-Chapter 4: Bird's Cage-

'Hi Kouji, it's Izumi. It's been awhile! I hope you're doing well. I heard you're at Takuya's school now. I know Takuya can be an idiot, so I just wanted to let you know that we've all missed you - him included, even if that knucklehead didn't say it very eloquently.'

'You don't have to say anything. I just wanted to tell you, that no matter how long has passed or however far away you may end up in life.. know that we'll be here for you, whether you'd like to talk or simply sit nearby in silence. I truly hope that you've been able to find some peace.'

Izumi held her phone and looked over the message she had sent to Kouji the night before as she tugged a sock up onto her leg. There was, unsurprisingly, no response, and whether or not he had even bothered to read it remained to be seen.

She sighed as she placed the phone back down on her bedside table, then turned to look into the standing full-length mirror in her room to adjust her school uniform's bow. She began to pull her long blonde hair into a loose bun when her mind began to reminisce on the words she had always meant to speak to Kouichi:

Let's talk to each other about our problems and things, okay?
There was always such loneliness on your face, Kouichi. You must have endured some bitter moments in life for your eyes to look that way.
It's a shame we could never find the right moment to speak with each other. I'm sure.. we could have been good friends.

What a cruel coincidence that she imagined similar words regarding his twin, now.

A familiar ding rang out from her phone, causing her heart to skip a beat as she imagined Kouji finally answering a text after five entire years.
She hurried over and picked up the device. A new text message sat, though not from Kouji. Rather, it was from Junpei.

'It was nice to hear your voice last night, Izumi! :) We should chat like that more often!'

She sighed again, though this time with a slight smile, as she took a seat on her bed's floral-patterned quilt and typed out a quick response.

'It was nice catching up with you too, Junpei! Your new job sounds interesting. I didn't get a chance to ask, are you still taking vocal lessons?'

Junpei was always devoted to keeping in contact with her after their adventures, even when she occasionally went long stretches of time without speaking to Tomoki or Takuya- and then of course, there was Kouji who had yet to respond to anyone.
It was never purposeful or malicious on her part. She simply found herself so busy at times that it was easy to slip up on answering a text, to forget to call back, or to have to turn down an invitation to a meet-up.

Junpei, however, was rather stalwart about checking in with her. Not day-by-day, but usually weekly, and at times monthly when they were both swamped by the various responsibilities of life.
Perhaps Junpei's devotion was fueled by his long-standing crush on her, or perhaps it was fueled by the desire to hold on to something or someone with whom their grief was shared- it was hard to say. Perhaps it was both, or something else entirely by this point.
Though, she admitted she found his unwavering presence to be, on the whole, comforting.

Funny, she thought, as lightning was often renowned as being a transient flash in the sky.

The sounds of chirping birds and a soft breeze came through her window which was left slightly ajar. Her lightweight lavender curtains alongside a small hanging collage of photos on her wall swayed gently from the wind; snapshots of her and a couple of friends from school.
She would often look at them and wish she had just one of her and the other Chosen Children together to join the wall, if only to serve as a memory.

Her phone let out another ding as Junpei responded.

'Yeah! But I haven't been able to practice as much as I'd like lately. My boss doesn't want me singing at the shop'
Izumi chuckled at the mental image.
'Why do you ask? Do you have a song request for me, Izumi?' came a second text.

'Not at the moment, but now that I know you're taking requests.. I'll have to think of something!' she replied. 'I hope you know it's going to be in Italian!'

'All the better, then!' he responded, and she heard in her mind that prideful tone of his he would use when showing something off.

Junpei was always an entertainer at heart, someone who longed to make others smile, and it seemed he could make that work in just about any context he found himself in. It was not much of a surprise to anyone when he wanted to get into classical music and opera lessons, but even in his new part-time tech support job- which could seem quite far away from the former- that part of him still managed to gleam through, somehow.
Perhaps the lightning's current was similar to wind in that way. Always flowing.

