Deceitful Time
Chapter Eight: Do Novo

"Shi-ro!" Kagome shouted before smacking him in the face, she even cringed after she saw what she had completely and utterly mistakenly done. "Y-you, it's your fault, seriously, can't you keep your hands to yourself?"

"I was just grabbing the remote!" Shiro screamed while he jiggled the remote before her which she promptly stole. At least then he could whip he face free of the cupcake that she had smeared onto him. She really couldn't have forgotten that she was holding a forth of a cupcake in her hand, so, he knew she did it on purpose. "I barely even touched you and that's only because the remote was in between the cushion beside you!"

"Don't change the channel," she altered the subject entirely. There was no need to linger on the cupcake fiasco. Besides, she never watched TV but the stupid reality show that he had allowed to be on his plasma for the past fifteen minutes caught her attention, shamefully. Reality TV was truly the embodiment of all that was wrong with humanity; Shiro had made a point at murmuring that at least ten times. She didn't disagree but she couldn't help it, the people were being so ridiculous that it was too amusing. Everyone was allowed their dirty little pleasures.

"Don't you want me to stay?" She inquired, "I mean, you did make such a scene when I said I was going—"

"Whatever," she was a high schooler after all… he grunted a curse to himself as he got up off the couch—which she made a point to sit a cushion away from him, he noticed—and got himself a glass of a little something to make the show easier to bear, and a napkin to get off the rest of the cupcake. "So, I think you are starting to hate me less and like me more," he taunted once he returned to sit on the arm of the couch farthest from her. Granted, smearing a cupcake in his face wasn't something he put under a 'like' list but she had agreed to stay at his for a while.

"It could easily be temporary, ya' know, you did save me today. If you stop stalking me I'd hate you less," she stated without once taking her eyes away from the television.

"I'm not stalking you, would you stop saying that? Once, once, I made sure you were OK because you were so warn out last night. It's a good thing I did, too."

"You know what goes better with cupcakes?" Kagome dragged out as she glanced at him from the corner of her eyes.

"Not having them thrown in your face?"

"Milk."

"You'd know, how many of those have you—?"

"If you knew anything about girls you'd know not to finish that sentence," she asserted with pressed lips. He did save her, he did… so, she'd let that one go. "Shiro… I've been wondering this for a while, where do you get all your money?"

"Good investments, I've had a lot of bad ones too but the good ones were really good. I've won the lotto twice and odd jobs," he shrugged as he slid down the arm of the couch to bump down on the cushion.

"Odd jobs?" She noted wirily, "what type of odd jobs?"

"Odd jobs," he waved the topic off but, unfortunately, she had to fight him on almost everything.

Quickly and completely she turned to look square at him, "what type of odd jobs?"

"Why does it matter?" He snapped back while he twisted halfway to meet her and drape an arm across the back of the couch.

"Because perverted behavior can be redeemed," Miroku was proof of that, "but something like, I don't know, murder," she harshly stressed, "isn't."

"Yeah, Kagome, you got me, I'm a hit man for hire," he mocked as he folded his arms and turned to face the TV again, "sometimes the Russian mafia calls me up, other times it's the Yakuza, then there is always the Italians—"

He was an ass, another very Inuyasha trait, she had to admit that but somehow that didn't warm her yearning heart. "Then why won't you tell me what 'odd jobs' means?"

"It's just a bunch of random shit," he kept up before getting up, "I'm going to bed, you staying?"

She just gawked a gasp and got up to edge towards the door at the very idea.

"Yeah, Kagome," he grumbled, "that's how I like to invite a girl to bed with me." Come on, he had more skill than that, not that any of that so called skill had helped him get anywhere with her.

"I'm never staying here over night," she swore once she reached the coat closet to get her red petticoat out and pull it on.

"Alright," he grunted as he reached by her to get his jacket out. She jumped and he hadn't even touched her, he was just near her, what the hell? Why did she have to be like that? And why did she keep calling him 'Shiro'? Yeah, he had been called that for a few years now but shouldn't she call him 'Inuyasha'. He. Was. Inuyasha. They were lovers-to-be, so shouldn't she be more comfortable around him, too?

It seemed to be involuntarily but, regardless, she flinched with one hand clinched in front of her heart. Right away her brows dropped as her other hand reached out to take the hand that had just tried to touch her shoulder, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"It's fine, whatever," he scoffed back, retracting the hand swiftly and completely from her grasp.

