InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Vivication ❯ Questions ( Chapter 47 )

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

Something wasn’t right.

Letting out a deep breath as he scowled at the opened ledgers spread over the undisturbed bed in the comfortably appointed guest room that faced the east and the sun that was slowly creeping up over the horizon, Rinji had been up all night, poring over the books, line by line, and, upon first glance, it was all there; it was all fine.

But the longer that he’d looked them over, the deeper he’d gotten, he’d started to feel as though there was something he was missing—something that he knew, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it.  It was something that he suspected really should have been obvious—ridiculously obvious.

So, why wasn’t it?

It really didn’t make a bit of sense, though.  Why Demyanov was using his personal account to pay for everything?  That was the question that he’d been asking himself all night, really.  He knew enough to know that the various jurisdictions had always separated the funding for their systems and expenses just to keep bookkeeping relatively simple—at least, as simple as keeping those kinds of records ever were.

Rubbing his face as he set aside the ledger he had been examining, Rinji figured that a short break was in order.  Stripping off his clothes, laying them over the back of a chair, he shuffled off to the bathroom, unable to let go of the questions, churning around his head.

The steady strum of the hot water drew a low groan from him as he let his head fall back, silver hair sticking to his body like a second skin.  Slowly running his hands over his upturned face, he stood there for several minutes, letting the steaming flow relax him before finally reaching for the small bottle of unscented shampoo.

‘Why is it . . .?What am I missing here?’ he asked himself, hating that feeling that something that should be so very obvious simply wasn’t.  Taking his time, he lathered his hair, idly enjoying the sensation of the soap as it trailed down his back, down his ass and hips and legs.

His youkai-voice sighed.  ‘Well, what kind of thing is it?  Maybe if you could determine, just what it feels like, it might help to narrow down just what kind of thing it could be . . .’

It sounded logical, sure.  Too bad that things like this very rarely held much in the way of logic, and the worst thing about it?  He wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t help but think that, whatever it was, it really should have been obvious . . .

But he’d been over everything, even looking back through receipts and records of scheduled payments.  Everything was in order.  Demyanov was meticulous when it came down to it.  Every last detail, right down to the deposits, and . . .

“The deposits,” he murmured, eyes flashing open wide.  “That’s . . .” He frowned, ducking under the water flow, scrubbing shampoo out of his hair almost impatiently.

That’s what it was, wasn’t it?  He’d gone through every last detail, everything that he knew should be in those ledgers, and he was right—dead right.  All of the records were there, and all of them were accurate down to the last detail.

Except . . .

Slapping his hand against the tap control, he reached for a towel to wrap around his hips, grabbing a second one to drape over his hair, squeezing water out of it as he hurried out of the bathroom once more.  Latching onto the first ledger he could reach—it really didn’t matter what year he was looking at—Rinji scanned page after page, looking for one particular entry, knowing that he wasn’t going to find it because it simply wasn’t there . . .

A soft knock on the door drew his attention, but he didn’t glance up as he kept scanning.  “Come in,” he called, the distraction in his voice very evident.

Saori slipped into the room, lost in the folds of a thick white robe.  He spared a moment to glance at her and shot her a wan little smile before returning to the ledger once more.  “Any luck?” she asked, her tone indicating that she didn’t really think he had.

Snapping the ledger closed, he let it fall out of his hand onto the rest of the pile.  “There are two accounts,” he said, dropping the damp hair towel on the floor in favor of rooting around for his cell phone.

“What?  No, there’s just the one,” she told him, settling on the edge of his bed, her knee drawn up, her other foot still on the floor.

“No, there’s not,” he told her.  “At least, I’m almost positive there’s not.”

“Who are you calling?” she challenged as he scrolled through the contacts in his phone.

“The one person who’ll know for sure,” he replied, hitting the button to send the call.

It only rang twice before the call connected.  “Rinji . . . Your mother tells me that you’re in Russia . . .”

“I am . . . Ojii-san, I was looking over Demyanov-sama’s books, and I was hoping you could tell me something . . .”

Sesshoumaru sent the call to video.  It took a few seconds for the feed to kick over.  “Faine’s books?  Why are you doing that?”

“He asked me to look at them,” Saori said, stretching out on her side to slip into frame beside Rinji, who had sat down on the other side of the bed.  “He thought maybe I’d be able to help him figure out a way to repurpose funds or to move things around so to make things a little easier, but—”

“I’ve been looking at them all night, and I realized . . . You deposit a stipend annually into each of the tai-youkai’s business accounts, don’t you?”

