The Journal (a one shot)
Disclaimer: They aren't mine. They're Takahashi's. I just borrowed them and played with them for a bit.
Edit: Fixed a few things I missed on the second edit-through.
* * *
* * *
Kagome ran home from the well, glad to be away from gory bloody monsters for a few days. She inhaled the sweet . . . well, not so sweet, actually rather stale and smoggy Tokyo air, and started for her house, ready to drop her heavy backpack and get some sleep.
"I'm home," she yelled at her family as she slipped off her shoes. She quickly ran upstairs and took off her book bag, rubbing her shoulders in relief. She dumped the entire thing out onto the floor, feeling a sense of satisfaction when her math book fell on the very bottom. Good place for it.
She plopped onto the bed and took her diary from the pile of things. She wrote in every night in the Sengoku Jidai while she was pretending to study math. In order to keep the others from peering at it while she wrote, she used the irregular bubble-style handwriting that was so popular with her classmates. The diary had cute little Pero-Peros printed all over the outside, and cute little Inuyashas drawn all over the inside. It was also dog-eared with love.
"Dear diary," she began. "Today Inuyasha and I were alone for a little while. Sheesh, sometimes I wish he'd DO something normal and teenager and hormonal . . . like the things I think about every night. Oh, Inuyasha . . ."
She proceeded to describe in careful, exact detail just what she wanted to do with Inuyasha.
* * *
Kagome overslept the next day, and in a panic, she hastily shoved all her books, including her diary, into her book bag.
* * *
She then accidentally left the diary in math class.
* * *
Houjou came along, and found Kagome's diary sitting ever so innocently on the desk.
"Higurashi's diary?" he asked himself, and picked it up. He hefted it, a few times, as if testing it, then looked around to see if anyone was looking. When he saw that all was clear, he pocketed the little book.
* * *
By the time Kagome realized she had lost her diary, school was over. Her friends had clucked sympathetically, but it was Kagome alone who ran frantically around the school, trying to find it.
"Ne, I wonder what she wrote in her diary," Yuka said, blinking.
Eri shrugged. "Probably something about that two-timing boyfriend of hers."
"I wonder how far they've gone?" Ayumi said innocently -- too innocently. Yuka and Eri stared at her, and she stared back at them, confused. "What?"
"I didn't even know you knew what the birds and bees were, Ayumi-chan," Eri finally muttered darkly.
"Hey look, it's Houjou-kun," Yuka said, tilting her head toward the approaching classmate. All three girls casually stood up straighter and groomed themselves nonchalantly. Whether he had designs on Kagome or not, Houjou was still Houjou, the most eligible bachelor in all of ninth grade.
"Greetings," Houjou said politely, waving to the girls. "Have you seen Higurashi?"
"She's inside looking for--" Ayumi began, but Yuka elbowed her quickly.
"For her math book," Eri cut in smoothly. They were loyal to Kagome to a fault, and disclosing a missing diary to a potential love interest usually resulted in slapstick comedy, not sweet romance.
"Oh," Houjou said, and shrugged handsomely. "She's losing a lot of things today. I found her diary. When you see her, can you give it to her?" He pulled the slim book out of his book bag and handed it to Ayumi. The girls looked at the book as if it were the answers to last year's high school entrance exams.
"We'll give it to her," Eri said suddenly, smiling brightly. Yuka and Ayumi nodded quickly.
Houjou returned their brilliant smiles and started trotting off. "Thank you, and goodbye," he called, waving over his shoulder.
The three girls went back to looking hungrily at the missing diary.
"We should give it back to her," Ayumi said, making an effort to be the Nice Smart Friend.
"We should," Yuka said, attempting to return to her role as Loyal Buddy Friend.
"But we won't, will we?" Honest Sarcastic Friend Eri asked, and stroked the diary in Ayumi's hand. It seemed to purr in response.
* * *
"Where IS IT?" Kagome paused outside of the schoolyard to tear out a chunk of hair.
* * *
Despite themselves, Kagome's three friends couldn't bear to read her diary without her permission right away. They held it reverently between them as they walked toward the shrine.
"If she's not home by the time we get there, a little peek won't hurt, I guess," Ayumi said nervously.
