Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kagome was lying in the first sparse grass of spring with Eri, Yuka, and Ayumi. Their heads were close together, feet sticking out in different directions, and there was a buzz of excitement.

“I really want to get into Elize Academy,” Ayumi was saying. “Their entrance exams are next week and I’ve just been studying my butt off.”

“You’re so studious, Ayumi-chan,” said Eri. “I know it’s a good school, but the stress of applying, plus the stress of going there just seems impossible.”

“Where are you planning on going, then?” said Ayumi. “High school is stressful no matter where you go. I’d love to hear otherwise.”

“You know I don’t have any firm plans,” Eri said. “I’ve been going to recruitment open houses just about everywhere, trying to find a place that feels right. You’d know that if you’d come with me on any of the tours.”

Kagome felt a sort of listless desperation whenever the conversaation turned to high school applications. She had no idea where she was going to go, had gone on absolutely no tours, and her grades were still in the toilet. She had no idea if she’d even pass an entrance exam.

“Be glad you haven’t been going,” said Yuka, to both Ayumi and Kagome. “Eri dragged me to Shirokin of all places last weekend. Total delinquent heap.”

“Shirokin?” said Ayumi. “Isn’t that an all-boys school?”

“They’re going co-ed,” said Yuka, like one might say they’d found a cockroach in their cereal. “How they think any girls are stupid enough to go there, I have no idea.”

“Oh, come on,” said Eri. “I was curious. And you have to admit that one female teacher was super cool.”

“You mean the one that had to beat up an attacker in front of the school? Really cool, Eri. I totally want to go to a high school where teachers regularly have to beat people up.”

Eri gave a rather melodramatic exhale. “You’re right, I guess,” she said. “I just wanted to see what it was like. Those Shirokin boys are total boogeymen, you know?”

Kagome did know. Shirokin had a reputation for taking on just about any boy who wanted to continue their education past junior high, with almost no regard for their grades or their records or anything else. This time last year, Kagome had been a little afraid of Shirokin students.

“Maybe I should start coming on some of these tours,” said Kagome. The other girls sat up, surprised faces entering Kagome’s field of vision and blotting out the brilliant sky.

“Really?” said Eri. “Because I’ve tried to ask you along before.”

“You were never exactly studious, but with how bad this year has been for you I thought you’d probably want to take a year off!” said Yuka. Maybe repeat ninth grade, went unstated.

Ayumi just smiled at her, a bit of the worry that Kagome could see on her face sliding off.

“I fell so far behind this year that I’m just overwhelmed by the idea,” Kagome said. “So I’ve been avoiding it.”

It’s funny — while she had been running back and forth between the past and the present, Kagome had done her best to keep her grades as high as she could. Now that she was back and had no responsibilities at all, school didn’t seem to matter anymore. But it did. She knew it did. She didn’t have the future she’d begun to imagine in the past anymore. The well was closed. The past was gone.

Something in her stomach turned at the thought and she shoved it down ruthlessly, sat up to look the other girls in their faces.

“Maybe I’ll have to take that Shirokin entrance exam,” she said. The other girls laughed, but Kagome wasn’t sure if she was joking.

That night, she booted up the computer in the living room and started reading about Shirokin High — she knew colloquially that the high school had seen its fair share of scandals over the years, but not much of it had made its way to the internet. The school itself did have a website, but even Kagome, who was not particularly tech-savvy could tell that it was laughably put together. One page in particular had been lovingly crafted. Apparently, a student had scored second in the national mock exams and had managed to get into Tokyo University. He was set to start there this Spring.

“He doesn’t look like a top-scorer,” said Souta, ever the pest, peering over Kagome’s shoulder.

“Tell me about it,” said Kagome. “Look at that hair.” It was dyed a lurid red, almost blinding on the computer screen.

“And what kind of school puts a spotlight on a student like this?” Souta gestured at the screen. Kagome looked doubtfully at the roses that had been carefully edited to border the photograph of this Sawada Shin. “Tell me you’re not thinking of applying here, Nee-chan.”

“Look at my math grades and tell me I have better options.”

Souta didn’t say anything, but there was something in his silence that was irksome. Kagome stood from her chair, stretched, then hooked an arm around Souta’s neck and dragged him screaming to his bedroom.

Somewhere en route, it devolved into a tickle fight, and Kagome let herself be carried away by the joy of heckling her brother. She didn’t know what she’d do without him, really.

Before the night got too late, though, she returned to the family computer and put her name down as a prospective student. Shirokin had a reputation for taking anyone, and, well. At this point Kagome was anyone.

She didn’t tell Eri, Yuka, or Ayumi when she went to sit the entrance exam. They knew she was looking more seriously at high schools, and they roped Hojo into helping her study more than once. (That poor boy, Kagome always thought, when he looked at her with hope and soft affection in his eyes. She wasn’t the Kagome he had a crush on anymore. That Kagome died somewhere between the last year and five hundred years ago.)

Shirokin was better than no high school at all, so Kagome wasn’t sure why she was reluctant to tell them. Maybe it was because she thought Yuka would get shrill. Or maybe because she couldn’t bear to look at the expression of motherly pride Ayumi tended to hand out whenever anyone did anything even remotely in their best interest. Or maybe she was a little afraid Eri would laugh, then sign up to take the test too. She could almost hear her: I am curious, and if Kagome-chan’s doing it…

Kagome loved her friends, so she didn’t know why the thought of going to high school with any of them made bile rise in her throat. Part of her thought that it was because she kept comparing them to Sango and Miroku, who they were simply not. If only she could let them be themselves, maybe she wouldn’t be so disappointed.

The test, with her friends pushed firmly out of her mind, was easy. Even for Kagome. Her current junior high teachers did her the favor of pushing her through the year, too. She wasn’t sure she earned her junior high degree, but her story of sickly woe had even the most hard-ass teachers melting in sympathy with one glance at her mother’s pleading eyes. "My poor baby was just so sick this year. Can’t we make an arrangement so she can pass? Now that she’s better, I know that she can push through the work."

She pushed through the work all right, but Kagome didn’t know if she was better.

On graduation day, the girls all in their junior high uniforms for the last time, Eri cornered her. “So what did you end up deciding for high school? You’ve been avoiding the question.”

“Shirokin,” said Kagome, willing to share now that all the decisions were final. “I’ll be starting at Shirokin in two weeks.”

And yes, Yuka got shrill and Ayumi looked maternal. Eri had an adventurous glint of jealousy in her eye. But with everything settled, those things didn’t weigh as heavy as Kagome had thought they might.

“I should have known you’d pull something like this. You’ve gotten mighty comfortable with delinquents before,” said Yuka. Kagome knew that was a dig at Inuyasha, but the girls had quickly understood that he was Not To Be Spoken Of, and Yuka didn’t use his name. So despite the twinge in her chest, Kagome let it go. Shitty or not, she knew that Yuka was worried.

Kagome just wished that Yuka would do a better job at expressing it.

“I’m so glad that you’re going to get to go to high school in sync with the rest of us,” said Ayumi, redirecting the conversation with her usual brand of earnestness. “You never said anything, but I could tell you were worried about it. I was worried about it.”

“And what an exciting school!” said Eri. “To think! One of the first girls at Shirokin! Right in their first co-ed year! That’s fantastic.”

Kagome could admit that part of the draw was the novelty. So she gave all three of them the broadest smile she could muster. “I’m excited,” she said. And it was true, really. When she fought past the numbness that had become her predominant emotion after the well closed, she could touch excitement. It was there.

“This calls for celebration,” said Ayumi. “I know we all have graduation plans with our families today. But tomorrow. Fast food?”

“Fast food!” said Kagome in chorus with Eri and Yuka. Even after everything, fast food was unifying.

With the Shirokin High graduation ceremony all said and done, Yamaguchi Kumiko was preparing her classroom for the coming year when she realized that her next class would be co-ed. She didn’t know why this surprised her, she’d known that girls would be coming for months now, but it bowled her over nearly as thoroughly as Sawada’s ill-advised love confession.

She dropped by Fujiyama’s classroom, already relabeled “1-2” instead of “3-2.” Kumiko hadn’t changed her label yet. She couldn’t quite bear it.

Fujiyama met her at the classroom door, said, “Have you just realized that you’re going to have female students in two weeks?” Kumiko wondered when the hell she’d gotten that transparent.

“How do I teach girls?” she said, a slight quaver in her voice.

Fujiyama’s laugh was booming. “Just like you teach boys, you dumbass.”

“Really?” said Kumiko.

“Really,” said Fujiyama. “Have you written up your lesson plans yet?”

Kumiko had.

“At least one of us is on top of things,” said Fujiyama, dramatically swooning against her desk. “But I’ll figure it out.”

Kumiko wanted to bring the conversation back around to the subject of girls, but Fujiyama apparently thought her flailing was too funny to help her out of it. Fair enough. Kumiko would get her revenge eventually.

“I wonder if I’ll be able to get enough recruits to have a few chorus clubs at once,” Fujiyama said. “I’d love to keep an all-boys chorus going as well as having co-ed and all-girls choruses.”

“I’ll be sure to hand your fliers out to my class,” said Kumiko, then extricated herself before Fujiyama could go off the deep end about choral arrangements for different vocal types.

She stopped outside the sliding door to her classroom, looked up at the sign that still said “3-4.” She needed to change out that insert. She’d miss her first ever class of precious students, but it was time to welcome the second.

Chapter Text

Holy shit, Kagome thought as she walked into Shirokin on her first day of class. The giant portrait of Sawada Shin from the website was hanging in the entrance hall. Internally, Kagome felt a rush of gratitude for the fact that she’d never been a top scorer, even before hunting for jewel shards and fighting Naraku had screwed over her academic performance.

She decided right then and there that she would be keeping her grades as dead average as possible. Good enough to get into a middling university maybe, if she decided later that she wanted it. She gave Sawada’s portrait a small, apologetic bow before ducking away to find her classroom.

It was horrifying, but no more horrifying than the Sawada portrait. Already, toward the back of the room, a couple of boys were fighting over a desk. Well. It was probably more than just the desk, but Kagome had missed the start and the context.

“Don’t be afraid of them. They just need to work it out,” said a voice at the front of the room. Kagome froze. The fighting boys froze. A woman in her mid-twenties melted from a shadow in the corner.

“When did the teacher get here?” said one boy to the other.

“Oh, I’m not afraid of them,” said Kagome.

“And what about the babe?” said the other boy. “Is she in our class?”

Kagome fixed him with a dead eyed stare before taking a seat toward the front of the room.

“Hot,” said one of the boys. Kagome did not dignify that with a response.

The teacher looked at her uncertainly. Or maybe she was looking at the notebook Kagome had already put on her desk uncertainly. “Higurashi Kagome,” Kagome finally said. “You’re Yamaguchi-sensei, right? That’s what it says on my schedule.”

Yamaguchi-sensei seemed to jolt. “That’s right!” she said. “But my students can call me Yankumi - my last class came up with it.”

That was cute. “Yankumi,” said Kagome, who never had any problem calling people what they wanted to be called.

“As if,” said one of the boys who’d trickled into the classroom. Yankumi, to her credit, didn’t seem phased by the rejection.

The school bell rang. Kagome looked around, fairly certain that the half-full classroom wasn’t nearly the full roster — and on the first day! Yankumi didn’t seem phased by that either.

“Well,” said Yamaguchi. “I’m sure most of your missing classmates are stalking Class 2 for a glimpse at Fujiyama-sensei. I can hardly blame them! But we can begin. I’ll introduce myself before taking the roll, to give the others some time to arrive."

Introductions were truly a disaster. Kagome thought that even Shirokin kids would be mildly attentive on the first day of their first year, but chatter sprung up all around her as Yankumi introduced herself. Again, the teacher didn’t seem phased.

Chatter aside, Yankumi’s predictions about attendance were spot on: most of the others arrived before introductions were done. Shirokin going co-ed officially hadn’t done much for enrollment, but girls managed to make up about a fourth of the class. Kagome figured that was pretty good for a school’s first co-ed year.

While two girls were sitting together towards the middle of the room, Kagome was amused to note that she and the last two girls had spaced themselves equidistantly around the classroom. She flashed the nearest a smile, but the other girl was focused on the playing cards she had laid out for solitaire.

This was Shirokin, after all. Distantly, Kagome heard her name — Yankumi, calling roll. She mumbled the sort of vague assent she’d heard out of the classmates who’d already gone, and the roll moved on.

When it was over, Yankumi looked around. “Homeroom really is just your time,” she said. “But I’ll want you all to at least pretend to pay attention when we switch to math. Keep it to one covert card game going on in the corner.”

Miraculously, Kagome heard a few stifled laughs. Somehow, even in a vivid red track suit, Yankumi seemed innocent and overly-organized. Seemed unprepared to handle a Shirokin classroom. That she would even make that joke was a surprise.

This time last year, when Kagome was still fourteen and entering ninth grade, she would have been unprepared to handle a Shirokin classroom. She wondered what that said about the buttoned-up Yankumi, that she’d prepared herself without having jumped through time.

Kagome spared one last glance toward her teacher before turning to the boy next to her and striking up a conversation. Homeroom had begun in earnest, and Kagome was curious about her peers.

Kumiko sat back for the rest of homeroom, even when another small scuffle broke out towards the rear of the room. The kids were testing her, she knew, to see how far she’d let them bend the rules. She had a major advantage: these kids didn’t know each other. When she’d started with her very first class, they’d been second years with an established rapport and classroom dynamic. The hierarchy, with Sawada and his closest friends at the top, was settled and fixed.

It would be interesting to watch that dynamic establish itself this time around. She saw a few students right away that had a good chance at it. Handsome — or at least striking — and watching their classmates with speculative eyes. Then she remembered the girls. There were five of them in her class of twenty four, and Kumiko had no idea how they would impact the dynamic.

She knew how wives impacted a gang dynamic, she knew how hostesses and courtesans handled men. She could remember her female classmates from her own high school years, but her high school classrooms hadn’t run like a gang. Not in quite the way Shirokin classes tended to.

The Higurashi girl had handled overt appreciation without getting remotely flustered, and the others seemed to be navigating the tentative social dynamic that was forming well. Even the two that had sat down together seemed like they were fine.

Perhaps the sort of girls that would choose to enroll at Shirokin in the first place were the sort of girls that would thrive here. She cast a speculative glance at Higurashi's planner, notebook, and math textbook all laid out on her desk. Maybe not. The boy she was talking to seemed to be heckling her about it already.

Kumiko decided to check her middle school transcripts, because she wasn’t sure why someone who cared even that much about academics would come to Shirokin. Higurashi seemed fragile somehow, too. She was well built, and she’d navigated the earlier heckling over her looks and the current heckling over her school supplies so well that Kumiko hadn’t noticed at first.

Almost like Kubo, she realized. Holding it together better than Kubo ever had, certainly. She wasn’t sitting there strung-out and shaking. But she was under some sort of stress, and she was hanging by a thread. Or maybe she wasn’t — maybe enrolling at Shirokin had been part of a self-destructive emotional spiral.

The bell signaled the end of homeroom, so Kumiko handed out her math syllabi. Higurashi, she noticed, dutifully transcribed the major deadlines and test dates into her planner. When one of her nearby classmates gave her shit for it, her foot flashed out from under her desk and kicked him in the ankle. He yelped. Huh. The fragility really was only emotional.

At the end of the day, Kumiko went straight to the student records files, Hi, she thought, sorting through the hiragana labels. For Higurashi.

“Someone’s caught your eye already, huh?” said Fujiyama, voice lilting. “Trying to make Sawada-kun jealous?”

“She had a notebook and a planner on her desk before homeroom was even over,” said Kumiko, before her brain caught up with Fujiyama’s second sentence. She gave the most menacing glare in her arsenal, but it was rather undercut by her involuntary flush. “Sawada is a child, leave him and his puppy crushes alone.”

“He might not be twenty, but he’s a university man now,” said Fujiyama, sing-song and bright. “But tell me more about your new student! A planner on her desk? Really?”

Kumiko recognized that Fujiyama was only changing the subject to avoid vicious retribution, but she let it go in favor of the more pressing concern. “Really,” she said. “She had the most current edition of the math textbook ready to go, too, which means she actually read her supply list.”

“Is this Higurashi Kagome? Because she was weirdly prepared in music class, too,” Fujiyama said.

“That’s the one,” said Kumiko, and there was her file. “Ah ha! Here it is.” She pulled it out with a flourish, flipped through the pages to her middle school grades, and immediately winced. “Okay there it is, that’s why she’s here.”

Fujiyama peered over her shoulder and whistled. “That is bad,” she said. “Especially for someone so put together. But look at the year before! Not exactly a star student, but maybe even a little higher than average.”

Kumiko looked. Sure enough. “So something happened last year. I thought so. She had that newly-traumatized look about her.”

“And you know so much about how newly-traumatized people look,” said Fujiyama flatly.

“Look at this,” said Kumiko, deciding to ignore that remark entirely. “The medical file her parents supplied doesn't indicate a history of serious illness at all, but the record her middle school supplied is absolutely crazy!”

“What is she, eighty?” said Fujiyama.

“Gout?” read Kumiko, remembering the deft kick Higurashi had dealt to her classmate. “Something’s fishy about this.”

“She was making excuses to skip school, and her family was complicit,” said Fujiyama. “And whatever the reason, it isn’t a problem now, because they didn’t bother to set up the possibility that she’d be missing for medical reasons.”

Kumiko always forgot how damnably perceptive Fujiyama could be. “I think this calls for a stakeout!”

“No. Bad Yamaguchi,” said Fujiyama. “This calls for keeping your nose out of where it doesn’t belong. Save the stakeouts for when you know how she performs in class.”

“Like you’ve ever once kept your nose where it belongs,” Kumiko said reproachfully. Fujiyama began humming whatever piece she’d started their students on and twirled out of reach, pretending like she’d never so much as heard of Hokkaido. But hypocritical as it was, it wasn’t terrible advice.

Higurashi’s file slid easily back into place. “We’ll see how you do, Higurashi-chan,” Kumiko said in an undertone before gathering up the introduction slips she’d managed to wrangle her students into filling out during her math classes. It was a whole new cohort, and Higurashi was far from the only interesting student in it.

When Kumiko got home, introduction slips and lesson plans crammed in her briefcase, she was horrified but unsurprised to see Sawada at the dining room table. “Don’t you have something better to do?” she said. “Like getting to know your new university classmates?” He studiously ignored her, engrossed as he was in a conversation with Kyou-san, Grandpa, and Wakamatsu. Enablers, the lot of them.

Chapter Text

After dinner on Kagome's very first day of high school, Mama decided to ambush her about her life choices.

"I'm glad you found a high school, but are you sure Shirokin is the right fit for you?” she said, voice full of concern.

“With my grades, it was the only option,” said Kagome, already both wary and weary.

“That isn’t quite true,” said Mama. She was right. Kagome had gotten enough cramming in at the last minute that she suspected that she would have performed well enough on even middle-tier high school entrance exams. File her application with decent test scores and a note about extenuating circumstances and she might have succeeded. But.

“It’s true enough.” Kagome was firm about this, because it was. The well had been closed for two months now, and Kagome still had trouble getting out of bed. She’d only had the emotional energy to sit through one entrance exam — she’d tried to force herself to sign up for more, really she had — and so she felt justified in choosing the safe bet. “Besides, I like it.” That was true, too.

Mama shook her head, all skepticism. "Everyone there seems so violent, though. It doesn’t feel safe at all.”

Kagome just raised an eyebrow. Mama immediately looked contrite. “I think that might be what I like about it.” Kagome decided to give her mother a crumb of vulnerability. “Makes life feel more real.”

