InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dead Famous ❯ 1992? ( Chapter 5 )

Dead Famous

Chapter 5

1992?

"Do you know what the most annoying question in the world is?" Miroku asked Kagome.

Sango hazarded a guess for her as she sipped her coffee from a distance. "Will you bear my child?"

Miroku gave her a disparaging look across the small security surveillance room. "I only ever asked you that once." He pointed out.

"That doesn't make it any less of a stupid question." Sango responded, dipping her cookie into her coffee to make it soggy. Kagome glanced between the two, realising that this was some sort of ongoing debate that she had yet to be let in on. She slid her gaze to the multiple CCTV monitors against the wall, all showing her pictures of what was going on around the mansion villa thing. On the third monitor she could see Kikyo talking with someone dressed in black in the middle of some random corridor she didn't recognise. On the middle monitor she could see the outdoor pool lit by a green night vision filter; someone, probably Inuyasha, was doing laps. A middle aged woman was cooking in the kitchens accompanied by several other chefs, but she seemed to be in charge. Kagome guessed that was the one everyone inventively called 'cook'.

"So!" Miroku stopped his casual bickering with Sango to turn back to her in his swivelling chair. He leant forward so his forearms rested on the desk between them. "Where was I?"

"At the most annoying question in the world." Kagome swivelled lightly left and right on her own chair.

"Oh yes. The most annoying question in the world is the first question that every person you meet from now on will ask you when they meet you." Miroku lectured, half watching the security monitors… or probably just the two cleaner girls that were comparing knicker colour in the sauna room. "And that question is… whoa… is that red lace?"

Sango's clipboard smacked him round the head before the actual girl marched over and switched the sauna room monitor off. "Get back on topic you stupid pervert…" With that she marched right back to her seat on the second desk in the room.

"Right…" Miroku rubbed his head as he tried to remember the media training he was giving. "Ok, the most overused question you will ever come across will be 'How do you feel about this and that?' It will vary slightly, but everyone will ask you how you feel."

"Doesn't seem that bad." Kagome shrugged.

"Then how do you feel about spending seven days with the world's hottest seventeen year old?" Miroku pinned her with the question.

Kagome stopped swinging in her chair as she struggled to find an answer. She knew exactly how she felt… but putting it into structured sentences was hard. She could think of a few words though… irritated, bored, homesick. "I feel… ok, I guess?"

"Not exactly an answer that will sit well I'm afraid." Miroku shook his head. "And they will ask it again and again and every time you answer you will have to make it sound like it is the first time you have ever heard the question."

Kagome sighed. "Is it really this dull answering questions?"

"It gets easier the longer you do it." He shrugged in response. "When different people ask the same questions you can just give the same answers as before, then you don't have to do any work at all at that point. Everyone will ask you your favourite colour, your favourite female idol and whatever. And… Sango, I really think we should turn that monitor back on - what if they decide to steal something?"

"Like what? Steam?" Sango stirred her coffee. "Relax Miroku, you only want to see if they compare breast size next."

Miroku coughed and turned back to Kagome to lecture her some more about smiling in public. "There are specialists out there who will analyse your smiles, really, they are that sad. Anyway, for that reason make sure you always smile with your eyes and not just your mouth…"

Kagome barely took in the words he was telling her as her attention wandering to the security monitors again, noting that Kikyo was now walking somewhere, passing through several different screens, and Inuyasha was getting out of the pool.

She let her eyes stay on him for a while as she watched him climbing up the slanted steps that led down into the pool. Fortunately he wasn't wearing speedos or Kagome probably would have laughed out loud and alerted Miroku to the fact that she wasn't listening at all anymore. He picked up a folded towel from a sun bed and bent double to cover his hair, straightening slowly as he began to rub the water out of his locks.

He wandered slowly over to one of the tables around the pool where his shirt had been abandoned. His hand reached out to it, but instead of picking up the shirt, he picked up a fist sized white box. Kagome narrowed her eyes slightly as she tried to see what it was, but with the bleached colours of the monitor she couldn't make out any details whatsoever.

