The morning dawned cold and grey, and for Kagome it only served to make her bitterer than before. Three years, she would be without contact to her family and friends. Frankly, when she thought about it, she didn't know how she would make it.
The time she was able to spend with her family while she packed that morning was hardly enough and before she knew it, she was on her way to Keysville to begin the journey to a small town near Raspuit, and the finishing school that awaited her in that town. At first, she had thought it was Raspuit she would be going to, but she turned out to be wrong.
She slept most of the plane ride, not wanting to remember the last time she was on a plane considering that time wasn't all that pleasant to recall. She could remember being trapped inside her mind during that plane ride, half awake and half asleep.
There had been two little images fighting inside her mind, and she could recall that fight never had been resolved.
Beside her was her cousin Lea, who was her escort to West City. Apparently, Lea was a detective, but Kagome had never realized that was possible. Lea didn't strike Kagome as the type to be cut out for detective work. No surprise there, huh?
In West City, she and Lea rented a hotel room from which the escort from Tokyowould pick her up in the morning, and Kagome lay on her bed, her mind swirling with thoughts. She'd not been gone even a half day, and she already felt lonely.
She could not talk to Lea about what bothered her, because she knew right away that Lea would offer her some crack-pot solution that wouldn't help her at all. So she was forced to try to deal with her thoughts alone, and since she had rested up on the plane, she had lots of time in the hotel room to think to herself.
The drive to Raspuit was pleasant enough with her new escort, and from Raspuit, they switched roads and began heading west towards the town of Snowsville.
Kagome found the town was about the size of Sunset, and that the 'finishing school' wasn't a boarding school like she had thought. Her escort explained to her that she'd be staying with an elderly woman at a temple and would be able to walk to school every day.
After hearing that, Kagome relaxed a bit. It was a relief to know she'd be living in a place somewhat like her own home. She and her escort each carried a bag of her things up the steps to what would be known as Kagome's new home for the next three years.
While Kagome was hardly winded at all when they reached the top of the stairs, her escort was panting heavily, sweating profusely, and dragging his feet. She took her bag from him and let him catch his breath just inside the temple gate, while she looked around and examined their surroundings.
They stood in a courtyard surrounded by a wooden stockade. The gate was large and made of wood, also left open. There were a few benches here and there in the courtyard, but not many.
The temple itself was large and made of wood, not stone like Kagome's family's shrine was. The layout of the shrine, though it seemed smaller in size, felt similar to Kagome's family's shrine, minus the tree in the courtyard.
"So this is the girl, huh?" Kagome turned her head to look at the speaker, finding an elderly woman standing nearby with a hardened look to her face. Her hair was wavy and pink, her eyes brown, and her figure seemed firm and muscled.
She wasn't back bent and using a cane like Kagome had expected, but instead she stood tall and proud, though she was a head shorter than Kagome. She had the look of someone who should and was respected, despite her gnarled, callused hands that she kept clasped firmly behind her, the wrinkles in her face, and the sarcasm that drenched her voice.
Kagome bowed her head respectfully to the woman. She noted the woman's clothes. They seemed more like a trainer's kimono than the priestess robes that were usually worn at temples and shrines, but they were white for the pants and undershirt, and red for the over coat. The belt and sash were blue.
"Yeah, this is her." Kagome's escort said, having finally caught his breath. "Her name is Kagome Higurashi. Either way, now I'm going back." He turned and began the descent down the stairs.
"Follow me, girl." The woman turned and headed towards the temple's front doors, sliding them open. Kagome picked up her second suitcase and headed after the old lady.
When she caught up to the old lady, the woman said, "My name is Genkai." She said. "I like peace and quiet, so there will be no pissing and moaning about the arrangements."
"Yes, Genkai." Kagome said. Kagome felt small compared to Genkai and considering she was taller than Genkai, she didn't know how this was possible. It could have been the presence that the elderly lady exuded, but she wasn't sure.
She felt a small pain in her chest building, but ignored it, as it was a minor annoyance.
Genkai stopped at a door finally after many twists and turns down dark drafty corridors and slid it open. "This will be your room. If you need anything, I'm usually around here someplace."
As Genkai turned and walked down the corridor, Kagome felt more alone than ever before. She was a long ways from home, and unlike when she was kidnapped, this time she didn't have Souta or any of her friends.
Kagome walked into her room and looked at her new home. There were the usual items you found in a bedroom, of course, like the bed which was covered in heavy winter blankets, and the desk made of solid oak. There was a closet and a bathroom connected to the room which had a stand up shower, a sink, and a toilet.
Kagome unpacked, putting her clothes in the closet, finding drawers at the bottom of the closet to put her undergarments, and placing her photos of her family and friends on the desk. She put the photo of her, her mother, and Souta on the bedside table.
With nothing else to do, and not knowing where to begin to think of what to do next, Kagome lay down to try to organize her thoughts. She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.
When Kagome woke, it was because her bell choker was digging into her neck. She'd forgotten to take it off before lying down so she did so now as she sat up in the dark room, placing the choker on the bedside table next to the picture of her family.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim room, she recalled her little going away party. All of her friends had been there, and some of the violinists had shown up as well. Anyone who meant anything to Kagome had been there, and even Medallion had shown up –if only to collect his money, but he had still shown up.
She smiled at the memory. She had collected kisses from everyone, even if they didn't want it, girls on the cheek, guys on the lips (minus Souta because he was her brother). Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha showed up out of respect, and besides that they also had group counseling that they couldn't get out of.
Kagome stood and walked to her window, opening its curtains to find the full moon staring down at her from a star filled sky. As the light washed the room in a moonlit glow, she smiled. Three years would pass before she knew it and soon she would be back at home in Sunset.
She couldn't imagine actually living somewhere other than Sunset. It was her home. It was where all her friends were, and her family, and her rivals and enemies. Except one. One couldn't be found anywhere.
The gold skinned woman couldn't be found, and Kagome wanted her to pay dearly for shooting Rin. She was mad enough at herself for allowing Rin to get hurt.
"I will find you." She whispered to the unhearing moon, though her words were meant for the woman. Its gaze upon the earth never wavered, never flinched. It was not afraid of Kagome, or anything for that matter. She stared at it, and it stared back.
She saw the pockets and folds in the moon, created from being a shield for Earth from flying debris in the atmosphere. It saw the pockets and folds in her soul, her weaknesses and her strengths.
Kagome tore her eyes from the honest moon and let the moonlight bath her body of impurities. She thought it was funny that she was worried now about impurities when she was no longer a virgin, but even if she could change the way things had been, she wouldn't.
Desires could drive a person to do things that they later on regretted, but they could also drive a person to do something that they would always remember and never regret. Kagome knew she would never regret that special night with Kohaku.
Kagome made her way to her desk quietly and picked up the photo in the little frame shaped like a heart. The frame was made of pure silver that reflected the moon's glow pleasantly. Inside the frame was what she wanted though. It was the picture that was held between a piece of glass and a piece of cardboard, and then backed completely with a silver back.
There was Kohaku. He stood behind Kagome with his arms wrapped around her shoulders, hugging her, his cheek against hers and a loving smile on his face. His chocolate brown eyes didn't hold the hidden meaning that they did now, because this picture was taken before the kidnapping. He was just happy in the picture. Now, though, he was mysterious and somewhat secretive.
She smiled; touching her lips as she recalled the kiss Kohaku had given her when Lea had shown up to take her to Keysville Airport. Kohaku's kiss, though he had verbally told her he was no longer interested in her, had severely contradicted his verbal statement.
There was so much emotion in that kiss, so much need and desire. And she had not held back either. She made sure he knew that she loved him through that one kiss.
It seemed far too cliché, like a lame movie line that had been overused, that they would kiss just as she was about to leave, but no one objected. By that time, Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha had been gone, the violinists had left to go to practice with their single leader Sesshoumaru before the New Years Concert even though New Years was over, and Lea was waiting patiently against her sleek mustang convertible.
