AN: Of course I do not own Kagome, Inuyasha, Miroku, Shippou, the Shikon no Tama, or much of anything else. I especially do not own whatever it is that Inuyasha tried to hide in that tree...

***

Kagome poked at the fire with a stick, stretching her long legs out in front of her. Sango had gone back to her home village to tend to the graves and repair her weapons, so she was on a hunt for Shikon no Tama shard rumors with Inuyasha, Shippou, and Miroku. She normally felt at ease around the other males, but today the hanyou and the monk had been acting strange. Several times she had caught them staring at her when they thought she wasn't looking, and the rest of the time they avoided making eye contact with her. She had feigned disinterest when the older two had called Shippou to them, asking the little kitsune a barrage of questions in low voices she couldn't decipher, but enough was enough!

"Alright, just what is going on over there?" she asked, getting to her feet and approaching the guys. Inuyasha grabbed something from Miroku and leapt high into the tree above them, putting it out of their reach. He slung the something over a branch so it wouldn't be brought down to Kagome if she sat him. Miroku chuckled and rubbed at his forehead in a nervous motion as if he expected to be hit over the head. Shippou rolled his eyes at the odd behavior of the older males, his supposed role models.

"They want to know why you don't have any hair on your legs," Shippou stated.

"On my legs..." Kagome repeated, looking from Shippou to Miroku in confusion. She would have looked at Inuyasha, too, but he was too high up the tree and she couldn't see well outside the circle of the campfire light. Then she glared at Miroku. "What are you doing looking at my legs, you pervert?"

"How is he supposed to not look, you stupid bitch?" Inuyasha asked from above her somewhere. "You wear such short kimonos! Its hard not to look at your legs, since you're showing them off all the time!"

"Sit!" Kagome barked.

*Crash*

"Stupid bitch!" Inuyasha exclaimed, his voice muffled from the dirt his face was pressed into. When he could, he looked up at her. "Don't do that when I'm in a tree!"

"You're always in a tree!" Kagome retorted, "and don't call me a bitch!"

"But you are a bitch," Inuyasha said, sounding confused.

Kagome had tried explaining that while bitch might mean female dog, it was considered an insult in her time. It didn't matter how many times she explained it; he never understood. Instead of explaining again, she rolled her eyes.

"So what's the answer, bitch?" Inuyasha asked.

"The answer?"

"They still want to know why you don't have any hair on your legs," Shippou chimed in, jumping onto Kagome's shoulder.

Kagome tried not to blush and failed, so she closed her eyes, avoiding all eye contact, before answering. "In my time, most people, well, many people think body hair on women is unflattering, so we remove it."

"How?" Inuyasha asked, his voice so full of innocent curiosity that she couldn't think of a reason not to answer him.

"I shave it off with a razor and shaving creme, a sort of foamy lubricant that protects the skin from irritation. Some people wax it."

"Wax?" Miroku asked.

Kagome sighed, walked back to her sleeping bag, and sat down on it, hugging her knees to her chest and closing her eyes again when she was situated. "Hot wax. Spread it on the legs, where it sticks to the hairs. Then pull off the wax really fast, and the hair is pulled out with the wax."

The men winced in imagined sympathetic pain, but Kagome's eyes were closed, so she didn't see it.

"Just on the legs?" Inuyasha asked, his voice closer to her then she had expected. She jumped in surprise, opening her eyes. His glowing amber eyes were only inches from her face. She leaned back a little, trying to get some space, but he just followed her, so she closed her eyes again.

"No. I also shave off the hair under my arms." She was blushing so hard now, her face so hot, that she wondered if there was blood anywhere else in her body.

A callused fingertip ran gently down her arm, a sharp claw delicately teasing the fine hairs there. "But not your arms?" Inuyasha asked.

Kagome swallowed hard before answering. "No, not my arms."

