Title: Plastic Like Paper
Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon.
Notes: When I started this I had behind me a bunch of people complaining about when skinny people call themselves fat. I didn't like their attitudes, but the conversation was intriguing. Eventually they got onto these mannequins and I was like, 'I could turn this into a fic'. Yes, these mannequins do exist. They're so nasty. It's taken me quite a few free lessons to write this, and I apologise for the lack of beta-ing. It's difficult to get things beta'd on school computers.

If there's one thing Mimi likes doing, it's shopping. And her favourite thing to shop for is lingerie. Almost nobody understands this, not even Sora; Miyako enjoys it every once in a while, but it's not really a passion of hers. So usually, Mimi has to go alone, like today. She browses, stopping every now and then to sort through the hangers and see if the item is in her size, or to hold things up against herself to check what they'd look like on.

She's been in this store many times before, but not since it's been upgraded. New, shiny, headless mannequins adorn the walls, proudly wearing the new arrivals. Mimi sees one and stops to stare. The gleaming plastic has a waist the size of the width of her hand, with much larger hips jutting outwards suggestively. They've even designed it so that the bones can be seen beneath the skin, sticking out and glaring.

Mimi's hands subconsciously go to her waist, feeling down to her hips. Is she meant to look like that? It's not attractive, and it doesn't look healthy. What could possess people to make mannequins in that shape? It's only going to give young girls the wrong idea. It's sick. She looks away, disgusted, and continues browsing the lingerie.

When she gets home, she can think about nothing else. Her bagfuls of purchases are dumped unceremoniously on her bed and she rushes to stand in front of her full-length mirror. She doesn't look bad, she assures herself. She's a good shape, a good size. She doesn't want to look like the mannequin anyway.

By the time she's put all her new clothes neatly away, she can't stop herself standing in front of the mirror again. Only this time she decides that it's pointless to analyse herself with clothes on, so she strips until she stands in the nude.

It's a good start. Her hips and ribs don't stick out, and she has a decently sized chest. She stands to the side and looks at her profile; immediately she frowns and her hands go to her stomach. It's a bit wobblier than she'd originally thought. Then she notices the width of her thigh, and she swivels to face frontward again, her mouth hanging open with unreserved shock. She'd never realised that her thighs were so… large. Well, not large per se, but she'd always thought they were smaller.

By the time she has finished picking out her imperfections and has dressed again, her mood has turned quite sour. When had all that happened? She had always been a nice size, she thought; and now this whole new revelation happens. She's not fat by any stretch of the imagination, she knows that; but it couldn't hurt to lose a couple of pounds, right?

Koushiro is the first to notice something's wrong when Mimi turns down the peanut butter and jam sandwich he offers her. She refuses politely and doesn't let on, but Koushiro is not an ignorant person. He has always shared his lunch with her because he knows how much she enjoys his mother's food, and not once in all of two years has she said no to it. Nobody else bats an eyelash, but Koushiro raises an eyebrow.

She seems happy enough; there doesn't appear to be anything wrong. She hasn't been stressing about schoolwork, and they haven't got any exams coming up that she might be worrying about. Perhaps she's having problems at home? It would seem a likely explanation if her parent weren't so nice, but then Koushiro knows, better than anyone, how parents can suddenly turn out to be different to who you thought they were.

He lets it go and eats his lunch himself, but keeps an eye on her anyway, just in case she should let anything else slip. She doesn't, of course; she's a better actress than that. But when she does, Koushiro will be watching and listening.

He hopes she knows that he'll always be there if she needs him.

She decides to do it the proper way, by cutting out unnecessary food in her diet and exercising a little more regularly. She also made sure that she drank at least two litres of water a day, as well as five portions of fruit and vegetables. That ought to do the trick.

And so far, it's been easy. She didn't really eat in excess before, so all she's had to cut out of her diet are her shared lunches with Koushiro and the occasional bag of crisps or chocolate bar. She's also decided to stop getting fast food, and she has to admit that that was a little difficult at first. But she has adjusted, and has since lost one pound.

It delighted her when she stood on the scales and saw a smaller number displayed than she had the time before. It was a wonderful feeling that she hadn't really given much thought to before. No one had ever told her she was fat and she had never thought so either, so she'd never seen much of a need to weigh herself.

Now, of course, it's a necessity. She just needs to lose a couple more pounds, and then she'll go back to eating normal.

She seems thinner than she was before, and Koushiro is beginning to worry. He begins to wonder what things were like when she was in America, so he decides that it might be an idea to contact Michael.

