Disclaimer: Again, theworldsgreatest01 does not own Inuyasha.
A/N: This author is very sorry to disappoint those waiting for the prologue but these chapters should be getting more and more interesting as we go along. This author promises to be done with the prologue very soon. theworldsgreatest01 promises.
Chapter Six: Eye-Catcher in the Rye
... ...
I'm starting to get the hang of this sibling thing or whatever the hell its called, anyway. Sure, I was pissed off to the last straw a few months ago when my "big brother" acted like a complete jackass and basically called me stupid as dirt, but I got over it when he apologized and came to me begging for forgiveness because I couldn't take him looking at me from far away with those sick dog eyes. Since then, I kinda feel good; laughing a lot, talking a lot. It feels like everything's not so bad anymore, I don't have to keep all my questions inside and I can be myself when we're alone, again. After that little fiasco we had, its almost like we've reached a whole new level; we understand each other more even if, at the same time, we don't get each other at all. Hm, its hard to get the gist of it, but to me its pretty simple. To somebody else on the outside looking in, they'd probably be confused just thinking about it. Somehow, I do get it, and nowadays, even though there may be some things about Nii-san that I don't get, I feel something that tells me I know everything deep down, so I just smile to myself with that in the back of my head.
The day of my beginning is getting closer now, what Oka-san calls it is much simpler: a birthday. I'll be turning seventeen winters. Time has passed since we first started our journey and I didn't even notice, so when Oka-san woke me up today earlier than usual with a bright smile I was surprised when she said, "You're growing up so fast."
I responded with, "But wasn't I just four feet tall yesterday? Are those herbs really working?"
"No, little Ms. Sarcasm, I'm talking about you turning seventeen already. Although it seems like just yesterday that you were four feet tall and hugging me everyday and telling me you loved me more than the whole length of your arms stretched out on both sides…"
To this memory, she squeezed me so tight I thought my arms were gonna lose circulation and fall off. "Whaddya mean I'm turning seventeen already? I was born in the beginning of spring, remember? Its still fall."
She thankfully let me go free and stood back to give me a quizzical expression with her hands on her hips. "Have you taken a look around at the scenery lately?"
Standing in the middle of our campsite, I looked up at the trees surrounding us. The branches were bare and devoid of life or flowers. A chill ran along both my arms with every wisp of the wind. I felt a strange tickling sensation on the bottom of my foot and saw that I had stepped on a bed of lilies trying to survive the cold, rough soil but had their lives cut short. The grass everywhere was turning a rusty color, and it even smelled like it was cold. Why hadn't I noticed it before?
Maybe because of the new freakin' people who keep popping up all over the place wanting to kill me and Nii-san, like this new chick who calls herself Haruka and tried to do some kind of snowy flowery trick with poison in it; well, there's where the idea that it was winter should have come from…but we breathed in one whiff of that stuff and it made blood practically shoot out our noses, especially mine. The feeling of it going up my nostrils almost burned my skull, and it felt so bad that I had to sit it with Oto-san since his sense of smell is even more sensitive than mine and his screams pierced my eardrums and echoed all through the cave we were trapped in. All of us have had to drink crushed up dead plants and snake venom in water for days to clean out our systems. Myoga said that if just a tiny drop of that poison is still in our bodies and goes untreated, we could die in a matter of days. And then, on top of that, this ninja guy who-- I don't even know if he's alive or a walking dead person because he smells like grave soil but looks pretty damn alive and kickin' to me if you count in the fact that he went one on one with me and was pretty damn good, --is confusing the hell out of me. But I do know that so far, his name is Kenta and he looks like he's not that much older than Nii-san, but his fighting skills, especially with a wide-range of weapons, is incredible. Arrows didn't do anything, so I gave them up and tried hand-to-hand combat and he matched my every move. Part of me is pissed to think that he was holding out on me. The look in his eyes, weird eyes, green ones…I felt him analyzing me, my every move, trying to remember it all, so I looked back at him and that's when he fumbled and I turned and elbowed him in the stomach. After that I didn't get anymore chances to land a punch or kick. Throughout our whole battle though, I knew he was holding back. He never touched me, at least not hard, anyway. Like he didn't want to, even after I got him good in the chin. All he did was avoid and evade and its been bothering me ever since. I think about him and the look in his eyes when I'm alone or lounging around with Nii-san and we take a quiet moment to retreat to our own thoughts; I relive it over and over, that look, that fumble. I've had at least two dreams about it, one of them just about the color of his eyes, the effect they had on me…and its something I don't get, and one of the only things where in the back of my head its not a reassurance that on some inner level I do, I just flat out don't. Sometimes I want to tell Nii-san, and there have been times when I almost have, to see what he thinks, but every time I do, I hold back. I guess its just one of those things I can't tell him and need to keep to myself. I can't just blurt out everything to him, like, "Hey its my time of the month! Don't piss me off!" I bet he holds personal stuff to himself too.
