Hello everyone! Finally I manage to comeback with a new fic, this time it is a Digimon fic. (I hope my One Piece Fans won't kill m for this. . *sweat dropped) I haven't been around for a very long time because, well you see. . I started college this year and it demands so much attention from me. The part one of this fic was started and finished about last June but I was too lazy to post it ahaha. . . (-_-)a
I forgot to mention it earlier, but this fic was beta-ed by TheDoublemintTwins11, thanks a lot sists! (hug)
well, anyway, enjoy and remember that reviews are greatly appreciated!
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Part 1
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Summer. When I had been younger, I'd loved summer so much it was my favorite season in a whole year. Usually I would have spent it by practicing football at my school (there was always a match in the end of summer) or camping with my friends. Or just goofing around like teenagers at my age usually did.
Well, it didn't mean that now I hated summer or something, but let me just say that this year I couldn't really spend the current summer just like I wanted. I'd just graduated from high school and that meant I wasn't in a football team anymore, and all I had to do is to study for the upcoming college test.
Fortunately my parents were not the kind of parents who forced their children to study so they could make them proud. They only told me to take my time and not to overwork myself. It wasn't that I didn't want to make them proud. I was just, as my best friend Yamato always kindly pointed out, lack of brain.
Not to mention the way to the medical faculty wasn't an easy road.
So, I thought I would spend my next whole summer studying and taking courses and preparations and…things such like that. Pretty boring, eh?
Right. So that was how the glaring sun found me in this deserted playground, swinging high on one of the old swings, my feet touching the ground when they went down. I wondered if I was too old already to play these, I'd be turning eighteen this winter, because the odd looks from the passersby told me so.
The park wasn't full, but it wasn't that empty either. Only several girls played with the sand and some boys played with a ball, others just played hide-and-seek, I thought. I remembered this place had used to be full of children when the holiday came. I often took my little sister here, too. But not going to school anymore made me forget if today was a day-off, or better, a holiday, at all.
The weather was pretty hot and the air was humid, very typical for summer after all, and my eyes caught a figure of boy sitting on the farthest side of the park, just right beyond a cherry blossom tree. I had to strain my eyes to see that the boy had a dark color for his hair, perhaps dark brown like me or red like Koshirou's, but I was almost sure it wasn't black. His expression was solemn, almost expressionless as his eyes followed the other boys playing football, his eyes never leaving the ball that bounced back and forth. It was painfully obvious he wanted to play too.
I watched him watching the ball for almost a good minute, when suddenly he turned his head towards me, locking my gaze with his. He had the eyes of the most beautiful golden brown I'd ever seen.
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"You're the person from yesterday."
He was sitting at the swing I had been sitting on yesterday and his feet were dangling several inches above the ground. It made me wonder how old he really was. Nine? Perhaps ten at most. He seemed rather short for boys at his age, though.
I cocked my head to the side, a habit that I could never leave, my unruly light brown bang falling to side. "You remember." I said, amused.
He looked up and I realized that I had been right, his hair was red, but several shades darker than Koushirou's. "You were watching me." he said again in a tone that was more of a statement than a question, his beautiful brown eyes narrowing ever slightly.
I just stared at him as I found myself unable to answer. I didn't even know why I had been watching him the previous day, after all. Still not giving an answer, I tried to shrug it off casually and walked behind him. "Push?" I offered.
He turned his head so he was staring forward again and nodded, his question long forgotten. I guessed he wasn't that interested to hear the answer anyway.
I noticed the park was almost empty today. Only I and this kid, and a few numbers of kids were here. "Why weren't you playing with the others yesterday? You seemed wanted to." I said after giving him several pushes to make him fly high, hoping he won't fly off and fall and die, and sit on the motionless swing beside him.
"Momma says I'm not supposed to talk with strangers." His reply was a bit muffled by the state he was in, swinging back and forth, his short hair was blown by the wind.
'And you are the one who talked to me first!' I tried to resist the urge to tell him that, he was just a kid. "Taichi, Taichi Yagami."
He dragged his feet to slowdown his swings. "What's that?" he mumbled. His fingers were gripping the chains so tightly they were almost white. Or was his skin naturally pale? I honestly didn't know.
"My name, " I grinned widely, "so we're not strangers."
