Masayume by golden eyes hypnotize
Reconsidering Hojo
A/N: I do not own the characters in this story. They belong to the marvelous Rumiko Takahashi and if I could send her a hug every time I thought about Kagome and Sesshoumaru, I would have been thrown in jail a long time ago.
Chapter 1
She sighed again. She reached out from the shower and grabbed the fluffy, oversized, white towel from the rack on the wall adjacent. As she dried her wet skin, Higurashi Kagome recalled the day she finally gave Hojo a chance.
The tall, lovely young woman with long, glistening, black waves that played over her shoulders and about the middle of her back with rich, blue eyes that shone with intelligence and presently creased at her brow in reverie had attended the same high school and then college as her present boyfriend. By most accounts, Hojo had always been the embodiment of the collective heterosexual female desire. He was over six feet in height, possessed of a toned, masculine physique and features that managed to foreshadow his gentle, caring nature even as they spoke of strength and fitness. At the top of his class in both high school and university, he was also a man with a bright mind who was full of determination.
Kagome had missed significant portions of her classes in high school due to persistent migraines exacerbated by the hormonal changes of puberty. As the first indication of Hojo’s preference for her, he began researching and offering folk remedies to Kagome. Her girlfriends were immensely envious of this attention and cooed with joy when he eventually asked her out to the movies. Unfortunately for Hojo, Kagome really didn’t feel that kind of attraction for him at the time nor did she even feel ready to date. To her perspective, she was overwhelmed with her health issues and keeping up with schoolwork and so saw no place for romance. That did not keep her well-meaning friends from encouraging her to accept the suit of the choice male, but Kagome would not be swayed.
The same determination that bolstered Hojo to the head of the class ensured he never took his eyes off his goal of Kagome. Any other young man would have moved on to another, more readily accepting female, but not him. All through their education he remained the ever-supportive friend and only very sporadically reminded her of his desire for her by asking her out, to which she maintained her disinterest in elevating their relationship status.
Undeterred, though he went on to pharmacy school and she to an unsophisticated secretary position—one that not only brought in money to help with her family’s shrine, but also provided her free evenings and weekends to work on her true passion in life: writing—he always found ways to keep present in her life. He had initiated a routine whereby they ate lunches together, he made himself invaluable as her best friend and ensured they spoke or texted constantly. Her family: her Mama, Grandpa, and younger brother, Sota, knew him well as he stopped by frequently.
It should not be inferred, however, that though Kagome would turn down Hojo that she turned down other offers. Starting in college, helped along by the remission of symptoms of her incapacitating migraines in her senior year of high school, she began accepting invitations for dates when she felt attraction. To her frustration, attraction was a difficult accomplishment and even in those rare instances, she really had yet to have that eyes-meeting-across-a-room-as-two-souls-call-to-one-another moment that she wrote about in her stories. This past Fall, she, a woman who had just published a best-selling romance novel and was the author of over a dozen short stories of that variety, had given up on that romantic hope and said yes to the man who had been the greatest non-familial male presence in her life.
In all this time, Hojo had never dated. Not once. To a more experienced, less pure-hearted soul, this might have raised suspicion, but not to Kagome. She believed only the best in people and, defying the odds, had never truly been disappointed in her assessments. Her family had voiced concerns of his behavior over the years, but in the end they were always won over by his gentle, caring ways and his obvious devotion to their Kagome. He looked after her and her family, always surprising them with healthy snacks or desserts when he came over and frequently helping her aging grandfather with physical chores around the shrine.
Last September 20th, Kagome was celebrating her 28th birthday with her family and Hojo. Her then friend had enticed them all to a fine restaurant for the occasion and treated the party to a few bottles of a well-aged wine. It was under this influence that he had brashly joked that the only thing that could make for a better introduction to the fall season than excellent food and superb company would be if Kagome joined him for a private meal at Oliver’s, a restaurant known throughout the city as the place to go for a traditionally romantic evening.
She had been taking a sip of her wine and slowly lowered the glass from her lips and swallowed, her eyes on the dark liquid gently sloshing above her fingers. Thoughtfully, she stared as she returned the vessel to its place in front of her. She remained quiet with an uncharacteristically serious look on her face. Around her, her company remained silent, her family conspiratorially exchanging looks with each other as they observed her. Kagome kept her eyes unmoving while she cleared her throat.
“That sounds like a great idea,” she murmured.
Hojo’s eyes went as wide as digital media discs and he couldn’t resist clarifying, “You will allow me to escort you to dinner?”
Her head raised and her eyes followed. With a nod she asserted quietly, “Yes.”
His smile was dazzling but hers was merely content.
He had picked her up the next night and taken her to Oliver’s. It was the single greatest night of his life to that point though he could tell deep down that Kagome’s feelings had not changed where he was concerned. Kagome enjoyed the meal and did her best to remind herself to give Hojo the chance he deserved for all of his attentions. With difficulty, she accomplished her rationalization and managed an acceptance when, after he had walked her to the doorway of her home, he asked her to dinner and a movie the next week.
