The strength.
That was what she missed the most. The ability to walk around without a mask on her face, to run. That mask was hideous, and so confining even in open spaces. Oh, she missed running, and seeing the other Digidestined run around with their digimon was painful. She wished she could be like that again. Only when she was running did she feel like a real kid, a child. Those moments of near flight were the closest to freedom she'd ever gotten. But more than twenty steps and Noriko would probably collapse from lack of air. She'd be rushed to the hospital, as the other Digidestined stared, pitied, laughed. Her partner would be ashamed, as would her family, and tears would come to her eyes for being so stupid as to try and live life. God, she missed running.
Right now she sat in the hospital, holding her sleeping partner and staring at the ceiling.
For a moment, for a few precious days, she had been free. She was unchained, not bound by the limits of her frail, deformed lungs. She was no longer the slow walking girl her 'friends' called 'slow' like it was her name. The digimon that had given her a chance to be like Ken was, a wonderful person. Noriko did not know words that were good and high enough to praise the woman. Instead, she'd settled for an incredibly brief hug. The digimon had stared at her. She was so free, so healthy. This strength had been beyond even her wildest dreams, and she almost cried as she held the woman, her angel, closer for a moment. Noriko usually would have mumbled an apology at the sudden outburst of affection.
But she was no longer afraid. It felt wonderful not to have any fear. So she stood there and asked, "What are you looking at?"
She couldn't believe she'd said that, now. The thought was terrifying. How could she have said that, after being so bold with the woman? How did she stand there with no fear at all? She longed for that confidence again. In that moment she was pristine, perfected after a lifetime being flawed. She was not slow, she was not plain. She was a person, an individual, and above all she was real. A real person, who would never cower in front of anyone. Even in front of the digimon, the creatures she had gaped at, she would never again falter. Was this how Ken felt, so invincible and flying high? For once in her life, she walked down the street with her head held high, shot back at her former friends when they insulted her, and had the guts and health to play DDR. To her joy, she was wonderful at it now. The world was a blur of joy and good times, and she skipped home singing Winter Wonder Land at the top of her lungs. What would once have been slurred Engrish became fluent sounding English in her new mouth. Her parents rejoiced. She rejoiced. They finally believed in her, and Noriko held herself taller than she ever had before. She was finally fulfilled, and nothing was beyond her reach.
Now she sat in the familiar hospital bed while her parents signed yet more paperwork. She did not speak. She wanted something to eat, but she didn't have the courage to bother the doctor with her little problems. Assuming she could breathe well enough to speak. At this moment, Noriko was taking deep, slow, careful breaths, one at a time, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Sleepily, she glanced down at her partner, who was holding the digivice like a child holds a teddy bear. She snorted, then coughed for several minutes before settling back down. This was what the Digidestined had confined her to, had left her with. This was all she would probably ever be. Unfulfilled, tired, beaten down, and timid once again. All her progress had been vetoed, and tears would come if she had any tears left to shed.
Anyone who said the Dark Seed was a bad thing to have was insane.
She had run all the way to the grocery store without her mask. Her mother had screamed, "It's a miracle!" and hugged her husband, sobbing, while Noriko enjoyed being able to run all the way there. Not three or four steps, but all the way. The way back, she ran, too, and even in her cold hearted state a smile bloomed across her pale lips. Her mother sobbed for an hour and called the doctor. The first night had not been a fluke! Each moment, they saw that more and more, as she practiced DDR in her room and began running through the house each time she was called, just for the feeling. The doctors were baffled. They had her do all kinds of tests and exercises. There was no sign of the breathing problems or chest pains. Noriko's father had grinned the whole time, proud as could be because somehow, someway, he'd had a normal child. Not even normal. Better than normal. Amazing.
She'd never forget how it felt.
