Categories > Anime/Manga > Inuyasha > Being Sesshoumaru, Being Human
Chapter 2
Kagome Higurashi gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and uncovered the word in the right column of the study sheet she had made for herself. “Yes!” she cheered, glad she had gotten another word right. This English was a tough language, and she was having a difficult time with the vocabulary. It didn’t help her studying any when Inuyasha complained about her saying things he didn’t understand, either. Even after knowing her for so long, he still didn’t understand the concept of tests.
Three more words later, Kagome was finished with her vocabulary review. She sighed, stretched, and pushed back from her desk, turning to find Inuyasha poking the contents of her backpack. “There’s nothing interesting in there, you know. We took all the food out before coming back here.”
“Ah, why’d you do that?” he whined. “I’m hungry, and I can’t eat paper!” He waved a letter in a white envelope before her eyes.
Kagome took the letter and glanced at the envelope. Oh yes, THAT letter. She had almost forgotten about it. “I have to go give this to Mama anyway, so I’ll see if dinner is ready. Wait here.” With that, she slipped from the room, headed down the stairs, and made her way into the kitchen.
“Oh, Kagome, are you finished studying?” her mother asked.
“Yes! Ooh, and dinner smells so good…Oh, Mama, this is for you, from my English teacher.”
Kagome’s mother stopped her cooking just long enough to take the letter and read it, trusting Kagome to watch over the food. Finally, she sighed. “Well, it’s about all of your absences from school…but it can’t be helped. You have your duties in both worlds, don’t you?”
Kagome nodded. “I think she’s suspicious, though…she said something about my crazy illnesses.”
Her mother patted her shoulder and took over the last few minutes of cooking. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Kagome. You’re going to be in school for a while now, right? You explained about your exams to Inuyasha, and he’s just going to have to accept it. Your teacher will be fine.”
The teenager nodded, gathering the dinner plates to set the table. In her heart, though, she wasn’t so sure that her English teacher would be so understanding. She had enough problems without worrying about delinquent students.
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Theresa Hyland sighed, eyes scanning her near-to-bursting classroom. Almost time for class to start…would Kagome Higurashi show up to school today? She hoped so, for the girl’s sake. Kagome didn’t seem to know it, but she was barely keeping her head above water in all of her school subjects. She couldn’t afford to miss another day. Then again, missing a day of study in this classroom probably didn’t hurt her chances of getting into a good high school that much.
Though she didn’t like to admit it, Theresa too was just barely keeping her head above water. She had come to Tokyo in July as an assistant English teacher on the JET program, and had been assigned a spot in this nice, quiet school working along side the elderly English teacher, Mr. Yamamoto. She had adored him -- he was a stern teacher, but he was also quite patient with his students and his slightly disoriented assistant. Unlike many of the teachers her JET peers had been assigned to work with, Mr. Yamamoto encouraged Theresa to come to him with new ideas, and he was usually willing to try them out. They were supposed to have started a revamped English Club, but then Mr. Yamamoto had fallen ill early in September and had wound up in the hospital. Since then Theresa had been the only one in charge of the classroom while the school scrambled to find a replacement. Their search was going poorly, leaving the American JET in a very bad spot. Plus, her students were confused -- they treated her with respect, certainly, but they had treated her differently as a mere assistant than they had every treated an actual teacher. Now, the assistant had become a temporary teacher. They had no idea what to make of her.
Her brown eyes narrowed at the sound of a new student entering the room, and she looked up just in time to see Kagome making her way to her desk in the middle of the room. Good. Maybe her letter to the girl’s mother had actually done some good. The other teachers had thought letters would be a pointless waste of time, but Theresa figured it never hurt to try.
Class went reasonably well that day, though there was some struggling during the vocabulary drill. Once again, Theresa felt her confidence in herself as a teacher slip. She was failing these kids. Really, they didn’t stand that much of a chance, having to rely on someone like her as their teacher. This wasn’t supposed to be here job. But there was no other choice. Finally, class ended, the students left, and Theresa called Kagome to the front of the room.
“I’m glad to see you today,” she said as the last of the students left the room. She could see the signs of motion outside the door indicating that students were busy moving between classrooms. “You spend an awful lot of time sick.”
Kagome shrugged. “I’m feeling better now, Hyland-san.”
