Love Sucks.

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha. However, I do own Yoko, Shuroi and other characters, including Kasai.

Chapter 4. Just like pieces of a puzzle

Excluding the headache that was still there when I woke up next morning, I felt a bit better. I got dressed, not in my school uniform though, and went downstairs to the dining hall for breakfast.

I took cereal and a cask of milk from the cooking lady, and she smiled at me sympathetically. Great, my ego was officially bruised. However, I did not say anything as I made my way to the very last table in the far corner and took a seat beside Shuroi. Sesshoumaru smiled at me.

"You're feeling better?" he asked.

"Still cannot smile, but I think I am a bit better," I replied, and was suddenly grateful for the concern. Remember my little story about my dad? Yeah, although Kasai thought that daddy would give a damn, I knew better. He was all over his head with his new wife. Well, for now, fiancée.

"How are you doing, Yoko?" Kasai asked as he came over our table. "You guys should eat up front, it is kind of hard to find you."

"Yeah, well, we like it here," Inuyasha said as he took a seat beside his brother, and then looked at Kasai. "What's the news?"

"Hmph. Well, I am glad you asked, Inuyasha. I want Yoko to stay from school for a couple of days, and unfortunately," he added rather sarcastically. "I cannot look after her because I am going to be busy with preparations for spring clean out coming next week. So, one of you has to stay with her."

"I will stay," Inuyasha offered, and I glared at him. Well, it was sort of a glare because my muscles still refused to function properly.

"No thanks. I'd rather lock myself in my room for a week than stay with you after what happened."

Kasai looked questioningly at me, but I ignored him. Inuyasha bit his lip, and I could see that he would rather asked me not to bring the subject up. No matter, he got what he deserved.

"You guys-," Kasai began, but then Sesshoumaru raised his hand for silence and nodded.

"I will stay with Yoko, Kasai."

"Yoko?"

"Anyone but Inuyasha," I replied and without touching my food, I left the table, and went back upstairs. I knew Kasai was following me with his gaze, but I did not care. Anything is better than trusting Inuyasha again.

"Lay off her for now," Shuroi said to Inuyasha who was now looking pointedly at his brother.

"And how I am to explain things to her if you two won't let me even open my mouth?" he asked, and picked out a mushroom out of ramen he was eating.

"You don't," Sesshoumaru said. "Leave it to me."

"Inuyasha…" Shuroi added, and looked into the boy's eyes. "Do you love her?"

I was sitting on my bed, reading that 'forbidden' book that I hid in my thongs on Monday. Today was Wednesday. Quite amount of things happened for the past two days, don't you think?

Five minutes later I shoveled my book aside, my attention spun long since gone. I was thinking about Inuyasha and the look in his eyes that I was able to catch a glimpse of in the dining hall. He looked as if a part of him was gone. Weird, isn't it? Two days ago I would have done anything to get him out of my life forever, and now I am sitting here, pondering about his look.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

"Is this some kind of code you use every time you visit girl's room?" I asked, and Sesshoumaru walked in with a smile on his face.

"You have to be careful, what if the girl is naked?"

I made the most disgusting face my muscles could possibly let me.

"You are beginning to sound like your brother."

"We are related, aren't we?" he asked me if he did not know. I wanted to laugh, but somehow I knew it would hurt my throat, so I resisted the urge.

"Yeah, but you are also different."

"How so?" Sesshoumaru raised his eyebrow as he asked his question.

"You seem to be more mature, and he is like a kid who looks for trouble, unafraid of what might happen to him or the ones he is tagging along with him."

"You are correct about me. However, you are wrong about Inuyasha."

I gave Sesshoumaru a puzzled glare. Someone has been going through his head and sorting it out? What happened to the guy who called his brother a moron?

"I could not accept Inuyasha at first," Sesshoumaru began, looking into some place that was only visible to him. His memory. "I thought of him as being… How should I put this? Extremer, I guess. Unafraid of anything, you are right. But then, he shuttered my opinions about him four month ago when he started to date your friend."

I gasped. "Shuroi?"

"Yes, I was quite surprised at first too. I thought, with Masha on his tail, he should lay off the girls for some time, not to get them in any kind of trouble. Apparently, my brother had his own thoughts on the matter that he shared with your friend, and she had shared them with me after.

Masha was a vulgar girl. She had excited something in Inuyasha, and he asked her out. Little did he know that she was a playgirl. They went out for about a year, while she kept her secrets safe. One night, however, when Inuyasha went over to give her a surprise visit, he caught her with another guy, in her bed, and they were just starting what Masha called 'marathon'. He dumped her right there, and ran out of the room all in tears. My brother was wise not to sleep with the girl at all, or she would have had him tied up to the bedpost now."

"But why would he even date her?"

