Daisuke was already in bed asleep when the phone call came, and so was everyone else in his family. This normally wouldn't have presented a problem, since there was an answering service to accept calls that came in when nobody was home or inclined to pick up the phone, but this particular caller was very persistent. The phone kept ringing for ten minutes until Daisuke's sister finally woke up and answered it.
Irritated that it was neither a life-or-death emergency nor for herself, she was not gentle in waking Daisuke. "Wake up," she said, kicking the side of his bed until the snores stopped and her brother muttered something that might have been "go away."
"No, there's a call for you and you're going to take it." She kicked the bed again. Under other circumstances, Jun wouldn't have been this short with Daisuke, but it was almost one in the morning and she'd been up late the night before chatting with some of her friends over the Internet. She was tired and annoyed and just wanted to get the phone into her brother's hands and out of her own. He rolled over and pulled the covers over his head, so she grabbed the blanket and yanked it off him entirely; one of his stuffed animals fell on the floor and squeaked. "Get up and take this, I'm not playing with you."
Daisuke swore and gave her a sleepy glare, no more pleased to be awake at this hour than she was. "What are you talking about?" He rubbed his eyes and sat up a little.
"Phone call. For you. Take it." She shoved the phone into his hand and turned to leave, her mission accomplished. The door shut behind her.
Daisuke stared at the handset for a moment, wondering who on earth could be calling him at this hour. He lifted the phone to his ear and said, "Moshi moshi?"
"Daisuke?" came the excited reply.
"Um ... yeah, who's this?" Daisuke squinted to make out the numbers on the clock.
"It's Ken. I didn't wake you, did I?"
Shit, it was ten 'til one. His brain still playing catch-up, Daisuke next started to hunt around the bed for Chibimon. "Yeah, kinda. What's up?" Chibimon was quickly located on the floor, under the blanket Jun had torn off him to wake him up. The little Digimon looked indignant and offended, and Daisuke rubbed the top of his head to apologize.
"Sorry. What time is it? I forgot to check. Damn, I'm sorry, I didn't know it was this late. I'll let you get back to sleep." Ken sounded disappointed, but not too much so.
"No, no, it's fine. I'm awake now. What's wrong?" Yawning, Daisuke rearranged the covers atop himself and let Chibimon crawl up onto his stomach.
"Who is it?" asked Chibimon quietly, his indignation assuaged.
"Ken," mouthed Daisuke. Chibimon's ears pricked up with interest and he bounced on Daisuke's tummy.
"Lemme talk to him!"
"Nothing's wrong," Ken was saying in the meantime. "I just wanted to talk. Is that Chibimon?"
"Yeah, he wants to say hi," Daisuke managed to say before his Digimon wrested the phone from his grasp. "Okay, okay, here, don't rip my arm off."
"Moshi moshi!" said Chibimon into the phone, proudly. After watching Daisuke talk on the phone a few times, Chibimon had been anxious to try it for himself for several weeks, but the opportunity had never come up before. "I'm fine. I was having a nice dream but Daisuke's sister woke me up. Uh huh, I was dreaming about being Paildramon and saving Daisuke from evil spire Digimon! It was fun! Really? That's neat! What did Wormmon say?"
Daisuke watched Chibimon eagerly chatter away, wondering what had possessed Ken to call him at one in the morning, just to talk. Ken hadn't been exactly friendly ever since what Daisuke was starting to privately call the "jogress incident"; he hadn't been unfriendly, per se, but Ken had clearly been less thrilled with the idea of Paildramon than Daisuke was. Ken had been keeping his distance from Daisuke, drawing back whenever Daisuke made any kind of overture toward him, no matter how innocent. It had taken him a little while, but Daisuke had finally accepted that Ken was never going to want to kiss him again. It hurt some, but it hurt more that Ken didn't seem capable of being around him at all and avoided him whenever possible.
He understood that Ken perceived him as dangerous, that Ken didn't trust himself to be near Daisuke without doing something extreme. He understood it, but he didn't have to like it. Especially after hearing the slow beat of Ken's heart just before Exveemon and Stingmon jogressed together ... in the past few days, Daisuke sometimes imagined that he could hear it beating still, keeping time with his own.
The phone handset suddenly looked different to Daisuke. It was a portal that could connect him, no matter how remotely, to Ken, and Chibimon was hoarding it for himself. "Come on, give it back now," he said, poking Chibimon in the shoulder.