A lot of personal stuff, I bet. Well, today we walked for about three hundred miles trying to get the latest on Maburoshi, and all of us were glad that the presence of a village not that far away gave us a reason to put off the search just a little longer, because you know, there's no sense in walking through a village and not spending the night. You gotta have somewhere to lay your head once in a while! So nobody lost face as a weakling since no one said anything about going on ahead, and no one objected like a hopeless idiot, not even Oto-san who used to be famous for working Miroku, Sango, Oka-san and even little Shippou to the bone. But at that time, even he was up for getting some down time, so I was all in.
"Finally! Some nice pillows to rest our heads on! I was getting a little worn out from the 'patch of grass then ground' routine." Sango exhaled while we strode into the small village with its poor, wooden houses and dirt paths weathered down by ox-carts. The air smelled off sweet buns and cherry blossoms.
"Yes, it will be a reward for our good hunting to relax and indulge in the fragrant taste of warm sake…" Miroku seconded, a glazed and dreamy look on his face.
Shippou chimed in, "Yup! And good food!" Then he smirked cockily, "No offense Sango and Kagome, your food is good, but there's nothing like a real home cooked meal."
They glared in response and Sango huffed in annoyance. Now that we had made it into the place, all we had to do was find a house for Miroku to scam and we'd be sitting pretty, but I couldn't help but notice the weird women who kept watching us like they were awestruck when we passed, although when I looked a little closer and followed their gaze, I ended up looking at Nii-san regarding them as questioningly as I was, disturbed to say the least.
I fell back to the pace he held and nudged him, whispering, "What's going on with these women? Do you think they're possessed or something?"
Nii-san watched a woman who spotted him and tried to crane her neck to see him past an old man leaving his home but couldn't, so she carelessly pushed him aside and jogged closer but ducked behind a house when she saw him looking back at her. "I don't think so, but they are acting rather odd…" he said, leaning his head toward mine.
As we passed, every woman who glanced Nii-san couldn't take their eyes off him. One of them twisted her neck around so much that she caught a pain in it, another tried to push her husband aside to get a better view, a third had been feeding chickens by pouring corn out of a large bag into the pen, but saw Nii-san and wasn't paying attention to how much she was pouring, so she ended up nearly drowning them in food. We watched everything, confused and fascinated that no one else noticed the epidemic, until Miroku shouted out overzealously, "…and you have nothing to fear anymore! I have vanquished the monstrous youkai plaguing your home and threatening your good souls! You may now sleep peacefully at night, even if my good friends and family must slumber on the bare ground with jagged stones aching their sides…"
He glanced meaningfully at the elderly man with a silver mustache covering his upper lip but nothing covering his bald head and sighed. "Come, my wife…" he held out a hand toward Sango who rolled her eyes. "I'm afraid that love is all I can give you in this state, and even if it is very good love and satisfying to you, I will not be able to put a roof over heads so that we can thrive in that amazing, mind-blowing love that I give you…sadly--"
"Miroku!!"
