When they finally reached the quaint neighborhood of Kurama's childhood, it wasn't long to identify the proper house. There was a tree in the front yard, and a garden surrounding the house. Kagome smiled. It had the fox's taste.

"Kun darling, it is so nice to see you." Shiori pulled Kagome's mother into a tight embrace.

"Thank you Shiori, it is nice to see you too. This here, is my Kagome," The two mothers separated and Shiori smiled brightly at the small female standing by her mother's side.

The black and grey haired lady held out a hand to her. "Kagome, I have heard so much about you. Thank you, sincerely, for introducing me to my son," she took Kagome's hand and held it gently shaking it.

"Kagome?" A worried voice whispered from behind them.

Kagome ducked her head and couldn't face him. "I'm sorry, Kurama."

"Kagome, what are you doing here?" He asked quietly.

"Shuichi! Welcome home! How was your vacation?" Kagome and her mother stepped aside as Shiori wound her way through them and moved to embrace her son. He stepped back, and the whole place froze. "Shuichi?" She asked softly. "Are you alright, son?" she pressed when Kurama just stared at Kagome.

Their eyes finally met, and Kagome winced and tensed up, watching him carefully. She took a slow breath, hoping that he'd forgive her.

"After…" he couldn't finish. His red hair fluttered about as he shook it, "I'm sorry mother, I need some air. I'll…" he shook his head again and dropped his head staring at his feet.

Slowly, he picked his head up to watch Shiori, "I wondered how you knew I was home." His voice caught in his throat, raspy. Tears freely fell from his cheeks as he watched her. "I thought Da-" he winced and dropped his head. "I thought work told you, and you guessed I'd be back a night early." His voice trailed off as he turned to leave.

As he made it out of the yard, he stopped and turned back to Shiori. "I'm sorry," he whispered, then literally vanished.

"What?" Shiori ran out of the gate and looked up and down the street, searching for him. "Shuichi!" She called looking around.

Kagome approached her from behind. "I'm sorry Shiori, he's not close. I think he just needs some time to adjust to the idea of you knowing. He'll come around." Kagome offered quietly.

Shiori spun on the small girl and glared at her. "This is your fault. If you weren't here to clue him off that I knew, if you were inside, or out of sight, then he'd be here still." She snapped. "Out!" she ran for her door and slammed it shut behind her.

Kagome's mother came up behind her, and gently touched her shoulder. "Maybe that wasn't the best idea. Come on. Let's go home. Perhaps if we're gone they can work things out on their own."

It didn't happen. Nearly a week passed and the only time anyone saw him was at work. As Shiori explained to Kagome's mom, he showed up wondering if he still had a job. Shiori hadn't told her husband about her discovery, so it was confusing to him, and he told the boy that vacations were vacations because you come back, not because you are vacating the job.

Shiori tried to corner him after work, and have her husband bring him home, but Kurama resisted, explaining that he had hurt Shiori, and he couldn't face her yet, despite Hatanaka trying to convince him Shiori was fine.

After a week, Kagome was on edge at home too. She sat studying at her desk after school, trying to figure out just how long it would take to actually collect the whole jewel, or even to find Naraku, let alone kill him without Kurama's help. She had convinced Inuyasha to postpone her return until she saw some evidence that Kurama would be okay.

Kagome sighed and bashed her head against the desk. She couldn't concentrate. With a deep breath, and another heavy sigh, she went out to the tree, tucking herself up on the bench beneath it. "Kurama, I know you can hear me when I talk to the tree, so I'm just going to say it. I knew she was going to try to find your mom, but she didn't tell her about you. Your mom figured it out on her own, according to my mom." Kagome bowed her head, staring at the ground.

"She loves you, did you know that? Your mom loves you so much, that she doesn't care if you're a demon, or a thief. She just wants you to be happy, and for you to be home. Finding out that it was a real thing was a relief. She thought you were talking to yourself, and that you went out and got yourself hurt doing stupid stunts. Apparently things got worse around high school?" Kagome chuckled and smiled. "It's alright to go home Kurama, she's not upset with you."

"He's not listening," a voice echoed down.

Kagome looked up to see the black shadow demon in the tree. "What?"

"He's not listening." The little demon jumped down and stood in front of her. "Kurama, he sent me here to tell you he's done." He held out the jewel shards to Kagome.

Kagome blinked and stared at it in wonder, but slowly reached out, and took it. She counted the shards in the bottle, all of them were accounted for. The little demon still stood there, stiff.

"He really did trust you," the demon remarked, miffed.

