InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 255

[ 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 254


Not far from the watch tower that stood guard over the village, there was a community well. There was a trough nearby for passers by to water their animals, and a covered area with a small bench, where people could wait for their turn to draw water.

It was not unusual to find someone or other sitting underneath the awning, watching the people come and go as they did their business. It was particularly a favorite place where some of the women in the village would gather in the afternoon to share the gossip.

Hisako and her little band of women, having made a circuit through the village, spreading the news about Maeme, headed that way.

“I think,” Benika said, as they neared, “that we have probably asked everybody who’s within easy reach to come to the meeting tomorrow.”

Hisako nodded. “Everybody else must be out in the fields.”

“At least it’s too early for barley harvest. Then nobody would have had the time to come,” Yaya said. “I bet Tameo-sama’s going to be surprised at who shows up.”

“Tameo-sama’s a smart man,” Teruko said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s going to be sending people around this evening to come to the meeting tomorrow.”

“Not this time,” Hisako said. “Remember? The wedding?”

Teruko shrugged. “Well, we’ll have to do it for him.”

They walked under the covered shelter. Hisako took a seat on the bench.

“I’m getting too old for this,” she said, sighing as she sat. “Running after Chichi-ue takes too much out of me anymore. I don’t have the energy to chase across the village telling people what to do.” She tapped her walking stick on the ground.

“Nonsense, Obaasan,” Yaya said, taking a seat on the ground. “You’ve always been able to outdo all the rest of us combined.”

Benika, sitting next to her, patted her on her arm. “Your otousan, well, we all know what he’s like,” she said, sitting down next to her. “Nobody but you has what it takes to keep him in line. If you weren’t here, no telling what would happen.”

The other women nodded. Yaya covered her mouth to hide a too bright smile.

“Do you really think everybody will come?” Benika asked.

“Maybe,” Yaya said. “Maybe, after dinner, we can get one of the men to go around and ask.”

Hisako sighed. “It’d be nice if Toshiro would do the asking. Or if his son would.”

“With a new baby in the house? I don’t see that. I am pretty sure I could get my man to agree,” Teruko said. “I’ll talk to Kimi. Maybe Eiji might say something when he makes his rounds tonight.”

“Isamu-chan might help,” Yaya said, standing. “I’ll get some water.” She patted the older woman’s shoulder. “You look like you could use a drink, Hisako-obaasan. Talking to all those men is thirsty work.”

“Maybe you need something stronger than water,” Benika said, standing back to let Yaya through.

“Eh, sake’s why they make the decisions that they do sometimes,” Hisako said, shaking her head. She tapped her walking stick on the ground.


While Hisako drank the water that Yaya brought her, Choujiro was stepping out of the headman’s compound. Kinjiro, finally getting some good work out of Aki was unwilling to let him go, so the woodworker stood there a moment, trying to decide what to do next.

“Well, this is Tsuneo’s project. Maybe he’ll let me have one of his men. Tadaki would be good. He’s got a strong back,” Choujiro said. “I hate to make InuYasha-sama do the work of a laboring man. He’s a warrior. It just doesn’t seem right. Anyway, it’s being done for him. How can it be a payment to him if he’s doing the work?”

He began walking towards Tsuneo’s place musing on the concept of having someone do the work on something that was owed to them, when it finally dawned on him someone was calling his name.

“Hey, Choujiro. I called you three times. Dream-walking, are you?”

He turned to the speaker. Masu, the head farm worker at Tsuneo’s place was walking towards him, along with Denjiro and Isamu.

“Ah, Masu. You just had to wait a little while. I was coming over to Tsuneo-sama’s to see if I could borrow Tadaki,” Choujiro. “How did you know I’d be looking for you?”

The older man laughed. “Now, that’s the last thing I expected you to say, friend. The kami must be really busy today.” He looked at his companions. “Maybe they shouldn’t have called today auspicious. They should have called it a coincidence day.”

Denjiro snorted.

“But that’s what auspicious days are all about, Masu. It’s the days where all the coincidences are lucky ones.” Isamu said. “Kwannon is merciful. Otherwise, without days like this, we’d go crazy.”

“Bah,” Denjiro said. “Days like this drive us crazy.”

Masu slapped him in a friendly way on his back. “You complain too much, Denjiro. The gods of luck could stand in front of you and hand you a lucky wishing stone, and you’d wonder why they wore red instead of black.”

Denjiro crossed his arms, but he was amused. “So, Choujiro, tell me. Is the news true?”
“Furume told us some things, but she was there before it was over,” Masu said, nodding.  

“My woman heard about it from your wife,” Isamu said.

“The thing that happened to Seiji’s woman today?” Choujiro said, sighing. “A sad story.”

“So,” Denjiro asked. “Is it true that she went into the river on purpose?”

The woodworker nodded. “That’s what I heard from Genjo. I was up at InuYasha-sama’s working, and when I stopped for lunch they had just taken her up to the monk’s house. He was there when they took her out of the river. Houshi-sama had jumped in the river when he saw her, and then InuYasha-sama helped get them both to shore down by the Willows.”

“They were lucky.  It’s bad river after that place. The Courtesan Spider rocks are just past that. I lost a brother down there a long time ago. Fell in the river when he was fishing, we figured,” Isamu said.

“I remember that,” Masu. “All of our mothers tried to keep us upstream or out of the water all that summer.” Sighing, he shook his head. “I wonder what got into her.”

“Genjo told me that the women said she was really beat up bad. Old scars, new bruises.” Choujiro shrugged. “Life must be bad for her.”

