Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha.
A/N: Prompts used – ameliorate, vanilla, broom. PhoenixBlade submitted these in a review!
Another busy day in the city; a day of housecleaning and laundry and vanilla milkshakes for lunch and ringing up the last sale of a day with only seven sales total and watching a good portion of the money earned trickle away into groceries.
Kagome dropped the bags at her feet and slumped dejectedly on the kitchen floor. It had always been a hard life. It had been hard growing up as sole heir of the oldest shrine in the city and having no interest in its workings. It had been hard watching her father die and her mother struggle to cheerily raise two children on meager government grants. It had been abominably hard – if exciting – to be a part of history and meet the stuff of fantasies and cash-cow manga franchises.
But none of that managed to beat the silent hardness of eking out a living on a shop of semi-antique curios and paying the never-ending series of bills and sending half of whatever she earned to the shrine to cover what the government refused to.
The priestess remembered the day she had walked out of her home. It had taken threats, tears and finally the promise of suicide if she was forced to live the life of a true Shinto maiden, to get her grandfather to drop the issue and let her choose an alternate career path. She could have handled the duties of the position – it was the emotional crunch of living as a modern Kikyo that smacked of impending disaster to her psyche.
The breach had taken time to heal. Time none of them had been able to afford, because the only independent option left to Kagome after a lifetime of failed academics was to open a business of her own. A tiny store was what she had planned for, stocked nook and cranny with the artefacts that collected dust in the shrine's outbuildings.
"The pride of our forefathers!" her grandfather had screeched in outrage at the idea of selling their treasures for profit.
"We need the money!" Kagome had snapped back and considered that the end of that line of discussion. What she had left unsaid was that she couldn't wait to get rid of what she saw as a pile of baggage from a past which had used her and spit her out like an old stick of gum.
Her store, Memoria, brought in a tidy income but shrine maintenance expenses left her with barely anything to fall back on for anything beyond a basic living. Heh, what luxuries, she grouched to herself, trying to summon the energy to pick herself off the floor and put the food away, a freaking movie every couple months or so is a luxury right now.
The bottom line to an improved life, Kagome admitted grudgingly, was that she needed a better source of income.
Like a trust fund.
Like a lucky lottery ticket.
Like a rich husband.
Too bad I killed the only one willing to put up with me.
Aloud, she muttered, "Stupid universe. Stupid bills. Stupid shrine. Stupid money. Stupid universe. Stupidly unlucky me and stupid, stupid, stupid evil overlords who come wagging their fat cheques at me like stupid morons begging to be killed. Just. All. Stupid."
"I have no objections to being described as an evil overlord, priestess, but I must object to being called stupid," a familiar mellifluous voice remarked from her bedroom.
Now, he could have stayed dead…but then we wouldn't have a story anymore. _ Please review?