A small, barely there, smile slowly made it way to his pale face. "Daisuke Motomiya."
I reached a hand to grab the chain of his swing to make it stop, my fingers brushing his briefly. "So, we're not strangers." I repeated, a grin still firmly plastered to my face.
"Yeah." He shrugged and I could see him grin back to me. It looked better on him.
It was only after I was home and got back to my books, I began to realize that his fingers were cold. And actually, they felt nice against mine.
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I hadn't come to the park for almost a week due to the preparation test I had had to do. The result would be out tonight. I wished I'd improved my grades, because, honestly, how much time left before the college test came? Three weeks? Or less?
As my thoughts wandered, I'd been on my way to the park, the very same park where I had met Daisuke, before I had even realized it. I honestly couldn't tell why I'd grown this habit of going there because if the reason was merely of boredom, then I could have ask Yamato to take me driving somewhere because he had his own car.
I wondered if it was because of Daisuke, though, because as soon as I stepped into the empty playground, I found myself searching a figure of a boy with burgundy hair and brown eyes. I almost could feel a clench in my chest when he was nowhere in sight when I shouldn't have had felt anything.
"I thought you weren't coming." A familiar, painfully familiar, voice greeted me from behind and I sharply turned my back to whoever that voice belonged to. I had no clue why I really felt like leaping in the air with joy at that time when I saw Daisuke standing there.
He wore a loose red t-shirt and army shorts, both hands shoved deep in his pockets.
"You didn't come yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before the day before yesterday—" he frowned, and I felt a smile threaten to make its way to my face. He looked so adorable like that.
"A week." I offered after a several seconds of silence and he looked up, a flash of fret was almost visible there. Kids hate it when there's an adult beating them to an idea.
He started walking to the swings and sit on one of them. "Figured that out." He said but I could see that he said it only to cover his pride.
"Sorry, got some preparation test and such." I offered an excuse even without him asking and it actually brought a question I had never thought before, "Aren't you supposed to be at school?"
"Nope." He replied shortly and started swinging high, the old swing made a creaking noise due to its aging. The caretakers should pay more attentions to them, it was dangerous for the children. "I don't go to public school, I'm homeschooled."
"Why?" the question left my lips before my mind had the time to register it.
He didn't answer right away and when he did, there's a different trace of emotion in his voice, something new I had never found in him. "'Cause I'm sick."
He reminded me of Hikari, a sister of mine who was five years younger than me. When she was young, she used to get sick pretty often, too.
"Now you know why I wasn't playing with the others. I don't have many friends." He said again, now more quietly, but still in the same emotion I had yet named.
"Do you like football?" without waiting for his reply I said, "Come again here tomorrow. I'll teach you to play."
That night, my preparations results were out. I still failed at some subjects. But later that night, after buying some Chinese take-away for dinner, instead of studying and trying to fix my grades, I found myself thinking about Daisuke.
I couldn't wait for tomorrow.
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The next day, at the exact time I had told him yesterday, I walked into the park and immediately found him sitting under the cherry blossom tree just like when I first saw him.
"You know," he said as I threw my ball onto him, "That you said that you'd teach me to play, I kinda have known about the rules. Jun gets a crush for the captain of football team at her school and she always brags about him and his match at home. It's kinda annoying, though."
"But knowing the rules and playing it is a completely different thing. It's like you can memorize a book about how to perform a surgery and freaking out when you're supposed to do it. It'll be fun" I said, beginning to draw the game lines with a random branch I had found nearby. I noted mentally to ask whoever this 'Jun' was. Probably his sister.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw him fidgeting a little. "I don't know…" he said hesitantly.
"It's fine. You'll enjoy it, I promise." I tried to assure him. "Nah, it's set. Gimme your best shot, Dai."
It took some times before he finally noded and put the ball on the ground, ready to kick it. "Then please teach me, Senpai!"
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The first thing I had noticed about Daisuke was that he got tired pretty easily. I thought it was no wonder since, being a homeschooled student he was, he didn't seem to spend his time exercising outdoor pretty much, and his fairly pale skin proved it. The second thing, aside from his horribly low stamina, he got some talents on him and I bet he'd be a good player in the future, if ever.