Kagome looked at the window again and noticed how light it had become already. She sighed wistfully and set the frame back in its original position on the desk. Next she looked towards her bathroom door.
She would need a shower in order to be best presentable for her new school. She wasn't about to wear the uniforms in the closet either. The person who had guessed on her size had guessed she was much smaller and a skirt that goes only half way down your rear is not exactly your best friend.
In light of the fact that she would go in clothes that were not the school's uniform, she ran her hands over her clothes in her closet, debating on what to wear to best suit her situation. First day at a new school.
She decided if she was going to break the rules, why not make a statement about it? The courts never said she couldn't disobey the rules just that she couldn't speak with her family and friends from Sunset.
She picked out her silver silk tank top that read "Hell's Bitch" in black across the chest with a black dragon on the stomach area, a wide strapped black tank top underneath that, and a pair of baggy black pants that fit her hips with two silver stripes going up the outside of each of the legs.
When she got into the bathroom she noticed that there were two other doors beside her own that led into the bathroom, so just to be safe she locked those so no one would accidentally walk in on her.
After showering and letting the steaming hot water run over her back to distill the burning feeling that came when her shampoo got into the welts, she dressed and wrapped her hair in the towel while she did her make up, heavy black eyeliner, silver-blue eye shadow, and her favorite silver lipstick.
She scrubbed her hair trying to dry it before removing the towel and running her brush through it gently to get rid of any knots so she could split it into three equal sections and braid it like she used to have it all the time. It was much longer now, going to her thighs.
Just as she was finishing up, someone began banging on one of the doors so she gathered all her things in her hands, flipped the locks to being unlocked, and left the bathroom, closing her bathroom door as she did. She guessed she shared a bathroom with someone when she saw the other doors, and now she knew she was right.
Finally she grabbed her backpack, taking the books off the desk chair that had been placed for her school supplies, and shoved the text books into her bag before getting ready to go.
A small meek knock on the door to the hall caught her attention and she crossed the room shouldering her backpack before opening the door. The girl who stood before her was about three inches shorter than her with long brown hair tied back at the nape of her neck and mud brown eyes.
She wore the blue skirt and suit coat uniform of the school and had a little brown briefcase in her hand that she most likely used to tote her school work back and forth between schools and wherever else she would go.
She wore tall stockings on her feet and a heavy winter coat, her day shoes were probably in the briefcase while boots were on her feet, just as Kagome's tennis shoes that she'd wear inside the school and put in her shoe locker were in her backpack, the shoes she'd wear around otherwise were on her feet.
"Hello. I'm Keiko Yukimura." She said quietly and held out a hand politely to Kagome. She frowned, disapproving Kagome's choice of clothes, but Kagome could care less what people think of her clothes.
She liked them, and she wasn't going to change unless it was raining, in which case she still really wouldn't change but just would throw on a hoodie sweatshirt. As it was, she grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door where she'd hung it before shaking Keiko's hand.
"Kagome Higurashi." Kagome said, wondering what the girl was doing at the temple. She looked flushed, and her brow was a little sweaty as though she'd just run the mile, her breathing was heavy though she tried to calm it.
"I'm here to show you to the school. I'm Vice President of the Wyman Student Board, so it's my job to make sure you have everything you need for school, and I'll watch you today to find out who might best suit you for showing you about the town."
Keiko huffed, out of air from her long winded speech. "Oh, I'm sorry." She breathed, holding her stomach. "I'm just a bit winded from all those steps!" She had an air about her that struck Kagome as Karei-like, even though she was being polite.
Kagome chuckled. "You should exercise more." She pointed out. "If you did, you wouldn't be so winded."
Keiko made a face, her breathing still a pant, but lengthening out steadily. "My boyfriend says that too." She looked stern after that for a moment as though debating something and then opened her mouth to speak her mind.
Kagome stopped her before she could even begin. "I'm not changing clothes."
Keiko's jaw snapped shut again, proving to Kagome that she'd been about to argue the clothes. Her jaw was clenched, and if Keiko clenched it any harder, Kagome was sure she'd hear the bones grinding together.
Keiko would be mad because Kagome, who would be considered the new girl, had just talked her off. Kagome had made sure her tone of voice left no room for argument.
"Hmph." Keiko stuck her nose in the air and pointed to the door next to Kagome's room door. "Miss Yuukaku is in there. She'll show you around the town and to school. And just remember; I'm watching you." Keiko's tone left Kagome on 'jerk alert'. Already Kagome didn't like Keiko. It was like another Karei and that was no good thing.
Kagome bowed to her mockingly. "Yes, your highness." She said in a dry voice as she stood once more. Keiko looked like a red hot tea kettle boiling over, and Kagome was forced to bite a laugh back. She couldn't understand why Keiko wouldn't like being mocked.
With a small grin quirking her lips she said, "You know, with your red face and the brown hair, you could pass for a rotten tomato if you wanted to."
Keiko's eyes went wide with anger and her nostrils flared out. "What did you say to me, you insolent wretch?" She yelled pointing a finger at Kagome. "Parentless loafer!" Kagome had no idea why Keiko would think Kagome was a parentless loafer. For one, Kagome had parents!
"Hey, now, Yukimura, is that polite?" A girl leaned against the doorway to the room Keiko had pointed to, looking elegant even in a black leather tube top, black skin fitting long-sleeved mesh shirt, and tight black leather pants.
Her black hair was up in a perfect bun and she had a green clip in her hair that held two feathers, just above her left ear which was pointed. Her red almond shaped orbs were filled with laughter though her lips, covered with black lipstick, were in a straight no-nonsense line as she looked Kagome over just as Kagome was looking her over.
Even her shoes made her look elegant; those being open toed high heels, showing painted black toenails, perfectly trimmed. She had green earbobs in her ears, and Kagome knew she was a half-demon just by looking at her.
The girl held a paper fan in her hand, tapping it steadily against her crossed arms in time with the ticking of the grandfather clock that was at the end of the hall, about to ring the seventh hour of the morning. Kagome guessed that the girl was 'Miss Yuukaku'.
Keiko sneered at the girl, hate making her ugly. "Yuukaku, you get to watch her." She said, putting loathing into the words before jogging off down the hall towards the grandfather clock. As she turned the corner, the clock chimed the seventh hour.
The girl walked forward towards Kagome and circled her. "Where did you get those pants?" she questioned curiously, her nature much more friendly now that Keiko was gone.
Kagome grinned. "I got them shopping with my mom and brother."
"And this shirt?" the girl stopped circling Kagome and held out her hand. "I'm Kagura Yuukaku, by the way. Don't worry about Yukimura. She's a bitch to anyone who doesn't follow the rules, even her boyfriend. She's a stickler."
"Kagome Higurashi." Kagome said, taking the offered hand and shaking it. "And I got the shirt quite a few years ago actually. I bought most of my clothes from a shop in Sunset called 'Quilt Designers'."
Kagura nodded. "Well, just one more year until I can go there then." She said. She turned and walked back to her room door. "There's still an hour until we have to leave for school, so come talk to me. It gets boring with only Hiei to talk to and he's in the shower."
Kagome followed the girl with a smile. She liked that there was a small town where demons were accepted. They weren't all that accepted in Sunset, and she intended to change that someday. It wasn't like they were chased with pitchforks and torches or anything, though.
The town just refused to associate with people who claimed they're demons. If you look different, it's not quite as bad, but it still does have an affect on certain people.
Kagura's room was as simple as Kagome's, though she did have more than Kagome. Had it not been for the stereo, the bean bag chair, the book shelf, and the CD rack, it would have been exactly the same only without the pictures Kagome had.
Kagura had two pictures only, and they were hung on the wall above her bed. One was of a woman probably in her late twenties to early thirties, smiling with a young girl of about twelve sitting next to her, and on the woman's lap was a little child who would barely be able to hold their head up dressed in pink.
