Faking Redemption
Chapter 3

They'd scattered themselves over the couches. They were set in a C-shape and Airu and Yuu were as far away from each other as possible while being on the same three-seater couch (though there was a dent in the middle that showed it hadn't been Yuu's first choice but he'd gotten wedged in anyway), while Tagiru was sitting next to Yuu and on the middle couch.

Which left me to take the seat across from Airu and farthest from all of them. And I wondered why I even bothered to remember that later on, but at least the division was clear. And my decision, and theirs as well… for leaving almost two thirds of the couches for me to pick a seat from. The perfect scene for a confrontation… and foolish to some level as well, because they'd picked the side that let them see me in the kitchen, which also meant I was now between them and the door.

Airu sipped at her coffee and raised a brow. Yuu didn't touch his tea. Tagiru had already finished half his orange juice and mine was full and untouched as well.

Somehow, it's very easy to remember moments like that, even when you forget the words.

And when the words began… well, I forgot exactly what they were for the most part. But Tagiru started it again. Something about how I shouldn't blame myself and I wondered if I should say I didn't or laugh at how worthless those words seemed when cast adrift like that. I wound up doing the second despite myself because, quite suddenly, I didn't want to lie.

Then again, I'd been lying without even knowing – or at least consciously noting – that was lying, so that wasn't really saying much. So I laughed instead and Tagiru stopped talking – in mid-sentence, I think, and both Airu's eyebrows vanished into her fringes and crease lines appeared near Yuu's mouth like he was trying very hard not to frown. I almost told him not to bother. We were being honest here, after all. But then again, I never set that precinct and neither did they. I just decided to be honest for myself. For that little portion of it anyway.

At some point, I wound up admitting defeat. We'd have kept going in circles otherwise and, to be honest, Tagiru and Yuu together were a formidable force. Maybe the old Clockmaker had been wrong. Maybe it wasn't just who was the best hunter, but who was the best team and Tagiru was the only new member of Xros Heart, wasn't he? Even Yuu had battled against Bagramon before. And so had Akari-san and Zenjirou-san, even if they didn't have Xros Loaders to show for it until a few days ago.

Actually, that made the Digital World seem rather ungrateful. The old Clockmaker was pretty much handing out Xros Loaders like lollypops and yet he couldn't give them to the two people who'd missed out on them in the first round until he was in desperate need of their help? Not that I saw what they accomplished with them. They were buying time, after all. Buying time so we hunters could battle it out to determine the strongest of all of us, and who'd pull the Brave Snatcher out of the earth and use it to strike down Quartzmon…

Except I didn't use it for that. And because of that, Tagiru, who'd already been weakened because he lost, had to drag it up a second time.

'I'm sorry,' I said to him. 'For the Brave Snatcher.'

But, really, that apology was as empty as his encouragement and he just shrugged. 'Well, it wasn't your fault, really.'

But it was. Because saying it wasn't alleviated me of the blame and it was my fault. I wasn't just a puppet that had been strung along. I was a naïve child that had been prodded, perhaps, but I'd walked and spoken and fought of my own free will and all of that had turned out to be part of some greater design. There'd been a mould and I'd walked right into it, fit it perfectly… And that's how people were when trifled with by the whims of those who took the script into their own hands. Would we call them gods, I wondered? Or where they also like us once upon a time: the ones who wrote the script, the ones who directed it, and the ones who fell into their roles and only realised too late they hadn't been acting on their own whims at all?

The conversation did take a surprising turn after that. And not from Tagiru: Tagiru was so earnest but Ryouma didn't think he understood at all, or even could. He was so bright-eyed and yet he wasn't blind to the important things after all. But as much as I wanted to let myself float free like that, I couldn't. Not anymore. Not after I'd missed so much, and let so many other things happen.

Ignorance was a crime, but it wasn't quite ignorance I was guilty of. Suppression, perhaps. Supressing the things I noticed that didn't quite fit into my ideal because I was too immured, too drunk on the idea of being just like that red-tinted hero I'd seen that day between worlds…

But it wasn't Tagiru who interrupted that. It was Yuu. Yuu who I barely had any interaction with at all because Airu was like that. Once she saw something cute, she staked her claim on it and she'd staked her claim on Amano Yuu and be it far from Ren and I to argue with her on any of those fronts. She was too useful and she was our friend – and look at how my priorities sit, even now.

