Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Kanyru stepped out of his carriage and something seemed out of place. Rika and Yoshi were there to meet him with smiling faces. "How's the set up coming?"
"Well there was an earthquake and all the supplies fell into the ocean but we recovered them all this morning," Rika said and she saw his face get red. "Don't worry though, we can still set it all up and it should be dry enough by the time all the triggers are set off."
Kanyru calmed down, thank kami, or else he would have been out of thousands of dollars. "Where is Aoshi?"
"He has been ill for about 2 days now," Yoshi shook his head, he seemed less gayer when he talked to his superiors. "He should be up and okay by tonight or tomorrow, we had a doctor come check him out."
"What's he got?" He looked at them and they looked at each other then back at him. They seemed to be very secretive.
"Just the influenza, the new age sickness," Rika said swiftly enough and Kanyru dropped his suspicious look. It had taken Aoshi a little longer than she would have thought to recover; she tried to stay away from his room. Yoshi and Megumi had taken turns taking him food and he had requested, 'Rika is to stay away from me.' So she stayed away, but she would sometimes peek at him when she knew he was sleeping.
"I trust you will tell my men when they arrive how and where to set up the explosives," Kanyru said getting back in his carriage and being carried away to his mansion somewhere with in the city.
Yoshi turned to Rika and they headed back to the house, when they got there Aoshi was sitting under the same tree Rika had saw him under the first day she met him. That was only 2 weeks ago, he had said that to her, but she wasn't sure what it meant. Did he think it was too early for him to trust her? To confide in her like he had already? To drop his guard when she was around? Was he secretly battling a crush for her? She laughed as she thought of the last one. She abruptly stopped when he looked up at her with his empty gray stare.
He had regained control of himself, and she was afraid that if she talked to him that he would lose it. She smirked and kept walking; she walked into the kitchen and sat at the table. It was so boring around there with out Kenshin and the others. She hoped that they would be there soon; she was ready for all of this to be over. Yoshi came into the kitchen and sat across from her at the table.
"The soldiers are here; they just entered the north of the city and are setting up camp there. How should we tell them to set it up?" He looked at her but she didn't seem to be in any mood to plot.
"Normally I guess, you can explain it to them, and we can go through and pretend to check later. The gun powder is all useless now. Do you feel like going by your self, I think I need a nap," she yawned after she said it.
"I guess I could go by myself, but you wouldn't feel so weak if you would eat more than a few bites of food. Megumi left some rice balls in the kitchen for you," he was worried about her; she seemed to be falling apart. He didn't know if it was homesickness, or person sickness. He pushed off the table and stood up he gave her one last glance before he headed off to talk to the men.
She sighed letting her head fall on the table, she wanted to talk to him, but she couldn't. She was the most confused she had ever been, she just wanted to know what was wrong. He was worrying her, she was sure he had never acted like that before. She heard foot steps outside and she hoped it was Aoshi coming to talk to her. The door slid open and it was Aoshi, she turned her head leaving her forehead to rest on the table. I guess hoping and wishing really worked, or not.
He looked at her and walked into the cooking part of the kitchen and shut the door behind him. She surprised him, why was she sitting in the kitchen with her head on the table? He wanted to ask her, but he knew he wouldn't be able just to ask her without having a conversation. He wasn't ready to talk to her again, or ever if he could help it. It hurt to think that he had to cut himself off from her, he had to do it for Misao. So that he didn't do something he would regret, and that Misao would become jealous of Rika. He wasn't going to ruin their friendship; Misao really didn't have very many friends.
He found the food Megumi had left for him and he noticed another plate, whose was it? He remembered Yoshi and Megumi had both came into his room to eat with him that morning, but he wasn't hungry then. Was Rika not eating, or was it just simply another plate for him. He walked back into the kitchen and Rika was asleep face first on the table. She did look a little weak, we walked back and grabbed the extra plate and set it in front of her. She looked up at him and pushed the food away from her.
"Pitiful," was all he could muster as he left her alone to pout. Had he caused her to act like that? She needed her strength for the next coming days, she needed to eat. She would eat eventually; she would get hungry and crave for it. It was what had happened to him, he didn't know how long he could go without eating, he knew it wasn't long. He sat on the porch and began to eat; he heard the door behind him open.
