InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 227

[ 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 226


“This water’s too cold to be doing this,” Miroku said, treading water as he took one last look at Sango. She was standing on the rock outcropping, holding his staff in her hand, looking concerned, but hiding any sense of worry behind carefully masked eyes. He took a deep breath and looked upstream to get his bearings. “The water won’t get any warmer with me just treading water.”

He began moving with strong strokes towards the drifting woman, who had her head facing the direction she had come from. It was an odd thing to see. She kept her head above water, but she was letting herself float along the current with no effort to swim or come to shore.

“What are you trying to prove, woman?” He moved further out into the stream where the current was stronger and the water grabbed him, trying to push him against the bank, but he angled his approach and began to close in on her.

Kicking hard, his feet made a loud splash as he neared her. The woman turned her head, surprised at the sound, and spotted him. Her calmness disintegrated as she looked at him and, she suddenly began to flail, beating the water with both arms in a vain attempt to move back upstream. Water splashed in her mouth as she began trying to move away. Spitting it out, she began yelling. “No, don’t come any closer, Houshi-sama! Let the water take me!”

“I can’t do that,” he said. Pulling himself through the water as hard as he could, he reached the woman and finally got a good look at her. Her hair was plastered to her head. The scarf almost all the peasant women wore having come off some time before, but her eyes grew more terrified as he neared. It was a lean face, one that had seen too much in the last few years, and he recognized it almost immediately. It didn’t take him much thinking to know why she had been floating down the river so calmly and why she was now upset. “Maeme-sama?”

She splashed at him. “Why are you doing this? I was at peace,” she said, splashing at him, trying to push him away. “For once I was at peace. Go away.”

“I can’t let you die, Maeme-sama.” He wrapped a sash he had brought, one that he used on his own robes, around Maeme’s torso, even as the woman, tried to push away. She was getting tired, and her attempt to push off of him was weak, but somehow, the heel of her hand hit his face just right and his head went briefly underwater.

Breaking back through the surface, the water streamed from his face and nose. “Damn it, woman. Don’t do that. We don’t have a lot of time.”

He wrapped the loose ends of the sash under his right arm and over his left shoulder. It was hard to knot it. His hands were getting cold and the sash was wet, but he got some sort of knot made and then wrapped his arm around her.

She beat at him weakly. “I don’t want to go back. Please let me go.”

“Yes you do, woman. Your heart may not want it, but your body does,” the monk said. “Help me. I’m going to try to get us to shore. Don’t fight me, or you might just kill us both,” he said.

“My husband, he’ll kill me anyway,” she said, almost too soft to hear. “I am already a dead woman.”

“No, he won’t,” Miroku said. He tugged at her, trying to get them to move back to the bank. “No, you’re not. I promise you. I will not let him touch you if you let me take you to shore. I will protect you.”

“I...I...” Maeme looked at him, staring into his eyes, and saw something in them that made her nod her head. She didn’t say any more, but she stopped fighting, and clung to him instead.

“Merciful Kwannon, watch over us now. You know Sango will jump in if she thinks I’m not going to make it, and then we all might die,” he prayed, and began swimming towards the bank.

Miroku was a strong swimmer, but he had to work to keep the woman’s head above water, and the current was pulling them downstream, and every stroke was getting harder and harder.

“Miroku,” he heard Sango yell. She was tracking them along the bank of the river, and he could glimpse her as she ran.

Clinging to her voice like a lifeline, he swam on.


At Tameo’s compound, a different crisis was going on. Kinjiro, his face not hiding any of his own feeling about the situation he had found when he came home for lunch, slid open the door to his father’s office and stomped across the threshold. The noise he made as he entered made his father look up from his paperwork for a moment. Taking in the way his son was moving, he sighed briefly, then turned back to finish his writing before the ink dried on his brush.

“Close the door, son,” he said as Seiji’s raspy cursing followed Kinjiro in. “It helps keep the noise down.”

Kinjiro made a sound in the back of his throat, voicing his displeasure at the situation, but turned around to slide the door behind him. It was harder to make out the words from behind the closed doors. He turned back to his father, and crossed the wooden earth domo, his fists clenched.

Tameo avoided looking at him, rattling his papers instead. Kinjiro stomped across the wooden platform and stood there, glaring down.

The headman dipped his brush back in his ink.

Kinjiro took a deep breath, and crossed his arms. “What,” he said, breaking the silence.


Shaking his head a moment as he looked up the ledger he was working on, the headman laid his brush down carefully. He met his son’s eyes, noting the way he carried himself, and licked his lips. “You look so much like your mother when she’s giving us the eye, son.” He moved his ledger to the side, and steepled his fingers together. “Except when she gives me that look, it doesn’t look like she’s about to hit something or someone.”

“There’s someone here who deserves hitting,” the younger man said, but he eased his stance at his father’s calm look.

“That may be so,” Tameo said, nodding. “So, what do you mean, what, son?”  

“What are you going to do about that piece of trash in the lockup, is what I mean.” Kinjiro moved to the side of the table and sat down. He leaned forward. “You remember what I said about him last year when he almost cost Masu his family. Are you planning to let him chase your own family out of their homes? And for how long?”

