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Chapter Three. The Rules.
Kagome woke up the next morning, her head still aching. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful morning, and Inuyasha was asleep at her desk, collapsed over the textbook. She debated over waking him up and decided against it. She went downstairs and made herself breakfast instead.
Her mother was waiting there, sipping herbal tea.
"Kagome, how are you feeling?" she asked, searching her daughter intently.
"Good," she replied, reaching for the milk out of the fridge. "The charm worked, I think. Inuyasha spent the night reading my physical science text."
"Do you think he'll want to go to school, then?"
"I don't know, Mama. He seemed rather stubborn about it, didn't he? Once he has his mind to something, he won't go back."
"Well, we'll have to make a good case for it," he mother said, clenching her soft fist. Kagome nodded in agreement. Souta and Grandfather came in that morning inquiring about Kagome's health and the whereabouts of Inuyasha.
"We can ride on his back to school!" Souta said happily. "Wouldn't that be awesome, sis?"
"No, Souta," chided Kagome. "If Inuyasha goes to school, he has to behave like any one of us. We'll walk together to school and ride the bus."
"What if we're late?" asked Souta slyly. "And there's no other way?"
"Then we'll run very quickly on our own two legs, won't we?"
"Keh," grunted Souta.
"Did you just say 'keh?" asked Kagome in bewilderment. "You're starting to sound like Inuyasha, Souta!"
"I do?" he asked, obviously pleased by the comment. "Keh! Keh! Keh!"
"It's not a good thing." Kagome finished eating and put her bowl in the sink. She ascended the stairs to see if Inuyasha was still sleeping. He was, so Kagome shook his shoulders.
"Wake up, Inuyasha, it's morning."
He grunted in response.
"Fine, have it your way." She walked over to her stereo and turned on the radio. Japanese pop music pumped through the speakers at extra volume. Kagome danced and bopped around a little bit as she tidied her room up and got ready for a bath. After she was finished with that, he was still passed out on her desk. She moved the textbook away from him.
Hmmmm…how can I do this? She thought. She pulled the chair out a little ways. She hooked her arm under his knees and one behind his back and lifted him with a great struggle. She took three quick steps and tripped while holding him onto her bed. He simply grunted in irritation and pulled the covers over his head. She sighed and got dressed, confident he wasn't looking. She grabbed her purse and went downstairs again.
"I'm going shopping," she announced to her mother.
"Have fun," wished her mother with a wave and smile.
Kagome looked in the men's department and walked back to the boy's department in the large clothing store. Would Inuyasha be classified as a boy or a man? He certainly acted like a little boy most of the time. However, his body was pretty much molded to that of a man's. She had already picked up a school uniform for him and now she was considering weekend clothing for him. It was hard for her to imagine him in anything but his red haori and baggy hakama pants, nevertheless wearing shoes.
She settled on a nice dress shirt with a tie and black khakis. She also chose a black overcoat for him for when it would get rainy or cold.
The total cost of the clothes had been expensive. Luckily, she had saved enough money over two years worth of uncollected allowance to afford the nice garments. And she had had fun dressing up Inuyasha in her mind. She thought the black cloak would make him look more mysterious.
After leaving the shop she stopped by the store to pick up more ramen, cleaning out the last traces of money from her purse. She delivered her goods safely home to find Inuyasha sitting on the couch squinting at the television.
"Where've you been, wench?" he snapped at her. "I thought you were sleeping."
"That was hours ago. You've been sleeping since, haven't you?" she asked, not waiting for a reply. She produced her shopping bag. "Try it on."
"I'm not going to wear a bag, Kagome," he argued, looking at it.
"No, no, what's inside the bag. Have Souta help you. Souta!" she called. Her brother looked in on her from the kitchen with a cookie in his mouth. "Help Inuyasha try on these clothes. I want to see all of them."
"Hie!" agreed Souta with a nod. He grabbed Inuyasha's sleeve and the bag and pulled him into the bathroom.
Kagome turned her attention to the TV, ignoring the cries of revolt from the bathroom. It was a news report from the inner city, something about a fire occurring at a radio station. The fire had nearly decimated the building. She chewed her bottom lip and watched the news reporter speaking and his interview with the DJ who had escaped the fire.
How long had it been since she had watched TV like this? Just letting her brain shut off was relaxing.
"Sis, look!" Souta said, pushing Inuyasha out of the bathroom.
