InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dogs in Tokyo ❯ Chapter 18 ( Chapter 18 )

Chapter 18

Houjou slowed his bike, fending it off of the curb with one foot. Having the day unexpectedly free from classes had left him at a loose end. After finishing any studying he could find to do at the local library he had gone for a bike ride and found himself outside the traditional apothecary store that fronted the main street of the district.

He entered the shop, the sweetly sharp smell of dried roots and herbs surrounding him in their familiar aroma. Most were in drawers behind the long counter that took up one side of the store but there was a section in the back where there were pre-packaged teas and roots in bins. This was where he was most fond of nosing into. Houjou's real ambition was to be a pharmacist for a major drug company, but he had a wide romantic streak in him that was called to by these old remedies and amulets.

Much to his satisfaction, he saw a new shipment had come in from Mainland China. It was still unsorted, sitting in a jumble on the floor in its open box. There was no telling what was in it.

"Looking for anything special today, Houjou-Kun?" The apothecary and he were old friends and he turned his head over his shoulder to answer readily, "No, just looking. What's in this new shipment?"

"Can't really say. Seems to have been shipped partly by mistake."

Houjou turned around and made a sound of interest.

"Part of what's in there is what's on my manifest but there's a whole pile of stuff that looks like it belongs to some Taoist priest in Hong Kong. Magic supplies and anti-daemon amulets aren't really what I ordered."

Houjou was already riffling through the stuff in the box. "Really? Wow!" I see what you mean." He held up a couple of circular amulets, which held chunks of dried roots and shiny stones in a web of copper wires. "Can I buy these off you anyway? With all these rumours of daemons wandering the streets it seems to make sense."

The apothecary brightened up. "You want to buy them? Say, maybe you're right and I should make a window display of them with a big sign. It's like pulling teeth to get these shippers to take a return on anything and if I can just break even, then…"

Houjou left, satisfied with his purchases, and mounted his bike to pedal up the gruelling slope of rising road that took him towards the Higurashi shrine. He didn't really have any distinct purpose in going there beyond a nebulous feeling that if he could only talk to Kagome, somehow give her the right gifts then things would start looking up for him.

It was as he approached the shrine that he realized how few cars had passed him on the road. This street was not a particularly busy one anyway, but normally he would have expected to be overtaken and passed by six or seven cars at least. Instead things had an eerie silence that allowed him to hear the crickets hidden in the grass behind the walls fronting the road and the faint echoes of some nearly hysterical radio announcer off in the distance.

Approaching him down the street was an apparition. He stopped the bike and wiped the sweat from his eyes. He was out of breath from the long haul up and felt a little dizzy so he shook his head and squinted to look again.

O.K., not an apparition, but a woman walking alone towards him swathed in some sort of red scarf, which clung to her neck and arms in dappled stripes. He could see her black shirt and clothes through it and the dyed purple streaks though her hair. That detail niggled at his mind a little bit but his attention was drawn by what she held before her in her hands.

It was a staff of sorts, with a pair Bunraku puppet heads at the top. The woman stopped a short distance away and turned it in her fingers so that the female puppet head was facing him. It was a beautiful face and seemed to smile at him, lips curving in the shadow of cheeks, eyes dropped modestly.

He frowned in confusion, trying to wrench his eyes away from the staff and focus on the woman who held it. He smiled quickly, relieved for some obscure reason, and spoke first. "Why, hello! I didn't expect to meet you here." He hesitated a moment as she frowned at him thoughtfully. "You remember," he urged, "We met in Yomiuriland the other night. We shared a car in the haunted house…" He trailed off as he realized that what he had thought was a red gauze scarf was not any such thing.

~*~

Meanwhile, back at the shrine, the interview with Jaken was not going particularly well.

Both Kagome and Inuyasha would have done better to take themselves off to do their own business while Higurashi-San and Souta gently pumped him dry of information but that did not fit at all with their notions interrogation and, as a result, Jaken clammed up. He would only mutter imprecations while casting casting dirty looks from under his goggling lids at them.

Higurashi-San had decided that she had to intervene to put a stop to the acrimonious hounding that was going on when Jaken suddenly sat up, going as pale as a creature with a dark green complexion possibly could. "It's here." he squawked distractedly, "It's here and we didn't even notice." With a scramble he hopped down from the kitchen chair to race down the hall to the front door.

Inuyasha and Kagome were barely an instant behind him and Jaken found himself swept up to ride on Inuyasha's back as they pounded for the head of the shrine steps. There was a brief crackle of greenish light and the threads of cold fire up the edges of the shrine's metal banisters as they arrived.

Inuyasha leaped ahead to land at the foot of the shrine steps with Jaken shrieking in his ear and scrabbling at his forehead for purchase. "Gods! Cut that out can't you?! I hate having my eyes clawed out." Jaken found himself dumped on his feet on the pavement by the scruff of his neck and an irate hanyou above him.

The jaki from the staff was there but it was weak and already dissipating. The street was empty except for a ten-speed bike lying on its side on the road, wheels spinning in lazy circles. Kagome clattered down the steps and stop with a dismayed gasp. "Houjou-Kun!"

Jaken felt energized. "Can you smell them, boy? The staff is seriously depleted and they cannot have gone far from here. It needs to be fed again and fed well for her to really travel with a passenger."

