Chapter 2

Mimi plopped her books down on Sora's bed and fell into it like it was her own. Sora watched with a soft smirk from her desk across the room. Her arms were crossed over the back of her chair as if she were looking over a balcony, an unwitting voyeur of the scene in front of her.

"I appreciate you bringing over my work, but you really don't have to stay." Sora glanced down. One foot was folded up under her so she was sat on it. The other, now fitted tightly in a boot, stuck out like a sore thumb against the wooden floorboards. "I probably won't be much fun."

Sora felt a bit clunky in her apartment. Her room was minimalistic and plain, the only decor being a few pictures frames and vases filled with flowers. She felt that if she moved too much she'd accidentally break something, what with lugging her dud foot around under her.

Mimi sat up and frowned, crossing her legs butterfly-style. It looked like she was getting comfortable instead of considering leaving.

"Don't be silly." Mimi replied, deciding no further counter-argument was needed.

Sora, with her head still laid down on the back of her chair, glanced out the window. It looked comfortable outside. It was sunny and warm but not so warm that tennis would be unbearable. She wondered if Natsu had stayed for afternoon practice or if she was too disappointed to face the team. She couldn't compete in a doubles tournament by herself, after all, so it was a lost cause.

Mimi, sensing Sora's distress, tried to snap her friend out of it before she dove in too deep. "Hey! Why don't we do something?" she clasped her hands together excitedly.

"Like what?" Sora asked, her voice monotone. Most ideas she could come up with involved leaving her house.

"We could watch a movie?" Mimi suggested. "Or we could bake something?"

Sora's brows perked up. She hadn't realized how hungry she was until Mimi mentioned food. She missed lunch due to spending most of her afternoon at the hospital so snacking on something would probably be for the best. "I think I've got some flour and eggs. I'm not sure what else." Sora offered.

"Good enough!" Mimi cheered. She rose triumphantly and marched over towards her friend, extending her hand. "Let's go see, shall we?"

Sora lifted her head. She didn't smile, but her mood had clearly changed. She let Mimi help her up and started to limp towards her crutches, which she'd thoughtlessly left against the wall on the other side of the room.

Mimi watched her for a moment until she realized what her friend was doing. "Oh!" She dashed over towards them to Sora's disapproval.

"No, no. It's fine, I can get them." Sora said through grit teeth, cutting Mimi off before she could complete the task for her. Sora moved slowly but it wasn't due exclusively to pain. She found it difficult to re-learn how to walk with one of her feet raised an inch off the ground. The boot she wore was hard and heavy and weighed her down while her healthy leg antsily pulled her forward.

Mimi skeptically surveyed the situation. It would have clearly been easier for Sora to accept her help, but Sora was stubborn- sometimes more stubborn than Taichi and Yamato. With a raised brow, she folded. "Fine. You get your crutches and I'll head into the kitchen and-"

The ring of a cell phone cut Mimi off. She instinctively scanned the room for her own, but it lay silently on the bed where she'd tossed it before. Sora sighed defeatedly upon realizing the call was for her and that she'd left her phone back on her desk. It buzzed impatiently and she would have let it go to voicemail had Mimi not lunged for it.

"It's Koushiro." Mimi muttered once her eyes found his name on the screen. She tossed the phone to Sora, who caught it as graciously as someone on crutches could.

"Ah- um- hello?" Sora fumbled to press the phone against her ear. She leaned over one of her crutches haphazardly. Mimi could hear Koushiro's voice on the other side of the line but she couldn't make out what he was saying. Instead, she tried to put the pieces together by listening in on Sora's side of the conversation.

"Yeah, it wasn't too bad. I'm fine."

"Yeah it'll be a shame to miss the tournament."

"...Yeah."

"Mimi?"

Mimi's ears perked up at the sound of her own name. She realized Koushiro was asking about her but she couldn't think of why. They'd just crossed paths before leaving school.

