Ironically, it's Taichi who finds out about them first, which in hindsight is probably why no one else does for a while. Her brother is not exactly known for his thoughtfulness, but he's good at staying out of people's business. That's probably why the second time he catches Takeru sneaking out at two in the morning goes down almost exactly as the last time, with one exception.

He waits for Takeru to make it to the front door before clearing his throat, shoulder slumped into the hallway wall, right next to a family photograph of a baby Hikari stood by Susumu's knees, clinging to them while a toddler Taichi clings to her, trying to pick her up, his gap toothed grin beaming in doting pride as Hikari wails. Takeru jumps at the sound, freezes with one sneaker in his hand and the other halfway onto his foot. He's holding an empty condom wrapper in his fist, the crackling foil shimmering a bit from the dimmed kitchen light that filters through the corridor. Taichi looks right at it. "That yours?"

With his toe, Takeru prods the heel of an expensive red-soled black pump, neatly lined up with its pair in the entranceway, and looks back at Taichi. "Those hers?"

He's still looking at the foil packet. "We don't—," and stops himself there, raises an accusing finger. "Don't interview me."

Takeru grins, finishes putting on his sneakers. "You know I'd do it for you better than anyone else." Says it with sweetener in his voice, so that Taichi rolls his eyes.

"I don't do interviews."

"People want to know about you." He shrugs. It's a pitch he's made in about a thousand different ways, but Yagamis are a stubborn breed.

"That's what comms is for," but in a disheartened delivery, a lame excuse. He used to be much better at them, before the wrinkles around his soft brown eyes had turned darker, stress lines burdening his handsome features. Friend Takeru feels sympathy for him, still so loyal and reverent towards his childhood idol; journalist Takeru tells himself to be impartial, and to temper his annoyance at the evasive answer. Then again, he knows how to knead a reluctant source.

Puts on his jacket, a hand me down from his brother that, if you asked him, Yamato would immediately clarify Takeru had simply stolen right off the back of Yamato's office chair the last time he'd visited him on assignment in Tsukuba. Most of Takeru's clothes are pilfered and bartered from others' closets. Takeru would say he doesn't like to own things, but his therapist would say he likes to be weighed down by his attachments. "Maybe comms should do their job, then."

Taichi doesn't react to the bait. He'd really grown into his public servant role. Journalist Takeru finds his annoyance peaking. It's not that he's any more curious than the lay person about the goings on of interworld politics. He just knows what makes a good story, and is competitive enough to want to be the first reporter to tell it. "Are you coming to Jou's tonight?"

Takeru shakes his head no but says, "That's the plan."

Taichi rubs his face, jetlagged and uncomfortable. "All right. See you then." Lasts a full ten seconds after the door clicks shut before remembering why he probably wouldn't. Taichi blames this latest bout of obliviousness to the insomnia of a cross oceanic flight schedule, but in truth Hikari just doesn't talk to him as much as she used to. The majority of his guilt about this is because he doesn't either.

Fills a clean drinking glass with water and returns to his bedroom. He had insisted his sister take it for her stay in town, which she'd declined and he'd relented without much fanfare. This was a routine performance of theirs, but an important part to adult siblinghood. He doesn't hear a thing from the spare bedroom when he passes it, and doesn't realize he's still frowning about that until Mimi asks what's wrong with his face.

"Takeru was here," says Taichi, speaking very lowly, like his door isn't firmly shut.

Mimi's sitting up cross legged in bed, bundled in his duvet, resting her back on the headboard. Outside of the hand that accepts the glass he hands her, only the collar of his uni sweatshirt peeks out over the folded top of the blanket, which is a good thing, because Taichi is way too tired to react to the sight of her in his clothes the way he'd want to otherwise. She stops mid-sip at his announcement, shocked. "And he didn't say hi to me?"

"I don't think he was here for you." Leaves out the reminder that no one outside of family is supposed to know she'd flown back early, by her own insistence, or else the holiday surprise would be spoiled.

