InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Snare ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

Chapter 3

Sesshoumaru sat discontentedly on the large balcony of his apartment overlooking Roppongi Hills. The brass fire bowl by his elbow burned with a steady flame and took the edge off of the morning’s chill. Only a faint ripple marred the perfection of its finish showing where a dent had been hammered out. The cup of tea in his hands was fragrant with the scent of orange blossoms; his life was back in place, improved even.

So? What was the difficulty? Why think of yellow walls and a cramped kitchen at night or take comfort in an image of a slightly battered tea set? Why this sense of lingering discontent? His file folders sat unattended on the table and he stared at his tea as if it were all its fault.

The door behind him slid open and Rin stepped out onto the balcony dressed in street clothes. She carried a purse over her shoulder and seemed quite lively, almost inappropriately so. “Sesshoumaru-Sama,” she said. “I am going shopping. Is there anything you would like me to bring to you?”

Sesshoumaru stared at her with his face held perfectly still. She waited, with no apparent impatience, merely glancing over the edge of the balcony and down into the street far below.

“Rin,” he said at last. “There is no need. Merely make out a list in triplicate and I will give it to my secretary. She will obtain what you want.”

Rin lifted her head and her eyebrows. “Stephanie-Chan? I don’t think so. She and I don’t see eye to eye about clothing. I mean, look, this is all I’ve got to wear.” Her hand gestured expressively at her trim body. It was attired, he saw, in flat shoes and a pink skirt that featured a poodle on a chain and which stood out in an odd manner about her knees. His eyes traveled up to a waist made all the more slender by the wide skirt and tight belt to a white sweater which emphasized her breasts. There was a narrow black chiffon scarf tied around her neck, her face above it was mutinous. She stared back at him silently.

He licked his lips. “I fail to see the problem,” he ventured.

Rin replied in an oddly sugary tone of voice. “That is why Rin-Chan needs to do her own shopping, Sesshoumaru-Sama.” Her head dropped a bit to one side and she swayed toward him. He watched her, rather mesmerized. The skirt rustled as it brushed against his knees and her slender hand was reaching forward delicately. She was just a breath away from touching his cheek when a horn sounded stridently below in the street.

Rin jerked back and flung herself away from him to lean far over the railing showing an astonishing expanse of black tulle and a pair of slender ivory thighs. “There’s the car! Yoo-Hoo! Coming, Jaken!” she waved frantically and then dropped her arm. “Oh, he didn’t see. I better get down there before he has to come looking for me. See ya!” She flashed a victory sign and headed back through the sliding door.

“Rin…”

Rin leaned her head back for an instant, “Don’t worry, Sesshoumaru-Sama, I already have it. Thank you so much!” She dimpled and waved what he recognized as his ATM card between the fingers of one hand and vanished into the darkness of his study. An instant later the front door of the apartment opened and closed.

He gave a sudden toss to his tea cup and was up on his feet even as it sailed over the balcony railing trailing a glittering arc of tea in the morning air. It started on its final journey to the street fourteen stories below. He scarcely hesitated before he followed it down. The driver leaning against the car door gave a slight scream as the teacup shattered on the ground in front of him.

Sesshoumaru touched down behind the car, touching his fingertips for an instant to the pavement before standing up. As the driver walked over, cautiously, to examine the shattered fragments of porcelain on the street, Sesshoumaru flicked his hair into tidiness over his shoulders and leaned back against the side of the car in the same spot the driver had been occupying.

After brushing with the side of his foot against the shards the driver turned back to resume his post only to find his employer leaning against his car in his shirtsleeves confronting him. He straightened up to attention so swiftly his back cracked.

Sesshoumaru flicked his eyes over to the small pile of fragments as a boxy Scion trundled by with its stereo cranked to the max and ran them over.

“So, who ordered the car?” he inquired gently.

“You did, Sama. Or, I mean, your secretary did.” The young man felt his scalp suddenly develop a thousand separate itches under his cap.

Sesshoumaru looked at him sharply, “Stephanie-San?”

Suddenly on sure ground, the driver warmed right up and even gave a faint smile, “No, Sama, the young lady did. She said you had an appointment and to be here at this time Sama.”

Sesshoumaru gazed at the young man and recalled days not so far in the distant past when he would have ripped this human’s throat out for merely sweating so. The errant breeze of the city streets stirred his hair gently as he regarded the young man who seemed frozen in place like a bug under a pin.

“I see.”

The automatic doors of building C swished open and Sesshoumaru snapped his head around to see a completely oblivious stranger leave the building and head towards the subway stop. He looked back at the sweating young man, “You have a cell phone, of course.”

“Yes.”

“You will contact me if a young lady should come down and attempt to enter the car. Do not argue with her. Merely contact me.”

“Yes, Sama.”

Sesshoumaru turned away, ready to leave.

“Sama?”

With a sigh, he turned back, “Yes?”

“The young lady’s appearance? How do I recognize her?”