Before heading out of her room, she recalled that she wanted to send one more text, to Takuya. She wrote out a message which included the phrases take it slow and be reasonable and be the kind Takuya I know you can be today, okay?

Perhaps that acted as a reminder to herself, as well.

Takuya would certainly read the message- now, whether or not he would actually listen to her also remained to be seen. It never seemed to matter how many times she reminded him who was the older of the two of them- it was always a toss of a coin whether or not he would take her advice, or if he would run off and do something wild of his own accord.

She admired that passion at one point in time.
He was sweet once. There was a solid layer of idiot, sure, but alongside that was someone who was generally friendly, sociable, protective, understanding..
She could see it in the way he looked after Tomoki, the way he could understand parts of Kouji that others may have failed to see- back in the Digital World, anyway- and his empathy for the various plights of digimon they encountered.

It was like Junpei had said when they sat together in that dark forest, ruminating by the campfire. There was a careful balance in place, back then, when they were all together; now that balance had long since been disturbed.

Takuya was now like the fire that burned too much, and what was once a comforting warmth often flared into scalding heat.
And she supposed that left Kouji as the fire that simply didn't burn at all. Cold, and with only a faint and subdued light left smouldering.

It's not as though she failed to understand either of them- she found herself missing the Digital World just as Takuya did.
Though it wasn't the fighting that her heart longed for, but the flying.

Feeling the wings on her back,
seeing the colors dancing in the sky,
hearing the songs that the breeze carried with them..
Summoning the wind at her fingertips.

She let out a nostalgic sigh at the thought, as she pushed herself up off her bed and gently closed her window.

On the other side, she also understood she couldn't let those desires cloud her vision of her future in this world.
She had turned 16 this year and finally began to work on the modeling portfolio that she had planned for so long, kept herself on top of her grades and afterschool activities, filled her schedule to the brim hunting for opportunities- all because she told herself she was finally moving on.
That she herself had made her own peace with the past.

She had imagined that the wind would always be at her back through life after the Digital World, pushing her forward almost effortlessly, taking her to wherever she was meant to be-
That's what she'd hoped it would be like, anyway.

Why was it, she wondered, that it felt like she walked against it at times?

Izumi entered the bustling morning kitchen of the Orimoto household, filled with the chatter of her parents and a clinking and clanking of utensils as the smell of breakfast filled the air.

"Buongiorno, mi passerotta," her father Hiroki Orimoto greeted her, swiftly pushing a plate of warm food in her direction. He was wearing a simple cooking apron overtop a long-sleeved shirt and khaki pants, and his short blond hair was brushed away from his face. "Scusa, we're all out of eggs for breakfast. I didn't have time to go to the store last night," he apologized.

Izumi smiled as she took the plate and sat at the table. "Grazie, papa! It's okay, I can pick some up on the way home today if you'd like."

"Oh, could you? Grazie mille, I'd appreciate that very much! I'll leave some money on the counter for you. I meant to ask you last night, before dinner, but.."

"You were so busy on your phone!" her mother, Sayuri, suddenly butted in. She was dressed in a formal-business style outfit with a long black skirt and stockings, a striking blazer, and her ash brown hair was pulled into a tight bun.
"Who was that, Izumi? Was it.. a boy?" she asked with a hint of playfulness in her voice, leaning forward from the other end of the table in excited anticipation. Her green eyes glimmered as if she expected Izumi to admit to something.

"No, mama," Izumi replied with a raise of a brow and a little smirk, "it was just a group of friends."

"Oh, the group you used to go meet with?"

"Yes, you can chat easily with a big group using apps now.."

Sayuri looked surprised, sat back in her seat, then smiled at the thought. "No no, love, I know that. I'm just glad to hear about you spending time with something other than work or school."
"You'll have to tell me more about them, sometime," she continued, "I'd like to finally meet these people that my daughter has been so fond of for years. In fact, it's been too long since I've met any friend of yours! You should invite them over for dinner next time!"

