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"—And that is how the Order of the Guardians was first assembled," Tentomon concludes. It is rare that a kwami should feel pride for anything other than their miraculous wielder, but it is also a rare treat to have such an attentive audience. Tenotmon relishes in it. "Is there anything you would like me to repeat, Koushirou-han?"
Koushirou hums in concentration, his hand slipping across the paper as his pen tries desperately to keep up with the memory of Tentomon's last words.
"I'm surprised you don't use your," Tentomon pauses on the next word. He clops one of his clawed feet on the aluminum cover of Koushirou's most prized instrument. "This," he says and then he corrects himself with, "Computer!"
"I always write notes on paper first," Koushirou tells him absently, still focused on the final few lines. "If I want to remember them," he adds after a moment, eyes fluttering upward only briefly to meet Tentomon's gaze. "Afterwards I'll transfer them over to the computer. It helps. Like muscle memory."
"You're very interesting, Koushirou-han," Tentomon remarks, hopping from his impromptu lecture stage to hover above Koushirou's work, curiously. The only word he can read with any clarity is Ladybug . He knows very little of the script from humans in this era, but Koushirou has been teaching him in kind, with a quiet patience that Tentomon finds admirable. "No other Ladybug has been this invested before."
Koushirou hesitates, his pen sitting carefully atop the paper. Tentomon takes the moment to perch upon it. "Have there been preceding Ladybugs?"
"Dozens!" Tentomon reports. It has been a while since he has thought of them, and the fondness reaches his tone. "Hundreds," he decides is more fitting.
Koushirou's eyes flicker back to his work, but he does not write this new information down. Tentomon watches him, worried now.
"What is wrong, Koushirou-han?"
"Nothing," he replies, swallowing visibly.
"It sounds like the opposite of nothing," Tentomon observes.
"Just." Koushirou stops there for a moment, his frown deepening. The desk lamp just above Tentomon's head buzzes audibly. "I've been working under the assumption that I was the only person who could take up the mantle of Ladybug," he continues on. Koushirou taps the instrument along his wrist with gentle fingers, then recoils them just as swiftly. To Tentomon, it looks as if he has been burned, though the kwami knows this cannot be true. "But now that isn't true." He looks away, and it reminds Tenotmon of a scorned child. "Any other person could have been chosen."
"Not just anyone," Tentomon starts, cocking his head in thought. "Only certain individuals have an affinity to harness a miraculous. It is not safe for just anyone to use."
"But if that affinity was met," Koushirou pushes, "then that person could even become Ladybug?"
Tentomon hesitates, for the answer does not come to him immediately. "In theory," he decides, "yes. But out of the whole world," he continues, pushing back into the air with an unkempt enthusiasm, "it was you who was chosen to be the Ladybug of this generation!"
Koushirou stares ahead for a moment, dropping the pen from what Tentomon thinks is a tight grip. "Mistakes happen," he says finally. Tentomon winces minutely at the bite in his words.
Someone raps against the door. Koushirou's shoulders tighten with nerves until his mother's voice sings from behind it, "Dinner's ready, dear!
"Coming," Koushirou calls back, already pushing out of his chair. He hesitates at the door, head bowed, and Tentomon waits to see if he will say anything further. A moment later he leaves.
He can hear Koushirou's mother asking, "Were you on the phone with someone?"
"No," Koushirou answers, their voices growing more and more distant, "just streaming a lecture."
Tentomon settles onto the unfinished notebook. The handwriting is careful, precise, that much Tentomon can gather. Koushirou is prudent in all things, from the other notebooks littering his desk he has filled for classes, or the ones he has already finished from his extracurricular studies labeled simply, Ladybug 1 and Ladybug 2.
"I'll just contest it as a fiction novel I was inspired to write after all the akuma attacks," Koushirou had assured him when Tentomon first brought up his concerns about having the truth chronicled in such a concrete fashion. He had wrinkled his nose at the thought. "People would believe that first."
Over me being Ladybug , Tentomon had read in the ensuing silence.
A kwami has never questioned the judgement of the guardians before, nor has one ever shared a bias towards their masters. It is not in their nature, Tentomon knows. For over a millennia, he has known only this to be true. Every Ladybug had been worthy of their title, in some different way, and Tentomon had felt no contest to their appointment, had been fond of each of them in equal parts.
But this Ladybug is different. Tentomon's heart aches to concede the truth.
Koushirou sinks back into his chair after a time, picking back up his pen and staring dutifully at the notebook once more, but he writes nothing for a while yet. Tentomon watches him from back atop Koushirou's computer.
"I'm sorry I sounded so cross before," Koushirou apologizes softly. Tentomon watches the stain of red flutter across his cheeks. Koushirou is a secretive one, Tentomon knows, but sometimes he is the easiest human to read. "It wasn't right for me to take my insecurities out on you."
"Perish the thought," Tentomon tells him, waving his front claw in a visible attempt to show his nonchalance. "I know Koushirou-han is under a lot of pressure. It's good to let it out sometimes."
Koushirou gives him a fond, but still unsure smile. "Thank you, Tentomon."
Tentomon finds the lightest blanket he can carry at the foot of Koushirou's bed, hefting it across the room to place along his charge's shoulders long after the boy has drifted off. He looks as if he could awaken at any moment, ready to learn more, fingers still clutching tightly to his writing instrument. Tentomon hums fondly, dropping heavily against the button of the desk lamp, until the light extinguishes itself to the dark.
It would be unfair, Tentomon decides as he settles into the crook of one of Koushirou’s arms, eyes heavy with the beckoning of sleep, to compare the incommutable past to a future that has just barely begun.
For what are stars, compared to the promise of a waxing moon?