A/N: The revamp continues!

Spring Ranting

Chapter two - Tai's Little Secret

"Your mom told me to pick you up because of some last minute preparations she had for you," he told her a little impatiently, his body language saying that he was eager to get out of the airport. Unfortunately, Sora hadn't quite processed what he had told her just yet.

"Hey...Takenouchi? You all right?" Tai asked, snapping his fingers in her face. She was in too much shock to respond.

How could he be living with her? How come Mom or Dad never said a single thing about Tai and his family living in our house? No...this was a joke, it's all a joke. Tai was just pulling her leg. That had to be it. There was no way he was living with her. She couldn't have to face her mother AND Tai at the same time! Facing latent problems with her mom was enough of a dilemma. Now Tai was living with her? She was already thinking of some dialogue between her and her mother once they came face to face because she knew it was going to be awkward, but now Tai was shoved in her face!

The gods hate me...what did I do wrong?

It's your Geometry grades, her conscience told her. Well...her conscience could be right. She really should've told her dad about those grades. Eh. He was going to find out anyway...

"Takenouchi," Tai called again, this time, succeeding in getting her attention.

Oh yeah, back to the subject. "You're joking right?"

"No, I'm not. Man, you haven't changed at all. You're mind still processes slowly," Tai said, knowing, and purposefully knowing, that it would provoke her. He turned his back with a small gesture for her to follow him. As angry as that comment made her, she didn't return with a comeback. Things were suddenly moving way too fast for her. She simply followed him as he made his way towards a red car.

Sora was so unaccustomed to seeing Tai with a car that she was slightly amazed. The last time she ever saw him, he was using that orange bike he found at the local metal dump site.

What did you expect, Sora? It's been four years, she told herself. She sighed and proceeded to enter.

"Hey, you need me to put that in the back?" Tai asked, offering to take her bag. She clutched it protectively to her chest.

"I'm fine," she responded with a small smile. The smile was fake, of course, just like the smile he was giving her back. Hey, at least he wasn't trying to dump any kind of mushy liquid or substance on her head like he had many times before. She was still a little weary but just assured herself that Tai was four years older and four years more mature. Hopefully. He got into the front seat.

As Tai drove, Sora scanned the passing objects, signs, and people. It seemed slightly newer than last time. Now there were more housing developments, lots of high rise apartment buildings, and restaurants she's never seen before. It was a lot less intimate, less close-knit. Four years ago, a person knew everyone within a 5-mile radius. She doubted that now with all the new homes that have been built and are still being built. Now the small town seemed more like a mini cosmopolitan; the people around didn't seem to know squat about each other by the way they passed by one another. Plus there were TONS of tourists.

"Odaiba sure changed a lot," Sora couldn't help but say to herself.

"Odaiba wasn't the only thing that changed," Tai responded, even if he knew Sora's comment was rhetorical.

Sora turned to face him, but since she sat in the back seat, she couldn't see his expression. What the hell did he mean by that?

She decided not to dwell on it and proceeded to look out the window. As they stopped at a stoplight, a group of boys crossed the street. Sora hadn't noticed them at first, but then, a pair of blue eyes caught her attention.

She squinted into the sun. That blond hair, that face, those dark blue eyes. That boy was vaguely familiar...

Then she realized who it was. Matt Ishida... she thought and mouthed at the same time.

His eyes had caught hers, and the two locked gazes for a couple seconds before Matt continued on down the street. There was barely a spark of recognition, but Sora knew that Matt remembered her.

At the same moment, the light turned green.

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"Mrs. Takenouchi! Your daughter's home!" Tai called through the large apartment as he dropped his keys on a nearby counter. Sora watched the keys flop onto the surface before her eyes began examining her surroundings. The house looked completely different! The walls were filled with paintings of wispy figures, male and female, some completely naked. The walls were painted an appealing pale yellow instead of the hideous dark blue it had once been when she and her dad were living there. The furniture was also different. There was a large comfy looking brown couch in the living room, a glass coffee table and a modern entertainment center housing a 50" LED TV. From where she was standing, the kitchen looked completely renovated. There were cherry wood cabinets and fronts, granite countertops, and stainless steel appliances. It was a totally different house. Still, she didn't feel uncomfortable with the changes…

She watched Tai climb up the stairs, still calling for her mother as he disappeared down a corner. She slowly walked into the living room as if to make sure that it was still in the same section of the house.

There, she found an unexpected figure: A young girl, about 12 or 13, playing video games with a cat sitting next to her, scratching at the figures on the screen.

The girl turned, giving Sora a brief smile before continuing on with her game. "You're back Sora onee-chan. Never thought I'd see you again," she said nonchalantly, surprising the redhead.

"Who..." Sora began, before recognition hit her. Of course! If Tai was living here, his sister obviously was too! "Kari?"

"Who else?" Kari asked, jokingly. "Wanna play COD Onee-chan?"

"Thanks! I'll kick your butt as soon as I unpack...where's my mom?"

