First incredibly short chapter of what I hope
will be a successful new fic of mine--enjoy. ^_^ Oh yes, and I'm not trying to
stake claim to Digimon or any of its characters at all--just my story.
"Uhmm…."
Hikari rolls over, smooshing her face into
the back of the noticeably smelly couch. Her feet in their clunky black boots hang
over the end, narrowly missing a lamp without a shade. Her head throbs, though
she doesn't notice it yet.
The smell jerks her a little more awake, as
does being uncomfortable and the sound of a shower running. She opens her bleary
eyes and quickly realizes--this is not her living room.
Nor is it her brother's, Takeru's, or any she
recognizes. Hikari sits up, sending the lamp crashing to the floor. She swears
and tries to remember how she came to be here.
"You awake, chick?" comes a male voice from
the same direction as the shower.
"Er…yeah!" Hikari replies, looking around.
"Argh, not again…" she thinks.
"I'll be out in a sec," he says.
"Whatever," she breathes. Her coat is hanging
on the doorknob, along with her purse. Jumping up and grabbing these things,
she bolts into the hall of a grubby apartment building. Paint peels off the walls;
the only light comes from a boarded-up window and the sparking, broken light
bulb. Ducking away from the exposed cords of that fire hazard, she thumps down
the steps as fast as she can. Her incredible headache suddenly comes into
focus.
She lets her air hiss through her teeth in a
sigh and crosses her arms close. The equally dirty streets are equally
unfamiliar. Apartment buildings in various stages of dilapidation block any
light that may've come from the clouding sky. "Pick a street, any street…."
Randomly turning around and pointing, Hikari starts away, eyes constantly
scanning for a subway sign or a recognizable anything.
A stranger crosses her path ahead. He
stumbles, over nothing, and falls to his knees.
Hikari rushes forward to help him, but stops
when a bottle of scotch rolls to her feet. The wino heaves on the cement
sidewalk. She winces, crosses her arms tighter and hurries past. Rounding the
corner, she throws her back against the brick wall. "How the hell did I get
here?!"
Sudden rain mixes with sudden tears. The
sound drains out the drunk's vomiting, a distant baby's crying, her sluggish
footsteps and quiet sobs.
As though on television, Hikari's memories began to
play. How she came to be only twenty-two years old, had her stomach pumped
twice, woken up in a stranger's house with no immediate idea how she arrived
there, five times realized her hair had changed from all brown to streaked with
white-blonde, blue, orange, green, and pink, cussed out her Digimon, parents,
brother, best friend, and boyfriend, had been hung over for nearly weeks at a
time, and now found herself alone in the foreign slums of somewhere in
Japan--at least she hoped it was still Japan--with dirty clothes and faded
hair, lost in the rain.
