InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Only in Dreams ❯ Phantasm ( Chapter 2 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

I’m sorry for over loading your emails with updates, I was trying to make it so half the page wasn’t bold, but it won’t work. Maybe I’ll try again later, but for now I’ll give your inboxes a break ^_^ Sorry.



Disclaimer: The ownership of Inuyasha does not lie under my hand, no matter how much one dreams, the only consolation it seems is the fact I get to torture them deliciously in this story.



Only In Dreams


Chapter One: Phantasm


A strong wind swept across the open courtyard, carrying in its wake the feeling of desolate solitude. Not a soul lingered on the grounds of what normally was teeming with the life of the young eager to learn and then the not so eager. Dull eyes trailed over the yellowed white of the picnic tables in detached interest. Not so long ago he had laughed with friends in this very courtyard during lunch hours and in between classes. It seemed a lifetime ago and then just as if it were the other day he had been here in this fine institute of higher learning carrying about his afternoon as he normally would. Instead, it had been six months. He had just woken from a coma two months ago, had gone through rehabilitation and intense study just to reach the level of his weakest peers. There were only three months of school left in the year. Three months to achieve the level of greatest that slipped from his grasp through an act all of his own foolish design.

No one would tell him what had gone on that night. He could not recall the tragic events on his own. He had been informed it was for best his memory failed him, but he did not believe it to be so. He longed to know what had led up to his accident. He longed to know how he had gotten in that car so drunk off his rocker that he could scarcely function. He was desperate to know if his friends had been present and if they had tried to prevent his foolish endeavor. He wanted to understand his actions. He may have lived for the thrill of the race. Speed every ounce apart of his blood that to take it away would surely mean his death. He was not stupid. He would never race under the influence of any substance. In fact, considering the quality of his blood that separated him from the rest of the mortal plain, he could not imagine becoming so lost as not to be capable of making sound judgments.

Therein laid his confusion, his uncertainty.

His friends should have been able to reason with him. Granted, he rarely listened too much, he would have heeded such a warning. He would never have been so far gone where such sound advice could be tossed aside for his own cheep thrills. At lest, he liked to believe so. Truly, though, he really wished no such reality with in the confines of his own mind. People, those he felt closest to him, claimed his persona to be different from what he had been before the incident. He figured it was mindless talk. A person did not sleep and then wake made anew. That only happened to amnesiac patients. He did not have amnesia. Albeit, certain things were skewed in his mind to what they had once been, he was beyond certain he had not changed.

No, he was not changed at all. Even if his mother now watch him with worry in her eyes and his brother and father stepped around him as if he were a sasori-youkai primed for the strike. Even if his friends gave him false smiles when he recanted the past incorrectly and his two best walked over eggshells in his presence. He was not changed at all, of that he was most certain. Those around him were merely paranoid over the grandiosity of his accident. There were not many who could survive his ordeal and come out of it the same as they had always been. They saw that and, trying hard, he saw that well enough not to hold a grudge.

Quickly he turned away from the courtyard and hurried to find the front office that was, nonsensically, placed nowhere near the front as suggested by its title. He veered off to the left and traveled down an open hall that would quickly have him to the back of the school. Or so he hopped, his recollections of late were hardly the most reliable. Not that he allowed himself drown in too many. The remembrance of the past, for one reason or another, filled him with nausea.

“Late again Inu-baka?”

The voice had him stilling uncomfortably. The soft tones of a woman roughened just the slightest bit in caustic regard. He turned and glanced the younger woman up and down, a queer feeling residing strongly in his gut from the perusal. A head of dark wavy locks that would likely brush the bottom of his chin were she close enough surrounded a soft angled face. Her eyes were drawn in dismay, though there was a twinkle of teasing messed with the profound blue color, and her lips were a deep rose that drew his attention almost immediately. “No,” he murmured; distracted. “I’m going to the office for my schedule.”

The foreign girl laughed. “Oh, that’s right; you were in that accident weren’t you? I had heard some things slipped your mind. Did you forget your way to the office as well?” She quipped lightly.

“What?” A dull ache was beginning to take up residence between his temples. This girl, why did she speak as if she was well acquainted with him? He did not recall ever seeing her in his life. While his memories were distorted, he had not forgotten a single person and her face had never been amongst his past.

She shook her head sadly. “Intelligence has gone down as well, I see, and you already had so little to spare.” She spoke pityingly, mockingly.

Feeling anger perk up in his chest with white-hot clarity, Inuyasha clenched his clawed hand tightly. He would not snap back unnecessarily. He had more control than that. He would not give this little girl the satisfaction. “Who the hell are you?” He shouted, forgetting all of his talk of control with the seething tone escaping through his parted lips.

The girl grew quiet, the air tense with some foreign emotion he could not quite place. Something with the equivalence of deep despair. The girl swallowed hard and squeezed her eyes shut. Guilt rose up and, unable to squish it like the flee myoga-jijii; he reached out to speak words of apology. The atmosphere cleared and she was smiling softly, sadly. “Higurashi Kagome.” She offered berceuse.

He considered the girl before him a moment prior to taking the hand she held out to him in greeting. The pads of his fingers rested lightly over her flesh, his steel like-claws carefully arranged to be no more than a breath’s caress against her, shaking with a gentleness that belied the power of his forearm. “Taisho Inuyasha.” He returned. There was something about the girl that had him pulling back in great reluctance. At the touch of her downy skin, he had forgotten his irritation and smiled roguishly. To say that he did not find her attractive would be utter blasphemy in the eyes of his best male friend. “Have we met before?” He could not help asking, the familiarity around her would not allow him to set aside this curiosity. As it were, he was going to miss the day conversing with her. She had already missed the majority of her first class as well.

Laughing harshly, the girl brought her hand to smother the sound, her head shaking back and forth in deep mirth. “Of course not, you run with popular crowd. I don’t even know why I decided to talk to you like this,” her eyes twinkled with amusement as they had earlier. “Perhaps it had something to do with how you, of all people, looked so lost. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without your confident smirk.” She quipped lightly.

“Is that so?” He grinned, it was almost as if she was harmlessly flirting with him, and then waned under the high-pitched yowl of the bell signaling the next class. Sighing heavily, he had wanted to continue their conversation; he doubted the office attendants would be so understanding, as well as whatever teacher the girl had next. “We should both go before we get into trouble, but…” he hesitated. “Can I see you again? At lunch, maybe, or after school?”

Inuyasha did not quite grasp why, but he had this undeniable urge -this gut gripping want- to see this girl again. Truly, he did not even want to leave, fearing irrationally that moment his eyes lied elsewhere she would disappear like morning mist. It was foolish, but it was there, and it was strong. I have classes to get to, he thought stubbornly, and what would it matter if I didn’t see her again. She was just a nameless girl before this. He swallowed hard; she was not nameless any longer, as his mind seemed to whisper traitorously. It fueled the pointless emotion to grow in strength.

The girl snorted in disbelief, her eyes a fraction wider. “You’re kidding right?” When he made no sounds to allege her words as truth, she laughed, and he squirmed uncomfortably. “Your kind doesn’t deal with mine; in fact you look down on us. Why in the world would you suggest something so laughable? I mean your friends would have a field-day if I joined you at lunch, in fact your reputation as popular would waver.”

He blinked. “Is that your only reason, because it sucks.”

“It’s the greatest reason.” She shot back.

“No its not.” He rasped in return. “Meet me at lunch, if they don’t like it, then too bad.” He shrugged. Really, he did not care what they thought, as they only trailed his steps for the money in his pockets. If his father were not some bigwig in technology, making his family the richest in Japan, they would not care to kiss the ground his feet walked across like brainless fools. No, the only ones that mattered where his two best friends, the two whom are real and with him because of him rather than money. He knew that the troublesome duo would not mind her presence. “What’s your real reason?” He murmured as he took note of her face that was twisted in reluctance and dismay.

Her blue eyes regarded him warily. “You find me at lunch and then we’ll talk.” She said and then whirled around, trudging in the opposite direction of the office, loosing herself amongst the student traversing to their next class. He sat and watched until her head of dark hair completely winked out of sight.