Sesshoumaru’s eyes narrowed.  “Strictly speaking, it’s not from me.  It’s from my office, but yes . . . Why?”

“That’s what I thought,” Rinji muttered.  “Demyanov-sama’s not getting them.  In fact,” he said, quickly rifling through the first one, “he never has gotten one—not one, not ever.”

“Impossible,” Sesshoumaru growled—or as close to a true growl as he ever would get, anyway.  “The transfers are automatic—the annual investment interest from the Inu no Taisho account is always disbursed.”

“Yeah, and another thing,” Rinji went on.  “Demyanov-sama only seems to use his personal account for everything—so it’s no wonder that he’s running so low on funds.  He makes a good profit from his distillery, but he’s using that, along with the money that was left to him, and he’s almost broke.  If he were only paying his own personal expenses out of the account, he’d be dead damn rich.  Paying for all the youkai services, too?  It’s a miracle he hasn’t gone broke already.”

“Rinji, I’m telling you, there are two accounts.  Alexei called me and asked me to take care of changing everything over for Faine before he stepped away, and I did as he requested.”

Rinji nodded.  “All right.  Is there a way to get Demyanov-sama the information he needs to access that account?  The amount of money in that one has to be staggering by now . . . He’s been tai-youkai for over fifteen years, and he’s never once drawn any funds from it . . .”

Sesshoumaru sighed—a strange and foreign sound, coming from him.  “I’ll gather the information he’ll need and bring it with me when we fly in for the tai-youkai summit . . . I think I need to have a talk with Faine, anyway . . .”

“See you then.”

“Bye, ojii-chan,” Saori called out just before the connection ended.  Turning her frown upon Rinji, she slowly shook her head.  “Nii-chan . . . What does all of this mean?”

Letting out a heavy breath, Rinji paused as he idly finger-combed his still-dampened hair.  “It means that Fai’s used funds he shouldn’t have had to in order to pay for all the services.  There’s always been a business account . . .” Seeing the confusion still heavy in Saori’s expression, he quickly shook his head.  “Ojii-san has an account—a trust fund, I guess you could call it.  That’s basically what it is.  I’ve heard him talk about it with Toga-oji-san before.  You know how your trust fund generates enough in interest and profit from the investments that you don’t ever have to actually dip into yours?  It’s the same idea.  The profits and interest from that account is divided annually between all the jurisdictions and deposited for that year’s expenses—everything that is involved with providing services or seeing that necessities are paid out . . . Russia is no different, but for some reason, Demyanov-sama doesn’t even seem to realize that this account even exists.”

“What kind of dividends are we talking about here?” she asked, slowly nodding as she considered everything he’d told her.  “If it’s enough to fund all youkai services . . .”

Rinji nodded, too.  “I don’t know, exactly, but it would stand to reason if we’re looking at a staggering amount of money, just for a single year—more than enough to fund all of Russia’s programs and then some.  He sighed, glancing at the stack of ledgers once more.  “Let me keep these a little longer,” he said.  “I’m going to break it down and figure out how much Demyanov-sama needs to be reimbursed since he’s paid it all out of his own private funds.”

She nodded and sat up.  “Okay . . . Get dressed, and we can go tell him all of this,” she said.  “Or you can . . . You’re the one who figured it out.”

Glancing down, he snorted.  He’d entirely forgotten that he was running around in nothing more than a towel.  “All right,” he told her.  “Get out of here, then, so I can get dressed, and I’ll go on down and talk to him.”

She hopped up with a giggle, hurrying over to give him a quick hug before dashing over to the door.

He smiled a little wearily as she closed the door in her wake.  Hopefully, this would help to alleviate a lot of the stress that Demyanov had to be feeling . . .


Crossing his arms over his chest, Fai frowned, shook his head slowly as he shifted his gaze from Rinji to Saori and back again.  What he’d been told . . . Was it some kind of weird and really bad joke . . .? “Wh . . .? What . . .?”