Mama’s face contorted in fresh heartbreak. Kagome was never sure if telling her these things was better or worse. Kagome knew that her mother wanted to hear them, felt worried and left-out when she didn’t hear them. But it clearly hurt her to hear them. Kagome hadn’t really realized the repercussions of her time in the past until it was over. Neither had Mama, apparently.

“Just don’t worry about it,” Kagome said. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will, baby,” Mama said. “You could survive and thrive anywhere.” The implicit and that scares me, went unsaid. Kagome heard it anyway. If it scared Mama so damn much, she should have done something about it when Kagome was regularly putting her life on the line.

Kagome swallowed against that thought. That wasn’t fair and she knew it. “I want to go upstairs and get a better sense of the syllabi,” she finally said. “I don’t really have homework — even if it wasn’t the first day, I think the teachers at Shirokin might have given up on homework as a concept. But I want to do my best in high school.”

“Of course,” said Mama. “Do your best.”

It wasn’t that Kagome didn’t want to do her best in high school, but the instant she was in her bedroom, she slipped out the window. Her second story bedroom was high enough off the ground that she’d never considered climbing out the window before her adventure in the past. Even during her adventure to the past, she’d only used it as a door when Inuyasha could carry her down. In the months since the well had closed, Kagome had learned exactly how to do it without hurting herself.

The grass was soft under her bare feet — her shoes had been left in the genkan, but there was a pair she’d slipped in the well house once she could stand to go into it. She retrieved them, felt in her skirt pocket for her wallet and phone. Assured that she had the necessaries, she set off into the deepening evening.

Really, it was just bad luck running into Hojo, carrying two large paper grocery bags. “Higurashi-chan!’ he said, face open with surprise. “It’s so late, what are you doing out?”

“Hojo-kun,” said Kagome, giving him a strained smile. “I just wanted some fresh air.”

“In Tokyo? That can’t be good for your emphysema!”

“I’m all better now, Hojo-kun. No more health scares for me.”

The look he sent her told her he knew that several of the illnesses Grandpa decided to give the school were fundamentally incurable, and she felt a rush of gratitude that he didn’t push it. Instead, with a somewhat wry tone, he said, “What a miracle.”

Kagome broke into a more genuine smile. “Right?” she said. “A miracle.”

Hojo with a sense of humor. Who would have thought? “I’ve heard through the grapevine that you did manage to get into high school,” he said. “I’d like to say that I had every faith in you, but I was worried. Where did you end up?”

This conversation again. “Shirokin,” she said. “That delinquent school that just went co-ed.”

At least in this context, with Hojo’s eyes seeming to bulge out of his skull, saying it was funny. She cracked up laughing, and for a moment, Hojo looked almost assured. “You shouldn’t tease like that, Higurashi-chan! Where did you really end up?”

“It is funny,” said Kagome. “But I wasn’t joking. Shirokin. I’m going to Shirokin.”

Hojo stared at her for a moment, clutching his brown bags closer to his chest. "Really?"

"Really," said Kagome. She had an idea. "Can I help you carry your groceries home? I'd hate to hold you up if you'd like an explanation." She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to give an explanation. But talking about things. People were supposed to talk about things.

Hojo was still staring at her like he'd never properly seen her before. Well, Kagome thought with a sliver of malice, he really hadn't.

It took a moment for Hojo to find his words, and when he did, they all stank of his reflexive chivalry. "I am not going to have a young girl escort me home, only to let her turn around and walk home alone in the dark. In fact, I should be escorting you! May I?"

"No," said Kagome, perhaps a little too quickly. "I just left home, Hojo-kun. I need a walk, and you hardly live far." She stuck out her arms to take a bag. He still looked uncertain. "You might want to consider that a girl who'd enroll at Shirokin has reasons that she's not afraid to walk at night. I'll be alright."

There was another beat of hesitation before Hojo, voice quiet and suspicious, said,"You really don't have advanced arthritis, do you?"

"No," Kagome said, making impolite eye-contact in the near dark. "I never did."

Hojo let out a soft breath. If Kagome didn't know better, she would have thought there was an edge of a muttered swear word in it. Hojo held out one of his grocery bags; Kagome took it, hefted it gamely on one hip.

“You were never going to go out with me, were you?” said Hojo, and Kagome rather felt that he had waited to drop that conversational bomb till she was tethered to him by his groceries.

“I might have,” she said, surprised to find that it was the truth. “I think if the thing that started on my fifteenth birthday had never happened, I probably would have. But that’s not the world we live in. I’m sorry that my friends kept trying to get us together, even after circumstances changed.”

“Right,” said Hojo. “Thanks for your help.”

“No worries,” said Kagome. “Two of these bags would be a lot to carry alone.” She had a feeling wasn’t only talking about the bags, but the bags were what she knew how to address.

“If you weren’t sick,” said Hojo. “What exactly were you doing? And with your entire family on board!”

Kagome felt at the brown paper of the bag, grounded herself with its sense of heft. She didn’t look at Hojo when she said, “I don’t think you’d believe me.”

“Try me,” said Hojo. “Please.”

Now, Kagome did look at him. “No,” she said. “Even if it was remotely believable, if I tried to explain it, I think I’d cry. I’ve done enough of that recently.”

“That bad, huh?” said Hojo.

“It wasn’t all bad,” said Kagome. “And now it's over, and I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t even know,” said Kagome. “Because you’re here, I guess.” Because he was there, because he wasn’t Yuka, Eri, or Ayumi. Because he wasn’t Mama or Souta or Grandpa. Because he’d always been so absolutely normal.

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” said Hojo. Kagome had no idea how to respond, so she didn’t. They walked for a moment in silence. “Shirokin. You said you were willing to explain that much.”

Kagome had. “It seemed like a safe bet,” she said. “They were looking to boost enrollment, looking especially to enroll girls, and they’ve never had much in the way of requirements. You take the trouble to apply and show up for the entrance exam, and they think you deserve a high school education.”

“I guess that’s admirable in its own way,” said Hojo.

“I thought so,” said Kagome. “You know, I probably could have gotten in somewhere else. But Eri-chan and Yuka-chan actually went to the open house day. I didn’t even know they were planning on going, then all of a sudden they were telling me about their little adventure to the delinquent high school. And I couldn’t get it out of my head.”

“You enrolled at Shirokin because you wanted adventure?”

Despite her conversation with Mama, Kagome hadn’t quite thought of it that way before Hojo had said it. “I think I did,” she said. “You know, this last year got me very used to being in anywhere from low-grade to life-threatening danger all the time. I wanted a school environment that gave me a dose of that, I think.”

Hojo breathed in that way that made Kagome suspect he was actually muttering very quietly again. Louder, he said, “I didn’t know you at all, did I?”

Kagome smiled, but walking shoulder to shoulder as they were, she wasn’t sure if he saw it. “You did a year ago,” she said. “Then things got complicated.”

“Are you ever going to tell me why?”

Kagome considered that. “Probably not,” she said.

“Right,” said Hojo. “Well, that’s my house up there.” He pointed down the block rather unnecessarily.

“That it is,” Kagome said as they approached it. “Here are your things.”

Hojo held out an arm, and Kagome settled her half of his burden back in its place. “Thanks.”

“No,” said Kagome. “Thank you, Hojo-kun. Have a good night.”

“You too,” he said. “And good luck at Shirokin!”

“Good luck to you, too,” said Kagome. He, after all, was just starting high school too. It occurred to her that she wasn’t sure where he’d ended up, but he was already leaning against his front door, ready to head inside. She decided not to ask.

“Thanks!” Hojo ducked out of sight, not quite slamming the door behind him. Kagome stood there for a moment, wondering what to do next. She looked in the direction of the shrine, shook her head. She wasn’t ready to head back to her room yet. She just wasn’t. Besides, it was a nice night for a walk.

Chapter Text

Kumiko's precious first years were engaged in some full scale shenanigans by the end of their first week. She reflected that she probably shouldn’t be surprised. She’d had to rescue Kuma from Kubo right at the beginning of her time with her first class, after all. While her first class would always be deeply special to her, that didn’t mean they were substantially different from their successors. Shirokin kids were Shirokin kids.

One of her first years had decided to go and pick a fight with a third year, and she honestly wasn’t sure if she should intervene. Her student had started it, and this batch of third years (having been first years themselves when Kubo’s group reigned supreme) weren’t especially inclined toward bullying the younger kids. They had every right to assert their place at the top of the hierarchy by age and seniority, but Kumiko was still uneasy about the whole thing.

If uneasy was the right way to describe dashing from the school yard to that same damn warehouse she had to go rescue Kinoshita and his girl from that one time. Huh. Kumiko had forgotten about that. Even as she was dashing down the street, she wondered idly if they were still together.

She was jolted from those thoughts by a high voice asking, “So, does this happen a lot?”

Higurashi Kagome was running easily alongside her, and somehow Kumiko hadn’t noticed. “You don’t want to get involved in this shit,” she said, not breaking stride.

“I don’t?” said Higurashi. “Because I think my classmate is about to get the ever living shit beaten out of him by that massive third year, and that’s worrisome, even if he was totally asking for it.”

That was not a bad summary of the situation. “That’s exactly why you should go back to the school,” said Yamaguchi.

“And leave you to fight them alone? Absolutely not,” said Higurashi.

Spirits, Sawada trying to act protectively macho around her had been grating when he was eighteen and larger than her. Higurashi was clearly well built and used to combat, but she was only fifteen! Still, Kumiko knew better than to say something like, How’s a child going to help me with this? or Leave things to the adult, please. That was a recipe for disaster.

Kumiko slowed in her running — didn’t stop, couldn’t stop with her student on the line — to get a better look at Higurashi. While she hadn’t been able to keep her yakuza background from her first class in the end, her origins weren’t common community knowledge either. Her private business was private, and displaying her unusual skill in combat wasn’t exactly the best way to keep it private.

But a girl who willingly chose to come to Shirokin might not find her skills so unusual. “How are you in a fight?” she finally said.

“I’m better as support,” Higurashi said without hesitation. “I’m the ranged fighter with the first aid kit, usually. But I do have a first aid kit with me, and I can probably knock out a couple of modern high schoolers.”

Later, later, Kumiko would wonder what the hell Higurashi meant by ranged fighting. She’d wonder what she meant by modern high schooler. But right in this moment, with her mind occupied with thoughts of her student in way over his head, her brain only processed as far as, Good. This is a woman who won’t be surprised to see me throw a good punch. She then corrected herself: Girl. This is a girl who won’t be surprised to see me throw a good punch.

Sawada had been surprised to see her have good reflexes, had been surprised to see her throw a good punch. His ensuing curiosity had ultimately led to the massive problem of him haunting her house in an effort to ‘be useful to you and to those close to you.’ She did not need a Sawada 2.0 in her life.

“Fine,” she said finally. “If there’s a fight, stick to the fringes. We want to get Ito-kun and get out, understand? He’s due to be knocked around a little, we just don’t want those third years to go too far.”

“Yeah,” said Higurashi, a tinge of breathless exhilaration in her voice. “I understand.”

If Higurashi was just a thrill-seeker, fuck, Kumiko did not think this would be a good idea. Fortunately, Kumiko did not have time to think.

They were noticed as they approached the warehouse. “It’s that woman teacher, you know, in charge of the little punk’s homeroom,” said one lookout in an undertone to the other, looking deeply uncertain. Good. Word of her skills had gotten around to the other years. That should help.

The other seemed to have some balls about him, said, “Is it really your business what we get up to outside of school hours?”

Kumiko looked at her watch. “I don’t think school’s supposed to be over, yet,” she said. It was true. She shuddered to think what her students were getting up to, alone in her classroom. If they were even still there, which Kumiko honestly doubted.

“Off school grounds, then,” said the student.

She looked pointedly at his uniform. “You know that as long as you’re wearing the uniform, you’re representing the school, right? Besides. I’m not even here because I care about fights. A fight can be good for young men.”

The student looked a little gobsmacked, but he gathered his balls and said, “If you don’t care about fights, then why are you here?”

“Because I want my student back in one piece,” said Kumiko. “There’s a fight between men and then there’s using superior strength to wail on a weaker opponent just because. I just want to make sure it doesn’t become the second thing.”

The look on the kid’s face told Kumiko everything she needed to know. Honestly, none of these damn boys knew a thing about honor unless it was hammered into their thick skulls. She was about to shove him bodily out of the way, but Higurashi evidently saw what she saw, and just marched straight past him, brazen as anything.

Both Kumiko and the two third-year lookouts stared after her in shock.

“What?” said Higurashi. “Not much use standing around talking if Ito-kun’s getting beat up badly. Let’s go get him.”

Kumiko looked at the third years. “Will you just let me pass without a fight? Because —” she glanced up at Higurashi, who was now yanking open the door to the warehouse.

“Fuck this,” said the third year who didn’t seem to have any balls to speak of.

The one who did tilted his head. “Whatever,” he said. “I don’t really give a shit about this Ito kid anyway.”

By the time Kumiko had entered the warehouse, only seconds after Higurashi, really, Higurashi was already scolding the small group of third years. Fuck. Kumiko slid behind her newest crazy student, ready for damage control. Only to find the third year in question looking… chagrined?

“Don’t you think you’ve already taught poor Ito-kun here his lesson?” Higurashi was saying, cocking her hip in a way that made her absurdly short Shirokin-issue black skirt swirl.

“He’s been disrespecting the third years at large,” said the third year — Terada, if Kumiko remembered rightly. “I couldn’t just let that stand.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” Higurashi said in the most patient and understanding voice Kumiko had ever heard. “And you haven’t. Look at him. So let me and our teacher patch him up and take him back to the classroom. I don’t want this to turn into a fight.”

“A fight?” said Terada, his expression going from almost receptive to a sneer. “What sort of fight would you be bringing, you bitch?”

Kumiko placed a hand on Higurashi’s shoulder, already sensing this was about to get nasty again. Higurashi leaned almost imperceptibly into her touch, and that was the only reason Kumiko knew she was nervous at all. “Bitch, whore, cunt,” Higurashi said. “Honestly, I’ve been called worse by my friends. You don’t scare me.”

Incredibly, Higurashi ducked out of the way right as Terada’s snarl turned into a howl of inarticulate rage, and the momentum he intended to use to tackle Higurashi brought him right into Kumiko’s waiting fist. He crumpled. Perfect. Kumiko looked at the other four third years in the room. “Who’s next?” she said.

She only had to dispatch one of them. The other three went running. “Take your injured with you, you absolute cowards!” Higurashi hollered.

That’s when Kumiko realized that Higurashi, with a staggering Ito half draped across her shoulders, was already nearly out the door again. Kumiko was almost certain that Higurashi had orchestrated the fight as a distraction, so she could get Ito out without being noticed. Huh.

Kumiko rushed to Ito’s other side, draped his other arm over her own shoulders. “So,” she said. “You seemed good at that.”

Higurashi did not deign to answer the implicit question. Instead, she said, “So did you.”

Kumiko let out a soft snort. “Let’s get Ito-kun to the nurse,” she said.

Ito made a muffled sound of protest, but it was too damn bad. He didn’t look good at all. But Higurashi shook her head. “No. He’d just get in trouble for fighting, and I think he’s already been punished enough. I did a quick assessment and I think I can take care of it. The question is: where’s closest? I want to be able to just put him to bed and have him not move for like twenty-four hours.”

That was how the three of them ended up climbing up an absurd hill to a fucking shrine.

“The stairs around the front might be easier,” Higurashi said, “but I doubt Grandpa would appreciate me being obvious about it. We almost definitely have worshippers and tourists around at this time of day.”

It occurred to Kumiko that the Higurashi connection should have been obvious — there weren’t that many Higurashis in the Greater Tokyo Area. But a shrine family? Really? Sending their kid to Shirokin?

They paused in the genkan. “You look like you could, theoretically, be a student,” said Higurashi. “I’m tempted to pass you off as a classmate. Let’s see what comes out of my mouth.”

“No,” said Kumiko. “I’m sure your parents know that Shirokin is an unconventional school. I’ll introduce myself as your teacher or not at all.” She really did not need a Sawada 2.0, and here Kagome was trying to stretch their professional relationship into friendship already.

“Fine,” said Higurashi, looking forlornly at the entrance to the rest of the house. “Let’s go.”

Ito somehow had the presence of mind to toe off his shoes, and Kumiko hastened to do the same.

“Mama! I’m home,” Higurashi said as she stepped over the threshold and into the hallway. There wasn’t a reply. Higurashi seemed to melt with relief. “Thank goodness. I wasn’t ready to explain this to her at all, come on in. The spare bedroom’s upstairs.”

“You are going to tell your mother you have someone in the guest bedroom, right?” Because Kumiko was starting to think she should have just called a car to take Ito to his own house.

“Oh yeah,” said Higurashi. “But I’ll probably edit you out of the story entirely. I had a wild year last year. She’ll believe me if I said I rescued him myself. She’ll be disappointed, but she’ll believe me. If she knows my teacher was involved. Well. She’ll be mad at you specifically and at the school in general, and I don’t want to talk her down from that, honestly.”

The stairs, as they came to them, were clearly too small to fit the three of them walking abreast. “I’ll take Ito,” said Kumiko.

“I think I could make it myself,” said Ito, sounding barely coherent. His eyes looked fuzzy and out of focus.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t take him to the hospital,” said Kumiko, ignoring him entirely and hefting him onto her back.

“No hospital,” said Ito, but so weakly that Kumiko wasn’t going to take that into account.

Higurashi looked at Ito doubtfully before nodding, more to herself than to Kumiko, Kumiko rather thought. “I can take care of this,” she said. “Looks like he’s got a minor concussion, maybe a broken rib, too. But there’s not much a hospital can do for a broken rib, and his breathing’s fine, so I think we should take a gamble to protect his reputation and his record.”

His record. Right. Kumiko knew she couldn’t just take a minor to the backside doc, either. “You know what you’re talking about,” she said to Higurashi, not sure if she could trust someone who was only almost sixteen.

Higurashi hesitated. “Kinda,” she said. It was that moment of self-doubt, that honesty about the limits of her knowledge, that compelled Kumiko to nod, and begin carrying Ito up the stairs.

Higurashi darted ahead of them, opened the door to the guest room.

“A western bed,” said Kumiko. “Really?”

“In all of the bedrooms except Grandpa’s,” said Higurashi. “He hates that we put one in the guest room, too, but it was Dad’s idea, and. Well.” She cut off abruptly, shook her head. “Put him down on it. The height of it will certainly make him easier to treat. My knees always start aching when I’m trying to treat someone on a futon.”

“A shrine kid, not used to seiza, huh?” said Kumiko, making sure there was a teasing lilt to her voice.

“Oh shut up,” said Higurashi, but she was smiling as she pulled out a gratuitously large first aid kit from her electric blue backpack.

Ito groaned, and Higurashi looked at him consideringly. “Well, first of all, let’s get some pain meds into him.” Her voice turned soothing and soft. Sweet and pitched high, Kumiko thought it might sound fake on anybody else, but somehow Higurashi pulled it off as she said, “Hey Ito-kun. I want to make the pain go away, but I need you to describe it for me first. Scale of one to ten, how bad is it?”

Ito’s gaze was still fuzzy, but he rallied and said, “I think an eight.”

“Okay,” said Higurashi. “I’m gonna help you sit up against the headboard and we’re gonna get some liquids and some pain meds into you, is that alright? Do you have any allergies?”

Kumiko wasn’t going to be any help here, was she? She backed slowly out of the room, found herself standing listlessly in the hallway when she noticed the half-open door to Higurashi’s bedroom. Not quite able to help herself, Kumiko crept inside.

It had a western-style bed like the guest room, and most of the trappings she’d expect for a teenage girl. But over there, by the window, was a bow. A bow?

