– 34 –

.equilibrium.

Time does not slow for the undying.

A year passes in a moment, as it does for all those who have reached a certain age.

And though they no longer care to keep a tally of its passing, they mourn it just the same.

It is a handful of such moments that have brought her here, to Tokyo.

She brakes slowly, easing her rented bicycle to a stop before a torii gate. Somewhere behind her, a siren blares past, and she starts at the sound, uncertain.

Why did I stop here, she wonders.

The action had felt almost mechanical, like the biking itself. Unconscious yet deliberate, and curiously natural to her.

Leaning the bike against a meter, she smoothes her pleated skirt and steps toward the gate.

Before her a series of worn stone steps cuts up into the hillside. As she ascends them, a two-story house comes into view. Relatively modern, it sits apart from the old stone path, which ends some distance back, at the door of a decrepit wellhouse.

The wellhouse stands in a clearing. Beside it is a lone aged tree, its massive trunk encircled with a strand of sacred chimes. “Goshinboku Shrine,” a polished stone marker reads in the grass before them.

She walks up to the tree. Above the chimes, a shallow gash extends in the smooth grey bark, a wound long since healed over. She touches the rounded edges briefly before turning toward the well.

A rope fence bars the entry, yet she pays it no heed, stepping over it and onto the threshold of the small, crumbling enclosure.

At the center lies an old wooden well, its mouth sealed by heavy planks. As if of their own accord, her fingers prize at the boards, but they are nailed down firmly and do not budge.

In the spare, dusty light she examines the well. At the back of it, a series of drawings beneath the ledge catches her attention.

Etched into the ancient wood are flowers and birds and four-leaf clovers, smiley faces and a stick-figure family of five–a child’s artwork, and lovingly signed, “Higurashi Kagome.”

Her breath freezes in her throat.

With trembling fingers, with burning eyes, she traces the characters of her name, and those apart from it, carved in a much steadier hand, an older hand–her own:

K + I

“May I help you?” a stern voice calls from the entrance. “This area is off-limits, and the first tour doesn’t start until 11 o’clock.”

Wiping her eyes, she exits the wellhouse at once. Outside on the pavement stands a woman in her mid-fifties or sixties, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Gomen,” she says to her with a hasty bow. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

At this apology, and perhaps sensing her distress, the woman’s expression relaxes. “It’s quite alright…since you’re here early, would you like to come over to the house for some tea? I’ve just put a kettle on.”

Still feeling shaken by her discovery, she smiles in thanks and follows the woman inside.

The house is warm and bright in a way that lifts her heart and pangs it all at once. Over the rim of the teacup, she studies the shrine owner, searching for a resemblance, for anything that might resonate with her in the same way, yet there is nothing to be found.

“It was always my dream to own a historic site like this,” the woman says. “As soon as I had enough money saved, I began looking, but the Higurashi shrine had been in the family for many generations, and I never imagined they would want to sell.”

Strengthened by the tea, she meets the shrine owner’s gaze intensely. “You knew the Higurashis?”

“Personally? No, I am sad to say. But from what I understand, they had lost a daughter some years ago–a teenage daughter. She went missing and was never found, at least to my knowledge, and the family wasn’t the same after that.”

“Is that so?” she says softly, carefully, setting the teacup down on the table as her hands begin to shake.

“Yes, and considering the circumstances, I can hardly blame them for wanting to move away. I would probably have done the same, in their position.”

“Did they move far?”

“To Kyoto,” the woman answers, looking at her curiously.

“And they live there still?” she presses on, undeterred.

The woman hesitates, a pitying look entering her eyes. “A few years back I attempted to contact them there–I had some questions about the shrine, you see. But I wasn’t able to reach them. Later…well, later on, I learned from a friend that they–mother and son both…that they had been killed in a freak accident.”

Across from her, a clock ticks on the wall.

Sick with loathing, she stares hard at the flitting second-hand, as though she could will it not only to stop, but to turn in the opposite direction. To travel backward, not merely into the past–

But into her past.

“…I see,” she says at last, swallowing in bitter defeat. She pushes back from the table, rising unsteadily to her feet. “I’ve forgotten that I have an appointment to keep. Thank you for the tea.”

“Of course,” the woman says quickly, rising as well. “But you will come back, won’t you, Miss–what did you say your name was again, dear?”

At the doorway she pauses to consider.

“Kagome,” she answers, glancing back. “Higurashi Kagome.”

…

They have traded a palace of wood and stone for one of metal and glass.

It is modern and elegant. A cage of her own choosing.

When she returns to it, he is not there. And she is glad of it.

The wrath she had subdued in the shrine keeper’s presence wells up within her, and she storms about the mansion laying waste to every room–shattering the windows, the vases, the pictures and ornaments and antiques. Shredding clothes and books and curtains, smashing fragrance bottles and crushing strands of pearls and diamonds beneath her heel.

She tears at her hair, at her skin until it bleeds and heals and bleeds and heals again.

