Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. Toei Animation does.
Summary: In which Yolei discovers that losing her glasses isn't necessarily a bad thing. Kenlei/Kenyako.
Through These Eyes Yet Unseen
Unlike most people, Yolei had never once minded wearing her glasses. She had loved them from the moment her mom had taken her to the eye doctor to discover the reason why she kept smacking into doors and lampposts and the doctor had ordered her prescription. Her mother had raised an eyebrow at her choice of the large, rounded glass frames, but had wisely stowed her tongue in check and decided it was for the best that her daughter seemed enthusiastic about the whole matter.
Yolei thought her glasses were the only nice feature she possessed. She had always been far too skinny and tall for her age with gawky, gangly limbs that she hadn't grown into yet, which made her clumsy and awkward at times, thus giving the perfect leeway for nicknames like "beanpole" and "the giant". She had never much liked her hair either, which she thought to be an ugly, mousy brown color and an unsightly mess of limp, stringy locks. She had attempted to solve this problem by dyeing her hair what she considered a "lovely, vivacious shade of lavender". Her brothers had laughed themselves silly when they had first seen it and called her "blueberry hill" for a month. Her sisters had pretended they were of no relation and her parents shrugged it off as one of those "inevitable, pre-teenage phases" and thought she was merely "expressing artistic individuality".
Yolei thought her glasses made her look smart, well smarter, since her grades were always above average already. She liked the way they magnified her eyes, made her look prettier. They were good for intimidation tactics too, she soon realized. She quickly developed a finesse for lowering her head so that her eyes peered over the top of her frames and giving a piercing stare at her victim; although her favorite method had to be tilting her face upwards a bit so that her glasses caught the light and reflected it so that her eyes were not visible—one time she had used this tactic on a neighborhood kid who was always lying in wait for her on the way home from school to taunt or bully her and had employed it so successfully, she had managed to send him packing, screaming about a "scary bakemono!".
When she had used this tactic on her teacher however, the time he had mistakenly graded one of her answers on her math test incorrectly and unsuspectingly drew him into a heated pre-algebra debate over the whereabouts of x, and unwittingly caused the man to take a two-month sabbatical from teaching, the school board had held a meeting with her parents and advised them to mull over the possibility of getting their daughters contacts as a substitute.
Yolei had once again proved herself as different from the masses by point-blank refusing the optical alternatives. It wasn't for the reason that she was deathly afraid of putting any foreign object in her eyes—heck, she freaked out when one of her eyelashes fell in or a particle of dust got trapped. It was the fact that her glasses made her stand out against the crowd. She wasn't just another unattractive girl with no fashion sense who tried to fit in. Her glasses made her feel strong, confident, like she could accomplish anything. For instance, she had never tried to defend herself from the nicknames her classmates called her before, but once they had found new torture material on her glasses ("hey, it's four-eyes!", "hey, owlet, fly out of the way!") and had started ragging on them, Yolei had discovered she possessed a wicked, right hook. From that day forward, she never had any difficulties about her appearance again. Why would she want to trade all that in for a pathetic pair of plastic lenses that would make her another weakling twit who with her luck, would lose them at the traffic-crossing and get run over by a car as she stupidly searched for them in the middle of the intersection or in the lunchroom over her mashed potatoes and ingest them, forcing her to get her stomach pumped?
No thank you, Yolei loved her glasses and would not give them up for anything in the whole world. Besides, there was definitely merit to wearing them. Joe Kido, one of the original Digidestined, wore glasses; he had worn them before he had been chosen as the Child of Reliability, he had worn them throughout all his adventures in the Digital World and he still wore them now and though, it appeared that he wore glasses because he was far too busy with his studies to take the time to transfer over to contacts, he was on the road to becoming a successful doctor and was brimming with self-esteem, which he had been severely lacking before. Yolei had a hunch that glasses were some part of the mystery equation of life, which enabled you to either ace or flunk.
She fully intended to ace.
So you can see why she had freaked out just a tad when her well-cherished glasses finally met their appointed time and broke. She really couldn't blame it on Davis kicking the soccer ball seconds after he had tripped and sent it careening off in the wrong directions into the stands where it smashed into the side of her face, knocking her glasses askew into the air in a wide arc where they fell to the ground and shattered in pieces, the wire frames already bent at an odd angle. It was entirely her fault she hadn't noticed the black-and-white projectile missile propelling itself towards her due the fact that she had been checking out Ken's fine backside in his white shorts as he bent over to help Davis up, and giggling as her mind brought up not-so-innocent thoughts. She couldn't blame Poromon for not warning her beforehand either. He hadn't really been in any condition to talk due to her gleefully stretching his mouth like silly putty as impure images danced before her eyes.
Then the soccer ball collided with her head and she saw stars explode instead before the blackness set in.
"Oh my god, Davis, I think you killed her!"
"It wasn't my fault! She shouldn't have stepped into the path of the ball! I was only trying to score a goal!"
