Later in the day, Kagome ventured from her home—more to escape her clinging husband than anything else. As she busied herself with taking down laundry from the line, she couldn’t help but overhear a hushed conversation nearby. Her ears had always been too keen for their own good.

From behind the shed next door, Rin’s voice whispered, plaintive and harsh, “…How can you be so sure?”

“Trust me, I’m sure,” Kohaku’s voice answered bitterly. “He couldn’t have been more clear.”

“But, what did he say?”

“He said that you’re still a young girl. That young girls don’t know their own minds. That they make mistakes—when there is no one around to prevent them. And then he just looked at me, and I knew.”

“Young?” Rin repeated in quiet indignation. “I’m almost fifteen! There are plenty of girls my age who are already married—or at least engaged to be.”

“It was a threat, nonetheless,” the taijiya returned coolly.

“Surely, he didn’t mean it that way…”

“Rin, Sesshoumaru-sama is threatening. You just don’t see it because he dotes on you.”

“And because he cares so much for me, he would never hurt you.”

“It is precisely because he does care for you that he would hurt me,” Kohaku countered flatly.

“So, you’re just going to give up on us?” Rin’s voice choked with angry tears. “I thought you loved me, Kohaku-kun…that’s what you told me when—”

“I do love you, Rin,” Kohaku interrupted, flustered, “but how can you expect me to defy Sesshoumaru-sama? He’s my mentor as much as your guardian. Threats aside, after all he’s done for me, how could I openly disrespect him in this way? How could you?” At Rin’s sullen silence, Kohaku continued. “If he opposes our courtship, I see no choice but to end it.”

“Fine,” Rin snapped back at him in watery hurt. “If you want to ‘end it’ so badly, then it’s over!”

Sobbing, she rounded the shed and dashed by, not even noticing Kagome as she burst through the hanging laundry. A moment later, Kohaku followed more slowly in Rin’s wake. Spots of red rose high on his once-freckled cheeks.

“…Kagome-sama,” he said, giving her a terse nod as he continued on his way.

Flushing as well, Kagome took down the rest of the laundry with shaky fingers. Her heart went out to her star-crossed young friends. In a way, it was difficult for her to sympathize with their predicament. Without a father figure, she had never faced this kind of opposition to her own boyfriends—few that there’d been, at any rate.

Huffing, Kagome set her linen basket on the porch. She’d like to think that she’d chosen just fine for herself without the overbearance, and in her estimation, Rin had as well. Kohaku was a fine young man. Strong and dependable. Kind-hearted and brave. How cruel of Sesshoumaru to stand in the way of their love, just because of Rin’s age.

Rin and Kohaku had been friends for years—and had been through much together. It was understandable that they would form such a strong bond, that they would want to spend the rest of their lives with one another. Kagome frowned. What was so wrong with that?

Troubled by the thought, she wandered toward one of the wells at the far edge of the village.

Her back ached terribly as she hauled up the heavy bucket. The rope slipped from her fingers as a sudden wave of dizziness overcame her. Bracing herself for the burn, she reached out toward the falling rope again when abruptly it stilled—a set of pale claws above her holding it in place. Eyeing the red slashes on his wrist for a moment, Kagome stepped back, turning her face aside.

“…Thanks,” she mumbled, swiping a sleeve across her sweaty brow. “The heat got to me, I guess.”

With one brisk pull, the bucket shot up through the well shaft like a rocket. A thin sheet of water sloshed over the side as Sesshoumaru caught it in midair and deposited it on the wooden ledge before her. Despite her recent sentiments toward him, Kagome cracked a slight smile as he folded his hands placidly into his sleeves.

“That was a neat trick,” she said, submerging her angled jar to the neck. “You’re a lot better at chores than you look.”

“I have many talents,” he replied cryptically.

Kagome laughed. “The Lord of All Trades,” she dubbed him, as she set the filled jug down on the ledge.

“Many,” he corrected with a wry glint of eye. As she made to lower the heavy bucket down again, he intercepted the rope ahead of her. “But my skills are ever-expanding.”