"Daisuke wants to talk now," said Chibimon. "He really likes you. Uh-huh! Sometimes he says your name in his sleep ... Hey!" Daisuke snatched the phone out of Chibimon's paws with a glare.
"Don't tell him that!" He rolled Chibimon across the blanket with his hand, scowling at the giggling little Digimon while he raised the phone back up. "Sorry about that, Ken."
"It's okay," said Ken, sounding like he was about to break down into laughter. This changed his voice considerably, and if Daisuke hadn't already known who was on the other end, he wouldn't have recognized the voice. "He's cute. Just like you."
Blinking, Daisuke felt his neck and ears prickle. "What?"
"I said you're cute, just like Chibi is. Hey, want to do something tomorrow after school?"
Daisuke just sat there for a moment, staring at the dark wall of his room. Then he said, "Okay, who are you and what did you do with Ichijouji Ken?"
Ken giggled. Daisuke's jaw dropped further open. "That's funny! No, it's me, I just couldn't sleep. I was thinking about the mechanics of jogress evolution and I think I figured it out, so I started to write a paper about it. Then I thought I really ought to ask Wormmon, but he was no help, so we talked about other things instead and it turns out that time in the Digiworld used to move differently than it does now. Did you know that?"
"Um ... no ... " Daisuke wasn't sure he was keeping up with the free-association flow coming through the telephone. Ken was talking a mile a minute as if hyped up on something, and miscellaneous little sounds came through the phone line as if the other boy were pacing and fidgeting around his room while he spoke. This was just too weird.
"Well, yeah, it did, time in the Digiworld used to move a lot faster than time in the real world. But now they move at the same rate, and Wormmon didn't know why. Well, he didn't really know that time used be different there at all, I kinda had to infer that from other things, but I'll spare you the details. It actually makes more sense for time to move faster there than for it to move at the same rate as here, after all it should only be restricted by the clock speeds of the main servers the digital world is based upon, and you know those things are probably moving at the speed of light. I put up the question on a Usenet group earlier this evening but nobody's replied. Maybe I didn't phrase it right, though, I don't think I sound very intelligent when I try to write in English. Maybe we should meet somewhere and talk about this, you free?"
"Ken ..." said Daisuke, worried now. "It's one AM. Yes, I'm free, but I'm not going anywhere."
"Oh yeah. Damn. You don't have a computer there either, do you?"
"No." Not that Daisuke could use anyway. "Are you okay?"
Ken laughed. "Of course I'm okay!"
Unconvinced, Daisuke said, "Are you sure? You sound really strange, this isn't like you at all."
"No, really, I'm fine. I just get like this sometimes. I can't sleep, that's all. It's nothing to worry about. I started designing a computer game today, I'm going to turn it in for extra credit in my C++ class. Want to beta test it for me in a few days?"
"I guess. Doesn't it take longer than a few days to write a whole game though?"
"Nah, I'll get most of the base code out tonight and tomorrow, and I have a bunch of interface code I can pull in from other programs that I never finished. Then it's just writing the plot itself and debugging. Tell you what, you can help me out with that. I know I've been avoiding you lately, and I'm sorry, I want to make it up to you."
"Huh?" Daisuke glanced at the clock. He was having more and more difficulty keeping up with Ken; the sudden changes in subject left him reeling. At least Ken didn't seem to mind that Daisuke wasn't holding up his end of the conversation.
"It's not that I was avoiding you, really, I was just avoiding everything. I couldn't deal with it all, but I can now so it's okay. I'm sorry about everything I said to you before, about how I couldn't see you anymore. Everything was just getting to me, and I couldn't deal with it with you there. Every time I see you I want to touch you so bad and it's distracting. Man, I wish you had a computer there, I'd be over there in under a minute."
Unable to believe what he was hearing, Daisuke couldn't come up with a reply to that before Ken started off again. Chibimon, tired again now that he'd had his adventure with the telephone, snuggled down into the blankets in Daisuke's lap and went back to sleep.
"I wish I had a picture of you or something. Or a video, that'd be better. I doubt a still photo does you justice, there's just something in the way you move that I can't resist. Want to get together after school tomorrow?"
