Wow. Look. I'm on my fourth chapter, and the last I checked, 24 reviews (Is that bad?)! If any of your friends are Inuyasha fans as well, please tell them that I am the greatest writer ever. Just kidding. You can tell them to read my story. But they don't have to. Yeah. Thank you!
Signed, the author,
xkumaxchanx
P.S. All these names are actual places in Japan, mostly on Honshu Island, but they are not all next to each other, or near Ishikari-gawa.
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Then next morning, Kagome was working on her mortar samples again when her radio clicked and shouted annoyingly, "SUSHI! SUSHI! SUSHI! GRID FOUR! LUNCH IS SERVED!"
This was not actual lunch, but a codeword way of saying that there was a new discovery somewhere on-site. In this case, it was grid four. They all used codewords for all important transmissions, because every now and then, some officials would monitor them in secret.
Grid four was up near the monastery. Up she hung in the Fukui chapel, and wondered if she should go or not.
"Hear that, Inuyasha?"
"Yeah," Inuyasha mumbled and messed with the ropes and let her down slowly.
-
"I'll row," Inuyasha offered.
She nodded, and laid herself down in the boat, closing her eyes, and relaxing.
"Beautiful day," she said.
"Yeah." Inuyasha said, though he of course didn't mean it.
Kagome wore a t-shirt and beige khaki shorts. Again, she closed her eyes after shading them with her black sweatshirt.
"…PERVERT!" Kagome suddenly sat up and kicked Inuyasha in the stomach, sending him over the edge of the boat.
Inuyasha bobbed back up to the surface, holding onto the edge of the boat. "What, wench!"
"You were groping me! God, you're turning into Miro-…"
"Hm?" Suddenly Inuyasha was not mad, but curious.
Kagome screamed. On her thigh was a large beetle-like bug, squirming around on its back. "EWWWWWWWWWWWW! GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF..."
She said this all while swiping her hands back and forth, like she was slapping someone invisible repeatedly. Inuyasha hurled his hand at the silverfish, picking it up between his nails, and squished it.
Again Kagome kicked him, though in the face.
-
"Yeah?" Inuyasha said as he climbed up to Miroku's standing point above a large trench.
All the excitement was over near the east arch, where they had dug another trench. Work was grueling and slow nowadays because Kazunori and Miroku kept finding soldiers' remains, with battle wounds.
The trench had collapsed on the sides, and the earth fell inwards. A landslide-like dirt formation now stood in the way from continuing.
Kagome looked down to see Kazunori and Kouga in the collapsed trench. Kazunori took pictures to stitch together in the computer for 360 degree panoramas.
"Get down there, Inuyasha. You too, Kagome."
Kagome got to the ladder first and quickly climbed down. There was a strong odor of decay, and she felt the dirt under her feet compress with every small step she took. One of the skulls broke free of a small dirt mound and rolled to her feet.
She looked at it carefully, not wanting to move it. The jaws were larger than normal and jutted out at the sides, and there was a small, circular hole right behind where his ear would have been. She could picture him being alive. Screaming. Bloody. Eyes rolled back in head. An arrow in his hair.
"Don't worry about it," Kazunori said. "They're as jumbled up as they can get."
Kagome, relieved, let out a large sigh, and then continued over to Kouga after walking cautiously over the skull. Inuyasha and Miroku had dropped down the ladder moments ago, and followed after her.
"There was a battle here?" Kagome asked.
"I'm more interested in that." Miroku pointed ahead to the arch, rounded and a little bit flattened.
"Maybe 12th century…"
"I mean that."
It turned out he was pointing directly beneath the slight curve of the arch. The collapse of the dirt walls had left a black, three-foot-wide opening.
She looked at Miroku quizzically.
"We should get in there. Now."
"Why so quickly?"
"Rooms." Inuyasha mumbled. From the very beginning, Inuyasha had seen the black pit, and was observing it from afar.
"Yes," Kazunori said. "One room, two rooms, maybe even ten. Now it's exposed to oxygen."
-
"Okay, people," Miroku said to the undergraduates, "I want flashlights, reflectors, excavation packs, portable oxygen, filter headsets, everything, now, for Inuyasha and Kagome."
"Miroku, I don't think it's safe to go in there…"
"What? Losing your nerve?" Miroku laughed.
-
Fifteen minutes later, she was hanging in midair by the edge of the arch.
"Five feet." she held up five fingers and looked at Inuyasha. He gave her five feet of slack.
"Three more." She looked down and dropped to her hands and knees lightly.
"Everything okay?" Miroku asked.
"Yeah. I'll go in now."
She flicked on her light, turned on her radio, pulled down her headset so she was filter-breathing, and crawled slowly down the small slope.
The air had a damp, cool feel to it. The stone walls and floor gave a feeling of a small courtyard, except there were no flower arrangements. And barely any light.
Even through the filter, there was an odor that was unpleasant; it made her dizzy. No one usually bothered with masks at excavation sites, but they were required here because at that time in the fifteenth century, there was a plague that killed a third of the population through rat, coughs, sneezes, and air.
There was a loud clattering behind her, and Inuyasha slid down through the hole.
"You realize we could be buried alive?" Kagome asked, quivering as she spoke.
"So optimistic."
Inuyasha moved in, holding a large fluorescent light with reflectors. Now that they could see perfectly, the room looked ugly and bare. There was a stone sarcophagus of a knight, lid removed, to the left, and a wooden table on the right.
There was an open corridor to their left as well, ending in a stone stair case, winding up into the dirt. There were small mounds of dirt on the ground and a large one, blocking another passage straight ahead.
