I have found this amazing headcanon-analysis of the the potential poly-relationship between Takeru, Hikari and Meiko by @uniarycode (please give it a read, it’s great!!!) and I realized something. Back in mid-2021, I had started one HUGE compilation of my headcanons for the relationship between Taichi, Sora and Koushirou to play out... And never finished that one.
Since I had quite a few epiphanies in recent months, I finally wanted to sit down and write down all my headcanons for them – and how they’d actually manage to become a polyamorous relationship based on things that may have happened that way or similarly in canon (slightly tilted to the left, maybe more in an AU kind of way).
LONG POST AHEAD.
Platonic / Friendship
Taichi and Sora have gotten to know each other even before their families moved from Hikarigaoka to Odaiba, so I’d say they probably already became friends in 1st grade (at the age of approximately 6), so calling them actual childhood friends isn’t too farfetched.
Sora played for the girls’ football team until the end of 3rd grade and then joined the boys’ team when she and Taichi are in 4th grade and that’s where they become an unstoppable attacking force. Since they’re already friends, they’re reading each other’s movements easily, understanding each other blindly and giving each other advantages and spotlight. Football is also the main thing they bond over after school and they regularly meet to gush over recent local league results, arguing about who are the best players, etc.
Koushirou joins their club when he’s in 4th grade, approx. half a year before they all go together to Summer camp – and as it was clearly stated in the novels, he wouldn’t have gone if Taichi hadn’t invited him. Taichi and Sora are immediately taking him under their wing, as they can both tell he’s not the most athletic and has a hard time keeping up with the pace of their other teammates, so their natural instinct to take care of younger ones takes over easily. Taichi is also the one who first asks Koushirou whether he wants to hang out with them outside of the club – to which Koushirou reacts with complete and utter confusion. He turns him down the first few times, as he is 100% sure that Taichi won’t even enjoy his company, as they do not seem to have a lot in common at first – but Taichi doesn’t give up. He’s not pushy about it, which Koushirou is very grateful for, since spending time with people is still pretty exhausting to him at this point in time. But he quickly discovers how kind Taichi actually is, always praising his passes with a loud “Nice shot!” all across the pitch and doesn’t shy away from telling him that he should be proud of his ability to read their opponents’ positioning, calling him “the best offside trap of all times”. Sora is naturally protective of Koushirou as she senses that he’s reserved and not very comfortable around others and thus gently nudges him, asking what he would like to do after school. They end up playing video games at the Yagami residence, either all three of them, just Taichi and him (or them getting joined by Hikari every once in a while). In the following months, it rather becomes a thing for Taichi and Koushirou to hang out and Taichi quickly notices that the kid he first perceived as rather shy has quite a bold and forward nature when it comes to solving riddles and stuff (mainly through them doing homework together). He liked Koushirou before that, but seeing him get excited and outgoing over things makes it even easier for Taichi to bond with him.
After their adventures in the Digital World, both Sora (6th grade) and Koushirou (5th grade) leave the football club to pursue other interests – Sora joins the tennis club as Koushirou regularly visits (and eventually captains) the computer club. Taichi often (jokingly) mopes about them “leaving him behind” – at the beginning, he was indeed disappointed, but deep down, he is happy that they’re doing things they’re more interested in, as they’ve all grown more confident in recent months.
In terms of “hanging out”, Sora and Koushirou live in the same building and before entering middle school, they tend to go home together a lot – and also end up doing homework together at times. He helps her with English and several Science related subjects (she’s decent at Math and Biology, but can’t stand Physics and Chemistry) and she helps him with Social Studies and Arts. Taichi tags along at times, but doesn’t get as invested in their conversations about the subjects, even if they try their best to make him take his tasks seriously. Koushirou also helps Sora in doing research about flower arrangement, as she struggles with it a lot.