"Yeah, she made it here. Why?" Sora continued the conversation but shot Mimi a curious glance.

The adrenaline spike Mimi experienced rapidly melted away. He was just checking in, as any good friend would.

"Oh, uh, alright. Well she's right here if you'd like to talk to her about anything."

There was a pause. Sora figured it'd be more convenient to put the boy on speakerphone, so she did just that as he gathered his thoughts.

"No Sora, it's fine, I don't need to talk to Mimi, I just wanted to make sure she-"

Mimi's eyes widened playfully at the opportunity to tease him. She spoke loudly from across the room, smirking all the while. "What do you mean you don't want to talk to me?"

There was another pause- a shorter, more confused pause. Sora stifled her laughter as Koushiro stumbled over his words. "Did you put me on speakerphone?! Why would you do that!"

Mimi let out a snort and quickly covered her mouth, the sound only making her laugh harder through the gaps of her fingers. Sora shook her head in amusement as she ended the call. She looked like she was going to say something but a message on her phone caught her eye. Noticing it was from Taichi, she curiously opened it up.

'Hey! I'm really sorry about what happened this morning. I hope you're feeling okay. Let me know when you can hang out. Maybe I can get you a coffee?'

As Sora looked the text over, she wondered why Taichi's voice in her head sounded awfully guilty. The message read like a personal apology for something that wasn't his fault. Sora also wasn't a huge fan of coffee, which is something Taichi knew. In fact, he'd always tease her for how jittery and anxious she'd get after drinking it. He wasn't offering to settle his overactive conscious about something, was he? If so, this was a pretty mindless attempt at it.

Sora considered typing out a response then and there, but Mimi had already dashed into the kitchen and called for her to hurry up. There was a jarring clatter of pots and pans.

"Yeah, uh, give me a minute!" Sora called back, glancing down at her boot. She wouldn't be able to hurry anywhere anytime soon, so she shoved her phone into her pocket and trudged out to help her friend.

Takeru Takaishi leaned forward in his chair and propped his elbows up on his legs. A newscaster on tv was going on about some new temple or church that opened downtown but Takeru was distracted. He watched his father tap his fingers against the couch in the middle of the room. The second hand of the clock on the wall behind him seemed to tick in tune. Clearly the man was nervous- it was ten minutes before his new girlfriend was set to arrive and Yamato had yet to show.

"Where is he?" Mr. Ishida asked for what seemed like the tenth time.

"I don't know," Takeru responded without missing a beat, "doesn't he live here? With you?"

His father grumbled something inaudibly before sighing and speaking up more clearly. "This is why I told you both to get here early. I figured something would happen and I… I wanted to talk to you…" the man's voice trailed off as he tilted his head to stare at the clock. His eyes followed the second hand as it inched closer and closer to the deadline. "You know, to fill you in and all, I mean. And you know how your brother can be…"

Takeru caught his father's eye and offered a reassuring smirk. "Yeah, moody."

The man snorted. "Well that's not how I was going to-"

"Just call it what it is, Dad." Takeru interrupted him and laughed. Perhaps he would have gone on with the joke, but it was all cut short by the sound of the front door opening. Takeru craned his neck around to see who it was as his father jolted up. The heavy footsteps gave it away before he had the chance to get too rattled. Yamato moseyed around the corner, seemingly unbothered by his tardiness. He tossed his jacket on the back of the couch.

"Hey." He huffed without making eye contact. If he was expecting some sort of reply, it didn't seem to bother him when both his brother and father hesitated.

Takeru glanced at his dad and nodded encouragingly. He moved to turn the television off and the silence gave the man the perfect opening.

"Yamato." His father said his name like he was already defeated. "I'm glad you made it."

"Well I had to come home eventually." Yamato retorted. He took a moment to fold his jacket more neatly, feigned a look of annoyance at it, and unfolded it just to fold it again.

