By definition, trauma is a lasting emotional response to a distressing event. It rewires the nervous system, embeds itself in the body, and shifts how a person sees the world.
Kagome didn't need a textbook to tell her that.
She felt it in the way her breath hitched when Inuyasha's hand brushed hers. The way her stomach clenched when he looked at her, his amber eyes soft but piercing, like he could see too much. She didn't feel safe. Not with him, not anymore.
It wasn't always like this. At first, she chalked up her unease to normal nerves. Everyone gets scared sometimes, right? But then came the moments she couldn't explain away. Battling Naraku's hordes left her ears ringing and her heart racing long after the fights ended. At night, the dreams started—visions of Naraku's twisted grin, of that horrifying baby latching onto her soul and rooting around inside her like it owned her. She'd wake up drenched in sweat, unable to shake the feeling of something crawling under her skin.
The worst part was the memory wasn't fading. It should have been just one bad moment in the middle of months of blood and chaos. But it wasn't. The terror was sharp, fresh, and clinging. And every time she thought back to that moment—Naraku's baby pulling her apart while Inuyasha searched for Kikyo—it only got worse.
Kagome swallowed hard, her fingers tightening around her school bag as she walked toward the library. She'd told herself she came here to study. That was a lie. What she really wanted was answers, and she wasn't going to find them in a textbook on history or algebra.
When she stumbled on a psychology section, her fingers traced the spine of a thick manual. She opened it to a random page, and her eyes caught a heading: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Her pulse quickened as she read the description. Hypervigilance. Intrusive thoughts. Flashbacks. The words stuck in her head, and they felt too close to home. Was that really what this was? Was she… traumatized?
She almost laughed. Her mind raced through all the horrible things she'd seen in the feudal era—death, destruction, demons—and yet none of them left her feeling like this. None of them made her chest tighten or her hands shake. It wasn't the battles or the blood. It was him. Naraku. And the fact that when it mattered most, Inuyasha wasn't there.
Kagome's throat tightened. Her fingers curled into fists. She wanted to hate him for it. For leaving her, for making her feel so small and helpless. But she couldn't.
Because no matter how much her body recoiled at his touch, no matter how often her mind screamed that she couldn't trust him, her heart still ached when he smiled. She still wanted to lean into him, even as she held herself back.
How could she be in love with someone she couldn't trust?
The question lingered, bitter and raw, as she closed the book and walked out of the library. For the first time, Kagome realized she wasn't just fighting demons in the feudal era. She was fighting one inside herself, and she wasn't sure which one scared her more.