Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ cascade ❯ cascade ( Chapter 1 )

cascade

Digimon and all related charcaters are trademark and copyrighted by Akiyoshi Hongo and TOEI Animation.This fic is made for fun purpose only. Profit shall not be gained from this fic.
Author's notes: The italics were the things Ken Ichijouji had in mind, the moments and situations he recalled in his mind.

Fool... Fool... I was such a fool...
What is Ken Ichijouji, what is boy genius,
if I'm such a patethic fool person?

*RING! RING!* The phone rang for the 3rd time that morning. Ken Ichijouji didn't move from his comfortable position above the bed... It was reasonable, after all he hadn't had enough sleep for days.

*RING! RING!* Another ring made him flicker in his sleep. He stirred "Miyako, pick up the phone."

He didn't recieve any answer, so did the phone. *RING! RING!*

"Miyako!" He said louder, eyes still closing. "Pick up the phone!"

The phone rang once more and made Ken half heartedly wake up... and when he was turning his body to see Miyako's sleeping body, only to find an empty space... making him realized about the truth, snapping him from his dream.

Fool, mentioning himself. He narrowed his eyes in disgust of the view and turned to pick the phone, above the nightstand beside Miyako's usual place to sleep.

"Ichijouji residence, Ken's speaking." He said, eyeing the digital clock beside the phone, 10.24 AM, also proved by the lines of sunrays piercing through the pastel colored curtains in his lone room. "Oh, Takeru --- yeah, I just woke up, thanks to you ---"

He rose from the bed and walked to open the curtains, thing that Miyako always did every morning in the past. "--- am I alright? I'm in a great shape!" He lied, knowing he was doing the thing Miyako detested very much. "Yeah--- my kids're find too. We can manage everything."

Then he stopped, looking again to the empty space in the king sized bed, staring at it absent-minded.

Fool... such a fool...
I'm sorry... Miyako...
If only, if only...

It happened few weeks ago, when Ken started to have very bad temperature. He was screwed up. Everything that he had done wasn't as good as he had expected... Frustrated... A foolish reason. Everyone's furstrated, he knew that. Oh my, he knew it very much he was very very stupid that day.

He didn't stand it anymore, his work, his pressure from work... He was expected to act like a *hero*, because he had saved the world before. From his superordinates... they should know that *detective* was a far different thing from *chosen child*. While the villains didn't give up because there were a former *chosen child* in the police departement. He was almost in his work 24/7... making him distant from his family.

He had conversations with his family mostly in telephone, and his children kept asking him when would he come home and taught them maths, a decoy reason, just because they missed him.

"Why don't you teach them?" Ken once asked in the phone.

"Stupid, I'm not as good as you. You're the boy genius." Miyako answered him.

"Excuse me, Miyako. But were you that stupid in the elementary, that you don't even know the answer of 6x6?" Ken raised his eyebrow.

Ken smiled when he remembered that day... It seemed so far now. He wouldn't hear her voice again. He wouldn't guess Miyako's new attempt to force him to go home... Not again, never again. He shook his head.

That day, he still remember the day... Late autumn... his workmates persuaded him to go to a certain bar, to drink... to clear his mind... instead of going home and meet his beloved ones. The foolish thing was, he had actually gone with them.

But he then got home, very late, welcomed by an enraged Miyako. She was right to be furious. She didn't see her husband come home often... and that night, when he had a chance to come early, he went to a bar, and drunk...

"Ken!" She yelled, he could recall her beautiful angry face clearly.

"Heey, Mi--- hik---ya!" He greeted, grining wildly, trying to suport his weak body to the foyer's wall.

"Don't 'Miya' me, Ichijouji! Are you drunk!?"

"Yea--- hik! I think I--- hik! am." He shook his head. "But hik--- my mind is still---hik sane, relax hik! Where're the children--hik!?"

"Sleeping, mr. detective, after all it's 1 o'clock in the morning!" She glared. "And if they're still wake up, I won't let them see you. You're drunk! You're making bad examples to the kids!"

"Who's---hik! making bad---hik! example?" He walked slowly to his wife. Only that, that simple walk, he fainted, but one thing he remembered that... it was the last time he launched himself to his wife's embrance... even when his mind was poisoned by alchohol, he still felt the warmness, her warmness, her sincerity...

Habits of Japanese workers she didn't like... Went home drunk... She had told him before when he asked her to marry him;
"Listen, Ken. I don't like a husband that whines too much! I don't like a husband who can't cook! I don't like my husband smoking, hell I hate smokers! I don't like him making bad impression towards my children! I don't like him coming home, drunk! My father *almost* died beacuse liquor and I really hate it when my husband *does* too! I don't like my husband lying to me! I don't like him cheating at me! I don't like him punching me, throwing vases at me, screaming at me---"

And the list went on, making him afraid that she was searching away to decline him... (for Wormmon's sakes! He knew he wouldn't do that to the woman he loved) Until at the end she said;

"Because of that--- of course I'll marry you, Ken!"

Again, her young energetic face was visualized in his mind. I'm such a fool...

