InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Black Hole of Endless Suffering ❯ What Is A Word? ( Chapter 2 )

.BLACK HOLE OF ENDLESS SUFFERING.

 

"What can go wrongwill go wrong."

 

Japanese terms that you will be hopelessly lost without:

 

Gomen: basically means “sorry”, an apology

Lie: basically means “no”

“Zamaamiyagare”: a phrase meaning something around the lines of: “it serves you fucking right” or “you got what was fucking coming to you”.

Baka: basically means “stupid”

Osuwari: means “sit”, but strangely enough in a more polite manner (for transitive reasons this is done in Japanese), when Kagome says “Osuwari”, the prayer bead necklace Inuyasha wears forces him to fall to the ground, this spell was put on him by Kaede the old priestess for anytime Inuyasha got out of hand (which happens a lot).

“Itai”: Japanese term around the lines of “ouch” or “ow”

Konbanwa: “good evening”

“Omachi de aru”: A very formal and respectful version of “wait”

Koitsu: a highly offensive way of saying “you”

“O genki desu ka”: “How are you?”

Oyasumi (nasai): Means good night. Adding that nasai either makes it a more intimate good night or formalizes it, depending on the context and situation.

Hai: basically means yes

“Nani?”: Means “What?”

Kaa-chan: Mommy

(Papa and Mama are also common terms for parents in Japan)

“Mou”: Very much like “jeez” or a like exclamation

Hanyou: a half youkai being (half demon), translates directly to “one of half magic”

 

 

 

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One thing was certain, if millions of things weren't: the house was clean.

 

Kagome didn't know how many times she had dusted the top of the 32” television screen in the living room, but the number was higher than the amount of hairs on her head. She turned the lamp a bit toward the wall. “Lie, that's not right, dear.” She turned it back. “Lie.” If Kagome had one wish at this time it would be that her mother would suddenly grow a phobia to lamps and smash the damned thing so she could stop floating in and out of the room, spurting out annoying comments about it.

It wasn't any special event for the Higurashis to set a grueling pace from room to room, cleaning like hyper-germaphobe-road runners with obsessive-compulsive disorder when a dinner guest was expected. Regardless of the identity of the expected dinner guest, the family would find themselves hopelessly lost in a psychotic frenzy trying to make the house as spotless as possible prior to their arrival. No one wanted the shame of a rudely unclean house…and many families went a little too far in their attempt to achieve the opposite.

Kagome found herself stuffed into the dress she had worn at her aunt's wedding last year. The thing didn't fit very well, but it was the most presentable thing clean. Peering into the full-length mirror next to her bed, Kagome saw a strained fifteen-year-old in a fourteen-year-old's dress. At least it feels tight at my boobs so it's not like I've grown in any bad ways…She was immediately transported mentally back to her return from summer vacation, and the beginning of her ninth grade year at school. The instant her friends saw her, she was met with jaw drops and greatly enlarged eyes. She had grown breasts. And not just breasts. LARGE breasts. Actually, she hadn't been happy with them at all in the beginning, as they were constantly an obstacle and felt enormously uncomfortable when running. She was simply happy when her friends followed suit in developing their own not too long later, as it was difficult being simply gawked at by other boys and singled out as the only girl with much of an upper-area.

She sighed, still finding them virtually useless, and more problematic than ever, beginning to hurt under the very uncomfortably tight dress. Recalling her first day of school that year, Kagome vividly remembered analyzing her chest and decided they were very strange looking and that she didn't want them. She had also always gotten her revenge against any boys that had given her a hard time over them, and wound up gaining more respect than almost all the girls (of which the majority of boys saw as little more than sex objects).

Still, as she observed herself in the mirror, she began pushing and prodding her chest, trying to flatten it in a way that could possibly be more comfortable. It was when she had pulled the dress skirt forward of course, wedged her arm through the in an attempt to stretch the slightly allastic material out (as she couldn't get her arms out of the sleeves) that she heard a voice behind her. “What the HELL are you doing?” Kagome stumbled forward, screaming.

