Digimon Existential Theater Presents: No Exit
aka, "Hell is Other DigiDestined"
Author's Note: Just a reminder, I own nothing. And I really don't hate any of these characters; quite the opposite. I think Sora comes across as being the most different, but someone had to be Inez, and she really was the best choice. Hopefully her shift in character will be adequately explained in later chapters.
The Keeper of the Crest of Love didn't look all that different from how Tai remembered her. Certainly she was older, but her reddish-brown hair was still short, just brushing past her shoulders, and she was conservatively dressed in a black turtleneck and jeans. It looked to Tai as if she had retained that unique combination of tomboyishness and sophistication she had developed while they were in high school.
The valet acknowledged Tai's response with a slight nod of his head before turning to address her. "Here is your room, madam. If you do not require any information from me, I shall take my leave. With regards to the toothbrush, the lights, and the bell, this gentleman can tell you anything as well as I can."
Sora made no indication that she wanted the valet to stay. Without another word, the valet left the room, the door closing behind him with a soft whoosh.
For a few moments, Tai and Sora stared at each other. It was Sora who broke the silence.
"Where's Yolei?"
Tai looked at her curiously, momentarily caught off guard. Of all the things she could have said to him, it was that? "I, er... I have no idea."
"Sure you don't," she eyed him suspiciously. "I see. It's torture by separation, then. Well, it won't work with me. She was starting to get on my nerves, anyway. I don't think I'll miss her after all. So, what else did you have in mind, then, hmm? Whatever it is, I won't break easily."
Tai was completely thrown off by these words, and the way Sora was staring at him. Now that he looked at her a bit more closely, he saw that there was a subtle difference in the face of the person he had known so well. It was slightly lined, of course, as an artifact of being at least twenty years older than when he last saw her, but there was also a hardness about her mouth and eyes that he was certain had never been there all those years ago. It made her look stern, even somewhat cruel.
"Sora," he said cautiously. "What are you talking about? Who do you think I am?"
Sora gave a humorless laugh.
Unbelievable, she thought. Why were they playing dumb?
It hadn't taken her long to figure it out thus far. The Anubismon that led her here had been the most obvious clue. If they hadn't wanted her to know her escort's name, they should have taken her digivice away when she arrived. Of course, knowing Anubis' role as guardian of the dead didn't hurt either- having a father who taught college-level cultural anthropology meant that she had absorbed a lot of random mythological information over the years. So why, after the overwhelming evidence, had this demon, or whatever, assumed the form of a man from her past and professed not to know what she was talking about? It was absurd! Well, she wasn't going to play along.
"You?" she said derisively. "You're my torturer!"
The demon laughed. "You've gotta be kidding me!" His disbelief was fairly convincing. "You really think I'm one of them? Sora, it's me- Tai! Tai Kamiya!"
"Yeah, ok." Sora could feel herself smiling patronizingly and noticed that the Tai-demon seemed to crumple slightly as a result. Certainly... not what she had expected, but she wouldn't let him know that. If he kept giving her invitations to maintain control over her situation like this, she would continue taking them as long she could.
Even if it was just staving off the inevitable.
"Come ON, Sora!" Tai fumbled for something he could say- anything- that would serve as proof that he was really him, simultaneously wrestling with the desire to shake some sense into her. "I... I threw up in your hat when we were four! I saved you from Datamon in the Digital World! I gave you a hairclip for your birthday one year, and you hated it!"
She felt her eyebrows raise, hoping her surprise was not too noticeable. She did not speak, but made a deliberately slow lap around the room, arms firmly crossed, trying to look everywhere but at him. Unfortunately, it was impossible to ignore the room's only other occupant. Maybe... maybe he really is Tai, she thought. She didn't know precisely how much they knew about her, after all, and they certainly wouldn't be interested in trivialities like hats and hair clips.
