InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Can't Stop Loving You ❯ Part Six ( Chapter 6 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

A Day in a Miko’s Shoes

“Come on, you gotta do it; I did it!”

“Yeah, and I’ll do it when you do!”

“That doesn’t make me want to do this anymore than I already don’t, Jamie,” Kagome replied behind her shoulder to the newest member of her growing group of new friends. Each had unique styles and qualities, but Kagome somehow fit in with each of them as did each other. But now, as each one of them pushed her further towards the tattoo/piercing place, she was almost regretting meeting them.

“Come on, guys; I did my cartilage, three times, almost my eyebrow, and now you guys want my tongue pierced?! How am I supposed to get a good job? I’ll be working at Starbucks the rest of my life, all thanks to you. How would that make you feel? Terrible? Hmm?” she asked as she ground her feet into the sidewalk even further, knowing well that she would be bashing her head into the wall for doing it, because she had bought her boots yesterday.

Yes, boots; another thing of many things that her new friends had pushed her into doing; One day Kagome, Celine, Sadie, Connor and Jamie were browsing the big Oakland mall (because Kagome had gotten her first paycheck from her job at Starbucks), and they walked into a Hot Topic, literally, because Celine hadn’t been looking where she was walking and ran into the big spiral in the doorway, along with the sign of clearance items and a man who worked there (later on becoming her boyfriend), and they went in to check it out. Kagome was terrified at first, but after she warmed up to it a bit, she started trying on clothing like the rest of her group. By the end on the day, she ended up with four shirts, two pairs of pants, two pairs of gloves, four packs of thong underwear, one pair of boots, and one corset, (damn Connor and his spur-of-the-moment dares), and from then on she bought most of her clothes from there.

Yes, this seems weird for Kagome of all people to be doing, but she didn’t do well under peer pressure, and so she gave in to the requests of her new friends, even though the second she came home and her mother saw her, and InuYasha, for that matter, she would be getting yelled at for months, and ridiculed for years by her brother. But, for now she just gave in to them and became “punk-rock-Kagome”. And now, here she was, being shoved by her group of friends into a piercing shop, wearing her spaghetti-strapped red buttoned shirt with black outlining, white stripes through the red, and lace at the hem, her stretchy pleated black mini skirt, fishnet stalkings, and knee high shiny plastic black boots that laced from the top down to the toe. Kagome sighed, she couldn’t take it anymore. She gave in.

“Allright, all right, guys, stop pushing me…. I’ll….I’ll get my tongue pierced,” she said with a grimace, and she turned her head to see each and every face smirking at her, and she turned and walked into the shop.

Immideately after walking into the room, she went into a coughing fit. She covered her face and looked around, and eventually the coughing subsided. Looking into the room, she was more scared than she was the first time that she walked into Hot Topic. There were six or seven black leather chairs in the dim room, and everyone that worked there had at-least six piercings on their face, and surely there were even more in other places than the frightened girl even wanted to know. It wasn’t the lights that made the room so dim, it was the fact that every single thing in the room was black, except the lights and the writing on a board above the counter that was to her right when she entered the room, but the writing was still a light gray color. Fifty or so incents were placed all about the dim room, hence the girls coughing fit.

A man that seemed to be in his late thirties asked her name and age when she went up to the counter, and told her to sit on the leather waiting couch across from the desk. She obeyed, and waited with her four friends on the ripped-leather couch.

“Hey, you guys…. Are you sure I should do this? I mean, I can’t take this piercing out like I can the others. And-and I can also get sick from it, I heard. I’m not sure I want to do this anymore…” Kagome said hurriedly as she shook on the cold leather. Sadie smiled at her and it calmed her a little.

“It’s all-right, Kagome, you have nothing to worry about; these are professionals we’re talking about, so suck it up,” she said, the first part of the sentence warming, the ending sarcastic. It didn’t smooth out her ragged nerves.

“Yeah, come on Kags, how about this; if you get your tongue pierced, then I’ll be the first one to lick it,” Connor smirked and winked at her. Her face contorted into a look of disgust, and she turned her head back towards Jamie and stuck out her tongue and stuck her finger practically down her throat. The girl let out a laugh, and Connor’s head popped out from behind Kagome’s and raised one eyebrow at Jamie. She just laughed harder.

“Kagome Higurashi?” a regular sized woman, about her late twenties, with a nose, two eyebrow, and about five-six (on each) ear piercings, in a black tube top, black baggy pants with many odds and ends, like zippers and chains, hanging from it, and literally five inch high leather platform boots with a zipped down the middle, stepped into the room with a clipboard in hand. The shaky girl stood and bowed her head a bit, earning her a raised eyebrow from the woman.

