#enlightenmonth

Enlightenmonth - Day 1-4: Friends/Family

When you and your crush have been (obliviously) pining for quite a while now and all your closest friends have started picking up on it already.

While I do believe that the majority of the Chosen Children would notice Koushirou and Hikari having a... Thing for each other, I wanted to focus on these four in particular. Takeru being one of Hikari’s closest friends and having a sixth sense when it comes to the love life of his friends (especially Koushirou’s) would definitely be among the first who’d make it his personal mission to drop hints - and he might also be the first who’d go “So, Taichi-san, what does it feel like to have your sister crush on your best friend, huh?”. Meanwhile, Taichi.exe cannot compute for now, but he’ll come around it. Mimi, just like Takeru, probably has a sixth, seventh and eighth sense when it comes to the love lives of her friends - and regardless of whether this is a timeline in which Koushirou may or may not have crushed on her once, she would KNOW just by looking at him. Sora would pick up the signs as well, but she’d be more quiet about it, even she’d let Mimi indulge in some subtle matchmaking.

enlightenmonth 2022! ✨

hello fireflies! thank you for filling out the interest check. we are pleased to announce another enlightenmonth this year, which will be held in may 2022, because it is said that fireflies start to emerge late spring, just before the summer ;)

— how does this work? enlightenmonth is a one-month challenge, with prompts changing every four days to give more time to prepare. for each span, there are two prompts available. feel free to pick one of the prompts for each day, or if you are up for some challenge, you can always mix both. pick both prompts for two different works? why not!

— but i can't join in may! no worries; do your own enlightenmonth in any other months! if you want to start early on march or april, please do too! (also, you can always put your submissions on queue/schedule too...)

— i can only join on the first week!

this is a very chill challenge, so do not feel pressured or obliged! it's okay for you not to finish, only participate in several days (because you're busy or you're not clicked with the prompts), or even participate simply as an observer.

— what kind of things i can post? any fan contents (art, fic, video, headcanons, etc). no specific genre or boundaries (language, rate, etc) as long as they are about the relationship of koushiro izumi and hikari yagami—which may also include their best partners, tentomon and tailmon. what kind of relationship, you ask? anything. platonic friends, brother-sister, romantic, or even rivalries.

— what are the prompts? day 1-4: friends/family day 5-8: work/holiday day 9-12: dance/music day 13-16: rain/shine day 17-20: fall/bloom day 21-24: magic/science day 25-28: go out/stay in prompted challenge officially ends on day 28, but for day 29, 30 and 31, you have the liberty to do anything you like. post other koukari things that are not prompt-related? sure! publish the works from any other days you weren't able to finish timely? go ahead! take a break and do nothing? yes, you deserve it!

— how can i interpret the prompts? any way you like, literally or figuratively. just because it goes with rain, shine doesn't always mean sunshine. fall, besides autumn, can also mean falling in love... or falling to the trap of piemon, perhaps.

— any specific tags? we're always tracking #koukari, and please don't forget about it as our aim is to spread more love to this dynamic. you can add #enlightenmonth or #enlightenmonth 2022.

Day 13-16: rain/shine

summary: while waiting for the rest of their friends to arrive, Koushiro and Hikari have time to talk about the rain… @koushirohikari

“Looks like we are the first ones here,” Hikari let out a breath, gazing out the damp window at the glowing neon lights from afar. The soft glow of pink and red from the bright sign that screamed Bowling for Ice Cream fell delicately on her pale skin.

“Looks like it.” The response came from the boy in the driver seat as he clicked the car into park. Koushiro’s eyes avoided the warm, naturally radiant figure in the passenger seat and looked out at the cool raindrops slowly drifting down the side of his window. He sighed, thinking about the numerous miscalculations his friends made prior to this moment.

One minute he was over at the Yagami residence discussing different cheat codes in a new game that he was playing with Taichi, and then the next Taichi received a phone call from Mimi. She was in town from America and wanted to see if the group could meet up for a couple rounds of bowling and some ice cream. So the two masterminds on the phones exchanged plans, rather poorly, how the group would meet. Taichi insisted on picking up everyone in his new SUV, but once he realized that his car can only sit six people, it was too late. It was then that Taichi asked Koushiro to drive Hikari to the place while he kept his promise and drove the rest of the group. It took some convincing, but Koushiro complied to the request. He didn’t realize until now how much extra time he was going to have now…

Now he sat there, staring at the falling raindrops sliding down the window, patiently waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. He wondered how the rain could create such an infinite amount of little droplets each reflecting the fluorescent lights to put on a silent show. He pondered on what emotion flooded into his mind when observing such a display. Sadness? Confusion? Longing? He couldn’t pinpoint it.