She turned to give him another appraising look. If this was Tai Kamiya, the years had not been very kind to him. He had finally cut his hair, so at least he didn't look quite as wild and shaggy as he had when they were teenagers, but the mahogany brown nest was unmistakably peppered with flecks of grey. His clothes had a distinctly worn look, and were creased and wrinkled as if he often slept in them. His mouth sat crookedly on his face, even when he wasn't smiling. Most of all, he looked tired and strained, reminding her quite forcibly of Matt's father- at least, the last time she had seen the elder Ishida.
Nevertheless, as she stared at him, she became more and more convinced that this was, in fact, Tai. She couldn't quite place what it was about him that drew her to this conclusion. Maybe it was the tentative, pleading way he was looking at her, as if an echo of the boy she had known so well was reaching out to her across the years, asking her to trust him. And whatever else he had become in the time they had been apart, she reasoned, there still had to be some small part of him that was the Tai Kamiya she had known so long ago.
"All right." She tried to look and sound sincere. "Tai."
She turned back to sit stiffly on the sofa directly to his left. Even if she was willing to acknowledge him, she wasn't terribly pleased to see him. After all, if he wasn't a demon, it meant their real torturer was still coming, and she couldn't stand the thought of waiting even longer for something like that. Plus, this was... well, it was Tai. Not that they had parted on bad terms or anything, it had just been so long since they had actually talked to each other. What did you say to someone after being separated by half a lifetime of experiences?
It was too awkward. Especially since he was just sitting there, staring at her. She could feel his eyes on her as keenly as if they were a brand. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but couldn't find the words. The silence stretched across the gap between them, filling her ears with an irritating buzzing.
"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" he asked finally and, Sora thought, rather lamely. "What have you been up to these days, anyw-"
"No offense," she said, "but I don't think I feel much like talking right now."
Tai momentarily looked as if he had been slapped in the face, but the shock was quickly replaced by indignation. "Well excuse me, Your Highness, I was just trying to make conversation! You know, break the ice, be polite- unlike you seem to be capable of. Or do you still believe I'm not really me?"
"No, I... I'm sorry, Tai." She tried to sound it, too. He hadn't really done anything wrong, after all. She could, for now, give him the benefit of the doubt. She would be civil as a privilege to him, at least until he gave her cause to revoke it. Of course, the way he was going, he didn't have long anyway.
She sighed, and made an effort to at least look him in the face. "I guess I'm just a little out of practice with being polite."
Tai saw her mouth curve into a smile and heard her voice soften, but he couldn't help noticing that her eyes retained their hardness.
"Well then, I guess I'll just have to be polite for the both of us," he said, crossing his arms over the arm of his couch and cracking a tentative smile. "So, how do you tell what a torturer looks like, anyway, since you seem like such an expert?"
She studied her hands folded in her lap for a few moments before speaking. "You can tell a torturer," she said primly, "by the frightened look on their face."
The Keeper of Courage bristled. "Afraid? Me? I think you're forgetting who you're talking to!"
Sora regarded him coolly. "Deny it all you want, Tai, but I've seen my face in the mirror often enough to know what I'm talking about."
"Mirror..." His eyes swept the room hungrily for his reflection before he remembered where he was. "Right. Never mind." He was starting to feel uncomfortable in Sora's presence. Did he really look scared? It was hard for him to tell, but he knew he would much rather look at his reflection and try to judge for himself than have Sora tell him what he looked like.
After a few minutes of pretending to keep himself occupied by staring at the patterns in the carpet, he tried to jump-start another conversation.
"Hey, Sora, did you and Matt ever...?"
"No."
For once, he was grateful for her blunt replies.
"Well, what do you... er, what did you do for a living?" he prodded. "Me, I worked for-"
"No offense, but do you ever stop talking?" she asked, her voice tinged with annoyance. "At least take a walk around the hallway or something, so I can have some peace."
He balked again. This was not how he pictured a reunion with Sora at all. "The, uh... the door's locked."
"Pity," she said, turning back to stare at the ceiling.
"Look, what's your problem?" he demanded. "I know we haven't seen each other since high school, but I know we can get along here. You know me, I've always been an easygoing guy, and that hasn't changed. Let's just try to make the best of this situa-."
"Tai, your mouth!" Sora shrieked.