Rinji stood near the fireplace, mirroring Fai’s stance.  “Ojii-san set it up long ago,” he explained slowly, carefully.  “I don’t know when, exactly, he set up the Inu no Taisho fund, but I remember him saying that it was originally collections of things that he’d amassed over time: things that were gifted to him or that he’d acquired in the defeat of certain enemies . . . Lands and antiques . . . All kinds of things.  At some point, he sold off most of it, created the Inu no Taisho fund.  Then he invested parts of it, let some of it draw steady interest.  It’s grown to the point that it funds itself; that every year when the account is audited, the earned interest and the investment dividends are automatically divided between all the jurisdictions in the world, yours included.  It’s a secondary account that should be used to pay all of the things that run your social services—everything that has to do with the office of the tai-youkai . . . Everything that you’ve paid from your private accounts . . . Those things should have come out of this one.  Your money was never meant to fund the office you hold.”

Fai shook his head again, still not quite able to grasp the enormity of just what he was being told.  “But I’ve never . . . I was never given any information regarding a second account.”

Rinji shrugged.  “I don’t know the technicalities.  Ojii-san said that your father asked him to see that all his accounts were turned over to you, and he said that he did that.  I don’t know why you never received the information you needed . . . Maybe it was a bank oversight.  After all, they’d have been the ones to actually change everything over.  It would have been their responsibility to send the necessary paperwork to you.”

Letting out a deep breath, Fai covered his mouth with his hand.  “And all this time, I’ve been worried and wondering, trying to figure out how I was going to pay for . . .” He grimaced as his temper spiked.  It took him a minute to get it back under control—righteous indignation that he’d been beating his head against the proverbial wall, and all along . . .

Rinji smiled.  To Fai, it seemed like the kind of expression that one might get when one was trying to placate someone else.  “I’m going to go through your ledgers again.  Once ojii-san gets the information to you, there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t reimburse yourself for all the money you’ve paid out on behalf of your office.  I’ll get everything down, send it to ojii-san to be approved, but I don’t see that he’ll have a problem with that, either.”

“Uh, thanks,” Fai said.

Rinji nodded, letting his arms drop as he headed for the office door.  “Before that, however, I think I’m going to get some sleep.”

“Thank you, nii-chan,” Saori called after him.  Rinji lifted a hand to acknowledge her, but he didn’t stop, letting himself out of the room and closing the door behind himself.

“I’m . . . kind of glad that I asked nii-chan to look everything over,” she admitted when Fai remained silent.  “I might have figured out the same thing he did, but it would have taken me a bit longer.”

Flopping down in a nearby chair, Fai leaned forward, letting his face fall into his open hands.

To be honest, he wasn’t sure, what to think, not really.  On the one hand, he certainly was relieved enough.  On the other, though . . . Just how the hell did an account that large, end up being completely overlooked?

Saori wandered behind him, reaching over the back of the chair to rub his shoulders, and he groaned softly.  “You . . . You’re not happy about this?” she asked quietly, a little reluctantly, like she wasn’t sure just how he was going to respond to her.

He made a face, trying to shove away the unreasonable irritation that still plagued him.  “No, I am . . . I should be . . . I just feel entirely incompetent, if you want to know the truth.”

“You’re hardly incompetent,” she corrected him gently, her hands, kneading his shoulders.  “How would you have known about the second account if no one had told you, right?”

He sighed.  “I’m going to find out . . . Someone had to have known something.  Sesshoumaru . . . Rinji said that he asked the bank to sign everything over to me, so they’d have known about it . . .”

“Maybe,” she agreed in a rather philosophical kind of tone.  “And there was nothing about the second account when they delivered all the information?”

“Evgeni brought that stuff to me,” he replied.  Then he shook his head again, as though to clear away his thoughts.  “Maybe it was a simple oversight,” he ventured at length.  Letting out another deep breath, he caught her wrist, pulled her around the chair and into his lap, slipping his arms around her, resting his chin on her head when she relaxed against him.  Simply wishing to draw a measure of calm from her, he deliberately drew a few deep breaths, willed away the questions, the anger . . . Concentrating instead on the feel of her youki, the sweetness that was her, he closed his eyes for a moment, breathed her in deep.  “I’ll call the bank,” he finally said.  “I think I’ll take a day or two, though—try to focus on the positives—if I can.”

Toying with the buttons of his shirt—she didn’t unfasten them—Saori smiled up at him.  “I guess you can afford to keep the orphanage for real now.”

He nodded.  “Maybe.  I still would like to see as many of them placed into their own homes as possible.”

“Me, too,” she agreed.

There was simply something about her that soothed him, and he . . .

He loved that about her . . .


“Oh . . . Oh, that’s just . . . Isn’t that simply precious, don’t you think?”

“Precious enough that it kind of makes you want to puke.”

