ughhhhhh 7 months to update even though I wrote all this in a week, why am I like this
This chapter mostly serves to introduce a familiar character from SP in more depth before we dive into the main antagonist's appearance next time. Enjoy 'n' stuff~ <3
PHANTOM PROJECT
5.5
*
It had just started feeling like October.
Olivine City was cold and remarkably devoid of tourists as a result. Locals brave enough to roam the streets braced themselves with layer after layer of clothing, their pokémon similarly wrapped up in custom knitted hats and scarves. Gracie, a fire-type who found the changing of the seasons more tolerable than most, kept her gaze on the dying hawthorn leaves covering the boardwalk leading to the sea. Crisp and shriveled up, their dryness wouldn’t react well to the flames on her back if they touched. She found some amusement in the way nature left her such an easy way to destroy a city if she chose to do so…
Gracie flinched as she noticed a palossand waking from its slumber out of the corner of her eye. That meant she was a few blocks away from the Pokémon Center now, where the rest of her team sans Senori competed over a game of spades. The furret had claimed to want to convince Sai that apartment hunting would be a better use of his time, but now, he jogged on all fours behind her. The quilava guessed that conversation hadn’t gone as planned.
And she could understand Sai’s reluctance, really. Trainers were offered a hefty discount at all Johto Centers, not to mention free food and rather cozy, hotel-like accommodations. The Nurse Joy on duty most often knew them all by name and never turned down a request of theirs. Still, it’d have been nice to have a permanent home to return to.
But Gracie couldn’t complain, not really. Things were quiet and peaceful overall. And Senori livened things up when she needed it.
It came as no surprise to her that Senori suggested they go for a swim once they reached the sea proper.
“A fire-type afraid of water…” he mused, grinning. “So typical. I wanna prove to you it’s not so scary!”
The quilava yawned, unimpressed with his bravado. “Yeah, no, because I know how it’s gonna go,” she said. “As soon as you dip your toe in there, you’ll complain that it’s freezing and demand we go home to warm up again.”
“What’s that got to do with you swimming?” Senori folded his arms and puffed out his cheeks, pouting. “The water shouldn’t be too cold for
you, right?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Won’t be much fun if you don’t join me, though.”
Senori started, nearly tripping over his own tail. He caught himself in time and mumbled quietly as he brushed away a clod of dirt stuck under his foot. Laughing, Gracie reminded him that he’d been helping her settle ever since she switched trainers. Trying out new things together was a staple of their friendship already.
The furret took a deep breath and said, “Okay, just for that, you’re definitely going for a swim today.”
“Whatever you say.”
As it turned out, the duo practically had the beach to themselves, too, aside from a bale of shuckle arranged in a circle, peering into each other’s shells and combing through their collections of oran berries. They dumped the overripe ones onto the sand and retreated to the top of a nearby sea stack. A lone krabby scuttled by and gathered the scraps, then hissed as Senori and Gracie strolled by. Bubbles foaming from its mouth were carried away by the wind and toward the latest wave rolling in.
Gracie didn’t shy away as the wave soaked one of her paws. She’d visited the beach before, and though she had a habit of purposely blocking out unpleasant memories, she found herself reliving the moment when her new team decided to make Olivine City their home. Sai had rented a beach house, despite how expensive they were, to help everyone unwind after the Team Rocket incident. Senori joked with him about never getting to take baths, Kuiora tried to teach him the art of swimming, and even Atis spun on the water’s surface like a circus acrobat just to make him laugh!
Of course, Gracie herself had settled into a shady spot on the shore, where the sand was cool and the sun couldn’t taunt her flames. She watched on, stiff-backed and quiet and invisible, searching for the inevitable sign that would confirm her choice to join Sai’s team was a mistake.
In the end, she found none.
She supposed that explained why she’d ventured to the beach of her own accord today—to continue the search. All the tension engulfing the team, all their jokes and attempts at pretending... Gracie got the distinct feeling that toughing it out with them would be worth it. But eventually, maybe she’d realize this wasn’t a battle worth fighting. Maybe she’d rescind her choice to stay with the team. To her it was a baffling, paradoxical choice to make for reasons she had no words for, but a choice nonetheless.
