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A/N: Here we are at Chapter 6! Thanks for all your encouragement last chapter. Since tomorrow I've got to go to work chasing seven year olds under the hot hot sun, I did my best to finish this and update tonight, because who knows when I'll have the energy to write again. :P Don't take that too seriously. Chapter 7 is pretty clear in my head. I mean, it's all about MIMI.
Special thanks to Viridian Wings, who caught an inconsistency in Chapter 5 which has since been rectified. You're awesome, and it's great to know my readers have my back!
Enjoy!
Chapter Six
Bloody Monday
"Drive on. We'll sweep up the blood later!"
- Katherine Hepburn
08.01.2005
MON
* Anniversary *
After an hour of fruitless scouting, Taichi figured they'd seen enough of the town to chart a map of it. Hitchhiking across Japan no longer sounded like such a bad idea. At least it would get them off their feet. They could hire a private jet and fly to New Zealand, join up with a National Geographic expedition and spend a week snorkeling with the sting rays for all the good trudging around Shinagawa was doing. The errant digivice signal continued to elude them, and Koushirou had either forgotten how to be Koushirou or was dead because he wouldn't answer his phone.
"He'd better have a five-star excuse for this," Taichi grumbled, pocketing his cell phone. "He ran out of battery life, as if that would ever happen. He suddenly realized the smell of me gives him conniptions. He was abducted by jolly drunk folk singers and forced to play the mandolin until his fingers get all blistery and peely."
His traveling companion, the injured and beleaguered Takaishi Takeru, looked at him sidelong as a clump of sweat-drenched bangs flopped limply over his brow.
"He must be in a lot of trouble," he said.
"I know," Taichi nodded gravely. "I am jinxed without my Koushirou. Usually I'd get along alright with my dashing good looks and generally charmed existence, but even that's deserted me. We make quite a pair, Takeru. We are brainless and luckless."
"Which of us is which?"
Taichi paused thoughtfully. "Well, I'm both. Don't ask to go halves because I'm not sharing. Oh, alright, if you insist – you can be Less."
"We are doomed to wander in circles for a hundred years," Takeru sighed, scuffing his shoe at some loose gravel. "I bet we stumbled into a fairy ring."
"A what?"
"A fairy ring, you know, a ring of mushrooms that fairies dance in, and if you step in it you are cursed. You may die young or become invisible to mortal eyes."
"I can still see you," Taichi pointed out. "You can see me."
Takeru shook his head sadly. "We probably both stepped in it and didn't realize."
"Die young, huh," Taichi murmured. He squinted along the road lined by ramen stands and bars and boutiques. They had returned to the land of the living, to streets illuminated by headlights and fluorescent signs, choked with bicycles and speeding taxis in spite of the hour. Taichi recalled seeing a photograph that showed a bird's eye view of a Shinagawa night. The roads had been streaks of yellow-gold while the rest of the city was flushed in an eerie green haze. A ghostly sort of beauty. Maybe he was oversensitive because he was tired, but the city seemed somehow too electric, as if energy were mushrooming outward and upward, growing more reckless the farther it went.
"Are you shivering?" Takeru placed a hesitant hand on Taichi's shoulder, tilting his head with concern. "You can't be cold."
Taichi wrapped himself in his arms. His muscles were trembling, which really was a strange sensation while the rest of him felt somewhat like meat on a spit. By now they were probably both dehydrated. Anyone smarter would have though to pack a water bottle or six. Jou was always good for remembering that sort of thing.
"Let's go in there and buy some drinks," Taichi suggested, pointing to a convenience store isolated at a street corner.
"The police –"
"– Can't be crawling the entire city, and anyway it's safer inside than out." He watched Takeru debate it with himself, the absent way his jaw sloped, how his eyebrows knit like lovemaking caterpillars. He decided he didn't quite understood why Hikari often said Takeru Uncertain was very cute. "Come on, don't be a wet blanket, Lord Floppy Hair." Swinging a careless arm around Takeru's shoulders, he towed him inside the store.
A blast of cold froze them where they stood. "Aaaaah," Taichi sighed into the welcome wave of air conditioning. "The life of an icicle, though fleeting, is truly enviable."
"Yeah, I can see the attraction. Who wouldn't want to be all melty and cone-shaped, and an inspiration for passers-by to wax philosophical?"
"What I want is to be cold. Just leave me here, and if I'm not melty and cone-shaped by the time you come back, you'll have to stick me in the refrigerated section among the iced teas and Gatorades. This is the part where you say, 'I hope at least your mouth freezes over, Taichi-san'," Taichi pointed out.
"I'm not going to say that," Takeru protested, averting his eyes and looking like he rather wanted to say it.
Gingerly flexing his injured hand, Takeru headed in the direction of the restroom to clean his wound. Taichi roved the aisles of snacks, sugary and salty and all obscenely overpriced. He wished Koushirou were with him to talk him out of buying a pack of Ring-Dings, since they'd only turn into gooey Essence of Ring-Ding in his pocket and he'd have to go around looking like he'd crapped his pants. But Koushirou wasn't with him, he was off drinking and badly harmonizing far away in some Scottish hamlet.
