seed 02

"Honestly, Hiroshi! What would the neighbors think if they found out the kind of company you keep?!"

Hiroshi had to lift his voice to be heard over the sound of his mother running the vacuum cleaner. "I didn't ask them to come. She just decided...on her own...."

"And that's the worst of it!" His mother shook her head, unplugged the vacuum, bustled about the sitting area straightening pillows and shelving magazines. "You're never going to get ahead in life if you don't start being more discerning. I'm letting you have them over this one time because it would look even worse for you to never have friends over, so make some decent ones and invite them after you tell this bunch to never come back, won't you?"

None of the people his mother would consider "decent friends" wanted anything to do with Hiroshi, but he knew better than to try and point that out to her. "Yes, Mom."

"Giving us no advance notice to prepare for guests----" His mother paused in the middle of her own cleaning frenzy, paused and looked at him. "Why are you standing there?"

This had to be a trick question, but the way she was staring expected an answer, so Hiroshi sprung the trap. "You're....talking to me....?"

Hiroshi's mother flapped a hand at him. "They're going to be using your computer, aren't they? Go get your room ready! Are all your papers put away? You make SUCH a mess sometimes, I wonder how you even stand it..."

"Okay." He turned around and plodded back to his room, barely opening the door before slipping inside and shutting it because he knew if it made a noise, he'd be accused of slamming it and disrespecting the apartment. He didn't know Noriko or any of the other kids that well - the short one had called right after to confirm this was happening, Takashi, that was it, and it had been news to Hiroshi there would be more kids arriving - but he couldn't help but wonder, now that his mom had said it, what they'd think of his room.

After all, he didn't have any decorations up, he didn't have posters or toys. The only thing that marked the room as his was, just like she'd said, piles and piles of drawing paper, sketchbooks, pencils in various state of use - some pristine, some worn down just to nibs. He swept them all into a drawer without bothering to sort them. It would be hard to find his favorites later, but he had to get the room ready. He had to be Presentable. Fast.

Hiroshi's bedding twitched, and a leaf stuck out of it. "Why are the art things going away?"

"I'm cleaning."

"Cleaning is when you shove things where nobody can see them?"

"Around here, it is."

"Oh." Stepping out from her hiding place, Tanemon watched the cleaning progress. "Should I help with the cleaning?"

"You can help by thinking about what to say to other Digimon." Stack the notebooks. Shove them on the shelf. Roll up the larger paper. Hang it, in rolls where no one can see the insides, in hooks on the wall. Sort it later, if later ever came. He'd only have to re-sort it if his mother ever found it. "This drawer is for the paper that feels exciting to draw on" wasn't a concept she knew how to understand. "A few of them are going to come over. From the big battle."

"The one you're using in your comic?"

"I guess." Hiroshi had unearthed a half-completed poster. It showed a girl in a frilly costume covered in blossoms, standing up to a giant smudge of shadow - he'd tried to draw a monster and it never looked the way it looked in his head, so he'd scribbled over it and his heroine's villain had just become a misshapen Dark Blob. He contemplated the image. The girl's elbow was drawn all wrong.

"Oh, that's scary." Tanemon crawled back under his blanket. "I like it better here, Hiroshi, where nobody sees me."

The poster got shoved on top of the pencils, the drawer shut. Hiroshi booted up the computer. How did he change the wallpaper, again? He probably shouldn't have this image of the MagiRangers on it if other people were going to come over.

"I like it better too," he admitted, and wondered whether that were still true even as he said it. It - it didn't fit, the same way he could tell a pencil was the wrong hardness for the paper when he pressed down and something inside him constricted, resisting. Maybe this would be different, not like having other kids over. Maybe, because these were kids who had all gone through the same stuff he had, they wouldn't laugh or judge.

