Lord of My Dreams
Chapter 6: Investigation
Rin sighed as she took off her shoes once through the door. "I'm home!" she called over the sound of television coming from the living room.
"Welcome home, Rin," Kagome's voice called back. "I wasn't sure if you'd eaten or not, so there's some food in the fridge that you can warm up if you're hungry."
"Thanks, but I've eaten," Rin lied. She was eager to get back to the books, and could not even think of eating.
"Alright—and for the record, I do appreciate calls—or even texts—telling me what to expect for supper," Kagome called as Rin began up the stairs.
Normally, Rin would have felt guilty; at the moment, she was too preoccupied. "Sorry, I lost track of time." Kagome said something about a family get-together on Sunday which Rin absently acknowledged without really hearing. Rushing up the stairs, she entered her room and closed the door behind her. Spreading her books out on her desk, she resumed going through them as if she had never so much as paused.
It was midnight when she had gone through each book at least once extremely thoroughly. She was sure that she could recognize a large number of pictures and even some sentences at this point; however, her search had yielded nothing that she could say was obviously something that would have caught Sesshoumaru's attention.
Rin sighed—she seemed to be doing that a lot lately—and set the books to one side of her desk. Digging through her school bag, she pulled out her homework and set about finishing what was due the following day.
There wasn't much to be done, but her level of distraction was such that she would frequently find herself staring absently at the pile of books lost in thoughts about Sesshoumaru and various dreams. Thus it was well past three when she finally finished and went to sleep.
For the first time in a long time, Rin slept a dreamless sleep.
The following afternoon found Rin in the library again, only this time in the archives with the manuscripts of some old documents detailing lifestyles, medicines, manners of dress, family histories and even demons of the Sengoku era.
Getting in had not been as much of a difficulty as it could have been—Rin had been a frequent visitor of the library before she got busy with the entrance examinations for college. She had enough friends among the library staff who knew and trusted her that they were willing to bend a few rules and allow her to access the archives—normally, one had to place an order, and a week or so later would receive scanned copies of the requested documents. Since Rin had no particular document in mind, she was grateful for the connections that allowed her to peruse the ancient documents as she pleased.
Rin was trying to keep the details about demons at a minimum—after all, mythology only helped so much—when she came across a reference to a Lord of the Western Lands whose name was Sesshoumaru. It was a small mention, at the bottom of a long paragraph painting a sketchy picture of demon nobility. Sesshoumaru was referred to as the last Lord of the Western Lands, who had vanished without a trace one day and simply had never been replaced as the world entered an age where demons began to decline.
Rin narrowed her eyes at this thoughtfully. Reincarnation, sure—but the same name?
She only pondered this question for a moment before she copied the paragraph into her notebook word for word and flipped to the end to find the source that the author had referred to for that paragraph.
Her heart leapt to realize that it was a familiar title—she had come across references to this document many a time in reference to demons. Perhaps she should not have been so quick to dismiss demons as nothing more than mythology. Perhaps the "demons" referred to were a powerful, tyrannical family or class of nobility that had died out.
Yet when Rin thought back to some of her more recent dreams—the ones that she had decided were probably from the Sengoku era if they were, indeed, memories—she thought of the mystery she felt each time she woke and remembered Sesshoumaru. She thought of the shining of his hair, and the fur muff that she always wanted to refer to as his 'tail.' She thought of a dram that she had had one day when she had drifted off during class, where Sesshoumaru had seemed to possess the speed of light and battled fiercely to protect her without batting an eye, and sometimes armed with nothing but his…claws. She had desperately tried to brush this off as a daydream, but now it began to occur to her that perhaps this was her problem—perhaps she was too quick to deny what she did not consider realistic.
Rin went back to the shelves to search for the reference on demons: The Demon Encyclopedia, it was called, and the author was unknown. Rin searched under the history section, and then the mythology section to no avail. Finally she turned on the lone computer in the dimly lit, dusty room and searched.
The library had no record of such a book. So Rin tried the databases of her school library and a few other city libraries. No database turned up any results beyond popular fiction.
Rin thus chose to change her approach and tried running a web search.
Still, her findings were meager at best. The most detail that she could find was that the Demon Encyclopedia had existed at Rokuonji a little over a century ago. The most recent document that referenced it as far as she could find was a short historical research piece on the changes in lifestyle before and after the Sengoku era. However, a quick search for the author revealed that she had died in 1965; also that she had been born, raised and died in Kyoto.
Rin only thought a moment before snapping her book shut and turning off the computer. She found herself sighing again as she carefully replaced the documents where they belonged.
It was not as though she could run off to Kyoto that very evening. She could make it a day trip the next day, but that would still cost a great deal of money that she would essentially be smuggling out of Kagome's savings.