All three of them aren’t particularly good at talking about feelings, but the longer they know each other, the more they pick up on each other’s interests, backgrounds and families. Koushirou already knows a lot about the Yagami family due to hanging out there frequently, he knew about Taichi’s and Hikari’s past already and Yuuko has basically accepted him as second son anyway, so she tells him a lot about her kids’ childhood. When he is at Sora’s place, he learns that her father works as university professor in Kyoto – as we all know, he’ll work with him one day in his research of Digital World affairs and whenever Sora is back home, she’d meet up with her father and Koushirou for lunch or dinner. Plus, he is getting along very well with her mother, who cherishes him for his calmer attitude – in comparison to Taichi, whose charisma she still finds charming, even if she is aware that him and her daughter have had their moments because of that.
Taichi is the one who first learns about Sora’s interest in fashion – and about her crush on Yamato. He discovers both of it unintentionally – the former not only because of the infamous hair clip disaster, but because even he, whose own fashion sense revolves around mainly sports gear, notices that her sporty wardrobe changed over time. As she spends a lot of time with tennis practice and preparations for tournaments, they don’t have many opportunities to meet during middle school and he does wonder when exactly she started to wear skirts that much whenever they meet. He’s observant enough that he notices her getting a lot more flustered around Yamato and at first, she’s even acting apologetic (even defensive) towards him when he points it out towards her. Even if it bugs him that they don’t spend a lot of time together anymore, he’s the one who pushes her to confess to Yamato – it’s a phase in which they butt heads a lot, especially because his well-meaning attempts to encourage her to “not wear skirts if you don’t want to, it’s not that hard” aren’t always appropriately phrased. However, they’re still there for each other whenever it’s needed and Taichi really, REALLY wants Sora to be happy after all.
Koushirou doesn’t purposely intervene when they’re having quarrels, but he’s also naturally the one Taichi turns to in order to talk about her and her distant behaviour (since they’re friends after all and even if “emotional stuff” isn’t their subject of expertise, the conversation just naturally goes there, because they’re both nuts that care a lot). It also happens frequently that Sora and Koushirou bond over Taichi being “like that”, they both know how he can be at times and as much as they both cherish him, it’s something Koushirou often cannot help but side with her over.
It takes until high school before Taichi and Sora really start to get along with less teenage hormones arguments again and it starts with small gestures and attempts – like her attending Taichi’s football matches again occasionally and him giving her a book on design and colour coordination for Christmas. Around that time, she does return to a more Sora-like clothing style, but it takes time for her to figure out what exactly that means.
During their transition period between middle- and highschool, their schedules are extremely off – Taichi still often finds himself visiting Koushirou by his window after football practice, since the Izumis live on the ground floor. When they know that Sora is around, they text her to join them there as well. Koushirou himself doesn’t attend any clubs in middle school anymore, as he wholly committed to doing research (and mentor work) for the new Chosen Children, so he either ends up at home early or spends a lot of time at the computer rooms in school. Sometimes, Taichi picks him up from there, even if he has to go out of his way for that. (He also did that at times when he was in middle school and Koushirou still in his computer club in elementary school whenever football practice was cancelled, so the other club members often wondered why that – kinda popular – upperclassman was around that often. There were rumours… Lots of them.)
When Koushirou learns about Sora’s affinity for fashion – he notices the kimonos she made for the culture festival in school –, he is very keen on helping her with research here as well. Not only does it inspire him to create his infamous clothing app, but she also kindly nudges him towards figuring out his own preferred style (because it’s still easier for her to see that for others than for herself). His gear is either formal or reminiscent of what he always wore (Button downs and wide pants) and her suggestions lead him to wear more comfortable things, especially when he’s spending hours upon hours on his laptop.
When Koushirou enters highschool, they actually pick up the habit of chatting and calling each other over the phone a lot more. They did that in middle school through the digiterminal, but only for the sake of Digital World missions, not because of private things. You know – they still learn how to communicate. Taichi still isn’t very good at dealing with technology and Sora isn’t too used to texting either (and usually prefers to call), but Koushirou eventually convinces them that electronic communication isn’t too bad to stay in touch better (as he already demonstrates by texting a lot with Mimi in America and Sora actually starts doing this with her as well).
