A late spring sun on its early decline spilled sunflower-colored light over the walls. Here and there were glints of scraps of tape from where posters had once been.

The breeze wafted in from the open window, but Sora had already taken the chimes down. When the wind passed, she was left with only the scents that said she had lived there once. Rice that was probably warm and fluffy when she made it, but was now just a vaguely stale, but homey scent in the background that refused to go away. Some lemon-scented cleaning product wafting from the bathroom and the kitchen. A deep, rooted scent of her skin and hair and the things she used on them that seemed to rise out of every spot that hadn't been covered by a piece of furniture. There was pink and blue fluff in the spots Piyomon liked to sit.

It was strange. She had only lived there a year. A miniscule timeframe compared to the years spent living elsewhere, but it still felt so much like leaving home.

It wasn't as though she had never moved before; it had happened once or twice in the past. The only difference was that her family had been there. There was a kind bustle about a family moving as she recalled it. The child had to help, but also be out of the way and not handle anything too heavy. There was a lot of directing, and making sure every box was placed in the appropriate room. And of course, her mother was insistent on handling the vases herself.

Her mother...

She had worn an expression Sora could never forget when she first moved away from home. It had been a little after she began college. Sora had modest work at a modest bookstore, and so she had chosen to live in a suitably modest apartment. It was an experience, to say the least. Her parents weren't exactly rich. They could not have managed to pamper Sora by paying for all of her living fees. Although, even if they could, they were frugal people by nature and probably never would have anyway. In fact, it had downright surprised her when her parents had offered her a rather substantial monthly allowance when they heard just where she was moving. It was true that Tokyo wasn't cheap, but they were already covering a fair portion of her university fees. Otsuma wasn't exactly super-expensive but it was still an unexpected sum. And that bittersweet look on her mother's face when she'd declined it was still so striking in Sora's mind.

Opening her eyes to the dazzling sunlight, Sora wondered if maybe she'd have a daughter someday. One whom she loved as her mother had loved her, and whom she'd someday have to make that expression to as she wavered between I'm so proud of you and I'm so scared to let you go. The quintessential mom-face, she supposed. She had to have made a face like that at least once for Piyomon.

Of course, this time was different. This time she would be moving in with someone else.

With Yamato.

She rolled onto her stomach, surprised at the butterflies that welled up inside of her. The decision had been made months ago, so her nervousness struck her as rather sudden.

Their relationship had survived high school well enough. He was still very much himself, in that he could get wrapped up in his failures and had some difficulty being traditionally affectionate. They had their rough patches where she would get mad at him for being broody all by himself, and he would get mad at her for pursuing and being stubborn. All couples were like that she supposed, but it was always so odd after the way all of them had grown over the summer of '99. They all battled problems, and maybe it just felt like there weren't supposed to be anymore big issues after all of that. But it was so obvious sometimes that he was still kind of... It seemed harsh to say damaged. Harsh and inaccurate. Wary might be a better match. Cautious? Was there a word for a person who seemed over-aware that things that no high school boy should have had on his mind?

Still, the good times far outnumbered those moments. She was happy, and he...well, he was the one who had even suggested they get a place together. 'For economic reasons', he had claimed with a needless insistence despite being red up to his ears.

So far as she knew, that was the best sign she could hope for. It could come down around both their ears, but they were digidestined. If there was one thing they knew, it was that dreams that went unchased never amounted to anything.

Of course, she hadn't been thinking about any of this so hard until... She sat up, and shook her head to try and clear it, but it was sitting on the table. The clip itself was a little rusty, and the flower ornament was unraveling, but it was unmistakable.

Taichi's hair clip. Given to her what felt like ages ago. A clumsy gift that she'd had a clumsy reaction to.

She felt her lips curling, and she couldn't help a snicker. It quickly escalated to a gut-deep laugh that bounced off the walls. Why on earth had she been so mad at him for giving her a hair clip? She remembered fidgeting with her hat and her hair the rest of that day, stubbornly refusing his calls even though Diaboromon had been wreaking havoc.

The door clicked open, and Piyomon poked her head in. When Sora had to take a moment to get herself together, she tilted her head. "Did something good happen, Sora?"

