11. And Awash With Hope
He can't find her.
Panic builds Like a volcano. His feet are bleeding. His body is burning. Bakumon has started crying once every few hours. He goes off too far. And Daigo worries, but he cannot say so. He cannot make him worse. When they find Hime, he has to smile. He has to be able to smile.
It gets hard.
It gets so hard.
Then his heart stops and he sees and sees-
Mugendramon.
And Gennai.
No. No. They killed you we killed you.
Everything gets rebooted. Hime-chan, the world, the them.
He remembers now. He remembers that instant of seeing her. And her face, so unhappy. So scared and sad and knowing. She knew and she had always known, had always been there
Daigo hadn't been dreaming her and now and now and-
He stops walking. He can't move anymore. He slumps to his knees and sobs with a smile on his face.
It's all he can do to do either of those things.
Bakumon ignores him. And Liollmon-
He doesn't appear.
Himekawa Maki is not what Meiko imagined.
Little Maki does skip every third step like Daigo-said. She rarely trips and she smiles with only her mouth. Her eyes are like the setting sun.
But she does not have the feeling of childlike innocence. She smile with her mouth but her eyes have something that human eyes don't have, that normalcy and pleasure and falliable irrationalty is missing. There is a little girl here, but she's not too.
"We're going to meet Ni~ji then?"
"Niji?"
"Daigo!" Maki skips her third and sixth, skips and spins on her tenth. It is repeated and practiced. "They told me so. They told me he was here. Your friends are here."
Meiko frowns and then it slips off like water. It's easier to smile now, perhaps due to the presence of this girl. "They?"
"The lights." Maki looks at her with those eyes and seems very odd. "The balance lights. They talk to me a lot. They… they talk to me all the time." She smiles wearily. "They told me I was special. It's bad to tell kids that, my mom said."
Meiko, thinking of the grave with no body, believes this. "Your mom's smart. Have you..." she pauses. "Have you seen a big orange cat around here?"
"Meicoomon?"
Meiko smiles, nods too quickly. "Yes!"
Maki nods. "She is scared. She is looking for you. Things are dying again." She looks at her tiny hands. "Your partner's so angry." She frowns for a second. "I wonder where mine is."
And it all clicks together like a plug to an outlet.
Daigo-san, kind, friendly Daigo-san, who fretted after Meicoomon and tripped over his words, had used them. He had used them all for what? Meiko looks at little Maki, who is now just ahead of her. For this little girl. Her friends, if she could call them that, lost everything for her sake.
"So now you know."
Ichijouji Ken walks into view. "I'm glad. So, will you help us?"