Joe Kido sat staring out the window in his class room. Yes he was in school still. Medical school. His dream to become a doctor had been reinforced by loss of Tai two years earlier and now he was in his junior year. In another year he would graduate and then go onto work at a hospital near his home for a year. He smiled sadly thinking how it had hurt everyone that day two years ago. It should have been a happy day in retrospect due to the fact that he and Mimi had finally gotten together. The younger D.D. had all also gotten into couples in the months before that day. The last ones to do so had in fact been Tai and Matt who had just kissed for the first time before the accident had broken them apart and broken Matt in a way that they couldn't explain.
Mimi had moved back to Japan on her own after they had finished fighting off the last form of Myotismon. She could still recall to this day how brightly Tai had smiled as he talked about Matt and how happy the two of them had been together even though they weren't dating. It was true she laughed that at one point each of them had thought to have loved Sora. Mimi pulled her long honey colored hair out of her eyes and pushed it behind her ears with a small sad smile. Her pink eyes gleamed with unshed tears as she leaned over and placed a rose on the grave of her late friend.
At half past four that afternoon she and Joe meet up to go to the park where they knew they would find Matt. Something's they suspected were not going to change. Every Sunday the D.D. got together there as a form of healing. It was a hope that they would somehow bring Matt out of his deep depression. Two years and he had not one smiled at any of them even a sad smile. He would no longer sing and had left his band. If it weren't for the fact that they all knew he went to the park everyday they probably wouldn't have seen him. He avoided Kari most of all and that hurt the younger girl who had dreams of becoming his sister -in-law.
When they reached the park they found Matt in front of the cross his eyes closed and hands folded in pray. It was a common sight now a days and they barely blinked when he opened his blue eyes and looked up at them with tears no longer evident. He had most likely been crying since that morning. Mimi sat down next to him and pulled him close in a hug. He leaned his head on her shoulder.
"Guys!" a Yell came out of the blue at them and Joe looked up while she continued to rub Matts back in soothing circles. It was Yolie and Cody. They were running toward them hand in hand. Two years and six months that's how long they had been together. Behind them were Ken and Davis each carrying something. And finally Sora and Izzy who had decided to come together after running into each other on the train. Kari didn't come any more during the afternoons and instead spent them at her brothers grave, she wouldn't put Matt through having to pretend to be alright around her. T.k sometimes went with her others he came with them today he had gone with her.
"Its been two years Tai and still nothing has changed." Kari whispered as she sat at the foot of her brothers head stone. "Matt doesn't want me around because it hurts him to be reminded of you and I can't help but feel like I have to give up everything not hurt him. I miss you too. We all do but it has completely broken Matt in both body and sprit not to have you around." She wiped tears away from her eyes as she thought about the brother she would never get to see again in this life.
"She isn't wrong about it breaking Matt. He hardly ever talks to anyone anymore. Not even me. We had gotten so much closer after the digital world and I thought he would come to me when he needed someone but he just hides away and when we do go to be with him he try's not to look at her. It's like he sees you in her."
A slight wind stirred her hair as it always did when she visited the grave and she smiled sadly. She had long ago decided that the wind was her brothers way of letting her know he was listening to her. T.K. never said anything to her about that even though he too felt the presence of the boy who would have been family in all ways possible except blood to him.
Davis and Ken had left a small soccer ball at the side of his grave the day before and it still sat there. Next to it now lay the rose she knew was Mimi's doing. Every month they all but something by it. It stayed for a few days and then was gone. They knew that the groundskeeper was taking them up and putting them in the trash. On memorial day they all put in money to put a vase of flowers at it. This year it was lilies last it had been tulips.
"God Tai we really miss you.." She placed her hand on the stone and its cold burned almost as much as the heat in a furnace would have. It broke her heart every time she came here but it was the closest she could get to her big brother. "good bye for now." She got up with the help of T.K. who had put aside his usual hat the day of Tai's funeral and never again put it on.
Davis had placed Tai's googles in the casket with him. That was the last time they ever saw Davis cry. His mentor was gone and he no longer felt the need or the want to become better than him. He had stopped pushing himself and just tried to enjoy things again. It had led to him and Ken getting together about two months after Christmas.