InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Years Pass On ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 4 )

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha or anything related except for this fanfiction and the events that occur therein

Chapter Three

I continued to make my way in the general direction of the shrine, but now I was a great deal more distracted. The implications of feeling so great a jyaki in Tokyo made me very nervous. Tokyo was the closest thing I had to a real home (though my true home had disappeared long ago) and there was something there, something I couldn't quite put my finger on, that I was willing to protect with my life. Maybe it was the shrine. I'd always thought so, but now I wasn't so sure of it. Sure, the shrine was my past, but now that I stopped to think about it, my past had never really been all that important to me. Of course, I'd had friends and as much of a childhood as was possible when one can't remember anything before the age of nineteen, but that was all gone now. I'd managed to accept that a long time ago, as I'd accepted the fact that I don't age. Perhaps I was only forming awry conclusions from lack of sleep produced by a combination of business stress, jet lag, and the general insomnia I'd always suffered from, but it seemed that there might be another reason I'd saved the shrine from annihilation.

A completely off-center conclusion flitted across my mind and I smiled a bit at the absurdity. Perhaps I'd only been doing my job as the Kami of the shrine. The shrine's guardian spirit was Inuyasha, the hanyou that I was named for who had been the local hero of the original Tokyo. That fact has somehow been lost in the antiquity of time, during the hundred-odd years between my first departure from Japan and when I finally returned. It was funny, although we weren't related in any way, our fates were somehow intertwined, with no real connection save for our names. I have very unclear origins, due to my peculiar amnesia concerning my past. My first friends, who I met shortly after I became aware of my existence, Sango, Miroku, and Shippou, had been the companions of the hanyou and the reincarnated miko, who had disappeared as well. I've come to doubt whether or not she ever existed, but that wasn't really important. My thoughts were coming faster now. I felt like I was hovering near an important conclusion, maybe even the answer to the great puzzle that is my existence.

I have no memories of my life before I appeared in the Sengoku Jidai era, in a thick forest not far from the feudal Tokyo. I appeared in Inuyasha's Forest, actually. As I wandered around with a sword that I couldn't use, a demon exterminator named Sango found me. That's another thing that connects me to the Hanyou Inuyasha - somehow I gained possession of his legendary demon blade, which is the Tetsusaiga that I took out of the security box earlier, though being human, I can't really use it. I have no idea where I came from, and why I'm different from other people. I did appear within years of the hanyou's disappearance. I don't know what happened to him myself. Miroku wouldn't tell me, even though he knew. Inuyasha had been a close friend of his, and perhaps it was difficult for him to talk about it. Either way, Inuyasha is the kami of the shrine of the Shikon no Tama, now known as the Higurashi Shrine, and he was listed as deceased, which might be some indication. Perhaps I am, in some way, his replacement, though I could never come close to his legendary strength and cunning.

My piecing together of scattered memories and information that had been swimming around in my mind for centuries was interrupted when I found myself standing in the courtyard of the Higurashi shrine. I looked around appraisingly. It seemed familiar to me, though it had been more that twelve years since I'd last been here. I glanced about and caught sight of my tree, the Goshinboku, and decided to conduct further investigations from there. The Goshinboku, as I've previously stated, has been around longer than I have, but as it translates to the God Tree, it is no ordinary tree. The Goshinboku is supposed to have many magical properties, and for some reason, I've always been drawn to it. I even heard once, long ago, that it had the power to reach across time because of its long life, though I don't know how true that is. I would have to be careful if I wanted to present myself openly to the family because I look exactly like the man who `bought' the shrine decades ago. Therefore, I wasn't going to tempt fate and draw suspicion on myself by showing up in the middle of the night. I had just settled myself in the upper branches when the door opened. I was so surprised that I almost fell out of the tree, and I was glad I'd thought to hide myself.

It was the girl. It had been about fourteen years since I'd last seen her, and she was about college age now. I was so busy thanking the kami Inuyasha that I'd thought to hide myself that I almost didn't notice that she seemed to be making a beeline for my hiding place. Wait - she wasn't one of those shrine maidens that had actual spiritual powers, was she? That might be a problem, only she shouldn't be able to sense me, since I was human, and not a particularly malicious one. Still, I wasn't going to take any chances. I shifted so as to make myself as invisible as possible.