But she recognised the way his hands moved around the box… the way he slid something out, put it to his lips, dumped it, and then picked up a small darker coloured object and brought that to his lips as well.

Kagome sat up. "Does Inuyasha smoke?"

Miroku stopped talking mid-flow, clearly confused at her sudden question and his mouth moved to form an inquiry. He quickly disregarded that as he realised she was staring at the CCTV monitor behind him. The media organiser turned quickly in his chair and jabbed the power button for the pool camera, losing the image of the pool side and leaving nothing more than a fading dot in the middle of the screen. He turned back to Kagome with a smile. "So remember, when you smile don't forget to think crows feet."

Kagome blinked at him before glancing at Sango who was watching Miroku carefully, as if observing him with curiosity. Kagome darted a look back at the blank screen behind Miroku's shoulder and frowned slightly, before deciding that she had better start listening to his teachings or risk missing something vital.

Sunday night seemed oddly quiet to Kagome. Unlike Saturday night, there was no banging on the ceiling above her and now that Kagome knew it was Inuyasha's room above hers, she wondered what he had been doing the previous night.

A rather irritating kind of restlessness fell over her and she tossed and turned on her oversized, overstuffed emperor sized bed. She twiddled her fingers restlessly, clenching and unclenching them in the cool satin and silk materials around her. But eventually she decided she couldn't take it anymore. She just couldn't sleep in that bed, it was just too foreign and different than her own bed at home at the Shrine. Her bed was warm and comfy with a little groove in middle from the imprint of her body that had been lying there every night for the last ten years. This bed was cold, and while comfy, it was detached and had no soul.

A bed needed a soul, Kagome decided as she slipped her feet onto the beige carpeted floor and pulled her fluffy dressing gown around her body before padding over to the large windows that stretched from ceiling to floor. Gingerly she took hold of the handle on the doors set into the windows and pushed it open.

The breeze was cool and gentle while smelling strongly of salt and perhaps a little bit of chlorine from the pool below. She stepped over to the stone wall that rounded her balcony and leaned over it to peer down at the undisturbed surface of the swimming pool. She gazed at it a moment before turning her eyes up and looking out over the stretch of beaches ahead.

But when the moon was barely a slither of white in the sky, it was hard to make out much beyond the pool and the cliff edge. The sea looked black and forbidding and it seemed to merge right with the black sky above it; Kagome couldn't make out where one ended and the other began.

It wasn't long before she got bored of watching blackness and so she turned her eyes upwards to the balcony above her, not that that gave her much to look at either. She wondered if Inuyasha was sleeping up there.

Now there was something to go home and tell her friends. She'd slept in the room just beneath the Inuyasha. But by the time she got back she'd be able to tell her friends much more… including the part where she had called the world's most famous superstar a dick… to his face.

Kagome laughed slightly and put her hand to her head. If someone had told her she was going to readily insult Inuyasha last week then she wouldn't have believed them. But now that she'd met him, she realised that he wasn't as perfect as everyone made him out to be. He was a jerk and a bully whose ego was so big it was bursting out of the seams. And he was a slut…

But perhaps Kagome had to admit that even if he hadn't been as famous as he was, he still would be a guy at the top of the pecking order who would have girls queuing up outside his house to go on dates. When Inuyasha entered the room, you knew about it. He had a presence that probably came with being famous for so long - he just oozed self-esteem and confidence. She'd noticed it the first time she'd laid eyes on him.

"Disgusting really…" Kagome said aloud, determined to stay true to her views on the pillock above her.

With a sigh she went back into her room and closed the glass doors after her. Now what? She still didn't feel tired - probably an effect of the last twenty four hours of fame academy that had been going on around her.

