Less Than Three series:
A collection of one-shots showing what happens when technology meets romance.
Sometimes, love & tech just don't coincide!

Less Than Three series #2

Decoding Emoticons =)

By Keelah

He'd battled armies of demons, defeated swarms of evil souls, ruled the vast and most envied lands of feudal Japan. But for the life of him, he could not understand these foolish little symbols his Miko puts at the end of her messages. What in heaven's name is an equal parenthesis?

1 new text message: from Miko

Hey Sessh! I have class till 6pm today gaaah =_="

wanna grab dinner at around 7 instead? =)

He could simply ask her, he supposed. That would be certainly easier. His common sense told him a simple question would easily yield a simple answer, and thus easily end his agony. His kingly pride, however, would not allow it.

Ask?

He'd seen those dreaded symbols before, in the phone screens of passing teenagers, the occasional advertisement trying to keep with the latest trends, the comments on that site with the videos and the red box. YouTune, was it?

He didn't know, and he hadn't the time to find out. He'd lived through the last five hundred years, of course; he saw how technology sparked, then grew, and then exploded. Like the fine demon he was, he adapted. He was more than capable with a computer—he knew Excel, knew PowerPoint, knew statistical programs, e-mails, fax... everything he needed to run his companies and keep what was more or less the Western Lands his. He adopted parts of technology that were necessary and efficient, and for all their stupidity and flaws, he recognized that the most idiotic race on the planet has indeed produced some very productive and progressive inventions.

But the symbols.

The symbols he never understood, just as he didn't understand pop culture and contemporary slang and why in the world humans enjoyed announcing what they had for breakfast or every worthless thought in their empty heads on a website meant for tweeting birds. While he kept up to date with the changing maths and sciences around him, picking up those innovations that were useful, it wasn't as though he'd been mingling with human teenagers to keep up with the latest culture. He stayed buried in his work and profession the past half of the millennium, and only in the last five years, after seeing her again, has he come out to re-greet the world.

It wasn't a very impressive world, to be honest.

Humans stayed a dumb and lazy as ever. (Except his Miko, of course, but he supposed he was a little biased).

Incapable and indolent, so much so that humans have de-generated language into a series of punctuations and symbols.

In the last five hundred years, he'd had the leisure to be fluent in seven languages. Seven.

But for the love of god, he would not understand what an X and a D meant. XD? Is that a better version of 3D movies?

These characters... they must be a kind of cult language. He remembered distinctly that they started emerging once those dreaded little black devices were invented. And now his Miko speaks in the same way. He'd survived the last five years of their being together, but the symbols accompanied every text message she sent, and god, what if she had been trying to tell him something all this time and he had missed it all?

What if it was a secret language?

What if she were secretly trying to tell him he's an idiot? Or that she didn't love him? Or she was in danger and it was a cry for help?

Or maybe her symbols were trying to tell him to hurry up and propose already.

Or maybe—

1 new text message: from Miko

Hello? O.O? Okay, maybe you're in a meeting. Btw I was thinking fast food? Nothing fancy. I've got exams coming up and my profs are murdering us with term papers x( Can't stay out too late. CYA soon! TTYL fluffy =3

Sesshomaru stared at the evil black device in his hand.

Oh god, another one.

Oh god, now there are six things he didn't know.

What if it was a test. What if their relationship would only work if he understood this god-forsaken, alien-like, nonsensical language? What if his cluelessness made her think that they were too different and incompatible? She would leave him—and he wouldn't be able to take the solitude of another five-hundred years again. He'd waited five hundred years for a woman who taught him to breathe again and spent the last five years earning her heart, and now his love and life and happiness depended on learning this stupid new language invented by a stupid race because their stupid little brains can't—

Okay. Okay.

Calm.

This Sesshomaru is calm.

He gripped the cursed phone and stared at the screen once more.

He'd taught himself English and Cantonese and French, out of necessity for his corporate dealings. How hard could this be?

0.0

What is 0.0? X and a bracket? Equals three? She must be struggling on an equation of some sort. He didn't know she was taking a mathematics class. He could have sworn she was majoring in History and Archaeology. Perhaps she was trying to solve a math problem? And asking him for answers?

Was Kagome cheating on an exam?

Btw? What? Is that word? His face scrunched, struggling to pronounce the vowel-less word. Buh-tuh-wuh?

With a large swipe across his desk, Sesshomaru pushed off the stacks of annual reports and department summaries (and basically everything he should have been doing this last hour) to place his laptop in front of him. He was determined to get to the bottom of this. There was nothing the Lord of the Western Lands did not know or could not learn. Nothing.

GOOGLE Search:

I demand the meaning of BTW. Now.

Search Results: About 84, 600, 000 results

An Unprecedented $660 Billion In Excess Debt Demand - Zero Hedge

Alright, so maybe he'd typed in the wrong thing.

