Chapter 2: Well, it wasn't over after all
By Vikki
Day 001 – Contact
"Hey! Why don't you watch where you're going!?"
Kagome wasn't listening. She stared up into beautiful violet eyes and froze, before she allowed herself to search the face of the boy. Small, pouty mouth; black hair pulled into a low ponytail; an expression that suggested a near-constant frown. Almost as if he were the human form of—
No ... no no no no no. It can't be. In the stories it takes years for reincarnations to find each other! But then, Inuyasha wasn't ever the romantic type …
The boy raised his eyebrows slightly and snapped, "What?"
Kagome very nearly tipped over. She allowed her mouth to fall open instead. Same tone of voice! Same attitude!
~I swear I'll find you …~
It had to be him. It just had to.
She couldn't help it. Kagome burst into tears of happiness, thrusting her face into the shirt of the poor high school student, and bawling, "Inuyasha!"
* * *
His name was Tama Akuma, not 'Inuyasha' (whatever that was), and when this girl whom he definitely didn't know grabbed his shirt and started crying into it, he was nonplussed to say the least.
"H-hey! Stop crying! What's got you so upset?" he demanded, throwing up his hands as if to prove to anyone and everyone around that he was not a pervert and he was not taking advantage of the situation.
"I-I'm not crying!" stammered the girl, looking up at him with dark tear-filled eyes. "These are tears of happiness, you jerk!" She firmly wrapped her arms around Tama. "You found me! You … you promised and you found me!"
Tama's hair attempted to stand on end in protest of gravity and failed miserably.
Rikan tapped Tama on the shoulder. "Hey, man, she isn't some kinda long-lost fiancée or anything like that, is she? Because you know, we don't need another Furikan High-type deal going on around here …"
"I don't know her!" Tama attempted to detach the hysterical girl and instead found himself in an awkward position. He gave up, red-faced with anger and embarrassment. "What the hell are you talking about? I didn't promise you anything! Who are you?" he demanded of the girl.
The bell rang. It went completely unnoticed.
* * *
Kagome registered the protests of Inuyasha's reincarnation on some remote level, but it took a few moments for it to hit home. "I didn't promise you anything! Who are you?"
She pulled away, indignant. The gall! "You promised you'd find me, you jerk! You gonna pretend that didn't happen now, just because there are people around?" Slap! She planted her hand neatly on his cheek.
The boy with Inuyasha winced. "Ooo … and you didn't even deserve that one …"
There was a dramatic pause as Kagome glared at Inuyasha and Inuyasha stared at her for a long moment, before his expression got dark. "What the hell was that for!?" he snapped at the same time as she exclaimed, "SIT!"
"'Sit'? What am I, a dog?" Inuyasha snarled.
Kagome opened her mouth to reply in the affirmative, then paused as she realized two things. The first thing was just silly; Inuyasha's reincarnation didn't have the rosary donned, of course, so 'sit' would no longer have an effect. But worse yet …
It's his reincarnation. Kagome, you dope! This Inuyasha having memories of his old life would be like you remembering being Kikyou!
She looked at the boy's rapidly reddening cheek. "Oh no …" she whispered. "I'm so sorry!"
"You oughtta be, bitch!" the reincarnation spat. He glanced up at the clock. "Dammit! Class started already!" He shot a venomous glare in her direction. "Come on, Rikan." He stalked haughtily off to class, Rikan not far behind him; Kagome stared after him, able to imagine his ears twitching in annoyance. His 'I'm pissed' gait was exactly the same as it had been … before.
"I've made a terrible mistake," she groaned. Then she glanced at her watch. "Yikes! I'm seven minutes late!"
* * *
Kagome spent the rest of the day brooding over Inuyasha. What the heck did she do now …?
* * *
The question was answered for her during Physical Education.
She was warming up for the high bar exercises when the baseball hit her on the head. She felt dizzy for a moment, but otherwise fine, and so it was with a reasonably pleasant attitude that she picked up the ball and was about to toss it back into the baseball field when she realized the boy holding up his mitt to catch the aforementioned ball was Inuyasha's reincarnation. His cheek was still a little red.
She dropped the ball at her feet.
The boy scowled for a moment, then his eyes widened with recognition and the scowl deepened. "You!" he said accusatorily.
Kagome picked up the ball sheepishly. "Oh. Um … hi again," she whispered, feeling herself blush. "I'm really sorry about slapping you!" she blurted. "I thought you were … somebody else," she finished uncomfortably.
The boy looked uncomfortable for a moment. "Look. I don't … I've been slapped before, it's no big deal. Just throw the ball over here, okay?"
Kagome walked over instead. "Um, my name is Kagome Higurashi, by the way," she said, shrugging.
"I know, I got told," Inuyasha's reincarnation scowled.
"What's yours?" Kagome asked as innocently as she could manage.
"Tama Akuma," he said awkwardly, looking a little confused. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say more, but someone shouted, "Akuma! Get your butt over here, we need the ball!"
Tama snatched the ball from Kagome's hand with quick fingers, muttered, "Thanks," and hurled the ball towards home plate.
Kagome smiled and thought, At least he has better manners than the first time we met.
Tama Akuma. Demon jewel. An oddly appropriate name. Funny coincidence.
Or not …
* * *
"So what's up with you and that Higurashi girl?"
Tama scowled. "Betsuni."
"There is no way you guys just met for the first time today. Come on, man! You can tell me!"
"Hn." Tama grunted rather than justifying that little comment with an answer. Rikan was about as trustworthy as a fox.
"Come oooon …" he whined.
"Shut. Up." Tama applied the Glare of Death™, and his classmate finally backed off. Tama went back to wiping the chalkboard with the sponge and thinking about the strange girl.
Kagome. The name triggered something in him, but it was like trying to pinpoint the location of a fly in a fog by only following its humming wings. Tama swiped the board and scowled a little more.
It wasn't just the name, either. The girl was a little … familiar-feeling, he supposed. Cute, really – not that he'd say anything. Trying to compliment a woman safely was like trying to feed an angry cat. (Rikan liked to say he was shy, but Tama called it survival.) Full of 'spunk', as his cousin would have said. Pretty weird, though. No, he corrected himself, very extremely weird. First she slaps me, then she acts like she wants to be my friend. Ch', what am I supposed to do? Turn her down?
He fingered his sore cheek. Geez. If my cousin notices this, I'll never hear the end of it. Or worse … my second cousins.
* * *
Day 002 – Making up
The next day, Kagome shouldered her backpack and marched out of her house like a woman with a mission.
She was one.
I'm going to make friends with Inuya—Tama. With Tama. I'm not going to let a bad start stop me! Besides … he didn't seem so mad when I gave him back the baseball, so there's hope.
I think.
* * *
Tama stalked out of his house like a man with a mission (after sticking his tongue out at his obnoxious cousin and promising a beating to his youngest second cousin).
He was one.
I'm going to find out what that Kagome girl wants and make her go away. She makes me feel weird.
He'd dreamed about her. In his dream, she was smiling at him with tears running down her face. Her mouth had opened, and she was about to say something vitally important … when he woke up. A weird dream about a weird girl, he decided.
Tama had a reputation as a troublemaker, a poor student, and a serious lack of understanding in the girls department. Truth was, Tama had a low tolerance for insults (or excessive stupidity), a … misunderstanding with the Japanese language, and no experience with girls except for his second cousin, who was still a little girl anyway. Kagome was a whole new department for him; apparently more so after Rikan had filled him in on the gossip.
"She's pretty tough, and really smart. She was sick almost all the time last year, but she still passed the exams to get into our high school no sweat. Akuma, if she's got a crush on you, you'd better watch out!" he'd laughed.
"I think she's mistaken me for somebody else," Tama grumbled.
"Come on. You'd have had a thousand girlfriends if you only knew how to handle girls," Rikan pointed out. "I mean, they all seem to think you're cute enough, anyway—"
"Shut up," Tama snapped.
Rikan ignored him. "And they want to go out with you—"
"Shut up!"
"—But then you stick your foot in your mouth first thing, and they slap you, and that's that," Rikan finished triumphantly.
Tama resisted the urge to whack Rikan a good one. On the head. Like the stupid kitsune he was—
"Gotta go," Rikan laughed, taking off towards his house.
Why is he my friend? Tama wondered yet again.
Kagome was different, all right.
Tama wasn't sure he liked it, yet.
But at least she was different.
* * *
Kagome stood by the gate of the school, waiting and hoping that Tama would get there later than she had so she could catch him before class. She shifted her backpack to her other shoulder impatiently and pondered how much lighter her backpack felt after lugging around everything (really) in the Sengoku.
About ten minutes before classes began, she spotted him, walking in a sulky way towards the school, his hair pulled back the same way it had been the day before. She waved her hand in the air. "Inu-uh, Akuma-kun! Ohayou gozaimashita!"
Tama looked up sharply and his scowl deepened, but he didn't say anything.
