InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dogs in Tokyo ❯ Chapter 22 ( Chapter 22 )

Chapter 22

Kagome opened the side door and turned on the lights. The yellow room lit up with a cheery glow, showing the kitchen table filled with neat stacks of paper and Mama's inking set, a few brushes and an ink stone sat off to one side. Which probably explained why Kagome's fingers had smuts of ink on them from the doorknob. She glanced over at the sink but it was half-full of dishes so she stepped into the darkened bathroom to rinse her hands.

Inuyasha remained outside of the house in the darkness of the surrounding yard. He found himself looking around, nostrils aquiver. There was something…not…right…

A confused crash and the infuriated yowl of a cat brought him inside to be confronted by the sight of a sopping Buyo standing in the center of the kitchen table and dripping all over the papers scattered there.

Kagome stepped into the kitchen holding a towel and crying out, "You're a bad cat, Buyo! Get off of there!"

Buyo scrambled in a shower of damp paper to land with a wet plop on the floor and Kagome dove to catch him with the towel. She spoke over wheezing cat complaints as she dried the animal off. "He was sleeping in the bathroom sink of all places. I didn't even see him until I turned the water on and he pitched a fit. How did he ever fit in it?" She paused at the lack of response and looked around. " Inuyasha? Aren't you even listening?"

He wasn't. He was circling the kitchen in a suspicious manner, apparently trying to catch some elusive scent. Kagome sank back on her heels staring at him as he dropped to a crouch and started sniffing the floor. Buyo dragged himself out of her slack hold and moved under the kitchen table to start a protracted bath.

A low growl from Inuyasha cut across Buyo's self-involved mutterings and the cat stopped, one leg extended up over its head, to watch Inuyasha slowly rise and lean over the scattered, water-stained, contents of the kitchen table.

"Inuyasha, what is it?"

"Sesshoumaru--" was the snarled reply.

Kagome stood up and looked about the kitchen a little frantically. Everything seemed undisturbed except for the mess on the table. Finally, she spotted the note on the front of the fridge and pulled it off of its clip with trembling fingers. "She's gone with him," she forced out. "This says they went shopping." Kagome rubbed a hand across her eyes. "My mother and Sesshoumaru went shopping?"

~*~

Higurashi-San sighed in repletion as she returned her chopsticks to their porcelain rest and surveyed her place setting. It had a full compliment of western-style flatware of which she had dared to use only two pieces, a knife and a fork. The rest of the array was bewildering to say the least and spying on other diners had not helped her as she did not want to get caught staring.

Not that she could prevent her eyes from roving the room. This was Maxim's de Paris situated on the lowest floor of the Ginza Sony building and largely considered to be the best French restaurant in Tokyo. A string quartet played softly in the background, seemingly absorbed in making beautiful music and paying no attention to the chattering diners and discreet waiters. The art nouveau mirrors on the walls reflected back the mellow lighting of the amazing stained glass ceiling.

A flicker of movement at her elbow alerted her to the presence of the waiter as he deftly removed her entrée and replaced with something in a tall glass. She was pleased to see a long handled spoon provided with it. "Parfait au coco á la nougatine crustilles d'ananas." Murmured the waiter and whisked around the table to reverently serve Sesshoumaru.

"Um, excuse me," Higurashi-San spoke up, "is my son behaving himself?"

Sesshoumaru looked faintly amused as he turned his head to regard the waiter.

The waiter paused, the tray of finished dishes deftly poised over his shoulder on the fingertips of one hand. "He is a very well-behaved guest Madame. There has no evidence of distress from the chef."

"We must not distress the chef?" Now Sesshoumaru actually sounded amused.

The waiter turned and bowed slightly, "Indeed, non, monsieur that would be very unfortunate. But tonight it is Chef Philippe Taquet running the kitchens and he is a man of sanguine temperament. If it had been chef Anton de Lapparent we may have had some trouble. He is less flexible about situations such as children in the kitchens."

"Well, let us be grateful chef Anton de Lapparent is off tonight." Sesshoumaru said sardonically and turned to Higurashi-San as the waiter shimmered off towards the kitchens. "There, you see? Nothing to worry about."