She screams and curses him, and curses herself for whatever she did to become so irrevocably enslaved.

Sobbing, she stumbles at last into his own private study, where the three swords he holds almost as dear to him as she are mounted prominently above the hearth.

A sudden idea occurs to her. She rips the swords off the wall, bundling them awkwardly to her chest as she stalks to the back of the room, where a set of double-doors opens out onto a balcony overlooking the western sea.

It is a sheer, steep drop to the water below. Climbing up onto the narrow railing with swords in arms, she peers down, her heart pounding in her throat.

Like a mad dog, the waves lap at the cliffside, frothing and foaming in their greed.

And like a madwoman herself, in an ecstasy of rage, she opens her arms and feeds Bakusaiga and Tenseiga to the sea.

Held closest to her, Tessaiga strikes the balcony railing instead, and falls with a clatter behind her.

She steps down and retrieves it, unsheathing it in the process.

Battered and rusted, the sword rests in her open palm. She glares down at it, her own blue-gray eyes glaring back at her in dim accusation.

But they are not alone.

As she prepares to toss Tessaiga over the rail, she catches sight of Sesshoumaru’s reflection in the sword and turns, meeting his fury with her own.

“Return the sword to me, Kagome,” he says, his words dangerously low, yet somehow perfectly clear even above the din of the waves.

“Get away from me,” she answers, her voice choked with anger, her outstretched hand trembling from the weight of the sword. “You monster, you murderer–I hate you so much I could die!”

“But you cannot,” he says ruthlessly, moving toward her, yellow eyes flashing. “So return the sword to me at once, and perhaps I will overlook this insolent behavior.”

With a tremor, she lowers her arm, bringing Tessaiga inside the balcony railing once again. Slowly, hatefully, she approaches him, the ruined sword tip grating against the balcony floor.

A few steps away from him, she stops.

“I never wanted to hate you,” she confesses. “I could have loved you, I think, if you hadn’t hurt me so deeply.”

“So you say,” he replies. “But your love was never my objective.”

“What was?”

“To have you,” he declares, “and I do.”

Her head lowers, her shoulders shake. A laugh escapes her at the hopelessness, the absurdity.

Abruptly she raises the sword in her hands, and though she is far slower than he, the sight of her brandishing Tessaiga against him gives him the strangest, slightest pause.

It is enough.

She slashes forward, clumsily, but intently, and the sword, though blunt to all outward appearances, slices nonetheless cleanly through his cheek and across his chest.

With a howl of agony and rage and something more terrifying still, he lunges toward her as she strikes again, the blade glancing off his collarbone and splitting open her own.

He tackles her to the ground, and she releases the sword with an anguished cry. It slides beneath a gap in the railing and down into the hungry sea.

She thrashes and twists against him, wet with his blood and her own. Her nails dig viciously into the rend in his cheek, making him snarl in pain even as he pins her underneath him, the back of her skull hitting the balcony floor with a crack that leaves her stunned.

And now his hands are at her neck, at her breast, crushing her windpipe, ripping through her shirt and skin in a frenzy of manic need. He is growling, laughing, his eyes red and his face split in a wicked, sharp-toothed grin.

“My Kagome,” he thunders above her, claw tips curving against the middle of her chest. “How perfect you are.”

She screams when his fingers plunge beneath her flesh, and he descends upon her, smothering her mouth with his as he breaks past her ribs and curves his hand around her still-beating heart.

“You chose this,” he gloats, though she scarcely hears him over the roar of her blazing nerves. “You chose me.”

Her vision is darkening, her body falling slack. Not merely from the shock of pain, but from the sear of truth in his words.

With a grind of bones, with a sickening suck of muscle and skin and blood, he withdraws his hand from her chest and raises it to his lips. His tongue glides out as her consciousness fades, moving languorously through the gore, savoring the taste of his victory.

…

And in her dreams, as in her waking thoughts, the scar of her wish remains upon her.

It is a brand she has laid herself, though she does not remember, a grotesque melding of love and hate, forever upraised in her mind. It is a collection of broken images, fused together haphazardly, like a ball of shattered glass.

Fragments, shards–the rest of the pieces lost to her forever.

And so she must make do with what she has–a kiss now beneath a sakura tree, a rusted sword pulled from a pedestal of bone, a crow with a string of crimson in its beak, a gentle hand with sharp-tipped claws, a thin smile and a glint of fangs–

Pale skin, tan skin, slashes of magenta, swathes of red–

White hair, silver hair, golden eyes, yellow eyes–

Gold and silver–

Yellow and white–

Gold and–

Yellow.

Blinking slowly, stiffly, she gazes up at him from the crook of his arm, her lips thinning in bitter hatred despite the love that still mists her eyes.

They are out on the bloodstrewn balcony still, reclining in an unscathed corner. From far below, the sea breeze rolls in, chilling her, and he draws her closer, though there is neither want nor need.

“What were you dreaming of?” he asks, studying her expression.

“You,” she admits, at last.

A slow smile spreads across his face.

“Good.”

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi