All three of us knew what was going on. We knew how we felt.
It was Izzy that decided to get it out in the open.
But I was the one who made it into the Contest.
I just want you to know, I was against the entire thing. I didn't want it to go that far.
Izzy was stupid for bringing it up.
Matt was an idiot for making it competitive.
But I was the real idiot for going along with it.
It all started when I was sixteen. Sora was seventeen, and so was Matt. We had left the Digiworld years ago - along with our digimon, a reality none of us were all too pleased to think about. The e-mail from Gennai, however, was a rude awakening: after three years without any signs of existence of the digital world, save our Digivices, we were summoned again.
The DigiDestined were supposed to be back in business in five days. Then, a vortex escorted by Gennai himself would appear to take us away and reunite us with our digimon, to face whatever virus digimon awaited us.
I felt like a soldier on one of his last nights before being shipped out to war. There was so much I wanted to do before we left.
There was so much we all wanted to do before we left.
Izzy started this whole thing when he asked us in the Burger Barn...
"Guys...do you like Tai?"
My eyes widened as my mouth froze two inches away from my burger.
I nearly choked on a french fry.
From the looks on Matt and Sora's faces, I could tell it wasn't all that right to blurt the question out like that. I cleared my throat and tried to save some face.
"Um, well...what I mean is...I like Tai. I'm...attracted to him." I took a deep breath, and swallowed the words. I didn't like how that sounded. "I guess I've felt this way for a while now. I know how I look at him, and I know how I feel when I'm near him."
"Like you wish that smile of his meant more then it did," Sora chimed in, her eyes looking straight ahead, her mind on a memory from time I'm sure I could match with my own.
"Like you can't deal with another day of just being friends," Matt said listlessly, his eyes transfixed on the glob of ketchup on his plate. "but you know you have to."
"Yeah...like that." It was then that I noticed how similar our feelings were - we all felt as if we had absolutely no chance with Taichi Kamiya, and for the past six years we were all beating ourselves up over it. But I knew I wasn't going to deal with it anymore.
"Now, you guys know that this fight is going to be difficult," I said, referring to our latest update from Gennai, "and we might not make it back." All eight of us knew that something had to be terribly wrong in the Digiworld; if there was a new evil, then why wasn't there new DigiDestined chosen? If they chose us again, then this had to be worse than anything a newbie could handle. They had to call in veterans for this job.
Matt and Sora nodded solemnly. "Well, I don't know about you two, but I know that I don't want to die knowing that Tai never knew how I felt about him."
"Just what are you saying?"
Izzy was starting to scare me. First, he admits that he likes Tai - something I had a feeling about for quite a while now - and now, he actually wants to tell Tai about his feelings? This was definitely not a good idea, and I wasn't too sure that Tai would be all that thrilled to know how Izzy and Matt - two of his best friends - felt about him. I wasn't too sure he would bee all that thrilled knowing how I felt about him.
"I propose that we tell him. All of us. Now, this isn't a competition, to see who he chooses -" He looked over at me, his eyes full of sadness. We three all knew I was the most likely choice for Tai, and I never thought before then about how he must resent me for that. "- but instead a simple proclamation. Just to show him how we really feel about him. I don't want to do it alone."
His voice was full of yearning, his eyes pleading. He was scared. I knew Izzy was never good with words - he was better at communicating with a computer or a digimon rather than a human - and for him to gather his bravery and think of doing this was inspirational. I opened my mouth to agree with him, when Matt said instead...
"Why *don't* we make this a competition?"
Sora and Izzy looked at me, both their faces filled to the brim with shock. I narrowed my eyes, squaring the two out. Maybe this was the bit of excitement I was craving before we traveled back...
"Why don't we make this little proclamation interesting?" I asked, wondering if they would go for it. Izzy was shy around people as it was, and Sora didn't seem the type to gamble with people's emotions. But, as I had learned years ago, when it comes to Taichi Kamiya, all bets are off.