Sesshoumaru had a thousand thoughts in his mind when he opened his lips to answer the driver. Thoughts that led to words like: beautiful, shy, laughing eyes, dimples…beautiful. What he said was, “She’ll be wearing a poodle skirt.”

.o.o.o.

Back upstairs, Sesshoumaru opened the door to confront an astonished Jaken in the act of brushing off one of the coats from the hall closet.

“Sesshoumaru-Sama? I thought you had left. The meeting with Koencho-San is in barely an hour. The car awaits you downstairs.” The toad daemon was in human form, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, wielding the coat brush with a finicking air very much at odds with his current appearance.

Sesshoumaru frowned, “What meeting?”

Jaken tsked and circled the rack upon which Sesshoumaru’s camel hair coat resided at the moment, using a steamer on the creamy wool. “Rin didn’t tell you? She promised she would. Really, that young woman, straight back to her old tricks I see.”

The taller youkai’s eyes followed the smaller one’s figure as he went on about his task. Jaken often went about his duties in human form these days. It was an unprepossessing one to be sure as Jaken’s human form came across as a disreputable and oddly frog-like little man. Jaken didn’t seem to care, however. He said he had gotten used to the various advantages pertaining to the greater size and relative anonymity. He also said that the previous twenty years that he had spent trapped in his human form had given him a taste for things human.

Privately, Sesshoumaru suspected that the toad youkai had discovered within himself a fondness for human vices such as smoking and the imbibing of spirituous liquors but that was one of those issues which was simply never raised between them. There were many things that they no longer discussed having grown into a habit of silence. Sesshoumaru hadn’t taken the trouble to hit him since before Rin had awakened from her ensorcelled sleep. Maybe the toad was overdue.

Jaken gave a final flick to the coat and turned to Sesshoumaru, “I will be sure to mention her oversight to Rin when she gets up. Would you like to wear this coat? Koencho-San was quite anxious for this meeting after the events of Inuyasha’s wedding.”

“Jaken.”

“Yes?”

“Rin is not here.”

“No?”

“No. She left the apartment ten minutes ago, bearing my card and stating she was going clothes shopping with you.”

Jaken stared back at him, looking a shade greener in the face than usual.

“You would know of her absence if you had maintained your daemon form.”

Jaken dropped his eyes and put down the steamer and brush, “So, she no sooner returns to life than she is back up to her old tricks. Do not concern yourself, Sesshoumaru-Sama; I believe I know where she is going. Tell me, did she take the car?” As he spoke, he swept the coat off the rack and held it ready for Sesshoumaru to put on.

Taken off balance, Sesshoumaru complied and shrugged the coat up over his shoulders. “She did not,” he said in reply as he was ushered firmly out the door and to the elevators. Before he quite knew it, the doors were sliding open and half a dozen humans were stepping back to make way for him.

Jaken spoke quickly, “Then I indeed know where she is and how she left the building. Do not concern yourself, Sesshoumaru-Sama, I’ll have her back!” He waved a hand as the door slid shut behind his honored lord and wiped some sweat off his brow with a trembling forearm. It was a good thing that he had realized fairly early on that Sesshoumaru had become slow to strike at humans and reluctant to show his true nature in front of multiple witnesses. He was sure he would have been sporting a broken head by now if that had not been the case.

Rin was a problem and it was with no good grace that he fished for his keys in his pocket to let himself back into the apartment. “Shibuya,” he muttered to himself, thinking of the shopping Mecca of Tokyo’s young adults. He had seen her watching the commercials on the TV late last night after they had gotten back from that fiasco of a wedding. “She’s headed for Shibuya.” The apartment door slapped shut behind him with a decided snap.

.o.O.o.

Higurashi-San sighed tensely as she rested the phone back onto it’s hook. The morning had not been a pleasant one and she had returned from her meeting to find that Sesshoumaru’s secretary had left no less than four messages while she had been out. She had duly returned the call and had been pleased to be asked out for a late lunch.

Sesshoumaru was intelligent and restful. The lunch was likely to be excellent. It was the reason for the lunch that she was worried about. He had been cagey. He had said he wanted advice about Rin. Why, she didn’t know. He had not explained that and she did not really feel herself ready to act as an advisor about the behavior of young women at the moment as things stood.

She sighed again and pulled out the stack of papers in its large manila envelope from where she had rolled it up and thrust it into her purse. She eased the papers out and looked at them without really seeing them. She knew well enough what they said anyway. She had been both expecting and dreading the arrival of such a packet for a good two years now, ever since Kagome had first gone through the well. It was a letter and attached paperwork from Kagome’s high school bearing the official letterhead of the Ministry of Education. It said in part that the normal school system of Japan could not condone the immoral and dilatory behavior of the student Nishigawa Kagome, née Higurashi. Perhaps she, as the parent, or the student’s husband would be more comfortable with sending her married daughter to a private high school and so-on and so forth. The pages swam before her eyes.

