Chapter one complete!
Title: Fine Art (chapter one)
Fandom: Digimon
Rating: PG
Warnings: Nope
Author's note: I'm going to finish this sucker or die trying.
It wasn’t like blowing up buildings or punching dragons right in the face, but the first week of wearing uniforms and having a shitload of homework was OK, I guess. Me, Takeru, and Hikari rode the train together, which sucked because it meant dealing with Takeru’s bright and early cheerfully annoying existence all the way to school, but which was also awesome because Hikari in the morning was like eating a bowel of sunshine for breakfast. We all got into high school together, even though Jun said that the only way I’d pass the entrance exam was if I dressed up Ken and made him take it in my place. So what if that’s practically what happened? There was no way I was going to let Takeru get Hikari all to himself - And it was the same school that Taichi-sempai had gone and Ishida-sempai, too, before he got too cool for it and quit to become a kick-ass rock star. So what if it meant that Ken had to sleepover for practically a whole month while he helped me study? I made it in totally fair and square, no matter what Jun said.
That’s what I was thinking about, about Ken staying over everyday and all night, while the train rolled us to school. I pulled out my phone and flipped it open. He hadn’t sent me an email since the day school started and hadn’t called me since a week before that.He was probably busy with homework and clubs and interviews and smart stuff.
“Daisuke! Stop daydreaming and do your homework!”
“Huh?”
Hikari nudged my shoulder and pointed to the open notebook in my lap. “I can’t believe it’s only the second week and you’re already falling behind. You need to work really hard now, Daisuke.”
“Yeah or else I’m going to tell Ken on you.” Takeru grinned and bent down to point at question fifteen. “The answer’s four point eight kilometers an hour. I remember getting stuck on that one last night.”
I wrote it down to fill the empty space, figuring any answer was better than none. “Cool. Next?”
Takeru rubbed his fingers through his hair. “Uh, I think it’s sixty even. Sixty kilometers an hour.”
Hikari opened her bad and pulled out a folder with yellow flowers on it and carefully removed a sheet of paper. I snorted and grabbed it from her. “You’ve got homework too? So my bad habits finally rubbing off on you?”
Hardly," she said with a giggle to soften the blow of the insult. "Actually, I was just looking over the club list for this year. I'm thinking about joining the astronomy club, since Miyako-chan’s doing that at her school and we might be able to meet up, but the tennis club looks good, too, and I know that Sora-sempai has had a lot of fun with them." She sighed, blowing some strands of hair that had escaped her butterfly barrette. "Or maybe the art club. Even if I’m terrible at drawing, I hear that they do a lot of photography too, and it’d be cool to get back into that. And the art club only meets twice a week, so I could even join something else."
"The art club? Damn," I said as I eyed the list. "Won't that make you too busy? Didn't you want to get a job, too?"
She sighed again, and grabbed the piece of paper and tucked it away. "Well, I could use the extra money," she said slowly. "But, mostly," she paused and looked quickly around before lowering her voice. I leaned in to share her secret, inhaling the flowery scent of her hair. "I want to make the most of my free time, now that I - that we - have some. I want to make up for everything I missed in elementary school and junior high. So now we have the chance to be normal kids. It's such a relief, don't you guys think?"
Her brown eyes flickered back to her paper and we both stared at it like any minute it was going to jump up and do a dance routine. I felt the vaguely unpleasant feeling of the foundation crumbling, an earthquake or a landslide. I looked up at Takeru but he was looking out the window at the trees blurring outside. I opened my mouth to ask them about the Digital World, about the rest of the gang, about how Hikari didn’t mean she wanted to ditch all of that for clubs, did she? But the train pulled into our stop and I crammed everything back into my bag and we all got out. And the Takeru brought up his brother and how his bass player blew up another amp, which was too good of a story to interrupt.
