It had all started when Ken saw the photo.

Miyako and Ken had come to visit Daisuke in order to help him retrieve some things, and Daisuke, being the rather messy sort, was digging all sorts of things haphazardly out of his desk. The photo was flung out of the drawer and onto the floor, causing Ken to reflexively pick it up.

In it were Daisuke, Miyako, Iori, Takeru, and Hikari, all cheerfully posing together with their partners, in front of what seemed to be a building.

"Hey, hey, what's that?"

Miyako came by to look over his shoulder, only for her to freeze up. Ken looked back at her, curious at what warranted the reaction.

"...Ah. That. That, uh...that."

"Miyako-san?"

Daisuke quickly noticed the commotion, and bent over to look.

"Huh? What's going on?...Oh."

Ken looked between Daisuke and Miyako, noticing both of their faces looking stoic and cold.

"...I, I don't want to think about this!" yelled Miyako, her tone suddenly strangely tense. She snatched the photo out of Ken's hands, shaking.

"Miyako-san, what's wrong..."

"Nothing! Nothing at all!" she exclaimed, in a tone that made it very clear it was not nothing.

Ken turned back to Daisuke to see if he had any explanation, but Daisuke was only gritting his teeth awkwardly. He took the photo from Miyako, sighed, and put it on top of the desk.

"...Don't worry about it. Anyway..."

Daisuke went back to looking for what he was looking for, and Miyako was biting her lip hard enough that even Ken could see it looked painful. Seeing their reactions only made him more curious as to what could possibly be going on, but it was clear that pressing the issue would get no answer from them.

He looked back at the picture on the desk.

The group seemed to be in the Digital World, with all ten of them in the photo smiling cheerfully. Given the time of day pictured there, it seemed to be late afternoon or early evening. Ken didn't remember any recent occasion in which the photo could have been taken, and, given the awkward reactions Miyako and Daisuke had just given him, he was able to figure it out pretty quickly:

The photo had likely been taken before he'd joined them, while he'd still been fighting them as the Kaiser.

After the day had ended and Ken had returned home with Wormmon, Ken discovered that the picture had ended up in his bag somehow. He didn't remember how – he wasn't sure if he'd accidentally picked it up off the desk when cleaning things up, or whether it had fallen in, or whether he might have even taken it unconsciously.

He looked back at the photo, mulling over everyone's smiling faces. Being the type to inspect details, he quickly noticed that Hikari's camera wasn't on her person, meaning that they'd probably gotten someone (probably a friendly Digimon) to take the photo for them. He couldn't recognize the area they were in; the building behind them made it seem like they were in some kind of village, but he hadn't given much of a thought to individual villages back then…

"Is something wrong, Ken-chan?" said Wormmon, hanging onto Ken's back and also looking at the photo.

"Nothing in particular. It's just…"

"Are you worried about the photo?"

"Not worried, I guess. I mean, it's not that strange for a picture like this to exist, but…"

There was a strange feeling about the picture that he couldn't quite put in words. He hadn't really put much thought into what it must have been like for them to actually fight him back then, but it seemed like they'd been able to enjoy themselves at times like these. It was a bit of a relief, in a way, knowing that there were times they'd been able to be happy even despite everything he'd been doing to them at the time.

And yet…

"They look happy," said Wormmon.

"Yeah," said Ken.

All of them were happy. Even back then, they'd been having this much fun together. And yet, for the past few months, they'd been going out of their way to get him into their circle…

A pang of guilt rose up.

"…I don't know how to put it, but when I look at this, I wonder how much of a burden I've been putting on them…"

"You shouldn't feel that way, Ken-chan," said Wormmon. "I'm sure they don't feel that way at all."

"I know. But…"

He continued to look at the picture through the light on his desk, as if staring at it any further would get any more out of it.

Ken's better judgment told him that he'd have to return the photo to Daisuke eventually, but his and Miyako's reactions had made it quite clear that it wasn't like it'd be missed much, so he decided to make a detour before doing so. It had been about a week since he had first found it, and the group, on a shopping outing, had split up, leaving him with Takeru and Iori.