He looked over at the girl sitting next to him for an answer. She mirrored his actions, except she was tracing the drops with her tiny finger as they fell from view of the window. His eyes narrowed a bit, analyzing her actions to see if he could pick up her thoughts. Was she conducting a race with the water droplets? Or was she thinking the same questions he was? Koushiro caught a glimpse of light in her eyes when she placed her hand down on her lap and kept her gaze to the rain. Was it longing, too? Or was it filled with hope? She didn’t seem to look at the rain sadly, but rather looking for her love in the rain.

“Why do people associate rain with sadness?” She said, quiet enough for him to hear.

Her voice caught him off guard, causing him to look out the windshield. He let out an unknowingly held breath. “What makes you say that, Hikari?”

“Well,” she began, a bit hesitant in her next words. “For most, rain makes people sad. They had a negative connotations it. Connecting bad feelings to something that is not necessarily bad.”

Koushiro slowly nodded his head. “Yeah, make sense. So what are you trying to get at?”

She took a breath and looked at the boy next to her. “It is important to know that the rain can make some people sad, but only until we see closely the beauty of a single raindrop is when we start to appreciate the little things in life.” She brought her gaze up to meet the boy’s dark eyes. A nervous laugh escaped her lips as she shook her head and looked at her hands on her lap. “I mean, I guess I never had any negative feelings toward the rain.”

“So you have positive ones?”

She smiled softly, light from the environment reflecting off it. “With Taichi. We used to wish for rain so badly so we could jump and play in the puddles.” Then she started to giggle. “Or with Sora and Mimi. We went window shopping when it started to downpour. All we could do was laugh like crazy because there was nothing we could do.” She then paused for a moment. “I think those are some of my favorite memories with them.”

Koushiro chuckled at her stories. “I see.”

A hum came from the passenger seat. “Do you have any favorite memories with any of our friends?”

Koushiro turned his head to face her. Their eyes met, making Hikari let out another nervous laugh.

“I mean, it doesn’t necessarily have to do with rain, so anything could do.” The words rushed out of her mouth to fill the vacant air between them.

Koushiro brought a pondering hand up to his chin in thought. “Who were you thinking?”

“Taichi.” His name was the first one to pop in her head.

He stopped and thought for a couple minutes, thoroughly running through all the records and files in his brain to think of a find memory he has associated with that name. “I think when Taichi and I stopped for some snacks on the way to movie theater. He tried to shove as many treats and snacks into his shirt as he can without being suspicious.” He looked over at Hikari’s raised eyebrow. “Taichi paid for them, of course. He just looked so ridiculous!”

Hikari could help but smile and moved her gaze back to him. “How about Sora?”

He again stopped and thought for a couple minutes before speaking. “When she brought me some yellow flowers for my promotion I received at my job.

“Yamato?”

A couple beats passed by before Koushiro could answer. “Probably when he came over to help me study. He started playing his harmonica, and I swear it is the only thing that helped me pass that exam.”

She laughed at that that story. “Excuse me, what? Yamato helped you?”

He chuckled and looked at her. “Yes, I hate to admit it sometimes,but I don’t know everything.”

She laughs hung in the air for a bit before the drops of rain overwhelmed it. A pause intruded before she broke in. “What about me?”

In an instant, Koushiro looked down at her hands and smile softly Hikari could see the memory flowing easily through the boy’s mind as he spoke. “It was at your house. Taichi invited me over, but for some reason, he wasn’t home yet. Just you. You suggested that we play Nintendo in Taichi’s room. After some negotiations, we agreed on Mario Kart. You said you were not good at that game, but you managed to win every round. And every round, you were so happy to take the lead and win. You would laugh, cheer, and pretend to be a sore winner by rubbing it in my face. But I know we were just playing around and buying time before your brother came home. Seeing you smile was better than winning I suppose.”

When eyes reached her, the realization of what he just said hit him the a turtle shell in Mario Kart. His cheeks felt hot and he started to stutter. “I mean, there are so many memories with you, it’s so hard to pick one…”

She leaned toward him to catch his dark eyes in hers again. “I guess we will have to make more then.”

The tiny taps of the raindrops on the roof of the car played with the pitter-patter of his heartbeat. Before he could respond, solid knocks bombarded the pair. Koushiro turned his head to see a taller boy.

