InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 4: Justification ❯ Meeting of the Minds ( Chapter 2 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

"Morning, Izayoi-sensei."

Izayoi Kichiro barely stopped long enough to glance at the receptionist as he strode through the office with a glower in place.

"Your first appointment is waiting for you in your—"

Slapping open the office door, Kichiro winced as the woman waiting inside jumped and whipped around.  "D-Doctor Izayoi?"

Fighting back a consternated sigh, Kichiro strode forward to rip the cigarette from the young woman's fingers before snubbing it out in the decorative crystal ashtray on his desk.  "This is a medical office," he remarked in brusque English for the woman's benefit.  "We ask that you don't smoke in here.  Sets a bad example."

She regained her composure quickly enough as she slowly, deliberately pulled another cigarette from her purse and lit it.  "Surely you can make an exception for me, Dr. Izayoi?"

Two things were apparent to Kichiro as he reached over and plucked that cigarette away, too.  Firstly, the girl was hanyou.  Secondly, she was trying to push him, but why?  "What can I do for you, Miss—?"

"Zelig," she supplied with a little grin.  "But you can call me Belle, if you wish."

Kichiro nodded slowly, pushing his white lab coat aside as he jammed his hands into his pockets.  "What can I do for you, Zelig-san?"

Her little grin widened, her lush red lips parting just enough to offer him a flash of her perfectly straight white teeth.  "I need some work done," she answered as she slowly shrugged off her the black silk jacket that covered most of her tiny black dress.  "I hear you're the best."

Kichiro narrowed his gaze, let it roam up and down her slender frame.  He had a feeling that she was toying with him.  He had a feeling there was more to this meeting than a girl wanting to schedule plastic surgery to fix some preconceived and oftentimes non-existent flaw.  What was her game?  "Surgery?  So what do you want to have done?"

Pivoting on the balls of her feet, she presented him with her profile as she peeked over her shoulder at him, deep blue eyes widening in mock surprise.  "Can't you tell, Dr. Izayoi?  I've been told . . . I need bigger breasts."

Wrapping his arm over his stomach as he propped his other elbow and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his grin was lazy.  "Really."

She grinned back.  "Do you need to see them?"

Kichiro shook his head.  "All right.  What do you really want?"

Turning back to face him, all the pretenses fell away.  The girl leveled a look straight into his eyes, and this time when she smiled, it was natural—beautiful.  "I have a friend.  I'd like you to help her."


He stood motionless as long seconds ticked off the clock, staring at her as though he were trying to see into her head, to see the thoughts that were spinning around.  Bellaniece didn't blink, and she didn't offer any more information.

He sighed.  "All right, I'll bite.  What does your friend need, and why are you asking me to do it?"

Biting her lower lip, Bellaniece took her time answering.  Having spent the greater portion of her seventeen years learning how to manipulate her father, her teachers, and basically every other male she came into contact with, she didn't figure Dr. Izayoi would be any more difficult to persuade than the quarterback of her high school football team had been.  Batting her eyelashes a few times, she smiled and shrugged.  "Nothing untoward . . . unless you've something interesting in mind?"

His smile was tolerant at best as he cocked his head to the side and flicked his wrist, checking his watch.  "I'm running late this morning, so if you're just here to waste my time, then I think we're finished."

Bellaniece's clear blue eyes flared in surprise at the blatant dismissal.  Covering her astonishment quickly, she sank down in the padded leather chair and sighed.  "My friend was burned—severely burned—a year ago.  The doctors told her that she needs plastic surgery to repair the damage . . . skin grafts and all that.  She doesn't have the money to have it done, and she can't go to just any plastic surgeon, you understand."

The light of understanding glowed in his brilliant golden eyes, and Bellaniece relaxed just a little, cautious optimism blossoming in her chest.  If he would just agree, if he would just hear her out . . .

"Your surname is Zelig, you said?  Your father's rich.  Why don't you ask him to pay for the surgery?"

"It's not like that," she countered.

"Don't tell me your father is immune to your tricks."

"That's mean."

He shook his head.  "But accurate."

"Is that so?"

"Isn't it?"

"For your information, Kelly won't let me pay for the work.  I've already offered many times."

"Kelly . . . ?"

She waved her hand, annoyed that he was ignoring the broader picture.  "Hendricks."