"Don't buy it," Takeru said from behind him. The flesh around his wound was pink and irritated, and his face and hair were wet. He brought his dripping self to Taichi's side. "Chocolate will make you thirstier. Besides, buying more than the bare essentials for survival will look like infidelity to Miyako-san. I'm already expecting to be charged extra every time I shop at her store for the next month."
Taichi replaced the Ring-Dings on the shelf. "You're a true Chosen, Takeru."
Ten minutes later, hydrated and emboldened, they resumed their trek through the city with a water bottle each. They made it as far as a train station and stopped by a bench. Without much hope, Taichi scanned his digivice, and was not surprised to find no signal. He reached around and massaged his neck.
"I think we need to call it quits, Takeru," he said.
Takeru's spirits plummeted. Amazed, Taichi stared; he'd never seen someone's spirit plummet, but he was sure some weight in Takeru's chest, right where his sternum should be, had suddenly caused his shoulders to sag.
"It's just that we aren't making any progress," Taichi went on, sympathetic but too tired to put much effort into an explanation. "You need to get back to camp. Besides, I'm worried that something's happened to Koushirou. Let's just grab a taxi and go to Aomori."
Takeru gave a reluctant shrug. Taichi suppressed the urge to shake him, to shout at him to stop acting like a kid. In these situations he liked to imagine he was with Hikari, that she was the one being stubborn and annoying, and then he could keep his head on straighter. Only Takeru was quite different from Hikari; for one thing, she would never just silently pout. She would be whining and protesting and asking what a brother was good for if he couldn't even recover her D3, her most important item. Then they'd have a huge fight and wander a while fuming at each other, until she hugged him and he apologized and they worked out a compromise between them.
At the same time, he was glad he wasn't with Hikari, because then her crestfallen face would make him just as desperate as Takeru, only more bull-headed and he wouldn't even spare a thought for whether or not it was wise to plunge on past his limit.
"Listen." He propped his arm against the wall near Takeru's head. "There's still a chance that one of the others will find something. And even if we don't find it tonight, we're bound to eventually. Hosoda's parents may know something. Or how about that Kawada Noriko? She helped Koushirou out – maybe she knows more than she let on. But, look, we're both exhausted. You're probably in a heap of trouble, and the longer you put off dealing with it the worse it's going to get. Let's start by doing what we can, alright? We'll –"
He broke off, interrupted by the shrill wail of his digivice. A blinking red mark faded in and out on the screen. Takeru stared at him, bug-eyed. "Damn, spoke too soon," he said, breaking into a sprint, "this way!"
They followed the road around a bend, down an alley. Taichi had no clear idea of where he was going, except that his digivice's chirruping grew wilder the closer they got to the city outskirts. "I wish," he panted as the lights started disappearing, "that our digivices were like your D3s, and all our signals were color-coordinated."
"Who else could it be other than Hosoda?" Takeru raced on beside him.
Taichi had no answer to that. All was a blur of artificial color but for the vague details his flashlight afforded them – threads of grass surging into pavement, the smear of a cat slipping covertly into shadow. Judging by the signal on Taichi's digivice, he – Hosoda – wasn't that far off and didn't appear to be on the move. They were closing in on him. Taichi sped down a flight of cement stairs leading who-knows-where, a demon's den or the door to hell, loping down the steps two, three at a time. Maybe he skipped one too many, or maybe he tripped. But suddenly he'd lost his footing, his body twisted the wrong way, and the thought crossed his mind that he should really throw his arms out in front to protect his head. The funny part was he couldn't really bring himself to move.
Sights flashed before his eyes and his last conscious thought was This is and then the world collapsed into white. The gears of his mind churned to a halt. He could see and was not sure of what he was seeing. Beyond that, he didn't care to try. And he could not feel his body.
He couldn't hear. Or was it that he wouldn't?
His arms swung limply, streamed uselessly from his sides.
His body crashed like a bag of sand.
"Ow – OW! Shit!" Dazed at the bottom of the stairs, Taichi raised himself up on his elbows. He brought a hand to his mouth. It came away shaking, slick with blood.
"Are you okay?" Takeru shrieked in the most amusing girly voice Taichi had ever heard. Not even Mimi could shriek like that. Well, maybe she could, if someone were bleeding all over her shoes. Takeru leaped the last few steps. The flashlight beamed rudely in Taichi's face.
"Aaugh, geez!"
"Sorry, sorry!" Takeru pressed his palm to Taichi's forehead and gently turned his head. "Ugh. You're a mess. I think you've got holes in at least five different places on your head… And there's a geyser spouting from your mouth."
Taichi touched his chin, which turned out to be a bad idea. Apparently all he had left of his chin was a lumpy mound slightly pear-shaped. That was unlucky. His chin may not have been all that masculine, but he'd been fond of it. It had served him well and endured all sorts of abuse for seventeen years. Now Yamato would never again draw Groucho Marx eyebrows on it while Taichi was sleeping upside down. He would have to live with the mashed up, indistinct, unadorned by Groucho Marx ruins of a chin.