“Should we be, uh, staring at them . . .? It feels a little . . . wrong . . .”

“Well, if you’re worried that he’s going to get all bent out of shape and declare war, at least he’s got her, pining him down, so you’d at least get that much of a head start . . .”

“My sister isn’t to be used as a human shield, you realize.”

“. . . Saori’s your sister . . .?”

“Of course, she’s my sister.  She looks just like me.”

A very loud snort.

“. . . Oh, uh . . . but she . . . She really doesn’t . . .”

“What the hell do you three want?” Fai grumbled without moving and without opening his eyes.  At some point, he’d fallen asleep with Saori—a huge mistake, apparently . . .

Yerik chuckled.  “Sleeping on the job, Fai?” he deadpanned.

“Do you often sleep in your office?” Rinji asked.

“It’s a very precarious position you occupy, Your Grace,” Konstantin remarked.  “I’m not entirely sure that I can endorse what you’re doing in here right now . . .”

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” Fai pointed out.  “Is this really any of your concerns?”

“The Asian tai-youkai, fast asleep in his office,” Yerik went on, apparently deciding that having a death wish was in order.

“You know that anyone could just walk right in here, and they’d find you asleep—with my sister,” Rinji added, leaning back as he crossed his arms over his chest.

Konstantin nodded slowly, almost sagely.  “His Grace is a good and fair tai-youkai—a good and fair tai-youkai who snores . . .”

Fai snorted.  “I don’t snore.”

Rinji shrugged.  “Well, you do—but she does, too, so I guess it’s a match made in heaven—or hell . . .”

Konstantin turned suddenly, stared hard at Rinji.  “Is she really your sister?”

“Yes.  Yes, she is.  When she was an infant, she refused to sleep anywhere but on my chest, so I know first-hand that she does, in fact, snore . . . Let’s just hope she’s outgrown her habit of passing gas on me, too . . .”

“Nii-chan!” Saori groaned, sitting up straight and smashing her hands over her mouth, proving that she, too, had woken up at some point or another, and had just been playing opossum, too.

Fai cleared his throat.  “I can’t say I’ve ever noticed her doing such a thing, no.”

Saori groaned again and hopped up off of Fai’s lap, only to scurry over to the door as fast as she could without breaking into an actual run. “Baka!” she blurted as she slammed out of the office.  The word and the crack echoed in her wake.

Rinji grinned, entirely unrepentant, and why should he be when Fai was the one who would have to coax her out of her embarrassment later on . . .? “Okay, Kostya.  He’s awake,” he said, gesturing at Fai, who still hadn’t bothered to get out of the chair.

“Is everything all right, Kostya?” Fai asked, opting to ignore Rinji’s commentary, at least, for the moment.

Rinji chuckled.  Yerik flopped down on the sofa, eyes sparkling since he made no bones about the idea that he found the entire thing to be amusing as all hell.

“It’s fine,” Konstantin said.  “Your Grace!  I am here to continue our challenge to find out who is the manliest in all of Russia!”

“Oh, that again,” Yerik muttered, slowly shaking his head though his obvious amusement hadn’t waned at all.

“Wait . . . continue?  They’ve done this before?” Rinji asked, peering back at Yerik, who was still sprawled out on the sofa.

“At least there’s no homemade vodka this time,” Yerik quipped.  “We can be thankful for that, at least . . .”

“The jug is in my car!” Konstantin bellowed.  “And this time, I have brought the gorodki!”

Fai snorted.  “I am not going to— gorodki, you say?”

Yerik sighed, then chuckled.  “Come on, Rinji.  This should be interesting, at the very least . . .”

Rinji spared him a rather foreboding look.  “What’s gorodki?”

“It’s a game,” Yerik said.  “I guess you could say it’s kind of like bowling and horseshoes, put together . . . The goal is to take out the gorodki in the fewest number of throws.”

Rinji blinked.  “It’s a game?”

Yerik grinned, hauling himself to his feet once more.  “It used to be.  Apparently, it’s now a measure of a man’s manliness . . .”

Konstantin grunted.  “A manly game!  Now, come, Your Grace! Today is the day that we shall prove who the manliest man in Russia truly is!”

Fai considered, trying to talk Konstantin out of it for a few minutes.  Then again, if all it took to make the big man happy was a game of gorodki, then who was he to complain?

‘Uh huh . . . because you aren’t even remotely interested in the game, right?’

Fai didn’t respond to that, but he did chuckle softly as he followed the others out of his office.