"Well hello, if it isn't the lovely miss Sango," smirked Koga as she arrived, glaring at him furiously. "Looking happy as usual."
"Spare me the compliments, smart-ass," she snapped, dropping her stuff next to Kagome. An entire day with mister I'm-better-than-you. Oh joy.
"Miroku's gone to get us some ice-cream," said Kagome cheerily, ignoring the enmity between her two friends. "He should be back any minute – if he doesn't find someone pretty on the way to flirt with, of course."
"Wouldn't surprise anyone, would it?" mumbled Inu-yasha, his head hidden under a baseball cap. Sango looked at him curiously. Seeing him shielding his face from the sun like that, it made her remember a question she had been pondering for a long while now…
"Inu-yasha… are you an albino?" she asked hesitantly. He sat up and pulled the cap off his face, raising an eyebrow. Koga let out a howl of laughter. (Another thing Sango despised by the way. His laughter.)
"Does it look like it?" Inu-yasha asked.
Well, it did not. Inu-yasha was very tanned, his entire body a rich brown colour.
"No… it's just… your hair…"
"Yeah, I don't know where that comes from," he said casually. "I played with Koga when I was little. It probably came from fright when I first saw his face."
"Yeah right," snorted Koga. "You were as white as my granny even before I came on the stage. But honestly Sango, him? An albino? Are you really as stupid as you seem or is it just a show?"
Luckily, at that moment Miroku arrived with five big cones of ice-cream, otherwise it could have turned really nasty. Sango felt like her blood was on fire. One day, one day real soon, she was going to take her Dictionary of Latin Phrases, and she'd make it go straight through Koga's head, and she'd wipe that stupid smirk off his face…
"Do I feel hostility here?" grinned Miroku, sitting down beside Sango. She growled. He laughed.
"Koga, Koga, how many times do I have to tell you you're not allowed to make her angry!" he exclaimed, punching the other boy lightly in the shoulder. "I mean, you take away all the fun for me!" Sango gave him a Look. He suddenly choked and put a hand to his throat. His breath came in ragged gasps as he put a hand on the ground to hold himself up.
"Miroku?" she asked worriedly. "Miroku, are you OK?!"
He was almost blue in the face now, falling over to lie on the ground. He reached his hand out to her.
"I… have always… been wrong…" he whispered softly. She took his hand. Funny, it felt normal, not clammy or anything at all. She noticed Koga was sniggering too, and started to have a bad feeling about this. Miroku spoke his "last" words.
"Looks… can… kill…"
At that moment she dropped his ice-cream in his face.
A while later, when Sango had calmed down, Miroku had stopped laughing and cleaned the ice-cream goo off his face and they were all becoming a bit restless, they decided to go for a swim. Sango had her bating suit under her clothes, and just pulled off her shirt and shorts, silently grumbling about Miroku and, most of all, Koga. She was getting started on all the "s"-words again. Sniggering, sly…
Koga pulled off his (STUPID) rugby jersey.
…sexy.
Ooooops.
'Alright, so he has a fine body. Get a grip on yourself, he's still the same smug bastard,' Sango thought to herself, mentally slapping her cheeks and feeling a bit ashamed of herself. She had just never imagined him to look that good.
"Are we all ready?" asked Miroku, standing up and brushing some sand off his legs. He looked mighty fine too of course, but she had seen him without his shirt on before.
Er. Not because she had, well, been intimate of sorts with him or anything… even the thought made her blush, jeez. He had taken it off at her party for some unexplainable reason. Maybe because there were a group of cute girls watching him.
Just maybe.
"Sango?" She turned around to see Koga smirking at her. God damn it, couldn't he do anything but smirk?
"Yeah?" she asked angrily.
"Are you planning on standing there all day? 'Cos the others have already left." He pointed down to the sea, where Miroku just made a graceful dive into the waves. Blushing, she started walking down the beach briskly. She was sure she heard him chuckle behind her.
