Class Trip Ch. 9- A Revealing Night

Inuyasha and Hitoshii headed back to their tent soon after the girls made their exit (causing much speculation among the gossip-mongers of the class), still discussing different sword techniques. Hitoshii had piqued Inuyasha's interest. The hanyou still wasn't entirely convinced that Hitoshii was a normal human being, something just didn't sit right, but he was pleased to have found someone on this trip that he could talk to. He would normally have stuck around Kagome most of the time, but, well......... after her little off-hand 'friends' comment, he wasn't sure she wanted him around. Though he wasn't showing it, and no one outside of perhaps his small group of friends would have noticed, he was feeling just a bit depressed. He had to continually give his brain reminders that he DID NOT care about being the 'damn wench's' friend, or it would have forgotten and he probably would have found a tree to sulk in all night. As it was, he knew that if he did anything "strange", it would draw attention, something he desperately didn't want. Besides Kagome sitting him into oblivion, he knew full well what humans did when they found demons anywhere near them. He was really lucky that the people of Kaede's village respected her enough to let him stay there peacefully. They were well within their rights to drive him out any time they wanted to. It was part of the reason he wanted Kagome around as much as possible. Kaede was old, there was no denying it, and her only successor to the position of village miko was Kagome. If Kaede died while Kagome wasn't around and something bad happened to the village, he knew very well what would happen to him. Sure, he could very well handle the villagers, but he didn't really want to hurt any of them. Even if they'd done it grudgingly, they had treated him well. He had always been an outsider, and he could not so easily forget the kindness those people had been showing him. If they tried to drive him out, he would go. That was all there was to it. He just hoped he wouldn't have to.

"Hey, Inuyasha!" Hitoshii's voice pulled the hanyou out of his reverie, and he noticed that they had arrived at their tent. "Are you okay? You were pretty deep in thought there........."

"Aa. I'm fine. Just thinking about some things." Hitoshii wasn't so easily put off this time. It seemed as though the silver-haired youth's evasive answers were beginning to bother him.

"What kind of things?" he pressured, trying to get a straight answer out of his new friend.

"Home." Inuyasha replied, with a vague hint of sadness mixing into his voice. He pulled his bag out of the tent. 'Oh, to hell with it. I can't sleep in that thing, anyway. If they decide to kill me or something, I'll deal with it. I'm faster than they are.'

"I'm sleeping outside. You can have the tent." He muttered gruffly, then headed off to the nearby tree line. Hitoshii's eyes widened in surprise. He glanced in at the tent that now contained only his things, then raised his gaze to follow the other boy's trail.

"Are you s-" Hitoshii stopped mid-sentence. His eyes flew upward. Sure enough, Inuyasha was again perched some twenty feet in the air. "I guess he's sure..." the brunet commented under his breath. "Why does he keep doing that?" He glanced again at the figure perched in the tree, then entered the tent to get some sleep before the hike the next day.

Inside the tent next door, Eri's flood of questions was postponed by the movement of the boys less than five feet away from their tent. Both girls had the same idea at once: 'shhhhhhhhh...'

They both remained silent and listened to the small dialogue between their respective "guys", as Yuka had taken to calling them. Kagome was thrown slightly for a loop.

"My god. There is something seriously wrong with him..." She didn't even notice that she had said it out loud. Quietly, but out loud.

"What do you mean?" Eri asked, puzzled by Kagome's strange reaction. It didn't seem to her to be strange to be thinking about your home when you were on an extended field trip like this. Kagome barely registered the question and answered it automatically, her mind still processing other things.

"He was sad. He actually sounded sad. Something is wrong." Kagome's voice was tinged with worry. Eri was a bit taken aback. She had barely registered the hint of emotion in the boy's voice, but Kagome was acting like it was the end of the world.

"Are you okay, Kagome? You're spacing out on me again!" Eri decided she wanted some real answers (it had nothing to do with the fact that Yuka was waiting for her to report on the whole issue). "You said you'd tell me what's up with you and him, so what is it?" Eri pushed a bit more towards getting Kagome involved in a conversation.

"I did just promise to tell you, didn't I?" Kagome sounded resigned to her fate, but she was still planning to keep all of the really important details well-hidden.

