age. She took a step into the alley before remembering that she was a simple seventeen-year-old girl, that she was not remarkably strong, and that even if she were strong, it would still be impossible to fight off four demons at once.
Her legs twitched, begging to run and do something, but she stayed planted where she was. Her fingers yanked her cell phone out of her jeans pocket.
The boy popped up from his stumble and landed a punch on the Scab. He went flying in a brown blur. A split second later, the other three jumped on him, grabbing his face and his neck. He went down quickly, and the demons kept him on the ground, kicking him mercilessly and repeatedly. One of them stomped on his face, and the crack of his breaking nose was matched with the sound of his head slamming against the cement.
Before Kagome even realized, she was already halfway towards them, sprinting like a maniac and screaming like a banshee. The demons paused and looked at her with confusion. She continued to run at them, swinging her large purse wildly.
The demons didn't move and she ran into the closest one, who had pale skin covered in blue markings. She thumped against the demon and fell smack onto the ground. He hadn't even budged, Kagome noted frantically. The demons simply stared at her, and then at each other.
"Boss never told us to take care of the interferers," a slightly bent over one said, his spindly arm reaching up to his head to scratch with a twig-like finger.
"Usually they tell us specifically to take care of 'em," the pale one agreed, "Y'know, not let 'em live if anyone sees anything."
"Think we should kill her?" the scab asked.
I'm right here, Kagome wanted to point out. She knew they could easily catch her if she tried to run away, so there wasn't much point when or where they would discuss her death, but still…why did I do this again? she wondered hopelessly.
The fourth demon, in a do-rag, deliberated. "He only told us to rough him up. He never said to kill the guy. So why kill the witness?"
The group of demons nodded with furrowed brows in a great contrast to the intense faces they had when they were beating up the boy. If Kagome's life weren't in danger, she would've laughed.
The pale demon sighed and looked at the boy behind her, who Kagome guessed was unconscious. She couldn't turn around to see him without taking her eyes off the demons, and it was killing her. "I guess we 'roughed him up' enough. This was our worst gig yet." The group turned to leave. "I think we should have a 'must kill policy' in our services," the demon proposed.
"We been through this," the Scab said, "nearly three quarters of our business comes from-"
He glanced back at Kagome, remembering she was still there. In the blink of an eye, he was right in front of her. His face was inches from her own, and a bumpy hand came up to her cheek. "You tell a soul 'bout this," he growled lowly, his breath hot and damp on her face. She held her breath. "I pull those pretty eyeballs from their sockets, okay? I know what you look like, how you smell. I can find you easy. But I won't if you don't tell, 'kay?"
Kagome nodded stiffly. "Okay," she whispered, and they were gone.
She inhaled a shuddered breath and turned to the boy. Blood was gushing from his nose; it covered his face grotesquely. Her hands fumbled around the ground absently, looking for something to stop the blood flow. The contents of her oversized purse were scattered all over the alley. Like a kid on 'home base' playing don't-touch-the-lava, Kagome kept her feet crouched in place at the boy's side and crawled her hands out to a nearby tampon, as if he would disappear if she moved away from him. She snapped back and very tenderly probed the boy's nose, waiting for the crushed pulp to give. It didn't.
She gasped softly. "It's already healed!" she marveled.
Kagome undid the wrapping and pushed the tampon up his left nostril, which was the only one bleeding. Aside from his long silver hair, his sharp-looking incisors, and a cute pair of ears on the top of his head, the boy looked rather human.
"You're a half-demon, aren't you?" Kagome murmured, surprised. You never saw many of those around town. Humans and demons stuck with their own, for the most part. Interrelationships between the two kinds were generally frowned upon.
The boy continued to lay motionless, and after staring blankly at him for a second or two, Kagome really began to panic.
"What to do?" she muttered, "What do I do…"
She patted her sides to feel her pockets empty. Where is my phone?
"What to do?" she mumbled, taking one last worried glance at the unconscious boy before getting up and scanning the alley for her phone or a passerby.
From what she could see, the street was still bare. She felt a pang of despair.
Noises vomited nervously from her throat as she blindly searched for her phone. "Umm…ahh…s'okay, s'okay…uh…"
Kagome finally spotted her phone, ran to pick it up, and stumbled back to the boy's side. She flipped the phone up and began to dial 911 when a large hand swiped it out of her grasp. The hand tightened around her phone until it crunched and popped into a broken shame of its former self.
"Hey!" she bellowed, startled. The half-demon was awake, and he was glaring at her. His eyes were a mesmerizing amber color that she noted and filed away in her brain to ponder later. "Y-you broke my phone!" she stuttered.
The boy's mouth turned down. "…don't call for help."
"I can't you idiot, you just BROKE my phone!" Kagome snapped. "What the hell is the matter with you?!"
The boy blinked, as if mentally listing all the things that might be the matter with him. After a long pause, he said, "You can't call for help. I'll kill you if you call for help."