Higurashi-San plunged her free hand back into her purse searching for a wad of Kleenex. The packet she came up with was empty. With an uncharacteristic curse, she tossed the packet aside and dumped her purse out on the counter on top of the letter to pick through the scattered contents.

The front door slid aside in a resounding smack, making her jump. “Tadaima! We’re here, we need to get supplies!” Kagome’s voice caroled out and feet pounded through the front hallway and took a quick turn up the stairs. She could hear them overhead, Kagome chattering excitedly and an occasional low-voiced comment from Inuyasha. He did not speak up much around the house which Kagome had always assured her was a good thing but his steady devotion to Kagome was a comfort in itself.

With sudden decision, she shoved everything back in her purse along with the papers and busied herself with gathering food supplies and checking the first aid box. By the time Inuyasha and Kagome came down she was composed and able to give a smile and a hug to her daughter.

“Here you are Kagome-Chan. Everything is ready. It’s a good thing I was able to stop by the pharmacy last week, the box was really getting very low.”

“Mama, you think of everything,” Kagome said, peeking into the first aid kit and exclaiming over some of the contents. “Ooh! Those new bandages for draining wounds that stay on five days, Mama, how useful! I’m sure someone will need them.”

Inuyasha stepped up silently, carrying the yellow pack in one clawed fist. He looked over the foodstuffs on the counter with approval and started piling them in, pausing occasionally to give one item or another a cautious sniff.

“It’s all fine, Inuyasha. No natto or curry in this lot. Really, that was just an oversight last time.”

He grunted briefly in response and went on to the next item. He was taking no chances.

Kagome suddenly stopped, clapping a hand to her cheek, “That math test! I need my book!”

“Kagome! No…” she trailed off as her daughter bounded out of earshot around the turn of the stairs, “need to worry.” she continued in a small voice.

The room was silent behind her and she turned around to find herself nose to chest with Inuyasha’s red suikan. He bent down a bit and gave her a close look in the face, “So, is there something you are going to keep back? Or is it something you are going to tell her?”

She backed away a pace and made her way around him to busy herself resettling things in the pack. There was little need; after all this time he had become pretty proficient.

“Mama,“ Kagome shouted down, “where is my…oh, never mind, I’ve got it. We’ll need another bag.”

Higurashi-San stepped over to the closet and got out a canvas satchel as Inuyasha folded his arms and stood waiting expectantly. The silence was difficult to ignore and she didn’t last long as Kagome’s footsteps first approached the head of the stairs and then doubled back hurriedly to her room.

“Well?”

“Inuyasha-Kun. I don’t know what to say to Kagome right now. Just take her with you and keep her safe and keep her busy. Take as long as you want.“ Inuyasha’s ears flickered. “Within reason,“ she added. “I have a few things I need to clear up.” she caught his look. “No-one here is in any danger, it’s just a piece of annoyance. Please.” She held out the canvas satchel and he took it from her fingers reluctantly.

In a flash he was out of the kitchen and trotting up the stairs after Kagome. She could hear him growling at her to “Get moving,” If you can’t remember it then you can do without it.” The sheer normalcy of his voice made her smile. Inuyasha would keep his own counsel; she could trust him.

The phone rang, it was Sesshoumaru letting her know he would be there to pick her up within the hour. She was still on the line with him when Kagome and Inuyasha returned to the kitchen carrying the stuffed satchel and yet another armload of things. It looked like rolled-up blankets this time.

Inuyasha’s brows were pulled down into a scowl and she rang off quickly to give her daughter and son-in-law a hug and to send them out the door, Inuyasha moving easily under a load that would challenge a champion weightlifter. She waved goodbye brightly and shut the door with a sigh of relief.

.O.O.O.

It wasn’t until they had reached the other side of the well that Kagome voiced her concern, “Inuyasha, did you think Mama was OK?”

Inuyasha grunted and dumped the thick roll of blankets on the ground. “Why wouldn’t she be? She knows I’ll keep you safe. Why the hell do we need so many blankets? They’ll just be in the way.”

“They aren’t for us.”

Inuyasha straightened up, putting his hands on his hips. “Then why the hell did you make me lug them through the well?” he barked.

“They’re for the village, silly. Winter is coming and nobody ever seems warm enough.” Kagome resettled the weight of her pack with-a self satisfied air. “I bought them second hand, but I don’t think anybody here will care.”

Inuyasha sighed and flipped the load of blankets onto his back before grabbing the satchels in his free hand.

“I mean,” she continued as they set off on the short trek through the forest to the village, “didn’t she seems kind of distracted?” She chuckled to herself and Inuyasha shot her a sharp look though his hair. “I mean, that phone call. I swear, if it wasn’t Mama, I’d think she was going on a date, she was so nervous.”

A few moments passed as the hanyou considered Kagome’s comments. That, and the voice that his sharp ears had picked up from the other end of the line. His ears quirked quizzically but Kagome didn’t see it. She was looking for the first glimpses of the village through the trees. “Kagome,” he asked finally, “I’ve heard you use that word before. What is a date?”