It was only about twenty minutes but Daisuke already seemed running out of his breaths. I asked him if he wanted to stop, and he shook his head, no. Five or so minutes later, seeing that he'd been panting heavily already, I decided to take a break. We sit under the cherry blossom tree.
"That's all you've got?" I teased him playfully, he could have done much better.
He was still panting lightly, and when he had got a lot calmer, he muttered in shaky voice, "Shuddup." He whispered something inaudible and buried his head in between his legs.
We continued sitting there, just enjoying each other's presence until the sun finally set and we both separated to go to each respective home. As for me, my boarding house.
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Several days had passed since first I taught him football and he gradually became a better player, despite there wasn't any significant change in his stamina. We'd become closer, even though it was me who mostly did the talk.
One day, he pointed at my goggles that always hang around my neck. I used to wear them on my head before I got into high school but decided it looked inappropriate on a high school student. I told him they were important things to me, my lucky charm, and he laughed.
I even asked him about Jun he seemed to mention very often. She was his big sister who was three years older than him, she was about Hikari's age, then. And according to what Dai had said, she was…well. She was loud and brash, very protective but unbearably careless. She was a big, I meant BIG, fan of Teenage Wolves, the indie band Yamato was currently in. but then, it shouldn't have been really surprising, since Yamato's band had managed to have some fans, too.
I and Hikari were different though. She was sweet and quiet and I couldn't imagine myself being harsh to him. Some people often teased me as an overprotective brother but then, who'd care if I was really one? I had endangered Hikari's life once, when I had taken him playing without knowing that she had developed a high fever. Since then, I promised myself to take a good care of her.
"Nee-chan yells and throws thing at me a lot." Daisuke frowned in deep thought while I winced internally, and then he added, "But she takes care of me a lot, too, even if it's obvious she doesn't want to."
The way he said it was in a tone that I could vaguely recognize as disgust, but actually, he was smiling when he told me those things. I wished he would smile a lot more, he really had a nice smile.
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Yesterday I had took him to an unused football field near an abandoned school just outskirt of town. There was a small stream running beyond it. Joe once had told me a ghost had been seen there. It was much of a rumor of course, but it was pretty much understandable since the unattended building had been left rotting for ten years or so.
I and Daisuke then called it our secret place.
"Senpai," Daisuke had been calling me that ever since the day I first taught him football, not that I really minded. "Do you plan to be a football player? When you are older." he asked as we took a rest under the rooftop of the crumbled building, watching the river water flew by. It was a peaceful time where I could hardly find in such crowded city.
"I'm old already, Dai."
He gave me a look.
I laughed then ruffled his hair affectionately and told him I wanted to become a doctor, half expecting him to burst into laughter any time, just like other people who'd known me better had done it before.
He didn't.
"Cool." was his only reply. "I don't even know what I want to be. Why do you want to be a doctor, anyway? It seems…complicated."
"I want to cure people. People get sick everyday and they need someone to cure them and—" I looked away, in each passing second becoming more embarrassed as my answer became less coherent, " I just think it's a good thing to do."
This time, I really expected him to laugh, or at least snicker at my naivety, but instead, he only nodded dully and we fell into comfortable silence once again.
"Is it far?" he asked and when I gave him a confused look, he only added softly "The university you want to go in? The one that has a medical school in it? There isn't any in this city, is there?"
I gazed at the sky thoughtfully. There was a university with a medical school just at the neighborhood city, but it wasn't the one I aimed for. I aimed for the best university in this country, although it seemed silly and impossible for me whose head was merely full of football and food. But then I'd decided if I was going to go for something, then it would have been be best if I gave it all I might.
I told him the university wasn't that far, but then after giving it a second thought, it wasn't close, either. About eight hours long driving. He fell quiet once again and I didn't say anything more.
The thought of leaving him gave an uneasy clench to my chest and I wonder if he would miss me, if at all.
"You should be able to cure me, then." He blurted out suddenly and when I turned my head to him, he was staring at me intently, brown eyes clear yet distant. I remembered never asking him about his illness, so, deciding it was the best time to do it, I did.
"Cardiomyopathy." He answered, that tone of that unnamed emotion was present.
