Digimon Adventure Tri: Echo

3) Illusions of Security

To Miyako, the recent events felt like an itch. 

As she walked into school for the second day of the new year, Miyako wondered about everything that had taken place. She hadn't been too proactive about participating in texted conversations regarding the events of the past few days, but she was thinking about them more than she could ever hope to say. It felt as if the incident with Kuwagamon never left her mind. Even as she struggled to sleep at night and pulled herself from bed in the morning, she thought about it. 

Miyako smoothed out the skirt of her uniform as she walked towards where Koushiro was standing on the campus of their shared school. While most of their comrades within the Chosen Children went to the same high school as Taichi, Koushiro and Miyako had wound up setting their sights elsewhere. They were the only two members of the team to go there as second and first year students respectively. Miyako was still adjusting to the new school year, but she was going to do her best to become acquainted with the world around her regardless. 

It most certainly would have been easier for her to get ready for the rest of the year if she wasn't constantly thinking about the Kuwagamon incident. That left Miyako struggling to relax, and it only made it harder to navigate the school that she was unfamiliar with as it was. She sighed as she brushed some of her hair away from her face and adjusted her glasses, needing to give her hands something, anything to do to fill the silence. 

Koushiro was leaning against the side of the building with his school bag hanging off one shoulder. He was looking at his phone, and Miyako was already sure of what he was investigating before she even came into his line of sight. "Hey, Koushiro," she greeted simply with a nervous smile. 

Koushiro looked up with a start, and a nervous flush rose in his cheeks after he calmed himself down from his moment of startled panic. "Good morning, Miyako," he greeted softly in his regular gentle demeanor. He glanced down to his phone once again, and Miyako followed his line of sight. Sure enough, he was looking at the conversation that held all of the Chosen Children that they had been using to discuss the Kuwagamon incident. 

Miyako sighed as she leaned up against the wall beside him. "I can't stop thinking about it," she confessed. "It seems like I can't escape it no matter what I try. I don't know what I expected, but... It still bothers me."

Koushiro nodded his understanding. "We need to arrange a time to meet with everyone to discuss what happened," he told her. "We've already decided to unite on Sunday at my apartment, but we still need to decide on a specific time of the day."

"I hope it's a one-off thing," Miyako confessed. She felt that itch again, and she resisted the urge to start fiddling with everything that dared to cross the space between her fingers. "The gate has been stable for so long, and I don't want it to start falling apart now. We did so much years ago to make sure that nothing bad like this happened again."

Koushiro shook his head. "Right now, it's too early to say much of anything. Still, with what we heard from Taichi, Sora, and Hikari about the dark patch of data on his shell, I think that we need to consider this a serious matter until we can find answers," she told him. "I'm surprised that we haven't heard anything from Gennai or Qinglongmon as of late if the gate between worlds really is falling apart though. I would have expected to hear at least something."

Miyako sighed at his words. She had heard that Gennai was rather distant from the Chosen Children a majority of the time between the adventures of 1999 and 2002, but that had completely changed since the fall of BelialVamdemon. Koushiro got regular reports on how the Digital World was doing from Gennai, and he often updated the rest of the team on what he had heard as well. To suddenly not hear anything was concerning, and that felt like an understatement. It made Miyako's internalized itch so much worse in the blink of an eye.