"What the- are you nuts?!" The boy continued to glare stonily at her, and even though he was lying like a bleeding lump on the ground with a tampon up his nose, his blood-covered face and strange eyes were intimidating. "You're hurt! You're going to the hospital, dammit!" Kagome hardly ever cursed, and was startled that she was driven to it.
"No. I'll heal, just leave me the fuck alone," he muttered venomously, but Kagome could tell their argument was wearing him.
"I'm staying with you!" she said, mostly because it would annoy him. "You need help. We need to call the police, too, and get those guys who did this to you."
"Like hell you'll call the police!" he said in a raised voice, although his chest convulsed and he began to cough. Kagome rushed to hold his head up. The glare he shot at her was lost in a fit of hacking. When he stopped and pulled his hand from his mouth, it was covered in blood.
"Oh god," Kagome moaned. "Oh go-"
"Don't be such a baby," he snapped in a voice that was raspy from coughing, wiping his hand on his jeans, "It's just my ribs mending back together."
She blanched.
"Don't call the police," the silver haired half-demon went on, shaking his shoulders until she let go of her hands, "Those guys will come after you if you do, and you can't make me go to the hospi-"
"Wait, were you conscious when they threatened me?" asked Kagome lowly, feeling waves of white anger roll through her.
"What? No!" the boy's eyes widened in a believably innocent way, and his breathing rattled; Kagome's anger ebbed with worry. "They threat'nd you?" his eyelids were slowly closing. "I woulda taken 'em…" he took a large breath. "…you're jus...a lil girl…they can't…"
Kagome sighed as the half-demon slid back into unconsciousness. Although he was an ass for breaking her phone, he didn't seem rotten to the core. He seemed pretty desperate about not going to the hospital, and he was right about not going to the police.
She wondered what to do with the guy as she collected her things and put them in her purse. Smiling when she found her wipes, Kagome scrubbed the crusty dried blood off the boy's face. His nose was sprinkled with small freckles, and his face was tan. He was actually slightly attractive, Kagome mused, in a boyish way. Too bad he's a jerk.
But what to do with this newfound jerk of mine? He wouldn't want anyone else to get involved, probably. Which meant she couldn't call one of her friends or her mom to pick them up.
Oh wait, the punk broke my cell phone, anyway. Damn him!
"What did people do before cell phones?" She complained to a nearby trashcan. Trashcan!!
It was large and rectangular-shaped with wheels and a handle to pull it. Perfect. She rolled it over to him and opened the lid. The thick, oppressive scent of trash in the summer heat wafted up to her nose. "Blech!" she moaned. Lucky there's no trash inside…
Kagome tilted the trashcan on its side and gingerly tried to drag the boy into it.
"Oomph," she panted. He was heavy. With intense difficulty, she pulled his legs a quarter of the way in. She sat for a moment to catch her breath.
"How much do you weigh, fatty?" she asked him. One of his ears flicked cutely. Aww! Embarrassedly, she put her hand to his soft white ear and rubbed it. He didn't wake. A grin grew on her face and she massaged his velvety ears. "They're so cute!" she giggled.
Suddenly his hand drifted upwards and enclosed gently around her own. Kagome froze. His eyes didn't open, and he gave no indication that he was conscious.
"Kikyo…" he murmured, and gave her hand a small squeeze. His hands were large and strong, and rough with calluses. He had sharp claws instead of fingernails. Kagome shivered, but not out of fear. As tactfully as she could, she wormed her hand out of his grasp.
Kagome shook away the odd thoughts that suddenly filled her mind and finished pushing him into the trashcan. Pushing all her weight into it, she turned it right side up. His knees folded with gravity and his forehead slammed against the slimy side of the plastic.
"Sorry," she whispered. He slid down in an awkward ball to the bottom. Kagome kept the top open so he wouldn't suffocate with the fumes, and pushed him at a snail's pace out of the alley. As she picked up momentum, the boy wasn't so difficult to push.
Once they left the alley, the street-side stores grew closer, and Kagome flipped the lid over the bin in case someone saw from the store windows. "It'll just be for a little while," she promised the trashcan. She hurriedly wheeled him down the road and turned the corner. The street turned residential, and more people populated the sidewalk. She maneuvered awkwardly around them, desperately ignoring their stares.
When the endless steps to her family's shrine came into view she almost broke into a run.
"Kagome! Ka-GO-me!!" a voice called from behind her.
She yanked the trashcan to a stop, and with a twinge of annoyance saw her neighbor, Mr. Mathenly, come jogging towards her. He was a middle-aged busy body, and she knew he would latch onto the strangeness of her pushing around a trashcan like a leech and never let her go.
"Good morning, Kagome! Whatcha doin' with that trashcan?" he fell into a fit of laughter, as if he just made a terrific joke and not an observation.
