He was a ruler once, an emperor of worlds, feared by all.
He was a boy once, small and soft, with big, clear eyes.
He doesn't know what he is now. He suspects he may not be anything at all, more figment than human, but that's okay. It's the price he has to pay, and he pays it gladly.
He tells his parents that he doesn't know how to be, what his thoughts are, why there's this boy from two districts over who keeps saying that he wants to be his friend. What is a friend, he asks his mother. She frowns, and he knows she will cry later in the bathroom when she thinks nobody will notice.
He notices. He's been doing that all his life.
His digimon is the best thing that's ever happened to him, a constant force in his chest that anchors him, pulls him down to the ground. He's like a small, fragile bubble. He'd drift away and pop otherwise.
Ken doesn't understand the personified earthquake that is Daisuke Motomiya. He is a solid, breathing vision in front of him, pure life, so real that it somehow makes him ethereal. He doesn't seem to care that Ken feels alienated by his presence, that he never knows what to make of his offers, his openness.
Daisuke is a door that is perpetually kept ajar so that anyone can see that he won't repel them if they try to enter—provided they have the necessary courage to pull the gap wide enough to slip through.
Ken isn't sure he's ready for that yet.
But he knows he will be someday.