Tai's hands immediately jumped to his face. "What? What is it?"
"Can't you keep it still?" she asked, wincing. "You're always making these weird faces when you talk. It's grotesque."
Tai lowered his hands and stared at her incredulously. "Geez, sorry! But how am I supposed to know what my mouth is doing?"
Sora scowled and turned her back to him. "That's your problem, Tai, you have no sense of... perception. You talk about being polite, then you can't even control your own face. Do you have any idea of how you look to other people? Well, you're not alone here, and you don't have any right to inflict that on me."
Tai was becoming increasingly desperate for something he could see his reflection in. He had never been vain by nature, quite the opposite, he had always thought, but Sora's judgments against him were quickly becoming more than he could stand. And the way she looked at him... each word he fumbled over seemed to sharpen the hard-set lines around her mouth and eyes, until Tai found it almost as difficult to make eye contact with her as he had with the valet.
He sighed. The room was still stiflingly hot, not to mention he was growing tired of looking at it. The ambiguous lighting made everything look flat and severe, and it was giving him a headache. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and cupping his face in his hands, the only way he could think of to block it from his vision, but it was no use. The room seemed to have burned itself into his retinas. What wouldn't he give for an interruption, some temporary reprieve to distract him from this room, from Sora, from himself.
As if on cue, Tai heard the door open and the rustle of the valet's wings. As he started to raise his head, he heard the frightened voice of the room's newest occupant, presumably addressing him.
"No, don't look up! I know what you're hiding!" The voice, and the person it belonged to, was unmistakably female. She was covering her own eyes with her hands, as if she couldn't bear to look at him. "I know you don't have a face anymore!"
In spite of herself, the new person peered though her delicate fingers, and Tai found himself meeting the wide-eyed gaze of yet another familiar face. Dressed impeccably in a long, fitted dress, makeup expertly applied, honey-colored bangs framing her face, there was no doubt in his mind that this was Mimi Tachikawa.
As she realized who she was looking at, he saw her expression morph from terror to confusion to happy recognition in the space of a few seconds.
"Tai!" she smiled. "I thought... I thought someone was playing a nasty trick on me. And Sora! How wonderful! Is anyone else coming?" she addressed this question to the valet.
"No, madam. This room is at maximum capacity," he said in his booming voice.
"Oh!" Mimi exclaimed, continued to look pleased. "Then we're staying together, the three of us." She giggled, and Tai couldn't help but think how foolish she sounded.
"I don't really see what's so funny," he said, hoping the annoyance came through in his voice.
She turned to him, continuing to smile. "It's just this room. The sofas, they're so hideous. And look how they've been arranged!"
Typical Mimi, he thought. The first thing she criticizes about the afterlife would be the decor. At least it seemed she hadn't changed in the course of twenty years.
Meanwhile, Mimi hadn't missed a beat. "I suppose there's one for each of us. Is that mine?" She indicated the only unoccupied couch, the vivid green one against the right wall. "But you can't expect me to sit there! It doesn't match my dress at all!"
Sora looked at her with a friendliness in her eyes that had been quite absent until now. "Would you prefer mine, Mimi?"
"The claret-colored one?" Mimi seemed to be sizing up the offered seat. "That's sweet of you, Sora, but... no, I don't think that would be any better. Nor the rust-colored one." She lowered herself onto the green cushions, smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress as she did so. "We've got to take what comes to us, don't you agree, so I'll stick with this one. There's no use in worrying, anyway."
"Do you require me any longer, madam?" the valet interjected from the doorway.
"Hmm? Oh, no, you can go," said Mimi dismissively, barely even looking at him. "I'll ring when I want you."
Once again, the valet left as silently as he had entered. The door clicked shut with a certain finality that Tai couldn't help but notice.
Mimi continued shifting her gaze from Tai to Sora, beaming gratefully. "I'm really so glad that we're staying together. I'm sure we'll enjoy each other's company, although I can't imagine a stranger place to meet up."
"Well, the room is a lot better with you in it, Mimi," Sora said pointedly. It was difficult for Tai to tell whether or not Mimi had heard her.
