Omoide no Mori
Forest of Memories
chapter two:
*In Which Inuyasha Ruins Kagome's Lunch*
Kagome jogged quickly toward the well, her jet-black ponytail bouncing around her shoulders. She slapped her unruly bangs out of her eyes, and suddenly wished she had brought a pair of gloves. It was downright chilly outside! Pulling the long sleeves of her shirt over her fingers, she hurried toward the Hone Kui no Ido.
Jumping down into the dark, gaping mouth of the old dry well, Kagome felt a brief sensation of vertigo, and shielded her eyes to the blue-and-silver glow that enveloped her. She gripped at the tiny jar of Shikon shards she carried near her heart, and then landed with a small thump on the soft, loose dirt at the bottom of the well.
Kagome glanced up at the clear blue sky above her, and then gave a little smile as she slowly scaled the vine ropes that crept their way up the walls of the well.
She found it a tad strange...that she felt so at home here in the past.
Well, granted, she certainly spent enough time here...it was practically her home away from home. She had actually grown quite fond of her secret second life, and she was quite certain nobody else had been on so many adventures... After all, how many students could honestly say that they had reanimated a spellbound half-demon, had a magical jewel torn from their very body, been burned alive by magical flames, been shrank to the size of a doll by a deranged mountain hermit, had an evil miko's curse set upon them, countered the dark hex and purified the fragments of a mystical stone...and all the while managed to keep it a secret? That wasn't even half of what she'd been through--and it hadn't even been a full school year yet!
Kagome grinned as she grabbed at the wooden lip of the well and hauled herself up over the top. She poked her head out into the air of the past, and took a deep breath. She held it for a moment, then exhaled audibly, still grinning.
Surely her classmates would all be jealous if they knew that she--
--!?
"Oomph!"
With a cry, Kagome was crashed into violently, and found herself thrown backwards, back down into the well. She landed hard on her rump in the soft dirt at the bottom, and groaned.
"Itai~i~i..." she moaned, rubbing the small of her back, one eye squinted closed in a grimace.
Irked, she snapped her head up to glare at the party responsible, then groaned as she realized that the well had, seemingly inadvertently, sent her back home when she had fallen back in.
She groaned.
"Mou..."
And with that, she climbed up and out of the well in her time, then gave a gusty sigh and jumped back in.
How troublesome, she mused to herself, that the well couldn't tell when someone fell in by accident...
Landing softly back in the dirt at the bottom of the dry well, again in the feudal age of 500 years ago, she cast a peeved leer upward.
"Nee," she called to whoever was still undoubtedly up there, "why don't you watch where you're going, you big oaf?"
A pair of golden eyes stared snidely down at her, and there was a brief flash of fangs.
"What was that?"
Kagome brushed herself off and huffed a sigh.
She might have known.
Grabbing the vine again, she climbed up and popped her head out up over the lip of the well, coming face to face with the very hanyou she had awakened from his ensorcelled sleep not so very long ago. Leaning on her elbows, she narrowed her eyes.
"And just where were you headed in such a hurry, Inuyasha?" she asked coyly.
Inuyasha blinked rapidly, started to say something, then looked at the ground.
"Actually," he said after a moment of heavy silence, "I was coming to see you."
Kagome was a tad startled.
To see me?
She blinked.
He actually hadn't done that in a while. She wondered what the occasion was...?
"N-Nani?"
Inuyasha's eyes snapped open wide, and he took a staggering step back.
"N-No, no, I didn't mean--!" He threw his hands out in front of him. "Baka, stop thinking like that..."
"Like what?" she asked sweetly, trying hard not to laugh as Inuyasha's face turned beet red.
He scowled at the ground, realizing he had inadvertently been blushing the whole time.
"I just...had a question to ask you," he said gruffly.
Kagome pulled herself up a little more, until she was sitting on the lip of the well with one leg dangling down into the mouth.
She removed her backpack.
"Well, ask away," she said, opening the bag to pull out one of the bentou boxes her mother had prepared. She'd left in such a hurry, she'd forgotten to eat breakfast! "Just ask quickly, if you would," she added, pulling out one bentou and swinging the one leg still dangling down into the well back and forth, "I can't stay too long."
Now that she had seen that things seemed to be okay with Inuyasha, she really needed to get back home to study for those tests she was having next week...
"Whaddya mean?" he asked, cocking one dark eyebrow. "If you had no intention of staying, why'd you come here anyway?"