As for Senori? He chose to use a weakened version of his slam attack on Gracie. She stumbled deeper into the shore, the lower half of her body submerged completely. On all fours, he sprinted after her, stifling a giggle before he caved in and the sound of his laughter echoed in her ears.
Instinct told her to draw in her flames as she struggled to stand up straight and avoid plunging face first into the undertow. When she finally stabilized, she noticed Senori next to her, punished with chattering teeth and damp fur while her body temperature kept her warm.
“That’s what you get,” she said jokingly, digging her paws in the sand on the ocean floor below her. She forced herself to stay put, to be grounded in the present moment and not ruin the fun for her best friend.
“Yeah, yeah.” He shivered and shook his fur, droplets plopping back into the ocean where they belonged. “At least the water’s not too hot for me in the summer. Then it’s perfect!”
“Since you like to brag so much,” she said, “show me what I’m supposed to know, see if I can get the hang of this swimming thing.”
“About that…” The furret rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. Peering out into the distance, he lost his train of thought, his voice replaced by the undulation of the waves sounding slow and subdued like a soft sigh.
Gracie rolled her eyes. “You don’t actually know how to swim, do you?” she said.
His head snapped back in her direction, a grin plastered on his face as he said, “Nope.”
“Figures.” She paused, not moving an inch. “So, what do we do now?”
“Probably the only thing we
can do is learn to swim, you know, together… or go back and see Sai and co.”
It was a lose-lose situation. The winter-like weather would take its toll on them in no time at all, sooner rather than later for the furret. And if she remembered right, the sun would start setting soon, at which point they’d risk having to navigate back to the Pokémon Center in the dark. Yet the thought of spending any longer in that cramped room, not knowing exactly if and when they’d pack up and settle elsewhere, was enough to persuade Gracie to give swimming a try.
Senori didn’t wait for an answer. “Here, let’s just do this,” he said, and with that, he dipped his paws underwater and grabbed hold of one of Gracie’s. With a swift flick of his wrist, he propelled her leg forward a few inches. “Reach out and touch. Baby steps and all that, right?”
Gracie stared at him, dumbfounded. She hardly called this an accomplishment of any kind, but it was as good a starting point as any.
//
chapter 6 ; [GRACIE]
mindscape
*
“Come on, Sai. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
I lingered in Trainer’s room, lights out and door shut tight. Rennio’s words should’ve come off muffled from the kitchen, but they struck so clear-cut I thought he was screaming them into my ear.
Trainer never bothered to make his bed, so I didn’t have to feel guilty about curling up in the cotton sheets draped onto the floor. There was nowhere else to go without attracting anyone’s attention. Yes, they all probably thought me pathetic for hiding, but by the sound of it, our apartment wouldn’t be
ours much longer. Then we’d lose so much. Then when I’d get to searching for something familiar to see or smell or hear, I wouldn’t be able to find it. I had to hide while I still could and hold on to what we had, while we had it.
“I’m just saying Olivine’s getting boring, and traveling with my closest friends sounds nice. To me, at least.”
“What? Olivine’s
not boring, thank you very much. The sea is here.”
“Not the point, Kuiora,” Rennio said. “He wants to play the hero and help them at his own expense. Oh, and ours. Do you think—”
Atis raised his voice to interrupt Rennio. That was my cue to tune out the conversation completely; he only ever contributed to a serious conversation when he was obligated to play the middleman. I knew how things would play out: Atis would stutter, Ezrem would poke fun, Kuiora would scold both of them, and finally, the jokes would give way to quiet and everyone would go their separate ways until the tension blew up again later.
My back shivered, and I forced myself to focus on keeping my flames suppressed. Not that Trainer would’ve cared if his bed sheets caught fire and reduced the place to a pile of debris, blacker like charcoal, blacker than even the darkness around me. And if I were being honest? Right now, if Trainer ordered a fire blast out of me, I wouldn’t say no, wouldn’t question him unless I never saw a hint of regret afterward. Just how much did we mean to him? The answer to that seemed to depend on the day, ever changing like everything else about him.
As expected, Ezrem and Kuiora started bickering a few moments later. Covering my ears, their voices outside became simple background noise. Unfortunately, that left me alone with my thoughts, and my guilt—that familiar, bottomless pit of guilt—stormed in to chastise me. Trainer was suffering, too, wasn’t he? So how could I judge him so harshly at a time like this?