Kagome had finished her bathroom routine lost in her thoughts and was walking in her towel back to her room to dress for the day. Today was Saturday: her day reserved for her writing. She liked to sit outside under Goshinboku, the sacred tree on her family’s property situated in the courtyard, and write her stories by hand in her large, cherry blossom notebook with her special pink gel pen she’d picked out especially to write with. She would type up her story later and use that opportunity to proofread her writing. She dressed in a teal, short-sleeved top with large, silver hibiscus flowers across the front and a wide, v-neck paired with grey capri pants. As she fixed her silver, elongated spiral earrings into her ear lobes, doubts about the wisdom of her current relationship lingered in her mind.
By all appearances, Hojo was a great guy. His every thought was of her and her family. She should be happy. More than happy. He loved her—there was no doubt in her mind that he had been in love with her for years. And yet, despite trying to force her heart to return his affection, every time she came close, something occurred that brought questions to her mind. His love seemed a kind of obsession: he needed to know where she was at all times though he masked it with playful texts like “Hey, Beautiful! Whatcha up to?.” If she didn’t answer those texts within exactly five minutes (recently she had started timing him) he would call her phone. Then, should she not happen to answer her phone, he would leave her a very loud, very over-the-top message and a stream of concerned texts with superfluous exclamation points and question marks would follow. This behavior had started after she had first accepted a date with him and had escalated over the seven months they had been going out.
Lately, this and other similar actions from him had begun to frighten her. She would talk to him about it, tell him that it concerned her, and for a few weeks his obsession would abate and she could convince herself that the good outweighed the not-so-good. Then, with regularity, he would slowly slip back into his previous habits and her unease would return. She desperately wanted to talk about this with her Mama but every time she thought of what to say, it just seemed silly. After all, Hojo not only fawned over her, he doted on her family. He played video games with Sota, brought her mother fresh flowers and sweets from the bakery, and not only was he always available to help her Gramps with the lifting and carrying, but also patiently listened to his rambling stories.
And yet, even with all this time together, her heart was unaffected and her mind was riddled with doubts. She did like him. She did enjoy their time together and though even she had to admit after seven months she should have been open to a physical relationship with Hojo, she just wasn’t ready. She had let him kiss her, but every time he would bring his hand to touch her or hold her, she would pull away. Perhaps, she reasoned, it was all her fault he had become obsessed. Maybe if she had been like every other girl she knew and at the least made out with him, he would not feel this all-consuming preoccupation with her whereabouts.
Maybe it was just sexual frustration. After all, he was a healthy, 29 year old male and she knew for a fact he had never had a girlfriend. She wasn’t completely naïve and understood that it was entirely possible that he had had intercourse without the benefit of a relationship, but something told her that Hojo just wasn’t that kind of guy.
She was settled on her blanket under Goshinboku writing a description of the hero of her next novel. No doubt it could be said that she lacked imagination, but in every romance she had ever written, the male lead was inspired by the exact same idea: nearly all of her life, Kagome had dreamt of a man. It had started with the migraines of her teen years. Her head would be stricken by a lancing pain that caused dizziness and blind spots in her vision with its intensity. She had been taken to specialists and prescribed a cabinet of medicines but the only thing that relieved her pain was sleep so in the end, they prescribed medicine to aid her into slumber.
It was in the dreams of this induced sleep that the Silver-Haired Man first appeared. Possessed of great height, broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a face and bearing so exquisitely handsome and elegant as to be beautiful, this man, who never revealed his name, accompanied her every dream from that time on. If truth be told, she was rather upset with this manifestation of her mind. She was 28 years old. She had dated, but never more than a few dates with any particular man until Hojo and with him, like all the others before him, she just couldn’t get her heart to engage. It was almost certainly a sign of madness, but her heart was engaged for Silver-Haired Man and had been for over a decade.
In her dreams, they talked about everything. They went for long walks holding hands. She sat and watched with rapt attention as he practiced his forms with his katana—as elegant and beautiful as he was stationary, he was infinitely more alluring in motion as perfectly-honed muscles tensed and bulged in his efforts. He listened as she ran ideas for her stories past him and he offered suggestions. They sat cuddled together and read from their own books. She knew it was odd that she recalled these dreams upon awakening. She knew it was even more peculiar that the dreams were so detailed and lifelike. Still, she would never think to share her dreams with another soul: they were hers, they were private, and they were immensely dear to her. And yet, part of her couldn’t help but be angry thinking that these wonderful dreams were sabotaging her chances at a real love life.
As she wrote, her phone chirped from its place beside her and she looked down to see a message from Hojo. He was asking her out to Oliver’s tomorrow night. She sighed. They had not been back to that restaurant since their first date. Kagome bit her lip as she wondered what could have prompted his desire for such an exclusive restaurant and didn’t like what her mind came up with.
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