"Admit it, you want to see what she's got written in there as much as I do," Eri said with a grin. "Since we left her at school, that little peek is all but guaranteed."
When they climbed the shrine steps and found that the coast was all clear, they ducked into the well-house -- surely no one would go in that stuffy, damp building.
"Let's see . . ." Ayumi said, carefully settling down onto lip of the well. She started flipping pages, but before she had a chance to actually read anything, Eri lunged for it.
"Oh no. We're reading it together," Yuka cried, and Ayumi drew the book against her chest protectively.
"Remember why we're doing this. We have to find out if she's still going with that two-timing bastard," Eri reminded them. "Now hand over the diary, Ayumi."
"But . . ." Ayumi protested, and slowly held it out, then decided to be clever and pulled it back quickly. Eri grabbed at it triumphantly, but lost her balance and nearly toppled into the well before Yuka grabbed her around the waist. Yuka also nearly lost her balance and grabbed Ayumi's arm, twisting it sideways. Startled, Ayumi accidentally let go of the precious diary.
It fell a long, long way . . . and then hit the bottom of the well with a thump.
All three girls, still frozen over the mouth of the well, said nothing in the dead silence for a good while. Eventually Yuka pulled Eri back onto solid ground, and they all gathered around, staring at the bottomless pit that was the old Bone Eater's Well.
"At least no one will read it now," Ayumi said forlornly.
"'Cept one of those demons that died in the well like the sign says," Yuka sighed.
"You don't really believe those signs, do you?"
"Well, not all of them, but I like the legend of the girl who jumped into this well to meet her soul mate five hundred years in the past."
"Hmmm, yeah, I always liked that one, too, come to think of it. Let's get out of here before Kagome comes home, okay?"
"Good idea."
The three girls left with the subdued silence of the guilty. They didn't see the bright flash of light as the Bone Eater's well decided that a thing covered in slobbering kawaii dogs was most definitely demonic.
* * *
Kagome finally started out for home, absolutely devastated. Her most private thoughts were now out there for the whole world to read . . . or worse, for the school to make fun of. Just some of the things she'd written about Inuyasha . . . it was absolutely terrifying to think that anyone might read them. They'd think she was a pervert, or worse, a nutcase.
"Why do these things always have to happen to me?" she wailed, and continued home dejectedly.
* * *
On the other side of the well's time slip, Inuyasha the hanyou was getting impatient, as usual. Kagome had said she'd be back tomorrow morning, but Inuyasha didn't see why she couldn't return once she was done with that "school" thing.
He was sitting on the edge of the well, sulking a bit, when he heard a small "thump!" drift up from bottom. His ears twitched, and his nose quivered when a faint note of Kagome's scent wafted past it.
"Kagome?" he called down the well, but she didn't answer. Curious, he agilely slipped over the side of the well and fell to the bottom without triggering the time-change. He landed on all fours, and sniffed around in the darkness until he encountered a small, hard-bound book.
"Feh, probably one of her stupid school books." Inuyasha, never known to be the brightest crayon in the box, didn't question why one of Kagome's books would fall down the well with no Kagome attached. He leapt back out of the well, and studied the book.
The outside was decorated with a very cute stylized white dog, with black button eyes and an enormous pink tongue lolling out of its mouth. It gave Inuyasha a toothache to see them slobbering all over the front of the slender volume.
He then opened the book, and thumbed through a few pages of text before closing it and giving up.
"Damn. I knew I should have learned to read."
* * *
Kagome had passed by her three friends on the way home, and asked them if they had seen her diary. As one they shook their heads no, then edged away nervously. Kagome knew she probably looked like hell. Her hair was ragged from her tearing at it earlier, and her uniform was soiled from peering into dusty corners of the school.
She climbed the steps to her family's shrine and entered her house with considerably less enthusiasm than she had the day before.
"I'm home," she called grumpily, and dropped her book bag out on her floor again once she reached upstairs. She sorted through the books . . . but there was no diary.
"Where the hell IS IT?" she cried, and threw her math book against the wall in despair.
* * *
"So you see, Kaede-baba, I can't read one fucking word. What the hell is this thing?" Inuyasha demanded, shoving the book under the old woman's face. With a sigh, Kaede accepted it and squinted closely at it with her one good eye. The light from the fire inside her hut flickered on the crisp white pages.