Maybe they were actually gonna put all their plans into motion, the ones they'd come up with in the truck! Hiroshi had been scared to talk at first, after short little Takashi had brought it up - "What are you going to do after you become perfect?" - but once he'd started sharing his ideas, he couldn't stop. After all, didn't he have pages and pages of scripts already written about exactly that? And hadn't he stopped writing that story, about a boy who could do anything, when everyone had laughed at him and said the story was stupid, that the main character was boring, and his mother had pointed out hardly anybody got published in comics so there was no point in even trying, now get back on the computer and do your math like a good boy?

Hiroshi hadn't understood. The main character was <i>perfect</i>. Perfect was what you wanted to be. So there was no way it could be boring, or that people wouldn't want to read about it. But he'd still stopped.

And then these kids had listened as he shared his ideas, had grinned along with him as he painted the world in his head for them. That's right, they were gonna come here to be his friends, and they'd go on adventures together, and Tanemon would evolve into something super cool and get a big flashy explosion scene like that dragon had in the Digital World!

Or the other kids would just be here for the computer, for some reason, and not really pay any attention to Hiroshi at all. Which would probably be for the better, because then they wouldn't have any grounds to make fun of him.

The doorbell rang. Already? Hiroshi hadn't figured out the wallpaper thing yet! He clicked open the browser so a nice, innocuous search engine would take up the whole screen instead (load in time, please load in time), and hurried to get the door. If his mother got if - if she reached them first -

"Ah, so you're - Takashi-kun, is it? What a pleasure to meet you! Hiroshi has said such marvelous things about what a good example he sets for a little boy like you! And you're so sharp, to have figured out you need a friend like Hiroshi!"

Hiroshi's stomach dropped. His mother's voice was extra-loud today. Apparently, if they were going to have people over, she'd decided to handle it by pretending they were having the kinds of people she wanted to have, instead of the people she was getting.

"Thank you for having me over." Seriously, why had Takashi even been in the truck? He could smile like a regular person and everything. He could smile at Hiroshi's mother! Hiroshi couldn't do that.

".....Welcome," Hiroshi tried, hoping this was the sort of thing Hiroshi The Son Everybody Was Supposed To Think Lived Here would say, not Hiroshi The Son Who Actually Did. "My room is this way. Won't you follow me?"

"Hiroshi." His mother's smile was extra-wide.

"---And would you like something to eat or drink?"

Takashi shook his curly head. "I'm okay. Thanks!"

And he skipped, actually skipped, past Hiroshi's mother, his arms full of squishy white fluff. Hiroshi's mother watched him go, staring, and hissed at her son when she thought Takashi was out of earshot.

"YOUNGER children, Hiroshi? You have nothing to learn from them! He even brought a stuffed animal!"

"Ah." Drat. "Yeah, they - might all. Do that. It's. A fad."

"A fad." His mother shook her head. "I suppose that's one thing I can congratulate myself on. My son will never fall for fads."

"Nope." Hiroshi swallowed. "I'm gonna.....go be with Takashi-kun...."

"Get him water first!"

Not because Takashi wanted it, because the perfect host would provide it. Hiroshi understood. "Okay."

He didn't know how many kids would be coming, so he filled a lot of glasses, and was trying to keep them all balanced on a tray while turning the handle when, as the bedroom door cracked open, he heard a squeaky voice ask "You mean you've NEVER left the bedroom? And NOBODY knows you're here?"

Hiroshi almost dropped the platter. Nudging the door open with his foot, he got in as fast as he could and slammed it shut; the noise, right now, was the least of his worries.

Tanemon was bunched up in the blanket, which had made a mess of how he'd laid out his bed in the morning. And Takashi and the white blob were both staring at her in confusion. When he noticed Hiroshi come in, though, Takashi turned and looked up at the older boy.

"You haven't told your parents about your Digimon?"

Hiroshi swallowed. He felt like he could drink all these glasses of water himself. Couldn't you die from drinking too much water? Or at least get yourself really sick. It might be useful to get really sick, right now.

But he had to ask anyway. Because it just seemed so impossible.

"You HAVE?"