Chapter 3

The deeper they got in the forest, the larger the trees became. They'd been walking for hours, and they felt like insect crawling around the roots of the giant trees. The few glimpses they had of the sky through the canopy revealed that the sun had set and the darkness would soon be complete.

"Let's set up camp," T.K. suggested. "We should recover out strength and keep looking in the morning."

"Someone should stay awake and guard," Cody said.

"With this many people, two people should stay up to guard," said Tsukiyo. "That way they can keep each other awake. As soon as one of them gets tired, he or she should wake up someone else, so at least one person will be fully alert at all times."

"But the digimon should get all the rest they can, so they should be exempt," Izzy added.

"I'm not going to argue with that," said Tentomon drowsily.

T.K. and Cody decided to take the first watch. They talked for almost an hour before T.K. got tired and woke Ken. Soon after, Cody grew sleepy and woke up Yolei, at Ken's request.

They sat near the low fire. Nothing was visible by its light past the sleeping humans and digimon, and the forest was silent. It felt like their little camp was its own universe floating in endless emptiness. Ken shivered.

"Are you cold, Ken?"

"Not really."

The night's stillness was broken by Davis snoring.

Yolei laughed softly. Ken glanced at her, admiring the color of her hair in the firelight. She noticed him looking at her. "I don't know how we get any sleep camping with Davis," she explained.

"It's one of life's mysteries, I guess." He looked away. "What do you think of Izzy and Tsukiyo?"

"I think they were made for each other," Yolei replied.

"I agree. I don't think Izzy would be completely happy with anyone who wasn't his intellectual equal."

"You know, it's funny: I've always been the smartest person in most of my classes. I used to wonder if I was a genius. Then I met Izzy and you and Tsukiyo. Being around you makes me feel average."

"Yolei, you're very smart..." Ken objected.

"But I like it. I like feeling average, being around people I can talk to without feeling like a nerd. It's lonely at the top." She smiled at him. "But I guess you know that."

He smiled back. Her smiles were contagious.

He looked away and scooted a few inches further from the fire. "Davis tells me that you have a new boyfriend," he said casually.

"I wouldn't really call him my boyfriend," Yolei said. Her smile widened, but it was no longer for him. "His name's Tommi. I met him in school. We've been hanging out lately, that's all."

He didn't believe her, but nodded. "I'll have to tell Davis he was over exaggerating."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far. I mean, I really like him; he's really, really cute and so sweet. Last week he left a rose in my locker with a note..."

"Oh really? He sounds..." Ken yawned loudly. "He sounds nice."

"And you sound tired. Maybe you should wake someone else up and get back to sleep."

"I think you're right. Any preferences on who you'd like to keep you company next?"

"You're so considerate, Ken." She thought about it. She had the suspicion that Tsukiyo and Izzy had come up with the two-person watch as an excuse to spend some time alone together, and she was more than happy to collude with that plan. "I'd kind of like to talk to Tsukiyo a little."

Ken roused Tsukiyo, then crawled into a sleeping bag. He lay awake for some time, wondering why he had to bring up her new boyfriend. He didn't think he was jealous. Why would he be? Yolei wasn't his girlfriend. He didn't deserve her...not after the things he did as the emperor. He immediately berated himself for thinking that way. It didn't usually bother him anymore, but sometimes the guilt returned, usually late at night, like this.

Tsukiyo thought Ken had looked kind of upset when he woke her up, but maybe he was just tired.

"What did you and Ken talk about?" she asked Yolei.

"He asked me about my new boyfriend."

"You have a new boyfriend? Do you wear them out quickly?"

Yolei knew she'd meant it jokingly, but she was still a little defensive. She didn't know how much Izzy had told Tsukiyo about her dating history. "I've had lots of boyfriends in the past, but I was too young to have a serious boyfriend, and it's different with Tommi. Besides, how am I supposed to find out what I want in a boyfriend if I don't shop around a little?"

"I wouldn't know," Tsukiyo answered bluntly.

Yolei stared at her. "You can't mean that Izzy is your first boyfriend."

"Or at least the closest thing I've ever had to one."

She arched her eyebrows in disbelief. "How old are you, twenty-something? And you've never had a boyfriend before?"

Tsukiyo looked a little embarrassed, though she didn't blush. "I'm twenty-six, and I've just been too busy with my education and my career." She reconsidered. "No, that's not true. The truth is I never wanted a boyfriend, I never looked for one, and I was surprised when I met Izzy and realized that I actually had feelings for him." She seemed to think that was all she needed to say, and stared thoughtfully into the fire.

Yolei couldn't stand leaving it at that. "And?" she pressed.

"And what?"

"Why did you think you would never have a boyfriend? Didn't you want to fall in love?"

She shrugged. "Not really. As soon as I learned about love—from a fairy tale my teacher read to the class when I was about eight—I gave up hope of ever feeling it myself."

"You didn't learn about love from your parents?" Yolei queried.

Tsukiyo's face melted into a look as bitter as if she'd just bitten down on a fat, juicy aloe vera leaf. "Those two. They've been married for almost three decades, and I'm convinced they've hated every single day of it. No, I did not learn of it from them."

"Then how did you know you felt that way about Izzy?"

"I didn't, at first," she admitted, the bitterness receding back to wherever it came from. "I had feelings for him that I'd never felt before. I contemplated them, analyzed them, dissected them, then tried to disregard them and concentrate on the professional friendship we were forming. But they wouldn't go away. I never imagined in my wildest hypothetical extrapolations that romantic attachment would be so powerful...that it can pull you in even when you don't want it."

"You really do love him, don't you?"

Tsukiyo didn't answer. She was embarrassed at how much she just revealed. It was more than she'd told to Izzy, in fact. "You look tired," she told Yolei.

"I am starting to feel sleepy. Maybe I'll go to bed. Goodnight, Tsukiyo."

"Goodnight."

Yolei woke up Izzy, as she'd planned, and went to sleep.

Izzy sat down beside Tsukiyo. He didn't talk for a moment as he searched his brain for conversation-starters that weren't insipid. "It must be pretty late," he finally said, even though he was wearing a watch. "It's hard to tell without seeing the sky."

"Yes. It's hard to imagine how high the trees are without actually looking at them. I was just thinking that they might not grow in the digital world, they could simply appear at any size. But there would have to be some mechanism that instructs the raw data to form that shape. It's really fascinating to speculate. You know, Izzy, I don't know if it's appropriate to say this, but I've never had a boyfriend before."

After all the time he'd spent with Tsukiyo, Izzy was used to her random subject changes, but this still caught him off guard. "I've never had a girlfriend before. I spent my time concentrating on my studies instead, both by choice and by everyone else's choice."

Tsukiyo nodded understandingly. "Izzy...I'm not good at talking about my feelings..."

"Neither am I," he said quietly.

After a moment, she smiled. "Okay then. It's a relief to have that cleared up."

Izzy released a breath he'd been holding with a sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh. "Yes. It is."

They talked quietly about the science of the digital world for the rest of the night.