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“Do you remember?” Agumon said in Japanese, watching the campfire. “How you accidentally set that Seadramon ablaze?”
Taichi chuckled. “We do not talk about that, buddy.”
“What did they say?” one of the boys asked. Koshiro was not fully sure about the names. It was a lot of kids, and a lot of new faces, and frankly, he regretted he was here in the first place.
Taichi grinned, answering in English. “Oh, we just talked about how back then when we got stuck in the Digital World, we also made campfires. We had one box of matches along. But that ran out quickly. So we really had to learn how to make fire.”
Another child, this one a girl with dark skin, on whose lap a Wanyamon sat, looked at him. “But can’t your Agumon make fire?”
Taichi paused, and then laughed. “I mean, yeah. But you know, sometimes when we had big battles, all the Digimon that can make fire had reverted to their Baby forms and those almost always can just blow bubbles.”
“Was it not scary?” one boy – this one was of the younger campgoers – asked. A Kunemon was sitting on his shoulders. “To be all alone?”
“Well, we never were alone,” Taichi said. “We always had the Digimon.”
It was this moment that one of the camp supervisors spoke up. A woman in her early thirties. Koshiro knew her name at least. Mrs. Delmore. She was the one who had welcomed the two of them earlier. “How about we calm down, and ask the questions one after the other. As you know, we can be quite honored to have those two young men here. They were among the first people who ever received a Digimon partner, and who saved the world.”
Koshiro really felt awkward as he was sitting on the simple wooden log.
He liked the idea for the camp. With the number of people who had partner Digimon rising, Mrs. Delmore and the even older gentleman who ran this camp – Mr. Thomason – had come up with the idea. A summer camp for kids with partners.
Koshiro knew that over here in the US these kinda summer camps were quite common. Not school organized but instead made by some sort of other organization. He had seen it in a lot of movies and shows. A bit different from their own camp experience in Japan, but he guessed it was technically nice. He just… it felt strange to have all those kids and their partners stare at him.
“How about we start like this,” Mrs. Delmore said. “You two tell everyone about how you first met the Digimon.”
“Right,” Taichi said. He grinned. For some reason he was getting really good with speaking English. While he had a thick accent, the words came to him a lot more easily than they came to Koshiro. But maybe it was because Taichi was generally less anxious than him. “You know, it is kinda ironic. Because back then we also were at a summer camp. It was a camp from our school. It was just supposed to go for three days. But, uhm… So, on that first day of summer camp, the camp got hit by a blizzard. We and some others went to a hut to be safe from it. And then, boom!” He got out his Digivice. “Those things came down like meteors, and next thing we knew, we were in the Digital World.”
“And then you saved the world, right?” It was Digimon that asked this question. A Muchomon sitting next to their partner.
“Ah, err…” Taichi paused. “We first mostly tried to get home. But then we were attacked by Devimon, and when we defeated them, we got to the continent and then… We did save the world eventually. But it was all a bit more… we got lost quite a lot along the way.”
“How old were you?” another one of the kids asked.
“That was in August of 1999,” Taichi said. “I was not quite eleven yet. Koshiro here was nine years old. My little sister, who also was part of it, was seven.”
“That sounds so scary,” the kid in question muttered.
“Well…” Taichi paused.
“It was scary,” Koshiro said. He paused, trying to row up the words in the right order. “We were seven children first. Then Taichi’s sister also was one of us. So we were eight. But we had the Digimon. And the Digimon made sure we were kept safe. Which you need to keep in mind. You partners will always look out for you. It is what it means to have a partner.”
Some of the kids here looked at their partners. There was some mumbling going on.
“I am not fully sure what you said,” Tentomon noted in Japanese, “but it sounded encouraging.”
Being at the camp made Koshiro mostly remember how his parents back then had sent him along for the school camp partially to make sure he was doing stuff with others. Just as they had sent him to soccer practice, hoping her would make friends.
It was kinda funny, he guessed. Back when he had been in primary school, it had been way less common to be a kid obsessed with computers than it was today.
“Koshiro!” the familiar voice took him out of his thoughts.
He looked around, seeing Taichi come towards him from that little village of log cabins, Agumon in tow.