"Er, Houshi-sama, if you need food and boarding for the night my grand-niece and I would be honored to have you stay as long as you like as penance for your gracious deed."
The old man interrupted the marital abuse that was about to occur between Sango and Miroku; Shippou jumped up onto the crude stone steps leading inside his home and Oka-san clapped her hands together in delight. Yeah, he was giving out too much perverted information, but I had to admit, he got the job done.
I thought the outside of the house looked sad, but the inside was even worse. The slanted boards that served as the roof were corroding away as badly as the floorboards, which had green mold forming in places where it shouldn't be. There were only two divisions for rooms, so the women would have to sleep in one and the men in the other, but it wouldn't have been better on either side because the smell of sweet Akashi buns didn't reach this place, nope, it reeked of lake water, old fish and decay. They must have tried to mask the stench with burning herbs, as I could see from the still smoldering embers that sat in the square patch of dirt in the middle of the entranceway which I guess was the cooking area, but while they probably fooled the all-human part of our ragtag family, I could tell by the looks on Oto-san's and Shippou's--even Kirara's!-- faces that they didn't fool us.
"Gee, Miroku, after years of practice swindling and lying, you would think you knew how to pick the right people to lie to…" Oto-san grumbled.
"Yeah, this is almost worse than sleeping outside!" Shippou jeered.
"Please, friends," Miroku rose a hand in his defense. "I happen to think on terms of quantity rather than quality."
"Well then, they have a quantity of mildew if that's what you were looking for! And isn't it quality to quantity?" I shot back, glaring at the guy who was practically my uncle but still a bozo.
Sango scanned the place and scrunched her face up. "They're right. You could have been a little more sensible with your choosing, Miroku-kun…"
"Yeah, Miroku, why such an…interesting…choice?" Oka-san asked as she stepped on a floorboard and it screeched as it threatened to break in two from the strain.
He cleared his throat and out of the corner of my eye I saw him wink at Nii-san, who didn't understand. "Ah, Kagome, I believe that you cannot judge a scroll by the messenger who delivered it. This place will do. If I had asked for anything more extravagant we would have gotten a hut with less mildew. If you would look at the area, we cannot ask for much."
"And what if the scroll is so old and moldy that you can't even read it?" I asked with a frown in his direction. "Can ya cut it out with the proverbs already?"
Right then, the old man entered the tiny entrance room with a barrel of fresh fish and a slab of ox meat wrapped in cloth. He smiled and said, sincerely, "Please, sit and relax. I know you must have traveled a long way to get here."
I winced at the thought of sitting down on all the rot and grout and started to miss the nice, soft, outside ground when he chuckled at our expressions. "Oh, of course, the mold." As he walked into the shadowy room on the left where no doubt more mildew lurked and thrived, he continued talking. "I am a fisherman, so, I normally track, er, water in from the lake over yonder…my niece always reminds me to be careful, but, I never listen, so there is damage…" he came back with a sheet tucked underneath his arm and carefully opened it fold by fold. "She really is a dear…she tries her best to keep the condition of our home, but I am the one who ruins things…like the water demon you, Houshi-sama, said infested our home….I must have provoked it by fishing without giving offering in thanks."