“This dress doesn't fit so—“ she returned, wincing as she heard the seams of the velvet dress ripping.

“Zamaamiyagare.” Kagome's eyes narrowed when she heard the familiar term, just before she felt her heart give out for a moment at the realization of who had said it.

“GO A-WAY!!!! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M CHANGING, INUYA—“ Yet by the time Kagome had hobbled around to face her open window there was no sign of the hanyou, and the window stood perfectly empty. He had come and gone like a flighty apparition. Kagome sighed, certain his departure was a good thing for many reasons, and ignoring a deep unease and throb inside her at his rush to leave. She then thought back to her predicament. Confined in her own dress, Kagome decided there were two solutions: 1, get out the dress entirely no matter how wrecked it became in the process or 2, get back fully into the dress as she was before. A shrill bell was heard, echoing throughout the entire house.

“KAGOME-CHAN!!!! THAT BOY IS HERE!!!!!!” screamed her grandfather, setting Kagome into a bout of alarm that she would never forget. Perhaps, Kagome didn't have any deep feelings for Hojo, but how she and her family looked was highly important, especially since she didn't want to give off the impression that she hated him. Despite how wary she sometimes became of Hojo, Kagome found she didn't want to lose him as a friend…at times anyway…

“CRAP!” Kagome cried, squirming desperately to escape her strange position in her dress to no avail. “I'm stuck…” she whimpered pitifully, becoming still and wondering where to go from here.

“Oh, mou, Kagome!” came a familiar voice from behind her. She recognized it immediately this time.

“Inuyasha…” she snarled, hating how ridiculous she looked and the fact she felt like crying. “…what are you doing?” she snapped, hearing him approach from behind.

“Just hold on, you're stuck right?” Her eyes widened. What was he doing?

“Wait—“

“Hold still.” Her eyes became ever wider as he poised his claws, “look at this bind you've got yourself in—baka.” Kagome felt her face coloring further from not only embarrassment, but also indignation.

“Go—“ But it was too late. A distinct tearing noise signaled the fall of the velvet dress, and its pooling at her feet. Shutting her eyes tightly, Kagome resisted the very, VERY strong urge to beat the living daylights of Inuyasha. “Osuwari!!!” Immediately, the prayer beads around his neck reacted, and the hanyou was a pitiful pile of silver and red face planted in the floor. Kagome stood in her underwear looking the most enraged she had ever been. “THAT DRESS WAS EXPENSIVE!!!”

“Yeah, and you're too baka to wear layers, you bitch,” Inuyasha said pointing at Kagome's nearly naked body with a very bruised and also rapidly flushing face. “It's fuckin' freezing out there!”

“SHUT UP YOU PERV!” Kagome exclaimed, “oswari”ing him several times more.

“Itai…” Inuyasha grumbled, “…it's not my fault! I assumed you'd be wearin' more clothes than that!! MOU!” He finally managed to get to his feet, as Kagome turned and frantically tore through her dressers for a nearly presentable outfit. Inuyasha was hit in the face by an onslaught of airborne clothing. “Are you listenin' to me?! Well?”

“Shut up,” Kagome returned distractedly, throwing her alarm clock back at him, which hit him square between the eyes.

“ITAI!! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!!” There was a pause as Kagome acted as if she hadn't heard him, “come back, we have to get the Shikon no Tama, REMEMBER? Or did the fact you SHATTERED it slip your MIND?” A rabbit figurine hit his head.

“Could you stop staring at my butt, already?”

“Why would I DO that, Conceited-san?”

“Nani?” Kagome asked with a sarcastic sweetness, as she put on a button-up blouse. Soon after she slipped on a frilly purple skirt that failed to meet her knees by three inches, and turned to give Inuyasha a smile decorated with fiery eyes. “Don't tell me you've already forgotten all the times I've caught you PEEKING ON ME!” There was a long silence as Inuyasha simply stared at her very incredulously.