Theresa raised an eyebrow. “You know, Kagome…you’re a smart girl, and you could be doing so much better than this, if you just came to class more often. And I have to admit, I’m highly suspicious of some of these illnesses your grandfather keeps claiming you get. Last time you were out because of an aneurism, and the time before that it was meningitis. Those are very serious problems, you know -- not the kind of thing you recover from in a few days.”
“Hehe,” Kagome muttered rubbing the back of her neck. “Grandfather must have misunderstood the doctors…”
Theresa just stared at her for a moment, then gave a defeated sigh. “I know I’m not the best teacher, Kagome. I try, but it’s hard for me. Success in school doesn’t just depend on the teacher, though. Just…be more careful and try not to miss any more classes, alright?”
“Sure!” the teenager said cheerfully. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Hyland-san!” And with that, she headed off to her next class, leaving Theresa to deal with a new group of students.
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Sesshoumaru glared down at the bowl of thin, nearly tasteless soup and the tough, leathery fish before him. One of the main disadvantages of being a human was that he had to eat regularly, something he discovered on his first day of being a human after nearly passing out from hunger. Too bad the village he currently called his temporary home lacked any good cooks, or the resources to find better food. Bah, this whole place was disgusting and dirty, the people incredibly unattractive, the work and the food so far beneath him as to be insulting. He was a daiyoukai, the oldest (and, as far as he was concerned, only legitimate) son of the great Inu no Taishou. He deserved better.
“Not hungry, Masuyo-san?” one of his dining companions asked. The man had a name, but Sesshoumaru couldn’t be bothered to remember it.
“This Se- cough This sort of food is…beneath me,” he said gravely. Something of the gravity he had hoped to achieve was lost, however, what with his voice not being as deep as it had been when he was a youkai.
The people around him fell quiet, though those farther away continued chatting amongst themselves. “What do you mean, it’s beneath you?” another man asked.
“I mean, I deserve better than this,” Sesshoumaru growled. “This food may be fit for the likes of you, but for someone like me to eat it…I wouldn’t be surprised if the heavens opened up and swallowed us whole, that’s how far removed from the proper order of the universe it would be for me to eat this.”
Silence…followed almost instantly by raucous laughter. “My, my, such fancy words from someone like you!” the first man exclaimed. “You think you’re some big prince or something? A great lord, maybe?”
“Where’s your castle, little prince?” someone else shouted. “Where are your servants?”
“Maybe you can hire us some entertainment tonight!”
“Why bother with that, he’s entertainment enough!”
Sesshoumaru pushed his food aside, stood, and drew his sword with a flourish, holding the tip so that it just touched the throat of his nearest heckler. “You dare speak about me like this?” he hissed.
A snort. “Just who the hell do you think you are? We took you into this village out of the kindness of our hearts, and this is how you treat us? You don’t even deserve to grovel at our feet, you filthy, ungrateful little vagabond.”
“I’ll teach you to speak to me that way!” Sesshoumaru shouted. Before anyone could even blink, the previously peaceful meal scene had turned into a violent brawl. Sesshoumaru got several good hits in, of course, but in the end none of that mattered. By nightfall he was once again homeless, looking for a warm place to sleep and plotting his path for the following day. Damn these pathetic humans…who did they think they were, treating him like this?
This went on for weeks until, one day, Sesshoumaru found himself in some vaguely familiar territory. He knew he hadn’t come here often in his youkai form, but for some reason, he felt like he had been here before. His eyes darted around, studying the surrounding forest for something that would tell him exactly where he was, when he saw it -- the Sacred Tree. That was it. He had been here almost fifty years ago to see his then-sealed brother, Inuyasha. Things had changed since then, but the area was still very familiar. Well, if he was near the Tree, that meant he was near a village, didn’t it? Sesshoumaru headed off in search of the village he seemed to remember was nearby, and it wasn’t long before he found it. And whom should he encounter upon entering the village but the old woman called Kaede, younger sister of the priestess Kikyou. Just his luck.
“Welcome, stranger. What brings you to these parts?” Kaede asked.
Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes and looked around. This was one of the nicer villages he had seen. Much more welcoming of strangers, if Kaede’s greeting was any indication. “I’m just a traveler,” he finally said. “Searching for something I lost.”
Kaede nodded gravely. “Can we help you find it?”
“Maybe,” he replied. “Can I stay here for the night, at least?”
“Of course. I have room. Come on, then.” With that, she turned and headed for her small hut, Sesshoumaru following close behind.
