Lord of My Dreams
Chapter 5: Library
"Want to stop by that new café on the way home?" Kyouko suggested cheerfully.
"Sounds great! I've been wanting to go there for a while, but…" Masami broke off, smiling sheepishly.
"But you couldn't find the time," finished Aya, rolling her eyes.
"Masami never has time," teased Sayu.
Rin laughed with her friends, but as they all began concurring to Kyouko's suggestion, Rin had to cut in.
"You guys have fun. I've got to stop by the library."
"Again?" groaned Aya.
"What's up with you, Rin?" asked Kyouko.
"You're busier than Masami these days," Sayu pointed out.
"Why don't you just use the University library while we're here?" Masami suggested.
"Sorry—I'm trying to solve a…family mystery of sorts. I need material from the archives at the city library."
"A family mystery?" Kyouko sounded exhasperated.
"What sort of mystery?" Sayu's curiosity was piqued.
Rin quickly smiled reassuringly. "Nothing big—actually, I'm not even really certain what I'm looking for…"
"What do you do in the archives, then?" asked Masami.
Rin hesitated, but decided that honesty couldn't hurt. "It's…an old book about demons during the Sengoku Era. It's legends, but something Kagome o-ne-san was saying the other day made me think it might be important."
"Demons?" asked Sayu incredulously.
"So why don't you just ask your sister?" Aya pointed out.
Rin bit her lip. "Apparently it's…something like a thing that each person has to figure out for themselves. Things get awkward when I so much as ask about it."
Her friends stared at her.
"I guess this means you would prefer it if we didn't tag along," Sayu sighed. Her disappointment was obvious.
Aya and Kyouko, on the other hand, looked relieved.
"I'll see you guys in Physiology tomorrow," Rin said, waving as she turned and went on her way.
"See you tomorrow!" her friends chorused. Rin didn't hear them as anything more than a slight background noise. She was already deep in thought.
Kagome, Inuyasha and Kaede had told her not to investigate her past life, and initially she had agreed. But the days had gone by turning into weeks, and her dreams refused to show her anything from the "right" time or place. Tuesday of this week had been exactly three weeks since her visit to Kaede's shrine, and nothing had happened since.
So Rin had decided to throw caution to the wind and start investigating.
Her decision was in large part due to Sesshoumaru's odd reappearance; she tried to put him from her mind, she truly did, but the more she tried not to think about it, the more she saw him cold and distant, walking away without a second glance.
She felt like she was going insane. Had she dreamed up the boy who had saved and helped her in her childhood? No—that couldn't be. Had he forgotten her? Could he forget her so easily after they had spent seven years side-by-side? She didn't believe that for a moment. Had something happened—in this life or any previous one—to make him want to have nothing more to do with her?
Rin pondered the matter absently all the way to the library. When she found herself standing in front of her destination, she blinked, surprised to find that she didn't even remember getting on or off the train. She did, however, remember in vivid detail a number of recent dreams and a few precious moments from her memory.
She shook her head and headed into the library. Now was not the time to be worrying about that—she would deal with the Sesshoumaru issue after she had solved this past life problem.
Unless they're related, she thought. But she pushed the thought away before she could start daydreaming again. In any case, the most important thing was to regain her memories of her last life. Or at least the life she shared with Kagome and Inuyasha and everyone—she wasn't sure if it was necessarily the last one.
She was heading towards the staircase that headed down into the archives when a familiar glint of silvery white hair caught the corner of her eye. She swung around, and indeed—there stood Sesshoumaru, looking sadly down at a book in his hands.
Sadly? Rin blinked. She had hardly ever seen Sesshoumaru look sad. In fact, when she blinked and looked again, she couldn't even identify why she thought his expression looked sad: there certainly weren't any of the usual signs that betrayed sadness. Or emotion in general.
But something about him seemed sad. Rin tried to squint at the book, but all she could tell was that it had a red cover.
