A/N: Written for the Becoming the Tamer King Challenge: Training Peak Task, and for the What if Challenge, "What if Ken died instead of Osamu?" Both challenges are on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile).
unchosen
4. amidst the now doors were things he did not realise before
The computer, it seemed, had opened up new doors. He'd never spent as much time on it in the past as he did now, poking at every inch of it, every scrap of memory it retained, and looked for all the things he'd never realised before.
He had records of everything. Records he'd never thought he'd use. But he was using them now, using them to uncover the side of his little brother he'd never seen, never had the chance to see.
No, he reflected, that wasn't true. Hadn't he seen that hurt and angry Ken? When he'd caught him with that strange device in hand? And he'd just ignored it, thinking Ken was just pretending, just wanting attention. Think Ken couldn't possibly know how to be angry, truly angry.
But the evidence that Ken had and could be was right in front of his face. The games that Ken had always hated played when Osamu hadn't been there to play them – and Ken must have been copying him, because Osamu only had those games in the first place to play when he was in a bad mood. His parents hadn't been agreeable at first, thinking as most adults did that they were garbage for the brain. But Osamu had needed them, had needed something he could do without his brain, without having to think about marks or competitions or all that.
An innocent first wish of studying hard and pleasing his parents had turned into an obsession, something he just couldn't lose. Even now he couldn't stop working, stop studying; it was his way of coping, of forgetting. And when he couldn't take it anymore, when his head was filled to capacity and was about to explode, he'd exit all his academia related programmes and bring up a brain numbing fighting game instead.
Except they weren't brain numbing any more. They were pulling his thoughts to other things: those things he approached those games to protect. Footprints of his sweet little brother who'd never even liked those games plastered everywhere. Footsteps Osamu was only starting to see, and appreciate.
They were also footsteps he didn't want to appreciate, because they were all telling him he hadn't known his brother at all.
He hit the shut down button on his computer, not caring what was open, what unsaved files he'd lose. He didn't want to stare at the screen anymore – but aside from that and his academics, he had nothing else. His eyes raked the room. Textbooks. Notebooks. Computer softwares. A few games. In his drawers, clothes and spare stationaries –
And in the top one, that little device that had been the source of their last quarrel.