Fog swirled around Sango, giving the forest and the river a dreamlike quality. With the fog so thick this morning, it almost seemed like she was completely alone… even though she knew her friends were only a short distance away, waiting while she went to the river to refill her water container. It promised to be a long day on the road, and she wanted to be prepared.

The illusion of solitude didn't last long.

Shapes loomed out of the fog, only revealing themselves to be men as they shouted and charged toward her.

She thumped one man solidly on the head with her newly refilled water container and neatly evaded a strike from another as she retreated the few steps necessary to retrieve the hiraikotsu.

The men were clearly agitated and had not expected their prey to fight back; she heard one say, "What the hell?!"

"Who are you?" she demanded, suddenly fearing the worst. She'd thought these men simple bandits who would turn tail and run at the slightest resistance, but had apparently misjudged the situation. Wondering if she ought to call for the others, she stalled. "You seem like ordinary human men, but…"

She could see now that there were more than she had thought, including one riding a horse. That one's arm was in a sling; he would likely be no good in a fight.

"We were mistaken—she's not Koharu," one of the other men, most likely a lackey, told him.

"She's beautiful," the man on the horse said. Sango frowned, not liking the way he was leering at her. "Take her."

"Yessir!" his men said, though they did not sound very confident. They readied their weapons and began to slowly approach. Sango stepped back as if she were afraid of them, readying her hiraikotsu for a sudden strike. She was going to enjoy teaching these men a lesson.

But before she had a chance, Inuyasha came bounding out of the fog to pummel them into submission. In short order, all of the men had fled back into the fog, and she and Inuyasha were alone again.

"Um." Or maybe not as alone as she had thought. She turned and saw that the voice belonged to a young girl who couldn't have been older than Kagome. She was soaking wet, probably from hiding in the water, and looked like she wasn't sure what to say next.

"Were they after you?" Sango asked, trying to keep her voice gentle. This girl seemed very frightened and very shy, and she didn't want to scare her off. If she had been hiding out in a swamp all by herself, she had probably been through a lot already. She glanced over her shoulder, but it was as if the men had never been there at all. Turning back to the girl, she assured, "You won't have to worry about them anymore."

Miroku and Kagome came running up before the girl had a chance to answer. As soon as the girl laid eyes on the monk, her entire demeanor changed. Shyness and terror fell away in an instant. She ran to Miroku and threw her arms around him in a fierce embrace, calling, "Miroku-sama! I missed you!"

Sango could only watch in confusion. This girl knew Miroku somehow?

The monk didn't seem to have a much better idea what was going on than Sango did. "Do I know you?" he asked, infinitely gentle. Sango noted rather sourly that he made no attempt whatsoever to disentangle himself from the girl. Typical.

"It's me, Koharu," the girl told him. Were those tears in her eyes? She was so happy to see Miroku again that she was ready to cry, it seemed.

At least the monk finally seemed to recognize her. "Oh, Koharu! From that one time…" Then again, maybe not.

"It's been three years," the girl added helpfully.

"You certainly look a lot different!"

Sango had no idea how the monk could look so convincingly concerned and caring when he obviously had no real idea who this girl was. Inuyasha and Kagome were having a hushed conversation off to one side, leaving Sango to take in the scene by herself. Did they know more about what was going on here? Or were they, like Sango, merely suspicious of the monk's motivations?

Somewhere in there, probably around the time that Inuyasha demanded to know how she knew Miroku, Koharu finally realized that Miroku was not traveling alone and turned to address the rest of the group. Even so, she remained close to the monk. "I lost my whole family to war, my parents and all my siblings, when I was just a young child," she explained. "I was found by the headman of that village and he put me to work… but it was hard work from dawn to dusk, and he never gave me enough food. I was starving, and cried every day."

Sango, who had been mildly annoyed that Koharu seemed not to notice she even existed, felt a pang of sympathy. This girl might be young and bright-eyed, but she had already been through a lot in her short life.

"And then Miroku-sama was summoned to the village to perform an exorcism," Koharu went on. "He gave me food, and was so kind to me…" She sighed wistfully. "So I was so happy when he asked me if I would bear his child…"

Noticing the way both Sango and Kagome had recoiled at this revelation, Miroku asked, "What's with the looks?"