"Not—," and gasps, the drama of it all. Her eyes are glued to the door, ears peeled for any more sounds on the other side. "Oh, this is terrible."

His heart was already sinking, but Mimi's reaction sealed away any doubt. "'Terrible' is a lot." Blood, after all.

She pulls the duvet tighter around herself, a shivering ball of overfeeling. "Jou said Shin filed annulment papers."

He feels his heart go right down to the bottom of his stomach. For the umpteenth time in the last decade, he wonders how he missed so much of his sister's life. He's not a saint either, but he wants to care less about her choices than he does, and probably would if she'd just include him in them. Taichi understands that this is what actually bothers him. Public servant or no, he'd have the grave already half dug if Hikari'd ever asked him how to dispose of a body, but he'd much prefer to know in advance that there'd be a body to dispose of in the first place. Maybe even do it himself, for her, if she just told him.

Taichi sinks to the edge of the mattress. He looks at the door again, brows furrowed to a point, thinking it over. Mimi puts her glass down on the bedside table, then scoots up behind him, opening her blanket cocoon to swallow him up from behind. Her skin's a little clammy, a low grade fever the ER doctor had assured her would pass with bedrest and better prenatal care, so she'd gotten the next flight to him while he'd rebooked his to match hers, and here they are, unplanned but excited. When she wraps her arms around his shoulders, he pulls the inside of her wrist against his lips. The idea that two heartbeats now flow through her pulse has him closing his eyes, trying to shut everything else out but them. This was supposed to be a good day, something real to celebrate. Mimi had wanted to tell everyone else at dinner. Jou—who'd known even before Taichi, to the latter's unsurprised disinterest, because he knew she came as a two-for-one from the start—had offered to host at his. He'd been acting extra chummy since Shin had asked him for Hikari's phone number. I always wanted a kid brother. Taichi had laughed, even though Jou had only been half joking. They'd both agreed, without exchanging one verbal word about it, to pretend they had no questions about any part of it, to not compare timelines, or who left who for whom. It's difficult to see your sibling in dimmed light, when you know all you should want is to see them happy.

When he gets too quiet too long, Mimi cups his chin, turns his head, tucks her nose right into the hollow of his right ear, and licks the shell. Taichi yells, flinching on instinct, tosses her off him before he can stop himself. She's laughing into the pillow, rolling away, hiccuping when he dives after her. Her hip hits the wall when she shimmies too far and too fast, and she pitches a whiny exaggerated fit, demanding make up cuddles. He pulls her into his arms. "You love me, right?" Doesn't even know why he asks. Keeps thinking about Takeru shaking his head while his mouth said something else. The easy way they all lie to each other.

Mimi sighs, truly and transparently happy. "You know what? I really do." Like some kind of miracle.

Later that morning, Hikari comes to breakfast with her hair down, an uncharacteristic appearance for her. She's in a hurry, she says, because Jun and Shuu want to take her to lunch while Shin's with his divorce lawyer. When she reaches across the table for the coffee carafe, the collar of the blouse she'd borrowed off Mimi slips low for just a fraction of a moment, revealing a mark in the shape of another man's mouth unmistakably pressed into the base of her throat. Taichi looks away.

The Sunday after the Saturday he'd first kissed her goes by without any discussion or acknowledgement of the fact that he had. So does that Monday, then Tuesday, Wednesday, the whole week. Two weeks, and he starts to believe he just made it all up in his head, that he'd dreamed it instead, that he would never have acted on a desire he pretends not to know he has.

Three weeks, and Hikari calls him. He's walking out of one lecture hall, on his way to another. His Thursday is always packed, and he only ever has time for a quick meal at the campus dining room, so when he sees her name on his caller ID, he turns the phone over without answering and finishes his lunch, and then honestly just forgets. Finally remembers, and calls her back, well after his last class, walking home with a pile of books under his other arm.

She answers before the first ring. "Oh," because he's so surprised by her unusual departure from normal phone habits he forgets his, too.

"Hi to you, too." Her tone is bright, relaxed, a hint of a tease. "How was your library haul?"