"Still," Mimi continued, "I wish the decor was more to my taste. This place could really use some curtains, or paintings on the walls. Maybe some flowers on the mantel." She looked wistfully at the statue. "I used to love flowers, didn't I?"
For a moment, Tai thought that she expected one of them to answer her, but she started speaking again before he could even think of a reasonable response.
"But I don't suppose they'd last long, would they? It's so stuffy here. I'm sure Palmon wouldn't like it either. She'd say she was wilting."
It was the first time any of them had mentioned one of their digimon partners out loud since arriving, and once again Tai's heart ached at the thought of Agumon's absence. The girls seemed similarly lost in thought: Mimi's eyes were large and tragic, while Sora looked pensive, almost guilty. It seemed like a long time before any of them spoke again.
"Well, I... I suppose we'll just have to try to make the best of it all," Mimi said, seeming to shrug off enough sadness to sound halfway cheery again. "So tell me, how long have the two of you been here?"
"I've been here about a week," Sora said quietly. "What about you?"
"Oh, I'm quite recent," said Mimi, as if she were discussing her induction into a new country club. "Yesterday. In fact, the service isn't quite over."
Tai was about to ask how she could have known anything about her own funeral, and for that matter, how she and Sora could know how long they had been here without day or night, clocks or watches, or any other obvious way to note the passage of time, but he wasn't even sure that Mimi would have heard him. She was staring at a corner of the room, eyes focused on something only she could see.
"There's Michael, and Julie," she said in a far-away voice. "Betamon, Floramon... my, but Catherine looks frightful. She's not crying, but I can't blame her- tears always mess up one's face, don't they? Catherine was my closest friend, you know- I mean, after I left Japan."
"Did you suffer much?" Sora asked.
"No, I don't think so. I was unconscious for most of it. Pneumonia," she added. "Ah, there. It's over now. They're all leaving the cemetery. They were quite a crowd. Goodbye, now. Thank you for coming. Bye..."
Mimi seemed to come back to herself, turning her gaze back onto Tai. "My husband stayed home, you know. He was practically sick with grief himself, the dear. What about the two of you? How did you... get to be here?"
"The gas stove," Sora said, her voice emotionless.
"Twelve bullets through the chest," said Tai automatically. He saw the look of horror on Mimi's face, and quickly added, "Sorry! I... I guess I'm not good company among the dead."
He had hoped that this apology would help, but it seemed to have quite the opposite effect.
"Please don't say that word!" Mimi cried, flinching. "It's so very crude. If we're going to talk about this... turn of events, let's call ourselves something else, like... like... absentees. That sounds much better, doesn't it?"
Tai shrugged. "Fine. Whatever."
"Now Tai, how long have you been... absent?" Mimi pressed. She put Tai in mind of the hostess of a formal party at which all the guests had suddenly and violently contracted food poisoning, and she was determined to keep the polite conversation going regardless of how many people threw up on her shoes. The mental image caused him to stifle a smile while considering her question.
"About a month." The answer came to his lips without him really being able to say how, but he knew it was true- at least, that was how much time had passed on Earth since he had entered this room.
A whole month? He could hardly believe it. It certainly hadn't felt that long on this end. Was the time difference similar to that surreal hour he and Koromon had spent in Odaiba after they had defeated Etemon? Did time really pass more quickly elsewhere?
Meanwhile, Mimi was nodding. "Did you both stay in Tokyo?"
"I moved to Kyoto for a while," said Sora, "but I didn't stay there long. I had a place in Shibuya. I was a postal clerk there."
Mimi looked surprised. "Really? Oh. That's... well, that's nice," she said.
"I was in Rio," said Tai wistfully.
"Rio de Janeiro? Oh, how wonderful!" Mimi exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "I never pictured you as much of an international traveler, Tai! I hear Rio is very nice. I always wanted to go on vacation there, but I never got the chance."
"Yeah, well," Tai said, "I went for the soccer, and when that didn't pan out, I just... stayed." He glanced at Sora. She was staring at Mimi, and Tai tried to dredge up an idea of where Mimi might have spent her adult life. Her accent sounded a little strange. "What about you? I sort of lost track after you went to America."
