Now I'm feeling conflicted. So, I'm typing this, but Jade wrote it. So…do I still do the author's note? We'll just call it a typist's note and all is well. I just have to say it's a good thing that I can read her handwriting…man…Jade, you're killing me over here.

My eyes are bleeding.

Warning: This contains plot that might disturb some readers. Please do not proceed unless you feel prepared to deal with violence and implied sexual content.

I Believe in Yesterday

Part 9

"Dude, I am so glad we aren't fighting." Kagome told Sango. She had just been out in the hallway where someone, or perhaps some people seemed to have gotten into a Mountain Dew fight. The fact that Inuyasha's backpack was laying in a still-drying sticky puddle of yellow-green helped her suspicions along to some degree.

Sango was sitting on her bed, braiding half of her hair as the other half sat already finished, tied neatly at the end with a red rubber band. She looked rather restless, but the fact that her homework was lying before her in a stack of completed work added a slight smugness to her expression as well. "I heard some weird noises a little while ago." Sango commented. "What were they?"

"Let's just say the hallway is awfully sticky, and Inuyasha and Kouga better clean it up." Kagome sighed. Sango giggled mischievously, tying off her other braid at the same time.

"That sounds sort of wrong, if you know what I mean." Sango joked, "But seriously, they're so immature some times."

"But everyone's been fighting." Kagome looked out the window. "Well, not everyone, I suppose." This was true. Kagome, Sango, Shippo, and Miroku were trying their best to stay out of it with varying techniques and degrees of success. Miroku wasn't down on their floor harassing people quite as much, simply limiting his activities more to the campus and his own floor with only the quick visit to Sango so that she never forgot his groping hands and the constant threat of their appearance. Shippo could frequently be seen with Kikyo, which seemed to be curbing the brown-eyed girl's anger.

"The other day we went to an art exhibit." Kikyo had told her yesterday as they worked at the coffee shop together. "He's interesting, and a lot less needy and whiny than some people."

These sort of jabs were a very large part of conversations with either Kikyo or Kagura as of late. It was just something that they had all learned to ignore and avoid commenting on, lest they themselves be dragged into the feud.

"Heeeey!" Rin flew into their room. She was practically glowing with happiness. "How is everybody?" Rin had visited a couple of times before the fight had began, but it seemed she was very quick to return to "sweet sweet Sesshoumaru loving," as Kagura so aptly put it.

"Hey Rin, we are doing just fine." Kagome emphasized the pronoun, gesturing to Sango and herself. "But I think everybody else is ten seconds from a crazy stabfest."

"Oh no." Rin's expression was so full of worry that it was almost comical. "What happened?"

Kagome and Sango told her the saga of their collective trip to the mall and everything else that had happened since then. Kagome added a small explanation of her theory on how the hallway got so sticky at the very end of this story, through which Rin kept the same expression of intense concern on her sweet face.

"Okay…I'll try to see about Kagura and Kikyo." Rin decided, her lips still pursed and a tiny line in between her eyebrows. "If Kouga and Inuyasha are throwing things at each other, it'd be best for us all to stay out of the line of fire for now."

"You just don't want to get sticky." Sango grinned and winked. Kagome sighed, privately thinking that Miroku was definitely a bad influence on her roommate. "Not that I'd blame you. Anyway, Kagome, wanna go down to the darkrooms? I'm all done with my homework, and I've got five rolls just begging to be developed!"

"Yeah, okay." Kagome agreed. It would do her some good to get away from the stressed out atmosphere of the dorms right now. "Good luck, Rin."

"You guys have fun!" Rin waved enthusiastically as she quickly set out towards Kagura and Kikyo's room.

ooooo

Inuyasha was combing his long dark hair, a towel draped around his shoulders as he glared at Kouga and tried to look as scary as possible. Kouga was doing the same exact thing to him from his side of the room. He never knew why it was that Kouga didn't seem to like him and vice versa from the start. It was something that naturally clicked in his mind. Kagome was nice. Miroku was a pervert. Kouga was a stupid prick. But now…it was beyond that.

Why does it bother me so much?

It's none of my business if Kouga and Kagome kiss.

But when I saw…

I wanted to tear his throat out.

