Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

You chew on your bottom lip as you look at yourself in the mirror of your car’s sun visor. You hadn’t bothered to put on any makeup or dress nicely, but now you’re beginning to feel self-conscious of that decision.

Should you have gotten pretty for tonight? You wanted to look approachable—friendly, even—but maybe something other than your faded college orientation shirt, an old pair of basketball shorts, and your beloved pink crest of sincerity necklace would’ve been better for that.

You can feel yourself start to sweat, your hand clammy as you grip onto the steering wheel even though the AC is still running. Your other hand is still on the gear shift, ready to put your car back in drive and leave, but you can’t bring yourself to move it.

Your eyes flicker between your reflection and your rearview mirror to see the near-empty parking lot around you, and you wonder whether or not you’ve made the right decision coming tonight. You count 6 cars, all of them parked right next to each other right at the entrance. Apart from those few, there’s absolutely no one else around.

You groan, moving both your hands to the top of your steering wheel so you can thrash your head back and forth in despair. As you move around, the small black box in your pocket falls out, and once you feel the weight gone, you stop immediately and pat around in your chair to pick it back up. You panic when you can’t immediately find it, but eventually you see that it’s caught between your seat and the door, so you quickly turn off your car’s engine and open the door so you can pick it back up.

Your legs now swung out, you sigh to yourself as you put the box back in your pocket. You awkwardly lean down to make sure that nothing had fallen out, but you don’t see that familiar plastic sheen anywhere, so you figure it’s all safe. You look around to make sure that nobody’s seen you haphazardly shuffle about in your car, but, as you’d expected, there’s no one there.

It really is so empty, much more than you’d thought it’d be. The advertising for the event looked so well-put together and planned, but there really isn’t anyone around. Who could even say all those 6 other cars were here for the same reason you were? They could just be there to shop around.

Your feet to the asphalt, you put your elbows on your knees and groan again into your hands.

Seriously, why the fuck are you even here right now?

You run through it again in your head to delay having to move, but, honestly, you’re about a minute away from just turning the engine back on and driving out of this sketchy parking lot at the edge of town.

You’ve been playing Digimon TCG since it’d launched a couple years ago. You suppose a more accurate statement is that you collected the cards back then and learned the actual rules of the game a few years later in the summer between high school and university, but no one around you really cares enough to hear the difference, so you just say you’ve been playing since launch.

Makes you sound cooler, anyway. Like, “look at me, a grown adult woman, I’m so up-to-date on a children’s game franchise that I’ve been playing their card game since it released!”

But, anyway.

You used to play competitively in tournaments, but, as you'd feared, that didn't last very long, and you ended up having to move onto online matchups to try and recreate the magic. For a while, you fared just fine with finding other players in online servers, but with your third-year university schedule, you’ve had to stop queuing for duels that pretty much always ended up being hours-long, even on weekdays past midnight.

And, full offense to them, but the only people available to even play by the time you’re finished with your responsibilities for the day aren’t all that great, always lecturing you mid-game on the current game meta and pressuring you for extra rounds when they lose to your deck.

Quite frankly, you didn’t clear your deskspace and set up your overhead camera at your PC to listen to a bunch of basement dwellers whine about how your deck should’ve lost to theirs (which you call out as blatant misogyny—Ophanimon forbid a girl plays with cards that’re girly, cute, and viable for comp).

You don’t know anyone personally who plays either, much to your dismay. Admittedly, you hadn’t tried very hard to look—DTCG isn't popular enough in the first place for you to feel optimistic about asking strangers if they also play it, and you're too shy to approach new people regardless of that fact. And while you’ve tried getting your friends interested, lending them your spares decks to learn and practice the game with you, you know they’re not having as much fun as you’d want them to, so you let it go and reassure them that you're alright just laying two decks on the same table and playing against yourself.

. . .

And that’s how you find yourself here now in the near-empty Jujutsu Comic Shop parking lot on a Friday night, your Beelstarmon deck heavy in your flimsy shorts pocket, supposedly ready to play a few tables with other local players who probably don’t even exist. You saw a small flyer for a DTCG game night put up on one of the bulletin boards on your uni campus last week, went home and triple-checked your deck to make sure none of your cards had suddenly become illegal for play since the last time you got them out of their box, and made the relatively long drive to get to the comic book store.

