By the time he was eleven, his hair long enough to reach mid-spine. Kaede was constantly fussing over it, saying it was too long, that he wasn't taking care of it properly, that there were split ends.
But he stood out.
Not necessarily in a good way.
School had always been hard for him. He never truly felt like he belonged. He was picked on because his guardian was an old woman, that he had no parents. That he was an orphan, unwanted by anyone except a strange old witch who dressed in old priestess robes when she wasn't at work.
His eyes were also a deep blue, unheard of in the Orient. So there was talk that he was a half-breed foreigner.
Abandoned by his dead parents, rejected by the classmates who were corrupted by their own parents, he was pretty much a loner.
He was used to it by then. It bothered him, but then it didn't. He could imagine things and entertain himself well. So he scorned those than shunned him and continued through school. His will was strong.
But it was weakening. Bit by bit, when he wasn't paying attention.
Being rejected constantly... it could take its toll on anyone. Inuyasha was no exception.
So by the time he was in middle school, with his blue eyes and long hair, he was being picked on even more. Long hair was against the dress code, the teachers said. Even with his sharp eyes, he looked like a girl, the children said.
He didn't care, but he cared. But his hair was already this long, so he kept it that way. He'd gotten so far, how could he give up?
Especially when that boy, his older brother, had looked so perfect. Perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect clothes. He looked like a prince stepped out of a storybook, or from the past. He was so well-groomed that it didn't look out of place for him to have that long braid. It had been the first time he'd seen long hair on a male. He had realized that even if his brother had looked feminine at first, there was no doubt that he was male. So hair length did not matter.
And when the dean of the school sent him home for not heeding to the dress code despite numerous warnings, and Kaede had seen Inuyasha's determination to keep the length of black down his back, she enrolled him in another school.
Now Inuyasha was free of the ignorant children of his past. He was among strangers. Perhaps they could make a fresh start.
Except he was so used to keeping to himself that his very aura exuded a want of being alone. So they kept away. And his hair grew longer and covered his face as he watched the others laugh and play around him, how they avoided him once more. He didn't realize that it wasn't entirely their fault that they ignored him. He was still only a kid.
A black seed, planted in his heart at birth, reaching its roots out through most of his childhood, now started to bloom. He was angry. He was sad. He was afraid. He was jealous. All of these fed the dark flower inside of him.
So when he met Sesshoumaru for the third and final time, something was already unhinged inside of him.