He cringed hoping she wasn't going to talk to him, but he heard the foot steps walk straight past him. Apparently she had gotten the hint, but she still seemed upset, she wasn't Aoshi's problem anymore. By the time he had finished eating Yoshi had returned and seemed in a bad mood. "What happened?"
"They are blocking the road from the north; Kenshin won't be able to get through. When they see them they will capture them and execute them," he said with a huge frown, all was lost as far as he was concerned.
"Yoshi?" Rika said coming out of her room. She didn't look good at all.
"What is it? Are you feeling better?" Yoshi walked up to her; she was clenching the side of the house. Just as he reached her she fell forward and he caught her and flipped her around so that he could see her face. "Rika!" He shouted setting her down on the deck and started to shake her, "Wake up, do I need to get Megumi?"
Rika didn't respond she was completely gone; she didn't look as if she would recover any time soon. Yoshi looked over at Aoshi who was staring off into space. "Aoshi, watch her, I will go get Megumi-san." Aoshi kept his head straight; she had starved her self that was it. He didn't need to watch her, he was sure she wasn't going anywhere soon. Yoshi got up and ran to get Megumi anyways whether Aoshi was going to watch her or not.
After Yoshi had disappeared Rika sat up, and Aoshi looked at her but she didn't notice him. She mumbled something and stood up, what was she doing? He watched as she kept repeating the same incoherent word and started to walk to the farthest part of the yard. He sighed and decided he should get up and follow her; finally they were in the groove of sakura trees. Rika fell on her knees and looked as if she was chanting something, was she going insane? Did starvation make people act crazy? As far as he knew they did, and then she fell forward and pass out again.
He walked back to the main part of the yard and waited for Megumi and Yoshi, he told them what had happened and they all walked over together. By the time they got there she was already gone, who knows where a psycho babbler would go. They searched for hours but they couldn't find her, they decided to settle in for the night and Megumi started to make dinner.
Yoshi was trying to think of a way to get a correspondence to Kenshin to tell them to enter the city from the west. Megumi brought in their dinner and Aoshi knew the prefect idea. "Megumi can pretend she is taking medicine to a small village in the north and when she runs into Kenshin, she can tell them."
Yoshi of course thought he was brilliant and Megumi agreed to do it. Now everything was set, they really didn't need Rika anymore. Where ever she was Aoshi was praying that she wasn't getting into any trouble.
Rika didn't know what was going on around her; she knew that she didn't want to be near Aoshi. She had finally remembered the whole night and she hated herself, and she was embarrassed. The things she did and the things she offered, the way she enjoyed it, she was sick. She wanted Sanosuke, she wanted to sleep, but the visions wouldn't let her. She had to get out of there; Sanosuke would never forgive her for that, no matter their relationship. She knew that even if the gun powder was still wet that people would die and there would be a huge fire. She couldn't help stop it anymore; it was something that needed to happen.
She looked around and everything was blurry the only thing she noticed was the rock. She ran but it felt like walking, and fell against the large stone. She could stay there for the night and then she would go back into the well in the daylight. No one would ever look for her there, she lay down and fell asleep.
When she opened her eyes it was very sunny outside and her vision was still a little blurry, she had had horrible sleep. Her dreams were plagued with flashbacks and she had a dream she had told Sanosuke what had happened. He had resorted to ripping her head off and that was when she woke up. She stood up and headed for the well, it was weird how she knew where everything was now.
Finally she found the bone eaters well and didn't bother to drop the bucket down, she wasn't coming back. She plugged her nose, even though she knew she wouldn't feel the freezing water. She jumped and landed in Kagome's well house, she looked up and saw streaks of light coming in through the cracks in the wall. Now she could rest easy, she had set everything up to happen just like it was supposed to. She climbed out of the well and saw Mrs. Higurashi before she passed out again.
Rika opened her eyes and saw the blurry outlines of what she recognized as Kagome's room. She rubbed her face and sat up; she remembered this room too well. When she didn't have a place to go and she actually saw Kagome this was were she would stay. Apparently Kagome was still in the feudal era doing her whatever stuff. She felt a little better, but she felt bad for leaving everyone on their own. She got out of the bed and walked around the room, she stopped next to Kagome's desk. There was a history book lying right out in the open, quickly she picked it up and turned the lights on. She tried to open it but it was too heavy, she went and sat on the bed and set the book in her lap.
