I was out of breath when I collapsed into the squeaky wooden chair in the diner, Naraku sitting in one just like it opposite of me with a devil's grin. My heart was pounding, my lungs threatening to break in half as they forced the eatery's distilled air into my throat, and my legs burned from all the running we had done. Reckless.
It felt as though we had jogged the entire city two times around. And the only reason for it was that he wanted to bring me here.
"What's this?" I asked finally, having caught my breath.
"It's a diner." He smirked, glancing over the menu. I mentally kicked myself for sounding so stupid.
"I've never been here before.."
"What's your name?" He asked abruptly, gaze flickering upward from the laminated booklet that listed every cheap item that they fried up and served on a bed of French fries and paper towels there. Somehow the question seemed sharp, almost cold.
God, this man was intimidating as hell.
". . . .Kikyou," I answered softly, smiling at him. "And you're Naraku."
"Yes." He leaned over the table, the warmth of his nearness flooding the perpetual cold InuYasha's lack of touch had somehow left me with. "And Kikyou, there are a lot of places you've never been before, . . . .that I will take you to."
I could just tell that this was going to be a bumpy ride.
A lithe young woman clad in the usual waitress uniform stepped delicately over to our table, long, brown hair swept over her eyes, tied up with a fiery orange ribbon; thick, pink clots of eyeshadow were caked on. "What will you be having today. . . ."
Her eyebrows furrowed as she stared at her two odd customers, sentence severed immediately for her to make this evaluation.
". . .Mister. . .Naraku?" I almost swore I saw her jaw drop and hit the dirty, tiled floor. "Naraku!" she hissed, slamming her small notepad on the table while paying no mind at all to me as she grabbed one long tendril of his black hair, yanking his head painfully toward her own. "You bastard, I haven't seen you in forever."
The hair was released, falling neatly back to his shoulder. He seemed not to mind the offending action.
They both smiled widely. "Hello again, Sango. This is my new friend, Kikyou."
His voice lowered to a threatening whisper. "Be polite and introduce yourself, Sango dear."
The waitress turned and looked me over, dissecting me with her eyes as all of Naraku's lady friends seemed to do. "New friend? Yeah right." She winked at him, grinning. "You and I both know all too well what you do with your 'new friends'."
She extended a dainty hand to me, her nails layered with pink shimmer polish that was chipping away fleck by sparkling fleck.
"Hey," she said in a casual, friendly tone as I shook her hand timidly, confused over whether or not she, too, was one of his more intimate lady friends. My eyes wandered to her nail polish again. Maybe it some sort of obsessive compulsive thing- hell, maybe even just obsessive - but to see the clear nail peaking out from beneath smooth chips of bright, glittery polish, the entire paint ruined by the absence of just ONE little piece, made me want to grit my teeth and run all the way home for my nail kit.
"Hey." I finally answered, realizing they were both waiting for my response.
"You should come over and let me give you a manicure sometime," I blurted as an afterthought, smiling up in her direction.
She turned back to Naraku, absently picking up her little notepad from the table, removing the ballpoint pen from behind her triple-pierced ear. "She's cool," She said quietly, only to him, although I could hear her perfectly from right across the table. "You can keep her."
Shuffling over to stand beside the table again, she licked the tip of her black pen and asked professionally, "What will you be having today?"