Dark as Day
Chapter Two
Inuyasha was dimly aware of the fact he'd just jumped out the window of his mother's seventh story apartment. It took him a moment or two to realize that he was, indeed, falling from the sky towards the pavement below. His eyes widened and he began flapping his arms like a bird, as if such an action would assuage the growing fear within him.
No such luck, however. Even with his arms flapping he didn't feel any calmer. Which was understandable since he's very much not a bird demon. Dog demons couldn't fly.
"Shit!" he heard himself yell out. And to think that only a few hours ago he was feeling the pure ennui of life. Now he missed every single blissful moment of boredom he'd ever experienced.
Why the hell had he jumped out his mother's window? Did he inherit psychotic tendencies from his father along with dog demon blood?
He supposed this was his punishment for being so ungrateful of his simple life. He wasn't normal anymore. He was dead. He was a dead man.
As the threatening pavement loomed ever closer Inuyasha pushed his hands in front of him and clenched his eyes closed. He was going to die. Would it hurt? His life was flashing before his eyes but it was far too boring to watch.
He was suddenly surrounded by metal and a large crunching sound reverberated in the empty street of his mother's neighborhood. Inuyasha was fazed for only a moment until a car alarm screamed next to one of his twitching dog ears.
He sat up and clapped his hands over his ears, releasing a small scream of discomfort. But he wasn't dead.
He dared to open one of his golden eyes to see that he was sitting in the bed of a completely totaled vehicle. He stared at the metal surrounding him. The car alarm blared loudly and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. He sat where the back seat of the sedan would have been, the roof of the car nearly encasing him in its iron trap.
He slowly stood, his legs wobbly and his back feeling like it'd broken in several places. Only, he didn't know what that felt like and he was standing, so he scratched the belief that he was forever disabled or dead.
He stared around him, watching as people poked their heads out of their houses, staring down at the commotion. One older lady, who lived on the sixth floor directly below his mother screamed loudly.
"It's a demon! It's another demon attack!"
It seemed that with that simple remark the whole neighborhood was thrown into an uproar. Mothers and children, who'd curiously poked their head out to see what had disturbed their sleep, screamed and ran from the windows. Men pumped their fists, glaring at Inuyasha menacingly and brandishing makeshift weapons they'd acquired from their homes.
Inuyasha blinked in surprise at the sudden evolution of his predicament simply due to one old lady's screams. The men started screaming their repugnant insults towards him, like he was incapable of feelings or higher thought. They shrieked at him, shaking their fists and their table lamps as if he were a household pest.
Inuyasha was slightly comforted by the fact that none of them really presented a threat to him, up in their homes behind their locked doors when suddenly a shot rang out throughout the street and a bullet shattered the glass of the window his feet were inches away from.
He yelped and jumped out of the car, his feet touching the pavement and causing a crack to shoot out from under his feet and damage the road below him. His head whipped around to the area where the bullet had come from and he spotted a man, pistol extended and dark eyes glaring down at him like he'd done personal harm to him.
Inuyasha's eyes widened when he recognized the man. He never knew his name, but had seem him during the hot summers of his youth, when he would play in the streets with his childhood friends. He'd come out with lemonade occasionally and the children would laugh and giggle about an old man making food instead of the wife. He'd always smiled his crinkled old smile and waved them aside like they were his own children.
Seeing the man with his pistol extended, his finger on the trigger and the bullets aiming at him was a shock back to reality. He was an evil creature.
But he'd done nothing wrong. Why were they trying to kill him? Okay, granted, he'd just destroyed someone's car, but he hadn't hurt anyone. Another bullet whizzed past him.
Inuyasha stumbled. He turned his back and ran from his neighborhood. He couldn't bear to stare at the ones who despised him now. If they recognized him as Inuyasha Takahashi, Izayoi's only son, would they cease their needless destruction of him?
'They'd probably go after mom, too,' Inuyasha realized with a chill running down his spine. He turned away from the original destination of his running, his home. He couldn't go home. They could hurt his mother.
