Schism ~ an adventure in shounen ai with the occasional flock of strangeness by ShiniJekka
Necessary Disclaimer o'Goodness – If you've been with us so far, you know I don't own these lovelies. Not even down to the last chibimon. Good thing, too, cos we're running outta meat to cook with over here…
Author's Ramble – This one wasn't so hard to write, cos my notes extended at least this far. Once we move beyond, however, it's uncharted territory and no doubt surprises for both you and I…
Chapter 2 – At My Heels, the Howling…
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Linguistics. Speech. That which separates modern man from animal. Communication. The way the world works.
At the moment, the bane of my existence.
This class used to be simplicity in itself, just another sidetrack on the path toward Digital Domination. Some small section of my brain would stand up and proclaim "This is my realm, my companions, I shall handle it. The rest of you just keep working on those spiral plans…" and all would be well.
If I'm lucky, I won't blurt out a terrible swear when it's my turn.
This particular teacher enjoys the task of introducing one paragraph and then letting the class take turns transcribing it into different languages. Three desks ahead of me, Himiko was flaunting a perfect Italian accent. It sounded, to me, like a recipe.
"Il supervisore della casa era molto severo. Era, infatti, una persona di tale natura dura che le tempeste hanno scurito perpetuo il suo portello," she recites perfectly, and perches back onto her chair with a flurry of skirt and bounce of shiny purple ponytail.
"Bueno," the teacher compliments. The girl practically glows.
And my doom creeps one desk closer.
"Ryuusuke. German."
"Der Meister des Hauses war sehr stern. Er war …tatsächlich eine Person solcher rauher Natur, daß Stürme unaufhörlich …seine Tür verdunkelten…?"
"Ausgezeichneter Job, Ryuusuke. Hiro, English."
My attention wanders, despite that now of all times I ought to be watching like a hawk, listening carefully to the inflections. Something outside keeps catching my eye, some flurry of movement from near the ostentatiously blue recycling bin… from the corner of my eye, faint glimmers, but whenever I try to see, it's gone.
Slightly strange, slightly infuriating but let it not be said that Ken Ichijouji is not a patient and determined person. There has to be a system to this; that persistent movement at the edge of vision wasn't just a figment of mine. It may be that it was there one moment, but not the next… else I have to look so suddenly that it doesn't get a chance to vanish. I just need to single out the formula.
Ahead of me, Hiro was finally stumbling through a long and painful English translation. The teacher rolls her eyes and asks him to repeat himself. I'm keeping half an ear to the result in case it would help me, come my turn. And I waited… waited…
… Almost…
"The master of the house was v-very stern. He was, in fact, a person of such …harsh nature that storms perpe… perpetually darkened his door."
"Much better, Hiro."
I snap my vision toward the bin, before the glimmer can vanish.
And very nearly fall out of my chair.
There was only a split second of visual contact before it was gone, but it was enough to spy dark blue hair, spiky ends shifting in a breeze, and a gaze framed by angular glasses.
A self-assured, casual smirk…
"Ken. In French, if you could."
I ignore her, staring out the window still, rising to my feet stiffly. It was impossible, of course, that I had seen what my eyes and mind had registered. Preposterous to the point that any sane man would direct his attention forward and sort through the French that was assembling in my brain like a line of martyred soldiers off to war. "We haven't a chance, but Sarge wants us on the front lines, men."
"Ken? Ichijouji-kun, daijoubu?"
Iie, Sensei, I think to myself. I am most certainly not.
Because I glanced out the window and saw my dead brother looking up at me.
Whispers were beginning to ripple through the students like wind over a field of wheat. I tear my gaze from the window, to the irritable teacher, to the door, to the chalkboard…
A person of such harsh nature that storms perpetually darkened his door
And vault my entire desk, running at full 'Rocket' speed out the door and down the hall, feet pounding and skidding around corners, my own progress echoing back to me from the cold cement surrounding of the academic purgatory I was suddenly fleeing. Some dry and still reasonable portion of my brain is defining for me the process of 'fugue', and sighing that I'd just furthered the belief that Infallible Ichijouji has lost more from his head than a stellar IQ.
I let it ramble. My brother had been outside, and he had been in my dreams for a week, now. I'm not going to miss this message any longer.
The school door bursts open as I shoulder into it and spill into the open air, sucking in greedy gasps of oxygen. A quick, desperate look all over, street to street, corner to corner, proves fruitless.
There's no one. Not a soul, not a departing back, not even a stray dog. I ran from my class like a lunatic to find an empty street.
