AN: Here is the next chapter! I would have had this out before but over here in Austin, Texas, we have had nine days in a row of heavy thunderstorms, which has made problems so I could not write and post. I would also say that the next update might not be until late next week seeing as how my seventeenth birthday is tomorrow, Saturday July 3rd. For my birthday, my parents bought me two different DVD box sets, Hellsing and Revolutionary Girl Utena, so I will be busy watching those as well as writing. I will not stop writing this story, though. I would also like to thank all my reviewers out there! You have all encouraged me to continue on with this story and just for you guys to know, I believe this will be my first story that I am actually going to finish. So, now on to the chapter!

I'll Wait Forever

Chapter 3:

Melissa looked up from her work scrubbing down the counters where someone spilt some coffee as she heard the little golden bell ring as the front door to Rika's House of Coffee opened and hit it. She smiled as she saw the young woman from the past two weeks walk into the shop. She remembered the first time she laid eyes on the eighteen year old girl. She had walked in down and depressed that day and every day since then, she had come to the shop at the same time with the same expression on her face. Although Melissa didn't know the girl's name, she was sure that the girl knew her name by now since she worked the morning shifts at the shop everyday, including weekends.

Melissa quickly started the cappuccino machine and grabbed an over sized chocolate chip muffin, the same thing the young girl asked for everyday. She waited patiently as the girl walked up to the counter and, even though she had everything ready for the young girl, she had to wait until the girl ordered before she could hand over the late morning snack to her.

"What would you like this morning?" Melissa asked in a pleasant voice.

The young girl before her sighed and answered, "A cappuccino and a chocolate chip muffin, please." Melissa nodded her head and went to the cappuccino machine just as it finished.

"Here you go. Your total is six dollars and thirty cents." The young girl dug in her purse and fished out the amount and paid Melissa. Taking her late morning snack, she set off to sit at the same back corner seat she had sat in from her first time in the coffee shop, already lost to her inner musings.

Melissa sighed and walked into the back room. There she took off her apron and called out to a coworker. "Hey, Ichiro, do you think you could take over at the counter for me for a little while?"

"Why?" came her reply from Ichiro who was already grabbing his apron and heading to the counter.

"Because I have something I need to take care of. It'll only be for an hour, maybe less."

"Fine but you owe me."

"I know," Melissa groaned and headed back out to the tables to find that down depressed eighteen year old girl. She reached the table and tapped the young girl on the shoulder to get her attention. The young girl jumped somewhat startled and blinked out of her thoughts.

"Yes?" she asked the coffee shop employee.

"Can I sit with you?"

"I guess."

"What's your name?" Melissa asked her.

"Kagome. Yours is Melissa, right?"

"Yes. You got that from the name tag, didn't you?" The girl looked down at her coffee sheepishly while she nodded. "I figured as much."

"Why aren't you at the counter taking orders?" Kagome asked while she looked up to met Melissa's silver eyes.

"I wanted to talk to you."

"Me? Why?"

"Well, for the past two weeks you've been coming in here at the same time everyday, ordering the same thing, sitting at the same spot and looking out the window with the same down and depressed expression on your face. I thought you could use a friend."

Kagome smiled slightly for the first time in two weeks and said, "Thanks. I probably could use a friend right now."

"So, what's bothering you?" Melissa asked.

'Should I tell her? I mean she's been so nice so far but can I trust her with what my problem is?' Kagome asked herself. 'Yes, I think I can trust her with this.' With her decision made, she looked up to Melissa and said, "As long as you don't tell anyone about this, I guess it couldn't hurt to tell you."

"I promise, I won't tell another soul," Melissa said seriously, wondering what was so serious to make Kagome ask her that.

"Three years ago, on my fifteenth birthday, I met a guy," Kagome started.

"Ah, guy problems."

"Well, more like fate problems."

"Fate?"

"Mmhmm. When I met him, he had had a troubled past and at first I was quick to judge him. I thought he was an arrogant jerk before I got to know him. But as time went by, I started to like him. I got to see a softer side to him he let no others see, a tender side that would make any person see over the stereotypical tough guy act he put on. But his old girlfriend came back and wanted him back. I would see the two together thinking that they were alone but I didn't care, just as long as I was with him and near him I was happy.

"With his old girlfriend back, it became a struggle with him because I look so much like her. I would wonder whether he would look at me and see her in my face or think of me as a replacement for her at times. I was happy to be by him but, still, I couldn't help but wonder those thoughts and cry when I did see the two together. They seemed perfect together in every way.