"We'll see about that, I'm pretty good," Kari returned with a smirk. "She's probably upstairs still fixing up your room."

Sora smiled. Okay...so her mother was making her room all nice and perfect for her. She didn't ditch her after all!

Her smile widened as she headed up the stairs. She still felt probably more like a stranger in the house than Tai or Kari, but more nostalgia was seeping into her as she crossed the subtly familiar house. She walked down the hall knowing that just a door down, her room lay. She gently pushed the door, trying hard not to make a sound as she opened it.

Inside, her mother was arranging a gift on the bed, twisting it here and there, unsatisfied with its position on the futon. She moved away from it and gazed at it from a further position.

Sora felt a surge of endearment for her mom. She's doing all this for me? she thought, as she watched her mother slide it into a final position before turning to walk out the door.

She was surprised and slightly mortified when she found Sora peeking through the door. Then a smile slowly crept to her face before she wordlessly walked up to her daughter and gave her one of those gentle motherly hugs.

"I've missed you," she whispered into her daughter's ear.

"I missed you too Mom."

"You never came to visit!"

"You never asked," Sora returned solemnly, looking up into her mother's familiar eyes. Everything about her was different, her figure, the way she wore her make-up, her hair was cut differently, and the clothes she wore looked like they were made specifically for her. But those eyes...they were still the same as they'd always been.

"I'm sorry honey...oh! I forgot to mention to you that Tai and Kari are living with us along with their mother. It-it just happened so fast...I mean, after Tai's dad got in that train accident, they couldn't pay for the-"

"What!" Sora exclaimed. She never knew Tai's dad got in an accident! If she did, she never would've been so mean to him!

"Yes...they couldn't afford to pay for the medical bills and their apartment plus they were already struggling financially, so I offered them our home. You're fine with it right?"

The way Mrs. Takenouchi asked the question made it difficult for Sora to disagree.

"Yeah...um, it's fine..." she replied. I think, Sora thought. The exact moment she saw Tai's face in the airport, all the horrible memories flooded back to her in mere seconds.

Now she had to live with him for three months?

"Great! I hope you two get along now that you're mature adults," her mother said, emphasizing the last phrase a little too obviously while her eyes stared into hers intently.

"I'll just avoid him. That way, I don't get the urge to sock him for all the years of utter torture he put me through."

"Sora. Please! Tai was mature enough to tell me himself that he wasn't going to try and fight with you this time."

Sora sighed. "Fine...sure... It's just that every time I see him, I just want to blow his head off," Sora said, her teeth slightly grinding.

"I hope that's not some naughty euphemism about the fantasies you have of me," Tai's teasing voice came from the halls. He was leaning on the threshold, arms crossed, with that lopsided grin pasted on his face.

Sora rolled her eyes before her gaze fell on him. "You wish Yagami."

"Whatever Takenouchi!"

"You're the one being disgusting!"

"Well if you hadn't made it so easy for me—"

"You two! That's enough!" Mrs. Takenouchi turned to Tai. "You promised not to start any fights!" Then she turned to Sora. "You agreed to be a mature adult!"

The two had their heads down and hands folded in the front. Mrs. Takenouchi gave a small smirk, remembering the two of them as children. When they were scolded they both looked exactly the way they looked now; the looks on their faces had been even guiltier especially after the two of them had been caught in an especially intense physical fight, their faces covered in dirt, bruises and scratch marks on their arms, and scrapes on their knees. At first, the fighting made her furious, especially at Tai; that young disheveled, brown haired boy should not have been picking fights with her daughter, but she realized that the fights were mainly harmless and this was simply the young boy displaying his infatuation with her beautiful doe-eyed, auburn haired daughter. Of course, when things got too heated, she or Tai's mother interfered and that was how the two mothers befriended one another.

There was a very small, but distinguishable "sorry" from the guilty party, curling Mrs. Takenouchi's small smirk into a full-fledged smile.

"Good, now I'm going to go down and make lunch. You two behave yourselves," Mrs. Takenouchi said, pointing a finger at the two teens before leaving the room. She paused, "Oh, and that present on your bed is a key to the bike rack by the front door. Got you a red schwinn."

"Really? Wow…Thanks Mom, you didn't have to…" she murmured coyly. Sora always wanted a red schwinn cruiser. She couldn't believe her mom remembered. Mrs. Takenouchi simply smiled at her daughter before she shut the door quietly behind her.

Once she left, Sora's eyes turned to Tai. She scowled and poked him in the arm.

"Hey! What the hell was that for!" Tai growled, slightly shoving her away.

"Look what you did! My first hour here and Mom's already scolding me! And she got me a schwinn! A SCHWINN. If it wasn't for your nasty thoughts-"

"It was a joke!"

"You're always starting trouble!"

"Well, you're just a bitch!"

"You jerk!I can't stand you!" Sora shouted, storming out of the room, leaving Tai fuming. He watched her slam the door before kicking the nearest thing to him-which happened to be Sora's old soccer ball sitting by her bed.