All that only to find that the whole thing is a complete bust. Seriously, 6 cars?! And it starts in, like, 10 minutes! The flyer said free food—that’s usually enough on its own to get everyone and their mother to these things!

Ophanimon, and the likelihood that everyone waiting in there is just an arrogant asshole that’s waiting to insult your deck is high enough that you’re better off just building a new one with whatever booster packs are in the store…

There’s at least one of those fuckers waiting in there. One of the 6 cars in the lot is littered with Digimon stickers, enough of them that you’re going to assume that they’re crazier about it than you are, which is saying quite a lot considering you’ve been in love with the franchise since you were a young girl.

At the very least, there’s none of those excessively lewd stickers plastered on it—just a bunch of Rookie and Champion levels—, but you can barely even spot the license plate with how overstimulated your eyes are. In any other context, you’d most definitely find the car cute, but, right now, you’re just annoyed at yourself for thinking that coming all the way out here was a good idea.

You lift your head to do one last scan of the parking lot, feeling dejected.

You really do want to play, but would it really be worth it to stick around if you weren’t going to have any good games? It’s starting to get late, the sun starting to dip past the horizon, and it really doesn’t look like any more people will show up. You suppose that the other cars could’ve been full with friends carpooling and that there’s actually a bunch of tables being prepared right now as you’re loitering in the parking lot, but are there even enough people in this college town who know a Digimon card game exists in the first place?

You’re probably part of the problem yourself, unwilling to face the other thing holding you back from just going in and making yourself present.

It’s… scary to be somewhere like this, all on your own and to play something you feel strongly enough to spend the last 30 minutes driving to.

And you really hesitate to say it’d be embarrassing—cringe isn’t real, people should do whatever they want—, but it would be sufficiently embarrassing to walk in, see nobody there except for the organizer (who’s probably the owner of that obnoxious DigiMobile), and have to sit through some painstakingly slow games with someone who very likely won’t respect your build choices.

You close your eyes and lean further into your elbows, deciding that you’ll leave in a second. As disappointed as you are, it does feel nice outside today, even with how clammy your hands still are, but that’s to be expected at the beginning of autumn. Your only opportunities to be outside like this nowadays are when you’re walking between classes and when you’re chasing after the evening bus home from campus, so it’s refreshing to actually enjoy the breeze for once instead of being upset that it ruins your hair.

You don’t realize you’ve spaced out until you hear the sound of someone clearing their throat, and you’re startled awake by it. You straighten up, hands now in fists in your lap, and you look around frantically and towards where the sound came from.

And, standing over the parking bumper in front of your car, is…

“Nanami?”

The two of you were in a few general education courses together last year, and while you wave at him when you see him around campus, you don’t really have any interactions beyond that. Occasionally, one of you will send the other a once-in-a-blue moon text 15 minutes before a deadline if either of you need an emergency set of eyes to review a paper, but, again, you don’t know anything about him beyond what you’ve seen in class.

What’s he doing here?

When the two of you make eye contact and he realizes it's you, his eyes widen in mild surprise.

“Oh, hello. It’s nice to see you,” he greets politely.

“Yeah, you too," you say cautiously. “What’re you doing here?”

“Ah, well,” he purses his lips, “my friend sent me out to see if anyone was out here, he put together the event.”

“Oh.”

There’s an awkward pause, and you nod along to the silence.

“Is that what you’re here for?” Nanami asks just as awkwardly.

“Yeah, I guess so.” You put your hand over where your deck is. You figure that you’re comfortable enough with Nanami to tell him about your reservations. “I just… don’t really see anyone else here. I wouldn’t want to be the only person there, you know?”

“Yeah, I get that.”

There’s another pause.

“I didn’t know you played,” you comment awkwardly. "DTCG, I mean."

Which is true; Nanami’s just about the last person you’d expect to see at something like this, and you imagine he thinks the same about you. Apart from a small D-3 keychain on your backpack that constantly gets mistaken as a Pokédex for some reason—it’s ridiculous, they look nothing alike—and your crest necklace, you don’t really parade around your obsession often enough for people to assume you’re a raging nerd about it.