Sango glared at Miroku to emphasize the guilt he should have felt at making an old man think that he screwed things up for him and his grandkid. Miroku just grinned sheepishly and said to the old man, "Ano, Oji-san, I am sure that the demon was not wreaking havoc upon your home because of a lack of offering, but that it was simply malignant in nature--"
"No, no, Houshi-sama, I take full responsibility." he finally managed to unfold the sheet completely and motioned for us to move to one corner so that he would be able to lay it down. We obliged, and after several flaps, it gently descended upon the floor and covered the unruliness. "Now, you can sit with no worries." We didn't wanna break the old guy's heart, I gotta admit that a sheet didn't fix anything, but we sat down anyway. He pulled out two splint rocks and cracked them together over the dying embers, waiting for some sparks. "I just wish that I would listen to my poor grand-niece…she means the best, with her dear mother and father gone from a raid on this sad, little village long ago, she has only me to contend with and yet, I am so stubborn…"
A fire finally rose in front of us and he placed a charcoaled pot over the flame, it being held up by two conveniently, but awkwardly shaped sticks planted into the dirt to hold up the pot by the sides. "We never had much," he continued, "but little Sayuri does all she can to make it the best."
After carefully placing the beef in the pot and the sizzle of the meat sounded out in the small house, he looked up at our faces and grinned, wrinkles sprouted up all over withered skin. "I do talk about her so much, do I? Well, she is all that I have left…no family, no friends besides my little Sayuri. Such a beautiful, charming little girl."
Miroku interrupted by rushing to ask, "Oji-san, if you don't mind my asking…exactly how old is your little Sayuri-san?"
The old man crumpled up his face and thought for a long time and finally answered after a while, "She will be sixteen winters tomorrow."
"Huh?" We all exclaimed in unison.
"I'm sorry to tell you this old man, but that kid's not 'little Sayuri' anymore." Oto-san said, crossing his arms.
"Oh, well, this I do know, but I like to think of her as my little Sayuri still. I'm surprised she hasn't left me for her own happy life…I know she rejects all her suitors for me. It pains me that she has to be left out from her happiness for an old man like me…but she tries to relieve my guilt with smiles and her precious laughter."
"Wow, old grandpa. That's tough." Shippou murmured, unconsciously petting Kirara who was sitting next to him.
He was right, and I expected to hear some kind of sob story judging from the conditions of the place but I didn't know it would be that bad. And that little Sayuri girl seems to hide her misery really well if you take in account of her livin' with an old man all her life.
"So just where is Sayuri-san now?" Miroku asked, turning a simple talk into a weird interrogation over a girl nearly twenty years younger than him. He'd brought her up three times already!
"Sayuri-chan is running errands around town. I'm sure she'll be back sometime later on." the old man answered respectively, and Miroku sat back with a satisfied nod. Sango gave him a suspicious sideways glance but only I caught it. I don't blame her for looking at her husband like that after he kept asking obsessive questions about a teenage girl, taking note of his reputation as a womanizer before and during his courting her. Makes someone wonder what he's up to…
After a surprisingly good meal considering the financial stuff and the look of the old, run down place the old guy let us stay in, I couldn't take the smell of mold, the sound of too much talking about nothing, and too many people in one room; the need to go outside for a breath of fresh, non-toxic air was overwhelming. Nii-san automatically got up to join me; obviously the coward had been waiting for me to get up first so he wouldn't look like the rude one. I just rolled my eyes at the relief he showed as he scrambled to his feet and waved a hand to let them know we were leaving.
"You know, you don't have to wait until I get up to get up yourself if you want to." I said to Nii-san.
He smiled that lop-sided smile and looked around. "Well, I-I just don't want them to think I don't want to be there…"
I started walking toward the food stand where they served the Akashi buns across from where we stood at the old man's doorstep and sucked my teeth. "It's not like they care!"
I expected him to answer like the smart, obedient boy he is with a logical explanation that would turn into an all-out speech on how much our parents want to protect us and do all they can and how we should at least spend some time with them, but I didn't so I took my eyes off the buns sitting in a wooden rack for display to see what got him quiet all of a sudden and saw him still standing at the old man's doorstep and the moving of his mouth, the blush on his cheeks and the woman clenching a folded up kimono to her chest, looking up into his eyes with a fake innocence that made me sick. He held his hands up in defense and shook his head at the woman, she pouted and clearly pleaded with him but he walked backwards still shaking his head, then turned around and ran over to me.