Takeru feels his heart swell. Lets it go right to his head, like he's not frustrated with her at all, and never could be. "I had classes all day. No time for the library."

"Hm," she hums, accepting the weak lie. "Is that why you didn't call me?"

"Do I have to be the one to call first?"

"You kissed me, Takeru."

So it had been real. "You kissed me back."

"Which makes it your turn now," says Hikari, and proudly, like he'd made the clever connection at last, catching up to where she'd been on the two of them for a while now.

He doesn't let it go, or let her off that easy. He also won't be direct about it either, because Takeru doesn't know how to do that with her. He's a little afraid that if he were to look her in the eye the same time she were to look at him, they'd see right past each other. Or, worse, see that there's nothing of substance there at all. That what they knew of each other and of themselves with each other had never meant to go beyond the surface, and that the attraction of simply knowing someone and being known by them from childhood is not a foundation for romance but a crutch for its substitute. "To kiss you back, or first?"

"Do you know how many times I wanted you to?" A casual redirect, like she doesn't know the question would knock him off his knees, not daring to hope.

"No," says Takeru. "I never know what you're thinking, Yagami."

She hums again, conceding the point, polite enough to be mollified. "I guess that's true. Should I give you a hint?"

He's about to tell her no, he doesn't want hints or riddles or guesswork or games, that for once he's not playing along, that he has loved her all his life, and that while nineteen years hasn't meant for a very long life, he's sure he won't need another nineteen to know this truth about himself any better, when his phone dings with an incoming text message. A picture. Takeru almost drops his books. Brings the phone back to his ear. "Where are you?"

Hikari sighs into the phone in her right hand, the other hand between her legs. Looks up at the ceiling of his bedroom, laying on top of his sheets. She feels out of body, or at the precipice of it. She still can't believe he didn't call or text or message her in three weeks. Pinched together the last of her allowance for the bus ride here, just to end up waiting around even more. How long does he think she'll wait for him?

"Your flatmate let me in hours ago. Takeru," in this silky lilt, quiet, but not above begging, not when she's this close, the side of her thumb rubbing the most sensitive area under the hood of her clit until she can't hold back anymore, "come home soon, okay?"

While Takeru goes downstairs to the motel lobby to answer a work call, saying he gets better reception there, Hikari looks at her own messages.

There are a few emails from her school, which she answers right away. A student had confessed to defacing the Friends of the Digital World club room with a pro-Human fascist epithet, and the vice principal asked Hikari to be the appointed mediator at the meeting with the child's parents. She agreed at once, then sent an email to the club members to check how they were doing, and then finally began drafting another email to the student. She'd written many of these kinds of emails and letters, usually to children who parroted what they heard from the adults in their lives, often still yet unequipped to discern their own opinions. Hikari considers this her barometer for success in her mediation work, focusing on the students. Adults often write themselves off as lost causes, set in their ways, ashamed to admit mistakes, uncomfortable with uncertain conclusions, contrary truths. Children could yet be changed. She would say this is why she chose becoming a teacher.

She has a couple messages from Miyako, which were mostly gossip and snaps of her little family, and a lot more from Daisuke, who composed texts one character or emoji at a time, simply because he'd get so distracted in the middle of a thought that he'd move onto the next one before finishing the first. They'd learned his shorthand by now, and were inclined to forgive him more easily than themselves anyway, seeing as how Daisuke at his most distracted often resulted in the best meals any of them would have in this lifetime, or the next. She leaves his unfinished message thread unanswered for now, lets him catch up to whatever thought he had wanted to tell her when he gets there, and looks at the one from Shin.

He says he landed in Hong Kong safely, and that she'd been right, the air is too muggy for him and he's already sweat through his shirt. He says he's on his way to the hotel but would probably stop to buy more weather comfortable clothing first. He says he has dinner plans with a colleague and her children, who had tagged along to the conference because her partner had another of his own and plus she wanted to show her children where she grew up. He says the flight was terrible and the food was okay, and that he wishes he could have attended his panel virtually. He says that networking is good, and it will be nice to catch up with old medical school classmates, but that he'd rather be at home with his houseplants, and asks if that makes him old. He says he misses her.

Hikari checks for marks on her skin and snaps a quick photo in the bathroom mirror, leaving the buttons of her blouse undone so her bra shows through clearly, and using her left hand to tug the collared top together. Makes her mouth into a big pout. Her ring catches the camera's flash, as intended. She studies the picture carefully, zooming in to be sure. Satisfied everything looks right, she sends the photo to him, and says she misses him, too, and wonders how she'll get through the next three nights without him.

Shin replies sooner than she'd expected, even with the slight time difference. Isn't Takeru in town?

She bristles, irritation scratching just under the skin. How should I know? He does what he wants.

He sends his shortest message. So do you.

Hikari has several responses to this, like how she hasn't always, and wouldn't always, and couldn't always. How it matters who's the one wanting most. How capable she is of the judgment of want and its motivations. How long she hasn't put herself first, and the occasions in which she does. How in fact she does not do whatever she wants, and that this is what her friends and family know best about her: that Hikari will not burden people with what she actually thinks, or really wants, and truly needs. How this characterization is her shield and her shelter, because she knows that the reason she rarely ventures further than her own surface is she's too scared to find out this selfless projection isn't who she is at all, and yet also is somewhere deep inside, all at once.

Instead, she replies with nothing. Goes to turn off her phone entirely, when Yamato texts her. Takeru's not answering me. I don't need to know if he's with you, but I need to know if you've seen him.

Hikari closes the bathroom door, sets her own back to it, phone in both hands to keep them steady. Is everything okay? She remembers their father had just entered his twentieth month of remission and no longer needed extended at-home care, that their mother had returned to France a while back, then moved to Portugal, then northern Italy, that they weren't quite sure where she was most of the year. Takeru had always taken such news with a smile. Hikari doesn't understand why everyone says she's the one who's hard to read.

Yamato's courteous even when he's angry. We're all fine, thanks. I hope you are, too, but Hikari, I don't think this one will blow over. I just don't want everyone to know it was him and more to the text then, with additions incoming, but Hikari has stopped reading the rest.

With a lump in her throat, she opens a new page in the internet browser on her phone and immediately searches for her brother's name. It's mostly the standard news reports that reference him, often in passing or via press statements, all of them addressing the crisis that had consumed them all at least at the periphery. It had come to a head about eight weeks prior, when, with the backing of Russia and China, France had called for an emergency security council session after the tenth Gate breach in four months, asking for an indefinite global suspension of Digimon visas, while the UK had abstained and the US had used its veto to derail all further motions on the subject, to the vocal outcry of both pro and anti-Digital World proponents, for a multitude of reasons and concerns. This, like of all of them, Hikari knew in detail, followed closely, discussed openly.

It's the eleventh result in the internet search that's unexpected, a breaking news bulletin published anonymously that reports the Digital World Mission had gone contrary to the Secretary-General's procedures and shared information directly with the French delegation, revealing three more yet undisclosed Gate breaches by infected Digimon behaving beyond their coded nature, including a cover up of one attack by an infected Kuwagamon at the Oslo Digital Gate station that had been so violent a nine-year-old child had been left paralyzed and her Leomon killed. The bulletin published with its damning claims a copy of another leaked internal Mission memo that did not address the loss of human and Digital life, but denied the existence of a cover up, announced the firing of the individual who had spoken to the French delegation, and reprimanded staff for the breach of policy on communications with outside of authorized channels. The bulletin said the memo was authored by Minister-Counsellor Yagami Taichi.

Hikari goes back to the message thread with Yamato. She does not read the rest of what he'd gone on to say, was in the middle of still saying. Only asks, Whose byline was it? and after that still doesn't wait for him to answer.

She texts a link to the bulletin to Takeru. Whose byline is this?

He comes back to the room ten minutes later. She has just finished putting on the rest of her clothes. Stares as she's buttoning the top of her jeans, her shirt riding up a tanned midriff. "Because of one article?"

