After Kagome had greeted the rest of her family and had taken the time to fully enjoy modern life once more (bathing, sleeping, television, you know, what we can’t live without), she decided to take a walk through Tokyo on her own. It had been a while since she had last been shopping and, well, a girl can’t go too long without shopping! ^_^

Kagome waved her hand high in the air as she saw her friends walking down the sidewalk in her direction. "Eri! Yuka! Ayumi!"

The trio of girls looked up at Kagome, surprised that their bed-ridden friend was out in the daylight. In the blink of an eye, they were right next to Kagome, looking for any tell-tale signs of sickness. Eri cocked her head sideways as she looked at Kagome’s left arm, noticing a long thin scab. "What happened there, Kagome? Geez, it looks like you were attacked..."

Kagome looked down at her arm, slowly remembering how the injury had come to be. She had decided to push Inu Yasha out of the way of what would have been a fatal attack. She was lucky that all she did get was that gash. Only moments later, Sesshoumaru had come rushing out of Naraku’s mansion to make sure that she was okay. Sesshoumaru… There she went again, thinking about him, wondering what really had happened to him. "I’d rather not even talk about it."

Yuka pushed Eri out of the way as she held movie tickets up in front of Kagome’s face. "You have so totally got to come with us to see this movie!"

Kagome stared blankly at the tickets, seeing that the movie was titled ‘My Lord Romeo’. "What’s it about?"

Ayumi stared at Kagome in disbelief. "Oh… My… GOD!!! You must have been really sick not to have seen any of the previews for this!"

Eri shrugged as she continued walking down the sidewalk. "It’s set in feudal times. The basic outline that we’ve seen so far is that the Lord of some castle has to rely on the help of a slave girl. They fall for each other even though it is so totally unheard of for someone of his class to be even speaking with a slave girl like her. It has that one hot guy that was in that last movie we saw—you know the guy who voices on that one anime? Which one was it…?"

Kagome reached for her purse to see if she had enough money with her to pay for a movie ticket. "Well, I guess I’ve got enough…"

Yuka waved her hand back and forth at Kagome. "No way. We haven’t all gotten together in over a month—there’s, like, no way I’m gonna let you pay for this one Kagome."

Kagome smiled in gratitude—truthfully, she wasn’t at all looking forward to seeing a movie. She stopped, though, when she thought she had heard a familiar voice from behind herself. "Kagome…"

Kagome whirled around, expecting to see Sesshoumaru behind her. However, the man behind her was anyone but Sesshoumaru. "Hojo-kun?"

"Kagome, it has been so long since I’ve seen you… I heard about your illness, but when I went to visit you the doctor told me that no one was allowed to see you… Did you get the therapeutic chair cushion that I sent? How about those chocolates? Were those okay? I didn’t know if you liked dark chocolate or not…" Hojo blushed as Kagome stared at him, thoroughly confused.

In order to save face, Kagome smiled and gestured Hojo to follow as she continued walking with the other girls. "That cushion was very helpful, Hojo-kun… And I love dark chocolate!"

Ayumi turned around and smiled as she saw that Kagome and Hojo still seemed to be getting along well—even though they had gone over a month without seeing one another. "Hojo-kun, we’re going to see ‘My Lord Romeo’! Do you want to come?"

Hojo’s eyes shone with excitement. "I’d love to! Kagome, why didn’t you tell me?"

Kagome shifted uneasily as she feinted a smile. [I don’t really want to…]

Only an hour later, they were all deep into the plot of the movie. Kagome found herself liking the plot in spite of herself. [This is… painfully ironic…]

The girl was a slave, indeed. The lord was facing war and happened to be short on aid. He asked the girl to help in the fight for her lord’s kingdom. He had been rigid and faithful to tradition and society for quite a while, but steadily fell in love with the slave girl. As the movie began to wind down to an end, the girl slayed the enemy’s leader, but lost sight of the lord during the fight. The scene flashed and showed that the lord lay dying all alone in the enemy’s stronghold while the girl left, assuming that her lord had been killed in battle. The girl later died of other causes and met with her beloved lord in the afterlife.

Eri, Yuka, Ayumi, and Hojo began to walk out of the theater with smiles on their faces. Hojo stopped, though, when he noticed that Kagome was still sitting in her seat. He placed his hand on her shoulder and then noticed that she was crying. [What a sensitive girl… it’s things like this that drive me crazy about her…] "Kagome… it’s okay, it was just a movie."

"Sesshou-kun…" Kagome continued crying into her hands as Hojo helped her to stand. She reluctantly dried her tears and followed him out of the theater, not noticing that his arm stayed hooked over her shoulders.

Hojo’s eyes narrowed as he thought over the name that he heard Kagome whisper. "I thought you said you didn’t know about this movie… It was inspired by the legend of a warrior lord from the Fifteen-hundreds by a similar name… Gee, I wish I could remember what the guy’s name was…"

Kagome looked up into Hojo’s eyes, in shock. "Tell me more about this legend…"

"Are you sure that you don’t know? I mean, golly, there’s a documentary about the guy on TV all of the time." Hojo grinned as he stopped in front of a small bookstore. "Here, I’ll buy you a copy of the official documentary about him…"

Kagome followed shortly behind Hojo, intrigued. She gasped as Hojo handed her the book with a picture of Sesshoumaru’s castle, though notably aged, on the front cover.

Kagome’s jaw dropped as she flipped to the next page, seeing the aforementioned portrait. "Sesshoumaru…"

Hojo stared at Kagome in bafflement as she flipped through the book, wide-eyed and whispering to herself. He looked at an identical copy of the book and found nothing nearly as interesting as Kagome made it seem. Finally, he became bored and led Kagome to the cash register with the book still in her hands.

