again."Why are you awake?"

"Why are you awake?!" he replied irritably, which sounded harder than he'd intended. Her gaze wandered from his face over his arm to his right hand. Her eyes widened when she saw the blood.

"What do you have...?"

He turned his head quickly and hid his hand under his sleeve. The swift movement with which he had grabbed Kagome had started bleeding again.

"Show ... show me this."

She reached out her hand carefully to him, but in a sudden burst of shame he slapped her away. She shouldn't see it ...

"Inu ... Yasha ...?"

He turned his head to one side. He felt caught out.

"You're welcome..."

Her voice was little more than a whisper. The half-demon felt something huge and hot come up inside him. All of a sudden he became very angry. With a jerky, quick movement he whirled around and snorted angrily and clearly audible,

"Leave me alone."

"E ... eh?"

"I said go away!"

His heart was beating wildly against his chest.Couldn't she stop staring at him like that?

He felt a desperate urge to slap her face.

Kagome backed away a little. There was a look of fear and anger in her eyes. Did he make her cry?

"You..."

"Get out of here !! Get out of here! Go away !!"

Suddenly something wet entered his eyes and smeared everything around him into a matt glass unit.

That was allowed, that couldn't be.

He hadn't cried in so long. He couldn't really remember the last time. It must have been a long time ago. His mother must have been alive then.

Before the tears could work their way down his cheeks, he hastily wiped them away with a sleeve of his robe to keep Kagome from seeing them. Why on earth did he suddenly have to cry? His right hand was trembling.

"Damn it..."

He leaned against the trunk of the tree he had been sitting by and let himself slide down it.With his knees drawn up, his arms resting on them and his head lowered on his upper arms, he sat and felt the blood pulsing in his temples.

He knew Kagome was looking at him, but he made no move to send her away again.

His legs were shaking like he'd just run 5 miles and he felt like his heart would burst if it didn't start beating slower.

He didn't quite understand why his eyes suddenly had tears, if only for a second. And why he had hit Kagome like that was almost as much a mystery to him.

All of a sudden he went mad with anger. Even if he didn't know what he was so angry about that he could overreact so much. And he had overreacted, obviously, he knew that. He just wondered what Kagome would do now. Slowly he calmed down, but he was still tense, angry at the fact that he had been disturbed, that he had been caught in an inattentive moment, and last but not least, angry with himself.He was confused and somehow desperate, as if he had to fight an inner urge, but would only make it with the greatest effort. As if he was about to vomit.

He stayed between the roots for a while, waiting for a reaction from Kagome that hadn't uttered a single sound.

Just as he was thinking that, he noticed movement next to him, and he was pretty sure that Kagome had sat down next to him. That surprised him. He had expected her ... he wasn't sure what he was expecting. At least not with her sitting next to him.

"Um ... Inu..yasha ...?"

"..." He was silent.

"Eh ... well ... because of just now ..."

"What...?"

"I mean ... I wanted to ask if ... did you just ... cry ...?" she asked softly and carefully. She knew he was sensitive about that.

"You ..." he growled softly.

"I mean, not really crying, I just ... saw what ... glitter, I thought ..." she began hesitantly."You were wrong about that !!"

There was another silence. Realizing she had brought up the wrong topic, she was feverishly wondering what best to say to reassure him. A few minutes passed before the girl answered in a tone that was as calm and approving as possible.

"... I'm sorry ... I should have known you didn't want to talk about that-"

"THERE IS NOTHING TO TALK !!"

He didn't want to, but he started screaming again anyway. He asked her if she would like to disturb other people's thoughts, and without waiting for an answer, he continued to tell her what it would occur to her to interfere in his affairs and whether she would find it nice to get on his nerves constantly walk. He jumped up, and when he saw that she had covered her ears and buried her head between her bent knees so as not to have to look at him, he could no longer control himself and hit him. His fist hit the tree a few inches from her head.He hadn't intended to meet her, he just wanted to vent his anger.

There was silence for a few seconds before Kagome finally raised his head and dropped his hands. There were tears in her eyes and she was pale as death.

Inuyasha was startled. He hadn't wanted that. He had lost his temper for the second time. Now that his anger had apparently evaporated, he realized what he had done. He had never been so aggressive towards Kagome before. No wonder she was startled. But what he saw in her glassy eyes was maybe more than a shock. Maybe it was fear. The tears that had stood in the corner of her eyes slowly oozed down her cheeks and dripped onto her knees. She looked at him and suddenly he was terribly sorry for what he had done. He wanted to apologize for saying anything to her, but he couldn't utter a word.

Finally, Kagome began to speak."W-what's the matter with you -?" Her voice slipped. She wiped her face with the palms of her hands, then looked him straight in the eye. Inuyasha couldn't meet her gaze and turned her head away. "You b-are so weird the whole time. Don't talk a single word to us for hours! I would like to know what kind of phase you're going through again!"

"Oh, shut up!"

"You see, how am I supposed to have a normal conversation with you if you don't even want to listen to me !?" Kagome stood up. The shock that had been in her limbs a moment ago was gone and turned into defiance. She would demand an explanation for what just happened.

Inuyasha, on the other hand, was apparently unwilling to deliver them to her. At least not voluntarily, because he had still demonstratively turned his head to the side and was silent. For this stubborn, childish manner he could have slapped himself in the face at that moment, because he knew that this would make Kagome even more angry and encourage her to believe that she would have to literally squeeze an answer out of him.Because she knew pretty well what questions would make him tell her what she wanted to hear. Damn Kagome.

But his fears did not come true. It got worse. The girl had apparently decided to play a game of "good demon - bad demon", because the question that he hated came promptly:

"What will you do when we find all the splinters and defeat Naraku?"

There was silence.

If he was the evil demon, he'd say he'd grab the jewel and use it to quit his half-demon existence and pursue a career as a full-time demon (What a word ... -. - °) - if he was the good demon, he would answer obediently "I don't know".

And he really didn't know what to do then. At the very beginning, yes, he had intended to become a demon. But now he wasn't so sure anymore, even if he kept asserting that his plan would be put into practice - which Kagome apparently still doubted.And maybe she was right about that. In any case, his short-term transformations had given him a foretaste of what would most likely await him - and he had next to no memories of that.

He had been unconscious during these periods, and what he should have been doing during them made him feel a little sick. He hadn't imagined a future like that, and he didn't want a future like that. It drove him crazy when he lost control of himself, and that was only a fraction of what he was doing as a true demon. Perhaps these outbursts of anger were the harbingers that his demon blood was taking over more and more of the upper hand - at least it would be conceivable. And he didn't like the idea at all.

Without answering Kagome's question, he remained silent.

The girl was now facing him, her hands on her hips.She fixed the half-demon with a demanding look, but she might as well have asked the question to a hair dryer. At most she got hot air as an answer from him. A soft sigh escaped her. Sometimes she really wanted to know what was going on in his head. She didn't think he was stupid, on the contrary; he might even have a greater intellect than some people in her class - only that he didn't have the opportunity to show it because he was too withdrawn, kind of shy.

Once again she became aware of how little she knew about him, despite the more or less long time they had known each other. She knew almost nothing about his parents, about his origins, where he had spent his childhood, all that sort of thing. She wasn't even sure if he could read and write ... maybe he was even noble, and she was really dealing with a very wealthy daimyo heir? She imagined Inuyasha in a wide, dark blue kimono interwoven and decorated with gold thread and had to suppress a grin; it just looked too weird in her imagination."I do not know."

"....What?"

"You asked me something ... I don't know."

"You do not know?"

"No."

'Better than nothing,' thought Kagome. At least this time he had answered her in a normal tone.

"Neither do I." she said softly.

"... I thought you would go home again ... and ..."

"..not come back?" she finished the sentence for him.

"No ... or ... yes, yes ..."

"Should I do that?"

"You have to know that yourself." he replied firmly and in a cool tone.

The conversation developed in the completely wrong direction for him.

"Haaaaah ... it wasn't a good idea to break up, was it?" Kagome suddenly changed the subject. Apparently she wasn't eager to go into the previous conversation any further. Inuyasha accepted it gratefully.

“Pfh, why?” Exclaimed irritably. His standard tone.

"It's boring ... we have