"Tell me it's not as bad as it feels," Taichi groaned, wincing when just moving his mouth made stars burst under his eyelids.
"I'm hoping it's not as bad as it looks," Takeru answered grimly. "There's a lot of blood."
"From my geyser," Taichi added, even though he hadn't meant his injuries.
The shock of falling had distracted him, but now even pain gave precedence to fear. Whatever – detachment – had stopped him from protecting himself during the plunge, had numbed not only his body, but also his soul. The minute his feet flew out from under him, he'd stopped thinking, stopped caring what happened to him. It had been the same at the campsite, watching his hand flicker like an old film, foggy with age. But then he'd felt nothing but a brief, immobilizing flash, and he'd come to his senses with only a blurred residual memory of what had – had not happened. This time he'd lost more than a couple seconds of thought. For one frightening moment, he'd felt like he didn't even exist at all.
He raised his treacherous arms just to make sure they were there and working. At least they were no longer noodley and disobedient, flailing at his sides, leaving him to drop on his face like a clumsy toddler.
Takeru was saying something about hospitals and stitches. Taichi started to nod, then realized nodding was probably Bad as well. His fingers wandered upward, to his pulpy, copper-tasting mouth. He slipped one inside. "… Takeru, take that flashlight and look for my tooth."
"Your – what!"
"My tooth! Am I speaking Gobbledegook?" Takeru gave him a look that told him he certainly didn't sound intelligible, toothless wonder that he was. "One of my very precious front teeth. Makes me pretty. Has to be here. You look."
He jabbed a finger at Takeru, narrowly missing his left eye. Scooping up the flashlight, Takeru hunched over and started inspecting the ground, leaving Taichi to process the world of hurt he was floating in like a slab of very tired driftwood. He closed his eyes, which only made him dizzy. He spat blood and saliva into a dusty corner.
"Found it!" Takeru cried, standing and peering at something tiny clasped between his fingers.
"Hold it by the crown," Taichi directed, "not by the root. No, just give it here, actually."
Takeru laid the tooth in his hand. Taichi splashed it with water and popped it back into its socket.
Takeru shrank back, repulsed.
"If you think this is disgusting," Taichi mumbled around the hand in his mouth, "never try playing soccer without a mouth guard."
He patted his pants. His digivice was not – oh. It was still clasped in his other hand, safe and sound. But the signal was gone again.
"I'm sorry, Takeru," Taichi sighed, staring mournfully at the unresponsive black screen.
"It's okay," Takeru replied with a hasty smile. "Everything you said before was true. I'm not worried."
Taichi looked up at him. It would probably be very unkind of him to let Takeru go on believing he was a good liar when there were so many beastly people in the world who would take advantage an unassuming kid. Right now, though, Taichi was too grateful that he had made the effort to lie.
"Looks like we're going to the hospital." Takeru helped Taichi stand. He kept a firm grip on his elbow while he reoriented himself.
Making sure his uprooted tooth was semi-secure in his mouth, Taichi dipped his head, pride more than a little bruised. So much for his plan. Everything had gone awry since the moment he'd left Koushirou on the bus.
Well done, Yagami; having lost your brain and your luck, now you're losing teeth and every other sometimes-useful body part too, he thought to himself.
He ached far too much to laugh.
"What's happening?" Daisuke craned his neck to see around the cabins blocking his view of Yamato and Hosoda, wincing as Ken lugged him up the wooden steps. A great purple lump was swelling beneath his eye, and Ken was sure the rest of him would look quite dented and beat up in daylight, but still Daisuke trooped stalwartly onward. Ken took pity on him and decided not to mention that his pants had slipped and his boxers were glowing in the moonlight.
This really was a lot easier when they had their Digimon with them. On the whole, fewer body parts were injured. And no one got humiliated by falling down stairs or losing their pants in the process of saving the world.
Every few seconds Ken had to brush stray hairs from his loose ponytail out of his eyes. They made a perfect tag team, Hairy and Depantsy.
Together they flew past the cabins and darted around the fire pit towards Yamato and the intruder. They stood within a shroud of cascading color. Ken's breath fled him at the sight of the brilliant aurora, nebulous and unearthly, ripping a seam in the night sky.
So this is how the Chosen Children were first invited into the Digital World. Long buried envy briefly suffused his mouth. He forced himself to swallow.
"He opened the Gate," Daisuke panted. "I can't believe it, he actually opened the Gate!"
"He hasn't gone through yet," Ken said, jaw tight. "We can still stop him."
From the look of it, Yamato had everything under control, anyway. As they neared, Yamato launched himself at Hosoda, clawing at his legs, and sent both of them tumbling to the ground. They wrestled in a tangle of limbs, Yamato's furious threats mingling with Hosoda's thin, high-pitched squealing. Hurling himself into the fray, Daisuke slammed his hands into Hosoda's chest, smearing his face in the dirt. Ken squeezed in between them and pinned Hosoda's arms.
