EDUCATING MR MOTOMIYA

PART 8

"You are officially an idiot," Hikari thought glumly, as she stared at her science book and pretended to be engrossed by the lifecycle of the tapeworm. Even though Takeru hadn’t said a word about what he must have overheard, she knew he was feeling as awkward about it as she was. When they worked together, he usually sprawled on the floor beside her or read over her shoulder at her desk. Instead, he was sitting on the bed next to Jyou, his legs tucked beneath him and his hat beside him. Patamon snored gently on his lap. From the expression on his face, he was paying as much attention to his book about the Meian Era, as she was to hers.

Ever since that look on the basketball court, things had not been the same between them. Oh, they might have talked as usual, laughed as usual, and played as usual. To everyone else, it would have seemed as if everything was normal between them, as if they were the best friends they had always been. But, underlying everything, had been an awareness that Takeru was no longer just her friend. It was like that single look had opened a door through which everything was new and strange and frightening, yet through which she had to step eventually.

Evidently sensing that someone was watching him, Takeru looked up from his reading. For a brief, thrilling instant, his eyes met hers. Why had she never noticed before how blue they were? She had only seen a blue that pure and intense once in the past when she had been a little girl. It had been a cold, grey day, and she had been sitting by the window, watching the rain-drops trace patterns on the glass. Suddenly, the clouds had parted to reveal a patch of sky that was almost luminous in its blueness. It had lasted a second before it had disappeared, but the memory of the colour had remained vivid in her mind. How had she never noticed in all their years of friendship that Takeru’s eyes were that precise shade of blue? Feeling her cheeks grow warm, she dipped her head back to her book.

"He must think I’m going mad. Even I think I’m going mad. What’s wrong with me?" she asked herself, staring furiously at the innocuous diagram of an amoeba, "I can’t be falling in love with him, can I? He’s my best friend. He’s been my best friend since I was eight. Things like that don’t happen in real life. They belong in romance novels and . . . silly, made-for-TV movies. They don’t happen to me."

"Hikari? What’s wrong?" Tailmon asked, evidently sensing her mood.

"Nothing. There’s only so much tapeworm a girl can take," she said with a false, little laugh.

"The same goes for Python Gore," Daisuke agreed, slamming his book shut to emphasise his point, "With a name like that, I expected him to be a lot more exciting."

Hikari saw Jyou wince, but she was not sure whether it was at the abuse of his maths’ book or Daisuke’s continued state of blissful ignorance. With tremendous forebearance, the older boy removed his glasses and rubbed them clean on his shirt before answering, "Firstly, Daisuke, it’s Pythagoras. Secondly, I don’t think a break is a bad idea. I’ll go get us some snacks."

"I’m coming too!", Daisuke leapt enthusiastically off the dresser and followed Jyou out of the door. A huge grin on his face, V-Mon bounced after his partner, like a blue-and-white spaceball. Hikari told herself not to panic. Tailmon was still there. Tailmon was sensitive to her feelings. Tailmon wasn’t the kind of Digimon to leave her partner in the lurch. Tailmon was ... following the others to the kitchen, leaving her alone with a snoring Patamon and Takaishi Takeru!

She had never thought that she would be sorry to see Daisuke leave, or that she would wish that he would hurry back so that she would not be alone with Takeru. It had also seemed impossible that she could be uncomfortable with her best friend. They had never needed words or actions to understand each other. They had always been able to sit in companionable silence, and know precisely what the other person was thinking or feeling .... Hikari felt everything within her freeze. Her thoughts suddenly seemed too loud and too public. Takeru had always been able to read her - he had to know how her feelings for him had changed. Or, if he had not worked it out, he would in a matter of minutes. No, she had to make conversation, no matter how weak. The silence between them revealed too much.

Plastering a smile onto her face, "Patamon seems really tired. Even the prospect of food didn’t wake him."

"Yeah," Takeru said, his eyes firmly fixed on his sleeping Digimon, "He got into mom’s chocolate stash yesterday. He spent all night flying circles around my room."

"Poor, little guy."

"Yeah."

"Was your mom upset?"

"Yeah. It was her expensive, Belgian chocolate. I’m going to have to get a summer job to pay for them."

"I see."

"Yeah."

Chewing her lip, Hikari stared at the posters on Jyou’s walls and tried not to think about how quiet it was. Or that, in front of her, the door to a new world waited. If she stepped through it, nothing could be the same again. She would be forever changed if she passed through it. She would no longer be a child, but she would not be a woman either. Worst of all, though, she might lose Takeru’s friendship. If he rejected her ... She clenched her fists in sudden resolve. Anything would be better than this horrible, tense silence between them.

"About what I said earlier about you ...." Her foot on the door’s threshhold, she hesitated and drew back into safer, familiar territory, "Well, it makes me mad when Daisuke is nasty about you. He shouldn’t say things like that about you. He doesn’t have any right. You’re my best friend, Takeru, and I should stick up for you."

"I guess I was weirded out by what you said," he replied slowly, picking up his hat and tossing it from hand to hand, "I didn’t know you thought ... well, you thought that much of what I did. I’ve never seen it as anything special, Hikari. Most of the times you mentioned, I was trying my hardest not to burst into tears and hoping like crazy that our brothers would come and help us," he lifted his head and looked directly at her, "I wasn’t like you. From the beginning, you were so calm and so brave, no matter what happened to us. You faced everything without batting an eyelid. You never seemed to be afraid, like I was the entire time."

"That’s because I had you, silly," she laughed, "Taichi told me once that there is nobody as courageous as the person who conquers their fear. You might have been afraid, but you never let it beat you. You never gave into it in the sewers or in Puppetmon’s house of horrors or on Spiral Mountain or any of the other times my brother mentioned to me. That helped me get over my own fear - because, believe it or not, I was also scared the whole time we were there. So, if I seemed brave, it was because of you."

"Thanks, Hikari," he said, smiling shyly.

"It’s my pleasure, Takeru," she paused, "Now, do you want to come and study the tapeworm with me? I promise it’ll be boring, and quite possibly disgusting too."

"With an offer like that, how can I refuse?"

Patamon grunted slightly but did not wake, as Takeru lifted him off his lap and placed him gently on Jyou’s pillow. Slipping off his jacket, he laid it over the little Digimon, then walked across the room to where she was sitting. As he sprawled on the floor beside her, all long arms and longer legs, she knew that everything was going to be all right between them. And, in her mind, a door swung very slowly and gently closed, waiting until the day two years later when she would step through it.

In part 9 . ..

MARVEL as Jyou, Hikari and Takeru try to educate Mr Motomiya!

GASP as Daisuke actually gets a question right!

THRILL as the author remembers her main plot!

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