InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ To Begin Again ❯ Scroll Six: Shopping ( Chapter 6 )

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

Scroll Six: Shopping


"No."



Kagome, Souta, Jii-chan, and Inuyasha sat around the table eating breakfast. Both children were in their school uniforms checking the clock constantly to make sure that they would get to school on time, when Keiko had broached the subject of dinner at their father's apartment.



"No. Absolutely not. Mama, how could you even ask such a thing?"

Keiko sighed and touched her daughter's arm. "Kagome, darling, I know it's hard to understand the reasons behind your father leaving and his sudden reappearance - and I know you're angry that he came back without warning and then the way he announced to you all that he remarried and is expecting a baby, but Kagome, sometimes you just have to let go of everything you're feeling and understand that people do stupid things without thinking about the consequences. Your father is one of those people. At least give her a chance." Though she did not like the thought of Haruki being married to another woman, she harbored no ill feelings towards the woman who carried his child nor did she wish ill on the child. It was simply unnerving to think of the man she had loved for so long, who had carried her away from her family and her life, given her two of the most wonderful children a person could ever hope for, was now giving that same life to another person.

"I don't want to give her a chance." Kagome nearly knocked over her glass of orange juice as she waved her hand in exasperation. "I don't want anything to do with him or her. I've got all the family I need." What had gotten into her mother? Did she forget that Haruki had abandoned them, had abandoned her? She couldn’t forget; that was for sure. It still hurt to think about it, to remember the day he had told them he would be leaving. Souta had been no more than a baby, still unable to walk, but Kagome remembered.



“Papa, you promised! You promised to take me to the beach and you said we’d build sand castles. Please take me with you, papa. Please? I’ll be a good girl, I promise!”

Souta put his chopsticks down and crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, if Kagome's not going, neither am I." There was no way on earth he was spending time with two total strangers without his sister or someone there to keep him safe.

Kagome put her utensils down and took the last drink of her juice. "Mama, I have other things to worry about. If she wants to meet the family, she'll have to find a different way to do it. I've got bigger problems - like how am I going to get down the well without him figuring it out? Am I going to have to tell him? How am I going to do that? He's gonna freak! He's probably going to forbid me - not that I'd listen to him - to do it again. Kami, he'll probably tell the evening news that I can time travel or try to get me locked in an insane asylum."

"He wouldn't do that, I'm sure," Keiko reassured her.

Jii-chan cleared his throat. "However, Kagome does have a point, daughter. She can't very well just throw a time traveling well and a hanyou boyfriend at Haruki his first week back in Tokyo."

Kagome's eyes got as wide as saucers as did Inuyasha's. She had explained the meaning of the word boyfriend a long time ago when she had used it in reference to Miroku and Sango. "He's not my boyfriend!"

Jii-chan chuckled. "You're going to be late for school, children."

The teen gave her grandfather her best 'I'll-deal-with-you-later' glare and stood up, grabbing her shoes from the cubby beside the door and walked out. Souta and Inuyasha followed.



"Inu-kun? Do you have to go back down the well?" she asked as Souta ran past her to meet a few friends at the bottom of the shrine steps. She and Inuyasha had stopped by the top steps.



"No, why?"

She scuffed the toe of her loafer on the ground, making an arc on the cobblestone. "I just feel like I have no one to talk to about this...no one who understands, you know? If you go back, then I'm gonna be alone and I really don't think I could handle that right now."



She blushed and looked away, towards the street below. "I just mean...well...Mama...she never stopped loving him, you know? And then to find out he's back and got a new wife and starting a new family...I couldn't bother her with my problems. And Souta doesn't even remember him, really, and he's got to be scared to death of the changes this will cause. Jii-chan...well, I don't think Jii-chan ever really forgave him for leaving like he did. I remember that for a long time afterwards whenever someone would mention Dad, he'd go into some rant about how he raised his sons to be more responsible than that, to treat their family with respect and honor their duties. I just want someone around who can support me, is all." She shrugged and started down the steps. "Never mind, Inuyasha...just forget I asked, okay? I'm feeling out of place right now."

"I told you last night I'd stay, baka," he huffed. What did she think he was? A liar? When had he ever broken a promise?

"Really?"

"Didn't I just say that?"

She smiled brightly, gratefully. "Hey, look, it might take a while to deal with this and figure out some way to avoid telling Dad about the well - a week or so, probably. After school today, would you let me take you shopping? I could get you some clothes like the guys in my time wear so that way you can walk around if you want to while I'm in school and you won't have to worry about people messing with you."



