InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dogs in Tokyo ❯ Chapter 28 ( Chapter 28 )

Chapter 28

The housekeepers let themselves into the apartment using the pass key. The place was quiet but they had no reason to believe that their employer had left the building that day so they separated do their work In silence. One went towards the kitchen and one down the front hall to the utility closet where she stopped in surprise.

There was a large, hand-addressed envelope taped to the front of the closet. She took it down and read the contents, her face registering a growing shock. Never, in the fifteen years she had been employed by Sesshoumaru had there been any break in the household's routine.

'Please refrain from using the vacuum today.' The note said. 'The bathrooms will require extra towels and toothbrushes for nine. As most of the rooms of the apartment have sleeping guests trash removal and a light dusting will be all that is required. Thank You.' There was another packet that contained yen notes tucked into the envelope.

She took the note and headed for the kitchen to see what her co-worker made of it. She found her companion standing in the center of a kitchen piled high with used dishes and tea cups holding a note similar in appearance to the one she had. "He wants breakfast for ten. He scarcely keeps enough food around for one." Her workmate whispered. "What do we do?"

"Use this, apparently." Reaching down into the envelope in her co-worker's hands, she drew up another thick wad of yen notes. Plenty to buy what was required.

So it was that, not very long later, the two women eased through the double doors of the living room on their way to set up warmers for a buffet breakfast on the large, Japanese-style, dining table. Morning light slanted across the gleaming teak of the table where it stood on its low legs on a raised platform. In contrast, all of the drapes were tightly drawn in the rest of the room, casting it into a shadowy half-light. The low hum of the TV could be discerned in the background and one of the women placed her steam tray on the table and padded in that direction to turn it off.

She nearly stepped on a boy sleeping on the floor. He was flat on his back with his head on a sofa cushion and an alpaca throw over him. She frowned as she saw that some wiseacre had tucked a lily from the floral arrangement in the front hall into his hands so that he looked like some sort of carelessly bestowed corpse.

Putting her hand on the back of the leather-covered lounge chair she tiptoed awkwardly over the sleeping youth only to discover that the lounge chair had an occupant in the shape of an elderly shrine priest in full temple regalia. His wispy hair stuck up all over his head and he gripped the remote control in one hand. She would have to use the controls on the front of the set.

She carefully circled around him and headed for the dimly glowing set. It was showing anime at this hour, the shifting colors pulsating with some sort of combat.

"Leave it."

The low voice startled her and she spun to see a young man sitting on the floor with his back to the couch. A sheathed katana was cradled against his shoulder and the whiteness of his hair and the gold of his eyes made her think, for one disoriented instant, that it was her employer. But no, the face was more youthful and the shaggy hair was nothing like Sesshoumaru-Sama's.

The woman bowed apologetically. "I'm sorry; I didn't see you. Breakfast is arriving in a moment and will be kept warm on the table. Please feel free to eat whenever you are ready."

The young man's glance flickered back to the TV screen where a good deal of muted but still shrill screaming was going on accompanied by dramatic music stabs. She did not turn to look at the TV as she had a couple of grandsons of her own and had a fair idea of which program it was.

"Rice balls, soup and pickles? No thanks." He shrugged his indifference.

"Ahh, no. So sorry, but because of the earliness of the hour and the lack of supplies we had to stop at Wacdonald's and, if I may say so myself, just about bought them out."

It was then that the front door of the apartment opened and the food arrived piping hot and wrapped in steaming bags.

'Ah,' thought the young man, 'American junk food.' His stomach growled at the warm, chickeny, smell causing him to blush in response to the woman's knowing smile.

:::O:::

When the maids were gone, Inuyasha stretched elaborately, popping his shoulders backwards and showing a good deal of fang when he yawned. His ears flickered back into being, unfolding like twin fans atop of his head and poking up through his hair. He glanced over his shoulder at a long, blanket-wrapped bundle on the couch behind him.

"Kagome, you hungry? I know you're awake." He dropped a hand backward to run a knuckle against the nearest available piece of her, probably a forearm.

The bundle shifted and a pair of bright eyes and flushed cheeks put in an appearance from under a corner of the blanket.

"No, I am not awake, but you are. Bring me some tea please." Kagome said and checked the other end of the horseshoe-shaped couch where Souta was dead to the world, before snuggling in again to the couch's soft cushions. Who would've thought that Sesshoumaru favored comfy furniture? She had always pegged him as a tatami mat and futon kind of guy.

She shifted again and reconsidered dropping back off in favor of the nice bathrooms. She rolled off of the couch, bringing the blanket with her and considered how insulting it would be if she did not indulge in a hot, greasy, breakfast and then a an even hotter soak in one of the simply enormous tubs that the apartment afforded.

"Oy," Inuyasha spoke from where he was at the table, confusedly trying to figure out why the tea was sealed up in plastic cylinders and nosing under the covers of the chafing dishes. "I thought you said you were still asleep."

