Not long after dawn, Kirara arrived. Kagome was gloomily silent as she dragged herself up from where she lay sprawled among the roots. At the heavy, knowing glance the nekomata seemed to cast her way, the miko’s miseries compounded.

…If cats could talk.

To the forlorn young woman, it felt like the equivalent of a walk of a shame, as she approached and haggardly clambered aboard. Not swiftly enough for her bitter liking, the two of them sped from the meeting spot of the pitchfork tree, and left the region and its accursed landmarks behind them.

~

What ensued for Kagome was the most melancholy, lethargic span of days in her almost eighteen years of existence.

At a moment’s notice she swung between bouts of depression and scorn. The overall effect was that her moods were as unpredictable and tempestuous as a change in the winds, and sensing it as such, her poor friends kept a wary distance. By now mostly healed from their battle wounds, they milled about Edo village, idle and restless.

Fortunately, some recent additions to their ragtag group offered a diversion from the monotony.

Of course, Inuyasha was preoccupied with the still-recovering Kikyou. Sango was overcome by her reunion with Kohaku. Miroku was obviously glad for her sake.

And Shippou had a new set of playmates.

The sound of children’s laughter buffeted at Kagome’s ears, interspersed every now and then with an imp’s indignant shouting. Happy as she was for her adopted son, a fresh surge of despondency hit the pining miko, and she flopped back onto the deck of Kaede’s porch with a long-suffering groan.

She still couldn’t make heads or tails of her former demonic paramour. What she’d observed and experienced conflicted almost entirely with that Obasan’s account. He hadn’t spoken so much as a word to her, and though it had started out as such, the end result of her encounters with him had been far from ‘chaste.’

Ruefully, Kagome’s cheeks colored. It made no sense to her why he’d behaved so differently around her, why he’d broken his pattern of initial abandonment and kept coming back to meet her. But anyway, she scolded herself, what did it matter? In the end, he’d dumped her all the same.

Maybe she was just a bigger sucker than the others.

Kagome’s nails curled against the wooden planks, as her jaw clenched and her blood began to boil. Of course, there was another key difference between herself and those village women—and maybe when this war with Naraku was over, she’d track him down and put a blazing arrow in his chest to illustrate that distinction…

“…Kagome-chan?”

With an inward shake, the miko blinked up to find Rin and Shippou peering down at her, their eyes alight and faces flushed from running around in the chill autumn air. She’d been so caught up in her ruminations that she hadn’t even heard them charge up the porch steps.

“You okay, Kagome-chan?” Shippou asked her, exchanging an uncertain glance with Rin. “That was a scary look on your face just now.”

With a twitching smile, the miko pushed herself up into a sitting position. “Sorry…I was feeling a little off there for a second, but I’m fine now. Totally fine.”

The fox kit frowned, seeming unconvinced. But after a moment, his gaze slipped past her.

“Speaking of scary…” he muttered.

Following his look, Kagome glanced over. Nearby on the deck Kirara sat, stock-still and upright on her haunches like a guardian statue. Though she was un-transformed, her youki glowed around her in a candle-flame of scintillating crimson. Her hackles were raised, her red eyes glaring. The target of that searing stare of hers was unmistakable—a laser beam of pure animosity, its trajectory was aimed straight across the yard toward the edge of the woods, where the pale reclining figure of Sesshoumaru was visible against Ah-Un’s slumbering bulk.

“She’s at it again,” Kagome observed, catching Shippou’s eye. “Any idea what’s the matter?”

The boy shook his head. “She’s not saying anything, but I think it’s pretty clear how she feels about him.”

“Yeah.” Kagome’s brow furrowed as she tipped a knuckle to her chin. “It’s strange…she’s usually so friendly with everyone.” Her gaze shifted to the daiyoukai again. “Do you think he notices?”

As if on cue, Sesshoumaru’s eyes cracked open narrowly in their direction, and the three of them tensed.

“H-hai,” Rin said. “I think that he does…”

But Kirara’s death-glaring vigil remained unshaken. After a moment, Shippou shrugged at a loss.

“Must be a cat-and-dog thing.”

~

First anxious over her friends’ well-being and then consumed with anticipation for the night of the full moon, Kagome hadn’t paid Sesshoumaru much mind over the past few weeks. He didn’t talk much, and was often gone for days at a stretch. But after the last battle with Naraku, he had more or less just sort of…hung around. Kagome had assumed it was because the rest of them were biding their time here in the village while they regrouped and recovered—and because Rin was clearly content to remain with them in the meantime.

The fact that he doted on his young human ward was apparent to Kagome, and she was as intrigued by this as she’d ever been. In an effort to pull herself out of her own inner moping, she was eager for any sort of mental reprieve. Rin’s stories of how Sesshoumaru had saved her from death not once, but twice certainly gave Kagome a lot to mull over. Did he have a soft spot for humans she’d somehow overlooked, beneath all the contemptuous remarks and repeated attacks on his half-demon brother?

The miko frowned, attempting to reconcile these seemingly contradictory pieces of information about him. All she knew for certain, as her gaze touched his briefly through a veil of falling leaves, was that there was more to him than met the eye.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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