She knew the few times he had wandered Tokyo without her he had always managed to gather a crowd and he hated the way people reacted to his ears and his out-of-date clothing. He knew he attracted too much attention in her time and that it was not a good thing.

"Feh, whatever."

"Thanks, Inuyasha!" She waved and turned, running down the steps. "Ja ne!"



Ayumi, Eri and Yuka had greeted her with hugs and smiles and the latest gossip, but when the news that some new girl was fawning over Houjou didn't seem to get any sort of reaction out of her - glad or otherwise - they began to worry. And when the news that the school dance was only a week and a half away received only a small "cool" they knew something was wrong.

"Okay, spill," Yuka demanded, poking her friend in the shoulder. "What'd Inuyasha do this time?"



All three suddenly became overly protective, waiting for Kagome to spill the beans.

The girl sighed and looked up at the high school building. It was still hard to believe she had passed the high school entrance exams...or that Inuyasha had helped her study. It hadn't come as that big a surprise that Miroku and Sango offered to help, but when the hanyou had descended from his tree branch and offered his assistance with her math - turns out he was a practical genius when it came to numbers and mathematical equations - it had nearly brought her to tears. Her tests and her school work were important to her and so it was important to them, Miroku had said when he had taken her history notes and begun scanning them.



It hadn't been until afterwards that she began to wonder about the repercussions of allowing her fifteenth century friends to read and learn about the up and coming five hundred and something years...and when she'd passed the exams, after congratulations were given, the same lecherous monk had voiced his disappointment with the fact that the high school uniforms were longer, and because of the knee length skirt being a bit of a hindrance, she had begun to wear civilian clothes to the Sengoku Jidai. That particular comment had earned him a nice knot from Sango and a black eye from Inuyasha. Baka Miroku-sama...doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut.

Ayumi waved a hand in front of her face, bringing her out of her day dream.



"Huh?"

"We were asking you what happened with you and Inuyasha," Ayumi reminded her with an exaggerated sigh. "You're so bummed and we want to know why. Do we need to go hunt him down and teach him not to break your heart again?"

Kagome blushed deeply. "No, no...it doesn't have anything to do with Inuyasha. Actually, he's being uncharacteristically supportive...I'm sorry...I'm just a bit distracted is all. My father came back last night and announced that he moved back to Tokyo."

Eri and Yuka stared at her in disbelief, mouths hanging open while Ayumi's eyes got round. Kagome had been friends with Eri and Yuka back then, but Ayumi had been attending a different school and so she had not known Kagome when her father left even though she knew the story. The other two girls immediately caught control of themselves and started trying to console their friend while Ayumi gave her a sympathetic look and patted her arm. She too came from a divorced home with a step mom and a step dad as well as stepsiblings on both sides.

"That...that...oh, I can't even think of a good word for him," Eri seethed. "I hope your mother told him exactly where he could go."

"The nerve of some men!" Yuka had her hands on her hips. "To think he can come back after all this time. What a baka!"

"You don't have to see him or have anything to do with him if you don't want to, Kagome. Your mom wouldn't force you." Ayumi shook her head. After all the stories she'd heard about Higarashi Haruki, she'd never have expected him to return. Not after everything Kagome had said about him.

"Yeah, I know. Mama said I don't have to if I don't want to, but she acts like she wants me and Souta to get to know him. She acts like she's actually glad he came back even though I know it's killing her." Kagome frowned clenching her fist by her side. "Can you believe he actually had the nerve to stay for supper last night? And to top it all off he announced that he's remarried and that his wife is in - and I quote - 'a delicate condition'. Ugh! Didn't he even care how that might make my mom feel?"



The first bell rang and the four girls reluctantly headed for their first class. "Then he tells Mama to tell me and Souta that Ikoku - that's the woman's name - wants us to come to dinner at his house this Sunday. He didn't say that he wanted us to be there; he said that Ikoku wanted to get to know us. Like he doesn't even care - which I'm sure he doesn't.”

Ayumi linked her arm through Kagome's right arm and Eri took her left side. Yuka linked her arm through Eri's as they walked down the hall keeping Kagome between them. "So what did you say?"

"I told Mama that I wasn't going. I think if he wanted to know us kids so badly he would have made a little more effort over the past ten years." Kagome shook her head. “She's gonna make me go, I can just feel it. She actually argued with me when I refused."

"What's Higarashi-oijii-san have to say?" Eri wondered.

Kagome sighed. They had to let go and walk single file into the room, but gathered around Kagome's desk with a little time before the second bell.