Then she remembered the piano in the classic room…

Without a second thought she left her bedroom and trotted down the corridor, taking the same path she had memorised with Sango that morning. She headed into the elevator and took it to the ground level before padding silently down into the very empty, quiet entrance hall, past the snoozing security guard, and headed straight for the large double doors of the 'classic' room.

They opened quietly enough and Kagome quickly slipped inside then closed them securely behind her. She was going to have to take Sango's word for it that this room was soundproof and so hoped that she wouldn't wake the sleeping guard out there.

*~*

Miroku and Sango were on the late night shift again, which wasn't exactly the high-light of their job… but at least they got to sleep in next morning.

"Go fish." Sango told Miroku as she eyed her own hand of cards sceptically.

"I'm tired of playing Go Fish." Miroku announced as he let his cards drop onto the table, ending the game whether Sango liked it or not. "Let's play strip poker. That's much more fun."

"Let's not." Sango sighed as she threw down her own cards and started picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. "God… I hate night shift…"

"Someone's got to keep an eye out for trouble." Miroku said dutifully as he turned back to the security monitors. A movement caught his eye. "Shit - what's that?"

Sango quickly turned to follow his gaze, hand already going to her intercom to call for security. But she relaxed at once when she saw what he had seen. "Oh… it's only Kagome."

Miroku relaxed a little. "She plays piano then?"

"Apparently." Sango tapped at the volume button on the monitor. "Do we have sound on this thing?"

"Nope."

"Remind me to ask Inuyasha to put a microphone in each room the next time we upgrade security." She sighed and sat back in her chair, watching the schoolgirl play silent music.

"He won't do that." Miroku leant back in his own chair to behind balancing a pencil under his nose… a difficult task to do while talking. "He hates security measures. He says it's worse than have fans crawling all over the place. Besides… it's not like we need high-tech equipment. Last time burglars tried to break in and got past security, it was Inuyasha who apprehended them before they got anywhere."

"Mm. I suppose." Sango mumbled as she rested her chin on an upturned palm. She watched Miroku and his balancing act for a moment before deciding to pursue a question that had been on her mind. "You didn't answer Kagome's question during media training." She commented.

"What question?" he carried on balancing.

"About Inuyasha smoking."

He sighed as he sat up again and looked at her. "Look, I know that she's an exception in this case seeing as how we're supposed to let her get all close and comfortable with us in the villa, but there are some things that she can't go spreading around when she settles back into her normal life."

"Even about Inuyasha smoking?"

"He needs to maintain that clean-cut image." Miroku sighed.

Sango just frowned at him. "Make him stop if it's going to tarnish his image." She felt she pointed out the obvious.

"I've tried!" Miroku gave the ceiling a despairing look. "Kikyo's tried but he never listens to the voice of reason."

They lapsed into a comfortable quiet, mulling over their thoughts and disgruntlement about the superstar that employed them.

"Which means," Miroku said slowly, "no matter what the circumstances, we keep certain… things from little Kagome. Including that…" he looked about him suspiciously before lowering his voice. "that 1992 incident."

Sango stiffened. "Oh."

"What 'oh'?" he frowned at her slightly.

She darted a worried gaze to his. "Um… I may have accidentally… mentioned the incident to Kagome."

If Inuyasha learnt that, Sango would loose her head. Miroku stared at her intently. "How much did you tell her?"

"Oh - nothing more than just mentioned it. I didn't tell her what happened or anything." Sango darted a look at the Tv monitor behind her, checking that Kagome was still there. "I mean… she doesn't know anything beyond the fact that something happened in that year…"

"Good." Miroku nodded, but seemed to be unsettled. "Let's hope that doesn't arouse her interest anymore than it has done… but I'm afraid that if she asks us about it again… we can't act like we're hiding anything or that will make her suspicious."

"So what, we just tell her?" Sango rapped her nails anxiously against the desk. "We can't tell her! You just said-"

"I know but it may harm us more if we don't, do you see my point?"