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Later that night, Kaede was woken up by…something. She wasn’t at all sure what it was, though. Were there youkai about? She glanced over at her guest (what had he said his name was? Oh, right, Masuyo Watanabe). He was sound asleep -- no way would she be able to wake him up easily. Well, she was hardly a helpless old woman, she could investigate herself. Collecting her bow and arrows, she slipped quietly from the hut and went in search of the disturbance.
It wasn’t long before Kaede stumbled upon it. It was a man, or at least, it looked like a man. But it glowed with an unearthly light she couldn’t remember having ever seen before. Kaede narrowed her eyes at it. “What manner of creature are you?”
“My apologies, Lady Kaede. I would come to you in a…less bright form…but I’m afraid that’s impossible. I’m a ghost. Specifically, I’m the ghost of the father of the young man sleeping in your hut.”
“Oh. Should I get him for you?”
He shook his head, making his long white ponytail sway. “There’s no need for that. It’s you I need to speak with. You see, I’m the ghost of a youkai. That young man in your hut is Sesshoumaru. You’ve heard the name, I take it?”
Kaede’s one eye widened. “Inuyasha’s older half-brother,” she said.
“Right. Now, at the moment he’s fairly harmless. You see…he went on something of a rampage not too long ago. It was bad, even by the standards of human-hating youkai. The last straw for me was when he raised his hand to strike Rin. That little girl has never done anything to harm him, she doesn’t deserve his wrath. Being dead gives me all sorts of advantages, like the ability to discuss things with other dead youkai -- even former enemies or people I didn’t know as well when I was alive. So, a group of us decided that Sesshoumaru needed to know more about what it’s like to be a human…and lo and behold there’s a way to turn him into a human. So that’s what we did. He’ll become a youkai again when he finds a human he cares about enough to potentially die for.”
Kaede nodded slowly. “Why is he here?”
“Well, he needs some way of surviving in this world.” Inu no Taishou sighed. “I hate to ask this of you, I truly do. But please, if you can, let him stay here. Teach him how to be a human. I wouldn’t ask this, but we’re desperate, and I know my other son thinks highly of you.”
“He can stay,” Kaede said. “I’ll watch over him. But he can only stay at my discretion. If he acts up again, he must leave.”
“Thank you, Kaede. Oh, and please don’t tell him I was here, or that you know the truth. I think it would be better that way.”
Kagome Higurashi gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and uncovered the word in the right column of the study sheet she had made for herself. “Yes!” she cheered, glad she had gotten another word right. This English was a tough language, and she was having a difficult time with the vocabulary. It didn’t help her studying any when Inuyasha complained about her saying things he didn’t understand, either. Even after knowing her for so long, he still didn’t understand the concept of tests.
Three more words later, Kagome was finished with her vocabulary review. She sighed, stretched, and pushed back from her desk, turning to find Inuyasha poking the contents of her backpack. “There’s nothing interesting in there, you know. We took all the food out before coming back here.”
“Ah, why’d you do that?” he whined. “I’m hungry, and I can’t eat paper!” He waved a letter in a white envelope before her eyes.
Kagome took the letter and glanced at the envelope. Oh yes, THAT letter. She had almost forgotten about it. “I have to go give this to Mama anyway, so I’ll see if dinner is ready. Wait here.” With that, she slipped from the room, headed down the stairs, and made her way into the kitchen.
“Oh, Kagome, are you finished studying?” her mother asked.
“Yes! Ooh, and dinner smells so good…Oh, Mama, this is for you, from my English teacher.”
Kagome’s mother stopped her cooking just long enough to take the letter and read it, trusting Kagome to watch over the food. Finally, she sighed. “Well, it’s about all of your absences from school…but it can’t be helped. You have your duties in both worlds, don’t you?”
Kagome nodded. “I think she’s suspicious, though…she said something about my crazy illnesses.”
Her mother patted her shoulder and took over the last few minutes of cooking. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Kagome. You’re going to be in school for a while now, right? You explained about your exams to Inuyasha, and he’s just going to have to accept it. Your teacher will be fine.”
The teenager nodded, gathering the dinner plates to set the table. In her heart, though, she wasn’t so sure that her English teacher would be so understanding. She had enough problems without worrying about delinquent students.
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Theresa Hyland sighed, eyes scanning her near-to-bursting classroom. Almost time for class to start…would Kagome Higurashi show up to school today? She hoped so, for the girl’s sake. Kagome didn’t seem to know it, but she was barely keeping her head above water in all of her school subjects. She couldn’t afford to miss another day. Then again, missing a day of study in this classroom probably didn’t hurt her chances of getting into a good high school that much.