He's never been so anxious to receive an email reply from anybody.

When the reply arrives, he's not sure whether to be relieved or not. Michael claimed to have noticed nothing out of the ordinary while Mimi was in America; he spent a lot of time with her family, and they had always seemed pleasant. She acted the way that they had always known her to act, and had been as carefree as anything. The only times when she had shown concern about anything was when one of her friends was having a hard time.

But now Koushiro is left with a dilemma. Is he supposed to go by what Michael was saying and presume that Mimi is fine and he's making a fuss about nothing, or should he be even more worried because she's going through something that she has never told anybody about?

Even though the number of the scales is smaller every time she looks at it, whenever she stops in front of a mirror she always sees the same thing. The tummy, the thunder thighs… she's also noticed her upper arms wobbling a bit when she moves them. That had been an unpleasant discovery. And she has started to stop smiling, because it makes her face look rounder and her cheeks look chubbier.

She knows her current weight loss plan is working, but it isn't working fast enough. The 'diet and exercise' approach is the only one she's ever heard being recommended to people who want to be thinner, but she needs to try something else. Something quicker; she's not concerned about risks. As long as she doesn't die or end up in hospital, it's ok by her standards.

Maybe counting calories would be the way to go.

She looks it up on the internet while her parents are out, since she knows they'd disapprove. Using her height and weight, she calculates the number of calories she's allowed to eat in a day in order to lose weight. She takes off a couple of hundred from the final amount, just to make sure it would be fast.

Also, since she's been slacking a little on her exercise, she decides to be stricter on herself. She would exercise three times a day for an hour at a time; once in the morning, once after school and once before she goes to bed. If she misses a session for whatever reason, she would half her calorie intake for the next day.

That sounds like a good plan to her. She decides to put it into action the following day.

Mimi's mother is still none the wiser, and continues to make large dinners for the family. Mimi wishes she could ask for much smaller portions, but she doesn't want her parents to worry about her. There's nothing to worry about, really, but they've always been people to make a fuss about nothing. Especially her mother.

She hates lying to her family; but she hates being fat more. So she keeps a smile on her face and hides the excess food up her sleeves when no one's looking.

It's a struggle at first, but she's determined to go through with it. She eats some low calorie cereal for breakfast, some fruit for lunch and more cereal for dinner if she can; if she can't, she eats a little of whatever her mother has made and gets way with it either by hiding the rest or claiming to feel unwell.

It's not entirely untrue, either. She has been feeling a bit dizzy recently. Headaches have been getting the better of her in school and she's been finding it difficult to concentrate. She's not stupid; she knows it's because of the drastic changes she's made to her diet. But she's sure that these insignificant effects will pass once her body has adjusted. She'd much rather be thinner and endure the undesirable things that come with it.

And her new plan has been working; she's only been doing it for a couple of weeks and she's already lost more than she did with the previous plan. This is definitely a method she's going to stick with. She might even cut out a few more calories.

It comes to a point when Koushiro can't stand it anymore. Mimi looks unwell. She always seems so tired in classes, and has so much difficulty paying attention. And he hasn't seen her eat anything for weeks, now. In fact, he's tempted to guess that she's not eating at all; when she had to steady herself earlier in the day, her top rode up slightly and he was shocked to see her hip bone protruding.

He waits outside the school gate for her after school, wanting to talk to her without distracting any unwanted attention. Soon enough she shows, and she's surprised to see him waiting for her. She smiles, but even Koushiro can tell that it's forced, and she asks how he's doing.

He gets straight to the point as he walks with her. He's worried.

Her eyes widen, and he's not surprised; it's very rare for him to just come out and say something like that so bluntly. It emphasises his point, and he hopes that she picks up on it.

He continues. He's noticed her rapid weight loss, and he can't express his concern enough. It's dangerous to lose so much weight so quickly, and he wants her to understand. Maybe she doesn't even realise the effects of whatever's going on in her life are having on her body. He tells her how ill she looks, wanting her to look at herself properly, and he tries to coax her into confiding in him.

For a few moment's she's speechless, seemingly unsure of how to reply. But then she smiles again, as if he'd merely pointed out someone else's lack of colour coordination, and tells him he's worrying over nothing.

He's not convinced by her fake expression of happiness, but he lets it go; he's not good at making people feel better anyway, but he wants to try his best for Mimi. He just hopes that she'll come to him before she does herself any permanent damage.