Takeru stepped forward. "I'm glad too!" It was an attempt to shatter the awkwardness but it felt overly enthusiastic, even to him. "I mean, this will be nice, right?" he corrected himself.

Yamato stopped fidgeting with his hands and turned around to face his brother. In the process, he noticed that the apartment looked cleaner than usual. A blanket was folded neatly over the back of the chair instead of being crumpled upon it. Piles of papers that usually littered the coffee table had been cleared away. A throwpillow Yamato didn't recognize was fluffed up proudly on the far side of the couch.

"Dad?" the older boy raised a brow. "Did you… did you buy a throwpillow?"

"No." His dad stuttered a bit too quickly. "What? No. That throwpillow? Why? Does it look new?"

Yamato slumped his shoulders and put a hand lazily on top of his head. "It looks out of place. You've never bought anything like that before."

And it was true. Mr. Ishida wasn't much of a decorator. He had the essentials and what he didn't need he'd never miss. Yamato realized that his old man had put a significant amount of effort into making this a good first impression. Takeru seemed ready to play along, but Yamato was never one to fake happy emotions. Would he attempt to hide negativity? Almost certainly, and usually poorly, but that's as far as he would go.

Over the next few minutes, Mr. Ishida explained the situation as coherently as he could. The two brothers listened with lines of confusion traced on their foreheads. Their father had called his relationship both serious and not serious, gave varying accounts of what he considered his first date with the woman, and rattled off a list of her interests that probably wouldn't lend itself to conversation later on. There was only one thing that grabbed Yamato's attention.

"-she used to play bass in her younger years, you know!"

The boy blinked. "Yeah? She still any good?"

His father recoiled. "I uh, I've actually never heard her play. Maybe you can ask her."

Yamato crossed his arms over his chest. "Yeah. Maybe."

Before Mr. Ishida could get into any further details about what to expect, there was a faint knock at the door. If there wasn't a break in the conversation all three of them probably would have missed it. Still, Mr. Ishida froze.

Takeru looked from the door, to his father, and back to the door again. "Do you... do you want me to get it?" He asked quietly.

The man cleared his throat. "No, no. I'll do it. I'll get it. You two just wait here and... and..." he furrowed his brow, trying to think of the most effective final piece of advice. "Be nice. Please."

Yamato could feel his father staring at him, waiting for any sign of assurance that he'd honor the request. When the boy kept his gaze locked firmly on something insignificant across the room, he turned around and shuffled towards the door. Takeru elbowed him once the man was out of sight.

"Ow! What?!"

Takeru frowned. "You heard him- you should really be nice. Give her a chance, you know? I can't carry this dinner on my own."

"Why do you both think I'm going to be mean to this woman?!" Yamato asked in exasperation. "I'm going to be nice."

"Okay," Takeru went on, testing his luck, "what about pleasant, can you be pleasant too?"

"Takeru-" Yamato warned, but was interrupted by the reappearance of his father. A petite woman stood next to him in the hall. She immediately looked to the two boys and smiled. For some reason, Yamato was caught off guard. He spent little time imagining her but she wasn't what he was expecting.

The Yagami siblings sat in front of the television while their mother finished the dishes. Although both of them offered to help- Hikari less begrudgingly than her brother- Mrs. Yagami encouraged them to do something fun.

"Like what?" Taichi gawked at her. It was getting late.

"I don't know," she'd responded, "why don't you see if there's something on tv?"

So, Hikari was propped up on the far end of the sofa flipping through channels. Taichi lay across the other two-thirds of it, one foot dangling lazily off the side. He spun his phone around in his hand before flipping it open and scanning his perpetually empty inbox for a message he could have missed. It'd been hours since he texted Sora and she never texted him back.

"Why does she even have her read receipts on?" the boy muttered to himself, clamping his phone shut and tossing it onto the coffee table. It slid to a halt just under Hikari's calculative gaze.

"Who?" she asked, unconcerned with whether she was supposed to overhear him or not.

