Lies, Letters, and Calloused Fingertips.

Lies, Letters, and Calloused Fingertips.



Chapter Twenty-Two: You are Safe.



Kagome sighed as she crossed the street, remaining on the well-marked crosswalk that guided her and a million other pedestrians across the bustling street. With purse in one hand and cell phone in the other, she flipped the contraption open and dialed a very familiar number.



He picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Kagome.”



She smiled. “Hey, Minoru.” Her heels made a small sound as she hopped up onto the curb, regaining a good position in the crowd on the sidewalk and started to her left, heading toward the shrine. “Have you been over there today?”



The exasperation in his sigh was tangible, even through the receiver. “Yeah, I checked in on him this morning. He had already made it through half a bottle of scotch before nine; there were quite a few empty bottles of sake and brandy littered throughout the house.”



Kagome stopped for a minute, hurrying beneath a nearby stoop outside a shop; she was both surprised and not surprised by this news. It had been three months since she and Inuyasha had last spoken – three months since all of her questions had been answered, since his story had been finished.



It had been three months since she’d last spent any time at all with Ko, since either her husband or her great-aunt had laid eyes or hands on her children. Moriko and Kaji were both growing at excellent rates, and they were a pair of happy, healthy babies. Kaji seemed to be laid-back and rather introverted, as most of the Higurashi’s seemed to be – Kagome’s jiijii excluded, of course. Moriko, however, seemed to have inherited a great deal of her attributes from Inuyasha; she was loud and obnoxious half the time, never wanting to be put down. Kagome’s mother was more than happy to oblige the baby girl, and the quarter-demon was already well on her way to being one of the most spoiled children in all of Japan.



After the entire scene in Kagome’s hospital room, she had asked Rin to move some of her more essential items to Suzume’s surprisingly spacious loft apartment in the middle of Tokyo. It had plenty of extra rooms for the new tenants – Suzume, being the fabulous and well-sponsored musician that she was, made sure that she and her oldest/newest best friend could live peacefully with her in the penthouse of her apartment building.



So Kagome had her own bedroom, the twins had their own, and Suzume had captured the master bedroom – which she shared with Minoru nearly every night now. The doctor still maintained his own apartment, separate from Suzume; dying as Miroku had brought him back in this life as a responsible, reasonable young man, Kagome mused.



The differences between Minoru and Miroku were about as stark and startling as the differences between Suzume and Sango. Miroku had always struck Kagome as somewhat of a bum, always leeching off rich folks throughout the villages, tricking them with (usually) fake exorcisms to get the group a night spent indoors and in beds. While Minoru still had that intelligence, his air of confidence was gone, and he mostly kept to himself. While pretending to be a humble monk in search of personal fulfillment, Kagome was able to observe him for what he really was – the epitome of arrogance. She had once thought the same of Sesshomaru, but that seemed to have changed over the past five centuries.



While Miroku was often so easy for Kagome to like and despise simultaneously, Minoru was… more difficult to dislike. He was quiet and much less sure of himself, which Kagome still sometimes found laughable coming from the face that still reminded her so much of the monk from his previous life. It took him a very long time to become completely comfortable around Kagome, despite recognizing her instantly at the soba shop.



Suzume had become more like Miroku, it seemed, and Minoru had become more like Sango. The two souls still balanced each other, though they were both more on neutral ground now than before. Suzume was loud and outspoken – sometimes borderline outrageous. Poor Minoru really had no idea what to do with the crazy woman half the time; he wanted to just curl up on the sofa with a book and a good movie, but Suzume always felt the need to jump into a sexy outfit and run off with her wild bandmates. More often than not, Minoru was dragged off to these crazy parties with his new girlfriend, and Kagome couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor man. He obviously wasn’t used to all the attention he’d been receiving, and she honestly couldn’t blame him for craving his space already.



Kagome sighed into the cell phone. “I can’t believe that he’s still so bad off,” she murmured, making sure to keep her voice down while still in public. Her expression changed suddenly from sad to annoyed. “That idiot! He can face down some of the worst demons and villains in history, but estrange him from his wife – a wife that apparently can never be good enough for him when she’s around but is the center of his existence once she’s gone – and he’s a bumbling drunk!” She shook her head, still feeling the brunt of her anger and bitterness from that day. Unbidden tears rolled down her heated cheeks as she stood beneath the stoop, watching sorrowfully as it slowly began to rain.



On the other side of the phone, sitting in the break room at his hospital, Minoru pulled away from the receiver and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb. Inuyasha, you dumbass, he thought with no shortage of irritation at his best friend’s actions. What on Earth were you thinking?



Kagome cleared her throat suddenly. “I’ll talk to you later.” The change in her tone startled the young doctor, and he sat up in his chair, moving his hand and blinking off into space.



“Kagome? Are you all right?”