When she gets home she strips naked again and stands in front of her full length mirror. Obviously, cutting out those extra calories has had the desired effect. Koushiro's noticed a change in her size, so other people must have done too. Probably including her parents, but they hadn't said anything so the can't be too concerned.

But when she looks in the mirror she frowns; she can't see much of a difference to what she saw that day she came across the mannequins. What was Koushiro talking about? She doesn't look significantly thinner at all.

If she can't see any improvement, it can't be working that well. But she hasn't got many more calories she can cut out without starving to death. She only has one small piece of fruit for lunch now instead of two or three, her portion of cereal for breakfast had more than halved and some days she doesn't have any dinner at all.

That means upping the amount of exercise again, but she doesn't have many more hour slots in the day. So she changes the routine a bit; one hour in the morning, and five half hours between the end of school and when she goes to bed. And if that doesn't work… well, she's running out of options.

But it had better work. She needs her body to adjust, because it still hasn't done it. She's seen clumps of hair coming out in her hairbrush, and her previously perfect complexion is now seeing the beginnings of a plague of spots. And her concentration has been getting worse by the day.

If that's the price of being thin, then so be it. She just hopes that it doesn't last for too long.

Koushiro has been keeping an eye on Mimi since that talk they had, just in case she was doing something irreparable. But, even though he knows that something's wrong, he can't put his finger on what it is and it makes him feel incompetent.

Apart from looking ill and seeming so dizzy, she's the same as she was before.

He only understands during lunch. Sora has brought in cakes for everyone, so needless to say most people are swarming over them. But when she offers one to Mimi, the initial reaction she gets is a shocked and disgusted look before a polite refusal. Then does Koushiro finally figure out what's going on, and he berates himself for not realising it sooner.

He pleads that it's not too late to fix it.

There is a sense of urgency when he takes her aside right then and there, since he knows that he doesn't have any time to waste. She stumbles with dizziness as they head to a more discreet place to talk, and she asks him what the matter is. He doesn't reply directly; he just begs her to eat. If she doesn't, the consequences could be dire. And despite his lack of public affection, he does care what happens to his friends.

If she wasn't Mimi, she might look like a deer caught in headlights. But she always has been stubborn, he reminds himself, and she probably doesn't even realise what she's doing. She tries again to convince him that she's fine and that she doesn't need to eat any more than she does at the moment.

This time he's not prepared to let it go so easily. He fishes his laptop out of his bag and demands her height and weight. She tries to leave but he stops her and there is a verbal struggle before she finally relents and, sounding annoyed, tells him her height and weight.

He knows immediately that the combination of values she gives him isn't a healthy one, but nothing could prepare him for the calculated BMI that appears on his screen after he's typed the values in.

He turns the screen so she can see it for herself, and at first she doesn't understand what the numbers mean. He tells her that BMI stands for 'body mass index', and is a number that is calculated by a person's height and weight combined, designed to make sure people are a healthy weight for their height.

She still doesn't quite get it, so he sighs and turns the screen back. A healthy person shouldn't have a BMI lower than 18.5; Mimi's BMI is 15. She asks if that's bad, and he replies that it's disastrous. She's on the verge of starvation and she doesn't even realise.

But the response he had hoped for never comes. There is no shrieking and no drastic realisation of the damage she's doing to herself. She just says that she doesn't feel starved, so it can't be all that bad. But before she goes back to the group she does tell him that she'll come to him if she begins to feel like she's ill.

She forces herself to eat everything her mother cooks for dinner, which only results in her throwing most of it up again afterwards. Not deliberately; her body just isn't used to so much food at a time anymore.

As she lies awake in bed later, she's more than a little concerned. Could her eating habits really be having such a terrible effect as Koushiro was saying? She'd really only felt bad and ill when she'd first started, but now she feels fine. She gets dizzy and feels faint more than ever, but it's not too painful. It's just a bit disorientating.

But then, he's told her countless times that numbers don't lie. Being the genius that he is, he's bound to think things like that. Only this one seems plausible. She knows that height and weight go hand in hand, so the idea of a body mass index makes sense. She just had no idea that hers would be so low. She doesn't feel that light, and she doesn't think she looks it when she sees herself in a mirror.

That's what she doesn't understand. If she's as underweight as her BMI claims, then why doesn't she look it? If she could see herself losing the weight, then maybe she wouldn't have gone to the lengths she did to lose more. She only kept going because she wasn't looking any thinner, no matter what she did.

So now what's she supposed to do? She still doesn't look thin, but Koushiro says she's killing herself by trying to.