Even caged by three men, the boy continued to struggle underneath. His pathetic shrieks grew louder and more desperate. Ken heard Yamato let out an "oof!" just as he himself took an elbow in the eye – Daisuke's elbow, as it turned out, thrashing wildly to pinion Hosoda's upper torso. Suddenly, Hosoda's squeals morphed into a heart-stopping scream of pain. His body started to convulse. Ken felt static travel up his arm, and scanning the ground, found the source of it clutched in Hosoda's viselike grip: Takeru's D3.
It was hard to make out the color under the glare of the aurora, but the shape was definitely that of a D3. The screen was flashing as if the D3 itself were panicking, shooting wormlike branches of electricity under Hosoda's nails and up his arm. Ken's eyes swiveled to Hosoda's face, which had taken on the putrid hue of a toad's belly. His eyes caught Ken's for a bare instant, then rolled into his head.
"Guys, I think –" Ken dodged another wayward elbow. "I think it's hurting him!"
"Well, what – do you expect – me to – cut it out, what do you think you are, a baboon?"
Since Daisuke was otherwise occupied, Ken decided it was prudent to leave him alone. Yamato was now oofing every time Hosoda's knee met his groin; no help there, either.
Ken stretched his arm as far as it would go. As soon as he brushed Hosoda's hand, electric splinters lanced through his fingers. He recoiled. So touching the D3 wasn't going to work. He needed another plan. He needed to deactivate that D3.
Luckily, he wasn't known as Japan's Best and Most Well Groomed Prodigy for nothing. Groping blindly, Ken peeled back one of Hosoda's fingers and grasped it hard. Sorry about this, he sent mentally, and gave it a rough yank.
Hosoda howled. His grip weakened and the D3 slid from his hand to the grass.
Immediately, the sky began to calm. The aurora folded in on itself, collapsing into a roiling, shimmering ball. It shrank and shrank until it disappeared among the myriad pinpricks of stars.
Leaping up, Ken tested the D3 briefly, and gave a relieved sigh when he wasn't scorched. The surface was hot to the touch, but no longer sparking. He compared it to his own D3: the signal on his screen twinkled green. It was without a doubt Takeru's D3.
"Hand it over," Yamato said. An enormous clump of mud had settled on the bridge of his nose. He took the D3 and clipped it to his belt, next to his own digivice. Then he whirled on Hosoda. "Come on, up!" He and Daisuke each took an arm and hoisted the unresisting Hosoda to his feet. They frogmarched him to a log near the fire pit. Ken followed, torn between amusement and full body exhaustion.
Looming over him, Yamato glared down at the boy. "Is your name Hosoda Seiki?" he rumbled.
When no answer was forthcoming, Daisuke grabbed the back of his shirt. "He is according to what his mom's written on his tag," he smirked.
Hosoda Seiki jerked away. "Let go of me!"
"I guess his name could be Made in Taiwan," Daisuke snickered.
"Daisuke." Ken frowned at him. Then he turned his attention to Hosoda. "Mind telling us why you decided to steal Takeru-kun's D3?"
Beneath his mussed bangs, Hosoda's hazel eyes were narrowed. "What do you care?" he snapped. "Yours works."
"I care because it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to my friend, who was extremely distressed when he realized it was missing," Ken replied sharply.
Hosoda turned his scowl on the ground. Sighing, Ken changed his approach.
"Look," he said, more gently, "we know you were there the day Oikawa activated the Spores. We know you saw Digiworld and met your partner. Romamon, wasn't it?"
After a wary pause, Hosoda lifted his head. With a puzzled glance, he nodded. "Romamon. And we haven't been able to go back ever since."
"It's not that I don't sympathize, but you can't go stealing other people's digivices in revenge," Yamato put in. His eye kept twitching.
"Besides, it obviously doesn't work," Daisuke added.
"Shut up!" Hosoda cried, shrugging them off. "None of you have the right to say those things to me! None of you!"
"Hosoda-kun," Ken pressed on valiantly, more than a little annoyed with his overeager teammates. "I know it's hard –"
"And you least of all!" Hosoda thrust a finger at Ken, eyes blazing. "I know your face. Who doesn't know your face, Ichijouji Ken! Just because you've got an all-access pass to Digiworld, even though you're just like us! Just because of that, don't think you're any better than us!"
The raw anger in his voice was unlike anything Ken had ever heard. At least not since he'd taken up the mantle of the Digimon Emperor, and encountered such seething hatred from Digimon and Chosen alike. So he'd erected an icy fortress and called it his kingdom. Now all at once he felt as if he were choking on the frozen shards leftover from the purge of the Emperor. Maybe he wouldn't have been as stunned by Hosoda's outburst if he hadn't expected – if he hadn't hoped –
– not that it mattered what he'd hoped. He was like them. It wasn't fair that, just because he'd received his digivice before he'd been infected with the Spore, he could visit his friends in Digiworld as much as he wanted while the rest went years without meeting with their partners even once.
He'd never told anyone how guilty he felt about that, not even Daisuke.
… Especially not Daisuke, Ken amended as he caught his best friend's eyes on him. If there was anything he wouldn't hazard discussing with Daisuke, it was his "reign" as Emperor. Daisuke just couldn't understand. What exactly it was he couldn't understand, Ken couldn't put his finger on, but it existed. It existed and it was the last barrier separating them, so of course Daisuke wanted to crush it. Because crushing was what Daisuke did, when something hurt his loved ones. Holding back nothing. Melting ice with fire and sometimes singeing what he didn't mean to harm, but always with the best of intentions.
