Not my world. Just my playground.
LITTLE GIRLS AND ODEN
Laundry basket. Photo album. Sheets.
Shane ran over every item of that girl's he'd come into contact with, trying to remember where he'd seen her name. At first, he thought perhaps he had glimpsed it, labeling some object or other as belonging to her. But try as he might, he couldn't remember where he'd seen it. In fact, he didn't even know how it would be spelled – Romanized.
Shane wasn't especially familiar with the Japanese written language. But he did know that Kagome's name would be written in hiragana, and that there were no kanji symbols for it.
It disturbed him.
It disturbed him so badly that he never actually managed to get out of the parking lot, although he did find his car and lock himself in.
Kagome, Kagome, Kagome. Where the hell did he know her from?
That had to be it, it had to. He must have met her sometime in their youth, sometime long…
Sad, she looked so terribly sad.
She was a pretty child, a little chubby perhaps, but with full red cheeks and lips and big gray dawn-sky eyes.
Tears glittered in those pretty eyes, and he could almost have wept himself at the great effort she put forth to restrain them.
She carried a handful of rather withered flowers. Neither the flowers nor the girl herself had stood up well to the rain, and Kenjiro began to make his way toward the tombstone she'd curled up against, pulling his raincoat off as he did so.
"Where is your mother, little girl?" he asked gently, afraid of frightening her.
"She doesn't know I'm here," the little girl answered. Rain mingled freely with her tears, so he couldn't be quite sure that she was still crying. He shrugged off the coat and draped it over her shoulders.
"Why are you here alone?"
"I miss Daddy." There was a heartbreaking catch in her voice, and a massive lump rose in Kenjiro's throat. He knelt beside her.
"Is this your daddy's grave?"
"Yes."
"I'm sure he's happy that you came to see him, but I bet he'd be upset if you made your mother worry."
It wasn't the right thing to say, and he regretted the mild rebuke immediately. Tears welled up in her eyes – evidently she hadn't been crying – and her plump lower lip began to tremble.
"Now, now!" Taking hold of the raincoat, he pulled it up over her dripping black locks, holding it in place so that it shielded her from the rain.
"What's your name, little girl?"
She sniffled, face half-hidden in the shadow of his raincoat. "Higurashi Kagome."
"Well, Miss Higurashi, where do you live? And how did you get here?"
"I walked."
He waited. "I walked from the shrine where I live. It's that way." Pointing a chubby little finger southwards, she looked up at him expectantly.
He stood, and looking down the street, he could just make out the gates of a shrine in the rainy mist. "Come on, then."
He hoisted her up onto his hip, now completely soaked. It was a comfortable weight, and he wondered idly as he made his way out of the cemetery if, supposing he ever had kids, they would be as adorable as the little girl in his arms.
Shane shivered, despite the stifling summer warmth. The girl had been the exchange student; those eyes were a dead giveaway. But who the hell was Kenjiro?
Was Kenjiro his look-alike in the photograph?And even if he was, why was Shane remembering Kenjiro's experience with the little girl?
Kenjiro, Kenjiro. Jiro was a traditional name for the second born son… Ken… Ken often preceded those 'number' names, and meant 'golden.'
A sudden image of Sesshoumaru's odd golden eyes flashed before him, and he shivered again as another queer memory assaulted him.
"I still think it's a bad idea."
"Tokyo's a big city. The odds of a chance encounter are minimal."
"That kind of shock could dispel the whole illusion, Sesshoumaru."
"She's only four. He probably wouldn't recognize her if he saw her."
"Bad idea. Very, very bad idea. It's not like he has time to wait for me to create a whole new world for him, Sesshoumaru. I'm glad you worked out your differences, but he really cut himself short on time."
"He hasn't seen her in five centuries. He only wants to be near her."
"Gah, you would have to say that. Fine. Just don't blame me if the whole thing goes straight to hell."
Shane pulled his knees up to his chest, breathing hard. Sesshoumaru – Sesshoumaru he barely recognized, but no one else could pull off that high and mighty demeanor so well, and no one else had his brilliant amber eyes. But his hair had been long and silvery, and his ears were pointed, like those Star Trek aliens, and purple tattoos marred his face and arms.
And the other thing – God only knew what that was, the redhead with the pointy ears, just like the look-alike Sesshoumaru's. Whatever it was, it had a big, bushy red tail on its rear end.
But he did know that they were talking about him, or that Kenjiro person, or maybe the both of them. And he knew the four-year-old child that had them so concerned was the little girl in his memory. And she was the same girl that had him so freaked out right now.
He shuddered yet again. What the hell was going on?