Kagome guessed the little child was a girl because of the pink. What mother in their right mind would humiliate their newborn boy enough so to dress them in pink anyway?
Kagome thought the elder girl looked kind of like Kagura, only younger. Now, Kagura looked to be about eighteen or so. "Is this your family?" Kagome asked, indicating the picture she was looking at.
"Yeah." Kagura said, a hint of sadness in her voice that she tried to hide, but Kagome found anyway. "That's me, my mom, and my baby sister before the accident."
"Accident?" Kagome inquired carefully, knowing or figuring it could be a touchy subject.
She was proven right when Kagura forced a smile, shaking her head. "I don't want to bore you." She said softly. She sat in her desk chair, picking at a thread on her mesh shirt sleeve.
Kagome wasn't stupid. She could read the signs. Kagura wanted to talk to someone sympathetic about what happened, and now here was Kagome, but Kagura couldn't find the words to start out with, and didn't know if Kagome would be that sympathetic person in the first place.
Kagome turned to look at the second picture. The picture held Kagura sitting with a little girl dressed in a white kimono on her lap. Kagura wore a kimono that was checkered with strange arrays of color, and she had her hair done up exactly like it was done now, up in a prime bun with the feather clip in her hair and the green earrings and instead of black lips her lips were blood red. The fan was unfurled in one of her hands.
The girl on her lap had long pure white hair with a white flower hair clip in her hair and white bows all over the kimono she wore. She held a mirror in her hands like it were her teddy bear, strangely enough the mirror did not reflect. Her eyes were stark black and though Kagura was smiling, the little girl was not.
"Kagura, the only thing that bores me is my ovulating cycle." She joked to lessen the tension she could sense building.
Kagura chuckled, smiling. "How can you get bored when you're ovulating? You're always on edge, like as though you'll start leaking any moment! At least, that's how it is for me."
Kagome shrugged. "Well, maybe I'm special." She winked at Kagura and left it at that, looking at the pictures again. "Is your sister here?" She guessed that it was her sister in the second photo.
Kagura sighed and stood from the chair, walking over to the photo and looking at it for a moment. "No." She shook her head after a moment, turning away again. "Kanna was adopted two weeks ago. That picture was taken a week ago. I bought two copies, so she can have one and I can have one. Today after school, I go to pick her up from the elementary school so I'm going to give it to her then."
Kagome nodded her understanding. Now she knew why Keiko called her a 'Parentless loafer'. Keiko thought she had no parents because she now lived in what was obviously an orphanage. "Then she lives nearby?" Kagome asked.
"No, she lives in Raspuit." Kagura frowned and turned, walking back to her desk and sitting at it. "It's about twenty five miles away, maybe thirty, but Hiei and I make the trip every Monday and Thursday after school. While we're there, we do things like shop for Genkai and for ourselves."
Kagome walked over to Kagura and leaned against the girl's desk, smiling slightly. "It's good that you'll do that for her. She probably misses you a lot when she can't see you."
"Fay, where's my toothbrush?" A male's voice asked as he entered the room from the bathroom door. Both Kagome and Kagura looked to the door, both thinking they were the one called. It was Kagura that the man was talking to.
As he pulled the towel off his head, Kagome saw his hair flop in his face like a wet mop. He had crimson eyes framed by long lashes that would have looked feminine if it were on anyone else, and looked perhaps an inch taller than tiny little Rin.
He was bare of a top, but his pants were black and baggy, with biker's boots on his feet. He had a third eye on his forehead that stared directly at Kagome while his two normal eyes looked at Kagura.
On his hands he had claws, his ears were pointed much like Kagura's were, and when he opened his mouth, Kagome could see his fangs just as when Kagura opened hers she could see her fangs.
"I don't know." Kagura said quirking an eyebrow. "Check your ass. Maybe you stuck it up there?"
Kagome stifled a laugh, knowing that was exactly how she talked to her friends as well. It was odd seeing it put into action. She reached up to her neck and touched the bell choker, making sure the blue metal star was in place in the center of her neck. She hated when it got twisted around because then it just looked stupid and pointless. It was still where it should be.
The guy scoffed. "Yeah, whatever. Who's she?"
Kagura grinned. "Your worst nightmare..."
Kagome couldn't hold it anymore. She started snickering, which turned into an all out laugh. It was all too familiar. Time would not go as slow as she first thought. These two, if she didn't screw up a friendship with them, would make time go all the more faster.
The introduction was quick. Hiei Emporia was rather quiet most of the time, or so Kagome found out on the walk to school, while Kagura poked and prodded him into talking, not letting him get off the hook on any subject.
But just because he didn't talk as much did by no means mean that he was slow. His wit and sarcasm lashed like Naraku's belt and left split wounds to fester and burn. He too was a demon, but he was fully demon, not a half-breed.
His blood was mixed, but he was a full demon. As his hair dried, it began to stick up in the air like an arrow point, silver streaming his hair like a bright crescent.
At the school, Kagome saw many others too who were demon or half-demon. Kagura had Kagome sit with her and Hiei at lunch and Kagome soon saw that, once an outcast, always an outcast; she had again joined a group of outcasts.
She didn't mind it though. She knew she would feel more comfortable with Kagura and Hiei than she'd ever feel with any of the 'in' groups.
Unlike in Sunset, Kagome wasn't pressured to 'lead' the group, and she delighted in that. Neither Hiei, nor Kagura took the lead either. It was a 'play as you go' sort of thing. It didn't take Kagome long to figure that out. It only took a half day.
She had connected with the two quite well by the time the first day was out, and Kagura asked her if she wanted to go with them to Raspuit.
"Sure, why not? It isn't like I have anything else to do." Kagome replied as they reached the temple. They put their backpacks in Kagura's room since it was the closest to the exit, and Kagome followed Hiei and Kagura as they went to find Genkai.
"We have to find Genkai and ask if we can borrow her car." Kagura explained. "Otherwise there's no point really, because we won't really get anywhere by walking will we?"
Kagome shrugged. "I suppose not." She said, and though normally when asked such a question, the person receiving the question would feel offended, Kagome did not.
Genkai grumbled about it, but she reluctantly agreed. Apparently, the old woman just didn't want anyone to know she was kind hearted, so she acted gruff and uncaring. It was amusing. "Don't crash my car." Genkai hollered after them. "It's worth more than all of you!"
Kagome laughed as they got into the car, Hiei sitting in the middle of the old barely repaired junker's front seat and Kagome in the passenger seat. Someone would have sat in the back, but there was no back. It was just a small car with a front seat that they squished into.
Hiei, being only four feet ten inches, a whole foot shorter than Kagura and a half foot shorter than Kagome, was forced into the middle. It wasn't that he seemed to mind. In fact, he rather seemed to enjoy himself there. He snaked an arm around both girl's waists, a large grin on his face after they were buckled.
"I'm just a lucky kind of guy." He said.
He reminded Kagome of a certain two perverted friends that she had in Sunset. Of a mix of Kohaku and Miroku, except minus the whole "bear my child" thing that was Miroku's trademark pickup line.
When Kagome felt Hiei's hand slipping up her shirt, she grabbed his hand and pulled it back to a respectable position.
Just because she and Kohaku were recently broken up, for the second time, didn't mean by any means that she didn't still think about him and long for that hand to be Kohaku's and not Hiei's. So she avoided the thoughts by keeping his hand at a distance.
"Pervert!" Kagura yelped, managing to elbow Hiei in his leftmost eye. He'd put a bandana over his third eye so that no one would see it, but both girls knew it was there.
The car swerved to the left as it pulled out of the temple driveway and Kagura quickly righted it again, the tires slipping on snow and ice a bit.
Kagome laughed as Kagura pulled the car to a stop and turned in her seat to glare at Hiei. "Just because you have the middle, doesn't give you the right to cup a feel, you little jerk!"
Hiei grinned, one hand going to his painfully bruised and already swelling eye. "You liked it and you know it."