The office attendants had expressed their dismay over his late arrival. It had been two minutes to ten when he finally arrived. After speaking with the principle, receiving lectures about appropriate behavior for the school, he had to meet with his guidance counselor Old Lady Keade. After an in depth conversation of his placements and why, he had been given his class-schedule.

Its strange, he marveled on his way to lunch, being here again. Though it had not felt that long, he had been asleep for the majority, being in school again felt so foreign. It was almost as if he had been displaced from his body. He felt nothing as his peers welcomed him back to his first class, to history, giving him false smiles and accolades for his speedy recovery. He knew, in his mind he knew, that before he would have reveled in this attention. Now, however, there was only a gapping emptiness in his gut. The psychiatrist hired to help him deal with his accident had warned him that such an occurrence was plausible and to be prepared for out-of-place emotiveness crowding his skull.

It crowded in now. Clawing at his skin, giving rise to the want to flee.

He held it back with an exhalation of breath. Now he moved along the line of students who shuffled their lunch unto plastic trays. So far he had been waiting ten minutes and still had yet get a single item unto his tray. This currently displayed behavior was at odds without how he would normally function in this situation. He never waited in line. He did not have to wait. In his memories he strove ahead and cut in line, charming the lunch ladies for the choice picks. On the occasion he could get one of many adoring female followers to brave the chaos of the lunch line to bring him back his meal. The idea, it did not appeal to him, or perhaps it had more to do with this abnormal feel clouding his thoughts.

Eyes of confusion, of expectation, cut into the flesh of his back like switch blades. His ears quite clearly picking up the whispered conversations of his peers, folded downward in dismay. The hot topic seemed to be of his return and of his less then accurately portrayed normalcy. Soon the voices fell away under the weight of his relentless and restless displacement. He could easily agree with their assessment the longer he stood waiting in line. He had changed and then had not changed at all. He could admit that his normal reactions, those found in his memory, no longer appealed to his wakeful and present consciousness. It felt strange, bizarre, to even consider walking down those roads as he had once carelessly done. Even, strangely enough, it felt wrong and forbidden. His brow furrowed at that, but then quickly dismissed the feel in favor of focusing on choosing his lunch as those ahead of him were currently doing.

Walking through the crowd of students, lunch in hand and paid for, he made his way to the furthest table that caught his eye. It spoke of isolation and he desperately wanted to be left alone with his thoughts. He needed to sort through his own emotion to better grasp why this sense of displacement bogged his shoulders down to the point of pain.

Familiarity lit his features as his eyes spotted a head of dark hair and youthful features that spoke of someone much younger than high school years. He recalled this kid managed to skip ahead one year to be apart of the freshmen class and because of that nearly everyone picked him on relentlessly. The kid always had a ready smile for him, a sort of hero worship sparkling in those profoundly blue eyes. He could hardly walk by without acknowledge the kid’s presence, he would feel guilty about it later.

“Hey squirt.” He called with a smile and wave. The smile quickly shattered to a frozen sort of shock as those eyes of the kid’s looked upon in something akin sickened horror. Fear clouded the boy’s sent and Inuyasha moved a step back in confusion. It was all wrong, the kid was not supposed to look at him like that; he was not supposed to act this way. It was all wrong. Hesitantly he held out a clawed hand in helpless confusion, but jerked back when the kid readied himself to be struck. “Are you okay?” He whispered, feeling very unsure of himself.

The kid opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water, grasping for something to say, yet clearly too fearful to bring it fourth. Inuyasha was confused and felt sick to his stomach. This was all wrong. The kid was not supposed to look at him this way. He was a hero in the kid’s eyes; not a monster lying in wait under the bed.

A firm hand clasped around his shoulder and he turned to see a jovial looking Miroku, but underlying that faced was pure nervousness. “Hey now, leave the poor kid alone. I know he’s your favorite to pick on, but he recently lost some one very dear to him, so cut him some slack, eh?”

Inuyasha blinked stupidly. It took him a good second to comprehend wait his best friend was telling him. His amber gazed shifted back to the terrified boy and his insides squirmed. It was wrong. He would never pick on this kid, not when he had so clearly idolized him. No, he had stopped others from doing so, because it was wrong and the boy did not deserve it for merely being smart enough to attend high school. “But I wasn’t-.” He tried to protest.