"It's a journal," she finally said. "An extremely fine one. I've never seen its like. Kagome-sama's handwriting is so . . . strange, however, that I can't read any of the words."
"What do you mean, strange?"
"It's rounded, like little bubbles." Kaede shrugged, and wrapped it up in a blanket. She placed it reverently in the corner so that no one would see it. Bound books like that, a dime a dozen in Kagome's world, were priceless in their feudal era.
"Figures that twit wouldn't be able to write properly," Inuyasha muttered, his bruised pride somewhat assuaged by Kagome's own literary fault.
"Well, if I could see better, I could probably read it. As it is, I believe we should let Kagome have it back. It belongs to her. When she returns from the well next, I will give it to her."
* * *
So naturally thieves broke into Kaede's hut that evening and stole the blanket -- with the book inside.
* * *
Over the course of time, the book passed from dealer to dealer. Such a rare and fine thing even ended up as a gift to the emperor at one point. No one ever tore out any of the rich paper leaves; instead, they wrote their own comments in it and their own thoughts in the world. After a hundred years of being passed around the diary was full, and it wound up in a private collection in Kyoto. When the capitol was moved to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo, the collection moved as well. It ended up in a museum in the early 20th century, which went out of business and closed down during the depression after WWII.
The journal, as well as a few hundred other precious books, ended up finding a new home in a certain Shinto shrine on the outskirts of Tokyo.
* * *
"Kagome-chan?" her mother called up the stairs. "Dinner is ready!"
Kagome stirred from her depressed funk on her bed, and yawned. The journal weighed on her mind more than anything else had in months.
"It's got to be around here somewhere," she muttered for the umpteenth time that day as she wandered down the stairs.
"Oh, Kagome-chan," her grandfather said from the family room. Kagome leaned her head inside, and saw her Jii-chan with a lot of really old moldy scrolls and books in front of him. "I found something of yours. It must have gotten mixed up with these things last time I sorted them. I'm sorry, but the chemicals from the books seemed to have disintegrated it a little."
He held up the Pero-Pero journal, which looked a lot worse for the wear than it had earlier that morning.
"Oh, Jii-chan!" Kagome cried happily, and grabbed the book, which shed a few flakes of paint when she gripped it tightly. "I've been looking for this all day!"
"All . . . day?" her grandfather said, confused. "Kagome, the box it was in hasn't been opened for at least five years. These books and scrolls are all very rare and precious, some of them almost five or six hundred years old. Why, this one here details the birth of the first son of a priest and a demon hunter in this very shrine -- "
Kagome was too happy spinning around with the diary clutched to her chest to pay attention to another one of grandfather's silly stories.
* * *
After dinner, Kagome fairly flew upstairs in a cloud of happiness. She had it back! She had her diary back, after only one day of panic! She must not have taken it to school after all . . . although it DID look really yucky now. What had happened to it?
Chalking it up to Jii-chan's carelessness, she plopped down on her western style bed, which bounced a few times with the movement.
"Finally," she sighed, and took out her special matching Pero-Pero pen to finish the entry she had started the night before.
She turned to the page, all prepared to write. And blinked. Someone else had continued the entry for her.
"Dear diary: Today Inuyasha and I were alone for a little while. Sheesh, sometimes I wish he'd DO something normal and teenager and hormonal . . . like the things I think about every night. Oh, Inuyasha . . ."
"Young men seldom do the things we wish them to. My advice is just to give up on him and return to your Houjou-kun, who obviously at least respects you. -- Lady Kaminari"
"Never be it said,
True love runs smooth through all time
Like the River Yuu.
-- Aki no Kiri"
"Enlightenment cannot be achieved through emotions. Inuyasha is the more restrained of you, despite his anger. He is closest to Buddha. You should try to be more like him, and not write such things as you have. These bodies are immaterial, and the feelings and emotions are imperfect. Give them up to attain true harmony. -- Brother Matsumishi"
"Erk" was all Kagome could manage to utter.
The whole world, it seems, or at least all of Japan, really HAD seen her diary after all.
