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Rika Nonaka realised she was in love much in the same way that most people about to be run over by a train realise they’re about to die, with sudden and tragic inevitability.
And much like most people who are about to be run over by a train, she didn’t particularly like the fact that it was happening.
However, unlike the vast majority of people about to be run over by a train, Rika’s realisation was also accompanied by the sudden impact of a particularly viciously thrown dodge ball to her face in the middle of a high school’s physical education class.
To be specific, it was Rika’s own high school physical education class and the successful hit meant that she was helped from her position on the gymnasium floor, given an ice pack and taken to a wooden bench.
This was done both so she could recover from the stinging blow to the face and because she was out, as per the rules of dodge ball.
However these factors, the stinging face and being out–which probably should have meant at least something to the more typical seventeen year old girl–didn’t exactly help with the growing horror that was quickly and fully enveloping her heart.
Because this wasn’t the realisation of love that most people feel, it was a far more monstrous thing. One that descended from the sky like a comet, tore out her throat and left her gasping for air.
It stood tall against Rika, towering in its truth, and there was nothing much she could do about it because it was now a part of her, much like her heartbeat or the air in her lungs.
She was now a part of her, even more so than she had already been.
Renamon.
That name, her name, was now tattooed onto her heart in glowing golden ink. Promising to be there for many years, like a scar.
Fuck.
Her face stung.
Rika Nonaka was perfectly fine with her life, at least according to her.
How could she not be? She’d saved the world like twice by the age of thirteen, almost died about a dozen times, suffered a number of severe personality realisations and adjustments, and had lost probably the closest thing to a best friend she’d ever had (also according to her therapist she may have suffered a small ego death).
How could anyone be anything but fine after all that?
It was totally normal, or that’s at least what Rika said to herself.
She was a totally normal teenager, who was just dealing with totally normal things like grades, friends, romantic relationships and drugs? Sex? The police?...
Okay so Rika didn’t really know what ‘normal teenagers’ dealt with, she was a natural high achiever, her friends were all very much like her (aka former Digi-destined) and romantic relationships…well she wasn’t really trying to develop them so they didn’t really happen.
Of course she’d been confessed to several times (wealth, relative fame, high grades and her general coolness probably a contributing factor) but she had yet to care for any of the people who confessed, so those never went further than her rejecting them.
That was not to say that Rika didn’t feel desire.
Sexual want had, some years ago slithered up her spine and firmly sunk its fangs into the base of her brain same as every teenager, with golden blond women seeming to have the strongest effect on her (oddly) but…well she had shared her consciousness with another sentient being at 13, had become living data and the whole almost dying several times thing made it a bit hard to connect with others outside like 5 boys and one very traumatised girl, which didn’t exactly make for an exciting dating pool.
Plus while Rika had discarded the more abrasive edges to her cool girl image, she still liked that cool girl image. Liked how people were just a little on edge around a girl who knew how to fight, liked how she could silence a room with a stare and liked how no one would ever mess with her.
Sure it left her a little lonely, comparatively, but it’s not like Rika minded.
So no, Rika Nonaka didn’t deal with romantic relationships.
She was very much an atypical teenager, however much she tried to deny it.
It was unavoidable, she guessed, given basically everything about her life and all that had happened to her.
But she was fine with that, fine with everything.
Everything was fine.
What did it matter that she couldn’t get over the digimon disappearing?
That sometimes she heard Renamon’s voice while on the streets and lost hours searching for her, voice going numb as she called for her?
That now she could cry regularly, sometimes over small insignificant things that she would have scoffed at when she was younger?
That was fine, normal even.
She was a fucking normal teenage girl with normal teenage girl behaviour.
Love.
Being in love with Renamon.
As Rika sat on that wooden bench in her physical education class recovering from her dodge ball injury, she tried to understand it.
Tried to intellectualise where it had come from, why it had happened.
Rika of course knew what it was. Vaguely.
She knew familial love and platonic love, knew what they felt like in a very ‘knowing their absence, makes their presence more tangible’ sort of way.
And it was all thanks to Renamon that she had discovered them.
Rika sighed, she guessed it was somehow inevitable.
Everyone’s time came for them to fall in love, it just so happened that her love was in another reality, probably had forgotten her and was a digital construct.
Love.
What was she even supposed to do with it?
It had no purpose, Renamon wasn’t here and even if she was, what was she supposed to do with… love ?
Confess? Fucking layout her soul for Renamon to examine? Hoping, begging that she’d fell the same way for her?
How fucking weak was that?
How fucking lame!
Rika felt herself start to bristle as she sat on the wooden bench, thinking.
What had she become in her old age? Love was for fools and weak-hearted idiots, it wasn’t fit for who she was, she didn’t need it, she…
Rika grit her teeth and shook her head, trying to dislodge the sudden aggressive thoughts in her head.
No.
Renamon had helped her understand love.
She’d helped Rika be vulnerable, to let others into her heart, allow others to trust and have faith in her. She’d been there, held her and comforted her when no one else did.
Renamon had let Rika just be herself, had let her be her true, sometimes very scared self and had not been scared to see the darkness that Rika sometimes felt inside herself.
Renamon had loved me.
Rika felt her heart flutter as the thought crossed her mind.
Fuck.
Fuck, of course Renamon had loved her.
How had she not seen it?
Fuck!
Rika lowered her head into her hands.
A single tear rolled down her cheek.
Fuck.
Her face really stung.
—--------------(Not part of the story)--------------------
Rika walked through the halls of their hotel apartment, it was a few weeks before their final battle with the D-Reaper, and she was heading towards her room. Her mum and grandma were out, getting some lunch, so it was just Rika and Renamon in the apartment, though she hadn’t seen Renamon for a good ten minutes.
But as she opened the door to her bedroom she was amazed to see Renamon standing in front of the mirror. And not only that, but she was wearing a hideous, baby pink ankle length skirt which she was spinning in, so that the skirt flared.
She seemed to be having a lot of fun doing it.
Rika felt a small flutter of something race across her heart as Renamon noticed her in the doorway.
“Rika, look at this strange thing your mother gave me.”
“It’s a skirt. But why are you wearing it?”
“Oh your mother said I should try it on for something later, it’s intriguing.”
“Argh, another photo shoot. But you seem to like wearing it?”
“Yes, there’s something about the motion as it flares that’s mesmerising. Will your mother let me keep it?”
“Well if she doesn’t, you can have all of my skirts. I hate them. I always tell her to not buy them for me but she always does. I don’t get why.”
Renamon nodded once in understanding as she turned back to the mirror, doing another set of spirited twirls and watching, entranced, as the fabric followed her movement and then tried to stop along with her.
Thinking back, Rika cherished that small little memory of Renamon being so happy doing something so unique to her, honestly it was one of the few times that she had seen Renamon visibly happy.