“That’s right, now come along; I can’t keep my lovely Sango waiting.” Miroku plowed right along, captured the hanyou’s arm to drag him in his wake. Right to overly populated mesh of popular table and so very far away from the seat of solitude he had longed for. Instead of complaining, as he was wont to do, Inuyasha bared it with gritted teeth and a huff of air. “So,” Miroku began in the thickened silence between them, “how are you feeling? You look fine, but I don’t think you’re well enough to be picking on unsuspecting freshmen.” He reprimanded slightly, tone still holding that jovial quality he never seemed to be without.

Inuyasha frowned. Could it really be possible that he had picked on that kid before his accident? He sure seemed to think so, he thought as he recalled the pure terror that had crossed the quietly eating boy’s face. It was as if he were expecting to be deck at any moment. Miroku also seemed to be of the mind to believe he had the intentions of harassing the freshmen. “It wasn’t like that,” he mumbled, “I just wanted to talk to him. Are you sure that I bullied him, Miroku, I don’t exactly remember that.”

The rat-tailed boy slanted him a look that spoke along the lines of, “are you kidding?” Then seeing the utter seriousness cloaking his friends gaze, he answered back gently. “Yeah, though Sango and I never agreed with it, he was your favorite victim.” He stopped just short of reaching the table where Sango waved to them upon noticing their arrival, a smile clearly spread over her face. He smiled and waved back before leaning closer to the hanyou. “Is this another one of those things that you’re not clear on? If you don’t want a repeat I can give you all the names and faces you should watch out for.”

Inuyasha shook his head and moved passed his best friend to take a seat next to Sango. How could his memories be wrong? Was it simply the dreams of a comatose mind leaking into his past and replacing his reality with falsities? That had to be wrong. It was simply impossible for the fantasies of a mind wrested into oblivion to hold such a feeling of genuine solidity that he could literally touch, taste, smell it so fully with his enhanced senses. He was loath to believe that those eyes looking upon him with such hero worship were a mere phantasm slipped into his fractured mind to give it a semblance of being whole. The feeling of having that type of emotion placed on him by another was fantastic and he was unsure it he would be able to give it up, real or not.

No, he thought as his amber-eyed gaze found the dark head of hair that caused him this confliction, I will make it real. Satisfied with his promise to make amends and to bring that look back into the boy’s profound blue eyes, he was able to eat the food in front of him. Yet, with that worry dislodged from his brain, he was able to think of other things.

Taking a bite of his food without really even tasting it, without even seeing what it was he had taken mechanically from the bar, his eyes swept over the mass of chattering students. He perused through the ever shifting bodies of his peers with his sight in pursuit of the female he had meet on his way to the front office. He cheeked those closest to him with a dark mass of wavy hair for those stunning blue eyes that had held him up short in their first meeting, tying his tongue horribly. Everywhere he looked, she was nowhere to be found. Caught between then want to search for her and then to stay seated least he draw more unnecessary attention, his leg began to bounce in the way it did during these moments in his life. Caught Sango’s irritated look out of the corner of his eye, but ignored in favor of his dilemma.

Decision made, Inuyasha stood to conduct a grand search of the outside lunch area and then proceed to move inside to find her. If it took that type of detailed examination for her location. His sleeve was caught keeping him from going any further. He cast a curious gaze back to Sango veiled in annoyance. “What?” He snapped. His leg started moving impatiently again. If he did not hurry, she could move from her current spot making her even more difficult to find. Not that he knew where she was currently taking her lunch.

“What is your problem?” Sango snapped back, her brown eyes burning with heated flames. “We’ve been trying to talk to you the last ten minutes and all you’ve done is ignore us and look around like an idiot and then there is that leg thing of yours! I repeat, what is your problem?” She bit out, slamming her open palm over the tabletop.

Resisting the urge to snap back, for she was clearly irate enough to attempt bodily damage, he replied. “I was looking for someone, but I can’t find her.” Though he tried, he could not completely force his tone into the tranquil territory to advert her wrath and thus it come off as hostile. Luckily, she seemed to ignore it, becoming thoughtful.

