A/N: Exams distracted me from posting. Whoops. Though I passed which is the most important bit. :D

Prompt for this chapter is slap.

Dripping Water
Chapter 12 - their rivalry (Kiriha)

Kiriha was, frankly put, annoyed. He'd come to talk about their plans to return to the Digital World and had been thwarted by the fact that Taiki hadn't even showed up to school.

Less than a week before the midterms his friends were agonising after… but apparently he didn't care enough to attend the final classes.

'Why didn't you just go back to the Digital World, then?' he asked the sky.

It looked gloomy. Sufficiently grumpy, just like him.

But in a way he was glad Taiki hadn't just run off to the Digital World without his friends. Because that would've been running away. From what he knew, and what he'd gleaned from Akari…

He stopped walking suddenly, staring at the athletic track he'd wound up at. 'Why'd I come here?' he grumbled to himself, annoyed.

MailBirdramon's wings flashed in the distance, just in case. Or maybe he'd done that on purpose.

'Right,' Kiriha sighed. Of course, he'd been thinking about those idiots, Hinomoto Akari and Kudou Taiki. And that led him to think about Sano Tatsuya. And that led him here.

There was a white van, and a boy on a wheelchair getting in.

'It's about to storm, soon.' Kiriha turned around. The speaker was tall, and in sports clothes with a sticker saying "physiotherapist" on their shirt. 'We can give you a lift, if you like?'

'Nah, that's fine.' Then, spotting the boy peeking out curiously from the window, he changed his mind. 'Actually, is that Sano?'

'Oh, are you two friends?' Friendly, without a hint of suspicion.

'You could say that,' Kiriha shrugged. 'I'll take you up on that offer of a lift after all.'

.

Sano Tatsuya was friendly to a fault. The fact that he didn't call Kiriha out on the lie was proof enough.

The fact that he was excited to hear Taiki's name was even more so.

'You don't look like you plan to be dead by twenty,' Kiriha said bluntly, five minutes into the ride.

It was also a mark of the rest of the adults that they didn't react badly to the rash comment.

'I don't plan to,' Tatsuya replied brightly. 'I just have to do as much as possible before then, and if I'm still alive afterwards, that's more chances to do more things.'

'One could almost call you a gambler with those words.' But that was someone living life to the fullest, chasing dreams even when their clock ticked closer than most. 'Can't say I begrudge that.'

In fact, he envied that. And he'd thought he'd taken the dive in the Digital World.

That was nothing compared to this.

'Tell me, Sano. How would you take a corporate company back from your step-siblings?'

'Is this a sign that you respect our resident optimist?' asked the physiotherapist from the front with a grin.

'Sure, whatever.' He wasn't going to say it out loud, even if that was what it was.

'Corporate takeover…' Tatsuya mused. 'That depends, I guess. You just have to prove you're the best person for the job. You could do that by proving they're bad and slotting yourself in, but then someone might open you up the same way and you've left a trial of breadcrumbs. Or you could just be the better person and that might take longer but then no-one can prove you don't.'

It still sounded overly simplified, but the fundamentals were there, in any case.

'Figured as much?' Tatsuya asked. 'I'm not sprouting super powers, after all.'

'No, just a dream and a drive and resources that are aiming to get you there.'

He lacked resources, himself. Taiki lacked the dream.

'Hey, Sano. What do you think about Kudou Taiki?'

'I'm disappointed, really.' Tatsuya looked at his lap.

'Good,' said Kiriha, turning to stare at the rain pounding the windows. 'So am I.'

.

They dropped him home. He grabbed an umbrella and was out again, suffering a snort from MailBirdramon who nonetheless promised to cover the worst of the rain. 'I need a shower anyway.'

'How about I spray you with bicarb?' Kiriha jibed. He didn't even have bicarb.

'No thanks. We digimon aren't as particular about soap as you humans.' Which was true enough. Or food, as most of their stuff was tasteless. The cuisine of the human world must taste like gourmet, even when it was cheap microwave dinners and cereals in boxes.

