Home is Where I Belong by Miko-chan

Prologue

I am different.

Yes, I noticed that. I am extremely different from an average student who lives in an old shrine. Positively sure that you would not miss me out in the bustle of the crowd. If you were minding your own business and I stepped over your point of eye view, you might stare at me as if I was not one of you for over a minute. And I'm not kidding.

First of all, my appearances were striking but not too overwhelming. Ebon tresses that has the color of moonlight and orbs that can change into different hues of cerulean colors. Not to mention that I inherited my Otousan's grace and Okaasan's charm. Thus, I was always given the impressed glances from the crowd. I never wanted to be the center of attraction, the way they whisper and gaze at my profile from my inhuman demeanor. However, coming from a prestigious family, what can you expect? I have a father who is very wealthy and too beautiful that I start to wonder why he didn't told me what is his age. My mother, a successful pediatrician, is also as compassionate as her beauty. I also have skills that I never thought that I could maintain. How many students, tell me, can both excel in sports and academics at the same time? I guess this crazy 'perfectionist' streak came from my father.

Good thing that Rin-neesan, my older sister was too patient to bear my insanity outburst at how my oddities seems to make me open up like a chatterbox. She responds to me like an appropriate audience should. When I try to hold any conversation with anyone, its either a timid boy would blush or an insolent girl would be glaring darkly, trying to imagine me without the head. She have heard all the replay and the big news about the injustice that the world has given me, and still smile like my okaachan. I really know why Rin-neesan was adopted, from her resemblance with an angel to bless everyone...I wonder where she was adopted? So I could thank them for giving her to me...

Even though my heart was happy from moments of these girl talks and how my family is so caring for my welfare, I could not still tell them the things that might make the crowd shudder at my presence. I trust them with all my life yet with this serious fact...who knows that they may also join the crowd who always freak out in eerie coincidence?

I am different.

I have senses that are...shall we say, better than others. I cannot comprehend why they were extraordinary, often pondering how I have gotten this. It takes a great deal of courage to accept it, that I, somehow feel, do not belong in this world. As if I must be far away from this place. I can hear the heavy breathing or the heart beat of a jogger next door. I can smell that he is very exhausted and what he ate in his breakfast (mainly coffee and two eggs). No one would believe in these whimsical fancies, that I seem to identify somebody with his scent, with his emotions and detect them. In my childhood, I was constantly haunted doing math in class while in front of me someone who was having an onigiri for recess due to the floating aroma of his lunch box behind him...And I was the only one who was disturbed. I recognized these fragile truth when playing hide and seek (which was too easy, by the way) Being real irritated that 'we' are just being ignorant that we did not know where the others are and still get the inconvenience to discover their hideouts, I screamed on the top of my lungs at the poor kid having a hard time getting along, "Can't you just smell us?! Why do we do this dumb game! It's useless!"

With the looks they gave me, they thought I have lost my mind or just being conceited.

And this where it struck that I was different. I never told to anyone about this incident.

Not that I don't like these features (*wicked grin*). The bus could be already heard honking five blocks, enough for the ritual of preparing to scamper for the morning and still have time to catch up the morning cartoons. When anonymously sent love letters are drowning my locker, I can still trace their faint scent. It's really pathetic, striving to be unidentified stalkers and muttering some secret or gossips, when I can practically learn everything. I can feel if someone is violating the time limit for staring at me. Ahhh...but the pleasure is perceiving already what is the cafeteria goo bubbling up in the kitchens...It comforts you when you acknowledge your lunch is actually safe and edible.

All things have side effects, no matter how it seems to benefit you. This is no exception. When the bells screech and teachers scream in able to reach those who prefer to occupy the back seat, I really wished I was free to cover my ears and shut my eyes tight until the painful sensation pass away. But noooo, I have to risk losing my ears. And talk about afternoon pratice for some soccer or basketball tournament...the men are so..Ugh! I wished that I never have lived to endure it!

But what was worst was the day when the moon disappears in the night. If they ever found out...

You cannot imagine my joy when in just one night I can be a normal...Its really amazing, when you see ivory turn into ebony slowly and just feel yourself in the sudden silence of the night. Tranquil as a dream should be. but dreams end up abruptly the moment the sun touches me....My parents never saw me, when I was kid, they frequently made me to sleep before dusk every day. So you can imagine the night when it was 'time' and I just saw myself change....

I always make sure that the doors were locked and the windows shut tight when my features change. I do not want the neighboorhood screaming that I was my mother's experiment for some mutation of the world. I even can feel eyes burning my hair whenever the week of the new moon arrives, watching my every move. I try to distinguish their scent, yet theirs is...so unearthly and undescribable. Wishfully thinking they were some kind of weird guardians, I continue to be oblivious to this.

Yes, I'm really different.

Maybe you are thinking that I must be in a hospital ward. That would do nothing to me, for I live like any of you do. Its hard to discern what causes for me to be like this. But I know its because I am...

I am different.

And I am Yukiko , daughter of Kiyomori Sesshomaru and Higurashi Kagome.

And someday I'm going to find out what I am.