Well, Higurashi was a shrine kid. And while Kumiko was fairly certain her student couldn’t be a miko proper, maybe archery wasn’t an odd hobby for a shrine kid. She almost dismissed it, but something about the idea of a bow and arrow wouldn’t stop tumbling through the back of Kumiko’s head. An image of Higurashi, looking fierce in her too-short Shirokin uniform, with an arrow leveled off into the middle distance had crept into Kumiko’s mental image of her student, and she suspected it wouldn’t easily go away.

She didn’t get any more snooping done, though, because suddenly a kid — towards the end of elementary school, probably — walked through the doorway.

“Who are you?” he said. “Is Nee-chan in the guest room? Who does Nee-chan have in the guest room?”

“A classmate,” said Kumiko, then realized that the kid might interpret that as answering either of his questions. “I’m your sister’s homeroom teacher, and she’s in there with one of her classmates. He needed a place to rest up a bit before going home.”

“Oh,” said the kid. “Darn. I was hoping — whatever. I’m Higurashi Souta. Are you Yamaguchi-sensei, then? Yankumi?”

Higurashi was the only one in the class who’d started calling her Yankumi right away, wasn’t she? Kumiko felt a small thrill of warmth. Both because Higurashi had talked about her, and that she’d talked about her using her nickname.

“Yeah,” said Kumiko. “That’s me. Is school already over for the day?”

Higurashi Souta blinked at her. “It’s past four,” he said. “I even had time to walk my friends home. Shouldn’t a teacher know that? When did Shirokin get out?”

She hadn’t realized it had gotten that late, and she definitely couldn’t hope that her various math classes hadn’t caused trouble upon noticing she wasn’t there to babysit them. Damn it all.

And damn Ito and the third-years for getting her into this typa mess already!

Higurashi Kagome appeared behind her brother. “Get outta my room, you little brat,” she said, grinding her fist into the crown of his head.

Souta stuck his tongue out at her, and Kumiko was certain things were about to devolve into a playful wrestling match before both of them seemed to remember she was there at precisely the same moment, straightened.

“I think Ito-kun’s gonna be okay,” said Higurashi. “I’ve given him some aspirin and dressed his cuts. Nothing seems broken except maybe that rib. I’ll stop by the herbalist later for some advice.”

Souta looked at his sister incredulously. “Not Hojo-senpai’s family’s herbalist,” he said. “Haven’t you been avoiding him since —” he hastily cut himself off, and Kumiko wasn’t sure if it was for her sake or for his sister.

“Do you know any other herbalist nearby, stupid?”

Siblings had a sort of magic, Kumiko decided, that made even insults sound like endearments. Tetsu and Minoru were the brothers she’d always wanted, but they couldn’t replicate the dynamic of siblings that had really grown up together. Not quite.

“You’re gonna give Hojo-senpai the wrong idea,” said Souta.

A self-satisfied look appeared on Higurashi’s face. “I don’t think so,” she said. Souta looked like he wanted to pester her about that, but Higurashi was shoving him bodily out of the room, one foot pressed firmly on his sternum, with muttered threats. The door shut behind him, she turned back to Kumiko. “As I was saying,” she said. “Ito-kun. I’ve definitely got him handled. I don’t know that he’ll be able to come to school tomorrow, but he has a cell phone and I’ve convinced him to at least let his mom know where he is. So. You don’t have to worry.”

Kumiko was pretty sure that she did, in fact, have to worry. She decided to heckle her student instead. “So. Who’s this Hojo-senpai?” she asked, emulating Fujiyama-sensei’s nosiest voice.

Higurashi’s self-satisfied smile returned. “I think he might actually finally be just a friend,” she said, and Kumiko wasn’t sure if she wanted the story behind that. “But his dad’s an herbalist and he’s planning to take over the family business. I’ll call him if I need help. Or if I just decide to traumatize him again about my choice in high schools.”

“A straight-and-narrow type, huh?”

“So straight-and-narrow you wouldn’t believe it,” said Higurashi. “Anyway, now that I know I have Ito-kun covered…”

Higurashi trailed off, unwilling to kick Kumiko out of her house outright — so polite for a Shirokin student! — but clearly desperate for her to leave.

“I’d better go,” said Kumiko. “I have to get ready for tomorrow’s lessons.”

Higurashi looked relieved, escorted her back to the genkan and shut the door to her home firmly between them. Alone and not carrying a conspicuously wounded delinquent, Kumiko decided to walk down the hill at the front of the property, where there were stairs. She took a moment to nod at the sacred tree and the sacred well house and the shrine itself — Grandpa always said that it paid to respect the spirits of the land.

It was as soon as Kumiko put her feet on the stairs and began her descent that two bits rattling around in her brain connected. I’m the ranged fighter with the first-aid kit, usually, Higurashi had said as they ran to rescue Ito. Now, Kumiko’s brain built a construct. I’m the ranged fighter with the first-aid kit, usually, Higurashi Kagome said in Kumiko’s brain, knocking an arrow on the elegant bow that had been propped in her room.

Kumiko had not seen any readily accessible arrows, but the one in her mind’s eye was wickedly sharp. No, she decided. There is no reasonable possibility where my fifteen-year-old shrine kid student has intentionally used lethal weapons in a fight. Kumiko just wouldn’t go there.

Chapter Text

After the Ito incident, the students of Class 4 seemed uneasy.

"I can't remember what she did exactly, dude, I was so out of it. But I was toast, and I know Yankumi helped. She didn't even get me in trouble for it, either," Ito said to anybody who would listen.

"Aw c'mon, you can't be calling her that stupid nickname, can you?" the others said.

Ito mumbled, got pink around the ears, and put up with his classmates heckling. But heckling or no, the class was watching Kumiko with new eyes. She could feel it.

She also noticed that not a damn word was circulating about Higurashi among the first-years. She'd expected silence on the matter from the third-years — probably too embarrassed to admit she'd so effectively chastised them.

But Ito, who was so willing to talk about Kumiko's involvement, to the point of talking her up to his peers, did not say a word about Higurashi. Kumiko did not understand why until she overheard Higurashi and Ito talking in the hallway.

"I appreciate you leaving me out of the story," Higurashi said.

"It's no big deal," said Ito. "But I don't understand why you wouldn't want everyone to know about it. I don't know what I would have done if you and Yankumi hadn't shown up when you did."

"I know it probably seems odd," said Higurashi, and Kumiko peered around the corner just in time to see Higurashi rub the back of her head sheepishly. "But thank you anyway."

"Thank you," said Ito. "Seriously."

That was the end of it.

The classroom’s collective uneasiness made Kumiko somewhat unsure of what her next move should be, so she settled in to wait and see what would happen next. Unfortunately, no big blowout to break the tension came. Their uneasiness was making them cautious.

A week passed. Two weeks passed.

Three students needed to be patched up after a decently large snafu with some punks at Daigin High. Another student had to be picked up at the police station after he was caught with drugs.

Higurashi tagged along on all the misadventures, first aid kit slung over her shoulder. Her attitude? Professional and determined.
Finally, the vibe began to shift. Class 4 relaxed.

And then Higurashi’s mother sent in an excused absence on Higurashi's sixteenth birthday. Ito, who had taken to sitting next to Higurashi in class, looked noticeably put out when she didn’t appear. Bold reaction from someone who was missing at least once a week, but who was Kumiko to complain?

“She’s sick, apparently,” said Kumiko, by way of explanation. “Her mother called in, so if she’s ditching it’s with parental approval.”

Ito accepted this, but something about ditching with parental approval echoed in Kumiko’s brain, and she remembered Fujiyama’s voice back from the very first day. She was making excuses to skip school, and her family was complicit, she had said.

Fuck.

The rest of the day was somehow both agonizingly slow and a frenzied blur. When the final bell rang, Kumiko was about to bolt for the door, bolt for the Higurashi shrine, when Fujiyama leaned in the doorway. “I noticed Higurashi wasn’t in class today. Was she called out?”

“Yeah, but Shirokin students ditch all the time, anyway," said Kumiko, backpedaling like she hadn't been about to sprint out of her classroom.

“That’s true,” said Fujiyama. “I’m not even worried about it. But I know you, and I just know you’re going nuts.”

“Most of the kids in my class have ditched twice or three times already,” said Kumiko. “Unless it becomes a pattern on the order of her absences in junior high, it’s not a problem.”

“Wish you believed that,” said Fujiyama with a long-suffering sigh. “But good show, Yamaguchi. Points for effort. Did you bring your car today?”

“I took public transit,” said Kumiko.

“Would you like a ride to Higurashi’s house to check on her?” said Fujiyama.
Kumiko did not know quite what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything. As she’d hoped, Fujiyama, patience as small as her breasts were large, took that for a yes and grabbed her by the wrist to drag her bodily to the parking lot.

“Thanks,” Kumiko said as Fujiyama peeled out of the parking lot. "You know, it's her birthday today. Can we stop and get her a cupcake or something?"

"Oooh, good idea. Better not to come by empty handed, then."

Cupcake aquired, Fujiyama tore down the streets of Town K into Tokyo proper. It occurred to Kumiko that Fujiyama was not even consulting a map. “How do you know where we’re going?”

“She lives at the Higurashi Shrine, right?” she said. “I’ve been there a few times as a tourist. They have a gloriously kitschy gift shop.”

Kumiko decided not to ask how Fujiyama had gone about connecting those dots.

“Right,” she said instead. “You and your vacations.”

Fujiyama raised an amused eyebrow. “It’s right in town, you know. Hardly a vacation. I just like to have activities on the weekends.”

Kumiko considered that, considered that people who weren't busy half-running a gang on the weekends might do other things to help break up routine. She also considered that Fujiyama's driving might likewise be explained by needing a bit of the danger that occurred quite naturally in Kumiko's life. Still, Kumiko kept a white-knuckled grip on the overhead handle all the way up to the Higurashi shrine.

Fujiyama screeched into a parallel parking space, miraculously avoiding the cars in front and back. Though that should be the bare minimum, Kumiko was impressed despite herself. They marched up the shrine steps together.

The Higurashi shrine was beautiful, approaching it from the front. They sidestepped it for the family home, but Kumiko did not miss the longing look Fujiyama shot at the shrine proper. Always wanted to be touristy, that one.
Kumiko rapped smartly on the front door, waited until a motherly woman opened the door. "Oh!" she said. "I wasn't expecting guests?"

"Higurashi-san," said Kumiko, cheerfully. "I'm Yamaguchi Kumiko, your daughter's homeroom teacher. This is Fujiyama-sensei, the music teacher. We noticed Higurashi-chan's absence and wanted to make sure she was okay!"

Something in Higurashi-san's expression shut down. "It's so kind of you to check in," she said. "Did I not call her out properly today? It's only her first absence of the year."

Kumiko and Fujiyama exchanged glances. "No, no. You did it right. It's just that at a school like Shirokin, us girls gotta stick together," said Fujiyama, all sparkly and personable in that way that Kumiko just could not quite pull off.

Higurashi-san gave them a brittle smile. "I'm afraid Kagome isn't up for visitors. She'll be back in class tomorrow."
Right. They were clearly being fed bullshit. Kumiko wondered what she'd do if this became a problem on the order of Kagome's middle school absences.

None of her last students had an absence record like that. Truancy was a problem for the Shirokin kids at large, but they could generally be counted on to show up at least twice a week. Somehow a junior high shrine kid had beat them all out.

"I'll be sure to let Kagome know you stopped by," Higurashi-san said. "She'll appreciate it."

Kumiko nodded, pulled the little cupcake out from behind her back. "I'm sorry she's sick on her birthday. That's no fun. Can you give her this for us? Tell her happy birthday?"

That brittle smile softened a little as Higurashi-san took the cupcake. "I will." Then she shut the door quite firmly in their faces.

"Ten bucks says Higurashi's not sick," said Fujiyama.

"No way," said Kumiko. "We both know she's not sick. I'd lose."

"Can't blame me for trying," said Fujiyama, like she was piteously poor and didn't spend all her excess money on expensive vacations. "Can we go to the shrine gift shop now?"

Not like Kumiko had a choice when Fujiyama was the driver, but, "Absolutely," she said. "I do love a gloriously kitschy gift shop." Maybe she'd find something nice for Grandpa.

She did not find something nice for Grandpa. She poked her head in the store, immediately yanked Fujiyama into a crouching posture. Higurashi-chan was in there, not in her Shirokin uniform, arguing with her own grandfather.

"We're not selling these anymore! Period! I thought I threw them all out!"

Grandpa Higurashi, dressed like a monk, was protectively clutching a cardboard box. "They came this time last year, Kagome. I just forgot to cancel the auto order!"

"Get. Rid. Of. Them." Even from their hiding place behind a display. Higurashi-chan's rage looked incandescent.

"But they cost money!"

"Then you should have canceled the order! I don't want to see replicas of the Shikon-no-Tama every time I step foot in the gift shop! I don't want to see people carrying them around, knowing that you sold them! Even if the replicas weren't bunk, it's hardly a sacred item!"

"You have to get over this, Kagome," Grandpa Higurashi said. It was clearly the wrong thing to say.

Kagome yanked the box from her Grandfather's arms, marched straight out the door without another word. The bell jingled as it closed behind her.

"Yikes," said Fujiyama.

Grandpa Higurashi noticed then that he had customers. "I'm sorry you had to see that. Young people these days!"

"What was that about?" Kumiko asked.

There was a hesitation that told her that he wasn't going to give them any better information than Mama Higurashi did.

"Who can say why kids do what they do?" he said. "This country's going to the dogs."

He may not have been willing to tattle on his granddaughter, but he did help Kumiko find something nice for her grandfather after all.

After their shopping spree, Kumiko and Fujiyama were careful to time their exit with a good crowd of other tourists, just in case Higurashi-chan was somewhere she might see them. This turned out to be wise, because there was Kagome sitting on the other side of the lawn, face lit by the late spring sunshine, back against an outer wall of the sacred well house, the cupcake they'd brought her in one hand.

She'd clearly just blown-out the candle, but she didn't look happy at all.

At least it ruled out the idea that she was ditching to party. The new sixteen-year-old clearly wasn't even having herself a one-person party.

"Damn," said Fujiyama as they made their way back down the shrine stairs. "I was honestly hoping she was ditching to have a good birthday. Poor kid seems wound up."

Kumiko made a noise of assent. She wasn't sure what she'd been hoping to find at the Higurashi Shrine, but Higurashi-chan picking fights with her grandfather and sitting forlornly against a well house wasn't it.

"Just keep an eye on things," Fujiyama advised. "Don't go crazy. It's probably nothing - she's been pretty dutiful til now." Fujiyama was probably right. Kumiko exhaled through her nose and resolved to try to leave well enough alone.

Higurashi-chan was back in school the next day. "I just needed some time," was all she said when Kumiko asked about it discretely.

Kumiko eyed her doubtfully, even though she thought this was probably true. A different student might have been intimidated enough at that look to offer more information. Higurashi just raised an eyebrow and excused herself.

That one absence on Higurashi's birthday didn't turn into a pattern — she continued to appear at school on time and put together. Shirokin teachers rarely assigned homework, because that was the way to end up failing an entire cohort, but she worked hard in class and met her deliverables.

"I am not good at math, Yankumi," she said after the first round of exams.

Kumiko thought back to her grade, shrugged. "You more than passed. You did better than most of your classmates."

"Yeah," said Higurashi. "And that's a problem because I suck at math! Am I actually going to learn what need to know just to live an adult life?"

Kumiko was not used to this kind of forethought from her students. She blinked. "What are your career goals? Do you need much math?" Kumiko was personally of the opinion that math was everywhere in life, but people's needs did vary and she thought she did a good job getting across the most universally necessary stuff.

Somehow, this question seemed to stump Higurashi. Like she'd had a certain answer she'd almost said on impulse, but had stopped herself from saying it. "It doesn't have to be realistic," Kumiko added. "You're only in your first year of high school. We have time to make things happen, no matter what someone might have said."

Because terrible middle school history aside, Higurashi's grades so far were pretty good. She'd have options at the end of school, if she wanted them.

Higurashi's eyes went distinctly watery. Oh shit. "You have time," Kumiko said again, trying to be reassuring. "Whatever your dream is, we can work together to make it happen. Do you want to join in on my after school tuts? It wouldn't be required for you, but we could get you working on harder material if that helps."

Kumiko snapped her mouth against the irrepressible tide of word vomit, tried to wait and hear what Higurashi Kagome wanted.

Higurashi wiped at her eyes. "No," she said. "It's not... it's." She hesitated. Collected herself. "I'd like to go to a middling college, maybe? Have the option to sit the entrance exams and do well enough to get in if I want to?"

"We can do that," said Kumiko. "We can absolutely do that." Sawada had not been her only student to pursue more education.

"Thanks. And nobody said anything," said Higurashi. "Like I couldn't meet my dreams because of my grades or anything. I just don't have a dream, so I need to make sure I can choose one later."

"I call that sensible," Kumiko said in her best reassuring voice. "You don't need to know anything yet, and this way we can keep your options open."

She'd eat her dog's shit if Higurashi wasn't lying, though. Maybe nobody had said anything mean, but that girl had a dream. Or maybe just a purpose, or course of action. And for whatever reason, Higurashi thought that she had to change course. By the brief trace of wetness in her eyes, she hadn't changed course because she'd wanted to.

Higurashi did get diligent about attending the math tuts, though. She stayed after school and slowly but steadily worked her way through math sheets that weren't quite as remedial as what Kumiko had the other kids working on. It wasn't exactly where a high school first year should be, either, but it was a start. For all that Kumiko had no concrete answers about Higurashi's undoubtably tragic back story, teaching was something Kumiko could do.

They settled into a routine after that. Kumiko stayed nosy, Higurashi kept carefully hiding any overt signs of her emotional fragility. They rescued Kumiko's precious students from their myriad shenanigans as a team. The school year continued.

"So," said Sawada one afternoon after a spar in the Kuroda yard. "Who's the new me?"

Kumiko had him on the ground, a foot pressed to his chest. She really hadn't been expecting him to come out with questions right now.

"There isn't a new you," she said, lifting her foot. "Every batch of students have their own unique dynamic."

"Oh come off it," said Sawada, standing up and wiping sweat off his brow. "You know what I mean."

"Well if you mean the class leader, there's this guy Sado who's got a lotta influence on the other kids. And there's this Ito kid, who I thought was a bit of a weakling honestly. He's also got a way of getting the others to listen."

"That is not what I mean," said Sawada.

"Well you were your class leader," said Kumiko reasonably. "So the 'new you' would be the new class leader."

"You would try to be that literal." Sawada looked up at the sky in that way he did when he didn't want to look at her. "Who joins you on your rescue missions? And don't say you haven't had to do any or that nobody's stepped up."

Honestly, it's like he didn't think she was perfectly capable of rescuing her cute students from their juvenile scrapes by herself! She nearly slapped him on the shoulder and changed the subject on principle, but... "A girl named Higurashi Kagome," she said.

Sawada looked surprised but not relieved, which meant his curiosity probably wasn't entirely about some sort of ridiculous jealousy. Kumiko continued, "She's always got this massive first aid kit with her, and if she can't diffuse a situation entirely, she's good at orchestrating distractions to get her classmates and herself out of the line of fire."

"Huh," said Sawada. "A first aid kit's not a bad idea at a school like Shirokin."

"Right?" Kumiko wondered what it said about them, that neither of them had thought of it. "Anyway, she is pretty good in a crisis, so, she usually volunteers herself along."

"Any idea what her story is?"

"None," said Kumiko, approximately honestly.

Sawada smirked at her. "That must be driving you nuts." Kumiko huffed at him, telegraphed a nice kick at his face. He dodged, as he was meant to.

"You'll get it out of her eventually." he added, totally redeeming himself. "Nobody can resist you for long."