You can't exactly afford all the anniversary merchandise anyway.

“I don’t, but a friend of mine does. He is, to put it plainly,” he pauses to sigh, “obsessed with it and everything else Digimon-related. He's always begging our friends and me to get into it, but none of us have the time.”

You chuckle dryly at that. “Sounds about right, I've tried with my friends too.” You gesture vaguely towards the direction of the other parked vehicles. “Is he the one with the car?”

“Yes, don’t remind me,” he groans. “You do, though, I presume? Play, what is it? DCGT?”

“Yeah," you nod, leaning into your hand. "And it's D-T-C-G. 'Digimon: The Card Game.'"

Nanami hums in acknowledgement, then sighs. “Well, if you don’t want to go in, I’m not gonna snitch on you for leaving. I'll tell you now, though, you are the only person that’s come to actually play.”

“Seriously?”

He nods with a slight frown. “He’s dragged all our friends here for company, but it’s just him who plays.”

“Did he plan the whole thing by himself?”

“Some of our other friends and I helped decorate and set up, but for the most part, yeah.” Nanami sighs again, but this time, it’s less exasperated, more sad. “We tried telling him not to get his hopes up, but he never listens.”

You frown, looking over at the entrance to the small shop just a few meters away.

Ok, well now you just feel bad for the guy. You… kinda feel like you have to go in now, your good conscience wouldn’t let you sleep if you didn’t step inside for a second, take a look around. The least you could do is compliment his car—glancing over at it again, it really is super cute.

Besides, this dude seems… enthusiastic to find someone to play with, so much so that he’s planned an event for it and invited all his friends to stick around and fill space. It’d upset you if you were in his position and nobody showed after all that effort spent.

And, surely, this guy can’t be that bad if Nanami’s friends with him, right? The tall blonde is polite and a good peer review partner, and even if that isn’t much to go off, it’s better than having no knowledge of who’s in there. It’s no longer a faceless middle-aged man beyond the door—now, it’s just a faceless friend of Nanami’s.

And, in all honesty, you’ve seen a few of them walking with him around campus. You’d be lying if you said they weren’t incredibly easy on the eyes, especially that tall one with white hair and glasses.

You just hope you’re not making the wrong assumption here.

You sigh again, this time less strained, and you shake your head as you get up from the driver’s seat. “No, it’s okay, I think I’ll come take a look. Wouldn’t hurt to, right? At least there’s free food.”

“Right,” Nanami nods along. “Are you sure?”

You lean back down to grab your keys before closing and locking the doors, eyebrows furrowed at his comment. “Why, you don’t think I should come in? Is he a weirdo?”

“No, I’m glad you are, and he’s not a bad guy or anything. He’s just… really into it.”

You nervously smile up at Nanami. “I think I’ll take my chances.”

You lock your car and follow Nanami as he leads you to the store's front entrance. He opens the door for you, and you thank him quietly as you slip under the roof and he’s now the one behind you. He tips his head towards one of the game rooms towards the back of the store, and you cautiously walk in that direction, your eyes darting all around you. There’s plenty of figurines on display in the glass cabinets, a few Digimon trinkets on the windowsills, a huge poster on the wall in front of you with a charmingly messy drawing of the WarGreymon digivolution line with an arrow pointing to the entrance.

Your nerves buzz. Whether it’s because you’re afraid this guy’s going to quiz you on your knowledge or excited to finally meet someone in the Real World that you can actually hold a conversation about the franchise with, you don’t know, but you're too nervous to really care.

You could also just be hungry. You can smell the food through the door.

Before you can grab the door handle of the game room to turn it, though, someone on the other side pulls it open, and you hear an audible gasp from them when the two of you meet eyes.

Oh.

Oh.

It’s that guy you see with Nanami around campus—the tall one with white hair and glasses. He's dressed similar to you in a pair of grey sweatpants and an old band shirt with the logo so faded you can barely even read it.

You see him look at Nanami, then back at you, then back at Nanami, then back at you again.

