Nestled underneath his worn comforter, Koushiro Izumi's mind was wide awake, sleep eluding him in the early hours of the morning.
Outside, cicadas sang their lonely song, the moon full and bright against the inky black sky.
His mind trapezed from one strand of thought to another, unable to stay stagnant for long.
Earlier, as he brushed his teeth methodically, Koushiro took time to study his reflection. The bathroom mirror was flecked with toothpaste from nights prior, his image warped from condensation.
After the toothpaste foam was spit down the drain, he stared at himself, allowing his eyes to trail over the minute details of his face, scanning and observing until a hypothesis formed.
Koushiro forced the corners of his lips up into a smile, taking note of the way his eyes crinkled, studying the slight scrunch of his nose. Memories of sitting on his father's lap, watching as his face lit up from a joke long forgotten, resurfaced.
In the reflection, Koushiro's smile dropped. His father's nose didn't scrunch like his; his father's eyes refused to crinkle.
Running a comb through his damp hair, Koushiro continued to look at himself, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. In the dim light of the bathroom, his heart sank as he realized that his hair was too bright, too vibrant, too red.
Visions of Koushiro's mother, face glowing with happiness, invaded his senses. His mother's hair was subdued, a mere whisper of crimson compared to his flaming locks.
The hypothesis remained stubbornly in the forefront of Koushiro's mind: he would never resemble his parents.
At thirteen years old, Koushiro knew better than to believe the kind strangers that insisted he was his father's spitting image. He knew by now that his hair would never fade to his mother's breathtaking auburn.
Koushiro had resigned himself to the inevitability of never seeing his own deep, brown eyes reflected back to him.
As he tossed and turned, Koushiro's mind couldn't cease. The walls of his apartment were thin, the sound of his father snoring being the only sound to accompany his thoughts.
Did his birth father snore, Koushiro wondered? Did his birth mother have the same soulful eyes?
Would they have been proud of him?
The faded photographs in an aging scrapbook were older than he was. The smiles were staged around the twinkling lights of birthday parties, their poses anything but natural.
Did they ever hold each other when there wasn't a lens pointed at them?
Would they have been like the parents in movies, dancing to a tune only they could hear in the kitchen late at night?
A memory floated to the surface of his mind. Koushiro, still bruised from his summer camp adventure, padded his way into the living room. It was much too late to be awake, but his parent's voices floated easily into his room.
"Is everything alright?" His voice sounded small, even to his own ears.
Together, they assured him. Nothing was wrong, they insisted. The worry lines on his mother's forehead told a different story.
On the coffee table sat a photo album of people Koushiro had never met. A tentative glance registered the faded smile of a woman, a bundle of something pressed close to her chest.
His parents eyed him carefully, an explanation forming, but Koushiro remained silent.
As they sat together on the couch, hands intertwined, Koushiro could see their worry. A few weeks ago, they had promised to answer any questions that he had.
At the time, his mind pulled a blank. Where could you start when trying to learn about people you had never met?
Now, the questions bubbled to the surface, poised on the tip of his tongue. His mother braced herself, gripping his father's hand tightly.
All it took was a glance at her eyes, at the wrinkle on his father's brow to understand.
Koushiro knew then that he would never ask them, that he would rather go to the grave with questions than to have his parents unsure of where they stood with him. With a hug to each parent, nine-year-old Koushiro went back to sleep.
In the four years that had passed, his curiosity had grown insatiable. What would his biological parents have thought of his friends? What would they have thought of Tentomon?
As the digital clock perched on the bedside table ticked on, Koushiro resigned himself to never knowing.
Tears pricked his eyes as a realization crept into his mind: the only people that would know how his birth parents preferred their coffee or their thoughts on his digital adventures were dead.
Silently, Koushiro allowed his eyelids to flutter shut. He forced his breathing to even out as snippets of memories filled his senses.
A soft lullaby, too low for him to make out the words, and the shapeless form of someone smiling down at him. These were the memories that Koushiro clung to. These were the only instances of his parent's existence that he had been privy to, and yet, they were faded and worn at the edges like his well-loved photographs. He held onto those flashes, clung to them with a ferocity he had never known he was capable of.
There was no question that he belonged to his parents. They were the ones that tied every loose shoelace, wiped every tear from his cheeks. His mother had been the one to cook onigiri for a week when the thought of eating anything new overwhelmed Koushiro.
His father had taken the time to kick a soccer ball around when Koushiro was desperate to learn, afraid of his friends leaving him behind if they chose different after school clubs.
Together, the three of them had faced every obstacle, digital or otherwise. They had loved Tentomon merely because Koushiro did, setting aside their worries and concerns for the happiness of their child.
Their child. Koushiro was theirs, a living mosaic of their life lived together.
He would never have his father's stern jaw or his mother's willowy frame. He would never be able to look in the mirror and see the reflection of the people that raised him, cared for him, loved him beyond all reason.
But Koushiro had his father's dry sense of humor. He inherited his mother's concern for every living creature, her laugh, her thirst for knowledge.
The hallway was adorned with photos of a full and happy childhood. Pictures of Koushiro's first steps and science fair projects were sandwiched between their family vacations. In every photograph, Koushiro was sandwiched in the middle, his parents smiling down on him.
They had been the ones to watch him grow, to support his education and every endeavor. They had been the ones to celebrate his achievements, to love him as their own.
They were proud of him.
He would never meet the people that brought him into this world, would never learn about the books that were on their bookshelves or their hobbies they were sure to have had.
It was best not to focus on the things he would never know, Koushiro decided. It would be much more efficient to study the data he had access to.
He knew that his birth parents had loved him, and that would have to be enough.
The digital clock ticked forward once more, a pair of eyelids finally feeling heavy.
With a sigh, Koushiro settled in, burrowing down further into the warmth of his bed. The sound of his father's snoring lulled him into sleep, his dreams filled with an embrace, the whisper of a kiss on his forehead.