When the morning routine of greeting our teacher and waving my hand to prove I totally hadn't stayed home all day in my underwear playing Super Dragon Fighters Rockets 2, fulfilling the requirement of attending class had finished, I glanced over at Takeru, who sat a row to the side and a desk in front of me. I scribbled a note to him asking what he thought Hikari meant, but when I tossed it at his head, it just bounced off his hair and landed by his foot. He’d be terrible at soccer with reflexes like that.
She probably meant that it was a pain in the ass to get to the Digital World, I thought as our homeroom teacher started droning about class duties. And it was. It was harder to sneak into the computer lab and since Koushiro got into some insane college where he practically had to turn into a computer himself, we didn’t have someone around to monitor all the crazy shit that the Digital World did. Portals slammed closed and the didn’t open again for days, some moved so you got dropped in the ocean instead of on the beach, and some disappeared completely. I nodded to myself. That’s probably what Hikari meant. There was no way she regretted all the awesome stuff we’d done. That’s be insane - The Digital World was the greatest place on earth. Or not on earth. Wherever the hell it was. Me and Ken spent a ton of time there in junior high, since it was easier to get meet there then deal with the trains and buses from getting from my place to his apartment. We’d go and then fight some bad-ass flying elephant or something or then do races with the Kamemon and totally wipe the floor with them. Sometimes Taichi-sempai would come along and we’d recruit a bunch of Digimon and play soccer. But whatever we did, it was awesome.
A few times the whole gang managed to meet up. Even Ishida, who did concerts and commercials and was trying to get into acting, too. And even Kido-sempai, who almost cried the time the portal dumped us in the water. It’d been awesome getting a ride from a bunch of fish back to shore and then I just peeled off my jacket and ran around until my clothes dried. The girls ran off to some secret girls-only base somewhere so we couldn’t spy on them when they took off their clothes, which sucked. From my seat I could see the pool through the windows of the gym and I stared at the blue line of water. Next time we’d have to bring a change of close or wear our swim suits. It’d have to wait until we had a break in school, though, I thought as our teacher strolled by my desk. I scribbled something about the Heian Period when she paused and then scribbled it out again when he moved to the next row. Hikari in a bathing suit was worth the wait. Hikari in a school bathing suit was even more worth it.
Lunch finally came after the longest day ever and as soon as the bell rang, I rummaged through my bag. There had to be at least a few yen somewhere, all I needed was enough to buy some bread.
“Oi, this note’s from you, right? ‘Yo, you understand girls?’”
I looked up as Takeru tossed a rolled up piece of paper onto my desk. “Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Hey, you got anything good for lunch?”
“Yeah, my brother came over last night and made us onigiri with plum.” He pulled his chair over and then opened his bento box and poked at the stuff inside. “At least he didn’t put faces on them this time. He gets in these weird moods. Anyway, what’d your note even mean?”
“Hikari-chan. You know, what she was talking about this morning,” I explained as I took a bite of an onigiri. They were good even when Yamato-sempai went crazy with colors. “I don’t get it. Who cares about clubs and stuff when we can go to the Digi-”
“Daisuke,” Takeru said firmly like he’d become a teacher all of a sudden. He jerked his head to the cluster of girls sitting near us. They looked over and giggled and one of them even wagged her fingers at Takeru who gave them a smile back.
“What? Hey, I’m not done eating that!”
He sighed but passed me half an egg. “Just keep it down about that, OK? Anyway, aren’t you doing soccer again this year?”
“Yeah, of course! What’d they do without me?”
“Well, so Hikari wants to do join clubs too.” He popped a tomato into his mouth. “What’s weird about that?”
“You know what’ weird about it. She was acting like she wants to forget all about the D- You know, about that place that we used to go to all the time and is awesome.”
“So she wants to try new things. Maybe you should, too. I’m going to try for the newspaper, maybe see if I can learn how to write articles. It’ll be fun.”
I frowned. “I still think it’s weird. She’s weird. You’re definitely weird. Who cares about stupid school clubs when there are monsters to fight and a world to save and stuff?”
