Glitter Explosion
“I am so sorry to come to you for this.”
Ruki could hear the voice from the front gate, as she was looking out of the kitchen.
“Don’t worry,” her own grandmother said. “We have more than enough room here.” She laughed about it – and obviously was not wrong. They lived in a mansion and half of the rooms were barely used, given that Ruki’s mother once more was overseas on a photo shoot for some new parfum or something.
“Still. I know it is sudden. Jialing was supposed to look after her, and now…”
“You know I can stay home alone, right, Okaa?” a rather indignant voice commented. “Also, Lopmon is with me either way.”
“I know, but I am not gonna be home before tomorrow afternoon, darling. And I just would not…”
“I am not a kid anymore,” the indignant voice insisted.
“I know, my dear,” the other voice replied. Then she clearly addressed Ruki’s grandma again: “I will pick her up tomorrow. Probably in the early afternoon.”
“Of course,” Ruki’s grandmother replied. “That is no problem. I am certain we will get along splendidly.”
Not soon after, Ruki saw them come up the stone path to their home. Her grandmother, and Shaochung, Jianliang’s little sister, who was carrying a rather unhappy looking Lopmon. Then the younger girl saw Ruki’s face in the open kitchen door.
“Ruki-chan!” she exclaimed. She accelerated her steps and came running towards her. “Where is Renamon?”
Like so often, Renamon appeared out of the darkness behind her. “I am never far.”
The nine-year-old grinned. “I know.” She was holding Lopmon close – clearly inadvertently chocking it, though the Digimon was too well-mannered to complain. Then the girl looked at Ruki again: “You have like a really fancy house!”
“I know,” Ruki said.
“And because it is a fancy house,” her grandmother added, “we take off our shoes.”
“Oh, yeah.” Shaochung looked at her sport’s shoes. “Sorry.” She slipped out of them to go back onto the veranda on her socks, at least letting go of Lopmon for this. “This looks really old.”
“Technically it isn’t,” Ruki’s grandmother said. “The home is just thirty years old. It is just build in an old home.”
Shaochung however ignored it. “It is like a palace. Which would make you a princess.” She looked at Ruki.
Ruki chuckled awkwardly. “Don’t tell that my mother…” She was more or less glad that her mother at least had stopped putting her into those fancy dressed she had once upon a time gotten for Ruki so often.
“Why not?” the kid asked.
“Let’s just say… My mother would have liked a princess.” Ruki managed a half-smile.
Her grandmother looked at her. “Do you want to show our little guest into her room for the night?”
Ruki sighed, but nodded. “Sure. I can do that.” She nodded at Shaochung. “Come along.”
Admittedly, it was quite cold on the veranda open towards the inner courtyard. It was already December after all, and given the house was built in the pagoda style, there was a dire lack of proper walls. While the paper screens in the door were in winter replaced with more sturdy wooden panels, the time between the middle of December and middle of January could be quite chilly. And that was here in Tokyo. Ruki really had to wonder, how people had once dealt living further up north.
“So,” she still said, opening one of the sliding doors. “This is our guest bedroom.” She went inside, turning on the light and the heater, as she was on it. Then she went over to the door to the wardrobe. “We have a futon in here, too.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “You sleep on futons?”
“Yes,” Ruki said.
“That is so cool!”
“A lot of people sleep on futons, Shaochung,” Lopmon muttered, looking at her Tamer.
The girl was not to be dismayed though: “It is still cool!”
Ruki smirked just a bit. She knew that Jianliang’s family lived not very traditionally. “I guess it is.” Though at times she wished for a proper bed. She pulled the futon out of the wardrobe and spread it out over the ground. Then she also got out the linen to wrap it in.
“It looks so fluffy.” Shaochung watched her.
“I guess so,” Ruki said.
Then the girl looked at her. “Say, Ruki-chan. Will you play cards with me?”
“Shaochung…” Lopmon muttered, but Ruki sighed.
She knew already that Jian was nobody to play with other people. He mostly just collected his cards and never used them outside of real Digimon fights. Ryo was the only person to ever indulge Shaochung in card fights. “Maybe until supper,” she said, earning herself a wide smile.
“Yes!”
Ruki never had had any siblings. Obviously not. While her parents had been married for two years, she did not even remember them living together. After all, as long as she could remember, she and her mother had been living with her grandmother. Her father had been living in Germany until his death. In some years she had visited him once a year. Sometimes he had visited them in Japan. But it had not been common. She had met her father maybe eight times in her entire life.
She was not sure if she would have liked to have a sibling. Because playing cards with Shaochung for an hour and a half showed her two things: A younger kid could be adorable, but also quite annoying. She wondered, how Jianliang was doing with all his siblings.
There was a knock on her door, though. “Ruki-chan?” her grandmother asked.
“Yes?” she replied.
“Dinner is ready. I made curry.”
“Oh no…” Lopmon muttered, while Shaochung jumped onto her feet.
“Curry! I love curry!”
The door was slid open and her grandmother looked at them. “It seems I made the right decision then!”
“Yes!” Shaochung said. She was beaming. “Man, you are so lucky to have grandma, Ruki-chan! And such a pretty one as well.”
Ruki’s grandmother chuckled, while Lopmon gave a very exasperated sigh. “Shaochung. Might I remind you, that you have a grandmother too?”
“Yeah, but she lives in Hongkong and I barely ever get to see her. And if I see her she does not make curry for me!”
Ruki’s grandmother looked at the girl, who was now almost as old as Ruki had been when she had met Renamon. “I am going to assume your grandmother makes Chinese food for you then?”
“Yeah,” Shaochung said. “And it is not bad. But it is not curry.”
Lopmon just gave a little sigh at this.
“What is with your other grandmother?” Ruki asked. She did not know much about Jian’s family outside of the siblings. “Your mother had a mother too, right?”
“Yeah,” Shaochung replied. “But I never met her. Okaa-san says, she has been dead years before I was born.” She shrugged. “So she won’t make curry either.”
“Yeah, I assume she won’t.” Ruki got up from the floor. “You could make her some curry for Obon next year, though.”
Shaochung considered that. “Okaa-san never took me to the grave, you know?”
“Have you asked her before?”
“I think I did,” the girl said. “But that was long ago.”
Lopmon hopped onto the girl’s shoulder. “Well, that is all something we can talk about with your mother, right? Until then, we should eat now.”
“I guess…”
“And afterwards,” Ruki’s grandmother said, “I think Ruki needs to do some homework still, right?”
“Actually I don’t,” Ruki said. “I finished before Shaochung arrived.”
“Very dutiful.” Her grandmother smiled, just as the younger girl slapped her hand against her forehead.
“Oh shoot!”
“What?”
“I need to finish stuff for school on Monday!”
Shaochung sure had a lot of energy. Ruki had known that before. After all, she had seen the kid in the digital world, and had seen how Shaochung had run around and played with Digimon, and had seen her go about everything else.
During their dinner, Lopmon and Ruki’s grandmother agreed on one thing: the need for Shaochung to not talk with her mouth full. Because Shaochung sure had a lot of thoughts she was willing to share with everyone.
However, while her grandmother and Renamon were doing the dishes after the dinner, Shaochung got her backpack from school and claimed the kitchen table for herself.
“Ruki-chan?” her grandmother meanwhile asked.
“Yes?”
“Can you let in a bath? And you can take the first bath.”
“Sure,” Ruki said. She went out onto the veranda once more. By now it was even colder, given that it had turned dark.
She could feel Renamon close by. Her Digimon partner usually joined them for the dinner, but like so often just disappeared after it.
“What is it?” she asked, as she went over to the bathing room.
“You seen to be quite overwhelmed,” Renamon noticed.
Ruki sighed. “Not really overwhelmed. I just notice that I am not used to having someone younger than me here.”
“Do you wish you had another sibling?” Renamon teased – and while her voice was fairly flat, Ruki just knew she was teasing.
“I already have an annoying older sister, don’t I?” Ruki smirked as she looked at her partner, who just let her hear a little giggle.
“Fair enough.” Once more Renamon disappeared into the shadows, just as Ruki opened the door to the bath room, turning on the light. She sighed, enjoying the moment of silence.
Her pajamas were still lying on the washing machine, so she stripped, putting her clothes in the basket, all while already letting hot water run into the bathtub. The bathtub was about half-full, as she sat down in front of it to shower.
She was shivering just a bit – it was not that warm in the bathroom after all – but it was all a lot better when the hot water was running over her body.
