Author's Note: Are pigs flying? Is there a man on the moon? No, another miracle has occurred: I've updated this fic! ^_^ No Ken-angst, damnit! But some spooky Daisuke stuff. Fun! And another cliffie.

I love you too.

+++

Daisuke didn't like puzzles. He especially detested them when Ken wasn't around to help him out.

The boy was back at home, sitting backwards in his chair, head lying on his folded arms. That day had been an utter fiasco. After hiding behind the bleachers for a further hour, he had realized the futility of trying to summon up enough courage to continue with the school day. When everybody had been inside, taking lessons, he had slipped out of the gate and run home, spurred by the nagging fear that something was just behind him, nipping at his ankles. And then, at home, his mother had given him her most sympathetic glance as he barrelled past her to sulk in his room. He didn't want comfort.

After divesting himself of his uniform and school bag, and realizing his bone-deep fatigue, Daisuke had flung himself onto his disheveled bed. But no sleep would come. His mind reeled with shock and, when it wasn't that, it was preoccupied with the mysterious note and its even more baffling characters. After trying unsuccessfully to coax himself to sleep for the better part of half an hour, the cinnamon haired boy had risen and paced across his room. That had just unsettled him further, so on a general consensus he sat down and glared out of his window.

"Stupid perfect day," he muttered sourly, wishing that the world would partake of even a fraction of his misery.

He sat and stared and mulled over everything that had occurred to him on that day. The overall picture was less than encouraging, and at the rate it was going, things would only be getting worse. Soon, Jun would be home from school, and he did not have the energy to contend with that. Supper would be an abysmal affair, as had become usual over the past few weeks. And then, the sun would set and tempt from hiding all manner of shadowy demons. Daisuke fleetingly wondered if he wasn't too old to be afraid of darkness, but compromised with the excuse that he had every right to be, what with alien letters and hideous murders and not-so-everyday stuff like that.

That brought on another train of thought. Perhaps, he surmised, if he just dared read one more of Ken's disheartening letters, perhaps then he would have some basis for the further working-out of the riddle that his life had become. Besides, how frightening could it be with the full force of daylight streaming into his room?

"Famous last words," he intoned forebodingly.

He weighed both options up mentally. Either he could read the letter and thereby spend another terrified, sleepless night but also have the answers to at least a couple of questions; or he could remain blissfully unaware, if confounded. He knew how far ahead he'd gotten with the latter tactic, and it wasn't very far at all. Indeed, it was almost backwards.

=#=#=#=

Daisuke had just steeled himself to dig the box out from under his bed - an action he felt comparable to any deeds of heroicism that he had performed in the Digital World - when the telephone rang. It effectively shattered his resolve. He didn't know whether he should be feeling grateful or not, what with all of his effort wasted, but deep down he felt something settle: a perfectly legitimate excuse to ease his guilty, insistent conscience. When his mother mutely knocked on the door, asking if he would take the call, he let out a rush of air.

Not feeling up to prodding questions and sympathetic glances, he opened his bedroom door just enough to snatch the phone and mumble a thanks. He looked at the machine cautiously.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Thank god! Dai, are you alright?"

It took a moment for the red-haired boy to recognize Hikari's voice. She sounded terribly worried. About him? There was nothing wrong with him, Ken was the one that. "I'm okay," he muttered, realizing that his silence had stretched to improbable lengths.

He heard a scoff. "Don't give me that, Motomiya! You can't rush into class, turn white as a sheet and have a breakdown; and then still pretend that nothing's wrong a few hours later!" Her aggravated tone softened immediately. "We're all worried about you. Miyako and Takeru and Taichi - everyone! We just want to help. Won't you let us try?"

Help? The concept seemed strange to him. They could never understand his gaping emptiness, the nerve-snapping fear that he felt each night, his anger - his futile fury. "I don't want anybody's help! I'm handling it perfectly on my own - I'm fine!" Daisuke hardly recognized the bitter, snappish tone as his own. Why was he feeling so resentful towards his friends?

"You're not-" Hikari began, her voice raised. Then, after what sounded suspiciously like a sob, she whispered, "You're not alright, Dai. Just talk to someone. We're all so scared because we're losing you and don't know what to do to make things right." She was crying now, trying to hide her emotions by putting on her trademark brave voice.

"Nobody can make things right!" Daisuke yelled. Something within him had snapped. He wanted to share his fears and worries, but he wanted to share them with Ken! The others didn't know him inside out like the black-haired genius had: how was he supposed to explain everything? Where would he start "Don't you understand? You can't just fix this - he's dead, damn it! You have no idea what his life was like! You have no idea!" And then he hung up, like a sulky child who didn't want to lose an argument.

All energy drained out of him and Daisuke flopped down onto his bed. That conversation had triggered an unpleasant chain of thoughts. He was being such a hypocrite: how could he lecture Kari about ignorance when he himself had just barely - and recently - scraped the surface of Ken's dark past? When he was almost too terrified to expand that knowledge?