Ken hadn't liked being crushed back then but he was glad of it, because destruction had created space for recovery. But there was part of him that would probably never let go of the last of his guilt. Sometimes it crept into his dreams, hot and silky and sickening.
"Enough out of you." Yamato pulled Hosoda up by the arm, and Ken broke out of his reverie. "You're not exactly in the position to hurl accusations like that, pal. You stole my little brother's digivice and caused a heck of a lot of trouble. And cost us all a night's sleep."
"Shutting up now," Hosoda mumbled. He didn't fight it as Yamato shoved him in the direction of the stairs. Daisuke followed with the flashlight, and Ken took his place at his side. Before he could say anything, Daisuke rammed his elbow into Ken's ribs.
"Would you stop doing that?" Ken squeaked through gritted teeth.
"I know what you're thinking," Daisuke said, ignoring him. "And if you let anything that snot-faced bed-wetter said get to you, I'll personally sock you in the eye so that you look just like me."
"Like we're not already a matched set," Ken grumbled, massaging his side, "Depantsy."
Daisuke gave him a blank look. "Huh?"
"Your pants are falling down."
Daisuke paused, looked down and cursed. Ken left him to tend to his boxers and trudged resolutely after Yamato.
Snarling under his breath, striding along quicker than Hosoda could keep up, Yamato clambered down Shiroike's hillside. He'd climbed steeper hills before – he'd climbed Mt. Sanbe* just last fall for lack of anything better to do while at his grandmother's – but each trek up and down that familiar slope stirred thoughts and emotions he usually saved for self-reflection and sleepless nights.
"Took a while getting here, didn't you," he growled. He didn't need to glance at his watch to guess the time. They had arrived close to two a.m., and waited around for at least a couple hours before Hosoda showed up. It was practically morning.
What irony that he was here to recover a stolen digivice on the Chosen's anniversary.
"I got lost," Hosoda admitted reluctantly. "I only had a vague idea where the camp was. Couldn't make heads or tails of the map I found on the Internet."
"Kawada Noriko gave you that vague idea, didn't she?" Yamato asked.
Hosoda's head snapped around. "How did you know about Nori-chan?"
"Nori-chan? Oh, you're tight, are you?"
"As a matter of fact! She's much nicer than you are. Sharper, too."
"Watch it." Yamato guided Hosoda away from a rotting step and ignored his glare. "For your information, she's the one who told us where you were headed."
"… She did not." Hosoda regarded Yamato with a doubtful slant of his mouth. But he quickly looked away towards the approaching road.
Something in Yamato's stomach twisted. If he remembered rightly, Koushirou hadn't said Noriko had given away Hosoda's location. Just that she'd told the other Spore Children about the gate at Shiroike. But there was something about Hosoda's expression… something about the unsure flicker in his eyes that nudged Yamato to push it.
"Actually, she did," he insisted. "We have all of you on record, you know. Everyone who went with Oikawa that day. Noriko-chan –" He threw in chan as an afterthought; if he really wanted Hosoda to think they knew more than they did, it couldn't hurt to make him think they were on friendly terms with Noriko.
"– Noriko-chan told us it was you who stole Takeru's D3. And she told us you'd come here with it."
"You're lying." Hosoda was getting agitated quickly. "She wouldn't have told you, she promised."
Yamato shrugged. "Suit yourself."
"Look, I don't care if you're a senpai, you're on thin ice," Hosoda hissed. "We had a deal, okay, she and us. Even if she – she wasn't alright with it, but – she promised," he repeated, breathlessly. He raked his hair back.
"So she was supposed to cover up for you," Yamato said while making a mental note to mention Hosoda's "us" to the other Chosen. "She was your alibi and she fell through."
"No! She wasn't – we weren't – involved," Hosoda blurted out. "I mean she wasn't involved. With this. The thieving."
"Mmm."
"She wouldn't have said anything," he went on, sounding more certain. "She hates you too."
Yamato was sure he didn't like being told he was hated. He made no reply, and they fell into a tense silence.
At the foot of the stairs, Yamato's phone rang. He flipped it open.
"Takeru, good news –"
His brother cut him off before he could get in another word.
When Daisuke and Ken caught up with them, Yamato was just pocketing his cell phone. His lips were set in a stern line.
"We have to go to the hospital," he told them. "Who's got cash?"
A young nurse padded by and arched a slender eyebrow as he was extracting one long green tendril which had wormed into shirt. He started to wave at her but his nose itched, and then he was staring at the vinyl floor and sneezing into his knee.
Maybe she'd been impressed by the young man courageously thwarting his verdurous assailant. Maybe she would sing his praises to the other nurses under thirty during nurses-under-thirty coffee hour. Maybe they would laugh at the middle schooler with the floppy hair who got himself tangled in an aspidistra, and sneezed at it.
Yeah, I'm smooth. Slipping-on-a-greased-floor-getting-intimate-with-the-wall smooth.
