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"I was just thinking about why we started all this and how it's gotten to this point and—and what that even means."
The one thing people don't understand about eidetic memory, that they fail to consider while they swoon over the idea of remembering everything they learned for a test or never forgetting a friend's likes and dislikes, or never confusing one person for another, or forgetting important holidays like Mother's Day and Valentine's is that having a photographic memory is never just sunshine and rainbows.
Perhaps, at first, you'd be ecstatic. You could remember everything and anything you've seen with your own two eyes. You could pass all your tests. You'll never forget anything important. You'd be praised for being so highly organized and knowledgeable because who wouldn't want to impress people by reading encyclopedias or watching documentaries just so you can recite the facts like you've actually studied them? Who wouldn't want to puff up their chest with pride at being called a genius, at being seen as the most capable person in the room, all because you could never forget anything no matter how hard you tried?
To ordinary folk, it is a gift. A blessing. A talent given by the heavens that he should be cultivating because it would give him the ultimate edge over anyone he encounters.
No one ever realizes how cursed the idea can really be.
How terrifying it is. How debilitating it can be. No one knows that your memories will remain with you until you die, that your best chance at forgetting anything is to hope that you die sooner rather than later. They preach and rave about how intelligent it makes you, how amazing you will become, but when you witness something you shouldn't, when your own mind betrays you, breaking you down from the inside out, those who had once praised you are gone. Removed from the narrative. They stare you down with disgust—emphasizing that you are the problem, that it shouldn't even matter because there were more important things to focus on.
You wonder then, what could be more important than discussing how you will always see the disappointment of your parents when you close your eyes? What is more important than begging for help because your dreams have turned into nightmares of people reminding you to do well, that this is your last chance, that one more wrong move will ruin your life for good?
What, pray tell, is so much more special than you unable to forget the fear in a person's eyes as they are dragged away? The horror as you destroy their lifelong companion? Why is it that your curse is seen as a gift when it keeps you up at night, staring at the grubby warehouse ceiling of your newest squatting place, unable to get the words of your enemy rival turned something out of your head?
Raito would like to speak to his parents, to everyone he's encountered at school, to strangers from rich parties and Klay who scooped him up from the sand to do his bidding why he must suffer with the label of gifted when he feels like cursed suits him much better.
Tossing and turning on his makeshift cot of a bunch of tattered cloths with his Tactics jacket folded under his head, Raito can't begin to describe the way that his sleep has been robbed by one annoying, bespectacled little shit and yet, here he is, wide awake at what he hopes isn't the crack of dawn (but it might as well be if the darkness outside the cracks in the warehouse boarded up windows said anything), and thinking about Tomoro's words in conjunction with their newly formed dynamic that he doesn't quite know what to name.
They weren't rivals anymore, least of all enemies, but then what were they, and why was Tomoro so insistent on trying to get an answer, and why was he troubling himself over having to give one? Hadn't what he said been enough? If they liked to fight each other, to receive and give as much as they could take, then couldn't that be enough? Shouldn't it be enough? Did they need to call whatever they had something for it to be meaningful? Did Tomoro want it to be meaningful? Was he agonizing over nothing, running himself in circles when Tomoro is probably sleeping all soft and warm in his bed not even giving what he said a second thought?
Or did Tomoro want him to provide the answer before he voiced his opinion? Over the course of their shifting dynamic, Raito has only just begun to understand who Tenma Tomoro really is when he takes off his tinted lenses and breaks his rose colored glasses, even if he cannot stop himself from seeing the boy in a light that makes every muscle in his body relax, pushing him into this position of submission that, with Tomoro, Raito can't help but feel comfortable in. The way his courage steadily grows. How he gets more sure of using his strengths to his advantage. It all makes Raito feel like putty and only reinforces his pride when Tomoro is bruised by his fists and wide eyed underneath him, like Raito is the one person he'll shed away his rebellious nature for and the one that drags his courage to the surface.
