InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 90

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

I do not own InuYasha or any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi

Chapter 89


“So I can count on you when we do the roofing?” Miroku asked Susumu. They both sat near the fire pit in Tameo’s house, sipping tea.

“Otou, play with my horse with me?” Mitsuo asked, trying to crawl into his father’s lap.

“Not now, Mitsuo-chan,” Susumu said, putting his cup down as he picked up his son. “Otousan was just taking a break, and has to get back to work.  Maybe after lunch.”

Mitsuo frowned. “Morio-kun had to go home. I don’t have anybody to play with.”

“Why don’t you go to Matsume-obasan’s house and tell your sisters to come home?” Emi said. She was sitting in a pool of light from the window, no longer spinning, but now working on some sewing.  A soft beige cloth cascaded across her lap as she looked up at her son.

Mitsuo looked at his mother, obviously preferring the girl-free house. “Okaasan? Do I have to?”

Emi took one more stitch, then tucked her needle into her work.  She nodded at the boy, a look not to be argued with on her face. “I need Yorime to help me, and Suzume to keep an eye on Aomi. I’m sure she’ll play with you.”

“Girl games,” he said, pouting.

“Mitsuo,” Susumu said. His voice promised less pleasant things if the boy did not obey.

Sighing, the boy nodded and got up.  “I’ll go.”

Susumu and the monk watched the boy drag his feet and step outside. “It gets hard for him sometimes, having no brothers, I think,” Susumu said.

“My son’s lucky he’s still so young,” Miroku said. “I’m sure those daughters of mine will try to boss his every step for a while.”

Emi giggled. “I’ve seen them with Sango. They can be quite the handful.”

“True, true,” Miroku said.  He turned back towards Susumu. “So you’ll be there?” Miroku asked again.  “The day after tomorrow.  I hear that this house will be hosting  a number of women about the same  time we’ll be working.”

“That’s true,” Susumu said, nodding. “We’ll see.  Someone still has to do the farming around here.  Have you talked with Takeshi yet?  Or Yasuo?”

“Not yet,” the monk said.  “But they are on my list.”

“Somehow,” Susumu said, “I’m not surprised to hear that.  How many people do you think you’ll need for that little building?”

“The more we have the faster - ” Miroku began, but he stopped as the door to the back room slid open, and Kagome, now dressed in the red and white of her miko garments stepped out, followed quickly by InuYasha.

“Ah, cousins,” Susumu said, looking at the two of them. “Ready to go get this morning over with?  Or are you just here to rescue me from the friend you left in my company?”

“Both, maybe,” Kagome said, giving Miroku a look. The monk shrugged.

“Trying to enlist you too?” InuYasha said.

“Oh yes.  Are you going to be there?” The younger man stood up.  

“Keh,” InuYasha said, crossing his arms. “Don’t think I have much choice.”

Hisa walked in from the outside, carrying a basket, which she put down as she stepped up on the wooden floor. “There are always choices, but I do think you’d rather be there than here with all the talk about sewing and babies and recipes,” she said.

InuYasha’s ear flicked, but he didn’t know what to say to that comment so he nodded.

“I suspect she’s right,” Kagome said, softly.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.”

“Is that what you talk about?” Miroku said, standing up.

“Mostly,” Hisa replied. “But I’m sure Sango will fill you in on all the details. She is coming, isn’t she?”

“I suspect so,” the monk replied, smiling. “But now I have more reason to encourage her.”

The women laughed.  Hisa noticed the bundle of clothes that Kagome was carrying. “You won’t want to take those to the meeting. Just leave them here,” Hisa said, reaching for Kagome’s folded stack of clothes. “You can pick them up when you get done.”

“Thank you,” Kagome said, watching Hisa take them and carry them over to her daughter-in-law.  “Do you know what’s going to go on?”

“I’m sure that Toshiro, Tsuneo and Tameo have all pretty much decided about what to do by now,” Hisa said. “There will be some talk, and some lecturing to the boys, and no doubt they’ll be apologies all around.  I don’t know why they always seem to take so long, when I can usually guess what they’ll do, but they seem to like it.”  She walked back over to her basket and picked it up. “Well,” she said, turning to the others. “Let’s get going.  If I know Daitaro, he’s already pouring the sake.”

“You’re coming, too?” Kagome asked.

“I usually do,” Hisa replied. “Someone has to make the tea. Besides, I’m a bit curious. I want to see if they do what I expect them to do. Sometimes they surprise me.”

“Keh,” the hanyou said. “Sooner we get this over, the better. Don’t know why they wanted us to come anyway.”

