Disclaimer: Possibly creepy. Eheh.

Author's Notes: New Year's visits to the temple, bullet-trains, and math. OMG, I must be depressed.

For: Denise.

Thirteen hundred for the demons sleeping within. Hundred and twenty thousand for the memories mining through. One hundred sixty-five thousand seven hundred and ten for the days lived.

It is the second Monday in January when she walks by him.

His first lazy afternoon thought is soft and dirty.

She is ten. She smells of lilacs and black spring. And at eight thirty in the morning, she boards the number one-fifteen shinkansen to Ohmiya. Three minutes after nine, her friends buy her a tiny piece of chocolate for ninety-nine yen. By half past eleven, it is raining.

His shadow steals by her into Ohmiya's temple. Third in line, she draws her fortune for the new year—nineteen ninety two—and frowns.

"Tie it to a tree branch," he tells her softly, fading into the thinning crowd.

Startled, she stuffs the fortune into her second smallest pocket and pretends she hasn't heard him.

One by one, he charms her friends away until she is lost in a crowd of three hundred, alone. And at five 'til seven, with the moon climbing in the distance, he rises before her.

"You shouldn't be out in the rain," he tells her, with an umbrella in his hand and a hunger in his heart. "You'll upset your mother."

She gives him four suspicious glances, her hair matted to her wet forehead.

"Y-you know my mother?" she asks hopefully, shivering in the rain.

"Very well," he replies.

His coat is thick and heavy and she takes shelter beneath it, nestled against his elbow. For the first minute, she takes only seventeen shallow breaths, her hair soaking his shirt.

"I got lost," she tells him finally, sniffling and clutching his fingers. "I drew the worst luck and now it's coming true and I don't know how to get back home and my friends got lost, too, and..."

Affectionately, he smoothes away a lock of hair away from her forehead and runs a thumb down her pink cheek. "I'll help you tie it to a tree branch."

Two big eyes look up at him. "Really?"

"Yes," he says, and picks her up out of the puddle, settles her on his shoulders.

Her little thighs clamp down around his ears. "And my bad luck will go away? All of it?"

"I promise," he replies and hurries through the rain.

They pause before the seventh tree in the fourth row. She stretches up over his shoulders twice, but the note cannot seem to reach, so he lifts her up, high to the heavens, and watches her worries melt away.

At eight forty-five, she's sleeping in his lap aboard the number one-ten shinkansen to Tokyo. He's trying to read yesterday's papers. But secretly, he's counting.

There are four September colors drifting through the folds of her kimono. Twelve tiny butterfly clips in her dark hair. One Shikon beating behind her breastbone.

"Are we there yet?" she asks sleepily, burrowing deeper inside his coat, sprawled out across two train seats.

"Almost," he answers lazily, folding the newspaper away.

She smiles up at him with the sort of smile he'll never see again, and quickly pokes his nose.

"I wanted her to name you Kikyou," he says, entertaining a soft, dirty thought.

She sits up in his lap with a pout. "My name is Kagome. Ka-go-me."

Ten years, seven months, and twenty-six days after she was made flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, he realizes he's made a mistake.

Born with the soul of his miko and the root of his existence, she is not perfect. But really, he is only two hundred and sixty-five million minutes too late to change his plans.

"I made you a promise," he begins as the train screams to a stop. "Now you have to make one in return."

While she scrunches up her face, five long shadows flit across the window. Two lanterns are shining through to her, seven people board the train, and she remembers. "I shouldn't talk to strangers."

A wicked smile quirks his lips. "We've met before." He tucks a stubborn curl behind her ear, and leans in. "Remember."

She scoots away, wrapping four little fingers around the metal pole, and bounds across the aisle.

Eleven minutes past ten, she's peeling hot, roasted chestnuts, shaking her head to a silent melody, perched upon his shoulders. He walks slowly, three steps before each brief pause, four before each question.

"And what will you always do?" he asks silkily.

Her little mouth closes around a chestnut. "Come home."

"No matter what?"

"No matter what."

Six years, one month, and twenty-eight days later, he's going to wait for her at the well. He's going to linger in the darkness for only seven heartbeats. On the eighth heartbeat, exactly, she's going to scale the mossy walls, betrayed and bleeding, and ask him one question.

"Why?"

But for now, thirty-four minutes into the second Tuesday in January, he returns her to her little pink room and counts the spiders on the wall. There are ten for each birthday, and one is kneeling before her bed.

Appraisingly, she touches a strand of his hair to hers and yawns.

"Promise one more time," he whispers into her neck, tucking the blanket around her.

With a sleepy little frown, she curls around his hand and mumbles against his thumb. "Always come back to you."

When he is four streets away, he runs a shaky hand through his hair and thinks even his soul consists of numbers.

Thirteen hundred for the demons sleeping within. Hundred and twenty thousand for the memories mining through. One hundred sixty-five thousand seven hundred and eleven for the days lived.

And one for the obsession still burning inside.