It was easy, far easier than it should’ve been. There were plenty of ways we could’ve worked through Senori’s death together. Silence was not one of them. We were supposed to be a team, after all. We were eight different bodies, all consumed by the same grief, but still we acted like strangers every time we bumped into each other. It was as if we didn’t trust each other to share in our loss, even if it meant healing and moving on.
I could only hope I was overreacting, and that Trainer hadn’t told us much so he could think on it more and avoid a scene. Rennio, excitable as ever, had stepped in to fill in the missing details first chance he got. Marty and Sasha wanted to chase down a long lost sibling? They were going to travel across Johto, searching for leads? They asked Trainer to be their travel companion because they were worried about him? And of course it was Marty and Sasha, because only they were capable of uprooting all the progress I’d made in life so far…
It seemed to be a trainer thing, disappointing pokémon. Marty gave up on the gym circuit dream years back after learning I didn’t care for him as a trainer, effectively screwing over everyone else on the team—two fliers, a swimmer, and a psychic. They needed open space; fire was best left contained.
As for Sasha, she had wanted to open up a florist shop for trainers to fly out to their loved ones as they traveled. She was going to get her degree in botany, adopt several grass-types from the Azalea shelter, build a massive greenhouse… but she gave up halfway through the paperwork for all these things.
Still, I couldn’t deny that I’d disappointed others as a pokémon just as often, if not more.
The bedroom door opened. Flinching, my paws instinctively latched onto the sheets and pulled them above my head, as if they’d transform into an invisible cloak if I willed them to.
“Oh, Gracie,” Trainer said, his tone flat. “So this is where you went.”
Whimpering, I lowered the sheets and caught a glimpse of him, his hair ragged and head tilted. At least he left the door cracked open so I could gauge his mood better, but then I had to deal with the team’s unhappy grumbling from the kitchen creeping in like a ghost.
“Yes…” I said, but I wasn’t loud enough to drown out the grumbling. I repeated myself and added, “Tired. A little bit sad. Maybe a little more than just a little bit. You know how it goes.”
“That I do,” Trainer said, a hint of a smile in there. “Want me to leave ‘em off as usual?”
“Hmm?”
“The lights, Gracie.”
Right. What else? Trainer noticed my preference for the darkness of his own accord long ago and had adapted to fumbling around, memorizing the location of everything, everywhere—in his own bedroom, and just for my sake. He never even asked me to light the way with my flames.
I nodded, realizing my mistake immediately, but the silence this time was enough. His hands grazed along the bumpy drywall he got permission to paint back when we first moved in and were motivated to make the place our own. Eventually I heard him switch to using the tips of his fingers only, like he was tracing veins on someone’s wrist and searching for their pulse.
When he reached the attached bathroom, he grabbed his electric toothbrush and leaned against the sink. His normal bedtime routine, except his toothbrush clinked against the counter before he picked it up again. No doubt Senori was on his mind; no doubt he’d bumped into a piece of his grief in the darkness when he least expected it; no doubt I’d get but a sigh in response if asked if he was all right.
I wanted to tell him I was there, too. That I felt what he felt, and maybe one of us felt a bit worse than the other or remembered a memory somewhat differently, but that wasn’t the point. I was there, really there, and ready to talk. Didn’t he know that? The darkness didn’t erase our existence.
Wordlessly, Trainer finished up in the bathroom and hopped into bed. He was careful to tiptoe his way there so as to not trip over anything… or anyone.
“It’s early, I know,” he said. Like he really knew the exact thing I was thinking of in that moment. “I’m meeting Mom tomorrow, though. Usual place, if you’re up for it.”
I frowned, remembering how Trainer was kind, yes, but almost to a fault. After everything his mother put him through, he still met with her every month at the Wavefront Café down on Beechwyn Avenue, names I only remember because they reminded me of the ocean and how the water felt caressing my paws. Trainer swore by their black coffee—nowhere else made it quite so bittersweet—and we always seemed to catch the waitress that assured Trainer’s mother that she’d put double provolone on her grilled chicken sandwich at no extra charge.
“Don’t know just yet,” I said slowly. It was the truth, at least. “You think you’ll need me there?”
“Need you?” Trainer said as I heard him lie down and position the comforter. “I mean, not really,” he finally answered.