"You'd even say that to a child?" Kagome demanded, aghast.

Koharu insisted, "I was so happy!"

And she might well have been happy, considering how miserable her life must have been until the monk walked into it. But Sango couldn't move past the disgust she felt now that she knew the monk was even willing to proposition children. She'd known he had his flaws, but had never imagined this. Now that she was aware of the depths to which he had apparently stooped, she felt ten times a fool for having sympathized with his plight.

"Take responsibility for your actions!" Kagome continued.

"I never laid a finger on Koharu," he protested, in the same obnoxious tone of voice he always used when he complained about being misunderstood.

Sango scowled. He hadn't even recognized Koharu at first, yet now he made such ridiculous claims. "Are you sure about that?"

He was remarkably good at maintaining his composure. "Yes. Koharu is a child, and—"

Koharu, of course, jumped to his defense. "Miroku-sama left the village soon after that, but he promised to come back someday and take me away," she explained. "Everything was fine for a while, but…" She took a deep breath, as if to steady herself. "Lately the headman's son has been watching me with a lewd look on his face. And… last night he tried to get what he wanted by force."

Hearing this, Sango felt torn between her ire at the monk and her desire to protect this poor girl from further misfortune.

"So you ran away and hid?" Kagome asked.

"Yes," Koharu confirmed. "I hit him over the head with some firewood and took my chance."

Good girl, Sango thought.

But for Koharu, Sango and the others might as well not exist. Now that her sad story was told she focused entirely on Miroku, and implored him now, "Please take me with you, Miroku-sama!"

"Koharu…" he began. Sango half hoped that he would now explain the situation, in preparation to let her down gently. But Koharu would not let him get a word in edgewise, even if he had wanted to.

"I have nowhere else to go!" she pleaded. "And besides, I'm fourteen years old now. More than old enough to bear your child!"

Sango took a step back in horror, and Kagome went right along with her. She knew that some girls got married and had children very young, though this was not traditional in her own village, but Koharu was doing this for what seemed to Sango to be entirely the wrong reasons. Plus, she seemed to have no real idea of what bearing a child entailed. She wanted only to be with Miroku, the one person who had ever been kind to her, no matter what.

For Sango, whose own mother had suffered serious complications after the births of both of her children, the idea of a girl as young and small as Koharu attempting to give birth was horrifying. If the monk so much as seriously considered it…

She glared at him and hoped the message got across, because she was too angry to say it without yelling at him, like Kagome had done.

"We've wasted enough time here," Inuyasha decided, putting an end to the escalating conflict in his own gruff way. "Can't we at least keep walking while you figure this out?"

They followed the river for a while, until they found an empty building, which provided a convenient place to stop for a break. Kagome ushered Koharu away, taking her a short distance down the river, but only after sending significant glances toward Inuyasha.

The hanyou settled himself on the steps leading up to the building. "You know we can't take her with us, right, monk?"

For once he didn't try to equivocate. "Yes."

"Maybe so, but we can't just abandon her, can we?" Sango pointed out.

"Indeed," Miroku agreed. "Until we can find a safe place for her to live, she'll have to stay with us."

"Oh, of course. She's the one you asked to bear your child, after all," Sango said dryly. She'd not intended to take it further than that, but the angry words spilled right out. "She was a child. Did you intend it to be some sort of joke when you asked her to bear your child?"

"Not a joke… it's just something I ask every woman I meet," he explained, like that weak excuse made it any better. She supposed that as far as he was concerned, it did.

Still, she couldn't let it go at that. Needing something to needle him with, she seized upon the first thing that came to mind. "You never asked me."

For a long, uncomfortable moment he stared at her in utter consternation. Was he really thinking back through every interaction they'd had since they met? Sango could feel her own anger rising. Not good. She'd wanted to rile him up, not herself.

At last he reached the inevitable conclusion: whatever his past habits and ordinary behaviors, he had somehow never asked his ridiculous question of her.

The next thing she knew he was standing entirely too close to her, with both her hands clasped in his… just as he must have done with Koharu and every other woman he'd ever met before her. "Forgive me, Sango!"

She yanked her hands away with what she hoped was angry finality. "Don't even think about it, monk!"