"Yes, I suppose you were right." She smiled at him and took a taste of the parfait. "I just had never thought of sending the children off to play in the kitchens as a viable option when they got bored at a restaurant. How clever you are to be sure."

Sesshoumaru picked up his demitasse cup and sipped it delicately.

~*~

Souta was in Heaven. Everything he did was really useful and not really too hard even though much of it was run by huge bizarre machines and seemed to include a lot of shouting. Washing vegetables was nice for instance.

He had lasted at the table approximately twenty minutes. Part of that was due to the fact that there were no familiar foods on the menu. He had made it through what seemed to be a fishcake salad but, after that, he just wasn't hungry. After the third sigh and picking up his flatware to rearrange it into families he had drawn an icy glance from Sesshoumaru-Sama.

Now, he knew making families of the table utensils was childish, but the blunt little knife at the top edge of his plate had seemed lost. Maybe threatened by the perfidious fork clan. So he had sent the sharp and serrated father knife out to find the child lost on the waste of the snowy tablecloth along with the father's great friend, the knife with a serrated edge but twin-pronged end (which made it a hanyou and so, in love with the spoon daughter). While the spoon women of the family huddled together for safety the father and his friend had set out in a slide along the tablecloth.

"Clink!" The hanyou knife had knocked into the base of one of the stemware glasses as he slid in his usual adventurous way amid the perilous forest of crystal.

"Souta," came the deep voice of Inuyasha's older brother. "Are you finding it difficult to keep still?"

Souta had gulped and raised his eyes to meet the cool gaze of this new and disturbing relative. The eyes were very like Inuyasha's he decided. Not just in appearance either. He had encountered just such a look from Inuyasha when the hanyou was thinking seriously about something and was caught off-guard for once by the non-threatening Souta. Clear-eyed and abstracted, a portion of attention had nevertheless been directed at him. Somewhat taken aback by this sudden familiarity Souta answered in all honesty. "Yes, I spent the whole afternoon eating snacks and I just can't eat anymore. Sorry."

Mama broke in in soft tones. "Why, Souta-Chan, that's a shame. It's not often you'll be in such a place as this. Just sitting here and not eating wouldn't be right." She bit her lips and hesitated, clearly embarrassed and disappointed. "I suppose we should go if you can't eat."

Souta had squirmed miserably and had been on the verge of telling his mother that he would sit still and touch nothing and enjoy it to remember forever when Sesshoumaru said "Nonsense. The boy will never forget this restaurant." And called over the maitre'd.

So much then, for Souta's presence at the table.

Instead, he was currently pressing a toggle switch that cranked a bin of potatoes and sent the peels flying in a sluice of water out the bottom. It roared like a giant blender mixing a load of duckpin bowling balls and vibrated excitingly. Souta grinned as he tugged the trolley with the deep bowl set into the center over to it.

"Souta-Chan," the voice of Hajime-San could barely be heard over the machine. "You're wanted topside."

"Oh." That probably meant it was time to go. Souta looked about the bustling prep room in dismay. "Take over for me, Hajime-San?"

Hajime grinned down at the boy, "Sure thing. Say, you're a good worker. Come back again, hear?"

Souta waved in acknowledgement and scampered off, dodging around the end of the stock rows and past the prep cooks, each rapidly slashing up selections of vegetables and putting the results in the small placement cups that would be brought up on trays to the main kitchen. One of the cooks looked up and gave a shout as he passed.

"Hey, kid, bring this with you!"

Souta stopped, balancing on one leg. The cook stepped over to him carrying one of the small placement trays with two bowls on it. Souta took it and looked down in puzzlement. One bowl contained very slender stalks of asparagus, the other, a tiny pile of what looked like black wood shavings.

"Take this to the master chef and hurry. Sliced truffles and baby asparagus do not keep!"

"Who's the master chef?" Souta called over his shoulder as he sped off up the stairs.

"The man with the tallest hat! What a question!" Followed a chorus of voices.