* * *
The End
* * *
Disclaimer: They aren't mine. They're Takahashi's. I just borrowed them and played with them for a bit.
Edit: Fixed a few things I missed on the second edit-through.
* * *
* * *
Kagome ran home from the well, glad to be away from gory bloody monsters for a few days. She inhaled the sweet . . . well, not so sweet, actually rather stale and smoggy Tokyo air, and started for her house, ready to drop her heavy backpack and get some sleep.
"I'm home," she yelled at her family as she slipped off her shoes. She quickly ran upstairs and took off her book bag, rubbing her shoulders in relief. She dumped the entire thing out onto the floor, feeling a sense of satisfaction when her math book fell on the very bottom. Good place for it.
She plopped onto the bed and took her diary from the pile of things. She wrote in every night in the Sengoku Jidai while she was pretending to study math. In order to keep the others from peering at it while she wrote, she used the irregular bubble-style handwriting that was so popular with her classmates. The diary had cute little Pero-Peros printed all over the outside, and cute little Inuyashas drawn all over the inside. It was also dog-eared with love.
"Dear diary," she began. "Today Inuyasha and I were alone for a little while. Sheesh, sometimes I wish he'd DO something normal and teenager and hormonal . . . like the things I think about every night. Oh, Inuyasha . . ."
She proceeded to describe in careful, exact detail just what she wanted to do with Inuyasha.
* * *
Kagome overslept the next day, and in a panic, she hastily shoved all her books, including her diary, into her book bag.
* * *
She then accidentally left the diary in math class.
* * *
Houjou came along, and found Kagome's diary sitting ever so innocently on the desk.
"Higurashi's diary?" he asked himself, and picked it up. He hefted it, a few times, as if testing it, then looked around to see if anyone was looking. When he saw that all was clear, he pocketed the little book.
* * *
By the time Kagome realized she had lost her diary, school was over. Her friends had clucked sympathetically, but it was Kagome alone who ran frantically around the school, trying to find it.
"Ne, I wonder what she wrote in her diary," Yuka said, blinking.
Eri shrugged. "Probably something about that two-timing boyfriend of hers."
"I wonder how far they've gone?" Ayumi said innocently -- too innocently. Yuka and Eri stared at her, and she stared back at them, confused. "What?"
"I didn't even know you knew what the birds and bees were, Ayumi-chan," Eri finally muttered darkly.
"Hey look, it's Houjou-kun," Yuka said, tilting her head toward the approaching classmate. All three girls casually stood up straighter and groomed themselves nonchalantly. Whether he had designs on Kagome or not, Houjou was still Houjou, the most eligible bachelor in all of ninth grade.
"Greetings," Houjou said politely, waving to the girls. "Have you seen Higurashi?"
"She's inside looking for--" Ayumi began, but Yuka elbowed her quickly.
"For her math book," Eri cut in smoothly. They were loyal to Kagome to a fault, and disclosing a missing diary to a potential love interest usually resulted in slapstick comedy, not sweet romance.
"Oh," Houjou said, and shrugged handsomely. "She's losing a lot of things today. I found her diary. When you see her, can you give it to her?" He pulled the slim book out of his book bag and handed it to Ayumi. The girls looked at the book as if it were the answers to last year's high school entrance exams.
"We'll give it to her," Eri said suddenly, smiling brightly. Yuka and Ayumi nodded quickly.
Houjou returned their brilliant smiles and started trotting off. "Thank you, and goodbye," he called, waving over his shoulder.
The three girls went back to looking hungrily at the missing diary.
"We should give it back to her," Ayumi said, making an effort to be the Nice Smart Friend.
"We should," Yuka said, attempting to return to her role as Loyal Buddy Friend.
"But we won't, will we?" Honest Sarcastic Friend Eri asked, and stroked the diary in Ayumi's hand. It seemed to purr in response.
* * *
"Where IS IT?" Kagome paused outside of the schoolyard to tear out a chunk of hair.
* * *
Despite themselves, Kagome's three friends couldn't bear to read her diary without her permission right away. They held it reverently between them as they walked toward the shrine.
"If she's not home by the time we get there, a little peek won't hurt, I guess," Ayumi said nervously.
