Author's notes: It's been a while since I've actually written something, but I'm very satisfied with the results of this one. It was actually inspired from an occurrence that happened to me involving my closet and the book of this story. I would suggest reading the book after you finish with the story as well, because you may recognize some of the more clever elements I slipped into the narrative. I'd also like to dedicate this to those that have basically given me inspiration to keep writing (whether they know it or not) -- Marc, Phil, Stacy, Mari, and whoever else. Thanks.

Disclaimer: Look at my bio page, naturally.


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V E L V E T E E N
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"And remember, Ken, I want every bit of clutter in that closet of yours to be thrown out or neatly sorted and stacked!"

Mrs. Ichijouji's shrill voice cut through the sterile gloom of the apartment, resonant from her usual post in her base of operations, the kitchen. The motherly edge was not forgotten, just as the promising sternness of how the one she spoke to had-better-listen-if-he-knew-any-better wasn't, and only further dispirited her otherwise silent addressee.

Ichijouji Ken, renowned child prodigy, was not known to keep "clutter" lazing about his room, in any shape or form. Dustbunnies cringed and hid in the darkest of crevices when his mother's vacuum cleaner came near; unalphabetized files quickly rearranged themselves; a smudged laptop computer screen closed itself. However, his closet had remained a sanctuary for the things that just didn't want to remain in their proper places. Even the meticulous Ken could not restrain a few unmatched socks (heaven forbid) or old, yellowing trinkets from winding up in the dank reaches of the shallow enclosure. The boxes of his youth contained things like trophies and faded color photographs (his room was surprisingly skeletal for someone who should have an ego), things that he just didn't like having around.

He kept Osamu's things in a box too, specially labeled and sealed carefully, set in the corner of his modest little closet. Clothes, essentially, and generally stuff his mother never wanted to part with. Nostalgia, remembrance of "the good old days," was a powerful thing.

It didn't take long for Mrs. Ichijouji to finally discover her son's "dark secret" with a little casual snooping while he was at school. And now, on a Saturday evening with the sunset painting the sky the color of blood, he was charged for his crimes, and duly punished with the sentence of having to clean that mess. Unreasonable, he said. It's out of the question that you don't, his mother returned. You'll clean that up, and you'll clean that up now, young man. Yes, mother.

Seating his thin, seemingly fragile form on the ground before his imposing closet, Ken pondered for a moment over how he would go about such a task. Initially, dumping everything into a white trash bag and merely hiding it somewhere had seemed reasonable. Of course, with the thought that his mother would again discover the wealth of items, he quickly thought otherwise. Maybe he would wing it, too, merely going over each artifact that had long since been lost, and deciding whether or not it presented any sort of value to him in the present. There were few things that did, anyway, so why not? Yes, all right.

Pale digits wedged open the first half of that closet door, and subsequently began on the second to admit a nicely sized rectangle of darkness to appear, one that led back two feet or so, with an abyss chartered on either side. Slanted violet eyes squinted for a moment into the space that smelled of aged brass and mothballs, judging whether or not to retrieve the sterling lamp from his desk to help guide his way through the jumble of things within. Pot-of-the-luck drawing also seemed appealing for whatever reason, giving more of an adventurous tinge to the mundane chore, and was decisively called for. A slender hand slid into the unlit murk, the wrist and above exposed to the rusty sun's light, groping and raking over the initially clear carpeting for something -- anything -- to start with. Sudden smooth texture, contrasting the roughness of the floor's covering, was noted. Jackpot.

The straight edge slid easily into his grip, cool to the touch, although obdurately caught under something much heavier that had lodged itself in a compromising position atop it. One firm pull was all that was needed, and Ken quickly withdrew it from the unseen confines, curious. Beige highlighted with the waning sun's ocherous rays slipped silently into view, marked by sloping text in forest green and a picture that took up most of its front. It was a book. It was "The Velveteen Rabbit" the words proclaimed eloquently, and as if to emphasis that fact, the drawing featured none other than a child's toy bunny, complimentary with a cute button nose and tawny fur.

And as anyone, even renowned child prodigies, are prone to do, Ken was intrigued with his very first discovery. His assigned chore was forgotten for at least the time being, stored away in his memory to be remembered whenever it wasn't a nuisance. He passed the palm of his hand over the cover, watching the silky-smooth face shimmer in the diminishing light. How long had this been here? He couldn't even recall the story, come to think of it, and that poked at his curiosity even more. Ken stood swiftly and shuffled quietly in his pruinose slippers to his discreet desk. He took a seat, fumbled in the now-twilight for his reading light's switch, and, once suited with the bath of goldenrod that flowed over his hands and newfound book, he opened it to the first page.

Once, there was a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid . . .

Ken read into the night.


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I found a book recently, not even thirty minutes ago, at the bottom of my closet. It's a children's book, published in relatively large font and with prose that's easily understood. The work itself, the storyline, revolves around a sequestered toy rabbit on a hopeful mission to present itself as "Real" despite all of the difficulties of what could be considered a life in the toy-box, to be forever immortalized with Boy's cherishing. It's an accomplishment that most toys don't achieve, according to the Pale Horse, the only toy to have since become Real in Rabbit's company. To be Real is amazing.

I thought I was Real once.

Real to me then was the facade of puce lenses and saffron frames shielding gelid one-tone lilac eyes from the world, erratically spiked heretics of normalcy in magenta, a cape and cowl of equally as strange and surreal materials and hues: obsidian, opal, sapphire, gold, silver. These were Real. The length of braided sepia leather in my grip attached in finality to a handle of black steel was Real. Flawless obelisks of ebony, the circles and spirals of sard, all of this -- it was Real. A gird and chilling stare was Real.

So, naturally, I was Real. That was the conclusion anyway. Anything else wasn't. In a sense, anything else was Unreal. It was false, a shadow of the brilliance of what I was, and sometimes not even that. My parents were Unreal, the worlds were Unreal, the digimon were Unreal, my schoolmates, my fans, my second life as the charming and aristocratic Ichijouji Ken. Everything.

Only the Kaiser was Real. His superiority gave him the right to rule legions, to force otherwise peaceful and secular creatures of digital information to do nothing but his bidding, especially with a little sadistic glee at the end of a whip involved. He was especially content with his Paradise, hands firmly grasping the reigns, his influence touching ever corner of the digitized globe and back again. But still, nothing but he was Real, and that's the way he liked it. There was no one to try to usurp him, to claim their importance over himself, nothing at all. He was feared, and he found that delicious.

Enter the Chosen Children into the equation, and suddenly the fat goose-egg of an answer just wouldn't add up. But they were all Unreal, merely aphids that wished to nibble at the plants of his Garden -- he would be rid of them soon enough, right? Right. Further considerations and concerns were put aside. Why bother.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple.

Frustration, actual hair-pulling frustration, was long in coming. There was the war, and then there were battles. A control spire taken down here, a pod of digimon slaves released -- futile, worthless attempts at the hands of those who would inevitably fall. They were Unreal, they couldn't touch Him, and one day they would understand that and go back home. But they didn't understand, they didn't go back home. I continued to live my double life, always on the look out for the more vulnerable Chosen in their natural, faux habitat. Maybe it was that first and last encounter in the human world with them that my world crumbled down around me, that my Realness was finally tested and broken.

It hadn't caused much pain. I remember it all clearly, even with my mind as fogged as it is since the zenith of events as the emperor . . . it's something I can never forget. Fiery bronze eyes caught the light of the sun, purple-tinged asperous locks jangled noiselessly with the slightest of movements, Motomiya Daisuke extending a tan hand for me to shake. I recognized him immediately, even without his insipid trademark goggles or teal-scaled companion. I recognized his friends too, cheering him on from the stands. His hand felt warm. It felt Real. And it, ironically, left me cold.

I played my hardest that day, despite his team being a pushover (at least in my mind), as if only to distress the point that he wasn't Real, he was an insect, he was nothing, and I could so easily crush him beneath my pleather boot if it was for such is my pleasure. I wanted to see him squirm. It didn't quite work out that way, though, as just before the final whistle would announce that my team (more importantly, me) had won the game, he did something quite unexpected. I had misjudged his talent, and his forward slide caught me in my unaware airs of egotistical congratulations. His cleat neatly clipped my shin, my ankle caught on his extended leg as it went by, and I found myself suddenly without proper traction. No, I didn't fall, but my pride was badly bruised. It wasn't until Daisuke apologized after the game that I realized that I had been injured. Maybe adrenaline, or just the specifically clean cut, had prevented me from feeling any nerve-ending irritations.

It was later when I was wrapping my shin with surgical gauze that it donned on me -- he had injured me, and most horrifying of all, he had made me bleed. He had done all of that to me, and it wasn't even fathomable that he be able to in the first place! The first spark of eagerly mind-eating frustration began then, and that was why I chose to torment Daisuke the way I had only later that day with the staged kidnapping of his friends. I tortured him mentally, just as he had, indirectly or not, done to me. And it was enjoyable to my sick mentality. But it still left me with the questions, even after I rode away triumphantly on an Airdramon.

