InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Movie House Hanyou ❯ Disconnected and Disconcerted ( Chapter 7 )

A/N: thanks for all the reviews, people on AFF.Net! Thankees! Reviews make me feel all squishy and loved!

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Work for the last week and a half had been more than stressful. Stressful was an understatement. Of course, he could hide things quite well, and not just the true explanations behind his… eccentricities, both physical and other. However, tension in the air was thicker than those azuki and honeydew jelly-cake bars he liked to stock up on at the Golden Lion in Brooklyn Center, and damn, those were nice and thick… and tasty.

It wasn't just the fact that he had to deal with having his sights set on a girl who was not only his inferior at work (which he didn't care too much about except for his fear of getting a pay cut if demoted) but also much younger than he had originally thought. Sure, he had been able to tell she was fairly young, but he had guessed 19 or 20. It was also the fact that she had actually come very close to discovering part of what he hid from most humans… his dog-like ears.

Inuyasha did eventually plan on letting her know his secrets, but that day was quite far off in the future. Only a couple dozen humans here in Minneapolis knew who, and what, he truly was, and some of them had not received the privilege of finding out until he had known them for several years.

Must be much more careful around her, damnit, he thought to himself, cursing mentally. I wonder if she suspects anything at all so far.

The opening weekend for X2: X-Men United had been extremely busy at work. He was glad the movie was a Friday release and not a Wednesday release like he originally had heard, or else he would have had to have a heated bitchfest with Naraku about being scheduled around opening night. Thankfully, May 2nd was not the new moon, and he hadn't needed to worry. The previous General Manager, Mr. Nick Ruston, was always understanding of his "situation," as he was one of the privileged. Naraku, however, would never be one to know. The bastard stank of deceit.

Right now, it was another night that he would be awake. In order to pass the boredom this time, however, he planned to reorganize his collection of movie posters. Nick had always let employees keep posters, and the rotund thirtysomething always let his best employees, such as Inuyasha and Zara, have first dibs. He personally didn't care what posters he got.

He just wanted posters.

He had learned long ago that collecting mundane things over the years would prove useful in gaining easy money decades and centuries later, as he could easily pawn or completely sell off artifacts, "antiques" and collectibles years down the road when they would actually be of antiquarian worth. Sometimes he sold things on ebay which he knew would be hot sellers, and other times he took his items to professional dealers.

He'd made a fortune selling portions of his stash of old Japanese currency to the guy at Premium Quality Coins in the Northstar Center a few blocks away from work, right in the heart of downtown and on the skyway level. He hadn't sold all of it… just some of the items of which he had multiples. Especially the ones made of gold and silver. The guy really enjoyed dealing in rare coins and precious metals, and they brought in the most money.

He was far from an okanemochi, but all of his friends had to admit that in addition to having a secure bank account balance, he had some fairly impressive collections, be it his old currency, his movie posters… or his Japanese weaponry.

The other day that katana he'd recently won on ebay had arrived in the mail, and almost immediately he had removed it from the package and inspected the embroidery on the hilt and the scabbard, checking to make sure it was in as nice and decay-free condition as had been listed in the auction description.

A blade made of tempered steel would last for many centuries, he knew, but the non-metallic elements, anything organic, must be kept and cared for properly in order for the structures to remain pristine over time. A good whiff and a smooth feel-up of the wood, fabric, or bone used in his newly accrued possessions often were enough to tell him the cellular condition of the materials. And the seller of this katana was right on the money.

Inuyasha stood in his poster room in the basement, staring at the few pieces he'd decided to hang in his poster cases for the past month. About two thousand posters altogether were assembled and filed away in high quality sealed tubes, and approximately two hundred banners. It was about time he took down his Almost Famous and Taxi Driver posters and replaced them with some other one-sheets, he decided.

Within minutes he had placed his precious double-sided movie posters, proof that they were authentic originals, into storage tubes and stuck some brilliant one-sheets from Donnie Darko and Gas Food Lodging up in their place, closing the front of the cases and locking them before turning the backlights back on. The images of Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Fairuza Balk, and Ione Skye shone back at him vibrantly from behind their glass prisons.

Turning around and scratching his head lightly with his knuckles, in the spot right between his ears, Inuyasha glanced toward his favorite piece of movie memorabilia… his Moulin Rouge windmill standee.

It sat in a corner by itself, stationed at just the right angle so that when plugged into the wall socket the lighted cardboard sails would turn in a perfect circular motion. He'd made Allen Sashka, another big movie memorabilia collector, order a second of the standee, one that he could take home for himself. The original one that had been assembled and put on display in the main lobby so as to entice customers to see it frequently had eventually become so battered and knocked around by the time the movie actually came out on the big screen that he was glad he had his own copy of the standee. It was probably his most precious single item in his collection of… of movie stuff.

Someone had actually offered Nick a good $300 for the Moulin Rouge windmill, despite its shitty condition. Numerous others asked for cheaper bargains, as well. However, while Inuyasha had been blessed with taking home an unassembled standee box, the display standee ended up being destroyed so that no one, customers or employees, could have it. Inuyasha himself had been given the honors of slashing it to bits in front of everyone. It made him proud, made him feel special.

