InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Future Beginnings ❯ Ch 4: Alone Again ( Chapter 4 )

DISCLAIMER: Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi.

 

Ch 4: Alone again

 

 

Ramen noodles and hot water sprayed out in an arc as Inuyasha landed face down on the carpet. As soon as he was able to move again, he jumped up and took one step forward, shaking his fist at Kagome.

 

“What did you do that for?” he shouted.

 

Kagome was shaking, but not from fear. He took another menacing step towards her, opening his mouth to yell at her again. He never got the chance.

 

“Sit,” she said quietly this time. Boom! Again he landed face down on the floor. “Sit.” Boom!

 

After the third time, Inuyasha scrambled to his knees and then sat on the floor, glaring at Kagome through his bangs. He didn't try to speak.

 

Kagome bent down and started scooping noodles back into the empty styrofoam cup. “How could you?” she asked. “I can't believe you followed me all the way here. How did you even get on the airplane?” She looked at him suspiciously. “Did you get on the airplane?”

 

“Do you mean the big car that looks and acts like a bird? Of course I went in it! Did you think I would just hang on to the outside?” Inuyasha asked, with a pang of guilt, because he had done just that on the roof of the car that brought her to her little house. He didn't let it stop him, however. “Just how stupid do you think I am?”

 

She frowned at him. “I still don't believe you did this. You can't stay here—you can't! I have my studies. I don't have time for this! What am I supposed to do with you? Inuyasha, what if somebody sees you?”

 

“Nobody saw me yet,” he scoffed. “You didn't see me either.”

 

It was the wrong thing to say. “Fine.” She stood up and threw the styrofoam cup into the trash, grabbed some paper towels and started sopping up the damp carpet. “Then go away. You shouldn't be here.” She straightened up, hands full of dirty towels and ramen, and faced him. She took a deep breath. “I'm going to pretend that you were never here.”

 

Inuyasha looked up. His eyes locked on hers but she didn't look away. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

 

“Just go. Go back home.”

 

“How am I supposed to do that? I don't even know where home is!” Or when it is, Inuyasha thought to himself.

 

“I don't care what you do. I just don't want to see you now. Go! Get out! GET OUT!”

 

Inuyasha stared at her for a moment longer as she literally trembled with anger. This wasn't how he had envisioned their reunion. Abruptly he stood, then he brushed past her and cleared the stairs in one bound, walking out the front door without another word.

 

Kagome burst into tears.

 

 

Inuyasha tore through the bushes that ran behind Kagome's little village, slashing wildly at any stray branches that got in his way. He ran through green square after green square, moving quickly enough so that the people in the adjacent houses wouldn't notice him. How could Kagome think he would let himself be seen? Didn't she realize that he only let himself be seen by the people he wanted to see him?

 

He started to slow down as he approached the crossing to Kagome's school village. A yellow cat came face to face with Inuyasha as he skirted close to one of the last houses in a row. It looked up at him and froze, arching its back and hissing. Inuyasha growled in return and the cat took off like a shot.

 

When the brush became sparse, he leaped into the nearest tree and paralleled the black road, heading towards the school village. He didn't want to be around humans, though, so he continued on by. There was a forest of sorts, not very big, just past the school village. It was where he sometimes hunted for his dinner. “Stupid Kagome,” he muttered. “I don't need her to take care of me.” He found one of the little grey animals and made himself a quick lunch. He told himself it was even better than the ramen noodles he had never had a chance to eat.

 

Afterwards, he washed his hands in the small pond he'd found a few days earlier. His anger started to dissipate but now he felt resigned. Why did he think it would be different than it ever was? Why did he even think Kagome was different from every other human he'd met? Go home, she said. How? Was it even possible anymore? He had no home, not here, not 500 years in the past.

 

 

Kagome cried until she had no tears left. She had just thrown Inuyasha out - Inuyasha! He shouldn't have followed her. This just complicated things. But how could she have thrown him out? Now he was all alone in a strange place - just like she was. She sobbed again, hiccoughed, and finally closed her eyes, pressing her fingertips to her temples. She had a massive headache.

 

She had come back because she'd forgotten her book for class. Now she couldn't go to class because her eyes were puffy and her face was all red. She turned around, burying her face in her pillow. “I hope Inuyasha is all right,” she thought before she fell asleep.

 

 

Inuyasha was not one to wallow in his sorrows for very long. If he was going to be stuck here without Kagome, then he would need to find a place to live. This little woods was inviting enough, but it was too close to civilization for him. All the natural smells were overlaid with human smells from their cars and their garbage and—them. He needed to get away from everything human for a while.