She flipped to the page Kagome had bookmarked and of course it was on the year, 1886. She started to read and everything she had gone through was mentioned, including who first started the idea and how Kanyru killed his son. It gave a back ground story on Kanyru Takeda and even a very wrong account of Kenshin. It described Kenshin as a viscous killer who killed with a backwards sword because it was more torturous. It told about the earthquake that dumped the gun powder into the ocean and how they still used it in houses. It mentioned an explosives expert by the name of Okani Sagara, who learned the art from an unnamed father.
She wondered if this woman was her, her nickname was Okani, but Sagara? She recognized the last name, but couldn't place it was it Aoshi's? She knew Kenshin's was Himura and she never heard Sanosuke's. She shivered thinking of being married to Aoshi, she couldn't of, and he was with Misao. Maybe that was why he was freaking out so much, did Aoshi love her? If he did then he was right for staying away from her, and she was right to come back. She looked back down at the name and couldn't place it on the page. She reread the page over and over again and couldn't find it, the whole sentence was gone. She shut the book and sighed, so now she wasn't included in history at all. All the better that she stay in her own time.
There was a knock at the door and she told whoever it was to come in. It was Kagome's mother, "Are you hungry?"
Rika smiled and nodded and Mrs. Higurashi brought in a tray of food. "Did Kagome tell you anything?"
"She told me you were able to use the well," she set the tray in front of Rika and sat at the edge of the bed. "She didn't mention where you ended up, last time I saw her she said that you weren't where she was."
Rika remembered that face from when she had bumped into her in the market place. "I went to the Meiji era, it was quite fun." Mrs. Higurashi made a surprised face and Rika reached into her pocket and pulled out the money purse, "I think this is yours."
She took the bag from Rika and fingered it, she couldn't believe it, and she thought it was gone forever. So Rika knew that she had once traveled through the well before, "Thank you, how did you know it was me? I thought I was disguised pretty well," she laughed a little.
"How could I not notice your face," Rika laughed to, "I spent some of the money, I am sorry."
Mrs. Higurashi looked fine with it, there was still quite a bit left. She spotted the book off to Rika's side and picked it up. "Catching up on your history?"
"Yeah my name was in it, but I read it again and couldn't find it. I've been forgotten," she sighed opening up to the pages and letting Kagome's mother read it. "It was somewhere in here, but it wasn't really my name, but a form of my name. It said Okani Sagara, which Okani is my nickname from my adoptive parents but I don't know where Sagara was from."
"You were supposed to stay in that time and marry someone you met I'm guessing," she set the book back down on the bed. She remembered her adventures in the same time. "I chose to come back; I was once in the history books, but not anymore."
"Really?" This shocked her, what else happened in that time that she could have been in history forever for. Why had she turned it down? "What happened?"
"Well, I met this older gentlemen named Saito and we fell in love but he was married. He was promoted as the emperor's second in command, and then I fell in love with the emperor. I feared for my life so I ran, when I came back I went to school. In class they were talking about the affairs of the emperor and how they had killed her, and she was the first adulterous ever executed in Japan," she was looking at her fidgeting hands all the time. She had no problem telling this to Rika, they had been close for a long time now, but remembering hurt.
"Oh, that's horrible, I never learned about anything about that," she said it never happened because she left, but she wasn't destined to die. She felt bad thinking about Sanosuke, "Did you ever meet Kenshin?"
"No, but Saito knew him, but we never officially met," she stood up; apparently she didn't want to talk about it anymore. "I hope you never regret coming back, sometimes we are born in a different time then you are destined, you and Kagome are both lucky to of been able to go where you belong." Then she left Rika to sit alone and eat her dinner.
"She's wrong, people aren't born in the wrong the time," Rika said to herself pushing some sushimi into her mouth, Kagome's mother made the best food she had ever tasted. She could easily marry someone of this time and love them as much as whoever Sagara was. But she couldn't help but imagine herself married to Aoshi or Sanosuke or even Yahiko, have a bunch of children eventually. Here she would have to find someone new and fall in love with them, there she had already met whoever it was. She thought about Kaoru and hoped that they had found her in good health and that she would have her baby and both parents would be very happy.