“Oh. Well, in that case—”
“It’d just be nice to have you or someone around. That’s all I’m saying.”
Me or someone. Anyone. Whoever it was convenient for. His head sank into the pillow; my shoulders slumped.
I pushed down the sense of inadequacy swelling in my chest and focused on Trainer and his mom, alone together for the first time since Senori passed… A hug from most mothers could assuage their kid’s pain—just a tiny sliver, of course, but she’d carry the burden as long as she had to. Melanie Luart was a mother only capable of inflicting new kinds of pain and expecting Trainer to handle the weight of it alone.
“I can. I think. Probably best to wait until the morning to say for sure, but count me in for now.”
No response. My body seemingly slipped away from me as my mind demanded my full attention.
Marty and Sasha’s mom, she wore bangle bracelets that clinked as she walked because I’d flinch anytime she walked into the room unexpectedly. She passed them on to Sasha when she grew so frail it was a wonder there was anything left of her for her bones to support. And Marty told me a few times he missed how she never pushed him to talk when he only had the energy to offer a one-shouldered shrug. She had a knack for empathy that, from the sound of it, few others could match.
No, Melanie wasn’t anything like her. Instead, she reminded me of Marty and Sasha’s dad, the tyrant who shamelessly beat and bruised his children, his deep baritone voice enlightening them as to how little he cared for their existence every chance it got. It’d been years since Melanie had any real hold on Trainer, but I couldn’t imagine how he felt, exposing his sadness to the woman who’d done her fair share in building it up only to ignore it.
I couldn’t imagine what Marty and Sasha felt in their situation right now, either. I couldn’t even guess or ask or observe them from a hiding spot from another room in their house.
Despite myself, I suddenly found myself wanting be part of Marty’s team again, with Sasha and Marin and Halcyon and Peoria, all of them, just to know. Just to not be left in the dark.
*
As it turned out, when morning came I wasn’t up to being Trainer’s awkward third wheel at Wavefront.
I told him I’d tag along anyway with the most enthusiastic voice I could muster, because that’s what good pokémon do. They fight battles, physical or otherwise. If he found himself in the middle of some kind of war, I’d fight alongside him—or for him, if I could.
But my teammates hadn’t forgiven him for last night’s conversation, nor were they feeling generous. Ezrem was perched on the back of the couch, pecking at a bowl of cereal balancing on the edge of the armrest and looking Trainer square in the eye. His chewing was loud and obnoxious. And of course he just shrugged when a large crumb fell onto the floor and bounced a few inches. Leaving his own cereal on the table half-finished, Trainer disappeared into his bedroom wordlessly.
Shin munched away loudly as well, except on an unopened crate of tennis balls. Kuiora chuckled and plopped down next to him.
“We may have found the one thing he can’t tear through right away,” she said.
“It’s just plastic, isn’t it…?” Atis asked, taking a step toward Shin and tilting his head.
Shin growled and grabbed the crate in his paws, bounding over to Rennio near the apartment’s front door. He nearly tripped over himself in his excitement. His eyes pleading, he held the crate up to the elekid.
“I wanna see what happens when you give it a good shock, Rennio!” he said.
Rennio blinked, then offered a slight smile. “Not a good idea indoors like this… Sorry, buddy,” he said.
“Aw.” Shin looked this way and that, his gaze soon settling on me. A devilish grin spread across his face as he bounded over to me at the entrance to Trainer’s bedroom. “What about you, Gracie?”
“Fire’s not safe, either,” I said, waving him away.
In a rage, the totodile threw the crate of tennis balls on the ground. “You can summon your flames whenever you want.
And we’ve got a fireplace,” he said. “Lame excuses, guys.”
“Give it a week or so. Then you’ll all be in the good ol’ wilderness all the time, just like me,” Ezrem piped in, rolling his eyes.
“Yeah, because you’re exactly what we aspire to be,” I retorted.
“Hey, you’ve only got your old trainer to blame. Don’t know what his deal is, but…” Ezrem’s voice trailed off.
“But forgive us if we’re still a little skeptical of him. He was pretty mean to Sai years ago,” Kuiora finished on his behalf, followed by an affirmative grunt from Atis and Rennio.