Once Ken had confirmed that Daisuke and Miyako weren't in earshot, and the three of them had a free moment, he showed them the picture and asked if they knew or remembered anything about it.

"This picture…" said Iori. "I feel like I might remember something about it. Do you remember anything, Upamon? Takeru-san?"

"I remember!" said Upamon. "We took a rest stop at the village after destroying some Dark Towers, dagya!"

"They fed us dinner and we had a celebratory party!" said Patamon. "Daisuke and Miyako were making a bet on who'd be the first to strangle – "

Iori and Takeru suddenly grabbed their partners and clamped their hands around their mouths.

But despite their presumed expectations, Ken actually started laughing.

"No, no, I probably deserved that, don't worry too much about it…"

"W-Well! You know, it was a long time ago, after all…" said Takeru, awkwardly laughing. He looked more closely at the photo. "Certainly, I remember something like that happening. But…"

Iori, Takeru, and their partners continued staring at the photo, and Ken noticed that there was a pretty deep frown on all of their faces. Ken wondered if they were maybe feeling bad about the accidental offense they'd just incurred. In actuality, he hadn't been lying – it was kind of funny in some sense, given the irony of the current situation, and he'd probably really deserved it, and that did sound like something Daisuke and Miyako would do.

But Iori and Takeru still seemed worried about it, and Ken, in turn, felt a little guilt for making them have this kind of concern over it…

Hikari wasn't the kind of person who would meet up with people alone very often, so in order to ask her about the photo, Ken had to actually arrange a meeting with her in advance. Even if she hadn't been the one to push the shutter herself, he knew that it was very likely that she'd been the one to arrange to have the photo taken, and, being an enthusiast about photos being record keepers of memories, would probably be the one most likely to understand the significance of the photo.

Upon hearing Ken's question, Hikari took the photo from him and looked over it carefully, with Tailmon also looking at it from her shoulder.

"Ah, I definitely remember this one…It wasn't very often we had free time to get dinner together in the Digital World like this, and the village members were so kind, so I wanted us to have a photo for the occasion," said Hikari. "I recall it was something like that. Everyone had worked so hard that day…"

Ken observed that she was dodging anything to do with the Dark Towers or the kind of work they'd been involved in back then, and while he appreciated it, it only made him feel even more nervous about everyone's antsiness regarding the picture.

"Um…" he said. "I noticed everyone – Daisuke and Miyako-san, Iori-kun and Takeru-kun, all of them were having difficulty talking about this around me, but if it's because I was fighting them as the Kaiser back then, I think everyone shouldn't feel so bad about it. It's the truth of what was going on back then, after all…"

He looked back at the photo.

"Everyone looks so happy in it, so I don't want everyone to feel bad about it…"

But, surprisingly, Hikari shook her head.

"No…I don't think it's that. Well, there is that, but I think the reason is something else. The truth is…" There was a long pause, as if she were debating whether it would be okay to say what was coming next. "The truth is, I don't really like looking at this picture very much myself. It makes me a little uncomfortable, for some reason…I think that's what everyone was feeling."

She continued to look at the photo, even tracing her finger over it. There was a moment of silence as she and Tailmon ruminated over it, before Tailmon chimed in.

"I think the problem is that it feels wrong. There's something missing. Something that should be there."

Ken and Wormmon both looked at the two of them carefully, and a little nervously.

Something missing?

By that, do they mean –

A very resolute expression appeared on Hikari's face, very suddenly. It was like her entire demeanor had changed in half a second, startling Ken as she looked directly at him in the eye.

"Ichijouji-kun. Would it be okay if you could do us a favor?"

On a desk lay a single photo of five kids and their Digimon partners smiling cheerfully – but it was impossible to see those faces without disturbing the second photo on top of it, newly printed and with vivid colors.

In it was the same location, the same time of day, but instead of the same ten participants from before, there were now a sixth person and his partner standing there, huddled with the others near the center.

The picture was packed more tightly, and was more crowded, and the smiles on everyone's faces were brighter than ever before.

[Author's note]

This was one of those ideas that popped into my head and wouldn't leave. I think most of it is pretty self-explanatory, so I hope you enjoyed it! (I'm still working on Glasses Girl. I promise.)