InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Mayumi's Story ❯ Chapter 6 ( Chapter 6 )

Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi

 

 

Mayumi's Story, Chapter 6:

 

 

“Hold still while I pin this in place.” My mother tightened the wide band around my head which effectively flattened my ears. I had to admit it did look good. She had made it out of the same material as my dress, a shiny metallic gold color that contrasted nicely with my light hair and highlighted the color of my eyes. We'd left my hair long to hide my lack of human ears.

 

A car horn beeped. “He's here. I've got to go. Thanks, mom!” I grabbed my purse and attempted to rush out the front door, but I slipped in my new high heels and nearly fell.

 

“Hey, there, careful.” A hand shot out and steadied my elbow until I could regain my balance.

 

“Oh, Uncle Dai, thanks,” I murmured as the wolf youkai who often hung around our house let me go. He gazed at me in my prom dress and gave me a half-smile as he looked me over. I pirouetted for him, smiling back. “Do I look ok?” I asked him.

 

“You look beautiful,” he replied.

 

“And you're sweet,” I said as I gave him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek before I opened the front door. “'Bye!”

 

It was my first prom. I was only a sophomore, but a Junior boy invited me so I was one of the few fifteen-year-olds that got to attend the dance. I almost didn't get to go at all. Papa would not hear of me going out on a `date' at my age, until Mama reminded him that she hadn't been much older when they had first met. Besides, my mother reminded him that I was hanyou and could certainly handle a wimpy human boy. I think that's what swayed Papa.

 

I was so glad my parents weren't up to speed with these things like some of the other parents. They let me out without taking one picture. My friend who was a boy, as opposed to boyfriend, didn't even have to get out of his car. We drove carefully down the mountain road, trying to avoid the many potholes on the seldom-traveled road.

 

The dance was being held at a local hotel ballroom, and we pulled into the hotel parking garage where we met some of his other friends. I was so excited. Devin, the boy who had invited me to the prom, was a friend. We hung out at school. I was in some of his classes, so we got along pretty well. I had been flattered when he asked me to the prom instead of asking someone his own age. But now that we were finally here, I began to feel out of place. I'd thought my dress was elegant, shimmering gold which fell in graceful folds from my waist to just above my knees. The other girls wore slinkier dresses which clung to their bodies in shades of deepest purple, or black, or in once case, bright white which would have washed me right out if I had tried to wear that color. They all wore their hair up off their necks in elaborate curls. I felt like a little girl next to them.

 

Devin was great. He sat with me, danced with me, and by the end of the evening I was having a good time. Some of the other kids had rented a hotel suite so they didn't have to drive back late at night. Devin wanted to go, but I knew that wouldn't fly with my parents, and I told him so.

 

“You can go. I'll get a ride home,” I told him, having no intention of riding home in any vehicle. I could make it there faster on my own, anyway, as long as I took off my heels.

 

But Devin was a gentleman and insisted on driving me home. “Come up to the room for just a couple of minutes so I can tell everybody good-bye, ok? Then we can go.”

 

What could I say? I went. There was drinking going on; I could smell it as we got near the door. There was also other stuff going on between some of the couples. I stood stiffly just inside the door and waited for Devin to say his good-byes. But he pulled me over to the couch, telling me it was just for a little while. Hanyou that I was, I still let him pull me. I think I was still trying to be polite at that point. Then he tried to kiss me. That did it. I stood, and untangled my hand from his. “I'm going home,” I said.

 

He actually tried to use his strength to hold me there. I kept walking towards the door until he had to let go or be dragged. He let go, but he followed me. “I'm sorry,” he said in one breath. “I thought you liked me,” he said in the next. “Never mind, I'll take you home.”

 

We got into his car in stony silence, and started the long drive up the mountain. He smelled confused, and I thought maybe I had reacted too strongly. “I'm not mad,” I said. “You surprised me, that's all. I don't think of you like that.”

 

It was the wrong thing to say, apparently. Devin pulled the car off to the side of the road in a fairly deserted area. “Well, maybe you should,” he said, as he turned off the engine and the headlights. He probably thought I would be scared of the dark and turn to him for comfort. “I like you, Mayumi. I really do.” He reached across the seat for me and I sidled back as far as I could towards my side of the car.