"Vaguely." She ran a hand trough her high ponytail and brought it to lie on her shoulder, playing with the tips as she stared at the desk between them. "Oh great Miroku… now I'm worried about her…"

"Don't worry," he patted her hand. "Besides… I'm always here to take comfort in."

Sango pulled her hand away from his sharply and glared at him. "Thanks but no thanks."

~*~

"Hey Pimp!"

"Yes, Candy?"

"I'm Kagome!"

"And I'm Inuyasha."

Glad we have that sorted, Kagome thought tersely as she approached the superstar where he was lounging on a sun bed beside the pool. Now this was the image Kagome had often pictured when thinking of a spoilt, overrated star who had as much room in his wallet as he had brains… which was to say very little. He had dark sunglasses shielding his eyes from the sun's glare on, along with a tall cold beverage in his hand that Kagome suspected was some expensive Italian brand.

"What do you want, brat?" he asked without twitching a muscle to acknowledge her arrival.

"Brat?" she echoed. "You're barely older than I am."

"Well I was going to call you bitch but you'd probably puff up like an angry toad who's been stepped on…" he turned his head slightly towards her. "You wouldn't happen to have the time would you?"

Kagome sighed slowly, desperately trying to control her annoyance with him. "It's just gone one in the afternoon." She answered slowly.

"Monday, right?"

"Yes."

"Cool…"

"Now you answer my question."

"Sure thing, Kurami," he said as he began to sit up, setting his drink on a small table beside the sun bed. "But while you do that, honey, could you rub some lotion onto my shoulders, I think I feel them burning."

"If this is another attempt to 'woo' me then you can go-"

"Just do it."

Strangely, Kagome felt almost compelled to obey him for his tone of voice alone. After all he'd been bossing people around for the better part of his life - he knew how to boss. She resisted it for a moment before deciding he would only be difficult with her if she didn't at least try to butter to guy up. Rolling her eyes discreetly she sat down with a thump behind him and grabbed the nearby bottle of lotion in one hand and dolloped a nice big portion of the bottle into her hand. With that done she threw the bottle over her shoulder, pushed his overly manicured and pampered hair out of the way to slap the cool gel bang onto his shoulders.

"What the - how much are you using?!" he jumped away, startled.

"What?" she asked, peering at him innocently with her hands caked in white sun cream and held up in a surrendering gesture. "I'm just being thorough."

"Alright… just don't get any on my hair." He clung onto his snowy tresses protectively as she mouthed an insult at him and got back to work on his back.

"You know…" she started slowly. "Sango said something funny to me yesterday… it got me wondering…"

"Mm hm." He hummed. "Bit lower."

Kagome clenched her teeth and glowered off at the sculptured bushes that edged the stairway down from the villa to the pool. "She was telling me all about you. Probably trying to get me to like you. She said something about an incident that happened in 1992…" she trailed off slightly when she noticed a slight tensing in the muscles of his back. If she hadn't been in contact with him she wouldn't have noticed.

"Mm hm." He hummed, giving nothing away.

"And I was wondering… what happened that year? Sango didn't really elaborate." Kagome frowned slightly as he refused to let his muscles relax, but for all appearances seemed as casual and uninterested as before in his manner. "I was just curious and-"

She didn't get a chance to go on when Inuyasha suddenly spun around, grabbed both her wrists in his hands and pushed her back down onto the sun bed. If Kagome hadn't already been prepared for anything this guy could throw at her from their first encounter in the limo, she would have been too shocked to react successfully. But luckily her lightning-fast response time saved her from that certain kiss of death.

"GET OFF YOU-" she twisted mightily with a scream, wrenching both hands free and pushed angrily at his face. "-ROTTEN SCUM!"

Either she'd caught him off guard or he hadn't been too bothered about her resisting, but she managed to push him back far enough to scramble off the sun bed. She whirled on him angrily, but kept herself at a safe distance. Her glare was as sharp as a razor edged blade as she watched him wiping at the sun cream with distaste that she'd spread on his face. "You…" she began in low, dangerous voice.