Someone walked up to him and said something—quietly, of course, as it was a library, and Rin couldn't hear a word. She tried to surreptitiously move closer to the pair; eventually, she settled for slipping into the row behind them, and pressed as close to the bookcase as she could as she tried to hear what they were saying.
"…your own…just…work!"
"I will decide…works…"
Rin pressed her ear to a gap between two books. Surprisingly, she found that this made enough difference.
"But independent law firms aren't easy jobs."
"Yes. That is why I am working part time at your law firm."
"No, you're working at my place because you don't have a proper legal degree yet."
"I will at the end of the year."
The other man sighed. "Fine. But don't think I'll help you at all."
"I do not need your help."
The man's muttered comment wasn't audible to Rin. Whatever it was, Sesshoumaru apparently chose to ignore it.
"I will be there tomorrow afternoon, as planned."
"I'll see you then, in that case."
Footsteps told Rin that the man was walking away. She slipped to the far end of the row to peer into the one where Sesshoumaru still presumably was. She was just in time to see Sesshoumaru replace the red book and leave—in the opposite direction, fortunately.
As soon as he was far enough, Rin went straight to the part of the row where she had seen him standing and looked at the level of the bookshelf where she had seen him replace the book. Her heart sank: there were four books that were red, and she could not remember enough to determine which of the four it might be.
Pulling all four out of the shelf, she headed straight to a table and sat down to peruse the books.
She started by flipping quickly through each. Nothing caught her eye as specifically fascinating. They were all books on art, but one was on scrolls; one was on a specific Chinese artist; one was on European paintings; and the other was on sumi-e. Sighing, Rin resigned herself to a day of going through the books trying to figure out what it might have been that Sesshoumaru had been looking at.
It briefly crossed her mind that there was no guarantee that she would know what it was even if she saw it, and that what she was doing was something that could possibly be construed as stalking. Rin couldn't bring herself to take either fact very seriously.
She made herself comfortable and began to read the books.
She was in a field, braiding his hair. His beautiful, silver hair was smooth beneath her fingers and each strand would glimmer in pure whiteness when it caught the sunlight just so.
He sat still for her as she wove flowers into his hair as she braided. She wasn't so good at braiding, and she knew this. But his hair was too beautiful not to touch.
She braided his beautiful white hair.
Rin blinked, realizing that she had been dozing. No surprise, she thought, glancing at her watch to see that it was a quarter to nine. She last had looked at the clock at eight-thirty.
Then she blinked, realizing that she had been dreaming—dreaming about being a little girl braiding Sesshoumaru's hair. Complete with flowers.
I must be more overworked than I'd thought, Rin thought to herself, shaking her head. The sooner she forgot that dream the better. But she still felt as if she could feel the silk strands of his hair beneath her fingers, and see the glimmer of the sunlight that made his hair a white sheen.
His hair was white, yes, and shiny and beautiful…but she had never seen it shine like it had in her dream, as if it were made of strands of white gold.
"The library will be closing in ten minutes. Please either return the books to the shelving rack or to the counter for check out. I repeat, the library will be closing in ten minutes…"
Rin almost jumped out of her skin when the announcement began. She had forgotten that the city library closed at nine. How long had it been since she had last sat at the library this late?
She briefly considered whether to return the books which she had already perused to the shelving racks. But she quickly discarded the idea—there was nothing worse than to disregard perused sources when one was searching something without know what one was searching for.
Standing, Rin gathered the books into her arms, retrieved her school bag and headed to the check out counter.
As the librarian was checking out the books for her, Rin absently remembered that she had in fact come to the library for the archives before she had gotten distracted by Sesshoumaru.
Oh well. I can always come back another day.
There was no hurry, after all. In fact, it would be ideal if she could remember more before she had the chance to peruse the archives.
The dream floated into the surface of her mind. Rin shoved it away with a vengeance, and not just because she found it unrealistic. There was something about the memory of the texture and the light of that hair that made her chest tighten and her throat constrict.
Thanking the librarian, Rin gathered up the books and headed out of the library. I'm catching a cold, she told herself firmly. The lack of conviction behind the statement she ignored.