“I’m sure they’ll let you know,” Susumu said. “Yesterday was such a crazy day, I’m sure they want to make sure everybody’s satisfied and nobody feels they were being unfair. Otousan likes to do that.  He says it means less trouble in the long run.” He walked to the door. “Coming?”



As they were preparing to leave Tameo’s house, Kinjiro, walked around the office building to find Tsuneo sitting on a bench behind  it. Aki was sitting next to his grandfather, resting his head on the older man’s shoulder,  staring into space, obviously nervous. His grandfather had wrapped an arm around him. Isao, the side of his face quite purple with a big bruise, was sitting on the ground near them, his head propped in his hands, face down and eyes half closed. He grimaced as if his head were still hurting him.

Kinjiro was about to say something when Tsuneo began to talk.

“I got in trouble once when I was your age, Aki-kun,” the older man said. “But I survived it. And what happened was worse than what you did.”  

Instead making himself known, Kinjiro leaned against the edge of the building and listened.

“You, Ojiisan? You?” Aki said, surprised. Isao looked up as well, curious.

“I was young once, too,” Tsuneo said, grinning at his grandson, “even if you don’t want to believe it.”

“I know that, Ojiisan,” Aki said, just the briefest ghost of a smile acknowledging his grandfather’s attempt at a joke.  “But I didn’t think you ever did anything wrong.”

The old man snorted.  “Ah, I wish, grandson.” Tsuneo’s voice was wistful, touched with a trace of bitterness.  He looked away from the boy and stared out at the hills beyond the house. “I’ve done many things I wish I hadn’t over the years.  Sometimes I caused it, sometimes it was just bad luck.  But the way that life works, I’m afraid. Sometimes...”  His voice trailed off for a moment, then he looked back at Aki.  “But the first big trouble I got into was all my own fault.”


The boy looked up at his grandfather, still not quite believing it. “What happened, Ojiisan?”

“There was an old woman who lived on the south side of the village, pretty far away from most of the other houses.  Been a long time since there was a house there.  I’ll show you where sometime. She had outlived her husband and all of her children.  Her last son had been killed in a nasty bandit raid.”

“Who was she?” Isao asked. He rubbed a spot on the top of his head. He squeezed his eyes shut in a fresh grimace.

“Still hurting?” Tsuneo asked.

“Yeah,” Isao said. “I guess the tea Haha-ue gave me is wearing off.”

“I’ll tell Hisa-sama. I’m sure she can make you something that will help,” Tsuneo said.  

Aki pulled his grandfather’s sleeve.  “So who was she?”

“Ah,” Tsuneo said. “Her name was Ume. I don’t remember for sure, but I think she was related some way to Toshiro-sama’s family. Maybe her husband was.” The old man shook his head.  “It was a long time ago.”

“How did you get into trouble?” Isao asked.

“Now that’s the story,” the old man said, shifting in his seat.  “I’m not proud of it, though.  After her last son died, something happened to Ume-sama’s mind. She would go through the village, talking to people who weren’t there, her husband, her children.  Most of the families would give her food and firewood because she had nobody to take care of her, and she wasn’t able to take care of herself.  But even though we gave her food,  that didn’t make her less strange.  She was dirty and her clothes were ragged.  The village children, we were all a bit scared of her as she walked by talking to herself. Someone started saying she was a Yama-uba, a mountain witch.”

“Was she?” Aki asked.

Tsuneo shook his head. “No, not at all. She was just poor, lonely and grief-stricken. But we children weren’t very kind to her.”

Aki suddenly looked down at his hands, a guilty look on his own face.

Tsuneo sighed. “One day,  one of my cousins dared me to go into her house. We had created big stories, saying if she were a Yama-uba we’d find bones and other stuff there to prove it.  I still don’t know why let them convince me to do it, but I agreed.  First, I smeared mud on my face and wore a straw rain cape and a rush hat, just in case someone saw us.  We knew we weren’t supposed to do it, but when does that stop people?”

“Yeah,” Isao said.

“So, with my cousins hiding in the trees nearby egging me on, I snuck into her house.”  Tsuneo paused a moment, looking off into the distance, then continued.  “It was small and dark, her house, and the shutters were closed.  There weren’t many things in it, and I saw no bones like a Yama-uba was supposed to leave scattered about, but there was one thing there nobody expected.”

“What was it, Ojiisan?” Aki leaned further into his grandfather’s hold.

