The next morning as Kagome opened up her work email she found an email from Rin with the subject line of "Personal – Please Help Me". She was curious so she opened it to find the following:

Sesshomaru told me that he can't be with me anymore because he has to hide something from me. Do you know what he could be hiding?

Kagome smiled and replied back, I do know. Please see me during lunch today. She pushed send and not even a minute later there was another email from Rin stating that she would be in Kagome's office as soon as she warmed up her meal.

At noon Rin put her work aside and walked to the break room on their floor. She did not have to dig far since most of the people in her office did not bring food to work and opted instead to go out for lunch. She microwaved her meal and grabbed a fork before entering Kagome's office to find her finishing her meal. "I'm sorry," Kagome apologized, "But I start my lunch about 30 minutes earlier than most."

"It's no big deal. I should be apologizing for taking up your time," Rin said placing her hand over her chest. "I'm sure that Inuyasha wasn't too thrilled to find out that you weren't joining him."

Kagome waved her hand at Rin gesturing. "Oh, don't worry. He's at the gym with Koga making a fool of himself. Even though Koga is in love with Ayame now, they still seem to be rivals." Rin cocked her head to the side in confusion. "Oh, I don't think I've ever told you that story." She leaned in towards Rin despite the fact that her door was closed and whispered, "Koga was once in love with me before Inuyasha would admit that he loved me. Koga used to come by often to flirt with me, which made Inuyasha so mad. But enough about me. What's going on with you right now?"

Rin finished chewing the rice and vegetables slowly as she tried to control her emotions. It had been difficult for her all day knowing full well that Sesshomaru was only a couple of floors above her. "I have to apologize for my behavior on Friday."

Before she could continue on Kagome interrupted her by explaining, "I knew that as soon as those two started fighting that you would eventually get curious to see who was fighting and then notice that Sesshomaru was part of the problem. Frankly I didn't like the idea of hiding it from you, but Sesshomaru insisted."

"And I guess he can be quite intimidating after hearing that fist fight in Inuyasha's office, but that's not really what I need to talk to you about. You see, he came over and apologized but then said before he left that he couldn't continue seeing me because he had to hide some other things from me. As his sister-in-law, do you have any idea of what he could be hiding from me?" Her eyes were pleading, and Kagome couldn't help but feel compassion for her.

Rin put another bite of food into her mouth and chewed it nervously while waiting for Kagome's response. Kagome, on the other hand, was plotting out how she would put her plan into work. "Do you remember me mentioning the fact that you appear to be a reincarnation of someone?"

"Yes," Rin pipped up. "Sesshomaru says that I appear to be a reincarnation of the woman who they built a shrine to only a few blocks from my apartment."

"Right. Well, you really are her reincarnation, and Sesshomaru, Inuyasha, and I all have something to do with your past life." The shock on Rin's face was quite apparent, and she dropped the bite on her fork back into the container. "But in order for you to understand everything I will need to hypnotize you so that I can bring the memories of your past life back to you." Rin nodded numbly so Kagome continued, "How about you stay overnight at my house and I'll do it tonight. You'll have to use your PTO paid time off to take off all of tomorrow because after I do the hypnotism you'll sleep for up to 24 hours as your mind plays back to you all of your memories."

Kagome walked around her desk and bent down next to Rin to hug her. "Don't worry," she cooed. "Everything will start making sense tomorrow. Then you and Sesshomaru can be together again." She smiled at Rin, so Rin smiled back to her newfound friend. Rin then returned back to her desk to finish the rest of her lunch break in a complete daze.

When Rin got home she packed an overnight bag and immediately started walking to the address Kagome had written down for her. Once at the house she could hear the sound of children running around in the backyard in the snow. The house was rather modest in comparison to Sesshomaru's house, yet they fit 8 people into this house with little problem.

Inuyasha opened the door and stepped aside to let her in as he yelled, "Oi, Kagome, Rin's here!" He slammed the door behind her as was his custom and went looking for his mate leaving Rin standing in the entranceway with her overnight bag still in her hand.

It seemed like a couple of minutes before Kagome appeared with around 3 children in tow. "Rin, I'm sorry." She took Rin's bag from her and walked down the hallway with Rin assuming to follow her. They entered the living room and Kagome put the bag just around the corner next to the wall. "Have you eaten yet?" Rin shook her head in the negative. "Well, we were about to sit down. Would you like to join us?"

Rin agreed and walked into the kitchen to find the whole family preparing to sit down for a meal. When Rin had heard that there were 6 children in their home, she had assumed they were all younger children especially considering how both Kagome and Inuyasha appeared to be in only their late 30's. But each of the children from oldest to youngest appeared to be born within 3 years of the one before them.