“That, Kinjiro, is a good question.” Tameo picked up his brush and a fresh sheet of paper, like he was going to make notes. “What do you think I should do with him? Why do you think he’s making all that noise?”

“He...he wants...” Kinjiro frowned. “He’s trying to get you to let him out, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” the headman said. “Remember that time when you were about ten, and his otousan tried to keep him locked up?”

“After that shed got burned up?” Kinjiro said, straightening up. “It was a long time ago.”

“Longer for you maybe. For me, eh...” Tameo said. “He sat in that room and wouldn’t shut up. He drove everybody crazy. Eventually, his otousan said the hell with it, dragged him out by his hair, and beat him until he agreed to apologize and do some work to pay off his debt.”

“He’s one stubborn fool,” the younger man said. He began to drum his fingers on his father’s desk. “So what do we do?”

Tameo dipped his brush in the ink and began writing. “Our choice is to gag him, which means we’d have to tie him up or chain him.” Lifting up the brush, he looked at his son.  “That is doable, but it will take some effort. The question is, is it worth it for the short time we plan on keeping him in the lockup?”

“How long are you planning to keep this ass there?” Kinjiro said. The corner of his mouth curved up as he pondered his father’s words. “Last time he caused this much stink, you only kept him in until he slept it off.”

“Well,” Tameo said, rubbing a finger across his chin. “We don’t want him to spoil Shinjiro’s wedding, and as mad as he is right now, I don’t trust him not to do it. So he’s in overnight. And there’s Maeme and his boys to consider. You know if we let him out right now, he’d probably find a reason to beat the hell out of his woman.”

Kinjiro, still not fully mollified, nodded. “Be better if we put her in the lockup,” he said. “It’d be a lot quieter.”

“Or we can do what he wants us to do, and let him go, the hell with the consequences,” Tameo said. “But besides whatever damage he might do to the wedding, or to his own family, it would let him think we have no guts to preserve order in this village. With him, I suspect, that’d give him the idea he could set himself up as a little warlord, making us all miserable. I’ve seen villages where they let a bully get too much power. Not a pleasant thing.”

“Might as well call in the bandits and give them everything,” Kinjiro said. He began drumming his fingers again, more loudly.

“Maybe,” Tameo said, “we can get lucky and think of another solution. That’s why all the elders are going to meet tomorrow. It’s a hard decision. But I think even Toshiro’s getting tired of it. I don’t know how much longer his promise to Seiji’s father is going to hold.” He turned around and opened a cabinet behind him, took out a small bottle of sake and two cups and placed them on the desk. “In my opinion, we win by putting up with it until tomorrow. After that, something will give. If it was up to me, we’d kick him out.”

“Or let InuYasha have at him. He’s got cause,” Kinjiro said. “Sake already?”

“A day like this deserves it, I think,” the headman said. “Just don’t tell your okaasan we got into this before lunch.”

“I won’t, but you know, she always finds out. Sooner or later.” Kinjiro stuck his tongue in his cheek, darkly amused by his father’s word.

The headman sighed. “Usually.” He unstopped the bottle. “But she’s gone, and may be gone most of the day.”

“It seems like all the women have left,” Kinjiro noted. He watched as his father poured small amounts of the wine into each of the cups.

“Everyone here but Riki.” Tameo pushed a cup towards his son. “After today, I’m probably going to need to give her an extra something for being so willing to put up with, well, everything.”

“If what I heard coming in is a sample of what’s been going on, you ought to, Otousan,” Kinjiro said, picking up his cup. “What woman would want to listen to all that? They wouldn’t even hear all this in a brothel.”

“True, true,” Tameo said, putting away his paperwork and lifting his own cup, “Seiji is doing what he’s always been so good at, acting like a bully. If he can’t get his way one way, he’ll try another. First, it was singing rude songs.” He took a sip. “It sounds like he’s still doing that.”

“And yelling for his son and his wife,” Kinjiro said.

“Sukeo hasn’t come back yet?” the headman asked, surprised by that news. “He left a good while ago.” Tameo scratched his head. “It must have been a couple of hours ago. He was supposed to go ask his mother to make a headache potion. Seems our...guest...thinks we might try to poison him or something.”

Kinjiro shrugged. “Maybe she was out in the fields. The boy might have had to check around to find her.”

“That woman. I somehow doubt if she was very far from either whatever field she been working in or doing her woman’s work. I know he tends to chase away any woman who wants to try to make her life a little better.” Tameo shook his head. “I wonder if we need to check on them.”

“You might want to.” He took a sip of the wine. “I thought today was supposed to be an auspicious day,” Kinjiro said. He drained his cup.

“It’s supposed to be,” Tameo said. “Just maybe not for us.”

“Man makes his own fortune, some people say,” Kinjiro said. He stood up. “I’m going to make some good fortune for my belly. It’s time for lunch.”

Tameo laughed. “I do believe you’re right. Let’s go see what Riki’s managed to stir up.”

“Not as much as Seiji, I’m sure,” Kinjiro said. “But I bet it tastes better.”