"Tallest hat. Tallest hat." Souta muttered to himself as he wove his way among the assorted workstations. He gripped the edges of the tray anxiously as he stared about but hanging pots and gouts of steam kept getting in the way. Every one up here had on a tall white hat of some sort. Something solid bumped against his back and sent him forward a few steps in a scramble to preserve the contents of his tray.

"Stay out of the line of traffic kid!" shouted the guy who was pushing a trolley of smoking haunches of beef towards a table where a man stood waiting, knives in hand.

"Sorry!" Souta squawked jerking out a bow. "Please, who's got the tallest hat?"

The man with the knives glanced at his tray and pointed forward with one of his gleaming blades. "Get it up front boy. You'll know the tallest hat when you see it. Go straight up to him, don't speak and place your tray about 20 centimeters from his left hand and then step back out of the way. And move it! I think he's assembling the dish now."

Souta trotted forward more surely now that he had a definite purpose and, stepping around a hooded broiler found himself at the front line. There, surrounded by a hum of quiet activity amidst all this noise was the cynosure of the kitchen, the head chef (or, as Souta would put it, the man with the tallest hat). He stood at a station on the line with pots before him on a set of flaming burners straining something through a conical bag into a small fry pan. A blue neckerchief adorned his back and his hat was indeed tall; a pleated, starched, linen confection that stood a good 46 centimeters above the wearer's head.

Souta advanced quickly and placed his tray where he had been told. Within moments the head chef's left hand left the handle of the fry pan and reached blindly to grasp the small bowl of asparagus tips. They were tossed into the pan with a light sizzle and deftly tossed for a few moments. As they were tossed the left hand reached as blindly as before to bring down an oval plate from the warm rack above and the contents of the pan were gently flipped onto it in an impossibly neat-looking pile. Again a reach and that hand dug into the bowl of sliced black truffle to sprinkle the aromatic fungus over the dish. A stroup of saffron hued sauce, two stems of chive and narcissus flower picked from a waiting bowl and the dish was done.

With a tap of the bell and a bellows of "Ceci est fini. Prochain ordre svp!" the great man turned and regarded Souta.

"And so, this is my baby-sitting charge?" he rumbled in some rather ersatz Japanese. Souta just gaped at him. The front of his white coat was decorated with pins and a golden medal was visible just under the knot at his neck. He was thin with a face so far removed from that of a regular Japanese that Souta would have swallowed the information that he was from a different planet entirely without much of a blink.

"I trust he has been no trouble."

Sesshoumaru spoke from behind Souta so suddenly that the poor boy jumped like an electrocuted frog and came perilously close to upsetting a rack of cooking utensils. He grabbed desperately onto the rack to steady both it and himself and missed some of what was being said because of the loud clatter caused by the swaying implements. When he could pay attention again he found the conversation was already over and stiff bows were being exchanged.

Souta hurriedly bowed too as an envelope changed hands and turned to follow Sesshoumaru out of the kitchens. "Boy, here." A hand was in front of his face holding a thousand yen note. "First professional money, Come back in a few years and we may have a place for you." Souta flushed red and took the note with a trembling hand. He risked a shy glance up at the head chef and found himself backing out of the kitchen in a flurry of bows as Sesshoumaru paused for an instant in the doorway and looked back.

"Thank you sir, I will not forget!" Souta clutched his pay to his chest and scurried to the door and out, heart pounding and a light ringing in his ears. He saw his mother standing at the door of the restaurant through a happy haze and got into the back of the wonderful car to ride in it and answer his mother at random as he gazed at the crispy thousand-yen note that he had earned all for himself.

It wasn't until the car slowed at a gate with a guard in a booth outside of a very tall and elegant -looking apartment building that he realized they had not gone home. "Mama?" he inquired, turning his head to look around at what little he could see in the gloom.

"This is where Sesshoumaru-Sama lives. He says that this is probably the best way of getting his brother Inuyasha over for a visit."

Souta scrunched up his brows in puzzlement as they swung into the underground parking garage. 'Why not just come over for a visit during the day?' He wondered as the darkness swallowed them up.

~*~

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