"Sango my darling!!" shouted Miroku as she came near them, Koga tagging along behind. "How I've missed you! Come give papa a hug." She looked at him suspiciously. Why the sudden overenthusiastic welcome? She started to walk warily towards him, but then her brain clicked. Miroku. Wet. Hug. She did not want that.
Unfortunately, Miroku was way faster than her and caught her as she tried to flee, squeezing her tight.
"YAAAAH!" she yelled, making several seagulls rise in fright. "Cold cold cold cold!"
Miroku released her only when she was thoroughly soaked, chuckling happily. Koga was laughing so hard he had to sit down, not to fall over. Sango glared at him for a while, then as she realized she was now very wet and cold, too, she smiled devilishly. Throwing her arms around Koga's neck she rubbed her face in his chest, shedding as much water as she could on him.
"YAAAAH!" he yelled, trying frantically to disentangle himself. "Cold cold cold cold!"
Sango finally let him go, laughing loudly.
"Serves you right. Come on, Miroku, I'm betting you can't duck a dumper as well as I can!" She jumped into the waves, giggling happily as they pulled her out to sea, returning just before they pulled her too far out.
"You often come to the beach, don't you?" asked Kagome as she swam close to her friend.
"Every spare minute," smiled Sango. She was a true beach fanatic, not happy if she couldn't breathe salt air at least a few times a week.
"You're an expert when it comes to handling the waves, I can see that," Kagome commented. "Looks like Koga might finally have found some competition! He's always been the best at knowing how far out he can go. Of course, he's very strong. Might be because of that."
"Hey, I'm strong too," pouted Inu-yasha, breaking the surface close to Kagome.
"I know, you big baby. Is the wee boy a bit jealous because I complimented Koga?"
"Me? Do I look like the type of person who is jealous?"
"Jealousy is your second name, Inu-yasha."
"It is not! Honestly, we've been hanging out for how long and you still don't know what my middle name is? You wound me, girl…"
"My name is not girl! Honestly, we've been hanging out for – "
Leaving the pair to their bickering, Sango swam over to Miroku, whose legs were visible over the surface of the water. Just as she came close to him he flipped the right way up, coughing up sand and spluttering.
"Looks like I won the bet, huh? I think I can duck a dumper rather better than that."
"Bitch," muttered Miroku, combing through his hair to rinse it from sand and seaweed. "I don't know how you can stand having all that hair – not that it's not beautiful, because it is, of course. Everything about you is beautiful, darling. But isn't it a dreadful nuisance? I don't have very long hair and it's still driving me nuts."
"Imagine my situation," grinned Koga, swimming over to them both. "I'm thinking about getting it cut."
"No, you mustn't!" said Sango, surprising herself. She hated his hair, didn't she? Koga raised an eyebrow.
"So you think it looks good this way?"
"Er… that's not it!" she stammered. "It's just that… I couldn't stand it if your hair was shorter than mine. It'd upset my view of the world."
"Oh-ho," grinned Miroku. "That's the problem, huh? Well then Koga, as you can see you can under no circumstances cut your hair." Koga was still giving Sango a kind of funny look.
"I should, just to bother you." And of course, he smirked at her. This was getting boring.
"Yo, Kagome, Inu-yasha, come over and join us!" he then yelled, interrupting them in mid-bicker. They were a pair alright – no one but themselves would be able to stand that much fighting in a relationship. They swam over to the others, narrowly avoiding being dumped on the way.
"I just can't stand all these waves," Kagome panted as she reached them. "I think there is a kind of rock pool a bit further off. Can't we go there for a while?"
The others agreed, Sango rather reluctantly. After climbing around a few cliffs they found the rock pool, which was unfortunately full of people of the same mind as themselves. Oh well.
"Yay! Calm water!" squealed Kagome, jumping into the pool immediately. Inu-yasha followed suit, back-flipping into the water after her. Of course Koga had to be better. He jumped up from a cliff and vaulted in the air before breaking the surface of the water perfectly.
