DISCLAIMER
This is fanfiction based on characters from Inuyasha by Rumiko Takahashi. I do not own Inuyasha or any original canon characters — this story is a fan work. OC belongs to the author (me)
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I don't see many female-OC-focused Inuyasha web novels — most of the ones I find prioritize male leads or yuri pairings. I wanted a story with a female OC at the center, so I wrote my own version for people who like a female protagonist. I hope you enjoy The Other Higurashi.
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The shrine bell swung slow and thin, its note cutting through the humid hush of late summer. Miyu Higurashi let her fingers rest on the wooden striker and watched the bell sway, feeling the practiced steadiness of someone who had learned to keep breathing through other people's storms.
Kagome was already fussing — the way she always did when the shrine hummed with visitors and Miyu's quiet made her look louder. "You missed the first set of visitors," Kagome snapped, tugging at her school uniform. "You were off staring at the altar again."
Miyu offered the smile she'd perfected over a childhood of small slights. "It's fine. I was checking the offering list." She kept her voice soft so it wouldn't fuel the thin, hungry thing she'd grown used to: the need in others to make her wrong.
Kagome's mouth thinned. "You don't get it. People talk. They expect someone… ordinary. Not someone who draws eyes all the time." Her meaning hung between them: prettier, easier to notice, easier to like. Miyu felt the familiar prick of irritation settle in her ribs.
"You should be kinder," Miyu said, gentle but not apologetic. "People aren't trophies to be hidden."
Kagome flinched, then looked away, jaw working. The silence after was loaded with years of petty cruelty — snide comments at festivals, whispered comparisons, the small ways Kagome had tried to make Miyu smaller. Miyu had learned to swallow more than she let on.
A shriek split the afternoon — sharp and raw. From the courtyard, the bucket rope thudded against stone. Auntie's voice cracked. Footsteps thundered, a slam of the shrine door as people rushed out. The world telescoped until everything in Miyu's life pointed at the old stone well.
Kagome's hand closed on the rope and then slipped. For that half-breath Miyu saw the white flash of school uniform, Kagome's hair fanning like a flag as the ground seemed to tilt. People screamed. The bucket struck the lip. The sky became a bright tunnel.
"Miyu!" Her aunt's voice broke. Instinct and the kind of loyalty you don't choose made Miyu move before thought. She grabbed the rope with both hands, felt the coarse strands bite at her palms, and lunged. Her foot slid. For an absurd second she was held between two worlds — the tatami-scented kitchen she'd always known and a dark that smelled of cold stone.
Their hands brushed. Kagome's fingers clamped at her arm. They both fell.
Water hit like a strike. For a moment Miyu couldn't tell whether she was drowning or falling into a sky. Then the world folded open.
Something cold and precise slid into her head — a voice with no mouth that spoke in crisp text inside her mind.
[SYSTEM BOOT SEQUENCE — AUTHORIZING HOST: HIGURASHI, MIYU]
[WORLD: FEUDAL ERA — BINDING COMPLETE]
[RETURN PROTOCOL: DISABLED]
[SOULMARKS SCANNING…]
She clutched the well stone with numb hands and felt, under her skin, as if a sheet of warm glass had been laid across her wrist. When she pulled her arm free of the water, a faint pattern pulsed beneath her sleeve like an ember reaching for air.
Light wrote itself across her vision in letters she did not need to speak to read.
[SYSTEM]
Host: Miyu Higurashi
Status: Alive
Binding: Feudal Era (Permanent)
Soulmates Detected: 3
Three names flared in the air of her mind — strong and unmistakable:
Inuyasha — Half-Demon
Sesshōmaru — Daiyōkai Lord
Kōga — Wolf-Demon Prince
Under the names a blinking menu offered something that looked suspiciously like a quest interface:
[Mission: Survive | Skill: Soulmark Detection Lv.1 | Inventory: 0]
Miyu dragged a shuddering breath that tasted of iron and riverweed. Marked. Chosen. Bound. The words sounded like a curse and a dare at once.
"Kagome?" she croaked. The name scraped her throat. The girl coughed and spat brackish water. They were both slick and alive.
They scrambled out of the well and into the wrongness of another time: fields rimmed with primitive fences, smoke that smelled of cooking, the distant creak of cart wheels. The shrine courtyard — the neat, familiar rectangle of home — had been replaced by the raw textures of the Feudal Era.
Kagome stared at Miyu's wrist where the mark knifed through fabric with a faint crimson glow. "What is that?" she asked, voice small.
Miyu felt the system's presence like breath against her neck. She let the words come slowly. "A System," she said. "And apparently… three soulmates."
Kagome's eyes widened. "Soulmates? Miyu, this can't be real — I have exams—"
"You might not go back," Miyu said, and hated how final it sounded. The system had closed that door.
For a long time they sat there, dripping on packed earth, among villagers who fed them without questions because in that time, people tolerated stranger tales. The woman who sheltered them fed congee and watched Miyu's wrist as if she'd seen more wonders than rumors.
When Kagome's voice came again it was smaller, raw. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I was jealous. I pushed you away because I thought if I made sure everyone looked at me, maybe no one would look at you. I didn't mean—"
Miyu felt a stone shift in her chest. Years of bruises didn't vanish with a line of apology, but it mattered. She reached across the low table and closed Kagome's hand around her sleeve. "We'll figure this out," she said, deciding that facing a ripped world she could be the kind of person who helped.
Outside, a far-off howl threaded the night like a blade. Miyu's mark flared — not painful, but like a bell struck. The system chimed.
[SOULMARK SIGNAL: NEARBY (WEAK)]
Her heart thudded. Whatever had made that sound had touched the tether her mark hummed for. Miyu lay awake that night listening to creaks and the system's steady murmur.
[MISSION LOGGED — STEP 1 COMPLETE: SURVIVE THE FIRST NIGHT]
[REWARD: SYSTEM ACCESS CONFIRMED | SKILL: Soulmark Detection UNLOCKED]
She had always measured herself in small increments — days she survived ridicule, compliments she'd brushed aside — but the Feudal Era removed any smallness. The system had closed the door to home. She would learn its rules — or bend them.
Dawn came pale and hesitant. The woman who sheltered them — a sturdy, round-faced woman — bundled them with bread and a patchwork cloak. Miyu felt a small, fierce attention settle over her: every breath tasted like homework left undone and like the possibility of loosening old knots.
Kagome leapt up with frantic plans. "We have to find a way home," she insisted. "We can't just— Miyu, you said you saw a mark— maybe it's temporary."
"What if it isn't?" Miyu asked. The system pulsed at the back of her skull with the three names. They were words carved into a tree — familiar to touch but not yet meaning anything.
They moved toward the road, and the world folded around them like a new language: a peasant with a yoke, an ox cart patched with rags. Miyu kept her eyes sharp. The system gave tiny cues she still learned to read: a faint tremor when a "soul" passed, the way light tasted different around someone important.
[SYSTEM TIP: Soulmark Detection active. Signal strength increases when a bonded soul is within visual range.]
They didn't wait long. Villagers pointed and whispered as a lithe figure lounged in the crook of a camphor tree, humming as if the world were his private thing. Miyu's mark warmed. The first name unfurled like a scent: Inuyasha.
He was younger than stories had primed her to expect — white hair wild, a crimson kimono half-torn, amber eyes sharp as a blade. He perched like something caught between boy and beast, grinning at the villagers below.
The villagers were frightened and reverent at once. "Half-demon," someone muttered. Miyu's mark pulsed steady.
Kagome's face went pale. Miyu felt a pull at her chest as if gravity had shifted. The system announced, clinical.
[SOULMARK SIGNAL: INCREASED — APPROXIMATE RANGE: FAR]
[Soul Detected: Inuyasha — AFFINITY: LOW → MEDIUM]
Inuyasha watched like a cat sizing up a fly, then tilted his head. "What are you gawking at?" he called, voice rough.
Kagome stepped forward with bravado. "You! You take that back — you're invading the shrine—"
Miyu placed a steady hand on Kagome's arm, not to silence, but to steady. The new world demanded a united front, at least for now. Miyu was the one with the System; she intended to be the one to steer conversations when it mattered.
Inuyasha hopped down with a feline grace and fixed his gaze on Miyu. The system snapped bright.
[SOULMARK INTERACTION INITIATED]
[Inuyasha — AFFINITY: MEDIUM]
[Visual reaction: Mark glow SUSTAINED]
When his gaze brushed her mark, the pattern on Miyu's wrist flared, an aching light. It felt like someone striking a bell in her chest. Inuyasha blinked, then smirked — amused and annoyed at once.
"You're not the usual kind," he said. "Where're you from? You smell like city folk." His tone was mockery, but his eyes lingered as if trying to read the stamp across her skin.
Miyu kept her voice even. "We're travelers. We fell — we don't know where we are." The lie sat strange; she had a system telling her everything but couldn't reveal that truth in a place where a half-demon's temper could cut quick.
Inuyasha's expression shifted: part amusement, part something softer that touched like regret. "You should be careful, human. There are worse things than being in my company," he said, oddly protective.
Kagome, panic and practiced defense tying her voice, burst forward. "You— you can't talk to her like that! We have a shrine—"
Inuyasha laughed. "A shrine doesn't matter here." He sniffed, then gave a small, sharp shrug. "You're the priest-girl, right? Don't get in my way."
Kagome reddened. Miyu could have tried to defuse everything right then, but the system's prompt floated up: Observe | Interact cautiously. She took a breath and asked the question that would give them time and information.
"Inuyasha," Miyu said, clear and low, "we're lost and need help. Kaede — can you point us to her hut? We won't cause trouble. We just need shelter and to understand where we are."
The half-demon cocked his head. "Kaede's hut?" he repeated. "You picked an interesting place to fall." He gave a small snort and turned as if already deciding. "Come on. I'm not staying long, but I'll show you the way."
Kagome brightened like someone handed a map. Miyu let a private exhale leave her. The system recorded.
[MISSION NOTE: Travel to Kaede's hut. Potential learning: local customs, allies, threats.]
They started down the path. Miyu kept a hand near where her wrist marked beneath the sleeve, fingers brushing the faint warmth. The system gave another ping — a distant pull and the faintest taste of another soul.
A hard shadow detached itself from tree cover, immaculate and disdainful. He moved like a blade through cloth. Sesshōmaru.
The daiyōkai looked at Miyu with the annoyance of someone who had discovered a speck on perfection. His expression was composed, almost bored — except for the tiny tremor of interest the system loved to record.
[Soul Detected: Sesshōmaru — AFFINITY: LOW → RISING]
[SOULMARK RESPONSE: Sesshōmaru — ATTUNEMENT INITIATED]
Miyu felt recognition like a mirror held up — not kindness, but a precise, unreadable focus. Kōga's name throbbed faintly underneath, wolf-drummed in the distance. Her life was no longer only where she'd come from. Destiny — or the mechanical fate that had booted into her mind — had other plans.
The villagers watched them with thinly veiled fear. Two powerful demons in the same air made even the boldest hush. Miyu heard the system whisper next steps.
[MISSION UPDATED: Establish ally or escape route | Objective: Avoid immediate conflict]
Miyu stepped forward and took charge of the conversation. "We don't want trouble," she said, voice steady. "We're lost. If Kaede can help us learn the customs and where travelers may stay, we'll be grateful. We don't plan to stay long — we only need to understand the situation."
Sesshōmaru's gaze was an assessment. Inuyasha's smirk softened into something almost protective. "Kaede's hut," Inuyasha repeated. "Walk that way." He pointed, then blinked at the mark's faint glow. "You… you should cover that, human. It draws more attention than you think."
Miyu nodded and slid her bandaged sleeve higher. She had already learned one rule: visibility invites trouble. She would hide the mark when needed — but not hide herself.
They walked under camphor trees and into a world that felt both cruel and poetically immediate. The system hummed like a companion pleased with the unfolding plot.
[SOULMARK SIGNAL: MULTIPLE — Kōga: DISTANT (WEAK)]
Miyu swallowed. Three names. Three threads tugging at a single map. If destiny had taste, it had chosen a messy one. She tightened her cloak and walked on. The other Higurashi — the one people whispered about — stepped into a story that would not let her be quiet any longer.