Kagome took a step closer as she slowly reached her hands out to him, "Inuyasha, you know I—"

"Drop it, Kagome," he demanded before looking away from her and to the moonless night sky.

"It's not your fault—"

"I said drop it!" He shouted harsher and louder than he had intended. When he finally dared to turn his attention back to her she was mute and meek but her eyes kept pleading for him to understand. He did. He got it. He—

"I know you'd never hurt me, never, no matter what," she swore as he took a step forward to grab his human hands, "even if you are in your demon form. Even if you don't remember who I am, I will always trust you."

He tried to say something but couldn't, what was there to say? He wanted to argue with her, tell her how stupid that was, that she shouldn't feel that way. That if he ever forgot her when he turned into that monstrous demon she should run and quickly at that. But… he never wanted Kagome to run from him.

That's why he took no care in trying to pretend that when she wrapped her arms around his chest that he didn't want to hold her back just as hard. That he didn't want to bury his face into her soft ebony waves and inhale her scent that he knew so well even with just a human nose.

"Kagome," he murmured as she broke away only enough to look up at him and smile. She always smiled when he needed her to. He kissed her for that and she kissed him back.

He shook his head, "what do you think I'm going to do? Molest you?"

Her hazels simply narrowed on him in responds.

That he couldn't even find a clever reply to so he gave up and grunted a sigh, why'd she have to think like that? "I'm gonna walk you home, I promise not to try anything."

"I know my way home and I plan to take the subway—"

"Kagome," he softly said, which finally got her to stop giving him that 'I'm-warning-you' look, "I am walking you home."

{xoxoxoxoxoxox}

"You can't always be here for me, you know?" Kagome brought up once they got on the subway, she got a seat in the crowded cart while he chose to stand in front of her with a hand grasping the pole above his head. "Maybe you can't change when a person is supposed to pass, maybe even if I'm not in the past—"

"Why would you even say such a thing?" He murmured after his heavily lids allowed themselves to find peace.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine," he just hadn't really slept since he met her, even demons needed their shut eye and over the past few years he had gotten plenty of it because… well, he hadn't much to do. Now each time he closed his eyes an image of her, a bloody battered her, would pop up. Not now, thankfully, even though there was no way he'd fall asleep right then.

"Seriously, Shiro—"

"Can't you call me by my real name?" He sighed as he weakly opened his lids to meet her hazel beauts.

Her eyes glanced away, "no," it was such a low whisper that she wasn't even sure that his super sense of hearing had caught it. When she finally glanced up to the silent Shiro he wasn't even looking at her anymore, his wrong colored ambers were fixated on the blackened window behind her. Did it hurt his feelings somehow that she refused to call him by the name of her love? She doubted it but…

{xoxoxoxoxoxo}

"I'm safe," Kagome announced, "happy?"

A weak nod was all she'd get from him as they stepped off the final stair to be in view of her home. Thoughtless motions led him to the hut; he could feel her eyes intently on his back as he opened the door and entered the darkened pit. Echoed creaks of the stairs followed each of his, she was right behind him, and he knew it as he grabbed at one of the ghost-like-chains.

To her surprised, even though she ought not to be, his hand could actually grasp the see-throw things.

"Please try to understand why," he tried to begin but lost all motivation to finish. He couldn't explain what he couldn't find words for. It was just an unrelenting need to keep her from that world, from the drama, the wars, the demons, and… that scene. That tattered land.

"I guess… I could," 'try' being the optimum word there. She could try anything, she could try to fly but that doesn't mean she wouldn't just end up breaking a few bones instead. "If you try and understand that you are… making my choice for me. I should be the one to decide."

"No," he retorted rather harshly, abruptly letting the chain go to thud against the wood in a strange wooshing thud.

"No?" Kagome coaxed. Her glove covered hand grabbed at his shoulder and tried to get him to turn to look at her but it was no use, he didn't budge a bit.

"Dying is easy," he scoffed, "dying is a release. Living is the hard part."

"What's that mean?" She snickered but that malice left when he finally took a step to the side to look at her. That look that was wrongly within his eyes from the first moment they met was… out, again. What was it?

"You'd pick jumping through that well the second I open it for you," he knew it, she knew it, too, that's why her eyes averted him so swiftly. "Because you love m—him, believe me when I tell you I'm saving my—him by doing this. You get to die, Kagome, who knows what comes after it's all said and done but I'm the one that's got to find a way to keep going."