"No one." Taichi huffed, tapping his foot so his knee bobbed up and down impatiently.

"Sora?"

The tapping stopped.

"No."

Hikari didn't press him about it. Instead, she began flipping through channels again while Taichi sat up.

"You know," he said, "I'm really tired. I think I'm gonna go to bed early."

"Are you okay?" Hikari asked with obligation.

"Yeah." Taichi responded with the same sense of duty- an obligation to reassure her, even if it wasn't honest.

He picked himself up and wandered into his room. It was dark but he kept the lights off, having remembered the exact spot he'd thrown a t-shirt on the floor. Light from the city seeped in through his curtains and he used it to his advantage. He pulled the top of his school uniform off in one cool motion and let it fall to another spot on the floor.

Taichi sighed and took a moment to stare at himself in the mirror, the t-shirt he grabbed balled up in his hands. Football practice was certainly doing a number on him. Faint outlines of his abdomen were laced with skid marks from sliding across turf, but he'd trade the occasional bruise for the shape he was in. His chest was a bit wider than his abdomen and his shoulders wider than that. The skin on his upper-half was bronzed from constantly being out in the sun. For all that could be said about him though, he didn't smile. Taichi's reflection stared back at him unsatisfactorily. He could always be better, and he looked so tired.

Taichi knew he hadn't been sleeping well. It was already difficult for him to pay attention in class, but this week had been particularly tough. The bags under his eyes weighed his eyelids down and he wondered if going to bed early would actually help. For the past few nights, the boy felt like he'd been having nightmares. He frequently woke up during them but he could never remember what they were about. Certain details stuck out to him but if there was any importance to them, it was still a mystery.

The only logical solution Taichi could arrive at through all this was that he was experiencing an unusual amount of stress. The problem with that, though, was that he didn't really feel stressed. Football was going well, school was going okay, and he was still far enough away from adulthood that growing up felt like a concept. Taichi leaned his forearm on the mirror and leaned his head against it, eyeing his reflection up close. Something had to be bothering him- something he couldn't pick out yet. He got the feeling that his subconscious knew what it was and sooner or later it would rise to the surface. Maybe there was an exam he was forgetting about, or maybe he was getting sick. The options were limitless and he couldn't worry himself more than double checking his calendar and taking extra care to eat right.

Taichi leaned back and realized goosebumps had blossomed on his skin. He unfurled his t-shirt and pulled it over his head. The cotton was stiff but warm and soon he was feeling more comfortable. As he headed to bed, the boy took some time to set an alarm on his phone and checked his inbox one more time before turning in for the night. It was still empty and Taichi's stomach sunk with the realization that Sora might actually be mad at him. He was sure he was being silly before for feeling guilty in the first place but the lack of response was making him second-guess himself. Had he done something else? Maybe Mimi was right when she scolded him for not walking her to the nurse. Maybe he had been thoughtless. Or, maybe Sora had brewed something up in her own head that she'd let loose on him at school tomorrow.

Or... maybe he was overthinking things. Maybe she was busy. He could never tell with Sora and a part of him knew he would never be able to tell. It bothered him endlessly, but at least tonight it gave him an excuse for his insomnia. Taichi stared at his ceiling until he couldn't anymore and he fell asleep without realizing it. Hikari tiptoed in a little bit later and soon, the entire Yagami household was quiet.

As the chosen children knew all too well, however, quiet surroundings didn't always mean their surroundings were peaceful. In fact, it often meant the opposite. A man in dark clothes stood outside the Yagami's apartment complex. He stared up at Taichi's bedroom window with unquestioned confidence. The man shouldn't have been able to pick it out from all the others, but he too could feel the restlessness.

"Are you sure he's the right one?"

"I'm sure of it. He's the one. Can't you feel it stirring inside him? He will be the key to everyone's undoing."

Whew, I finally finished the second chapter! Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to read this so far. I'm looking forward to getting into the action next chapter. Until then-

-garudamon