Sighing, his mind still on the most recent events at work, he plugged the standee into the socket, and the fake, illustrated sails began to turn slowly, despite lack of wind, the lights gradually leaving hallucinatory trails in a circular motion.

Ten minutes later he had the movie's soundtrack playing in a CD player, a bottle of green specialty alcohol from the Czech Republic, and a tall glass, cold water, sugar cubes, and a metal vintage absinthe spoon set up for his windmill ritual.

Half an hour later, he was greeting the green fairy as she danced on the rotating sails and smacked her Tinkerbell ass with a flirty nose wiggle, lighting up the semi-lit room, singing along with her to the familiar songs. Henri Toulouse dressed as a magical sitar sat in a window that only existed within the illustration of the tower of the windmill, continually bombarding him with the line, "I only speak the truth… I only speak the truth!" while Satine the Hindi courtesan mock-danced in the traditional yet butchered movements her acting troupe had choreographed for their play, stationed on the ground in front of the swooping cardboard sails.

Entranced by the colorful and familiar visuals, Inuyasha merely nodded and listened to the stories of the sitar-man's acting troupe friends and brothel women, his own ears wiggling and twitching from hearing auditory hallucinations, his eyes thoroughly dilated.

His thoughts were on one and only one thing… the Bohemian ideals and how one in particular he constantly had to disobey. Truth.

I want so much to bond with her, make her know the real me. But she's not ready yet, he told himself foolishly. That woman, no… that girl shall be mine someday. Mine. But I won't go after jailbait. Never again. I don't give a shit that I'm much older than this goddamn country thinks I am. I just can't be found out. So many others left when I showed them the truth.

I am one big lie. My whole existence… I keep having to erase my identity and start all over again several times a century because I don't age the way these humans do. Because I'm… different. And different is not always good. I outlive everyone I meet, and it makes existence torturous at times.

He sat back in his chair and gazed stupidly at his claws, flexing them like he were tenderly gripping Kagome's breasts--

Where the FUCK did that come from?! he cursed at himself as his head snapped back with wide eyes, a snarl half-forming. She kept invading his ever waking thoughts at the most random moments, and it drove him absolutely insane. Stop thinking about her, damnit! he mentally proclaimed in a self-order.

Beginning to breathe heavily due to the influence of the music combined with the hallucinatory effects of the illegal substance he had consumed and was currently tripping on, Inuyasha quickly and drunkenly stood up and ran out of the poster room, rushing up the stairs into the main room.

He needed some fresh air, and he needed to sober up and get his mind off his current fantasy object. She was off-limits in American society to him for another eleven months and then some, and he wasn't about to have a repeat of Seattle eight years ago. No fucking way would he let the same shit happen to him again, he grumpily told himself. He'd been able to wait for a girl's 18th birthday before, and he could do it again. Couldn't he?

Glancing out the window at the house across the street, he stood there for a long time, contemplating what he was going to do.

"Life's a bitch."

Paranoia began to set in once again.

"Just how much did Kanna see or hear?"

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In her bed, Kagome tossed and turned, unable to sleep. The last week and a half had been pressing. She wasn't exactly sure where she and Inuyasha stood, and her worries had nothing to do with their age gap, about which she didn't care aside from the obvious legal aspect of it. Understanding his moodiness was fast becoming a real pain in the ass, that was for sure.

Things were just so ambiguous. Some days he would act like he had at Hell's Kitchen, playful and agreeable. Other days he was worse than on her first day of work, deliberately pushing her to the limit of her sanity. She didn't know why he had grown on her so much, despite all his… quirks. But, that was the way she felt.

Finally waking up from a semi-sleeplike state and forcing herself into a sitting position, regardless of the fact that it was only 4 in the morning, Kagome groggily opened her eyes and yawned, her body stiff with discomfort from not being able to find a good sleeping position. Her left hand had even fallen asleep.

"There's something weird about him that I just can't figure out. I don't know what it is, but someday, I'll get it outta him," she told herself aloud. "He kept saying not to ask, that I don't want to know. Heh, whatever it is, it can't seriously be that bad if he can go around in public.

"What's with the hat, anyway? He's the only person at Pierce who ever wears one, and I've never seen him without that hat or one of his bandanas. Granted, I haven't known him that long, not quite a month, but geez," she continued babbling to herself. "Hen na otoko da na…."

The insomniac continued to voice her concerns aloud to an audience that consisted of only herself and all the inanimate objects in her room until she finally felt her consciousness slip away. The last thing she saw before her vision blurred and she conked out was her alarm clock, which read 5:37am. She and her mother would be rousing themselves around 6:45am so that they could reach their respective places of school and work on time. Oh well, she would just have to suffer from lack of sleep today. Maybe she could get a chance to sleep during some of her boring classes.

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A/N: you can visit Premium Quality Coins in person or online. Billy Himmelwright's a good friend of mine, and he has had that coin store there since 1983, I think. here is the website: http : // www . Pqcoin . Com

Japanese vocab-
azuki - red bean, very sweet and tasty! *author likes azuki flavored ice cream!*
okanemochi - rich person
Hen na otoko da na…. - weird guy, indeed!