Title: Grades
Character: Ichijouji Ken
Word Count: 500||Status: One-shot
Genre: General||Rated: G
Challenge: Diversity Writing, A62, 3rd person POV; Digimon Flash Bingo, 948, nervous; Word Count Set Boot Camp, #9, 500 words
Summary: Ken's not a genius anymore. So his grades go up and down. Down isn't good.
Ken's hand didn't shake as he stared at the paper, but only because he exerted every ounce of his strength not to allow it. He closed his eyes, pulled in a deep breath, and opened them again, some tiny part of him that had clearly spent too much time around Daisuke hoping that what he'd first seen would be different now.
But it wasn't. The mark remained.
It wasn't a failing grade. He hadn't slipped that far, though sometimes he thought he might if he didn't work harder.
But it wasn't as high as the grades he'd made when he'd ruled ruthlessly as the Kaiser and it wasn't even as high as some of those he'd made after that.
He'd more or less passed by the skin of his teeth.
It won't affect the long-term grade, he tried to tell himself as he headed home. I'll still come out with a high overall end grade.
Telling himself that should've made him feel better. It really didn't. Only one thing would: being able to go back in time and retake the test so that he got a higher mark on nit.
He knew he could, if time travel could make it so. Because he would know he should concentrate and get the right answers this time. It wasn't even that difficult, now that he looked over it again. He could see everywhere he went wrong the first time.
How am I going to tell Mother and Father about this? They'd been kind about how his grades changed and he'd tried to explain to them about the Dark Seed and why he wasn't the little genius that could anymore.
Ken wasn't at all sure if they'd even understood everything he'd told them on that score. They'd both reassured him that they didn't care about his grades. He believed that much. But he wanted to do his best for their sake, and with grades like this staring back at him…
He wished he had Wormmon to talk to right now, but his dear partner remained in the Digital World for another couple of days. As for the other Chosen, nothing at all stopped him from putting in a call or an e-mail: except himself. Except knowing how helpful and supportive they would all be.
He appreciated every moment of that, but he didn't need help in studying. He just needed to be able to take the test when he wasn't stressing out over the problems of two different worlds, and in pure fairness, that wasn't something he could stop doing. None of them could.
I wonder what their grades are like. He'd probably find out sooner or later. But regardless, he still had to tell his parents about this, and make sure he did better on the rest of the tests.
And none of that did anything to soothe his stomach or loosen the knots in his shoulders. He didn't think anything could except just getting it over with.
"Mother? Father? I'm home."
The End
Notes: I'm sure most of us have felt Ken's pain here. But he'll be all right. He's just not used to scoring relatively low and actually caring about that.