InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Phony Digits ❯ A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words ( Chapter 7 )

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

Disclaimer: InuYasha is the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I have nothing.

Chapter Seven: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

*Bing Bong*

Kagome's phone chimed as she sat at her desk in front of her computer monitor, working and eating her lunch simultaneously. She couldn't help but smile when she read the text.

'Send me a picture of you.' It read.

She had been exchanging texts with Phony Digits for the last couple of weeks now. They still hadn't gotten any closer to revealing their identities, and he had yet to express any interest in meeting her in person.

'You send me a picture.' she responded.

'I would, but I'm really handsome and I don't want you to feel intimidated.'

Kagome rolled her eyes despite the grin that spread across her face. She did a web search for 'bikini model photo' and sent him a picture of a sexy blond who seemed to be crawling around the beach with her ass in the air, wearing only what appeared to be several strands of white dental floss. She added the caption: 'This was me a while back before the boob job.'

InuYasha chuckled to himself upon opening the text. Cheeky wench. He thought as he opened his Google app and did his own image search for 'nerdy teenager', choosing the geekiest looking school yearbook photo he could find and sending it to her with the caption. 'Me last year. My mustache has filled out a lot since then. Hosting D&D campaign tonight. Finally get to be dungeon master! Score!' He snickered at his own antics as he hit send.

'Am I invited?' Kagome replied.

'Yes. Bring beer. You can come in through the basement window so mom won't see.'

"Higurashi!"

Kagome jumped at the sound of her co-worker's voice as he entered her sterile, white office without knocking.

"Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to scare you." the lab coat clad forensic anthropologist apologized. "Miyahara needs you to go look at a stiff. She and Renji are down in the lab waiting for you."

Kagome sighed and disappointedly looked down at her half eaten salad. She knew her lunch wouldn't be very appealing immediately following a postmortem. "Do you want the rest of this?" she asked, lifting the plastic container of salad towards him.

"No, thanks." he said, crinkling his nose with a frown.

Kagome rolled her eyes as she stood from her stool, standing eye-to-eye with his compact stature. "You know, you have to eat your vegetables if you want to gwow up big and stwong." she teased him in a baby voice as she reached out to ruffle his tousled, tawny hair.

"Height is predetermined by genetics, Kagome." he said matter-of-factly as he swatted her hands away.

"I know that, Shippo, it was a joke." she said as she made her way to the door, grabbing her lab coat from the hook and pulling it on. "Are you coming?" she turned and said as she straightened her collar.

"No way!" he shook his head vigorously. "I don't want a ghost to follow me home!"

Kagome raised a brow. "But...isn't your job to look at skeletons…?" she asked dryly.

"Yes, but in the time it takes for the decomposition process to leave nothing but bones, the ghost has had plenty of time to cross over to the other side." he said plainly, as if it were common knowledge.

Kagome chuckled. "You're a nut, Shippo." she said, shaking her head as she exited her office.

<<>>

"So, are we officially a couple now?" Miroku said as he slid into the booth across from his friend.

"Shut up." InuYasha grumped, slipping his phone into his breast pocket.

"I would just like to know where this relationship is headed, InuYasha. I don't want to limit my options if you aren't going to settle down and make a commitment. I'm no spring chicken, you know."

"I said shut up, idiot! You're wearing out this joke."

"Well, I can understand how dating someone like Kikyo would turn you against all women, but I really think it's high time you get back out there and sow your wild oats."

"Keh!" InuYasha scoffed. "You know I'm more of a one-oat kinda guy, Miroku."

"O-kay, so go out and sow one oat, then. Just get out a do something. Is this about Kikyo? Are you...heartbroken or something…?"

"Keh! No…" InuYasha huffed. "actually I almost feel guilty about how not heartbroken I am. I've hardly even thought about her at all since we broke up. I guess I didn't know how...oppressed I'd been..."

"Really?" Miroku said, raising a brow. "Because I feel like I made a point of telling you quite often."

"I tune you out." InuYasha said.

The waitress arrived and took their orders. As usual, Miroku brazenly flirted with her despite that fact she was easily old enough to be his mother.

"So…" Miroku continued after the waitress had left. "could this be about Fake Number, then?" he asked, getting back to the subject of InuYasha's love life. "Because I gotta tell you, Yash, I don't think it's going to pan out. If she was going to meet you, she'd have done it by now."

"It's not about her."

"Then what's it about?"

"It's not about anything! It's only been two weeks for Christ's sake!"

"Right... and for two weeks you've been texting this girl almost every day and still don't even know her name. What do you two even talk about?"

"Nothing really." he shrugged. "Mostly just joking around."

"So flirting, then? Flirting without the possibility of sex. It seems pointless to me, man." Miroku said shaking his head.

"So being friends with a woman is pointless?" InuYasha asked. "You are such a sleazebag." he added, shaking his head.

"I'm not a sleazebag, Yash. I'm just a man. I have needs!" he half-joked. "Speaking of which, do you think enough time has passed that I can text Lady Cop?"

"Keh!" InuYasha scoffed. "So when I text a stranger it's pointless, but it's okay for you to do it?"

"What I said was, 'flirting without the possibility of sex is pointless'; but I assure you, when I flirt, there is always the possibility of sex."

InuYasha sighed and rolled his eyes.

Their meals were delivered and Miroku continued to carry the bulk of the conversation, mostly centering around women, and how to seduce them. He was, afterall, a self-proclaimed expert in the art of seduction. Although this expertise seemed to be lacking in evidence...

When InuYasha had finished and paid for his meal he stood from the table. "I'm going back to work." he said as he slipped on his fleece jacket.

"Have fun!" Miroku said facetiously, knowing InuYasha despised his job.