I nodded stupidly. Perhaps this explained why the silence was bearable for them. They knew each other well enough to know what they were thinking without forming words and sentences to validate their suspicions. They knew what each other were feeling even if what they felt didn’t have a name.
If they all understood each other so well and this wasn’t just another kind of façade… that was great for them, less so for me. After all these years, was I really still so separate from them?
Just then, the door to Trainer’s bedroom opened. He stepped out, a shoulder bag slung over his back. I sidled slowly over to the front door to show him I wanted to bounce before another conversation could spark.
“Ah, sorry, Gracie. Had to find Glori’s ball and some papers I promised I’d bring Mom,” Trainer said sheepishly as he followed my lead. The crate of tennis balls rolled in front of his feet after Shin dropped it, but Trainer merely sidestepped it. Shin retrieved it himself, sticking his tongue out at Trainer.
“Oh?” Ezrem said, an eyebrow raised. “Well, look at that! Won’t be just Sai after all.”
“I think you should tag along, Ezrem,” Rennio quipped. “Get out of the house for a while, you know?”
“As if he doesn’t do that enough!” Kuiora said.
“That’s… the point of the joke, yeah.”
Kuiora offered another retort, but I tuned her out. “Glori wants to come? Really?” I asked Trainer.
He glanced down at me, brushing a lock of hair out of his face and waiting for a signal that it was okay to get going. From the glint in the light, it seemed he’d taken care to gel his in place, and in a new style—teased forward to give it a spiky appearance, but smooth on the side.
“Well…” His voice trailed off as I placed my paw on the door and we saw ourselves out. “I asked her to, and she didn’t say no, at least,” he finished in a whisper.
“Good enough for me.”
“Me, too.”
Wavefront was a quaint café, with bright yellow and baby blue walls. Beige bookshelves lined the front area and held seashells, postcards, travel guides, and other knickknacks that tourists could buy as gifts. The smell of mocha wafted in from the seating area, where several booths divided by wide aquariums took up a good portion of the wall space. Between the aquariums stood glass dividers, probably to prevent stealing, and so that pokémon didn’t have the means to battle and potentially destroy the café.
Trainer scanned the place, holding his hand above his eyes like he was looking out at the sea proper. I listened among the chitchat for a recognizable voice before the glow of a staryu’s core flashing caught my eye and distracted me. Its topmost appendage waved at me as it caught me staring, and I looked down out of embarrassment.
A hostess approached us then, asking us if Trainer was lost. She had to refer to him as “sir” three times before she broke his trance.
“I’m here to meet my mom,” he explained, not making eye contact with her. “Just looking for her.”
“Would she perhaps be on the freshwater or saltwater side?” she asked.
“Uh, freshwater.” Trainer fished Glori’s ball out of his bag and held it out for the hostess to take. I’ve been here before, but not with a water-type. I’m not sure how I…”
“Whatever you’ve got in there isn’t too big, I assume. Come this way, see if we can’t find your mom at the back.”
“Right. Thanks.”
The hostess nodded to me, which I took to mean I should subdue my flames a bit more than I already had. Non-trainer humans didn’t pay much attention to ‘mon around here unless they needed something from us. As we followed the hostess to the freshwater side of the dining area, a man paused halfway through a bite of smoked salmon to pull his table’s skirt inward just in time for me to pass by. I extinguished my flames completely, adding this encounter to the list of times people thought I’d gotten too close for comfort. The urge to want to fold inside myself and disappear made my heart race, and I counted thirty seconds before Trainer was seated across his mom and was explaining that she’d tried to find a secluded corner of the café out of habit more than anything.
“I guess I would’ve done the same,” Trainer said.
Bowls of food pellets sat at the end of the table closest to the aquarium, the usual goodies on the other end: menus, bread with butter packets, near empty bottles of ketchup and mustard, and silverware rolled up in thick napkins. Trainer leaned forward, rolling Glori’s pokéball back and forth in his hands instead of setting himself up to eat. Melanie, her eyes just as rich of a blue as Trainer’s, watched him as if he were swinging a pendulum around.
She gave Trainer a sympathetic glance and reached out to fold his hands over hers. “That’s the sweetie, huh,” she said.
“Yeah, this is Glori.” Trainer examined the area above our table’s aquarium for a moment, the bubbling of the filter like a soothing melody. “Oh, here we go,” he said, standing and reaching above his head to pull open a hatch. He aimed the pokéball’s light at the opening he’d just unveiled. In a flash of red light, Glori materialized inside the tank, the level of water rising slightly.
