Kagome left Sango’s home near dusk. Though she’d succeeded in raising her best friend’s spirits, she herself felt depleted—emotionally and physically. She remembered when she was a girl, her boundless enthusiasm of heart. Where had that surplus gone? It seemed to her now that everything she gave took a toll on her. Nothing came without a cost.

Outside on the porch, she held Shin to her chest and sighed. He wriggled against her, in a way Kagome recognized as his unspoken means of communicating that he wanted to be let down. Kagome took him out of the carrier and set him on the wooden boards. He transformed in a rush of youki, becoming a big white beast of a dog once again. Even bigger now, Kagome thought as she squinted.

Shin paced around the porch, his black claws clicking. He snuffed the boards, snuffed the air. He glided down the steps, still snuffing. In the grass he turned around partway, cocking his shaggy white head toward the west, where the sun was setting. His pointed ears pricked. His pink tongue lolled, ragged and dripping smoking drops of saliva onto the dead grass. He padded a few steps away then circled around. His red almond eyes fixed on Kagome as he gave a gravelly whine.

“What is it, baby?” she said, descending after him. Shin half-sprinted, half-flew a few more paces away from her and then fixed his red gaze on her again. “You want me to follow you?”

When she started after him, he kept going, all the way to the edge of the woods. Crossing the treeline, she continued to follow after her son’s pale, slinking form. She could only imagine the scent of some new quarry had caught his interest, and he wanted to make sure she didn’t miss out on the fun. Her senses detected nothing out of the ordinary. She detected nothing whatsoever as Shin led her ahead, soundless as a ghost.

Even before he paused at the roots of the tree, Kagome had glimpsed another ghostly form, reclining high in its branches. She drew to a halt as Shin did, sitting back on his haunches with a yip of triumph.

Sesshoumaru’s golden eyes slanted down at him. Shin got up and circled around the ancient tree, summoning his youki to spring. Kagome watched as he launched himself up to the first branch, then leapt to the next. He kept climbing upward in this way until the perches grew too precarious for his bulk.

Scrabbling at a high branch near Sesshoumaru, Shin snapped it and plummeted—but a cloud of youki materialized to break his fall. Kagome only stopped clutching at her throat when Shin flipped upright with a toss of his snowy head. Though she’d been confident he’d be all right—especially with Sesshoumaru watching—her son’s inuyoukai antics still unnerved her.

Sesshoumaru dropped from the tree, landing lightly on a raised root. Shin darted up to him at once. He planted his forepaws on Sesshoumaru’s chest plate and rumbled up into his face. For anyone else, this would have been deathly frightening. But Sesshoumaru looked down into Shin’s searing red eyes and furrowed maw, unfazed. Though nothing happened that Kagome could discern, after a moment, Shin rebounded from him. He streaked off into the trees with a yip that sounded eerily like barking laughter.

As Shin faded from view, Kagome looked to Sesshoumaru. “I’m glad he found you,” she said, clasping one arm before her. “I was starting to get worried when I didn’t sense you around.”

Sesshoumaru didn’t say anything in response to this. He didn’t even look at her. He was still staring somewhere past her, in the direction where Shin had gone. Kagome worried at the inside of her cheek.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You seem—”

Sesshoumaru’s eyes snapped to her suddenly, metallic and flinty. “You reek,” he said. “It disgusts me.”

Kagome stared back at him, stricken. “What are you talking about?”

Sesshoumaru didn’t reply. Kagome looked him over as he continued to ignore her, immovable as a hunk of stone.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, growing more indignant by the moment. “You’re giving me the cold shoulder because I jerked Inuyasha off this morning?” A student of Sesshoumaru’s silences, she could tell from the frosty character of this one that she’d hit the mark. “For Kami’s sake, Sesshoumaru, I live with him. He’s my husband.”

Sesshoumaru’s youki flared. He was in her face so swift and sudden she recoiled with a gasp—but he pursued her.

“Your husband,” he said as he stalked toward her, his voice dark and edged with scorn. “He is not your husband. He never was.”

Kagome’s back hit a tree as she glared up at him. Her heart pounded in a tempest of fury and frustration. This sort of blind envy and possessiveness was an absurd new low. He was outright denying the facts of the matter. The very facts of her existence.

“You’re unbelievable,” she whispered harshly.

Sesshoumaru glared back down at her, immovable once again. Shin’s reappearance broke their frigid stalemate. It was probably the only thing that could have. As Sesshoumaru’s eyes strayed toward him, Kagome slipped past, making a beeline for her son. Whether it was her spiritual pressure or his own anticipation, Shin breezed back into human form at her thunderous approach. Without another word, she gathered him up and went back to the village, antagonized beyond belief.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 1/17/24