“Ah, this was the worst part.” Tsuneo wrapped his arm a little tighter around the boy.  “As I looked around, I saw Ume-sama sleeping on a bed in the corner of the room. I froze for a moment, not sure of what to do, but I must have made some noise.  She bolted up, and screamed. I remember her yelling ‘The oni have come for me!’  Before I knew it, she began throwing things at me.  Somehow, my rain cape came off as I tried to get away and fell in the fire pit and caught fire.”

He shook his head at the memory. “In a few moments, the whole house was burning.  My cousins and I got her out of the house safely, but there was no saving the hut she lived in.”  Tsuneo looked at his grandson and took a deep breath.  “I didn’t even mean to scare her.  I thought she’d be down in the village, because she was usually there that time of day.  But this day she had felt sick, and had stayed home.”

Aki’s eyes grew wide. “What...what happened next?”

“The grownups, seeing the smoke, came running and  put out the fire. When my father found out it was my fault, I thought he was going to drag me to Odawara and sell me off. The elders calmed him down and decided that I was worth saving, and after they rebuilt her house, I spent the next year taking care of her, bringing her food, making sure she had firewood and water.”

“You did that?” Isao said. “You weren’t scared?”

“Oh, I didn’t say that,” said Tsuneo. “I shook like a leaf the first time I went there with a basket of food.  But she didn’t seem to realize I was the reason her house burned down. She was too busy spending time with the ghosts from her younger days.  At first she barely noticed I was there, but later, I could tell she missed me if I was late coming.  One day she surprised me and gave me a plate of rice cakes. I don’t think she ever called me by name, just Boy.”

Aki looked up at his grandfather. “What happened after the year was up?”

“Oh, she got the coughing sickness, and got weaker, and weaker, and passed on.  I was there when it happened.  I tried to make her drink her soup or eat some rice, but she wouldn’t.  She cried out the name of her last son, and then she was gone.”  He closed his eyes.  “Even though I hated having to do all those chores for her, I cried and cried when she died.  Funny how that goes.”

Aki shook his head.  “How long were you supposed to take care of her?”

“Until the elders said I had done enough and learned my lesson,” Tsuneo said. “I guess the kami thought a year was enough.”  He sighed.  “But it taught me a lot.”

Kinjiro stepped forward, and gave a little cough. Tsuneo and the boys turned and looked.

“How long have you been there, Kinjiro?” the older man asked.

“Long enough,” Kinjiro said. “I’d never heard that story before, Tsuneo-sama.”

“It was a long time ago,” the older man said. “Is it time?”

Kinjiro nodded.  “I think Joben had to take Morio back home, but InuYasha and Daitaro are at Otousan’s house, and they’ll be here in a few minutes.”

Tsuneo nodded and stood up. He looked at his grandson, who, for a moment, went pale and panicked, but the boy covered his face with his hands. Taking a deep breath, Aki shuddered a moment, then let his hands drop away, having gotten some composure back joined his grandfather.  Isao, obviously in pain, slowly moved to join him.

“The sooner this is over, the better,” Tsuneo said, wrapping an arm around both boys’ shoulders. “It’ll not be as bad as you think.”

“If you say so, Ojiisan,” Aki said.

“I say. Let’s go.”  The group started walking.

As they neared the door of the office building, Kinjiro, listening to the men laughing inside, scowled.  “We better be starting soon. Daitaro brought sake.”

Tsuneo, still holding onto the boys, looked at Kinjiro and smiled.  “Did you not expect him to?  Have you ever gone to a meeting where he didn’t?”

“I can’t remember one,” Kinjiro said, scratching his head.  “He is mighty proud of the stuff he brews.”

Tsuneo snorted.  “Don’t tell him, but I can’t tell -” He was interrupted when suddenly, Aki froze.  Tsuneo felt the boy pull away from his arm and turned around to look at him.  “What’s wrong, boy?”

“Loo...look,” Aki said, his voice barely a whisper.  “That...is here. Is he going to eat us?”

“Who, Aki-kun?” Tsuneo asked, frowning.

“Him,” the boy said, pointing.

Tsuneo turned and looked. In front of the door, almost ready to go in, InuYasha stood talking to Miroku and Kagome. Sunlight glinted off of his silver hair, and one ear flicked.  Suddenly, the hanyou turned and looked at them, his eyes somber, and his dark brows knotted.

“What have they been telling you, boy?” Tsuneo said.  His brows knit together, angry.

“Obaasan said...” the boy said.  He was breathing quickly, almost in a panic.

“Enough of that. InuYasha-sama is under the protection of the kami, and he doesn’t eat people,” the older man said. “He has every right to be here. Let’s just get this over.”

And pulling the boy forward, they moved forward as a group to meet the hanyou and the miko and the monk.