#lockdownchallenge

He knew a quarantine was something serious he should never be celebrating. He also understood New York was in a very extreme situation exceeding the ten thousand cases of people infected by the virus named like a famous beer brand. Yet there he was, smiling as if he had won the lottery. Miyako would probably hit him if she knew he somehow felt lucky about the whole matter. But he didn’t care, not in that moment.

Daisuke was just starting to open his ramen franchise in places outside of Tokyo, and he had gone to New York specifically to do market research. It had been a complete coincidence that Hikari had been planning to visit Taichi at that same time. Yes. An accident.

And listen- he wasn’t as crazy about Hikari as he used to be when he was eleven, but he once had read that first loves were the only real ones and the rest were to forget, and Hikari had been his first love, it was nobody’s secret. Not even to Hikari herself, so they were chill. It had just been a friendly trip to New York City, to him it was for business and to Hikari it was leisure. And Daisuke enjoyed travelling in company rather than alone.

He also needed to stop justifying himself, but it had been a normal trip until it wasn’t. He was now in a government mandatory lockdown. It had been just his luck that he had rented an AirBnb for over two months while Hikari had preferred a hotel room. Her hotel, however, had just announced they would be closing due the lockdown. Daisuke, as nice as he was, suggested she could stay with him, since Taichi was working home office on confidential manners. Hikari didn’t want to get herself, or her brother, in trouble with the United Nations, so she agreed.

And there she was, just entering his temporary apartment. She was just carrying a small luggage and she looked scared. Hikari was very much about vibes, and it was nobody’s secret that New York looked eerie with pretty much no people on the streets. Daisuke and the younger Yagami had been through a lot, but before they had to fight Digimon, things they could see.

“It’s weird, isn’t it? Having an invisible enemy, we can’t fight with the power of our Digi-vices.” Daisuke smiled, he sometimes believed Hikari could read minds.

“I mean, this one we can fight staying inside and binge-watching Netflix so…” Hikari left her luggage in a small corner in the rather big apartment Daisuke had rented, as if she didn’t want to bother.

“Why am I not surprised at all,” she laughed, stepping into the kitchen just to see boxes of Oreo, chips, and of course, ramen all over the place.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a college student no more!” he defended himself. “There’s some vegetables on the fridge!” Hikari had a look on her face Daisuke hadn’t seen in a long time, sparkling eyes, even. “What?”

“Do you want to know what I did?” he nodded; the brunette ran straight to her purse to take out three toilet papers.

“Did you steal that from the hotel-“ he was speechless. “Who are you and what did you do to Yagami Hikari?”

“I heard the whole city was out of toilet paper! I lost control!” She could not stop laughing, Daisuke appreciated the sound of it.

“I can’t believe you actually did that. Now we can make sure we will survive this with the power of toilet paper and cookies.”

“Oh, everyone will be so jealous of our quarantine survivor kit,” Hikari took out her polaroid camera and took photos of the mountains of food Daisuke had bought. She was anxious about everything, but she was glad she was not spending it alone. Since she was a teacher, and her students were in vacations she was not homeworking like everyone else was, hence why she had decided to visit Taichi during that time.

She never expected for everything to go wild, it was not even safe for them to go back to Japan, considering New York was now one of the most affected cities in the world. Hikari didn’t want to put her parents in any kind of risk. It was better for her to just stay in New York, with her brother. With Daisuke.

“New York has always been the city that never sleeps, yet here it is. Sleeping.” The man stated, looking outside the window. The sun was setting, meaning it was probably chilly outside. Not that it mattered, since they had a heater inside.

“Did you trick me and are you actually Takeru in disguise?” she teased this time around.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” He stuck his tongue out to her, Hikari rolled her eyes.

“Daisuke! We are not eleven anymore!”

“I know, I know! And I promise I’m nowhere as salty as I was back then.” He stood up to boil some water for the ramen. They were nowhere as good as his, of course, but it was what they had for now. People had gone nuts in the streets with all the panic shopping, Americans were way more paranoid than they were in Japan.

“I’ll take a quick shower if that’s okay?”

“Hey, su casa es mi casa!”

“It’s supposed to be mi casa es tu casa…”

“Now I’m supposed to believe you’re bilingual.”

“I’ve learned some things from Miyako, the basics.”

“Ok booksmart, go take a shower because I can smell you from here!!” he yelled, she laughed; as she disappeared into the bathroom, leaving him in silence once again.

Their friendship had become stronger over the years, eleven-year-old Daisuke would have never imagined he would end up locked with Hikari Yagami. Adult Daisuke was, of course, over that crush. Sure, he would always love Hikari, but the romantic feelings were left behind, right?

Not many people knew this about the younger Yagami, but she loved horror movies. How would you ever guess that, considering she looked like an angel herself. So, after the ramen was done -and he improved them, if he could say so himself, he felt free to pick the newest horror film on Netflix, to Hiakri’s excitement.

“I was just thinking about watching this film! I tried to watch it with Taichi the other night but he’s such a chicken, oh and the ramen looks amazing!” She had her now longer hair still wet and wearing an oversized shirt. Daisuke tried to hide his blush; she was so naturally beautiful. “Perhaps I made the best decision by staying with you instead of my brother, God knows what he’s eating right now.”

“He works for the UN, I’m sure he is being taken care of.”

“You’ll be surprised…” she whispered for herself.

Not too long had passed when Hikari fell asleep while watching the film, which, by mere causality, was in Spanish. That made Daisuke laugh. Hikari’s phone began ringing to show it was Taichi himself who was calling, he felt free to answer.

“Have you not gone bald yet?”

“One more pandemic away to do that!” the older one laughed; it was refreshing to hear a joke after so much stress at the office. “Where is she?”

“Asleep,” he looked at her, breathing softly.

“Of course she is, girl can’t stay up after midnight no matter how hard she tries.” Taichi sighed, changing the tone of his voice. “Thank you for taking her in, I feel so guilty for not taking care of her while she was here…”

“You know how Hikari is, she never wants to bother.”

“She’s so lucky to have people like you in her life, and I mean, me too.” Daisuke smiled; he had an inexplicable amount of respect towards Taichi. “Thank you, really.”

“The Yagamis will always have a special place in my heart, you know it. Let us know when you take a break from saving the world so we can do FaceTime!”

“It’s a promise. And Daisuke?”

“Yes?”

“As soon as we’re done with this mess, I’ll introduce you to someone I know, he’s very interested in your business and would like to help you open your first branch here!”