InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Possessing ❯ Chapter 1

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

Blanket Disclaimer:

Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi.
I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi, or VIZ Productions.


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Hello! And welcome to the continuation of Possession! This story was originally written as my annual Halloween fic one year after the previous installment, and so in keeping with my tradition at that time, this story also takes place one year later.

But don’t worry! You guys haven’t missed any of the good stuff. In fact, we’re right on time, for the fluffy part at least. No smut yet in this one. I know, I know! Patience, LOL.

And just a quick reminder for those who might have forgotten. This is a deliberately fake Americanized version of Japan, so there will be things that are blatantly American while other things are undoubtedly Japanese and that is not in error. Enjoy!



Chapter 1




Scrolling through current news articles about youkai sightings on his computer, Inuyasha sighed near inaudibly as he chose to ignore some obvious clickbait regarding what you won’t believe happened next when some idiot went for a dip in a pond known to contain a family of kappa.

That’s what he gets for invading the kappa’s territory, he thought, as he scrolled past the ‘article’ to see if there was anything more important worth reading.

Inuyasha had told Kagome that she didn’t need to buy him a new computer, that he didn’t want her spending too much of her money on him, but as she’d pointed out, a computer would be his best...practically his only way to connect to the rest of the world. Her family had since come over to visit more than once, after she’d gotten him to agree to go to dinner at their house on the night of the new moon, before then also agreeing to be dragged out of the house on all new moon nights, but visiting with her family or having dinner at one of the small restaurants in town one night a month hardly qualified as truly socializing with all of mankind.

So after a couple of months he’d caved and let her get him his brand new laptop that now sat on his childhood writing desk. He hadn’t yet braved joining any social media sites or anything like that. How could he get to know people, get close to them, become friends, while keeping a secret like being a hanyou? But of course he couldn’t tell anyone what he was. Unless they thought it was role play…? But the whole idea seemed more complicated than it was worth, so for the time being he was content to just browse the Internet and lurk in the shadows, reading about different people’s lives from anything and everything he could find so he could at least get a feel for what the rest of the world was truly like.

Both the good and the bad.

It hadn’t taken him long to learn how to use the new technology, either, since he’d had a computer back in the late ‘70s, shortly before his mother’s death. Of course, there was truly no comparison between one of those dinosaurs and a modern-day laptop, but he at least already knew what a computer was, and he’d already learned how to type, which was extra difficult with his claws but as Kagome had rightly pointed out, if women with long acrylic nails could type then it made perfect sense that he could, too, after getting the hang of it. He’d had to relearn how to hold his fingers since his laptop’s keyboard was different than the clunky thing his original computer had had, but he’d picked it up pretty quickly.

Getting ready to click on another link, a woof from behind him drew his attention and he turned to face the animal lying on his bed.

“What?” he asked Shiro, the white akita-mix Kagome had come home with as a puppy less than a month after her discovering his identity and agreeing to let him live with her.

Getting a dog hadn’t been planned; someone had been giving away puppies out front of the grocery store and Kagome just hadn’t been able to resist.

Shiro woofed again. Lifting an eyebrow before cocking his ear, Inuyasha listened for a moment before turning back to the dog that was a spitting image of what his own dog form would probably look like, if he had one. Aside from the tail, you’d never know Shiro wasn’t a purebred. He looked just like an akita inu except his fluffy tail didn’t curl back up on top of his back and instead hung down when at rest. Most of the time it was wagging though because he was such a happy dog.

“That’s not her car, it’s one of the neighbors,” Inuyasha said then, because Shiro was anxious for Kagome to get home.

So was he, but unlike the pup, he could tell the difference between different car engines. Shrio would get the hang of it in time. He was only barely one year old; he still had a lot to learn.

Turning back to his computer, Inuyasha again almost clicked on the next link, but then this time his ears were the ones tingling, and he turned them both to the window. Shiro perked back up as well at the sight.

“Okay, this time it’s her,” Inuyasha said a second later, and barking again, Shiro happily leapt from the bed and made a beeline for the living room, Inuyasha hot on his heels as both the pure dog and the man-dog hybrid excitedly ran down the hall and down the stairs, the former just making a sharp right to come to a stop in front of the front door, waiting, while the latter continued to run in a large clockwise circle through the living room and dining room until ending up in the kitchen.

Outside, beyond the front door, beyond the front yard and even beyond their cul-de-sac, Kagome was still a couple of minutes away, but grinning, the miko could already visualize her two boys both eagerly anticipating her arrival home. Inuyasha had told her plainly just how good his ears were, and from how far away he could hear her coming. There was no sneaking up on that hanyou.