She felt like crying, but she would be unhappy there, it wasn't her place. She looked back at the book sitting next to her. Was Kagome planning on staying in the feudal era? She opened the book to the index and searched for Kagome's name or anything about it. Finally she found something about demons and opened to it. It told about mythical demons and a mythical priestess named Kikyo. It said that the priestess died and then was later brought back and eventually she was brought back as a clay doll. The clay doll wandered Japan sucking up the souls of the dead while the other one helped to defeat the mighty demon Naraku. 'Nope, nothing about Kagome or Inuyasha,' she thought closing the book and throwing it on the floor. Whatever Kagome was doing that she thought was so important, it really wasn't. Kagome wasn't even in the history books, unless she was Kikyo, but the picture of the woman looked nothing like Kagome.
For the next few days Rika helped around the house and helped Souta do his homework and collect Kagome's. She helped grandpa do whatever it was he was doing everyday, mostly cleaning. She really wanted to wait and talk to Kagome, what was Kagome's plans after doing whatever it was she was doing? One day Rika helped clean out the well house and she stared at the well the whole time. She didn't want to jump in it as much as she wanted Kagome to come out of it. After sitting in and watching all day she went in for dinner.
As she was helping Mrs. Higurashi clean dishes she saw something white out in the yard. She assumed it was just Buyo and continued their conversation about the dinner. Then Inuyasha came into the house and they both looked at him shocked.
"Where is Kagome?" Mrs. Higurashi asked getting something for him to eat, and hopefully Kagome.
"She isn't here?" He scowled looking around the room until he saw the food. Immediately he grabbed it and started eating, Rika got done with the last dish and said goodnight. She was tired from waiting all day; she reached for the door handle and heard crying inside the room. She opened the door and saw Kagome lying on her bed. Kagome looked up when she heard the door open.
"I'm sorry, Inuyasha is down stairs just so you know," she shut the door and walked towards the guest room.
"Wait," She heard Kagome whisper from her door behind her. She turned to see the tears being wiped off of Kagome's face. "Why are you here?"
"Um…, I don't want to be there anymore," was all she could say, this wasn't how she imagined this conversation going down, and she had thought about it all day.
"Why what happened to you?" Kagome waved her into her room, Rika went in and they both sat on the pink rug on her floor. Kagome was always caring about other people other than herself.
"I just don't want to get involved anymore, I did as much as I could do," she said remembering the question she was dying to ask. "When you are done are you going to stay with Inuyahsa?"
Kagome blushed she didn't know what to say, "I guess I really, I don't know, I will have to see what happens."
"I saw myself in the history book under the name Okani Sagara, and then I just disappeared," Rika hadn't meant to make her uncomfortable. She suddenly had the feeling that Kagome had never even thought about it, now she would and she would be driven crazy just like Rika was now.
"Okani Sagara? Yeah she was the woman who told them how to place what stuff where right?" Kagome tried to remember what she heard in history class. "Well I'm not even in the history books," she laughed nervously, well, she didn't think she was.
"Your mother said that most people are born in the wrong time and we are lucky enough to go where we belong," Rika remembered and Kagome's face went sour. "Do we belong there?"
"Well you do, you are a important part of history, I'm not so much," Kagome said nonchalantly she was in deep thought. She was just Kikyo in modern day; two of her couldn't exist in one time. But Kikyo was technically dead and the people of that time really needed her powers. She wasn't Kikyo, she stammered to herself, she was Kagome she may look a little like Kikyo but she wasn't her. They were so different in so many ways; Kikyo was cold and Kagome was playful.
"Kagome," Rika kept repeating until Kagome came out of her head and apologized. "Do you really think I belong there? Was it stupid of me to leave?"
"I think you should go back, there is probably more people who love you there. I mean my family loves you, but you know your real family and your adoptive family don't seem to care," Kagome felt embarrassed she didn't feel like was helping at all, she just wanted to get back in to her train of thought.
"I think I will stay here a few more days, just to make sure it's the right decision," Rika got the hint and stood up and walked into the guest room.
Kagome tried to remember what it was like to just live a normal life, was it really what she wanted? She didn't like school now, once she loved to be at school with all her friends. She heard her room door open again, and she felt herself start crying again. Was she really meant to be in the feudal era, her mom believed she did?
"Kagome, why are you crying?" She heard Inuyasha ask as he shut the door behind him and sat in front of Kagome like a dog.
A/n: A little Inuyasha in there for you, of course I don't own either show or manga or anything at tall.