Never speaking on his thoughts unless Raito voices his own, Tomoro can say one thing but have several different interpretations of your answer, his own influenced by whatever you decide. Raito wants to scream. To punch the wall until the bones in his knuckles and hand are all broken, shattered to dust. He wants to grab Tomoro by the collar and shake him, demanding to know why he was so lost in thought that he started to wonder what their dynamic even meant.
Was it not obvious? Did Raito misinterpret? Had something shifted without his knowledge? Here they indulge in a game of tag, of Raito letting Tomoro chase him but never ever getting too close, always an edge away from grasping him and holding him close and Tomoro chases with no complaint, no fanfare, always ready to do whatever Raito asks and now he questions it. Questions them. He wonders something that Raito cannot find the answer to because what were they was better when it wasn't something they had to define, when they could simply exist and accept that they did but maybe Tomoro wanted more—maybe he was tired of chasing with no reward, maybe he was growing restless.
Maybe there was only a few chances of opportunity left before he called it quits and Raito would have to contend that Tomoro was never going to indulge him like he does to him.
(But then, the scab on his cheek irritates him enough to scratch it off, seeing the blood on the pads of his fingers, and Raito thinks that can't be all, that Tomoro simply isn't someone who gives up so easily.)
Had letting Tomoro keep his bandanna not mean anything to the boy? Coming to their meetings time and time again without his hair up, with a new style that Tomoro clearly noticed by the way his eyes widened everytime, making sure to always lose his hair clip so he can take time to pull his bangs back and tie them up just to say, hey, I know you have my stuff, when will you do something about it? But, maybe, he was expecting too much, putting too much responsibility on Tomoro's shoulders. It wasn't as if Tomoro had much experience with this—as neither did he—, following along with Raito's footsteps without questioning his motives.
Seriously—one win and he'll stay with him forever? Tomoro, against him? Maybe in a Digimon battle. Maybe in art. Maybe even their different style of genius. But in combat? Something Raito was trained in—that he excelled in? The bet was sure to have been impossible, dragging Tomoro into sparring with him over and over until the circumstances shifted and what had once been an easy decision turned into a solution that the both of them could use for their own selfishness.
To think Tomoro was actually thinking of why they had begun this game in the first place made Raito's mouth go dry.
What was he supposed to tell him? How was he supposed to explain? Tomoro was like a fairy—born from light to give people hope—and Raito was just an idiot kid who didn't know how to be gentle. He could kill everything they've built. All these memories—would Raito be tainting them? No one ever told him how to be nice. How to be caring. Not his parents, who ignored him because he was capable enough on his own. Not his teachers, who pushed him to succeed regardless of the feelings of the peers he left behind. Not his peers, who resented him for something he couldn't control. It only became worse with Tactics, with a man who believed that violence was the answer to everything, that the weak should obey the strong, sacrificing themselves if it was so willed.
How was he supposed to learn from that?
Tomoro didn't deserve a half assed explanation. He didn't deserve Raito's less than stellar skills in empathy and compassion. Seeing those stupid eyes of his, eyes that glowed like stars and looked like the setting sun when it turns the landscape a fiery red, scream stay when they look at him make Raito's head spin.
Seeing his reflection in those shaking pupils, the tousled hair from Tomoro grabbing it. His pale face from the boy's words. His own eyes, wide and shaking while his cheek bleeds, Tomoro's nail dug deep into his skin, made him want to recoil and fly as far away from Tomoro as possible, hiding away until the boy stopped contacting him, stopped thinking about him, until Tomoro forgot he existed and went back to living his life, trying to get his brother back, maybe even settling for someone who wasn't so backwards and complicated and wrong.