Though she didn’t like to admit it, Theresa too was just barely keeping her head above water. She had come to Tokyo in July as an assistant English teacher on the JET program, and had been assigned a spot in this nice, quiet school working along side the elderly English teacher, Mr. Yamamoto. She had adored him -- he was a stern teacher, but he was also quite patient with his students and his slightly disoriented assistant. Unlike many of the teachers her JET peers had been assigned to work with, Mr. Yamamoto encouraged Theresa to come to him with new ideas, and he was usually willing to try them out. They were supposed to have started a revamped English Club, but then Mr. Yamamoto had fallen ill early in September and had wound up in the hospital. Since then Theresa had been the only one in charge of the classroom while the school scrambled to find a replacement. Their search was going poorly, leaving the American JET in a very bad spot. Plus, her students were confused -- they treated her with respect, certainly, but they had treated her differently as a mere assistant than they had every treated an actual teacher. Now, the assistant had become a temporary teacher. They had no idea what to make of her.
Her brown eyes narrowed at the sound of a new student entering the room, and she looked up just in time to see Kagome making her way to her desk in the middle of the room. Good. Maybe her letter to the girl’s mother had actually done some good. The other teachers had thought letters would be a pointless waste of time, but Theresa figured it never hurt to try.
Class went reasonably well that day, though there was some struggling during the vocabulary drill. Once again, Theresa felt her confidence in herself as a teacher slip. She was failing these kids. Really, they didn’t stand that much of a chance, having to rely on someone like her as their teacher. This wasn’t supposed to be here job. But there was no other choice. Finally, class ended, the students left, and Theresa called Kagome to the front of the room.
“I’m glad to see you today,” she said as the last of the students left the room. She could see the signs of motion outside the door indicating that students were busy moving between classrooms. “You spend an awful lot of time sick.”
Kagome shrugged. “I’m feeling better now, Hyland-san.”
Theresa raised an eyebrow. “You know, Kagome…you’re a smart girl, and you could be doing so much better than this, if you just came to class more often. And I have to admit, I’m highly suspicious of some of these illnesses your grandfather keeps claiming you get. Last time you were out because of an aneurism, and the time before that it was meningitis. Those are very serious problems, you know -- not the kind of thing you recover from in a few days.”
“Hehe,” Kagome muttered rubbing the back of her neck. “Grandfather must have misunderstood the doctors…”
Theresa just stared at her for a moment, then gave a defeated sigh. “I know I’m not the best teacher, Kagome. I try, but it’s hard for me. Success in school doesn’t just depend on the teacher, though. Just…be more careful and try not to miss any more classes, alright?”
“Sure!” the teenager said cheerfully. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Hyland-san!” And with that, she headed off to her next class, leaving Theresa to deal with a new group of students.
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Sesshoumaru glared down at the bowl of thin, nearly tasteless soup and the tough, leathery fish before him. One of the main disadvantages of being a human was that he had to eat regularly, something he discovered on his first day of being a human after nearly passing out from hunger. Too bad the village he currently called his temporary home lacked any good cooks, or the resources to find better food. Bah, this whole place was disgusting and dirty, the people incredibly unattractive, the work and the food so far beneath him as to be insulting. He was a daiyoukai, the oldest (and, as far as he was concerned, only legitimate) son of the great Inu no Taishou. He deserved better.
“Not hungry, Masuyo-san?” one of his dining companions asked. The man had a name, but Sesshoumaru couldn’t be bothered to remember it.
“This Se- cough This sort of food is…beneath me,” he said gravely. Something of the gravity he had hoped to achieve was lost, however, what with his voice not being as deep as it had been when he was a youkai.
The people around him fell quiet, though those farther away continued chatting amongst themselves. “What do you mean, it’s beneath you?” another man asked.
“I mean, I deserve better than this,” Sesshoumaru growled. “This food may be fit for the likes of you, but for someone like me to eat it…I wouldn’t be surprised if the heavens opened up and swallowed us whole, that’s how far removed from the proper order of the universe it would be for me to eat this.”
Silence…followed almost instantly by raucous laughter. “My, my, such fancy words from someone like you!” the first man exclaimed. “You think you’re some big prince or something? A great lord, maybe?”
“Where’s your castle, little prince?” someone else shouted. “Where are your servants?”
