InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Learning my way... ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

IY Chapter 3

~

Sango stared up at the clear blue sky above Kaede's village. In the distance, she could see Inuyasha's forest. Every day, she watched the forest, hoping to see her good friend approaching the village from the well; perhaps she would have little Keitaro in tow.

She knew it would never happen.

Fifteen years… Fifteen years ago today, Inuyasha, Kagome and Keitaro died.

A tear slid down the tajiya's face, then another… and another.

Oh Kagome, I would give anything to see you and Inuyasha again…

"Okaa-san?" said a cautious voice, "Are you alright?"

Sango hurriedly wiped her eyes and turned to see her eldest daughter, seventeen-year-old Rika approaching, a basket of laundry balanced on her hip.

Sango nodded, not trusting her voice completely.

"Your thinking about Kagome and Inuyasha again aren't you?" asked Rika quietly, shifting the basket from one hip to the other, "Otou-san is also looking sad today…"

"It was exactly fifteen years ago that they died," replied Sango softly, turning back to stare at Inuyasha's forest, the breeze ruffling both hers and Rika's hair. Rika was silent, thinking of the vague memories she had of a silver haired man with funny ears and his kind wife.

"Come Okaa-san, let's go back to the village" Rika took her mother's arm and guided her back towards their hut.

~

Over the next three weeks, Fujita Mariko and Higurashi Keitaro became best friends. Rumors and gossip followed them down the hallways, but neither cared, because they knew it was all BS.

Mariko invited Keitaro over to her house several times and the two of them (and occasionally Mariko's younger brother, Akihiro) would battle it out on the Fujita's X-box, or sit around and listen to music, talking and complaining about school and annoying things (such as Nishimura) in general.

Mariko's mother, a slender woman with brown hair and Mariko's dark blue eyes, had instantly taken the opportunity to tease her daughter about acquiring a boyfriend so quickly, not to mention a cute one.

"Mom!" cried Mariko indignantly, flushing bright red, grabbing a bag of cookies off the kitchen counter and dragging Keitaro to her bedroom.

"So, how many boyfriends have you had?" asked Keitaro slyly as Mariko shut the door to her room and threw the cookies at him with more force than necessary. He could smell faded traces of about five other boys on her, one had a fading trace of youki, but he couldn't identify the species.

He caught the bag of cookies easily, opened it with one claw, took six cookies and tossed the package back to her.

Mariko gaped at him without bothering to catch the cookies. They hit her in the stomach and dropped to the ground, but she didn't seem to notice.

"What?" he asked through a mouthful of cookie.

"You… you did that so fast,"

"Did what?" he raised a puzzled eyebrow.

"Got the cookies… I tossed it too you and blinked and the bag was flying back at me and you had a handful of cookies!"

For a second Keitaro looked panicked and his ears flattened against his head.

"Erhm… maybe I'm really really hungry…?" he volunteered weakly.

Mariko gave him a look that told him that she knew that explanation was complete and utter bull-shit, even if she didn't know exactly why. Neither of them went back to the subject and spent the afternoon doing homework. Mariko was fluent in English, something that Keitaro was extremely grateful for and Keitaro helped her with math homework, which was something that Mariko barely managed to pass each year.

"It's so much more complicated when written in Japanese!" cried Mariko, throwing down her pencil in disgust, "I thought English math was bad enough!"

Keitaro sighed, rolling his eyes and leaned over to help her with the problem.

~

When Keitaro had invited Mariko to the Higurashi shrine, Mama-baachan had been waiting at the door.

"There you are Keitaro! Where have you been!? I expected you home a half hour ago!" she cried, before noticing Mariko, who looked startled by Mama Higurashi's outburst.

"Sorry Mama-baachan…. we…erhm…walked took the long route home," he explained, hoping she would catch on.

"Oh…right… the long route," agreed Mama, as Mariko bowed in greeting, while eyeing Keitaro suspiciously.

We took the most direct route to the shrine… no way could it have been the `long' route, unless I don't know about some other way… and we were walking pretty fast… How could Keitaro get home so fast? Wondered Mariko.