"I don't take charity cases."

"Doesn't it bother you at all that someone might really need your help?  Not just some superficial work that'll sag and have to be redone in a few years?  Maybe that's what you're after.  The more lifts and tucks you perform the more money you make, right?"

"Mind your manners, little girl."

Wondering just how she could have assessed him so erroneously, Bellaniece glared at the hanyou as she shot to her feet and snatched her silk jacket and stalked toward the door.  She couldn't resist offering a parting barb before she left.   "You're just like every other stuffed-coat, Dr. Izayoi.  You can't see past age . . . so stuck in your belief that youth means stupidity?  That I'm shallow because you're—what?  Ten years older than me, if that?  Forget I asked."

Dr. Izayoi cleared his throat loudly, stopping her before she could storm from the office.  Reining in the urge to march over and rant at him a little more, Bellaniece drew a deep breath as she slowly turned her head to look at him again.  He was smiling indulgently.  She gritted her teeth and waited.

"I said I don't take charity cases, but if your friend is that set against allowing you to pay for her surgeries, then I have no choice to demand payment in another way."

She couldn't restrain the hot color that instantly flooded her face as her temper soared.  "You call me a little girl then you have the gall to—"

"Calm down, Zelig-san.  For kami's sake, I have absolutely no interest in anything . . . untoward?  That was your word, correct?  I need another receptionist, that's all.  If you care about your friend's reconstructive surgery so much, then maybe you'd like to take on the job to pay for it."

The surge of hope fizzled out, and Bellaniece swallowed hard as she tried to keep her disappointment from showing.  Forcing a tight smile, she nodded at the doctor.  "I can't do that."

Gaze narrowing as his grin widened, she could almost hear the gloating he was doing in his own mind.  "I understand."

"No, you don't.  I'm here with Daddy because he's giving a lecture.  We're leaving, probably today.  Thank you anyway—for nothing."

Stalking from the room with her back straight and proud, Bellaniece kept her composure until she stepped onto the sidewalk outside the medical office.  She sighed, shoulders slumping as she shook her head slowly and blinked back angry tears.  How cruel was it, to offer her a chance to help her friend and then to have that same chance taken away?


Kichiro sighed as he rubbed a long-fingered hand over his face.

She was interesting, that girl.  Zelig Bellaniece, only daughter of the North American tai-youkai . . .

She didn't look like a little girl; she didn't act like a little girl, and yet when she wasn't putting on that misplaced act, there had been a certain vulnerability about her, too.

He turned, staring out the window.  'If she'd taken you up on that offer to be your receptionist, she'd have driven you nuts.'

Kichiro snorted inwardly.  'Damn straight, she would have,' he agreed as he wrinkled his nose.  'There's something about her . . . She's trouble.'

And that was true.  He had been in more than his fair share of trouble over the years.  Much of it had been instigated by his rowdy, rotten twin, but Ryomaru had certainly not forced Kichiro to all the things that made him grimace, now that he thought back.

If he were completely honest with himself, he'd have to admit that he was bad—horrible, really.  Ryomaru and he had discovered girls long ago and spent the majority of their teenage years into their early twenties being, as Ryomaru's mate was fond of saying, 'man-whores', and while Kichiro had never actually gone 'all the way' with any of the women he was with, he had certainly gone far enough.

Kichiro frowned as he sat on the ledge beside the window.  He wasn't sure when he'd lost interest in those shallow relationships.  He hadn't simply awoken one morning to the sudden realization that the casual flings just weren't enough for him anymore.  Maybe, after seeing his cousin Toga, settle down with Sierra and witnessing the happiness they shared, then later Ryomaru and Nezumi . . .

Maybe that's when he first started to understand that there really was more, and that he didn't have it yet.

Strange, really.  Growing up in his family with his parents, he'd seen first-hand, how happy they were.  Izayoi InuYasha grumbled and complained, growled and groused at anyone in listening distance, but it was just as obvious that he adored Kagome.  Maybe Kichiro had looked for things that never really were there, and maybe he'd gone along with Ryomaru's often inventive if not outright deviant plans so long that it had become second nature.

Or was there more to it than that?