Bottom line, his underwear was simply not garish enough for superheroics.
He disliked hospitals. Not that he could claim to know many people who would don feathered hats and break into song at the prospect of spending the night somewhere that smelled so strongly of antiseptic and of – of clean. If clean could be counted as a smell. Which Takeru would vouch it could. Because he was smelling it now.
It made his nose itch.
Taichi had been MIA for half an hour. At the sight of the two of them, bleeding and road-weary, their mustachioed taxi driver had whisked them downtown at break-neck speed. Then he'd personally escorted them inside the hospital, dropped the cab fee, and spent the following fifteen minutes pacing with Takeru while a doctor tended to Taichi.
He'd finally disappeared after making Takeru promise to call his mother. Takeru would feel more grateful for all his help otherwise. Now she was on her way here.
Here lies Takaishi Takeru, the first recorded teenager to die by sheer force of motherly scorn.
The automatic doors glided open, and Yamato barreled in. Takeru blanched at the sight of his brother, untidy with scraggly, tumbleweed-like hair and grass-stained jeans. Stumbling along behind him was – Hosoda Seiki. A giddy grin spread across Takeru's face. Although Yamato had let him know over the phone that they'd rescued his D3, seeing Seiki here now – for the first time in what felt like ages, he could breathe freely.
"Takeru!" Daisuke pounded across the lobby. "Do you have any idea how much trouble you've caused, dimwit?"
"Sorry," Takeru sang in reply, grasping Daisuke's hand as he extended it and pulling him in for a quick side hug. "Next time I decide to have my D3 stolen, I'll clear it with your secretary first."
"Damn straight." Daisuke thumped his back.
"Here." Yamato bypassed hugging and plunked the green D3 in Takeru's hand. Takeru pressed it tightly between his palms, relieved beyond belief.
"Thank you," he said sincerely. He hid a smile as his brother blushed and looked down. His eyes fell on Takeru's bandaged hand.
"Are you okay?" he cried, concerned. "You didn't say you were hurt. What about Taichi? Did you really get drunk?"
"I'm fine, it's just a cut! Taichi-san misses his chin but he's all right, and can we talk about that later? What happened to you? You look like you tried to wrestle with a pack of wild Boy Scouts. And lost."
"Just one delinquent Boy Scout, and in spite of our striking resemblance to the sad remains of a rodeo during Mardi Gras, I'd say the fight went in our favor," Ken put in, glancing sidelong at Seiki.
Takeru followed his gaze and hesitated. Miserable and bedraggled, Seiki had taken Takeru's seat, staring intently anywhere but at the Chosen. Takeru ran his thumb along the ridges of his D3, torn between pity and anger.
He wanted to be mad at Seiki. He deserved it. There was no reason to feel sorry for him. Seiki wasn't the one who'd had to drag his friends out of bed at witching hour to tour an unknown city; Seiki hadn't had to get one of those friends to the hospital because he'd knocked out his tooth; Seiki wasn't the victim of deadly assault by a sadistic aspidistra; and Seiki wasn't soon to be violated by motherly scorn until all lingering delusions of independence were beaten out of him.
Really, he had no right to look so forlorn. He'd caused this, he was the thief, there was no reason to feel bad for him just because he was sniveling at the floor like a kicked puppy.
And yet.
"Dude," Daisuke said, "you should say something to him."
"I can't think of anything," Takeru whispered back.
"Uh, how about, 'd'you want me to slug you now, or somewhere less public?'"
Takeru turned to Ken. Ken shrugged at him. "… Takeru-kun, have you ever considered the charms of life as a hermit?"
"– Because I mean, if you're going to slug him, you might as well do it, seeing as we're already in a hospital and your mom's gonna have beef with you anyway –"
"Oh my gosh, my mom," Yamato interjected.
"I don't want to talk about my mom!" Takeru cried.
"No – I mean I think that's her getting out of that car."
"What! Already?"
"Quick, which room is Taichi in?" Pivoting on his heel, Yamato backed off down the corridor.
"The morgue," Takeru deadpanned. "Where I'll soon be. Niisan, you'd abandon your only brother in his time of need?"
"Never mind. I'll get the room number from the receptionist. Good luck, little bro!"
Waving, Yamato disappeared around the corner.
Yamato frowned. "Why the hell are you calling me that?"
Pointing to the nine jagged stitches running along his chin, Taichi replied, "Talking hurts. Too many syllables in your name."
If it hurt that much, you wouldn't be talking at all. Yamato scrubbed at his face. Taichi's appearance was better than he'd anticipated based on Takeru's hasty account over the phone. The entire left side of his face was swollen and tender-looking, like an overripe tomato. But the blood had been cleaned away, his avulsed tooth splinted, and aside from his mass of mushy jaw and unsightly stitches, he looked exactly like Taichi.
"I'll tell you what," Yamato said. "With your face like this, no one will pay attention to your clown ears."
"Har har. I take it that since you aren't wet, there's no thundercloud of gloom dogging your every dour footstep. So you must have found Hosoda."
"Yeah. We got Takeru's D3 back, but a Gate did open in Shiroike –"
"Ah," Taichi said, expression clearing.