“Hi,” you greet shyly, now suddenly aware of how close the two of you are, barely a meter separating you.

“Hi,” he awkwardly lets the word fall from his mouth, seemingly in some sort of disbelief. His eyes fall to your necklace, just barely peeking out from behind the neck of your tee shirt. “Are you, uh, here for the DTCG game night…?”

You nod, lips pulled in a nervous smile. “Yeah.”

“Like, to play?”

“Um, yes…?” You take out the box from your pocket. “Here’s my deck.”

And once the words sink in, he just about lights up, a grin now on his face as he throws up his arms in celebration.

“Woo! We got one person!”

There’s a chorus of cheers (and a few groans) from behind him, and he moves out of the way promptly to usher you into the space. “Please, please, come in!”

You look back at Nanami who simply rolls his eyes with a small smile, and you step into the room, careful not to trip over your feet in front of all these people. There’s a desk towards the front with a sign-in sheet and a pen, so you quickly fill in your name and deck color before taking a quick look around the room.

It looks like any other ordinary club party, save for some playmats stacked at the front table and small motifs around the room. All eyes are on you now, but people have their own food, drinks, and seem to have been talking casually amongst themselves at different tables and at the edges of the room. You thankfully don’t look out of place at all because no one is wearing anything fancier than a shirt with a collar (that person being Nanami). Trays of food that’re probably going to end up being leftovers for the next week are lined on a table to the side, and there’s a cute Gerbemon drawn on another poster by the trashcan to show where to throw things away.

The guy who opened the door is still brimming with energy, kinda like his crest’s just gotten activated, and he turns back around to face you. Funnily enough, he does have the necklace on: a blue tag with the crest of light engraved into it. It must’ve been hidden by his shirt earlier and shaken forward when he greeted you.

Guess this is him.

“Thank you for coming! My name’s Gojo!” He smiles, his hands pressed flat against each other at the side of his face. You give your name and a wave to greet him, and he leans in closer to you, having to bend his knees to meet you eye-level. You blush slightly, but you’re too frozen to move away. “Say, you look familiar. Have I met you before?”

“No shit, she’s wearing our college orientation shirt!” Someone shouts from behind him.

They’re promptly shushed, and you awkwardly laugh and scratch your cheek with your pointer finger. “I know Nanami, so maybe you’ve seen me talking to him around campus. I think I’ve seen you around before, too.”

The realization dawns on him, and he nods to himself. “Right! That, and I think I recognize you from the library. You study on the 6th floor?”

You nod. Honestly, you’re too occupied with your schoolwork when you’re at the library to pay attention to anyone else around you, so you aren’t surprised you don’t remember seeing him around there.

Promptly, Gojo shoos Nanami away and orients himself to be facing the same direction as you again, his arms spread out wide. “Well, grab something to snack on, and take a seat! Actually, let me know where you wanna sit, I’ll set up the table.”

“Sure! Uh,” you start, and you point at a table towards the opposite corner of the room, “is over there okay?"

“Whatever you want!” He chirps happily, and he practically skips over to grab a playmat and a handful of memory markers. He yanks on the back of one of his friends’ shirts to get his help setting up, and the long-haired ravenette gently knocks at Gojo’s head before coming along.

After you’re done grabbing your food (seriously, what’s with this spread?), you walk over to the table you’d pointed toward earlier, and you carefully put down your plate at the free space towards the end. Gojo’s friend is off standing somewhere else now, talking with Nanami and some other people you vaguely recognize, so it’s just you and the man of the hour where you are. There’s a cute Adventure 01 playmat between the two of you and a clay Koromon as the memory marker, which makes you smile to yourself.

You carefully twirl your fork to gather some noodles onto it, and Gojo leans down to grab something from a backpack. As he’s digging through it, he tuts the digivolution animation sound to himself, and you hum along yourself while you eat. As you take a bite, you faintly hear what sounds like a deck box opening and closing, so you figure now’s as good a time as any to ask.

“So, Gojo, who do you play?”

“You’ll see in just a second, let me count my cards real quick. I usually play blue, though,” he hums, moving back up into his chair.