He turned and fled into the city of Tokyo, the city that hated him now.
The city that had demons running wild.
He uneasily ran around the city, dodging street lights and stray cars. Everything was moving as if in a blur and he felt a strange, exhilarating high as he raced down the street. He discovered that with his newly acquired muscles, he was able to run rather quickly and come to a sudden halt easily. He inhaled the air around him, starting to grow used to the burst of different, odorous scents.
For a city that supposedly had tons of demon attacks every night, the world outside his neighborhood seemed rather tame. He hadn't seen a single demon, save for himself, since he set out into the large urban area.
He ran briskly down the sidewalk, nearly smashing into telephone poles and pay phones but he managed to avoid disaster by evading any obstruction that came into his view. He found it quite easy to nimbly dodge oncoming objects, and his coordination was far superior to what it had been not even a day before.
'It's hard to believe that I ever survived as a human,' Inuyasha thought with a large grin as he sped down an off-ramp and into the traffic of the highway. He raced down the center lane, whizzing into new lanes when a car came towards him. He knew he was being reckless, but if he could fall from a window and slam into a car, no doubt he could survive racing down the freeway into oncoming traffic.
He embraced this newfound freedom. 'This is amazing!'
He felt the blood of his father coursing through his veins and his muscles tense and relax as he traveled down the road. He already knew he could move faster than a normal human, dodge on a whim and skid to a halt quickly and painlessly. But… what else could he do?
Eventually, he turned around and moved in the opposite direction, not wanting to leave the city. There was nothing for him outside Tokyo. In the solemn part of his mind however, a small voice whispered that there was nothing inside Tokyo for him, either. Now that he was a demon, he was on the bottom of the list. Now that he was a demon, he would be killed. He'd seen the way his neighbors had transformed into ruthless monsters.
'Are we all like this?' he found himself thinking as he returned to Tokyo and darted down an alley way to catch his breath. Even demons ran out of air eventually. 'They don't even know me. Yet, they were willing to kill me.'
He bit his lip. For his entire life everything had been black and white. There had never been any shades of grey. Everything was either good or bad. There was no middle ground. But now he was living proof of that shade of grey. He was human and he was demon.
He fisted his hands and pounded them against the ground angrily. When he pulled his fists away he saw a large hole in the thick cement. He frowned.
What was he going to do now? He was now the very thing everyone had told him was evil. But he was the same as he was before, only new and improved. He smirked sardonically at that thought and quickly shook his head. He had to focus on his predicament.
Where all demons like him? Unsure what to do with the human problem? But what of the ones killing humans? Surely they were evil? He drew his knees to his chest and released a small sigh that came out in a raspy growl similar to a dog's.
He titled his head back, staring at the night sky with a forlorn expression. What was he going to do? If a human found him he was as good as dead and he knew nothing of his powers, if he had any. He knew that demons had supernatural powers; that was how they managed to kill humans so rapidly.
He sighed-growled again. How was he supposed to learn his powers, if he even had any? He didn't have a teacher and it wasn't as if he could snap his fingers and expect fire to shoot out from the friction.
Curiously he snapped his fingers. Nothing. He was slightly disappointed that he wasn't able to control fire with a simple snap of his fingers. Once again his fabulous luck was playing a stupendous role in his life.
"Might as well head home before I get killed," Inuyasha muttered to himself and rose to his feet. Dusting himself off of any dirt he'd collected when sitting on the ground of a dingy old alleyway, Inuyasha began walking to the opening.
Cars whizzed by and once they were out of sight, Inuyasha was racing down the speedway again into oncoming traffic. He did his customary dodging and skidding to avoid collisions and was thrilled when horns screamed at him whenever he cut it close.
It seemed that Inuyasha was keen on near death experiences because at that moment, racing down the street, cars appeared, almost side by side and blared their horns. His ears flattened and he frowned angrily.
He didn't have time to dodge or skid, he realized and he blanched. Before he could have another flashback of his overly boring life, Inuyasha did the only thing that he could think of: He threw his arms in front of his face and jumped.
