Part 10: We Will Meet Again

          It was a painful first few weeks alone in her own time, but Kagome slowly found herself remembering Inuyasha's life rather than his death. Oh, there was no getting rid of the part of her soul that felt ragged and empty without him, but nonetheless, she believed she would meet him again someday, in another life.
          It was this thought that drove Kagome onward, which forced her to study madly. It was her desperation to hide the pain of loss that earned her perfect marks in school. In a way, it was her misery that kept her alive.
          Her friends noticed the change in her personality, and at first tried to force her out of it. They soon gave up, and accepted that when she worked through her problems that she would come back to them. It bugged them and hurt their feelings, but they respected her wishes to be left alone.
          Some days, Kagome didn't feel that she could go on. Some days, she wished she could just fall asleep and never wake up again. Some days, she considered taking her own life, just to get away from it. But she never did.
          A year passed, and Kagome's friends seemed to realize that she wasn't going to get better, and that she wasn't going to work through her problems and return to the person she was before. It wasn't going to happen. Kagome became the girl who no one noticed, except when they called out the highest grades in the class.
          One day, as she stared at her textbook, remembering the time Inuyasha had stolen her geometry book, she heard the teacher speaking, and slowly emerged from her memory, wishing that it was real, and feeling a lonely tear try to escape from her eye. By the time she had fully come back to the real world, the teacher had finished speaking, and a boy had plopped down in the seat in front of her.
          His long black hair spilled onto her desk, and she sighed wearily pushing it off her book, and gazing at the blackboard dully. Suddenly, guy in front of her knocked his book of the desk, irritably muttering to himself, "Feh. . .stupid book. . ." and leaned down to pick it up, flipping his long hair over his shoulder.
          Kagome sat straight up in her chair, and her eyes locked on the back of the boy's neck. A stripe of intricate swirls and twist extended from his hairline and disappeared into the back of his shirt. Kagome snapped her hand out and latched onto the back of his collar, pulling him upright in his seat and peering down the back of his shirt.
          "Hey! Get offa me!" he protested irritably and pulled away from her, whirling around to face her.
          "It's you. . ." she whispered, her voice small and rough.
          The boy's wild golden eyes bored into her, a mix of surprise, recognition, and confusion sweeping across his face. He grabbed Kagome's wrist and pulled her to him across the desk, kissing her wildly, blinding her to the world around them. He pulled away slightly, staring at her wonderingly, "Who are you?"
          "Kagome." She whispered, smiling and feeling whole once again.
          The boy struggled to remember where he'd met her before, struggled to find her face in his memory, but it wasn't there. Something deeper than a chance meeting in the past was happening here.
          "Ahem?" The teacher's voice interrupted their wonder and joy, "Thank you, Ms. Higurashi, for greeting our new exchange student so eagerly. Now if you would turn around, Mr. Koruderuru, and we will all move on with the lesson." He scolded.
          "My name is Aidenu." He told her with a smile.
          "I missed you." Kagome told him, and he turned to listen to the lesson. Things were brighter now, the souls were together again and it could only be better from here on out. Kagome's mind was calm and joyful; she was whole again.
          The promise was kept, and forever it would be. After all, someone once said, "We will meet again."