InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ I Loved Him ❯ I Loved Him as a Brother, Part 3 ( Chapter 10 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

LES: Souta’s turn! This chapter has changed form since I began this story. At first, I was going to have Souta have a boyhood crush on Inuyasha. (It’s not unusual for young children to crush and love members of the same sex, and it doesn’t always reflect on their future sexuality. Look it up.) But I decided to change it back into canon. Souta loves Inuyasha as a brother, given the fact that Souta calls him “Inu-no-niichan” (Dog Brother) in the original Japanese. This chapter is written in honor of one fact in my young life: the first movie that I ever saw in a movie theater was Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”. I was two years old at the time, so I don’t remember it directly, but apparently it set the stage for my manners in movie theaters for the rest of my life. I never make a peep in movie theaters. I’m almost always too absorbed in the story. Anyway, that’s just a little fact about me.

There are a few experiences that are universal in the realm of childhood. It seems that no matter what sort of situation a child grows up in, there are a few things that remain nearly constant. And one of those things was the existence of a childhood hero.

And Souta felt that he had the best hero of them all.

Most young boys would look to their father, but Souta had no memory of his father. His father had died when he was too young to remember. But that didn’t mean that he was completely lacking a male role model in his life.

Inuyasha, Souta’s absolute hero, was the perfect hero in Souta’s opinion. Inuyasha was strong, stronger than could be believed. He stood firmly against the tide of evil and he never gave in. The Inuhanyou was everything the boy could want to be.

The whole family knew of his blatant hero-worship. It had become clear the day when Souta began to even sound like Inuyasha, responded to uncomfortable questions with a “Keh!” instead of a real answer. Though his mother had managed to stop Souta from parroting Inuyasha’s more ‘colorful’ language for now.

But Inuyasha was certainly not perfect, especially in the modern era. He knew his own time, and knew how to handle situations in his own time, but the modern era was like a foreign country to him. He was hopelessly lost in the modern era, and would continue to be hopelessly lost without some tutoring.

That’s where Souta stepped in. He taught Inuyasha the basics of the modern world, so that he was not unduly surprised or shocked with technology. At least he didn’t stare in confusion at every person using a cell phone or try to interact with the tiny people on television screens. (Yes, he had done it…)

Thanks to Souta, Inuyasha could knew his way around the kitchen at least well enough to make ramen, could watch simple movies without undue confusion, or get his ass handed to him in video games when playing against Souta.

It was a good thing too, because since Souta always got home from school before Kagome (as his was closer) it was his job to entertain the hanyou to make sure that he stayed on the shrine grounds and didn’t go chasing after Kagome the instant the clock said that she should be out.

Souta came through the door. “Mom! I’m home!” He called.

“Welcome home, dear.” His mother called to him. “Souta, could you go and rescue Buyo from Inuyasha? I’m afraid that he’s working on that cat’s last nerve again.”

“Sure thing, Mom.” Souta replied, heading into the house in the direction that Buyo’s annoyed meows were coming from. Inuyasha, it seemed, liked to mess with cats as much as any dog, and Buyo was is favorite ‘playmate’ on this side of the well. His sister once told him that they traveled with a Nekoyoukai on the other side of the well, but Inuyasha did not seem interested in picking on her.

“Kirara can take care of herself.” Kagome had said when Souta asked if Inuyasha bothered the Nekoyoukai too. “I think she would be more than capable of getting Inuyasha to stop if he started messing with her too much.”

He found Inuyasha messing with the cat, and keeping Buyo captive every time he made a mad dash to escape. But Souta knew that Inuyasha was just bored. The best way to rescue Buyo was to give him something else to keep him occupied.

“Hey, Inu-no-niichan!” Souta called.

“Afternoon, kid.” Inuyasha replied. He had long ago accepted Souta calling him Dog Brother, or at least, he’d never said a word against it. Kagome had told him that Inuyasha had an older half-brother who was a full Inuyoukai named Sesshomaru, but that Inuyasha did not get along with his brother very well. Of course, Kagome had not told her kid brother that Inuyasha and Sesshomaru’s brotherly squabbles nearly always led to near-mortal injuries.

“Wanna watch a movie?” Souta asked.

Inuyasha pondered for a moment and then allowed Buyo to escape via a mad dash away from the Inuhanyou. “Sure, I guess. But none of that ‘sci fi’ sh…”

“Inuyasha…” Mrs. Higarashi called warningly from the kitchen, a warning to watch his language around Souta.

Inuyasha stopped the curse mid-word. “Stuff.” He finished.

Souta laughed. He knew better now than to try to show Inuyasha science fiction. The concepts in science fiction were far too complex for the medieval hanyou to understand. Souta had shown him ten minutes of “Star Wars” before he got tired of Inuyasha’s constant questions before he turned it off and put on a much simpler movie.

