A/N/: Hey guys! I hope this didn't take too long to update— here's the third chapter!
Disclaimer: I could lie, say I'm Rumiko Takahashi. But I'm not. Therefore, I do not own Inuyasha.
Mornings were not his thing.
He couldn't imagine how they were anyone's 'thing'. It was a wretched feeling, being jostled out of a peaceful sleep by a loud ringing, especially with ears like his. His sensitive little dog ears flattened themselves into his thick argenteous hair. He groaned and rolled over, shoving his face into his pillow. He was enjoying his dreamless sleep until that godforsaken alarm clock jolted him right out of it. Why had he set an alarm clock in the first place? It wasn't as if he had to go to school or work or anything...
Work!
He cursed loudly and stared at his alarm clock. It was six in the morning, not a natural waking time for him. However, Kagome insisted he get to work about an hour and a half before the store opened like she did, so they could clean up and get the store into shape. She had assigned him the same hours she worked, which meant every day the store was open, he was there, working all day long until it closed.
It wasn't much of a problem, honestly. She said he got a lunch break, and any day the store was open late, a dinner break as well. His demon blood allowed him to not get as tired as a normal human, and he doubted working in a bookstore would be fatiguing anyway.
He was surprised by his pay. It was a considerably larger amount than he had expected— about twenty-two hundred yen per hour, if he remembered correctly. He supposed she was being generous since he was the only other worker at her store. He knew she wasn't splitting all her profits with him fifty-fifty, of course, but it was much higher than minimum wage.
She asked that he be in the store by seven thirty, since Shikon opened at nine that day. He figured that he could give himself an hour and a half to get ready and go to the store. It wasn't as if showering, eating, and getting dressed took forever.
A shower and two cups of ramen later, he was regretting his former words,
What the hell do you wear to a bookstore?
He remembered Kagome was wearing nice clothes — not business casual nice, just... nice. A simple looking skirt and button down top that matched. Casual, but not sweatshirt-and-jeans casual.
He looked at the time on his clock and cussed. Grabbing his cleanest looking pair of jeans and red button down shirt, he threw them on and was out the door.
He took to the high rooftops, leaping off the middles of buildings as quickly as he could, more for the sake of not being seen rather than being late. He could make it to her store with time to spare — he'd just rather not have anyone look at him while he did it.
He missed this feeling of freedom he got when he was near flight, soaring above high rises and everybody's heads. It felt even better after fifty years of not being able to.
He dropped to the ground soundlessly right beside Kagome, who was standing in front of Shikon, fumbling around in her pocketbook for the keys. She started violently at the hanyou's sudden appearance.
"Keh, that scared you?"
Kagome put a hand over her heart and raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, it's not everyday someone casually drops out of the sky. I'm glad to see you're right on time, Inuyasha!"
He snorted. "Not gonna be late— it's my first day on the job."
She smiled at him and unlocked the door. They both stepped inside, and Kagome locked the door behind them, explaining that she would unlock them when the store officially opened later. Inuyasha followed her behind the wooden counter and into the storage room behind it.
"This is where we keep all our shipments when they're delivered, so if we ever get a delivery, make sure you have them bring the boxes back in here. If it's locked, there should be a key behind the counter," Kagome explained, gesturing to the many boxes in the room behind her and a small drawer on the back of the counter.
"Got it."
"So yesterday, we got a whole bunch of new shipments, and I only managed to tag them with their prices. What you and I have to do now is put them onto the shelves. All the shelves should be clearly labeled by genre, and each genre is sorted in alphabetical order by the authors last name, like they do in the libraries. Sound familiar?"
Inuyasha nodded. The bookstore was quite like the library he had worked in, just not as large and had a slightly different system.
"So do you think you've got it down?" She received another silent nod.
"Whoa, control your excitement," she drawled sarcastically. "Alright, the boxes are heavy, so just grab one at a time and start..." She trailed off as she watched Inuyasha stack four boxes into his arms and walk out of the storage room.
"Show off," she grumbled as she grabbed her own box labeled 'biographies' and headed for the back section of the store where the biographies were shelved.
"I heard that." Kagome's head shot up, staring at hew new employee who was already on the second floor with a box open, neatly sliding them into their appropriate places. Shaking her head in amazement, she opened up her own box and began on her work.
After she finished each box, she went back into the storage room for a new one. There were many boxes stacked up in no particular order. Normally, it would have taken her days to finish stocking the books, and during those days she would get more shipments. But with Inuyasha's help, who worked almost triple her speed, they had nearly finished the contents of the storage room, with only five or six more boxes left to go.
At nine o'clock sharp, Kagome grabbed her keys and unlocked the door, pushing it wide open and holding it in place with the door stopper. "Now we just wait for the customers. I'll man the register, but I'd like you to just hang around and help anyone with anything they might need, alright? If anyone has a question you can't answer, come to me."
"Got it." Inuyasha crossed his arms over his chest and stalked away from the counter. For a first day on a new job, it's a hell of a lot easier than I thought it'd be.
