Title: Altering Perceptions
Character: Kimura Kouichi
Chapters: 1-1||Words: 500
Genre: General||Rated: G
Challenge: Diversity Writing Challenge, section A95, write a paragraph with at least 4 fullstops
Summary: After the Digital World, Kouichi finds he thinks a little differently about some things.

They talked to him.

That, to Kouichi, had to be the most amazing thing that had come out of all of this, second only to finally meeting Kouji face to face.

The other Chosen – and he could even think of himself as one of them - they talked to him. They included him in anything that they did. He wasn't just someone who blended in.

Granted, he'd never lacked for friends, but for people who understood him? People who knew that he'd done horrible things, who knew what he'd done, and still talked to him, wanted to be around him? Those were few and far between.

Once they returned from the Digital World, and he'd recovered from his accident, Kouichi found that it wasn't the same as it had been before. In many ways this was all for the good. It meant that he had his brother at last, and Kouji met their mother, and Kouichi met their father, and despite a lot of anger and a lot of court proceedings, things were getting better where that was concerned.

But with his friends from before, the ones who didn't know what had happened in the Digital World, and who indeed had no idea there even was a Digital World, things changed. Their idea of doing something wrong existed in the form of deliberately avoiding homework or chores around their homes, or having an argument with someone.

The first time one of his friends complained about their sibling, Kouichi's thoughts flashed back to Tomoki and to Takuya and to Kouji. And he found that he wanted to ask them if they'd ever tried to kill their sibling for reasons that meant nothing at all in the long run.

It wasn't that he didn't like his older friends. He did. But he saw the world differently now, and he had someone with him that he'd been meant to see it with all along, and it was just different.

The friends he had before were the ones who knew him before, before he'd let all of his darkest impulses lose. They didn't know and would never know this part of him.

The friends he had now, Kouji and Takuya, Izumi and Junpei, Tomoki, they knew that part of him and had faced their own innder shadows. They accepted what he was because they knew what he was, and he was one of them.

He liked himself better this way. He felt cleaner, getting all of those poisonous thoughts out of his system. He loved knowing his father and loved knowing that Kouji knew their mother. He'd brought Kouji to their grandmother's grave. Kouji introduced him to their stepmother, and she treated him just as she did Kouji.

Kouji's dog still didn't like him, but Kouichi thought he could live with that. His cat wasn't fond of Kouji either and spent most of Kouji's visits on Kouichi's lap, purring and glaring at Kouji.

It wasn't the life he'd expected, but he loved it anyway.

The End

Note: Thank you for reading and a hope that you enjoyed the story. Please let me know what you thought of it if at all possible.