“Is your BRAIN broke again?” Kagome sighed angrily as she swung the door to her bedroom open and was met with a bashful Hojo.

“Konbanwa…Kagome-san,” he said with a nervous smile. Kagome shoved Inuyasha back with as much strength as she could, as he journeyed for the door. A loud crash erupted from the inside. Kagome made a very sweet smile, but it was tainted with such exasperation and sarcasm she felt like the biggest bitch there ever was in making it.

“Omachi de aru.” Immediately after telling Hojo to wait with an overly respectful verb, Kagome wondered if she sounded more sarcastic or more apologetic as she re-entered her room. “Inuyasha!”

“…you are so cruel, Kagome…” Inuyasha moaned in pain, clawing his way out of the mess of Kagome's things he had knocked over upon colliding with her table after being pushed.

“You have to stay hidden…” Kagome whispered urgently, “…there's someone here…” she put carefully, hoping Inuyasha wouldn't ask who it was.

“Someone here,” Inuyasha repeated as if he could spit on the statement. He stood up and gave Kagome a sinister look. In return, Kagome coughed nervously, searching for the right wording, but after Inuyasha scowled long enough, Kagome found she had lost her temper with him.

“I have a life you know,” she returned, venomously, “It's always about Naraku with you. It's always about the jewel. Well, what about me?”

“Koitsu?” Inuyasha returned irritably. Kagome decided that the highly rude term for “you” was a given when dealing with someone like Inuyasha and avoided confrontation all together.

“Oyasumi…” Kagome returned, “…nasai…” she added with a very cold formality, in a way as if to prove that her words could sting far more than his, while being light years more respectful. It was clear, that the icy look she gave him, and her unforgiving hollow words that killed any warmth in the room hurt Inuyasha. Immediately, she wanted to take the “nasai” back, but she felt her own suffering devouring her will to be kind. She found no fragment inside herself that was willing to take back what had been said, for she thought perhaps a bite to the fiendish beast would cause it to learn the pain it caused others.

The two of them studied each other for pulled and strained seconds, which screamed in the agony of their stress in being yanked so hard. Kagome averted her gaze, finding not the slightest satisfaction in the deep anguished eyes that engulfed her into a pit of ravenous flames that she couldn't escape if she looked back. “Oyasumi…” he breathed still staring at her fixedly, Kagome looked up in time to see a strange expression on his face, “…nasai,” he finished, with a tenderness that utterly destroyed Kagome where she stood. She began tearing herself up inside for the frigid spin on a word she had given him that had only been returned with a shockingly affectionate one. He leapt onto the windowsill of the small mouth behind him, devouring the starry night sky. An abrupt instant came, where Kagome took a window in time to reach out to Inuyasha, but in a glint of silver his figure was lost in the shadow of night. And Kagome could no longer see him or smell the scent of wild things and pine.

Inside an empty shell of imprisonment and isolation, the choice to leave seemed ludicrous and impossible. The choice to chase after him seemed far too spontaneous and exciting for her in this dull, hollowed-out world. All that she could hear was the pounding. The erratic, thundering pounding which was beginning to drive her insane; the pounding of her heart in her ears, surrounding her and putting a deafening echo that meant and would accomplish absolutely nothing. Anything she could have tasted, smelled, heard, or saw was a pitiful reminder of what was missing, therefore it was all nothing. The cold breeze, which breathed from the night, kissed Kagome's face and sifted in something out of all the intense nothingness. She caught a fragment, a remnant of something to hold on to. Something filling a tiny piece of the huge nothingness that was herself. The wind drew in a taste of the untamable scent of a shadow hanyou who left his piercing gaze behind whenever he departed and a single word on its long flowing arms of air. “Gomen.”

“Kagome-chan?” Scissor words cut a slit into the paper-thin barrier, and Kagome realized she had been gripping the windowsill, still slightly warm… “Kagome-chan, the guest is waiting.” The words fell like the thud of a dried out drum, they had no meaning, and as Kagome stared at her grandfather for the longest time she didn't see him at all. A moment before she could evoke Inuyasha's presence, like recalling the warmth of a bath after leaving it. “Kagome-chan?” her grandfather asked worriedly, as he could see Kagome's gaze was in his direction but it saw nothing remotely like him.