Blue? You suppose you’d peg someone like him as a Magnamon player. Sucks for you, though, your deck isn’t strong enough as-is to have any chance against him. Even if he isn't playing Magnamon, blue is an awful matchup for purple.

“Who do you play?” He asks obliviously.

“I have a few other decks, but I brought Beelstarmon today,” you answer halfheartedly.

“Oh, I haven’t played against purple in a while, it’ll be fun!”

“Huh?” You say that more to yourself than to him. Does he take pleasure in knowing he’s about to mop the floor with you? He seems oblivious to your concerns, though, happily humming to himself again.

“Do you play any other colors?” He asks.

“Oh! Uh,” you gulp nervously, “I main yellow, but I like playing purple, too. I tried building green a while ago, though, just not really for me.”

He nods along, hands steady as he continues to count to himself. “That’s me and red. I really wanted to build an AncientGreymon deck, but I get too anxious playing without def. Sucks because I love the evo line, but I figure they’ll eventually have better blue-red hybrid decks that I’ll enjoy playing later. I have some white decks, I guess, but they’re so boring to play, especially D-Reaper, like, I can’t even play aggressive until the set is almost over! I really ought to branch out into black, I think…”

As he drones on, you peek up at him through your eyelashes. The more he talks, the more you realize that he’s just blissfully unaware of how anxious you are, and the more his carefree energy rubs off on you.

For the most part, everyone else in the room doesn’t pay either of you any mind. Your table is practically its own island, everyone else floating around and just making their own fun amongst themselves. It doesn’t seem like Gojo minds that they’re all doing their own Digimon-unrelated things, so you choose to ignore it too.

Getting a better look at him now, even at table height, he looks so tall, kinda like the chair he’s sitting in is too small for him. You see him smiling while he talks, occasionally swiping away something on his card sleeves as he counts them, and he seems to still be shaking with quiet excitement. His glasses hide his eyes a bit from this angle, but they sit nicely at the bridge of his nose. When they fall slightly, he throws his head back so he doesn’t lose count of his deck by moving his hands elsewhere.

He still gets distracted, though, getting so caught up in what he’s saying that he loses count anyway and curses at himself for needing to start over and make sure he’s not missing anything. Everytime that happens, his friends within earshot snicker at him and he barks back at them with some corny line from the anime, then immediately looks to you to make sure you catch the reference.

You didn’t think someone being so… dorky could be so cute.

You continue eating while he talks, nodding and giving answers when he asks for them. He seems to never pause, but it doesn’t feel like he’s talking at you—more like he’s trying to say as much as he can now while he’s got your attention. Not that he’d lose it this way, you latch onto every word because it’s not often that you get to listen to someone who actually enjoys this interest of yours in the same way you do, but also because you want to stay in your dreamland for a little bit longer before he places down his broken Magnamon combo and destroys you.

If nothing else, you suppose that even if you end up losing every game tonight, you’ll have at least had a good conversation with another fan.

By the time he’s finally ready to start the match, you’ve already finished most of what you picked up for dinner, and the two of you swap decks to shuffle. You aren’t supposed to look when you shuffle, but he hands his deck to you face-up, and you catch a glimpse of the top card.

Your hands also brush slightly in the exchange, but you hardly acknowledge it in your surprise.

You raise a brow and bring the deck closer to look at. “You’re playing Cendrillmon?”

“Yep!” Gojo grins, already starting to mix up your cards.

“…Didn't you just say you play blue?”

“Ah, ah, ah,” he clicks his tongue teasingly, “I said I usually play blue. But Cendrillmon’s my favorite digimon, so I figured I’d play her tonight.”

You light up. “That’s so cute! I love when people build their decks with digimon they actually like,” you gush.

“Right!? I wish it was more common,” he sighs wistfully. “Is Beelstarmon your favorite, too?”

You shake your head, turning over his deck so you can shuffle blind. “I like her a lot, but not my favorite. I just felt like playing purple today.”

You give the name of your favorite digimon when he asks, and he gives an enthusiastic thumbs-up to you as you both continue to shuffle.

“Well, I’m glad you brought purple, it would’ve been kinda boring if we were both yellow.”

“Probably, yeah. Did you only bring one deck?”