"Sure," said Daisuke automatically. Then : "You are really starting to worry me, Ken. You didn't eat a whole bowl of sugar or something, did you?"
"Of course not. I told you, I just get like this sometimes. I'm fine, I'm fine, don't be worried." He laughed, and Daisuke had to admit that it was a very nice sound, even filtered through the telephone. "I'll see you tomorrow then, okay? Meet me at the soccer field in the park. Dream about me? I know I'd dream about you if I could get to sleep." An odd sound filled Daisuke's ear, and it took him a few moments to figure out that Ken was kissing into the phone. Before he could recover from the shock of this, Ken had hung up.
Daisuke turned the phone off and set it slowly down on the floor, as if it were a viper that might bite his hand if he moved too quickly. "That was the strangest conversation I've ever had," he said quietly. "Was that really Ken? It sounded like Ken, sort of. I've never heard Ken giggle, though. I didn't know he could."
"Go to sleep," said Chibimon, grumpy again now that his hyper spell was over. Daisuke patted him and rearranged the blankets, settling down to get back to sleep. It was a long time before sleep actually took him, though; his mind kept replaying Ken's words over and over, trying to figure out what was wrong with the other boy to make him act so differently than he usually did.
------======*======------
The next afternoon found Daisuke hurrying toward his appointment with Ken at the park soccer field just after school let out. He was worried at first that he wouldn't be able to find Ken, but it turned out to be quite easy - all Daisuke had to do was follow the crowds. Ken had somehow arrived before Daisuke, and had attracted a small army of admirers already. Most were children younger than he was, wanting soccer balls autographed and wanting Ken's attention while they showed off their best moves for him. Mixed in with the younger children were some girls around Ken's and Daisuke's age, chatting quietly with each other and sometimes concealing giggles behind their hands.
Ken offered the younger children all the attention they could possibly want, and was at least as hyper as they were, dressed in his Tamachi soccer team uniform and chasing an impromptu game around the field. Daisuke stopped at the edge of the field; over the course of the day, he'd managed to convince himself that the strangeness of the midnight conversation had been an artifact of the late hour and his own tiredness, that Ken hadn't really been talking that rapidly and jumping wildly from topic to topic. Yet Ken looked now the way he'd sounded the night before, restless, on top of absolutely everything, practically a blur of energy.
"This is unreal," said Daisuke, setting his book bag down on the ground. "Hey, Chibi?"
"Yeah?" came the muffled reply from within the bag.
"Do me a favor, would you? If you see Wormmon, ask him what's wrong with Ken."
"Sure thing!" chirped Chibimon, and the bag crinkled as the Digimon peered out. "He looks fine to me, though."
Ken was demonstrating a particularly deft pass to his audience, and in the process attempting to teach it to one of the kids. There was nothing innately wrong about the way Ken looked, Daisuke had to admit that. The only thing unnatural about it was the fact that it was so far out of character for Ken to act this way. In Daisuke's mind, Ken was shrouded, dark, quiet, and filled with deep silences. The boy out in the field was none of these things as he cheerfully played with children two and three years his junior.
Walking out into the field, Daisuke navigated around clumps of girls who ignored him in favor of the much more famous Ichijouji Ken. Ken didn't notice him at first, but did when Daisuke called his name and waved.
If Ken had looked lively and happy before, he went practically radiant upon spotting Daisuke. "Daisuke!" he called, and ran over to meet Daisuke halfway, trailed by the pack of children. Daisuke felt like a spotlight had suddenly turned on him, as all the girls looked at him as well. Ken grabbed his hand and dragged him further out into the field. "Come on and play. This is Motomiya Daisuke," said Ken to the attentive children. "He almost beat me once."
"Hey, I could have if you didn't have your whole team with you." Daisuke grinned. Ken's brilliant mood was contagious, and Daisuke's doubts were starting to burn away.
"Yeah? Well, I don't now, so here's your chance to prove it." Ken gave him a sly little smile and a half-wink, and a moment later both Ken and the soccer ball had shot past Daisuke toward the goal behind him. Children cheered and they all ran to catch up with Ken.
By dusk, it ended up that Ken won by a single goal, which Daisuke put down to dumb luck and took with equanimity. With the last of the younger children being carted off home by their parents, Daisuke and Ken were left almost alone in this corner of the park; only a few of the older girls were left, and they were making a show of not looking openly at the two boys.