But Mailbirdramon was better than an umbrella, and Kiriha walked under its shade to the elementary school where Taiki had once gone, to the place he thought Taiki might be now.

There were some things a rival knew better than a friend, after all.

And he was right. Taiki was right there, in the bleachers, staring at the empty field. He didn't even look up when Mailbirdramon blotted out the sky, or when Kiriha made his way through the rows.

He only looked up when Kiriha's grip on his shirt forced him to. 'Oh, hi Kiriha.'

'You airhead,' Kiriha sighed… then mentally corrected himself. Taiki's eyes weren't focused on the invisible breeze, but rather the shadows. 'This isn't the weather to be strolling down memory lane. If you get sick, it'll just delay getting back to the Digital World. And if you fail your exams, same thing.'

'Are you worried?' Taiki's lips twitched. 'I didn't take you for the kind.'

'I've met Sano,' Kiriha said abruptly, instead of replying to the jibe. He wasn't going to admit he was worried. Not to a Kudou Taiki who looked like that… and maybe never, to anyone.

Become a worthy man, or prove the ones currently there are unworthy. And becoming the worthier man is the only reliable option, huh.

'Did you?' There was morbid curiosity in his tone, as though he knew he was about to be killed and had been asked what method he preferred. Melodramatic. Kiriha's lips curled. It was Taiki's friends who suffered from melodrama as far as he'd come to know. Taiki was the rational one with the creative ideas that worked far more effectively than anything by the book Kiriha managed by himself. That's why he'd wanted him. That's why they quarrelled. Because they were different, with different strengths and weaknesses, but this –

Kiriha punched him.

Taiki tumbled down, between the rows of seats.

Taiki who should have been able to take that punch straight on.

Taiki whose lips were already bleeding, as though they'd become that friable, that weak…

Kiriha sighed. 'You're not even eating right, are you?'

'I am.' It didn't even sound like a protest, just an admission. 'Eating, I mean.'

'Enough?' he pushed, examining his knuckles. They stung more than they should. Had he mis-aimed and hit him square on the slips instead of the cheek? Or did some of that childhood fat get stripped off in neglect?

Taiki did laugh this time. 'You're mother-henning,' he said. 'Did Akari rub off on you?'

Kiriha winced at the thought – though there were worse people to be compared to than Hinomoto Akari. 'I'm more thinking about yours,' he said honestly – a little too honestly, perhaps, but Taiki had a way of getting under his skin like that. And it was either talk or claw that expression off his face, even if Taiki was less listless and more engaged right now…

'My parents?' Taiki looked mystified. 'Well, my father's a sports coach. He's always travelling for work. So usually it's just my mother at home.'

Kiriha caught the tone, and the unsaid words behind them. 'You're not home enough, huh.'

'…no. But I can't just stay home and keep her company. I'm not good company like that.'

'No, you're not.' Taiki would get too restless too easily, and it didn't even matter if he was chasing after his own dreams or somebody else's. 'That's probably why she doesn't stop you.'

'Probably.'

Kiriha sighed again. Mailbirdramon was doing a good job keeping them dry (or drier, in Taiki's case) but it was still freezing. 'Can we take this inside?'

Taiki shrugged. 'I'll stay out a little longer.'

'Doing what?' Kiriha snapped. 'Sano's gone home, you know. And besides, he goes to the community track.'

'I was thinking,' Taiki shot back defensively.

'About what?'

Taiki didn't reply.

'Let me guess, now that we've got access to the digimon, you thought one of them would be able to help. Like that healer of yours: Cutemon.'

'Did Akari mention it?' He didn't sound defensive anymore. Just defeated.

Kiriha undoubtedly preferred defensive to defeated. 'It wasn't hard to guess. But I talked with Sano, you know. And he's disappointed in the person you've become – and so am I.'

Mailbirdramon called down at that point. A car had pulled up at the elementary school. Taiki's mother, maybe. Kiriha considered that. Should he stay?

He'll leave. He'd already said his piece, after all.