He didn't even remember, what the cause of their argue, was it because he was drunk? Or is it because of something else? The next thing he knew that... He was screaming, she was screaming also, the children were peeking from their room. The little one cried at the top of his lungs, trying to stop his parents.

But it didn't stop...

"Fine!"

The climax was when he went out... slamming the door, walked out from their appartement, *his* appartement... leaving her alone with the kids. Instead, doing something he really hate, drowning himself in his work, accepted all the cases, avoiding all phone calls for him, making himself exile from his sorroundings... became a new ghost in his office.

When one day he *actually* came home few days after... only to find his house filled with the people he knew and flowers, flowers everywhere. He peeked his wristwatch once again, he was sure he came in time that no one would wake up, 2 AM.

"Ken? Ken? Are you still there?" Takeru worried voice behind the phone made Ken snap himself from his memories, jerking little drops of emotions froom the corner of his eyes.

"Yeah, sorry. Just thinking if I should change this room's decorations." He said, of course another lie. His friend was not fooled with this.

"Are you *really* okay, Ken? If you need help, there're---"

"Thank you very much, Takeru." He sighed.

All was finished.
I can't change at this moment
Only a fool thinks he can change the past.

Moments wasted talking random things that Ken answered with half of his voice, and of course... with half of his heart, until Takeru Takaishi, from the other end thought that it was no use to talk more.

Ken put the receiver the back, closing his eyes.

"What happened here?"

His own voice echoed repeatedly in his mind, in his tiny little brain cells. It affected his hands, shaking holding the receiver.

"Hello, sir? This is Ichijouji." Ken held his trembling voice. "I asked for another day off, sir."

"Ichijouji you jerk!" He hadn't seen Daisuke Motomiya for ages. But the very first time they met after a long time, he charged and hooked his fist to his jaw, making him fell back in a complete confusion. "I never thought that you could change yourself back to Digimon Kaizer mode again!"

His punch hadn't changed for years. It was still hurt, Ken rubbed his jaw. "Until when, I didn't know either, Sir. I must adjusted myself in this *new situations*."

That time, he took an investigating eyes thorough the room. There was crying Hikari Takaishi, in his husband's embrance. Takeru was looking at him with eyes similiar with Daisuke's.

"Hold on, Daisuke." Taichi Yagami said. When he heard his voice, Ken realized that the older chosen children that he had not seen for ages were also there, what's going on question occupied his mind. "We have to hear it from Ken's own mouth."

Ken was getting more flustered, was there something he didn't know happened, or did his little argue with Miyako few days ago could make everybody alerted like *that*?

Then the only missing person, Iori Hida came out from his children's room. "The kids're sleeping now." He stopped when his sight fell to Ken's body. "So at last you came."

"Until when?" Ken asked himself. "Maybe after all is finished, Sir. A weak would be enough."

"What's going on here!?" Ken raised to his feet. First, the whole thing with Miyako. Then he came home finding a bunch of people and greeted with a straight hook from an old friend he hadn't seen for long.

The atmosphere was meaner this time. The looks from his friends strangled him in place.

"Do you mind telling me?" Ken narrowed his eyebrows, he didn't realize that this made him look more like Digimon Kaizer... and his friends was aware of this.

"You're too long hanging in your new version of Control Spire!!" Daisuke hissed. "I thought you could make Miyako happy, but I was wrong!"

So, it was the problem with Miyako. "What do I do with her is none of your concern! Everything happens in this house is none of your business!!!"

With that last words from him, the once little Iori Hida lunged himself towards him, pushed him until his back was slammed against the wall. "

"You said that, Ichijouji!" The lawyer's voice was different when he was threatening the former boy genious of Tamachi. "Do you know what really happened!? Do you!? We've been calling you for days and now we finally met you, to hear you say that!?" Iori slammed his head to the wall. "Listen Ichijouji! You just listen! Miyako Ichijouji, Miyako Inoue, my friend, our friend, your children's mother, your wife, IS dead!!!"

"Thank you, Sir." Ken said again, now he couldn't hinder his tears, falling down to from his oceanic eyes, to his red cheek, to his quivering chin. "---yes, I'll see you in a week."

It's a joke...
A stupid joke.

"And Armadimon can fly." He snickered.

No responsing laugh.

"Come on, do you want me to believe it?"

Ken once more put the receiver back to the phone, sighing loudly. He sit of the bed, silence, his mind wandering everywhere or just not moving anywhere. His new habit that he enjoyed so much these times.

"Do you want me to kill you now, Ichijouji!? You can't cry for Wormon's help this time; Miyako's dead!"

He shook his head, Iori was definitely different that time. The little reliable Iori with Armadimon never lost his emotions control... neither does the lawyer Iori Hida. But that time, he was really in rage.

Ken walked from his bed to the balcony door, staring at the railling, imagining the chronicle of his wife death.

Miyako Inoue was standing in the room's balcony, arms at the railling. When her youngest son ran to her and accidentally push her, making her tumbled from her place.
Her left foot was stucked at the railling for a while, when the innocent son pulled her shoe, making him fall from the 16th floor of the appartement to the asphalt street, head first.

Ken shut his eyes.

"Where's she?" Finally he asked after minutes of silence. "Where's Miyako?"

