The stupid, boring truth
is that a week or so after Inuyasha found her, Kagome ended up in the hospital,
where they gave her IV fluids, ran tests, told her she was dehydrated and
undernourished and had mono, and sent her a nice lady from dietary to show
her a cardboard triangle with pictures of food on it.
For all the times she
had collapsed, all the drama and subterfuge (now that Koinu's brain and
nose were completely coordinated, he ferreted out all of her hiding places
at school, but she had no real interest in hiding anymore, so it hardly
mattered), all the worry and angst, there was no romance whatsoever to her
hospitalization. No ambulance, no tortured dash to the ER in Inuyasha's
arms, no clenched teeth or fists or pounding on walls or abject apologies
or tragically tender caresses. They'd gone to the Houjous' house after school
and he was fixing instant ramen for them both—he could cook anything as
long as it involved nothing more than pushing the button on the hot pot,
and was proud of it—when sweet, homey Auntie Terra brushed Kagome's arm
while reaching for something else and said in her funny English, "Oh,
Kagome dear, aren't you warm!"
All of the ladies surrounded
her then, clucking and feeling her forehead and agreeing that she felt a
bit warm, each of them guessing what her temperature might be. A thermometer
was produced and Terra herself was declared the winner at 38.2 degrees Celsius,
although Ms. Kamura was a very close second at 38.1. Not terrible, they
agreed, but certainly enough that her mother must be called and, given her
thinness and worrisome medical history, the doctor, as well. And so Kagome
and Koinu were bundled into the car and transported to the shrine, and a
bit later bundled into a taxi and transported to the doctor's office, and
then into yet another taxi for the trip to the hospital, with a stop home
to pick up robe and slippers and schoolbooks and toothbrush and a few other
things she might need (Inuyasha's eyebrow shot up at the sight of her bulging
backpack, but he shouldered it quietly—he had in fact learned a thing or
two during his years of waiting).
She spent three tedious
days being poked and stuck and listened to and dripped into as her mother
sat and read magazines or her grandfather told stories of his childhood
at the shrine. He no longer tried to tell her the stories of the Shikon
no Tama; she knew them all, or all that she could bear to hear.
At the end of the school
day her self-appointed tutor would arrive with his own backpack full of
books. He was a shockingly good teacher, except perhaps in literature, her
own favorite subject, where he tended to gloss over the talky parts and
dwell on battle scenes. Knowing her weaknesses, he carefully guided her
through math and English, and she was amazed at the amount of thought he
had devoted to protecting her from these, her nemeses. History was a delight.
Every dry fact seemed to bring a story to his mind—pulled from his books,
from the stories of his great-grandfather, even, she realized, from her
own grandfather. His face glowed as he recited tales of samurai, of English
merchant vessels, of American gunboats, of ancient people lost in the past
and everyday people still living.
When the nutritionist
arrived he sat, polite and attentive, as the woman pointed out each item
on the food pyramid, the grains at the base, the fruit and vegetables. Did
Miss Higurashi have any questions? Miss Higurashi did not, nor did her wide-eyed
swain. Alone with Inuyasha at last, it occurred to Kagome that she knew
that expression, had seen that same faraway look in golden eyes. She said,
"Well, what do you think?"
He considered. "You
know in the Back to the Future movies?" he said. "In 1955?
There are least three DeLoreans in that town. The one Marty drives the first
time, the one he has there the second time, and the one in the movie theater.
Plus, he passes through that time twice on the way back and forth from 1885,
so technically there are at least five."
Yeah, she had thought
he'd say something like that.
And so their lives passed
from sorrow and passion to the cheerfulness of the everyday.
(Houjou Kagome, whose
husband still thinks of her as a Higurashi and still affectionately calls
her that sometimes, and who has been quietly reading over our shoulder,
now looks up at us with her beautiful unflinching eyes and says, And
is there truly no sorrow or passion in everyday life?
The story is whatever
we choose to tell, she tells us.
And she says, There
are the stories we tell the people we love, and the stories we tell to others,
and the stories we tell only to ourselves.
If I were
to tell the story of those three days, she says, I would say that on
the second day, with some fluids in her system and the unceasing perception
of the aura of daemons finally beaten back from the front of her consciousness,
the Lady Kagome looked down at her own hands and was shocked and appalled
to see them clearly for the first time in months. The skin was nearly transparent—she
holds out her own smooth, slender, carefully manicured hands as she remembers—-and
they were like claws, like skeleton hands. When the Lady Kagome saw them she
whispered the first thing she thought of: "Bones and grave soil,"
she whispered. And Houjou-kun's face shot up from his book and he cried out
a single word:
Houjou Kagome—but still
Higurashi—folds her beautiful hands and explains to us, the anonymous reader,
We do not use the word "no" in Japan, she tells us. We
say, "maybe," or "perhaps," or "we shall see,"
but to say "no…"! She laughs and shakes her head.
A little way from us Assistant
Professor Houjou looks up from his laptop, on which he has been doing the
figures for a proposal. He does not speak, or even growl, but he watches
us, warily. There is something in his expression; we are careful not to
move a muscle. Perhaps we try to stare him down, but Assistant Professor
Houjou is no house pet. He straightens in his chair and rearranges his face
so that he is again the most engaging and pleasant of academics, and now
his eyes are wide and friendly—but he does not blink until after we have
done so.)
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