"The necessary, Inuyasha." Kagome said in a tired voice.

They had traveled together for over two years and he still behaved as though normal bodily functions didn't exist until he allowed time for them. At one point he had gotten so bad that Sango and Kagome had banded together to give blatantly explicit descriptions of just what it was they were doing each time they headed off into the trees. In response he had complained that he didn't want to know what they were doing but that they went too far for him to easily hear or smell what they were doing when they did it.

It is almost needless to say that the number of gratuitous o-swaries shouted on the black day that he said that at least convinced him to keep his mouth shut on the subject. Miroku's bug-eyed looks lasted for weeks afterwards however, and Kagome always harbored an obscure sense of guilt over the monk's loss of innocence.

None of which had any bearing on how she felt about a bathroom where she found individual care baskets filled with all manner of toiletries and soaps.

:::OO:::

A few minutes after Kagome left Jaken appeared in the doorway to Sesshoumaru's study looking even more pale and haggard than he had the afternoon before. His skin was peeling in patches, with one or two of the Band-Aids still adhering, and his bones were visible through his sunken flesh. The leaden table drew him like a magnet.

Inuyasha remained silent as the toad daemon grabbed a cup of tea in one shaking hand and peeled the cover off to bathe his face in the steam. His eyes looked dull and sunken and Inuyasha's never-very-ready sympathy was to the fore when he said; "Look, how about you take that cup of tea and we'll stick you in a tub of water somewhere.

Jaken raised sunken, dull, eyes to his and said, "Water?" in a tremulous voice that would've wrenched sympathy out of a true sociopath.

"Yeah, water, I think it's this way."

Inuyasha strode ahead, letting his nose lead the way as he searched for the bathroom where all the water smell was coming from. They exited the living room to the main hall and went through a door that Inuyasha remembered from the night before as leading to the bed rooms. A few more steps brought them to a door that stood open and there was Kagome, gathering towels and talking through a connecting doorway to someone out of sight in the tub area

Jaken stumbled ahead, drawn by that all important smell. "Water!" He croaked.

Kagome spun in alarm at the sudden invasion of the bathroom by a frantic toad daemon and clutched her stack of towels to her chest as Jaken sped past her into the tub room. Inuyasha was a whisker behind him, blasting out "Oy!" at the top of his lungs as there was an almighty splash and a rising feminine shriek.

Inuyasha slid to a halt in consternation, catching himself by his hands at the doorway and then jumped back followed by a bucketful of rinse water that included the red plastic bucket. It bounced off of his shoulder and hit Kagome.

"What are you doing?" wailed the woman's voice as sloshing splashes continued. Kagome regarded Inuyasha through matted, dripping hair and tried to blow up her bangs.

"Umm, Inuyasha?"

He looked wildly at her and winced in response to a renewed set of shrieks and sloshes from the tub. Ryosei suddenly appeared between them with a towel wrapped around her dripping self. "You absolute perverts!" She screamed in Inuyasha's face from inches away. She spun in place and shoved her middle finger up in front of Kagome's face. "I'll see you sued!"

Inuyasha straightened himself out of his reflexive cringe and tapped the woman insistently on the shoulder with a claw, his face red and brows lowered. She turned and he let her have it. "If you got a problem you'll be talking to me!" He blasted into a roar making everybody who could hear it cringe, including Sesshoumaru in his bedroom. There was a fine shower of plaster all over the apartment building and a tremor in the building opposite that caused a picture of a particularly ugly "Beautiful View" in the office building opposite to them to suddenly fall from its wall and break its frame. (The office workers promptly banded together to throw the awful thing out.)

Sesshoumaru's chill voice spoke in the ensuing silence. "I take it everyone is awake now." They slowly turned towards the daemon confronting them in the doorway, cream colored yukata pulled loosely about him. He looked faintly disheveled and more than a little peeved.

Ryosei gulped audibly and stepped backwards into the tub room, swinging the door shut after her retreating form. Kagome sighed and wiped at her face with her bundle of towels. "Good Morning, Sesshoumaru. I hope you slept well."

He inclined his head briefly in response and stood listening to the quiet sloshes and hissing whispers going on behind the tub room door. Inuyasha's ears flickered in that direction and, after a glance at his brother he spoke to the closed door panel.

"We are still out here and we can hear you just fine." The sloshing water and murmuring voices stopped. A few moments later the door swung back open and a subdued, but still towel-wrapped, Ryosei and a gleamingly dripping Jaken made their appearances.

Sesshoumaru had already left the doorway to disappear down the hall towards the enticing smells of breakfast. Kagome frowned at Jaken's appearance and told him to go back into the tub room and to take off his clothes. Her mother showed up at that point and everyone else was scooted out as they determinedly loaded their arms with towels and descended upon the unsuspecting toad daemon.

