InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 230

[ 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 229


The little parade of participants and well-wishers made it up to Miroku’s house to find the three older girls playing ball toss with the twins. Naoya still slept in his basket cradle.
Rin was the first to spot them. Her eyes grew wide as she saw the grownups grow near.  Tossing the ball to Tazu, she hurried over to where they were walking up the path.

“What happened, Miroku-ojisan?” she asked. She looked surprised, and then seeing the burden Genjo was carrying, worried. “You’re all wet.”

He gave her a little grin. “I had a little run-in with the river, Rin-chan,” he said, his voice reflecting the fatigue he felt. His smile faded. “Will you watch the girls a little longer? We have a few things to take care of.”

Tazu sighed. “No Sesshoumaru stories today, I guess.” She slapped her hands over her face when she spotted Genjo. Her eyes grew wide at the figure of the small woman wrapped up in a brown and yellow blanket “Is...is she alive? Who is it?  I...I apologize for...”

“It’s all right, Tazu-chan,” Miroku said. “Maeme-sama fell in the river. She’s alive, but we need to take care of her. I’ll have to owe you on the stories.”

“Can I help?” she asked.  

“Me, too,” Iya said, looking equally surprised. “What...why...does someone need to tell her family?”

“Stay with the girls a bit longer?” he asked, then headed inside. “We’ll send word down the hill once we have her dried off and resting. That’ll help the most.”

Sango followed right behind. “I’d really appreciate it,” she said. Rin nodded.

Genjo entered next, gently carrying Maeme into the monk’s house.

“We’ll put her in the sleep room” Sango said, walking to the back of the building and sliding the door open. “That way, we can give her some space from our little ones.”  

He nodded and walked to the back of the building. “She’s so light,” the man said. “Such a frail thing.”

Sango rolled out a dry coverlet. “Lay her here, please. We’ll dress her in some dry things and lay her down on a straw bed once we get her cleaned up.”

Genjo lay the small form of Maeme on the coverlet, then nodding, left her there with Sango. As he left, Kagome walked in with Mariko, and slid the door closed.


While all this was happening, Miroku took a moment to change into dry things. Even while he was doing it, he could hear his daughters crying to come inside, so he hurried. As soon as he stepped back out, the twins began to try to escape their babysitters. Yusuko was first, wiggling out of Iya’s arms, and Noriko didn’t take long to escape Rin. He picked them up, one in each arm. They snuggled up against him, but Yusuko tugged on the monk’s hair.

“It’s wet, Otou,” she said.

“I know, I know,” the monk replied, pulling her hand away. “So how are my beautiful girls?” he asked. “Were you good while we were gone?”

“They were. We played ball and sang a lot of songs,” Tazu said, nodding. “I think I’m tired.”

“They can do that,” the monk said, smiling at each girl in turn. “Can’t you, my pretties?”

Yusuko hugged his neck. “Ha-ha all right?” she asked.

“Yes, Okaasan is all right, babies. She’s helping Maeme-obasan who fell in the river.”

Noriko looked shocked. “Why?”

“Why what, baby?” Miroku said.  

“Why river?” the girl asked. She had been warned about the river a lot by both of her parents.

“We don’t know,” Miroku said, shaking his head sadly. “We just don’t know. But we’ll take care of her.”

“You jumped in after her?” Iya asked.

“I did indeed,” the monk said, nodding. “It was a rather cold swim.”

“And,” InuYasha said, coming to stand next to the monk, but not quite close enough for either of the twins to change position, “I helped haul him out.”

“You did more than that, InuYasha,” Miroku said, a grateful note in his voice. “Otherwise, I might be heading towards the sea by now.”

“So, that’s why you’re wet,” Rin said, noting the fact that his hakama and jacket still were hanging limply along his body.

“Hard to jump in the river and stay dry,” the hanyou said. “Even fire rat takes time to dry.”

The girls, either nervous or amused, laughed.


While the girls and men chatted outside, the three women worked on getting Maeme out of her wet things.

“I...I have seen women like Maeme before,” Sango said. Although she was not really wet, she hugged herself as if she were cold. “If she was truly seeking her death, her life must be very bleak to her indeed. One of the women in my village, she thought she had lost everything, and only sought her death.” She looked at Kagome, and Kagome could see reflected the memory of the emptiness Sango had felt once after Naraku had destroyed her family and she realized he had used her as a tool.  

Kagome returned the look with understanding. “It has to be bad if living with a husband and family is more painful than having nothing,” the miko said.

Sango’s eyes dropped back to the unconscious woman and she nodded. “It must be very bad for her right now. A woman with children who will do that...there must be no hope anywhere in her life.”

Maeme’s eyes remained closed, and she neither helped nor hindered the women as they stripped her of her wet kosode and under things.

“Why is she still unconscious?” Mariko asked. “Did she injure herself some way that did it?”

Kagome shook her head. “I’m not sure why,” she said. “Sometimes upset people withdraw so deeply that they act like they’ve fainted or are in a deep sleep.” She undid the woman’s wrap skirt, and pulled it away from her body. “It can be the mind’s way of coping with deep mental pain.”

“Let me get her some dry things,” Sango said. She went out of the room, and the two women could hear her pulling open a clothes chest.

“I wonder why her things are so bad,” Mariko said, looking at the unconscious woman’s garments.  They were thin and worn, often mended. “She weaves beautiful cloth. I’ve seen some of it that went to market day. Why doesn’t she make better clothes?”

“Perhaps,” Sango said, as she returned and slid the door behind her, “her husband won’t let her keep enough of what she makes for her own needs. Her boys aren’t dressed much better.”

Mariko shook her head and held the wet things in her hands as Kagome was gently drying her off with the coverlet they had spread over her. Her eyes looked at the unconscious woman and back at the young miko, and they were very troubled. “Let me go hang these up before they get everything wet,” she said. Standing up, and clutching the wet things to her chest, she left the room and went outside.

“I think,” Kagome said, “this is getting too much for Mariko.”

“I heard her youngest aunt had a bad husband who beat her,” Sango said, shaking out the white under kosode she selected. “One day, he went too far and she died. Maybe this is bringing on bad memories.”

“That makes sense.” Kagome rolled the woman, who by this time was wearing nothing more than a coverlet, over on her side. The cloth dropped off her back towards her waist when she did, and what Kagome saw made her catch her breath.

Sango looked down at what Kagome had been reacting to. Maeme’s back was marked with recent, but not fresh bruises. She had raised scars across her back where she had been beat some time or the other with something, perhaps a bamboo rod.  

Kagome gently ran a fingertip over one of the stripes. “These are old,” she said.

“Look at that cut,” Sango said, showing Kagome an old, healing mark on her shoulder blade. It had slightly puckered, and the skin was still not fully healed. “It’s not that old. She should have had Kaede stitch it.”

The young miko nodded.

They slipped the garment behind her. Those weren’t the only bruises they found.

“How many does she have?” Sango said. “What happened to her? Those aren’t new injuries.”

They rolled her on her back and moved the coverlet down. Sango reached out and touched one particularly nasty looking bruise. It was the size of a man’s fist. “That didn’t happen today. She looks like she’s been in a battle, or worse, a brawl.” Sango looked up. “What happened to her?”

Kagome looked up, torn between pity and anger. “What happened to her? One word.”

“Seiji,” Sango said.

“Seiji.” Kagome reached out for the kosode Sango had picked out. Together, they slipped the woman into a dry white undergarment, and then a plain blue one.

“We need to get her moved onto the straw,” Sango said.

“What should we do?” Kagome asked.

“I’ll go get Miroku or maybe Genjo if he’s still here,” the other woman said. She started to turn.

Kagome grabbed her wrist. “I don’t mean about moving her. I mean, about the shape she’s in.”

Sango let out a long sigh. “I know Miroku promised to take care of her,” she said. “I understood that Seiji was hard on her. The fact that she did what she did says so much, and I wasn’t upset about his promise. But now I want more.” She looked up into Kagome’s eyes. “I want him to feel what she’s been feeling.”

She brushed a stray bit of damp hair out of the woman’s face. “We’ll figure out something, Maeme-chan. We don’t ever want you to go back to that hell hole. You’re safe. Even if I have to take him down myself.”


In a different part of the village, unaware of the activity going on at Miroku’s house, and not involved at all in the nastiness taking place at Tameo’s compound, Ushimi, wife of Takeshi, mother of Erime, was sitting by her fire pit. Her face had a busy, but content, glow about her, surprisingly at peace considering the importance of the day.