“We haven’t done that in years, Daisuke.”
“So what?” I asked. “I still got my goggles. Anytime anyone needs to be rescued and bam! I put these babies on and I’m ready to kick ass.”
“You carry them around with you?”
“Yep!” I fished the goggles out of my backpack and passed them Takeru. He stretched the band and the plucked out a dangling thread. “Ok, so they’re a little old. They still fit! Sort of.”
“You’re the weird one,” Takeru scoffed. You can’t wear these now.”
“Why not?” I grabbed them back and stuffed them away. “You’re just jealous that Taichi-san didn’t give you a pair. All you got was that dumbass hat.”
“All I’m saying is that joining a new club or two’s a good idea.”
“Fine,” I said with a shrug. “Me and Ken’ll have fun in the Digital World without you. Gimme another piece of egg.”
After lunch was over, we still had another ten thousand hours of class before the day finally ended and they let us go home. I looked out the window again and wished it was summer vacation. Again. I glanced over at Takeru who was writing down notes about whatever our teacher was talking about. The girls who giggled at us were glancing over at him too and I snorted before turning away. He’d probably have a club dedicated to him by the end of the week full of fangirls. If Hikari ended up joining that, I quit school to go live like a monk on a mountain or something. Or just move permanently to the Digital World and only let Ken come in.
Our teacher called on him and Takeru stood up with his book in hand. He read whatever it was and sat back down. Behind me I could hear some girl whispering, “Takaichi-kun’s pretty smart. And didn’t he look cool just now?”
Maybe Takeru did know what he was talking about, I thought grudgingly. Besides, how hard would it be to join the stupid art club? Hikari had said they met twice a week - I could do that and soccer, no problem. With Takeru busy with the school newspaper, me and Hikari would have the club room all to ourselves. Yeah! I’d join the art club, date Hikari, and with Ken helping me with school, I’d beat Takeru so hard on finals that he’d have to go back to junior high.
And people said high school was hard.
Fandom: Digimon
Rating: PG
Warnings: Nope
Author's note: I'm going to finish this sucker or die trying.
It wasn’t like blowing up buildings or punching dragons right in the face, but the first week of wearing uniforms and having a shitload of homework was OK, I guess. Me, Takeru, and Hikari rode the train together, which sucked because it meant dealing with Takeru’s bright and early cheerfully annoying existence all the way to school, but which was also awesome because Hikari in the morning was like eating a bowel of sunshine for breakfast. We all got into high school together, even though Jun said that the only way I’d pass the entrance exam was if I dressed up Ken and made him take it in my place. So what if that’s practically what happened? There was no way I was going to let Takeru get Hikari all to himself - And it was the same school that Taichi-sempai had gone and Ishida-sempai, too, before he got too cool for it and quit to become a kick-ass rock star. So what if it meant that Ken had to sleepover for practically a whole month while he helped me study? I made it in totally fair and square, no matter what Jun said.
That’s what I was thinking about, about Ken staying over everyday and all night, while the train rolled us to school. I pulled out my phone and flipped it open. He hadn’t sent me an email since the day school started and hadn’t called me since a week before that.He was probably busy with homework and clubs and interviews and smart stuff.
“Daisuke! Stop daydreaming and do your homework!”
“Huh?”
Hikari nudged my shoulder and pointed to the open notebook in my lap. “I can’t believe it’s only the second week and you’re already falling behind. You need to work really hard now, Daisuke.”
“Yeah or else I’m going to tell Ken on you.” Takeru grinned and bent down to point at question fifteen. “The answer’s four point eight kilometers an hour. I remember getting stuck on that one last night.”
I wrote it down to fill the empty space, figuring any answer was better than none. “Cool. Next?”
Takeru rubbed his fingers through his hair. “Uh, I think it’s sixty even. Sixty kilometers an hour.”