Inuyasha paused to fish a cashew out of the bowl of mixed nuts next to him. He saw in very little time that someone had already been at them. Not one cashew left. "You fucking ate everything except the fucking walnuts?" Inuyasha demanded angrily as he surveyed the pathetic contents of the bowl.

"I don't like walnuts." Kouga shrugged. "Besides that, you fucking set 'em out for anyone to eat."

"They're still mine!" Inuyasha remembered the Mountain Dew fight and all the shampooing he had been forced through just to get it out of his hair. He grabbed the bowl of walnuts and wildly threw it. It sailed over Kouga's head, and the plastic dish bounced off the wall, falling and dropping walnuts all over Inuyasha's own bed. He was staring at the walnuts littering his bed in a state of shock. The smart move would have been to send walnuts scattering all over Kouga's bed. Kouga's face was a bit dumbfounded as though he couldn't decide if Inuyasha had meant to do this, or was just so angry that he was a raging wave of unpredictably random acts of violence. One look at Inuyasha's face suggested that Inuyasha had done this out of stupidity, and Kouga began to laugh.

Strangely enough, Inuyasha felt himself laughing along with his roommate. It just struck him as hilarious. So both Kouga and him were near hysterics when Rin poked her head in the door swiftly. She couldn't help it, she wanted Inuyasha and Kouga to be friends, too. Plus, Inuyasha was Sesshoumaru's brother, and even though they weren't on close terms, Rin felt it was a bond that must mean something to both men.

But when she found the two caught up in uncontrollable bouts of laughter, she was sure that the two had made up on their own, and she tried to quietly close the door, but the two boys heard the noise of her movement. They looked up in alarm, the shared moment of mirth now utterly forgotten.

"Fuck, now people will think we're fucking chummy buddies." Inuyasha swore angrily.

"You started it." Kouga shot back lamely before they went back to combing their hair, trying to look scary and manly while doing so.

ooooo

"What are you guys up to?" Rin came into Kagura and Kikyo's room, which was so thick with tension that Rin could have cut the air with a knife. Kagura was hand sewing what might have been a second kimono while listening to an Offspring CD and shooting dirty looks at Kikyo, who looked like she was doing homework and generally ignoring all other goings-on.

"Well, I'm sewing." Kagura shot another mean look Kikyo's way. The pale girl didn't even seem to realize what Kagura was doing. Perhaps not even that she was in the room.

"What about you, Kikyo?" Rin chirped in her happiest voice.

"Trying to work." Kikyo grunted in reply.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kagura hissed the challenge, causing Rin's eyes to widen in fear.

"I can't work with you constantly playing that racket." Kikyo explained coldly and for a few moments nothing but music could be heard. "You've been listening to Offspring all afternoon." Kikyo broke the silence finally.

"Yeah? Well go study in Shippo's room and leave me and Dexter alone." Kagura stuck her tongue out at Kikyo.

"Um…" Rin tried to speak up, but she was ignored in favor of the battle that was escalating before her eyes.

"This is my room as well, and I have every right to be comfortable in here." Kikyo stood up indignantly.

"Well, you're the one with the problem." Kagura countered. "You just like to piss and moan about everything. I wish your new roommate the best of luck."

"You're impossible!" Kikyo gathered up her homework. "I'm going to the library."

"Good." Kagura folded her arms in pretended indifference.

Kikyo stomped past; stopping at the door where the room change request form was still hanging, waiting for the required signatures. She opened her pen and signed her name, turning a cold glare on Kagura before she walked out in a huff.

"Oh no." Rin felt a bit useless at that moment.

"Bitch." Kagura said to the girl who had already left before turning to Rin. "I bet she is going up to Shippo's, he's the only one who'll listen to her complain."

"Kagura…maybe," Rin wasn't exactly sure how to approach the situation. "Maybe you should try to be a little more understanding."

"She's the one who isn't understanding at all!" Kagura insisted. "She signed her name! That bitch." Kagura flopped down on her bed. "I want to be alone." She said after a drawn out sigh.

"Okay." Rin backed away unsurely. Could the two really not recover from their fight?

ooooo

Sango and Kagome were in the darkroom together. They usually used the buddy system because of the extremely creepy Professor Chizome who was the head of the photography department, and who they both agreed made them feel uncomfortable almost all the time.