Kagome was bad at lying, so she took the time to laugh with Mr. Mathenly before answering.
"Oh, ours blew away last night and I finally found it," she said in a gust of words. She shifted impatiently from foot to foot.
"Really? Y'know, I didn't think it was that windy last night. Let me tell you, that night last week (Wednesday I think it was) was just a killer! That thunderstorm near ripped the siding off our house. The wife certainly was not pleased when our 'curb your dog' sign blew away, but what can you do? I-"
"Oh Mr. Mathenly," Kagome tried to sound sorry, "I really need to get to my house. I'm expecting a call from my brother any minute."
"Ah yes. Souta's at camp now, isn't he? What happened to your cell phone?"
Kagome was relieved she wouldn't have to think up a lie. "It's broken."
"Too bad, that's just too bad! Kids these days are so reckless with their things. Not that you're reckless, my dear, just in general. I think AT&T's family plan is-"
"I promised Souta I'd answer after the first ring, so I really have to go," Kagome nearly shouted, turning on her heel and dragging the trashcan behind her at a run.
She chugged up the wheelchair path and thanked the gods she finally made it. In a last shot of adrenaline, she eased the half-demon out of the trashcan, dragged him up the steps, and pulled him onto her bed.
Kagome plunked down on her floor and shuddered a few breaths in and out before her breathing went back to normal. "And I thought I was physically fit!" she laughed to herself.
The boy twitched on her bed, and she studied his face. Still out. The only boy that had ever been in her room was her ex-boyfriend, Hojo, who, in the perfect representation of gentleman-ship had announced he "didn't feel right being alone with her in her room without someone to supervise them" only a minute of two after being there, and promptly left.
What a weirdo that kid was, Kagome reminisced fondly. Very polite but so…dull.
She focused her attention back to the half-demon. He had smelly sludge that stained his long, pretty hair and his tan face. One of his eyes had swollen shut, ugly and purple. He had various cuts and bruises on his arms. Blushing, she lifted up his shirt and saw large bruises splattered on his torso. He's well buil-
She slammed her hands onto her bedspread. "No! No!"
The boy remained in his little la-la land. "What are you, a rock?" Kagome snapped, angry at him for some reason. His ears twitched cutely again. "I'm gonna go get some ice," she muttered to her unconscious guest.
When she came back her head was cleared, and she wrapped the boy in ice packs.
She bandaged his cuts and cleaned the sludge off his face and arms, and was just finishing washing and toweling his long hair dry when she heard the front door slam.
"Oh, poop!" Her mom only worked half-days on Mondays, an important fact Kagome had conveniently forgotten. She tossed the towel on her floor and pushed the small basin of water she was using to clean him off into her closet.
But what's the point of doing that when you still need to explain the half-demon guy sprawled out on your bed?!?!
"Uhh…" she slammed her door, ran downstairs, and hoped to distract her mother for as long as possible. Honestly, how often does she go into your room? Not often.
With that relieving thought in mind, she hopped carelessly into her mother's arms.
"Hey mom!" Kagome chirped, giving her a hug.
"Hey, hon." Mrs. Higurashi pulled out of their hug and pointed to a small wicker shelving unit by the door. "I finally got some shelves for your room. It's so disorganized in there; hopefully these will neaten things up."
Kagome's heart sank. This can't be happening.
Mrs. Higurashi picked it up and walked up the stairs. Kagome trailed closely behind her, nervous. "Where do you think it should go? I think we should spend the summer reorganizing your room- it's long overdue for it, and Souta's out of the house, so we'll have no distractions." Mrs. Higurashi made it up the stairs and stepped closer and closer to Kagome's door.
"NO!" Kagome's mom startled. "I mean, can't we chat and have snacks first? I'm kinda hungry. I didn't have lunch yet. God, I'm hungry. And I have to go to the bathroom. Really bad. I want to decide where to put it with you, so I can't be gone. Umm…" she trailed off as her mom blinked at her sudden outburst.
Mrs. Higurashi narrowed her eyes. She turned her back slowly to Kagome and stepped quickly to the bedroom door. She turned the knob gradually, then flicked it away from her. The door flung open and Kagome flinched.
Mrs. Higurashi laughed. "For a second I thought you snuck a boy up to your bedroom," she chuckled, "But that Hongo boy would never go along with something like that. He's so old-fashioned, that boy is."
Her bed was empty. The quilt was patted smooth. There was absolutely no sign of anyone being there.
Kagome laughed hysterically along with her mother. "Hojo, mom, his name is Hojo, and I dumped him last year."
"That's right! What a dull boy," Mrs. Higurashi mused. She set the shelves down and left for the bathroom.
In the closet, a stack of icepacks were placed neatly next to the water basin. A warm breeze blew in from her window. She hadn't opened it that day.
"He could've left a note," she sighed to her empty room, but only the wind responded.