She stopped just below me. Hidden well I might be, but if she looked up, she was going to see me, darkness or no. But she seemed a little distracted. I took the opportunity to get a good look at her. She'd really grown up rather nicely. She was very pretty, not beautiful, because to be beautiful is to be untouchable, but very pretty. She had black hair that fell some inches past her shoulders, and brown eyes with a sad expression. Around her neck she wore a chain with a large pink stone in the shape of a perfect sphere. She reached up on her tiptoes to touch an almost invisible hole in the side of the tree, and after a moment, she broke into tears. "Why did you do it?" She whispered. "I'll never understand." There was a pause. "I miss you, Inuyasha." She whispered finally, and walked slowly back towards the house.

I almost fell out of the tree again. Inuyasha? She's obviously had no idea I was there, and even if she had, she couldn't have known my name. She hadn't been talking to me, but there had only been one other Inuyasha in existence that I knew of, and that was the Hanyou, the kami of the shrine that was the girl's home. Once I was sure she was gone, I investigated the hole she'd been basically talking to. It almost looked as if it could have been made from a longbow bolt, and it was fairly high up on the tree, indicating that it had been there for a long time. I touched the hole, wondering if the arrowhead remained. It wasn't there anymore, but something more interesting happened.

-Flash!-

"Inuyasha!" I heard it clearly in the background, but I was more concerned with what I was holding in my hand at the moment, trying to convince myself that this victory was more that enough to make up for the betrayal I'd experienced. Then, an arrow pierced me, cutting right through my heart, and pinning me to the tree - the Goshinboku.

I dropped the jewel that I'd stolen after she'd betrayed me, and looked at her. "You bitch, how could you?" I stuttered out as the sealing spell took hold. Then the world disappeared.

I snapped back into reality. "What was that?" I whispered. That girl that had shot me, that was the girl from the shrine. As quickly as the idea hit me, I discounted it. They'd looked alike, certainly, but there had been differences, including the not-so-subtle fact that the girl with the longbow had been wearing the traditional garb of a miko - a priestess from the Sengoku Jidai, and that the background had been that of the village that I had once called home, a village that no longer existed.

I stumbled away from the tree, still in shock from the sheer vividness of my vision, and managed to make it down the rather impressive stairs of the shrine more or less in one piece. But my mind was working again. Though I had appeared in Tokyo not long after the hanyou Inuyasha had left it, I still had no more of a cursory knowledge of him. Most of what I knew I had learned from the villagers, because those who knew the details, my friends, had refused to speak of their adventures most of the time. But I did know that Inuyasha been pinned to the Goshinboku by the priestess Kikyo after he stole the Shikon no Tama. He'd remained that way for fifty years until her reincarnation had released him. The reincarnated miko had appeared almost as abruptly and inexplicably as I had. Is that what I'd seen? The moment when Kikyo, the Guardian of the Shikon no Tama sealed the hanyou Inuyasha, the hanyou that she loved. He'd been tricked into stealing the jewel and she into killing him because of a youkai who lead them to believe each had betrayed the other. That would explain why my- his thoughts had been filled with the pain of betrayal.

But what about the girl? It was because of her that I'd had the vision at all. Why had she been crying? Then I remembered. I'd almost lost my perch in the high branches of the tree because she'd said my name, though she obviously hadn't been talking to me. She couldn't-

No, that was impossible.

The daughter of the Higurashi Shrine couldn't possibly be the reincarnated miko from the legends. All that had taken place more than 500 years in the past. But- it was really the only thing that made any sense.

I smacked myself - literally- to bring myself to my senses. I was a businessman, not a medieval peasant. I had the gift, or at least the training, of logic, and elementary logic said that the daughter of the shrine couldn't possibly been involved in the adventure concerning the reappearance and eventual permanent disappearance of the Shikon no Tama, 500 years before she'd even become a thought in the minds of her parents. Then, being the combination of the logical businessman and the medieval peasant that I was, I muttered something to myself about witchcraft, and firmly resolved not to draw any conclusions until I had more information. I wandered off toward the hotel in a moderately - all right very - confused state.