Hello, friends! I hate Zoom!

Okay, now that that's said, I got this idea from a meme I saw that basically said they were waiting for a Hallmark movie to be made about a girl that accidentally gets on the incorrect Zoom business meeting and falls in love with the guy.

I immediately thought, uh yes thank you okay let's do this as a fanfiction with InuKag and then this story was born. I changed it up a bit from the original idea to make it my own, and this story was born. I hope you enjoy!
One final thing: my story, No One Else, is in the running for the Best Canon category for Feudal Connection 2020 Quarter 2! Voting is open until the end of the day on May 13th, just in case you were wondering… ;)

Happy reading!

Edited 5/13/2020. Shout-out to ushmie for their review on who actually painted Scream...I'm a little rusty with my Art History.

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha or its characters. All rights to Rumiko Takahashi.

Zoomin'

Kagome released a very uncharacteristically loud curse as an error message once again flashed on her computer screen.

She was about ready to throw the electronic across the room. Or maybe just her router...whichever one was to blame for her inability to connect to the Zoom meeting room.

As an editor for a very prominent and well-known publishing company, human interaction was a big part of Kagome's career. She needed to communicate effectively with her clients when she either explained how good their work was or how much it needed to be revised.

With the stay-at-home order in place from the recent pandemic, Kagome's meetings now had to be conducted via Zoom. Luckily, she'd had enough work to do with previous tasks that she didn't require any meetings with clients for the first few weeks of being bored in the house and in the house bored, but now it was unavoidable. One of her newest clients needed to get their revisions done as soon as possible.

The company wasn't planning on publishing any new books until the pandemic situation had cleared up, so they'd switched over to just publishing e-books, which meant that Kagome still had to meet with her clients. Today's client had an Android phone, so Kagome couldn't hold the meeting via FaceTime like she was hoping to get away with doing. Zoom was too complicated, and she'd seen that there had been a few cases of hacking, so she was less than thrilled about the whole thing. It was what her boss had insisted on the whole company to use for meetings, so she didn't have a choice.

So there she was: trying to get her computer to properly open the Zoom meeting room so she could hop on for her meeting. She was already five minutes late, and with no relief in sight, she called her client to reschedule.

Once that was taken care of, she glared at the computer screen again. She refreshed the page again; she at least wanted to get it to work even though she'd be alone. At least then she'd be able to say she'd successfully used Zoom at least once.

After another ten minutes of trying, something finally happened.

She had just started on another round of shouting, "Come on, you stupid piece of-"

She was quickly cut off by the sound of the doorbell. She nearly stood up to answer her front door, but then she realized she didn't even have a doorbell.

Zoom is weird, she resolved silently. What a stupid noise for a stupid program. Why is it even making that noise?

She took a deep breath and tried to focus on the screen. She definitely managed to join the room, even though she was alone in it. She took a few minutes to familiarize herself with the different controls and basic set-up of it. Apparently the doorbell meant she had entered the room.

About five minutes after she'd started figuring things out, she heard the doorbell chime again before another face popped up on the screen.

Her eyes widened as she took in the sight of a man she didn't recognize. His golden eyes narrowed in confusion, but what she noticed the most was the mane of silver hair that hung down longer than the screen revealed.

"Who the heck are you?" the man demanded, his voice many, many octaves lower than her own and smooth like honey.

Breaking herself from her admiration, Kagome frowned deeply. "This is my meeting room," she snapped. "Are you some kind of hacker? Get out of here!"

The man scoffed. "Keh! This isn't your room." His voice was rude and snippy, and Kagome almost wished she could reach through the screen and smack him.

Zoom was really messing with her head.

"How did you get the link for this meeting room?" Kagome asked harshly, matching his annoyed tone. "This is private. You shouldn't be able to join without the link."

Golden eyes rolled back at her. "I'm pretty sure you're the one with the wrong link. What, did you type it in from memory?" Kagome didn't appreciate his condescending tone, but she still took out the sticky note on which she'd written the link that morning.

"I have the link here," she replied. "It's the right one."
The man rolled his eyes. "You sure about that?"

Kagome glanced from the sticky note to the URL line at the top of her screen before her eyes widened again, this time in embarrassment.

She did have the wrong link. She'd put an incorrect letter at the end of the URL.

"You're right," she conceded meekly. "I'm sorry about that. My mistake. I've been dreading having to use Zoom, so I might have...typed angrily and messed up."
To her surprise, the man chuckled. "Well, this room is only open certain hours of the day. It probably wasn't working because you were trying to join a room that wasn't available."
Kagome didn't bother hiding her curiosity. "Really? That's a thing? This is the first time I've used this program, so I'm not entirely sure how it works."

The man nodded. "I get it," he replied. "I'm a college professor, so I have students getting links and meeting rooms wrong all the time. I'm in my office hours right now, but one of the classes I teach is Art History on a freshman level for kids just trying to fill one of their gen-ed domains. No one usually comes in anyway."

Kagome laughed. "Bummer," she replied. "I can't even imagine how tough it must be to try and teach virtually."

The man shrugged. "The kids have figured out how to make it look like their internet has cut out during lectures. I know they're faking it and just off somewhere else, the little snots, so I mark them as absent. They don't know I'm doing that, so their grade is slowly dropping every time they do it."

Kagome's eyes widened. "What a mean professor!" She couldn't hide the amused grin on her face.

The man laughed. "If they own up to it once they see their grades, I'll get rid of the absence portion. They're trying to be sly, but they're not gonna get away with it."