"It'd been a while," she admitted vaguely, tracing one finger over the edge of the bentou box, "and you hadn't come to get me...so I thought I'd surprise you..."
She opened up one of the boxes and gleefully decided upon a large nikuman.
He scowled.
"But if you have to go back so soon...then what was the point of coming in the first place?" he demanded sourly.
She shrugged at Inuyasha.
He flattened his eyes as she took a bite out of the meat bun, and chewed it carefully. Then he grit his teeth.
"Temee, don't eat when I'm talking to you!" he shouted, and lunged forward to grab for the nikuman. "At least let me have a bite!"
With a yelp, Kagome lunged backward in an effort to save the lunch--
--and went tumbling
back down
into the well.
"A-Ano..." Inuyasha stammered, more to himself than anyone else as he peered over the lip of the well.
Kagome hit the ground hard on her side, grimacing, and then gasped audibly as the nikuman landed in the dirt beside her, rolling to a stop a few feet away. She let out a gusty sigh as she gazed at it.
It was covered in dirt.
She glanced up, and sighed again as she saw the ceiling of the shrine.
Rats...now she would have to climb completely out of the well...and jump back in...again.
She found it ever so cumbersome that the well, once she had climbed out of it on one side, would send her back to the other if she entered again...even if she only happened to fall in inadvertently.
This was getting dreadfully tedious...
Yare yare...
She clambered out of the well, taking her bag and the dirtied nikuman with her, and then carefully jumped back in.
"D...Daijoubu ka?" Inuyasha asked, his hand behind his head as he leaned down to peer into the shadowy depths of the Hone Kui no Ido. "Ka...Kagome?"
He leaned in a little more.
Where had she gone?
Surely she wouldn't have gotten upset over that and decided to stay in her time...?
Or...had she?
"Kagome?"
There was a silvery blue glow from the bottom of the well.
"Kagome...?"
"Inuyasha?" she called forlornly upon hearing his calls.
She brushed the dirt off her jeans from her second trip into the well, and tried to sound plaintive.
She'd get him good for this.
Nobody ruined her mama's nikuman and got away with it.
"Kagome...?"
A vein popped out of her forehead.
"Inuyasha...?"
He made a wordless sound of acknowledgment and leaned over a little farther.
Wait for it... she told herself, wait for it...
"Kagome?"
"Osuwari!"
WHAMPH!
"Nnnngh..."
Kagome sat on her knees and folded her arms over her chest as the hanyou attempted to peel himself from where he had been deposited on the bottom of the well. She narrowed one eye, actually a trifle piqued that the well had chosen not to send him to the other side of time...
Damn selective temporal vortexes...
Ah, well, it was more fun this way..
"You had that one coming," she told him tritely, and he glared at her.
"So then...what are you doing here, anyway, Kagome?" he asked, genuinely curious. He brushed the dirt from his sleeves and sat, scowling, avoiding eye contact, the bottoms of his feet pressed together. "I thought you had to study this weekend for another one of those 'tests' you're always having."
Kagome stood up slowly and fidgeted.
"I...had a bad feeling," she admitted, tapping her fingertips together. "I wanted to make sure everything was okay."
Inuyasha frowned.
"A bad feeling?" he echoed, standing up. Brushing off the last of the dirt from his sleeves, he asked, "What do you mean?"
"I just...woke up uneasy," she told him with a frown, suddenly feeling a little awkward, "that's all.." She paused. "I was jerked awake earlier than usual, like something had startled me..." She sighed. "I just...had a bad feeling..."
Inuyasha gasped inwardly.
Something had startled her awake?
Did that mean that whatever was trying to tell him something...whatever was attempting to warn him of something--was it trying to warn Kagome, too? Or...or could it be that Kagome had somehow been able to sense his distress that morning?
Kagome blinked.
"Inu...Inuyasha?" she stammered.
But...no...no, that wasn't possible! Humans didn't have psychic powers, how could she have known something was bothering him when they were separated by a rift in time?
"Inuyasha?" Kagome asked again, a little more urgently this time, then squinted one brown eye.
What was wrong with him?
It just didn't make any sense!
Inuyasha's mind was writhing in confusion.
What was the strange entrancing voice in his dream? Why was the song so familiar? Where had he heard it before? And how had Kagome--?
"Hn?"
He gave a start, and blinked rapidly as he felt a palm placed across his forehead.
"Ka...Kagome, wha--?"
"What's the matter with you?" she asked quickly, pulling her hand away. "You went white as a ghost for a second there...are you feeling okay?"
