Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Inuyasha or any of the supporting characters.
Let's continue to chapter five! I hope you enjoyed the story so far!
Chapter Five: Kagome's Choice
The next morning, the sound of the alarm clock woke Kagome up. It was time for school. She rolled over and put her pillow over her face, not ready to get up. After a few minutes of the annoying sound of the alarm, she decided to get up and turn it off.
When she got up out of bed, she smiled. She was much less confused now than she has been in a very long time. She finally knows who she wants to explore her feelings with.
She glances out the window towards the well house and the goshinboku, wishing she could go back now, but she knows she needs to go to school and make up some tests.
She goes to her closet to grab her school uniform and heads to the bathroom to take a nice hot shower. When she gets to the bathroom, it's locked. She grunts to herself and goes downstairs. She greets her mother and grandfather and decides to eat a bowl of cereal.
After she finished eating, she goes back upstairs to take her well deserved shower. To her surprise, the door is still locked. Angry, she knocks loudly and yells, "Sota! You're using up all the hot water!"
Sota yells back, "I'll be out in a minute, sis!"
Five minutes later, Sota finally comes out of the bathroom to meet with a very angry big sister. He smiles nervously and sneaks past her. Kagome rolls her eyes and goes into the bathroom.
She turns on the water and feels it to make sure it gets to the right temperature. She has a sigh of relief when the hot water starts to flow. She takes her time with her hair and than moves to the rest of her body. She can't help but think about a certain someone as she washes herself. She shakes her head and thinks, 'wow, I must be hanging around Miroku too much.'
After her long shower, she got out, brushed her teeth and hair and got dressed for the day. She looked at the time and saw that she still had plenty of time to get to school.
On her way to school, she sees her three friends walking together. She walks a little faster to catch up. "Hey, guys!" She happily greeted them.
"Hey Kagome!" They all said in unison.
"You look like you're feeling a lot better today." Eri observed.
Kagome smiled, "thanks to you guys, I am."
When they make it to the front doors of the school, they are met with a handsome boy. "Hi, Kagome. How are you feeling?"
"Uh, hi Hojo. I'm feeling great today." She nervously smiled.
Her three friends huddle up together to think of a plan. Hojo clearly likes Kagome but Kagome has already found love. They than huddle around Hojo and Yuka says, "sorry Hojo, Kagome is taken."
Hojo looks confusedly at the girls and than back at a nervous Kagome, "oh.. Who?"
Eri starts to say, "the name is -" Than she is stopped by Kagome covering her face.
"Shhhhh." She says to the girls. She then turns to Hojo, "It's just someone who doesn't live around here. I'm sorry, Hojo."
Hojo smiles and says its okay, than turns to go into the school. Kagome has a sigh of relief, than her and her friends head into the school also.
Back at the Higurashi shrine, a certain half demon comes storming out of the well house. "Stupid girl. Why do you always have to come back to this stupid place?" He jumps through Kagome's window to her room and looks around. He sniffs the air and realizes Kagome hasn't been here in a while. He pauses to smell her room some more. He's always liked Kagome's scent. Vanilla and cinnamon, mixed with strawberries and sometimes lemons.
His face turns as red as his fire rat robe when he realized what he was doing. He leaves the room and heads downstairs to be greeted by Kagome's mother.
"Oh, Inuyasha! How lovely to see you dear. Kagome is at school right now. Oh, but she did forget her math book. Could you bring it to her?" She smiled at the half demon who just quietly nodded in agreement. She put a hat on his head to cover his demon ears and sent him on his way.
Inuyasha follows Kagome's scent all the way to her school. He finally reaches the math room where Kagome and her friends were sitting.
Kagome grunts and puts her head in her hands.
"What's wrong, Kagome?" Ayumi asks.
"I forgot my math book and I'm falling behind." She than glances at the door and sees Inuyasha's face. Her face turns bright red.
Kagome's friends follow her gaze and Eri asks, "Isn't that Inuyasha?"
Kagome slowly nods and than watches as Inuyasha opens the door. The teacher asks, "may I help you young man?"
Inuyasha holds up Kagome's math book and points at Kagome. Kagome burries her face in her hands again. When she looked back up, Inuyasha was handing her her math book. She looks into his eyes as she grabs it. When he leaves the room, she asks if she can be excused to use the restroom. The teacher gives her permission and she rushes out. She thought she would need to run fast to catch up with Inuyasha but than she realized he was sitting on the floor just outside the classroom door.
"Inuyasha, what are you doing here?"
"I came to see how much longer until you were coming back. We gotta keep looking for shards." 'I also missed you.'
"I'm not supposed to come back until tomorrow, you knew that."
Inuyasha's ears, underneath of his hat, went down and his gaze left that of Kagome's. Kagome smiled at him and continued, "I guess, I could come back today after school."
Inuyasha perked up and looked back at her happily.
Kagome continued, "BUT - you have to let me take a bath and do my homework before we go back." She reluctantly continues, "and uh.. when we get back, we need to uh.. talk."
Inuyasha growls lightly. "Can't you just talk now, wench!?"
Kagome shot him a death glare which caused him to gulp and silently agree. Kagome tells him to wait for her at the house and that she would be there in a few hours.
After a long day of school, Kagome walks outside the front doors while talking to her friends.
"Do you want to go to Wacdonalds, Kagome?" Eri asked.