After he had paid for the book and they were leaving the store, Hojo raised a curious eyebrow at Kagome. "What is it about that old legend that interests you so?"

Kagome looked down at the white plastic sack in her hands that held the book that Hojo had just purchased for her. She very well knew that she couldn’t tell Hojo the true reason. "Well… he’s just very… fascinating. I mean, the fact that historians are unsure whether or not he was human—it’s just amazing!"

Hojo stared at Kagome in disbelief. "You mean that you believe in demons?"

Well, this much Kagome could explain… "Yokai? Of course I do! Why do you think that people in the olden times relied so heavily on miko? It wasn’t just for their spiritual support, Hojo-kun."

"So then why aren’t there any demons now?"

Kagome shrugged. She pointed to a few passing cars as though the answer should have been obvious. "Things can change very quickly. Over the last century, Japan has experienced a technological boom, perhaps yokai have disguised themselves. Or, what about the atomic bombs?"

"That wasn’t dropped here, Kagome."

Kagome nodded, suddenly deep in thought. "You know, there have been yokai and bad spirits in this time, now that I think about it. A boy in Souta’s class—he was in a coma for several months and his sister’s ghost kept trying to kill him because she thought that her mother left her to die because she didn’t love the girl. There was also an ancient Noh mask that we had to exorcise—it was possessed by some evil spirits—around the same time."

Hojo watched Kagome in sudden interest. "Wow, that sounds so exciting, Kagome-chan! Gee, I wish that I could see things like that…"

Kagome shook her head as she grabbed Hojo’s hand, as though to emphasize a point. "You never want to see those kinds of things. They can destroy your soul before you know what’s happening."

Hojo waved his free hand back and forth, as though to fan away Kagome’s words. "Ah, that’s not possible, Kagome… That’s just legends that are used to scare little kids."

Kagome shivered as a cold wind blew over her uncovered arms. [I only wish that it was all a legend to scare little kids… but I can’t tell Hojo that much. It’s sort of funny, though… this is the first real conversation that I’ve had with Hojo. Really, he isn’t all that bad. Maybe… just maybe, when I complete the Shikon jewel, I’ll come back here—forever—and give him a chance… yes, a real chance.]

Hojo sighed as he saw that they had already walked all the way to Kagome’s house. He led her to the base of the steps before he broke her from her thoughts. "Kagome-chan, you’re home… do you want me to walk you up the steps?"

Kagome looked up the stairs, which suddenly seemed too ominous to climb. She nodded sheepishly. Hojo gladly walked with her, talking about how beautiful the flowers were and how wondrous the foliage that her grandfather had long ago planted looked. Kagome smiled and nodded, pretending to care as she looked up to the top of the stairs, waiting for something, but was not sure what.

Finally, she reached the top of the steps to see Kikyo waiting for her. The miko made long, quick strides to Kagome, seeming to ignore Hojo’s presence. "You are needed elsewhere—where were you?"

"I was just out with some friends…" Kagome blushed furiously as she realized that she still had hold of Hojo’s hand. "Hojo-kun, I’ll see you later, okay?"

Hojo nodded, for once taking a hint, and began to walk away. "See you later, Kagome-chan!"

Kagome waved and watched as Hojo left. As soon as she was sure that he was out of earshot, she spun around. She shot Kikyo a ‘You’d better have an explanation’ glance and began walking towards her house.

Kikyo was quick to follow Kagome, though she still didn’t seem too happy about it. "Inu Yasha is in your room, waiting for you. Said he was getting a bad feeling about something all of the sudden. Said Sayaka took sick out of nowhere—a bad omen, if you ask me. You need to go back there—something is terribly wrong. Something is starting to happen that shouldn’t happen. That book in your hands—it didn’t used to exist. That movie your friends just took you to—it was never made until you came back. There’s something that has gone wrong in the past and if you don’t fix it, everything in this world may change."

Kagome, wide-eyed, took a few more steps and then ran into the house and up to her room. She dropped the bag with the book just inside the door as she saw Inu Yasha looking over the things on her desk. She finally dropped to her knees, her bangs shadowing her face so that Inu Yasha couldn’t see. "It’s about him, isn’t it?"

Inu Yasha stared at Kagome for a moment, confused. He became even more confused as Kagome reached into the plastic sack that she had brought home with her and threw a book to him. "Look in the book. There’s too much that points to it. All of the sudden Sesshou-kun is some well-known legend… it doesn’t make sense… None of this makes any damn sense…"

Inu Yasha took a quick glance at the book and then set it down on her desk—like he could read it anyhow… "Kagome, we have to go back now. We think that maybe he’s still alive, but we don’t know where… Kouga said that the antidote you gave him must not have worked, because he was still in pain when he rescued Kouga."

Kagome nodded as she looked to her bed, where her mother had left her kimono after it had been washed, dried, and folded. "I’ll go change and then we’ll leave…"

Inu Yasha nodded and clutched Tetsusaiga as Kagome took her kimono and walked to the bathroom down the hall. Only moments later, she returned, fully dressed in her kimono with her bow and a few arrows over her shoulder. [Sesshoumaru… I’ll find you… I’ll save you from whatever has happened to you…]

~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ -^_^- ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~

A.N. Well, another chapter, another four or five left for sure! (Unless I can think of yet another plot twist to put poor Kagome through… then it’ll be ‘til Christmas that I’ll take to finish this… ^_~)