“I think I know one that’s simple enough.” Souta said. “It’s based on a foreign fairy tale, but the story is simple enough.” Thankfully, even through the story was foreign, the fact that it was a fairy tale made it okay. Fairy tales are universal things that every culture can understand. They had many fairy tales in Japan, and many of them were available even in Inuyasha’s time. Fairy tales never contained anything more complicated than magic, which was something that Inuyasha could understand, having encountered many magic-users in his life.

“A foreign fairy tale?” Inuyasha questioned. “What’s it called?”

Souta hesitated before answering. “Beauty and the Beast.”

Mrs. Higarashi snorted from the kitchen, and Inuyasha caught the sound. He knew it too. It was the sound of her stifling her laughter. The Inuhanyou didn’t like the feeling of someone laughing at him. His ears pressed down against his head, almost hidden by his wild hair. “Maybe another?”

“Oh, Inuyasha, don’t mind me.” Mrs. Higarashi called from the kitchen, moving to the living room. “I think you’ll like the story.”

“But you were laughing.” Inuyasha pointed out.

“I was laughing because Souta made a good choice.” Mrs. Higarashi said. “Watch the movie, and you’ll find out why.”

So, reluctantly, Inuyasha sat down as Souta got the movie and started it. It was animated, a cartoon, but Inuyasha didn’t mind. Some of the other movies and shows that he’d shown Inuyasha were also animated. Sighing nervously, he settled down to watch.

As he watched, he began to realize why Mrs. Higarashi laughed when Souta named the movie. The story was not too complex for Inuyasha to follow. In fact, it reminded him a great deal of the Japanese fairy tale of “The Dog and his Wife”. (He had to work really hard to stop himself from drawing too many parallels, though.)

Inuyasha could see a great deal of himself in the Beast character. He, too, was misunderstood, hated, and shunned from society for his appearance. Both of them bore human hearts, but the great majority of the people in their lives could not see past the beastly exterior and see the heart within. And both of them sought only the approval of one mortal, average girl.

The story was a romance. Inuyasha figured that out early on, what with the rival lovers in the Beast and that asshole Gaston character and the fact that only love could break the Beast’s curse.

Inuyasha did not consider himself much of a romantic. He just didn’t know how to do romance very well. But he found himself quietly cheering on the Beast’s efforts to win over Belle. (Not that he was making even more parallels between himself and Kagome…)

He felt the Beast’s pain when he sent Belle away to be with her sick father because his love was so great that he couldn’t see her suffer, even if it meant that she had to go home. Inuyasha knew that pain well. Oh, the number of times he had thought of, and tried, to force Kagome to come home. But, the stubborn wench always came back.

Belle, of course, was much the same. Once it was clear that the Beast was in danger, she’d rushed back to him. He held his breath through the climatic fight scene, and even wore a small grin when the Beast and Belle were reunited.

Of course, the grin transformed into a growl of rage and disgust when that asshole coward Gaston stabbed the Beast in the back while he was distracted. And no, he did not feel one drop of emotion during the Beast’s death scene.

And then came the transformation scene. Belle had confessed her love for the Beast as he lay seemingly dead. Inuyasha knew right away that the curse had been broken and that he would transform back into a man, which he did.

As the finale of the movie ran its course, Inuyasha felt that he couldn’t bear to watch any longer. Instead, he stared at his feet with his ears pinned back again. Souta noticed the look on the hanyou’s face as the movie ended. “Inu-no-niichan? What’s wrong?” The boy asked.

“Did he have to turn human?” Inuyasha asked. “Belle loved him as a beast, didn’t she? Why couldn’t she continue to love him as a beast?”

Uh oh. Souta realized that not only had Inuyasha caught onto the similarities between him and the Beast, he’d taken the ending a little bit too literally. Of course, it was a common question among those who watched the movie and was a bit of a joke on the internet. Did Inuyasha now think that he needed to become human for any girl to like him?

“He turned human because he was human.” Souta finally said. “His true self was a human, not a beast. But I think that Belle would have continued to love him even if he did stay a Beast.” Souta paused. “I don’t think she would have felt any different if the beast was his true form. She would have loved him anyway.”

At last, Inuyasha seemed to perk up. “Yeah… yeah, that’s better. Someone should be loved for who they are.”

Souta took a breath and then ventured. “I know that Nee-chan really loves you.” He said. “And I don’t think it matters to her if you are human or beast. But, if you ask me, I think she prefers you as a beast. I know that I think you’re pretty cool as a beast.”

“I am, aren’t I?” Inuyasha asked rhetorically. “Hey… thanks for showing me that movie… Nii-chan.”

Souta froze when Inuyasha called him brother. As long as Souta had been calling him Inu-no-niichan, Inuyasha had never replied with anything besides his name. That the Inuhanyou who was also his hero considered him a brother was nothing short of a dream come true. He beamed widely at Inuyasha. “No problem at all, Inu-no-niichan!”

LES: Dedicated to my everlasting love for the movie “Beauty and the Beast”.