Falling for each other / going into romance
Each of them coming to terms with their feelings being more than just platonically based – takes time, to say the least. A LOT of time.
For Sora, the period of alienating herself from the group in her early twenties to find her purpose, is also the time when she has to contemplate whether or not she is even ready to be in a committed long-term relationship at all. With Yamato being focused on figuring out his own career and her figuring out if design is really the thing she intends to ditch the iemoto-family-inheritance over – they may actually come to the conclusion to stop seeing each other, but remaining on friendly terms.
It’s after her and Taichi had to say good-bye to their Digimon partners (for the time being at least) that they actually decide to meet each other in private again. They’re both still going to different universities and since they’ve both had a tendency to distance themselves from everything and everyone else for quite some time, it’s hard for either of them to make the first step towards one another. Thankfully, Koushirou has always been adamant on the “please just use the phone, you don’t have to write a wall of text, just send a simple message” part of their communication process – especially now that he is making his own phones at his own company. He, being the office shut-in he occasionally is, has to make sure they MAKE that move towards each other. To ask each other to have lunch or dinner, meeting after university/study hours – or to actually visit Koushirou at his office to have said dinner together (and silently apologizing to him for being so stubborn, even if they would never really admit that).
Koushirou himself is perfectly ready to just let the other two do their thing – despite him having had a crush on Mimi in highschool and (dreadfully) knowing exactly what these “suddenly changing” feelings mean, he doesn’t approach the situation in an initiative way. Taichi was always the person he had been closest with, physically and emotionally, he never took his own attachment to and adoration for him in a non-platonic way – until it finally hits him one day and no matter how much and how often Tentomon tries to encourage him to face that kind of revelation, he refuses to do that at first. It doesn’t help that he has always seen Sora as that wonderfully supportive friend who is also pretty gorgeous but, unlike Mimi, never had caused butterflies in his stomach, but more of a very warm, very affectionate glimmer, now that he thinks about it... But he decides not to get in the way, not with both of them finally getting closer to one another. Because he comes to the conclusion that, objectively speaking, they would obviously be more drawn to each other than to him. It doesn’t matter that he himself feels attracted to both of them, that could be “an anomaly” after all. Plus, he could not imagine someone like Sora – who apparently fell for the likes of Yamato AND Taichi – to fall for someone like him, just for example. And neither would Taichi… Right? Speaking of anomaly, he thinks to himself, what does that even mean in this case? So his curiosity gets the better of him and he does research, lots and lots of research on unconventional, non-heteronormative relationship dynamics, the phenomenon of being attracted to several genders and only after a certain level of closeness, etc., and oh boy, does he get lost in that…
Taichi is still hesitant when it comes to facing his feelings as well – of course he has somewhat recognized by now that he is definitely attracted to redheads (if the porn he hides beneath his bed gives you any indication towards that), but going for a close friend’s ex-girlfriend who is also one of his own best friends while simultaneously coming to the conclusion that his other best friend ALSO has some impact on him despite being a guy is… Quite conflicting, to put it lightly. He wants to do SOMETHING, he wants to work towards the unification of the Digital and the real world, strengthening the relationships – but how does one deal with all of that, your own mental health after having lost your literal soulmate, AND the idea that you may have fallen for two people at once? He’s HAPPY that he and Sora (awkwardly) try to reconcile after all this time, seeing her slowly but steadily thriving in figuring out that creating fashion designs is exactly what she had always wanted. It also BUGS him that Koushirou is so committed to finding a way to restore his and Agumon’s partnership while totally overworking himself, he wants to shake him, tell him that it’s fine. Also tell Sora that he’ll always be supporting her with everything he can, but… He doesn’t really know how to do all of that (yet).
Sora feels that change in herself as well, but it confuses her even more. Going for fashion design after having concealed her true desires for such a long time, breaking through expectations and family traditions, is one thing – but going for two men at once after having broken up with someone out of their shared friend group feels like it should be absolutely out of question.
