InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Mayumi's Story ❯ Chapter 8 ( Chapter 8 )

Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi

 

 

Mayumi's Story, Chapter 8:

 

 

I had to be sure. After I had done all my moping and soul-searching, I couldn't ignore the fact that my Daichi could be Dai. But why hadn't he said anything? Did he not remember me? Was I fated to return to the future and never again see my one true love? I mean, Dai was nice, but he was old. I was in love with Daichi—and he loved me. What could have gone so wrong? I told myself I was getting upset for nothing. After all, it could just be a coincidence. The names were similar, that's all. They were both wolf youkai. They smelled. . . I had to think about it for a minute. . . they smelled. . . similar, but not the same. I would know, right? I'm inu-hanyou.

 

I went down to dinner still preoccupied with the Dai-Daichi dilemma. I didn't even taste my food. Daichi liked hunting rabbits; so did Dai. My father glanced sharply at me, and put down his bowl and chopsticks. “Where were you?” he asked me.

 

“In my room,” I answered truthfully. Not the whole time, but I was in there. He looked suspicious for another few seconds, then went back to shoveling food into his mouth.

 

“Papa, is Kouga really my uncle?” I asked.

 

He nearly spat his mouthful of rice across the table. “What? No! He's a wolf youkai, not a dog youkai. Keh! Really your uncle,” he muttered.

 

My mother caught his eye from across the table and he quickly toned down his tirade. “You know how it is,” Papa said more quietly. “You call everybody who's older Auntie and Uncle—like Miroku and Sango. And Shippo.”

 

I was relieved to hear that. I'd thought as much, but I wanted to be sure. If Kouga had really been my uncle, and Dai was Kouga's son, and if Dai turned out to really be Daichi, then . . . well, I didn't want to think about it.

 

Glances were flying fast and furious between my parents, until finally my mother pulled me aside. “Mayumi, is there anything you'd like to tell me?” she asked.

 

“No, Mama,” I replied. I did not want to tell her about this particular problem. I finished my meal and started washing dishes. As much as I had wanted her comfort earlier, when I was still in shock over my discovery, this was something I had to figure out on my own.

 

Dai's wolf pack lived to the north of our mountain, but Dai always seemed to be close by. I had thought it was because Papa had enlisted his help in protecting us from that mysterious youkai threat, but now I was not so sure. I made it my mission to try and find out exactly who Dai was.

 

So I followed him. I tried to be stealthy about it, but he'd had about five hundred more years of experience in youkai tracking than I did. “What are you doing?” he asked curiously, as I hung back just as he was about to close the bathroom door.

 

“Oops, sorry!” I apologized, and slunk away. I'd have to be more careful.

 

It was the end of a very long day. Dai had picked me up from school again and this time when he left me at the barrier which would let me pass through but would burn him unless he called my mother to take it down first, I pretended to go inside. I watched while he left, and when it was safe, I slipped back out again and followed him. He was easy to track. I realize now that it was because he knew I was there. In other words, he was letting me track him. He led me past Uncle Shippo's house and down the mountain almost back to town before he zipped north again. My cell phone rang and I panicked. I ducked behind a boulder and frantically scrabbled at it, trying to turn it off before it rang again. It was my mother, most likely wondering why I hadn't come home from school. Dai turned at the sound, but right then his own cell phone went off. Mama was probably trying to call him next. The jig was up. I turned around to go home when Dai caught me by the shoulders. “What are you doing here?” he asked, for the first, but certainly not the last time, that day.

 

“I—uh—forgot to tell you something,” I quickly fibbed, my face going red.

 

“Oh? What?” he asked pleasantly. The beginnings of a smile tugged at his lips, and I imagined I could see echoes of Daichi's smile in it. I couldn't be sure, though.

 

“You're supposed to stop by the house,” I made up, wondering what I was going to do when he found out it wasn't true.

 

“Yeah, your mother just told me,” he agreed. “She was worried about you, you know.”

 

So it was true? He was supposed to come to our house? Saved. “She worries about everything,” I said blithely, passing it off as unimportant. I was off the hook. Dai had bought my story.

 

His dark eyes turned serious. “You shouldn't be so reckless,” he said. “She's only concerned about your safety.” He held out his hand and I took it, and we ran back together. I couldn't tell you how many times Daichi and I used to run, hand in hand, just like that.

 

He and my father and Fenn spent the evening discussing their mutual youkai problem. I was supposed to be upstairs doing my homework, but I listened. The three of them had carved up our territory, which was roughly the northeastern part of the continent. Things like borders and countries don't mean much to youkai. The territory was ours in the sense that we lived in it, not that we owned it. Papa had this area; Fenn concentrated on the area to the south and west of us, and Dai was responsible for the far north. Most of Dai's wolves remained to our north, in the wild, uninhabited spaces beyond the human cities. I envied them their relative freedom to be who they were meant to be, creatures of nature, wild things.