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I should have seen it earlier, I thought as I rest my forehead on the desk with a soft thump, a medical book I borrowed from my friend Joe open widely on one side. The small noise caught Yamato's attention and he'd poke his head to ask if I was okay. I waved him dismissively without really giving him an answer. I took my head up with an actual effort and continued reading at where I'd just left it.
I should have seen it earlier on Daisuke. His shortness of breath, the way he clutched at his chest as if in severe pain. I thumbed on the page numbly. To sum it up, Cardiomyopathy was a heart disease that could lead to sudden cardiac death.
Daisuke could die at any given moment.
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I met Daisuke some days later. Funny how I was still unable to get rid the thoughts of him dying and gone from my mind when I should have been studying for my upcoming tests. He was sitting on one bench when I came, his feet still dangled inches above the ground.
It had become an unspoken rule between us, we'd meet in the park first, we'd head to our secret football field together, and he would be the one walking ahead. As if, he led and I followed.
"You didn't come again yesterday." His tone was accusing, almost angry, but his face was calm. Still as stone.
I couldn't summon the strength to directly meet his eyes. Daisuke could die right there, right then. Or perhaps a second later, or a minute, or an hour from now. You'd never sure with a person who suffered a severe illness to the heart. These thoughts kept swirling inside my head endlessly, making me dizzy and uneasy. I wondered why the image of him leaving hurt so much. I began to wonder if I'd got attached to the boy way more than I realized.
"You don't bring the ball." He frowned at my empty hands but it still looked adorable on him.
I took a seat on the far end of the bench, "We won't play football today." I said quietly and I could feel his brown eyes peering at me for answers of questions he never let out, before he made a soft noise of acknowledgement and leant back onto the hard wooden back.
He waited for a girl with pigtail to leave the swing, and when she finally did, he stiffly headed there. I was hot on his heels. That was it. He led and I followed.
"Dai," I started, the sun was glaring mercilessly at us but neither of us seemed to mind. "How old are you?" despite how often I thought about it, I'd never actually asked.
He started swinging, and I noted that the caretakers hadn't fixed those swings yet, it still creaked even under Daisuke feather light weight. Wonder when they would actually collapse and if they'd care at all.
He told me he was ten and he asked me the same. The anger, I realized, had subsided a little.
I caught the swing just in time to make it stop completely, this time my fingers curled around his pale ones. I wondered if he, or anybody else, noticed the bold gesture.
"I'm eighteen, almost."
The rest of our day was spent in silence, which I actually felt grateful for it, because it gave me time to think, if it would be really sick to fall for a boy eight years younger than me.
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The next day, instead of bringing him a ball like I usually had done before, I brought him colorful pieces of paper. Lots of colorful paper pieces, in fact. I hushed him before he could open his mouth and question me anything, and just motioned him to go to our usual place.
"There's something I never told you before." I said when we reached our secret football field and guided him to the small stream near it. "If you sail a paper boat on this stream and it reaches the sea, your wish will come true."
He raised his eyebrow skeptically, his tone was an utter disbelief "Really?"
No. Of course it was a made up. My own made up bullshit, actually. I didn't even know why I had stayed up all night just to make it, when I had been supposed to be studying for my college test which would be coming in two days. And even if I hadn't been studying right then, I should have been sleeping, unless I wanted to do my test all sleepy and weary.
I also didn't know since when and why the sight of his smile was the only thing mattered in my current whole life.
"Yeah." I answered curtly and sit on the bank, putting the paper pieces next to me. I hoped I still remembered how to make a paper boat Takenouchi Sora, my long time friend, had taught me years ago.
I tried to hide a smile when he slowly approached me and sat next to me. He took a red paper and began folding a paper boat, brows furrowed in deep thought and I had considered leaving him alone when a voice in the back of my head told me that probably he didn't even know how to make one. So, I took the paper from his grasp and showed him step by step, guiding his tiny fingers to fold it into a more recognizable shape.
His first paper boat was crumpled and folded in unwanted place but it was okay. Then we began folding more and more, until there was a heap of colorful paper boats around us. But we kept folding some more until I thought it had been enough already.
