“Miko.”
Kagome jumped in her chair. With a weary sigh, she frowned down at the intercom on her desk before pushing the small red button to respond.
“Hai, Sesshoumaru-sama.”
The words left her mouth a little terser than she’d intended. It rankled her that he’d demanded she address him with his old honorific like they were still back in Sengoku Jidai. That, coupled with the fact that it was already well past 9 PM, had worn her patience rather thin.
“The Umamaru contract. I expect it on my desk in half an hour.”
“H-half an hour?”
Kagome’s frazzled nerves nearly short-circuited. She hadn’t even started on that contract yet, and he wanted it in thirty minutes?
“Is that a problem?”
“No,” she answered weakly. “Of course not.”
“…”
“…Sesshoumaru-sama,” she amended.
“Good.”
The intercom clicked off. Kagome’s shoulders sank. She cast a despairing glance at the pile of papers on her desk. Letting loose another tired sigh, she sifted through them, extracting the Umamaru original document with care.
She smoothed the aged parchment gently, using a couple of beanbag animals to keep the curled edges laying flat. This contract was at least five hundred years old. It was short, mercifully, but the terms it contained were pretty archaic.
Reaching for a heavy binder which Jakken—looking like a toad even in human form—had deposited on her desk with nothing more than a “Here, wench” before hopping, quite literally, on a flight to L.A., she cracked open the cover and started flipping desperately through table after table, searching for something that would help her translate the ancient clauses of the contract into modern-day terms. It was only about two hundred years ago that youkai had begun to deal in human currency, and many of the contracts Sesshoumaru brokered in were woefully out-of-date.
Some transactions were straightforward enough—land, for example. Others, like heirlooms, were more of an educated guess. But an enchanted shrub? Kagome’s eyebrow twitched, her grip on her pen becoming white-knuckled. And was that a drawing of a rock?!
How, in Kami’s name, was she supposed to estimate the value of something like that in yen?
Glancing nervously at the time on her computer screen, Kagome scribbled down a few hasty calculations in a notepad and started hammering out a new, electronic version of the contract on her keyboard. With one minute to spare, she ripped the document from the printer and sprinted to Sesshoumaru’s upstairs office.
“Enter,” he spoke, as she practically threw herself against the mahogany double-doors.
Panting, she staggered in.
Across the room, Sesshoumaru was pruning what appeared to be a pearl-fruited bonsai tree with a set of tiny gold scissors. At her breathless entrance, he paused, his cool gaze sweeping over her for a moment before he resumed his task.
As Kagome walked over to lay the contract on his desk, his voice sliced through the air.
“Bring it to me.”
Biting her lip, she approached him. He was dressed more traditionally this evening, in a black kimono shirt embellished with silver thread. A clawed hand extended toward her, accepting the slightly wrinkled printout from her without so much as a glance.
She watched with trepidation as he scanned her work, golden eyes narrowing critically.
“Astonishing,” he declared.
Kagome looked up at him hopefully, the beginnings of a smile pulling at her lips.
“You have somehow managed to produce a quality of work that is inferior even to Jakken’s.”
Her face fell as the contract shriveled in his acidic hold.
“Redo it,” he ordered. “Now.”
Kagome blanched. “But…it’s nearly 10 o’clock. My mother was expecting me home over two hours ago.” She stared at him pleadingly. “Can’t it wait until the morning?”
“You are free to leave whenever you wish,” Sesshoumaru replied, taking up his scissors again. “Whether you will be able to return is another matter.”
Dejected, Kagome retreated to her desk downstairs. Resting her cheek against the cold hard plastic of her desktop, she asked herself how bad she really wanted this job before dragging herself up and getting back to work.
She spent the next hour reviewing the original contract and making revisions to her first draft—which, she admitted, had been sloppy at best. Cross-referencing the drawing in the contract with a map of ancient Japan had even given her clarity on which particular rock had been deeded to Sesshoumaru, and comparing Jakken’s figures with the list of bi-century gold payments Umamaru had already made, she was able to arrive at a more confident conclusion as to what was still owed.
With red-rimmed eyes, she ascended the stairs yet again, leaning heavily on the railing. Sesshoumaru met her at the door this time. She bit back a yawn as he perused her revised contract, her tired gaze dwelling overlong on the sharp line of his jaw.
“It will suffice,” he pronounced at last, his honeyed eyes meeting her own.
The rumble of his voice did strange things to her senses. When she’d decided to give the contract another shot, she’d told herself it was because she wanted to keep her job.
But as he held her in his regard, she realized with the tiniest of shivers that there was something else—something she wanted even more.
His approval.
Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi
this gives me life. i love sarcastic!sesshomaru, special kudos for his demand for the honorific lmao (also kinky?? lol). the traditional bonsai stuff was a good touch, maybe a little too human tho. but after 500 years we can headcanon this stuff, so. also the contract stuff was really good! and original too, ive never read it before.
the end left me wondering, did he really just approved of her work, or also took account of the state she was in?
excellent work!! i love this series, cant wait for more <3
Thanks, girl!! So glad you liked it 🙂 This story is so fun to write haha