Keisuke Amasawa was in a somber mood.

It had been two weeks since his fight against Eater EDEN. Two weeks since he'd had to settle into a new reality where digimon seemed to be completely absent, save for an old app game. Two weeks since he'd lost everyone he'd met in the previous two months of his life. His friends from Hudie, Zaxon, and the Rebels, Arata, his digimon partners, Erika, Yuuko...all gone.

Of course he'd looked into everybody's counterparts in this new version of the world. Hudie had somehow formed as a two-man team, even in the same cafe, which of course was still standing due to the lack of a giant monster to destroy it. It had taken a bit of persuading to get Ryuji and Chitose to let him in, but after showing off the hacking skills their other selves had taught him, they were happy to have him join. He still had a way to go to catch up with them, now that he had no digimon to make it easy, but he would get there eventually.

It had been easier than he'd thought to get Yu to join too, something he'd later suspected was due to Yu's desire to spend time with him. Yu took to hacking very quickly, and to Keisuke's relief, he took to Hudie as well. Now that he was aware of his loneliness, Keisuke wanted to make sure Yu had more friends this time to help him grow into the world.

The couple jobs they had taken on in that time were admittedly more small-time than Keisuke was used to, but having the new Hudie together made it fun nonetheless. Chitose was mostly the same, already trying to unload tips for getting a girlfriend onto Yu and himself. Ryuji was a bit more friendly than he remembered. As much as Keisuke disliked thinking about it, Erika's decision to keep herself out of this new world had her desired effect. Their parents had never died, and Ryuji had nothing to keep him from pursuing whatever he wanted to do. He was even getting a real job with Kamishiro soon, though he'd of course continue to hang out with the rest of Hudie whenever he was off.

Arata had come by the cafe a couple times. He'd seemed a little surprised the first time he showed up for some reason, but soon enough he was conversing happily with Ryuji. It seemed that in this reality, the two hadn't had a real falling out, Arata had simply found some other interests to pursue. When most of the Judes moved on from hacking, Ryuji renamed the group, though neither he nor Chitose could quite remember where the idea had come from.

Nokia had taken a bit of digging to find, seeing how they attended different schools. Keisuke's search turned up that she was the head of the local Jimmy KEN fanclub, and not too much else. While he had wanted to get in-contact with all the new versions of his friends once he learned they were mostly the same people in-order to rebuild anything he could of the relationships he'd made, he wasn't sure if there was a natural way for him to approach her, lacking any real connection to her in this timeline. He decided that he'd have to settle for meeting her in a chatroom at some point, or maybe one of Jimiken's concerts, and hopefully develop that into a friendship from there.

Yuuko...he'd reluctantly given up on Yuuko. It seemed that somehow, the differences between realities had seen fit to have Yuuko's father be alive here. He was quite skilled at keeping EDEN secure, as Keisuke had learned from Ryuji when he asked if they'd ever gotten any requests for help directly from Kamishiro. On top of that, it seems her brother had awakened from his coma, along with everyone else that had suffered from EDEN syndrome. He imagined these would keep her out of any way he could reasonably come into contact with her without him looking like some kind of creep that was after her family's money. He'd have to be content knowing that this Yuuko would be happy with her unbroken life.

Keisuke sighed dejectedly into his coffee. He'd come to his usual spot at K-Cafe, the familiar albeit not particularly good coffee a welcome carry-over from his previous life. Try as he might, he couldn't help but mull these thoughts over again in his head. He knew that the changes had probably been for the best. He'd heard from Fei before it happened that Yuuko knew this would be the result of going off to "save the world". This thought unfortunately didn't comfort him very much.

He'd been brought to the memory of his last interaction with Yuuko earlier by the sight of a certain restaurant. She had invited him there after helping him deal with one of many teams of hackers that were trying to take advantage of the chaos caused by the digital shift to take over EDEN. He briefly smiled when he thought about the way she'd gotten flustered when he asked if she was sure she wanted him to go with her. Truth be told, he had been planning to ask her out when they eventually went. He'd been interested in the girl ever since they'd first met, and it just naturally bloomed into more as they continued to meet up to work and eventually just enjoy eachother's company. He was pretty sure she'd accept, at least if everything he'd ever read in manga was anything to go by.

But it seemed that it was never meant to be. After that she'd disappeared, with only the message "I'm going to help my friends. Don't forget that omelets promise." left to him over DigiLine. With what Fei had told him, he wondered if she'd sent that just so he wouldn't worry. He wondered if it had been as painful for her to leave him behind as it was for him now to miss her, knowing they'd never really see each other again.

Keisuke wished he had anyone to at least talk to about this, but he knew they'd have to be crazy to believe him. The only ones who would remember any of it were off in another world that he had no access to. He chuckled to himself, wondering what kind of jobs the digital world's Hudie was taking, what adventures they were getting into. Erika said that their worlds were still connected, and he had hope that one day they may they might be able to meet again. After all, if digimon had come to their world once before, surely they could come again, right?

