InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Lost World ❯ Chapter Fifteen ( Chapter 15 )

Lost World

 

By: OtakuSailorV

 

Chapter Fifteen - Sketching

 

Rin was silent the entire flight back to the castle, her clammy grip had long ago caused the red blossom she clutched wilt. She plucked at its silken petals, not quite sure why she was holding onto it. Maybe because it reminded her of home? She looked down at it thoughtfully and became instantly lost in memories of her last few moments in her own world. Internally she hissed at the painful memories and quickly shut them away again, dropping the flower in the process. No, she didn't want to remember…she didn't want to remember that day at all…

 

She stooped and picked the flower back up, sheepishly glancing about to see if anyone had taken notice. They had. Her cheeks flushed immediately and she bowed her head, fussing at the wilted petals again.

 

“Are you not feeling well, Rin-chan?” Inutaishou questioned, trying not to smile at Rin's frustrations. “You've been quiet ever since Sesshoumaru brought you back from the garden.”

 

Rin looked up sharply, cheeks ablaze, feeling quite stupid and frantic. Should she tell him what she suspected of Lord Naraku or not? If she were wrong, she'd feel horrible about making such an accusation, but if she didn't, and she was right, then she might run into trouble later on. It could be a good lead as to how she could return home too, and she was fairly certain that this Lord Naraku at least knew something about her mysterious passage into this world…But there was still the fact that she might be wrong. She didn't want Inutaishou to go through any trouble at all, and if she set him on a wild goose chase, she'd never forgive herself. She soon became dizzy with indecisiveness.

 

Seeing Rin so instantly frantic made Inutaishou grin again and he looked side-long at his son slyly. “I see, you two were out in the garden alone together weren't you?”

 

Both were absolutely silent as Rin's face suffused the brightest red Inutaishou had seen to date. Sesshoumaru merely narrowed his eyes at his father as if to say `ha ha, you're not funny' while frowning.

 

“N-no! That's not it at all,” Rin spluttered, waving her hands and dropping the flower again. She picked it up hurriedly and continued on, trying to explain the situation but was in fact only making it worse. Inutaishou seemed to love to tease her.

 

“We- I- no, you see,” she gave up after several moments of ineffective attempts at speech.

 

“Oh yes, I see,” Inutaishou continued to tease, only to be rewarded with another death glare from Sesshoumaru and more flustered fussing from Rin.

 

“Naraku was causing trouble in the gardens,” Sesshoumaru said shortly when his father began to nudge him in the ribs with his elbow. He looked annoyed.

 

Inutaishou paused for a moment; his smile still in place as was his elbow, sticking awkwardly into Sesshoumaru's rib cage. “Oh, he was, eh,” he sounded amused and concerned at the same time.

 

“Rin-chan, what did you make of Lord Naraku?” he asked, turning to her suddenly with a curious smile. Rin was taken aback.

 

How should she answer? She knew she should tell the truth of what she suspected of the strange Lord, but what if her suspicions were wrong? Again she became flustered, stumbling for words and scratching at her head thoughtfully. There was a long pause in which she collected her thoughts.

 

“I…uhm…” she looked into Inutaishou's eyes apprehensively, watching carefully for how he would take her words. “I don't trust him…he's…there's something…”

 

She pulled at her fingers fitfully for a moment, fiddling with the flower caught between them. She held it up so that Inutaishou could see.

 

“This flower, it was something that the man who brought me into this world showed me before I arrived here…Tonight, he…offered me the same flower. He acted like he knew something…” she felt stupid and turned her eyes away. Naraku was definitely a strange man and she did not like him at all, but was she correct in her assumptions? Could it be just a coincidence?

 

Inutaishou took the flower in his hand, holding it between his thumb and forefinger as he investigated it with a careful eye. He seemed to have no argument with her idea so far. Rin was slightly relieved, though she still wondered if he thought her foolish or not. He sniffed at the flower before passing it to Sesshoumaru, who looked at it dully.

 

“What do you make of it?” he asked his son sternly.

 

Sesshoumaru had barely touched the flower when it suddenly rotted and turned to dust. Inutaishou's eyebrows rose and he snorted in amused contempt as the dust blew away. Rin was astonished.

 

“It would appear that Lord Naraku doesn't take much of a liking to you,” Inutaishou joked humorlessly.

 

“Hm,” Sesshoumaru scoffed.

