As a child watching Digimon Frontier for the first time, I had a deep conviction that Zoe and Kouji should get together. I guess I still do lol
No one loves Christmas more than Zoe Orimoto. No one. It's a fact that has been made abundantly clear over and over again, every year, when she drags everyone to her house to bake Christmas cookies and decorate them with Christmas decorations, followed by a Christmas gift exchange and Christmas dinner. Made from Christmas scratch, if such a thing is possible. Zoe Orimoto loves Christmas and there is no doubt about it.
They complain about it, of course. Stupid, not even a real Japanese holiday, over-commercialised… these are some of the things that are muttered out of the side of JP and Takuya's mouths every year. Tommy is still young enough to appreciate the bountiful joys of Christmas (according to Zoe, anyway), and Koji puts up with it with his usual silent, stoic mein.
There's a reason why Zoe showers Koji and Tommy with a lot more affection than she does Takuya and JP during this time of year.
(Truth be told, Koji finds her Crazy Christmas Attitude kind of cute. It doesn't mean he's going to go broadcasting it though.)
This Christmas, she's a lot less on the ball about Christmas. It doesn't mean she's still not crazed. It just means she's not as crazed. Zoe has a boyfriend this year to go nuts with over the Yuletide holidays, which she does, in earnest. The boys won't admit they miss her fussing around, but they do put a marginally more concerted effort at Christmas that year. And when it goes pretty much unnoticed, there's a lot of general scoffing about how Christmas is stupid anyway, and who cares about it?
(Koji tries to tell himself the acrid feeling he gets is because he doesn't like his efforts to go wasted. It only marginally works.)
So imagine his surprise when the doorbell rings at 9am on a freezing Sunday morning, the day before Christmas. They'd just had their annual Christmas fest 2 days ago, and he still hasn't slept off the holiday cheer yet.
Even as he opens the door, he recognizes Zoe's signature blonde hair at the front gates. emIt's Zoe, it's Zoe/em, his heart sings, and he tamps it down as he fumbles a little too much with his shoes as he goes out to meet her.
He only realizes her tears once he gets within an arm's length of her.
Her boyfriend has just broken up with her, one day before Christmas. It makes his blood boil just thinking about it, which is a good thing, since he'd left his jacket in his house.
They walk laps around the nearby park; Zoe alternates between sniffling silences and long rambles about what could have been, and reasons for what it is. Through it all, Koji is silent, hands in his pockets, thinking that out of anyone she could have gone to, she's here, next to him. His blood runs a little cooler, but still warm. Definitely warm.
Finally they rest, and Zoe sighs that they've only been going out for two months, so why does it hurt so much? Koji knows why – it's because he knows that everything Zoe does, she throws in 100% of herself and more. But he just sits there, because he knows she knows it too. Sometimes, you just need a listening ear to hear you out.
(Koji doesn't have a crush on Zoe. Crushes are dumb, and unreasonable, and you just don't have a crush on someone like Zoe. You don't.)
Zoe allows herself, in all, 4 hours of self-pity and misery. The rest of the time, she throws herself into Christmas, friends, and family. She smiles and shrugs prettily about the breakup, but Koji can see when she's breaking a little inside. He smoothly cuts between her and JP's boisterous assurances that she'll find someone else, someone a thousand times better, and tells himself that that look she gives him doesn't mean anything but gratitude. He's probably right.
Around Boxing Day, he acknowledges to himself that he's probably fucked. But that's the greatest extent he'll ever get to.
Or at least, until Takuya prods it out of him one day. It's humiliating, and he wishes he could sink into the ground. JP laughs and claps a commiserating hand on his back, although he would do literally anything than to admit he had a crush on Zoe way back when. Takuya encourages Koji to just tell her, and JP snorts.
"This, boys, is how you know he's never been in love."
this starts a scuffle between the two of them, and Koji just rolls his eyes and rolls over, away from their general noise and confusion. He's not in love with Zoe anyway. He's really not.
JP and Takuya leave him alone with Zoe more times than he can care to count, always tugging Tommy away cheerfully, towards the waves, towards the food, towards the birds. Anywhere but towards Koji and Zoe. Traitors.
For the most part, Zoe doesn't seem to mind. Or even notice. She's comfortable jabbing away about school, and work and movies and music, so he sits there and absorbs it all with his heart in his mouth and barely daring to move a muscle, scared that his movements would betray it all.
"He's seen her reject some would-be suitors, and she picks her way around the city and school avoiding where they could be at. He doesn't think he wants that to happen to them, so he sits there and shuts up. Besides, he likes listening to her talk.
(He's still not in love with her, so shut up.)
He kind of really doesn't mean to explode at her the way he does. It's just that some dumb things done by the right people make for really, really irrevocably dumb things. And reactions.
It's something like this: Zoe's ex-boyfriend (the one that dumped her right before last Christmas) has contacted her again, and said something to the effects of wanting to get back together. And Zoe's thinking about it. God.
So when she tells them about it, he explodes. Because he expects more from someone like her. Or if he's being really honest, he expects more from her. So he storms away from the group, fuming, and fully expecting never to be invited to another group gathering again.
She shows up at his house later, his bandanna scrunched between her hands as she keeps worrying the material. He hadn't even realized he'd left it behind him, if he's being totally honest.
They both start apologizing at the same time, and there's, you know, that cringey awkward moment where they laugh at themselves. Then he apologises for flaring up the way he did and makes clear that who she dates isn't any of her business, and is there a little bit of disappointment in her eyes? But she shrugs it off and tells him prettily that he's right, but he also brought out some pretty good points about her ex.
Not that it's any of his business, she adds primly, but she's decided against taking up with him again.
Good, he says. Want to go for a walk?
They won't really remember much of it, years from now. There's just bright lights, a neon glow, and each other. And, you know, it's enough.