"Ah, what?"
He gave a few cautious shakes of his head. "Nothing, there was a Gate, go on."
"I don't know why it opened, and I don't know if it would have let him through. The three of us had him pinned, Daisuke was kicking everyone, and Ken started shouting that Takeru's D3 was on the fritz. And I kind of saw it through the gap between Daisuke's legs and it was sparking like a frayed wire."
Taichi scowled. "Geez, if he broke it – well, then we'll break him. We'll have to let Koushirou take a look. Does Takeru know?"
"… I haven't gone into the details with him yet." Yamato leaned back with his hands shoved in his pockets.
Chuckling, Taichi's lips curved in a lopsided grin, favoring his sore left cheek. "You're too nice for a big brother. You probably saw his glittering, tearful smile and couldn't bring yourself to make him worry again."
"I'll tell him before he leaves," Yamato replied testily.
"Hey, I don't blame you. He is cute. Even Hikari thinks so and she only ever says I'm cute."
"If by cute you mean insufferable."
"Yama!" Taichi resorted to pouting. "I'm an invalid. I'm hurting. You could say a few kind words."
"Stop calling me that, or Mimi'll catch on and I'll never hear the end of it."
"Mimi," Taichi groaned. He started to slap his forehead, then wisely switched to a consoling pat. "Shoot. I'm supposed to go meet her tomorrow. Today. Sora's going to kill me."
Yamato stiffened at the mention of Sora. Then kicked himself for overreacting.
"Well, whatever. I'm going to take loads of painkillers and sleep for twelve hours. She can kill me when I no longer ache."
He wondered idly if Taichi thought that talking about Sora like Yamato wasn't pissed at her, like yesterday's argument wasn't still fresh in his mind, would encourage him to put the incident in the past. Other people would put on an elaborate dance, choose every word only after careful deliberation. Taichi saw no point in beating around the bush and preferred to face the problem head-on. This was his version of verbal dancing. Yamato supposed he should appreciate the effort, even if his thick-skulled best friend hadn't really grasped the concept of tact.
What Taichi didn't get was it wasn't just this incident. It was a series of incidents, some larger than others, stemming from sometime in junior high school when he and Sora were dating. It was unreasonable to expect they could just go back to ambling around tangled together like seaweed. But very typical of Taichi.
On the other hand, he and Sora had agreed early on that they didn't want to involve their friends in their problems. That was almost more challenging than trying to be civil with each other in public. Taichi was a meddler, and the seaweediest of the bunch; plus at the end of the day the Chosen simply knew each other too well for something like this to be kept a secret.
But still they tried. Their relationship as Chosen Children was too important.
"Can you do me a favor," Taichi asked. "Koushirou's at an internet café right nearby Aomori. Can you go pick him up?"
"Are you coming?"
"I wish. I'm a minor. The doc called my folks and they're on their way here." Heaving a sigh, Taichi backed to the wall so a nurse could push a tray cart down the corridor. "Koushirou called when we were on our way over here. He'd had his phone on vibrate while he was in Aomori and didn't notice any of my calls. But he's stuck there now and you're the only one who can escape."
"Okay, I'll get him," Yamato said, glad for a reason to avoid his mom. They started walking toward the lobby. Taichi folded his arms over his chest and fell into a brooding silence. His jaw probably hurt him more now, and Yamato tried to think of something helpful to say, but before he could come up with anything better than Relax, chicks dig scars and big awkward clown ears, Taichi mumbled something he had to strain to hear.
"This mission was a disaster, huh."
Surprised, Yamato paused by a restroom. "What makes you say that?"
"Just look at us, Yamato," he snapped. "I've got nine stitches. Takeru sliced his hand and had to get a tetanus shot. You're all banged up and I'm betting the other two don't look so hot either. We got ourselves all split up. Communication failed. Chaos ensued."
"But we caught Hosoda," Yamato protested. "And Koushirou's fine."
"I," Taichi went on, quite determined to milk his dismal mood for all it was worth, "forced your brother to forget about tracking Hosoda by falling down the stairs."
"Daisuke fell down some stairs too. His eye looks like a potato."
"Daisuke is fifteen," Taichi replied impatiently. "Let him fall down all the stairs he wants; he's got time. This is my last year of high school."
Taichi wasn't making any sense. He usually didn't, Yamato reminded himself, sense was to Taichi what collectible figurines were to an energetic dog – yet his sixth sense for Taichi Issues kicked into high gear. This would be an appropriate time to sock him out of his melancholia, except that between the pain in his jaw and the pain in his temple from Yamato's fist of iron, Taichi would probably black out. That would be bummer to explain to his parents.
"Look, a busted chin isn't going to stop you from playing soccer," he said instead.
"We need to be more organized," Taichi muttered.
Why did he bother to say anything at all? "Fine, I'll sort by color, you by size."
"What?" Taichi finally looked at him just as they were entering the lobby. "Color? Of what?"
Catching sight of his mom and two police officers grouped around Takeru and Hosoda, Yamato cut the conversation short. He gave Taichi's shoulder a squeeze.