“Hmm?” she murmured, breaking out of her trance-like state. In her head the memory repeated itself as if it were on faulty film. “Oyasumi…nasai…” she had heard the same words countless times, but she had never heard them quite like that.

“Hojo-kun…is downstairs…” her grandfather paused a long time, studying her, “Kagome-chan?”

“Hai?”

“O genki desu ka?” he inquired worriedly. She nodded slowly as her only response, her eyes catching the movement of a flighty ghost no one else could see. Floating past her grandfather vacantly, she suddenly knew exactly what she had done. It had only taken the return to the memory a few times before she realized it. Her cold words were meant for Inuyasha to realize some of the suffering she had kept inside for so long. And he now knew it.

`Gomen.'

The words were meant to distance herself from him. Perhaps she had succeeded.

`Gomen'

Gomen for causing her pain. Gomen for not leaving to end the pain. Gomen because now he would leave her, once again, so that she would not feel the torment that threatened to seep out every time she saw him with Kikyo. Gomen for never realizing his “mistake” and being blind to the “right solution”.

Now he knew the “right solution”. Now he knew that Kagome “wanted” him gone. Kagome didn't want a “gomen” as a goodbye. In fact she didn't want a goodbye at all. What it was exactly that she wanted, she didn't know. Perhaps, she was tired of the apparition of someone. The echo of someone.

Maybe she didn't want the echo that remained after thoughts of Kikyo had left him. Not just a faded fragment of Inuyasha, but the real, entire thing. Maybe he would return, maybe he would speak to her about it.

Or maybe Kagome would be left in this frozen world of meaningless conversation, and redundant events. Repeating and repeating, stuck in the trend of everyone else around her. Kagome had shut herself up in her shell of isolation. There was no running after the flighty hanyou with nothing but her bare feet and a witless love. She was frozen in a saltless ocean of “have-to's” and errands, of school and friends. There was no coming out of the shell. And no reason to. Pain lie on the outside, rejection lie on the outside. Kagome descended down the stairs like a soulless corpse in a demon's charade, but she smiled her smile. It was perfect too. Brimming and youthful, the camera should have been there, for it was a smile made for a photograph. There were no faults in a smile like that, because like all things crafted to be perfect: there was no heart in it.

 

 

Author's note and crap once more: Well blah! This thing finally got dramatic, it's about time. I don't have much to say here except I incorporated the Japanese stuff much more and better this chap because unlike this one I wrote it originally with it, instead of formatting an already written plot to it. I did a lot of research on Japanese mannerisms and “formal” and “respectful” forms. Something written just with English could never work in the part above which has so much to do with the use of Japanese words and making statements more intimate or more formal. By the way, “conceited-san” is basically a Japanese way of saying, “Miss. Conceited.” Inuyasha's just poking fun at Kagome as usual.

 

BTW: A word on “Shikon No Tama” for those who don't know:

 

Shikon No Tama: the original Japanese name for the Shikon Jewel which can be translated into “Jewel of Four Souls”, as in Shinto Philosophy four balanced portions make up a good soul and imbalanced portions indicate a soul which will begin to become defiled, this explains how the jewel becomes unpurified, if a user desires to use it for selfish reasons, some try to use it for good. The jewel was created by the soul of Midoriko and a number of youkai souls, during a climatic battle between she and the great number of youkai. Since then it has fallen into the guard of several different sources, at first Sango's village guarded the jewel, then it was bestowed upon Kikyo, when she was dying she had herself be burned with the jewel, and Kagome was born with the jewel inside her. Shortly after the jewel was removed from inside Kagome's body by the youkai Mistress Centipede, it was shattered, once it had been devoured by a crow youkai. Kagome shot this youkai with her spirit arrow, which shattered it into hundreds of fragments.