Which, as far as Kagome was concerned, was just one of the many things she loved about him.

I definitely don’t have to worry about installing a security alarm, she thought with a giggle.

Not that she had all that much worth stealing. She might be a millionaire, but if she wanted to stay a millionaire long enough to be set for life then she needed to stick to her budget. And of course having an extra mouth to feed...two if you counted Shiro...meant that her budget had been stretched a little thinner than originally planned before deciding to register as a reservist warrior miko with the Spiritual Forces, not that money had been her only motivation. She was a miko, after all, and one living on her own, not bound to her family shrine. A shrine which still had three powerful reiki using residents in her absence. Plus her hometown had not already had its own reservist warrior miko, so it’d been a position with the Spiritual Forces in need of filling. Warrior miko were few and far between, after all.

Some reiki users made a career of active duty, like the itinerant houshi who regularly patrolled the forests just outside border towns like hers and dealt with any small youkai issues that might arise, while the taijiya had local branches in every border town as well as the big cities and were always on call to deal with common problems where reiki would not be required, like infestations of lowly brainless things such as demonic insects or rodents. Since between the two of them the taijiya and houshi usually had everything under control, most miko did their spiritual duties by being miko for their shrines, or performing purification rituals for other people, and in the event of all hell breaking loose their task would be to help maintain the spiritual barriers at their shrines to make the holy grounds a safe haven for fleeing humans. A miko could only become an official warrior miko if she had no duties to a specific shrine that would need to take precedence in a wide scale attack.

In Kagome’s case, she’d known the rest of her family could take care of that end of things at the Higurashi shrine. Now that she had a car, because reliable transportation was also a must, Kagome had thought the matter over carefully and she’d decided that, besides the paycheck definitely being a plus considering her increased budgetary needs, it was also her duty to become a warrior miko, for more reasons than one, and her family had supported her decision.

So had Inuyasha.

She’d actually decided to do this after getting to know the hanyou, because besides the extra money coming in handy, and feeling it was her duty to not ignore the gifts the kami had given her, she had also once seen first hand on the news how some other miko might just automatically use deadly force when it wasn’t warranted, just purifying the youkai to be done with it, and she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t kill an attacking youkai unless it was absolutely necessary.

After getting to know Inuyasha, really, truly getting to know him, and confirming for herself that he really wasn’t all that different from a human outside of his appearance and the occasional subtle canine trait here or there, as she’d always personally believed was the case when it came to hanyou, Kagome had started to really think about the plight that hanyou and youkai faced in their world. As far as human society was concerned, youkai were just barely above mortal animals, and dealing with youkai was typically akin to animal control. But while there were countless species of lower youkai that really were animals, there were also intelligent people-like youkai, both hanyou and daiyoukai alike, and society viewed them as animals, too, albeit dangerous ones.

Fortunately, for everyone involved, the higher youkai of the world had all agreed to an unofficial treaty of sorts, formed centuries ago, shortly after humans had learned that reiki users didn’t need to remain pure and that in fact reiki was hereditary. That discovery had shifted the balance of power. There were suddenly enough spiritual humans to pose a serious threat, and so knowing that continuing to threaten humans could prove deadly the higher youkai, along with the miko and houshi of the time, had agreed to leave each other alone and stick to their own parts of the world. It was an unwritten agreement that humans as a whole still abided by today, which was why there were vast quantities of wild land zoned as youkai habitation where human development was not permitted, but that didn’t stop the occasional idiot from wandering deep into the forest and becoming some random youkai’s lunch, and likewise the occasional lower youkai might still wander into town for whatever reason, hence the continued need for taijiya and trained reiki users.

Fortunately, daiyoukai didn’t care if humans killed lower beastly youkai any more than humans cared that youkai killed and ate mortal animals out in the forest. Killing a lower youkai that’d wandered into town put them in no risk of starting some kind of a war between the humans and the youkai. Actually, even killing a higher youkai put humans at no risk of retaliation, because the other higher youkai would merely look at it as a disgrace that the dead one had managed to get itself killed by ‘lowly’ humans.

