Yusuke woke up the next day and went downstairs to find nobody there. He yawned and scratched his head. Where did everybody go? He wondered sleepily. Oh well, might as well get something to eat.

A box of opened cereal sat on the kitchen table, so he grabbed it and poured himself a bowl. Going to the refrigerator, he found himself a carton of milk and added it to his cereal. However, he couldn't, for the life of him, find a spoon. He did everything short of turning the kitchen upside down, but in the end, he had to resort to using a ladle that he'd found instead.

What kind of a crackpot family has everything else but does not own spoons? He thought angrily, jamming a ladleful of cereal into his mouth and getting it stuck. He tugged on it and it came out with a Pop! He glared at it and walked into the living room to watch some television. Five minutes later, he did it again.

Kagome's mom had taken her grandpa and Sota to a priests' convention; or rather, she took Grandpa, who dragged Sota along as well, still convinced that it was not too late for him to shave his head and start his priesthood training. Since Yusuke was still sleeping, Kagome had seized the opportunity to avoid him by taking Keiko on a tour of the Higurashi shrine.

Kagome and Keiko had hit it off quite well and spent the morning talking about nothing in particular as Kagome showed her around the shrine. It was noon when they got back to the house. Keiko was explaining some obscure algebraic theory to Kagome when they heard a Pop! followed by a loud, angry snarl. They went into the living room to find Yusuke sitting on the couch in his boxers glaring at a large, plastic, blue ladle.

"Uh…Yusuke?" said Keiko. "What are you doing?"

Yusuke jumped suddenly noticing their presence. He turned red and muttered something about spoons before grabbing a half-eaten bowl of cereal from the coffee table and storming out of the room.

"Is he…always like this?" asked Kagome.

"More or less," answered Keiko, smiling.

Kagome shrugged and they both sat on the newly vacated couch and channel-surfed for a while before deciding to watch a movie instead.

Yusuke came down a little while later, now dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt. His hair was gelled up in his customary style. He didn't say anything, still peeved an a little embarrassed about the earlier occurrence, which the girls had already forgotten. He sat down on the couch next to Keiko. They were too engrossed in the movie they were watching to pay much attention to him.

Yusuke watched with them for a while and was really getting into it. After a particularly exciting scene, he asked curiously, "What movie is this?"

"Titanic," said Kagome without looking away from the screen.

"Leonardo diCaprio," said Keiko and they both sighed dreamily.

"Your joking, right?" he said flatly, looking as if he was about to choke.

The girls looked at each other and simultaneously burst out laughing.

"Really, Yusuke," said Keiko between giggles, "I thought you knew me better."

"It's the Italian Job," said Kagome, smiling a little. "Starring Mark Wahlberg, not Leo diCaprio. Sorry to disappoint you, Yusuke."

"What? I'm not disappointed!"

"Uh-huh."

Yusuke sat back and fumed and they watched the rest of the movie in silence. When it was over, Kagome got up and stretched.

"Great movie," she said. "So where do you guys want to go for lunch?"

"You got any good noodle places around here?" asked Yusuke, hesitantly after Keiko hadn't spoken up. He usually just let her choose where to eat since he wasn't too picky about food.

"Sure, there's one right down the street. I'll just grab some money and we can be on our way." She ran back up to her room, leaving Yusuke and Keiko on the couch.

Yusuke turned to Keiko, noticing that she'd been unusually quiet. "You okay?" he asked her. "You look a bit funny."

And he was right. She was sitting stiff as a board and staring down at her hands, which were tightly clasped in her lap.

"Um…Yusuke?" she said hesitantly. "Your arm…"

He looked and found the aforementioned limb around her shoulders. During the movie, he had subconsciously put it there and neither had noticed until now.

He quickly snatched his arm away, immediately missing the warmth of her body. Both looked away, keeping their gaze on anywhere in the room but at each other. "Sorry," he mumbled, not really feeling sorry at all.

"Okay! Got it!" announced Kagome, hopping back into the room. She paused, seeing them sitting uncomfortably on the couch, both their faces beet red. "Am I interrupting something?"

"No," said Keiko, recovering first and putting on a bright smile. "Of course not. Let's go. I'm starved." She got up and walked past a bewildered Kagome to the door. "Come on," she said impatiently.

"Right," said Kagome, running to catch up. Yusuke followed at a slightly more leisurely pace, his face a mask of indifference.

Back in Kagome's room, a small slimy slug-like demon made it's way out of the large yellow backpack in which it had been hiding. Actually, it had been originally hiding in there, but then it took the little piece of grossness ever since the last night to find its way out of the bag.

Stupid backpack, it was thinking to itself, very disgruntled. Who carries something that big around with them all the time?

It continued grumbling and muttering complaints to itself, which, had anyone been there to listen, would have just sounded like occasional squeaks and blubbery noises. Leaving a slim trail of slime behind it, it made its way slowly toward the desk where it could feel the pulsing energy of the Shikon jewel shards.

A/N: okay, that last part was a bit odd, but we thought we should give an update on our good friend, Mr. Slug. Sorry about the long wait. We were originally going to add more, but we couldn't think of what to add. Well, make that, we just couldn't think. So we just decided to let you guys have it. Please R&R! Criticism welcome! (P.S. Yes, we are now officially referring to ourselves in the third person plural form.)

DraGonMistress704-Yes, definitely not. We're hoping he can cope with a week. (We don't think it's likely)

Gloria-It will. We're excited about it too. We're just waiting for the right time.

GoldenKitsuneHime13-For your first question, the answer is no, they won't be in the Dark Tournament. As for #2, we've already said that we will not reveal pairings. You'll just have to wait and see D

Phinixofthezodiac-Thank you! And sorry for the long wait!

Anime Alex36-laughs evilly Sorry 'bout the wait, hope you like this chappie, though it's kind of just a filler…

Auroratwin-Heh. Thanks…we think. ) and we thought that thing got broken, but then we saw it again, but it was with Botan, so we're assuming it's still with her.

Dark lil Hiei-Well, you may be surprised, but we'll say nothing more.

koriaena-Thank you! D