Kumiko resolutely ignored that too-charming smile of his. "Minoru's making hot pot tonight," she said. "Are you staying for dinner?"

"Kyou-san gives me the dinner menu in advance. Seems to think I'll have better luck on hot pot nights. Of course I'm staying."

Fucking Kyou-san. He'd pay for encouraging the poor kid. Sawada'd be getting dinner and a show, Kumiko resolved. But for now, she was content to drink in the moment as Fuji wandered over with a happy bark. Her sweet old dog leaned his full weight on Sawada's legs, recieved all the scritches he was due. Sawada kept his face carefully blank, but his love for Fuji was plain anyway. Later. Kumiko would beat up Kyou-san later.

Sawada was whipped, though. Sweet as it was for him to say, plenty of people were perfectly capable of resisting Kumiko. As the school year went on, and Kumiko's batch of cute first years matriculated into second years, she rather thought that Higurashi was one of them.

Chapter Text

By the time Kagome finished out her first year of high school, she thought she'd gotten pretty good at pretending she was fine. Mama and Souta still gave her the occasional side-eye and Yankumi was nosy about all of her students. Grandpa, though still resentful over the lost revenue from the trashed box of Shikon-no-Tama key chains, seemed willing to leave Kagome's last year of junior high in the past.

Eri, Yuka, and Ayumi, predictably, were not quite so willing to let things go. "You're not dating some punk from Shirokin, are you?" said Yuka one day, early in their second year of high school. "It's just that it's been over a year since you've dated and you're so pretty that I think you might just be hiding a boyfriend we wouldn't approve of."

"No Shirokin punk boyfriends," Kagome assured, though she knew that Ito, at least, was interested.

"Would you like me to set something up?" Yuka had gone to the local middle-tier high school. It was co-ed, and Yuka had always been good at making friends. "It's definitely time you got back out there."

Eri, who attended the same school as Yuka, nodded earnestly. "There's this really kind upperclassman who'd just love you."

"No, thank you," said Kagome. "If I want a boyfriend, I'll find one."

Ayumi didn't say a word, just grasped Kagome's hand under the plastic fast food table, and squeezed. That was almost worse.

Kagome hastily changed the subject. "So, did I tell you that Shirokin second years all go on a class trip? We're going to Akita!"

"A school like Shirokin? Really?"

"That sounds so exiting, travelling with your kind of classmates!"

"You'll have to find me a CD of local folk music!"

Satisfied with her choice of diversion, Kagome began to tell them the details. She really was looking forward to this trip. There would be hot springs, and far enough north that they wouldn't be any of the ones she'd enjoyed with Sango, five hundred years removed from how she remembered them. Kagome was genuinely ecstatic about it. So she told them all about the geography project the history teacher had them working on, and the way Yankumi was incorporating relevant population statistics into their math lessons.

"So they really do teach at Shirokin, huh?" said Eri.

"Miraculously." Because as protective of them as she'd become over the last year, Kagome could acknowledge that her classmates were not easy kids to teach. "I'm trying to figure out if you'd love or hate the music teacher, Ayumi," Kagome added. "But she's managed to get three full choirs going."

"That's incredible!" Ayumi said with her usual warmth.

"The more you talk about it, the more Shirokin sounds like just a normal school," said Eri. "Choruses and class trips!" she sounded less jealous about the whole thing now, which Kagome counted as a win.

"And the fete last year was shockingly normal, too," Yuka added.

"Your classmates did a great job with that takoyaki stand."

"It kind of is a normal school," Kagome said, electing not to mention that the fete was only so normal because she and Yankumi had disappeared half way through to beat up some third years who were trying to sell drugs out of their booth. "It's just tailored to its students, who've been let down by the school system overall."

"That music teacher sounds amazing," said Ayumi. "I'd love to meet her." Last Kagome had heard, Ayumi wanted to be a music teacher. She seemed energized by this whole conversation.

She hesitated, attached to how separate Shirokin was from her junior high life, friends included.

But Ayumi's eyes were bright in that way Kagome wasn't sure she could achieve anymore. "I can probably arrange that," she said cautiously. "Fair warning. the Shirokin boys kind of worship the Elize girls — especially the third years, who are still boys-only."

If Kagome thought that might be a gentle deterrent, she was wrong. Something settled in Ayumi's expression.

"That's fine," said Ayumi. "You know I see them all the time. Shirokin and Elize are so nearby."

This was true.

"Alright then," Kagome said. "Let's get you and Fujiyama-sensei in a room together. What could go wrong?"

* * *

"Is this weird?" Kumiko asked Fujiyama.

"Higurashi's basically your new Sawada," Fujiyama said, shrugging. "I don't know if it's weird, but I'd expect weird shit from her anyway."

Kumiko bristled at that description. "She's my precious student Higurashi-chan, not a replacement for Sawada!"

Fujiyama gave her a flat look. "You busted a student Fight Club with her last week and miraculously got those students to form a boxing club. If those arent Yamaguchi-and-Sawada shenanigans, I don't know what is."

Damn.

"Anyway, Sawada never brought his old posh, academic achiever type friends around, so your point is moot!"

"I think it's sweet." Fujiyama declared. "I've always wanted a mini-me!"

Nomura Ayumi turned out to be very un-Fujiyama-like. She had long wavy hair, her Elize uniform was perfectly pressed. Everything about her screamed soft. She flinched when one of the boys wolf-whistled at her. Kumiko had been half-hoping that Nomura-chan would have answers to Higurashi's secrets, that she'd been involved in whatever had happened to Higurashi in 9th grade. She very obviously had not been.

And by the hawk-like stare Nomura kept on Higurashi, she had as many questions about Higurashi as Kumiko did. Despite her occasional flinches and obvious discomfort with Shirokin's graffiti-splattered walls, she was shockingly gracious. She shrieked and ran from a brewing fight in the halls, then helped those same boys back to their feet when they found themselves in a crumpled heap.

Kumiko was fairly sure that Higurashi had tripped one of them at a strategic moment, was gratified to see Nomura's questioning side-eye. She wasn't a mini Fujiyama, but she might still be an ally.

At the end of the school day, Fujiyama was glowing. "That girl has a set of lungs on her! And she tutored students on reading music in every class session! She plays the biwa!"

"That good, huh?"

"I love our stocky delinquent students, Yamaguchi, I really do. But working with her today was so refreshing." Kumiko would personally kill for a student with a strong affinity for mathematics. Even Sawada, who was objectively good with numbers, was indifferent to the field at best.

"Well, I'm glad she visited then." Kumiko said. "Weird thing for Higurashi to do or not! You said she plays the biwa?"

"Yeah," Fujiyama said dreamily. "Not that I'm much of a biwa person myself, but..."

"Grandpa would love it," Kumiko said. Grandpa was a traditional man's man from his tattoos to his geta to his taste in music.

"Don't introduce them!"

Flooded by the image of a trembling Nomura playing the biwa for her family, Kumiko threw her head back and laughed. It was a wonderful thought, and one that must never come to pass.

Nomura-chan kept visiting Shirokin after that, attending Fujiyama's co-ed chorus club after school. She not-so-subtly befriended the students Higurashi was close to.

"And that's Ito-kun redirected," Higurashi said the day he also signed up for the co-ed chorus club. "Thank goodness, I was getting worried about him."

"Worried about him for you, or worried about him for him?" Kumiko asked, because if it was the former, she'd need to sit Ito down about the appropriate way to approach a woman.

Higurashi snorted. "For him, poor guy. Ayumi-chan is a much better match for him than me."

Kumiko took a moment to digest the fact that Higurashi apparently had a low self-esteem. "You're a catch, Higurashi. Don't you forget it."

Higurashi gave a wistful sort of sigh that could mean any number of things. "I don't mean it like that," she said, but chose not to elaborate. Stumped, Kumiko just gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder.

Besides, she wasn't sure Higurashi had the right of things.

Not by the way Nomura and Ito spoke lowly in each other's ears, ever alert to the way Higurashi spooked at loud noises. If Ito and Nomura were coming together at all, it was because of their mutual interest in Higurashi.

Whatever the cause, Ito's budding closeness with Nomura seemed to be catching. All of a sudden, the boys in Class Four seemed to be aware that women existed.

Oh, they'd always been crude and uncouth, not so far off from the boys who photoshopped Kumiko's head on a naked blondie and named her Yankumi.

But their interest was tangible in a way it hadn't been in First Year. It was a terrifying new element to the co-ed dynamic, and Kumiko had no idea how to handle it.

Thankfully, the girls in Class Three seemed to see their male counterparts as utterly ineligible. Two of the girls might actually be dating each other, and Kumiko was debating the merits of referring them to Miura-sensei's budding GSA club. She wondered if girl love might not be outside of Miura's wheelhouse, though, and she didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

General sense of distaste for the boys aside, one girl had accepted her classmate's inelegant suit. Kumiko feared the day they might break up with all her heart.

"I just don't worry about it," Fujiyama said when Kumiko came to her for advice. "They're almost adults. They can handle being in class with their lover or ex. And if they can't? It is not like anybody's paying attention in class anyway." That was unfortunately true.

Kumiko reached out to some of her old classmates at Waseda, ones who'd gone to co-ed schools to begin with. Then she reached out to her old professors. Stay neutral, they all advised. Be supportive if they ask for it, but otherwise let them handle it.

It was all frustratingly hands off.

Kumiko was used to violently cleaning up her students' collective messes. She wasn't sure what to do with herself when that wasn't a viable option.

Between fretting about her students' pathetic love lives and watching Nomura watch Higurashi, the second year trip hit absolutely out of nowhere.

"It's a shame I'm not actually a student here," Nomura said at one of the after school prep sessions. "This sounds like so much fun!"

"Like Elize isn't doing something way cooler and with twice the funding," Ito reminded her.

Nomura blushed but stood her ground. "Less exciting company." It was testament to how thoroughly she'd managed to charm the Shirokin students that nobody took offense to that on principle. It was interesting, the split between students who proudly wore the badge of delinquent like a kind of armor and the students who found it chafing and restrictive. Kumiko also found it interesting that Higurashi seemed to be the former.

"Is it so weird for a Shirokin student to have a terrible junior high record?" Higurashi had asked oh-so-innocently when Kumiko asked a few too many questions in a row.

Kumiko had been forced to concede the point. Today, sitting in a loose circle in Kumiko's classroom, Higurashi gave Nomura's veiled reference to delinquency an indulgent smile.

Later that night, Kumiko reflected that Ito's comment about funding was a good one. Shirokin was not an expensive school. The student population was, on average, struggling financially. It was through the grace of alumni like Abe Tsuru that there was funding in place for students who couldn't pay their own way. She pulled Kyou-san aside and made an anonymous donation. Stepping in as the fourth generation when necessary made Kumiko feel less like a freeloader about living at home and eating out of the household budget. What she did with her earnings from school was her business, at least once she'd gotten Kyou-san's input.

Having felt like she'd done something material for her precious students, Kumiko was able to put aside her fretting long enough to arrive at Narita Airport bright eyed and bushy tailed, her troupe of excited delinquents in an unruly line behind her.

"Akitan hot springs," Fujiyama said as they settled into their seats. "Cherry blossoms."

"It's the wrong season for cherry blossoms," Kumiko pointed out, because summer was already well underway.

"You know the springs you can soak in even when it's snowing?

"We have to go to one of those." Kumiko didn't have the heart to point out that it was the wrong season for that, too. Even in the frozen North of Hokkaido, it was the wrong season for snow. But visiting a place in exactly the wrong season was extremely on brand for Shirokin, so Kumiko decided to take it as part of the charm.

Maybe Akitan summers would be a little less sticky than the summers in Town K.

That idle dream was dashed the moment they stepped off the climate controlled aircraft. It was hot that day in Akita. By unfortunate fate, perhaps hotter than the day they'd left behind in Tokyo. On the bright side, it made herding their bored, antsy students onto the tour bus easier. Kumiko was willing to take that win.

There was one real benefit to the whole co-ed thing.

Unlike how things had shaken out during Kumiko's trip to Okinawa with her first batch of precious students, these kids were not an outright hazard around pretty girls. They did manage to get off the tour bus a few times. Perhaps most successfully, there was a tea farm where all her city dweller kids got out into the fields to enjoy some sunshine and fresh air.

Well. Maybe enjoy was a strong word. They were definitely cranky about having to pick and roast tea leaves for an afternoon, but Kumiko could see the way the tension dropped from their bodies as they made their way through the rows of tea plants. Kumiko and Fujiyama exchanged pleased glances with their colleagues. Maybe staking out the hotel exits in shifts wouldn't be so necessary with the kids exhausted from an afternoon out of doors.

Kumiko sense of satisfaction evaporated when Fujiyama nudged her, though. "Look at your girl, Yamaguchi!"

Kumiko should have protested that Higurashi was not 'her girl,' but that protest would have been utterly spoiled by the fact that her gaze had gone immediately to where Higurashi treked sure-footedly through the bushes. She had never seen Higurashi look so at home and relaxed. Shrine kid or not, Kumiko had been under the impression that Higurashi was as chronically urban as any Shirokin kid.

But her steps were sure and her gathering sack bulged with her harvest.

"Huh," Kumiko said. "Weird."

"Right?" Fujiyama shielded her eyes from the sun, throwing her shoulders back in that way that put her large breasts on prominent display. Kumiko loved Fujiyama's brazen and unashamed comfort with her body. Kumiko thought she had the same air of relaxed comfort, but she had learned it through physical training, through fighting. That Fujiyama came to it so naturally was aspirational, really.

Kumiko refocused on her student. "Maybe she just likes plants?" But there hadn't been so much as a cactus in her bedroom. "Or maybe she's a tea enthusiast?"

"Yeah," said Fujiyama. "Maybe. Look at you accepting rational explanations!"

That, Kumiko thought, was genuinely uncalled for. Especially given that Fujiyama always enabled her shenanigans if she thought it would lead to something fun. Kumiko decided against making a playful show of being offended, said, "Maybe we'll actually learn something about her during this trip."

Fujiyama snorted. "Maybe."

The tea collecting went better than it should've honestly, and it occurred to Kumiko that Higurashi was a steadying influence. Not only on her own classmates, but on the cohort at large. Kumiko hadn't thought that Higurashi was a class leader in quite the same way Sawada was — and their leadership styles were certainly a world apart — but maybe the comparison was a little more apt than Kumiko had wanted to admit.

She forced herself to refocus her attention away from Higurashi and onto her own tea gathering. Good teachers led by example, and Kumiko had been so preoccupied that her own gathering sack was pathetically empty. "Let's actually pick some damn tea," she muttered to Fujiyama. Of course, that just led Fujiyama laughing at her.

Fujiyama was always laughing at her. It's honestly what Kumiko liked about her.

Chapter Text

That first evening in Akita, Kumiko realized that while the day's tea picking activities did successfully tire out the students, they also thoroughly tired out the teachers. In Okinawa, Kumiko had been horrified by the days spent crammed like sardines on the tour bus, but after a day of real touring, Kumiko found herself almost nostalgic for it. She collapsed straight down on the window-side bed of her shared hotel room, the ties of her twin tails digging into the base of her skull. She was ready to sleep, grand hot spring plans with Fujiyama notwithstanding.

She should have predicted that Fujiyama would be energized by the demands of tourism.

"It's not like we were stuck on a stuffy bus like last time," she said when Kumiko tried to bully her into staying in for the night. "You can't tell me you aren't buzzing, what with being in an exciting new place."

"You really like travel, don't you?"

Fujiyama slung a pink toiletry bag over her shoulder. "Who doesn't?"

Kumiko rolled onto her belly and groaned into her pillow. Then she rolled out of bed. Their hotel boasted access to some truly enviable natural hot springs and a good soak did sound lovely.

"You're going to be the death of me, you know that?"

"Oh please," said Fujiyama. "We all know it'll be Sawada. At least for a little death."

Kumiko lobbed a pillow at Fujiyama's face, felt only moderate satisfaction when it hit its mark. Man, Kumiko hated the way Fujiyama's expression shifted whenever she got all perverted. Sawada was only a year and a half into his university program! He was barely twenty!

"Throw all the pillows you want, Yamaguchi. It won't change the facts. You've already bought him a souvenir, haven't you?"

Kumiko had, but that was none of Fujiyama's damn business. She busied herself by gathering her own toiletry bag. The Sawada argument wasn't one that Kumiko could win, not when he'd brought her to that old Yakuza movie showing last week. Not when half the Gokudo was already treating him like Grandpa's successor.

Why was everyone Kumiko knew a filthy enabler? "Let's just go get that soak," she finally said.

"And I won't tease at all till we're done." Fujiyama beamed at her. "Well. At least not about Sawada."

Kumiko glared at her, but she'd be the first to admit that there wasn't much heat to it.

The problem with Shirokin being suddenly co-ed was that Fujiyama and Kumiko had expected by default that there wouldn't be any students in the women's bath. That was an incorrect assumption.

"Fucking Higurashi," Fujiyama said.

That wasn't at all fair, because it wasn't only Higurashi. It was a smattering of girls. At least one or two from each class.
Distinctly, Kumiko heard one of the girls say, "Shit, it's the teachers."

"Oh, don't worry about us." She carefully set her toiletry bag down, set to cleaning herself. If she heard some whispering about her lean muscle or Fujiyama's objectively incredible rack, she ignored it.

It was a good thing that the kids were using the hot spring. It was part of why they'd chosen this hotel!

Significance to Akitan culture aside, they'd been hoping that the novelty would encourage more than usually hygienic practices in the kids while they were stuck on a tour bus with them.

Kumiko was thrilled to see that paying off. Really. She was just generally tired and had to be coerced into coming down to the springs in the first place.

Fujiyama, for all that she'd sworn upon seeing their students relaxing in the hot water, seemed to glory under their appraising gazes. No one could ever accuse Fujiyama of being shy.

Kumiko reminded herself that she was hardly shy, either.

She just had secrets to keep, and the obvious strength of her body did not fit with Yamaguchi-the-bumbling-math-teacher. She undid her twin tails, tucked the ties into her toiletry bag and dumped a bucket of soapy water over her head. She got her hair clean and detangled before putting herself through one last frigid rinse and joining her students in the hot water, everyone's faces lightly obscured by the rising steam.

Kumiko sent affectionate nods at the two girls there from her homeroom as she waded past to sit with Fujiyama across the spring. Higurashi was first, then Kawata. Given that Kawata was more-or-less permanently attached to a deck of playing cards, seeing her was a surprise. Kumiko wouldn't have thought she'd want to spend an extended amount of time in an environment too wet to bring them.

Kumiko settled next to Fujiyama on a bench, let her shoulder press into her colleague's, and breathed deeply, relishing the humidity in her sinuses.

Kumiko knew that Shirokin staff and students were far from the only guests in the hotel, so it was odd how many of the people lounging in the water were Shirokin students.

Kumiko scanned the crowd. There was only one woman she didn't recognize! She didn't seem uncomfortable, surrounded as she was by Kumiko's delinquent students, but Kumiko resolved to watch the girls closely, just in case. She tried not to apologize for her students, she hated the idea that any of them might think for a second that she was ashamed of them, but she'd pull the woman aside for an explanation if it proved necessary.

It occurred to Kumiko that the woman was beautiful.

Her hair was incredibly long, ends splaying wide in the water despite the water coming only to her waist. It looked almost unreal.

Somehow, Kumiko knew that she was safe in this hot spring. Safer than she'd ever been.

Nothing could touch her in this water, not while this woman was with her. Kumiko settled deeper onto her bench, letting her shoulders slip beneath the water's surface. She was perfectly, completely, at ease.

And that's when the woman looked up at her properly. Kumiko knew that face. How could Kumiko not have recognized her on instinct?

"Mother," she said, standing from her bench and reaching through the steam.