“Click!”



The resident sat back in his seat, staring down at his quietly beeping cell phone in surprise. A bad feeling was starting to gather in the pit of his stomach… He locked his jaw in place, determined, and dialed a number he knew he was going to regret.



Under the stoop on the street, Kagome wiped her clammy palms against her wet cheeks, trying to rid herself of her embarrassing tears.



“Let’s get going.”



She shot the young man standing beside her a perturbed look. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” she said to him in a quiet voice before hissing at the uncomfortably hostile way he shoved the barrel of his handgun into her back. “My husband isn’t a very nice person when you piss him off.”



The shadowed face sneered; Kagome followed the lines his lips made, and her brown eyes widened in sudden recognition. Even as he stepped out from the darkness of the shop doorway, she knew what his face would look like; crimson eyes glinted maliciously at her in the dimming sunlight.



“Naraku…!”



The whispered name brought back a jolt of memories for Heru, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. It struck him that he had met this girl before, though maybe not in this lifetime.



The first thing he sees is a simple fold-out table in the middle of a dirty, cluttered kitchen; it’s a relatively small room, and the child feels cramped standing in its doorway, looking at it. The window across from him is brightly lit with sunlight, so bright that it doesn’t seem to be a window at all. No, it’s not a window after all; it’s just a large, white-yellow square set up on the wall… with a flower in a vase in it. It’s a pretty flower, Heru has to admit – a vibrant, orange lily, his mother’s favorite…



His eyes dart to his right as strange yet familiar noises reach his ears; they seem to be coming from his mother’s bedroom. She had always been a simple woman, never too bright, and she had always been what the other children at school knew as a “bum connoisseur.” He hates the way they speak about her, but there’s nothing he can do, he’s tiny compared to them. Every time he lashes out at them for calling his mother a whore, he’s put down in his place, made to feel just like the rotten piece of trash that he is. Even at eight, he has become so well-versed with this underworld he calls home that the sounds he encounters as he nears his mother’s barely faze him.



The door creaks as he pushes it open, and opens it does. Crimson eyes settle upon a harrowing sight, one that is forever burned into his retinas. On her large bed lies his whore of a mother, fighting off a man who looks uncomfortably like Heru himself; blood is quickly soaking the normally pristine white sheets, and his hackles raise at the thought of her blood ruining the mattress. It’s a good mattress, he thinks as the man towering over his cowering excuse for a mother turns and catches sight of him.



Never moving as the man stands, leaving his mother to drip dry of life, Heru isn’t even sure he’s the one moving his lips. “Are you my father?” Even at eight, he realizes that their shared appearance can be no coincidence.



It’s such an elaborately cynical smirk that Heru isn’t sure he should have asked the man any question, let alone one so life-changing. “Why, if it isn’t the halfbreed?” the man says, mostly to himself, as he steps closer to the boy. Heru doesn’t – can’t – move at this point; all he can do is stare, close-mouthed and numb, as his mother’s murderer approaches. Looking up, the boy is sure that’s certain death he sees in those scarlet eyes that mirror his own.



The man regards him, his eyes lingering on the boy’s longer than average fingernails. “You’re more like her than you should be,” he says, and Heru isn’t quite sure what he means, though he has an inkling. He’d always felt there was something off about him, but his mother could never tell him what it was.



“D’you hear things you shouldn’t, boy?”



Slowly, Heru nods, never taking his eyes off the man. His father chuckles, probably at his silence, and swings his head to the right, relighting his smoke and taking a long, satisfying-sounding drag. Both males look at the twitching body on the bed, and Heru knows that he should feel something for it – something like remorse or sorrow.



But all he can feel is relief.



Even at eight, he knows there is no room for regret in this dysfunctional mindfuck called life.



This girl… She isn’t from this lifetime, I’m sure, Heru thought, his smirk disappearing at the strange name.



He grunted at her, shoving her forward with his left hand still in his coat pocket and the gun in his right hand still pressed firmly against her tender back. “Let’s go.”



Together, Kagome right in front of Heru, they both began to walk down the sidewalk; after a few minutes, they passed the steep stairs that led up to the Sunset Shrine. As they continued walking, Kagome glanced up, at the top of those stairs, hoping to see a family member sweeping or something – anything! – and get them to notice her and the trouble she’d gotten herself in.



But there was no one standing on the stone steps, no one waiting for her beneath the torii. She was on her own.



A/N: Just to let my readers know: I had my twins on November 23rd, almost at midnight, so I'm still in the hospital as I post this. I just wanted to go ahead and get it posted - and also let all of you know that my posting may become erratic and few and far between for a while. My husband and I are playing all this by ear, and we have to put off the move for awhile until myself and the twins are up for it. Thank you for understanding. ^_^



Next Time:



Chapter Twenty-Three: Let's Jam.