He took a breath that turned to a fog of mist once it was released, he stepped by her and up the stairs, "I guess… I should say sorry, anyway, I'm being selfish. Go home, Kagome," he requested once he reached the door and stopped to linger halfway in, "what are you doing tomorrow?"

"Hanging out with some school friends," she distantly murmured. It was pointless but she still reached out to touch one of the chains with her hand, just like each time before she only ended up feeling the wood beneath them.

"Will you call me while you're out with them? I won't 'stalk'," he jested, "you, if you promise to do that."

"I don't have a cell phone," and she didn't know his number.

"What? How can you not—?"

"I'm barely here," she stated while she turned around to look up at him, "I'm not going to get killed tomorrow. I'm probably just going to go see a movie, that's safe, right? I'll be with a group of girls so the chances that I'll get run over by a rouge car is slimmer, and—"

"Fine, just stay safe, alright?"

Stay safe, that's… strange. The way he said it, it was almost difficult for him to but she knew he meant it. Five hundred years would be wasted if she died, at least he must think so. That didn't change the fact that she would jump through that well the second she got the chance to… for the most part.

{xoxoxoxoxoxox}

"You… are?" Kagome tried her best to hide her gawking but… well, she failed miserably as her hands wrapped around her drink.

"Is that OK with you?" Ayumi asked half-heartily while her slender fingers flipped a few fries around on her tray.

"Yes, I'm happy for you," truly, completely, happy. If Ayumi and Hojo dated then she'd never have to deal with him, not that he wasn't a nice guy and everything but he'd never be the guy for her.

"Shiro," Sachiko brought up after the initial awkward silence faded, "are you dating him? What university does he go to?"

"Oh, right, that guy," Eri chimed in from across the table, "he was kind of odd… hot, but odd."

"He is odd," they had no idea. Then again, to them she would be really weird—how many people could travel through time by jumping through an old well on their family property?

"But…?" Sachiko smiled, "come on, you are telling me you don't like him at—?"

"Not really, not like that at least." Love? Shiro? No. Inuyasha? Absolutely. Actually, they were one and the same but… not, is that really what she makes him into? Because she dies he transforms into that type of man? Not that, really, Shiro was terrible-terrible. The more time she spent with him the less he tried anything but that didn't change the look he had in his eyes, the lifestyle he had chosen, or his blatant alcoholism. Was it in the end her fault entirely?

"I bet he doesn't attend a university, does he?" Michiko put in, "he just don't look the time. He looks like a—"

"He graduated from Tokyo U," she spat out quickly and just as hastily regretted it but—she sighed as she sat back in her chair—she got the feeling Michiko was going to say something not-so-nice about him. Even though she constantly ridiculed him, which he deserved fully, that didn't mean someone else could. It was… like her little brother, she could say whatever her heart pleased about how bothersome Souta was but the second someone else did she would get offended and jet in to defense mode. Wait, did she really just compare Shiro to Souta? She literally had to shake the thought from her mind.

"Graduated?" Eri honed in on the word that all the others had, too, "how old is he then?"

"I don't know," and that was the honest truth, who did? She would bet a hundred thousand yen that not even he could answer that.

"He doesn't look more than twenty," Sachiko deciphered after a long pause.

"Yeah, is he some kind of super genius?" Michiko inquired.

"I don't know, can we not talk about him?" Need he be the center of her existence? No.

"Alright, Kagome," Eri nodded, all the while keeping her slightly narrowed eyes upon her friend.

{xoxoxoxoxo}

"That was a lame movie," Eri yawned, "those two shouldn't have gotten together at the end."

"I don't know, I thought it was kind of sweet," Sachiko countered with a small shrug, "you know what they say, love finds a way."

"No way," Michiko butted in, "Hachiko and Hiro did not belong together. Their personalities were way off, and, come on, that ending? How many times has that been done? It was so cliché. What'd you think, Kagome?"

"Opposites sometimes attracted," she would know. Inuyasha and her were nothing alike yet they still formed feelings for each other.

"That's a bunch of crap," Eri exclaimed with a bit of a 'hmph', "opposites might attract but they'd never work out."

"True," Sachiko nodded.

"You guys go ahead to the mall," Kagome murmured, "I'll meet you there in a few minutes."

"Why?" They inquired but she was already moving along with the other bulk of bodies.

"Shiro," she sighed as she pushed his shoulder, "what'd I say about stalking me?"