"Kumiko," Kuroda Yuriko said, opening her arms broadly. "Oh, darling."

It was so easy to collapse into her mother's arms that Kumiko ignored the little voice screaming in her head.

How silly. Of course Mother hadn't died when Kumiko was seven. Her mother was right here, solid and real and warm.

"Fuck me," Kagome said to the room at large.

"Yamaguchi?" Fujiyama-sensei sounded uncharacteristically worried. "Do you know this woman?" But Yankumi was absolutely beyond hearing, ensnared as she was.

"Why?" Kagome demanded. "Why here? Why now?"

Fujiyama-sensei waded purposefully through the water, uncharacteristically businesslike, too. Kagome recognized that this was fair, that this was an emergency. But she wanted to have the space for a breakdown. Utterly.

"You know something about this, don't you?"

Kagome gave herself a second to breathe, in through her nose for a count of eight, out through her mouth for a count of nine. It was clear that Fujiyama was about to try to demand answers again, so Kagome cut her off. "Look in the water. Look at her reflection."

Fujiyama-sensei glared at her flatly. Kagome did not lower her gaze, heard the eruption of uneasy chatter from her cohort.

"At the woman's reflection. Not Yankumi's." Doubling down did the trick. Fujiyama-sensei hesitantly met Kagome's eyes, then looked down into the water, craning her neck to where Yankumi was practically melting into a strange woman's embrace.

Kagome placed a hand on her music teacher's shoulder, guided the both of them to a better vantage point.

Yankumi's familiar reflection rippled in the water, face utterly at peace. The Mu-Onna's reflection had no face at all.

"Fuck," Kagome said again, worst suspicions confirmed.

Fujiyama shrieked, and all the Shirokin girls jumped at the volume of it, Kagome included. She should have expected this from Ayumi-chan's professional idol: Fujiyama had a real set of lungs on her.

She also seemed to be remarkably good at managing her panic. She shrieked one more time, shuffled hastily backward, and took several quick breaths. "What is that?" Fujiyama-sensei asked, suddenly all business again.

Kagome grimaced, wanting, for one wild second to deny what she was seeing, deny that she knew anything about it. "It's a Mu-Onna. The restless spirit of a mother who lost her child, corrupted into something predatory."

Because she couldn't pretend she didn't know, not with Yankumi on the line. "A friend of mine was nearly consumed by one a few years ago."

"What do we do?" Fujiyama-sensei folded her arms under her breasts.

Kagome looked at Yankumi critically. The Mu-Onna was moving quickly — Kagome was hard pressed to tell where the monster ended and her teacher began.

There was a horrified quietness that Kagome never thought she'd hear from Shirokin girls. All of them were deferring to her! All of them were waiting for Kagome's expertise. Fuck, even self-assured Kawata, from her homeroom.

Kagome did not have her arrows with her. She'd almost gotten good with those by the end of her time in the past. She looked around the bath at her cohort, at her teachers, at the Mu-Onna who was curled protectively around her prey.

"Higurashi," Fujiyama said, voice anxious and impatient. Kagome closed her eyes against all of it. She focused on the water lapping at her waist, on the stony ground beneath her feet.

Kagome wasn't sure if she'd be able to reach that part of her that could slay youkai at a touch. She hadn't tried since the well had closed behind her and none of the reiki she'd thrown at it had done shit to open it back up.

But even as she managed to grasp her reiki, it occurred to her that she might not really need it. To kill the Mu-Onna, sure, but....

There it was, there in Yankumi and the Mu-Onna's rippling reflection. A child where there should have been a woman. Swimming was faster than wading, so Kagome dove beneath the surface of the water, the heat slamming her full in the face.

Even through the distortion of underwater sight, Kagome could see where Yankumi's legs were melding with the Mu-Onna's. She swam for that set of legs, letting her body and instinct take over.

She emerged from the water right through the Mu-Onna and Yankumi's reflection, and if her classmates noticed that Kagome glowed with the pink light of her reiki, she'd just deny it.

Yankumi sputtered, body coming free from where it had been partially absorbed. She grabbed the Mu-Onna with both hands, lifted her over her head, and dumped her face-first into the water.

Kagome had gotten into and out of any number of scrapes with Yankumi over the past year, but she hadn't realized she was quite that strong. Her martial arts background must be pretty thorough.

"What is this thing?" Yankumi asked, not bothering to hide the fresh heartbreak on her face.

Kagome couldn't bring herself to explain.

She was still breathing hard, less from her time spent under water and more from the way reiki was still fervently buzzing under her skin.

"Higurashi called it a Mu-Onna," Fujiyama-sensei said. "And then she used Miko powers on it, but didn't finish the job."

"Finish the job?" Kagome said vacantly. She looked at the Mu-Onna, who was emerging from the water, looking exceptionally disgruntled. Kagome could finish the job. She could do it easily, with how present her powers were at the moment. The glow had disappeared as Yankumi tossed the Mu-Onna into the water, but it was coming back to her hands.

Everyone was watching her expectantly, too, wanting the power of the Miko of the Shikon no Tama to protect them, seeing her initial failure to purify the demon as a shortcoming.

But. "No," Kagome said, willing the glow to fade from her hands. The Mu-Onna looked disgruntled, not murderous. And Kagome would never forget the one that had died to protect Inuyasha.

Even if she'd almost eaten him first.

"No?" Fujiyama-sensei stared at Kagome blankly.

Kagome ignored her, put her hands on her hips, turned to the Mu-Onna. "People aren't food."

The protective look on the Mu-Onna's face was almost sweet. "She needs a mother," she said. "I can be her mother."

"Absorbing her, body and soul, is not being her mother."

"Better she's safe within me than living the life she leads."

Kagome knew that the Mu-Onna had a way of intimately knowing their targets as a mother would, but she chalked this statement up to over protectiveness.

"Maybe from your perspective, but even if my classmates are a little rough around the edges, Yankumi can take care of herself. Frankly, I don't care if she needs a mother. She's a grown adult, and we need our teacher."

The Mu-Onna looked very skeptical to hear this.

Kagome tried again. "I barely touched you with my reiki. If you want to keep it that way, you leave her alone."

The Mu-Onna narrowed her eyes. "You're a miko. You'll purify me no matter what I do."

Kagome thought that was probably a position wrought from experience. "A holy person who'd kill indiscriminantly just because their target is youkai is hardly a holy person at all."

"And what would you know of youkai little girl? There are so few of us in recent years. And so many of us choose to hide themselves away."

Spirits, this was territory Kagome did not want to go into in front of her classmates and teachers. Kagome took the Mu-Onna's hands in hers. She leaned in close, spoke in a soft undertone. "I've loved youkai before." Kagome said. "And now they're gone." More loudly, she added "You can feel your targets, can't you? Feel me."

Kagome carefully disassembled the dam she kept before her emotions about the past. She let herself think about Inuyasha, because of course she had to think about Inuyasha. It was a daily struggle to keep him off her mind. But she focused her attention on her feelings about Shippo, which were motherly and sharp with loss – something the Mu-Onna was sure to understand.

"Oh," the Mu-Onna said.

"I won't hurt you," Kagome said. "Not if you don't hurt me or mine."

"He was a fox?"

"I miss him every day," Kagome confirmed. "He wasn't mine. Not technically, but."

"You were becoming his mother in the ways that mattered. And then he was gone."

Kagome looked down at their reflections in the water, reassured to see her seventeen year old self looking back at her. The Mu-Onna was making no move to embrace her, but Kagome released her hands and took a few steps back, just in case.

Distantly, she was aware of mounting horror on everyone's faces. Goodness, Kagome wasn't looking forward to having to explain this one.

"They were all gone. So you see, I'm not gonna just purify the first youkai I've run into since. Not if I don't have to."

The Mu-Onna nodded, cast a longing look over Kagome's shoulder at Yankumi. Kagome shook her head. "She's not your child. She can't replace your child."

"I know that," the Mu-Onna said. "They never do."

"Then maybe you should stop." Kagome stepped back into reaching range. "They never will, and eventually somebody will kill you for this."

The Mu-Onna stepped deftly around Kagome, like wading was no harder than walking.

Kagome braced herself, called her power back to her hands. She saw Yankumi slide into a fighting stance. But the Mu-Onna did not open her arms for her soporific and deadly embrace.

She just placed a palm on Yankumi's cheek.

"Stay safe," she said. "Your mother left for you. So she could raise her children somewhere better. So for her sake, keep yourself safe."

And then the Mu-Onna was gone.

"Fuck," said Fujiyama-sensei.

Yankumi looked ashen, clearly too shocked to speak. Yeah. Kagome felt that. The Shirokin girls errupted into chatter. Kagome felt a sense of unity with her teacher, too spent to contribute to the rising din, just staring vacantly at the place where the Mu-Onna had disappeared.

Then Yankumi bolted, fleeing the bath. She took only the time to loosely wrap her yukata around herself before leaving the bathing area entirely. Kagome could relate.

"Fuck," Fujiyama-sensei said again. "Higurashi?"

That was Kagome's cue to follow Yankumi's lead.

She had some Truths to confront, and damn if she was going to do it here, with her cohort staring at her and the music teacher about to mount an interrogation. She didn't bother to run, though, just slid lugubriously out of the water, steadfastedly ignoring the conversation happening behind her, wrenching her arm unceremoniously free from the hand that landed on it.

Kagome slipped on her own yukata mechanically, left the hotspring to have her mental breakdown in privacy.
Youkai still existed. They weren't relics of a world long gone.

Sango, Miroku, Kohaku, Rin, and Kaede were a lost cause. Kagome had known that from the beginning. But five hundred years wasn't too long for a youkai.

Shippo, in partiular, should be a young man! So where was he? Where were they? And why weren't they here at Kagome's side where they belonged?
She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Chapter Text

"Yamaguchi?"

Kumiko peered out from under her blanket, saw Fujiyama standing at the doorway to their shared room. Kumiko pulled the blanket back over her head. "I don't want to talk about it."

Fujiyama sat down on her futon. "Then don't," she said. "But I'm here, okay? So do what you've gotta do and know that you're not alone. Also, I brought a bottle of sake."

Kumiko's next sniffle was almost a laugh.

It was so nice to have friends.

Of course, the next morning, everyone was talking about the secret love child Higurashi had put up for adoption before coming to Shirokin, ignoring what Higurashi and the Mu-Onna had actually said in favor of the most scandalous interpretation. Because what else would a bunch of high school delinquents have heard, honestly? A fair few of them had been pregnant themselves or accused of it. They were just dishing the same bullshit they'd been served.

Higurashi, to her credit, didn't seem offended, but Kumiko wasn't certain that it wasn't just because she wasn't really in a state to notice the gossip. It was the first few weeks of first year all over again, Higurashi moved through the rest of the trip on a terrible auto-pilot. To be perfectly fair, Yankumi wasn't much better the day after the incident with the Mu-Onna.

But Kumiko was a grown woman, so she shed her tears, then shook it off. She had students to guide through the not-so-frigid North.

She couldn't pretend she wasn't shaken, though. The Mu-Onna had replicated Kumiko's memory of Kuroda Yuriko to the smallest detail.

And she'd known things. Known things she could not possibly have known. The line about leaving "for" her was almost enough to make Kumiko dust off the father question. Maybe she had already existed in a small way by the time Yuriko left the kumi.

But Kumiko had already gotten comfortable with uncertainty about her parentage, about the fact that Yuriko would have chosen nearly any future for Kumiko over the course she'd chosen. So she cried herself to sleep two nights in a row, accepted Fujiyama's offer of sake on the second night, and was back in her body and ready to be present by the next day.

Higurashi looked like she was repressing everything instead of dealing, though. Sure, the Mu-Onna hadn't targeted her with a dearly missed motherly embrace, but the whole thing had clearly brought up things from Higurashi cryptic tragic backstory.

Man. Higurashi was suspiciously good at scolding her classmates but to think that she'd had a child that she'd somehow lost! And that this child almost could not have been part of her life after she'd started at Shirokin.

And all Kumiko could do about it was watch. Watch her seventeen year old student try to compartmentalize her grief over a child she'd lost at fifteen. Watch as her other students turned it into something more scandalous than it was.

Not that Kumiko thought they should be tittering about it in Higurashi face even if it was that scandalous.

Kumiko couldn't even pretend that she was good at relating to other women, but at the very least she'd been around hostesses who were genuinely heartbroken over the loss of children they couldn't have kept and hadn't wanted in the first place. Around women who'd had to make hard choices to protect themselves.

All she'd ever been able to do was watch.

The Great Yankumi was out of her depth. Still, she refused to be totally useless. She threw herself, as usual, into teaching, zealously leading her students through their touring sites and encouraging Higurashi to reengage in the moment whenever she stared into space for a little too long.

Like at the tofu making workshop, where Kagome left hers curdling in its pot. Not that much of the tofu got eaten anyway. This was Shirokin. Things ended with an astonishingly violent food fight.

It always astonished her, how blazé they were about food, especially given how many of them erperienced food shortages at home. Teenagers and their undercooked consequences brain.

The fight seemed to wake Higurashi up a little, at least. For all that she was a shrine kid, for all that the Higurashi shrine was plainly affluent, she looked torn between fondness for shenanigans and shocked at the blatant food waste.

Kumiko didn't want to think too hard about what that meant. She did, though. Of course she did. She couldn't help it.

It wasn't until the end of the trip that Kumiko managed to muster the strength of will to enter the hot springs again. Fujiyama had been trying to coax her into it for days, but every time Kumiko tried to gather her bath things, her mother's face flashed through her mind.

In the end, Kumiko waited until Fujiyama was passed out drunk on the second to last night of the trip to face her literal mommy-issue demons. She waited until it was late enough that every sane guest would be tucked in their futons.

Sane guest was a key word, though.
Higurashi wasn't apparently a sane guest either.

She was sitting on a bench on the far side of the spring, only came directly into view as Kumiko waded into the water.

The steam was thick, obfuscating, and Higurashi's face was tipped up toward the distant ceiling. Her body was utterly relaxed.

Kumiko sat down on the bench next to her. "Hey," she said.

"Hey," said Higurashi, apparently unsurprised by Kumiko's voice. Wading wasn't exactly a silent activity, but how Higurashi knew it had been Kumiko approaching was a mystery. Even now, her eyes were closed.

"How are you?" Kumiko asked her. "Are you okay?"

Higurashi sat up a little taller, opened her eyes, and rolled her head to the side to fix Kumiko with her steely grey-eyed stare. "I feel like I should be asking you that."

"You shouldn't be worrying about your teacher, you know."

"As your student?" Higurashi said. "Maybe not. As the miko who saved your life from a Mu-Onna? Following up with you is practically my job."

Kumiko, unfortunately, couldn't really argue with that logic. "I knew you grew up on a shrine, but I didn't know you were actually a miko. How long has that been going on?"

Higurashi looked back at the ceiling, shrugged. "I think it was inevitable before I was even born."

And that was a non-answer if Kumiko had ever heard one. "When you were fifteen, then?" Because that was the period that made sense for coming into an inevitability. "Your last year of junior high?"

Higurashi slid down the bench, submerging herself entirely instead of answering. She stayed down there for nearly a minute, long hair spreading about her head like squid's ink.

Kumiko watched her. She was no great swimmer, but even she knew not to leave someone unattended during an extended breath hold. Maybe Higurashi would open up a little, when she realized her cute ploy to avoid the conversation had failed.

She surfaced just when Kumiko thought it might be time to haul her out for her own safety.

"I grew up on a shrine," Higurashi said, pushing her dripping hair up and out of her face. "Why is fifteen more likely than anything else?"

"I have seen your academic records, you know," Kumiko said, saw Higurashi flinch. "And those grades don't match what you were achieving the year before or your grades at Shirokin."

"You got me," said Higurashi flatly. "My grades slipped because I spent a year travelling Japan slaying youkai as a shrine maiden. Right along with that teen pregnancy everybody's all excited about."

Higurashi's deflection was one Kumiko recognized. 'What, you think I'm doubling as a Yakuza heiress while studying to be a math teacher? How'd you guess?! All that loan sharking really helps my math skills!' She'd had that conversation once upon a time.

And this wasn't Kumiko's first rodeo with youkai, either. Unlike her old Waseda classmate, she recognized that Higurashi wasn't just spouting absurdities.

Clearly, though, Higurashi was unready to share. "Yeah fine," Kumiko said. "It was just a guess. You don't have to be all mean about it."

By the relaxing of Higurashi shoulders, Kumiko knew she'd made the right call.

"However it started," Kumiko decided to add. "I'm glad you're a miko. I do know you saved my life with that Mu-Onna. Thank you."

Higurashi gave her a small smile. "I'm sorry I didnt notice her sooner. I know being targeted by a Mu-Onna really hits a person where it hurts."

"Have you?" Kumiko didn't finish her sentence. She'd met Higurashi's mother.

"No," Higurashi confirmed, her eyes growing distant. She didn't say another word, but Kumiko could almost see the memory that played in Higurashi's head of another person in another place.

It all went back to her spotty ninth grade year, didn't it? Where she'd been mostly out of school and had somehow gained a son and lost him.

Abruptly, Kumiko remembered the bow she had seen in Higurashi's bedroom that first week of first year. Remembered the mental image that popped up then, of Higurashi leveling that bow with an air of concentraton. Remebered what Higurashi had said before that first fight: I'm the ranged fighter with the first aid kit, usually.

It really was like the early days of Higurashi's first year all over again. Kumiko knew damn well that she shouldn't pry and she wanted to anyway. How could she not, when Higurashi had apparently travelled Japan slaying youkai?

But Higurashi had proved herself reliable. Both in schoolyard fights and academically, so her issues were none of Kumiko business. And for all that Kumiko had overstepped her bounds - creeping on the Higurashi shrine and asking invasive questions - Higurashi hadn't retaliated. Not even to ask why Kumiko had been vulnerable to the Mu-Onna to begin with.

It could even be argued that Higurashi was entitled to that information, too. Argued that Kumiko owed her explanations. If she wasn't going to offer one (and she definitely wasn't) she couldn't demand one.

There was nothing for it but to leave well enough alone. Kumiko relaxed against the stone wall behind her, let her muscles enjoy the heat and weightlessness of the hot spring. There weren't any answers for her here, but there was comfortable companionship.

Higurashi made a small sound. It echoed oddly through the steam; it took a moment for Kumiko to recognize it as a sob.

Kumiko had no idea how she was supposed to address that, so she didn't. Higurashi did not cry for long, but Kumiko sat beside her till it passed.

Maybe she didn't need to know Higurashi's whole story to give her the support she needed. Maybe being her teacher could be enough.

Chapter Text

"That hot spring sounds absolutely delicious," Yuka said as she inspected her chicken sandwich. "Who would think Shirokin would do such a cool second year trip."

"I would think," said Eri crossly. She'd never quite gotten over her jealousy about Kagome's adventurous choice in high schools.

"Then you should have sat the entrance exam instead of just talking a big talk." Yuka said, her mouth now full.

"Oh, shut up," said Eri.

Ayumi sent them both an eyeroll. "I bet that Fujiyama-sensei loved it. She absolutely loves travel."

Kagome sent her an appreciative glance. "She spent so long in the water during her free time that I thought she might be trying to make a Fujiyama broth!"

Thankfully, everybody laughed at that, whatever weird argument that was brewing between Eri and Yuka dispelled for the moment.

"What about you? Do you like hot springs?" Eri asked, a clear olive branch.
Given how well intentioned the question was, Kagome was careful to restrain her instinctive grimace. Of course her friends were most interested in the part she least wanted to talk about.

"I do like hot springs, and these were as nice as they look on the brochures."

There was a chorus of dreamy sighs and Kagome forced a grin. "But the real highlight of the trip was the tea farm."