"Jii-chan is so mad he can't think straight. He keeps muttering to himself about how irresponsible his youngest son ended up being and apologizing to Obaa-san for Otou being such a disappointment."

"Geez, Kagome." The gravity of the situation was starting to set in and Kagome slumped in her chair.

"I know." She sighed and leaned over with her forehead resting on the top of her desk. Wasn’t her life complicated enough?



"What are you doing today?" Yuka asked as the girls walked out of the front doors of the high school on their way home. "You wanna grab a bite to eat at WacDonald’s?"

"I’d love to, but I can‘t. Sorry, Yuka-chan." Kagome smiled apologetically. The girls had been a great help in lifting her spirits all day. They'd stopped pressing Houjou-kun on her nearly a year ago, much to her relief, but they had not given up setting her with a decent boyfriend. However, they had put their mission on hold since she had explained the entire situation to them weeks before. "I told Inuyasha I'd go clothes shopping with him - he has no modern clothes, you know." She grinned.

"Oooh, shopping!" Ayumi exclaimed, sounding wistful and excited. "I haven't been to the mall in ages it feels like!"

Eri giggled. "We went just last weekend!"

"Like I said, ages!"

Kagome laughed. "I'd invite you girls, you know that, but I don't think Inuyasha'd be too comfortable..."

"But if we just happened to show up at the mall -"

"And we just happened to run into you -"

"Then what could he say?" All three had stopped in their tracks at the edge of the school yard and were grinning wickedly.

Kagome sighed. She was outnumbered and definitely beaten. "He couldn't really say anything, I suppose…and I'm guessing there's nothing I can do to persuade you not to do it?"

They shook their heads and laughed. "See you at the mall, Kagome!"

"Ja ne!"

Kagome rolled her eyes and waved to them as they went in their own separate directions.



Having changed into khaki short-shorts and a navy blue tank top, Kagome accepted a wad of cash from her mother, who had agreed with the idea of buying some modern clothes for Inuyasha to wear when he was on their side of the well. She drug the teen hanyou down the street to Tokyo's shopping district. She had made sure he was wearing a baseball cap to cover his ears and had insisted that he wear a pair of her grandfather's sandals, as stores seldom allowed customers to enter barefoot. He had reluctantly agreed. This seemed to be making Kagome happy, after all, and if it kept her from crying then he'd do anything.

If he thought the streets of Tokyo were crowded, he had been sadly mistaken and realized it once they entered the automatic doors of the mall. His sensitive ears and nose were bombarded with various loud noises and strong odors and he almost passed out from the attack. Kagome kept a tight grip on his hand and led him through the maze of crowds and booths with ease. The food court was just to their right and a parade of tantalizing scents tempted him to detour in that direction.

But he wasn't given the chance. Three black haired girls in school uniforms pounced almost immediately.

"Kagome!"

"Kagome-chan!"

"Is that Inuyasha? He looks different!"

"He certainly is taller!"

"Don't you just love his hair, Eri?"

"Yeah! I wish mine were that pretty!"

The hanyou growled low in his throat. My hair is not pretty! I'm not pretty! Sesshomaru is the pretty boy - not me! He looked to Kagome for rescue only to find that she was laughing as the girls stared at him with starry eyes as if waiting for some sort of response. "Oi...Who are you?"

Eri frowned slightly, looking hurt. "Oi, don't tell me you’ve forgotten us already? We're Kagome's friends from school. I'm Eri, this is Yuka, and that's Ayumi."

"Oh, yeah." He fidgeted nervously. What was it with girls in Kagome's era? They were always drooling over him. It was times like these he much preferred the way people reacted towards him in the Sengoku Jidai - with fear and distance. This attention and fawning was unnerving.

Kagome cleared her throat, deciding it was time for intervention. "Leave him alone, girls. It was hard enough getting him to come out here. He hates crowds." She tried to look serious, but her eyes sparkled with laughter and he scowled. "I promised we wouldn't be here long."

They all three looked disappointed. "Well...I suppose we'd better go do our homework, anyway. We'll see you at school tomorrow." Eri said, smiling at her. She missed spending time with her friend. The three said their goodbyes and drooled over Inuyasha a second longer before leaving them be.



"Sorry about that. They really wanted to see you and I couldn't argue..." Kagome bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. She didn’t like making Inuyasha uncomfortable, of course, but the look of total confusion on his features whenever he was exposed to her friends was verging on hilarious. Of course, given time to adjust to their obvious infatuation with him, he became more comfortable and started answering their questions with ease, but the initial shock of adoration that was flung at him kept him on edge for the first few minutes. It was actually kind of sad, when Kagome stopped to think about it. It was only another testament to the fact that Inuyasha had not been given much positive attention in his life.

