Hirokin left.

In his absence, Kagome seemed to shrink in upon herself. Half in a daze that even demonic sake couldn’t be blamed for, she started home at last.

The house was empty, for the moment. As her eyes scanned dismally over the dark, cluttered space, a new neat pile drew her attention. Checking herself against her own desperate surge of emotion, Kagome made her way over to it.

On the tatami-covered platform, she sank down to her knees. Sorting through the stacked belongings, she catalogued them in her mind. It was a grim inventory. The sum total of this little stack of odds and ends felt woefully small for a life that had been so long and had touched so many.

Yet there was something tangible missing here. Shorted and cheated as Kagome already felt, this absence she couldn’t abide.

The moment Kanako tiptoed across the threshold, the miko glared toward her. “Where is Kaede-baa-chan’s teacup? I told you to bring me all of her things. All—not most.”

This was the agreement she and Rin had come to: Rin would take the house, and Kagome everything else. Kanako had been there to witness it all, so the fact that she was staring bug-eyed at Kagome like she’d suddenly been struck dumb just riled the miko up even more.

“What are you still standing there for?—go and fetch it.”

Kanako’s lip quivered. “But, Kagome-sama, I cannot.”

Kagome’s glare sharpened. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

“…I threw it away,” Kanako whispered, seeming on the verge of tears. “Into the thicket.”

“You did what?!” Incensed, Kagome shot to her feet, strangling the collar of her robe in lieu of Kanako’s spindly neck. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“Because a dead woman drank from it!” the waif wailed, throwing herself onto the floor at the miko’s feet. “Kagome-sama, it is cursed—you must not touch it!”

“I’ll be the judge of what I can and can’t touch,” Kagome growled, in absolutely no mood to suffer the girl’s ignorant superstitions. Reaching down, she peeled Kanako up by the nape of her yukata. “You go find that cup right now and bring it to me, or don’t bother showing your face here ever again!”

With a wretched little cry, Kanako picked herself up and scampered off. Kagome crossed her arms, sighing deeply. In what seemed like record time, the waif came slinking back, with a little painted cup clasped to her heaving chest. Still, when Kagome held out her hand, Kanako hung back in clear reluctance.

“I must wash it first!” the waif protested, almost in a panic.

“Fine,” Kagome said, figuring it was probably dirty anyway from being tossed out into the woods. “Go ahead.”

Whether it was an act of contrition or compulsion, the miko couldn’t tell, but after the third or so round of frenzied scrubbing, she’d had enough. Striding over to the wash stand, she snatched the cup up from the rinsing rack, as the waif eeped in dismay.

“Please, Kagome-sama,” Kanako said tremulously, dogging Kagome’s footsteps as she set the wooden teacup down by the hearth to dry, “promise me you will not drink from it.”

The miko shook her head. “I’m not promising you anything. Now, go on—I need to rest.”

“I thought I might stay with you,” Kanako persisted, clutching at Kagome’s sleeve. “Please, Kagome-sama, let me stay with you.” When Kagome tugged herself free of the girl’s bony grip, Kanako’s voice became whiny and desperate. “I have done everything you asked me to, and more!”

“And right now I’m asking you to go,” Kagome snapped, at the end of her patience.

Yet Kanako lingered, sniffling at her side. “K-Kaede-baa-chan…”

“No,” Kagome said, rounding upon her in anguished fury. “You don’t get to cry for her—you barely knew her! Don’t pretend like you actually care.” Wrenching Kanako up by the arm, Kagome marched her to the door and all but threw her past the curtain and out onto the porch. “Get lost.”

Weepy still, Kanako fled, disappearing into the night. Feeling more depleted than ever, Kagome returned to the hearth. The cup was almost dry. Picking it up, she turned the little vessel in her hands. In some spots the painted flowering vines were faded, in the slim tracks where Kaede’s fingers had rested time and again.

Something about these imprints tugged at Kagome in a way that even the funeral pyre hadn’t. What was a body, after all, once the soul had departed, but a lump of unfeeling flesh? But in this cup, in the faint indentations Kagome fit her fingers to now, she could almost feel the warmth of Kaede’s companionship, the phantom comfort of her presence.

And now the smooth wood grain was darkening again, pattered with the tears that wouldn’t stop. Hiccupping, whimpering, Kagome cradled the cup to her and sobbed as if her heart had been cracked open like an egg, and all her grief was spilling out of her through the cracks.

Hatefully, almost violently, she swiped her sleeve across her sodden face, as the air began to darken around her. “…You have got to be kidding me.”

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi