Remember
Chapter Seven: two tacky pieces
She didn't dream that night. Even so, Yolei woke with the overwhelming feeling that something was wrong.
Her eyes peeled open to sunlight. Head pounding, she fumbled for her glasses and found them on a table beside her. The room came into view.
The picture Momoe kept beside the TV was missing.
Suddenly, the night came rushing back in bits and pieces, nausea and embarrassment mixing in a wave of red over her cheeks.
The smell of coffee wafted from the kitchen (definitely not Momoe's) and she could hear the faint sound of birds chirping through an open door. Her eyes wandered over the apartment.
It had an air of bachelordom to it, the type of clean that came from someone who was hardly home, not cold but not necessarily warm either. Art hung on the wall: a traditional Japanese landscape, a cherry blossom tree, nothing too personal. But just past the couch, there was a little table covered with pictures.
Sam was memorialized in the center, pushing a tiny Ken on a swing at the park, about a year before the accident. And right beside it, demanding equal attention by its placement, was one of the three of them.
Davis had one arm around Ken's middle, a wide-toothed grin on his face. Ken looked bright-eyed and happy. The shorter haircut he'd opted for in college was already growing back out and had been swept neatly to the side. They wore matching charcoal tuxes (Ken had opted for classy Oxfords, while Davis insisted on bright white sneakers). Yolei stood beside them, tears of joy still fresh in her eyes. Davis's other arm was wrapped around her waist, fingers laced in her wedding dress.
Yolei collapsed back onto the couch with an audible groan, hands sliding under her glasses to rub her eyes. She lied there, trying to remember exactly what had happened before she had fallen asleep. She remembered the argument (because of course they couldn't not) and the way Davis had given in when she pulled him close.
Heart pounding, she sat up and kicked off the blanket she didn't remember receiving. She stood slow, feeling haggard and nauseous, and straightened her crumpled dress. A stack of mail was piled on the kitchen counter along with her cellphone, which Ken had left charging for her some time before Davis showed up.
Massaging her temples, she made her way to the open patio door.
Ken was leaning over the balcony, a lit cigarette between his fingers, alone.
"You're smoking?" Her voice lilted into an accusation.
He turned toward her with an apology, ready to put it out.
"It's fine," she said, leaning over the balcony beside him.
Ken gave a nod and took another drag before looking out over the city. The sun was high in the horizon, and she was afraid to ask him for the time.
"I guess I picked it up from the guys at the station," he said and his eyes wandered to her again. "Just once in a while, I promise. How are you feeling?"
"Like I got hit by a train." Yolei ran her fingers through her tangled hair, suddenly feeling self-conscious. "Is Davis—?"
"He left pretty early, I think. I got a text around 5:30. Said he had to hit the market when it opened."
Yolei felt her eyes sting. "Jackass," she muttered, shoving a hand under her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose.
After a minute, she held out her hand. "Give me that."
"What?"
She stretched her hand further, gesturing to the cigarette.
Ken raised a brow. "You don't smoke."
"Neither do you," she spat.
He handed it over.
Furious, Yolei took a long drag, sucking smoke so deep that she could taste the ash on the back of her tongue.
She choked. Then, with one cough, she swung sideways and promptly threw up into a potted plant by her feet.
The tears came without mercy, dumb little sobs with each heave of her stomach, which only got worse when Ken tied her hair back.
When she was done, she took off her glasses and cried into her palms. "I threw up on your plant!"
Ken gave a light chuckle. "I don't think smoking is your thing."
"I'm so sorry!"
"It's okay."
"I'm the jackass!" she cried. "I told him I want a divorce, but I won't stop writing to him and I miss him even though all we do is fight and we made out while I was drunk on your couch, I don't even remember him leaving and… and I puked in your plant!"
"Don't worry about the plant," Ken said.
"I'll clean it," she sobbed.