Then she really let him have it.

~*~

"Um… am I fired?"

The cleaner girl that Kikyo was addressing in her office looked positively petrified at being asked to see her. Kikyo merely leaned back in her cushy office chair and clasped her fingers together in a pose very reminiscent of the late Mr Burns. Usually it was hard choosing which employee to fire when the villa got too overcrowded, but this time it was easy… after all this was the current on-the-side girlfriend of his almighty.

"Of course not, Rena." Kikyo smiled tightly. "I enjoy e-mail jokes as much as the next person. In fact I'm still laughing about your 'top ten signs that Inuyasha's agent is a frigid cow'."

"Oh my god… you're sacking me," the girl looked pale and drained.

"No, don't be ridiculous. I'm not petty." Not much anyway, Kikyo thought as she tapped her fingers together slightly. "We're just… making some changes to the requirements of the job."

"Oh…"

"From now on cleaner girls will need a PhD to continue working here." Kikyo went back to shuffling her papers. "Feel free to apply here for a job when you get one."

"Well that's a relief!" the cleaner girl put a hand to her chest, looking happy. "Thank god I've got a PhD!"

Kikyo's smile slipped slightly and she turned hard eyes on the girl. "Excuse me?"

"Only in cleaning - didn't take me long." Chirped the cleaner.

"Well… ok…" Kikyo was not about to be outdone by a cleaner. "And… you'll also need at least a bronze Olympic medal to-"

"Silver. Junior gymnastics 1996." The girl replied smartly.

Unbelievable. She knew that only the best of the best worked here under Inuyasha, but this was unreal. "Well…" she twiddled a pen between her fingers rapidly. "Personally, I don't think you're fitting in. So you're fired. Goodbye." And don't let the door hit you on the way out, she mentally added as she watched the girl stagger out of the room in bewilderment.

Feeling satisfied that she'd put in a good morning's work, Kikyo went off in search of Inuyasha, knowing that she'd always find him by the pool side at that time of day. He liked to loaf off his lunch in the sun… more like a cat than a dog.

As she neared the french doors that opened out onto the pool she slowed slightly. A rather hoarse voice yelling from outside could be heard drifting up from the pool area. Kikyo stopped to listen.

"-and I will not be seduced by the fifteen watt personality power of a swaggering heap of over-active testosterone glands and churlish masculinity courtesy of Neanderthal-induced charms with beer-deadened brain cells you dim-witted pompadour and inept social moron!!!"

Well… that girl certainly had her way with words. Kikyo eagerly moved on towards the source, interested to find out which maid or staff-member was resilient to the 'Neanderthal-induced charms'. She'd just reached the doorway when a rather red-faced Kagome shot through them, barged past her and ran as though for dear life away down the corridor.

Kikyo followed her progress for a moment before turning slowly to look down at the pool. Inuyasha was still sitting on his sun-bed, rubbing cream on his face as if nothing had happened. But it didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened.

Arching an eyebrow she descended down the stairs. Inuyasha looked up as she approached, looking innocently expectant. But as soon as she was within reach she grabbed one of his ears, twisted it and hauled him to his feet.

"Ow - ow - ow - ow - get off!" he yelped as she dragged him towards the pool. "Kikyo - I mean it - get off me!"

She did get off. And as soon as she let go of his ear she shoved him in the chest and sent him plunging into the water. Kikyo waited patiently for him to surface again as she folded her arms and sighed deeply.

Inuyasha broke the surface with a gasp. "What the hell was that for?!"

"I warned you." She said in an even, authoritative voice. "I warned you not to touch her - but what do you do?"

"I was only messing…" I grumbled, ducking down in the water slightly like a sullen child.

That was all he was really, Kikyo thought as she narrowed her eyes. Nothing but a sullen, spoilt child. "She didn't seem to think it was funny. You'll be lucky if we don't get any charges of molesting."

