A/N: Written for the Digimon Bingo: the non-flash version from the DFC (link in profile), number 517 – prompt: alluring. Was trying to avoid a romance with this. Also for the 5,10,20,50,70,100 fandoms challenge, fandom 77/100.
This is in the official Adventure novel verse. Things go a little differently; they have a lot more detail, and there are minor changes. In this case, it's the extra detail I'm using – when they arrived at camp, Mimi with her friends were looking around for their cabin mates and Mi-chan pointed out Koushiro with his laptop and she and Taako laughed at him. Mimi didn't, because "she didn't see anything to laugh about".
They explain Mimi wonderfully in the novel as well. Much easier to understand her anime personality now. They go into all the characters pre-DW in more depth (haven't gotten too far into the DW part yet).
notice when she doesn't laugh
Taako and Mi-chan and Mimi's other classmates never really noticed when Mimi didn't laugh. They just assumed she did. Like when they pointed out Izumi Koushiro and his laptop bag. Or when they were laughing about how Kido Jyou tripped over his own two feet. Mimi didn't laugh at those things though; she didn't find them funny in the least. And if she did laugh at the time, which she sometimes did, it was because she was responding to some inner logic within her head – something which didn't necessarily have anything to do with the situation.
Like she might have been thinking of her mother finally convincing her father into a frilly pink apron when Taako pointed out the boy with too-big glasses that slid down his nose. Or she might have been rerunning the humorous parts comedy show she'd watched with her parents the night before in her head, finding herself tickled just as much as she'd been then. But it fit into another context for Taako and Mi-chan and anyone else watching them, and unlike when she'd start crying at seemingly insignificant things – things like her bus being late or her heel coming off – people didn't see it as strange.
Most people anyway. Her parents would think it unusual to see her laughing at people like Koushiro and Jyou, but that was simply because they knew her better. Knew the quirks she had inherited from her mother, who also had a brand of logic most of the world didn't care to understand. Her father was getting rather good at it though; between his wife and his daughter, he'd become accustomed to their sudden mood-swings, and knew for the most part what was related to the current context and what wasn't.
So if he did see Mimi laugh with her friends at Izumi Koushiro wandering around with his large laptop bag, then he'd be more or less certain something entirely different was going through Mimi's head. But sometimes there wasn't, and at those times she was extra-perceptive of the situation: how she didn't find what her friends were laughing at very funny at all. And she'd feel both a stab of sympathy for the victims and alienation for herself, in those moments before she recalled the more beautiful things about Taako and Mi-chan that she loved.
It wasn't because she wanted to fit in that she was friends with the two of them; they shared something else. If it was only to fit in, Mimi would have far more friends. Most of them would be boys, probably, or younger students. Boys who after her with a slight blush when she laughed, even if they weren't really old enough to know a crush from embarrassment. People who weren't popular by schoolyard definition but she still looked toward…and really, there was endless opportunity there. But Mimi searched for something different in a friend: people that understood her would be the best, but that was seldom the case and she had been forced to scratch that from her list. But that didn't mean she chose her friends lightly. She respected them…usually.
But she didn't laugh when they laughed at others, because she didn't see anything to laugh about. And they didn't notice, because they didn't see anything not to laugh about; they thought there wasn't anything. And maybe there wasn't; maybe she should laugh when someone tripped and then stood up again with an embarrassed laugh, or when someone wore glasses that were a fashionable disaster (and she certainly didn't disagree that those glasses were hideous). But somehow it didn't agree with her internal logic. It was harmless to Taako and Mi-chan and all their other classmates who laughed as well. It wasn't bullying…or she didn't think it was bullying. Maybe it was, but bullies seemed more like big ugly brutes than well-mannered girls having a little laugh. And it wasn't like Mimi wouldn't laugh with the rest when Taaka brought the wrong books to class or when Mi-chan had her shirt on backwards.
Maybe she just didn't feel like she knew other people well enough to be able to laugh at them. Maybe that was a hidden clause behind her friendship checklist: things to do exclusively with friends.