A sudden banging on his windows startled him, and he looked up to see a very upset Sonja slapping her palms against his beloved Pontiac GTO.
He rolled down his window.
"What the hellis going on here, Shane? How could you do that to her?" She shoved her face into the car with him, causing him to back away just a little. "You've been weird all day, but I have never, never seen you act like such an asshole. Not to anyone. How could you?"
He stared at her a moment, then grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her through the window into the cab with him. "Shane! Shane!"
Shane's car, like his guitar, was a classic, a 1965 GTO. At this particularly moment, he was less interested in its history than he was in its speed, however – zero to sixty in less than six seconds. He peeled out of the parking lot, much to Sonja's dismay, and careened into the road that ran along the campus's eastern boundary.
"Shane!" Sonja protested again.
"I am so fucked up, Sonja," he admitted, gunning the engine, finding an odd comfort in the horses below the hood. "And I have no fucking idea why."
She stared at him. "Just slow down, Shane."
Though his nerves craved action of some kind, he reluctantly pulled his foot away from the gas and shifted into a lower gear.
"Take a left here." Sonja pointed at a stoplight. He obliged her. "Go two blocks, and make a right," she instructed.
After a few more turns, he found himself at a diner.
Sonja pulled the slim strap of her purse over her shoulder. "Come, boy," she commanded, smiling wryly.
Too upset to argue, he did as he was told and followed her inside.
"We'll need two cups of coffee, cream, and a glass of water, please."
The waitress brought the requisite items to the out-of-the-way corner booth Sonja had selected.
"Now. You're all screwed up. I can see that. Now tell me what's gotten into you." She blew gently into her mug, and a plume of steam streamed over the lip.
"What happened to Kagome?" he asked, dodging the question.
"Maverick was going to take her back to my room. I'm not going to leave her alone until she gets an apology from you, mister."
He grunted a little, but hadn't expected anything less, not from Sonja.
"Now."
"I can't remember where I saw her name," he blurted.
"She told us at dinner, remember, she said…" Sonja's voice trailed off. "You went to get some more fries. Hmm. Well, you must have heard us using it."
"So why do I also know there are no kanji symbols for her name?" Shane stared into his own coffee cup.
Sonja blinked. "Shane…"
"When I got to the car, I had these weird… memories, almost. Except, I wasn't me – it was like I was watching them from someone else's perspective. And she was in them."
Sonja looked into her own cup. "When I first met Maverick," she said after a moment, very quietly, "I felt like I knew him."
"It's not – "
"Let me finish, Shane." Something in her voice stilled his objections. "I knew, from the minute I first saw him, that he was going to grope me. It was just a feeling I had. I also knew I was going to be with him for the rest of my life. I can't explain it; I've quit trying. But every now and again, he does something – some little thing, just a particular turn of his head or a movement of his hand – and it's like I'm in a whole other time, another place, and we're completely different people." She found his eyes. "Shane, he says the same thing happened to him when he met me."
"When I saw that monk in Kagome's picture, I thought I'd gone insane. I know – I know – I've seen him before. Not Maverick. But that person. I feel like I could almost tell you his name, like it's on the tip of my tongue."
"What's happening, Sonja?" Shane hunched into the corner of the bench, resting against the wall. "She makes me so crazy."
"I don't know, Shane," Sonja admitted softly. "I do know that I got weird feelings around you when we first met, too, and that played out okay. Just stick it out, please? Things happen for a reason – I do believe that. Maybe she's supposed to meet us."
"I don't believe in that stuff, Sonja, you know that. All that reincarnation and karma and fate crap."
"I don't know that I do, either. But I know there are things I can't explain, that no one can explain. Maybe Kagome's one of them."
Shane took a sip of the coffee, but it was still too hot. "I just feel so guilty around her! Like I really screwed something up. And I don't even know what it is!"
"Maybe the other guy really hurt her, and you're just picking up the feedback off that," Sonja suggested.
"Maybe."
"You still have to apologize to her, you know. Cuz you really did screw up tonight."
"Yeah."
Sonja stretched. "Do you want to get something to eat?"
His stomach growled his assent, and she called Maverick to see if he and Kagome wanted anything.
"He wants a burger and onion rings, surprise, surprise. And she didn't know what to get, so I guess we're – "
"Stopping at the all-night Japanese place on Fifth."
"What?"
Shane grimaced. "She likes oden."
"What the hell is oden, and how do you know she likes it?"
"Oden's a Japanese soupy dish – kinda fishy, it's got eggs… you put it in a daishi broth. And I have no idea how I know she likes it. But she does."