Inuyasha stood in the black school uniform and it reminded her Houjo-kun. He looked very fetching; she felt an upsurge of adoration for him. He looked ticked about the whole affair, however. He scratched the fabric around his butt and sleeves.
"It's uncomfortable," he whined, trying to stretch it out.
"Don't pick at it, you'll rip it. Try on the other one." She turned back to the television and watched a commercial for a new electronic toy. She wondered if Souta had that particular one.
"I look like a sleazy bandit," Inuyasha complained, coming out of the bathroom. He stood there in the black over coat and the dress shirt unbuttoned at the top (Souta probably couldn't reach that high). He was so mysterious-looking, like a secret agent with wild white hair…and dog ears, too.
"Inuyasha, you look amazing!" Kagome said, stars in her eyes. "Like a movie star! Don't you think so, Souta?"
"You look awesome, Inu-chan," Souta agreed.
"Keh," he brushed aside the praise, but struck a pose that made him look like a feral James Bond. "This one's easier to wear, anyway."
"Hold it like this," said Kagome, showing him with her own pen. "Don't grip it like that." She adjusted his fingers on the pen.
They sat on the floor of Kagome's room, paper scattered all around them. Inuyasha was hunched over his pen and paper, trying to follow what Kagome was saying.
"Argh!" he grunted, and snapped the pen half. Luckily Kagome had set out newspapers just for that purpose, and none of the ink got on the carpet.
"Patience, baka!" Kagome snipped at him. "Just relax. Watch." She took the pen and wrote on her paper, in big flowery script, 'My name is Higurashi Kagome'.
" 'My name is Higurashi Kagome'," recited Inuyasha. "I can read that."
"Good," said Kagome with a smile. "Your turn. Write 'my name is Inuyasha'."
He gripped the pen, then rearranged his fingers with much concentration. He grasped it the way Kagome showed him, and in large, awkward characters, similar to those of a small child, he wrote 'My name is Inuyasha.'"
"That's great, Inuyasha! Keep going. You can do it." He continued on many pieces of paper, eventually making the marks smaller and more precise. It was still sloppy, but readable and crunchable into a line of notebook paper. "Once we're done with your penmanship, we can start on etiquette lessons!" Kagome announced, a mission clearly stated in her eyes. Inuyasha looked up with suspicion.
"Etiquette? I'm not a snob like Sesshoumaru, so you keep your fancy lessons to yourself." He 'hmph'ed and returned to his writing, his knuckles white from the effort of controlling his pen.
"Baka," Kagome said with a glare. "School has lots of etiquette rules your have to follow. Like…raising your hand in class when you want to talk."
"I know that already," snorted Inuyasha. "You sent me your brain, remember?"
"Oh yeah. So you should know all that stuff already." They were silent for a moment while Inuyasha copied his characters.
"Kagome," Inuyasha said, pausing in his writing to look up at her. "Why do you go to school?"
"Why?" she asked, cocking her head to the side. "Everyone does."
"Why?" he repeated. "Why does everyone go to school? Where are the farmers? Don't people just become apprenticed anymore, or learn from their fathers so that they might surpass them?"
"They do, but it's very uncommon. All the good careers—livelihoods, I mean-"
"I know what a career is, Kagome. Fifth grade language class."
"Right. You need school to get the good careers. After high school is university. University prepares a person for a high-level job. The high-level jobs pay the most; that's why they're so competitive. I guess in the modern society you're a failure if you don't get through school."
A failure? Inuyasha wondered. He looked down at his own scrawling on the paper and at Kagome's texts. From not being able to understand books? There's no way I'm going to mess this up, especially if I would become a failure in Kagome's world. No way. With that determination, he set about picking up her text books and began to decipher them one by one.
"I…Kagome," Inuyasha said, suddenly very tense. "I have the rosary."
"The kotodama one?" she asked. He nodded and pulled it out.
"I used it to go through the well with the lingering magic it still had in it. Kaede fixed it for me and said the spell over it."
"Inuyasha, are you choosing to wear the rosary?" asked Kagome with great surprise.
"Yeah," he said. "I can't go back without it. It also comes in handy. Plus, it just doesn't feel right without it. I can't explain it. When you cut it…it was like… just say the stupid word, already."
"Hie," Kagome agreed. She took the rosary and placed it over Inuyasha's head without a complaint from him. "Okay, I'm forewarning you. Here's my pillow, put it on the ground there." She threw him the sham and he placed it directly under himself.
"Ready?"
"Get it over with."
"Osuwari!"