"Yes, you did. Now, first of all, how did you meet him, and how long ago?" Eri noticed Kagome's non-enthusiasm, and brought her own down a notch. She didn't want Kagome to get fed up and refuse to answer anything, after all.

Kagome thought for a moment about how to answer the question. 'Oh! That might work...' she suddenly remembered a lesson they'd had in biology that week.

"You remember my 15th birthday? When I got sick so suddenly and had to go to the hospital?" Eri nodded. They had had a big party planned, but Kagome's mom had called everyone to cancel. They had held the party later, once Kagome was feeling better. They had been told that Kagome was too sick to see anyone at the hospital, and all her friends had felt bad that they couldn't share her birthday with her. "Well," Kagome continued, knowing the story that had been fed to her friends, "I met him there." Eri looked puzzled.

"At the hospital?" she asked incredulously.

"Hm." Kagome nodded. "He has this rare form of, um, albinism. You know, we were talking about it in class this week!" She managed to pull off the lie fairly well, or so she thought.

"But don't albinos have red eyes?" Eri raised an eyebrow. "Plus, he's tan. Albinos can't be out in the sun without a lot of sunscreen, they burn too easily." Kagome cringed inside, but had planned for this possibility in her last comment.

"I said rare form, didn't I? Well, I meant it." She came off sounding a bit miffed, as though her friend had said something too stupid for words. Eri was slightly shocked by this. Her experience with Kagome had not prepared her for the 'new' Kagome that had shown up on this trip. She had sworn, been short with her friends, and seemed to want to stay away from most of the class. What the girl didn't realize was that Kagome was so unused to the noise of being around so many people that she was rapidly developing a headache, and that having to worry about Inuyasha was not helping. 'Of course,' Kagome thought to herself, 'He hasn't actually needed much worrying over. The girls are worse.........'

Eri, meanwhile, was trying to come up with another question that Kagome might be willing to answer.

"Okay, so why isn't he your boyfriend yet? And don't tell me that you don't like him or that he doesn't like you, because you two are way too obvious." Kagome almost refused to dignify that with an answer, but then realized that there was a simple and easy one to give, and it wouldn't make them suspicious in the least.

"He has some issues about an ex-girlfriend of his. I guess I sort of reminded him of her at first, and it's kind of hard to get past that." Kagome sighed involuntarily as Eri processed and stored the information. "It's a bit of a touchy subject, so don't bring it up with him, okay?" The seriousness of the request caught Eri off guard.

"I won't, I promise." She answered just as seriously. And she wouldn't either. That's what accomplices were for. "So, I already know you like him... hmm... I think the next question is why he was afraid of the bus?" Kagome's head snapped up.

"You saw that?" her voice had a note of panic in it, making Eri wonder what had caused it. She nodded. Kagome took a deep breath as she thought up a quick cover. "He's from a really rural town. They don't have buses like that there, so it was his first time seeing one. I can imagine them being pretty scary if you've never seen one. He hasn't really had a lot of access to modern life, since his family was very traditional. He's been staying with us for a while," Eri's ears perked just a little bit more, "so he's learned about TVs and stuff, but he's still kinda naïve..." Kagome trailed off, remembering Inuyasha's first experience with the moving pictures on the screen. Her mother hadn't really appreciated buying a new TV, but Sota loved having the bigger screen to play video games on, so it had worked out alright. 'At least mama doesn't really hold it against him...'

Eri was trying to match all the pieces of the story together. Something didn't fit, but she didn't have any proof that any of it was a lie, so she decided to accept what she had been told for the time being.

"Wow. I didn't know there was anywhere left that was that rural. So, how did he get so good at fighting? He and Hitoshii-kun were really going at it there for a while! I haven't seen anyone be able to stand up to him for that long!" Eri seemed to have moved on to more recent topics, and Kagome was glad. She had enough stuff to fill Inuyasha in on (just in case the girls questioned him later), and didn't feel like answering any more "tough" questions.

"I think he pretty much learned on his own, actually. Maybe he learned some from his father, but I don't know for sure. His father died when he was little." Kagome was glad she could tell her friend some of the truth, anyway. "I think he just sort of picked it up as a hobby."

"Pretty good for a hobby!" Eri exclaimed, then went into a monologue of Hitoshii's various other duels with members of the kendo club. Kagome took the chance to get ready for bed and think about the events of the day, and a little bit about the real answers to her friend's questions.