Of course she was quite aware of the irony of this whole situation. Because most people who were close in her life by now, she would haven ever met if it had not been for the Digimon. The Digimon were, what had made her life into what it was now. And it was better. She was not certain about everything still – but her life was better than it had been before everything else had happened.
She would not want to live in a world without the Digimon – even with everything else being so chaotic at times. She just wanted to know that the Digimon were there. That Renamon was there. And that… Ah, well… She was not sure. Even in her thoughts she was not sure. She just knew that she would not want to miss her friends. Humans or Digimon.
By the time Ruki returned to the kitchen, she found her grandmother in front of the computer chuckling about some jokes she was clearly reading, while Shaochung was still sitting at the kitchen table. She was clearly doing something for art class – that much was apparent from the things lying on the table now. There was a pad with paper, a box for water colors, but also two bottles, and a large bottle with glue.
Ruki could not help her curiosity. She stepped behind the younger girl and tried to spy over her shoulder only to be noticed and reprimanded with an angry look.
“Don’t look yet,” the younger girl said. “It is not done yet!”
“Oh, I am sorry,” Ruki said. “What are you making?” She herself had always hated art class. She never had liked painting and drawing. While she was somewhat okay in the music class, art was always one of her least favorite classes in school.
“Just a stupid homework assignment,” Shaochung said. “We are supposed to paint our ‘dream Christmas’.” She rolled her eyes in a rather melodramatic way.
“Shaochung does not like homework,” Lopmon offered helpfully.
“Obviously I don’t! Nobody likes homework!”
Ruki’s grandmother turned around to them. “I guess you are not that wrong about that.”
“Of course I am not.” Shaochung made sure Ruki was no longer looking, before grabbing the bottle with glue. “Homework is pointless.”
Ruki could not help a little smile. “Tell that to the teachers.”
“They don’t get anything. I mean, when I am an adult, I am just totally going to travel to the digital world and become a professional adventurer there!”
“Shaochung…” Lopmon muttered. “I don’t think that will be so easy…”
“I am pretty sure it is,” the girl replied. “I mean, I know Yamaki-san and his people try to learn more about the digital world, right? So they need someone on the inside, and then we will just go!”
“I am rather certain that is not what ‘someone on the inside’ means,” Lopmon said.
“Ah, why would you know that?” Shaochung asked. She got one of the other bottles.
And only now did Ruki see what this bottle was filled with: glitter. Some sort of tiny glitter flakes, which the girl now started to generously spread over the paper.
Ruki watched this. “Glitter?”
“Uhum.” The girl nodded enthusiastically while pouring more of the flakes over whatever she had painted.
“You have to see,” Lopmon said, “Shaochung loves glitter.”
“It makes everything better.”
Ruki could not help but chuckle. “Oh boy, you really would love my mother.” She turned to her grandmother. “Obaa-chan, we need to invite her when my mom is home.”
Her grandmother just chuckled, while Shaochung looked up from her picture. “Why?”
“Oh, Ruki-chan’s mother does enjoy things that glitter as well,” the old woman said. “And things that are pink or in pastel colors. Something I feel you might agree with.” She looked at Shaochung in her pink dress.
“Pink is a pretty cool color,” Shaochung agreed. “I don’t know what pastel means.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ruki’s grandmother said.
Now the girl turned on her chair. It seemed for a moment she wanted to say something, but in the end she just gave a shrug. “Okay.” Then she looked at her picture again. She seemed to consider for a moment, but then she blew on it, making the glitter fly up into the air in what seemed to be a big explosion.
“Shaochung…” Lopmon whimpered, now her fur being beset with a trillion little sparkling flakes. “We talked about it.”
“And we will have glitter in our kitchen floor for the next two years,” Ruki’s grandmother said, looking at the floor.
Shaochung only noticed this now. She looked at the sparkling powder that now was spread all across the floor. “Oh. Sorry.”
Ruki’s grandmother sighed. “Ruki. Would you get the dust pan?”
Ruki sighed and nodded. “Sure, Obaa-chan.” She left the kitchen just to get the dustpan form the next room over.
Just when she returned, Shaochung was looking at her picture once more. “You know what? I think it needs more glitter.”
Ruki could not help it. She chuckled a bit herself. “I am sure it does.”
