InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Mayumi's Story ❯ Chapter 1 ( Chapter 1 )

Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi

 

 

Mayumi's Story, Chapter 1

 

 

It's not easy being me. Don't get me wrong, I love my life and, all things considered, I'd do it all over again if I had to. I had a destiny to fulfill, my whole family did. At least that's what they always told me, and having seen some of the things I've seen, I'd have to say they were right. Sometimes I wish I were just an ordinary girl. I'm sighing here. We can't always get what we want. I really hope the rest of that song is true.

 

I don't know when it dawned on me that my family was different from other families. My parents loved me, loved all us kids, and they loved each other, too. I grew up in a household of love. I thought everybody loved me when I was little. As a child, I took the sweeping changes in my daily life for granted. Didn't all little kids have to have their ears covered before they went out in public? Didn't they all get their hair dyed before they went back in time to visit their other house? Of course, back then, I wasn't actually aware that we were traveling through time.

 

My first clue that there might be something different about my family occurred when I was sent to pre-school. Mama was busy with my baby brother Koji, so maybe she didn't pay as much attention to me as she should have. I remember getting yanked back by my new teacher when the other kids complained that I was sniffing them. Mama didn't see, and I learned right then and there not to sniff my new friends too closely. Later, Papa comforted me when I told him I didn't want to go back to that place. He figured out right away what was wrong, and taught me how to sort through scents without being so obvious about it—a great life lesson for me, one I came to rely on years later.

 

I was something of a Daddy's girl—still am, I suppose, for all that I'm a mother and a grandmother myself. My brother Kazuki is Papa's spitting image, in looks and in personality, too, even though neither one of them will admit it. I take after Papa, too, in looks. I think we're alike in other ways, too, although everybody else says I'm nothing like my hot-headed father. He isn't always hot-headed. He understands me. I can talk to him about anything. He was the one who told me when. . . when. . . my world almost came to an end, and I had to make a choice which killed me inside. He knew, he understood, and he let me do it.

 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. As I said, it isn't easy being me, a time traveling hanyou with a foot in both worlds and a destiny to fulfill. Of course, I didn't realize any of those things for a long, long time. In the beginning, as I said, I thought I was the center of the universe and everything revolved around me. In time, I learned to be careful, that not everybody loved me, and not everybody could do the things my family took for granted. But in the beginning, life was grand.

 

 

 

“Mayumi! Come here!” my mother called from the upstairs bathroom. I leapt up to the second story rail, not bothering with the stairs. This was my newest trick. Mama made me stick my head under the faucet in the bathtub while she washed my hair with the stuff that stank and turned it black. Then I hopped in the tub and washed in the slightly brownish water that turned my skin golden and masked my natural scent. Koji was already in the tub, his little arms and legs splashing wildly. Mama had dyed his hair, too, to match hers. We dressed in what I thought of as our traveling clothes, not knowing how right I was, and Papa met us downstairs to take us on our journey. Papa never put the black stuff in his hair. I never questioned why he didn't have to when all the rest of us did—it was just how it was.

 

Of course, Kazuki went by himself, without us. I didn't like that. “Why can't I go with Kazuki?” I whined, not wanting to hear how he was older. I was big, too. Didn't I go to pre-school with the Humans every Tuesday and Thursday? I told that to Mama, hoping to sway her.

 

“Honey, that's not their last name,” Mama admonished me. “That's just what we call them, but you mustn't say it in front of them. Remember, we talked about this before.”

 

I vaguely recalled that conversation. They were Humans, but we couldn't call them that. Then why did we say it? I didn't get it. “Ok, Mama,” I agreed, because it was easier. She had distracted me from my original complaint. Papa drew Tetsusaiga, his big sword, and swished it in a blue arc in front of us. Then we were there. In the other place. Uncle Miroku was waiting, as usual. I liked riding up front with Uncle Miroku. I forgot about wanting to go by myself, like Kazuki.

 

We had our own house in the slayer's village where we stayed on these mini-vacations. Mama and Papa did grown-up things with Uncle Miroku and Auntie Sango, and we kids had free reign among the village children. I loved playing with Sango's daughters. They took me under their wing and called me their little sister. I followed them everywhere.

 

Suddenly the alarm sounded and cries of `Youkai!' rang out through the village. My father tensed, then relaxed. “It's just Kouga's kid,” he muttered, and went back to doing whatever it was he was doing. The youkai never even came in to the village, but went right to the practice field where Hiroshi and Kazuki and the others spent most of their time. Apparently he knew my brother.

 

We girls traipsed out there, too. It would be a few years yet before we were old enough to join in, but we enjoyed watching the big kids play. Kouga's kid looked right at me and grimaced. “Who's she?” he asked, disdain in his voice.

 

“She's our sister,” the girls protested, gathering me closer.

 

“Is that so?” asked Kouga's kid skeptically. He stared straight at me, and I stared right back, trying surreptitiously to get his scent. It was kind of nice—different, but nice. He turned away then and went back to his practicing. I found myself watching him rather than watching my brother or Hiroshi. He was as fast as Kazuki, and in my little mind I thought him quite dashing.

 

That was the first time I met Daichi, although I didn't find out his name until much later. I took to watching slayer practice or `Slayer School,' as my brother called it, every time we came to visit. Sometimes Daichi was there. Most times he was not. When he was there, he made a point of ignoring me, which I didn't like at all. I made up my mind right then and there that I was going to marry him.

 

My parents trusted Auntie Sango and Uncle Miroku implicitly. I spent many of my vacations there in the Sengoku Jidai, as did Kazuki, and later, Koji. At the beginning, my parents always came, too, which was probably a good thing, because I learned what it meant to be youkai, hanyou actually, while I was there. Later, after I had figured out Kazuki's trick and could travel through time by myself, they were content to let me stay there without them.

 

We had a system. As I grew older, I learned a little of my parents' history and why it was so very important no one know who we really were. So, it became the story around the village that I was Sango and Miroku's adopted daughter, who had some youkai blood, not much. Even Uncle Shippo was fooled, on the rare occasions that he and I happened to be in the village at the same time. I attribute a lot of that to Mama's scent-masking solution and to Uncle Shippo's great lessons in kitsune disguises that he taught me in my own time, with the full knowledge that I would be using his tricks to fool his past self. He knew how important it was that we keep our true identity a secret. Did I mention that my family has a destiny to fulfill?

 

Kazuki was—Kazuki. He came and he went, and he was so much better at hiding in plain sight than I ever thought of being. It came naturally to him, I think in part because he didn't try to hide. He was just—Kazuki. The Sengoku Jidai came to accept him as himself and never put two and two together that he was Inuyasha's son. In retrospect, that's hard to believe. They really are a lot alike.

 

Of course, I didn't connect my Daichi with the grown-up Daichi I knew in the future, either. How could I? By the time I realized they were one and the same being, it was too late. By then, love prevented me from letting on that I knew, and I started down the whole spiral that was both necessary and painful and led me to this moment in time. I hurt so many people, myself included, despite the fact that most of them, including me, had advance knowledge of what was to come. Even knowing, none of us could stop it. I'm sighing again. Memories.

 

I don't want to imply that I had a sad life; I didn't. I was blessed in so many ways. Like all creatures, I had to learn about life by living it. I know my father's story, and my mother's. They overcame just as many odds and still survived. Their love gives me hope for the future.