"Admit it, you want to see what she's got written in there as much as I do," Eri said with a grin. "Since we left her at school, that little peek is all but guaranteed."
When they climbed the shrine steps and found that the coast was all clear, they ducked into the well-house -- surely no one would go in that stuffy, damp building.
"Let's see . . ." Ayumi said, carefully settling down onto lip of the well. She started flipping pages, but before she had a chance to actually read anything, Eri lunged for it.
"Oh no. We're reading it together," Yuka cried, and Ayumi drew the book against her chest protectively.
"Remember why we're doing this. We have to find out if she's still going with that two-timing bastard," Eri reminded them. "Now hand over the diary, Ayumi."
"But . . ." Ayumi protested, and slowly held it out, then decided to be clever and pulled it back quickly. Eri grabbed at it triumphantly, but lost her balance and nearly toppled into the well before Yuka grabbed her around the waist. Yuka also nearly lost her balance and grabbed Ayumi's arm, twisting it sideways. Startled, Ayumi accidentally let go of the precious diary.
It fell a long, long way . . . and then hit the bottom of the well with a thump.
All three girls, still frozen over the mouth of the well, said nothing in the dead silence for a good while. Eventually Yuka pulled Eri back onto solid ground, and they all gathered around, staring at the bottomless pit that was the old Bone Eater's Well.
"At least no one will read it now," Ayumi said forlornly.
"'Cept one of those demons that died in the well like the sign says," Yuka sighed.
"You don't really believe those signs, do you?"
"Well, not all of them, but I like the legend of the girl who jumped into this well to meet her soul mate five hundred years in the past."
"Hmmm, yeah, I always liked that one, too, come to think of it. Let's get out of here before Kagome comes home, okay?"
"Good idea."
The three girls left with the subdued silence of the guilty. They didn't see the bright flash of light as the Bone Eater's well decided that a thing covered in slobbering kawaii dogs was most definitely demonic.
* * *
Kagome finally started out for home, absolutely devastated. Her most private thoughts were now out there for the whole world to read . . . or worse, for the school to make fun of. Just some of the things she'd written about Inuyasha . . . it was absolutely terrifying to think that anyone might read them. They'd think she was a pervert, or worse, a nutcase.
"Why do these things always have to happen to me?" she wailed, and continued home dejectedly.
* * *
On the other side of the well's time slip, Inuyasha the hanyou was getting impatient, as usual. Kagome had said she'd be back tomorrow morning, but Inuyasha didn't see why she couldn't return once she was done with that "school" thing.
He was sitting on the edge of the well, sulking a bit, when he heard a small "thump!" drift up from bottom. His ears twitched, and his nose quivered when a faint note of Kagome's scent wafted past it.
"Kagome?" he called down the well, but she didn't answer. Curious, he agilely slipped over the side of the well and fell to the bottom without triggering the time-change. He landed on all fours, and sniffed around in the darkness until he encountered a small, hard-bound book.
"Feh, probably one of her stupid school books." Inuyasha, never known to be the brightest crayon in the box, didn't question why one of Kagome's books would fall down the well with no Kagome attached. He leapt back out of the well, and studied the book.
The outside was decorated with a very cute stylized white dog, with black button eyes and an enormous pink tongue lolling out of its mouth. It gave Inuyasha a toothache to see them slobbering all over the front of the slender volume.
He then opened the book, and thumbed through a few pages of text before closing it and giving up.
"Damn. I knew I should have learned to read."
* * *
Kagome had passed by her three friends on the way home, and asked them if they had seen her diary. As one they shook their heads no, then edged away nervously. Kagome knew she probably looked like hell. Her hair was ragged from her tearing at it earlier, and her uniform was soiled from peering into dusty corners of the school.
She climbed the steps to her family's shrine and entered her house with considerably less enthusiasm than she had the day before.
"I'm home," she called grumpily, and dropped her book bag out on her floor again once she reached upstairs. She sorted through the books . . . but there was no diary.
"Where the hell IS IT?" she cried, and threw her math book against the wall in despair.
* * *
"So you see, Kaede-baba, I can't read one fucking word. What the hell is this thing?" Inuyasha demanded, shoving the book under the old woman's face. With a sigh, Kaede accepted it and squinted closely at it with her one good eye. The light from the fire inside her hut flickered on the crisp white pages.
