Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Digimon Adventure 02
Title: Not A Shadow
Character: Kouichi
Word Count: 500||Status: One-shot
Genre: General||Rated: G
Challenge: Written for Digimon Flash Bingo, prompt #041, lone; Written for Diversity Writing, section A, #57, write a 500 word drabble
Summary: [one-shot, Kouji, Digimon Flash Bingo & Diversity Writing] Kouji doesn't want to be alone. He wants to be more than a shadow.
Kouichi didn't like being alone. Alone to him meant an empty apartment, cold with vague echoes coming from the other families who lived in their area, all of which were louder and larger than his own. They never seemed to notice him when they passed him by, going on about their business as if he were nothing more than a slightly not-dark shadow.
Kouichi didn't think he liked being a shadow, dark or otherwise. Shadows faded away, moved along, were not noticed at all. Taken for granted. Little more than a thought that would fade away.
Kouichi refused to fade away. He was not a shadow.
Kouichi tried not to let himself remain alone. It wasn't easy and he failed more than he didn't. Not being a shadow meant talking to people, and Kouichi wasn't very good at that. Set apart from most of his classmates by virtue of not having a father, the stigma of divorce hanging over the Kimuras, not everyone wanted to speak to him at all.
Not that they were rude about it. Most people simply let their gaze slide off of him instead of ignoring him when he spoke. If they could contrive an excuse not to talk to him, they would. If they couldn't, they found a way to end it as soon as they could. Always in a way designed not to hurt his feelings, or as best they could.
At least most of them were like that. Some of the ones who weren't that polite simply walked off while he was in the middle of a sentence, laughing. He didn't know if they laughed about him or not, but as the years slipped by, he thought they did more and more often.
He didn't want to be alone. But it seemed as if that would be his fate.
At least until the day when he stood in an antiseptic and far too silent hospital room and heard his grandmother's last words.
You have a twin, they were, and his name is Minamoto Kouji, she said. And in Kouichi's heart there suddenly leapt up a fire.
He was not alone. He was not meant to be alone. He had a brother. And more than that, he had a twin. He was not alone.
And so when the funeral passed, and he could leave home without worrying too much about his mother, he set off to search for this Minamoto Kouji.
He was not alone. He wouldn't be alone. He would find Kouji and they would be together and that was what was meant to be and always would be and Kouichi refused to let himself think otherwise.
To think otherwise was to accept being alone and Kouichi did not do that. He wasn't alone. He wasn't a shadow. He was someone. That someone had a brother.
But even those with brothers can fall and Kouichi would not let Kouji go on without him, and...
He was not a shadow.
He was Duskmon.
The End