:::O0O:::

Since Sesshoumaru's ideas on hosting a meal seemed to consist of seeing that the food was on the table and sitting down to eat it in silence: The seats were taken at random by a shy and puzzled group of people. Kagome and her mother remained behind firmly closed doors with Jaken. Inuyasha showed no hesitation in digging in to serve himself but the others felt uncomfortable. After a few awkward moments of watching the Inu brothers inhale food Jukuryo decided to take command and started passing plates.

He handled everything with an enthusiastic aplomb. Chatting with an obviously hung-over Jijii-Chan he sorted through wrapped food stuffs and divvied up packets of sugar and ketchup. Houjou came to the table holding his lily in one hand and promptly got a cup of water for it handed to him. Ryosei knelt at one corner swathed in a terry bathrobe with a towel around her hair and seemed to be trying to figure out how to manage an egg sandwich in one hand and a hot cup of tea in the other and fade into the woodwork all at the same time. While Inuyasha shoveled food in at a truly alarming rate it was Sesshoumaru who was disturbing; his bites were neat and efficient, his table manners were exact, but he ate rapidly and with little apparent appreciation of what it was that was going into his mouth, each bite disposed of in seconds.

Inuyasha plowed through everything with gusto but actually slowed and rolled an eye at Souta as the youngster quietly abstracted food onto a couple of plates and set them asides. "Where's that going?" he wanted to know.

Souta blushed and refilled Inuyasha's plate with hot apple pies. "It's for Mom, Jaken and Kagome. The way the way all this food is going they'll have nothing left. I'm keeping it."

"Are you eating yourself kid?" Inuyasha asked quietly under the hubbub and the faint echoes of tormented screams from Jaken in the bathroom.

"Huh?" Souta looked a little confused.

Inuyasha grunted softly. "Here, hasuburounu…tomogo WacMuffin…Orange-shiru. Eat."

Feeling a little stunned, Souta dug in.

Sesshoumaru finished and leaned back, hand cocked slightly in front of his stomach as he watched the others. Inuyasha and Souta, whispering together in their corner as they mounded food onto a couple of plates, totally ignored everyone else. Higurashi-Jijii sat swilling tea and staring vacantly into space while he grunted about being old to anyone who would listen. Jukuryo appeared quite entertained as he pressed food at a baffled Houjou and an embarrassed Ryosei with persistent cries of "Eat-up! It's good for you!"

Kagome suddenly trotted in from the direction of the kitchen and called Inuyasha over to her as she headed for a chair. He handed him a roll of something black and whispered instructions to him that made him stiffen up and say loudly, "Have you lost it? No daemon's in need of that much babying."

Kagome sniffed back at him. "How would you know? He needs to be kept wet." She turned on her heel to march back into the bathroom and stopped, seeing the interested circle of faces around the table. "Good morning," she said, with a stiff bow and returned the way she had come to pull open the doors of the room and assist her mother in steering a tottering bundle of sopping wet towels across the floor.

Inuyasha swore softly as he pulled several plastic trash bags from the roll that Kagome had handed him and split them with his claws down the side to drape the chair that the little group was headed for.

"That's nice, Inuyasha." Higurashi-San told him with a smile. "Now, if you could just lift him into the chair for me?"

Inuyasha shrugged and plopped the diminutive daemon into an approximately seated position on the plastic-wrapped chair. The bundle moaned softly, dripping steadily on the floor.

Higurashi-San nodded and gave Kagome a roll of paper towels, causing the girls shoulders to slump as she dropped to her knees and started mopping up their trail. She turned and raised her voice slightly to speak to everyone at the table. "I believe that you called Jaken back here so he can answer questions that you had about his recent activities and the staff."

There was a silence at the table and Sesshoumaru frowned abstractedly as he stared down at his empty plate before him. "This Sesshoumaru has read the reports. There seems to be little question as to what went on. This Sesshoumaru has no interest in feeble excuses."

The moaning from the Jaken bundle turned into a faint wail. Inuyasha cuffed it lightly to shut him up.

Jukuryo had read the reports too and did have a few questions about what had gone on but had no clear idea of what he wanted to ask first so he bit his lip in silence. It was mostly Sesshoumaru's affair.

Kagome spoke up from where she was kneeling and blotting ineffectually at the carpet. "Well, I have a question I want Jaken to answer. If nobody objects." They all turned and looked at her as she stood up. "Jaken, where's Rin? That little girl who used to accompany you?"

Jaken slid off of the chair to land with a wet plop on the floor. Sesshoumaru stood up and made to leave the room as Inuyasha prodded the damp bundle with a foot. "Dang, Kagome, he's out like a light. You're getting good at this."

:::OOO0::0OOO:::

*Smiles evilly* Before anybody asks, there was foreshadowing for this in some of the previous chapters. Only one or two people seem to have figured that out though.

Reviews are so nice….