But for now, that wasn't the case. Keisuke knew that one way or another, he'd move on through life. This would all pass. Maybe he'd never meet Erika and his partners again. Maybe the memories would fade one day, and it'd all have felt like a dream as he blended into this new reality. It'd be breaking his promise he'd made to himself, but maybe that would be for the best. Maybe he could forget this pain of feeling so alone.

He set down his empty cup and thanked the owner as he walked out the exit. As he stepped into the elevator, briefly wondering if the combination to the hidden floor would still work in this world, his stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten in a few hours. Walking out the front exit to Nakano Broadway, he turned to the vending machines just outside and decided to go for a quick snack to tide him over.

And then, as he was looking at the selection, out of the corner of his eye he saw the familiar combination of black and white. He saw her. Yuuko Kamishiro was standing just a few yards away, looking straight at him.

Thoughts raced through Keisuke's head too fast for him to keep track of them. He'd been to Nakano many times both before he met her and over the past two weeks. Never in all those times had he seen her, and he was certain he never would again, yet here she was.

He realized he was staring, and quickly turned to face the vending machine again. What should he do? He'd already resigned himself to the idea that he'd never be able to contact her, but now she was walking towards him. It was then that he spotted a familiar flavor, and an idea stuck itself into his head. He'd do it, he'd take this chance. He had nothing to lose, this wasn't his Yuuko, but he'd at least take a shot at befriending this one.

As she stopped next to him, he tried to look as absentminded as he could while he put in twice as much money as the product cost, and quickly pressed the button two times, the cans dropping down to be taken. "Oh," he chuckled as he pulled them out, "I must have bought two by mistake again." He turned to her with his best smile on his face and held one out. "I don't suppose you like this flavor, do you?"

Yuuko looked down at the can with an unreadable face. "Red Hot Azuki Bean Soup..." she read aloud before looking back up, her eyes widening ever so slightly. "Just like back then..."

"Back...then...?" Keisuke repeated back to her, as once again his mind began running through thoughts too fast for him to keep up. "D-do you...?"

"You...remember..." She brought her hands up to her mouth like he always remembered her doing when she was shocked or surprised, water starting to gather in her eyes. "I-"

"Yuuuukoooo~!" said a loud voice from behind her, both Keisuke and Yuuko looking to see Nokia and Arata walking over to them. "Are you ready for lunch? It's a shame Yuugo's resting today and Takumi's busy, but-" They both stopped for a moment and stared when they saw who was there. "O-oh... Who's your new friend?" Nokia struggled to say, trying and failing to act as if she'd never seen him before.

"Nokia, he remembers...!" Yuuko managed to say, causing Nokia and Arata to look even more shocked than before. She turned back to him, a smile starting to form as the tears finally came down her face, and practically lept into his chest, much to Keisuke's surprise. "You remember...!"

Keisuke stood processing what was happening before wrapping his arms around the girl, his own tears falling as the sadness that had built up in him flowed out as relief. "You remember," he parroted. "I thought I'd never see you again, but you all remember. I'm not alone."

Nokia leaned on Arata, her own eyes starting to water at the sight, while he just smirked, running through a few guesses in his head about how this was possible.

They were making quite a scene in the middle of the sidewalk, but they didn't care. They had found their way to each other, despite the whole world being changed. They weren't alone, and they never would be.

Hello, anybody! Thanks for taking the time to read my little one-shot here. I've been meaning to write something like this since I finished Hacker's Memory, and seeing Yuuko's popularity events pushed me to do it. I love this pairing now, possibly more than any other pairing in any Digimon series. Like most characters, Yuuko gets to show up in HM while she's offscreen in Cyber Sleuth, and she's usually in a happier mood than you generally see her in the original game. This really made it feel like Keisuke became a person that she could relax with and go to when she needed to feel better. Top that with her final event screaming that she likes him as more than just a friend and it just seems perfect to me.

The pairing aside, I just really hope that something like this happens. Both the original group and Keisuke remember the old world, and it would be a tragedy if they never found each other again. As stated in the fic, he essentially loses everybody he met over the course of the game, which is heartbreaking when you have events based on forming close relationships with everyone.

You may or may not notice that this conflicts with a couple things stated in the HM ending, namely EDEN still being up and Ryuji getting the job instead of Chitose. The former is because that contradicts the original game's ending where Nokia specifically mentions that Kamishiro is still running EDEN. As EDEN was being developed before the 5 kids came into contact with digimon, there's no real reason to believe it wouldn't have still been made here. The other contradiction is almost certainly a mistake on the localization team's part. Chitose's text says "I got a job at", but then he asks Ryuji if he's told his parents and then they all go out for steak to celebrate Ryuji. You would have thought that they could put just a bit more effort into this, but it is what it is.

So thanks again for reading, and leave a review if you wanna! I dunno if I could do any good writing another chapter for this, much less if I could make it into a whole fic, but I suppose I could try if people want. It could be fun to write Keisuke and Takumi meeting and hanging out with the gang.

Cya!