"What was that about?"
"That girl…she.." Nii-san paused and blushed, swallowing before he said in a small voice, "She wanted me to go to the village festival with her and said I was…"
I cocked my head to the side and frowned. "She said you were what?"
Right after I asked the question apparently the daughter of the owner of the Akashi shop was listening and I had noticed her earlier gazing at Nii-san and almost drooling, but I didn't expect her to jump forward, leaning over the counter and blurting out, "The most handsome man I've ever seen!!"
We both staggered back from shock, even me! Despite my reflexes I was caught off guard by the girl, as well as Nii-san, whose eyes grew twice their size while she swooned over him. He looked at me and signaled with his head that we should run before she went crazy. I nodded and she didn't even notice that we just stepped back little by little in case she tried anything and sprinted in another direction.
"What the hell is wrong with the people in this village?" I spat after we found a safe spot under the canopy of an herb peddler's store.
Nii-san shrugged. "Did that woman call me handsome?" he asked, blushing again in embarrassment.
"I don't know why! She must have had a sight problem. You look more like a scared little mouse to me."
I stared him down. It almost felt like he was enjoying all the attention these little fillies were giving him! I actually caught a smug smile on his face…well, it wasn't much of one, but he titled his mouth to suggest he was holding back one. For that, I snorted in disgust and leaned against the hut with my arms crossed. In all the other villages we've gone to nothing like this ever happened. Now all of a sudden he's some kind of sex symbol to these women? Maybe its just the village. They probably have the ugliest men in Edo here or something. I mean, Nii-san? Handsome? It must be a defiance of law to use those two words in the same sentence. Well, there were incidents with women liking him that he's had, including the one from a few months ago with the village headman's daughter, but those situations were just because he was somehow found attractive in their eyes! And yet, even while we stood side by side under the cool shade of the canopy jutting out from the hut they stared and pointed at him until he couldn't take it and neither could I.
"We should go someplace else." he mumbled, cupping a hand over his mouth to hide his words from the prying eyes of the others waiting for his next move. "I don't think they'll follow us…do you?"
"Of course not! They can't be that desperate!"
We escaped from the side of the hut and tried to find a secluded area, but in order to do so we had to travel past the houses. Each one we passed, a girl or woman, once an old woman; peeked out one by one and appeared at their doorstep. All of them with eyes on Nii-san. Soon enough, we got glares from the men in his direction as well. I don't know why, but it got on my nerves to an extent that I wanted to punch him straight in the face so he wouldn't be made a fuss over anymore. I glared at him and his stupid blush, growing more and more as we walked through the village; they probably fell for his cute, adorable shyness or his dumb tiny, monk ponytail in the back of his head. Miroku has it too, but they're not all over him! As we stayed outside longer and longer, it got more sickening to be around him. Everywhere we stopped, a woman came up to him, and we thought we found a safe haven in the distant field where the children played, but as soon as we sat down in the grass and sighed in relaxation, someone came up.
Her hair had obviously been brushed over and over to doll herself up for Nii-san and she brought out the most decent kimono she had, and I could tell as she walked up to us that she was trying to look coy. "Houshi-sama, I heard what you did for Sayuri-chan's Oji-san…" she began. She bent down to Nii-san's level to give him a clear view of her breasts.
He saw, it showed through the redness that bloomed on his ears and spread all over his face to the tip of his nose. And the most tasteless thing that he did was trying to look away but not even succeeding because of the nasty inner pervert I always knew was in him. He sputtered before catching his breath and saying, "I'm sorry, I wasn't the one who helped her Oji-san, it was my father. So, he is still at Sayuri-san's granduncle's house if you want to--"
"--Oh, that's fine! A simple mistake. May I talk to you anyway, Houshi-sama?" her voice got small and childlike, and I felt the meal from earlier in the afternoon rising up in my stomach again to try and greet the outside world.