Izumi gulped at the thought of having all of them, perhaps including Kouji, at their little dinner table all at once.. oh, the sheer chaos. Not to mention her mother would probably never let her live it down that all of them were boys.

"Well, it's not always easy to get them all together at once like before.. a call is usually better for everyone, nowadays," Izumi responded candidly, lightly scratching at her cheek.
'Maybe if they could go a day without getting rowdy, it could actually be a lot of fun,' she then thought.

"But maybe some day, mama! They should get a taste of Orimoto cooking, after all!"

"That's right!" her mother huffed proudly.

'.. has it really been that long since I brought someone by?'
Izumi wondered to herself as she took a bite of her croissant.

She never did invite the other Chosen Children over to her place over the years. She was the only one of them living rather isolated on the other side of town- her place was, possibly, the most troublesome for all of them to convene. When they had gathered in the past, it was almost always at or near Takuya's home by Jiyugaoka Station.

And she did, in fact, have friends outside of those met in the Digital World.
She searched her mind for the last memory of when she brought anyone over to her home, and recalled a close schoolmate from Junior High- Kaede.
Just another person she had forgotten to keep in touch with over the years, as they were separated by different high schools.

Even though she had considered her a good friend at the time.. it still felt as though an invisible divide lingered between them.
Something that kept Izumi from growing close. Something that made Izumi keep her at arm's length, and not the other way around, as it usually went.

She picked up the simple white teacup on the table and took a sip.

Kaede accepted her for who she was. She loved Izumi's blunt attitude. She loved the food her parents made. She loved learning a word or two of Italian.
So what was the problem, then?

She paused with the cup in her hands, the warmth of the tea's steam lingering on her face.

She's never had to fight day after day, or sleep for months in the wilderness, or had the data of another being overlaid onto her own,
she's never flown, never commanded wind-
She's never had to watch someone her age die.

Those things weren't her fault. And Izumi wouldn't have wished the painful portions on her.
She glanced at the reflection of her eyes in her tea, barely visible in its light green liquid.

The isolation that she felt before the Digital World was never truly remediated. It simply moved and changed with her; from one bird cage into another.

9:39am.
That was the time the clock on the classroom wall displayed as Takuya stared at it, slouched at his desk with his chin resting on his hand, a growing feeling of boredom and impatience brewing in his mind during the course of their English class.

He glanced towards Kouji's desk, watching the other boy concentrate on the ongoing lesson with little distraction, as if Takuya weren't sitting there in the same damn room, with so damn much to talk about-

'Be the kind Takuya I know you can be today, okay?'

He let out a tiny sigh as he recalled the text Izumi sent to him that morning.
As much as he would have liked to snark back and say 'I don't need a reminder', it did in fact remind him of that look on Kouji's face the day before; that pained expression and those eyes that held little light left in them. A reminder to ask himself why.
Really, there was no use getting angry at someone who looked so damned sad.

For someone who had half of the school gripped in fear with the title demon-boy, Kouji certainly had yet to live up to the reputation.

On a different note, Kouji was surprisingly astute when it came to their English class, for someone who had been at this school for a whopping day and an hour. The teachers seemed to expect him to keep to himself quietly for the first week or so.
And he did, for most other periods- but during English, he sat ready with immediate answers to the teacher's questions and was the first to turn in the small worksheet they had for the day.

He certainly seemed to be further ahead than where Takuya felt he was at with the subject, who had absolutely scrambled into the late hours of the previous night to get an assignment done. Seeing Kouji's aptitude for it made him feel a spark of familiar competitiveness.

But outside of that, it also just seemed.. peculiar.
Five years worth of mysteries sat behind those lusterless blue eyes, as though they were a book where Takuya had read the first chapter and then skipped to a random page somewhere toward the center. A page where happenings seemed to occur without rhyme or reason and so many questions were raised as he looked over the text presented in front of him.

It was just one more thing to add to the continually growing list of things to ask Kouji about, Takuya thought.
Maybe some day, he'd actually get to ask them.

