InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dressing the part ❯ The start of it all ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: I disclaim all.

Chapter 1

The start of it all

Who could that be? "Hello?"

"Oh Kagome thank God!"

Puzzled, Kagome tried to place the desperate woman's voice when it suddenly clicked. No one knew her as Kagome except her family. The rest of the world knew her as the Miko. "Mom?! What's wrong?"

"Kagome it's Souta. He wants to quit."

That didn't sound like her brother. Her brother had never quit anything. As a matter of fact, she remembered a time thirteen years ago when Souta locked himself in the dark, abandoned attic simply to beat her a hide and seek. What amazed her was the fact Souta had been afraid of the dark at the time. "Mom what are you talking about? Calm down and tell me what's wrong with Souta?"

Mrs. Higurashi tried to calmly collect her thoughts. However her attempts were failing badly. "Kagome, your brother wants to leave Takahashi."

"What are talking about?! Is he crazy?! After I degraded myself to send him there, he should feel grateful he has a school to go to. Mom, I don't know what to do? The money I saved isn't doing us any good. Souta doesn't want to go back to his school, and I can't go back to mine."

Suddenly unexpected thoughts started popping into her mind. "Why did you say Souta wanted to leave?" was the first response out of the younger Higurashi's mouth.

Startled unexpected calm that laced the question, Mrs. Higurashi tried to recall her son's reasoning. "He said the older boy who shared his room with him, a boy named Naraku, was acting cruelly towards him. I told him to talk to one of men who are supposed to be watching for this kind of thing, but he said he wasn't the kind of guy to `rat' someone else out. Maybe if he had someone there he could depend on, someone to look out for him he wouldn't be so vulnerable. What are we going to do?"

"Mom, do you remember how I said I hated modeling and I wanted to try acting sometime?"

"Yes, but you said no one would take you seriously because you had no experience."

"Well Mom, I have an idea..."

"Hold on." Mrs. Higurashi knew it was trouble whenever those choice words came out of her daughter's mouth. She took the pot filled with simmering spaghetti sauce off of her stove, brought the cordless phone over to the large chair in the living room, sat down, and braced herself for whatever they might have been. Little did she know how those few, startling words would change her children's lives forever. "Okay, I'm ready...I think?"

"What would you say if I knew someone who could go to school with Souta to make him feel less alone?

Pondering the novel idea, Mrs. Higurashi tried to think of anyone who could both afford to attend school with Souta and had the courage to stand by the boy.

"What if I also told you this person could be with him everywhere, including baseball practice?"

"Kagome, do you have someone specific in mind?"

"Let me come home before I propose this." Not wanting her mother to reject her over the phone, Kagome hung up and started walking home. Before she left the park gates saw a small group of three middle-aged men disappointedly getting into a vehicle with the logo for the Tokyo World, the biggest tabloid in Tokyo, plastered on the sides. She was glad to see them drive in the opposite direction of the shrine.

After climbing the shrine steps and walking in the door, saw recognized the scent of a food her mother made whenever she was worried, spaghetti.

Seated in the same chair since her conversation with her daughter, Mrs. Higurashi turned and spotted the girl claiming to know a way to end Souta's problems. "Kagome, you said you have a solution?"

Kagome cringed at her mother's helpless attitude. It just didn't seem to suite her mother's stong, usually optimistic attitude. "I sure do. What I am about to say will solve both my problem and Souta's problem."

"I hope it does my dear. I hope it does. Now, tell me who is this savior of mine?"

"It's me. I am going to Souta's school."

Mrs. Higurashi waited for her daughter's laughter, but it never came. "I'm sorry. What?"

Kagome looked at her mother confidently and proudly. "I am going to Takahashi School for Boys with Souta. I will stand by him, hopefully making life there bearable for him, I will watch his back at baseball tryouts, and I will be hidden in the one place I won't be found by the media. Plus, if I can pull it off, I can fire back at producers who say I don't have experience."

"That's all well and good, but what if you don't pull it off. To his peers, he would become the scared little boy who hides behind his sister. It's only the beginning of second semester in his freshman year. Baseball tryouts are only in a couple of weeks. If the team finds out, that could lessen his chances of following in your father's footsteps, the one thing he has wanted to do since your father's accident. If you decide to do this, it had better work my dear. I can't think of another solution."

Mrs. Higurashi turned and started to walk out, but she suddenly said to her daughter, "Kagome, regardless of what happens, I love you and I am proud of you. Not because of how you helped me when you dad died or how successful you become, but because you are you. I say it again. I love you and I am proud of you." With that she retreated to the kitchen to finish dinner.

The speech from her mother had only strengthened her resolve. She was going to Takahashi for Boy. She was going to help Souta. Of course she would be left alone for a while, but that was only secondary to the only reason she really did anything. Her family needed her.