 

He was effectively blind in the dark, but I could see just fine. I opened my door and got out. “Good-bye, Devin,” I said. I slipped off my shoes and glided away in the dark. I could hear Devin open his car door and call out for me. I ignored him.

 

My eyes filled with hot tears, and I blinked them away angrily. I wasn't upset that Devin had tried to kiss me. I was more upset that I'd lost my good friend Devin. After this, it would be impossible to go back to the easy friendship we used to have. What a way to end prom night!

 

I didn't want to go home with red eyes, so I stopped in a tree safely outside my mother's barrier and cried my eyes out. When I was done, I finally sensed that I was no longer alone. Instantly I tensed up. I ripped my headband off so that I could hear better, and watched it flutter slowly to the earth below. It never landed.

 

“Uncle Dai,” I said in surprise, a little embarrassed at having been caught crying, and even more embarrassed that I had allowed him to sneak up on me like that.

 

He hopped up to my branch and handed me back my headband. “Rough night?”

 

“No—yes—well, I had a good time, actually, but then Devin tried to kiss me.”

 

“He WHAT?” Dai shouted.

 

I blinked up at him. He sounded just like my father. “I didn't let him,” I said, and Uncle Dai visibly relaxed. To my mortification, my eyes started tearing up again.

 

Uncle Dai put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to his chest. He held me until I stopped crying. His scent enveloped me and gradually I calmed down. “Better?” he asked.

 

I nodded. “Thanks, Uncle Dai.”

 

He winced. “Don't you think you're a little too old to keep calling me `Uncle'?” he asked.

 

I hadn't realized it bothered him. I was just so used to saying it. Then it registered what he had said. He thought I was old enough to be considered an adult! I smiled widely. “Sure, Dai,” I said. “Thanks for always being there for me.”

 

“Anytime.” He jumped from the tree in synch with me, and we raced the last few miles to the barrier, where he left me to go in alone. Devin's car was in the driveway. I put on my heels and went inside to rescue Devin from my Papa.

 

 

 

I don't know when I realized that I loved Daichi. It occurred to me one day as we were running, as usual, in the feudal era, that there was no where else I'd rather be, and no one else I'd rather be with. Maybe I'd always loved him, since that first time I'd seen him when I was little. Maybe it just took me a long time to figure it out.

 

There was a reason I hadn't wanted to kiss Devin. I already had a boyfriend. I went back to the Sengoku Jidai the weekend after the prom. I didn't need my father's sword to travel back in time, and I wasn't bound by his limitations to always appear at the old well near Auntie Rin's village. I could appear anywhere I wanted. My only limitation, which seemed to hold true for my brother Kazuki as well, was that the time line ran parallel to our own. I could go back to the Sengoku Jidai, but only in relation to my current time. I couldn't go back, for example, to a time before I met Daichi. Time only moved forward for us, either here in our time, or back there in the Sengoku Jidai. So I went back there, to a place halfway between the slayer village and Daichi's territory. It was where we could be ourselves without having to worry about running into either Daichi's family or mine.

 

Daichi didn't know I was from the future. I never let him see me actually appear or disappear. I made sure I did that somewhere private, where nobody could see me. There was a cave near our meetingplace. I kept a few changes of clothing there for times like these, when I snuck out of my parents house to go meet Daichi.

 

I hadn't had time to dye my hair and I had to settle for rubbing some of the bean paste water all over my skin as I quickly changed my jeans and t-shirt for the modest, and, truth be told, more comfortable, garb of the feudal era. I tucked my kerchief into my waistband, rather than wearing it. Out here, I didn't expect to meet any humans.

 

Daichi thought my real hair color was beautiful. He ran his hands through my hair and over my silvery ears, and laid his own dark head next to mine so that the colors mingled. “You shouldn't have to hide this,” he told me. “You're beautiful.”

 

We lay on our backs gazing up at the clouds. I sighed in contentment. If only we could stay like this all the time. I turned my head to look at Daichi at the same moment that he turned his to look at me. We were inches apart. I hadn't wanted to kiss Devin because I wanted to kiss someone else. I wondered if Daichi would think I was terribly forward if I kissed him.

 

I stretched up, just a tiny bit, and pressed my lips to his. No, he didn't think I was being forward at all. Somehow we found ourselves in each other's arms and we kissed, as if we had always known how to kiss. It was that right.

 

That day was a turning point for us. Daichi was my love and I belonged with him forever.