Hikari opened her bad and pulled out a folder with yellow flowers on it and carefully removed a sheet of paper. I snorted and grabbed it from her. “You’ve got homework too? So my bad habits finally rubbing off on you?”
Hardly," she said with a giggle to soften the blow of the insult. "Actually, I was just looking over the club list for this year. I'm thinking about joining the astronomy club, since Miyako-chan’s doing that at her school and we might be able to meet up, but the tennis club looks good, too, and I know that Sora-sempai has had a lot of fun with them." She sighed, blowing some strands of hair that had escaped her butterfly barrette. "Or maybe the art club. Even if I’m terrible at drawing, I hear that they do a lot of photography too, and it’d be cool to get back into that. And the art club only meets twice a week, so I could even join something else."
"The art club? Damn," I said as I eyed the list. "Won't that make you too busy? Didn't you want to get a job, too?"
She sighed again, and grabbed the piece of paper and tucked it away. "Well, I could use the extra money," she said slowly. "But, mostly," she paused and looked quickly around before lowering her voice. I leaned in to share her secret, inhaling the flowery scent of her hair. "I want to make the most of my free time, now that I - that we - have some. I want to make up for everything I missed in elementary school and junior high. So now we have the chance to be normal kids. It's such a relief, don't you guys think?"
Her brown eyes flickered back to her paper and we both stared at it like any minute it was going to jump up and do a dance routine. I felt the vaguely unpleasant feeling of the foundation crumbling, an earthquake or a landslide. I looked up at Takeru but he was looking out the window at the trees blurring outside. I opened my mouth to ask them about the Digital World, about the rest of the gang, about how Hikari didn’t mean she wanted to ditch all of that for clubs, did she? But the train pulled into our stop and I crammed everything back into my bag and we all got out. And the Takeru brought up his brother and how his bass player blew up another amp, which was too good of a story to interrupt.
When the morning routine of greeting our teacher and waving my hand to prove I totally hadn't stayed home all day in my underwear playing Super Dragon Fighters Rockets 2, fulfilling the requirement of attending class had finished, I glanced over at Takeru, who sat a row to the side and a desk in front of me. I scribbled a note to him asking what he thought Hikari meant, but when I tossed it at his head, it just bounced off his hair and landed by his foot. He’d be terrible at soccer with reflexes like that.
She probably meant that it was a pain in the ass to get to the Digital World, I thought as our homeroom teacher started droning about class duties. And it was. It was harder to sneak into the computer lab and since Koushiro got into some insane college where he practically had to turn into a computer himself, we didn’t have someone around to monitor all the crazy shit that the Digital World did. Portals slammed closed and the didn’t open again for days, some moved so you got dropped in the ocean instead of on the beach, and some disappeared completely. I nodded to myself. That’s probably what Hikari meant. There was no way she regretted all the awesome stuff we’d done. That’s be insane - The Digital World was the greatest place on earth. Or not on earth. Wherever the hell it was. Me and Ken spent a ton of time there in junior high, since it was easier to get meet there then deal with the trains and buses from getting from my place to his apartment. We’d go and then fight some bad-ass flying elephant or something or then do races with the Kamemon and totally wipe the floor with them. Sometimes Taichi-sempai would come along and we’d recruit a bunch of Digimon and play soccer. But whatever we did, it was awesome.
A few times the whole gang managed to meet up. Even Ishida, who did concerts and commercials and was trying to get into acting, too. And even Kido-sempai, who almost cried the time the portal dumped us in the water. It’d been awesome getting a ride from a bunch of fish back to shore and then I just peeled off my jacket and ran around until my clothes dried. The girls ran off to some secret girls-only base somewhere so we couldn’t spy on them when they took off their clothes, which sucked. From my seat I could see the pool through the windows of the gym and I stared at the blue line of water. Next time we’d have to bring a change of close or wear our swim suits. It’d have to wait until we had a break in school, though, I thought as our teacher strolled by my desk. I scribbled something about the Heian Period when she paused and then scribbled it out again when he moved to the next row. Hikari in a bathing suit was worth the wait. Hikari in a school bathing suit was even more worth it.