"Akuma-kun!" Kagome hurried over. "Nice to see you today. You're not still mad about the slapping thing, are you?" she asked nervously.
Tama looked away, haughty and nonchalant at the same time. "No," he said simply.
"Oh. Good." She smiled, and watched as he watched her smile. He looked away quickly. "How are you?"
"Fine," Tama began confusedly, but then his face hardened and he snapped, "What the hell do you want, anyway? First thing you do is slap me silly, then you wanna act like we can be friends and everything's fine!"
Kagome smiled sweetly. "I want to be friends. That's all," she said honestly.
In the approximately ten minutes of time she'd spent with this reincarnation, Kagome had come to the conclusion that Tama Akuma was rather like Inuyasha before she'd gotten to know him – brash, fierce, and prickly, but kind of hurt inside and far more forgiving under his guards. (Of course, maybe that was too much analysis for ten minutes, but still.) It was almost like starting at square one …
But just like the human side of Inuyasha in the Sengoku, Tama was far gentler at the edges than his former hanyou self.
Tama looked nonplussed before his scowl settled again. "Uh-huh. Why?"
"Because … because you seem like a nice guy," she said brightly.
Now Tama gave her a look that said you're pushing the limits of sanity. Oops. "Where did you hear that? Because whatever else I am, I. Am. Not. Nice." He made a fist at his side and his knuckles popped, a la Inuyasha's claw attack.
Think fast, Kagome. "Oh, so you're going to hit a girl to prove it? What's wrong with wanting to be friends anyway?"
"You act weird and you make me feel weird and there's absolutely no reason for you to want to be friends with me. I called you a bitch," he snapped. Suddenly he looked like a light bulb went off in his head. "You're one of those airheads who reads my cousin's books, aren't you? You just want to meet my cousin, don't you?"
"I'm not an airhead," Kagome said angrily, "and I don't even know who your cousin is! I just want to get to know you better!"
"Why!?"
"Why not!?"
There was a long pause while Tama and Kagome stared each other down.
"You still going to hit me?" Kagome asked quietly when the glares had softened.
"I couldn't hit you anyway," Tama said flatly, letting his hand relax.
Kagome smiled again, ghosts of memories of fights with Inuyasha rising in her mind. At least this one hadn't ended in a name-calling war. "Will you let me be your friend? That first time we met, it was a misunderstanding. A bad one. Can we forget that and try again?"
Tama bared his teeth a little, a skeleton of a smile. "You won't leave me alone until I say yes, will you?" he asked.
"No," Kagome said firmly.
"Then, 'yes'." Tama stuck out his hand awkwardly. "Ore wa Akuma Tama da. Anata no namae wa …?"
"Higurashi Kagome desu. Yoroshiku," she smiled, taking a moment to register that his hand, offered in the American fashion, was supposed to be shaken. "Arigatou."
"Dou istashimashite," Tama rubbed his head in embarrassment.
* * *
Kagome came home that day humming happily. "Tadaima!"
"Okaeri nasai!" Her mother smiled. "See? Aren't you glad I made you go to school? You're doing much better," she exclaimed happily.
"Yeah. Thanks, 'kaa-san!" She hugged her mother tightly and skipped up the stairs.
Things are going to work out just fine.
* * *
Day 013 – Getting reacquainted
"So you're from America?"
"Sort of."
Kagome and Tama were sitting under a tree during lunch. (Rikan used to join them at first, but lately he'd joked that he felt like a third wheel and dodged Tama's fist expertly.) In an effort to get to know this reincarnation of Inuyasha better, after 'making up' Kagome had latched onto him whenever she had the chance and asked him questions mercilessly. Eventually (as she had proven the day before) this would result in an explosion of annoyance and his retreat into the higher branches of a tree. However, most of the time, while remaining quietly (or not-so-quietly) haughty and constantly stiff, he'd answer her questions reluctantly, and even ask a few of his own.
"What do you mean, 'sort of'? Either you're from America or you're not," she protested.
"My mom was from America. My father was Japanese. I lived in America until I was 12 and then I moved here," he said before stuffing another mouthful of instant ramen into his mouth. (Inuyasha's taste for instant ramen seemed to have carried over into his reincarnation.)
"That's pretty neat." I wonder why he said his father was Japanese … she almost asked, but a horrible thought – maybe he died – stopped her. "What's America like?"
"It's really different from here," Tama said. "Really … different." He didn't elaborate at first, but suddenly he added, "You can't get corn on your pizzas there."