Kagura didn't honor him with a response, she was so angry. She looked at Kagome. "You didn't do it to her, so why me?"
Again, Kagome cracked a smile. "I'm used to treatment like that. Two of my friends are just as perverted, if not more than, so you learn to recognize the signs." She ran a hand through her bangs.
"Do you two mind if we stop somewhere where I can get my hair cut?" she asked curiously. "It's been a few months since I had a trim." It was true. Her bangs were almost hanging in her eyes.
"Sure." Kagura said, sending a glare at Hiei as she started the car back up. "No more of that, Hiei. I'll break my fist on your face if you do it again." Basically she was saying she'd pound on him until it pained her and wouldn't care how much damage she did to him.
She pulled out onto the road and began driving towards the highway. "Why'd you laugh when Genkai called us worthless?" she asked Kagome, adjusting her mirrors so she could see behind her better.
"She didn't call you worthless." Kagome shook her head to emphasis her words. Genkai had only been gruff about it, but she didn't think that Kagura and Hiei wouldn't have realized that.
Hiei snarled, clenching a fist. "She did too. Every time we go she says we're worthless."
Kagome shook her head again. "You're seeing it wrong." She looked out the window of the car and saw wintry countryside going by and was silent for so long that the other two thought she wouldn't even continue talking.
"In the book Into the Mind of the Victim by Doctor Kali Onigumo, she states that and I quote, 'Love is subliminal; you cannot be told you are loved through the words 'I love you'. You know you are loved through the actions of another, though it can be showed in many odd forms, including through disagreement. Hate is across a thin borderline with love, and yet it is also subliminal. The words 'I hate you' can mean 'I love you' and vice versa because when put that way, they are actions. Therefore you know you are not loved if a person harms you physically or emotionally just for the sake of seeing you in pain.'"
"Genkai isn't calling you worthless." Kagome continued. "Her mannerism proved that. The way she tried to look annoyed, but her eyes and her body said she didn't want us to go. She tried to act like she doesn't care but she does."
"You read Doctor Onigumo too?" Kagura asked, surprised.
Kagome grinned, having forgotten that not many knew she was the famous Kali Onigumo's daughter, but she wasn't going to say outright 'oh yeah, I know her in fact I'm her daughter'. That seemed too much like bragging to her, so she didn't say it. "She's got very interesting work." She said instead.
"Aw, man!" Kagura laughed. "She's my idol! I've been taking classes in the University to be a psychiatrist like her. As soon as next summer, I want to go to Sunset and meet her. Hopefully I can get an internship with her. That would be real neat."
"Sounds like fun." Kagome said. "How old are you, Kagura? You don't look old enough to be out of high school."
Hiei answered for her. "She's twenty."
Kagome was confused. Twenty was barely out of high school, and in some places it wasn't out of high school at all. But still it was usually up to nine years of training to be a psychiatrist. Besides, Kagome had seen Kagura in school all day. Granted, she was working furiously on some homework most of the time except for lunch, but Kagome still had seen her.
Kagura switched lanes so she could take the exit off of the highway and continue towards Raspuit. "Wyman is a finishing school, and I'm just a smart type of person." She said, correctly guessing Kagome's thoughts.
"I graduated from high school when I was eleven because of my mom and her persistence, and then Kanna and I came to living with Hiei and Genkai, and Genkai told me I should be a doctor and sent me to Wyman."
Hiei laughed. "You yelled at Genkai and said all you wanted was to get married and have babies."
Kagome winced at the thought of just being married with the only use of having children. She wanted to work. Having children would be something she was sure she would have eventually, but she wanted to be able to just work and if whoever was her partner didn't agree with that, then he would be out the door instantly.
He wouldn't have to go through the pains of childbirth, so it really wasn't his choice, and she wouldn't let any man guilt trip her into it either.
Kagura continued, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel to a tune only she heard since the vehicle had no stereo at all, no radio, no CD Player, nothing. "Yeah, I argued. I went to school and did my work because Hiei always talked me into doing it, but when I got to Genkai's again I would argue with her and yell at her like a little brat."
"What are you talking about? You are a little brat!"
Kagura reached over and pinched his inner thigh and he yelped. "Shut up Shorty." She said. "I've no problem with tossing you right out into the road."
Kagome thought the two acted just like siblings should, blood related or not. She smiled. "And so eventually you found an article written by Doctor Onigumo?" Kagome inquired.
"Yeah. Genkai follows Doctor Onigumo's work as well, so I found the articles and since then I've admired the Doctor. What made it so you wanted to follow her work?"
Kagome shrugged. To not at least know of her mother's work would be a crime in her mind. If her mother was known even to the Americans, she knew it was something special that she would have to keep up with. She thought about it for a moment and wondered.
She never had to follow her mother's work. Her mother never forced her to follow it, and never so much as hinted when she would publish an article or book. The only thing Kali ever told her children about was when she published her fiftieth article; she was going to send them all in to be published as a collection book.
Kagome did the research on her own. It was strange, researching her mother, but it was fun at the same time. She supposed her mother was just one of those people who had a lot of people who looked up to them, and she was also among the numbers.
"I guess I've just always followed her work. I've never had a real reason to do it, I just did. When I wasn't working or hanging with my friends or doing school work or getting into fights with people from the public school, I'd buy the articles or books –which ever it was that I didn't have a the time- and I'd read them over and over. She's published forty-nine articles and five books, and I have them all. In fact, I think I brought them with me."
Thinking of those articles made her think of her mother, and it saddened her. She missed her mother and brother most out of anyone, and thinking about them would depress her so she forced her mind elsewhere and began to sing.
If anything worked, it was music. It always cleared her mind when she sang or played the violin. She preferred to play the violin though, because she was very self-conscious of her voice.
But sing she did, and as she did it, she stared out at the passing winter wonderland. At least the heat worked in the junker car, even if it had nothing else. She was nice and toasty in her coat, bunched up against Hiei's shoulder, their legs touching.
Silence was the only true thing in the vehicle at the moment as Kagome's two new friends listened to her voice sound out clearly. Kagome knew that anyone with an even slightly emotional past could connect with the song. It pained her to think that anyone should suffer as bad a childhood as she had herself.
Kagome stared at the sky unflinchingly as memories of her past flittered through her mind, reminding her of the infected and aching most recent welts on her back. She couldn't fathom how her mother never found a way to escape such pains, for herself and her children.
Her mother was the famous Sunset's Shrink who found a way for hundreds of her patients to escape their own pains and problems, from counseling marriages, to sibling rivalry, to juvenile delinquents... military personnel, murder convicts, rape victims, you name it she's done it.
But she could never save herself. She could never escape the pain, so she would lock it away. Her children had seen her escape inside herself several times rather than break down crying. She was a strong woman, but she could never deal with Naraku.
It was Naraku that was the cause of her mother's nightmares; the nightmares that Kagome knew Kali had. The nightmares were the reason Kali had begun to work all hours of the night, so that she would be so exhausted she wouldn't have to dream.
The debt collectors hadn't been the reason, as Kali had said they were. Work was Kali's way out of her nightmarish dreams and her nightmarish wake.
Kagome couldn't understand what her mother had ever seen in Naraku in the first place either. But some part inside Kagome remembered her father when she was very young, when Naraku would play with her in the park.
Kagome could never understand why her father would bring home women at night, but during the afternoon he would pick her up and dance with her, twirl her in circles, tickle her, push her on the swings until she was as high as she wanted to go and then tell her to jump off the swings and he would catch her.
When she was young, she had been so trusting of her father. It was before the beatings even started. And every time she vaulted off the swing, he had always been there to catch her so she wouldn't get hurt. He had always assured her that he wouldn't let her fall.
He would hold her up when she was down and help her to get back on her feet. He would always be her father, and the part of her that remembered those memories cried out, wanting to have that loving, caring, laughing father back.
In a shrine, every night was a silent night when the doors were shut for the evening. The outer walls were built of a thick stone, and the inner walls were wood filled with insulation and cork. Even the rain barely dared to sound inside the walls.
