Disclaimer: Anyone you recognize doesn't belong to me. Anyone you don't, does. Especially Kusaraku Fujii. He's my pride and joy.
Title: Body, Mind, and Soul
Chapter: Six – Nikako and Hotaru Fujii
After Kagome went home, Kusaraku went to the kitchen and fixed himself some mixed ramen just the way he liked it, beef-flavored with extra bullion, onion powder, and garlic. Once it was finished, he drained the juice, mixed in a can of mushrooms, and took it to his bedroom, determined to avoid his old man as usual.
He always avoided the man. Nikako Fujii, once a very proud man, had let himself… break, so to speak. When Kusaraku's mother, Hotaru, had been pregnant with him, the two had been going to college, studying to be scientists… the field of Bio-Engineering, to be specific.
However… when Kusaraku had been ready to be born, he had been positioned in a way that he couldn't come out naturally, so the doctor had had to do a cesarean section on her.
At first, they thought everything had gone fine. A couple of days after Kusaraku had been born, they all went home and were as a family. Both Nikako and Hotaru got a month off a college, so that they could get used to the new baby.
But the happy family was not meant to stay together.
Just about two weeks after the baby had been brought home, Hotaru started to experience severe back pains. She called the doctor, but they simply said that it was normal, and that she was to stay active. A day later, she started hemorrhaging, blood pouring out of her, just gushing out, not stopping.
They tried to stop it, but they couldn't. The nearest hospital was about forty-five minutes away, and, just before they made it there, Hotaru just… died. She closed her eyes, and didn't open them again… She died of blood loss.
What had happened, as it turned out, is that the doctors had messed up on something when they were working inside of her, so, if you chose to look at it that way, it was really their fault that she had died.
After Hotaru had died, Nikako had never bothered to return to pursue his education or career any further… with his wife had died the fire which had once burned so brightly within him. He did the things necessary to care for his child, but that was all… he stopped taking care of his house, and his self, more and more… until he had ended up as he was now… a pathetic excuse for a man, in which could no longer be seen who he once was.
From early on, it had been obvious that Kusaraku was much smarter than the average child. He was able to read by age three, and his mind devoured anything he could get his hands on… including, eventually, even his parents' college books. He was, in short, a genius.
When he started going to school, it wasn't long before his father was offered the chance to allow his child to skip a grade. However, this wasn't what Kusaraku wanted, and so his father complied… his father let the boy do about whatever he wanted, as long as he stayed out of trouble mostly.
And he did stay out of trouble… but he didn't have friends… not even the smart kids were his friends. He simply didn't need friends, and made it obvious… there was no reason for friends. A few kids tried to pick on him, but, for some reason, all he had to do was look at them with those eerie eyes of his and then he would be left alone… he wasn't normal, and the other children could sense, deep down, that this was not one whom they should bother.
A couple of years later, Kusaraku decided, though, that he was dissatisfied with the school that he was in… so he arranged to be transferred, and had his father sign the papers. It was done.
For some reason, he felt like starting over once in a while…
Every couple years, he'd have himself transferred again, and that was how he'd ended up in the current school which he was in.
For the past few years, he'd encountered a new problem… a minor one, but an annoying one, nevertheless. He was getting undesired attention from the girls in the schools… they seemed to think that he was pleasing to the eyes. Some of them even visibly drooled. All in all, it disgusted him… the whole situation of boyfriends and girlfriends was something he saw no reason to be involved with… it looked to him as though it were nothing more than a pitiful situation with people running around, letting themselves be told what to do by their hormones.
Pitiful, really.
Finishing up with his food, he set the now-empty bowl on the table beside him for him to wash in the morning.
And then he lay himself down to go to sleep.
That night, he dreamed… he dreamed a lot, which was unusual for him. And the dreams… they seemed to be so real.
In one part of the dream, there was a young woman there who looked remarkably like him… like she could be his sister or something, except that her ears were pointed. Another one was a little girl with long white hair and dark eyes like an abyss. And then there was a monk with what seemed sort of like a black hole or something in his hand, and a little fox-child, and a young woman toting an enormous boomerang.
The three figures he saw most, however, were these three… a woman who looked like she could be Kagome's older sister almost, with skin as pale as ivory, dressed in the garb of a miko… a young man, dressed all in red, with long silver hair, white dog ears, golden eyes, and claws; he carried a long sword, and always seemed to be fighting Kusaraku… lastly, was someone he had seen in real life. Kagome… she was scattered all throughout the dreams... and, in the last part… her brown eyes, usually so gentle-looking, were filled with fear, loathing, and even fury as she stared at him. A look of determination made its way into the brown orbs as she lifted a bow and fired an arrow at him, and then…
He woke up, sweating, his whole body feeling as though it were covered in fire from the neck down.
He stared down at his hands, which had, in the dream, been clawed sort of like that silver-haired guy's. What the hell kind of dreams were these? They were so… real… like none he'd ever had before. In fact, he'd never even been able to remember his dreams before this.
Was this somehow connected to Kagome?