"As time passed by, however; there was something in his attitude that made me believe that he wanted to be with me more than his ex. He would do things he never did with her with me, show me his tender side with out any barriers up to hold his tough guy act, things like that.

"About three months ago, his ex finally got the picture that although he still cared for her, he was no longer in love with her. The whole time before she hated me and had tried to hurt me in several ways to get to him. That just made him feel for me more, I guess.

"Then, two weeks ago, I had to leave. I had no choice in the matter, I had to go. We were torn apart from each other but up until then, I had thought that he just wanted a close friendship with me. Right before I had to leave, he embraced me and asked me to stay with him, a thing he would never had done in the past. When he embraced me, I felt his emotions, felt him shaking and his grip on me tighten as I spoke to him, telling him I had to go. I could feel his own pain at loosing me.

"I had figured out shortly after I met him that I was in love with him but I always thought that he would never return my feelings. Then I have to leave and he does something that could have been the starting of our relationship. It was fate that brought us together and it was fate that gave us all those problems dealing with his ex and her own problems that became our problems. It was fate that made me have to leave. And it's fate that is making me stay away from him."

"What's keeping you two from seeing each other? Your parents? You can see him if that's the case since you're eighteen."

"No, it's not my mother. His parents died while he was younger and my mother and father separated. I use to live with my mother but she adored him and my father never knew about him. It's fate, that's all it is."

"But how? How come you can't see him? Fate has nothing to do with it if you choose not to go see him."

Kagome sighed and looked out the window, placing her right hand under her chin and her elbow on the table. Her coffee and muffin were both gone since she had stopped to continue with her snack every once in a while. 'Should I tell her the truth? Can I trust her with that?'

"There's more to this story than what you're telling me, isn't there?" Melissa asked quietly.

"Yes. The guy's name is Inuyasha and he is a hanyou," Kagome said while she continued to look out the window.

"A hanyou? But those are so rare and even still, only a trained miko can see through concealing spells. Plus, the only youkai or hanyou named Inuyasha is the legendary hanyou of five hundred years ago. No youkai or hanyou that has had offspring have ever named them Inuyasha. He was the only one."

Kagome's head shot up to look at Melissa with questioning blue-gray eyes. "I am a trained miko and what's this about a legendary hanyou?"

"You're a miko? Then what youkai am I?"

"You're a dragon youkai in humanoid form. I started to train when I first met Inuyasha and have developed my powers now. And what is this legendary hanyou by the name of Inuyasha?"

"Inuyasha was a great and powerful inu hanyou. He is said to have been the lover to the high miko Kikyou who was the protector of the Shikon no Tama and later betrayed her to take the Shikon no Tama himself. Legend says that fifty years later, a young girl that met up with him became the new protector of the jewel. It goes one about their travels together since the girl shattered the Shikon no Tama and an evil youkai started to find and take the shards to increase his power. They pick up allies, two humans and a kitsune kit, and battle the evil youkai to return the Shikon no Tama to the protector. But that's about it and there isn't much detail other than what I have just said. The legend was written in a language no longer used by youkai or humans so no one can read what was originally put there any more."

Kagome looked away from Melissa with pain in her eyes. She remembered every gory detail of her travels with Inuyasha and her friends. They were just to painfully for her to see in her mind while looking at another person. They could read her like an open book if she let others see her eyes when she thought about them.

After a long silence between the two, Kagome collected herself enough to speak. "The legend is true. I lived it."

"Nani?" Melissa stared at the young girl in shock. 'What is she, crazy? She's here in this time, how could she possibly live through that legend?'

"I am Kikyou's reincarnation and I met Inuyasha on my fifteenth birthday when I was transported through the old well on my family's shrine property to the Sengoku Jidai. I shattered the Shikon no Tama and after three years of hard work between my friends, our allies, Inuyasha and I gathered all the Shikon no Tama shards and destroyed the evil youkai by the name of Naraku. If I could see the legend written as a hard copy, I could decipher it and write it out in today's characters."

"You could do that?"

"Yes. Plus I'm going to start at SnT University this coming fall to major in history since I lived some of it."

"I know where the original copy is being held and I can take you there if you want. I can't believe that you are the young girl of the legend or the fact that your Inuyasha is the hanyou of legend!" Melissa raised her voice.

"Shh, do you want everyone in here to know about that? Most humans don't know youkai exist let alone about this legend."

"Opps, sorry. I forgot about that."

"I want to help decipher the legend but I want the fact that I am part of it a secret. Please, don't tell anyone about this," Kagome pleaded.

