InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ De Nouveau ❯ De Nouveau ( Chapter 1 )

This is the in the same arc of both Doctuer De Spectre and Renaissance D'Espirt, a set of one shots that I wrote last year. You don't need to have read either to read this story, but I would suggest that you do so details and events presented here will be better understood.

 

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De Nouveau

 

By SaiyanBlack

 

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Chapter One

 

 

Did you ever have that feeling that you were being watched? Did you ever turn around only to find that nothing was there? I'm what everyone would call a normal high school student; decent grades, great friends, and a loving family. The only difference between you and me is that when I turn around, there's actually someone there - and I can see them… All of them.

 

 

“Kagome?” her mother called up the stairs of their quaint home in the more suburban section of Boulder, Colorado. Sitting at her desk, the dark-haired teen tilted her chair back to peer out the open door and down to the kind face of her mother. The older woman gave her daughter a kind smile, “Dinner is almost ready. Why don't you save the rest of your work for later and help me set the table before your father gets home?”

 

“Alright, mama,” she called, letting her chair fall back onto all four legs before she closed her math book and placed her pencil down beside it. Downstairs, her mother still worked in the kitchen, cooking dinner for their small working-class family. It was a tradition for them to eat together on Sunday's because it was the one day that her mother and father were both home in the evening. Her father ran a café near the campus and her mother worked as a counselor part time between her high school and the university, so it was times like Sunday evenings where the three of them could be together.

 

As Kagome was setting the table, the garage door opened and her father stepped in, kicking some snow from his boots on the step before he took them off. He was bundled up for the winter weather and he closed the door before too much of the heat escaped from the house.

 

“How was your day, Kago?” he asked as he pulled off his jacket and hung it on the old hat tree between the doors leading to the front and the garage. He placed a kiss on her forehead as he passed.

 

“Okay. Nothing special happened,” she answered, positioning the silverware next to the plates.

 

“That's always a good thing,” he leaned over and switched the knife and the spoon, giving her a teasing smile as he corrected her placement.

 

“Hey!” she threatened him with a fork and a narrowed look, but he only laughed and continued on into the kitchen where he embraced and kissed her mother with a warm smile. Kagome turned away from the romantic scene only to find that one of the spoons was slowly making its way to the far side of the table.

 

“Are you going to correct me as well?” she asked the little girl that sat in the chair closest to the window. One small hand was slowly pulling the utensil away, but stopped when she was spoken to. Big green eyes blinked up at the teen innocently and Kagome sighed, taking the spoon away from the child and returning it to its original place next to the plate. “Leave those alone. I hope you didn't do that to your parents.”

 

“Who are you talking to Kagome?” her mother asked from the kitchen and she looked up at her parents, who were watching her with some curiosity. When she looked back across the table, the chair the little girl had just occupied was empty once more.

 

“Was it the little girl again?” her father asked as he placed a dish on the table and she continued with the silverware as if she had not just spoken with a child that had appeared out of thin air.

 

“Yes, and it seems that she wanted to criticize the way I set the table as well,” she told her father, who laughed outright. “She wanted a spoon.”

 

“Kagome,” her mother said, setting the dish of pasta on the table before sitting, “I met a young man today that I think has the same ability as you do. He transferred to the university this semester from New York State and I could have sworn I saw him talking to someone out in the courtyard by my office, but there was no one there.”

 

“He could just be crazy,” her father joked as he passed the salad bowl to Kagome over the table. She began to dish out her food, while she digested what her mother had just told her. Her parents continued their conversation, moving to the topic of repairs for the café and when would be the best time to make them now that the winter semester had started and more students had joined the campus.

 

She'd never met someone that could see the same things she could and the spirits she came in contact with never seemed to know anything about the world outside of the area that they were attached to, including the presence of other ghosts. It would be interesting to meet someone outside her family that actually believed her - then again, her father was probably right. The guy was probably crazy or stressed out from his classes.

 

What was the likelihood that there was actually someone out there that could really see and talk to the dead?

 

~*~

 

Her high school was built in the 1940's and there had never been any doubt in her mind that the building was a “hot spot” for spirits that hadn't quite figured out that they had graduated - in some way or another. She knew that the teen years were many of the hardest for people and that was reflected by the amount of teen deaths in the world, not to mention that all the ghosts that still attended her high school, except for an old janitor that still cleaned the halls, were tragic teens that continued going to class everyday.

 

Like the one that often held Kagome's attention in her history class. A senior boy; young, handsome and charming - all qualities that would have made him popular in life when he lived in the fifties, if his clothes were any indication. Of course, she doubted that when he was alive that he walked around with a bullet hole in his head and blood covering his letterman jacket. He was in the class everyday, listening to the teacher as she discussed the Vietnam War.

 

Kagome could tell that he wasn't as connected to the living world as some spirits, mostly because he didn't react in any way to a lesson that was focused on a war that happened after he died. She had also never seen him interact with people or objects, including herself. He seemed to be stuck in a time warp, trapped in a classroom that had meant something to him in life.

 

The bell rang and the students stood, collecting their things before exiting the classroom. But when Kagome looked back into the room from the doorway, the young man still sat at the desk, looking at the front of the class as if the bell never rang.

