Shikon no Go
The Language of the Shikon
A Fanfic in 100 Chapters
By DQBunny
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DISCLAIMER: This story is based off of "Kendo no Go: A Fanfic in 100 Chapters" by Akai Kitsune. Her story in turn is a parody of "In the Language of Love," a story by Diane Schoemperlen. My thanks and appreciation goes out to Akai Kitsune for letting me borrow her fic idea! "Inuyasha" is the property of Takahashi Rumiko.
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Chapter 3: Shomyo
"Don't you just love listening to him?"
Kagome blinked at Sango, surprised to hear the revelation come from her. Her friend crouched a few feet away, both women hiding behind a hedge of bushes just out of sight of the monk that stood before a Buddhist statue.
Miroku chanted in a lyrical sing-song voice that rose and fell with the rhythm of the chant. Kagome picked out enough of the words to guess that he was chanting one of the basic Buddhist sutras, but she wasn't quite sure. Having grown up Shinto, she didn't pay as much attention to other religions as she should. She regretted that now.
She watched Sango, secretly enjoying her friend's flushed face over watching Miroku perform his ritual. Oh, you are so head over heels for him. Even Inuyasha, the most thick-headed person we know, realizes that.
"I wonder if Houshi-sama comes from a line of shodoshi?" Sango wondered, tapping one finger thoughtfully against her chin.
"Shodoshi?" Kagome asked.
"What's that?" Shippou spoke up from where he sat next to Kirara.
"Don't you know anything?" Inuyasha rolled his eyes from his position a few feet away from them. "They're performing monks that were popular a couple hundred years ago."
The girls whipped their heads around, Miroku's chanting forgotten. "Inuyasha, I had no idea you knew anything like that," Sango commented.
He blushed and averted his gaze from them. "It's not like I didn't get an education, you know. I can read and write."
Kagome smiled, visualizing a small Inuyasha learning how to read at his mother's knee. "Did your mother teach you?"
"I saw a shodoshi when I was little. It's not that big of a deal."
She did teach you, didn't she? Kagome sent a silent thanks to his mother's spirit. She taught him how to read, how to write, and tried to expand his knowledge of the human race. Her respect for his mother blossomed. "I don't even know about the shodoshi. What did they do?"
Inuyasha pushed himself off the tree he leaned against and joined the group, crouched next to Kagome. "It's a performance. From what I remembered, there was a bunch of poetry and music, then the monks would do the same type of chants Miroku's doing. They told different types of poetry - kyoge, shuku, waka and a bunch of other stuff like that. "
"Do you remember any of the poems?" Sango asked.
He shrugged. "No. I fell asleep."
Kagome pressed her fist to her mouth to bite back a giggle.
"Idiot! You fell asleep during a Buddhist service?" Shippou smirked.
"I was only 5-years-old!" Inuyasha snarled at the kitsune. "You'd slept through it too!"
"No I wouldn't! I'd stay awake."
"You little..."
"Inuyasha!" Kagome scolded as he yanked up Shippou by his shirt.
"I take it you enjoyed the shomyo?" Miroku stood on the other side of the bushes that shielded them from him, his staff tucked in the crook of his arm, a quirky grin on his face.
The group stared at Miroku. Kagome sighed. In the process of talking about the chants and arguing, their voices had grown louder and louder until they disturbed him.
"We're sorry, Houshi-sama," Sango apologized, the blush returning to her face.
"Yeah, Inuyasha's being an idiot again," Shippou muttered.
Inuyasha thumped the kitsune's head and dropped him. Kagome half-heartedly scolded him. Sorry, Shippo-chan, she thought. You had that one coming.
"It's no problem. I was finished." Miroku smiled at them. "Let's go get some breakfast."
Kagome lagged behind the group as they headed back to the village they stayed the night before. It seemed weird to her, to see Miroku actually practicing the beliefs of his faith and hear Inuyasha reciting in-depth knowledge about them.
It'd been several months since Sango joined them and nearly every day, she learned something about her friends that surprised her. They all fought for one common goal, but she was amazed at the complex levels of each of their personalities that made them all so different. No one is really what they seem like on the surface, she mused. A stranger would think Miroku-sama nothing but a letch and Inuyasha a standoffish hanyou.
Both of the men, Kagome realized, were very smart and knowledgeable about the ways of the world and in Miroku's case - of faith. They just had different ways of showing it. They could both be very mature at times, Kagome thought with a smile.
"Come on, Kagome! You're lagging behind again! Can't you keep up?" Inuyasha shouted.
Kagome closed her eyes and scowled. And sometimes Inuyasha acted just like the immature hanyou she found pinned to Goshinboku.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Third time's the charm on this. I knew exactly the image I wanted to portray, of Miroku chanting his Buddhist sutras while the group looks on. I wanted to explore a bit more of the dynamic between the Inuyasha-tachi in this chapter, but it wound up being more of a study on some of the things we don't often see - Miroku actually practicing his faith and Inuyasha revealing a bit of his life while he was still young and with his mother. I had a hard time writing this one and this was the third effort. "Shomyo" is the word for a Japanese Buddhist chant. The chants sound like music. The original title of the chapter in "In the Language of Love" was "Song." Inuyasha explains the meaning of the word "shodoshi." They were performance preachers that were popular back in 12th and 13th century Japan.