"Takuya, pay attention!" the voice of their English teacher jolted him out of his thoughts, and Takuya's gaze snapped away from Kouji and to the front of the class to see Mr. Lee giving him an accusatory stare.
"Language is like a key to unlocking the doors of the world, you know, you can-" he began a little spiel on the importance of learning language and communication in general, and Takuya gave one last look toward Kouji during that time. Their teacher's call-out earned him a little glimpse from Kouji's direction, which once again vanished as quickly as it appeared.

He wondered just how many more times this exact interaction might occur over the semester. He turned back to the teacher.

"-uage and communication allow us a deeper insight into different cultures, ways of life, and an ability to form connections with each other. Once those doors are opened, the possibilities are limitless-"

The eventual chime of the lunch bell rang once more after the rest of their morning classes, sounding the same as it always did. Again, Kouji got up from his desk and left the classroom in a swift silence.

Takuya simply sat and watched, despite everything in his body wanting to give chase, seeing that wisp of hair disappear around the corner again- like a dog watching a disk freshly thrown into the air.
He closed his eyes, let out a huff and went to grab the bento his mother had packed for him.
He didn't get a chance to eat his lunch yesterday, and he found he regretted it with a painful hunger in the middle of soccer practice the previous afternoon.

It was not long before Ryuhei, after doing a quick look behind himself in order to make sure Kouji was fully out of earshot, quickly approached Takuya to barrage him with questions.
"Takuya! What was with you and the demon-boy yesterday?! You two know each other?!"

Takuya frowned.
"He's not a demon-boy, Ryuhei, he's just... Kouji," he responded as he absentmindedly poked at a slice of cucumber with his chopsticks, "you don't have to worry about him beating you up out of the blue. Well.. probably."

"Probably?"

"It's been five years since we last spoke to each other, so.. " 'I guess I don't really know him the same way,' sat a thought unspoken. ".. the Kouji I knew wasn't like that, though. You usually had to get up in his face or do something stupid to piss him off first," he chuckled, a bit dryly.

"Is it true he knocked you on your ass yesterday with some fancy martial arts?" Ryuhei made some vague and likely inaccurate gesture with his arms, as if to emulate a Judo throw.

'Damn, people saw that?' Takuya thought, then shrugged.
"I guess you could say I got up in his face and did something stupid. Also, it wasn't really that fancy-"

The other boy squatted at the side of Takuya's desk, sighing as he rested his chin on its edge.
"You're nuts sometimes, Takuya. He could be dangerous. I mean, the rumors.."

"What rumors, the hospital thing?"
Takuya spouted off, just a bit too sharply, as if he felt a need to defend something, "why don't you just ask him yourself instead of making it weird?"

"A-ah, I, well.."
Ryuhei sputtered, looking rather dejected at Takuya's response. The glare that held Takuya's eyes eventually softened as he watched him pathetically twiddling his thumbs.

'- be reasonable-'
Again, he could just about hear Izumi's voice in his mind. He groaned.

".. sorry," Takuya muttered, turning back to his lunch.
"I was going to ask him myself, and I'll keep you updated when I do. I promise.. he's not a bad person."

'You... you're not a bad person, right, Kouji?'

The school day had finished, and Kouji walked with his bicycle at his side whilst leaving the school grounds. He turned a corner onto a quieter portion of a residential area, the pedestrian walkway of which was lined with tree beds and potted plants.
A small breath of relief escaped from him as he, in turn, escaped from the clamor that was brought about by the stream of students leaving the school.

Always too noisy and a little too close.
It was the same the day before. He wasn't certain then if it was only his imagination, when he would occasionally pick out his name from a murmur in the crowd, or feeling as though unblinking eyes were swirling all around him.

The sounds of the leaves gently rustling from the breeze slowly replaced that chaos now, with each step taken farther from the school.

He tightened his grip around the handles of his bike, and paused to look at one of the tree beds that sat in neat rows down the road.
This particular tree had its green leaves tinged with more patches of yellow than the others. Fluffy cumulus clouds painted the sky in the background of its branches, framed by electrical cables and the edges of unfamiliar homes.