THUD
Kagome was up before the sun for her first day of school. Across the room, Inuyasha slept soundly, Tetsusaiga nestled under his arm and in the crook of his neck. The Higurashi family decided Inuyasha would sleep in Kagome's room, although it might have been more appropriate that he share a room with Souta. Inuyasha claimed he would sleep near the Shikon shards, and unless Kagome and Souta started sharing a room, Inuyasha would stay with Kagome. They had at least offered him a cot, if he would not take a bed, but he resisted on any generosity on their part for a sleeping place. Kagome didn't care as long as he didn't mess up her stuff or watch while she was changing her clothes.
"Wake up, Inuyasha, it's time for school," she said, shaking his shoulder with her foot. She stretched and picked out her clothes (tough one—a uniform or a uniform?), placing them on her bed. She went downstairs for breakfast. Inuyasha came down soon after and cracked open a cup of noodles. He was wearing his 'yah-mah-kah': a religious headpiece that apparently the Jewish wore in the West somewhere. The real reason he wore the piece was to hide his ears, but the school wouldn't allow hats in school without just cause. It wasn't a real one (it didn't even look real) but she doubted anyone would call his religion into question.
"Mmm," he mumbled as he watched the water boil.
"Inuyasha, you can't have ramen for every meal!" sighed Kagome. "Especially not for breakfast."
"I eat what your mom cooks."
"You never eat what I cook anymore!" argued Kagome, watching him inhale the prepackaged food. "You used to eat what I made for you all the time."
"Well, the choice was between food and starvation, it's not really about you-" he considered.
"Baka!" she cursed at him. "Osuwari!"
"What the hell, Kagome!" he cried, his face full of noodles as he pried himself out of his floor-crater.
"Inu-neechan said a bad word," giggled Souta before turning back to his cereal.
"Next time I hope you just starve!" she glowered at him. She ran upstairs and took a bath, as part of her morning before-school ritual, but it didn't help her relax. She got dressed quickly and checked the clock after she had loaded the rest of her textbooks into her backpack. It would be ten minutes before the bus would pull up to the corner two blocks from the bottom of the stairs to the Higurashi's shrine.
Souta had already left, but Inuyasha was still eating, on his third container of instant noodles.
"Inuyasha, you're going to be late!" she shrieked, trying to push him upstairs so he could get dressed out of him usual red clothing.
"No I wont, baka! Stop pushing me," he said, tensing his muscles. Inuyasha would never push her back, but he growled at her.
"Fine! Be stupid. You'll already be a truant on your first day. I'm going to educate and make something of myself!" She stormed out of the house. By the time she slammed the door, she could hear slurping noises. Furious, she ran down the stairs, nearly tripped, and ran all the way to the bus stop. She waited for four minutes, expecting Inuyasha to show up any moment. However, he was not to be seen. As the bus came around the corner and pulled to a stop, Kagome looked around it earnestly to see him, but he was not there.
"What's wrong, Kagome?" asked her friend Eri, attended by their mutual friends Ayami and Yuka. "Why do you keep looking back towards your house?"
Well, there's no use in lying any longer, thought Kagome. They'll find out sooner or later. I'd rather they get my version of the story rather than hear a rumor.
"Inuyasha moved from…his home country…into my house," said Kagome.
The girls erupted in a fit of giggles, which merited annoyed looks from the other passengers.
"Your delinquent boyfriend moved in with you?" asked Yuka in a scandalized whisper.
"He's hafu, right?" asked Ayami, trying to remember.
"Yeah!" said Kagome quickly. "He's from Australia, on exchange for the year. I'm afraid he's late, though, I kept looking to see if he was coming."
"Late on his first day!" hissed Yuka. "He is a delinquent!"
"I guess he is, isn't he?" Kagome said with her nose in the air.
"Kagome!" said Eri, looking shocked. "You're not defending him?"
"Why should I? Late is late. If he's going to be a jerk about my cooking and eat ramen for breakfast, that's his own problem, isn't it?"
"Your cooking?" asked Ayami with a frown.
"He eats ramen for breakfast? What, is he from outer space?" asked Yuka.
"Seems like it sometimes," sighed Kagome. She remembered that last week she'd spent coaching him on not telling anyone that he was actually from another time period:
"Why do I have to wear this stupid head thing?" he asked, tugging at the fake yarmulke. "My ears are cramped."
"Can you still hear okay?"
"Well, not as clear as before."
"If I stood five meters away and whispered something, would you be able to hear me?"