Daisuke was tired but not overly so - it was the pleasant tiredness of having honestly worked off his habitual overflow of energy that usually kept him so fidgety. He threw himself down into the grass at the edge of the field next to his book bag, peered inside to see if Chibimon was there (he wasn't), and then he laid down on his back to cool off.
However, Ken's afterburners still seemed to be engaged. Despite the fact that he probably got little or no sleep the night before, he was practically bouncing as he went over to his own duffel bag. "Hey, Daisuke, what's your Digimon doing in my bag?" he called.
"I don't know," replied Daisuke. "Why don't you ask him?"
"I would but he's sleeping on Wormmon. Come look, Dai, they're so cute!"
Cute was not one of those words Daisuke expected to hear out of Ken, especially when applied to a Digimon, yet this was the third time Ken had said it. Daisuke frowned and sat up. "Okay, Ken, what's the matter with you? Why are you acting like this?"
"I don't know. I just do from time to time. Want to get something to eat? Oh, here." He frisbeed something white that struck Daisuke in the chest. Fumbling to catch it, Daisuke discovered a stapled stack of paper.
"What's this?"
"My essay on jogress evolution. I was going to turn it into my biology class for credit, but Wormmon convinced me that wouldn't be a good idea. So, you hungry or what?"
"Yeah, sure," said Daisuke absently, flipping through the pages. It was full of terms like "non-amalgamation" and "fission of vinculum." "Does this come with a translation?"
Ken laughed and picked up his duffel bag, hefting it over his shoulder. One of the Digimon inside muttered a sleepy protest. "You're so silly. Come on, let's go, I'm buying. Do you need to call your mom?"
"Nah." Daisuke stood up and brushed himself off. "She'd just tell me to come home for dinner and yell at me for not being home sooner."
Ken's face fell and he said, "Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get you in trouble!"
"Don't worry about it." Daisuke picked up his books and grinned, tucking the sheaf of paper inside the bag. "I'm always in trouble."
"You sure?" Ken looked genuinely concerned, and Daisuke remembered that aside from the Kaizer thing, Ken was always such a good boy, who probably never broke a window or got detention in his life. Being yelled at would probably cause his world to come crashing down, whereas it was nothing new to Daisuke.
"Yeah, I'm sure. If I don't call her, she can't say no, so let's just go."
"Okay." Pleased again, Ken led the way, chattering as he went. "I got almost half the base code for that game written last night after I hung up with you, so it's time to start thinking about what the plot should be like, so I can start coding that in. Tell me what you think of this."
Daisuke listened with growing incredulity as Ken spun him a rather strange little epic set in shogunate Japan, involving two young common-born boys who ran away from home and ended up masquerading as samurai in China, with the climactic battle saving the life of the Chinese Emperor from invading Mongols. Daisuke, having only the loosest grasp of his own country's history, much less that of China, agreed that it sounded cool and was talked into helping Ken with the dialogue.
As the sidewalk passed through a stand of trees, Ken suddenly shoved Daisuke aside. Taken completely by surprise, Daisuke stumbled into a tree, and was yanked around behind it, and a moment later he found Ken's arms around him and Ken's lips on his.
"W-what ..."
"Shhh," whispered Ken just before drawing him into a consuming kiss. Daisuke felt a hand slide up under his shirt and whimpered in shock, even as his body reacted enthusiastically by pulling Ken closer and hooking a leg around the back of Ken's knee. Their book bags went down onto the ground, and there were complaints from Wormmon and Chibimon.
What is wrong with him? This is not normal, no matter what he says. This isn't normal for anyone, much less him.
This was the last thing to go through Daisuke's mind for awhile, though. Ken's touch was fiery, his kiss wild and savage, and Daisuke had been wanting it for quite some time; he wasn't about to squander what might be his only opportunity to hold and kiss the only boy he loved. Nothing tainted the clean, liquid taste of Ken's mouth, nothing stood between them except their clothes, and that was remedied somewhat by each boy putting his hands up the other's shirt. Faintly, Daisuke could hear the low murmur of Ken's heartbeat, feel Ken's pulse flutter rapidly beneath his fingertips, and he would have sworn that his own was keeping the same pace.