“Maybe you can hire us some entertainment tonight!”
“Why bother with that, he’s entertainment enough!”
Sesshoumaru pushed his food aside, stood, and drew his sword with a flourish, holding the tip so that it just touched the throat of his nearest heckler. “You dare speak about me like this?” he hissed.
A snort. “Just who the hell do you think you are? We took you into this village out of the kindness of our hearts, and this is how you treat us? You don’t even deserve to grovel at our feet, you filthy, ungrateful little vagabond.”
“I’ll teach you to speak to me that way!” Sesshoumaru shouted. Before anyone could even blink, the previously peaceful meal scene had turned into a violent brawl. Sesshoumaru got several good hits in, of course, but in the end none of that mattered. By nightfall he was once again homeless, looking for a warm place to sleep and plotting his path for the following day. Damn these pathetic humans…who did they think they were, treating him like this?
This went on for weeks until, one day, Sesshoumaru found himself in some vaguely familiar territory. He knew he hadn’t come here often in his youkai form, but for some reason, he felt like he had been here before. His eyes darted around, studying the surrounding forest for something that would tell him exactly where he was, when he saw it -- the Sacred Tree. That was it. He had been here almost fifty years ago to see his then-sealed brother, Inuyasha. Things had changed since then, but the area was still very familiar. Well, if he was near the Tree, that meant he was near a village, didn’t it? Sesshoumaru headed off in search of the village he seemed to remember was nearby, and it wasn’t long before he found it. And whom should he encounter upon entering the village but the old woman called Kaede, younger sister of the priestess Kikyou. Just his luck.
“Welcome, stranger. What brings you to these parts?” Kaede asked.
Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes and looked around. This was one of the nicer villages he had seen. Much more welcoming of strangers, if Kaede’s greeting was any indication. “I’m just a traveler,” he finally said. “Searching for something I lost.”
Kaede nodded gravely. “Can we help you find it?”
“Maybe,” he replied. “Can I stay here for the night, at least?”
“Of course. I have room. Come on, then.” With that, she turned and headed for her small hut, Sesshoumaru following close behind.
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Later that night, Kaede was woken up by…something. She wasn’t at all sure what it was, though. Were there youkai about? She glanced over at her guest (what had he said his name was? Oh, right, Masuyo Watanabe). He was sound asleep -- no way would she be able to wake him up easily. Well, she was hardly a helpless old woman, she could investigate herself. Collecting her bow and arrows, she slipped quietly from the hut and went in search of the disturbance.
It wasn’t long before Kaede stumbled upon it. It was a man, or at least, it looked like a man. But it glowed with an unearthly light she couldn’t remember having ever seen before. Kaede narrowed her eyes at it. “What manner of creature are you?”
“My apologies, Lady Kaede. I would come to you in a…less bright form…but I’m afraid that’s impossible. I’m a ghost. Specifically, I’m the ghost of the father of the young man sleeping in your hut.”
“Oh. Should I get him for you?”
He shook his head, making his long white ponytail sway. “There’s no need for that. It’s you I need to speak with. You see, I’m the ghost of a youkai. That young man in your hut is Sesshoumaru. You’ve heard the name, I take it?”
Kaede’s one eye widened. “Inuyasha’s older half-brother,” she said.
“Right. Now, at the moment he’s fairly harmless. You see…he went on something of a rampage not too long ago. It was bad, even by the standards of human-hating youkai. The last straw for me was when he raised his hand to strike Rin. That little girl has never done anything to harm him, she doesn’t deserve his wrath. Being dead gives me all sorts of advantages, like the ability to discuss things with other dead youkai -- even former enemies or people I didn’t know as well when I was alive. So, a group of us decided that Sesshoumaru needed to know more about what it’s like to be a human…and lo and behold there’s a way to turn him into a human. So that’s what we did. He’ll become a youkai again when he finds a human he cares about enough to potentially die for.”
Kaede nodded slowly. “Why is he here?”
“Well, he needs some way of surviving in this world.” Inu no Taishou sighed. “I hate to ask this of you, I truly do. But please, if you can, let him stay here. Teach him how to be a human. I wouldn’t ask this, but we’re desperate, and I know my other son thinks highly of you.”
“He can stay,” Kaede said. “I’ll watch over him. But he can only stay at my discretion. If he acts up again, he must leave.”
“Thank you, Kaede. Oh, and please don’t tell him I was here, or that you know the truth. I think it would be better that way.”
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