But, that was wishful thinking, Raito knows. Tomoro would never leave him. He'd never give up. He hadn't back in the colossuem. He hadn't when he fought Klay, even as he was actively close to dying in that desert, so why would he do so now, even as Raito was pushing him further and further towards the brink, Tomoro just comes right back swinging without hesitation. Raito can't help but admire it—his steadfast determination. His unwavering resolve. It was nothing like Raito, who could get so bogged down by orders that he needed a way to not think for a moment, to throw his punches fast and loose and feel alive for once in his life. No, Tomoro was different. Alive and free. Wild and as beautiful as the creation of a supernova—exploding outwards with the most prettiest light Raito has ever seen.
He doesn't know why he didn't realize it sooner. Blinded by his own rage? Angry over something he couldn't have? Jealous and bitter that the label he had so carefully built himself around was nothing but a lie? Maybe it was all three. Maybe it was just him being stupid to be unable to see just how dazzling that light really was, so bright and clear that it chased away at the demons stuck to his shoulders, eating away at him until he was close to becoming a husk of his former self and yet—all Raito could do in return was tarnish the hope given to him so freely, unable to even fathom the idea that he could keep it forever.
(What did the light see in his darkness that made it want to hold onto him so tightly?)
"Keto?"
His partner—his friend, his friend that he never knew he had until so, so recently— nudges against him as he rolls over, hair covering one eye while golden ones stared at him with concern swimming in their depths. "Even you," Raito mutters, "sticking with me even after everything. I don't get you two. I really, really don't understand…" Arm thrown over his face as he rolls onto his back, Raito feels his side twinge as he breathes in, and does it again, just to remember the way Tomoro had slammed his foot into him with enough force that Raito had gone crashing into the water and skidded across it like a pebble being thrown.
He can't forget the way Tomoro looked when he surfaced back up, coughing and spluttering, holding onto his side and glaring at him from under his wet bangs. The triumphant look on his face. The beaming smile that looked like it belonged on the sun. The way his e-pulse seemed to respond to his emotions wholeheartedly, glowing bright purple and, under the sun's rays, a dazzling rainbow that Raito can never forget and would never want to even try.
To think, someone like him…
"Why are you so fucking confusing," Raito groans, palms pressed against his eyes. "Why couldn't you have just hated me and gotten it over with? Why did you have to say all of that corny shit? Why did you have to look at me like that when you did?" Holding his hands under the water, pressing their palms together, grousing that Raito was an asshole and so, completely, unfair but always coming back for more, always waiting for him at the same spot by the dilapidated beach with the sunken buildings as if he has nothing else to do.
Always bathed in that unearthly light whether it be his smile or the sun shining down on him, as if to tell Raito he could still grab hope and keep it close when that shouldn't be possible, when he should have exhausted all of his damn options already and been left to rot.
His side twinges. He can hear the birds chirping outside as he flutters his eyes open, the sun's rays filtering in through the gaps of the boarded warehouse windows.
Raito sits up with a sharp intake of breath that makes his side stitch, the pain bursting forth in the same manner as grass finally peeking through the barren soil after winter and he presses his hand against it just to feel the way his skin burns, e-pulse responding in kind. Blue light glitters like the falling sands of an hourglass once it is turned, the impending ticking of when the last grain will fall through growing brighter and brighter as Raito pulls himself to his feet, bending down to pick up his Tactics jacket to slip it on.
"Keto?" Ketomon hops forward as Raito digs through his satchel and holds out his Sapotama with his right hand, the egg glowing a vivid blue before his partner swallows it whole and Monodramon stands in their place, eyes as bright as the sun. "Raito?" He cocks his head to the side.
Taking out a hair tie, Raito gathers his hair up to tie it back as he starts to walk towards the warehouse doors, right hand beginning to glow more vividly before he steps out into the light, hears his partner's roar as he leaps into the air through the warehouse's broken roof, the crystal on his tail glittering underneath the rays of the sun.
"Alright," he mumbles as Rhamphomon flies in a circle above him before diving down towards him and Raito jumps up in response to land on his back, the wind blowing through his hair as the pterosaur shoots back up into the sky and the clouds part for them, dissolving away.
"It's time to let off some steam—let's go, Rhamphomon!"