An eternity later, Ken withdrew from the kiss, leaning hard against Daisuke and panting in Daisuke's ear. Daisuke turned his head to inhale the scent of Ken's hair and stale sweat left over from the soccer match. Because it was Ken's sweat, it smelled wonderful.
"Mmm," moaned Ken softly. "I love you. Do you understand that?"
"Uh huh," whispered Daisuke breathlessly. He would have agreed to anything Ken said at this point.
"I don't care if my parents disapprove. I don't care if they hate me forever. I love to be near you, I love to touch you." Ken's head moved, and an instant later Daisuke felt teeth come playfully down on his neck.
Daisuke gasped, but in spite of his pleasure at having Ken chew on him, part of that statement disturbed him. "Huh?" he said after a bit of thought. "What was that about your parents?"
Ken pulled back enough to look Daisuke in the eye. It was starting to become seriously dark, turning Ken's eyes into black pools. "My mother and father don't approve of me."
"Why not?"
A light shrug. "I'm supposed to carry on the family name and all that. You know, get married, have children, the whole deal. They don't approve of me being gay because that means I won't do any of that stuff. But enough about that. Let's go!" And just like that, Ken took up his duffel bag in one hand and grabbed Daisuke's wrist in the other. Daisuke barely had enough time to catch up his own books before Ken hauled him back out to the sidewalk.
"Up and down and up and down, make up your minds," said Chibimon, a little crossly. Ken laughed, and then began to talk again, keeping up a constant flow of conversation that was completely one-sided, but Ken didn't seem to even notice, much less mind.
It had never occurred to Daisuke to wonder what his parents would think of him dating a boy. He wasn't supposed to be dating anyone until he was fifteen, but that rule, like all other parental edicts, was made to be broken. Even so, he felt it would be best if he kept this a secret as long as possible, but Daisuke didn't think that would be too difficult. After all, he'd kept Chibimon a secret, and Chibimon's existence as an animate creature would be a lot tougher to explain than Ken's presence. His parents would probably be ecstatic that he was friends with someone like Ken, and look no further than that. All he had to do was keep from kissing Ken in front of them.
"Hey, are you listening?" asked Ken, nudging Daisuke out of these thoughts. Which was a good thing, since Daisuke realized that he was spending valuable time with Ken thinking about his parents.
"Yeah," he lied. "Where are we going anyway?"
"I don't care. Let's just get some take-out or something and go sit somewhere. There's a sushi bar not too far from here, we could get something there, unless you're allergic."
"I'm not," said Daisuke.
"Did you hear about that guy a few years ago who wrote a whole book full of haikus about sushi? He covered everything from the tuna boats through the auction and how to tell good tuna from bad tuna and how to cut it and make the rice, I mean he covered everything, down to the last painful detail. I'm surprised you never heard of him, he was all over the news with this book, that was right about the time my brother died. Hey! Look at that!"
Daisuke found himself staring at Ken's back as the other boy pelted off, covering the last few meters to the edge of the park and then crossing the street toward a magazine stand. Sorting through the newspapers, magazines, and a wide assortment of manga and doujinshi, Ken pulled out the latest issues of several manga and started to flip through them while Daisuke approached at a slightly more normal pace.
Despite the almost frightening level of activity that Ken was exhibiting, Daisuke decided that he liked Ken this way. It was a vast improvement over the moping and self-pity, and no matter how beautiful Ken was while hating himself (and Ken was very beautiful while hating himself), Daisuke decided now that he preferred him happy. Ken had said that this was typical for him; Daisuke wondered what could have triggered it.
"Hey, do you read any of these?" Ken asked, displaying the array of manga he'd chosen.
Looking them over, Daisuke shook his head. "Nope."
"Oh. Well, pick out a couple and I'll get them for you. I think you'd like some of these though, I'll let you borrow them when I'm done. This one, this one, it has these demons in it that look, I swear to you, exactly like Airdramon. It's almost scary. Let me find one." He licked his index finger and started to page rapidly through the book.
The guy manning the stand had been peering suspiciously at Ken and Daisuke while they talked, and when Ken started to brutalize the manga in question he spoke up. "Hey, you want to pay for that before you rip the pages out?"
Ken's fingers stopped dead, and he looked up at the man with a deep frown. "Excuse me?" he demanded. "Are you implying that I'm not going to pay for it?"
Recognizing Ken's tone, Daisuke laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. "No, he wasn't saying anything like that."