"Show-offs," muttered Sango.
"It's still the same old rivalry over Kagome," said Miroku with a smile. "You'd think they'd be over that by now, but nooo." He dived into the water and she followed him, almost wishing that two boys would fight like that over her.
But that was a stupid idea.
*************
They played in the pool for a long while, until they became cold and decided to go warm up back where they had left their stuff.
Sango looked up after laughing at a joke Kagome had just made and saw Miroku gazing at a tall, handsome boy who was playing beach volleyball close to them.
"Miroku, what are you looking at?"
"Hm?" He shook himself slightly, coming out his thoughts. "Oh… I was just watching that boy over there make a fool of himself."
"Yeah right," snorted Inu-yasha. "Sure you were."
The comment puzzled Sango, until she noticed a pretty girl sitting at the other end of the volleyball pitch.
'Bet he was really checking her out. That must be what Inu-yasha meant, too.'
"I'm gonna go back to the beach," said Koga, standing up. "Anyone joining me?" He was looking at Kagome while he asked his question, but it was Miroku who answered.
"Yeah, I'll come." After a slight hesitation Sango accepted the invitation, too, and the three of them made it down to the shore. (Inu-yasha and Kagome had both declined.)
"Come here, Miroku, I'll teach you a thing or two," Sango said. "When a large wave comes that you don't have time to take properly, you have to go under it. Otherwise you'll end up getting properly dumped and that's no joke. You see, if you take it like this…"
Koga, growing bored by the basics Sango was showing the other boy, swam off and left them alone.
"Thank you, honey," said Miroku after a while. "I think I'm starting to get it now."
"Don't you "honey" me. And get your hand away from there before you have an accident. Like banging your face in my fist."
"Aw, come on Sango, you know you love it."
"Pervert."
She sniffed and turned away from him, not wanting him to see how close to the mark his comment had hit. Her eyes sparkled as she looked out over the sea. The sky was so blue, the water so inviting… The waves seemed to call out to her. Come, Sango. Come and play with us…
"I'm going to go a bit further out," she said. "Care to join me?"
"Do I look crazy?"
"You don't want me to answer that."
Before he had time to retort she swum away, taking long, powerful strokes and soon putting a considerable distance between her and the beach. She lay back and relaxed. Stupid Miroku, couldn't he stop flirting with her? Or rather, couldn't he stop flirting with everyone else? She grumbled for a while about two-timing – make that one hundred and sixty-seven-timing actually – boys. Not that they were really together or anything, but still…
Where had Koga disappeared to? He'd been right beside them and then he was gone.
'Ah, good riddance.'
She shut her eyes, feeling the waves gentle tug on her body. Well, not exactly gentle. It was very strong. And she was…
…shit! Sango's eyes snapped open as she realized how far from the beach she had actually come. She quickly turned around, starting to swim back. But the currents in the water were far too strong. Shit, shit, shit! Oh, she was so STUPID!
"Help!" she yelled, waving her arms frantically. But Miroku was too far away to hear her. He waved back cheerily, not seeing the plight she was in. She looked around wildly to find someone within hearing distance. But of course, no other swimmer was STUPID enough to venture out this far.
She paddled furiously with her arms and legs, but didn't make much progress. She'd be worn out before long, and then she'd have no chance against the currents in the water. What then? Death out at sea?
She felt her strength giving out. Not much time left…
Suddenly someone actually came closer to her. Someone was swimming fast, with purposeful strokes, coming to save her.
"Help!" she cried feebly, blinking salt water from her eyes but still not seeing properly. She felt a strong arm go around her shoulders as the person started to pull her back to the shore. She tried to help them by swimming as much as possible herself, but she was now shaking with fatigue and could hardly move. Her savior noticed this and turned his head towards her.
"Stupid… bloody… idiot," hissed Koga.