And I've left my bag behind, too. Absolutely terrific. Thank god I'd left Wormmon home today, since he was so tired this morning. I don't even want to go back in the front door, as far as my locker.
I don't want to, and so I won't. Past all of the rules and regulations and social expectations, it suddenly occurs to me that it's as simple as that. I don't want to go back inside, and so I won't. I could go back home, and if that garnered a scolding, I could plead sickness.
It most likely won't be far from the truth.
To my profound relief, the apartment is empty.
Save for one.
"Ken-chan!"
I close the door behind me and offer a smile to the enthusiastic Digimon who scuttles across from my room to lean adoringly against my leg.
"Hello Wormmon."
"How was school, Ken-chan? You're home early, aren't you?"
"Mmn." I set my keys on the counter and bend to pick him up, cradling him in the crook of one arm. His mandibles click and his eyes take on a happier shape, and impulsively I nuzzle my forehead against his smooth skin.
"Did something happen at school?" Wormmon asks quietly.
"Would you like some lunch?" I counter. He looks up at me for a moment, antennae waving in curiosity, and then nods as I knew he would.
Things are silent as I compile the sandwiches. Wormmon sits on the tabletop (despite his worry that he shouldn't be, we do eat on the table after all, and to which I reply 'You can be wherever you want, and if the table gets dirty then I'll eat off something else.') and watches me quietly, patiently.
He knows me well, well enough that he knows this story will come out when I'm ready for it to. As always, he's right.
Amidst mouthfuls of lettuce, turkey, and bread I ask him if he remembers when I had a brother.
There's a slight pause as my partner tilts his head to the side, letting the question settle. His aquamarine oculars look me over, as though trying to figure out from the one innocent inquiry just what was troubling me.
"I remember," he finally replies, squirming slightly. "You were usually upset when you talked about him."
"He was perfect," I say with a shrug, as though it were the explanation for everything. "He was Mr. Wonderful. He had the spotlight, the attention of everyone, and it made me feel ignored."
"Never by me," Wormmon reminds me gently. I smile for him and reach over, resting a hand upon his head, my thumb massaging in little circles. He leans into it with half-lidded eyes, and from deep within a rumbling sort of purr emits.
"I know, my friend."
"You never talked about him after you went away, though," he notes through the purrs. "You were very different when you came back, after all, but I found it odd that you never once mentioned him." He turns his gaze up to me, and for a moment I am encompassed in his sympathy. "I wish I could have been there for you when he died."
For a moment that feels like an eon I struggle to keep my emotions reigned in. This isn't the topic at hand, after all, though I understand he'll bring this up again later, until I'm ready to let him help me through this old wound, just like the others.
So I murmur thank you, and get to the meat of it.
"Osamu is trying to tell me something."
Wormmon looks genuinely confused, nudging the remaining quarter of his sandwich away, which more than anything tells me how concerned he is. A Digimon turning away uneaten food might be listed among the warning signs of the Second Coming.
"Ken-chan, I thought humans didn't come back like us Digimon did."
"They don't," I sigh, resting my head in my hands. "Therein lies the problem. Either I'm being haunted by my brother, or I'm going completely insane."
"You're not going insane," the confident alto returns, from closer than he was situated before. I raise my head to see he has scuttled ever nearer, to place himself directly in my line of sight, blocking all else. "I would know if you were, Ken-chan, and I know you're not."
"So then my elder brother is sending me nightmares and daydreams?"
He clicks his mandibles together and nods to himself, and I forget that I hadn't yet told him just what my dreams had been about, yet. Well, now he knows.
"Maybe," Wormmon admits. "How do you know it's your brother? Maybe it's something else."
"No." It would have been a nice thought, but the sighting at the school cemented it in my beliefs. "No, I'd know his figure anywhere. There's no possible way I could mistake that blue, spiky hair, the way he kept it messily jutting out in all directions… the way light used to gleam off the shape of his glasses, or his proud posture in the doorway, straight and rigid and unyielding… Osamu was never the type to…"
I trail off, suddenly, because Wormmon is looking very odd.
In fact, he's shivering.
"What?" I ask with a blink. "What's wrong?"
"K-ken-chan…" he stutters softly, eyes going wider and filled with a fear I'd hoped never to see in him again. "Who you just described… to me, sounds more like…"
In my left ear, there is a sibilant giggling.
Jolting upright, straight off of my chair into a wary standing position, I skew my gaze around the room, violet eyes narrowing in hostile terror. This is getting absolutely ridiculous, a genius like me jumping at shadows and tilting at windmills, but I'm too tired and stressed out and freaked out to sit and think it over reasonably.