Even so, intelligent but harmless youkai that merely liked to mess with humans, like kitsune, were usually captured or chased away without injury. Classified as animals or not, most people couldn’t just butcher as an animal something that could look human and carry on a conversation with you. There were also ‘youkai rights’ and ‘youkai cruelty’ laws on the books that even protected the lower beastly youkai, just the same as there were for mortal animals, so everything that was illegal to do with mortal animals, like dog fighting, was also illegal to do with youkai animals. The problem was when it came to a wild beastly youkai in the city that could be likened to a mountain lion that’d wandered into a human neighborhood, where Animal Control, or in this case the Spiritual Forces, needed to be called in to deal with it, and the moral issue of whether or not to try to capture the beast alive and release it back into the wild, as was Kagome’s obvious preference, or just kill it.

The fact that not everyone shared Kagome’s personal views in that regard, including some warrior miko, had been another deciding factor in joining the Spiritual Forces. After she’d looked into it and confirmed that her hometown still had no local warrior miko of its own – which made sense considering her family shrine was the town’s only shrine so if there had been one, the woman would’ve had to have moved there – and without one it meant that in the event of a miko’s aid being needed one would have to be called in from the city, Kagome had realized what all that meant for her community. That delay could cost lives, for one thing, and plus after what she’d seen on the news a few years ago, when a miko from the city had been called in to aid her hometown, Kagome knew she didn’t want that particular miko coming into town on assignment ever again if she could help it.

And she could help it.

Youkai lives mattered too, and she would only kill a youkai if she’d already exhausted all other options.
As a daughter of the Higurashi shrine and a powerful miko born and raised in that community, it was her duty to be its protector. She probably would have ended up registering as a warrior miko even if she’d never won the lottery and never bought her house or met Inuyasha, but after meeting and getting to know the inu-hanyou, how could she not?

Pulling up in the driveway, Kagome parked the car and got out, then reached in the back and grabbed her bow and quiver full of arrows. Being a reservist warrior miko meant that one weekend a month she had to participate in training to keep her skills sharp, but fortunately the nearest training center was in the big city only a half hour away so she didn’t need to spend the night away from home, going back and forth both days. She had to be back at the training center tomorrow morning, but at least she was home for the evening. It was actually good to have something to go do for a day since not having a job, while wonderful in the sense that she didn’t need to work at a job she didn’t like, could also make the days long and boring.

Of course, nothing is boring with these two to keep me company! Kagome thought as she opened the front door only to be glomped by a four-legged dog with a two-legged one standing there visibly resisting the temptation to hug her as well.

She momentarily wondered if it was just the dog in him, or if it was his human side that wanted to hug her just like she wanted to hug him, but quickly shaking the thought free, Kagome crouched down and let Shiro drench her face in doggie kisses, ignoring the ache in her heart as she wished Inuyasha would chime in with a joke like ‘Hey, save some for me!’

Damn it Kagome, get a hold of your feelings before he senses something’s wrong!

Smiling brightly, she shifted her eyes up to meet the smirking gaze of the hanyou who was doing his best not to laugh as Shiro covered her in saliva.

“Did you put him up to this?” she managed to ask without accidentally getting dog tongue in her mouth.

“Who me?” Inuyasha asked, batting his eyelashes innocently.

That had Kagome laughing, and dropping her bow and arrows as she wrapped her arms around Shiro. “Okay! Okay! I missed you, too!” she said to the akita mix.

Chuckling, Inuyasha picked up Kagome’s fallen quiver and bow and brought them into the living room.  The miko finally extracted herself from her dog after another moment, and slipping off her sandals, followed the hanyou to the couch where he’d sat her weapon. There she paused, mouth agape, her eyes wide in surprise as she caught sight of the dining room table in the adjacent room, already set for dinner.

“What’s all this…?” she half whispered, half gasped as she followed him into the dining room and took in the sight of the steaming bowls of oden sitting innocently at her and Inuyasha’s established places at the table.

It wasn’t a surprise that Inuyasha knew her favorite food dish was oden. It’d come up long ago during their process of getting to know each other. But she knew for a fact they hadn’t had any fishcakes or daishi broth on hand. She’d been planning on going to the store in a couple of days.

Inuyasha just shrugged, trying to play nonchalant even as a light blush rose on his cheeks.

“It wasn’t hard to follow a recipe I found online,” he said with a shrug. “We didn’t have everything, but your mom was more than happy to run the ingredients over. She offered to help me cook it, but I did it myself.”

Kagome just stared for a moment, unsure of what to say, before finally just settling on, “Thank you. That was really sweet of you.”

Add that to the list of things she loved about him. And on top of his thoughtfulness, from the smell of things, the man could cook!