Thankfully, the girls were willing to accept the redirect. Ayumi, however, had a thoughful look. It was gone in another instant and Ayumi was all earnest when she clasped her hands together and said, "Oh that sounds lovely! Tell us all about it!" Kagome did, but she kept a weather eye on Ayumi for the rest of their girls' day.

She watched for more of that thoughtful expression, but it didn't seem to reappear. By evening, Kagome had almost convinced herself she'd imagined it. That was a mistake.

On Monday morning, Mama wandered into the kitchen. If she looked a little baffled, Kagome shrugged it off. Mama often looked a little baffled. "Ayumi-chan's outside," Mama said. This wasn't unusual. Elize Academy and Shirokin High sat on neighboring blocks. Kagome and Ayumi often walked to school together, savoring a moment of old camaraderie in the press of the morning commute rush.

If there was an odd tone to Mama's voice, Kagome didn't notice, preoccupied as she was by hastily pulling her brush through her hair and buttoning the jacket of her Shirokin uniform. Shirokin barely had an attendance policy, but Elize didn't tolerate tardiness.

She practically fled the house, breezed past the wellhouse and the shrine to the main steps, where Ayumi was waiting for her. Her wavy hair was draped artfully as ever around her shoulders.

Those shoulders, however, weren't clad in the usual Elize uniform.

Oh, shit. "Ayumi, what?"

Ayumi flashed a cheerful smile. "I filed my transfer while you were in Akita!" So Kagome wasn't hallucinating. That really was a Shirokin uniform: button-up jacket, absurdly short skirt, and all. What the fuck, Ayumi?

"You transferred to Shirokin?" Kagome said, more than a little tongue tied.

"Well," Ayumi said, that thoughtful glimmer back in her eye. "I thought that I might do a better job learning from Fujiyama-sensei if I was properly her student."

"Huh." Nothing else to say, she gestured at the long stairs down the hillside. Ayumi linked their arms at the elbow and they picked their way down to street level. Kagome eyed Ayumi in her periphery.

"I'm in Class Two with Fujiyama-sensei." Ayumi added, seeming to sense Kagome's scrutiny. "Besides. I know you mostly went to Shirokin for the fresh start. I'm not trying to take that away. But maybe we can eat lunch together on the roof sometimes?"

Kagome gripped Ayumi's arm a little tighter, relieved that Ayumi had noticed Kagome's need for space without her having to say anything. Relieved and mistrustful, because there was no real guarantee that Ayumi would respect it. She really did idolize Fujiyama-sensei, but she'd only discovered Fujiyama because she'd come to spend time with Kagome. To watch Kagome.

Boy, Kagome didn't like that she was being watched.

That's why she'd chosen Shirokin of all schools — a place where almost none of her old junior high classmates would choose to go! At least none that had traveled in the same social circles that she had.

"The uniform looks good on you," Kagome said faintly.

Ayumi grinned at her, adjusting the strap of her biwa case. "Thanks," she said. "The skirt's obscene, though! As bad as our junior high, honestly."

"At least its familiar!" Kagome tugged ruefully at the hem.

"Speak for yourself. I've spent the last year and a half in the Elize uniform!" Ayumi started that sentence almost reproachfully, but she finished by laughing. Kagome forced herself to relax into the camaraderie.

The world around them was easing into fall; even in Tokyo, the air was crisp and sweet.

She could enjoy that. She could enjoy that even if Ayumi's gaze was always a little calculating. She could enjoy that even if this person Ayumi was becoming under Fujiyama's brash and self-assured tutelage was more than a little terrifying.

"Your new project student is a miko?" Sawada was, of course, casually sitting at Kumiko's dining room table.

"Impressive," said Grandpa. "It's always good to hear of a youth rejuvenating the old ways."

Ugh. The glance he cast to Sawada was fond. Of course he was fond. Of course he would compare her former student to her current student while treating him like successor and son-in-law.

Kumiko tried to let those roles coincide in her head as little as possible. The way this dumbass twenty-year-old looked almost jealous of Higurashi Kagome did not help matters.

"Oh come off it, Red Lion.'' Kyou-san said. Bless Kyou-san. "We all know you ain't a holy man. That ain't what we want you for." He was leering.

Net bless Kyou-san, then. Kumiko elbowed him firmly in the side. This did not help her case, because Sawada had elbowed him firmly on his other side. He and Kumiko locked eyes. There was that silent communication that had become too easy.

They lifted Kyou-san together, dumped him face first on the tatami in perfect unison.

It would have been satisfying if even Kyou didn't look so damned pleased about it.

There was another silent communication and Kumiko and Sawada were fleeing the Kuroda compound together. This, too, would have been more satisfying if Sawada wasn't smirking at her.

"Coffee?" he said in that too casual tone of his. He wanted her to say yes, but thought she would say no if he sounded like it mattered to him. Kumiko almost hated that she knew him that well, except that she couldn't bring herself to regret it.

"Yeah," Kumiko said. "Coffee sounds great."

If his face lit up like it made his day? Well, if Kumiko was being honest, it made hers, too.

When two steaming cups of coffee were placed in front of them, Sawada asked,"So, what's a shrine maiden with demon fighting powers doing at Shirokin?"

"Hell if I know." Kumiko said, "But her last year of junior high was apparently crap. Her grades at Shirokin are stellar, her seventh and eighth grade records were pretty average. She's lucky she didn't flunk out of ninth. Her family made all sorts of excuses about her health, but it was clearly bullshit to anyone with eyes."

"Was she out..." Sawada grimaced, like his own sentence was causing him psychic damage. "Demon slaying?"

The thought caused Kumiko some psychic damage too, but for rather different reasons, she suspected.

"It's not like we haven't encountered both ghosts and youkai before."

"Yeah, yeah," said Sawada, taking a drink of his coffee – black, even though Kumiko knew he preferred it with cream and sweetened to all hell, because he thought she'd find it impressive.

Let him suffer, Kumiko thought, taking a drink of her own apple spice latte. She didn't fill the silence, like she wanted to. Tried to give Sawada the space to find his words. He was slow with words sometimes, too easy to talk over and around if Kumiko let herself.

"You really think that's what she was up to?" Sawada finally said, dropping the subject of his skepticism of anything supernatural.

Kumiko placed her cup on its saucer. "I don't know," she said. "It's what she seemed to be implying, and she certainly can slay demons. But there was also apparently a much younger child involved. A fox youkai. Higurashi described him as her son in all the ways that mattered, and now he's gone. Maybe dead, given that she used her feelings about him to reason with a Mu-Onna. And how the hell that fits with the demon slaying hypothesis, I have no idea."

"Huh," said Sawada. He was smirking again, damn him. "That must be driving you crazy."

"I'm trying to let it go," Kumiko said. "I realized that I don't really need to know her life story to be what she needs."

There was a pause while Sawada formulated his next thought. "Well," he said. "We know who to call if we run into any more youkai."

He was definitely at least half-joking, but Kumiko decided that it wasn't a bad way to look at things. She stood from her chair and picked up Sawada's coffee.

"C'mon, I'm tired of watching this. Let's get you a coffee you actually like."

He flushed red to the tips of his ears, but he didn't try to fight her on it.

Sawada stood and Kumiko nudged him with her shoulder. She wondered if his half-joke would turn out to be prophetic. Maybe they would need to call on Higurashi Kagome, demon slaying miko extraordinaire one day.

Chapter Text

"Ayumi's at Shirokin, and I'm not?!" Eri exclaimed at their monthly fast food retreat. "And she doesn't tell me until she shows up in the uniform?!"

Eri, who'd instigated the Shirokin curiosity in the first place, had always been a little weird about Kagome's choice to actually go there.

"Kagome, I get," Yuka said. "No offense. We all knew you were poised to do something desperate and crazy at the end of ninth grade. You had that look about you."

"None taken," said Kagome, because she really couldn't argue with that.

"But Ayumi? Really? You want to be a teacher!"

Ayumi went all starry-eyed. "And Fujiyama-sensei is exactly the sort of teacher I want to be!"

"Minus all the weird sex jokes, right?" Kagome asked, just to see Eri and Yuka's faces.

A few years ago, Ayumi might have sniffed primly in response. Now, she just giggled. "Minus the weird sex jokes and the bishonen choir."

"The pretty boy choir?!" Yuka said, getting shrill.

"You have to see it to believe it. She has choirs for other vocal types that are a little more diverse, but the tenor choir has a... cohesive look."

Eri gagged. "That's terrible! That's your new role model?"

"Yep," Ayumi said. "Say what you want, but she manages to keep a successful music program going at Shirokin of all places. I want that kind of tenacity."

Yuka glared at both Ayumi and Kagome in turn. "I hate that that's a fair point."

"That school sounds like it's straight out of a manga," Eri said, sounding displeased with her life choices all over again. "Are you two even getting an education there?"

Kagome wobbled a hand back and forth. "We're doing extra work to make sure we can pass a University entrance exam."

"The point, though, is making a high school diploma more accessible to students who wouldn't otherwise be able to get one," Ayumi added. "They have to show up more often than not, but trying to make Shirokin actual college prep would be almost counter to the point."

"But you don't need that, Ayumi," Yuka said earnestly, beat a hasty glance at Kagome. "And even Kagome's doing fine now."

"The amount of work I put in right at the end of ninth grade, I might have even gotten in somewhere better myself. I just liked going with the safe bet."

"So why?" Yuka demanded. "What are either of you getting out of some terrible delinquent school?"

Kagome exchanged glances with Ayumi. Because, yes, partly it was Kagome's failing junior high academics. Part of it for Ayumi was her concern for Kagome and a desire for proximity spying. But there was also that sense of otherness to Shirokin. It was irresistible, really, and Kagome had no idea how to explain that to somebody who didn't already know.

Ayumi just shrugged. "It's Shirokin," she said. "Somehow, that's enough of a reason all on its own."

Yuka looked dubious. Eri, Kagome could tell, understood.

Second year passed quickly after that.
Rumors circulated like wildfire about 'Higurashi's dead ninth grade love child,' but the fire was bright and hot and burned out quickly.

"I was with Kagome-chan in junior high," Ayumi said flatly to anyone who asked. "She definitely wasn't pregnant." That helped put the rumors to rest, but it only fueled Ayumi's brand of quiet suspicion.

Kagome ignored it. She was too busy focusing on her dismal math skills. Youkai might be back in her life, but the well was still just an impenetrable hole in the ground. College loomed – her unfortunate 'just in case' looking likelier every day.

Ayumi took a brief break from her oppressive monitoring to focus on her stellar biwa skills.

First, this was a good thing. Then, one day Ayumi flagged Kagome down in the hallway after school.

"I composed a ballad for the biwa! I found this incredible legend in the library, and I had to sing it," Ayumi said excitedly. "Please come to the music room and hear it, please!"

Kagome felt a sense of wariness she could not explain. She couldn't refuse, though. Not when Ayumi looked so pleased with herself.

In Fujiyama's classroom, Ayumi gestured for Kagome to sit at a desk near the front of the room, then settled herself at her biwa. She began to play.
She began to sing.

It took a moment for the subject to sink in. Ayumi described a priestess and a sacred jewel: cremated together, rebirthed together. Ayumi described a hanyou, reviled by his community and desperate for connection. Ayumi described a motherless fox, a clanless demon slayer, a monk who was being consumed by his own body. Ayumi described a second hanyou, described his bloody quest for power.

She did not finish the song before Kagome found herself crying hysterically at her desk.

Ayumi broke off the music abruptly. "Oh, fuck," she said – something no good Elize Academy girl would ever say – and rose. "Kagome-chan, what's wrong?"

Kagome did not explain. Ayumi held her through the breakdown.

"I'm sorry," Ayumi said. "I am so so sorry."

"S'not your fault," Kagome said. "I'm sorry."

"Shhh," said Ayumi. "Don't you dare." She firmly rubbed Kagome's back. Miraculously, she asked no questions.

In the aftermath, Kagome couldn't help but feel like she'd given too much away. Surely Ayumi didn't stop watching her. However, some of Ayumi's obsessive observation turned inward. She was quiet. Reflective. Kagome desperately wanted to know what Ayumi was thinking, but Ayumi did not share and Kagome did not pry.

Sometimes, Kagome noticed Yankumi watching Ayumi. Sometimes, Kagome noticed Fujiyama-sensei watching herself. As the only two female teachers at Shirokin, Fujiyama-sensei and Yankumi had always shared a deep sense of cooperation and mutual respect. They were clearly co-conspirators. Kagome thought the two of them might even be friends. Still, she could not help feeling suspicious when she saw the two of them with their heads together, murmuring quietly and eyeing her with interest.

Fuckers.

Despite her suspicions, Kagome couldn't undo the trust she'd developed in Yankumi. Especially not when they were regularly bandaging her classmates in back alleys and beating up local trouble makers together. They were a team, and to Yankumi's credit, she never pressed Kagome with questions she didn't want to answer.

It was in that rhythm that third year rolled in. Career advising sessions came soon after.

"Will you be doing the whole shrine maiden thing full time after high school?" Yankumi asked during their session. "I bet you look fantastic in the miko get up."

Kagome nearly retched right then and there. Grandpa had been trying to get her into the miko clothes forever. She was hardly able to look at them.

"Absolutely not," Kagome said. Not on this side of the well. Not without Inuyasha or Shippo or Sango or Miroku or Kirara by her side.

Yankumi assessed her, said, "College, then? What would you like to study?"

"I'll work on Gen Eds until I decide what to do," Kagome said. "Because honestly, I have no idea."

"Then let's get you going on exam prep. Your friend Nomura-chan's also going to Uni, right?"

"Yep."

Yankumi beamed. "Then you've got a built in study buddy!" Studying with Ayumi was always The Worst, but Kagome just nodded placidly. Not like she had any better ideas.

"You don't have to make any decisions yet, you know," Yankumi added softly. "You have time."

Kagome did not feel like she had time.

Ayumi quietly declared that her plans had changed after her own career advising appointment.

"History," she told Kagome. "I want to study history."

Kagome didn't know what the fuck she was supposed to say to that, so she just nodded mutely.

With Kagome's future career still up in the air, Grandpa continued to be pushy about shrine work.

"Why would you waste your power and skill?" he would say at dinner, puffed up and frustrated. But it wasn't that Kagome was wasting her talents, it's that she'd already used them. She was the Miko of the Shikon-no-Tama. The Shikon-no-Tama was gone. Kagome's powers had served their purpose. She had quite literally left their whole world behind.

Leaving her powers in the past where they belonged, however, was easier when no one outside of her family knew that those powers existed. At this point, all of Shirokin knew, and they did not seem inclined to forget it.

It was a small miracle that Ayumi hadn't spilled the beans to Eri and Yuka.

Kagome was now fielding working questions about spirituality and religion, along with requests for blessings for objectively stupid things.

"Can you bless my shoes so I can always outrun Yankumi?"

"What about my pencil? So it always gives me the correct answer on exams?"

"Can you do my cellphone? Scam calls have to count as a kind of demon you can exorcise."

Kagome just stared these classmates down until they left her alone, not dignfying their requests with an answer.

But sometimes someone would approach her with something a little more heartfelt.

"My older brother is looking at a prison sentence, Higurashi-senpai. Is there anything you can do to help as a miko?"

"My grandmother's sick, Miko-senpai! What am I supposed to do?"

Kagome felt compelled to explain to these classmates that she wasn't a proper holy woman, had no idea how to help them. Still, the requests continued. It occurred to her that she might be the closest thing to a real miko these Shirokin kids had access to.

She wasn't expecting Yankumi to get in on the action.

Yankumi leaned low over Kagome's desk during their after-school tutoring one day, the end of one twin tail brushing the desktop. "I've heard the whole skinny about how you aren't a fully trained miko, of course," she said. "But youkai. You know youkai, don't you?"

Kagome froze over her extra math packet. "Why?"

"Because this old man's been demanding to see my grandfather's sword, and I don't think he's entirely... human."

"Are you sure he's not just a weird old man? My grandpa's pretty weird."

"No," said Yankumi, eyebrows crinkling. "I know geezers. And this guy sure is a geezer, but that's not the issue."

Part of Kagome wanted to protect the fragile peace she'd built for herself. Another part of Kagome would do anything to see youkai again – another reminder that the past was real. The biggest part of Kagome, however, knew she had to say this much: "Youkai or not, if he's an old geezer who just wants to see a sword, you can probably let him. Youkai are people, you know."

"The Mu-Onna wasn't the first youkai I've encountered. The other one was violent, too." Yankumi's expression belied her statement. She looked considering.

Kagome shrugged. "Just luck of the draw. If you're not sure this man is a youkai, he's probably taking steps to disguise himself. Just trying to go about his business."

Kagome didn't know why she hadn't thought of that before the Mu-Onna had told her, that youkai might just be in disguise, blending into the modern world.

Yankumi's shoulders settled. "You're probably right," she said with a long breath. "I don't want to make an old man uncomfortable before he's even done anything wrong."

This was a good thing. This was the conclusion Kagome had wanted Yankumi to draw. But with good sense and fair mindedness prevailing, the opportunity to speak with a youkai again was dwindling.

Peace or connection to the past?

"Tell me when you arrange for him to come," Kagome said. "At least I have practice socializing with youkai."

Yankumi hesitated. "Well if you don't think he's likely to be dangerous, I shouldn't be bringing you anywhere near my family. Professional boundaries, you know."

"I mean, we don't know for sure that he isn't dangerous," Kagome said desperately.

"Are you arguing for or against treating youkai like normal people?"

Kagome deflated. "For," she said. "Definitely for."

"Then stop arguing against yourself," said Yankumi, bordering on exasperation.

"Please," Kagome said. "I don't know. He might have news about..." She trailed off.

"Your youkai son," Yankuni said, eyes softening.

"Among others," Kagome said. "I haven't been able to contact anyone since ninth grade. I don't even know if they're —." she couldn't bring herself to say still alive.

Yankumi seemed to hear that last bit anyway. "I'll keep you posted," she said. "Anything you see at my family home? No you didn't."

"I don't want to know why, do I?"
Yankumi smiled sardonically. "Probably not."

Yankumi left Kagome to her supplemental math packet, then. Tragically, Kagome could not focus on it at all.

Chapter Text

Yankumi picked Kagome up at the 7-11 around the corner from the Higurashi shrine bright and early on Saturday morning.

"I didn't know you drove," Kagome said, sliding into the passenger seat.

"She just doesn't like it," a masculine drawl said from the back. "But family business calls for faster transportation."

Kagome gaped at his lurid red hair, at his familiar face.

"Shut up, Sawada," Yankumi said, irritable and fond.

"You're Shirokin's top scorer!" Kagome exclaimed. "With the stupid portrait in the entrance hall!"

Sawada grumbled, clearly unhappy with this description. "They still haven't taken down that portrait, have they?"

"Nope," said Yankumi gleefully. "Of course not. We haven't had a student beat your record, yet!"

"And to think I wouldn't have bothered if you hadn't challenged that asshole Uesugi. No Portrait of Doom."

"And no Tokyo University, either," Yankumi said. "It reminded you that you had options, and if the cost for that is one stupid portrait, I'm not sorry."

The exchange had the hallmarks of a long worn argument. The comfy sweater of disagreements. Kagome wasn't about to let that distract her from the pressing question: "Why are you here? Are you related, or something?"

Both Yankumi and Sawada visibly gagged. "Absolutely not," Yankumi said.

"Definitely no," said Sawada.

"It's a good question, though," Yankumi added encouragingly. "Why are you here, Sawada?"

Sawada hit her with a gimlet eye, gazes connecting through the rearview mirror. "You know why."

Yankumi sighed, but let the subject drop. Clearly, Kagome wasn't getting a better answer any time soon.

"So," Kagome said, remembering her manners. "I'm Higurashi. It's nice to meet you."