"It's a journal," she finally said. "An extremely fine one. I've never seen its like. Kagome-sama's handwriting is so . . . strange, however, that I can't read any of the words."
"What do you mean, strange?"
"It's rounded, like little bubbles." Kaede shrugged, and wrapped it up in a blanket. She placed it reverently in the corner so that no one would see it. Bound books like that, a dime a dozen in Kagome's world, were priceless in their feudal era.
"Figures that twit wouldn't be able to write properly," Inuyasha muttered, his bruised pride somewhat assuaged by Kagome's own literary fault.
"Well, if I could see better, I could probably read it. As it is, I believe we should let Kagome have it back. It belongs to her. When she returns from the well next, I will give it to her."
* * *
So naturally thieves broke into Kaede's hut that evening and stole the blanket -- with the book inside.
* * *
Over the course of time, the book passed from dealer to dealer. Such a rare and fine thing even ended up as a gift to the emperor at one point. No one ever tore out any of the rich paper leaves; instead, they wrote their own comments in it and their own thoughts in the world. After a hundred years of being passed around the diary was full, and it wound up in a private collection in Kyoto. When the capitol was moved to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo, the collection moved as well. It ended up in a museum in the early 20th century, which went out of business and closed down during the depression after WWII.
The journal, as well as a few hundred other precious books, ended up finding a new home in a certain Shinto shrine on the outskirts of Tokyo.
* * *
"Kagome-chan?" her mother called up the stairs. "Dinner is ready!"
Kagome stirred from her depressed funk on her bed, and yawned. The journal weighed on her mind more than anything else had in months.
"It's got to be around here somewhere," she muttered for the umpteenth time that day as she wandered down the stairs.
"Oh, Kagome-chan," her grandfather said from the family room. Kagome leaned her head inside, and saw her Jii-chan with a lot of really old moldy scrolls and books in front of him. "I found something of yours. It must have gotten mixed up with these things last time I sorted them. I'm sorry, but the chemicals from the books seemed to have disintegrated it a little."
He held up the Pero-Pero journal, which looked a lot worse for the wear than it had earlier that morning.
"Oh, Jii-chan!" Kagome cried happily, and grabbed the book, which shed a few flakes of paint when she gripped it tightly. "I've been looking for this all day!"
"All . . . day?" her grandfather said, confused. "Kagome, the box it was in hasn't been opened for at least five years. These books and scrolls are all very rare and precious, some of them almost five or six hundred years old. Why, this one here details the birth of the first son of a priest and a demon hunter in this very shrine -- "
Kagome was too happy spinning around with the diary clutched to her chest to pay attention to another one of grandfather's silly stories.
* * *
After dinner, Kagome fairly flew upstairs in a cloud of happiness. She had it back! She had her diary back, after only one day of panic! She must not have taken it to school after all . . . although it DID look really yucky now. What had happened to it?
Chalking it up to Jii-chan's carelessness, she plopped down on her western style bed, which bounced a few times with the movement.
"Finally," she sighed, and took out her special matching Pero-Pero pen to finish the entry she had started the night before.
She turned to the page, all prepared to write. And blinked. Someone else had continued the entry for her.
"Dear diary: Today Inuyasha and I were alone for a little while. Sheesh, sometimes I wish he'd DO something normal and teenager and hormonal . . . like the things I think about every night. Oh, Inuyasha . . ."
"Young men seldom do the things we wish them to. My advice is just to give up on him and return to your Houjou-kun, who obviously at least respects you. -- Lady Kaminari"
"Never be it said,
True love runs smooth through all time
Like the River Yuu.
-- Aki no Kiri"
"Enlightenment cannot be achieved through emotions. Inuyasha is the more restrained of you, despite his anger. He is closest to Buddha. You should try to be more like him, and not write such things as you have. These bodies are immaterial, and the feelings and emotions are imperfect. Give them up to attain true harmony. -- Brother Matsumishi"
"Erk" was all Kagome could manage to utter.
The whole world, it seems, or at least all of Japan, really HAD seen her diary after all.
* * *
The End
* * *