“Hey, guys; we’re all here! Sorry it took so long! Let’s get going; I’m hungry!” Taichi screamed through the still-closed window and started to walk toward the entrance of the bowling alley. The group of the remaining Digidestined were right behind the leader. Taichi started splashing in the puddles, gaining some scowls from Yamato and Sora and some light laughter for Takeru.

Koushiro slowly turned to look back at Hikari. She only shrugged her shoulders.

“Ready to go?” She asked.

“I guess so,” he responded.

Ok ok ok I’m getting excited here:

Hug

“What is a hug?”

The question lingers in the air for a moment. Koushirou can’t say that he’s surprised – after all, it’s Hikari who’s talking. He should be used, by now, to her questions.

“A hug is…,” he pauses for a minute. “A hug is a physical action, where a number of people, usually two, intertwine their arms behind each other’s back.”

“Is it, though…? A physical action?”

Koushirou should be used, by now, to her having more questions. He should be used to Hikari reading deeper into things. He should be used to Hikari not accepting a rational answer to her questions.

So he should try harder.

“A hug is…,” he starts again. “A hug is a physical action. You can’t hug from behind a screen,” he touches his laptop, his cellphone… the one thing they can’t do for him. “And it’s also a physical… feeling.”

Is that too weird? When he speaks with Hikari, he feels his brain moving, straining itself. Exercising. If he were a machine, he would be hearing the sound of hinges.

But instead, he hears her laugh. So clear. So natural. He’s aware that he’s blushing.

“Yes? Are feelings physical then?”

The questions never end, he should be used by now. She will always want to reach deeper. So he thinks.

“Yes… feelings are physical. All of them. You feel them in your body, in your hands, in your eyes… they are connections, chemical connections inside your brain, and thus they are physically felt.” Somehow, speaking about something he knows, something that is, in fact, rational and concrete, gives him the urge to continue. “So if a hug is a feeling, then it is, also, a physical action. A hug is a physical feeling.”

Hikari leaves her cup on the small table that separates them. She smiles, her eyes are huge and they shine. He should be used by now…

I still have things coming up for pokemon and the next chapter of figuring it out as we go coming out later today, but i threw all of that to the wind and sat down and, in a fit of inspiration, typed all of this out at 2 AM last night. That being said… ignore the typos. Hope yall like it!!

Together

Enlightenmonth prompt 1: morning/evening

enlightenmonth 2022 (@koushirohikari) [day 25-28] go out/stay in in which, at some point of their relationship, they shared a netflix subscription together because they are the true introverts/homebodies (also, because koushiro just cannot detach himself from the screen even though it's his relax time). here are some movies/series they love to watch while staying in.

koushiro: time cannot be wasted on something that is not giving any new knowledge, so documentary it is. some of his favourites are the social dilemma (the title definitely doesn't reflect him, mind you) and elon musk's return to space. he watched stuff like arrival, knives out, and da vinci code series just because they played with his mind.

hikari: she admitted that she's just like any other girls... getting dreamy while watching chic flicks. even every christmas, she doesn't mind binge-watching those low-budget, cringe-storyline-but-they-kissed-in-the-end movies just for fun. since she's more on the mainstream line, she tries to keep up with the series that's on the trending/top 10; j-drama, k-drama, you name it. one of her favourites was start up because she got koushiro to watch with her every week. also, due to her job, she sometimes watched the kids' shows to follow the children's trend.

tentomon: huge fan of marie kondo after finishing the whole season in one day; he applied ALL of her suggestions to clean up the house and will get petty if someone messed up with his very-neat foldings. sometimes will watch food documentaries and then tells kae about a recipe that seems good to cook. just like his partner, also love documentaries, especially those about nature. david attenborough's were constantly on the list. also, sometimes joins hikari and tailmon to watch classic, old movies.

tailmon: she basically follows what hikari watches, but she loves animations! also, a bit like koushiro, she loves investigation/crime series. perhaps it's because she was once on a yagami household, she secretly loves to watch stand-up comedies just for fun. although rarely people subscribed to netflix to watch game shows/quizzes, she has the habit of having a friendly competition with tentomon to guess all the questions.

___

things they watch together: money heist, space sweepers, hometown cha-cha-cha, that blackpink documentary (koushiro loves it fyi), midnight diner, stranger things, queen's gambit.

also, tentomon is always the one who reminds koushiro and hikari to pay the subscription.

Enlightenmonth - Day 9-12: Dance/Music