"Looks can be deceiving. You saw her, right? She has a good composure. So do you," he added quickly when I gave him one of my hating looks. "Anyways, I think my brother did not expect anything from his ex, so two month later he asked your friend out, and she had accepted after giving it a lot of thought. They dated openly at school, and everyone began to accept them as a pair. Everyone but Masha. Seeing Inuyasha with anyone brought her fury out, not at herself, but at others. To add to her misery, her friends moved away from her as soon as they realized what had happened between her and Inuyasha.

I observed her for a while. I think that she was mad at Shuroi, and that she thought that she stole Inuyasha from her. You see, it did not dawn on her that the reason why Inuyasha broke up with her was because he saw her with another. She merely thought that he was on his way to break up with her because he was cheating on her."

"So she took it all the wrong way," I whispered as my heart began to ache. "What happened to…Shuroi?"

Sesshoumaru let out a long breath before he continued. "Your friend was unaware of what was yet to come, and neither was my brother. One day, Masha came over his locker, and started apologizing, and then, when she saw Shuroi, she kissed my brother. Inuyasha pushed her away, and then told her to 'get lost'. He walked away with Shuroi, who tells me that she noticed a look of hatred pass on Masha's face. She tried to tell something about it to Inuyasha, but he simply told her that the girl was mad at him for refusing to come back together."

"You brother still does not understand females, does he?" I teased, and Sesshoumaru smiled and then shrugged.

"I guess not. Shuroi talked to me afterwards. I became concerned, and, unlike my brother, told her to be careful. I talked to my brother then, but he would not listen, or so I thought. He made a mistake right the next morning by walking over to Masha, and telling her not to take a step close to Shuroi. The girl only grinned, and told him that she could not possibly think of such thing, and that he was being mental.

A gang of girls caught up with your friend after school, and began talking to her. She grew more and more uncomfortable, and then asked them to leave her alone, and hurried towards the parking lot towards Inuyasha's car. One of the girls caught her, and they began beating her up. I noticed them as I walked out from the back door of the school. One of the girls, probably the more athletic one, had a knife in her hand, and she began cutting Shuroi's wrist when I made it towards them, and drew into the fight. I must say, they did not have a chance against me. They ran off, and I turned my attention to your friend. Her wrist was the main concern, and I picked her up from the ground, and made my way towards Inuyasha's car. When he saw Shuroi in such state, he almost lost it, and wanted to know who had done such a thing to her. I took the wheel from him, and luckily, we made it to hospital in time."

He looked down, and I noticed tears in his eyes. My eyes were already wet and my heart was aching. Sesshoumaru went on, and I made my ears listen.

"You were not in the room when we brought her back, and she made us promise that we will not tell you what happened. Inuyasha nodded, and then told her that it would not be wise to stay together anymore. He did not want Shuroi to get hurt again. She only nodded, and I knew that she was grateful for his concern. It is not exactly a characteristic that you see my brother establish quite often.

She recovered quickly: both emotionally and physically. She began visiting me quite often, and I am sure that you might have noticed her absence."

He was right, of course. Most of the time Shuroi was gone, and when I tried to ask her where she was spending her time, she would say something that would get me off the subject pretty fast. Now I understood. Still, I had a question.

"But how were they able to keep a dating thing away from me? I have never seen them together in school, and you said it yourself: it was an open relationship."

"Simple, actually. Wherever you were around, they pretended to hate each other. Just like her and me, and you have never noticed either. No one did. We began dating a month after the incident."

"Wow, you guys are fast," I said through tears and pain that was now piercing me through.

"I am scared," I whispered.

"Don't be," he said, wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me close. I found his touch comforting. "Although it seems like Inuyasha is pretty stupid at the moment, he really cares about you. He won't let anything happen to you again, and he was not expecting you to be in this condition either. Now, what do you say we go downstairs and play some DDR and then karaoke? It can help your muscles."

"All right," I agreed right away, and stood up with Sesshoumaru's help. "Thanks for telling me and comforting me when I needed it."

"No problem." And with that, we departed for the basement.

Did I tell you how much I love that show that they broadcast from America called "Grey's Anatomy"? Well, I think it is the best. So while I was playing all those games with Inuyasha's brother, I was coming to my own conclusions. I could almost hear Meredith's voice in my head announcing those conclusions for me. Suddenly, I knew what to do.

When Shuroi came back from school, Sesshoumaru left her in our room, and gave me another questioned look. I nodded. He signed, and left us alone. Then, I pointed something important out to my friend, something that not only Inuyasha wanted, but also his brother. Shuroi listened to me, wise beyond her years as I realized now, and then she hugged me.

"I will take your advice. It would be the best thing that I could ever do since then."

I smiled, and returned the hug. I could finally understand my best friend in the world. And not only that, I began to understand one person that I thought I hated. But I was not sure about that any more.