“J-Japanese tradition, sorry,” Kagome said, answering the unspoken question. The woman merely shrugged and motioned for her to follow to an unoccupied black piercing designated chair, and Kagome followed and sat down. In a chair next to her, a young woman with yet another full black outfit on, was sitting in the chair, and leaning back. Normally this wouldn’t disgust someone, but to Kagome it did, for what was so disturbing about it was that the girls wrists had many, many scars on them, some fresh, and she had more piercings than both of the employees that worked there together on her face alone. And that wasn’t even the worst part of it; the girls legs were spread as far as she could get them, and her skirt dropped to the floor, as a piercer leaned in towards her private areas with a piercing gun. Kagome watched in horror as the man pierced the woman’s, err, area and the woman let out a pleasured yell after Kagome heard the chinch of the gun. Kagome’s face was a look of horror, and the employee grunted behind her. Kagome looked at the woman who was busing herself with sterilizing the piercer she was planning on using on the miko’s tongue.

“Pretty sad, isn’t it? I would never do that shit on my life. Heh, I may seem the type to get anywhere I can think of pierced, but I would never stoop that low,” the woman said to Kagome, not once looking up from her work.

“Sad? I’d say disgusting and low,” Kagome said as she looked down at the floor, heat rising in her cheeks because she had been caught looking.

“Yeah. I had a friend that did that; the same type of person too, cutter, whore, devil-worshipper, the works. She jumped off a cliff a few months ago,” the woman said, a sad expression on her black-makeup-caked face.

“I’m so sorry….” was all she could think of to say. The woman smiled a bit and turned toward the still shaky miko.

“You don’t have to worry, this is perfectly safe and, thought it may hurt a bit, the pain will only last for about an hour,” she said, noting Kagome’s shakiness. The woman grasped Kagome’s chin and opened her jaw. Kagome helped her, yanking her jaw as wide as it could go and sticking her tongue out. The woman chuckled and told her that she needed to relax her tongue. She obeyed, and the woman stuck the instrument into Kagome’s mouth and clicked down on the trigger before the girl could even think of protesting.

:::8::8::8::8::8::8::8::8::8:::

“Ja-a-a-a-a-a-a -mi-e-e-e-e-e! It still hurts Goddammit! It’s been two months!” the girl complained as she once again sucked on an ice cube, hoping to diminish the pain for at-least a few minutes. She really wasn’t expecting for it to hurt after so long, but her tongue still throbbed at times, and she could only fit an ice cube in her mouth; if she could, she would use a whole ice pack….

“Aww, poor Kagome! It must be so horrible for you!” she heard Connor say through the door of her dorm. She raised an eyebrow and asked Jamie to hold on a second before dropping the phone onto the blue cushion of the couch and getting up to open her door. She grasped the cold knob and turned, only to see Connor on the other side, inspecting a big package wrapped in brown paper.

“What’s that?” she asked and took a step closer. He shrugged and handed it to her.

“Dunno, was on your doorstep when I got here,” he replied and stepped into her door with ought a though to ask first. Kagome raised one eyebrow and inspected the package, shutting the door behind her with ought taking her eyes off of the cushy package in her palms. She looked at the return address. ‘Higurashi…. From mama?’ she stopped in her tracks as another thought went through her mind, ‘from…. InuYasha?’ she ran over to the phone on the couch and picked it up with one hand and put the receiver up to her ear, “Hey, Jamie, can I call you back later?” she threw the phone back onto the charger before the girl on the other line could respond.

She hesitated as she inspected the package, but soon enough tore open the paper to find that the gift was also wrapped in pink wrapping paper; from the looks of it, she knew that InuYasha had wrapped it, because she could see gold and blue fabric through the seams of the wrapping paper. She tore off the pink wrapping paper and gasped when gold and blue silk slid down her palms and onto the freshly vacuumed floor.

She grasped the silk before it could all fall from her hands and inspected it. It was not of her era, she could tell, because the material was not the cheap kind that you buy from stores now days. Her eyes were averted when she saw a folded piece of pink cardboard come sliding out from the middle of the fabric, and, growing up having to read the card before looking at the present, she laid out the fabric on her lap and grabbed the Hallmark card, along with another Hallmark card and a card that was not of her time, either; it was made of home-made paper. She looked at the first Hallmark card first.

It had pink and purple glitter on it and a red rose smack dab in the middle of the front of the card. She folded the card open and read the contents. It was all hand written,

“Happy Birthday, dear Kagome! 19 years old, wow! We miss you so much and wish that we could have you here with us. Maybe next time you come down we’ll have a belated birthday party!

Hope to see you soon!

Love,

Mama.”

Kagome smiled and fingered a necklace that was taped to the backside of the card. Under it said, “P.S. This goes with InuYasha’s gift. He picked it out. Happy Birthday again! Please call!”

It was a very beautiful necklace, with sterling silver beads on the string, and a heart in the middle of the necklace. It had three sakura blossoms engraved lightly into the heart to look like a background, and in the middle, in Kanji, said “Koishii”.

“Beloved…. InuYasha picked this out?” she said, tears forming in her eyes. She tore the tape off it, unclipped it, and re-clipped it around her neck. She grasped it in her thin fingers and closed her eyes, smiling.