"Oh really, it's not that complicated. I was in New York for all of high school and college, except for the few semesters I spend abroad in Europe. I moved to France after I graduated- Paris, of course- and I've been there ever since."
"Yeah, not complicated at all," said Tai dryly. He was starting to feel irritated again. "Well, anyway, it's been fun, but would you mind if we cut it short? I have some thinking to do."
Both girls stared at him. Sora looked vaguely hopeful, but Mimi looked aghast.
"What are you saying?" she cried. "What could be more important than catching up? We haven't seen each other in who knows how long, and you want to just sit in the corner and keep to yourself?"
"Yeah? So what if I do?" Tai demanded.
"Don't you get it? This-" she gestured around her- "is what happens when people become absent! They get to meet old friends, and relatives and things!"
"Yeah, charming old friends- one with a hole in the middle of his face," Tai said, sharper than he had intended. When Mimi didn't say anything, he continued, somewhat apologetically.
"Look, there are just some things I need to think through," he explained. "I want to try to set my afterlife in order, make peace with the people I left behind. Is there anything wrong with that? You two would do well to do the same, anyway."
"I don't need to," said Sora dismissively. "There aren't any loose ends left in my life. It tidied itself up nicely without any help from me."
"And how do you know that?" Tai asked, the anger rising in his voice. "How did you-" he glared at Mimi- "see your own funeral? How can either of you know anything about what you left behind?"
"Maybe you would too," Sora sniffed, "if you stopped flapping your mouth long enough to think about it."
Tai rounded on Mimi, who looked scared at his sudden outburst, but encouraging. "Do you have anyone down there who still thinks about you, or places that are still important to you? If you do, it'll come."
Thanks, Mimi, that really clears things up, he thought to himself. Frustrated and antsy, he started pacing the length of the room from his couch to the door. So what, he was supposed to think of people back on Earth that he still had ties with? Hadn't he tried that earlier? But, thinking back on his time alone here, he had been focused on the grief of losing Agumon, who he already knew was not among the living anymore. His mind had barely passed over the other DigiDestined, but they had become distant to him so long ago, he didn't think that his ties to them would really matter at this point. Would his co-workers count? It wasn't as if he really had a family anymore...
With a sudden jolt of guilt, he remembered- Kari. His sister was still down there, and he hadn't even spared her a thought since arriving here! But now as he pictured her face, murmured her name, she came into clear focus in front of his eyes, and he could see her as if she was on the other side of a camera lens. The room and the other girls seemed to fade from his vision as he used this impossible, wonderful connection with the world he had left behind.
"I see her, I see Kari," he said, not sure who he was speaking to. "She's at the barracks. She's trying to look through the gate. The guards won't let her in, and of course she wouldn't use Gatomon to get past them. She doesn't know I'm... absent, not yet... but I think she suspects. She's wearing black already. It makes her look like a shadow. She's not crying, she's... she's too strong for that, but she has those big, tragic eyes. She's such a saint." He laughed humorlessly. "How I hate that martyred expression of hers!"
"Tai!" Mimi's cry snapped him back to his current surroundings. He looked at her. She was standing over him, her wide eyes boring into his face.
"What?" he asked, alarmed.
"You're sitting on my sofa."
He looked down. He was indeed sitting on stiff, green cushions.
"Sorry," he muttered, getting back on his feet. He hadn't even realized he had sat down.
Mimi reclaimed her sofa and smoothed out her dress again. "No, it's all right. You looked so far away. Sorry to disturb you."
Tai crossed the room back to his own couch. A familiar unease was squirming through his stomach, and he noticed he was sweating profusely. "Ugh, it's so hot," he muttered without really caring, wanting to re-establish some connection with Earth. "I used to spend my nights in the newspaper office, and it was like this."
The vision came more quickly this time. "It is like this. It's night right now."
"Yes," said Mimi, sounding far away again. "It must be after midnight. Catherine's undressing. Time passes so quickly down there!"