It took him a few moments before he realized he wasn't in a massive car crash and that he wasn't dead. He seemed to be avoiding death a lot lately. Nervously, he dropped his arms and felt the wind pelt his face. He blinked bright golden eyes and realized he was in the air. He really had jumped.
He felt like he was flying for one beautiful moment before he began his descent and landed awkwardly on his feet. Within a moment he was rolling on the ground, scraping his skin and clothes against the pavement before rolling to a stop in the gutter on the side of the road. He groaned and tried lifting his head.
Slowly, he sat up and rubbed his head. Pulling his hand away he saw his fingers stained red from a small cut on his forehead. Quickly examining his body he determined that he'd gotten a lot of scrapes and bruises, but no serious damage. At least, not for a demon.
'Demons have healing powers,' he reminded himself and stood up on wobbly legs. He stood awkwardly for a moment, trying to regain his balance before inhaling deeply.
He'd jumped. He knew that. But he'd been so high up in the air, almost to the rooftops above him. He tilted his head back, staring up at the roofs of the buildings as if he was trying to register just how high he'd jumped. He jumped experimentally. He didn't go very high, though higher than he used to.
He furrowed his brow as his curiosity to this new ability began to sway him into more experimentation of his powers. He crouched down to the point he was nearly sitting down and pushed with all his might. He was extremely happy to see that he went much higher than last time.
Grinning when he landed, Inuyasha took off at a run, his legs whipping below him. With a might leap he bounded off the sidewalk and into the air. Doing a large, graceful arc, Inuyasha landed a block away. The smile on his face could not falter. With another tremendous leap, Inuyasha landed on the rooftops high above him.
He raced across the rooftops, delighting in the thrill of bounding over the gaps in buildings. He released a happy yip that he once again linked back to that of a dog's. He felt so free. How had he been able to live without this thrill? Without this blood surging within him? If this was what it was like to be different, then he rather enjoyed it.
As he ran wild in downtown Tokyo, his claws scraped against buildings, leaving gash marks. His feet left imprints in the stone of the building tops. He was wild. And he loved it. He felt wilder than he'd ever felt before, but that was to be expected. He was a demon now.
As the hours ticked by, Inuyasha became aware of the sirens behind him. The police had finally caught onto his presence. Normally, he would have been fearful of being arrested but now he was too high off his freedom to care. He did a small flip in the air and landed on a side street. His hand pressed against the ground and he felt the vibrations of the police cars following him.
He grinned, his fangs glinting in the subtle light of the street lamps and stood up. He recognized where he was. He was in his own neighborhood. His apartment was close by. Turning on his heel he whipped towards his home. Easily outrunning the cars' sirens, Inuyasha arrived at his apartment easily. Withdrawing the keys to his motorcycle and running towards his bike, Inuyasha jammed his helmet over his head and sat down idly.
He watched the cars whiz by, in pursuit of the 'demon attacks' scared civilians had reported about. Beneath his dark visor, Inuyasha smirked. He'd eluded an arrest. He felt incredibly rebellious for the first time in his life. He'd grown up living in the shadow of his father, trying to make his mother proud of him.
He'd attended an all boy's school during high school on a scholarship. One wrong move and he would have been out of there. He couldn't afford to let his mother down. He'd studied hard. He hadn't allowed anything to sway him from his studies. But now, he was his own man—no, a demon.
Of course, a small amount of doubt lingered in the back of his mind. He had gone from the perfect son to wild demon in just one night—his birthday. But this was an awakening for him. He enjoyed this wild side of himself… but how long could he keep this up?
After he was positive that the police wasn't returning he revved his engine and rode his motorcycle away from his neighborhood before they discovered that he was the demon they were after.
Armed with a new confidence in his health, Inuyasha sped down the roads, screeching his tires and weaving around slower cars. He loved his motorcycle; it was the only thing that would make him feel free and defiant. Now it was simply an accessory it seemed.
In any case, he was in for a wild night.