Kagome smiled at his retreating form.
Their first customer that morning entered about ten minutes after they opened. She practically danced in on her dangerously high stilettos. She wore what Kagome could only call 'business sexual', with a rather low V-neck top and short clingy skirt. Her black gloves were holstered by her middle fingers, and her eyes were an unnatural magenta hue, giving away her identity as a demon.
She sauntered up to Kagome and grinned, revealing her sharp white fangs. "Hello dear. Could you help me find a book?"
Kagome pointed to Inuyasha, who was watching them from the second floor. "You can ask him, up there." The scantily clad woman nodded her thanks and turned to look up at him. She gasped loudly, her hands coming up to her mouth.
Kagome watched the woman with worry. "Are you alright? What happened?" The woman shakily pointed at Inuyasha.
"Oh, his HAIR!"
Well, Kagome wasn't expecting that.
With a delicate flying leap, the demon soared onto the second floor, right next to Inuyasha. "Oh, what lovely hair! Such a pretty silver color. It's not even dyed, you can tell."
Inuyasha's eye twitched. He looked very uncomfortable, and Kagome had to stifle a giggle at his rather dumbstruck expression. "Can I help you?"
"No, but you can let me help you. Such pretty hair, but you haven't taken care of it, have you? There's so many split ends..."
"W-what?" Inuyasha fervently tugged his hair out of her grasp and backed away. "Isn't there a book I can help you find or something?"
"Hmm? Oh yes, yes there is. Now what was it called?" The woman tapped her bright red lips carefully in thought, before rooting around in her small purse. "Aha!"
She handed a slip of paper she had fished out of her purse to Inuyasha. His eyes scanned it quickly and he raised an eyebrow. "Nihongami no Sekai: Maiko no Kamigata?" He opened his mouth to comment, but decided against it and quickly snapped his lips closed. "That should be this way."
Kagome watched them carefully from her place behind the counter, keeping an eye on her new employee as he led the demoness down the stairs and into the informational section in a back corner of the store. The woman's book choice wasn't very odd, compared to what some other customers bought. It was surprising, the number of people who had not-so-subtly commented that they would have liked an 'adult' section in the store. Kagome wasn't usually one to judge, but if she had to, she would have pegged this customer to be one of those commenters.
Inuyasha scrolled faster than she could follow through the books before plucking one off the shelf and dropping it into the girls hands. She watched as his ears swiveled on his head and then towards the door. Kagome followed and was surprised to see that someone was indeed coming in through the door.
He wasn't very tall, and he was quite obviously a demon. He had a very irregularly shaped bald head, with two or three lone strands sticking out of the very top. Kagome knew him— he had come into Shikon many times before looking for books, usually about hair growth and repair.
"Hi, Manten!" Kagome said, waving cheerfully at the newest arrival. "If you're looking for what I think you're looking for, I'm sorry to say we don't have any new books for you yet. They're backed up on the order list, I'm sorry. Try again next week, huh?"
Manten grunted. "Fine, fine. I'll be back then." He turned and was about to walk back out when he suddenly stopped. His large snout went higher into the air and he sniffed loudly. "Is that a... hair demon?"
A hair demon? Kagome thought. She glanced over at the woman who was now on her way towards the counter, presumably to buy her book. She stopped short, her face twisting up in disgust and annoyance as she spotted Manten.
"Oh, Yuraaa!
"Good lord, what are you doing here?"
Manten turned towards Kagome, his beady eyes sparkling. "Higurashi-san, your bookstore is truly a magical place, for it has brought me the one thing my heart has sought."
The demoness, Yura, rolled her eyes and leaned on the counter, tilting her head towards Kagome. "He's been hitting on me for weeks, and begging me to give him some hair, or a wig, or something like that. Can you believe him?"
"Uhhh...?"
"But Miss Yuraaa!" Manten whined. "Please, I'll do anything for you. Just one date, and a little bit of hair!"
"So not worth it. And I can't make hair grow, dolt," Yura scoffed as she pulled money out of her dainty purse and handed it to Kagome for her book. Kagome packed it into a pink paper bag with the store's name on it, listening to the banter as she did. She looked up and spotted Inuyasha back on the balcony, perched on the railing with his legs dangling over the side, looking amused at the interaction between the two demons below him. Kagome raised an eyebrow at him and he seemed to startle, immediately swinging off his position from the and landing on the second floor's ground, acting like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Kagome's eyebrows furrowed. She waved her hand dismissively at Inuyasha, trying to tell him that she didn't care, but he didn't seem to notice as he leaned against the bookshelf with his arms crossed instead of taking his former position.
"Thank you," Yura gritted out between her teeth as she snatched the bag from Kagome and practically fled the store, with Manten running pitifully behind her.
"But Yuraaa...!"
Though using youki-powered attacks were common in Tokyo, Kagome was still surprised when Yura lashed out and knocked Manten off his feet with a few strong strings of hair that appeared seemingly out of nowhere right outside the store.