Sawada made on acknowledging sort of sound.

Kagome took that as a sign to continue. "Do you have anything else you can tell me about this youkai of yours?"

"He has to be seen to be believed," said Sawada.

"He's like an old man, but not," said Yankumi. "I don't know how else to explain it. And Sawada's allergic to describing things he doesn't want to understand."

There was that gimlet eye from the back seat again. "He might still be just a weird old man."

"Yeah right," Yankumi said.

"Well, we'll find out," said Kagome, placating.

Yankumi looked at Kagome from her periphery, still focused on the road.

"Thanks for this, by the way."

Kagome wanted to thank her back. "You're welcome," she said instead.

"Old men are all kinda demonic anyway," Sawada said from the back seat.

"Too true," Kagome said with a laugh.

The rest of the ride passed quickly, trading wisecracks and gently bullying each other. At least until they drove into a distinctly shady part of town, about an hour north of Town K.

"Say," Kagome asked. "Where exactly do you live, Yankumi?"

"Kamiyama!" Yankami said, chirpy and distinctly nervous.

"You didn't tell her, did you?" said Sawada, all accusation. Yankumi visibly winced and he added, "Chicken shit."

"Tell me what?"

"Well," Yankumi said, "There's a reason I'm pretty private about my family at school."

"Are you, though?" Kagome asked. "Comparatively speaking? Most teachers aren't exactly sharing details about their personal lives."

For a moment, it seemed like a gong had crashed over Yankumi's head. "Right," she said when she recovered. "Of course not."

"I mean," Kagome hastened to add. "It's not like I didn't know you were hiding something. But that wasn't why. I just figured we were opperating under mutually assured destruction. I was hiding things. You were hiding things. Ergo. Buddies."

"Just tell her, Yamaguchi," said Sawada, head tilted all the way back to stare at the beige ceiling of the black sedan.

"I'm the fourth generation Kuroda heiress." Yankumi said it in a rush, clearly anticipating a negative reaction.

Kagome almost wanted to give a negative reaction. That was yakuza. Kagome was used to a certain amount of criminality, but yakuza was a whole 'nother level. But.

Maybe Kagome was just rationalizing to stave off panic, but really, the yakuza was probably less dangerous than people Kagome had allied herself with before. Some of them might have gone yakuza themselves. She could easily see Kouga going that way in a modernizing Japan.

"That actually tracks," she said, after a frozen moment. It did explain a lot.
Yankumi visibly relaxed. Sawada did, too, Kagome realized, looking back at him.

"So," she said. "We're driving into Kuroda territory?"

"It all sounds really sketchy when you say it like that!" Yankumi said, tittering nervously. "I'm just bringing you to my house."

"That almost sounds worse," Sawada said. Kagome hid a small grin.

"Oh hush," Yankumi said.

"So what exactly do you two have going on?" Kagome decided to ask, because it couldn't possibly be worse then admitting to being a yakuza heiress. Or maybe it was. They exchanged another meaningful look through the rearview mirror. Then they didn't say a word, clearly both uncomfortable. Okay. Kagome could respect that.

"Wow," she said instead. "This city is really beautiful." Because it was. The lights were stylistically different. The buildings were trending toward traditionalism. Kagome could both see and feel the Shinto shrines tucked inside people's tatami rooms and between buildings.

Yankumi visibly preened. "That's Kamiyama," she said, and the name just felt right.

"Yeah," Kagome said. "It really is."

"Oh boy," said Sawada. "The Kurodas are going to love you."

Kagome wasn't sure how to feel about all of that — a city called mountain of the great spirits, the idea that a yakuza clan would like her, or going back further, that a youkai wanted to tie up loose ends with her homeroom teacher's family. Actually...

"Knowing your family is yakuza makes the youkai thing make more sense," Kagome said.

"I don't know if I should be offended by that statement," said Yankumi.

"You know," Sawada said. "Ucchi always said you have the face of a hanya when you're mad."

"I do, don't I," Yankumi said, suddenly pleased.

"That's not even what I mean," Kagome said. "I just mean that I can think of more than a few youkai who would get involved in yakuza business, just for kicks."

"For kicks?" Yankumi asked, a dark cloud appearing over her face. "Those typa people ain't cut out for the life." Hanya indeed.

Sawada huffed audibly.

Kagome back peddeled. "I just mean that the feudalism of the whole thing would appeal to them, and they view humans as either prey or entertainment as a general rule."

Again, Yankumi seemed to settle. Kagome hadn't noticed how changeable Yankumi's moods could be, before. This all must be delicate for her.

"Entertainment, huh?" Yankumi said, seeming much less offended and just of a practical mind. "Is that the best we can hope for?"

"Well, I tend to hope they consider humans beneath their notice. Things are easier that way. But if this guy really is youkai, he's already noticed your family. So that rules that out. But it's worth noting that this is all cultural for them – not inborn. There are individual youkai and hanyou that value humans."

"No way to know which it is till we get you there, I suppose."

"Nope," Kagome said, aiming for cheerful.

"Exciting," said Yankumi in exactly the cheerful tone Kagome had been aiming for.

Kagome gave her teacher a bewildered look. Sawada laughed at her, because of course he did. Come to think of it, he seemed like the kind of guy who fluctuated between amused and predatory most of the time himself. The human version of the archetype.

Kagome sat back in her seat, attempting to project an air of ease. She wanted to help, wanted to encounter another youkai. She hadn't seen one since the Mu-Onna in the Akitan bathhouse. She was ready for another.

Idly, she thought to her earlier speculation about Kouga, wondered what the chances were that he was the youkai she was about to see. Unlikely, she thought, Kouga would hardly be an old man a piddly five hundred years into the future. Still, it was a pleasant fantasy.

"Well," Yankumi said, pulling up in front of a large, traditional house and bringing the car to a stop. "We're here."

Great. Kagome was totally ready for this. She fisted her hands in her skirt and managed to avoid flinching when a scarred man in a pinstripe suit opened her car door. His was perhaps a little too charming.

Predatory. Shark-like.

Though his courtesy had been directed at Kagome, his gaze fixed first on Yankumi. "Ojou!" he said. "This the miko?"

"Kyou-san!" said Yankumi, voice full of affection "Yes! My student. Higurashi Kagome. Higurashi-san, this is Ooshima Kyoutaro. He's the one who raised me, more than anyone else."

"Call me Kyou," Ooshima-san said. "I've got better things to worry about than all this formality." He sent Kagome the sort of roguish wink that she found almost comforting.

"Kyou-san, then," she said. "Call me Kagome."

Yankumi scowled. "On a first name basis with my precious student before I am? Really?"

"Ya snooze, ya lose, Ojou." Kyou said with his disarming grin. Oh yes.
Kagome had known many men like this on her adventures. She well knew her footing with this sort of beast.

She had her preconceived notions about the yakuza, and somewhere in that bias, Kagome had almost forgotten that they were just people. Dangerous people, certainly, but Kagome had lots of practice dealing with dangerous people. Even if that practice wasn't as recent as it could have been if the god damn well wasn't broken.

She let herself smile at this Ooohima Kyoutaro and smoothed down her skirt. She squared her shoulders, faced the beautiful sliding doors of the Kuroda house.

"Let's go see about this youkai," Kagome said.

Kyou-san shifted uneasily. "He's already here," he said.

Sawada and Yankumi grimaced in unison.

"That bad, huh?"

"He's just a weird old geezer," Yankumi said like it was a prayer.

The only question: was it because she was hoping that a weird old geezer was all he was, or because a weird old geezer was already bad enough? Kagome decided she wouldn't know until she met him herself.

"Well, might as well get a miko in the room with him, then."

There were nods all around, and Kagome was led into the Kurodas' traditional manor house. Her first thought was that the Hawaiian shirts and flagrant tattoos were. Well. A loud stereotype. She shook that off.

"Hi," Kagome said with a small bow.
She got small bows in return. Then she was led deeper into the house.

The entire thing was floored in tatami, which was unusual today. Even Kagome's house had a few wooden-floored rooms, and her home was markedly more traditional than those of her friends.

Finally, she entered a room where two old men sat facing each other. One was aging exceedingly well, straight backed and severe. Even in profile, his resemblance to Yankumi was clear and strong.

The other was genuinely decrepit. He did not even look Kagome's way before he said, "A miko, really?" The sound of his voice was enough.

"Totosai-oji-san?"

He turned his head with an uncanny snap, eyes finding Kagome's face in an instant. He looked, for a moment, terribly uncertain. "Kagome-san?"

Kagome could not help from throwing herself at him, her knees hitting the tatami as she landed half on top of him. There was a round of concerned murmurs, which made sense, given Totosai's apparent fragility. Still, youkai were youkai, even if they were also frail old men.

"You're alive," Kagome said tearfully into his shoulder. "Are the others?"

For a long moment, Totosai just sat rigidly in Kagome's arms. Then quietly, so quietly, he said, "Yes, Kagome-san. Yes they are."

Kagome squeezed him a little tighter. He patted her shoulder awkwardly.

"Then why haven't they found me?" Totosai pulled away from her then, his expression serious.

"They will, Kagome-san. Just give it time."

"Time?" she said. "It's been nearly three years!"

"Time," he stressed. "Then you will find them."

Kagome shuffled back from him on her knees, settled into a proper seiza. "Time?" she asked.

"And that, my dear, is all I can say about any of it."

If Kagome was properly understanding him – and a small hopeful kernel of herself truly believed she was – then that was all she needed to know.

"You know about me, then." It occurred to Kagome that most of her more casual feudal acquaintances had not known that she was from the future.

Totosai blinked, a deer-in-headlights. "Please, Kagome-san, no more questions."

"But!" Kagome was about to protest in earnest, but the other old man in the room decided to interject.

"I see you two know each other."

Kagome felt a sudden deep chill. She shuffled in her seiza to face the literal Yakuza boss in the room. He was also in seiza, unsurprisingly.

Kagome placed her hands on the floor, bowed deeply. "Kuroda-kumicho-san." Kagome said. "I am Higurashi Kagome. It is an honor."

"The honor is mine," the Kumicho said, though he gave her only the merest incline of his head. Kagome rose from her bow, straightening back to seiza proper. He continued. "I understand you saved my granddaughter and heir from a youkai not so long ago."

"That was nothing," Kagome said. "I would have done that for anyone who needed it."

"Even so," the Kumicho said. "The one who needed it was my only granchild. Thank you."

Unsure what else to say, Kagome gave another small half-bow, said, "You're welcome."

Kuroda approved of that, she could tell. Spirits, Kagome could not afford to lose her shit in front of a yakuza boss.

"So," Kuroda said, "Now that our last guest is here. Totosai-san, you said you wanted to see my sword."

"Indeed!" Totosai said. "I am old. Even among my kind, I am old. I do believe my time is growing nearer. We are long lived, but hardly immortal."

Kuroda-kumicho gave a gracious nod. "So I've been given to understand."

Totosai smiled brightly at that, eagerly clasped his hands together. "So I thought I'd go on a tour of my greatest hits!"

"I'm sorry?" Kuroda-kumicho said, blinking.

"Totosai-oji-san is a master swordsmith," Kagome said, "I'm guessing he made yours. But, Totosai-oji-san, I didn't know you made human blades!"

"I didn't, back when you knew me, but as you well know, times have changed."

"That they have," Kagome said.

Kuroda was staring at her, Kagome realized, a puzzled look on his face. "This sword has been passed down all three generations of the Kuroda clan. If Higurashi-san –" he cut himself off, seeming to think better of asking the obvious question.

Kagome gave him a grateful smile. She was sure she'd have to explain sooner or later, but she certainly wasn't prepared to do so now.

Hearing that your student (or your granddaughter's student) had time travelled to be the infamous Miko of the Shikon-no-Tama couldn't possibly be weirder than hearing that your homeroom teacher was actually a yakuza heiress.

(Except it probably was, tragically for Kagome)

"It was commissioned by the first generation's liege, Takatou Shuuzou," Totosai said. "So that the man who acted as his sword – your Kuroda Torakichi – would have the very best of blades at the end of his swing." Totosai's eyes settled in the middle distance, seeing memory rather than space. He smiled. "And the very best of blades it turned out to be – of the human variety, at the very least."

Kuroda-kumicho stood abruptly from his seiza, strode to a sword hanging in its sheath on the wall.

He held the sword horizontally, balanced gently in his two palms. It did not even waver as he slid back into his perfect, perfect seiza. Kagome adjusted her knees, knowing her own seiza should be better.

Kuroda-kumicho slid the sword partially from its sheath, held it out for Totosai to take. Kagome thought there might be tears in both their eyes.

"Ah," Totosai said, taking the blade and unsheathing it fully. "I can see she is in very good hands."

"You honor me," Kuroda said.

"Only as you have done honor onto your sword, and therefore me as her maker," Totosai said. "Now might I have the privilege of servicing this blade one last time?"

"The privilege is mine," said Kuroda. "Of course."

"Thank you," Totosai's voice was nearly a gasp. "I shall return three days hence, and this blade will be ready for many generations to come."

Kuroda showed a flicker of unease – perhaps having not expected Totosai to leave the property – but there wasn't much he could do about it.

Tototai, sword and all, vanished into a sudden, dense, fog. By the time it lifted, he was gone.

A distinct humidity lingered in the air. For a moment, all was silent. All was still.

Kagome broke the stillness by rubbing at her forehead.

Yankumi broke the silence by saying, "Man, this fog cannot be good for the tatami."

"He'll be back," Kagome assured. "He never did us wrong, working on Inuyasha's sword. He's just —"

"A dramatic old bastard," Yankumi said. Sawada snorted.

"I don't know about bastard," Kagome corrected.

A solid chunk of the rotten underbelly of central Japan laughed at her for it, but somehow not unkindly. Fucking surreal.

It occurred to her that she had said Inuyasha's name. It hadn't hurt at all.

Chapter Text

After the departure of the demon sword smith, Kumiko made haste in getting her precious student the absolute fuck out of an active gang headquarters.
Grandpa had questions for Higurashi, clearly, but he'd just have to get over it.

"You won't even invite her for hot pot?" Kyou said in a heartbroken sort of outrage.

"Higurashi-chan," Kumiko said. "How do you feel about a ramen stand? My treat, as thanks."

Serves Kyoutaro right. Kumiko wouldn't just roll over whenever he tried to bribe her with hot pot.

"That sounds lovely," Higurashi said with a grimace. Yeah, Kumiko would probably also want to avoid socializing after an encounter like that one. Sucks to suck, though, Kumiko was the one with the car keys. At least a dinner of three was better than eating with the whole Kumi.

Kumiko bustled Higurashi out of the compound, Sawada hot on her heels, making her excuses and looking more amused than he had any goddamn right to look.

When the three of them were back in the car, Higurashi safety out of the Kuroda zone of influence, Kumiko said, "That was surreal."

"Yeah," Higurashi said quietly, clearly not in the mood to debrief. Fair enough. Kumiko threw the car in reverse, pulled out of the Kuroda family driveway, and made haste for truly the most appropriate place she could think of: Kumai ramen.

The drive passed in relative quiet.

Higurashi was dead silent, and Sawada only had a few of his little comments to make. This sort of tension? Exactly why Kumiko preferred to take the train when possible. She ignored it, focused on the road.

"Yankumi!" Kumai cried when she and Sawada hustled Higurashi (who wasn't acting much under her own power) inside.

"Kuma!" she said, releasing her grip on Higurashi's shoulder to give her former precious student a proper hug.

When she released him, he hugged Sawada. "Good to see you, Shin-chan," he said.

Visibly, Higurashi mouthed, "Shin-chan?" For the moment, Kumiko ignored that.

Then, Kuma directed his warm attention on Higurashi. "Who's this, then?"

"Higurashi Kagome," Kumiko said. "She's one of my third years at Shirokin!"

"The new crop is in third year already?" Kuma said. "Wow, that almost makes me feel like a real adult!"

"You became a real adult the day you managed to reopen this place," said Kumiko. "My precious student, all grown up."

Sawada raised his eyebrows at her.

"Oh, fuck off," she said to him fondly.

"It's lovely to meet you, Kuma? San?" Higurashi interjected, keeping Kumiko from devolving the conversation into bickering with Sawada.

"Kumai Teruo," Kuma said "Shin-chan thought of 'Kuma' back in junior high. You're welcome to use that, if you'd like."

"Kuma-san," Higurashi said more firmly.

"Higurashi-san," Kuma beamed. "Let's get the three of you seated. I know Yankumi and Shin are gonna want the flavor of the day, but I'll get you a menu, Higurashi-san."

"Oh," Higurashi said. "The flavor of the day is fine. I'll have whatever they're having, if they're having the same thing."

"I know you're just trying to be polite," Kumiko said, "but I'm gonna let you get away with it because flavor of the day is always an experience. Kuma's in culinary school and he's always trying fun new things."

Somewhere in Kumiko's description, Kuma had shuffled them to a table. "So," he said, when they were all seated. "What's the occasion?""

Sawada, damn him, grinned. He propped elbows on the table, leaned forward conspiratorially. "We just finished up some business at the Kuroda house."

Of course he'd put it like that, the rat bastard.

"Oh wow," said Kuma. "I think that means I owe you ¥2000."

"What?"

"Well," Kuma hedged. "Now stop it with the hanya face. It's just that I guess you do always get a student involved with your family."

Sawada's face took on a malicious delight.

"Comp me next time I come in and we'll call it square," he said. "Yamaguchi's footing the bill today."

"Done," Kuma said.

"What?" said Kumiko again.

Higurashi giggled behind her hand.

"I'm going to kick your ass, Sawada."

"You always do." It might have been mollifying if Sawada hadn't sounded slightly dreamy when he said it.

"In Yankumi's defense," said Higurashi, saint that she was. "If she's only taught two classes, that's a really small sample size to start saying 'always!'"

Yankumi gestured at her in thanks, a glorious, nonverbal, See!!!

Kuma briefly looked torn, but Kumiko wasn't entirely sure Kuma knew what a sample size was. He certainly wasn't going to let statistics get in the way of being a little shit. After only a moment's hesitation, he grinned, winked at Sawada, and said "I'm still comping you next time. Now, let me get your order started! Anything to drink?"

When Kuma disappeared into the kitchen, Kumiko fixed her gaze back on Higurashi. She had no idea where she should start. "So."

"So," Higurashi said. "I guess you've got more questions then I really want to answer."

"I've got lots of questions," Kumiko said. "But honestly, I'm more interested in your questions. You know, the ones that Totosai-oji-san gave you answers to today."

Higurashi blew her bangs out of her face theatrically, all teenaged petulance. This was one thing that was no different than her all-boys classes. All teenagers apparently used their hair as a prop for dramatics. Kumiko was willing to sit in the drama, though.

Higurashi leaned back in her chair before speaking again. "I go back," she said. "Totosai-oji-san basically told me that I go back to the place I was fighting for in junior high."

"You go back," Yamaguchi said, knowing there was something odd about how Higurashi said that, but not quite sure how.

"That's an awful lot of certainty for something that hasn't happened yet." Sawada pointed out, ever the academician, however unwilling.

"To him," Higurashi said with an air of exhaustion, "it already has."

"Bullshit," said Sawada.

"No," Higurashi said. "It isn't."

"Yamaguchi's no sucker you can sell crap to," Sawada said, eyes blazing.

"A demon sword smith disappears in a dense and sudden fog, but time travel is where you draw the line, Sawada?" Kumiko said, not even certain time travel was what Higurashi was getting at, but feeling obligated to defend her nevertheless.

"Except maybe she is," Sawada said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "What the hell, Yamaguchi?"

The truth was, Kumiko wasn't sure she believed it, but right now, her student was talking. Sawada didn't understand how rare and precious that was.
Kumiko met Higurashi in an intense and highly impolite direct eye contact.