Lunch finally came after the longest day ever and as soon as the bell rang, I rummaged through my bag. There had to be at least a few yen somewhere, all I needed was enough to buy some bread.
“Oi, this note’s from you, right? ‘Yo, you understand girls?’”
I looked up as Takeru tossed a rolled up piece of paper onto my desk. “Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Hey, you got anything good for lunch?”
“Yeah, my brother came over last night and made us onigiri with plum.” He pulled his chair over and then opened his bento box and poked at the stuff inside. “At least he didn’t put faces on them this time. He gets in these weird moods. Anyway, what’d your note even mean?”
“Hikari-chan. You know, what she was talking about this morning,” I explained as I took a bite of an onigiri. They were good even when Yamato-sempai went crazy with colors. “I don’t get it. Who cares about clubs and stuff when we can go to the Digi-”
“Daisuke,” Takeru said firmly like he’d become a teacher all of a sudden. He jerked his head to the cluster of girls sitting near us. They looked over and giggled and one of them even wagged her fingers at Takeru who gave them a smile back.
“What? Hey, I’m not done eating that!”
He sighed but passed me half an egg. “Just keep it down about that, OK? Anyway, aren’t you doing soccer again this year?”
“Yeah, of course! What’d they do without me?”
“Well, so Hikari wants to do join clubs too.” He popped a tomato into his mouth. “What’s weird about that?”
“You know what’ weird about it. She was acting like she wants to forget all about the D- You know, about that place that we used to go to all the time and is awesome.”
“So she wants to try new things. Maybe you should, too. I’m going to try for the newspaper, maybe see if I can learn how to write articles. It’ll be fun.”
I frowned. “I still think it’s weird. She’s weird. You’re definitely weird. Who cares about stupid school clubs when there are monsters to fight and a world to save and stuff?”
“We haven’t done that in years, Daisuke.”
“So what?” I asked. “I still got my goggles. Anytime anyone needs to be rescued and bam! I put these babies on and I’m ready to kick ass.”
“You carry them around with you?”
“Yep!” I fished the goggles out of my backpack and passed them Takeru. He stretched the band and the plucked out a dangling thread. “Ok, so they’re a little old. They still fit! Sort of.”
“You’re the weird one,” Takeru scoffed. You can’t wear these now.”
“Why not?” I grabbed them back and stuffed them away. “You’re just jealous that Taichi-san didn’t give you a pair. All you got was that dumbass hat.”
“All I’m saying is that joining a new club or two’s a good idea.”
“Fine,” I said with a shrug. “Me and Ken’ll have fun in the Digital World without you. Gimme another piece of egg.”
After lunch was over, we still had another ten thousand hours of class before the day finally ended and they let us go home. I looked out the window again and wished it was summer vacation. Again. I glanced over at Takeru who was writing down notes about whatever our teacher was talking about. The girls who giggled at us were glancing over at him too and I snorted before turning away. He’d probably have a club dedicated to him by the end of the week full of fangirls. If Hikari ended up joining that, I quit school to go live like a monk on a mountain or something. Or just move permanently to the Digital World and only let Ken come in.
Our teacher called on him and Takeru stood up with his book in hand. He read whatever it was and sat back down. Behind me I could hear some girl whispering, “Takaichi-kun’s pretty smart. And didn’t he look cool just now?”
Maybe Takeru did know what he was talking about, I thought grudgingly. Besides, how hard would it be to join the stupid art club? Hikari had said they met twice a week - I could do that and soccer, no problem. With Takeru busy with the school newspaper, me and Hikari would have the club room all to ourselves. Yeah! I’d join the art club, date Hikari, and with Ken helping me with school, I’d beat Takeru so hard on finals that he’d have to go back to junior high.
And people said high school was hard.