But aside from that and what I'd seen of Yuu from the final battle, I knew pretty little. And he tended to stand back in the hunts; help out of his help was needed (except for the SuperStarmon thing, and my pride was still smarting by how well he'd played Tagiru and I there) but let Tagiru take the hunts. I wondered at that, because he rarely digixrossed and, when he did, it was typically to help out Taiki rather than do anything with Tsuwamon. Did he even have any other digimon in his digivice aside from Damemon? It's not something I ever really bothered to ask and it wasn't my business either way.

But still, I was surprised to see him speak up. Frankly, I wondered why he came at all. He didn't seem the sort to give second chances with naïve backings. But when he told his story, I understood. The story of Bagramon and DarkKnightmon and three groups of armies under four generals when I'd only seen the final battle and all four of them standing together. He told me about how he'd thought the Digital World was a game. How he'd been invited there by DarkKnightmon and given a Xros Loader. How his sister had followed him in and how she'd wound up as DarkKnightmon's temporary General in trying to get her brother back but he hadn't seen anything wrong with his situation at all. He told about how Taiki-san had saved Nene when DarkKnightmon had decided her usefulness was at an end, and how he'd gone out into the battlefield himself after that, as Team Twilight's General. And he told about the death game in the Digital World Hell which had turned out to be the turning point of it all: the changing of the tide.

And in the context of it not having been a game at all, it sounded horrific. Their lives tied to the flowers over their hearts and one of them had to die for the other to escape. I could only imagine their desperation, fighting their way out of hell and not just the humans, but everyone, everyone who'd been aware it hadn't been a game at all – so everybody aside from Amano Yuu.

'And I lost Damemon there,' said Yuu sadly, and to hide the waver in his voice, he gulped down his tea just like Tagiru had with his orange juice before. 'I lost Damemon and that finally clued me in: that the Digital World was real and all the Digimon was real as well, and I'd just killed so many of them and tried to kill three human beings, one of which was my own sister.'

I couldn't help but wince at that part. It's not nice to smile at another's misfortune or mistakes but I couldn't help but be relieved I didn't have any siblings to betray and that wasn't even the point of him spilling his guts and heart out on a sofa in my home.

Seriously, he even let Airu sidle up to him and put a hand on his arm. All the things I notice in retrospect…

But at the time, I was too busy trying to process… What, exactly? That I might get a second chance with Psychemon, with the digimon who should have been my real partner and who I thought had been Psychemon and my partner but he'd only turned out to be a fake? Or that I'd have a second chance to fight evil and save the world and be a hero this time instead of an anti-hero or straight out villain? Or everything was all right in the world now and people like Tagiru and Taiki-san wouldn't let us drown in self-pity and regret? Or a bit of all of those, I supposed, but they didn't know the hunt was on until a year later themselves.

'What did you do?' I asked him. 'Before the hunt started up again?'

'Even after the hunt…' He sighed. 'I was jealous of Tagiru, you know?'

I blinked at that. Airu snorted. 'He's a sun,' she said. 'Too bold and too bright. Burns the skin of fair-haired boys like you two.'

She was speaking metaphorically, of course, but she made sense. Tagiru was very different from both Yuu and myself and maybe I was more similar to Yuu than I'd ever thought.

It was food for thought, and when Yuu explained the main reason why he'd been so jealous of Tagiru, I understood something else as well.

Yuu hadn't even had a partner the first three months after he'd found out about the digimon hunt. He'd known the digimon had been reborn but Damemon hadn't come back to him and he'd thought that was his punishment, to watch Tagiru with his new friend, watch Taiki with the digimon king… and yet he participated in the hunt anyway, as an observer and an advisor and a friend, because that was what he was capable of doing.

He hadn't just curled up in bed and wallowed in self-pity when it came to doing something.

And, in my case, there was something I'd been putting off for far too long: going to see Taiki-san. And even if the apologies were superficial, I owed it to him and the other tamers to give them, didn't I? At least that…

And that visit wound up with the cheer team winning the round.