Taishiro Week Day 2 – Cards

The Correct Universe

Taichi crossed his legs on his bed, beginning to feel uncomfortable. He was playing Fantasy Warcraft 3 with Koushirou in his new room. With Taichi starting middle school in a few weeks, he and Hikari finally decided to split into separate bedrooms. It was a good opportunity to invite a friend over to play a loud videogame, without bothering anyone else. The Fantasy Warcraft series featured giant dinosaur monsters and complex puzzles, which both Taichi and Koushirou enjoyed. Perhaps they each preferred one feature over the other. But they liked playing together most of all.

Still, it was getting increasingly difficult for Taichi to concentrate on gameplay, when all he could think about was—

"I gotta pee!" Taichi dropped his game controller and jumped to his feet.

"What?! Now?" Koushirou mashed his controller's buttons furiously.

Onscreen, Taichi's orc avatar stopped defending Koushirou's wizard, who was overrun by velociraptors before he could defuse the bomb in time. There was an explosion and the 'Game Over' screen appeared.

"Taichi!"

"Sorry!" Taichi fled the room.

Two minutes later, Taichi practiced his best charming smile in the bathroom mirror. He anticipated that Koushirou would still be mad at him. And Koushirou could be difficult to impress. He patted down his hair and walked back to his bedroom. "Hey man, sorry for—" Taichi stopped and raised his eyebrows.

Koushirou was standing over Taichi's drawers, his hand inside an open box that Taichi kept on the top shelf. Koushirou squeaked like a mouse and spun around, his eyes wide and his face flushed. "I'm sorry! I was—cleaning!—I mean, of course I wasn't cleaning. I was—gahh!" Koushirou sighed. "I was poking my nose in your stuff without your permission."

Taichi laughed. "Don't worry! I know you. I don't care if you look around my new room. I'm not hiding anything from you." Taichi sat back on the bed. Koushirou looked relieved.

"Thanks…" Koushirou cleared his throat. "Taichi, before we go back to playing and fixing your mistake—can I ask you a question?"

"Of course!"

Koushirou held up his hand. He was holding a card; Taichi recognized it immediately. The card had an image of Agumon on the front side, and yellow circuit lines on the backside. Taichi realized that Koushirou must have noticed the familiar card on top of his drawers. It was the kind of thing that would naturally excite his friend's curiosity.

"When we were in Vamdemon's castle, you asked me to solve the card puzzle to open the gateway to our world," Koushirou began. "I was able to solve most of it, but not the last part. There were two cards leftover for the final spot: the Agumon card and the Gomamon card. They were both child-level vaccine-type digimon. There was a fifty percent chance probability for either of them being the correct card that would take us home. Sora asked you to pick the last card…And I've always wondered. Why did you pick the Gomamon card?" Koushirou stared at his friend with an intense expression.

"Ohh haha!" Taichi fumbled and laughed. "I'm trying to remember what was going through my mind. You know, Koromon actually asked me that afterwards! He was insulted that I didn't pick him. I told him that I wanted to keep his card as a souvenir." Taichi smiled fondly, remembering the feeling of holding his digimon partner in his arms.

"I don't believe that," Koushirou said. Taichi blinked. Koushirou didn't seem to notice that Taichi was acting more awkward than usual. Even if he did notice, Koushirou was still determined to get a satisfactory answer to his question. "Psychologically, I doubt that you were thinking about which card you'd like to keep as a souvenir. The stakes were too high. I know you. You're a smart person. You must have had a reason."

"Thanks! That's flattering, coming from you." Taichi rubbed his forehead. "I'm trying to remember. It was stressful. Everyone was yelling."

"I would have picked the Agumon card."

"What? Why?"

"Because Agumon was yours." Koushirou realized what he said out loud and started blushing. "I mean! I think that everybody would have picked yours! Including Jou! After all, Jou was the first person to ask you to be the leader. We all wanted you to be the leader. So it would simply make more sense to choose your card."

