It was good that Sesshoumaru didn't measure time because it kept Kagome from worrying he'd tell her to get lost. She would've chalked her lack of communication up to not wanting to piss him off in any way, but she found she didn't mind the silence.
It was different than before. When no one could see her, her outbursts were constant and filled with rage, hoping the extreme emotion would catch their attention. Now that someone knew of her existence, she was more at peace with it. Maybe she had a purpose after all. Who better to keep company than someone who was basically immortal?
It still pained her to know her friends would never see her again, as muted as it was, but she also wasn't in a rush to turn Sesshoumaru into some weird version of a ghost translator. He'd asked as much, eyeing her in disbelief when she'd shrugged it off.
"It's fine. They're not going anywhere, and neither am I. We can address it when you next visit Rin," she said.
"You are avoiding them."
She chuckled, slowly kicking her feet back and forth on the edge of a glistening lagoon. She hadn't needed to bathe since becoming a spectre, but she often missed the way the warmth of the naturally occurring onsen would seep into her muscles. Unfortunately, the whole nothing-phased-her thing included water as well. She couldn't even float. She'd tried but ended up walking along the bottom of a lake as if weights were strapped to her feet.
Spring had arrived while they were still travelling, melting away the snow until even Sesshoumaru had to shed his outer layers. He still wore his armour, though she hadn't seen him draw his sword the entire time they'd been together. Perhaps it was a comfort thing. She'd been out of sorts for months from not being able to hold her bow.
"A little, but that's not the right word for it." He sat against the opposite bank, shoulders bare and nonchalant, as if he weren't completely naked under the water. He'd actually praised her lack of reaction, counting on her squealing and covering her face when he'd undressed. She'd still turned away, but it was out of respect for his privacy more than anything else. If she'd still be able to feel, she'd likely have been embarrassed, or at least taken a longer look.
Just because she was a ghost didn't mean she couldn't appreciate.
"I think it's more that if they accept I'm nothing more than a ghost, then I have to as well," she said, melancholy creeping into her voice. There was still that spark of hope that one day she'd magically wake up from this nightmare of an afterlife, surrounded by her friends and family, and able to go on living.
"It is better than being forgotten."
She snorted. Trust him to bring that particular worry up. "They're not allowed to forget me. I saved them too many times. Mostly from starvation."
"Perhaps that is why they cannot see you." She raised an eyebrow, the water rippling as he turned and rose from the water. "Their wish to see you again is purely selfish."
She watched him dress, the mechanical routine of putting limbs into sleeves and the fastening of ties keeping her mind from spiralling. Was that it? Was that how the jewel had managed to get away with this? Her wish hadn't been selfish, but everyone else's to see her come out of it unharmed was.
She tried to dig her fingers into the ground. None of the dirt or rocks bit into her skin; there was just a slight pressure, the same pressure that allowed her to sit on the edge of the bank in the first place. "I'm sorry that you're the one I ended up haunting."
There was a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth as he glanced at her over his shoulder. "I am not."