“BAHAHAHAHA!”

Kagome glowered, blushing fiercely. Leaning heavily on his cane—which he mostly just carried around for show—her old friend wiped at the crinkled corners of his eyes, glanced up at her, and doubled over laughing again.

Somewhere inside Kagome’s temple, a vein threatened to burst.

“Can it, Inuyasha,” she growled. “It’s not that funny.”

“Kami,” the hanyou wheezed, attempting to compose himself. “That asshole’s really done a number on you, all right.”

Kagome glared. Where were those rosary beads when she needed them?

“Well I think it’s nostalgic,” Shippou said, suppressing a grin as he leaned casually against the edge of her desk. “Green and white’s a good look for you, Kagome-chan.”

She huffed, the front of her cotton shirt stretching even tighter across her breasts. At his lordship’s command, she had been wearing her old school uniform to work for about a week now. The short skirt was as snug through the hips as the blouse was in the bust, and bending over in it the other day had given Jakken a hearty nosebleed when he’d glimpsed her through his office window.

As mortifying as it was to parade around like a schoolgirl at work, she’d had no intention of going out like this. But of course Inuyasha and Shippou had shown up to “surprise her.”

“We’d better get going,” the fox demon said, a set of car keys jingling from his many-ringed claws. “Kouga’s got a new batch of girls coming in tonight. If I’m not there to run interference, Ayame’ll skin him alive.”

Inuyasha smirked as he plopped a pancake hat down over his silvery ears. “Keh. That idiot wolf never learns.”

Glancing up at the clock, Kagome bit her lip, uncertain. It was almost 8PM, but that didn’t mean she could just leave.

“Let’s go, wench,” Inuyasha barked, gesturing toward the door with his cane.

“Hold up, guys,” she said, turning scarlet all over again. “I have to, uh…ask permission first.”

Shippou arched an auburn brow. Inuyasha stared at her flatly.

“Like hell you do,” the hanyou bit out, snatching her wrist and hauling her toward the  exit. “Work time’s over. If Sesshoumaru has a problem with that”—Kagome winced as Inuyasha raised his voice in the direction of her boss’s upstairs office—“then he can take it up with me.”

“Wait!” Kagome exclaimed, looking back nervously over her shoulder as Inuyasha continued to drag her forward, her heels scraping across the carpeted floor. “You don’t understand…”

The hanyou snorted as he pulled her over the threshold. “I understand that my brother is a controlling prick.”

Kagome scowled at the irony.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi