InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dystopian Story of Lovers ❯ Distant ( Chapter 3 )

 

 

 

Distant

 

 

 

when they look for me it is not me
when they find me I am not there

when I get there I am already gone
I carry in my heart a motor that will not let me stop

 

 

 

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha and the man who made the movie `distant', and the said movie.

 

 

~*~

 

 

Kagome just stared at him. After Sesshoumaru slammed the door of his office, he turned slowly to face her. His hand was still gripping her arm tightly. To his dismay, she had not yet made any protestations against his abusive conducts.

 

“Miss Higurashi.”

 

Kagome stayed silent.

 

“What actually did you discuss with our personnel manager during lunch?”

 

Kagome stared blankly at him for a moment, and then she answered him, “We were talking about the reason why he hired me, Sir.”

 

“And why did he hire you, Miss Higurashi?” Sesshoumaru questioned her coldly.

 

“He believed, despite my lack of experience, I seem to be the right person for this job.” Kagome answered him dispassionately.

 

Sesshoumaru went behind his desk and took a seat. He leaned forward and pressed the tips of his fingers together. “Now, Miss Higurashi, tell me the real reason why he hired you.”

 

“Sir?”

 

“What are you scheming with my bastard brother?”

 

Kagome looked at him intently for a moment, and then she smiled bitterly. “I understand.”

 

Now it was Sesshoumaru's turn to be puzzled. “I would very much like to understand this as well if you allow me. What exactly do you understand?”

 

“This whole commotion, or why I was hired, and why the other employees seemed to alienate me. What exactly did Mrs. Kahara Misako ask you to do, Mr. Inoue?”

 

Sesshoumaru frowned. “Kahara Misako, the chairman of the Kahara group? What- what the hell does she have to do with any of this!?”

 

He was probing his mind to find the appropriate data for this new information. Kahara Misako. A wolf youkai. She had lost her mate three hundred years ago and had an only son, Kahara Kouga, the successor of the Kahara group. He was mated with Ogata Ayame. They were arranged to be married ever since they were children. According to the newspapers, there were some obstacles to their wedding procedure, but Sesshoumaru hadn't read any further. He was unconcerned with such insignificant gossips.

 

“When my place was mugged just eight months ago; when two strangers broke in my place and demolished what was left in it; when I got thrown away from my own apartment; all these impediments; every time I tracked them back, only one person seemed to fit in the picture. Mrs. Kahara Misako. And now, she had found a new way to obliterate me. Is this some kind of fun pleasure to all of you youkai high society? Just like the hunting season? To teach an inappropriate human her place?”

 

Sesshoumaru was speechless for a moment. There were hundreds of questions he wanted to ask, but the only one that he was able to phrase was, “Youkai?”

 

Kagome blinked, and then she snorted to hold back a laugh. “Oh please! Do you think I'm stupid? I must confess that you hid it quite well, but there are many traits of a demon in you that weren't quite hidden. Kouga told me how to —”

 

She paused. Her expression went grave.

 

Sesshoumaru's eyes blazed into hers as he spoke, “You were the obstacle.”

 

Kagome smiled. Her eyes lit up with fake, impudent coquetry. “The term that Mrs. Kahara Misako used was actually blunter, but you could assume that was me.”

 

“I see.” He gazed at her for a while as if judging the truth of her account. “Go back to your desk, Miss Higurashi. I need you to write a few letters.” He then occupied himself, writing something on a note.

 

“Excuse me?” She looked baffled.

 

“I'm not going to repeat myself. And that is the first rule if you truly want to work with me. Don't make me repeat what I have said to you. Do you understand?” Kagome nodded.

 

“Respond sufficiently when I asked you a question. Now, do you understand?” he spoke without looking at her.

 

“I understand perfectly, Sir.” She made her way out and closed the door on the way.

 

Sesshoumaru stopped his writing. His jaw contracted as he crushed the metal pen in his hand. Waves of emotion washed over him. It was not her face that created such havoc in him this time, nor was it her scent, but, because for some inexplicable reasons, he felt as if he was betrayed. Why did her manners have to contradict her physical appearance? He didn't realize that he was identifying her with someone who was not her.

 

~*~

 

After she closed the door behind her, Inuyasha grabbed her hand roughly.

 

“Did he do anything to you!?”

 

Kagome shook her head impassively as she struggled to disentangle her hand from his grip. He looked sheepishly to where their hands were joined and grinned. “Sorry, I forgot you don't like to be touched.”

 

She then smacked his arm. “That's not what I said! Don't make it seem like I have some aversion against physical contacts, which I don't. And you're not going to let go of my hand any time this moment, are you?”

 

“Oww! Damn it! I was worried about you!” He pouted, looking at her accusingly. Kagome felt guilty all of a sudden.

 

Inuyasha smiled when he saw the look of remorse on her face. “Hey, so you have a soft side inside you after all. It's a shame that you have to be offensive all the time. Why is that, I wonder?”

 

“Offensive? Me?” She tilted her head up. A flash of memory briefly slipped through her mind,

 

// “Kagome, you're so sweet.” A masculine voice whispered hoarsely against her throat. His hand was trailing down her spine sensually. She mewled softly and kissed the hand that held her face — //

 

“Kagome? Hello … Are you alright?”

 

She snapped out of her daze. “Why should I care about what you think of me? Just because I'm unfriendly to you doesn't have to mean that I'm hateful. If you are used to people who are able to tolerate your sickening amicable attitude, then you should've accustomed to the people who simply can't stomach you.” She seethed at him.

 

“Ouch,” and he actually grimaced when he said that. “So it's just me?”

 

She gave him an exasperated look. Finally she managed to disentangle herself and made her way behind the desk.

 

At first Inuyasha simply stood there and watched her openly, but she had already tuned out her awareness transmitter and ignored him. And when he left, she didn't follow him with her eyes because she was already far away. This happened sometimes. When she was lost in her own world, images of the past seemed to kick in and began to play in time-consuming tempo. Everything seemed to connect to the past. From the marble floor to the blue pen in her hand; marble was the floor of the apartment she had shared with him, and she remembered distinctly the coolness of it against her bare skin; blue was his favorite color as well as the color of the contusion on her hip when he had had her too roughly.

 

~*~

 

Sometimes some of us were destined to love once and never to love another, and yet we still had to wonder on what basis did this love actually stand? This question always had Inuyasha baffled.

 

He was now in a relationship with an attractive woman, and he was at a point in his life where he was ready to step into the paranoia of every sane male in this world, a commitment. The reason for this resolution was not because he couldn't imagine a life without her—he could in fact imagine himself achieve quite nicely on his own, or that she was the first woman who touched his heart—he wasn't even sure if he cared for her more than he cared for his past girlfriend. It was none of those reasons. It was because of her stares, one of her cold stares that sent chilliness into his heart, subduing his primal beast; the stare that said `what would you have done without me?'

 

This reason was pathetic he knew. It was just that he never knew any other reason. It's like as if he had never loved before.

 

That was why he just couldn't understand his brother. Sesshoumaru had been married when he had been in the age of twenty, a young age for a youkai to step into the official mating ceremony, and he had lost his mate a year after he had mated her. He had since then never sought for another, much less loved another. In the past -freaking- 500 years.

 

And the coldhearted bastard acted as if he had lived the greatest romance ever. As if he could never love again. As if one was truly dim-witted enough to think that Sesshoumaru could ever love and therefore undergo love.

 

He hated it when his brother constantly looked down upon his past relationships with women. The countenance of his face suggesting that only he knew what love was; the way he carried on with his life as if he was the only one who was suffering in this earth; the whole egotism and smugness of it. Only Sesshoumaru alone could wear his heartache like a wristwatch of an expensive brand.

 

So Inuyasha decided to teach him a lesson. He had to understand there were some people out there who were not as fortunate as him, to understand that there were people who truly had to carry the world's suffering. That Aung San Suu Kyi was still under house arrest, or that in the Middle East the war was still active; it wasn't about him and him alone. This was what drove Inuyasha to set up this little game for him the moment Higurashi Kagome applied for a job in the company, that and the fact that he hated Sesshoumaru's guts.

 

And so the basis was the person; the one who he would never forget, dead or not dead or metempsychosis.

 

Of course there were times when a surge of compunction attacked his conscience. Like at the time when the girl looked touchingly delicate and vulnerable as she was waiting in the lobby. But thanked God he read Sun Tzu, and the line that he kept repeating in his mind of scheme was the key point of the conquest, `all warfare is based on deception'.

 

Most likely he should've played on the x-box a little less often.

 

~*~

 

Kagome went home to a small apartment that she neither loved nor hated. As she opened the door, she spotted a little dirt on the surface of the wooden entrance. Immediately she drew out a hankie out of her pocket and began to wipe out the soil. She didn't even realize that she had gone so far as to spend five minutes to polish the timber. And when she finally finished polishing it, she started.

 

And it came to her all at once that she was reluctant to come inside to her apartment.

 

She couldn't keep living like this, she thought. She couldn't keep feeling like this.

 

She went to the kitchen and prepared herself a cup of instant noodle. She went to her fridge and drew out a bottle of water. Setting her small dinner on the low table, she crouched down to sit in front of the table.

 

When one lived alone, there were certain procedures that they would do on daily basis, because nobody would come to tell them that it was time for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or if it indeed time to sleep or get up. So she had to remind herself that she had to eat and sleep, timing her own activities, to be careful not to make one day out of two.

 

She was not always this lethargic and offensive as Inuyasha phrased it quite courteously. Once she was sweet and innocent and agreeable. A certain ookami had once tasted her skin because she was so sweet and had taken away her innocence because she was agreeable, until everyone else convinced her that she was none of those.

 

And she had begun to believe it, because somehow it justified everything. Villains weren't remorseful, and she sure as hell hadn't been remorseful when he had kept giving her gifts. After all, what were gifts among friends? She had liked them too much and hadn't been stupid enough to refuse opulence or smart enough to hold on to it.

 

But she was none of that now. And a heavy weight of compunction began to oppress her. She had given back everything, but still it wasn't enough. And so if she felt lost and miserable tonight or yesterday or the day after that or in every damnable day in this past ten months, it was of her own doing.

 

~*~

 

Sesshoumaru checked and checked again. There was no important data on Higurashi Kagome; no scandals, nothing to satisfy his avidity to find something to defile her, anything to crush this image of her. It seemed that the Kahara family had taken care of the scandal thoroughly.

 

He closed his eyes.

 

But it was only a face and a scent; nothing more than a face and a scent, and yet it was everything.

 

He slammed his fist onto the desk. He closed his eyes once again.

 

It didn't matter, he had decided. Such problems had occurred now and then in this past 500 years, but he had gone on. He always had.

 

But when his mind strayed to wonder what a certain raven hair girl could be doing tonight, he wondered … why he went on at all.

 

~*~

 

It was dawn, and Kagome couldn't sleep. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Before, she had derived small pleasures when she was alone in her bed and didn't have to expect that some time at night a hand would groped her and wrenched her away from her sleep.

 

And it wasn't because of the sheet either that she seemed to be sleep-deprived. She had to admit it was not as soft as the Egyptian cotton sheet that she once had had, but this sheet on the bed was hers. She had bought it with her own money, and the least it could do was to help her find a peaceful slumber, but it didn't. Maybe she should've kept the Egyptian cotton sheet after all.

 

She hadn't allowed herself to keep anything at all that was from him. Although in the beginning when she had bought some of the things, she would had never thought they would just be temporarily hers. But after the breakup—if one could call it as such—she hadn't been able to bring herself to use any of the luxurious things. The feelings just hadn't been right. As if she had been one of the bought items, and the other materials had just complemented her. As if she had lost something.

 

As cliché as it was, she had felt as if she had lost her dignity.

 

So as to save herself, at the last moment she just had had to gain it back. In the end, her proud action had turned out to be the biggest mistake she had ever made in her life.

 

She hadn't known that she had broken many hearts by simply giving him back everything he had given her, and how that little innocent act of gaining dignity had taken away the dignities of many others.

 

 

 

 

 

*end of chapter*

 

 

 

AN: Excessive emotional baggage. I know, a cheap way to add a plot in the story. But still hope you like it, and if you do… really?!