Dinner was quite a circus with Inuyasha grabbing food from the middle of the table without asking for it and Kagome constantly complaining about his bad table manners after all of the years they had been married. Once dinner was finished she left Inuyasha and the children to clean up the kitchen while she took Rin to get her bag and then go upstairs to a guest room.

Rin was instructed to dress in her pajamas and then to sit on the edge of the bed. It took only a couple of minutes for Rin to fall into a sleep like trance, and it did not take long for the hypnotism to be completed. Rin was then left in a deep sleep as the events of her past life and her current life to date ran rapidly through her mind.

Kagome had taken off the next day from work also and stayed at home with the youngest child, yet Rin did not wake up until 25 hours later. After taking a much needed bathroom break she went downstairs fully dressed hoping to find something to eat but was pleased to find them getting ready to sit down for dinner. What caught her off guard was how everyone worked. Inuyasha had his usual features: dog ears, claws, silver hair, and golden eyes. The children also had a mix of demon traits now showing: some with silver hair, some with golden eyes, some with claws, and one with dog ears.

Rin sat down between the 2 youngest children and gulped down her food since her stomach was aching from a lack of food. As she ate she thought over everything that had happened to her soul to-date. Sesshomaru, her Sesshomaru, was the demon lord who had brought her back from the dead twice and saved her on numerous occasions. She had loved him, and he had shown his first true emotion to her when he cried as she died for the final time in the Feudal Era. At the shrine he had told her that he had loved her and erected the statue to let everyone know she was buried there. He was in love with her then, and the fact that he still visited the shrine every year meant that he still loved her now.

What puzzled her was how Kagome had lived so long and how everyone was able to hide their traits at will. She knew that she would have a number of questions to ask Kagome when they got the chance.

Upon finishing the meal and the cleaning up of the kitchen, Kagome took Rin to the office to let her ask what questions she felt she needed to ask. "Kagome, how...how are you still alive?"

Kagome wanted to laugh because she had not expected that question to be the first out of Rin's mouth. "After you died I decided to make a wish upon the Shikon no Tama. I wished that every human that mated with a demon or a half-demon be exempt from illness so that they could only die by a brutal death or by the death of their demon or half-demon mate." Rin nodded her head not sure if she should believe everything she heard until she reasoned that after gaining back her memories it was possible for anything to happen.

"How is it that demons and half-demons can turn their demon traits on and off?"

"They don't turn them on and off," Kagome explained. One of Inuyasha's work shirts was sitting on the desk, but Rin hadn't noticed until Kagome picked it up. She flipped it inside out and pointed at a long tag that had been sewn into the hem of the right side of the shirt. It looked to be a sutra. "A witch came up with a way to alter certain traits for the person who has this against their skin," she said pointing at the sutra.

"This must be a magical thing?"

"It is. I was taught how to use my spiritual talents to make these things," explained Kagome, who pulled open a drawer and then took out a number of sutras. "I can make anyone look older or younger. I can change eye and hair color and even made certain traits look human. We use this to make humans think that we are aging. When we get old enough to retire, we do and come back later looking like a young, fresh, new person. It's helped us hide for a hundred years now."

Rin soaked everything in like a sponge. This world was so much complicated than she had every thought possible. Her thoughts suddenly changed when Kagome observed, "I thought you would have wanted to talk about Sesshomaru."

"What about Sesshomaru," Rin asked excitedly looking up and Kagome and staring her in the eyes. "I know he is the demon who brought me back to life and who loved me."

"He still loves you, Rin. I know that because I know that you are soul mates."

Rin looked away from Kagome by first looking up and then looking just to the right of her at a particular bookcase for no reason. "Do soul mates really exist?"

"They do." She stood up and picked a book out of one of the bookshelves behind her. Rin watched as Kagome flipped through the book until she found what she was looking for. "This says that souls are the ones that fall in love. When two souls fall in love, their souls will always seek other the other for all eternity." She closed the book and confessed, "I know that Inuyasha and I are soul mates because the woman who had my soul first was Kikyo, who was Inuyasha's first love. Then he fell in love with me just as he fell in love and I with him." She pulled Rin into a hug and offered her the chance to stay another night.

Rin decided it would be best to leave her friend to be alone with her family, which she also found out was much larger as they had a child every 3 years since they had mated. Once at home she collapsed on the couch and remembered the kiss she and Sesshomaru had shared on it only a couple of days before. She vowed that tomorrow she would face him again but this time knowing the truth of what he was.