"Yeah, because the goal-net is pitched in the stands."
"I tripped, okay?!"
Yolei groggily came back into wakefulness to the voices surrounding her. Her temples throbbed painfully and her eyelids fluttered as she struggled to open them. She felt like she was laid out on something cold… and metal…. the bleachers? What had happened? From the sound of it, Davis had conked her out with a foul game of dodge ball. Not only that, he had interrupted quite a good fantasy about her and Ken stranded alone on a tropical island paradise. Oh, she was going to kill him.
"Hey, is she still breathing? Should someone give her mouth-to-mouth?"
Ooh! Ooh! She wasn't sure who had spoken, but she the idea sent shivers of anticipation through her. Maybe if she was lucky, Ken would volunteer to resuscitate her! There was no harm in lying still a few moments longer to find out. As subtly as she could, she held her breath and tried to do her best impression of a cursed princess lying on her glass coffin awaiting the kiss of life from her prince charming.
"What's that, Davish? Ish that like the movie we saw where the two people were sucking the face off? Ish that a human attack?"
"Don't look at me like that, guys! It was just Jun watching one of her chic flicks! DemiVeemon snuck behind the couch to see it! Though why he wanted to watch such crap is beyond me!"
Yolei seethed in her pretense comatose state. Dang it, she could be dying of oxygen-deprivation over her and everyone was more interested in Davis' non-existent love life!
"Umm… maybe we should let her have a few more minutes of peaceful bliss before we wake her up."
Yolei frowned inwardly. That was Cody's voice and sounded… fearful?
"What do you mean?" she heard Kari ask.
"Her glasses…" Cody said his tone tremulous. "They're… broken."
There was an audible intake of breath and Yolei felt her heart skip a beat and not in a good way.
It took maybe five seconds for her brain to comprehend what her ears had just heard and five more to believe what had been said and then five more where she wondered in panicked darkness what she was going to do.
It wasn't too hard to come to a solution.
"KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILL!!!" Yolei shrieked, her prone form springing to life suddenly as she leaped at the one who had inadvertently caused her this grieving loss, hands outstretched and itching for a strangulation attempt.
Unfortunately, she didn't just wear glasses for mere decoration or to stimulate self-confidence. She really was as blind as a bat without them, so it was no surprise the blurred shape closest to her she had jumped turned out to be the wrong person.
It was a surprise when her abrupt hurdle caused them both of them to tumble head over feet down the bleachers to the soccer field and she found herself sprawled on top of her target, her arms flung around his neck in preparation for squeezing the life from his lungs.
"Glasses-murderer!" she screamed. "You hat-hating, glove-wearing copycat, goggle-headed soccer-freak! DIE!!!"
It was only when she heard laughter and shouts somewhere behind her and glanced over her shoulder to see a familiar tanned blob shaking with mirth did the notion occur to her that it couldn't possibly be Davis she had in a choke-hold.
Squinting, she pressed her face closely against the person beneath her and was able to blearily make out a mop of indigo-colored hair against another face turning blue from lack if air…
Yolei gave a horrified shout and immediately relinquished her death-grip, falling sideways off of poor Ken who started to gasp like a fish out of water, the wind having been knocked out of him.
Davis was still laughing. As soon as her glasses were fixed, she was going to steal her brothers' razor and shave his spiked head bald, and then she'd see who was laughing in the end. But for now, her attention was focused elsewhere.
When it became apparent that Ken was going to live and not suffer any brain-damage from his recent assault, and after Yolei had stopped sounding like a broken record apologizing, T.K. pointed out it was late and that they ought to be getting home. They had only stopped at the soccer field after returning to the real world for a brief practice game. It wasn't supposed to have turned into an episode of ER.
Yolei wasn't really looking forward of going home. She had always taken such good care of her glasses—they hadn't even acquired a single scratch, not even that one time where she had blown up the chemistry lab. All it had taken was one fatal kick and they were history. Her parents had been vying for an excuse to buy her contacts and this was the perfect opportunity. No more feeling brave or pretty, no more intimidation tactics. It was all over.
That's assuming if she even made it home. She couldn't make out her hand even if she held it up a foot away from her face—it was just a fuzzy blur.
Man, her day was shot. As was any chances that Ken might be harboring some secret passion towards her. She knew she had a stupid crush on him, but she wasn't so delusional that she would convince herself that he reciprocated her feelings. She was after all, a loud-mouth, aggressive go-get-it girl who more often than not, looked like she had thrown on whatever her hand first came into contact with and that her wardrobe often clashed terribly. Ken was not only handsome (as well as adorably cute), he was a genius. Guys like him dated soft-spoken, pretty girls who weren't color-blind and dressed elegantly for formal occasions and understood that casual didn't always mean a t-shirt and jeans. She could just imagine the kind of scandal, which would occur when Ken's mob of paparazzi would take their picture unawares and would make the front page the next day all due to her sheer idiocy of wearing one of her nerdy shirts that read "My pie is 3.14 times better than your mom's!" But there she went, getting ahead of herself. Ken was way of her league. Besides, she had probably scarred him for life with the whole neck-choking fiasco.