"I'd better go. You sure you'll be okay?"
"Yeah." Taichi still seemed distracted. "Take care."
Yamato left him and joined the others for a minute. His mother was engrossed in conversation with the police, one arm wrapped around Takeru, massaging his back. Yamato stayed long enough to remind Ken to tell Takeru about his D3's malfunction, and then went out before his mother had a chance to call him over.
Outside, he was surprised by a rare chilly wind. The sky had already begun to turn blush-colored at the horizon. It was strange being suddenly alone.
He walked to the bus station humming tiredly under his breath.
The police wanted to escort them back to the precinct so Seiki's parents could pick him up and Natsuko could fill out some paperwork. At the hospital, Natsuko had been wet-eyed and clingy, and kept saying, "Don't you ever do this to me again, don't you ever!" Now that she was occupied driving downtown, Takeru could see her lips growing thinner and thinner, and the lines around her eyes deepening into ominous crevices.
It began with no warning. "You're grounded," she said predictably.
He sighed.
"And I want you to call the camp tomorrow and apologize for all the trouble you've caused. They turned the grounds inside-out looking for you. You have no idea how terrified I was when I got the call that you were gone. I thought you'd been abducted, or worse. 'My son would never run away and trouble me so much!' I thought I'd raised you to know better, Takeru."
"You did," he said miserably. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry isn't going to cut it. When you get home it's right to bed. If you're hungry you can eat something, but after that you're doing what I say. You'll finish your summer homework. You can go to basketball practice when it resumes, but you have to come straight home. No television. No Internet."
Takeru thought dismally of the long, long summer stretching out before him. "Geez, Mom, you want to impound my cell phone too?"
"I'm considering it."
He knew she would probably relax the rules after he'd been meek and obedient for a few days. With any luck, he'd manage to convince her to let him out for the Chosen's annual picnic, currently slated for next week.
"I just don't understand why," Natsuko went on. She gave the steering wheel a rough tug. "What could possibly have been so important that you felt justified in breaking camp rules, and wandering around on your own in a city you don't know?"
"Um." Takeru glanced at the rearview mirror. All he could see were Seiki's crinkled eyebrows and Ken's unruly mop of hair.
"I can take a guess, judging by the company you had with you," Natsuko sighed. "But I don't know what to make of Hosoda-kun."
"… It's not what you think," Takeru replied, desperate to get her mind off any scenarios she was concocting about Digiworld. "It's… Hosoda-kun and I had a bet."
His mother peered at him. "A bet," she repeated.
"It was really stupid," he explained. "See, we're kind of like enemies." Seiki's expression in the mirror didn't budge. "So we had a bet to meet on an off-campus basketball court and have a one-on-one match. But there was some miscommunication, and he left earlier than I did. Then we both ended up getting lost."
"Uh-huh. And how did the rest of them get involved?"
"They weren't with us originally! I… I called Taichi-san when I couldn't find my way back, because I was too embarrassed to call you or Niisan. He came to get me and brought Niisan with him anyway. Daisuke and Ken were just along for the ride, because they were hanging out with Niisan and wanted to make fun of me." There, he'd managed to fit one smudge of truth into that humongonormous lie. "Then Taichi-san fell down the stairs…"
"I hope you apologized to him too," Natsuko fumed. "Dragging your friends out of bed because of your foolishness. It's your own fault he got hurt."
"I know." He really did.
"For someone who claims to like Hikari-chan as much as you do, you have a funny way of showing it."
She pulled to a stop at a red light. The captives in the car, afraid to be caught breathing, sat rigid as statues.
Daisuke snored into his seat belt.
Natsuko began to calm down, and Takeru prayed she wouldn't find her second wind. "I don't know that I believe you. You're so good at telling stories. Even when you were little, you would tell me the reason you couldn't eat salmon for dinner was because aliens could hear it digesting and would come to rip your stomach out at night."
"I really hated salmon," Takeru agreed.
Natsuko smiled. That was huge. He knew he wasn't off the hook yet, and if she ever found out how badly he'd lied he'd probably never again see the light of day. But thus far, she'd reacted much better than he'd expected.
He met Seiki's eyes in the mirror again. They were filled with a tumultuous mix of curiosity and puzzlement. And also bitterness.
Once more, Takeru felt a strong pull to say something to him. Talk with him.
Stop this before it turned into hate.
But Seiki looked away, out the window. Once they arrived at the precinct, he would go home with his family. Maybe they would never meet again.
I'm not angry, Takeru sent mentally. And was surprised to realize it was true.
Funneling smoke roiled above, guiding the way to a vast, ink black sea.
He sat down where he was. A voiceless blockade. His shadow cast the sea in eternal darkness.
At his back, the sun rose.
Chapter Notes:
A/N: The heck is wrong with Takeru? Salmon is awesome!
1.] Mt. Sanbe: In Shimane prefecture, where Yamato's grandmother (Bokura no War Game) lives. It's actually several mountains, but I'm sure Yamato didn't hike them all. ;)
*theatrical voice-over* The Hosoda arc is OVER! What happens next? Was Koushirou really abducted by folk singers? Stay tuned to find out!