“Better be careful, or else I’ll have you cooking dinner for me every day that I come home from training.”

“That would not be a burden.”

Their eyes locked for a moment, and Kagome found herself wondering not for the first time if the feelings he seemed to have for her were as real as the feelings she had for him. She wished she could muscle up the courage to just talk with him about it. One of these days, she would need to, she knew, but not today.

Then something else occurred to her, and she chuckled.

“You called my mom? You asked her to run over ingredients?”

He looked even more embarrassed, but that didn’t stop him from sitting down at his spot at the head of the table – per Kagome’s repeated insistence over the last several months – and gesturing for her to join him, which she did. Normally she’d have changed out of her miko robes first, but the oden smelled wonderful and she didn’t want to let it get cold. Plus she was hungry!

“What of it?” he asked then, smiling when she giggled.

Taking a sip from the glass of water Inuyasha had placed beside her bowl of oden – he’d even remembered to use coasters! Although then again it was his mother’s dining table – she then said, “Oh nothing. I’m just remembering how terrified you were to meet my family that first new moon night after I’d told you you could stay, and how you were nervous all over again when they saw you as a hanyou for the first time. Now here you are, secretly having my mom run over with ingredients for oden while I’m gone.”

“Well what can I say?” he said with a shrug. “Your mother reminds me of my own mother, so I’m comfortable around her, now.”

Kagome’s heart swelled at his words, and she was sure he knew how much it meant to her because there was no helping the look in her eyes as she practically started at him before he glanced up at her and she suddenly remembered to eat.

He smiled when she wasn’t looking, and then taking a bite of his own food, he continued.

“It’s true,” he said between mouthfuls. “When you’d first told me that you’d told them about me, that you’d come clean about it because you’d already been discussing the whole ‘kitsune’ thing with them so your mom had been asking for updates and you hadn’t wanted to lie to her, I was afraid your next words were going to be an apology that you had to ask me to leave because your family didn’t want you ‘harboring’ a hanyou.”

Kagome opened her mouth to assure him that she wouldn’t have told her family about him if she’d feared that reaction was even a possibility, and that she’d had faith that at least her mother would understand and trust her judgment in this matter, even if her grandfather didn’t like it, but Inuyasha’s raised hand had the miko closing her mouth, letting him continue. He wasn’t usually this talkative, so if he was in a sharing mood then she knew she needed to listen.

“Then when you told me that not only did your mother understand, and even your grandfather reluctantly accepted that you’d made an honorable decision,” he continued then, “and that they wanted to meet me...”

Pausing, he sat his chopsticks down and met her eyes, the look in this own intense.

“I just...I don’t think you can know how much it meant to me, how much it means to me, that they were willing to accept me on your word. That they didn’t think I was a monster. And even thinking of me as a man then we’re still talking about a strange man you didn’t know, who’d been sneaking around trying to scare you, suddenly living in your house with you like a roommate. I expected your mother to be all ‘stay away from my daughter!’ not ‘welcome to the family’ and while it caught me off guard, how nice your mom is, it’s a really good feeling now that I’m used to it.”

He resumed eating for a minute, then, as did Kagome, Shiro happily sitting near the miko’s feet.

“I was really proud of you, you know,” she spoke up after a short amount of silence passed between them. “To agree to come with me to the shrine on that first new moon night. To come meet my family when you were at your most vulnerable.”

He snorted a chuckle.

“I actually felt safer going to a shrine on my human night. Nobody could purify me that way.” He took another bite. “Which we’ve since learned only temporarily turns me human, anyway, but at the time neither of us had known what would happen if I tried to walk on holy ground as a hanyou, if I’d be purified or just repelled by an invisible barrier.”

Kagome nodded her agreement.

“Now we know the local kami welcome you, and you’re only repelled if my family’s barriers are up. If they drop them long enough to let you in then it’s fine, but you’re right. At the time, for that first dinner, neither of us had known what to expect, so going on the night of the new moon, and not in your fire-rat robes, had just made sense.”

She took another sip of water.

“I’m sorry it turned out we can’t turn you human at will,” she said after a moment, in reference to his comment about them now knowing being purified only turned him human temporarily. “You know my family and I accept you as a hanyou, but I understand wanting to be accepted by the rest of the world.”

It had actually been Inuyasha’s idea, originally. Kagome had been reluctant to try it because she’d known it would be painful and she hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but logically speaking, she’d also known it wouldn’t be fatal. As a hanyou, purifying his youki would only ever turn him human, and he’d even been mentally prepared for the stunt with her ofuda to turn him human permanently, as they’d used what would have been a fatal amount of purification for even the very strongest of full-blooded youkai.