“What is it?” she gasped and remembered that Connor was still there. She opened her eyes and found him three inches away from her face, looking at the necklace. “What does it mean?” he asked again.

“Koishii….and that means beloved, or wanted…. My boyfriend picked it out….” she answered, and he raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, that guy. The guy that thinks I railed you. Why doesn’t he actually come here, like a good boyfriend?” he asked. She frowned, angry that he would put InuYasha down like that.

“I would not like to see what InuYasha would be like in an airplane…. It might get scary. It’s all-right to me though, I’m just so happy they remembered -I didn’t even remember,” she said a little harshly. He sat back, and stood.

“All-right, I’ll leave you to your present opening then. See ya,” he shut the door behind him, and Kagome sighed, letting a tear she had been holding back slip down her face and she smiled. She picked up the other Hallmark card and opened it, 18,000 ¥ falling out (about $50), and she grabbed it in mid air with both hands, laying it down on the counter next to her. There was a simple, “Happy Birthday!” written in the middle of the page and, “Love, Souta” and “Love, Jii-chan” underneath it.

She set the card down onto the coffee table next to her and grabbed the last of the cards. It was simple, yet she still loved it; it was made of home-made paper and had a Sakura tree painted on the front. She opened it and gasped. Four dried Sakura blossoms fell onto her lap, and she marveled at how neat his writing was.

“Dear Kagome,

I’m not good at letters, to start off, so sorry. Happy birthday, I hope you like your present. I went to all the tailors I could find and this was the only one that was good enough. I hope it fits, I wasn’t sure what size you were, but your mother said that it should fit. Take a few pictures with it on so I can see it on you. I’m sure it will look just as beautiful on you as everything else does.

Hope you come home soon, everyone misses you -especially me.

Love,

InuYasha”

Throuout the letter there was scribble marks and smudges, but she still loved it more than anything. A few tear drops were added towards the end, but they weren’t from InuYasha.

Kagome wiped her eyes, and set the card onto the table along with the others, her fingers lingering for a second, before she stood and, checking to make sure the door was locked, stripped of her clothes. She pulled the silky garment over her shoulders. Fastening the obi around her middle, she strolled down the hallway into the bathroom and looked at herself in the full length mirror. She spun a few times, and smiled at herself, imagining what InuYasha would say once he saw it on her.

InuYasha. . .

When would she be able to see him again? Her smile faltered and she immediately ran from the bathroom back into the living room.

Picking up the phone, she quickly dialed the area code and number to her house. It rang once.

Twice.

Three times.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Higurashi shrine, for the Shrine times, dates, and special events, press one. For Mrs. Higurashi, Kagome Higurashi, or Souta Higurashi, press two, For-” beep was heard when Kagome pressed two, and another beep followed before she left her message, a little disgruntled because she had wanted to talk to one of them in person.

“Hi, mama and InuYasha, I just got my present, th-” a click was heard from the other line and next thing Kagome heard was, “Hey, sorry, your mom’s out right now, so I wasn’t sure if I should pick up,” from InuYasha’s voice. She smiled at the fact that he was at her house, he must be spending a lot of time there if he was there alone.

“Hey you! Thanks so so much for the kimono, its beautiful, and the necklace. I’m glad you picked up, I hate leaving messages,” she said, the smile she had left in the bathroom coming back to her face.

“Your welcome. I would much rather have been there to give it to you instead of just sending it in a brown bag, but your mother said that we shouldn’t “interrupt her studying just to give her a gift that we could just send to her”. Yeah, whatever. I wouldn’t have said two words to you if she didn’t want me to, but I just wanna be there with you. . .” he trailed off, leaving Kagome a little sad that her mother would say such things. InuYasha wouldn’t have been a burden at all; her studies couldn’t get any worse, if anything they would get better because the reason she was doing so bad was her lack of InuYasha.

“Well, I’m sure that mama wouldn’t stop you from coming down during spring vacation.”

“Yeah. I hope so,” the doubt in his voice was so evident that she pulled the phone away from her face and looked at it like it was crazy.

“InuYasha, are you sure there isn’t something your not telling me?” she asked skeptically. There was a pause.

Then, “Of course there isn’t, bitch. It just seems like that ain’t gonna be happening because you keep fucking up your grades,” he replied harshly.

Kagome gasped, he hadn’t talked to her like that since she left on the plane. Had she said something bad? Maybe he thought she was accusing him of lying to her. She winced, “It’s not my fault that I have bad grades, you know, its yours!” she yelled into the phone, saying exactly what she had not wanted to say.

InuYasha frowned on the other line, “Like hell it’s my fault! How could I be fucking up your grades?” he yelled back.

“Because I miss you!!!” she screamed, leaving a confused hanyou to listen to the long dial tone when the like went dead. He immediately turned around and smacked his head into the wall, slamming the phone back onto it’s hook. He really fucked up this time.