 

From what I could gather, this youkai that they were so afraid of (how they would bristle and deny it if I said so out loud) was one they had encountered before, at different times and in different places. It seems that he could move through time, or at least through space, with ease. What was the big deal? So could Fenn, so could my brothers and I, and even Papa, with his sword. My papa and Fenn both thought they had killed him, if it were even the same youkai. He disappeared from Japan right around the time my father left for the first time, and he had disappeared from here when Fenn killed him a few hundred years ago. Personally, I doubted that it could be the same youkai. I had seen the petrified remains of the youkai Fenn had killed—I wasn't supposed to, but I snuck out with Kazuki when I was still in elementary school to go look at it. This was before the supposed `danger' all the grown-ups were concerned about. We had both seen Midoriko's earthly remains, and this one looked similar. Fenn had sucked all the life essence out of it—neat trick, that. I'm glad I take my essence fresh and on the hoof. Apparently, this youkai had been spotted again, recently, in our territory. Papa thought it might be a manifestation of one of Fenn's cast-offs, which Fenn vehemently denied. Poor Dai had been sucked in to this. He hadn't known anything about the mysterious youkai until my father had drafted him to become our protector. I still didn't see what the fuss was about. So what if there was a mysterious youkai running about the territory? Something they were saying caught my attention then. The youkai had been spotted in Uncle Miroku's time—Daichi's time—also? That was what my parents had been tracking back in the feudal era. I hadn't realized it was the same one. Unthinking, I crept down the stairs.

 

“What are you doing here, Mayumi?” asked Dai, looking up from the table where the three of them were poring over maps of some sort. I think he was trying to make my father realize that I was listening to things I shouldn't be hearing. My father knew I was listening. He didn't tend to baby us as much as Mama did.

 

“I heard you talking,” I said lamely. “Are you sure it's the same youkai on the other side?” I was worried about Daichi.

 

“We got it covered,” my father said. Dai shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Fenn looked up at me and smiled reassuringly. They all knew about our family's time traveling abilities, so I wasn't giving away any state secrets on this side. “Go back to bed.”

 

I wasn't tired, but I went back upstairs and left them to their meeting. I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to find Daichi, but it was late, and I wasn't sure I was ready to face him yet.

 

Much later, when the house was finally still, I crept back downstairs. Fenn had gone home but Dai slept on our couch in the family room. I inhaled through my mouth and nose, tasting his scent. Similar, not the same. It might have been because they were both wolves. I had to get closer.

 

Soundlessly I made my way to the couch and I crouched over Dai, sniffing surreptitiously while I gazed at his sleeping face. He was leaner than my Daichi. I studied his face, needing to know. Suddenly his eyes popped open and I fell flatt on my bottom. Some youkai stalker I was!

 

“What are you doing?” he asked me, slowly propping himself up on his elbows so he could see me better.

 

My face flamed. What could I say? I'm trying to find out if you're my boyfriend from the past? I lowered my head and kept my mouth shut.

 

“Mayumi.” A hand gently cupped my chin and tilted my head back up. The look in Dai's eye frightened me. It was tender, it was knowing. He knew what I was doing there.

 

His face got closer and closer, then he gently kissed me on the lips before he pulled me up and sat me on the couch beside him. “So you finally figured it out,” he murmured.

 

“Daichi?” My voice trembled. I folded both my hands in my lap and wouldn't look at him. I recognized him in that kiss. I should have been happy, but the truth was, I don't know what I felt.

 

“Yeah, that's me.” He sighed. “I'm glad it's finally over. You don't know how hard it was pretending all these years.”

 

My mind was spinning as I tried to make sense out of everything. “Why did you leave me? What happened to us, Dai?”

 

“I didn't leave you. You left me.” His voice was soft and steady but I could hear the sorrow behind it.

 

“That's impossible,” I argued. “I would never leave you, Daichi.”

 

The pain in his voice intensified; he was Dai, hadn't been Daichi for hundreds of years. He knew I wasn't talking about him. “I don't know what happened,” he said. “You disappeared. I searched and searched, but I never found you.”

 

I swallowed. Until now, I thought. “Did you—didn't you ever—have another girlfriend?”

 

He sighed, but he didn't answer my question. I felt my shoulders tense. Of course he must have had other girlfriends.

 

“Do you love someone now?” I asked in a small voice, afraid to hear the answer. He wasn't my Daichi, but he was. Even if he wasn't the one I really wanted, it hurt to think of him with someone else.

 

“Yes, I love someone right now, Mayumi.” He took both my hands in his and stared right into my eyes so there would be no mistake about who he meant. Me. He loved me.

 

I couldn't pull my hands away. That would hurt his feelings. He was Daichi, but he wasn't. Not to me. Not yet, and maybe never. My Daichi was waiting for me five hundred years in the past.

 

So I smiled faintly and held Dai's hand in the moonlight. This close to him, and now that I knew what to look for, I recognized his scent, Daichi's scent. He really was my Daichi, somewhere in there. I felt myself relax and I thought, if we were fated to lose each other, at least we didn't lose each other forever.