The library, filled with books, was the worst place to be in the shrine at night when it was raining because of the high domed brick glass ceiling that reflected the storm on the inside. The glass bricks when pounded with the rain storms sounded like some sort of death cadence played on drums.
It was the only room Kagome would not go to when it was raining at night. At least, not by her self, and not if she could avoid it.
But her mother could often be found in the library when it was dark and rainy. She said that the rain soothed her stresses when she heard it hit the panes of the domed roof like no silence could. She said it made her smile to listen to it and it stopped her from being terrified. By what? It was a question that had only caused more questions since she'd first heard it. Her mother wouldn't tell her what she was terrified of. Could it be the silence? Why then, if it was the silence that frightened her, did Kali refuse to give up the silent shrine? What purpose could it serve?
Kagome shook her head at all the questions and continued singing, never missing a beat in the song. She'd listened to it so many times she knew it by heart. She could hear the song playing in her mind; coming from the stereo that she'd bought with the money she earned working the shrine.
Kagome ended the song and the interior of the vehicle drifted into a near silence. The only sounds heard were honking of vehicles, the tires on the road, and the sound of Genkai's vehicle's muffler falling off.
In Raspuit, the sounds changed more. There were more cars than there had been. People were shouting here and there and everywhere. It was four thirty when they arrived in Raspuit, so Kagome was slightly worried.
She didn't know Kanna, but she did know that schools in Earth usually all got out by four. It was snowing again, and Kagome knew it wouldn't be very warm out with the wind howling through the buildings, gusting snow across the road.
Traffic was slowed even further because of the weather in Province Seven. She might have flown to Tokyoin Province Six, but Raspuit and the new city that housed Kagome's home was in Province Seven. She hoped that Kanna had somewhere safe and warm to wait and didn't have to wait outside the school.
"So where is this school?" She heard herself asking. She wondered if she ought to point out that the weather wasn't very good, and ask if Kanna had somewhere warm she could be, but she didn't. She wondered where in the car Kanna would sit if Hiei took up the middle seat, but she didn't voice her thoughts.
Kagura was silent and Hiei was staring off into space ignoring the meager conversation. Kagome shifted silently in her seat, staring back out the window. Slowly a girl swam in her vision, though it was ethereal.
The girl had looked like Kagome, only different somehow. Something about her was off. She blinked. The girl disappeared. Was she hallucinating? They weren't moving so fast that a girl would disappear from her view. In fact, they were stopped at a stoplight. All she looked at now was a brick building.
Shaking her head, she ignored the pain building in her veins, swimming through her blood. For the moment, it was of no effect. She didn't care because it was hardly anywhere near the pain she'd lived through before, both emotionally and physically.
When the school parking lot came into view, Kagura turned to pull into it and drove right up to the front of the lot where a little girl sat on a bench. She had hair and skin that was as white as the purest snow and wore a blue snowsuit with blue boots.
The hood on her snowsuit was down, her cheeks and nose rosy from the cold, her lips purple blue from it. Kagome guessed, quite accurately, that the little girl was Kanna.
Kagura elbowed Hiei. "Guess what?" She asked him as she turned the car off and unbuckled.
Hiei looked at her, dazed. "Hmm?"
"You're going into the trunk."
Hiei growled. "I am not."
Kagome laughed at the image of Hiei in the trunk. The trunk was small, so it wouldn't be the easiest fit. "Oh yes you are." Kagura said.
She reached to where she'd put her fan on the dashboard but Hiei was quicker. He snatched it up and grumbled. "Fine fine. I'll go in the trunk." He got out with Kagura and fixed his coat better, shivering in the brisk wind.
Kagura unlocked the trunk and opened it and Kagome watched through the passenger door mirror as he climbed in, his weight pulling the back end of the car down slightly. Soon as the trunk was shut, Kagura walked over to Kanna and knelt in front of the little white haired girl.
Kagome couldn't tell what they were saying, but it seemed to make the little girl very happy and giggle. It brought a smile to her face when Kanna bent down to pick up the younger girl, swinging her around in a circle just as Naraku used to do with Kagome. When Naraku was still sane, a part of her thought viciously. It was the part of her that hated him for what he'd become.
It was a few minutes before Kagura returned to the vehicle holding onto Kanna's hand, but soon they got moving and Kagura buckled up and waited for Kanna to do the same before driving off. "Hello, Kagome. My name is Kanna." Kanna said. Kagura obviously told her who was in the car and what her name was before hand.
"Kagura tells me that we're going to get hair cuts! Do you like hair cuts? What kind of hair cut do you like best? Do you like short hair or long hair better?" Kanna seemed bouncy and it made Kagome smile.
"I prefer long hair, but not so long I can sit on it," was all she got to say before Kanna cut her off again with more questions that seemed to be pulled from thin air.
"Do you like reading? Can you do a handstand? Do you know how to play Hopscotch? What's your favorite color? How come your eyes keep flashing different colors? What's your favorite number?" Her questions came out in an indecipherable tumble, and Kagome had to laugh, even though none of the questions registered in her mind at the moment.
"Please, Kanna, one question at a time. I can barely understand you!"
Kanna giggled. "Oops. I'm sorry! I was just excited! Do you know Monday is my favorite day of the week? Do you want to know why?" Kagome understood as far as the word 'excited' but after that was more indecipherable mess.
"Hush, Kanna." Kagura said. "Look, there's the parlor!"
They pulled into a parking space though they weren't as close as they could be. They had to walk still, but Kagome didn't mind and neither, it seemed, did Kagura or Kanna.
Kagura let Hiei out of the trunk and he crawled out, massaging his back. "Do you know how painful it is to have a tire jack jamming into your back for twenty minutes and a spare tire chafing your head? Not to mention a tool box smashing painfully into the back of your knees at every bump?" He rattled, but he didn't really seem all that angry.
Kanna giggled at him. "You're so silly!" She told him.
Hiei grinned and ruffled her hair like an elder brother might do as Kagura locked the trunk again. Together, Kagome and her two new friends followed Kanna as she skip-hopped to the parlor.
They slipped in after her and all heard the parlor lady greet Kanna readily. "Kanna, my child." She said with a smile. "You're back already? You were just in yesterday!"
Kanna chattered away with the parlor lady as though she'd not seen her for years. Kagome looked at the parlor lady for a moment before she felt something vile in her throat, like a snake trying to slither out of it.
She saw a sign on the wall saying "restroom" right next to an open door, so she headed for it. As soon as she had closed the door, she began coughing.
She used her hand to cover it and felt something moist hit her hand. It smelled metallic and in her mouth tasted of blood. As soon as she was done coughing, which it seemed to take forever for her coughing fit to stop, she pulled her hand away from her mouth and looked at it, horrified.
She could feel herself pale as she watched the blood run down her hand to drip into the sink. The mirror was spattered with blood that had escaped her hand.
But that was not what frightened her to the point of making her entire body shake with nerves. In the center of her palm was a large wad of ...something...
She didn't know what it was, just that it was there in her hand. It looked like tissue. Like something that should not have come out of her human body.
Her back hit the wall of the bathroom and she slid down it until she was sitting, staring with wide open eyes at the thing that stuck to her hand as though it were glued there by the blood itself. Drops of blood dripped to the floor from her hand as she stared and she tried to breathe but it felt impossible.
Breathing was far too hard now. She was too frightened of herself to breathe. She didn't want to look at the thing that had come from inside her, but it was there, on her right hand, and she found she was unable to look away. She didn't have either the will or the strength to do so.
Finally after what seemed like hours, a knock on the door tore her attention away from the...the thing, the clump of tissue on her hand. She stared at the door as though it were an alien object before finding her voice again, finding her breath, and the will to speak once more.
"Kagome?" A woman's voice called through the door. "Are you okay? You've been in there for ten minutes now." She sounded worried, and for a second Kagome couldn't even remember who the voice belonged to. Then it came to her. Kagura. It was Kagura who was talking through the door, knocking every time she got no answer.