He visibly clenched his jaw. "Sango told her about what happened in 1992."

Kikyo regarded him through hooded eyes. "Did she now." She cocked her head. "How much does the girl know?"

"Only that something happened." He treaded water softly as he watched her intently.

Kikyo only gave a faint sigh. "We might as well tell her now that she's caught wind…"

"No!" Inuyasha jerked so suddenly that he sank a few inches before he regained his balance. "We don't tell her - if we do then she'll go and tell everyone else. She's just a kid, we can't trust this kind of thing to her."

"But now she won't stop asking." Kikyo pointed out.

"I managed to make her think about something else." Inuyasha shot back craftily.

Ah… quite a clever ploy actually. But it was still wrong of him to try and pull that kind of thing. "You can't do that every time she asks."

"Oh, she wanted me to." He said knowingly. "You could see it in her eyes that she was struggling to keep her hands off me - it was only because she heard you coming that she ran off like that."

Somehow Kikyo doubted that. "You're a tosser, Inuyasha. I don't know why I work for you." She picked up his pile of clothes and dry towels before walking to the pool edge and holding them out precariously above the water.

"Don't you dare - don't you dare-" she dropped them. "Ooh… you're such a bitch! I should just fire you!"

"Then by all means…?" she spread her arms invitingly. "Go ahead and fire me."

He narrowed his eyes as he hesitated to fulfil his threat. "I'll give you one more chance…"

"Hm." Kikyo smiled slightly before turning on her heel and heading back up the stairs. "And don't forget, you have a fight coming up on Wednesday so make sure you keep in top form. It's against Kouga."

"Now you tell me…" Inuyasha grumbled as he watched her walk back inside before ducking completely under water again to try and clear his head.

~*~

"I think he really upset her this time…" Sango's voice said.

Miroku responded, "Maybe she's tired, I mean, I would be if I stayed up all night pacing around whatnot."

"Well… I'll tell cook to leave some food out in case she gets hungry and comes down."

"Inuyasha will eat it."

"Then I'll label it 'Kagome's'."

"He doesn't remember names - he'll think it's fair game."

"Urgh… I don't like her skipping dinner… but…"

The voices of the pair faded away until Kagome was alone again in her quiet bedroom. It was still fairly light outside, but she still felt wiped out and tired. Hunger was the last thing on her mind while that idiot was weighing heavily down on her.

"I should call Mom…" she muttered half-heartedly to her empty room. Perhaps she should call her friends and shatter all their dreams by telling them all about Inuyasha's bad attitude. No… they'd probably think he was extra cool for having an attitude anyway…

She still remembered what her mother had said from the previous night. She'd told Kagome to change him. "Hah!" Kagome laughed without humour. Inuyasha was an incurable prima donna… no way would someone like him change his ways within the space of a week, and Kagome was the last person on earth who'd be able to preach him.

Though… Kagome frowned deeply as she pondered… she did wonder what kind of person Inuyasha would have been if fame hadn't been shoved in his mouth at the tender age of two minutes old. He was difficult, surly and expected everyone to bend over backwards for him because that's all people had done for him over the past seventeen years most likely.

Perhaps Kagome was presenting herself as a challenge? She liked the sound of that… but then again, she had already heard that Kikyo was already enough of a challenge for the superstar.

What could I possibly do that he's never seen before? Other than scream abuse at him and try and open his eyes to how abnormal his behaviour was?… not much… There's no way I can change him…

It was a few hours later when Kagome roused enough to open her eyes to glance blearily out at the black outdoors through her windows… she'd forgotten to close the curtains. But before she could focus herself enough, a dark shape flitted down from the balcony above hers, landed on her stone wall, before dropping down out of sight.

Kagome could have sworn it was Inuyasha… but Inuyasha didn't have black hair did he? Kagome dismissed her thoughts and settled back down to sleep. Perhaps all white hair looked black when there was no moon overhead to cast light.

AN: TTFN ^_^