A/N:Hello! A Tuesday update! How rare. I love what happens when I can't sleep. This one is a bit less worldly than Hikari's. Hooray for Noriko's ordinary humanity! Enjoy and review guys! I love your comments.
II.
Middle school is absolute boredom.
She isn't able to put to words why exactly, but suddenly everything seems easier and the other students seem a lot slower than she she remembers her friends being. Maybe she's still siphoning off the Seed... though she has nothing left to want to do that for.
Almost like a bad dream, her earlier suffering has faded into wisps of details that are quickly wafted away by Punimon's spikes under her fingers and the voices of her friends who find Digimon eggs by their pillows when they turn twelve. She feels relieved and bitter and even a bit proud of herself for learning the right thing and earning a partner before they got one.
She is frightened, some of the time. She is worried, all of the time. Because things are still happening in that other world and she wants to go there but she's afraid she's not allowed to.
Because she hurt it, hurt it with her own despair and selfishness. Do those kinds of people deserve to be there?
"It's not about deserving," Ichijouji Ken had said when she tracked him down. "You just belong there."
She hadn't asked him why because at the time, it had felt like there was no answer.
Even now, Noriko finds that it doesn't. Now, when there is responsibility like carrying Punimon and keeping him fed and smiling in her general direction. Now, when she is able to hold up her Digivice and let it pull her through, she feels at home and decides not to question it. Otherwise, she might get it taken from her.
And that simply is not allowed.
Sometimes she wonders where Yagami Hikari is. Sometimes the wondering is intense, like the cramps that make it hard to leave her bed as a teenager. Others it is merely a faint curiosity, like the envy she has towards her friend's boyfriends.
Because as she grows older, she notices that her friends are pretty and she is not quite so much.
No, the feeling of being ordinary lingers still and with it, the pain of the barcode resting at her neck. Ken, who is now a constant pen pal and even more of a best friend, tells her that is probably all right because the pain never left him.
Sometimes, when the red pain clashes with bad dreams and the pull of hormones, she thinks the Dark Seed is a ghost, the ghost of evil and nearly-made sins that will haunt her because she is not a perfect being and, worse than that, doesn't want to be a perfect being anymore.
The girl with the beautiful laugh didn't look at perfection, perhaps because there wasn't anything to look at there. She had seen the flaws in Noriko, or the burden of them, and appreciated them. Or that is what it had looked like on that day. She doesn't know, because Hikari seems to exist as much as a ghost in the Odaiba area. She sees that girl Miyako all the time, but it is only in passing and Noriko doesn't talk to her. She irks her.
Maybe all those moments of seeing Miyako staring at her house have something to do with it.
Punimon wants to spit acid bubbles in her face.
Noriko knows that the acid is only about as dangerous as lemonade splashing your face, but she still says no.
Because it isn't right, and that is a clean-cut fact.
She still doesn't like Miyako, though.
…
Surprisingly, a lot of the times when she's in the Digital World, she rarely runs into any other children with the Seed. They are all probably busy going after their dreams. She has nothing more that she can do with herself at this point, so she throws herself into this multicolored world of... dreams, funnily enough.
The only one she sees with any way towards frequency is Keiko, who is learning how to bake here.
"Digimon will eat almost anything," she says with a giggle whenever Noriko sits and watches. "It doesn't really make them sick. But they have better taste buds than I do."
Noriko has to agree, watching her Punimon swallow a large bite of still piping hot bread. She grimaces, feeling the heat in her own throat.
Keiko flushes. "Sorry... forgot about that."
Noriko just grins.
Keiko is easy to talk to, she realizes, kind, not too invasive, but plenty of passion when she gets going. She's fun and safe and understanding. On some meetings, she envisions that Keiko is cute, in her own, looking-at-her-shoes kind of way.
But it's not what she's looking for, and Keiko knows it as well as she does.
Doesn't stop her from appreciating it anyway.
…
High school entrance exams are three months away and Noriko finds herself in the library with Punimon trying not to drool over her math equations.
At least he isn't snoring this time.
She pokes and she prods at the papers, trying to decide what school she should go to, what place to be in. She hates being smart once in a while because although the overflow has slowed since she was eleven, it hasn't dropped off the radar and is next to useless on nation-wide tests that makes geniuses sob. Okay, so Ken didn't sob about his, but his elite school isn't exactly known for being nice and he made sure she knew it.
Most complaining she has ever heard from him since, well, ever. Of course his best friend is even worse.
All things considered though, Motomiya Daisuke is a moron.
"Takeru, how the hell did you get x out of that gibberish?"
Speak of the devil.
She lifts up her book over her face as the aforementioned boy passes her, hearing him complain in dulcet tones to the blonde beside him. The other is sighing in long-suffering tones and trying to explain.
"Daisuke-kun, if you stopped thinking of food recipes and chemistry, you would know already!"
"I'm good at chemistry!"
"Daisuke's good at food, Takeru!"
It's the childishly high voice that makes Punimon perk and she shushes him. She does not want a Digimon gaggle of noise in the middle of the library. Alone, they were noisy enough.
"He's good at food," says a soft voice in agreement, and Noriko feels her hair stand on end. "But that doesn't mean he's good at taking high school entrance exams."
The childlike voice grumbles. "Why does he gotta take these loud tests anyway?"
Daisuke slams a book down on the nearby table, by the sound of it. "Cause if I don', there's no culinary school and without a license and the way to prove I can earn it, I don't get my cart, Chibimon!"
"Duh," Takeru mutters and there is a sudden cry of "ow" a few seconds later.
Noriko giggles behind the book, even though it really isn't that funny. She thinks she was quiet enough, even though Punimon is bouncing by her other books because he wants some chocolate and smells it in somebody's (probably Daisuke's) bag and wants to eat it now!
"Hi, Noriko-chan!"
Her face flushes and almost hits her table, but she represses the urge and looks down from her work. Daisuke is waving a tan hand and his goggles at the same time, like she can't tell who it is or something. Takeru is hiding his amusement behind his arm and Hikari is smiling at her books. Her hair is a little longer now, some held back by a plain pink plastic clip, and it swishes as she looks up to give Noriko a sheepish smile.
Gosh, she's beautiful.
That thought promptly makes Noriko flush with embarrassment and sigh. Thankfully, she's never been one of those girls to be in denial about who she is or what she likes, but it's still awkward to wave at the three of them and put a finger to her lips. Daisuke looks downtrodden and Takeru punches him in the arm.
Hikari laughs at the pair of them. Or maybe it's with them. It's hard to tell by the way the three of them sit together and look at each other.
Something about the moment is so mundane, almost too mundane.
Noriko breaks that feeling by sitting with them.
And letting Punimon eat Daisuke's chocolate. Because that isn't mundane at all.
All things in fun and comfort.
And being close to Hikari doesn't hurt either.