The water was fairly warm from being heated by the summer sun all day and, unlike my prediction, it was deep enough it almost reached my thighs. I felt grateful though, that this stream wasn't one of the black, polluted water rivers in the city or I would be highly unwilling to jump into it just to sail some stupid paper boats. This small stream, however, had water that was clear enough I could see some trash in the bottom. Honestly, people should have known better than to mindlessly throw their junks here.
"It's okay, Dai." I reached out a hand to him, which he reluctantly took. He cried out in surprise as the water hit him hard and he slipped on some rock and would be most likely fall had I not quickly caught his arms. By then he was soaked up to his belly and so did I. I laughed heartedly as I wrapped an arm around him securely and he clung to me tightly, all shaking and shivering.
We both took a handful of paper boats and put them carefully on the water surface, letting the steady water flow sail them into the sea which was about seven hundred meters far from here. There were some passing people watching us with odd looks and I was pretty sure I would do the same if somebody else did the things I did. But I can be care less.
Daisuke's widening smile was worth it all. Hell, his smile was worth everything I owned in this world.
"Go." I heard him whispering softly to the colorful origami crafts that steadily became smaller as they sailed farther, soon becoming tiny specks on the horizon.
Some had been drown right away as they'd touched the water, some others stuck on the stray junks or weeds during their way, but the rest, surely, would go on.
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"Senpai, what did you wish for?" Daisuke asked after we had got back into land and waited for our clothes to dry off. He was soaked up to his chest while I was up to my thighs myself.
I blinked slowly. I hadn't really thought about it when I released the paper boats. "For my entrance test the day after tomorrow, I think. I'm hopeless…"
He seemed amused as I was fuming about how I thought I wouldn't pass my test because I hadn't studied well and cursing the whatever God existed there for giving me so little of a brain, because he snickered a little. And I could feel my face brighten at the pleasant noise so I braved myself to ask, "So, what about you? What did you wish for?"
I hoped that he'd wished a wish I had thought when I'd been making up this whole thing last night.
At this question, he fell quiet and began kicking the water with his bare toes that only sprayed more water onto his already wet clothes. If he didn't change them into the dry ones, he would probably get a really bad cold.
"I didn't really have one." I watched him watching the sky, the red twilight. The wet blue t-shirt he refused to take off clung to his back, unlike me who had thrown mine carelessly onto the ground, hoping I could find it later. "Is it okay?"
Quiet sadness, or more precisely, quiet surrender.
That was what I had been calling it, the unnamed emotion that I only had the fortunity to see it shown by Daisuke in rare occasions. I had begun to understand it just after I had known about his illness. He had a severe heart disease and was inching closer to death just as we spoke casually like this.
A quiet, helpless surrender to death.
"No, you should get one." I insisted, a faintest trace of anger was visible in my cracking voice, and I bit my lower lip so hard to keep me from yelling at him even if it started hurting. What was the point of spending my precious sleeping time just to create this lie if he wasn't playing along? If it couldn't make him get a hope even the slightest? Did it mean it was useless, after all? -
"Then the same with you." He interrupted, the sound of water splashing beyond his feet was faint and weak. He looked at me, his brown eyes with a faint shade of golden were clear as crystal. "My wish is your wish to come true. My wish is your wish also."
I couldn't find any words to fire back at him. Because, really, how could I? There stood a boy, a dying, hopeless boy, who sacrificed his wish to be mine instead of wishing for his own life. A boy I lo-
I motioned him to come closer.
"Close your eyes." I ordered and he obeyed. Kneeling down, I slid off my goggles from my neck and carefully placed it on him. It was still too big for him it hung lopsidedly on his head. He started squirmed a bit, curious at whatever I was doing to him.
I had told him once that the goggles were my most important things.
And before I could even acknowledge it, my face was inclining closer to his. My brain must have stopped working then, because what I did next was something I'd never thought I'd do to him.
I captured his lips with mine. I kissed Daisuke.
Daisuke's eyes snapped one and widened in alarm. "Senpai?" he asked, his voice trembled from both the shock and the cold.
The only thing I remembered about that day was, that I had jerked back, stunned, my mouth had been unable to form any words. Then, grabbing my scattered shirt, I had run, leaving Daisuke in utter shock and confusion, with my goggles on.
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I had never come back to that place, not after seven years later, when I had graduated and become a real doctor.
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Please do tell me of what you think about this story! thank you so much for reading :D