Digimon Re: Integrate Vol. 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Why do the best classes have to have early time slots? I wondered as I reached for my phone. I fumbled with it for a good ten seconds while the alarm blared, trying to find the "Stop" button without taking my blanket off my head. Finally, I found it and the noise stopped. I couldn't enjoy that victory for long, though. I could silence the alarm as much as I wanted, but the fact of the matter was that I had to get up.

I threw my blanket to the foot of my bed and rolled off the mattress, hopping down to the floor. "Too tall," I scolded the bed for the hundredth time. Why were college beds so high?

I shuffled toward the door where the light switch was, flicked it on, and moseyed to my dresser. I pulled out a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans and put them on, then moved to the closet. From there I retrieved and donned a black hoodie, zipping it up to the bottom of my chest.

Before leaving, I always liked to check for emails because that's where class cancellation messages showed up. I didn't expect class to be cancelled or anything, but one too many times I had shown up to an empty classroom because I didn't get the memo. So today, like always, I sat down at my desk and turned on my PC to check for emails. When the monitors came on, the Command Prompt window was open and had a line of text in it.

[ w h e r e a r e y o u g o i n g ? ]

[ To class ] I wrote back to Jyarimon. It seemed to have a lot of energy despite our long game of virtual tag, as it was hopping emphatically in a small circle. I guessed that figured, though, since it was just a collection of data.

[ w h e n a r e y o u c o m i n g b a c k ? ]

[ About an hour and a half. Then I have an hour until my next class. ]

[ w h a t a r e w e g o n n a d o t h e n ? ]

[ I might watch anime. ]

[ t h a t s b o r i n g p l a y w i t h m e ] The little red sprite flapped its winglike appendages frantically.

[ You might like anime, you know. ]

[ i d o n t l i k e a n i m e ]

[ Blasphemy. Have you tried it? ]

[ n o ]

[ Then how do you know you don't like it? ]

[ i j u s t k n o w ]

[ You don't. Don't knock it till you try it, that's how it works. ]

[ k n o c k i t ? ]

I looked at the time displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen. [ I'm leaving now. Don't mess with anything on my computer while I'm gone. ]

[ n o p r o m i s e s ]

"Jeez," I sighed. Whatever. As long as it doesn't cause too much damage, I should be able to fix it. With that, I grabbed my bag on my way out the door and left the room, leaving Jyarimon to its own devices.

. . .

The bright, white, almost perfectly cubed room was full of the sound of clacking keyboards. It was loud. It was incessant. It was music to my ears.

"Use this class time to work on your documents," said Professor Stanley Levinson. "I'll be here to answer questions, but other than that, I won't be talking today."

Excellent, I mouthed silently.

Our current project in Professor Levinson's coding class was the construction of a document using the C++ language to format a combination of fonts, text effects, colors, and so on. This was a skill I had mastered in high school, so, naturally, my document had been finished for a few days now. I hadn't told the professor that, though. If I did, he'd just assign me some other rudimentary task. Then I wouldn't be able to use this time the way I wanted to.