“A girl you say?” Miroku shifted into the conversation with sly wriggle of his brows. “And just who is this lovely vixen that has managed to snag the attention of the Great Surly One?”

Inuyasha snorted at his quip, opened his mouth to speak, and the faltered. He gave a sheepish shrug. “I can’t, for the life of me, remember her name.” His brow narrowed and he tried with all of his might to pull the pesky title from the reserves of his memory, only to come up empty handed. “I can’t remember it.” He sat back down with a huff. He could not go to her now, not after forgetting her name. It would only serve to prove her point. Then again, never coming to find her during the lunch hour would also accomplish this feat. At this stand still did not know how to proceed.

Sango patted his arm comfortingly. “Tell me what she looks like; I might know who you mean.”

A sparking in his chest that had recently deflated of air, he swiftly replied, though making sure not to sound so eager. “Very blue eyes, wavy raven black hair that touches the middle of her back, and she probably barely brushes my chin with the top of her head. She was wearing a long black coat thing with blue jeans and no makeup.” Not that she needed it, he made sure to keep to himself. He paused and then looked at Sango, “have you seen her?”

A weird closed off look came in her eyes and before he could examine it further, it was gone. He made a deep perusal of her features, but there was nary a trace left. He knew what he had seen. She was now apologetic and slightly shame-faced. “Sorry Inu, I haven’t seen her. Maybe if you ask around some one might know who you’re talking about.” She turned back to her meal of grilled fish.

Clearly, any additional aid was not to be found in her, and though he was curious, he resolved not dwell on it just yet. Turning to Miroku, he raised a brow. “You know every girl here, have you seen her?” Albeit he wanted to find the girl, he was unsure if he wanted the knowledge to come from his best male friend. The man was pervert through and through. If he had knowledge of her, either she had been with him or he had groped her and then popped the question. As Miroku said, he never forgot a rear. While he would prefer the later, he would belt his friend for both. If either were true.

Brow drawn down in a deep perplexed frown, Miroku murmured. “How odd, but I don’t recall ever seeing her. At least not today. You know there are a bunch of girls with dark hair and blue eyes. You’re out of luck my friend.” Clapping him on the back, he said. “How bout we look for her after school, or even tomorrow, as lunch will be over in a few minutes?”

Though he wanted to argue against it, he held his tongue. Briefly, he wondered why he even cared to find enough to enlist the aid of his two best friends. It was very brief and quickly shoved aside. There was something about that girl, something that pulled him, drew him and he knew that he could not leave her be until her understood it. With nodded, he murmured, before going back to his meal. “Alright, sounds like a plan.” The bell for next period rang before he could take his last bite.

After school, the search proved fruitless. Both Miroku and Sango had joked that he dreamed her up, for no one in the school could put a name to the face he described. It was impossible to make up a persona so real in the middle of walking to the front office, even if one could daydream in the throes of movement. Howbeit they were joking, it struck something in the core of his being, and he felt the overwhelming urge to prove them wrong. He had to prove them wrong.

After separating, moving to path that would lead him home -his care taken away due to his accident- one single thought stayed with him the whole journey. I will find her and prove that she is real.



A/N:

So, what did you all think? I gave you this chapter, though I said I was going to put up a chapter to a different story first, because I felt that you couldn’t really decide if you like it more or not with how little I gave you. I also decided to only place two stories at a time because three would just be on too many.

This story would only be about ten chapters at the most, possibly one or two more, but that’s it. The next one I’m putting up will probably be twenty and the third -the one I’m gonna wait on- will more than likely amount to thirty.

Review and tell me what you think -k- because I’m really anxious to know, this being my first fan fiction and all. ^_^

Review Answers:

kokoronagomu- *Blinks stupidly* You know what, your right! I made sure to fix that, thanks for pointing it out. I’m kind of embarrassed for missing it ^_^! Your comments made me very happy, they brightened my day! I try very hard when it comes to my writing and vocab, I hope to write a story and publish it someday. For now, this is practice.

ladydeath31178- That was my intentions, I’m very glad it came off that way.

future author - Thanx and I can’t wait to hear from you next!

Thank you to all who reviewed and read my story, it means a lot!


~Katya Izmir