Inuyasha was perched in a tree right next to the campsite, still thinking. It wasn't as though he would normally have been worrying about such things as the villagers turning against him, but with the way Kagome was acting......... she worked so hard to leave all the time, and she as much as said that he and Miroku weren't considered as good of friends as most of the people on the trip.

'But she spends most of her time with us......... I don't know.' His thought process was disjointed and slow that night, and he wondered why. 'I guess it's been a weird day.' He decided, and determined to focus on something other than Kagome to pass the time. 'That demon earlier.........I wonder what it wanted? It wasn't after the jewel, I'm guessing, or it would have attacked us.........or maybe it's just weak and didn't want to attack such a large group.........so it might come back at night, when no one is watching.' If there was one thing Inuyasha had picked up on immediately, it was that Kagome's classmates had no intention of posting a guard to keep watch all night. It was already much past dark, the fire was going out, and no one was keeping a look-out for anything dangerous. Even if they didn't worry about demons, there were surely still dangerous beasts in the forest, of that, Inuyasha was sure.

"Keh. Stupid humans."

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Inuyasha jumped nearly out of his skin, then whorled on the owner of the voice. "YOU!" He jumped up into as much of a fighting stance as he could manage on a tree limb, and wished he hadn't left the Tetsusaiga in his bag on the ground- of course, he still had claws.........

"Whoa! Calm down, dog-boy! Not here to fight, thanks!" Kouga laughed and dropped down to the ground, an obvious invitation for Inuyasha to do the same. He did, although he didn't let down his guard for a second. Then he noticed that something was wrong.

"You're wearing their clothes. Why?" He demanded, glaring at the wolf. Kouga raised an eyebrow slightly.

"So are you. But then again, why wouldn't you be? I assume Kagome-chan forced you into them, but even you have to realize that it's best to fit in around them. They really are pretty funny little things, if you get to know them well enough." He regarded the campsite. "We've sort of been expecting you to show up, actually. Of course, one forgets exact dates after almost 500 years, but there you go." Inuyasha was getting more suspicious by the second.

"You aren't Kouga." The figure-that-wasn't-Kouga laughed, then changed.

"Whoo! You are quick!" the figure in front of him seemed familiar somehow, but in a far-removed sort of way. Like a stranger you sat next to on a plane one time, then happened to see some years later. A sort of deja-vu. "I didn't think you'd figure it out that quickly!"

"Who are you, what do you want, and how do you know that damned wolf?" Inuyasha was getting annoyed. He had been thinking, and had been interrupted by this annoying stranger.

"I'm a friend, my name is Kensuke, I'm here to say 'Hi!' and chat for a while, and I know about Kouga because Kagome left pictures, of course! Despite the fact that it took until computer technology got good enough for anyone to look at them........." the figure, Kensuke, trailed off, mumbling something like 'damn picture cd- don't know how it lasted so long' under his breath. Inuyasha was still glaring at him.

"What?" Kensuke moved closer, into a patch of moonlight that made his features clearer. His red hair glinted a strange tone under the moonlight, and his hazel eyes were glimmering mischievously.

"Hmph. Kitsune." Inuyasha grunted and sat down, as though that were all he needed to know.

"Whaat!?" the fox-demon sat down nearby, grinning at the hanyou. "I beg your pardon, but I am not just a 'kitsune'!" he mimicked Inuyasha's slightly insulting tone on the word perfectly. "I happen to be from a long and distinguished line of kitsune, thank you." Inuyasha rolled his eyes.

"Family isn't everything." He stated gruffly, and in such a way that it effectively ended the conversation.

"Well, then. I guess you don't feel like chatting. I'll see you tomorrow then!" he stood up and brushed off his khaki cargo pants, which had collected several leaves.

"Wait a minute! What do you mean, you'll see me tomorrow!?" Inuyasha was ticked. The kitsune wasn't telling him something (not that he was being very inviting, but that's Inuyasha for you!), and he had a feeling it was something important.

"Oh, you'll see! Then maybe you'll trust me, ne? Oh, keep an eye on my nephew there, will you? Ciao!" The kitsune disappeared as silently as he had originally come, leaving Inuyasha to sort out what had just happened.

"Nephew?"

TO BE CONTINUED