"Watching paint dry would be more fun than listening to you." InuYasha shot back without turning around as he headed for the door of the diner.

Miroku removed his phone from his pocket and opened the message app, typing a text to 'Sexy Cop'.

'I bet your uniform looks great on you, but it would look even better on my bedroom floor.' he typed and sent. Smiling smugly at what he believed to be a clever pick up line.

<<>>

"Well, this is a first for me!" Kagome said, her tone slightly too enthusiastic considering the subject matter. "The murder weapon was a large, phillips-head screwdriver. I've seen hammers, crowbars, pipe wrenches" she counted off on her fingers. "...but this is my very first screwdriver!"

"Congratulations." Sango joked as she strode up beside her friend, patting her on the back. Her eyes scanned the corpse that lay on the cold steel table of the autopsy lab. "How could you tell?" she asked, looking over the wounds.

"See this right here?" Kagome answered, pulling down the swing-arm lamp over the victim's torso, and using a magnifying glass to reveal a tiny, shallow, X-shaped puncture surrounded by a dark bruise. "That was likely the first strike." She wrapped her fists around the handle of the magnifying glass and raised it over her head, bringing it down quickly in a stabbing motion before stopping abruptly just above the cadaver. "They either miscalculated the force it would take, or they hesitated on that first swing just leaving the tell-tale cross mark of the phillips head."

Sango and her partner leaned in to look at the wound.

"If they did have any qualms they got over them fairly quickly... considering this guy was stabbed over thirty times." Kagome continued.

"Probably stepping out on his woman...or moving in on somebody else's..." Sango's partner, Detective Renji, commented.

Sango rolled her eyes. "That is so presumptuous, Renji." she scolded him. "The poor guy can't even defend himself."

"Poor guy, my ass!" he shot back. "Fifty bucks it was his lover's husband that did it." He extended his hand.

"You're on." Sango said, giving his hand a firm shake to seal the deal.

"What about you, Kagome? You want in on this?" Renji offered.

Kagome narrowed her eyes. She wasn't sure if he was referring to the bet or just being suggestive. Knowing him, it was probably both. "No, Kouga." she said shaking her head. "That's morbid."

"Oh, come on! We're just having fun! Just like this guy was before he got shish kabobed with a screwdriver." he chuckled.

Kagome had not yet gotten to the point that she could make jokes about the victims. She sort of hoped she never would.

"Besides, isn't the detectives betting on the murder considered a conflict of interests or something?" she asked.

"You know we're straight shooters. We wouldn't throw the case over fifty dollars…" Sango brushed aside. "but we're really not supposed to, so don't mention it to anyone..." she added in a whisper.

Kagome snickered and shook her head.

"Well, I think the guy probably just stole from the wrong person." Sango said, returning to the subject. "Cash or drugs or…" she paused as she felt her phone vibrate against her hip. She pulled the phone from it's holster and saw she had received a text from an unfamiliar number.

'I bet your uniform looks great on you, but it would look even better on my bedroom floor.' She snorted upon reading.

"Look at this Kagome." she held out her phone. "It's got to be Phony Digits' roommate."

Kagome's eyes scanned the text. "It's Miroku."

"Miroku? That's his name?" Sango asked.

Kagome nodded. She had already informed her friend that she had a secret admirer.

'Hello Miroku.' Sango typed, smirking as she hit send.

"Phony Digits?" Kouga said, furrowing his brow in confusion.

"Oh," Sango waved a hand. "long story short, it's a guy Kagome's been texting. We don't know his real name."

"A complete stranger, then?" he questioned her. "That's dangerous Kagome. I don't like this. You could end up with a stalker." he said sternly, shaking his head.

"Ha!" Sango scoffed, slapping Kouga across the back. "That's ironic coming from you, Renji!" she said.

"And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?!" he said indignantly.

"I think you know what it means…" Sango suggested.

"So you think this is a good idea, then?" he asked.

"It's fine." she waved a hand in dismissal. "These guys are harmless."

"There is no way you could get a good read on these guys through texts messages, Miyahara."

"You're just jealous." she said as she jabbed his ribs with her elbow.

Kouga's expression changed to a scowl as he crossed his arms in a huff.

Sango felt her phone vibrate in her hand as she chuckled at her partners turmoil.

'How did you know it was me?' came Miroku's reply.

'You have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool me, bub.'

'Well, I stand by what I said.'

'Well, I'm not wearing a uniform.'

'That sounds even better.'

'In your dreams, pal.'

'Ah yes, of that I can assure you.'

'Have these lines ever worked on any woman?'

'You'd be surprised.'

'I bet I wouldn't.'

'Why don't you have dinner with me sometime and you can find out for yourself?'

'Pass.'

'Suit yourself, but I won't give up so easily.' he sent, along with a selfie of his winking face sporting a cocky smirk.

'Do your worst.' she challenged, an amused grin pulling at her lips as she slid her phone back into her pocket.

Well... he is kinda cute…

<<>>

A/N:

Sorry for the delay. I had a death in my family, and have been out of town.

So the big question last chapter was, how the hell did InuYasha know that Kagome was eating lunch?

Well, I don't think I did a great job conveying that, so let me explain.

In short, he didn't know. Not really, anyway. It was just an educated guess based on the time of day, and the fact that she was probably on break since she was texting him. Really it was just his smug, know-it-all way of calling out her lies like the smart ass he is.

So yeah. Sorry about the confusion. I sort of thought it was confusing when I wrote it, but I put it in there anyway. It is hard to convey tone in a text message, in real life and in stories.

Oh, and please don't lose patience! I promise they are going to meet. Soonish...

Thanks for reading and reviewing.

Have a damn glorious day,

StoatsandWeasels