Melanie nodded at the magikarp. That was better than the absolute nothing I received as a greeting. Wasn’t she a fire-type trainer? If so, what was with the immense interest in Glori? Not knowing the answer to that question made my skin crawl.
I watched as she tapped her lips with the tip of her index finger, scrutinizing Glori’s movements. Like me, Glori wasn’t afraid to meet her gaze with a flair of skepticism to boot.
After a minute, Melanie cleared her thought, seemingly oblivious to the meaning of our body language. Her eyes scanned the rest of the aquarium. White gravel lined the bottom mixed with multicolored gems, bright as neon, along with chunks of driftwood molded into the shape of a cave. The place clearly ran a bit cheap with its artificial bamboo plants and anemones wavering lifelessly.
“Cute sign,” she finally said, pointing at a faded ‘no fishing’ sign plopped down crookedly near a decoration piece in the shape of a ship.
“Yeah. Not sure how many fishing fanatics are really around here, but yeah.”
Melanie grabbed a menu at the end of the table, but shoved it under a notebook and pen she’d been covering with her forearms before now. She didn’t bother to hand Trainer a menu of his own.
“So,” she said, “plain red and white pokéball.”
Trainer lifted the ball up, gaping at it like it wasn’t meant to be in his possession anymore. Shoving it back into his pocket, he grunted in affirmation and turned to me.
“If you’re hungry, come here,” he said, patting the cushioned seat next to him. All the awkwardness from this place so far melted away from me in an instant. I hopped up into the booth, climbing over his lap to claim the spot closest to the aquarium.
Glori swam over to me and plinked on the glass. “I know what you’re thinking,” she whispered. “Sai told me what was up beforehand. No need to worry.”
“Now I’m even more lost,” I said. “She can’t understand ‘mon, though, so. For you, no need to hush hush.”
Her mouth opened like she was gonna speak, a glistening bubble escaping and dancing toward the tank’s surface. Meanwhile, Melanie reiterated how Senori had caught Glori—as if Trainer needed another reminder of it—and asked how conscious Glori was at the time.
“And Sai
can understand pokémon. Uh huh,” she said skeptically, then began to swim away to the other side of the tank, near Melanie.
“Okay,” Trainer started, taking a deep breath. “Fully conscious, she told me. Senori… Senori gave her a choice, and she agreed. No real battle involved. I guess Glori
did ask other magikarp at the daycare what they thought, but no one batted an eye? Or a fin, even.” He offered a nervous chuckle, then continued, “So, uh, when she’s in there… It sounds nice, like I don’t have to feel bad about not having renovated the apartment yet.”
Melanie’s hand stopped as she looked up sharply from her notes. “And seems you might not even need to,” she said. “What’s it like inside?”
Trainer glanced at Glori, who was busy peering off into the distance, yet a slight twitch of her lips told me she was only pretending to not listen in.
“Any memory she wants,” he said, “she can have it. It can become real all over again, in a sense. A tap into her mind is all it takes to summon it in front of her, and she can’t change anything about it, just watch. Like us people at a… at a movie theater, and, you know…”
No, I didn’t know. And he didn’t finish his sentence for me to learn.
“What’s wrong?” Melanie asked, her eyes narrowing.
Trainer shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I just remembered I’ve never been to a movie theater still is all. Rennio and Ezrem talk about movies, or used to, I guess, because their old trainer was pretty into them.”
The waitress swung around, stopping the conversation for the moment as she offered each of them a full glass of water or another drink instead. She took their orders and turned to walk away. Except then Trainer reached out and lightly gripped her arm, murmuring a quick thank you before realizing his forwardness and hiding his arm under the table.
“Sorry,” he said, watching the hostess disappear around the corner. He took a long sip of his water and addressed his mother again. “You can imagine that Glori chooses to recall positive memories, for the most part.”
“For the most part.” Melanie leaned back in her seat, eyeing him like he was the one in the aquarium. Like he was the one on display and being interrogated about.
“Yeah. I mean, I’m not gonna pry into her personal life beyond that, you know?”
“Has she ever said anything on her own?” Melanie asked. Glancing in the direction of the aquarium, she tutted when Glori turned the other way.
