The news was hard on us all. All of our loved ones died in one accident. When the men were working in the mines one morning, someone set off an explosive and in the small shaft, everyone was dead within seconds. The explosive was so massive, even people near the mines were either killed or severely injured.

I was in my classroom, listening to other people's conversations instead of the lessons we heard day after day after day. There was an extremely loud crash sound that shook the classroom. Had the sound not been heard, we would have thought it was an earthquake.

Everyone was so terrified; no one dared to move a muscle, except me. I darted out of the room. My father was in there. I already knew what his fate was. I just didn't want to believe it.

I ran and ran out of the school and down the streets. Merchants and their consumers started running away from the mines or just stood there in utter shock. Not a single soul in the district could believe it.

There was a thick cloud of smoke in the sky above. It looked so thick that if you took one breath of it, you'd die right then and there. Maybe that's how some of the passersby met their end.

When I was at the mines, I couldn't even recognize it anymore. First of all, smoke was still seeping through the shaft so it was impossible to see it anyway. But the areas I did see were unrecognizable. I couldn't identify parts, both from mine equipment and body parts.

Limbs and bodily fluids cover the ground ahead of me. There were even decapitated heads on the sides of the street. The saddest part was I recognized one of them as my father.

Everything was numb. I couldn't scream or cry or run again. All I could do was fall to my knees and stare at the scene.

I wasn't the only one who fell either. Not too far away from me was him.

InuYasha.

I remember seeing him often as a child. No one hung out with him because of his unnatural white hair. Chemicals from the mine had that effect, but no one had seen that on a kid. His mother died giving birth to him, so he only knew his father and half-brother who lived in another district. His father and my father were good friends, so I got to know him some.

InuYasha sat there, gaping at the smoke. His eyes were full of a fire. There were no signs of tears but there never were in his eyes. It was strange, but in that moment, I sort of pitied him a bit. He couldn't cry. Crying may be a bad thing, but it can help get out those feelings that need to leave.

I stood up and walked over to him. "How can this happen?" I whispered.

InuYasha looked at me. "This was bound to happen eventually. Its way too dangerous down there to begin with," he said.

There was a moment of silence. "I guess it was." Tears formed in my eyes rapidly and I began crying. I buried my face in my knees and sobbed quietly. A foreign hand rubbed my back and I looked up to see it belonged to InuYasha.

"Don't cry, Kagome."

The way he said my name so casually just made the whole situation seem not as bad. It was still terrible, but it was enough to get me to stop crying.

InuYasha stood up and slowly we walked to my house. The walk was so quiet. Neither of us dared to talk after our loses. We just walked to my house where he dropped me off and left.

After the funeral, InuYasha came to visit me to see how I was doing. I was okay. It was Sota I was worried about. He was heartbroken, even though he was too young to even know who his dad was.

InuYasha and I began to talk to each other my casually. He talked at school, walked home together, and he even went hunting with me once. He's really good at it.

After a while, I found myself being most comfortable around him and only him. That's when I realized it.

I was in love with InuYasha.

I couldn't tell if he was in love with me too. I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want to risk our friendship.

The day I was ready to tell him how I felt, it was the last.

I ran to his house in the early morning to see him wake up. But, to my surprise, he was already awake. On his porch, he sat there with another girl I knew: Kikyo.

She and I never got along and after I got there, I never wanted to. InuYasha was talking to her and she glanced at me from the corner of her wicked eyes. A smirk crossed her lips as she leaned in and kissed him mid-sentence.

I wanted nothing more than to kill her right on the spot, but not as much as InuYasha. He didn't push her away. He returned the kiss.

Like on the day my father died, I ran away to my house. Everything was numb again. I lost him. He may have still viewed me as a friend, but I felt as though a huge gap came between.

A gap that would never be filled. Ever.

Author's Note

So yeah...flashback :D...I got nothing else to say...so next chapter we return to the main story! :D

Until next time, sayonara~!