He scoffed.
"Feh...nandemo nee yo," he insisted. "It's nothing."
He took her by the wrist.
"Koi, Kaede-babaa mentioned to me yesterday that there was a shard rumored to be somewhere in the forest nearby."
He lifted Kagome up and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders to hold on as he launched himself up into the air.
"Just...I can't stay here too long this time, Inuyasha," she warned him. "I promised Souta I would be home by Thursday for his school recital."
"Hai, hai," the hanyou responded, though he honestly had no idea what a 'Thursday' was in the first place, and then he said no more.
Kagome frowned. She still had that bad feeling nagging at the back of her mind. Inuyasha hadn't taken one cheap shot at her since she'd arrived.
Something was definitely bugging him, and she was determined to find out what it was. Though...she wasn't quite sure how she was going to do that just yet.
She gripped his cloak a little tighter as they soared through the air in great bounding leaps.
Doushita no, Inuyasha? she wondered. What's troubling you...?
*
Hey, my friend
It seems your eyes are troubled
Care to share your time with me?
Would you say you're feeling low?
And so
A good idea would be
To get it off your mind...
~Dave Matthews
*
"Just as I figured..."
Shippou glanced at Miroku.
"What'd you figure?" the kogitsune queried, scrunching up one side of his face.
Miroku grinned, and the bangles on the staff he carried jangled softly as he stood up from where the two had been crouching behind a bush.
"He was going to find Kagome-sama," he explained with a wise and knowing (if not somewhat devious) smile, "which can only mean one thing."
Shippou waited for him to continue...
...and growled loudly when the monk took too long to do so.
"Means what?" the little fox shouted.
Miroku scooped him up again, and Shippou was rather starting to feel like a purse.
"It means," the monk explained, "that something is wrong."
Shippou was startled.
"Wrong?" he echoed, apprehensive. "But--"
"Listen, Shippou," Miroku said as he trotted back into the woods to follow Inuyasha to the village, "you know how Inuyasha would never admit to really needing Kagome-sama’s help...right?"
Shippou nodded.
"So...something must be really wrong for him to willingly go after her."
Miroku started to jog quickly down the trail in the forest.
"C'mon, we have to hurry..." he added, his sandals making soft pitpat pitpat noises on the beaten path, "if there’s trouble, Inuyasha will be there..."
"And if Inuyasha’s there," Shippou added, pumping one tiny fist in the air, "so are we!"
And with that, the two of them hurried toward the nearby village in the hopes of catching an earful of the newfound adventure they were certain awaited them there...
* * *
If we take our time and we stick together
Everything we do will go our way
And if we try
Now and forever
No matter what comes next will be okay
Let's kick it up
Together
~Artist Unknown
* * *
Author Notes:
Wow, I got this chapter up sooner than I expected to. ^_^ Hope everyone is enjoying. Please drop an email sometime! I want to know what you think!
*Glossary of Terms*
I am assuming we all know the Inuyasha basics, like youkai, hanyou, Shikon no Tama, etcetera, so those will not be translated here. Also, I'm only gonna put translations once, so as the story goes on, the glossary will dwindle. I'm hoping your memories will serve you, because otherwise the glossary will be absolutely enormous! Some chapters probably won't even need one, so I hope you guys can keep track of words already translated. Let me know if it gets too tough.
itai: "Ouch". >_<
mou: "Sheesh", or "jeez" or something to that effect. Just an exclamation with no real direct translation.
baka: "Moron", or "stupid". A relatively mild insult, used quite frequently in animé. Heh, I also use this word quite often.
"Temee!": Inuyasha's favorite phrase. Basically means "bitch" or "wench", when referring to a female, "bastard" or something of the like for a male.
yare yare: "Oh well", more or less.
osuwari: The word no self-respecting Inuyasha fan should be without... "SIT!" Heh heh, here's a random fact you may not know...the actual verb "to sit" is suwaru, so the imperative or command form of the verb, which is what we would expect Kagome to have said, would actually be suware, or suwatte. The conjugation Kagome uses is actually the honorific, a very polite imperative term, which is more like saying "please, take a seat". I found that exceedingly amusing...
koi: "Come".
-babaa: This is a derogatroy way to refer to a woman older than you, basically meaning "old hag". Pfft, poor Kaede. Inuyasha is so hidoi...
So, how is everyone liking? ^_^V LOVE AND PEACE!
~~hikari