He glanced at me for support, but he was the one looking down her kimono just like she wanted him to, so I rose my eyebrows and turned my head away. He made his bed and sowed his seeds, now he was going to have to deal with it. Why would I have to help someone who didn't want to be helped? He looked very comfortable with that every other second sneak peek at the slut.
I watched him squirm in discomfort as she leaned closer to give him a better view of everything he wanted to see, he scooted back and mumbled, "I-I really can't speak to anyone right now…I am here with my Imoutou-chan."
"Actually you're in luck." I spoke up, placing my hands in the grass and pushing myself up into a standing position, getting ready to leave him there to enjoy the show on his own. The stricken look on his face would have gotten me if it wasn't holding up the brown eyes that were staring down a girl's chest just a second ago. "I'm leaving."
"Imoutou-chan…" he whimpered, begging like the loser he is. It didn't faze me.
What got my attention was the sarcastic question the slut bending over him asked. "That's your Imoutou-chan?"
A nerve exploded within me and I reeled on her with a sneer. "Yeah, what do you have to say about it??"
She moved back, disturbed by the stance I took, my arms folded tightly with my hands curled into tight fists. To me, it appeared that she couldn't take the heat, and she only talked but didn't have the guts to back it up, and even though she was that shallow and disgustingly cowardly, Nii-san was going to talk to her. I knew he was, so before he had the chance to say anything in his defense, I walked away without another word.
No one looked or stared at me the way they did at Nii-san when he walked past. As I made headway for the old man's home, they stared and pointed, not admiringly, but ridiculing me. Whispering about the color of my eyes or the dark aura of my presence. I've heard it all before. I was the one they avoided and looked at warily. Nii-san was always the charming, adorable one. Well, he can do that by himself. I already told him I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm going to be seventeen winters soon. And I don't need him if he's going to be perverted just like Miroku was. He can make his own mistakes. He's a not a little boy anymore either. Clearly he isn't.
Inside the old man's house it wasn't so bad, I adjusted to the smell and he was a welcoming geezer, brought out his good cheap sake and all for everybody. He even offered me some, but I told him I wasn't old enough. He insisted, then my Oto-san had to come in between us and assert his authority with a snarl. Oka-san had to step up behind him, frowning at his bad manners toward an elder. Miroku's drunken laughter filled the small area as he kept feeling up Sango no matter how much she warned him and ultimately slapped him, he pressed on, shouting out, "Oh, Sango, my love, remind me of the old times! Remind me of when we were young!"
"Miroku! Cut it out, this isn't the time, especially while you're so drunk!" she hissed.
But he kept on getting frisky, and I didn't really pay attention to the dull thunk of a hard object colliding with his empty skull and the sound of his body falling onto the floor in the midst of all the good spirits in the place. Even Oto-san loosened up and drank some of the cheap sake which I figured as much from the red splotches all over his face, and Oka-san had some too, she couldn't stop giggling. Shippou and me sat down together, the only ones who couldn't have a drink, but despite me having to sit with the loser playing with a little toy spinning top, as I looked around at all the goofballs making fools of themselves, the old man too, I felt…I felt normal. Like this was just the family on a regular night. I liked it, and for a second I noticed Nii-san was missing from the picture, and I felt sorry for the pervert. He was missing out on a moment we might never get to witness again.
A/N: The title of this chapter, of course, came from the book Catcher In The Rye, and this author noticed as they were writing it, that the scene where Kohaku and Kikyou are resting on golden grass, which resembles rye, and the scene where the women's eyes are caught by Kohaku's good looks would save this writer much trouble by deeming it after a book. Also, Kohaku-san can be considered as quite the eye-catcher, for he posesses very good genes from each parent. Dark cocoa brown eyes inherited from the mother enhanced by the intense, endless quality of the father; dark, silky brown hair, Miroku's deep, sensuous voice and facial structure coupled with Sango's endearing nature makes for an eye-catcher indeed.