"I'm not going to let you do that." He rubbed her back, and only then did she realize that somewhere in her rant, she had collapsed against his shoulder, crying into his shirt.
"I got snot on you," she wept, pulling back to wipe her nose with her sleeve.
"Come on," Ken said, helping her to her feet. "Let's see if you can keep down some tea."
She nodded her head, trying to pull herself together. Ken pulled out a seat for her at the dining table and turned on a stove burner to heat the kettle. After going through his cabinets, he poured her a glass of water and slid a couple of painkillers into her grasp.
"I'll be right back," he told her.
He disappeared back onto the balcony, and Yolei downed the pills, sinking over the table to lay her head in her arms. She wasn't sure what was worse: the nausea, the embarrassment knowing Ken was outside, cleaning up her vomit, or the ache in her chest. After a minute of wallowing, she slid out of her seat and grabbed her phone from the counter, tugging out the charger.
A bunch of unread texts covered her screen. Most of them were from Momoe: where the hell are you? why is Davis calling me at 3am? The baby took me an hour to get back to sleep. Then: Great, now I'm calling Chizuru. Poromon is a nervous wreck, so you better get home soon or call me back, followed by various versions of the same thing.
Mimi, Sora, and Kari each had similar messages, little blurbs, hoping she was okay.
Davis hadn't written anything in response to her wall of drunk texts but, Where are you? even though he apparently called half the digidestined looking for her.
Yolei scrolled through her one-sided conversation, reading it back to herself, cringing with each word.
When Ken returned to take the whistling kettle off the burner, he found her slumped over the kitchen counter, cheek mashed into the granite, the phone face down under her palm.
"I'm never drinking again," she groaned.
Ken smiled at her and pulled a teacup from the cabinet by her head. "Green or black?"
"Black," she muttered. "Like my dark disgusting soul."
He unwrapped a tea bag and poured steaming water into the cup before sliding it beside her hand. "Do you want to try some toast?"
Cheek still squashed on his countertop, Yolei looked up at him. His hair was nearly touching his shoulders, loose around his face.
She hadn't realized how long it had grown. When he had first joined the police academy, they had hacked it into a crew cut, which had been a shame since he had such pretty hair. She lifted herself from the countertop and fiddled with hers, fingers absently touching the hair tie he'd wrapped it in.
"I think I'll pass," she muttered, watching him as he turned to pour himself coffee from the half-empty pot beside her. "Do you work tonight?"
He leaned his back against the counter and took a sip of his coffee. "I took the week off."
"Oh, I can… I can go," she said. "I'm so sorry, I'm probably ruining your plans. And your plants."
"You're not."
"You don't have to lie to me."
His eyes seemed to bore into hers at that. "It's nothing pressing. I've just been working on something with Izzy. It can wait a few hours."
Yolei grabbed her cup of tea and forced herself to take a sip. "Can I help?"
Ken gave her an odd look.
"I mean, if it's you and Izzy, I thought… Is it work related? Or…?"
"Digiworld," he said vaguely. "I didn't want to bother you with it, with everything."
Yolei twisted her hair around her fingers. "I could use the distraction. What's up?"
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and for a minute she thought he wasn't going to tell her.
"A virus," he said finally.
She straightened, suddenly all business. "What kind?"
"Something new. Izzy said he's never seen one like it before."
"Hm." Yolei grasped her cup tight, letting the steam fog her glasses. "Well, it's a good thing you're taking me to Digiworld then."
"Yolei…"
"Tomorrow," she said. "When I stop feeling like I'm going to desecrate more plants."
When Ken didn't respond, she looked up and met his wary gaze.
"I can handle it," she told him.
"Do you really want to know why I've been seeing Animamon?"
Dread and panic raced up Yolei's limbs, tightening her throat. She remembered Animamon in flashes, like a nightmare she could only just recall. Sometimes, she had a hard time connecting him to the monster he'd created, the one that had flung Davis into a tree and left him choking on his own blood.
The Animamon she remembered was the one who laughed in the darkness while she was sure she was still stuck in a fever dream, who cried sparks of power as she threw stones at him, demanding the death penalty. The one without remorse.
She looked at Ken. "Is it a good reason?"
He gave a shrug. "That depends."
"On what?"
"How much you believe in second chances."
Yolei glared at him. "I swear, Ken, if this is about you…"
He smiled again, the famous one that still looked sad. "Not everything is about me, Yolei."
.
Ken had explained more about the virus on the drive to Momoe's: about the quarantined babies, the vaccinations, Animamon's role. He never really did give a great explanation on why he had befriended Animamon in the first place, just a vague description of the beginning: how he had been looking for answers about the digimon that had made up the monster melded with Izzy's soul.
All these years later, Animamon still didn't remember that particular detail of his past life.
It left Yolei feeling even more queasy than her hangover. The dread of facing their old enemy was only surmounted by the fury she felt knowing he had put his creepy claws on Davis, reading their memories.
She had been too drunk to pry Davis for more information last night, and she had half a mind to track down his ramen cart and grill him about exactly what he gave that disgusting digimon access to.
She didn't dare ask Ken if he knew.
When Ken walked her to the door, she wrapped her arms around his middle, squeezing him tight. Sometimes, she wished things could go back, before Animamon, when she could be a comfort to him instead of the other way around.
He gave her hand a squeeze and said goodbye.
Momoe was waiting on the other side of the door, baby on her hip, Poromon fluttering by her head.
Poromon dove into Yolei's arms. "Please don't disappear like that again. I was worried."
She gave him a light squeeze. "I know, I'm sorry."
"You were at Ken's?" asked Momoe, brow raised.
Yolei scowled. "Don't even start. It isn't like that."
Momoe gave a shrug. "No judgment."
"And yet I'm definitely feeling judged."
Poromon fluttered out of her arms, sensing her impending wrath.
"I just remember a certain incident with a certain someone, that someone"—Momoe's free hand gestured at Yolei—"told me about the first time she broke up with a certain other someone."
"I'm never telling you anything again," Yolei said, a flush growing over her cheeks.
"Heard that before." Momoe gave another shrug. "You look like you need to hydrate."
With a pointed glare, Yolei pushed past her to grab her overnight bag from its temporary home on the couch, digging for something decent to wear.
"Does Davis know you were at Ken's?"
"I hate you."
"Your auntie is so mean," Momoe cooed to her son.
"And so is your mother," Yolei said, tickling her nephew's tiny foot. "I'm going home for more clothes. I'm sick of wearing the same five outfits."
Momoe hooked her free arm around Yolei's neck. "Love you, lil sis. Try not to drama too hard, okay?"
"Why ask for the impossible?" asked Poromon.
Yolei threw a sock at him. "Traitor."
About an hour later, she had driven herself to their apartment, overnight bag slung over her shoulder. The door swung open, and she paused at the threshold.
Poromon squeaked from her arms. "Yolei?"
She loosened her hold on him, realizing she was squeezing.
The place was nearly spotless. Freshly mopped and vacuumed, and there was a stack of cardboard boxes, contents labeled in Davis's familiar scrawl.
Yolei walked in a daze to the computer desk, grabbed the paper lying beside the keyboard, and found the words: Eviction Notice written in bold red letters.
Her stomach churned. "When was he going to tell me?"
"What is it?" asked Poromon.
"He's not paying his half of the rent," she muttered, letting him free so she could rub her eyes under her glasses. "I can not believe this."
She collapsed into the rolling chair and noticed the computer was in sleep mode. She wondered how long it had been since he had shut it down properly. With a frustrated click, she woke up the screen and found Davis's email, still wide open.
He seemed to be in the middle of writing one, the cursor still flashing at the end of his words.
FROM: Davis Motomiya
TO: Nori Motomiya
SUBJECT: RE: RE: (None)
Thanks mom.
No. Not this time|
Yolei scrolled down.
FROM: Nori Motomiya
TO: Davis Motomiya
DATE: Yesterday, 2:04 PM
SUBJECT: RE: (None)
Of course you can come home, honey.
Are you sure you two can't work it out?
Love you,
Mom
PS. Your father will never turn down a good meal. Especially if you made it. 3
FROM: Davis Motomiya
TO: Nori Motomiya
DATE: Yesterday, 1:42 PM
SUBJECT: (None)
Sorry I didn't call you back yesterday. Been at Cody's.
So I'm not making a lot of money with the cart right now. Gonna see if Yolei wants the apartment. Is it ok if I come home until I figure things out?
PS. Willing to bribe dad with food.
Yolei leaned back in the office chair and reread the emails in their proper order.
Her heart sunk.
Poromon fluttered over her shoulder.
"I'm texting him," she mumbled, trying to quell the nausea rising up her throat. She glanced at the clock on the computer screen. Well past the lunch rush.
I don't want it, she wrote and quickly hit send before she could change her mind.
An ellipsis appeared almost immediately, followed by, Don't want what?
Yolei chewed her lip, waiting for more, for anything.
He hadn't even bothered to say goodbye that morning, or tell her where he had gone, leaving Ken to play the intermediary again. And he was all ready to leave, boxes packed.
Was that really all he had to say?
She thought of the way he climbed over, with her hand tugging at his shirt, demanding it. But he had always been like that, from that very first night in Animamon's world, reluctantly willing.
Maybe it was just habit now: their bodies drawn together like a resurfaced memory, a connection that never really broke, even when they tried to sever it.
They'd never had a clean break. Each separation seemed to leave that same sticky residue, like they were two tacky pieces just waiting to graze back together. Sometimes she felt like she had left a part of herself behind, wrapped inside him, a piece she would never get back, that maybe she was never meant to.
She wondered if Izzy had felt the same when Animamon had stolen his soul.
A terrifying combination of sorrow and fury welled up inside her, the ache in her chest evolving into that familiar pain: a festering wound.
Not this time
Yolei took a breath and rubbed her eye before texting back, The apartment.
There was a long pause before the ellipsis came. It appeared, disappeared and reappeared a dozen times before Davis finally sent a message back.
Ok
…
When Davis got home, her things were gone.
He called his mom.
…
Ken postponed their trip to Digiworld twice.
"Helping Davis move," he had told her flatly.
Yolei could tell he was angry with her, which only made her more resolved to keep bugging him to reschedule, churning all her emotion into a ball of fury she was ready to toss in his direction.
After his second dodge, she called Izzy.
"I want to help with the virus," she said, fiddling with her laptop while she put her cell phone on speaker.
She sat, cross-legged on the twin bed of her childhood room, an arrangement her parents agreed to when she offered to work one night a week at I-Mart (which she knew she'd regret almost immediately). At least it beat Momoe's couch and scrutiny.
"I'd be happy to have your input," Izzy said. "We're still stuck on exactly how to transfer the data from the vaccination program into a cure for the babies in quarantine. I've managed to extract enough information to understand how the virus clings to the digicores to prevent it, but…"
"This is where Animamon comes in, isn't it?" said Yolei, feeling her throat tense.
"He's actually been heavily involved with the vaccinations themselves," said Izzy. "He's the only way we're able to get the code into the digicores. The vaccinations have been successful so far. No visible side effects. We've already managed to vaccinate half of Primary Village."
Yolei chewed on her lip, opening and closing tabs in her browser while he talked, going into more detail about what he'd written for the program so far.
Poromon had made himself busy unpacking a box of books. At the moment, he had one opened, the feather on his little pink head twitching thoughtfully as he stared.
Yolei closed her computer to get a better look while Izzy kept talking.
It was her high school yearbook, flipped open to a page dedicated to the soccer team, nearly a year after Animamon had captured them to create his world.
Davis had managed to score the winning goal that had put the team in the championship game that season, a first for nearly a decade (unfortunately they didn't win). He had scooped her up from where she'd been screaming on the sidelines and planted a sloppy, sweaty kiss on her cheek while everyone was celebrating, her smile immortalized for anyone who had a copy.
"I'm not sure if C# is really the best language for this," Izzy was saying. "It works well enough for detecting viruses, but I don't know how it's going to translate into something that could be considered a cure. It isn't super compatible with digicode."
"Mmhm."
"How are you doing?"
Yolei blinked, turning from the picture. "Oh, I'm sorry, I was distracted, what were you—"
"I asked how you were," said Izzy. "Kari told me you moved back home."
"Oh." Yolei pulled her laptop back open, tapping on the keyboard. "Yeah. I'm okay. I mean, it's probably only a matter of time before my parents try to get me to quit my job to work retail, but hopefully I'll be out of here before then."
There was a long pause. "I meant…"
And she realized Izzy was struggling to put his thoughts into words, to get to something that he wasn't really comfortable asking.
"I know," she said quickly. "I'm fine. I just, I really need a distraction."
Izzy gave a hum of acknowledgement. "I know it isn't my place, but…"
She held her breath.
"He really cares about you," Izzy said.
Yolei fiddled with her browser again, organizing tabs.
"I only remember bits and pieces," he continued. "Maybe because I'd undergone a vivisection at the time, but I know that the worst part for Davis was knowing what was happening to you. He kept asking me what it'd be like, for you to…the sepsis. He did everything he could to try to keep that from happening."
A lump crawled into her throat.
"I just…" Izzy paused awkwardly. "I didn't know if I'd ever told you that. I thought you should know."
Yolei swallowed. "Thanks."
"Well," Izzy coughed. "Ken said he was planning on coming by on Thursday for the next round. You're welcome to join us."
She channeled the hurt into a new ball of fury. "Oh, is he now?"
"I think TK is planning to be there too. He wants to check on things before Kari has the baby."
"Well then, count me in."
…
…
His parents had turned his room into an office.
Which is why Davis was now lying on a flower comforter with a poster of Matt Ishida staring at him.
It was sort of crazy that his room was no longer in existence while Jun's had been kept like a time capsule since she'd finished high school.
Guess he knew which one of them was the favorite.
"You were so ready to get out of here and start living your dream," his mom had explained, folding the clothes from his duffle bag to put in Jun's old dresser. "Your room hardly had anything left in it."
Meanwhile Jun's seemed to accumulate more things, making it impossible to completely unpack.
Ken had offered to share his one bedroom apartment but Davis declined.
"You're still on my blacklist," he had said, earning a Ken smile while the two of them stacked the rest of his things into storage. "Consider this your probationary period, removal pending. Plus, I'm pretty sure Yolei'll fight me for custody if I keep hoggin you."
Ken didn't find that funny.
Davis hadn't either, since he wasn't sure he'd been joking.
.
He turned away from the Teenage Wolves poster and tossed a footbag into the air for Veemon to catch. "Matt's judging me."
"That's just his resting face," Veemon lisped, sending the bag back.
Davis caught it and did a quick sit up, glaring at the wall of boy-bands. "I'm gonna take him down."
He was standing on the bed, deep into prying down the poster, when his dad appeared in the doorframe.
"I see you're keeping yourself busy."
Davis gave the poster a firm rip. "Just makin the rooms even."
Tadashi Motomiya took a seat on Jun's old bed, grabbing the abandoned footbag and tossing it to Veemon. "How bout we go get a drink? Scope out the ladies?"
Davis stopped ripping the Teenage Wolves poster in order to shoot his father a glare.
"Not for me," Tadashi laughed. "I'm still happily married."
The poster floated in pieces onto the flowery bedspread and Davis sunk down, sprawling over a pillow.
"Come on," Tadashi coaxed. "Don't be so doom and gloom. You're still a catch. All these modern women are probably dying to not have to cook for their families."
"Dad," Davis groaned.
"Don't let living at home stop you." Tadashi ground a knuckle into his son's hair.
"How are you so…not passively passive aggressive?" grumbled Davis.
"You mean aggressive aggressive?"
"I guess."
"Just trying to help my mama's boy become a man."
Frowning, Davis snatched the footbag Veemon was tossing up and down from the air. "I think I'm gonna quit drinking."
"Interesting timing," said Tadashi, rubbing his hands on his knees before standing back to his feet. "So guy's night out is a bust, huh?"
Davis was caught by surprise at the disappointment in his voice. "Yeah. Maybe some other time?"
"You cooking tonight?"
"Planning to."
"Good. Ramen?"
"I was thinking of tryin my hand at some okonomiyaki. Been awhile since I made it."
"I love okonomiyaki," sighed Veemon.
Tadashi chuckled. "I'm sure it'll be great. Can't understand why you haven't been getting enough business."
Davis shrugged.
"They'll come around. And if not, well, that's their loss." Tadashi gave his son's shoulder a firm squeeze before quickly leaving the room.
Davis stood up to close the door. He turned to Veemon. "That was weird."
"Maybe we should go," Veemon said.
"And listen to his terrible advice all night?" Davis went back to tearing the posters from the wall.
He still remembered the last time: right before he started his last year of high school. He had just come home from helping Yolei move into her new dorm room, and his dad had given him unsolicited relationship advice.
"Maybe you should start thinking about seeing other girls," Tadashi had said.
"What? Why?"
"Well, you know how college is."
Davis had stared at him, blank.
"Yolei is going to want to experiment, live life a little. You can't expect her to stay with her high school boyfriend the whole time."
But he had expected it. Until his dad had put the thought in his head, spurring on break up number two.
.
Davis dug his fingers under a movie poster, releasing it from the wall with a loud rip.
"Don't you think Jun will be upset you tore up her pictures?" asked Veemon.
"Ask me if I care."
"Do you care?"
Davis rolled his eyes and proceeded to the next. Then, out of nowhere, an unwrapped tampon emerged, its string jammed between the poster and the door trim.
A burst of laughter came out of his nose.
"How many of these did I put in here?" he cackled. "Hand me my phone."
Veemon obeyed and, still chuckling to himself, Davis snapped a picture. On auto-pilot, he opened his texts to Yolei. Then, upon seeing their last exchange, he felt the humor fizzle out of him.
He sent the picture to Ken instead.
What is that? Ken texted back.
Davis gave a long, low sigh and wrote back.
This is why you don't have a girlfriend.
…
…
Sometime after the third theory, Yolei had tuned Izzy out.
It wasn't that she wasn't interested in how the vaccination program worked. That sort of thing normally fascinated her, made her giddy to try her hand at something new, fiddling and testing until she found an answer.
But all her anxiety allowed her to concentrate on was the way her steps led them closer to Primary Village, a place she'd been avoiding for more than a decade, just because she knew he lived there.
"I may need to refactor the code to recognize the active virus rather than defend against it. I'm not sure what the best course of action is in this case. We need to eradicate it without compromising the digicores."
"And Animamon thinks he can help?" asked TK, flanking Yolei's other side. Patamon was perched on his latest hat, one that had a strap dangling around his chin, making it look like he was on some African safari.
"He certainly seems to be the most qualified." Izzy adjusted the bag with his laptop over his shoulder. He turned his entire attention to Yolei so she couldn't keep pretending to listen. "You've been especially quiet since we got here. Any input?"
Yolei shook her head and glared a bit when the feather on Hawkmon's head twitched knowingly. On their left she could see the lake shimmer through the strange digital trees, water lapping into mud and muck. Butterflies fluttered in her chest.
"I'm sorry, I sort of zoned out for a while," she admitted.
"It's not too late to turn back," said TK.
She shook her head. "I'm fine."
"He looks the same."
"Are you trying to get rid of me?" she asked.
TK gave a shrug. "Does Ken know you're coming?"
"He was the one who was supposed to bring me," she grumbled.
"He's been postponing all week," Hawkmon chimed in.
"He told TK he hoped you would change your mind," chirped Patamon.
That was enough to squash the nervous dread that had been rising inside her since they'd gone with Izzy through the portal. Angry heat filled her cheeks.
"Well I didn't."
TK gave her a smile, a cross of amusement and sympathy. He pulled off his backpack and leaned forward to search through it, shaking Patamon into flight in the process.
"Here," he said, pulling out a bird made of glass, the kind that bobbed back and forth for a drink. "I got this for Animamon. Why don't you give it to him?"
Dread tried to poke its ugly head back up through the anger, making Yolei speak through her teeth. "Why?"
TK shrugged. "Thought it'd be a good conversation starter, make things less awkward. A peace offering."
"He should be giving me a peace offering!" snapped Yolei.
TK's smile seemed to twitch further upward. He gave a warm chuckle. "Good point."
He started to shove the bird back into his bag when a rush of at least five different emotions drove Yolei to snatch it from his hands.
The bird head bobbed up and down.
She clutched onto it so hard that it had made imprints in her palms by the time they reached the village.
Hawkmon hung back with her while the others began to greet the hordes of digimon that met them at the school.
"You don't have to do this."
Her lip sunk between her teeth as she stepped beneath the school banner. Some distance away she could make out the bubble erected to house the quarantined digimon and just beyond, a lone hut.
It was the anticipation that drove her, the nervous energy and fury churning like a whirlwind, desperate to just get it over with.
She didn't even notice Ken and Wormmon until she was well past the quarantine.
Ken called, "Yolei?"
She stormed right by them and slammed open the door to the hut.
For some unknown reason Gabumon was inside, half-slipped out of his fur.
The scream was mutual.
Yolei slammed the door closed.
"Wrong hut," TK called from somewhere behind her, far too much humor in his voice.
"Yolei, what has gotten into you?" Hawkmon asked, fluttering over her shoulder.
She whipped around to face Ken, who had followed close behind. Wormmon was peering around his neck, looking between them with concern.
"Which one?" she demanded.
Ken frowned. "Let me—"
"No!"
He stared at her while the others caught up, his eyes never faltering from her angry gaze.
"He's just past the first stack of building blocks," said TK.
Yolei immediately about-faced and stormed down the hill. A group of punimon spotted her and bounced happily by her feet, trying to earn her attention.
Hawkmon was attempting to be polite to them while keeping up with her.
"Why yes, I do believe you might digivolve soon. Yolei, what exactly do you hope—Aren't you a feisty little thing?—to gain by meeting with Animamon alone?"
"I'm not afraid of him," she said, knuckles going white around the drinking bird.
"That—I apologize, this is not the best time—did not answer my question."
That was because she didn't have one. She was moving on pure feeling, a rush of energy that begged to be unleashed, and the only thing she knew was she didn't want anyone in her way.
She could barely hear Ken and Hawkmon calling her name over the sound of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.
When she reached the hut beyond the building blocks, she tore open the door and stepped inside, slamming it shut before even her partner could follow.
Chest heaving, she found Animamon, rising to his full height.
A pallid clawed hand slipped out from under his dark robe and his cloudy eyes set on her face like he could see.
Regret instantly crawled into her chest, rising in a lump of fear in her throat, leaving her unable to speak.
"I wondered when you would come." His voice was soft but it did nothing to soothe.
Yolei stood frozen. Hawkmon was calling her from outside, but she couldn't move. Her back pressed hard against the door.
"You have nothing to fear." Animamon lowered his hand, eyes now wandering aimlessly past her. He took a low bow. "It is a pleasure to meet you again, Child of Passion."