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Rika was moving down a pathway (she was meant to be going somewhere but she couldn’t remember where) while all around her the cherry blossom trees were in full bloom, their flowers filling the air like a thousand droplets of pink hued rain.
Renamon was walking beside her, silent and stoic as ever, her yellow fur a shock of colour in the pink downpour of flowers.
Rika turned her head to say something: a question about where they were or where she thought they should be going? But something about taking in the digimon’s form surrounded by the delicate petals of cherry blossoms banished the question from her tongue.
Instead what came out was a love confession, rambled and messy by nature of her age but no less honest and true. It scared her even as she spoke it, the thoughts leaving her mouth were her most secret of musings and imaginings, extolled to the beautiful creature whose mere existence had caused them, and whose possible knowledge of them had jumbled and twisted many a tired night’s thoughts.
But this didn’t seem to matter in the slightest to Rika, for the flower bedecked air seemingly gave her all the courage she’d never had before. Strengthening her voice as she continued to tell Renamon of all the beauty she saw in her form, of all the longing she had to be held, and of her most secret of wants, to kiss the digimon.
And then it was done, her confession spoken, her cheeks burning hot, her mouth dry, and her eyes watching Renamon for any sign of disgust or disquite.
Yet that never came.
For as Rika looked on at Renamon in that pink flowered haze, the digimon started to speak. Telling of her own love confession, of how her connection to Rika strengthened her body and mind more than any amount of data, of how she wanted to protect and care for Rika far more than was reasonable for a Digimon, and how she too had secretly mused on what it would be like to kiss Rika.
After hearing that, time for Rika stood still, the flowers all around them holding their place in the air as Rika looked at Renamon, and Renamon looked at Rika.
Then as the looks between the two changed to movement, and their bodies embraced each other like they had been made to. Time, strangely, continued to stay still. For even it, did not want to disturb the moment when Renamon lifted Rika’s face in her clawed hands, bent down and kissed the girl who had brought her to the human world.
It was only after their kiss’ start and not before its end, that time seemed more than satisfied to start again. So that as Rika and Renamon pulled their lips apart they found themselves in the middle of a soft whirlwind of pink, as if the world itself cheered their newly confessed love and wished to make them stars in their own private pink-hued universe.
Rika would say the taste of Renamon’s lips reminded her of that rosehip wine her mother had once allowed her to taste, crisp and light with the lightest burn of alcohol at the back of her throat, yet this time accompanied by the lightning of want on her lips to do it again.
But as Rika opened her eyes for another kiss, she saw Renamon glowing, filling the private pink universe that the cherry blossom petals all around them were creating with a burning light that tasted of threat to…to—
Rika awoke to the darkness of her room, her eyes wet as tears ran down her face into the pillow beneath her.
Her voice crackled and whispered as she spoke into the void of light, “Dreams are not reality.”
She took a steadying breath, tears starting to stop as she said again to the pitch black room, “Dreams are not reality.”
Then after her tears finally cease to flow, she let out a growl into the ever present darkness, snarling out a final “Dreams are not reality!” As she turned her head and tried fitfully to sleep again.
This she found after a few moments of rageful thoughts to her treacherous subconscious.
But when she wakes in the morning, she’ll open her door to find a single cherry blossom flower outside her room, innocent and incredulous for the time of year.
Rika will make sure to step on it as she leaves her room, rage and shame burning inside her as she starts a sure to be terrible day for a sixteen year old girl.