Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Never Like This ❯ Going Away ( Chapter 1 )

Brand new series, but it's going to be really short. Only three or four parts… and most likely this will be finished this week. I'm inspired to write this. I'm inspired to run away.

Anyway… this is all from Daisuke's point of view. Some of it doesn't make sense, but neither does he. He tends to not go into detail on lots of things that really could use some and rambles on things that don't matter.

There's also a new thing I've just opened… it's a journal for Daisuke, whoo-hoo. It's on livejournal, and it's found here -> http://livejournal.com/~daisukekun <- I'll be updating it with short ramblings that don't belong in stories (this would go there if it weren't over ten pages…) and also lots of raging about problems I've found in fanfics. He'll make comments on Japanese culture, also… as I learn more and more Japanese and more about their culture, I always have weird thoughts about it, so I'll put them in there. It may be informative or it may just be amusing. Either way, if you're interested in poking at it, go ahead. It's just my boredom toy.

Anyways, disclaimer: I don't own Digimon or any of the characters, but I do own this story. Please don't steal it or alter it or copy it or et cetera. This fic includes weirdness, what could be depression but really isn't, and yaoi. (Daikeru/Takedai.)

A short explanation of locations: when I originally began writing Digimon fanfics, I read somewhere (on SOME Digimon page, hell if I remember which) that Odaiba wasn't a real place, that it was made up. Heh. Being that I have only a very tiny, basic map of Japan at my disposal (I really need to get a better one…) I believed it and thusly had to find a place to put Odaiba. I placed it near Osaka, in this little tiny inlet, right off the Yodo River (which is mentioned in several fics.) This explains why Daisuke runs far away to Tokyo. It wasn't until AFTER this fic that I was told that Odaiba is indeed a real place.

So, yes. I was wrong. I admitted that multiple times to people. Please stop bitching at me. It's called fanfiction; if you don't like it you can just not read it. Really isn't that hard.

AHEM. Now on with the fic:

I ran away from home three weeks before I turned eighteen.

The best and worst choice I ever made. For starters, I was finally free from my parents and their arguing, their treating me like an object, forcing me to pick sides and then holding it over the head of the opposite spouse. Freedom from parents is something most people just don't need as badly as I did. Some need it more so. But other people think 'freedom from parents' means having mommy and daddy pay to send him off to some expensive college where he'll snuggle up in a cozy dorm. But no, my freedom was nothing like that.

Instead I was stuck on the street, starving for some real food, freezing cold, and tired because it was too cold to get good sleep.

I had three hundred dollars to my name. My last paycheck from work was cashed instead of depositing half of it like I usually do. Unfortunately, I couldn't withdraw everything from my account because I wasn't eighteen yet, and there's a set amount you can withdraw at a time. I also wasn't going to access my account after I left - I was terrified if I used an ATM my parents would somehow track me down. Call me paranoid, but I really didn't want to be found.

Every kid I know has a story about how they ran away when they were six to their best friends house or something. I didn't do that. I didn't go to Takeru, or Hikari, or Taichi or Yamato or any of my friends. None of them knew I would be disappearing and not coming back for who knows how long. The only person I told was my boss, Jay J. I told him I had to quit because I wasn't going to be around. He didn't ask me about it. He only told me whenever I wanted my job back, he'd be glad to give it back to me.

I vanished. I made sure of it. One night I just went into my room, packed all of my clothes I could fit into a bag, my wallet, my toothbrush and electric razor so I could at least shave and maintain some cleanliness, a pack of batteries, and my digivice. And then I left at 3 in the morning when the apartment was silent and dark.

I ran away to Tokyo.

I don't know why I went to Tokyo. Originally, I was planning on living in the Kyoto prefecture. I guess it's because there's so much poverty and so many homeless people in Tokyo I figured I would fit right in. I decided not to go to the Shinjuku station because that's where every homeless person is. Instead I prowled my way around to find something more… creative, I guess.

I found my place on a street corner deep in the middle of downtown, on the stoop of an abandoned old building. There was writing all over the walls of this place. Graffiti. I don't even know why I stopped there, but it was home now. Curled up against this building, dark and unforgiving streets all around me, I had probably five layers of clothing on and I was still cold. If only I had been born in July instead of December. Then I'd have run away in June instead of late November, when everything was getting freezing cold.

First I wanted to get work. I need to get a job and then I could find an apartment. Unfortunately, it's extremely hard to get work when I didn't have a place to stay, or even a phone number I could be reached at. I did have my cellphone with me, but again, I just didn't want to use it because I was afraid of being hunted down and dragged back home. Extremely paranoid.

I spent two weeks on that lousy street corner, and every night I lay there and closed my eyes and thought that by the next morning I would either have starved to death or froze. I would place bets on which it would be. I think I was pretty delirious or something, or maybe I was just bored.

After the first several days, I started to get really sick. I wasn't eating right, I was freezing my ass off constantly, and I wasn't living in the cleanest situation at all. That wouldn't have been a problem if it kept me warm, but instead of feeling how hot I really was, I felt freezing cold. I was so sick I couldn't even cough. I'd try to, but it would only come out as a gasp.

