A/N:
Warnings: Rated T for violence, disturbing images, all around spookiness, language, sexuality, and a tiny bit of political incorrectness. By that last one I mean that in this first chapter, Kikyou mentally disses a burn victim's burn-victim-ness. (I don't think the same way she does about this stuff, so don't come after me with torches!)
Comments: SO. I promise myself and anyone who reads this that I will NOT delete it like I did all my other chapter-y stories. Read and review please?
Other stuff: This story will contain eventual Inu/Kik, but unlike my other stories, the pairing will not be the main focus.
Chapter One: Solidity
"Kikyou Higurashi?"
Kikyou looked away from the windowsill she'd been staring at to meet her teacher's eyes.
"Yes?"
"I've been calling your name for the past five minutes."
"I'm very sorry."
"Was the answer, by any chance, written on the window frame?" She pointed to something written on the black board. Kikyou shook her head.
"Ah. Then I suppose it would have been smarter to look at me while I was telling you how to solve this?"
Kikyou nodded, and forced her eyes to stay trained on her teacher's lips. DontlookDontlookDontlook
Sitting on the window frame, revealing it's sharpened teeth in a goose-bump-inducing grin, was a monster.
Not that Kikyou was entirely convinced she even believed in monsters. Surely they were all just hallucinations. Hallucinations that she'd been seeing since the day she'd been born. Hallucinations that silently followed her wherever she went, watched her as she slept, ate, and even while she showered. Shape-shifting hallucinations that sometimes looked like the beasts and dragons she'd read about in fairy tales, but could easily change themselves so that they could almost pass off as human – even in that form, though, there would be something off, something not quite right; they had dog ears or cat tails or strange markings on their faces.
Maybe it was something to do with being young. All children claimed they saw things like that, didn't they? Monsters under their beds and in their closets, faces peering at them in the dark. So perhaps Kikyou was a late bloomer; she just hadn't grown out of it yet.
Her motto was "If I just ignore them, it will be like they don't even exist." All she had to do was act normal, and everyone believed she was.
The lunch bell rang, startling her from her haze and saving her from having to respond to the teacher's torments.
"What a bitch,"someone said in an effort to comfort her as they left the class room. Kikyou turned to see Tsubaki rolling her eyes. Kikyou shrugged noncommittally.
The cafeteria was set up with square tables lining the edges of the room, and smaller circular tables in the middle. The spaces between were narrow aisles that were tough for even Tsubaki, size zero, to navigate, let alone the hordes of teenagers that poured into the space, but somehow they all managed to find a place to sit.
Kikyou and Tsubaki seated themselves at one of the smaller, circular tables. It only had three chairs, and the third was soon filled by the last member of the trio, Onigumo.
"Can you even believe that test?" Tsubaki whined. Onigumo nodded in agreement when he was finished wolfing down a ham sandwich. Kikyou didn't answer; she was busy looking across the lunchroom.
There, an almost human-looking monster with a wolf's tail was drooling over Kagome, a freshmen girl with puffy black hair who liked to wear miniskirts.
Tsubaki followed Kikyou's gaze and commented, "I can't believe how much she looks like you. Are you sure you two aren't related? I mean, you have the same last name and everything."
Kikyou shook her head violently. "We look nothing alike." She protested, her face turning sour at the very idea of being compared to the girl.
The only time she'd had any interaction with Kagome was when they'd bumped into each other in the halls. Kikyou's books had gone flying, and Kagome stopped to help her pick them up.
"Sorry about that," she had said, handing Kikyou her English textbook and smiling. "Hey!" Kagome had said brightly when she got a good look at the other girl's face. "You look kind of like me, don't you?" Then she walked away.
Kikyou stood in the hall, turning over what Kagome said in her head, and her stomach started feeling sick. Ice-cold fear pierced through her. "I'm older than you," she whispered. "I was here first. It's the other way around. You look like me."
It was then that Kagome became the first person she'd ever hated, and she did truly hate her. True, she didn't even know the girl, but why should that matter? Kikyou spent the rest of her life being a good child, but whenever she passed Kagome in the halls, a chill of pure anger ran up and down her spine, and for once she didn't bother telling herself she was being immature.