I became Unreal then, despite the vicious denial for a while, even though I think I had always been Unreal beforehand. It was through that experience, though, the reversed process of the flighty and beautiful butterfly being once more entrapped in a sluggish and ugly caterpillar body, that led to the worst endeavor of all. If I wasn't going to be Real, I said, then something else would be. Something that would be all I wasn't. It would be Real, and if I commanded it, then I could be Real again.

Chimeramon.

It was magnificent, an epitome of achievement for the emperor, representing all that he had lost due to the infernal and unyieldingly fresh soccer game. But it had one thing I had not counted on. It was sentient, and that I understood too late; not content at all with any sort of servitude, it lashed out in the most dreadful of manners. But it was that day that my imprisoned consciousness deciphered all that was with the world -- everything was Real, Wormmon was Real! And I let him slip away in a cloud of digital dust, all too late realizing that he, and everything else . . . it wasn't fake or untrue, it was me who was. I was a shell. I disappeared into the sand dunes of that desert, utterly destroyed, crying the cleansing diamond tears that had been held for years and years. I didn't think I would ever become Real, and I didn't think I even deserved to be in the first place.

Just as anything else was then, predictions always seemed to turn out incorrect. I regained Wormmon eventually, that was a given, but that was merely a second chance that I took seriously -- but not the redeeming opportunity to try to become Real. There was something, actually someone, that I had not accounted for in my earlier calculations of how the next while would play out.

And he made me Real again.

It wasn't the first time I met him after The Incident. It wasn't the second, the third, or the fourth. I simply became; the chronology did not matter and still doesn't, and I never concerned myself with seriously trying to pinpoint exactly when it happened. It was just one day that I was with him, as often as being in his presence was, that I again came to the conclusion. It didn't go off with a bang, and it didn't go off with a whimper. It just went. He accepted me unconditionally from the start. He understood. He . . .

He's everything. He's Real, just as the Kaiser had the inkling he was long ago, he made me Real effortlessly and without a doubt as to whether or not I should be, and he's just everything. He's my everything. And there's no way I can ever repay him for that. I don't think he would even let me, really. It's because, well . . .

I'm Real to the Boy, because he loves me.

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Ken's faraway gaze finally came back into focus abruptly, pinpoint on the desk and book that lay before him in the still-shining jasmine light. Heliotrope tinted irises lost their glaze of deep thought, and the muscles of his face, since so thoroughly relaxed from his contemplating, simply remained so. Although, only a slight number would contract to allow the vague curling of a nebulous smile. He was almost puzzled by his unknown revelations, any observer would have thought, but there was a silent laughter and joy in his eyes that was usually absent as he looked up from the book. And a tear, a real tear, fell to the page he was on.

He closed the book and stood up, not bothering to wipe at the saline droplet's remnants that had wormed its way down his cheek. His vague smile only became more definite and stubborn, misty eyes turning toward the crevice of black that was emitted from his closet. Ken quietly crossed his room in the same shuffling manner as he had earlier, and bending slightly with knees and waist, he dug out the something that had held The Velveteen Rabbit down upon unearthing it that scant time ago. It wasn't as heavy as he originally thought it had been, actually quite lightweight in either hand, although much more compared to the book.

It was a picture frame, glinting squarely in the oncoming light from the nearby desk. It was made of gold and copper, eerily colorful and bright when in such pallid constraints as Ken's hands. The photograph within was just as vibrant and florid, as Ken knew the rest of the cache of photos he had within was faded and much older. This was fairly recent, and invoked the most aureate of smiles and aqueous of laughs from the boy.

Transversing the room once again, Ken set the frame on his desk beside Osamu's. A moment more to observe, and he led himself out of the place of otherwise bare walls and furniture. He needed to make a phone call.

Mahogany eyes, full of life and unyielding drive, sadly frozen in natural quiescence, watched him leave. Mauve-streaked brunette and rosewood hair was piled above that carelessly, marred only by the sudden fashioning of what seemed to be clear-lensed goggles. A quirky smile crossed light garnet lips, surrounded by overly sun-kissed, maple skin -- it cocky and boisterous in its own natural right. Judging by the ill-faced others in the background, he had apparently taken the opportunity to ruin a group shot of some sort, to step into the limelight when he wasn't supposed to for a flash of "fame." He wasn't alone, though. He had dragged someone else with him, someone much shyer. His arms twined around the reluctant, albata-fleshed, thistle-eyed, lazuli-haired, and slightly taller youth beside him, who was attempting an introverted smile. Ken never liked having his picture taken when all was said and done, after all. Daisuke, however, hadn't really given him a choice in the matter.

But Ken didn't, hadn't, and would never mind anything Daisuke did . . .

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"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day. "Does it mean having things buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?"

"Sometimes." For he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

~~~~~~~~~~owari~~~~~~~~~~