“Hey,” Koshiro said.
He had been walking along the side of a lake that was near the camping grounds. Mostly because the moon was out, and reflected nicely of the surface.
“Ah, and there I thought you got attacked by a sasquash or something,” Taichi joked.
“I would have smelled a sasquash, though,” Agumon said. “I heard they are very smelly!”
“I was joking, buddy,” Taichi said with a grin.
“Hmm… Do you think sashquashes are Digimon?” Agumon asked.
“Maybe,” Koshiro replied with a bit of a smile. He had seen discussions of that same topic online. After all, a Gorimon looked quite a lot like a bigfoot. “Or maybe creatures from another world.”
Taichi chuckled. “Imagine there was just another ‘another world’ and some kids got sucked there as well and made friends with tiny bigfoots and cupacabras and then had to fight a big bigfoot with them!”
Koshiro could not help a little smile at that. “You are being silly.”
“I am just trying to lighten the mood,” Taichi said. “You seem a bit tense.”
Koshiro knew there was little sense in trying to deny it. “I am just a bit anxious to be in front of so many kids.”
“You have given talks to politicians,” Taichi said.
“I know, but… kids are different. Politicians follow rules. Kids can be… chaotic.”
“I think those kids think you are cool,” Tentomon offered. “You did save the world after all.”
“I know,” Koshiro said. “But… I mean, I barely knew how to talk to other kids when I was still a kid. And now that I am an adult it somehow feels more frightening.” He could feel his own blush, though the darkness of the night was probably hiding it rather well.
“Well,” Taichi said. “I do know that you are quite easy to listen to.” He took Koshiro’s hand, pressing it gently. “You know, spoken as the person who probably has spent more time than average listening to you rambling about theories.”
This made Koshiro smile after all. He looked at his boyfriend. “I… I… Thank you, Taichi.”
“Anything for you.” Taichi’s tone was a bit teasing. He smirked, and pressed a kiss onto Koshiro’s forehead. “I am also fairly sure there is more than one kid here who is about as much of a geek as you were back then.”
Koshiro chuckled. “I mean, yes. I…”
He paused, when he heard as loud gasp, a moment before a flashlight was pointed at the two of them.
There stood two of the kids from the camp – both of them probably around eleven or twelve. Their partners, a Pulsemon and a Puyoyomon were with them. Both of them seemed to be girls, one of them with fiery red hair and freckles. The other having black hair that had been braided into a long queue.
“You are gay!” the red-haired girl exclaimed.
“Uuuuuh.” Koshiro felt himself blush just a bit more.
“You didn’t say you’re gay!” the girl said.
“What is gay?” the Puyoyomon asked.
“Well, technically speaking I am pansexual,” Taichi answered in English. “And Koshiro…” He paused. “Why does it actually matter.”
“Well, you didn’t say!”
Her friend looked at both men. “Are all Japanese chosen children gay?”
“I mean, if you really wanna know, I mean… Daisuke-kun and Ken are…”
“I think we do not need to answer this,” Koshiro whispered in Japanese.
Taichi paused, before looking at the girls. “Do you have a problem with that?”
The girl shook her head. “I just never have seen gay people kiss! Do you kiss a lot?”
Koshiro sighed. He guessed, in a way, this was the kind of stuff one had to expect with kids, right?
He took a deep breath. “Would you ask your parents if they kiss a lot?” he asked slowly.
The girl paused. And then she grimaced. “No! Irks!”
“Would you like it if your friend asked your parents that?”
The girl looked over to the other one who had come with her. And then she sighed. “I’m sorry. I just… Uhm… I did not know that… I mean, that you are… I mean, no. Uhm. You did save the world. I just… I did not know gay people can do that.”
Koshiro felt weird about listening to her like this, but Taichi, upon that last sentence, did burst out laughing.
“Oh. Oh! Let me tell you…” He chuckled, making Agumon look at him confused – likely because Agumon did not fully follow the conversation. “The is a whole lot of things gay people can do.”
The girl looked from one to the other, clearly a bit indecisive about what to say next.
Meanwhile the Puyoyomon was hovering in the air still. “Caroline! Caroline! What does gay mean?”