Easy to say that he'd simply let Ryomaru talk him into things, but in reality, Kichiro was the one who normally was left cleaning up the messes his twin left behind.  Maybe in some strange sort of way, Kichiro had acted more as Ryomaru's conscience, and maybe that was the real reason he'd always tagged along.

The irate flash of brilliant blue eyes cut through his musings as his thoughts returned to the girl, the hanyou.  He'd seen other hanyou, and he knew that various ones exhibited varying traits of their youkai parents, or, as in his case, his hanyou parent.  He'd never seen an inu-hanyou retain the youkai ears, but unless his sense of smell was affected—highly likely since the little girl thought she'd look older with that atrocious cigarette dangling from those slender fingers—then he knew she was, indeed, human.  He could smell the human part of her, and unless his vision had been impaired—highly unlikely since he'd seen enough of her in that skimpy dress to know that she didn't look like the little girl he'd accused her of being—he hadn't seen anything else in her that would have labeled her as hanyou even if she weren't under a concealment.

Kichiro knew enough about the elusive North American tai-youkai to know that he, like Kichiro's uncle, Sesshoumaru, was inu-youkai.  Dog youkai.  Little else was known.

"You can't see past age . . . so stuck in your belief that youth means stupidity?  That I'm shallow because you're—what?  Ten years older than me, if that?"

Grimacing as her words echoed in his mind, Kichiro sighed again.  He'd seen girls like her before; spoiled brats who got their way by smiling and batting their lashes a few times.  Girls like that were a dime a dozen, weren't they, and he knew that better than anyone because he'd dated more than his fair share of them over the years.

"Izayoi-sensei, your next appointment is here," the receptionist said as she poked her head into Kichiro's office.

"Thank you," he said as he stood and turned to face the middle-aged woman.  "Send them in."

Mai bowed and nodded before backing out of the room.

"Oh, Mai-san . . . I want you to get some information for me."

The secretary-receptionist stopped and waited for further instruction.

"See if you can find anything on an American girl named Hendricks Kelly.  She was severely burned in a fire."

Mai looked confused but nodded anyway before she left the office.

Kichiro strode over to his desk, snatching the file off the neat surface and deliberately ignoring the question that was running through his head.

'Thought you didn't care, Kich . . .'

"Keh!  I don't."


Wiping a furious tear off her cheek as she poked the elevator button in the hotel lobby and ignoring the array of pitying glances she was receiving, Bellaniece made a face and whipped around to take the stairs instead.

She wasn't sure what she was expecting when he had slammed through the door in the lavish medical office.  She supposed she'd expected someone older, someone who looked more professional.  If he was thirty, she'd eat her purse.  He looked like he'd be more at home in less professional setting, yet his bearing and demeanor was completely at ease.

She'd gotten his name from a friend of a friend.  He was rumored to be the best youkai/hanyou plastic surgeon around.  Touted for refining the marking process before he'd even finished medical school, they called him brilliant.

Kichiro Izayoi.

She'd walked into his office to wait—he was running late, much to the chagrin of his frazzled secretary.  She'd never been this far from home, and more to the point, she'd sneaked out of the hotel while her father was getting dressed to give a lecture at the University of Tokyo.

Her nerves were shot, really.  Torn between the anxiety of what her father would do if he found out she'd sneaked out of the hotel and the almost-obsessive desire to help a friend, it had taken every ounce of bravado she possessed to goad Bellaniece into tempting fate in this venture.  Cain Zelig had an overprotective streak that bordered on the perverse, and it really didn't help that her daddy was also inu-youkai, which, in a nutshell, meant that she rarely got away with anything, ever.

Digging into her purse, she rummaged around for her compact but stopped as she pulled out the almost full pack of Marlboro reds.  She'd taken the cigarettes off the coffee table before she'd left the hotel.  She wasn't sure why her father had taken to smoking again.  He hadn't done it in years.  She'd grabbed them as she was sneaking toward the door so that he wouldn't smoke them.  It didn't matter that she knew that if he really wanted them, he'd just go out and buy more.  At least, in her mind, she had been keeping him from smoking the foul things.  Pausing beside the polished silver trash can, Bellaniece wrinkled her nose in disgust as she tossed the pack into the garbage.  