Keitaro's grandmother fixed them snacks and they went upstairs to Keitaro's room. The first thing that Mariko noticed was a small, glowing pink jewel that hung on a necklace from a stand on his desk.

"What's this?" she asked, leaning close to look at it. A wedge shaped piece of it was missing.

"It was my mother's," replied Keitaro, "and now it's mine... I have to protect it,"

"From thieves? Is it that valuable?" asked Mariko, eyeing the benign looking jewel with a new interest.

"Yah, from thieves… It looks pretty ordinary, but it's worth more than…well…It's worth quite a bit," he replied, pulling his books from his backpack.

"…And you just leave it sitting in your room?" asked Mariko disbelievingly.

"Yah…that's about the long and the short of it…" replied Keitaro, now munching on the sushi that Mama-baachan had prepared.

"Shouldn't you like take it with you? So you could protect it better?" continued Mariko curiously.

"I used to wear it when I was a younger - but now, if I wear it and got really angry, like I did at that asshole; Nishimura, I'd taint it," answered Keitaro offhandedly, dropping to his knees and digging around under his bed, looking for something. Mariko distinctly heard him sniff the air.

Taint it? She wondered, Oh boy… Life is sure getting strange with Keitaro around.

Keitaro found what he was looking for in a matter of seconds, a package of unopened lined paper. Mariko took this as an opportunity to look around his room. On the wall over his headboard, a wooden bow hung. She could almost feel the reverence that it had been hung with. His closet door was half closed, and one of the drawers in his dresser was slightly opened. What caught her eye were the pictures on top of dresser.

The first picture was of two people, a smiling young woman wearing a blue skirt and a white blouse, and a man, with long silver hair and his arms protectively wrapped around the woman's shoulders. He was wearing an old-fashioned red haori and hakama and on his head was a baseball cap.

He had a wry grin on his face and his golden eyes peered out of the picture as if to say I see you.

With a jolt, Mariko realized she was looking at a picture of Keitaro's parents.

Another was a wedding picture of the two. Mariko felt her eyebrows go up as she saw the puppy-dog ears on the silver haired man's head. There was a third picture, of Keitaro's mother holding a black haired infant, presumably Keitaro.

"What do you think?" asked Keitaro. Mariko jumped and felt herself hit something warm and solid. Keitaro had been right behind her.

"They're your parents right?" she asked, motioning to the pictures.

"Yah," replied Keitaro quietly.

"What were their names?" she asked curiously.

"Inuyasha and Kagome…"

"Inuyasha…? Doesn't that mean-" started Mariko, only to be cut off by Keitaro.

"Dog demon? Yah… So, what was that problem you were having? On page 56?" Keitaro flipped open their math text.

"Keitaro, why don't you just tell me what your big secret is?" demanded Mariko, irritated at his attempt to change the subject, "I already know there's something different about you… you know things you couldn't possibly know, you've got the ears, you can run faster than anybody! Come on, I've noticed all this stuff… I just want to know why…"

Keitaro fixed her with a level stare, his golden eyes betraying nothing of his thoughts. His ears were still and trained forward.

"What do you think I am?" he finally asked.

Mariko snorted.

"I'm tempted to say `crazy' y'know," she replied pointedly.

A ghost of a smile appeared on Keitaro's face.

"Well… I could seem crazy if I told you what I am," he said, tilting his head in what struck Mariko as a canine manner.

"Doesn't matter, just bloody well tell me, because if you don't, I'll smash your head in with that lamp there," she pointed to the reading lamp that sat on Keitaro's desk. Keitaro laughed outright at that.

"Try it,"

"What?!"

"Try and smash my head in," at Mariko's horrified look, he laughed again, "Don't worry, it won't hurt me… I once miscalculated a jump and fell twelve stories, and I was able to get up and keep going without much trouble,"

"Yah! Much trouble, because you bloody well broke something! Your neck maybe!" cried Mariko disbelievingly.

Keitaro shook his head.

"Nope… well, I did break something…" (Mariko flinched) "… A bunch of eggs, Mama-baachan had sent me out to get groceries, she wouldn't let me in the house though until I had hosed myself down and had gotten more eggs, then she yelled at me for being reckless like Otou-san was,"

"Reckless…?" echoed Mariko faintly.