She feels a slight pang in her chest, and figures she'll sleep on it. Maybe when she wakes up she'll know what to do.

He hasn't been able to stop worrying since he figured it out. He still can't believe he was ignorant enough to not notice it sooner; but it just wasn't Mimi. She's always been concerned with how she looks, he'll give her that much, but he never thought she'd ever be unhappy enough to starve herself. It was so unexpected.

Just to make sure, he later looks up the symptoms she's been displaying. The loss of weight, the dizziness and lack of concentration, her hair falling out… it all adds up to the same thing. Everywhere he looks. And he wonders if she's also privately suffering from other side effects.

He leans back in his chair with his head in his hands. He can't let this go on. He cares about her too much to let her damage herself in this way, or in any way, and even though he knows that she'll be angry with him he can't just watch it happen anymore. Guilt is a horrible thing to feel, and he wants to know that he's done his best to help her.

It's late, but this is a matter of urgency in his book. He phones Mimi's house, praying that she's still up. It rings a few times before her mother answers. He apologises for calling so late, and she replies that it's fine for him to ring at any time.

He's relieved when she tells him Mimi is in her room, and he hears Satoe call up to her. Then again. A pause, then she calls for a third time, this time also relaying that Koushiro is on the phone for her.

There's still no answer, so she goes upstairs, talking to Koushiro as she goes. She says that Mimi's not going to be in bed at this hour since she normally doesn't go to sleep until the early hours of the morning, so she's probably got music on and she can't hear her calling.

Koushiro fidgets, wanting to hear Mimi's voice.

"Look," Satoe says, "her light's still on. I told you she wouldn't be asleep." She calls to Mimi again, knocking gently on her bedroom door. Koushiro can feel his heart beating against his ribcage.

And then Satoe seems to have forgotten that the phone is in her hand and that Koushiro is still on the other end. Her next cry of Mimi's name is higher, louder and more panicked, and Koushiro's heartbeat increases tenfold. He hopes his suspicions are wrong.

It seems less and less likely as Satoe starts screaming, both for Mimi and for her husband.

Koushiro can't move the phone away from his ear. He's frozen where he sits. Through the phone he can hear Satoe still screaming; call an ambulance, she's not breathing, what happened? Keisuke swears loudly, apparently discovering the scene, and can be heard shouting their address presumably to the emergency services. There's a clatter; Satoe must have dropped the phone. She now sounds like she's alternating between weeping loudly and screaming incoherently, and Keisuke starts to swear again.

Koushiro knows. He knows then, and he lets the phone fall to the floor. He's too late.

Even though the phone is on the floor, he can still hear Mimi's mother screaming.

He doesn't cry at the funeral. He's one of about only three people who doesn't.

It was before her time, everyone says. It's like she could just get up out of the coffin, talk about how she'd had a nice rest, and ask why everyone was crying.

It's not going to happen though. Her mother hasn't stopped sobbing throughout the whole service, just like many of Mimi's friends. Sora and Miyako are clinging to each other like lifelines; they can't believe she's gone.

Heart failure, they'd said. Mimi had a weak heart, and it had failed. They'd uncovered her ever deteriorating eating habits, and determined that as the cause. She had only wanted to look good, and it had killed her.

Koushiro still can't believe she's not going to be there anymore. The sense of guilt is almost as overwhelming as the sense of loss. He can't help but know that he could have done something to help her. He should have been firmer. He shouldn't have just let it go all the time. If he hadn't, then perhaps…

He feels his eyes stinging with tears but he doesn't let them fall. He's never been one to cry, and he's not about to start now. Especially not about something he could have prevented if only he'd been a better friend.

He silently begs her, wherever she is, to forgive him. If he could go back he would do things differently. He wouldn't let her go.

Keisuke, his eyes swollen and bloodshot, pats Koushiro on the shoulder. He knows that Koushiro was the one on the phone when they found her, and that it must have been almost as bad for him as it was for them. No words are exchanged between the two; none need to be. Each simply stands, facing the new grave with unspoken grief. They've both just lost an important part of themselves; Keisuke has lost his daughter and Koushiro has lost what was probably the best friend he's ever had.

The family friends and relatives eventually disperse, mostly murmuring among themselves between tears. Satoe leaves with her mother, Mimi's grandmother, not ceasing her weeping for a second. It seems like an eternity before Keisuke removes his hand from Koushiro's shoulder and turns to leave.

Koushiro is left alone with his best friend. And he'll never forget her.