A/N: I just wanted to let everyone know that I appreciate any readers out there. Actually, I get a bigger kick watching the hit counter go up. Ahahaha! I know I don't do reply reviews and such, but just know that every one of them makes me smile a lot. (What? I can't do Appreciate Reviewers Day?) /OOCness

Disclaimer: Own? I don't even know what's happening in the canon world anymore. --


Chapter 14

Nghi


Today just wasn't a good day for him at all.

First he had slipped on a puddle in the driveway and fell face forward onto the muddy ground. If he hadn't been rifling through his bag for God knows whatever it was, he would have suffered a broken nose and a nasty gash on his forehead. Instead, his bag—along with most of his textbooks—broke the fall, and he ended up with a nasty gash on his hand instead.

Which was just what he needed for next week's district games. After spending a considerable amount of time cursing at the slippery driveway, Inuyasha had gotten up and dragged himself back into his room to change. On the upside, he was now in a fresh uniform, which was always better than a wet, dirty one. It smelled like detergent and fresh air—perfect. But on the downside, he ended up being late to school.

For the third time. In a week.

It would have been fine—he could've hung out at the dugout until third period—but as luck would have it, the moment he had stepped foot into the school, the secretary had run smack into him. "Oh, if it isn't Mr. Furiko." If there was one thing about her that made him angry for no reason, it was her monotonous, nasal voice. "Glad to see you decided to attend school today." Today was no different; she sounded like she woke up sick again.

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered. "I'm glad, too." It would have been a consolation if she had just let it drop there, but as it was, teachers and any person with some form of authority were always attracted to him for some reason.

He had almost turned the corner when she piped up again. "I'll be marking this down on your records." That was when he knew it; the day would positively suck.

And suck it did. He had managed to run into the damn secretary again later in the afternoon, had Miroku bother him more than usual at lunch, and stubbed his toe on a random bench. The chair didn't even stand a chance as he effectively kicked the leg out from underneath it, and Inuyasha watched with slight satisfaction as the seat collapsed to one side, and his bag slid onto the ground. "Serves you right," he grouched to the object and swiped for the sack before stomping out of the park.

Basically, if the day hadn't screwed him over, it certainly made him feel uncomfortable. And by 'uncomfortable', he meant that certain event during lunch right before Miroku had pranced in to check whether or not he would be going to Kawaguchi's party.

He didn't want to admit it—he didn't even like the thought of it—but whenever his thoughts strayed near there, his ears went a tad shade darker. "Goddamn," Inuyasha muttered, slamming the house door behind him. "You could've just left it there, but no, you had to go and chase me down." It had been a very bad day, and he was in a foul mood—too foul to describe it properly, apparently.

"Inuyasha?" It was Kaoru, and she appeared at the top of the stairs a moment later in a red silk robe. It was the expensive one big man InuTaisho had bought for her for their last anniversary. Pity, it would've made a nice gift, if he had actually been there to present it to her. The two-karat diamond ring, the emerald-encrusted necklace, and that perfume she was always wearing would have also made nice gifts, too. Altogether, the items he presented to her over the past decade or so would have been more than enough to feed a third world country, but frankly, he was too busy traveling to give a damn about anything else, and she was too busy trying to salvage their relationship to give a damn about anything else, either.

Then he remembered that she had called for him. "What?" he replied hastily, throwing his bag to the side and shrugging off his jacket.

"Why the noisy entrance?" she yawned, stretching backwards. Her eyes followed him, but she made no move to descend.

Instead, he climbed up the stairs by two's and walked uninterestedly past her. "Just a bad day." It was true, too. Absolutely nothing good came out of today, and he would have been far better off faking a cold that morning.

"What happened?" Kaoru followed him up to the room entrance; at that point Inuyasha promptly closed the door in her face. Then there was a lot of rustling and movement on the other side of the wall.

"Nothing," came the muffled answer. "The day's been a bit on the crappy side, if you know what I mean."

She shrugged, an apathetic smile briefly flitting across her face. "Oh, we get those all the time." There was no reply—just more shuffling on the other side. She shifted on her other foot. "Still, that's no reason for you to enter the house like the way you did. You want to bring the house down or something?"

The door opened, and Inuyasha walked out with a duffel bag slung across his shoulders. "No. Maybe I'm just a child resorting to desperate measures to get attention from his family." All of that said, and not a single look back at her. She watched as he walked breezily across the hallway and started for the stairs.