Kagome laughed. "That's weird."
"You mean you like corn on your pizza?"
"Who doesn't?"
"You're the weird one," Tama grumbled, but he wisely said nothing more. Kagome could explode with annoyance, too.
"Oh, shush," she laughed. She slowly sobered.
"What's it like living at a shrine?" Tama asked eventually.
"Oh, boring. Not much different from anywhere else, I suppose, although it's less cramped," Kagome said gustily. "Why?"
"Just wondering." Tama turned his attention back to his ramen.
"You ever been to a Shinto shrine before, Tama?"
Tama shrugged.
"You haven't!" Kagome was amazed.
"It's not that big a deal," Tama protested. "My cousin won't take me to one. Who cares, anyway, it's not like I follow Shinto or anything."
"No one should live in Japan without going to a Shinto shrine at least once," Kagome said authoritatively. "Who's your cousin, anyway? He seems kind of overpowering."
"He is," Tama grumbled. "I hate him."
"No, you don't. Is he your guardian while you're in Japan or something?"
"Something like that," Tama said indifferently. He punched his chopsticks through the Styrofoam instant ramen cup and tossed the packaging into a nearby trashcan like it was second nature. "I live with him."
"That's nice, I guess." Kagome folded up her bento box and put it away. "Would you introduce me to him sometime?"
"You do want to meet him!" Tama threw her an accusatory look.
"What is the big deal about your cousin?" demanded Kagome. "Why do you make it seem like people use you to meet him?"
"Because they do," Tama said darkly. He made a fist and his knuckles cracked. "He's a famous author, writes romance novels; every air-headed girl in the school's read them. I'm surprised you haven't."
Kagome caught the double meaning, whether it was intended or not. "What's that supposed to mean?" Kagome hissed. "You saying I'm air-headed, you jerk?"
Tama scowled at her. "I never said that," he said hotly.
"Yes, you did! You said that every airhead's read them and you're surprised I haven't! Isn't that what you said?"
"Yeah, but—"
"SIT!"
"What?" Tama blinked at her.
Kagome calmed down a bit. "Sorry," she said, taking a deep breath. "Relapse."
* * *
Day 020 – Family
"I really would like to meet your cousin," Kagome confessed.
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"Stop answering me like that." Tama crossed his arms and looked disgruntled.
Kagome cut off a giggle at how very like Inuyasha Tama looked at that moment. "Maybe I could tell him to back off for you."
"No, you couldn't."
Kagome pouted prettily, an art that she'd perfected over the last few weeks for Tama's benefit. He was more easily manipulated by tears and the like that even Inuyasha ever was. "Pleeease take me to visit him?"
"I never said no, did I?"
Kagome resisted the urge to swat him. "You never said 'yes', either!"
Tama sighed. "Maybe."
I guess that'll have to do for now, Kagome thought with a mental shrug. "Are you scared I'll like him or something?"
"If you like him," Tama said sharply, "then you're officially crazy. I'll gladly kill you so you don't have to suffer through the insanity."
Kagome stared at him, then burst into laughter at his perfectly straight face. "I've never heard you tell a joke before. You're very good at it," she managed.
"I'm not joking," he said flatly.
Kagome stopped laughing.
* * *
"I can't believe I'm taking you to meet my cousin," Tama groaned.
"Oh come on. If he's half as bad as you make him out to be, I'll be either whacking him repeatedly on the head or running home screaming, so I don't know what you're complaining about. You know I wouldn't take any crap from him," Kagome said.
"Yeah, I know," Tama scowled, rubbing the bump on his head that proved Kagome took no crap from anybody. "Doesn't change the fact that I'm—" he paused. "Well, here it is."
It was definitely a nice apartment complex, Kagome observed.
It seemed nicer still when they entered the lobby.
The elevator played classical music rather than campy J-pop. The elevator lady greeted Tama by name and punched the button for the top floor.
Apparently, they had the whole floor to themselves; there was only one door in the hallway. Tama unlocked it and called, "Tadaima," reluctantly.
"Tama. How was school?" said a familiar voice. Kagome frowned. Where did she know that voice from …?
"Ch', like you really care," Tama accused under his breath. "I brought home a friend," he said aloud.
"Oh, really?" Now that there was an arch tone of superiority in the voice, it sounded even more familiar. Kagome began to have a bad feeling. "I'll be out in just a moment."
The door to the left opened. A majestic figure stepped out.
"Oh my god …" Kagome gasped quietly, staring at him.
"Why, it's you," said Sesshoumaru.
* * *