"Is it true?" She begins throwing the pillows and sheets off the bed, searching for her belt, an accessory her outfit didn't need but she'd selected knowing she was seeing him. Wanted him to hold her wrists together with it, make her feel a little used. Sometimes she asks for her strangest fixations to be played out in his bed because it helps her feel guilty about having him in hers.

Takeru's still standing in the entranceway, but he's closed the door behind him. Stood a bit to the side, so the way out is clear, because he believes himself to be a nice guy. "Yes, it's true. People are getting hurt, Digimon are being—."

"Was it you, Takeru?" Her throat feels very tight. She can't remember the last time she spoke to Taichi. Mimi sends her pictures of her nephew all the time, but lately her brother hasn't been in them. She follows the news, and knows why, or thought she did. The leaked memo is stamped in her mind, every time she blinks. Which is a lot right now, only compounding her anger. She doesn't want Takeru to think she cares if it was him. The point is that it had happened at all, not who broke the story first. The point is, neither Taichi nor Koushiro had told her how bad it was. The point is, she hadn't noticed this herself.

He looks hurt, his hands at his sides loose with the palms open. "Do you really think I'd do that?"

If Hikari does, that is what her silence says.

Takeru closes his hands. He speaks slowly, the way he does when he doesn't want to say what he means. "I'm not the editor. But even if I did choose my stories—,"

She snaps, "You're their best writer. You're well beyond taking staffroom assignments," in that way that makes compliments sound like insults. Exceptionally good at it, too, because Hikari is so intentional with her words their purpose is never careless. When it counts, so is Takeru. "Who were you talking to before?"

"I'm not doing this with you," he says. "I'm not, Hikari."

"He's my brother—,"

"Hikari," and surprises her by how kindly he still manages to say her name, when they're both yelling like this, unrepentant, "no one gives a shit who he is. No one at the paper. Okay?"

"And you do?" She stops pacing around the bed to return to the bathroom and pick up her phone. Shows the screen to him. The article is still on the opened browser window, the headline in blocky white characters. "This is you caring about him? About us?"

"If you knew how much worse it would have been if I—," and stops. He's said too much. When he looks at her after a moment to catch his breath, there's something very unpleasant on his face. Hikari can't believe she ever thought she'd made the wrong choice, to stop waiting for him. "If you read it, you know who you should be upset with."

Hikari turns around and pitches her phone into the mattress. It bounces off the corner and hits the wall, and instead of getting it back, she sinks onto the bed, her arms hanging by her sides, her back hunched into a curve. She talks at her knees, unable to see anything through her tears. "Her Leomon died?"

Takeru does not go to her, sit beside her, reach out to her. At least he lets her ugly cry, and he doesn't lie to her. "From what I saw of the footage, it could have been a lot worse."

She wipes her nose with the heel of her palm. "Even one is worse."

He frowns, awkward with his reactions. "You really didn't know?"

At this, she looks up at him. "How did you?"

"I follow the news."

"You write the news—,"

"Hikari," again, so kindly, but all she hears is the meanness underneath. "It wasn't me."

"How am I supposed to believe you?" It's not a question without precedence, which hurts less than the fact that she'd have to ask it again. "Is that why you're with me? To use me? To use my family?"

He stares at her, unable to comprehend what she just said to him. "I'm with you?" like that's the big news of the day, so much so, that he's still trying to understand it, hours after she leaves again.

She opens her body to him in a way he hopes she never does with anyone else, not because he's so insecure as to be possessive of her attention, but because he wants to believe that of every person Hikari loves and will ever love, he alone is the blueprint, because she alone is his. Takeru wants to be an exception. This is the kind of hopeful belief that makes life very lonely, and probably pathetic, but the soft wetness that meets him every time he finds his place inside her feels so good he doesn't bother trying to make hope last. He just curls his fingers tighter between hers, pins her wrists higher over her head, and sinks his teeth harder into the flesh of her neck, until she's making the kinds of sounds he pretends are just for him. He'll make hope look good on her, too.