 

* * *

 

Rin sighed to herself as she looked out at the garden, her eyes were half-closed in tired thought. What was she going to do from here? Inutaishou had insisted that she not worry, that they would get her home somehow, but that wasn't what was bothering her. It was that man, Naraku's, cold eyes that she found lurking in the back of her mind. He knew something about why she was in this world, she knew it. It was those eyes…those horrible red eyes.

 

`What a horrible color for someone's eyes to be,' Rin thought to herself as she clung to one of the support beams.

 

“Oi! Rin-san, wake up!” A pair of knuckles rapped on her skull sharply, making her flinch in surprise.

 

“N-nani?!” she cried, spinning about in a blur to find Koto smiling down at her playfully.

 

“You're always day-dreaming, you know that,” Koto mused before taking a seat beside Rin with a grin. “What were you thinking about this time?”

 

Rin looked out at the garden again, cool and soothing in the early night hours. What had she been thinking about? She had in truth not really been thinking of anything, but floating from one thought to the other in a daze. She was too tired to focus. “I was just thinking…it would be nice to have my sketchbook.”

 

Koto's ears swiveled forward, cocking themselves in a questioning position in accordance with her eyebrows. “What? Sketchbook? What's that?”

 

Rin looked at her a moment, blinking in disbelief before she remembered to whom she was talking to. Of course Koto wouldn't know about her sketchbook. But how to explain it? Koto probably wouldn't really like to sketch…

 

“It's like…a book that I keep papers in with my drawings on them. I just thought it would be nice to have it here with me so I could draw,” Rin said sheepishly, feeling a tad like an idiot. She'd never gone anywhere without that sketchbook before. She'd left it in her backpack when she left her world…

 

Koto became thoughtful, watching Rin out of the corner of her eyes with a mischievous twinkle. Rin was about to say something when Koto got to her feet and hurriedly tried to pull Rin up as well.

 

“Well, Rin-san, you'd better get to sleep. You need to rest,” Koto shoved a protesting Rin down the hall.

 

“Huh, what?” Rin tried to get a word in edgewise, but Koto ignored her, talking loudly over Rin's babble happily.

 

“You should just rest-up, you've had a big day…”

 

* * *

 

Rin woke the next morning, still puzzled as to what had gotten into Koto the night before. Then again, Koto was an odd person, despite the fact that she was youkai, of course. She had an eccentric attitude that made Rin feel at home in this world, like she had gone back to her own time.

 

Getting up, Rin tried to fix her crazy bed-head as she looked around the room with bleary sleep-encrusted eyes. Sunlight was coming in through the paper panels of the shouji door.

 

“Hm, what's this?” Rin mused to herself sleepily as one of her hands rested on an object next to her. It felt like a book…Turning, Rin picked up what seemed to be a collection of papers of different sizes tied together with two dried leaves serving as covers for the pages. It was a book, or at least, Rin was pretty sure that's what it was.

 

In very thin ink were the characters for `sketchbook' on one side. It was spelt wrong and the characters were messy and misshapen, but Rin could tell what it was. So this was what Koto was up to!

 

Rin smiled, overflowing with thankful happiness. Why would she go and do a thing like that? It was so nice of her…Moving the sketchbook to one side; she caught another oddity out of the corner of her eye. Focusing on it, Rin found that beside the sketchbook had been placed a single sharpened stick of charcoal. She smiled at it, wondering where Koto had found all of the means to create such a thing on her own. And just from Rin's briefest description too…

 

Getting up, Rin hurried to the door and walked out, still in her nightclothes with the sketchbook in hand. She was determined to find Koto and thank her several times over for her kindness. How very sweet of her new friend…

 

* * *

 

Sighing, Rin made a face at the sketchbook, irritable because she could not find Koto anywhere. She had looked everywhere in the castle that she could think of her friend being, and had even asked around for Koto, but to no avail. No one seemed to know where her friend was. Rin became disappointed; she really wanted to thank Koto right away…

 

“What are you doing moping around here? Are you lost again?”

 

Rin jumped, looking about wildly for the owner of the voice. Peering down, she spotted the culprit. It was Takeshi, the little youkai boy that had reminded her so much of her own brother. He was giving her a rather sour look, his arms crossed over his chest. Rin didn't think that Takeshi liked her very much…

 

“Ah, uh, well, no, I'm-uh, just looking for Koto-chan…” Rin stumbled, feeling awkward under Takeshi's angered gaze. “Do you know where she is Takeshi-chan?”