"Well, yeah…"
"Then it stays on. You need to hide your ears, Inuyasha. If they found out you were a hanyou…"
"Why? Why do I have to hide whenever I go outside? Are you…ashamed of me? Kagome?"
"Ashamed of you? Why would I be ashamed of you?"
"Because I am a hanyou."
"Inuyasha!" Kagome cried, taking his hand. "Never! If it were only a matter of shame, I would have no problem. But…the present is different from the past. There are no youkai anymore, nobody believes in them! They would not believe it…"
"I could show them my ears and my powers. They would believe then!" He cried out, pumping his fist.
"No, they wouldn't. They would think you were some kind of monster that was created."
"Like Naraku?"
"Yeah, sort of like Naraku. No one would believe you were naturally born like this. It's not like in the Sengoku Jidai and being a hanyou there. Here…they would take you away."
"They? Who are they? An evil band of demons?" asked Inuyasha. "I'm not afraid."
"No, the government. Scientists or someone. They might take you away to some laboratory to study you."
"I wouldn't let them."
"They're human, Inuyasha, you can't kill them. And they have more sophisticated weapons than anything you've ever seen in the Sengoku Jidai. If they find out you're not human, and that my family has been taking care of you, we'll all be in great danger."
"I'm not afraid of who I am. I'll protect you, and your family." He squeezed her hand tight with reassurance. "I'm not afraid of them."
"But I am. Please, for me, Inuyasha. Wear the headpiece. You can take it off after school, you don't have to sleep in it. You can trust my family. And I promise I'll rub your ears to make them feel better if they get sore."
"Keh. I hate it when you touch my ears."
"Liar!"
"At least he doesn't have antennae," said Eri.
"Yeah, that would really be weird," agreed Kagome.
For the first time in a long time, the conversation turned from herself to one of her other friends, which was nice. She enjoyed the luxury of just worrying about the fact that Yuka couldn't seem to find hairstyle for a dance she was going to at another high school with a sempai instead of how she was going to extract a Shikon shard from the throat of some demon, or how she was going to sleep at night without thinking about dead bodies of villagers littering the ground.
They chattered about the benefits of up-hair rather than down-hair for dancing as they got off the bus. Kagome was engrossed in Eri's testament about the durability of a braid when she saw Inuyasha sitting on the ground, in his school uniform, scowling slightly.
"Inuyasha!" Kagome exclaimed to herself.
"Finally. That stupid machine is so slow. I could have just taken you myself," said Inuyasha. Kagome realized he had probably run all the way to school, jumping off the top of buildings, et cetera. She sighed and felt the headache coming on that would be triggered by the rush of questions from her friends about his athletic ability. She lucked out, however.
"You have a car, Inuyasha?" cried Eri in excitement.
"I…er," he mumbled, looking at Kagome for an answer.
"A motorcycle," said Kagome with quickness.
All three of her friends tried to keep from swooning, but they all looked at Inuyasha with stars in their eyes.
"Come on, class is starting!" Kagome quipped, grabbing Inuyasha's arm and dragging him away from her friends. She led Inuyasha inside and grabbed their schedules from a stack that the crowd was fighting to get to. Inuyasha was agitated in this swirling crowd, she could see from the twitch in his eye. She led him over to an empty stairwell.
"What is this number?" he asked, pointing to something on his schedule.
"First, tell me the rules."
"Why?"
"Recite them, Inuyasha. I need to know."
"Fine, wench, fine. No sitting on my haunches, no growling, no sniffing, no starting or creating fights. No bringing Tetsusaiga to school. No being rude to other students or teachers. No taking off the yarmulke. No leaving during class. Raise my hand to speak. No talking back. No talking about the other time period or my being a half demon."
"And?"
"And what, wench?"
"One more."
"I don't know."
"It's 'work hard.'"
"Keh. Like I need a rule like that. I'll be fine. Stop worrying about me. It's not like I'm fighting a grand youkai or anything."
"Come and find me if anything goes wrong. Don't go off by yourself."
"You're acting like I'm a little kid."
"Am I?" she asked, considering herself. "Sorry."
"It's not your fault. Let's go. We have… Physical Education together, first hour." The pair set off down the crowded hallway towards the gym. They were in a sea of people, tightly packed together. Kagome wondered if Inuyasha had ever been around so many people before, crowded in one place, thriving and being social. They called and shouted to one another. Inuyasha stood out somewhat because of his skullcap and hair. Kagome took his hand and held it until they came to the gym. They parted for their respective locker rooms.