“Seiji.” The farm worker spit. “That’s the second time InuYasha saved people that Seiji would have ruined.”

“He’s bad news, if you ask me,” Choujiro said. “Yesterday, he beats up his son, bad enough that the boy needed Kaede-sama to protect him, and then he pushes the new miko down while he was railing about it in front of her house.”

“He knocked down InuYasha-sama’s wife?” Masu asked, his eyes growing wide.

Isamu nodded. “I heard about that. Damn fool’s lucky he’s still alive.”

“That girl...she’s a good one,” Masu said. “Did you hear she was able to finally heal Haname-sama? Got out of her bed for the first time today after Miko-sama fixed what was wrong with her. And that after Haname slapping her over at Tameo-sama’s place the day she went crazy.”

“Healed her, huh?” Denjiro said, scratching his head. “Hadn’t heard the news about that yet.”

“Got up, got out of bed, took over the kitchen, and started ordering us all around,” Masu said. “And we were afraid she wasn’t going to make it yesterday.”

“I’ll take InuYasha and his woman over Seiji any day,” Isamu said. The other men nodded. “So what if he’s...well, not like normal men. He’s worth keeping.”

Choujiro rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t understand why Toshiro-sama’s been protecting Seiji. He’s a good man. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Old family story,” Isamu said. “Come by my place when you get the time. Bring some sake. It’s a long tale.”

“You and your stories, Isamu.” Masu shook his head, then turned to the woodworker. “The elders are going to be having a meeting tomorrow. You ought to show up and tell them what you know.”

“You think they’ll listen to the likes of me?” Choujiro looked surprised. “I’m not even related to any of them.”

“Hah. People think more of you than you realize, woodworker,” said an elderly woman’s voice from behind them.

The men turned to look, and saw Hisako and Benika walking up to them.

“Ah, Hisako-sama,” Choujiro said bowing. “How’s your father? I’ve been meaning to stop by and check on him.”

“Sleeping if he’s smart,” Hisako said. Her face was drawn in a scowl, and none of the usual humor that usually colored the way she dealt with people was there now. “Drinking sake if he’s awake, knowing him, and with me not there to keep him from doing it. But I have more important matters to deal with than a hardheaded old man who won’t listen to me.” She tapped her walking stick on the ground. “There are younger ones just as stubborn we need to deal with. You should go to the meeting tomorrow.  All of you.”

“Nobody listened to us when we told them what happened after the bandit raid,” Masu said. “Toshiro gave me some money and apologized, but that doesn’t make it right. My children...”

“I don’t think Tameo-sama would have a problem doing something about that man,” Benika said.

“After putting up with...that man...at the lockup today, I think Tameo-sama will be on our side,” Hisako said. “Even when we went to talk to Toshiro, he wasn’t trying to protect him.”

“True,” Benika said. “I think Seiji caught Toshiro off-guard this time, anyway. He really looked surprised at the news about Maeme-chan.”

“Did you hear Seiji?” Masu asked. “I’ve been hearing stories from anybody who’s gone by the headman’s office.”

“No, I’ve been up at the hanyou’s house cutting boards,” Choujiro said. “Why?”

“He must have sung every dirty song invented in all of Musashi. Maybe all of the Kanto,” Masu said, “from what people are saying. I hear tell that the headman’s daughter-in-law took all the children over to Fujime’s to get away from them.”

“And he sung them loud, according to Koichi,” Benika said, joining the group. “My man went over there earlier today, and everybody was hiding in the back so they could get away from the sound of it.”

“Tameo-sama had a talk with Toshiro,” Hisako said. “It better have done some good.”


While Hisako was giving the men her opinion, Kagome was putting the last touches on returning everything back in place as InuYasha brought things in. After setting the wash stand back up and put their sitting mats back down by the fire pit, she went back outside to grab the fire pan to see if she had any coals left to start heating the bath water.

Frowning, as she stirred the ashes, she looked up to see InuYasha walk in with their table

“We may have to rebuild the fire,” she said. “I’m evidently not very good at saving coals. I don’t think there’s enough fire here to get a twig burning.”

“No big deal,” the hanyou said. “It wouldn’t be the first time I had to make a fire from scratch.” He moved the low table to the spot where Kagome like to prepare their meals, then went to sit next to her. He took the fire pan and dumped it in the fire pit. Leaning forward, he blew on what was there, but nothing glowed.

He got up to go get his kindling basket, but gave her a small smirk before he moved. “I’m good at starting fires, you know.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “I could start another type of fire, though if you’d prefer. It takes longer. You might have to take a cold water bath if I do.”

She laughed and pushed him away. “Maybe you’re the one who should take a cold water bath.”

Laughing back at her, he got his things, returned to his place and quickly struck flint to steel and started the fire. That done, he helped Kagome put water on to heat then went out to fetch the wash tub.

“Still no sign of Choujiro,” he said as he returned and put the tub into place.

“I wonder what happened?” Kagome asked. She stuck another piece of wood under one of the pots.

The hanyou shrugged. “I hope it’s not more strange luck on this weird day. It’d be nice if the rest of the day would just go smoothly.”

“You said it. I better go get my clothes.” She started to head out of the house, but InuYasha caught her in his arms.

“We’re going to have to have a lucky day just for us.” He pulled her close to him. “Real luck. A time when it’s just us and no workmen, and no sick villagers. Some place quiet, like at that spring we went to.”

“Is that a promise?” she asked.

“If you want it to be.”

“Good.” And stepping outside, she went to get her miko robes.