"They've sealed my apartment," Sora said dully. "It's pitch black and empty."
"The men have unbuttoned their shirts and rolled up their sleeves," Tai continued to himself. "Their digimon are panting. They have a Penguinmon, but he can only do so much to offset the temperature. The air stinks- wet fur and B.O. and cigarette smoke."
"How uncouth," Mimi said distractedly, as if she were in a trance. "How did you stand it?"
"I used to like living that way," he answered in the same slow, expressionless voice. "That office was my second home. It was a place for a man to just be a man, you know?"
"That just proves our tastes differ. Maybe it was a good thing I never went to Rio; I prefer men with a little more refinement. What about you, Sora? Which do you prefer?"
"Oh, I don't much care for men either way," said Sora.
They sat silent for a few minutes, lost in their own visions, united temporarily by their desire to rejoin the world they left behind.
"This doesn't make sense to me anymore," said Mimi after a while. "I can't imagine why I'm here with you two, why they would put us together like this."
"A fluke, probably," said Tai, coming back to himself. The newspaper office could wait. He had been wondering the same thing, and now found himself eager to discuss it with the other two. "They put us in rooms as they can, in order of arrival."
Sora laughed harshly, and Tai turned to her. "What's so funny?"
"You!" she said, her mouth set into a hard smile. "The way you talk about flukes. Like they left any of this to chance! I guess you have to reassure yourself somehow."
"Well, why don't you enlighten us, if you're so sure?" Tai shot back.
"But I'm not," she insisted. "I'm really as much in the dark as you are. But I'm not going to delude myself."
"What do you-" he began, but she cut him off.
"How about you, Mimi? Why do you think you're here?"
"Well, I've just said, haven't I?" Mimi said, sounding confused. "I don't have any idea. Honestly, I think all of this might be some sort of horrible mistake. Don't smile," she implored Sora, who was continuing to look cruelly amused. "I mean, just think about how many people become absent every day. They must be sorted out by... well, nobody, really- minimum-wage employees who don't know how to do their job properly. If they made a mistake in my case, mightn't they have done the same for the two of you? And isn't it better to think that they did, anyway? Even though you'd think they'd be a little more careful with us, after we went to the bother to save two worlds."
Sora laughed again, and though Tai desperately wanted to agree that yes, this was all just a big misunderstanding, Mimi's last statement stirred something in the back of his mind.
"It's not a mistake," he said quietly. "That's what the valet said when I asked him. We were left to him because we're DigiDestined. But," he added, getting an idea, "he also told me that he usually deals with digimon. Well, digimon don't die, right? They get reconfigured, and are reborn in Primary Village. Maybe, because we're so closely tied to the Digital World, they decided that we should be reconfigured too!"
"That would make sense!" said Mimi. "So then this room..."
"... Is some sort of waiting room, while they figure out what we'll be coming back as!" Tai finished in a rush of triumph. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed crystal-clear that this theory was correct. He had been worried for nothing. He would be reincarnated as a digimon. And if he were lucky, he would get to see Agumon again, even if he might not recognize or remember him...
"Are you really that dense?" Sora's voice cut across his thoughts sharply.
"Why couldn't it be true? We don't know- how many other DigiDestined have become absent before us? They could already be back in the Digital World! Heck, they could be right next door, waiting for the same thing, and we'd never know!" He wanted to believe it so badly that he could picture it: Izzy, Ken, and Yolei together in a room like this one, having some deep technical discussion about computers; TK and Matt, spending their last few hours as brothers; Cody, meditating like some sort of tiny Buddha. But the images in his mind were not like the visions he had had earlier, of Kari and his newspaper office. He was picturing each DigiDestined as he had last seen them, high-school age.
"That settles it, then. It's mere chance that the three of us ended up in the same room," said Mimi decisively. Tai found himself nodding feebly.
"Mere chance," scoffed Sora again. "Oh yes. The heat is chance. That statue is chance. The sofas are all chance. Well, I don't believe it. It was all arranged like this for a reason. Try changing it, you'll see."