It's a tiny comfort that my Wormmon is here with me, though I'm not sure whether I ought to be protecting him or vice versa. Neither of us are exactly professionals in dealing with ghosts.
"Why are you looking around like that?"
I pause, and look at the table. Wormmon is exactly as he was, tense and spooked, eyes locked on me and shimmering.
"Why...? You didn't hear it?"
He shakes his head, and the eyes get impossibly wider.
"I heard you describe the person you kept seeing, Ken-chan. I does sound like the pictures of him I see, with the hair and the glasses and all, but I was just telling you that… to me it sounded more like…"
I'm not sure if he stops on his own, or if I simply can't hear him anymore, because the room has faded to black.
It was dark, dark all over, and cool. His own footsteps echoed back to him, as though the open street were the halls of his once mighty towers, of the erections which held such pride and now weighed down on his soul.
It was dark, and within it there was a figure. He tries to run to him, to take him by the shoulders and beg him to just end this and tell him what it is he wants him to know, but he can't seem to move fast enough, or at all. He's not really sure. He opens his mouth to yell, and no sound comes out at all. The figure steps forward. Eerie blue lighting flickers off the rim of his angular glasses, dances at the edges of his spiked hair…
"You haven't figured it out yet?"
And suddenly he wanted to run away, to stumble backward, to throw his hands in front of himself, a futile gesture of warding… whatever message this harbinger bore, he wanted none of it.
"You don't have a choice, my Ken-chan…"
"KEN-CHAN!"
Dim streetlight flares into the ceiling of my kitchen, so fast and disjointed that my mind simply can't comprehend. Somehow I ended up on my floor, which would account for the splitting pain in my head. Groggily I latch my fingers onto the edge of the table, pulling myself to my feet before poor Wormmon has a coronary. He's already squirming and fretting to bring down the house. It was his yell I heard last, echoing that of…
…of who?
I hate this.
"I'm okay," I rasp, mainly to myself, partially to the open air. Wormmon nudges at my hand worriedly, and I scoop him into my arms, lurching into my room, where it's cool and dark. I just need to lie down for a moment, until it all stops pounding, and I'll be fine.
"What happened?" Wormmon whispers. "You looked so white and then you just fell."
"Low blood sugar," my instant excuse generator supplies.
"You just ate," he counters, eyes reprimanding me for even trying.
"Just give me a minute," I plead. "I'll talk when it all stops spinning, I promise…"
You're just as weak as ever…
"Oh, god." I plant my face into the pillow, cupping the feathery confines around the sides of my face as though it could hold the pounding expanse of my brain inside safely. Visions and voices, wouldn't it go figure that after all I've gone through, I'm going insane?
Wormmon said I wasn't. I can trust him, beyond anything else. I can trust him.
But why won't this all just STOP? Stupid haunting, stupid giggling, stupid dark street, stupid dead brother, stupid Ken…
"Just go away," I whisper brokenly into the pillow, lips pressing against the fabric. "Just go away… just go away…"
Somehow… it does.
Just like that. The headache, the despair, the terror. Gone.
Except a small, tiny beeping.
Wormmon nudges the object toward me, antennae wavering in concern, and to my surprise, I've got mail.
From Daisuke.
"Hey, you! We're having an impromptu get-together in the digital world! Thought you'd like to come?
~ Dai"
Daisuke. I should be near him. I feel almost normal when I'm near him.
Daisuke can help me.
"Are we going?" my Digimon asks plaintively.
I nod, silently gazing at my black D3.
So much in my life was dark…
"I'll be happy to see Chibimon," Wormmon says gently, nudging at my knee. "And you'll be happier, too. Daisuke makes you happy."
"Aa," I reply, quietly.
His simple series of beeps, and my world is in blessed, soft stillness.
And I know for certain that he will be the only thing to help me through this.
"Digiport… open."
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This.. chapter.. took.. forever… I've been bouncing between this story and When To Bicker, which people seem desperate for more of, and despite my efforts I'm simply not making enough headway on. Hopefully Chapter 3 will come in less time than this one took, but I offer no promises in summer.
I love feedback. This is a subtle hint.
Adult Detective Ken: * Wanders by the 'Muse Wanted' sign, pausing to blink at it in surprise… Jekka jumps down on him with a butterfly net *
MINE! ALL MINE!
ADKen: O.o What th-… HEY! I've got CASES to solve!!
Nooo, you've got fanfics to help write. YOU'RE my new muse!!
ADKen: But… but…
You get to read all the kensuke.
ADKen: ……. m fine.
Neheheh, thought so.