It's the first time anyone has ever woken him in the middle of the night. So he finds it very strange to be going back to sleep again without really getting up. Takeru is just about convinced that he will never manage it when suddenly the girl is gently shaking his shoulder, telling him to wake. He opens his eyes to see the gloom of the night replaced by daylight.

The girl looks worried. As he sits up, Takeru realises why. The light isn't the only thing to have changed.

When they went to sleep, they had been surrounded by trees. Now, they are on a lakeshore. There are trees nearby, but his leaf bed is laid out on sand, and in front of him as he sits up is water. Poyomon hops up and down excitedly, crying "Poyo poyo!" over and over.

Takeru can only stare, slowly getting to his feet without taking his eyes off the sight. Out in the lake is a barren island. In the middle of it is… he's sure there's a name for it, but it dances on the edge of his mind, ever so slightly out of reach. Either way, it's a white box with windows and a door, and green stripes running horizontally along the sides. He thinks he can see wheels underneath and something sticking out of the top, but it's hard to tell at this distance.

Takeru isn't sure how long he stands there, staring at the strange thing on the island. His head is throbbing but he's only half aware of that, because somewhere on the edges of his mind he's starting to think he's seen all this before. Except, that doesn't make any sense because he's never been here. The longer he stares, the worse the throbbing in his head gets. It turns to a headache; an awful, eye-watering headache which makes him close his eyes and squeeze his head with his hands, trying to push the pain away. He feels dizzy, too.

Poyomon is calling to him from somewhere nearby, but he can hardly hear his partner's voice past the ringing pain. His eyes open, but instead of the beach with the island, all he can see is starlit water, with a forested shore beyond it. In front of him, a giant sea monster rears up out of the water, behind two small figures. It bats one into the air, and then he's screaming, because then the second figure is pulled underwater, and it's the worst thing ever and it's all his fault-

"Takeru!"

Hands - real hands - grab his shoulders and shake him. The pain in his head grows less, and the starlit lake vanishes, to be replaced with two brown eyes scant inches from his face. He blinks and takes a few steps back; almost tripping over something which is probably Poyomon, to judge from the squeak of protest. His breath is short and sharp. It feels as though he's just run a lap of the cottage's gardens.

He looks around sharply. The lake is back to how it was scant moments before - it's daytime, and the sun is shining on a quiet shore, fringed with forest. Out in the middle of the lake, the trolley car sits motionless, exactly as it was when he woke up.

The girl is watching him, her face a mask of concern. His knees wobble and he sits down hard on the ground, breathing heavily. Poyomon hops over and lands in his lap, pressing his small head against Takeru's stomach. He holds his friend tightly, and watches as the girl walks over and kneels down beside him.

"Takeru, are you okay? You looked… I called your name but you didn't seem to hear me. What happened?"

He closes his eyes and rubs his face. Maybe this all happened because he got woken up in the night. He's never had to sleep twice in one night before - perhaps his dreams got confused as well, and that's why it happened after he woke up? After all, it had to be a dream. He's never been to this place before. He's never even seen a… He frowns. It's a trolley car. Takeru is pretty sure that he has never seen one before, but that doesn't really explain why he suddenly knows what it is, when he was so sure he didn't before that flash.

"What is that thing?" he asks the girl. After all, maybe he's wrong.

She turns and looks at it for a second, frowning, before returning her attention to him. "You don't remember?"

Poyomon turns in his lap to stare at him. For a moment, Takeru alternates between looking at them both in turn, before scooting Poyomon out of his lap and shuffling backwards.

"What are you talking about?" he says, getting to his feet. "And why do you keep looking at me like that? You were doing it before, too. Just staring at me… it's all wrong, and I don't understand!"

His hands are clenched into fists and part of him wants to lash out at something - anything. He's gone from understanding life perfectly to feeling as though he doesn't know what's going on at all, and he hates it. Worst of all, there's a part of him which feels stupid; as though he really should know who this girl is, and where they are, and countless other things which he can't quite put into words.

The girl is staring open-mouthed, now. Poyomon turns to her, and says "Poyo. Poyo poyo poyo," in such a soft and mournful voice that Takeru wants to pick up his friend and hug him. Why is Poyomon so sad all of a sudden?

The girl looks down, and sighs.

"I'm sorry, Takeru," she says. "I shouldn't… I don't mean to make you feel so confused. Right now we just need to focus on finding that boy, okay?"