I drug myself into a corner store and bought some cold medicine and aspirin. Neither helped and I only felt worse, slumped on that stupid porch, wanting to cough and sneeze and vomit all at the same time and not able to do any of them.

On the second day of my sickness, I realized that I had a serious problem. I wasn't getting better, and I hadn't slept since initially being ill (on top of the lack of sleep I had beforehand). My fever was getting worse and my vision was starting to get blurry. I was really, really sick.

I needed a doctor.

I had just over two hundred dollars left, and no clue how much it costs to go to the doctor without insurance. With my dad's health insurance, it's ten dollars a visit. Without that, who knows what it would cost?

I dragged off the stairs and started looking for a hospital anyway. I didn't have a choice - if I stayed this sick much longer, I'd die.

It cost me about eighty dollars to sit in a freezing cold room and have them poke at me and jab me and diagnose me with hypothermia. Well, that's why I was so cold I guess. Anyway, they gave me a whole load of instructions on getting warmed up, and they wanted to keep me in the hospital for a night. Unfortunately, I didn't have the money for that. So I left. I put on a few extra layers of clothing and headed off to a coffee shop where I poured thirty dollars worth of warm tea into me. Apparently, this was supposed to help. I took an aspirin and slouched down in my seat, staring dizzily at the steam from my cup.

By closing time, I felt better, but decided I needed to find somewhere warm to stay for a night or two. I made a pretty bad decision, but it was the only one I could think of: I spent three nights in a bathroom stall of a subway station. It smelled and it was so vile and dirty, but it was warm. And when I puked the next day, I didn't even have to move.

I stayed in the bathroom until I didn't feel sick anymore and went back to my porch, deciding to try and keep as warm as possible and take cold medicine all the time to ward off anything else that wanted to attach to me.

The third week began to set in and everything was so bad I almost burst into tears and just dragged myself back home. December 4th. It snowed. I woke up and everything was dusted with white, and the stuff was still coming down. It was so cold I couldn't fall asleep again and dragged myself, and my bag with all my shit in it, off that damned porch and started wandering.

I went to Shinjuku Station.

I had no intent of staying there. I didn't want to. I just wanted to see. I prowled around that entire area, first taking in the east side. It was typical upper class Japan, those beautiful tall office buildings, modern and sparkling clean. Staring up at those tall buildings, one of which looked like a high-rise apartment complex, I got that feeling… the feeling that I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home and sleep in my own bed, feel carpet under my bare feet, take a long hot shower in my own bathroom…

By now I had walked along this platform to the east side, and I swear it was like walking into another world. There were all these… cardboard boxes. It was like if Cardboard Boxes R Us was a real store, this is what it would look like. But they weren't ugly, beat up things… no. There were all these fantastic boxes with gorgeous paintings on them. They're cardboard boxes, sure, but so many of them are decorated and they just look beautiful.

Me, I didn't even have a box. I just had a street corner.

Of course not all the boxes were so nice and they all weren't glamorous. Street life in Tokyo isn't all that grand. But as I stood there, admiring this cardboard breeding ground, I realized that half these people must have had jobs, but just couldn't afford the expensive housing costs. It occurred to me that I had been planning on getting work and then an apartment… what a dumbass I was. I couldn't afford an apartment here. Odaiba apartments were affordable. This… this place… was not.

Wandering out of the station, feeling angry and frustrated and above all, fucking cold and starved, I dragged off to a payphone and stood in front of it, arguing inside my head about if I should call my parents or not. I picked it up. I dialed nearly all the numbers. But in the end I hung up and decided I should just go back to that damn porch. I'd probably end up sick again, and this time I had even less cash and would most likely end up dead. But at least I'd be dead instead of cold.

I wound up at a homeless center instead of dead or on the porch. Bullshit for a homeless center, this place cost fifty bucks to sleep and get fed each week. By now, I had maybe thirty dollars left on me. I couldn't afford that. I drug myself in anyway, just to get warm.

I almost ran into this woman as I slunk around, trying not to be noticed. Well, she noticed me, and started drilling me with questions. Didn't take long before she found out I wasn't really supposed to be there. I almost made a run for it, figuring I'd be thrown out or worse. Instead, probably the best thing possible happened.

She offered me a job. A job handing out food to these people, these people just like me (except they were better off, they could afford fifty bucks a week). And on top of that, she also offered me a place to stay. Warm, dry, and surrounded by food. I swear I nearly had an orgasm just thinking about it.

It wasn't all that it could have been, really. My room was about the size of my bathroom back home, with this little hard cot on the floor, and one blanket. Not much of a bed at all, but it was better than concrete. The food was disgusting, bland, and most of the time I wouldn't be able to eat until after everyone else was fed, and it would be cold. So I was still pretty cold and hungry at nights.

But fuck all if I complained. I had work and a place to stay. I wasn't on that god-forsaken porch anymore.

Okay, next chapter gets real plot. Feh.