A/N: Hi and welcome to a brand new spankin' fic after five long years. This might be AU in a sense that although Digimon Adventure and 02 took place, all the digimon returned to the digital world after the gate closed. Don't ask me why because it's not part of the story. I just had problems inserting Pata-chan and the rest into this fic so I decided to leave them out. If you read on, you'll eventually understand why. I hope.

Disclaimer: Digimon Adventure and its characters are not mine.

CHAPTER 1 – Shyness Is Nice

Shyness is nice, and,
Shyness can stop you,
From doing all the things in life,
You'd like to.

"It's going to be okay."

She blinked, willing his words to dictate her fate for this school year. Her tiny fingers grasped a pale pink handkerchief, her favorite one. All around her, students exchanged greetings, hugs and little gifts. She hated first days. There were too many new things happening – someone wonderful leaving, someone horrible arriving, new problems needed to be solved, awful teachers, lockers that refused to close correctly…

She'd have nightmares at the start of classes, summer camp (when she wasn't sick), summer cram school. The night before the first day of junior high, was the worst one. She dreamt she had fallen into a giant hole filled with an infinite amount of papers. There were quizzes, homework, reaction papers, projects, essays, math drills, maps. Her classmates were climbing on top of each other to reach the top of the pit where the teacher was droning on and on about needing to pass the entrance exams to senior high school. Around her, students were frantically pushing and shoving. She just stood there, frozen in panic until she was buried under a mass of squirming limbs, crumpled sheets of paper. Until she could barely see Masahiro-sensei above them. Until she could barely breathe.

"Hikari."

Her brother's firm voice snapped her back to reality. Breathe, Hikari. You're being ridiculous.

"Hey," he ruffled her hair playfully as if she were eight again. Back when things were easy. Back when there were no nightmares. Back when she didn't have to deal with anxiety every single stupid day. He grinned and she felt envious. She wished she was as sure as he was. "I'll swing by later to pick you up, okay?" He slung his backpack over his shoulder. Suddenly, a crowd of students rushed between them, separating the siblings, pushing him away from her. She felt her throat closing up.

Why can't I do this?

"Taichi!"

His voice was now distant, but the tone was still as confident as ever. "You'll be fine! I'll see you later."

And he's gone.

The poor handkerchief in her hand had been wrung to death. She stared at its distorted pattern of orange cats. Concentrating on their beady eyes and blocking out the noise of everyone around her, she took deep breaths until her breathing was a rate not comparable to racing cars. Her heartbeat decelerated soon after, followed by her muscles relaxing. She felt her mind become clear again. "One foot in front of the other," she muttered quietly while walking slowly past rows of lockers, until she reached hers – with a wonderful sight greeting her. A wonderful, golden sight.

His comforting smile had her already feeling better.

"They transferred mine to the one next to yours!" he rejoiced while taking her book bag for her. He had already stuck a picture of him and her with the rest of the chosen children on the inside of the door.

"What about Yoko?" she asked, bewildered, referring to the previous owner of the locker.

He shrugged in answer. "Maybe she moved." His smile faded and he took her hand that had started to curl tightly around her handkerchief. Her stomach started to twist painfully.

Someone leaves.

"Hikari," he told her gently, "you hated how she would slam her locker door."

Her cheeks reddened. "I… I liked her. She always helped me with my books and told me my pictures were nice. She was nice."

"I'm a better neighbor, I promise," he smiled, and she's warm all over again. Takeru always did that to her, made her feel good. If Yoko had to go, Takeru would be more than enough to fill the void. This was fine.

His fingers wrapped around hers, over the pink cloth. "Change is good."

This was good. She could do this. "Change is good," she echoed.

Satisfied, he tugged at their joined hands to the general direction of senior year classrooms. She let him. "Come on, let's figure out our room so we can get seats together."

This was good. Change is good.

She smiled for the first time that day.

She had to admit, Takeru in the seat to her left, and the view of the sun and the cherry blossom trees behind him had her feeling much better a few hours later. The lessons were more difficult, but juku lessons from last year always kept her on her toes. Then again, there's the entrance exam at the end of the year and it's probably a hundred times more difficult…

She shook her head to stop herself from thinking about her nightmares.

"Oi! Hikariiiiiiiii!"

Takeru cheerfully waved at a screaming, green-colored blur making a beeline for their table in the cafeteria. The figure tripped over a couple of chairs and tables earning yells from hungry students. Not to be deterred, the boy continued to mow down everything (and everyone) else in his path until he planted himself on the seat across Hikari.

Daisuke Motomiya had always been a show. Everything about him was amusing – his messy hair, wild eyes, boisterous laugh, big hand gestures. He could read a book on plate tectonics and make it sound like an action movie. He, like Takeru, always cheered her up within minutes.

Like then, as he was chewing on rice balls and telling them about Jun and his mother's argument over her unhealthy obsession on Ishida Yamato, bits of rice flying everywhere, she could not stop herself from laughing.

Takeru would have laughed too, if the story did not involve Daisuke's mother finally discovering Jun's mini-shrine dedicated to Yamato. It even had a chewed-up piece of gum with his saliva on it!

She could tell Yamato's younger brother was already creeped out by the way his left eye was twitching uncontrollably. Her hand found its way to his knee which was bouncing crazily under the table. She squeezed gently and he stopped.

"Daisuke," she said sweetly. "Let's talk about something else. I don't think Takeru enjoys this as much as I do."

"Oops, sorry," he replied while grinning sheepishly at Takeru. "Sometimes, I forget you're related to Yamato."

"I know. Maybe if I smiled less, it would be more obvious."

"Takeru!" she admonished. "You cannot NOT smile."

He scowled at her for a full five seconds before finally breaking into a large grin, nose crinkling. "You're right."

"So, how was Kyoto?" she asked Daisuke, changing the subject for Takeru's sake.

The question earned a series of funny stories about his misadventures. The brunette was in the middle of recounting a tale about getting lost in the lingerie section of a mall when Hikari felt a light brush on her arm.

Takeru dropped a sugared plum into her bento box while mouthing a 'thank you.'

"You're welcome," she whispered back.

Daisuke's voice reached an impossibly high pitch while describing how the women's underwear on display smelled like his grandmother's powdery perfume. He was guffawing every few words.

And she was giggling with Takeru between bites of homemade sushi, nightmares long forgotten.

Taichi's right. She was going to be fine.

A/N: So after writing the first half of this giant fic, Digimon Adventure Tri came out. (Yes, I've finished writing drafts of the first 8 chapters before even posting the first chapter. This is because I have a nasty habit of not finishing multi-chapter fics). Just a warning, I wrote this bit a year before Tri came out so yeah, I obviously did not take any of the occurrences there into account. Meiko doesn't exist in this universe. The 02 children, though not in the main storylines, will get some moments because I'm not an asshole, unlike Toei. *eyeroll*

"Juku" is a Japanese term for cram school, which most high school students attend in addition to regular classes.

Song is "Ask" by The Smiths.