The fingertip and claw left her arm, settling on her ankle and running up her shin. "No hairs at all," he muttered, inspecting her legs up close. Her skin was as soft as silk under the grime of a day spent hiking. She had opened her eyes in surprise when he touched her leg, and now golden eyes looked curiously into her eyes of gray-blue. "How high on your legs is the hair gone?"

Kagome set her hand on top of his, halting its assent as it reached her knee. "All the skin that shows when I wear my swimming suit," she answered, turning her face away from his and feeling her face blush even more. "And stop staring at me, you guys. What is up with all these questions, anyways?"

"They were looking at this!" Shippou stated, hopping down from the tree where Inuyasha had laid whatever he and Miroku had tried to hide from her. Miroku made a very unsuccessful leap towards the kitsune, and Inuyasha received a sit from Kagome to allow his safe passage into her arms. She looked down and gasped. Shippou was holding a girly magazine.

Kagome jumped to her feet, knocking the poor unsuspecting kitsune to the ground where he was easily snatched up and bonked on the head by a humiliated Inuyasha that knew many more sits were on the way. "And just where did you get this, Inuyasha?" she asked, standing over the hanyou as threateningly as a human girl possibly could. She was so angry, she failed to notice Shippou's struggles in Inuyasha's grasp.

"From your world, of course," he answered, trying to pretend it was no big deal. "A bunch of these painting books were just sitting on a bookshelf outside, so I grabbed it on the way to your school that time I brought you your lunch."

"You mean you stole it from a street vendor?" she asked, her voice dripping acid. "And then brought it here to further corrupt Miroku?"

Miroku and Shippou both snickered at the idea of the inexperienced hanyou corrupting the worldly Miroku. Inuyasha didn't dare laugh, pinned to the ground as he was by Kagome's glare. "Well, I didn't know what sort of paintings were in the book," he complained, a bit of a submissive whine in his voice. "It was wrapped in brown paper and some of that shiny invisible material."

"Plastic," Kagome named without thinking. "Of course it was wrapped up, you idiot! That is to keep trash like that away from children! Children like Shippou!" She scooped the forgotten kitsune out of Inuyasha's grasp and cradled him to her chest.

Miroku sighed with jealousy of Shippou's position before adding his opinion to the largely one-sided conversation. "You must admit that the paintings are quite incredible, despite their content, mustn't you, Kagome?"

"They aren't paintings, you idiots," she sighed, rubbing her forehead and feeling suddenly exhausted. "They are photographs."

"Photographs..." Inuyasha whispered in awed surprise. He had seen photographs at Kagome's house. That meant that people like those in the book truly existed in Kagome's world, women with full rounded hips and large perky breasts that would bear many children with ease, but that also were trim and had tiny waists, meaning they fed their mates and offspring before themselves. Women with absolutely no visible body hair except for the hair on their heads...

"What are photographs?" Miroku asked.

"It means these are exact likenesses of real people, not paintings," Inuyasha said in a strained voice.

Miroku sat down where he was, closed his eyes, and meditated on this beautiful wonder of nature until just before dawn.

Kagome, weary and feeling annoyed by the glazed look in Inuyasha's eyes, slipped into her sleeping bag, still in her school uniform, and tried to sleep, Shippou still held in her arms. She had slept for a few hours when she awoke with a jolt, sure that she was being watched. Sure enough, Inuyasha was leaning over her, his eyes once again only inches from her own. Her mind recognized this as no threat, and tried to return to slumber again.

"What do you want, Inuyasha?" she asked with a yawn, the earlier events of the evening blurred in her sleepy mind.

"Um, I'm just wondering... Are you sure you only remove body hair from your legs and under your arms?" he asked.

With another yawn, Kagome pushed Inuyasha aside so he was no longer leaning over her and said one word: "Sit!"

***

THE END...

Unless I get requests for a sequel, along with requests for scenes with poor Kagome, a baby kitsune, a lecherous monk, and a very innocent ahem hanyou.