"I don't want stray kids tearing up my stock," said the man. "Either buy it or leave it alone."
Ken's eyes narrowed, and for just an instant Daisuke was afraid he was going to pull a whip out of somewhere. No whip appeared, however; instead, Ken merely slammed the stack of manga down on the counter and said, "Keep them, then. Come on, Daisuke."
Daisuke had to trot to keep up with Ken's stalking strides. "What was that all about? Are you okay?"
A low growl was the only reply he received. The bag Ken carried opened a little and two Digimon peeked out.
"What's the matter now?" said Chibimon. Wormmon just looked morose, but this seemed to Daisuke to be his normal expression.
"I don't know," said Daisuke. This entire afternoon and evening seemed to have gone by in a whirlwind, a whirlwind named Ken. Daisuke briefly entertained a theory that Ken was possessed, or that aliens had somehow taken over his mind, but discarded this idea when he remembered that Ken had kissed him less than fifteen minutes earlier. Demons and aliens might make Ken behave in this bizarre fashion, but Daisuke doubted any alien or demon would want to kiss him. As much as he might believe in himself, he wasn't delusional, and he knew he wasn't exceptionally attractive to anyone.
Ken suddenly stopped and turned around, some of the dark fury gone out of the lines of his face, replaced by quizzical concern. Daisuke almost walked into him. "I bet he just wanted my fingerprints. I should go back and get those books I touched."
"What?" Daisuke stared. "Why would he want your fingerprints?"
"So he can track me, of course." Ken made this sound obvious, and actually started to walk back the way he'd come before Daisuke grabbed his arm to stop him.
"I'm sure he doesn't care about your fingerprints or tracking you or anything like that. This is getting scary, Ken, come on, stop."
For a good thirty seconds, Ken stood still and pondered. Then he said, "You're right, I probably smeared the prints up enough. Nevermind. Let's go eat." Taking Daisuke's hand again, his bright cheer restored, Ken said, "Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I almost fell off the terrace?"
"No," said Daisuke, wondering if he should call Ken's parents and have him taken to a hospital. While Ken related his story, interrupting himself every few sentences as he was reminded of other things, Daisuke gradually relaxed and allowed himself to be soothed by the sound of Ken's voice and the obvious happiness there. Who was he to say if this was really abnormal, after all? Maybe this was Ken's regular state of affairs and his earlier depression was the anomaly. How well did he really know Ken?
Besides, it was nice to spend time with someone who was not only pretty, but cheerful as well. Daisuke was accustomed to being the most energetic person in any given group, and it was an agreeable switch to have someone around who could not only keep up with him, but left him behind.
With a slight mental shrug, Daisuke discarded all his worries and stuck his hands in his pockets, grinning brightly and listening to Ken ramble.
"So that was when my parents bought me the telescope, but of course it's pretty much useless in Tokyo so it's sitting in my closet now. Remind me sometime to show you the pictures I pulled off the Web, they are so amazingly cool, you will not believe things like this actually exist. I was really interested in that for a few months, but I doubt you'd enjoy it, there seemed to be a lot of standing around talking quietly, you'd go nuts. Even I was bored. Okay, you wait here, I'll go in and get us something. Do you care what I get you?"
Daisuke shook his head. "Nope. I'll eat anything."
"Cool. Be back in a minute." Ken ducked into the small corner establishment, leaving his duffel bag and Daisuke outside. Daisuke leaned against the wall and tried to look like he belonged in that spot; there was a steady flow of executives moving in and out of the place, and some of them gave him strange looks.
"Daisuke!" whispered Chibimon from Ken's bag at Daisuke's feet.
"Yeah?"
"Wormmon says he's never seen Ken like this before. He says Ken hasn't slept in almost three days."
"Are you kidding?" Daisuke looked down at the Digimon, ignoring the even stranger looks that he was getting now.
Wormmon wiggled around until he could peek up at Daisuke. "No. Well, he sleeps a little, but not as much as he should. I'd really be worried if he wasn't eating either, but that's not a problem."
"Huh." Daisuke stuck his hands back in his pockets, trying to ignore the wind, which seemed to be getting colder by the minute. He was wishing that he'd brought a change of clothes, or at least a jacket; he hadn't been planning on playing soccer and getting all sweaty, or staying out all night. "Well, he's happy enough."