The feel of the air gently, subtly moving past her face; the steady rhythm of her feet slamming against the floor. Running was a luxury she'd never had before. She had energy, actual energy, not just a good disposition. Noriko leapt up to grab things from the top shelf in the kitchen, she took the stairs two at a time to her apartment, and she rushed through her chores with a vigor that stunned her parents, who usually wound up doing the chores themselves. The strength pulsed through her, making life worth living again. Each moment was a tribute to the power she now had. Her hand was no longer feeble and shaking. She could write whole paragraphs. In a week her kanji surpassed that of even the brightest high school students. Noriko was not a failure anymore. Her parents kept coming in to ask if she needed something. She yelled at them to leave. She was clearly fine. She could even leap up from her seat now, like a normal girl!
She was doing it all for them. All her life, she'd seen that cold look in their eyes. Noriko was not a daughter to be proud of. Her accomplishments were never bragged about to other people. They hung their heads when the news reported Ken's life. Secretly, they wished for him to be their son. It hurt, it hurt so bad to be inferior. To be nothing more than a shadow compared to a normal child was bad enough. Next to Ken, she had been invisible. Unable to do anything noteworthy, unable to be anyone worth mentioning, her parents never once told her they were proud of her. In her entire life, they had never beamed proudly at her the way other people's parents looked at them. Noriko did not want to be Einstein, or famous. She just wanted her parents to quit looking at her with such disdain. So she had gone for it, made a play for power, and it had worked.
The intellect was staggering.
No longer did she have to strain to keep things straight in her head. The dyslexia was gone, finally gone. Everything was clear. Letters and number sequences did not dance before her eyes. They stayed clear within her mind. Nothing switched places before her eyes anymore. The world was right, and she began to learn kanji until she was no longer the last in her class, but the first. She could read now without having to stop and reread every other paragraph. She read faster than anyone else in the class. Her hands no longer struggled to correctly write. It came out beautiful, almost like calligraphy. She never got two kanji mixed up, never forgot how to write them. Photographic memory had come with this. She would never struggle with anything again, it seemed! At first, she was startled. Then she realized she was superior now. These things were not weird, they were normal. All of them were like this, never again to be bound by who they were.
And now they were gone.
Noriko Kawada had spent seven months in the hospital after she got her digimon. The breathing problems had returned with a vengeance, mocking her. Recovery was not an option, not even a remote possibility. Surgery was considered at one point. She lay in a coma for weeks, unable to breathe on her own. It was like she had become Sleeping Beauty, a statue of a girl left somewhere between life and death. Her partner cried at first. He thought she was going to die. She did not have the strength to tell Punimon that this was normal for her. When she woke up, he cried like a baby into her shoulder. He didn't understand that this was her destiny now. Eventually his tears stopped, but he worried for her constantly.
Everyone worried about her.
Why shouldn't they? At any point in time, she would crumple to the ground in a semi-lifeless heap, shaking slightly and gasping for air. She could only be trusted to walk to her room at home and to her classes at school. Even then, the nurse, the teachers, her parents, all watched her closely. There was no hope for her, not in the least. They waited for her to fall, for her to faint, to suddenly stop speaking and they rushed over each time she began to cough, fearing the worse. She was nothing more than a biological time bomb to them, and they waited for her to go off. Any little ting was a trigger for intense worry on their part. They worried because it was so hard not to. Some days, some weeks, Noriko would be fine. No coughing, no shortness of breath, nothing. Karma seemed to hit her randomly, just when she was almost happy and almost normal in the eyes of her peers. All would be fine, and then BAM! She'd cough violently all the time and be unable to attend school because walking from class to class triggered more coughing. Everyone worried about her, except her. She was used to it by now, and used to the pity.
The Chosen worried about her. Sometimes. Darkly, Noriko noted that she was not always a priority to them. She was on the back burner, a side note to their lives. The first few daqys after Malo Myotismon's defeat, she was worthy of visits and attention. A couple weeks, only the female digidestined came. A month, and they all seemed to have moved on. In her mind, she envisioned them saying, "Noriko? Noriko, who?" Or maybe they just laughed at her behind her back. The support of her dreams, the warm embraces, the encouragement had all faded to nothing when the crisis was over. It was as if they simply gave up on her. Everyone could achieve their dreams, except her, and so she was not worth noting to them anymore.