Ducking her head, Kagome smiled again. For a moment, as they bantered like this, it felt like old times. She had forgotten just how much she missed his companionship. It hadn’t always been this way, of course, but over the years he had warmed to her, it seemed. Like Rin, it was hard for her now to picture him as the cold, ruthless killer she knew him to be.

Then, as she took up her jar and turned around to leave, he caught her by the chin. The look in his eyes was as icy as she’d ever seen it. She shivered as his chilling gaze raked over the side of her face that had been hidden to him before.

“It’s just a little swollen from last night,” she said lightly, covering the angry red scratch marks with her palm. “It’s nothing.”

But all the levity between them was gone.

“You would dismiss this,” Sesshoumaru said, his voice low with challenge.

“It was an accident,” Kagome defended, though she wondered why she even should. “He already apologized for it, and he didn’t even fully realize what he was doing, anyway. It won’t happen again.”

“No,” he said, releasing her as he turned, “it will not.”

Kagome’s pulse accelerated at the threat in his tone. Desperately, she gripped his sleeve.

“Sesshoumaru,” she said urgently, “Inuyasha only got so upset because I told him I was going to leave at the worst possible time. It’s my fault that this happened, so please—don’t do anything more to him than you already have.”

Her heart pounded like mad as Sesshoumaru glanced back at her at last. Jaw clenched, he inclined his head in the barest of nods. Kagome relaxed. Her tense fingers fell from his sleeve. Encouraged by his concession, she stepped toward him, clasping her hands before her.

“This situation won’t last forever,” she said softly. Her eyes ventured up to his. “Once it’s over, everything will be better. And I hope…I really hope you and I can be friends again.”

Sesshoumaru’s expression cooled. “I’m not interested in your friendship.”

Kagome’s face fell as he turned his back on her and walked away.

The next few days passed dismally by. Kagome stuck mostly to the house under the excuse of not feeling well. And in all honesty, she wasn’t—emotionally or physically. Sesshoumaru’s parting words to her had left her stricken. Over and over, she replayed them in her head, a relentless self-deprecating mantra. Night and day, she berated herself with them, as she lay fatigued in bed or paced vainly to distract herself from the aches that seemed to wrack her all over.

It would be better if she went outside and did some real activity. But just the thought filled her with crippling anxiety. Her hormones were hopelessly out of sorts. Even Inuyasha seemed cognizant of it. Mercifully, he’d given her a reasonably wide berth as she struggled to bring herself back into some semblance of balance again.

Her menstrual symptoms were as bad as they’d ever been, but over the intervening days, scarcely a drop of blood had been shed. Kagome began to worry that something might seriously be wrong with her. Getting up from bed, she rifled through her small library and extracted one of her mother’s nursing textbooks that she consulted on occasion.

Skipping straight to the section on menstruation, she scanned the paragraphs rapidly—trying to determine if a long cease in flow like this was truly abnormal—when a random side note viciously snared her attention:

“…Light bleeding, or spotting, on the other hand, is often an early indicator of pregnancy.” 

Pregnancy…

Breathing rapidly, Kagome shook her head in denial. It couldn’t be—all her other symptoms were perfectly normal ones for this time of the month. Sure, her period had come briefly and rather late, but she wasn’t struck with morning sickness or suffering from the trigger-ready bladder her mother had always complained about.

Still…

Flipping a chapter over, she skimmed the pages on pregnancy. Her eyes widened when she read the list of first trimester symptoms—many of which were eerily close to the period-like ones she was experiencing. Numbly, Kagome closed the textbook and set it aside. The beginnings of a headache took root behind her eyes.

“Kagome,” Inuyasha groused, the sudden sound of his voice making her start, “put out that light and come back to bed.”

Swallowing, Kagome did as he asked. Her eyes remained wide as she lay stiffly down beside him. A burning desire to know filled her, but she didn’t want to disturb Inuyasha again. She should wait until morning, anyway—just to be sure.

After the longest, most sleepless night of her life, Kagome rose at dawn—the dawn of the very day she was supposed to leave Edo village—and stole off with the pregnancy test kit that had been gathering dust in her hut. As she waited the long, long minutes for the results to display, her heart thudded audibly in her chest.

If she truly was pregnant, then the pact would be over. She would never be with Sesshoumaru again.

Never again…

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 8/3/22

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