 

“Don't call me `-chan!'” he ordered immediately, making Rin flinch away from his loud voice. She hurried to apologize but he cut her off rudely. “And Koto isn't around. She's going to be busy all day with work so you better not bother her again.”

 

Rin was taken aback. Was she really always bothering Koto? “I-I'm sorry, I just wanted to thank her…the sketchbook…”

 

Takeshi looked at it, nose wrinkled in distaste, though it was apparent he was interested. “Well, you'll have to thank her later, she's busy.”

 

With that he walked off, looking like he was about to burst with anger. Rin watched him go, wondering if Takeshi had a little crush on Koto. She suspected so from the way he was acting, but then again, she had always been clueless about those sorts of things. Sighing, Rin scratched her head with one hand as she looked at the makeshift sketchbook. She'd brought the charcoal stick with her…

 

* * *

 

Sitting on a rather large boulder in the middle of the largest garden in the castle, Rin sketched out the nearby pond, brimming with life. The Koi inside were making it hard for her, always moving, but she managed to get a pretty good picture down. After all, it was good practice for her art class back at school in her world. She'd have to stay in top-form on at least something if she was gonna be gone so long.

 

Sighing, she leaned back, comparing her sketch to the landscape in the twilight. She was satisfied with it, though she did miss her eraser and colored pencils. But she wasn't about to complain after so much work that Koto had put into it. She'd give the sketch to Koto as thanks, maybe, if Koto liked it. Rin grew embarrassed as she considered the idea of someone else looking at her art. Would they think she was very bad? No, they'd praise her…but what did they really think?

 

Her frazzled thoughts made her eyebrows come together, wrinkling her brow. From beside her came a sudden snort, a half-bark of acknowledgement. Rin flinched, her silence broken. She came crashing back down to earth and realized suddenly that Jiro was seated next to her rock, looking at her with that same stony expression. He seemed rather peeved at not having been noticed until then.

 

“Oh, it's you,” Rin greeted, patting his head warmly. “Where do you run off to all the time, huh? You always seem to sneak up on me.”

 

The dog made no sign as to whether he had heard her or not, merely sitting there as if he were bored. Rin scowled, imitating the dog's stern stare after a moment, mocking him.

 

“I ought'a call you Sesshoumaru, always being so bland and emotionless. Why don't you get all excited when you get petted like other dogs do?”

 

Rin paused, thinking about what she had said. “…No, that wouldn't be you then, would it. You'd be just like everyone else. Never mind,” she patted his head lovingly again. “Stay the way you are, nothing wrong with that.”

 

The dog watched her through gold-colored eyes that seemed so intelligent and yet he remained silent and stoic as ever, letting her pet him to her content. In a way, he seemed to enjoy it, as Rin continued to stroke him; he seemed to grow more comfortable. Shifting, he leaned closer to her as she scratched behind his ears.

 

“What do you think, huh?” Rin asked, picking up her sketch and showing it off to him. Jiro looked at the sketch unemotionally and then back at Rin's smiling face. “I'm out of practice, but I'm still proud of it. I think I'll give it to Koto-chan as a present.”

 

Jiro laid down, his head on his paws. Rin made a face, taking Jiro's movement to mean that he didn't like her sketch or was bored with her. She peeked over the edge of the rock to see that Jiro had closed his eyes. Rin imitated Jiro's snort from before.

 

Setting her sketchbook and charcoal stick aside, Rin climbed down from the rock and crouched down so that she was nose-to-nose in the grass with Jiro. The dog's nostrils flared as they filled with her scent and he opened his eyes lazily, holding Rin's dark chocolate eyes steadily. Suddenly, Rin leaned forward and kissed the tip of Jiro's black nose, startling the dog, which made her grin. His eyes went wide and he sat up, snorting in surprise.

 

Rin giggled, sitting back on her knees as Jiro licked his snout, apparently confused.

 

“Didn't expect that, did you?” she continued to laugh. “That's what you get for trying to ignore me.”

 

Jiro's expression went back to its usual flat look before he turned and walked away. Rin made a face at his retreating form, peeved with the dog.

 

“Oh, can't you take a joke,” Rin grumbled after him. “Runnin' off with your tail between your legs because I got the better of you for once.”

 

Jiro stopped for a moment, looking back at her briefly before continuing his slow pace away from her.

 

Rin laughed again as she stood and collected her things.

 

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