Unfortunately, depending on your perspective, hanyou were actually super youkai when it came to dealing with reiki. It was ironic, really, considering most youkai looked down on hanyou for being half human, as if it made them weak. And it was true that their human time of the month was a definite weakness, but putting that aside for a moment, hanyou could survive nearly all of the same types of physical injuries youkai could survive, and at least for daibanyou like Inuyasha, they could heal almost as quickly. Then on top of that, their human blood acted as a fail-safe to protect them from purification.

Thinking about it a moment, Kagome had to suppress a shudder, grateful beyond words that the world governments had all agreed to make it illegal to utilize youkai in human warfare, or she could just imagine the horror that might have been a hanyou soldier breeding program. She supposed in that one way it was actually a good thing the world viewed hanyou as youkai, as well, because acknowledging the fact that they were human hybrids could have theoretically created a loophole when it came to hanyou and the military, making them exempt from youkai rights laws. Fortunately that was a reality they didn’t have to face. It was quite illegal to use hanyou in that way.

What they hadn’t known until actually trying their purification experiment, though, was just how quickly his youki would regenerate itself.

A purifying ofuda used up its magic upon performing its purification. Or at least the ones used to fight youkai did. If placed on a building to keep youkai out that was different, but even then they didn’t last forever and needed to be recharged on occasion. When placed directly on the youkai itself, though, it would burn through all the energy that’d been put into it to release that reiki into the youkai on contact, and such was the case with Inuyasha. The only problem was that his youki had started to come back again after only a few short minutes of being purified human, Kagome’s spent ofuda still on his bare chest.

Perhaps, she had hypothesized, if he were within a purifying barrier made by one of their strongest priests, then the effects might last until the barrier was removed, but that was irrelevant. Either way, turning him human at will so that he could go about his business and live a relatively normal life was, unfortunately, not an option.

“Figures it was too good to be true,” Inuyasha said around the current bite in his mouth, waving it off with his chopsticks. Swallowing, he added, “I am what I am, and I’m used to being alone because of it. At least, thanks to you, I don’t have to be alone again for a long time.”

“You’ll never be alone again if I can help it,” she replied right away, and the intense look in her eyes locked them both in a stare again until they both looked away, faint blushes rising up on their cheeks that they both diligently ignored as they each resumed eating.

Clearing his throat after a moment, Inuyasha spoke back up with, “By the way, I got you something as a sort of thank you for everything so far.”

Kagome put her chopsticks down, blinking at him in surprise.

“You...you got me something? Besides making dinner?”

He shrugged, and valiantly ignored the darkening blush on his cheeks.

“Okay, so technically you paid for it, since the only money I have to my name is the allowance you give me...which I also told you I didn’t need, by the way, along with the computer,” he added with a laugh, smiling broadly when she giggled as well.

“I know, I know,” she said, still laughing. “But I wanted you to be able to buy whatever you wanted...for yourself,” she stressed, still smiling, “and hooking you up with your own PayPal account so you could buy things online seemed like a better idea than dragging you to the mall every new moon night.”

“Yeah...once was enough,” he agreed with a playful shudder.

That first new moon after Kagome had invited him to live with her she’d brought him home to the Higurashi shrine for dinner, to meet her family, but then the next month, she’d convinced him to go out shopping with her to the big mall in the city.

She’d bought him a lot of necessities within the first week of meeting him, of course. He didn’t wear deodorant – it was an inu thing, not wanting to mask his scent – and he didn’t need a toothbrush because his demonic teeth were impervious to tartar buildup and he hated the taste of toothpaste, but he’d needed other things like changes of clothing, or at the very least underwear. Plus she’d gotten him a few things to just wear around the house, like t-shirts and shorts, since with the new boiler the radiators were making the place toasty warm and she’d figured he was roasting in those bulky red robes. She’d also gotten him a modern gray yukata and black hakama for that first dinner at the shrine since neither of them had known if wearing demonic robes would have complicated things.

He’d had a whole wardrobe of normal modern clothes growing up, of course. His mother had bought him kid’s clothes in the city, not daring to risk shopping for her little boy in her own home town where people might recognize her. When he outgrew his things she’d donated them anonymously to thrift stores in the city as well. But he’d still had all his adult clothes and other possessions when she’d died, and keeping his promise to his mother, not wanting to risk leaving any evidence of his existence in the house for other humans to discover, he’d taken everything with him deep into the forest to the place he’d tried to make his new home until reverting back to coming home to this house at night for safety – and on rainy days to stay dry – only hunting and bathing in the forest during the day.