"Now, Matt, this is exactly what I was trying to avoid..." Izzy said as I nibbled on a french fry. "We're all close friends here, and if we make this into a competition, we might lose our friendship. I didn't want it to come to something like that -"
"Izzy's right, Matt," Sora agreed. "we shouldn't play with someone's feelings. If he chooses one of us, then the other two are going to get hurt. Besides, do you want to be fighting with us right before we have to fight in the Digiworld?"
"Look, I'm not saying we're going to be at each other's throats because of this," I tried to defend my proposal. "and I'm not thinking that we're all going to go up to him at once and demand that he choose."
"Then what are you saying?" Sora asked.
I laid out my plans to my two accomplices. "One night. We each get one night to see if Tai feels the same way about us that we feel about him."
"How?" Izzy asked, although he already knew the answer. He just wanted me to say it.
"Sex, my dear Koushiro," I said as Izzy winced, more from me using his full name than from me pointing out the obvious in a crowded restaurant.
"Wait," Sora said. "You expect us to have sex with Tai to see if he likes us? Matt, isn't that getting a bit extreme?"
I sighed, and rolled my eyes. It figured that Sora would be the only seventeen year old girl I knew who was still clutching onto her virginity. "Fine then, do what you want with your one night; I don't care. On the day before we leave for the Digiworld, we'll ask him which one of us he's most attracted to. Whoever he picks, wins."
"Wins what?" Hmmm. A very good question. It was something I hadn't thought about before.
"Well...it has to be something useful in the Digiworld while we're traveling..."
"How about the losers have to carry the winner's equipment for three weeks?"
Sora came up with that idea a little too quickly. I think she was thinking about that as soon as I said the word "competition." She usually brings more camping equipment than her small frame can handle, and it would be a delight for her not to have to deal with the extra weight. I smiled, my mind already filled with heavy objects I could bring along to the Digiworld. I always wondered how the acoustics of Infinity Mountain would make my guitar sound...
"Alright," I said, finalizing the deal. "So, we have a contest on our hands. Are we in?"
I looked at Sora, who was absently chewing her drinking straw as she thought about the Contest.
It sounded like a good prize to the winner. My sleeping bag weighed a ton, and I know I was going to get stuck holding the emergency food rations. Maybe I could even bring a change of clothes, perhaps a few new helmets...
The odds against me were slim. I was a shoe-in to win, too. There was never a doubt in my mind that Tai would choose me out of us three.
But did I really want to toy with his emotions like that? Did I really want to expose him to how Matt and Izzy felt about him? Should I go along with a contest that would surely tear us apart?
"I'm in," I said without even thinking.
Watch out boys, you might even have to carry Biyomon around if you're lucky.
Matt was in. Sora was in.
I was shaking in my sneakers.
"Oh, Izzy, it's nothing," Sora said. "Just a friendly contest between friends." Yeah; easy for her to say. She had a high probability of winning.
"Come on, Koushiro," Matt said, using the name I learned to dread. Koushiro...who names their child Koushiro? It's a no-brainer why I tell everyone to call me Izzy... "don't be a baby. Unless you're afraid to bet with the big kids..."
That last line did me in. I was known as the little kid from Odaiba since I was eight, and when T.K. left the original DigiDestined team, I became the shortest DigiDestined this side of the Digiworld. No one calls me a baby and gets away with it. I was going to sooner be random bits of unsorted digital information rather than back out of the Contest.
"All right," I said, shifting my eyes first to Matt, then to Sora, "I'm in."
"Well, it seems like we have quite the Contest here." I removed my Digivice from my belt and placed it outstretched in my hand.
"To the victor goes the spoils!"
I reached behind me to unhook my Digivice from the strap on my bookbag. I held it out, much like Matt did.
"DigiDestineds forever!"
Taking my own Digivice off my belt, I smiled. I held it out in my hand, all of our hands touching in the middle of the table.
"Let's hope we all get out alive."
The closeness of the Digivices caused them to glow and whir. We now had our secret pact. The Contest was on.
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