"Yeah," agreed Wormmon, but he didn't sound very pleased.
Daisuke flashed Wormmon a reassuring smile. "I'm sure he's okay. Isn't this better than him trying to kill himself?"
"... I suppose."
There was no supposing in Daisuke's mind. Ken as a happy, lively person was infinitely preferable to Ken as a depressed, suicidal person. Ever since he'd been drafted to save the world, he'd logged up quite a few experiences that, viewed in hindsight, he really could have done without. Talking Ken down had definitely ranked up there.
"Digimon worry too much," said Daisuke, settling himself against the wall and wondering how much longer Ken was going to be.
It turned out to be only a few more minutes before Ken slipped out of the sushi bar, carrying a bag in which several small boxes were stacked. "Come on, let's get out of this crowd. I can't believe I had to sign autographs just to buy dinner. They almost didn't let me get anything at all. Don't you think sometimes that it would be neat to, I don't know the word to use, come out of the closet so to speak, and not have to hide your Digimon anymore? Then when people act like you don't exist because you're a kid, you can Digivolve Chibimon and really get their attention."
"You can't be serious." Daisuke inserted this while Ken paused to take a breath, and followed amiably along behind him, carrying Ken's duffel bag now. They were headed back toward the park, in the general direction of Daisuke's home.
"No, I'm really not, but it'd be cool, wouldn't it? And I wouldn't have to walk everywhere or take the train or the bus or whatever either. I could just ride Stingmon. I could be to your place in just a few minutes, it'd be almost as good as you having a computer I could use."
"I'm not a taxi!" came Wormmon's soft protest. "Get a bicycle!"
Ken laughed, and so did Daisuke. Then Daisuke wondered, "What would you want to come over to my house for? There's nothing there except Jun most of the time. I'm sure she'd love you, though, and want you to sign her shirt."
"Well, you're there," said Ken, and he gave Daisuke a wink. "What more reason would I need? I could teach you all of my patented secrets to beating video games and then distract you while you try to implement them." Ken's hand went up to the nape of Daisuke's neck and lightly brushed across the fine hairs there. A deep shiver clutched Daisuke's spine. "I could teach you some other things, too. I've been doing research."
Daisuke liked Ken's teasing touch. In fact, he liked it altogether too much for being in a public locale, so he sidestepped and ducked to escape it. "Can we, um, not talk about this here?"
"Are you embarrassed? I believe you are!" Sounding delighted, Ken nevertheless backed off a little. "And here I was beginning to think that it was impossible to embarrass you. Who was it who kissed me right in front of a restaurant? Hmm, let me think, could it have been one Motomiya Daisuke?"
"That doesn't count, I was desperate."
"Uh huh," said Ken, grinning knowingly, then his attention shifted and he pointed ahead. "Look at that!"
Daisuke looked and saw nothing special. "Look at what?" he asked, but Ken was already dashing off into the darkened park. Daisuke took off after him.
There was a small playground near the fringe of the park, where the very young children usually played under their mothers' eyes. It was forlorn and silent now, after dark; at least, it was until Ken hit the miniature merry-go-round running, leaping onto it and letting his momentum set it spinning. Throwing his head back and clinging to one of the metal bars, he laughed as the contraption squeaked its way around a slow revolution.
Once he was back within easy earshot, Daisuke called, "Ken, how old are you again?"
Grinning, Ken held up four fingers and said, "This many!"
"I believe you." Daisuke reached the merry-go-round and stopped it with his hand before sitting down on the edge. "Why can't you be like this all the time?"
"I don't know." Ken dropped the bag of sushi and climbed up onto one of the bars, balancing there a moment before slowly standing up. "It'd be cool if I was, wouldn't it? I'd get so much done! Of course, I'm not getting that much done right now, but that's fine, I'd rather be with you than working on homework or something. Although that game I'm writing is going to be so amazing. You are going to help me out with it, right?"
While Chibimon and Wormmon came to help Daisuke investigate the sushi, Daisuke said, "Sure, I said I would." He peered at the kanji written on the sides of the boxes by someone with terrible handwriting. "You did not seriously get sea urchin."
"I did! It's good, you should try it, but if you really don't want it, I'll take it."
"You can have it. I wouldn't step in something like that, much less eat it. What else did you get?"
