[tri OOM] One Week Later (Real World)

[angry_friendship_wolf]

“Good morning!
Summer vacation begins with bustling resorts and amusement parks. Here in Odaiba, students and families have been pouring in since morning. There are blue skies across the nation, and the weather is warmer than usual, making for a refreshing day.”

The Bureau’s surveillance of the Digital World has always been poor, a matter of observing the world’s effect on the Analog World and surmising what they think could be happening in the other world.

Right now, all their study suggests that the Digital World rebooted successfully. Since the Reboot, there’s been no radio interference, no glitches that would be telltale signs of the Infection, and none of the disasters that would follow the Digital World being swallowed by the quantum sea.

“It’s been a week,” Maki says to Nishijima, as he sits on the other side of her desk. “The quantum sea hasn’t materialised in the Digital World yet. We can assume the Reboot was successful.”

“Is that so?” Nishijima replies. He sounds glum, but Maki supposes that’s to be expected. The last week was also the last week of school -- he would have spent it teaching half the Chosen, seeing them every day. “It’s one hell of a trade-off.”

Maki gives a small nod. “I know,” she says. “Those kids just have to move on. Move forward. It won’t take as long as you think.”

Nishijima looks up at her, and Maki can tell he doesn’t believe her. There’s a momentary pang of bitterness in her chest -- what has Nishijima ever known of loss? -- but she pushes it down. It’s unfair to feel like that.

“In six months, new buildings will be up, and Odaiba will be just like it was before,” she says, instead. “In a year, everyone will have forgotten what happened there. No-one in the world will even mention Digimon anymore.”

“Even those kids?”

“That’s just part of becoming an adult.”

---

A lot of that first week is a blur.

Yamato takes Takeru home, tells him that it wasn’t his fault (not that Takeru even hears him), and waits with him until he’s cried himself to sleep. Then he lopes back home, lets himself in, and heads to his own room.

He expects the grief to come crashing in, now that he’s alone. It doesn’t. He just feels numb. He stares at the ceiling of his room, thinking about what happened, but no matter how hard he thinks about it, none of it feels real.

That numbness is still there the next day, and the next, and the next. He all but sleepwalks through the last week of school, barely hearing anything anyone says, and when the last day of school ends, he realises he wasn’t even aware of how many days had passed.

On the first day of summer, he almost just stays in bed. Even moving his fingers feels like too much effort compared to staring at the ceiling and waiting to drift in and out of sleep. Eventually, the heat becomes uncomfortable, forcing him to move.

He visits Taichi. They walk, buy ice cream, sit near the edge of the sea. They talk, but nothing they talk about matters -- it’s all useless small talk, skirting around the issue of the Digimon, and eventually, Yamato just tunes it out.

He’s snapped back to reality by his ice cream, now melted, dropping onto the ground. There’s the briefest of moments where he thinks that this, the loss of half a cheap raspberry ice cream, is going to be the thing that pushes him that last millimeter over the edge.

It doesn’t. He leaves anyway.