A/N: Written for the Halloween Trick or Treat Bag (2015), Day 8 - popping candy, prompts: choke, productive, incompetent, reduce, super, cowardly, cross, limit, creepy, damp
Pre-Exam Angst
It's hardly productive, spending all day worrying about his seat in the class and then all afternoon trying to absorb knowledge that instead slipped away like tears in his eyes, leaving his cheeks only slightly damp. And maybe he's shed a few real tears as well.
His placement would seem like such a trivial thing - if only because he hasn't told anyone about how the order related to their ranking in the class and how his at the far back meant he'd been incompetent in all his recent tests. Of course, there's a bright lining in that. He hasn't failed any of them...yet. He wouldn't even be there if he'd fallen that far below the standard, since it was a prestigous school and they have their limits, their uncrossable lines, but the last row is a dead-end anyway, for those not expected to get any further.
And it's not that he's in over his head, not that he can't grasp the concepts or remember the facts. His old habit of choking at the wrong time just hasn't left him and he hasn't mastered it. It's super-annoying at the best of times and a creepy nightmare at the worst and in those realities - when he's got a woefully low score and cast into the back row again - that he'd reduced to that feeling of inferiority. And it's frightening because he's seen second-hand what those feelings can accomplish - with Ken, and with the Dark Seed children - but he still can't help but feel them.
And when disaster tries to swipe everyone up again - well, he starts feeling inferior again. He can't handle his own entrance exam; how will he help the others. He doesn't go to the others. He cries and smiles when Gomamon comes through his window but he doesn't join the fight. Maybe it's cowardly. Maybe he's right and he'll just be a burden with his half-heartedness or maybe he just knows either Yamato or Taichi or both of them are going to punch him and knock some sense into him and he's not quite ready for that yet. Otherwise the evening wouldn't be wasting away like ice-cream slipping out from under him and, speaking of ice-cream, Gomamon wouldn't be devouring what was left of it because he'd be needing carbohydrates and maybe some herbal tea after a big fight instead.
Maybe the day will take all the clouds and puddles left by the rain along with it, and there'll be a bright sun of optimism tomorrow and no bad mark to bring down his spirits again and the day won't just slip away like so many recent ones and he can feel good about himself - because if he doesn't feel good about himself, how can the others depend on him?