Kagome cleared her throat and felt more blood gob up in her mouth. She hurried to the sink and spat it out, disgusted that she was having these strange problems when she knew she was perfectly healthy.
The doctors could not find anything wrong with her that would cause problems like seizures, not in the near future, or even the distant future. "I'm"—she tried again when she found her voice to be too weak—"I'm okay."
She turned the faucet on and tried to wash the gob off her hand to find she could not only wash it off, it really was stuck on like it was super glued. When she pulled on it, she felt like she was trying to rip off real skin. It was very tender.
"What the..." She washed it with soap and found that it was very much connected to her hand, as though it had always been there. As though it were some sort of defect.
Unsure what to do, she rinsed her face, washed the blood off the mirror, floor, and sink, and put her right hand in her coat pocket. She was frightened. Something was happening to her, and it was unnatural.
It felt like there was some second presence around her and that presence was a demon, or at least part demon. When she looked around, all she saw was the tiled walls of the bathroom, the toilet, the sink, and herself in the mirror. She looked paler than before, her eyes looked strange and sunken.
She looked like she'd spent weeks bedridden and unable to keep very much down, constantly vomiting and losing nourishment.
"I'm finally losing it... I must have hit my head one to many times with those seizures." She muttered, unlocking the door and opening it.
Upon seeing her, Kagura gasped. "Are you okay?"
Kagome nodded. "I'm fine."
"You look strange."
That's the understatement of the century, Kagome thought bitterly, but she showed nothing of what she was thinking. Kagome cracked a weak grin.
"You looked in the mirror lately? You don't look all that normal yourself, fang-face." Her tone was joking, even if it was weak and just a little raspy from all that hacking. But it wasn't like it was her choice. She couldn't just not cough.
Kagura slung an arm around Kagome's shoulders, smirking. "I like you." She stated, as though it were the most important thing she'd ever say.
Kagome laughed. "You better, else wise I might cry." She croaked then and took the debit card from her wallet in one of her large baggy pockets, careful to keep the large lump of tissue hidden (since if she didn't know what to make of it she doubted that Kagura or anyone else would either) and shrugged away from Kagura.
Her mother had given her the debit card, promising to put money in the account once a week, two hundred dollars at a time. She needed a haircut, and now was as good a time as ever to get one, considering they were in a beauty parlor.
Rin was still chatting happily with the old lady who brushed her hair, the white flower hair clip lying on the countertop nearby. Kagome noticed a second barber whom she had not seen before that very moment.
He was trying to act as though he weren't there at all, dazing off into space. He looked about nineteen but since Kagome had been so wrong about Kagura and Hiei, thinking Hiei was sixteen at first when he was actually nineteen, and Kagura was eighteen when she really was twenty, she decided not to just deem him a nineteen year old until she knew what his real age was.
She walked up to him, gauging his character by his looks and stance. She usually could gather whether or not a person was nice or not by noting how they held their presence. He didn't seem like a bad sort.
He just seemed out of it; as though he could think of a hundred places he could be and have a hundred times more fun than he was having at that very moment. His hair was raven wing colored and slicked back with gel, and his devil's food cake colored eyes were glazed over.
He wore the light grey-white shirt and pants that was obviously the protocol uniform of the little parlor. His chin had a determined quirk to it. Defiance radiated from his body. He leaned with his arms crossed behind his back against a wall, staring up at the ceiling as though if he looked long enough it would get up and do a jig.
"Hey." Kagome said. She had to repeat herself three times before getting any sort of reaction out of him. He blinked after the fourth time she said it, but otherwise he didn't move a muscle. He was well toned, from what she could tell, she noted.
He probably worked out. Well, whatever he did it made him muscled, and he was tall and lean which Kagome personally liked. Still, he hadn't responded to her except when he blinked, and she wanted a haircut. She looked at his tag and read it, then spoke again, this time using his name so he knew she was talking to him.
"Hey, Yusuke Urameshi, I'd like a haircut." She waved a hand in his face and saw his eyes followed in place with it.
He knew she was talking to her then. He was ignoring her, or trying to. She snapped her fingers after a moment of slowly moving her hand in front of his face and he jumped, not having been expecting that.
Kagome laughed. "I'd like a haircut, Urameshi. Any time now."
Yusuke scowled at her, hating that she destroyed his reverie. "There's the scissors." He said, pointing to the table nearby with scissors and a variety of other hair trimming and cleaning utensils. "There's the garbage. Clean up when you're finished." He sneered at her, but when she didn't start crying and flinch away like all the other girls who came in, he just turned his head and looked away.
"I don't get paid to do your job." She said mildly, unafraid of him or of his nature. She figured that she could probably get along very well with him. But only if he did what she asked –cut her hair.
"Neither do I." He muttered. "So that makes two of us. This is community service, for spray painting the walls 'round here."
Kagome chuckled humorously. "Sounds like fun. Next time you do it, invite me in on it and you won't get caught."
Yusuke looked at the female before him. He hadn't really looked at her before, but now he realized she wasn't exactly some preppy girl like he'd thought. She was sexy though.
Her lithe defined form, supple breasts, full lips, and strange mysteriously dark blue eyes all joined together, making him have to give her not just a once-over, but a twice-over. He'd never looked at a female twice before, so he wondered what the difference was about her.
His...friend... would not be pleased if he just up and went straight all of a sudden just because he had looked at a girl twice. He sighed and looked away from her, but his eyes wandered back.
There was something about her that attracted him like no man's body had. He couldn't say 'woman's' body because he'd never really found interest in them.
"Are you going to stand there gawping at me or are you going to cut my hair?" She asked him. "I'd like to do some of the homework before the night is over."
He nodded and waved to the seat. Kagome turned and sat in it, finding herself facing a group of four people talking. The people consisted of Hiei, Kagura, Kanna, and the elderly lady.
She ignored their conversation which seemed to be about Kagura's college and Kanna's schooling, and felt Yusuke gently pulling her braid undone and then running a brush through it, and after that, a comb.
"You take well care of your hair." Yusuke hummed in her ear. His lips brushed her earlobe, but that fact went unknown by anyone except the two.
His voice was very sensuous and it toyed with the hormones inside her, making them act like trapeze artists, flying all over the place with the nervous feeling of shock just before one trapeze artist caught another who'd been sent flying through the air to him. It was a frighteningly delightful feeling he sent tripping through her and she liked it.
It was that ability that Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha lacked. Sesshoumaru especially. His kisses might give her the exhilarated feeling of riding an avalanche down a mountain, but she knew that was all he had to credit himself for.
Inuyasha knew girls liked gifts, but he didn't know when to quit. Inuyasha's kisses were just as delightful as Sesshoumaru's though Kagome wasn't as attracted to Inuyasha as she was Sesshoumaru.
Inuyasha was no less of a man than his brother, but Kagome loved mysteries, and Sesshoumaru was an enigma that seemed like it had no end. Still, he lacked the ability to truly affect Kagome like a confident person was able.
Yusuke knew the feeling that he forced to rush through her. He smirked cockily and buried his nose in her hair, taking in her scent deeply. That was another thing he never had done before. He'd never truly reveled in the scent of a person, man or woman. "Passion flower, patchouli and vetiver?" He questioned.
Kagome relaxed in the chair, delighting in the sound of his voice even though he was just a stranger. "How did you know?"
"Sexy..." was his response to her question. His eyes wandered to the group. None of them were paying attention to the two of them. They were engrossed in the conversation of their own. "What do you want me to do with your hair?" He asked her in that same velvety soft voice.
His voice sent even more ripples through her navel, but she clenched them with her will. She wouldn't let herself go out of control. If anything, she prized herself for her ability to keep her desires hidden.
She'd had to do it during the three days she spent at the Nokugami's house, or they would have felt the heat coming from her. All those kisses...