He groaned the next morning as his alarm blared, the red numbers flashing the time. He rolled over in his bed, knocking his pillow to the ground and kicking his blanket away from him. Wary, he raised his head and stared at the alarm before hitting the snooze button.
He'd stayed out the entire night, eluding near death experiences and pulling wool over the cop's eyes. After obtaining his motorcycle, Inuyasha had discovered his incredible strength when he'd whizzed into the ditch. He'd been convinced it was a fruitless effort to pull his bike back onto the road but gave it a try anyway. He was shocked, and pleased, to see that pulling his motorcycle out of the ditch was as easy as pulling weeds in a garden. He'd also discovered, thanks to his honed muscular power, that popping wheelies and jumping mediums was as simple as pie.
Inuyasha sighed happily in the memory before his golden eyes whipped open and he ran from his bed and into his bathroom. He stared at himself. His silver hair was sticking up in abnormal places and his velvet ears twitched about. Golden eyes stared at him.
"It wasn't a dream…" Inuyasha marveled, his eyes wide in shock. He reached out and touched the ears on his head. It had been real.
He frowned. He had a class in two days… how could he mange that? He couldn't very well skip class now could he? He was already close to flunking out of his university and it had taken him too much effort to get in there on his scholarship. He swallowed and gripped his sink.
"I can't go to class as a demon!" Inuyasha exclaimed angrily and was tempted to punch the mirror for no particular reason sans the fact he was upset. He restrained himself and sighed angrily. "I guess there goes my education."
He was briefly aware of the fact he was upset over not being able to go to school, but it was important to him. How else was he going to get a good job without an education? Scratch that, how was he supposed to do anything as a demon?
The phone ringing interrupted Inuyasha from his morbid thoughts and he slouched out of the bathroom. Picking up his cordless he stared at it for a moment. How was he supposed to hold it if the side of his head no longer had an ear? Then he heard a feminine voice asking if anyone was there. Frowning, he answered, "What?"
"I hope you're happy," his mother's voice scolded.
Inuyasha frowned. He knew this was coming. His mother was about to lecture him. "Sorry, Mom."
"Do you have any idea how much damage you caused last night?" Izayoi's voice was a pitch higher than normal, signaling that she was rather upset with her son. He could just picture her at her home, hand on hip, foot tapping the linoleum floor of the kitchen as she scolded him, her brow knitted.
"Sorry, Mom," Inuyasha sighed.
"You are not. Turn on the TV," she instructed.
Inuyasha frowned. "I don't have a television, remember?"
Izayoi groaned angrily and he pictured his mother glaring at the phone. Then she exhaled loudly, blowing a stream of breath into the phone. Inuyasha's dog ear twitched.
"Rampaging around the city would be something I'd expect from a senseless demon, not my son," Izayoi scolded with a bit of relief swimming in her voice. "You've cost the city thousands of dollars and caused several accidents with your motorcycle. People saw you, Inuyasha."
Inuyasha rubbed his forehead, feeling a pounding headache coming on. He pushed silver bangs away from his eyes and released another small sigh that sounded like a growl. His tongue felt too heavy to talk with and he felt a small sheet of sweat beginning to form on his brow. Did they know who he was?
Irrationally he imagined someone from one of his classes recognizing him despite the new features he'd acquired and running to tell the government about the demon who'd been masquerading as a human for all these years. He fidgeted with the phone and shifted from foot to foot.
"Be thankful that no one recognized you," Izayoi snapped out, unknowingly soothing Inuyasha's illogical fear. "But that's not to say it won't happen next time. Never do that again, you hear me? Do you have any idea how scared I was to come back and see you gone only to look out my window to see someone was shooting at you? Do you want me to die early, Inuyasha?"
Inuyasha shook his head quickly than realized that his mother couldn't see this gesture. "No," he choked out. "I wasn't thinking."
"Obviously not," Izayoi said with another exhale of breath into the phone. "You have to be more careful, Inuyasha. Who knows what could have happened? If the police hadn't have gotten you than the demon hunters will."