Kagome watched in concern before turning to look up at Inuyasha. "Should we do something?"
Inuyasha shook his head. "Nah, they'll be fine." He gestured towards the window, where Manten was brushing himself off and pursuing Yura once again as she took off.
They watched the two demons until they disappeared out of sight.
The clock struck one o'clock in the afternoon, and Kagome yawned. After Yura and Manten's exit, the store had slowly filled with more and more customers. It wasn't as busy as the Ginza or anything, but they had a very fair amount of customers, and even though they were only halfway through their day, Kagome needed a break.
The craziness has slowly wound down, and the last customer was ringing up her copy of The Tales of Genji. Kagome handed her the change with a smile. "Have a nice day!" They waved to each other.
As soon as she had left, Kagome ran to the sign on the front door and flipped the sign to 'Closed'. "Inuyasha!" she called out. The half demon was by her side in an instant, appearing seemingly out of nowhere.
Kagome 'eeped'. "You have got to stop doing that!" He grunted, but made no further comment.
"Anyways, we have a lull in business. Want to come grab lunch with me? I'm starving; you must be too!"
Inuyasha vehemently shook his head. "I'll stay here and watch the place."
She shot him an incredulous look. "It'll be locked and the lights will be off. No worries, Inuyasha. Nothing has ever happened before, and it won't happen now." She grabbed her purse and keys from off of the counter and looked at him. "Come on, let's go."
"Nah, really. I'm not hungry." He refused to meet her eyes. He knew he sounded suspicious to Kagome, but he just couldn't go.
"Inuyasha." Kagome's forehead creased as she tried to figure out why her new employee wouldn't go. "Look, it's not that I don't trust you in here alone or anything. I just thought it might be easier on both of us if we took our lunch break together."
He didn't reply, but adamantly crossed his arms. Kagome gave him a once-over. He hadn't come in with a bag or anything of the sort, and he didn't seem to have a wallet on him.
"Did you forget your money?"
...Crap.
He wished he didn't feel so stupid about a little thing, but he did. He'd be damned if he let a girl pay for him. He may have his quirks, but his mother had taught him to treat a lady, not the other way around.
"Keh, so what if I did? Not hungry anyway."
Kagome huffed. Why were guys always so prideful? Was there some sort of rule in the guy handbook that forbade girls to pay for them?
"Well, you're coming anyways. It's your first day of working here— let's celebrate!" When she saw he still made no move to follow, he let out an exasperated sigh. Seizing him by the wrist, she pulled him out the doorway, and locked the door behind her.
Inuyasha was a little too stunned to speak as his new boss pulled him out of Shikon and onto the sidewalk. The air was brisk, and the sun dimly shone through the clouds. It wasn't a gorgeous day, but it wasn't gloomy either. It was neutral— just how he liked it.
He watched silently as Kagome closed and locked the door. "Look, I heard there's this wonderful Tibetan place that opened just a few blocks down. I've been dying to try it, but I wouldn't have gone alone. You'll be doing me a favor! Does that make you feel better?"
Inuyasha didn't say a word and wouldn't meet her eyes.
"Okay, how about 'I'm your boss and you have to do what I say?'"
He sent a withering glance her way.
"Eh, you're coming either way. " She gave him a push towards the general direction they were headed, and then began walking beside him. Knowing she had won, Inuyasha followed.
It wasn't a very large restaurant, but a wonderful venue nonetheless. Kagome had ordered from them both, since Inuyasha kept mostly silent through their whole trip. Halfway through their meal, she attempted to make light conversation, but he evaded most of her questions or ignored them altogether.
Their server obviously had some issues with Inuyasha, what with all the not-so-conspicuous glances directed at him.
Both Kagome and Inuyasha noticed. Neither commented.
But Inuyasha did not miss Kagome 'forgetting' to tip their waiter as she paid the bill.
He still said nothing.
A/N: I hoped you enjoyed this chapter! Just a few notes—
1. Argenteous - silvery
2. Also, Inuyasha's wage is approx. 17.00 USD. The amount of research I had to do about wages in Japan was overwhelming, so I sort of took a gander at how much he'd get paid. Mind you, 2200 yen is well above Japan's minimum wage, and from what I can tell, something Inuyasha can live on if he's alone.
3. I understand the job process is probably really far off how one in real life would go, but that's what I'm aiming for. I'm trying to show that Kagome doesn't really have any experience hiring workers, and Inuyasha doesn't have experience applying for a job, and that they kinda reached some unspoken compromise to wing it. If this is much too casual or unrealistic, please inform me and help me make it better!
4. I'm planning on introducing Sesshomaru in either the next chapter, or a chapter very soon. I want your guys' opinions— would you rather have him and Rin as a couple, or a father/daughter relationship? I don't mind either relationship, and I honestly can't think which would better suit this story. Thoughts?
Thanks again everyone! All my reviewers, followers, and people who fave'd me are AMAZING.