Chapter XV
An hour later after the uneventful phone conversation with Sesshomaru, Kagome was patiently waiting for Rin outside of a board room clutching the tiny hand of a very hyper and annoyed toddler. Since the moment they had left Rin's office to the moment they stopped in front of the closed doors of the board room, Kagome has been ignoring the inconsistent tugging and pulling of Kazumi on her hand, and Kazumi, hating the feeling of being ignored was becoming more and more annoyed with her caretaker than she's ever been before.
So in typical toddler fashion, Kazumi took in a deep breath and prepared to throw a mayor temper tantrum when she caught a hint of her father's scent. With widened eyes and a smile splitting her face, Kazumi-without any warning-tugged her hand free of Kagome's and followed the scent of her father's, all the while tuning out the sound of Kagome calling her name. In moments she disappeared from Kagome's line of vision and was running throughout the building following her nose to where her father was. She came to a stop a minute later when she was standing in front of an elevator.
Tilting her head to the side in curiosity, she brought her nose close to the doors and delicately sniffed. The scent she had been following was coming from behind those doors and coming closer. Taking a step back, Kazumi excitedly shifted in place as she waited for the elevator doors to open. When she heard the soft ding signaling that the elevator had reached its destination, she shifted feet and ran into the legs of her father as soon as the doors were open wide enough for her to slip through. Hanging onto his legs as if her life depended on it, Kazumi tilted her head back so that she could look at her father fully and gave him a brilliant smile.
"Papa!" Kazumi said in way of greeting as Sesshomaru carefully stepped out of the elevator with Kazumi still attached to his leg. Once out of sight of the elevator, Sesshomaru stopped walking and looked down at the beaming toddler with one brow raised in question. When that got him nowhere, Sesshomaru inwardly sighed and asked Kazumi what she was doing there.
After pondering his question for a minute, Kazumi finally answered with, "Kazumi bored, so Kazumi followed Papa smell."
In other words, she escaped from her caretaker.
Sighing in exasperation, Sesshomaru silently asked Kazumi to let go of his leg and when she did so, bent down at the waist and pick her up. Squealing in excitement, Kazumi grabbed fistful of silver-white hair and snuggled up in her daddy's arms. Within moments she was asleep. Silently wondering at what goes on in the head of a toddler, Sesshomaru sniffed the air briefly before walking straight ahead and taking a turn to the right when he reached an intersection. There, he found a frantic looking onna calling for his daughter while looking around the corridor as if Kazumi would pop out of nowhere and land in front of her.
"Onna," Sesshomaru says, drawing the attention of the dark haired, blue eyed girl. The girl looked in his direction for a moment before settling her eyes on the sleeping form in his arms.
Releasing a sigh of relief, Kagome walked over to the pair and said, "Taisho-san I presume?" With a slight nod of his head, Sesshomaru looked on in confusion as the onna smiled up at him and mentioned for him to follow her. With an inward roll of his eyes, Sesshomaru followed after the annoyingly chipper girl.
"Rin-chan won't be done with her meeting for another couple of minutes so we can wait in her office for now," Kagome said as she stopped in front of her friend's office and held the door open for Sesshomaru to step through. Grunting in thanks, Sesshomaru stepped through the open doorway, took a quick look around before stepping aside and letting the onna behind him through.
Once inside the office, Kagome closed the door behind her and mentioned for him to lay Kazumi down in the couch in the far corner of the room. Shifting his gaze to where she mentioned, Sesshomaru gracefully walked over to the couch and carefully laid Kazumi down before standing back up and turning to face the onna talking a mile a minute.
Holding a sigh of annoyance in, Sesshomaru was just about to tell the onna to shut up when the door opened and the mother of his daughter walked in. Without a glance in his direction, she walked straight to her desk and began sifting through the papers piled there.
"Rin-chan," the onna began as she turned to look at the frustrated woman. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, just looking for the documents for my next meeting," Rin says as she briefly glances up to offer her friend a strained smile before going back to sifting through the endless amounts of papers.
'3…' Sesshomaru silently counts, waiting for the woman to realize that he was in her office. '2…1…'
"What are you doing here Taisho-san?" asks Rin briefly glancing in his direction before going back to organizing her folders and papers.
Sesshomaru, slightly infuriated that she only spared him a glance, glared at her hunched back and straighten his already impossibly straight back further as he spoke in his regular monotone voice. "I came here onna," he bagan. "For an explanation as to why you made such a ridiculous request to someone as I."
"It wasn't a request, Taisho-san," Rin replied as she finally looked up from her desk and looked into his molten golden colour eyes.
"It was a demand," she stated. "If Kagome-chan didn't make it clear, let me. You are taking care of Kazumi-chan this weekend, no and's, but's or or's."
The glare that was already fixed on her, intensified as Sesshomaru shifted slightly so that he was fully facing her and not turned somewhat in Kazumi's direction. The thoughts that she could see running through his mind made her faintly shudder. She has no doubt that he was running multiple scenarios through his head on ways to slowly maim her for disrespecting him and commanding him to do something he clearly has no desire in doing.
Before anything else could be said, the phone beeped signaling that she had an incoming call. With a glance in Kagome's and Sesshomaru's direction, Rin picked up the phone.
"Yes?" Rin asked.
"Your four o'clock is here, ma'am," her secretary's voice, Aki, said.
"Lead them to an empty board room, I'll be there in a moment." Once she received an affirmative from Aki, Rin hung up and began gathering up the folders and papers she had organized earlier.
"I expect you to come pick Kazumi-chan up at five o'clock on Saturday, Sesshomaru," Rin says as she walked around her desk to came to stop in front of a very stiff demon. "If you don't show up, I'll make sure you regret it, mark my words."
"Hn."
Satisfied with his answer for the moment, Rin turned to Kagome and asked, "Can you take Kazu-chan home, Kags?"
"Yeah, don't worry about it," Kagome responded with a small smile. "We'll head over to Sango's first then I'll take her straight to the apartment."
"Okay, thanks again for babysitting, and sorry I couldn't spare you more time today."
"It's okay," Kagome says. "You better head out."
Nodding her understanding, Rin stepped around the demon blocking her way and was halfway out the door when she turned around and pointed a finger in Sesshomaru's direction and said, "Five o'clock Saturday. Don't you forget," before disappearing behind the swinging doors.
With her disappearance the room fell into an awkward silence, and Kagome being who she is, couldn't stand the silence for long, so she turned to Sesshomaru to start a conversation, only to find that besides Kazumi she was the only one in the room.
Blinking in astonishment, Kagome scanned the room to see if he was just hiding out and when she found that she was the only adult in the room, huffed in annoyance and muttered, "Rude," under her breath.
'I wonder how he left so quickly without making a sound?' she mused. 'I'll have to ask Rin to see if he did that when they were together.'
With a sigh, she began picking up everything she brought with her before gathering Kazumi in her arms and walking out the office. Nothing else to do but leave and finish her day with a bang.
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