"Oh yeah?" Tai got to his feet, desperate to prove her wrong. He seized his sofa by the armrests and pulled.
Nothing happened.
"They don't move?" Mimi asked as Tai sat back down in disgust. "But really, it's so hideous. All of the angles. I always hated angles. So, what are you saying? It was all laid out beforehand?"
Sora had a superior look on her face. "Yes. And they put us together on purpose."
"But why?"
"How should I know? We've all been here for a while, and nothing's happened yet. Maybe they're waiting for us to do... something."
"They're expecting something from us? Ugh." Mimi said, wrinkling her nose. "I hate the idea of anyone expecting anything from me. It always makes me want to do the opposite."
"How can you hate it? You don't even know what 'it' is!"
"But it sounds like you do!" Tai blurted at Sora. "You've hinted at it enough, so you might as well let us in on it too."
"I told you already," Sora shrugged. "I don't know anything about it. Still, if we only had enough guts to tell..."
"Tell what?"
"Mimi!" Sora said suddenly. "You were the one who wanted to catch up, so tell me some more about yourself."
"Oh, really, what else is there to tell?" Mimi asked. "You know all about me already from when we were kids!"
"I want to know what you've done to be here," Sora said, "assuming there were no mistakes." Even though her tone was casual, there was something about the way she said the last phrase that made the smile fade from Mimi's face. To Tai, it looked like the younger woman wasn't going to continue the conversation, but Sora continued to look steadily at her until it seemed Mimi was only answering in order to fill the silence.
"Well, honestly, who can say? I mean, what I did after college was trivial, really. I had a satisfactory life, traveled around a bit, met some fascinating people, but the money couldn't last forever, you know. I fell on some hard times a few years after I moved to Paris, but I didn't give up. I was terribly poor when I met a man who wanted to marry me, and I said yes, of course. He was very well off, and a kind old soul. Old enough to be my father, if you must know, but it didn't matter. We were happily married for ten years. Then two years ago, I became reacquainted with the man I was fated to love. We knew it the moment we laid eyes on each other after all those years apart. He asked me to run away with him, but I refused. Then I caught pneumonia and it finished me. That's all. Where did I go wrong? I suppose I shouldn't have sacrificed my youth to a man twice my age, but really, could that be called a sin?"
"No way," said Tai. "And do you think it's a crime to stand up for what you believe in?"
"Of course not!" Mimi said, looking aghast. "Is that what happened to you? What about soccer?"
"Hold on. I said the soccer thing didn't work out. I tore some ligaments pretty badly when I was twenty, and that ended it. So, I went back to school. Majored in political science. I wanted to... I dunno, be a politician, or work for the United Nations or something. Well, that didn't work out either. So, I ended up running a pacifist newspaper down there. It got to be pretty popular. Then a civil war broke out. I was approached by both sides, but I had legitimate conscientious objections! I shouldn't have had to fight, but try telling them that. Everyone was watching me, wondering what I would do. So I made a stand. I crossed my arms and they shot me. Did I do anything wrong?"
"No, no!" Mimi cried. "Quite the opposite. You were a-"
"A regular hero," said Sora, a trace of irony in her voice. "Funny, I never imagined you as the pacifist type."
He turned to look at her, scowling. "What's that supposed to mean? Just because I lose my temper sometimes? We've always fought for peace. I just started doing it a little differently. The pen is mightier than the sword and all that, you know?"
"It just shows he's matured," said Mimi. "It's a change for the better, really."
Sora sniffed. "I suppose. And what about Kari?"
Tai glanced down at his lap before answering her, a familiar unease stirring in the pit of his stomach. "She had been teaching in Shinjuku. Primary school. But she got really sick a few years back, and couldn't keep managing by herself. Our parents died in a car crash five or six years before that and didn't leave much to either of us, and she never married. I paid all of her hospital bills, and she moved down to Rio to live with me after that. She helped me out a bit at home, and I spared her from having to go to the poorhouse," he said simply.
"You see?" Mimi said. "We're all perfectly innocent victims of circumstance!"
