InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Light in Dark Places ❯ Prologue I: Kagome ( Prologue )

Light in Dark Places

By: Eilan-san

 

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Prologue I: Kagome

 

I'm sure the heart I left behind

Still lies in the heart of the deep, deep forest.

 

--Do As Infinity, “Fukai Mori”

 

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She missed Japan. She missed Japan a lot. Especially the food. Everything she'd heard about English food was right… it really was terrible. She glanced down at the instant miso soup she'd picked up at the local Asian market -- it didn't hold a candle to the real stuff, but it was better than nothing.

 

She sighed wistfully.

 

What she wouldn't give for her mother's oden right about now.

 

Kagome Higurashi glanced out the window of her apartment. She hadn't been in England long, but she was already wishing she could just go home. And the snow falling outside certainly wasn't helping.

 

She'd graduated the previous spring; her mother and brother in the audience as she received her doctorate. She'd smiled with tears in her eyes and they had told all of their friends about how smart she was, and how far she'd come after her bouts of sickness during middle school.

 

Unfortunately, what they don't tell you is that with a doctorate you're basically overqualified for everything. She'd spent an entire summer and fall searching for a job, and she'd finally gotten a call from the University of London asking her to join their distinguished World Literature faculty. Apparently they thought by adding her they would be more “cultured.” She hadn't really wanted to leave Tokyo, but when you've got a PhD in Japanese Studies, beggars really can't be choosers. She was lucky she'd gotten a faculty appointment at all.

 

Although now she regretted coming in mid-year. Another professor had had to leave in a hurry and they needed a quick replacement to teach his classes. She enjoyed teaching - in fact, she'd almost say she was pretty good at it - but it had been tough getting used to a new place with little to no introduction. Especially when English was very clearly her second language; and unfortunately for her, most of the faculty in the department weren't exactly the overly friendly type.

 

She spent most of her time either teaching, working in her office or holed up in her apartment. She hadn't made any friends in the whole month she'd been here and she was starting to get very lonely.

 

She looked around her empty apartment - white walls with only the barest amounts of furniture (a lowly associate professor could only afford so much) and a few framed posters of ancient Japanese prints. Her favorite print was hanging in her room above her bed. It told the story of her favorite legend - painted by a medieval monk named Miroku - the legend of a hanyou and a priestess and their search for the Jewel of Four Souls.

 

Kagome smiled. She imagined Miroku laughing at her if he could see her now. Since she'd fallen so far behind in her studies, when her quest was over and she'd returned home (albeit not by her own choice) she'd done the only thing she could think of. There was definitely one subject she knew a lot about: medieval Japanese history. After spending several summers catching up in school, she applied to the University of Tokyo and received a Bachelor's in history, and then went on to get an MA and PhD, specializing in Japanese folklore. And well, when you've lived history, it gives you a slightly unfair advantage over the rest of academic community.

 

Her face dropped - it wasn't like she'd asked to be returned to her own world after her adventures in the Sengoku Jidai. She'd known - maybe she'd always known - she'd been chosen because she had the ability to return to her own world once her task was finished. They all knew that a day would come when Inuyasha would hold the completed Shikon no Tama in his hands and he would decide his fate, and perhaps the rest of theirs too.

 

One of the things Kagome had loved best about him was his sense of duty, even if it was that sense of duty that had taken him away from her in the end. On a cool moonless night, he'd taken her aside and asked her if she could give him up so that everything that had gone wrong since Naraku had appeared could be righted again. His duty was to protect Kikyou - and even though he loved Kagome, she knew he loved her - he had given his promise to Kikyou centuries before Kagome had ever even been born.

 

She'd been angry. Bitter, even. But she'd understood. And that had made her even more angry. She wanted to behave like a spoiled child who wasn't getting her way - it was so much easier when you were allowed to act badly -- but in the end, she'd handed Inuyasha the completed jewel, hugged him goodbye and jumped in the well for the last time without ever looking back. If she'd looked back, she knew she would never have been able to leave.

 

Later, when she'd stopped crying, her mother reminded her of the legend about the shrine she'd grown up at: a hanyou had cleared the land and built a house for a Buddhist monk, his demon slayer wife and their many, many children. Eventually the land was passed down to two of their daughters who had become Shinto priestesses and they, in turn, founded the shrine that would one day become her home. After many years, the descendants of the houshi and taijiya she had known so well took the surname of Higurashi. She'd beamed for the rest of that day - even if she had never seen her friends grow old, she was carrying around a piece of them with her.

 

I can't cry. It's been almost ten years, there's no reason for me to cry.

 

She was angry again.

 

It was almost appropriate. Sickeningly appropriate. All the Japanese fairy tales endings were sad and beautiful, and she had long ago come to the conclusion that hers was no different. Life wasn't perfect, and although she longed for her own happy ending, she was glad that her friends had found peace with each other.

 

She wiped her eyes and went back to sipping her soup.

 

And… as much as part of her was still hurt, even after so many years, she hoped that Kikyou had made Inuyasha as happy as he had made her during those short few months she had been in the Sengoku Jidai.

 

And now she was here. She had a life to live, and as her friends had lived theirs - she would live hers.

 

She just hoped the food would get better.