 

So he followed the treeline through villages and farms, heading generally northward for about an hour. He saw less and less houses as the land steadily rose and the forests became denser. Finally he could breathe. He went deep into one of the patches of forests on the side of a mountain. There were lots of living creatures here. He could smell them. He wouldn't starve. He could even make a fire if he wanted to. He didn't want to.

 

Finding a likely tree, he jumped to a high branch and surveyed his new kingdom. Sunlight filtered through the leaves and warmed the top of his head. He turned his face up to the sun and closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth. Just before he fell asleep he felt a faint presence, as though his new forest was aware of him and had accepted him as a part of itself. Perhaps it had.

 

 

Kagome went through the motions of her new life as a college student. She hadn't seen or felt Inuyasha for days and she worried about him. She tried to tell herself that he would be all right, that he had said himself he could hide his presence from her if he wanted to. Still, she caught herself looking furtively up in the tree branches and on rooftops for the familiar flash of red.

 

She had never meant to hurt Inuyasha. She knew she loved him, but she needed this time away from him to sort out her own feelings. What kind of future could they have? What did it even mean that he had followed her here? Was it just more of his possessive nature? If only she could be sure of how he felt. Before Inuyasha showed up, she was excited and happy about going to school in a new place and meeting new people. Now, she was confused again, and worst of all, she missed him.

 

 

Inuyasha, on the other hand, eagerly explored his new world. There were ravines and cliffs and caves to sniff out. He surprised a bear in one of the caves and they each took a startled swipe at the other before Inuyasha backed off. This was the bear's home too.

 

He wondered what Kagome was doing in her new school village with her new school friends. He wondered if she ever thought of him. One dawn he stood at the top of a hill and watched the sunrise paint the trees below him a bright green. This would be a good place to build a house, he thought. Not too close to the humans, but not too far away either. Kagome could still go to her school. He sighed. She had made it perfectly clear that she didn't want him around. Why would she want to live with him in a house in the forest?

 

Inuyasha was human enough that sometimes he craved the company of his own kind. It had gotten him in all kinds of trouble in his youth. Even now, although he felt at home deep in the forest, he found himself occasionally wandering back towards Kagome's school village. He told himself it was only to make sure she was still safe. Even though she didn't want him, he would still protect her.

 

On his moonless night, he gathered up his black hair in a low ponytail, donned some modern clothes he had swiped off a line of clothes hanging in back of a house, and strolled brazenly through Kagome's school village.

 

The language issue was going to be a problem. He couldn't understand anybody. Every now and then he found a group of Japanese students and he gravitated towards the familiar sounds, but he didn't want to run the risk that Kagome might be with them. Not that he was hiding, he rationalized, but he didn't want her to think that he was following her.

 

He picked up a few words of English here and there, one of them being “eat.” It had been a while since he ate human food, so he tagged along after a group of students who had mentioned the word “eat.” He wasn't disappointed. They went into a building near the edge of the village and he could smell the cooking smells even with his human nose. He watched as they each took a tray and moved forward in a line. Some of them talked to people behind a high narrow table and were rewarded with wonderful-smelling cooked food. Some of them just took packaged food from the shelves below the high table. Inuyasha couldn't talk to the people behind the table, so he just took some packaged food.

 

The room was crowded and as students moved through the line they exchanged money or sometimes just showed a little square to the money-taker at the end of the line, then moved away to sit in small groups at different normal-sized tables. Inuyasha didn't bother going to the end of the line with his tray as he didn't have any money or a small square to show the girl. He found an empty table near the back of the room and sat down and enjoyed his snack.

 

A moment later two students plunked down their trays on Inuyasha's table. He scowled at them but moved his chair over to the side so that they could sit down.

 

“Thanks,” said the boy. He held out his hand. “I'm Peter and this is Susan. I hope you don't mind if we share your table.”

 

Inuyasha didn't look up. He kept eating his chips, hoping they would leave him alone or go away. This was a little too much human contact for him.

 

“Are you a foreign student? What country are you from?” The girl, Susan, tapped his shoulder. Inuyasha looked up finally and said, in Japanese, “I don't understand.”

 

“Oh, sorry! I'm Susan. Soo-sen,” she said slowly and a bit too loud. “Your name? You?” She pointed to his chest. He knew what she meant, did she think he was a complete idiot? He gave her a grudging smile and a very slight bow, pointed to his own nose, and started to say “Inu—“ Then he hesitated. He'd better not use his own name.

 

“I'm…” he repeated what she had said before the Soo-sen part. “I'm…Miroku.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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