In a stupid effort to calm her rising anxiety while she waited for Dr. Izayoi to make his appearance, Bellaniece had actually tried to smoke the offensive things and had ended up nearly choking herself, instead.  The second one had been a show of bravado, and she hadn't been surprised when Dr. Izayoi took that one, too.  'Daddy smokes when he's nervous.   No wonder they calm his nerves.  He's too busy trying to keep from choking to be nervous!'  She made a face and stalked toward the stairwell.

Sighing as the heavy metal door swung closed behind her, the sound echoing through the melancholy emptiness of the sterile white cinderblock cubicle that extended to the top of the fifty story hotel, Bellaniece's face contorted in a thoughtful frown as she slowly climbed the stone stairs.  It didn't matter that she had gone to see the good doctor for the sake of a friend.  She was a small town girl who hadn't been further away from home than the town forty miles away to go shopping when she could coax her father out of the house, and he had been just a little too smug, a little too complacent, and overall, a lot too much of an ass.

He was hanyou—she hadn't realized that.  She could see through his concealment spell, though it was stronger than she had seen before in any other hanyou.  Hers was strong too, because her father was the North American tai-youkai.  'Maybe it has something to do with his parents . . . the great hanyou and miko . . .' Younger than she expected, taller than she expected, more handsome than she expected, and apparently far angrier than she had expected, too, Dr. Izayoi looked surprised for all of ten seconds before he strode over to her, snatched the cigarette from her hand and smashed it out in the decorative ashtray on the desk.

The fuzzy little ears on his head twitched as though he were monitoring the area for signs of danger.  Bellaniece bit her lip, hid her smile.  She'd never seen anyone with ears like his before, either.  Hanyou, she was, but her ears resembled her father's.  His ears looked sinfully soft, and it had taken all of her common sense not to run right over and touch them.

She winced.  No, that would have been a bad, bad thing.  Kichiro Izayoi already thought she was nothing more than a stupid little girl—amend that: a stupid, spoiled little girl.  The very last thing she needed was to add fuel to that fire, right?

Pushing through the door on the landing on the tenth floor, Bellaniece shook her head and squared her shoulders as she tried not to flinch.  Her father was back.  She could smell his scent lingering in the empty hallway as she quickened her pace.  She didn't even try to kid herself into thinking that he didn't know she was gone.  Maybe she could convince him she'd just gone down to the gift shop.

Of course, that would probably be easier to do if she had remembered to pick up some small trinket somewhere . . .

The door to their rented suite swung open as Bellaniece reached for the handle.  Cain Zelig glowered down at his daughter seconds before grabbing her into a stiflingly tight hug.  "Are you all right?" he demanded when he finally let go to drag her inside.  "Have you been crying?"

Bellaniece forced a weak smile and shrugged.  "Of course not, Daddy.  Don't be silly.  I got some dirt in my eye, that's all."

He didn't look like he believed her.  Staring at her for long moments, Cain finally sighed and rubbed his face tiredly.  "Where were you?  I thought I told you not to leave the hotel."

Bellaniece rolled her eyes and leaned up on tip toe to kiss her father's cheek.  "I just went for a short walk.  It's a lovely day, you know."

He kissed her forehead and let go as he shuffled over to pour a glass of water.  The ice in the pitcher clicked softly, and he drained the glass before turning back to face his daughter, sapphire eyes troubled, searching.  "I know it's kind of sudden, but . . . would you mind if we stayed here awhile?"

Her surprise must have showed in her face as Bellaniece blinked and leaned against a small table.  "You want to stay here?  Why?"

He shrugged.  "The university needed someone to fill in.  Seemed a little rushed, so I figured why not?"

Bellaniece wasn't sure why her father was lying.  She knew there was more to it than that.  He guarded his privacy with the viciousness of a dictator.  Still . . .

If she pointed that out, he'd probably drag her back home.  If she didn't . . .

'I could do it, couldn't I?  I could take that job, and Kelly could have the surgery, after all . . .'

She smiled instead.  "Sounds great, Daddy . . . In fact, I was offered a job today."

"A job?"

Bellaniece nodded.  "A receptionist in a doctor's office."

He looked skeptical.  "Who?"

Bellaniece headed off to her room, anxious to be alone, to escape the critical eye of her ever-observant father.  "Kichiro Izayoi—he's a surgeon."

She didn't see the look of surprise followed by the pensive frown as she left Cain in the living room.