Daisuke dropped his head into his hands, feeling a slight fever across his forehead. He didn't want this problem in his life! Why could nothing go right for him? He silently cursed his life, his fate, his existence - hoping impossibly for a release from the Pandora's box that it had become.

Bonelessly, he fell onto his back, glaring at the ceiling. He had never been particularly vindictive, but now he wished that he could foist his troubles onto someone else, dust off his shoulders and return to his preferred happy-go-lucky way of life. Daisuke felt like he was fighting an impossible battle; running a marathon that just got longer the further he got. Forward was the only way, and he couldn't just give up and sit himself down on the roadside, arms crossed, refusing to continue. This was his life - his life! - and he was losing it piece by piece.

Daisuke closed his eyes, imagining that for a moment the world was a better place. He pictured a day some months ago. He and Ken were lying sprawled on a blanket in the park, making idle conversation. Daisuke, picking at the grass, felt a sudden bout of philosophy come on, and said, "I want to be happy."

Ken glanced up with mild concern, the flower that he had been twirling between his fingers momentarily forgotten. "Hm? You've lost me, Dai. Is something wrong?"

Daisuke rolled over onto his back and stretched his arms out languidly before him. "Nah, you know me: not a care in the world. I was just thinking, if someone were to ask me what I wanted to be in life, I'd say I'd want to be happy."

"Aha." Ken smiled whimsically at that logic, used to Daisuke randomly blurting out comments, unaware that he had just silently skipped over several steps of thought in the process. "That's very ambitious of you."

"And you?"

"What?"

"What do you want to be?"

Ken grinned slyly. "Do you want an abstract or figurative answer?"

Daisuke shrugged. "Whichever."

It took the black-haired boy a long time to come up with an answer. He looked off into the distance, and said, "Unburdened." Daisuke glanced at him at his melancholy tone, but shrugged it off. Ken had strange moods sometimes.

Suddenly, something didn't feel quite right to Daisuke, like a cloud that had covered the sun. He looked over at Ken again, and shot up when he saw the malicious, narrow eyed expression that had suddenly disfigured his face. The cruel stare was fixed on him. "Ken?" he asked uncertainly.

The boy reached out to him, but there was no tenderness in the clenched hand. "I want to die, Daisuke," he now said, but the voice was not his - it couldn't be, not with that degree of sadistic joy. "I want to be slashed and burnt, haunted, broken. I want to smear my walls with paint," and now he was advancing on Daisuke, an unholy bliss in his eyes. Daisuke inched back, and found his back against a wall that had not been there a moment before. "I want to tear out my heart, spill my blood onto the carpets!" Before Daisuke realized it, iron hands were on his throat, squeezing, choking - "And I want to take you with me!"

Daisuke clenched his eyes against the horrific vision of his gentle, kind Ken's indigo eyes burning with the fires of hate. Feebly, he tried to loosen the grip around his neck, gasping for air. But the hands only tightened, crushing his air pipe - draining the life from his young body -

"Supper, Dai!"

Daisuke sprang up as though a barrel of icy water had been thrown over him. It took him a moment to get his bearings in his slightly dusky room. Had he dreamt? He reached a trembling hand to his throat, finding nothing but a trail of cold sweat. The skin felt raw, though; bruised. Had he actually -

"Hurry up, Davis, we're all hungry here!"

Jun's irate bellow quickly cut that question short. Daisuke was relieved: he wasn't too keen on answering it. Instead, he scrambled out of bed, threw open the door to the lightened hallway and scampered into the dining room. Supper was an uncomfortable affair. Nobody was quite sure how to broach the topic of Daisuke's abysmal school day, or if the topic should even be raised. He realized that nobody was looking directly at him, just flittingly passing each other pointed looks. Daisuke just glared at his plate, pushing his food around, until finally the tension and irritation reached breaking point.

"Will somebody just say something!" he exclaimed. "I'm not blind, you know."

Mrs Motomiya looked down. "We just don't know what to do anymore, Dai. We've tried, but you're pushing us away. You have to tell us how we can help you."

Daisuke choked at this. Hadn't Kari said exactly the same thing? He was no closer to an answer now than he had been then. He stayed quiet.

Then Jun stood up, grabbing her emptied plate. "Oh, get a life, Davis! You can't spend the next forty years cooped up in that room of yours. Everyone's running out of pity pretty fast."

"I don't want pity!" he yelled back, ignoring the placating gestures of his parents. "I want-" He paused. "I want to be unburdened!"

Ignoring the horrified expression on his mother's face, and the sceptical one on Jun's, Daisuke charged out of the room to his only sanctuary, his bedroom. He slammed the door, flicked the light on and froze in absolute terror. He didn't move, he couldn't breathe.

Something was rustling under his bed.

+++

Oooh, suspense! ^_^