"I'm not, I just found you," he growled back. Before she got a chance to say something else that was sure to be annoying he dangled a bag in front of her face, which caught her attention enough that she let whatever was on the tip of her tongue go.

"Is that for me?" She inquired as she took the bag and looked inside, "why'd you get me this?"

"'Cause you said you didn't have one," he said with a 'duh' like tone, earning himself a quick glare from her as she pulled the three or so inch box out of the bag.

"I can't accept this," she stated even though she very much wanted to. Everyone, everyone, had a cellular. She got nothing but angst from all her friends for not having one but she wasn't in her own era enough to really use it, it would just be a waste of money each month but… she did really want it. From the image on the box it looked like a nice phone, too.

"Consider it your birthday gift," he requested.

Her hazels flickered up to him as she cocked her head ever so slightly to the side, "my…?"

"Don't tell me you forgot that your own birthday is right around the corner," he teased with a smirk, "your brother warned me the other day."

"It is, isn't it?" She mused while she flipped the box over in her hand, "well… if that's the case I'll take it but I'm going to pay for the monthly—"

"How?" He had to stop the idiocy before she could fully develop it, "you don't have a job. You're a student."

"But—"

"I got plenty of money to spare, don't worry about it. It's a S001 by Sony. I already programmed the phone, too," he pointed out as he took the box from her and opened it, "my number's in here so if you get yourself into trouble you can just call me, alright? This way I don't have to 'stalk' you."

"We are in Tokyo, it's not New York or something, why is it that you think I'm going to get into some sort of trouble all the time?" She scoffed as she snatched the phone away. The only number in her new contact list was 'Inuyasha' which she promptly edited to 'Shiro'.

"Yeah, whatever, I just get the feeling that I had to save your sorry ass all the time before," and when she flinched a bit from that accusation he knew it was right.

"Is the camera on this phone good?" She inquired as she examined her new toy closer; it was a pink rectangle that slid up vertically to show the keyboard and when she flipped it over there was a place that read 'cyber-shot' that could be slid away to expose the camera lenses. Wasn't it sad that she was a teenager and never texted before in her life?

"Yeah." The sales clerk that helped him out was in his early twenties so he figured that guy knew what teenagers wanted most in a phone. He had also been assured by the sales clerk that his eighteen year old girlfriend adored the S001, so he bought it for Kagome.

"OK, then let me take a picture of you," she smiled after she pressed the 'camera' button but before she was able to take one he shoved his hand over the phone, "Shiro! Come on."

"I hate getting my picture taken," living forever made such things a hassle. It was so simpler to move through time before videos, cameras, and the rest of those devices were created.

"Fine," she pouted and pulled her phone from his grasp, "but…" she began once his hands were stuffed into his jacket. She smiled as she moved to his side and threw an arm around his neck, all the while holding her new phone out in front of them to snatch a shot.

"Kagome," he growled but she backed away before he could do anything.

"You look surprised," she giggled as she flipped the phone around to show him the picture, which he promptly tried weakly to snatch away. If he really wanted to he could, she was sure, "just let it go."

"You are acting like a flirt, Kagome."

"I am so not flirting with you, just testing out my new phone," she stated stiffly. Kagome Higurashi did not flirt; she had never done so in the past and never really planned on starting. Was it her that the men misinterpreted her actions? No.

"You—"

"I got to go," she cut him off, "my friend will be wondering where I went. Thanks for the phone, I'll see you later." She waved before running off towards the mall.

{xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo}

Was she starting to… like him? Shiro the strange? Yes, there was no denying it; she had a soft spot for him. Not love, never would she love him, but maybe… like. Yeah, she just liked him. Not that much, she wouldn't really call him a 'friend' but… then why was she in front of his home again knocking on the door instead of heading home after her day out?

"Shiro?" She called out, why did it always take so long?

"Shiro is out," a lull of a voice declared as the door opened up.

Kagome lost her breath as she stared at the woman before her, she was... beautiful. Probably the most attractive looking woman she had ever seen in person and she looked so… mature. She looked—why was there a tug at her heart?—just like Kikyou, really. But a modern Kikyou with long luscious locks of midnight colored hair in a ruby red sweater dress.

"Who are you?" She inquired as her condescending chocolates moved about Kagome.

"Never mind!" Kagome cried out before spinning around and running down the stairs.

She should have known… old dogs don't learn new tricks.