He shrugs, looking over to the door to the room. “Yeah, I honestly didn’t really think anyone was gonna come, so I just have the one.”

“Oh,” you say quietly. Right, like Nanami mentioned earlier.

“How’d you hear about tonight, by the way?”

“I saw a flyer at North Campus, most of my classes are around there.”

“Oh, sweet! I think I sent Suguru to put them up around there, I’ll have to be extra nice to him later,” he jokes.

“Sure.” After a pause, you blurt out what’s stewing in your mouth. “I’m sorry.”

"Why, what's wrong? You didn't do anything."

"I mean, I'm sorry there's not more people here. It must be disappointing."

When he hears your concern, he chuckles and waves you off with an honest grin. “Don’t be sorry! You’re here now, so it’s already much better turnout than I expected! Either way, it’s good to have an excuse for the crew to get together, and it still would’ve been a party even if it didn’t work out. I’ll introduce you to everyone after we play a few matches.”

“You’re more positive than I’d be, I’d probably be crying in the bathroom if nobody showed up to an event I planned.”

“Maybe, but, like I said, there is someone here, and she’s having a great time!” He exclaims, holding your deck out for you to take. “Right?”

You look up at his face, a nervous smile on his features as he waits for your answer. His eyes avoid yours, but you still bring up his cards to hide behind them as you smile.

“Yeah, I’d say so.”

His lips lose their nervous twitch as he sighs in relief. “Okay, thank goodness. I wouldn’t want to let down such a pretty girl."

You lower his cards to the table and laugh dryly. “Ha ha, very funny, Gojo.”

His careful smile suddenly drops and his eyebrows furrow behind his glasses. “Uh, I wasn’t joking.”

You look down at yourself, then back at him, and before you can retort with some other kind of comeback, his friend from earlier—the one with long black hair—passes by your table and puts a hand on Gojo's shoulder.

“Satoru, play nice.” Then he looks at you and slyly smiles. “Sorry about him, he’s a huge nerd.”

He groans, and he looks up at his friend frantically. "You say that like it’s a bad thing! Shoo! Leave us alone, quit embarrassing me!”

As the two of them continue to bicker, you bite back a smile at Gojo’s expense. He occasionally looks to you while him and his friend throw other empty insults at each other, his smile telling you he’s sorry you’re having to see the exchange (and maybe that you thought he was joking when he called you pretty). When the other guy leaves and tells you, once again, that he’s sorry you have to deal with the white-haired boy, you let out a small laugh that brings Gojo's attention fully back to you.

Gojo clears his throat and straightens up in his chair again, stretching out his hands in front of him with a forced smile. “Well, don’t mind him.”

His (very bad) attempt at nonchalance makes you laugh again.

"What's so funny?"

You chuckle to yourself and shake your head. "Nothing."

Once your smile has passed enough for you to be able to get back to shuffling, you hear him whine from across the table, now holding your deck even closer to you now for you to take. “Why are you taking so long to shuffle?! I wanna start playing!”

You roll your eyes at him, playfully hitting his hand with his own cards. “Well, excuse me for wanting a fair matchup.”

“You’re excused!” He laughs loudly at his own joke, but he waits patiently for you to finish, his head down on the table as he watches you.

After another couple seconds, you pass off your cards back to each other, your hands touching again. Neither of you acknowledge it, now occupied with setting up your cards on the mat, but you steal glances at him as you do to make sure he isn’t uncomfortable with the contact. It is your first time meeting him, even if you have seen him around a few odd times before.

It seems he has the same thought, and your eyes catch each other awkwardly. He chuckles to himself, a hand now on the back of his neck, and he tips his cards towards you in some kind of gesture that asks if you’re fine. You nod, and he shyly tips his head down again, a slight flush under his eyes.

Once everything else is set up, the two of you place down five cards from the top of your deck at the top of your playerspace, and you quickly pull out a coin from your wallet to wordlessly decide who goes first. He tells you “heads,” and he cheers when you flip it and you lift your palm to reveal heads.

“Okay, you ready?”

“Yep.”

You both hover your right hands over the playmat, then nod to each other before pulling them across the board to grab your cards.

“Digital Gate, open!”