With Regard to You by Mynameishuman

One

Kagome was weird. She knew it. Had come to accept it, even. Though, if she could change it, she...probably would.

Ever since she could remember, she’d been…different. Her grandfather said she was special. Kagome had been the unwilling beneficiary of her grandmothers sight. Which seemed fitting, her being a shrine daughter.

Her ability to see the spirits of the dead had manifested itself within her no sooner than her grandmother had died. She couldn’t be certain, but she’d wager that a four-year-old was too young to be seeing ghosts.

Unfortunately for Kagome, she didn’t have a choice in the matter. People died. Something kept their soul from moving on, and Kagome became their only interest in the afterlife.

She supposed she couldn’t blame them too much. She harbored a great deal of reiki within her own soul. Spirits couldn’t help but be drawn to it.

She felt for them, she did. But it still scared her at times. Some of them weren’t always pleasant. So, she did her best to ignore them. Whenever she drew attention to the fact that she could see them, it was even harder to get rid of them.

So, when she and her classmates stepped onto the property of a shiro from a bygone era and her ki spiked in warning, she did her best not to glance around warily. Historically, any spirit in the vicinity would have felt her reiki and would be drawn to her location.

I will not draw attention to myself, Kagome swore with finality. I won’t!

And like a moth to the flame, he was there.

She could feel his eyes on her as soon as she followed her teacher over the main threshold, and with a subtlety she was proud of, she swept her eyes over the room as if he didn’t exist, all the while getting a good look at him.

She’d had an unfortunate amount of practice with this sort of thing -seeing without looking. But no amount of practiced perception could have prepared her for what she saw.

“Kagome! You comin’?”

Glancing up, she realized she’d stopped walking and quickened her pace to follow after her friends.

“Coming,” she said, not daring to look back at the most ethereal spirit she’d ever seen in her entire life, though she wanted nothing more.

Fisting the hem of her skirt, she almost sighed when the heavy presence at her back began to follow her. She hadn’t expected any less, of course. They are always interested in her at first.

Luckily for Kagome, she had to endure it only as long as she was on the property. Her one saving grace, odd as it was, was that more often than not, spirits seemed to be confined to the area near the place they were laid to rest.

When she left the shiro, she’d likely never see this spirit again.

“Were you daydreaming again, Kagome?” Ayumi laughed as the blue-eyed girl caught up.

Laughing with her, Kagome refused to think about the fact that the otherworldly being behind her had most definitely not looked human.