Kagome joined in his laughter before sighing. "Well, I guess I'll let you get back to waiting for your students to not show up for your office hours."

The man smiled. "You could at least tell me your name first," he said.

Smiling back, Kagome told him. "It's Kagome. I'm an editor, but you were definitely not my client."

The man chuckled. "I'm Inuyasha. I'm a professor, but you were definitely not my student."

Kagome found herself not wanting to leave, but she wasn't about to try and engage a stranger in more conversation. That would just be weird.

And yet, Inuyasha almost seemed hesitant as well.

"You know," he began slowly, "my office hours are Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from two to four in case you want to learn about Art History. It's not like there will be actual students here anyway."

Stifling a blush, Kagome nodded. "Interesting. I've always wanted to learn more about Van Gogh. He did the Scream painting, right?"

Inuyasha laughed. "That would be Munch, but good try."

"Oops," she replied. "My bad. Guess I need some more education."

Smiling goodnaturedly, Kagome finally figured it was time to get off.

"Well, I should probably get in touch with my client. Now that I have the actual link, we can still probably have our meeting."

Inuyasha smiled. "Good luck with that."
Kagome smiled back. "Good luck with your phantom students."

After their final goodbyes, Kagome left the meeting room and sat back in her chair.

Inuyasha...what a name...what a guy.

She shook her head and grabbed her phone to call her client to check if they could still have their meeting.

It was Wednesday, and if she didn't have too much to do on Friday afternoon…

She'd finally figured out how to work Zoom. She might as well use it.

O.o.O.o.O

Inuyasha typically got annoyed at his students for not taking his class seriously.

There was the occasional Art major in his 101 course, but not this semester. It was mostly Business majors, so he just left them be. His other classes were much better. He had different office hours for each class so there wouldn't be any overlap of students, but the Art History office hours mostly consisted of him sitting around catching up on work that was already done.

Expecting to find his office hours meeting room empty, he was caught completely off-guard by the unfamiliar woman already there.

Man, that attitude of hers. She came across as a feisty, pesky woman.

But then they started actually talking and, well, his opinion started to change.

Once she'd left his Zoom meeting room, he smiled at his laptop screen. As expected, no students joined the call, but he wasn't irritated like he usually was. Not when he had Friday to hopefully look forward to.

O.o.O

Fifteen minutes after the start of his office hours on Friday, he heard the familiar chime of a new member joining the room.

Blue eyes and a small smile greeted him on the screen.

"Hi there, Professor," Kagome greeted. "Any students yet?"

Inuyasha smiled back at her. "Not a one."

Kagome laughed. "Well now you've got one. I'm ready to learn about Van Gogh, the artist who didn't paint Scream."

Her laughter rounded out his usual frustration at his lack of students. How could he complain now?

He jokingly began telling her the very basics of how art began, but it soon turned into his own beginnings in art, and then it turned into her beginnings in editing, and so on.

They talked for the majority of his office hours until he had to hop off. He had to prep for his next class that started thirty minutes after his office hours ended.

Kagome only smiled when he said that. "I guess that concludes our lesson for today, yeah? Any homework for Monday?"

The professor chuckled. "Take the weekend off. We'll see how you do next week and we'll take it from there."

Kagome returned on Monday, and the following Wednesday, and then the next Friday. They very quickly forgot about their silly "lessons" and settled on just chatting with each other.

She was funny and witty and seemed to really love her job. Inuyasha learned the little things about her and was embarrassed enough to realize he was starting to fall for a woman he'd only met through a computer screen.

But, hey, he was gonna do what he had to do.

Two weeks after she'd accidentally stumbled into his meeting room, Inuyasha mustered up the courage to do something he knew was stupid. But he just didn't care.

Was it possible to ask someone out through Zoom? He was about to find out.

In the few minutes before his office hours were over, Inuyasha stopped her from leaving the Zoom room.

"Kagome, I know this is really weird, but, uh…" He trailed off, already noticing the amusement in Kagome's eyes. He was pretty sure she knew what was coming.

"If we had met in real life," he began again, "I would have definitely asked you out by now, but all things considered, I kinda can't do that...but maybe we could figure something else out?"

Kagome smiled brightly. "Of course. We can eat dinner simultaneously while doing a Netflix party. That would be a pretty unique first date, huh?"

Inuyasha laughed. "I would say so, yeah. Maybe tonight? I think we can move on from just talking during my office hours." Kagome laughed, too.

"That sounds great," Kagome replied. "What's your number? I think it's time we graduate from Zoom. Please tell me you have FaceTime on your phone…"

The professor nodded at her through the screen. "Yep. I hate Zoom. My students disappoint me too much on it so I'm more than okay with doing something different."

She laughed again before he gave her his number before they got off the call.

Soon enough, he got a text from her.

Hey, Professor Zoom. Does 6 work for you tonight?

More than a little excitedly, Inuyasha responded and they settled on their "date" for that night.

That one went well, and so did the next one the following night, and then the next night, and then the next, and, well, you get the idea.

Inuyasha didn't know what the future would hold, but he knew that Kagome would be a constant. It was unconventional and unusual and downright weird, but it didn't matter.

He hated Zoom a little less now.

FIN.

I hope you enjoyed this little one-shot. I might do a sequel at some point, but for now this is it :) I hope you all are staying safe and healthy during such a crazy time. Stay home if you can!

This story was for pure enjoyment, and I am in no way downplaying the seriousness of this pandemic. Truly, stay safe and healthy and don't go anywhere unless you absolutely have to!

Much love.