She even almost found the fact that a monster was trying to get a glimpse down Kagome's shirt a little funny. That's horrible! You can't think that way! some part of her mind protested weakly, but Kikyou silenced it, reasoning that if Kagome didn't want supernatural beings peering at her breasts, well then, she should remember to put a bra on in the morning, shouldn't she?
"Yeah, Tsubaki, Kikyou's way prettier." Kikyou glanced at Onigumo, but immediately had to take her eyes away from him. She could never make eye contact with him; she was ashamed, but his face disgusted her.
Onigumo was a bad burn victim. The skin on his face was melted and burnt, and it stuck to his bones in multi colored patches. Half of his right ear was missing, and his eyes had bright red veins running through them.
She knew he loved her. She hoped he'd never tell her, because she was dreading rejecting him. She was only friends with the poor guy because she felt sorry for him –
No! I'm friends with Onigumo because he's kind. She cringed at the thought, thinking how pathetic it was that she couldn't even tell the truth when no one else could hear her.
Onigumo was kind, but only to Kikyou. Once she had seen him picking another boy, Miroku's pocket, and another time when she'd invited him and Tsubaki over to her house, she'd heard him calling her younger sister a "little shit-for-brains".
Maybe the real reason she forced herself to stay around Onigumo was not because she liked him or because she felt sorry for him, but because he seemed to keep the monsters at bay.
Not that they could hurt her, or even touch her. They tried to, all the time; they reached out and grabbed at her hair or her arms or her fingers, but their sharp fingers passed right through her. The fact that they weren't solid added to her suspicions that they weren't real.
Even so, having them following her wherever she went was unsettling, and something about Onigumo seemed to scare them off; maybe they were just as repulsed by him as she was.
"Are you going to eat that?" Kikyou eyed Tsubaki's abandoned chocolate bar. Tsubaki looked down on it wistfully but pushed it toward her friend.
"Get it away from me, I'm fat enough as it is."
Kikyou took the chocolate bar and bit in to it timidly – her mother never let her eat junk food, and she felt like a traitor as it went down her throat, but it tasted too good to stop, and she ate the whole thing.
It was only after she'd eaten the chocolate bar down that she remembered to argue. "Oh, don't be ridiculous! You're skinny. Too skinny. Here, eat some…" She sifted around inside her lunch box . "…raisins?"
"…Gee. Thanks." Tsubaki said dryly.
Wherever Kikyou and Onigumo went, Tsubaki went as well. There was never a day when all three of them weren't in school together, and they even had all the same classes.
That didn't mean Kikyou trusted Tsubaki. Something about her put Kikyou on her guard. Once in a while during class, Kikyou would catch the platinum-blond teen staring at her, eyes questioning, as if she suspected Kikyou knew something and was keeping it a secret just to torment her.
Or maybe that was just Kikyou's imagination. God knew it liked to play tricks on her.
The bell rang again, and lunch was over.
…
When she got to Global Studies, her second to last period, her teacher pulled her aside.
Ms. Yura shared Kagome's taste in clothing. Her current outfit consisted of a tight- fitting red sweater and something that resembled a head band more than a skirt.
"We have a new student. I think he looks lonely, don't you?" Kikyou looked around to see where she was pointing, but her classmates were still filing in, and it was hard to tell one of them from another.
"I thought maybe you could be his buddy for a few days, show him around–"
Kikyou's eyes widened as she fell on the new student. No one else could see that his hair was white, or that his eyes were yellow, or that he had dog ears, and no one else knew that this boy was–
"Inuyasha, this is Kikyou. She'll be helping you find your way around the school."
He smirked at her. He knew she knew, she could tell. He put out a clawed hand.
She stared back into his eyes and defiantly stuck out her own hand.
"Pleased to meet you."
"Right back at you."
She held onto the handshake a little too long, digging her cleanly manicured nails into the side of his hand.
"Monster," she added as Ms. Yura made her way back to the front of the class to begin her lesson.