And thus, no progress was made for a long time – until the others begin to feel the change as well. Mimi noticing that Sora had suddenly become weirdly talkative on the phone (or in texting) swooning over Koushirou improving the design apps he had been working on for her for years, encouraging and supporting her through his gadgets. Mimi feels like something in her universe has shifted a little, because usually, SHE was one who praised Koushirou in front of Sora, so her getting so open about these things feels off. Not to mention that she hasn’t even mentioned getting into any disagreements or arguments with Taichi – on the contrary, she looks genuinely serene, almost bubbly when even mentioning his name.
That’s it, Mimi thinks to herself, and contacts “the squad”, namely Miyako (and in extension Hikari) as well as Takeru as “spies” to gather information. Takeru gently nudges Yamato, trying to figure out how his current state with Sora is, leaving Yamato just as confused, because he hasn’t noticed much of a change after having broken up with her, with them just ”texting normally”. He does mention that Taichi felt a bit less depressed than he was just a few months ago. Hikari confirms the same thing in regards to Taichi, but also claims to have the impression that he seems rather “confused” and “spaced out”, leaving behind things at the Yagami residence, forgetting meetings in general, etc, but she blamed that on him being too focused on his thesis, even after having handed it in a while ago. And Takeru can only agree with Mimi that, for some reason, Koushirou appears to be strangely hyper as well – despite knowing that he hasn’t made any progress in getting Agumon and the others back yet. Miyako is the one who makes the dramatic deduction that something as scandalous as a “love triangle” might be going on here; she was half joking, but Hikari starts to beam slightly, sensing that something else must be going on.
And so Mimi and Takeru try to dig at Koushirou first – because they both KNOW what an emotional mess he CAN be if approached from the right side. To their surprise, he is actually more grounded in his own deduction of the situation, having come to the conclusion that, yes, his feelings may fall under the category of polyamory, but he still has no intention of moving towards that… Until they both start to push him in that direction LOUDLY, trying their best to invalidate his rational approach (“Who cares if you can’t get married with two people at once, what is the Digital World for then, do they even have a law system specifying ANYTHING in terms of romantic relationships? Ha, didn’t think so!”).
Miyako is the one who tries to dig deeper at Sora – and Hikari does the same with Taichi. They’re both feeling easily dragged into a corner, not directly admitting what it is that moves them at the moment, but both Miyako and Hikari are addressing the whole “But didn’t you say you finally wanted to become happy again?” issue they’ve been dealing with for quite a while now, leaving both of them in thought.
It still takes some time of contemplation for either of them – but seeing how Taichi and Sora are even more reluctant to face their feelings, Koushirou is the one who eventually approaches them in a more… Matter-of-factly “That’s the way it is, at least how I see it, what do you propose we shall do about this?” kind of of way that baffles the other two even more. Initially, Taichi and Sora had decided to drag Koushirou out of his office to take a break from overworking – so they did not expect him to throw that bomb on them in return.
A night of very confusing conversations trying to give the whole dilemma a name (usually followed by long moments of silence) later – they decide to actually give it a try. It’s weird and surreal and, again, neither of them is really able to fully process what HAS been happening between them, but… They know they care for each other. Deeply. And being in each other’s lives makes them better, feel better, wanting to be better, much better than they did when they were dealing with everything by themselves. They’re aware it will not be easy, on the contrary, figuring this out will take its time, its toll, and emotional breakdowns, probably changing the dynamics they’ve been developing ever since they were kids forever. But… They decide it’s worth trying.
The relationship / dating
Once their partnerships with their Digimon are restored (thanks to them finally finding their own personal happiness), they all start to seriously work towards their future – this time, together.
Sora, becoming a professional designer of Japanese clothing with her own twist on it, is responsible for providing not only her two partners but also their Digimon with appropriate attire for their respective fields of working; mainly suits (for the official conferences and ambassador meetings), but also more utility/occasion related clothing (such as the laboratory clothing Koushirou wears).
Koushirou on the other hand also provides them all with gadgets for their work fields, with Sora not only getting improved versions of his fashion apps, but also multi-function glasses for her exhibitions, based on the distortion tracking goggles he keeps providing Taichi with. Him and Taichi also work together compiling the data the latter needs for his speeches.