"Take off an inch." She said as though she wasn't affected at all, though she knew it was the very opposite way around. She was so very affected. She liked Yusuke already, and she could predict future visits within the next three years as well. She couldn't bite back her wide grin.
She felt his tongue trail behind her ear and yet was unaware of his thoughts as he did that. What am I doing? He thought. Am I not with Eyndi?
But Eyndi had become rather quiet the past few weeks. The feeling between Yusuke and Eyndi was slowly disappearing, and Yusuke knew it. He didn't know the cause though. He wondered what the cause was.
Eyndi had even started sleeping on the couch rather than the bed with Yusuke. Yusuke bit back a sigh as he began to wet her hair down and cut it. His mother was none too fond of Eyndi staying at their apartment either, and there had been many arguments over the whole subject.
Eyndi was becoming more and more distant, and Yusuke would always wonder what he'd done wrong, when he could recall their last conversation as having been a rather pleasant one. It was completely all of a sudden that Eyndi silenced.
Kagome missed home even more at that moment. Her father used to sit her down and run a brush through her hair for hours while telling her stories of the one-hundred year war. Kagome had always been a daddy's girl even after Naraku had lost his sanity and started beating on them.
At first when he'd beat on them, he'd apologize and ask forgiveness. Then he'd take Kagome to the library and sit her on a cushion in front of his favorite chair – a black oak wooden chair with a thin green cushion on the seat – and he'd run a brush through her hair and tell her about the one-hundred year war in which his grandfather, her great-grandfather, had participated in.
He told her when she was little something very important during one of those special memories, but for the life of her, she couldn't recall what he'd said. It had to do with his blood and the blood of her many greats grandmother Madison – the very same blood that coursed through her mother.
But that was all she could remember. She wanted to remember. She didn't want to think of her father only as a bad man who did bad things and made bad choices. She wanted to remember him for the special loving father who easily made her giggle, and who played Tag with her and her brother in the library.
Granted, they had been very small, but those were the days she wanted so badly to recall.
It pained her to think that she couldn't bring them back. Some of them she knew were lost beyond recovery. As soon as Yusuke had finished with her hair, she looked at it.
She'd been so lost in thought; she hadn't realized how much he seemed to think an inch was. He'd chopped her hair almost completely off, it seemed. She stared at herself in the mirror, eyes wide with horror. The hair she'd been growing since she was a little girl was gone. Now her hair was barely past her shoulders.
She sighed. There was no reason to get upset over it, really, but she'd wanted to keep the hair style that her father had always said made her look beautiful. Even after he started beating them, that didn't stop him from telling her she would be a fine young woman when she grew up and she'd be the most beautiful creature on the planet.
She paid for the new 'do and Yusuke grinned at her. "Next time I want to commit a crime against civilization, I'll definitely look you up."
Kagome laughed, cheering up. It appeared he felt bad for his little 'prank' and wanted to make her feel better as he swept up all the hair. He handed her a baggy that had the largest longest clump of her hair, tied with rubber bands to keep it from tangling. A keep sake.
"Thanks." Kagome said and shoved it in her coat pocket. She walked over to the first people she'd met that morning and when they saw her, they blinked as though she was a stranger who didn't belong. But slowly they came to grips with who she was and who she became. She became a girl with short hair; no more, no less.
"You look...different." Kagura said. "Well, much less pale now. Maybe it was just the long hair."
Or maybe it was the coughing fit that made me hack up some sort of third lung, literally, and half the blood in my body. She thought as she smiled at them. "Maybe." She agreed, figuring it better to agree
than not agree. They left the parlor and Hiei was again forced to go into the trunk while they drove to Kanna's new home.
After dropping Kanna off, Hiei was allowed back into the front as they drove home again. To the new place where Kagome would live for the next three years. To the temple. They stopped at a Taco & Burger fast food place on the way home.
After that, it was systematic for Kagome. Nothing really interesting happened in the next five months. Kagome woke up in the morning, showered, dressed, put on her bells, did some warm up exercises so she wouldn't lose touch with martial arts, and worked on some last minute homework as the other two showered.
Then she went with Hiei and Kagura to find Genkai in the kitchen cooking oatmeal for breakfast to eat with milk or orange juice, whichever she preferred, and after that it was off to school to study hard.
Her daily routine mostly was just going to a classroom, getting the work, and being told to do it or fail, then being lectured for the remainder of the period on something that had nothing to do with what they were studying. She had to find out how to do whatever the homework was by herself.
Kagura helped her on her mathematics a lot, and Hiei helped her with science which where she used to be so good at, she was now almost failing. In return, Kagome helped the two with history which neither seemed to be very good at.
She would eat lunch with Kagura and Hiei, and sometimes Keiko would come heckle them about their not wearing school uniforms, and one of the three friends would ever so politely point out that she wasn't following school protocol because she wore bright red lipstick, or maybe it was a spot on her uniform, or her shoe laces were not perfectly bow tied. They would find something that was wrong with her, and she would huff about it and stalk away.
After lunch were more classes in which she would get more work on top of the already piling work and she would have to have it done in her free time by the next day or get extra work to do on top of the new assignment. She couldn't understand how Hiei and Kagura could stand it, and when she asked them about it, they both laughed.
"You can't keep up. You have to do it in your free time, but you see free time is a myth. It's what you get when you die and God rewards you with a peaceful life in heaven." Hiei said lazily, scratching down a scientific equation.
Kagura nodded, agreeing with him. "This school is much more demanding than any other one." She told Kagome. "It's because of that reason which makes the success rate of women who graduate from this school so high. You can't help but succeed. When I'm not doing something, I feel so useless. I always have to be doing something."
Kagome knew that was true. Her mother had gone to Wyman's counterpart, and supposedly everything was the same with their system. It wasn't hard to succeed when it was your only option.
Soon as the day would complete, depending on what day it was, Kagome would either go to Raspuit with Hiei and Kagura if it was a Monday or Thursday, or else if it was any other day of the week she would go straight to the temple to work on homework with Kagura and Hiei.
Despite what the popular opinion seemed to be, Kagura and Hiei were both vicious about studying. Kagome found herself more motivated to do better at Wyman with Hiei and Kagura than she'd ever felt when she was back at Sunset.
Kagura and Hiei both wanted success very badly, and that want quickly started to rub off on Kagome even more than she'd ever wanted to succeed before.
Kagome also found out very quickly that she did not get Saturdays and Sundays off. She had to earn a day off with her grades, and at first as her grades wavered from so much pressure, she never knew a day off.
Every day began to melt into the next, and soon she was so tired she hardly had the energy to talk, much less even to think about anything other than her school work.
The thing on her hand started to ache and the skin on her hands began to dry out quickly. She constantly had to use lotion on her hands, and it was difficult to hide the thing from Kagura and Hiei, but she managed.
Hiei and Kagura had never entered her room through all the time since Kagome had met them, and they still knew not of who her mother was, but Kagome was okay with that. She didn't want Kagura getting all excited because she was talking to the daughter of her idol. That would be just annoying.
She didn't have the energy to think about her family and friends either. Thinking about how she was unable to communicate with her family just wracked her nerves, but slowly she was able to develop immunity to the pain of thinking of her family and friends, as she always did.
Her friendship with Kagura and Hiei grew steadily closer and soon she was thinking of them not as friends but as brother and sister. She just never worried about it. She never saw Yusuke after that first meeting but she didn't grudge him for cutting her hair.
She kept it up in a ponytail and allowed it to grow out, the bangs included. Her hair always did grow rather quickly. Now it was being put to the test. In just those five months, her hair had grown out three inches and her bangs were already down to her chin. It wasn't long enough for a good braid though.
Still, she didn't mind. She, Kagura, Hiei, and Kanna all got a picture taken together in Raspuit; a professional one, and four copies were made. One for each of them.
Kagura paid for the picture itself, Hiei paid for the frames, and Kagome paid for each of the frames to be engraved with the words, The words were Latin, a language Kagome knew well. It meant "Family extends beyond blood. It is in the heart."