Takeru was the one who replied. "Odaiba cemetery."

Ken was flabbergasted.

"She has been there since last night."

Ken touched the railling, the last place Miyako had been alive, rubbing it as if he could get her touch back.

Fool...
I'm sorry, Miyako...

"You'd burried her?"

"What should we do?" Daisuke held his chin high, challenging Ken. "Wait for you until her body's rotten!?"

He wasted his days only to rewind those minutes. Stood there, in the balcony, looking downwards, painting the situations Miyako had been... hanging in the balcony up-side down because your foot was stuck in the railling, falling head first, after the argue you had with your husband, how' does that sound?

"Dad, I'm home!" A voice calling him from the foyer.

Ken pulled himself from the illusion world, trying to collect his ordinary self, walking out from the bedroom. "Welcome home!"

His oldest daughter ran to the kitchen with plastic bags in her hands.

"Here, let me take that." Ken took them from her hands, finding some cooking ingredients and some christmas accesories. "Where did you get all the money for these things?" Ken raised his eyebrows, putting the bags on the kitchen table, while his daughter gone to her room to put (slam) her schoolbag.

"You give it to me yesterday, right!?" Her daughter screamed then ran again to the kitchen. "You're easy to forget things these days, dad." She said while burrying her hand in the bags.

Ken didn't answer, he just did the same with his daughter, until her hands slapped his. "Ouch, what?"

"What are you doing!? You're massaging the eggs!" Ken's hands backed. "Put that in the refrigerator, and the carrots!"

"Your brothers don't like carrots." He commented.

"So what's the problem?" Her voice went high. "It doesn't mean I can't cook them just because some stupid brothers don't like the best vegetable ever exist in the world!"

Ken just smiled, really. He put the eggs in the refrigerator when he suddenly forwned...
His daughter... just looked the same like his wife when he first met her. He shook his head again, for times he did this day.

But, Miyako would say the same. She would also prepare the christmas from this day.

"Iori." He remembered when he called his wife's best friends, few days after he knew his wife was dead.

"What do you want?" His voice was cold in the other end of the line.

Ken held back for a second. "I just went to Miyako's grave this morning."

"At last, good for you." He could see Iori's expresionless smile in his mind.

"I just want to ask something." He pulled a long breath. "Does Miyako wear kimono?"

"What?"

"You burried her wearing kimono, right?"

Iori was silent. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because," Ken looked at the empty bed. "Miyako always said she wanted to wear kimono when she met her grandmother back. Her grandmother was the first person who put the kimono on for her."

His sentence was answered with another silence from Iori, until he said. "Yes, she wears kimono."

Another still. Once again, Ken asked. "Did she look beautiful when you burried her? She wanted to die peacefully and looked natural. You didn't put her any make up, did you?"

"Dad!" Again, her daughter voice made him jumped from his dreams. "What are you doing!?"

Now he saw his hands actually rubbing the fresh salmon's head. "Huh?"

"Dad!" She snatched the fish away from her father's hands. "Why don't you go and get brothers from school and from grandma's house! I don't really trust you with our dinner!"

Ken just shrugged, following her only daughter's advice.

"Oh, and Dad!" She yelled again just when Ken about to shut the front door. "Don't forget to buy christmas tree!!"

She's Miyako's daughter. He smiled.

And I'm such a fool.

***

He didn't realize when and why he stopped his car in the road front Odaiba cemetery. His gaze absent-minded looking to the lines of graves inside. Two siluettes could be seen on a hill he knew so much. He sighed again... and then drove his car away.

I'm so sorry, Miyako...
I didn't mean it, really.
I love you.
Maybe I was a fool back then.
Until now, I know I'm still a fool...

Who? Just who wants to waste a perfect person like you?
I want to whine...
And cry just for you.
Asking for forgiveness.

But there's still my chilren... our children.
I'm maybe a fool.

But I'm not a complete idiot.
At least, I want to keep your memories here.
And imagine that you already said;
'it's alright. but don't repeat it again.' to me

And for the least, I want to keep my children, your children, our children happy.

Then he remembered what Miyako shout to him the last time, he stepped on the break abruptly, forcing the car to stop again.

"Why don't you understand me!!!? I just want my family to be happy!!!"

He smiled again.

That's great, Ken.

***

Hikari turned his head to the far road in front of the Odaiba cemetery.

"Hikari?" Takeru asked when she saw his wife's worried face. "Are you alright?"

"Y--- yes, I think so." Hikari placed a last glance, than turned her head back to his husband. "Just... I thought I heard Miyako's voice."

"Hikari, the grave's over here." He smiled. "You're looking over there."

Hikari forced a laugh. "Maybe I'm getting old."

"You're old and Taichi would've been a grandpa."

She punched her husband's shoulder. Then she turned her gaze back to the grave.

Here lies Miyako Ichijouji
19xx-20xx
A friend, an aunt, a monther, a wife
Live in love and sincerity,
and die in peace.

************

Okay, I know this fic's rather stupid. But I wrote this in confusion. I don't even know the plot from the beginning, and I don't know where's the climax and the anti-climax when I re-read this. But at least I made a kenyako.