Chapter Text
Most days, Kagome Higurashi strongly suspected that hitsuzen hated her guts. She wasn’t exactly sure why this was the case, just that it was the only reason she could come up with for why she wound up with one of the worst destinies possible.
First, she was destined to lose her father while in elementary school, forcing her to move from her nice, quiet home in the country to Tokyo with her mother and younger brother, and the shrine where her father had grown up. Then, once she had finally gotten used to life in Tokyo, hitsuzen had seen fit to drag her down a centuries old well, and set her up to face hordes of youkai, all for the sake of one chunk of crystal with ridiculous powers. As if that wasn’t bad enough, hitsuzen had dumped her right into the hands of a hanyou who would never fall in love with her, but for whom she would develop deep unrequited feelings. Then, once she was at last at home in the Sengoku Jidai, hitsuzen dumped her in the middle of an epically bloody battle, and then sent her back to the modern era. It couldn’t even be bothered to be kind enough to send her home before her hanyou’s wedding.
For whatever reason, hitsuzen really didn’t like Kagome. In exchange, Kagome held out hope that eventually, hitsuzen had to stop hating her. It had been over a year since she had been blocked out of the Sengoku Jidai. Every week, she tried the well, hoping beyond hope that this time, hitsuzen would stop hating her, and the well would let her through again. After all, she still had the thrice blasted shikon no tama; in theory, the well should still work. The jewel certainly did, if all the lesser youkai and evil spirits coming after her shrieking “Give me the shikon no tama!” were any indicae. Kagome found herself thanking the kami on a regular basis that the plans for the last battle had required her to learn how to channel her miko-ki through her hands and any sharp, pointy object available. It certainly made purifying whatever came after her significantly easier, and also ensured that she didn’t get dragged off to the loony bin for carrying around a bow and quiver all the time.
She sighed as she took her seat in her home room class at school. Her travels in the Sengoku Jidai had resulted in her being held back a year in junior high, and, in all honesty, she was grateful, firstly, because it had effectively removed her from Yuka, Eri, and Ayumi’s radar, and secondly, because she knew she wouldn’t have been able to pass her high school entrance exams with the amount of class she had missed. Thirdly, and most importantly, she was very happy to have been held back, because it meant that she hadn’t been expelled. That had been a close call, with a practicing physician, who just so happened to be a family friend (and whose humanity Kagome definitely questioned) coming to the rescue, explaining to the school that in his senility, Jii-chan had mistaken Kagome’s repeated battles with Crohn’s Disease for multiple strange illnesses. He even brought in lab data to support his claims. The school was mollified, and Kagome silently promised to make some very, very nice giri-choco for him on Valentine’s Day for the rest of her school career.
The upshot was that, after doing very well on her entrance exams, Kagome was now a first year student at a small private academy on the opposite side of Tokyo. Sure, it required a nasty commute from the shrine every morning, but Kagome could put up with it. She liked the school, and no one else from her junior high was going there, so she managed to dodge any rumors about her string of illnesses. It also meant, along with the fact that she was a year older than her classmates, that she was allowed to be a just a little distant from everyone else. She preferred it that way; the Sengoku Jidai had seen to it that she would never really be able to the silly, care-free child she once had been, and the dark powers after the shikon no tama ensured that she wouldn’t let anyone that couldn’t take care of his or her self too close. Kagome turned to focus more clearly on what her teacher was saying, resigning herself to a life of solitude.
It was a nice day, Kagome decided as she walked to her subway station after school. Too nice to be stuck for nearly an hour on the subway after a day of classes. She changed her plans slighting, deciding to take a detour to a park she knew of where she could take a walk, and maybe study for a while before going to face the dreaded subway. As she walked towards the park, she felt a tell-tale tingling on the back of her neck. Here we go again, she thought, Dark spirit, or youkai with evil intent, behind me, right now.
“Stupid well.” She muttered, digging a sharpened pencil out of her bag with which she could stab the... whatever it was this time to purify it. After the first few such attacks upon her arrival home, Kagome realized that all the times that she had gotten the creeps and thought that there was something following her, even when presented with evidence to the contrary, as a child, she had been sensing something spiritual stalking her. The episode with Mistress Centipede had triggered her mikonic abilities, and by extension, her ability to see the spiritual world. As the dark shadow loomed over her, and gave the usual demand for the shikon no tama in a thick, gloopy voice, Kagome calmly turned, and flicked the wrist of the hand holding her miko-ki charged pencil, stabbing her attacker. Immediately, it began to wail and dissolve while Kagome watched impassively.
“Maybe this time your friends will get the message; the shikon no tama is not up for grabs. I worked too hard to gather the shards of this thing and purify them to give it up to the likes of you.” She murmured, her hand going to the strand of prayer beads around her neck, which included the shikon no tama. She turned on her heel, irritated. There went her good mood. Muttering darkly about stupid jewels that just couldn’t go away under her breath, Kagome started a short cut that one of her classmates had mentioned to get to the subway, her desire to go to the park gone with her good mood. As she passed down an alley, she noticed a traditional Japanese building with a well-tended garden nestled in between two sky scrapers. It was pretty, and reminded her of several shrines and smaller temples that she had seen during the Sengoku Jidai. She smiled fondly, knowing that nostalgia would lead her past the building more than once. She turned to continue to the station, when she felt a familiar tugging sensation in her legs. Kagome stiffened. This was the sensation that had lead her into the well house, and into the well itself, after Buyo.
Hitsuzen, it seemed, had decided to play with the life of Kagome Higurashi once again.