"Huh." Taichi frowned. He hadn't thought of it that way. "But that's an emotional reason to pick my card, not a logical one. It doesn't make any sense under scrutiny."

"You're right," Koushirou admitted. "But I couldn't solve the problem logically. And human emotions have greater power in the Digital World than in our world. Like courage, love, honesty…So if there was no logical solution to the puzzle, perhaps the only solution was an emotional one, but it could still work in the Digital World. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah!" Taichi beamed. "I understand. That's genius!"

"It's hardly genius. I would have picked the wrong card. Why did you pick Gomamon?"

"Hang on. I'm trying to remember what I was feeling, not just what I was thinking." Taichi lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a minute. "…I remember that I was overwhelmed that everyone asked me to be the leader, but I was mostly feeling so grateful to you guys. Even after all the mistakes I made—like causing Agumon to evolve to SkullGreymon, or putting Sora's life in danger—you all still trusted me. I felt like I didn't deserve that. It was humbling." Taichi rolled on his side to meet Koushirou's eyes. "I was definitely grateful to Jou. He's more mature than me and I always knew that. So I guess…picking Gomamon's card just felt like the right thing to do. My way of paying Jou back for validating me. Picking Agumon's card felt selfish and wrong. The only reason I was the leader because you guys were backing me up."

Koushirou nodded eagerly. "That's so interesting! It sounds like it could have been the feeling of teamwork that ultimately opened the Gate."

"Thanks." Taichi sat up straight. "After I got the crest of courage, I had to learn to stick up for other people, not just me. That's always the braver thing to do."

"You've always been like that, Taichi."

"Thanks!" Taichi's smile was disarming. He didn't have the heart to argue with his friend. Taichi knew full well that he had an arrogant streak. Koushirou was too nice to understand that.

Koushirou blushed under the full force of Taichi's sunny smile. He turned around and carefully set Taichi's card back in the box. "Thank you for taking the time to answer my question."

"No problem. I never put my feelings into words like that. You helped me understand."

"Well, that's my job."

Taichi chuckled. He stared at the back of Koushirou's head, his bright red hair. "I am glad to have it as a souvenir, anyway. I miss him. And now that we have to live ordinary lives and go to school again, sometimes I start thinking that the Digital World was all a dream. But then I can touch the card, and I have proof that he was real."

"Yes. I appreciate having proof," Koushirou agreed. He finally sat on the bed next to Taichi. "I still have files saved on my laptop that Gennai gave me. For example, statistical documents about the various types of digimon. When I came home, I made sure that I transferred the Digital World files to a flash drive. And a CD. And another flash drive. So I have multiple copies of the evidence that those digimon existed."

"Wow thanks. That was really smart of you."

"I try." Koushirou stared at his knees.

Taichi hesitated. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Yes."

"Do you ever wonder…if maybe I picked the wrong card? And we're actually living in a parallel universe to the one we were born in?"

"YES!" Koushirou shouted and grabbed Taichi's arm, a giant smile on his face. Taichi jolted back in surprise. Koushirou laughed. "I wonder about that all the time! Oh I'm not worried of course! If this is a different universe than the one we started in, then any difference between them is negligible. It still feels like home. So it's hardly an urgent question. But it is a fascinating premise, isn't it? What if we're really aliens in this world? What if there are subtle differences out there that we just haven't noticed yet?"

Taichi grinned. It was rare to see Koushirou light up like this. "Yeah, you're right! I'll have to keep an eye out for that."

"Please do, and keep me informed."

"You're surprisingly chill with the idea of being an alien in the wrong universe!"

"So are you," Koushirou said defensively.

"Heh, yeah. Well, at least we're still together."

"Yes!" Koushirou looked overjoyed. "Even if we're in the prime universe—which is still the most probable situation—I still want to see all of the universes out there. Don't you?"

"Yeah. I do."

The boys were still for a moment. Then Koushirou let go of Taichi's arm.

"Uh, do you want to go back to Fantasy Warcraft?" Taichi asked.

Koushirou nodded. He picked up his controller again. "Don't leave me this time."

"I won't."