After four decades in the woods there was nothing left of his old possessions, of course. Other youkai had found them at various times when he hadn’t been there, lured by his scent. Not that he’d been wearing his human clothes since his mother’s death, anyway, not daring to wear anything other than the protective fire-rat robes left to him by his father. His other stuff had been more sentimental than anything else, but at least he still had the house itself and most of the original furniture, and now, thanks to Kagome forcing him to go shopping with her that next new moon night after dinner with her family, he had other outfits he could wear when his archaic and demonic robes weren’t really appropriate, like when the two of them went out to dinner in restaurants on his human nights.

Like he’d said, one trip to the mall had been enough. Now they just spent his human nights going out to eat dinner at one of the restaurants in town, not bothering to travel into the nearby city. So far they’d always gone someplace different, not for fear of Kagome being recognized and people starting to wonder who her mysterious friend was, but just because she wanted him to have a wide range of experiences, trying all of the various local cuisines.

It was just one of the many things he loved about her.

After everything she’d done for him, after everything she’d given him, it had seemed only fair, only right, that he give her something in return, and even though he’d technically had to pay for her gift using her own money, it was money she’d already given to him that he was allowed to spend on himself. Unless he could think of a way to actually earn his own money that was going to be the best he could do, but he hoped the gesture was still appreciated nonetheless.

“So anyway,” he spoke back up then, clearing his throat nervously, and Kagome’s wandering mind immediately snapped back into focus. “I bought it a few days ago and timed it so that delivery was schedule for today, no signature required, so that after nobody answered the door the dude just left the package,” he explained as he scooted his chair back a bit and stood up to head into the living room. “It would have spoiled the surprise otherwise, if it’d arrived while you were home. I’m glad they didn’t screw that up.”

“You’re getting a little too clever for your own good,” Kagome replied with a fond smile as Inuyasha retrieved a box from the drawer on the curio cabinet.

It wasn’t a large box. In fact, the box was actually so small it’d been placed inside a larger padded envelope for shipping, but Inuyasha had removed that part earlier, presenting Kagome with a box that fit in one hand as he returned to the table, setting the box down in front of her.

“You’ve been...you’ve just been so nice to me, so I wanted something to say thanks,” he said with another faint blush on his cheeks, as a totally stunned Kagome opened the box to reveal the necklace held within.

“My mom used to have one that was really similar, but her jewelry was all taken by someone long ago,” he added. “I wish now that I would’ve tucked something away, but well, you got the whole house, so I guess that’s pretty special...” he said before shutting up, realizing he was rambling.  

The necklace was actually a locket, and just costume jewelry. A reproduction of a 1920s art deco style, pink rose quartz stones set in silver plated copper. Inuyasha’s ‘allowance’ wasn’t enough to buy anything too expensive, but besides it being the thought that counted, as the saying went, his mother’s original jewelry had all been costume, too, and plus he already knew Kagome wasn’t into spending top dollar on frivolous things. Growing up at a shrine she was used to modest living.

“This is beautiful! Thank you,” Kagome said, instantly recognizing the piece as costume and actually mentally sighing in relief that he hadn’t been saving up only to blow all of his money on something like this.

Sure, it was his money and he could do whatever he wanted with it, but she would’ve felt awkward, not to mention guilty that he’d felt obligated to do so. This, on the other hand, was a charming little gift, and she didn’t hesitate to put it on right in that moment, the chain long enough to just slip it down over her head without unlatching it.

Popping it open afterwards to look into the pendant upside down, she spied the empty oval and already started getting ideas.

“I’m going to need a picture of you for in here, you know,” she said with a smirk. At his slightly panicked expression she conceded, “During your human night.”

Although I think you’re much cuter as a hanyou, she added in her mind, before scolding herself to stop thinking such things as she got back to eating the last of her oden.

After dinner, she put her bow and arrows away and finally changed out of her miko garb, grabbing a quick shower before putting on some flannel pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. Ordinarily she’d hang out with Inuyasha watching TV for a while before bed, but on training days she was too sore to be good company, her instructor always putting her through all sorts of moves she’d never done at the shrine when honing her reiki skills growing up, and so bidding her hanyou roommate goodnight after thanking him once again for both dinner and the necklace, she retired to her bedroom.