 

“Kagome!”

 

In the hall, three girls came to collect her from the door and the four of them walked to their lockers in the lower level of the school, giggling all the way down the stairs.

 

“So are you coming or not, Kagome?” Ayumi asked as she fiddled with the combination of the locker she and Yuka shared. The teen in question sighed as she pulled her books out of her locker before closing it.

 

“I don't know-” she started, but was interrupted.

 

“Oh, come on!” Yuka whined.

 

“…I have to work tonight and-”

 

“Kagome, you don't even get paid for all the work you do in the café! And the only person that pulls in more hours than you is your father,” Eri pointed out as they walked out into the snowy courtyard at the front of their school and to the parking lot. Kagome had to think it over in her head and it seemed she didn't have much time with the speed they were walking to Yuka's car.

 

“Oh fine,” she conceded with a sigh as the three teens squealed, “but I have to talk to my dad about it. So can we stop by the café first?”

 

“What if he says no?” Ayumi asked as they piled into the old `24 Saturn. Kagome had no answer for that - in truth, she was hoping that he did say no. They last thing she wanted to do on a Monday evening was run around the mall for hours, looking at clothes that she didn't want to buy.

 

“If you want to,” her father told her as he refilled the espresso machine on a side counter of the small, casual café. As was normal for a weekday afternoon, it was filled with college students doing homework at the personal tables or in one of the many lounging chairs situated around comfortably.

 

The trio behind her just bounced with energy and Kagome blanched, sending her father a clear look of help - to which he just raised a dark brow before he schooled his face to a serious look that she always associated with her grandfather when he was trying to be dramatic, one that he must have passed on to his only son, who was the spiting image of him in his “better years.”

 

“Of course, I could use your help here. Kouga called in sick again today and I'm starting to think that he's just praying on my trusting soul.”

 

Kagome had to stifle her giggle and she was sure that the bouncing of her shoulders would have given them away to the girls behind her, but they only let out disappointed sighs. She turned to look at them and they waved as they left the café.

 

“See you tomorrow, Kagome! Maybe you can come shopping with us next time,” Eri called before the door shut behind them, the bell at the top tinkling lightly.

 

“You know,” her father began when she placed her books and bag into his office, “your friends are going to remember me as the man that never let his daughter have a life. Why not just tell them that you didn't want to go?”

 

“Where do you think they wanted to go?” she asked, tying an apron around her waist before pulling her hair back from her face in a low ponytail. “I'll give you ten guesses.”

 

“The mall again?” he asked as they walked behind the counter. “Didn't they just go last week? I know the mall is considered a teen hangout, but that's just ridiculous.”

 

“You're telling me,” Kagome laughed as she pulled clean mugs and ceramic café cups out of the industrial dishwasher and into their correct places in the shelves below the high counter. “I'm so tired of shopping and gaping at boys from the university.”

 

“And why won't you tell them that?” he repeated, but went into the kitchen before she could answer him and leaving her with that last thought. That's another talent he must have learned from Grandpa, she thought as she made new batches of coffee. Both her grandfather and her father had the ability to make you think about the things that you didn't want to think about. They were like her personal counselors, there with a ready ear if she ever had too many problems to deal with on her own.

 

Her grandfather knew a lot about her ability to see the dead and had told her that she must have inherited the talent from her Great-Aunt Kagome, the woman that she was named after and seemed to share many physical qualities with. She had died when she was about nineteen, on her way over the Sierra-Nevada Mountains back in 1992. Her grandfather was well into his seventies now and his wife of forty-nine years and her grandmother, Sango, had died less than two years ago when her immune system crashed and she caught a bad case of pneumonia from the very cold winter that came through Colorado every couple of years. Now her grandfather and her Great-Uncle Sota were the only people in the family that remembered her great-aunt.

 

The chime from the door of the café took her out of her thoughts and she looked up as the two customers approached the counter. She saw Kouga immediately and raised a slender brow when he flashed her a cocky grin.

 

“Dad's going to be mad at you for faking-sick again,” she told him before he had a chance to toss her a lurid comment like he usually did.

 

“Aw, come on Kagome,” he whined and she returned to working as he leaned up against the front of the counter. She kept both eyes on him, daring him to come closer; he was very touchy-feely when it came to girls. “Don't tattle on me.”

 

“She won't need to,” came the sharp voice of her father from the kitchen door, moving aside to let one of the girls pass through with food for a customer. “You either start bussing tables now, or you get out of my café, Kouga. I won't deal with you much longer if you keep playing hooky on my time.”

 

“Sorry, Mr. H.,” the college student apologized, hands up next to his head as he walked past the part-Japanese man and into the kitchen, his boss following behind him. Kagome suddenly felt as if someone was watching her, much like the feeling she got when there was a spirit in the room, but when she looked up it was not a ghost she saw. It was a young man with silver hair and very familiar eyes that caught hers immediately.

 

Very familiar amber eyes.

 

 

^*^

 

 

AN: The year in this story is about 2043, but it's not going to be a sci-fi in any way since I doubt that everyone will have flying cars in 39 years. It just doesn't seem logical to me. So ignore the date completely if it makes you feel more comfortable or think of it as the current year since that is kind of what I'm going for anyway.