Kanna liked it and openly showed it. Kagura liked it, and she also showed it but much less openly than Kanna, but Hiei said outright, "It's stupid." When Kagura was going to yell at him for it, Kagome just laughed. She knew what he meant.
Hiei's twentieth birthday was to be celebrated. It was June eighth. Kagome, Kagura, and Genkai wanted to make it special, though Genkai just kept muttering how useless birthdays were and acting like she didn't care. Kagome knew otherwise.
It was carefully set up, though it would only be a party of the four of them. Kanna was camping with her family. Still, Genkai baked a cake and Kagura decorated the dining hall while Kagome forced (he wasn't really forced, he loved to help her with it) Hiei to help her with her science.
Another surprise the school brought Kagome was that there was no summer vacation. Without Kagura and Hiei to keep her sane, Kagome was sure that she would have killed the man who developed the school's system even though he was already dead.
She would have dragged him from whatever level of hell he resided in (because all those who created anything remotely educational would never make it into heaven, of that she was sure!) and killed him again. Several agains.
"Who do you like, Hiei? Do you love anyone? Are you madly infatuated with anyone?" A giggle bubbled out of her throat when he gave her a confused glance. He didn't understand American, the native language to Europe. In other words, as he was growing up with Genkai, because Kagome knew he'd been with Genkai since he was a baby, Genkai had not taught him to be multilingual like Kagome was by her mother.
She translated to another language. This time she spoke Italian. "Who do you like, Hiei? Do you love anyone? Are you madly infatuated with anyone?" It was the exact same sentence she'd asked before as she lay on his floor, shoulder to shoulder with him. Again, he gave her a confused glance, because he quite clearly did not understand it. She tried again, in German. "Who do you like, Hiei? Do you love anyone? Are you madly infatuated with anyone?"
He understood that time. Obviously he could understand German. "Is that your business? Because I do not see how it is." He said in German. Kagome was pleased he understood the language.
She knew a multitude of languages, but never found anyone to converse in another language with other than Japanese beside her brother who couldn't do it very well. Hiei seemed very fluent in German.
"You speak German?" She asked him, surprised that he could but happy nonetheless.
He rolled his eyes at her. "Obviously." He drawled, back to speaking Japanese. "Kagura taught me, though so I'm not exactly perfect at it."
Kagome eyed him and then went back to drawing doodles on her science homework sheet. She wrote with her left hand now. She wasn't very good at it, but it kept her right hand out of sight. She didn't want to think about the lump on her hand, but she could still feel it so it was still on her mind.
It had almost been six months since she'd come to the temple to live. That meant that only two and a half years remained until she could go home. She couldn't fathom staying away from Sunset! Not if she could help it.
"So are you?" Kagome asked him, speaking French now. She'd go rusty if she didn't practice her languages. She used to be able to talk to her mother in all the languages at least. But obviously she was unable to contact family. She recalled her father was the one who taught her French.
The language of love, he'd called it. He also taught her German. She turned to lie on her back and delighted in the fact that she felt no pain anymore when she did so. She'd gone so many years with pain when she lay on her back that she'd forgotten how pleasant it was not to feel it. The welts had long since healed and scarred.
"And that means?" Hiei asked.
"So are you?" She repeated, this time switching back to Japanese. She wouldn't get to speak French it seemed.
"Am I what?" He ran a hand through his pointed hair and again Kagome wondered how it stuck up like that but figured it was probably a demon thing. He was half fire apparition, so perhaps his hair was kind of like fire? Being a fire apparition meant that he could command and control fire to an extent.
"Do you like anyone? As in more-than friendly? They don't have to be friends with you already."
Hiei sighed. "What brings this about?" He leaned on his elbow, staring down at her, and Kagome noticed how close they really were. It almost made her blush, but she contained it.
He too noticed their close proximity. He noted how her hair seemed to halo her head, her long bangs framing those curiously dark blue eyes that looked almost like a starry night sky because they seemed to be flecked with speckles of silver.
Her lips lush yet painted a dark blue with her lipstick, were parted slightly. He could hear her clicking her tongue against her teeth and her hands were folded behind her head in a casual form.
He could see plenty of cleavage because she was wearing one of Kagura's tube tops, it being dark blue to match her lipstick and eye shadow, and of course she wore black pants that were meant to be baggy.
The tube top showed much of her stomach as well, her low riders pants showing even more. The belly ring she'd gotten when she turned eighteen, which was almost a year before, dangled with a new end that she had just bought. It was a silver bell that hung from a little ball to tickle her stomach and tinkled softly when she moved.
"Trying to occupy time and not do my science homework." She said casually, sounding sexy even though she did it unconsciously. She knew what she'd done the moment she saw his face. She knew what he would do before he did it. And she knew what he was going to say next.
He blushed. "How do you see me?" He asked her, as though he were changing the subject. His eyes searched hers silently for an answer that he knew by now he would not find unless she wanted him to know it.
And suddenly the answer was there, and she spoke, though it was not the words he wanted to hear. "I see you as I see my own brother in Sunset."
His eyes bore into hers, wishing he hadn't heard that. Wishing he'd never been taught German. "The best birthday present you could give me..." He said quietly, his voice low as though to ward off eavesdroppers. "Would be to take back those words... It does not have to be that way. Do we have to be like siblings?"
Kagome shook her head. "Yes; it is that way, and it has to be that way."
Hiei growled low in his throat and leaned down the few inches to kiss her. Though the kiss was slightly rough, Kagome knew he meant the feelings he felt towards her and wasn't just attracted to her. He'd become closer to her than she'd thought.
But he still didn't know everything about her. And she didn't know everything about him. Yet, Kagome felt only the feelings towards him that she felt for Souta. She would never kiss Souta. At least, not like Hiei was kissing her. And certainly not with tongues.
She felt him moving to pin her down, just like Kohaku always did. Instead, she reversed it and pinned him. "The feeling is not mutual." She told him firmly in Japanese. "Happy birthday."
She got off him as he sighed and moved back to her science books. He seemed much less eager to help her with her science after that.
It was a lot of work to get through, and since coming to live at the temple, singing and playing her violin had been great escapes for her, if she had the time and energy to do it that was. After her first semester at Wyman, she was allowed to take either music or a band class, and she chose band. She wanted to play her violin.
At first, her violin only reflected how she felt. She was out of practice at keeping her emotions out of her music, and she often felt lonely without her old family and friends. The lonesome feelings came from all the memories she had with her beloved many greats grandmother Madison's violin.
Then, she gradually grew in skill again and soon she was playing it just as grand as she had played it before she'd gotten kidnapped by the woman with gold skin.
She had to use more and more lotion on her hands, to keep them from cracking and bleeding painfully, and the lump pulsed as though it had a life and mind of its own, but she tried to ignore the alien thing that came from her body to connect with her hand.
She was in Kagura's room when the first, the last, and the worst of her seizures took place. It felt like it was tearing her apart. It felt like her skin was being ripped off her body, and it was painful. Having your fingernails ripped out, one by one, your toes smashed with a hammer one by one, and the rest of your bones shattered with that selfsame hammer, slowly as though in slow motion. It felt like carving knives ripping through her back.
Hiei and Kagura tried to stop her from harming herself with no luck. Kagome tore out of their grip and ended up smashing her head too hard against the floor. She'd cracked her skull and was bleeding everywhere.
Genkai came running when she heard the screams of Kagome, and the hollers of Hiei and Kagura for help. She had Hiei run to phone the hospital, while Kagura and she tried to stop the bleeding without moving Kagome. It was impossible since the cut was under her, and so they found themselves unable to do anything at all.
Kagome was transported to the hospital, and while Genkai was allowed to go with, Hiei and Kagura were forced to stay and wonder what was happening to Kagome, praying that she would live. It had been a pretty violent seizure. Kagura's room was a mess from all the thrashing Kagome had done.