But Kagome knew that Rin was not above researching her previous life—or lives, as the case may be. If Rin suddenly declared that she wanted to spend a day in Kyoto, Kagome was bound to be suspicious.
This was how Rin decided to spend the following day on an undeclared trip to Kyoto. Certainly, there was a chance that Kagome would figure out that Rin had been up to something, but once Rin had been there and back there would be nothing that could be done to undo it.
Though it had seemed like perfectly good weather early in the morning, it was raining by the time she got off the train in Kyoto. Rin had never been more grateful that she always kept a foldable umbrella in her handbag.
That was only the smallest of her problems.
She had not expected that it would be easy to find someone who was willing to discuss with her possible locations of a manuscript that had existed in the temple over a century ago, but she had also failed to anticipate how entirely difficult it might be.
First of all, the surroundings of Rokuonji were entirely oriented towards tourists, and any inquiry she made about the manuscript seemed to inevitably flow into a conversation about the fire in 1950 and how nothing would have survived it.
It was at the fifth such conversation that Rin finally lost the ability to calmly excuse herself.
"I know there was a terrible fire! I know that nothing would have survived! The document I'm talking about was in this temple a century and a decade ago, and I'm willing to bet anything that it was moved at some point before the fire, or at least copied. There are so many documents that reference it, and the most recent one I could find was dated 1961. I simply have no idea where to look for the manuscript or any possible copy, and this was my best lead."
"What about the 1961 document? Did you look into that? The author?"
Rin shook her head. "The author's dead. I might inquire to the place that was once her residence, but first I thought I'd try-"
"I'd suggest you try the author's house first," suggested the man with a shrug. "Even if you're right and the manuscript or a copy was moved out of the temple before the fire, the records of that transaction would have been destroyed in the fire. I can tell you with a reasonable amount of confidence that you'd be hard-pressed to find a person around here who truly remembers anything that happened around here before the fire—even more so since you don't know when exactly the transaction might have happened."
Rin sighed, deflated. "Thank you."
The man—a random passerby who had heard the end of one of her conversations with a local guide and had asked what she was doing—looked at her speculatively.
"Who did you say the author of that particular 1961 document was?"
"I didn't. But her name was Shinobu Eri."
The man grinned in a friendly manner. "I thought that might be the case. She was my grandmother—it'll be my house that you're looking for."
Rin blinked, taken aback. "What- what a coincidence."
The man's grin vanished and he looked at her speculatively for a moment. "Why don't we have a cup of coffee somewhere and you tell me what document this is that you're looking for?"
Rin could only agree.
So it was that she found herself sitting across from the man in a downtown café a mere ten minutes later.
"Am I right when I guess that you're looking for the Territories and Daimyo in the Kansai?"
Rin shook her head. "Actually, I'm looking for a manuscript called the Demon Encyclopedia." She felt her face flush as she spoke, as if she were admitting something terribly shameful. She tried to force herself not to let it show, but the amusement on the man's face made her think that he had noticed—or maybe he was simply amused by the fact that she was so seriously searching for such a document.
"Well," said the man, leaning back in his chair. "That's something of a surprise."
Rin didn't get the chance to ask what part was so surprising before the man continued speaking.
"My grandmother was a great historian—she had a lot of really great books lying around in our home. Actually, I'd have to say that it's the influence of her books that convinced me to go into history myself. So I've saved almost all of her books—except for one notable exception.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" he suddenly asked, pulling a cigarette pack and a lighter out of his jacket pocket.
Rin mutely shook her head.
"Thanks. Anyway, there was this one document—the Demon Encyclopedia, as I'm sure you've guessed. It was something she'd obtained from Rokuonji shortly before the fire, and something she'd always treasured as much as any other historical document.
"I felt differently when I inherited her library—as far as I was concerned, it was the one blemish on an otherwise flawless surface. Yet, for some reason, there was a huge market for that book. So when I was having some financial difficulties, I sold it."
Rin pretended she wasn't feeling impatient as anything. "To whom? Where is it now?"
The man smiled wryly at her. "Ah, that's the thing… See, historical documents are actually a pain to sell properly—all sorts of authentications and tests that have to be done, and each costing more than the last. I really needed money, so I sold it to someone who was willing to pay a slightly lower price without going through all the tests…I can't say that the information that I have is accurate at all."
"The black market," Rin stated, almost to herself. The man only offered a wane smile.
Their coffee arrived, and Rin absently sipped hers in silence. The man said nothing either, and Rin was glad of this. She considered the little she knew about illegal markets and decided that she probably had little hope of tracing the book through this man. Still…
"Could I have the man's contact information anyway? And whatever details you remember?"
"It might not-"
"I know, that's alright. I intend to do some searching of my own anyway."
The man sighed. "Alright; would you mind coming by my office after this? Whatever records I kept I have there."