"Stupid girl..." he muttered under his breath, trying to calm his wavering nerves.

So Sora's feelings about him still hasn't changed... So...is it better that she never finds out? he asked himself.

To make sense of what he said, one would have had to dig not only into his past, but into his thoughts of the past (and present) as well. The reason being, Tai was as stubborn as they can get. He avoided emotional conversation, such as revealing hidden, passionate feelings about someone, or giving an in-depth "sorry" when he did something wrong.

But he wasn't just avoiding it; he just wasn't any good at telling people how he felt-because if he was...he'd express it damn well.

Well anyway, Tai had some hidden feelings for the ruby eyed redhead before she left and the feelings continued to linger long after she was gone. He was terrified of his feelings, especially at such a young age, so he attempted to keep it from all of those around him. Unfortunately, Tai's affections were much stronger than his willpower to avoid expressing them to Sora and those around him quickly figured things out. When around Sora, the young brunette was always blushing, shy, sweet, then volatile, and rude as if he were trying to cover up his feelings by making her feel miserable around him. Tai recalled being so embarrassed by his feelings and how he handled himself that he began to feel relieved that she was gone. He no longer had to continue making a fool of himself around her. He no longer had to explain his bizarre behavior when he was around Sora to anyone else. Years went by and he finally chalked it up to a (very intense) childhood crush. Nothing more. But as soon as his chocolate eyes met her ruby ones in the airport lobby today, his heart skipped a beat, unequivocally reminding him that it was no simple crush.

Taichi Yagami had been a little boy in love.

It was as simple as that. He realized he would have had to reveal his feelings to her somewhere down the line, but it was in a future time that little Tai had no reason to think about yet. One major thing he was dreading (and still is) was rejection. He figured he could reveal his feelings for her any time he wanted. Plus as a child, he naively believed that everyone stayed in the same town forever. Since he believed that Sora was going to live in Odaiba forever, why not wait until they were older to tell her how he felt? So when Sora unexpectedly moved to Okayama with her dad a week before spring break four years ago, he was devastated. He had to move up his confession much, much sooner. In fact, he had planned to tell her the day before she had to leave.

So he wrote her a little letter.

"Dear Sora" was crossed out and small sketches of stick figures were drawn around the side (probably out of boredom or indecision, but who knows?). It was slightly crumpled and the handwriting and grammar were horrible, but it was still very readable.

If he had nice penmanship and some grasp on grammar, it would have read something like this:

Sora,

There's no other way I could address you because I can't really describe how I feel about you. You're not "Dear Sora" or "My Darling whatever" because-I know this is hard to believe-but you may be more than that to me. So yeah...the reason I wrote this was because I like you, or rather, I have some weird feelings for you that won't seem to go away.

As you may know, I act like a total jackass to you, but I don't hate you at all, it's just my way of hiding how I feel about you from the others. I know, I sound like I'm ashamed of liking you but that's not it at all. I was just afraid that if you ever found out, you'd laugh and tell me off in front of everyone, and that would just hurt really badly. Even though in reality, I know you're a much better person than that. In fact I have a whole list of stuff that makes you a better person than I'll ever be, but you probably don't want to hear all that stuff about yourself.

So by now, you could probably tell that I'm no good at this "confession" stuff. But at least I finally told you how I felt, right?

You know something, I knew I felt something different about you ever since I met you. Do you remember third grade? Mrs. Satsuki told us the day before that we should bring something to class to give to someone else. So we all brought something to give, including me. I had this old, Superman Pez container that still worked and still smelled like sweet, yummy Pez. I handed it over to Kimi. She said thanks and whatever then gave her present to her friend Kazuki.

Everyone ended up with something except me. So I sucked it up and held out my egotistical pride, saying I was too mature for all that baby gift stuff-and then you walked over to me and handed me a hacky-sack that someone gave you, then without a word, you smiled at me and then walked back to your seat, not caring if you had a gift or not. You must've noticed me kicking the seat in front of me, sulking, or muttering to myself.

I was a short, scrawny kid that everyone teased and you were the first kid to ever show me kindness besides my little sister.

Man, you're probably reading it on your plane ride to Okayama and thinking, 'Wow, that idiot likes me huh?' or thinking 'Wow, that bastard's playing another joke on me.' or maybe even, 'Oh, that idiot's on some new kind of drug,' But it's not like that, believe me. Besides, if this was a joke, you can come back over here and smack me in the face as hard as you can.

You probably have better things to do right now, so I'll leave it at that. It would have been longer, but I already said too much, maybe even more than I wanted. But yeah, that's it. That's what I'd like to call, my rant before spring...or spring ranting.

Maybe I'll see you around then?

Love, Tai

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A/N: I know I changed some things a little bit but I noticed some discrepancies in the later chapters that made some things not make a lot of sense. Anyway, hope you're still enjoying my story!