“I always found fixing food one of the things that made everything feel normal, even on special days like today,” she said, lifting the lid off a pot she had cooking. A cloud of steam rose up, filling the room with a delicious odor. “That’s why I asked you to help me fix lunch, daughter.”

She poked the coals under a pot of soup, and added another stick.

“The rice should be about ready,” she said, “and the broth’s coming along just right.” Sitting back, she dusted her hands off on a towel.

“I’m just about done,” a young woman’s voice said, coming from the kitchen counter in the domo behind her.

“Take your time, daughter,” Ushimi said. “It’s not good to rush something like this. I don’t want you to cut yourself slicing greens. That would cause bad luck.”

“You always tell me that when I’m excited, Haha-ue,” the young woman said. “How many times have you told me that?”

The older woman laughed. “No doubt more times than you want to count.”

The girl preparing the vegetables laughed. “Maybe, Ha-ha.  But maybe not as much as I need to.”

“If it makes you feel better, my own okaasan told me that, many times.” Ushimi gave the fire one last check, then got up and walked across the room, and onto the domo.  

“You, Ha-ha?” the girl put chopped vegetables into a bowl. “I can’t believe you needed to hear that.”

Ushimi wrapped her arms around the young woman and gave her a hug. “On my wedding day, she told me that it was going to have to be enough times to hold me, because it meant I was grown up. It’s going to have to be enough to hold you, Erime-chan. It’ll be enough, just like it was for me. After today...”

Suddenly, the girl whirled around and hugged her mother in return. “After today...Am I really going to be a grown up?  Is this the last time we fix lunch together?” Her eyes got wide. “I never thought of that before, Ha-ha. These moments...”

Ushimi brushed a stray lock of hair out of her daughter’s face. The girl looked up and her eyes were shimmering. “This is how the world goes, daughter. I’m sure we’ll have our moments, but after today, your first job will be to be there for Shinjiro, and after that, to help Chime-sama. You’ll belong to his family first. But we’ll have our times.”  

Erime dropped her face and looked down at the ground, sucking on her lip. Ushimi used two fingers under her daughter’s chin to bring her face back up. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be, daughter.”

“I know...” Erime said. Her voice was thick. She put the knife she had been using down, and ran her hand over the wood of the cabinet top. “But...but...it’s going to feel so strange.” Her brows knit together. “I know every inch here.”

The woman laughed gently. “It’s the day you’ve been dying to have come, but now you realize how much everything will change, right?”

Erime, too choked up with emotion, merely nodded.

“Bride jitters, dear,” Ushimi said. “Remember I told you about them?”

Erime nodded again.

“But you know that Chime loves you like a daughter.”Ushimi asked. She tucked a wisp of hair back under her daughter’s head scarf. “I’ve seen you two together, and there’s no masking it.”

“I know,” Erime said. She swallowed like her throat was constricted, like it was hard to do. “I’m being silly.”

“No, you’re not. Every bride has this moment.” She pulled her close and rested her cheek on the girl’s head. “You are very lucky. Shinjiro will always treat you with kindness and respect. I’m glad you two wanted this. There are a few unmarried men in the village I would have wanted you to wed, but he is one of the best of the lot.”

Erime nodded. “He makes me happy, Ha-ha. I’ve heard what happens to some girls, getting married when they don’t even know their husbands. But he really likes me.” She took a deep breath. “I want this,” she managed to say. “But I don’t want anything to change, either.”

Her mother laughed gently. “I understand, daughter, but you can’t have one without the other. You will do well. And just think - you and your mother-in-law love each other, and you have a good man, but luckiest of all, you’re staying in the same village instead of moving out like so many girls do. You can still find time to come by and eat up all my chimaki!”

This made the young woman laugh.

“Now let’s see what you’ve got left to do.  Your otousan and everybody else will be coming in soon, hungry and almost as nervous as you.”

“Really?” Erime asked. “How can they be that nervous? They’re not the ones getting married.”

“Trust me,” Ushimi said. “Remember when your brother got married? We may not be making the wedding meal, but trust me, everybody else is just about as wound up.”

“Will Chichi-ue get the nervous itch again?” the younger woman asked. “Will you have to give him vinegar compresses?”

“I have the vinegar ready, just in case.” Ushimi picked up a bowl of vegetables and began moving it to the fire pit. “Enough to give him a bath in it.”

Erime giggled. Her mother, pleased at how she had calmed her daughter down, poured a little oil in a pan. Together, they began cooking the greens.