"He shouldn't have." Kagome added her shard to the mix.

"I'm going to help you, because I think what your mom did is noble and the fox is being a royal ass." Hiei stepped forward. "He is staying at Kuwabara's house. You know him, don't you?" the fire demon asked, his red eyes thinning.

Kagome nods. "I know him. I have his number."

"Tell Shizuru everything." With that, the fire demon vanished into thin air.

Kagome blinked a few times and looked around, frowning. She turned back and went back inside. She went upstairs and searched out the little paper with the number.

When Kagome called the number, it only rang twice before it was picked up.

"Hello?" It was the girl again.

"Shizuru Kuwabara?" Kagome asked skeptically.

"This is her,"she droned.

Kagome could hear the tiredness in the woman's voice.

"Um, is Kurama there?" Kagome asked quieter.

"Who is this?"

"If he's there, we should meet in private," Kagome pressed quietly. "Meet me at Fujishi Park," Kagome requested.

"Sis, who is it?"

"Just some telemarketer!" The phone snapped closed.

Kagome took a deep breath and nodded, then grabbed her coat. "Mom! I'm heading out, I don't know how long I'll be out, but I'm going to try to help Kurama and Shiori reconcile with one another," she called out loudly.

"Alright honey! Good luck."

Kagome jogged to the park, not sure if Shizuru could get there first or not. She shivered as she wrapped her arms around herself and found a bench near the front. Man, how would she even recognize the woman? Kuwabara had spirit energy, what about his sister? Kagome flared her energy to keep an eye out for her.

Hiei pressed against her energy off in the far trees of the park. Kagome gave him his room and kept an eye out. At least he was there, if nothing else he could identify Shizuru. Kagome relaxed into the bench.

It was nearly an hour later when anyone else came into the park. It was a tall woman smoking a cigarette with a lazy stare. She came right up to Kagome, her energy bowling around herself to keep her safe. "What do you want girl?"

"My name is Kagome Higurashi," Kagome stood up and held out her hand to Shizuru, but Shizuru crossed an arm over her chest and rested her elbow on her hand tapping out the ash on her cigarette. "Um," Kagome blushed and bowed. "Thank you for coming."

"Get to the point," Shizuru requested.

Kagome glanced at Hiei for a second before nodding. "I met Kurama after he stole the jewel from me. It's the jewel of the fours souls, which I broke and need to gather to repair 500 years in the past. Um," Kagome frowned, shifting nervously as Shizuru just observed her. "Kurama said his friend was in the jewel, the creator actually. Her name was Midoriko and he could feel her spirit energy from the jewel, and he was upset that it was broken, so he was helping me for the last month to give her some rest. When we were there, it took a while, but we gained trust with each other eventually. We had to come back though, and when we left, my mom said she was going to look up Kurama's mom. Well, she found her."

"I didn't really think she would. She said if she did, she would just tell her about me, and not break Kurama's confidence, but," Kagome winced and blushed harder. "Well Shiori figured it out. She really does love him! She doesn't want him to leave. She is actually relieved he's just a demon," Kagome stressed. "She thought he was schizophrenic. Apparently she heard him talking to himself and thought that the injuries were from running around." Kagome glanced up at Shizuru. Shizuru still looked at her lazily, as though she hadn't heard any of it, but she was paying attention.

"What do you want from me?" Shizuru asked.

"Um, I'm not sure actually. I would like Kurama to talk to Shiori, so she can prove that she still loves him, that she really doesn't care about it, but I don't know how you're related to him. I just heard that you might be the person to talk to about it."

Shizuru turned to look towards Hiei before grinding out her cigarette end with her toe. She took a slow breath and sized Kagome up, "Did he tell you that?" she gestured towards Hiei.

Kagome frowned, "I don't think it matters who told me as much as if you can do something to help."

"Look, girl, I don't care what the fox does, or why he ditched his apartment and decided to hang around with my baby bro. I don't even care if Shiori knows or not, but I do care about some little know-it-all brat dragging my ass out here to have some secret conspiracy theory about my friends."

"Shizuru," Hiei said from Kagome's side, who was standing stiff in her spot. "The fox needs to be dealt with. This human is the reason he's moping and you know how demon laws are."

Kagome stiffened as Hiei grabbed her arm. "Hey! What's going on? What are you thinking Hiei?"

Shizuru lifted an eyebrow as she tapped out another cigarette and lit it. "Are you suggesting we give the fox a present?" She asked curiously after taking a long drag.

Hiei smirked. "I'm thinking he needs some cheering up."