“Little things here and there.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t seem like anything catastrophic has happened in her lifetime, though, if that’s what you mean. Dunno how much that helps, but I’m glad for that.”
“I see.”
Melanie closed her notebook, resting her pen inside its side binding. Though she had a blank stare on her face and bit her lip as if contemplating something, she said nothing else.
Beside us, Glori gulped. “This is normal, I take it?”
Trainer opened his mouth to answer, but couldn’t, not without his mother having every opportunity to tune in and wrest an explanation out of him.
“Yeah,” I said for him, because I knew what she meant. Was it normal for her to converse with her son about everything except him? “Yeah, it is.”
If Trainer and her ever talked about their past, about how she locked him up in the secret Mahogany headquarters in the basement like an animal at her disposal, I didn’t know. Sometimes I imagined the two of them spoke in code in front of me, since Kaloseux phrases often slipped in their conversations. Trainer mentioned once he’d like to become bilingual again if he had a real reason to, and I hoped that didn’t mean meeting up with her more.
“What if she was unconscious? Sounds like it would’ve been bad,” he said, a little too loudly, a little too quickly.
“Naturally, then, the unconscious would dominate what’s perceived in the pokéball.” Melanie sat up straight, the cushion on her seat frayed in multiple spots. “For better or for worse.”
Trainer didn’t have anything to say to that.
“So, that’s my job,” she went on. “To define the better scenario and the worst scenario, and discern how to increase the likelihood of the former. Have you read any of my articles yet?”
“Huh? Oh, I… I try. But it’s hard to focus on them,” he said. I nuzzled the top of my head against Trainer’s bare arm, recalling several nights in which he mentioned heading to bed to the team but stayed up for a few hours afterward to read by lamplight. Unbeknownst to even me, he was apparently reading his mother’s published works and digesting other kinds of research and experiments she did these days.
Laughing, Melanie said, “Can’t say I blame you. The academic world could stand to teach and accept less dry writing styles.”
Wanting to tell her that wasn’t the reason at all, I sidled closer to Trainer. And I planned to stay until he told me it was uncomfortable or that he wanted me to go.
The conversation veered away from Glori and about pokéballs in general, until the two of them received their food and had a proper excuse to divide their attention between talking and eating. Melanie delved into the theory and history of pokéballs, gushing about how their normal design came from voltorb and altering their electrical makeup to reduce the likelihood of short circuiting, then exploding. The name magearna was thrown around, too, in relation to it being subject to collecting the life energy of pokémon and humans, all the while having the appearance of a pokéball as it slept. Her enthusiasm for methods aimed at controlling such excesses of energy made me shiver.
Eventually, Trainer paused halfway through lifting his last forkful of scrambled eggs, then let the piece of silverware fall back to his plate with a loud clank.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just, you know, silly of me, that I haven’t asked Glori if she’s hungry or wants to go back in her ball.”
“I’d say we’re ready to wrap up with the check, anyway.”
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that. I’ll see you in a couple days, so double what I usually do in a week.” Trainer forced a smile and moved to recall Glori through the aquarium’s latch. His fingers shook all the while.
Melanie raised an eyebrow. “You could always bring a bottle of pellets from here back with you. My treat, if you want.”
“That’s all right. I can take care of her,” Trainer said quickly. “We’re not low at home or anything. Quite the opposite.”
Reaching out and placing a hand on his shoulder, his mom said, “Relax, Sai. I’m not going to take her.”
I did a double take. Did that mean she’d thought about it?
“No, you’re not.” Trainer sighed, his shoulders slumping. “So, the birthday thing’s at Clauncher’s Hook. Nine on Saturday, okay? Not Friday like I thought Jasmine told me before.”
“Got it. I’ll make sure to have a bit of cash on me this time.”
“Oh,” Trainer said, meeting my gaze for a brief moment before closing his eyes. “Forgot about that. As usual.”
A pause, then it hit me as Trainer practically broke into a jog to rush out of the café. Not only was he helping his mom with her research, but she was helping to pay for… something of his. Rent, probably. Trainer skipped work too much, and it wasn’t our job to worry, but it
was our prerogative to worry about why he wasn’t worried. I sprinted after him myself, deciding it was best not to press any more buttons for him right this instant.