Someone was approaching.

"Kouji."
His shoulders gave a small twitch at the sound of his name, spoken with a soft yet decisive voice and not simply a murmur to mishear amidst a crowd. He heard footsteps on the concrete stopping somewhere to the left of him; not too close, yet not too far. Without turning to look, he knew who the voice belonged to.
Even if the voice hadn't spoken, the presence that he felt approaching him was unmistakable- and he disliked the fact that he knew.

"I don't know if you saw my text. Can I- can we just.. talk a little?" Takuya's voice was cautious yet testing, a very far cry from the Takuya of yesterday.

Kouji's eyes narrowed as he continued to study the tree in front of him. The twists and knots and ridges in the bark, the yellow-tinted leaves with their grip weakening day by day on their branches, sitting in anticipation of being torn off by a meager gust not very long from now. He grimaced and considered walking away.

"There's nothing for us to talk about," he finally responded, coldly.
He was caught off guard yesterday, seeing Takuya without warning, and he wouldn't let it happen again. With the short time he had to gather himself, his face now upheld the stoic mask he had hidden behind for the past five years. That phantom afterimage of himself.
He needed it.

He heard Takuya scoff to the side of him, and for a tense moment, Kouji lightly loosened his grip on his bike handles and braced himself for being grabbed again.

It didn't happen.

".. you and I both know that's not true," Takuya responded, quietly, but with a stern resolution. "Listen, you don't actually have to talk. If you could just.. hear me out for a second."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Takuya turning his nose up at the sky and letting out a small huff of frustration through his nostrils.
"I'm sorry.. about yesterday. What I really meant to say then, was.. that I missed you. And, I was worried about you. And..." there was an awkward pause as Takuya seemed to search for the right words, ".. I just hope you know you could've talked to me at any point. You still can."

Kouji slowly and slightly turned his head to look at the other boy, much like the little glances stolen throughout their time in the classroom. Glances born out of some morbid curiosity perhaps, like an animal circling a fire in both fear and fascination.

Takuya was clearly able to read something on Kouji's face when their eyes met, something behind the mask, which caused him to look at Kouji the way he did now; brows furrowed in a look of utter sympathy.

It caused Kouji to quickly snap his gaze away, returning to look at the tree. He may have preferred the angered and glaring Takuya of yesterday- being looked at in such a way, a tinge of dread touched his heart just as the tinge of yellow touched the leaves in front of them.

'You can still walk away, Kouji,' his own voice reminded him from within his mind.

"That's... that's it. That's all I wanted to say," Takuya quietly added on.

Liar.

"Or, I guess.. I don't know how else to reach out to you, Kouji.."

There was a point in time where Kouji knew full well what facing his friends, what opening the door entailed; it meant allowing himself to feel those emotions that were hidden away, both the joy and the intense grief, it meant having companions to converse with over what occurred back then, to converse with at all, it meant reminiscing and honoring Kouichi's memory instead of- stowing all thoughts of him away like a little box on a shelf- surely, Kouichi's memory deserved more than that-

In truth, there was a part of him somewhere deep, deep down, that wanted that door to be opened.

But the fear of all the things he had stowed away toppling over and crushing him left him frozen in indecision, and in his mind a voice- his voice- kept reminding him, over and over, that he was just not ready- that he just needed to think about this a little longer- that he just needed more time, more time, more time-
And before he had known it, plenty of time had passed, and he still felt as though he needed more.

Indecision is still a decision, though, and he found he had allowed that voice to lull him into a comfortable numbness, a sort of mental stasis over the past five years- and, if not for the current events, he could have stayed in that stasis for the rest of his life.

He had planned to leave Japan after graduation to travel the world, just as he had dreamed of since he was young. Perhaps it was merely a vestigial desire now- something he chased simply because he felt as though he should, something his phantom chased as one last hollow promise to himself- and he would have slipped away silently, without words or goodbyes to the people or the memories he would leave behind.

If only it were that easy.