A moment later there was a loud clatter on the other side of the house, and Kaoru sighed, shaking her head. "Welcome home, Inuyasha darling," she said to the emptiness. "I love you, too."

-

He threw the ball into the air and swung the bat a moment later, watching with satisfaction as the fence jangled furiously. There was nothing like a good workout.

He was lounging on the bench as usual, staring at the people loitering on the field. Jeez, didn't these people have anywhere else to go? Nearby a gaggle of girls were sitting by the base of the oak tree, and they were whispering. If one's definition of whispering was to talk as loudly as possible in a not-so-subtle hushed voice, that is. They were talking about some actor or something; whatever it was, it was annoying as hell, especially the lead one. She didn't have to do anything—just her voice grated his nerves already, like that secretary. He contemplated throwing a baseball into their group, just to see them scream and fragment into scattering twits before reassembling a bit further away. It was ridiculous… so ridiculous that it could possibly work.

—Grab the baseballs and start over—

His hand was already curling around the smooth leather and its red stitches when there was a shuffle behind him. In an instant the annoyance was shifted from the group to the person behind him. Could that dumbass ever take a hint? As soon as he tensed up, the shuffling stopped… and only to be picked up again at a quieter pace. "For fuck's sakes," Inuyasha growled, and already he could see his left eye twitching. "I know you're behind me, Miroku. Stop playing fairy feet with me, 'cuz you're not as light as you think you are." He didn't give the idiot a chance to start.

"And before you start spewing shit, I'm going to cut to the chase—leave me the hell alone. I ain't going to that—"

"I'm not Miroku."

—Wait two seconds, that was almost always the case, and hit at a 35-degree angle—

The voice was definitely too high for even the captain to imitate. The only conclusion that the intruder was not the annoying captain, but someone else. Inuyasha whipped around, his eyes already glaring. Just because it wasn't Miroku didn't make it any less annoying; rather, it was more offensive. "Who the hell—" The nasty remark was cut short as he saw his neighbor stand a few feet away from him, looking surprisingly demure from behind the fences.

—Curve balls still gave him trouble after all this time, dammit. He improved, but it was his considerable weakness. If only it wasn't so low—

She wasn't staring him down or making him feel inferior with that glare of hers (quite a feat). Instead, she was looking at the ground and fiddling with the hem of her skirt. Kagome Higurashi never played with the hem of her skirt; it defied all aspects of her personality, and it certainly wasn't her character to do so. That was one of the many numerous ways he could tell that something was eating her, and she was going to drag him down again.

Then he thought about what had happened yesterday, with the whole crying and sobbing and yelling and the shebang, and panic started to seize him, starting with his balls. Of pride, that is. Kagome was a strong character—she wouldn't break down in the middle of school, not even if the apocalypse was coming. But then again, he hadn't thought she could break down so hysterically like that yesterday… so essentially, anything was possible in the aftermath.

"Look," they both started at the same time. They also stopped at the same time and waited for the other to go. When he didn't say anything, Kagome finally looked up.

—His right hand was bleeding again, and it was starting to itch considerably. He needed to get Kaoru to check that out before next week's district games. If a scout saw him perform at anything less than his best—

"Did you want to go?" she asked, and he was suddenly pissed off at the awkwardness between them. What the fuck? He only saw her cry—it wasn't like he had caught her making out with that spineless boyfriend of hers.

"You go first," he said with a careless shrug, and he meant it. He didn't really care either way—he just cared whether she was going to start bursting randomly again, and that was a no-no. So just to make sure, he was being extra courteous to not set off any emotions.

Of course, that didn't mean that being extra courteous was encouraging Kagome to hurry up. She stood there for a good two minutes, 'um'-ing and 'ah'-ing and looking generally unsure of herself. It was quite the phenomenon to see someone act so outside of herself, and he was quickly becoming irritated until finally: "God, just spit whatever the hell it is out already!" That felt so, so good.

—There was a very unusual crack in the air, and he looked down to find—"Shit! Not my good bat!"—

She looked up sharply, and her mouth pursed. "Well, I'm trying to find a good way to string it! If you'd stop acting like you'd have to be somewhere all the time, maybe I wouldn't feel so pressured!" Ah, the I'm-about-to-have-a-cow-fit side. He'd take that over the emotional one any day.