Inuyasha shivered before he could stop himself. He hadn't thought of the demon hunters; they were notorious for killing demons in the dead of night. He swallowed a lump that had lodged itself in his throat.
"It doesn't matter now," Inuyasha sighed. "I'll never be able to go outside again looking like this." He stared down at his claws and flexed his fingers. The sharp talons on his fingers looked threatening in the soft light of the morning. He sighed. "I guess I can become a hermit in the mountains or something."
He heard his mother snort in a way that was similar to his own. He frowned.
"Inuyasha, don't be ridiculous. You just stay on the low down for a while before I figure something out, got it?" Izayoi sounded earnest, as if afraid her son would be stupid enough to go on another escapade after instilling fear into the boy's mind.
Inuyasha's frown deepened. "Fine."
"I'll talk to you later than, sweetie, be careful. Don't answer the door unless it's me, got it?" Izayoi demanded. As if he would be so stupid as to open the door to anyone else? He rolled his eyes heavenward and hung up the phone after exchanging good-byes with his mother.
Then he flopped down onto the couch and stared at his ceiling. The memories of last night rushed back to him and he smirked at the memories. It had been wondrous discovering his powers. But who was to say that that wasn't simply the beginning? What if he'd only just scraped the surface of his demonic abilities?
As soon as his smirk appeared it was replaced with a frown. It wasn't as if he could do anything. He had to stay in his apartment until he heard from his mother again. He felt like a mama's boy now.
He kicked his feet up and rested them on the other side of the couch, lying across the loveseat with a pout similar to a puppy's. He crossed his arms and closed one golden eye to protect the honey orb from the filtering sunlight that shown through his half-closed blinds.
Now that he was able to comprehend what it was that he'd done the fact that he was no longer completely human hit him like a ton of bricks. His golden eyes narrowed and he worried his bottom lip with a pointed canine.
"So, I'm a demon now," he told himself with a curt nod. "Mom's been hiding this secret from me since that day dad shot me with some kind of binding or whatever the hell it is he did to me." He puffed out his chest and jumped slightly when his fang pierced the soft flesh of his lips.
"I just spent the night acting like a delinquent after a twenty-two year streak of ass kissing." He found that speaking out loud was helping the weight of this hit him harder. He had to figure this stuff out. It was confusing and he was feeling emptier by the moment. "But what does this mean?"
The truth of the matter was that he'd had the human-good-demon-bad crap shoveled down his throat every year of his life and he'd grown up believing that all demons were blood-drinking human-killers. He wiped his hand down his face, golden eyes still staring at the ceiling.
"But now I'm a demon," Inuyasha whispered with a tired expression on his face. He sighed and tugged on a lock of his silver hair. "But I'm not evil."
True, what he'd done last night certainly wasn't angelic but he wouldn't go as far as to say that it was evil. He was just having some fun—destructive fun, yes, but fun nonetheless.
He scratched his head, his claw nicking over a velveteen ear which twitched away from his fingertip. His honey colored orbs continued to stare upwards towards the ceiling.
"What the hell is happening?" Inuyasha questioned the ceiling, as if the building held the answers to all his mysteries. It didn't answer, but Inuyasha didn't expect it to.
"This," he told the ceiling as he shifted his gaze to the claws at his fingertips. He was a demon now. "Is the perfect example of irony."
He'd spent twenty-four agonizing hours cooped up in his apartment. Inuyasha found himself growing increasingly restless. His claws yearned to dig into something, his legs longed for the furious pumping of muscles as he raced thought the city. He sat at his window at night, being mindful to keep his face shielded from the outside world and longed to travel along the rooftops, unlocking untold secrets of his powers.
But he was stuck in his home, awaiting his mother. His restlessness had continued to grow as the time for him to be expected to leave for class ticked near. He had one day before he dropped a letter grade in his history class. He wasn't a good student by nature; he had to work extremely hard to do well in school but he'd always had trouble with history, no matter how hard he tried.