GOOGLE Search: BTW meaning.

By the way

Behind the Wheel

Better than wholves

Born this way

British telecommunications Wholesale

What? Why were there so many? He tapped on his desk, restless now.

Perhaps he should ask Jaken.

The ugly little thing had unfortunately lived as long as he, and had held on to the hem of his robes as stubbornly as he clung onto life. Jaken must have been determined to fulfill his purpose—giving Sesshomaru his daily coronary from sheer irritation. He should have beheaded the creature a long time ago, Sesshomaru mused, but ah—Jaken had proven his worth at certain periods.

Maybe he could be useful again this time.

Reaching out to press the little blue button on his desk phone, Sesshomaru roared, "JAKEN!"

Jaken must have heard the rising impatience and irritation in his voice, because not even second passed before Sesshomaru's canine years heard the ever familiar squeak of fear. A moment later, the green thing scurried into his office. "Yes!" The bundle of uselessness and frustration piped, "Yes, Master Sesshomaru?"

He threw the phone at the creature, letting it fly straight into Jaken's face. "Read."

A bright red mark down his face, Jaken's big bug eyes looked over the screen before widening even further. "My lord?"

"Tell me what it means."

"She's going to get killed!"

Sesshomaru froze, before whipping around to face his pint-sized advisor. "WHAT?"

"The human!" Jaken exclaimed, "Her teachers! Her teachers are murdering all the students! Sire, it says right here on the—!"

A three-inch binder of this year's audit records crushed the speaking creature.

"You brainless fool. She's merely joking. I want you to look at the symbols."

The stupid thing looked over the message again, muttering to himself.

"What?" Sesshomaru snapped coldly.

"The human uses an awful lot of punctuations."

"I know..." Sesshomaru growled, "and what do you make of it?"

"Okay, okay. Well, this is bad."

"Bad?" he repeated.

"Yes, well, if I may speak boldly, milord, this is the human's time. If you cannot understand her strange, secret symbols and fit in with this era, then maybe you both are too different!"

Just as I thought. Sesshomaru let out a deep, demonic glower. He could not lose her, not over something so petty. "What can be done?"

"Well, you need to get caught up in the times, sire!" Sesshomaru looked at the rambling fool, who looked a little too sure of himself. "You need to get updated! And, Master, fortunately for you, I am quite knowledgeable in the area!"

Sesshomaru raised a brow. "Are you?" he deadpanned.

"Yes, yes, Master Sesshomaru. After all these years, have I ever given you ill advice?"

"Yes."

"Oh." Jaken let out a nervous laugh. "Well, not this time!" He lifted and dragged the phone back up to the desk, near Sesshomaru's hand. "Now, now, we'll decipher this cryptic written speech. Obviously, there are many meanings behind each symbol, Master, and—"

"Start with the first one." He had no patience for this. "Tell me what buh-tuh-wuh means."

Jaken turned to his lord's open laptop. "Alright, well, an easy solution would be to Google—"

"I've already done that."

"But you must have looked at the wrong place, milord!"

Sesshomaru raised an eyebrow. "The wrong place?"

"Well, there are specific websites for specific purposes."

"I referred to the Merriam-Webster diction—"

"Sire, with all due respect, you do not even know who Merriam is!"

Sesshomaru stared at him, but for once, Jaken didn't wither under his gaze. He seemed awfully confident with the words coming out of his mouth. That either pacified Sesshomaru's qualms or made him very, very worried.

"We have to look at the right kind of dictionary," Jaken continued.

"The right kind?"

Small, froggy fingers moved across the keyboard. Sesshomaru made a mental note to sanitize the keys before using it again.

GOOGLE Search: BTW meaning.

"There you go, milord!"

"This is the same search I had—"

"But look further down the results, milord! We obviously need a dictionary that applies for this contemporary era! Like this site!"

"What is this?"

"A dictionary, milord. An urban one!"

Click.

BTW

1. Breasts, tits & wieners

2. back to work

3. big titty wonder

4. big tittied whore

Sesshomaru blinked. Gaped. What? A growl escaped him, deeper and more menacing by the second. "Jaken..." he glowered, "What is the meaning of this?"

The little thing visibly cowered. "P-perhaps um..."

"Perhaps what?"

"P-perhaps your human m-mate is, is merely...um..."

He willed his eyes to glare daggers. "Merely what?"

"Mere-merely emphasizing... well, perhaps she's, um, reminding you of her... assets—"

He heard a satisfying squeak as the rambling fool hit the wall and slid down the floor, having flown across the span of his office. "You will keep your eyes off my Miko," Sesshomaru stated coldly, impassively. "Or I will gouge them out myself. Understood?"

"Yes, yes milord!"

To his dismay, the fool bound right back up off the floor and scurried back to his desk. "A-anyway, milord, if I may continue. You see, in your stead, I've familiarized myself with the cultures and colloquialisms of this contemporary era, and in fact I know my way around quite well. I'm very much familiar with the site where the humans keep the book of faces and the website where people pretend to tweet like birds. I even know what a hash tag means!"

"A hash tag?" Sesshomaru echoed. "And what is a hash tag?"

"It's... well, it's the grid you use to play Tic-Tac-Toe!"

Huh. "And what is a Tic-tac-toe?"

"...It's a brand of breath-freshening candies, milord! See how experienced I am?"

Sesshomaru huffed. So his brainless advisor knew a little more than he did. Perhaps keeping him the last five hundred years is finally amounting to something. Jaken, for his part, has never looked so eager and excited—this was probably one of the very few times Sesshomaru ever voluntarily sought for his advice. He would not fail his master!

"And what you propose I do with..." Sesshomaru motioned to the phone. "That? And Kagome?"

"You must show that you aren't so different from her, milord! You—you have to learn how to speak like the young humans! You have to talk like them!"

"Talk like them?"

"Yes, yes, using the secretive cult language they use to communicate over these black devices! You have to adapt to the new language, Master Sesshomaru. It will show her you two are more compatible than she thought, so she will not leave for modern human male—"

A low, predatory snarl escaped Sesshomaru's throat. A grimace wracked Jaken all over. "The miko," Sesshomaru glowered, "will not be leaving me for a modern human male. Is that understood?"

"Alright! As you wish, milord! I was just saying that to keep connected with her, and, and to make her love you, Master Sesshomaru, you have to speak and be like the modern humans... This is the only solution if you want the human to accept you! Here—" Jaken pointed a small, skinny finger to his computer's screen, the yellow heading stark against the blue background of the website. "This will help us decipher the alien codes and help us speak like the humans! We will use this website to communicate with the human."

Sesshomaru squirmed. "You are sure?"

"Yes, yes milord!"

Jaken was nearly jumping with excitement at the sign of his worshiped lord finally listening to him.

"Of course I'm sure!"

The little frog gave a great big smile, knowing he wouldn't fail his lord, knowing he knew all about the human world.

"When have I ever been wrong?"

And Sesshomaru, desperate as he was, had no choice to but to concede.

Bzzz!

Kagome quickly lifted her phone off the desk before the professor heard it vibrating off the tabletop. She checked the clocked. Ten minutes till freedom. She'd been in this fourth-year Archeology class for a four-hour lecture, and her only relief now was seeing Sesshomaru again.

She'd texted him five minutes ago, saying:
getting out of class in 15 mins. Yay! XD You're picking me up right?

Now as she unlocked her phone strategically hidden behind her textbook (not that the professors cared, she just didn't want to seem rude), Kagome scrolled through the menu and opened her newest message.

1 new text message: from Sesshy

Yes Miko, I am on my way =D lol ttyl yolo =O lmfao

Kagome blinked.

1 new text message: from Sesshy

cya :-/ bff OMG rotfl

...

Kagome: ahahah um, okay? Anyway. Thanks Sesshomaru. We've been so busy, I haven't seen you in the last 3 days! Can't wait to see you. Love you.

She waited, but it wasn't even a minute before her phone buzzed once again.

Sesshomaru: 8====D

...

Kagome gaped.

Kagome: Oh my god.

Kagome: What the hell is that for?

Sesshomaru: Well, you always put these strange symbols at the end of your sentences. I assume this is customary in modern Japan? lol nvm :-) asl ehehe fml

Sesshomaru: I wanted to show you I, too, can communicate in your language.

Sesshomaru: The urban dictionary says 8====D is a torch of love.

Kagome: WHAT?

Sesshomaru: 8 are the handles and the D emits the fire.

Sesshomaru: I am quite skilful with these symbols, aren't I?

Kagome: Sesshomaru...

Sesshomaru: Are you pleased by my torch of love, Miko? 8====D

...

Kagome: Oh my god. Oh my god. Sesshomaru, that's a dick.

...

Sesshomaru: Miko. I don't understand what you mean...?

Kagome: UGH. NVM.

Sesshomaru: TBC LOL =D NP :D TY 8=====D

Kagome: Sesshomaru!

Sesshomaru: JK OTP b/c STDs

Kagome: OMG WTF STOP IT.

Sesshomaru: asdf 143 fyi IRL orly?!

Sesshomaru: I'm glad we're finally communicating well, Miko.

Note: Just a little one-shot to brighten up your day. Hope it replaced those worries & tears with smiles & giggles, even if just for 5 minutes.
Review to tell me if it's mission accomplished? =D What moment made you laugh most?

Check out the first one-shot in the Less Than Three series!

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(Sesshomaru X Kagome)
Summary: There are many things the Lord of the Western Lands can do. Texting is not one of them.

Also, feel free to leave ideas for the next Less Than Three one-shot!
- Keelah =) xD lol fml jk ahaha