After a long silence, Kouji finally spoke.
".. I'm sorry."

"You said that yesterday, too," Takuya gave a hushed snort, "after you swept me."

"I suppose that.." Kouji's eyes followed the trunk of the tree down to its roots in the dirt, ".. I don't really know what else to say, either."

Another lingering pause sat in the air before Takuya responded.
"You don't have to keep apologizing. What's done is done."

Takuya continued.
"I can leave you alone, if that's what you really want. But.. I'd have to hear it from you, Kouji," a waver in his words betrayed a hint of anticipatory fear at some imagined response, "I'd have to hear you say it."

And the voice in Kouji's mind offered him an answer, an escape back to that familiar numbness:

'Say it, then.
Tell him to leave you alone.
Tell him you want nothing to do with him, or the others, or the Digital World ever again-'

But at that moment, another voice sprung into his thoughts, unexpectedly, from that message he thought he had only given a short and meaningless glance to that very morning:

'No matter how long it's been or how far away you may end up in life..'

'we'll be here.'

That message wasn't any different than the tens of others sent over the years, and he was only left to ask- why now?
Why did he find himself at this school, at this tree with Takuya by his side, why did Izumi's words ring out in his thoughts like a whisper on the wind, why did he have to have that dream of Kouichi as though his very subconscious longed for someone, anyone to talk to-

Why did it have to feel like some cosmic strings were at play, slowly pulling them all to a point of convergence just as when they were all pulled to Shibuya station years ago?

He might've laughed something bitter at the thought, if he didn't feel so broken.

...

In the end, he didn't say anything.

There were several moments Kouji felt certain Takuya would walk away. There were several moments Kouji felt certain he himself would walk away.
Neither of them did, for whatever message the silence brought that kept them both tied there.
It was hard to say whether it was comfortable or uncomfortable, simply standing there together in silence, staring at that tree. It could have also been neither.

Just two people creating a simple moment, anew.

'It seems we've forgotten to look after each other.. like we used to.'
'But it's not too late for us to start over.'

Author's Notes:

**Thanks for reading another installment of 'Everyone in this fanfic needs therapy, dear god, why are there no therapists,' I hope you enjoyed the riveting scenes such as Izumi closing her window and drinking some tea, and Takuya and Kouji staring at a tree together.
You know how there's that tradition/cliche in Japan where two people make romantic promises under the spring cherry blossom trees? Yeah I guess this is kind of weirdly adjacent to that, in some morbid way-

**Kaede is just another background character like Ryuhei. Pay little mind to her existence.

**I've imagined their English teacher as part of the JET program, hence the non-Japanese name. Thanks for coming to Mr. Lee's TED talk about the importance of language.

**I wanted to include a little more of Izumi in this chapter, but we're already close to 5k words for this one so I'll have to save some stuff for later, I think!

**Lastly, recurring readers may have noticed the summary has changed a little, and I wanted to give a little update. While I hate to be indecisive, I've chosen to pivot away from the original Devil-Survivor-esque lockdown plot I had planned for this fic, a part of which was due to working on these beginning chapters over the past few months- I've realized I really enjoy writing the slice of life, family and school aspects of this fanfic and that I don't want to write myself into a corner where I won't be able to do any more of them.

That being said, I myself being a big Devil Survivor fan, this fic will still have a lot of inspiration from that series and many of the scenes I had planned can still be worked with in a less-tense situation. I may also still use a lockdown as a plot point for later, just not something right off the bat or as the whole story. Time will tell!
I hope that isn't too big a disappointment to readers who may have been looking forward to that aspect in particular.

At the end of the day I'm writing this for fun, as an exercise and as practice so it makes sense to go in a direction I find most enjoyable, and hopefully you all happen to enjoy it as well.
There are a lot of other inspirations that drive me to write this, some of the most prominent besides Devil Survivor include Madoka Magica, Persona 4 and OMORI, to give an idea of the directions this story may go in soon.

Thanks for understanding, and hope to see you all next chapter!