On occasion, one or two of them would visit. Her digimon got more visitors; Gabumon and Tentomon liked to talk to Tsunomon. He had a sarcastic sense of humor coupled with extensive knowledge of the Digital World. Since he had nothing else to do, he read up on many subjects: Digimon, the Digital World, philosophy, anything that came into his mind. Tentomon and Tsunomon often had long, semi-serious conversations punctuated by dry humor. It made Noriko smile to see them sit there at the computer in her room or in the hospital room, talking like normal friends. It made her happy to her digimon, at least, could have a normal life. Actually, above average. Tsunomon was absolute brilliant. Gabumon often talked about philosophy with Tsunomon, which he thought was interesting, but over complicated. Some parts of some things, he ignored entirely. Noriko couldn't help but notice the irony. That was what everyone else did: they ignored her entirely, because she wasn't a problem that could be fixed, just a problem. Yet Gabumon was the one who noticed her, although the first time they met he struck her as the most ignorant of the bunch.
Hikari visited her once in a while, being her naieve self and not understanding how Noriko hated her. Hikari was going to become a teacher, do all the things she never could, and it burned at Noriko until she could barely tolerate the other girl. TK and Daisuke came on Valentines Day, ignoring the doctor's protests that she needed rest, and TK played the harmonica rather badly while Daisuke tried to sing something about love. It was all a 'Daisuke's-trying-to-make-Hikari-jealous' thing. Caught halfway between horror and amusement, she and Tsunomon could only stare at them, wondering if this was some horrible side effect from hospital food. She had rolled her eyes the whole time and was grateful when the doctor silenced Daisuke's high pitched off key vocals.
But still, she really didn't have any friends.
No one really noticed her after a while. At school, people had quit caring long ago. She was a wallflower. The most interesting thing about her was that she was sick, a defect amongst normal people. There was nothing notable about her that did not make her look worthless. She was viewed almost like a broken machine, and she hated it. It was why she held herself like she wanted to vanish. She did. And though the digidestined, being something akin to friends, had freaked out the first three times she had been in the hospital, they now accepted it as the norm. They didn't really care. If it had been one of the healthy ones going in, there would have been a floodwave of people. There was no one for her. Passed over, Noriko could only watch as they all lived out their lives without her. The world was flying by at the speed of light, and Noriko lay there, unable to move. She would never have a career, not with her condition.
She could have, if the Dark Spore would have kept working like Ken's had.
That's what bothered her the most, knowing that she could've had a shot at a normal life. For a brief moment, she was normal. Better than normal, actually. She had been able to run and write and breathe. She lived life as a non dyslexic, athletic, smart girl and she wished she never had. Everything she ever wanted to do was possible. Her dreams had been within her grasp. There was nothing that was beyond a Dark Spore child's grasp. Now she was lying here, unable to stand up for the hundredth time in her life. Nothing that the other digidestined can say about morality will make this alright. Does it matter if she risked her life to gain what she had? One could hardly call this world of hospitals a life. It didn't matter what the world thought, what other people said, how they felt about this. She tried, honestly, to make herself hate what happened, but she could not. For a second, she had been free and the wind had blown on her cheeks while she ran all the way home. For a single second, she was truly beautiful and felt as if an angel had swept her away to a fairytale.
Noriko knew what it was to be strong.
And so she keeps quiet, unable to even cry over her found and lost abilities, because a real Dark Spore child wouldn't cry. This is her last inner fight to be strong, to be note worthy or the least bit in control of this rollercoaster she calls her life. The last bit od hope to cling to. Reality would not crush her. Even as her doctors tell her she is repressing her emotions, she huffs at them. She doesn't want to be tough and gritty like they think she does.
Noriko just doesn't want to be weak anymore.