"Let me try some!" said Chibimon, claiming the box with the sea urchin in it.
"No way," said Daisuke, claiming it right back. "You are what you eat, and I don't want you turning into something disgusting. Here, you can have the yellowtail, let Ken eat the yucky stuff."
"Aww!" complained the little blue Digimon. "Let me try just one bite!"
"Yeah, and next time you Digivolve, you'll become Slimemon or something." Daisuke tickled Chibimon's tummy. The floor of the merry-go-round shook as Ken jumped down from the metal bar and snagged the abandoned box.
"Where's your sense of adventure?" said Ken, bouncing down to sit on the edge beside Daisuke. He began riffling through the boxes and handed one to Wormmon before digging into the otherwise unwanted kelp boats of sea urchin sushi, eating very indelicately with his fingers and not bothering with any of the various little side items that had been packed in with it.
"I left it at home this morning." That was all that needed to be said for awhile, until Ken, having inhaled the sea urchin in a manner that would have made any young Digimon proud and would have offended any sushi chef, stood up and leaped up atop a swing. Standing on the seat, he swung back and forth for a little while in silence.
Then : "Hey, Daisuke?"
"Hmm?" Daisuke's mouth was full. He didn't usually consider himself a slow eater, but anybody would look slow compared to Chibimon, and Ken made Chibimon look leisurely.
"Do you think I'm an evil person?"
Frowning and dusting off his hands, Daisuke swallowed and said, "Of course not."
Ken eyed him strangely, although it was really too dark under the distant glare of artificial lights for Daisuke to see him well. "Why not?" Crouching, Ken slowly kicked his leg, causing the swing to twist around until he was wrapped up in the chains.
"You just aren't. I shouldn't have to explain that."
Having twisted up, the swing began to untwist and then twist again in the other direction, whirling Ken around in a circle. "If Iori hadn't been so adamant about it, I would have tried deleting Arukenimon. I still think we should have just done it. I'd be willing to do it all by myself if I had to, to keep your hands clean." Suddenly dropping into the seat and stopping the twisting motion, Ken leveled a perfectly calm look at Daisuke. "Don't you think that means I'm evil?"
Not sure what to say, Daisuke just stared back at Ken. Was that an evil thing to think? Daisuke wasn't sure. On the one hand, killing Digimon, even nasty ones, wasn't the act of a peaceful person. On the other, there was a certain grim practicality in it; surely even Iori would have to admit that tons of trouble would have been saved if they'd just gone all the way and deleted Arukenimon when they'd had the chance. And, it was looking now like they might have been able to save the Digiworld in advance that way. Was it evil to kill someone who would destroy an entire world?
And was it evil for Ken to have offered to take the blood of one more Digimon onto his hands, to spare the rest of them?
Before Daisuke could wrest these thoughts into something coherent that he could actually say, Ken visibly lost interest and said, "I hate studying for history. I've got a history exam tomorrow and I haven't studied at all because history bores me. It's just memorizing stuff, and that's dull, I'd rather solve problems. I bet you're the same way, aren't you?"
"Huh?" Still caught up in the question of evil, Daisuke had trouble switching gears to the new subject.
"Thought so," said Ken, undeterred by this indeterminate answer. "Well, I've kept you out long enough. I bet I've tired you out." He laughed a little, and Daisuke could hear no hint of bitterness in the sound. The lack made Ken's laugh beautiful. "Want me to walk you home?"
"Nah," said Daisuke, shoving the disquieting thoughts aside. "Will you be okay, it's a longer way to your house."
"With Wormmon with me? Of course!" Ken pounced on his Digimon and gave him a hug before tucking him back into the duffel bag. "You going to be in the digital world this weekend?" Without waiting for an answer, Ken hefted his bag and said, "I'll see you then, okay?" He gave Daisuke a kiss on the cheek and was skipping off before Daisuke's brain caught up with events.
"Bye," said Daisuke, although Ken was probably too far away to hear. He looked down at Chibimon, who looked as baffled as he felt. "What just happened here?"
"I don't know," said Chibimon. "At least he's happy!"
"Mmm," said Daisuke. "Good point."
Without Ken nearby, the wind seemed to have grown teeth, and Daisuke shivered. He quickly gathered up his Digimon and his things and hurried toward home, his disquiet soothed by the comforting idea that Ken really did seem happy.