Author's Note: Let me start by saying this may be the best thing I've ever written. It's been years in the making, like, five years. Aren't you all glad I didn't publish it over the course of five years! The chapters are in parts so it's not such a pain to read on the computer screen, and as such updates will probably appear in clusters or on consecutive days. I am still a graduate student, so, as I found with Relapse, updating consistently may be challenging. However, I will be able to post a new chapter once every week or two.

There are some bits here and there that may be uncomfortable, so I will put like a content warning at the end those chapters so you can check if you want to. I would put them at the beginning, but then it occurred to me that seeing content information right off the bat might spoil the surprise. If I miss one do let me know!

Actually, if you have any thoughts at all let me know! And, as always, enjoy!

Near-death experience-ers, or NDEs. That's what they call them- us- the people who came back from death. We're the one's who die and, despite the doctors' initial efforts, stayed dead in every medically meaningful way. That's where the story usually ends, when everyone calls time of death and starts packing up the instruments and preparing the corps for the family. But for some reason, call it fate or luck, we're the exception. Something happened to us, something that most corpses never experience. Someone tries one more thing, some jerk of the table shits the body, some draft re-deposits the soul. For me it was my brother calling me, the sound of his voice coupled with one last miracle from the Digital World. Whatever it is, this event happens and suddenly, inexplicably, we're alive again.

And that experience gives us special… properties. Hence the special name, I guess. Most of them are kind of ambiguous; increased kindness, a feeling of "oneness" with the world, that sort of thing. But a couple are quite quantifiable, which is why anyone bothers keeping records or studying NDEs at all. For instance, those who recover from a near-death experience with their old personality still intact often become acutely sensitive to things like light and medication. Simple things like walking outside without sunglasses or taking a pain killer can cause anything from a splitting headache to nausea. A sudden jump in IQ is also common and school age NDEs often show a notable increase in academic performance. Perhaps the most significant and unusual "property" is the increased bioelectric field. The clichéd example is that wrist watches have a tendency to stop working when worn by an NDE. The abstract example links it to newfound extra sensory perception…

That's where my case deviates from other NDEs. There's no ambiguity; I can affect the needle of a compass by getting too close. It's not significant enough to mess with any electronics, but it's measurable. The doctors were- are at a loss and, since it wasn't considered dangerous, they were generally content to leave it as an oddity and release me without extensive testing. On the one hand, it would have been nice to know a little more about these new traits before going back into the world. On the other, an investigation would have brought up some tricky questions. Like why am I so special? It's sort of an unspoken consensus between us Digidestined that my bioelectric field has something to do with my consciousness spending an extended period of time existing as, for lack of a better term, data. Unlike the others, I left my physical body behind and existed in the Digital World as pure electrical energy. A ghost in the data-scape. Maybe when I came back my… spirit retained some of those characteristics? Who knows, and honestly, who could figure it out?

Anyway, though bioelectric fields are interesting, that's not what's been causing me problems. No, being unable to ware a watch or hold a compass is annoying, but what gets me into trouble is the accompanying ESP. It's not particularly strong, mostly just what the psychic journals like to call moderate empathy… with most people.

With Kouji, things are different. With Kouji, things are always different. Everything started out small; feelings here, a few words there. Then the ability grew and by the time we hit high school there were days when I could practically read his mind. And then it got to the point were, on those days, he could practically read mine too. Slowly but surely, that little bit of privacy you have with someone like your twin brother disappeared. Which, as you can imagine, has put a little bit of strain on our relationship. We're still close and we still traverse our parents' homes and school together, but sometimes it's hard. Kouji's a very private person and, although there's almost nothing he wouldn't share with me nor I with him, the sanctuary of our own thoughts is a lot to give up. Especially without a choice. Of course, over time I've learned to suppress it… or maybe control it is a better term. So most of the time we're a perfectly normal set of long-lost identical twin brothers.

But on those days that we're not things get awkward.