"One, it ain't class, so spit it out already, and two, I don't want to be attached to the hips with you. God knows we've seen each other more than we ever wanted to in the past few days."

"Oh, you're so smart to think up of that insult," Kagome retorted, her hands no longer playing with the threads of her skirt. They were planted squarely on each side of her hips now, and they certainly looked ready to swing right through the wires separating the two.

Inuyasha dutifully ignored the jab and looked away from her, not because she was too intense, but because he thought he saw a dragonfly flutter somewhere. (Did they even flutter?) "Hurry up and tell me what you wanted to say." Whatever it is, it certainly wouldn't be too bad to handle, now that he had her jostled into some semblance of a normal mood. If normal was defined as angry and livid, that is.

It got quiet again, and not in that relaxed sense, either. Momentarily distracted from his hunt, Inuyasha turned around again—

And he found the warmest smile.

—God, how could he have missed such an easy fastball? It was practically made for him! He growled, aggravated by such a blatant mistake. He was doing it all wrong, all wrong. How the hell would he make it to the major leagues if he played like a four year old?—

It was so out of the blue, so definitely way out of left field, so-so not what he was expecting, and he thought that maybe it was just a joke, that maybe all those years of staring at the sun was beginning to catch up to him. All it took was one glance at her eyes, and something landed hard in his stomach. What the hell indeed.

"Thank you," Kagome said, the smile still strange and slightly distorted on her face. He had always seen her face pulled into a scowl or a smirk (Got that from him, admittedly.), and any time she had been smiling or laughing, it was never directed at him. At all. "For-for yesterday, I mean. I won't do it again—I'll make sure to never do it again, actually—but… just for not being your usual self, I guess." Then the flash of smile became a support smile, and soon a mess of black hair followed it as she turned around and walked away.

Inuyasha didn't have time to process anything further because Miroku suddenly surprised him from behind.

—"Hell yeah, that's what I want to see!" The ball soared into the air and rebounded off the fence. All the hard work invested into the practice was paying off, finally. There really was nothing like a good workout.

-

He came back around seven or eight, climbing up the steep, green hill. Droplets of sweat slid down his face and stained his shirt. Whatever. That workout did the trick and made him forget about the stupid day and its thirst for Inuyasha misery. 'Cuz that's how you beat the system—you don't let it get to you.

The lights on his house were blinding him, even at a distant pace, and he briefly wondered just how much they were paying for the electric bill each month. It could easily be three times as many as his neighbors were paying.

Being outside during the dusk was always one of his favorite times of the day. It was quiet and serene, and his thoughts weren't usually so jumbled around his head. Out in the baseball field during this time? Heaven. Sometimes he snuck out of the house just to hang around in the deserted field; it wasn't like he was having a mental breakdown or was claustrophobic or anything—sometimes life moved by way too fast, as much as he loved being part of the fast and furious. Being out there with no nagging parents or teachers or annoying neighbors usually helped him get away from it all.

He never really did deal with stress well.

As he neared the house, the air blowing softly around him, it became apparent that maybe today was really destined to be a bad day. For starters, a sleek, silver car was parked in the driveway, and that only meant one thing.

Inuyasha slipped through the back door, and Kaoru's shrieks immediately enveloped him. "—that I like all this?" They were coming from the kitchen, and thankfully, the backdoor was connected to the living room—one room down, and he would've been caught.

"I don't need this, not when I finally come home after hard work," his father rumbled angrily. "I don't need you talking to me like I'm some obstinate child—"

"Child? You think I treat you like a child?" Kaoru screeched. "How about we redefine how you've been treating me lately, huh? I'm just locked up in this house like some-some porcelain doll!"

"I've never made you stay in this place against your will!" InuTaisho interjected. "I'm not the one who's chaining you to this house! You're the one who's doing it to yourself!"

"Oh yes, like I've always wanted to sit at home and wait for my husband to come home! Fuck it, if I'm going to be some slave to this household, at least make an effort to come home every month instead of an annual visit!"

"Don't you try and turn the table on me now! I've given you everything you've ever wanted. Those Belgian chocolates didn't come cheap—"

"Oh, so you think that's what it is? The materials in this house? I never wanted any of them!" Her voice cracked. "All I wanted was to spend time with you—"

"That wasn't what you said when I gave you those imported gold bracelets."