So, she was very startled to hear him offer to walk her home.
"Huh, but don't you live in Tamachi? Isn't that going out of your way?" she asked then cursed herself for not shutting up and pretending that she was unaware of these facts.
"Yeah, Ken, what gives?" Davis butted in annoyed. "I thought you said I could come over to your house afterwards so you could show me how to get into that secret level of Donkey Kong Madness!"
Ken stuttered, fidgeted, and then flushed an embarrassed red.
Kari hauled a yelping Davis off the soccer field by his ear sighing deeply and muttering under her breath something about, "Boys… how extremely dense".
Yolei watched the others follow them and only after T.K. had turned around to wave goodbye and give her two thumbs up while grinning broadly, did she realize with a kind of numb fear that she was completely alone with Ken.
"So…" she said awkwardly.
"So…" Ken repeated.
"Mmm-hmm," Yolei nodded, like the conversation was extraordinarily fascinating.
"Nice weather," Ken commented.
"Well, I can't really see it right now, but I'll take your word for it," Yolei stated blinking to emphasize the point that her glasses were broken and she was with a bit of a handicap.
"Oh, right," Ken said as if he had just noticed.
"What are they doing?" Poromon asked Minomon quite confused.
"I think this is some form of human mating ritual," Minomon stated matter-of-factly. "Ken and I watched the Discovery Channel once and they had this whole program about how some birds performed a dance in front of their chosen partners before taking things further."
"But Yolei's not a bird. She doesn't have wings," Poromon said worriedly. "And she can't dance. She tried once when her favorite song was on the radio, but all she did was step on me."
"Don't worry, Ken's good at sweeping people off their feet," Minomon said proudly.
"I thought I would walk you home since your glasses broke, ah, make things easier for you… that is, if you don't mind," Ken said and Yolei can't see his expression but his tone is quite nervous.
Yolei thought that if it were anyone else, she might be angry at them for seeing her in such a vulnerable position; might actually ignore their offer and stumble blindly home herself, because she's rather vain like that… but Ken didn't seem to be mocking her, seemed like her genuinely wants to help, and she liked to imagine that perhaps he was seizing this opportunity just for chance to talk and be with her.
So she agreed and allowed him to lead her out of the soccer field by the strap of her carrier-bag. Ken was refusing to meet her gaze, regardless of the fact it was hard for her to focus clearly on anything at the moment, and was striding at a pace fast enough to put the Imperial March to shame. It was only when she almost pitched forward face-first into a garbage bin because of Ken not taking her surroundings into accordance due to this, that she it prudent to address the issue.
"You know, I might be able to get home in one piece if we hold hands," Yolei stated boldly, waiting for Ken to make the first move.
"H-hold hands?" Ken echoed. He had stopped walking now.
"Yeah, so I won't like… get lost in a crowd or fall down a manhole," Yolei shrugged, hoping she sounded like she didn't particularly care one way or the other .
"Oh… of course," Ken said and for a moment he did nothing but stand there next to her.
Then Yolei felt the barest touch of skin against her palm as Ken's hand inched towards hers. Then slowly, their fingers curled around each other's in an intertwining embrace until it was hard to tell where one hand began and the other ended.
"Ken," Yolei said softly, "Am I… prettier without my glasses?"
"I really can't say," Ken told her truthfully. "Until Cody mentioned it, I never realized you wore glasses."
Yolei feels her mouth curving into an unabashed smile and warm glow spread across her cheeks, and she can't see Ken's expression but she finds she doesn't really need to—because their hands are locked together in an unbreakable clasp and Yolei has discovered that losing her glasses isn't such necessarily such a bad thing after all.
The End
A/N: Did I just write fluff? Sap? Romance? I dunno really. All I know is that while I excel at writing crack and humor, I haven't much dabbled in other genres, and while I didn't care about that for the longest time and was perfectly content to stay within my little comfort zone, I read in a fanfic author's—whom I admire greatly—Livejournal, that if you only write what you're good at, your writing will grow stale over time. That you should try and push your boundaries—you may find hidden talent that you didn't know you have and your writing will evolve. So I decided to try it out. I decided to give Yolei a voice and try and get inside her head—it was fun putting myself in her shoes and seeing how her mind ticks. As a person who wears glasses, a lot of her viewpoints are mine also.
Bakemono (Japanese mythological monster which usually disguises itself as a human—now you know where Bakemon derived from).
I couldn't help the humor that snuck in, but I did try avoiding making it ridiculous crack. Anyway, I'd like some feedback. I never wrote something like this before and want to see if I did a good job. Did you like it? What parts were your favorite? Please review, thank you!