Chapter Four : The Butterfly

At two in the afternoon she received a call from her husband. Kagome was cutting a pumpkin into half when the phone rang.

"Hello dear," she answered immediately the moment the receiver met her lips.

"Hello. I smell something," said her husband in a serious voice.

Kagome giggled. "As if you know."

"Tell me about it."

"Well, I went to the nearby bookstore yesterday. I suddenly felt like cooking something new, experiment a bit."

"Alright. So what did you buy?"

"Some American recipes for pastries. But I'm not baking anything today. I'm just making some pumpkin soup, that's all."

"I never had pumpkin soup before. Does it taste nice?"

"I don't know honestly."

"Well, it doesn't matter. Actually I have something important to talk to you about when I get home later. In fact," he paused, "I just left my employer's office as we speak. Do you want to guess why?"

Kagome pursed her lips. She did not like guessing games, and she knew her husband was not good in them either.

"I prefer you get home and talk about it. Is that okay?"

"Come Kagome, bear with me for awhile."

"Did you get a promotion?" she asked tentatively.

Her husband laughed at the other side of the line. "No, no. What would I do with a promotion?"

There was something wrong with the way he laughed. Kagome had always thought his laugh sounded strange anyway, like a kind of yelp.

"It's nothing like that," he continued. "Not even close. But again it doesn't matter. I will explain everything to you once I get home."

"Okay dear. What time will you get back?"

"As usual. Around seven o'clock."

Kagome then said goodbye to her husband. She hung up the phone, returned to the kitchen and continued cutting the pumpkin into many pieces.

At three she was almost done and was left with tidying up the kitchen. The pumpkin soup tasted better than she expected, she noted with a smile, and yet she was not sure if that was how it was supposed to taste. Like her husband, Kagome never had pumpkin soup before.

She threw the peelings away in the trash and wiped the counter. She washed the dirty utensils and tasted yesterday's curry in the pot, which she had reheated. She checked the rice. Then, as if something stirred her memory, Kagome glanced at the refrigerator and walked to it. On the door itself were at least fifty newspaper coupons and advertisements pasted with tape neatly side by side, covering more than half the door. From far it would have probably looked like a collage. Most of them were in black and white print; a few in colour. And none of them were more than three months old.

In the most bottom right-hand corner a small, almost missable advertisement was attached.

It was for a rice cooker, in sale at 70% discount.

Kagome peered at it for a long time. Then she rubbed at one edge of the advertisement, which had curled outwards.

"So that is the pumpkin soup?" Her husband inquired, after he had returned from work and they were seated at the dinner table. "Well I sure hope it's edible."

"Just eat it," she said. Kagome moistened her lips and watched her husband eventually sip his soup, slowly. "Is it good?"

"Mm-hm."

"Why don't you eat it with the bread?" she asked again. "You should eat it with the bread."

Her husband gave her a look and smiled at her patiently. "Don't worry, I will."

Kagome bowed her head and grinned in embarrassment. "Sorry. Oh. Speaking of which, you said you had something to talk about?"

"That's true," replied her husband, dipping his bread in the soup as she suggested. "Well it's about the dog last night."

"The dog?"

"Yes the dog. The one which couldn't stop barking last night. Do you remember?"

"Oh, that dog. Well what about it?"

"So what exactly did you remember, Kagome?"

"Well..." Kagome scratched her head and tried to recollect the incident. The strange thing was the harder she tried, the more cloudy and unreachable the memories became. It was as if she was trying to make a long-distance call in the middle of a desert.

"Well?" Her husband continued to look at her, chewing his bread slowly.

"I.."

"You can't remember, can't you?"

"No, I guess not. But what does it have to do with what happened at work?"

"That's because it's all connected, Kagome. A matter of cause and effect actually." He stopped to swallow his food, and wiped his mouth with a piece of serviette. "This is what happened: A dog was barking outside our house last night persistently. You awoke and asked me to take a look, but instead I told you to go back to sleep. Later that night you woke up again. I was not beside you. You were worried so you went downstairs, and that is where you saw me outside with the dog at the gate.

"When you took a closer look, you realized we were talking to each other. To be exact we were reciting the old names of countries. But honestly, it was just a front. We were talking about something entirely else before you came. I did not want you to know what we were really talking about. I did not want to scare you. The dog did not get it, I guess. It said point blank in front of you that I had to come back. When you heard this, you immediately turned heel and rushed back into the house. Do you remember all of this, Kagome?"

Kagome's breathing turned rapid as the past events of last night suddenly caught up with her. How could she forget? That large dog and its inhuman sandpaper voice.

"That was no ordinary dog," her husband spoke again. "It came from the other side."

Kagome took a while to digest those two words. Other side? they echoed in her head. She looked at her husband for an explanation but he appeared composed as ever, as though he had said nothing.

"So why did you leave your employer's office this afternoon?" Kagome asked him instead, her voice suddenly straining in her throat.

"You must understand that what happened last night was very important. I've been called to come back. I have no idea how exactly the dog came here, but he has told me he is not leaving until I come with him. There is a war on the other side. My presence is required and I have made my mind up."

Other side, he had said it again. Her husband stopped to pull a Marlboro pack from his trousers. He lit a stick and inhaled it deeply for several seconds. "Now that I'm leaving, I don't have to go to work any more. That's why I've tendered my resignation at my workplace today."

It was exactly eight pm sharp then. Kagome watched as the smoke from his stick billowed and took shape before her, almost like a living thing, and her eyes searched for anything she could recognize in it. And then she saw something-moving, growing, forming, and alive. It looked like a butterfly.

Outside behind the iron gate, the dog waited patiently, and loyally. This is it for you, he spoke, in his usual ear-scratching gravelly voice. This is where your beginning starts.

[A/N: The butterfly is a symbol of beginning.

Constructive reviews are much appreciated, and thank you again for reading! :)]