She breathed just a littler harder, her eyes moistening just a little, and InuTaisho deflated just a little bit. "No, Kaoru, that-that came out wrong. I didn't mean—"

Before he could finish his statement, she had swiftly unclasped the bracelets on her left arm and chucked them at his head. They ricocheted off his forehead neatly and slid across the floor and into some dark corner underneath the oven. "The fu—"

"Is that what I am to you?" she shrilled, and the tears were really falling down now. "A-A dress up doll? There, your damn bracelets back. If I don't dress in any of the gaudy crap you give me, will it bring you back? Will it make you less selfish and more humane?"

"Don't you—"

"The good China silverware?" There were loud crashes and crunches and cracks. "Gone. Will you come back now?"

"Stop it—"

"The earrings?" There was a loud grinding noise that grumbled suspiciously from the sink. "Gone. No more. Will you come back now?"

"Stop it—"

"This two karat diamond ring you gave me?" The sound of a window breaking. "It's gone, it's all gone. I've been stripped now. Will you come back now?"

"No."

"Then I'll break everything until he does," she said quietly once, and he knew it was the calm before the storm.

That was as far as Inuyasha got, as he safely made it into his room and shut the door quietly behind him. Downstairs the pandemonium resumed, and he shook his head, a disgusted sneer on his face. "Grow up, you guys," he muttered, pulling the sweaty shirt over his head. As usual, his parents couldn't have a normal dinner without yelling at one another. He was definitely hungry, but there was no way in hell he was risking his neck by traveling back downstairs just for a piece of rice. It just wasn't worth it.

But still, he was really hungry….

Pulling a new one over his head, and frankly not caring whether he smelled or not, he locked the door and shut off the lights. As much as he didn't want to, it looked like Inuyasha would have to pilfer some food from Kagome again. He was still a little iffy about what had transpired between the two (and more importantly, why he had felt a little uneasy by her presence) earlier this afternoon, but it was unimportant now. He had bigger fish to fry—literally. His stomach grumbled at the thought of instant ramen; that stuff was always good, too, and it seems her mom always had some form of it stocked somewhere inside her house.

Pushing open the window, Inuyasha easily climbed down the two stories. His parents had more than a few fights in this house, so of course he had more than a few opportunities to learn how to escape the hellhole. The first few times were rough, and Kagome hadn't noticed the bruises on his chin the original night he scaled her wall. That was because he fell more than five feet above ground and landed on his ribs, which really, really hurt like hell. But that was the past, and he was certainly better at the whole sneaking out thing now. Not that his parents cared either way, but it was a benefit for him.

What wasn't a benefit, though, was finding that Kagome wasn't home. Her room was dark, and as it turns out, the entire house was dark, too. Why the hell isn't she here? He thought, eyebrows furrowing in concentration. No way in hell she had a date with that boyfriend of hers… or maybe she did. He preferred not to think about her being all kissy-faced with another guy—didn't want to spoil his appetite, now did he?

Well, even then, at least her mom should have been home cooking or something. Inuyasha must have stood there for a good minute before it finally hit him; the district game for the girls was tonight! Ah, so that meant that if it started at eight o' clock, which was a good hour ago, and there was no after party to attend to—assuming they would lose….

Shit, he groaned inwardly. The earliest they would come home would be around eleven-thirty, if he was lucky. "Where the hell am I going to find food now?" he whined out loud. He had forgotten his wallet upstairs, so going to a fast-food place was out of the question. He did have his cell phone, but what good would that do? It's not like he could eat the damn thing….

Kawaguchi is having a party Friday night.

The single, traitorous thought flickered through his head, and he immediately squished it down. But it wouldn't disappear quite completely; instead, it repeated itself several hundred more times. "No way, no way," Inuyasha protested, his mouth pulled into a stubborn frown. "I ain't going there, no matter what. I am not, under any circumstances, letting that idiot think he won, and that's final."

The tough attitude lasted approximately thirty seconds, and his stomach howled in agony once, twice, and a third final time before completely taking over his self-control. Before he knew it, Inuyasha had flipped open the cell phone and dialed in Miroku's number. A few rings later, someone picked up on the other end.

"Yeah… so where's Kawaguchi's party again?"

-