"Feh, whatever." He shrugged as she reached out and took his hand, leading him towards the throngs of people.


They'd been at it two hours and had only spent half of the money Keiko had given them even though both of Inuyasha's hands were filled with bags. Getting Inuyasha to agree to purchase anything was a chore and a half. He thought all of the clothes were too tight or too revealing or too funny looking or too itchy or whatever else he could find wrong with them. Two pairs of baggy blue jeans, one pair of khakis and six button-up shirts later, they were almost ready to leave until she decided he needed a good pair of shoes. And so they were in the shoe store comparing styles and prices.

"You'd probably be more comfortable in open backs, I'm sure....Birkenstocks are a good brand and they're really comfortable. Souta's got a pair that he loves."



Kagome tapped her finger against her chin while Inuyasha looked at the racks of shoes like he thought they were going to fly off of the shelves and attack him. In all of his nineteen years he had never worn shoes, not even when he'd been a little pup in his mother's household and she was nobility!

Kagome grabbed a pair of dark tan clogs and bent them one way and then the other, checking for flexibility before flagging down a clerk and asking him to measure Inuyasha's foot for a pair of the uncomfortable looking things.

The hanyou had just dropped into a chair and was glaring evilly at the clerk who had taken a metal contraption and was trying to jam his foot into it when a male voice called out Kagome's name. Both teens looked up only to be confronted with an all too recently familiar face. Higarashi Haruki stood just across from them now and standing beside him was a woman in her early thirties. She was about Kagome's height with long auburn hair that she wore in a loose braid down her back, ending just at her waist. She wore a simple sun dress and sandals, but anyone could see the slight roundness to her tummy through the loose material.

"Kagome, I didn't expect to see you here. What are you two doing?" He managed a smile and put his arm around the woman's shoulders.

"Oh, Ruki-chan, what do you think they're doing at the mall with a bunch of shopping bags?" The woman rolled her eyes and smiled at Kagome. "Haruki can be so dense sometimes. So you're Kagome? You're picture doesn't do you justice! And you look so much older."

Kagome didn't smile. She sat on the chair arm of Inuyasha's chair and folded her hands neatly in her lap. "Probably because the last picture I sent was three years ago."

Haruki cleared his throat, not wanting to air their dirty laundry in the middle of a shoe store. "Kagome, this is my wife, Higarashi Ikoku. She's looking forward to seeing you and Souta on Sunday night for dinner."

The woman nodded vigorously. "Yes, very much so. You and your brother are both adorable from what I can see of the pictures. And so smart! You’re mother sent Haruki a letter every year and detailed the major events of both your lives to keep him informed. He's shared them with me and I am amazed at how talented you both are. You must get that from your mother."

Bet she didn't tell you everything... "We take after our mom a lot, thank you."

"You look so much like Haruki, Kagome, right down to the eyes. Of course, yours are darker, but still beautiful. I'll bet Souta-kun is the spitting image of your mother, ne?"

"Yeah, he got her looks."

"So, the two of you will be coming to dinner on Sunday? Is there anything special you prefer? Some favorite dinner or dessert that you would like to have?" Ikoku didn't seem to pick up on the tension between her husband and stepdaughter as she babbled on. "You know, Kagome, I want you and your brother to know that you are both welcome in our home and I want you to feel comfortable there."

Haruki coughed a bit. "Well, Ikoku, we should really get going. Your mother is expecting us for dinner, remember?" He gave Kagome a smile. "It was nice to see you again, Kagome....Inuyasha."

"Hai, it was very nice to meet you Kagome. And who is this?" She gave Inuyasha a curious glance as if noticing him for the first time.

"A friend of mine, Taishou Inuyasha." Kagome reused the family name from the night before as to not raise her father's suspicions.

"Then, it was very nice to meet you both. I hope to see you again soon. Sayonara."

"Sayonara."



Inuyasha watched them go and then glanced over at Kagome, who sat on the arm of his chair. "And I thought you talked a lot."



She shot him a glare and elbowed his arm. The clerk had used Inuyasha's distraction with Kagome and her father to fit his foot into the measuring device and was just returning with a box when the couple left. Kagome didn't give him the chance to argue, and simply instructed him to put the shoes on while she went to pay. When that was done, much to Inuyasha's relief, they headed back to the shrine with their purchases.