"Yah…"

"Reckless," repeated Mariko, her voice had risen at least an octave.

With that, Mariko picked up the lamp and nailed Keitaro between the ears with the base. He didn't even blink. Mariko dropped the lamp in surprise and Keitaro caught it with a faster-than-the-eye-could-see arm movement.

"Told you it wouldn't hurt me," he replied calmly.

"But…" gasped Mariko.

"I'm a quarter inu-youkai… not much can hurt me," replied Keitaro, "A train could hit me and I might get a few bruises. Other than that, the worst injury I've gotten was when a tanuki-youkai came after the jewel and I didn't sense it soon enough, and it broad sided me when I came out of the house to investigate and all it did was scratch me up a bit,"

"Inu - youkai?!" cried Mariko, "you are crazy,"

"Sadly, no… youkai do exist, but most have concealment spells and stuff… there's even a neko-youkai who attends our school, but she's in twelfth grade and considering she's neko youkai, she doesn't have much interest in talking to me,"

Mariko stared at him for several seconds, obviously trying to sort out her thoughts.

"So, your dad was… half inu-youkai?" she guessed, glancing over at the picture of Kagome and Inuyasha.

Keitaro nodded.

"How did your parents meet?" asked Mariko curiously, still looking at the picture.

"It's a really long story… and it has everything to do with that," Keitaro pointed a clawed index finger at the little, innocent-looking pink jewel hanging from its stand on his desk. Mariko raised an eyebrow.

"What, did your dad try and steal it or something?"

Keitaro choked on his sushi and gaped at her.

"How'd you know?" he gasped, wide eyed.

Mariko shifted, looking uncomfortable.

"Well, you said your mom was protecting it…" she replied defensively, "I was guessing,"

"Oh…"

"So, how did your parents meet?" repeated Mariko, moving herself over to Keitaro's bed and sitting down on it, crossing her legs in preparation for the long and interesting story that she going to hear. She patted the empty space beside her.

"Come on, Keitaro, have a seat and tell me everything,"

And he did.

~

Mariko was stunned when she looked at her watch next. Two hours had passed since Keitaro had sat and told her everything from his mother being dragged through the well by the Mistress centipede to his limited knowledge of his ancestry. He didn't even know the name of his youkai grandfather.

When he finished, he fixed Mariko with an apologetic look.

"That's all I know… My mother told Mama-baachan a bunch of stuff, but there is tons of things that Mama doesn't know,"

"It must have been hell to raise you then, ne?" commented Mariko.

"Yah, that's just about how she described it," he replied, grinning sheepishly. Mariko smiled and raised an eyebrow. Keitaro felt something inside him stir.

"My best friend is an Inu-hanyou… well, this is going to take some getting used to. At least I know why your sniffing the air, so won't freak me out like it used to…The only thing I worry about now is that you might be going around marking trees…"

The look of abject horror on Keitaro's face made her laugh so hard that she rolled off the bed and landed with a thumping sound on the floor. Keitaro looked down at her giggling with a grimace.

"That's…. just…. not right," he managed to say, his face twisting. Mariko managed to haul herself back up onto the bed. She reached up and scratched his ears. Keitaro managed to suppress a moan as his eyes fluttered shut in bliss, but a whine in the inu-youkai language escaped.

:gooooooooooooood:

Mariko laughed.

"You sound just like my friend Mary-Anne's dog," she explained when Keitaro shot her a puzzled look.

"Well, I'm not a quarter dog demon for nothing, I have a special affinity with dogs," he replied, grinning. "I sort of can talk to them…" he continued, and at Mariko's skeptical look, he elaborated, "I discovered it a few years ago, when a stray dog kept hanging around the shrine, I was able to understand what it was barking about and talk to it…"

"Sweet! Maybe it's like some sort of genetic language?" suggested Mariko. Keitaro shrugged.

"Maybe," he replied thoughtfully.

~

AN: The concept of the Inu-youkai language belongs to Terri Botta, author of The Lucky Ones <<This is THE best Inuyasha fan fiction EVER