As he lounged about his room on a lazy Tuesday morning—he only had his classes on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays—scooping up cereal into his mouth he heard his telephone ring. Frowning, he stood up and moved towards the phone on the wall opposite him. Lifting the phone from its cradle he tucked it between his shoulder and cheek.
"Hello?" he greeted gruffly, his voice dimmed by his sleepiness.
"Inuyasha, sweetie, I'm almost at your apartment," his mother's voice greeted. Inuyasha nearly dropped his phone. "When I get there be sure to buzz me up, okay?"
"Uh, right, okay," Inuyasha said slowly but was only met with dial tone. His mother was eccentric at times. He sighed and hung up his phone, waiting around to buzz his mother up. When he heard the buzz from his intercom he clicked the button without bothering to check that it was really his mother and waited for his mother to journey up the building to his level.
A few moments later he was met with a tender tap at the door and he opened it after a quick glance through his peep hole. Instead of a warm greeting, Izayoi slapped the back of his head before slipping off her shoes.
"Ow, what was that for?" Inuyasha demanded angrily as he slammed the door shut.
"Don't even bother to check to make sure it's me!" Izayoi snapped.
"You called me and told me you were coming," Inuyasha countered, his dark brows knitting together.
Izayoi sighed and moved towards the living room, beckoning her son with a wave of her hand. "Come on, Inuyasha, I need to speak with you."
Inuyasha followed after her, his feet moving faster and softer over the carpeted floor than his mother's had. Over the last day of supreme boredom, Inuyasha had mastered the talent of light feet. He plopped down next to his mother on the couch as she dug around her bag.
A moment later she extracted a small pouch and dropped it into his lap. "There you go, now you can go outside."
"Oh, joy," Inuyasha said sarcastically as he picked up the pouch that looked only suitable for holding stray coins. He waved it from side to side in front of his face. "All my problems are solved for I now have a coin pouch."
Izayoi fixed him with a glare that could have frozen fire and Inuyasha clamped his mouth shut. "It's inside the pouch," Izayoi said tensely. "Now, quickly."
He opened the pouch and tipped it over into his hand. A small ring rolled out and sat in the center of his palm innocently. It was a simple ring. The silver loop glistened in the sunlight streaming through his window, still only half-closed by the blinds.
"A ring…" he said slowly, trying to comprehend the significance of having a ring.
Izayoi sighed and smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle in her skirt. "Inuyasha, as you know, you are not the only demon in this world."
"Yeah," Inuyasha said slowly as he inhaled his mother's juniper scent. He'd grown used to the onslaught of smells he'd encountered and had even been able to decipher the difference between a human's scent and a demon's scent. At least, as much as he could seeing as how he only had his mother's scent and his own scent to go by.
"They live among us, unknown to the ignorant humans who only know about the demons from what the news and newspapers tell them," his mother said gently. "That ring will help you blend in among the humans. Do not lose it. It took me forever to find it. Your father had it made just in case you awoke. Within it are an ofuda and a spell."
Inuyasha stared at the ring before slipping it onto his right middle finger. It was hard to squeeze the ring past, seeing as how it was a little small, and he had issues at the knuckle but managed to squeeze it past. Once it was on his finger the simple silver ring did something remarkable.
It began to glow. Across the smooth silvery surface of the ring, it seemed as if words were being etched into the surface. He couldn't understand the language.
"It's Latin," his mother supplied. Inuyasha's brow furrowed.
"Why would I need to know Latin?" Inuyasha growled out.
"It's an ancient spell, Inuyasha," Izayoi scolded and they both watched as the glow dimmed and it was a simple ring again. "It's binding to your unique aura signature. Now it will seal you."
"Seal me…?" Inuyasha questioned.
Izayoi gestured to a mirror near where a television should have been and Inuyasha stood up. Journeying to the other side of the room he examined himself in the mirror and gaped.
His old self stared back at him. Black hair cascaded down his back, lavender eyes stared at him in confusion and he lacked fangs and claws.
"What is this?" Inuyasha whispered as he touched a strand of ebony hair.
Izayoi stood beside him, his body towered over hers. "It's a sealing spell. It's kitsune magic."