"I won't. I'll tell him that you know how to read the ancient language and that you want to help decipher it. I won't tell him."

"Thanks. How am I going to talk to, I mean besides in the coffee shop?"

"Here's my number." Melissa wrote down her phone number on a napkin and gave it to Kagome who, in return, wrote her phone number and tore off the piece to hand it to Melissa. "I have to get back to work. I hope to talk to you later though."

"I'll be home all day and you know I'll be back here tomorrow morning," Kagome said while she and Melissa got up from the table.

Kagome turned to leave but before she could take one step, Melissa called out to her. "One more thing, how come you two can't see each other? That was never answered."

Kagome turned around and gave her answer, "Because the well I used to get to the past wouldn't let me. It forced me to come back to this time while Inuyasha was forced to stay in his own time." Kagome turned around again, a single tear drifting from the corner of her eye down her cheek, and left Melissa standing there to feel sorry for her.

.

.

.

An eerie silence filled the nicely decorated apartment, a cup of hot freshly made coffee in the hands of the young woman sitting lazily in her imported Lazy Boy recliner chair. She stared blankly at the black screened TV set in front of her, thoughts swarming in her mind of the recent events that took place earlier that morning.

Reds, oranges and hues of pink and purple glittered over the walls around her from the window to her left of the beautiful sunset. She sipped her coffee, not noticing nature's beauty. Her long sleeved white soft cotton button down night shirt the only thing on her body, moved with her arms as the cup reached her lips.

'Inuyasha and I are legends. More him than me but still, we are both in a legend of my time. Who wrote the legend, though? Was it Miroku, the perverted monk that seemed wise beyond his years? He could have but I have never seen him write anything other than his ofuda. Sango I don't think could read and write, most women of that time couldn't. Kaede didn't have enough time left on earth to write something of this nature. She would have passed on before the legend was complete. And I seriously doubt Inuyasha would have written something of this nature especially seeing as it is focused around him, or so Melissa implied. Shippou could have written it after he grew older but by that time, his memory would have erased things to allow new times to be settled in his mind.'

She sighed. The matter of the legend weighed heavily on her, like a ball and chain strapped around her feet. There was just too much of her past involved at times like this. Her traveling days were fresh in her mind and even though she had to figure out what was written in the legend, questions seemed to arise about her love and friends of what they were doing without her. The memories of her happy contented time with them flooded her mind.

She could see herself laughing away as she watched Shippou and his childish antics he possessed while looking at some of her things from the future. She could hear, although faint, the deep rumbling chuckle that Inuyasha produced as he, too, watched Shippou. She could feel the peace as it used to settle in on her friends around the flaming camp fire; Inuyasha up in his tree above her, Shippou curled up next to her, Miroku off to her left and Sango off to her right. Pleasant times, those were for her. She even thought her fights with Inuyasha were funny as she looked back on them now. 'Maybe that's because he isn't here with me now and all I have left of him are my memories. Those are all that's left to prove that he was real; a real person and not some imaginary thing I thought up of.'

A sharp sudden ring came from off to her right, startling her from her depressed thoughts and making her body jump slightly, her coffee swishing in her mug. She blinked, finally realizing that her cordless phone next to her was ringing. Putting her coffee mug down on the end table that the phone rested on, she grabbed the phone and answered. "Mushi mushi," she said in a daze, still caught up in her memories.

"Hey Kagome! It's Melissa," a female voice called out from the other line.

"Hey Melissa. So what's up?"

"I just got off the phone with the guy that has the legend. From what I understand, he's some sorta rich guy who bought the thing in an actuation. His name is Mr. Kikuta."

"Never heard of him."

"Well anyway, I had his secretary book us an appointment to see him a week from today at nine o'clock and to let him know why we are there. I'll be taking the day off from the coffee shop, so no worries there."

"That sounds good just as long as I can get up on time and get my coffee."

"I'll make sure to bring you your coffee when I pick you up. By the way, where do you live?"

"Sunset Dance Residence on the twenty-second floor, apartment 2213."

"So you live close to the coffee shop," Melissa mumbled to herself.

"Yep. That's why I walk there everyday."

"Ah, I see. I'll pick you up next Wednesday at eight-thirty. That sound good to you?"

"Yep. I'll wait outside for you or in the lobby."

"Alright then. I'll see you tomorrow. Ja ne."

"Ja ne." Kagome set the phone back down on the side table and picked up her mug, ready to get back to her inner memories.