(Part of Cast List: Book 16)
Higurashi
Kagome
It was the cheerful enthusiasm
that got to her. The boy the legends called Lord Inuyasha had been enthusiastic
only about battle and certain foodstuffs, and cheerful only about mastering
the use of his magic sword. The boy she had once known as Houjou-kun was cheerful
about most things about schoolwork and chores, about maneuvering around adults
and their restrictions and enthusiastic about surprisingly many. He loved
Star Wars and kung fu movies and samurai movies and movies about people saving
the world from monsters. He loved baseball. He loved Mozarts opera The Magic
Flute, and some of the more interminable Wagner operas, the ones with knights
and swords. He loved fairy tales and legends and incomprehensible English
ballads. He loved King Arthur.
And he talked about all
of them, at length. Lord Inuyasha had been the silent, stoic type. This Inuyasha
was bursting with articulate intelligence, with fascinating trivia, with ironical
humor. The original Inuyasha she must not think of him as her Inuyasha,
for of course this boy was her Inuyasha as well was capable of sarcasm, but
not of self-deprecation. This boy could make fun of himself, could enjoy wordplay
and banter, could grin at jokes and funny movies and the sight of herself, giggling.
Inuyasha of the Shikon no Tama had used words as a weapon, screaming
and ranting and insulting, keeping people at arm's length. This boy used wit,
used charm, used streams of information
to keep people at arm's
length.
All those years, growing and
changing, learning how to cope in modern society, learning how to function within
the crowd. He had told her he liked living in the city, liked the variety and
diversity. Once he had said, "If you've got to be a redhead in Japan, Tokyo's
the place to live." He had laughed when he said it, and she had ticked off the
laugh on her fingers, something she had started one day when she was lost in
giggles and he wore his usual bemused grin. Months together now, and she'd only
just started on her second hand.
She'd begun to watch him,
to see how the boy she had known had turned into this person, so different on
the surface. But hadn't she changed, as well? Was there anything left of the
old Kagome, the bright girl everybody liked? Her old friends were scattered
to other schools, other lives or dead, bones and gravesoil for hundreds of
years. Only Houjou-kun was left of the old gang. Of either of the old gangs.
She knew, too, that he understood that about himself: she saw in the wide, gentle
eyes had Lord Inuyasha's eyes ever been that gentle? that awareness of himself
as the only bridge between the life she had lost and the life she was living
now.
Baseball season was over when
he found her, and it was months before she saw him play. Out in right field
he had a strong arm and a good eye, but he was overeager and impatient, even
in her inexpert opinion. But he looked beautiful in the uniform, the wide shoulders,
the trim knots of his arm muscles, the tight fit of the pants across his thighs
and behind. (Was this Kagome thinking these thoughts? He'd slipped into
her bed more than a few times, and they'd begun their tentative wrestling matches.)
Then he stepped up to the
plate, and she gasped. The wide eyes narrowed and began to flicker across the
field, taking in not just the opponents but the positions of his team's two
runners on their respective bases. She had seen those eyes before: Inuyasha's
golden eyes, sizing up the field of battle, placing not just foes but friends,
who was vulnerable and who was a threat.
Suddenly it occurred to her
that the job of the batter is get his teammates home safe, even if he himself
dies trying.
He found her in the stands,
grinned, and then stepped into the box.
He connected hard, the ear-shattering
crack followed by the roar of the crowd, which grew to shrieks of joy as the
first two men crossed the plate. They were racing home, the ball and the boy,
and he slid the last two meters, neatly dodging his opponent's outstretched
hand to score the third run. The game was over, the fans went wild, and it was
only the boy himself who recognized a woman's agonized scream rising above the
tumult. He pulled himself to his feet and made his way to the stands, graciously
nodding again and again in response to the congratulations, and stood before
her, resting his fingers lightly on her shoulders. At his touch she dropped
her hands from her eyes and fell against his chest, the screams dissolving into
sobs. "Kagome," he said. "Kagome, it's a game. It's only a game."
But of course, one day it
might not be a game.
"That's the girlfriend," somebody
said. "The shrine girl. They say she's rather strange."
"Hm," said another. "He doesn't need that. A nice, normal girl would be a perfect
fit for a boy like that." But no name came up, and it was remembered after all
that the boy had that odd red hair.
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