"Kitsune magic?" Inuyasha repeated.
Izayoi nodded. "It puts on an illusion that makes others see you as a human. You are still a half-demon, Inuyasha, but you appear human."
Inuyasha nodded. "So as long as I wear the ring I appear as a human, right?"
Izayoi nodded, her lips curving into a smile. "That's correct, Inuyasha."
Inuyasha felt a wave of relief wash over him. He didn't have to give up his newfound strength but he didn't have to stay cooped up in his house any longer. He could go outside once again. He rotated around the mirror, examining himself. Everything appeared to be in order. He smiled lightly and nodded his head in approval.
"Just be careful, Inuyasha not to lose it. And be sure that you're always wearing it. Demons will still be able to smell your half-demon blood, but they won't make a drastic move," Izayoi consoled. "If they do try to do something, they'll make it appear to be just a normal squabble. Humans can't tell the difference and they're your real problem."
"Right, thanks Mom," Inuyasha said as he turned from the mirror, complete in his examination of his form.
"Don't take it off," Izayoi warned as she moved towards the door. "And don't pull a stunt like the other night again, Inuyasha. You may be protected now, but this is still a very dangerous world."
Inuyasha and Izayoi said their good-byes once again and the older woman left. Inuyasha locked his door and slumped against it.
Slowly his lips curved into a smile and he slipped off his ring before pocketing it.
"Yeah right, Mom."
His history class was going to be as boring as ever, Inuyasha silently predicted as he scurried into his class ten minutes early. He moved towards his regular seat and plopped down next to it. He was thankful that it was near a window. Usually he enjoyed staring out it during lectures—which might be the reason for his bad grade in this class—but now it would help quell the restlessness of his demon blood.
His desk partner, Kagome Higurashi, was already sitting there. They'd only exchanged about five words with one another throughout the entire semester, both opting to remain silent during their class. From what he could tell, she was a rather intelligent girl and actually understood what the professor was talking about the majority of the time. For that, Inuyasha envied Kagome.
But today, Inuyasha felt strangely confident. Perhaps it was the demon blood marching through his veins or maybe that muffin he'd eaten for breakfast, but Inuyasha decided he wanted to talk with Kagome today.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She had long, black hair, traditional of a Japanese girl. She was lithe and had a fair complexion. The thing most extraordinary about her, however, was her crystalline blue eyes. The girl was obviously Japanese, but he was the only one he'd ever seen that actually had orbs the color of the ocean during a storm. She was rather pretty, maybe not beautiful, but certainly very pretty.
"Good morning," Inuyasha greeted, smiling at her. His hand self consciously went to his hand where his ring was. He knew, of course, that he wouldn't have managed to get to Tokyo University without incident had he not been wearing the ring, but it was becoming a habit.
It took Kagome a moment to realize that she was being spoken to and she turned her head towards him. Those fathomless, gorgeous blue eyes stared at him for a moment, blinking, before her pink lips curved upwards into a delighted smile.
"Good afternoon," she corrected, her blue eyes sparkling from the light peering in from the window. "It's one."
Inuyasha grinned sheepishly. "Oh, yeah."
After that they didn't say anything more. They really didn't speak to one another ever. Though she was the only person in the class other than the professor that he knew the name of. Perhaps it was because she sat next to him or it could be because she had gorgeous eyes that he remembered her name.
Besides, in the long run, it didn't matter. Kagome Higurashi had a boyfriend. Kagome Higurashi was a girl he knew nothing about. Kagome Higurashi probably hated demons just like everyone else.
He inhaled, wanting to commit her scent to memory. He imagined that she'd have a beautiful, wonderful scent, one that he would be able to recognize from a mile away. She had a look to her that suggested that she'd smell nice.
He wasn't disappointed. Kagome's scent was sweet, almost summery, but he couldn't place exactly what it was she smelled like. It smelled like nothing he'd ever smelled before and he couldn't place it like he'd been able to with his mother's scent.
He couldn't think more on it, however, because his professor walked in signaling the beginning of class.