He frowns, folding his arms. "Why do you care so much? You've never even met him. He's my friend."

"Poyo poyo!" Poyomon says sharply. Takeru looks down. That's the second time he's felt as though Poyomon is scolding him. And both times have been since the girl appeared. Takeru starts to wonder if she really can be a friend after all. Ever since she arrived, everything has been different. He's not even really sure why he followed her any more. How are they supposed to find the boy if they don't even know where they are?

When he looks up, the girl is watching him, with the same faraway expression she often seems to have. It's as though she's sad about something.

"I know that boy too, Takeru," she says at last, slowly and carefully.

"You're friends with the boy as well?" he asks, surprised. "But he always plays with me."

The girl frowns and looks away. "Well, no. It's… he's not a friend, exactly. But I am worried about him, all the same. You don't have to be friends with someone to care what happens to them. And we… I mean, I think he might be in trouble. So it's very important that we keep looking."

Takeru frowns. "But how do you know that?" Questions are amazing things. As much as he is a little worried about the boy now, he has to admit that it's fun asking them. Maybe that's why the man always does. It's certainly a lot more interesting than talking to someone who can't talk back.

The girl shakes her head. "I'm not sure that I can explain properly right now. But part of the reason I know is that he wasn't with you." She looks up at the sky. "We should get moving, really. We'll need to look for something to eat."

He blinks. "Find food? You mean you don't know where it is?"

There's a short silence while the girl stares at him again. Takeru thinks it must be her favourite thing to do.

"Takeru, you've been living on your own all this time. How have you been eating?" She speaks slowly and carefully, as though she's not sure he'll understand her.

He folds his arms, a little annoyed at her tone of voice. He's not stupid. "There's food in the kitchen at the cottage," he says. "That's what kitchens are for."

"Yes, but how does it get there?" Now she sounds as frustrated as he feels.

Takeru is suddenly struck by how interesting it is, that talking means you can sometimes tell what another person's feelings are. He's never really thought much about how other people feel before. He's never really had any reason to, after all. His friends come for visits to entertain him, but they don't ever talk or have ideas of their own. The thought strikes him that the boy had ideas. Does that mean that he has feelings and thoughts as well? If that's the case, what were they? What are they now?

He realises that the girl is still waiting for an answer. "It's just always there," he says with a shrug. "Isn't that how things work?"

She sighs. "No. Not normally. And I don't think it's going to be that simple out here. The world isn't all like the cottage." Looking up at the sky, she adds: "We should get going. Did you want to take a look at the island before we move on?"

This time there is no flash in front of his eyes, no strange vision when he turns back to the island and the trolley car. It's just silent, and still. Takeru frowns. Something about it pulls at him; a strange urge to go and get a closer look at the trolley car. To sit inside it, on the seats he is certain will be there. He's not sure he likes that feeling. There are too many odd new things happening. Too many different feelings he doesn't understand.

"No," he says at last, pushing those uncomfortable thoughts from his mind. "Like you said. We need to find food. And the boy. We should go."

He kneels down to pick up his bag, and after dusting off the sand, slips it onto his back. Poyomon is sat facing the lake. He poyos sadly as Takeru picks him up and follows the girl along the shore and into the woods again. Takeru tells himself that his friend is just hungry, and tries to ignore the feeling that he's doing something wrong again.

It isn't easy at all.

A.N.: Okay, this chapter was fun to write, because I am a dreadful tease. I was sorely tempted to just leave that mention of the trolley car alone and not refer to it, but I had a feeling that if I did so, it wouldn't be obvious enough what happened. This has already started turning into a much longer fic than I had originally intended, and if the pacing slowed so that I could drip things into the text like that, it would start to get even longer.

So, I made a conscious decision to pick up the pace a little and have Takeru notice the discrepancy in his thoughts. I will admit, it also occurred to me that people might think I just made a mistake, or was using descriptive shorthand by calling it a trolley car when I had previously indicated that he didn't know what it was. I wanted it to be clear that, no, he didn't know what it was, and now he does, but he doesn't know how. (And that is weirding him out somewhat.)

Also! Props to AUehara! You got all but one of the "images" right, and the one you got wrong was the one which I really made pretty much impossible to get except by luck. What I had in mind was the moment when Takeru is crouched by Yamato as Vamdemon/Myotismon dispenses with Gotsumon and Pumpmon. Except, of course, being as he's basically looking at the floor, he doesn't see much at all, so the description is rather unhelpful.