It wasn't about love. At least, she didn't feel so. Taichi had made it very clear to her that she was his dear friend. Sometimes she suspected that he meant 'dear friend' in the sense that Takeru meant 'dear friend' when he talked about Hikari. But for the most part he seemed genuinely okay with developments as they were, and all she could do was trust that. It was just funny. He had been such a big part of her world when she was a child. When she was a different girl. And more than any concerns over a love triangle, that worried her.

The woman she was now definitely loved Yamato. The girl she had been once had many feelings about many things that Sora no longer understood.

Even after so many years, she occasionally wondered if she had not quietly sacrificed the stubborn soccer playing tomboy she used to be. Had she taken her mother's words too much to heart? Her university was women only. Had she ever suspected she might choose that kind of lifestyle for herself? Sometimes she still felt that child inside her. A stirring of energy and carelessness. She still kept a soccer ball, but it had lived undisturbed in a box long before she started packing things for the move. She couldn't remember the last time she'd touched it.

"Hey, Piyomon... I've changed, haven't I?"

"Of course you have." Setting the grocery bags down on the floor, she plopped down beside her partner. "You're all grown up, Sora."

"It doesn't really feel that way." She drew Piyomon into her lap, resting her chin on the bird digimon's head. "Sometimes I wonder if maybe I gave up being the girl I was when we met too easily. She had such clear dreams..."

"Isn't that normal for human children?"

"I guess..."

Piyomon tilted her head up with a bright smile. "I think you're just a little scared, Sora. After all, when you were just a little girl, before you knew soccer, you must've wanted to be something, and you don't seem worried about having left that behind."

Sora gave a soft, nostalgic laugh. "I was a daddy's girl. I wanted to be like him. Traveling and doing research... Then I discovered soccer and I wanted to do nothing but play that."

"And then you gave ikebana a chance and you were really good at it!"

"Yeah, but I never wanted to do it for a living. I like it, but I don't love it. That girl I used to be definitely loved soccer." She fell backward, staring at the empty ceiling and running her fingers over the pins holding her hair in place. "I just get worried sometimes when I notice the difference between me then and me now."

"All a part of growing up," the bird digimon said confidently. She reached for one of the bags, and pulled out a box of strawberry pocky—Sora's favorite. "Here, these always make you feel better."

Sora couldn't help but smile, and she quietly slipped a single stick into her lips. She let it tilt down, held in place by her upper lip in a fashion reminiscent to the way Yamato left cigarettes in his before he lit them. Perhaps that was how change happened. A little quirk picked up here or there until it was hard to say where they had all come from.

Piyomon seemed relieved. "I don't really know what's normal for humans that are growing up. To me, Sora is Sora and nothing you've ever done has changed that." Her feathered brow furrowed a little. "Maybe if this really bothers you, you should talk to your mom. Maybe she felt like this once."

The pocky swayed skeptically in Sora's mouth. She couldn't really wrap her head around the idea of her mother being unsure of anything. Sora could only remember her as a woman who always seemed so dutiful and certain, and aware of the place she was expected to take as a woman living in Japan. It was that way of life that Sora always thought of as antiquated and silly as a child, particularly once she became a tomboy. As an adult, she was certainly more aware that such biases still existed—after all, the adults who must have caused her mother's outlook were still around. But it was hard to imagine her mother might have ever tried to fight the tide, particularly since that was just the kind of era her mother grew up in. It wouldn't have been strange to learn that she had been such a classic yamato nadeshiko since her childhood.

Of course, Sora knew skepticism was a poor reason to avoid asking. She had a better reason. "I want to try and work it out on my own first. Even if I don't really know what my dream is anymore."

"But why? What if she ends up being able to give you really good advice?"

"Hmm... I just feel like I have to try and reach that answer on my own for a while. It may prolong the search, but you should always start this kind of search with some honest effort. At least I think so. I consider it part of being an adult."

Piyomon crossed her arms, hemming and hawing as she tried to make sense of it. Why not just ask right away? Why not ask tons and tons of people until she got a good answer? Sora couldn't be the only one feeling like that. Wasn't it best to just talk to others about it? In the end she gave up with a shrug, and began rifling through the grocery bags. "Humans are so strange..."

"We certainly are."

Sora joined her partner, and together they ate their last meal in the first apartment they had both called home.