"Spill," she said.

"It all started with the sacred well on the shrine grounds," Higurashi said, eyes already lost to the middle distance. "It was my fifteenth birthday and the cat had gotten stuck inside the well-house."

Higurashi spilled. It was unbelievable, but it rang with truth. Higurashi, at least, believed it with her whole heart. She was a good storyteller, too. Kumiko was so entranced she hardly noticed Kuma come by with their bowls.

"So the child you loved like a son existed five hundred years ago?"

"Shippo," Kagome said, nodding tearfully. "But he's a full-blood kitsune, so he should still be alive. Until today. I was terrified about what it meant that he didn't come find me. For my human friends, it's a little different. I know they're dead, but there's no reason to believe that they didn't lead long, fulfilling lives. But Shippo should be a young man!"

"Even if you do go back, you'd be dead by today," Kumiko said. "If I knew that a younger version of my mother was briefly alive and knew me again, I'd visit."'

Sawada facepalmed. It occurred to Kumiko that this might not have been the most tactful thing to say.

Higurashi, however, did not seem bothered. "Except I might not be dead. Or, if I am, I might have given him explicit instructions not to, if I didn't remember him visiting me. I generally assume that time is stable and that my well travel isn't going to irrevocably fuck things up, but being careless about it seems like a bad idea."

"Wait, back up. What do you mean you might not be dead after five hundred years?"

"Eh," Higurashi said, though her body language betrayed a flicker of unease. "There are a few ways that might end up happening. Doesn't really bear speculating about"

"This it such bullshit," Sawada said again, though he'd remained totally silent during Higurashi's, yes, rather unbelievable story.

Kumiko shushed him.

"Don't I frickin' know it," Higurashi said, unperturbed. "I turned fifteen and my life started sounding like something out of a fantasy manga. I don't expect you to believe me, but Yankumi's wanted to know what my deal is for forever, and after today, there's no reason not to tell her."

"I appreciate that," Kumiko said.

"Mutually assured destruction," Higurashi reminded. "It only seemed fair."

Kumiko couldn't help but laugh at that. Her precious student, in her aggressively sweet, high voice, tacitly reminding her of blackmail material.

'It only seemed fair,' Kumiko's ass.

Sawada seemed to pick up on that, too. "I see why she likes you," he said irritably.

"Thanks," Higurashi said, clearly pretending she didn't notice that Sawada was being insulting.

That was the thing about Sawada's tendency to use truisms as insults – it only worked if his target was ashamed. Higurashi was utterly, radically unashamed.

Kumiko loved that.

The conversation shifted then, becoming less abut getting a set of facts and more about the little details. They were chatting, really, even if the subjects were wildly unusual.

They did not leave until their bowls were long empty, and a shade of the haunting behind Higurashi eyes had lifted. By the time they dropped Higurashi off at the shine, she seemed lighter than Kumiko had ever seen her.
Success.

"You're a sucker, Yamaguchi." Sawada said as they drove away.

"Pot, Kettle, Sawada," Kumiko said. "Pot, Kettle."

Chapter Text

Kagome had no idea what to do about any of the things she had learned from Totosai-ojii-san.

She wanted to go ballistic. She wanted to hunt her friends down with a vengeance, torment them for leaving her alone, then hug all of the rat bastards to death. The larger part of her, however knew that all of the things she had told Yankumi were true.

Dead or alive, a Kagome she had yet to become might have warned them off. It was good to know that the ones who could be alive probably were. It was good to know that she would go back to the past. These were truths Kagome could live with.

High school wound down nearly the same way junior high had. Kagome was in waiting mode, doing her best to keep her grades up – much easier now than then – and desultorily applying to her 'next step.' Totosai-ojii-san had not, after all, given Kagome a timeline.

She found herself, once again, lying in the first sparse grass of spring with Eri, Yuka, and Ayumi. This time, the subject was university applications.

"Japanese feudal history with a concentration in archeological methods with minors in music and music history?" Yuka asked, voice mocking. "Really? are you crazy? You've wanted to be a music teacher for so long!"

"Oh hush," Eri began.

Ayumi was utterly unbothered. "Learning the biwa made me a changed woman, what can I say? What will you be studying, Yuka?"

Yuka went scarlet, but her nose went haughtily in the air anyway. "General Studies. For now. I'm shopping my options."

"Then you can't blame Ayumi for wanting to explore!" Eri said. "As for me, I'll be studying accounting. Something practical."

Yuka rolled onto her side, propping herself up with an elbow. "Well, practical went out the window for Ayumi and Kagome when they went to Shirokin."

Kagome was suddenly heartily sick of Yuka's shit. "You know I wouldn't have done it if you and Eri hadn't gone to that first co-ed Shirokin open house, right?"

"Yeah," Eri said, suddenly very serious. "I'm glad I did that. You were really flailing that last year of junior high. It gave you some direction."

Sometimes, Kagome thought her friends didn't know her at all. Other times, she felt remarkably seen. She wasn't sure which was more uncomfortable.

"A weird fucking direction," Yuka said. Spirits, but she could be sour.

"You'll think I'm crazy for saying this," Ayumi said. "But as someone who went to both Shirokin and Elize Academy, I think Shirokin might honestly be the better school."

Yuka shifted the direction of her lean to loom over Ayumi. "Are you serious?"

"Maybe not in any of the traditional markers of academic quality," Ayumi said. "But experientially. The teachers were deeply committed to meeting our individual academic needs." Yuka snorted at that, but Ayumi was undeterred. "I'm serious. The classes are easy because most of the kids need that. But Fujiyama-sensei made sure all of my teachers made up advanced packets for me and kept me on track for my national mock exam and my university entrance exams. I never got that kind of individualized attention at Elize. And I certainly learned more about life at Shirokin."

Yuka made a generalized grumbling noise. There were some disgruntled words in there, but if Yuka didn't bother to enunciate them, her concerns were probably well enough quelled.

"Well what about you, Kagome? What will you be studying at university?"

Kagome shrugged, shoulder blades digging into the dirt beneath her. "Same as you, Yuka-chan. General Studies until something in particular pops out at me."

Yuka seemed mollified to hear it. Kagome had thought she might be.

"Well, that means we're all set," Yuka said uneasily. "That happened fast."

"Right?" said Eri. "Well. Here's to the next thing, I guess."

"To the next thing," Kagame echoed. She did not let herself hope that her next thing would be anything other than university. She did not want to be disappointed.

Yuka settled onto her back again.

Kagome drank in the sudden peaceful camaraderie, the blades of grass tickling her neck. She reached out her hands, linked them with Yuka and Ayumi. Eri did, too.

Kagome breathed.

They were not Sango or Miroku, but they were wonderful all the same.

Graduation day dawned bright and clear. Kagome adjusted her absurdly short Shirokin uniform and decided that she was not unhappy to never wear it again. Three years of junior high and three years of high school was enough time spent involuntarily in mini skirts.

Yankumi was, predictably, a mess. "My second class!" she said, over and over and over again, visible tears in her eyes.

Ito-kun, who never quite stopped following Kagome around, nudged Kagome with an elbow. "Look at Yankumi, she is fucked up," he said in an undertone.

"Were we expecting anything else?" Kagome asked.

Ito grinned. "Nah. Course not. It's just somehow even funnier than I thought it'd be."

Kagame snorted softly. Up on the stage, the principal was giving a speech. It was probably supposed to be rousing, but instead came off as a little old man bumbling his way into being endearing.

Ayumi – far and away the year's top scorer – stood beside him, waiting to give her own valedictorian speech. Fujiyama did not let this stand for long. Looming up from the back row of teachers, she muscled the principal out of the way and shuffled Ayumi in front of the mic.

Her speech actually was rousing.

Soon, class 3-4 was crossing the stage. Though tears were still flowing freely from her face, Yankumi was quite plainly beaming.

That smile felt better than being handed her diploma.

Kagome wiped her hands surreptitiously on her skirt after shaking hands with the principal. He was a weird old baldie. Harmless. Probably. Maybe. He was the one who chose the Shirokin uniform mini skirt.

Before Kagome knew it, the ceremony was over, and she was rushing through the crowd to hug Mama and Souta and Grandpa.

Then there was Ayumi, dodging people and chairs.

Their hug was wordless, but Kagome thought it managed to convey many of the unspoken things between them. There was so much that Ayumi did not know – perhaps would never know – but the understanding was there all the same.

Kagome buried her face into Ayumi's shoulder and squeezed. For a heartbeat, Kagome absorbed the warmth of their friendship. Then she felt a shiver in the air. Something ancient took a small breath.

The well.

Kagome pulled back from the hug, looked Ayumi dead in the eyes, hands on her shoulders. "Ayumi-chan. I have to go."

"What?" Ayumi said.

"I have to go." She could hear Ayumi asking follow-up questions, but she was already pelting through the crowd again. Her classmates and their parents disappeared into a blur around her. Her focus narrowed down to the tug in her chest, like the well was pulling her forward to the past.

The world lurched abruptly, impact under Kagome's ribcage cutting her momentum.

Yankumi. Fuck.

"Let! Go!"

"Higurashi-chan," Yankumi said. "What's going on?" It was Yankumi's authoritative voice. The one that probably made debtors fear for their lives. It gave Kagome a brief moment of clarity.

"The well," she said, meeting Yankumi's questioning look firmly. "The well."

"Oh," Yankumi said. "Oh." Then, they were running together.

"You!" Yankumi shouted at a young man with a moped. "We need that!" With no further warning, she tackled him off the bike.

"H-hey!"

"Shut up," Yankumi said, helping him to his feet and righting the bike. "You'll get it back." She looked meaningfully at Kagome. "Take it. Go.''

Kagome took it. Kagome went.

It made sense that Kumiko graduated her second group of precious students like this – covering for the disappearance of one with a side of moped theft. Shirokin students were, after all, Shirokin students. Kumiko was, in fact, Kumiko.

Her first move was to track down the Higurashi family. They were, predictably, milling about looking baffled. Kumiko waved them down. "She felt the well open," she said without preamble.

There was a pause. A look of pain? Pride? Relief? flashed across Mrs. Higurashi's face. "Oh," she said, then adjusted her smart sweater.

"Wait," said Higurashi's younger brother. "You know about the well?"

Kumiko winced. "Yeah," she said. "I know about the well. She's helped me as a miko a few times. It came up."

The shriveled old Higurashi-jii-san looked up at that. "As a miko? But I can't get that damn brat to so much as dress up for the festivals!"

"She doesn't like the clothes," her mother explained blandly. "I think there might be bad memories involved."

Kumiko did not know what to do with any of that. "The well," she repeated. "She's going to the well – I just sent her off on some dumb kid's scooter. I think you should probably get over there."

With that, the Higurashis left and Kumiko immersed herself in celebrating her other students. Over there was Ito-kun smiling shyly at family members, all offering effusive congratulations. Charismatic Sado-kun was holding court with a number of his classmates and their families by the bleachers.

Kawata-chan, the distinctive bulge of a poker deck in her skirt pocket even today, was tucked in a corner by the water fountains, looking like she was about to pick a fight with her younger brother. He was just a grade below her and an unrelenting pest. Probably had a beating coming to him, Kumiko thought fondly.

Fujiyama's Nomura Ayumi appeared out of nowhere to stand at Kumiko side.

"She bolted," Nomura said.

"She did," Kumiko said.

"Fuck," Nomura said.

"Shirokin finally got to you, eh? Some Elize girl you turned out to be."

Nomura gave Kumiko a truly dire glare. Impressive.

"I came here for answers," Nomura said. "And I don't think I got a single one."

"That's Higurashi-chan for you," Kumiko said.

"Yeah," Nomura shook out her wavy hair. "That is Kagome-chan these days."

"You miss her," Kumiko said.

Nomura shrugged. "We see each other every day."

Kumiko gave Nomura's shoulder a squeeze. "Yeah." Kumiko decided to change the subject. "You still planning on becoming a mini-Fujiyama?"

Nomura shook her head. "Archaeology with minors in music and music history."

Kumiko could not quite help but laugh aloud. Clapping Nomura firmly on the back, she said, "You know, you might find your answers after all."

Nomura looked at her incredulously. "She told you," she said, somehow all wonder and no accusation.

Kumiko could see no reason to lie. "She got outed by an old acquaintance of hers in front of me and I might have made her explain. I don't think she would've told me otherwise."

Nomura gave a measured breath. "Right."

It occurred to Kumiko then that Nomura didn't even know the basics, was still operating under the assumption that Higurashi had been ill her final year of junior high.

Tough break, but not, fundamentally, any of Kumiko's business.

"I'm glad you've got a plan," Kumiko said, trying once again to bring the conversation around to Nomura's accomplishments. She deserved to be celebrated on her graduation day.

"I'm excited," Nomura said. "Anyway, Yankumi, congratulations on your second cohort."

Kumiko beamed at her.

"Congratulations to you, Nomura-chan."
Nomura walked off after that, presumably to go celebrate with her family or her own classmates.

Kumiko closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sun. It was a good day.

Just a few days later, Kumiko once again faced the reality of switching her classroom sign from 3-4 to 1-4. Damn. It wasn't any easier this time.

Fujiyama, of course, appeared just in time to hassle her about it.

"You're so sentimental, Yamaguchi."

"Please," Kumiko said. "You know you love these little brats."

"Tragically," Fujiyama said, inspecting a fingernail. "You're right."

They were distracted from their conversation by the click of geta on the school's tile flooring.

"You sure I shouldn't take 'em off, Kagome? We're inside, and it sounds like you respect these folks."

Kumiko exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Fujiyama. There was something extremely familiar about the cadence of that speech.

"I wouldn't," came Higurashi's high lilting voice, interrupting Kumiko's train of thought. "I know you like your feet bare just about anywhere, but I think high school floors might actually be worse than trucking through demon flood."

Higurashi and her companion rounded the corner. She was dressed as a shrine maiden and he was in a vivid red haori and hakama. Incongruously, a ball cap was perched atop the longest, whitest hair Kumiko had ever seen.

"Ah!" Higurashi exclaimed. "Yankumi! I was hoping you'd be here. And Fujiyama-sensei!"

Fujiyama tilted her head. "Not my usual type, but that is one yummy specimen! Good job, Higurashi-chan. I didn't know shrine maidens could get it like that!"
Inuyasha – for this young man could only be the inu hanyou from Higurashi's stories – sputtered and flushed brightly.

"You said this bitch was a teacher?"

This was probably meant to be said in an undertone, turned to Higurashi's ear as he was, but his voice had a carrying quality.

"Inuyasha," Higurashi said, voice a warning. He winced.

Fujiyama guffawed, menace that she was. "Oh, no," she said, "Men aren't used to getting blatantly objectified, now are they? He's hardly the first to react poorly. Now I'm going to assume you're here to talk to Yamaguchi-sensei. I'll get out of the way." She disappeared into her own classroom and the air itself seemed to pause in response to her absence.

Then.

"What the fuck, Kagome?" Higurashi gently patted his shoulder. Inuyasha was not mollified. "She didn't feel like a demon or nuthin'!

"She's not," said Higurashi with a giggle. "She's just a little perverted. She teaches music here."

Now, watching a man from roughly the year 1550 reel in shock from meeting Fujiyama was funny, but. "You must be Inuyasha," Kumiko said, bowing. "Higurashi-chan has told me so much about you."

"She has?"

"She has!" Kumiko's voice was warm and welcoming. She clapped a hand onto Inuyasha's shoulder. "Come into my classroom so we can talk properly! I want to hear everything about your plans for my precious student's future!"

Her grip on his shoulder as she steered him into her classroom was utterly unyielding.

"Kagome, seriously," Inuyasha said as they crossed the threshold and slid the door shut behind them. "What the fuck?"

Higurashi just laughed at him. Kumiko figured that was a good sign.

"Now you really ain't all human, are ya?" Inuyasha said, swiping off his ball cap and rounding on Kumiko. Were those dog ears on his head?!

"Settle," Higurashi said and this man from the ancient past, this man whose fingernails extended like claws – and was that a fang sticking out of his mouth? – settled.

Kumiko shrugged, trying to ignore her body preparing for a fight. "Nobody in the Kuroda family ever lived longer than they should."

"She's human, too, Inuyasha," Higurashi said dryly, and Kumiko supposed she would know.

"Fuckin' impressive, then," he said, rubbing at his shoulder gingerly. She smirked at him.

"Ain't my first time fighting a demon. I just approach it the same way I approach fighting anybody what's bigger and stronger than me."

Higurashi's eyes followed their exchange with exasperation and fondness in equal measure. "Damn, I forgot yakuza talk like ancient Japan."

Yeah, Kumiko had found Inuyasha's cadence instinctively familiar, hadn't she?

"That's the crime orgs you were talking about, right?" Inuyasha looked suspicious again.

"Somebody's gotta give loans, sell protection, and organize prostitutes," Kumiko said. "We keep people safe and drugs off the streets." She didn't feel the need to be defensive – she felt secure in the good her family did for their community, and she could acknowledge the bad. But it occurred to her that Inuyasha genuinely could not know much about it all. He needed a basic explanation.

"Organize prostitutes?" Inuyasha said, looking at Higurashi with abject surprise.

"Please," Higurashi said. "She's not recruiting among her students. She's somehow the least weird out of all the teachers here. You saw Fujiyama-sensei."

"And don't you fucking look down on prostitutes," Kumiko said, feeling that long held protectiveness roar deep in her chest. "They're providing a service that people want! They deserve to operate safely and without sick fucks lookin' down on 'em for the work they do!"

Inuyasha's hands went up, placating, his fuzzy ears pinned back to his head. "Peace! I didn't say nuthin' about that! I know people gotta make choices sometimes."

Kumiko's hackles relaxed. "And that's why I'm a high school teacher at a place like this. Young kids end up falling into the yakuza life 'cause they feel like they don't got other options. I want to make sure even the roughest of 'em have options."

Something in Inuyasha's face turned fragile, then. "That's good work, Sensei."

Kumiko rather felt that she had earned that 'Sensei.'

Higurashi's hand had returned to Inuyasha's shoulder, a softness in her eyes. Kumiko had been tripped up by the clothes, she realized. Tripped up by the fact that Inuyasha was a literal hanyou. He was just the same as the boys (and yes, now girls, too) she taught – disenfranchised and without options.

"Thank you," she said to him. "Somebody's got to give these kids a real chance."

Higurashi inclined her head. "That's part of what drew me to Shirokin in the first place. I probably could've done better, but I appreciated that mission: that everyone deserves an education."

Kumiko watched Inuyasha watch Higurashi for a long moment, saw his expression shift to something like wonder. Something like worshipful gratitude. Yes. He was not a man who'd had a lot of options in his life.

"A lot of things make more sense now," Kumiko said. "It's good to see you two together. Thank you for bringing him by." Higurashi, clearly, had been seeking people that reminded her of Inuyasha in her Shirokin classmates.

"I thought you'd appreciate meeting him." Higurashi said with a smile that told Kumiko she had observed that same similarity.

When Higurashi and Inuyasha left, Inuyasha ushered Higurashi out the door first. He flashed Kumiko a bashful smile, one fang poking out of the corner of his mouth again. "Sensei?" he said. "Thanks for taking care of her."

Kumiko leaned lazily against the wall, gave a relaxed smile. "It was my great pleasure."

Inuyasha nodded at her. "It's mine, too."

Ah, macho little boys. Kumiko's smile shifted to a grin. "Then you'd better catch up with her! She's half out the school by now."

Inuyasha swore, dashed from the classroom.

Kumiko had been planning to grill this Inuyasha to the nth degree about his intentions, but she was pretty sure she didn't have to. Smiling to herself, she slid the classroom door shut.

Goodness, but they were cute.