Taichi is the one being away the most due to diplomat duty in the future and it took a while to get there too, with various internships, travels to the Digital World – thus, electronic communication becomes more important than ever. Whenever he’s home, him and Sora cook together, as she has taught him more complicated dishes outside of the more simplified ones he was capable of (Omurice…) and he brings home lots of recipes from countries all over the world for them to try out together. Koushirou, being among the least picky eaters out there, enjoys watching them like that.
When the situation allows it, they also use the Digital World as gateway-space to have dates – either in the explorative kind or just finding a quiet space to relax.
Since their dynamics and energy levels are so different, each combination would also have their own little dates without the third partner. Taichi cannot really deal with fashion talk like the other two do, Sora can’t keep track on the other two getting into their own nerd rambles and Koushirou, as mentioned, is not in on the cooking passion of the other two and also not as invested in sports anymore either – just for example. In regards to the latter, Taichi and Sora would definitely encourage Koushirou to work out more though – and he agrees if THEY agree to get more acquainted with the technology he provides for them, making sure they don’t break anything unintentionally and getting hurt in the process.
Spending time together may not happen as regularly as either of them would like to, but they enjoy it each and every time and make use of it to the fullest. They’d also have movie nights and very rambly calls on whatever was going on at the moment. They’d also have a group chat (and usually, it’d be two of them rambling with the third one going “What the heck, WHERE HAVE I BEEN???”).
Taichi is the most physical from the very beginning on, as his way of reconciling with Agumon also pathed the way for him to do as Hikari said – going for his own happiness. He also gets super (over-)protective of them, especially when they get sick. Whereas Koushirou rarely initiates, but does have his moments of allowing himself one – or two – shoulders to lean on. He was never good at asking for help – but having two very persistent partners who basically force him to face his own vulnerability as overwhelming forces of nature isn’t something he feels like protesting against too much. Plus, his love language has always been “acts of service”, so doing something for them in return, surprising them with his own personal declarations of love (like initiating the relationship in the first place) is definitely getting to them. As mentioned, the theme between them is still learning to communicate – and that goes specifically for their needs. Sora takes a while, but once she does get a grip on her own wants, needs and expectations, she does become more vocal (and physical) about wanting/needing affection, not only giving it, as that is her most natural approach. Comforting the other two is something that comes naturally to her – but them teaming up to make HER open up is something she is not used to at first, and has always been struggling with.
Their families had been mainly supportive from the very beginning; the Yagamis would basically see it as an extension of their son’s life generally being more “out of the norm” than anything they’d EVER witnessed and take it with a ton of humour; the Izumis probably would have accepted any lifestyle their son was going for as long as he felt comfortable with it and are extra happy to see him form a family on his own after he had been in doubt about his own whereabouts for so long; the Takenouchis had been the most difficult to deal with in comparison, but Sora’s father actually just wishes for Sora to never doubt the connections she shares with her partners, even with periods of long distance taking place here and there. Whereas her mother DID need time to accept the unconventional nature of their relationship at first, which is just what Sora was scared of. However, in the end, she cherishes both Taichi and Koushirou despite their intensely varying dynamics with her daughter and, just like with her career, eventually gives Sora her blessings.
As for their friends, most of them had been surprised at the outcome at first (with the likes of Iori and Jyou being most baffled at the possibility of such a thing even being possible), but all got used to it, with varying degrees of time passing. The “squad” had already been supportive from the start, Daisuke had nothing but adoration for his “senpais” and Yamato needed a while to really process what had been happening (actually feeling somewhat bad about not having been able to at least talk to Taichi or Sora up front), but was just as welcoming in the end as the rest.
Despite Taichi being the cheesiest in the relationship, getting all romantic and mushy, Sora having the tendency to mother the others to at least SOME degree and either of them usually being the ones initiating physicality and acts of affection – Koushirou would actually end up being the one to propose to the others first; just like at the beginning of their relationship, by actually using the argument Mimi was using to convince him back then, claiming that they could easily get married in the Digital World.
tbc