Sora rolled her eyes. "Please. What's the point of this play-acting, trying to fool each other? Of course we were meant to be here. We're all guilty of the same thing."
"Don't!" Tai jumped to his feet. Panic surged through him as he realized where Sora was heading. He could sense the words she was about to speak as if they were millions of gallons of water on the other side of a dam. As long as those words remained unspoken, he could stay here, dry and safe, ignoring what lay on the other side, even as Sora was making hairline cracks appear before his eyes. "I think you should reconsider before you say more," he said, trying to temper his sudden outburst.
But when Sora looked at him, he saw that his reluctance had only fueled her desire to keep picking away at the one thing that was keeping them from the flood on the other side. "All three of us," she said with a slow smile. "Criminals. Murderers. There's no point in trying to deny it. We're in hell, kids. They never make mistakes, and people aren't damned for nothing."
"How... how dare you?" Mimi demanded, her voice a dangerous whisper, all pretense of politeness gone. "Stop it! Stop-"
"In hell!" Sora crowed, cutting across Mimi's protests. "Damned souls- that's us! Me, and the noble pacifist over there, and even you, Mimi! Don't pretend; you knew as soon as you walked in!"
"Shut your mouth, dammit!" Tai shouted, but it was too late. The dam had burst, and the truth that he had known ever since he came here but refused to recognize came crashing into the room. It covered the floor, stained the walls and ceilings, took up residence on his couch, permeated the very air so that he felt he was drowning in it. This room had been his only refuge, but now he felt himself forced to acknowledge this ugly, audacious fact, sprawled out and naked for them to see at last, and there was no escape anymore.
For a while, no one spoke. He noticed that the other two were standing as well, and all three of them had all moved closer together into a loose triangle in the middle of the room, although he couldn't say when that had happened. Mimi looked like he felt: drained and disheveled. Sora surveyed the two of them with an unsettling calmness and a look of dawning comprehension.
"Well, well," she said after what could have been a moment or a millennium. "I understand now, why they put us together. It's so simple."
When neither of the other two said anything, she continued. "Look at the facts. No physical torments- you'll agree? And yet we're in hell."
Tai forced himself to nod. She was right. It was no use lying to himself anymore.
"It's very economical, really." Sora was smirking now. "Self-serve."
"What are you talking about?" Mimi asked, slightly breathless.
"Each person," said Sora, casting her gaze around to meet their eyes in turn, "is supposed to act as a torturer to the two others."
It took several seconds for this statement to sink in.
"What? No... no!" Tai sputtered. "How can they expect- we've known each other for ages! They have to know that I wouldn't do that to either of you! How could I want to? How could any of us?"
"But that's it, it has to be," Sora said pragmatically. "I don't think we have much of a choice in the matter. They must've known what they were doing. No mistakes, remember?"
"I can't believe that. Even though we're here, we still have free will. They didn't take that from us at the entrance!" Tai insisted. He clenched his fists, suddenly combative again. "We have the choice not to, so we won't. It's as simple as that. No one can make us do it if we refuse."
"But what can we do?" Mimi asked him plaintively, and Tai felt a rush of pleasure to know that she was looking to him to give them direction, even though they hadn't seen each other in twenty years, even though he had handed over the role of leader of the DigiDestined to Davis when he passed his goggles to him.
"I'll tell you," he said, looking at both women seriously. "If they mean for us to torture each other, we need to stop interacting with each other. We're going to stay in our own corners and keep to ourselves. Ignore the other two. It's the only way, if we're going to be... tempted, or whatever, to play their sick game otherwise." He walked back over to his couch and heard the others do the same.
"See?" he said, once they were all sitting. "It won't be so bad. We each have our own thoughts to keep us company. We could all do with some self-reflection. I think I could keep occupied for a thousand years, easily."
"Do I have to stay quiet too?" Mimi asked, pouting slightly.
Tai nodded. "Yes. We all do. And that way, we'll work out our own salvation. Sound like a plan?"
"Fine," said Sora indifferently.
"All right," said Mimi uncertainly.
"Great," Tai attempted a smile and tried not to sound awkward. "Well. I guess... goodbye then."