"Inuyasha…look." she said. She moved over to the dirt mounds on the right.
An earth-colored protrusion, brown, but the surface was sheen. Oilcloth, she thought, as she touched it with her hand.
He helped her dig. They did so carefully so the mound wouldn't collapse as well. Soon it was exposed: a rectangle roughly about two feet on the long side, covered in an oil-soaked rag.
"Documents." Inuyasha mumbled. The people above were still listening through their radios, so they had to at least picture what was in the pit.
He took it under his arm and headed toward the entrance.
"Inuyasha? I think there's more."
A shiny piece of glass protruded from the earth. Thin and perfectly clear, the edge was curved. It looked almost modern.
Kagome wiped away some excess dirt with her finger.
It was a bifocal lens.
"What?" Inuyasha asked, coming back to her.
Kagome held out the lens for him to inspect.
"Where did you find this?" he sounded concerned, almost mad.
"Right here." she pointed toward the dirt.
"Lying in the open?"
"No. Only the edge. I cleaned it off."
"How?"
"With my finger."
"You're telling me it was partly buried?" He didn't believe her.
"Hey, what is this, an interrogation?"
"Wench, just answer it."
"No, Inuyasha. It was mostly buried. Everything but that edge was buried."
"Great. You shouldn't have touched it."
She put her hands on her hips. "I do, too, if I'd known you were going to respond like-…"
"Turn around."
"What?"
"Turn around." He turned her around by the shoulders so her back was facing him.
He held his light close to her pack and moved over the surface slowly.
"Um, are you...?"
"Shut up." When it came to site contamination, almost everyone on site were the most serious people in the world.
It took two minutes before he stopped. "The lower left pocket of your backpack is open. Did you open it?"
"No, Inuyasha."
"Then it's been open the whole time?"
"I guess so."
"Did you brush against the wall at all?"
"No." She had been careful; she didn't want the roof to collapse.
"You sure?"
"Yes."
"Now you check me. See if any part of my backpack is open."
She did. Nothing.
"If you could clean it with a fingertip, it was not tightly buried."
"Yeah. It was loose."
"All right. That's the explanation. Somehow."
He took several pictures of the lens, then wrapped it in bubble wrap, and handed it to Kagome. He lightened up. "Be careful."
They climbed the dirt slope together again, heading outside.
-
The undergraduates cheered, the oilskin package was handed to Kazunori, and everyone was smiling, except Kouga and Miroku. Site contamination.
-
Later that day, Inuyasha, Kagome, and Miroku sat on the opposite side of Kagome's friends at dinner.
Though Inuyasha was just meeting with them, he disliked them immediately.
The men, almost every five minutes, got up to talk on cell phones. The women both were publicists in the same PR firm; they all tended to treat academics retarded. Surprisingly, they were somewhat pleasant.
Inuyasha would have like them more if they didn't ask the usual questions: What's so special about that site? How do you know where to dig? How do you know what you're looking for? How deep do you dig and when do you stop?
These questions went on and on.
-
"the point is that it's an accident that this town existed at all." Kagome said.
"It's nice here." One of the women said.
Suddenly both the men flipped closed their cell phones, sat down, and put their phones away.
"What happened?" Kagome asked.
"Market closed."
"So," the other man said, "You were talking about why Fukui is so special."
"We were discussing that it's never been excavated." Miroku continued. "But it's important to us because it's a typical walled town."
"This is when? The Dark Ages?"
"No. The High Middle Ages."
"Not as high as I'm going to be," the man said, burped, and put his beer bottle down roughly on the table. "So what came before that? The Low Middle Ages?"
"Yes."
"Hey! Right the first time!"
-
"Around 40 BC, Japan had been ruled by China, and what were left of the Japanese warriors still warred with the Chinese, individually in villages. All across Japan, Chinese soldiers trooped around and built roads, and maintained law and order. Much later, population fell, trade died, and villages shrank. All because of barbarians from the north western part of China. Japan became its own country, eventually. That was the Low Middle Ages." Miroku recited. "Soon, the feudal system was developed. Aristocrats, soldiers, and rulers at the top, then farmers, and at the bottom, slaves. Soon Japan thrived again, with population and trade. This was the High Middle Ages."
"If it was so good, then why did everyone build more defenses?" One of the men asked.
"Because of the Warring States Era."
"Was it a religious war?"
"No. It was about sovereignty. China owned a small part of Japan still." Kagome answered.
"What- are you telling me China used to own part of Japan?"
Inuyasha, Kagome, and Miroku sighed.
There was a term Miroku used for these people- temporal provincials. Ignorant of the past, tangled up in the present. Inuyasha's word for it: assholes.
If these two stockbrokers didn't know that, they didn't know where they had originated. As Professor Higurashi said, you don't know anything if you don't know history. You were a leaf that didn't know what a tree was.
-
When one of the men took off his heavy Rolex watch and began to twirl it around his finger, Inuyasha could stand it no more. He stood up and mumbled something about checking the analysis at the site of the oilcloth-covered box and the bifocal lens.
All along the street, he saw only couples, arm in arm, the woman resting her head on the man's shoulder. He rolled his eyes and said to himself, 'feh'.
Idiot.
What kind of a person liked Rolexes?
..-..
Me. Just kidding. I don't like Rolexes. Please please please please review on all the chapters if you haven't. You don't have to, though.
All the history on this (or most) is made up. Except for the Warring States Era. Yeah... Well I'll start on my fifth chappie soon...
Review!
Signed,
xkumaxchanx.