Kagome thought for a moment, she told Inuyasha she would be back and she definitely doesn't want him to come looking for her. But before she could answer, Inuyasha walks up to them.
Her friends point behind Kagome and Kagome turns around to meet Inuyasha's amber eyes.
She pulled Inuyasha to the side and scolded him. "I told you to go home! Why are you here?"
"I thought you could get home faster if you were on my back."
Kagome smiled up at him. "Well, my friends just asked me to hang out at a restaurant. I guess you could come.. if you want."
Inuyasha scoffed, he doesn't know what this rest-ar-ant is but he reluctantly agrees anyway.
When they get to Wacdonalds, Kagome smiles at Inuyasha. "You're gonna love the food here."
The three friends ordered their burgers and fries, along with drinks and Kagome ordered hers. Than she ordered for Inuyasha since he has no idea what anything is. She ordered him three cheese burgers, two large fries, and a large drink, knowing he can really eat.
They sit down at the table and Inuyasha sniffs his food curiously. Kagome gives him a look as if to say, go on and try it. She tells her friends that he has never tried burgers before. This shocked them. How could you not try a burger?
Inuyasha takes a small bite and than his eyes widened. He immediately scoffed his entire meal down, including the drink, before the girls got more than one bite of theirs.
Kagome nervously giggled hoping they wouldn't ask too many questions. Luckily, they just figured it was because he was a hungry boy.
Inuyasha smiles and asks Kagome if she can bring food like that when she comes to visit him. She just shook her head and smiled. She thought that he might like this new food almost as much as he enjoys ramen, maybe even more.
Once Kagome and Inuyasha made it back to the family shrine, she leads him to her bedroom. She tells him she needs some quiet in order to complete her homework. He frowns at this but sits on her bed behind her while she sits at her desk.
An hour of Inuyasha sighing and moaning in the background, Kagome can't handle it anymore. She grunts and says, "fine! I'll finish this another time. I'm almost done anyway. I just gotta take a bath and pack, than we can go. Okay?"
Inuyasha sighed. "Can't we just go now?"
"No, Inuyasha. We most likely won't find any hotsprings for a while and I really want to enjoy this one thing before sleeping in the woods for weeks!" She rolls her eyes and starts to head to the bathroom. That is, until a clawed hand stopped her.
She looks down at her arm, Inuyasha's hand around it, than looks up at Inuyasha. She gulps, "umm, what are you doing?"
He slightly blushes and steps closer. "You said you needed to talk. Talk now." It wasn't a question, but a statement that he needed to know what she was thinking.. what she was thinking about him. He lets go of her arm and stares lovingly into her deep brown eyes.
She didn't want to get into this conversation right now, she was hoping to wait until later. She looks up at him and smiles. Not a happy one, but a very intense and apologetic one.
His ears flatten, worried about what she is going to say. He steps even closer to her. He then very quickly pulls her into a hug. "You've.. chosen her. Haven't you." That last part was more of a statement, rather than a question.
She deepens the hug and rests her face into the crook of his neck. For a very long time, she wanted nothing more than for this closeness. She wanted Inuyasha to love her and want to spend his life with her. But the last month or so, everything changed. She fell in love with her best friend. She hugged him tighter and all she could get out was, "I'm sorry, Inuyasha."
He squeezed her tight as if to make it so she wouldn't ever leave him again. They stood like this for about five minutes before she tried to pull away, but couldn't.
"Inuyasha, please."
He reluctantly loosened his grip to let her go. As she turned away to head towards the bathroom once more, it hurt too much. He pulled her back by the arm and smashed his lips to hers.
Her eyes widened with shock. She was stunned for a moment but once that wore off, she pulled away. "Wait." She says as she backed away slowly. "I can't do this. I'm sorry, Inuyasha, but.. I want to see what me and Sango share. I want to explore those feelings. I - I'm really sorry." She turned once again to go to the bathroom.
Inuyasha just stood there, feeling like he was an idiot. 'Why didn't I just confess how I felt back than? We could have been happy. I made the worst mistake of my life.'
When Kagome was finished with her bath, she got dressed and brushed her teeth. She came into the bedroom to see that Inuyasha had already left. She sighed to herself and continued to pack her bag.
Inuyasha jumped out on the other side of the well, his friends waiting for them. When they saw that Kagome wasn't with him and he looked depressed, Miroku asked what was going on. Inuyasha ignored his friends and walked passed them, frowning. He jumped up into the Goshinboku, wondering what he's going to do next. His friends just looked back and forth to each other and continued to wait for Kagome to return.
Kagome returned about fifteen minutes later and immediately was greeted by Shippo jumping into her arms. She smiled down at the little Kitsune and said her hello's to Miroku. After Shippo jumped out of Kagome's grasp, her eyes met that of Sango's.
"Hey, Sango." She smiled towards her as Sango stepped closer. Sango pulled Kagome into a hug and told her how she missed her.
Kagome smiled as she took a deep breath in, loving the scent of Sango's hair. They pull away from each other and Kagome starts to talk. "Can we uh, talk later? It's kind of important."
Sango hoped that it was good news as she agreed. In the meantime though, the group of friends left to continue their journey to defeat Naraku and collect the remainder of the shikon jewel shards.
A/N: I hope you liked this chapter! Please review and continue reading!