Inuyasha snarled at him impatiently and said, "There's no trail for me to follow. How do you expect me to track them?" He gave an elaborate, sarcastic, sniff and paused. "I do smell a bunch of human blood though." He crouched slightly, presenting his back to his companions.

"Houjou-Kun?" Kagome inquired worriedly as she climbed on pushing Jaken in front of her. "That's his bike, I know. He just got it new with his own money."

"Feh, Idiot, how should I know? You think I care about that fool's blood smell?" He didn't waste any time though, for all his complaints, in racing off in the gathering dusk towards the distant stench of blood.

~*~

Not very many minutes later, Jijii-Chan stepped out of the shrine ticket office, locking it behind him. He was mildly surprised to find a new ten-speed bicycle lying half across the curb like that but righting it and wheeling it to rest against the side of the building was no real problem. The owner would find it safe enough later. This was such a quiet street.

He toed down the kickstand with a self-satisfied grunt and set off for his appointment at the Silver Rain Pachinko Parlour. Junkuryo had called him earlier in the day with the news that another machine was on the verge of paying off. It was just a matter of playing the balls often enough on that unit to meet its quota.

Such a nice, quiet street; why, one could even hear the crickets.

~*~

It was twenty minutes after that when Sesshoumaru's black Bentley limousine drove up the small side street to the back of the shrine and parked behind the tiny Nissan that was the Higurashi family car. It was currently up on blocks having fallen victim to Souta's automotive class. He was in the process of "tuning it up"' much to Higurashi-San's dismay and inconvenience.

Higurashi-San herself was seated at the kitchen table with a pile of thick rice paper using a rubber stamp that she had commissioned off of a sample of Inuyasha's simply beautiful calligraphy that he had traded her in exchange for making the mesh bag. She knew the hanyou had no patience for addressing envelopes but he had been willing enough to draw the header for the wedding announcement for her and she had wasted no time in having a stamp of it made along with one of his signature.

She carefully pressed down on the large stamp and waited an instant before rolling it off of the slightly sticky page. 'There, another beautiful impression. Only a couple dozen more to go.' The quiet purr of a car pulling into her tiny driveway caused her to lift her head and rise to go to the kitchen door.

To say that she was startled by the appearance of the car's occupant would be severe understatement. Sesshoumaru was attired that day in a dove grey suit that only served to set off the blushing pink of the natural pearl that served as a closure to his white, collarless shirt. His hair was swept back in a tidy, low, ponytail and his face behind his sunglasses remained impassive.

Intuition told Higurashi-San who this was and she stood on the step and bowed quickly in greeting as she spoke. "Nishigawa-Sama, I presume. Please enter my humble house. I have long wished to meet the older brother of Inuyasha."

Sesshoumaru hesitated for an instant before returning the bow stiffly. "You are Higurashi-San of Higurashi Shrine? I believe we are associated through your daughter, Kagome."

She dipped her head in assent and stepped aside, waving him into her kitchen. "Please come on. Ignore the mess, Kagome and Inuyasha are off with the little toad-man and may not be back until late. I have been stamping wedding invitations and feeling quite sorry I couldn't contact you. Please accept an invitation now."

Sesshoumaru found himself holding an invitation surmounted by all the glory of a formal kanji announcement done, if his memory did not fail him, in Inuyasha's own rather dashy calligraphy. He studied it gravely as he toyed with the idea of simply balling it up in his fist and melting it with his own acid. He sighed and drew his eyes up from the page to meet Higurashi-San's expectant smile. Her resemblance to her daughter at the moment was strong and carried much of the same pull that had dragged Inuyasha straight into falling so hard and fast in love with Kagome.

He found himself speaking before he had intended and listened in dismay as he heard his own voice accepting the invitation and offering his services in anything she might need. 'Where on earth had that come from?' He thought desperately as his unruly mouth opened and spoke again. "I see that your car is currently not in service. May I offer you the use of mine?"

"I gratefully accept, I really need to visit a couple of shops in the Ginza this evening but I was dreading having to carry all those bags myself." was Higurashi-San's prompt and unexpected reply.

Higurashi-San beamed cannily at him and called for Souta to meet his brother-by-marriage. Souta had been listening in and had no compunction about putting down the video-game controller to meet this new relative and see his astounding car. She moved quickly, putting away the printing supplies and gathering up her purse and coat after dashing off a note and placing it on the refrigerator with a magnet.

She sighed happily as she was conducted to the limo. Such nice boys at bottom.; they both presented a distant face to the world but were always ready to bend over backwards if just handled correctly. She shushed Souta once she was seated. The electronic controls in the armrest of the seat appeared to have excited him and he was pushing buttons in rapid succession.

Sesshoumaru seated himself in the seat facing Kagome's mother and considered the situation. It was perfect, actually. Inuyasha would be compelled to meet with him and tender over the staff in exchange for the safe return of the human miko's relatives. He studied the pair covertly as they watched the passing scene outside their windows with happy expressions. The inconvenience was a small price to pay in his estimation for return of his power over world gates. He winced a bit as the communicating window behind the driver descended for the fifth time in as many minutes.

~*~

All of which compounded to leave the Higurashi Shrine standing empty in the gathering fall dusk. Empty but for the adipose form of Buyo the cat, which was jammed in the amazingly small circumference of the bathroom sink, sound asleep.

~*~

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