"Ha! Look at this shot I got." Sango hung up a picture proudly. "Whoa, look at the way Kouga is looking at Kagura." Kagome turned and examined the photo in question. Kouga was staring at Kagura with large, lost blue eyes full of longing that he had obviously not known would be witnessed by anyone else. Much less captured forever in one of Sango's candid shots.

"I hope everything works out." Kagome finally spoke, her voice soft, sympathetic.

"Yeah, me too." Sango agreed before her cell phone suddenly rang. "Oh, just one second." She pressed the talk button to stop the cute little tune it played. "Yeah? Oh, hey Kohaku." Sango moved the cell phone away from her mouth. "Kagome, I'll be back in a bit." She smiled and left the dark room as Kagome went back to her work.

Ten minutes had gone by since Sango left, but Kagome was not at all concerned. Sango often took quite a long time with Kohaku on the phone. He was her only sibling, and the two were very close. This all seemed fine to her, and soon enough, she heard the door clicking open and shut behind her.

"Tell me how this one is, Sango." Kagome pinned up a photo with a few little kids playing in the local park that she was rather proud of.

"It's very…cute." An oily voice told her disdainfully. Kagome whirled around to come face to face with Professor Chizome himself.

"What are you doing in here?" Kagome stepped back warily, only to find herself trapped between him and the counter of the small room.

"I'm a professor, I can do as I please." Chizome-sensei took a step towards her, pushing himself against her. "How can you take such a cheerful photo? Is it because you've never been afraid? You should feel all that life has to offer, not only the sweet, but also the bitter."

"Get away from me." Kagome moved to shove him away, but he caught her hands easily. Then he pulled her off her feet and she hit the door before collapsing on the ground. Chizome-sensei grabbed her hair.

"Now, if you make a sound, I'll kill you." His hands went around her slim neck. "And then I'll do it anyway. I have no problems with cold bodies." Kagome wanted to scream, but the noise caught in her constricted throat. She struggled helplessly as he pinned her down on the ground, forcing her to spread her legs. Kagome began to cry then, silent tears flowing down her cheeks as he tore into her.

"What's the matter?" he asked as he shoved himself against her, inside her. "You came to college to learn, didn't you?" Kagome struggled, but it was no use.

No use.

ooooo

Sango finally hung up with Kohaku half an hour later. She started to walk back toward the darkrooms when she saw a dazed looking Kagome walking drunkenly down the hall, stumbling over herself and seeming rather distressed and out of her wits. "Hey, Kagome, over-work yourself?" Sango asked, concern in her voice as she patted her roommate's back. "You look tired. Maybe you should go get a nap."

"Yeah." Kagome croaked expressionlessly as she continued her progress away from the photography department and back to her room. Sango frowned slightly, but went back to the darkrooms to finish up her own work.

Kagome made it back to her own room with only one minor incident.

"You look like shit." Inuyasha commented in a speculative tone. She tried to walk on, but he grabbed her arm. She pushed him away as a wave of cold fear washed over her at the forcefulness of his grip. "What the hell? Kagome? Are you crying? What the hell…" she ran away and slammed her door against his questions before collapsing on her bed, starting to cry when the phone ring. She picked it up robotically, but noted with no emotion that her hands were shaking horribly.

"Yeah?" she answered.

"Your friend is still in there." Kagome cringed at Chizome-sensei's voice. It was like drowning, just hearing it. She couldn't find her voice or her breath, all she could do was cry. "She looks like fun, and there's nothing like having two girls in one afternoon."

"No!" Kagome found her voice then, yelling into the phone harshly. "Don't…please…not Sango! Not her, too…"

"Then you must never speak of this to anyone. No one would believe you, in any case." Professor Chizome was so smug, it made her want to vomit. She thought she actually might vomit, she felt so disgusting. "I'm a professor, and you're only a student."

"I'll never tell, please just don't do anything to her." Kagome begged. At least Sango would be spared feeling this way.

"Good girl." His sneer was almost visible from the tone of his voice. Then he hung up the phone.

Kagome cried herself to sleep.

When she woke up, she showered for an hour before throwing her old clothes away and then showering again.

She didn't tell anyone what was bothering her.

ooooo

The End (Of Part 9, That Is)